Hello there!

So, if you guys are wondering why I'm posting so many chapters in a row, you can check out my updated profile page. (It was in a major need of an update anyway). I now have in it a little more about me, some writing tips, and updates. You can scroll to the end where the "updates" section is and it says why I'm posting so many chapters of this.

On with the show!

The Valley Park- Noon

On the park bench, by the fountain that rested in the center of the Valley Park, the pig who always sat there was, as might be expected, sitting there.

He was pursuing his regular hobby of eyeing every young female in the vicinity when someone plopped down beside him on his bench. He turned to look at who had so rudely interrupted his concentration and was about to tell the person off until he saw who it was.

"Oh, it's just ya."

At first, his visitor didn't say anything back. He just handed him one bag of noodles and stared off into the distance. After a few more moments of silence, the pig asked with some concern,

"Ya okay?"

Finally, Shao turned his head toward the pig. The pig's eyes grew wide at the terrible shape his generous donor was in.

Shao smiled and tried to give the worst lie he had ever given. "I'm fine."

Even though one look at the goat would prove otherwise, Shao's words themselves seemed tired and old.

The pig frowned. "I thought ya was goin' on a vacation."

Shao nodded. "Oh, I did." He sighed. "It just wasn't the relaxing kind."

The pig knitted his brow, unsure of what the purpose of taking vacation was if it wasn't relaxing. After coming to no conclusion, the pig opened the small box in his hooves and began to eat.

The pig was content to sit there like they always used to, but Shao quickly broke the silence by blurting out-

"I killed Master Croc."

The pig was shocked into place. He then put his chopsticks back in the box and turned to look at his friend. Shao was staring off into space with a blank expression.

The pig tried to figure out what the punchline of the joke was supposed to be. "Um," he started, "And?"

"And?" Shao echoed. "There is no "and." I killed him in his sleep. It's as simple as that."

The pig blinked a few times, unsure of what to say. After a few seconds, he finally broke out into a nervous laugh.

"Ya," he said, trying his best to sound amused at what he thought was some kind of morbid joke. "That's a good 'un."

For the first time since he told the pig, Shao turned to look at him. His expression was still blank.

"How?" he asked.

The pig became more and more confused. "The joke, it wa'… funny," he replied with some uncertainty.

"Funny? Funny how?" Shao asked.

The pig was at a loss for words, and was silent, staring at the goat with confusion.

Shao finally understood the pig's confusion. "It's not a joke."

The pig's nervous grin faded away from his face. He gently put the box of noodles in the space between them. He looked at Shao, who looked back with that same blank face.

"What?" the pig quietly asked, his forced amusement now replaced with shock. "Ya mean, da news 'bout Croc bein' dead was… you?" The pig looked deep into the goat's eyes, but Shao couldn't take it, so he turned his head to look back at the fountain.

He nodded. "Yeah," he simply replied.

There was silence as the two sat there, Shao looking out at the park visitors and the pig stuck looking at Shao. They remained in that position, frozen in time, for quite a while.

Eventually, the pig decided he had to say something. "Well, why ya tellin' me?"

"I don't really know," Shao quickly replied. "I've been carrying around the secret for a few days now. But it's building up inside me, and I can't hold it anymore. I just had to tell someone." Shao risked a sideways glance at the pig. "Preferably not someone who'd report me to the city or palace guards."

The pig finally broke his gaze away from the goat, completely at a loss of what to do next. Shao had always been the guy who brought him his lunch out of the kindness of his heart, a quiet, kind person. But a murderer? The pig almost refused to believe it. It just didn't fit Shao's personality. If it wasn't for his all-too-serious tone and exhausted appearance, he wouldn't have bought it.

"Well-," he started, and he was about to ask "why?" but he decided against it. Judging from his looks, Shao seemed to be beating himself up already. He probably didn't need to come across as judgemental right now.

"So-," he finally settled on, "What are ya gonna do now?"

The goat shook his head. "I don't know." He sighed. "I don't really know anything anymore."

He then stiffened up, a new thought entering his head. He turned back towards the pig.

"Why do you live like this?"

The pig's eyes went wide at the blunt question aimed at his socioeconomic status. He had thought it common knowledge that you just didn't walk up to a homeless person and ask 'Hey, why are you homeless?'

But when the bluntness of the question faded away, and the pig finally remembered the reason, his head drooped to the ground. His eyes looked back up at Shao, who looked back with a curious expression. Finally, the pig decided that he did owe the goat something, as he had fed him for a few years. It wasn't as if he would have died without him, but he was still grateful.

Slowly, the pig reached into the stitched rags that he called clothes. He rummaged around in his pockets before pulling out a simple jade amulet. It had no decoration on it whatsoever, and only a thin cord held it around the wearer's neck. He handed it to Shao, who opened up his hoof to take it. The pig dropped it in his hoof.

Shao looked down at it. It was old and dirty. He looked back up at the pig.

"What's this?"

The pig sighed. "Dat… dat wa' my little girl's."

Shao's eyes went wide, and his hoof closed around what he knew was not just a simple piece of jewelry, but a relic to the old pig.

"You had a daughter?"

The pig smiled as warm memories flowed through his mind.

"I had a family."

Shao looked back down at the necklace, rubbing the tips of his hoof on it, connecting the dots in his head.

"And what happened to them?"

The smile faded from the pig's face, replaced by a deep sorrow in his eyes.

"It was just… one day, 'dose bandits came. Dat croc group, ya know? They 'waided my village."

His eyes welling with tears, the pig looked at Shao and gave a sad smile. He shrugged.

"Nothin' I could do to stop it."

With that, he looked back out at the crowd in the park.

"Oh, sure, I coulda kept on by myself, but…" the pig paused as he tried to find the right words. "I just wasn't nothin' no more. I just couldn't… I couldn't go on. So, I come 'ere everyday, and I sit down, 'membring the good times. Gettin' drunk, starin' at the young un's, thinking 'bout how they don't know how good they got it."

There was a silence between them as the pig finished, Shao letting his words sink in. He felt something click inside of him. He had been so shocked by his killing of Croc that he had forgotten why he had started his quest in the first place. Now that he heard the pig's tale, thoughts of heroically saving the innocent from the violent predators came back to the front of his mind in full force.

Finally, Shao handed back the necklace to the pig. After the pig opened up his hoof and Shao dropped it in, he said-

"Your daughter's death will not be in vain."

The pig's eyes widened, as he didn't know what Shao meant by that.

He turned around and began to walk away, his sluggish motions replaced with a purposeful stride. But as he was about to walk away, the pig told him-

"Wait."

Shao turned around, raising his brow.

"My name's Liao," the pig said.

Shao stared back for a few seconds. Then, he smiled. "My name's Shao." With that, he turned away and walked off.

Dragon Warrior Noodles and Tofu- Noon

Po strutted his way into his fathers' restaurant, a spring in his step and a smile on his face. His past fears were now replaced with confidence. Now that he knew Tigress loved him back, and Shifu and the Five were happy for the two of them, he was ready to tell the whole world. He could shout it from the rooftops, shout it from the palace, if only he could just tell someone, anyone, everyone.

Mr. Ping, who normally took orders in front of the counter, was the first to see his son.

"There's my boy!" he shouted as he quickly ran to the side door that led into the eating area and rushed to his son, jumping on his belly and hanging on in a form of hug, to which Po responded by putting his arms around him.

"Hey dad," he softly responded.

By now, Li Shan had overheard the commotion from his position in the back of the kitchen, and was now making his own way to his son. As he approached, Mr. Ping let go of Po to avoid being crushed between the two of their bellies as Li Shan came in for his own hug. The two of them embraced, each holding the other tightly.

Li Shan pulled back, keeping one paw on his son's shoulder.

"How's my boy?" he asked.

"Oh, I'm doing just fine," Po answered, his eyes glimmering with a suppressed joy. "Can we go inside the kitchen for a second?"

His dads nodded, and the three of them headed out of the eating area and entered the kitchen door. Li Shan was the last to enter, and he closed the door behind him.

"So, what brings you down here?" Li Shan asked.

Mr. Ping waddled over to the large pot of noodles, opened one of the cabinets, and pulled out a bowl. He looked at Po. "Are you hungry? The noodles are especially good today."

Po held his paw up. "No, I think I'm fine today."

Mr. Ping cocked his head, giving Po an expression that said, "Uh-huh."

Almost on cue, Po's stomach gave a soft rumble. Po looked at the shiny noodles in the pot, smelled their scent, and imagined their taste.

He smiled. "Well, maybe just a little bit."

"That's what I thought," Mr. Ping happily chirped as he filled up the bowl with what could probably not be considered "a little bit."

He handed the bowl over to Po, along with a pair of chopsticks, and then hopped up on one of the stools.

"So," he began, "How goes live at the Palace?"

Po waved the chopsticks in the air after stuffing his mouth full of noodles. "Oh," he said through a full mouth, "No one's tried to take over the country, so I guess it's going pretty good."

His dads chuckled, until Li Shan finally asked the question Po had been waiting for.

"So, what did you want to tell us earlier?"

Po swallowed his mouthful of noodles and put the bowl to the side. It was then did his dads realize that, whatever he planned to tell them, it must have been very important to get Po to stop eating.

His dads waited nervously as Po paused for a few seconds, allowing the excitement to build.

Finally, he broke the silence.

"Tigress and I are in a relationship."

There, he thought. He said it.

There was the briefest moment of silence as Mr. Ping and Li Shan processed his words. But it only took a few seconds for them to erupt.

They both rushed to Po and hugged him, each yelling or shouting something different.

"Congratulations!"

"Finally!"

"I'm so glad you finally told her!"

"I've been waiting for so long!"

"When are you going to get married!?"

"When can I expect my grandkids!?"

Po backed up out of their hug, laughing.

"Whoa, whoa, we just confessed to each other the other day! We're not… we're not-" Po started laughing at Mr. Ping's request for grandkids. "We're not quite there yet."

Mr. Ping smiled and put on a mock expression of impatience.

"Well, I'm not getting any younger, that's for sure."

Suddenly, Mr. Ping's eyes lit up. He backed up so that he was back at the counter. The restaurant was quite crowded, as it was lunchtime.

"Hey, everybody!" he shouted to the crowd, the tips of his wings in a cup around his beak. "My son's getting married to-"

"WAIT!" Po shouted, but it was too late.

"-To Master Tigress!"

The crowd cheered at the announcement, a mixture of shouts, congratulations, whistles and cheers echoing throughout the crowd. Po looked on with wide eyes, as he hadn't wanted everyone to know just yet.

But he looked back at his dad, who was looking on at the crowd with a gleam in his eyes, and Po knew how happy Mr. Ping really was that his son had finally found someone to spend the rest of his life with. Po inwardly sighed.

He and Tigress lived together anyway. What was the point of waiting?

The River Bank- Evening

The white ferry lowered it's gangway, and it's varied passengers began to file off of it, walking toward the valley center.

A leopardess and her son were one of the first ones off of the boat, making their way to the valley center. They passed the sleepy backstreets that made up the outskirts of town. The last tips of the sun had just set below the horizon and the grey sky grew ever darker. People began to light lanterns and candles in the streets to find their way and to give others a path.

The two passed homes and shops as they came closer to the center. As the sky got darker, they finally came upon the village square.

Despite the fading hours of the day, there were still a good amount of people, all merrily chatting away to each other. What the two visitors didn't know was that there was a juicy source of gossip going around among the villagers. Lianmin and Peng could hear snippets of conversation from various places.

"Did you hear about the Dragon Warrior?"

"I wonder if they asked Master Shifu about it?"

"Are they going to live at the palace?"

"Are they going to have kids?"

"Forget kids! When are they getting married!? I want to be there!"

Each wall that surrounded the main village square was adorned with benches for anybody to rest on. Lianmin headed towards one, Peng following her. They took a seat and looked out into the crowd.

Peng looked up thoughtfully at the sky. "So Po and Tigress are getting married."

His mother followed his gaze towards the dimming clouds. "Hm-hmm. And a wedding ceremony is the perfect place to hide. There's going to be so many people, it'll be easy to lose a single person in the crowd."

Peng nodded. "You think he'll attack during the wedding?"

"If I was him, I would. The Jade Palace is different from the Tower of Sacred Flame. The tower was in the middle of the city, right next to the streets. But the palace is isolated from the village by the One Thousand Stairs. Anyone who didn't belong would be spotted very easily. It's a huge risk to take to go up there. It would be much smarter to wait for them to come down."

"So we have until the wedding to find this guy?"

"Pretty much."

Peng stood up, ready to go. "Alright, when do we start?"

Personally, Peng was excited to meet Po again. Even though they may have had a… slight disagreement in the past, Peng was now grateful to the Dragon Warrior for showing him his true path in life. Without him, he would probably still be a potter, spending his days in his chair, making vase after bowl after plate over and over again.

But his mother was not nearly as excitable. She held out her paw, gesturing for Peng to sit back down. He looked unsure, curious as to why she wasn't acknowledging their closing window of time.

"Sit down, Peng. We're not going to find him by aimlessly wandering around. We know what he looks like. We're not dealing with some amateur. Someone has paid this assassin to kill some very powerful figures. He won't be treading around in the daytime."

When he understood his mother's reasoning, he sat back down. "So who do you think is paying him?"

"Probably one of the bandit clan leaders."

"But why haven't they tried this before? I mean, they've been raiding villages and valleys throughout the country forever in the same fashion. They would storm a village, only to get beaten back by the local kung-fu masters. Why the sudden change in tactics now? What changed?"

Lianmin broke her gaze from the crowd and turned to look at her son. She gave a soft smile and put her paw on the back of his head, rubbing it gently.

"I don't know what you'll do with your life, my son, but whatever it is, I know you'll excel at it."

Peng gave a soft smile at his mother's rare praise, and muttered, "Thanks."

And as soon as it had arrived, his mother's soft expression was gone once again, replaced by its usual calculating one.

"That is the question, Peng. Why the change? I think it has something to do with that new weapon. You see, when they looked further at Master Croc, they found a small metal ball buried in his head. Do you remember anything that spits metal like that?"

Peng nodded, already seeing where his mother was going with this. "Shen's cannons."

"Hm-hmm. I'm afraid that when gunpowder was created, the world was changed in an instant. If it wasn't Lord Shen, then it would have been somebody else. But somebody would have discovered the more… malevolent uses of the substance. I know it's banned now, but it's out there in the world now, and I'm afraid there's no taking it back."

There was a moment of silence between mother and son.

Peng looked up at his mother. "So what does this mean now?"

Lianmin looked back at him. She sighed.

"It means that kung-fu's days are numbered."

Valley Streets- Evening

Shao walked through the streets, the rumors, gossip, and news spreading around him like a wildfire. Even though he wasn't actively listening, he couldn't help but hear it.

She was getting married. To the Dragon Warrior, of all people.

When Shao had first heard, he simply hadn't processed it. He didn't want to. But when his brain finally started to function again, dread filled his head. If Tigress was getting married, and the Dragon Warrior was the one doing it, then it occurred to Shao that he might get a little upset if someone murdered his wife.

"Great," he thought. "Just when I finally got a little reassurance that what I'm doing is right, fate has to come and screw me over."

Pushing the thought to the side, the goat kept his purposeful stride all the way to an all-too-familiar building. He looked at the bamboo door that he had opened before a million times, and he sighed. How life seemed so much more simple back then, he thought. Only just a few weeks ago, when he had routinely arrived in the pharmacy, did his daily work, turned his head when bandits came to buy some illegal weapons, went home, ate, slept, and repeated the process the next day.

The goat raised his hoof and knocked on the door. He knew that his boss left at sundown, but he was hoping that he might be staying over a little later because of Shao's absence.

Sure enough, after a few seconds, he heard the lock go click!, and then it swung open, revealing his boss.

Qian looked at Shao with a blank face for the briefest of seconds, which Shao thought was strange, but his fears were soon resolved as his boss' face dissolved into a toothy grin.

He spread out his arms. "There's my boy!" He stepped forward, grasping the thin goat in his arms. After a few seconds, they broke apart, and Qian gestured Shao inside. The goat followed, closing the door behind him.

As Qian waddled his way to his stool, Shao took a good look at the place.

Memories of his daily life came back, from cleaning and restocking the shelves to sweeping, dusting, and scrubbing the floors and walls. Life had seemed so much simpler then. He didn't have any worries. None at all. Now he felt as if the gods had come and placed this massive burden on him, and made it so that he was forced to carry it alone. Sure, he had been… somewhat confident that he was doing the right thing when he had first set out, but why did it have to be him? Why couldn't the gun have fallen in the paws of someone more capable? Someone who actually had experience with those kind of things? Shao was a nobody; he was just another, average person in the Valley. So why had he been chosen for this, he wondered?

During his reverie, his boss had taken his habitual spot on his stool by the corner. Although, instead of crossing his arms across his chest and closing his eyes like he normally did, he excitedly sat forward.

"Well, I heard the news," he said. "Everyone's been talking about the… late Master Croc."

Underneath his fur, Shao went pale. While he was growing in confidence since his conversation with his homeless friend, he still didn't have any pleasant memories of the Tower of Sacred Flame.

The ram extended his arms forward. "You did it," he whispered. "I mean-" he began, his voice rising in volume and excitement. "-You actually did it! You… you… you actually did the right thing!"

Shao was surprised to find out that he had mixed feelings at his boss' reaction. On one paw, he was glad that he supported him, but, on the other, part of him recoiled at the ram's celebratory reaction to anyone's death.

The ram clasped his hooves together. Shao had seen him in action many times before, and that was the motion he always made whenever he was about to push a sale on a customer.

"So," he began, "What are you going to do now?"

The goat's thoughts drifted back to his conversation with the pig. He remembered the jade necklace. If not for the croc bandits, his family would still be alive, and he wouldn't be sitting there, wasting away, day after day.

For the first time since he had begun his quest, Shao looked at Qian without wavering.

"I'm going to finish this."

And that concludes the latest chapter! Please, if you did or did not like it, feel free to leave a review telling me why!

Keep being awesome!