The Many Deaths of Ms. Croft

"I'm sorry," Li Mei whispered. Sonya Blade's chin was clamped by the Outworlder's forearm; the top of her head was pressed against the bare skin between Li Mei's breasts. The special operative peered up at her captor from behind a swollen, blue-black eye socket, and felt the impossibly fine Outworlder silk of Li Mei's kimono brush her lips. The sky, far past Li's sorrowful brow, was the color of driedod, od, shot through with corroded green clouds. Sonya's ribs ached from where Li Mei's rock-hard foot had smashed into her; her knee throbbed hotly around the sharpened sai that had been punched through it. The Earth native could feel the cotton of her midriff t-shirt stretched over her breasts, pulled tight by the awkward arch of her back; the equally short-hemmed flight jacket she wore suddenly didn't seem enough to ward off the chill that had invaded her body. Her leather pants were torn and dusty; she remembered pulling them over her thighs just a few hours ago, after a night's sleep at the decrepit palace Raiden had made the base of his operations in Outworld. She remembered thinking, at the time, that if it weren't for the occasional attempt of some otherwordly megalomaniac attempting to include Earth in his empire, she'd never get to wear clothes like this. Her work as a founding officer in the Outerworld Investigation Agency took up far too much of her time--

Sonya's view whirled violently, and a terrible pain lanced through her entire body before sealing itself in her neck. The world swung oddly; it was only when the back of her had slammed into the dust that she realized Li Mei had dropped her. At the bottom of her vision, she could see her nipples outlined against the white t-shirt--it was true, she realized, those stories about the body's reaction to a broken neck. Somewhere below where her spine had been snapped apart, her body was probably twitching in ecstacy. Vaguely, Sonya tried to remember whether she'd taken a leak before beginning the assault on Shang Tsung and Quan Chi; she at least wanted the dignity of not pissing her pants when she died.

Her vision began to fade, the way it did when she stood up too fast--something she'd never do again. Somewhere to her right, Li Mei was fighting someone. Who? Sonya strained to turn her eyes and focus on the Outworlder's assailant; after a few long seconds, she finally recognized Croft. What was her first name? Larry. No, that was a boy's name. Lara, that was it. Lara lashed out with a fast boot to Li Mei's belly, knocking the Outworlder back and giving the tomb raider time to draw her pistols. In Sonya's dimming vision, the double flash of Lara's dual Colt 1911's was sun-bright. Time felt slower; Sonya watched the two .45 slugs punch into Li Mei's cheek and nose, distending her orientental features with the shock of impact. A few seconds later, or so it seemed, a lazy gout of bland and colloid brain matter lifted a lock of Li Mei's long hair in a slow halo, and the Outworlder began to stumble back, pupils dilating to bring into focus something only she could see.

An intense guilt suddenly fell on Sonya; her face pulled back into a rictus of sorrow as Li Mei flumped out of sight. It was her fault Lara was here, another victim in a pointless war. Earth was safe, all its portals destroyed; only the power of an Elder God could connect it to Outworld again. Her own life was a small price to pay for the freedom of worlds besides Earth, but to have dragged Lara here, playing on her sense of adventure and the chance to study outer-Earth cultures in order to have one more ally--one more body for the fodder-pile--was unconsciable. Sonya Blade died, tears streaming back along her temples as her body, unbeknownst to her, kicked and flopped in a puddle of her own urine.

The Outworlder twat made shaky "huuuhhh, huhhh" sounds as Lara stood over her quivering body--confused relfex instructing her lungs to breathe in and out at the same time. There wasn't any use checking on poor Sonya. The special operative's head had been twisted a full three hundred-sixty degrees; the flesh of her neck was wound like a slinky. At least it was quick, Lara thought, glancing again at the base of one of the tall, wrist-thick spikes which ran like a wall around Shang Tsung's palace. The Lin Kuei warrior named Frost had disappeared from Raiden's camp almost a week ago; most had assumed that the female ice-fighter had simply abandoned the cause. Regardless of her reason for leaving, her location was no longer a mystery: seven meters above where Lara was looking, the twisted iron spike punched into Frost's naked body, just above her buttocks, running up through her torso to protrude from the joint between her neck and shoulder. The amount of blood crusting the spike suggested that she'd hung there for most of the week that she'd been missing, yet the frost-haired warrior stilled clutched and mewled at the top of perch, kept alive--or, at least, conscious--by eldritch, evil magics. Most of the other spikes were similarly occupied, though those bodies showed less life than Frost. These warlocks Sonya had told her about had been breathing for far, far too long. Grimly, Lara holstered her pistols and charged toward where Princess Kitana was fighting with the betrayer, Hsu Hao.

Lara held a green belt in capoeira, which she used mainly on the dance floor of any number of night clubs when she felt the occasional urge to shake her booty; her white belt in pentjak-silat was infinitely more practical. A master of the hopping, whirling capoeira could be incredibly dangerous, as she'd seen demonstrated during her first instruction period--but the modular, straightforward techniques taught by the pentjak-silat teacher she'd switched to after a year's training appealed more to her particular mindset.

Even so, her capoeira instincts came in handy--Hsu Hao'd seen her coming, and lashed out with a sudden back elbow. With a grace she barely knew she possessed, Lara arched back and twisted low, clipping Hao with the toe of her left boot before spinning and bringing it around again for another high kick that caught the betrayer in the back of his head. Seeing an opening, Kitana spun in with her steel fans extended, drawing two bleeding lines across his barrel chest.

"Fsah akh-mekh!" Hsu Hao spat, stumbling back.

"Didn't catch that," Lara commented, sidestepping slowly to keep Hao between herself and Kitana despite the massive man's manuevering. Hao suddenly turned his back to her, facing Kitana; Lara slunk forward.

"It was Outworlder," she heard Kitana's mellow voice tell her from the other side of Hsu Hao. "He called you a--" Anything else the princess might have said was drowned out by an evil-sounding whine, like a jet turbine warming up. Lara shot forward, leaping high into air air to slam both her boots high into Hsu Hao's back; the betrayer fell onto his stomach, surprised by the speed and ferocity of the attack. Before he could regain his feet, Lara hopped into the air above him and kicked again; this time, the toe of her boot crunched into the base of Hao's bald skull, dislocating his vertebrae hard enough to snap the nerves inside.

Kitana looked up at Lara; Lara stared in horror at the hole, easily thirty centimeters in diameter, that Hsu H las laser burst had burned through Kitana's upper belly. Viscera quivered like jelly at the bottom, where the beam had engulfed much of her stomach; at the top, white rings of bone around dark circles of marrow showed where it had burned cleanly through her ribs. Between, Lara could see the mountainous horizon behind the princess. Kitana sank to her knees, her lips outlined against her half-mask in an 'o' of horror that was nearly wider than her terrified eyes as she dazedly reached through her own body, feeling to see if the massive wound were real.

"Oh, my God," Lara breathed, rushing forward to catch the princess as she slumped back. Helplessly, she cradled Kitana's head, looking around desperately for help. Across the way, Johnny Cage screeched as the oni Drahmin crushed the movie star with the spike club enclosing his right hand; Raiden shouted and disappeared in a blaze of green light under the combined magical assault of Quan Chi and Shang Tsung. Kano had found Sonya's still-convulsing body, and had stripped his dead nemesis's pants from her legs. As Lara watched, he gleefully undid his own fly, knife in hand.

"Oh, my God," Lara whispered again. Kitana clutched the tomb raider's shoulder; she looked down again to see the princess's pleading, terrified eyes looking into her own. Behind her mask, Kitana's lips moved, but with her diaphragm vaporized by the laser blast, she couldn't force air over her vocal chords. Blinking back tears, Lara silently watched Kitana's eyes lose focus and begin drying out. Slowly, the tomb raider became aware that the only sounds she could hear were Frost's keening, and the wet sounds of what Kano was doing to Sonya's body.

"Enkh gahl met-tola dea deeply distorted voice said from behind her. Gently, Lara laid Kitana's body in the dust of the Outworld plain, and stood. The neckline of her blue-white leotard was torn, revealing the upper hemisphere of her left breast; her face was smudged with dirt; her hair was coming free of the bun; the button fly of her khaki shorts had been ripped apart, and replaced with knots of twine that allowed the tight shorts to slip halfway down her buttocks. Exhaustion in her heart and defeat in her eyes, Lara turned to face Quan Chi and Shang Tsung.

"Reya hammnapto eech-agt," Tsung commented in his sibilant whisper. Lara stared at the pair for a long moment, then went for her pistols. Halfway out of their holsters, both weapons flashed a sallow green; when she pulled the triggers, one pistol aimed at each of the sorcerers, nothing happened.

"Damn it all to hell," Lara gritted.

"Ah, an Earthling," Tsung hissed. "Welcome to our realm--you would be the one called La-ra Croofit?"

"La-ra, Croofit, that's me," the tomb raider agreed. Far above, Frost sobbed and weakly pushed with her feet at the spike that impaled her.

"I believe the Earth woman appreciates your display, Shang Tsung," Chi laughed.

"Fear not, little human," Shang Tsung giggled. "That fate, I reserve for those whose spirits I could not otherwise break."

"This Earth woman is certainly not worthy to join those ranks," Quan Chi rumbled. "Still, what shall we do with her?"

"Mayhap we should simply send her home?" Tsung suggested.

"Stop it," Lara snarled, fists clenched. "Stop your toying with me. Kill me however you like, damn you, just get it over with!"

"Ah, some spirit at last," Chi grinned. "It's not nearly so much fun, if they don't hate you while they watch you kill them." Lara howled and sank to her knees in the dust, pressing her palms to the sides of her head. It felt like her skull was being squeezed from all directions--no, worse! It felt like it was being stretched, as if every atom in her head were being forced apart from its fellows. Groaning, she kicked and fell onto her side, body arching painfully as the two sorcerers cackled.

"Pleeeease!" Lara shrieked, jerking from side to side. All thought of anger, of resistance, of mourning for the horrible deaths of her friends disappeared in the blazing agony that was eating her skull. Rolling onto her shins, Lara screamed and hunched her head between her knees. Impossibly, the pain increased; the tomb raider straightened up and bent backwards again, her entire body supported by her toes and the top of her head. Dimly, she could hear Shang Tsung and Quan Chi laughing; huffing in pain, she struggled to her feet and stood, chest heaving air in and out of her lungs in short, terrified shrieks. Pushed by internal pressure, her eyes bugged slightly, wider than they'd eveen een in her entire life. Again, the agony grew; Lara let her hands drop to her sides and simply wailed at the sky, sobbing at the top of her lungs.

With a fleshy splatter, her entire head suddenly exploded in a spray of blood, bone shards, hair, and brain. Some of the grey, lumpy flesh and blood-soaked locks settled on her shoulders, but most of it sprayed out in a six-meter sphere of gore. Her body, tensed in the rictus of pain Lara had died in, remained standing for more than ten seconds, quivering in place as blood fountained from the stump of her neck in time with her still-beating heart. Finally, it fell forward, stiff-limbed. The impact of landing kicked her heels up for a moment, but her muscles had finally gone slack, and her feet thudded into the dust a second after the rest of her body.