2014 A.D.

"Cassie, I'm not testing you this time." Her father stood in front of her, having caught her outside shortly after her mother had ordered her to Outworld. He had a short-sleeved hoodie and gray-blue shirt, his eyes were blue.

Cassie opened up the dossier to see a picture of a blacked-out figure, he had purple eyes, a red cloak, and a sickeningly white toothy smile, below it was the word Viper. The man's eyes were lizard-like and the black slits were narrow and threatening. Cassie looked further down the dossier and she nearly dropped it. She heard her father pipe up, having guessed what she was gawking at.

"He's proficient in Hung Gar, Pao Chui, and Wushu. He can speak Saurian, English, and Mandarin. His scales give him enhanced durability, he can run at great speeds, and he has invisibility. He also has a prehensile tail and tongue. As well as the ability to generate aci-"

"Stop!" Cassie desperately attempted to hand the dossier back, she was confident but this man seemed a bit out of her league. "Why would you assign me this?!"

"Simple, I thought you could handle it, Cass. Also, Kotal Kahn has hired him for several assassinations. He can help in negotiations."

"The mission with Sub-Zero was a failure! You think I can take on him?!" Despite Cassie's skills, she for once had no belief in her abilities.

"I only saw one mistake Cass" Johnny's gaze turned to Kung Jin. "Viper may be a difficult opponent, but he has weaknesses." Johnny handed Cassie another dossier, but it was one that held Viper's weaknesses. Inside of it included typical reptilian dislikes, until she flipped to the very back of the dossier and saw a name in red print.

"Jade." The name rolled off her tongue.

"I didn't know Jade very well before she died." Cassie's father admitted. "But, she and Viper worked together for a very long time."

"I should use this if he's hostile?" Cassie eyed the small picture of the woman. Upon closer inspection, she found it was a drawing. The woman had long black hair, tied back into a ponytail. Her skin was darker than most other edenians she had encountered. She had tantalizingly green eyes.

"Viper wrote that himself 20 years ago. He's got an academy type establishment for assassins." After her father finished his sentence, Cassie felt an arm pulling on her shoulder. When she turned to see who it was, she saw Jacqui.

"Listen, Cass, if we're going to fight Mileena armed with Shinnok's amulet, we could use some assistance. Not to mention if Kung Jin screws us over again." Jacqui had a slight smile on her face as she said that last part, but Cassie could tell she was serious. Cassie nodded and walked over to her father.

"Alright dad, I'll see what I can do." Cassie started to walk away but Johnny piped up again.

"Remember, you don't necessarily need any of this." He pointed to the dossier of the weaknesses. "He may be friendly, it's just been a while since anyone in Earthrealm has seen him," Cassie remembered the island and a distant image of Havik in her head.

"Be careful Cassie" Johnny gave her all that she needed and then they parted.

22 A.M.K.

"Goddamn it." Viper conjured up an enchanted dagger. He started sprinting, disregarding the ice under his feet, towards his adversary. Whoso happened to be a Frost Dragon. Despite his naturally enhanced speed, the icy breath was nearly freezing his tail.

"Second one today." Viper thought as he closed in on the frost dragon and stabbed it with the dagger. Hearing a roar of pain from the beast, he jumped back.

"These flat snowfields are all off for an Ice Dragon, you didn't do this on your own initiative… someone had to charm you." Viper thought of his target, he was a centaurian named Nikoro. Despite the stereotype that they had no proficiency in magic some centaurians were great shamans, and the target was capable of charming animals to his will.

"When I find him, it might be better to not just spit acid at him." Viper thought as he rose from the corpse from the Frost Dragon. "Nikoro is a centaurian... he may be a bit too fast for just a simple acid pool"

He readjusted his cloak, considering Viper was a Saurian, he had purposefully been shying away from the Sea of Ice. However, when his scouts had reported back empty-handed, he was sure that Nikoro was either in another realm or somewhere in the Sea of Ice. Luckily, by the time Viper had reached the wretched place, Nikoro had little places left to run. He continued walking thinking, "The sooner I'm out of this cold the better."

Viper opened up a small booklet that contained information on his targets. Nikoro's page being the last one in the book, the saurian had memorized most of it but he wanted to make sure he had everything right. The page went on for a while about his feats, but what truly caught Viper's attention was the rolled up wanted poster of him. It showed a face with pale white eyes, looking like those belonging to a blind man, a tan face with wrinkled features and 2 gray-black horns that curved upward in a spiral form. Viper's eyes continued down the page and read the horrible unspeakable crime he committed...

"He stole 3 loaves of bread, and got away with it!?" Viper gasped, and then chuckled. Kotal, or Ko'atal, was a better emperor than the Konqueror, but his justice system was still a bit much. Unfortunately, working for him was a necessity due to his political plans. Feeling a need to create his own type of kingdom, Viper had started his 'academy' to officially claim that Zaterra was his dwelling... not that there were many people there to claim it, to begin with. Kotal enjoyed having all of Outworld unified, but with so much bad blood from the Konquerors' millennia of conquests, it was hard to get everyone under one banner. Viper had a plan though, he was going to gain Kotal's favor and start his own 'kingdom' of Zaterra. If the emperor tried to regain control then Viper would stop his assassination service for him, and Viper knew that he was the best assassin in Ko'atal's army. Of course, the saurian realized that he would technically be a vassal, but a powerful one, as well as one that Ko'atal would need to please.

Before long he saw the ruins of an ancient cryomancer building. Upon entering Viper stopped and saw a centaurian dead center inside the icy structure, his lower half in a resting position, but without much warning, the centaurian turned around.

"I know why you're here, you don't need to kill me." Viper could tell where Nikoro was going, so instead of truly listening he glanced at the centaurian's legs, they were in a position where he could easily charge... but he was trying to negotiate first. "He's terrified of me, good." The saurian placed a hand onto his chin.

"I have gold." Nikoro offered.

"It's a strange thing... if I had a copper for every time a target of mine said that, I'd have enough coppers to match the price on your head in gold." Viper smirked. "It's quite a common offer from a target, but whenever I check their corpses they never seem to have any money."

Nikoro backed off a bit. "I have money." A pouch of gold was shown. Inside, the clinking of money could be heard.

"Good... I can pick it off your corpse." Viper quickly glanced at the materials used to build the ruins and concluded that it was blue ice. Viper smashed his hand into one of the pillars and watched as it collapsed. "Cryomancers knew what ice to use when building." The saurian thought, but he turned himself back to the matter at hand.

"I could use Nikoro's strength to my advantage." Viper thought as he dodged behind another pillar and let Nikoro crash into it. The game of cat and mouse continued as Viper moved back and forth, and broke whatever pillars his target didn't. Eventually, only one pillar was left standing. Viper conjured up some acid and shot it from his mouth at Nikoros' centaurian legs.

"There… now you cannot run." Viper then broke the last pillar and sprinted as fast as he could out into the tundra. Soon after he returned to the ruins and lifted the parts of the ceiling.

"What was he doing here? If I were him I would've looked for a portal to… well, Earthrealm... of course, I can go invisible and he can't but he should've known that hiding from an assassin in service to the Kahn of Outworld is dangerous, especially in Outworld." However, Viper found himself unable to keep thinking of Earthrealm, as it brought both sweet and sour memories to his mind. He found, cut, and bagged the head of Nikoro before dashing as fast as he could away from the ruins and found his ship.

The crew was given to Viper by Kotal Kahn, although the Kahn had seemed to pick the meekest crew in Outworld. Every time they saw anything that even vaguely resembled a red cloak, Viper could hear them whimpering.

With his tail dragging in lethargy, Viper stepped onto the ship and went to the area below the deck… he attempted to warm up and heard a small buzzing noise coming from his pocket. He reached in and saw a small projection of Karanba, a young tarkatan that Viper had saved from the streets not all too long ago.

"Master, we have some visitors coming to the gates… they are of Earthrealm."

"Earthrealm… I will be back within the week, let them stay." Viper turned off the small projection and rested in his hunched over position. He had a fairly good idea of who they were once he recalled the group of fighters that were involved with Havik. "Special Forces, Shirai Ryu, and Shaolin." Viper thought.

The journey to Outworld had been less lengthy than Kung Jin had expected, they landed in a plot of land near Sun Do. The map pointed east, and so the squad moved that way... for 3 hours until they finally found themselves in the Zaterran part of Outworld. However, that was not the end of the journey, they found that they needed to walk even further east. Until they finally found a large building, with a long bridge that connected itself to the cliff that the squad was walking on.

Kung Jin knew that the Zaterran part of Outworld needed to be warmer than Earthrealm, considering mesothermic giant lizard men once walked around it in great numbers. But while Jin was sure it was quite comfortable to a reptilian, it was hot… interminably so. Eventually, a tarkatan walked across the bridge and started talking to the group of young warriors.

"You may enter." His response seemed curt to Kung Jin, but he was glad to get out of the heat. Kung Jin pushed forward and entered before Cassie, Jacqui, and Takeda. Kung Jin instantly felt a sense of relief hit him as he entered the academy. When he looked up he saw architecture that both reminded him of his home, and made him feel as if he was in the exact opposite of China.

"Impressive," Takeda said. He walked next to Kung Jin and stopped. He looked at his friend and asked. "You ok?"

"Yea… I'm fine. This place just looks familiar… but it doesn't feel familiar." Kung Jin touched a pillar, the stone feeling cold in his hand. The parts of the academy, "or more like castle" Kung Jin thought that wasn't stone was a nice red color. Kung Jin could see a library further in and past that he could see a balcony.

Takeda stood his ground next to Kung Jin and waited for Cassie and Jacqui to catch up. When they were all together, Cassie retook her spot at the head of the group.

"Hello, where is Master Viper?" She asked the same tarkatan that had let them into the academy.

"He is coming back to the academy." The man answered. He seemed more intelligent than the typical tarkatan.

"Well, where is he?" Kung Jin piped up. Despite his thoughts on the tarkatan, he wanted to know exactly where Viper was.

"He is coming back from the sea of ice. If you'd like to find a shipmaster willing to go down that far south, and try and find him in a constant snowstorm your welcome to leave the academy at any time." The tarkatan was obviously agitated that Jin had not accepted his answer.

Cassie interrupted the verbal sparring and continued on with the tarkatan. "I'm sorry for my squadmates' behavior, what is your name?"

"Karanba." The tarkatan answered cooly. His yellow eyes were filled with black slits, his large mouth was held open by rows of sharp teeth, multiple light brown spikes stuck out of his similarly colored arms.

"If you need lodging we have rooms further back in the academy." His answers were slightly more amiable when he spoke to Cassie, Kung Jin noticed and stormed off but before long he heard Cassie's voice coming from behind him.

"Jin, what the hell was that?!" Kung Jin turned to meet Cassie's gaze.

"I was trying to get answers." His response was a simple fact, Jin thought.

"Well, you nearly got us kicked out!" Cassie said in an urgent and hushed yell.

"But I didn't!" Jin returned in a slightly louder voice.

"Ok guys, let's find the rooms he was talking about." Jacqui separated the 2 of them with a nervous smile stretched across her face.

Kung Jin watched as the rest of his team walked off, or half the team considering Takeda came running back up and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hey Jin, don't you want to find your room?" Takeda asked.

"No… I think I saw a library, I'm going to go there." Kung Jin walked off curtly, but Takeda still didn't leave.

"Then I'll come with you." Takeda jogged up next to Kung Jin.

"Why?" Kung Jin stopped, slightly annoyed. Takeda was a good friend, and he was right about many things, but Cassie has soured any friendly mood Kung Jin could muster.

"Come on Jin, you need friends in this squad… and so far I think I'm your only one. Give them a chance, Cassie's a much better leader than you think." Takeda stopped.

"Alright, Takeda… you've convinced me." Kung Jin looked down forlornly and then continued. "But I'm still going to the library, there are probably books that could help us on our 'quest'." Kung Jin kept walking.

"Well, I'm still going with you." Takeda smiled as he continued along the path with Kung Jin. Before long, Jin could hear the voice of his friend once more. "Y'know, you're as headstrong as your cousin." Jin grinned as he said that.

"It's good to see that you have 20/20 vision, unlike your dad." Takeda feigned offense. Kung Jin knew that if anyone else had said that, Takeda would've fought them no matter where they were. But, Takeda and Jin were good friends, and Takeda soon smiled and entered the library with Kung Jin.

A few outworld days later.

Karanba kept working on his papers. While Viper was absent, Karanba acted as the head of the academy. The papers held different questions about how to best incapacitate, kill, or injure a target as well as how to stay hidden among guards or enemies. But while he was shuffling the stack he heard the gates of the academy open. Like Viper had taught him, Karanba vaulted over the desk of his workplace. The candles had blown out from his sudden movement. The absence of light left his workspace almost completely pitch black. The only source of light being the former Zaterran moon filtering through a very small window. Karanba let his bone blades slide out through his arms. He prepared to get into a dark corner and attack when he saw that the figure in the doorway had a red cloak, a strangely dark figure, and a sickeningly white smile, and 2 glowing amethyst eyes. A description that matched none other than the headmaster of the academy, Viper.