Mortal Kombat: The Phoenix Verison

Chapter 10: Too Late to Apologize

Cage gave it some time before he made the decision to enter the lion's den and talk to Ember. He needed to try to talk some sense into her, Sonya was getting close to changing plans and just sending Ember to prison.

She was sitting on her bed, silently staring at the bland fabric of her tent. As Johnny entered the tent, she paid him no mind. He cleared his throat and she finally acknowledged him so that he could sit on the bed beside her.

"Ember...you can't keep antagonizing Sonya." He said, removing his sunglasses. "If you keep this up, I'm sure she's gonna send you away. This is the quickest way to finish your sentence; if you went to prison I'm not sure how long you'd have to stay there but it would be a hell of a while."

He was cautious, as if he had to walk on eggshells. There was something else she caught in his voice: a condescending tone, like he was talking to a child who didn't yet understand her situation fully.

"I'm not a child, Cage. I don't want to be talked to like one."

"Aw, c'mon, firecracker you know I-"

Abruptly she stood from the bed. Johnny had thought calling her by her old nickname might've calmed her, but there was no calm for the undead.

"Sorry, sorry...I-" she waited for him to keep going, "I just missed you."

Behind her mask, a look of surprise overcame her features.

"You know," he continued, "when Cassie was younger I would tell her about you." He cracked a small smile. "Learning how to handle you is probably what made raising Cassie easier than I thought." Cage chuckled half-heartedly before looking up at Ember.

Her mask with its dead eyes was all that looked back at him. The smile dropped from his face. "...If you were around you would've been Cassie's godmother."

"It wasn't my choice to die." Ember dryly replied.

"That's not what I meant."

"If you really did miss me, as you claim, then why didn't you bother to look for me?" She asked with a bit of heat in the words. "Why didn't anyone look for me?"

Johnny frowned. "Ember you could've been anywhere, we wouldn't have known where to look. That cave on the outskirts of the city wasn't the most noticeable thing."

"Raiden could've used his power to find me." Ember scoffed.

"Well I can't just call on Raiden to help me find my keys every time I lose them. He's not at our disposal for everything." Cage shrugged, trying to make light of the conversation.

Wrong move.

Blood boiling, Ember tensed up. "Are you comparing me to keys?!"

Realizing his mistake, Johnny tried to apologize once more but she cut him off.

"It's funny, really, that if it had been Sonya or you to die-Raiden would've done everything he fucking could to find you. Since you two were so important in his idiotic visions..."

His mouth opened slightly, it dawning on him where this resentment and resistant was maybe coming from. As she shifted around the tent with the adrenaline of anger, he managed to speak the obvious.

"You're upset about Raiden's visions." It would make sense, her brothers were given terrible fates due to these visions.

"Gee thanks, Captain Obvious. Yes, I'm pissed that you all got your important roles in saving the world and I didn't. Your lives mattered enough for Raiden to at least intervene-and mine didn't. I'm mad because I wasn't worth saving and as soon as everything was fine again I was forgotten about."