Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, all credits are Namco's.
"Mom, today at school Sophie said her mom is pregnant. What does it mean "pregnant"?"
"It means her mother is having a baby, Steve!" Elizabeth Fox replied quietly, setting the table for lunch, which her husband was already seated at.
"And when the baby arrives, what happens?"
"That she will have a little brother or sister" was the dry answer of the adoptive parent.
" How beautiful! And can I have one too?" asked hopefully the little blond, who always wanted to have a playmate also at home.
He was a kind and sweet child, but for some reason he struggled to bond with his classmates, who avoided him, pointing at him as strange. Yet he spent a lot of time with that weird doctor, the psychologist, who made him talk and said he was perfectly normal. For a moment he thought back to Dr Kliesen... In that hell where he had lived her smile was the only thing that brightened his day.
"If your mother would have been able to have children, I don't think you would be here, Steve!" Charles Fox replied, without raising his eyes from the newspaper.
The enthusiasm in the small kid died, as did that childish glimmer of hope that someone loved him.
Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant. That word resounded in his head and ears like a cannon blast, while his mind refused to associate that state with the woman in front of him. The same woman who had brought him into the world against her will, who had denied him, now was carrying the child of one of the most ruthless men ever existed on the Earth. Why was his mother carrying his child? Did he hurt her? Had he forced her again to offer her body in the name of some sick science? Or worse, had she been raped? Had he brainwashed her into agreeing?
"You...How can you...be...?"
Nina's face was a mask of pain mixed with humiliation, her cheeks were red and her eyes could barely hold back her tears.
"I've been a fool...Reckless!" She stammered, nervously groping her still flat stomach.
"What did he do to you?" he was able to ask her, still in disbelief.
The assassin snorted up a couple of times before dropping heavily on the bed. Her legs couldn't take it anymore.
"What did WE do..."
" What... What do you mean by "we"...?"
Nina looked up at the boxer and saw all his bewilderment on his familiar features.
"Yes, WE did!"
Silence fell again for a moment, during which the boy tried to process what he had been told. Was it really consensual?
"So Kazama didn't... Did he hurt you?"
Nina shook her head, realizing how impossible that story had to be to other people's eyes and ears.
"No, Steve! Jin didn't hurt me. He didn't force me. He didn't even rape me, if that's what you're asking. Getting pregnant wasn't a consensual choice, nor even a deliberate one. So this should help you to understand what really happened."
"So you're telling me that you two..."
"Sit down Steve..." said the blonde, sighing heavily. "It's gonna be a very long story..."
The mild tone with which she invited him to sit almost startled him, but the curiosity to know what was behind it was eating him alive. He obediently dragged the desk chair in front of the bed, where Nina had crouched in the fetal position and was intent on peering at an undefined spot on the wall. She sighed heavily ready to pour out a river full of words.
"I had entered the fifth tournament to finally get even with my sister Anna... Shortly after I tried to kill you in front of the Union Jack Hotel, I found myself with nothing to do, because the union had failed. As you already know, I was trapped for 19 years into an induced cryogenic sleep, during which you were born. It was the men of the Mishima Zaibatsu who captured me when I tried to take out Kazuya Mishima, being betrayed by my dear sister, thus using me for Dr Bosconovitch's experiment. She herself offered to take part in it and remained frozen too... Probably that vain bitch would never accept the fact of growing old while I would have stood still in my 20 years. However, when we were awakened she didn't suffer any side effects, but I wasn't so lucky: I had completely lost my memory."
So that's how he was born. For a moment he felt guilty for being born that way.
"Shortly after the end of the fourth tournament and before the beginning of the next one I contacted Anna by phone. We hadn't seen each other for two years during which I had simply continued to kill by profession without remembering anything from my distant past. For about a month after waking up she had taken care of me, filling my head with what were lies and my mouth with drugs to keep me sedated, taking advantage of my amnesia. But in the exact moment I saw her, something in my mind snapped and I was finally able to remember almost everything: my childhood, my adolescence, the first two tournaments... And the death of my father, that she always blamed me for."
The boy watched his mother's eyes filling with tears at the mere mention of the parent. So his grandfather had passed away because of her? No, impossible. He didn't know exactly what happened, but something told him it wasn't her fault at all. She didn't even know her aunt that well, for that matter, but she had never inspired him anything good. The blonde wrinkled her eyes before continuing.
"We faced each other for days. Those few breaks we gave ourselves were for recharging our weapons than to rest. Yet neither of them ever struck the decisive blow to the other, probably because in our hearts we knew it wasn't what our parents would have wanted. So we decided to settle the score at the upcoming King Of The Iron Fist Tournament... We also fought there to the bitter end, and eventually I won. I could have killed her, in front of thousands of people...But I preferred to humiliate her, leaving her screaming and ranting on the ground in pain and defeat. From there I lost any interest in her. For me it was a closed chapter."
How bad had to be to remain without parents and in fierce conflict with the only family you had left. Steve had been alone for most of his life, because despite being adopted, that couple had never been affectionate towards him.
"So it was time for me to start over for the umpteenth time: I knew who I was again, although some holes in my memory remained, but I got my shit together and moved on. I had been eliminated by Jin at the tournament, after an exhausting fight in which I had not even given all of myself, because I was still proved by the clash with my sister, but I didn't care to win..." She took a short break, changing her position and lying on her back to look at the ceiling. "I had decided to leave the next week. I was walking around Tokyo buying camouflage clothing for escaping airport security. For the whole morning I had the unpleasant feeling of being followed and observed and in fact on the way home someone tried to approach me. I tried to throw him off anyway, until I decided to manage the situation, hiding in an alley to ambush my pursuer. He was young, but not smart enough... I still remember his expression of terror when he found the barrel of my gun pointed at his head."
She smiled remembering Chomei's face when it was him to find himself with his back to the wall. He was so inexperienced and her training had made him a stronger and better soldier and man.
"I forced him to spill the beans and he revealed me that he was a Tekken Force soldier serving the Mishima Zaibatsu and that his boss had an offer for me. Of course, after what they had done to me, it was absolutely out of the question to even talk to them without trying to take them out, yet before I could add anything else Jin himself appeared and told me that they were willing to declare war on Kazuya Mishima. It was then that I discovered that not only he had won the tournament, but that he had taken over the company."
" So you accepted his proposal and started all this fuss just for personal revenge?" Steve wondered in amazement.
"Oh no, there's more..." the woman replied, smiling bitterly. "The story is much more complicated than you can even imagine."
The confused look he gave him was an invitation to continue.
"Jin and I had crossed paths years before, at the third Iron Fist tournament. You probably won't believe a word of what you're about to hear, but I guarantee you that this is nothing..."
"Really? Have you been kidnapped by aliens?" he replied sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
"Aliens, how funny!" she retorted, glaring at him. "They would probably have been more harmless. Anyway... I had just awakened from my sleep and as I said, my mind was completely empty. Which made me an easy target for Ogre."
"Ogre? And who would that be?"
"Several years before Heihachi and the Tekken Force had ventured into Mexico among the ancient ruins of a temple. There his men were killed by Ogre, none other than the god of war who had been awakened. Of course, that old fool seeing how strong he was, tried to put him down and use him for his evil purposes. He wanted to merge his DNA with his own and become immortal. The very idea was more frightening than the monster itself. But obviously Ogre was no easy prey and began to hunt the best martial arts masters in the world to acquire their techniques. Until four years before the third tournament, he reached Yakushima Island where a 15-year-old Jin lived, with his mother, Jun."
So now it was all about the Kazama and Mishima family tree? Steve really didn't understand how all of this could be related to the main issue, but he listened carefully to what his mother was telling him, eager to know as much as possible about his past.
"I had met Jun Kazama in the second edition of the KOTIFT when I had the task of killing Kazuya. I remember how she warned me about him, how she was able to intimidate me. There was something strange in that woman, but in a very positive way. How she conceived a child with that devil still remains a mystery, yet she was convinced that there was good in him. Eventually she became pregnant with Jin and Kazuya was believed dead for years, so she was the one who raised him, sent him to school and taught him the art of fighting. They were inseparable until that horrible day when Ogre decided to pay them a visit."
Her eyes filled again with sadness. She was aware of these things because it was Jin himself who told her about them and she had clearly seen into his eyes the pain and anger for what had happened. She had never felt as bad for someone as she did at the time, even if she was barely able to feel empathy for someone.
"Jin was only 15 years old, he couldn't do anything. Jun had begged him to escape and save himself, but he still tried to defend his mother. Unfortunately, it was all useless: when he woke up their house was reduced to a smoldering heap of rubble and his mother no longer had a body to bury."
As much as he hated Jin, Steve felt sorry for what happened to him. In the end, a parent is always what you owe your life to.
"I always thought that Jun was endowed with some strange power and in fact he had warned his son days before Ogre's arrival that if anything ever happened to her to go and find his grandfather, Heihachi. And so Jin did, naively believing he was a reliable person. Indeed it seemed so for the first time, when he took him under his wing, giving him a place to stay, food to eat, teaching and training him, but the reality was quite different. That old fool had not given up his delusional plans yet and four years later he organized the third tournament to ambush Ogre. He succeeded. The final took place in fact between the latter and Jin, then nineteen and it was he who eventually became the winner."
"Ok but what about you?"
"I'm getting there! Ogre realized that Jin was a guy who was out of the ordinary even though he didn't seem as such. Going public would have made him easy prey for Heihachi...So in order to eliminate him, he decided to use the mind of a potentially lethal person, who at that moment was in her most fragile state...A person who no longer had any idea who she was and what purpose had in life..."
Steve flashed his eyes realizing what really happened. All of this was incredible... Yet Nina was anything but a liar.
"I enrolled myself with the sole purpose of killing Jin Kazama..."
Author's note: hi everyone! I'm back with the first part of this chapter. Steve is gradually learning unbelievable things, will he be able to handle them? Well...You'll find that out ;) see you soon!