With aching arms Po climbed onto the 'roof' of the library and pulled Tigress up with him. As she got onto the roof with him, Po looked out into the darkness and noticed something strange. "Hey, Tigress. Are those windows?"
Tigress looked. "Yes. The outside of the palace is essentially a shell."
"Woah. This is so over the top."
"Stop gawking, the library could fall any second!" Tigress dragged Po across the roof to the edge, giving them a clear view of the other sections. The one right in front, slightly lower than the library, was the entrance hall. They could tell from the spiralling tube that led up to the topmost section that was their destination. The entrance hall was too far away to jump to, especially with Tigress's leg, but below them was the tube that contained the corridor that connected the hall to the library.
Po quickly looked around for Long Feng's current whereabouts. To his dismay he did not see the tell-tale glow of the Sword of Heroes. "How about this. I jump down to the corridor and then I catch you." Tigress grimaced. "What? You're always doing it to me!"
"Po, if you miss the corridor..."
"I won't." Po said sternly, even though he wanted to throw up every time he looked down. "Okay, here I go."
Po stepped right up to the edge. He looked down at the scarily narrow tube that looked much farther away than before. He swallowed, took a deep breath, and jumped.
His stomach lurched as he fell through the cold air. The instant his toes hit the tube he rolled forward, his momentum coming to a halt as he spun back into a standing position. Po let out the breath he'd been holding, gave an unsteady chuckle, and looked up at Tigress. "Okay, jump!"
The moment Po held his arms up and nodded his head to let her know he was ready, Tigress jumped. She hit her target dead centre and the pair of them fell back onto the tube. The back of Po's head hit the stone with a smack. Tigress let out a yell of surprise at the sound. "Oh gods, are you okay?" Sprawled on top of the panda, Tigress rubbed the back of his head. Po merely laughed in response. "What's so funny?"
"It's just- It's just that that's the first time you've acted like a typical girlfriend."
Tigress rolled her eyes, stood up and yanked Po to his feet. "This is no time for levity!"
"Agreed." They crossed the tube to the roof of the entrance hall. "It's kinda weird that there's a lot of space in between these... whatever the right name for them is."
"There were a lot of rooms in the Palace of the Mind." Tigress said as they made a beeline for the throne room stairway. "Hei Nuwang probably left some out when she had the interior rebu-"
Tigress's latest awesome deduction was cut short by the untimely interruption of Long Feng leaping down in between them and the stairs.
"EMBEEEEEEEERRRRR!"
"Has turning into a demon made you blind?!" Po yelled. "She's Tigress, not Ember!"
"Save it, Po." Tigress went into her stance. "He's lost it completely."
"Really? I couldn't tell!" Po retorted, right before Long Feng lunged and swatted him like a fly.
Tigress's cry of horror followed him through the air. For a few horrible, heart-wrenching seconds he thought he was going to plunge into the abyss and never see her again. Then his shoulder hit smooth stone and he rolled to a halt. His relief was immeasurable. Even though the wind had been knocked out of him, he stood up and saw that he was on a different, larger section. He had no idea if he was on the bathhouse or the mess hall and he didn't care. All that mattered was that Tigress was now alone with the psycho. He could see her dodging Long Feng's swipes like she was dodging the swinging clubs. With her bad leg she couldn't hold out for long. Even worse, it had just occurred to him that the section he was on was slightly lower than the entrance hall, and the defence system went from bottom to top.
Po ran for his life. His only salvation was the diagonal tube that led to a cluster of smaller sections that were almost certainly the bedrooms. The clanking was getting louder. He could hear the supports beginning to give way. Ten feet from the tube, the roof vanished from beneath him.
Po pushed off the plummeting stone and flew. He wasn't going to make it. He was screwed.
Then his body hit steps. He'd fallen through the now open end of the tube and was now lying sprawled on the stairs inside.
He said it out loud, knowing that he was very unlikely to ever say it again. "I love you, stairs."
When the fierce red light disappeared and Viper's vision cleared, she found Yujin and herself in Sutoraiki's laboratory. "Don't look behind you." Yujin said as she made a beeline for a thin door.
"Why?" Viper fought the instinct to look anyway.
"Long Feng killed Sutoraiki and two guards in this very room. The bodies have not been moved yet and I need you to have a clear head."
Viper felt her eyes widen. "Oooookay. So what's the plan?"
Yujin opened the door to reveal a dark cupboard. "The bodies of Su and Nuwa were destroyed by the poison. I'm going to create new bodies."
Viper slithered forward to get a better look at the contents of the cupboard. She saw dozens of vials of different sizes. "How?"
Yujin telekinetically guided two vials out of the cupboard and set them on the table. "Hei Nuwang has been dabbling in a form of artificial reincarnation. Basically she has been forcibly taking souls from the Spirit Realm and placing them in alchemically constructed bodies. I'm going to do something similar." She went to the table and grabbed a vial. The blue chi poured from her paw into the vial like glowing water.
"You're going to reincarnate Su?" Viper asked, barely able to believe what she was hearing.
Yujin motioned for Viper to sit at the table. "Listen very carefully, because this is going to be complicated."
"I'm listening." Viper said, sitting stiff as a board on the stool.
Yujin remained standing, holding the vial with both paws. "When mother created me and my sisters, she did so by taking a part of nature and imbuing it with her own chi to bring us to life. For Hei Nuwang, it was amethyst. For me, it was the flame of a forest fire. And so on and so forth. Hei Nuwang has clearly been attempting to replicate mother's power through alchemy, but her methods are unnatural and cruel."
"So how are you going to do it?" Viper asked.
"I'm going to replicate the natural birth of a snake."
"Excuse me?"
"For decades I have studied the reproductive systems of mortals like you. Like snakes and birds, Dragons such as my mother reproduced through laying eggs. My plan is to create eggs to replicate this reproduction so Su and mother will be reborn as separate beings."
"You want to hatch Su, a panda, from an egg?" Viper asked, feeling faint. This sounded just like something Po would cook up. "Please don't roast me for this but you're insane."
Yujin ignored her. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but if we try to birth them through a womb, they are likely to recombine into one being. It's for the best that they grow separately."
Viper sighed. "Fair point. What's the pure chi for?"
"To make sure the birth goes smoothly, I needed the chi of two beings to form the bodies. I already have Po's chi to ensure that Su would be reborn as a panda. As for mother, you're the closest thing here to a dragon." Viper started blinking a lot. "The pure chi is required to create the eggs the bodies will gestate in."
"I... see..."
"There are only two more things we need." Yujin said. "The souls of Su and mother."
"... And... how exactly are we... going to acquire these... souls?" Viper said in a very high voice.
"From the flood." Yujin said. "The flood was formed from mother's body. To find the souls, we will have to go back in the water."
"... Great."
Mantis found the firepower he wanted just as Monkey's luck ran out.
Monkey had been doing the same thing Crane was doing on the other side of the courtyard, avoiding direct confrontation with the massive amethyst elephant in favour of evasion and concealment. Aside from the massive towers the courtyard was virtually empty, so Monkey found the cover he needed by running back into the warehouse tower through the giant hole in the wall and hiding amongst the crates.
The kung fu master couldn't help but feel a sting in his pride as he ducked behind a line of short crates, keeping out of sight of the elephant as it strode past, its every clanking step causing a slight tremor. Even though he knew attacking the amethyst warrior was suicide, he felt like a coward. Silently he prayed that Mantis would hurry the heck up so they could stop cringing in the shadows. The footsteps were starting to fade. The elephant was moving on. Monkey stared to sneak away in the other direction, aiming to get back out the tower and see if Crane needed assistance.
His tail brushed a piece of rubble and sent it skidding across the floor with a very audible scraping sound. The heavy footsteps stopped completely.
Oh, ripe bananas.
Monkey heard the sound of crates being obliterated and ran for it. Wooden shards bounced off his back as the elephant closed in on him, punching right through the crates like they were blocks of butter. A bell rolled under its purple foot, sending it flying forward. Monkey leapt clear just in time to avoid being crushed by several tons of precious gemstone or skewered by larger pieces of crate and fled through the hole. Back in the courtyard, he spied Crane in the middle of his own game of cat and mouse. The bird was doing fine, flying above the second elephant's fists just high enough to avoid being hit but not so high that it might give up and go after someone else. Satisfied that his friend was holding his own, Monkey prepared to return his attention to his own giant problem.
He was seconds too late. The elephant was out the hole and on him in a blink. It grabbed him by the waist and slammed him to the wall of the left hand tower. Monkey punched at the meaty fist and tried to push himself free, but he may as well have been fighting Shifu. Silent as the grave, its eyes as blank as pearls, the purple elephant raised its other fist to splatter him against the wall.
BOOM.
The next thing Monkey knew, a sparkling glowing sphere was tearing through the purple elephant's shoulders, sending the head flying and both its arms plummeting to the ground and taking Monkey with them.
Still in the dismembered arm's grip, Monkey looked up to see his saviour. First, he stared. Then he started laughing.
I'd never thought I'd see the day that Shen's cannon would be used for good.
Monkey pulled himself free as Mantis pushed the massive, smoking cannon closer. "What took you so long?" He asked, a false glare plastered on his face.
"Do you have any idea what I had to do to get this thing out of the armoury?!" Mantis's glare was very genuine. "Now shut up and help me get this thing closer to the other one!"
Mantis didn't need Monkey's help to push the cannon forward, so instead he pushed at the side with all his might. Together they were able to turn the whole weapon towards the second purple elephant. With a battle cry Mantis kicked at the back, sending it speeding across the courtyard. Running to keep up, Monkey yelled for Crane to get clear. Crane heard him, and so did the elephant. It turned around just in time to catch the cannon as it ran right into it.
There was a horrific screeching sound like claws on a rock wall. Both behemoths were skidding across the ground, leaving ragged gouges in the paving in their wake. Mantis caught up to them first and leapt onto the cannon. Monkey reached them just as they finally stopped.
Mantis grabbed the side of the massive barrel with his tiny arms and turned it towards the elephant's body. He leapt onto the barrel beside the fuse, rubbed his arms until a spark was formed, and the cannon fired.
The elephant moved its upper body to the right. The cannonball sped by harmlessly and smashed into the central building. Water poured from the hole in a torrent, rapidly spreading across the paving.
Mantis cursed and adjusted his aim. The elephant shifted to the left before he could relight the fuse. It was beginning to tilt the cannon to the side.
What they needed was a distraction. Feeling like a complete moron, Monkey leapt onto the cannon, rushed up the barrel and threw himself at the elephant's head.
"Monkey, are you crazy?!" Crane yelled from a safe distance. Monkey ignored him, punching the elephant's face over and over even though each strike nearly broke his hand.
Mantis on the other hand quickly realised what Monkey was doing. He stood frozen by the fuse, waiting for the right moment. That moment came when the elephant released its grip on the cannon to grab at Monkey. "MONKEY, MOVE!" Mantis hollered as he made the spark.
Monkey pushed himself off the elephant, his body skirting the explosion of smoke that erupted as the cannonball propelled itself from the barrel and through the elephant's head.
Monkey hit the ground and rolled to a stop. A piece of purple ear bounced off his chest. A whole tusk impaled the ground between his legs. The headless body went stiff as a statue and fell back with a final clank.
"BOOM, HEADSHOT!" Mantis whooped as he danced along the barrel of the cannon that had just saved their butts.
Crane didn't whoop, but he was sporting a huge grin as he landed beside Monkey and pulled the tusk from the ground. He brought the purple stone to his eye, his relieved expression becoming thoughtful.
"Hey, guys..." He eventually asked, looking around at the pieces of broken amethyst that littered the courtyard. "How many times do you think we could rebuild the Jade Palace with all these gems?"
