Embedded within the rocky mountains of Edenia, carved along the planet's fault line just before the ever reaching desert, Fujin appeared together with Mileena, Sonya, Takeda, Jacqui, Kung Jin, Kenshi, Cyrax, Smoke, and Sub-Zero. As the special forces, each descended the mountains to the coordinates Fujin had been given, as vague as they were.
"Got it!" Sonya called the group close. "I've got an electric signal. It's not far."
"I will go to the coordinates." Cyrax travelled on impulse into the digital ether. A stronger pulse for Sonya to follow, they would travel via his signal to the base of Red Dragon.
Only twenty minutes through the forest and down from the rocky crags, the base began to jut from the ground. Camouflaged with the trees and the autumn litter, it was like a stone, or concrete idol stood about twelve feet out from the ground. It was only a shed shaped mass, clearly just the entrance and the true base was beneath them.
A long metal staircase traversed down through the steep dark vein of the buried base. Cyrax, forced to appear at the bottom, scanned the next length of hall and searched for signs of life, digital and organic.
"I can sense only two life forms." Cyrax's words stuck like an apple in Fujin's throat.
"Only two?" He stopped his descent down the long staircase and stared with a grim horror at the reflection in Cyrax's eyes as it turned toward them, a red blinking hue cast on the metal and glass of the machine.
Beneath them, an explosion reached out like a great maw from the depths of this concrete sea and mangled the staircase. Fujin grabbed Sonya and Mileena, each ahead and behind him, Smoke pulled Jacqui with him to Cyrax on the cement level, but as the others fell, the heat chilled and the sound of glass shattered from what seemed many floors below.
Sub-Zero cracked his back against the ice, stretched and turned with panic as he searched the others for signs of life. He had broken their fall and sealed the explosion, but the fall was nearly three stories still. Takeda creased and staggered to his feet, Kenshi with him. Kung Jin had been knocked out.
Fujin lowered himself down, careful not to shatter the ice. They had fallen down three floors, one floor and a second staircase melted and buckled from the explosion meant to kill them.
"Get up, man!" Takeda jogged Kung Jin from his concussive state.
He watched the others follow down. There was a door to the second staircase, opened by the blast and close enough for Sub-Zero to form a staircase of ice for them to ascend.
"This is not the only trap, I assume." Smoke remarked.
"This whole thing was a trap." Fujin realized.
Sonya, with help of Cyrax, pulled up to the doorway and bust it open. This opened to a factory room with tables, machines, and what looked like the place of the Tekunin's construction. A sweatshop for the Black Dragon to be transformed into the cybernetic army.
"Are you sure there are two signatures in this hell hole?" A nod confirmed it for her. "We have to find them."
"It might be Kitana." Mileena climbed the staircase with Jacqui, the half-blood held tight to Jax's daughter to help her ascent on the ice.
"Or my dad." Jacqui rushed ahead with Mileena and Sonya. They would clear the road ahead as the others gathered themselves.
"Not before me." Smoke dissipated. The ventilation shaft would be the best mode of transport for him.
Once he came to, Takeda leaned Kung Jin's back against the concrete wall and looked up at the height they fell from.
"You good?" He looked over his friend, with only gashes and bruises, he couldn't be certain of any broken bones or internal bleeding without further medical assistance.
"Sharp as an arrow." Kung Jin confirmed, and reached up for Takeda's hand to join him on their feet, only to fall back against the wall.
"A broken one." Sub-Zero looked him over. "He fell on his head."
"Sit this one out, Kung Jin, rest. You might have a concussion." Fujin urged.
Without him, the others joined Cyrax at the top of the ice stairs.
"Great, yeah, I'll just sit here alone in the death base." Kung Jin mused, though Cyrax still had not left.
The machine cast a glance down at Kung Jin, "I can stay if you need?"
"No, Sonya needs you." Kung Jin waved him off.
"I can't leave you, not like we did the city." Cyrax stepped down the ice, his mass far heavier than it could handle as it cracked and shattered near to the last step.
"What do you mean?" Kung Jin felt that sinking feeling form in his stomach.
"This was a trap. Daegon knew we wouldn't play by their rules, nor they by ours." Cyrax added, in a grim tone, "I calculate the city is under siege as we speak."
He was right. Far and away, the gates of the city shattered open. The Tekunin, a mixture of Red Dragon and Black Dragon all tortured and merged into the cybernetic force bleed into the city.
Like locusts the army swarmed all lifeforms and turned the city to ash. At the ground level, Skarlet and Rain rushed the army through the market place streets. The blood that began to puddle and cake the alleys as the Tekunin marched forward coiled and formed solid spikes that just from the cracks and crevices of the walls into the skulls of the cybernetic soldiers.
As Skarlet took the street in the market square, Rain ascended a stream to the rooftops. There he raced the water like a rogue wave to push the machines back toward the gates.
Explosions brust through mud and stone walls and filled the tsunami with dirt, blood, and projectiles as the machinery overloaded and burst.
Across the distance, Daegon met Rain's eye. The monstrosity of a man snaked up to the flat rooftops like a dragon and charged for his brother. Having lost focus, the tsunami quelled and only the spikes of blood jutted out around them as Skarlet was joined by Tanya and Kia.
Rain leapt for his brother, and Daegon reached to pull him from the air, only to be smacked with a wall of water. He scanned feverishly for Prince of Edenia, but Rain had vanished.
Daegon jumped down from the rooftops toward a lower-class district. Bo' Rai Cho, Li Mei, and Frost cleared the Tekunin there and halted as the dust and blood settled.
"Where is Taven?" Daegon only asked once.
"Up your ass and around the corner." Frost snapped, she formed the ice from the remaining water and shot for Daegon's chest.
As the crystalized element of life cast like a bullet through the dense, blood scented air, it sweated and dripped foot by foot. What formed an impressive stalagmite-like dagger, met the maw of a fiery dragon into clear vapor.
Dumbfounded, Frost prepared another. Daegon watched as up on the roofs, and around the corner of the streets, No Face, Kabal, Kira, and Kobra emerged to confront Raiden's forces.
In the palace, Reptile and Scorpion fought side by side as the machines pushed them back floor after floor. As five would fall, ten would enter. The Tarkatan outside joined the fray, but untrained, would not be enough to hold them back. The Shokan, beings of greater strength, held the city walls after the first forty Tekunin had crashed through.
The tower up was a winding staircase from the meeting hall to the dining chamber, guest chambers and finally the Queen's personal chamber. The spiral was only wide enough for two, carved extravagantly out of marble, and shattered around them with each missile, each strike that came their way.
Unable to fight freely beside, nor behind Scorpion, Reptile climbed the wall and cleared his mask to spill acid down into the orderly line of machines.
"Where is Raiden?" Scorpion yelled.
"We are on our own!" Reptile hissed. "We must trust that the Wind God will return!"
The eerie emptiness of the factory and the stale, ghost like cool of the air did not welcome the group at all as they checked room after room.
The factory floor was like a great airplane hanger, nearly half the size of a football field. There were many doors, and two other staircases that lead to more places, but Sonya had an electronic signal. She followed it religiously across the factory floor.
"This has to be one of the signals Cyrax had." She noted.
It lead her to a double door of metal and wood. The doors had no knobs, but were heavy to push through. The signal grew to the size of the display screen on her wrist comm.
"It's here." She looked down the dark hallway.
With a quick flick and switch from her belt, a small flashlight illuminated the long hallway. She scanned quickly down each side until a red figure emerged at the end. As massive as Cyrax, the red and black machine hunkered down and aimed for Sonya.
Pissst!
A rocket shot from Sektor's wrist.
Sonya rushed behind the double doors and leapt for the nearest metal table. The others took the cue and sped back, or buckled down beneath the tables. As the explosion blasted the doors from the hall and shattered above them, from the fiery light, Bi-Han emerged like a shadow with the corrupted Lin Kuei.
Sonya checked her wrist, the shadow men didn't register and the two blips still blinked on her display. One was Sektor, and the other two levels below him.