She threw the dagger before she was even fully awake. It rebounded off the far wall and shattered on the floor, leaving a thousand tiny pieces glittering in the moonlight. For a moment she could only stare at the ice shards in surprise, but she didn't get a chance to mull over it.

"You're not that out of practice, are you?" Sareena asked with a low laugh.

"It's four a.m., give me a break," Frost moaned. She resisted the urge to toss something heavy now that she was certain of the she-demon's location, but it hardly seemed worth the effort. Besides, she did owe Sareena one, so she settled for flinging her pillow. "Why are you bothering me?"

Sareena feigned an innocent expression. "I just thought you'd appreciate a wake-up call. You wouldn't want to be late and disappoint the Grandmaster, would you?" She perched herself on the foot of the bed and examined her talon like fingernails. "At least not anymore than you already have," she added with a smirk.

With a loud sigh, Frost yanked the covers over her head. So the she-demon just wanted to needle her. Not that she was expecting anything else out of Sareena. "It doesn't take me an hour to get ready. Is there anything else?" As a teacher, she knew that the best way to deal with a bully was to avoid reacting at all. Don't give a bully a response and they will eventually grow bored and find another victim.

The sheets rustled and the entire bed moved as Sareena jumped up. "Well, if you don't want my advice, I'll leave you to your beauty sleep. You definitely need it."

Frost rolled her eyes. There was no doubt in her mind that she didn't want Sareena's advice, but it probably wasn't a good idea to alienate the only other person besides sifu who wanted to talk to her. And if there was anyone in the temple who knew of any tid-bits of info she should know, it would be the resident gossip-queen. She pulled the blankets down just far enough for her eyes to peek out. "What is it?" she asked, sharply enunciating every word.

"What is it?" Sareena parroted back. "You know, I'm just trying to help around here, but everyone keeps giving me shit.

"Here's an idea," Frost growled, "if you didn't wake people up at the ass-crack of dawn, they probably wouldn't throw things at you. So what exactly is so important that it couldn't wait until daylight."

"The best secrets are told in the dark," Sareena said with her predator's smile. "And I think you'll find these to be particularly pertinent."

"Pertinent? Did you have to look that up in the dictionary before you came here?" Frost was really beginning to regret not throwing Sareena out. "So what is so 'pertinent' to my morning training?"

"I'm sure you remember your little trip to the Netherealm, right?" Sareena waited until her audience was finished shuddering to continue. "And you remember our little fight before we escaped, and therefor our opponents."

"Yes, can you get on with it, please?" The sadistic glee with which Sareena was dragging it out was making Frost's stomach twist in uncomfortable ways..

"So you remember our opponents," Sareena didn't even bother waiting for a response this time. "Do you remember the little conversation we had about your sifu's family?"

For a moment, Frost's world came to a screeching halt as she connected the mental dots. "For the love of Christ, Sareena, please tell me you're not going where I think you're going with this." But the grin on the she-demon's face said it all.

"Never has the term 'black sheep' been more appropriate," Sareena continued. "I had seen Noob Saibot around the Brotherhood of the Shadow, but I never made the connection until I heard him speak. Quan Chi had gotten his revenge it seems."

Noob Saibot...It was an odd name, but she had no idea whether that was his real name or a pseudonym. So sifu's brother had been turned into some kind of demon. A demon that was quite happy to turn on his little brother and tear him into pieces. "Did the Grandmaster recognize him?"

The answer was so quick that Frost wondered if Sareena already knew what she was going to ask. "As easily as I did."

There was a long, uncomfortable silence as Frost pondered the idea. She was having trouble putting herself in her sifu's shoes. Plenty of people in her family had died while she was growing up, but she was fairly certain that none of them were going to come back as creatures of the darkness. "Sareena, what exactly does it take to become a demon? Aside from the whole dying and going to the Netherealm part."

"A history of cruelty and little or no remorse for your past transgressions," Sareena answered blithely. "Let's just say that the older Sub-Zero was one of the finest of the Lin Kuei. He had probably committed atrocities that you probably wouldn't even dream of and he didn't lose even a wink of sleep over them. It probably didn't help that he was an over-confident, self-congratulating bastard about it."

"He sounds like he was a great guy," Frost shot back sarcastically. "No wonder you seemed fond of him."

Sareena just shrugged. "I am a she-demon, after all." Her wicked smile came back. "But I didn't tell you the best part of all this."

"What, Sifu's daddy was a puppy-kicker and his mom ate babies?" Frost asked.

"I don't know about his mother, but his dad was just as bad as his offspring. But that's not what I was going to tell you. The cyber's name was Smoke, and he was also a former Lin Kuei."

"Sifu isn't really popular with the old school Lin Kuei, is he?" Frost observed.

"No, no he isn't. It seems that there was a movement a while back within the Lin Kuei to automate their members so they wouldn't have to worry about the whole 'conscience' and 'self-preservation' issues. A certain someone wasn't pleased with the 'soulless killing machine' idea and made a run for it when his number was up. So the former Grandmaster sent three cybers after Sub-Zero. Cyrax, who you know. Sektor, who I will bring up again in a minute. And Smoke, who was Sub-Zero's former best friend."

Frost winced. The more Sareena told her, the less she wanted to know. "So his brother and his buddy are both trying to kill him."

"It gets even better. Sektor was the Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei before Sub-Zero. After getting his shiny metal ass handed to him by your sifu, he formed his own clan of automated ninja. He's been gaining members rapidly from the ranks of the disgruntled Lin Kuei, whether they want to join or not. He plans to incorporate all the current members of the clan as well, right after he destroys the Grandmaster."

"So everyone is trying to kill Sifu." As sick as it sounded, she clung to her concise summary because the overload of information was making her head spin. "And you felt the need to tell me all of this right now, because...?"

"You wanted to patch things up with the Grandmaster, right?" Sareena spoke slowly to her like she were a three-year-old.

"Yes, but what does this have to do with me?" asked Frost.

"What was one of the last things Noob Saibot did?"

"I wasn't aware there was going to be a pop-quiz." But Sareena just glared at her. "Fine. He stole Shinnok's amulet."

"And what happened to him?" Sareena prompted her.

"He turned into a demon."

"Very good," Sareena said, ignoring the dirty look. "And who is Sektor and what is he doing?"

Even Frost's groggy brain could see where Sareena was leading her now. "A former Lin Kuei who is creating automated clan members from disgruntled Lin Kuei." Still, she let Sareena finish.

"And what does this have to do with you?"

"I'm an over-confident, disgruntled, former Lin Kuei with a displayed willingness to attack Grandmaster Sub-Zero, who stole an amulet, wound up in the Netherealm after 'death', and went missing for an extended period of time." She pulled the blankets back over her head. It was going to take forever to get back on Sub-Zero's good side.

"Sub was really worried that you'd turn up as a cyber," Sareena added. "I'm actually a little surprised that he didn't send a team out to drag you back here."

That makes two of us. "I expected one to show up at my door late one night. Although I was more concerned about being brutally murdered than being brought back here."

Sareena snorted. "With any other Grandmaster, you would have been eliminated within hours. Unless. of course, it was Sektor. Then you would have been automated." She seemed to be taking great delight in telling Frost what her fate could have been. "The only reason he probably didn't send a retrieval squad after you is he'd have to explain it to the other masters."

"So, no one else around here knows why I left?" Frost asked hopefully.

"Only those who Sub-Zero implicitly trusts...and those of us who are good eavesdroppers," Sareena smirked. "Apparently it's not usual for cocky little students to try and defeat their masters. It's just that you picked an extraordinarily inappropriate time and place to do it. An extraordinarily devious and brilliant time and place to do it, but inappropriate nonetheless."

The backhanded compliment took her completely by surprise. "Brilliant?"

"No witnesses, an entire realm to dump the body in, no way for the other Lin Kuei to find out until is was too late, element of surprise," Sareena ticked off the facts on her fingers. "I'm sure your sifu would be proud if it hadn't been humiliating for him and distressful to watch you turn yourself into an ice sculpture."

It was humiliating and distressful to be turned into an ice sculpture too. "Well, I had been planning it for awhile," she replied and stifled a yawn. If she kicked Sareena out now, she could probably sneak in another fifteen minutes of sleep. "So what was the advice you wanted to give me?"

"Don't do it again."

"What?"

"Don't do it again," Sareena said emphatically. "You were being groomed to follow in Sub-Zero's footsteps and if you hadn't been a greedy bitch, you would have gotten what you wanted with a hell of a lot less stress."

"Which isn't going to do me much good now," Frost said.

"That's where your sifu's most endearing personality traits and weaknesses comes in."

"And that would be?"

"His almost sickening belief in a person's ability to change and his willingness to forgive just about anything."