The sconces on the walls to the tower that once held Kitana Kahn now welcomed her step by step with Mileena and Reptile behind her. In the donjon, as it were, Hotaru had been imprisoned and awaited Kitana's judgement.
The moon peaked through the window slits and the dark purple skies of Outworld blended against the blue and pink and black of their respective attires. Reptile, black linens and leather boots, climbed up and faded into the shadow as the door to the cell hall opened for Kitana.
Mileena hated this place, it is where she and Kitana waited five hundred years before freedom could be felt on her flesh in the harsh light of day. She followed in step all the same and stopped after three cells were passed and Kitana addressed Hotaru.
"Lord Hotaru, I would like to believe we've treated you fairly?"
"Scum." He spat in her face.
Mileena bared her fangs but the mask disguised her temper. She hated this man now too.
"I will not treat you so fairly now." Kitana returned.
"You have broken the laws of reality, there is no order to the realms and it is all because of you."
"You know nothing of what you speak."
Hotaru stared from Mileena to Kitana, then lingered on Mileena.
"She is a rift, an abomination!" He spat at her too, but Mileena's rage lashed out and the mask gave way to a great maw that threatened to seize him, at least his fingers had he not jumped back at the sight. "Abomination!"
"Speak plainly, prisoner, or I'll have Havik take your guts for garters."
"You align with chaos, you ally abominations, and you bed foreigners."
"I bed whom I choose and it is no business of yours." She pulled close to the bars, the rust filled the air and the scent of his fear of Mileena's sudden attack desecrated the stone face he put up before them. "You are over. Years of torment and torture and defiling the rule of law to your definition, which I've noticed changed every time you desired it to. Who is the agent of chaos now?"
"I am order. I am everything that is trying to bring peace and stability to my realms."
"Your realms?"
"Once my army have marched on the Chaosrealm, it will expand and it will continue until every realm has adhered to law and order."
Kitana leaned back, a gentle hand on Mileena's urged her to step back in turn. The shadows watched from above should the chaos fill the room, but Kitana handled it, her words now tight to her chest.
"Raiden. Speak of him."
"Filth, I will spit on his grave." Hotaru spat at the ground, "he has done this, all of this. You and Raiden and Liu Kang."
"Again, you know nothing of what you speak."
"Do you think us blind, girl?" He added, eyes trained equally on hers and yet still he tried to look down upon her with them, "not all the realms are as shut out as Earth and Outworld. Not all the people of the realms are stupid."
"Just you." Mileena hissed.
"You will not speak you foul abomination." He gritted and continued toward Kitana. "Raiden has somehow, with your help, disturbed the natural order of the realms. I can feel it, but I don't go off just feeling," he pressed forward against the bars, "you think me unhinged, but you know nothing of what I do and what I am capable of."
"Same could be said to you of me." She added, "so, I ask, where is Raiden and what evidence do you have to prove it besides a conical hat anyone could buy from a street merchant."
"He visited me." Hotaru pulled away and explained, "first he came to me in the Orderrealm to understand why the realms are slowly tearing apart."
"Apart?"
"What you've done, whatever it is has begun to tear the very fabric of reality itself realm by realm."
"What do you mean?" Mileena asked, but she wasn't sure what she was asking, or what answer she should seek.
"You don't tamper with gravity, for it bends through all of reality. You, Kitana, and Raiden, and Liu Kang have done something to disturb even the One Being itself, if you believe in that."
Impossible.
Kitana that if this were the case, Kronika had to have started such processes with her near infinite changes to the timeline just to push Raiden and Liu Kang apart. Had she and Liu Kang unwillingly added to this, or is this another of Hotaru's lies?
If only Raiden were here.
"Why didn't you help him?"
"I laid judgement upon him that very moment and decided he would be prisoner and executed. A man so dangerous as to tamper with the very fabric of reality cannot be allowed to live."
"Sounds like you, but what can you do to fix it?"
"There is a static to all things, Kitana, and you should have realized that. I can only guess that whatever you did must have involved a great power never before touched by anyone in the realms before, and I don't mean Onaga and the Kamidogu, or the merger of Gods to defeat great enemies, nor Shao Kahn and his stupid tournaments to conquer and merge realms."
"Then speak plainly!"
"I don't know what it will take to fix this, or if it even can, you should know that more than I, since you, wretch, are the ones that did it."
"You're lying." Mileena had heard enough and growled low and bared her Tarkatan fangs toward Hotaru. "I will kill you myself."
"You are a construct, you are nothing more than a toy. You're not even real!" He spat and pulled back as she lashed out at him.
"I am real!" She hissed, but Kitana pulled her back. She too had heard enough.
When they faded from Hotaru's view he screamed out for her through the bile in his voice and clenched his knuckles against the bars.
"You will let me go! You will be judged!"
Kitana paused, turned as Reptile leaned over the bars unable to be seen, but Hotaru could certainly feel the cold breath of the Zeterran.
"You've not given me the answers I need to consider you worth my time, nor proven to me that you are docile enough to release back into the wild." She added just as the loud creek of the donjon door opened and hissed through the corridor, "may you rot, Hotaru and take this time to think about what you have done."