Bondage
by Nyohah

5
Machinations of Fate
Letter to Yuan Li

I fought Kung Lao today. Shang Tsung advertised it as Duel of the Winds. He really was very good. I beat him, but he did get me good a few times. My chin still hurts from that uppercut he gave me. Jax beat Reptile, Subby beat Baraka, though he got a nasty cut on his arm, Scorpion beat Raiden, and Liu Kang made mince meat out of Johnny Cage.

And I did acrobatics today, kind of how we used to play around. It really cheered me up, and I needed it.

Now we get to the fun part.

The demon called me to him, one day, seven years later.

*China cannot be without an Emperor,* he said.

"What do you mean, Master?"

*We will be making an Emperor for China,* he explained. *Your job is to capture the little princes, straight out of the womb, and we will raise them, and choose one who will fulfill his destiny.*

"How will I know which babies to take, Master?"

*From their birth dates, they will all be destined to be Emperors.*

"When do I start, Master?"

*Not so eager, Number Three. You cannot simply walk in and take the babies. There is a scientist, making something you need. You will be on good enough terms with him that you can use it, when the time comes.*

I walked down the streets of Hong Kong amazed. It was the first I'd been above, in the city, during the day the entire time I'd lived in the underworld, and I had little memory of my life before that. I was amazed by the modern technological world of Hong Kong. Gawking at everything around me, I hadn't even remembered what I was there to do for at least an hour. I had just decided to look for the scientist when a meter-tall metal box caught my attention. Under a clear window, there was a stack of printed papers. The top one said, Terrorist attack on school leaves four students dead.

Intrigued, I tried to open the box and take out the paper. It wouldn't budge. I looked around and saw a thin hole near the top, and near that, an inscribed 20. It was then that I heard the voice.

"Do you need some money?" A young man stood by the box. I just looked at him, confused. He was rather cute, in an adorable, little kid way. "Here." He put a coin in the slot, then opening the door, took out a sheet of paper. "Your newspaper," he said.

"...Thank you," I replied, taking the newspaper. The man continued on his way, without a second glance. I took the newspaper back to the underworld with me, and tried not to wonder about the person who'd helped me. I needed to know more about the overworld, and I learned plenty from the paper.

The next day, I tried to find the scientist again.

"Excuse me, sir, do you know where this is?" I asked a man, pointing to the address. He gave some lengthy directions, and I soon got lost, having to ask again—several times, actually.

When I finally arrived at the address, I saw a rather small building. It looked like a warehouse. Hesitantly, I knocked. Nobody answered, so I tried the door. It was unlocked and I walked in.

The house was sparsely decorated, but it was all very nice. I wandered around, ignoring the fact I wasn't invited, until I reached an unused spare bedroom. Its door opened into a quite unusual room. Big panes of glass covered one wall; there was a heavy-duty door on the same side, and a huge fan on the opposite wall. The windows revealed a rather large lab. A huge machine took up most of the space. Also in the room was a computer. I saw a figure sitting by it, so I opened the heavy door and walked in.

I walked over the computer to talk to the scientist, but as I approached I realized he had fallen asleep with his face pressed against the keyboard, causing a jumble of letters to fill the screen.

"There's a bed in that room that looks very comfortable. Why don't you use it?"

That woke him up, and he looked tiredly up at me. I almost laughed at the lines in his cheek from the keyboard, until I realized who he was. He looked startled to see me, too.

"Are you in desperate need of another paper or something?" he asked, not as sarcastically as he might have. I was trying to think of a good retort when I realized I had no idea what to tell him. Certainly not the truth. My demon master has sent me because you are inventing something I need so I can steal babies. That would have made a real great impression. Luckily he gave me an opportunity.

"You're obviously new in town, so I'll give you a list of good hotels and apartments if you'd like."

"I don't have any money." It wasn't a lie.

"Oh, well I can't help you there."

"But you can give me a place to stay, can't you? That room right there would be fine. You're obviously not using it."

"How long were you in here?"

I was getting rather nervous. "It was unlocked, and you didn't answer when I knocked..."

"What do you have to move?"

"Not much, actually. Some clothes." I was quite flustered by the entire experience. Merely the fact that he would not take his eyes off me made me lose all my composure. In the underworld, beauty had never gotten me anywhere. Shang Tsung had obviously noticed it, but back then I thought he wanted me for my fighting skills.

"Nothing you say? No rings containing the secret of invisibility? So you won't be much help to me, then. Nothing to tell me that will help me reach my goal." He folded a piece of paper that was lying in front of him. "I'm really starting to wonder if it's possible at all. They all say it isn't. I should have listened. But I'm so very close. Only a few more rearrangements, more adjustments...more dead-ends." He looked back down at his computer, depressed. "When you think about it, there's really not that much to conceal. Matter is made mostly of air, anyway." He looked again and seeing my vacant stare, and mistook it for confusion. Actually it was all making sense to me. Not what he was saying, but the situation. He was trying to create something that could turn things invisible. People, maybe. For some reason the Master thought he was almost certain to figure it out. If I was invisible, think how easy it would be to take the babies. Or kill someone. It was an almost non-existent power, invisibility. So few possessed it, and certainly not me. I am rather jealous of Jade's natural ability.

"Matter is made mostly of air, with such great empty space in atoms, even in solids. If you could find a way to move the atoms of that wall over there even closer together, you could simply walk through it. Understand?"

"Kind of."

"Oh, and back to the topic, if you really want you can stay in there. Not very nice, but I can find some things for you."

"You're so kind."

"Yeah, well, if I lived in Japan, I'd have to be immensely rich to have even as much room as is in this lab to myself. Amazing I have it here in Hong Kong. Might as well share it if I have it, eh?" He tossed the paper he'd been folding at me. It was a star.

"Thanks ever so much." He just shrugged, and as I walked out to retrieve my things, I noticed writing on one of the points. I tried to decipher the numbers, but they meant absolutely nothing to me.

Of course, you were the young man/scientist. You were undoubtedly the best thing that has ever happened to me. You're also one of the strangest people I've ever met. Your personality clashes with itself. If you ever had to see a person again, it was hard to get you to say anything to them, yet if someone told you something could not be done, proving that person wrong almost became an obsession. I've never met anyone else who is shy and competitive in my life. Also, there was the way you could act out anything with unbridled enthusiasm, and still, the next minute not say a word to people you knew well.

And it wasn't just that. When you were bored, you'd come up with hilariously silly things; any pleasant conversation started was liable to take an insane curve, as anything might make you think of something completely different.

Of course you know all these things. But I want to remember them, and I think anyone would like to remember the good times, so I'm writing it. You'll never get this letter anyway.

Some people thought you were crazy. So did I, for a while, until I figure out that you were just so bright that normal things bored you, and you notice the strangest things. For example, "Ching, do you think that before the turn of the last millennium people prophesized that the world was going to end, and do you think the same thing will happened a thousand years from now?" Or "Have you ever wondered why anyone would ever want to live in Japan, what with the earthquakes, pollution, over-population, radioactivity from the atomic bombs dropped on them, and typhoons?" "Chickens run around with their heads cut off for several minutes. I don't like pork, I'm not fond of beef, but chicken is perfect. And it's probably the dumbest animal so it's okay that we eat it. Running around with its head cut off proves the fact that it doesn't use its brain much. It probably dies by bleeding to death rather than the fact that it was decapitated." Or "Why do people climb Mount Everest? Do they have a death wish? You climb up until 2:00, and then you have to come back down. One guy stayed until 2:30. He died." And there were many more that I can't think of, now.

Oh, yes. There were the confessions that made me crack up, mostly because of the serious way you said them, when nobody would care or think they were a crime, as you always approached them. Ironically most had to do with geography. "I know all the capitals of the United States, and I don't even live there." "I was thirteen before I realized that Great Britain was an island. I was eight before I realized that England and Great Britain were the same thing."

About a week after I moved in, I was dying of boredom so I asked you if you had anything to do.

"Sure," you said. "There's lots of things to do. Wash the dishes, laundry, mop the floor, pay the bills..."

"No, I meant some kind of game."

"Oh, well, in that case, have you ever played chess?"

"Chess?"

"Apparently not." You walked to a closet and pulled out a box and a board. You sat the board on the table and began to unpack pieces from the box, small figures in two different colors. You placed them carefully on the board. Red on my side, and blue on yours. Pointing to a light-blue strip down the middle of the lined board, you said, "This is the river. Some pieces can cross it, but others can't. They move along the intersections of the lines." You pointed to the piece in the middle of the back row. "This is the Emperor. He can't leave the Imperial Palace, which is this square with the x through it here. He can't directly face the other Emperor without any pieces in between. He moves one step forward, backward, left, or right." You pointed to the identical pieces on either side of the Emperor. "These are the Counselors. They can't leave the Imperial Palace. They move one step diagonally." You went on to explain the rest of the pieces, from Pawns that can move left or right additionally to forward after they'd crossed the river, to Cannons that have to jump over a piece to capture another. We played every day, until finally, one day, I placed my Rook on the middle point, on the edge of the river.

"Check." I tossed my hair and grinned arrogantly. You moved your Counselor between the pieces, so I swung my remaining Cannon between my Rook and your Counselor. "Check." You escaped again, but I had my plan ready in my mind. Knight up into the battle, pawn left, rook right...

You swept your Cannon down the entire length of the board. "Checkmate," you said, quietly as usual. I began to move my Emperor to another space. "You can't do that," you said. "See my Pawn? It's Checkmate."

"No, it's not."

"So show me what you can do, then."

I looked at the board. Can't move there, not there, can't move the Counselor to block it. My mouth hung open. I hadn't even realized you had any sort of plan. I picked up your winning piece. "Here's what I think of your checkmate!" I flung it at your head. You caught it lovingly, as I threw a handful of other pieces at him. You grabbed a blanket, and swung it out, spun it a few times, and before I knew it, five porcelain chess pieces were wrapped in a blanket, safe from harm, and none had landed on the floor.

"Be careful, Ching, these are breakable."

I just stood there in shock. It was like some sort of Jackie Chan movie. "I never knew you were that talented."

"You never knew I was the chess champion at my university, either."

"Are you some kind of martial artist?"

"I've done Wushu all my life."

"Really? Do you know any acrobatics?"

"A little."

"Maybe we can do something sometime."

"Maybe. I'm tired, I think I'll go to bed now." And just like that, the conversation was over.

We continued to play chess, and when I lost my temper from then on, I threw the board, not the pieces.

I'm still not sure what happened between us. We were friends; we lived together, but in different rooms, and while we had a lot of fun, nothing more happened.

But something happened, and you claimed to love me. I didn't understand. They always say you never know what you have until it's gone. I wish that wasn't true. I wasn't good enough to you. I'm sorry.

Not long after that, the invisible robe started to work, as long as there wasn't any ultraviolet light shown on it—in other words, the sun wasn't up. You trusted me with your secret, and I stole it to do something terrible. I stole babies.