The epicenter of the war between Shao Kahn and Kitana, Sun Do was nearly made ruins. It was Li Mei and the hard working men and women that put this place back together as best they can. They did what they could with the human spirit in the face of deception, armageddon, and eventual annihilation.
What is it in Li Mei that drove her to defeat, not just Shao Kahn, but the continued invasion of thieves and bandits that still scar the lands of Outworld? What ever passion drives her is what Kotal Kahn has asked me to retrieve. With the only woman to have united the second continent of Outworld behind Kotal Kahn, he will be a greater threat and hold higher claim to the thrown than Kitana Kahn.
As we approached the wooden ramp into the temple where we would discuss it was easy to see this building had seen better days and barely held together. The whole structure was wood and splintered dreams of men and women that couldn't stand tall any longer without something to hold them up. Li Mei and Bo Rai' Cho entered past the threshold into the temple and a silent gong pulsed through the small village of Sun Do.
It was agreed quietly between the three of us that it would be me alone with them and the Shokan that had escorted me would stand outside, never to step on the wood contracted by the hearts of the broken. One last glance back at them with a nod, and a strange sight caught my eye in the distance, between two shoulders, a ghost formed a lump in my throat.
A small figure, like a spirit, barely visible and barely even registered in my mind stood along the curvature of the planet, right at the edge of the village where the gates were forever busted open. A tiny little girl with long black hair, with red streaks just like mine, and a curved maw with teeth that poked like that of a Tarkatan's, just like hers.
This sudden moment, blinked and gone, made me question my sanity. The Shokan returned the nod and I knew this vision needed to be forgotten, it was important to be in the moment, to come back with Li Mei and Master Bo Rai' Cho, for Kotal Kahn, for Outworld.
"Please, sit." She instructed and with deference, I did.
"What does Ko'atal have to offer us at the edge of the mountains?" Bo' Rai Cho started.
We sat on the floor, thin cushions beneath us and a low table between us. An older woman with a face painted in white would come to pour our tea, and it was important to accept it every time. Any sleight would be taken far deeper than intended here in this village, because they have already lost faith in the Kahn throne. Who am I to reinvigorate it?
"Freedom." My response after a sip of the hottest, yet strongest tea I had ever tasted. It was not like the warmth of blood, but more Earthy and rooted in the planet we sat on, much like the villagers and citizens of Outworld in this region. They believed in the strength of the world around them, not in the people that claimed to wield it.
"Freedom is neither free, nor dumb, and we do not accept the words of a Kahn, especially one that is incapable of coming on his own to make such platitudes." Li Mei shot back. "Ko'atal is also not a Kahn, but a usurper."
"He is the one true Kahn of Outworld. Kitana usurped the throne from Shao Kahn, but Kotal–" My response was cut off by the drunken master.
"The title of Kahn is not a title of power." He said after a hearty drink of something that was clearly not the tea Li Mei and I had. He wiped his lips clean and smiled, a little smug grin from the depth of this words that he thought escaped like the wind over my ears.
"A Kahn is a position of responsibility, not power." He leaned back from my response, as though to tell me he was going to listen. "Ko'atal has no desire to rule with power, not any longer. He has denounced his own headdress of the Osh-Tekk at the battle of the Living Forest."
They glanced back at one another, a shared moment, but the words between them whispered to me that somehow they had already known. Neither were stupid. Bo Rai' Cho did not travel this far by ship, but by bending the realm and teleporting over. He had power. Li Mei, the only woman the mountain folk would listen to, she had power. Word traveled like the wind and they knew all too well what transpired that night, probably as each sword strike happened.
Li Mei began to speak, but her words fell like the dead over the thin peaks of my ears. Behind her, a small child formed, her back toward us, but her hair black and nearly reached the small of her back. She was only dressed in a white shirt that reached down to her angles. She turned slowly, as my eyes tried to dart back to Li Mei, to assure the woman that our conversation was important, but even she began to notice my wander through this dream, or would it be a nightmare.
"Skarlet?" She turned as the child faced us, but her demeanor indicated nothing for her to notice.
It was Mileena. Blood flush, face full and very much alive, but yet all the same, I could tell this was not her in the flesh.
She took her small index finger and pointed it toward her right eye, then heart, and finally toward me, but the way her hand held itself was much like the sorcerer Shang Tsung as he would claim the spirits of his victims. There was an age to her eyes that did not exist in the real Mileena, knowledge and worldliness of an old soul, but all gone in blink as Bo Rai' Cho caught my attention.
"Let's be honest, Li Mei." He slammed his drink to break the spell, and turned toward her as he spoke of me, "we cannot trust Ko'atal, but my desire is not to see Outworld torn asunder by the wars of the fool hearted any longer."
"As is my desire." She agreed, then turned toward me, slight concern, mild discontent. "What is your desire, Skarlet? You follow Ko'atal for a reason."
This gave me pause. Why have I started following him? After having been beaten, raped, and imbued with the power of blood magic by Shao Kahn, the move to Kotal Kahn felt like a shifting of the guard. Kotal was better, kinder, but stern and focused, not like Shao Kahn, but I didn't really believe in him, just followed behind like a good little lost girl.
"Purpose." My voice broke. Soft, cracked like a brittle egg.
"What kind of purpose?" Bo Rai Cho asked, but as he asked, I had already begun to formulate the words in my head to answer that myself, because up until this point there was no answer.
"To find a reason to live. To know why I'm alive. To see her again."
This caught them by surprise, myself included. Li Mei took in a breath, tightened her lips and tilted her head in interest. She could see something in my eyes that, maybe, just maybe reflected in the little girl that had begun to haunt me since coming to Sun Do.
"You've had and have lost." She could feel it in my voice as it trembled in response.
"Yeah. Not much, but yet so much more than that."
"An abomination assigned to you by the sorcerer Shang Tsung, so the God of Wind tells me." Bo Rai' Cho was not as impressed with my display of humanity, but he couldn't peel the monster from the human. Not many could.
"My sister. My flesh. My blood. She was me, and I was her. She was no abomination, drunken peasant." My spit filled his mug with bitterness, and Li Mei intercepted to catch the vitriol.
"What he means–"
"There's no meaning to bigotry." My body pulled itself from the table, insulted far greater than any deity could have been had I spat on its alter. "I lived for her, and now she's gone. You don't know my past, what I've been through, what I had to go through just to get her."
"I don't care." He maintained his position at the table and could not be bothered to glance up.
"I fight for Kotal Kahn because of her. For her, and I don't need scum like you to tell me what you think is right and wrong in this world. You know nothing true humanity if all you care about is judging others by how they're created."
Forget them.
Drunkard Bo Rai' Cho remained at the table, though Li Mei stood as my march out was as loud as the gong that welcomed us. Kotal Kahn would be disappointed, but if this was Jade being insulted, he would understand. There is no place for ignorance in the new world.
"Stop, little girl." He barked like a sloven dog.
"What, you pestilent fool, I ought to drain your blood!"
He had but a moment before I truly did.
"We've already chosen to follow Kotal Kahn."
"Then why waste my time?"
"We never chose to follow you." He replied, and then stood, hard at his age from a seated position, and the alcohol stained the air around him, "but you have convinced me."
"Its human to feel pain, Skarlet. It's human to have and to lose. It's only human to suffer." Li Mei chimed in, "but it's more than that to strive for a purpose beyond yourself, even in the face of one that can never be attained." She added, "Kitana surrounds herself with gods and goddesses, with being so far beyond the mortal coil that they can't understand why we suffer, us simple, pathetic humans. Because of that, they don't understand why this world needs to be united under one banner, 'our world'."
"The dead are also part of our world, and the dead cannot fight for themselves against such odds." Bo Rai' Cho added.
My eyes closed, to hold back the river behind them with open arms barely able to dam the waters that carved my cheeks in the shape of this little girl's. As a child, I knew nothing but suffering. Knew nothing but that I was an object to be abused. For the few days I had her, I knew so much more about being human than I would have ever known about Blood Magic if I was taught by a sorcerer for a millennia.
This war was not to redeem myself, but to redeem this innocent child from being ripped apart by the cruelty of a world she just wanted to live in.
When Kotal Kahn sits on that throne and the world is right for the citizens of Outworld, I will find Shang Tsung and I will kill him.
That is my purpose.