#subscorpweek2025

The Rules

We call them rules, but they're actually the guidelines that we'll be using to run this event.

1 / The “Sub” in SubScorp is Kuai Liang.

We love Bi-Han and we love BiHanzo but this week is Kuai Liang’s time to shine.

2 / Any medium is allowed!

Art, fanfics, manips, gifs, macaroni art, text posts, memes and anything else we haven't thought of will be welcomed here. If you create it, we want to showcase it!

3 / Don’t be a thief!

Please make sure that your work is fully your own! Use of official Mortal Kombat imagery is allowed but please do not use the work of other artists if you do not want your bones stolen.

4 / Prompts do not need to be done in order!

Welcome to SubScorp Week 2023 where the prompts are made up and the order doesn’t matter! If inspiration strikes you outside of the official day, feel free to act on it! We only ask that you wait until the week officially starts to start posting!

5 / There is no time limit for the week.

We will still reblog tagged work well after the week has ended if there are still people creating for it. If you are reading this 10 years into the future, you are still welcome to participate 👀

6 / 18+ work will be allowed.

But please be aware that Tumblr is more likely to flag NSFW art. All work should be tagged in the correct manner and please make use of warnings, triggering or otherwise.

* We will be reblogging all Subscorp-Week work over to this blog! Please tag @subscorp-week to help us see your work 😉

Those fights are perhaps the most interesting thing this realm has to offer. They quench Hanzo’s incessant anger, give him an outlet for his itching hands with the sting of cracking bone and the heat of fresh blood. They wash away the pain and give him a goal. To survive. By any means necessary, and with the greatest brutality he can manage.

“Home”—or what counts as it—is not so engaging. Quan Chi’s palace is merely a stable for his playthings, for the revenants he has chained and the Netherrealm whelp that whimper at his heels. The demons and ghosts that follow Quan Chi are spineless things, and the revenants do little more than spar when commanded and kneel for their master when not; pets without purpose; wind up husks waiting for their key.

It is pathetic to see. If Hanzo were not loyal to Quan Chi himself, he would spend little time around such souls. Those too weak to remember their own grief. Those who only seem to come alive when Quan Chi commands it, their bodies still and drifting otherwise, an echo of whoever died in the same skin.

Perhaps… somewhere inside, they are more like Hanzo. Tied together by pain and regret, by impressions of strife marked into them by the world above. But if they are, they do not show it. Revenants and wraiths do not stand on equal footing. That, Hanzo learned a long time ago. He is a soul that persists of his own volition, for his own reasons, his own ends. The others only exist because Quan Chi demands it. Without him… hm… Hanzo believes they may just fade away. 

A pity, really. But as of now, Hanzo can only bear to be around them when called upon, or in the waking moments when he cannot think clearly enough to remember how to leave. 

Today is one such day. 

Time is meaningless. There is no moon or sun, no rest for weary eyes. Hanzo only knows time has passed because his heart aches as soon as he has the awareness to feel it. An ache of pain, of loss, of further distance between this life and his human one. 

He stumbles through the halls of Quan Chi’s court, minor demons skittering around his feet, each turn feeling nauseating, his mind searching for something he does not understand, for a coal of grief that feels like it is burning him from the inside out. 

He can’t… remember. Something has come loose, something important, something that has faded too far for him to keep hold of it.

“Scorpion…”

Hanzo blinks, the world clicking into hazy focus. He has found his way to the temple room, Quan Chi’s eyes resting on him with a heavy curiosity from where he sits on Shinnok’s throne.

“What brings you to me today?” he asks, closing a large tome resting in his lap and handing it off to a passing wing worm.

Hanzo opens his mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a rumble of fire. No tongue, no lips. He groans, clawing at a face without skin, without eyes, roaring in pain as he falls to his knees.

“Ah, yes.” Quan Chi gets up with a measure of disinterest, walking over to Hanzo until he can brush a hand over his skull. “You are due for a rebinding, aren’t you…”

Hanzo can’t understand what he’s saying. It feels as if his world is falling apart and his body going with. Hellfire rakes down through his chest, smoke filling the space where lungs used to be, an endless chorus of pained screams echoing in his memory. No order, no clarity. He feels lost to it, burning away in the throes of grief.

“Scorpion.” Quan Chi snaps his fingers in front of Hanzo’s face, tone lofty, as if trying to get the attention of an unruly child. Hanzo drags his gaze up to him, vision blurred, and sees the slight smile that graces the sorcerer’s face at his obedience. Quan Chi draws a sigil in the air that presses forward to land on Hanzo’s forehead, the contact stinging for a moment before Hanzo goes dizzy.

“I have a gift for you,” he hears Quan Chi mutter, the sound washing through him, forcing his eyes up once more. “A reminder of the pain that tethers you here. A reminder of what you must be.” 

The sorcerer steps aside then, eyes flashing, and a figure appears in the room behind him. 

A blue uniform caked in blood. The Lin Kuei crest pinned proudly to his chest. Cold mist pluming around his mouth, obscuring his face in a veil of vapor.

Hanzo’s stomach burns.

“Sub-Zero,” he growls, pushing unsteadily to his feet.

The man cocks his head, hands tightening at his sides. “Shirai Ryu dog,” he says in return, tone cold and flat. “Have you come to finish the job?” 

The voice is wrong. Hanzo knows the voice is wrong, and yet that does not stop the rage that ignites in his bones. He lunges forward, tackling Sub-Zero to the floor and closing his hands tight around his neck.  

“Lin Kuei scum!” he hisses. 

Ice. A sword plunging into his chest. Harumi screaming for him from a room he cannot reach as he bleeds out himself. Cruel laughter echoing through the doorway. The final silence that ended his world. 

Yes… yes—

“You murdered my family!” 

“Yes, he did.” Quan Chi’s hand slides around Hanzo’s neck like a collar, his nails scraping something into the reforming skin, magic pressing into his bones. It stokes everything brighter, makes his hands feel as if they could tear through stone. 

The sorcerer’s lips brush against his ear. “And what are you going to do about it, wraith?”

Hanzo growls under his breath again, the world snapping back into focus. Everything seems clear again, the pain fresh, his rage unending. He leans down past the cold mist blanketing Sub-Zero’s face to hold his gaze.

“I am going to kill you once more,” Hanzo hisses, voice low and deadly. “And when your soul finds its way back to me, I will kill you again. And again. Until you cannot remember any death other than that by my hands.” 

Sub-Zero—the one with the wrong face and the wrong voice and the wrong eyes that seem to spark with something as Hanzo’s hands squeeze further—smiles. There is blood in his teeth. He is too young. He is a man that Hanzo hates and a man he does not know, a proxy in a war that has taken both their lives. 

“Scorpion…” he mumbles, voice choked to a rasp as Hanzo presses harder on his windpipe. This time there is… recognition when he says it, a voice there beyond what Quan Chi summons in his revenants.

Cold hands skirt over Hanzo’s back, poking gently as if to feel the weight of his body, before Sub-Zero’s fingers suddenly plunge into the cloth, the flesh, the bone. Hanzo winces, ghostly blood dampening his uniform as ice lances out from Sub-Zero’s palms and into Hanzo’s body, spreading like crystals through his skin, growing like an arctic parasite. It is as if the man beneath him is trying to bind them closer, trying to carve out something in Hanzo for himself.

“You deserve… every death that came to you,” Sub-Zero spits, lips curling into a snarl. “I hope… we…” he wheezes. “I hope we rot in hell together.” 

The yellow cracks of Quan Chi’s magic flare up against his skin, painfully bright, and Sub-Zero’s jaw tightens as he holds Hanzo’s gaze, his limbs going tight. Then Hanzo’s fingers crush down, cracking skin and spine and trachea, and with one final choked off gasp as his neck pops, Sub-Zero bursts apart in a cloud of smoke.

The room regains silence. 

For a few moments, Hanzo hears nothing but the heaving of his own breath and the rush of adrenaline in his ears. 

Then, a hand lands on his shoulder. 

“Good dog,” Quan Chi murmurs, running his fingers through the reformed hair on Hanzo’s scalp. “It’s always such a treat to see you two play together. Do you feel better?”

Yes. Hanzo feels whole again, awake. He cannot remember how he came here, he cannot remember a life without this pain, without the hate and anger that burns like a lifeline in his chest. It is a glorious feeling. A fuel for everything that he does and everything that he is.

“Yes,” he whispers aloud, still kneeling with his hands splayed on the tiles over the impression of a bulging throat.

“Good.” There is another light tug to his hair before Hanzo hears Quan Chi walk back to his throne. “If you wish to meddle with him more, he will be resummoned in the courtyard later. Otherwise, do not disturb me again.”

Hanzo hums in response, but he hardly hears him. 

His thumb twitches against the floor, fingers clenching slightly around nothing, his palms still cold. Sub-Zero’s—no… that can’t be his name… His face remains clear in Hanzo’s mind. The way he seemed to… remember. The way Hanzo’s touch seemed to wake him up.