With teeth and ambition bared, it was time to prove myself in the ancient rite of Mortal Kombat. Still adolescent, I've only seen two other tournaments, and that's to say from outside the Coliseum. Years I have lived in the streets, fought my way through the slums and thieves' quarters, merchant's square, rape, blood, spit, dirt, and then something kind of hit me today.
Took a look at the world around me in this stadium and did see things my way? A world full of a people sans features, forced to take it hard all the time. Fighting with the eyes of our lies, taking it hard. Taking it hard.
I've tasted blood of kin, and I feel like paper, choking on united souls of the elusive victors that break in the new world. Deceived by the next of kin, like dogs defecating ecstasy to be accepted by the new urchin ones. Each step in the dirt, I could hear them on the rails, because of I'll seen, all they said, I see now they are the dead.
Pressed on hard through the night, never to know what's right, and never here, never able to know what it means to care. Never to know what it means to never feel another breath to share, that someone will care.
Now, I am today's double feature.
Guaranteed to get you killed in this theatre of death financiers.
Intoxicated in the sights, scents, and blood, I marched with Kahn at my side to Kitana Kahn's throne. Today Shao Kahn will replace Shang Tsung with me, after I kill him, after I kill my opponent here now.
He was adorned in gold and purple. The Prince of Edenia and set to marry the Princess Kitana, named after the vile Goddess before us. The Princess was barred from the tournament by her father and the Goddess, for her protection. Perhaps it would be wise, for I would have no qualms killing a woman with the face of this Goddess.
Time to break in the new boy.
To break the new boy.
The Virgin King, Rain.
Kitana watched us set into position, Shao Kahn opposite her. The tension between us could be cut with a blade, so I would have to do just that.
"Blood is thicker than water." I spat at the Prince.
"And the rain will wash yours off the street." He snickered behind that smug purple veil.
The streets will be covered in fresh men, oh, not their bodies. Their blood.
Arrogant and dressed to kill like a pleasure-seeking beauty, he couldn't hear me as I flared a bubble of blood from my own wrist and shot it forward in a swift motion that was followed by a charge toward him. The ground beneath him, barely picked up in my peripheral, muddied immediately and the ignorant male dissipated, or evaporated.
My arms pulled behind me, he had teleported behind. He held one wrist and pushed the other up against the small of my back.
"You are a beautiful beast." He whispered into my ear.
The only apt response was to bite him in the cheek and taste his blood through that silk veil. He shook it off and staggered back to remove the veil and feel the bite mark I had left. His eyes narrowed and he began to bend water into a ball, much like the cryomancers of China in Earthrealm, though this would not be so cold.
With a pivot of the heel, I turned and met his orb with my own, which was formed of a mix of our blood that splashed out against us and the two Kahn's.
"If you want it, get it here, thing." I spat his blood back at him.
Though blood was thicker than his water, the force he provided showed that his skill and training vastly surpassed my own. Not a week ago I was a street urchin and still had much to learn about blood magic. Rain would win this fight if I didn't do something drastic, or deadly.
Before the fight, Shao Kahn gifted me a glass vial of his own blood to use. It would serve its purpose as I dodged a roundhouse and tumbled toward the throne. The cork popped off, the blood spilled out with magical grace and with careful concentration, formed into two twelve inch spikes.
"Your face is a mess, Prince." He was covered in blood as facial wounds tend to. With that presented to me, I drew forth a third spike from his own blood mixed with the Kahn's and let it levitate high above us until he would strike.
"Finish him!" Shao Kahn urged.
As he charged, the spikes came down, aimed for the chest between the third and second rib, the throat, and his skull. The instant they should have it, he dissipated. Frustrated, I drew the spikes down into the mud left behind, and turned around to find no one.
"Hot tramp, I'd love you so." His whisper bit into my ear and hands took hold my neck and jaw, ready to twist.
With a swift, panicked arc down and my claws dug into his flesh, he was pulled over my back and onto the ground. The spikes behind us, he kicked up to push me back into them. As I had landed, the blood settled rather than impaled.
"I am the blood." He didn't look pleased at the sight of my possible death, how amused and pathetic I thought this was.
"Enough!" Kitana stood at the thrown and drew our attention to her. "I will not let you pervert my tournament with your games. Rain, you will yield to Skarlet."
He bowed with obedience and took three steps back from the fight circle before he took his leave. Lucky ass to make it away with his life.
"Pathetic." Shao Kahn approached Kitana, "I would have let them fight to the death."
"We would be here all day. I have a tournament to run and you have a fight ahead of you, Kahn."
Back on my feet, and dust off my leather attire, and the heat burned within from the sun that bared down on my red and black wear, Shao Kahn surprised me with a hard strike to the gut. I spat out blood, wheezed and choked. He tugged on my ponytail until it felt as though my scalp would rip from my skull and glared down at me through that skull and metal helm.
"You failed me, Skarlet."
"I won." Spoken through gritted teeth.
"It was to the death."
He threw my head back until hit crunched into the sand and my body fell after it. The metal tip of his big black boot slammed into my stomach before he I could hear him move on. All of this before the eyes of Kitana.
"Skarlet." Though she said my name, I didn't hear it at first. My eyes swelled and focused on the mud beneath my flesh, a mix of blood and tears and water left form my opponent. Back in the dirt, back to the streets. Lower than world around me.
Lifted slightly over the hot sand, and covered in my own hair, my face turned to meed the Kahn that stepped down from her throne to me. She looked down at me like I were a creature, but she spoke softly.
"There is no victory following Shao Kahn. Only defeat."
"I will kill him." Slowly, I pulled myself to my knees and tugged set my hair back into its rightful place. My eyes met the Kahn's and I replied, but her mouth, hidden behind a blue mask of silk and silver, did not quite reveal the intention of her tone. Her eyes however, said it all. She had been here before, where I lay, where I bleed.
"You will try."
She was escorted by the massive shokan Goro and the crowds around me cackled and stared. Soon all they would see is red.