Afterwards

Disclaimer: I do not own anything that is related, remotely related, or is in the movie series, Kung Fu Panda. It is owned by Dreamworks and all related companies. This story was created for the sole purpose of entertainment. Thank you for your time.

You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way – Marvin Minsky

Tai Lung had been unsure as to what the bear had in mind when he first came to the rather large island several days ago, even after those few days it hadn't been clear as to what 'lesson' he was supposed to be taught, yet here he was four days after being set up at the tanned bear's island and he still was unsure as to what he was supposed to be doing. When he was in the Mortal Realm he knew what he had to do, he had figured things out easily enough by way of hints or going through scrolls and tomes to find the next steps he had to take; the less he asked for the next step, the less humiliation he had to endure. However he wasn't completely in the dark about how things were on this island, it had taken some stealth and poking for him to understand why the inhabitants of the island looked like children when, in fact, they weren't children at all. It took him a day and a half to realize that these creatures of all variety of size, species, and age, and several different locations, had once been either Kung Fu masters during their time or, at some point during their lives, done a deed so great that they had been assured a spot in the Spirit Realm by the Universe.

He had thought that bear had been joking when he had said that the inhabitants had been former masters of "different styles of fighting", so he had pushed those words out of his mind until he had stumbled upon a small group of these 'children' fighting amongst themselves on the second day he had been on the island. To Tai Lung it appeared as those they had been fighting, as children did as young as they appeared, but rather they had been training, or at least some form of training the leopard hadn't seen before; it was a style he had not been taught at the Jade Palace and was not aware of it. The group had stopped as soon as they had taken notice that they had a very unwelcome visitor watching them and scattered about seconds later, most of them going back to the large structure that resembled a training school while others went back to tend to a few gardens that he hadn't noticed until much later when he had taken a few walks around most of the island. The two that remained behind stared at Tai Lung as though they were trying to will him back to wherever he had come from, after a few minutes of an awkward stare-down they turned and jogged towards the lake when Tai Lung did not back down from their so-called 'threats'. After the two had left, and after he stared at their retreating backs, Tai Lung had walked away to find a spot to mediate long enough to try to make sense of what the inhabitants were trying to accomplish.

In the last four days he watched, listened, and walked around the island to make some sort of semblance of what this place was and why it existed at all in the Spirit Realm; if the inhabitants were former masters of their respected arts, why were they here and why did they appear as children? Very few masters of the arts trained after they had reached their peak in their own art, sure they trained the younger generation yet very few continued to train after they learned everything they needed to know. He, himself, rarely needed to refresh his mind and body on techniques once he had master them, his muscles and mind remembered them each time he used them in combat or, on the even rarer occasion Shifu let him train a younger student, showed another how it was done. Surely masters who had come to the Spirit Realm no longer needed to practice their art once they crossed over, it even seemed like Oogway wasn't even bothering to part any techniques to anyone! Not that Tai Lung wouldn't have minded learning a bit more Kung Fu from the old tortoise, as not even the scrolls Tai Lung had mastered were all that the Jade Palace had to offer.

After he had mediated for over an hour, Tai Lung had made his way to the temple structure and found the doors unlocked and open for anyone to come in and out as they pleased. At first he hesitated, memories of the time he spent at the Jade Palace made him smile but the memories of what he had done to it when he went after the Dragon Scroll the second time soon replaced them, what he had done to Shifu, ran through his mind. He shook his head, pushing those memories away, and went inside the temple, slowly making his way through the entrance hall and through several open and unlocked doors; it took him some time to figure out where he was allowed to go and where he wasn't. Some doors opened to reveal nothing but a stone wall, some were locked, while others showed stairs up to the higher levels. Eventually Tai Lung settled in one of the libraries that looked the oldest and settled down with bound books and scrolls all around him and this was where he come to the next two mornings to take in any information that he could find. If he still had been in the Mortal Realm and still living at the Jade Palace, Shifu would've wondered if someone else had swapped bodies with Tai Lung, especially at the end of his stay at the Palace; by the time he had gone on his first rampage of the Palace, he could hardly sit still long enough to read three words into a very small scroll.

So here he was, on the afternoon of the fourth day, walking out of the large temple structure and no where near as close to figuring out what he was supposed to be learning or to be doing. He had only seen the bear twice since he had been brought there, once when he had awoken the leopard up for breakfast and a rundown of the schedule of meal times and once to politely point out how to get back to the dwelling Tai Lung had been put in. Outside of realizing that the bear told the truth about the inhabitants of this island, he had learned from listening to conversations, that the bear called himself Maitho and had been a farmer during his life in the Mortal Realm. What was a bear of his status doing in the Spirit Realm, much less knowing Oogway personally and keeping this large island running as well oiled as it was, he didn't know and needed to find out. The books and scrolls of the temple held little outside of a few stories of old masters but nothing else that seemed to catch Tai Lung's attention for more than a half hour at a time, nothing that seemed to make him understand what he was supposed to be doing. Perhaps he was looking at the wrong scrolls.

"Find anything interesting in the library?" Maitho's voice called from behind him. Tai Lung stopped at the base of the stairs leading up to the temple, turning around to find the tan bear walking the few steps he had left to reach the leopard, his unnatural pale blue eyes staring at the creature in front of him from behind those glasses. Those eyes seemed to bore directly into his soul, like the bear knew everything that was going on when he wasn't around and reminded him very much like how Oogway knew things well before anyone bothered to tell him.

"No, there's nothing interesting in there, nothing that I haven't learned already." Tai Lung desperately tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice, his mind trying to tell him to be somewhat civil to someone who allowed him to stay on his island without so much as a hint of payment, but that annoyance seeped into his words regardless. "All it is, is nonsense and gibberish, nothing that I can use towards any perceived lesson that I haven't been told I needed to learn."

The bear stared at the leopard for several seconds, his eyes moving along Tai Lung's head and face down to his bare feet before he fixed his eyes back on his face. The temple on the island was not often used as a place of training warriors in the skills of combat or defence, it hadn't been setup that way when Maitho came to the island some years ago after he, too, came to the Spirit Realm and eventually took over from the last person who ran this island. That type of training was rarely needed in the Spirit Realm, there were few conflicts that needed a display of might in this Realm but not enough that the more long-term residents of the Realm couldn't take care of, so whatever the temple had been before the last several keepers turned and kept it as a place of knowledge – among other things -he didn't know nor did he care. The inhabitants were free, of course, to keep the skills they learned when they were in Mortal Realm fresh, so long as those skills did not damage the islands or any part of the Spirit Realm then Maitho didn't mind that they trained or learned combat skills while residing on this island so long as they did what they needed to do when the time came.

And when he looked at Tai Lung he knew that either the Universe had made a mistake in keeping him as he was and putting him in the Spirit Realm, or was playing a cruel joke on the Realm as a whole. Even the most spoiled master Maitho had come across in both the Mortal and Spirit Realms didn't take so long to come down a few notches in terms of ego and self importance, usually after a few weeks of being in this Realm the most stubborn masters eventually became humbled enough to start turning around what they had been in the Mortal Realm and start leaning towards becoming one with the Universe, staying in the Spirit Realm to help calm the storms in either Realm, or finding a way to be reborn into a new life. This one, however, was more of a challenge than he thought he would be and swore at Oogway several times over that the tortoise thought it would be easy to sway the leopard on the right path.

"Sometimes a lesson one needs to learn doesn't need to be told to start training for, but rather learned on their own." Maitho glanced over Tai Lung's shoulder at a group of former masters making their way from the lake towards the homes they built for themselves, then turned back to the islands newest inhabitant. "Quite often these lessons are taught by yourself to yourself, ones that you don't need another master to help teach you."

"Now you're starting to sound like Oogway!" Tai Lung spat, his words at a low growl. The bear didn't flinch, instead looked highly amused at the leopard's tone while also looking rather honoured that he was likened to someone of Oogway's status, which just made Tai Lung even more annoyed. "I just need to learn whatever it is you believe I need to know so that I can get off this island and out of the Spirit Realm."

Maitho's face turned from amusement to annoyance, his eyes narrowing at the child in front of him. This cub of Oogway's was turning out to be more full of himself then originally thought, the bear wondering if Tai Lung's stint in Chorh-Gom had hindered his ability to not feed his ego or had he been like that before he nearly destroyed the Jade Palace – and the Valley of Peace – the first time around? Oogway had given Maitho some of the basics of Tai Lung, things that the general population hadn't known even before Tai Lung's rampage and the years since, and nothing seemed to make sense. He had learned a few things about Tai Lung's master, Shifu, and that he had been raised since cub-hood at the Palace, as he had been abandoned there at a very young age at the doorstep; Maitho understood quickly enough that Tai Lung's head had been stuffed with illusions of grandeur since his training had started. He wondered if Oogway had stepped in earlier in Tai Lung's training, that the leopard that stood before the bear now would've taken lessons in humbleness more quickly.

"It appears that you're still trying to jump from one lesson to another without bothering to look if you can make the leap safely or where you are landing, you don't seem to want to take the 'learn one thing at a time' approach." Maitho's tone was bitter cold, his eyes boring into Tai Lung's. The leopard took a step back, a look of shock crossed his face for a brief moment; the only time he had ever heard a tone so cold, so uncaring, was one of the last conversations he had with Shifu before he had been sent to Chorh-Gom. The red panda's coldness, the bitterness, hadn't reached his eyes at the time, not yet, and the bluntness of that conversation had haunted him during his entire stay underneath the darkness; he had felt fear towards his former master, something he had never felt before or since. The shock of him hearing the same coldness, the same disappointment in Maitho's voice, shook him enough to take a moment to shake himself out of the shock before he could respond.

"I want to get out of here as soon as possible, not take years to learn a lesson! I already wasted years of my life on other lessons." Tai Lung's voice had lost it's edge when he spoke, he looked away from the bear entirely when he spoke the last few words, as though instead of Maitho he saw Shifu standing in his place.

"The more eager you are to leave, the more anxious you are to learn the lessons needed, the longer you will remain here to wallow in whatever misery you put on yourself," Maitho said softly. He wasn't blind enough to not see the sudden change in Tai Lung, the subtle unease on the leopard's face, yet knew that change wouldn't last for very long and he was right. As soon as he had finished speaking, Tai Lung's eyes snapped back to the bear, ablaze with some perceived insult that only he could find in simple words.

"I don't inflect misery on myself, it's others who….." Tai Lung started with a snarl before the bear held up a paw, light blue eyes glaring underneath his glasses.

"I no longer have the patience to listen to a child throw a tantrum and spout nonsense about how they blame everyone but themselves on how things happen. You have been on this island for four days and in those four days the only thing you learned is that I was telling you the truth when you first stepped foot on this island. That's it." Maitho lowered his paw back to his side, his eyes not once leaving Tai Lung. "Even those with less ability to see, even those that never became masters like yourself or Oogway, could figure that out within the first few hours of the first day. What else have you learned or is that all? Have you even bothered to learn more than my name or even the names of any other inhabitant on this island? Have you even tried?"

Tai Lung opened and closed his mouth several times with no sound coming out of his throat, too stunned to make even a sound. He had torn off limbs of those who spoke to him like that, hurt those even worse than that for even looking at him wrong, and he knew his name and reputation had been something to be feared in the Valley of Peace for the last twenty-something years. So why all of the sudden did this bear, who once had been a farmer, have that kind of sway over him? He had a voice that commanded authority similar to what Oogway and other Grand Masters had, perhaps what he had heard around the island was wrong, that the bear wasn't a farmer after all. Maybe this reminded him of Po, that damnable panda that had put him in the Spirit Realm in the first place, and that maybe there was more going that Tai Lung was aware of; he put that realization out of his mind for now and focused on the one in front of him.

"I will not be talked to like that!" Tai Lung heard himself say before he could catch himself. "I have trained for far longer than these so-called former masters have and am…."

"…..on the way to getting yourself put into a worse situation than you currently are in. The longer you act like the Universe owes you something, the closer you are to being forgotten by the Universe at large. There are those in the Spirit Realm who have been here for decades, if not centuries, and the Mortal Realm has completely forgotten about them." That much was true, the bear had heard stories from several of the old masters about others in the Spirit Realm that once had been part of the Kung Fu lore but now had faded from distant memory. Tai Lung was well on his way to becoming one such faded memory. "I am sure that no matter what you have done in your past life, no matter what training you've done before, the last thing you want to be is a forgotten memory. Now either you start taking the necessary steps to start learning what you need to know or you will become a fate that is worse then death."

Maitho gave Tai Lung one last look before he turned and walked away from the leopard in silence as he stared at the bear with his mouth open with unsaid words dying on his tongue. Taking a few steps forwards to go after the bear, he stopped short when several of these 'former master's' – he still could not get past the idea that these children once had been masters of anything – came on both sides of Maitho as he continued to walk away. Staying where he was for a few seconds, Tai Lung watched as Maitho listened to a tiny fluff of a tiger cub was saying something to the bear, who laughed as though he had been told a joke. The leopard smiled, remembering such a time that he once had with Shifu, then frowned; for some reason, in the last ten hours his former master's name, and several memories of them together, had clawed to the front of his mind numerous times and almost every time it had been with some sort of fondness. Why all of the sudden was he thinking happily of his former master? The last time he had thought of him, the last time he had seen him, he had been full of rage and anger.

Standing where he was for a few minutes longer, Tai Lung broke his gaze away from the retreating form of the bear and turned it back to the towering structure before him. He felt a need to go find Oogway, to ask a few questions of him about this island, something he had done only a few times while the Grand Master had been alive and something he hadn't done in at least several years before he had been sent to Chorh-Gom. This would be the first time since then that he willingly went to see the old tortoise for any sort of advice. Today is becoming one for firsts, isn't it? Tai Lung thought bitterly to himself as he moved away from the large temple and started towards the edge of the island that the structure was near. He hoped that the old master was on his own island and not somewhere else in the Spirit Realm.

xxxx

Tai Lung found the old tortoise exactly where he thought he was, on the island Oogway called home. It hadn't been hard to see the former Grand Master sitting there in a meditative state, hunched over just like he had always been while at the Palace in such a state, acting as though he didn't know what was going on around him despite being in a deep trance. Tai Lung knew that Oogway had sensed him well before he had even been four islands away, his body slowly waking up from that deep trance as the leopard landed on the island and slowly walked towards him. Oogway didn't move, didn't acknowledge there was anyone else there until Tai Lung stood in front of him, paws crossed lightly in front of him and patiently waited for the old master to open his eyes. He knew that patience still was not Tai Lung's strong point yet he was learning how to be more patient the longer he was in the Spirit World.

"Ah, there you are. It has been some time since our last mediation session," Oogway said as he opened his eyes and smiled up at the leopard. He knew that neither one of them would be meditating together today, well before Tai Lung even opened his mouth.

"I'm not here to mediate, I need answers," was the curt reply, which was answered by that all-knowing stare. Of course he knew I wasn't here to mediate, Tai Lung mused to himself, trying not to smile at Oogway's failed attempt to look surprised; even if Oogway wasn't always direct, it was expected of others to be direct with him. It was easier that way, even if it took some time to figure out the answers out of his riddles.

"Isn't that why you were with Maitho? To learn?" Oogway asked quietly, his smile disappearing. He only knew the bear ever so little, even when in the Mortal Realm he knew of him just enough; Tai Lung did not need to know their connection just yet, or how the Universe brought them together in the Spirit Realm. That would come about eventually, when both Oogway and Maitho deemed Tai Lung understanding enough to learn more of that particular one's past. "Or are you needing answers he can't answer?"

"Yes, but…" Tai Lung hesitated for a moment, unsure what the tortoise meant by 'needing answers Maitho couldn't answer' but brushed that question aside for the time being. He had other questions that he wanted answers to, answers that would determine where he would go from here. "What does he do exactly? Why do those masters appear as children?"

"As, so you've encountered them, yes?" Oogway's smile returned brilliantly, having expecting the leopard to have only been in the so-called 'children's' presence long enough to have dismissed them as such. He could tell that Tai Lung was disturbed by the mere thought that children were living in the Spirit Realm, that the Universe was being crueller than usual and forcing these innocents to be in a place like this. There was no anger or rage in Tai Lung's eyes, no there was a hint of distress hidden behind them and while it was a little too late to have been in his previous life, at least it was a start. "Some masters are ready to return to life, to return to the world in which they have been away for so long, and they need someone to help guide them through that process."

"They're being reborn?" He asked, looking shocked. "And he's teaching them?"

He understood the concept of rebirth, understood it more when he came to the Spirit Realm, but it was more of a shock to hear Oogway be that direct about it than the actual concept being played out. That there were masters who wanted to return to the land of the living and resume the lives that had been gone in an instant and resume whatever tasks they never had a chance to finish. And there he was, walking among the young-looking masters of old, not fully realizing that they were on the path towards being put back into the Mortal Realm. Maybe that is why Maitho has me there, he thought to himself, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"In a way," Oogway said, keeping that statement for both questions. "They are not often reborn back into what they once were, not all of them, but rather back into life that the Universe calls them into."

"The Universe always seems to interfere," Tai Lung said bitterly, the sudden joy of being able to be reborn into what he once had been now gone. If the Universe was going to play games with the fate of those even in the Spirit Realm, why bother being reborn at all? He much rather be forgotten about than not returning back into the world of kung-fu, yet even that sentiment, of being forgotten, still seemed worse than being reborn into a different path.

"Sometimes the Universe isn't fair, it just is," Oogway said sadly as Tai Lung sat down in front of him, a first for him to acknowledge that the Universe, in all of it's grandeur, couldn't be fair once in a while. The leopard looked at the tortoise and in that moment, felt a sense of that maybe, just maybe, the Great Master Oogway didn't always agree that the Universe did as right as he usually thought of it doing. That thought was pushed aside as Oogway continued to talk. "The masters of old appear as children as a stepping stone into a new life, a new purpose, before they are sent back into the world of the living. When the time comes for them to be reborn, the Universe calls on them if they are ready, or willing, or not. It is the way it works in this plane of existence."

"Why?" Tai Lung asked, trying to understand why the master's of old would want to live a new life differently. "Why would they want to be reborn into something they weren't before?"

Tai Lung hadn't been the first to ask that question, wouldn't be the last to ask it either, and it was a hard enough question for anyone to answer. Oogway, himself, had asked that question enough in all of his years being alive, why someone would want to knowingly take the chance into a different path when the time of rebirth came, and there were so many reasons for that. Reasons enough that it was hard to pinpoint what, exactly, made someone, or even the Universe itself, want to dictate that sudden change from a master of an art form into a blank slate that could be anything from a poor farmer to a high-born noble. Without breaking the rules set down by the Universe, in which it was near forbidden to access the memories of those that had been reborn without the dire need to do so, no one knew exactly.

"These are only guesses, as it is impossible to know without being in the mind of anyone who does start on the path of rebirth," Oogway said carefully, as to not only not give Tai Lung the impression that this was set in stone but also to appease whatever forces where greater than himself from assuming he was giving all the secrets he knew to those that weren't ready for them. "It could be for a new start in a new life, to learn how things are in a different perspective, to shed their past lives and to be something they could not be before. They do not always need a reason, just a desire to be reborn – just like your desire to be rid of this place."

Tai Lung sat there in silence, going over the explanation he was given. It was a simple enough answer, simple enough reasons as to why someone would want to be reborn into a different life than they had lived before, but still a gamble to take with the Universe. But wasn't everything a gamble with the forces that be? If he were to take a chance to be reborn, regardless of the outcome, why wouldn't he run head first into it? After all, Shifu and Oogway took a gamble on him and despite what Oogway may have been told otherwise by the invisible force that kept him on his own path, they did not fully know how their gamble would pay off. So why not try to gamble on finding a path that would lead him into a better life?

Suddenly feeling light headed, Tai Lung put both paws on the ground to steady himself as he shook his head. For some reason he felt more at peace at knowing that despite the low chances of him being reborn into a place where he could be exactly as he was before, he was willing to take that chance. But what if he had a choice to become as powerful as he was now? Surely the Universe wouldn't be that cruel in not allowing someone, anyone, to not have a choice in what path they would take. Wasn't that the point of living, to be able to make their own choices? Or was that only when they were alive?

"Do they always get their choice of a different path?" Tai Lung asked quietly. Although he knew the answer already, he needed to hear the words for himself.

"No, not always," Oogway said with a shake of his head. "The masters are not always the ones that decides that path, sometimes the Universe decides who gets to be reborn into a certain path or not. Sometimes there are also other fates that decides who goes on certain paths."

"Can the Universe stop someone from being reborn?" He asked, dreading the answer to the question. Oogway looked uncomfortable, shifting ever so slightly where he sat; it was not the question that made him uncomfortable, it was the answer that he did not wish to give. There was only so much that he could say in regards to those what wanted to know the process of rebirth, so much that he was allowed to know himself, so little that could be told to anyone that didn't know a quarter of what the tortoise had gathered in his long lifetime. And, unfortunately, the one sitting in front of him could only know so much despite the Universe needing him to expand his knowledge even further.

"Yes, but that is up to the fates beyond anyone's control, including the Universe." That sad smile came back, one that told Tai Lung that the old master wanted to say more but couldn't. "That is all I can tell you right now, until you can prove otherwise that you are capable of knowing more."

Tai Lung looked down at the ground, wanting to scream into the void of the Spirit Realm that he was more than capable of the knowledge that was being withheld from him. Oogway knew that he was capable, Shifu knew he had been while he was being raised, but there were powers that be that didn't either care or wanted him to know more. How could he prove that he was capable of learning to the unseen forces that governed the Spirit Realm? It was in that moment that he realized what the first lesson Maitho was trying to get him to learn: that Tai Lung needed to prove to not only to the inhabitants of the Spirit Realm that he was capable of learning, but also to the Universe at large as well. How he would go about doing so would determine his fate from here on out.

Tai Lung looked up at at the former Grand Master, determined eyes now focused on the challenge in front of him and Oogway, seeing that determination, smiled warmly. This determination was different from the days he had lived at the Jade Palace, that determination was fuelled by a near insistence of being the best at everything, to get something that was far out of his reach, to be what others needed him to be. This time, however, his determination stemmed from a desire to prove to the Universe that he wasn't the cold-hearted creature he once had been, even if Tai Lung didn't understand that quite yet. In time he will understand, the tortoise thought, more to himself than to whatever powers that be were listening in on his thoughts.

"What about Maitho?" Tai Lung asked, realizing now that he had not once thought about the old bear since the very beginning of the conversation. "How is it that he came to look over a place like that?"

"That is for Maitho to tell you, not I." Oogway stood, stretching out his limbs as he continued to smile at Tai Lung. "Now, young cub, it is time for dinner. Care to join an old tortoise like me for a bite to eat?"

Until Next Time