Hello there!
Ohh, I'm super excited to get to this one! It's coming...
Oh well, the fastest way to it is straight through. So, without further ado-
On with the show!
Gongmen City- Morning
Shao walked through the streets as the city slowly came alive. The Sun had just peaked its first rays above the horizon, and the city residents were beginning to begin their day. In the street, merchants began to set up their stalls and shops, and people began to walk toward wherever they might be employed.
The peaceful awakening of the city perfectly contrasted the storm of panic within the goat. He was on the verge of hyperventilating, which was a bad sign, especially considering the fact that he hadn't even entered the building yet. It took almost superhuman strength to move his hooves; make one go in front of the other. Yet somehow, he managed to traverse the streets towards the building.
His destiny lay inside that building. He was doing the right thing, he thought. He was protecting those who were innocent. Wasn't it well known to always do what is right, no matter the personal consequence? Shao may have been afraid- terrified may have been a better word- but he wasn't going to let that stop him.
As the Sun rose higher and higher above the horizon, Shao finally caught a glimpse of The Tower of Sacred Flame. With the Sun rising just behind it, it was cast in a soft, warm glow that took his breath away. Which was a shame, as he needed all the breath he could get to stop himself from puking all over the streets.
By putting his left hoof in front of his right hoof, and then repeating the process many times, the goat was able to make his way to the end of the street that led to the square in front of the Tower. He stopped there, and leaned against a nearby wall.
Master Thundering Rhino's warhammer. There it stood, in plain sight, a monument to the great warrior who had given his life for the city. Shao was hit with a fresh wave of guilt and confusion as he stared at the hammer.
"If I do it," he thought, "They'll do something like that for him. They'll have a funeral, and they'll tell everybody how he gave his life for the city, just like his master before him."
And then, by the wall of some shop, the nerves, the pressure, the guilt, the fear, finally started to break Shao. Every negative emotion that had haunted him ever since he embarked upon his trip was heaped upon him at once. The terror, the wondering of what would happen to himself, the indecision if he was doing the right thing, came down on him. But it was really the fear that finally got through his defenses.
For a single instant, Shao finally began to lose himself. He felt all his worries, all of his fears, slowly fade away. What did he have to worry about? It was so simple. Walk in, find Master Croc, give him a parting gift just as Shen gave Master Rhino, and then leave. Why had he thought it would be so difficult, he wondered? All he had to do was point a stick in Croc's general direction and pull a little trigger. How hard could that really be?
"See, there's nothing to worry about," he thought. In fact, he should be happy! He was about to help the world. Surely, later in history, he would be remembered as a hero! Why should he be so scared!? It was actually kind of funny! Shao let his fears go and he giggled right there on the street.
It was the giggle that snapped him back to reality. He swung his head around as he looked to see if anyone had noticed him.
No one had.
Shao gripped his sides with each hoof and tried to get a hold of himself.
"Did I just giggle?" he thought to himself with horror. "What am I… what… what will really happen to me if I do this?" he wondered with yet more terror. "Even if I get away, even if I pull off a miracle and get out of this city, what would really happen to me? Will I become some raving lunatic, just as dangerous as the very thing I'm fighting against?"
"No, no," he told himself. "No, you won't go there. You have to stay strong. You can't let your fears defeat you. You're going to have to face your own demons if you're going to pull this off."
Still cautious, but now somewhat reassured, Shao made his decision. He strained his back, patted down his stolen white silk robe, put on the straightest face he could muster, and walked into the square.
Fortunately for him, he wasn't the only one. There were about two other servants coming from various streets toward the tower to begin the morning shift. He slowed down, and watched them as they walked all the way around the Tower. He followed them, trying to not look suspicious.
One of the servants gave him a sideways glance, but must not have found him very interesting, because he turned his head back toward a large, undecorated double-door at the base of the back of the Tower.
There were a few steps leading up to the door, and, at the top one, stood a female sheep. Shao looked at her from top to bottom.
She had white fur, neatly combed and trim, and wore an identical robe to the rest of the servants. The only difference was that it was red instead of white, suggesting that she was in charge of the servants. She looked to be fairly young. Her back was straight, and the focused look in her eyes suggested that she took her job very seriously. In her hooves, she held a board with a piece of paper on it.
As the other two servants walked up the stairs, she checked off something on her paper, presumably their names.
Shao's stomach dropped. "She's going to know that I don't actually work here."
Pushing the thought aside, Shao did his best to calmly walk up the stairs. The sheep, without moving her head up, shifted her eyes up to glance at Shao. He had just made it to the top stair and was just about to pass through the door when she said-
"I don't recognize you." She spoke in a cold and no-nonsense voice, which wasn't a personality that Shao would have an easy time of convincing.
With a gulp, Shao turned to look at her. He then laughed nervously.
"Oh, that's right, they must not have told you! I just requested a position as a servant a few days ago, and they just informed me that they hired me yesterday." Shao tried to give her a smile, but it came out very weakly and it seemed more like a grimace.
The sheep flipped a few pages on her board.
"Hmm, they didn't tell me anything about it. Who did you talk to about the job?"
"Oh crap," Shao thought. He didn't know anybody's names.
"Oh, well, I can't remember his name right now," he shakily replied, "But I came here a few days ago and I spoke with the person in charge of hiring new servants."
Even to Shao, it seemed like a terrible lie. It wasn't even really coherent, he thought.
"Oh, so you spoke with Zou Tian?" she asked.
Having no idea who she was talking about, Shao quickly replied, "Yes, that was his name!"
"Well, I'll have to check in with him just to make sure, but I guess I can go ahead and get you started while you're waiting."
Feeling a wave of relief wash over him, Shao backed up a few steps as the sheep turned and opened the door, walking in. She took a few steps in, but Shao made the mistake of being unsure of what to do.
She cocked her head back towards him and motioned for him to come to her. "Come on, I don't have all day."
Shao quickly followed her through, where she closed the door behind him.
Shao had been expecting a palace. He had expected floors made of precious stone and stair railings made of gold. What he didn't expect was a rather small room with about twenty hallways, each heading towards a different direction. The room itself was only about six meters wide on each side. There was nothing majestic about the bare stonework at all.
"These are the servant's hallways," the sheep began to explain. "This is where you'll travel through when you need to get to any spot in the Tower. Many of the hallways lead to staircases, which will lead you to the other levels of the building, where there's more hallways."
With that, she began walking towards what seemed like a random hallway, and Shao quickly followed.
Truly interested as to why this side of the Tower was so shabby, he decided to ask, "Um, why exactly do the servants go through different hallways?"
She gave him an exasperated glance as she looked away from her papers.
"Don't you know how many servants it takes to maintain a place of this size? If we had servants moving about in the main areas, we'd never have any room for guests."
Almost as if to prove her point, a group of about ten servants dressed in cooking outfits appeared around the bend of the hallway, pushing a table with a white cloth over it. The table was filled with several dishes that were covered. It looked like a feast.
"What's going on?" he asked the sheep, whose eyes had now drifted back to their favorite spot of her papers.
"Oh, Masters Ox and Croc are having some special guests in the Tower for a meeting. We've prepared a special breakfast for them."
She didn't see it, but Shao couldn't help himself from cracking a wide grin.
"So Croc is here," he thought to himself, yet another wave of relief washing over him. He felt his resolve become stronger just with the reassurance that Master Croc was simply in the same building.
Eventually, the came to the kitchen, where the other servants had just come out of. Even with all of the servants serving the breakfast, there were still about thirty other people in the massive kitchen, each performing various duties, from chopping vegetables to mixing boiling liquids.
The sheep looked out to one of the cooks. She was another young female sheep.
"Hey, Sun Jiang!" she called. The cook turned around from the vegetables she was chopping, put down her cutting knife, and walked over to them.
"What can I do for you boss?" she asked with some excitement in her voice.
"We have a new one," she replied. Shao noticed that she said "new one" as if it was something that happened frequently. "I need you to show him around and get him to his post."
She turned to Shao and held out her hoof with a toothy grin. "Hi, my name's Sun Jiang!"
She paused, waiting for him to answer back. After a few moments of awkward silence, Shao quietly replied, "It's nice to meet you."
The cook giggled, excited to show yet another servant around the Tower. The sheep in the red robe had already walked away, heading back towards the main door, leaving Shao with the cook. The cook hadn't even had to ask her boss whose position he was filling, as she already knew the answer to that question.
"Come on!" she said with excitement. She turned towards yet another hallway that led out of the kitchen in a different direction than the one Shao had entered in.
"Great," he glumly thought as he followed her. "I'll have one hell of a time trying to get her and her bubbly attitude away from me."
With that, he followed the cook as she prepared to give him a tour of the Tower of Sacred Flame.
The Valley of Peace- Morning
Tigress found herself back in the Dragon Grotto as the Sun rose above the horizon. She took her place in the middle of the grotto, and slowly closed her eyes and struck her stance.
This would mark the seventh day of meditation in the grotto, but today was different. This time, she didn't plan to recite some chant in her head. She wasn't going to waste time saying the words "inner peace" in her mind. She understood that she had to feel it. And she had come to the conclusion that there was one thought above all others that truly made her feel at peace.
The thought of the Dragon Warrior. The thought of Po.
She decided to act upon the teachings that Po had given her the other day.
"Just… breathe." With that, she began to slowly focus her breathing. Next, she opened up her senses to the world around her. She listened to the sound the wind made as it gently blew past, felt the cool chill to the morning air. But there was something else, something close…
What was it?
Tigress could feel something near. She softly opened her eyes, keeping her gaze half-lidded in an attempt to maintain the meditative atmosphere. She couldn't see anything, so she closed her eyes and resumed her breathing.
Meanwhile, right around the bend of the grotto, stood a panda.
Well, paced is a better word than stood. For the panda was facing the greatest internal battle of his life.
Inner peace? Chi? Those were afterthoughts compared to the new question in Po's mind.
"How do I tell her?" he wondered. "Should I interrupt her meditating session? Just walk in and say, 'Hey Tigress, how are you? Good? Oh, I'm glad to hear that. How am I doing? Oh, great, thanks for asking! Hey, Tigress, there's something I've been meaning to tell you. It's… well… you see…"
Hopeless, he thought. He couldn't even make a coherent sentence in his thoughts, what made him think he could do it in front of Tigress herself.
"It's okay, it's okay, just start over again," he thought to himself, taking a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm himself down. "Maybe I shouldn't hesitate at all. I mean, that would probably be her method. I can just walk straight up to her and say, 'Hey Tigress, I need you to listen to me. You see, I'm in love with you, and I have been for a long time."
"Wow, that just sounds creepy," Po thought. "It makes me sound like nothing more than a simple fanboy."
Which, if he was being honest, he was a fanboy. He had been ever since he had seen her kicking Boar's butt, and still was. Everything about her was just so… perfect. It was like everything she did was plain magic, no matter how simple.
But the thing that he really needed to convey to Tigress was that he had become more than just a fanboy. He didn't just have that boy's love anymore, he had real love for her. He loved Tigress, the person, not just Tigress, the image. Her flaws didn't drive him away, it only attracted him further as he realized that he could help her with those flaws, just as she could help him with his own. They just completed each other so perfectly.
"Okay, Po, think, think! What can I say?" It was then did Po make the mistake of taking a step backward without looking, in which his paw slipped on the ground a little bit, making a soft whoosh as he caught himself from falling. Of course, it wasn't a lot of sound, but there was nothing but dead silence up in the grotto.
"Oh boy," Po thought. "I… better just leave and think of something else."
Po turned around and began to softly walk back towards the Jade Palace. He made it a grand total of three steps before he heard the sound of Tigress clearing her throat. He hesitated for half a second, almost as if he didn't turn around, she wouldn't be there.
But, he did turn his head around, where Tigress was now standing only a few feet away from him. She had her arms crossed over her golden hanfu and her head was slightly cocked to the side. She even had a slight smile tugging at her lips.
"Oh, hey, Tigress!" Po nervously exclaimed, trying to make it seem as if his behavior was perfectly normal.
"Hello, Po," she responded. "Did you need me?" She tried her best to keep a straight face at Po trying to spy on her, but she found it quite difficult.
"Oh, I was just… I was…"
As Tigress raised her brow, Po dug his brain for any good excuse. It was fortunate that one came to him in time.
"Oh, yeah, I was just coming to see how you were doing with your meditation!"
It was now Tigress' turn to be embarrassed, as she suddenly recalled exactly what she was thinking about during her meditation.
"I've been getting better with my meditating recently, especially after your lesson the other day," she added at the end with a smile.
"Oh, well, I'm glad I could help!" Po answered, glad that he was able to do something for her.
"I've just been thinking about my favorite thing while I meditate, and it has a strong calming effect on me," Tigress decided to add. After she said it though, she blushed. Her orange fur was the only thing that saved her having to explain it.
There was a brief, awkward moment of silence between the two, as neither were prepared for saying what they both really wanted to say to the other.
Po was the first to break the silence. "Hey, Tigress…" he started slowly. "I've been meaning to tell you something recently."
Even though Tigress still maintained a straight face, it didn't match her emotions.
"Is he about to say what I think he is?" she wondered, almost afraid to hope for it, her past self trying to shield her from being hurt by shutting out emotions. But her new self pushed that mindset away, trying to accept whatever Po had for her with open arms.
" I…" Po began, but soon found himself at a loss. He began to freeze, unsure of where to go next. The longer he waited, the more he froze, the less he could think, causing him to wait longer, creating quite the vicious circle. It was then did Po finally find the way to explain it to her.
"Tigress," he started. The doubt was now gone from his voice, replaced with the resolve to do what he had come to do.
"Do you remember the night where he fought against Shen?"
Tigress paused for a second, caught off guard by Po's allusion to a time she didn't have fond memories of. Eventually, she nodded her head.
"Do you remember when you pushed me out of the way from his cannon?"
Tigress began to grow confused, unsure of where his conversation was going. She nodded once more.
"I've often wondered why you did that for me. Now, I think I know. And Tigress-" he paused for a second, initially planning to take her hand, but then deciding against it. "-I want you to know that I live in that moment every night, wishing that I could have been the one who took that shot."
Tigress eyes grew wide.
"Tigress-" Po started, now confident with his words. "- I love you so much."
There it was. He'd done it. Inwardly, Po breathed a sigh of relief, glad to have gotten the confession out once and for all. All he could do now was wait for the response.
There was a second moment of silence as Tigress took in his words. Then, Po noticed that her amber eyes became shiny. Then, a tear fell down her eye as she sniffed.
"Oh, what have I done now?" Po berated himself.
"Tigress, I," Po began, but we will never know what he was going to say, because Tigress rushed forward and threw her arms around the back of Po's neck and sobbed tears of joy into his shoulder.
"Oh, Po! I… I love you too!" With that, she buried her head back into his shoulder, making sounds resembling a mixture of sobs and laughter.
It was gone, she thought. Her coldness, her numbness, it was fading away. She was accepting Po, she was accepting love back into her life.
Meanwhile, Po, at first taken by surprise, now had his arms wrapped around Tigress. To say he was happy was the understatement of the year. If you could look inside of him, you would have seen golden light and rainbows. He continued to hold on to Tigress, never wanting to let go of her ever again. He knew that she was sobbing away her fear of rejection, so he was more than happy to let her continue to do so.
Eventually, after what seemed like not enough time for Po, Tigress finally pulled out of their hug, but kept her paws on his shoulders.
"Po, I… I," she began, but Po gently put his finger over her lips, making her go silent, more out of curiosity than obedience.
"You don't have to say anything," he said, so glad to be able to actually believe in that statement himself. "We don't even have to move from this spot. We're the two parts of the Yin and Yang, and we don't need anything else but each other. Nobody can come between us anymore. Nothing can keep us apart."
Tigress blinked the drying tears out of her eyes and smiled. That was probably the most romantic thing he could have said right then, she thought.
Po's romantic smile then turned into a mischievous one.
"Wow," he said.
"What?" Tigress asked.
"It just occurred to me that we've never shared a kiss yet." The smile on his lips grew wider.
Tigress laughed, feeling all her fears melt away with it. "Oh, you sly panda." With that, she leaned forward and closed her eyes, and the two shared their first kiss.
Gongmen City- Sundown
"Why are there so many stairs?" Shao thought with exasperation. He looked up from his bent position and stared up at the dozens of flights of steps that just went on and on.
He bent back down to put the sponge back in the bucket, and then continued scrubbing the stairs. He was now somewhere on the eight floor.
After he had joined the overly-friendly cook on the tour, she had led him through all of the servant hallways and stairwells, showing him all of the rooms that he would need to go in to perform his duties. As it turned out, the position he was needed in was that of a cleaner. It was an unpopular job, as it was hard work, and was a revolving door of a job. So, after she finished the tour, they actually found the sheep with the red robe again, who took him from the cook as she left to go back to her duties.
The master of the servants then took him to the main stairwell, which connected the base of the Tower all the way to the throne room all the way at the very top. When Shao had first seen it, he had been blown away. It was absolutely gorgeous, from the intricate designs on everything to the vibrant color. It was also just as massive on the inside as it appeared from the outside, and Shao wasn't able to truly appreciate that until the master handed him a bucket and a sponge and told him that he may begin his duties with the stairwell.
He had begun with the first step, squatting on the second step to avoid stepping over steps he had just cleaned, and slowly moved backwards up the stairs. Initially, he had planned to clean until she left. But that was where the issue came in: she didn't leave. She seemed to want to manage the "new" servant for a while and determine how good he was. So, she simply drifted back towards the wall, and leaned on it as she flipped through what seemed like endless papers, always keeping an eye on him.
He had passed the last four hours that way, and Shao was now exhausted. He had never done so much physical work in his life, and the amount of sweat making his fur stick together backed that fact up. As time went on, he kept glancing down at the base of the tower to see if she was still there. Sure enough, she would be there, still resting against the wall in the same spot, every time he looked.
He was beginning to believe that somehow, she had become a statue, destined to stand in that same spot for all of eternity. It wasn't until Shao got to the beginning of the ninth floor did he glance down to see a different sight.
At the base of the Tower, he could make out a second person walking up to the sheep. They talked for a few moments, until the visitor left, with the sheep following her.
Shao counted a few seconds in his head to see how long she was gone. When she didn't come back in a minute, Shao finally stood up straight for the first time in hours. He stretched himself, and then listened.
He couldn't hear anyone coming. He looked around. He could see anyone coming in any direction. As he had been cleaning the stairs, many people, from servants, to guards, to nobles, had all passed by. But he hadn't seen either masters of the tower.
It was time, he thought. He took a deep breath, reassuring himself that he was making the right choice; that he was doing what was best for innocent people.
"Okay, where would Master Croc be?" he wondered. The idea then occurred to him that it was already nighttime outside, which most likely meant that he was either asleep, or heading to his room in the barracks.
"Now I just have to find the barracks."
And, because of his tour, he knew just where he could go to find them.
He walked down a few steps to get to the ninth floor, where he turned away from the stairs and opened one of the many doors that led to the servants' hallways. He didn't have to walk through the bare hallway for very long until he rounded a corner and came across another servant.
"Hello," he quietly started.
The other servant stopped to look at him. "Hi." He then snapped his fingers. "Hey, you're that new guy, right?"
Shao could only nod his head. Well, it wasn't exactly a lie. He was new to the building.
"Yeah, yeah. Well, can I help you with anything?"
Shao did his best to sound inconspicuous as he said- " Yeah, actually. You see, someone told me that I needed to go up to clean one of the barracks, but I can't seem to find them."
"Oh, the barracks? They're just upstairs, on the level right below the top one. You just enter the left hallway after you leave the stairwell."
"Oh, thank you so much!" Shao gratefully replied as he headed back towards the main stairwell.
After a few turns, he found himself climbing the main stairwell. His heart pounded faster with every step he took. His breath quickened as he got towards the top. He felt like that myth from the west: he felt like he was flying higher and higher, but he felt as if the sun was going to melt his frail wings of courage, and send him plummeting down into the sea of his own consequences, where he would inevitably drown. Yet he still found the strength to climb every single step. His thoughts then turned to the specifics of what he was about to do.
"What if he's asleep?" he wondered. "Am I going to shoot him in his sleep?" For the first time, he actually gave a considerable amount of thought to that action. Would he slide open the door, quietly walk in, pull out his weapon, and kill the kung-fu master with his eyes closed the entire time?
"Well, what else are you going to do?" he told himself. "Are you going to shake him on the shoulder and say, 'Hey, wake up,' and then kill him? Oh, yes, that'll really show that you have such good manners."
While he had been thinking, he climbed the steps. Every last one of them. He was now on the second-to-last story of The Tower of Sacred Flame. He looked to his left, and, sure enough, there was a hallway.
After closing his eyes and taking yet more deep breaths, he took a moment to prepare himself. He did that for about a minute, until he finally felt ready to do what was right.
But when he opened his eyes, a surprise was in store for him. The space between him and the hallway was no longer empty.
Directly in front of him stood an elderly female goat, with a simple red cloth on her rounded body and a look of expectancy on her face. Shao was caught by so much surprise that he almost took a step backward, and that wouldn't have ended well considering his close proximity to the stairs.
"Oh, hi, I-" he began, trying to come up with any excuse as to why he had been on the stairwell taking deep breaths with closed eyes. However, she cut him off before he could get any further than that.
"Come with me," she said in a monotone voice. At that, she turned around and walked toward the very hallway he wanted to go to. She walked slowly, with her cane in hand, which really surprised Shao, as he wondered how she was able to sneak up on him like that.
When they came to the hallways, there were several sliding doors in a dimly lit hall. The goat turned into the very first one on the right side of the hall, and Shao followed her inside, preparing his best lie face he could possibly muster.
When he entered the small room, she closed the door, leaving the two of them in darkness. There was a small amount of shuffling as the elderly lady struck a match and lit a few candles in the room. The light revealed the simplest of rooms, with only a bed in the corner and a small wardrobe in the other corner. After she lit the last of the candles, she waved the match in the air, putting it out.
"Now," she began. "No one is sleeping close by here, so no one will overhear our conversation."
"Now, now," Shao quickly cut in. "I was just coming up the stairs to clean the-"
"Do not waste my time," she interrupted. "I know you are not a servant, and I know that you have no intention of becoming one."
If Shao's balls could have physically dropped off, they would have. How could she possibly know that? Had she been watching him?
She must have sensed his panicked confusion, because she added, "I am no ordinary servant here. I am a soothsayer for Masters Ox and Croc, and it is my job to see what lies in the future."
"A soothsayer?" Shao wondered. "They're real? I didn't think seeing into the future was possible."
"I have foreseen this meeting with you on the top of that stairwell. And I have looked into your future as well."
He didn't even try to protest anymore, knowing that his game was up. The only question now was what this lady planned to do with him. He was completely at her mercy now. Then, a new question gripped Shao. What could possibly be in his future other than imprisonment?
"Now, the future is cloudy, and difficult to truly see. I do not know exactly what you intend to do here tonight, but I do know what it will lead to. You should turn back now, my child. You have no idea what you are about to do."
Whoa, whoa, did she know that he was here to kill Master Croc, he wondered? Shao now understood that his meeting with the goat extended far beyond making an excuse for standing too long at the top of the stairs.
"I… I… I don't know what you're talking about," he nervously retorted, trying his best to display some confidence through his words.
The Soothsayer didn't seem to buy it. "Child, my gift of second sight is also a curse. I beg you, just go home. Now. That is all you have to do to avoid the fate that is at the end of the path you are on now."
Shao gulped. What was on the end of the path?
"I understand that you are well-intentioned, but your actions will not only lead to the deaths of countless innocents, but also of yourself."
"Countless innocents?" Shao thought with some shock. "It was only Master Croc, then Tigress, Viper, and Mantis that I'm worried about. I'm not going to become some serial killer. And my own death? I die at the end of this path? How could she know that for sure?"
The Soothsayer continued. "You will create the very monster you are trying to stop. But you can leave this path. It is not too late for you, my child."
A million different things ran through Shao's mind. How much did this lady actually know? Was she right about what she said?
No, he thought. Yes, he saw earlier that he might have been losing a small grip on his nerves, but he was aware of it now. He would make sure to stay strong, he had to be strong. He would not let himself become a monster in his killings. Each of them would only be for the good of everyone around them. He would not dare to think about hurting others than who he already had in mind. He would not become a monster.
In fact, Shao thought, why was this lady stopping him? She was an elderly goat who served in her city's government. She, of all people, should know that most predators became bandits. People like her master were the exception to that rule. And even those could not be trusted. Tai-Lung was proof of that.
"Okay ma'am, I've listened to you but now you are going to listen to me." he said, softly at first but it grew as he finished the sentence, thinking about his parents. Shao figured that there was no point in keeping secrets since this lady seemed to know everything anyway.
The Soothsayer only looked on with a straight face as continued. "The world will be a better place because of what I'm doing, okay? Don't you know who made up the bandits? Predators! Who killed my parents!? Predators! Who terrorized us at the orphanage I was forced to stay in!? A predator! And now, the entire Valley of Peace hails her as a hero! How can they be so quick to forget Tai-Lung!? I still remember having to evacuate the Valley when he didn't get that stupid scroll! When things didn't go his way, he snapped and laid waste to the entire Valley by himself! And now Shifu has made a mirror image of him, only he's trained her for even longer! What happens when she snaps like Tai-Lung did!? I won't let that happen, do you hear me!? I won't!"
Shao finished his statement, panting and sweating. He suddenly realized that he had been speaking much too loudly, and could only hope that there wasn't anyone close by who could hear the commotion. He then looked back at the Soothsayer, expecting her to call the guards immediately.
But she didn't.
She merely looked up at him for a few more minutes. Who knew what could have going through her head, Shao thought. Was she thinking of turning him in? Or was it something else? Was it possible that she understood him?
Finally, she cut the silence with a sigh. "I tell you again, I understand you have good intentions, but the path you are on now is filled with tragedy and death. Countless deaths. And you have the power to stop it. Right now. All you have to do is go home."
She sighed once more. "I will give you a choice. I will let you go right now if you leave this place immediately and never return."
Shao, eager for a chance to not immediately be turned in, nodded his head slowly, as if he agreed with her words.
"Alright," she said. She opened the door again, revealing the dark, empty hallway outside. She motioned for Shao to leave. He stepped out into the hall.
"Remember," she added as he walked back toward the stairwell. "You can change the path you are on. You can change your fate." And with that, she stepped back into the room and shut the door.
She walked over to the bed and sat down on it, putting her head on her hooves, hoping that she had made the right decision in letting him go. If only she could see exactly what he had come to do, then she might be able to make a better decision. But she just couldn't imprison him immediately. She had to give him a chance.
She then got down on her knees and began to pray. She didn't just pray to one deity, but to every single one that she had heard about, in hope that at least one of them would hear her cries. She remembered her vision of the young goat's future. She prayed that her vision was wrong. If he stayed on his current path, he would cause the greatest heartbreak she had ever seen, and it would lead to a monster far worse than even Lord Shen.
Meanwhile, Shao stopped in the hallway and really decided to think. What if she was right? What if he really did become some kind of monster, bent on killing all predators? If he became that, then he would have wasted everything, given up everything he ever believed in. He could not allow himself to become that.
It was then did he begin to seriously consider going home. It was so simple. All he had to do was walk down the stairs, all the way down to the bottom, and leave. That was it. And he could avoid everything that she had just said.
In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that it was the best option. His hooves began to move on their own accord, taking him forward, back towards the stairwell. Yes, he could leave. It was so simple!
He left the hallway behind him and crossed the platform until he came to the stairs once more. He was just about to begin his descent when something coming up the stairs caught his attention.
Master Croc.
There he was, just a few steps away from him. Master Croc was wearing a simple gold robe, most likely for sleeping, which was backed up by the tired look on his face. He passed by Shao on the stairs, softly saying "Good night," to the goat as he passed.
Shao was too shocked to say anything back, and Master Croc was too tired to notice. The crocodile's presence had snapped him out of his trance. When he passed by, he couldn't help but notice just how big the kung-fu master really was. On top of that, he had those sharp teeth and claws.
Suddenly, memories of the evacuation came back to him. Tai-Lung had been the Valley's hero. But he betrayed them.
Because he was a predator, Shao thought. It was only natural.
Shao backed up a few steps to see Master Croc go deep into the hallway, and then enter the very last room on the left.
"Yes, they call him a hero," Shao thought. "They called Tai-Lung that, too."
He patted his robe, feeling for the outline of his weapon.
He gulped, and then began to walk towards the hallway once again with determination. He no longer cared about the warning. He would not become a monster.
"That old goat can't be right about everything," he thought.
I know, I know, I'm sorry for cutting off the chapter here! I'm pretty evil like that, huh?
A special shout-out to Frozen Wolf heart 22 for helping me a lot with this chapter, especially with the dialogue between Shao and the Soothsayer. Thank you so much :)
Well, I hoped you enjoyed this chapter, and I look forward to when you get to see what happens next….
Keep being awesome!