Chapter 9:
Tai Lung Escapes From Prison
Meanwhile, back at Tartarus Prison, Tai Lung's plan was working to perfection. With several flicks of his tail, the snow leopard knocked the feather back and forth, turning it through the keyhole to his shell restrain. His ears flicked as the lock clicked. He had to be careful. He had waited so long for the perfect way to escape. Now it was close. Very, close.
With one final flick, the lock was turned. The spikes inside Tai Lung's shell spun out of the contraption. And after almost twenty years of being still as a statue, the snow leopard felt feelings flood back into his core.
He let out a long slow breath, his claws sprouted, and he cracked the frozen joints in his arms. It was a relief to feel his muscles again.
He clenched up his body and forced the spikes out of the shell. With a final flex, Tai Lung broke the shell off his body, only for the boulder restraints to nearly drag him back down.
But the boulder restraints were the least of his problems. High above him, Iron Will raced to the balcony, staring down in disbelief, and a hint of fear.
"Oh, no…" Iron Will muttered, only for Derpy to canter up next to him.
"What's going on down there?!" Derpy asked. However, she regretted asking when she looked down and saw the action starting on the levels below her, guards scrambled back and forth across the bridges, readying weapons.
Tai Lung tried to raise his arms, but the boulders, along with gravity's cruel hold on them, dissuaded his attempts. Tai Lung's golden eyes glared up at Derpy and Iron Will as Derpy let out a small squeak of fear.
"Fire Crossbows!" Iron Will ordered, the order carrying down to the minotaurs at the ballista.
One ballista fired a bolt like a spear. Tai Lung dodged it. More bolts fired upon the prisoner, slowly pinning him in a cage of wood. But as the fifth crossbow tried to fire, Tai Lung managed to shift his arm just enough for the spear to break the restraint around his right arm. Now that was the beginning of the end.
The Minotaur guards gaped in horror, unable to do anything other than stare as Tai Lung ripped the other chain on his left wrist free, and snarled up at the guards.
"Oh my…Tai Lung Is Free! I must tell Master Luna about…" Derpy shouted, shades of panic entering her voice. Before she could finish and run off, Iron Will seized her by the neck.
"You're not going anywhere and neither is he!" the Prison Warden yelled.
"Um… okay?" Derpy squeaked, as Iron Will turned to the elevator operators.
"Bring it up!" He ordered.
The wooden elevator lifted into the air, leaving two of the guards down below.
"No, wait! Bring it back!" One of the Guards said.
Tai Lung watched in amusement before his enhanced hearing picked up the click of another ballista. The guards tried to take advantage of him having his back turned to them. Unfortunately for them, Tai Lung was more than ready. Striking the spear with the palm of his right paw, he redirected it before sending it right back with a kick, destroying the crossbow and embedding it into the wall.
Glancing at the other spears with intrigue, Tai Lung tossed up four of the five spears into the air before delivering a kick to each of the spears, embedding each of them into the wall. With his path to the slow-moving elevator assured, Tai Lung cracked his neck, and used the last spear as a pole vault, launching him toward the wall. From spear to spear, Tai Lung jumped toward the elevator. His movements fairly good and quick. Making it hard almost hardvto believe that he spent 20 years motionless.
"Um… he's coming this way!" Derpy noted, trying valiantly to keep the fear out of her voice.
"He won't get far," Iron Will snarled before turning to his Minotaurs, "Archers!".
Across the highest bridge, Iron Will's guards fired a slew of arrows, turning the sky above Tai Lung red. Tai Lung glared at the raining arrows and quickened his pace. Making it to the final spear, he spun around the shaft before launching himself at the elevator.
For a split second, it looked like he'd be too late. But when the arrows coated the upper part of the elevator, the snow leopard was nowhere to be seen.
Without hesitation, the Minotaurs guarding the top of the elevator swung their axes, severing the chain and causing the elevator to fall below. For a brief moment, there was a relief. The guards laugh and clapped their axes together in celebration.
Then Tai Lung reappeared. Without warning, he downed the two guards with a split kick. Seizing the chain and hitting the release, Tai Lung used the chain to swing out onto the bridge above.
The Minotaurs raced to subdue him, but their axes, maces, swords, and guillotine axes were no match for the physical prowess of one that had mastered a thousand scrolls of Kung Fu. With a single blow, Tai Lung even shattered a Minotaurs shield and sent him into a crowd of Minotaurs like a bowling ball, scattering the guards and giving him access to the stairs leading to the next bridge.
Two of the Minotaurs tried to hold the door shut trying to keep the prisoner from escaping. Tai Lung simply busted the door off its hinges, crushing the Minotaurs underneath. Two more guards charged at Tai Lung but he threw them both off the bridge with a spinning maneuver. One guard tried to strike Tai Lung with a mace, but Tai Lung ended up taking the mace for himself.
With a weapon in hand, Tai Lung made short work of three guards in a matter of seconds. A fourth rushed him with a roar, only for Tai Lung to shove the mace into his mouth.
For a brief moment of levity, he hushed the Minotaur with a grin, before kicking him into the air. The Minotaur didn't even get to hit the ground before Tai Lung carved through the rest of his friends and caught the silenced Minotaur. Throwing him throw the doorway and into the reinforcements those doors held, Tai Lung scrambled up to the top and gained access to the final bridge.
The Minotaurs that hadn't been down yet stood in a crowd before the snow leopard. At the head of the crowd was Iron Will, Derpy was still getting squeezed in his iron grip.
Iron Will snorted in defiance.
Tai Lung snarled in aggression.
And Derpy neighed in fear.
For a brief moment, though, Tai Lung didn't move. He paced on the bridge, gauging the Minotaurs before him.
"So…Are we dead? So, very, very dead?" Derpy whimpered.
Iron Will laughed defiantly, "Not yet we're not. Now!" He declared, turning to one final Minotaur archer with a flaming arrow. This was the last resort to do if all else failed. A very dangerous gambit.
The Minotaur archer fired… and hit a chuck of dynamite tied to the stalactites above. As the first stalactite fell, Tai Lung noticed other explosives connected to the other stalactites, fuses set alight from the first explosion heading to destroy the rest of the ceiling spikes.
A glimmer of fear briefly appeared on Tai Lung's face before he stamped it down. He rushed for the end of the bridge, but the cave spikes slammed into the stone structure, bringing down his path to freedom. Tai Lung dodged the stalactites and made a mighty lunge…
But his claws sparked off the edge of the cliff, and he plummeted back into darkness.
Iron Will roared with laughter, mockingly waving goodbye to the snow leopard. But Tai Lung wasn't out of the game yet. Looking up, the Kung-Fu master saw a group of explosives that hadn't yet gone off. Jumping up, Tai Lung climbed up the falling debris, challenging gravity for control of his fate. With a mighty leap, he launched himself off the latest stalactite to fall… and caught the still last still intact ceiling spike.
The Minotaurs and Pegasus could only stare in mute disbelief as the snow leopard began to climb the stone. The fuse burned lower and lower. Every guard yearned for it to go off before Tai Lung reached it. But their yearning was for nothing. And the fuse was still hopelessly far from the explosive when Tai Lung caught it and yanked it from the stone. Before jumping up and grabbing hold of the intact stalactite.
Using his claws, Tai Lung pulled the explosive down and plummeted towards Derpy and Iron Will, both of them with pin-pricked pupils wide with fear and disbelief.
"C-Can we run now?" Derpy whimpered in fear.
"I-Iron Will says…Y-yes," Iron Will whimpered, his voice cracking in defeat as Tai Lung hurled the explosives at them.
The doors to Tartarus had been blown wide open. Ash mixed with snow, scattering all over the area are eerily still bodies of the Minotaurs. Derpy pulled her head from the ground with a moaning cough and whimpered as she beheld a familiar pair of golden horns, piercing the ground before her.
Before Derpy could even figure out how she felt about the fate of the prison warden, a clawed paw seized her by the back of her neck.
"Oh, not again," Derpy whimpered, as she was lifted off her hooves. But this time, instead of the rough Iron Will, Derpy's eyes widened in terror as she was lifted before the cruel, burning yellow eyes of Tai Lung.
Tai Lung lifted his free claw towards her, and the Pegasus flinched. But all he did was remove a stone from her hair before setting her on her hooves. When she opened her eyes, she blinked as she found the snow leopard… smiling.
"I'm glad Mother sent you. I was beginning to think she'd forgotten about me," Tai Lung said amicably as he lifted her message bag, tapping out a flaming ember before handing it back to Derpy. He was surprisingly gentle, almost kind in a frightening way.
Derpy held her message bag to her chest, fear and relief battling each other at the snow leopard's show of kindness.
"Fly back to the Celestial Palace and tell Aunt Celestia, my mother, and all their little students… that the Real Celestial Warrior is coming home." Tai Lung requested.
Derpy nodded, relieved that she was going to escape with her life. Spinning around, she took to the air at a speed that would rival the mighty Rainbow Dash.
Tai Lung watched her go, his smile turning more malicious as his gaze centered on where she was going.