They crawled like crippled insects, scuttling closer and closer.

Falling all over each other. Trampling each other. Lurching. Reeling.

Kenshi couldn't see them, or even sense them, without Sento. There was nothing there to sense. But he could hear them. He could hear them drag their rotten bodies across the sensitive blade where he abandoned it in their flight. He could hear their bare teeth chattering in anticipation, their jaws snapping. He could hear the whisper of the wind through their thin, delicate hair. He could hear chunks of dead flesh squelch and splat as it peeled away and hit the snow. He could hear the slither of whatever was left of their insides tugging on the white powder. Maggots wriggling. Dirt breaking as more ripped themselves free, howling in pain or pleasure. He couldn't tell.

He could smell their decay. Centuries of putrefaction. Of molder. Dense, cloying, vile. Unholy. Like rotten eggs. Sulfur. As soon as the breeze hit and he sucked in a breath it stuck to his nose, stuck to his throat. Coating. He resisted the urge to retch, blindfold luckily soaking up the tears that burned his eyes. Desperate for air. Brittle bones crunching and falling away at the slightest touch, and yet they continued their advance. The fabric of Hanzo's shirt slipped through his fingers and he panicked, scrabbling blindly for someone to hold on to. "Hanzo?"

"Here, friend," he grunted in front of him, hurling a fireball at the general mass.

He sensed all of them. He heard the smooth hiss of Sub-Zero's ice. Jax's metal fists hitting things. Raiden's long, drawn-out cries of exertion and the crackles of lightning all around them. Screams of pain. Kung Lao and Liu Kang's high-pitched cries and the sounds of their fists breaking their pursuers.

Sento drowned out all of them.

It called to him, SCREAMED to him, urged his very soul to retrieve it. Begged him and every moral and ethic nerve in his body to not leave the talisman, to NEVER leave his ancestors. Their screams, their wails blocked out his other senses. Filled his ears. Hundreds of souls, crying all at once. In hundreds of different pitches and hundreds of different speeds and urgencies. They fixated his mind, ghosting back and forth until they fired instead of his synapses. Their faces projected themselves behind his lids and burned themselves there. His gut twisted, his heart bled in sorrow. He couldn't leave them. They COMMANDED him. They hypnotized him. They seduced him. Sento consumed his mind, lying there in the snow beneath the writhing floor of undead. He couldn't leave it . . . Well, maybe if he made a break for it, he could . . . If he didn't stop, if he made an energy shield and trampled over whatever he had to, he could . . .

He very nearly obeyed, pushing past whoever backed into him - Hanzo, but someone grabbed his arm. Someone with skin, he noted in relief, albeit cold skin. "What are you doing?!" Sub-Zero yelled. He gently pulled Kenshi's arm, inching them back step-by-step. He heard metal on metal, heard Jax's slight grunt of pain. They stopped moving. And he knew.

He knew they were cornered against the graveyard fence.

Sento screamed his name. His warrior ancestors let out a screeching chorus so loud in his ears and his mind that it pained him. He staggered back, careening straight into Sub-Zero's arms. "TAKAHASHI KENSHIIIIIIIiiiiiiiii . . . "

He pushed against him. "Let me go!"

"No!"

"But Sento! I cannot leave it-"

He leaned too close to the mob. Lunging forward, a slimy, boney hand clamped around his outstretched wrist. A panicked cry tore itself from his lips and he flailed violently to throw off the creature. He sensed a surge of power, the hair on his neck and arms rose, and the monster holding onto him exploded. Bits and flecks of rotten gore and things he didn't want to guess spattered his face and lips.

"Leave it, Takahashi Kenshi!" Raiden cried. His voice pointed away and back towards Kenshi. He was searching for a way out.

Kenshi knew.

There was no way out. Not while Raiden couldn't teleport. Not while Hanzo could only take one person at a time.

There was no way out.

Cassie's palm collided into Jin's cheek with a sharp smack! She knew it was a good hit - she threw her shoulder into it and everything! So hard she spun him completely around. Fire erupted in her hand and fingers like a volcano and she hopped back, shaking out her hand in surprise. "Geez, Jin, I hit you so hard I hurt myself! What do you stuff in those chubby cheeks?"

He staggered around, wobbling like a top. As soon as he regained his balance he growled in pain and frustration through his teeth. "Impressive, Cass. The bitch slap. Very classy," he muttered, rubbing the five-star welt already reddening on his cheek.

Her confident smirk dropped like she was slapped. She sneered at him, "You're just jealous!"

"Of what?"

"You can't do the bitch slap or you'll look like a douche!"

"You wanna come over here and see if I care?"

"Hey, JACQUI!" Takeda yelled out, too loud and obvious to be talking only to her. "Do you think they REALIZE their sparring matches consist of eighty percent trash talk and only twenty percent, y'know, SPARRING?" He shot pointed glances at each of them.

"You know, I don't think they do, Takeda," she said lightly, shaking her head. "Kinda bums me out!"

Jin turned away from Cassie to fire back. Big mistake. "Oh, like you two're ones to talk! When you two spar all you do is sweet talk each other-"

Cassie sprinted forward and lowered her shoulder like a line backer, barreling into his stomach. A weak scream was all he had to show his surprise before the blow knocked his breath out of him, and he went down under her in a tangle of flailing brown patterns. His back and head hit the floor of the training room hard, his staff clattered from his hand. She straddled his diaphragm, jamming her knees into his arms to hold him down. Ripping both her guns from the holsters, she twirled them once around her finger before pointing them level with Jin's eyes.

"You're done," she said.

He blinked hard through his fog and instinctually started to squirm, to break free of her hold, but she shoved the guns closer, nearly touching his eyeballs. Jin froze as soon as he saw them, lips unconsciously curling up into a childish pout.

"I said you're done," Cassie snarled. Jin opened his mouth for one last jab, but a dangerous glint in Cassie's eyes must have convinced him otherwise. He nodded grudgingly.

"Fine. I yield."

Cassie rocked back and sat on his stomach to gloat, holding her guns out over him. She hit the release and the empty magazines slid out and clattered on Jin's chest.

"Okay, okay, you won. Now get off," Jin wheezed. "You're heavier than you look. Been stealing cake from the mess hall?"

She scowled down at him for a moment, but the light grin on Jin's face told her he was joking. She clamored off of him and helped him up, chuckling lightly. "Good match, Jin."

"Yeah, you too. I won't go easy on you next time."

"Me either," she countered evenly. She gestured to Takeda and Jacqui. "You two want the floor?"

"Nah," Takeda said, shaking his head. "Jacqui and I are going to go bother General Blade. I wanna know if she's heard from dad yet."

"He's only been on that mission for, like, a week," Cassie said. "He probably hasn't had time to report in yet."

"Yeah, that could be, but we haven't heard anything from my dad, either," Jacqui told them. "That's weird for him. He usually calls in the second he can, and after a week. . . I'm not worried yet, just a little curious."

"His comm device could've busted, too. You never know," Jin said, shrugging.

Cassie shook her head. "Seems unlikely, considering Kenshi never called in either," she said matter-of-factly.

Takeda squared his shoulder to her. "So, what? Are you saying you think something happened?" he questioned, giving her a hard glare in Jacqui's defense. "There're tons of places where comm devices don't work. They could've been sent somewhere deep in Outworld, or the Netherrealm."

"I'm not saying anything happened, just that it's weird for neither of them to have called in. Calm down," she replied, squaring her own shoulders and stepping towards him.

"That's what I'm thinking. I just wanna be sure," Jacqui responded calmly, hoping to end what may turn into a dispute. For good measure she took a cautious step in between the two of them. "I'm not asking General Blade to tell me the specifics of their mission, just where they went. She can tell me that, right?"

"She can. Not sure if she will," Cassie sighed. "I'll go with you. Batting my eyelashes never really got me anywhere with her, but it can't hurt, right?"