The Thriller
Disclaimer: Kung Fu Panda is © 2008 DreamWorks Animation SKG
A/N: You know, it's funny…I didn't realize that writing these would make me appreciate MJ more than I already do, but I guess I was way off! I'm really enjoying writing this! Like the previous chapter, this is told mainly in Tigress' POV. Oh, and before I forget, here's the link to the music video for your listening pleasure:
http:// www. you tube .com / watch?v=Uqxo1SKB0z8&feature=channel_page (close spaces where needed)
Enjoy.
Second Track – Beat It
Recorded in 1982, part of the album 'Beat It'
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The Sacred Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom. There was something inherently spiritual about the old fruit tree.
Even now, as it lay dormant overlooking the valley, it still held the same radiance, the same…protection, she had always sought. Tigress had always found peace here through meditation, but peace just wouldn't come to her tonight. She could hear her friends in the distance as she sat alone, laughing and sharing stories with the panda, as if he had been training with them for years. As if he was one of them.
So, where did that leave her?
Tigress sighed heavily and sat down, looking up at the empty expanse of the night sky.
She supposed that she was still upset with him, but, it didn't matter how she felt towards the panda now, did it? He was here to stay, whether she wanted him to be there or not. It wasn't that she hated him, at least not so much anymore. He had proven himself, and that should have been good enough for her. But it wasn't. She only wanted the Dragon Scroll because she felt that she had earned it. Tigress had always wondered if she was being selfish for believing that she was the only one worthy of being the Dragon Warrior, but her friends had unanimously agreed—she was a shoe-in for the title.
That was why she was the leader of the Furious Five, why she trained herself so hard every day, often fighting fatigue, tiredness, hunger…just to prove herself to her Master. At least Tai Lung had always gotten that from him. Shifu had never let the snow leopard think that he was deserving of anything less. He always had Shifu's unconditional love to fall back on. She didn't. Unlike Tai Lung, she had to fight for Shifu's acceptance her entire life. She had been a faithful and obedient daughter to him, had gone above and beyond what he asked of her.
Was it any wonder why she was so deeply hurt when Master Oogway chose that fat blob to take the title? Although now that she reflected on it, when Po had looked up to them for help when the task of being the Dragon Warrior was thrown at him, they didn't make things any easier.
Well, she didn't make it any easier.
Then again, ever since Shifu had adopted her, hadn't she looked up to him for the exact same guidance that Po was looking for? Perhaps she and Po weren't so different after all…to be perfectly honest, would it have killed him to say once, just once, that he was proud of her? That he was proud that she was his daughter? That he loved—
No. She wouldn't allow herself to go down that road. Never again.
Tigress sighed dejectedly and let her eyes flick down to the valley below. The twinkling lights of the village still shone brightly through the thick evening mist.
As more and more time passed, the less and less she found herself faulting Po for taking away what she felt was rightfully hers. He was—literally—dropped into a world where he had absolutely no idea what he was doing, and everything had turned out alright in the end, hadn't it?
But still, when Tigress witnessed firsthand how Master Shifu's attitude softened around the panda; after running up those steps to the Palace and seeing them there in the Hall of Warriors, locked in an embrace…she was devastated. Forget the damned scroll. Forget the title. All she really wanted was what Po had now. That soft smile, the promise of greatness, to be treated as a father should treat his daughter. She hated that she was being denied that one simple necessity.
And the more she thought about it, the more her temper was stoked.
How could he care so much for someone he had only just met? What did that fat panda give Shifu that she didn't try to give him over and over again? She handed her heart to him, leant her love and unconditional loyalty to him. And what did she get in return?
A reproving glare. A stern lecture whenever she did have the gall to step out of line, if only for a moment.
That's when she finally realized it. That every stance, every technique, everything she'd been taught, and everything she had ever fought for…meant next to nothing now. She had lost the one and only chance she would ever have to prove her worth.
So, all things considered, she had every right to be upset with Po, didn't she? To say that she was humiliated beyond all recognition was an understatement. Disgraced? Maybe not so much. Humbled? Quite possibly. She had waited for her chance to tell him how she felt the first night he was there. And that first opportunity she had, she took it. With as much decency as she could muster, Tigress stood from her bed that night and made for the door to tear it open, meeting a thoroughly frightened set of jade green eyes glowing in the dim moonlight.
He looked afraid. And she was glad for it.
"Master Tigress! Sorry for waking you…" All the panda was guilty of was not knowing where his room was. But she felt threatened by his presence, threatened by the notion that somehow she was being replaced. Being one of the strongest and most revered warriors in China, one would certainly make a case against her feelings of vulnerability.
But she needed to get rid of him.
She knew that the sooner he was gone, the sooner things would go back to normal, and the sooner Master Oogway could realize that he was wrong. "You don't belong here." For sure she believed that he would leave, but the panda proved to be more persistent than he let on.
"Right, of course. This is your room—" Was he serious? Did he really not grasp the concept of 'get the hell out'?
"No." Tigress whispered darkly, "You don't belong at the Jade Palace. You are a disgrace to kung fu, and if you have any respect for who we are, and what we do, you will be gone by morning." She had slammed the door in his face just to be sure it sunk in. Normally that would have deterred just about anyone.
Not Po.
Not he, the mighty Dragon Warrior, Protector and Overseer of the Valley of Peace. He who is without fault and without sin.
Tigress didn't even realize that she had started to cry until she felt hot tears fall onto her lap. She couldn't take it anymore. How Po always knew exactly how to make her Master smile and laugh, and always knew just what to do and where to be…
How after just a few days, Po became like a son to him, where it had taken almost her entire life, and she still didn't have the slightest idea of what to say or how to feel. A sob tore at her throat. What did it matter now, anyway? Maybe that was the reason why Shifu had taken such a shine to him. Because he wanted a son more than a daughter. The red panda wanted nothing more than to fill in the gap that Tai Lung had left behind. Why else would his behavior change so rapidly? That was it. That had to be it. For all intents and purposes, Master Shifu thought of her as a complete failure. There was no use in trying to deny what was blatantly obvious. She wasn't destined to be the Dragon Warrior. She couldn't defeat Tai Lung.
And now, he was trading her off like a commodity, replacing her with…with—
"Um, hello?"
Tigress froze in mid thought. No…not him. Not now.
He was the last person she needed to see right now, but she supposed that she'd have to try. It wasn't as though she'd be able to stop seeing him entirely. Quickly wiping the tears from her eyes, she silently bid him to take a seat on the ground next to her. Po didn't take that invitation. Instead he opted to stand, rocking uncomfortably on the balls of his feet behind her.
"Well anyway, Tigress I…I've wanted to talk to you."
"Oh, do you, then?"
He wanted to talk. About what? Probably just to gloat about how he didn't even have to break a sweat when he beat Tai Lung to a pulp, just like he had done to her hopes, her dreams…
"Yeah, you ran out so quickly after dinner. I was—we were worried about you."
Worried? Now he felt sorry for her?
Tigress spun on him, hoping that her eyes were blazing, but she knew that she probably looked ridiculous as she was. Her fur was a mess, the dried tears plastering her fur against her skin, and her face was contorted somewhere between a glare and a sob. Of course, he didn't look top-notch either. His lips were quivering, and his eyes slightly red. No doubt he was still out of sorts from his little gaff in the training hall earlier that afternoon.
"Are you really?" She stood, glaring at him accusingly, "Worried about poor little Tigress all by herself under the peach tree, crying to herself because she has no one else to turn to? Well, Dragon Warrior, I don't need you coming up here to voice your sympathy."
He was visibly stricken, "Tigress, that's not…"
She fell back down to the ground, her eyes brimming with unshed tears, "No, I never seem to get it right, do I?"
"What?"
Po looked genuinely confused, and honestly, she couldn't blame him. When she looked up at him, at those pleading green eyes, she noticed something that she'd never noticed before. He was reaching out to her, offering her his friendship, a shoulder to lean on, but she didn't want it. She didn't want his pity. All she wanted was for him to go away.
"Tigress," He smiled reassuringly, "I'm only here as a friend…"
"You unbelievable bastard!" She finally snapped, and before she knew it, Po was beneath her, arms pinned down against the dirt. "You are nothing to me, do you understand? You are not my friend, and you never will be!"
"But I…I don't understand…"
The feline grabbed him by the neck, "Now you listen to me, you fat slob; we all have a destiny, nothing ever just happens without a reason. It's all part of a plan…I was supposed to be the Dragon Warrior, but now, I'm nothing more than a piece of worthless shit standing in your damn shadow! Do you even have the slightest idea of how it feels to have your dreams taken away from you at the last possible second? To have everything one minute, only to have nothing left the next?"
Tigress had silently hoped that he didn't have an answer, that he'd stay quiet.
That for a rare moment, she could be right.
What he ended up saying only fueled her anger: "Y-yes, actually, I do."
Tigress slapped him across the cheek, "Did you hear what I just said!?" she shrieked, "You cheated me! I had a destiny, Panda, I was going to be the Chosen One, the Dragon Warrior… but then you fell in front of me, and cheated me out of it! You don't know what it's like…all I ever wanted to do is make him proud of me, to have him smile at me and say that he was proud of my accomplishments, to have him love me, and what do I have to show for it? You got the title, and you gained his love. What do I have, Panda? I have nothing." She shook violently, having lost all control of her voice and her emotion, letting her tears stream freely down her cheeks. She had always promised herself that if she were ever going to have a breakdown, it was going to be alone, far away from anyone who could hear her cry…not in front of an audience, and certainly not in front of him, only eight hours after she had finally bowed to him in respect.
But he was here. He was listening. And the worst part of it was, he wasn't going away. The stubborn bastard would never quit. Her tear-drenched eyes darted up to his face when she felt his hand gently touch her shoulder; the carefree smile had long since vanished from his face, but there was that spark in his eyes that told her that she could confide in him…that she could trust him. Her head sank until it was barely touching his shoulder, crying quietly and praying to the gods that he didn't think of her now as nothing more than some pathetic weakling, chasing after some unattainable dream.
She sniffed, blinking the tears out of her eyes, "Do you understand what I'm saying, Panda? This wasn't supposed to happen. Not to me. I was…Master Tigress, the leader of the Furious Five. A fearless warrior who answered to no one." She seethed and glared at the panda, but her vision of him was blurred behind a blanket of tears, "I had an identity, a destiny. And when Oogway chose you instead of me…I mean, what was I supposed to say?"
By the time she was finished speaking, her head was already buried in his shoulder, tears renewed.
For the longest time, neither of them said a word, although she knew Po had tried several times to say something. In the span of just a few short minutes, she had revealed to him—almost a complete stranger, no less—more than she had exposed to even her closest friends, and most certainly more than Master Shifu.
"'Panda, I'm going to kick your pathetic, fat ass.'"
Tigress looked up at him slowly, almost cautiously, "What?"
He looked down at her, "That's what you should have said, but we all make mistakes, don't we?" A smile broke on his lips, and although he may have been terribly mistaken, a shadow of a smirk was tugging at hers. The tiger finally sat up on her knees, allowing the panda to hoist himself out from under her.
Pushing themselves a ways apart, their eyes quickly turned skyward, watching the millions of tiny twinkling lights hovering above them. And though the brilliance of the nighttime sky held their attention for a good while, Tigress finally dropped her eyes from the heavens, watching the panda intently, as if waiting for him to say something further. But she decided it was best is she made the first move. "Why are you still here?" She finally asked him.
"Oh, right!" The panda began fumbling through his shorts, "I wanted to give you something." He pulled an item from his back pocket. "Just a little gift for any trouble I've caused you."
Tigress was taken back, "Why would you do that, I—" The moonlight glinted off of the smooth jade canister in his hand, making the object glow with a refined radiance. It was a scroll. No, the scroll. The Dragon Scroll. He was giving her the Dragon Scroll.
He was giving her the Dragon Scroll?
"You're giving me the Dragon Scroll?"
He handed it over to her, "Yep. The secret to ultimate power. I figured you might want to see it for yourself."
Tigress reached out and took it from him, making a mental note to pinch herself later, just to be absolutely sure she wasn't dreaming. Like an archeologist uncovering a sacred treasure, she cautiously pulled the gold stop from the top of the cylinder, and slid the sacred parchment out. Her eyes widened in awe. Blank or not, in her mind she was still reeling over the fact that she was holding the Dragon Scroll in her hands.
She tilted it slightly, revealing her reflection inlaid in the golden backdrop.
"Now, what do you see?"
I see…" Her face brightened for the slightest moment, but soon fell. "I see a failure. I see someone who fought for someone's acceptance her entire life, only to have her heart ripped out and stepped on. I see a person who isn't afraid to point out someone else's faults, but is still too afraid to admit her own, someone who still can't learn to…to…"
"I know. It's alright. You wanna know what I see?" Po asked. She sniffed and nodded. "I see Master Tigress, leader of the Furious Five, someone who says what she means and means what she says. She's the strongest and the boldest of the kung fu masters, and is everything you could ever expect from a hero. She's brave, fearless, selfless…and would do just about anything to save the day. And she doesn't need a scroll to tell her that."
He turned and smiled at her, but she didn't return it. Tigress' gaze remained firmly connected to her reflection. In the silence that followed, he figured that she just needed some time alone, and seeing the trouble it had gotten him into for being there in the first place, he wasn't going to be the unlucky one to stand in her way.
He stood up, brushed himself off, and turned away from her toward the Palace.
But before he could make even one step, she stopped him.
"Why don't you ever give up?"
Po sighed, looking down the steps, "Because if I did, I'd still be in the valley right now, serving noodles and listening to my dad drag on about how his son shouldn't dream, that his place in the world is 'at tables two, five, seven and twelve'. That someday his destiny to run the restaurant just like his father, and his father's father, and his father's father's father, who won the shop off a friend in a game of mahjong…would be fulfilled."
"And how is that supposed to make me feel better?" She said smartly.
"Don't know, but I know a cup of hot tea will," he turned around to face her, and that's when she saw it again. That same carefree smile, that same spark in his eyes. Po held out his hand to help her up, "You want some?"
She nodded and accepted his hand, "Alright." Tigress paused, then quickly corrected herself, "Actually, on second thought, I think I'm going to stay here. I…I have a lot on my mind." Tigress pulled her hand from his grip and slowly backed away.
He sighed dejectedly, and looked at his now empty hand, "Y-yeah, I understand. Well, I uh, hope you feel better. And if you ever feel like you need someone to talk to, and that someone just happens to be me…I just want you to know that you can tell me anything."
...If only that were true.
The tiger smiled sadly and walked over to him, giving him a hug. She was still torn between laughing and crying, but truthfully, she felt closer to crying. "Thank you, Dragon Warrior," Tigress murmured as she clung to him. She held him tightly, longer than she thought was appropriate, but as soon as she felt her sobs threatening to break loose again, she released him.
He stood back and gazed at her with a strange look, something akin to confusion...or was it—concern? She wasn't entirely sure. Perhaps to mask his guilt, he quickly caught himself and recaptured his usual cheerful tone.
"So, I guess I'll see you tomorrow then, right?"
"Right. Tomorrow."
After she was sure he was out of sight, she walked over to the peach tree and curled up next to it. The Dragon Scroll was still on the ground in front of her, unrolled, capturing the stars in its reflective surface.
And as she sat there alone, under the familiar protection of that old peach tree, she hadn't realized it…
He hadn't left, and things were beginning to get better.
A/N: And hopefully that proves what an apologetic little sapling that I am. Review? Pwease?
