The morning fog, the dense air that rolled over the crags and hills of the island terrain like a thick finger that pressed and wiped clean the surface with sweat and disregard sank down on Liu Kang's chest. He let out a thick wet breath and watched as the Naknada lined up on the beach before him and Quan Chi.
Beside him stood Raiden and Stryker on his left, Nightwolf on his right. Just beyond that line of robed monstrosities the bone thin figure of a sorcerer painted in black and white stared through the cracks and crevices of the lines between.
"Where is Sonya?" Raiden demanded answer, but only an ugly pause followed.
"You have no right to hold a challenger hostage. The rules of Mortal Kombat prohibit it." Kung Lao added, joined behind Raiden.
"The laws of Mortal Kombat no longer matter." Quan Chi's voice travelled like a deep rumble through the soggy air. For a frail sorcerer his voice was strong, just as his vile resolve. "I sought to that many years ago, Lord Raiden."
"Without Elder Gods you can do as you please, but I doubt Kotal Kahn would be pleased with you disrespecting his crown by spitting on this ancient custom so deep in the culture of Outworld and his people." Raiden spat.
"The rules are as I desire them." They couldn't see as he gestured for the line of Naknada to reveal himself to Raiden's group. Beside him stood Johnny Cage, and below him on her knees, Sonya's eyes crossed the sand to Liu Kang and the Thunder God.
Liu Kang stepped forward. Raiden turned his eyes to him, but no one moved with him. Nightwolf cast a dagger into the eyes of the Thunder God. A word between the two never spoken as the deserter of the White Lotus Clan halved the distance between himself and the sorcerer.
"I challenge you then, to Mortal Kombat."
Quan Chi shared this cold stare with Liu, a depth only the two could know, but then cut quick and with clear disregard as he turned toward Johnny Cage and pushed the actor forward.
"You will instead fight the Ninja Mime himself."
"You must accept the challenge." Raiden called out.
"You must feel so pathetic without all of your power, Keeper of Time." Quan Chi cut a crease in Raiden's mind that clung to a whole new horror that the sorcerer knew far more than they had ever imagined.
"If you will not accept the challenge, then I will still fight you." Liu Kang added.
"Johnny Cage has betrayed me." He turned to the actor, "I have torn you down from man to this shell before me and even still you betrayed me."
"What do you mean?" Cage couldn't see how he could have known. From the prisoners? From Shang Tsung? No.
"I only needed you for one thing, Johnny Cage, and I got it." Quan Chi added, a crack of a smile at his lips, "your future. Which now rests inside Sonya."
"You know what," Cage pushed over him, that deep voice pressed against with the vitriol of his, "everyone here talks too much."
He swung for Quan Chi with a fast right hook.
"Fuck it!" Stryker joined, a gun in hand before Raiden could push him back.
Before Liu Kang could close the gap, Nightwolf was ahead of him with the Naknada that charged in them in a circular formation. He followed Quan Chi close and bolted between the two monsters to reach him as he slid back from the fray.
Cage pushed Sonya down as a sword cast down for her from the six armed creature and threw his shoulder into the beast's chest. It reached for him as he dropped down to a knee only to find itself with its crotch in hand as the next strike doubled the creature over it's most tender of sections. Cage's old smile glistened, even for a moment as he enjoyed this quick second of being who he used to be. That second removed as quickly as it came as two large hands clenched over the thick meat of his shoulders and dragged him back against the coarse beach sand.
He watched through the carnage before forced to deal with the Naknada over him that Liu Kang had begun to fight Quan Chi, Raiden at his side and Stryker kneeled before him, barrel aimed to blow the skull of the creature over the two.
"Break the rules, and you will pay the price, Thunder God." Quan Chi was quick to dodge each strike, his strategy was to evade, his fragile form paled in comparison to Liu Kang.
"Consider this your punishment then." Nightwolf managed to grab the sorcerer, and forced him around. "A taste of things to come for your leader!"
Nightwolf created a wide gap between the two, this distance closed by a wolf formed of green light that leapt toward the sorcerer. Quan Chi buckled to his knees and allowed his own energy to meet the creature that gnawed for him. A shield of skulls that formed across his flesh and pressed back against the wolf.
Surrounded but not alone, Quan Chi had the Naknada to pull him from Raiden, Nightwolf and Liu Kang, but Kung Lao rushed in to meet him, and when he was engaged in combat with two beasts, Johnny Cage, Sonya, and Stryker were already there to flank him.
Stryker blew away the two beasts that pulled Quan Chi with them and the cold steel eye glared down into the pupil's of the sorcerer.
His finger pressed the trigger, the steel clicked and hissed and roared toward the sorcerer. Just enough time to blink before he saw the bullet catch inside of the chest of the specter Scorpion. Stryker clicked the trigger again, but the man before him absorbed the steel.
Quan Chi appeared behind the Lieutenant, that fragile appearance merely the cover of a tome he could not fathom the depth of its pages. Quan Chi's eyes lit with a green energy.
Stryker glanced down. Like the sea around the, the and began to ripple and the great kraken of a skeleton grew from the grains sand into a monstrosity that opened its maw wide enough to swallow the man.
"That is enough, Quan Chi!" A voice shattered the skeleton into fragments of light that cast back into the sand like light through a prism, no longer uniform.
All eyes turned as the Lin Kuei and the Black Dragon had finally raced from the spires to the scene of this chaotic battle only to be held back by the force of a shadow that formed a great wall around the rogue combatants.
One after the other a figure would emerge at each side of Kotal Kahn. First, a beautiful, cold eyed female drenched in blood red clothing of Soviet design that stood at Kotal's right, then a male in purple, Edenian with his smooth curves and veiled face. Scattered amongst them, two other females in black and grey and symbols Quan Chi recognized as the markings of the Brotherhood of Shadow. The last of them to emerge, a near mummified creature wrapped in cloth and adorned in red and black leather attire shredded and ancient, his eyes appeared to change almost infinitely as though the souls of millions stared back at all that gazed upon this being. He was many, and in this moment, even Quan Chi felt as small as one.