Above the grandeur of the city, a large bird silhouette in black circled with elegance across the moon. Its wings stretched far and wide as its almost feminine shape etched with grace as it swooped down into the city. Rain could only admire the nature of Edenia's nights. Sat outside the pub with the man in the long black coat.
Adorned in a more casual attire, he was covered from shoulders to knees in a black kaftan robe made of velvet and silk, embroidered with purple and metal wires along the back and sleeves in the traditional Edenian arts and geometry. He wore a head covering of black silk that draped down his shoulders to protect from the cold night that would soon come as the moon would wane and wax from the coming clouds.
Beside him stood his brother, Taven, in black linen breeches, brown boots tied tight from toe to top with black suede laces and the breeches tucked in a casual black cotton shirt. He preferred his skin to breathe, his clothes to sway when not adorned in his combat leathers, though the long black coat of silk gifted by the brother beside him swayed with the pick of up of wind with poor resistance to the cold.
The pub behind them housed the rowdy Bo' Rai Cho, heard with others of Raiden and Fujin's chosen. This was a night of victory, and a night to forget.
Quiet, they bathed in the ambience of the city around them and the ruckus behind the two. Not much really needed to be said between the brothers, as Rain was still unsure how, and Taven seems more chiseled along the statue of his goals to reaching and defeating Blaze. He was much more like Daegon than any would admit.
Rain was jealous, not of the fate of Daegon and Taven bestowed by the ruins of their father, but that he knew his mother.
That was something that still wedged them apart, as Rain couldn't fathom the notion of bringing it up to the man birthed by the woman that sought his destruction.
The more his thoughts dwelled even as he calmly breathed and stared out into the city street that stretched a ways into a peaceful nothing, the more he began to ponder if this woman could even be found.
What was her name?
What did she look like?
Was she here in the city?
"You think too much." Taven broke the silence. "You should drink more."
Rain didn't respond. He let that statement hang in a dry pause. It would be so easy to say something nasty in the presence of Taven's mother Delia as she stood across the street from them.
Rain realized even as Taven stared directly through her, that he couldn't see her. It had to be the entity, the being that called itself the First Evil.
"Yeah, I'll join you then." Rain spilled and urged Taven back into the pub and dared not rise until he heard Bo' Rai Cho's great welcome of his brother.
He peered left and right and behind. No eyes upon him was best as he crossed the road to meet the illusion. He reached through her throat and clenched his fingers. Part of him wished it was Delia and he could kill her here and now with her own son just out of reach. Unfortunately it was the entity that chose instead to torment him day in and day out.
"Why do you appear like her?"
"You make small talk with my son? Do you think your blood is worth the dirt on his shoes?"
"Change!" He tried not to make a scene. If he could grab her and scurry to an alley, he would, but here the entity stood with all its power over him to force him out in the open and risk the others seeing him. They'd understand if they saw her, but instead they'd just see Rain rambling to himself.
Still, she obliged.
Sindel folded her arms and stared down Rain with the disappointment only a mother could have for her son. She reached for his robe, but her hand went through him just as his would through her.
"Pathetic." Sindel spat, "my daughter has neutered you."
"I am still Prince of Edenia, and the son of Argus."
"You do her bidding while she bathes in the palace with slaves tending to her every whim. Here you stand in the streets like a pauper?" She added, "that's not what I had planned for you."
"Well, you're not Sindel." Rain spat, crossed his arms and tried to pull the entity forth from the face it took. What was its true form? "What do you want?"
"Take Taven and seek out Daegon. Your powers will only increase together as one."
"This may be Edenia, and you may be a primal evil, but this is the the twenty-tens and that is clearly some obvious super villain tactics."
Sindel stared, blank, unsure of what to say or think.
"I've been exposed to some American culture by the combat kids. I like David Bowie and Prince."
Sindel stared blank into the expanse of Rain's eyes. Unsure how to respond, she could only wait for the stupidity to end.
"She won't choose you." Sindel urged as he shook her off. To see the apathy in him seemed to strike the entity deeper than it had anticipated. "She'll kill you when the time comes!"
He stopped at the center of the road and turned, a smirk etched across his face with utter disbelief and pity at the poor sight of the vile primal evil trying desperately to shake him.
"I'm going to go see how many drinks it takes to make you disappear. You can't touch anyone," he laughed, "basically impotent."
As his feet cross the threshold of the pub, she screamed that old hiss of the woman he knew Sindel to be in her great anger.
"Ignore me, and you'll never find your mother!"
Sure, the entity may know, but he realized that its power was controlling him with its words and influence. It had taken Daegon and however many others, but the best thing Fujin had taught him, and Bo' Rai Cho cemented into the skull of a once arrogant prick was to stop caring.
A loud scream echoed through the city. Close enough to bounce off the walls of the pub and stop all in their boots as the sound was that of a woman, but not just any.
Kitana's.
Rain bolted with Kung Lao and Taven into the main street and toward the guttural scream of the queen. As they narrowed several wide corners of the stone built city, Rain realized that great black bird of beauty was a monster.
In the ever darkened night around them under the clouded moon, only its eyes shined bright in their direction. A bright blood red, it shined back at the two half-gods and the men behind them. Kung Lao, and Bo' Rai Cho soon behind them, but none would take action with a dagger at Kitana's heart, and the free arm of the monster wrapped snug around the queen of Edenia.
"Kill her!" Kitana screamed and tried to jab her elbow into the winged beast's gut, but the grip was too strong.
Weaponless and only adorned in a long silken robe and boots, Kitana was in no position to fight back with the dagger through the fabric. It tucked between the second and third rib, ready to dive deep into the heart of Edenia, but the monster gave those that formed a circle around them a great scene to witness. As many eyes as possible to witness, even Reptile that waited on the rooftop to their left to lunge and swipe her wings.
"Nitara." Bo' Rai Cho identified her.
"Trade the half-gods for her." Nitara spat through jagged teeth.
"Reptile, kill her!" Kitana struggled, but her most faithful servant hesitated as the dagger pierced Kitana's flesh nearly an inch in and the blood began to drip and stain and pool. "My life means nothing compared to yours!"
Her eyes on the brothers, she demanded it of them, but they stood still.
Nitara held the dagger still. The flat of the blade and the sharpest point edged within and desperately sought the flesh of Kitana's heart, but her orders were strict.
Her wings tucked in, as large as they were, and gave herself up should any around her lunge for the kill or capture, but the demon had one ace in her sleeve.
Sindel emerged from the crowd and caught the eyes of all, but most importantly Kitana's.
"Mother, you're alive!" Kitana, shocked, forgot her resistance against the vampire.
"Its an illusion." Rain assured, but the people of Edenia could only see their former queen.
"I'm disgusted at how low you've let me and your father's kingdom fall." She grimaced and glared out at the eyes around her until back on Kitana's. "You've betrayed your own blood."
Rain watched on. The entity could choose who saw it and in this grandiose display he realized it was no impotent force when all of Edenia could fall to its knees before it should they believe the lies it feeds them with the right face.
"You've killed or let all of your bloodline die, Kitana. I'm just lucky to be back." Sindel reached for Kitana but pulled back before she could touch and then turned away from her toward the half-god brothers. "Prince of Edenia, you were once wise to question my daughter."
"No!" Kitana spat. Nitara held her tighter and the blade pierced her deeper at Kitana's own struggling effort. "My bloodline is not dead."
Sindel wanted to address Taven and Rain before the crowd, but instead turned. The face that etched across the creases and shadows of her vile expression was like a demon Kitana had never seen before in her own mother until the day Shao Kahn took her from them when all of this began many timelines before.
"You lie." Sindel knew and now Kitana would be forced to admit it to her own kingdom.
"I have a sister."
"Sister," Sindel laughed, "you have a sister? The Tarkatan half-blood construct made from the perverted dungeons of Shang Tsung? She is a monster, not family."
The Tarkatans hissed. Sindel would not win them over like this.
"Still," She noticed. "You abandoned her in Outworld because of the shame you feel in sharing blood with Tarkatan filth."
This pinned Kitana harder than the dagger had. If she could feel the razor sharp point poke at the outer wall of her heart it wouldn't hurt half as much as the sight of betrayal on the faces of the Tarkatan common folk. Who to believe? Kitana or Sindel?
"Listen to her not!" Rain intruded.
Now the entity could address him and Taven. Nitara pulled the dagger free and closed the wound with her dagger like nails as the other hand raised up to close Kitana's mouth.
"Edenia has changed for the worse under Kitana. You saw how she did as Kahnum of Outworld" Sindel addressed the crowd, then Rain and Taven, "but yet you have the children of the protector of Edenia groveling at her feet. Servants like all of you."
"She's an agent of the Red Dragon." Taven added, but his words were sunken beneath the crowd.
"Take me instead of her!" Rain approached.
A selfless act, but it only amused Sindel. The man child that toyed with her, now she would with him.
"You're right, I am not really Sindel." She then turned to the crowd as Jade emerged from the body of Sindel. "I am Kitana's best friend, and she has betrayed all of you like she did me!"
Jade then turned back to Rain, in the form of Argus, Protector of Edenia.
"Father?" Taven stepped forward, only to be pushed back by the Prince of Edenia.
"Your father is very angry, boys." He backed step by step toward Kitana and Nitara. "Tonight, Rain, Taven, if you don't do the right thing, then I'll make sure your mother's milk runs red."
Rain understood. With deep reluctance he grabbed Taven, bunched the silk at his chest and prepared to drag the two forward in exchange for Kitana.
"We'll come." He pleaded, "just let her go."
Argus sought the truth in his eyes and nodded.
"Very well."
The entity disappeared in the blink of an eye with Rain and Taven rushed through it to replace Kitana with them, but one problem was that Nitara couldn't carry both.
Instead, the vampire held tighter to the Queen of Edenia and lifted up with a great slap of her wings toward the crowd. Like a gun she shot into the air until all she and Kitana became was a distant black silhouette.
"Now boys," Argus leaned to his boys with a fatherly smile, "don't disappoint me."