Chapter 3:
The four pandas that had stumbled up the steps rested their hands on their knees, taking in great whooping breaths. Shifu looked at them for a moment, wondering what on earth had just happened.
The human was getting up, shaking his head to clear the confusion from his mind. Tigress saw the opportunity to take the human on, and she took it. She leaped at him, and her claws slashed his face. The human roared in anguish, the pain sharpening his senses and bringing him back to reality. He glared at Tigress.
"You're going to regre-" he began, but was cut off by Viper wrapping herself around his throat. He choked, and then the anger behind his eyes solidified.
A wave of heat and power erupted from the human, and Viper was thrown away by the blast. Everyone else was quick to avoid it, but as Mantis jumped out of the way he got caught, and everyone smelled burning insect.
The human stalked towards Tigress, not caring for the Kung Fu masters making to physically attack him. Shifu took advantage of the human's clouded mind, but the moment his fist landed, he realized that the human was right not to give their efforts a second thought. He realized it very painfully.
The human's skin was hotter than burning metal, and Shifu hissed as he drew his paw backwards. He felt the pain moments before the smell wafted into his sensitive nose. It was an agony unlike anything he had ever felt before. Burning, stinging needles of a torturous nature he had never even imagined danced up his arm and through his blood.
It smelt terrible.
The four newcomers still had done nothing except catch their breath, and through the pain Shifu glared at Po, who looked at him with guilt. He turned to his students.
"Okay guys, no time to breathe, just hit the guy, and hit him hard!" he announced.
"Yes, Master Po!" one of them said. It was a girl, the fur on the uppermost part of her head turned upwards to the sky in a pony of sorts. Her eyes closed as she drew in a deep breath, and her flaming blue chi immediately became visible as her power concentrated around her body.
The other three followed her lead, and soon enough, red, white, and purple were up and flaring. They faced the human, and leapt at him, yelling. They attacked.
The human whirled around, and dispatched every single one of them with a single move, a tendril of his aura whipping around with the motion of his body, his hand outstretched. The wave of heat slammed into them, and they fell to the floor, burned.
The human pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed with frustration and exasperation. "All of you are in the way."
As he stood there, the thought seemed to solidify, and his rage mounted, climbing higher and higher.
"In the way, in the way, in the WAY!" he roared, and slammed his fist into the ground.
From the point of impact outwards, power imploded and exploded at the same time, curling into itself and then lashing out with a soft whump uncharacteristic of the force with which it propelled itself. The heat was intense. However, Shifu was not expecting what happened next.
In the blink of an eye, white chi zoomed between them all, and a moment later, Shifu found that his wounds were healed. He blinked in surprise, and looked to the young pandas. One of them, with an angry look on her face, was standing, white power flaring around her like fire.
Things were finally shaping up, finally getting serious. The human realized it too, because he settled into a fighting stance. Shifu recognized the look on his face. Cold, smouldering anger, kept under control by his recognition of the threat.
The human had calmed down enough to think sensibly. While the young panda's action had made them all think strategically, it had included the human as well, and that wasn't something Shifu wanted to see or deal with.
The rest of the warriors assembled straightened up as well, refreshed and ready to fight again. Monkey, Shifu was thankful to see, was unharmed. Then they attacked.
Chi flared here and there, and powerful strikes met the human in the midst of the chaos surrounding them. The human fought back ferociously, sending equally powerful, if not even more so, strikes back at them, hitting them in the face, in the stomach, in the throat, connecting blow after blow to his opponents.
A red blade struck him in the back, and he staggered, his face white. Crimson blood leaked from the wound in which the sword was still embedded, and the young panda who had wielded it looked horrified. There was a lull in the battle, and everyone took it as an opportunity to take on the human.
Blasts of chi met the human full in the face, and the sword in his back disintegrated as the panda squealed in an attempt to get out of the way of the pinwheeling human. Others took advantage of the human's weakness to launch physical blows, a leg connecting with his head, a fist with his abdomen.
By this point, the human's white robes were stained dark, dirty red from the blood and dust. Heat blossomed once more, but this time it was feeble, more comforting than intense. But no one was expecting the heat to grow.
The human was more powerful than Shifu had ever thought to be possible for any living creature. The fact that he was standing tall, his wounds healed through cauterization, his aura expanding to surround them all, large enough to be seen from the valley, hot enough to have everyone around hissing and writhing in agony, was a concerning testament to it.
But Shifu hadn't expected there to be anyone else alive who was greater than the human in this regard.
Surprising just how wrong one old Kung Fu master can be.
Curling smoke, or what seemed like it, drifted in through the human's aura. Shifu's first thought not related to the burning in his skin was that the heat had forced something to combust, but this was different. The smoke was cool, and soothed his pain immediately upon touching him. It wrapped him up in a blanket of relief. A cursory glance confirmed that everyone else was receiving this treatment.
And then their shadows began to move of their own accord.
They twisted and turned and began to move away from their owners, all dragging away towards one point. They slithered off and disappeared from the edge of the stairs. If Shifu expected the human to show outraged confusion, as he had come to expect, he was sorely, sorely mistaken. Because the expression the human wore was nothing like that at all. It was the complete opposite, actually.
The human looked absolutely terrified. And when Shifu saw what was coming up the stairs, he knew the human had every right to.