#vampire raiden

Let's go see the shiny new skins we got.

GAH HES JUST ATTRACTIVE KINDA OK

“Do you drink the color red?”

Raiden lifted his head and then gave little Cassandra, sitting on his leg, a rather confused look.

Johnny and Sonya had invited Raiden out for an afternoon picnic that had been meant for catching up as recently people had been busy and out of touch. Jax was currently grilling while Sonya and Vera wielded the knives to chop anything that needed sliced and chatted together. Johnny had been torn between chatting with the kids and Raiden and shooting off texts that were apparently ‘meant to deter anyone trying to call them’. Little Jacquiline and Cassandra were sitting on Raiden’s legs and scribbling on paper with crayons that their parents had brought them.

“My apologies but… I do not understand.”

“The color red, like Marceline! She’s a vampire like you and she drinks the color red.”

Raiden, still quite confused, tried to puzzle out exactly what Cassie was saying when he caught Johnny silently flailing his hands to get Raiden’s attention. Once he had it, Johnny clearly mouthed ‘Say yes, or she will be sad’. And well…

“Yes.”

“That’s so cool! Just like Marceline!”

Raiden listened to Cassie excitedly go about about this ‘Marceline’ character for awhile, before Sonya called for her and Jacqui to come over to get their plates situated.

“... May I ask…”

“Sorry, sorry, Cass has been watching a lot of this cartoon called Adventure Time. It’s got this vampire called Marceline and well... it’s a kid’s cartoon so she can’t drink blood, ya know? So instead she ‘drinks the color red’,” Johnny explained once the girls were waiting at Jax’s knees and focused on him.

“Ah… I mean in a way, it is the truth… I guess?”

“I mean yeah,” Johnny chuckled. “No worries Rai-dude. We’ll explain what you really drink when she’s older. Just the truth might be… kinda scary right now? And we def don’t want her scared of you.”

“My thanks.”

“That means, however, she’s gonna absorb all her vampire lore from Adventure Time.”

“... Should I be concerned?”

“Ehhh… I mean, it’s not Twilight!”

“Johnny please don’t joke about that, that atrocious book haunts my waking hours.”

“Was there ever a time when you used your… vampire powers for anything other than kombat?”

Raiden looked up to Liu Kang, who had posed the question. Him, Kai, and Kung Lao were reading for the evening in Raiden’s library. Raiden himself was also reading, but hearing his son’s voice made him look up to see that his question was genuine.

“Is there a particular reason for this specific question?” Raiden hummed.

“We were wondering if you… hissed,” Kai said from where he was sorting books back onto the shelf.

“Hissed?”

“Johnny Cage showed us this movie where a vampire hissed and spat and we discussed it at length,” Liu Kang admitted.

“Ah well… yes, there was a time that I did. It was perhaps when you three were rather small, I doubt that you would remember what happened because you three were so young. But I had taken your three out with a class to give your teachers a break from your… ‘youthful energy’ and you three had run off. Thankfully Fujin came to my aid and watched the others while I went looking for you three. Unfortunately, you three had wandered into… danger.”

“What kind of danger?” Kung Lao asked.

“A bear,” Raiden said, making the three looked panicked. “You lived.”

“But what happened?” They chimed together.

“Well… when I saw you three backed against a tree, I of course got in the way. And well… I did not want to hurt the bear but I did not want the bear to harm you three so I did the first thing I could think of, and tried to scare it. So, mustering everything within myself, I… bore my teeth and roared at it while exerting my presence.”

“... You… roared… at a bear?” Kung Lao asked.

“I was panicked. And I wanted to protect your three. And, like I said, I did not want to harm a likely confused bear that was probably protecting its own cub somewhere close where you three had accidently walked.”

“... It worked,” Kai said.

“It did. That bear turned right around and scampered off while crying. I felt terrible about it for a moment, but it was not hurt and we never went down that way again, so it probably went back and claimed that area. And also when I held you three, scared, shaking and crying in my arms… I knew I made the right choice.”

The three looked touch by that, and after a moment, Liu Kang got up and walked over to him to hug him. Kung Lao and Kai quickly joined him and Raiden felt his cool core fill with warmth at being hugged by all three of his sons. 

“Now, how is your reading going?”

“Not nearly as fun as hearing you scare local wildlife,” Kung Lao quipped quietly.