Hidden within the province of the Eastern Country, the Shaolin Monastery buzzed like a batted hive. Orange and white bees danced agitated across the temple grounds. Each of them disturbed and quiet about it, but as Skarlet peered through the circle window in her quarters, she could see the hive minded her stay like a bear in the bees nest.
Adorned in older orange robes, her feet in white tabi and black wraps to protect from the grounds, she almost blended in, save for her gender. They were baggy on her, didn't quite fit, but she would complain about the small comfort of clothing.
Since she had been brought in by Taven, she had not seen any of them for three days. Not Taven, not Havik, nor Raiden himself. Alone in this room she refused to leave and rice was slipped between the crack of the sliding door for her, for the monks refused to speak with her.
She believed they would starve her if it weren't for the fear of the Thunder God, or perhaps even a fear of her.
Not a word had been spoken to her since, but she could feel the grumble ripple through the chests of the monks at the monastery. The quiet almost maddened her until on the fourth morning the sliding door creased across the floor and Raiden appeared.
Straw conical hat, old robes, ever the pauper before the monks, he was modest, but kind to her at least.
He found a seat at the center of the room and urged her with a gesture to join him. Not to disrespect, she sat across from him, but her discomfort with all of this rippled as loudly through her body as it did with the monks.
"Why am I here?"
Raiden's eyes were shadows by the hat. She could only see his lips and chin and they twisted and screwed in thought ever so slightly like a worm that was careful to choose its next step.
He lifted his head to look into her eyes and scan her face, her long black hair and then tilted his head down as he spoke.
"I am not aware of the reasoning of your sudden return, but I am deeply disturbed by it." He went on to reach for her, a hand out, no electricity, just flesh and the need to touch the dead living. "Please."
She obliged and rested the back of her hand in his palm. Her pulse raced and her blood coursed like a waterfall.
"It is all right, Skarlet. I am not here to kill you again." He added, "but I am not sure yet how to approach this."
"Do you think it was a sorcerer? Quan Chi?"
"Quan Chi's energy has been destroyed by my brother. Shang Tsung is the only culprit, but he's is under the careful eye of a dear friend and does not have the power to do this."
"Scorpion?"
"It is true that the specter known as Scorpion, like Quan Chi, could corrupt the dead. Is he the one that killed you?"
She had to think about this. Her hand recoiled back to her lap and she watched the last fleeting memories flash in her mind like an abstract painting barely pieced together with the faded images that still haunted her.
A construct formed from the blood of Tarkatans and Princess Kitana had killed her. She remembered the face, the eyes so much like Kitana's and yet its maw wide and covered in blood, and her flesh.
That's all she could remember. The battle was a rush of blood to the head and so much done in such quick succession that she had little time to think or react. Her emotions had gotten the better of her, then nothing.
"Mileena." She uttered, and then dwelled on that feeling of darkness that had taken her. No after life, no heaven or hell, not even pain or thoughts. She was encompassed by nothing. "I think."
"That rules him out, little he could do about it anyway."
"I don't understand."
"Neither do I, but one thing I do know is that you're not meant to be alive."
He stared back at her, his eyes white and the occasional sizzle of electricity flashed between them. She wasn't sure how to take this, but she wouldn't disagree with it.
Skarlet seized up, unable to respond to this, unable to formulate any concept of how to follow this sentence.
She should not be alive.
It didn't mean, however, that she wanted to die again.
"Would you come with me to Outworld? To speak with Kotal Kahn and try to better understand this?"
"Kotal Kahn?"
He flashed before her eyes. Another painting that melted in her mind of his face and the creature he had become. So flush with anger and grief. If it hadn't been the Earthrealm warrior she had forgotten, Kotal Kahn would have killed her. Either way fate had her number at the Mortal Kombat Tournament fifteen years ago.
"I guess." She nodded, unsure if she had a choice at this point.
"It is either that, or I take you to the Special Forces, but considering your history, it would be easier to deal in Outworld, than serve in prison."
She was convinced by Quan Chi. Assured by Kotal Kahn. Pressured by Rain. Not a single ally among them in her final moments, and yet all she sought was to show them that she mattered. To who now though? She wasn't sure if she even mattered to herself.
Raiden must have sensed her thoughts, for she realized he would only respond when she'd answer, and did not order her, did not assert her actions, nor what would happen to her. She felt as long as it was with him, she had a choice, she had a moment to breathe.
"I can't stay here." She acknowledged.
"Though you have been given a second chance, your past still consumes you. I cannot ask the Monks to bear your burden another night. We will leave after I have spoken with Master Hanzo Hasashi about another matter. Then, I will take you to–" He paused as she answered for him.
"Outworld."
"Outworld it is."
The day moved as slow as the stones weighted in the nearby river she could hear gently rumble across the temple grounds. With an option now opened to her, she felt the urge to breathe, to wander, to understand.
The Monks stared as they passed her when she chose to leave her quarters. Past the forest gate, lined by a row of bamboo, she passed the threshold outside of the Shaolin Monastery and into the forest to follow the sound of the river. She moved south west and followed the stones, the dirt, and the forest curves until that ripple and gentle cadence of running water greeted her with a pristine river that cascaded downhill to the nearby village unseen beyond the forest.
Under the still sun she could feel its warmth radiate her flesh and sting her blood with positive energy. It wasn't like Kotal Kahn, but somewhere within her presence of blood magic still coursed through her.
She crossed her legs and rested her hands on her knees as she sat on the smoothest boulder by the river she could find to relax, to meditate, to find herself somehow in her thoughts.
She tried to understand the events that lead to her death. Her fights with Kotal Kahn and Rain. The incessant weaving of Quan Chi's plans through everyone's hair and trying to tie it all together like a spider's web. She never trusted anyone other than Kotal Kahn and as his face appeared clearer to her, begged for him to accept her as she appeared now.
He remembered what it felt like as the Earthrealm warriors tried to rush the platform after she had slain the bootlicking blonde's partner. The woman Raiden certainly meant when he spoke of the Special Forces, whatever that was. She had no true knowledge of them, and understanding of how they operated. Only Raiden's most recent actions with her, and even then, she was unsure how to take it, how it would all unfold.
She had meant to find or fight, or do something that would have assured some goal in her head at the time. She wanted to rush the palace, but she forgot why. Everyone wanted to, for someone or some thing inside. Quan Chi perhaps? Shang Tsung? Was it Raiden and his Earthrealmers or maybe Kotal Kahn?
Whatever anyone else's purpose, she remembered that the only feeling she held so tightly to her chest was anger, grief, and the need to be accepted. The construct Shang Tsung had created out of her blood before moving to Kitana's was the only thing she remembered had accepted her, but that too was a fleeting moment in her past.
Her hand felt wear Mileena had tore into her and fatally wounded her. No scar, no blood and no evidence remained of that moment. Just the memory.
Finally, she remembered as the world began to blur and her mind faded and misfired that she thought she saw Shang Tsung stand over her. The world was filtered in red as she had been covered in her own blood, though it didn't register until this moment, she thought it was the process the death.
Shang Tsung did something to her before it darkness took over and the light of her conscious permanently turned off.
Except, her death wasn't permanent.
Her eyes opened and the moon awaited her above. Crescent and bright it cast an image across the water.
She had fallen asleep in her meditation.
"You were always hard to read." A deep voice disturbed her rest.
Startled, Skarlet nearly fell from the boulder and into the river. She braced and turned to find the white painted sorcerer Quan Chi. The black lines along his eyes and the dot, the spikes on his shoulders and his baggy clothing.
"Raiden said you were gone." She couldn't believe it.
"Who are you going to listen to? Thunder God, or your eyes?"
She pulled herself from the stone and approached. She wanted to strike him, to bleed him and use that blood to stab between his ribs, but she refrained.
"You want to know why you're back?" He approached her instead and even reached out to her. She would not take his hand.
He cruised slowly around her, his hands hovered over her flesh, but never touched. She could feel no warmth, nor cold from his presence, just nothing but his voice.
"I brought you back." He answered her thoughts.
"Why? How?"
"You don't need to know."
She reached for the sorcerer, to tug him in front of her to demand an answer, but her hand felt like it just waved through the air.
Skarlet turned fast.
Her hand struck through him with a quick action.
Nothing!
She felt nothing as her hand pierced through him with no touch and response from Quan Chi. Startled, she staggered back.
"Freeze, Hostile!" The blonde bootlicker knelt before her, gun in hand and trained between her eyes.
The man she murdered for Quan Chi and Kotal Kahn. She had forgotten his name, assuming she ever heard it.
"One more move and I'll put a bullet in your skull." He clicked the gun.
Unsure, she froze. This was getting to be a bit much for her, and her flight response kicked in. Unable to use her blood magic, she couldn't fight back, but she could run.
A mad dash, she used that rush of blood to the head to turn and scramble through the trees.
The ground hissed as her feet crumbled beneath her to stop before Goro, the large Shokan Prince of Outworld stood before her. She nearly crashed into him, but as she fell and her knees creased under her, she realized her feet had gone through his. She climbed backward through the dirt and leaves, scraped by the rocks and forest floor.
"I didn't kill you!"
"You betrayed Outworld."
"Kitana was not Kahn, I followed Ko'atal!"
"Hey baby, you need some help?" A young man, still blonde but differently shaped. He had a glaring tattoo across his chest and blackened shades even under the moonlight. He leaned to her right as Goro seemingly faded with the blink of an eye. "I've got a way with the ladies, you know, I can help you through this."
She didn't remember him. Johnny, his tattoo read. Likely his name, but she couldn't remember anything about him.
"Oh, come on, don't tell me a hot chick like you doesn't remember the greatest fighter at the tournament?"
Her face was blank and he pulled himself up in disappointment.
"You remember me?" Jade stood up in his place.
Skarlet nodded. The entity now traded between them as it circled her.
"I brought you back," Jade explained, "the reasoning is my own. Kotal Kahn never knew about this."
Johnny responded as he crossed to Skarlet's left. "You know, tits, I could have been everything. I could have been champion! Instead, Raiden had to screw everything up. He's really to blame for why you're here."
Skarlet, her thoughts scattered, pulled herself to her knees and backed herself against a tree. The child she once knew, her eyes much like her own stared back at her with the grim smile of a Tarkatan.
Still unable to speak, never having learned to, the child could only approach. Skarlet's eyes clenched tight, she refused to engage, refused to see as the past rushed like blood through her.
"Look at me." Skarlet ordered of herself.
Her own voice, eyes, everything the same stared right back at her.
"You're going to learn about a good many things in the process of all this. Like how pathetic you are,"
"I'll tell him!" She sassed, still unsure of what to say herself.
"Tell him, tell old Sparky. I'm beyond his comprehension and you, you're just a little girl!" Johnny stood from her and crossed his arms with a smug grin. He chuckled at the thought.
"I'm more than that." Goro explained, "more than flesh, more than blood." He transitioned into Jade as she knelt before Skarlet's right. "There's not a single human word that describes me, but soon I will be on everyone's lips. Assuming they still have them when I'm done."
"Don't worry though, all things are well within perimeters." Striker stood and crossed around the tree to continue, "Hostile, be patient. I have been patient. Beyond Kronika, Liu Kang, Kitana, and Raiden. I have been waiting for this moment and It's time to be all you can be."
Skarlet leaned down to herself and smiled.
"You're back, and you're right where you belong. I thought I could be my own woman, respected and accepted." He reached out to caress Skarlet's cheek, but the flesh never touched as she spoke, "but we never will. We'll always be in the dark, and alone. We don't belong with anyone. Just like in the beginning, and that's where we're going to go."
Raiden stood before her and looked back to the moon, then to Skarlet. His eyes white and flashed with electricity brighter than satellite above him.
"Right back to the beginning. Not the bang, nor the word. The true beginning." He explained, "soon you'll learn. It's not about what's right, nor what's wrong."
The child sat on its knees before Skarlet. Her eyes in the child's, the tarlatan maw small and fragile.
"It's about power."