Po could not have been happier to see the sun as it slowly rose into the orange sky that still shed its glowing embers. He leaned on the windowsill on the top floor of the HQ, watching the dazzling, surreal scene as behind him, Top Dog rested on his own desk. He'd blacked out seconds after Po's hitting him with a chi ball somehow broke Ember's control over him, and the panda had had to carry him into the building. It hadn't been that hard, actually, mainly because no brainwashed soldiers or citizens had shown up since the civilians who attacked him in the square had disappeared. Po had welcomed the peace and quiet that followed. It had given him time to enjoy the bag of cookies he'd discovered in a kitchen he'd taken a shortcut through, and use one of the more undamaged bathrooms. The rest of the night had gotten a bit boring, though. With Top Dog out for the count, he had no-one to talk to. He'd started talking to himself, eventually, but it was no fun compared to talking to Monkey, or Mantis, or Tigress...
Tigress.
Po rubbed his tired eyes and opened the fist he held out before him. The auburn light flashed across the Heart of China he was holding. Tigress... I won't stop until I find you. I'll save you from Ember. I promise.
Po heard a groan. Top Dog had come round. The panda turned to see him sitting up on the desk, rubbing his head. "Please don't arrest me." Po begged again.
Top Dog didn't reply for a few seconds. "I'm not going to arrest you. Whatever you did broke the connection, and I thank you for that."
Po laughed nervously and rubbed his head. "Oh great. You have no idea how much I hate prison- wait, what do you mean 'connection'?"
Top Dog blinked a few times. "It probably looked to you like Ember had brainwashed us all. It's a bit more complicated than that. Dragon Warrior, I have a jug of water and a cup in the corner. Can you get it for me?"
Po brought him the jug and cup. Top Dog poured the water and took a long sip. Po sat on the desk beside him. Kreee... the desk crumpled, and Po fell backward onto the floorboards, Top Dog rolling down the surface and landing on his belly. Po stared up at him, cringing. "Sorry."
"Never mind the stupid desk." Top Dog, before muttering under his breath, "Even if it was imported from Japan." He got up and went to his chair. Po self-consciously went for the chair on the other side of the desk with the butt-sized dent in it. Just as he was sitting down, Top Dog's paw shot out. "Don't! Just... don't."
Po slowly sat down on the floor. "So... connection. What do you mean?"
"I mean she didn't take over our minds in a conventional sense." Top Dog looked down at the cup he held in both hands. "Master Eagle told me about the sleepwalking incidents at White Fortitude. Do you remember, Dragon Warrior?" Po nodded, suppressing a shiver. "I remember having a similar experience before you freed me. I remember some strange dream in which I was in the imperial city, just like now. Except it was different. Embers were falling from the sky, and the sky was the colour of fire. A voice in my head was telling me to block the secret passage in my office so only Ember could open and close it. At first I'd refused, but then-"
Top Dog stopped. His face contorted and his paws squeezed the cup. "Then what?" Po asked, taken aback by the sudden change in mood.
"Pain." Top Dog snarled.
"She hurt you?" Po asked.
"Not my pain. Her pain. Her pain, her rage, her grief. I felt it all as if it were my own. It was my own. The connection, it wasn't just Ember entering my mind, it was also me entering hers. I felt it all. What that evil woman did to her, the hell she put her through. I knew I had to punish them. I had to make them pay!"
Top Dog's face slackened as he noticed Po's stare. He shook his head and took another sip. "I'm sorry. I suppose I'll have to visit the monks once this is over."
"If Ember hadn't sent you all to kill me, I'd feel sorry for her." Po said. He actually did feel sorry, but he couldn't let that sympathy cloud his judgement, not when China was at stake.
"We weren't trying to kill you." Top Dog said. "Ember needs you alive, so you can remember. It's why we attacked you with ice weapons. Perhaps she thought combining ice and danger would move things along."
Po rolled his eyes and groaned. "It'd be so much easier if she'd just tell me what she wants me to remember."
"She can't."
"Worst excuse ever."
"No, she can't. I've seen into her memories, and do you know what I found?" Po waited in silence. "Nothing."
"Huh?"
"You heard me. Nothing. She remembers nothing from before she awoke inside that stone casket beneath the fortress. But when she sees you, something stirs. She sees flashes of a forest in winter, and a little boy wearing a big red scarf. You are the red eye on the white peacock's tail feathers. Something about you is bringing something back, and she's not going to leave you alone until she finds out what it is."
Po had no idea what to think. What Top Dog was saying was beyond crazy, even crazier than his theory that Mantis was part of a secret society of miniature guys performing nefarious experiments to make themselves taller, a theory that was swiftly disproven with four tiny legs to the face. Yet even so, Po felt that it was possible. He himself should know more than anyone.
He swiftly decided to change the subject.
"Top Dog, it's been two months since the Valley of Peace was attacked. Have you heard anything about Master Shifu and my friends?"
Top Dog's eyes hardened. "Po, your friends are in trouble, Monkey, Crane and Mantis to be specific. They infiltrated the royal palace to try and rescue the royal family, but Long Feng used Master Mei Ling to force them to surrender. They're being held prisoner in the central hall right now."
"Not for long." In a flash Po was on his feet, and in another so was Top Dog.
"No, Dragon Warrior! Not yet. Listen to me. Ember sent a message through our connection before you severed it. She's launching an assault on the palace when the sun goes down. Your friends are not her enemy, so she will not harm them as long as they don't give her a reason to. You're permitted to use the attack as a distraction to free them."
"She's permitting me?" Po stood with his arms akimbo. "Nobody can permit the Dragon Warrior to do anything except the Dragon Warrior! Except for Master Shifu." He curled the side of his mouth. "And the Emperor. And my dad... and my dad number two..."
"Dragon Warrior, please just do as she says. It's too dangerous not to."
"Alright, alright." Po said, even though waiting was the last thing he wanted to do."
"You should get some rest." Top Dog said after a sigh of relief. "You look like you haven't slept since you got here."
"Kind of hard to when you got a crazy dragon lady breathing down your neck."
Top Dog chuckled humourlessly. "I look forward to exacting justice on her when I get the chance."
"You and me too, pal." Po's chuckle was much more light hearted. "Hey, that's something we have in common. We both like exacting fists of justice on the forces of evil faces!"
"You use fists. I use warrants." Top Dog said. "But I still intend to have Ember executed."
Po balked. "Why do you have to be so... harsh? Couldn't we at least try to imprison her?"
"Like Tai Lung? Like Su Wu? Leave her to suffer alone in some customised prison with nothing but her own inner torment? I think Ember has seen enough caskets. I know I have." Top Dog looked away, a haunted, faraway look in his eyes. Po wondered what he was thinking about, and also if perhaps he had a point. "Get some sleep, Po. When the sun goes down, there's a secret trapdoor in that corner that will take you to the royal palace."
Po found a thick wooden chair that supported his weight in another room, brought it back to the office and sat down. He closed his eyes, but it was a long time before he could get to sleep.
Shifu's inner peace had granted him many gifts. He could see light in the deepest cave. He could travel a hundred miles in less than a day, as he was doing now. If he sat down and meditated for long enough, he could feel the universe in motion around him.
Shifu reached the mountains in record time, arriving at his destination right before sunset, coming to a halt on a stone hill when he caught his first sight of the smouldering prison ruins, silhouetted against the bright red sun. "My gods..."
Ember had done this through sheer destructive power. Just from looking at the results, Shifu was once again having second thoughts about allowing his students to try and deal with her. That would be something to discuss once he found them.
Speaking of which, at least one of them was somewhere in the surrounding forest. He should be looking for Viper and the others right now, but something was telling him to go to the prison. Everything above ground was destroyed, but perhaps everything underground hadn't been touched. Perhaps there were survivors in there, prisoners and guards. It was his obligation as protector of China to look.
And so Shifu made his way to the smoking ruin, curiously not coming across any soldiers on his way, quickly finding a way in through a peculiar hole in the wall. It was peculiar in that it didn't look broken through so much as melted through.
It was a stroke of luck that he found himself in a spiral stone stairway leading downwards, one that aside from pieces broken off the steps was intact. He silently made his way downwards, keeping a tight grip on his staff in case there were soldiers waiting at the bottom. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he found only a wide, empty corridor. Even the small red panda's footsteps echoed in the vast darkness.
The corridor was as short as the corridor in the student barracks, and had only one door on each side. Shifu tried the door on his left, found it locked and kicked it down.
At once he knew that this corridor and its adjoining rooms were all there was of the underground area. This hall alone had to be half the length and width of the entire prison, and was positively stuffed with wooden shelves that in turn were positively stuffed with bottles of a wide variety of colours and sizes. Fortunately all the shelves were gathered at both sides of the hall, giving Shifu a clear view of the other side. His keen eyes caught a big black cupboard bearing a paper sign. When he walked over to the cupboard, he could read what was on it: for the eyes of the Lady Hei Nuwang and Sutoraiki only.
Shifu didn't need his instincts to know that he had to know what was in there. The cupboard was locked, but a fist through the keyhole solved that problem. Pulling both doors open, he found several more bottles, all small and identical. More than half the bottles were labelled: Waters of Oblivion, by Meng Po, and the remainder were labelled: Antidote for Waters of Oblivion. There was also a scroll with the recipe for both concoctions.
Meng Po... Shifu knew that name. She was a deity who lived in the underworld, well known for her Five Flavoured Tea of Forgetfulness. When a soul was ready to be reincarnated, they were required to drink the tea so they would lose all memories of their past life. But what on earth does Meng Po have to do with world domination? And if this really is that fabled potion, how did the Children of Nuwa get their hands on it?
Shifu took one bottle of each, knowing that the Master's Council would want to know about this. As for the recipe, he tossed it into one of the torches lighting the room so it would no longer remain in the wrong hands. He doubted that Meng Po would disapprove.
Now something was telling him to check the room on the other side. Surprisingly the other room was only half the size of the first, and the shelves were stocked with scrolls. A second black cupboard stood in the centre, and Shifu gained access just as easily. Inside was a single scroll on one shelf. Shifu cautiously unrolled it.
He had met enough alchemists in his career as a kung fu master to know when he was looking at one of their diagrams. On the fresh paper was a series of seven sequential illustrations depicting a very strange process. The first illustration was a green urn decorated with cicada imagery. The second had the lid removed, and what looked like light blue smoke rising from inside the urn. The third had a black-silhouetted shape rising from inside, as did the fourth and fifth. The sixth had the figure standing to the side of the urn. The seventh had the figure wearing a mask.
"What is this?" Shifu said to the scroll. Madness. That's what this was. All the same, he now had a better understanding of what sort of experiments the Children of Nuwa had been conducting, but it wasn't enough. He needed someone who could and would give him the answers he needed.
Shifu tucked the scroll into his robe and made his way back to the stairs. He still had a viper to find.
