thecapitol | (no subject)

Who | Ermac and you!
What | Combat practice and demanding answers
Where | The training centre and the District 12 suite
When | Thursday the 9th

A

Ermac had awoken in the Capitol, thoroughly disoriented from the sudden silencing of his many souls. They were still there, he could feel them there, but their unending chatter and screams had been muffled to a sort of a dull roar at its loudest. It was like part of his consciousness had suddenly been denied to him. Not only that, but his telekinesis doesn't respond; there's not even a glow in response to his mental commands. Desperate for something, anything, familiar to ground himself with, Ermac soon found himself in the training facility. It didn't take him long to pick out one of the tougher training dummies to start pummeling.

Anyone coming across him will find him employing a wide range of martial arts maneuvers against the hapless dummy while some of its stuffing occasionally flies out.

B

Now that he's had a chance to vent, Ermac can be found wandering the District 12 suite, looking very unhappy about the situation he's found himself. The second he notices someone else, he immediately turns and heads in their direction.

"You! We have questions, and you will answer them!"

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He takes his cup and sits down.

"Then perhaps we should start before our 'birth.'"

Ermac adds a generous spoonful of honey to his tea and stirs it.

"The Mortal Kombat tournament was established among the gods as a means of giving Earthrealm some means of defense against Outworld. Our Kahn had been trying to conquer Earthrealm for centuries, but their guardian, the thunder god Raiden, had used tactics such as the tournament to prevent him from merging our realms."

He takes a sip, relishing the flavour.

"Shao Kahn needed to win just one more tournament in order to win Earthrealm, so he created us to ensure his victory."

Given the complete lack of a smile on his lips, it's clear that this plan didn't go well.

"Raiden, however...has always had luck on his side."

There are a lot of words in there that Signless simply doesn't understand, but from context he gets enough of the gist not to need to interrupt. He's been in Panem long enough to simply accept a lot of the strange worlds his fellow Offworlders speak of. Conquest, too, is not unfamiliar to him: trolls were already pushing the boundaries of their Empire beyond their home planet in his time. Kahn, Empress. Thunder god, Alien government. A simple enough puzzle to put together even with the pieces painted to look different.

"So you were born -- created -- to fight. And you were defeated?"

"Yes."

He admits it with no small amount of bitterness.

"As we said, Raiden has always been lucky. We house the souls of every Edenian warrior who fell in Shao Kahn's last conquest, and Raiden's champion defeated us only because he got lucky."

Another sip to steady himself.

"Our master chose to invade Earthrealm when the tournaments failed, and we would have succeeded had he only been more patient. Our forces had already overwhelmed their defenses, and we could have occupied their realm until a further ten tournaments had been won, but Shao Kahn tried to merge the realms."

It had been a rough war at first, but toward the end...he'd failed his first real battle, but that war had given him many sweet victories to relish for years afterward.

"The Elder Gods saw this as a violation of the rules, and killed him. We house his soul now."

He says it as if possessing his creator's soul were no more significant than inheriting some old clothes.

"I... I can't imagine what that's like," Signless says, because if nothing else it's completely true. He has no frame of reference save his own experience dreaming the life of the troll he was a universe ago, and that is nowhere near the same as being thousands of fallen warriors all shoved into a singular existence.

Well. No way to learn but to ask.

"I hope it isn't forward of me to ask, but do you remember all of the lives that you've lived prior to being you?"

He nods.

"All of their memories are ours. We benefit from their experience."

But...something was amiss here. He frowns and takes a sip of tea.

"They are...quiet here. Present, but muffled. Their memories are more difficult to call up."

At least he had a quarter of a decade of his own experiences and memories to draw on.

He takes a sip of his own tea, nodding thoughtfully. This at least is something he can speak to.

"Our hosts have a system in place that dampens abilities that might give us unfair advantages over other competitors. Those among our number who can wield magic, who have psychic powers: they find themselves unable to access them here. They took away my dream visions of my own past life; I haven't had one since I arrived, except in an arena where that dampening was lifted. If they saw even that as too powerful to allow me to keep, I imagine your many, many lifetimes would concern them the same way."