Chapter 22: Reflections of the Soul notes
August 10, 1999

Eleven days for this chapter. The time I spent here was running a
bit long, partly because I stopped to read a few books some nights
(who me? Read books? I almost forgot I could *do* that). Also
partly because a massive hard drive crash set my work back a bit -
thank GOODNESS I keep backups of my rough drafts in a private
directory on my web site! It looks like I won't get past Ch. 25
before summer is over, and I have to go back to college. Which
will most likely leave me with three chapters to finish the saga -
two during the semester (that's all I can ever seem to get done in
tandem with school) and one last chapter during Christmas break.
Or something like that... my January 1st, 2000 deadline actually
looks achievable!

With this chapter, Part IV: Lamentation ends, and Part V:
Depredation begins. It deserves the name Depredation on account
of all sorts of horrendous schemes, traps, and evil acts are plotted
and carried out...

The original title, "Out of Control," got rejected on account that it's
a) not *completely* accurate - Julia has some control on what's
going on, just not enough, and b) it's the name of Lei's special
throw from his Art of the Dragon stance. I've actually decided that
Lei is going to use that throw, later in the story. "Reflections of the
Soul," while a trifle generic, is a nice enough summary of what's
going on - both with Julia's use of the mirror against Shingo, and
with Jin & Julia seeing the sides of each other that they don't
normally see.

The epigraph is from a Styx: Paradise Theater song, and the quote
has been solidly in my mind for this chapter, ever since I first got
the idea for Shingo Yabuki and his paranoia of mirrors. Okay, so
the song is about a guy who's bummed out 'cause his girlfriend left
him. I still think the epigraph fits. ^_^

The one main theme for this chapter that was envisioned from the
beginning, is that Heihachi's trap would induce Jin's psychic
drunkenness, which would in turn force Julia to drag Jin to the
pocket dimension that was once Kazuya's inner sanctum. In fact,
this is perhaps 50% of the reason behind Ch. 16 - to set up the fact
that the pocket dimension is still around, Jin is using it, and it
nicely cuts him off from the rest of the world.
     Shingo's kidnapping of Julia wasn't in my mind until after I'd
thought about the character for a while - this is, of course, the
major subplot that Shingo insisted for himself. Originally, he
wasn't supposed to get his sanity back until later (when he came
across Lee's Sword of Truth), but it worked better this way. Here,
Shingo has more of a chance to explain himself, and why he went
so crazy for so long.
     Another change from the original idea is that Julia actually
manages to rescue Xiaoyu. Originally, she wasn't supposed to get
away... but I've come to realize that Heihachi WOULD have killed
her if she'd stayed (*before* he offed Jin & Julia!) and so the pixie
queen gets away. 
    Also in the original, the drinks served at Heihachi's party were
all bloodslave poison. In retrospect, though, I'd be writing myself
into a corner with the creation of so many bloodslaves - while
Heihachi would NOT want to risk tipping off Jin that anything is
wrong. So it's all just normal alcohol... very potent alcohol.

List of things taken or adapted from video games storylines, etc.:
    - Rugal Bernstein's description, gift of Orochi Power, etc.
    - Orochi Iori's intro pose, fighting stance from KoF '97
(transferred to Shingo)
    - Shingo's second victory pose (transferred to Julia)
    - the New Face Team's name (Yashiro, Shermie, & Chris are
called that in various FAQs)
    - that Shingo was once in love (though it was sort of a one-way
crush)
    - Jin's TK3 kick-button outfit.
    - Xiaoyu's time-over loss pose
    - Jin's pink lightning (from Tekken Tag!)
    - Julia's favorite color (why else is her Tekken Tag punch-button
outfit chartreuse?)
    - Hwoarang's time-over loss pose
    - Julia's time-over loss pose

List of deviations/creative license from video game storylines
    - switching Shingo's yells for powering up, shoulder ram, etc.
    - the whole story of Shingo losing his family to the Orochi
Blood riots
    - the whole storyline I made up for King of Fighter's '98

     So. Once again, you're back to interview me.
     You've been doing a lot of that lately, haven't you?
    - yes, I realize this is the fourth all-Julia chapter (as compared to
one all-Anna chapter, one all-Lee chapter, and one all-Bryan
chapter). It couldn't be helped. However, we're about to start on
another long break from Julia's viewpoint, seeing as how she's
drugged unconscious right now. While Julia will be interviewed at
least two more times (when Heihachi explains his evil plans to her,
and one for the story's resolution), I doubt that she'll have another
chapter all to herself. She's a bit reluctant to step down, after
practically carrying the novel all summer, but plot is plot, and Julia
won't be at the center of the next few plot events...

"Even if you could take Kusanagi-sama's gloves away from me,
you wouldn't be able to use them. They work only for his faithful.
You still don't believe he's a god, do you?"
    - I originally thought Shingo's gloves worked only for him,
because he's the only one in the story who will be wielding their
Power. Then I thought it over, and figured that Kusanagi-sama
would probably like Shingo to pass his gloves on to another
disciple, when Shingo's time on this world has come to a close. So
I made the restriction more provisional - Shingo's gloves work
(almost) only for him, because he's (almost) the only one who
believes in Kusanagi-sama.
    Chizuru Kagura also believes in Kusanagi-sama - and some
other King of Fighters '98 survivors might, too. However, they're
not around right now, and Shingo is. Some of Kagura's acolytes
(including her twin daughters) might also believe, but the ones
with a strong enough faith already have sorcerous powers of their
own anyway - for them to use the gloves would most likely be
redundant.

Julia's paragraph in which she commands Shingo is a deliberate
parallel to her speech against Toshin-Nina, and her speech when
she challenged Jin. It's just how she talks at a properly dramatic,
determining moment. Very, very loosely taken from an old "The
Real Ghostbusters" cartoon that stayed with me (I think it was one
of the episodes written by Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5).

I angled the mirror so that Shingo could see a clear reflection of my
face.
    - I originally created Shingo's phobia of mirrors so that there
would be a way to provoke him into an Orochi-style Riot of the
Blood. Then I had to start thinking of why Shingo was afraid of
mirrors, and came up with a reason above & beyond the mere fact
that they show the truth about what he is. The fact that he saw his
family's face in a ceiling corner mirror in the morgue naturally led
to what would make him snap - not seeing himself in the mirror,
but rather seeing 'imouto' in the mirror.

In a single motion, he snapped to his feet and screamed. Throwing
wide his arm, leaning back like a doll bent out of shape, rolling his
right eye virtually into his head, he screamed.
    - Orochi Shingo! Not really, no, but this is taken right out of
Orochi Iori's fight intro animation in KoF '97. 

His glass eye retained more humanity than his living eye. He
looked like a rabid animal, consumed by the virus ravaging its
doomed body. He did not lean on his claw cane; his back hunched
forward, arm dangling loosely with his cane in hand. His breathing
was heavy, labored.
    - similarly, this is Orochi Iori's standard fighting stance (he don't
look too healthy... :)

"Shermie!" he hissed, gripped with unholy, fanatic hatred.
    - this was an inspiration just for this chapter - that Shingo would
project a third female identity on Julia. One that would drive him
to murderous rage.

"DIE!" Shingo raged.
    - this is, in fact, something that Iori Yagami yells a lot (though
Orochi Iori is too out of it to say anything).

Okay. Now for the second big Julia/Shingo fight scene - very
different, this time. 
    Shingo's Orochi-style howl is more than just insanity - he's
powering up. When sane, Shingo would normally power up with
something like "GyuiiIIN - JYAKEEN!" His powerup here is
something closer to Orochi Iori's "WooOOOAH - HAH!" The
exact sound of Shingo's scream is not written out, because I think
it's more horrifying when left up to the reader's imagination.
    So when Shingo first snaps, he powers up a ball of super energy
with his howl. Then he lashes out at Julia (generic attack) and
powers up a second ball of super energy. Julia grabs the taser, and
seeing it in her hands shocks Shingo into thinking that she is
Shermie of the Violent Lightning. Shingo makes another attack to
disarm her, and she claws out his glass eye, in a scene distantly
inspired by the Rumiko Takahashi comic story "Mermaid's Gaze"
(which BTW, features an immortal, one-eyed homicidal maniac
named Shingo - different last name, though. However, it was
because of this story that I first regarded Shingo Yabuki very, very
suspiciously in KoF '97. :)
    Julia ducks Shingo's next attack. Shingo has built up a third ball
of super energy with the effort he's expended fighting (and
suffering damage), so now he puts all that super energy to use. He's
fast enough (and good enough) that he can power up before Julia
rights herself. Then he charges her with his powered-up shoulder
ram. The cool thing about Shingo's powered-up shoulder ram is
that if your enemy blocks it, he or she will be staggering/helpless
against a second shoulder ram - KoF '98 masters have
demonstrated as much to me. So overall, Shingo's powered-up
shoulder ram immediately followed by a regular shoulder ram is
like an unblockable super, that costs three super balls.
    Incidentally, I'm pretty sure Shingo yells "PIKAAN!" when he
does his shoulder-ram super; "MOERU SHINGO!" is for his other
super, which starts as a shoulder ram, then goes into Shingo
whaling on his opponent (in powered-up version, he yells "Bishu!
Bishu! Bishu!") However, "Moeru Shingo" (= "Burning Shingo")
sounded way more emphatic, and as long as I'm giving him Orochi-
style howls in place of his usual voice anyway...
    So, Julia gets hit Shingo's shoulder ram and falls. Shingo tries to
power up again, but Julia retaliates with my all-time favorite get-up
in Tekken: the forward roll into the cat pounce (f, f+1+2). I've
always found it annoying that some characters, such as Lei and
Xiaoyu, can't use this technique to get up from a knockdown, but
Julia can and she hits Shingo. She gets the taser, and taunts him -
not Orochi Shermie's taunt (which is just "You. Die.") but
something even more incendiary. Out of super energy, Shingo
resorts to charging with his long range "Bodee ga amaize!" (=
"Your body's wide open!") punch, learned from Kyo, and usually
one of his all-around best moves. However, Julia sidestep-attacks -
not all that different from the new sidestep-attack in KoF '98 Extra
mode, only she's got a taser set on maximum, so that Shingo goes
down.

Julia collapses in Shingo's second victory pose (i.e. falling to her
knees, heaving for breath). Instead of repeating Shingo's "Hah, hah,
hah... kate ta" (= [heavy breathing] "I won"), though, we've got a
side-detour into Julia's realization that this was her first ever
victory. BTW, this set of paragraphs is partly taken from something
I once wrote in a longhand epic (which I still want to get around to
finishing, one of these days).

"I fought Shermie, the she-Devil with the Power of Lightning.
Kusanagi-san's teammates joined in to help me; they fought her
Earth Devil consort and her Fire Devil foster son."
    - Of course, Yashiro Nanakase is the Earth Devil, and Chris is
the Fire Devil. Some online sources suggest that Shermie treated
Chris more like a little brother than a son, but hell. *I* say the
three of them look like a dysfunctional foster family, so there. 
    Kyo's teammates are of course, Benimaru Nikaido and Goro
Daimon. Goro took on Orochi Yashiro (grappler vs. grappler),
while Benimaru took on Orochi Chris. Our heroes didn't kill the
New Face Team, but they did drive 'em back and keep the Orochi
Blood Riots from being worse than they could've been. It was Kyo,
Iori, & Chizuru who soundly defeated the New Face Team.
Yashiro and Shermie died to fuel Chris' transformation into the
Orochi avatar, and then Kyo killed Chris and banished Orochi
(with Chizuru's & Iori's help, of course). Rugal's machinations
drew the New Face Team's souls to the Demiplane of Souls. After
Rugal's downfall, though... the New Face Team were never seen
again. Are they dead for real? Or do they still wander the Earth
somewhere, with or without their memories? That is for my readers
to decide...

Shingo's explanation for his insanity proved to be my one chance to
work in the KoF '98 storyline I made up. It's only summarized - if
anyone ever wanted to write a fanfic version of it, I'd support 'em,
but I doubt that'll happen. The one thing not in here is that Rugal's
true form is called "Omega Rugal" in KoF '98 - it seemed rather
extraneous to write in how Rugal sent an underpowered copy of
himself into the whole fray. It's enough to establish that Shingo
took on the real Rugal Bernstein in single combat, and leave it at
that.

I think that's why our climate is all wrong, why it's so warm in the
dead of winter. The sky would probably be raining hellfire if
Kagura-san weren't out there, protecting us.
    - Shingo's rambling paragraph actually allows the perfect chance
to slip in an explanation why a) Chizuru Kagura isn't around at the
moment, and b) the weather is so unseasonably warm.

"She... at first we were just friends. Then I thought we were
growing closer to something more. Maybe. But that was all before.
Before what Bernstein-san did to me, and what I did to myself."
    - This is from Shingo's KoF '97-'98 storyline, in which he has a
girlfriend (well, sorta - he's got a *heavy* crush on her, but she
thinks they're just friends) whom he loves dearly. No, Shingo's
girlfriend didn't die in the Orochi Blood Riots - Shingo's suffered
enough pain & trauma from that - but she couldn't be in the picture
for "Phoenix Reborn." The way out was clear enough, though:
when Shingo came back physically & mentally crippled, his former
girlfriend (not exactly his girlfriend to begin with) drifted apart
from him, and eventually married rich. Rich enough to send her kid
to the Mishima high school, anyway.

     "Does it hurt?"
     "Some," I admitted, cringing on the inside.
     "Yes," Shingo mused, wistfully. "Yes, that's love all right."
    - I think this is my favorite section in the whole chapter.

I wasn't originally certain whether Julia would meet the emissaries
from Kagura's temple before she left Shingo's apartment, but
settled on making it a close miss. If she'd had help, she might have
gotten away herself/rescued Jin, and of course it can't be that easy...

     A white satin kimono?
     An ill feeling rose within me. I swallowed it back.
     - this is loosely taken from an anime called "Sword of Truth"
(no, no relation to angel Lee's sword; it's actually a rather bloody
story, with kinky drugged sex, lesbian ninjas, and a Satan-
worshiping 'Christian' cult). It's not really an anime I liked *that*
much, although my dad loved it - he likes anything with samurai &
a lot of blood - but at one point, a man is "dressed to die" in a
stylized white kimono. 

Any unfortunate individual not quick enough to move aside
immediately found himself a stepping stone, as the fairy princess
launched herself over his shoulders and beyond, flying like a
magical creature out of legend.
    - Xiaoyu is doing her So Shoe Me throw (F+2~1) on everyone in
her way. It's a very weak throw (at only 4 damage, perhaps the
weakest move in the game that does any injury at all) so the guests
she heedlessly tramples are more or less still standing afterward...
assuming they weren't *too* drunk to begin with.

Ishida in particular looked downright disturbed. As if my arrival
had somehow made a bad night even worse. 
    - Ishida and Kimura know damn well that Heihachi is planning
to murder Jin, Julia, & Xiaoyu. Even if Taki hadn't told 'em, they
would've guessed from Xiaoyu's kimono and what they've managed
to glean of Heihachi's intent. They can't betray their master, but
Ishida in particular is having a *bad* time with aiding & abetting
cold-blooded murder. Inwardly, Ishida was hoping that Julia's
disappearance meant she had escaped - but now she's back.
     If it were just Jin being sacrificed, Ishida might be able to live
with it. But Ishida's personal antagonism against Julia and Xiaoyu
aren't enough to justify being party to their murder... even if it's
only by means of guarding them so that they do not escape their
fates.
     Kimura's conscience is bothering him too, but like the Kimura
of "Ashes," he's a little more devoted to his duty than his cousin
Ishida. And yet, when Ishida walks away from his duty as sacrifice
keeper, Kimura's fear for Ishida overwhelms Kimura's fear for
himself, as he vainly tries to drag his cousin back before Mishima-
sama realizes they're both slacking off.

Okay, time for Jin's TK3 kick-button outfit! Yes, the one that is so
HORRENDOUS that I can ONLY explain it as something Xiaoyu
gave him. BTW, Jin isn't sure that this outfit is too flattering either,
but he *really* didn't want to wear Heihachi's gift. So the best
excuse Jin could think to offer was, "Well Grandfather, Xiao-chan
gave this to me on Christmas, and I thought she would be _really_
disappointed if I didn't wear it..."
    I tried to look up the black character on the back of Jin's outfit,
and couldn't find it. It's not his name; that's a simple four-stroke
character meaning "virtue" or "man." I've heard that it might be a
fancy way of scrawling his name in English, who knows.
    Jin's outfit here is different from his look in the game in one
respect: he doesn't have his red fighting gloves. This is because Jin
didn't expect to get into any fights at the party (such misbehavior
would certainly have incited his grandfather's displeasure...)

At last, blood proved thicker than wine, and Kimura chased after
his recalcitrant relative.        
    - Kimura is so worried about Ishida because Ishida isn't just
Kimura's relative; Ishida is the one person to whom Kimura can
drop the strong, silent act & show his true feelings. He's more than
a best friend; he's really the one person that Kimura is closest to,
other than Kimura's wife Mariko (Kimura's mother is somewhat
distanced from her son, through sorrow and quietness. Kimura's
mother has long been afraid that she'll one day lose her son, just
like she lost her husband, and that led her to be fairly reserved - she
couldn't bring herself to bond too closely with her child).

"Good grief," Jin said, under his breath. "I knew they were upset
over being separated from their families for so long, but I never
had any idea-"
    - Of course, Jin has no clue as to the real reason why the cousins
are so upset. They've had years of practice at concealing their true
thoughts from a telepath, and Jin always strives to respect their
privacy in any case.

She seized his hands in her own, and pumped them so vigorously
she twirled her arms in a loop, flipping him head over heels. He hit
the ground on his back.
    - this is Xiaoyu's "Ruby" basic throw (2+4), more or less.

Xiaoyu plopped on her rear and wiggled her legs, utterly unaware
of the destruction her magical pixie powers had just unleashed. 
     - this is Xiaoyu's time-over loss pose, though she isn't truly
unhappy here.

     Gave her my gloves, which Shingo had enchanted with his
homing spell. Fitted them on her slender hands; they were a little
loose, but didn't seem about to fall off. 
     Whispered a prayer to the Great Spirit for her. For all three
of us.
    - my mother claimed this is something like the heart-wrenching
climax of "Titanic." I never saw the movie (and don't really want to
- too depressing), so I don't know.

     "On the count of three. One... two..."
     "WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!" she elatedly proclaimed, tearing
through the ballroom like pixie hell on wheels, knocking over
innocent bystanders left and right.
     "Three," I sighed, and used one of Lei Wulong's smoke
grenades.
    - this is a takeoff of an old gag. I think I saw it in Disney's
"Christmas Carol" starring Scrooge McDuck once, but the general
idea is that the person grabbing the head start/interrupting your
count is SO enthusiastic, you can't even bring yourself to cry foul.

     "My exec... exec'tive priv'lege?"
     "Just do it!"
    - In the year 2017, the Mishima syndicate has bought out Nike
and put all its executives to work in Third World countries. So
there. :-)

"I c'n do others. Pink! Yellow! Purple!" 
    - I'm sorry, this is the best explanation I've got for Jin's PINK (no
longer indigo!) lightning in Tekken Tag. Either that or he's come
out of the closet.

Actually, chartreuse is my favorite color - how did he know? - but
admitting as much would not have helped the situation.
    - I figure it's Julia's favorite color because it's the color of her
Tekken Tag punch-button outfit (not bad, but you can *still* see up
her skirt whenever she does a high kick. Sheesh.)

I was wearing one of my usual cutoff tops, leaving my midriff bare. 
    - both of Julia's outfits show off her midriff. Right now, though,
she's wearing something closer to her kick-button outfit: jeans with
cutoff top.

The scene where a very drunk Jin lavishes his attention on Julia
was a bit tricky to write. I'm *not* going for a sex scene here - not
even a kiss (that's for later). Jin is wasted enough that his sex drive
is shot to hell in any case, though his inhibitions are also long
gone.

(You build walls in your mind. Thick, black, impenetrable
barricades, mortared with your will and reinforced with white
noise. A musical chorus, an algebraic equation, a repetitive chant,
anything that you can concentrate on while leaving your upper
consciousness free to respond to the outside world.) 
    - again, I'm falling back on the idea of telepathic defense from
Babylon 5 - "Mundanes want us to fill our head with noise and
babble." This leads to Julia's chant, which is the off-format piece of
text for the chapter (hey, I ran out of room to fit anything else).

No, this wasn't a traditional Navajo chant. Or any other Native
American chant, not that I know of. Such rituals are sacred and
holy things; I've neither the knowledge, the training, nor the right
to call upon them.
     - This is me talking, as surely as Julia. Most Native American
belief traditionally does NOT have such sharp Anglo-Saxon
boundaries between the sacred and the mundane. So that even if I
could find a Navajo chant somewhere on the web, it really wouldn't
belong here. Much better just to make something up.

I think... I think it was the same door, and the same final tunnel,
that Lei Wulong had once crept through. Back in the Great
Invasion, when the noble Super Police was closing in on his arch-
nemesis, Kazuya Mishima.
    - I deliberately wanted to make a note of this... it won't be the
last parallel to "Ashes."

Another is that Hwoarang's immortal blood made him particularly
sensitive to Jin's Power.
    - Hwoarang did tell Julia in Ch. 8 that Immortals could track by
tracing blood, after all.

He turned away from us, disgustedly, and waved his hand in a
dismissive motion. 
    - this is Hwoarang's time-over loss pose (most other men just fall
to their knees and hang their heads).

"The girl should do herself a favor. After she drags her man into
the inner sanctum, she should have sex with him."
    - Hwoarang knows that Heihachi needs Julia not just as a blood
sacrifice, but as a *virgin* sacrifice.

I  just clamped my right arm around the back of his neck, so firmly
I forced him to bend over. Clasping his head against my side, I
sprinted for the receding portal. Caught in my headlock, and still
clutching my waist, he had to run with me.
    - this is Julia's "Headlock Face Crusher" side-throw (1+3 or 2+4
from opponent's left side). It's a variant of Law/Lei/Lee's "Bulldog"
back-throw from Tekken 2 - and you'd think that Lee would still
have it as a back-throw in Tekken Tag, wouldn't you? Well, we'll
just have to wait until he's time-released...
    There's one other Julia throw that I'd really like to write in
somewhere, and that's her cross-arm suplex. No one ever does it at
the arcade. But I don't know whether I'll have the chance to
squeeze it in... it's kind of hard to imagine her getting the Toshin
with it. ^_^

"_Please_ not loud-!" Jin whimpered, covering both ears like he
wanted to crush his own skull. "Loud is not good."
    - a deliberate parallel to Lei Wulong's hangover in "Ashes" Ch.
3: "Please not loud. Loud is bad." 

     "Don't you remember?"
     "When I try, it makes a scratching noise."
    - this is a takeoff of "When I blink, it makes a scratching noise"
which I *think* is from a Robert Aspin's "M.Y.T.H. Inc Link"
novel. Not sure, though. In any case, that novel could perhaps be
credited with inspiring the format for "Phoenix Reborn" - I think
it's the first novel I've ever read that was written from the first-
person perspective viewpoint of a LOT of different characters.
    Which is why I'm so sorry that Robert Aspin's latest book, "A
Phule and his Money," is so unfortunately mediocre. Oh, well...

     "Did Heihachi give you something to wear, too?"
     "Um, yes. I'm pretty sure he had a dress made for you as
well, but you left the syndicate early on some errand, didn't you?"
    - Heihachi's gift to Jin was a navy blue dress suit, just like
Kazuya used to wear when he was in charge of the Mishima
syndicate (i.e. Kazuya's Tekken 2 start outfit for the PSX). Jin
couldn't bear to put it on because he had seen Kazuya dead in that
outfit, from Lei Wulong's memories, and it would have been like
putting on a shroud. Which was sort of the idea - Heihachi wanted
to dress Jin like Kazuya as a reminder of how dangerous Jin's
Power is, and why Jin (in Heihachi's mind) has to be destroyed. It
is actually not so easy for the old man to cold-bloodedly murder his
grandson, though he fully intends to go through with it.
     Julia's outfit is a white bridal dress - though Heihachi intends
her for a virgin sacrifice, even as he also intends to murder Jin, he
also expects her and Jin to be "married" in the afterlife. Heihachi is
plotting to murder Jin and Julia not because he hates them (he
doesn't,) but because he feels it is necessary. He also feels it is
necessary to murder Ling Xiaoyu, because he needs her blood &
her heart to properly prepare the sacrificial area...

I rested on my inner shins and thighs, legs bent at the knees, in the
outward-spreading W-pose that my kindergarten teacher
denounced as bad for the body.
    - this is Julia's time-over loss pose (minus the sobbing into her
hands).

     Click.
     Click, click, snap! The pieces fell into place, and they had
been painfully obvious all along.
    - a slight takeoff from "Jhereg," when Vlad figures out Laris' evil
plan.

The revelation of Jin's & Xiaoyu's relationship has been planned
for a long time - not since the beginning of the novel, but it was
down to its finest details by around Ch. 17 or so. Ch. 18 let me
introduce the threat of a battle with Anna Williams as an extra
motive for Jin to train with Xiaoyu.

     He trailed off, and looked down at himself. At the crazy
banana yellow outfit that Xiaoyu had given him for Christmas.
     "I didn't want you to see what a monster I am," Jin
confessed.
    - this is a deliberate parallel to how Julia repressed her excuses
and looked at Shingo's gift gloves on her hands, before she finally
confessed the truth to Jin in Ch. 19: "I didn't want you to see my
weakness."

     Do you know, none of this had even occurred to me?
     I mean, I knew that I felt unworthy and insecure. I'd just
never imagined that Jin could feel that way, too.
    - now, this is my *one* piece of total plagiarism for the whole
chapter. From Steven Brust's "Teckla." Too powerful a piece to
ignore.

"Why are you crying?" I whispered, all other thoughts lost to that
one, timeless question. "Why...?"
    - this is from a chapter of Rumiko Takahashi's Maison Ikkoku,
where Godai sees Kyoko crying and wonders why. (Because she's
in love with him, that's why.)

The dragon seized me with reptilian strength; one taloned claw
gripped the back of my belt and wrenched me out of Jin's embrace.
I flailed helplessly, suspended high above the ground.
    - this is a variant of Heihachi's "Freefall" side-throw (1+3 or 2+4
from opponent's righ side). Here, instead of slamming Julia into the
floor, he chucks her out the portal.

"Careful!" the Hwoarang snapped, to one of my many restrainers.
"Hold her, but do _not_ harm her. 'Mishima-sama' was very
explicit about that."
    - Heihachi gave Julia his word that no harm would come to her,
inside his home. However, Heihachi doesn't consider drugging
someone unconscious to be "harming" them. He also never
promised her that she wouldn't be taken from his home, and he
certainly never made any promises about what could happen to her
outside his home...

However, Heihachi has had a minor crimp thrown in his plans.
Hwoarang has deceitfully suggested to him that Julia and Jin were
enjoying a private sexual liaison in the pocket dimension. While
this did not happen, Heihachi doesn't know it, and he doesn't trust
Jin either. So that Heihachi fears Julia is no longer a suitable virgin
sacrifice... or is she? In any case, Heihachi has been given some
cause to hesitate, while he figures out how to make *sure* that his
plan to summon the Toshin will work as he so desires...

Next chapter: Lee brings Lei's confession to Jin, and Anna sees
Mitsurugi again. What's left of Mitsurugi, that is...

Chapter 23: Blood of Kindred notes
August 22, 1999

Twelve days for this chapter. Even though I see pounding out the
rough draft as the hardest part of writing, it seems to be the editing
phase that's inevitably the longest. Another correction on my
projected schedule: at this rate, it looks like I'll finish only one
more chapter before college starts. Then I should have four
chapters left. If I can just finish one a month, I'll still achieve my
deadline of January 1st, 2000. It should be manageable. I wasn't
able to get more than two chapters done per college semester
before, but I've recently had a LOT of practice at speeding up my
writing.

I think I may dash off & post a summary of Knightstone's "Tekken
2" #1 comic, as well. For inspiration, as much as anything else. I've
recently sent off a money order to the address on their website, to
purchase their whole series (all the different covers, too!) Here's
hoping they don't go bankrupt before they can fulfill my order...

This is one of VERY few chapters that has actually kept its original
title, since the original outline. If anything, it was a modification to
the first part of the chapter (Lee's blood sorcery) that made the title
even more fitting overall.

The epigraph really has a more direct bearing on the second half of
the chapter than the first, but in a way, Lei was also "condemned"
to be Kazuya's "murderer." In any case, it's a strong moment from
the finest Dungeons & Dragons books I have ever read: the
Finder's Stone trilogy (the other Alias & Dragonbait book,
"Masquerades," is also something I'd highly recommend.) I almost
stole this line outright and gave it to Mitsurugi, but repented of my
wicked plagiarism. It was Mitsurugi himself who told me his
much, much more appropriate last words to Anna...

The main themes were in this chapter were from the beginning:
that Lee would find Jin alone in the pocket dimension, convince
Jin of the truth behind Kazuya's death. That Jin would repent, and
leave to see his father again with Lee. That Anna's distress would
cause Jin to detour. Also, virtually everything about Anna's
interview - that Hwoarang would use Mitsurugi & the personals to
lure Anna into a trap, and Anna would be forced to kill Mitsurugi
with his own gun, and then Anna would kill Hwoarang.
    This chapter is the payoff for a LOT of setup work. Everything
about Mitsurugi's & Anna's relationship, establishing that
Mitsurugi gives Anna his gun (how else is she going to have a
firearm? Maybe she could have bought one on the black market,
but Anna doesn't normally carry guns like her assassin sister),
Anna's love of the personals, etc.
    There were really very few severe deviations from the original
concept, for this chapter. The most significant one is the way that
Lee convinced Jin of the truth. At first, I thought Lee would use the
Sword of Truth to convince Jin, the same way he got Lei to 'fess
up. However, when I remembered that Jin could sense echoes of
Kazuya's past torture (in Chapter 11), I realized how effective
blood sorcery would be. Not only would Jin be able to *see* how
Kazuya died, I could also relive the scene as a dark omen/parallel
to upcoming tragedy.
     There was one more overwhelming advantage to this change:
now that the Power of blood-of-kindred sorcery to review the past
has been established, it can be used again. And it will be. To
review the death of Kazumi Mishima. Heihachi still wears the
sword that killed her.

List of things taken or adapted from video game movies, storylines,
etc.:
    - Lee's Tekken Tag fight intro pose (adjusting his glove)
    - Jin's TK3 time-over losing pose
    - Kazuya & the Angel's TK2 intro scene - this time with Jin &
Lee. Deliberate parallel.
    - the beginning view of Lee's TK2 ending (though not in detail).
    - Lee's TK2 time-over losing pose
    - Anna's pendant, on a ribbon around her neck (from her TK3
outfits, & Nina's TK3 ending)
    - Anna's & Mitsurugi's names as 'Lightning Scarlet' and 'Lone
Swordsman'
    - How Hwoarang usually wears his goggles (in his TK3 costume
& ending)
    - Anna's & Mitsurugi's fighting stances
    - Anna's TK3 time-over losing pose

List of deviations/creative license from video game storylines
    - that Heihachi never actually sparred with Jin; this is not an
express contradiction, but you'd think Namco sort of implies as
much.
    - that Hwoarang has got opaque his motorcycle goggles (or can
make them opaque); they're clear in his TK3 outfit & ending.

     Uh-uh. You're not getting away that easily. 
     Not when you've been avoiding me for ten days straight.
   - after a very long hiatus - ever since Ch. 8! - Jin's viewpoint is
back. It was helpful to show him only through the eyes of others all
through the time he & Julia got to know each other; that way, the
reader could wonder along with Julia whether Jin really was in a
relationship with Xiaoyu, or what. However, since Jin's confession
to Julia last chapter, there's no more reason to keep his perspective
out. In fact, it's helpful to start this chapter from his point of view,
rather than that of Heihachi, Lee, or Bryan. Because Jin is the
common point of interaction between these other characters, and
Jin is also the one feeling the greatest emotional upset (gotta have
lots of pain and trauma for a good story...)
   Also, we're returning to a present-time mini-subplot here: Jin has
figured out that there's something wrong with his mind. This will
also play itself out, and I've got an upcoming scene in my head.
Not sure which chapter it'll be a part of, though. In any case, it
won't be for a while *just* yet.

     It's a deal, then.
     I don't know what I'm planning to do.
     Hey. A deal is a deal; it's not my fault you assumed I had a
plan. 
    - a deliberate parallel to how Julia was tricked in Ch. 20.

He punched me in the face once, directly over my left eye - yes, it
was a powerful blow, but I've endured worse in more than one Iron
Fist Tournament match.
    - Heihachi used his f+1 Demon Variations punch, though he
didn't link it into the full punch-backfist-kick or punch-backfist-
uppercut.

I was only about ninety-eight percent certain that I was telling the
truth, myself.
    - this was originally 99% certain, but the same percentage Sonya
once quoted in "Ashes." So I'm toning down Jin's certainty one
extra percentile. ^_^

"I planned this marriage for your happiness!" Grandfather raged,
hitting me once more. This time it was a turning, full-strength
backfist to my gut.
    - this is Heihachi's b+2 Demon Variations backfist, a new move
that he learned for TK3. Very useful for cheezing the CPU. His
f+1, b+2, 3 is probably my all-time favorite Heihachi string.

"Now. Use your Power to locate Miss Ling Xiaoyu."
    - this wasn't in my original plan for the chapter, yet I like the fact
that Julia's armband (as well as her gloves) were put to good use
after all. Lei Wulong's gift probably ended up saving Xiaoyu's life.

     "Um, is something wrong? Do you know that place?"
     "I have never been to it."
    - Kagura's Temple is way, _way_ too heavily warded against
Evil for Heihachi to set foot inside.

When Kazuya controlled the pocket dimension, he had a locking
spell on it that prevented anyone else from entering it without his
invitation. However, Kazuya's death unraveled the spell, and Jin
has not (yet) discovered or used a similar spell to lock anyone out.
Also, as a servant of the Angel of Death, Lee would be difficult to
keep out of the pocket dimension in any case. Death has a tendency
to get you no matter how far you run. ^_^

     "Don't you remember? You gave me the Temple's address,
when you told me where Doctor Boskonovitch is currently
residing."
     Really?
     I hadn't known those locations were one and the same.
    - more to the point, *I* hadn't known those locations were one
and the same. I wrote in a reference to Dr. B in Ch. 11, well before
I had even seen King of Fighters '98, much less taken enough
interest in Shingo or Chizuru to write them into the story.

"No wonder Kazuya wanted the statue so much. It looked like his
mother."
   - ever since I made up how Lee first met Kazuya in Ch. 12, I've
been waiting to write in this scene. Just a little extra explanation.

"My brother used to catch people's souls in webs of necromantic
energy. You catch them with pencil and paper."
    - this line is one of the "Phoenix Reborn" quotes that's been in
my head since the very beginning.

"_This is where Kazuya died_! His blood courses through your
veins; his Power is your legacy! And yet, you never looked for
yourself? You never even tried to see the Truth?"
    - Jin's Devil side had a role in this. If Jin had seen the truth for
himself, he might have gone back to Lei Wulong, and Jin's Devil
side has staked its bets with Heihachi, to vanquish the Toshin. So,
it was Jin's own instincts that motivated him not to 'pollute' the
shrine with blood sorcery. Jin just didn't know that they were Devil
instincts...

The dialogue & replay of Kazuya's death is copied straight out of
"Ashes," though some of Jin's narration is subtly tweaked from
Raiden's.

*This is only a shadow of the past,* Lee consoled. *You cannot
change what has been.*
    - Lee's blood sorcery is not actual time-travel; only a divination
of the past. Technically, it is a form of necromancy (sorcery
dealing with death). It is rarely used; legend has it that Death calls
to its own, and using this sorcery has dangerous repercussions on
the future. This legend is _not_ proven, and in fact, Lee has his
doubts about it. However, Lee would not have resorted to the spell
if Jin's denial weren't so entrenched that nothing less could break it.

Then Wulong crumpled to the floor, quivering from the death-
link's toll. The last word on his lips was my mother's name.
    - I'm skipping over a little of Lei's final dialogue here ("Not
when I finally have something to live for!") 'cause it sort of broke
the dramatic mood. There's no need to repeat _every_ word he said.

Crumpled to one knee, one hand falling on the floor while the other
clawed at my hair. My head fell
   - this is, of course, Jin's TK3 time-over losing pose.

     It was raining outside. A soft, steady drizzle, with a distant
rumble of thunder. A faraway flash of lightning briefly cast stark
shadows of white and black.
     An angel's hand rested upon my shoulder.
     An angel's wing lightly folded me, in its feathery embrace.
     *Take my hand,* Lee said.
     - this is a deliberate parallel of the scene with Kazuya and the
Angel in the TK2 intro movie, and which I wrote into "Ashes" Ch.
18 (it was one of the few good scenes in the chapter, too - most of
it was just sort of rote setup work, to keep the plot moving).

At one point I took the questionable action of looking down, and
glimpsed a dizzying, panoramic view of neon lights and city
streets. Urban Tokyo at night.
    - I have the panning, upward view of that begins Lee's TK2
ending in mind here, though I couldn't go into elaborate
description. Most of the neon billboards in that movie were self-
referential anyway; I'm certainly not going to have Jin fly by a sign
that reads "Thank you for playing Tekken 2!" Talk about breaking
your suspension of disbelief...

 Lee probably would have tried to help me, but he was on both
knees now, head down, fists on the ground, in a renewed battle of
wills with Detective Fury's restless soul.
    - Lee's time-over losing pose, in Tekken 2.

Now, the Tokyo Sunrise personal ad. Just a quickie piece of off-
format text, but it's a nice way for Hwoarang to lure Anna into his
trap. I got the idea from Robert Asprin's "Myth-Nomers and Im-
Pervections," in which the only way our hero Skeeve can contact
his estranged mentor Aahz is by running a personal ad. So, since
Anna's tendency to read the personals was an integral part of the
plot, I had to establish it in Ch. 16, when she first meets Mitsurugi.
Since Mitsurugi remembers this, Hwoarang is able to learn it from
him.

And now, Anna's viewpoint is back after an even longer hiatus than
Jin's - she hasn't been directly interviewed since Ch. 7. She'll talk
some more at the beginning of Ch. 24, and after that, I don't know.
Despite having Ch. 5 all to herself, Anna just might be the least-
interviewed character of the six. We'll see. 
   The reason for the long break in Anna's perspective is that it
helped keep her more distant and mysterious, during her
relationship with Mitsurugi. Well that, and the fact that I had my
hands full writing so much other stuff...

     Julia banished my sister only to stop her from murdering
more innocent people. So, I wouldn't have carried a vengeful
grudge against Julia, if I had known. I wouldn't have hurt her.
     Much.
    - with EVERYTHING else going on, I really didn't have time to
write in Julia's reaction to meeting Anna, as originally planned.
Which led me to have Julia avoid Anna, most of the time (Julia had
banished her sister, after all). It's nice to tie up a final little loose
thread here - resolving the fact that Anna didn't know Julia had
banished Nina. If Anna *had* known, though, Anna probably
would have, um... personally interrogated Julia about how to get
Nina back.

When I discreetly questioned Taki, Heishiro's mysterious teacher,
she just happened to know of a black market where I could get fake
IdentiCards made up.
    - This is something I didn't originally plan to explain, but it
appeals to my sense of completeness to do as much. It was the
delay in getting the fake IdentiCards that stalled Anna until
Christmas Eve, after all.

     Oh, dear. That's another thing I was afraid you'd ask.
     The truth is, I had made a deal with Taki. On the side.
    - this is also something I didn't figure out until I was writing it -
exactly how did Anna protect herself from Jin's divination sorcery,
or get by during the week she spent in hiding from the syndicate?
She couldn't have gone to Kagura's Temple, otherwise she might
have had more help, and she needed to be on her own for this. The
logical answer was Taki, since Anna didn't know Lee was back and
had no cause to meet Shingo.
    I recently noticed that Anna wears a pendant on a ribbon around
her neck, in all three of her TK3 outfits. You can see it in Nina's
TK3 ending, too. It's a new item; she never had any necklace in
TK2. It was of course creative license that a) Mitsurugi gave her
the pendant, and b) Taki enchanted it, but, whatever works.

You know I've always had a fondness for reading the personals. It's
my second favorite way to begin the morning. Or end the evening.
     Mm?
     My first favorite way, mm... at the time, I couldn't let
myself think too much about that. Or else I'd really start to miss
Heishiro.
    - this gag is borrowed from Babylon 5's Michael Garibaldi, who
loved watching Warner Brothers cartoons as his "second favorite
thing in the universe" (and just guess what his first favorite is. :)

It had our pet names for each other. 'Lightning Scarlet' for me, as
the beauty of the Iron Fist; 'Lone Swordsman' for him. It's
connected to a story about his legendary samurai ancestor, I
believe.
    Lightning Scarlet/Lone Swordsman are how Namco's strategy
guides describe Anna & Mitsurugi, respectively. The story that
Mitsu told about his ancestor, vastly condensed, goes like this: the
legendary Mitsurugi tracked down the lord who assassinated his
master. The assassin lord was offering a contest for reward.
Legendary Mitsurugi beheaded the assassin lord in one chop,
saying, "Great. Two rewards in one stroke." 
    I doubt I'll ever really have room to write the story in "Phoenix
Reborn," but it would be nice...

The truth was, I honestly didn't feel comfortable, having an
intimate relationship with an armed man. Heishiro's gun reminded
me too much of my sister.
    - the original reason why Anna got Mitsurugi's gun was, "the
plot requires it." In fact, the plot required it in two ways - so that
bloodslave-Mitsurugi wouldn't just shoot Anna dead, and so that
Anna would have a gun to use on bloodslave-Mitsurugi. As I
thought about it more, I realized some additional explanation was
necessary... and saw a very clear one. Nina is waving a gun around
in her TK1 intro movie and her TK2 ending, and Anna might not
be comfortable having a relationship with someone who was *too*
much like Nina. Fortunately, I've never seen Nina carry a sword.

The outfit that Anna wears for her showdown with Mitsurugi &
Hwoarang is something I made up. She has two outfits that I
haven't written in - her zebra stripe suit (in PSX TK3) and her
military-bikini-platform-shoes thing (brand new for Tekken Tag),
but both of them are freaking RIDICULOUS, okay? Okay. Besides,
I need her wearing something that's better for nighttime
camouflage, and potentially leaves her gun visible. So, she's got
another dress with the spike heels and the slit up one side... only
this one is pure black. The black coat she wears over it is
something like the coat she wears in Nina's TK2 ending.

If I could only look into his eyes, I was sure I would have been able
to read his feelings, but he was wearing a set of opaque motorcycle
goggles.
    - these are Hwoarang's goggles - the vampyre uses them to make
Mitsurugi pass for human (sort of). Yes, I realize that in the
game/Hwoarang's TK3 ending, they're clear instead of opaque.
Either a) this is a special set for riding a motorcycle in bright
sunlight, b) Hwoarang found a way to tint his goggles, or c)
creative license, dammit.
    Originally, Mitsurugi was wearing a visor instead, but visors fall
off too easily - Hwoarang specifically had Mitsurugi put on tightly
strapped eyewear, and instructed Mitsurugi NOT to let anyone take
it off.

     He was Heishiro. Not an impostor. I knew what Heishiro
felt like, down to the slight mole by his left ear; yet still, something
was wrong.
    - Anna is not taking into account that someone could have
shape-shifted into Mitsurugi's form... but this is not a sorcery that
even Kazuya was proficient at (he only shape-shifted to Devil form
and back). Anna doesn't know much about shape-shifting in any
case. However, if she did, she would know that a shape-shifter
impersonating Mitsurugi would almost certainly not talk in a
monotone, but rather Mitsu's normal voice.

     "Heishiro?"
     "Exactly what is your question," he said, in that deathly
monotone.
    - I tried to write this whole section almost as if it were a
computer talking, although Mitsurugi's dialogue is much more
consistent than that of an artificial intelligence. This is because the
parts of his brain that can *process* language are still working. So,
there is some leeway for Hwoarang's instructions... just not very
much.

Also, as I worked on this chapter, I realized that Anna had to be
acutely aware that Mitsurugi might be controlled somehow. After
all, Anna had once been mind-controlled herself; she isn't stupid,
she could not possibly fail to make the connection. It's just that she
_has_ to save her sister, above all else.

The room to summon Nina is pretty much something I made up,
though the pentagram-in-a-circle is a very common occult symbol,
of course. Anime tends to use it a lot too, to show anything
mysterious. And once, censors actually demanded the removal of a
pentagram from a Magic: the Gathering card (Unholy Strength).

"So, you still have to die, but at least it won't be the same way I
did. At least I'll tell you the reason, and anything else you want to
know. Anything at all. You only have to ask."
    - I love this. It's the perfect excuse to explain everything that isn't
covered anywhere else. Also, it's important because it's how Anna
learns the only way Hwoarang can be killed.

"I have seen you before," I recalled. "Briefly. When I was under
Kazuya's mind control. You were with Baek Doo San."
    - Anna's glimpse of Hwoarang during Kazuya's Iron Fist
Tournament was a negligible event, which had no direct bearing on
her dark ordeal within the syndicate. So it's not mentioned
anywhere in Chapter 5 (okay, okay, so I never thought to write
anything like it in at the time. Hwoarang's role in the Great
Invasion was small enough that *everybody* seems to forget about
him... :)

"'Hwoarang' is the name I use the most. 'Blood Talon' to the gang
I've been hanging out with, not that many of them survived your
sister's last rampage."
    - Korean-speaking associates of mine have told me that
"Hwoarang" isn't a true name, more like a nickname. Good enough.
Rather than try to make up a Korean true name for Hwoarang,
though, it seemed more appropriate for him to just have forgotten
it. May as well put in one more reference to his 'Blood Talon' alter
moniker, though.

 The vampyre put the goggles on, pushing them well above his own
forehead, so that they anchored the foremost crest of his tangled
hair.
   - this is how Hwoarang puts on his goggles in his TK3 ending,
and how he normally wears them in his kick-button outfit.

"Unbeatable? Well, Mitsu now has all my fighting skills, and I'm
pretty good with a sword. Haven't used one in an age because
they're so messy, but old talents die hard. Especially when you're
undead."
    - I needed a way to explain why Mitsurugi, with barely three
weeks of real training under his belt, could suddenly be so
devastatingly good with a sword. Answer: Hwoarang picked up the
skills over the past 400 years, and unwittingly transferred them
with the bloodslave poison. Why doesn't Hwoarang use a sword
now? Well, they just leave blood *everywhere*... and he is in fact
*so* good with a sword, that carrying one might possibly decrease
his odds of getting the death he longs for.
    BTW, Mitsurugi also knows Hwoarang's Tae Kwon Do; he just
doesn't have much reason to use it, since he's got a weapon.

He's too busy working himself into a knot over... other
complications.
    - specifically, Heihachi is freaking out over Xiaoyu running
away, Julia possibly having lost her virginity, is he going to have to
set up a whole new sacrifice to summon the Toshin, etc.

"He's been bleeding me dry for weeks, stockpiling my blood.
Because even mindless automatons can be useful to him, and his
precious syndicate. He intends to make an army of them, using me
for an inexhaustible supply of vampyre poison-!"
    - I don't know if our heroes are going to fight a horde of
bloodslaves protecting Heihachi for the big final scene. Maybe.
May as well leave the option open... especially since this isn't
going to be the last reference to bloodslave poison, no matter what.

I put up my hands in defensive guard, turning the outer edges of
my open palms like knife blades.
    - ever notice that Nina/Anna are among the few Tekken fighters
who don't clench their hands into fists at almost all times?

All right. Now for the big Mitsurugi/Anna fight scene!
    Since Anna is unwilling to hurt Mitsurugi, she really doesn't get
to show off many of her moves. When Mitsu charges in with his
first sword swipe (regular B), Anna reverses it (b+1+3 or b+2+4 -
changed from b+1+4 or b+2+3 in TK2!) just like she can reverse
Yoshimitsu's overhead sword swipe. I tried again and again, but it
seems as though you _cannot_ chicken (i.e. do an attack reversal
reversal on) a reversed overhead sword swipe. So Mitsurugi goes
down.
    He quickly gets back up, though, and when he tries a generic
attack Anna reverses him again - but this time he does chicken her
(f+1+3 for a reversed left attack, f+2+4 for a reversed right attack).
She gets a smack to the face, which makes her bleed - a convenient
detail for later. Then Mitsurugi gets Anna with his Leg Sweeper
combo (d+K, B), one of his more useful sequences. Good thing
Anna's wearing a moderately heavy coat. Mitsurugi pins it to the
wall with his Wasp Stinger (f+B) - a bit too tightly.
    Then, love, blood, and tears reawaken his soul.
    Mitsurugi still has all his recent memories, and he is not an idiot
- it takes him much less time than, say, Bryan Fury to figure out
what's going on, and what he can & can't do about it. I almost
wrote in Mitsurugi's time-over losing pose here, but the pose is
actually pretty lame - in the game he half-sits cross-legged and
pouts. So, skip that.
    Perhaps Anna could have shot only to wound him... but then,
perhaps not. Mitsurugi is programmed with superior fighting
skills/reflexes; it's unlikely that anything less than a lethal attack
could have made him stay down. So he attacks Anna again, and
this time it's with his Critical Edge, with the Ticket to Styx
finisher: A+B+K, HCF+A+K. (The Cross the Styx finisher is too
lethal; it has Mitsurugi stabbing his victim, then kicking 'em off the
sword). Only he's just barely able to hold back, and keep his attack
superficial instead of deadly. Finally, he steps on the Anna, and
points his sword at her throat with Final Strike (d/f+B on downed
enemy).

His sword's tip drew down my neck, severing the ribbon that held
my enchanted pendant. The jewelry fell away. A new crease of
blood welled from the base of my throat. 
   - This was a last-second correction to the rough draft, to fix a
VERY big goof.
    Jin found Anna by sensing her distress. But Anna was wearing a
pendant that protected her from Jin's telepathy. How could he have
sensed anything from her? We're talking a Voyager-sized plothole,
here...
    ...but the resolution was simple enough. Anna loses her pendant
during the last second of her fight with Mitsurugi. When she's not
wearing it, it no longer has an effect, just like Julia's armband
doesn't do anything if she doesn't put it on.

As I turned to vampyre, my eyes must have flashed with the icicle
glare of a Medusa.
    - a deliberate repetition of how Anna has previously described
Nina's eyes.

I don't think he had expected me to shoot him. I really don't think
he did.
   - I didn't really expect this, myself.
   Originally, Anna was going to have another, drawn-out fight with
Hwoarang, after she shot Mitsurugi. But I was running out of
room, and really beginning to wonder. Anna was bleeding all over
the place (superficial cuts or not), while Hwoarang was at full
strength, and he had 400 years more combat experience than she
did. She'd be VERY hard-pressed to take him out in a "fair" fight.
What's more, I've really written Hwoarang fight scenes to death.
Two with Jin, a brief workover of Mitsurugi, and then one with
Heihachi. Really, there's only so many different Tae Kwon Do
kicks I can write in before it begins to get a bit repetitive.
   The final idea is much nastier, and I think more effective. It's
borrowed from episodes of "The Highlander," where a murderous
rogue immortal assassinates other immortals not by "honorable"
single combat. Rather, he guns 'em down, then chops off their
head.
    Hwoarang has in fact admitted in Ch. 8 that he doesn't have to
be beaten in a "fair" fight to become a slave - as long as it's single
combat. Even back then, he mentioned that he can take apart
twenty challengers, and if the twenty-first challenges him while
he's winded (or shot!), then that's his tough luck.

Of course, when Anna takes out Hwoarang's legs she eliminates
nearly all of his Tae Kwon Do attacks. Not that he can fight back
against her, when he's in shock. Anna's multi-throws Hwoarang
with the Palm Grab (QCF+1+2), Arm Break (1, 3, 2, 1 during Palm
Grab), and Falcon Wing Squeeze (2, 3, 1+2, 3+4, 1+2 during Arm
Break). Anna shares the Palm Grab and Arm Break with her sister
Nina, but the Falcon Wing Squeeze is a finisher unique to Anna
(also less cruel-looking than Nina's Double Arm Break or Falling
Arm Break finishers - Anna just tosses her enemy instead of
crunching their bones one more time).
   The parts of Anna's multi-throw can be escaped with 2 (Palm
Grab) or 1 (Arm Break or Falcon Wing Squeeze), but when
Hwoarang is shot up this badly, he's in no condition to do any such
thing. Anna finally torments Hwoarang with her Twisted Mind
heel stomp (d+3+4), which is extra nasty because a) she's got high
heels, and b) on a downed opponent, she viciously grinds her heel
in their body.
   All that's left is to take Mitsurugi's sword, and give Hwoarang the
death he has longed for.

Sinking to my knees, I collapsed on my hip, hanging and shaking
my head. I buried my tearful face in one hand, while the other
strained to hold me up.
    - This is Anna's TK3 time-over losing pose (changed from her
more generic crouch-with-hands-on-the-ground pose from TK2).

Next up: Nina comes back... and she is not happy.Chapter 24: Indisposed Possession notes
September 6, 1999

Fifteen days for this chapter - it ran long in part because of the
beginning of college classes. Argh. I'm taking two very hard
courses this time around... probably my toughest schedule since my
first semester since going back to finish my undergraduate degree. I
don't know how much time it'll leave for writing fanfic, but after
completing 11 chapters of 30+ pages each over the summer, I still
cling to my naive hopes of finishing one chapter a month, at least.
Maybe an extra chapter in the last 10 days of December, after
finals... this whole saga might expand to 29 chapters before it's
over. We'll see.

I also got my summary of Knightstone's "Tekken 2" #1 done (their
Kazuya is so depressingly two-dimensional compared to mine),
and ordered the rest of their comics. I've been keeping a list of
Tekken Tag special teams, and now I've got a request to describe
the special team intro/winning/losing poses... dunno whether I'll
have time for that, though.

I made up the title of this chapter from scratch, since the rough
draft thought "Battle for the Soul" was way too generic (and there's
a bigger battle coming up vs. the Toshin itself anyway).
"Indisposed Possession" is a fun noun phrase to pronounce, as well
as being emphatically appropriate three ways - Bryan is
(temporarily) divested of Lee, Nina is exorcized of the Toshin, and
Mitsurugi is freed from his bloodslave curse.

The epigraph is from a song in the American soundtrack to the
Jackie Chan movie "Supercop." In fact, since I liked both of Devo's
songs on that album, I checked out more of Devo's CDs, but they
weren't nearly as good. :-( It fits perfectly with the "everybody is
resisting control" attitude of the chapter, though.

The central premise of this chapter is sort of a turning point. It was
this idea - the idea of Bryan using the Law of Reflection to
dispossess Nina - that first allowed me to start thinking of
"Phoenix Reborn" as a workable story, and not just a collection of
disjoint scenes in my head. It is probably the first real, written
scene of the whole novel that I had in mind. I mean, this is
something I was thinking about before I even figured out that Julia
was going to be the main heroine/Jin's love interest, instead of
Xiaoyu. In many ways, a *huge* part of the epic is all built up into
setting this scene - everything about Nina/Anna, everything about
Bryan/Lee (this scene may be in part where I came up with the idea
for Lee to possess Bryan in the first place), etc.
    The scene where Mitsurugi frees himself from the bloodslave
poison has also been envisioned from the beginning, though the
final version had a change or two. In fact, there are *very* few plot
details about this chapter that have been improvised. Some of them
have been tweaked from their original conception, but brand-new
ideas - not really.

List of things taken or adapted from video game movies, storylines,
etc.:
    - the literal translation of Jin's name
    - Nina's TK3 kick-button outfit, and Tekken Tag white hair
    - Nina's TK3 kick-button intro (covering eyes, shaking head)
    - Nina's TK3 button 1 victory pose (walk forward, chest swipe)
    - the alleged name of Lee's style ('Mishima school karate'
indeed...)
    - Nina's TK3 time-over losing pose (on hip, shaking head, same
as Anna)
    - Paul's TK2 ending (only with Bryan and Lee in the place of
Paul & Law)

List of deviations/creative license from video game storylines
    - that Nina retains her memories - a mindless Toshin-slave just
wouldn't be as interesting
    - that Nina is Catholic - this is never actually denied in Namco's
storyline, but neither is it established.

Okay. After I wrote this chapter, it was missing an off-format piece
of text. So I fretted, and paced, and couldn't find anything quick
and easy to slip in like Ch. 22's segregated "chant." I cast around
for something new to add, and then realized that poor Nina really
had only a limited ability to express her side of the story. Sure, she
tells Anna what she's all about, but it would stabilize her character
if the chapter could open with something giving a little more about
who Nina is, and what she wants. And what could be more
revealing than a Catholic confessional?
    The off-format piece tied in well a second way. It explained a
question left unanswered since Ch. 5 - a question that I never
originally planned to answer, in fact. Namely: exactly how did Lee
know that Nina was out to assassinate Kazuya, during the last Iron
Fist Tournament? Answer: the syndicate has spies everywhere...
and some of them even wear priestly robes.
   BTW, Catholic confessional is by definition supposed to be
absolutely inviolate. A Catholic priest CANNOT divulge ANY
knowledge of what has been confessed to him (barring permission
of the confessor), even to save his own life, even to save OTHER
people's lives. Theoretically, you could walk in there and confess
your plan to bomb the World Trade Center, and the priest would be
required by his faith to not even call ahead and warn the poor folks.
So, 'Father' Michaels is committing a BIG religious transgression...
Lee had something really nasty on him.
     Of course, Father Michaels did have to be a syndicate
informant... otherwise, there's no way this confessional transcript
could ever make it to public viewing. It's probably still something
of a transgression. However, it has been done before... there was
recently a big uproar because a prison confessional was bugged
(without the priest's knowledge), and the confession obtained
therein was used to convict a man of murder.
    I learned a little bit about Catholic confessionals on the web site 
http://www.catholic-pages.com/penance/howto.asp

W: His damned Tournament killed my mother, and he stole my
only chance to avenge her death!
    - as recounted in Ch. 5 - Nina's mother fought in the Iron Fist
(back when Heihachi was periodically running it), and she was hurt
so badly she needed blood transfusions. However, the blood she
received was tainted with Hepatitis C, and she died shortly
thereafter. Heihachi was presumed dead at Kazuya's hand at the
time of Kazuya's Iron Fist Tournament, so Nina is mad at Kazuya
for robbing her of her rightful revenge. Of course, Nina still carries
a nasty grudge against Heihachi...
    BTW, on the Usenet shrine to Nina Williams, a first name is
offered for her mother: "Heather Williams." If I'd ever noticed that
before, I probably would've used it in Ch. 5, but oh well. If the
topic of Nina's mother ever comes up again, I'll be sure to invoke
the name.

Now for more of My Dinner with Anna. :) This will probably be
the last section in which Anna is directly interviewed. And we've
probably already passed the last direct interviews for Xiaoyu and
Lee. It would seem that all three of these characters talk from their
own pont of view only 4 times in the whole novel. However, it
turns out that the least-used character will most likely be Heihachi.
His journal has been excerpted only 3 times so far, and from now
on, he'll be viewed mostly through other people's eyes. He is the
big, bad villain, after all.
   As for the other characters - Jin, Julia, Bryan, and Mitsurugi will
definitely all have a little more to say in the last few chapters. Lei
probably will have one more, because there's this Lei/Shingo scene
that is stuck in my head.

     "It's Mitsurugi!" the young Devil exclaimed, turning
Heishiro's body on its back.
     "Don't distract yourself with who he is, or how you know
him!" the zombie barked, sharply. "Treat him as you would any
other patient!"
    - idea loosely borrowed from the pilot of "ER," when one of the
title characters tries to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping
pills. One of the nurses asks, "Why did she do it?" Dr. Mark
Greene answers, "We don't ask that about any other patient who
comes in here, and we won't ask it about this one!"

     "I don't have the Power of Healing," he said - was he
reading my mind? "However, I can stitch your wounds, so that you
don't bleed too much before we get you to Kagura's Temple. Just
hold still."
   - Lee's thread isn't permanent - it dissolves in 24 hours or so. But
that's more than enough time to get someone to a proper doctor,
and in the meantime, it never, ever leaves any scars. Lee's innate
"master surgeon" skill is part of the combined knowledge & Power
he gained as a Guardian. This particular talent of his will come in
handy later, which why I'm setting it up here...

     "Chizuru Kagura's Temple," he confirmed, and mentioned a
Tokyo address, all without interrupting his stitchery.
    - I want Nina/Anna in on the big final fight vs. Heihachi & the
Toshin, which means they'll have to hook up with the rest of our
heroes in Kagura's Temple, which means they have to be able to
*find* Kagura's Temple or even know it's *there*. The most
convenient way for that would be if Anna learns about it from Lee,
hence this line.

"Ssh," soothed the zombie. "Don't cry for Hwoarang, at least.
Death was all he longed for."
    - I've got at least 5 different e-mails or other messages from
various readers protesting Hwoarang's death. Hwoarang has a LOT
of fans, especially female fans who think he's cute. I'm told that no
other Tekken fanfic ANYWHERE has ever (permanently) killed
him off before mine. Haven't verified it personally, since I don't
have much time for fanfic reading, but he's popular enough (#5
most often picked in the local Tekken Tag game) that I'm inclined
to believe it.
     So, this is just one extra line of consolation, sort of meant for
Hwoarang fans. I didn't kill Hwoarang because I hated him - I used
to dislike him, but I took more of an interest in him once I started
getting into his character as a vampyre. However, his death was
*absolutely necessary* to the plot, and here's why. If Hwoarang
weren't dead, his bloodslave curse wouldn't be weakened. Meaning
that Mitsurugi's resistance to the curse would *kill* him, just like
Satake, et. al. died when they resisted the curse. And I'm not done
with Mitsurugi yet, oh no...

BTW, Jin's healing of Heishiro Mitsurugi is probably a very loose,
unconscious takeoff from the Beast's resurrection/transformation in
"Beauty and the Beast" (and the critter does rather look a little like
the Toshin, I think, especially around the face). 

Jin... his very name means 'virtue' or 'humanity'; did you know
that?
    - the kanji for Jin's name are written in a Japanese TK3 strategy
book, and also in the packaging for Jin's action figure. "Jin" is a
four-stroke kanji literally meaning "virtue" or "humanity" (ironic
given that he becomes a Devil). Jin's last name, Kazama, literally
means "wind interval." Didn't make enough logistical coherence to
throw in a translation of that, too.

"Not a chance, same reasons. Looks like we face her together."
    - I swear, I really didn't have a Lee/Anna Tekken Tag team in
mind when I conceived the idea for this chapter, let alone started
writing it, but...

When Nina appears, she's wearing her TK3 kick-button outfit,
courtesy of the Toshin. I always thought that was Nina's cooler
look (as opposed to her purple hooker lingerie, or whatever that is).
Nina is, however, minus the pearl necklace, which seems a bit
extravagant for even the Toshin. Nina gets a diamond cross
necklace instead (what can I say? It's an alternate Tekkenverse.)

She put one hand in front of her face, and shook her head.
    - Nina's kick-button TK3 intro pose (she looks like she's in flux
over the Toshin's control).

*I DELIVER YOU FROM EVIL!*
    - when Nina threw Lee's Power back at him, it *might* have
exorcized Lee from Bryan's body, except that Lee's spell
specifically delivered from "evil." Lee isn't "evil" enough to
qualify, not even from Bryan's point of view. Even so, Lee was
drastically weakened.

     Nina advanced upon us step by step, in a casual, sultry
walk. She brought her hand up to her throat, and made an
imperious, chest-level swipe with her palm. It was the gesticulation
of a royal executioner.
    - one of Nina's TK3 victory poses (hold down button 1)

Now for the Nina/Lee fight scene: this is actually pretty limited to
Nina whaling on poor Lee. After Lee's exorcism fails, Nina smacks
him with her Blond Bomb (F+1+2 or f, f+1+2). One of my all-time
favorite Nina moves, due to its long range, nasty damage, and the
fact that it's very hard to retaliate after blocking it. Also useful for
certain juggle combos. After an energy attack, Nina just decides to
smack Lee around with her 10-hit string - her really nasty 10-hit,
the one that mixes up a lot of highs & lows. Nina players often use
it to wreck mere mortals: 1, 2, 1, 2, 4, 3, 4, 2, 4, 3. It has a couple
guard points, but Lee is too overwhelmed by Bryan's resistance to
take advantage of them. The last hit of this string actually launches
Nina's victim in the air for more juggle hits, but Nina can't juggle
Lee because of Anna's interference.
     Anna jumps on Nina with u/f+3, a move that is not named
in any TK3 guide I remember. It's basically like Nina's Bone Cutter
(f, f, f+3). Like that move, if Anna connects she does the Crab
Hold throw. However, Anna apparently doesn't have any of Nina's
Crab Hold multis. Although Nina's Crab Hold throw (d, d/f, f+3+4)
is allegedly an escapable throw (button 1), her Bone Cutter doesn't
seem to be, and neither does Anna's Bone Cutter. On the other
hand, Tekken Tag *does* make Nina's Bone Cutter escapable; I've
seen characters just throw Nina off, a couple times. That's what
Nina does here. Anna's attack might normally be inescapable in
Tekken 3, but hey. Toshin's Power + creative license. After that,
Nina drives out Lee, and I should mention...

     +THAT _THING_ IS NO ANGEL!+
    - on the web site mentioned above, I learned that according to
Catholic belief, human beings *cannot* become angels when they
die. Angels are a separate order of beings entirely. Human beings
will one day be reunited with physical bodies, etc. etc. So Nina has
her religion as well as personal hatred of Lee backing this
assertion. (This is also a nice parallel to Bryan repeatedly calling
the Toshin possessing Nina a "thing.")

*Do not use my crimes to justify your slaughter of more
innocents!* the angel shouted, desperately. *_Nothing_ can justify
the murder of innocents!*
    - this is a childhood conclusion I came to myself a long time
ago, puzzling over an ethical dilemma presented in a fantasy novel.

Originally, I envisioned Toshin-Nina's discard of Bryan as
throwing him out a window... Bryan would cling to the windowsill
and pull himself back up. But I figured that was too melodramatic
and stretching disbelief, so I made the sacrificial room windowless,
and just had Toshin-Nina throw Bryan away.

Now for the Nina/Anna fight... only it isn't, really. They had it out
in Ch. 5; I'm not going through a whole battle again (that's for
Bryan to do). Instead, Nina gets to show off more of her bone-
crunching moves, especially since Anna isn't resisting - not even
passively (sort of like the dummy in TK3's practice mode). First,
she hits Anna with her Assassin's Dagger (f, f+1), a strike that
makes her opponent show their right side when it hits. Nina
follows it up with her Hammer Throw, which is 1+3 or 2+4 from
opponent's right side. Then, Nina goes after Anna with one of my
favorite multi-throws - a multi I can actually do at the arcades. Her
Over the Back Toss (2+4), followed by the Shoulder Throw Buster
(1, 2, 1) and the Shoulder Throw Arm Breaker (2, 1, 3).
     Anna's way out of it by now, so Nina charges her
unblockable Hunting Swan (d/b+1+2). But when Anna says just
the right thing, Nina cancels her unblockable (u, u).

     "And then what?" I whispered.
    - a line from the black comedy movie "Death Becomes Her,"
also given to Lei Wulong after Kazuya expounded of the New Era
he would bring about.

     "Do you remember Yukie?" I asked her. "If you don't know
her name, then do you remember this, and where it came from?"
     - even if I have to make up cannon fodder and give 'em horrible
deaths, I don't like to have them just completely and totally
forgotten about, later. That annoys me in "Voyager" and countless
other TV shows. Once again, Yukie proves central to the
developing plot... though I originally didn't intend it to turn out this
way, or for Hwoarang's breathing her name as his last word to be
this critical. Originally, Anna offering her life was to be Nina's
turning point, but I like what I finally came up with a *lot* better.

     +I am not like him!+
     "Think of what Kazuya was! Think of what the Devil made
him do! The same things that you're doing now!"
     +I AM NOT LIKE HIM!+
    - a partly deliberate parallel to Lei's denial of being like Kazuya
in "Ashes" Ch. 17, and Kazuya's denial of being like Heihachi in
"Ashes" Ch. 24.

"Fight the Toshin, Nina. Fight it!" I draped the chain of Yukie's
cross around her neck.
    - originally, I wasn't sure exactly what would become of Yukie's
diamond cross, in the end. Now I know. It goes to Nina, and she
keeps it to guard herself against once more becoming the very
thing she used to hate the most.
   BTW, the idea of a Catholic, cross-wearing, blond femme fatale
video game assassin could be borrowed from the "Street Fighter V"
anime, in which Cammy is a government assassin who likes to
wear a Catholic cross (total contradiction, here... but no more so
than a cross-wearing mafia member.)

Now for more of Bryan's point of view. In retrospect, it's a pity that
Lee (probably) will get no more than 4 interview sessions for the
whole epic, but... well, Bryan is a lot more down-to-earth than Lee.
Seeing Lee through mortal eyes helps increase his mystique, and
virtually holy awe.

Hey. I saved pretty boy Kazama, didn't I? He's the one who got rid
of the Toshin, isn't he?
    - this gives away a bit of the ending, but only a bit. Jin didn't
vanquish the Toshin all by himself; he had help...

So the Indian girl has saved his life, too. So more idiots had to
gang up and save him again. 
    - in Ch. 9, Julia saved Jin from Nina, who was about to tear his
head off. And in a couple more chapters, Lei Wulong & company
will all have to gang up to stop Heihachi's evil plot...

     Besides, she called me ugly. The slut.
    - Bryan is actually a *lot* more sensitive about his looks than he
would ever, *ever* admit aloud. It's part of why he takes such a
hostile (without actually being malevolent) attitude toward Jin,
always calling Jin a "pretty boy." Deep inside, Bryan envies Jin's
good looks.

     I cut off her head.
     One stroke. That's all it took, and I'd never really handled a
sword before. I was absurdly proud of myself. 
    - In addition to Bryan's enhanced strength, the sword he's using -
Mitsurugi's sword - has killed a vampyre. This has invested the
weapon with certain supernatural powers. It can cut through a lot
more than any ordinary sword ever could...

     There used to be a writer called Hemingway, who said that
courage is 'grace under pressure.'
    - Bryan had to study Hemingway in high school, just like a lot of
American kids.

I took on an almost full-forward fighting stance, like I was Lee.
    - Lee's Tekken 2 stance is close to full-forward. Lee's Tekken
Tag stance is different; he turns more to the side, and one of his
arms is drifting around his midsection instead of covering his body.
Still, neither of them resemble Bryan's stance, in which he sharply
turns his body to the side.

Now for Nina vs. Bryan - only Bryan is trying to fight like Lee!
     Nina gets the first move in, with her *inescapable* Betrayer
throw (d, d/b, B+1+4). She tries to link it into her Twisted
Nightmare (2, 1, 1+2, 1+2+3) followed by either the Neck Crusher
(1, 3+4, 1, 2, 1+2) or the Leg Stretch Arm Lock (1, 2, 4, 3, 1+2+3).
However, Bryan escapes the Twisted Nightmare (2), and clears
some space with Lee's Back Handspring (b, b, N, 3+4). Nina comes
after him with her Left Side Kick (d/f+3) to Triple Side Kick (3, 3,
3 after Left Side Kick). The Left Side Kick hits mid, and the Triple
Side Kicks hit high, high, low. Bryan blocks the mid kick, ducks
the high kick, and then retaliates with Lee's Infinity Kick
(WS+3~3, d+3, 3, 3...)
     Bryan only does the first five hits of the Infinity Kick,
which is the axe kick (WS+3~3), followed by the low, mid, high
kicks. If Lee gets the first four of the Infinity Kicks on any
opponent, the fifth one will whiff while he hops forward. (BTW,
when Ogre uses the kick in TK3 or Lee uses it in Tekken Tag, too
much kicking will make Lee automatically veer on a side angle,
and he'll be an open target). This is what happens to Bryan, and it
takes him by surprise.
     Meanwhile, Nina strikes back with a *nasty* juggle combo.
Her Liftshot (2 while sidestepping) tosses enemies for her Low
Right Kick to Back Spin Chop, and the Blond Bomb for a final hit
(d+4, 2, 1+2). Here, Bryan doesn't actually go flying, but the
Liftshot is a head blow, so it stuns him like it only stuns big
enemies in Tekken Tag (Jack-2, Gun Jack, & Ganryu).
     While Bryan gets back up, Nina powers up (1+2+3+4). But
she goes after Bryan's weakened legs with her Left and Right Low
Kicks (D+3, 4), Bryan uses his Low Parry (d+1+3, or d+2+4) to
stop her first kick. Then, while Nina's trying to right herself, Bryan
tries one of Lee's high flip kicks (D, U+4). 
     Bryan messes this up royally, in a parody of Paul's TK2
ending (where Paul tries Marshall Law's flip kick, and ends up flat
on his face). In fact, the move Bryan actually does is Paul's
Incomplete Somersault (D until Paul throws down his hands, then
U+2+3+4). This is a crazy TK3 move for Paul, showing his failed
attempt to get those darn flip kicks down. Paul really does kick
back, flail his arms, and land on his face. What's more, the move
always does 15 damage to Paul (25 damage to Paul's opponent, if it
hits). Compare this to, say, the 5 damage that Heihachi's missed
Demon Scissors or Nina's missed Forward Flip Kick do to them.
     End Bryan/Nina fight scene. And by the way...

Now for more of Lee's kicks - what's his style called, anyway?
'Mishima-school karate'? That's a laugh; just about the only move
he uses as often as the rest of the Mishima family IS that stupid axe
kick, but never mind.
    - I don't get this myself. Why do various strategy guides call
Lee's style "Mishima-school karate" when it's obviously nothing
like Kazuya's, Heihachi's, or Jin's style? Except for the two-hit axe
kick, that is. Lee's new moves in Tekken Tag don't resemble those
of the House Mishima either; they're more like the Williams sisters'
bone-breaking locks. Maybe Heihachi never thought Lee was
worthy of instruction in the higher Arts of the House Mishima...?

You do NOT have a choice, you can NOT argue, you are NOT
going to deny it what it wants, and what it wants is blood and
souls. 
    - I'm dimly thinking of Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone
and his dark sword Stormbringer here... "Blood and Souls for my
Lord Arioch!"

BTW, the description of Nina being dispossessed has elements
loosely borrowed from what it's like to have a Vorlon pull out of
you, as seen in Babylon 5.

Its left arm also had two fingers, but instead of a right arm, it had a
red-eyed snake. A snake whose poisonous fangs reached for me.
    - Ummm... until I got my True Ogre action figure a few weeks
ago, I never actually noticed that its right arm was a snake. Not
once. Really. Loopy, huh? So there's never any mention of this in
Ch. 2, when the Toshin's true form first showed up - hey, it was
dark, Jin couldn't see that well. When the Toshin comes back, it'll
probably do its Serpent's Venom on someone.

     The dirty gold disappeared from her body, her eyes, and her
hair. I mean, _all_ the color went out of her hair, draining it to
stark white.
    - as in Tekken Tag. Kagura's Temple will probably end up
bleaching Nina's clothes out too, when they put some protective
wards on her out of distrust, so she'll end up totally in her cool
Tekken Tag button 3 colors. ^_^

     She slumped to her knees, then on her hip. Her hand
covered her eyes, and she shook her head back and forth.
    - Nina's TK3 time-over losing pose (same as Anna's).

     "The Law of Reflection, psycho-bitch! If you target a spell,
and your target isn't there, your sorcery turns on _you_ instead.
Any sorcery. Divination, mind-probe..."
     I soundly smacked my fist into my open hand.
     "...exorcism!"
    - there's a reason why I showed Lee mentioning the Law of
Reflection to Bryan in Ch. 15. Lesser matters, such as Lee
practicing backflips, infinity kicks, etc. in Bryan's body can be
referred to later with very little setup, but stuff like this needs to be
planted in advance - Chekov's rule of playwriting.

He's got a comment to make, about psycho-bitch's attitude. He calls
it 'reaction formation.'
    - an unconscious defense mechanism that I learned about in high
school & college psychology.

BTW, Bryan's rampant thievery is not only a matter of his
character telling me what he would do. It's also a convenient way
to explain how Anna eventually gets her enchanted pendant back
(she's wearing it during her interview in Ch. 23) when she never
picked it up after Mitsurugi cut it off her neck.

     "As a Guardian of the Grey Kingdom, I can't possess your
body without your invitation. I can't even ask you to invite me; the
solicitation must come wholly from your free will."
    - the Toshin is not a Guardian of the Grey Kingdom, so it could
go ahead and urge Nina/Anna to invite its possession. Same with
the Devil that possessed Kazuya. However, even these critters did
have to be invited first.

     So, I prayed for a whole lot of crap. Toys, games, candy.
Food, clothing, heat. The usual.
    - Bryan actually grew up in a rather poverty-stricken
background...

"Incidentally," Lee continued, "I saw you appropriate Jin's billfold,
among other items. Rest assured that you _are_ going to return
them all."
    - when my father reviewed the rough draft, he pointed out that
Lee would *very* much disapprove of Bryan's thievery. Bryan's
probably going to grudgingly arrange for the return of his ill-gotten
goods next chapter.

"Mm-my master was coming. Mishima-sama was c-closing in, I
could feel it. Mishima-sama said he w-was going to terminate the
Cyborg Army project. I-I knew Mishima-sama would d-destroy
you, if he found you..."
    - Originally, I thought Heihachi would give Mitsurugi an order
like "Dispose of that as well" and point to Bryan's body, indicating
that Bryan should be incinerated, and Mitsurugi would resist or
deviate en route. But then I realized that a) Heihachi would NOT
entrust Bryan's destruction to flunkies a second time - he'd
dismember & incinerate Bryan personally, and b) Mitsurugi
probably wouldn't be able to keep his cover around Heihachi, since
he's fighting a losing battle with the bloodslave poison in the first
place. It made a lot more sense for Mitsurugi to just grab Bryan and
run, shortly before Heihachi followed reports of a disturbance to
the blood sacrifice room. Mitsurugi actually got out of the
syndicate the same way he led Anna in - through the service
elevator, underground passages, etc.

     "B-but how...? Anna shot me-!"
     I take it this flunky has never seen "ER."
    - I've seen every (or almost every) "ER" episode, myself. Dr.
Kerry Weaver is my favorite. ^_^ I *still* think Dr. Mark Greene
looks like a classic serial killer on "N.Y.P.D. Blue," though his
character is of course vastly different (on the other hand, he *does*
infrequently 'kill' his patients...)

"Mitsurugi was pierced through the heart. I've never heard of any
human sorcery capable of healing such a wound. I'm still not
certain what Jin did to save him."
     - Jin performed the sorcerous equivalent of a kidney transplant.
Just ripped a huge piece of Power out of himself, and stuck it in
Mitsurugi's heart (then jump-started Mitsurugi's biological
processes, so that Mitsu would start breathing again). Jin's gift of
Power is literally holding Mitsu's heart together. Like a kidney
transplant, it's a permanent transfer; even if Jin dies, Mitsu will
live, with this energy thing keeping his heart going for the rest of
his natural allotted span of years. Like a kidney transplant, it has
permanently diminished Jin - Jin's raw sorcerous strength and
resources will never be quite so high as before, though his
telepathy remains unaffected. And like a kidney transplant, Jin can
only do it once and keep living.
     There is a price. The bond that hold Mitsu's heart together
has to sustain itself with energy from Mitsu's own life-force. As a
result, Mitsu has about half the endurance of a normal man his age
& health. If Mitsu overtaxes his limits, he doesn't die - his
transplant has a deliberate safety to prevent that. He will, however,
pass out like a light. He's close to passing out now, after carrying
Bryan all the way out of the syndicate - fortunately for Bryan, Jin's
initial healing did give Mitsu something of an energy backlog.

     "You fucking expect me to carry you? Uh-uh. Get up!"
    - one of the fun things about Bryan is his hypocrisy - even
though Mitsu carried him out of the syndicate, he's unwilling to
carry Mitsu.

     "You think it's any kinder to leave him twisting in
Heihachi's grip?"
     (I have murdered under a similar rationale before, and lived
to regret it. Not again. Never again.)
   - Lee is remembering his murder of Michelle, here.

     "Lee, you're a goddamn ANGEL! There must be
SOMETHING you can do!"
     That got to him. 
     I don't know if it was my choice of words or what, but it
really got to him. 
    - When Lee finally joined the forces of Light in "Ashes of the
Phoenix," Jun and Liu Kang were agonizing about what to do to
help their friends. Jun said, "There must be _something_ we can
do." And Lee realized, "There is." That's how Lee decided to set
free Kazuya's sleepers, turning the tide of the battle for the
Mishima syndicate (and ultimately the Great Invasion as well). All
it cost Lee was his life...

"This doesn't make sense NONE of this makes any sense why is
this happening what went wrong I thought Bryan Fury was dead
and he talks like he's alive I thought Taki was mean and she cried
for me I thought Xiaoyu was a monster and she's my best friend I
thought Julia was jealous and she was right about everything I
thought the young master was a Devil and he saved my life I loved
Anna and she betrayed me I revered Mishima-sama and he did this
to me-!"
    - I made this paragraph up on the spot, and I love it. Poor,
ordinary Mitsurugi... lost in a syndicate of crazies and monsters,
where nothing and no one are as they seem! ^_^

     Mitsurugi raised his weapon overhead, and with a scream to
split the sky in half, he declared, "_I HAVE TO STOP HIM_!"
    - another scene envisioned from the beginning. Originally, there
would be a lightning streak while Mitsu yelled this, but there's been
enough dramatic lightning cliches in previous chapters.

     "I... I can see colors again. What did you do?"
    - as a red-eyed bloodslave, Mitsu saw the whole world in red and
black.

Next up: Bryan reaches Kagura's temple, learns answers about
Taki, and finally has his long-awaited confrontation with Lei
Wulong...

Chapter 25: Solemn Promise notes
September 24, 1999

Eighteen days for this chapter - college classes take a toll. Argh.
One of my courses would have driven me nuts even if I weren't
writing fanfic, so I dropped it. I'm in only one course now, and it's
actually a rather tough one, but I find myself enjoying it. It's
Systems Analysis - how to make your queues get more queueing
per Q! :) I'm still on track to graduate at the end of either the spring
term or the summer term, but it is nice to take an extra-light course
load for this one semester. Just long enough for me to finish
"Phoenix Reborn"...

I took the title for this chapter from its recurring theme, which
seems to be a lot about promises & oaths & what-not. Especially
the Oath that Bryan took when he was sworn in as a police officer.

The epigraph is from a Sherlock Holmes story I studied in my old
college English class, along with "The Speckled Band" (which
Julia refers to as one of her favorite stories in Ch. 1). Hey, the
book's on my shelf and it's in keeping with the chapter theme... I
needed an epigraph. ^_^

Several of this chapter's key revelations about Bryan have been
planned from the beginning, including but not limited to the reason
why he refused to swear the Oath of the Guardians, the death of his
mother, his awkward reunion with Taki, and his final "revenge" on
Lei Wulong. What I didn't envision (but should have) was that
Bryan would take over the whole chapter for himself. Originally, I
was going to get back to Julia's perspective as well, but Bryan
loudly complained that she'd already had four previous chapters to
herself, while he'd had only one. Can't argue that.
    A few other minor things were adjusted as I worked on the story.
The inclusion of Doctor Boskonovitch was something I didn't
figure out until around Ch. 11, when I realized I'd need to write in
someone specific to save Taki's life. Taki was originally to wake
out of her coma when Bryan approached her, but I threw that out as
way too cheesy/convenient a coincidence. Instead, it makes more
sense if Lei Wulong has already woken Taki up (he's a demon, so
she would be sensitive to his presence even in an unconscious
state) plus it would free up a little more space for the rest of the
chapter. Finally, I didn't make up my mind to write in Goro
Daimon or Chizuru's daughters until I started this chapter. I'd
previously been toying with the idea that the Temple caretaker
would be Chizuru's husband, or that she'd have twin daughters
(Chizuru is herself a twin; Goenitz murdered her twin sister before
in KoF '96). 

List of things taken or adapted from video game movies, storylines,
etc.:
    - the Kyo/Iori statues show Kyo & Iori in their cut-scene poses
when they face off against each other in KoF '98. 
    - so of course, Kyo's fire is red-orange while Iori's flames are
purple.
    - Chizuru's regular & alternate outfits from KoF '98 (her kids are
wearing 'em)
    - Goro Daimon's regular KoF '98 outfit (complete with the shirt
he shrugs off in his intro animation, if he's the first character out.)
    - one of Daimon's victory poses (the clipped half-bow)
    - that Goro Daimon is a VERY tough fighter - one of the best, if
not THE best in KoF '98
    - that "Kagura" is a false name, which Chizuru took to disguise
her true lineage
    - Nina's Tekken Tag outfit (select with button 3)
    - Boskonovitch's PSX TK3 background
    - Boskonovitch's PSX TK3 punch-button outfit, complete with
killer radio or whatever that red-antenna-knob black box is
    - that Boskonovitch has a hard time standing up
    - that Boskonovitch wants Toshin's blood to bring his daughter
back from the dead
    - that Boskonovitch is dying from a "pathological organism" he
contracted while working on the Mishima syndicate's coldsleep
technology
    - Lei's purple Tekken Tag outfit (button 1)

List of deviations/creative license from video game storylines
    - everything about Bryan Fury's mother
    - that Chizuru Kagura & Goro Daimon ended up getting married
& having kids
    - Jessica Boskonovitch's first name
    - that Lei Wulong knew about & arrested Bryan Fury over his
dark connections with the Mishima syndicate drug trade. (Namco's
storyline just says that Lei was suspicious of Bryan).


Once again, I finished the rough draft and realized that it was
missing a piece of off-format text. There wasn't much room left for
anything elaborate. I considered writing out Taki's note (the
original outline actually called for a different note from Taki - a
suicide note that she would have given/left behind in Ch. 20. The
idea got scrapped because a note was too remote to contribute
anything worthwhile to describing Taki's ordeal or Heihachi's evil).
But Taki's note would have just been a jumble of code.
     Since the chapter is all about Bryan, the off-format text
should relate to him. I thought it over, and figured that since Bryan
never flat-out admits that the story he tells is about his own mother
(and since the interviewer is a little reluctant to ask him directly),
perhaps the interviewer used the resources of the syndicate to do a
quickie bit of research. Pulled a few strings, and found the death
certificate of Bryan's mother, which factually confirms the darker
aspects of Bryan's story. Bryan will most likely be displeased at the
death certificate's inclusion in the record, but he has sort of brought
it on himself... he's been verbally abusive of the interviewer on
more than one occasion.
     I based the death certificate off a 50-year-old model I found
on the web. Which means that its format may be out of date, but
heck...

The name of Bryan's mother, Constance Fury, is something I made
up. My Bryan didn't grow up with a father, so he has his mother's
last name. Her first name, Constance, was deliberately chosen for
irony - a name meaning "stability" for someone who ultimately
succumbed to her own personal demons. Bryan's childhood home
(Wilkinson Public Assistance Project) is also something I made up.
Bryan grew up dirt poor. After his mother's death, he spent a few
years rotating among foster homes, but was out on his own at 17.

At last, we see Chizuru Kagura's Temple, a sanctuary that I didn't
invent until I was on Ch. 15. I didn't feel like doing a whole lot of
research on traditional Japanese temple design, so I skip out on
extensively describing the place, though there's a quick reference to
a torii. However, I knew I had to put in statues of Kyo Kusanagi &
Iori Yagami, wielding their characteristic flames, if only as a
special acknowledgment to KoF fans everywhere... yeah, I know
who the KoF heroes are. But this story isn't about the KoF fan-
favorites that everyone else writes about; I just like Shingo, is all.
Of course, Shingo sleeps next to the statue of his hero and god,
Kyo. 
     BTW, Chizuru Kagura specifically created the statues to
memorialize Kyo and Iori in recognition of the ancient alliance of
their clans, and their heroism against the dread Orochi. Chizuru
knows that Iori was a cursed Devil of Orochi blood, but she also
knows that he sacrificed his life to protect the Earth.

     (You're _watching_ me, remember?) I thought back,
irritably. (So just settle back and watch, damn you. And keep quiet,
unless I ask you a question.)
     (I've hurt your feelings, haven't I.)

    - in fact, Bryan's feelings are a lot more sensitive than he would
ever, EVER admit.

The scene where Bryan mistakes Shingo Yabuki for a
bum/derelict/beggar came to me shortly before I started working on
Ch. 25, and it was just too good to ignore. I needed to write Bryan's
first meeting with Shingo somewhere, since Bryan knows Shingo
well enough to refer to him in Ch. 20 (when Bryan was amused to
learn that Yabuki was the "powerful wizard" who shielded Lei
from Lee's location spells.)

     The cripple let his head fall, miserably. "I knew I never
should have let Chang-san attempt a rescue all by herself-!"
    - Shingo is glad that at least Julia was able to save Xiaoyu, but
he feels miserable overall because the emissaries from Kagura's
Temple arrived to pick him up just a few minutes after Julia left.
Not that he had *any* reason to expect them, but like Julia, he
wonders that if even one Temple acolyte had gone along to help
her with her rescue mission...

"Daimon-san is a former champion of the King of Fighters
Tournament. He used to be one of Kusanagi-sama's teammates."
     - the third member of the KoF's Team Japan, a.k.a. the Hero
Team, is Benimaru Nikaido, who BTW is half-Japanese & half-
American. Benimaru is, in terms of gameplay potential, probably
the weakest member of the team, though he is probably much
easier to learn than Kyo or Goro. Personality-wise, the hot-headed
Benimaru was always getting into temperamental clashes with
Kyo, and only calm, level-headed Goro could keep the Hero Team
together.

Chizuru Kagura once had a twin sister. The evil Goenitz murdered
her, before his own death at the conclusion of KoF '96. If you play
Chizuru's special team with Kyo & Iori on KoF '96 (not '97 or '98!)
you actually fight her dead twin sister as a sub-boss (all other teams
fight Chizuru as a sub-boss on KoF '96).
     Since I like symmetry, and since Chizuru's bloodline is a bit
sacrosanct/magical and probably more prone to things like twin
births, I've sort of wanted Chizuru to have twin daughters 20 years
later. So, here they are. Taiyou Kagura and Tsuki Kagura both take
after their mother very strongly. Their names are the Japanese
words for "Sun" and "Moon" respectively, after the symbols of the
Kusanagi clan and the Yagami clan. Taiyou is dressed in her
mom's default outfit (white with red trim), while Tsuki is wearing
her mom's default alternate color (dark blue with black trim).
     Their personalities do reflect their names. Taiyou is the
more open & sunny of the two, while Tsuki tends to be more sullen
and withdrawn. At the same time, though, Taiyou can be more
merciless in attitude, while Tsuki can more readily understand why
some people would want to seclude themselves in darkness...
     Chizuru's greatest fear (next to the destruction of the Earth)
is that one day she will lose one of her beloved daughters, just as
she lost her twin sister. She has never told anyone this, not even
her husband; yet Goro understands. He knows her that well. Both
parents are very, very protective of their daughters. Neither would
EVER allow their children to participate in any fighting
Tournament - at least, not at the early age of 14 (heck, even Lion is
15 in Virtua Fighter 2). Nor would Goro allow his children to face
off against Heihachi. Way, way too dangerous. While the girls do
rebel a little from time to time (Taiyou almost dyed her hair blond
once), they both love and respect their parents far too much to
disobey them and run off on Sailor Moon-type hijinks.

Now for Goro Daimon (no relation to Goro from Mortal Kombat -
though for this reason, I'll usually call him "Daimon" in my fanfic).
The more I thought about needing to make the Temple caretaker a
named character, and possible Chizuru Kagura's husband, the more
Daimon fit. His KoF storyline mentions that he was beginning to
look for an arranged marriage. As for Chizuru, well, she is very
different from him in personality - more of the wild partying type,
loves to ride her motorcycle, etc. How Goro & Chizuru originally
got together is a long story in and of itself, and both of them
actually tell conflicting versions. Chizuru is certainly not the type
of wife Goro ever imagined himself marrying, back when he was
29 and in KoF - for one thing, she's away fighting demons, etc. far
more than he would like - but by now, he can't imagine having
settled down with anyone else.

     I'm good. I'm tough. Hell, I'm a Cyborg Army prototype. I
still would NOT want to get into a real fight with this man.
     Ever.
     - Goro is potentially THE most powerful character in KoF '98 -
IF you know how to use him well. VERY well. If you can master
his cancel (a move listed on Japanese guides and websites, but not
most American ones!) then you can cancel your opponent's moves
and then grab him for major damage, no matter what they do. I
have seen CPU Benimaru attempt a desperation-move throw (he
yelled "Ezurika!"), but a master Goro player canceled it, and
grabbed Benimaru with a desperation-move instead. Goro is SO
tough that the only way to explain his absence from the Iron Fist is
to make it clear that he's retired.
     Goro first shows up wearing his default KoF '98 outfit - he's
wearing the jacket without putting his arms in the sleeves if he's
the first character up for a match. What's up with that habit of not
using jacket sleeves, anyway? How can anyone do it without
having the jacket slip off? I saw B'Ellanna Torres wearing a jacket
like that on "Voyager," and I still don't get it.

     "'Kagura' is an assumed name. To conceal her true
bloodline from demons and Devils. I offered her my name, but she
would not endanger me so."
    - Even though they're married, I want to call Chizuru Kagura &
Goro Daimon by their original names so as to make it clear they're
from the video game KoF '98. Chizuru's last name, Kagura, is in
fact from the KoF storyline - it really is a false name she assumed
to hide her true lineage. Her real last name is Yata. It won't be
mentioned in "Phoenix Reborn" because it's a closely guarded
secret, and this "record" that the interviewer is working on is for
public release. Chizuru wanted to pass the false name of Kagura to
her kids as well, to protect them. She didn't want them to have the
name Daimon because then their true names would be something
readily known. It can give you an edge to keep your full true name
concealed from demons & Devils.

Flashing magical waves washed over her body, bleaching the
maroon of her leopard-spot vest to a soft baby-blue. Sorcery fizzled
on her bone-white hair.
      - what can I say. I like Nina's new 3-button Tekken Tag colors.
Her 1-button Tekken Tag costume is bright red garters with white
hair - Mrs. Santa Claus. Put her on a team with 4-button "Santa"
Heihachi, on the winter background redo of Yoshimitsu's stage,
and it's Christmas time...

     "Of course," he responded, repeating that clipped half-bow.
"If you need anything, you have only to call."
     Then he walked away. The retreating <clack, clack> of his
wooden sandals gradually faded from my hearing.
     - Goro's limited bow is one of his KoF '98 victory poses. The
<clack> sound of his geta is *very* audible whenever he runs -
unlike Heihachi's geta, which are silent even on a wooden floor.
^_^

Just as I was polishing the final draft for Ch. 25, I fire up my TK3
PSX to check a few things on Boskonovitch, and what do I find?
He has his own background! Just like Gon (though Gon's
background looks like a remake of Roger's). So I quickly rewrote it
for here, though I've added a cryo chamber for Dr. B's daughter.
Dr. B is in his punch-button lab-coat outfit. He carries that black
box with a red knob on its antenna when he fights.

BTW, Dr. B is the ultimate Tekken finesse character. He can't
stand up (at best he can crouch), can't throw (other than a
frankensteiner move), and perhaps worst, he has EXTREME
problems getting up from a knockdown. Any knockdown. Other
fighters immediately scramble to their feet; not the doctor. He is
extremely vulnerable to any kind of pounce or stomp moves. He's
so frustrating to control that it's understandable why he's been left
out of Tekken Tag... at least the arcade version.

     I flicked my eyes to Boskonovitch's little girl, frozen in the
cryo unit, and muttered, "Yeah. I'm sorry for your loss."
     - This is a common police phrase on N.Y.P.D. Blue. Every
episode, there's a homicide or five, and someone on the squad has
to comfort surviving friends or family with "I'm sorry for your
loss."

     "Right. Look, I'm not here because I want to give you a
hard time, okay? I just need to find out about Taki."
     "'I' want. 'I' need. Does the entire Earth turn at your whim?"
    - this is a deliberate parallel to one of the lines in Ch. 3, where
Bryan's last thoughts bitterly question whether Lei thought the
whole world turned around him...

The stuff about Boskonovitch's sickness, and searching for the
Toshin's blood, is of course right out of Namco's storyline for him
(actually referred to under Yoshimitsu's bio). Yoshimitsu is in TK3
to help Boskonovitch out. Since Namco never actually specifies
what Boskonovitch is sick with, I also don't bother to give any
further details... for now.

"When I tried to kill myself, it wasn't because I wanted to die. It
was because I was more terrified of being alive."
    - Being afraid of Life is a very, very common thought & motive
of suicide.

     Lee had never before confronted me over the drug-running I
used to do for the syndicate. I wonder how he knew about it. From
my mind? From scanning Abel's computer files about me? Or was
he just guessing?
    - When Bryan went searching through Lee's memories, the Law
of Reflection mirrored a few things back to Lee in addition to a
little about Taki's home. Lee also learned that Bryan used to be a
heroin dealer as well as a user (though Lee had already suspected
as much).

     "Can those damn silver threads of yours stretch long
enough for that?"
     "Yes. They shall not break, so long as you do not desire it."
    - Lee can set a maximum length for the threads if he so wills it
(such as the ten meters that kept him attached to Bryan in Ch. 20),
but he doesn't have to if he doesn't want to.

     "I never attended public school."
    - Taki's mother educated her daughter largely at home. As Taki
grew older she went out mostly to run errands for her mother...
more and more often... until her mother just stopped going outside.
Taki's mother hasn't left her home in years.

     If Taki's teeth weren't half-mutant needle-sharp fangs, I
could have sworn she was biting her lip, under that mask of hers.
    - actually, Taki is biting her lip. Her skin is tough enough that if
she doesn't bite down hard, she won't cut herself on her own teeth.

     I had to stop, and swallow a thickness in my throat. "It's
something I once ran across. I've seen a lot of bad shit when I was a
cop; don't think I haven't."
    - Bryan knows he can't lie to Lee, so he's careful to phrase this so
that each statement is, by itself, true. Overall, Bryan's trying to give
the impression that this story has nothing to do with him personally
without actually saying it. However, Lee knows misdirection when
he hears it.

The death of Bryan's mother is loosely inspired by some TV movie
I once saw, about a junkie woman who's in love with a cop... and
when her dealer finds out about it, he arranges for his potential
problem to take care of itself.

     "Hey!" I shouted, standing up and getting some distance.
"Did I say this had anything to do with me? Did I!?"
     Lee refolded his wing. *No. No, you never made such an
assertion. My apologies.*
    - Lee still knows the truth, but he also knows better than to
directly confront Bryan about it.

     *You refuse because... you have already sworn it.*
     Lee looked up at me, with those white fire eyes that I could
swear were seeing into my soul. *To serve and protect, to uphold
and defend - is this not the Oath to which you dedicated yourself,
upon becoming a police officer?*
   - this is why, when Bryan first refused to swear the Oath of the
Guardians, he was looking at the shadow of his police badge, then
ground it under his heel. This action of Bryan's was really the only
clue to the minor mystery that I planted before revealing it thirteen
chapters later... I wonder if anyone ever guessed it in advance?

     "I gave Snake Eye my word that I'd be here to listen to
him."
    - back in Ch. 3, when Lei arrested Bryan.

Now for a scene I've been rather looking forward to... Bryan finally
has his chance for revenge on Lei Wulong, yet is so thrown by
Lei's sickness that, well, what *is* he going to do? This scene had
a few modifications from the original imagined outline. At first, I
wasn't sure where it would be set, if Lei would be beaten up from a
lost match against Paul or what. Later it became clear that Lei
would be too sick to just meet Bryan in some alley; it would have
to be Bryan who came to Lei.

He had on a loose, purple Chinese thing that probably doubled as a
makeshift hospital gown.
    - Lei's Tekken Tag button 1 outfit... which is just about the same
as the one I described in Ch. 15, only purple and less extravagant
(Ch. 15 describes the elaborate green outfit you see in Lei's TK3
ending). Lei will be wearing something else for the final
showdown against Heihachi, though... the same, azure-and-black
outfit he wore in Tekken 2. Which is what he wore when he
defeated Kazuya, at the turning point of the Great Invasion...

I can kill. I have killed, when I was a cop; always in the line of
duty, or related to it.
    - such as when Bryan cut the throat of the Ivory Claw hit man
that tried to assassinate him (and *damn* near succeeded).

     At last, I said, "Yeah. What happened to Haw and Wa-
duck?"
    - I had the idea to put this in just as I started work on Ch. 25.
Whenever a character is given a name in my story, I like to have
some closure to what happened to them... even if they're just one-
line throwaway names.

"Wa-duck pulled through, but he had some trouble with post-
traumatic stress. Couldn't take being on the job anymore. Had to
resign. Working as a security consultant, last I heard."
    - loosely based on a season 1 episode of "Hill Street Blues,"
where one cop is murdered and his partner survives, but can't take
the stress of his job anymore and has to quit.

"Don't you talk to me like I'm him. I am NOT like him!"
   - a vain protest, and a theme that comes again and again in my
stories... Lei claiming that he is not like Kazuya, Kazuya claiming
that he is not like Heihachi (in "Ashes"), Nina claiming that she is
not like Kazuya...

     "Because you had run out of stuff to get high with? Had
your funds run dry, since the syndicate was paying you with cop
tips instead of money? Heroin can be an expensive habit."
    - From the beginning, I expected this chapter to be the point
where several minor mysteries or things left unexplained about
Bryan are revealed. Including why he refused to swear the Oath of
the Guardians, why he wasn't in "the best state of mind" when he
fell for the Ivory Claw ambush, and why he "freely" signed the
contract donating his mortal remains to the syndicate.

     "I want Bryan Fury on my side. The _real_ Bryan Fury. The
good cop who cares."
    - I think this is my favorite line of the chapter. I could really see
and hear Lei say it, more than any other piece of dialogue.

     "You idiots - all of you! This isn't current syndicate code.
It's old code. Old enough to be common knowledge!"
    - Taki wasn't allowed to learn the current code, when she was a
message courier (nor did she let herself - she thought it was safer
not to know, at least in this one case) but she has kept track of the
syndicate's old codes. She encoded Bryan's name at the beginning
of the note, so he'd recognize it and know which code key to apply.

     "Then where is she? Why has she left?"
    - Taki has left to do some scouting and spying on Heihachi.
Maybe even rescue the kids, if possible, but she knows it might not
be. In the worst case, though - if she didn't make it back alive - she
wanted to be sure the Temple would know how to find the kids,
and so she left behind the note.


Next up: Heihachi keeps the promise he made to Julia in Ch. 10 -
his promise to tell her all about his true plans...Chapter 26: Fruit of the Poisonous Tree notes
October 17, 1999

Twenty-three days for this chapter; the editing especially took a
while. I'm going to try to finish Ch. 27 by Halloween. I'm not sure
whether what's left will need 3-5 chapters, but if it's 5 chapters,
then I'll need to finish a chapter every two weeks to meet my
deadline. 

At five words, this is the longest title of any "Phoenix" chapter so
far. It's from a legal term mentioned in "Hill Street Blues." If
information for a police investigation is obtained by prohibited
means (the poisonous tree), then all the results of that investigation
are useless in court (fruit of the poisonous tree). In the episode, a
lineup arranged for a suspect in custody for the wrong reasons was
invalid. 

The epigraph is of course from Shakespeare - in particular, a
gruesome passage of "Hamlet" that my high school English teacher
once pointed out for its graphic horror, especially by Elizabethan
standards. I copied it off a Shakespeare site on the web.

Two main things about this chapter have been planned from the
beginning. One, that Mitsurugi would answer the question of how
on Earth Jin saved his life; and two, that Heihachi Mishima would
explain his evil plans to Julia, as promised in Ch. 10.
     A lot of details changed from their original inception, though.
Although I did want to have Anna and Mitsurugi contemplate a
reconciliation, I decided that Anna would know better than to even
bring up their relationship until after Heihachi's downfall. The idea
of Mitsurugi keeping Hwoarang's skills, and acquiring the
supernatural weapon 'Blood Talon,' also came up as I went along.
Everything about Ishida and Kimura, in this chapter and next, feeds
into an idea I didn't have until at least around Ch. 13 or so. So that
while I did want to have Taki drag Kimura back home, it wasn't
until I started writing this chapter that I figured she'd knock him
out in a fight in front of Jin & Julia.
     Also, I didn't originally plan to have Devil Jin talk to Julia at
this early stage. It worked soooo much better because he did,
though... heh heh heh...

List of things taken or adapted from video game movies, storylines,
etc.:
    - King's & Armor King's masks, Tiger's outfit...
    - ...Jane riding on Gun Jack's shoulders, a la Gun Jack's TK3
ending...
    - Forest Law's 'Flaming Dragon' nickname
    - Mitsurugi's A-button outfit in Soul Blade (I'm almost sure
that's the character for "loyalty")
    - Mitsurugi's demo kata from Soul Calibur (though not in detail)
    - Ogre-1's background from TK3 (well, a hidden piece of it)
    - Heihachi's green-coat Tekken Tag outfit (button 3)
    - Kazuya's TK2 Start-button outfit (on Jin)
    - Jin's crimson-white Tekken Tag electricity
    - the Owl Tekkenshu's reddish-colored armor (Owl Tekkenshu
are the strongest Tekkenshu, on the "Mishima Syndicate Fortress"
level of the Tekken Force game)
    - Taki's K-button outfit in Soul Blade
    - Devil Jin's bad attitude :) 
   - Jin's crooked-finger taunt from a piece of rendered art (actually
this is Devil Jin, but hey).

List of deviations/creative license from video game storylines
    - yeah, I know Kazuya's tuxedo is really purple. I've said it's
navy blue since "Ashes," and can't change it now... one more sign
that you're really in an alternate Tekkenverse.
    - that the treasure of Julia's tribe can transform into a weapon
("Heaven's Dagger")
    - that Jin IS a Devil (not just possessed by a Devil), and that
Devil Jin has his own consciousness prior to transforming (i.e.,
getting the wings, claws, & body markings).

     Oh, I heard about the little clash Nina had with the Temple
caretaker. It's too bad I wasn't awake for any of it. I'm told he made
quick work of her.
    - the only characters who got a good look at the Nina/Daimon
fight were ones who aren't being interviewed: Nina, Daimon,
Shingo, Taiyou, Tsuki, and Anna was out of it. So, that's one fight
scene I get out of writing. However, I've decided that Daimon will
get a chance to kick ass when everyone takes on Heihachi
Mishima's forces. It doesn't seem right to have all this buildup
about various Tekken characters (Nina, Bryan, Anna, etc.) being
wary of him, with no payoff.

I wanted to talk to her about everything that had happened, try to
work through our feelings, but she would have none of it. My visit
resulted in little more than adamant sibling rivalry. 
    - I really don't feel like going into detail on an Anna/Nina
discussion. Since Nina is still smacking Anna around in Nina's
TK3 ending, and especially Tekken Tag (Nina smacks Anna to the
floor if a Nina/Anna team loses), it would seem that all the sisters'
hostility hasn't been resolved...

I saw a capoeira master with his hair in dreadlocks, wrestlers with
the masks of a jaguar and a black panther, a young woman riding
on the shoulders of a tremendous robot, and - brace yourself - a
human relic of _the seventies_
    - of course, Anna is describing Eddy Gordo (fully recovered
from his match against Jin), King & Armor King (Armor King's
not in the Tournament, but he's in on the crusade), Jane riding on
Gun Jack's shoulders as in their TK3 ending (no satellite
threatening to blast 'em, though), and Tiger. Ecch. I really want to
make Tiger one of the unfortunate casualties in everyone's big fight
vs. the Toshin...

Paul Phoenix, for one; I dimly remembered him from past Iron Fist
Tournaments. My goodness, twenty years had been hard on him,
not that he ever cared what any woman thought of his looks. 
    - Anna once tried to hit on Paul, some twenty-two years ago, and
got rebuffed in an instant. This is how Anna figured out that Paul is
gay. :)

I swear, Kagura's Temple practically takes up a whole dimension
by itself.
    - actually, the Temple *does* partly exist in a dimension
coterminous with Earth. Helps protect the place from demon &
Devil invaders, and saves a bundle on rent.

Okay. Now that Mitsurugi has committed himself to fighting for
the good guys, here he is dressed up in a Soul Blade costume. I
looked up the character on his back, and I'm almost sure it's a very
slopping rendition of the character for "loyalty." If it isn't, well,
then modern-day Mitsu has a slightly different vest than his
ancestor, all right? ^_^

It was a rather lengthy kata, too. With swooping cuts, sloping
curves, acrobatic twirls... I don't know, I really can't describe it
very well.
    - Soul Calibur really shows some gorgeous kata for each
character in demo mode. However, you have to stare at an
(unplayed!) arcade machine for, I don't know, up to half an hour or
more to see a specific character's kata. You can unlock an option to
see any kata anytime on Soul Calibur for the Dreamcast, but I don't
have enough space for a Dreamcast (I'm currently getting more use
out of my PSX with Tekken 3 anyway). So, I decided that Anna
doesn't remember more than a vague impression of Mitsu's kata.
All the Soul Calibur katas are so long that they'd take several
paragraphs to fully describe, anyway.

Both of Mitsu's stories are traditional little fables that I've heard
somewhere. I'm almost certain the second fable is Japanese, while
the first fable might be Chinese. They're being rendered from
memory (Mitsu knows them because his dad used to tell them as
quickie bedtime stories). Anna already mentioned in Ch. 23 how
much Mitsu loves to tell stories...

People would talk in front of me as if I were a light switch.
     - people tend to talk in front of janitors like they're light
switches; I imagine being a bloodslave would only make the effect
more likely.

One of the reasons why I have Mitsurugi tell Anna that she saved
his life is that I really wanted to expressly state why Mitsu is still
alive, while Satake et. al. are dead. Without a logical explanation
(Hwoarang's death weakened the curse), I'm writing another case of
Trek Redshirt Syndrome: why doesn't Mitsu get killed? Because
he's a title character, of course! Title characters are invulnerable to
everything that mows down the expendables left and right! (Even
good Trek episodes such as Deep Space Nine's "Valiant" are
subject to this).

     "Do you agree to this, Anna? All debts paid?"
    - 'all debts paid' is actually a phrase used by a demon in Tanya
Huff's "The Last Wizard," after it saves the people who freed it.

     "I know who he is! Heishiro, why are you still referring to
him as if he's your master?"
    - as I worked on Ch. 25, I realized that Mitsu would still be
referring to Heihachi and Jin as 'Mishima-sama' and 'young master'
- it just sounded appropriate. I wanted to touch on why here. Mitsu
says 'Mishima-sama' because he still respects Heihachi's good
deeds, and he calls Jin 'young master' because he feels he hasn't
earned any rightful claim to Jin's friendship. Not yet. However, he
calls Julia by her first name (even though he feels he hasn't earned
any claim to her friendship yet, either) because she specifically told
him to, back in Ch. 17.

Originally, I wasn't sure what was going to happen to Mitsu's gun,
after Anna shot him with it. Logically, I reasoned that Bryan would
pick it up for cash; logically, my dad pointed out that Lee would
make Bryan return the 'borrowed' property; and logically, I
decided, Mitsu still wouldn't want anything to do with the horrible
weapon that nearly murdered him. So, time for a bit of closure...
Mitsu chops it up in a demonstration of his skill, and asks Anna to
have it smelted because he doesn't want the pieces on his person
for one second longer.

     "I don't have Hwoarang's memories, but if... if I don't think
about it, if I clear my mind and just let myself be... I'm not really
sure how far Hwoarang's expertise goes."
     - this is the inverse of Jin, who got Hwoarang's memories as the
side effect of a mind-probe, but who doesn't have Hwoarang's
skills. Jin wasn't made a bloodslave until after Hwoarang's death,
so that the weakened curse didn't transmit Hwoarang's abilities.
Not that Jin particularly needs them... he's got plenty of skill on his
own.

In Soul Blade, Mitsu's default weapon is Korefuji, and his other
weapons are Onimaru, Iron Slasher, Kojiro's Sword, Water Moon,
Two Handed Sword, Falx, and Murasame. However, if any of
these weapons are still in the family, Mitsu's father doesn't
particularly trust his son with 'em. Nor did Taki trust Mitsu with
any kind of magic sword (she figured he was as good as dead
anyway). It is only now that Mitsu's sword has become magical -
because it was used to set Hwoarang free. 
    It's an old samurai tradition to name one's sword. Understanding
the source of his sword's new Power, Mitsu naturally names it
Blood Talon. Mitsu remembers Hwoarang's gang nickname from
Ch. 23, when Hwoarang was talking about himself to Anna.

"He was singing." Heishiro appeared wistful. "I asked Mr. Fury
earlier today, and he said that he couldn't hear anything either. But
I remember. It's one of the few clear memories I have."
     - Jin's singing was on a psychic/telepathic level... an entreaty to
Mitsurugi's soul, to keep it from slipping out of this world.

Now for the point where Mitsu spells out the details of how Jin
brought him back. Originally, the Anna interview was going to be
after the Julia interview (since most of it does take place after
Taki's failed rescue mission), and in fact I did write the Julia
interview first. However, one of the nice things about putting the
Anna interview first is that it explains what Devil Jin is ranting
about when he complains of his 'personality camouflage program'
transplanting a piece of HIM into a 'worthless flunky.'

In the rough draft, I had Mitsu spell out his suspicions much more
explicitly to Anna. For the final draft, though, I just had him leave
hints... so that Jin's condition as a bloodslave, and Taki's rescue
attempt, could be more of a surprise.

     Thanks for delaying this interview a few days. I've been sort
of pushing myself lately, trying to finish my college paper. It took
weeks of research and effort, but now it's done. 
    - my final paper for my Native American History class was
recommended for publication, too... and when I completed about
90% of the research & writing of it in one little weekend. ^_^
BTW, I wanted to throw this line in, since the external sub-plot has
mentioned a couple times that Julia was working on a paper.

Either his memory block hasn't triggered, or he's no longer
bothered by it.
     - it's more of the later case - Jin has reconciled himself to the
gaps in his mind, for now, as he carefully considers what to do
about it. By now, he has decided that he should confront Julia and
Lee, but first he wants to be absolutely sure of what to say. Jin
knows in his heart that whatever they did to him, it wasn't out of
malice.

     I think I'll begin with the smelling salts. 
    - Heihachi usually relies on injected stimulants to wake a person
up, but those do carry the risks of any hard drug - heart problems,
etc. Besides, Heihachi doesn't want Julia to have any extra drugs in
her blood when she's the Toshin's blood sacrifice - what if the
Toshin doesn't care for junkies?

I saw Heihachi Mishima, dressed in a fine, fur-lined suit of dark
green cloth.
    - his button 3 Tekken Tag outfit, of course. Not Santa Heihachi,
but it still looks rather Christmasy.

Except that the surfaces all around me weren't the color of stone,
but rather like tarnished gold.
    - TK3 implies that the Toshin's Temple is somewhere in
Mexico. And so it is. However, Heihachi feels more in control
orchestrating all his plans in Tokyo, and so the Iron Fist is held in
Tokyo, not Mexico. And since the Iron Fist is in Tokyo, Heihachi
can't just relocate the Toshin-summoning ritual to Mexico.
Answer? Heihachi had his syndicate build a replica of the Toshin's
Temple in Tokyo, using Taki's magic to cloak its location.
    So, this is a copy of Ogre-1's TK3 background... but for all
intents and purposes, it's the same. Julia is held in a basement
chamber.

BTW, Julia's bridal gown (and Jin's Kazuya-style suit) are the
outfits Heihachi sent to them for the New Year's Eve party... which
they declined. A pity. The speech Heihachi planned to make at the
party was Jin's & Julia's engagement announcement.

"Yes. It is the peak of my Tournament. Were it to progress further,
the next match would be between myself - the King of the Iron Fist
- and my grandson."
    - Officially and unofficially, Jin has fought seven enemies in
pitched single combat: Hwoarang, Nina, Lei, Eddy, King,
Yoshimitsu, and Julia. (Although Jin has trained against Xiaoyu a
lot, they've never fought in a no-holds-barred knock-out match). So
that if this were standard TK3 arcade mode, he'd duke it out with
Heihachi, Ogre-1, and True Ogre. This isn't quite TK3 arcade
mode, so Jin's next battles will be a little different... however, you
could say that even as "Ashes" was structured around Lei winning
TK2, "Phoenix" is structured around Jin winning TK3.
     As for the actual mechanics of Heihachi's Iron Fist Tournament
- ah, it goes something like a Martial Champions tournament (i.e. a
pair-off style - hey, MC also had a main character named Jin!)
Details? Who cares about details, they're too much work. Jin is the
undefeated front-runner, that's all anyone needs to know. ^_^

"The preparatory sacrifice is most effective if performed by one
whom the sacrificed warrior loves; yet I expect that child truly
loves little, save for her toys and her dreams of an amusement
park."
    - Heihachi originally held the hope that Xiaoyu would come to
love Jin enough that he could have Jin kill her for the preparatory
sacrifice. The preparatory sacrifice doesn't have to be a virgin, so
Heihachi didn't care if Jin slept with Xiaoyu. However, Heihachi
knew from the beginning that Xiaoyu couldn't be the main
sacrifice, because Xiaoyu was not an innocent - she had killed
Shiina.

     Wait a minute. Why am I worrying about Xiaoyu's stupid
Panda?
     - Xiaoyu's Panda is back at the syndicate, being cared for by the
skeleton staff. Sorry; Kuma/Panda are among the few Tekken
characters who won't take part in the big fight vs. Heihachi & the
Toshin (along with Mokujin and Mokujin, who are just training
dummies). 
     BTW, I set a record-breaking score with Panda in Tekken
Force. F+1+2, takes out nearly all the Tekkenshu quick and easy as
you please.

"Attacks with this blade cannot be blocked by supernatural Power.
What Heaven's Dagger cuts, sorcery cannot heal. Not even the
sorcery of an Immortal. Not even the sorcery of a god!"
     - In other words, shield spells are useless against it. You can't
use magic to paralyze, charm, or blast its wielder. While sorcery
and supernatural regeneration can't heal the wounds of Heaven's
Dagger, though, natural healing and medical science can still be
helpful, as can indirect sorcery (i.e. Lee's magic thread to stitch a
wound closed). 
     Heaven's Dagger has the potential to slay most Immortals. But
the Toshin? At the very least, you'd need the Toshin's true name...

     Kazuya's corpse had been clad in a navy blue dress suit.
Exactly like what Jin was wearing now. Down to the precise shade
of velvet, and the shape of the cuff links.
    - most of Ch. 16 was background, recap, and setup stuff. But
here, one piece of the chapter pays off, as Julia can now recognize
Kazuya's dress suit.

Moving precisely, like a clockwork automaton, he lifted his right
arm. His fingers brushed a stiff tuft of Heihachi's grey-white hair,
grasped a single strand, and pulled it free.
    - it's been planned all along that Heihachi would make Jin plant
a death-link in himself here. However, it wasn't until I was writing
the scene that I thought to consider what the mechanics of a death-
link spell look like. Neither Lee Chaolan nor Lei Wulong were
particularly cognizant of the details when Kazuya put a death-link
in them... I decided to take a tip from voodoo, and incorporate a
hair from the person to whom one's life is linked.

     "No!" I cried, as I belatedly realized the consequences of
Heihachi's command. "No, Jin, don't do this to yourself! DON'T
DO THIS!"
    - a semi-deliberate echo of Lei's despairing cry to Kazuya, when
Kazuya committed suicide.

"My grandson loves you, as surely as you love him. Allowing him
to live with the crime of your murder would bring him
indescribable torment. I know what that would do to him. I would
not allow him to suffer thus, even if he were not of unclean blood."
    - Heihachi is speaking from personal experience, here. As will
be further explored in an upcoming chapter... when the truth
behind Kazumi Mishima's death is revealed.

"_Kimura_!" I demanded. "I know you're not made of stone, and I
know you're not a monster; if you were, Jin never would have let
you serve him! You know this isn't right. You know-"
    - no one ever seems to make a heartfelt last-ditch appeal to the
black-suited servant types in anime. Probably because it would
never work, but still, it's something that I figure a gaikokujin like
Julia would try... ^_^

"Are you saying that you were _never_ Jin's bodyguards? That your
real purpose was to protect Heihachi Mishima FROM Jin!?"
    - originally, I thought that perhaps Ishida would get drunk at the
New Year's Eve party and blurt out the truth of his mission there,
but this way seemed to flow better, and truer to the characters.
(Kimura would shut Ishida up before he could ever do any such
thing anyway, resorting to physical violence if necessary - and
Kimura's a better fighter than Ishida. Witness how Kimura nearly
gets the better of Taki in this chapter, while Taki used to
effortlessly cream Ishida every time).

"He came to fancy Ishida and Kimura as 'friends.'"
    - Jin knew that Ishida and Kimura could never truly be best
friends with him, but he dearly appreciated how well they
controlled their fear of him. And he did become a little fond of
them, given how much they put up with from him. This is why Jin
has, in the past, begged Heihachi to be lenient with Ishida and
Kimura for failing to keep perfectly strict tabs on him. Heihachi
relented not so much because he felt merciful, as because he could
tell that his grandson had a fondness for Ishida and Kimura... a
fondness that would prove useful to exploit.

BTW, I've been playing Tekken Force a lot lately. It's *fun*!
Rather tricky, but great fun, and I love how each character has his
own, personalized set of bosses (though everyone seems to have
Heihachi for the last boss). So the Tekkenshu soldier accosting
Heihachi here is an Owl soldier, in reddish plate.
    BTW, the funny thing about that Tekkenshu plate armor... it
seems to make its wearers incapable of blocking any kind of attack.
^_^

Taki's K-button PSX-only Soul Blade outfit is pretty cool, IMHO...
if only that bikini thong weren't so tiny as to be illegal in 48 states
(that thing _can't_ be comfortable - wouldn't she get a wedgie if
she wore it too long? Oh well, maybe sorcery's involved here. :)

     "Hey, here's a thought. What if it's Ishida? What if your
cousin has escaped whatever tortures Heihachi sentenced him to
endure, and now he's fighting to get reven-"
     "DON'T _SAY_ THAT!" Kimura screamed, whirling
toward me in a panic.
     - there is a reason why this particular comment of Julia's freaks
Kimura out. A reason which will be brought into the open next
chapter, when Taki turns Kimura over to the Temple for
interrogation...

Okay, now for a quick Taki/Kimura fight! Taki snags Kimura with
her Mad Circus back-throw (A+G or B+G behind opponent) and
kicks away his gun. However, Kimura's tougher than he looks, and
he gets back up; meanwhile, Taki is shocked because she doesn't
know about Heihachi's promise to Mitsu (that Ishida & Kimura
wouldn't be made into bloodslaves). Kimura lunges for her, and
she jumps over him (f, f+A+B). However, Kimura turns around
and gets her with his knife as a projectile attack. Then he goes for
his gun...
     ...and only Taki's comment about his cousin (referring to
Kimura's threat in Ch. 9) keeps him from blowing her away;
instead, he drops his weapon. When Taki closes in on him, he tries
to kick her, but she snags him with her Assassin's Revenge kick
reversal (b+A+G). Now Kimura stays down.
    Although Taki wins the fight, it is a credit to Kimura's skill that
he was able to damage her at all - none of Heihachi's Tekkenshu
achieved that (though most of 'em were busy just chasing after her
shadow-clones) and Ishida was never able to scratch her in any of
their clashes. It is also a credit to Kimura's skill that he was that
close to killing her, before his own emotions betrayed him...

     "Does the whole UNIVERSE know!?" Taki exclaimed.
    - from "Jhereg" by Steven Brust, where Morrolan tells Vlad that
he knows something, and Vlad wonders "Does the whole Empire
know?"

Now for the off-format piece of text: Taki's dual-verse haiku (yeah,
it's in English. Why? Because. Um, because the English syllables
sound more foreign and mystical, from Taki's point of view. Yeah,
that's it.) Loosely inspired from a dual-verse haiku about Taki in
GameFan's Soul Blade guide:

          Sacred temple gone foul
          Dark whispering in the night
          She comes to save us

          Furious demons
          Taste Rekkimaru and die
          Peace has returned here

Hey, if those haiku were in English, this one can be too.

And now, for Devil Jin.
     He hasn't transformed (yet)... no wings, claws, or body
markings. But make no mistake, this is Devil Jin talking. You
wanted to know what Jin's memory block seals away? It'll be
expressly spelled out in the last chapter, but right here, you can get
a good idea. You also get an idea of why Jin's memory block
triggered once, when he started talking to the interviewer about the
one poison that had an effect on him.
     Devil Jin wasn't originally going to start speaking this early, but
his presence was so forceful that I got carried away with the
character. Devil Jin has one overriding goal, and that is survival.
He has one overriding fear, and that's ending up as Toshin-kibble.
Which is why he'll go to any length to cooperate with Heihachi's
plan, even if it entails murdering Julia. Devil Jin knows Heihachi
plans to kill him, but fortunately, violent death is what will enable
his transformation into Devil form. However, dying at the Toshin's
hands (i.e., losing his soul) will kill him PERMANENTLY, and he
is very, _very_ afraid of that. Devil Jin's existence in our world is a
direct violation of the Divine Sanctions, so that even if he got out
of the Toshin to the Grey Kingdom or such realms, he is
TERRIFIED of winding up in the Black Abyss (or perhaps just
condemned to the most excruciating tortures of Hell).
    In fact, it is this sublimated fear that prompts Devil Jin to choke
Julia at one point (as prophesied by Julia's grandmother - though
she interpreted it as 'Kazuya' strangling Julia). Normally, Devil Jin
is somewhat fond of her (mmm... pretty soul...). This is part of why
he tries to put her to sleep (also, he really doesn't want her pain,
agony, bleeding, and possible death distracting him when it's time
to fight the Toshin). It's just that Devil Jin firmly believes in
looking out for number one. In this way, he is the polar opposite of
his personality camouflage program, which firmly believes in Jun's
teachings - putting other people's welfare ahead of one's own.

     Jin stretched out his free hand, and crooked his index finger
in a wagging taunt. "Try that again, Taki. Do try that again."
    - This is from a piece of rendered art in a TK3 guidebook,
showing a Jin taunt. It just didn't seem in character for my Jin to
use anywhere, not even in his fights vs. Lei or Julia. So I saved it
until here, where it fit Devil Jin's personality much better.

     "And then, your accursed angel almost finished the job!"
     My what?
    - originally, I wasn't sure when Julia would first find out about
Lee - if Jin would tell her over some breakfast table, or if she
wouldn't know until he showed up along with everyone else for the
grand attack on Heihachi. This proved to be a good place, so that
while Julia's first sight of Lee would be a shock, it wouldn't hit her
completely unprepared.


Next up: "Angel of Treachery." Lee Chaolan interrogates Kimura
for critical information, and our heroes plan their big assault...