Hi guys!
So this is the chapter you've all been waiting for! I hope it's okay because I didn't have much time to check for mistakes and all that stuff… But here it is!
I do not own Kung Fu Panda
Chapter 12 – West
"Why are you trying to hide?" Proelio asked and looked at Tigress with a curios glance, "I mean it's not like there's anything wrong with being who you are." They were both lying in the grass and had been talking for a while now. Tigress smiled and answered: "I don't understand what you want me to be. Shall I be a warrior?" Proelio shook his head. "No," he said, "I want you to be like me. Like a tiger." He smiled at Tigress and she felt… happy.
Tigress opened her eyes to see Po lying in front of her, he was still sleeping. She immediately sat up and looked around. Had she just been dreaming? It just felt so real, but now she couldn't even remember anything else but the happiness that she had felt.
She looked around. The sun was setting and everybody was still asleep, except from her and Master Proelio. He was leaning against a tree, watching the sunset. Didn't he ever sleep? He actually looked tired, he wasn't smiling. He just looked like he was deep in thought. Tigress examined him without smiling either. He didn't even notice her. Was he looking nervous? Or maybe he was sad?
"Good morning, Tigress," Monkey said and yawned while sitting up, "Slept well?" The others were also about to wake up. Tigress looked at Monkey and nodded. Yes, she slept very well.
"Good morning students." Tigress looked at Master Proelio again. He was now standing in front of them. There was something fake about his smile or maybe it was just Tigress' imagination. "Are you ready to continue?"
They all shared some bread, except from Master Proelio who wasn't eating at all, took their stuff and started walking. The male-tiger had told them that they didn't have to walk for long before they would reach the western group's hiding place. And as he said, when they only had been walking for some minutes, he stopped in front of a huge cave which wide entrance showed some broad stairs leading to under the ground.
Master Proelio turned his glance at Tigress and the others. "Okay here's what we do," he said without smiling, "The six of you walk down the stairs and attack the bears."
"Okay! Wait… we just walk down and attack them?" Po wasn't the only one not to like the idea. "You said that we have to be very careful," Monkey said and Viper continued: "They are too many for us to handle."
"They would never expect us to attack them straight away. And that's to our advantage," said Master Proelio and was now smiling cheerfully, "It's the perfect plan."
"It's not even a plan!" Tigress sneered at Master Proelio. She couldn't believe that he had dragged them so far for nothing. He was actually trying to convince them to do something that was the certain death, when they could be sensible and come up with a real plan.
Master Proelio turned his golden eyes at the feline and asked: "When do you learn to trust me, Tigress?"
"Why should I trust you?" Tigress said, "And what are you going to do in that plan? I didn't hear you saying anything about you fighting!"
"I'm also going to appear in the plan," he said with a smile, "You're just not going to hear about it until it's relevant."
Tigress was about to say something but Viper gave her a glance who told her not to fight with the male-tiger now. The feline sighed but stayed quiet and Master Proelio continued: "Okay, let's do it. Good luck."
"Good luck is exactly what we need…" Tigress mumbled but the master didn't hear it or maybe he just didn't want to answer. The students slowly and silently walked down the stairs: It was dark especially because it was midnight, but Tigress eyes were use to it. They continued walking and Tigress was surprised that the hiding place was so deep underground.
And finally they stopped in front of a huge gate. They looked at each other and hesitated before opening it.
It was like time just froze. On the other side of the gate, there was this huge room with stones and rocks as walls, floor and ceiling. Along the sides, there were giant boxes, ten feet tall. But what Tigress was looking at was the fifty bears that starred at them with surprised glances.
Xi was the only one of them to move again after some long seconds. "Attack!"
And so they did. The bears grabbed their swords, axes and other kind of weapons and ran towards The Furious Five and The Dragon Warrior. Tigress' friends accepted the battle and attacked the bears. Crane flew through the room towards the bears in the back with Mantis running after him on the ground, Viper was handling five, struggling one of them and Monkey and Po fought as many bears as they could without letting their own guards down. Tigress was about to help her friends when a white bear who must have been twice Tigress' size stood in front of her with a spiked mace as weapon.
He swung his mace but before it had time to swing in a full circle, the tiger was on the other side of him, kicking him into the wall. Waiting for the white bear to attack again, she dodged to avoid another bear's fist. The two bears, who had decided to cooperate, were now focusing on hurting Tigress as much as possible. The white bear had a wound on his right cheek, probably from a rock in the wall.
Tigress dodged yet again when a sword from another white bear joined the others. She hit the second bear in the face right before a clenched fist in the stomach, forced her to get on her knees. A foot hit her face and she fell to the ground, now lying on her stomach. While gasping for breath, she managed to turn on her back, narrowly escaping the mace's spikes.
"Come on, kitty," the white bear, who clearly was angry because of the wound, said, "Don't ya' wanna play?"
The sword's sharp blade was hurrying towards her but she quickly avoided it with leaping to her feet. She dodged when the sword came towards her again but this time she also managed to grab the sword around its blade and kick the second bear around from her. The pain from the sword's sharpness had her letting go of it but promptly grabbing it with the other hand, holding around the hilt this time.
"I only play to win," she said right before the battle continued. Not that it was any easier now when she had a weapon; the fourth bear came, with swords to everyone who needed it. Tigress fought as good as she could but it didn't take long before the mace was hitting her shoulder, putting it out of joint and leaving it with a deep wound.
Tigress took a few steps backwards but the bears kept on moving closer and closer to her. She tried to put her shoulder at its place but the pounding agony that went from her shoulder down to her tingling fingertips, gave the tiger an awful headache and made her feel weak and hopeless. And then she felt it.
This kind of pain wasn't from the bottomless wound on her shoulder or the fatigue of fighting and fighting. No, this uncomfortable feeling felt like a thousand of dead hands crawling on her skin, into her body. And this feeling was worse than ever before.
With tears in her eyes, Tigress cast a sidelong glance at her friends. They weren't handling it very well. Monkey was lying up against the wall with nobody noticing him or the fact that there was a huge hole in his stomach showing blood and flesh. Crane was fighting to protect his friend, Mantis, who was sitting on the bird's shoulder exhausted after hours and hours of battle. Viper and Po was handling ten bears at once, or at least they were trying. Where Po's fur should have been white, it was now red. Tigress wasn't sure if it was his or another's blood. But her friends had done a good job until now; actually about fifty bears were lying either dead or unconscious. Not there were only 150 bears left…
Tigress looked at the bears again and tried to focus but all the screams and loud sounds made her confused and everything else was just blurry. The white bear's mace was heading towards Tigress again and she dodged. It was about there, she remembered some of Master Proelio's words:
"Accept that it's there. Accept that noise will always be there. Noise is a part of the life and you have to accept the life."
Tigress avoided another sword and looking around for some sort of hiding place where she could be without anyone having a chance to hurt her. While walking away from the bears, she saw it; one of the giant boxes weren't completely up against the wall. There was about two feet space behind it where somebody – in this case, a tiger – could hide if necessary. Tigress made a roundhouse-kick, reaching the second bear's face as a distraction. And then she ran into the battlefield. Many enemies saw her as an easy target and tried to harm her, but she jumped past them and ran even faster, using her very last powers. And finally she was there. She squeezed in so she now was wedged between the box and the stone wall, which she could feel up against her back.
She looked to her left seeing two bears who were trying to squeeze in. But they couldn't; the bears were too big to fit in. Instead they started yelling at her calling her "weak", "scared" and "pathetic". Instead of surrendering to the anger and jump out again, Tigress closed her eyes and started to breath slowly. She listened to the bears scream and the sound of metal meeting and after some time it actually felt tolerable, like she was use to it. Actually it would be weird without this noise. Tigress began to relax and suddenly everything was quiet. There was only the feline in a non-existing world with nothing. The dead hands crawled away from her again and a shiver ran down her spine with relief, just as she could feel the strength growing inside of her. She opened her eyes. She was back in the real world, with scream and agony. But now, the noise didn't bother her. It was accepted.
"What's the matter, Kitty? To scary fo' ya'?" the white bear didn't say anything else because now he was lying lifeless on the ground with his friends right next to him. Tigress stood next to them, surprised over how fast it went; even she didn't notice what was going on. Then she took a deep breath, continuing into the battle. On her way, many bears tried to attack her and because of that, Tigress left a track of bears lying on the floor with blood around them.
It didn't take long before she was standing next to Po and Viper. No bears were attacking them anymore and Tigress was gasping and out of balance. Her friends weren't fighting either but were looking at Tigress with stunned glances.
"Go… help Monkey," Tigress managed to said and sat down for fear of fainting. Her friends nodded and hurried out of her sight. Tigress tried to look around but everything was foggy and simply colors. Mostly then color brown or red, but suddenly something black stopped in front of her. When the shape started talking, Tigress realized who it was.
"You have so much power, my striped feline," Xi said as he raised his knife, "It's such a shame that you don't know how to save some for the very last battle."
Tigress quickly stood up, gasping for breath and took a step backwards. Xi hit out at her and she barely had time to avoid him. She kept on stumbling away from Xi, she was too drained for energy to turn around and run or even fight back. She looked at her friends and saw that Po was hurrying towards her to help her. But someone put a hand on his shoulder to make him stop. Master Proelio was also looking at her without smiling but still with a satisfied look in his eye.
"Focus, Master Tigress. Or you'll just get hurt," Xi said in the middle of a hit that Tigress almost didn't avoid. Tigress tried to focus but couldn't stop thinking about Master Proelio stopping her friends from helping her. Why would he do that?
The knife reached her, leaving a wound down her arm. She pursed up her lips trying to ignore the pain and kept on dodging and jumping away. But she felt more and more exhausted until she almost couldn't stand on her on feet. She was about to faint but someone grabbed her before she could fell to the ground. She looked up and saw Master Proelio. The male-tiger grabbed his knife – it was the one he had stolen from Xi back in the forest.
"Proelio?" Xi wasn't smiling anymore; actually he looked scared as he said: "You told me that you wouldn't try to track me down!"
"Well, that's not entirely true, West," Master Proelio said as he let go of Tigress, "I told you that I wouldn't track you do down and kill you. There's a huge difference"
Tigress didn't remember Master Proelio and the bear-leader fighting. It felt like it only took some seconds before Master Proelio was holding the bear who barely was breathing.
"Kill him, Tigress," Master Proelio said and the gloomy glance he had, made Tigress coming back to the reality. She grabbed a sword that was lying on the ground but hesitated as she asked: "Why can't you just do it?"
"Because I promised him and I'm a man of my word," he said and when Tigress still didn't do it, he sneered angrily. "Do it, Tigress!"
Tigress stabbed Xi as hard as she could. She had killed before but never like this; this made her sick and new tears ran down her chins as Master Proelio let go of the leader, who as the last bear, fell to the ground. And then everything turned black.
When Tigress woke up, everything was black and silent. Though she could hear someone moving, she couldn't see the person. It actually took some minutes before she realized that she stilled had her eyes closed.
"Tigress, are you awake?" Master Shifu must have been to one to move and Tigress sat up while opening her eyes. She nodded and looked around in the room that she recognized as her own. It was dark and it was night.
"How long have I been sleeping?" Tigress asked just as she remembered something else: "Is Monkey okay? And how about Mantis?" Her Master didn't seem to be upset so she immediately calmed down.
"The others are doing just fine. Because of you," the red panda said, "I heard that you fought over hundred bears by yourself. Is that true?"
Tigress nodded but added: "But it made me lose more power than I gained." It was probably also the reason why she fainted. Tigress remembered Xi and his words and a shiver ran down her spine.
"At least you had power enough to slay the bear-leader," Master Shifu said and Tigress nodded again as he continued: "You need to rest. The others have been asleep for a while now and Monkey is healing very fast, so you don't have to worry about them anymore."
"I need to talk with Master Proelio," Tigress said and was about to stand up but Master Shifu's glance stopped her. "No, you need to sleep. I will go talk with Master Proelio about the battle. Goodnight Tigress."
Her Master turned around to walk out of the room but stopped when Tigress quickly asked: "Where were you those days when you weren't at the palace?"
"I was visiting the orphanage that Master Proelio was living in when he was a cub," Master Shifu answered, "I was trying to find some missing information about him. But that's none of your concern. Goodnight."
Tigress looked surprised after him but then she lied down in her bed. She didn't know that Master Proelio had been living at an orphanage. Actually she didn't know anything about Master Proelio. She closed her eyes, determined to not think about Master Proelio tonight. Everything was okay again; the bears had been defeated and she could now almost find her inner strength again. But still, something told her that this adventure was far from over…
A/N: Soooo this is the ending of chapter twelve and the ending of part 1 – West! I hope you enjoyed it, because if you did, I can be happy to tell you that this has only been 1 out of 4 parts of the story about Tigress and Master Proelio. There will be many more chapters filled with action, drama, fear, hope, happiness and maybe even some love ;-)