The streets of Hong Kong, red lights and rain misting the gravel along the poorly paved streets. Liu Kang never saw this place as home, but he couldn't think of the place he'd actually call that being anywhere he'd want to be either.

He watched the tears of a dark sky shatter at his feet, and the red cascade of light turn to green. With each step, he drew closer to anywhere he'd call home in this otherwise hub of lulled life.

The nightclub, where lull goes to live. The awakened youth rattle their cages to pretend that life welcomes them when they're thirty. A regular, he moved past the bouncers to the side entrance where only those that knew how to get in would get through the speakeasy door.

Inside, the lights flickered like a glitch in the sun and shattered across the floor around him. Green, blue, red, lines and dancing of strobing and flickers welcomed him into the mist and cool atmosphere of the club.

The main floor was large, the warehouse sized club had an empty floor, no tables or chairs, just a platform for a DJ and the floor for music. Liu Kang bypassed this as he traced the side wall like a rat to a metal staircase that beckoned him up to the second level, which hosted those that wished to get out of the mist, or the crowd.

Across from him, an older man in his forties stared back at him through the red and blue streams of light. Shang Tsung.

He waded through women that looked him over, a man in a long trench coat and black painted eyes to reach across the club to the empty chair next to the sorcerer.

No words, just a nod to acknowledge one another.

Shang Tsung immediately turned to the ground floor and drew Liu's eyes with him. They watched like predators as the prey dances their lives away. There in the lights though, Liu could see his youth as he would have liked as opposed the years on his knees for the Shaolin and White Lotus Clan.

Each night as they would stare like this, it grew more and more apparent on this one that Shang Tsung had kept his gaze on a specific young woman that danced her life away to the sounds of a revolution in her heart. He could feel her soul and it drew him to her, but never once had he ever approached. Tonight, Liu Kang noticed her as well.

"She's a regular?" He was first to speak, and Shang Tsung turned to him.

"Yes, you haven't noticed?"

"It's hard to focus."

"With that darkness in your soul, how could you?" His lips twisted into a grin. Shang Tsung had long ago informed Liu Kang of his twisted fate.

Once a god, he had learned that his former self had split his soul in two and hid half of it inside of Shang Tsung, whilst the other was reborn with this physical body.

He wasn't the Liu Kang that was inside Shang Tsung, nor the one inside him, but a new Liu Kang that had to deal with what had been handed down to him and told to him would be his life.

"You should talk to her." Shang Tsung added, "you might get something out of it."

"I might kill her." He stared inwardly as he spoke.

Her form was beautiful and short, slim, curved where he preferred, but all the same much like everyone else she looked regular, dull, and asleep.

"You should kill her."

"Why?"

"There's a killer inside you, Liu Kang, and he's begging to awaken."

He stared, silent, no longer willing to speak with Shang Tsung, but mulled those words like a bad wine in his stomach. Every day he'd sleep, go to work, and pretend to be human as the burning grew within him.

He felt it at first in his mind, his thoughts grew dark as they kindled and tumbled down his throat like bricks, hot and spreading ash through his throat. He'd choke on his anger.

The revenant within him would scrape the inner wall of his mind until his entire body was aflame with hatred and this growing urge for vengeance, though he knew not who it was for.

Dull and asleep like all around him, Liu Kang hid away from the word and himself, but he couldn't hide from Shang Tsung. He couldn't hide from himself.

"This need is destroying you. You know you can feel it from the bottom of your heart." Shang Tsung added like a whisper in Liu's ear, "let it consume you and you will be free."

Her breasts became more apparent as she dances. Her smooth skin glistened in the light as if she were magical. Nothing extraordinary really, but as the carnal desire of darkness burned within him, her features became more emphasized and he desired them more and more, or perhaps it was when the vision of her throat curved at an awkward angle, blood spilled down her chest did he finally burst from his shell and push up from the chair to march down and meet her.

"Excellent." Shang Tsung mulled over his thoughts and watched his student take the fastest and clearest path to victory.

Liu Kang was taller than her and his shoulders more broad. He encompassed her within his shadow and took hold of her energy. When his hands touched her arms it was like feeling bread and butter, warm and soft and the blood within just melting under his touch. He could bite inter her, he could snap her in half, or he could defy Shang Tsung and just walk away.

When their eyes met, there was a gleam of green within her that caught him off guard, but quickly the lights played their tricks and he continued this dance until the careful watch of his master.

As the night moved as fast as thunder rolled over the club, Liu Kang bathed in her sweat and took in her scent. The revenant within begged to take her, not to bed, but to murder. He could bend and break her fingers as they would occasional entangle with his when they danced their final dance, and her eyes could pop from their sockets should he choose to bury his thumbs inside them.

Every step they took was another vision of death and violence and blood where she were the victim and he would end the night staring into a version of himself he desperately tried to bury as deep under the grave of his flesh.

Finish her.

He could hear Shang Tsung in his head and shook it off.

Tonight, he'd choose to walk away.

This was not his vision of home, but a version of hell.