Okay, so I just saw Kung Fu Panda 3 a few days ago. (Really good movie by the way. Please go see it. You'll love it.) Anyway, I decided that I really wanted to do a story after seeing the movie, but now that I've finally experienced what the KFP archive was capable of, I really want to do one now. So technically, yes, this is my first KFP fanfic, but no, this is not my first fanfic. I have a bunch more that I've done on my profile. They're not KFP-related, but I do think they're pretty good. Anyway, enjoy!
Oh, and by the way, this story was inspired by Pandafan91's story Fate Can Be So Cruel. I don't think this'll be as dark as his story, but I'm aiming for something close.
It was a quiet morning inside the Valley of Peace. All of its inhabitants were just getting up from their night of sleep, ready for another morning of trading and simply living day to day.
One of the more beautiful parts of the Valley, though, happened to be the ornate Jade Palace, situated at the top of what has been known throughout the Valley as the Thousand Stairs. This is where the Kung Fu masters known as the Furious Five live, along with their own Master, a red panda named Shifu, as well as Grandmaster Oogway, a turtle that has watched over the Valley of Peace for many years, protecting it even as the Furious Five has supplanted him and Shifu as the main protectors.
Our story starts back in the village, however, as a large group of wolves sauntered in through the main gate to the village. Most of them carried some form of weapon, including swords, crossbows and maces, but there were some that were unarmed, which was mostly due to the fact that they were the leaders of said group.
As they walked through the main thoroughfare of the village, the group of wolves were ignoring the stares that were being given to them by the villagers, no doubt due to their attire that presented them as bandits. Instead of immediately panicking, though, the villagers were waiting to see what would happen.
They didn't have to wait long, though, as the bandits stopped in their tracks in the center of the village. The area soon fell silent for a few moments before one of the bandits at the front of the pack gestured, and all of the others soon went on the attack.
Soon, screams of fear split through the morning, as the bandits ran throughout the village, ransacking everything they could manage to get their hands on.
As the wolves continued to have their way with the hapless villagers, there were two other villagers standing over by the Thousand Steps, forced to watch as the bandits threatened the lives of some of the village's inhabitants between all of the random looting and debauchery.
Finally, unable to watch any more, one of the villagers, a pig, turned towards the villager standing next to him, which happened to be a goat staring blankly at the destruction around him.
"What are you just standing around for? We have to warn the Jade Palace before the village is burned to the ground!" said the pig.
The goat somehow managed to tear himself away from the carnage for a few moments, allowing himself to finally focus on the task at hand. He quickly sprinted over to the warning gong, dodging bandits the entire way there as he quickly thanked the gods that the gong was still standing.
Once he managed to reach the gong, he didn't waste any time, grabbing the large mallet and whacking the gong as hard as he could with it.
The sound of the gong reverberated throughout the valley as the goat repeatedly struck it with the mallet, not wanting to take any chances that the Masters of the Jade Palace would not have heard it.
Eventually, the goat stopped banging on the gong, returning the mallet to its original spot as the gong continued to reverberate.
"Come on, please save us, Masters!" the goat thought as he stared at the Thousand Steps, waiting for them to arrive.
However, before he could see them coming down, a shadow suddenly darkened the area around him, and he gulped nervously before turning around to find a wolf bandit standing right behind him.
"Well, well, looks like we've got a bit of a tattletale here. Do you seriously think those pathetic masters can save you all now?" he asked while chuckling evilly.
The goat could only shake in fear as he eyed the broadsword that the wolf carried, a fact the bandit noticed almost immediately.
"Oh look, I almost forgot that I still had this with me. Good, I've always wanted to have some goatskin to wear! I've heard that they're perfect for winter." said the wolf as he brandished the sword in front of him.
The goat immediately panicked as he saw the sword coming closer. However, as much as he wanted to run, the goat's legs wouldn't listen to him, and he ended up being forced to cower in fear, knowing that the end was close for him.
Fate had other plans, however, as the goat soon noticed another shadow fly over him before a loud crack soon reverberated through the area around him.
Looking up, the goat soon noticed that the wolf with the sword was no longer in front of him. Instead, said wolf was on the ground a few feet in front of him, clearly knocked out.
Confused, the villager stood up, wondering what was going on, when he finally got a good look at who was now standing in front of him.
"T-the Dragon Warrior?"
It was indeed the Dragon Warrior standing in front of him, a panda whose name was Po, as he stood in a fighting stance, waiting to see if the wolf would get back up. When he didn't, Po relaxed for a moment, turning towards the goat, who was staring at the Dragon Warrior in wonder.
"Hey, you'd better get back inside where it's safe, little guy. We'll take care of these bandits."
The goat continued to stare at Po for a few more moments, which made the panda feel a little awkward. Thankfully, though, the pig who was standing next to him earlier came by, lightly shoving him towards the nearest house.
"Thank you for saving us all, Dragon Warrior!" said the pig as she ushered the goat towards safety.
Po couldn't help but feel a little bashful, knowing that the Furious Five was in the village with him taking on the bandits, but he still appreciated the compliment all the same.
Unfortunately, by the time he went to thank them, they were already gone, so he decided that he should probably go and help the others. However, he didn't simply want to simply rush over and take them out with simple kung fu. He wanted to make it a little more interesting, knowing that the Furious Five was more than capable of taking on the bandits themselves.
Po quickly climbed on to the roof of the nearest building he could find, which was a bit slow going, considering he wasn't exactly in the best shape to be doing strenuous labor like that. After finally reaching the roof, he quickly looked around the area trying to find where the Furious Five were.
He eventually did manage to find the others, but to his surprise, he found that they weren't currently handling the bandits with ease. Rather, the Five were standing across from five of the bandits that weren't already knocked out on the ground around them.
Po admittedly wondered exactly why they weren't kicking the bandits' butts already, but as he got closer, he found out that each of the bandits was holding a villager hostage, a crossbow aimed at each by the wolves.
"Oh no." Po said to himself, worried.
Po couldn't exactly hear what was happening over the commotion of the villagers around the Five so, even though he assumed that they must be negotiating for their release, he had no idea how well it was going.
As much as he wanted to wait and see if the Five would be able to convince the bandits to let the villagers go, he could tell that some of the wolves had itchy trigger fingers, as the hands brandishing the crossbows were starting to shake.
Po needed to think of something fast if he wanted to prevent the bandits from firing their crossbows and possibly killing the villagers, so he quickly formulated a plan before putting it into action.
Taking a few steps back to ready himself, Po quickly sprinted forwards before jumping off of the roof.
"Shakabooey!"
The wolves looked up at who made the noise to find a large black and white object flying straight towards them, beginning to spin in place as it came closer.
"Po, wait!"
Po was completely zoned in on where he was going to land as he put his plan into action, but when he heard the warning, it completely caught him off guard, and his landing ended up being off target.
Po still successfully managed to land near the bandits, but not on his feet like he had planned. Instead, Po crashed into the ground on his side, landing painfully before bouncing off of the ground and by sheer luck managing to crash into the bandits in front of him.
However, his luck soon changed for the worse, as while he did manage to get the wolves to release their captives, all five of the bandits fired their crossbows in panic as they were sent flying, and the bolts just happened to go into the crowd, screams piercing through the crowd as they ended up hitting villagers.
As Po came to a stop, he slowly picked himself up, his heart beating hard when he heard the screams.
"Oh no. What did I do?" he said to himself.
Po could barely focus on the task in front of him when he realized just what happened, but thankfully the Furious Five took care of the rest of the bandits, knocking them out while they were still dazed from the Dragon Warrior crashing into them.
"Quickly! Check on the injured!" yelled Tigress once she managed to incapacitate her bandit.
As Po watched the scene in front of him in shock, his brain unable to process just what happened, the Furious Five went to check on each of the villagers that were hit with the crossbow bolts.
"This villager's fine. Looks like the bolt just missed the internal organs." said Viper as she checked on her ward.
The rest of the Five checked in soon after Viper finished speaking, revealing that each of the villagers who were hit were all going to be okay. However, when the last member of the Five spoke up, which happened to be Tigress herself, what she said made Po's heart fall even further.
"Mr. Ping, are you alright?"
