Transposition
by Nyohah

Movement I:
Accelerando

Chapter One

The mountains of northwest Argentina were quiet once again. The silence had been broken by the violence of the hunt, but the hunt was over, as was its aftermath, and now all that was left of the disturbance were two young women climbing through the Andes with unusually quiet and deft steps.

They had grown used to silence in the stalking that had preceded the hunt, and the return to it now seemed no less usual. Lundiy wondered if the noise of her home would startle her when she returned. There was always movement around the Kitsune village. Each warrior was as capable—if not more capable—of being silent as Lundiy herself and her traveling companion, Mistral. But also inhabiting the village were children and men, who were never as quiet as a deer crashing through underbrush. She imagined that the noise would come back slowly, as it had faded. And surely the presence of noise could not disconcert nearly as well as its absence. But she—fully a Kitsune warrior now and just awaiting a ceremony of recognition—could not allow herself to be startled by something so simple as sound.

She did not know what Mistral thought. She wasn't sure anyone ever knew what Mistral thought. She had met the woman just that morning, and she was shamed to admit that she might have failed her task and might even have died had their paths not crossed. Lundiy had been hunting a cougar, and Mistral a buck, and neither of them probably would have killed her own prey if it had not been for the others'. The animals they had hunted had been overwhelmed by the force of instinct and distracted from its pursuer by when the chase had forced them together.

But she and Mistral had both succeeded in the end, and the exact circumstances of those successes were and would be known to only them. No woman talked about the experience of her final hunt. It was entirely possible that an already dead carcass had supplied Mistral with the antlers she was now wearing on her head—or Lundiy the jawbone she was wearing on hers, as well as the bones to make the beads she had threaded onto her braids. But part of the process of becoming a Kitsune warrior was to develop a keen sense of honesty. Neither of them would ever be questioned. Mistral and Lundiy had accomplished what they had set out to do. Circumstances could never be entirely accounted for in advance. Such was the chaotic nature of the world. And neither Mistral nor Lundiy felt any need to discuss it.

Or anything else for that matter. But that was just as well for Lundiy. She listened intently for the gradual rise of noise she was sure would come with their approach to the village.

But, as it turned out, there was nothing gradual about it. No laughs of children, or the roll of cart wheels on uneven ground. No sounds of animals. It was just one climb over the right hill, and then came the screaming.

She and Mistral began running at once. Mistral was faster, so Lundiy was alone by the time she reached the village. What she saw there nearly made her sick. Everyone was dead. Everyone and everything. But still the screaming continued.

Lundiy ran further into the village, following the sound of the screams, seeing no life anywhere. Only death. The screams, she could tell as she neared them, were hysterical rather than terrified and were coming from a single throat. She ran under one last stone archway and around a corner, and there in the courtyard of the Kitsune headquarters itself stood a small, pale, white-haired woman, screaming, and Mistral standing a few paces back, examining her.

Lundiy walked over to Mistral, staring at the woman. She had a dark black streak running through her hair, and was wearing some of the strangest clothing Lundiy had ever seen. Purple and pink and shiny all over.

It was only because of its shininess that the woman's clothing registered at all. Lundiy was focused on the drying blood covering the woman's hands.

"What happened?" Lundiy said.

"This woman killed everyone," Mistral said.

"Has she spoken to you?"

"No," Mistral scoffed. "It's obvious."

"Then why is she screaming?"

"I do not know."

Lundiy looked anxiously at the Kitsune headquarters. "Is anyone at all left alive?"

"No one."

Lundiy shook her hands out and breathed deeply. The woman was still screaming. "I wish she would just stop," she said. "We have to do something, and I know I could think if she would just stop!" Lundiy reached for her head to run her hands through her hair and was startled by the jawbone that rested on it.

"Stop screaming?" asked Mistral. Or, at least, Lundiy thought she had asked, but Mistral then took her spear and touched the point to the woman's neck. "I said stop screaming."

The woman did stop and looked up at them with wide eyes. It was only then that Lundiy realized the woman's eyes were without irises or pupils—a solid, uniform white.

Yuan Li hated waking up before the sun rose. It reminded him of the brutal training of the Lin Kuei, of the obsessive drive to create an invisibility device that had once possessed him, and of taking care of his father's horses before going to school—all things he swore had nearly killed him.

Unfortunately, Yuan Li also hated lying in bed awake. It reminded him of being too sick to get out of bed, which had also nearly killed him—twice.

But, as his friend Yen Mulan had cheerfully pointed out to him, complete with finger quotes, he was 'the Boy Who Lived. TM J.K. Rowling.'

Both his parents were already awake and working, but he had managed to escape from morning chores again lately, which he was, admittedly, quite expert at, although his help had been less in demand back when his brother was around. This time, it wasn't that he had pled off for sickness, pouted when his mother was around, or even yawned a lot to show how sleep-deprived he was (when in reality he slept at least eight hours any night he wasn't required to rise before the sun the next morning). No, this time, he hadn't had to act to bring pity upon himself. It had just happened. But he supposed that was only natural given that he had been forced to leave the love of his life to die, for all he knew, in a hell dimension in the clutches of demons she used to serve, who now knew how she had betrayed them, no less. But it wasn't as though, if they killed her, it would be the first time. If Yuan was the Boy Who Lived, Hua Ching Sa was the Girl Who Died. A lot.

He supposed it was eerie how much their lives had paralleled, Ching's being, by far, the darker version. He had almost died when he was very young, from damage to his lungs; Ching had died when she was young, from a fall. He had recovered miraculously to the surprise of his doctors; she had been resurrected by a demon and forced to be his servant. They had both been trained in martial arts their whole life, but Yuan's was mostly for show, while Ching was meant to kill. And the invisibility robe he had invented that had initially connected them in Hong Kong had nearly killed him, while the conflicts it had caused had led Ching to kill her master and for that, die again. Ching was resurrected and forced into service to Shang Tsung; Yuan recovered and was forced into the Lin Kuei; and they had met again in Mortal Kombat. Yuan had escaped that tournament. Ching had fallen into a coma after suffering huge injuries during her last fight, and Yuan had been forced to leave her behind.

He couldn't forget how Smoke had dragged him out the door of the medical ward. Ching's own father, who had trained Yuan hard so he would survive the tournament and worked to bring Yuan and Ching together again. Had left her. To rot.

Yuan slammed the rickety gate behind the Lis' house shut behind him and headed for town, ignoring his father leading horses around in the pasture.

If he were to say that he could not understand how Smoke could leave his daughter behind, then he would have to say that words could not express how much he could not understand how Smoke could sit around and do nothing knowing that she was still there. But Smoke refused to even discuss the subject with him. Anytime Yuan mentioned the words 'Ching', 'Outworld', 'your daughter', 'you're insane', or anything of the sort, he was met only with admonitions to wait and have patience. Granted, that was the Smoke he had always known. Waiting or patience had been involved in every other sentence the man had spoken to him even before the time he had begun training. While stuck in bed, trying to recover, filled with a child's excitement over learning to do something that his parents and his brother already knew how to do—even then, Smoke's words had always been instructions to be patient. But he had seen a different Smoke in Outworld—one who took an initiative, and actually seemed to care about doing something to better things in the world rather than to just exist in the world as it was.

It must've been the air or something, because upon returning to Yanxubin, the Smoke with initiative had disappeared once more, leaving the same old Smoke practically chanting 'patience, patience...'

Looking at the village of Yanxubin, shadowed by the triple-storied monolith that was Mr. Yen's house and business, Yuan realized if it was the air anywhere, it was the air in Yanxubin. The place seemed almost enchanted into stagnation. The only person who ever did anything was Mr. Yen, and it was hard, looking at any corner of Yanxubin, let alone the whole, to not see his mark upon the place, clearly defining him as the citizen in charge, albeit economically.

Yanxubin. The Final Coast. Whatever that meant. It was closer to desert and Siberia than any large bodies of water, let alone the ocean. Yuan had lived there all his life and had gradually come to realize just what an odd place it was. If he had to sum it up with one simple fact, he would offer that there was a memorial in the cemetery constructed a mere quarter of a century ago that no one in town would admit to knowing the meaning of. And there was more.

It was a young town, built just as the communist government of China began adopting capitalist economic policies. But everyone who lived there—most much older than twenty-five—listed it as his hometown and place of birth. It had benefited from the economic reform by gaining freedom and money while it was being built and clearly had lacked the characteristic poverty of the time. But it had—in an effect he was, just this morning, beginning to consider writing up and calling the Yanxubin Effect—changed very little since its building, missed entirely by the rebuilding, renovating, and reorganizing that had swept the country during his lifetime. And it had always, ever since he had first traveled to nearby cities and found out what China looked like, seemed to him like a piece of the world trying desperately to be China while being something else entirely at the same time—something he had never seen the likeness of anywhere else.

It wasn't just uniqueness that set Yanxubin apart. There was uniqueness all over China. The citizens of his hometown were just one of dozens of minority ethnic groups overwhelmed and surrounded by the Han Chinese. But there was one important distinction between the people of his town and the other small groups. The others had histories and held tightly to them and their cultural distinctiveness. The people of Yanxubin appeared seemingly from nowhere in 1975 and threw themselves into the throng, trying to be like everyone else, but lacking the ability.

And they were ignored.

Yuan sighed and headed through the middle of town toward Mr. Yen's house. Someone would let him in, and then he could mess around with Mr. Yen's newest toys and eat various sugary breakfast items until Mulan woke up. And then, maybe, they could do something that would make him forget for an hour or so.

Just before dawn broke, Enmity stood in the middle of the village of Yanxubin, staring at footprints in the mud around a manhole. They had not been there when she had left, and considering she had left only four hours before, and most of the village had not yet awoken, she had reason to be suspicious. Especially considering that the manhole in question was the entrance to Lin Kuei headquarters.

But, as she could tell immediately after seeing the footprints, the person who had created them had merely walked across the hole without pause. She was not worried, just curious, but her curiosity always tended toward suspicion. Anyway, she knew who had made the footprints, and he was a Lin Kuei. A good fifth of the town was Lin Kuei. Something much closer to ninety percent of the town either was or was related to a Lin Kuei. The clan was the only true power in Yanxubin. The Chinese government was, in Yanxubin at least, powerless compared to the Lin Kuei. There were horror stories among the Chinese military about what happened when task forces were sent to try to make Yanxubin comply to things it wouldn't, whether it was because the Lin Kuei didn't want it that way, or because Yanxubin was too sluggish to comply with anything that resembled forward progress. Enmity knew there were horror stories because she had helped to ensure there would be.

A swift bout of cruelty now will save endless struggle in the future, was what her father said. His version of 'a stitch in time saves nine'.

Her father, the headmaster of the Lin Kuei, was the only true power in Yanxubin. And she was his most trusted servant. Most trusted by him. To the others in the Lin Kuei, she was the least trusted and the most feared. No one outside the Lin Kuei even knew she existed. It was as though it was forbidden to speak of her. Her name was the closest thing Yanxubin had to superstition, and she was proud. No one but her father knew her birth name, and he never called her by it. If there was power in a name, Enmity's, as her father's, was hardly diminished.

Enmity slid the manhole cover to the side and dropped the five feet into the hole. She landed on a small, uneven hill made of mud that had been formed under the entrance to facilitate easily closing the manhole. She reached up swiftly and did just this, then ducked to fit under the thick outside wall and walked, partially crouched, forward along the corridor that twisted off to the left. As she went farther along, walking down the mud hill, the ceiling rose above her until it was high enough that she could not have touched it if she jumped.

The walls of the Lin Kuei headquarters were tarnished and had long since lost their gleam, but they were still clearly metal, as was the floor. The door she approached was not. The door at the right end of the entrance corridor was mere metal, and a simple password could open it. The door she approached was stone, and could only be opened by the highest-ranking members of the Lin Kuei. It led nowhere special, but served as a shortcut around much of the training area and the curved corridors that connected each of the small rooms. It was best if the high-ranking ninjas were seen the least so that their appearances would instantly garner them attention and fear.

She opened the door by applying her power—fire, naturally, as she took after her father—in a specific and complicated way. She continued her customary route through headquarters, turning down every left corridor and passing three more such doors before finally arriving at the large, semicircular chamber that served as her father's living quarters. This door she hit with as strong a burst of fire as she could muster—she knocked. Seconds later, the door opened outward silently, and Enmity stepped into the most secure spot in Yanxubin. The walls were metal, and everywhere they were exposed, they shone from polish. Most of the walls, however, were covered in muted hangings—some of the most valuable works of art in Yanxubin, most containing her father's favorite words of wisdom, written in the characteristic swirling of Mandalorian script with sharp lines of punctuation. The floor had been tiled with dark reddish-gray clay tiles.

She did not know what the ceiling looked like, for she had never seen it. The room was dark, lit only by torches, and Enmity bent her head as she entered, took the requisite three steps forward, and knelt. Vendetta—she did not know his real name, and her family name was her mother's—approached and stood in front of her. She focused on his two-toed black boots.

"What have you to report?" he asked her, his formality archaic-sounding even to her ears.

"I scouted Mr. Yen's manor this morning, as you asked me," she replied. "I do not know what I was looking for or why I was there, but I saw only one thing of suspicion. Sub-Zero approached early in the morning, much before dawn, and entered the house. He was dressed in civilian clothing. I believe he is friends with the daughter of the house."

"Yes, he is."

"The house was quiet. It had some semblance of security, but nothing that would keep out anyone with any skill. Is there someone inside that we are to assassinate?"

"No, no, Enmity. It has come to my attention that it is time for the Lin Kuei to embrace technology."

She had been in training under and subservient to her father her entire life, and she still almost jerked her head up in surprise.

"Master?" she asked. "Respectfully, sir—"

"It is not," he said, sternly, "a daughter's place to question her father. It is not a student's place to question her teacher. It is not a servant's place to question her master. Why do you feel it is your place to question me?"

"No excuse, Master," she said quickly.

"Good," he said. "I wouldn't want to have to entrust my most necessary operation on someone else."

"I wouldn't want anyone else to have it, Master," she said.

"Good. I need you to know every aspect of Yen Sa's house. Every step in every person's routine. Every time they deviate. Every person they have contact with. Where everything is kept. And everything he is capable of."

"Is he a danger, Master?"

"Everything he is capable of technologically," he replied, as though she were stupid. "He is no more a threat than a de-clawed kitten." He laughed.

"Yes, sir," she said. "I will gather this knowledge for you. I will start now."

"No, no need for that," he said. "You may train first."

"Thank you, sir."

"You are dismissed," he said.

He turned and walked away, and she backed herself out of the door. She tried not to let her father's sudden interest in technology bother her as she hurried to her quarters. She had been in civilian clothing for too long.