Mortal Kombat: Annihilation

“Somebody’s gotta remind this windbag, cheaters never prosper,” Johnny said, stepping forward and flexing for battle.

Shao Kahn, however, was one cheater who had come prepared.

With a horrible ripping sound, the sky above the devastated landscape opened like a slit paper bag, the edges of the newly opened Portal actually peeling back before Johnny’s awed, disbelieving eyes. He watched in amazement as dozens of humanoid forms began to rain from the widening tear in the chrono-spacial fabric, hooded Outworld warriors armed with hand and foot spikes, hooked chains, throwing stars, nunchaku, bo staffs, and other hand-to-hand combat weapons he’d never seen before – weapons that had not been devised by any earthly intelligence.

The Extermination Squad spilled from the impossible hole in the sky, landing on their feet after executing a perfectly coordinated sequence of
tae-soo
flips, fanning out around Rayden’s small group of champions in a half circle.

Outnumbered, caught by surprise, Johnny Cage turned back to his fellows, his bravado suddenly failing.

“Uh, guys,” he said, “any volunteers?”

It isn’t supposed to be like this,
he thought.

Cloud-shadows gathering under the sun, blotting out the daylight... Dead birds, whole flocks of them, dropping from the sky, the feathers plucked from their carcasses, swirling like confetti in some madly festive slaughter... The wind howling like ten thousand demons, sweeping across the darkened landscape in violent gusts, uprooting bushes, tearing limbs off trees, flinging the trees themselves through the air as if they were weightless splinters... The ground heaving with agonized convulsions, fissures spreading across the crust of the world like jagged wounds, opening wide to suck down entire lakes and streams, leaving behind a dry, barren emptiness...

No, not like this,
Rayden thought again, standing there in the angry throat of the wind, his senses reeling from the inexplicable destruction that seemed to have gripped all of existence.

Then, in the sunless sky above him:

An eddy of deeper darkness spun off from the very clouds and descended to a bare stone overhang above Rayden. Growing, coalescing, taking on substance.

Rayden felt a cold dread seep into his bones as he watched the apparition assume a distinctly human shape.

It –
he
– flipped through the air in a brazen display of physical prowess, landed on his feet, and stood gazing down from the ledge, a looming figure in a hideous mask and black exoskeletal battle armor.

Evil seemed to radiate from him in tangible waves.

Rayden stood there watching, his eyes filled with the terrible certainty that he was looking at the malign ruler of Outworld.

“Shao Kahn,” he muttered. “I should have known.”

“The earth was created in six days!” the warlord declared as if on cue, stepping forward to the edge of the outcropping. His voice echoed in Rayden’s ears like apocalyptic thunder. “So too shall it be destroyed! And on the seventh day, mankind will rest... in peace!”

Rayden’s eyes narrowed. More figures were materializing behind Shao Kahn, a royal entourage that might have been drawn from the world’s collective nightmares.

“Please welcome my generals,” Shao Kahn roared with a flourish of his arms, clearly savoring the moment. He swept a gloved hand toward one of them like a ringmaster at some demonic carnival.

The woman stepped forward, clad in leather, her grin a twisted line on a grotesquely distorted face – a face made all the more awful by the ghost of spoiled beauty that seemed to linger over its features. She seemed amused by the recognition in Rayden’s gaze.

Once, he knew, she had been Shao Kahn’s reluctant queen, Sindel.

He saw no reluctance in her now.

“
Sheeva!
” Shao Kahn boomed, his arms still raised.

The towering, four-armed woman beside Sindel nodded at Rayden. Why, he wondered, had the sorcerer called out her name and not Sindel’s?

“
Motaro!
”

Rayden heard the clatter of hooves, and instantly recognized the horned, half-human creature rearing up before him as a Centauran warrior from the highlands of Outworld.

“
Baraka!
”

The bald, powerfully built mutant staring down at Rayden peeled back his lips to expose rows of meshing, razor-sharp teeth. Gleaming blades of living, organic metal simultaneously sprang from his arms like the claws of some monstrous jungle cat.

“
Ermac!
”

The last member of the group was the only one of them who did not seem to be enjoying his master’s haughty performance. Perfectly still and unblinking, he listened to Shao Kahn announce his name without any discernable reaction. Though red rather than black, his clothes were otherwise identical to the traditional garb of the ninja: a hood drawn over his head, the lower part of his face masked with a wide strip of cloth, his lightweight boots split at the toe to aid in stealthy movement.

“This is not good,” a man’s voice said from Rayden’s left.

Rayden looked over at him. Johnny Cage, who had once made a career of fighting Hollywood villains in the movies, and been accustomed to having his battles end with a director yelling “Cut!”, had learned the meaning of true courage during his recent adventures on Outworld... and it showed in his hard, determined eyes.

“I thought our victory in Mortal Kombat closed that... ‘door’... for the next thousand years,” Liu Kang said.

“
Portal,
” the woman called Kitana corrected.

Both young warriors stood to the right of Rayden – Liu, a lean, whiplash-quick martial arts fighter of Chinese descent, Kitana, a dark beauty whose own royal lineage reached back through time and extradimensional space to Outworld itself.

“What closes can also open again,” Rayden said cryptically.

“What does
that
mean?”

This from Sonya Blade, an American Special Forces lieutenant who had joined the others to defend her world in the supernatural tournament called Mortal Kombat. Tall and athletic, she had arctic-blue eyes, wintry-blond hair and an icy-cold attitude to match.

“Somebody’s gotta remind this windbag, cheaters never prosper,” Johnny said, stepping forward and flexing for battle.

Shao Kahn, however, was one cheater who had come prepared.

With a horrible ripping sound, the sky above the devastated landscape opened like a slit paper bag, the edges of the newly opened Portal actually peeling back before Johnny’s awed, disbelieving eyes. He watched in amazement as dozens of humanoid forms began to rain from the widening tear in the chrono-spacial fabric, hooded Outworld warriors armed with hand and foot spikes, hooked chains, throwing stars, nunchaku, bo staffs, and other hand-to-hand combat weapons he’d never seen before – weapons that had not been devised by any earthly intelligence.

The Extermination Squad spilled from the impossible hole in the sky, landing on their feet after executing a perfectly coordinated sequence of
tae-soo
flips, fanning out around Rayden’s small group of champions in a half circle.

Outnumbered, caught by surprise, Johnny Cage turned back to his fellows, his bravado suddenly failing.

“Uh, guys,” he said, “any volunteers?”

“There are many of them, but they do not think for themselves,” Rayden was saying. “That is your advantage.”

Just a bunch of poor, mentally-challenged assassins who’ll cut out your heart and eat it at their master’s whim,
Johnny thought, looking around at the deadly horde of Outworlders.

Before he even realized what he was doing, he reached out for Sonya’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

To his complete surprise and disbelief, she didn’t pull away.

“I will handle Kahn,” Rayden said.

Though they stood only a few feet apart, Rayden’s words hardly registered with Johnny. It was crazy, absolutely nuts, but he found the fact that Sonya had left her hand where it was more astonishing than bad guys spilling out of some trapdoor in the sky, and the world transforming into a place that would make a nice vacation getaway for Sauron from
Lord of the Rings
.

Now he saw three of the Outworlders closing in on him and reluctantly separated himself from Sonya, shifting into a
Koroo Seh
free-fighting stance: bobbing, waving, making himself a tough target to hit. Peripherally he could see that Liu, Kitana, and Sonya were also being surrounded by groups of Kahn’s minions. Then a spiked length of chain whipped out at him and he ducked below its whistling arc, prying his attention away from the others, knowing he’d need all his wits to survive the attack.

Over to his right, a pair of the warrior drones – both armed with knife-tipped bo staffs – had converged on Liu and driven him toward the same conclusion. Moving with wildcat speed, he grabbed one of his attackers’ staffs in mid-thrust, then pivoted on the ball of his right foot, wrenching the staff from the Outworlder’s fingers and delivering a flurry of vicious snap kicks to his chest.

Even as the drone crumpled – his ribs shattered – the second warrior lunged forward, swinging his bo at Liu’s head. Using both hands, Liu brought up the seized weapon, blocked what would have been a skull-shattering blow, then jabbed its bladed end out like a spear point, driving it into the assassin’s stomach. The warrior stumbled and fell, the staff jutting from his body.

Two other drones, meanwhile, had launched a nearly identical strike against Kitana, driving her backward, their long staffs whirling like airplane propellers.

Eager to put some space between herself and the mindless killers, needing some room to maneuver, Kitana turned–

And froze in her tracks, blinking incredulously.

The leather-clad woman that had appeared with Kahn was standing perhaps fifty feet away from her.

Staring coldly at her.

Just staring.

Their eyes met, and suddenly Kitana knew, by the Elder Gods she
knew
...

“Mother,” she said, still not moving, her body held in a vise of fear, horror and confusion. “You... you’re...”

Before she could complete the sentence, a ferocious blow to her head knocked the breath, and the words, right out of Kitana. She stumbled, nearly spilled to the ground, and caught herself just in time to see the red ninja called Ermac hurtling through the air at her, following up on his surprise attack with a flying front kick – one that was certain to be crippling if it connected.

Glimpsing what had happened to Kitana, Rayden started toward her, trying to cut through the throng of Outworlders between them.

Shao Kahn had no intention of letting him reach her, however. He leaped off the fingerlike precipice from which he had watched the battle until now, flipping twice through the air, his feet touching ground directly in front of Rayden.

They stood face-to-face, mere inches apart.

“As long as I have the power, Kahn, you will never rule this world,” Rayden said, not backing off a single step.

“As long as the Portal remains open,” he countered, “your powers grow less every second. And my Extermination Squads will have safe passage to this realm.”

The two immortals began to circle each other, Kahn swinging his arm as if it were a sledgehammer. Rayden shifted from side to side, avoiding the deadly blows, his
paqua
defensive technique frustrating Kahn as he kept trying to connect.

Finally, his anger flaring, Kahn clashed his wrist guards together, ejecting sharp, needlelike spikes.

Poised, focused, Rayden readied himself for the sorcerer’s next move.

A heartbeat after she and Johnny split up, Sonya had whirled to see the brutish half-metal half-human warrior called Baraka pounding toward her, murder in his eyes, his clawblades gleaming.

Sonya lashed out with a spinning crescent kick, but Baraka reacted far more quickly than seemed possible for someone his size, slipped underneath it, and swung his blades back at her. She jumped high to elude the strike, knowing full well those claws were capable of slicing her to the bone. Once again moving with unexpected swiftness, however, Baraka brought his foot up in a kick that knocked her legs out from under her and sent her crashing to the ground.

Flashing his sharklike smile, he lunged forward to deliver his killing blow.

“Why do I always get the ugly ones?” Johnny said.

No sooner had he taken out one of the red ninjas than the Centauran – Kahn had said his name was Motaro – literally came hoofing toward him, his tail whipping in anticipation.

Johnny had always wanted to own a horse, but he was telling himself this was way, way too ridiculous.