There was a large stream in the forest backlands of Dequan City. Thousands of tributaries joined at the trough of the mountains, forming this giant waterway - a small split of cord from the Weeping River. Where the rag-tag crew and the five started, the stream was at a fit of rage - so much so that the surface of it was white and frothy and had lost all its transparency. But the extreme length of the river gave way to changes. By the time it was about to be done away, the water was already glasslike, the currents invisible.
So when the five arrived at the ending stream flushing into the backwaters of some deserted beach, they found themselves staring worriedly afar, where the sun sank into the ocean, forming a dimming mirage.
Tung disposed his fifth used cigar on some bushes, its amber sparking upon contact. "Which one of our smokers gonna start a forest fire, you think?"
"Don't know. But let's increase the chances." Rushi tossed hers into the distant woods.
Other than the two's foolhardy stunt, the shore remained quiet.
Tigress grew accustomed to staring at her feet - it had made it easier to put effort into taking steps while zombying through the monotonous walk. But with all the down-looking, she did not at all spot in time the tripping-bound bottle protruding from the sand ahead of her. Sure enough, she slipped, taking several fleeting steps to recover.
"What the…" The tiger marched back to observe the guilty flask. And, it, was freshly littered.
One man immediately came to mind. Ju Lung.
"That utter-" she muffled down a coming curse, and in an effort to not blow up entirely like the ignited fuse of a dynamite disintegrating to its cap, she kicked the flask aside… several hundred miles into the ocean.
The tiger regretted it immediately, watching the bottle wane into the distance. But it had understandably been a long and hard trip.
It was then her patience wore out too thin. She trudged ahead, away from the group's sights, and continued this hasty separation from the others until she entered the sovereign space which Ju Lung had allotted only for his special self; she remembered the bear's declaration clearly: "I'm already an extremely humbled man, but the looks of all you is risking what's left of my pride. So, I'm setting up parameters. I'll be way over there, and you cunts will be all the way back here, alright? Just follow my tracks, or whatever. Keep distance, but tag along."
The tiger started hearing distinct sounds: splitting air followed by subsequent thumps. Wood chips pelted passed her the closer she got to the source. And when Tigress finally pushed apart the brush to uncover Ju Lung's suspicious scene…
She watched in shock as the bear dismembered the limbs of several trees with an axe in hand; he was whirling the monstrous blade across anything - even the ones not directly in his way. Looking aloft, the effects of his violence traversed up the shaken tree trunks and to the now jerking foliage above; new leaves shed on her like a glorious storm, but that abrupt break of inertia on the once quiet canopy might as well have sent a beacon of light at their most current location to any flying passerby.
"No. No. No!" At the height of the bear's next swing, the tiger leaped out, ending it. "What are you doing?"
Ju Lung refused to turn, unmoved by the tiger's barely repressed anger. "I'm coping."
"This is coping?" she nearly yelled.
This time, he faced her. "I can be an asshole to them trees. You have your way of meditating; I have my way of meditating."
She approached, each deliberate step accompanied with a point. "You smoked. You drank. You cussed at me, at the others. And then you isolated yourself. Weren't they enough for your meditation?"
"Enough? Eh, not really. Listen Tiger, I have many ways to get through life, and due to the current situations, meaning you guys, I feel as if I am entitled to use each and every method..." He grinned cheekily. "You know, I call them the methods from my madness."
"But by doing this - compromising our spot?" Tigress asked.
The bear swung his axe down in an excessively catapult-like motion and nearly disintegrated the affected tree. "I'm not that stupid - I made sure we were far out so we're not spotted - we a good several miles away!"
"Several miles away…?" It took her awhile to puzzle over what he said. She hesitated to ask, "Several miles away from what?"
"From them ship, dumbass! The enemy scout route doesn't reach all the way here - am pretty sure. My tree murdering bullshit is safely hidden, and I assure it, on the whore that raised me." He waved off in ignorance. "See how smart I am? How I think things through?"
Years' worth of stoic-training reduced instantaneously to this one moment of acute double-taking. Tigress pinched her fingers together, concentrating all her growing violence there. "Are you telling me..." She was slow to speak, careful of her rage. "That you've been intentionally keeping us far away from the ship? That you've been wasting our time?"
The bear snorted, entertained, "It isn't wasting time if you're deliberately wasting time. By the time we get there it would be nightfall. It is then easier to stalk, easier to sneak, easier to snoop around the place and see it for yourself. Because the dark… it conceals people - lack of light on our pretty faces, right? Then we could board the ship and you could go on your merry way with them bad guys. This is practically toddler knowledge..." The bear paused, waiting for the tiger's reaction - but she remained tarrying, so he didn't let her hang. "I'm telling you this because I think you're kind of stupid."
Halfway through the bear's monologue, Tigress heard all her inner voices say 'ohhh...' in realization at once. Yet, pathetically rising her chin, she tried to keep un-indignant authority. "I suppose that's fine."
"Me thinking you're stupid?"
"No - and I'm not! - I meant this whole situation."
They continued walking.
The tiger admitted. "I wasn't able to think that you had a smarter intention for all this stalling. I…" and she tried to make this unobvious, "I apologize."
"Wow... that was some serious ass shit! Suck a nut, spit all them etiquette-yness out, will you." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "You're officially forgiven! Now go join them other inbreds."
"That's the other thing." she quickly asserted. "I want to talk about your unfairness towards the others, and me. I think your doubt towards us is a bit - well, it's a bit too high. Just, please, give us a moment to convince you."
"Well, it's comforting to know that that 'moment' that destiny deliciously served you with as your proving point, is on a massive, piss-my-pants ship set to destroy China, and crewed by enough men, that for each flimsy bone in your team's pubertal, little bodies, there are ten guys in that ship readily on there to break it." He said this in a space of a second.
It didn't take much to know the numbers of such were overselling the mission's difficulty, but Tigress wondered how much of a hyperbole the bear really had intended in that statement.
A new thought came to the tiger. "Back at the club, you were surrounded by lots of people you know who could fight. There were what – hundreds of them?" Her eyes squinted as she pieced things together. "Why bring us, if you think we're just dead weight? What is your intention?"
The bear looked unharmed by her advance. "You've already proven yourselves to me the moment I learned you dumb-dicks chose to be part of this crapfest. We all know choice and requirement demand vastly different doses of will. First thing to recognize."
He crept towards her.
"Second, I'm not much of a pessimist. I don't think you guys are dead weight. Though, come on, don't get it confused, no - I still think you guys are a bitch-fuck of a load to carry around. But you're a different kind of burden... in that you're still the useful kind - if that makes any sense. It's kind of like, let me think, heavy, heavy sacks of bricks?" He snapped his fingers. "Nail on the head of my dick! That's exactly what you guys are. Sacks of bricks. If things go to planetary shit, I can build a strong, thick wall around myself, about this high," he hovered a paw at his shoulder, "So instead of me taking the brunt of all them shits and storms coming my way, it's gonna be that fucking wall. And, of course, that fucking wall is gonna be built out of you sacks of bricks."
Tigress already felt withdrawn out of the oddness of the conversation. She stepped away from his grasp, uneased. "I think I'm going back to the others now."
The foreman had a simple thought; it was that for every little thing, there is a reason to be cautious about it.
This steel-plated wolf had all the parts to being in control: he stood on a high dais, that rested on a hill - that allowed him a view of the project below at large. He was shielded by an entourage of men that had ridiculously armed their bodies endlong, and that instilled fear. This gave the foreman all the sway on the work-fodder, who were all too dispirited anyways to take up arms even without the presence of the wolf's army. That gave him micromanagement, or at least, at its most effectual.
But he knew his power was not ubiquitous - the larger the scheme, the more chance trouble befalls him, the more he can't control. The mongrel's gaze fell on the suspicious forest regions, then to his workers under.
At last, he gathered his assistants' attention. "The ship will sail tomorrow."
A sudden fuzz between the men.
"But sir!" Some golden-robed goat broke through his surrounding sentry. "The master asked that we deliver on time!"
"Tell that man that the circumstances had unfortunately reduced his choices to only these two," he counted with his fingers, "One, either his shipment will be a day late, or two, his boat won't make berth at all."
The goat fretted, all too adamant to oppose. "Why postpone it sir? We have not projected any bad weather we-"
"Am I not mistaken," he dismissed, "one of the Liang Lian agents is visiting here awhile?"
"Yes, sir. But-"
"He himself should be enough..." The wolf drew out a hasty breath, reconsidering his approach. Shall he truly officialize it? Shortly after, he was decisive. "Tell that man, once he arrives at the city gates, that he'll be resting on the ship instead. Yes men, make it known that Dequan City is no longer his final destination."
"But sir, that would be inconvenient news for the man, it isn't exactly his direct duty to protect the ship."
"Yes, but if he decides not to worry about this, he himself is left compromised. We all know the vulnerability of the Liang Lian no matter how powerful they are. Perhaps selfishness could incentivize him." The wolf was unwavered. "See to it that he gets my command."
"You'll be frustrating people you can't afford to frustrate, sir." the goat warned the last time.
"And I couldn't care less. I suppose this is why the masters have taken the unusual decision to make me ruler over you, fellow goat." The wolf's daunting grin showed his backmost molars, pointed and murderous.
Travelling not far off the ocean bank proved to be a difficult task for the five. The jagged shoreline's many land-curbs blocked the warriors' view from what's directly straight ahead, and so they were left to search blindly for the jolt of the sudden sight of the ship.
But it turned out that their anticipation was cut short. The ship came to them in no surprise - it was too large to be a surprise. The masts of it stood from the woods much like a steeple does stand out surrounded by low-built residences - it could be seen miles away.
And it didn't take much to sense they were closer than ever.
Tigress held her nose up. The wind brought a sort of medicinal smell with it… a foul, salty tinge that's tangible enough to taste. Behind an approaching hill, flaming light was being emitted - the fiery hues suspended on the foggy air - an amber glow welcomed them in.
She halted.
This was it.
The group's tramping of feet quietened to a stealthy one, so that the distant sounds of laboring and talking were left heard: metallic, booming uproar. Tigress promptly scrambled up the inclined land, dirt kicked backwards from her digging soles as she hastily did so. The sounds only grew to become a formidable orchestration.
That grand build of noise did not disappoint once the tiger finally summited and saw the site to behold. She could hear Monkey whimper from behind as he continued to cower closer to her personal space. "I think I just peed my pants through my bumhole."
The monkey just shit his pants.
Tigress loosened the collar from her ostensibly tightening neck. If it wasn't for modesty, she would have told the simian that she too felt like having the same reaction. For a small ways down the embankment, there was a shore of many on-going machinations. Hundreds of large, armored men peppered along a sea of their own drudges: a countless bunch of scraggly, injured pigs. The admission of this unsightly fire, evil and labor overwhelmed her sense, and everything turned to a blur.
She moved apart, leaving Monkey to rattle all by himself.
The group's collective attention was towards the moored ship, which was large enough to be the panoramic backdrop for the evil-laden esplanade - the ocean wasn't even in sight. Against the moon's full blast, the vessel remained a silhouette.
Crane stooped next to Tigress. "Holy moly mother of the gods. How much is that ship holding y'think?"
The tiger rended the plants to provide a better view for herself. From there, she spotted an army of parked carts by the peripherals of the scheme. Some transports conveyed a great deal of nearly mountainous cargo.
It seemed as if Crane had also caught sight of what the tiger noticed. "Well, at least most of the carts are empty."
Apropos of her earlier observation, Tigress shook her head. "No. They aren't empty, they were emptied. Most of the contraband is already in the ship."
"Oh. Yeah that makes more sense, should've 'duh'ed me there…" The bird scratched the back of his neck. "I don't know why I didn't guess that at first."
Tigress just nodded.
"And to completely answer your question, there's enough unfriendly stock in that Junk to become a pessimist." Some new face wedged her big head between the two warriors - turned out to be Rushi, to Crane's dismay. "Lots of matters at hands - mind the plurality, because that's how much there is to handle. But let's not yap over here." Before any reaction, she hooked her arms around their necks and brought them down skidding backwards.
Crane immediately grabbed his aching bum. "I don't think you had to do that. We needed to observe and... uh, stuff."
It was unplanned for Tigress to notice the golden cat's gauzed, infected, and gnarly arms that were slung around her own shoulders. With two hesitant digits, the tiger picked it off and dropped it away from herself, completely wide-eyed by the other feline's total lack of manicure.
"I'd like to make a point that you guys are missing something much bigger here, and that point is over there." Rushi answered with an aggressive lead skywards. The two traced her stiff finger to some weird, black geometry in the sky - they were not quite clouds; further squinting, it was birds they now saw. Flocks upon flocks of them, all lining up militarily in perfected shapes.
Crane muttered. "Oh wow. Isn't this great news. Please tell me how we're going to capture those guards, tie them up, strip them naked, and wear their armor if there are like a million eyes in the freaking sky."
Rushi answered. "We're just going to have to find a way to make them all blind towards us."
A/N
I admit, i've done fooked up. 6 months of no updating and I give you guys a chapter below 3000 words? Absolute heresy. For that, I will 2000% guarantee an update next week. No more slacking! This is serious business.
Much thanks to The Dragon Chronicle and The Great Ying for beta reading my story. Couldn't have done it without them.
And of course, thank you for reading my story. And please leave a review! I love and appreciate having them!
