Bonus Feature: Lost Souls II

Master Pang

The following excerpt is derived from a confession penned by one Master Pang You Fong, found on the last pages of his journal when his martial arts school was raided by the TPD on [REDACTED]. The journal and other evidences found in Pang You Fong's residence has since been transferred to the USDO. It has been translated from traditional Chinese to English by translators working with the USDO.

Date: 03 MAR (Friday) 1989. Morning.

The morning blooms. It will soon turn to the fateful day when I shall face a threat few men will ever face. I pen this down so that I may leave something behind. To whom may read this, convey it to the family I leave behind, and to my disciples, and their disciples.

I came to Townsville as a mere boy of five, with parents who had decided to flee communist rule belatedly. My father, Pang Yi Fong, was himself a keeper and conservationist of the martial arts, and my mother was his faithful supporter. Much of their possessions had been confiscated by the communists. They came with nothing but what they could carry, yet managed to build a middle-classed existence. I took after him, so he said, and took over his training center after he was killed by cancer. To this day, I lament my inability to defeat this insidious enemy - disease.

From then on, I had only things to lament. My involvement this fateful night had everything to do with this. To survive in a distant land with nothing in common with the one we came from - to thrive where suffering was a certainty - it involved many sacrifices, many compromises. We could never do it alone. My family and I met many acquaintances in Chinatown, people who made sure we didn't have to do it alone. People who made sure that we would make it, get our lives off the ground so that father could regain even a fraction of his glory, so that our ancestors and their wisdom still has a place in this world, and our style of martial arts live on.

Some of those people were in the Triad.

Just as father had passed on everything he had to me - both the material and the immaterial - he had passed on the people he knew to me. The unseen mark that the Triad had on him was mine to bear.

It was never a heavy burden to shoulder at first. Father's friends knew how I was like; they outlived him, and they had seen me grow up. They merely asked small things of me. I trained some of their ilk from time to time. I gave them advice. I helped new immigrants into the city, people like my parents and I who simply wanted a second chance at life. When I first started working with members of the Triad, I did not trust them. Time passed, and my mild and even kind treatment under them had changed my views of them. I knew they were part of Townsville's shadow, yet I had not seen that side of them at all. Father had deliberately kept me ignorant, and so did the Triad.

For years, I lived blissfully and thrived under this arrangement, with this shadow over me. I was able to, as the shadow cast upon me was light and small. This was the case… at least until the Powerpuff Girls appeared.

The change began slow at first. My friends and brothers in the Triad became tense and jumpy in the first few months. In the next few, I saw the bloodthirsty animals in them.

I was curious in the last few months as to why this was, but I continued to bury my head in the sand. I wanted my life, my family's legacy, to last my lifetime, to last a thousand years, and so I tried my best to ignore it all. I was curious and I did not investigate; but I heard whispers in the wind all the same. The Townsville Police Department was becoming more active, shadowing Triad members everywhere they went. The United States Defence Organization were as tigers in a forest full of wild cats, all competing for the same prey, to different ends.

Then there were the Powerpuff Girls. When they first appeared, I could never believe what I read on the newspapers, or what I saw on the televisions. When my own children caught wind of them, they adored them, they imitated them, they could not get enough of them. Children younger than my own fighting crime with magical powers? The ancient myths of my forefathers were more real! I would sooner believe in the impossibilities of the exaggerations in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms than the outlandishness of three girls flying high in the sky, raining lightning upon men of evil hearts!

Everywhere the Powerpuff Girls went, so I gathered, destruction followed, whether they were victorious or defeated. As the months passed, they began bringing this destruction to the criminal gangs.

That was when my Triad brothers began making demands of me.

It began with small things, of course. That was how they operated. First, they asked for places in my family home to hide their ill-gotten gains. Then they hid their people there next. They began asking for more spots in my training center so that I could train more Triad members. For weeks, I continued to bury my head in the sand like before, even when I saw my Triad brothers' true colors. I thrived despite, relying on ignorance for bliss. They pushed me for more, and I kept giving way.

I kept giving way until I couldn't anymore. I allowed their evil to hide under my roof when they asked to stash their drugs under it. I allowed their evil to hide under my roof when they asked to stash their illegal weapons under it. I even allowed their evil to hide under my roof when I harbored murderers under the banner of the Triad. I forgave them, when one of those murderers made advances on my wife; I could have done more than beat him severely had I been more ruthless.

But then they asked that I allow my disciples to be recruited into their ranks, to fight with them against the other gangs, the Townsville Police Department, the United States Defence Organization, and even the Powerpuff Girls. It was only then that I denied their demands of me. That was when the demons in them were unleashed.

Day after that, my Triad brothers returned to make the same demand. At first, they came to my training center a few at a time. Then they came in greater numbers, armed. They sought to intimidate me, but I was a martial artist trained almost from birth to fight, with or without weapons in my hands, and my disciples stood by my side. Each time they came to cow me into submission, they were turned away by fear.

I did not think that would be the end of it, but nor did I think that they would stoop much, much lower, lower than even levels I didn't think Triad members would stoop down to.

Days passed, and they began committing arson; thankfully, I was able to tame the fire each time. They began sending notes threatening my family, my disciples and my livelihood; hiring my disciples as guards was my solution to that. Then they began carrying out their threats.

For days, I tried to hold strong. We held back the few Triad assassins who dared to jeopardize the lives of people I cared about. We held back attackers both in the dark and in broad daylight. It was the Triad's mistake to rely on me for training. It meant that I knew how the Triad warriors fought. But we couldn't hold them back forever. It is only human to err, and eventually someone erred. One of my disciples was killed. My children and wife came close to that end.

After holding a funeral wake, I delivered myself to the Triads. I had an entire night to think things through. I could continue fighting the Triad, but it would be like fighting the waves with a sword. I couldn't force all my disciples to fight for the Triad. It would be wrong for a master to take advantage of his students.

And so I delivered myself to the Triad as the peace offering. I was to fight for them. As I knelt before the Triad elders, I reasoned with them that a master was worth a hundred of his disciples. They would have agreed had it not been for my overzealous disciples, a few of whom defied my wishes and covertly followed me to the tiger's lair, and so they were recruited along with me.

Life under the Triad was slow at first. We were simply ordered to guard their ill-gotten gains and their lairs. Most of my time had been mundane and thankfully uninteresting. We fought but one battle against shadowy assassins, who attempted themselves to assassinate the Triad elders. I and my disciples, in helping the Triad warriors fighting them, cast them back to whence they came. It was not without cost however, as I lost another disciple that way: Lee Yew Hock.

Things, however, did not abate after that. Other gangs were going for our throat; why the gangs fought among themselves rather than united, I did not care to find out. Just as kingdoms betrayed and allied each other on fleeting whims in the ancestral lands, it seems that Townsville was no different.

Sometime along the way, we were compelled by the Triad to take the drugs we were guarding. We fought a few more battles under the influence of His Secret, and it brought me to levels I had never felt before. Chasing the dragon had somehow given me strength, not lethargy. I was changed somehow, turned into something even a rival master could never hope to beat. I hated it yet grew addicted to it all the same. It subverted my wish to perfect my art. It was then that I knew that I was thrown into a pit I could not climb out of.

Today, even as I pen this down, I was told to expect even worse things. Rival gangs were easy to defend against, but that had only been the beginning. The Triad elders had somehow found out that the Powerpuff Girls would soon be after them. My end is near, this I know. I have heard of the Powerpuff Girls. I am trained nearly from birth to be a fighter with or without a weapon in my hands. I am drugged by His Secret, and so are my disciples. We fight as one. But we are nothing compared to what I have heard and seen the Powerpuff Girls can do.

Yet, for family and legacy, for my traditions and disciples, I must go and protect the Triad from them. My wife, my sons, my daughter, do not mourn my loss for I am no longer the man I used to be; I had died long before my impending fight with the Powerpuff Girls. My soul belongs to a demon now, a dark, red demon from hell. Take everything you can transport and everyone who would follow and leave Townsville for elsewhere, just as my parents had left the ancestral lands all those years ago. Treat my memories as distant ones, at least let this will of mine be done.