Thunder rumbled in the sky as the Valley of Peace woke up to another summer's day. The humid breeze was stifling, and the static charge in the air made one's fur stand on end.
In the Jade Palace, the day's tournament events had been suspended in anticipation of the weather, and all of the competitors had taken advantage of the brief hiatus and slept in. All of the competitors but one.
Hu crept anxiously out of his room in the guest dormitories, being sure to not wake his master or comrades. The lithe cheetah sneaked around the corner to the corridor given to the Lee Da Academy.
Hu stopped as he paced silently down the hallway, lost in thought.
I have to tell Mei Ling about Übel's plans. I can't let her get hurt.
Hu continued down the hall, but stopped again before he reached Mei Ling's door.
Could I betray the Organization? he thought to himself, and considered turning back. If I tell Mei Ling about what's going to happen, I'll as good as have told the whole Palace.
Hu rubbed his palm against his forehead, conflicted. Finally, he shook himself, and continued down the hall.
This is the right thing to do, Hu told himself again and again, contemplating what he was going to say to Mei Ling. I have to warn her about Mr. Übel's plans.
Hu put his hand on Mei Ling's door- he was about to slide it open when he felt a sudden weight on his tail.
Spinning around quickly, Hu jumped at the sight of Master Zuihan glaring at him.
"What do you think you're doing, Hu?" Zuihan whispered sternly, taking his foot off Hu's tail.
Hu stood in silence for a moment before answering.
"I'm doing what my heart is telling me."
"Are you a warrior or a weakling?" Zuihan spat coldly. "I never thought I'd see the day when one of my students let false emotions blind him."
"There is nothing false about my feelings for Mei Ling, sir," Hu replied, an edge to his voice. "You even said yourself that you don't agree with Übel. How can you live with yourself, knowing that innocent people like Mei Ling will be killed in his horrid plot?"
"Übel told me to execute his 'horrid plot' as a master's command. I have respect and obedience for my master, as you should have for yours."
"Just listen to you," Hu said condescendingly. "You've convinced yourself that, as long as you do what Übel says, everything will be fine. But here's the thing- Übel may have given me the opportunity to be who I am today, but I think there's something seriously off about his logic."
"No matter what you think of Mr. Übel, we have our orders," Zuihan said resolutely. "We must do as he says!"
"I'm telling Mei Ling," Hu said in a resigned sort of way, and turned back to the door.
With blinding speed, Zuihan grabbed Hu by the collar and spun him around to face him.
"I can't let you do that," Zuihan blurted, his voice rising to a fever pitch. "You don't understand how important this is to Mr. Übel! Although I'd regret it, I will not hesitate to stop you myself, right here, right now! For the sake of the Organization! For the sake of you!"
Hu briefly considered fighting, but then dropped to his knees in front of Zuihan.
"F-forgive my insubordination," Hu muttered, his voice seething with anger.
Zuihan offered a hand to help Hu up, but the cheetah batted it away.
"Do what you need to for your Organization," Hu spat viciously. "Do what you need to appease Mr. Übel. But don't tell me that this is for my own sake. Please, don't tell me that."
Bitter tears formed in the corners of Hu's eyes as he walked quickly back down the hall, and out of the dormitory.
Zuihan watched Hu go, and almost regretted stopping him from telling Mei Ling.
This has to be, though, Zuihan tried to reassure himself. If we disobey Übel, that will be the end of me, the end of the Axiom, the end of everything I have worked for my entire life to create. This has to be…
But as Zuihan considered the situation more and more, he began to believe less and less that Übel's plan had any good in it at all.
Midday-
Po had finally worked up the motivation to brave the tumultuous storm to go out shopping for the night's groceries. He, Mantis, and Tigress were sitting in the kitchen, and Tigress was insistent on Po doing the shopping before the weather got any worse.
"We should really keep this pantry stocked better," Po complained as he donned a wide hat and drew a cloak around him.
"You're the one who used all our ingredients trying to make that ridiculous dish last night, so you're the one who should replace them," Tigress replied coolly.
"I don't mean to add insult to injury, pal," Mantis continued," but shouldn't you of all people have recognised that something was wrong when the preparation ended up being about twenty times too big for the pot?"
"Jeez," Po muttered, sauntering towards the door. "Just because a guy makes the mistake of thinking 'tsp' stands for 'two square pounds...'"
Tigress watched Po leave the kitchen, and sighed to herself. Deciding she would go to the training hall for some light practice, Tigress excused herself from Mantis and turned the corner out of the doorway as well.
From his seat at the kitchen table, Mantis suddenly heard Tigress gasp in surprise, and then mutter, "Oh, it's you." There was then the dull thud of fist meeting fur, and a fleeting shadow whizzed past the kitchen doorway.
Mantis leapt up from his seat and darted into the hallway, only to find it empty.
"Tigress? Tigress!" he called, his eyes darting around the hall. "Where did you go? Tigress?"
This is really odd, Mantis thought to himself, and started down the hallway to fetch Master Shifu and the others.
Mantis scurried apprehensively down the corridor, but stopped dead when he heard a creak from behind him. Before he could turn around, his world went black.
Just a few minutes earlier-
Po bent his head against the driving rain as he approached the Palace gates.
Man, he thought. How am I going to get down the stairs in this weather?
As Po drew nearer to the stairs, he noticed a hooded figure standing just before the doors to the Jade Palace.
"Hey!" Po called out, squinting through the rainy bleakness, "Do you need something? Autograph? Rescue from bandits? Anything?"
A bolt of lightning illuminated the sky as the hooded figure turned to face Po. It said nothing, but instead darted in Po's direction.
"Woah, woah, woah!" Po exclaimed, and backed up, suddenly feeling very uneasy.
Suddenly the dark assailant was right on top of Po; the Dragon Warrior's last memory before the abyss of unconsciousness was a glint of white from under the cloak.
About half an hour later-
This is the good life, Po thought to himself, reclining on the white sand of the beach. The sun was shining, the breeze was cool, and the seaside water looked beautiful.
I should go for a dip, Po decided, and launched himself into the waves. As soon as he hit the water, Po began to realize that something wasn't quite right.
Hmm, Po thought to himself, this water's awfully cold for the seaside... Just then, the world began to dissolve around Po. The sunny sky turned gray and bleary, the cool breeze suddenly became a biting wind, and the sun was sucked behind a mass of black clouds.
Blinking awake, Po found himself slumped in a large puddle outside the gates of the Jade Palace. The rain was heavier than ever, and Po had a splitting headache.
What the heck is going on here? Po asked himself as he picked himself up and ran through the gates. Who was that spook that pummeled me, and what was he doing here?
Suddenly though, Po skidded to a stop.
I could be walking into a trap! he thought to himself, and assumed a kung fu stance.
"Stealth mode activate!" he announced, and dropped into a crawling position on his stomach.
Po slithered (wobbled, really) across the Palace grounds, trying as best as he could to avoid open space.
Po was humming an action tune to himself when a pair of hands covered his mouth, and whisked him into one of the Jade Palace's side rooms.
The discombobulated Dragon Warrior found himself inside a broom closet staring up at Monkey, Tai Lung, and Viper.
"What in the world..." Po began loudly, before being hushed by the others.
"Keep it down!" Viper chided, glancing around nervously. "Something really weird is going on!"
"Will somebody please tell me what?" Po whispered breathlessly, sitting up.
"It seems that we're under attack," Tai Lung stated flatly, raising his eyebrows.
"We don't know that for sure," Viper responded, "but The Furious Five are disappearing one by one."
"D-disappearing?" Po stammered. "You mean like, kapoosh, gone?"
"Absolutely no warning," Monkey affirmed. "I was talking to Crane, I turn my back for one second, and when I look back, he's gone!"
"Something similar happened to Shifu," Tai Lung reported. "We were fixing a leak on top of the roof. He climbed down to get another shingle, but when he got to the ground, the ladder fell. I went to the edge to see if he was alright, but there was no one there- as if he had just been spirited away."
"Luckily, Tai Lung found Monkey and I before we were caught," Viper said, coiling up next to Po. "We were just searching for the others when we ran into you."
"Er..." Po said, looking slightly confused, "how did you spot me? I was in stealth mode!"
"If that's your idea of stealth," Tai Lung jeered, snickering, "than you should really reread that 'Solid Snake Stealth Scroll' from Viper's father."
Chuckling sheepishly, Po stood up and stretched.
"So what happened to Tigress and Mantis?" he asked, cracking his neck.
"We were hoping you could tell us," Viper said, leaning forward. "Weren't you the last one with them?"
"Yeah," Po replied, "but when I left the kitchen both of them were still there. I was on my way out to do the shopping when some creep knocked me out at the top of the stairs."
"Some creep?" Tai Lung asked, suddenly much more interested. Did you get a good look at him? Who was it?"
"I dunno," Po replied, scratching his head. "He was wearing this hooded cloak, and I could hardly see through the rain."
"He must be the one that got Tigress and Mantis!" Tai Lung concluded, and stood up. "We have to find him!"
"Wait a minute Tai Lung," Monkey said, pulling Tai Lung back from the door. "Let's think about this. The person who attacked Po left him there, but all the others have just vanished. Do you think that the person who left the Dragon Warrior outside the Jade Palace was the same person who kidnapped the rest of the Five?"
Tai Lung remained silent for a moment, and then sat back down.
"I don't know," Tai Lung groaned, holding his head in his palms.
"Monkey's right," Viper said, nodding. "It seems to me that there is the distinct possibility of two parties in the Jade Palace trying to achieve different goals."
"Great," Po said sarcastically. "So we've got more than one baddie in the Palace, and we don't know who any of them are, or what they want. What can we do?"
"Wait," said Monkey resolutely. "Wait and try to figure out what in the world is going on."
"Wait?" Tai Lung burst out incredulously. "But who knows what they're doing to Tigress... (Viper cast him a meaningful grin here) and the others? I was going to say 'the others' as well, thank you very much."
"We can't afford to lose any more of us," Monkey stated. "We have to tread very lightly."
"So we use stealth!" Po concluded, and assumed the "stealth mode" position.
"So we use stealth," said a familiar voice from beside Po.
Everybody in the room jumped as they realised that none other than Master Shifu was standing next to Po.
"M-m-m-master Shifu!" he said in disbelief. "How did you get here?"
"You honestly think those amateurs could have kept me bound up for long?" Shifu replied in his gruff voice, and dusted off his shoulders. "In fact, the only reason it took me so long to escape is because I wanted to see where they were taking me."
"Who is 'they,' master?" Viper asked.
"It's got to be those blasted cheetahs," Shifu said, shaking his head. "They were cloaked, but the morons took me straight to the guest dormitories and locked me in that room with all the spiders."
"Do you know where the others are?" Monkey asked hopefully.
"You see," Shifu said looking puzzled, "that's the thing that's been confusing me. I had already suspected that something similar might have happened to all of you, so I took a peek into the other rooms in the guest dormitories; oddly enough, there was nobody else around."
"What does this mean?" Viper asked worriedly.
"It means that either I was taken significantly earlier than the others, they were taken somewhere else, or that our captors were not the same," Shifu replied, thinking the situation over.
"Interesting you should say that," Tai Lung jumped in. "We have also come to the conclusion that there is more than one body at work right now."
"Why is that?" Shifu asked bluntly.
Po retold his story to Shifu, who had begun pacing nervously in the closet.
"Troubling..." Shifu muttered as he paced some more. "I wonder then, was it the cheetahs who took the others? And where is the second intruder now?"
"We need clues," Monkey said, shrugging his shoulders. "But how can we find them?"
"We've already figured out all that we can by sitting around here," Tai Lung said impatiently. "What we need is action. Every moment we sit here is another moment that Tigress and the others, Viper, are in danger."
"As much as I regret what my agreement entails," Shifu said reluctantly, "Tai Lung has a point. We need to go out searching for answers. But be very careful. We are dealing with something we may not know how to handle. The Axiom, whatever their game is, are certainly a threat. But on top of that, we have absolutely no information about the second intruder except for the fact that he was able to knock out the Dragon Warrior within seconds. This is a dangerous situation, and the smallest slip-up could cost you your life."
"So what do we have to do, Master?" Po asked on behalf of the gathered warriors.
Shifu spent the next several minutes divvying up tasks. Viper, Monkey, and Tai Lung were to travel as a threesome and search for Tigress, Crane, and Mantis, while Po and Shifu would search for the second intruder. At the slightest sign of anything suspicious, evasion of detection was of utmost importance. Engage in combat if only absolutely necessary. After approximately fifteen minutes, everyone was to regroup in the Hall of Heroes, assuming that the location was not compromised by intruders. If so, return to the broom closet.
Shifu wished all of his students good luck before standing up. He stood poised to push open the broom closet door.
"On my signal," he whispered.
The closet door swung open, and immediately the warriors gathered inside sprung silently into the wailing storm. Although their movements were concealed by swaying trees and pouring rain, a sense of dread had descended upon the five- imbued into all of their hearts was a deep fear: fear of the unknown.