Deception, Cage through a glass against the wall of his personal chamber, as he played the day over in his mind. A world of games and deception picked like spiders in his head. He turned after a flare of anger washed from his face, the outworld slave still on the bed.
"Sorry."
"That is Quan Chi pulling the strings inside you."
"No, not just him."
He met her at the foot of the bed.
"Tell me."
"I am Johnny Cage, money, power, fame. All of it. I've earned that." He added, "since being fired it's all been downhill, Hollywood just chews on you till you're raw and spits you back out."
"Sounds like Outworld."
"I don't know if it's all been Quan Chi, or if this downward spiral's been happening before then and I've just been ignoring it till now."
"It's not you, Johnny." She assured, and added, "you should leave this island. Go back to the way things were."
"I'm trapped." He met her eyes, she smiled, but he didn't understand why.
"No, you're bound by the laws of Mortal Kombat, and if you are defeated you are forced to leave. If you win, you move on to the next fighter."
"What are you getting at?"
"Challenge me to Mortal Kombat and lose, and you will get to leave all of this behind you."
"You can just do that?"
"It has to be consented, but yes."
He stepped back. Took a moment to see her fully as she knelt on the edge of the bed in just tunic and pants, medieval and still beautiful, but she'd be left behind if he did this. he tugged on his shirt collar and let the flush red of his anger subside as reason clouded his brain.
"What happens to you?"
"I'm a slave, Johnny," she added, "there is no happy ending with me." The Outworld slave pulled herself from the bed and approached the Earth Realmer that had taken her since his arrival and balled the cloth of his shirt in a gentle fist. "I challenge you to Mortal Kombat."
His hand met her wrist and he gestured to pull away, but stopped. This little moment he needed to look into her eyes, to see that this was the only spark of light she may otherwise ever see. To free him would be her only expression of freedom, of individual.
It wouldn't hurt. It wouldn't be more than him in front of her, on his knees to yield the challenge to her.
"I accept," the spark of his eyes met hers as she began to illuminate with a green hue from pupil to iris, from maw and flesh.
"We are pleased to know." She pushed him back and a chorus of voices echoed as her flesh rapidly dried and decayed. She stepped back into a body bound by cloth and leather, red and black shrouded a deformed corpse that then rose a meter and cast its glaring green eyes down at Johnny Cage. "Fight!"
"Holy shit!" Cage staggered back against a wardrobe of old stained wood that nearly splintered by his body crashed against it.
"We are Ermac. We cannot be defeated."
Johnny clawed at the edge of the wardrobe and pushed it down between them, taking a quick stance to the right, but Ermac followed him unaffected by the crash, the space between them nothing as he swooped down from his aerial position.
Cage felt the cold hands, stiff and leathery as the grappled at his chest and shoved him against the hard wood wall, then pull him up against the stone ceiling. His back scraped along the old wood. He reached for the corpse's throat and found a tight, hard surface to ring, but no squeeze would affect him, no tug, or jerk.
Ermac's hands met Cage's throat as Johnny felt his body pulled down from the ceiling until that energy that illuminated Ermac's eyes seeped around Cage's body to hold him against the ceiling with him.
Cage reached for anything he could. He clawed at the leather wrapping around Ermac's face, the corpse beneath revealed to him with taut, decayed flesh and green orbs that sat wavering in the sockets of the entity. He stuck his hand inside of the eye sockets and choked the bone and taut flesh between, tugged and tore at him. The energy surrounded his hand and pulled away from Cage's body until he fell from the ceiling.
His arms instinctively braced for the crash into the wardrobe, but he felt no splinters, no boards break beneath him. Ermac reached for him, his hands clutched Cage in the air and slowly pulled him back up.
"Oh, come on!" Cage tried to kick, jerk, roll, anything to get out of the hold.
"You are nothing to us." Ermac hissed at they pulled Cage closer and closer up.
Nothing?
Cage stopped, not his body, but his struggling. Since he had started this, everyone had latched on to him to tell him how much power he didn't have, and how unimportant he was to them. Every single one of them went out of their way to show how useless and unnecessary he was to them, but only now did he finally realize just how wrong they were.
"I'm Johnny Cage, and I am the whole damn game."
Cage used the energy to tilt his body to meet Ermac's skull with his boots and stomped out the entity until it let go of him. Ermac formed on the floor with Cage. He cursed himself for having landed, crashed within the wardrobe, but was quick to pull himself out.
As he lunged to his feet and charged the entity, Ermac graded Cage's back to brace himself. Johnny shoved Ermac into the wall and struck him with several hard jabs to the dusty cages of his ribs. He realized quick enough it would have little effect on the already dead entity, he returned his focus to the skull where the energy first emanated from.
Ermac clenched Cage's ribs and sucked the breath out of him to force the mortal to meet eye to eye with him before that ancient maw exploded in green light that felt like a sledgehammer to Cage's chest as it threw him across the room.
His back met the door, then the wall in the outside hallway. His body crumbled into the rubble as the entity had already rushed to the doorway to meet him.
"Johnny!" A voice filled the hall, louder than he expected.
When the rubble and dust wiped from his eyes, he saw two women stood between him and Ermac. One in blue, the other in pink, then his eyes were cast down with a barrage of dust from and rubble.
He felt his shirt balled upward into another strong fist he thought was Ermac, but as soon as he could see, a creature with jagged teeth and eyes wild like a beast, but the shape of a young woman pushed him up to his feet.
The other was already in the room engaged in combat with Ermac. This creature soon joined her, but hissed for him to join, though she did not recall his name.
Once inside, the three spread out around the hooded figure of Ermac. Though not known to him, Kitana and Mileena stood at both sides. Each began to take turns striking and defending against the entity's attacks. When Ermac would pull one with they're energy, the other two would come in to break it.
When the two would engage Ermac, the entity force them all back. A stalemate by any other name.
"This battle is with the Earth Realmer." Ermac hissed.
Mileena lunged into Ermac and let the full gape of her jaw widened to case the entity's neck between them. Ermac, unaffected by the pain as the cloth and leather shredded, pushed forward with her latched on and Kitana at the side with hard low kicks as Johnny faced the entity head on.
"We will go then." Ermac pushed them all back, but they're words were not quite what Cage had hoped.
Once Mileena had been removed and Kitana fell against the bed, Ermac reached out with the force of their energy and tugged Cage close to them.
The two vanished in a bright display of light. Kitana and Mileena covered their eyes, but neither could get close enough until they were gone.
Johnny felt ground beneath his feet. Stone, but something threw him off. Something strange about where he stood and only when his eyes, blinded by the light of Ermac could see again did he realize that odd feeling was the wind and altitude that tugged on his every side to pull him down into the abyss from a thin stone bridge.
Across from him, Ermac stood, unencumbered by the battle and stared with zero emotion through those green orbs of light.
"Look down." Ermac spoke calm and in control.
"I'd rather not." He had no choice. Beneath him were spires of spikes with skeletons, corpses and even flesh blood that fell from tip to earth. A pit of death waited for him after a long fall from the thin seemingly brittle bridge.
"In the end, I become them and I lead them. After all, none of us really qualify as human." He stepped closer to Johnny as he spoke, but his steps were not on the stone, but the air itself. "You will become one of them, one of us."
There was no escape.
No help.
No one but them here on this bridge and only one of them was going to walk away. He needed to make sure the one to walk away was still living.
As Ermac edged closer, their hand reached out and a flame like flicker of that energy licked at the cold wind around them. Johnny found himself forced down face first against the dirt and stone of the bridge. His body turned to force him to look down, head hung over the edge. His body began to tilt upward.
"It is over, Hollywood." the many voices that comprised the entity all whispered into the air in unison only to be taken by the wind.
His fingers clenched the stone, what cracks and crevices he could claw to keep from being launched over, but as the voices sank in and the certainty of death stared back at him from the eye of the dead beneath him, he felt his body almost crippled with adrenaline. It coursed through him and flowed like blood that pulsed against the energy around him, what strength it gave him, he used to hold tight, but his body continued to raise until he felt nothing but blood rush to his face.
All this time, secured by Ermac's whim, he realized what little time he had left and in a rash move, let go of the stone ledge and reached for Ermac's ankles. He managed to curl and wrap latch onto the entity with something of a leglock, but Ermac only pulled him further into the air until both were over the ledge.
"Only one of us will fall." Ermac reminded him.
He ignored the banter and kicked as he tried his damned hardest to climb the corpse like a rocky cliff, and though the heel of his boot caved in the entity's chest, it did not affect Ermac. It wasn't until one last hoist up, one last desperate kick caved in the skull of the entity and the energy pulsed around them.
Ermac fell.
Not so far down, but enough to waiver. They held steady quickly enough, Cage still attached, upside down and his face reddened as blood rushed to meet his brain. All reason flooded away as he kicked one last time, unable to recognize the green light around his own body that, as his foot struck the creatures chest, forced him back onto the bridge, just barely enough to hold to.
The entity fell to the spikes below and became pierced through the chest.
Cage, only a glimpse to confirm this, was satisfied enough with that small glance to then pull himself up. His body crumbled hands and knees as the blood began to course through his body, and the adrenaline crippled his spine with wave after wave.
"I win." He gasped between heavy breaths.
Out of the corner of his eyes he saw figured race out from the courtyard toward the bridge. They looked like Sonya and Stryker, Raiden and Liu Kang, but he couldn't tell, only that they weren't the humongous robed beasts, nor the bald sorcerer. He only hoped for victory.
Beat. Beat. Beat his heart pumped.
Gasp.
Each deep breath steadied his body.
A hand reached down for him, and this he could tell was not Ermac.
"Take my hand, Johnny Cage." Raiden assured him and then pulled Cage up.
Caged climbed to his feet with the God's help and leaned against him, barely able to stand on his own.
"Thanks, pal," he managed to breath out between gasps and heavy heart beats.
"It's over now." Raiden said, but his voice was thrown past him.
Johnny paused.
He turned slowly to meet the reformed skull, the deep sockets that illuminated with green energy and the corpse lifted high in the air as though nothing had happened.
"We are not defeated." Ermac declared.
"You have lost this fight!" Raiden demanded of him, "return to your master!"
Ermac stared, Raiden's voice carried no weight to pull them down.
"You will return, Ermac." A deeper voice carried, one with the weight of all the souls within the entity.
Quan Chi and Kotal Kahn stood from the wooden bridge that connected around the jagged cliff from the courtyard.
"Johnny Cage wins." Kotal Kahn announced.