Smoke's Vendetta

Unit: LK-7T2... That... Isn't... Who I am...

Alias: Smoke... That's... Not... Right... Either...

Warning! Warning! Memory drive malfunction! Certain files have been lost! Attempt to retrieve will cause further deterioration of priority functions! Repairs required!

I have long since my transformation forgotten my Human name... My scans show that I've taken too much irreparable damage and can no longer access certain robotic functions... Some may think of this as a curse, but it has become a blessing to me in more ways than one.

Ever since Outworld merged with Earthrealm, I was turned into this... Mechanical monstrosity... Against my will... Thanks to my former allies... I thought that I'd be able to reason with him... As I fled from the Lin Kuei base with Sub-Zero, I realised that we'd both end up captured by Cyrax and Sektor unless I sacrificed myself and allowed Sub-Zero to escape unnoticed... Sektor was my friend when he was Human, and I thought that I'd be able to convince him that what he was about to do wasn't right... I at least managed to get him separated from Cyrax, as he went to search for Sub-Zero... The Sektor I knew was gone, and I was too blind to see it... We fought, but I didn't stand a chance... He was just too powerful... Not even my Invisibility was able to escape his sensors... I was captured... And it didn't take him long to teleport us back to Lin Kuei headquarters and proceed to make me like him... He programmed me himself based on his own functions and designs...

Primary Objective:

-Eliminate the rogue assassin Sub-Zero... No, I refuse to! I REFUSE! Error! Error! Foreign operations preventing commands from being followed. Primary Objective stored for later reminder...

My old programming still haunts me... It's been nearly a decade and my old commands still try to override my thoughts... It's getting easier though to think for myself. I have another Human to thank for that...

Once the Outworld portal had opened, all souls were taken from the planet... No life remained after Shao Kahn's invasion. Sektor and I proceeded with our missions to find and eliminate my old friend... I wasn't in control of all of my actions, but I knew that I had much more freedom than Sektor had. I was able to prove that we'd have better chances finding Su-Zero if we separated, and once we had, I found myself being hunted... Not by the Lin Kuei, but by creatures I now know as Centaurians.

Perhaps the only good thing that came with being a Cyborg was the fact that all my abilities were enhanced beyond my imagination... The weapons I held were phenomenal! Missiles, grenades, harpoons, smoke bombs, grapple hooks, poison gas pumps... I was a complete armoury! Even I noticed that as I massacred their ranks, I started to maniacally laugh with my new, cold voice... Registering the unique screams that these creatures had... It made me feel so alive! Watching them cough and wheeze as they choked on my smoke, huddle around together as they tried to find me while I was Cloaked, and blowing them all to smithereens with various explosives... This helped me realise that I was indeed not like Sektor and Cyrax; if there was anything I knew, it was that the other two were incapable of emotions in their current states... I remember a saying that ran through my mind after I defeated them all; ``laughter was the language of the soul''...

I was able to override my programming briefly to allow myself to remember the real reason why Sub-Zero and I had returned to the Lin Kuei; to inform them of Shao Kahn's invasion... I remembered deciding to join the other Earthrealm warriors in dealing with the Shao Kahn's forces, and I wasn't going to hold back on my promise...

I managed to run into a Human who was on the brink of death... It was... Not long after my fight with the Centaurians that I encountered this one... He was badly wounded, to the point that he was no longer able to breathe by himself... The nano-technology that I was built with is capable of repairing organisms with mechanical enhancements... This Human was badly injured, so I damaged my ``skin'' and allowed my oil-like blood, which is filled with nano-technological ``bots'', to swarm his face and throat, and willed them into creating an artificial respirator for him, as well as a mask to allow his face to eventually heal... Although I didn't do this on purpose, his respirator was also given an offensive mechanism that would allow him to pump air into other objects, and his mask had the ability to shoot limitless energy bolts thanks to the nano-technological bots that would be forever with this being...

Once the respirator was fully operational, I waited with Human until he regained consciousness... He was surprised that I was helping him up, and even giving him his hook-sword weapons, and thankfully, didn't link me to the Centaurians that had attacked him earlier... My scanners indicated that he was fully functional thanks to my nano-technology...

While the Human who called himself ``Kabal'' tested his new abilities, Raiden appeared to us in some kind of astral-projection form... He told us of Shao Kahn's citadel being located in a portion that was formally the United States, and that we needed to find a way to get there and meet with the other Earthrealm warriors... Although my teleportation abilities were heightened, I calculated that wouldn't be able to cross the Pacific Ocean unless my current walking speed was three times more efficient... This is where Kabal came in... His speed was unbelievable! My scanners could barely register how fast he could run; he was my ticket out of China...

Kabal carried me on his back as we headed towards the Pacific Ocean... He didn't mind the smoke I produced, but he was still frightened to know that machines from my bloodstream were keeping him alive... To test how far we'd teleport together, Kabal and I made a very fast trip to Japan, which proved how easily we could cross large-bodies of water with a running start... The distance I can teleport is based on how fast I am moving, and with Kabal's immense speed, it took us only three seconds to leave Kyoto, and arrive at San Francisco... We were both fine, until my scanners registered Tarakata and Centaurian warriors approaching us...

There were many more units this time than before, but we managed to hold them off until another Human came to our aid... The Tarakata were fierce, strong, savage creatures, but their ranks were decimated by the Human's machine gun... All three of us destroyed the Centaurians together.

The Human known to us as ``Kurtis Stryker'' worried about his limited ammunition, but thanks to my nano-technology, I was able to upgrade his weaponry... I opened the same wound I had given myself and forced my nano-technology to modify his machine gun, taser, and his grenade-belt... Now his taser had limitless energy to spare, his machine gun's bullets would be manufactured at the same rate as they were fired, and now the back of his belt had two chambers that would make grenades when needed. Stryker had become a one-man armoury with his enhanced weapons (it still paled in comparison to my own arsenal)!

I never did end up finding Sub-Zero, or the other Earthrealm warriors I met while in Shao Kahn's ``Mortal Kombat'' tournament then, although my scanners led the three of us to a massive energy source, which turned out to be a colossal portal that led into Outworld... Although we were a tad sluggish with the extra weight of a new comrade, it took very little time before we were in front of enemy lines, at the doorstep of Shao Kahn's fortress... I surrounded myself and my allies with a haze of smoke, preventing the Extermination Squad from being able to see us, but it did not stop them from firing in our direction blankly... The odd part was that they were using laser weapons and explosives, the likes that were used only by Humans! It was Kabal who had suspected that they learned how to use Human weapons, but how was it possible that they knew how to use them so efficiently?

We fought back vigorously, but eventually, we had to escape from that war-torn zone. As strong as we were, the three of us alone couldn't stand up to an entire army... We managed to teleport a safe distance away from the area... And with that, we heard the horrid, demonic screams of a falling creature... Kahn's fortress shone in a brilliant green light, followed by immense explosion that destroyed the tower... The portal's energy began to fluctuate, and the portal itself began to minimise... At first, we had proceeded to hurry through it the way we had initially, but a blast from a Centaurian had separated the three of us... Because of how fast we were travelling, and because I was in mid-teleport, our distances varied drastically... I could detect that Kabal made it through the portal with minor injuries, but I did not have time to scan for Stryker because my mission objective had been found...

Rogue Lin Kuei assassin Sub-Zero detected! Eliminate target! SILENCE YOU INFERNAL MACHINE! Logistical error! Memory bank malfunction! Date required in order to keep proper records of previous objectives! LEAVE ME ALONE! You will be informed when it is essential! Lousy nano-technology...

Yes, I had detected Sub-Zero, and he had already gone through the portal with other Humans... But Centaurians were occupying the space between where I stood, and the closing portal... I ran as fast as I could, jumped into the air, onto the head of a Centaurian, and proceeded to teleport over the army's heads... My smoke clouds surrounded the ones I stood over as I rapidly teleported towards the portal, causing them to go into a firing frenzy after me... I was exhausting my energy by rapidly teleporting, so I needed to get out of there another way...

``SUB-ZERO!'' I yelled out in the loudest voice my mechanical vocal box could create, and when he turned around, I knew... I did not detect it, I actually knew... That he looked past my metal body and recognised who I really was... ``SMOKE!'' It was at that moment that I launched a harpoon at him... To this day, I cannot tell whether that harpoon was intended to kill Sub-Zero or not, but all I know is that it made it to him, and he grabbed it in mid-air and held on tight... I ordered my body to follow the cord rather than pull Sub-Zero towards me, and away I went...

Sub-Zero held on for a long time... Just a little more, I thought, just a little further... But the portal was shrinking swiftly... ``SMOKE! HURRY UP,'' he called out, but the portal was too small for my body... ``SUB-ZEERROOOOO...''

The portal closed right before I made it... All I lost was the spear-head, but that could have been easily repaired... I just skidded hard on the rocky ground, scraping a bit of my armour... The Extermination Squad was following me... I had been denied everything... I was denied my request to participate in the tournament that cost my friend, the original Sub-Zero, his life... I was denied my chance to aid the current Sub-Zero in defeating Shao Kahn... I was denied my way home... I was denied my freedom from the Lin Kuei... I was denied my own humanity! I wanted to commit suicide then and there, but not before taking a few Centaurian and Tarakata warriors...

I diverted all of my major energy sources to my weapon system... They were all going to feel my wrath... All of my weapons were fully charged, at maximum power, and able to annihilate hundreds of warriors... And I was ready to do it all with a smile under my disgusting, purple, metal mouth-piece... The surge of energy, possibly an equivalent to adrenaline, fuelled my rage and anger, and I made sure of it that every single one of them felt it... The explosions took many Outworld warriors, their bodies flew into the sky in chunks of flesh and bone, and their blood rained to the ground in shades of green and red... The screams I heard as I gutted some of them with my harpoon were magnificent, almost harmonious with the explosions, and the moans of pain, and the war-cries... I had developed a blood-lust in this battle...

As the battle wore on, my enemies began to disperse, knowing that it was futile to take me on in my current position... But I began to grow weary... My energy was diminishing quickly... It was costing me a lot of my bots to constantly repair my body and reload my munitions... The ones who remained to fight me caught on... Everything started to get darker... Quieter... My limbs became heavy... My smoke began to clear... I was defeated... I was going to die there... I was going to self-destruct as soon as my vision failed me... Suddenly, my system's leapt back to life... My bots were still functioning... Not mine specifically... But those from some short distance away... Stryker had returned, and the bots I shared with him were communicating with the ones in my body... They were re-vitalised! I could tell that Stryker was fighting back against the remaining army, and because of his presence, I was able to help finish them off...

Stryker had helped me once again, and I was indebted to him for it... I knew that he would always be a good person, and would do whatever it takes to defend fellow Earthrealm warriors... We retreated to the Living Forest, where I had decided to train him in Mi Tzu Chuan, to hone his fighting abilities without his weapons... His training took time and patience, and helped me focus and concentrate more on getting him to master my abilities, as well as think for myself and not in relation to my nano-bots... It passed much of the time while we were trapped in Outworld... And during our evenings, while he slept, my mind went into a hypnotic trance... The control over the bots in my blood finally had a use to me off the battlefield... I forced them to dismantle the majority of the weapons in my torso and recreate my Human organs... More often than not, however, my hypnotic state was disturbed by the distant calling of another... It was the same sentence every night, and the same voice would always be using it... Awaiting command... I had a feeling that it was someone I knew, someone familiar... I had to block it out every night to continue my recuperation... If it wasn't Kabal or Stryker, I had no interest in it whatsoever...

During this time, barely a month after Shao Kahn's death, a war was had once more... Something that my own eyes could barely understand and my own scanners could barely explain to me... It was as if the sky and ground themselves had opened up, and a legion of monsters had erupted from the ground to clash against beings made out of the elements... Earth, Water, Wind, Fire, Steel, Wood, Lightning... Stryker and I did not participate in this war, and watched from the treetops (getting to the top of a tree is one thing, but getting to the top of one that wants to eat you is a completely different task altogether!)... The chaos that we saw left us in wonder and awe... We had seen so much while in Outworld, and yet this was one thing that had caused us to be speechless... We eventually left our location, as the war came closer and closer to us... Neither of us wanted to get involved in something that looked like Armageddon...

Surprisingly, we managed to hide away long enough to avoid any kind of confrontation from the demons or the gods... Just as the end of the war against Kahn had been spectacular, this one proved to be equally interesting... The ground opened up, and a massive hand of fire and shadow sprouted with a fury of 1 000 demons... And as this hand fell to the ground, with the fingers curved and ready to scrape the ground clean, the silhouettes of these massive, muscular, hunched-over demons appeared and pulled down all those who were not of Outworld, the monstrosities that had come from the ground and waged war against the sky... Their screams of pain and agony were heard throughout the realm, as they were pulled down into the darkness... Down into the pits of the Netherealm...

When the war had passed, it turned out that Shao Kahn was still alive and in charge of Outworld, so Stryker and I had to hide further away from his known territories, and closer to what appeared to be a new realm that we had never noticed before... An Outworlder had told us that the former step-daughter of Shao Kahn had successfully set her realm of Edenia free from his control, and that she now ruled this realm alongside her mother... Stryker and I felt that this would be a much safer place to live and train...

The years had passed, and the occasional battle had broken-out thanks to Kahn's forces trying to take-over Edenia... Stryker and I fought when we needed to, but otherwise kept hidden in the city... Stryker's training had paid off, and he became an excellent fighter, with and without his weapons... And my own internal changes had begun to take effect... Now I had the option of breathing in the cool, fresh air, instead of just detecting the molecules found in it... I could reveal my face and use my mouth to speak instead of an artificial mouth-piece... My original skin was gone and replaced with black, synthetic armour, but it was still a change... I had a tongue again, and it could be used to taste the sweet liquors that Edenia had to offer, as well as a pseudo-oesophagus that led to a pseudo-stomach that would store anything I ate and break it down as an alternate source of energy... My own cold, purple armour began to fall away as well... For the first time in years, I was breaking through...

I also started noticing that I could feel things now... Heat, cold... Pain... The pain had begun once my armour began to fall off... It was like my skin was peeling off, which didn't even make sense, as my armour wasn't connected to my nerves as I was being built... As well, my body began to produce much more smoke for no reason... And my bots began to malfunction...

I remember one evening, as I meditated, I felt a gutting pain in my abdomen... Kabal was being attacked, and was losing... My former bots were healing him as he fought, but not as fast as they could... Once Kabal had hit the floor, I knew that he would die... But his pursuer got careless and left him as is... The fact that I was able to feel his pain from a different realm surprised me, and I focused and concentrated and forced the nano-bots that Kabal carried to repair him as organically as possible... Because of the great distance, I strained my mind to do this, and when he was finally saved, I collapsed and shut down for several weeks...

The ordeal had damaged my body, my mind, and my mechanics... I could no longer control my robotic functions at their full capacity, and had even lost some functions, as well as portions of my memory... The smoke continued being produced in alarming amounts from my body, and I knew that this was unnatural for me...

Stryker had moved me to a new location... Apparently another war had broken out, after so many years of decent peace... Shao Kahn was dead; Shang Tsung and another sorcerer named ``Quan Chi'' had built up an army of mummies and started another onslaught for control of Outworld, Edenia, and eventually, Earthrealm. There were rumours that Earthrealm was asked to help in this war as well, and that Liu Kang was dead... I was definitely surprised by this, but I was in too much pain to move... I needed to meditate more and work my way through this pain to function properly... I needed to meditate for an indefinite amount of time, and I couldn't hold Stryker back any longer... He was self-reliant now and could get out of there, and if he was lucky, get back to Earthrealm without any problem... I told Stryker this, and to leave me where I was... This would be his chance for freedom, and my chance for pure solitude to heal... Stryker understood me like a brother, and as difficult as it was for him, he left me to my meditation...

Advance species from other realms to perfection; create unity amongst all peoples. Those were the sentences that rang through my mind and woke me up... My body was no longer in pain, and I was able to move properly now, more-or-less healed and able to somewhat function... I recognised the voice pattern in my mind... I was on the same frequency as my former nemesis, Sektor... Unit LK-9T9. DO NOT CORRECT ME, YOU MINISCULE PILE OF BOLTS! It turns out that he's somehow elevated his own status from mindless machine, to a leader of mindless machines... I scanned every message as best as I could, and learned everything that I needed... An alliance with a Dragon King, and an Oni-Sorcerer... What was this war coming to? I fought through every ounce of pain to find his location in Earthrealm... The new Lin Kuei base? Searching for Grandmaster Sub-Zero?! That was indeed a surprise to me... I located a heavily-guarded portal that would take me to this base... I couldn't believe my own scanners... I would finally be able to go home...

Despite the pain that came with it, I managed to Cloak myself and teleport through the portal completely unnoticed... No machine, no mummy, and no ``Oni'' flinched as I passed through, and none would stop me from finding Sektor... He put me through this nightmare for far too long... If I he had not pursued us as per his orders... I would have not tried to reason with him and ended up being captured... I'd have stayed with Sub-Zero, and I'd have been Human... I will deactivate you Sektor, once and for all... Your hive mentality will be your downfall...Your machines will not cause anymore pain... And when your system crashes, I will finally be free of my mechanical bonds... I can tell that my body is dying, and that my nano-technology has become too exhausted to be efficient anymore...If it is my time to go, then this will be the last thing I do... That is my promise, Sektor... I'm coming for you...

Author : Jerrod Therace

Creation date: 2005-11-20-19-28

Modification date: 2005-11-20-19-28