No wolves.
No people.
For once, their little pocket of graveyard felt some shred of safe.
Safe enough. Takeda resolved he would never feel totally safe in this hell-space, but it felt safe enough. Cassie was set to take the watch, with her back planted against the tree. Facing the tunnel with a cocked pistol in each hand, so Takeda allowed himself to collapse on top of his sleeping bag and sprawl out. Jacqui had already started and fed the fire, while Jin had pulled the map paper out of his bag to keep drawing.
With nothing for Takeda to do but try and relax, the rest of his adrenaline drained out of his systems quickly. The fine details and the textures of the graveyard blurred with his dulling senses, and exhaustion crashed down over him like a wave. It weighed down his limbs and his chest and even his eyelids, making sleep nearly inevitable. He didn't want the adrenaline to leave. He wanted to keep his heightened awareness. He wanted to keep his quickened reflexes, and his sense of danger. Instead, they abandoned him, and left him with nothing except a ridiculous desire to sleep and never wake up.
"Whatcha doin', Jin?" Jacqui asked, and Takeda used the conversation to peel his eyes open and watch them.
"Updating. Starting with the map." He unfolded the nearly blank paper and spread it across the snow.
"It's gonna get wet," Cassie warned him.
"Nah, map paper's different. Anyway," Jin said, stooping low over the paper. "Last I updated was . . . like, the second section in. It was an 'L' shape," he said, tracing over the lines he already drew to make them darker. "Then, there was a rock overhang, and it turned to the rrrrrrrright," he settled on, thinking through it to make sure he was correct. He started to draw the path to the next section, the section with the mausoleum, but Takeda stopped him.
"Oh yeah, there was a set of stairs in the 'L' section," Takeda said. "They just went up and turned a right into a dead-end courtyard. Like, on the arm of the 'L'."
"Oh, really?" Jin asked. "Must have missed those."
"Yeah, me and Cassie went up there."
"What was in there?" Jacqui asked him.
"Just a statue, from what we could tell, but it was gated shut." Takeda figured that was his addition to the map, so he closed his eyes again and tried to fall asleep.
"Okay. I'll draw the stairs and the courtyard. It might be a good idea to designate all these areas, too. In case we get lost, we can say, 'Rendezvous in the "L"', know what I mean?"
"Yeah, that's a good idea," Cassie said from her spot.
"Okay. The place where we first entered - that little courtyard place - that'll be The Gate. Any opposition?" Everybody shook their heads. "Then, the first area of graves will be . . . "
"Boneland," Jacqui suggested. Jin snickered in reply, and Jacqui glared back. "What? You have a better idea? I'm just trying to be original, and we need to make sure we don't have any of the areas confused."
"Alright, alright! Boneland it is. Next section will be the 'L'," Jin said, writing the label down in the center. "I'll call the statue courtyard the Statue Courtyard. Simple."
"Next section was the mausoleum. That's pretty self-explanatory," Takeda said. Those souls, all those souls. Attacking his senses. Screaming in his ears and blurring his eyes and shutting down his body. He shuddered against the memory of it, afraid that if he thought about it for too long it could happen again.
"Right. The Mausoleum. Then . . . "
"That little archway can be The Archway," Cassie said.
"Cool. The Archway. Maybe when this is all over, we can come up with more poetic names, but these work for now. After that was . . . kind of that open area where we found Scorpion's weapon, and where we were attacked the first time. We'll call that . . . Takeda?" Jin asked, deferring to him.
Obviously he was trying to be nice, considering how much finding Master Hasashi's weapons had affected him, but Takeda was caught off-guard by the question. He didn't want to name the area. It felt strange to him to invest that much time and energy into naming the place that had stolen everyone dear to him, especially when their goal was to get out as quickly as possible. Plus, he was completely exhausted. His creativity was not at peak performance.
"Umm . . . " he trailed off, trying to think. He shrugged. "I don't know. Call it whatever."
"Let's name the two paths first. We'll call the straight one the Ice Path, since we found Sub-Zero's ice there, and we'll call the other pathway The Tunnel." He paused. "The area itself can be Wolfland," he muttered bitterly, rubbing the scratch from where the first wolf attacked him.
"Oh!" Cassie yelled. "We should call that first area Spider Hell since the entrance to the spider caves is there!"
"Hah! Spider hell," Takeda chuckled. That was totally what it was.
"See, I thought about doing the spiders," Jin said, "but when we actually go down there, I have to make another map. I think we need to reserve 'Hell' for a room down there."
"That's fair," she replied.
"Then, after the tunnel, is the Shaolin Temple. I'll draw it tomorrow - well, in three hours," Jin said. "I hope that lack of time thing isn't gonna fuck us up when we get back."
"If we're not fucked up in some way when we get back, I'll honestly be amazed," Cassie said. "I betcha the time thing is going to be the icing on top of a very tall, very gross cake. Honestly, fuck this place."
"Yeah . . . Well, that's the map!" Jin said, folding all the paper back up. He switched back to the book, flipping a few pages in. He wrote the word, 'BESTIARY' at the top and underlined it. "Now for enemies. Start with the wolves, which I'm officially dubbing Netherrealm Hell Hounds. 'Large, bear-sized wolf. Glowing red eyes and sharp claws. Extremely violent. Will attack on-sight.' Then we've got Spiders from Hell-"
"Is that their official name?" Jacqui joked.
Takeda was already starting to tune them out. Or, rather, they were fading out as he sank closer and closer to sleep. He closed his eyes again, listening to their gentle back-and-forth.
Someone grabbed his arm and shook him - hard. "Takeda! Wake up!"
Oh, gods, they were under attack! Takeda's eyes shot open, and he shot to a sitting position, fists already up and ready to fight whatever was around them. Wolves, people, spiders-
"Woah, woah! We're alright!" He looked, and saw Jacqui leaning over him. "It's alright, calm down. It's been three hours. We're gonna move."
. . . Oh. Geez, that was scary for a minute. Takeda dropped his fists and sighed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and resisting the urge to flop back down. A tiny pillar of smoke told him that Jacqui had already deadened the fire, and Jin and Cassie already had most of camp packed back up.
"Did you guys sleep at all?" he asked her.
"Yeah, I did. I don't know about Jin. You slept for, like, two and a half hours."
He didn't feel like he had been asleep for that long. It felt like seconds, like a blink. He supposed it was a good thing that he woke up with a start, though. It definitely killed all of the drowsiness in his body. Takeda flipped to his knees and started rolling his sleeping bag as tight as it could go, and packing up the rest of his stuff. He checked and made sure he had the extra wheels in case his whips broke, and his portion of the food.
"I slept for, like, an hour," Jin said. "We didn't have any trouble at all."
"That's good," Takeda replied. What all were they going to do next? They still had a small bit of the graveyard to explore, then . . . "We're heading into Spider Hell, then?"
"Yeah. After we explore the graveyard, there's nowhere else for us to go. We have to," Cassie said. "We just need to do a perimeter here, from what it looks like, and then the Lotus Temple's in the back."
"Well, I'm headed there," Jin said, and immediately set out, crunching over the snow. "Someone come with me."
"I'm on it," Takeda said, following after him. If his only other option was scope the perimeter and comb the graves, he'd rather explore the Temple with Jin. He really didn't want to be reminded of everything that seemed weird about them - the stones, and the dirt, and the snow. At least, Takeda noted, Jin's enthusiasm for the history of the Shaolin was back. Jin was probably feeling refreshed after their rest. It was sort of comforting that he wasn't too scared.
Or at least, wasn't letting on how scared he really was.
He wanted to read Jin, and find out what was on his mind while they walked up to the Temple, but he knew Jin wouldn't appreciate that, so he kept his powers to himself. Maybe that was another thing about this place. Anywhere else there were always crowds, always people to read. Like constant chatter in his mind, unless he set up his own walls. Here, he had his team. That was it, and they rarely liked being read without their permission. This place was too quiet, both in the physical world and in the psychic world. The spiritual world was alive like wildfire, but every experience Takeda had in trying to open up to it was a poor experience.
What was once a path up to the Temple was long-since worn away by snow, overgrown grass, and the other elements of this place. Takeda could tell it used to be a path, though, because the stones were arranged on either side of it. The tombstones around them generally looked the same as the first few sections. There were Mortal Kombat dragons, there were lotus flowers, there were hands and skulls, like before. Some were even edged on the wall that enclosed the area. The Temple itself loomed tall and proud over them. It carried a sort of serene beauty that was out of place in this weird realm. A sharp contrast to the mausoleum, which seemed to threaten passersby and suck all blackness deeper into itself.
The set of stone steps that led up to the Temple were simply carved out of the rocks, and they inclined steeply. Slick with ice that only seemed to get thicker the closer they grew to the Temple. The actual building was plain brick. It had a low-standing entranceway past a stone arch, and two torches marking either side of it. The building behind it looked tiered, with columns at different points along it like a castle. The white lotus window glowed white right in the middle of the bricks. Overall, a majestic building. It suited the White Lotus society, and the Shaolin, based on what Takeda knew about both.
The two of them stumbled and slipped up the steep steps. Takeda watched his footing so closely, he didn't realize Jin had stopped until his forehead and nose smashed into Jin's back. He knocked the both of them off-balance, and Takeda's feet slid out from under him. He and Jin flailed for a terrifying moment, caught somewhere between steadying each other and saving themselves, until finally, they both stopped moving.
"Thanks," Jin grumbled irritably.
"Why'd you stop?" Takeda yelled back.
"Uuuuh," Jin trailed, gesturing wildly to the Temple. Takeda rolled his eyes, but looked anyway.
Stretched the entire width of the three-foot wide archway and set about a foot and a half into the vestibule area was a thick sheet of ice. Just looking at it, Takeda could tell there was something off and supernatural about it. Spikes rose up around it just like around Sub-Zero's ice ball. It was so thick, it was almost white, and wisps of cold air pooled off of it. Frost even spread to the outside bricks of the Temple.
" . . . Oh," Takeda said, unsure of what else to say. "The hell is this?" He inched close to it and could feel the cold emanating off of it on his face. His breath frosted from his mouth, too. Takeda pressed his hands flat against the ice and tried to push it. To crack it or something, but it didn't cave at all. It didn't even sound like it was shifting. He knocked on it next, and it sounded and felt like he was knocking on stone.
"Don't even try it," Jin sighed. "I don't know what it is, but there's no way that ice that thick is natural. It's magic, or something."
"Is ice normal for the Shaolin?"
" . . . I . . . I don't . . . think so," Jin said.
"So what do we do?" Takeda turned back to him, and saw his eyebrows deeply furrowed. Obviously deep in thought. Despite what Takeda said earlier, he gently scanned Jin's mind to see if he could pick up on his thoughts.
" . . . gotta see what's in there. How are we supposed to get through that? Shaolin never use ice, we use the Dragon's Fire. So why would ice be here? That doesn't make sense. The only people who use ice are the Lin- Wait!" Jin shouted out loud. "Sub-Zero!" He ran forward and pushed past Takeda, flattening him against the wall of the entranceway. "Move!" he said, grabbing his shoulder. He pushed him back behind him and out into the open air, and once again Takeda almost wiped out on the ice and snow.
Jin switched his hands to the top and bottom of his staff and brought it up over his shoulder, driving the end into the ice. The tip glanced harmlessly off of it, not even scratching it.
"Who else wields ice like this but Sub-Zero?!" Jin said frantically. "He probably barricaded himself and the others in here!"
Hanzo could be in there. Or Kenshi. Galvanized into action, Takeda ran forward to help, but the area was too small for the both of them. Especially with Jin waving his staff around. He drove it down into the ice again, and once again, didn't do a shred of damage. He grunted with each effort, throwing all his force into it, but the ice was unyielding.
"Jin, you're not gonna break it! It's too thick!" Takeda tried. He watched Jin struggle until his grunts turned into growls of frustration. "You'll break your staff before you get through." That seemed to make him pause. Jin wiped the beads of sweat from his brow and rested the end of his staff on the ground. He tried instead to shout through the ice.
"Sub-Zero! Sub-Zero, can you hear me?! Hello? Liu Kang! Lao!"
They waited.
One second.
Two seconds.
Nothing.
"Hanzo!" Takeda yelled. "Master Hasashi?! Dad!"
"Try to read through it."
Takeda called his power and sent out a pulse like a sonar, through the ice and around the Temple to pick up on any presences that he could read. Behind him, he sensed Jin, Cassie and Jacqui, but blocked their essences from his awareness in case he confused them with anyone in the Temple. His power was sent towards the ice, but like a magnet it arced around it and glanced off of the walls of the Temple.
The ice was blocking him.
"Rrgh!" he growled. "I hate this place! The stupid ice! I can't get through!"
"Then maybe nobody's in there-"
"Not ten seconds ago you were about to bust your weapon to get through! I can't tell if anybody's in there because my power can't get through the ice!"
"Try to move it! Try to move the ice!" Jin said.
"I'm telepathic, not telekinetic. It's Kenshi who can move stuff this big."
They both paused, staring down the ice. Despite being unable to get through, Takeda prayed, with all of him, that Kenshi and Hanzo were in there. It would be such a relief, and much easier to handle this place if they at least knew where everyone was and just had to find a way to get in there.
Takeda saw an idea spark in Jin's eyes, and he gently tapped his staff off the ground. The little pearl in the dragon's mouth turned red with fire energy, and a column of fire spilled from the its mouth. Jin started waving it all over the ice. They waited for a minute or two, but when Jin pulled the fire away the ice hadn't even started to drip. The fire didn't make a dent in it.
"What?!" he yelled. "Do you have any bombs?"
"Yeah, I've got a couple," Takeda said. Luckily, he remembered to bring his plasma kunai with him. He pulled three of the small explosive knives from his belt and Jin held out his hand to take them, but Takeda shook his head. "You have to throw them. Back out of there." The two of them inched out into the open, and Takeda flayed the handles between three fingers. He pulled back, arm poised by his ear for a backhand swipe, but a quick glance at the structure of the building and the entranceway made him hesitate. He paused and lowered his hand.
"What? Let's go!" Jin urged.
"Wait. I can't detonate these. What if we bring down the entranceway? Then we'll never get inside." And Hanzo and Kenshi and Sub-Zero and whoever else was in there could never get out, either.
"They're small kunai!" Jin yelled incredulously. "The bombs aren't that powerful, are they?"
"Yeah! In a contained space they're powerful enough to bring down this whole building. Didn't you see what it did to the wall in the Special Forces' barracks? It blew a hole in there. Through the cinderblock on both walls."
Jin frowned back at him, clearly wanting to fight, but he could tell Takeda was right. "Fine, then. We'll have Cassie shoot at it, or something."
"Your staff couldn't make a dent! What makes you think-"
"Do you want to get them out of there, or not?" Jin walked back up to the ice. "SUB-ZERO!" he yelled as loud as he could. "Sub-Zero! Are you there? We're going to get you out of there! Just hold on!"
No answer.
He shoved past Takeda again. "Jin," he said, grabbing his arm. "We're not gonna get through that ice."
"I know, okay?! I don't have any other ideas! Except the fire. We-" he started, then cut himself off.
"What?" Takeda asked.
"I don't know," he said, suddenly sullen. "We won't get in there by ourselves. Honestly, I think we need the Dragon's Fire, but we don't have it."
"You tried your staff on it already-"
"No! Like, the Dragon's Fire," Jin emphasized, slashing each word into the air with his hand, "that Liu Kang carries in his body. You know how Liu Kang can summon fire to his fists when he fights? And the huge dragon of fire that he can call?"
"I mean, I didn't know about the dragon, but okay-"
"The Shaolin, upon induction, are granted a portion of the Dragon's Fire. That's what you see in my staff: a small portion. The Dragon, if it deems a Shaolin worthy, may grant a large portion of its power in a special and ritualistic ceremony. Then, when the Shaolin dies, the power returns to the Dragon and lies dormant until the Dragon deems another Shaolin worthy to carry and wield the power. Since Liu Kang was the Grand Champion of Mortal Kombat, he was graced with the Dragon's Fire."
"So, in other words, we need Liu Kang."
Jin nodded. "We need Liu Kang."
"We're stuck," Takeda said. Stuck in the graveyard, stuck in this realm, stuck without technological or military aid. Stuck. With Master Hasashi and Kenshi and Jax and Raiden and everybody. "Jacqui," he thought to her, sending it out for her to hear.
"What's up?"
"The Temple's blocked by a sheet of ice. We can't get through it."
"Ice?!" she shot back. "Sub-Zero, then!"
"Maybe," he answered quickly. "We don't know. I can't scan for any presences because my power can't get through it. It's supernatural. Jin thinks we need the Shaolin Dragon's Fire to bust through."
"I'll tell Cassie."
"Come on, Jin, let's regroup."
They left the Temple entranceway and inched back down the steps, careful to avoid falling. When they got to the bottom, they caught up with Cassie and Jacqui, waiting right beside the steps.
"Is anybody else confused as fuck?" Cassie asked, before anyone else had the chance to say anything. "This doesn't make any sense. It's stupid for Sub-Zero to close himself in there, but not leave any sort of way to get out, first of all. Second of all, that's, like, the second time we've seen something like that. First, we need Kenshi and Sento to get into the mausoleum. Now we need Liu Kang and the Dragon's Fire to get into the Temple. We have Scorpion's kunai, but no Scorpion. We have Sub-Zero's ice, but no Sub-Zero. There's something back in the Ice Path that we could open, but we don't know how. We have to blast the Statue Courtyard open. Anybody else think something - something - is wrong here?! I don't know what, but something is!"
"Uh, yeah!" Takeda huffed. "It's the Netherrealm! What did you expect?"
"Not fucking this! By the way, you still have his ice-ball, right?"
"Yeah. It keeps freezing my pants to my thighs. Why?"
"I don't know. Just hold on to it. If we find Sub-Zero he may need it. How the fuck does this place look untouched, but there were clearly people here?"
With each word Cassie said, Takeda felt fear and panic rise in his chest, constricting him. The more she laid it all out, saying everything they all were probably thinking, the more this place didn't make sense. The more this place didn't make sense, the more surreal it sounded. It was all some big illusion, and the more time they spent there, the more ensnared in the illusion they became until they were trapped. They could never break free. This entire place felt like some cruel prank, like they were all going to wake up in Quan Chi's fortress.
"Cassie, we don't know," Jacqui said. "We're trying to figure this out just as much as you. Listen, it sounds like we're stuck here for now." Takeda opened his mouth to protest. They couldn't leave! Not yet. Not when everybody was potentially so close. But Jacqui cut him off. "For now!" she repeated. "We can't get in the mausoleum, and we can't get into the Temple. And we don't have any real proof that anybody is in either of those places, either. The only place that's accessible to us is Spider Hell. I say we go down there-"
"We can't! We can't leave them," Takeda said.
"You think I want to? There's no proof! How can we justify staying here when everyone could be in the mausoleum or even in the spider caves? We have to move!" It hurt Takeda's heart to hear it. To even conceptualize abandonment. It bled from his heart down into his stomach, weighing his shoulders down. The looming threat of 'what if' was there, so large it was impossible to ignore. Always there at the back of every situation. It halted decisions and made people second-guess everything.
What if Hanzo or Kenshi were in there? What if they were dead? What if they found everyone, but Raiden couldn't get them back? What if Fujin couldn't get to them? What if they took too long, and were assumed K.I.A.? What if, what if, what if-
What ifs were the worst kinds of questions to ask. Because they force Takeda to look at their situation - to the very thing he wanted to avoid - and weigh just how the consequences play out. From there the questions spiral directly downward into the worst-case scenarios and their effects, and then he believed they were going to come to be, no matter how skewed they became. No matter how screwed he thought he was by avoiding the problem, he'd be ten times more screwed if the worst-case scenario came to fruition.
"Takeda," Jacqui continued. "I don't want to leave anybody if we can help it. But right now, we can't. I'm sorry, okay? I know the possibility is there, but without any real proof either way, we have to keep moving. We can't wait around for something to happen. We have to keep going."
" . . . I know. Is there anything else with the graveyard we could do?" he asked. "Not to stay any longer, I swear. Just to do a thorough check."
"I don't think so," Cassie said. "Jacqui and I have been sweeping the perimeter, like we said. We just need to finish this side, then the side that heads back towards the tunnel, and then we're done here. There's nothing on any of the graves, either."
"Okay," he nodded. "Let's-" His throat seized, and he swallowed thickly. "Let's go," he said, despite his heart rolling in his stomach again. "I'm sorry, dad," he sent towards the ice, just in case somebody, anybody, could hear it. "I'm sorry, Master Hanzo. If you're in there, we'll be back. I promise. With Liu Kang's fire, or something to get you out. Hang tight."
Jacqui grabbed his hand and gave it a quick squeeze, but then pulled him along, tugging him away from the Temple. He didn't want to look away. For some reason, he felt that if he looked away, then everybody and everything within the Temple behind that ice would be lost to him forever. Like he'd never be able to see any of it again. With reluctance, he tugged his eyes away, and turned away from it, resisting the urge to check over his shoulder.
He stared down the wall, and noticed that there looked to be a small inlet - kind of like the one that contained Sub-Zero's ice. Just a part of the wall that squared out. Only a few feet wide. Cassie and Jin made it to the inlet first, and Jin even peered around the corner into it just to make sure there wasn't anything in there. But suddenly, Jin gasped, withdrawing away from the inlet. His face paled, so quickly Takeda thought he would be sick. He covered his mouth with his hand and turned away from the inlet.
"Gods . . . " he breathed.
Takeda and Jacqui inched forward, but he could only see a pair of boots.
A/N: This chapter took me a while to figure out as far as where to leave it off. Let me know what you think of it! Thank you so much to everyone who's kept up with this so far, and don't forget to leave a review if you have the time! :)
~Keyblader