Greetings, and thank you for checking out my story! I am The Dragon, and this is my very first Chronicle. Please enjoy!
Chapter One: Necessary Evils
It had been nearly two months since Oogway and his faithful companion, Kai, had arrived at the panda village in utter desperation. The two had been the most feared of warlords, legends in their own right. But that was before an ambush had left them the only survivors of their once mighty army. The tortoise had been mortally injured, but revived when the pandas of the secret village had healed him with the spiritual energy of Chi. Oogway hadn't just been restored… he'd been forever changed; he was no longer motivated by discovery and conquest, but instead the desire to do good and pursue harmony and balance. His oldest and closest friend had not shared his change of heart.
Since his arrival, the tortoise had been studying under the village elder, Zhi Shan. The aged panda taught him the properties of Chi, how it was constituted by a balance of Light Chi and Dark Chi; the great benefits of Light Chi could never come to fruition if there was no Dark Chi in existence. Oogway had tried to pass on this new wisdom to his companion, showing him that mastery of this power was the key to a higher understanding of the universe. Kai had remained unconvinced, and thought that these techniques would be better applied as weapon of war. Day after day, the bull would watch the tortoise learn with the pandas with skeptical eyes. At times he wanted to tell them what he really thought of all this nonsense, but he respected Oogway too much; he just couldn't bring himself to do it. And so for weeks he went on like this, watching his friend learn new techniques and motions, even overhearing what some of the pandas were teaching him. On one such occasion, he tried to feel the flow of the Chi they were giving, just to see if he could. He felt something, but it wasn't coming from the pandas or his friend. He began following the flow of this pervasively strong new feeling, and it led him towards the outskirts of the village. His departure had not gone unnoticed by Oogway.
Kai neared the place where the village met the solid wall of rock formed by the surrounding mountains, and found that the force compelling him was emanating from the recesses of a cave. The damp grotto looked to be the result of something that had impacted at the foot of the mountains long ago. Oogway entered the cave behind Kai, and noticed he was staring intently at a small boulder that had a feint green light escaping between topical fractures in its surface. Kai was aware of his friend's presence but did not turn to face Oogway when he spoke.
"This rock… I think… there's something inside it."
The fist of the bull drove into the core of the boulder, releasing a viridian mist from the rubble. When Kai removed his arm, he was holding a sinuous shard of bright, pulsating jade. Oogway watched in horror as the thing enraptured his bovine companion, his eyes unable to leave the sinister looking substance. It was obvious to Oogway what it was, he had been taught how to feel its presence… and it was colder than he expected.
"It is pure Dark Chi, Kai. Leave it be." the tortoise cautioned.
"Leave it? I can feel it… it's speaking to me!" The blade was indeed talking to him, teaching him how to capture the Chi of living beings. "With this kind of power, we could raise a new army, become unstoppable! Imagine how different that ambush would have gone with a weapon like this!"
The tortoise behind him was showing a skeptic frown, increasingly afraid of how this shard was consuming Kai. "It would only lead us to great evil, my friend."
"Evil?" The bull's eyes widened. Whatever those pandas had done changed his fellow warlord beyond recognition. "You speak of evil now, after all we have done? We have spent years burning cities to the ground, wiping out entire civilizations, showing no mercy to our enemies! What has happened to you, brother?"
"My eyes have been opened to a greater truth."
"Don't you know I only want this power so I can protect you? You're the closest thing to a real brother I'll ever have… I love you, Oogway; I can't lose you!" The serpentine shard in his grip was glowing ever stronger, feeding off Kai's desperation.
"You can never hope to possess that level of control over fate! Control is an illusion!" the tortoise responded with a guarded tone, but the bull's eyes were still locked on his bewitching prize.
"I thought you were Oogway the warlord, not Oogway the mystical fool!"
"Don't do this Kai. The gift of the Light Chi can show you the truth!"
"No. You have only seen what those pandas want you to see." Kai turned around to face Oogway at last, revealing his eyes that were now a sickening green. "This is the true power that they were hiding from us! They're hoarding it all for themselves!"
"If you refuse to open your heart to the truth, then I must stop you from opening it to evil." Oogway widened his stance defensively and readied his staff to face his brother in arms.
"You choose to betray me in favor of your newfound morality? So be it. Then the only way to protect you, is to capture your Chi!" The bull lifted the shard against his oldest friend.
A massive airburst of Dark Chi energy sent Oogway careening back out of the cave, landing amongst some of the panda villagers. Still in shock, the tortoise watched as Kai started consuming their Chi one by one, collecting their essence into jade totems. With each devouring of Chi, Kai seemed to get stronger, and Oogway knew he had to stop this evil that his companion had unleashed upon the world.
Along with Zhi Shan, he did battle with the jade warrior; the ensuing melee was truly the stuff of legends: for hours and hours, their near-identical fighting styles clashed with the thunder of a thousand storms. Oogway would nearly be defeated again and again, only to be rescued by Zhi Shan's use of a Light Chi ward to protect him; it seemed the only way to counter the bull's enhanced abilities. Kai grew tired of this, and unable to consume the elder's Chi, he used the serpentine shard as a throwing weapon to strike down Zhi Shan. Seeing the elder fall, Oogway rushed to the side of the mortally wounded panda.
"No-one had to die, Oogway! Your betrayal has killed him!" the bull taunted.
The tortoise was not listening to Kai's raging, only trying to console his doomed ally. Zhi Shan did not look fearful of his impending death, and started to reach for the shard imbedded in his chest; the bleeding from between his ribs, unstoppable.
"Leave it, my friend. It will only increase your suffering."
The village elder shook his head and continued reaching anyway. When his paws made contact with the shard they started to glow with a strong golden light. Both Kai and Oogway were now watching with curiosity at the dying panda's actions. He seemed to be pushing the blade deeper into himself, a choice that, outwardly, made little sense. As he continued to bleed out, something else started to flow out with the blood – pure Light Chi. The golden energy emerged completely from the panda's body and spiraled around the full length of the blade, starting to eat away at the verdigris within. The shard flickered gold, returned to green, then back again and again. At last, the metallic yellow prevailed with a flare of resounding light that made the two warriors shield their vision for fear of blindness. Kai was stunned at first, but quickly regained his smug composure when he found his own power undiminished.
"So this old fool, with the greatest of Chis, spends it all just to keep a little blade from me? I'm afraid it was a waste, Oogway – I still have the ability to take Chi, and that was always the true weapon." the bull said as he readied himself to continue the fight. "I AM INVINCIBLE!"
For the first time since being transformed by the pandas' Chi healing, Oogway felt true rage boil up inside him. He looked down to see an understanding look in Zhi Shan's eyes. He gestured to the golden shiv still protruding from his body.
"Take it. Do what you must."
The tortoise complied, and the panda cringed when the weapon was removed. Now holding the blade of radiating Light Chi, Oogway turned back to his oldest friend with death in his eyes.
"Continue to fight me, brother, and I'll be forced to kill you!" the bull barked, defiant at the sight of the clearly powerful object in his adversary's claws.
"I could say the very same to you." Oogway had replied with equal ice in his tone.
The bull charged at the tortoise on all fours and started to throw heavy strikes, even one of which would have killed Oogway had they connected. When Kai slashed at his throat, the tortoise took advantage of his retractable neck to go much lower than the bovine had aimed, providing the perfect opportunity to deal the killing blow. He intended to take it.
"Goodbye, my brother." Oogway said, reluctantly shoving the blade into Kai's chest. The bull stumbled backward at the impact. Surprisingly, instead of bleeding him dry, it caused his essence to start to dissipate into golden beams of light. For just a brief moment, Kai's eyes started to turn back to their natural color. With the blade inside him, it began to speak to him like it had before; Kai knew what was coming.
"You traitor! I will show you the true power of Chi! I don't care how long it takes - even if it means waiting a thousand years!"
In another second, a blinding shockwave swept over the village, taking Kai with it and turning the Chi-consumed villagers back to normal. After a few minutes, the cloud of gold dust settled and revealed Zhi Shan on the ground, still clinging on stubbornly to his life. Oogway's face held a thousand questions on its features, which the elder could never hope to answer with the limited time he had left.
"You have banished him to the spirit realm." he said calmly, despite the blood pooling up in his throat.
"I… I had to." the young warrior replied. "Does that mean Kai is-"
"You have sent him, body and soul, to another realm. He will lay in wait for you there, no doubt."
Oogway saw the golden shard that had sent Kai away resting in the cool mud between them. It was emitting a soft hum. "What is it – the Dark Chi weapon?"
"Do you recall when I first taught you that if there is light, there must also be darkness?" Oogway nodded, as the elder's breathing became increasingly labored. "Your friend found a piece of that necessary darkness… there are many of them throughout the world. Their nature is to bring pain and suffering, and they can do no true good, only undo whatever evil they have wrought. At the same time, they can never be eliminated altogether, lest the-" The panda's eyes widened at his own words.
"No… I have made a terrible mistake! I've disrupted the balance!" He started to panic and bleed even faster, but Oogway was quick to comfort him.
"You have done a good thing, Zhi. It was a necessary sacrifice to defeat a greater evil."
The dying panda seemed to calm down a little, even smiled at the tortoise above him. "Oogway, your soul is pure, and your Chi is strong. Be a warlord no longer; become my successor in the pursuit of honor, harmony, and balance. Use the Chi that exists in all living things to guide you."
"I understand… I will do as you have asked." Oogway's answer had made elder smile even more. He took the paw that had been holding his wound and put it on the tortoise's shoulder.
"The universe brought you here for a reason, my friend. There are no accidents."
And with that, Zhi Shan surrendered the last of his willpower to death.
Oogway honored his word, taking the purified shard with him when he left the village in search of his new life's purpose. When he eventually achieved enlightenment and set about creating Kung Fu, Oogway had not forgotten the lessons he had learned in the panda village. In the ten-thousand days he spent trying to perfect his fledgling art of Kung Fu, he spent many years seeking out the other repositories of Dark Chi. Sometimes he would find them by being in tune with the flow of Chi in the natural world, other times he would have to defeat a great evil in order to capture its source; though Oogway never again banished the body and soul of an enemy to the Spirit Realm like he had done to Kai. In his research of them, he found that each shard would offer the holder a great power, but it would manipulate their deepest desires into evil; the one that his friend Kai had found had taught him how to take Chi, and twisted the bull's desire to protect Oogway into darker motives. He buried the necessary evils, along with a number of other dark weapons and knowledge, beneath the foundation of the Jade Palace when he had it expanded. One shard had eluded him, however.
Over the centuries of the tortoise's long life, what came to be known as the Dagger of Deng-Wa changed hands many times, building upon its legend with each new wielder. In the last of his many great battles, Oogway and the Jade Palace Masters fought a feral horde of warriors and the wielder of the mythical weapon near the city of Xiangyang. On that day, two-hundred years before the coming of the Dragon Warrior, Oogway had defeated the last of the Deng-Wa warlords and rendered the blade impotent with a Light Chi binding; but he had failed to recover it, and assumed it was lost forever.
Oogway had assumed wrong.
As I'm sure you guessed, I don't own Kung Fu Panda. Many of the characters, locations, and lore elements referenced in this work of fiction belong to DreamWorks, a subsidiary of Universal Pictures, in turn a subsidiary of our holy overlords at Comcast. This work is intended entirely for entertainment purposes.
Author's Notes:
- While it should be noted that this is not only my first fanfic, but also my first story ever, please do not hesitate to be honest with your constructive criticism
- If something doesn't seem right or make sense, let me know in a review or a PM; one of the biggest reasons I'm putting this out here is to become a better writer (especially with plot development) so that I can make better content for you guys
- Feedback is key for me, both good and bad; just a little can help a whole lot
- For this story, Kung Fu Panda: LoA is NOT CANON for a plethora of reasons: a vast number of character inconsistencies (particularly with the characters Tigress and Po), as well as problems specific to the portrayal of this individual story, such as the fact that the Ladies of the Shade suggesting that snow leopards are a common sight in Southern China (In my story they will be almost exclusively in Mongolia)
- While it is not canon, I may utilize the show to reference the existence of certain characters, locations, moves, etc.
- If you didn't know, the Dagger of Deng-Wa actually exists in the KFP lore, as it is quickly referenced in one of the shorts
- It is also important to note that I am always open to interesting plot ideas, as the ending of this story is not set in stone
- And of course, I hope you enjoy reading! I will probably get out the first couple chapters in quick succession, as they're pretty much already written, and then after that I will try to put out a fresh chapter every week or so