This is a silly idea I had after watching a walkthrough of Mortal Kombat 1. That was my first exposure to the lore of the MK franchise, so there may be some things that I'm unaware of. This probably won't be of the same sort of calibre as my other recent work, but the fanfic is wreaking havoc in my head so I need to get it out. Knowlege/familiarity with the MK1 game will help you to follow this fanfic better.
Chapter 1: Prison Break
"You've been at that for hours," Kenshi murmurs at Baraka, hating how weak and wispy his voice is in the resounding echo of metal and hopelessness.
"If you could see you'd know why," the Tarkatan responds before returning to trying to force the door to their cell, cringing internally every time his eyes stray to his brethren in the surroundings.
Kenshi just sighs, defeated. "That's not happening, is it?" he asks the agonising darkness, another swell of pain his only answer. "Keep talking, will you? To keep my mind off this. Tell me about life before you got sick."
He's not fully convinced that Baraka will humour him, so is mildly surprised when the merchant's gravelly voice responds. "I was doing well, trading goods up and down the Fartakh coast. My family was comfortable, happy." The sigh he gives next is so reflective of Kenshi's own state that the swordsman takes a strange comfort in the trauma-bonding.
"Then Tarkat came," Baraka continues. "It took my wife, then my children. Cruelly, it lets me live, for now. I think it enjoys ravaging my body more slowly."
Before Kenshi can respond, a groan comes from the back of their cell as Johnny Cage pushes himself up. "Ugh, this hangover." He blinks a few times before realising their position, and snaps his gaze to his right. "Kenshi!"
Scrambling over to him, Johnny grips his arm in a way that's meant to be comforting, but probably comes across as desperate as he fully examines the extent of the wounds. "Goddammit. How bad's the pain?"
"Excruciating," he admits, disregarding all sense of bravado.
Even though he can't him, Johnny bends down to look Kenshi straight in the face. "You saved me. I won't forget that," he promises.
"But you may just regret it," Baraka counters.
Johnny inhales to ask what his Outworlder friend means, but he's interrupted by the sounds of metal striking metal and screams. His eyes widen as he takes in the full sight of the stone and metal and viscera. One Tarkatan lies writhing nailed to a vertical slab, another body hangs upside down, its torso completely missing, seemingly ripped off. Some horrific fleshy amalgamation of multiple Tarkatans groans in unthinkable agony. Metal and blood mingle in his nose, and he pushes down a wave of nausea.
Just pretend they're set pieces, he tells himself. Just props.
"What in the fuck?" he stands, glancing at Kung Lao as he comes to as well. "When did we take a left turn into survival horror?"
"This is Shang Tsung's real laboratory," Baraka explains.
"We're beneath where we were before," Kenshi adds. "That was a false front."
Johnny gazes out of the bars again. "Reminds me of this cheap-ass film we did in my early days: The Flesh Pits. God, that was trash."
A clang! much like when Baraka was trying the door before sounds close by, and Johnny would have dismissed it as another poor soul in the middle of one of their host's "experiments" if it weren't for the fact that a normal-sounding woman's forceful exhale follows it. His eyes widen as it happens again, a grunt accompanying the metallic crash this time.
" She hasn't stopped either," Baraka muses to Kenshi as he faces towards the sound, though he's not sure if the swordsman realises he's addressing him.
"Whoa, wait. Is someone else here?" Johnny edges forward to the cell door.
The clang rings again before: "Jesus wept, you're sure not the brains of that little operation, are you?"
The woman's silky voice contrasts with her barbed words, barely pausing to catch her breath before the metal crashes again. If Johnny angles himself just right and cranes his neck, he can see a young woman with shoulder-length brown wavy hair glare at the door to her own cell before aiming a fierce kick of her heavy combat boots to the lock of the cell door.
His grips the bars. "You know – not that I know a whole lot about Outworld accents – but I could swear you actually sound Irish. Like, Earthrealm, Irish."
She kicks again. "If you mean the beautiful green land of Ireland, then you're right." As she takes a few moments to breathe, she looks up to see Johnny's face in his cell door. She blinks, then approaches her own door. " Johnny Cage? "
The film star's face lights up. "You a fan?"
At the back of the cell, Kung Lao groans quietly. "And here I thought things couldn't get worse." Kenshi manages a small huff.
The woman continues. "If you count someone who's mildly disgruntled about billboards and giant screens constantly assaulting their senses with the same old shit as a fan, then yeah."
Kung Lao smiles slightly. "You know what? Actually this is fine." Johnny scowls at him.
"Is this one of your fucking films, Cage?" she continues, glaring at him.
"I swear to you, the writers I work with would love to have this creativity. How did you even get here? This isn't exactly an easy tourist destination."
"Depends what you mean by 'here'," she responds, going quickly back to kicking her cell door. "If you mean our charming current accommodation, I got knocked round the back of the head and woke up here. If you're talking about this fucked up reality full of, I swear to God, genuine mages and creatures with more teeth than manners, I was tailing our delightful host as he was looking super shifty, even by New York standards."
"You were in New York? The city in Earthrealm?" Johnny clarifies.
"Why do you keep calling it that?" she frowns before kicking again. "But yes."
Johnny swears to the others. "He's somehow found a way to Earthrealm without using the portal at Sun Do." He turns back to the other prisoner. "And because it's called Earthrealm. The realm we're in now is called Outworld. Turns out they've been here as long as we have, with creatures and magic we only dream about. But there's a tournament that happens between Earthrealm and Outworld every once in a while. The three of us were picked for it, which is why we're here. We met Baraka along the way."
She pauses to aim a dubious look at Johnny. " You guys were chosen for the tournament?" She chuckles briefly before returning to kicking the lock. "This doesn't look like the fairest tournament."
Kung Lao calls out to her, out of her eye-line near the back of their cell. "Actually, the tournament is all finished. My friend Raiden won it for us. But we were here under orders from the guy who recruited us to keep an eye on Shang Tsung."
She frowns, briefly pausing to catch her breath again as she rests her back against the door. "That worked out well for you. So what's going on here then?"
Johnny shuffles on the spot, troubled. "To be confirmed."
The ominous clatter of a metal door opening echoes through the dungeon, and all turn towards the connecting corridor where soft footsteps tread closer.
"Who's this?" Johnny mutters, tensing in preparation to meet a lackey of Shang Tsung.
"Our jailer," Baraka responds simply.
A lean figure emerges from the shadows. He glances around the prison with none of the glee or sick fascination Johnny would expect from someone involved in the horrors occurring here. The vibrant green of his sash is such a startling contrast to the grey and crimson of the dungeon that it's strangely comforting. Black tattoos echoing patterned snakes swirl over both his arms, and another curls over his left eye. As soon as the jailer came into view for her, the other prisoner smirked, relaxed, before returning to her task of attempting to break the door down. The stranger in green stops in front of her cell, gazing at her as she aims another kick.
"You're still not afraid to do that around me?" The jailer's voice is gentle and husky, not rebuking or threatening at all, more curious.
"As I told you before," the woman answers, "I don't need to worry about you."
He tilts his head. "How do you know?"
"Because you –" kick "– don't have any –" kick "– of the sadism –" kick "– in your eyes like your boss does." She rests her hands on her knees briefly, breathing slightly heavily while grinning up at him. "I'd wager you don't really want us to be here. Heck, I'd wager you'd rather not be here." She straightens. "I can at least try to escape with little repercussions from you."
The mask covering the lower half of his face obscures any change in his expression. He silently moves to another cell, picking a piece of meat off the top of a pile in a bucket and tossing it into the cell. A poor Tarkatan imprisoned in the cell scrambles forward to devour the meat ravenously. Finally he turns to Johnny and Baraka at the cell door and approaches them, nodding down to Kenshi.
"How is he?"
Johnny glares. "His eyes are gouged out. Guess."
Rather than rise to Johnny's animosity, the stranger instead reaches to a bench beside their cell and offers a cylindrical tub from among its contents. "That will dull the pain."
After this gesture of goodwill and the absence of any vindictiveness previously, Johnny takes the tub almost immediately, taking him at his word. Baraka, however, is less convinced; as Johnny steps away to see to Kenshi, he grips the cell door in rage.
"You're vile to be part of this," he spits.
The stranger's piercing green eyes are pained as he accepts the abuse. "You are Shang Tsung's prisoner. I am his slave. He has my family. He'll kill them if I don't obey."
Johnny scowls at this story, but focuses on treating his friend. Opening the tub and finding a paste inside, he tears off a red sash from his outfit and smooths a generous helping in the middle. He then presses it gently over Kenshi's eyes before tying it behind his head. Almost immediately the swordsman sighs in relief, his whole posture relaxing.
"Why did he pick you?" Baraka asks the jailer, trying his luck given the stranger's honesty so far.
"So he could learn how I shapeshift."
Kung Lao steps forward, remembering the disappearing act Shang Tsung pulled off in the Tarkatan settlement. "He learned that from you? We saw him do that. It was unreal."
"So how does it work?" Johnny asks as he re-joins those at the cage door. "You just shapeshift into anything you want?"
"I can shift only between this and my natural form." Before the prisoners can contemplate asking the question, the stranger in green provides the answer; with a blur, the human shape disappears, replaced with a bipedal reptilian creature of similar size. His form is thick with muscles and tough-looking scales, short spines dotted across his back. His face is dominated by sharp teeth, and red slitted eyes stare at them instead of his previous green ones, but the heaviness never leaves them. He shakes his large head with a huff.
"Whoa," Johnny exclaims.
A pause in the clanging from next door suggests this has also caught the woman off guard.
"You're Zaterran," Baraka remarks with interest. "Your race can shapeshift?"
"None can, except me," the creature responds, his speech breathy and hissing.
A soft whooshing sound behind the reptile halts any further conversation, and he reverts back to his human form as a bright sand-like swirl quickly gives way to Shang Tsung. The Zaterran's shoulders immediately tense at the sight of his blackmailer's smug, self-assured face.
"Are they ready?" Shang Tsung queries lightly, as if asking if customers were ready to be seated at a diner. "It's time."
"Time for what, sorcerer?" Baraka growls.
"Replication experiments," he smiles, stepping closer. "They begin with your vivisection; I'll use your harvested parts to build new creations. The process is fatal, of course." His sick glee seems to increase with each word he utters.
Hating how powerless he feels behind the cage door, Johnny can only respond with: "Liu Kang won't let you get away with this."
Any hope the film star had at scaring the sorcerer by mentioning the Earthrealm Protector and god of fire's name is dashed as he simply laughs, stepping confidently closer.
"That presumes he will ever learn of what happened," Shang Tsung shrugs. "But when I am done, there will be no trace left of you."
As he turns to the young woman's cage, his smirk widens. "And you, my dear, should have known better than to meddle in affairs wholly unrelated to you. What is that saying you Earthrealmers have? 'Curiosity killed the cat', isn't it?" He chuckles. "I will unashamedly admit now, however, that I am particularly looking forward to a more detailed examination of your enticing flesh."
Johnny is amazed that the young woman simply grins back in the face of such a revolting speech. She pushes off the wall she was leaning on, stepping idly closer to her door, her voice soft. "You know, after accidentally following you here, I've witnessed many extraordinary things, including creatures I never would have thought would exist in my nightmares." Her voice softens further, so the other prisoners have to strain to hear her, and Shang Tsung steps closer to her. "And yet, as I stand here now amongst both Outworld denizens and abominations of your own design, I can say with the utmost confidence that you are the only thing here that really makes my skin crawl."
She leaves less than half a second for the insult to sink in; quick as a snake strike, she snaps her hand through the bars, raking her fingernails across Shang Tsung's face, sending him stumbling a step or two as he gingerly touches the two short lines of blood across his cheek. The woman retreats further back into her cell, cackling like someone has just told the funniest joke she's ever heard. Johnny, Kung Lao and Baraka all share a wide-eyed look, impressed at the woman's nerve. Even their jailer had flinched back at her completely unexpected attack, his eyes awed from what Johnny can see from the side. He soon averts his eyes though as Shang Tsung straightens and casts a spell at the woman to slam her into her cell bars. She drops to her knees, groaning slightly as she cradles her face.
"Hey!" Johnny bangs on the bars of his own cell. "Leave her alone!"
The sorcerer ignores his outburst, stepping closer to the woman's cell again, though remaining out of arm's reach this time. "'Crawl'…? Yes, what an inspired idea. Your creation shall be without legs, so you must crawl pitifully along the floor."
The woman simply looks up from her hands to spit in his face. He recoils again, his face twisting in rage.
"Better get to it then, hadn't you?" she goads him.
He barely turns his head to address his slave. "She dies with them! No more waiting!" He gathers himself with a few deep breaths before continuing. "I shall return soon to check progress. I have other matters to which I must attend." And he vanishes as quickly as he arrived.
Johnny immediately checks on the woman. "You okay, kid?"
"Fuck off with your 'kid' bullshit, Cage, you're barely older than me," she snipes as she easily stands up. She presses her nose gingerly before grinning at her fellow prisoners. "Not even broken. I remain the prettiest face in the room."
As the Zaterran listens to this exchange, Johnny could swear he hears a short huff from behind his mask, but he then turns to follow his orders.
"You don't have to do this," Baraka appeals to him.
He pauses briefly, but murmurs regretfully. "It's either you or my family."
Walking to a pulley chain near a cell of snarling Tarkatans, he raises it up, telling the Tarkatans to "put them in the chambers". The prisoners have little time to wonder how these seemingly feral Tarkatans have been trained to follow orders before their own cell doors open, and they're faced with the savage group. Johnny springs into action immediately, swinging from the higher bars of the doorway to launch himself into one of them, punching it unconscious as he lands. The woman takes a few steps out of her cell, then faces the approaching Tarkatans calmly. When they get within a few steps, she suddenly reaches out to grab the closest one, directing its own immense momentum in an arc to smack into the bars with a sharp clang!. She sweeps the feet out from the other so it flies headfirst into the back wall of the cell and lies still. She pushes the first one into the bars again by leaping up and kicking off it to flip to kick another across the head, sending it flying into its comrade. Johnny raises his eyebrows at her as she giggles as she lands beside him, flicking her long bangs out of her face.
"Glad you're enjoying yourself."
"Find joy in the little things, Cage, like making yourself more trouble than you're worth," she winks back.
As she darts to meet other attackers, Johnny races ahead to engage two more, kicking them aside before another charges him and pins him against a stone pillar. Kung Lao and Baraka are fending off their own, but all four are too busy to prevent Kenshi from being snatched straight from the cell by two others and dragged out. He tries to struggle, but it's a feeble attempt given he's still weak and his blindness is disorientating, and he's easily tossed inside a cylindrical cage of some kind. To his dismay, he's also sure he hears Johnny grunt as the film star is thrown in a similar cage beside him. Baraka continues to carve through the attackers, and Kung Lao manages to narrowly avoid capture himself as he kicks away one who was dragging him and knocks out the other one. He dodges and kicks any oncoming Tarkatans intent on grabbing him, and lunges for his chakram hat at his earliest opportunity, snatching it off a nearby table and hurling it. It slices through the necks of two attackers before soaring back towards him. He catches it just as Baraka slices the final attacker in half. His victim lies at his feet, still weakly crawling forward.
"There is nothing more foul," he spits.
Heavy thumping and a humming sound interrupt their victory, and they glance up to see Kenshi and Johnny's cages light up at the top. Johnny grips the bars, whether to try and force them or just to have a better view outside, but he winces as his body begins to convulse as electricity charges through him. A huge Tarkatan monstrosity stomps its way towards Baraka and Kung Lao, mercilessly smashing the head of its comrade on the floor.
"You spoke too soon, Baraka," Kung Lao raises an eyebrow at his companion as they both square off against the beast. It suddenly charges forward, knocking Kung Lao aside, and Baraka greets it with a sharp slash across the chest. It pauses only for a moment before it presses the attack again, and Baraka grunts as he reels from a powerful blow. As the monstrosity prepares another strike, however, it recoils as its head is struck with a container which shatters on impact, some unknown substance puffing into a small red cloud as it is released. Another container hits the creature, this time a sickly green liquid oozing across its face. None of these hits seem to particularly damage the creature, but they distract it from overwhelming the two fighters. Baraka and Kung Lao turn their heads to find the woman hurling one container after another, swiping them up from any surface available to her, speaking one word with every throw.
"I – hope – these – are – expensive!"
Kung Lao takes advantage of the creature's distraction, leaping to slice at its face with his hat. As he lands, he returns the woman's grin. "Thanks for the assist!" he nods.
She does a quick bow. "All yours now, gents! You deal with the big guy, I'll get the cages." And she whirls to run towards a promising-looking switch on one wall.
Just as she reaches to flip the switch upwards, she flinches from a fist aimed at her head, dodging and blocking any additional blows. The green-clad jailer fights ferociously, much quicker and more agile than she expected him to be. She catches one of his arms as it crosses in front of her, pinning him briefly.
"Is this really what you want to be doing?" she asks incredulously. "I don't want to fight you, and I don't think we need to."
He yanks himself free, catching her across the chin with the back of his hand. "I will protect my family at any cost."
She tests her jaw where she was hit, and raises her eyebrows at him. "Then why are you holding back? That wasn't the hardest you could have hit me."
The pain in his eyes flaring into desperation, he aims another volley of blows at her, the precision and skill behind the attacks challenging her, and the strength behind them far more than she can withstand for long. She tries her best, but he is quickly able to push her to the floor, and she frowns up at him as he strides closer.
"This isn't right, and you know it. Your boss, I would gladly beat up, but I don't want to hurt you."
"I will suffer whatever pain is necessary to keep them safe," he insists ardently.
"I might understand that more than you realise."
He hesitates at the declaration, his eyes a storm of emotions; guilt, loneliness, fear, empathy, hope. That hesitation is enough for the woman; she dives to the side, pulling on a chain mechanism. The jailer's head snaps upwards before he leaps desperately out of the way of a suspended brazier crashing to the floor where he had been standing. The woman immediately springs up, throwing a heartfelt "I'm sorry" towards where the jailer had landed, sprinting to the switch for the cage electricity supply and snapping it upwards.
Finally besting the Tarkatan monstrosity, Baraka marches up to the now-deactivated cages, waving aside Kung Lao's feeble attempts to free Johnny and Kenshi, and grasps the cage bars, straining for only a few seconds before the door rips from its hinges. Johnny quickly hops out as Baraka frees Kenshi, too, and he and Kung Lao gently take one of Kenshi's arms each, supporting him between them. As they make to head off, however, the jailer's husky voice calls out despairingly.
"I'm ruined! Shang Tsung will punish me for this by torturing my family!"
Baraka looks disappointed but resolute as the jailer steps towards him menacingly.
"You'll pay for their suffering, Tarkatan!"
He barely takes the first swing at Baraka before the woman shouts towards the fray: "Didn't we just talk about this?! We shouldn't be fighting each other!"
Neither combatant responds to her plea. The Tarkatan is more evenly matched with the jailer than the woman; even if he has evidently made the decision to not use his blades against the Zaterran, he can meet the strength of every blow with as much of his own. While the Zaterran has the advantage with speed and agility, Baraka's strikes wear down the jailer more than the hits he takes himself. It's a long fight, Baraka's determination pitted against the Zaterran's righteous desperation, but eventually Baraka manages to knock his opponent to the floor in a way he seems reluctant to recover from. Baraka glares down at him.
"We are leaving," he insists.
The Zaterran grabs his green mask and hurls it from his face, exposing the full extent of his tormented expression. "Then kill me," he begs emphatically. "If I die, maybe he'll spare my family."
"No," Baraka shakes his head, stepping back. "I won't murder you."
The jailer rises onto his knees, reaching out to Baraka. "It's mercy, not murder," he argues, before turning his eyes down and sitting heavily back on his feet in shame. "Not that what I've done deserves yours."
"You were protecting your family. I would have done the same."
The Zaterran sinks further onto the floor, his expression broken. The woman nods her thanks at Baraka before stepping forward to stand in front of the jailer.
"I told you," she says softly, "we don't need to fight. You deserve better than this, and while I don't really know you, I get the feeling you are better than this. And I think they'd want you to remember that."
He raises his eyes to hers at that, his own so tragically lost she can't help but want to protect him.
"Come with us," she offers, "and we'll make sure to find your family. You've done so much to protect them this way, maybe it's time for a change in strategy." She holds her hand out to him. "Now, for God's sake, get off the floor; it's disgusting down there."
He regards her outstretched hand with the fearful hope a parched man in the desert would approach a pond, and his hand shakes as he reaches towards it. As he grasps it, however, he takes strength the woman's own strong and sure grip, immediately pulling him upwards. He gazes into her self-assured grey eyes, searching for any hint of doubt in her decision to help him, and sighs in wonder when he finds none.
Their newfound camaraderie is interrupted as a soft whoosh announces Shang Tsung's arrival. The woman smirks as the psychopath's confident smile gives way to confused outrage as he surveys the trashed state of his laboratory.
"What has happened here?" he demands. Johnny grabs Sento off a nearby bench, rushing to brandish it at Shang Tsung. Beside him, Baraka unsheathes his spikes threatening. The jailer is more hesitant in his defiance, but he clenches his fists. The woman simply grins and bows with a flourish.
"Some of my finest work, I'd like to think," she laughs.
Shang Tsung grits his teeth, rounding on his slave. "Syzoth, you fool; you've let them ruin everything!"
The woman scoffs as she straightens. "Excuse you, I'm sporting a few bruises that say he didn't let us do anything." The jailer – the one the sorcerer referred to as Syzoth – looks so close to sheepish beside her that she almost laughs again.
"We're going, sorcerer," Baraka states.
"And we're taking you with us," Johnny adds. "Liu Kang would like a word."
Shang Tsung turns away from his adversaries, heading towards the door. "I cannot be apprehended so easily." Before any of them can spring to intercept him, he mutters some strange words and whirls back around to face them. From his outstretched palm oozes a thick green mist, filling the space of the laboratory alarmingly quickly.
Johnny abandons the threatening stance to look around uneasily. "Yeah, I got a bad feeling about this."
Shang Tsung smiles smugly, giving a slight nod of his head. "I bid you all farewell." He sneers at his slave. "Cheer up, Syzoth; I'm reuniting you with your family."
The air seems to freeze at the sorcerer's words, and they all hear the jailer's breath leave his lungs in pained wheeze.
"They're dead?" he gasps, eyes haunted. "You killed them?!"
"Many moons ago," Shang Tsung clarifies with a careless wave of his hand. "I do hate loose ends."
For the first time, Johnny sees no trace of playfulness in the woman's face as she stares with horror and building anger.
"You twisted, slimy insect !" she hisses.
She charges at him, dodging the hand that Johnny tries to grab her with, but Syzoth beats her to it, letting out a bellow of agonised rage and leaping the distance in one bound. Shang Tsung dissipates into a cloud of dust as he tries to tackle him though, and he gazes down at his empty arms in furious dejection. The woman snarls as her target vanishes, but her rage and frustration is interrupted by a coughing fit as the green mist begins to settle. Syzoth glances at her before rushing to the wooden door. He's shocked to meet resistance as he reaches it, pausing for less than half a second before heaving his body into it. But the wood is as unyielding as if it had sprouted roots into the very brickwork.
"We gotta get out of here!" Johnny's exclamation is thin and reedy as he fights to stave off his own coughs, but they burst through as the gas begins to scrape at his throat.
"What's wrong?" Kung Lao, supporting Kenshi, asks Syzoth as he notices him struggling against the door.
He gasps as he relinquishes his attempts. "The door must have sealed when the gas was released."
He barely has time to glance around the laboratory for anything that might help before Baraka steps forward, rolling his shoulders as he sheaths his blades.
"Stand aside," he commands.
Syzoth quickly leaps aside as Baraka winds up a huge blow, shouting with exertion as he pummels his fists into the door. The resulting dent is so miniscule that the woman can't help but start to panic, but the second hefty strike from the Tarkatan actually cracks a fracture in the door. Baraka seems to ignore any effect the gas is having on him and any pain he feels from hitting such a solid object with his fists, and the door splinters after two additional strikes. Everyone hurries through the door, inhaling deeply in the clearer air. Johnny quickly takes Kenshi's shoulder as he's supported on the other side by Kung Lao. Syzoth slips to the front of the group.
"Follow me," he says. "This way."
As Kenshi stumbles between his helpers, he can no longer ignore the all-consuming feeling of inadequacy. "Leave me," he insists. "I'll just slow you down."
"What?" Johnny responds, horrified. "Shang Tsung finds you, he'll kill you."
The linger pain in his eyes, the cold, indifferent darkness, and the general weakness in his body asks if that would be such a bad thing. "Look at me, Cage," he laments. "I'm useless! Don't risk your lives to save mine."
"Hey," Johnny snaps, "you are not giving up. The Taira need you, remember? We are gonna get back home and figure out how to help you. Got it?"
The tunnel eventually opens out into an evidently secret entrance, hidden out among the greenery of the surrounding forest. The woman takes a deep breath as they emerge.
"Can't believe I got used to the stench of that place," she muses, mostly to herself.
"We can't linger," Syzoth informs everyone as they march onwards. "We'll be captured."
Kung Lao nods. "We need help getting Kenshi to the portal at Sun Do."
"I can take you only to the city's gate," Baraka sighs. "Tarkatans are forbidden inside."
"I'll see you the rest of the way," Syzoth promises. "It's the least I can do to make amends."
In the pause after this offer, Johnny decides he can't tolerate the awkward silence. "Well, I'm not usually one to stand on ceremony, but I'd say this calls for introductions. I'm Johnny Cage, this here is Kenshi Takehashi and Kung Lao. We're part of the Earthrealm team for the tournament. Our travelling companion is Baraka, who we met during our mission to locate Shang Tsung." He turns to the woman. "You got a name, kid?"
She sighs deeply. "If I tell you it, will you stop calling me 'kid'?"
Johnny shrugs, grinning. "It'll increase the chance."
She shakes her head with a rueful smile. "My friends call me Haisley."
Kung Lao snorts. "What do your enemies call you?"
"It varies, but the most popular choice to date is 'nosy cunt'."
Kenshi makes a choking sound and flushes while Johnny bursts into surprised raucous laughter, with Kung Lao joining him. Even Baraka's gritty chuckles can be heard. Haisley laughs with them as Syzoth looks at her over his shoulder in obvious bemusement. His eyes and face are far too honest to hide his own amusement, however, so she just grins and winks at him.
"That wanker in the dungeon called you Syzoth," she calls to him. "Is that your name or a name he gave you?"
"My own," he answers, shaking off the last of his surprise at her previous comment.
Johnny frowns. "Yeah, now that you mention it, I wouldn't put it past Shang Tsung do something like calling people he's blackmailing by different names."
"I was also thinking about given names potentially being different from preferred names," Haisley comments.
Johnny grins. "What, like you?"
She regards him silently. He gives an easy shrug.
"Come on, 'Haisley' is hardly a standard name, and the only people who say 'my friends call me' whatever are people who don't want to be called by their given name."
A few seconds pass, and Johnny wonders, slightly concerned, if it's slightly frosty as Haisley's eyes narrow. "Look at you, mister TV detective. Yes, my legal name is different, but 'Haisley' is all you're getting."
"Fair enough," he nods.
As the ground gets slightly more even and Kenshi feels more strength returning to his legs, he shuffles in his helpers' arms. "You can let me go. I can walk on my own."
"You sure?" Kung Lao asks.
"Yes, just one of you give me your shoulder to hold."
Kung Lao and Johnny carefully unhook Kenshi's arms from their shoulders, then Johnny takes the swordsman's hand and guides it to rest on his shoulder from behind. He consciously moves more carefully through the wood, mindful of which makeshift paths would be easier for his blind friend to navigate. Haisley, who had been walking a few steps to the side of the trio of Earthrealmers, skips nimbly to a few steps in front of Johnny, and, as quickly and quietly as she can, starts either kicking or picking up sticks and rocks that would be in Kenshi's way and throwing them aside. Johnny says nothing, but smiles to himself at the kid's quiet kindness.