Transposition
by Nyohah
Chapter Thirteen
Smoke kept his eyes closed. He knew exactly where he was. He was sitting against the back wall of a cell on the lowest level of Lin Kuei headquarters in Yanxubin, China. His particular cell was almost directly underneath the pawn shop on the main road of town. He knew more than that, though. Had anyone ever asked him, he would have said without hesitation or the slightest sense of arrogance that he probably knew the Lin Kuei headquarters better than anyone else. It had once been a ship—the queen's private ship. The only other ninja who had known the ship as well as Smoke had was Vendetta himself, and he spent so much of his time in his own quarters that Smoke doubted he knew many details about the day-to-day use of the more open areas of headquarters. None of the younger generation of ninjas even knew anything about the headquarters' history as a ship, and most of them didn't have access to as much of the modern headquarters as Smoke did. His little cell had once been used solely to store rice and spices. It still had a noticeable, distinct smell. The room Vendetta had claimed as his own had once been the queen's quarters. The Lin Kuei ceremonial room had once been the bridge. He knew all of the uses and relative dimensions of the rooms without thinking. Looking around gained him nothing.
Besides, it was usually too dark to see. Currently, it was too bright to see, because the door was open. If Smoke had opened his eyes, he might have seen three silhouettes in the doorway. Two of them were guards. One of them was talking to him.
"Did you hear me?" Vendetta demanded. "I said I had news for you."
Smoke didn't answer. A few seconds later, he heard a rustling. It was a very familiar rustling to him—the sound of Vendetta pulling his arm back in preparation to administering a blow. Smoke took the second he knew he had to consider his situation and decide he would rather not be both a prisoner and in pain.
"Oh, I don't know," he said slowly, intentionally feebly, just in time to stay Vendetta's backhand. "Sitting in the dark in here, I lose track of the time, the place, and everything else. I probably don't know enough of what is going on that your news will make sense to me anymore."
"You've been down here less than a day," Vendetta answered.
"No," Smoke said, faking disbelief. (It was about an hour and a half before noon.)
"Yes," Vendetta said. "You have far more than enough comprehension to benefit from my news. I must say I am less than surprised that you are cracking up already, Hua Sa."
Hua Sa. Vendetta had given him the old suffix of the slaves. Smoke had been a slave in all but name when Vendetta had trained him as a ninja, but he had never been formally given a slave's title. And now Vendetta had given him the title wrong. It should have been Quy Sa, or perhaps Ling Sa. If they were called by their family names, then his wife would've been Kei Sa, daughter of Kei Sa, son of Kei Sa, and that was a ridiculous naming scheme. Smoke stifled a laugh, masking it with a fretful groan as he began to speak again.
"Oh, well, if that's the case, I guess I'll have your news, then."
"My daughter—" said Vendetta, taking a step closer, "—you know my daughter, don't you?"
Smoke nodded exaggeratedly. He knew the point of her right boot more than anything.
"She was just at the Lis' earlier this morning."
Smoke heard another, less familiar rustle, and the brightness of the light on his eyelids increased. Vendetta had knelt beside him.
"Now you would tell me that there were no Lis there this morning, wouldn't you?" Vendetta asked, discomfortingly close.
Smoke shook his head.
"And you would not be intentionally lying to me. All holed up at Yen Sa's, aren't they?" Vendetta slapped the floor. "But there was in fact a Li at the Lis. Now," Vendetta said slowly, "can you guess who that Li was?"
Smoke swallowed hard.
"He was a pupil of yours—and a family friend," Vendetta said lightly. "We all thought him dead."
"Sub-Zero?" asked Smoke, having to fake the dim-wittedness in his voice but not the shock.
"Yes," Vendetta snarled suddenly, "and I suppose a loyalist like you would like to crown him prince!"
"He was your best," Smoke said. "Wouldn't you be glad to see him?"
"I'd be glad to see him dead, with the other three lined up in a row beside him." Vendetta stood up, blocking most of the light from the door, and took a step backward. "Open your eyes," he hissed.
Smoke did as he was asked. Vendetta had turned a remarkable shade of red—nearing purple, really.
"Do you understand yet?" Vendetta asked.
"I've thought for long, arduous hours and reasoned that you probably aren't striving for the good of mankind, given that you kidnapped me," Smoke said, dropping the act. "And this is only tangentially about the Lis."
"Oh, really? How so?"
"I won't argue that you haven't taken pains to incorporate harming the Lis into whatever it is you've been planning," Smoke said. "Reviving the Lin Kuei was a blow to everything Ming and her brother worked for. Forcing their eldest son into your service was another." Smoke ticked off both points on his fingers, then sighed. "Shall I continue with this tiresome account of your actions?"
"Please do."
"Very well," Smoke said. "Getting their oldest son killed must have seemed a masterstroke. How inconvenient that he appears to be alive after all."
"Yes," Vendetta snapped. "Hurry up."
"I am just being thorough. After their eldest son appeared to be dead, you made claims on their other son, even though at the time he was recovering from a nearly deadly sickness. That was possibly your harshest blow yet. Though nothing next to what would have happened if he had followed in his brother's footsteps and died in Mortal Kombat. Seeing him return must have been frustrating."
"Well," Vendetta said, "I attribute that to your tutelary gift."
"Then you misattribute it," Smoke answered. "But now, you've set yourself as ruler in Ming's stead and general in place of Wei Yong? The capstone of twenty-five years of insult to the Lis in the name of the common good. I really had to explain that to you?"
Vendetta laughed once. "You just argued the opposite of your position, Hua Sa. It would seem the Lis are central to my plan, not tangential. "
"It would," Smoke said, "And yet, you know where they are, and you're here talking to me."
Vendetta snorted. "You're the fastest way to the Lis in this town—no, don't protest. Yen Sa is too well-connected in the business world not to be cared about if he suddenly disappeared. But you're right. It's not about the Lis, or perhaps I should say, it's not solely about the Lis. I'm fighting a much larger battle."
"I think it would be considered a war," Smoke said.
Vendetta kicked the side of his head. Smoke's head turned as he fell, and his face hit the ground hard enough to start his nose bleeding.
"Very well, then," Vendetta spat, then calmed suddenly. "A war. An eternal war. I gave them Mandalore, and now I'm going to give them Earth."
Smoke's teeth clenched, and he inhaled involuntarily, snorting up blood. "I had no idea it went back that far," he forced through his teeth.
"I chose my side before you were even born," Vendetta said, "following our great Emperor Yuen. Whom you, as I recall, let be killed!" He kicked Smoke again, this time in the stomach.
Smoke wheezed. "This is revenge?" he managed. "You're still angry that you didn't get me executed?"
"No, no, dear Hua Sa," Vendetta said. "You will pay your debt, but with service, not with death."
Smoke wiped blood off his face. "You think a 'loyalist' is going to turn traitor with you?"
Vendetta laughed. He turned around, clapping his hands together. "My daughter can kidnap an old ninja; she can kidnap anyone. Scientists, from Yen Sa's business. Specialists in robots and neurobiology in the cargo bay, setting up a premier laboratory for researching the possibilities of uniting the two. We're going to explore the augmentation and control of the central nervous system with robotics and see if it can't just solve the eternal problem of discipline on the battlefield."
Smoke stared at him. Prolonged contact with Yuan had apparently rubbed off on him more than he thought, because he understood at once what Vendetta was saying. "You're making robots out of people?" His voice came out in a disbelieving monotone.
Vendetta smiled under his mask, the skin around his eyes wrinkling. "We're starting tonight."
"Do you think we lost them?" Biao Ying Xi asked as Sub-Zero pulled the horse to a stop on a dirt road west of Yanxubin.
Sub-Zero turned the horse around, inspecting the field behind him. "I'm not sure they made much of an effort to follow us," he said, sliding off the horse. "They certainly didn't try to follow us on horseback."
Honor shook its head.
"She must have gone back for orders," Sub-Zero muttered, turning slowly to take in his surroundings. "Back where I started."
"Oh?" Ying Xi asked, still perched on the horse. "You came from the west? Where have you been?"
Sub-Zero looked at her for a moment. "A long way from here," he said. "But, yes, I came from the west this morning."
"Well, it's good for us, now, to be back here," Ying Xi continued.
Sub-Zero raised his eyebrows at her.
"We can go around town instead of through it," she said.
He stared at her.
"To get to Mr. Yen's. To find your family." She paused. "You were looking for them this morning, right?"
"Oh, of course," Sub-Zero answered quickly. "They're at Mr. Yen's?"
"Where else would they be? Oh," she added, digging in her pocket. "I work there. If they've noticed what's going on and locked it up, I have a key." She held up what looked more like a piece of plastic.
"Right."
=Is it Yen Sa she talks of?= Honor asked.
"Yes," Sub-Zero said. "Off to Mr. Yen's, then?" He stepped up to the horse's shoulder and gently guided it forward.
"Nei Jen?" Ying Xi asked.
"What?"
"You're kind of more talkative than you used to be."
Sub-Zero sighed, and kept walking.
Kitana raised her hands above her head in surrender, watching the nomad captain warily. "I won't just quietly let you kill me," she said. "I am well-trained in fighting—"
The captain snapped his fingers, and Kitana felt someone grab and squeeze the back of her neck. The nomad behind her pushed on her neck until Kitana hunched over.
"We're not going to do it here," the captain said scornfully. Kitana watched through the hair falling into her face as the captain turned and broke the semicircle, Plus-Sign still at his side. The rest of the nomads followed him in a loose clump, and Kitana walked in the middle of the group, humiliated.
The wound on her stomach burned when they finally stopped in front of a line of tents outside of town. The nomad soldiers formed a semicircle alongside the tents, and Kitana was pushed to the center of it. The nomad holding onto her neck released her with a short push, and Kitana straightened herself to see the captain standing a body-length in front of her. Plus-Sign had disappeared.
"Welcome to camp," said the captain, giving her a short bow. The nomads behind Kitana laughed.
Plus-Sign emerged suddenly from a big tent to Kitana's left. He was holding a flat, square board with a sheaf of paper attached to it by a ring. He took his place beside and just behind the captain, flipping through sheets of paper until the one on top of his board was blank. Kitana squinted at the paper hanging off the back of the board and was startled to see tiny, neat Edenian writing next to what looked like endless columns of numbers. Plus-Sign noticed she was looking and raised his pen with an almost belligerent cock of his shoulders.
"Who wants to go first?" asked the captain.
"Definitely me," one of the nomads on Kitana's right growled.
"You went last time," Plus-Sign said.
"No, I didn't."
Plus-Sign flipped back a page on his board. "No, you definitely did."
"You trust those scribbles more than me?" asked the soldier.
Plus-Sign slammed the blank sheet back on top. "They're my scribbles," he replied with the hint of a threat in his voice.
"But it was unarmed," the soldier said.
"Doesn't matter," the captain snapped. "You want to be ordered like Kahn orders, go to the palace. You want a turn you have to give everyone else a turn." He paused a moment, cocking his head at Kitana. "I'll do it."
Plus-Sign made a note.
"Do what exactly?" Kitana asked, forcing herself not to back up.
The captain held up his arms, and the metal blades embedded in them slid out.
"What sort of weapon would you like, Miss Fighting Expert?" asked Plus-Sign. "And how would you like to be known in the records?"
Kitana stood up straight, flexing her arms. A fight she could handle; injured or not, she was still a Mortal Kombat survivor. "You can call me Kitana," she said. She reached into her robes with her right arm and pulled out her fans, tossing one into her left hand and flicking them open in one smooth motion.
Plus-Sign stopped writing abruptly. The captain froze.
One of the nomads to Kitana's left shouted, "Hey, this is the best prize we've ever had!"
"Don't be stupid," snapped the captain.
"Isn't she supposed to be wearing blue?" asked Plus-Sign. "And a mask?"
"I traded my clothes last night," Kitana said.
The captain laughed. "Why would you trade your pretty clothes for that thing?"
"I traded my clothes for bandages," she replied, carefully pulling her robe open just at her stomach. She was pleased to see that her bandages had an impressive red stain. "And I would have preferred not to be recognized."
The captain suddenly took a step forward and jerked his arm toward Kitana's neck. Kitana dropped her robe and tried to swing her fans up fast enough to block the blow. She knew as soon as she began that she wouldn't make it in time. She closed her eyes.
The metal against her skin was surprisingly cool and surprisingly gentle.
Kitana opened her eyes.
"What sort of a mission are you on?" the captain demanded, holding his arm-blade to her throat.
"I'm not on a mission," Kitana said. "I'm running away from the palace."
"And we're expected to believe that?"
"I am the princess of Edenia," Kitana said. "Shao Kahn murdered my parents and lied to me for years. I found out. I helped the Earth warriors invade the palace yesterday. They know. So I ran."
"The Earth warriors invaded the palace?" Plus-Sign asked.
"Only to rescue a prisoner," Kitana said. "At which they succeeded, with my help."
"Interesting story," said the captain.
"How do you think I got injured?" Kitana said.
"If she was injured in the palace," Plus-Sign said quietly, "she would stay there for treatment. If she was injured out here, she would go back, not further out."
"Close those fans," the captain said.
Kitana flicked them shut.
"Now hand them to Djurash, pointy end last, if you will."
Plus-Sign put his board under his arm and stepped forward to take the fans from Kitana.
The captain removed his blade from Kitana's neck. "Into the tent with Djurash." He pointed his arm blade to the big tent in the middle.
Plus-Sign politely lifted the flap of the tent, and Kitana stepped into it.
It seemed a much longer walk around Yanxubin than through it. Sub-Zero was fairly certain it actually was a longer walk, but he had never been very knowledgeable about geometry. His brother could have written him a formula. It also seemed a longer walk than it was, as both Ying Xi and Honor kept making irrelevant comments. He had come to expect it from Honor, but he remembered Ying Xi as a quiet girl. Maybe she was still panicked.
It was just past noon, and he thought they were almost halfway to Yen Sa's house, making terrible time. He probably would have been there already if he were by himself, but the horse was tired, and Ying Xi didn't really know how to ride, so they kept taking breaks. It was their third break, and Sub-Zero was ready to tell Ying Xi that if it hurt so much to ride a horse, they would make better time if she walked.
She was picking flowers in the brush by the side of the road. He decided she wasn't still panicking, but she might have entirely cracked.
=Li Nei Jen!= Honor attempted a whisper. It felt like the inside of Sub-Zero's skull was being scraped.
He jumped. "What?"
"I didn't say anything," Ying Xi said, standing up and shielding her face from the sun with the hand that wasn't full of flowers.
"Oh," Sub-Zero said. "It's, uh, so quiet I must be hearing things." He waited until she turned her attention back to the bushes, then cocked his head and glared at Honor.
=Someone comes.=
Sub-Zero whirled. They were well outside of town—a mile or two too far for anyone to be out here on their everyday business.
"Are they close?" he demanded.
=Yes,= said Honor.
He turned back to Ying Xi. She was looking at him as though he were the one who had decided to start picking flowers. "It wasn't you I heard," he explained. "Get back on the horse."
She hurried over to the grazing horse, flowers in hand, and began to ineffectually try to pull herself up.
He rushed over to her. "Drop the flowers!" He hit them out of her hand, then grabbed her by the waist and pushed her up. His urgency spooked the horse, which reared before taking off down the road, trampling Ying Xi's flowers as it went. Sub-Zero caught Ying Xi as she tumbled backward off the horse.
She squealed helplessly, staring at the horse, as he walked back across the road to the brush. Holding her by the waist, he lifted her as he had to push her onto the horse and tossed her over the bushes. She stumbled and fell to her hands and knees in the grass on the other side as he leapt over the bushes.
"Come on, and be quiet," he ordered, pushing her underneath the brush. He wiggled his way in beside her and waited, staring at the road in front of him.
Three minutes later, a pair of female boots stepped into his field of view. He struggled not to make a sound as he breathed in sharply. In a moment, his tension turned to confusion. The boots were brown, not black, and round-toed instead of two-toed like Lin Kuei boots. He arched his neck uncomfortably to look upward. The woman's legs were tightly clothed in dark brown leather and went on for far too long. He finally found her waist and saw a ribbon of exposed copper skin before more brown leather girding her torso. He inched forward so he could find her head—she was taller than he was—and jolted in surprise when he saw she was wearing a full-size pair of antlers.
She jerked her head toward him and looked down. He had rustled the bushes. He watched her take another step forward, then lean down and drag Ying Xi out of the bushes in one smooth motion.
Ying Xi shrieked, and the antlered woman grabbed her around the neck.
Sub-Zero burst out from under the bushes and tackled the antlered woman. She hit the ground on her side and bucked, trying to put him underneath her. He grabbed her bicep with one hand and one of the antlers on her head with the other, struggling to force her onto her back. To his surprise, she slipped her head out of the antlers—he saw too late they were tied at the base of her skull instead of under her chin—and he began to fall forward. Before he hit the ground he was tackled from the side.
He landed hard on his back, but his new assailant was much smaller than the first, and he tossed her off of him almost as easily as he tossed Ying Xi. He caught a glimpse of a woman with similar coloring and attire as the first as she kicked her legs, trying, but failing, to keep from landing on her back. He threw his arms back in preparation to leap to his feet, but the sudden, unwelcome sensation of something pointy under his chin made him freeze.
The tall woman was standing over him, holding her antlers in her hand, the tip of one of them pressed against his throat with the perfect amount of force to communicate that she could punch it all the way through his trachea if he gave her reason to.
The other woman stood up, brushing dirt off her arms. She spoke to the taller woman in a language Sub-Zero couldn't identify.
The taller woman pulled the antlers away from Sub-Zero's throat, taking a step back and settling them back on her head. Sub-Zero slowly climbed to his feet, taking care not to startle the two women. He looked down the road and saw that the two women were not alone. A third woman stood docilely in the middle of the road, large, dark sunglasses on her face and a scarf falling out of her white hair. The shorter woman turned suddenly and began to walk toward the white-haired woman.
The taller woman spoke sternly in fair English. "You understand me?"
Sub-Zero nodded.
"Why were you hiding to ambush us?" she demanded.
"It was a misunderstanding," he said slowly in his best English. "We were hiding from someone else."
"You look like one of them," the tall woman said, jabbing her finger back in the direction of Yanxubin.
Sub-Zero looked down at his ninja uniform. "I used to be, but not now," he said. "It's difficult to explain."
"Convenient."
"Look, I'm not wearing my mask anymore." He pointed to his mouth.
"It's true," said the shorter woman, pulling the white-haired woman by the arm. "All the others were masked."
Up close, the white-haired woman looked vaguely familiar to Sub-Zero. He couldn't stop staring at her.
"He's protecting me," Ying Xi said.
"And you're protecting her?" Sub-Zero asked, pointing to the white-haired woman.
She jerked in surprise, and the sunglasses slid down her nose and onto the road. The shorter woman ducked quickly to retrieve the sunglasses and slid them back onto the white-haired woman's face. But she wasn't fast enough. Sub-Zero saw the woman's eyes, and they were as white as her hair. Ying Xi gasped and took a step backward; she had seen them, too.
Sub-Zero gripped her by the elbow. The white-haired woman's eyes were not the reason he still stared. He did know her.
"We're trying to find my family," he said after a moment. "I think where they are, they're safe, at the house of a man named Yen Sa."
The white-haired woman did not react to the name.
"Mr. Yen's the most powerful man in town," Ying Xi said.
"He's one of the most powerful men in town," Sub-Zero amended, "and he's the only one who might be able to protect you from what the other one is doing with his ninjas."
"Mistral," said the shorter woman, "I think it's our best choice."
"Trust me," said Sub-Zero, watching the white-haired woman. "The people you want to see are there."
Yuan stood in Mr. Yen's kitchen doorway, staring at the trees behind the house, his head cocked. Something was off about one of the trees in the middle. He had thought it was the glass of the kitchen window playing tricks with his vision, but the problem was still there without the glass. It might be the sun at some weird angle casting that odd-shaped shadow beside—
"Yuan!"
He jumped. His father gave him a stern look. "You said you would only have the door open for a minute."
"Yes."
"It's been five." Li Wei Yong stood up. He pulled Yuan backward out of the doorway by the collar and shut the door, locking the deadbolt. "We have almost no defenses, but we have some, so don't just throw them away."
"Sorry," Yuan mumbled. He walked across the kitchen to hover in the doorway leading to the hallway instead. A few seconds later, he heard the stomping of heels on hardwood floors.
Chat rounded the corner and sprinted to Yuan. "There's someone coming!" she panted.
Yuan stood up straight. He heard a chair fall over in the kitchen behind them.
"How many?" asked Wei Yong, squeezing through the doorway.
"Five of them," Chat said, "and they look pretty tough. Come on!"
The three of them ran to the entryway. It was mostly dark, only a warm glow and some slivers of light penetrating the blankets they had hung behind all the glass. Yuan slipped under a blanket near the door and looked out at the five people who were approaching. He blinked in surprise, then ducked out from behind the blanket and opened the door, just to be sure.
"Yuan!" his father hissed.
Yuan laughed. "No, they're friends." He reached out an arm and beckoned the five warriors forward. They broke into a run and soon reached the door, filing into Mr. Yen's entryway and forming a loose semicircle.
"Well, we're here!" Kung Lao announced, spreading his arms. "And we're ready for Mortal Kombat!"
Chat nodded appreciatively. "What's that?"