You might be surprised that since Max is a tiger and his bio mom is a tiger, he explains his phobia...of his own kind. One example...

Chapter 2: Fear of Tigress

Later on, Musaki took Max over to the Jade Palace and he asked, "You ever been there before?"

"No." Max replied.

As soon as they arrived, Max looked up at the stairs and saw how high it was to get in there. He gulped nervously and asked, "We have to walk all these stairs?"

"Yep. They call it the Thousand Steps. If anything, it looks like a million steps." Musaki added.

"Who made these?"

"Master Oogway."

"Wow..."

They walked across the steps and as they got to the middle of them, Max started to become very tired just from walking. He panted heavily and slowed down a little bit. Musaki stops and asked Max to climb on his back and carried him all the way up.

As soon as they got there, Max looked at the entire place and his eyes widened by how huge it was. He said, "I imagined that this place was big, but not like this."

"Well, it gets bigger than that."

Soon enough before they reached the bunkhouse, they saw Arizona, Kazuo, Shing, Ruiz and his brother Zeke came over and they saw Musaki with Max and they greeted them as they came by. Max said hi to them and Zeke asked, "What brings you here?"

"He's staying with me for 2 weeks." Musaki answered.

"Wow, really? Where's everyone else?"

"They're out of town looking for more kids to adopt."

"How many kids can uncle Mako adopt?"

"I don't know, Zeke."

"So, how you been doing, Max?" asked Arizona.

"Doing fine, I guess." Max replied, sadly.

"What's wrong?" asked Ruiz.

"I don't wanna talk about it."

Max walks away with his head hanging down, which concerned most of them and Kazuo asked, "What's wrong with him?"

Musaki sighed heavily and said, "This is gonna be a long story."

Max was walking towards the training hall, hoping to get some alone time and when he went inside, he looks in wonder as he saw how huge it was. He walked around parts of it and he's never seen anything like this before. Several minutes in, he hears someone punching and kicking in there and to his surprise, he saw Tigress.

She was punching the adversary way harder, which kinda made him nervous and when he looked at her, his nervousness went into full-mode fear because he reminds her of his mom. Then, the severe sound of the punch made him quiver and he slowly backed away and as he got to the stairs, a creak sound came out of nowhere; which caught her attention.

Max quickly hid under the steps leaving Tigress to look around to see where that noise came from. She thought there might be intruders or maybe Po playing a joke on her. She walks around the training hall to solve this little mystery and as she was looking, Max was in constant fear of getting caught because he remembered being beaten by his own kind when he was younger; which triggered the fear of his own species.

Suddenly, Max let out a sneeze and that caught Tigress' attention as well. He tried to hide where he couldn't be seen and when Tigress went under the stairs, she tried to look for the stranger figure and not long as she stuck her head under the stairs, she got clawed in the face. She started screaming and covering her face, hoping that there was no blood and while she wasn't looking, Max quickly got behind her and bit her tail, making her scream louder and then he kicked her from behind and quickly running out of the room.

Tigress got up and she saw the door starting to close and she got really mad and was determined to find this person and make him pay.

Max ran faster and faster, hoping that Tigress isn't behind him and when he came into the bunkhouse, he saw Musaki walking towards the hallway and when he turned around, Max jumped on top of him, making Musaki fall down to the ground.

Max was panting heavily and Musaki said, "Max, you okay?"

"This...monster...tried to...tried to come ater me." Max replied, panting.

"Who?"

"She's after me! She's after me!"

"Who's after you?"

"MUSAKI!"

Max screamed in fear and ran off to Musaki's room to hide and Musaki didn't even know what was going on. Not long, he saw Tigress looking ticked off with a scratch on her face.

"Whoa...what happened to you, claw yourself?" asked Musaki.

"Not funny! Who did this to my face?"

Musaki grew confused about this and he responded, "I have no idea."

"Did you see what this person did to me?"

"I wasn't there, so how should I know?"

Tigress growled at him and said, "When I find the person that did this, I will brutally hurt him!"

"Calm down, okay? Just tell me what happened."

"I was training and I heard someone come in and I didn't know who it was and then, someone sneezed and when I went under the stairs, someone clawed my face, bit my tail and kicked me from behind. I didn't see who it was, but I saw the door close and that might be someone playing a trick on me."

"That's all?"

"Yes, that's all!"

"I get the idea now."

"I wanna find this person right now and hurt him bad!"

"Okay, I'm not sure if I can help you with this, but if I hear anything about it, I'll let you know."

"You better."

She walks away angry, but not before Musaki said, "To be fair, at least you have your beauty mark."

She scoffed and kept walking and then, he went over to his room and saw Max curled up in a corner, whimpering. Max asked in fear, "Is she gone?"

"Who?"

"The monster."

He quickly discovers that he was talking about Tigress and then, he said, "Yeah, she's gone. Can you tell me what happened?"

"I was walking to this big place and then, I saw her punching a dummy and when I looked at her, I see my mom in her and that made me want to step back and then, she heard me and I hid under the stairs, hoping she wouldn't find me. But when I saw her coming under it, I clawed her face, then I bit her tail and kicked her and I just ran. I didn't want to be hurt again."

The clues of the puzzle somewhat fit the answer of that situation and what Tigress was talking about. That's when he found out that it was Max that did it. He slowly turned to him and said, "It was you, wasn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"I'm...I'm scared of my own kind."

"Really?"

"Before I was at the orphanage, my mother would physically and verbally abuse me and molest me and my dad would just beat me and my brothers and sisters neglected me and when they do notice me, they want to hurt me. And I was left behind by some wolves one time and they wanted to hurt me by the demand of my mom, so I lived in fear all of my life."

Musaki felt sorry for Max because he's been through so much in his life, like it just became that bad. He puts his arm around him and said, "It wasn't your fault. You didn't have to deserve any of this."

"I know, but sometimes I ask myself, 'what did I do wrong' or 'why do they not want me or love me?'"

Musaki hugged Max tightly as Max started crying and he said, "it's gonna be okay. But you kinda have to tell Tigress what you did."

"I can't do that because she'll kill me."

"How do you know?"

"I don't know. I'm just afraid she will."

Musaki didn't really know what to do at this point and he knew that he would have to protect his cousin, but he didn't think he'd protect him from his own family. He told him, "You'll be safe here. I promised your brothers I'll take care of you and I will."

"And so will we."

They looked up and they see Arizona, Kazuo, Ruiz and Shing coming in the room, each reaching out to Max and giving him support while he's here.

"We won't let anything happen to you, we promise." Arizona added.

"Thank you guys." Max said, tearfully.

That idea popped out of my head since September and Max sees his abusive mom in Tigress, which adds to the fear. Later on, I'll put in when they'll actually meet and it's gonna be crazy!