As he opened his eyes, his nostrils filled with the stink of burning plastic. He wrinkled his nose and blinked in the flashing strip lighting. The bulb above him spat and fizzed. It was hanging at an angle off the ceiling, with half its wires trailing out.

He was sitting on white bed. Torn sheets were in disarray and strewn about. A side table had been knocked over, and the floor was littered with broken glass, needles, latex gloves, and an array of small, silver, operating instruments.

The laboratory about him was quiet. There were signs of only recently ended chaos – bulbs still swinging, a monitor at the end of the bed smoking with a shattered screen, a fire burning brightly in a cracked, see-through plastic box. He stared at the orange flames licking up the walls of their cage, thickening the plastic with a smoke-black screen and filling the air with an acrid stench.

He tilted his head. He could hear the sound of rapid breathing. His eyes hunted in the wreckage of the room. His gaze fixed on an overturned operating table. Sandy blond hair and a pair of quick blue eyes peered out from around the edge. He watched with some curiosity as a man clutching the body of a young woman flashed into his vision, and then darted out the door in a whirl of a red cape. He shook his head. They both seemed familiar. He touched a finger to his temple, trying to sort out the jumble of memories coming to him.

His attempts were interrupted by a new arrival. A man with an ageless quality to him, silvery hair and keen features, swept into the room in a labcoat. He somehow wore the coat like fine robe, despite the fact it was singed at the ends and soot was tracked up one side. He moved with elegance about the scene of destruction.

"Ah! Jin! Finally with us again, excellent!" He gave a thumbs up and a glowing smile.

Jin scowled at him.

"Uncle…" he said, more as a recollection than a greeting.

"And with a memory intact, this day just keeps getting better!" Jin looked past him, at the still-sputtering fire burning in the corner. His uncle, Lee Chaolan, turned to see what he saw. "Oh, don't worry about that!" His uncle smiled brightly.

A small explosion burst from the heart of the fire. Flames shot up four feet into the air. A plume of purple smoke mushroomed and blackened the ceiling. The fire then subsided down to a slumbering smoulder. The sprinklers flipped on. Showers poured from above and a silver rain coated Jin's vision. Jin lapsed into a scowl as water ran down his face and slowly soaked his hair and clothes. His uncle gave slightly pained grimace.

"Not without some hiccups as you can see," Lee added.

Jin shivered in the cold water. Lee pulled a torn labcoat from a counter and flung it around Jin's shoulders.

"Come along, my dear," he said with enthusiasm, as if he wasn't standing in a destroyed medical bay, drenched in water. Puddles pooled beneath their feet and live wires sparked and stuttered in their broken reflection.

Lee led Jin out into a corridor. It was nondescript and grey and instantly made Jin wary.

"Hush, hush," his uncle said, somehow sensing his discomfort, "it's alright. This is a private facility of mine, no one here means you any harm."

"Not even him?" Jin was looking down the corridor. Standing menacingly in the clinical light was the man who'd first fled the lab. He had an erratic mass of sandy hair, gelled into spikes, and was fixing Jin with a sullen look. Jin could recognise him now as Lars, his other uncle. It was a confused and sprawling family, but all that mattered was that none of them had ever been there for him when he'd needed them. They were all tenuous fair-weather relatives, as far as he was concerned. They suddenly started popping up all over the place as soon as he had power and wealth. None of them had been there when he'd had nothing, when he'd been alone.

"Lars," Lee called. His voice was pleasant, but just tipped with fine hint of danger.

Lars glared at Jin, then stamped into another room and vanished from view.

"He won't bother you." Lee gave another brilliant smile. "He's just a little upset, is all."

"There was a girl… earlier." Jin frowned as he tried to recall. He pulled the labcoat about him and pushed wet hair out of his face. He curled his fingers inside the material to hide that he was starting to shiver.

"Alisa. The android you had programmed a while back. You recall her? Well, there might have been a little accident involving her in the lab just now."

Jin gave his uncle a quizzical look.

"You shot her head off," Lee clarified.

"I- what?"

"Don't worry yourself over it, you were stressed – not yourself."

"I shot her head off?!"

"Easily repairable. Lars is just being dramatic. I'll have Alisa fixed back up in no time at all. Now, this way please, I can't have you freezing to death, what kind of uncle would I be?"

Jin glowered at him, but allowed himself to be led into another laboratory. It was a mirror of the one he'd apparently torn apart. He looked around uncertainly. Lee pulled out a draw from a steel cabinet and set it down on a clean surface.

"Right, sit." His uncle indicated to a hospital bed. "I took the liberty of purchasing some clothes for you. All in your melancholy, introspective shades of black and angst red."

Jin's head snapped up as something came hurling towards him. He caught a fluffy towel in his arms. He gave his uncle a furious look.

"Ah the Mishima scowl, how I haven't missed it," Lee said as he regarded him. He leant his chin on an elegant hand. "Now, lets see what else I can get you."

As he moved about the room, Jin noticed a slight limp to his uncle's gait. If he hadn't been watching carefully, he might have missed it. There was also a fractional crease about his uncle's eyes with each step he made too.

"Did I hurt you?" Jin broke the quiet. He got no response. His uncle continued his search, pretending he hadn't heard him.

"Ah, here we are." Lee offered a closed hand to him.

Jin pulled away. His uncle opened his palm. Within was a little packet of sweets.

"Very important to get sugar levels up after a fright."

"I didn't have a fright," Jin scowled and hugged the towel to him. "I don't know what happened. I don't know where I am, and my memory is… hazy." He fixed his uncle with dark eyes, "I want answers."

Lee rustled the sweets in front of his face. Then dropped them on top of the towel in Jin's arms.

"You've been unconscious for some time." Lee took off his labcoat to reveal a perfectly pressed suit beneath. He checked his bow tie in the reflection of a steel cupboard door and straightened his jacket. "In better news though, your grandfather is dead."

Jin looked up.

"Heihachi is dead?"

"For good, hopefully, this time. It's about time Kazuya got at least one thing right."

Jin received this news with an empty ambivalence. His grandfather had raised him for four years: given him a place, a purpose, shared his home and his martial arts with him. Jin had latched onto him for the stability he had needed back then. He had thought they had something – a bond, an understanding – only to be stabbed in the back by his guardian. Metaphorically of course – he hadn't been actually stabbed in the back – he'd been shot in the face. He wasn't sure what injustice Lee had faced at Heihachi's hand, but the old man seemed to have a reputation for being a bastard to his family. It didn't come as a huge surprise to hear Lee talk so bitterly of his dead father. Jin watched his uncle curiously, wondering if it was appropriate to ask what Heihachi had done to wrong him. Jin knew very little about his uncle other than that he had grown up with Kazuya after being adopted into the Mishima family.

Just as he opened his mouth to ask, Lee gave him another charming smile that steamrollered all other potential conversation into silence.

"Are you going to use that towel, Kazama Jin, or are you just going to drip all over my lab equipment?"

Jin set down the packet of sweets and began to tousle himself dry.

"Here, let me." Suddenly his uncle was beside him, drying his hair.

Jin flinched and shrugged him away, his heart beating fast.

"Calm down. It's alright." Lee's tone went from amused, to gentle and reassuring. Jin could hear his pulse throbbing in ears, tolling out a warning at the proximity of another living being. "It's alright, it's alright." The repetitive motion of the hands and the towel was light, feathery soft against his head, as though waiting for him to allow more contact. "It's alright." Something clenched inside Jin, choking up his throat. "It's alright," his uncle kept saying over and over, in a softer and softer voice like a mantra. Jin could feel things threatening to bubble up from inside. There was a war in his chest – one part fortress walls built with high defences, and another part all surrender, suffocating with a long need just to breathe, to relax, to allow himself to be cared for, to put the world on pause and to not have to look after himself for just five minutes.

The fortress walls harboured dark things that sprung before his eyes as evidence: Mishima Heihachi was towering above him. The night was cool. Heihachi was still in his hakama from their fight earlier. The patterns on them glimmered silver in the moonlight, only a little ruffled up by their tussle. All colours jumped into relief like crash lightening when the Tekken Force assault rifles lit up the night with their stuttering gun fire. His vision flickered with the onslaught of flashing lights. The sound had been so deafening. Jin had never heard a gun before then. He gazed stupidly at the handgun in his grandfather's hand, as the barrel slowly lowered towards his head. The sound of it firing ricocheted through Jin's dreams for years to come. He could still feel that moment of impact. The cold, solid entry of the bullet through his skull. The slow way that all the world folded in on itself and gradually collapsed into blackness. The dread and paralysis that seized him for the brief millisecond before he fell into nothingness.

"He's gone." A whisper by his ear. "He's gone, he can't hurt you." Jin realised his arms were wrapped tight about his uncle's waist. Lee was holding him gently, one hand still tousling his hair with light, calm, repetitive motions.

Jin unwrapped his arms and lowered a fold of the towel to peer up at his uncle through the soft, white, fluff. He was unable to articulate what was happening inside him just then, but Lee gave him a small smile – a real smile, not like the clever ones from before.

"How do I know?" Lee asked Jin's question for him. Jin gave a slight fractional nod. "You remind me of-…" Lee cut himself off. Jin's face darkened. "Someone I used to know," Lee finished, just a little stiffly. They both knew he meant Kazuya. "Besides, Heihachi has a way of doing that to people. Getting in and making himself a permanent place to live in your head before he starts eating away your self-confidence. Have a sweet, they'll make you feel better."

Jin was caught off guard. His uncle had such an earnest expression on his face that it was somehow easy and unjudgemental to do as he asked. Jin reluctantly open the packet. Inside were sticky, sugar-flecked, hard-baked sweets. They did make him feel better, he reflected, as he sucked on one and let his uncle finish drying his hair.

"Can I see?"

"Hm?" Lee paused with the towel.

"Is there a picture? Of Gr-… of Heihachi? Dead, I mean."

Lee put down the towel and squeezed onto the bed next to him. He pulled out his phone. He flicked through a gallery.

"Not much to see. I had a spy satellite rigged up, but the pictures aren't fantastic."

He passed the phone to Jin. The unmistakeable hulk of Heihachi, hewn down, and laid on rugged, black land filled the phone screen. A scar mark of a punch flared as a red star across his chest. The man was battered and bruised, his signature black gi all burned and ragged. His expression was vacant, faintly surprised, as if he couldn't quite believe in his own mortality. Jin looked at the image expressionlessly.

"His chest…"

"His heart stopped beating," Lee clarified.

It wasn't much of a clarification. Had Kazuya really… just punched that undefeatable man so hard that he had a heartattack? Heihachi was a nearly six foot of tough muscle and thick limb, still in the prime of his health despite his advancing age. What kind of man could, with one punch, just end that? All those booming laughs, and keen sharp eyes deconstructing every kata move Jin ever made, those large hands helping him back up whenever they beat him to the dojo floor, all those smiles larger than sun, and canny wit that Jin could barely keep up with – stopped like the pendulum in a clock: a steady, reliable clock that just kept going, providing that background so essential that until its continual tick stopped, it wasn't truly clear to Jin that he'd even known what silence was. He wondered if Lee heard that silence. He wondered if he relished in it, or felt that odd emptiness.

Jin interlocked his fingers together.

"I'm sorry I ruined your laboratory."

"No need to apologise." Lee gave him a warm smile.

"I'm sorry I hurt Alisa."

"She'll make a full recovery soon."

"I'm sorry I hurt you."

Silence.

Jin looked at his feet and put another sweet in his mouth. Lee put his phone away and folded up the damp towel and set it to one side. He sighed.

"Has it taken over you like this many times before?" Lee asked.

Jin kept looking at his feet. He didn't need to ask what his uncle was referring to. He nodded slowly in response.

"It didn't manifest properly for Kazuya until he was twenty-six."

Jin's hand tightened into a fist. He didn't want to speak of Kazuya. At the same time, though, he realised Lee was one of the few other people on earth who knew of, and had been close to, the devil gene. Jin was quiet for a bit, before tentatively asking,

"Did he-… did he lose his memories when he transformed?"

"Hmm." Lee crossed his legs, then reached over Jin into the sweet packet and popped one in his mouth. "Hard to say," he said around his mouthful. He swallowed then continued. "It was a strange time. He was under a lot of pressure. He was getting paranoid. What he wanted, what he did, what he became, how much he had control, how much he forgot, how much he remembered – it was all a big mess." Jin watched his uncle carefully. He was surprised to hear a hint of sorrow in his voice. Lee sighed again. It was a heavy sigh and Jin could hear the decades in between then and now in it. "Well, that's all in the past now. He's certainly very much master of all his actions now."

Jin shifted in interest.

"He is? What, even when…?"

"Even when he has that devil form? Yes, I suppose so. He seems to be able to transform at will, so I assume he's fully cogent whilst he takes it on. He speaks with the same aims and intentions when he's a devil and when he isn't," Lee said bitterly. "That's no longer a secret – by the way." Lee set Jin with sharp eyes. They made Jin feel like he was back at school. "Heihachi caught Kazuya as a devil on footage and had it broadcast to the world. A desperate last effort on his part – he's been trying to keep his son's curse out of the public eye for decades. But yes, we have Kazuya in high definition, in all his malevolent glory, blasting laserbeams out of his forehead on the top of G-Corp tower." Jin stared at him. Lee grimaced. "But, on a more positive note, plenty of material for me to work with. I've been rewatching the footage to learn what I can about his condition. It should give us the edge when he comes for you. Which he will, I'm afraid. As soon as he's thinking straight after this victory over Father, he'll start looking into Zaibatsu business. He'll noticed a failed kidnapping attempt by Heihachi to remove your body from my humble Violet Systems." Jin's head snapped up at that. Lee fluttered a hand dismissively. "Yes, that happened too. Not a problem. Lost a whole building, but I have others." He stood up and started pacing. "But onto more important matters, you'll need to retake the Zaibatsu as quickly as possible. The last thing we want is for Kazuya to have all the resources of G-Corp and the Zaibatsu."

The pacing stopped. Jin looked up. His uncle was looking at him with raised eyebrows. Jin's cheeks flushed.

"I was listening."

"You were not."

Jin's cheeks went redder. He glanced away.

"I was thinking about what you said. That… he can transform at will…"

"Kazuya? Yes. What about it?"

"That he is still in control whilst in devil form…"

"Jin…"

Jin fixed his uncle with a desperate look.

"If I had that, then I never would have lost control. I wouldn't have upset Lars, or harmed you and Alisa, or destroyed your lab." Jin twisted his fingers. "I don't even know what might happen in future: the things I might do when I turn into that monster."

Lee laughed, but Jin wasn't sure what kind of laugh it was. It didn't really reveal very much, and certainly didn't seem humorous.

"I told you – nothing was damaged that can't be replaced – you're getting worked up over nothing."

Jin glowered and he saw his uncle's face falter slightly, as if touched by some memory.

"I want to be in control. I don't want to hurt the people around me. If I must use this power until I've defeated all trace of it elsewhere, then I have to able to control myself. I have to be able to sleep at night knowing that the blank spaces in my mind aren't places where people have suffered because of my own weakness."

"Jin…"

"Don't say my name like that – like I'm being childish! I know what I want!"

Lee sighed and turned to him, he put a hand on his arm.

"It's not childish. And I'd never belittle you for such noble desires. But think about what you're saying."

Jin's brow flickered. He looked up at Lee.

"What-… what am I saying?"

"That you want to be in control. Exactly what Kazuya always said."

"Wanting control isn't the same as crusading for power and letting nothing stand in my way!" Lee raised one eyebrow at him. Jin turned away. In the last year or two, he'd taken some more drastic measures to try and see his own goals through to fruition. It had been a worthwhile aim, he kept telling himself, but that didn't change the fact that Kazuya wasn't the only one who could be accused of tyrannical leadership and destructive practices. Jin had waged wars, before it all started collapsing around him. "When I was doing all that stuff before with the Zaibatsu, it was for a good reason. I didn't really want to destroy everything. I thought it was the right way to solve the problem…" Jin gave his uncle a look that was all defiance and just a little bit desperate. "I'm not like him."

"No…, no, you're not like him at all," Lee reassured him, patting his arm and using that tone of voice that Jin was beginning to think was mostly for calming angry children and not for conveying truth. Jin tried to push his irritation at that away.

"Do you know how he did it? How was he able to gain control of the devil gene? How can he change at will, and use his own mind and speak with his own voice when transformed?"

Lee shook his head.

"I don't know. He's spent years researching his own genes. My expertise is in robotics not genetics or… demonology. But I believe it has compromised him somehow. It's brought Kazuya's personality closer to that of the devil he harbours. He's barely recognisable as the man I once knew."

"But it's also brought the devil part closer to his human side. He can stop it from lashing out at just anyone it pleases."

"Jin!" Jin shied away from the reprimand. "Jin," Lee said again, this time with more gentleness. "You need to think less impulsively. You need to learn patience and planning. If you want to stop needless suffering, you can start by reflecting on the actions that you do have control over. You've caused a huge amount of pain just as plain Kazama Jin, without much help needed from any devil." Jin's heart beat loud in his head and his throat dried. He swallowed and lowered his eyes. "War, death, political assassinations? This doesn't sound like the kind of child Kazama Jun would have raised…"

Jin's head snapped up, eyes lit with fury. He stood abruptly and wheeled on his uncle. Lee spread his hands in placation.

"Alright, alright. No talking about your mother," Lee said before Jin could act on his anger. "But at least think over what I've said. Think about changing what is in your control, before you fantasise about the kind of power that will destroy you. Trust me. This is coming from someone who's seen it all before." Jin continued glaring at Lee. His uncle sighed. "Ah, dear nephew, you're so predictable. Don't throw a tantrum at me – show me how mature you are by engaging in a little self-reflection. And put those clothes on before you catch a cold, you've been in those wet things for far too long. When you're done, there's a door at the end of the corridor with an eye scanner. I've programmed it to let you out. Come on upstairs and I'll show you a room I've prepared for you. We can have some dinner together."

Lee Chaolan went from scathingly manipulative to domestic nagging so quickly that Jin wasn't sure what expression he was even meant to pull in response.

Before he could work out if he was still angry or not, his uncle had left, letting the lab door swing closed behind him. Jin stood in the midst of the clinical, sterile room with his fading fury and an empty sweet wrapper in hand.

Author Note: Dedicating this story to Sola_Ircadia and ThalieXVII, for their great stories and inspiration that fuelled me to write this one :)

This will be another multi-chapter work, not as long as my last one though. The chapters are all different lengths, and I havne't decided on an update schedule yet.