The air tasted stale, the dry heat and the sand blocked all of my senses, even sight when the wind howled across the field. Is it really as bad as they say?
There were murmurs in the crowd that I had ruined the tournament. It was so control and so precise, a gimmick and manufactured this time around. There was no stake, there was no heart. The whole of the tournament was emptiness.
The people that said this are the people that followed Shao Kahn to the slums and worked him over as a hero who could make Outworld better than it had ever been under my rule. The other half felt themselves tired of me and saw passion and justice under the rule of Kotal Kahn. He spoke the right words to carry my fairness, but infused with his passion for justice.
All of the politics and none of the worry, because at the end of the day, this entire tournament is for nothing. The deaths that I would allow were all political. Raiden would die at the hands of Shao Kahn because I wanted him to. Though it had not happened yet, I could see it with my own eyes, whether the sand blocked my vision or not.
That is also something I heard, that ultimately my lack of justice when it was time to punish Shao Kahn was not as passionate as Kotal's because Shao should not be Kahn. Shao should be dead.
They're right. There was something inside me that, though I had tried to kill him once, didn't have the heart to. He had raised me, and though he raised me under a mountain of lies, he was still my father figure for so many years. It wouldn't be the same if Mileena stood before me, because she was a fabrication of science and magic. She should not have existed, and yet I hear a new Mileena has been birthed.
Was Raiden right? Is fate really unchangeable? Is destiny nothing more than a fixed point in time, never to be altered at the end, but just how we get there?
Is that the same with my mother? No matter the misery I feel not being able to be her girl the way this timeline's Kitana is able to be, will she still meet her end at the hands of injustice?
Perhaps Raiden shouldn't perish, or maybe it's just not his destiny to die.
Gods can't die.
Only forgotten.
The day progressed as dull as the first. A handful of fighters began to work the crowd like this was some sort of entertainment rather than a rite of life and destiny. The crowds could tell there was no heart this time, even though we on the field felt as though this were the most important one yet.
Shao Kahn, Onaga, Raiden, and Kotal Kahn. So many names that shouldn't mean anything in one singular point of time but now somehow coagulate into this terrible possibility. What happens if Raiden dies and Shujinko manages to resurrect Onaga again? Will I, or Liu Kang be forced to expel our energy to defeat him, only to discover its futility?
What if Shujinko dies, and with him, the resurrection of Onaga, but Shao Kahn then reclaims Outworld? Will my mother perish, and the realms be threatened by this horrid conquerer yet again?
So many possibilities, but fate only has one ending. This is why I took the throne, to stop those possibilities. How naive of me. You can't stop fate, only hope it doesn't burn you on the path toward your destiny.
Did Kronika know this? Is this why Armageddon happened? Should Armageddon happen again?
As these thoughts plagued my mind, another fight ended, and the crowd didn't care. Soon Raiden would fight Shao Kahn, the only fight I would allow a death to occur. The crowd didn't know the history between us, nor did Shao Kahn, but though I made a small pact with Raiden, I think it would be best if he died. It was his mistakes that created this, the least I could have done would have been to unburden him of those bad decisions.
You don't need to consult the elder gods to realize that Raiden was not fit to protect Earthrealm.
That's the decision I had come to and finalized just as the next two fighters stood before me.
Sindel and D'Vorah.
Everyone watched. All of the fighters in their unique groups formed in betrayal and loyalties, schemes and lies. The were interested in these hooded figures that gave their loyalty to me, but it wasn't really mine to have. Any moron knew they followed some unknown force they refused to name.
Perhaps it wasn't Sindel and D'Vorah they wanted to watch fight, but Shao Kahn and Raiden, and how I would handle it.
How does Mortal Kombat end?
"Fight!" My voice carried through the light wind and granted my mother and her opponent the ability to move forward with this great tradition.
Though she had committed treason against my rule over Outworld by having sided with Kotal Kahn's claim to power, I could not stay angry with her and Jade. In my original timeline, she was dead. I'd rather spend a millennia trying to rebuild the bridge with my mother than see her buried in the ground again.
My mother fought with grace. As a revenant she was deadly, but that's because she was the Queen of Edenia, not the damned. She was more than enough to deal with D'Vorah's dirty tactics.
It seemed that the crowd began to thin at the sight of this classic back and forth until a strange moment came when D'Vorah began to take the upper hand. Sure, I'd hate for my mother to lose, but perhaps that would be a lesson to her for having betrayed me, but I know D'Vorah.
She lusted for power.
Anything for the hive.
My mother kicked her exoskeletal jaw up into the air and a wad of spit smacked the wind that scratched their faces. D'Vorah should have staggered back and used that momentum to push forward and come back with another hit, to which my mother would respond accordingly, but she didn't. She planted her jagged extra limbs into the sand, enough to pin her to the ground, and then a tube jutted from her guts and latched onto my mother's purple and black attire. It ripped through the silk and fabric and tugged on her flesh until they were stuck together. I knew what this meant, and pulled myself free of the throne to yield for Sindel, but D'Vorah instead seemed to have expected this of me and with her large wings, swept the two of them into the air. Even Goro could not reach them if he tried, they were so high.
D'Vorah said something to my mother, and Sindel replied, but the words were lost to the wind. The tube began to siphon her life's blood, and I knew this fight had to end if I wished to save my mother.
"Enough!" I screamed into the wind and readied one of my deadly fans to break that tube between them.
The apathy in D'Vorah's eyes as she stared back down at me, then grew with excitement as the crowd finally began to roar and the other fighters gathered in their separate groups to see how this all turned out. It was disgusting. This was my mother!
"This one does not listen to you." She spat her disrespect.
"Who do you fight for?" Sindel tried to free herself, but she was latched tight like they had become siamese twins.
"This one fights for the Dragon King!" D'Vorah pulled my mother in with her long limbs and with her carnivorous jaws cracked my mother's neck, even a chunk of her flesh had pulled away with the bite.
They seemed one at first, but how easily D'Vorah let her go the moment she was dead.
Goro, Sheeva, Baraka, and Bo' Rai Cho were quick to join my side. Goro especially knew what this meant to me. I could even see Raiden hurt and enraged beside Liu Kang. All of this happened so quickly. Jade, Kotal Kahn, Shao Kahn, their fighters, men and women, the crowd, everyone watched as my world collapsed.
I could be come a Goddes but I could not stop my mother from dying? Even as a God I would be doomed to watch her die twice?
"Kitana?" Goro held my shoulder, but I hardened under his grip and my eyes burned with hatred and the passion to destroy.
D'Vorah, smug, watched as the hooded figures now revealed themselves in front of the crowd after they rushed the field to join her.
They knew what would happen next.
"Charge!" My orders were loud and clear and out feet moved with fierce resolve to reach our enemies.
The crowds erupted as the tournament fell into chaos. The splintered groups and factions that now fight for control over the realms and Outworld charged as well and soon we would all meet and decide who among us would meet their destiny, or fate, through Mortal Kombat.