HOPE: The sender and receiver work on a plan to take on the same enemy.
DESTINED: The sender recognizes the receiver from a dream, a past life, or a vision.
(For Hanzo from Noob Saibot *cracks knuckles*)
𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐎𝐓 𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒 . . . ( 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫 ) || @shadowedsoulss || accepting
HOPE: The sender and receiver work on a plan to take on the same enemy.
DESTINED: The sender recognizes the receiver from a dream, a past life, or a vision.
▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || The darkness in the Netherrealm is not absence - it is weight, it is pressure, it is a substance that seeps into the marrow and folds the soul into itself. Hanzo Hasashi lies upon the obsidian slab, the remnants of his flesh singed and torn, eyes wide yet seeing only void. Here, the world does not speak in sound; it speaks in pain, in the slow erosion of being. The fire does not merely burn; it knows his name, it knows every secret sinew, every tendon and nerve, every shard of memory, and it hammers at each until they shatter.
Chains of blackened iron bite into his wrists and ankles, drawing blood that turns to vapor before it can fall. The claws of the Netherrealm rake at his mind, peeling the man from the husk, unspooling every tether that bound him to the life he once cherished. Faces of family, of Shirai Ryu, of his wife and child - they are flickering mirages, torn from him with each agonized heartbeat. The echo of their names is a whip against his consciousness, lashing, twisting, reminding him of what was stolen, what can never be returned.
And across the void, from shadow’s pit, Noob Saibot watches. His words slide from the dark, serpentine, heavy as poisoned chains - an offer, not of brotherhood, but of strategy. Join me, the abyss says. Together we shall crush Earthrealm beneath heel and silence the resistance.
And in the crucible of suffering, the soul fractures. Hanzo screams, a soundless, shuddering rupture that shakes the walls of his prison. Fire engulfs him, not in the way of warmth or light, but in the way of a predator, an entity that consumes and reconfigures. Every nerve becomes a live wire, every breath a rasping chord of torment. His limbs convulse; his own blood becomes the ink of a hellish script that writes vengeance upon his very bones. The body that once bore honor is nothing more than kindling, the memory of Hanzo Hasashi folding in on itself, folding away like ashes in a funeral pyre. He is being unmade. He is being forged. Hanzo Hasashi is flayed of softness until there is only Scorpion; a revenant wreathed in fire, a vessel of vengeance born anew in each cruel exhalation of the inferno.
And then the void answers with cold. Shadows slither through him, curling around shattered sinews, weaving into his marrow. The pain does not relent; it sharpens, becomes articulate, becomes a teacher. They whisper his name; Hanzo. Hasashi. They do not offer comfort. They offer purpose. The shadow enters, not as friend, not as guide, but as inevitable. It binds to the flame, and the flame binds to the grief. Together they form a new pulse, a single heartbeat of fury, sorrow, and hatred made corporeal.
From the wreckage of his flesh and the fragments of his spirit, a new being awakens. The eyes flare with a hellfire not of this realm. The voice that emerges is ragged, molten, a growl that carries both the memory of love and the weight of death. The chains around him shiver as if acknowledging the transformation; the slab of blackened stone does not burn him - it recognizes him. Across the void, Noob Saibot sees it all. The shadow trembles with an echo of recognition, a sliver of remembrance from a time before memory. He speaks, offering the union of their powers against Earthrealm’s fragile defenders, but Scorpion does not answer at once. He is not yet complete. The vestiges of Hanzo howl through him - anger, sorrow, grief, despair - every emotion sharpened by the impossibility of undoing the death that made him necessary.
The voice of Noob is patient, pulling at threads that are frayed but not broken. At first, Scorpion recoils. He has been forged in solitude; vengeance has always been a path walked alone. To invite another is to invite weakness. Yet the visions come - images of Earthrealm warriors laughing, living, their ephemeral happiness like sparks across a void of endless night. Fire sears through his chest at the sight, and in that pain, something deeper than wrath ignites; conviction. A bond stronger than shadow or flame forms between grief and purpose, and he bends to it willingly.
At last, Scorpion rises. The flames lick the edge of his newly formed soul. His body is reborn from pain, his mind tempered by torment, and the whispering chains of the Netherrealm yield to his will. He does not speak, not yet, for no words can capture the crucible from which he has emerged. Instead, he looks to the abyss where Noob Saibot waits and acknowledges it with a slow, deliberate exhalation of hellfire. Not trust, not camaraderie - only recognition of necessity, the recognition that even a revenant may find an ally when the weight of the world threatens to crush all that once was.
Together, shadows and fire, they march into the battlefield. Each step scorches the ground, each motion a testament to a soul remade by agony. The whispering flames and writhing shadows intertwine, their unity born not of choice, but of irrevocable grief, sorrow, and the merciless conviction of vengeance reborn. ▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 ||
