Hey there again!

another chapter is up, and the journey continues

Making the Cut
Chapter 8
Darkness before Dawn

I was in a bizarre labyrinth of forest trails. I wasn't sure why I had come back if I had just gotten out of it. Shifu suddenly appeared next to me. I was about to ask him something when he said "Why aren't you running?" I immediately ran blindly through the trail's twist and turns, Shifu constantly by my side saying stuff like "Hurry, you're running out of time!" "Why didn't you bring the Sword of Heroes!" I was unsure of what I was trying to do, but I knew it was something important. I rounded a corner immediately running into a wall of silver fur and muscle. Tai Lung's eyes smiled wickedly at me. "Miss me?"

My eyes opened. My body, sweaty as usual after a a dream like that, felt like it was gripping the hard dirt ground.

My eyes darted around frantically trying to discern anything familiar.
The fire had died down to glowing embers. I grabbed a few pieces of wood at hand and threw them in. More fire more light. More light more...

Calmness? Sanity?

I could sure use one of them

I leaned forward toward the fire and blew into the re-growing flames. The glow of the embers intensified with the jet of air. The twigs began to crackle and curl from the heat once again.

I glanced over at the base of the oak tree where my backpack sat just visible in the wavering light of the fire.

I swore I'd never do this again.

With that being my concluding thought, I padded over to my bag and pulled out a piece of paper.

In the Darkness

Darkness presses all around
My shelter of light on the ground
While the flames flicker in the wind
I know eventually they will end
But where will that leave me?
What will be my destiny?
In the darkness where is hope?
Will I be left to only mope
Over the many things I've lost
Crippled by my own exhaust
This journey can't be done
For it has only begun
These thoughts come and pass by
While here in the darkness I lie

Jo Dakota Crevan
X. T. G.

The scratching from my pencil ceased at the final period and I sat there in silence blending in amongst the silence of nature.

For the first time on this trip I felt alone. I'm surprised it took this long. I was a stranger in a strange land with out a single person on my side.

There were times before like this. The times before I came to Jade Palace, when I spent my days excluded from everything. When I was shut out by the kids in the streets. Wondering what made it so hard for me to experience the same as others. wondering what made me so different. I hated being different. Always in the Shadows and never in the Spotlight. There were days I prayed desperately for this seclusion to end.

When ever Master Shifu told me I was going to live there with the Furious Five and Po, I felt like all those days were behind me.

Here I was, though, isolated again.

Isolation can get you at any time
but only if your alone

I shook my head. Now I'm just thinking nonsense

I set the paper down next to bedroll and laid down to sleep. A young badger sleeping alone in the wilderness miles from anyone.

The sun was fully up by time I was awake. The canopy of branches had blocked a good deal of the sun. It was that shade that had kept me in a longer sleep.

It must be nearly 10 or 11. I got up groggily with the enthusiasm of a rock. I had intended to start earlier than this. Time was everything now. It was already the second day. Actually it's the second day since I left, but third day since they were captured.

The fire was now out, the torpid remains of it sending up a stream of smoke twisting in the air like a phantom snake.

As I rolled up my bedroll I saw the paper I had written the poem on last night.

I began to remember the thoughts from last night. They all seemed so incoherent in the daylight. Day light had a way of doing that; making things clear. Come to think of it, it was its main purpose.

Once I packed everything on my back again, I began the last five miles to Pearljing.

There was still no signs of the city, but the empty countryside was a breath of fresh air compared to the perpetual forest from yesterday. I was by no means one of those people who suffer from claustrophobia, but I hated feeling boxed in by the trees.

My thoughts began to turn to the masters (as they probably should). My thoughts were on the darkness so much last night that they hadn't even crossed my mind.

Where were they?

Last night when I was sleeping on the ground, they could have been sleeping in heavy shackles, if you could even sleep like that. They could be being tortured sadistically at the hands of this Keen Lee. He could be interrogating them for answers while viciously putting them through grouling experiences.
They could be on the verge of death right as I'm thinking this.

Slow it down. Don't get going to fast. Think through it logically.

There's no reason for them to be tortured. He's only using them as a ransom.

There's nothing to interrogate them about. They don't have any knowledge they'd want to know.

Did they?

Regardless I had to make it to them as soon as possible. Only once I found them could my mind be cleared of the bout between me and Shifu.

I hated the fight. Every word
Every Action.
Every unspoken thought between us.
I hated it even more knowing all that had happened between us in the last year.

The times when he had been sympathetic to my minor injuries and excused me from a day's training. When he stood up for me when Tigress lost her temper trying to instruct me on certain maneuvers. Late nights after all-day training when he made herbal tea to calm my nerves.

I couldn't let this be their end.
Not with our last exchange of words being a lashing, my last words to Shifu being "You enable me about as much as two broken legs."
The words stung to even think about
Maybe he wasn't an enabler, but he was as much a father to me as Po was a brother to me.

PO
I'd come close to losing him once before. That in itself was murder to think about. I won't let anything happen.

Suddenly instilled with power that came from nowhere, against my better judgement, my walk quickened into a run. It only lasted about about a minute, but the feeling still lived.

Maybe this journey wasn't so impossible anymore.

Just Crazy

I stopped to have a small lunch on what was left of the dried beef and bread. What must have been an hour later, I saw the first road sign all morning. "Welcome to Pearljing"

Made it

What was the plan?
Find the school

I took out the map again.

The school appeared to be more or less at the edge of the city further away from the village itself. I saw on the map that the road forked ahead. One road leading to the village and the other to the school. When I arrived at said fork, I decided it would be better to keep my load light so I stashed my backpack behind a large rock near the road where I could easily come back for it later. Hopefully by time I cross that bridge the Masters will be with me. I kept my dagger still in its concealed sheath.

I followed the private road until I came to a large iron gate in a 6 foot tall stone wall.

The regal-looking letters on the archway clearly read "KEEN LEE ACADEMY, Kung Fu Training Institute."

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Stay tuned for the next chapter. It's gonna be BIG