Hun Territory

We flew off with one more person in tow. When we got to the end of the territory, we decided to stop to rehearse what we would do. It was about noon. "Ok, guys, this is the plan. Zan, Krystal, Monkey, and Alex will be outside the palace getting our ride out ready, near the palace. Krista, Tigress, Po, Tai-gee, Zeng, Mantis, and Peng will enter the palace with me. We'll establish a plan in rescue the princess from when we get inside," Lion explained.

"Good, but how do we go into the territory without attracting attention?" Peng asked. I scoffed.

"That's simple," I said. With that we started to the gate post. The oxen guard stopped us.

"Halt! What is your business here?" he demanded.

"We are here to invade the kingdom and kill every single one of you," Lion replied. The guard's eyes and our eyes went widen. We all stared at Lion as if he had completely lost his mind. Lion laughed at their expressions. "Nah man I'm just joking. I'm the new court jester and these are the new servants and slaves." The guard didn't seem to believe him. Go figure.

"If you are, make me laugh," he said. We were worried. We had never heard Lion tell a joke. He still laughed but he himself never told a joke. Lion clasped his hands together.

"Well, I could tell you about my old man that didn't care about me," Lion started off quickly, "I told him one time,'I want to go ice skating' he says,'wait until the ice gets warmer.'" The guard started to chuckle. "Or I could tell you about my mom. She was a healer and healed everyone except me. I told her one time, 'my leg hurts every time I walk on it' she says, 'don't walk on it.' Oh thanks that's some helpful advice." The guard began laughing and we snickered a bit. "Oh but it gets worse with her. One time I said something real stupid, and I was sick that day. I forget what I said that was so dumb, but after that I said, 'Sorry, I'm slow and stupid when I'm sick.' You know what she said? She said, 'Oh does that mean you're sick everyday?' I tell you, no help at all." By now the guard was laughing on the ground and we were all laughing hard. When the guard got up and finally composed himself, he let us in.

"I didn't know that you were that funny," Krystal said still laughing a bit.

"Yeah those were some nice jokes," Mantis said.

"They really happened guys, they weren't fake," Lion replied.

"You mean that your mother actually called you dumb?" Krystal said surprised and sad. Lion laughed.

"We all insulted each other in a way, but it was out of love. If we didn't love each other we wouldn't be able to laugh like this. I've known couples to call their wives old hens, suggesting that they cluck, nag, or talk so much," he explained.

"That's mean," Krista said.

"I don't think the wives mind because when they serve their husbands food, they start to cluck like a chicken," Lion replied making the others laugh. When we were well way away from the guard, little Zan asked.

"So now that we are in, how exactly are we going to get into the palace?" he asked.

"Simple, I'll be the jester and you guys the servants," Lion explained. We all stopped immediately. "What?"

"I thought you were lying about us being the court servants. Why are we going to do the 'blend in' strategy?" Zan asked. He knew a lot about war and fighting maneuvers for his age of 10.

"Well, Tai-gee, Peng, Zeng, and Po will be inside the palace looking for the princess while Krista, Tigress, Mantis, and I will be distracting Attila long enough for the others to get into the prison and get the princess," Lion explained as everyone started to nod their heads.

"Don't you think using all of us is a bit...overkill. I mean one of us can take out at least 20 Huns by ourselves easily," Tai-gee suggested.

"This is a delicate situation, Tai-gee. If we were to do something like that, we could plunge the country into unnecessary war," Lion said. That explained a lot. "That and I want to get close enough to the princess to make sure that if anything goes wrong, we don't endanger her life."

"That's the more prominent idea," Krystal said. We began to walk the barren mountain side. It wasn't cold but the rocks kept getting between my toes. We walked from there on. I whispered over Lion wanting to know why we couldn't just fly to our destination.

"Hey, Lion. I have a question. Well, two. Why can't we just fly to the palace, and why did you need a whole month to do a job that usually takes a day?" I asked. Lion looked over his shoulder to make sure that Peng was a far distance from them. He brought me closer to him.

"When I heard that Peng was going to be joining us, I needed to find a way to get him to understand Tai-gee," Lion whispered silently to the point I nearly couldn't hear him.

"You mean, you needed more time so Tai-gee could grow on Peng and not get into a fight?" I asked trying to understand his strategy. Lion nodded. "Okay, so why then can we not just fly to the palace?"

"Oh, well, because Tai-gee was complaining about carrying Monkey and Mantis," Lion said chuckling a bit. I shook my head smiling as we went forward.

As we walked, we came to a village not much bigger than a couple hundred square meters. There we went into a small crowded restaurant. We decided to just eat some of the local food. As we were getting our table, one of the waitress, a mountain lion, with some juice noticed Lion. She came up to him with a cheery but a little devilish smile. "Hello, sir. Nice to meet you. Would you like any juice, water, anything important?" she said with a seductive tone in her voice. Lion was sweating by now.

"Oh, Sorry ma'am, but I'm married," Lion said trying to get rid of the woman, but she persisted.

"Oh, she won't know, and I'll promise I'll be better than her," she said...And I later heard from the villagers, that's all she can remember from that day. The next day she was trying to figure out how she got two black eyes, three broken ribs, and a concussion. No one up to this day is willing to tell her that it was Krystal that beat her to a pulp after hearing her. It was so quick that I didn't even see it. After we saw the waitress laying in a clatter of broken mess with Krystal huffing and puffing over her, Alex scratched his head and said nervously.

"Maybe we'll just eat out. As in OUTSIDE!" Everyone quickly agreed and we had some of my noodle soup for dinner. Luckily, the manager didn't stick us with the bill.

This is for all the people who think they know someone that is like Krystal.