Su was aching all over by the time she finally, finally reached the final damp, wooden rung of the ladder and climbed out onto the surface. She stepped away from the pit, rubbing her arms and stretching her legs, glad to be out of there. She pursed her lips as she brushed off the worst of the dirt on her clothes. Even if they weren't what people usually wore around here, she liked them. They were the one thing she had liked about that room she'd been stuck in. The only thing worse than the dirt was the scrapes and cuts on her paws and wrists from where the ladder had been splintered in some places. They stung, but at least she wasn't having tummy aches and headaches anymore. That and her tears didn't come out red anymore when she cried. Actually, she'd heard the creepy hornet and the panther lady talking about that outside her door. Something about the redness theoretically being a physical manifestation of something spiritual going on inside her body. Su hadn't understood what that meant.
"Viper!" She called out into the dark forest, even as another voice in her head told her that Viper and the others were better off without her. She had already caused enough trouble.
But a third, more mature voice pointed out that Viper could be seriously hurt. Su had gotten really, really lucky when she'd fallen into that pit. Viper, even if she was a grown up, might not have been as blessed. "Viper!" Su said, growing more afraid by the second. Not just for Viper, but she was all alone in a dark, empty forest. Little kids should not be alone. They could get kidnapped by bandits, eaten by monsters, and end up hanging upside down in a stupid pit.
"M-missus Viper!" Where was she? Had she broken anything? Was she bleeding out her eyeballs? Had she fallen down a pit too? Maybe she was okay, and was looking for Su right now. It was no secret how much Viper liked Su. Something to do with Su being like her little sister. Su liked Viper back. She was pretty and really nice, no matter what the snake-haters said. Su recalled the fond memory of that time a kid had tried teasing her outside the fan clubhouse. Being called fat hadn't hurt as much as she thought it would. Her coin being called stupid had annoyed her. Taunting her for spending all her time with a no-legger had only confused the heck out of her... until Pong told her what the word meant. That was the day the Su-ker Punch was given its name.
"Viper!" Su called Viper's name again and again as she stumbled through the forest.
Hei Nuwang... Izumi... Sutoraiki... Long Feng... Sao...
The names of those horrible people she'd seen or heard of came to the forefront of her mind. At the same time she imagined what they would do if they found Viper, her mummy and daddy, and the others. Sutoraiki had been considering making her parents his next test subjects before he was sent to the other place. Izumi had never stopped fantasizing about killing Viper since she smashed her face into a mirror. If any of those monsters, those evil jerks who didn't care who they hurt as long as they got what they wanted, got to Viper and the others before she did...
She continued on through the forest, desperate to find them. That would be the first step to fixing her mistakes. From there she would do what Po always does and figure it out as she goes.
"Mommy! Daddy!" Su cried as she pushed her way through some thin bushes. "Mommy! Mo-" She tripped in the dark and fell forward. There was a splash as her bloody paws and knees hit water four inches deep. The ground was soft beneath the water, so the fall didn't hurt her. Still, Su couldn't help but be miffed that even after months of training, she was still falling over things. "Stupid trippy legs." She muttered, but her anger didn't last long as the coolness of the water seeped into her body, numbing the stinging and the soreness. A little smile of relief grew on her face, and she had to force herself to stand up.
When she looked down at her soaking wet paws, all the cuts and scratches were gone.
Su tilted her head, puzzled. It had happened again.
The last time, she'd been sitting in a dark, damp cell, lonely and scared. She'd scraped her elbow very badly on the rough stone wall on the same day a fierce rainstorm had sent water trickling in the cell. Predictably, Su had gotten wet. Unpredictably, the scrape shrank and vanished.
Nothing would have come of it, except a passing guard witnessed the whole thing. The next thing Su knew, she was in the room next to the evil hornet's lab, even further away from her parents.
Su blinked. Something about her brain was different. "Order." She said.
Nothing. Her body didn't fill with rage and thoughts of bloody revenge. She hadn't really thought about it until now, too scared for herself, her parents and the nice masters, but that dark part of her that threatened to rise to the surface each time the Children of Nuwa were mentioned was gone.
She heard the sound of dirt being crushed underfoot. Fear got the better of her and she crawled into the bushiest bush she saw. She curled into a little ball. Keep still, as Shifu and Viper had told her. Keep stilll...
She heard more footsteps. More and more. Coming from behind her. There was a whole group of them. Were they soldiers working for the bad guys? Were they looking for her?
Su couldn't bring herself to turn her head and look. It could be her mummy and daddy, but if it wasn't, she didn't want to be captured by those people again. It was cold inside the bush. The dirt she was lying on was staining her clothes. Su released a shiver she couldn't suppress, and the bush shook with her.
Oh no.
Some of the footsteps were getting louder. Closer.
No, no, no, no... please let it be daddy, please let it be mommy...
She actually felt some of the little branches behind her being shifted.
Someone shouted a bad word nearby. The branches went back in place and the man who nearly found her stepped away from the bush. There was shouting and weird noises. What was going on?
"Master Boar!" Su's heart leapt when she heard her mother's terrified cry. She uncurled herself and started to crawl out the bush, but her coat got snagged on a thick branch. There were more shouts, her mother cried out again.
"Viper! Everyone, run!"
No! Don't go!
Su reached behind her and pulled the branch off. More hurried footsteps, growing fainter. They were being chased. By the time Su was out of the bush, she was alone again.
Su nearly started sobbing, but when her eyes fell to the ground, she saw a weird thick line along the ground, like someone had been dragging a big sack. Her eyes followed the line until they saw a shape on the ground some distance away. She made out a pair of tusks and a bag stuck on a thick dark arm before the shape started receding into the darkness. Was that Boar? And was he being dragged?
"Wait!" Su dashed after him and whoever was dragging him through the forest. She had the legs of a child, however, and the sound of the people she was chasing was growing steadily fainter.
"Boar! Mister Boar!" Neither Boar nor the stranger answered. Was it really Boar she had seen? Was the person dragging him a bad guy? Was she running towards her parents, or away from them? Even so, it was either this or be alone again, so Su didn't stop running.
Boar and his captor were growing hazier and hazier in the darkness, leaving only a faint outline for Su to chase. Eventually they vanished completely, but Su still had the marks on the ground. Just as her legs were starting to feel like lead, she heard a clatter up ahead. Then she found herself running up to a big hole, where the drag marks ended. Several feet inside it was the bag, fallen from Boar's arm. It had fallen open, the contents strewn everywhere. She saw biscuits, a box, some small weapons and a tiny unlit lantern.
Su looked into the cave, more scared than ever. It was much darker in there than it was outside. "Hello?" She called. No-one answered. She really, really didn't want to go in there, but if this was where her parents, Viper and Mister Qiang had run off to...
"Boar?" Su very slowly made her way into the cave. She went in eight steps when a sudden pain hurt her eyes. She shut her eyes and rubbed them until the pain went away. When she opened her eyes again, she noticed that the darkness had thickened more than ever, and the only way she knew the bag was in front of her was when she nudged in with her foot.
She bent down, found the lantern, found the matches, and then she had a little red light. There was a crumbling sound behind her. When she turned, the cave mouth was gone, a dead end in its place. "What the heck?" She turned back round to face the impenetrable darkness ahead.
"Mommy..." Su summoned all the courage she could muster and started walking.
It was the secret passages in the Himalayan fortress all over again. Everywhere that wasn't cast in the light of her lantern was pitch black, and the tunnel seemed narrower than it did before she stepped inside it. It was so confining it was horrible, and the only sing that Su wasn't suffocating was the sound of her own heavy breathing. To top it all off, it was freezing. That time she was being chased by her would-be-kidnapper, but this time was even worse. This time she had no idea whether or not she was truly alone, if her parents were still alive, or if she would ever get out. She imagined all sorts of monsters hiding in here, the ones that looked monstrous and the ones that didn't.
Su turned a corner and bumped into some wooden sticks that toppled to the floor, thankfully not making too much noise. When she held her lantern out, she saw picks and shovels. Was this a mine? She stepped over the fallen tools and continued on.
Su thought she heard a very faint hiss every now and then, but other than that it was utterly silent. "Viper?" She called every now and then, but if Viper was here she said nothing.
She turned another corner. The ground here was dotted with little puddles. The tunnel walls were covered in deep, big scratches, and were dripping wet. How deep was this mine? Where was the way out? Where were her parents?
A hoofed foot entered her little ball of red light. Su's paws trembled as she slowly made her way along Boar's still body. When the lantern revealed his face, Su's breath caught in her throat. Her mouth fell open and she backed away. She was going to get nightmares from this, she was certain of it.
The person who had dragged him could have done this... if it even was a person.
Just as Su was thinking about running back the way she came, she heard Viper shout farther down the tunnel.
"Viper!" Su sprinted past Boar, going right through the puddles in her determination to get to them before she lost them again. She rounded a corner, then another, until the walls and ceiling disappeared and she was in a cavern.
Viper yelled again from somewhere at the other side. "Viper!" Su kept running, only stopping when she saw a sleeveless coat on the floor. Her lantern and eyes travelled upward, as she thought of how the coat looked an awful lot like the one her- "KYAH!"
Su leapt back with a scream that tore at her throat. Her father, her still, lifeless father, was hanging upside down right in front of her. Feeling sick, Su took a step forward, but when she saw the red stains covering his body she staggered backward, screaming and sobbing.
Nonononononononononono... no! No, daddy, noooooooooo!
She stopped screaming as her voice failed her, her mouth opening and closing wordlessly and her eyes wide as teacups.
Footsteps. Coming from behind. Su slowly turned round.
A monster. A monster the same height as she was, with lidless red eyes and a toothy maw that released a shriek that brought back Su's voice. The little girl screamed like she had never screamed before. She turned to run away, and found herself facing a taller monster reaching out with bloody claws. Su threw the lantern in its face and dashed back the way she came even as more monsters emerged from the blackness. She couldn't, wouldn't stop screaming. She hit a shiny, scarred wall, the tunnel gone just like the entrance. She screamed and swore naughty words. These monsters had killed her daddy, killed Boar, and were going to kill her too. She ran along the wall, finding another tunnel just as a pair of clawed hands grabbed at the collar of her red coat. Su shrieked and she pulled her arms out her sleeves, escaping into the other tunnel.
In her panic she ran right into the grasp of a monster a head taller than she was. She punched it in the face and wrenched herself free, and at the same time her leg hit a big rock. She fell face first into a shallow puddle, her head hitting the ground with a bang.
All sound disappeared in an instant, leaving only a soft ringing in her ears. Su gasped silently, half in and half out the puddle, feeling something warm trickling past her eye. Beneath the ringing was a horrible shrieking. She turned her throbbing head, saw the monsters coming down the tunnel, and tried to crawl. Her limbs weren't working properly, and she only reached two feet before several claws grabbed her legs. By now Su could hear her own screams as she was dragged back and surrounded. The headache was gone but she was feeling light headed. One of the monsters reached for her. Was Su's brain broken, or were those claws turning into hooves?
The last thing Su remembered was their red eyes turning to white.
