Remember to be alive.
Nearly eight billion people all shooting up, or shooting each other, struggling to get out of their heads, out of their minds, out of this world, or out of this time.
Hit!
Hit!
Beat!
Beat!
Beating away the drum of discontent, Takeda struck the punching bag again and again in tandem to the music that barely glued the discordant soul that scratched the jagged cage of his bones. His knuckles sore, his mood sour, if he stopped, he'd be a drowned man waiting to be saved.
A hand touched his back and his fist swung fast to strike back.
Smack!
Jacqui blocked the strike that startled him at the sight of her. No harm, no foul, but she apologized for the intrusion.
"Takeda."
The ear plugs pulled free and the world crashed into him like a rogue tsunami he wasn't quite ready for. The sand bags of his mind blocked out everything until her eyes caught his and the stern look of a broken mind matched his own.
"It's time."
We change by the speed of the choices we make.
All he could see as he looked down from the shower head, the water fell on him like a thousand tiny daggers of pure heat, hatred and bliss, was the bags packed outside the apartment door he woke up to that morning.
Here, he could pretend to be the man he thought he was at home, but after the world ends, those fumes burn out faster than some.
Now the gym was home, but–
"Takeda?"
He hurried to scrape the water from his eyes and turned to find a man in a tan suit with briefcase in the locker room watch him.
"Can you wait?"
"Not really, the government wanted an answer yesterday."
"I don't really care what the government wants."
The man shifted a hand into his suit pocket for a paper, but no means to hand it to him.
"A, uh, note from the president for the Special Forces."
Takeda looked down again and then back at the water that burned him and slammed his fist on the knob, twisted, and turned it off for the suit that pulled him back into the world.
"We really doing this now?"
Fully nude, Takeda threw out his hands and approached the man. Piss him off, interrupt him, he's just going to have to deal with naked and wet. He snapped the paper from the man's hands and read the scribbled cursive signed by the United States President, now soaked and bleed out.
"I can't read this crap. What does it say?"
Jacqui answered, only now did he notice her leaned against the door way, amused.
"Wants the coordinates for the base of the Shirai Ryu, Lin Kuei, and Shaolin Monks where Raiden is."
"That's not intel for us to give."
"That's not the answer that the president wants."
"We're Americans, bud, we can give you the Black Dragon, but others are in Asia, you're going to have to go to the Chinese Communist Party for that info."
"That's not how intel works."
"Then we don't work with this administration, just like we didn't with the last one."
"We appreciate that last bit, but why don't you put some clothes on first, young man."
Beside Jacqui and older man, tall, thin white hair, and suited in all black and white with a flag lapel stood in the doorway beside her.
"President."
Jacqui greeted him.
Takeda took that chance as she stalled him to put slip into grey sweats and dry his hands. The suit retreated behind the president as the man entered.
"Where's the others?"
The president pondered, though had no desire to look around the showers.
"Sonya and Cyrax are gone, but Kung Jin is at base."
"My condolences. This country owes your division a lot more than just gratitude and a pin."
"It does, but we've yet to see anything more than lip service."
"I'm looking to change that."
"We appreciate you coming in person, but really, what do you want?"
Jacqui joined Takeda and asked, arms folded, as the government had abandoned the Special Forces after Armageddon, the moment the portals closed and the arms deals with the other realms ceased.
"I'm not the other guy, I'd like to thank you guys properly, but I'll be honest, I've got a request to make beforehand."
"Isn't there always."
"Right."
The president took the briefcase handed to him and unhinged the clips to pull the lid up slow and steady. Takeda and Jacqui peered in to find a perfectly preserved Kamidogu.
The artifact was crafted almost perfectly into two sphere plates. One was a larger green emerald that glistened under the fluorescent lights like a tiny dancer in Takeda's eyes, the other a smaller blue plate just barely attached with iron wiring.
Crafted with a flat black like an Anglo-Saxon disc brooch, or plaque, Jacqui was careful to pull the gemstone Kamidogu of Earth free from the case.
"How?"
"Raiden destroyed the Kamidogu over five-hundred years ago."
The president nodded, having known the details of the previous events, or at least enough to respond accordingly.
"So we thought, but, this one isn't." He added, "that's why I'd like to know where Hanzo, Kuai Liang, Fujin, and Raiden are."
"Only Raiden should know, if at all," Jacqui suggested, "why reach out to the clans?"
"They were present when the original was destroyed?"
"So Raiden tells it."
"Then I'd like their perspective as well, not just Raiden's."
"Why do you care?"
Takeda took the Kamidogu with care, but eyes eyes seared into the man. This was not an object any mortal should wield, let alone any with power. He already had little to no trust for a government that abandoned them, this was a red flag.
What would Sonya have done here?
He was the president. She would have done as asked. However, they were not her.
"You must understand then that I'm not giving this back to you. This doesn't belong the United States government."
Takeda reached for the case, but the President withheld it.
"That's not going to happen, young man."
Am I really about to knock out an elderly man who just so happen to be the President of the United States?
"What do you want?"
It's what Sonya would have asked.
"Open the portals."
Takeda scoffed and handed the President the Kamidogu. He turned back toward the shower and tossed the towel at the man.
"I'll be over here in the real world."
"Mr. President," Jacqui intervened, "Kamidogu or not, after the Battle of Armageddon, the portals were all closed and all champions of Mortal Kombat stripped of their powers."
"Yet there are still Gods in Earthrealm with power." The president turned to the defiant young man, "like Raiden and Fujin."
"Even still," Jacqui pulled him back to her, "they have no means to travel the realms just as we don't. If that artifact is real, it's still useless."
"The bigger question we should be asking," Takeda turned back, a glare of mistrust, in fact, he wasn't even sure if that was the real Kamidogu or just a replica to pull them back into the favor of the United States Government, so he added, "if that's real, how did it get here?"