A/N: So this is the first time I have written anything for Teen Wolf, so I hope people enjoy it! Also there's a lot of references to Mortal Kombat in this fic and for those that aren't familiar with Johnny Cage's story in particular, all the movie titles I used for him are on Johnny Cage's MK wiki page and the for the bit about him being like Peter is a reference to the games where Johnny is killed and brought back to life repeatedly. Once again hope everyone gets a good laugh outta this. I know I did writing it!
Disclaimer: I own no one from Teen Wolf or Mortal Kombat. If I did the sheriff would be a lot more badass than he is now.
Summary: After Stiles is saved from being werewolf food by his dad, he finally ends up spilling the beans about all the supernatural activity going on in Beacon Hills and winds up learning about a very interesting time in his dad's past.
Stiles had a feeling something was up. When he thinks back on it, he knew his dad had been becoming more suspicious lately about what he's been up to, what with the ritual sacrifices and the random Alpha attacks that were still going on in between said ritual sacrifices, he should have figured that at some point his dad would figure out a little more than Stiles wanted him to.
He just didn't think it would happen like this.
Stiles looked around frantically as he tried to look for any trace of Scott or Derek in the woods. He should have known that the Alphas would have been at the scene of the latest murder too, and that meeting had no chance of ending well. Derek had told him to run as soon as he got the first scratch from Kali's claws. Ethan decided Scott was his opponent for tonight and Stiles...
Well Stiles has spent the last ten minutes running from a bloodthirsty Aiden, who doesn't look like he's gonna quit until he's having roasted Stilinksi for dinner tonight. He could hear the growling and the thundering footsteps behind him and knew he had to come up with a plan, and quick.
"Shit!" Stiles hissed as he slid to a stop and saw the ravine below him. He hadn't realized where he had been going until it was too late and that was a tumble he definitely didn't want to take. The growling behind him had become louder and he turned to find the piercing red eyes and claws out and waiting for his victim.
"Come on man, you don't want kill me." Stiles held his hands up in a defensive position. "I mean, I'm only the brains of the operation, you really want the muscle and that way the brain can't do anything! Perfect logic right?!" His arms beginning to flail as Aiden start to walk towards him. "Okay maybe I'm not the brains, maybe I'm-"
"Will you shut up already?!" Aiden bellowed, "Part of me wants to kill you just so I don't have to listen to you ramble anymore!"
"If you don't want anymore rambling, I can do that." He makes the motion of zipping his mouth shut, "See this is me..." he watched as Aiden began charging quicker toward him, "...not rambling." He thought about his odds of surviving the fall into the ravine as he began to brace himself, but the hit never came.
Instead, he was treated to a sight that not even he could believe. He saw his dad of all people running towards Aiden, and before he could even get the words out to warn him, he had jumped into air, and with a trail of green shadows following him, he landed a solid kick to Aiden's chest. Which to increase Stiles' astonishment, sent the Alpha through a tree and into a field a good distance away.
"Damn, that hurt!" He said after he landed, rubbing his knee with a wince. He then ran over to Stiles and began checking him for injuries. "You okay son? I didn't think I would get here in time."
Stiles could feel his mouth moving but couldn't hear the words coming out, but he finally managed to splutter, "Wh—What the hell was that dad?!"
John looked over at where the boy had landed and saw him weakly moving around, "Apparently less damage than it used to do and watch your language Stiles."
"So you're really not going to give me an explanation about why my dad is suddenly strong enough to kick an alpha's ass?!" He shouted, flailing his arms around madly.
"Language son." He said absentmindedly as he watched to see if Aiden was gonna charge at them again. When they saw the wolf roar at them and begin to charge, Stiles watched as his dad shifted into a fighting stance and one of his hands began to glow a faint green, but then the loud howling drove him out of his stupor as he heard Aiden turn in the opposite direction to find rest of his pack.
"They're retreating dad." He said and quickly glanced back down at his hands again to see that they had returned to normal. "Come on! We have to find Scott and Derek and you have to tell me how you went all Jedi Master just now!"
John sighed as he led Stiles back toward where he had left the cruiser, "All right, but I'm not going to be the only one giving up secrets tonight." He said with a stern look at his son.
Usually in situations like these, there would be a tense silence accompanying their ride home, but not in the Stilinski family. The ride back to their house was filled with constant questioning. "Were you exposed to some kind of radiation, is that why your hands were glowing? Is this hereditary? Why didn't you tell me I could do that stuff?!"
John had been trying his hardest to keep the headache that had been building since they left the woods at bay, but even he could only take so much of his son's questioning. "STILES! I will explain everything when we get to the house, so just relax, please?"
A pout and a nod were all the reply he got. The rest of the ride passed smoothly, if it wasn't for the fact that the sheriff could hear the gears in his son's head turning. Something told him he was going to be in for a very long night.
"Soo..." John said slowly as he looked at Stiles, "Werewolves huh?" Derek and Scott had been waiting in front of the house when they returned and then had spent the next hour filling him in about the wolves, the hunters, the Alpha pack, and the Kanima or what his dad kept calling 'another reptile lizard warrior' whatever that meant.
"Yeah werewolves." Stiles said calmly. "You know I always figured you'd be much more surprised or shocked when I finally told all of this to you."
"Yeah well kicking one of those" he waved his hands as he tried to remember what Stiles had called them, "Alphas?" When the three boys nodded, he continued. "Yeah kicking one of those through the forest kind of lowers the shock value."
"Kinda a raised it for me."Stiles muttered.
John shot him a glance before before speaking again, "So this pack, are they behind these murders?"
"No." Stiles said with a sigh, "That would be the Darach."
"The Darach." John said with a nod. "Have we gotten to that part of the story yet?" With the three of them shaking their heads, he sighed. "Why am I not surprised."
"We'll get to it soon Dad. Right now I want know what you were doing being like something out of The Matrix in the woods tonight."
John sighed as he left the room and returned a few minutes later with a heavily locked box that Stiles hadn't seen since he was a kid. "Dad? What are you doing with that? You mean I'm finally gonna find out what's in the lock box of doom?!"
Derek had cuffed Stiles in the head before the sheriff could even open his mouth and he had to give him a nod of thanks before continuing with the long and seemingly endless, to Stiles anyway, task of unlocking and opening the box. When he was finally done, he started to take out a bunch of old videotapes, a few DVDs, an old yet completely intact pair of sunglasses, and a really old looking antique scroll.
Stiles was the first to touch anything, picking up the old videos and reading the titles before passing them on to the others, "Tommy Scissorfists? The Gist of My Fist? Ninja Mime?" He picked up another tape, had to do a double take as he read the title and looked incredulously at his dad, "HWAAAA!? Really dad what's going on here?"
"Hey that last one won me an Oscar, and please never mention Ninja Mime again. I still have people trying to kick my ass for that one, but what I could I do, that one definitely wasn't my idea." He said with a shrug, but before he could say anything else, twin gasps from Derek and Scott had turned all the attention in the room to the wolves.
This—This-This is impossible!" Scott exclaimed as he stared at the one of the covers in his hands. "This can't be real!"
"You're supposed to be dead!" Derek suddenly shouted. "You died in a freak accident while filming a movie at the Grand Canyon!"
"Derek, Scott" Stiles said with as much patience as he could, "Would you like to share what you know with the rest of the class? Beginning with why my dad is supposed to be dead?!"
Derek just gave him his patented 'you are such an idiot and I have no idea why I put up with you' look, but didn't answer him. "You really don't know who this is?!" He took the video in his hand and shoved it into Stiles' face, "Your dad is Johnny Cage! One of the biggest action stars ever! I mean people like Jean Claude Van-Damme and Chuck Norris came to Hollywood to be the next Johnny Cage!"
John chuckled at the praise, "Well I don't know about that, but thanks for the compliment."
"Wow." Stiles said in slight amazement and fear as he looked at the two of them. "I've never seen this side of you before Derek, it's a little unnerving. He then turned to his dad, "And you dad...Why didn't you tell me you were Johnny Cage?!" And this is what John was waiting for. "Me and Scott were the biggest fans on the planet!" He turned a quick glare at his dad, "Is this really why you really wouldn't let us watch any of your movies?! You told me they were too violent! That they would corrupt my mind!"
"It was for your own good Stiles." He tried to explain, "There were other forces at work here that I had to keep you and your mother safe from."
"Do you know how different my life could have been?! The fortune? The popularity? Half of my life wouldn't have happened if people knew my dad was a movie star and I mean that in the best way I possibly can!" Stiles grasped his dad by the shoulders and attempted to shake him, "You're supposed to tell me these things!" he shouted hysterically.
"Stiles, Stiles! Calm down son." he said as he pulled Stiles' hands away from his shoulders. "Can we move on from the me being a movie star thing. There are a few more important things that I need to tell you." He reached for the scroll and handed it over to Stiles. "This is part of the forces that I was trying to protect you from."
Stiles, Scott and Derek all stared at the scroll in confusion. There was nothing but Chinese characters on it and a drawing of a dragon in the corner. "Dad I hope you know, there isn't a beginners Chinese course offered at school."
"Yeah I know that son." He paused as he figured out how to say this next piece of information, but he figured there was no use in beating around the bush with something like this. "Now... that scroll is an invitation to the Mortal Kombat tournament, held once every generation."
Scott blinked slowly, "You mean like the movie Mortal Kombat that-"
"You starred in that spawned two sequels and a video game franchise-" Derek continued.
"That you would never buy for me?! Are you trying to tell me all of that really happened?!" Stiles shouted, his voice beginning to reach the hysterical level again.
John had pinched the bridge of his nose to keep the oncoming headache at bay and said calmly. "Stiles can we please move past all of the movies and games I wouldn't buy you because they were either based on me or I starred in them." He took another breath and began again, "Now Mortal Kombat is a real tournament and every rule and occurrence in that movie actually happened except for a few artistic liberties." he said a bit sheepishly.
Now it was stiles' turn to furrow his brow, "What kind of artistic liberties?"
"Well..." he said a bit hesitantly, still wondering if he should give his son this much information, "I had kinda...well died...for a little while."
The room was stunned in to silence as they all processed this new information. Stiles instantly ran over to his dad and hugged him tightly. "This is another one of those things that you're supposed to tell your son!"
John rubbed his back soothingly, in hopes of keeps Stiles calm. "Son it was a short mystical death, well how I died wasn't mystical except maybe it was since I was killed by a centaur, but" he waved his hand dismissively "That's not important. What is, however, is the fact that because of what was going on at the time my soul was stuck on Earth and eventually placed back in my body after being resurrected multiple times."
It was Scott that asked the next question considering that Stiles didn't want to let go of his dad anytime soon. "Uh-huh. You were kind of like Peter then, with the whole dying and coming back to life thing then." Another thought struck him. "Why wasn't that made into a movie? All of your other Mortal Kombat adventures were."
Derek just shook his head and John looked at him and snorted. It was then that Stiles could see a bit of the rumored Johnny Cage cockiness in his dad, which he had to admit was really weird yet very amusing as he said, "Oh believe me they tried and almost did too, but really, who wants to watch a movie where the main character dies a bunch of times! If I hadn't been called away again for another threat to Earth that film coulda ruined me!"
Yup, the Johnny Cage in him was coming out Stiles thought bemusedly. When Derek spoke to ask his dad a question, Stiles could only hope it was nothing like Scott's. "So what happened with the threat to Earth?"
"Well my friends and I managed to win, barely, but the beings we beat weren't exactly happy about it. I actually thought when all of this stuff started happening that they had came back for a bit of a rematch. While I had never let my training go completely, I'd increased it just in case Johnny Cage had to make a sudden appearance" He looked at Stiles fondly, "Like tonight."
"And why you say them you mean Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung right?" Derek asked.
When the rest of the room turned to look at him strangely, he couldn't help but look sheepish, "I have all of the Mortal Kombat's hidden in my loft." he admitted softly. When he couldn't hold the stares any longer, he glared at Stiles and Scott and shouted, "Don't judge me!" Before turning away from them.
John was left a little speechless, but continued with his story. He went back over to the chest and pulled out a photo, taken during one of the few times of piece that they had. Liu was in the middle with Kung Lao standing on his left and he and Sonya on his right with Jax standing behind them. He handed it to Stiles and Derek and Scott peeked at it over his shoulders.
"The last threat I fought in was right after you were born and I knew I had to make a choice. There was a multitude of heroes that Earth had to defend it and many that were much more powerful than me. I had a family now and I needed to protect you and your mother."
"So what did you do?"
"I made my choice. I told Raiden, he was our mentor as well as the Thunder God and protector of the Realm of Earth, unless there was some threat that he absolutely needed me for, to not contact me because I had a family to protect. Surprisingly, for a God, he understood and did as I asked. I still see them all from time to time and they let me know what's going on, but they respect my wishes."
"So how do you explain going from famous movie star to small town sheriff?"
John had to chuckle at his son's single mindedness. "Your mother and I agreed that you deserved to have a normal life and so Johnny Cage mysteriously disappeared during a movie shoot n and deputy John Stilinski was born."
"Sooo..."Stiles tried innocently, "All the money and royalty fees?"
John just shook his head in exasperation, "College fund and charity Stiles. I also keep some of it around if we ever need it."
"So am I going to go to the bank one day when I'm like 30 and find out I have an entire vault of money at my disposal?"
"We'll see son. We'll see. You'll have to wait until you're thirty to find out." John said with a chuckle.
"Does that mean you'll be helping us out with the Alpha pack?" Scott asked.
John hesitated. After what happened tonight, it showed that his powers were still strong enough to handle any threat that Beacon Hills could throw at him, but he knew what would eventually happen if he got involved in this. He promised Claudia that he wouldn't let anything happen to Stiles and he was going to keep that promise.
"I'm not going to be on the front lines with you guys, that wouldn't end well for any of us, but if you guys ever need my help, I'll do what I can."
As he began putting all of the videos and mementos back in the box, he could feel Derek's eyes on him and turned to the wolf with a sigh. He would have never thought that Derek Hale of all people would be such big fan of his movies. He was slightly surprised that he hadn't figured out who he was way before now. "You want me to say it don't you?"
Scott and Stiles looked on curiously as John just shook his head and Derek looked like he was torn between actually smiling and widening his eyes enough so that they would pop out of his head. While they had been some of Johnny Cage's biggest fans, the fact that John would never let them see any of his movies kind of limited their knowledge of his famous movie quotes, but apparently not Derek's. They watched as John put his sunglasses on the table and glared at Derek like he stole something as he spoke one of the most epic lines of his career.
"Those were 500 dollar sunglasses asshole!"