Hiss…
Click…
Beep…
Nothing.
"Nothing's working here." Jax revealed the static of his radio.
"Same." Sonya chimed in with her watch, "clicking, but nothing's moving."
"We'll we're not in Hong Kong anymore." Stryker added, "as if it was any better there."
"We move forward with protocol." Sonya gathered them closer, one on each side. "We track Kano, arrest him and take him back, dead if need be."
The trio had broken off from the beaten path of the staircase and had found themselves near the edge of the beach and woods. Jax gazed back out to the spires where beyond them, a temple of red and gold peaked past the edges.
"We can't take it by storm, and I doubt U.S. Law will have any grounding here." Stryker suggested as he wiped the salt from the air from his eyes. "We enter through the forest, find a way underground."
"We don't know where Kano is. For all I know, he could be waiting for me in the open." Sonya turned toward the spires. "Perhaps we play their game?"
"No. No need to risk our lives any more than we already are. We're not part of this freak show, Sonya." Jax disagreed, and joined Stryker as they motioned toward the forest.
"What about Raiden?" Sonya stopped them.
"What about him?" The men continued on.
Reluctantly, but with no other present option she could voice, she followed them.
The forest was dense. The bark scraped and tore at their cloth at certain points as they tried to traverse the terrain. It seems at times it closed in on them on purpose, and opened up. From outside, it looked several miles thick, but as they moved for what seemed like an hour, they Sonya pulled a few strands of thick roots and bent foliage to pull her body into a clearing that revealed a view of the mountain range of stone, and the outer walls of the temple.
"It's like some medieval castle." Jax commented, he had no other word to compare it.
"Fortified by the natural geography." Stryker noted the spires, the forest, beach and mountains ahead. He stepped closer to the walls to find it made of stone, white washed to look new and clean. "No way through on this end. We'll keep moving along."
"The forest should stop soon." Sonya added and moved forward ahead of them.
Before them was a bog that stretched into two forks that arched like a snake's tongue into the forest. They traced the right side of the land and continued ahead, but as more time progressed, the bog stretched further and the forest closed in tighter on them.
Jax found a dirt path that had opened for him after a hard exercise through the dense bush and slowly it curled along mud and roots, trees that seemed to form a barrier around him until it reached an old wooden pagoda.
"Found something!" He yelled back to the group.
He inspected the wood, rotted and the paint barely visible. It would have been a beautiful red and gold structure when new, but it looked to have aged a millennia with little to no thought for it. Inside hung a lantern from chain, the light long extinguished. It overlooked the swampy water that breathed a gentle mist over its surface.
When his two partners did not respond, he turned back toward the path, still open for him, but no one came through.
Scrape.
Crack!
He turned each direction he thought it came from. The sound seemed to bounce of the trees and die in the water. He paused and listened, but for a long time there was nothing. When he finally let out a long breath he heard another crack of branch behind him where the tree line stood up from the depths of the bog itself.
"This is some Jurassic Park shit right here." He cursed under his breath, for he knew he had been watched the entire journey here.
He focused on the tree line that stretched out from its muggy roots and strained to find where the sound originated. He hoped it was Sonya and Stryker.
"Don't go any further." A low, hissing voice swept him around and his gun aimed between the eyes of the old main in the conical hat.
"It's you!" He kept it focused, kept it ready.
"I don't think so." Raiden approached, eyes cast beyond Jax toward the forest. "I would leave if I were you, or would you prefer to fight here and now?"
Jax turned at the sound of a hiss and the rustle of bark being clawed away as, seemingly only out of the corner of his eye, the landscape shifted and shaped around a humanoid form up into the dense canopy of this horrid forest.
"Reptile." Jax turned back to Raiden as he spoke, he watched the alleged God approach him and explained, "always watching. Best not get lost again, Major Briggs."
"Not hard to do here." He finally lowered his weapon.
"This isn't the way to the tournament." Raiden pressed, he could sense the defiance in the two men.
"Just here for the criminal." Jax pushed passed him and Raiden appeared in front again in a dull flash of light. Jax froze, his gun raised.
"Where do you think Kano is? Here?" Raiden snickered and lowered his hat to shade his eyes as light broke through the canopy with the rustle of unsettled trees.
"I suppose not." He agreed, reluctantly. It was logical, but now he needed to find Sonya and Stryker. "They've probably got thirty minutes on us."
"I'll find them in an instant." Raiden's eyes flickered and the two faded into the harsh light of day.
Stryker and Sonya had remained together. They had broken through the tree line just enough to find a large opening that lead toward a large stone structure, possibly a tunnel entrance. They could see broken ruins of statues and staircases that lead further through the terrain, a courtyard perhaps. They weren't close enough to climb into it, but the guard wall now etched through the forest and the openings of land were more frequent.
"What is it?" Sonya knelt down to inspect.
Here was a hole in the earth. Sealed by a patchwork of branches and mud, rocks and what appeared to be charred remains.
"Clear it." Stryker ordered and they began their work.
A flash of light drew their attention and their weapons at the sudden target. Raiden stood in front of Jax with the two guns aimed at him. Sonya lowered hers first, then Stryker when Jax cleared the distance between them.
"I wouldn't go in there." Raiden saw the mess around them. Displaced earth and carbon, the port hole sized cover of what looked to be a deep tunnel entrance into the walls of the temple.
"Might be what we've been looking for." Jax joined them.
"A secret way in." Stryker added.
"Neither." Raiden assured. "It's a tomb."
"To what?" Sonya stopped and looked at what they had revealed, then toward Raiden.
"The Kytinn." Raiden approached and explained as a seal presented itself for their efforts to unearth it. "The last of an ancient, and violent race of creatures set on complete annihilation of the realms." He looked into the eye of the men, "best not disturb the dead."
"They're already dead." Stryker pressed.
"Hopefully." Raiden raised a brow and a wry grin. "However, has anything you've witnessed here adhered to reason?"
"No." Stryker admitted. He looked back at the seal. It was metal, not stone, and appeared to have been etched with the design of hornet like wings that met at the center of a flame.
"Let's go." Raiden gathered their attention, "you have a tournament to win."
Collectively they stepped back from the seal and Raiden gathered them within a flash of light. In unison, the bodies dissipated with the glare.
The branches rustled and Reptile emerged from the brush only a few short meters from where Sonya had stood in their triangular position around the seal. His flesh blended with the bark and merged with the wall as he quickly ascended and leapt over into the courtyard.