Author's Note: This chapter was inspired by two sources, the most obvious of them being the movie, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers when Aragorn figures out that Merry and Pippin were not killed by the Riders of Rohan, but in fact had escaped to Fangorn Forest. I really thought how they showed him tracking them was cool and so I tried to achieve that effect myself. The other inspiration was an episode of BBC's Sherlock called "A Scandal in Belgravia," where he meets the woman (Irene Adler) for the first time, and both she and Sherlock imagine themselves on the field where the guy has died, watching what happens and making deductions about it as if they were there. I hope you all find it captivating. Or at the very least, enjoyable to read LOL

"Where was the last place you saw Olivia?" Miyuki quietly whispered to them as the group of Champions hid behind a boulder and waited for a patrol of oni to pass by. So far, they had remained undetected by the enemy forces, and that was how the Cryomancer wanted to keep it.

"By the castle," Jamie whispered back as he pointed to the rightmost wing of the Black Palace. "She was arguing with Uncle Bi-han."

"That guy's a prick," Cassie announced.

"That guy has been through more shit than you can even imagine," Erron snapped at her. "Better show some respect, Miss Cage."

"Yeah, okay, Howdy Doody," she shot back. "And it's Sergeant."

"Jacqui," Takeda began as he rested his hand on her shoulder, "can we get over there without being seen?"

She was looking through her binoculars at the battlefield, sizing everything up. "It's going to be rough," she said.

"Like Darfur?" Cassie asked her.

"Exactly like Darfur," she replied.

"What happened in Darfur?" Tommy now asked them both.

Cassie shook her head. "Long story," she told him. "We basically had to sneak into a terrorist camp and sabotage it from within."

"Sounds like fun," Kabal drily remarked.

"Not the word I'd use, Deputy Dawg, but yeah."

"So how do we get through, then?" Miyuki asked her. "Since you've done this before."

"I don't know," she told her. "Before we executed our mission, drones spent days taking aerial photographs of the camp, and the CIA agents we had undercover inside fed us pertinent info. We knew exactly where everyone would be at and at what time, and we knew exactly where to go."

"Here," Jacqui now added, "it's basically like throwing a dart at a dartboard while blindfolded."

Miyuki shook her head in disgust as she gazed back at the battlefield, even though she knew the Rangers were right. They'd had no time to do any sort of reconnaissance, and basically, they were just hoping to find Olivia without too much trouble. Heaven knew they didn't have the means to fight the Netherrealm army on their own. Thankfully, she saw, several boulders littered the plains in front of the Black Palace, and they were large enough to provide cover if they staggered their approach one at a time. Furthermore, she noted, she glimpsed several Edenian corpses strewn about not far from their hiding spot, and a grotesque solution occurred to her. She quickly explained her idea to the others, and then looked up to Erron for approval.

He and Kabal exchanged a glance, and then he shrugged. "I reckon that's probably our best option right now," he replied.

"You go first, Frost," Kabal ordered, his voice harsh and cold. His voice simmered with rage, undoubtedly remembering all the times she tortured him, including with the rats. He hated rats, she knew.

"My name is Miyuki," she crossly replied. "Frost is dead."

"Not from where I'm standing," he shot back. "Now go."

"Why her?" Jamie demanded to know.

"Because if she gets killed, it'll give us time to get away," he replied. "And if she dies, it's no big loss."

"Can any of you track a person as well as I can?" she snarled at him, now standing up and looking at him directly through his mask's eyes. "Can you track a person at all?" she wanted to know.

"I'm a detective, sweetheart," he hissed back. "That's what I do for a living."

"In the city," she retorted, her voice terse. "But not in the wild. Take a seat, Junior, before you hurt yourself."

"Oh, look who put her big girl panties on today," he shot back. Miyuki started to raise her fist to punch him, but then stopped herself, thinking better of it. "That's right," he jeered. "You know I'd kill you in a flash."

"I've beaten you before," she growled. "I could easily do so again. But you're not worth it, you human piece of beef jerky."

"Ouch," Jin said as Erron now wedged himself between the two of them.

"The more time you idjits waste jawin' off at each other, the less time we have to help that girl, if she's not beyond helpin', that is," the gunslinger snapped at them both. "Now I say we all go together."

Miyuki shook her head no. "I'll go," she told him. "I'll get the clothes."

"Listen here, woman-"

"No, you listen," she cut him off. "They're less likely to see one of us than a whole group of us. And I was a kunoichi. I know how to stay invisible if I want to."

Erron bit his lip and nodded. "Alright, Darlin'," he said, "go rustle us up some disguises."

She nodded and slipped from behind the safety of the boulder onto the battlefield. No one living remained on this part of the battlefield, just mountains of bodies from all sides strewn about like trash, mingling together in blood and carnage. They looked eerie in the growing twilight of the evening, their faces basked in shadows and contorted in pain that revealed their final moments in perfect clarity, their open eyes glassy and vacant like dolls'. One of General Blade's men laid in a pool of congealing blood, his arm gone at the elbow, clearly chewed off by one of the oni. Nearby, a dozen of his friends sprawled around him, equally mutilated. Hundreds of people were riddled with arrows. More than a few of the oni and the Tarkatans had their faces blown off by hollow point bullets. Already, Netherrealm vultures had found their way to the field and were ripping off chunks of flesh from the corpses before letting the meat slide down their gullets. As Miyuki crept closer to the Edenian bodies, her foot accidentally kicked an oni head like a soccer ball. Nearby, she saw, the vicious demon drones were looting the bodies of the slain. So far, however, her presence remained unnoticed, and they did not bother her.

The Cryomancer worked quickly to peel the bloody clothes off the corpses, and did her best to match the Edenians' height and build to her teammates so that things would fit as well as possible. It took her nearly half an hour to scrounge up enough garments, but she'd blessedly gone unseen and scurried back to the others with a pounding heart, dragging the large bundle with her. When she'd reached the safety of the boulder, she dropped it and let it fall askew.

"Hurry," she whispered.

"This is so gross," Jacqui complained as she held up a yellow robe stained red with blood.

"It's the best solution we have," Takeda reminded her as he slipped a green peasant shirt with billowing sleeves over his black and yellow Shirai Ryu robes.

Jamie, his aunt couldn't help but notice, looked in disgust at his black tang jacket, which was smokey and burned in places around a distinct bullet hole soaked with blood and char. He immediately dropped it and staggered back a few steps before collapsing into the dirt and throwing up. Tommy immediately saw his twin's distress and ran to his side to help him. He began patting his back as the others now looked at them both in concern while they slipped on their disguises.

"What's wrong, Jamie?" the boy naively asked.

"Livy's dead, isn't she?" he whimpered. In response, his brother's head sagged down and rested on his. He pinched his nose to rub away his own pain.

"Raiden said she was still alive," Jin reminded them.

"Yeah, well, Raiden's been wrong before," Kabal bitterly reminded him. "That said, I think if anyone could survive this mess, it's that wildcat of a sister of yours, Jamie. God, she reminds me of your mother sometimes," he fondly chuckled.

"I think this all is just a little too real for him," Erron offered, crossing his arms. "Only played at war before, huh, kid?"

"We fought the Tarkatans when they attacked the Temple, and we fought here too," Tommy snapped at him as he looked back, and the gunslinger merely raised his eyebrows and harrumphed at that, clearly not convinced.

"Hell, kid, fighting is the easy part," Kabal told him. "It's the death and the carnage that'll keep you up at night."

"Hey, maybe you should stay back here," Cassie gently suggested to Jamie as she knelt over him and patted his shoulder. "We'll come back for you when we find Liv."

"No, I'm fine," he protested as he wiped his mouth and got to his feet. He started to put on his shirt. "I'm better now."

"Then let's get going," Miyuki told him and the others. "We've already spent far too much time here. It's lucky we haven't been noticed."

The Netherrealm sun was rapidly setting, and the glowing fires around the battlefield still burned fierce and red, when the group left the safety of their hiding spot and began the most dangerous leg of their mission. As Miyuki had planned it, they staggered their approach, each of them subtly moving from boulder to the next so as not to attract notice. And so far, so good. The oni and the remaining Tarkatans paid them no mind as they steadily made their way to the spot Olivia was last seen.

After a long, nerve-wracking jaunt, Miyuki felt safe enough to regroup, so she stopped for a spell to let the others catch up. That proved disastrous. When they all started to get up to move again, they heard the sound that they'd all been secretly dreading: the noise of oni marching towards them, moving fast on a path cutting through the Mortus-Coombe.

"Be cool," Cassie urgently whispered to everyone as the group proceeded to their destination, walking in triple columns like they belonged there. Beside Miyuki, Kabal bowed his head in his deep hood to hide his ghastly mask, and Erron shoved his hat inside his Edenian shirt.

"Maybe they'll just leave us alone," Jacqui hopefully whispered in between Jamie and Tommy.

And for a moment, it looked like they would. The winged oni came first, snapping whips and driving along the flightless demons, who were holding their heads down to shelter themselves from the vicious lashes their leaders kept dealing them. On either side of them, Jade and Nightwolf shouted orders at all of them, hurrying them on. Miyuki held her breath. If any of the gods cared about the Earthrealmers at all, she thought, they'd keep the two revenants from recognizing any of them.

"What are you still doing in Netherrealm?" Jade snidely asked in her high accent as she left the line. Her eyes burned as they fixed on Erron's face, quite possibly because he was the tallest and broadest of their number, surely their leader. "Your master has gone to Seido with the others."

Erron cleared his throat. "Yes, Milady," he said slowly, deliberately washing all traces of his Texas twang from his voice. "But Lord Reiko asked us to find one of the Earthrealmers for him. He's quite fond of her. She's the Cryomancer's daughter."

Jade's eyebrow lifted as if she was surprised, but she nodded her understanding. Inwardly, though, Miyuki was panicking, wondering what she'd do if the assassin didn't buy their story. Though she never moved her head, her eyes subtly darted around, looking for escape routes. Blessedly, everyone else remained calm as well, staring straight ahead to avoid rousing suspicion. And the gunslinger himself was the most collected of them all - shockingly, he spoke like a well-polished Edenian lord, offering no indication of his true heritage to the woman as she interrogated him.

"What makes Lord Reiko so certain this woman remains here?" Jade demanded to know.

"It is not for me to question his reasoning on the matter," Erron replied. "He has asked us to look for her, and so we shall."

She looked like she might like to say something more, but she glanced back at the oni and saw them nearly passed. "Very well," she said. "But do not linger. Your master needs to worry about his plans to free Shinnok, not about the dead."

"Yes, Milady," he cordially replied with a slight bow.

When she was gone, Kabal cocked his head at Erron, somehow managing to convey his surprise behind his mask. "Since when did you learn how to talk like one of those stuffed-shirt swaggering peacocks?" he asked.

It prompted the corners of the gunslinger's mouth to turn up in faint amusement. "Being in the Kahn's court has come in handy in more ways than one," he replied, his voice back to its normal drawl. "And I ain't a minister for nothing."

"You're certainly arrogant enough for the job," Jin quipped behind him.

"Takes one to know one, kid," he replied. "Now come on. That was far too close for comfort."

"Amen," Miyuki replied and once again led them forward.

Finally, they reached the general vicinity of Olivia's last known location, and upon first glance, the situation looked pretty grim. Nothing had survived here - no human, no oni, no Tarkatan, no Edenian. Miyuki began to wonder if Jamie's fears were founded. Had Raiden been wrong? Was Livy really dead? She tiredly rubbed her eyes and scrubbed her grubby fingers through her hair, vaguely noticing how despondent the others looked as well.

"Well, what say you, Darlin'?" Erron asked as he peered at the Cryomancer for answers. "You said you were one of the best trackers in the world. At least the best in our little group. So where's Livy?"

Miyuki sighed and shook her head in frustration, and it was hard for her not to imagine the worst. The battlefield was a muddled soup of tracks, not surprisingly. Each set told her a different story, but those were stories she already knew - or at least, could surmise. There had been a titanic battle here. To find a trace of her niece, and her niece alone, seemed hopeless, like finding a needle in the proverbial haystack.

And yet…

With some stroke of luck, perhaps even divine intervention leading her eyes, that's exactly what she suddenly found set faintly in the scorched dirt. A set of footprints several feet away from the search party, pressed more lightly into the dirt than the ones around it. The Cryomancer scurried to them, stepping lightly to avoid disturbing a single stone, for each one painted a picture in her mind, and she crouched over the tracks to study them more closely. Yes! she inwardly smiled as a newfound swell of hope surged through her chest. These were definitely a woman's tracks; she stood more lightly than a man would've, and this particular woman put more weight on her toes than her heels, almost suggesting that she was a ballerina, airy and graceful.

"Livy was here," Miyuki declared as she carefully ran her fingers over the tracks, feeling every dip and whorl, sensing every micromovement her niece had made. She easily noticed how her feet had turned slowly around nearly 180 degrees, clearly to face someone new.

The Cryomancer's eyes followed the direction of Olivia's boots and recognized a man's tracks now approaching her. His tracks were more deeply impressed in the dirt and far more defined than his quarry's. Miyuki immediately crawled to this new set and ran her fingers over it as well, letting it speak to her. It told her how to interpret every twitch of motion that she felt. This man had walked towards Livy, had caught her off guard, and unwittingly drilled the haft of his weapon into the ground like a walking stick. She glanced to the side of his boot and saw the indentation of a perfect circle pressed into the ground, offering its testimony to validate her theory. She guessed the weapon was some sort of a staff or a naginata like the oni and the Edenians were using, and it was tall because he was tall, judging by his size thirteen boots and long stride. At first, Miyuki just wrote the mysterious man off as a random Edenian rebel, but a vague slip of the weapon's tracks suddenly signaled a much different scenario.

The kunoichi blinked as her imagination returned her to the battlefield at the precise moment this track was made, the chaos of war screaming all around her as the opposing armies clashed in blood and carnage. She gradually lifted her eyes from the imprint in the dirt until she saw him, a tall man in heavy armor, and it weighed him down and cast his indelible impression into the soil. His stride was long, just like she'd deduced, and he walked with unfailing confidence, like he was accustomed to effortless victory. In his hand he carried the weapon she'd seen, but it was not the simple bo staff or naginata she initially guessed. No, this weapon's blade stretched outward like some kind of unholy steel wing just waiting for the opportunity to disembowel an enemy. A scythe.

"Reiko confronted her," she finally announced as the story continued to unfold in her mind, playing for her like a movie in vivid clarity. She was lost in this daydream, the tracks as familiar to her as a well-loved book. The General had attacked Livy, his scythe glinting with hellfire, but she parried his attack and drove him back. "They fought," she quickly reported, scurrying around, following their tracks. "She kicked him. That bought her some time."

Miyuki now saw three new sets of tracks in the dirt, all seemingly belonging to an animal rather than something humanoid, their talon-tipped toes clawing into the ground, digging furrows. She scrambled around them, feeling them, studying their every movement, following this fight where it would go.

"The oni attacked her," she then said, biting her lip in concentration. "Three against one." She moved with the skirmish, ignoring the others as they followed her lead. "She..." the Cryomancer trailed off when she found a heaping pile of oni bodies at the end of that path, the one on top split completely in half from its skull to its navel..."killed them," she finally finished, looking at the mess in awe of the young woman's power and skill.

"Damn," Cassie muttered, clearly admiring her friend's handiwork.

"You aren't joking about that," Kabal answered her, equally in awe. "Now she reminds me of her father."

But Miyuki didn't hear her companions talking; her mind was too focused on the picture being painted in her mind. She continued interpreting every track and quickly realized Olivia barely had time to react before Reiko had attacked her again, this time sneaking up on her like a coward. Once again, their respective trails showed an epic fight between them, with Livy somehow holding her own against the ferocious Outworld General.

"Reiko attacked Livy again," she reported, drawing her comrades' attention once more. She noticed how her niece's tracks suddenly disappeared, only to reappear again a few feet away, her feet having shifted several degrees. "She butterfly kicked him," the Cryomancer deduced. "Then she side-kicked him, which surprised him."

Miyuki probed the tracks with her hands, and her fingers found a bloody piece of metal stamped into the dirt. Curiously, she pried it up and rested it in her hand.

"What's that?" Takeda asked as she wiped the grime from it.

"Reiko threw shuriken at her, and many hit her in the chest."

She looked up, and once more, Reiko stood before her, squaring off with Livy, the story growing in urgency by the second as he tackled her and pinned her to the ground. "He straddled her," she dreamily said as her fingers curled around the shuriken, her other ones probing the ground. She bit her lip in concentration as her eyes slid slowly shut, feeling her way around the indentation her niece's butt had made in the ground. She felt the girl struggle and shift under his weight, the tracks not unlike the strange, rippling ones made by a snake in the sand. She glanced up again and this time, she saw the General beating at Olivia's face until all the fight in her body seemed to have left her. She watched him pound her head into the ground, smashing little half moons into the dirt, wearing away her strength with each blow. Her niece's hands flopped weakly to either side of her body, the indentation unmistakable. But the young Cryomancer's feelings of despondency must have lasted only a moment because now Miyuki noticed how Olivia lifted her knee into Reiko's chest and used it to throw him off of her.

"She wanted to give up, but she didn't," she said. "They circled each other right here, but then he charged her and knocked her down again." But now she cocked her head and studied the tracks below her fingers. Livy had laid stunned in the dirt for too long. "She hesitated," she mumbled in concern. Her niece had squirmed, she could tell, but she must have been in too much pain to get back up. Reiko, she saw, had kicked the girl while she was down, and he would've kept kicking her if she hadn't have had the presence of mind to sweep his feet from beneath him with a simple pivot of her legs. The Cryomancer faintly smiled as she ran her fingers over her movements, pleased that she'd refused to give up after all.

"They wrestled," she then reported. Her probing fingers now found blobs of tacky blood drying like coffee grounds in the scorched dust. It pooled inside more half-moon shaped indentations in the soil. "He held her by her hair and slammed her face into the ground." More signs of resignation crept around those tracks. "She was tired. Fading."

Miyuki watched Olivia slump into the ground in a heap. Reiko towered over her, clearly the superior warrior, superior because he was ruthless. His right foot jarred abruptly to the side while the other one barely left the ground as it drilled into her side. It was exactly like what her father had done to her only two days prior. And it ended exactly the same.

"He broke her ribs," she announced, now brushing the new tracks. "Then he lifted her up and threw her into that rock," she said as she pointed to the nearby boulder.

She trotted to it and found the tracks again, but this time, the story was harder to see because stone was stubborn and never willingly gave up its secrets. But judging by the angles of their feet on the ground, Reiko had pinned her to the boulder. And then she realized the stone did have a story to tell her. She curiously traced her fingertip along a strange water stain drying in such a way that it looked like the chalk outline of a murdered corpse, the edges of it white like powder.

Once more, Miyuki smiled. "Somehow, she got her second wind," she told them. "She teleported behind him, attacked him, and subdued him."

Now the Cryomancer's eyes caught sight of a new set of tracks that were gradually sneaking up on Livy with all of the stealth of a panther stalking its prey. Her niece clearly didn't notice him sneaking up on her - her attention was far too focused on Reiko, whom she'd driven into the ground. No clues offered Miyuki any insight into this newcomer's identity save that he was a man and he was tall, though not as tall as Reiko. One of his bannermen? she asked herself. It didn't really matter, she quickly supposed. This man, faceless in her mind's eye, had hit her niece with something hefty and large, perhaps a club. His reach had been too far for a rock or anything smaller to make sense. And predictably, under the weight of the thing, Livy had crumpled like a rag doll from the blow.

"Someone else showed up," she thoughtfully murmured as she put her hands on her hips and squinted closely at the tracks. "He knocked her out from behind. She never even knew he was there."

"Who was it?" Kabal demanded to know, his voice tinged with barely controlled anger. "Was it Sub-Zero?"

Miyuki shook her head no. "I don't know who this is," she replied, "but it's not my brother."

"Maybe it's not," he retorted. "Or maybe you're just covering for him so I don't have one more reason to go after the son-of-a-bitch."

She snapped her head around and glared at him. "I have no reason to lie to protect him. I could be wrong, but I don't think my brother needs to be worried about the likes of you."

"At the risk of starting an argument," Takeda now began, "how can you be certain it's not the Grandmaster?"

She snorted impatiently and then turned her attention back to the tracks. "He's shorter than Kuai Liang," she told them, tracing her hands over the imprints again. "But not by much. See his stride? See his shoe size? See how shallow the impressions are?" she pointed to the mysterious man's feet. "He's definitely a couple inches shorter. Maybe 5'10", tops." She dangerously glowered at Kabal again. "My brother is six feet even."

"You've got to teach me how to do that," Jin praised her, thoroughly impressed with her skill.

Miyuki gently smiled at him and then looked down at the ground once more, thoughtfully stroking her chin. "Something is wrong with his leg, too," she suddenly noticed. Her fingers brushed along his instep. "He's favoring his left leg over his right leg just a bit. It's very slight. I almost missed it. He could've been hurt in the battle. I think it's pretty unlikely he came to this fight with a preexisting limp."

"Listen, sweetheart, I don't give a damn about this man's limp so much as I wanna know what happened to the kid," Erron barked at her. "Where's Livy?"

The Cryomancer inhaled deeply and once more turned to the tracks for answers. The mysterious assailant's arms dug burrows beneath Olivia's body in order to lift her into his arms. His footprints confirmed that as she now saw them set more deeply into the ground, indicating that he was carrying a heavy burden. And his tracks, she saw, faced Reiko's; the two must've exchanged words before he ran away from the battlefield, prompting Miyuki to chase after them like a bloodhound.

"He took her towards the mountains!" she cried and led them after Olivia.

alwaysdoubted, I'm glad to. I always tell people to write the story they'd want to read if they were on the other side of the equation, and everything will come up aces if they do. I'm happy that my method works and that people enjoy what I have to say. I agree - they better hurry up if they're going to catch up to Xinyi and Olivia in time! But fortunately for her, more than one person is looking for her ;) Oh, yeah, whoever gets their hands on Xinyi is gonna have a field day with him, but I can't say who that's going to be in the end. And I wouldn't sweat it too much - I find that when I'm lacking in inspiration, something always catches my notice and gets my juices going again. I'm sure that'll happen to you too!

ROCuevas, as always, thank you so much!

MKDemigodZ-Warrior, I thought that the parallels between Xinyi and Hans was apparent when Xinyi knocked her out after pretending to be a good guy LOL And this whole thing could be how Frost and Livy learn to get along. But I can't weigh in on the scenarios you provided. You know, because of spoilers ;) Thanks for your review!