The Final Night Pt. I
Mileena stood before the throne of Edenia. Kotal Kahn at one side with Reptile and Erron Black, Ermac behind them. The other with Raiden, Liu Kang, Fujin, and Kung Lao behind them.
In one of the great hall's windows, Taven sat perched to watch over the scene as instructed.
The harsh light glared into the room when Daegon, Kollector, Kabal, and Sektor entered. Guards at each side, all Tarkatan and Edenian, the rival faction walked through the tense aisle toward the throne. Not a word of hello, not even the clearing of a throat.
The man in the long black coat, eye scarred and heritage on fire, Daegon stopped just before the throne, his one good eye on his brother, then on Mileena.
"You called?" He waited with bated breath.
Mileena stepped down to meet him face to face. Eyes up at his great beastly height, but she could take him, she knew it. She tore the veil from her face and nodded.
"Yeah." She spoke, "tomorrow, we have agreed to march onto the field and raise the pyramid."
Daegon smiled, he held in the full curve. He had wanted this for too long and was almost sure Raiden would force his troops to wait him out to death. He held a hand out for her to take.
"One last contest of Mortal Kombat between the realms?" He added to her agreement and she took his hand.
Once parted, his hands were raised as his group backed away from the throne. Mileena backed up the steps and watched them part through a portal as agreed.
"Inform everyone to prepare today." She turned to Raiden, "then make sure they spend their last night alive doing whatever the hell they want."
Raiden agreed.
When night fell, it was a mixed image for all. Some drowned as they wait. Some couldn't wait.
Sonya trained with Cyrax outside of the walls of the city. Away from everyone, she could gather her thoughts from the journey that had transpired up to this point.
Having been a pawn of Shang Tsung's, Quan Chi, the instrument to Johnny Cage's death and Jac's capture, she lost herself along the way as well. She had distanced herself from the woman that once lunged into a building to save her family against the Black Dragon and lost. Closed herself off from the woman that would never know of the child she could have had if Quan Chi's plans succeeded to implant her with Johnny Cage. She saw herself only as Cyrax did, a machine meant to fight, meant to struggle to the very end with a sole agenda.
She'd strike the hard metal of Cyrax's plated armor until it bruised her through the gloves and the protective gear. She would grunt and breathe like an animal without thought as she fought, even when he'd protest.
To Sonya, all there was left in her journey was to see it to the bitter end. She had once desired to find her true self, only to completely lose it. However, strip away everything and what do you have left?
"Sonya." Cyrax stopped her. "Stand down. That is an order."
"You don't order me, Cyrax!" She punched his chest plate, but he grabbed her hands and held her in place.
"You are bleeding. You're going to hurt yourself before the battle." He turned her hands back at her, gloves torn, blood dripped from the holes and through the black fabric.
She focused on the blood. It was foreign to her. So much of it had flashed before her eyes for too long and it seemed like such a casual thing to witness. Sonya had never stopped to remember that she bled too and how easy it flows.
Like ketchup on mustard, it splattered and scattered in little knuckle shapes and mounds that dripped off of various plates from the cyborg. Unable to clean it, he could only leave it there and it became almost a burden for her to see him covered in it.
Her blood.
Sonya shook her head, wiped her face with her clean arm and cracked her knuckles tight.
"Doesn't matter. Let's go." She dropped back into an offensive right stance.
"No." He protested.
"That's an order Cyrax!"
"No."
"Has Takeda and Jacqui been messing with your programming again? I'll kick their teeth in."
"Stop. Just stop."
She punched anyway and he grabbed her fist. His hand was hard, only padded an inch thick and began to crush her fist until she couldn't pull back.
"What are you doing?" She fought him as he twisted her arm and pulled the glove off to show her.
"You need to stop this." He spread her hand wide to reveal each knuckle had busted and blood dripped in multiple lines down her arm. "Don't become me."
She struggled to get her arm back. She pushed the machine back and only after screaming did his protest ease enough to let her go. Her knuckles could no longer crack. As stiff as a robot, she watched her hand tremble and pulse, bleed and stagger her.
"There is still a man somewhere in here." He spoke, softer this time to her. "I still have a soul, Sonya, but I can never be like Jax, Takeda, or even Kenshi ever again. I have no choice in who I am."
"I didn't either." She fought.
"You still do." He added, his hand having taken hers into a gentler grasp so as not to hurt her knuckles. "I won't make it out of this war, but I know Sonya Blade will. You can still survive this."
"I've won battles before, I don't plan on losing, Cyrax." She didn't get it. So he crunched her hand and pointed to her heart with a hard prod.
"This can still survive."
"That's long gone."
In Outworld, Skarlet waited without word of their plans. She stared up at the statue of Goro, Raiden, and the other fighters from the tournament in Earthrealm's 90s. The tournament she still felt was just the day before. It gave her pause and a moment to look at herself in the mirror, at her hands and hear her own voice. She was still alive even after knowing death. She was still here.
It had been ten or fifteen years for the others, as she barely remembered them saying, and yet the air still smelled of her blood. It still felt like Quan Chi could emerge from Goro's lair, or Kotal Kahn would challenge her to mortal kombat. Stryker's blood, Sonya's friend, still hung on her belt.
The past was hard to let go for her.
Hell, she could still hear Kotal Kahn's voice bellow across the field.
"Skarlet!"
He'd call to her. She clenched her fist and closed her eyes and tried to forget. That was so long ago for them. It didn't register that is voice echoed again. When she heard a third time, she turned to find the Kahnum of Outworld by Shang Tsung's podium far into the courtyard, still under the full moon.
It wasn't a memory. Erron Black and Nightwolf hung back as he approached to meet her half way. Caught between two walls, one to the jagged caverns of the Kytinn now sealed away, and the other to a secret courtyard of Shang Tsung's now emptied riches, they met.
"Why are you here?" She pondered, unsure if this was his attempt, like Rain, to wipe her from the past, or like Raiden, make amends with it.
"You were once my right hand. Could never be replaced." He spoke.
She noticed he was without weapons. Adorned in his headdress, and Kahnum attire, but void of his weaponry, should she be concerned, or should she listen?
"What changed?" She pondered. Though she knew the answer, but did he?
"You betrayed me, Skarlet. That cannot be forgotten." He shut her down.
"I don't agree." She stood firm.
"It may have been in my best interest for you to do so, but you still did. In Outworld, I cannot forget that, but in my heart, I can forgive it."
She was taken back by this. Silent, she waited for him to take it away. She knew what it meant, for she'd never be welcome in Outworld again and he'd be force to kill her for her treason, but hear even an ounce of gratitude for her effort to pull him from Quan Chi's thrall, even in her own anger toward him at the time, it meant something more.
"If you die, I will erect a great statue to you in Outworld." He boldly decided.
"Oh? A statue to a traitor?" She jested.
"Hidden one, somewhere no one can see, but it'll be there." He played.
There wasn't much else he could say. He stepped back to leave her to her last night after he had informed her of the plans for the battle. She would be there.
No hug, no handshake. He reached Nightwolf and Erron Black at the ruined podium and as the portal ripped open from Nightwolf's axe, she called out to him, but he couldn't hear.
Alone again, she looked at the grounds around her stained with history of pain and suffering and somehow in those grains of sand and stone, stains of blood and decay, she found new growth. Little pieces that could lift from the past to form a new future.
The lines were drawn, and many finally cut, or connected, but only one remained untethered from her past.
For her last night, she would prepare herself, not to make peace with that final string linked to her past, but to bury it once and for all.