Including Erron Black, Johnny Cage (both younger & older), Raiden, Bi-Han, Mileena and Kano.This is written with affection and there is angst amongst the comedy. I’ve put the Kano bit at the bottom so if you don’t like him you can ignore it.
Erron Black: You’ve seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Erron is worse than the Black Knight.
He’s taken you into the jungle near Kotal’s palaces. The lush foliage is full of exotic birds, flowers with delicate and alluring perfume that only stoke your desire to get to know Erron that bit better. It’s also full of terrifying beasts with too many teeth and claws, and whilst Erron manages to take down that… thing…. he doesn't come out unscathed.
He’s spilling blood at an alarming rate, and he’s swaying on his feet, but “tis but a scratch” and “I’ve had worse”. You only manage to get him to sit his (magnificent) arse down and to let you tend to his (horrifying) wounds with the threat of taking away his hip flask.
Luckily you’d packed your travel medikit and through sitting on his chest to stop him moving and several phials of superglue and all your steristrips, his leg is attached once again. Sort of.
He insists on you kissing it better “but it’s your leg not your mouth” and then stupid idiot faints from shock (from the injury, your technique isn't that bad).
Luckily Ermac has sensed something is wrong and appears with a small pack of servants and a litter to carry Erron back to the palace. 3 days after Erron has recovered he invites you back into the jungle.
More kombatants after the cut!
Johnny Cage:
Younger!Johnny is enough to make you (almost) walk out and never come back. The man is a BABY. He’s admittedly a very cute baby when he’s pouting and shiny eyed and holding out his hand to show you the tiny bruise.
One day he’ll tell you he behaves like this to try to get some attention from his parents, they’d loved him when he was small, but as he grew older they gave him less and less attention so acting like a younger child was the only way he knew how to get attention and care.
He’s taken you picnicking and you’re both rolling down the hill, laughing like hyenas. At the bottom he twists his ankle. It swells up immediately and starts to turn purple. He’s really trying not to cry, and you actually feel sorry for him because a twisted ankle hurts like a bitch. Whilst you go searching for a branch to use as a crutch, he has a little sniffle, and the red eyes are testament to this when you return. But he really does try not to yelp too much and too loudly when you’re slowly walking (hobbling) back to the car. After you’ve got him back to the medi-centre and he’s got the attention of all the staff, you make your way back to your quarters. The next morning you’re awoken by flower deliveries, chocolate deliveries and tweet after tweet devoted to your ‘bravery upon saving him’.
Older!Johnny soon stopped with the baby routine when he actually had a baby. Sonya wasn't going to tend to him and Cassie, so he soon bucked up his ideas. He can deal with minor injuries no problem, but if you’re with him he’s still going to pull the pout and “kiss it better” routine. He’s learnt to love his scars (older action stars need a few scars, right?)
He’s taken you to an intimate restaurant for dinner, and you’re walking back to the car when a bunch of drunk idiots start yelling that he’s a washed-up fraud. Johnny ignores them, holding your hand a little tighter when he sees you upset and scared. Then the idiots attack him, and he puts them down, hard, but gets caught across the arm with crowbar. He tries laughing through the pain but you know it’s bad when the jokes stop. He lets you cradle him gently whilst you wait for the Police and Ambulance, and once the morphine has kicked in (administered by the star struck paramedic), he admits you’re his beautiful bunny and he loves you.
Raiden: Pain and injury are nothing when the fate of the realms it at stake! Or so Raiden claimed.
The man is SUCH a baby. Gods get colds too (when they’re run down after severe exertion such as fighting Shinnok). He makes SO much fuss you’d think it was the end of times. He must have tea and he must have it now. He must have softer tissues, and he must have them now. You’ve run out of lemons and there is no more ginger tea left, and Sainsbury’s can’t deliver until tomorrow. You are so fucked. Fujin has disappeared because he KNOWS how Raiden gets when he’s sick and he’s not going through that again.
Raiden is in bed for 5 days. 5 LONG days. The floor of his bedroom is covered in more tissues than a 14 year old boy’s. It’s only when you pointedly mutter loud enough for Raiden to hear that “Shinnok would be a better patient than you” that Raiden bucks his ideas up and stops whinging quite so much. He apologises for being such a bad patient, and his puppy-dog eyes (who taught him that? That’s not fair!) are impressively moving enough that you sigh and let him hug you tightly. You also make sure to keep a secret supply of tea and tissues just in case you have to go through that again.
Mileena: Being cared for is an alien concept to Mileena. If she injured herself, Shang Tsung would punish her with a cruel spell and his sharp tongue, and she’d be left to treat her wounds by herself. After she left his ‘care’, Mileena didn’t expect to find someone to treat her with kindness, to be tender and hold her hand when it all got too much.
Yet again, Kotal tries to strike at Mileena. She strikes down his forces with blinding ferocity but pays little heed to her own safety, so when she returns to you, battered, bruised and bloody, she’s puzzled at your concern. At first she tries to brush you aside, but you won’t take no for an answer. You take your time to clean and bind her wounds, kissing the bandage gently each time, your touch as gentle as you can be. When you bind her final wound, she looks at you with tears in her eyes. All of a sudden she knows what she’s missed, and she files away the anger the flares at Shang Tsung and Shao Kahn, she will use that against them when the time comes. For now, she’s going to demand more sweet words and gentle kisses from you.
Bi-Han: Growing up in the Lin-Kuei is hard. There are no comforting hugs or someone to “kiss it better”, no-one to wipe away those tears and tell you how brave you are. Unless you’re dying, you can deal with it yourself and you’d better be quiet about it. Bi-Han learnt to be quiet after he was punished for crying when he broke his wrist. Kuai watching open-mouthed as Bi-Han got higher and higher up the snow covered tree until he missed his footing and fell, landing with a scream. Grandmaster told Bi-Han that the break was punishment for disobeying the rules.
Bi-Han staggers home 2 days late and you’ve been so worried about him. His skin is white as chalk and clammy to the touch. He’s burning up, but shrugs away your concerns. He slumps against the bathroom wall during the shower he insisted he needed, and thank the Gods you hear the sound of the curtain rail breaking. You stroke his head whilst you wait for the ambulance, talking all the time to reassure him you’re there, and he’ll be ok. He doesn’t want you visiting him in the hospital, but you ignore him and stay every day well beyond official visiting hours. He’s been home 3 days when he takes your hand and presses a kiss to your forehead, whispering his love to you. No-one ever stayed with him or cared for him like you. He really does love you.
Kano: He’s been a bad boy for a long time, so he’s had more than his fair share of injuries. He’s got a very high pain threshold, and he uses it to his advantage in a fight. When his opponent sees Kano shrug off injuries only to roar and jump back into the fray, they literally shit themselves.
You’re partying in the Fight Club when SF burst through the front doors. Most of the patrons scream and run blindly through smoke bombs thrown to try to disguise that SF have likely too few bodies to take Kano down. Kano smiles and carries on downing his pint.
He takes down soldiers with knives, fists and feet, but gets caught by a baton to the side of his head. Luckily his cybernetic eye takes much of the blow, but his vision goes strange and his head is ringing. It’s him versus the last soldier. Kano staggers to his feet whilst you hide under the table, and with every thud of fist against flesh you jump, preying it’s not Kano. The soldier falls and Kano calls to you, staggering back onto his seat, grabbing a beer on the way. He hands you his phone and asks you to call his ‘doctor’, pauses long enough to kiss you, down the beer, then passes out on your shoulder. The doctor patches him up, no long-term harm done. And whilst still in the hospital bed, Kano has you steal a white coat and perform several medicals on him. After all, it wasn’t his dick that got hurt, was it?
