Chapter 2 - Firm

I grabbed a bowl and put some noodle soup in it and sat next to Tigress. These guys are great. Po was great as he provided optimism and an enthusiasm that was needed to ease us all.

Crane was a great friend as he had this likeability that made him easy to talk with.

Mantis was someone that while being a good friend, can get on the nerves, he just needs to work on thinking before talking.

Monkey was a more tolerable version of Mantis since he can be mature when needed and pulls pranks which were funny 60% of the time.

Viper was practically the mother of the group and I love her company since I'm grateful for her giving me a chance when I first got here. The fact that she was caring and kind made me feel okay about talking some more personal and private stuff with her since she cared.

And there's Tigress. She is pretty much my best friend. We both still share the same room and we both don't mind since we're both masters of the Tiger style and we both enjoy each other's company. She's also my usual training partner as we both help push each other to do our best, which is my prefered way of training. But there's something I haven't told her, which is that I'm starting to have feelings for her that are beyond friendship. I don't know how to deal with this, especially since she may not share the same feelings for me.

Looking at these guys reminded me of when I was at the Chow Xu Academy. When I was there, I was in a group of friends of which each of us were students of the 5 different styles taught there, 3 of us were male and the other 2 were female and we were pretty much the Furious Five of the academy.

"Hey, Luke, are you alright?" Viper asked me which snapped me out of my thoughts as I stared at my soup. Everyone looked at me.

"I'm fine it's just I was remembering something." I replied as I took a spoonful of the soup.

"What were you remembering?" Tigress asked me with curiosity.

"Back at the academy, I was in a group of friends and we were like the Furious Five at the academy since each of us were taught in the different styles taught there." I explained with a small smile on my face looking back on those good memories.

"Do you miss them?" Tigress asked.

"A bit. We all knew that we'd go our separate ways and it's been 4 years since I last saw them. Besides, I have you guys." I said. The last bit I said made me remember what that demonic looking figure said to me and then I saw a black arm in the corner of my eye which made me shiver a bit.

We all ended up in our conversations and mine was with Tigress talking about Masters Shifu and Yen, and how they treated each of us and how they were similar in more ways than one.

Dinner time ended and we all went our separate ways to spend the day however we wanted. I decided to go for a walk around the Valley and it was nice to walk around, among the citizens as they all treated me with respect and I felt calm seeing people doing their own things in harmony.

My walk lasted for a while as it was getting dark and so I walked back up to the Palace and to the barracks so that I can prepare for tomorrow's training.

I walked down the hallway and entered my and Tigress's room, I saw that she was fast asleep so I left her in peace and slept on the mattress next to hers.

Some time after I drifted to sleep, I heard whispers coming from outside the room. They sounded as though they were the Five and Po saying that they're barely tolerating me and that I'm just lucky to even live. I couldn't just believe it all as it must be the demonic figure trying to mess with me.

I decided to see who's out there and they're all still asleep. As I was about to go back to sleep, I saw the figure at the end of hallway and it made me run in fear and it chased me all the way to the Pool of Sacred Tears, time really flies when being chased. And when I reached the pool, I felt a migraine in my head and it hurt so bad that I passed out.

"You'll begin to believe and trust me." That dark voice said to me right before I fully blacked out.