A specter of doom was present in the company-town. In the streets, something that moved ruffled the dirt on many roads and drew out these wisps of particles in the direction it went—this residue of motion was as indicative of the specter's headway as arrows, but the arrows pointed in many, many directions, some towards recently collapsed buildings… some towards injured and unconscious soldiers.
On the opposite end of town, where danger had not yet approached, Mantis entered a derelict infirmary room and set Viper down a cot. There was no one else there with him, including a much needed doctor. For now, the bug had to make do with his own know-how on diagnosing. He ran a pincer down Viper's areas of trauma, feeling the disfigurements at her neck. As his hand glided across her midriff, the weakest heaving of her lung pushed against his touch.
Moments ago, the sounds of commotion outside had resided in the back of Mantis' mind. But the presence of Viper's life-force allowed much of his dire sense of urgency to be dispelled, and so the regular yells and booms of the distant brawl came to him suddenly with twice the reverberation. For a second, Mantis glanced out the open bedside window. A brown cloud had spread across the opposite end of town where the battle took place. To think that there, amidst the buildings that were being razed, was Monkey.
Was the poor guy losing to the absolutely maniacal Tigress, injured, frantic… coughing up dust and blood in his worn state?—that was the likely scenario Mantis envisioned. He began to wonder why the simian would ever even allow himself to be the one to commit to the more perilous half of their duty. Though a noble decision, it seemed less like a self-imposed sacrifice by him and instead selfishly on the bug's part, seeing how he was the only one enjoying being so remotely placed from danger.
But it wasn't like they had the luxury of options.
"Damn…What happened to being five?" Mantis returned his sights to Viper, who wasn't in a better state after his rumination. He cursed at himself and quickly returned to work.
"AHHHHHHHH." Monkey shrieked.
Tigress had outgrown all bodily foibles, the poison seemingly replacing her muscles and organs with factory-like modes of movement—of pumps and pistons. She rumbled with mechanistic power, her deep, gurgling sounds that were growing louder indicating to the simian that she was tailgating him with an utmost drive.
Monkey pushed himself to go faster, practically gliding across the street as his limbs launched him by whits of explosive contact times with the ground. Long arrays of buildings standing abreast each other had the simian snared into a strict lap across the alleyway, and as such, he was put in a desperate race against a tiger who was clearly about to outpace him. She nipped on the fur of his projected tail end, forcing him to withdraw it closer to himself.
Shortly ahead, the vista of the village emporium opened out. Monkey immediately dove to the sides once he took to the open space.
Tigress had not redirected her momentum, coming out of the alley in a line of blur. She immediately decelerated with extended claws, the downforce of her brakes immense enough to plow deep trenches on the ground.
Intending to stall a complete one-on-one engagement with the feline until backup came, Monkey prompted to continue the pursuit, beginning to run in a circle around the common. The tiger, having landed on the center of the market already, chased towards him radially, taking a path that was bound to intersect his arched one. But just as she was about to cut him in front, Monkey jumped aloft, mounting a nearby tarpaulin and then leaping to the next. Beginning to move high and low the marketplace—hopping across the kiosks' top panels, coming to the ground and rolling underneath carriages—the simian made his route so complex in ways the tiger could not simply keep up with; she had lost a certain spatial understanding, becoming as subtle as a some brutish linear striker. Running amok objects of burden, she quickly turned the neat market into a fruit-drenched wasteland.
After the persistent hunt seemed to have gone on for hours, several contingents of guards finally deployed into the opening from all sides.
"Roll out and encroach!" One of the officers ordered.
They quickly lined themselves into a loose lasso shape that surrounded the entire vicinity; the gaps in-between the troops, formed by their dispersed attack geometry, was filled out of its openwork by the aggressive crossing of their spears. The impressive clangor of a well-armed iron force pervaded the air for a frightening moment.
Danger was immediately sensed by Tigress. Reacting on impulse, the tiger discontinued her chase towards Monkey, instead coming up above the rooftop of one of the shops. She then leapt and forced her current leverage downwards, soaring towards a segment of guards.
In the next second, several reinforcements were blown away from a sudden blast point having been finely applied to the ground by Tigress. A mushroom of dust swelled across the immediate area, and in this obfuscation was her silhouette rising from the center of the impacted earth. After releasing a feral growl that shook all objects, her darkened figure began circumnavigating the clouded space on all fours, downing several more men that have been enclosed by the running dust gloom.
The once strict chain of soldiers quickly fell, as more and more of them broke away from their flanking formation to rally around the tiger's concentrated wrath.
The concrete underneath Tigress cracked under the tumultuous force of her quadruped running. She easily took down several more ensembles of guards in a straightforward barrage, her uncharacteristically near-fatal use of slashes and bites making her mode of attack all the more destructive. Her mouth remained perpetually opened—the serrated ivory blades embedded deep in her gums fully shown, and she appeared just about ready to devour them all.
Currently being the primary prey for the tiger, a rearing armyman propelled a spear right towards her face. She caught the shaft with her mouth, the precisely-timed clamping of her jaws pulverizing the projectile just before the tip of its blade reached the back of her throat.
Watching the battle in its many hectic ways, Monkey had a fluke of realization. "It's like your paws are stuck to the ground, ain't they? You don't seem to want to use them…"
He jumped on the rooftops and faced the enemy ship they had capitulated some great distance away. Trailing from the seaboard and down the street, halting just before the forepart of the present battlefield, was a train of carriages and containers. An idea began to rapidly take over his thoughts.
Leaping from the building he was on, he grappled onto a banner-line that ran across the center of the market with a coiled tail and swung himself towards the opposite side of the field, landing atop the closest carriage. The bottles inside the boxes he landed on rattled from his great impact. He pried away some wooden cover, and the gleaming glassware and its crystal-clear contents were all in there for him to assess.
Turning back, he caught the attention of several outlying guards with a piercing whistle. "Guys! I have an idea! Lead her here."
"Sir!"
Having complied immediately, they ran towards a commander to better network Monkey's new initiative. Seconds later, a new coordination was yelled, which quickly propelled the remaining men to form an enclosed funnel-like configuration around the tiger, constricting her flow of movement into a bottleneck leading towards the street Monkey was in.
"Hold ground, men! Slow your movements." The commander yelled as his troops almost immediately began to fall back, fearing what the tiger may do when she had turned and bore her glowing eyes on each and every one of them.
The simian swung his hands in whopping circles, yelling at the distant beast. Tigress' ears jerked in irritance before her head snapped the direction. He had immediately caught her attention. In her feral state, it appeared that even her perception changed, such that the only thing that took an active part in her environment were the things that had the wildest movements; the men who held fort around her quickly became inanimate things in the background.
"Yep!" Attempting to provide the tiger a constant source of allure, Monkey turned around and wiggled his butt in a taunting sort of way. "It's just you and me now!"
Tigress' appraising creep towards the simian quickly transitioned into full-on pounces, decisive about her new target. Each of her heavy footfalls enlivened an earthquake, pulverizing ground. She was quickly crossing the market space.
He faced the cargo below him once more, hesitating, but only having a moment to get his shit together.
Frantic, Monkey began arming himself with as many flasks of the valerian solution as his fingers could interlock with. He bent over and looked between his legs, closing one eye and singling out his vision so that he managed to acquire a reference point of the approaching target in her upside-down form.
Just as Tigress was about to make her final leap, the simian began launching the bottles through his legs and right at her face. In this rapid fire succession, the flasks once in his hands were quickly all put to use, so he resupplied himself with another batch from the crate of ammunition below him and resumed his ballistic attack.
Exactly like what Monkey suspected, the quadruped tiger's defensive approach to this all was nothing more than single-handed strikes and clumsy attempts to bite down on the myriad of missiles flung at her. Fractals of glass shards exploded at her face. Absorbed by her fur, the valerian chemicals frizzed and seemed to burn her skin. Some of the liquid dissipated into a noxious aerosol that formed an encasement at her head.
Monkey finally halted, awaiting Tigress' next move. Stumbling, the tiger reared back to the ground, her arms already unable to support her own weight. She hacked away the liquid poison, but the immense and sudden administration of the chemicals was not lost from this desperate reflex. As she shook her head wildly to break off what felt like a hemorrhage forming there, long streaks of drool lashed away from her loose maw.
Just before Tigress' flickering eyes could close fully, a golden blur streaked sideways, blindsiding the tiger. The collision brought the striped feline and the intervening object into one of the buildings, disappearing completely from the street.
Not even seconds later, a storeyed watchtower a distance away ruptured from bottom to the top. The spire from which the sudden collision course made its final impact on collapsed inwards, having just enough structural integrity to contain the rocketing force from exiting out of the roof completely.
Monkey had not one clue how the two figures could've possibly ended up there so quickly. "Holy crap. Who was that?"
"Golden cat."
A thought immediately entered his mind. "Rushi…crap. She's also feral-ized. We need to save Tigress!"
The bull soldier who had just answered the simian struck a valerian flask down on several arrowheads held in his hand. Once the solution coated the blades and started dripping down in its excess, he furnished his quiver with all but one poisoned arrow.
A loud roar escaped the distant building. Loose rubble unloaded from the sides of the structure, allowing the golden cat some space to pry her way into the open air. Approaching the roof's edge, she let out another growling call, this time more triumphant and prolonged.
The first thing Monkey noticed was her red-tainted muzzle. His sweat turned cold.
Could it be?
The thought petrified him. It can't be Tigress' blood. But it wouldn't be any consolation if it was someone else's. To have mangled someone as to have caused that much blood to be drenched in one's own face was by far the grimmest possibility in the entire fight. "Where the hell is Tung?" That big bull was, afterall, the one supposed to control her. Monkey hissed at himself, already hating the decisions that were made to have come to this point.
The guard beside him drew back his bow, making final adjustments to his aim.
Monkey looked back just in time before the army man could let the arrow loose, and he jumped to nearly swat the weapon from his hooves. "Hey man! Just shoot her arm or something!"
"I wouldn't soak this thing with the sleeping juice if I was aiming for her heart." The guard quickly reaimed and released; the extreme tension of the bowstring launched the flying arrow to great lengths. An instant after, the poisoned blade nipped the side of Rushi's arm.
She fell back almost immediately, having stumbled and resisted only the first few moments.
"…and she's down." Another observer commented.
"Finally."
"Sheesh…"
Monkey had no time to engage with their commentaries; he quickly fled to the wreckage.
The fine taper-dressed paint tool had each hair so succinctly scaled that the brush point could mottle down the tiniest speck of ink. Pieces of sand formed a beach; likewise, a million dots on a paint canvas constituted Crane's most grand, although meticulously detailed, artistic imagery—the brush just understood his fastidious movements that way.
A grand reference laid distantly ahead. The city of Mudi Zhen sprawled on the horizon like a gigantic mountain range a thousand times the deformity. An urban nightmare of smoke, upzoning, and light pollution. The stench of congestion made the atmosphere there a cloudy green.
Between the outskirts of that city hellscape and their tiny boat moving towards it was the foreground of deadened rice paddies and brown tributaries; be it hopeless, this slightly more naturally reserved part of the urban region was actually more luminous than the city itself and was thus the prettier sight.
His talon cramped again; an hour of controlled twitches turned his joints into hot stones. The frightening sight of the city was a visual masterpiece in itself, one that left little compositional work for the mind. But he took the time to add abstractions of his own, overdoing the misanthropic imagery—twice the buildings, twice the intensity of the city's disgusting clouds. It helped his gloomy case that the brush he owned now had a color-carrying capacity that was decisively unmatched.
Is it palm-fiber? He ran a talon-finger through the tool's hair. Couldn't possibly be. His previous brushes were also palm-fiber, and still they lacked the strength to hold ink-weight, and that often meant paler values.
He began to wonder about the tool's origins. They had stopped by a river market a while back. Huifen had errands to run—Ju Lung went off somewhere—leaving him to stroll around the public space alone. The first thing he'd notice was the 'shops on wheels' theme—in that every selling outlet was mounted on movable platforms. When he later asked Huifen about the peculiar setup, she mentioned it being a brisk market—coming and going in a day, touring around like a campaign. …Something about the Wokou pirates blocking a massive waterway supply chain made this bartering scheme important to the local river inhabitants, who possessed no other reliable options for trade. And apparently these pirates were doing it as part of some stratagem…
A little while later, after they had departed the marketplace and continued traveling by boat, they had drifted past a long series of turnpikes, evidently spaced out to only fit small vessels such as their own. He figured this was just regular urban conflicts.
At the market, he had met a craftsman at a discreet corner-elbow of stores. He was a big, himbo-looking wolf, but he had some wise, meticulous fingers. The guy was nice enough to give him a discount on a whole painting set —canvases and all. Next time he came back looking for his products—which the wolf assured he would—he was going to have to pay at full price for another set.
Indeed, wherever that wolf might be in the future, he would be there with a million coins.
"Really, please. Enough with the foreplay. Just stick it up your ass already." Ju Lung muttered.
Crane turned. "Say what?!"
"The paintbrush! You've been staring at it more than you should."
"There's nothing wrong with it." The bird muttered.
"There is…"
"You just don't understand the passion, Ju Lung." Huifen added. Standing at the rear of the boat, she prodded the riverbed with a long bamboo stick, readjusting their course through the shallow stream. "Your caveman desires don't understand hobbies."
"I understand hobbies."
Huifen sneered. "You don't even have one."
"You're right about that…" just as Crane extended his neck to acknowledge the young horse behind Ju Lung, something moving far out in the sky caught his eye first. A flock of birds was behind them. They glided along the lowest draft of air, appearing to be positioned to still fly distances but ready to engage with whatever's on the ground immediately. Their species could not be ignored—they were a very familiar consisting of birds, that of herons and cranes.
Crane's gradual widening of his eyes prompted the rest to finally turn.
"What in the damnation!" Ju Lung punched the rim of the boat. "How did they find us and catch up to us?"
Crane clenched his jaws. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! They had so much time and distance to spot those birds, but not one of them watched their backs.
The warrior avian jumped on Huifen and Ju Lung's backs, grasping onto their clothes and fur.
"What are you doing?" Ju Lung barked, swatting upwards to ward off his talons. But still, the bird clamped onto the scruff of his neck.
"I think I can give you guys a head start, but they'll definitely catch up to us before we get to the city. I can drop you off by the tall grass over there, and you run. Stay hidden, move quickly. Hide in the city." Crane began flapping his wings, miraculously bringing the two heavy-weights midair. "I'll try my best to slow them down. Now hold on."
After some strenuous flaps, Crane was gliding fast above the defoliated area. As he only continued to gain altitude and momentum, the grip strength on everyone's part reached herculean levels, ultimately crushing the bird's talons.
Crane chuckled nervously, feeling as if his feet were about to shrivel up and die. "I know I told you all to hold on but you really don't have to squeeze the life out of me."
"Woe is me and my toes!" Ju Lung spat. "Next time don't use a fistful of my lard as handholds—it equally hurts."
"You're just mad that someone is finally digging out the molds growing in between your skinfolds." Huifen yelled back.
Molds? In between his… Crane wanted to puke —and get a pedicure later… For now he could only forget this dismay and look back to observe the other problem. The flock had cleared another considerable distance between them. Crane squinted, trying to plumb the depth of the atmosphere and where exactly the birds belong in it. At this rate, I've got half a minute at most before they catch up. As he continued to observe the adversarial group, the particularly piercing blue in the head-avian's angular eyes shot at him. A shiver went down his spine. No, no. They're definitely closer than they appear.
"Looks about time to let us go." Ju Lung muttered, looking down at the tall grass presently below them.
"If you ever make it out of this, we'll be in Sunshine Tavern." Huifen yelled.
"What? Who decided to go there?" The bear asked. "Why would we go there?"
"There's no time to be picky." Crane growled. "Now brace for impact!" He swooped closer to the ground and delivered them down an angled—and most-certainly undignified and ragdoll-causing—landing. The pesky people once in his grasp immediately disappeared into the croft of tallgrass, their drop-point having been made just as ambiguous as ones made in a void.
Looping up and over, Crane faced the opposite side and finally made headway towards his rivaled forces. At breakneck speeds, he dashed away a hundred meters long gap amidst them in mere seconds.
Crane's heart rate shot up. The enemy ahead flew in a tight conical formation; the head-flyer's beak, being the foremost facet in the flock's collective shape, was piercing just as his terrible blue eyes. It seemed as if the Jade Palace warrior was driving himself straight into a knife.
Crane felt something drain from his extremities and heap in his stomach. Suddenly, all his distributed weight felt pulled back into this small median—one tip, one imbalance, and he'd be tumbling sideways.
The flock started to squak war cries —a crowd's roar. Crane groaned. He was one guy going against how many? The numerical disadvantage was already there, but even then he had no particular set of skills to outstand that. He was far from a one-man army—heck, he was probably one man representing half a man. That was it: he was half-man, no army.
I can't do this.
He left it at that, releasing his pent up anxiety in a single accepting sigh. Decisively, with the slightest tip of his body, he fell off the illusory pivot point formed moments ago in his stomach, and it was like a boulder had been dropped on one side of a vacant seesaw: just as both parties were about to collide, Crane veered sharply down to the left.
"Speed up, you idiots!" The head avian yelled to his flanks, never once slowing their pace to redirect their pursuit.
The slowly forming echelon of birds swept wider across the sky, pursuing after Crane in what appeared to be like the laterally expanded form of an inescapable drift netting; the young avian warrior was merely a fish to catch, and he had no other way to escape but forward. Alas, Crane could not outmaneuver the fast and strictly-arrayed avionic force. He eventually fell in their ranks and was captured by the legs.
Still, with his wings set free, Crane tugged on the winds harder, pumping for an overshoot. After projecting himself slightly ahead of the birds beside him, he wrapped his wings tightly around his form and dove into an intense downwards spiral, sending the opponents tethered to his talons in a spinning turbulence. The sharp pressure of claws digging into his talon-flesh finally released, and in those first seconds he was free, he plowed through the upper regions. At accelerating speeds, the airspace around him felt counteractingly thicker; but he was a fine blade slashing against the grain of a fabric—at some point the opposing force only helped him apply more of his own.
Suddenly, he had breached the city ambit.
As the atmosphere became more green, several structural offshoots jutted from the clouds. Crane swerved past these swaying complexes, beginning to observe the balconies, the plants, the people, the clotheslines suspending about, and the many other signs of civilization. The metropolitan surface below being revealed in a random clearing of the thick fog was geebled by tall buildings and thousands more squat properties.
"Hey bub!" A voice echoed.
He looked over his shoulder, slowing.
The flock, suddenly blocks behind him, had completely stopped the chase. A round metal thing in the talon of the head-flyer occupied much of their attention now. There was a spark trailing down this object's wicker ignition.
A bomb.
"Why don't you fetch?" The blue-eyed heron dropped the weapon —into the city.
"Oh you little—! You—!" Crane seethed only at this instant, but he quickly forced himself to think. The falling bomb was certainly an entrapment —one that would force him to move back to the flock's air position if he did choose to play fetch; the only thing they'd need to do was close the altitude.
In the urgent seconds he was supposed to snap into action, he remained in a processing, panicked idle. He calculated a million phantom equations, none of which actually produced any sense of the situation.
When the bomb disappeared into the gloomy sub-atmospheric clouds, his body-and his most primal instincts-were finally forced to take over: he reluctantly fell into the sharpest diagonal path.
It was only a blink after that the fog parted and Crane's talons skidded onto pavement. A sea of people parted from his area almost immediately. Despite following its exact fall pattern, he quickly found the bomb not below his reach, nor was it visibly beyond him. It must have bounced off somewhere, getting lost in all the crowd and city noise that suddenly surrounded Crane.
"Bomb!" Someone yelled at his side.
Crane shoved several lofty walls of people aside, desperately making it to the source. The landing flaps of the enemy flock were just shortly behind him. Ignoring this problem to momentarily deal with more extingent matters, he pushed onwards, entering a clearing of people. At the center, where the explosive ball had rolled to a stop, a rushing snow leopard halted before it. The feline grabbed the bomb and launched it high in the air with impressive strength. It went past the surrounding high-rises, and exploded just before falling back to the Earth. Shell fragments rained over the crowd. The smell of sharp powder mote quickly bittered the air.
One problem being relieved had only put a greater burden on the next. Before he could even consider giving the leopard the massive bro hug he most certainly deserved, Crane crossed the clearing and re-entered a different part of the quickly evacuating crowd. Hiding amidst the people would soon be futile, as they only continued to disperse. Making the final uses of this residual cover, the bird dove into the tight lips of a small alleyway.
Looking over, Crane hitched a breath as a tandem of enemy birds entered his narrow line of sight. He flattened against the wall, pressing for a few more inches of concealment—but they never once looked his way in the first place.
After they had gone, Crane finally fell off his rigid pose, letting go of his breath. He proceeded down the opposite end of the alley, coming out of its more attenuated side. When he went aloft one of the parapets to overlook the city, the sight that bewitched him next was an immense one. Mudi Zhen was monstrous, diminishing at all corners of the perceivable Earth. Many of its swaying skylines that were all bound to simultaneously tip over by the slightest turn of winds were the tendrils of a polyped beast living in the city's underground.
Immediately leaping off the terrace so as not to stand out too long, Crane walked in the crowded streets with a new and hefty burden to bear in mind. There certainly was a painful case of deja vu here, and the bird betook himself to those not-so distant memories. After just leaving one great city came an even greater one; and he would have to find Ju Lung here, again, in a tavern—again— no less.
"Hey watch it there, buddy!" A smelly horse-lamb-looking hybrid with matted fur shaped like a cauliflower blew right past him, and a line of similar-looking vagabonds following just behind did so too in rapid succession, effectively pushing the bird all the way to the side until he hit a market stand and fell over its heap of rice. The seller cried before he launched himself over the counter to pull Crane off his possessions -but in this fleeting moment of distraction, a litter of cubs rushed over from all sides and quickly ran off with several handfuls of the staple product.
The indignant rice-owner raised his fist. "No! You'll all pay for this!"
Crane skittered away from the raging seller before any consequences of his own developed, casually resuming thought once entering the covers of foot traffic. The only good thing about this place being so large is that those bird dudes would, hopefully, also have a hard time finding me—although their divide and conquer strategy, what with their considerable numbers, would put me at a disadvantage. When reassessing how the enemy force, in their multitude, cropped up in the midst of his and Ju Lung's unassuming sidequest, Crane finally realized how weird their measures were. No way were a whole division of elite-flying birds out here to re-arrest a bunch of idiot try-hard dissenters such as them.
Tigress blinked, taking in sudden brightness one increment at a time. Then she muttered, expecting the wind of her voice to meet the face of Shifu. A moment ago, everything had been crystal clear. Her and her master were having a conversation of sorts. Whatever disruption of visual senses happening this instant would not make her lose track of the conversation—whatever it was about… she tried to say a word, and then another.
But her forced utterances came out as incoherent rasps, received by Monkey—who suddenly appeared directly atop her.
His head tilted. "The what now?"
She blinked again, this time with purpose. The lid of her eyes wiped away blurry films. Monkey's features sharpened; she frowned, swearing Shifu was in his place.
"I-" Tigress looked around, noting several things at a gradual rate. Walls on all sides, a glassware-cluttered table in the corner of the room. Definitely not the Jade Palace. Gray light from the overcast day was coming in from an open window just by her bedside; on the opposing end, a warm and brightly coruscating candle battled the cold colors and produced a hopeless spectrum across the room. When the smell of medicinal herbs kicked in, it finally dawned on her that this was reality. The strong tang of mint seeped into her tongue from after a long whiff of the air.
"What happened?" She palmed the abrupt ache at her head, wincing.
"What a start, already asking questions… well, actually, to be fair, I asked a question first." Monkey stopped there, promptly deciding to avoid going down her thread of inquiry—not when she could barely collect herself. He wrung a damp towel, cool water leaving his fingers and falling into a red-tinted pool in a bucket. "How are you feeling?"
"Great as ever. What happened." She insisted.
Swatting away Tigress' aggressively massaging paw, Monkey applied the towel on her temple with a less desperate pressure. "You were hit pretty hard. Does it hurt a-"
"Hit by what?" She flinched once at his touch before setting herself rigidly straight again, remembering not to heed pain. "Why was I hit?"
"Look, you were hit by a lot of things." Monkey murmured. "So it would make sense if you're in a lot of hurt right now."
A million hot needles gradually poked at Tigress' face, the cuts from all the glass flung at her finally making themselves evident. It took every conscious fight in her not to let her fingers go there, discover what was causing the burn. She couldn't give Monkey the inch. "Just on my head. And it's dull—barely there. Now tell me what's going on. I wasn't just lying here last time. Yes? Last time I was losing consciousness."
"Yeah, you were; it's unfortunate." With a sigh, Monkey took the towel away from her temple and let it drop in the bucket. Thickened blood-water oozed from the rim, shaken by the displacement. "I'm not super good at telling stories, so I'll give it to you in bullet point format…"
"—Sounds good." Tigress hurried on.
"So, the medic guy… he's quite a character."
"I'm thinking the same."
He rubbed his neck, then proceeded to scratch his back. The more time he gave to tend to himself, the more he could be deliberate over his words. "He gave you tea-"
"Poisoned me. I remember the initial part." She muttered, not having it.
"Exactly that." He sighed. "Then you turned crazy."
"Crazy? As in—"
"Just a little too much. You kind of destroyed some parts of the town…"
"What?" Tigress looked out the window. The buildings nearby had not been destroyed, but she remained looking for evidence—down both ends of the deserted street and in the distance. Her heart soured when she spotted a collapsed spire some rooftops over. She could only wonder what more was out there. "Oh no…"
"I was able to take you out pretty early though!—with that one sleeping potion." Monkey placed a hand on her shoulder, trying to ease her worry.
It seemed to work only a little. Tigress rested on her pillows, but her eyes remained locked outside, as if to still find things that would further disappoint herself. "I can't believe this. Was anyone hurt?"
"I would be lying if I said no. You've injured some of the soldiers… a lot of them actually, you were a beast. But it wasn't that ba—" his thoughts went adrift—specifically across the hospital's hall and into the room of a battered snake; the truth of that caught his tongue before it could ever make a fictitious promise that Tigress hadn't done anything terrible. "It wasn't too bad…"
"Too bad?" Tigress sensed an inflection—a wavering of words; there was a catch.
"Well…" his mouth hung for a moment, stuttering on unsaid words, "yes."
She sat erect, all the more attentive. He appeared frail, barely holding in something of great outwards magnitude. "Monkey. What did I do?"
Idiot! What do I tell her? He cringed, knowing what came next. In terms of cushioning the events for her— he just about accidentally led her before a cliff and pushed her off. For a comedian, he had a terrible way with words, and a terrible way of setting up. His profession truly was just self-proclaimed.
Prolonged silence only continued to build up nerves. Tigress clenched her jaw, speaking with gritted teeth. "What did I do?"
"You— you may have… well, you may have also beaten up Viper."
As if his admittance was a spell, Tigress was immediately struck by a flash, followed by the opening of a vision. She was back there—the medic's place. She witnessed through her own eyes the gradual blurring sight of slow psychological stasis, where her thoughts gradually became immaterial —and eventually non-existent. Viper was also there, specifically in her grasp. Distant screams. Writhing. Some sensations —scales against her own feral palms. An urge to squeeze. Something had dictated her, foreign yet coming from within: from exactly within her belly, which had a monstrous appetite. It was terrible! And equally exhilarating—she recalled. But that happiness was never in thought; it was like her emotions had leaked from her brain and dispersed all over her body. Everything was thoughtless and visceral. Static made her vision opaque, and then there was blackness.
Tigress came out of that sudden reverie lurching forwards. Sickened, she pushed her stomach into a complete vacuum and was disappointed when only air surged out of her mouth. She wanted the demon out, in any solid form.
"Holy hell! Are- are you okay?" Monkey peered at her face closer.
She began to shake, feeling an all too familiar dread. This was exactly what she had been trained not to do. Years of sharpering and strengthening, and it was an idiot doctor and some liquid—a few sips of it—that was enough to break her. No, not this. Not to Viper, not to anyone! "Where is she?" Her voice cracked, yet still demanding.
Monkey pulled his head back, baffled. "The room is across from ours, and she's sleeping like a baby, Tigress. Mantis says she's alright now. It's all oka-"
"I'll see for myself!" She demanded, swinging her legs over the bed. Before she could force herself up, the edging of Monkey's finger pushed her frail body back down.
"Really, Tigress please. She's resting. And you're supposed to be resting."
The tiger swatted his arm away, making another attempt. This time she knew Monkey as an obstruction, and expected his adamance to step in her path. She simply plucked him by the head and set him aside like a pawn moved slightly across the board before she walked onwards.
The Indignant simian turned to catch up. "Well now that's just not fair…"
Tigress came to face the entrance of Viper's room in only three strides. Mantis cracked open the door once she had knocked on it. She bid no time for the bug to consider her, pushing on the door for more clearance. A draft of wind swept past her face, like angels had just left the room. Her heart beat accelerated, pumping only bugs and butterflies all throughout her system, making everything in her crawl. She crept to Viper's bedside, her gait unevenly staggered. Only the snake's head protruded out of the bedsheets, as her injuries were kept covered.
"No…" Tigress winced. "How could I even do this."
Mantis cleared his throat. "You know the tales of way back then? When everyone was crazy and ate each other? Before society—when everyone was feral?"
"So that was it. I lost control." She hunched, leaning on the frame of her friend's bed. "I'm so sorry, guys."
"Sorry for what? You were poisoned into doing this." Mantis deadpanned. He had hopped atop Viper's pillow, looking into Tigress' eyes.
"I didn't…" Upon looking up, she noticed the wear in his face. "You look tired, Mantis. I can take care of her. This is my doing."
"It really isn't, like seriously-"
"Please."
He realized it would be more of an insult to take this away from her. "Okay… I'll be in the next room. Taking a little nap. Wake me up if you need anything." He hopped down, scurrying out of the room and eventually passing Monkey, who remained withdrawn from them.
It was not soon after that the simian also left Tigress to her own devices, not wanting to play any part. He had done and said enough, and he wouldn't be able to make it any better. The moment was not meant to be unwinded; it was taken as it is. He himself couldn't make sense out of it.
Monkey walked out of the infirmary building. When he strolled down the entrance steps, a party of men lifting a covered gurney passed him on the street below.
One of the conveyors caught sight of him, and they stopped. "You! You know him right?"
The cloth assuming the shape of a body was stained red at the middle—the part of the abdominal area.
Monkey withheld a gasp. No… this isn't real.
Even when it was under the obtrusive cloth, he recognized the body's familiar form all too well. "Him?" He forced out. "Who him?" He had a big clue—he just didn't want to assume the worst. This must have been some foolish attempt of a prank—one where the badly-hidden body on the gurney would jump out of the covers and scare him.
"Him." A yak folded over the blanket, revealing the head of a bull.
"He's dead? Like dead dead?" Mantis whisper-yelled.
"No, like dead-alive —no of course I mean he's dead-dead, Mantis!" Monkey paced around the bug's room. He had just woken him up from a seconds-long nap and was now directly relaying him the most terrible information. The poor bug didn't even get to finish rubbing his sleepy eyes before the simian brought everything up. "They found him on the outskirts of the city. He was probably trying to control Rushi, calm her down, and then… and then he got killed! I- I didn't see what he looked like—just his head. But they said that Rushi… may have…"
He gulped, swallowing the following words.
"May have what?" Mantis cried, unable to bear him trail off. He watched him march faster—faster and faster, as if needing to escape somewhere far but was stuck in this very moment.
"Ate some part of him." Monkey finally let out. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to replace the unwanted visions of how the event possibly went down with corporeal darkness. "Took his guts out. That's why her face was all bloody when we took her in!"
Mantis shook his head. The news of that seemed so remotely placed. It couldn't exist in this world—he should be laughing at the blatant fictitiousness of it. "No… no! That's insane!"
"But it's true." He spoke more quietly this time. "That poison. What the hell even is it? How could it get her to- ugh, holy crap." He winced, rubbing his head. "It's evil."
"Yeah, yeah.. Evil…" Mantis followed the word carefully to make sense of it, but was interrupted by the thought of gore. How could they have been talking to someone who became… what? He shook his head, dissipating his own recreations of the ghastly sight. "Where is he?"
"They took him to the morgue."
"They should've taken him here. Did they even check if he could be saved?"
Monkey raised his arms in an expansive gesture, frustrated that Mantis wasn't immediately registering what this all comported with -the total tragedy of it. "He was dead, Mantis. There's nothing to save."
"I could've been the judge of all that."
"Oh shut it." Monkey crept closer, seething quietly. God forbid Tigress heard them next door. Perhaps some part of him wanted to let his frustration loose on anyone. "Do you hear me? He's dead. Dead as in dead."
"I get it! Okay? It's just… What the hell…" Mantis' bug-brows furrowed. The more he unravelled more of this damned details, the less he could accept it—but still, it seemed, there was a lot to ponder about -as if he couldn't deny the truth that Monkey had just dropped right here on him: that he had to rue and rethink. It punished him; but for what? Tung's death was a disaster—true, but it was also beginning to dawn on him that it wasn't exactly out of nowhere. The tragedy was a terrible mistake. A mistake caused by them -even if it was only in some ways. The moment they let him out the door to chase after Rushi was the moment they'd doomed him. That was neglect, and he was feeling the guilt of it all. He covered his face with his claws, muffling himself. "What the shit!"
"Mantis—"
"We just had to let him be with that murderous cat, didn't we?"
An incredulous Monkey withdrew from his position of bearing down over the bug. "What? No. No! Don't begin to do that. We're not gonna point fingers at anyone expect that stupid doctor!"
It was the insect's turn to pace around, going from end to end of his mattress.
For a long time, Monkey could only stand and observe. The bug appeared to be thinking. In some instances he would bob his mouth and utter a syllable, almost expressing his thought, but he'd stop himself to ruminate on it some more.
"You're right." Mantis finally spoke, his voice dry. "We never wanted the poor guy to be… torn apart. But we let him go."
"He left so quickly, and before we knew what the poison could do." Monkey wanted to sit beside the distressed bug, but he elected not to do that for now and instead continued his attempt at being the voice of reason. "And, listen, we couldn't just leave Tigress and Viper. Imagine if one of us did. Was it bad we were just looking out for them?"
"Yeah that's good and all—taking care of our team."
"Exactly that-"
"But we sold ourselves as warriors, right?" He cut off. "I thought everything we do is bigger than us. We're supposed to look out for everyone."
"You can keep reversing time, but with so little understanding then..." Monkey shrugged in defeat. "The decisions will be made -again and again."
Mantis snapped. "Yes-I know I can only wish! We should've had the insight to know better. But I have it now."
"And what will you do with it?"
The bug sighed. Making some passionate agenda immediately out of Tung's death wasn't the least bit honorable, but his realization was there, and he felt it was relevant. He took a deep breath, finally predesignating his next statement to make it exactly to the crux of the matter. "This is dangerous—what we're doing. The more we assume we can do everything, the more people's lives will be on the line. Tung didn't deserve us, this whole dang town didn't as well. This hospital is filled with injured people. It reeks in here. It's not exactly our doing, but they expected us to prevent it. I'm saying we need help. We need it badly."
Monkey looked down. In many ways, the bug was finally right. He never expected death to be the collateral of their ineptitude—it should've just been the cause of a few deprecating jokes and nothing more. What the hell did they get themselves into? "Help will come soon."
"And I mean it. We'll do nothing else until we get it—I'll talk to Tigress myself." Mantis' heaving breaths eventually slowed. He hoped that meant he could finally keep his cool for a second, but a new worry entered his mind. "Shit… How are we going to tell Rushi?"
Monkey tapped his foot quietly, thinking awhile. "We'll say close to nothing. It's not necessary."
"So what? We'll tell her he's not dead?"
"No," he rubbed the side of his arm. "I believe that would be the necessary part."
"What about the part where she killed him?"
He cringed. "I don't know, Mantis. I don't know…"
Two questions were now on his mind: where the hell was Ju Lung, and what the hell does Twit mean?
Crane had traversed six large avenues and hundreds of their offshooting side-roads. Each time he'd ask a friendly passerby about this Sunshine tavern, they'd always call him a twit and usher him to move on. Why was he called a twit? Was it just that every stranger here called every other stranger a twit? Or was he, specifically, a twit? What even was the point of questioning it. Crane was sure he was a twit anyways. But for it to be told to him by the most badass-looking people? Hurts like bullies. It was the word of felines, gators, hawks—muscled, sharp, beastly apex predators. They stank literal green and brown perfume, but they also stank of musky badassery.
Eventually, Crane managed to pull in a leopard who did not call him a twit the first moment he grabbed his attention. The beastly man jabbed a finger due west once the bird asked about the tavern's whereabouts.
"Corner. Statue." The leopard spoke in a broken language but had no foreign accent.
"It's by the corner of the city, by a statue?" Crane clarified.
He nodded. "Big bull ugly statue. Eughhh. Ugly very."
"Thank you!" He started to flee the other direction.
"Bye, twit!" The leopard called out.
Everything in between this was an eager rush. The next moment he was looking at a finely crafted bull statue vandalized at its every possible surface. A little behind this mark was an arched-roof, mushroomy, squat house that proclaimed to be the tavern—although it looked more like grandma's teahouse.
When he entered, he didn't need to find them. There were only two places to dine, one right in front of the restaurant, and one to the side. Ju Lung and Huifen were just ahead. He entered their circle wordlessly.
"Pretty boy's here!" Ju Lung howled.
A cup dropped right in front Crane, rolling end to end like a coin before being put to a stop by a hoof.
"Welcome to the Happy and Hopeful Sunshine tavern—where the men grew from rags to rags.
Hello, I'm your waiter, I'm your host, I'm your star. The name is Yu-Yen. I'm piss-poor and all I do is piss and pour." A boar tipped his pot, allowing the tea to cascade down on Crane's cup.
"That's quite a poem." Crane commented before moving on. He gave Ju Lung his sharpest glare (but with weary russet eyes, it wasn't exactly glare-ful). "It took me five hours. Five hours to find you guys."
"Sorry, our tavern isn't very popular." Yu-Yen inserted.
"Probably for a reason." Ju Lung didn't bother looking Crane's way, too busy playing with the food on his plate.
"What!" The boar slammed the pot to their table. "I've used up all my decency with you, dirty bear! You know what? Thirty years I've worked here. Thirty years, and I've never smelled someone as dirty as you."
"Really now?"
He sniffed the air. "It most certainly comes from your ass."
"That's impossible. My ass is self-cleaning."
Huifen slammed her head on the table, having heard the ebb and flow of their banter for a long time now.
"Yeah let's stop this bullshit." Crane muttered, not bothered to raise his voice in the midst of all the yelling. "We really have to be on the move."
That managed to turn some heads.
"Where?" The waiter intervened again, abruptly dropping the current fight. "To the retirement district? Huifen told me already. Not worth finding anything there, I'll tell you."
Crane groaned. "We went all the way here exactly for that. We're still going."
"By all means, go there if you want to. But let me tell you something that will most likely take up more of your interest first." The boar pulled a nearby chair in, finally settling amongst them. "I've heard you just came from Dequan. You observed a shipment?"
Crane raised an eyebrow. Just how much crap did Ju Lung and Huifen tell this guy? "Sure."
"Dequan is our sister city, with similar happenings -we're just deeper in the poop. The people you saw in that operation are likely the Wokou."
"Huifen mentioned them." Crane perked up. "Who are they?"
"Pirates. Sometimes pirateers. They could be insurrectionists then. Saints now. We never truly know. They assume the intent of the person who has the fattest purse of gold." The boar practically snorted out those last words. "It seems they've taken interest on our side, the entire city of Mudhi Zhen. Which is weird. Our pockets aren't exactly deep with it."
"How are they taking your side though? I heard they're blocking trade here." Crane glanced over at Huifen, who signaled him an assuring nod.
"They blocked a specific kind... Tell me, young foreigner, for all its width and greatness, have you ever heard of this city?"
"No… not actually." Crane muttered. And I tend to be a map enthusiast. He looked over, and stared as the boar suddenly seemed to have caught himself in some motion-guided hypnosis:
the spinning of his gray-tinted tea as he swirled it about.
The next words were spoken with a more dismal whisper. "There's long been speculation. Collusion between those of power within our system who tell us they are friends and those outside the city with even more immense power." He looked up at Crane. "They've kept us purposely debilitated and hidden from the world."
The bird wanted to roll his eyes at this melodrama. What a fancy thought: that cities aren't normally controlled by greater power. What kept this place thinking its function was any different from others?
Whether he intended it or not, Crane did in fact roll his eyes the slightest. Keen on his listener's reactions, the boar noticed this slip immediately. He shook his head, disappointed. "I cannot tell you why this is, only how it's done. You've probably noticed that the only way in the city is through the rivers. The surrounding lands are murky and nearly inaccessible. They've taken advantage of that by putting a navy at our only accesses, closing us from the outside. We've barely been self-sustainable, but even then we had to pay tribute or taxes or whatever—if we worked till our backs break and our skin started sweating gold, to them the fruit of such labor was nothing—maybe a few grains of rice, hah. It's easier to understand now why the Wokou is so popular here. They're the ones that drove away those leeches."
"So what now?" Ju Lung yawned, his entire body reclined and his feet kicked up the table. "What benefit do we get from listening to this sob story?"
"Darn you fools." The boar glared at Huifen, and began pointing at both Crane and Ju Lung. "I thought you told me these two are heroes. Am I still meant to believe that?"
"Only the bird! He's from the Jade Palace!"
"Jade Palace you say?" He turned his head again, finally acknowledging Crane from head to toe. "No wonder you come off as some rich prick, despite simultaneously looking like some runaway teenager. Nevertheless, I hope by your merit you'll understand why I'm telling you all this. But since you all generally seem to have the attention span of a fish, I'll tell you the most important detail."
There's going to be an uprising. It's only a matter of time before our angels, The Wokou, leave us. The Wokou have been supplying us with stuff for war. Swords, cannons, booze —you name it. There's an underground network for it—it's a large one, not too hard to come by of course, since they need the entire city in with it, practically. Find some sketchy group in the corner of the streets, that's usually them."
"Thank you. Thank you." Crane bowed twice. The news of this tickled his stomach. Whether the feeling was eagerness or anxiety, he could not tell—but it was not a pleasurable sensation in any case. "We need to be headed right away then, if this is as crazy as it sounds. I'd like to crack this case quick and give my contributions back to Tigress and the others—wherever the hell they are right now…"
Crane grunted at the thought. There was so much sidedness to this world that it made sense it was a sphere. Who knew if he was even dealing with the same messed-up conspiracy as the five. To not be able to regularly communicate with them was another massive problem on its own… he meant to let his grudges about this inconvenience go, as it wasn't important now, but it began chafing the two hemispheres of his brain together, starting a raging fire. He finally exploded at Ju Lung. "I still think it's a mistake for us to all split up like this. How am I supposed to know if anything we're doing right now will actually help us?"
"Ha!" Ju Lung let out. "If it's any consolation, we'd all instantly know we're all going down the right path if we do happen to unintentionally bump into each other."
"Yeah, I don't really think that holds any statistical truth. Even so, that takes luck."
The bear shook his head. "You really don't have trust in me, Clucks. But you sit with a logical genius. I know the risks and the rewards of everything. Every decision we've made so far is done with calculation. Do you wanna know how I got my left hand cut off?"
"Sure, why not." Crane felt like wasting a few seconds.
"I got my finger stuck in a finger trap. So I cut my arm off. The ratio of risks and rewards, Clucks—it's an important thing."
AN
I really feel like this chapter stagnated in relation to its word count. Almost 9k words lol.
I had a hard time with the dialogue and introspection here. I feel like character reactions to certain events just didnt match. I would love some feedback on them!
Thanks again to the Dragon Chronicle for beta reading my story. Also thank you to all who reviewed. I am blessed with genuine support and thorough criticism. I admit that it may take some time to apply some of the advice (took some time to make Ju Lung finally less edgy lol), but they nonetheless are fully considered. Finally, eternal thanks to Tydrags for the cover art!
