Bitter Failure

Shen walked through darkness with an elegant step. The path before him was dark, just as the road behind was. It was such a complete darkness that the path was in fact completely obscured, and this fact made the peacock nervous. Furthermore, there seemed to be a worrying voice in the back of his head that insisted that Shen should be dead. Which was ridiculous. Of course Shen wasn't dead, if he was dead then how on earth was he walking here?

But that thought led to other confusing thoughts, like 'where is 'here' exactly?' and 'what am I doing here?' Both of these questions had no apparent answer, and Shen hated having no answers. Answers were his life. He always had that extra helping of curiosity that other animals seemed to lack, and although it had often got him into great amounts of trouble, Shen felt he was better for it.

"I wish I had some answers now," he thought, "But none seem to be forthcoming. Bother. What am I even walking on? It feels solid enough- but why can't I see it?"

He looked around himself, viewing the featureless void that stretched in all directions, even down. It was a disconcerting feeling, to look down and see your feet, and nothing but a great yawning blackness beyond.

"Wait." he said aloud, as a thought occurred to him, "How can I see my feet? In this darkness I shouldn't be able to see the end of my beak, let alone my feet. What the-"

He inspected himself, and found that every detail of himself was perfectly defined, as if he was standing under a bright light and not in the midst of a great darkness.

"Well, that's odd. I must be dreaming..."

He looked around in greater confusion, willing the darkness to reveal whatever secrets it contained. The darkness refused.

"Hum. My mind is frighteningly empty," he said out to the darkness, "I have heard of 'dim-witted' but this is just preposterous."

He listened for any response, but none came. The darkness remained as blank as ever, and his words did not echo. A worrying thought crept into the back of his mind, that perhaps he really was dead, ad this was some kind of dreadful purgatory for the not-quite-good-enough. But again that thought was rejected in favour of something more rational.

"I command this dream to change," he said imperiously, halting his movements and drawing himself up. He drew his wings into his robes- and then gave a start. His robes were fine white silk, the type that ran like water in his wings. The type he hadn't been able to wear since his defeat at Gongmen city, and had been wishing for ever since. He drew his eyebrows together.

"I suppose every dream deserves some wish-fullfillment," he said dryly, almost sardonically, "But if this is my dream then why not show me something more entertaining? Perhaps another one of those flying dreams I used to be so fond of? Or even on of those blasted nightmares? You know what I'm talking about. The ones with all the fire and smoke, and the blood, and..."

He trailed off as a strange sensation came over him, almost like his words were being sucked from his mouth and blown away. His tongue felt like lead. Well. It was ridiculous to be yelling out into the darkness anyway-

Fire. Smoke.

He paused, as the two words came to his mind unbidden. Was there something important about them?

Academically, he knew that fire and smoke was important. But more than that, the words seemed... personal. Important. As if they had once been crucial to him.

"Well," he thought grimly, "I expect I'll remember when I wake up."

Then, light.

It appeared so suddenly that Shen was forced to shield his eyes with wing to keep from being blinded, and even then the light was painful. Shen forced himself to acclimate quickly, struggling against the blinding whiteness that suddenly had replaced the dark.

But when the initial shock had finally faded, and Shen was able to look around without blinking, he found something more interesting to take his focus.

Before him stood a peacock, or what on first glance could be called a peacock. On closer inspection, Shen noticed that parts of it's neck and wings were missing, along with pieces of it's chest and tail. Although the peacock was white, the places that were missing shone, as if the whole bird was simply a sheet placed over a very bright fire and had torn in some places, allowing the light to shine through. Swathes of red ran over it's body like errant clouds, shifting between it's train and it's face. And it's eyes were burnished blood-red, and they did not blink.

"Who are you?" Shen asked in confusion, his guard dropping enough that plain astonishment was clear on his face.

"I am the you which exists within yourself, which in turn resides within you." the being replied. It's voice was neither male nor female, but each word echoed with authority. Power.

"The wha-?" Shen stuttered, possibly more confused then before, "That doesn't make any sense."
He regarded the strange apparition cautiously, as if it could strike at any moment. Which for all he knew, it could. Shen had learned from experience that strange beings appearing in his dreams were rarely friendly.

"I exist within yourself, which itself exists in you." the being spoke again. As it spoke, it's head rotated in a distinctly unsettling manner, casting red beams from it's eyes like searchlights.

Shen realized his eyes followed the eerie beams of red light with involuntary fascination. He shook his head to regain control of his eyes, and took a step back.
"Stop that. It's disconcerting." Shen said. The spectral peacock continued it's weird motions anyway. "That isn't what I was asking anyway. What is your name?"

"I am Shen." came the reply.

Shen took a second step back. His train rustled behind him, a sing tat he was losing his composure. He took a deep breath and focused on the air in front of him, rather than the actual being that stood before him. It only took a moment for the ghastly white being to become blurry as Shen's eyes lost their focus. Now, without the distractions the spectre provided, Shen was able to plan his words.
"Now, this is where we come to odds." he said slowly, "You say that you are Shen. However, I am quite sure that I am Shen. And since there is only one me..."

Shen trailed off as he remembered that it was actually quite possible for there to be more than one of hm. After all, hadn't he fought himself to a standstill atop a burning airship?

"I am Shen." the being responded, with no change of tone. It gestured around itself with a talon. "This is Shen. And you are Shen. I exist within Shen, and Shen exists within you."

"If you aren't going to be more cooperative, I hope you do not mind if I ignore you. I have places to be." even as Shen spoke the words rang confusion in his head. Where did he have to go? Where did he have to be?

"You hate failure."

Shen balked. "W-what are you talking about, you foolish spirit?"

"You hate failure."

"I thought you said you were me. Don't tell me you are becoming inconsistent along with illogical." he drew himself up, wrapping his train about his legs and raising his head in a gesture of proud suspicion.

Search this dump.

Find the dragon warrior.

Don't worry about the peacock, he's dead.

The words seemed spoken an eternity away, barely whispers to Shen's ears. Yet they invoked a cold shiver that traveled up and down his body. That was Zhung's voice. And Hao... Hadn't he been fighting them, and eon ago?
Or perhaps, not so long ago. Memories of motion and pain flashed through his mind, and he knew he had been fighting. More worryingly, he couldn't recall who won.

"You hate failure." the being said for the third time. This time Shen snapped his eyes to the other peacock, cold shivers racking down his back.

"Are you saying I failed? Against Hao? Impossible."

"We fought and we burned." the being said, without expression.

"Impossible!" Shen insisted. But the words were nothing against the cold conviction that arose suddenly in his gizzard, the terrible knowledge that the spectre spoke truth. That he had failed and had-

"We fought and we burned." the other peacock said in the same flat tone.

"And let me guess, you saved me?" Shen hissed, "You saved me to send me back because I have some great destiny? Augh! Why doesn't anything make any sense?"

"I did not save you."

"What?" Shen said in a drawn out hiss, his hackles raising down his neck. "Am I fireproof now?"

"I did not save you. We burned but did not burn."

Shen slumped. "I-I burned? But did not burn? Brilliant. That makes less sense than I thought it would."
He looked around himself again. The appearance of Other-Shen had illuminated the landscape, but the light revealed nothing. It was simply now an endless expanse of light instead of darkness.

We did all we could.

Forget the students. This academy was dead a long time ago.

I tell you, the Peacock's dead!

Shen shivered, though he was not cold. His head-crest had drawn tight against his scalp.
"Where am I now? I mean right now? Is this truly a dream?"
His questions were rapid, tense. He was losing his pose again.

"Within you. Within you. No." Other-Shen replied.

"What am I doing here?" Shen pressed, taking a step forwards in his fervor, "Is there something that this- this vision is supposed to tell me? Inform me? Is this about- about my inner peace?"

"Be... calm. I am awake now." Other-Shen said flatly, tucking his wings into his sides. "I am your inner peace."

"What." Shen halted mid-step. "You are WHAT? Please don't tell me that this is what I have to look forward to when I finally master inner peace! Surely I misheard. If this is a vision, then-"
He cut off, as another thought occurred to him. A thought that gave him chills.
"Only, this isn't a vision, is it? No, no. This, all of this, this is my soul. I'm inside my soul. And you live here. You are living in my soul."

"Yes."

"But why are you in pieces? Why are you in my soul?" Shen continued, growing progressively louder as he did, "Why am I in my soul? Answer me!"

"Your soul was pure. I chose the purest. I only live in purity."

Shen laughed a grim laugh. "I am pure? Hah! You chose poorly. Poorly indeed." then his voice grew cold as ice, and his eyes narrowed into thin slits. "What are you doing in my soul, spirit? What is your purpose? What have you been doing all this time inside me?"

"I..." Other-Shen began, and then paused. His disjointed head drooped, and just for a moment, his light faded.

"You what?" Shen pressed, stepping forwards so that he was right in Other-Shen's face, "You what?! Tell me! How long have you lived here, and what are you doing here?"
No. NO! There was no way that he was going to allow this! He wanted an answer. He deserved an answer. He needed to know how much this thing could do. How much it could influence. How much of his life it could have stolen.

Other-Shen blinked. For the first time. His head drooped still lower.
"I only live... in purity..."

And then there was darkness again, because Other-Shen vanished before his eyes. And then even the darkness was fading, fading, fading, and even as he desperately searched around for the spirit, there was a terrible ringing sound and a sensation of rising very quickly, and then-

There was color.

"He-he's still alive!"

"Impossible! he's on fire!"

"It's impossible, but he's alive!

"Quick, get the master!"

He woke up.

He was in pain. His wings were bruised. His tail was singed. His legs both felt like they were going to quit.
"I'm going to have to kick this habit of waking up in pain." he said idly.
Around him was a smooth metal room. He could hear groans of restless sleepers around him, which jolted him upright. As soon as he sat up, he noticed a thick heady smell that reminded him of tin. But he knew it was blood. The smell came from the other birds arranged in rows around him. Their feathers were blackened. Many had open burns all over their bodies. Some were dead.
On closer inspection, he found that he himself had the least burns of anyone in the room. Apart from a few blackened train feathers, it almost seemed like the fire had gone out of its way to avoid him.

For all the good that did. He flopped back down to the blanket. His lungs hurt. His tongue hurt. His head hurt.

He might as well have died, for all the good he had done. The thought weighed on his shoulders like an anvil, along with other thoughts and wonderings. Had Po been captured? What about Yin?
No! They couldn't be gone! He had just began making friends, blast it! They couldn't be gone. They couldn't be... But where were they? Not in this room.
Perhaps they were dead. Wouldn't that be ironic. Another friend lost to flames.

And to top it off, he had just learned that there was some kind of spirit-creature infesting his soul. This thought disturbed him. It made him wonder how much of his life had really been his own. How long had that spirit lived inside him? How long had it been...

But none of that mattered if Po was gone. If Yin was gone. Hah. Yin wasn't even her name. He had never even called her by her name. Had they been friends? Shen thought they had. Perhaps he had been wrong, and his thoughts and emotions were being toyed with by that thing in his soul that claimed to be him.
He tried to fight the thought off. He had to believe that his friends were his friends, or else he would lose himself to his old paranoia that even now threatened to consume him.

He had to shake the thought away. For now, he had to focus on finding out what had happened to Po. To Yin- Fenghuang? Hmmph. Yin would do for now. To Dunthrie as well, he supposed.
Why wasn't he dead?
No, no! He had to focus on the now. He had to focus on finding out what had happened to the others.

He forced his legs to move, forcing himself to ignore the pain and stiffness that ran through his limbs, and stood. Slowly. Very slowly. He straightened his head and neck, and stretched his wings. It didn't matter how he survived. He could worry about that later. For now, he had to find out what had happened to the others. It didn't matter how he survived. He was alive.

For the first time since he had awoken, he focused and really looked around the room he was in, taking in every detail. The floor was littered with panting bodies and dark blankets. He could see many faces that he had met yesterday. Koum'Satek was there. Xua was there also.
The metal walls were blackened with smoke, and showed signs of having melted and then re-hardened. There was a window, through which a bright morning sun shone through, and a large steel door which was closed.

It was to the door that Shen headed, weaving between the bodies like some pale phantom of death. He reached the exit and tried the door. To his pleasure, he found it was not locked. He fumbled with the catch a bit (his wings felt strangely numb) before opening it and stepping through.
Even that meagre effort seemed to have tired him. He found himself leaning on a wall almost against his will. this was no good. He needed something to prop himself with. A staff.
He looked around for such an implement, but found nothing. Everywhere he looked the floor was swathed with great black strips, no doubt from where the fire had raced across it only this morning. In some places the back splotches stretched up the walls and covered the ceiling.

And there were no animals. There was nothing but a consuming silence out here, now that he had stepped away from the groans of pain from the other birds. All together, there was an effect of deadness to the place. It seemed to Shen that he was almost the last person to exist, as if the rest of the world had simply ceased to exist.
A chill ran through him at the thought. He didn't want to be alone. Not anymore.
And if he didn't find the others- if he didn't make up for his mistake- then he would be alone.

"I hate failure." he mumbled to himself, as he braced against the black walls and walked forwards. Each time his wing pressed against the wall, it came away blacker than before. Every time his robe touched the wall, it too was blackened. But he ignored this, relegated it to a back part of his mind. There would be time to gripe about his clothes later, if he could just find Po!

He stumbled over his own feet, nearly falling before catching himself with an outstretched wing. The action brought back the earlier battle with Hao. Brought back how the wolf had humiliated him. Brought back how he had nearly lost himself to rage and killed his childhood friend.
How had it come to this? At what point had he stopped winning?
Was he simply prolonging the inevitable? How much more failure would he take?

He righted himself and struggled onwards. Each step was hell. Each breath was agony. But it was nothing that he hadn't lived through for years upon years in a metal factory, or after hours spent trying to make his parents proud of him by practicing a new move over and over until he succeeded. He was just tired. It would get better if he could find Po, see that stupid panda's face, if he could find Yin and yell at her over some trivial philosophical point... if he could just find his friends, and know he hadn't failed them.

He found another door. Swung open without complaint, but it was empty of anything but ashes.
A few more steps and he found another room in the same state, then another, then another still. And there was yet to be any sign of life. But there had to be someone here! Someone had to have moved him, to have treated those wounds, to have applied those bandages!

He stumbled into the great room where all the halls met. Even is this place, where the ceiling stretched far over his head, the ceiling was blackened with ash. The pillars were blackened as well, and the once-intricate phoenix designs that had adorned them had been melted down to slag.
And the floor was a pattern of black and silver, swathes of black describing where Zhung Chai had fought. Some browns, where blood had dried. The bodies (there must have been some, but where were they?) had been moved away, but there was still the occasional patch of fur or charred skin.

And in the center of the room stood master Chang and a group of other avians. Shen gave a silent prayer of thanks as soon as he saw the aged ibis.
Chang noticed him as he approached. His eyes looked every bit as tired as Shen felt.

"Chang." Shen said, by way of greeting. He was too tired to bother with formalities.

"Shen." Chang replied, sending the other birds away with a wave of his wing.

The two birds regarded each other for a moment.

"I am glad that you are well enough to stand." Chang said at last, "I needed to thank you for everything you did yesterday, to protect the young people that call the place home."

"Save your thanks," Shen said bitterly, looking away. "I did nothing."

"But you tried. I am certain that things would have been the worse if you had not."
Chang walked up to the troubled peacock and placed a reassuring wing on his shoulder. "Do not doubt yourself so."

"What reason have I for indulging is pathetic self-pride?" Shen asked, acid in his tone. "I failed. I failed everyone."

Chang didn't argue. "Not everyone can succeed all the time. Some of us fail more than others. But it is our results that measure us."

Shen felt a heavy knot in his stomach tighten at those words. Growling, he shook the ibis's wing from his shoulder.
"Spare me your hypocrisies, you old bird," he said, stepping back and looking down imperiously at Chang. His eyes were a mask of rage and disgust. A fitting cover, since that was what he actually felt. Only not towards Chang. No, Shen was disgusted with himself. Angry with himself.

"Ahh Shen. You are troubled, and you lash out at others to protects yourself. Why can't you accept comfort from others who care about you, and find healing?"

"Don't pretend to care about me!" Shen snapped. "I can't take your pathetic care. I can't find healing until- until I make things right. All this talk made me forget the reason I came to find you in the first place."
He took a deep breath, trying to quiet the storm that raged within him.
"Where is the Dragon Warrior? Where is Yin?"

Chang stepped back and looked away, and Shen felt the bottom fall out of his world.

"I see." he said quietly.

"They are not yet out of your reach, Shen." Chang was quick to interject. "They yet lived when they were taken from the academy by Zhung Chai and his wolves. I tried to stop them, but- I cannot do everything. Sometimes I cannot do anything at all. Zhung Chai has grown powerful indeed. The village guards were not even able to slow him down."

"Fools." Shen said softly, tilting his head back and looking up at the ceiling. He just felt so tired. So weary. But also, so relieved. They were still alive. That was good, at least.
"They should have been trained better. They should-"

He looked down grimly, the set of his beak determined. "I know what I must do."
And he began to stride away from the old master, a look of fire in his eye.

"Wait." Chang said behind him, "Where are you going? What do you intend to do?"

Shen paused, and half turned to regard the Ibis with a blazing eye.
"I'm going to get them back. And I'm going to make that tiger wish he was never born."

"Don't be a fool!" Chang said. "You are in no condition to do any such thing. Savour your life, do not just throw it away!"

Shen laughed. It was a long and rattling sound, filled with scornful mirth.
"For all your wisdom, master, you don't know me very well at all. I'm not about to simply run off after them. No. I'm going to prepare. I'm going to take a nap. And then... and then I'm going to equip myself. I need better weapons."

"We have already gathered your knives, if those are what you seek." Chang said slowly, "But if you intend to forge a new blade, then it may take days. Perhaps weeks. There is not enough time-"

"I don't need a new blade." Shen interrupted. "One of the academy's swords should work just fine. Other than that... I'm going to find some fireworks. And we will see what I can do."

Author's Note: New chapter! WOOT! 11,000 views! WOOT! 4th of July! WOOT!
Anyway, here begins the second arc of this story. The first arc was lamely cut, due to me forgetting the pot during my hiatus, but then I found myself some old documents outlining the basic story, so it's time to get back on track!
Just watched the KFP3 trailer. Most hilarious thing I have ever seen. (sorry, no spoilers.)
Happy 4th of July!
Read and review, or Shen's coming after YOU!

Also, Omake!

Shen walked up to Chang. The aged Ibis looked up with an expression as weary as Shen felt.

"Chang" Shen said by way of greeting.

"Shen." the aged Ibis replied.

The two birds regarded each other for a long moment. It was Chang who spoke first.

"Uh, Shen, why are you naked?"

"W-what!?" Shen yelled, looking down. To his horror, he found that he was, in fact, totally nude.
"W-what is this!? What happened to my clothes!?"

"Well. your body may have not burned, but your clothes did, and it was easier to treat your injuries that way, so..." the ibis trailed off. "What? Did you forget to check yourself before coming in here? What are you writing down?"

Shen was scribbling down his to-do list.

1: Kill Zhung Chai

2: Rescue Po and Fenghuang

3: Kill master Chang.

"Hmm." Chang said, looking over his shoulder, "I would have thought that 'buying new clothes' would be on there."

Shen turned his head slowly, an expression of rage crossing his face.
"SHUT UP YOU STUPID OLD BIRD!"

And then Chang's students had to come in to stop their master from being killed by a naked peacock. However, Shen beat them up easily.

"Hah. Nothing stands in my way."

He turned, his back to the pile of beaten birds, and wrote

4: buy new clothes.