Disclaimer: I do not own Mortal Kombat. I`m just borrowing their characters to torture for a bit.

Chapter 1

I was at my study desk when Mileena came into my room, my school skirts piled on the crook of her arm. She placed them on my bed. She had brought them in from the lines in the backyard, where I had hung them to dry that morning. Ermac and I washed our school uniforms while the slaves washed the rest of our clothes. We always soaked tiny sections of fabric in the foamy water first to see if the colors would run, even though we knew they wouldn`t. We wanted to spend every minute of the half hour Father allocated to uniform washing.

"Thank you, Mileena. I was about to bring them in." I said, getting up to fold the clothes. It wasn`t proper to let an older person do your chores, but Mileena did not mind. There was so much that she didn`t mind.

"The rain is coming. I didn`t want them to get wet." She ran her hand across my uniform, a red plaid skirt with a darker-toned waistband, long enough not to expose my knees when I wore it. She let go of my skirt, almost reluctantly.

"Father`s going to have to step down as the Kahn."

I stared. She was sitting on my bed, knees together.

" You`re going to be the Kahnum?"

"Yes." She smiled then looked down at her lap.

"When?"

"In October."

"Thanks be to Shinnok." It was what Ermac and I said, what Father expected us to say when good things happened.

I held one of the skirts carefully, making sure the folded edges were even.

"Did school go well?' Mileena asked, rising. She had asked me earlier.

"Yes."

"The maids are cooking for the soldiers; they will be here soon."Mileena said, before going back downstairs. I followed her and placed my folded skirts on the table in the hallway, where one of the maids would get them for ironing.

The soldiers, members of the Brotherhood of Shadow, soon arrived, and their noisy chatter, accompanied by robust laughter, echoed upstairs. They would argue and debate strategies for about half an hour and then Mileena would interrupt in her low voice, which barely carried upstairs even with my bedroom door open, to tell them that a "little something" had been prepared for them. When the maids started to bring the platters of grilled and roasted meats and roasted potatoes, the men would gently chastise Mileena. Then the clink-clink-clink of forks and knifes scraping against the plates would echo over the house. Mileena never used plastic cutlery, no matter how large the group.

They had just started to fight over the food when I heard Ermac float up the stairs. I knew he would come into my room first because Shao Kahn was not home. If he was, Ermac would go into his own room first to change.

"Kal awanu?"("How are you?") I asked when he came in. His school uniform, blue long pants and white shirt with the school crest blazing from his left breast, still had the ironed lines running down the front and back. He was voted neatest junior boy last year and Dad had hugged him so tightly that Ermac`s back almost snapped.

"Fine." He stood by my desk, flipping idly through the physics textbook open before me. "What did you eat for lunch?"

"Roast lamb."

I wish we still had lunch together, Ermac said with his eyes.

.
"Me, too," I said,aloud.

Before, our driver would pick me up first. Then we would drive over to get Ermac at his school. He and I would then have lunch together once we got home. Now, because Ermac was in the new A.P program at his school, he attended after-school lessons. His schedule had been revised but not mine, and I couldn`t wait around to have lunch with him. I was to have had lunch, taken my siesta and started studying by the time he got , Ermac knew what I had for lunch every day. We had a menu on the kitchen that was changed twice a month. But he always asked me, anyway. We did that often, asking each other questions that we already knew the answers to. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know.

"I have assignments to do,' Ermac said, turning as if to leave.

"Mileena`s going to be Kahnum," I said. He wheeled back and sat down at the edge of my bed. "She told you?"

"Yes. She`s having her coronation in October."

Ermac closed his eyes for a while and then opened them. "We will take care of her during her rule; we will protect her."

I knew that he meant from our father`s wrath once he got word of it, but I didn`t say anything.

He sat on my bed for a while longer before he went downstairs to have lunch; I pushed my textbook aside, looked up and stared at my daily schedule, pasted on the wall above me. Skarlet was written in bold letters on top of the white sheet of paper, just as Ermac was written on the schedule above Ermac`s desk in his room. Shao Kahn liked order. It showed even in the schedules themselves, the way his meticulously drawn lines in black ink, cut across each day. He revised them often. When school was in, we had less free time and more study time, even on the weekends. When we were on vacation, we had a little more spare time to read newspapers, play chess and train our fighting skills.

It was during family time the next day that the coup happened. Shang Tsung had just checkmated Ermac when we heard the martial music on the radio, the solemn strains making us stop to listen. One of Father`s generals with a strong Outworld accent came on and announced that there had been a coup and that Outworld had acquired a new realm. We would be told shortly who the realm`s new head of state was.

Shang Tsung pushed the board aside and excused himself. Ermac, Mileena and I waited for him silently. I knew he was calling his fellow right hand man, Quan Chi, perhaps to tell him something about handling any potential uprising. When he came back, we drank the wine, served in tall glasses, while he talked about the coup. Conflict begat conflict, he said, telling us about the bloody years leading to the Realm Wars. A conflict always began a vicious cycle. Men would always overthrow one another because they could, because they were all power hungry.

Of course, Shang told us, the Outworld citizens were corrupt. Rumours circulated about money that was stashed in foreign bank accounts, money meant for building roads and paying workers` salaries. But what Outworld needed was not soldiers ruling them, but a renewed democracy. em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"Renewed Democracy/em. It sounded important. But then, most of what Shang said sounded important. He liked to lean back and look upwards when he talked, as if he was searching for something in the air.

The day after the coup, we sat in the living room and studied the newspapers. Only one had a critical editorial, calling on Shao Kahn to quickly implement a return to autocracy plan. He read an article from another paper out loud, an opinion column by a writer who insisted that it was indeed time for a democratic government, since the autocracy was out of control and the economy was a mess.

" 'Change of Guard.' What a headline. They are all afraid. Writing about how corrupt the autocracy is, as if they think the civilian government wouldn`t be. These realms are going downhill. "

"The Kahns will deliver them," I said, knowing he would like my saying that.

"Yes, yes," Father said, nodding. He reached out and caressed my hand and I felt as if my mouth was filled with melting sugar.