All the corners on the building moot and bleed like cyclones of trees. Mile high, the Earth looked flat in all its wondrously apathetic curves and rounded off into obscure clouds as it paled over slate seas.
Johnny could feel the difference in altitude like he felt the weight of his world lift off his shoulders and burdened with a brand new one. This one floated through the clouds of uncertainty.
He played the events in his head and it all played like a suspense thriller. Fallen actor taken by a risen star sold to the human trafficking game, given an ultimatum to return to his normal life on the top of the hill of celluloid and narcotics that was Hollywood. The thoughts didn't diminish the anger in him, that tightness in his chest that burned his flesh from heart to cheeks. It didn't reduce the new desire to murder everyone around him. The world had taken something from him, and now it toyed with him like a broken doll held one last time, with thoughts of being stitched together, only to be cast into the trash.
His seat, a smudge the stained near the middle isle as a heavyset man behind grizzly facial hair and glares directed at the actor enjoyed a window view of the world as they passed over it on the long journey to Hong Kong. He hated this man. He hated the man across the isle. He hated every single one of them. Did they every think, for one second, what it might be like to be him? Where he is, what he's gone through.
The thought never occurred to him to think if what they had.
Each individual on this plane was different. Opposite cultures, races, fashion, but they all shared one thing in common.
The Black Dragon.
This wasn't a biker gang. This was a movement. This was a way of life for them that delved well beyond human trivialities. It was a family, and families don't always get along, but there is always that underlying understanding that you must tolerate it, or else the elders get involved.
Who were there elders?
David Bowie?
He only knew he didn't belong here.
He wasn't one of them.
The clouds fought back against the intrusion of the Boeing. The cylinder shook and rocked like a child in the womb ready to break free from its fleshy cage. He could feel each kick and every force of nature that desperately urged to break into the plane.
"Who the fuck is driving this thing?" He piped up.
He was met with stares, grimaces, but not too much feedback until one tall, older man in white shirt and black jeans got up from the first seat in the coach section and looked for him as he moved up. The barrier between first class and coach was barred with a human body, a guard to keep any piercing of that threshold. Johnny did think to break it, but he stood up instead and watched the man, perhaps ten years his senior.
"Th'fuck are you?" The sized the actor up.
"I'm the actor." He repeated the muttering scattered before lift off.
"You part of the gang?"
He noticed all eyes on them like Christians to a suicide. He could see is agent in those eyes. The blame, the disappointment, and the apathy.
From the critics that downplayed his ability to fight, to the studios that turned their backs on him to lay their spines for China. His landlord, now laid out in the ground. The world pushed down on him, this one man that tried hard to just exist.
When you've stripped away everything that makes you who you are, what's left to fight back?
"No, I'm Johnny-fucking-Cage." His answer came with a right hook and a kick to the chest.
This created the burst of energy he had expected. All asses now up and everyone ready to engage the outsider. The older man was down and trampled on by his cohorts. All for none, but one for all, he thought. That was the Black Dragon.
He danced.
This was a dance he had done since he was six. Johnny was a fighter. The music was in his muscles, in his bones, and his spirit. Arms stretch, fists tighten, feet kick and the body moves. All of it in sync with his back up dancers and none of them could outperform him. The black swan amongst his ugly ducklings.
It wasn't until he felt a sharp pain in his back, close to the second and third ribs that protected his heart did the dance change. He lashed out and used his attacker as a shield, having pulled him to the forefront and taken his knife.
They watched the outsider with the knife at their family's throat.
He saw their eyes. Every single void of black and white was nothing but anger toward him. They couldn't see the man he held, nor the life he threatened. Blood coursed down his back as the barrier between coach and first class pressed back against him.
He took this moment, his mind raced for what seemed like a thousand years. He felt the blade like an extension of his hand as it touched the man's skin, right to the grit of his facial hair. All of that anger in them, in him, the fight, the dance, the need in him swiped across the man's throat and let the hot blood shower over cold family.
He kicked the body forward and bashed the door back to break through to the first class.
The door slammed shut, with the expectation of every man behind that door about to burst through to kill him. He turned to find two white couches behind him and a table between.
To the right of him sat a man about his age with, what he believed was a horribly disfigured side of his face masked by a metal plate. The man sat comfortable across the couch, but as Johnny barged into the room, he unsheathed a long bowie knife and watched.
Johnny looked to the door. No one came through.
"This him?" The disfigured man spoke, head cocked toward a black curtain draped past the couches.
Between the two curtains entered Bowie.
"Sit, Mr. Cage." Bowie insisted, even held out a hand for him and refused to sit before Johnny.
"Boss told you to sit." Johnny finally noticed as the the metal plate that settled just underneath the open flesh of the disfigured man also contained a single red eye. No pupil, no whites, just a singular red light. He thought of the Terminator, but dared not say it.
"I'd rather kill you." Johnny spat.
Bowie smiled and like a mime put his two hands together in front of his face. They formed curtains with his fingers like spires that suddenly jutted out and splayed as they came down in an arcing fashion to reveal the face of the old bald man.
The long face. The sunken eyes. The old world that stared through those deep eyes watched the sundown of horror cross Johnny's.
The man's flesh was painted white and dotted, symboled, etched like a religious figure of a native tribe or part of some ritual. His clothing filled his form, no longer the frail old man, but now black and grey, metal and spikes, leather and jewels.
"Sit down, Johnny Cage." The man's voice deepened until it felt like a hollow tube of ancient air breathed deep from the depths of a demonic volcano that rattled his heart.
"Th'fuck are you?" He couldn't move, just watch.
"I am a Sorcerer. Quan Chi. This is Kano, leader of the Black Dragon."
"Fuck off mate." Kano spat, half hearted.
"What is this about?" He couldn't grasp it, but there was no escape from this situation, only understanding and accepting his fate.
"Your future, Johnny Cage."