The Woman of White Wings

Chapter Two: In Which Kazuya is Forced into a Frank Discussion

Angel had vanished soon after her announcement. Being able to think about the whole thing rationally, without someone who stared at him or scolded him for every disbelieving thought before he could even finish it, Jin came to the conclusion that he was going insane. Either he was putting too much pressure on himself or this was yet another side effect of the cursed blood his father gave that he had been unaware of, but the fact was, invisible, mind-reading winged women did not exist. That Jin had come face to face with a Mayan fighting god and was apt to transform into a three-eyed tattooed beast when he was particularly upset or his life was in danger notwithstanding, the boy simply wasn't ready to give up on outside precepts of What Is Real and What Is Not. She was a delusion. She was not someone who could actually help him fight what he was becoming.

Jin left the café to walk the streets alone with his head hung and once again tell himself that he should have not come back to Japan. He didn't know what Heihachi had to gain by pretending he was dead, but he was sure there was some sort of plan involved and equally sure that it had something to do with bringing himself and his father to their untimely ends. By participating in the tournament, Jin felt like he was almost sacrificing himself to this, that he could never be more than someone locked in a three-way struggle to kill his opponents. He should have been able to run away and leave Heihachi and Kazuya to their battle which had been going on since long before Jin was born.

Jin didn't have the time to run away. He couldn't just wait until they succeeded in killing each other to live a normal life. He was losing to Devil and he wanted to take them down with him.

He also wanted to lie down, Jin realized, so he stopped walking when he reached the nearest bus stop, waited for the first bus and rode until he reached a good place to start looking for a cheap motel. He was better off staying away from the address his tournament entry listed. He was also better off not leaving a paper-trail, so when he found a motel, he paid in cash and registered under a fake name, no questions asked.

The room was small and sparsely decorated—a bureau, an old television on a rickety stand, a bed with an Angel sitting in the center cross-legged and staring vacantly out the grimy window.

It seemed impossible that she could be there to greet him unless she was a fabrication of his mind. She just acted so insulted when he doubted her, though, that Jin's natural politeness overtook the realistic portions of his brain. He supposed all either of them really had was belief.

"I didn't even know I was going to be here. How could you?" It was nicer than a 'What the hell are you doing here,' at least.

The question was ignored. Jin might as well have never said it, or because she was a mind-reader, even wondered. Angel leapt up from the bed, flew across the room—which was so small it was really more like jumping, but because she had wings, it looked like flying—and hugged him tightly in greeting. It was really only right that someone with no regard to personal space look Western.

"After we had such a lovely chat, I wanted to talk to your father, but I didn't know where to find him. You can help me look for him, can't you?"

"The last thing I need is to look like I want to find him," Jin replied. It was true, of course. If Kazuya thought Jin was looking for him, then he very well might appear unwanted and that would result in a battle. If he was going to fight his father, Jin at least wanted to do it someplace he could be assured no one outside of the Mishima clan could stumble upon them and get hurt.

Though she didn't take her arms from around him, Angel pulled back a little to better look him in the face. "It's normal for a child to want to know where their parent is. No one will think anything of it."

"Kazuya would. I don't want him thinking that I want to see him. Can't you just find him the way you did before I was born?"

Angel moved closer to Jin again, resting her chin on his shoulder and speaking in a slightly stifled voice. "I can't find him. I used to just know where he was and what he was thinking the way I know now with you. I don't even know where to look anymore. He's not the same person he was, I'm sure of that much."

Jin didn't say anything but wondered if it was possible to feel the jaw bone of a delusion digging into one's shoulder. Angel left this thought alone, though she probably heard it loud and clear.

"I'm not asking for a lot. Just find someplace where he'll have to be sometime or even someplace that he was but has already left. I can't just walk up to someone and ask if they've seen him."

"He's not going to be leaving a trail for the Zaibatsu to pick up on anymore than I am. He's smarter than that." Jin had only met his father once and didn't have any idea how Kazuya's mind worked, but he was good at hiding from Heihachi's men. If he had not been, then at some point, he would have wound up being part of Jin's life.

"I have to talk to him." Angel couldn't argue Jin's logic.

"Why? You said yourself he doesn't listen to you."

"I just have to." She stepped away from Jin finally. He thought she looked like she was about to cry. "I'm the only one who loves him now. Doesn't he at least deserve to know I'm here?" The plea did little to change Jin's mind, so she added, "Also, I have to smack him for being an idiot." She thought she saw Jin smile at that, just a little.

Actually finding Kazuya was fairly difficult. Looking at the tournament records, Kazuya had no local address given and neither Jin nor Angel could find anyone mentioning him hanging around any of the Mishima buildings like the foreign contestants were known to do. Angel proved to be very good at eavesdropping and tended to want to gossip about the female entries. She was trying to explain the history of Anna and Nina Williams when Jin walked away from the unseen annoyance to convince a Mishima receptionist to print out a copy of his father's fight schedule, hoping to find a stage that Kazuya would eventually have to be. Playing the part of the caring son left a bad taste in Jin's mouth, but it was met with more success than any other attempts at finding him. Making sure the print-out was visible to her, Jin explained in hushed tones that she could see Kazuya after his fight with Raven—or before, if she wanted to make him look like a raving lunatic in front of his opponent.

But she was gone.

---

Kazuya Mishima walked away from Raven disgusted after their match. The ninja had acted as though he had information that would be useful to Kazuya that he was unwilling to part with. But a foot to the man's chest revealed that whatever organization Raven was working for, they were just as in the dark as Kazuya himself. For all he "observed" G Corporation, Raven didn't know why they had betrayed Kazuya. He even had the gall to ask Kazuya what was the beneath the temple.

If there was something beneath Homaru that had been freed when the temple exploded, and if that was the same entity that was now in control of the Zaibatsu, Kazuya could only think of one way that it could have gotten there in the first place. Heihachi.

But if Heihachi had known there was something powerful under Honmaru, why would he have brought Jin to be held captive there as well? Perhaps it was not the chains that kept Jin's Devil side in check, but the temple itself. There, Kazuya had been unable to transform into his Devil self, unable to pull Jin's essence out. Devil suspected it had something to do with the Kazama blood, but when had Jun ever implied that she her own supernatural abilities to pass on? Kazuya hadn't seen Jin transform in Honmaru; Jin didn't need his full power to defeat his father. Devil Jin's ire at been directed only at Heihachi and then short lived. Kazuya, upon regaining consciousness, had been far more concerned with escaping the Jack robots than noticing the black feathers on the ground.

He'd gotten no answers out of Raven—no reason for why G Corporation betrayed him. And now he was beginning to suspect that Honmaru had been a prison for someone powerful, other than Jin. Leaving the shinobi, if Raven could really be called such, to his own devices, Kazuya turned his back and left the rooftop stage where they had fought.

A little lean-to housed the stairwell, on top of which sat a women dressed in white.

"Kazuya," her voice was heavy, she was someone who only now realized that she had been betrayed. "You summoned Devil. Why didn't you summon me?"

His left eye, permanently red now, began to glow, but rather than transferring control of his body Kazuya muttered, "No, I'll handle this."

"You'll handle what?" Angel's response, not Devil's; Devil's answer was only in Kazuya's mind, unspoken, and apparently, unheard by Angel.

To Angel, he said, "I have no use for you."

"That's obviously a lie, since I'm here now. I wouldn't be here if you didn't want me and you know it." She hopped down from where she sat to be eye-level with him on the rooftop. Some meters back, she could see Raven pulling himself to his feet, but that was far less important.

"You are merely another who would get in my way. I did not call you here."

Angel balked. "Get in your way? When have I ever done anything that wasn't helping you? I'm the one who wants what's best for you. Devil is possessing your soul so that he can have a material body. Nothing you want matters to him. How many years has he been making you promises that he hasn't kept? Huh?"

"Devil and I have come to a new agreement," Kazuya responded. "And it has no place for you."

"Why are you listening to him? You wanted to get rid of him! Don't you remember wanting to be free? To be a good person?"

Desperate questions ignored, Kazuya pushed past her to make his way down the steps and off the roof. Angel watched him. "Kazuya?"

He turned back towards her, just a bit. His right side was facing her, she could see his normal eye. It was familiar and comforting. Maybe he was willing to listen to her now. "You'd be surprised how much death changes a person's plans." The brown eye began glowing as well and the voice that came out of Kazuya's mouth no longer his own. "You abandoned him in death."

"So did you! You attacked Jin!"

"Kazuya lives now only because I returned to his body."

"You didn't do it for him!"

"Why should he choose you, you who forces your morality upon him unasked for, over me, who gives him the power to fulfill his ambitions? Choose you, who left him to die, over me, who saved his life?"

The physical manifestation of Kazuya Mishima's good side as a separate entity shook with rage.

"You left him to save your own life. His soul was saved. You forced him back to life so that YOU could still live in the human world because you couldn't have JIN!"

The glow of the right eye subsided. Kazuya was once again in control. "So you would wish me dead, Angel?"

"I wish you peace, Kazuya. I fear you will only know this peace in death." Angel was ashamed to say it, ashamed because it was true, ashamed because it sounded like she was betraying him, as he betrayed her. Could her actions hurt his feelings? She would have thought it unlikely, but he had taken his voice back for that question.

He turned his back towards her fully, and continued walking down the stairs. "Then leave me to my peace."

Next—The Asuka Question

Disclaimer: See last installment.