A/N: So…..I had the intention of leaving this as a one-shot. A looming midterm and very nice reviews have made me decide I want to continue this. Le sigh. And thanks aplenty to my roommate, who puts up with my random questions and actually answers them. Warning: innuendo at the very end. If you don't see it, then you should probably take stock in the whole "ignorance is bliss" concept.

And for those unfamiliar with my works, this is based on MK: Defenders of the Realm. The only characters I own are Lilith, Russell, Chow (not Liu's brother), Elliot, Darcy, and Rayne, who is based off some character in the MK Malibu comics. Most are cameo appearances and/or referenced in passing anyhow, so don't be concerned keeping everyone straight.


3 Years Later

"Johnny, leave the grill alone," Sonya advised her husband as he hovered over the turned-off machine. "Jax'll kill you if you ruin the food."

"C'mon, don't you trust me?" Johnny asked plaintively, looking over his shoulder at her.

"With our one-year-old son, yes," Sonya tickled the belly of the aforementioned son in her arms, who gurgled and kicked his feet in delight. "With our three-year-old daughter, of course. But with a barbecue grill that you have no idea how to operate, absolutely not. I don't even know why you bought it in the first place."

"Because it goes great with the place," Johnny waved at the grand house behind them. "And it's to shut Jax up about me not being able to grill like the other men."

Sonya came up behind him, wrapping an arm around his waist. "Honey, I love you dearly. But owning a grill doesn't make you excellent at grilling."

Johnny pouted at her for a second before becoming distracted with his son's outstretched arms. "Alright, c'mere Russell, let's give Mommy a break, okay?" The boy babbled and fisted his father's shirt as he was transferred. "When are the others getting here for the barbecue?"

"In a little bit. Jax and Ruby are running behind schedule with the newborn, and Raiden . . . well when he got to the part about the geese attacking and monks losing hoods on their robes, I told him to get here when he could. Liu, Kitana, Sub-Zero, and Nightwolf are just going to have to wait until it's all sorted out."

"What about Kurt?" Johnny put his son into the baby chair, making faces and strange noises. Russell paused for a moment, then erupted into more giggles and clapped his hands. "It's not like he's across the ocean or country."

"He's waiting for Jax and Ruby," Sonya replied. "Stryker's letting Jax use his truck to carry over the charcoal and other stuff we need for the barbecue."

"I still say I could have bought it all," Johnny grumbled.

"And I still agree with Jax and Stryker in that you would have bought the 'classy' charcoal," Sonya rebutted. "That's no stuff to barbecue with."

There was loud honking, and their daughter Lilith Cage looked up from her coloring book. She exclaimed, "That's Uncle Kurt's truck!"

"Yes it is, Lilith," Sonya nodded, lifting up her daughter. "You wanna go meet Uncle Kurt?"

"Yeah!" Lilith clapped. "Wanna see Uncle Kurt!"

With a passing warning to Johnny to keep the grill off, Sonya rounded the house to the driveway. Stryker's truck was followed by Jax's SUV, and the passengers got out of their respective vehicles. From her angle, Sonya could see a bulge in Stryker's truck bed. She let Lilith run to Stryker with cries of, "Uncle Kurt! Uncle Jax! Aunt Ruby!" Following Lilith at a slower pace, Sonya finally saw the truck bed fully, with its load of lump charcoal and other assorted barbecue necessities. "Stryker, Jax, what is all this? We are having an eight-hour barbecue, not an eight-day party."

"Hey, you gotta be prepared," Jax answered with a chuckle. "With the kind of group we have, we don't know what's going to happen."

"Not much," Ruby put in, carrying a blue-wrapped bundle. "We have to make sure these kids stay safe."

"Wanna see baby!" Lilith cried, squirming in Stryker's arms. He set a firm hand on her shoulder to keep her steady, and drew closer to Ruby so the girl could peek at the baby boy. Dark eyes blinked up at the blonde girl, and the baby turned his face to his mother's breast.

"This is a great initiation to the family," Stryker remarked as Lilith cooed over the baby. "Good food, good company, and Johnny trying to match wits with a thunder god and snarky comments from all around."

"Alright, everyone, let's get this to the backyard," Sonya climbed into the bed of the truck, took a good, long look at the load, then turned to the owner. "How about you drive this into the backyard, Stryker? That way we don't kill our backs transferring everything."


Several hours later, Lilith and Russell were put to bed (much to Lilith's displeasure) and the Briggs' son Elliot shared Russell's crib. Chow, Liu and Kitana's two-year-old son, had put up less of a fuss getting to bed, and in a bout of devious thinking Sonya had Lilith sleep on the same bed as the boy, knowing Lilith would settle down before throwing a fit and disturbing Chow. True to her nature, the girl stopped protesting her bedtime to preserve the boy's peace.

Children settled and daylight slowly fading, the adults moved their meal into the house. Arrayed throughout the spacious living room, with Johnny, Sonya, Liu, and Kitana sharing the couch, Jax and Ruby on the love seat, and the other four seated in sofas. Bottles of champagne and sparkling cider (for the seven-month pregnant Kitana and abstaining Nightwolf, Liu, and Sub-Zero) were passed around, though at one point Jax accused Raiden of spiking the champagne with something stronger. Raiden contended he was innocent of such a crime. Given the innocuous appearance of the liquid, most dismissed it as good-natured jesting (Jax's claim was proved correct later in the evening when Stryker began an animated conversation with a house plant and Sonya tried to provide an entertaining strip show to the men, much to Johnny's chagrin) and continued to trade well-aimed jabs and speculated as to the gender of Kitana and Liu's baby.

Eventually most of the group had crashed, whether it was in a spare bedroom, on the couch, or curled on the floor. The few that managed to stay awake (and sober enough) for a conversation were Raiden, Johnny, and Sub-Zero. Johnny had Sonya's head on his lap, running his hand through her hair with soft strokes. Sub-Zero took a pillow from the couch and slid it under Stryker's head, who had fallen unconscious on Sub-Zero's feet. Raiden returned from the children's bedroom, having finished answering the cries of Elliot and Russell whose parents were less than capable of rising out of a bed, much less taking care of the infants' needs.

"Was Russell alright?" Johnny asked softly.

"Are you kidding?" Raiden lifted a brow. "Mortal infants are simple to appease compared to immortal babies."

Johnny peered suspiciously at the god (he had, after all, lied about spiking the champagne) but dropped it in favor of keeping Sonya comfortable. "That's good."

"I'm still surprised Sonya agreed to have a second child," Sub-Zero remarked. "And that she let Stryker be godfather."

"I guess two years was enough for Sonya to want another kid," Johnny shrugged. "As for Stryker being godfather, I asked about it after she declared him so. She said something about favors and hospital stays—I let it go after she mentioned dropping a television and his laundry out of his loft."

Raiden and Sub-Zero looked at each other, then nodded in understanding. "Probably the safest course of action," Raiden agreed. "Any plans on making Russell a middle child?"

"If there are, I haven't been privy to them," Johnny replied. "What about you, Sub-Zero? Any girlfriends you've been hiding away from us?"

"If I am," Sub-Zero said evenly, "it's highly unlikely I'm going to spill it now."

Stryker mumbled under his breath, something that sounded suspiciously like, "Darcy," and "bed." The three men all shared a glance, one that promised trouble and nagging for the police officer in the very near future.

Johnny smiled down at his beautiful wife, who he knew was not going to feel very beautiful the following morning if Raiden's tampering of the champagne had anything to say about it. And when he looked up, he saw Raiden with a permanent marker in one hand kneeling over Stryker's prone, drooling form.

"For crying out loud, Raiden, first spiking the champagne then this?" Johnny stared. "What's up? Got dared by some other god to make your mortals miserable tonight?"

Raiden tossed a condescending look over his shoulder, saying, "I have some pent-up energy that I've been dying—no irony intended—to release. My wife isn't letting me have my fun at home, so you guys get the brunt of it." And with that, he began to draw characters on Stryker's face. Johnny recognized some as Chinese, Arabic, and other Far and Middle East languages. Sub-Zero snorted and made some sort of comment about, "not being tall enough" which Johnny chose to take as an insult toward Stryker. When Raiden rose and cast his eyes about for his next victim, Johnny covered Sonya with a protective arm and used his best, intimidating glare at Raiden. The god simply lifted a brow, shook his head, and moved on to Liu.

"So, how exactly is your wife preventing you from having fun?" Johnny spoke after a moment. "Is she withholding the sex?"

"I'll pretend you didn't infer that I can't be charming enough to escape the doghouse," Raiden retorted, not pausing from his task of drawing an elaborate cockroach on Liu's cheek. "And for your information, Rayne refuses to let me cook our meals."

"This is a bad thing?" Sub-Zero inquired doubtfully.
"It is when her cooking is second worse only to my five hundred-year-old son. Even Shinnok—may he burn in the eternal flames of the Netherealm for the rest of his long life—was a better cook than her. Besides, I like cooking. It's calming."

"If you say so," Johnny frowned, remembering his own attempts at the elusive art. The fire department had had a field day when they first realized the one who kept burning his kitchen down was none other than the A-list celebrity Johnny Cage.

Sonya swore she'd give Lilith and Russell the videotape of Johnny's last failed attempt at cooking breakfast as a birthday gift in the future, complete with the fire chief pleading with Johnny to stop cooking and rabid fans and paparazzi trying to get a glimpse of the humiliated actor.

Maybe I ought to let Raiden draw on Sonya's face . . .

But, no. While Raiden seemed fairly assured of his ability to entice his wife to bed, Johnny knew that Sonya had a strong will. If she said he was sleeping on the couch for some wrong deed, he generally slept on the couch for the majority of the time for which she sentenced him.

Stretching with a groan, Johnny got up with Sonya in his arms. "Alright, I'm heading to bed. Feel free to crash wherever, Sub."

"What about me?" Raiden asked plaintively.

"I thought you had a loving wife with no grudges to whom you could go home," Sub-Zero pointed out.

"I said I can escape the doghouse, I didn't say I wasn't in the doghouse. If I go up there right now, I'm liable to lose an eye. Or something in a region more south of my head."

"Fine," Johnny rolled his eyes. "But if I wake up and Sonya's face is painted with permanent marker—"

"I'll leave Sonya alone, I swear," Raiden grinned.

Johnny felt he ought to be nervous about Raiden's good humor. But with the pleasant buzz of alcohol in his system and the alluring thought of a comfortable bed, Johnny put it aside, said goodnight, and went to their bedroom.


The sound of violent vomiting woke Johnny up, though he was a bit confused as to why. Not only was the vomiting sounding in stereo, but Sonya wasn't pregnant again—was she? Johnny couldn't remember, especially not with the headache throbbing in his temples—

Oh. That's right. Damn thunder gods, their pranks, and spiked champagne. Breathing deeply, Johnny sat up and rubbed his temples. His hangover wasn't terrible, at least. Better than Sonya's, anyhow.

But there was still the fact that there was a chorus of vomiting noises throughout his house. Thinking about the previous night, Johnny realized whose prayers to the porcelain god it was: Stryker's, the only one who had drunk as much as (if not more than) Sonya.

The toilet in the bathroom connected to their bedroom flushed, and Sonya filed out slowly, face drained of color and appearing woozy. "What the hell happened?" she groaned.

"Raiden spiked the punch," Johnny answered her sympathetically, rising up to rub her back in gentle circles. "I think you and Stryker got the worst of it. I'm pretty sober, and I don't hear either Jax or Ruby puking their guts."

"How wonderful," Sonya grumbled, then frowned at Johnny. "Hon?"

"Yeah, babe?" Johnny led her to the bed, unaware of her confusion.

"Why the hell do you have, 'World's Most Whipped Dilettante' written on your face with Peter Griffin to the side?"

Johnny blinked. Making his way slowly over to a mirror, he saw the bold, black marks across his forehead, the bridge of his nose, and around his jaw, with the aforementioned face on his left cheek.

"Raiden!"

As her husband ran out of the bedroom to deal with the errant thunder god, Sonya sat on the bed with a heavy sigh. Sometimes one couldn't understand a god and his intentions.

"Mommy?" Lilith came in, blonde hair messy but her eyes were alert. "What's a dile—dilee—"

"Dilettante, sweetie. It means someone who does something but they aren't truly interested in it. Your daddy isn't one, Lilith, so don't worry about it."

"Oh. Okay." Lilith paused, then asked, "Mommy?"

"Yes?"

"What's a sy—sybi—sybian?"

"Raiden!"


And that, as far as I know, is that. If I were to ever continue this (which I don't intend to) it would probably take a less-humorous turn and delve into the next Kombat (because, honestly, with this generation there aren't any rules keeping the tournament happening once every generation).