Monkey rubbed a paw over where the artifact bumped his head after it fell from the high shelf. The sound of it clanging loudly to the floor below him greeted his ears as it echoed around the Hall of Warriors. He breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that, even though it fell from where it had been positioned, it wasn't broken. Some of the most important relics throughout various dynasties were on display here, and he didn't wish to be the one who ended up breaking something extremely historical.
"That's what I get for thinking this was a wise place to practice my kung fu," he said to himself. "I'd say it's best I stop monkeying around."
He chuckled at his own pun as he walked over to what had fallen to the floor, ready to place it back where it had originally been. He was stopped from immediately doing so, however, when he got a better look at the object.
It appeared to be some sort of ornamental box with jewels on the top of it. He lifted the lid of it open and revealed what it had been keeping inside. The contents were a thick, golden pen and a note underneath it that had been rolled up like a tiny scroll.
Monkey took the pen out and held it in his grasp, realizing it was much heavier than he imagined it would be. Curiosity stuck him to see what message had been placed along with it, so he unrolled the sheet of paper.
Lest ye wish to suffer a terrible fate, the message on it read, refrain from wielding the pen before it's too late.
"A warning in the form of a haiku?" Monkey pondered. After giving it some thought for a few seconds, he shook his head. "Nah, that's not what that is. A haiku has three lines with a specific amount of syllables. Everybody knows that. This here is just a word of caution that happens to rhyme."
But why would someone leave such a message to not use the object? It looked like nothing more than an ordinary pen to him, just made out of gold instead of other material. Why was that note acting like there was some sort of grave danger involved with it?
"Guess I'll just keep it with me for right now. No harm in doing that, right?" Monkey shrugged his shoulders as he disregarded the note's warning. He set the box on the ground carefully, whistling as he started to walk out of the hall.
As he walked over to where she was meditating, he noticed that she muttering something under her breath.
"Uh, Tigress?" Po inquired quietly. "Are you okay?"
He reached forward and placed his paw on her shoulder. As soon as he did this, Tigress opened her eyes bolted up from her meditating position. She leaped into the air and assumed a fighting position, her face looking like she was ready for a battle. Realizing that it was only Po standing before her, she quickly got off the defense and calmed down.
"I'm sorry, Po," Tigress apologized. "I didn't expect you to be here."
The panda smiled back at her and said, "It's okay. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You were mumbling as if you were having some vision or something."
The feline in front of him rubbed her head and sighed. "As a matter of fact, I did have one. And not a good one at that. It was this weird vision that everything around us became all… unusual. And the reason it was like this is because Monkey caused it."
"How are you two?" Monkey suddenly called from behind them.
Tigress shouted out of surprise and returned back to her fighting stance, her breaths becoming fast and her eyes wide with fear.
The golden langur was confused by this. "Did I startle you that badly?"
"I…" Tigress trailed off.
"It's nothing, Monkey," Po responded.
Monkey was silent for moment, but made his way out of the room. "Okay," he said. "If anybody needs me, I'll be writing with this new pen that I discovered. Can't wait to try it out."
"See you later," the panda replied as he waved back at him.
Once Monkey left, the bear and tiger were quiet for a few seconds, up until the moment that panic kicked in the feline once again.
"Something terribly wrong is going to happen and I just know it!" Tigress exclaimed, making who was standing beside her jump a bit.
Po tried to reassure her that everything was going to be alright. "There's no need to worry, Tigress," he said to her. "Monkey isn't going to make anything happen like he did in that vision you had while you were meditating. He's just trying out some new pen that he found. What's the worst that could possibly happen?"
Those famous last words from the panda echoed inside of the feline's mind.
Some Time Later…
Monkey sighed as he pulled the chair out and took a seat on it. He pushed it in towards the table, grabbed a plain sheet of aged paper close to him, and picked up the golden pen.
"Now then," he said as he tapped pen against the desk, "what should I write?"
"I will tell you what I believe you should write…" a guttural voice muttered, the source in which it came from unknown.
Monkey got scared by the voice, and he scanned the room only to find out that nobody was in here with him. "Who said that?" he asked.
"I am the canid spirit that haunts this pen. The one that you wield," the voice called to him again.
The langur looked at the pen closely and squinted his eyes at it. "You mean," he wondered, "you're in this?"
"That is true. I have been dormant for a long, long time, up until the moment you discovered me. And thanks to you, I can carry on the plans that I once set forth."
"And what is that, mysterious voice?"
"The plans for bringing this land down on its knees with destruction. And the best place to start is by eliminating the weak Furious Five…"
"But I'm one of the Furious Five," Monkey replied. "That means you want to get rid of me as well."
"Not quite," the spirit in the pen responded. "I shall use you as my instrument to bring an end to the others, starting with that Dragon Warrior."
"No!" the langur exclaimed loudly. "I can't let you did that. Po is my friend."
Just then, the pen started to glow as an orb floated from out of it. The orb flew to the other side of the room, becoming a figure that stood before him. Looking back at him now was the spirit of a wolf with an eye patch over his left eye. It floated up towards him quickly, causing him to scream as it approached him. As soon as it got near him, however, he disappeared.
Where did he go? Monkey thought.
As if he heard his thoughts, the spirit answered him. "Since you wouldn't make yourself the doer of my demands, I must take control of your actions. And we shall start by going to the pagoda outside of the village, where there will be a space in which you can write my plans into effect."
"What are you talking about?" the primate said. "How will that happen?"
"The pen you possess holds power beyond the world in which you stand in, and whatever is written with it shall become reality. And in my case, I will use this to bring chaos to life as this part of the world knows it. But it will be more like you will bring chaos, in this case, for you will do the writing once I take control of you.:
"Leave me, spirit!" Monkey cried. "Leave me be!"
"Never…" the wolf spirit cackled.
Monkey suddenly found his paw being raised without him making any motion of the sort. The pen and paper in his grasp, he started getting up from where he sat and walking away. He tried to fight the spirit that was controlling his movements, but it was no use.
This was not going to be good.
A Few Hours Later...
Tigress continued to kick at the bag that was in front of her in the dojo, but she found herself not having the usual energy that she normally had when her and Po did their training. Much to the panda's surprise, she was actually starting to get a bit tired. Normally it was the opposite way around, with him getting easily winded.
"I need to take a break," she said as she panted. She went and took a seat at the nearby bench in the corner of the space, that look of concern still plastered on her face.
"You're still concerned about this whole ideation you had possibly coming true, aren't you?" Po asked.
"Yes, I am," Tigress snapped in reply, "and I have every right to be worried."
"I never said you didn't," the panda responded. "I just hate to see you so distraught. Perhaps we should go get some dumplings. Those always make me feel better whenever something bad is on my mind."
The two walked out of the dojo together and made their way tot he outside of the Jade Palace, where they ended up encountering Crane.
"What's going on?" Po asked him as they walked up to him.
The bird in the straw hat turned around and looked at them, opening his wings as he looked at them with a stern look. "Hope you're ready to prove who great of an opponent you truly are, panda," he snarled. "Prepare for the kung-fu fight of your life."
"Woah, woah," the panda said with confusion, unsure of what his friend was talking about. "Its just me."
"I know not who you are, nor do I know who this tigress is that accompanies you," Crane replied. "But you better be prepared for an epic paw-to-talon battle."
It was as if Crane was in some sort of trance. He didn't sound like his usual self, and he didn't seem to know who they were for some unknown reason. Po wanted to believe he was just joking around, but he never was one to do things like this. Something was wrong here, and he didn't know what.
The bird suddenly lunged forward towards the portly bear, ready to attack. Tigress from the side leapt up and delivered a fierce kick to Crane, sending him down to the ground. Once he got up, the bird shook his head and rubbed it with his feathers.
"What the-" he muttered to himself, looking back up at his two friends. "What's going on? What am I doing out here?"
"You just tried to challenge me and Tigress to some battle," Po explained. "You were acting like you didn't know who we were."
Crane sagged his head and made a noise that sounded like he was in discomfort. "I don't feel so good," he remarked.
Just then, he looked down and realized that his feet were literally turning into stone. This sensation spread up his body until he couldn't move, and he needed up becoming a statue of himself in seconds.
Po and Tigress stood there with mouths agape, shocked at what they just saw happen in front of them. The panda had to admit that she was right after all. Something unusual was happening around here.
"Viper!" they cried out at the same time as they ran back to the palace.
The two made their way over to where they knew she would be and bursted open the doors.
"Viper, are you alright?" Po asked with concern.
"Something just happened to Crane outside," Tigress added.
Just when they thought she wasn't there, the two saw the snake slither up to them. Something here was wrong as well, they quickly realized. Viper's body was now blue and gray in color.
"What's happening to me?" Viper muttered to them in reply. "I'm supposed to be a greentree snake, and the next thing I know I become blue!" The snake then glanced down at herself again, realizing she saw becoming gray like stone. "Gah! What is this?"
Within an instant, Viper had become a stone statue in the same way Crane did.
"I don't know what's going on," Po said, "but we better warn Mantis about it."
Tigress turned away from the panda and looked outside of the room, near the hall that lead to the other rooms. "I think we're too late for that," she said as she pointed to something in that direction.
The large ursid turned to see what she was talking about, only to see Mantis had turned to stone along with the other two members of the Furious Five.
Their attention was then directed out to a window, where they saw something else that was bizarre. The sky was now the color of fire, with some of the distant village's buildings no longer visible. It was like they just disappeared. Villagers in the distance could be heard shouting as they saw them running.
Po was at a loss for words at the moment, but the feline next to him sure had something to say about what they were seeing.
"See! I told you!" Tigress shouted. "This everything that I saw in that vision coming true!"
"But are we really sure that Monkey caused all of this?" Po inquired. "I'm not sure how he could do that."
"It's the pen he was carrying!" the striped feline to his side replied. "I first believed it could have just been me thinking it was, but then I truly realized which one he was holding. That pen he had was the Pen of Existence."
Despite the gravity of the situation, Po's eyes lit up the moment she mentioned this. "The Pen of Existence?" he said, knowing all of the facts behind the artifact the way he did with all the other kung-fu relics throughout history. "Supposedly crafted as a gift from a darker realm of spirits to cause anything that's written with it to come true. It was gifted to a wolf soldier bent on destroying the world he loathed. That and the pen's said to be the object in which his spirit lingers until somebody summons him from his slumber from his protective case."
"Yes, that one," Tigress said. "Now enough about its history. We need to stop Monkey and get that pen from him before anything else happens."
"What are we gonna do?" the panda inquired, at a loss when it came to ideas.
"We better alert Master Shifu..."
A Few Moments Later...
Po, Tigress, and Master Shifu ran as best as they could through the streets of the village, dodging the chaos and running animals on either side of them as they trekked onward. This hadn't exactly what they originally planned to be doing on this day, but if they didn't get to that pen there wouldn't be a chance to possibly have another day.
"Never thought that something of this sort would be caused by Master Monkey," Shifu remarked as he continued to run alongside the others.
"It's not him that's done this," Tigress replied. "It's the Pen of Existence that he got a hold of that's done all of this."
"What?" the elderly red panda exclaimed in disbelief. "But that's been stored safely inside the Hall of Warriors."
"Not safely enough for him to get his paws on it," the feline responded. "The spirit that supposedly occupies it has probably made all of this happen."
"But..." Po said as he gasped for air, the sprinting they were doing being more exercise than his usual regimen. "Where do we find him? He could be anywhere right now."
Just then, they heard a nearby sheep villager shouting as he ran passed them. "Somebody's at the pagoda where the skies are all dark!" he bleated.
"That's probably where he is," Tigress assumed. "We need to get over there as quick as we can."
Within a matter of time, the three reached the pagoda that the ovine had mentioned earlier. Like his cries warned of, the skiy in this particular area were much darker than the rest of it that was already a deep red. Thundering storm-clouds gathered above the construction, and the wind seemed like it was starting to pick up around them.
They looked out in the distance and saw the langur they were looking for, hunched over as he scribbled fiercely onto paper on the ground with the Pen of Existence. From what they could see, he seemed like he was trying to stop himself from scribbling any more, but they assumed the spirit that took over that pen was stronger than him. It was like he was under a spell that made him unable to fight the spirit back.
"Come on," Tigress said as she gestured Po and Master Shifu to follower her as she ascended the steps that led to the pagoda.
There wasn't that many steps to climb up, but the powerful winds that blew against them made the climb a bit more difficult. They fought off the gusts as they continued to slowly step forward.
Monkey, who was still under the control the wolf spirit, peaked his head and noticed they were coming his way. He immediately returned to his paper and wrote at a speed that seemed impossible.
Just then, Po and Tigress felt a shiver course through their bodies. They looked at one another at the same time, only to both be in surprise once they saw what had happened to them. Tigress now black fur with white stripes, and Po's fur was now the orange color that the feline's was.
"This is probably something that spirit forced him to write, so it would happen to us in an attempt to slow us down," Tigress said. "We have to keep going no matter how it tries to mess with us."
"Got it," Po said without fear.
The portly bear and tiger continued to ascend the steps, with Master Shifu following a step behind them. They looked up and realized that Monkey was writing in the trance he was under once again.
Po and Tigress felt that shivering sensation once again, and the color of the fur was back to normal, only this time with patches of gray in it. They looked at each other again and realized that they had aged greatly, probably due to what had been written by that pen.
"Huh?" Tigress muttered to the panda, her now-old ears believing she heard something. Her voice now sounding more aged than it normally did.
They turned back to look at Monkey, bracing themselves for whatever that spirit that currently possessed was trying to slow them down with next. Within the matter of a second, the panda and feline found everything around them becoming a lot taller than it was before. However, they quickly realized upon looking at themselves they regressed into children. They both shouted in unison out of shock, only to return to their original selves two seconds later.
"Glad that's over," Po remarked, relieved he and Tigress were back to normal after all that.
But everything was far from over, as their ears detected the sounds of something being jotted down once again. The a cracking noise came behind them, and they turned around to look back at Master Shifu. The red panda was clutching his back like he was in pain, plopping down to the ground shortly afterwards.
"Shifu!" they cried in concern.
"My back just got thrown out," Master Shifu responded. "Don't worry about me. Just try and get that pen."
Tigress turned around and pointed to something ahead of them. "Look!" she exclaimed.
Po turned around and looked at Monkey. That golden pen in his grasp was now glowing eerily, and the look on the langur's face as he wrote was a lifeless one. He was completely taken over by this foul spirit, and they needed to try and to free him from it.
"Stop!" the two called out.
This didn't do them any good, as the scribbling only continued. The skies above them became even darker than they already were, the crimson hues being engulfed by utter blackness.
"NOOOOO!" Po and Tigress exclaimed.
As they shouted that, the two of them found themselves sporadically changing into different forms. Tigress quickly turning into an antelope, then a badger, then a vixen, and then a grizzly bear. Po started shifting from a snow leopard, then into a rhino, then into a crocodile, and then into a boar. They returned to their normal selves immediately after experiencing this, and Master Shifu watched in horror as that happened to them.
"How do we stop him?" Po asked. "He just keeps writing like crazy on that-" His words were cut when he ended up being transformed one again, this time into a feral panda that was on all fours. His words came out as nothing more than a roar.
An idea hatched inside of the feline's brain after a second of thought. "I got it," she remarked. "You know what those who write dislike most? When somebody completely hates the work you've made."
Po quickly returned back to his regular, anthropomorphic self once again, nodding his head at the idea. "I know what you mean, Tigress," he replied.
They turned their heads over towards the langur and called out his name to get his attention. Monkey raised his head and looked back at them with lifeless eyes.
"Monkey is no longer in control," said the spirit through their primate friend. "'Tis only I, the writer of all of this beautiful destruction."
"That's what we wanted to talk to you about," Po remarked. "Your whole destruction-of-the-world thing is actually pretty terrible." He pretended to yawn in boredom for added impact.
Monkey cocked his head as the spirit reacted. "What?"
"I agree, Po," Tigress chimed in. "I've read haikus with better concepts than whatever this is."
"No! Don't say that about what I've made."
"And the way you tried to stop us walking up here with this minor changes?" the panda continued. "How weak!"
The spirit grunted and started to get angry. "NO!" it cried out.
Just then, Monkey let out a deep breath before looking in utter confusion. The spirit had left him, and Po and Tigress saw the canid phantom float away before disappearing entirely.
"What's going on?" Monkey muttered. "Why is everything like this?"
"Don't worry," Po replied with reassurance. "Tigress and I are going to fix all of this."
Tigress ran up to the paper and swiped it in her paw, picking up the golden pen as well. As she wrote, she mumbled out loud, "All of the destruction was gone and everything returned to normal."
As soon as she jotted that down, there was silence. The ground started to quake below them. The buildings in the village behind them that had vanished returned to where they were before. Master Shifu's back readjusted itself, and he became able to stand up from where he had been down. The redness in the sky faded away, becomign brigther until it was replaced with a light blue color and sunshine. Once everything returned to the way it was, a rainbow could be seen in the distance.
"Well, this has been... an interesting day," Po sighed in relief.
Monkey looked low in spirits. "I feel as if this was all my fault, you guys," he said. "I ignored the warning in that pen's box that told me not to use it, and now I feel really guilty about it. I'm sorry."
"You didn't know there was a spirit within it that was going to make you write out those things," Tigress responded with a smile. "Consider it water under the bridge now."
Master Shifu slowly met up with the three members of the Furious Five. "The next step is properly ridding of the pen," he suggested, "that way none of this can happen again." He took the writing tool from the tiger's paw and held it in his. "And as for what I wish to write, I will use a normal pen. I have some stories I wish to get written, you know."
"Really?" Po wondered.
Shifu nodded his head. "They are about you and Master Tigress. I actually ship you two as a couple."
"What?" Po and Tigress said in unison.
"Nothing, nothing," the red panda replied.
Author's Note: This was a crazy story that wasn't mean to exist, but came to mind yesterday with it being April Fools then. I meant to share this then but I forgot to, so consider this a belated April Fools' Day work of mine. Please don't take this too seriously, as this was one-hundred percent intended to be nothing more than a silly story, with logic being nonexistent.