Author's Note: Wow, I was not expecting this to get much attention so soon after posting. Color me jolly! Also, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, Shibai looks exactly like Mileena as depicted in Mortal Kombat 11. Their only differences are personality and motives, but there will be more obvious changes as time goes on.

Food... Need food...

She did not need food, she just ate.

FOOD!

Shibai groaned and pressed her free hand to her aching temple. The other hand clutched at her wound, stemming the bleeding as much as possible. She needed bandages and clothing, and then she needed to escape this unholy place.

"I'm hole-y," she said to no one in particular, and then laughed at her own joke.

She had fallen to a lower area of the Flesh Pits, which despite its name did not seem to have much flesh lying around. In fact, there was hardly anything of note on this floor beyond lit braziers on the walls and the occasional torture device. Perhaps the majority of the more interesting things were on the upper floor, but Shibai had not had the chance to look around before she left.

Even so, the air was filled with the enticing aroma of blood and rotting meat. Shibai licked at her fangs, desperate for tiny bits of muscle still stuck in them. Why was she so damn hungry?! The further she limped, the stronger the scent of food.

She needed to focus on getting out of there and having her wounds treated. There had to be an exit, perhaps an unguarded doorway or a flight of stairs...

FOOD! Shibai took a deep breath through the nose and sighed hungrily. There, just behind a column and lit by a dying brazier, was a perfectly good carcass ripe for the picking. Someone had even gone to the trouble of skinning it!

Forgetting her wounds, Shibai pounced on the corpse and yanked off one of its arms. She bit down hard and ripped a sizable chunk from the forearm, gnashing the sinews of muscle between her teeth. It was so delicious! How in the world could anyone just let the body go to waste? She took another bite, and another, and another, until the forearm was nothing but bone.

"Excuse me?"

Shibai froze. The last time she was interrupted from a meal, it ended badly for her. She carefully looked around for the speaker but found no one. Was the voice in her head?

"Excuse me? Down here."

Shibai looked down. The corpse looked up at her, one eye dangling from its socket. "... Hi."

"Hello," it said, then pointed at the hand still twitching in Shibai's grip. "May I have that back, please?"

She looked at the hand, then at the corpse, then back at the hand, and then dropped it on the floor. "I'm so sorry, I had no idea you were alive!"

The corpse grabbed its arm and sat up. "No harm done." It stuck the limb back into place with a loud snap! "It will regenerate in a few minutes."

"I'm sorry, I was just so hungry and you didn't even make a sound."

The corpse chuckled, its dangling eye swinging from cheek to cheek. Tendrils of nerves and veins sprouted from the stump of its arm and coiled around the reattached limb. Indeed, it would be fully reformed in barely a minute or two. "Quite right, I do not feel pain."

Shibai stared at the process of regeneration with fascination. Not only was her hunger sated, she found herself curious to meet one such as this. "Who are you?"

"I... don't have a name," it said. "I escaped the sorcerer before I was fully formed."

That certainly explained its appearance, but... "What are you doing down here? Is there no way out?"

The creature nodded. "There is, it's further down the hall and to the left. I have often walked down there and..."

"And what?"

"I can't leave," it said with a defeated sigh. "The Tarkatans would sniff me out in an instant as you just did, but I fear they would be less willing to relinquish my body parts. I would be an endless feast for them, so I am trapped here."

Why did she feel the need to help this poor soul? It was dead meat, it said so itself. She had to suppress a snort at the thought of its name being Meat or something similarly on the nose. "Perhaps you can come with me? I just killed three Tarkatans, I can... I can fight more. However many it takes to get us both out of here."

'Meat' chuckled but shook its head. "You have a kind heart to help a stranger, but alas, you..." It suddenly looked down and its eyes widened. "My word, you're wounded!"

"It will heal," she said, but the wound was getting more and more painful. "I'll focus on that later."

"If I may, I can stop the bleeding."

Shibai stared at it. The second person in her life that actually spoke to her was offering to heal her? "I don't know... You would do this freely?"

"Well, I do have a request," said Meat. It grasped its hanging eye and ripped it right from the socket, holding it out to her. The pupil dilated and contracted as its bloody optical nerve dangled below. "I can see through this eye even when it is removed. Please take it with you so I may see the world beyond, if only from a distance."

... ... ... "I accept." She carefully took the eye and tied it around her wrist. If Meat did not feel pain then neither did the eye, and she had nowhere else to secure it. As for her wound, Meat simply pressed a hand to it and within seconds the wounds healed up enough that Shibai was no longer in danger of bleeding out.

"It will heal fully in a matter of days but I'm afraid it will leave a scar."

Shibai shrugged. A paltry scar was the price of freedom? That and taking his eye with her? Quite the deal if she did say so herself. "Thank you."

As Meat had said, the exit was down the hall and to the left. After that it continued on to a long, dark passageway that chilled Shibai's skin. It seemed no one bothered to have regular security down in this area as there was no door or gate to block Shibai's progress. It did have two guards some ways down the passageway, both of whom had their backs to her.

They seemed a different race than Tarkatan judging by their scents. Perhaps the same race as Kitana, but that was not important. They were blocking the way out and must be eliminated.

The first went down with a simple snap of the neck, but the other grazed Shibai's arm with his spear. Enraged, Shibai yanked the spear from his grasp and shoved it down his throat, piercing all the way through until it stuck in the ground. Such brutality certainly made Shibai feel proud of herself and yet also unsettled. So far she had been viciously violent with literally every person she had met so far, and she had only been born less than half an hour ago.

Grumbling to herself, Shibai removed the clothes of the guard not nailed to the floor and dressed herself. The clothes were a poor fit, the armor would be no fit at all, and she had to tie some spare cloth around the wound on her arm, but at least she finally had clothes. The tunic even came with a hood to obscure her face. As well, she claimed his fallen spear to better protect herself against any other damn weapons. One of the benefits of Shang Tsung's incubation experiments was that he could implant memories and subconscious instructions; while Shibai had no actual experience with weapons, she had a built-in instinctive technique with most weapons available in Outworld. For some reason, she knew she had particular skill with small dual weapons like knives and daggers, but the spear would suffice for now.

Armed and clothed, Shibai made sure Meat's eye was still secure and went on her way.

The underground beneath Shao Kahn's palace was enormous and labyrinthine! These halls curved and bent into each other and into dead ends and everywhere between. Shibai wandered for seemingly hours in the tunnels and passages before she finally found an actual exit, but she quickly wished she had not.

Her eyes burned and filled with painful tears at the caustic air. It smelled and tasted like putrid stomach acid and the light was poisoned to a sickly green hue. Even breathing hurt!

Shibai hesitated at the entrance to this new area. She would be fully exposed on the walkway beyond and while there did not seem to be any guards at the moment, those pools full of green fluid did not look inviting. One slip and she feared the worst, given what just happened to a carcass suspended on a hook. It lowered into the pool, stayed under for a few seconds, and came back up a desiccated skeleton dripping with acid.

Ugh, the smell was suffocating! Shibai could be blindfolded and have dung an inch from her face and be none the wiser. She glanced down at the eye tied to her wrist. Maybe Meat had the right idea to stay behind but Shibai could not make that decision for herself. She had too much to do, too much to prove to herself.

That did not change the fact that she wanted to vomit. Maybe if she ran through? The floor seemed relatively clean, no danger of slipping there. There was light beyond the walkway and into the hall beyond, as well as the light from above the grated ceiling. It appeared to be daytime, not that that meant much if she could not get out of this damn dungeon!

Enough deliberation! Shibai had not come this far just to debate with herself. She took a deep breath, counted to three, and ran for it.

She made it about halfway across before something collided with her torso. She went flying right back to the entrance to the dead pool, her chest burning as though someone had rammed it. The wind knocked out of her, she struggled to find her attacker but there was no one there. What the hell happened? It felt like someone had drop-kicked her but how? Surely she would have seen them? Unless...

At the opposite end of the walkway, the air shifted and bent around someone. They revealed themselves, a strange creature with green-ish scaled skin, green clothing, and black armor. Their eyes burned a golden yellow, and when they rasped, flecks of green acid spilled from the holes in the mask covering their mouth.

"Intruder! You shall die for the glory of Shao Kahn!"

Shibai hoisted herself back to her feet and glared at this beast. A Saurian if her implanted memories were accurate. Venomous spit, prehensile tongue, and a proclivity for violence. Well, that last one was obvious. This was Outworld, after all.

"And you shall die for kicking me right in the chest!"

The battle began, and Shibai realized with mounting horror that while she had the innate skills of Princess Kitana, she lacked actual experience. She had been very lucky to have won her previous battles as those were against unskilled opponents the first time and she had the element of surprise the second time.

This time, she quickly learned how outmatched she was against an opponent with actual fighting prowess. She certainly landed a few strikes, but for every blow she landed she received three in turn. The beast was so fast! And it could turn invisible, like that was fair.

The first 'round' ended with a decisive uppercut to her jaw and she knew a few teeth were broken before she hit the floor. But at least she hit the floor and not the acid pools on either side. Damn this creature! If she had a better idea of her own capabilities, she would defeat him easily! She had to!

She stood back up and wiped the blood from her nose and mouth. The creature did have minor wounds thanks to her spear, but it was still in better shape to fight than her and she knew it. She did not fear death, not yet anyway, but to die so soon into her life at the hands of some reptile? That was just sad.

Shibai charged into the second bout with renewed vigor but she needed to come up with something if she was going to win this fight. Kitana was able to perform magical attacks with war fans, but could Shibai do the same with a spear? If she was going to die, she earned the right to find out.

After a successful kick that sent the Saurian reeling, Shibai gripped the spear such that it stood perpendicular to the floor and spun it as fast as she could. The result was twofold; her opponent was forced back further by a gust of wind, and she herself was pushed in the opposite direction by the wind she conjured. Finally some breathing room! Shibai would definitely have to remember that technique.

And then the bastard turned invisible. The stench of the dead pool masked its scent, leaving Shibai defenseless. Swinging wildly would get her killed but she could not just stand there and do nothing. There had to be a way to get it to reveal itself...

Too late. Its fist collided with the side of her head and she went spinning to the ground. Dazed, she swiped her spear at the general area around her only to have the spear swatted out of her hand. A clawed hand clutched her throat and another punch landed right in her face. And another, and another, and another...

The creature revealed itself again and looked at her with hungry eyes as it removed its mask. Acidic venom dripped from its fangs, its jaw unhinging as it prepared to finish her.

A bloody foot smashed into its skull, releasing its grip on Shibai's neck. She gasped for air and coughed harshly as she tried to stand, but the vicious assault left her severely disoriented. Better that than having her face melted off, she supposed.

"Run!"

Blinking away the fatigue in her eyes, Shibai found Meat battling the creature. They were locked in a grapple, though it seemed the Saurian had a stronger grip.

"Run now!"

"I can't leave you!" she tried to yell, but it came out a harsh growl from the choking she suffered earlier. "We can defeat it together!"

Meat smiled sadly. "Yours is truly a kind soul. Now go!" The Saurian slipped free and bit down hard on Meat's throat. With a crunching snap! it also broke Meat's arm at the elbow.

How could Shibai leave? She owed her life to this poor unfinished man, she had to help! She had to... had to... She had to run, so she ran.

"I'll come back for you," she cried, her eyes welling with tears. She hated herself for it, but Meat was right. Now was her chance while the Saurian was distracted, but to sacrifice Meat... "I'll come back for you! I promise!"

From that moment forth, Shibai made another vow. No matter what, she would never allow one to sacrifice themselves for her again. Not while she still drew breath.