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 ❝ Did I miss something ? ❞

~wearetekken rp secret santa~

Secret Santa here - Merry Christmas!! Hope you enjoy the fic – I’ve diverged a tiny bit from certain bits of canon, and I made the assumption that Julia is Navajo, seeing as it’s never been specified which Native American nation she comes from. 

Julia’s first memories are of the forest – birdsong and bracken beneath her feet, her hand held in her mother’s as they walked the beaten path and pushed through undergrowth to explore the less accommodating areas away from the confines of the track. The sounds of twigs snapping beneath her own little feet, and the conspicuous lack of noise from her mother’s careful, well-practiced steps still play clear in Julia’s mind when she sits back and recalls those early days, as clear as the rustling of the trees around them, the wind moving through their branches and stirring them into quiet song.

Julia remembers with clarity the first time her mother took her out to track an animal; she was five, brimming with curiosity and bold as a mountain lion. She had taken to her mother’s side that day full of the quiet determination that made her stand out among her peers – everybody expected great things from her, and, even being as young as she was, Julia was set on realising them.

They had moved through the forest, Julia doing her best to emulate her mother’s light feet and quiet alertness, Michelle deftly checking tracks and signs of activity and using them to mark their path. It was early morning when they set out – Julia can still remember the forest’s distinctive smell that day, the earthy scent of damp soil and cold air.

It was not a short task; Michelle was impressed after an hour had elapsed and Julia had not uttered a word of complaint. Michelle had quietly explained to Julia the ins and outs of what she was doing – why she had paused at a barely audible sound from far off in the forest, why she had checked one set of tracks once, twice, three times before deciding where to move next, what the significance was of checking for the animal’s droppings and for certain disturbances in the foliage that lined their path. Julia had been an attentive student, nodding along and sometimes whispering questions back, always talking quietly so as not to disturb the peace of the forest.

Michelle was a proud mother.

Julia remembers finding the stag at last as if it had only happened hours ago rather than years. Her mother had paused, slowly, silently lowered herself in the undergrowth and motioned for Julia to do the same. Julia had done so, trembling slightly with anticipation – and then the mule deer stag had come into view some distance away, a hulking shadow moving assuredly between the trees. Its pace was slow and confident, its head held high, silhouette made all the more imposing by the antlers that swept up from its head, their many tines curving forwards in spikes that resembled the branches of the surrounding trees. Julia had held her breath, felt her mother’s hand come to rest on her back as the stag made its way past; at one point, it stopped sharply, turned to look their way with wide, mistrustful eyes – but either it didn’t see them, or didn’t deign to consider them as threats, for it relaxed moments later and continued on until it had disappeared from sight.

Michelle had stood up after some time and Julia followed her on quaking legs, and there the memory fades into a haze of incessant questions and the routine return to their home.

Julia remembers her mother bringing in a mule deer stag she had killed a few months later, its eyes glazed, mouth wet with blood, the red wound in its side testament to the way it met its end, remembers being outraged, locking herself in her room and crying and not coming out to discuss the kill with her mother for hours after.

When she had finally emerged, her mother and she talked, and Julia had slowly come around.

“This is the cycle of things, Julia, just like we’ve talked about,” Michelle soothed, stroking Julia’s hair back as she hiccupped and sniffed into their reconciliatory embrace. “Besides, you’ve seen me bring in deer before. What made this one different?”

Julia didn’t reply – but, even now, memories of the uncanny resemblance between the stag in the forest with its proud head held high and the corpse with its dead eyed stare haunt her.

Michelle’s disappearance was the catalyst for Julia’s first great journey away from home.

Eighteen years old, driven by anger and fear of the worst, Julia made her way across oceans and continents to Japan and the King of Iron Fist Tournament 3, intent on finding the notorious Heihachi Mishima as her mother had done mere weeks before she vanished without a trace. Julia suspected foul play, and wasn’t going to leave or let up until she got the answers she wanted.

But Heihachi proved elusive, and, in her haste to get as close to him as possible in the first place, Julia had signed a contract that obliged her to take part in the tournament. She was dragged headfirst into a world of media promotion and relentless training under an agent who didn’t even care to ask which Native American nation she came from, disregarding her regular reminders that she was Navajo – Julia’s frustration and frequent corrections did little to stop the publications she was forced to provide interviews to from minimalistically describing her as ‘the Native American’ fighter.

What little downtime she clawed back was spent chasing leads – Jin Kazama, Lei Wulong had tipped her early on, was the grandson of Heihachi Mishima, heir to the Zaibutsu throne.

Unfortunately for Julia, Jin proved as difficult to collar as Heihachi himself; a week from her arrival, she hadn’t so much as seen Kazama, let alone talked to him.

She was verging on giving up on that particular lead when hope came in the unlikely form of a young Chinese fighter and a mouthy redhead from Korea.

Julia had stumbled upon them in the hotel lobby. They were in the midst of a heated discussion, the redhead gesticulating wildly, the tiny girl – the youngest competitor after Julia, being just sixteen years old – standing on her tiptoes and nigh on shouting to be heard over her noisy opponent. Julia intended on passing them by and heading straight to her room for a bit of alone time in amongst the TV spots and training – but then she heard the man say the name Jin Kazama. She halted, looked around quickly to ascertain a feasible distraction, found it in the form of the schedules hung on the wall of the lobby and lingered there so that she could eavesdrop on the conversation. Julia had never been one for snooping, but this was an urgent matter – she thanked her lucky stars that she and her fellow competitors had been fitted with Zaibutsu-issue translator devices, making the language barriers that existed between the international competitors all but a non-issue.

“If you know him so well, how come you can’t tell me where he is?” the redhead snapped. Julia chanced a glance at the pair – they were so involved in their dispute that the threat of discovery was more or less null – and found the man standing with his arms folded, head tilted back, lip curled up in a sneer.

“Why would I tell you?” the girl asked petulantly, still on her tiptoes and glaring. “You just told me you wanted to beat him up!”

“It’s gonna happen sooner or later, princess,” the man replied. “Let me know where he’s hiding out and I’ll get the embarrassment over with sooner rather than later, yeah?”

“Give me a break! You’d never beat him anyway!”

“I would! And I will! Where is he?”

Julia sighed. It seemed these two weren’t going to be any more use than anyone else in the damned place had been. She turned briskly on her heel, made for the doors that led to the elevators that would take her back up to her room – only for them to open when she was but a few steps away and reveal the man she’d spent so long hounding hitherto with no luck.

Jin Kazama was unmistakable and cut an imposing figure. He was tall and broadly built, all deadly muscle beneath the jarringly garish yellow motorcycle outfit he was wearing (he was, Julia assumed, another casualty of the tournament’s fashion team – she herself had nearly had an aneurism when she’d been presented with her ‘Pocahottie’-esque wear, but she was contracted to wear it and there was little she could say against it on those terms). His face was sharp, framed by a black fringe that hung darkly over his eyes, and his expression was carefully blank, unreadable; he barely looked at Julia as he moved past her, though her eyes followed him.

The man and girl stopped bickering, stopped talking entirely when they spotted him. For a few blessed moments, there was silence. Julia found herself intrigued by the dynamics between the three; the girl had moved to Kazama’s side immediately, hovering beside him, eyes locked on his face; the redhead grinned, rolled his shoulders, flexed his fingers as if readying himself for a fight; and Kazama had held his ground quietly, raising his arm slightly, almost imperceptibly, in front of the girl, apparently anticipating violence from the redhead.

Julia could have laughed. She had watched stags during rut several times in her life, seen the males square off and posture before things came to blows, and she couldn’t help but see something of that in the redhead’s body language. He was someone quite clearly in possession of an excess of testosterone and a score that needed settling with Jin Kazama.

“Finally showed your face, huh?” the redhead said, hands on his hips in a blatant display of bravado. “I’ll take you on, here and now.”

“Not here,” Jin said. His voice was deep and clear, and as devoid of emotion as his expression.

The redhead scoffed.

“What d’you mean ‘not here’? You too chicken?”

“You’ll get your rematch,” Jin said, still stock still and speaking in that calm, measured voice. “But during the tournament, and not before.”

Julia watched as the redhead bristled. The two couldn’t be more different, she thought; the redhead was all loud body language, cocky bravado and unbridled passion next to Jin’s quiet non-expression, practiced stoicism and careful restraint. They were fire and ice.

For a few moments, it looked as if the redhead wasn’t going to back down – but then, to Julia’s surprise, he backed off a few steps, hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans, relaxed his shoulders and tilted his head back easily.

“Alright then, Kazama,” he conceded. “Doesn’t matter when we fight. The result’s gonna be the same either way.”

And he turned and crossed the lobby, exiting through the hotel’s front doors.

Julia blinked, surprised at how quickly the tension had dispersed. Jin’s calm presence and grounding effect on the people around him was entirely at odds with his reputation; Julia had heard dark rumours about him, suggestions that he’d inherited his father’s penchant for cruelty - but watching him now, he seemed closer to Jun Kazama, his mother, someone that Julia’s own mother, Michelle, had befriended at the second tournament. Michelle had told Julia about Jun on a few occasions in the past, spoken about her innate affinity with nature and the simultaneously quiet and overwhelming presence of her company - she was a woman that sought to draw no attention to herself, but who was impossible, somehow, to ignore. That was the impression Julia got of Jin.

She made to approach him, to introduce herself and see if she couldn’t find some answers to her questions - but the Chinese girl squealed and latched onto him, began chattering to him in a happy babble, and Julia could only watch, bemused, as she led Kazama away in the direction of the recreation room. Assuming that they were old friends and not wanting to encroach on any catching-up they had planned, Julia sighed and headed to her room, hoping Kazama wouldn’t prove so elusive now that she had actually seen him.

And, indeed, Julia did see Jin Kazama regularly over the following days; she saw him outside the hotel giving monosyllabic interviews to members of the press, who just kept throwing new questions at him despite his inaffable facade; she saw him again in the lobby with the Chinese girl - whose name, she had found out, was Xiaoyu - hanging off of him and talking a mile a minute as he nodded patiently along; she even saw him come close to breaking his calm, controlled front in the hotel’s cafeteria in the face of some seriously irritating heckling from the redhead (Hwoarang was his name), who, for all of his public deriding of Kazama, couldn’t seem to stay away from him if they were in anything resembling close proximity.

It seemed that finding Kazama alone and receptive to conversation was to be the new hurdle.

Three days before the tournament’s beginning, Julia had all but given hope of finding a nick in the boundary created around Jin Kazama by the numerous people orbiting him. She resigned herself to hoping that she would be matched against him at some point and that, maybe, she would get the chance to talk to him before or after the fight.

‘What could he tell me, anyway?’ she asked herself as she went through the motions of practising forms in the hotel’s makeshift training room. ‘He wouldn’t have been involved in whatever’s happened.’

There were footsteps behind her – another competitor coming in to get some training done, no doubt. Julia paid no mind to whoever it was, content to complete her forms in silent concentration and hoping that the newcomer would be happy to do the same.

But then they spoke, and it was the deep, unmistakeably soft voice of the man she’d spent days trying to talk to.

“Hwoarang isn’t around, is he?”

Julia turned to look at him, momentarily dumbstruck by the luck of it. Jin was wearing dark, baggy clothes, including a jacket with the hood drawn up, shadowing his face – obviously trying to avoid the press and the aforementioned redhead, Julia thought. She couldn’t blame him. She’d be happy never having to give another interview in her life after the tournament was over.

“I haven’t seen him,” she said at last with a polite incline of her head.

Jin heaved a sigh of relief, murmured a ‘thank you’ and crossed to the cupboard-turned-tiny-changing-room, shrugging off the hoody as he went.

Julia returned to her practice as Jin shut the changing room door behind him – but her movements weren’t so precise as they had been. She was too distracted, mind too fogged up now that her chance had come.

Jin emerged a minute or so later, dressed only in the loose cut trousers he had entered in, and Julia spoke up straight away, wanting to engage him before he started.

“You’re Heihachi’s grandson.”

Jin winced, and Julia bit her tongue – she’d had days to think of what to say, and she’d started with that?

“I am,” Jin said uneasily.

“I was – it’s just –“ Julia sighed and lowered her head, pinched the bridge of her nose, took a deep breath to compose herself. “My mother came to visit him recently, and I’ve heard nothing from her since she first landed in Japan.”

Jin said nothing immediately. Julia looked at him, found him looking back at her with an expression even more guarded than usual. His impressive eyebrows were furrowed as if in thought.

“I know it’s – not really anything to do with you,” Julia said when his silence continued, and she realised her voice was beginning to tremble. She lowered her gaze again. “You’ve got to understand, I – I just want to know where she is –“

Jin cut her off in that soft, yet authoritative voice.

“I’ll see what I can find out.”

Julia blinked up at him, eyes wide with shock.

“You will?”

Jin nodded curtly.

Julia smiled, laughed a little with the [shock of it]. Almost two weeks of nothing had led to this – and maybe he wouldn’t be able to find anything out, but it was a damn sight better than nothing.

“Thank you,” Julia said, brushing an errant strand of hair back behind her ear and bowing her head a little. “Thank you so much.”

Jin bowed his head in return, then turned away and set to focusing on his training.

Julia left the room, content to leave Jin with his hard-found solitude. As she went, her mind wandered to Michelle’s stories of Jun, and she wondered absently where Jin’s mother was.

Competitive fighting proved to be a far cry from the days Julia had spent sparring with her mother. She found that her natural aptitude and years of training were next to worthless when placed against the skills of practitioners who’d spent their lives honing their craft again varied opponents, learning how to deal with the strategies of numerous people and not just the same person over and over.

Whilst her loss in the first round against Forest Law did not surprise her, Julia was nonetheless disappointed.

“It was a good fight,” Forest said, smiling in that anxious way he often did.

“Thanks,” Julia said, dusting herself off and offering a weak smile of her own. At least he’d been the one to defeat her; Forest was modest, humble, sweet – a good competitor. There was no trace of humiliating derision in his words. If she’d lost to someone like Hwoarang, she wondered if she’d have been able to take the smug post-match gloating without giving them a black eye for their trouble.

As she was leaving the arena, her agent approached her, scowling at the result, but holding a phone.

“It’s for you,” the agent said glumly.

Julia furrowed her brows, unsure of who would be calling her here – spirits, if it’s another interview, I swear – but took the phone regardless.

“Hello?” she said. “Julia Chang speaking.”

“Julia!” the voice on the other side exclaimed, breathless with happiness – and Julia knew that voice. It was –

“Mom?” She hardly dared to believe that she wasn’t dreaming. “Mom, is that you?”

“Yes,” Michelle said, laughing though her voice was trembling as if she was verging on tears. “Julia, why didn’t you tell me you were going to Japan?”

“Mom, I –“ Julia frowned. “Mom, I came looking for you. Where have you been?”

“I came back yesterday to find you gone without a trace. And – why were you looking for me in Japan? I was never there. I went to China to visit your grandparents.”

No, Julia thought. That wasn’t right at all. Her mother had told her – clearly – that she was going to Japan to see Heihachi Mishima.

“When I was six,” Julia said slowly. “You did something that upset me. What was it?”

“Oh,” Michelle said, taken aback. “I - I killed a mule deer stag and brought it home. Though I don’t see what that has to do with you disappearing off to the King of Iron Fist Tournament.”

Julia sighed with relief. It was her mother, not some plant.

That still didn’t explain the discrepancies.

“I’m sorry, mom. It’s over for me now, anyway. I’ll be home in a few days.”

“Honestly, Julia, if you’d wanted to enter the tournament, all you had to do was tell me. Just wanted to follow in your mom’s footsteps, eh?”

“Sure,” Julia smiled. “Listen, I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. A lot of people gave me messages to relay.”

“Ohh – lovely. I’ll see you in a few days then. Love you, dear.”

“Love you, mom.”

Julia ended the call, simultaneously overwhelmed by relief and overcome by worry over the true nature of what had happened. She wondered if Jin had spoken to his grandfather, wondered if the latter man hadn’t engineered this suspicious reappearance of her mother because he’d found out someone was looking for her.

And it never did become clear exactly what had transpired in the weeks Michelle had been missing. The Chang family in China had no recollection of Michelle going to visit them, even though Michelle had a story for every day of her nonexistent visit; and no proof existed for her ever having gone to Japan, despite Julia clearly remembering having spoken to her when the day she landed there in search of Heihachi Mishima.

Their search for answers turned up nothing but blanks – and eventually, when accusations of madness and unsoundness started being thrown Michelle’s way, the two Chang’s were forced to drop the whole thing. It never stopped playing on their minds – but months passed, and it dropped into the backs of their brains.

It was during this period that a strange and devastating new disease swept into the rich forests of Arizona. The trees and vegetation were helpless against it; they withered and crumbled into dust, so rapidly that entire areas were decimated in weeks. It was with horror that Julia watched the forests of her childhood fall into nothing, and Michelle was distraught at the disappearance of the land that supported the animals she respected and hunted.

Unwilling to do nothing, Julia sought out the best way to help save the Arizona forests – and found it in the shape of a research group. Using her own knowledge of genetics and ecology, she aided as well as she could, throwing herself into her research every day without break – until the grant they had been given by a rising company called the G Corporation was pulled suddenly and without explanation.

Julia was furious. She had invested hours, days, weeks of her life into the project – and the rapid deforestation being caused by the still unknown disease was ongoing.

The news only got worse; reports told that the Mishima Zaibutsu had attacked G Corp’s high security research centre, appropriating reams of data – including all of her project’s painstakingly gathered information.

Why was it, Julia wondered, that the Mishima Zaibutsu were at the core of so many headaches for her?

“A letter came for you today,” Michelle said dully when Julia got home from her final briefing with her team. Julia looked at her mother sadly; the loss of the forest meant that she was unable to track or hunt in anything approaching the capacity she was used to – a huge part of her identity was lost with the ancient vegetation.

“Thanks for telling me, mom,” Julia said, scooping the letter off the table and opening it as she dumped the bags of redundant files onto the floor of their home.

She could hardly believe the words she read.

‘Julia Chang,’ it read. ‘You are cordially invited to the King of Iron Fist Tournament 4, hosted by Heihachi Mishima of the Mishima Zaibutsu…’

Julia didn’t continue reading past that. She didn’t need to.

“Mom,” she said, the fire back in her voice. Michelle looked at her, curious as to her daughter’s rekindled passion. “I’m going to Japan.”

The fourth tournament was much like the third, packed with familiar faces and the usual media circus. Julia remembered Paul Phoenix, her mother’s old friend, and thought she saw Forest, only to find out that it was his father, Marshall. Hwoarang was present, still on the lookout for Jin Kazama – but his hair was cropped short and there were dark circles around his eyes, and a rumour was going around that he’d deserted the South Korean army to be there. Xiaoyu, too, was around – older, a bit more mature than Julia recalled her being. There were other people, too, a few newcomers in the form of a hulking Aussie, a beautiful, charismatic Brazillian and a self-assured but sweet Brit – but conspicuous in his absence was Jin Kazama. Julia had heard that he’d disappeared without a trace following the third tournament; she wondered where he was, if he was alright.

Julia set immediately to making contacts – but security was tighter that year, in the wake of the bizarre reappearance of Kazuya Mishima, a man long believed dead. Any leads Julia did pick up died soon after. It was nigh on impossible to speak to anyone with ties to the more important levels of the Zaibutsu, and she was forced to drop into the dull rhythm of forced interviews and regular training. No matter how much she loved her art, Julia was unable to concentrate on it, knowing that her data was close, but entirely unattainable.

The week leading up to the tournament passed, and she didn’t have her data. Nonetheless, she wasn’t to leave before a chance encounter with the one who had helped her in the previous event.

It was the day before the tournament’s official start when Julia came across Jin Kazama.

She was lingering in a café near the hotel she and the other competitors were staying. Knowing by now how to avoid being recognised by the general public, Julia wore her hair in a ponytail rather than her recognisable braids, donned baggy clothes and hunched over a book in a way that belied her natural good posture. No one approached her – except for one man.

“Julia Chang,” said the distinctive voice. “You’re in danger.”

Julia looked up sharply, found Jin Kazama sitting opposite her – though he seemed to have taken a leaf out of her book, loose clothes hiding the muscle of his figure and a hood pulled up over his head, not quite enough that it masked his distinctive fringe and dark, sad eyes.

“I thought you weren’t here,” Julia said, blinking with surprise. “Danger? What do you mean?”

“You’ve been asking too many questions,” Jin said softly. “It would be safer for you to leave now. Before things get serious.”

Julia went to reply, but a couple of men dressed in military gear burst into the café suddenly. They said nothing, just looked around briskly and then left as quickly as they’d entered.

Jin leant in, asked, in that impossibly quiet voice: “Have you seen Hwoarang?”

The rumours, Julia thought. Hwoarang did desert.

“I have,” she nodded. “Not fifteen minutes ago. He was going into the bar across the road.”

“Thank you,” Jin said – and then he was up and gone.

Julia considered his warning, considered her match the following day – against Paul Phoenix, of all people, a man with double the experience she had.

I’ll leave after the match, Julia resolved. I’m getting nowhere here. I’ll resume my research at home with what I salvaged. I’ll make it.

The home research was unsuccessful. She was working with resources so limited and data so choppy that she could draw none of it into a cohesive, working model. Her relationship with her mother grew strained, Julia working herself into the ground and into dark moods, Michelle slipping further into despair as she struggled to adapt to an office job that held none of the scope of her hunting and tracking.

The missing data played on Julia’s mind from day to day.

If only I hadn’t listened to Jin Kazama, she seethed to herself – but she knew he had done her a favour, in truth. He himself had disappeared in suspicious circumstances towards the end of the tournament.

Two months following the close of the fourth tournament, news reached Julia that there was to be another. She was shocked – two tournaments in such close proximity? It was unheard of.

But it was another opportunity to get her data – and she was going back, risks be damned.

And Julia was successful at last. In the midst of the confusion and evil feeling that permeated the fifth event, Julia had been approached out of the blue by a man – a Japanese sumo wrestler whose name she couldn’t remember – who had given her a drive containing the data she’d spent so long pining after. She hadn’t asked how he’d come across it – she’d been so happy that the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind, so elated that she’d even forgotten to thank the man, too eager to get the data somewhere safe.

So she returned home, gathered up her old team and appropriated the lab they’d used to finish what they’d started. They got close, but success was always just that little bit out of reach – until Julia received a call one night from a man who didn’t identify himself, but whose voice was distinctive, familiar.

Lee Chaolan.

She’d only spoken to him once before – at the fifth tournament, just before they’d both gone into separate interviews, but his intonation was unmistakable.

“Julia Chang,” he said. “I have a proposition for you.”

“What is it?” Julia asked slowly.

“I can get you into the best facility in the world to finish your forest rejuvenation research.”

Julia froze – how did he know about that?

“All I need is for you to do something for me…”

And for some reason, Julia didn’t hang up. Chaolan talked her over, and she found herself plotting, planning and entering into a world of risk for the sake of her project.

She could handle the danger if it meant getting her forests back.

How did it come to this? Julia wondered from behind the glass of her prison.

Such a thought was applicable to many things in those dark days.

How had the world been dragged into such a devastating war in so few months?

How had Jin Kazama, the gentle, powerful soul with so much concern for those around him fallen into evil, become twisted into some horrific, destructive force? She had seen him on television screens as the newscasts spoke of the new horrors committed in his name; his eyes had become the dead eyes of the mule stag from Julia’s childhood, as cold as the ones set in the corpse of that once noble beast.

How, she wondered most of all at that moment, had she been drawn into the duplicitous task, providing intel to Lee Chaolan as she used the G Corp’s resources to continue the research that was, slowly but surely, paving the way for Arizona’s forests to return?

She had inevitably been discovered – apprehended and thrown temporarily into the locked tanks that held the fruits of her research. She sat among the young, flourishing plants in their grey, sterile environment, fear of what was to come seizing at her chest. People from the company had ‘disappeared’ before – was she to become the latest number on that list?

There was a disturbance in the corridor; Julia’s guards stood to, raising their guns uneasily – but they were useless against the force of nature that surged through the doors.

It was a man, cutting through the guards like they were nothing, electricity crackling around his limbs as he sent them sprawling to the floor. With him was a girl, slender and with pink hair and – and chainsaws that shot out of her arms and sliced the air near the guards in threat.

It took the duo mere moments to down a dozen soldiers, and with no damage to themselves.

Who were they?

The man opened the doors, breaking the electronic lock to release Julia.

Julia stepped outside cautiously.

“Who are you?” she asked. Regardless of what they’d done, there was the chance they’d come for her for selfish reasons.

“Friends,” the man said, a reassuring smile spreading over his features. He had remarkable eyes – such strength and presence in them that Julia was left momentarily stunned. “Lee Chaolan sent me. Now let’s get you out of here – get whatever you need to finish your research. Chaolan has arranged transport to take you back to your home.”

Julia nodded. She wasn’t going to argue with that – and the research was sufficient. The forest of Arizona would be restored over the coming years with her findings.

She had done it.

And so she left with her charming saviours and returned to Arizona.

The healing process of Julia’s forests was slow. They did not flourish back into greenery in days, or weeks, or even months; it would take years, Julia understood, for any serious progress to show. Sometimes the slow progress upset her. All that work, and still there would be a lifetime of it to go before she could walk the restored forests of her childhood, marking out the tracks her mother had trodden before her.

But there was progress, and that was something. What little remained of the forests was now salvaged; trees and plants were no longer falling to the strange, but now understood, disease, and animal life was moving back into the areas as a result, no longer left in a scattered state in the sparse urban environments they’d been forced into. And new tree shoots, ones Julia and her team protected fiercly from harsh weather and opportunistic grazers, were emerging.

Michelle had been thrilled with her daughter’s achievements, as had the rest of the Navajo nation; Julia was showered with praise and respect, recognised for her efforts to protect an ecosystem that had supported her people for generations.

Julia accepted the praise modestly, and looked to the future in hope of better days and a restored forest.

It was only the beginning, but that was enough.

And now Julia puts on her mask and checks her outfit in the changing room mirror.

She has grown. She’s met every challenge that’s made itself known to her, defeated every one through force of will and hard work. She has realised the potential that everyone recognised in her so young – but she knows that there is always room for self-improvement. This is but another challenge, one so far flung from her usual activities that it makes her nervous to tackle it every time – but she is getting good at it, and she will only get better.

“Julia!”

Julia turns, smiles from behind the mask and brings a finger to her lips in a shushing motion as her mother approaches her.

“Jaycee when I’m in costume,” Julia reminds her with a wink. “Remember?”

Michelle laughs. “Sorry, ‘Jaycee’.”

They embrace, Michelle squeezing her tightly before pulling away to look at her daughter.

“I’m so proud of you,” she says. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, mom,” Julia smiles.

“Knock ‘em dead tonight, sweetie,” Michelle says. “You know me and everyone on the reservation’ll be cheering you on.”

“I’m gonna need it,” Julia laughs, a little bit of a nervous jitter to it. How strange to be anxious over a little wrestling match when she’s stood up to huge corporations and occupied the same tournaments as devils with world-destroying power.

It’s almost nice. Finally, a bit of normality.

“I’ll come find you when I’m done,” Julia assures her mother.

“When you win,” Michelle says with a wink. “Tell King I say hi!”

“I will,” Julia laughs. Michelle leaves, and Julia’s manager pops her head around the door.

“Ten minutes and you’re on,” she says.

“Got it,” Julia nods, going over her outfit one more time. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

She is going to win.

And it is with that thought that she leaves the changing room and heads to the ring, ready to tackle whatever stands in her way.

                         ＭＹ ＳＥＣＲＥＴ ＳＡＮＴＡ ＷＡＳ  imaginexporium

[ MY BURRITO. I want to wish you Merry Christmas ! You deserve everything good in this world, I chose Ryo because you know I love Ryo. I never got so interested in a character before. your creativity it is otherworldy I can only congrats you and ask if you can donate me a little bit? You’re an amazing person and really sweet, I can see some similar traits of Ryo on you. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year ! ] 

A tiny body standing in the middle of a battlefield Clenching her fists announcing her try They all thought she would be the first to die Little did they know… Her will to live surpassed her small size A naive stance was a mere disguise Holding her head up in glorious This frail little fighter is victorious.

ＳＣＩＥＮＺＡＴＯ → ＪＵＬＥＳＩＭＡＳ