"Olivia," Jiayi softly spoke through her nightmares of yurei coming for her to cut off her ears. "Wake up Olivia," he said again a moment later, this time nudging her shoulder. "We need to leave."
Olivia drowsily blinked, inhaled sharply through her nose, and groaned. "What happened?" she muttered as he leaned on one knee beside her. Her throat felt raw and dry now, and when she spoke, her voice was hoarse. She swallowed as she realized she'd made a burrito of herself with one of Xinyi's furs, and then sleepily flung it off her before Jiayi helped her sit. She glanced around, and as she did, memories of the day before flooded her brain. Gingerly, she touched her wounded ear. It was tender and sore, pulsating in time to her heartbeat, the scorching pain almost intolerable. "So I guess that really happened," she grimaced.
"Unfortunately, Milady," the Crown Prince replied. "What were you dreaming about?" he then wondered aloud.
She cast him a wayward glance. "Why?" she suspiciously drawled.
He shrugged. "You were restless," he told her. "You were tossing and turning for most of the night."
Olivia awkwardly cleared her throat and looked away, thinking of her persistent and horrifying night terrors, thankful that she didn't act any of them out this time. "Yeah, well, I do that," she quietly murmured in response. But she refused to answer his question. "What time is it?" she then asked, rubbing the last traces of sleep from her eyes.
"It is approaching midday," he said.
Immediately, her eyes were bulging in surprise. "What?" she yelped. "Why did you let me sleep so long?" Like a pernicious disease, suspicion devoured her once again and she looked at Jiayi with wide-eyed horror, trembling now. Had he drugged her somehow and then done nefarious things to her body while she was unconscious? At the thought, a flash of anger burned a hole through her, and she scowled.
As if he'd read her mind, he raised an eyebrow at her and crossed his arms. "I let you sleep because you needed it, Lady Olivia," he patiently told her, his voice never raising. "I know the havoc those cobalt collars can wreak upon our bodies, and how weak they can make us. I am actually quite impressed by your resilience against its powers. A lesser Cryomancer would never have made it up these mountains like you did."
"Yeah, well, I've done it before," she bitterly replied.
"Be that as it may," he continued, "you were wounded and weakened, and you will be no good to anyone in the fight if you are dead on your feet."
She frowned but said nothing, refusing to admit that he'd made a good point; she had been pretty tired. When she didn't speak, he said, "Let me look at your ear, Milady." Olivia sighed but then nodded and tilted her head at an angle so he could see the wound better. "Does it still hurt?" he asked a moment later.
"Yeah."
"How much?"
She shrugged. "Enough to notice, but it's not that bad," she lied. "I can manage."
"Pain is to be expected," he told her thoughtfully as he manipulated her head around to study the wound in greater depth. "But if it starts to feel worse, you must tell me right away."
"Even if it does get worse, there's nothing you can do about it," she sassed him. "It's not like there's a doctor nearby."
"There is something I can do to help you," he argued. "And a doctor is closer than you realize." He then met her gaze and smiled. "But for now, it seems to be mending well with the medicine's help, so perhaps we won't need his services."
Olivia shrugged and looked down, suddenly very ashamed of herself for being so damn standoffish with him. Jiayi had been nothing but kind and patient with her since he found her, and still she was behaving like a spiteful harpy. She knew she shouldn't treat him so badly on account of what Xinyi did. It wasn't his fault, she reasoned.
She sheepishly looked at her hands in her lap and said, "That's good." Her voice was quiet.
"Yes," he agreed.
She grimaced. "Jiayi, I'm sorry," she blurted out. "I've been rude to you and I know you're just trying to help." Now she forced herself to look at him. "I do appreciate everything that you've done for me. I know I should do a better job of showing you my gratitude."
He chuffed at that as he wiped his hands clean. "You're not beholden to me because I helped you, Olivia," he told her. "And your hostility is normal. I'd probably react exactly the same way if I had gone what you've gone through."
"Really?" she asked, lifting her eyebrow.
He shrugged. "Well, maybe not exactly the same," he teased. "But I'm not taking it personally."
She sighed. "Even still, I'm going to try not to be so hateful," she swore.
"I expect you'll do your very best," he replied with a smirk as he patted her knee. "But we really do need to leave. It is unwise to linger here, and the portal to Outworld is still nearly a day's journey from here."
Olivia recoiled and scowled, angry once more. "Why do we have to go to the portal at all?" she snarled, once again suspecting a trick to lure her to Mòhé against her will.
The Crown Prince sighed and tiredly rubbed his temples. "Would you prefer to stay in the Netherrealm?" he pointedly asked.
"I would prefer to go to Seido to regroup with my family and kick Reiko's ass," she snapped.
"And we will do that," he coolly replied, "but first, we must escape to Outworld where we can go to the Emperor and ask him to conjure a portal to Seido. Z'Unkarah is only a day's journey from the portal."
Olivia didn't even try to hide her loud, exasperated sigh. "This is taking too long," she complained. "The battle will be over by the time we get there."
"We are not that lucky," he tiredly muttered. Then he said, "Unfortunately, this is our only viable option right now."
She frowned. "Fine," she grudgingly conceded. "But no funny stuff. I am not going to Mòhé."
That prompted him to outright laugh. "Lady Olivia, Mòhé is a several week-long journey from the portal. I am not going there either."
She crossed her arms. "Well...alright then," she said in her haughtiest tone. "As long as we're in agreement."
An hour later, after they'd packed up Xinyi's supplies in the two packs, and had eaten a small breakfast of some kind of Outworld strawberry and dried strips of meat, they were hiking down the mountainside. Jiayi led the way down, having charged Olivia with guarding the rear. Though, she suspected he really let her walk behind him on the narrow path in order to build her trust and grant her peace of mind. And she understood his logic. How effective could she be taking point if she was if she was constantly looking over her shoulder, waiting for him to stab her in the back? Also, she wagered, he could be trying to be chivalrous, and to her surprise she hoped that was the case. There was something quite reassuring and pleasant about someone looking out for her for a change. Sometimes, it got tiresome being the strong, brave one. Especially now when the sylvan Netherrealm mountainscape reminded her of a haunted attraction at an amusement park and set her skin into goosebumps.
The growing heat was like an anaconda that wrapped itself around her. At first, it felt nice after the chill of the blizzard at the top of the mountain. But then, very quickly, the snake began to constrict her as if it were trying to wring the excess water from her body. Almost immediately, every layer of clothing she wore was soaked with sweat, and she quickly began stripping down to her basest shirt as she walked, tucking her blue tunic inside her pack. Her white hair clung damply to her forehead. There were insects which didn't sting but seemed to be drawn to her just to annoy her. They swarmed around her in a cloud, angrily buzzing as if to warn someone ahead of the approaching travelers.
The path Olivia and Jiayi walked lazily meandered through the forest and down the mountain slope. It was about four feet wide with thick trees growing on either side. Some of the trees, she noted, were of the carnivorous variety and had bones picked clean strewn before them. More than a few damned souls swung from the twisted branches, doomed to hang there and pry at the ropes around their necks for all eternity. She shuddered listening to their strangled moans. The Netherrealm sky remained dim like twilight even though it was midday, so they were enveloped by shadows save for the misty green light glowing through the trees and creepers. It was nearly impossible to see very far into their midst, but now and then she could hear animals crashing about in the bushes, shrieking their sepulchral cries. Ghoulish birds cawed loudly, croaking like death, and there was the steady buzzing of the insects underneath it all.
The trees grew so close to the path now that it was hard not to touch them as she walked. Increasingly claustrophobic, they aggravated her anxiety. In response to her discomfort, an occasional breeze pushed past them both down the path, shifting the leaves, making them whisper. And then, a tree on her right seemed to call her name: Olivia, it hissed, so clearly that she actually jumped and turned her head, goosebumps running up and down her body. She shuddered, familiar fear creeping in, but she kept moving forward, insisting she was imagining things.
"Stay as far from the trees as you can," Jiayi had warned her after they passed one of the maneaters close to the trail.
"I know," she'd softly replied, afraid to speak louder for fear of attracting something's attention. "My dad told me stories about them when I was little. He almost got eaten by one, but that was a couple of years before I was born."
"I am glad he escaped that grim fate," he told her. "If he hadn't, I would never have had the pleasure of knowing you."
Olivia chuckled at that, but said nothing as her cheeks began to burn.
Silence followed for an hour, at least by her reckoning. The young Lin Kuei kept glancing over her shoulder as she walked, feeling like someone was in the darkness watching her move. As she walked, she became acutely aware that she was out of breath and she stopped for a moment; she was too hot, too sweaty, and too paranoid to keep going. Thirsty, she formed a small ice ball in her palm and popped it into her mouth, sucking down the moisture. The sudden cold soothed her parched throat, but it did nothing to quench her thirst; she was certain she was going to crumble like ash if she didn't get a drink of liquid water soon.
As they walked, Olivia's ear screamed curses at her so loudly that she could hear no other sound. There was a growing sense of concern that something was seriously wrong with it, so eventually she said, "Jiayi, that doctor you were talking about earlier, remember him?"
"Yes," he said, "I remember. What about him?"
"Is he just on the other side of the portal? You said he was close."
"Why?" he pressed. "Do you think you need him?"
She shrugged. "Maybe," she said. "My ear is pretty sore. I just didn't want to say anything earlier because I didn't want to look like a baby. My dad and my uncle are always saying pain is the mark of a weak mind."
"On that, I disagree with them," the Crown Prince told her. "Pain reminds us that we're still alive, Olivia."
"I suppose that's true," she said as she stepped over an age-pitted leg bone. "But it really does hurt. So is that doctor close to the portal? Or will we have to go out of our way to meet him?"
"No, we won't, and he's even closer than that," he said.
"He is?" she asked, wrinkling her nose. "He's here in Netherrealm?"
Jiayi snickered. "He is me, Olivia," he said with a mischievous smile as he looked over his shoulder at her. He raised his eyebrow at her.
"You're a doctor," she said flatly and somewhat incredulously.
"I spent a hundred years in Seido, studying various subjects," he replied. "But I spent nearly half of that time solely studying medicine."
"Fifty years?" she repeated in disbelief. "That is longer than most Earthrealm doctors' entire careers," she said.
"It was but a blink of an eye for me," he said lightheartedly. "I have always enjoyed anatomy and physiology. I have always enjoyed healing. I remember when I was a young boy, I would sometimes find wounded animals in the caves around Mòhé, or on the shores of our frozen sea, and I would try hard to nurse them back to health. Sometimes I succeeded too. As I got older, I started following the women healers around the city to learn how to take care of our people. So when I went to Seido to study, I took the opportunity to formally train with their doctors and learn to excel at what I loved." He glanced back at her again. "If we make it out of this battle with Reiko alive, I would very much like to study Earthrealm medicine under your mother. That is, if my duties allow, I should say. I am rapidly running out of time to pursue such interests. But the way the Hydromancers heal people has always fascinated me. I envy their abilities sometimes."
"You're really a doctor," she stupidly repeated, which made him laugh.
"By Seidan standards, yes," he said. "But by my birthright and my duty, I am the Crown Prince and eventual King first and always, therefore I will never be able to practice doing what I love. Not with any consistency, at any rate."
"That sucks," she said, not knowing what else to say.
"If I was the younger Prince, this would be a non-issue," he replied. "I would be free to pursue whatever path my heart desired to follow. But since I was born first, my fate was decided for me from the moment I first drew breath."
"I'm really sorry," she said, her words truly heartfelt. "When I hear that, I think I'm lucky that I can pretty much do what I want." She thought of her father's strict standards. "Well, within reason, that is."
Jiayi thoughtfully hummed at that, and then asked, "What do you do for the Lin Kuei when you're not being kidnapped by Outworld villains?" He looked over his shoulder again with a smirk.
"Oh, har har," she scowled at his joke, prompting him to laugh again. "And I'll have you know that I'm a teacher, primarily of the littles. It's not as prestigious as being a doctor or a prince, but it's fun and it suits me."
"There's no need to get defensive, Olivia," he admonished. "I imagine that managing small children is as difficult as managing a kingdom. It is something I do not think I'd have the patience for."
"I don't know, Jiayi, you've had plenty of patience with me, and I can be a handful."
"Oh, you don't have to tell me," he teased.
"Very funny," she rolled her eyes.
"You said it," he replied.
"You didn't have to agree with me so quickly," she retorted, which earned another chuckle from him. "Anyway, doc, about my ear…"
"Is the pain worse or the same?" he asked her.
"The same, I guess," she told him. "But I downplayed it earlier, remember?"
He stopped in his tracks and faced her. "Let me see," he said and examined her once again. A minute later, he pulled away and said, "It looks the same as it did earlier: slightly infected but mending well."
"I just don't want to lose my whole ear to gangrene," she worriedly said. "Losing just a bit of it was bad enough."
He warmly smiled and patted her shoulder. "I don't think that's going to happen, Olivia," he reassured her. "I do wish there was something I could do to ease your pain, but unfortunately, all I have is somniferum, which will make it difficult to travel as it will put you to sleep."
Olivia frowned. "I'll manage. Thanks anyway, though."
"Let's go," he said, still smiling. Then he turned and resumed his path down the mountain trail and the eerie woods.
She had completely misjudged the Crown Prince, she decided as she followed him down the suffocating trail, still sucking on ice balls as she walked but getting absolutely no relief from them. She had thought him a complete and total douche, with an astonishingly large ego and a superiority complex that lasted for days. It was everything she ever expected a prince - or any royalty, for that matter - to act like. But here he was talking about trying to save animals and following the healers around Mòhé like it was the most normal thing in the world. The mental image of the young Prince traipsing around his home like that, behaving like a regular kid and not the next King of the Cryomancers, somehow endeared him to her even more, and she found that she liked that he was a normal person underneath the veneer of his duty and nobility. And this prompted her to think he needed a down-to-earth nickname to reflect his true personality.
"Jiayi," she began with this in mind.
"Hmm?" he asked.
"Can I call you 'Jay'?"
"My name is Jiayi," he corrected her, though his tone was not harsh.
"No, I know that," she said. "But I feel like 'Jay' suits you better. It's less stuffy."
"That may be true," he replied, and she thought she heard amusement in his voice, "but it is not my given name."
Olivia frowned. "You told me you were in my debt, and that you would give me anything I wanted," she argued.
The Crown Prince chuckled so softly that she doubted she heard it at all. "Yes, I do believe I agreed to those terms," he said.
"Then that's what I want," she asserted. "I want to call you 'Jay'. It's a good nickname for you."
Now he burst into outright laughter. "Clever girl," he said, chuckling. "Very well," he acquiesced a moment later. "If that is what the Lady Olivia asks of me, then it shall be hers."
"Thank you," she said, now beaming.
"However," he continued, "there are some restrictions. For one, you must never address me this way in front of any heads of state or tribal leaders that we may encounter in our journeys together, especially anyone from Mòhé. They would view it as weakness, and that is not something I can afford to be."
"That's fair," she agreed.
"Also, you are the only one allowed the privilege," he said. "It is reserved for you alone, in payment for what is owed."
"Well, I feel special," she joked as they tramped down the trail, prompting him to look over his shoulder at her with an amused grin.
"Payment for what is owed," he repeated, though he wore an ornery smirk.
Olivia stared around them now and saw that they had come upon a rocky beach surrounding an enormous mountain lake, and wind-carved palisades in the distance far beyond. A brutally humid wind now screamed around them, blowing stinging granules of dirt at them from behind their backs. It carried with it the pungent odor of burning flint on suffocating must. A foul scent wafted from the dark waters, but the promise of something to drink was too much for her to resist, and so she broke away from him and the trail and bolted at breakneck speed to the shoreline.
"No, Olivia!" he shouted, giving chase. He caught her just as she knelt down to cup the water in her hands and abruptly tackled her to stop her. "Stop!" he hissed at her.
"Get off me!" she snarled, pushing him away.
"You can't drink this water!" he barked at her as she climbed to her feet. "Just like a slight scratch from the smallest of twigs will poison you, so too will this." He stood up as well.
"You don't know that," she argued, the glassy surface tempting her to drink. Her brain dwelled on her unquenchable thirst, and the temptation gnawed away at her mind like rats chewing through a wall.
"The water is not meant for the living," he insisted. "Please, listen to reason," he said a moment later.
"I-"
Olivia didn't get to finish her thought because then, as she and Jiayi argued about it, there came an abrupt rumbling from the heart of the lake. The water began to churn and bubble from somewhere far below the surface. The shoreline began to vibrate and hum; it was hardly perceptible at first, but soon, the ground began to sway and groan, recoiling as if something hideous had touched it. Rocks slid down from the tops of the taller sandbanks like an avalanche as the rumbling became steadily louder, and both of them struggled to stand.
"Run!" Jiayi cried as he grabbed her hand and yanked her along.
But a great roar suddenly bellowed from the water, and a large and powerful tentacle snapped out and wrapped itself around her waist, pulling her towards the murky lake with a startled cry. She vaguely heard the Crown Prince scream her name before a solid whap! from another appendage slapped him in the chest and knocked him onto his back. She glanced over her shoulder to see the monster that had attacked her, and she glimpsed the outline of a creature's long track below the whitewater, the rise of the wave at its cresting head like the approach of a tsunami, its abundance of tentacles like a host of snakes writhing from its body.
She squealed as the gray tentacle constricted her with overwhelming strength while Jiayi slashed at it with a kori sword, and she too produced a kori sword in her hands and ran the thing through just below the point it started to curl around her. A pained roar mingled with the sound of sloshing water and her own labored grunts, and immediately, the monster dropped her into the muddy shallows.
"Jiayi!" she panted as she slogged towards him on all fours, the black mud gripping her booted feet and dragging her down.
And then, a loud and frightening sound began to impress itself on her: a grinding noise, a hissing, an abrasive squeal like metal ripping metal, and it was accompanied by a putrid scent like pond water that had gone stagnant for years. The noise grew steadily louder, and the odor grew steadily stronger, and she knew that the monstrous lake creature was almost upon them. Suddenly, it leapt from the water. Dim light flashed from an enormous curved beak surrounded on all sides by tentacles, rather like a giant squid, and it let out a terrifying, trumpeting roar as it soared through the air. Then it dove beneath the surface again just as fast as it had come.
"Get out of the water!" Jiayi, frightened, snapped at Olivia as he grabbed her arms and pulled her along.
"What did you think I was doing?" she grunted as she trudged along awkwardly.
As they reached solid ground once more, they heard a discordant shriek trumpeting behind them once again. They watched with pounding hearts as the watery mound turned outward into the lake again for a moment, then coursed back towards them, questing. And then the squid monster turned towards the shoreline, speeding now on a straight, seething track toward them. It surfaced once more, and as water cascaded from its wide-open beak, she saw its enormous tongue covered in razor sharp teeth.
Olivia gasped, smelling the putrid murkiness of the beast as its cresting head threw a tall dirty wave that swept across their hips, knocking them backwards. She gulped but summoned her powers to the surface, confident that her powers could do some serious damage to this monster. Its home in the water would be its undoing, she vaguely thought. But at that moment, two things happened. Olivia felt something slither against her legs, probing. A second later, Jiayi screamed as something now yanked him towards the lake.
She dove for him, now cursing, too stunned to cry out. When her hands firmly wrapped around his, she swung around and saw the water around them foaming in shades of black and green. From the waves, a long sinuous tentacle was constricting his waist and dragging him towards the toothy maw; its suction cups had a round ring of more teeth on it, and the way those cups pulsated and quivered as they bit into his skin was practically obscene. Olivia dove forward, slashing at it with a kori sword, but shocked by how tenacious it was in spite of the wounds she had dealt to it.
The tentacle tired of her onslaught, though, and now released Jiayi, who fell into the water, only to slap the sword from the Cryomancer's hands. It poised to strike her again, but this time she threw a jet of cryogenic energy at it, and it froze in an instant, shattering like glass upon the shoreline. From somewhere below the water, a shrill, squealing roar bellowed and churned up mud from the bottom of the lake. Olivia wasted no time threading her arms below Jiayi's armpits and pulling him from the shallows.
"Let's get out of-"
Olivia didn't get to finish her thought. The shoreline shook so hard that sand sifted out over the edges, and the dunes and outcroppings above them had already collapsed. And then, from the lake rose the squid - a monster that she'd never seen before and had previously believed could only live in saltwater. Her heart sprang into her throat and she shoved herself backwards through a mound of sand with the Crown Prince in her arms, her reaction as much from surprise as from fear. It bellowed, its cries painful and sharp in her ears.
Olivia struggled to stand, to work her way between the beast and a bleeding Jiayi, but she managed to climb to her feet in spite of the rumbling and rush of water around her waist. Come on, you bastard, she cursed at it with hands glowing blue. A new wave lifted her body. Water swept across them both. She steadied herself with a strong stance rooted in the mud, her world dominated by the passage of that gray wall rising from the water, those vicious tentacles, the teeth in each sucker sharply defined inside of them.
With a deep primal grunt, the squid suddenly snapped its body forward, hurling its body at her with all its overwhelming strength. Its massive, spade-shaped head soared directly towards Olivia to slam her backwards with devastating force. But the Elite leapt to the side just in time before the beast beached itself a few paces to the right, dangerously close to Jiayi, who scrambled out of the way. It didn't even so much as slow. Its mighty head rammed the rocky shoreline as it retreated into the water once more and now flanked the young Cryomancer, gliding as silkily as an eel. Its movements, Olivia realized, were decidedly snake-like.
Then the squid leapt.
Jiayi, now standing again, produced a kori sword in his hands before it reached either of them. He spun it once, twice, and then leaned forward, the great icy blade like a lance. At the apex of the beast's jump, the sharp-tongued tip of the sword seemed, almost gently, to kiss its belly. With a pained roar, it crashed into the water, throwing more waves in all directions, but refusing to dive down to retreat from them.
Then Olivia broke into a charge across the lengthy expanse of rock, keeping pace with its fast, serpentine movements. Now her kori sword spun, and then she leapt onto the squid's head, using the blade to give her a hand-hold. She jammed it into the soft part near its massive golden eye. It sank through the rubbery gray flesh, spraying creamy white goo that splattered her hand. Olivia quickly formed a new kori sword in her other hand and drove it into the beast's head as well. But her attack had hurt the squid, garnering its notice, and it snapped a ferocious tentacle at the Cryomancer as if flicking away a fly. The power of the blow instantly knocked her off its body and tossed her onto the shoreline on her back, knocking the wind completely from her. As Jiayi rushed to help her, the squid turned to ram them with its head once again. She heard the steady bubbling of that giant, rubbery body displacing water, and when she looked up while staggering to her feet, the monster was diving towards them, its beak snapping hungrily.
And then something unexpected happened. A brilliant white glow swooped down from the sky, piercing holes in the clouds and forming a solid column of light that completely enveloped the squid, suspending it on its course. The finger of God, Olivia suddenly recalled her mother's name for the slender ray that pierced through gray skies and reinvigorated the earth after soggy afternoons of rain or snow. The column before them now melted as it reached the water, dissolving into a quivering glitter that burned up the squid in an instant. Then it grew dark around them once more as the light was sucked into the lake.
"You shouldn't be here," a woman's voice called, prompting both Olivia and Jiayi to look to the high grassy bank behind them. They immediately saw a woman holding a long, wavy dagger high over her head - a kris, the Elite believed it was called, if she remembered her terminology from weapon's class - parallel to the ground.
As the last of the light faded, the strange woman lowered her arm. Now Olivia's eyes met those of that dark-haired woman whose brilliant, burning gaze poured into her soul like boiling tar, whose mouth frowned with fury, and whose hand now curled around her deadly kris. She wore a white hanfu trimmed in brilliant gold thread, and a wide white hat with a veil trailing down the back on her head. Small black kanji were written on the hat just above her forehead, and Olivia quickly translated the words into "demon." There was an air of hidden strength around her, a graceful strength that showed in her balance, in the way she held herself, in the way she looked down upon them like they were both small children.
Something about her threatened Jiayi, though, and bravely, he interposed himself between the white-robed woman and Olivia. "Who are you?" he demanded to know as he held up his hands, both of which glowed a vibrant blue around a fresh kori sword.
"I would ask that of you, but it is very obvious to me who you are," she said, never wavering. She was a solemn statue. "You are survivors from the battle at the Black Palace." She lightly shook her head in disgust and then said, "I am called Ashrah. And again I say, you should not be here."
"We're not looking to stay," Olivia told her, trying to step forward, only to be pushed back by the Crown Prince's free hand. "We're trying to get out of here as fast as we can."
"There is a portal due east of here," she replied. "It will take you to Outworld."
"Yes, we know," Jiayi coolly replied.
"I would not stray from the path again," Ashrah warned, her voice lilting haughtily. "Teuthos aren't the worst things you can encounter in the Netherrealm."
The Elite's face hardened with suspicion as she glared at her over Jiayi's shoulder. "Why are you helping us?" she wondered. "Our Realms are at war."
Now the demoness' own face softened. "Perhaps that is true, but it is not my war," she said. "I have my own battles to fight. Now go. Before I change my mind and kill you where you stand."
alwaysdoubted, yes to all of that! Reiko definitely feels untouchable and is not about to let Rain steal his thunder - yes, I made a lame joke there LOL Mileena needed to return because I left Ascension on that note, but she's mostly there for her adoptive brother's benefit. Of course, she'll probably reap some rewards ;)
Reptaliator, Himavat definitely pushes the line of acceptable interference of mortal free will, doesn't he? Well, I'm not sure who Gavin is, but correct to the rest of your guesses. I don't know that Xinyi is completely idiotic because he's my latest asshole in a long string of assholes, but I do think he bit off more than he could chew in allying himself with Reiko. I'm glad you enjoyed their interactions.
Praxus84, the interesting thing is that Reiko still sees himself in total control over his minions, and thinks that Rain is nothing more than a biting fly, only mildly annoying. But we all know from past history that Rain can be a real thorn in his handler's side. It will definitely be interesting to see if Subby can break away from the spell, but he may go full-on villain again for the rest of his life too. We may never know ;) And I'm glad you found Xinyi's punishment acceptable for now. But I'll have to remember the spine rip for the future LOL
DinoLord00, yeah, Artie's a handful right now, but I do love the ornery scamp. And I appreciate that. I can't honestly say I've overcome the trauma. That's why I'm in therapy. But I'm getting there, slowly. And you're absolutely right. At the time, I thought myself weak. But now that I've had a few years to distance myself from that relationship and had time to gain clarity, I realize I'm much stronger than I know, and I have a lot to be proud of. The best part is that karma is kicking his ass - he is a failure of a man who can't hold down a job, whose kids hate him because of his actions, who is barely scraping through life. Meanwhile, our lives are steadily improving, and while things aren't perfect, they're pretty damn good.
As cathartic as reading Reiko tell off Rain and then cut off Xinyi's ear was for you, it was even more cathartic for me to write. I've always enjoyed writing my villains for various reasons, but I love Reiko because he's damn near likable. Like, he's totally wrong and for so many reasons he's a jackass too, but he's a charming, affable jackass who occasionally ventures into anti-hero territory. I'm glad that you enjoyed seeing him sort of learn through his dream that shit is hitting the fan, so maybe some part of him will try very hard to fight off his chains. Shinnok needed to make somewhat of an appearance, I felt, mostly because we've been building up to that, and I felt like I'd be robbing the readers if I didn't give them even more of a nibble. When he finally does get involved, you're right, it's going to be bedlam for our heroes. It'll be fun for me to write - and by fun, I mean labor intensive from all the research into battle strategies. Not honestly looking forward to that, my friend. And oh, Mileena. As I said above, I ended Ascension with her escaping jail and the promise of her returning to help Reiko, so I felt it would be bad storytelling on my part to just cut her out of my story completely. But my hand to God, I am not playing around with her psycho superfans. I don't think I'm going to be harassed on the same level as Ed Boon and friends, but I have had some of them privately message me making demands of me, and I promptly gave them the middle finger and told them where they could stick it. Mostly demands to write her a stand-alone story. That did not sit well with me as I hate being treated like a trained monkey, something I'm sure the MK developers can relate to a lot. And I don't know why it's just Mileena. It's never fans of Scorpion or Reptile or Kitana or whatever. Just Mileena. Her stans are just the most entitled freaking lot of people I've ever seen in my life, like they don't know that porn is now pretty much free on the internet. Like seriously, get a life. And obviously, I'm not referring to people who like her in general - she was one of my top faves when I was younger. I mean the fringe lunatics who think it's okay to badger people in our fandom about her. So yeah.