A Sense of Purpose

Chapter 3: A rocky start

Tai Lung sighed quietly. Okay, that could've gone better, he thought and let his eyes wander over the remaining fighters in the room. Aside from Master Shifu, everybody was frowning, but he was relieved to see that nobody was looking angry. A fragile peace.

It was Master Shifu's loud sigh that made him and the others focus on the here and now again. "I had feared she'd react badly," his former - and with some luck, future - Master whispered.

"Well, to be fair, she's been acting-" Po started, but froze when the remaining members of the Furious Five shot him angry glares. "Oh, come on!" the panda groaned and gestured at the door. "She's cracking, and we should really tell Master-"

"I already know, Po," Master Shifu interrupted him calmly. "She has been getting little sleep recently, and her mood is becoming more and more unstable." The red panda started to pace through the kitchen. "First things first," he suddenly muttered and hopped onto the counter. "Po, a pot of tea, please?"

"Right next to you, actually," the panda replied with a light frown. "I made some early on, but with all the betting about whether Tigress would break Crane's wing, I-" He gasped and quickly covered his mouth, as if that would somehow un-say the last sentence. Monkey groaned and smacked his forehead.

"Yes, yes, wonderful," Master Shifu replied. Tai Lung wasn't sure if he was simply ignoring the implications of Po's words or if he simply wasn't surprised by them. "Now, Po, why don't you get a chair for Tai Lung?"

"Hey, I can go and grab one myself," the snow leopard quickly offered. "Still in the unused room down the-" He stopped talking when Master Shifu gave him a surprisingly stern look. Oh, come on! We just had a long talk about trust, and now you don't even trust me to go and get a chair?

"Po, please?" the Master simply asked again and pointed at the door. When the panda had left, Master Shifu sighed again and took a small bag out of his pocket. Within seconds, he had emptied its contents - some sort of red powder - into the pot of tea and stirred it quickly. "Po is a nice guy, but he's a very bad actor," he explained to nobody in particular. "If I want this to work, I need him to believe that nothing is wrong..."

The others exchanged worried glances, but didn't say a word. Then they looked at Tai Lung, who only shrugged. Trust me, guys, I'm as clueless as you are!

"Got you a chair!" Po suddenly rushed in again, pushing Tai Lung onto the chair he was holding and only then placing it - and him - at the table.

Okay, I admit he's strong, Tai Lung thought and looked down at the chair, as if to make sure that the panda had indeed just carried him with one hand.

"Hey, you want some soup?" Po quickly added and then looked at the others, as if expecting angry glares again. This time, however, none came.

"Yes, a good thought," Master Shifu said and quickly filled two bowls before Tai Lung could reply. "Here, Po, I want you to take these to Tigress. I'm sure she'll be happy to have something to eat." Without even looking, he tossed the two bowls at Po, who caught them on his arm with surprising grace. "And take this tea with you, too!" The pot of tea and two cups quickly followed the bowls, and Po was suddenly balancing quite a load on his arms. "If she's not in the training hall, just follow the claw marks and the trail of destruction." Po raised an eyebrow, but when the others just shrugged he left the room without questioning his orders.

"Now, if you'll excuse me..." Master Shifu sighed as he walked towards the door. "Once the tea did its work, I'll carry Tigress to her room so she can get twenty hours of sleep."

"...wait," Viper remarked after the red panda had left the room. "Did we really just witness Master Shifu setting Po up to drug Tigress?"

"We did," Crane replied quietly. "Understandable, though. She had been close to her limit for quite some time, and now..." The bird gave Tai Lung a dark look. Monkey, Mantis and Viper quickly joined in.

Wonderful, Tai Lung thought and tried not to sigh. Alone in a room with four people who once fought me to the death and who will do it again if I give them a good reason. He frowned. The last time, he had been able to beat them - more or less - easily. But that had been when life had made some fricken sense! Now? Almost blasted to bits, a month of no training, and I just started to get my life back in order a few minutes ago! Make them angry, and the result won't be pretty. I need to charm my way out of this one. "Look, Stripey started it, okay?"

Monkey stood up so quickly that his chair fell over and slammed a hand onto the table.

Ohhhhhh Tai Lung! You're sooooooo smart! The snow leopard smacked his forehead. "Wait, wait... that kinda came out wrong!"

"Oh, really," a voice from below muttered, and Tai Lung glanced down to see Mantis standing right in front of him on the table.

The feline frowned. Mantis was the only one of the Furious Five he hadn't fought directly. Yeah, because he had been busy holding the bridge all by himself. Would you like to find out what his strength will do to your barely healed body? He slowly raised his hands in what he hoped would looked like a non-threatening way. "I'm serious, really! I just told her that the students are supposed to do the chores so that they can find balance. By the time I wanted to ask her where Master Shifu is, she lashed out!"

Viper and Crane exchanged quick glances. The bird finally shrugged, and Viper sighed. "Okay, let's assume for a moment that that's true. Master Shifu is taking care of her now, so there's little we can do but speculate, anyway. But we're still left with a few other questions in the meantime." She gave Tai Lung a meaningful look.

"Like what?" he asked, relaxing slightly as Mantis and Monkey calmed down again.

"Let's start with the way you're acting," Crane suggested and grabbed a fresh bowl and filled it with soup. "We didn't exactly have a meaningful conversation on the bridge, but what little we heard painted a slightly... different picture about you somehow."

Tai Lung frowned lightly, thinking about this one. "That's... kind of a long story, I guess," he finally replied.

"That's okay, the soup's hot, anyway," Crane remarked and smirked as he placed the bowl in front of the cat. Tai Lung chose not to comment on the fact that the bird had handled both the bowl and the soup ladle with his feet.

"Well... what you should first keep in mind is that I had been a student just like you before my imprisonment." He idly stirred the soup. "You know... trained most of the day, did the chores, occasionally snuck out during the night to peek into the women's bathhouse down in the village..." Monkey and Crane quickly looked away and coughed quietly. Viper just rolled her eyes and groaned. "My childhood had been about as normal as yours had been. Maybe even more normal, considering how Shifu had been more like a father to me than he had apparently been to you. Deep down, I'm just a normal kid."

"A kid who attacked his Master, who also was practically his father?" Mantis asked and gave him a look. "A kid who was considered to be so dangerous that a special prison had to be constructed just for him?"

The snow leopard let out a deep sigh. "I know, I know... I had allowed myself to become obsessed with the Dragon Scroll. Shifu's constant encouragement about how I'd surely become the Dragon Warrior didn't exactly help. I pushed myself to my limit to achieve this goal, and only this goal. Master Oogway had noticed my obsession, and I only recently realized that he had been right in stopping me. But back then, I had effectively gone crazy about this. During my twenty years in that prison, I kept obsessing about the scroll and about getting even. I broke out and once again hurt the one who had given me nothing but love all these years." His claws slowly scratched the wooden table. "I wanted nothing more than the scroll... and when I finally got it... it all fell apart. The thing that drove me all those years turned out to be nothing more than some sort of convoluted philosophy lesson."

Nobody spoke for a minute. Then, Monkey crossed his arms. "Since we're at that point of the story, why don't you tell us how you survived the Wuxi Finger Hold?"

"...isn't that obvious?" Tai Lung asked, slowly snapping out of his reverie.

"Errr... no, not really," Crane replied and cocked his head. "Granted, we know very little about this move in the first place," he added sheepishly.

"Oh yeah, I forgot that Master Shifu didn't teach you any of the fun stuff!" The snow leopard allowed himself a grin and sat upright again.

"Did he teach you?" Viper asked and gave him a look.

"You are aware that I'm the first student who mastered all of the thousand scrolls you can find in the Hall of Warriors, yes?" He crossed his arms. "Of course, I never tried it out. But I know how it works and how you do it. The concept is actually quite simple. You know how many parts of Kung Fu deal with using the opponent's strength against him, right? You exploit weaknesses, momentum, stuff like that." The four warriors nodded quickly. "The Wuxi Finger Hold takes this to the extreme. It uses your reserves against you. All the strength inside of you, the strength you need to attack, to block and even to just keep standing - it all is suddenly under the control of whoever performs the hold." He roughly mimicked the Wuxi Finger Hold and flexed his pinky. "And then... boom. All that energy is bursting free."

"Then how is it obvious how you survived?" Monkey asked and frowned.

"...there was almost no energy left," Crane suddenly whispered, and Tai Lung nodded grimly.

"The realization about the scroll had drained me." Okay, that, and the fact that I had horribly crash-landed after bouncing off Po's belly. But no need to reiterate every single, embarrassing detail... "The only reason I hadn't collapsed already was frustration that had turned into a blind rage. And even that evaporated when I realized that I had been caught in the Wuxi Finger Hold. So by the time Po unleashed it, the blast injured me badly and threw me across half the village, but I had been alive. And some part of me still clung to life, so I dragged myself into a hiding spot while everybody celebrated my death."

He carefully studied the four fighters, half expecting a remark about his survival being a pity. However, none came. "I guess that leaves only two questions," Mantis finally started. "Why are you here now? And what deal did you make with Master Shifu?"

Tai Lung leaned back in his chair and sighed. "I grew up here. All my life, this had been my home. Everything I ever held dear is here. So I figured that this would be the best place to start my life again. To give it some sort of purpose." He placed his feet on the table, keeping it at a slight distance from the soup bowl. "Which kinda brings me to the next answer: I asked Master Shifu to accept me back as a student."

"And his answer?" Crane asked, staring straight into his eyes as if looking for any hint of a lie.

"He hasn't given me a definite answer yet," Tai Lung replied, holding the bird's gaze. "I won't do any training and I won't sleep even here. Think of it as a trial period while he makes up his mind. On the up side, it means that you won't have to do any chores for a few days at least. You know, sweeping, cleaning, cooking, stuff like that."

"Actually," Viper noted and pointed at the soup bowl with the tip of her tail, "you won't be doing much cooking, I think."

Tai Lung raised an eyebrow and finally tasted the soup. "Mhhhh! This is great! Shifu finally got a professional cook? Seriously, you guys are so lucky. Back when I was a student-"

"Actually, it's still pretty much the duty of the students to cook our meals," Monkey interrupted him and grinned when he saw Tai Lung's confused look. "Let's just say that you were defeated by a panda who spent most of his life working in his father's noodle soup restaurant."

Po was... a noodle soup cook? Tai Lung stared at the bowl, then back at the four fighters, who were giggling madly now. He knew he should feel mad about this, but then he decided to just appreciate the universe's sense of humor and laughed. Loudly.

And it felt good.