Chapter 2: What Now, Brown Cow? (Or White Bird...)
"Hey! Ugly Chicken! Table Five is waiting!"
Shen sighed softly; the fireworks had yet to be fired, but, even if had been time, his job was only to prepare them. It would be the work of the Jade Palace servants to fire them off. So, as he had some spare time, he had promised Kurisu and her (obnoxious) adoptive brother, the Dragon Warrior Po himself, to help at their adoptive father's restaurant.
It was Kurisu who spoke now. The tiny, blue-furred feline was alight with energy, carrying a stack of bowls twice as tall as herself to the sink as she entered, and balancing them fairly well.
"I'm on it, Itty Bitty Kitty," he said with a small smile, and left the kitchen.
The restaurant was buzzing with life. There were five minutes until the fireworks, and Mr. Ping had promised his customers the best seat in the Valley for them. (A sentiment up to debate.) The goose himself was bustling about, taking orders. As for the panda...well, the fact no one had seen hide nor hair of the blubberball told Shen he was probably somewhere at the back area of the store, playing with his precious toys.
The peacock rolled his eyes at the thought.
Table Five was the seating place of Masters Monkey and Crane, who smiled and nodded, but said nothing, as the peacock placed their orders down and scuttled away quickly to the kitchen once more; years as a demented warlord and recluse had done nothing for his social life, and he always felt...uneasy in crowds...
"So," Kurisu asked cheerfully, fastidiously scrubbing a bowl, "Have you told Nana about that bad dream of yours?"
"Not yet," Shen replied without turning around, trying to concentrate on the bowl of soup he had been practically coerced into making by the goose owner (who was a nice enough fellow, Shen had decided, but pushy when it came to business) to make...if there was one thing he feared more than his own supposedly cured insanity, it was...
Well...actually, it was making anyone even remotely close to him angry, particularly Min Yun, the Soothsayer who had been his nanny as a young lord...but second to that was messing up on Mr. Ping's famous noodle soup. He was no chef, naturally, but spending so much time with the kitten and the panda had taught him a few things...
"You can't keep stalling you know," the kitten said oh-so-innocently.
"I AM going to tell her, Kurisu," he said calmly. "But I simply haven't seen her all day since breakfast at the Palace, and, in case you forget, I never got a chance then..."
Kurisu rolled her eyes with a smirk. It had been almost three months since she, Shen, the Soothsayer, Lanying, and Shen's friend and former henchman, Xun the Wolf Boss, had returned from a trip to Gongmen City. A mad panther who called himself Maddohatta had threatened both the city and the Valley of Peace with an enormous cannon, based on a larger version of the cannons Shen had designed for Gongmen's defense systems.
Kurisu felt her washing slow, and a rare frown clouded her face at the thought of the panther. Not only had he constantly taunted Shen about his past misdeeds, having a strange knowledge of them, but he also had a connection to herself: she had been adopted by Mr. Ping when a group of assassins, commanded by the panther warlord Giao Xun, had destroyed her village and killed her family.
It had been Maddohatta who led the attack.
She blinked rapidly, feeling a feathered hand settle on her shoulder. She looked up and smiled sadly up at the peacock, who eyed her curiously.
"Sorry," she mewed. "I've tried forgetting, but..."
"I know," said Shen. "If my dreams are any indication, I'm having trouble forgetting him myself."
Kurisu just nodded, and returned her attention to the bowl.
"Shen!" squawked Mr. Ping, suddenly popping up. Shen turned to look at him.
He raised an eyebrow at the...odd expression on the goose's face.
"Yes...sir?"
"There's a merchant here...they wanted to show my son something, because he's...well...you know..."
"Yes, Mr. Ping, I know."
"Well...he said you may want to take a look. You, too, Kurisu."
Both looked curiously at the older goose, then looked at each other, before putting down their work and moving out of the kitchen.
A small crowd had gathered around the entrance of the noodle shop. Crane, Monkey, and Po were looking down at...something, their expressions all an equal mix of confusion, shock...and, at least in Po's case, anger.
"What's the matter?" asked Shen.
Then, he looked down, and his already white-feathered face paled as he realized just what was wrong.
A black cat – perhaps a panther – was lying on the ground, half supported by two pigs dressed in merchant's clothes. It was a male, and he was, even viewing him from this point of view, very tall, and very, very thin...almost as if he hadn't eaten in weeks. He wore nothing but a dirty, ragged red jacket, and a pair of black silk pants, held up by a mere rope, that were in even worse condition...at least the jacket bore a few patches, but the pants seemed to be more like holes with cloth between them than cloth with holes in it.
Shen could have sworn his heart skipped a beat. He felt his left eye twitch nervously.
He glanced at Kurisu.
The stunned expression on her face, along with her clenched fists, seemed to say she had the same thoughts he did.
Thin, tall, black...same pants, same coat...
"We found him lying outside our store, in the alley," said the sow. "Poor dear...might have been lying there all day, we just found him by chance..."
Shen almost snorted with laughter at the endearment of "poor dear." Soundlessly, he crouched down beside the unconscious creature. He cautiously moved its arm slightly. He gulped when he saw the blood collected on the panther's body, a deep cut in his side...his whole body, he quickly realized, was bruised, scraped, and scratched, but this cut was particularly nasty.
"It can't be," he whispered to himself.
"Shen...I think it can," Kurisu whispered, and held something up to him.
Master Shen felt the breath catch in his throat.
She held a dragon-head topped cane...a cane too familiar to be a coincidence.
Carefully, Shen reached down towards the cane, and gently clutched the jaw of the dragon's head ornament. The jaw closed, there was a soft click...
Monkey and Crane stared, somewhat surprised, as a long, sharp, sword slid from the cane's shaft.
"How'd you know that was there?" asked Po.
"Because I was expecting it," Shen said simply, and glared down at the body on the ground. "I present to you, my friends...Maddohatta."
"Y'mean...the guy you and little sis met in Gongmen?"
"Yes, panda. 'The guy.'"
Po looked stunned.
"What's he doing here?" he asked.
"No good," hissed Kurisu.
"Not now, Kitty," said Shen, waving a wing at her, eyeing the panther on the ground with a strange, unreadable look.
"What should we do?" asked Monkey.
"Do you know where Master Shifu is?" Shen asked.
Crane and Monkey looked at each other.
"Well...he isn't here right now," Crane said simply.
"With all due respect, Master Crane, that is not what I asked," Shen said, glaring frustratedly.
"He's probably up at the Palace...you know getting the fire-"
A loud moan interrupted them. The panther stirred slightly.
"Stand back," Shen said, reaching inside his robe for a knife, while Kurisu looked ready to pounce.
The panther was gently lowered down by the two merchants, who hastily took a few steps back. He coughed, and his red eyes fluttered open.
There was no mistaking those eyes, Shen thought darkly, as their slit-pupils almost instantly settled on him.
A wheezing, sick laugh erupted from the panther's chest, followed by another hacking cough.
"Well, well, well...we really ARE all mad here, arent' we?"
Without another word, he collapsed again, and lay still.
Shen took up the madman's wrist cautiously.
Still a pulse...
"Tell Grandmaster Shifu we have a patient in desperate need of Lady Biming's services," said Shen.
The general expression and reaction on all faces was something along the lines of "WHAAAAAT?"
"Shen, but, he's-!"
"I know what he is, kitten," Shen said in a strange sort of voice. "That's...sort of the reason I'm doing this."
Kurisu gave him a doubtful, and, he detected, none too pleased, look...left up to her, he had no doubt the panther would be buried alive right now.
"Please," he said, turning and nodding to Crane and Monkey, who nodded uncertainly and dashed off.
"Po?" asked Shen, finding himself still unused to using the panda's actual name, "Would you please...?"
"Um...yeah, sure," Po said, picking up the panther by the legs, while Shen grabbed his arms. He groaned audibly.
"Whoa...heavy for a skinny guy," Po said with a short laugh.
Been there, done that, Shen thought.
As he and the panda left the noodle shop, Mr. Ping and the customers watched them go.
The old goose cocked his head slightly, and then looked down at Kurisu, who had an expression on her face like she had just bitten into a lemon.
"Who is that...cat, darling?" he asked, quietly, confused about the whole thing.
Kurisu just sighed.
"He's...no one, dad. No one..."