johnshi

5

(Adjusted and edited version)

A few months had passed since the battle against Shang Tsung and Quan Chi. The new empress was now ruling with her father and her sister at her side, guiding her in her new duties.

That meant it was finally time for Earthrealms Champions to go home and rest. Raiden and Kung Lao had found their places in the world, and Kenshi had pursued his mission to take down the Yakuza, but Johnny's situation was different.

He arrived back to Earthrealm to an empty house. Not one person was there to welcome him back from all his heroic deeds. But, all his heroic deeds didn't spare him from all the angry messages and voicemails he had to answer to. Cage's agent, PR team, producers, and his now ex-wife, were the ones with the most to say. To everyone else, he just up and left, taking some sort of hiatus after his wife broke it off with him.

While he hoped he slipped away unnoticed, that wasn't the case. Cage was a high-profile action movie star, and his departure did indeed not go unnoticed by the media, let alone Cris.

Instead of a big welcome home, surrounded by loved ones, Johnny came home to divorce papers and articles of his divorce, and boy, oh, boy, were they not pretty. His PR team and agent were riding on his back about the whole thing. Telling him he had to fix this. So that's what he did. Johnny went home and got straight to work.

First, it was the break up with Cris, to war, to work, and then losing his home. Because if Cris didn't have it all before, she did now. She managed to take almost everything but the clothes on his back.

Well, that's being a little overdramatic. Johnny had enough to get himself a decent sized apartment and had enough to live off of till he got his next gig, so maybe he didn't lose it all, but it definitely felt like his livelihood was stripped from him.

With his personal life in shambles, he did however have one good thing going for him.

He and Takahashi had kept in touch. Texting and calling one another when they could, just talking about all  the things happening in their lives. Kenshi had told Johnny about his new gig with the FBI and how they were helping him take the Yakuza down, and Johnny told Kenshi all about the messy divorce and gave updates on his project to make his movie, "Mortal Kombat." Kenshi had been his saving grace through the whole divorce-. The amount of night calls and endless hours of talking Johnny through what he should do was unconscionable. Yet, he was glad to help him. After everything Cage did for him, he felt it was the least he could do.

They didn't exactly have all the time in the world; they both had tight schedules, and thrilling lives. So, even if there were times where they'd go weeks without contacting one another, it was still something Johnny could fall back on if he needed it most.
——-

Johnny sat at his desk, staring at a half-written script for his movie. He was stumped, and his brain felt like it was melting out of his skull. The more and more he tried to put something down on the doc, the more he felt like he was having some kind of bad trip. Johnny attempted to proofread his work, but it all blurred together, a mess of scrambled words.

Cage shuts his laptop letting out a groan of frustration. He picked up his glass of whisky from the right of his laptop and took a long drink before setting it down with a hiss of pain when it hit the back of his throat. "Fuck this shit." he cursed. Johnny pulled out his phone from his pocket and sat back to take a small step away from work.
——-

Kenshi was also struggling with work. He was sitting in front of the computer at his office, trying to find any lead on their next mission.

He sat back into his chair as he let out a long exhausted sigh. Takahshi's head was killing him; Sento had been a great help, but it was still difficult to see some things. Like stuff on computers, TV, and phones. He had to narrow in on them more, and it just felt like he needed glasses; it was so blurry.