Skarlet opened her eyes to the vast emptiness of the Blood Sea. The heavy waters between two great mountain ranges of dead earth, her senses were overloaded before she had even seen it. Her wrists tied behind her back and her knees stuck into the old wood of the ship they traveled out to sea, the musty burlap sack was tossed to the side and her eyes cast over the great old peaks of the Netherrealm, then down to the massive and viscus sea the ship slugged through.
"Pull her up." Reiko ordered.
She recognized him, though had forgotten all about him. Tanya and Kia jerked Skarlet from her bruised knees and she winced and writhed as the pain of the previous night's encounter still wore on her.
She took a look around to get a better understanding of her surrounding. Bi-Han, the shadow figure himself stood beside Reiko, arms folded as though he was unsure if whatever their plan would work out. Two Shokan steered the ship and maintained their course. They, of course, were the heavy lifters.
"So, what's this, you've all banded together to be, what? Pains in my ass?" She bit at them and glared daggers into Tanya and Kia for their betrayal.
"You don't look too good yourself, and running away?" Tanya remarked. She noticed the bites, the bruises, and the cuts all over Skarlet where her armor exposed her flesh.
"I'm not interested." Skarlet assumed they'd ask to join them.
"Make her do it." Reiko ordered.
Tanya rolled her eyes and pushed Skarlet to the edge of the ship. As the Blood Witch's eyes were forced down into the vast viscus sea of Blood, she wasn't sure what he meant, or why she had been captured if it wasn't to turn on Raiden's army.
"From what I hear, you're not exactly a good girl, are you?" Kia leaned into her ear and pulled at her hair to yank Skarlet's face against the wooden rail.
"Bitch!" Skarlet spat and bit the wood.
"Do it!" Bi-Han demanded.
One glance to him and the two realized the games were over. Kia released Skarlet from her grasp as Tanya cut the rope that tied those pale bruised wrists.
"Someone mind telling me what I'm supposed to do?" She shook her hands free and stretched them as best she could.
"Geras." Reiko answered, "there is a man in the ocean, sinking for eternity. You are going to pull him up."
"You've got the Shokan for strength, don't you?" She argued.
"This is a Sea of Blood, hell itself won't even break your fall." Reiko added, "being a Blood Witch, this is just your thing."
"Do it, or you'll be thrown overboard with him." Bi-Han approached. "You smell like torture."
She would strike him where he stood, but the shadow would fade and she was not keen on the eternal drowning in the Sea of Blood. Instead, Skarlet grit her teeth and closed her eyes to focus. Somewhere beneath them she'd have to feel for a pulse. Have to feel for a scream or something, someone, and somewhere.
There!
She moved to the center of the ship and reached down with her hands as though she were about to grasp the man himself, then slowly her body pulsed and it built with each moment into a rampant cacophony in her heart, throughout her body.
The small shop began to sink. Slowly at first, and as her concentration became clearer, the others realized the ship wasn't sinking, the blood around them was actually parting and lowering the ship down rapidly. One hand stretched out to hold the walls of blood on each side of the ship as the other continued to part beneath them until nearly an hour later the force it took to pull the man up, and the power to sink the ship down met somewhere in the middle like a gun shot through the ocean.
They felt the bump of something beneath the ship and the rattle of chains and flesh as it rolled up the side. At this point, Skarlet began to raise the ship by filling the blood beneath them. It took longer than it did to sink, but soon enough the man spilled on deck and gasped for air as if he had just been awoken from an eternal slumber.
There was a mile or more of blood above them. Now she had the power. It was nothing for her to bring Geras forth from the ocean, in fact, she smiled and told them that she didn't even have to sink the ship or part the red sea to do it.
"Now that I've got control, you're going to do as I say." She warned them, "I've just had a really bad couple of days and I'm not looking forward to dealing with anymore of anyone's crap."
"What do you want?" Reiko seemed to tremble beneath the vast wall of sea above him.
"I will go in peace, just let me go. I don't give a damn about the battle at the pyramid, and I won't tell anyone about this."
"No." Bi-Han appeared beside her, "there will be no bargain."
She stood between a rock and a hard place. Skarlet had every means to sink the ship into oblivion for all eternity right there and right now, but she knew the sea would swallow her whole with them.
She tried to stare into the blackened eyes of the wraith, to find some semblance of humanity or thoughts she could latch onto. His eyes looked as empty and vacant as Rain's. She imagined Bi-Han must have been as insufferable when alive as the Prince of Edenia. So, there was only one thing left in her arsenal.
"So be it." She released her grip on the magic.
Reiko cursed Bi-Han for his stubbornness and rushed for the Shokan at the helm. Tanya and Kia panicked as well as the wall of blood around them crashed down harder and faster than either of them expected.
Bi-Han stood and watched. Those cold callous eyes of an apathetic man turned into the empty hollow shell of a wraith. Skarlet couldn't tell the difference between either, but the scar of a smile that scratched itself across her bruised and beaten face as the blood threatened to crush them all was as good as anything she'd get.
For a brief moment, she took back control of herself. No one could have her, and no one could control her. No army, no war, and no man.
Just as the blood broke the mast and sails and all destruction seemed imminent, she melted into the blood of her own suffering and faded just as Bi-Han did into the shadow.
Reiko collected the Shokan and rushed through a portal as well, though the blood spilled through and crashed them ashore like a thick tsunami. Kia and Tanya had fled long before the sails stained red.
She awoke in Outworld. Her body felt the warmth and radiance of light and electricity. Somehow in the world between worlds, Raiden had jarred her out of it and singled her out.
She lay on the beach of Shang Tsung's island. The very island her life was taken on.
Raiden stared down at her, his robes hung thick and low as he leaned on the wooden staff and stared through that long white hair. She could tell he had a grim expression on his face and when he pulled the curtain back, having lifted his conical hat to reveal his eyes to her, they sparked with lightning.
"Why betray me?" His voice hissed through a chamber of gravel.
"I did not betray you, Lord Raiden." She spat back.
Her back to the sea, she pulled herself up on her rear end with her hands. The island massive behind Raiden, and very much a ruin by the sight of the fallen peaks in the distance. Just like her chance at returning to Thunder God's forces.
"I do not know the reason why you were resurrected, Skarlet, but I watched you and guided you. I had hoped to learn from you and to see what important role you played in all of this." He added as he sank in voice and with his grip lowered on the staff in defeat, "I did not expect it to be betrayal."
"I did not betray you, Raiden!" She yelled, "I wanted to fight beside you and Liu Kang, and Kitana! You were the father I never had, even from Kotal Kahn."
"When what happened?" He waited, silent, unsure.
"Before I died, Rain betrayed me. He was cruel and heartless and only cared about himself." She continued, "since we came to Edenia, he had been stalking me, singling me out like I was the one that betrayed him."
"That's why I suggested you not work with him. However, that does not excuse your attack."
"My attack?" She bit her lip and glared, all of the anger of the world flared on her shoulders and she wanted to charge him, but she realized how futile it would be. Not cause he was a God, but because she realized he that Raiden was the only one that would give her the chance to explain herself.
As the Thunder God, he could have killed her at any moment, but he gave her the courtesy of being human, because she was.
"He tried to kill me, and he raped me." She wiped the blood and tears from her face.
"What about Kitana's blood?" He uncovered the other issue she had hoped none would.
"I don't know." Skarlet reached for one of the other vials, "I keep these like weapons to draw from. I don't know why I felt the need to collect hers."
"I understand we all have demons we must fight within ourselves. I also understand that not everyone we live with, or must deal with are good people. I'm not the one who's angry with you Skarlet, at least not after seeing through your soul and knowing your innocence." He reached down to guide her back up as a father might.
As she came up, wiped herself clean of the dirt and blood, he added one little caveat to the whole ordeal.
"However, you'll find it very difficult to return to the Palace now that Mileena has deemed you an enemy of the realm." He explained.
"I will be there at the pyramid. I'll see this through with you." She wanted to be anywhere but, however, if this was the price of acceptance, she'd pay it. If it was with her life, then at least she'd have had one father in her life to miss her.
Before he left her, having offered the island as her grace until she was ready to return to Edenia for war, his eyes sparked with rage at the realization of Rain's actions. She could feel his power radiate like a nuclear explosion. As much rage as she had burdened inside of her, she felt that of the his almost singe her to the bone.
"Rain will suffer for this. There is no excuse for what he has done."
"Don't kill him." She grabbed at his old robe and stared back into the whites of the lightning filled eyes. "Punish him, jail him, I do not care, but I will kill him."
They shared a long pause. She wasn't sure if the God would agree, but as he eased off and stepped away, Raiden nodded.
He reached for the sky and a bolt of lightning pulled him from Outworld, leaving her to the island alone to think.
She would not have expected understanding from any other person, except perhaps Fujin. Though not reasonable by any means at every chance, the Gods lived long and had seen eons of lives ruined by simple human error, and the destruction of communication. She thought that might have been the reason for why he had not slain her, or perhaps he truly believed she had some practical part to play in the battle of Armageddon and would not kill her just yet.
Whatever it was, she collapsed on the white sand of the island and finally let herself breathe.