"The Tournament" - Part Five

Part Five

            Training, fighting, training, fighting, and then more training and fighting.

            That was all Margie ever did over the last several months since she and Toby had been locked in this single dimension. Margie was so driven from her quest to end Shang Tsung and his tournament that she lost focus on who she was. Toby knew from the times Cara reminisced of the Time War that she was a fighter of sorts – a “gladiator” was what they called her on Gallifrey. She wouldn’t have guessed there to be one under all that blonde, white, and crazy.

            And yet, there it stood in front of her, in the form of a Filipino woman dressed like Elektra. “I know I’m only pretending to be you, but now I feel like I am you,” Toby told Margie, who practiced the techniques Raiden taught her with the sais in the T.A.R.D.I.S. console room while her companion tinkered a little with the controls.

            It was evident to Toby how they swapped roles since Margie took up her crusade.

            “You wanted the name, now you take the baggage it comes with,” Margie countered, not bothering to look Toby’s way.

            Toby’s frustrations finally boiled over. “When will this pointless mission end?!”

            “Pointless?!” Margie’s sights finally homed in on her companion. They looked exhausted to Toby, baggy with an intense fiery glare frozen in them. “That man is killing people in his death tournament! I’m trying to save lives by stopping it and him!”

            “But why is it any business of ours?! Neither of us is from this world! I just wanna go back home, Margie!”

            “You have no home! When I found you, you had no one! You have nothing to go back to!” These words, no matter how true, were more harmful than Margie intended for them to be. That much was so from the tears streaming down Toby’s face.

            The young woman left the T.A.R.D.I.S. in anger.

            Soon after Toby left, Margie heard despondent chirping nearby, finding Gizmo – her pet Mogwai and longtime companion – sitting in one of the console platform chairs that dwarfed his tiny figure. Margie hadn’t even realized he’d been there the whole time. He’d gotten so adept at appearing in and out between places that it drove his owner crazy at times.

            But no more so than at that time, when Margie snapped, “What’re you looking at, you little hairball?!” Her tone was harsh and antagonizing towards the little Mogwai; but, most of all, it was out of character for her. No matter what new body she regenerated into, Neas would’ve never been so cruel to Gizmo of all creatures.

            His chirping got gloomier and his bat-like ears drooped.

            The very sight of him broke both of Margie’s hearts. She stared at the sais in her hands, not seeming to have let go of them since Raiden presented them to her, and then afterward to her revealing ninja garb. What have I become, she subconsciously questioned.

            Ridden with guilt, she discarded her sais and went to her littlest and longest-serving companion. She dropped to her knees, the right position for one to beg for forgiveness. “Oh, Giz. I’m so sorry, lil’ buddy. I shouldn’t have yelled at you that way. I don’t even know who I am anymore…not in this body, at least. Can you forgive me?”

            The Mogwai, not the type to hold grudges, delivered a pardoning chirp.

            Margie happily stroked his small, furry head with her index finger, giving it a kiss thereafter. Though it relieved her to have Gizmo’s forgiveness, there was still the matter of a certain teenaged orphan who deserved more of an apology. Immediately, she rushed out of the T.A.R.D.I.S. to catch up with her.

            She stopped cold in her tracks once she saw Toby being abducted by a four-armed humanoid creature of immense size and build. Near it stood Shang Tsung, oozing with arrogance. He pointed a crooked finger at Margie and issued a new challenge: “Face my champion, Goro, and your ultimate death…or the girl dies!”

            They vanished in a flaming haze before Margie could move a finger.

            The scene, as well as Shang Tsung’s issued challenge, perturbed Margie. It urged her to go to Raiden and his Earthrealm defenders, relaying the news to them.

            “I should have considered her well-being in all of this,” she bemoaned. “But I was so fixated on ending Shang Tsung and this tournament of his! Now Toby could die, and it’s all because of me!”

            “Take it easy, Margie,” Sonya said. “We’ll get her back.”

            “All we need is a plan – a good one,” Liu Kang added.

            “Yes,” Raiden agreed. “If Margie faces Goro alone, she will surely perish. Shang Tsung will see to that either way.”

            It was then Margie snapped her fingers in jubilant revelation.

            “I think I’ve got just the idea,” she cheered.

-----------------

            “You’re wastin’ your time kidnappin’ me! Margie doesn’t care about me! Her head’s so far up her butt tryin’ to stop you and your tournament, she wouldn’t even know I’m gone!”

            Having a chatty mouth was always Toby’s biggest design flaw.

            And she talked most when she was afraid.

            Shang Tsung might’ve looked like a frail old man on the outside, but he still possessed powers unimaginable. It didn’t help much either for Toby to be standing in the middle of Goro’s spooky dungeon lair, with a skeleton hanging from a few shackles nearby and multiple pairs of glowing yellow eyes blinking in the distant darkness.

            “Your friend’s death is inevitable,” Shang Tsung told Toby. “Goro will decimate her in ways I have seen over many that have fallen at his might. He will separate her skin from her bones…rob her of all her limbs…perhaps even bludgeon her head into her stomach.”

            Toby was not at all disturbed by his horrid depictions. “You know, while you were tellin’ me all that, all I could think about is how shriveled your pride must be from a combination of old age and being shown up by a woman…especially one that came back from the dead.”

            There goes that chatty mouth of hers again.

            As good of a comeback as it was, it was effective enough to damage even an ego as massive as Shang Tsung’s. Infuriated, he snapped his fingers and called on Goro. Toby felt the ground beneath her feet vibrate at the stomping of his. The Shokan warrior’s imposing form was enough to terrify her, witnessing it the first time.

            “Watch yourself, girl,” Shang Tsung warned. “You can still be destroyed whether your friend accepts the challenge…or not!”