Calm waters. The perfect battleground.
As if reaching for an unattainable seclusion, Tigress leaned further out the ship railings, indulging in her senses. Crashing waves spouted up the hull in vaporized brine—the unsullied saltiness of it stung the tiger's eyes and tickled her sinuses. Despite the ruckus and the movement that indicated otherwise, nothing occurred behind her; the vast ocean radius was what fundamentally laid beyond. With only the slightest eastward folds pushing on their boat to parts unknown, the wide oceanic visage remained like an ironed-down blanket—a far contrast to the raging storms it had once forced them to weather through. But the dramatic irony of such abrupt peace remained all the more frightening. Tigress heard many claims of war in this historic theater; beneath the apparent calm was a bed of ships and bodies and everything remnant of some distant, but perpetual suffering. There was no better place to test oneself than here.
"Tigress." A hand crept to her shoulder—the digits were long and distinctly itemizable. She knew it was Monkey right away. "It started."
In the seconds that the aggress of drugs inside the soldiers' systems finally registered, the concretization of its effects were sweeping and in an instant. Men fell by large units, like there were invisible volleys of arrows shot from the sky. Without a responsive command, those lucky rest who continued enduring the ticking damage of their own dosage fell into hysteria. Soldiers broke into an uneven gridlock, trying to attend to everything and everyone at once. Their rapidness had begun tilting the immense ship from side to side.
Proceeding to the quarter deck where the congestion thickened, Tigress quickly became chambered in the crowd; the fleeting movements of surrounding enemies had bleared into thick threads of motion blur that spooled hypnotically all around her. The flow of craziness simply couldn't be theatrically matched by the more conserved tiger.
When it seemed like she was beginning to fall in the vertigo, a hand parted the curtain of bodies, pulling her out of the brief time capsule and settling her a little ways to the side. It turned out that the savior was some scraggly old canine leader. He had pinned her against the ship's handrails, pushing her dangerously overboard. "You! Good mercy, you look steady. I want you to find Commander Bao. If he's knocked out, bring him to the infirmary! I need him to figure out whatever the shit is going on. Is that clear?"
Tigress nodded, pressing on her helmet before it could slip away from her purposely veiled head.
"I don't think you understand." The wolf gripped the hem of her armor even tighter. "Answer me properly! Answer!"
The tiger cleared her throat to try and reach her bottommost octave-but she knew it ultimately wasn't in the range to fool anyone. Although it could perhaps compromise many things, she considered just throwing her arm overhead and casting this overbearing man out to sea—there's a good chance it wasn't going to be a witnessable deed with the havoc anyways.
Conveniently for Tigress, all her matters were dealt with when something crawled up her body and entered inside her helmet.
Mantis shouted through the visors. "Yes sir!"
"Good… good." The wolf dropped his ragdolled victim and moved along. A distance away, he succumbed to his own poison.
Tigress had immediately reentered the crowd. The frantic din of back and forths coming from all corners of the deck intertwined into a gibberish web of dissonance—something that covered them just well. "Thanks for that, Mantis."
"No problem partner." The bug patted her cheek. "If you don't mind, I think I'm just going to chill in here for a while, where, well y'know—" in cue of his speech, some stampede of soldiers rampaged just inches before their haltering forms. "...where I can't get stepped on."
"Fair enough."
An unknowing guard that was drawing closer to them suddenly buckled into unconsciousness. Catching his slacked body, Tigress settled him to the side.
And just like that, no other inducement that demanded her impulse presented itself. The seconds and the poison worked ahead without her initiative. Benumbed soldiers passed by her, indifferent to her idle form. Time slipped into maximum warp. It seemed that in every next instance the tiger blinked, whole waves of live enemies were suddenly flat on the ground.
Eventually, only an exceptional remainder of canines large enough to withstand the dosage was left—but even they were combatively insignificant. On any vertical surface, one could find them barely able to prop their large frames and stand aground.
At last, the moment of hysterics and loudness passed by—reinstated were the creaks from the booms and masts, and the sounds of frizzing from the ocean waves. The sky was blue; the climes were oddly sequestering and tropical. The vessel, once operated by more than a hundred strong, was truly put to sleep.
Wobbling out of their cabins, a group of elderly superordinates who were not administered the poison began remarking at the sea of bodies before them; it seemed they hadn't learned that the onslaught was completely biological soon enough and had intended to make the butchier division of the company deal with the threat themselves. And here presented to them the fruit of inaction: their shouted orders quickly became a pittance when met with the underlings' lack of reception.
"Look at 'em." Mantis muttered. "What a bunch of idiots."
Tigress had hid behind one of the masts, watching the late force of seniority now attempt to frantically approach every moaning soldier and get them to wake. She knew there was no point in acting among the fallen now—sooner than later she and the five would have to confront them. But it had been an interesting thing to quietly observe their defeat. She was sure the other warriors, wherever they may be, were appraising this residue of victory the same way.
Just then, hulking stomps pounded from the level above. Seismic waves virtually shifted across the floorboards. It felt as if for each immense footfall the ship endured, it had lost an increment of buoyancy. Tigress looked towards the forecastle where they originated. Standing there already, postured regally like some divine leader on a dais, was a masked rhino. Propping atop his massive head was an equally great horn that jutted out and eclipsed the rising sun. This ivory blade sent out a shadowed rift sharply across the entire boat.
There was a trample of falling knees-all of a sudden the olden crewmembers were on the ground, showing deference.
"Lord!" A loose-limbed wolf groveled forwards. "It happened all too fast, we didn't know how to respond!"
The excuse fell into deaf ears. In his sustained silence, the rhino scanned broadly across the deck, surely deferring his full-on fury at their mishandling by examining the situation first. As he locked-in momentarily on them, the old seamen stared at their feet, trying to avoid being the transient suspect subject to his brief investigation. Like an open and shut case, it only took a few seconds for the rhino to rightfully center on Tigress.
Their silent confrontation was one-sided. The rhino's black mask had granted him almost maximal anonymity, and the aureole that formed around him proliferated his darkness even more.
Tigress snarled as she was forced to challenge the most unyielding, hollowed eyes—this grounded the young warrior in ways the previous sequence of events couldn't: it appeared to be that while she was trying so desperately to outface him, he was merely studying her. In a betraying turnabout, the tranquility in the seas and in the devitalized boat suddenly became off-putting, presaging a certain storm. The quietness was surely leading up to an abrupt forte. She was ill of it, but she persisted in her upwards glare regardless. And as he started to march down to the front of the deck, her resolve strengthened at least slightly. There was something about his pace that brought about a feeling of discrepancy; so precise were his movements that his strides had an undeniably trained fluidity to it, the likes of which she had only seen in dancers—for all the weight his footfall brought down.
The rhino stopped an arm's length from Tigress, doubling in size and towering over her.
"I would suggest you surrender." She spoke. With a high paw, the rest of her companions were prompted out of their refuge, stomping out the remaining crewmembers in a commanding and clear onslaught.
Despite being faced with an outnumbering leverage, the rhino had not said a word, nor expressed a gestural hint of sentiment. Instead, he had taken a few steps backwards, shifting into what looked to be a modest kung fu pose.
"You can't fight all of us!" Viper announced from behind. She had been slowly treading to the tiger's side.
"No." Finally, the rhino spoke, his voice a deep baritone. "I want to fight the girl, and the girl only."
The blatant proposal produced a significant pause among everyone.
Tigress was only processing what was put forward, but Viper had immediately been first to break out of the allure, putting a tail before the brooding tiger. In many ways, the snake knew the young warrior's pride: she wasn't exactly the type to be completely for the adverse—it was a fateful challenge afterall. "Don't duel him. He wants to take us down one at a time."
"She's right." Mantis whispered in her ear like some shoulder angel.
"I know…" Acknowledging this completely, Tigress raised her chin in a more demonstrative show of her re-establishment. "This is your last warning. We will take you down."
"Then don't waste my time."
The spark of annoyance prompted Tigress' impetus. She launched forwards, her fist tightened and loaded like they were the perfect counterweights to the clobbering spins she had begun throwing. Energized by her sudden initiation, everyone else joined in. Viper leaped for the rhino's bare side; the rest of the team simultaneously coalesced to form an imbalanced flanking on his right. Limbs of all sorts reached out for his large frame, yet he had evaded the multitude of varied strikes like he was as small and as unattainable as some discreet fly zipping through the air.
Playing each one of them with controlled intensity, the rhino managed to rapidly array his enemies away from their clustered assemblage. The segmentation had opened him up to several local vulnerabilities, and he had immediately dove for Tigress once the opportunity presented itself. He grasped the tiger's neck, lifting her off the ground-the range of motion to terminate her completely was within a measly flick of his wrist.
In full understanding of the situation, Tigress' companions had stopped at once, careful not to instigate anything. The true power of their enemy finally dawned on them. He was quick and mobile just as much as he was big and strong.
The rhino tightened his squeeze. "I will break you."
"No you won't!"
The visor to the tiger's helmet burst open, and darting out of it was a green dot. Splitting air until it whistled, the speeding Mantis produced a concentrated impact to the rhino's nose, which sent him tottering backwards.
With Tigress let loose, they prowled for the moment of offense once more. Monkey rolled behind the ungulate's feet and upturned him completely. In the instant he was midair, Tung rocked his head downwards and struck the enemy, propelling him through the deck.
After the eruption of sawdust had settled, the ragtag crew gathered around the manhole, looking below where the rhino should have landed.
"Oh no! He's gone!" Monkey cried. "He must have gone through the ship!"
"Are you crazy? Then there should be an opening down there too you idiot." Mantis chastised.
Just meters before them, the rhino reemerged from the floor at full impact. He had gone completely upwards, penetrating through one of the ship's booms, which upended along his skyrocketing force. High in the air, the evidently experienced fighter managed to outmaneuver past all the odd physics of the void and readjust the heavy beam in just a few effortless taps. The boom, now made into a tremendous spear, was then plunged downwards by the rhino's all-out crescent kick having been applied right at its butt.
The team dispersed from the spot immediately—all except Tigress, who was more provident than she was instinctive. If that immense shaft came down unimpeded, the destruction it would certainly cause could capsize the entire ship. Coiling her legs and exploding skywards, she became like a javelin herself, the initial surface area of her tightly clenched fist being the very point of her own blade. All she saw was the great wooden cross-section coming down upon her. At the peak of midair, the two unstoppable objects finally collided-but the darting warrior was a concentrated flechette, a more finely destructive force: the head of the boom splintered outwards as it bore her inceptive power, the split of the wood-grain cracking like lightning. She continued blitzing across the beam's great cylindrical length from inside, coming out the other end and barreling against the rhino who was falling down the same path.
The boom had been successfully deflected and disassembled, raining down in pulverized chunks on the ocean surface. But now came the other problem for Tigress: both she and her enemy were quickly descending towards the far-reaches of the sea.
Oh, you crazy, crazy, foolish thing!
Viper saw the tiger crash in the distance, but she never spotted her resurface. Such a moment was ever so familiar: when in times of need, the burden of resolution fell on her own initiative.
But what can I do?
There was no way the massive ship could ever get her there on time, and that only left her thinking the craziest possibilities. The instant some slight idea popped into her head, she committed right away. "Mantis! Monkey!"
"What?" They both said.
"Ready the cannon! I'm launching myself out there."
"What!?"
She started wrapping a long thread of rope around some cannonball. "You heard me boys. Load it please."
Right away they fled to the nearest portside cannon, assuming some form of formal naval drill the best they could. Mantis scuttled to some stash of weapons, returning with a purse of gunpowder. "So how does this work? We just uh… put this inside?"
"Yes." Monkey grabbed the bag and shoved it in the barrel, not knowing that the insect was still attached to it. Once he was handed the cannon round, he dropped it inside as well.
"I'm still in here you blind ape!" Mantis' voice echoed.
Viper faced the mouth of the cannon, pulling the soot-filled bug out. "Okay guys. Once I tug on the rope, reel it in."
"Like fish."
"Mantis, I'm being serious."
"And I know that, sorry." He hopped out of Viper's tail, rearing towards the igniter. "Now go, save our friend. We'll handle it."
Will you really? When the snake peered sideways, Monkey raised the tightly-gripped ropes to her, ensuring their procedure was all well-coordinated.
"With pleasure then." She entered the hole, packing herself securely for the load of energy she was about to endure.
Tung and Rushi elevated the cannon trajectory. Once the nose was fixed to the skies above, Mantis pulled out the priming lanyard with liberal force. A spark, and then subsequent fire. The weaponed mount erupted and kicked backwards. Already in the atmosphere, Viper was careening over yonder.
The aim was fortunately solid. As the cannonball began plummeting, she spotted a dark blob of two figures beneath the ocean. The impelled snake deployed from the flight path prematurely, diving straight into the struggle underneath her. Pain spread across her face as she punctured through the water's surface tension with tremendous velocity.
Almost all of Viper's senses muted at once-there was only the stinging coldness. She pried her eyes open, forcing her sights to function in the midst of all the distortion and pain. With the diminishing light continually being manipulated by the aqua-refractions, Tigress remained a vague distance away-but as the snake persisted further and further down, she began to realize how deep they truly were.
Eventually, Viper had gone close enough to catch on to their movements-the young tiger was fully animated and alive, but so too was the rhino. The languidness of the heavy water realm had greatly expelled the fighters' energy such that their movements practically summed zero impact—the only thing they had left was the will to grapple each other into the very depths of the sea.
Tigress you crazy fool.
As Viper's lungs continued to constrict, her need to resurface slowly became more primal than her original intentions of saving. The snake puffed her cheeks, preserving the final pockets of air.
Taking a leap of faith, she thrusted forwards and finally made it to them.
There was no time to think of a concise way to referee these two suicidal idiots. Viper wrapped around the rhino's hooves, wringing them tight. She could only hope for the best-but even in her most strenuous efforts she was unable to make his hands budge. The newly enraged warrior, in her last bit of exertion, quickly looped the rest of her long body around his fettered limbs and tried again. Remnants of breath left her in gloating bubbles, but with such grim compromise was her victory: she felt the release of his muscles.
Tigress promptly grabbed Viper's neck and yanked her from the depths. The pressure around them gradually relieved as the lightedness of their upwards mobility allowed them to shoot back up to the surface in record speed. They emerged with opened mouths, gasping in the great volume of air.
After deep, heaving breaths, their struggle settled a little.
"Viper..." Tigress watched the snake go limp on her paw. "Oh geez. I can't thank you enough for this. Just hold on." Cradling her dazed companion close to her chest, the tiger grabbed rope that had been shot out to sea; it had since been swinging back underneath the ship due to its cannon-ball anchor. Only a few seconds after the tiger clenched on the lifeline, eager tuggers from the opposite end began pulling in the two warriors. They lapped so fast across the ocean that they skidded on its surface. Moments later, they were hauled back into the deck like prized fish.
"Oogway's fart! Are you guys okay?" Mantis was all up in their faces, slapping them with medical intent.
Tigress coughed out dried breaths while she turned over, surrendering completely flat against the ground. "No…"
"Ehh, that's what I thought." The bug was currently jumping up and down on Viper's throat, squeezing out excess water. Halting his borderline torture, he reassessed them once more. "Ah geez. You two look like a wreck. Someone find them orange juice or something-and not the ones that are poisoned!"
"Are you sure that will work?"
"Viper, you need to whiff on some essential oils. Look at it! There's at least 5 layers worth of wood panels and bolts barricading that thing. And for added measure," Mantis leapt atop some impressively large lock located at the middle of the door, "I will gladly guard it."
Viper humored briefly. "Great sentinel you are. I'm sure the likes of you can hold up the strength of a hundred men—"
"Yep!
"Mantis! No! We need to be prepared for when they wake up. Get down from there, I need to hammer more nails in."
"That's only if I don't find our location in time." Tung spoke. Held close to his chest was a bundle of charts, which were under the threat of being completely blown away by the open source of wind.
"You've changed our bearing like nine times." Rushi shouted from the wheel deck. "Four of them were waaay more than 360 degrees mind you."
"I just wanted everyone to have a good look around. Eh?"
Tigress had been watching the conversation from a remote corner close to the very stern of the ship. After just tediously booting all the troops down in the hold, she was sure that among them, there would have been some leisure of silence. Her companions one-upping each other in snarkiness was an unexpected turn. Words required great energy.
Admittedly, how they came to be a market of quips was something entertaining to witness. In what way did they allow themselves to handle such blows of douchery with much indifference? All jokes lay somewhere in the simple extremes, no matter which way a person dissected it. She often couldn't take them politely herself, although she'd look past them.
Monkey climbed up the pulpit, juggling a compass between his hands. "Hey! Watcha doing?"
"Oh. Nothing really." The tiger left the rails she was leaning on and sat back on a cargo box. Interestingly enough, she had observed that it was the simian, of all people, who also isolated himself from the rest of the silliness. Perhaps they had a few subtle things in common.
"Nothing?" Monkey took the tiger's prompt comfort as a chance to lay in front of her at a reclined position. He summoned for some greater answer with a winding gesture. "You looked like you were staring into the eyes of evil just a second ago. Hoo! Intense."
Tigress could admit that her efforts in studying the five's ongoing conversation exceeded far more than how much she actually cared about it. The interest was more or less contrived, for reasons well within her conscious thought—despite how much she wanted it to remain out of her awareness. She could admit to all this, but it required so much work.
Tigress decided to skip the pretext entirely. "Your background… I know it's complicated. But I've been meaning to ask you a few things about it."
"Oh! Sure…" Taken aback that the tiger had just repurposed his curiosity to discuss more pressing—potentially even more personal— matters, Monkey sat erect. "What have you got?"
She pressed her lips, working on her words. "What was the Kung Fu Council like… among your folk?"
"Like, how we thought of them? Us poor, filthy people? I don't know… it's pretty complicated actually—almost like politics. If not, worse. In terms of how they were actually like to us, they never really did reach out, at least that's how it was when I was in my early days. They weren't exactly everywhere. My mom used to call Kung Fu warriors the emperor's vanity."
Tigress sighed. "I suppose that makes sense. We live in palaces. Host parties, feasts, tournaments. And Master Shifu always told me to wear good clothes. The impression is there."
"Hoo! I'm glad you understand. We saw you guys as any other... elite. Elites that can fight. And that makes it worse." Monkey knew his conviction was getting tougher to swallow, but he was opening up now. "Oh I'll be honest. I hated you guys. Yes! I did, very much. One time, I entered one of the rich cities and pickpo- you know what, that's not very important. At the end of the day, the kung fu pricks rolled out of their crown jewel and defended the other rich pricks. Kung fu was meant to bring balance to the world, but I didn't even have a balanced diet!"
"So what happened? What made you switch up? Fight on our side?" The tiger leaned forwards, propping her elbows on her knees.
Mantis smiled—the destined question was finally asked, and he had a chance to apply his bragging rights. "Well of course, it was all Oogway. He came into my life."
"Oogway?" She tilted her head.
"Yes! Right? The man himself! And just when I thought all of kung fu had deserted us, the most important figure of them all came up to me. Crazy right! Oh man. Well, he helped me figure out a few things, one of which is that I had made myself just as much as a loser as those I thought to be the losers. I like to think I owned up to myself now. At the end of the day, there are bad guys and good guys anywhere. Just look at you guys. You guys are great y'know. I'm fighting on your side, not on behalf of the entire Kung Fu Council."
Tigress had a few silent moments to ponder over what he had said, but they were quickly terminated by the simian's eagerness to find how her question fitted the grand scheme of things.
"So. Why'd you ask?"
"Ah well…" While Tigress never intended to have her internal motives resurface this quickly, it was inevitable. The most she could do was honor his one question.
She fished something out of her armor, showing it right on Monkey's face.
It didn't take that much of a close inspection to identify what was on her palm. "That—wow… That's the rhino's mask." The object was fragmented, but the simian could still puzzle together the black shards and make out definite facial geometry: somehow, this gave life to it. The feeling was almost uninviting, like he was just handed the leavings of a prized beheaded head. He pushed her extended paw back. "So, you managed to see what he looked like? Ooh! Was he good looking?"
"I saw him just vaguely. That fight, there was so much movement—too much dizziness. I guess along the way I managed to snatch his mask. And well… luckily, the deeper we got, the stiller he became. It was dark, but, I think I got a good glimpse of him." Tigress shoved the mask back under her covers; it seemed to have weighed even more on her chest now. "I think he might be Master Mengyao… son of Master Flying Rhin-"
"Tigress!"
Their heads quickly diverted to the distant yell. On the other side, Viper was suddenly atop the forecastle along with the others. The snake beckoned for them to come.
Monkey reached out for Tigress before she could proceed. "Hey. You know, we can talk later. Right?"
"Yeah…" Tigress nodded once. "Of course."
It wasn't much of an assurance for the simian. He had an inkling feeling that the conversation was an exclusive one—done in a breath, gone in the wind.
They eventually made it to the front of the ship. Everyone else had been leaning on the guard rails, observing something outwards with a shared telescope. Once Monkey had got in line, Tung handed the monocular spyglass.
The simian peeked through the magnification, spotting several ships in the horizon that faced their direction. Three vessels: three tiny sails propelling them. The boats were flat, modestly shallow drafted and unassertive—but congested fully on each deck were crops of heads and blades sticking out. It was certainly some kind of brown water warship fleet. "Yikes. Small but terrible."
"See the flag?" Tung hinted.
He tilted his line of sight upwards. At the summit of one of the masts hung triangular banners-a faint red emblem imprinted on them. "Yeah what about them?"
"They're Vietnam pirates." The bull answered. "And they're speeding right towards us."
He destructively stretched the telescope several more barrels, far more interested now. "Oooh! So you think they've been chasing us?"
"Certainly clears up a lot of things-why we were all the way out to sea where the storm was. We were clearly avoiding something. This is a fairly big, deep boat—we didn't need to go into that storm, but we had the option-and we took it."
Tigress squinted and began observing the outlying situation with her crude sight. Employed with the most minimal understanding of maritime intricacies, the tiger had no more than dead reckoning about this. But she tried to remain open. "And… do you think those are chasing us?"
"Well take a look at this." The bull unwinded a sheaf of charts and raised it against the sun where the layers of drawing superimposed transparently. "These old idiots created puzzles for maps. Can't find a port. Can't find no pattern. I just can't read them for the life of me. But..." He moved a finger along freshly drawn reroutes, landing it upon an indicator that mimicked the very same symbol they had spotted on the fleet's flags. "This is definitely telling. Looks like we did change paths—just to throw those pirates out of the loop. And if those One-Eyed-Hooks long been knowing how to chase down this ship, there's a good chance they know its original route too, and stuck by it in hopes to get ahead of us. We definitely stumbled right by them."
Rushi stepped away from the huddle, marking her exit with a conclusive clap. "Welp, I'll note our location then. There's a good chance we can find this ship's original port by them."
"No wait. You do understand that we still need to get this ship to prison, right?" Tigress pointed.
"Yep! That's why I'll be marking this." The golden cat kicked the spokes of the wheel, acutely changing the boat's heading again. "Now let's cross our fingers and hope this piece of crap takes us to mainland before those thugs get to us."
Tigress caught Mantis and Viper into her arms as they had begun slipping. Afar, the asymmetric mast that no longer had an offsetting boom tipped dangerously at the abrupt positional change. It was true—with a deranged cat on a wheel, a crew of sleeping soldiers right underneath them, and literal pirates chasing them down, one can only hope.
A/N
I kind of find the fight scene ridiculous - this is probably why this chapter was a lot faster to write because I pretty much turned a blind eye to logic heheh. I've been having extraordinary writer's flow lately. I've revised three chapters, and I have one chapter in stock. Lots of updating to do soon. Hopefully, now that summer's actually here, my writing flow will carry on.
The fact that I skipped that underwater fight between Tigress and the Rhino is very lame, but I promise that the next chapter will somewhat adequately go over it.
Thank you to The Dragon Chronicle for beta reading! And much love to the people who have supported me!
