Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, all propriety are Namco's!
The deepest silence surrounded him, not even the faintest breath of wind dared to disturb his meditation. He felt all the energy converging inside him and flowing like fire in his veins, unleashing a dark aura perceptible by anyone. Those who dared to interrupt the process would have met instant death. He didn't consider himself as a human anymore: he actually was, but the essence of evil lingered in his blood. Many wondered who he inherited that from, since his father Jinpachi was known as a fair and good man, nobody would have expected that his only son would have become the patriarch of the most damned family ever existed. The only love he felt was the one for power, the thirst for glory had made him a blind man without remorse, who didn't hesitate to throw his only child down from a cliff when he was only a kid only to prove his theory. But that little bastard had survived, showing him that he had inherited the evil gene from his mother. He thought he loved his wife, but he killed her without thinking twice: he was the true monster.
Something was creeping closer, or better, somebody. He could feel an impressive form of energy in the air, but as hard as he tried to recognize it, he wasn't able to understand who it belonged to, it was totally unknown to him. He wasn't impressed at all: whoever it was, it would have been no match for him. A sudden whiffle opened wide the dojo's doors and stormed inside, extinguishing all the flames that were burning bright. He stayed still, sitting on the floor cross-legged with closed eyes. It would have taken much more to impress him.
"Who the hell are you?"
Heihachi heard heavy steps creeping closer and closer.
"Someone whose fists know no equal!" answered a deep, harsh voice.
"Ha! It seems we can drop the formalities..." he replied, standing on his feet and turning around to face his opponent.
As they moved into their fighting stance a series of lighitning discharges went through his worn and muscolar body, but still full of force. He studied the unknown man in front of him, who wore nothing but a ripped blue jumpsuit, a pair of flip-flops and a bizzarre necklace made of big wooden spheres. His red hair were tightly tied in a messy bun, while the terrifying expression was made even more frightening by his vermillion eyes, which glittered with evil light.
"This is too destiny..." he commented, before dashing against Mishima's boss, whom immediately ran towards him to start the battle.
It was a fierce and violent no holds barred combat, and yet nobody could overbear the other. They kept attacking each other ceaselessly but the situation was still even. Heihachi stopped for a while, observing his enemy. In his mind flashed the words of that weird Italian exorcist: "We received intel that something inhuman had been witnessed in the Far East...". Of course, everything now made sense.
"It was you..." he whispered.
He couldn't add anything else, tho...A loud thud interrupted him and in a blink of an eye the two men found themselves surrounded by an army of well known robots.
"Jack-6...You're with G Corp?"
The man wasn't impressed.
"What is this?"
No, he definitely was their ally. But it wasn't time for questioning, the androids had pointed him and they were ready to strike. There was just one thing to do, as an unpleasant dejà-vu crossed his mind. He promised himself not to be fooled again and sided with the mysterious warrior, starting to beat them down one by one with a single blow. It was way too easy not only for him, but for that man too; surely he wasn't an opponent to understimate.
"I must say you impress me!" commented Heihachi, as the whole Jack army was reduced to a futile pile of wrecks. "Tell me your name."
"I am Akuma and I have come to kill you and Kazuya on behalf of Kazumi!" he retorted coldly. "All of this is for her..."
"WHAT? Kazumi?" screamed Heihachi, as he heard his wife's name. "You're saying that Kazumi told you to kill me and Kazuya? Ah, nonsense. If that were true why only appear now?" he asked disdainfully.
"I was merely waiting for you to become stronger! Right here, right now I will fulfil my promise to Kazumi..."
And in no time the battle started again, fiercer and more brutal than before. Now survival was the price, only one would have made it out alive as their common aim was destroying the other. Heihachi couldn't believe what he had just being told by Akuma: for what reason would his wife ask someone to kill not only him, but their child too, even if she loved him deeply? Sure, she tried herself to kill him after accusing him to have become a power-hungry monster and that was when he killed her by breaking her neck, but he would have never, ever thought she would have asked somebody else. Those thoughts costed him a lot: in a moment of distraction he got hit by a purple wave of energy that made him stagger badly and allowed Akuma to deliver the final blow.
"HELL AWAITS YOU" he shouted, before hitting him with such a powerful fist it was as letal as one hundred.
Heihachi was thrown backwards and when he looked up it was too late; vain was his attempt to protect himself, another rush of purple light hit him. A painful scream echoed into the night and then it was silence again.
Several miles away, from Jack's eyes somebody else had followed the whole show, comfortably sit onto his leather chair.
"Who the hell it that?" he asked, observing on the montitors that man's figure who had never seen before.
"He's not registered in our database." replied a soldier, checking through hundreds and hundreds of files in the vain attempt to identify him.
Kazuya rested his disfigured cheek to his fist and studied the whole scene, wondering how they would deal with his robots. He wasn't expecting that much from those mass of cans with too many circuits but it would have been interesting to observe that foreign man's style of fighting. As foregone crushing his androids was no match for the two men and now was watching them studying each other.
"I must say you impress me!" said his loathed father, scanning his rival. "Tell me your name!"
"I am Akuma and I have come to kill you and Kazuya on behalf of Kazumi!" was his cold answer. "All of this is for her..."
That reply suddenly caught his whole attention. He focused, determined not to miss even a word of that conversation and what he got to know was literally incredibile: his mother, his beloved mother wanted him dead. One of the few people he ever trusted, the one he gave him life had asked a complete stranger to kill his only son. He kept observing them brutally fighting and he didn't even blink when Akuma left the destroyed dojo after dealing Heihachi a lethal punch. Maybe he was finally dead: pretty unlikely, but not impossible.
"An explosion has been confirmed at the Mishima dojo! We've lost sight of Heihachi Mishima." the soldier informed him.
But Kazuya wasn't listening, he was too focused on his thoughts.
"My mother...was trying to kill me and Heihachi...?" asked rethorically, hiding his face behind his palm.
Before anyone could answer him a loud and scornful laugh bursted out from him.
"How absurd!" he declared, before intertwine his fingers on the table and resuming his reflections. "But who is this guy? And what kind of powers does he whield...?"
Rain kept falling imperious on the Mishima dojo's ruins. The destruction that battle had caused was utterly impressive. Only one had survived...Or so it seemed.
"No matter how hard I try, I simply cannot fathom it...Akuma...How could he know Kazumi?"
A fist emerged from the ground, followed by a vengeance and answered-hungry body.
"Heihachi Mishima is dead!"
That phrase was storming through worldwide tabloids, newspapers and channels. That tyrant was suddenly gone due to a mysterious illness, leaving the Mishima Zaibatsu without a command. Nina sighed, switching the television off. She perfectly knew that it was just a flow of bullshits and that old fart was still alive, plotting only God knows what. If anything that news released a lot of tension on the city and the whole world either: inspections had been interrupted and life was getting a little easier. Of course there was the opposite side of the medal to deal with: G Corporation took advantage of the situation to extend his power and gain even more prestige. Another tyrant was no solution, be it Heihachi or Kazuya who moved the pawn, the world would have been headed to destruction in any case. What was planning the first one by pretending to be dead? Did the second one really believed that pathetic farce? But above all, why was she still stuck in Tokyo and hadn't left yet?
The answer was given by the umpteenth stomachache that forced her to run to the bathroom for the millionth time. It had been two weeks that nausea woke her up every morning, she couldn't eat anything because she would have puked it almost immediately. She felt tired, dizzy, weak and irritable: she switched like a mad flipper ball from packing her things ready to leave to moments of desperation where everything she could do was lying on the bed and crying her eyes out without any specific reason. It was such a frustrating and heavy situation, she surely had to get a virus, or something similar, otherwise she really couldn't explain to herself what was wrong with her.
After saying goodbye to her breakfast she slowly stood up, leaning against the wall to support herself. As if it wasn't enough, dizziness and high and low blood pressure were beating her down. She dragged herself towards the sink to brush her teeth but she realized she ran out of toothpaste. Gripping tightly to the sink's bord to keep balance, she opened the drawer next to her to get a new one, but as she rummaged between various object her gaze fell on a couple of objects.
Her cerulean eyes widened at that sight, she took it in her hand and stared at it completely frozen. She slowly walked to the toilet to sit on it, as she was really about to faint, it seemed the ground had disappeared under her feet. She studied that lone tampon and a blister of pills she quit taking a while ago, since she eventually opted for a IUD, who had been left and forgot in that drawer for months and months...It didn't matter if she was a skilled trained assassin, the bodyguard of the most feared man of the world, an amazing fighter able to submit a whole army: she still was a woman. A human woman. And as such, she soon realized that a common and normal feminine occurrence was long time missing.
It had to be stress! That could easily influence on the absence of that annoying routine: the past months had been terrible for her, she was constantly under pressure and surely it wasn't the first that something like this happened to her, especially after the cryosleep she was forced into. There wouldn't be any other explanation for that, hadn't she considered the morning nausea, or the continuous mood shifts. She was about to faint again. It couldn't be. It hadn't to be. But what if it was?
For the first time in her second life, Nina Williams got to know the feeling of true fear.
Merry Xmas everyone, hope you're doing great! In this chapter I wanted to concentrate a little on the other characters to give them some space in the story, in this case Heihachi and Kazuya. More chapter focused on Nina will follow asap! Some of you may have already figure out what is going to happen next, but hey, things are not going to be easy ;) thanks for the lovely reviews, I'm grateful for them! Have a happy new year!