Chapter 2:
Tigress immediately took in the scene and pounced in, snarling. The human snapped his paw against the air and the force of the chi he released made the air rush at Tigress. She froze, caught in mid-air, and hurtled backwards out of the Jade Palace. The rest of the five whirled in, and Shifu got up to aid his students.
For a moment, he thought they could beat this human with sheer numbers, but that notion quickly vanished when a rapidly expanding dome of near-solid air caught them and pressed them all against the hard, cold walls of the Jade Palace. Crane arguably fared the worst and the best, since having taken to the air, he crashed through the wooden ceiling and then the roof of the Jade Palace, but was quickly freed by the open airspace outside the Palace. Since the dome of air could not reach outside the walls of the palace, it was forced to retain its shape and size, leaving Crane free to roam, but trapped outside.
Tigress, having bounded back up the stairs of the Palace, attempted to breach the invisible barrier, but was simply prevented entry by the impenetrable force.
But Crane was a bird, and knew all about wind. He focused his chi in his wings, and when he came back down, he flapped his wings, creating such force that it broke the wall of air the human had set up. The look on the human's face was a mixture of impressed and shocked, but it quickly went back to the original, ever present smirk.
Po dropped to the floor, and sucked in a huge breath. The human glanced at him, and in the momentary distraction, Shifu used the opportunity to slam the human against the wall with a powerful strike. He attempted to follow up the move with a jab to the neck, but the human recovered quickly and punched him. Shifu flew backwards, and the jade wall cracked.
Somehow, every single relic in the Palace had managed to stay safe, but now, their time was up. The human darted to Viper, grabbed her by the tail, and used her to bat Mantis away. He then spun and released her, and she crashed into Crane, who was coming in for a divebomb. They landed with a thud at the base of the stand of the Sword of Heroes. It tottered for a little bit, then came crashing down and stabbed deep into the floor of the Jade Palace, all the way up to the hilt, narrowly missing one of Crane's feet.
Shifu, his head still throbbing, stood up unsteadily. He waited for just a moment to let his headache recede enough to allow him to start moving. Po rushed the human from behind, and summoned enough chi in his fist in the time he had between getting up and making contact to release a blast of concentrated, almost pure chi at the human's back. The human flew forward, and almost fell down the many stairs of the Jade Palace, but managed to regain his balance at the last moment. Monkey, however, had other ideas.
He leaped at him, and delivered a solid punch to the human's neck while he was still disoriented, which had the rather advantageous effects of causing the human great pain and pushing him down the stairs. He fell all the way. There were several cracks.
Shifu sighed, thinking that to be the end of it. He turned around to face the Five and Po.
"My students, I am proud of you. You have managed to defeat one of our most formidable enemies in a matter of minutes. It is truly a feat that many Kung Fu masters I know would not have been able to accomplish."
"Thanks, Master Shifu," Crane said, "but what was that?"
Shifu proceeded to explain what a human was. It suddenly dawned on him that he had failed to send someone to see whether the job was done. He cursed himself internally for making a beginner's mistake in his assumption of victory.
"Crane, go and check on the human. See if he survived."
Crane nodded, and immediately took to the sky. He swooped and flew off down towards the village.
"We should treat any injuries. Is anyone hurt?" Shifu asked.
=0=
Crane flew off downwards, heading towards the valley. There were a few villagers gathered at the bottom of the staircase, and his sharp eyes caught a twisted shape. He swooped down, and landed in front of the human.
"Okay everyone, there's nothing to see here. Just go back to doing whatever you were doing. We've got it covered."
The villagers, calmed by his presence and satisfied with his explanation, turned and went back. They quickly disappeared. Lucky, that. But then it was rather early in the morning, so there wasn't a very big chance of the populace of the Valley of Peace being awake and active to witness anything.
There was a snap and a few pops behind him, and Crane turned around to see the human's body repairing itself, returning to its original shape. Crane quickly took to the air, and started flying back to Master Shifu and the others to report, as well as draw the human away from the village. By this time, the human was fully healed, and had seen him. He started to follow.
=0=
Shifu finished applying some salve to Tigress' shoulder, where she had received a deep cut from the sharp edges of the stairs. Since no one else had any unattended injuries, he began searching for a herb to make some tea with, in order to sooth his headache. He found it, and began to make the brew, boiling some water over a fire in the kitchen quarters. Crane burst in, yelling.
"The human survived! The human survived! And this time he's really mad!"
Shifu quickly extinguished the fire and hurried outside. Tea could wait. Hell was coming, and that would be enough to boil the water.
He stepped outside, and found Po and the rest of the Five in a furious brawl with the human. Apparently, hell had no patience, since it was already here. This time, all traces of composure had left the human, and he was livid. His rage was making his movements a little clumsier than before, although his style of fighting was still unusual, and a little hard to predict. However, Shifu had faith in his students, and was confident that they would be able to pull it off. However, humans were too great of a risk to simply entrust responsibility to someone else, so Shifu jumped in. Apparently, the human was close to a breaking point, and Shifu spinning him around to kick him in the face had not helped matters. The human roared in absolute rage, and finally, brought his chi aura to blazing life.
It was huge, and burned the color of magma, a red inferno that glowed angrily. Closer to the human's body, however, there were different shades of fire, each one progressively lighter than the last. Then Shifu remembered that the human was still there.
The human flipped backwards, and his fist punched into the rock, cracking it and bringing up a chunk of stone the size of a door, but nowhere near as thin. He flung it at Shifu who jabbed it quickly and precisely, splitting it into millions of pebbles. Between the shower of stone, he was treated to a view of the human punching Po through one of the jade pillars, then whirling around and firing a blast of his magma-like chi at Monkey. Monkey toppled backwards, and the smell of singed flesh wafted over to Shifu.
Everyone else, upon seeing Monkey's condition, immediately leapt at the human. Shifu hurried over to see that, thankfully, it was just a burn. A bit severe, but nothing that was very life-threatening. Monkey would live, with the right treatment.
He turned and immediately punched the human that was powering towards him so hard that he heard a crack, and the human keeled over. For just a minute. Then his jaw, which was hanging loosely, repaired itself and the human got up. Then he shot backwards, propelled by the blast of purple chi that had come from somewhere behind Shifu.
A squad of four young pandas stumbled up the final steps, wheezing.
"We're *gasp* here, Master *gasp* Po!" one of them managed to say, before flopping on the ground.