Bondage
by Nyohah

10
Truths
Fifth Day of Mortal Kombat

Syada, syada, syada. What in the universe is syada? Mileena was still being bothered by this word. She knew what it meant, and she knew she knew what it meant, but she could not manage to bring it up out of the depths of her mind.

"...Outworld to Mileena!" yelled Shang Tsung.

She sat up suddenly, a little embarrassed that she had been daydreaming.

"Now that we're all awake, we can start. Reptile and Jax are out of the tournament; Johnny Cage has been killed. Scorpion, Kitana, Baraka, Kung Lao, and Raiden all only have one more chance. Sub-Zero has only been beaten once. After today's first fight either someone will no longer be in the tournament or someone will no longer be undefeated."

Liu Kang started to rise. "No," laughed Tsung. "This fight is between Baraka and Mileena."

Mileena and her new enemy had hardly reached the arena when Shao Kahn declared, "Fight!"

The mutant lunged at her with his arm-blades. Mileena flipped over him and kicked backward with one foot as she landed, slamming her heel into the back of his head. He fell flat on his face, and she ran toward him, lifting him up and leaning over backward, slamming him into the ground. She followed her throw with a sweep kick that knocked him off his feet, and an uppercut.

She began to pace toward Baraka. He rose quickly and, when she was in range, slashed at her neck with his blade. Mileena stepped further back along the blade's path, forcing the top of her right forearm into the bottom of his, holding it up. At the same time, she swung her left leg in a wide crescent until it ended up on top of the blade, where she slammed it to the ground with an axe kick. The blade snapped completely off Baraka's arm and he screamed in pain, though he—and the audience—wasn't sure what happened, as it had happened too fast for them to see.

Mileena spun around and forced Baraka away with a spinning side kick to the face. She flipped back, gaining herself some space, which she used to throw her sais at Baraka. He managed to dodge the left one, but the right impacted into his left shoulder, severing the muscles that allowed him to extend the blade he still had.

Once the threat to her throat's continued existence was gone, Mileena engaged herself in a semi-close quarters fight, smashing powerful kicks and punches into various parts of Baraka's body. As Baraka was beginning to lose the ability to concentrate on his opponent, Mileena twisted her body and hooked the side of her elbow into his cheek. She continued to spin, following the strike up with a backhand punch to the temple. Baraka fell and did not rise.

Mileena pulled off her mask. She leaned down and grabbed Baraka's stained shirt, wrenching him to his feet. She leaned forward, and to everyone's disgust planted a kiss the side of his bald head. She picked up one foot and bent it back toward her hip as something odd began to happen to Baraka. He seemed to shrink, and she sucked him up into her mouth. When he was completely gone, she turned around spit out his bones. She turned around and faced the audience.

Everyone stared at her. Shao Kahn forgot to declare her victory. At last, Shang Tsung spoke.

"Well," he said, obviously disturbed, "we'll take a twenty-minute break." He almost ran out of the arena, followed, more slowly, by Reptile and Shao Kahn.

Mileena walked up to the others. They all had wide-eyed stares of disbelief, staring at her. Jax recovered his voice first.

"You ate him."

"Hmm?"

"You ate him."

"No. Actually I didn't. Would you like me to explain?" All seven fighters nodded. "When I kissed him—and there was a reason for that but I don't feel like explaining—it looked like I sucked him up. But, actually, at that moment I was teleporting his bones away—that's why he kind of deformed. Then I teleported the rest of him where I had sent the bones—the middle of the wasteland—and brought his bones back, making it appear they came out of my mouth." She shrugged. "It's really not that difficult."

"What on earth, or Outworld, I guess, made you come up with a crazy idea like that?" asked Kung Lao. He never got his answer, for at that moment a flash of bright emerald came out of nowhere and landed on Liu Kang. It forced him to the ground, where he struggled with a dangerous-looking, dark-skinned female ninja with bronze fans. Jade had one of the fans aimed toward his throat, and as she swiped right, Liu Kang forced his right hand in the opposite direction, where he grabbed her by the wrist, holding the deadly fan away from his neck, and struggling to make her drop it.

Still pushing on the fan, Jade reached down toward another of the many stashed in her boots. Liu Kang likewise grabbed that wrist and shoved his foot into her stomach, rolling backward and flipping her away from him.

Kung Lao and Mileena each kicked a fan from her hand as she was standing back up. Jax caught her right wrist and twisted it behind her and up toward her shoulder, almost to the point of breaking. Kung Lao grabbed onto her other wrist and held it with a death grip. Mileena tried to get the other fans from her boot, but Jade's kicking feet prevented her, so she settled for grabbing one of her legs. The other kicked her in the soft spot under her chin, and broke her grip, sending her sprawling on her back, coughing.

A hooking kick connected with Kung Lao's stomach, and would have hurt a lot more if he hadn't seen it coming and started to duck. He still gripped her wrist with both hands.

Liu Kang and Raiden approached carefully to help, but Sub-Zero stopped them. He addressed Jax and Kung Lao. "Let go on my mark."

"Are you crazy?" asked Jax.

"Trust me," said the ninja, a little annoyed. "Three, two, one..." He crouched and released a blast of ice. "...Mark!" Jax and Lao let go, and the blast connected with Jade before she could move, freezing her.

Kitana suddenly came back from where she had been, though no one had noticed her absence, carrying some rope. As soon as the ice melted, eight warriors tackled Jade at once, pinning her down in a chair as Kitana and Raiden tied her to it, and Mileena finally was able to remove all her fans and set them aside.

Kitana addressed the very irate green ninja. "Jade, what are you doing?"

"Killing Liu Kang," she whispered.

"Pardon me if I'm wrong," said Mileena, "but wasn't it you who told me not to kill any warrior with good intentions for everyone's sake?"

Jade glared up at Mileena. "Shang Tsung ordered me to. Do you think I could just disobey him like nothing was going on?"

"Jade," said Kitana, "you're a person. You have just as much ability to disobey as any of the rest of us."

"No, I don't," she replied. "And no, I'm not."

"What are you saying?" asked Kitana, lowering herself into the chair next to Jade.

"I'm saying," she replied angrily, "that there are two people in this universe that I simply do not have the ability to disobey. One is Shang Tsung." She lowered her head. "The other is you, Princess."

Kitana looked at Jade in disbelief. Kung Lao asked the next question. "What is that other thing you were saying, about not being a person?"

"That's part of the reason I can't disobey them. I'm not an Edenian person. I'm..." Her voice began to quaver, like she was...crying? "I'm a...just a," she swallowed, and finally spit it out. "Kitana's clone." She choked and began to cry harder. "He took some of your genes. Kahn always thought you had a most marvelous heritage. He wanted more than just one of you. And Shang Tsung has this thing with cloning—he loves playing God." She looked up at Kitana, drops of salt water trailing from the corners of her eyes. "He changed me, a little. He darkened my skin to normal Edenian standards instead of your half Mandalorian, half light-skinned ancient Edenian royalty. He also changed my abilities, decided to give me intangibility and the almost non-existent actual, natural invisibility, not like Reptile's chameleon camouflage." She lowered her head down almost to her lap, covering her face. Her voice came out muffled when she spoke again. "The whole reason I'm here is to cheat; to keep the Earth warriors from winning at all costs—even murder."

Kitana didn't know what to think. Her best friend, her partner, her confidante, not real? A clone? An evil replica of nature created by Shang Tsung?

"I say we kill her," said Liu Kang. The others started to agree, all except Kung Lao and Sub-Zero, who wanted to make sure she couldn't hurt them, but not murder her, and Mileena, who had been in situations all too similar to not be able to look past the fact she was a clone to the truth—she had no choice. And if she really wanted to kill Liu Kang, she could have stayed invisible and simply decapitated him before anyone else could do anything about it.

Kitana was startled out of her reverie by their agreements to slit her throat. "No! You can't! She helped me."

"She tried to kill me," said Liu Kang.

"She had to! You heard her. She couldn't disobey Shang Tsung."

"How do you know? She could be lying."

Kitana sat there for a second. She stuck out her tongue and attempted to touch it to the tip of her nose, not successfully. Kung Lao raised an eyebrow at her unexpected behavior.

"Jade," said Kitana, "I order you to stick out your tongue and touch it to the tip of your nose."

Jade stuck her tongue and attempted to do so, falling short. For several minutes the others watched at the ninja attempted the simple feat, trying everything she could think of to stretch her tongue out longer. Eventually she began to strain against her ropes, so she might use her hands to assist her.

"Okay, Jade, you do not have to do this anymore." Kitana crossed her arms and legs and looked back to Liu Kang. "Satisfied? Good." She looked around, and when she determined that Reptile was nowhere in the area, she continued. "Jade helped me, as I said before. I got the rules to the tournament—the new ones that might have loopholes. I gave them to Jade, and she gave them to one of you."

"If Jade gave them to one of us," said Liu Kang, disgusted, "then where are they?"

"You don't have them?" asked Kitana, genuinely surprised. "Jade, you can't disobey me. Where are they?"

"I gave them to Smoke! I swear! I did it to give less of a trail back to you, Kitana. He was supposed to get it to one of them. Please believe me," Jade pleaded.

"I did see her give something to a gray Lin Kuei ninja when I was in the Living Forest for my fight with Sub-Zero," said Mileena, matter-of-factly.

"Smoke's here?" Sub-Zero said, and everyone was quite amazed at the volume of his voice, the loudest they'd ever heard it. "During our fight? And I missed him?" He slapped his palm against his forehead and sank down into his chair.

"I still say we kill her." Liu Kang was not amused, as most of the rest were.

"Liu Kang," said Kitana harshly, "Isn't it a rule on your planet 'innocent until proven guilty'? Well it was on Edenia, and I am not going to let you kill her until it is proven that she destroyed the rules."

"Kitana?" asked Jade, "How do you know that was a rule on Edenia? It was taken over when you were a year old!"

"Be quiet, Jade," she ordered, still glaring at Liu Kang.

"I would have to agree with you, Kitana," said Kung Lao, "and don't mind my friend here. He's a Fire elemental. It's the equivalent of a woman having PMS, except all the time."

"Well," said Mileena, "as long as we're having this whole confession session. I have one question to ask. Subby, what in the worlds happened to you? You are so much different than anything I've ever heard about you. What is going on?"

"Uh...that was two questions, Mileena."

"Shut up, Kung Lao." She turned and faced Sub-Zero again. He had his face buried in his hands.

"You know," he said, suddenly sitting up, "I wasn't actually expecting to get this far. It's not like we're really that much alike or anything. He's nine years older and almost eight centimeters taller than I am for crying out loud!"

"Who?"

"My older brother. The Sub-Zero who went to the last tournament."

"Do they name all brothers the same?" asked Kung Lao, wondering about this odd little detail.

"Actually, I think I'm the only brother of a Lin Kuei assassin who's also an assassin, but yeah, I guess if they were the same element and they couldn't think up a better name they might as well. Causes confusion."

"Yeah, to your mother," laughed Jax.

"Okay, sure, 'cause my mother named me 'Sub-Zero'." He rolled his eyes at Jax. "There's only one reason I agreed to come to this tournament." He turned and looked straight at Scorpion. "What happened to my brother?"

"Actually," said the former Shirai Ryu ninja, "I don't know. I defeated him in our match, and I was going to burn him up with the fire I can spit, but there was this huge flash and he seemed to absorb it, and it almost seemed to be replenishing him, and then he disappeared. There was another bright flash and there weren't any ashes or anything. I honestly don't know."