Time for the Semi-Finals of the tournament, starting with a most anticipated fight. Strap in, because you're in for a lot of fights.
Mei Ling vs. Lu
"Hey, aren't you the girlfriend of that **** Crane?" Lu called. "You should really raise your standards to someone like me."
Mei Ling didn't answer, instead just drawing her staff, a cold stare on her face.
"Ready? Let the Semi-Finals, BEGIN!" Kai announced.
Lu rushed forward with a darkness fist, only to have it blocked by Mei Ling's staff. The white tiger went in for another hit, only to receive a kick to the gut. Mei Ling then charged up her staff with water, creating multiple water spouts to knock Lu around. The tiger fell flat on his face, pushing himself up and growling.
"Alright, this is going to end now," Lu said.
He created shadow clones and sent them to attack Mei Ling, whom simply cut down each of them. "The boys back at Lee Da were more of a challenge," she said. Doing her own attack, she summoned her could to jump onto, getting the aerial advantage once again.
"Screw this!" Lu shouted, shooting some darkness energy to knock Mei Ling out of the sky. When she tried to attack, Lu went into his Spirit form, phasing through the golden cat's attacks and delivering his own massive punch.
Mei Ling went flying landing on her feet and wiping some blood on her lip. Dodging the next attack, she shot herself upward on a water spout, slamming her staff into the ground and creating a wave of water, pushing Lu back as his spirit form faded.
"Okay you *****, I'm tired of you not submitting like everyone else," Lu seethed. "So why don't you just DIE!"
Changing his energy to the max, Lu shot out his Shadow Bomb, which when fueled by his rage created an explosion so massive that Oogway and Kai had to put up a shield to defend everyone else. When it faded, Lu stood panting in exhaustion, with Mei Ling nowhere in sight.
Suddenly, the air shimmered as a cloud started to form, which reformed into Mei Ling. "No… Impossible!" Lu shouted.
"Nothing is impossible, just some things are harder," Mei Ling said. "I turned into my water form to avoid your attacks, which since clouds are water means I complete dodged your attack."
Running forward, Mei Ling slapped Lu across the face with her staff, taking advantage of his exhausted state to go all out. The tiger stumbled, then was immediately hit again and again, until he couldn't take any more and fell to the ground, defeated. As she put her staff away, Mei Ling looked up to see a cheering crowd, everyone (including the Wu Sisters, surprisingly) glad that this horrible jerk was down for the count. The golden cat smiled, then left the arena, going to go check on Crane,
Kya vs. Kumo
'If I win this fight, I move on to the finals,' Kya thought, readying her sword for combat.
Kumo, meanwhile, was doubting himself since the last battle. After what happened to Xing, he didn't know if he could continue on without control of his poison.
"Ready? FIGHT!" Kai announced.
Kya charged forward, but Kumo shot some webs, tripping her up to make her drop her sword. Kya rolled forward to catch herself, pulling out a side knife to cut her legs free. She then made a dive for her sword, dodging the incoming web shots and rolling into a standing position, sword in hand.
"Come on, this isn't even a challenge," Kya said, rushing forward and cutting through Kumo's webs. "You were the one that defeated your foes with one bite. Wat happened to that guy?"
Kumo paused, then started to tear up a bit. "Xing was an accident!" he shouted, going into his Black Widow form and charging forward. Creating a ball of webbing he threw it at Kya, the ball exploding in a web bomb. "I'm trying to control my powers, but they either put people into comas or are dead! I don't want to kill anyone!"
Kya struggled in the webbing, but heard every word the spider said. "That's why you're here, to control your powers, isn't it?" the tigress said in realization.
Breaking out just in time, Kya slashed at Kumo as he charged, getting a nice slash across his underside and losing his Black Widow form. Sheathing her sword, the tigress watched as her opponent fell to the ground, unable to move from the gash she had inflicted on him.
"Kumo is unable to battle, making Kya the winner!" Kai announced.
"Keep training, and never stop until you overcome your shortcomings," Kya said to the spider.
Toka vs. Jikan
"Come on! One more match and the finals are here!?" Toka called.
'One more fight and I'm one step closer to home,' Jikan thought.
"Ready? FIGHT!" Kai announced.
The snow leopard and fox met in the middle, Toka delivering a flurry of fists while Jikan blocked them with his speed. The fox summoned a sword, only to have it broken by Toka's Iron Fist attack.
'Okay, weapons aren't going to work here,' Jikan thought. The fox activated his time powers and ran to the other side of the snow leopard to deliver a few fast hits before restoring the flow of time.
"Woah, that was fast," Toka said. He threw down some smoke Chi to cover the arena and get his bearings again.
After getting a good distance away from Jikan, the snow leopard condensed the smoke around the fox. With a snap of his fingers, the smoke ignited, causing an explosion that sent Jikan flying. Landing on his face, the fox got up, woozy from the explosion.
"I might not be able to fight with my body, but my clones can!" Jikan shouted, though still a bit dazed from the explosion.
Creating his copies, the clones rushed Toka, using various attacks against their opponent. Toka blocked as much as he can, but eventually had to make a fire barrier to block the clones. Pulling the fire in towards him, Toka surrounded his hand in the flames and did a Phoenix Fist to defeat the rest of the clones.
"Alright, how about we give the people a show?" Toka asked Jikan. "One attack each, and whoever falls first loses."
"Sure, let's do this!" Jikan replied.
Toka readied another Phoenix Fist while Jikan created more clones, though these were more like afterimages than clones, each of then slightly displaced in time.
"PHOENIX FIST!/UNLIMITED PAIN!" the two shouted, rushing forward while delivering their attack to the other. With an explosion of power, the two were sent flying back, the attack flinging them out of the arena and into the stadium wall.
"Okay… might have used too much power…" Toka said, peeling himself from the wall
"Ow," was all Jikan could say as he fell from his hole and onto the floor.
"So… who won that match?" Kai asked Oogway.
"Master Kai! I recorded the match, so maybe we could use that?" Po offered, holding up his video camera.
"Alright. Hikari and Flying Rhino, you watch the video while we continue the matches," Kai said.
Tigress vs. Huli
"So you're Fufie's sister," Huli said.
"We've met before, when he invited you over for dinner that one time," Tigress said.
"Ready? FIGHT!" Kai announced.
Huli charged with her speed forward, giving Tigress little time to block most of the kicks coming her way. The Furious Five leader delivered a palm strike to the vixen's body, knocking her away so that Tigress could re-center herself.
"You know, it's poetic that the two women of Fufie's life are fighting each other," Huli said.
"Don't say it like that," Tigress said deadpan.
Going back to fighting, the two females exchanged a few more blows, until Huli used her gravity powers to float Tigress off of the ground. Struggling to get back down, Tigress was helpless as the vixen did her Gravity Crash technique, sending the tiger a good few feet into the ground.
"Huh, I thought it would be more difficult," Huli said as she turned to leave.
Suddenly, there was a rumble behind her as a giant pillar of fire shot out of the hole Tigress was in. Jumping out of the hole, Tigress was now coated in flames, her Chi flaring brightly with white-hot flames, forming around her in the visage of a Dragon.
"No way…" Po said in awe.
"The Dragon Warrior…" the teachers said simultaneously.
Raising a hand, Tigress sent her Chi dragon forward, wrapping around Huli and keeping her from moving. With her other hand the Dragon Warrior closed her paw, making the dragon clamp onto Huli and dissipate into flames, leaving the fox unconscious on the floor.
Kai was in utter awe, but snapped out of his stupor and grabbed the mic. "Uh… right. Huli is knocked out, so Tigress is the winner!"
Tigress closed her eyes as the fire faded from around her, though she then heard some whistling from the crowd. Looking down, she saw that her clothes had been burned off from the fiery aura she had produce, which meant she was now naked in front of the entire student body. Covering herself, she was relieved when Hikari came down and conjured up a blanket.
"Okay, I'm just going to cut that part out of the video," Po said to himself, though even he had to admit that Tigress did have a nice figure.
Cat vs. Karasu
"CAT!" shouted Lu, jumping down into the stadium before the match could even begin. "I HAVE HAD IT WITH WAITING! TODAY YOU AND I WILL MEET IN COMBAT, AND I WILL-!"
Before he could continue his tirade, both Karasu and Cat decided to just unleash their ultimate attacks onto Lu, frankly tired of his BS.
"Final Fantasy!" Cat shouted, trapping Lu into an illusionary trap.
"Elemental Slash!" Karasu shouted, creating five elemental orbs and combining them into a slash that pierced Cat's illusion and sliced straight through Lu, instantly knocking him out.
As the white tiger fell to the ground, you could see that he now had a slash across his chest, which seemed to not bleed but not heal either.
"You must really be a despicable person if my sword left a lasting mark on you," Karasu said, sheathing his sword. He then turned to Cat. "What's up with this guy?"
The cheetah scratched the back of his head. "Well, this guy has been trying to kill me for some time because of something I did in the past apparently. It's a long story." He then picked up Lu. "Anyway, I should probably get this guy out of here before he wakes up. Hope to see you guys around some day."
And with that, everyone watched as Cat left Jade Palace Academy, wondering what this meant.
"So… did Karasu win?" Saras asked, only getting a shrug from Aurora.
[***]
In the aftermath of everything, the Tournament was put on hold due to the fact that two of the students had just left and the teachers had found who the tournament was supposed to bring out.
"You wanted to see us, Masters?" Tigress said as she, Mei Ling, Karasu, Hyung, Jintien, Toka, and Jikan entered the office.
"I would like to apologize for cutting the tournament short," Kai said. "Especially to you, Hyung and Jintien. You didn't even get to have your match."
"It's fine," Jintien said, with Hyung nodding in agreement.
"The reason we brought you here is because of what we're going to do about who the winner is," Kai continued. "The winner of the tournament was going to get special training to get their Hero License, but seeing as we had to cancel it, Oogway and I decided to let all of you into this special program as an apology."
"Really? Awesome!" Toka cheered.
"However, there is a catch," Kai said. "We now have two slots open in our current school roster. I would like for some of you to go and find someone to fill these slots."
"We'll do it," Jintien said. "I bet there's some students at my parent's dojo that would love to join."
"And there a few people I can think of," Jikan mused.
As everyone left, Tigress was told to stay behind.
"Tigress, have you ever heard of the Dragon Warrior?" Oogway asked.
[***]
In the infirmary wing, Mei Ling went to go see Crane, who was recovering from his injuries, though his wing would be in a sling until it healed from being broken. Shen was also there, checking on Xing as he recovered from being poisoned.
Over in the city, Karasu had taken up his Denko disguise, watching over the city with Saras by his side. The two looked down at the Sword of Heroes, which was still embedded in the middle of the town square.
Meanwhile, Po was editing all the videos of the tournament fights for uploading. He paused when he heard someone walk into the computer lab. Turning around, he found Tigress standing there, arms crossed. Po smiled sheepishly, then gave her the tape of her fight. She crushed it in her hands and threw the scraps in the trash, watching as the panda deleted the video from the computer.
In the dorm rooms, the shake-up of the roster caused the rooms to shift a bit. Fung had been moved over to Xing's room, and Zucchi had been moved over to Rhino's room, leaving Tai Lung and Alena without roommates.
Author's Note
And thus, the Tournament Arc has ended. Sorry if it seems a bit anti-climactic, but the ending happened because of a bit of drama behind the scenes. Long story short, Supreme Divine Alpha CAT 17, the user whom gave me permission to use Cat and Lu, asked me to take Cat out of the story due to accusations against him. Now, no one who has left a review on this story has complained about him, but I respect their decision and agreed to remove Cat and by extension Lu, as he was tied to Cat and it wouldn't make sense to keep him around without Cat.
With that drama out of the way, I now need two new characters for this story, so OC submissions are now officially open again! However, let's establish the rules for these two open slots.
I am looking for 1 male and 1 female student. The male will be rooming with Tai Lung and the female will be rooming with Alena. IF YOU WANT TO IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES, PLEASE TAKE THE FOLLOWING INTO CONCIDERATION:
New Author: if you didn't have a character get in last time, this is your second chance!
Your character is not a Cat/Feline/Fox: there's already a lot of these here at KFA so I would prefer not to have any more to add diversity.
Your character is a Reptile/Bird: there are also a lot of mammals, so having another type of animal would be nice
Your character fights in a unique style: you don't have to have Kung Fu, just a style of physical combat. GUNS ARE NOT ALLOWED.
Your character has a unique personality: there's a lot of "people who like to fight" or "antisocial but want friends." Having something more unique (maybe they're a nerd or a singer) will help you stand out.
Your character fits a school role: KFA is a school story, after all. What kind of school activity/ class does your character like to participate in?
Keep it PG-13: your character can have some "risqué" things, but nothing to gory or violent. I don't need people that are psychopaths or murderers.
With those out of the way, I'll leave you with the submission form.
Name: Your character's name, and/ or the name they go by (Last name is optional but appreciated)
Gender: Self-Explanatory. Male or Female (sexual preference is optional)
Species: The type of animal your character is.
Appearance: Your character's eye color, along with a general description of how they look.
Civilian Clothes: What your character wears when not in combat. Make sure to keep the clothes consistent with your species, IE if your character us a bird then they can't wear gloves. Also remember that since this is set in modern times, your civilian clothes be more contemporary in style.
Fighting Clothes: What your character wears when in combat/ hero training. The same rules apply here: keep it consistent with their species. (This will probably just be what your character wears in their own story, or maybe not. You decide!)
Personality: What your character acts like. KEEP THIS TO UNDER FOUR SENTENCES. I just need the basics, not every intricate detail.
Combat Style: How your character fights and what weapon they use.
Special Attack: Your character's ultimate attack and/ or super form.
Character Arc: THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. The character arc is what your character wants to achieve at Jade Palace Academy. What is their ambition? Why did they join the academy?
Backstory: what your character was doing before coming to Jade Palace Academy. As with personality, keep this under four sentences.
Other: extra things I should know about your character.
I hope to see what new students will show up at Kung Fu Academia!
