Hello there!
I welcome you all to the second half of this story! I'm so glad you're here!
Now, if I'm being truthful, the reason this story is split up into two separate titles isn't because it's supposed to be a sequel. It's not. It's just because of the rating. I thought I could get away with the first twenty chapters or so being rated T, but there are a couple of chapters in this next part that probably can't be called T. The only reason it's not rated M now is because we haven't reached any of those chapters yet (although I warn you, the first one of those is coming pretty soon, but I'll tell you when you need to turn your filters to "All.").
So, a quick disclaimer: this book will get pretty violent at a few points. However, the violence will not be excessive or unnecessary. It will be used in moderation when it's needed.
Anyway, with that out of the way, I am happy to begin where we left off! Now, let's see, where were we…?
Ah yes! Po, Shifu and the Five are dead, Tigress is still unconscious, and no one knows what to do! So what's going to happen now, you wonder? What will the bandits do? Where did Qian go in all this mess? How is Shao going to become the person he's determined to be in the prologue? What's going to happen to Tigress? What was with those two prophecies by the Soothsayer?
Well, Frozenwolfheart22 and I assure you all your questions will soon be answered, but first things first. In fact, we have a slight twist or two coming down the pike right in the opener here, so fasten your seatbelts, grab your popcorn, turn off the lights, turn on your music (if you like listening to music while reading like I do), and hold onto your butts!
And on with the show!
The Valley Square- One Hour After The Explosion
After the tragedy had taken place, the people in the crowd had been shocked into silence. But after the ringing of the bells that began the mourning of their protectors, their silence had turned into panicked shouts, as they wanted to know what was going to happen now. Who was going to protect them now from all the dangers that lurked outside their somewhat peaceful valley?
If it hadn't been for Master Ox using his powerful set of lungs to silence the crowd and issuing orders, it may have quickly turned into anarchy. But Master Ox, used to being in charge, quickly set things straight and the people were much too afraid of an angry ox to even think of disobeying. He ordered Tigress, whose body was still laying over in the alley where Peng had used his nerve-attack on her, to be taken to the nearest doctor so she could be treated for her injuries. He had also demanded that Liamnin and Peng go, as both of them needed to get themselves checked out for potential injuries. Mr. Ping had gone with them, as it had been decided that his face was the one that Tigress needed to see first when she woke up. Meanwhile, Li Shan had been sent back to care for Lei Lei.
Meanwhile, as the Valley guards began to file in, Master Ox quickly assumed command of them and he ordered the people of the Valley to return to their homes for now. The crowd had been displeased, to say the least, but he had eased their desire for answers and their wave of disapproval by saying that there would be a meeting in the Jade Palace Courtyard in two days, at noon, where they would explain to them what had happened and what was next.
As the terrified people finally began to leave, Master Ox quickly ordered a search for each of the bodies of the Masters of the Valley of Peace. The guards, mostly made up of rhinos, quickly began to dig through the rubble with their bare hooves, moving like automatons, with a constant and steady pace, as they attempted to recover what was left of their bodies.
As they solemnly worked, Master Ox and the Soothsayer watched over them, quietly talking to themselves.
Ox sighed. "What do we do now? Without all of them, the Valley of Peace is…" He couldn't bring himself to say the word "vulnerable."
The Soothsayer shook her head. "I don't know."
Master Ox lifted his brow. "You do know I know when you're not being honest with me, right?"
The Soothsayer was about to shake her head, but Ox interrupted the act with a-
"Hey, look at me."
She did just that, as her tear-filled eyes looked high up in order to meet Ox's.
"I've known you since I was a child. You've been like a mother to me. You can tell me whatever you need to tell me, even if it's something that I don't want to hear."
The old goat gave a soft smile, appreciative of the rare words of affection from him.
"So," he began. "These visions you've been seeing lately. Can you tell me more about them now?"
She slowly nodded her head. "At first, I foresaw someone, now I know it to be that goat, causing the most terrible pain to someone else. Someone powerful. And I saw that that person would take their revenge on the world."
Master Ox looked down at the ground for an instant as he carefully chose his next words, but he lacked the strength to tell them to her while looking in her eyes.
"And if you knew that, then why did you let him go?" Ox tried his very best to say with the least amount of judgement in his voice, but he still knew it was a painful subject with the old goat.
"You will never know how much I wish I would have called the guards that night. But somehow… I thought I needed to tell him what he was doing, to tell him of the fate that awaited him on his chosen path. His death lies on that path. I thought that would be sufficient to deter him. You see, he's not a truly evil person. His actions have been out of a misplaced sense of righteousness."
Ox's eyes grew wide, as this was the first time he had heard such words from the Soothsayer. "You're saying he killed my brother out of a sense of righteousness? What did he ever do to wrong others? He lived his entire life for them!"
The Soothsayer shook her head in response. "He has this belief that all predators are a danger to society."
Ox's wide eyes grew ever-wider. "Oh, but the person who murdered him in his sleep isn't!?"
The old goat put her hooves up. "I didn't say I understood all of his motives. I only know them on the surface."
Master Ox took a few deep heaves, trying to calm himself down. When he did, he continued.
"Alright. But when we heard that she and the…" he hesitated, as he couldn't bring himself to think of Po Ping as dead. "-late Dragon Warrior were to be married, you looked into the future again, and you saw something different. What was it?"
The Soothsayer put her eyes down for the first time since she had made eye-contact with Ox. "That's where things begin to truly get worse. For as terrible as the vengeance of the one who has suffered can be, it can only last so long until they realize that vengeance will not bring them back what they have lost. But some people, people bred for a single cause, will never stop pursuing their goals until they have them or they're dead, and they'll kill whoever gets in the way. Even people close to them."
Master Ox remembered what little she had tried to tell him on their hurried boat ride to the Valley.
"The warrior of black and white…" he echoed, recalling her words.
"Yes. The warrior of black and white will be more terrible than anything we have seen, presuming that fate is the one of many that awaits us. And…" she paused. "I do not know what we can do to prevent this fate from happening. It is only one of many possible outcomes, but it is by far the worst."
They stood there in silence for a few minutes, turning to look at the Valley guards, who were still shifting debris away from the center of the fallen structure. With their combined and sustained efforts, progress had been made, and Ox felt the bodies could be retrieved before the setting of the Sun on this cursed day.
He turned back to the Soothsayer. "And this 'warrior of black and white?' I mean, I think we all know who the 'suffering' one is."
The Soothsayer nodded her head. "Yes, but what should we do about it? As I said, it is only one of many possible outcomes. We have an important decision to make. If we do nothing, then the situation may spiral out of our control. But if we try to prevent it from happening altogether…" at that moment, the Soothsayer felt like a terrible person, as both she and Ox knew exactly what that sentence meant. She only meant it as a worse-case scenario, only to be used in extreme need. But if it came down to the lives of countless innocents, or the life of one, which would they choose?
"But if we try to cheat fate," she continued, "we may only be welcoming our own demise. After all, I once knew a very wise man. He came to me when I was still young and unsure of what to do with my strange gifts. He told me, 'One often meets his fate on the road he takes to avoid it.' I fear the same here. We cannot be… rash in our decisions from now on."
After a few seconds of deliberation, Ox nodded. "Very well. We'll watch Master Tigress, and monitor her from now on. But we will not take any actions against her unless she clearly becomes a threat."
Both Master Ox and the Soothsayer hated those words with an equal passion, but the Soothsayer nodded to them, as she felt it was the best course of action, given how she knew what the alternatives were.
"But still…" Ox continued. "I understand who the 'suffering' is in your visions. But who is the 'warrior of black and white?' It clearly can't be…" the Soothsayer nodded, allowing him to not have to say Po's name. "But who?"
She raised the tip of her paw in the air. "Something changed between my first vision before all of this began, and my second, right before the wedding. As always, I can never be sure, but I have a strong feeling I know who this warrior of black and white is."
"Who?" Ox asked.
"Well, I suppose I have lied to you. I have narrowed it down to two people, and I don't think I'll ever know which one it really is until the time comes."
"Well?" Ox prompted, eager to learn who these two people were.
But the Soothsayer seemed lost in her own thoughts as she continued mumbling to herself.
"Oh, Ox, I'm afraid I won't be alive to see this warrior of black and white for myself. At least not when they take the path of their destiny. This goat, this young, confused goat, alone in the world, has knocked over a small domino, but that domino will push down larger and larger ones until…"
Just then, something caught Master Ox's attention. Up in the rubble, he saw one of the soldiers freeze and turn his head in an odd manner. It was almost as if…
"STOP!" he yelled out at the top of his lungs. The men immediately followed his orders, freezing in place and ending whatever whispered conversations they had been participating in. But Master Ox's eyes were locked on that one rhino as he kept turning his head. The rhino got on his knees and put his ear down into the rubble. A blanket of suspense seemed to smother everyone in the area as the possibility of hope came to them.
The rhino shot back up from his knees. "GUYS! I HEAR SOMETHING! I HEAR SOMETHING!"
Immediately, all the guards converged on the spot he was standing on, forming a ring as they now dug through the rubble faster than any canines could. Master Ox walked up on the pile towards them, eager to see if fate had actually been that kind to them. It seemed impossible, yet the guard had been dead serious when he shouted out that he had heard something. Master Ox was soon among them, digging with them as the debris seemed to be replaced with only more and more layers of debris.
Finally, after about a minute of frantic digging, they saw it.
A flash of light green in the pile of dark brown stones. They quickly removed all the rubble away from it, but there was one massive slab of rock hindering their progress. The rhinos were about to work together to remove it, but Master Ox took care of it, grabbing both ends of it and lifting it up, placing it behind him. When he turned back around, he gasped in shock and gaped at what he saw in horror, the rhino guards already doing the same thing.
At their feet lay a white and bloody mess. As they gently removed the final pieces of rubble, they knew the mess to be the last remains of the great Master Crane. The huge slab of rock had been sitting on top of him, and his rather frail body had stood no chance. But was even more shocking, at the tip of his wing, a light green color was visible. The same they had seen before Ox had moved the large slab.
None of the guards wanted to be the first to touch Master Crane, but Ox knew what needed to be done, so he gently rolled him to the side. As soon as he did, he heard a weak moan come from underneath his body.
Underneath Master Crane lay a wounded and bloody Master Viper. The only difference between her and Crane was that she was still alive. Her eyes, swollen and half-lidded, were still alive as they closed at the sudden barrage of light that assaulted them. She was covered in a layer of dust and blood, and towards her tail, her body was bent in an awkward manner.
Ox did the greatest job he had ever done of being gentle in scooping the snake in his arms, Viper moaning weakly again as he did so. Everything after that happened so fast that he had no recollection of sprinting away from the pile and all the way down the Valley Streets and to the hospital that was currently treating Tigress.
A Few Minutes Earlier
Lianmin sat in a chair in a simple hallway, her head drooping over her shoulders and her ears drooping over her head. Next to her, Peng was sitting in a similar manner, as well as Mr. Ping from across the hall.
When they had entered the hospital, the doctors had taken Tigress into a room and they hadn't let anyone see her. Mr. Ping practically begged to get in the room with her, but they were adamant about it. They tried to take Lianmin and Peng to their own rooms, but she refused to move from her seat outside of Tigress' room until she was awake. She didn't want to tell anyone, but her real reason for being there instead of in a hospital bed was because she didn't know what Tigress' state of mind was going to be when she woke up. Would she be the same animal that she had become when her family had died in one, terrible instant?
She sincerely hoped not, and also believed that she would be herself when she woke up, but she couldn't take any chances. However, the doctors wouldn't leave her alone until she conceded, so she partially satisfied them by allowing them to bandage her bleeding shoulder wound, a large gash now there where Tigress had sunken her fangs in her shoulder. It was now swelling and she found it both painful and difficult to move. So she had them bandage it in her seat in the hall and slung it around her shoulder so she didn't have to move it.
At first, as the confusion and intensity of the situation began to die down, Lianmin and Peng began to feel the atmosphere of grief take hold of them. They both felt as if it was partially their fault. Lianmin felt as if she had missed the signs early on, and let Shao slip through their fingers one too many times. If she hadn't been so narrow-minded in assuming that they were dealing with a single professional assassin, she would have come to the conclusion that the killer might have had help or that it might be anybody, even someone who didn't seem immediately obvious.
On the other hand, Peng was blaming himself for getting caught in Qian's pharmacy. If he had waited for his mother, as she had instructed him, they might have been successful in capturing Qian and they would have learned of the bandit's plan earlier and would have been able to stop the wedding.
It seemed to Lianmin and Peng that fate had given them so many chances to stop this from happening, yet they had failed at each and every turn, until fate had simply shrugged and said, "Sorry. I gave you so many chances, but you're clearly incapable."
Of course, when they had first arrived, they had timidly offered their sincere condolences to Mr. Ping, who sat across the hall with his head in his wings with tears freely flowing down his face. They couldn't imagine what the old goose was going through at that moment, and a part of them, deep down, hoped that they wouldn't ever have to go through something similar. They tried to keep their conversation down to a minimum, as they were both so busy blaming themselves for the tragedy that they naturally assumed that it was only a matter of time until everyone else started blaming them too.
However, blame was not in the mind of the goose, who walked up to them when they had given their condolences and wrapped his wings around their necks, desperately needing someone's shoulder to cry on.
Eventually though, thoughts besides their own place in the tragedy began to fill their minds. What was going to happen now, they both wondered? Without the Valley's protectors, Tigress would not be able to hold back the bandit clan, most likely now rejuvenated with hope at their enemies' deaths. What should they do? What could they do?
Their thoughts were interrupted when two doctors opened the door to Tigress' room from the inside, quietly walking out and closing the door behind them. One was an older pig, and the other a much younger bunny, clearly his assistant.
Lianmin, Peng, and Mr. Ping stood up, eager to hear Tigress' condition.
"How is she?" Mr. Ping was the first to ask. Before he could go any further with his questions, the pig held up his hoof.
"She'll be alright. She isn't terribly injured. Although..." he paused, and everyone seemed to hold their breath. "She received a wound in her left eye. It was only a surface scratch and won't permanently damage the rest of her face, but her eye... there was nothing we could do to save it."
There was a solemn silence as they took in the doctor's words. After a few seconds, Lianmin raised her eyebrows, and the pig knew what she meant by it.
He nodded. "Yes, she's awake now, and yes, she's in her... right mind."
Mr. Ping suddenly brightened up a little, at least as much as possible given the situation.
"May I see her?"
The pig nodded, and he held the door open for the goose to walk through. Taking a deep breath, Mr. Ping walked in the door, and the doctor closed it behind him.
The pig gestured to his assistant. "You can go," he told him. When he had disappeared from view down the hall, the doctor turned back to the two and sighed.
"Although, there is something you need to know."
Lianmin's ears perked up, eager to learn of any new developments. "What?"
The doctor seemed to hesitate for a second, and he looked back at the door they were just standing next to, as if he didn't want Tigress to hear it.
"Why don't we step into another room, shall we?"
Meanwhile, as they walked away, Mr. Ping slowly waddled up to Tigress' bed.
The hospital room was mostly bare of decoration. It had the necessary tables, and workplaces for the doctors to organize their tools, but that was about it. There was a single chair next to the bed which rested in the center of the back wall. In the bed, now in a hospital gown, Tigress lay, blinking her eyes and rubbing them with her paws.
When she saw the familiar face, her ears perked up.
"Oh, hey Mr. Ping," she said calmly enough. She looked around in confusion. "What am I doing here?" She blinked her eyes, as if something was off with them. "And why can't I see out of my left eye?"
Up to that point, the old goose was doing a good job of holding in his tears, as he wanted to tell Tigress what he needed to tell her with at least a small display of strength, to be there to comfort her when she inevitably broke down. But when he looked closely, and saw the stitched-up wound on her face, and her eye, now turning a milky white color, he could no longer contain his tears anymore. He let them burst through his eyes as he approached the chair by her bedside and struggled to lift himself up to it.
"Mr. Ping?" Tigress asked in shock. "What's wrong? Are you-"
Tigress paused in mid-sentence, her mouth dangling open and her eyes looking in Mr. Ping's. At that moment, her memory came back like a cart running over her face. The wedding, the shot, the explosion, and Po…
"Po." Tigress thought as she finally realized the truth. Tigress' arm shot out of the bed as her paw grabbed the tips of Mr. Ping's wings.
"The building! It collapsed! Are… are… what…" Tigress tried to ask, but she couldn't find the words to say it.
When Mr. Ping began to sob even harder, it began to dawn on Tigress.
"No, no… no." Her voice faded to nothing, and her amber eyes began to well with tears.
She looked back up at the goose, clinging to false hope. "Mr. Ping, you… you have to… they have to be alive! They… they can't be… They can't be!"
But Mr. Ping, now racked with sobs as his body violently shook, moved his head back and forth, signifying the worst.
Tigress went silent for the briefest of seconds as she registered the words. It was as if, for a moment, the words seemed to be untrue. How could they be? They had survived so much together. They had been with each other for the majority of their lives. It wasn't possible that… that…
"My family… they're… they're dead," Tigress finally thought in her head. It was… true.
Her chest beginning to heave with incoming sobs, Tigress leaned over from her bed, overcome with grief, almost no longer in control of herself. She snatched up Mr. Ping from his seat, lifting him up from under his wings, and she brought him over to her chest as she cradled the goose, who wrapped his wings around her neck and sobbed freely into her shoulder.
Before Tigress became completely overwhelmed with sorrow, she felt a pang of rage mixed with it all. Not the kind of rage she felt at the one who killed her family like she had felt earlier. But a rage at fate itself. Her whole life, she had only wanted one thing. Love. That was it. She had been denied it for so long, and when, finally, on the cusp of love everlasting, fate had taken it all from her. Fate took her family from her.
Holding Mr. Ping tightly in her arms, Tigress lifted her head up into the air and roared with a deafening ferocity. But it was not the same kind of roar that she had given off earlier right before she had lost all control. It was a roar that spoke of not only rage, but of incomprehensible pain and loss. Mr. Ping initially flinched at the sound, but when he really heard it, he was not afraid of Tigress.
After she finished, she bent her head down and held Mr. Ping tightly as the two sobbed uncontrollably together.
Lianmin and Peng sat across the table, their mouths wide open.
Peng shook his head and stuttered, "I-I mean, y-you're sure? You're absolutely sure?"
The pig solemnly nodded his head. "Yes. When we noticed some odd signs in our initial tests, we had to check. And…" he trailed off.
Lianmin leaned forward in her chair. "Well, we have to tell her."
The pig was quick to shake his head. "No, no, don't tell her now! No, no, we have to wait until…"
"Well, we can't wait that long!" Lianmin protested, the frustration clear in her voice. "What do you want us to do, just walk up to her in a month from now and tell her, 'Oh, Master Tigress? Yeah, this kind of slipped our minds, but we were supposed to tell you that you're pregnant!?"
What, pregnant you ask!? How could this have happened!? It's certainly not like Po and Tigress ever… oh, wait a minute. Chapter 11 of Part 1 might be a good reference…
Anyway, words cannot describe just how excited I am for this story. This story means so much to me. Although we'll get to why when we get towards the end...
Frozenwolfheart and I certainly hope you enjoyed the beginning of what we hope is going to be quite the journey for you all! We hope the story will be complete with a little bit of everything, and we cannot wait until the day comes when the final climax plays out! Oh, it's gonna be so awesome!
Speaking of which, keep being awesome!