Week 507 (June 16- 30) Stories : Chow Down

[C. J., Cool yet firm like ice]

Great prompt, Al!

[C. J., Cool yet firm like ice]

As for myself, I hope to sharpen up Chapter 3 Part I. If I don't do it soon I'll never do it! Some bad old habits die hard... lol

[C. J., Cool yet firm like ice]

Anyway to share about Part II (also to put down things to help me motivate myself) I want to cover some more ugly sides to Outworld.

We will now be intro'd to some seedy characters planning stuff so we will see some evil, scary things. Disturbing things. Also characters that are enemies (or one that seems like one.... you'll recognize her if you've played or know a little about Mortal K. II).

[M]

(In an effort to come up with something, and in violation of the rule not to post merely a scene, here is a scene from a story I wrote years ago, called The Mansion in the Moorfields. The setting is Lyons College. Ned Moss and Marjory Mohr are sophomores.)

Forge’s Grill

It was a blustery, rainy afternoon in October of 1980. My stomach told me it would soon be time to head for the cafeteria, but first I wanted to see what little reading I could get done in art history. A quiet table in the library seemed just the place. As I left the lobby of Pierce Dorm, I noticed it had gotten colder since I had come back from class. Across the valley, the high windows of the main floor of the Student Union Building seemed bright in the somber light.

I hadn’t gone far when a gust of wind had ripped my little umbrella to shreds. Pulling the collar of my trenchcoat up, I turned and hastened to the college bookstore, which was in the basement of the SUB. The palm tree near the recessed door was dripping forlornly. Throwing the umbrella disgustedly into a garbage can, I went in.

Someone was busily at work in the tiny postoffice on the right. Through a second set of doors was the bookstore. It wasn’t a very big bookstore, and hardly anyone was there. Dell Barham, a clipboard in his hand, was taking inventory. He asked what was up. “I need an umbrella the wind won’t blow out,” I said.

Dell showed me to a stand where there were several big, purple-and-white umbrellas with the Lyons logo on them. “You’ll never have to buy another one,” he assured me. Anyone who knows Dell knows he could sell an Eskimo an icebox. “Those are very stout,” he testified as I had hesitated, looking at the price. I saw that there were only three of them left. “If anything goes wrong with it,” he added matter-of-factly, “you can always bring it back for a refund or an exchange.” That made up my mind.

I had hardly gotten past the bulletin board where the walks intersect, before I felt a yank on the umbrella handle and a mighty gust of wind nearly lifted me off the ground. I heard a shout and laughter. On the walk near Micklin Hall, a student I recognized as one of the baseball players had seen me. The umbrella looked like a piece of abstract art on a stick.

I went back and exchanged it. The woman at the counter seemed surprised. “No one has ever brought one back,” she said, with a look of astonishment. I told her it wasn’t a skydiving-grade umbrella and that now there was only one left. I went back outside, and was standing in the recessed entry, opening the umbrella, when I heard a voices, one of them familiar. Exiting the Student Union down the double flight of Georgian-style steps that framed the bookstore entrance were Marjory and the girl I had seen on the verandah of the girls’ dormitory. Marjory was wearing riding boots and she had pulled up the hood on her raincoat. Andrea was opening an umbrella.

Andrea was stunning to look at, and the sight of them together would have stopped the weariest voluptuary in his tracks. One could tell that the girl was angry and had been crying, and there was a look on her face of unwilling resignation. “This isn’t over,” she began, then broke off.

Seeing me, Marjory seemed both relieved and unsettled. “Hi, Ned. Uhm, this is Andrea Draum.”

Running her fingers through her mussed hair, the girl sized me up with barely concealed resentment. “You’re Ned Moss?”

I nodded. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You’re very lucky,” she said, but instead giving me any idea what she meant, she had turned to Marjory had sighed, “I have to go to class.” Wiping her eyes, she had leaned her head to one side and parted her hair. At that moment a gust of wind whipped the little red umbrella out of her grasp. I chased it a few yards down the sidewalk. When I got back, they had reached the bottom of the steps.

“Thank you,” she said when I brought it to her. As she walked away, she had given Marjory a beseeching second glance.

I held my umbrella out for Marjory in the buffeting wind. She joined me under it. Her hair was damp, and the faint scent of her sent ripples of excitement through me.

“Have you read the chapter on the Middle English Period?” she asked. We were both taking Dr. Corrigan’s History of the English Language class, and Marjory knew very well that I wasn’t good about reading my assignments.

I shook my head. “Is it an exciting chapter?”

She smiled. “Buy me a cup of coffee?”

We departed up the walk beneath the dark and dripping live-oak trees, past the gray stones of Judson Hall. “You’ll ruin your boots,” I commented as we splashed through puddles.

“I’ll risk it,” she laughed.”

Across Lyons Boulevard, opposite the entrance to the college, was Forge’s Grille, a haunt of students for generations. The glow of its windows looked inviting. The dinner hour was approaching, the restaurant crowded, but we got a table by the front windows. We removed our coats and draped them over chairs.

A dark-haired waitress named Linda brought us coffee. The ceramic cups and saucers clinked as she set them on the table. Then she took out her pad.

“I’ll have a club sandwich and a house salad,” said Marjory, putting the menu away.

“What kind of dressing would you like with that?” the waitress asked.

“House dressing will be fine,” Marjory replied.

Linda glanced down at me. “Cheeseburger and french fries?”

I nodded.

The waitress smiled at us. “It looks pretty nasty out there.” As she finished scribbling, her eye caught the summoning motion of someone at another table and she hastened away.

I moved the wet umbrella, the ribs of which had survived several blasts of wind, from the chair on which we had piled our books. “What’s up with Andrea?” I asked.

Marjory flashed an expression of annoyance. “Must we talk about Andrea?”

I slid the glass jar filled with sugar toward me and poured some in my coffee. “Okay.” It had seemed preferable to discussing Middle English.

Her fingers were unsteady as they reached for the dented stainless-steel creamer. The menus, kept propped against the napkin dispenser, fell over, toppling salt and pepper shakers and nearly-empty ketchup and mustard bottles.

I put them precariously back in place, my concern mounting. “Are you all right?”

She nodded unconvincingly. “Like David, she can’t take no for an answer. It’s been weeks since I told him I wasn’t going to see him anymore.”

I pushed the sugar across to her. “For an instant,” I confessed, “I had a feeling she wanted to run me through with her umbrella.”

Across the boulevard, through blowing rain, framed by oaks, stood the college’s art museum, a handsome brick structure executed in an unassuming, Georgian style, erected in the 1920s. The scene beyond the rain-spattered glass engraved itself in my memory, a gateway to a moment I would attempt to recapture when my life no longer seemed all ahead of me and my mind churned with questions of things past.

She gave me an apologetic glance. “She knows you’re the one--.” She hesitated, apparently reconsidering how to put it. “She knows I’ve put up with her brother’s arrogance all I intend to.”

As I sat there, perplexed, rainwater dripped from my hair onto my cheek. Marjory reached across the table and touched my face, her fingers gently brushing the water away. Looking into her eyes, I imagined that I saw the shadow of the goddess who had made my soul, whom I would know again when time at last returned me to whatever twilight realm had furnished my genesis.

For a few minutes after that there seemed nothing to say. With a clatter of china, the waitress brought our sandwiches, each sectioned into quarters beside a heap of french fries. “More coffee?”

I smiled at her awkwardly and shook my head. She glanced at Marjory.

“Okay, then. I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on you.” Moving away, she had given me a sage expression that said, “She’s the one you want to keep.”

As precisely as a surgeon might draw up a stitch, Marjory extracted one of the toothpicks that fastened her sandwich. “What’s your impression of Andrea?”

I sipped my coffee, no longer as hungry as I had been. “A real bombshell,” I observed in the fresh recollection of the titian-haired, blue-jeaned figure.

“That’s not what I mean.” She tried to restrain a smile but failed, then shook her head. “Who says men aren’t all alike?” Fingering the sandwich, she took a bite.

I shrugged in response. It was not apparent to me how we were all alike. There was little that appealed to me about the unconcerned, mechanical temperament I was supposed to have been born with, but there were times when I would willingly have taken it in trade for the fog bank of indecision that constituted my actual mentality.

“How did you wind up here?” I asked. “You said you had planned to go to an Ivy League school.”

She nodded. “A long way from the neighborhood where Andrea and I had grown up.”

Whipped by the wind, rain pattered on the windows. A row of light fixtures hung above the tables in the long alcove at the front of the diner. Finished in an antique-brass color, they were a 1960’s interpretation of what an oil lamp looks like. The glow from one glinted on her hair.

“Andrea and I grew up together,” she related. “Her parents and mine are old friends. I started dating her brother when I was in high school. He was much older, in college. He seemed ideal--bookish and intelligent, even athletic.” She looked across the table at me, as though she were at the end of her rope. “He’s also possessive.” She made a face as I liberally applied Tabasco sauce to my French fries.

Screwing the red cap back on, I set it to the side with the ketchup and salt and pepper. “What happened?”

She toyed with her sandwich. “I’ve just had enough. Like Andrea, David can be very insistent and persuasive. Now that he’s in law school, his ego is even bigger.” She shuddered. “I dread his phone calls, not to mention seeing him.” She glanced out the window as if she half expected to find Andrea there in the rain.

Marjory regarded me as though she were unsure how much to tell me. “Do you remember the reception at the Shearings’?”

I nodded. Virginia Shearing, a state senator and a wealthy graduate of Lyons, owned a beautiful contemporary house in the hills on the southwest side of the Port City. In August, the previous year, she had held a reception for scholarship recipients. Miraculously, I had been one of them.

I grinned. “It was the first time I ever saw you.”

She brightened for a moment, looking me in the eyes, then her expression clouded. “I didn’t think Andrea would come to Lyons. She had her eyes on Southern Methodist. Her plan was to hook up with somebody rich.”

Around us there was the sound of people talking, laughing, of forks on plates, spoons in coffeecups. On the greasy paneling at the end of the row of tables hung a stained still life of a plate loaded with seafood.

“Her brother can be very charming,” she related. “He made just the impression on my parents he intended to.” She shook her head. “But I know what I want. I can’t help that.”

There was an uncharacteristic, helpless look in her eyes. “When we got back to Dallas, after the reception at the Shearings’, I was no longer interested in David.” Picking up a menu, she waved it like a fan to drive off the smell that rose from my plate.

As I hastened to finish my french fries, Linda refilled our coffeecups and my glass of ice water. “How is it?”

I couldn’t say anything because my mouth was full.

Marjory smiled. “Very good, as usual.”

The waitress beamed. “We get a lot of compliments on our club sandwiches. Thank you.” She wandered off to refill other coffeecups and water glasses.

[M]

(“Forge’s Grill,” continued.)

As Marjory took a sip of coffee, she seemed relieved to have found a reason to change the subject. “I guess you’ve heard about Dr. Walters.”

I shook my head. “What about him?”

“He’s got cancer. He’s dying.”

I wasn’t prepared for that, but merely sat there, shocked. Walters taught government and American history. He had been my advisor before I changed majors and switched to Dr. Corrigan.

On the boulevard, cars went by, their headlights on. Some people with umbrellas were walking under the oaks in front of the museum.

“He’s from Masefield, isn’t he?” she asked quietly.

“Yes. His family’s from there.”

It seemed strange that I had never known what neighborhood Dr. Walters had lived in, or considered how I had been shaped by a community possessed of a genteel intelligence surviving from a forgotten time. Masefield had been the site of the last Civil War battle won by the Confederacy. Going home on weekends to see my parents, I followed the old stage road along which cannons had been pulled. Where ordnance had shaken the ground with thunder, in air once filled with lead and smoke, there was now a ghostlike tranquility. Beyond a grove of oak trees at a bend in the road, a motorist might glimpse the broad eaves of a contemporary house with walls of glass.

She traced the trend of my thoughts, her eyes looking into mine as if she were standing outside a door only I could open. Then she looked back down at her coffee, lost among the loose ends of the conversation. “Very little is certain in this life,” she murmured. “Few blessings are unmixed. Any endeavor worth throwing yourself into is fraught with uncertainty.” She looked across the table at me. “But there’s excitement in that, if only one is willing to take a chance.”

Leaving the restaurant, we had headed for Pierce Dormitory, but in a drenching downpour we had run up the high front steps of Judson Hall and taken shelter in its bare lobby.

Judson Hall had been the college’s first building and had originally housed students, classes, and, in the basement, a laboratory. In the late 1930’s, a tornado had damaged it. Rebuilt in the 1940’s from the basement up, it was now home of the language and arts departments and was the shabbiest building on campus. The students called it “Judson Hole.”

Our clothes stuck to us as we settled ourselves uncomfortably on the Naugahyde sofa. I wiped off my art history textbook and a wilting ringbinder and set them down on the pocked tiles of the floor. To the right of the stairwell, across the corridor, Dr. Corrigan’s office was dark. The building seemed deserted, the only sound the drumming of the rain.

[M]

Thank you, Alex! Across from Centenary College was a diner called George’s Grill. It had been in operation since June of 1960 and was the inspiration for Forge’s. In real life, the restaurant faced a different side of the campus. When I was in college, I probably ordered cheeseburgers, but in later years I usually ordered a club sandwich, sometimes a hamburger steak. Linda was actually one of the waitresses.

[M]

Oh, and the incident with the umbrellas really happened. The umbrellas were guaranteed, and I went through a couple of them in one afternoon.

[Garrison]

AUTHOR: Garrison Kelly
TITLE: Mass Transit
GENRE: Contemporary Fiction
WORD COUNT: 1,423
RATING: PG-13 for sexual assault and language



The idea of chowing down on a Hawaiian pizza and BBQ chicken wings made Reese Lee’s mouth water. But in this Peter Pan bus station, it was only an idea and nothing more. It was something that would have to wait until she made it back to her college town. Considering that breathing air in this bus station was worse for the mouth and nose than giving a rim job to someone with a stomach virus, even the idea of getting potato chips from the vending machine was a taboo.

All she could do was sit cross-legged in a chair (preferably one without bubblegum stuck to it) and study for her final exams. Burying her nose in her text book was more appealing than allowing body odor and cigarette smoke to melt her face off like acid. It was even more appealing with new age music blasting in her headphones while she kept her hoodie up. Everything about her screamed “Do Not Disturb”. But who was listening? Certainly not the other patrons.

There they were milling all around the station waiting for their respective buses to take them to their destinations. Some of them had long greasy hair that hadn’t been washed since the Obama administration. Some of them burped loudly enough to jolt Reese out of her studying trance. A scraggly old man in a trench coat puked on the floor, the puddle resembling a prehistoric tar pit. A weary-eyed mother sat on the floor and attempted to rock her crying baby to sleep. A man in overalls and a MAGA hat lit up a cigarette and puffed like a diesel train.

This isn’t worth it…none of this is worth it, Reese thought to herself as she tightened the draw string on her hoodie. No matter how many times she pored over various psychological terms in her textbook like Gestalt and Jungian, they wouldn’t stick in her overcrowded mind. Her brain felt as though it had Novocain smeared all over it. Her eyes watered from the intense smells. Her jaw clamped down so tightly that she was getting a headache. She could just as easily step outside for fresh air, but that would mean potentially missing her bus back to college.

Then again, it might not have been a bad outcome considering that a man a greasy leather jacket marched up to her reeking of alcohol and trash. “Ten-HUT!” he shouted. “The purple monkeys are coming to take our brains! STOP THE STEAL! Blar-blah-BLAR!” He marched to the bathroom, but not without leaving Reese a quivering mess in her seat. Her eyes watered once again, but not from the pungent miasma.

It’s not worth it…it’s not worth it….none of this is worth it…

As Reese tried to steady her nerves with deep breathing exercises (the ones she learned from her psychology classes), the mother from earlier approached her, the baby in her arms fast asleep. With yellow teeth and chapped lips, she asked Reese, “Do you have a cigarette?”

“No, I don’t. Sorry.”

“Come on, just one cigarette! I’m stressed out!”

“I told you, I don’t have any.”

“I’ll kiss your feet if you give me one!”

Bile rose up from Reese’s throat. She threw her textbook to the ground and rushed for the ladies’ room. Unfortunately, time was not her best friend as she vomited on the ground before she could make it. Her stomach contents burned her throat while her eyes watered some more. A few droplets of nose pudding mixed with her biological swamp brew on the ground. Nobody said a word when the motor-oil substance from the old man hit the floor. But once Reese’s acids flew from her lips…

“Fucking gross, lady!” yelled the guy in the MAGA cap. “Is that what they teach you in that lib-tard school of yours?”

Reese wiped the sewage off of her face with the back of her hand before unnecessarily apologizing. The heavy breaths she took wouldn’t do much for cooling down her throat considering the air was thicker than that of a burning building. But heavy breaths she took anyways.

She took even more of them when an obese man in an American flag T-shirt grabbed her butt and squeezed as hard as he could. “Ow! Ow! Let go! You’re hurting me!”

“I bet that shit hurts real’ good, little lady!” said the pervert before hacking and laughing at the same time. Reese was able to pry his fingers off before dashing for the exit. The pervert laughed at her some more when she slipped on the black puddle from earlier. Her back collided with the cement ground and knocked the wind out of her lungs (not that it was good air to begin with). Her MP3 player and headsets broke on the way down, but not nearly as badly as her spirit.

She used the nearby arcade cabinet to pick herself up before (successfully) dashing out of the bus station and into the clean night air. The breeze gently blew against her white-hot face. Every shaky breath she took was pure heaven to her throat and lungs. In fact, it was the only thing about this night that could be described as being remotely close to heaven. She rested her sore back against a graffiti-splattered wall and sunk down to her butt, bursting into a full-on crying session.

The whole reason she went to college in the first place was to study psychology and become a licensed therapist. But even with this wealth of knowledge, she knew the people in that bus station were beyond help. The healthcare system failed them. The world failed them. But she had zero interest in helping them now.

If that whole bus station burns to the ground with them inside…I’d never be depressed ever again…

While she couldn’t find a gas can and matches with her blurry eyes, she did see something that was almost as destructive: a lead pipe lying on the ground. A rusty lead pipe with a little bit of moss grown over it, because of course it was. She wiped her eyes dry and picked up the non-moss end of the pipe. She could bash a lot of brains in with this weapon. Not that they had brains to begin with, but it’d be a nice visual for her healing.

“I’ll kill them all…I’ll fucking kill them…” she sniffled.

“What did you say? Hello?”

That familiar voice came from her smart phone, which thankfully wasn’t damaged in the slip and fall thanks to the case she bought for it. She must have pocket dialed someone during the whole kafuffle. That someone was her mother. Hearing her voice again was another factor in cooling down her aching lungs and throat.

“Mom? Are you there?”

“Reese, are you okay? Did I just hear you say you’re going to kill someone?”

“Um…” she sniffled. “No, I was just…I mean…Mom?...I can’t go back inside the station. I hate it there!”

“What’s wrong, honey?”

Reese had a hard time forming words through her tears.

“Do you need me to come pick you up?”

“But…I have my final exam soon…”

“That’s not what I asked you. I asked you if you wanted me to pick you up and take you home.”

“…Yes! That’d be wonderful.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Hang in there.”

“I love you, Mom!”

“I love you too, Reese. Bye.”

In all this time of studying psychology, Reese had forgotten the most important lesson of all: self-care. Even the most hardworking minds needed to rest. Even straight A students weren’t immune to mental health crises. If her professors didn’t understand these things, they had no business teaching psychology. In that case, studying at this college wasn’t such a good idea after all.

As for the lead pipe, Reese gazed at it for a while, feeling the rusty metal grate against her sensitive skin. She had thirty minutes before her mother got her out of this hellhole. She still had ample time to smash heads and drop corpses. But if she went through with her violence against the mentally-ill bus station customers, she had no business being a therapist in the first place. And if that was true, then learning psychology from these uncaring professors was like a toxic relationship that would never end.

Reese dropped the pipe and allowed it to roll across the sidewalk. “I hate this place. But I hate the system more…” She pulled her knees to her chest and sobbed into her legs some more.

[C. J., Cool yet firm like ice]

Title: M. K. Chapter 3 Part II: To Fight Much Darkness (or better known as "Raiden Pries out Pride: Part II:)
Author: C. J.
Word Count: 2,427
Rating: Might be closer to R as it tends to deal with a lot of disturbing themes including murder.

Johnny continued to stare though the truth rang to his heart from Raiden’s statement as clear as a warning, convicting bell.

“No one here has achieved greatness. There is only one who has all of the worlds within his hand. We all have either wanted to know more or are striving to be a little better.

“That is what these battles entail. We must fight the deep darknesses within in order to overcome our obstacles. Here in this world the struggle is right in front of each of you! Each time you face one, it will be one that is a little close to what you may have not yet faced before.

“These are battles” he spoke the word with a booming tone, “not mere and insignificant fights, as they are against the very darkness, the evil prevailing in your very own hearts.”

“I will not always be with you physically but I will guide you. No matter what. Somehow it will continue as long as I quest to be on this earth.”

They stare. Soon he is gone from them. They watch him walk, wondering why he didn’t disappear in a big show or display.

They wonder as he goes.

Sonya seeming sorry looks in compassion towards Jax.

“You know Jax… you can talk to me about anything, right?”

Jax though was hurt by Sonya’s comment before. Yes he assumed she had done wrong in the earth realm but she didn’t have to say that! He turned to her his eyes appeared to be welling up. No. He can’t cry. He’s a man!

He must never appear weak in front of his friend. Especially a woman!

“I didn’t know you didn’t sh…. nevermind. I’ll just leave you alone now…”

She watches him take off. But she hadn't noticed Johnny was still standing in his place. The same place even from a moment ago. With the same expression.

That moment Jax headed to bed. He slept a wink though he knew they would fight in just a few hours. And he has that dream again.

The captain is spoke then finishing his speech:

“... I am proud of all of you. To be ones who stand and answer the call for serving is a great duty. A tough but appreciated service. But sometimes our great men or women get cut down before we can truly honor them here. We are greatly grieved to share that one has taken the ultimate sacrifice during this service in their life.

“Today we honor a great man, a hero, but most importantly an amazing father. Jaxton Briggs Sr!”

Jax wakes up. He then felt someone from behind staring, standing next to his bed. He turned seeing if it was who he suspected. Yep, Sonya.

“Look. You know I was frustrated about that time earlier.” she said. “I was mad because you assumed and then said it was a fact, okay? Yeah, I said it.”

Jax turned back looking to the wall again.

“But I know you think a lot and don’t let me in a lot of times. I care about you Jax. You are not just a ‘man,’ you are my fellow police brother. I would die for you if need be. Just ‘let me in.’ Please.”

He sighed. Silence.

“Is this about your father?”

His eyes shot open. How did she know…?

“You keep forgetting that I was there too..! From what I had heard, he was a great man. A wonderful father.”

Jax finally spoke up but as if she were the wall.

“But he always kept silent. He never spoke about anything. I guess a ‘man’ was not to talk about anything. He was shut up even about what he saw in battle. Everything. But I feel that if I talk about my stuff I’ll be less than half a man of what he was…”

She was startled. “That’s really how you feel??”

Sonya then stopped herself. She paused, took a breath then continued. “Look, there was probably a reason he kept silent. Maybe he saw horrible things. Maybe he didn’t bring stuff up to ‘protect’ your growing mind from the terrible things he saw.
“And that is only because he was willing to do that just to help ‘bring’ you up. To be a real man. You are a real man no matter what you think Jax. I mean that with my whole heart.”

He seemed unaffected. She placed a hand onto his shoulder. It paused there. She started to pull away but then suddenly felt his hand. Jax gripped it lightly, giving it a single squeeze as if in a silent Thank you.

Then she gently pulled hers away. She smiled at him and left the room to find a place to train.

-----

Still in Outworld a woman torn between her morals and her questionable loyalty is standing by a doorway. Out comes the man who ordered her to listen to him, Shang Tsung.

She stood looking beautiful with the dark complexion and radiant hazel eyes. Her green and black outfit made her stand out from the two sisters. Her dark features had shown a strong woman’s face, waiting but honoring the one whom she had to follow.

Jade awaited Shang Tsung’s order, excitedly to her it would be her very first mission!


Tsung came out from behind the door, forthright with his “hope.” He then places into her hand a heavy weapon, a long gray stand with a sharp edge on one side. He matches the so-called gift with his order for her.

“Your first mission, Jade, will not be easy for you.”

She spoke with quiet, assuming gladness.

“It will be easy, my lord Tsung…”

“As you say so.”

He almost smiled at the kingly praise.

After a pause he went with it.

“I want you to drive this staff into Princess Kitana’s heart.”

Her eyes became saucers.

“What?”

“Yes. You will kill her in battle.”

“But she is my sister.”

He spoke up like her hesitance was as annoying as a simple misbehaving child. “She is only your half sister. It will not be so tough.”

“She is my only family.”

“Then if you know her barely, doing so will be ‘easy’ on you, right? Just like you had said!”

He let go of it as the gift now stood in her hands. She had a look of uncertainty.

“Do it or you will never follow me again. And also you will have no leader to help you from here on out. I will make it ‘my’ mission that you won’t have anyone on your side. Yes, be sure of that!”

He walked away. The door shut hard.

Do my mission… she wondered.

But she is my sister! she repeated in her mind.

As if made the decision in her heart, she holds up the staff. Her decision was now between her and whoever could "hear" her heart. And Jade carried it toward her new destination.

She figured she would go right to where she knew Kitana would be. The place only the two knew of. Jade held the staff behind her as she goes as if anticipating the meeting the surprise might be deadly. The sis wouldn’t know what was coming for her!

-----

Kitana sat by a strange place. In a gray outfit and wearing a mask to match. She was near the “surreal garden” that was cherished by an individual she felt she knew well in a wonderful way, she paced back and forth.

She hoped to train with Sonya after hoping to speak to Jade. It would be fun! Maybe she would get to know this new person from a realm she was mostly vaguely familiar with; all she knew was that was the realm where her “love” came from.

Sonya Blade. It sounded like she would have a spark of life. Maybe she could spar with her before their own tournaments. They could find a way to not win still and not even play through. It wouldn’t matter. Tsung thought he knew how to keep people playing his “game” but Kitana had 999 year old smarts. There was always a way around his ideas, she had felt.

She headed off to grab her fans. Maybe she would finally hone her skills better this time. There was something she sensed she could do but hadn’t been able to until she realized she had a passion to fight after Liu Kang’s spar.

She would start that path over. Redo her own fighting lineup. It could be done! Or maybe she figured that with wavering certainty.

-----

Shang Tsung was now getting his dinner ready. He ordered two of his servants to rustle up everything that was fresh and bring it to his quarters.

“But Tsung, there is a problem.”

He nearly smashed the man across the face for speaking so out of turn. He gave a mean eye. “What? Go on…”

“Something has changed since Raiden’s visit.”

“And what is that?”

“I don’t know. There is … a ‘new’ air that has pervaded your tournament!”

Tsung laughed. “Hah. Such ignorance. I can beckon the guards. I must bring all three though. And they shall bring me my feast. Guards!”

He waved a hand that would summon them.

Standing there, he waited. Not even one showed up.

“Is there an issue. What, are they sleeping?”

“I don’t know. But here is a thought that is unsettling. I believe… yes, I have a sense that one is not active anymore.”

“Not active? Has he quit?”

“I don’t know! I just… feel it, master.”

“Well feelings will get you killed. I must bring my beast to be my right hand guard now. Release 'it' from my dungeon! He will be by my side then if ‘feelings’ are what are keeping my so-called real men at bay..”

There was a huge sound of stones being moved. Large stones that seemed to slide then out came heavy sounding foot steps. Before he knew it, there he was.

One of many creatures of his kind. A four-armed thing called “shokan,” a frightening beast!

“Replace my dweller. He will be by my stead from now on.”

The two large men who fetched the creature then went back to do what he ordered. They were about six and a half feet tall and Goro still lumbered over them!

His four arms seemed as if he had lifted endlessly through dark nights. He was living on beasts and whatever could be thrown to be his only foods though they could have been his only “friends.”

Goro stares as if angry at the sight of his captor. He roars and Shang Tsung looks fearful.

“If you don’t behave I will make sure you never eat again.” He walks over to him and hands him what looks like a dead rat. “Now eat. You are now my protector and guardian.”

----

Near rocky, treacherous terrain a one who was claimed by people to be an elder god stared at the view from far away.

Raiden peeks at a woman looking in bad shape.

Coming through the awful path a young woman clad in purple is walking, almost stumbling in her path with the mental mission of following the “emperor” Shang Tsung.

He spoke to himself with a seemingly sad promise. One he hoped could be broken soon.

“I will stay away, my sad Princess Mileena. But in hoping that you will want to live a path worth ‘walking.’”

Mileena, a seemingly wretched woman, ordered him to stay away from him. With lamenting stare he felt if only she let him simply heal her, she would have been well in seconds!

-----

Far as if a hundred miles in this Outworld it seemed goodness could not enter where two seemingly soulless creatures dwelled.

Their hearts given to darkness, they seemed to prefer to “live” only in it.

A teenager naively hoped to dye her hair. In a large crevasse she had kept a strange “ink” that was thick as the light would not pierce its surface. She collected a cruel “well” full of gore and dipped her scalp into it. When she pulled it out, blood poured everywhere and she enjoyed the wonderful thick kiss on her hair and skin.

Hoping that men’s blood could be a great source for changing her hair, Nitara pitied herself:

You mean I killed so many souls for nothing...?!

[C. J., Cool yet firm like ice]

M. K. Chapter 3 Part II
"Continue?"....

She was so used to her ways of sinking her fangs into necks and gulping the juice within the veins, she no longer felt it satisfying. If she tried to turn a soul, Tsung found a way to kill him! What fun was that?

She seemed to grow tired of being in Outworld. She wished to wander elsewhere! What if she hoped there were other worlds, other realms that she would pierce and find that were beyond here. That excited her!

“What if there was a place we could travel to? Would there be a… key… or something. A thing like Tsung’s talisman that we could steal and use?”

Nitara thinks the one she is speaking to is not paying attention. “Hey… Syzoth!”

This creature half-man with lizard skin turned a loud screech then was heard, his “smiling” mouth of a snake opened!

Reptile, his nickname anyway, had been sitting stoically in silence. Though he quietly agreed to her statement.

They hoped to find this hopeful treasure in previously unseen acres of this world.

They also pledged to do any task to be praised by their master, the powerful Shang Tsung.

And to the Dragon King they yearned to owe their lives!

One day they wished the rising of this great leader would lead to their success and they would give him revering and worship.

He would one day save all of Outworld, taking all the talismans of the realms and rule above them all.

To rule over all realms was the one thing Onaga had yet done!

The sad state of the world kept it from full fruition as they gave “comforting” thought to this wondrous future day!

-----

Raiden watched from afar the princess earlier doing something strange. He was following a man, one of the servants of Tsung.

Not thinking much of it, he noticed there was something passionate behind her eyes. A feeling that he did not like one bit.

He watched the man with a big belly as he saw her and seemed to then fill with trepidation.

He saw hunger.

Raiden was disgusted! Would Mileena stoop so low she would come to this man and try to eat his insides?

He hoped she would be strong and keep from doing such a task.

To imagine a person eating another was beyond inhumane. It was so unfathomable until Raiden witnessed that gleam about her violet eyes it almost made his skin shudder.

Something had to be done about this evil invading hearts. And he had to try and stop it soon!

End of Part II

[C. J., Cool yet firm like ice]

Gonna edit this just a little more.

[C. J., Cool yet firm like ice]

Announcement:

Polls are now up! Also new contest.


---
Polls link: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/list/1...
---

Contest links will go up soon