A pale body lost in the forest, she huddled against a lone wisteria and listened to the river as the snow buried her with each paper thin layer. Voices called her name in all directions. Visions of the entity stained in her mind, Skarlet refused to respond.
As if already dead, the husk of a woman, coiled and frozen waited until the voices found her by the lone wisteria. The figure of Raiden leaned down before her almost close enough to touch. Behind him, two of the monks peered over his shoulder.
"Skarlet?"
His voice hummed inside of her mind and she felt as if it shifted tones from one dead to another like the entity had, but the moment he reached for her, she recoiled against the cold scratching bark of the wisteria. He retracted his hand, unsure how to approach this sudden madness. The two monks called for more, as if they cared, or perhaps it was again the fear of Raiden's ire, or they too were just ghosts in her mind like the entity that had spoken to her.
As Raiden waited, he observed Skarlet's fragile form. With no words spoken, he pulled her close and wrapped those pauper's robes around her. Though tattered and old, stained with time, she felt warmth for the first time since came back into the world.
"I don't need this." He assured when she protested with a hand on his chest to push him away.
She wanted to scratch him, to draw blood and hurt him, but the moment it registered that her hand was on him and his robes were real she finally looked up with disbelief. Is this the real Thunder God? Not the entity, not a ghost, nor the voices in her head that urged her to suffer.
Other hands gently carried her up to her feet where she found herself like a tree trunk uprooted from the ground, from the madness that wormed itself into her mind.
Raiden behind her as one of the Shaoulin monks braced her arm over him to guide her back to the gate of the monastery, he stayed just a few steps behind to survey the world around him.
The river flowed like time, slow and gentle, and the trees and flora all subtle and alive with little damage or whispers to give. Still, though she had been brought back from the dead, her mental state had only just fallen into the well of madness and something, or someone had to have done this.
He tucked his hands together beneath the undergarments for warmth and lowered his conical hat as he followed the three ahead back to the gate.
That night the Thunder God waited until the hills rolled with the sound of the coming storm and the shots of lightning in the distance signaled them to leave. Like shadows in the night, he assured her cover and beyond the gate, far from the Monastery, sought refuge through the lightning.
Any eyes, any ears, any feet that moved toward them he hoped would fall deaf, blind, and still.
When the light faded and the snowy skies patted gently its sullen flakes upon her flesh again, the robe collected and melted the worst, but her hair scattered white and her eyes that scanned the skies found a whole different moon beyond the Monastery in Japan.
They had emerged at the gates of a Dojo and temple to the Shirai Ryu. The shinobi known as Scorpion, she remembered, but unsure how to approach this change of direction from Raiden.
"This isn't Outworld."
"I need you to meet someone."
He took her past the threshold of the temple and before them the great steps to the Dojo where she could hear men training inside. The light inside was warm fire cast on every wall and the man that greeted them at the entrance looked much like Scorpion as he stared down with blank expression, but his eyes were different. He was human.
"I grow weary of your sudden visits, Lord Raiden."
"I would not have disrupted you again if it was not important."
When he cast a glare into her eyes it took him a moment, but the pale face before him and the red lips, the face of the dead took his breath. He suddenly understood Raiden's reference to a girl being in his care, but had dismissed it as a mere Earthrealmer. This truly was important. He guided them in and quickly past the training men.
What resembled an Abbot's Room in the temple portion of the Shirai Ryu grounds, Hanzo slid the door shut and ordered none to approach him for the rest of the night. They would train alone and eat without him.
He poured the sake for Raiden and Skarlet himself and urged them to sit at cushions he too prepared himself for them. So sudden, so uncertain were these times, he did not trust the eyes or ears of anyone beyond this moment.
"Are you demon of the Netherrealm?" Hanzo pondered of Skarlet.
"She is mortal, much like yourself." Raiden answered.
"Impossible." He rejected this and observed her closer.
She breathed, her blood pulsed, her eyes switched away from him when he leaned closer to inspect her. No smell, nor aura of the Netherrealm came off her flesh. He leaned back in disbelief.
"Have you gone to Sub-Zero with this?" A strange question, Raiden thought.
Raiden assured him, "no. Nor Sonya Blade and the Special Forces."
"Why here?"
"Protection." Raiden answered, he took a long sip of the hot sake and they both turned to Skarlet. "What happened in the forest?"
All eyes on her, she tried her best to congeal those memories into the fat of the matter, but even as she relayed the events and voices, they began to fade from her.
"I was attacked by something." She tried to explain, "didn't touch me, but talked to me."
"Like Sindel?" Hanzo pondered.
"No," Skarlet waved this off, in fact, she didn't remember seeing that face among those that appeared to her. Until now she had even forgotten the Queen of Edenia. "Goro, um, Quan Chi, just a bunch of people and voices and all of them telling me things."
"Strange." Raiden leaned back, he gently rested the conical hat and stared lost and pensive as she spoke.
"Quan Chi's energy has been destroyed. It was not him." Hanzo assured. He pierced her story with his logic, but she added to it as if to defend herself.
"I saw Raiden, and myself as well. It told me that it brought me back."
Now all eyes were on Raiden. Hanzo turned toward the Thunder God, unable to drink the sake nor take in this story. Raiden lost himself in the ripple of sake in the kettle. It seemed he too were lost, but before Hanzo could jog him back into reality his whitened eyes returned and a grim expression etched itself across his face.
"This is not the doing of a sorcerer, nor a titan." He sought the words, but they were not there. Not in the steam that met his lips from the stone cup, nor in the eyes of those around him.
"Bi-Han? The wraith I had slain in the tournament?" Hanzo queried. The wraith had made itself known, but he was not sure of this was something Bi-Han would be capable of.
"This does not sound like the work of the Brotherhood of Shadow."
"Kia, and Jataaka?" Skarlet remembered. The night Goro was slain, she remembered the urgency of the Shadow to the tower to claim victory over Kitana.
They could see Skarlet too was lost in thought, and spoke only between the two of them.
"If it didn't touch her, why bring her here?"
"If she was brought back to life, then this unseen force must have others working its will. If it cannot touch, it will use another to do so."
"You bring a bomb into my home?"
"We will meet with Kotal Kahn, who will know more of this situation, I pray. However, I know you will protect her tonight, and I will protect the Shirai Ryu as promised."
"Then we wait and see who has chosen to align with this unseen force." Hanzo understood.
If it was bold enough to appear before her in a place well hidden, then it wouldn't matter where she was. Skarlet was a target and all those with her as well. Here, Raiden believed, she'd have the right protection at least to whether the first storm should the entity choose to attack. Whomever would be the muscle for the brain, they would have to go through the Thunder God and the Shirai Ryu.
Still, she had to ask, "has anything like this happened before?"
Raiden was still and silent. Hanzo shook his head as he wouldn't know, but Raiden's expression became grave with knowledge he wished not to share. Not here at least. Though Hanzo knew of the timelines, he was not aware just how sever the tampering had damaged the realms. In fact, as Raiden sat pensive and uncertain, he had begun to question if even he knew the severity of the situation.