Hi,

I'm so glad you enjoyed the last chapter, I will get started on that series, I mentioned before, soon, but probably not for a week or so.

But this story has about six or seven more chapters to go, anyway,

Enjoy.

Breakfast next morning in the palaces abnormally long dinning room was a quiet affair.

Spirit Yin sat at the head of the table carefully reading through letter's while the other masters sat quietly eating their breakfast.

"When do you think we should start preparing for the attack?" Susan asked after a little while, carefully putting her silver spoon down as she did so.

"I don't know," sighed the Spirit, rolling up the letter and picking up her spoon again. "But that's part of the terror of war, not knowing what the other side plans to do and when."

"And how will we come about fighting them, do we stake them out and then ambush?"

"That sounds about right, yes. Today we'll sort out weapons and armour and the like." The spirit said this all casually, as if she was merely asking them to visit the market for some blueberries, not risk their lives.

Everyone nodded silently and turned back to their breakfast bowls.

"Right," Yin sat up from the table, folding her napkin up and replacing it back on her seat. "I'm going to start getting ready, please make your way to the library after you're finished, we'll get started on a plan." And with that, and a sweep of her long cloak, she was out of the room.

"I'm not really hungry." Susan sighed after a couple of minutes of silence, bar the scraping of metal spoons against bowls. "I think I'll help her make a start on the battle plan."

She sat up from the table and wandered out, biting her bottom lip and scrunching her face up slightly, thinking hard.

Monkey stared after her, biting his lip too.

"Master Shifu, what animals do you suppose we'll have to fight from the underworld?" Tigress inquired to Master Shifu quite suddenly.

"I don't know, but I'm certain they'll be something we can't and aren't prepared for." Master Shifu replied darkly. "Meeting An Ling was quite a scare in itself."

"You don't think there could be something worse than him out there, do you?" Crane asked with a slighter cower in his posture, glancing around nervously as if expecting the snake to just jump out of nowhere and attack him.

"It's possible,"

The warriors all took their seats in the library watching intently as the Spirit rolled out an aged map of China on and set it on the table, carefully placing a small pile of ink pens next to it.

"Now," she picked up one of the pens and drew a massive circle around a small drawing of a castle on the scroll, complete with the words "Yin and Yang palace" in curly black writing written beneath it. "This is where we are now."

She drew a second circle, this one a little to the south and a lot bigger, encircling three enormous mountains. "I estimate, this is where An Ling is hiding."

"That whole mountain range?" Po groaned. "Really?"

"Yes," The Spirit replied sharply. "He's hiding somewhere there, if we want to succeed~"

"We'll need to come from all sides," Susan cut in, grabbing a pen from the pile and drawing four straight arrows coming towards the large circle. "We don't know exactly~"

"Where they are hiding so it's better to have a complete view over~" Tigress now cut in, drawing a second circle around the large one, creating a hypnotic whirlpool of ink.

"The whole area so they don't come from behind us and attack us first!" Viper finished excitedly, grabbing her own pen from the pile in her tail and drawing a third circle around the ink whirlpool.

"Perfect," Crane grinned, "Then what?"

"We strike!" Viper hissed and stabbed the pen into the centre of the drawings on the scroll, creating a splatter of dark ink spurting everywhere and the nib of the pen to break off.

"So when do we strike?" Mantis inquired, stabbing his pinchers down onto the table, mocking Viper.

"Tomorrow."

Susan was sitting in the palace's courtyard, sitting on the stone bench surrounding the potted birch tree admiring the moon.

It was a gorgeous night, impossibly contrasted to last night which was bucketing down rain, tonight the sky was perfectly clear, you could see every star and the beautiful crescent moon glimmering happily above.

Susan felt happier than she had that morning. Before she'd been worried about the war, now she felt better, they had a plan, everyone knew what they were doing, nothing could go wrong.

"Hey,"

A voice quietly called out from behind her, she twisted around and saw Monkeys standing quietly in the courtyard, the moonlight illuminating his golden fur brightly.

"Hi," she replied breathlessly, though she had done no running she could recall. "Come sit."

Monkey politely obliged and sat down beside her.

There was silence for a few minutes as the two animals watched the moon glimmer high above them.

"It's beautiful isn't it?" Monkey asked quietly.

"Yeah," She turned to face him again and for some reason felt her breath catch in her throat, immediately she shook it off. "Do you think everything will be ok, I mean, do you think everyone will live?"

"Yeah," Monkey replied. "We've survived before, we'll survive again and you, bloody hell, didn't you fall down a fifty-foot cavern and survive? I mean jeez." He chuckled.

Susan chuckled a little too. "It wasn't fifty-feet." She responded modestly.

"It looked like it. Do you think we'll survive?"

"Umm, sure, yeah." It was rather hard to think straight with him starring at her like that, calmly, compassionately.

Monkey's grin faded slightly. "You're just saying that, do you really think that?"

Susan turned away from him and looked at the moon again, the light breeze wafting her dress around her knees. "I think we could, if we stick to our plan."

"Alright, but last time, when we went to Gongmen city, our only plan was not to die so really anything beats that."

"I guess so," laughed Susan.

"Honestly though, do you really think we'll come out of this alive?"

"Yes," she felt she was saying it more to herself than him. "I do, I think we have the skills, the plan and the technique. All we need is the right mindset."

"Mindset?" he looked confused but intrigued all the same.

"A man is always more likely to fail if he doesn't believe he'll succeed, but when he does believe, he's halfway to success already." She quoted automatically.

"Where did you find that?" Monkey chuckled.

"I think I made it up, pretty good eh? Reckon I could be the next Oogway?"

"Oh definitely." Guffawed Monkey in reply.

Su smiled and felt herself automatically lean towards him, without her consent, but she let it anyway.

Monkey's body also leaned towards hers and they were inches apart when a voice crowed out from a window of the palace above them.

"Yin says you have to test your weaponry now!" Came Mantis's harsh cry, startling both warriors apart.

"We should get back,"

"Yeah, coming."

Yo,

Two chapters today how lucky!

I hope you liked this chapter, I quite enjoyed writing the last bit.

Stay tuned for all the story left to come!

xx