Sub-Zero: Origins

Class Reunion

"Tomas, are you alright?" Kuai Liang asked as he went to his friend and helped him to his feet.

"I'm fine," the other replied as he looked down at the perfect cut in his thick gray armor. "An inch to the left, however, and I'd be carved up like a Christmas goose." He scowled. "You see what I mean? They're all she-devils. You should have killed her. She ruined my tunic," he grumbled as he ran his hand over the damage.

"I'm not starting an inter-dimensional incident just yet, and certainly not for her," he said.

"Spoil sport."

"Come on," he said impatiently as he resumed his course along the path. He made sure there was a generous amount of room between him and the trees. "I will not rest until I find Shang Tsung."

"Be realistic," Tomas admonished. "My pr̆ítel, we have no way of knowing how big Outworld is. If it's even close to as big as Earth, this could be like finding a needle in the haystack."

"Which I did," the other cut in.

His friend laughed. "I forgot all about that!" He continued chuckling.

"It wasn't funny, Tomas."

"Well, what did you expect? You beat up Sektor for stealing the candy Xiao-Ping gave to you. You can't just beat up the Grandmaster's son and hope to get away with it. And nothing cures a bad temper like spending three days rolling around in a ton of hay." Tomas nudged him playfully. "When you finally found the needle, you came out of the barn smelling like a yak."

"I lost count of how many baths I had to take to get that smell off me."

"What are you talking about? You still smell like a yak."

"Better than what you smell like," he shot back.

Tomas raised his eye brows, both amused and impressed. "Nice one, Kuai Liang, but you're still a rank amateur next to me."

The Cryomancer started to counter, but suddenly the hair on his neck stood on end. He stopped dead in his tracks and scanned his surroundings as best he could in the darkness. Tomas, also sensing something was wrong, squinted his eyes and glanced around. To their left, the living forest full of man-eating trees stood in ancient silence, waiting for their next unfortunate victim. To their right, a sheer rock wall towered at least thirty feet above them. The eternal night was still.

And then a tidal wave exploded from the shadows beneath the cliff face, caught the two fugitive warriors, and swept them towards the carnivorous trees. Kuai Liang, reacting quickly, gripped Tomas' tunic with one hand while forming a long ice dagger in the other, and plunged it into the ground to stop their momentum. His muscles stretched and burned as the water, as powerful as the ocean tides, swirled past them harmlessly into the forest. Sputtering and choking, the Cryomancer lifted his soaked head in time to see Hydro stepping into view.

"Oh, my God," Tomas mumbled as he staggered to his feet. "They found us."

On cue, more Lin Kuei slipped from the shadows and surrounded them, backing them up ever closer to the tree line. They, however, were no longer human. Covered from head to toe in shiny armor in various colors, and wearing helmets with wires streaming from their crowns like ponytails, it was obvious what had happened to them. Like Hydro, they were now fully automated. They were cyber-ninjas.

"It didn't take them long to automate them," the Cryomancer muttered in amazement and horror. Indeed, it had only been two days since they'd fled the Temple. 

"Sub-Zero. Smoke," Hydro began in a voice that sounded like his own British one, but was now synthesized and formal. "You will return to the Lin Kuei Temple to await your transformation." His voice was dispassionate, matter-of-fact, soulless. No different than a computer.