Chapter Text
Tekken 1:
Open Wounds
“Family is supposed to be our safe haven. Very often, it is the place where we find the most heartache.”
Iyanla Vanzant
“Father, one day I will tear you to pieces”
Two decades earlier
It can be difficult to break through. All the boy could see was a solid wall of flesh facing him down, attempting to drive him inwards. Blow by blow, that wall only seemed to grow in strength. Gritting his teeth, the young Kazuya struck that walls stomach over and over…. Tiny, hardened fists bouncing off muscles uselessly.
Still, he struck with all his might.. all his power, with all the training somehow merging with this immature fury he felt. The reasons were not immature, but the actions completely were so. Yet, Kazuya could understand, as a child and even beyond, why he would cling to both aspects so desperately. He could do more than understand.
Kazuya still struck. Kazuya hit one more punch, which again barely fazed the hulking figure.. Kazuya eventually turned his head slowly up, to see that look painted on his face. Those brown eyes, that mirrored young boy’s eyes, did not share any of the childish qualities, nor demeanour, nor any of that justified rage that the young boy held so close.
Heihachi stared down at the young boy, his thin lips hidden behind a dark, handlebar moustache. His hair only seemed more intimidating to the young Kazuya now… the dark hair sticking up either sides of his head, Kazuya could only see a… monster staring down at him. With those eyes… those rough, cold eyes. Heihachi stared down at his own son, with a look that the young boy could not decipher. A Mishima should never aim to be a murderer. But, what is it we end up desiring? Maybe, desire is the wrong word. As a child here, the last thing Kazuya was considering was what his desire meant.
The young Kazuya turned back to his fury, his teeth grinding so hard, his jaw began to ache. His fists were already bruising from punching his father’s stomach. But, pain did not mean much to the boy at this point. Kazuya began to hit his father’s stomach once again, fists slamming and having no effect on the sheer size of his father. The boy slammed his fist once more into Heihachi’s stomach.
Before Heihachi lifted his leg, and kicked the child in the face.
Kazuya could not recall much of the damage it did to him. He could not recall how he fell, although he distinctly remembered landing on his face. What he recalled was that feeling that came to him. It was as if it all flooded to the surface… his face screwed up.
His thick eyebrows furrowed, as he felt his dark, spiked hair began to crackle. His face buried into the dirt, and the rock of the mountain below… Kazuya felt the tears well forwards. He was stupid. Of course he was, he was only a boy.... he had barely graduated from the irresponsible comfort of infancy. But, that was all Kazuya knew. He knew, even as young as he was here… he had to retaliate. Even then, that defiance was a part of his nature.
As a boy, Kazuya never knew how to articulate a verbal retaliation. As a man, that skill seemed even more insurmountable, almost as much as this very moment was to him as a child. This was the only answer, the only course of action he could manifest in that underdeveloped mind of his.
The young Kazuya finally raised his head, the tears clouding his darkening eyes. He stared up at his impassive, silent father.. who stared at him, fists clenched by his side… just standing. Standing there, all high and mighty, in his fancy gi… nothing on his face. There was never any emotion in Heihachi’s face during these moments. Only the coldness of a stone.
Kazuya felt the tears block his throat, that he fought so desperately to keep down. He needs to keep them down.
“You killed my mother!” Kazuya screamed, his voice carrying across the entire peak… faintly echoing behind Heihachi, and down through the mountain. Kazuya remembers screaming at the top of his lungs… of course, memory can greatly exaggerate, but he was sure he would scream true in a moment like this.
All the same, Heihachi still glared. Heihachi still stared at him silently, his brown eyes as intense and impassive as ever. Kazuya would not exaggerate, nor would he ever forget the look in those eyes. Kazuya certainly did not understand it at the time, but those are the eyes of determination. Of relentless action. Of obsession.
Kazuya knew no better, and how could he? Getting off his feet, clasping those little gloves tighter to his small, bruising fists… the young Kazuya charged at his father once again, with another scream. Heihachi soon lost his patience with the game. With one fist, he backhanded the boy… and once more, Kazuya remembers his face eating the dirt.
He remembers the agony that came with it, and the tears that came flooding openly from his face. But, he could not cry again. A Mishima does not cry. A Mishima will never cry. The young boy could not be weak, as he has already failed enough in his duties as a child. They may shed tears, they may feel sorrow, but they will never cry. They would never stoop themselves to sob.
“Try again.” Heihachi finally spoke. His gruff voice held that same intensity… the gravity in his voice, Kazuya remembers, infuriating him more. Again, it was not something he wholly understood, but he despised the fact that his father seemed to be treating Kazuya impulsive action as a … test.
As some kind of lesson that the boy could learn, as if Kazuya would be capable of learning with the trauma he faced in such youth. But, again, how in the hell would Kazuya understand anything? He was a damn boy. Kazuya could ask the same question of Heihachi, but Kazuya knows, upon reflection, the tyrant has no excuse. Heihachi was the one who started this bloodline of cruelty.
Kazuya got up, and charged again. This time, Heihachi did not even grace him with so much as a punch. The open hand palm that graced the side of Kazuya’s face stung, and the fact he could feel the tears squash into his cheeks…his eyes began to swell, the soft flesh of his face begin to sting and ache. The first tastes of blood across his tongue, and the hot feeling of that same blood gushing out of both nostrils. That is a flavour that terrified the young boy, yet all Kazuya could do was appreciate that terror has been long gone through osmosis.
Those are the things Kazuya can distinctly recall. The way the mountain looked will always change, but those feelings will never go. The only sight Kazuya can remember is how that face of his did not shift, did not turn in sympathy… that face showed no regret for what he was doing. What he was about to do.
Of course, when Kazuya turned up again.. gasping for breath, tears flooding down his swollen, bloodied face as he choked, and sobbed… Heihachi merely folded his muscular arms. You could look for compassion in Heihachi Mishima’s eyes until the day you died, but you would only meet it in a grave. The same grave he buried it in with my mother.
“Pathetic.” That gruff voice, with no other recognizable emotion hidden in there, simply delivered that message. As if it was delivering a fact, telling one’s neighbours the weather that is to come for the week. Delivering it as a standard, delivered to many of his students, to his colleagues.... it was a message delivered.
That tone is not one Kazuya had ever heard since that moment, and the fact is he has come to resent it. Even more than Kazuya resented Heihachi’s mocking’s, his derision, his disgust, his cruelty… even his hatred. The young boy found his strength from somewhere. Kazuya could tell you what emotion had driven it, and sometimes, he hates his sheer stubbornness to rush towards it.
But, how can Kazuya hate how a boy would react? He cannot. He would not know what was to come. A boy could not foresee the consequences… a boy never would. A boy is like a dog… it sees the immediate benefits. It recognizes the immediate danger. It frantically crawls away from the immediate panic. It only embraces the immediate satisfaction.
With little rhyme or reason left, the young Kazuya charged at his father once more. He no longer wore that initial exuberance in the slightest. He may have even limped towards his hulking father, but no matter his pacing, it would not have changed the outcome. The last thing Kazuya can remember is the way his father’s lip curled. It curled once, as he stepped back with one leg. As he swung forward, for one reason or another, all Kazuya could focus on was the way Heihachi curled his lip.
The velocity or force behind the kick mattered not to a boy like him in his condition. The fact is he is fortunate he survived a blow like that at all. But, in hindsight, Kazuya realises that Heihachi did not intend for the beating to be the final signature on Kazuya’s life. That is how sadistic, and sick the legacy of Mishima could be. Mishima’s will never cry. They will learn not to.
Kazuya may have formulated the rest of this in his head. Perhaps, it was you who managed to fill in these missing memories. It is as accurate as it could have been, Kazuya. But, Kazuya can only describe it as an out of body experience… his vantage point as he remembered this memory, it can only be described as such.
He remembers as Heihachi slowly walked over to his small body. It always sickens Kazuya to relive this, because it becomes clear how small Kazuya was. He must be particular when he uses the word ‘young’. True, he was young. He was still a child.
But, it was in these moments, he aged many years. This moment aged him far too many years, leaving him in a stasis where he was caught in a boy’s body with a man’s feelings for far too long. With no way to articulate it, without the intelligence or the confidence to go along with those foreign feelings. Maturity in the wrong place.
Heihachi slowly picked up the unconscious form of the young Kazuya, and turned towards the praecipe of the mountain. He was so slow, and so deliberate with his walk… damn him. Even if Kazuya would try to write it off as an act of impulse, in some deluded illusion.. he never could.
Not in the way Heihachi walked towards the edge, his bare feet so slow and careful as he came to a stop at the edge. A thousand thoughts must have run through his head, perhaps most of hesitation and some of shame. But, those thoughts are not what manifested, and those thoughts clearly did not transverse into the cowards feelings.
Heihachi cradled his son for several more moments, his brown eyes wholly unreadable… as the vastness of the surrounding mountains began to shroud them both in shadows. Kazuya cannot tell you how long Heihachi cradled him. It could have been moments, or merely just a breath.
Kazuya hardly cares if Heihachi stared at his face one more time. Any sentimentality was mere urine to Heihachi now, designed to be tossed aside and flushed away like the mere waste that it was to him. But, he was certainly swift with that.
Kazuya may have been unconscious, but he would never forget the feeling.
A swift snap. Heihachi shot his arms out, and thrust Kazuya over the edge as hard as he could.
Kazuya imagines he was limp… the wind shooting against his limps as he soared high in the air, his body twisting and turning as he slowly began to plummet… below Heihachi’s eyeline, below the edge of the cliff.
Plummet below it all, as Heihachi stood there, arms spread wide… staring down at what he had done. What he had done to a damn child, a damn child that was no doubt soaring to his death… far from reaching the double digits of life.
Far from experiencing the joys of friendship. Far from battling through loves and loves lost, far from making his way and finding his destinies path in this life. Heihachi stared down into the chasm of the cliff until Kazuya disappeared below his sight. All Heihachi cradled now was all that he had taken from the young boy.
Heihachi does not care about the fact. Heihachi felt nothing but apathy, and some sort of cruel justification in his actions. Heihachi felt justified taking the life of a child. No. Even then, Kazuya misspeaks.
Heihachi felt justified taking the life of his own child.
What is justice to a man like that? What is justice to any of us? Maybe, justice was just an excuse. Maybe, it always will be.
Yet. As you know, that child did not die.
His resilience may be something to behold, and Kazuya will accept that has become something that has become attached to him his entire life. But, even he would not be so arrogant to attribute that to his resilience.
The fact is, Kazuya the boy could not have survived that fall. Kazuya knows as much, and Kazuya… Kazuya must accept that. Kazuya survived that fall, because power was given to the powerless. Because, truth always prevails if you look to the right guidance.
Kazuya remembers the brief moments before he appeared. The…. Agony he felt. He did not only feel it, it became his reality… it made his crippling injuries, his crippling damage a reality. Kazuya barely had the functionalities left to scream, remaining to bellow in agony… Kazuya remembers those brief moments.
Kazuya remembers them dragging on for so long, begging for the pain to end, begging to wake up… begging for all of this to come to a steady close, and that he can wake up in his mother’s bed, with nothing but an embrace smothering him.
While he begged, he realised something was overwhelming the pain. There was a smothering sensation, but it was not the agony of his spine shattering. It was not the shooting, overwhelming stabbing of his skull fracturing. It was not the pain he got from any broken limbs, punctured organs or loss of breath.
It was not even a smothering. It was an awakening.
Kazuya was able to move. Not through miracle, but through deliberate transformation. All of his broken bones were being knitted together by a strange darkness, one covered with a violet shade and imbued with a whispering coaxing.
His agony and pain was fading into this insatiable hunger, that only he could rouse from the deepest parts of his young soul. Kazuya’s entire human body slowly morphed into something that Kazuya could never understand at that age. However, he understood that his skin was turning violet. He could see his fingers growing longer, and his fingernails becoming long and jagged.
Kazuya could feel dark wings sprouting from his back, that began to flap of their own accord. Kazuya could feel his brown eyes turning into a shade of red… all of this terrified Kazuya. But, what terrified Kazuya more… and still terrifies him to this day, is death.
That is a fear that no being will ever overcome until they’re at true peace. So, Kazuya accepted this presence. Kazuya accepted this presence taking over his body, taking over his mind, corrupting his heart… Kazuya accepted this presence drowning his soul.
And, while Kazuya faded away, his body began to rise. While Kazuya went dormant, Devil began to slowly ascend, and fly up the chasm, making that long journey to the pinnacle of the cliff.
You understood your true nature.