Title: Feeding the Ouroboros
Characters: Crane, Viper
Summary: She thought of how odd this would be by definition, bonding over fictitious beings and the science of creation; he spoke of enigmatic theories and great mysteries abound, amazing things nobler than life, and she listened.
"...for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself."
- Collected Works, Carl Jung
.
The new student looked he would snap in half by their first training block.
She meant it. Looking over the spindly creature tiptoeing behind Master Shifu, Viper felt terribly uneasy as she summed him up. She was never one to conjure unwarranted prejudices, what with her tango with the gorilla bandit and all, but this was something entirely different. There wasn't much to mistake about that; it was just there. He towered over some of them by more than half save Tigress, and had ringed stilt-legs with diameters some noodles she had eaten before would be envious of. His body was svelte with hardly any muscle tone, with wings that looked more adapted to carrying periodicals and paperweight lexicons; there couldn't be a lot of strength woven into his Kung Fu style, whatever it was. And that most unwieldy beak – a diversionary fighter, perhaps? Or maybe Shifu thought that the missing piece to their incomplete team was an analyst. Just for balance, a non-combatant to tell them what they're doing wrong.
Viper pushed that from her mind. None of them had been completely refined when they first joined up, after all; she'd only been here for half a year. Master Shifu's idea for this new warrior group – The Furious Five – hadn't prioritised innate skills over trainability, though it would probably allow a candidate to match the job description with much more ease. Tigress and Mantis would attest to that.
"Good morning, students. I've assembled you here for the inauguration of the last member of The Furious Five." Shifu waved airily behind him; the bird gave an awkward smile and flapped a wing feebly in some semblance of a physical gesture. It could have been an attempt at a non-verbal hello, if it weren't for the fact that his right eye started to twitch with an odd rhythm.
On both her sides, Mantis and Monkey started to snigger, and Viper had an urge to whip at their ankles with her tail. If only she could pull it off without Shifu noticing, but she hadn't reached that proficiency of stealth just yet. She settled on shooting them surreptitious glares in turn, which they ignored in a magnificent duality.
"Would you like to introduce yourself to your teammates?" Shifu asked, extending an arm in their direction. It was hardly a request, and Viper could see that the bird knew that. She mentally readjusted her estimates of his survivability in the Jade Palace; understanding Shifu at this fundamental level could see a person through with his feathers still intact.
He stepped forward, dragging his talons through the dirt and looking nervously at Shifu, as though pre-empting ridicule. Did he have trouble with meeting new people? Viper wouldn't put it past him, even though the rational part of her mind set the threshold of forgiveness for social phobia way below his age. Perhaps even at schooling level. They did teach that at her institution, at least.
"Hi, everyone," he said, repeating the incomprehensible flounder with his right wing. "I'm Crane, and it's an honour to be teaming in your work. No!" His eyes widened in horror. "I meant working in your team! Because…you can't exactly…team…" Crane trailed off and looked down at his talons, mumbling inaudibly. There was a ruddy flush creeping up his face, blotching messily in his cheeks.
"No, you can't," Mantis managed to sputter, turning purple as contained laughter built up a stifling pressure.
Viper thought that Mantis would just about spontaneously combust if Shifu wasn't there.
"Crane is here on recommendation from the deans at the Lee Da Kung Fu Academy," Shifu interjected quickly. Crane gazed at him thankfully, having found somewhere else to look besides his own extremities and the gobsmacked expressions of glee on Mantis's and Monkey's faces. "He is an excellent student and I've nothing but the greatest expectations of the value he will add to this team. I ask that you accept him and work with him without question. Any issues with this matter at hand will be directed to me." His gaze swept over his four students; Shifu fixated on Mantis and Monkey for a second longer and sniffed in obligatory warning. "Now, then. If only someone would be so kind as to escort Crane to his quarters."
As usual, it wasn't a request.
.
It all boiled down to the result of a series of coin tosses. Tigress had made it clear that it would not be her from the dangerous look on her face once Shifu had left them to meddle out a system. They'd have to be crazy to challenge that ultimatum. (Seniority had nothing to do with it at all.) So that left Viper, Monkey and Mantis; they had one coin each to be tossed at the same time, and the odd one out would be the unfortunate schnook to be burdened with the task. Viper tossed heads. Monkey and Mantis both tossed tails.
Somehow or other, she just knew that they cheated.
They took the longer route to the bedrooms, but not by Viper's own volition – the servants were reupholstering parts of the Jade Palace, and their operations managed to intrude just precisely into the regular course they'd normally take. They had been truly apologetic for the inconvenience caused unlike most other people, but she couldn't help but frown at them in annoyance despite herself. This wasn't a kind of contact she wanted to prolong. Still, it gave her an opportunity to converse with the new student, and even though she'd rather it be later, sooner would do fine.
"So you're from Lee Da?" she asked, making sure to keep her tone kind. He nodded excessively and continued to stare forward. Viper tried again; she wasn't the type to give up that easily. "It's a nice school, isn't it?" Another spasmodic set of nods were gleamed from him, and then they regressed back into wordless ambulation. This was going nowhere. It's not as though she wasn't trying hard enough – hell, he'd been lucky enough that she was the one who lost and was forced into this. She could hardly imagine Crane being stuck with either Monkey or Mantis. The poor fellow would have probably wound up lost somewhere in one of the palace's lesser-known corridors.
"Just ignore Mantis, all right? Sometimes he just goes a little too far." She reached out to pat his wing comfortingly.
Crane turned to her and smiled. "It's not that, but thanks anyway. I'm just a little nervous, that's all."
"Seems a lot more than just nerves to me. Is it Master Shifu? He can have that effect sometimes."
"No, definitely not." Crane shook his head and swallowed. "He's been wonderful. A little stricter than my other teachers back at the Academy, but I'll manage. I have heard stories, though…"
"It's best not to talk about Tai Lung, if that's what you're getting at."
"Oh." He paused. "So it is true, isn't it?"
Viper swivelled around to check that they were alone before nodding swiftly. "Do try to understand, Crane. It's not like it was planned or anything. Besides, it hasn't been easy for him, not one bit. The stigmatisation afterwards was one thing, but losing Tai Lung was another."
He remained aggravatingly quiet. True, Viper had questioned Shifu's actions herself when the story first reached her ears, though she was much quicker to trust it in the end. She had reasoned that the least they could do as his students was to have faith in him to continue to do what was right for them. He didn't need their forgiveness, or their kindness, at least not from those who were lesser strangers to it. It'd be worthless coming from those whom he hadn't hurt, those who barely scraped the topsoil of a tragedy buried to the point of damnation from spoken memory. If it didn't come from experience, he shouldn't have had to hear it. How long before Crane would grasp this, before he would desert his perfunctory judgements?
Viper sighed sharply. "In any case, don't go around chasing the topic. I'm telling you this before Tigress does, or worse, Master Shifu. There are things that shouldn't have to be remembered."
Something about his face changed at her words. Before she could take a closer look, it vanished, and Crane nodded. "I know," he croaked. "Yeah. I shouldn't have asked."
Viper glanced at Crane, confused but thankful for making this compromise. First steps to liking him already taken, and all within an hour.
They walked in silence for a few minutes as the identical walls on both sides ripped past and his luggage trundled behind them. Viper started to fidget in discomfort. "Well, you're from the prestigious Academy, yes?" she asked, trying to revive their conversation. "What's it like there?"
His face lit up considerably. "It's great! We've got more than a hundred students and brilliant instructors. There're great facilities for practical studies. Lots to learn there, Lee Da."
It sounded more like a sales pitch recital to Viper than a personal opinion. She almost expected him to hand her a brochure and pull out an enrolment register, tucking away his formal script into his pocket to prevent detection. "Okay. So what have you learned there so far?"
He took a couple of seconds to collate his thoughts, processing the attended lessons in chronological order before answering. "Physical conditioning and building stamina in the event of drawn-out fights. Agility courses. Flexibility, stances, throws and strikes. Power attacks to stagger opponents, and blocks to avoid them. Meditative training for breath control and Chi malleability. Our teachers always said that flow is key in maintaining Chi. The rhyming makes it easy to remember. Balance and equilibrium in footing while maintaining strength and range. The basics. Cudgel-wielding and dao use in moderate classes during our last semester, with grappling and disarming techniques to an above average level of mastery, or so we've been told. We were due to progress to jian next week – I'm hoping that Master Shifu can fill in the scholastic gap for me. I have managed to advance into pedagogical studies of different styles of Hung Ga Kung Fu with instructor's permission recently. It's interesting to juxtapose the forms at a hypothetical level and improvise a synthesis of Kung Fu techniques on the spot. A real brain-bender; I've done two complete dissertations concerning the topic for appraisal and review. I think that too many practitioners subscribe to the separatist doctrine in maintaining unconditional purity of distinct styles. Segregation of style is empirically orthodox due to different methodology used at rudimentary stages of development for singular forms and personal preference of individual masters, but not completely desirable in some scenarios where a more concurrent approach would yield considerably better results. Who's to say that Tai Chi Chuan will necessarily adulterate Northern Shaolin? Even if the former is a more defensive, fluid fighting style, reconciling two diametrically opposing types of Kung Fu isn't impossible. It's tricky and improbable, but not impossible. Some call it corruption, I call it innovation. We could look at Kung Fu as a whole using a completely post-modernistic viewpoint. I've found that the Crane Style of Hung Ga works pretty effectively with elements of Ba Gua Zhang blended into parries and sweeping deflections. Optimising warrior ability and ensuring combat readiness can't be achieved by adhering to a static move set you're told to use when faced with Threat A and not with Threat B. If a new Threat C emerges, then what? Expect the unexpected, and then respond by integrating your training appropriately to meet new challenges. A merger of different approaches across the schools; just think of the infinite permutations! Versatility and a holistic understanding are more important above anything, right?"
Viper tried to sort out the pedantic babble with no luck, the overload of terminology and suffixes blowing about in her mind like debris in an oceanic storm at sea. "Are you always this erudite, or are you trying extra hard just for today?" she asked, lolling her head to the side as she continued to scrutinise him with interest. There was something awfully endearing about him and his sesquipedalian esoterics. She wondered if she should be feeling sorer about her own inadequacies, consciously picking at whatever scraps of his pontification that she managed to retain. Viper hadn't even heard of some of the things he had labelled 'basics' so matter-of-factly. Master Shifu wasn't kidding about him being an excellent student.
Crane smiled and shrugged, brimming with enthusiasm. He exuded excitement like a child. "That? Introductory paragraph of an everyday thesis. I do like Kung Fu a lot. Had one heck of a friend who got me really into it and all."
"Is he also a student at the Academy?" Viper asked, now genuinely invested in their interaction.
He clamped his beak, looking away from her and at nothing, the same lost look drifting in his eyes. "She was. But not anymore," he replied.
"Where is she now?"
The question was a dead weight that coursed between them. She felt their steady nexus weaken into tenuity as Crane closed his eyes, as though searching hard for the answer. It was odd how he could fluently string together a multitude of complex concepts in the span of a few seconds, but struggled with a simple enquiry such as this.
Finally, he looked at her, his face drawn and grim. "There are things that shouldn't have to be remembered," he parroted softly, and this was all it took to convince her into dropping the subject.
.
They'd walked for roughly ten more minutes before reaching the dormitories. She was told that Crane would be taking up lodging inside the vacant one approximating her own. Slithering up to the open door, she let out a groan.
"All right, Crane. Just hold on for a second, okay?"
He complied readily, standing behind her in bewilderment. Viper lifted her tail and stabbed forward, snapping the concealed tripwire in two. A deluge of pudding sloshed onto the floorboards in front of them, which was then accompanied by a scattering hail of sesame seeds. Cries of mirth and the fusillade of fleeing feet contacting wood around the nearest corner allowed them to pinpoint the hiding spot of the foiled pranksters.
"Monkey! Mantis!" she fumed. While Viper had ensured to maintain a safe distance away from the doorway before triggering the booby trap, she had grossly underestimated the radius of spatter pudding could have when dropped from a sufficient height. Crane had received only a bit of the dessert around his ankles, but Viper's proximity was enough for it to cake a little under three-quarters of her face. Its simplicity had managed to fool her.
Squeezing her eyelids shut, she tried to clean it out of her eyes so she could catch up to them and wallop them. Something prodded her back, and she chanced a small look at what it was. Crane had excavated a piece of cloth from his belongings and was offering it to her.
"Thanks," she muttered, accepting his gift. He managed a guilty smile.
"That was meant for me. I'm sorry."
Her eyes opened carefully, and she could still taste the rancid tang of kitchen leftovers where the foul treat had touched her lips. "Don't apologise for what they did. I'm going to tell Master Shifu about this –"
"Here. You missed a spot," Crane said, and then he dabbed at her cheek with an additional rag. Viper's eyes leaped to his, her scales tingling from the cool pressure of his cloth-encased talons working over her dirtied face. He was peering at her diligently with his brows pursed in concentration, like a curator polishing a statuette. Crane's breath stirred hers as he gently wiped away the mess. She dared herself to look away from him, but she did not, overruled by a small ripple of affection for him. Her tail idled over his slender leg, but still she did not touch him.
"There. All cleaned up." Crane stowed the thready textiles in his bag and looked into his ruined room, now turned into a blast zone with bits of culinary sludge speckling the rice paper walls. "Guess it's safe to say I won't be unpacking any time soon," he said half-jokingly. Strangely, Viper found it a lot funnier than she would have five minutes ago. She allowed herself to giggle, and was surprised that it came all too naturally.
.
She was amazed at the treasure trove he hauled into their quarters, warehoused within his luggage that seemed to contain just about everything. A set of bronze scales, tarnished and antiquated; a landslide of differently-sized scrolls and charts that he shook out of a bag onto his straw bed; several calligraphy brushes and stone inkwells – there was a moment as he unpacked that she entertained the notion of a pocket dimension inside each and every one of them, limitless containers bigger on the inside than the outside.
Viper offered to help him. Seizing one of the bags, she looked inside. "Not a fan of travelling light, are you?"
Crane was too preoccupied with adjusting the weights on the instrument to look at her. "Well, it's unlikely that I'll be returning to the Academy, so I may as well just bring everything over. I might need some of it."
"I really don't think we'll need a researcher's catalogue of alchemical reagents." She unfurled the scroll and gazed down the garbled index. The writing wasn't in Chinese. There were freshly dried ink spots peppered here and there along with untidy annotations where someone had translated parts of the text, or tried to.
He looked over at her, taking a second to recognise the document. "It's just a hobby. Kung Fu trainee by day and amateur scientist by night, you know?"
"How do you read this anyway?"
"I observe patterns in the language. Sometimes phrases are more oft-used than others and only in certain positions, and that gives you clues as to what they might be. I've got a scroll of basic vernacular somewhere that's served quite nicely as a legend to compare against, but there are blanks that haven't been filled in yet. It's actually quite fortunate that I obtained it after it had gone through a linguist. I don't think I'd have gotten so far without his expertise."
The symbols and nameless calculations fascinated her. There was a black stain at the edge in the faint impression of a feather. She pictured him poring over it through the night, twirling a brush and accidentally catching the side of his face with the tip whipping wildly through the air, dislodging tiny bits of his downy coat.
"What's that?" Viper asked, pointing at a sigil stamped above his own imprint. The only thing she could recognise, it was also the weirdest – a serpent coming full circle, weird in the sense that its tail was in its mouth. It looked like it was trying to consume itself whole. He had a physical impossibility inscribed in one of his scrolls, for reasons unknown.
Crane clomped up to her side and inspected it, having finished balancing his scales. "The Ouroboros, as referred to by those who use it as an icon, religious or secular. Traditionally a representation of reincarnation and eternal life – you could consider it a foreign version of the phoenix – it's depicted as a snake or dragon eating its tail."
"Any reason as to why it's doing so?"
The Ouroboros, Crane explained, was an idea positing that everything operated in a cycle, that beginning and end are one and the same; an explanation for existence. "It simultaneously encompasses infinity and nothingness at the same time, two paradoxical entities. The stuff of theological legends. Destruction and creation. A creature that eats its own body – the snake kills itself to stay alive. Sort of like a chicken-and-egg scenario, but with a bit more sophistication."
Viper absorbed this slowly. "So what does this have to do with alchemy?"
"Completeness, fullness, two halves making a whole. The Ouroboros is to alchemy what Yin and Yang is to Kung Fu." Crane looked down at her with the same animated glint in his eyes. "Changing elements into other elements and then changing them back – that's what alchemists do."
"I'm an emblem for mad scientists?"
"Only if you chow down on your tail."
They laughed good-naturedly. His laugh was a chiming, beautiful sound. She thought of how odd this would be by definition, bonding over fictitious beings and the science of creation; he spoke of enigmatic theories and great mysteries abound, amazing things nobler than life, and she listened. The preacher and the acolyte. There was clearly so much more to the world than their cloistered training grounds and he was bringing it to her, scrap by scrap.
She carefully coiled up the scroll and knitted the cord together, sealing it. "Do you believe in all that, though? The totality and circulation of life and two parts to everything – it's not some crazy confabulation, is it?"
He unpacked the last of his belongings, his velvet pants and a straw hat – at this point, she wasn't surprised that he hadn't prioritised getting his wardrobe in order before his other tinkerings. Crane looked at her as he folded his apparel, musing deeply. "I study it. Doesn't mean that I agree with it. It's flawed in certain areas, but it's an admirable concept nonetheless. It makes sense in theory – the wholeness bit. Not many things can be truly complete in solidarity. I mean, look at side dishes. Concomitants. Matrimony."
"It does make sense. Sort of," Viper agreed, inexplicably thinking of Shifu and Tai Lung. She flicked her tail in front of her face unconsciously, and a quick impulse to taste it flared in her gut. She was a paradox, an endless conundrum in herself, and never even knew it. "Wholeness is good." She traced the tip over her lips in a convincing circle. "Wholeness tastes like snake tail. Yum."
Crane smiled enormously. "Aren't you a lovely little delicacy," he teased. "Ambrosia for the gods of time themselves, you."
"Nobody's eating me but me."
He slapped his forehead. "Of course. Corrected by my own pupil. What sort of teacher am I?"
"The cute kind, apparently," Viper cooed, a grin spreading over her face.
Crane gazed at her in awe. She wanted to give something back of equal magnitude, to show her appreciation. Leaning forward, she pecked him on the beak; these shaman lips that alchemists centred their lives around and based whole paradigms on, the solution to everything that perplexed philosophers. Viper lowered herself uncertainly, looking back at him – he blushed, swaying briefly on the spot. Somehow, it made him seem a little more forlorn, but the catatonic expression from the hallways did not return.
"I'll…uh, just tidy up a little bit more," he mumbled. "Smells like there's still leftover pudding somewhere. I'll see you at dinner, I suppose. We do have dinner, right?"
She nodded. "Yeah. See you then."
As Viper left through the corridor, listening to him rummage around in his room, busying himself with pudding that was cleaned up an hour before, all she could think of was the tart sliver of taste lingering on the forked edge of her tongue. Bony and saltish, she savoured it for a minute longer after it had finally disappeared, and decided that it tasted so much better than wholeness.
A/N: Needed a nice swap-up from the usual Tigress/Po, so I thought of this. Also, past tense! This was crafted from a larger idea for a series I had but didn't feel like exerting the effort to sustain; I've got 'Peacock's Cry' and 'A Master's Lesson' already. Seemed good enough as a standalone fic. I might just rexplore the pairing in future using this as a template; who knows?
Complaints about Crane being a braniac are expected, but it's not like Dreamworks gave much to go on besides a general awkwardness. Make of it what you will, I say, and it still seems true to his character. I've always gotten these little nerdy vibes just by looking at him.