Chapter Twelve: Smoke on the Horizon
What Po really needed was a quiet place to sit down and think everything out - all the better were it over a nice bowl of dumplings.
Unfortunately, any food he could hope to find would undoubtedly be a desert mirage. But silence... there was plenty of that. Too much of it.
The panda had started to pass the time by wordlessly observing his fellow masters as they walked in front of him a short distance away. Po had rarely seen Crane do that much walking before, and witnessing his gawky avian stride in detail was a novelty in and of itself. If he really looked closely, he could see that the bird was constantly muttering to himself, stopping only occasionally to awkwardly sneeze against the sand-filled gusts of wind.
A little ahead and to the right of the bird was Tigress, whose stride had always seemed anything but feminine; but it was somehow even more wrathful than usual. Her arms no longer covered by sleeves, Po had noticed that there were red stains on her forearm that - uncannily - seemed to run up instead of down. He had tried to ask her about this, but she either hadn't heard him, or had intentionally disregarded his every word; she hadn't even turned around.
Tigress was far more focused on the horizon.
The striped feline had caught the scent of fire long before she saw the billowing black cloud; the opposite had been true for Crane. Po was still much more focused on coming to grips with his present reality, and was lost in his thoughts as the three of them headed towards the beginning of the steppe. Nothing made any sense; Crane was now wearing Tigress' clothes as a bandage for some unknown wound, and the panda had one of his own, of which he was just as clueless about the origin. As they got closer and closer to the source of the fire, the sand beneath them gradually became thick grass and underbrush, but there was still not a single tree in sight.
"So... what do you guys think it is?" Po asked openly, as they had all been looking at the same thing for a while now.
"Doesn't matter." Crane answered. "Smoke means fire. Fire means other people. Other people can point us in the right direction to complete the mission."
Tigress said nothing, but her silence seemed to indicate she agreed with the bird's reasoning.
The three masters continued on as golden sunlight cascaded through the dry grasses all around them. After fording a small trickle of water that could barely be called a stream, they realized that the smoke was emanating from a small mud-brick village. Even from here, they could see that the buildings were being burned, but they did not quicken their pace until they heard the screams; it was still in the process of being razed to the ground, and there was a chance to save the civilians.
The scene was complete chaos. The marauders were torching buildings left and right, snatching anything valuable they could get their paws on; the villagers were running for their lives to seek shelter. The warriors of the Jade Palace were all too accustomed to such circumstance, moving through the midst of the settlement with a forceful bearing.
As the masters continued moving deeper into the settlement, both groups stopped what they were doing to watch the strangers who had miraculously just strolled in from the open desert. When they had reached the village center, where the bandits had gathered into a group a few dozen strong, one of them began to step forward. He was a lynx, as evidenced by the tall tufts of black fur above his ears. The outlaws behind him were a collective of inter-mingled canines and felines; mainly jackals, wolves, and snow leopards that wielded an array of small armaments and bows.
The lynx studied the three newcomers carefully for a moment before speaking.
"I see the Chinese have decided to grace us steppe rats with their benevolent presence!" he mocked, taking a derisive false bow in the process.
Po was about to speak, but Tigress came from behind the panda with an assertive paw on his shoulder.
"I'll handle this."
As she stepped forward to answer the lynx, many of the villagers were still scattering between buildings. The leader took notice of Tigress, who was still lacking outer clothing on her upper half, and whistled suggestively.
"Wow… I like what I see! Care to take any more of that off, Stripes?" he taunted as his men chuckled wildly behind him.
"Turn around and leave now." she deadpanned, ignoring his remarks entirely.
"Or what?" he asked, still laughing.
The tiger didn't flinch as he'd hoped she would.
"Or," she paused, glaring at him. "I feed you your teeth."
The bandit leader was surprised by her boldness, but responded to her aggression with some of his own. Coming even closer, he stopped his face only inches from hers.
"And just how are you gonna do that, bitch? You're outnumbered ten-to-one!"
Tigress began to growl.
"I welcome those odds."
Astounded by her boldness and adequately provoked, the lynx launched an impulsive jab; before the blow touched her face, Tigress' paw flew up and secured his wrist with crushing force. The rest of the bandits were stunned; they'd never seen speed like that before.
"That... was a mistake." she menaced through her bared teeth.
The newly-widened amber eyes before the lynx revealed a fury that devoured his gruff bravado instantaneously.
The leader tried to free his appendage by bringing over his other paw, but it was no use. Even pulling with both arms, he couldn't free himself from Tigress' grip. She could have used her claws, but she didn't need to: the lynx's wrist was already reduced to a soup of shattered bone and cartilage. Immediately following this, she headbutted him into the ground - the lynx arriving in the dirt with a few less teeth, the tiger having kept her promise. The speed and fluidity with which she downed the bandit cast an intimidating pall over the rest of them.
On cue, Crane and Po joined their tiger companion in fighting stances to face the rest of the outlaws. Seeing their leader writhing from pain in the dirt, clutching what was left of his right paw, they responded by filling the air with the sound of tightening bowstrings. Now in her defensive stance, Tigress assessed the threat immediately and looked to the avian beside her.
"Crane, do you have this?"
The defensive master narrowed his russet orbs, matching her chilled spite with his answer.
"Always."
Po was surprised that, even with his injury, Crane had just sprung forward of the two mammals and was now in a perfect deflective position.
His base was wider than usual, his left wing curled and extended out in front of him. The avian knew his right wing was weakened, weighted down by injury. He offset its deficiency by recoiling it up behind his head and inverting it off to his left side, widening the spaces between each of his outer black fringes; the feathers were nearly jumping from the increased blood-flow to his extremities. He had become as large and as wide as possible - a shield of sorts. His head hung down in patient anticipation of the release of the oncoming arrows.
"What the hell are you waiting for? Kill them!" the lynx screamed from the ground below Crane, breaking the extended silence.
The unanimous snapping release of the projectiles came at last. More than thirty wooden shafts were headed straight for the three masters, traveling at speeds much faster than any Chinese bow could produce.
Crane swept his legs forward in a half-stride, setting his ailerons into circular motion around his form. He brought a premature termination to each individual arrow's flight path, shattering, deflecting, and redirecting the wooden missiles with the precision of a god; an immovable rock dividing an oncoming tide of wood. The only thing making his movements discernible was the golden fabric tied to his right side.
Tigress had known what was coming, and was already calculating a strategy in her mind for the coming melee engagement.
Thirty-three assailants; weak-points at the clavicle, knees, and underarms. Crane will be tired after all this deflecting – he should face no more than seven by himself. That leaves more than twenty for me and Po.
The tiger master turned to the Dragon Warrior at her right; she didn't have much time, so she made each word count.
"Po – take ten to your side, I'll take ten on mine, then meet in the middle; aggressive, high-speed flanking. Understood?"
"Got it!"
To add further insult to injury – or really, just further injury to injury – Crane caught the last arrow with his talons, and gyrated it up and around his wing to launch back away from himself… and straight into the bandit leader's thigh.
As the lynx shrieked in pain on the ground, the marauders and Kung Fu warriors collided around him in a furious affray; the past few minutes of building disdain were now being unleashed in a glorious flood of blood and adrenaline. Po and Tigress knew that to maintain the advantage, they would need to drop the thugs quickly, to prevent them from bringing their superior numbers to bear.
Protecting the flanks of Crane, they started attacking the lowlifes with everything they had; the circumstances were ideal for tiger style, as Tigress excelled in ending fights as quickly as possible. She unleashed devastating sidekicks to the necklines of two wolves followed by a blocked sword strike from a snow leopard. Holding the swordsman by the wrist, she used his blade to parry a vertically slashing spear, then an axe attack; when her puppet's usefulness had run its course, Tigress cleanly dislocated the leopard's arm. The resulting snap was heard by Crane, who was busy fending off three wolves with battle-axes nearby.
A much larger wolf brute approached and horizontally withdrew a two-handed saber from his back, which Tigress had to quickly recoil backwards to avoid; she briefly felt the whoosh of the passing heavy blade in her whiskers as her paws touched the ground behind her. From this low position, she immediately sprung back up, catching an incoming arrow with her right paw along the way. The sound of metal splitting air announced that the bandit with the large saber was swinging downwards at her. She went straight through his attack by rolling forward and to the left of him, planting the arrowhead behind his shoulderblade as she passed – a ruthless immobilizing strike.
All of this taking place in a matter of seconds, Tigress glanced over to see the source of the fired arrow and saw a dhole that was readying yet another missile from his quiver. Disorienting the rush of new assailants into her part of the fight, she executed a perfectly timed Tahlia Leap up and over them; she had intended to land on top of the dhole, but her tail injury caused her to miscalculate, and she landed right in front of the bandit as he was about to fire. In an instant reaction, the canine let the arrow loose, but not before the striped feline had punched his bow to the side; the manipulated shot took down yet another wolf, who had been coming up behind Tigress with a dagger-axe.
His primary weapon useless, the dhole reached for the handle of his shortsword and started to unsheathe it. In a one-two jabbing attack, she first punched at his wrist, forcing the blade back down into the sheath; her second strike was a throat-punch that went straight beneath the jawline and sent him to the ground on his back, motionless.
There was no time to rest, as she was still surrounded by many of the brigands.
On the other flank, Po had taken out no less than four of them right away, belly-gonging the first wolf to reach him into his canine companions; he had winced immediately after, once more feeling the wound he had on his chest.
Gonna have to stop forgetting about that...
Shaking it off and building from this sudden momentum, he rocketed upward to unleash his "Feet of Fury" into the faces of a few jackals that had been foolish enough to attempt a leaping attack on him. No sooner had he done this before he looked to his left to assess the state of his allies: Tigress was fighting nearly a dozen of the enemy on the far flank, looking entirely undaunted; the avian master was still holding his own down the middle with an improvised iron-fan misdirection technique, but could use some help.
"Hold on Crane - I've got ya covered, buddy!"
Ducking under a thrown sword that came flying at him end-over-end, Po grabbed a nearby leopard cat by the tail and begun to spin him through the air; having built up significant inertial force, he hurled the screaming catamount towards Crane, taking down most of the assailants in the bird's part of the fight. The avian showed his thanks with a nod to the panda, before both had to go back to dodging more attacks.
Meanwhile, Tigress was beginning to tire, as she was still facing the lion's share of the bandits alone; she knew it was time to bring the two flanking attacks to the center as one. After sending the canine teeth flying out of a wolf's maw with a leaping upward kick, the tiger yelled over to the bear-style master.
"Po! Double-Death Strike!"
Even in the heat of battle, the bear's eyes lit up with excitement. Downing the last two of his opponents with an elbow jab to the face and a palm strike to the chest respectively, he rushed over to meet the tiger master.
The move made them all but invincible, akin to the Wu Sisters when they formed their own pinwheel of death. Paws locked, they sent opponents flying backwards in all directions. Po could be the anchor, giving the tiger free reign to deal out a volley of bone-crushing kicks; alternately, the muscular feline could be the pivot point herself, swinging the panda's immense weight around like a massive bludgeon.
The two Jade Palace heavyweights, one of whom embodied this word in several ways, kept at this until the dumbfounded and terrified bandits finally broke into a full-on rout from the village. An exhausted Crane at last dropped to his tail feathers, struggling to recover his normal breathing. Po was looking around enthusiastically, amazed that they had just prevailed in such spectacular fashion.
"Another glorious triumph for the forces of justice!" he exclaimed, searching for a similarly elated sentiment about Tigress - but he found none.
Po looked on as the tiger was approaching the only bandit that hadn't been able to limp away, the leader, her paws balled into fists.
That's never good.
Author's Notes:
- Not a ton to say about this chapter... mostly just a big fight
- Tigress' "Feed you your teeth" line is a nod to what is easily the best dialogue element of Assassin's Creed III (Other than "Where is Charles Lee!" of course XD)
- In this fight, I wanted to illustrate just how badass these Kung Fu masters are; even with injuries, they can still easily defy ten-to-one odds
- This was my first attempt at a fight this large or this long, so let me know what you think of it!
- Thanks for reading! Based on the way this one ends, it's safe to assume the next chapter will pick right up where this one leaves off...