Chapter Sixteen: Collision Course
The depth of the night was thoroughly evidenced by the fading light of torches, their dwindling shafts releasing drops of liquid flame to the ground. A weary patrol slowly worked its way along the edges of the Khanbaliq hinterlands; near the front of the column of lamellar-and-scalemail bedecked soldiers, the Khan's son and his sworn protector walked side by side.
"You know the first thing I'll do when I become Khan?" Zhenjin questioned rhetorically. "I'm going to centralize the armies, and avoid all of the useless clan politics."
"A noble goal for sure, kid." Gan quickly answered, moving his torch further from his face. The tiger next to him couldn't help but notice his lack of enthusiasm.
"What - you think I won't be successful?"
The leopard took a moment before answering, making sure his next words were adequately phrased. "Your father and I have fought in many wars; some thrust upon us, some of our own making... but we've always accepted the futility of the one going on in our own lands. The Khan has been wise to appease the clans thus far - some of them supported his brothers in the realm divide, and are liable to turn on him otherwise."
"Pfft. A lot of good it's done us lately." the tiger mused. "The armies should've been here weeks ago."
His torch having just met its demise, Gan let the now-useless twig fall to the ground; he habitually kept readjusting his twin shortsabers in their respective scabbards.
"Please forgive my skepticism, Jinong, but I don't expect to see the clan chiefs relinquishing their power anytime soon."
The tiger's features contorted, and he gripped the spear he was holding a little tighter.
"It'll be hard for them to relinquish anything when they're dead."
This was the kind of brashness that Gan had come to expect from the young Khan-to-be; it often made him fear for the future of the realm.
"Tough words, but you'll find backing them up with force to be harder than you think. As soon as you kill one, the rest will turn on you; and the last thing this country needs is another civil war."
Zhenjin grunted discontentedly, but offered no retort as they continued onward. A few moments later, the leopard saw his striped counterpart stop suddenly, and raised a paw signaling the soldiers to halt.
"What is it?" Gan asked in a lower tone than usual, his eyes darting around the surrounding area in search of threats. Seeing nothing in the darkened grassland, the veteran warrior listened closely for distant commotion; he heard nothing - only the wind. When Zhenjin finally answered, it was with a question of his own.
"Do you smell that?"
The spotted feline sniffed at the air, and his gaze returned to the tiger next to him. "No, I've got nothing; but your nose is better - and younger - than mine."
He couldn't hope to accurately describe the smell, but Zhenjin's instincts told him it was a particularly corrupted redolence, and it put him on edge. Nonetheless, the revolting scent faded as swiftly as it had arrived, the winds having shifted directions again.
The tiger shook his head. "It's gone now... probably nothing."
"Fire's getting low again." Crane commented, despite this fact being obvious to the three masters huddled around the dwindling flames.
Without a word, Tigress got up and headed away from the makeshift camp they'd thrown together, presumably to begin the daunting task of finding something flammable in their current wood-less surroundings. Po just kept munching on some chickweed he'd collected, attempting to fight the hopeless war of attrition with his stomach. As the tiger passed beyond the view of the masters and into the night, the bird and panda just looked at each other; Po had finally stopped chewing at the plants when he'd noticed Crane staring at him from across the fire. Not wanting the moment to become any more awkward, the bear-style master quickly scoured his mind for a subject for small talk, which - unlike stealth - actually was one of his stronger "modes."
"I wonder how long we've been gone..."
"Maybe a month and a half. Lost track of time a while ago, to be honest." Crane halfheartedly answered. "What is it? Are you getting 'homesick' or something?"
"I don't know..." the panda started, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I do really miss the little things, like cooking with my dad... dads, actually. What about you?"
"The only thing I miss right now, is my hat."
The bird jabbed at the ever-weakening fire with a stick, and silence once more overtook the two masters.
Po then recalled a question he'd meant to ask Crane for a long time. The panda had always understood that the Furious Five had actual names, but for reasons of privacy and prestige alike, had taken on monikers appropriate to their fighting styles; regular Chinese names were usually lacking in brevity, anyways. The fact that all Kung Fu masters were known by titles, and not names, only added to their legendary reputation. Even though the respectful courtesy was to not ask, the Dragon Warrior had asked Monkey, Mantis, Viper, and especially Tigress for their real names hundreds of times.
Viper had been the first to give in, as she was simply too kindhearted to see Po disappointed. Furthermore, she was the daughter of well-known nobility from the Viper Clan, and her name probably wasn't that big of a secret anyway. Next had been Monkey, who had bet this information on a dare. While the panda ended up bed-ridden for two weeks as a result of completing the challenge, he'd always believed it had been worth it. Mantis had shrugged aside his requests many times, until one day - out of the blue - he gave in with little to no resistance. In retrospect, Po wondered if the insect had simply given him some random name just to stop the Dragon Warrior from nagging him about it. Tigress had still refused to entrust him any semblance of an answer, even after all this time. Initially, she would give an angry glare or a growl; but as the months went on, his question would only illicit a frown and long bouts of silence from the feline. He'd even stopped asking her as much, as he hated to see her like that.
But Crane... Po had never asked the avian for his true name. The bird was a very quiet, private individual, who usually went to his room after training and all meals. In short, instances where it was just the two of them together were few and far between. In most of those cases, Po was either distracted by something - usually one of the avian's many art forms - or more focused on the current mission. But in this moment, when they were both exhausted and run-down, the panda had a hunch that the conditions might be suitable to pose such a question.
"So Crane, do you, ya know... have a real name?"
The question did not immediately cause the avian to answer; he was trying to process why Po had just asked such an odd, highly-personal question at a time like this.
"Of course I have a real name." the bird said bluntly, despite knowing this wasn't what the panda was really getting at.
"Well yeah... duh." Po agreed, tamping down some of his chest fur to better cover his wound. "But I was actually wondering what name, specifically."
"I see..." Crane shifted his stance a little, but at last made up his mind to give the panda what he wanted.
"My parents called me Lu Xian, but I've been known as Crane since before the formation of the Furious Five."
The panda grinned giddily.
"I don't know why you'd want to do that - it's such a cool name!" Po assured, before proceeding to sound out the traditional Chinese name in increasingly unusual tones and accents.
Trying to suppress the urge to roll his eyes, Crane was about to explain that he'd always disliked his name; but hearing someone else say it aloud for the first time in over five years gave him pause. He was reminded of the one person who'd made his name sound beautiful and real... as if it actually meant something.
"Po, have you heard of Master Mei Ling?"
Naturally, the Dragon Warrior's encyclopedic knowledge of all things Kung Fu quickly made Crane's question seem redundant.
"Of course! She was the greatest student at the Lee Da Academy back in the day... but she hasn't been seen or heard from in years."
"Indeed, she hasn't - but she really was something back then... strong, quick-witted, honest, kind."
Even as oblivious as Po could be sometimes, he could clearly see a change in the bird's bearing; his eyes held a certain vim that the panda had grown accustomed to not seeing there.
"Were you two close or something?"
Crane sighed, stirring his recollection. "Mei was more the quiet type, but I got to see a side of her that nobody else did. I was such a nobody then; but she always believed I could be more. At first, I thought it was all out of pity - but that wasn't the case."
"So what was it then?" Po asked with a knowing smile.
The bird's nervous side, which had remarkably been absent up to this point, returned in full force when Po had asked this.
"I- I'd rather not speak of this." the bird mumbled, turning away slightly. Po honored his request but refused to let the conversation die, and unwittingly steered the topic in an even more serious direction.
"So... what'cha think of Tigress lately?"
"What about her?" Crane quipped, detached.
Po frowned heavily at the avian, as if to say 'come on.' "You've seen her - aren't you worried?"
"Sure I am," he conceded. "but I've also accepted the fact that there's nothing I can do to help her - not that she would let me if I tried."
Po grew silent under the weight of the bird's pessimism. Indeed, it was quiet just long enough to lull Crane into believing the conversation was at last over.
"You wouldn't happen to know Tigress' real name, would you?"
Crane's beak was half-open, about to issue another one of his rapid answers, but what happened next kept it locked in that position; a bundle of kindling had flown out from the surrounding darkness and breathed new life into the flames of the fire - the rising conflagration reflecting brightly on two golden eyes.
"I don't have a real name; I don't need a real name."
The crunching metal sound of the armored soldiers around Zhenjin, a crude lullaby of sorts, had almost put the tiger to sleep several times throughout the night. But now, he knew it wouldn't be long until dawn - he could smell it. The waist-high steppe grasses, soaked in the morning dew, gave off a certain attar at the first hint of the coming day.
This familiar natural perfume wasn't the only thing his acute snout detected - the smell from the previous night had returned. Even stronger than before, he recognized it this time. It was an essence of putrefaction, rot, and death; unfortunately, he'd grown accustomed to such smells from the time he was a young cub. Still disconcerted about holding up their patrol in the night over nothing, Zhenjin was hesitant to report his finding to Gan, who was a little ways in front of him and looking steadfast as usual. The patrol was almost through the open grasses, headed for the relative safety of the elevated dirt road that led back to Khanbaliq.
They couldn't get there fast enough; the soft, formless mud beneath the tiger's paws seemed to make each passing moment linger ever longer. The leopards around the striped feline didn't seem the least bit concerned, and yet, he could feel something watching them - rapidly closing in.
The first rays of sunlight had arrived.
After reaching down with both arms to free one of his legs from the mud, Zhenjin heard a faint whizzing sound, and looked up to notice that the soldier in front of him had stopped moving forward. Coming up from behind, he'd only gotten halfway to the leopard before the soldier hit the ground with a weighty thud... his eyes were stuck open, and a crudely-constructed arrow protruded out from his chest. It took only a split second for the tiger to process what was happening.
"Ambush!"
Further ahead, Gan turned around in time to see their party's number instantly reduced by a third as more arrows came streaking out from the grasses on all sides. Not one to crack under pressure, he instinctively began barking orders.
"Close ranks and protect the Khan's son! Archers - return fire!"
The hardened leader's words seemed to restore morale to his shocked troops at once, and they did as commanded; after firing blindly into the thick overgrowth, the oncoming arrows diminished in number, and the impromptu battlefield grew eerily quiet. The sun continued to rise, bringing the unwelcome daytime humidity with it. The Mongolian archers eagerly searched for any sign of movement, refusing to relax the tension on their drawn bowstrings; Zhenjin watched closely as Gan removed one of the deformed arrows from the nearest corpse.
"What is it - assassins?" one of the soldiers nearly yelped.
The veteran tersely inspected the projectile before tossing it aside and drawing his twin sabers.
"Worse."
Low growls started to emanate from the grass like dull, vibronic thunder; the air itself seemed to strain as a brief glimpse of black fur became visible through the overgrowth. Panicking, the nearest Mongol loosed his arrow, and it struck true - a spark that unleashed a ravenous flame of combat, hungry for death.
A multitude of ferals cut out through the weeds, some of which were immediately impaled in midair by arrows; others began entangling themselves with the soldiers, finding the gaps in their armor with small, unrefined weapons. Two of them came right at Gan, but the grizzled maven made a pair of quick slashes, and both were dead before they hit the ground. The other leopards promptly tried to shield the tiger among them, but soon became preoccupied with their individual marks. These people - these things - attacking them had horribly overgrown fur, and mephitic drool slipped from their maws. When striking, they weren't hesitating to use their claws in close combat; the mud below soon mixed with the hot, thick red of feline blood.
Using his blades with maximal efficiency, Gan was parrying with one saber, and immediately following with a death-blow from the other; determinedly cleaving through the mange-covered assailants, leaving a trail of severed limbs and entrails in his wake. The ferals were fighting sloppily, and the leopard exploited this by using one as a meat shield on several occasions. After reversing both sabers in his paws and jabbing them into the chest of what used to be a wolf, one of the savages got lucky by planting a shiv in his shoulder; he responded by turning and puncturing one of his blades under its chin and cracking through the top of the skull - but the damage had been done. The wound weakened him significantly, and virtually denied him the use of one of his limbs. Not wanting to carry two weapons anymore, he chucked his spare blade into the head of a charging lynx, effectively lobotomizing it.
Somehow still untouched, Zhenjin looked around frantically, trying to spot Gan in the frenzied close-quarters melee. The soldiers were fighting well, but still steadily falling to the superior numbers of the ferals; some of the attackers had opted to smother the leopards in the thick mud, using their weighty armor against them. There were now too few Mongols left to protect their prince, and the tiger reluctantly entered the fight. A blood-spattered feline with overgrown claws lunged upwards at him, and he blocked its arms by placing his spear horizontally as he'd been taught; his training didn't prepare him for when the deranged cat snapped its jaws down on the shaft of the weapon, splitting it in two. Improvising, he grabbed the falling blade tip and jabbed that half of the weapon into the feral's weak-point at the underarm; it ended up penetrating clear through to the spine, paralyzing the fiend.
There were now only around ten of the Mongols left; the survivors were forming a circle. Gan backed towards his remaining allies, outstretching the blade in his only good limb to ward off the advances of the crazed attackers. His spear long gone, Zhenjin drew his saber, a gold-inlaid ceremonial weapon that wasn't crafted for killing, and readied it to do just that. The more-numerous aggressors started to circle them, trying to pick off an easy kill or find a weak point. Seeing them move slowly for the first time, the tiger could see their eyes at last - such desperation they held, widened by an intense longing for some unknown ravin.
There was only a few passing seconds where the tiger could shout a question to his protector, and have a chance of being heard. He had many questions, but there was only one at the very forefront of his consciousness.
"Gan - what do they want from us?!"
The mindless brutes continued to circle. The answer to his question came at last, in between labored breaths.
"Our flesh."
This realization was punctuated by the sight of several corpses being drug away by the most desperate of the beasts. The stalemate was shattered when a canine made the fatal mistake of thinking the wounded Gan was the weak-point and leaping at him; the old leopard was tired, nonchalantly lowering to one knee and holding his blade vertically - gutting his enemy lengthwise.
Seizing on the instability of the moment, the rest of the ferals rushed in. Without hesitation, Zhenjin plunged his blade into the gut of the first wolf to reach him - the beast didn't even seem to notice as it spread its jaws wide, impulsively trying to bite his head off. As he grabbed each side of its maw, the fangs within began to tear into the tiger's paw pads. Letting out a scream of pain, he jerked with immense torsive force; there was a loud crack and the lupine collapsed to the ground, the ornate saber still lodged in its gut. Zhenjin realized he was now unarmed a little too late, as what appeared to be a manic female leopard pounced on him and brought them both down to the mud. Both of his arms pinned down, he tried to face his death with courage by roaring defiantly.
His call was unexpectedly answered - by an almost identical vocalization.
Right before the berserk leopard dealt the killing blow, something seemed to strike her from behind, and her form fell limp on top of her quarry. Exhausted, and not having the strength to push off the weight, Zhenjin passed out.
A flash of orange split its way between the ferals, dropping them like wheat before the scythe. Leaping high into the air and bringing her weight down on two nearby attackers, Gan was shocked to see a female tiger - a Chinese tiger - taking out his enemies. The lithe feline joined the Mongol survivors, and they seemed content to keep fighting without asking questions. The scene became even more surreal as a bird - which wasn't flying - and a large monochrome bear of some kind leapt among the ferals with their apparent striped ally. Like the feline, they were unbelievable fighters, and any opponent to approach them quickly hit the ground; all the while, they seemed to be using non-lethal means. Gan just watched breathlessly, blood running down the side of his face from a nicked ear, as the last of his ruthless enemies fell.
The panda was initially smiling after their timely victory, but soon took in the carnage around him, and emptied his stomach onto the ground. The bird also looked somewhat green, but the tiger just stood still, glacially sizing-up the mud-covered Mongols. As the newcomers - and obvious Chinese foreigners - adjusted to their surroundings, Zhenjin was helped from under a heap of several bodies and edged up behind to watch the silent standoff taking place.
The leopard and panda were close to each other now, and after such a rough battle, were perhaps even considering shaking paws... but old habits die hard, and a millennia of conflict between cultures is seldom forgotten. With a flick of one digit from their leader, the remaining leopards drew their weapons; the tiger and bird answered in kind by lowering their stances. However, the panda did not move. The bear stepped forth, raising his arms in a reassuring way, and Gan could see a large wound across his chest that he'd tried to hide with his fur.
Perhaps this is not their first encounter with the flesh-eaters...
"Po - what are you doing?" the striped one said through clenched teeth.
The panda began to speak without answering his ally. "I have a proposal."
A single jolt of amusement, a hint of a laugh, passed over the leopard; he was entirely committed to the notion of fighting the foreigners to the death. He was a killer, not a negotiator, and "proposals" did not interest him. The leopard knew his death would be likely in such a fight - but he no longer had many reasons to live, anyway. As he was about to raise a paw to give the order to engage, the prince behind him intervened.
"Wait - I wish to hear the large one's offer."
Po frowned at this other tiger's bluntness, but proceeded anyway. "We will come with you without a fight... if you promise to take us to see the Khan."
"What kind of deal is that? Why shouldn't I just have you killed now?"
Po breathed in deeply, and looked to his companions on either side of himself. "Trust me." he whispered, lowering their outstretched limbs with his paws.
"Because we just defeated a force that had the better of you - do you really think you can afford any more casualties?" the panda wisely observed. The Mongols began to look to each other and their fallen comrades with unease.
Gan seemed to grow angry, raising his paw once more; but the way the striped feline paused, showed he was seriously considering the offer now.
Everyone continued the standoff for several more uncomfortable moments. Wincing from the dagger still in his shoulder, Gan leaned in closer to the tiger's ear. "I advise against this."
"It's settled then." Zhenjin started, forcefully yanking out the flesh-embedded blade, at which the leopard couldn't repress a pained grunt. "We'll take you to the Khan - but I make no guarantees of your safety once we reach Khanbaliq."
Po nodded, not breaking eye contact with the Mongol prince. As the leopards began to withdraw and lower their weapons, Crane came up next to the panda to stay out of their earshot.
"I hope you know what you're doing."
Author's Notes:
- First off, sorry about the extra slow update; life kind of dropped on my head like an anvil from a damn Tom and Jerry episode
- Jinong is a specific title, reserved for the Mongol prince that is the designated heir to the throne
- So the subject of the masters having real names comes up yet again - I think the fact that Tigress doesn't have a name is just another example of how Shifu raised her completely different from Tai Lung (whose name means 'great dragon'), and is in line with the general detached temperament she's been brainwashed to have
- The idea of feral animals in the KFP universe always carries a certain intriguing quality; the versions portrayed here are not "true" ferals per se, as they were recently normal people - that due to the food shortage in the area, turned to flesh-eating, and it corrupted them
- I really wanted to juxtapose fighting between weapon-users and the unarmed combat that the masters utilize; Kung Fu is fluid and even visually impressive, the conventional warfare is erratic, desperate, and ugly
- It seems Po has improvised a way to get into Khanbaliq, with a little help of the naive and idealistic Zhenjin, who still believes in honor; unlike his older spotted counterpart, who knows how little 'honor' is actually worth in these times
- As you can probably guess, we are now on the verge of the inevitable meeting of the two "sides" in this story... which has been building for some time
- With this chapter, this fic is going to pass the 50K words mark, which is funny because this is initially how long I thought the completed story would be... and as you can see, it's far from over; thanks again to all my wonderful readers and reviewers!
