Hi,
R&R please, Thank you!
Tigress sat in the corner of her prison and tried blatantly to ignore the bowl of steaming dumplings beside her. It wasn't an awfully hard thing to do since she'd had years of enhancing her Will Power with Master Shifu, but the smell was rather too much to bear. Especially in her starving state.
She growled at nothing in particular and turned even further away from the bowl, her eyes back on the cold stone wall she'd stared at for such a long time.
Her throat growled again and she stuck her nose high in the air.
It was so infuriating to be trapped like this! Especially with that taunting bowl of dumplings there.
She hoped with all her heart, that the others had enough will power in them to also fight the urge to eat but she was slightly doubtful.
Especially with Po, the panda would eat his own head if he was really starving, and she was sure he wouldn't be able to resist tasting just one.
She jumped up and roared as loudly as she dared, flinging her whole-body weight against the stone but it did not budge, or even crack.
Falling back and rubbing her arm, her eyes began to water slightly as she fought of the great panda, knowing he would fall for the food. Fall for the bait.
Her eyes began to wander to the bowl as she sat back down and for a moment she just stared at its inhabitants. Their shiny, silvery surface and perfect round shape.
Well if she was to be stuck here forever or die, she'd rather the latter. She decided, after all, maybe in the afterlife there'd be Kung Fu and Po would probably be there.
Yes, see Po and the others in the afterlife or be stuck in this stone matchbox until you die of hunger or thirst? that was a rather easy question. She decided,even for someone as socially-unsure as Tigress.
She reached out and picked up one of the dumplings, ripped off a piece and placed it tenderly in her mouth.
As she chewed, she found her eyesight start to disintegrate slightly and her body to sway until she could no longer support it.
She would see Po now. She would see everyone.
Her head was slightly aching as she opened her eyes. She glanced up and found herself staring up at the midnight sky, sprinkled with stars and streaked in shadowy clouds.
She could also hear whispering voices, a male's and a female's. The female's she realised was her mother's. However, she was unable to identify the male's. From how she was lying, she wasn't able to identify the facial features of the voices.
"We can't just leave her here Fan, they won't accept Tigers!" Her mother hissed, as the voices slowly began to fade into the sound of the whistling wind.
"We must Wen, we need to go, there isn't time." A male voice, perhaps her father's? He hadn't said a word at Viper's banquet.
The voices faded into nothing, and there was a moment of silence joined only by the sound of paws scrabbling over rocks and robes swishing against branches.
Then a blinding light broke the darkness joined by the sound of a door creaking open above her head and an ear-splitting shriek.
"There's a tiger out here Mei, a baby tiger!"
"A tiger Fei? You must be clean mad!" another panicked voice, the sound of hoofs thundering against floorboards. "You're right," the second voice gasped in shock. "We need to cage her straight away!"
The scene changed, swirling into colours and unrecognisable shapes, twisting and spinning around her until they came to a sudden stop.
Tigress shook her head and blinked her eyes repeatedly, but she was still unable to make out anything through the gloom. All she could see was the shadow of a bared window.
No, she wasn't back here. She couldn't be.
Immediately, her breath began to quicken and her head whizzed around, allowing her amber eyes to take in all of her shadowed surroundings.
The room was square and stone cold. It stank of dampness and old vegetables. The only object in the room that could even potentially count as furniture (since the several random dust covered boxes did not count, no matter how many times she'd perched on them like a chair and pretended to have a tea-party with herself and a chipped mug of dirty water) was an iron bedstead covered in a thin blanket with nothing but a smashed wooden block for a pillow.
She glanced back up at the barred window and immediately a group of bunnies, all wearing sunset colours with bows in their fur, gasped and drew back from the window, as they went scrambling back down the hall, Tigress heard a few words of their conversation.
She really is a beast!
No wonder the carers didn't want us going near her, she'd rip us apart!
She'd eat us for dinner!
The scene changed once more but this time it didn't stop and focus on one slate in the mosaic of her childhood, bits and pieces floated towards her like seaweed under water.
When will the carers be able to get rid of her?
She's a danger to society!
A Monster!
Then it all stopped.
"Tigress."
Tigress' head bounced up in an instant and she starred at the younger Master Shifu, stood pointedly with a defiant gleam in his eyes.
"I am Shifu, I am~"
"Afraid?" She interrupted, glowering at him.
"No," Shifu slammed the door behind him and stepped further into the room, where her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness.
"You should be! I'm Tigress, Tigress the monster." Her fur prickled in the light movement as he face shook indignantly with frustration, then it fell. "A monster no-one wants." She finished, more to herself than the master, and turned away from him so as to shield her watering eyes.
"You are not a monster." Shifu countered, in a slow and concise tone. "You're just a little girl."
Barely after Shifu had finished he swirled into meaningless colour and shadow and Tigress watched, as if through a glass window, her childhood of training and endless hours of work, play before her for the first time.
Focus, again.
Patience, again.
A still hand and a steady heart.
Again.
It seemed as if it would never end and Tigress could perfectly recount every day that it happened.
Every day, she spent hour after hour trying to get the dominoes to line up and fall on each other in synch.
Sometime she'd forget the dominoes entirely and hurl them across the room, burying her face in her knees and crying silent tears.
But after every crying episode, Shifu had re-appeared and he had told her to get up and try again. And she had.
Every single day, until;
I'm Mantis, I was supposed to come here, I think.
Hi, is this the Jade palace? I'm Monkey.
Oh my god you're so pretty! My name's Viper.
Um, are you going to attack me? only I don't want to~, oh but maybe that sounded rude, sorry I don't want to assume that every tiger is vicious, oh I'm Crane by the way, did I mention that?
I'm so sorry, I just wanted to know who the Dragon Warrior was!
The colours swirled into shapes, she could see Viper chattering aimlessly to her while the two sat in the hot springs, Monkey and Mantis racing her to the village, Crane sparring against her and jumping into the air every time he thought she was about to swipe, Po guffawing in laughter as the noodle drooped over his large nose like a slimy moustache.
The hardcore do understand, I just can't watch my friend be killed.
"That was pretty hardcore." She grinned at the great panda, the sunlight of the early morning sprinkling over him like gold glitter.
He looked as if he was about to laugh then threw himself at her in a tight hug and clamped his huge sopping body to her chest while she just froze in shock.
A friend. She revolved her paws around each other until they too admitted a soft golden light and directed it towards the lotus petals, her paw feeling warm and tingling slightly, as if she was placing goose pimpled paws over an open fire.
Tigress awoke with a start, breathing heavily she glanced around the prison, her mind whirring.
A monster.
Hello,
Firstly, I'm sorry this took so long I've been having a few doubts about the plot on this story now and have unfortunately been lacking the motivation to write the chapter quickly, which I apologise for.
Secondly, I used a quite a lot of italics in this chapter because I thought it would look cool but if there are too many please do tell em and I'll cut down on them, it was just to try something new.
Thirdly, I mentioned in this chapter a little about the five and when they met Tigress. (Not from secrets of the scroll because even though that was brilliant I think it lacked the communication between the five, that it so clearly needed for the storyline to appear more interesting) I started writing a story about how the Five met and their very first trip, its on my computer and I add onto it occasionally, if you'd like to read that story at some point (after I've finished either this or the Harry Potter crossover) please do say and I'll start fixing it up.
Alright, thank you everyone for your continued interest in this story, please leave me a review and tell em what you thought of it and I'll see you lot next time!
xx