Title: by predetermined service
Fandom: Kung Fu Panda
Summary: [Pre-movie AU.] "It's never too late." (Except when it is, as a young Shifu and Soothsayer discover.)
A/N: Finally something for a meme way back, when editoress responded with this request: "whatever floats your boat from Kung Fu Panda, 'It's never too late.'"
Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Kung Fu Panda.
The young Kung Fu student pricked a large ear, his curiosity piqued by tavern talk.
"She may have a wicked tongue—"
"—and a wickeder mind—"
"—but that goat is never wrong, swear to the gods."
"It's not natural."
"Being dramatic is what you are, she's not all doom and gloom."
"Doesn't make it natural!"
"It's not like she's the first fortuneteller this village's ever seen—"
"But they weren't real. She's for real,and that's not natural!"
Shifu listened, until he had overheard where this goat seer could be found. Even more curious, skeptical, and feeling bold, the Kung Fu student sought her out, his striped tail swaying as he went. The young red panda's return to the Valley of Peace would still require another week's worth of journeying, and he was stuck here for the night. Why not try this out?
On the outskirts of the village, Shifu found her in one of many ramshackle tents, all a part of the same travelling caravan. His large ears flinched at the sound of loud sobbing, then flattened as he saw a couple of sheep come running out, one crying while the other tried to console her.
Stepping out from the tent was the object of his diversion—a tall goat that carried her large horns with a certain proud tilt, her beard long and full and a hard glint in her eyes that darkened her smirk. "Now do be sure to tell your husband I sent you, should he be interested in doing business!" She leaned back, crossing her arms, eyes full of mirth and every inch of her still dripping with mockery. "If he's as practical as you say, exposure of his infidelity shouldn't stop him, now should it?"
While the red panda looked askance at her, the goat's taunting smirk dropped as she leveled a flat, weary glance at him over her shoulder. "Come in now, warrior, you're up," she said, nodding to the tent behind her, and soon afterward going back inside without another word.
For a moment Shifu was impressed that she knew he was a warrior—then he recalled that the sword at his belt was rather prominent. Frowning, he followed her inside.
The polite thing to say about the goat's surroundings would be "cozy." But given her earlier display, Shifu thought she wouldn't give a damn if he called it out for the mess it was. And yet he noted that despite the chaos, she didn't really have a lot of material worth. The red panda supposed that despite her talk of "business," things were lean, perhaps to faciliate the ease of her apparently nomadic lifestyle.
"Take a seat," the goat said, back to him and waving a vague hoof over her shoulder to one of the cushions that littered the floor. The student knelt down.
"Specific question or general reading?" The goat asked, still with only her back to him as she rifled through a chest. She pulled out a plate, narrowed her eyes at a crack in it, then shrugged and flung it with a grin, which only widened when it smashed into smaller pieces against one of the tent beams, and Shifu's tail jerked at the random destruction.
"I thought you'd know," the red panda shot back, one wary eye on the bowl she now held in her hoof.
That she kept, and finally turned to face him, smiling—and then she was a flash of colored cloth and before Shifu could think to make a move, she had plucked the meager whiskers he had been trying to grow.
The red panda swallowed the undignified "ow!" that instinct wanted to expel, and instead blinked rapidly over the stinging in his face.
"I thought you'd block or evade that, warrior apprentice," the goat said with a lyrical voice and quirk to her grin as she plopped down onto a cushionn. She threw the student's short whiskers into her (uncracked) bowl.
Shifu bit back a bitter retort, an unworthy reaction to his own embarrassment. (A Dragon-Warrior-In-Training should not have been caught so off guard.)
"It'll be—hmm, let's say fifty yuan?" The Soothsayer said, as she added other things to the bowl. They were ingredients Shifu tried to note, but again she was too fast for him, her hoof unerringly knowing where to go and what to place.
"Thirty," the red panda said, his voice firm.
"Forty-five," the goat replied, corner of her mouth lifting.
"Thirty-five, I'll not go higher."
"Forty, my service is no charity."
Satisfied with their haggling, Shifu gave the goat her yuan, which she accepted with one hoof, the other still adding to the bowl and mixing its contents. All he could gather was that she added more herbs, minerals to the bowl—and then it was crackling and smoking. (By this point, the goat had put her payment down somewhere.)
Shifu's skepticism grew, even as the smoke's color shifted from gray to a red-orange, for it was not very dissimilar to some bandit's smoke bomb, used for distraction and such. He thought the goat further milked the performance with her gesturing hooves, though admittedly the focused, even glazed look in her eyes was more convincing, unnerving even...
Until part of that smoke consolidated into the shape of a red panda, and that was too much for a coincidence. The student's eyes widened further as part of that smoke further split, turning green and long and serpentine. It turned into a dragon.
"The dragon scroll you seek—" the goat seer began, her mouth a hard line.
The student leaned forward, transfixed, eager, his paws slightly grasping for the smoke dragon that now swirled around the triumphant smoke red panda—
"—belongs to another," the goat said, just as the smoke dragon sped away and dissipated into nothing, leaving the smoke red panda alone and looking quite abandoned and bereft, until he too dissipated.
A lengthy silence spread between the actual red panda warrior and the goat seer. She smirked, and his eye twitched.
"The bearer of bad news does not do refunds," the goat said, giving her mild, mocking warning.
The red panda's eye twitched. Again. And again. Then he closed his eyes, took a breath, and his face smoothed out. Then his eyes opened, and his brow arched. "The student of Master Oogway does not go back on his word."
Shifu stood up, gave her a cold bow, then turned to leave. "And it is faulty news, for you are quite mistaken."
"Mark my words—"
And the actual seriousness of her response, so different from her mercurial treatment of treating everything as a joke or with contempt or both, made the red panda pause, and look over his shoulder. Matching her voice, the goat looked quite grave, though still rather disdainful.
"—pinning all your hopes onto this one dream will only lead to shame and foolishness."
Shifu scowled. "To give up because of one crackpot's parlor tricks would be the height of foolishness."
The goat merely smirked. "Whatever." She leaned back on one elbow, and bounced her new yuan in hoof. "Merely felt like sharing my two cents—free of charge!—to a pitiable idiot such as yourself." The red panda's ears twitched at every bounce of yuan in her hoof, their clicking and jangling so loud and irritating. "I've no interest in exercising all my good reason to persuade you—that'd be your master's problem, wouldn't it?"
"Do not speak of my master," the student snapped. "Your tongue is unworthy of him."
Maddeningly, the goat remained amused, all grins and mirthful eyes. At last she stopped bouncing the yuan, her hoof snapping around them like a vice. She then flopped onto her cushion, lying down and giving a low chuckle.
The goat's laughter followed the red panda out, long after he had left her ramshackle tent.
A/N: Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed. Feedback is always welcomed. One of Nico Marlet's designs for the Soothsayer in "The Art of Kung Fu Panda 2" inspired my ideas of a young Soothsayer-this particular design showed Soothsayer as seemingly younger. I liked the idea of younger Soothsayer being more biting when she was younger, to say the least. Shifu's early desire to be the Dragon Warrior is from one of the official creator commentaries on the bonus features of the DVDs.