Article: 17315 of alt.games.mk
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From: vctr113062@aol.com (Vctr113062)
Newsgroups: alt.games.mk
Subject: FANFIC: "The Blood On My Hands" 6/8 (Kitana)
Date: 1 Nov 1994 01:03:05 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
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	After a long and exhausting run, I cleared the forest's outskirts.
A short distance away, I glimpsed Jade. Her uniform appeared as
silvery-grey as mine in the moonlight. I slowed my pace to a fast walk. It
was a credit to my physical conditioning that I felt tired, but not out of
breath.
	"Have you seen Kung Lao?" I asked, when I was close enough.
	Jade shook her head and pointed down at Liu Kang, who lay prone by
her feet. 
	"Yes, I'll watch him." She dashed toward the border of the Living
Forest, covering the distance as fleetly as a gazelle. I'd never seen
anyone move that swiftly before, not even Mileena. 
	"Is everyone in the entire damn Outworld faster than me?" I
grumbled.
	"I'd say so," someone else breathed, his words tinged with satire.
The long hike and battle with the tree-things must have drained me more
than I realized, for I hadn't detected his approach. I drew another pair
of fans, ready to battle a tribe of mutants if need be...
	Ready to battle anyone if need be...
	Where was my antagonist?
	"I'm right in front of you," he whispered, as if reading my mind.
"Trouble is, I'm not terribly visible at this time of day. Or rather,
night."
	Whoever confronted me was at least as good as Jade at erasing all
sign of his presence, if not more so. I smelled nothing. I felt nothing.
When I peered more closely, I could see nothing save shadow. The murky
darkness swirled so thick it blindfolded the eye.
	"Look. Look again. _See_."
	The moon's gentle light faintly illuminated the dry, dead earth of
the Wasteland, except for one patch directly before me. My eyes traced the
outline of what I couldn't view; it was roughly manlike in shape. A man
made solely of shadows... 
	"What do you want?" I curtly demanded.
	The man-shadow chuckled. I stared at him so hard that my head
began to hurt, and I almost thought I could see different shades of black
within the void that composed him. "What do you think I want?" he
returned, after the pause.
	"You cannot have Liu Kang."
	"Good guess, but incorrect."
	"Have you come to challenge me?"
	"Do you want to be challenged?"
	"No."
	"Perhaps another time. Guess again."
	"I've had my fill of insanity today. Stop trying to drive me crazy
with your accursed riddles!"
	"Darn, you guessed." The man-shadow leaned upon what might have
been the shadow of a staff, or conceivably a spear. "Kitana, do you know
that you are the talk of Shokan? Word has spread about your mission. We
are all placing bets on how far you will get. You should be proud - the
odds of your subduing Liu Kang were five to one against, let alone the
odds of bringing him out of the Living Forest alive."
	"Even if what you say is true, how could anyone know I was in the
Living Forest?"
	"You shouldn't underestimate Shao Kahn's power. It isn't wise."
	"I don't understand."
	"Don't you?"
	"Master Kahn is counting upon me to succeed."
	"Is he?"
	"Will you cease those redundant tag questions?"
	"Will I?"
	I seethed and held my tongue, since I doubted that interrogating
the man- shadow further would do any good.
	"Of course," he continued, "the obstacles ahead are much greater.
You may get past the Wasteland, but once you enter Shokan..." Was he
smiling? I couldn't be sure he had a mouth to smile with. "...let me put
it this way: I've wagered that you'll make it inside Shao Kahn's castle,
but fail to reach his audience chamber alive."
	"Why are you telling me this?"
	The man-shadow dispersed, blending into the shadows of rocks and
hills, pooling and becoming nothing but ordinary night.
	"Wait!" I called after him. "Who are you? What is your name?"
	"You must have some serious problems with your long-term memory,"
came a familiarly jovial response to my right. "I'm Kung Lao, often called
'the Ingrate.'"
	"You be quiet."
	"I bet you say that to all the guys."

*****************************************************************

	Jade had chosen to return to her home within the Living Forest.
Kung Lao assured me that she was perfectly safe. Traveling with us had
impeded her arcane talents for total concealment, but when she was by
herself then not even the demon- trees could detect her presence unless
she so wished. I felt a little relieved to hear that, although I couldn't
isolate the reason why. Certainly not because I believed all that claptrap
about Jade being my "real twin sister." If Jade were my twin sister, then
what would that make Mileena? I'd known Mileena for many years; Jade,
barely twenty-four hours. Which one did they think I'd trust?
	The stretcher we'd carried Liu Kang upon was long since lost. I
was ready to shed most of the metal armaments in my cloak and use it like
a hammock, but Kung Lao stayed my hand. He took off his hat and pulled a
long, deep blue traveler's wrap out of it. The rectangular cloth felt as
if it were expertly woven from a substance many times softer and smoother
than ordinary wool, but without the sheen of satin or silk. It had one
edge decorated with elaborately patterned gold trim. I examined the item,
wondering what enchanted fabric it was made of, and spotted a tiny white
tag with the arcane words "100% polyester, do not bleach." We wrapped the
blanket around Liu Kang. 
	"That hat of yours must have some potent sorceries cast upon it,"
I commented, noting that the cloth was far too voluminous to have been
physically stored inside his headgear all along. "Wherever did you find
it?"
	"Inheritance," he shrugged, as if that one word explained
everything. 
	Hoisting Liu Kang in the provisional sling, we used it to take him
another two miles away from the Living Forest's border before stopping to
rest. I didn't like the thought of sleeping out in the open Wasteland, but
the alternative would have been staying near the Living Forest and its
demon-tree inhabitants. Kung Lao took first watch, since the initial shift
as guard is usually easier than successive shifts, and I suspected I had
more experience than he did in such things. During my turn to stand watch,
I learned that I was not the only one troubled by nightmares. I doubted
Kung Lao would want to talk about his dreams any more than I'd want to
talk about mine, though, so when the sun rose I said nothing about the
matter.
	The day passed without incident, not surprisingly, since most if
not all of the Wasteland's mutant humanoids are nocturnal. We'd be at
greatest risk of encountering them during the night, which was why we
stayed in one place and kept a wary eye out for enemies once darkness
fell. The closer we came to Shokan, the more perilous our journey would
be. Packs of mutants sometimes prowl the carcass-strewn area near Master
Kahn's city, seeking to rob the dead. There isn't truly all that much to
rob, but some beings just never give up hope. It was early evening during
the third day when we approached the irregular rows of bodies at the
battlefield's outlying edge. I wanted to feel encouraged that we were
nearing the final leg of our journey, yet a nameless worry soured my
thoughts. I glanced about the stark lines of mangled corpses, searching
for any living enemies that might lurk among the dead, and breathing
through my mouth to reduce my exposure to the foul stench of decay.
	Kung Lao threw up.
	I'd never thought about it before, but he was probably rather
young. Scarcely past his second decade, say. He most likely hadn't seen
enough bloodshed in his life to become accustomed to it, like I had.
	"Are you ready to continue?" I asked, dryly, once he seemed to
have finished.
	"How can you stand it?"
	"I beg your pardon?"
	"This!" He vehemently gestured at the rotting cadavers. "Don't you
realize what this is? What it means? Every one of these people were
cruelly murdered, their remains desecrated. Doesn't that have any effect
upon you?"
	"They are only criminals."
	He lowered the brim of his hat, snarling, "And what do you suppose
constitutes a capital crime in Shokan? Littering? Failure to look both
ways before crossing the street?" I had never seen him like this before -
angry, bitterly sarcastic, mayhap on the verge of forsaking his sanity. 
	"To oppose the Master is to invite death." I adjusted the clasp of
my cloak, ready to use a poison dart on him if necessary.
	"'To oppose the Master?'" he parroted, sneering. "My Temple housed
forty-five men and twelve boys, none of whom ever harmed a living soul.
Liu Kang, _only_ Liu Kang left to 'oppose' Shang Tsung's schemes. And your
precious 'Master' sent his butchers to murder them _all_! All except for
one, who he invites into his Tournament of fun and games; all except for
Liu Kang himself!"
	"And you."
	"Wrong. Dead wrong." He started pacing again, tensely, like a wild
beast held captive within too small a cage. "The only reason they didn't
get me as well is that I hid myself and cowered. The sounds followed me,
every outcry. I smelled fresh blood, and listened to the desperate,
pitiful pleas of the children as they were tortured to death. I heard all
their screams again in the Living Forest. It is so well imprinted in my
mind that I can see the slaughter as it must have happened; all I have to
do is close my eyes!"
	"Get to the point."
	"Is it that difficult for you to grasp? If your 'Master' had his
way, I would have joined the piles of my order's of festering corpses -
which means that _you_, dear Princess, would now be a stain on the
hillside! _That_ is what the 'Master' you serve would have!"
	I snapped two of my fans into my hands and spread them part-way
open, crossing my arms in front of my chest. "So, you finally realize what
a mistake it was to rescue me from death. Do you wish to rectify your
error?"
	He stopped pacing, gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. "You
really don't understand, do you? What does it take to get something
through your pretty head?"
	"Try it, and I'll part _your_ head from its shoulders."
	"I WASN'T SPEAKING LITERALLY!"
	The wind howled, scattering the Wasteland's dust and toying with
the hair of a dead brunette woman near my feet. I smelled something on the
gust, something other than the putrilage around us, and felt the tread of
living feet upon the earth. Kung Lao and I turned our heads slowly in the
direction of the disturbance, still keeping careful watch upon one another
from the corners of our eyes. A raiding party of approximately twenty
mutants studied us with avid interest, from no more than a hundred yards
away. 
	"Oh, shit," we said in unison.
	I scanned them for arrows or throwing spears and saw none. Good.
At least they couldn't cut us down from afar. I hadn't really expected
them to carry any projectiles in the first place; competently crafted
missile weapons are a rarity in the Master's realm. Most mutants keep
their projectile weapons within their home tribe at all time, reserving
them for use only against the greatest threats, such as the Master's
wyvern cavalry.
	"Quickly," I whispered, "can you take two people with you when you
teleport?"
	"I don't think so. The magnitude of the required centripetal force
would escalate exponentially."
	"That is bad?"
	"Your arm would be ripped off."
	"That is bad." Six mutants, armed with a variety of edged weapons
both internal and external, detached themselves from the group and quickly
approached us. An excited glow flared in their pupilless crimson eyes.
"I'll keep them at bay for as long as I can. Take Liu Kang and go. Use
your teleportation to get away."
	"No."
	"There is no time to argue! One of us must complete the Master's
mission!"
	"You're breaking my heart."
	"I would desert you, if our places were reversed!"
	"Good thing they aren't, isn't it?"
	There was no more time to debate, for the walking death would soon
be upon us. 
	Kung Lao hurled his bladed hat. I palmed my fans and scattered my
spiked caltrops in their path. That slowed their approach enough for me to
carefully aim and throw my two remaining nightshade darts, striking the
mutant closest to me precisely in the right eye and the one just beside
him in the throat. Nightshade does not kill humans or mutants instantly,
even in large doses. It did buy me time, though, as the poisoned mutants
stumbled and their fellows had to step around them. There was the <ching>
sound of metal deflecting metal; one of the attackers must have blocked
Kung Lao's hat. I was tempted to use my last sleeping-sap dart, yet
refrained on account of a deep inner suspicion that I could not put into
words. 
	A grinning attacker with a long knife shoved his dying comrade to
the side and charged me. When he was nearly upon me, I reached forward and
bent back, underneath his furious swipe at my throat. My hands seized the
soft part of his body below the ribs and above the pelvis bones. Speed,
fluidity, and balance were everything. I arched my back and pushed with
the muscles of the legs, bringing him forward without exerting the vast
effort it would have required to raise his center of gravity. He hurtled
over me, and I smoothed my own motion into a quick back handspring. 
	I recovered from the move just in time to crouch and meet my next
opponent with a kick to his knee. Luck was with me; he had planted his
foot in front of a rock firmly anchored in the ground, and his leg was
already in the process of extending. My strike pushed his knee back while
the bulk of his impetus went forward and his foot stayed in place;
something had to give, and it was his joint. His knee hyper-extended, its
hinge cracking with a faint snapping sound; his leg awkwardly contorted in
an angle it was never meant to bend. I rolled to the side as the crippled
mutant, no longer capable of standing, pitched forward. His flailing arm
and the blade that extended from it slashed at me, cutting into my left
thigh. I held back a curse, turned, and stepped on the flat of his blade,
pinning him face down long enough to draw my fan across the back of his
neck, severing his spine.
	Kung Lao's two opponents circled him. Just as I turned to help him
against his attackers, they both lunged for him; one raised her rusty
machete high and chopped down with it, while the other moved to plant a
dagger in his back. Kung Lao ducked and spontaneously vanished an instant
before the machete could touch his head. The mutant with the dagger barely
missed the middle of his back, instead scoring a gash across his left
scapula. Both attackers lost their balance and stumbled forward when their
strikes didn't encounter the resistance they expected. The one with the
machete could not stop her blade from burying itself in her colleague's
braincase. Before she could extract her weapon from the body, Kung Lao
rematerialized behind her and planted his hands on her hair, grasping it
firmly and flipping over her. As he touched down in front of her, still
holding her hair, he used his momentum to propel her over his head. She
lost her grip upon the machete, which remained stuck within her
associate's corpse.
	The poisoned mutants went into their final convulsions; they had
never managed to crawl close enough to provide any serious threat. Kung
Lao and I glared at the two mutant survivors of the fracas. The disarmed
female surveyed us for half a second, then sprinted in the direction from
which she had come. Her comrade stared at us for a little longer. Then he
started to back away, finally turning around running. I spread my bloody
fan and displayed it for the scouting party to see. Kung Lao held up his
hat, letting the last dying rays of sunlight reflect brightly upon its
jagged metal brim.
	The mutants milled around a little, then decided not to bother
with us after all. They shambled away, neither hurrying nor delaying,
although some of them looked over their shoulders and fixed us with their
hate-filled, evil red eyes. I saw the finger- shaped mark tattooed on
their foreheads and wondered why I hadn't noticed it before. They were
from the Clan of the Severed Finger, one of the tribes that was supposedly
loyal to the Master. They knew damn well who I was and who I worked for,
yet they had attacked anyway. I planned to mention this outrage when I
delivered my mission report to Master Kahn.
	I checked on Liu Kang. He was uninjured; the Severed Finger had
probably left him alone because they mistook him for nothing more than
another corpse. Kung Lao kept his gaze firmly fixed upon the Severed
Finger until they disappeared from view, behind the grisly pattern of
impaled bodies and a dip in the land.
	"Don't get any ideas," I advised him. "They could have taken us.
They could have consumed us like a school of piranha driven into a feeding
frenzy. They just didn't want to pay the price we would have made them
pay."

*****************************************************************

	(You killed me.)
	(My Princess, you killed me.)
	(You kill us all!)
	The gathering of walking corpses jeered derisive accusations. In
the center of their ring, I relived the struggle with the six attacking
mutants. Only this time, I was on my own. I took two of the mutants down
with my nightshade darts, and a third with my sleeping-sap dart, but the
other three circled me and I was unable to defend against them all. My
hands burned; the slash in my thigh throbbed; and I anticipated the cold
caress of a knife in my back. Determined to take as many of them down with
me as I could, I pitched headlong toward one of the attackers, cutting her
down - and heard the muted <thud> of two more bodies falling upon the
dusty earth.
	I turned around and met the sky-blue eyes of my rescuer. His
golden-blond hair shined with light reflected from an unseen source. He
was quite tall and strong; a warrior, most assuredly. Flickering shadows
hid his face. I did not have to see it to know that he was definitely not
Kung Lao. He still felt familiar, in a manner I could not describe.
	 The ring of zombies murmured ill-tempered protests. (Hey, back
off!) he snarled to them, and surprisingly, they did take a few steps
backward. 
	To me, (You really shouldn't let them get to you like that.
They're only a threat if you allow them to be.) His voice was also
different from Kung Lao's; it flowed slowly, like thick syrup. He crossed
the distance between us in a few strides and put his hands on my
shoulders, affectionately. (You know what your problem is? You care too
much. They can't affect you if you don't care. Feel nothing, and nothing
can ever hurt you.)
	(I don't understand.)
	(You will, in time.) He ran his fingers through my long black
hair. (I'll show you. How about it?)
	(I... all right. What must I do?)
	(First, conquer your fears and take off that mask. Why are you so
afraid to show your face? Nearly everyone in the Outworld knows who you
are.) 
	I hesitantly tugged at it. (I wear my mask on Master Kahn's
orders. He has warned me never to remove it unless absolutely necessary.
He said I should never be... near anyone else when I removed it.) My
fingers were trembling; I was all but overcome with nervousness. A small
voice within me cried not to do it, not to circumvent the Master's will
even in this one, seemingly harmless way. My itching hands halted in place
after I brought the mask halfway down; the golden-haired man gently put
his hands around mine and helped me remove it completely.
	(Shao Kahn doesn't know what he's talking about. The only thing
your mask hides is a very beautiful face. Why don't you come a little
closer?) A part of me dearly wanted to do as he asked. I felt a strong
attraction to him. A keen pit of loneliness gnawed my heart. It had been
there all along, I realized; for years and years, its caustic bite had
eaten away at me, shutting my soul within walls of stone. Only now, it
receded a little. Perhaps, if clung tightly to this strange person, the
emptiness would subside, and I would no longer be as miserable as I knew I
had always been. He bent his head down, bringing his lips close to mine,
and I met his kiss passionately.
	Something was wrong.
	His hands slackened and his arms fell away from me. I broke off
the kiss and stepped back, apprehensive. Before I could ask anything, I
saw the nature of the wrongness - an expanding sphere of pressure pushed
outward from the center of his vitals. His body stretched and distended
past the tensile limits of his skin, which rent apart at bloody seams. He
uttered a strangled cry before the growing stress within him ripped him
apart, like a balloon filled with too much air. I threw my hands in front
of me, and his blood and organs spattered upon them, were absorbed by my
thirsty silken gloves, and soaked through onto my skin. The sear upon my
fingers and palms raged, so painfully intense that I could not bear it.
The circle of corpses whooped their approval and moved in on me, a
voracious light shining in their glazed, dead eyes.
	I screamed.
	-or tried to scream, but something pressed tightly against my
mouth, stifling the shriek before it could finish taking shape.
	"Easy! It's only me," Kung Lao soothed. "We're still in mutant
territory. You mustn't cry out, or who knows what will hear you. All
right?" I managed a nod. He removed his hand from my mouth.
	The dream had been so vivid! As lifelike as the day it... I
started to push the half- formed thought away, then stopped and shook with
horror when I saw my face mask clutched in my hand. I must have pulled it
off during the nightmare. Another wave of shuddering revulsion washed over
me; I hunched over and trembled, unable to fight the fear and loathing
off. And my hands were filthy with blood; I could feel the rot eating away
at them even now.
	"Take it easy," consoled Kung Lao. "You're safe - er, that is,
about as safe as you can be in a former battlefield full of corpses and
roving mutants, which isn't really all that safe, but there's no danger
right now. I think. Just relax..." When I didn't answer or stop shaking,
he shifted position, moving into my line of sight, and leaned forward. His
face was perhaps twelve inches away from mine. "Is there anything I can-"
	"_Not so close_!" I swung my elbow at him and struck him in the
cheek. His head snapped back and he hit the ground. With a slight groan,
he rolled to his knees, holding the injured side of his face. A brackish
trickle of liquid showed near the corner of his mouth.
	"My apologies," he muttered, then turned and moved away, adjusting
the front of his hat down and grumbling something sardonic in Mandarin.
Most of it was too low for me to make out, though I thought I discerned
the phrase <...this happens too damn often...>
	"Wait."
	"Hm."
	"Raiden didn't tell you everything about me, did he?" I inferred,
cautiously.
	"Even the gods do not see 'everything.' Only a God could do that,"
he sighed, clearly pronouncing the capital letter in his second sentence.
	"I take it that means 'yes.'" Putting my mask back on, I drew in a
long, slow breath and exhaled it, letting my tightly constricted muscles
unwind, one by one. "I am under a... condition of Master Kahn's will. He
has warned me never to remove my mask, or if I did, never to let anyone
come too close to me."
	"Hm?"
	"Once, I disregarded the Master's wishes. I let someone come near
me. His name was Lucian." I looked down at my prickling hands. "He died.
Horribly."
	"Oh."
	"I don't know how much it takes. A kiss was enough to set it off.
Maybe less. Maybe just being in proximity to me when my mask is down."
	He should have been accusatory, fearful, or angry, but strangely
even his former vestiges of pique had faded away, replaced by an
inexplicable expression of sympathy. "I appreciate your telling me this. I
thought I'd offended you somehow... why are you looking at me like that?"
	"I could have killed you, easily. It wouldn't have taken much."
	He lifted the brim of his hat up a little, enough for the
moonlight to shine upon his face. "What you say is true, but that was not
your intent and it is not your fault you are under a curse. I fail to see
your point."
	"Don't you care about your own life?"
	"Does it matter?" he returned, without missing a beat. "Yes, I
care. When has that ever made a difference?"