Chapter Thirteen: Unbalanced
Thud.
The limp, crippled body of the lynx slammed into the wall of the nearest building; he emitted a feint wheeze as he hit the dirt once more. The tiger who had thrown him there approached, ready to strike again.
"Why did you attack these people - because you can? Because you think they're weaker than you?"
Propping himself up frailly by his elbows, he shook his head at the dust below as he coughed specks of red into it. He issued no response.
"Answer me!"
The tiger jabbed her paw at the arrow shaft protruding from the bandit's thigh, driving it deeper and sending a shockwave of pain through his body. Nonetheless, the lynx was defiant.
"I won't tell you a damn thing, freak!"
Tigress grabbed the cat, who had been trying to crawl away, by the throat and lifted him up so he couldn't touch the ground with his paws.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. Would you mind saying that again?"
An answer was impossible, as the lynx's windpipe was being crushed. A bird and a panda watched on, petrified by the sight before them.
The lynx, somehow still trying to resist, emitted a fanged feline hiss; Tigress responded with a vocalization of her own that nearly shook down the buildings of the village. It was not a growl, but instead a thundering roar, the likes of which Po had never heard – it elicited a pathetic whimper from the lynx. The larger feline had just proved her unquestioned dominance.
Tigress deeply desired to snuff out this wretched being at her claw tips; the tiger was quickly losing herself. Adrenaline surged through her, her inner rage begging to be spent. The fight had awoken, freed something in her; a scale that had slowly been shifting for some time now, had just been tipped beyond her ability to control.
He is garbage... nothing but garbage... he tried to harm me, he tried to harm my friends!
Her grip around his throat was starting to tighten. It would be so easy… his eyes were starting to roll back slightly.
The Dragon Warrior was utterly mortified.
I can't believe it – she's actually going to do it.
Po had seen enough. "Tigress – he's defenseless!" the panda pleaded.
The lynx was starting to struggle less against the death grip of the striped feline. She wasn't letting up.
"Put him down!" Po demanded.
The enraged tiger only half-turned her head back in his direction, so that the panda could see her muzzle but not her eyes, which were now slits.
"Back off, panda - I'm handling this!"
Po closed his eyes for just a second, summoning something within himself.
"With all due respect, Tigress, that's master panda to you."
There was a sudden moment of clarity – an opening of sunlight within a thunderstorm of rage.
What... what am I doing?
Tigress dropped the bandit leader at once, backing away in sudden disgust of what she was about to do.
The avian master was awestruck as he watched the surreal events before him.
Well I'll be damned.
The Dragon Warrior had just spoken in an authoritative tone entirely foreign to their ears.
Eyeing the panda with guarded agitation, the tiger gave him a halfhearted palm-in-fist salute and stepped aside to allow Po access to the lynx, who had since pissed himself in abject terror.
Tigress watched as Po came up and got down on one knee near their prisoner, talking to him in an understanding tone. As the rage drained from her blood, she began to think clearly again. Though she wasn't showing it outwardly, she was actually proud of Po and ashamed of herself; she knew she had been out of line, and understood how much guts it must have just taken for him to call out his friend like that. At the end of the day, the panda stood up for what he believed in, no matter what.
Even against me.
She couldn't help but respect that.
Crane was equally surprised at the bear's actions, but also just as proud of his new master; it reminded the avian master of how truly good Po was at heart. The Dragon Warrior was unbelievably compassionate and forgiving - he had even been willing to completely absolve the peacock that had committed genocide against his race.
Who else could do that but Po?
This was perhaps the greatest trait of the Dragon Warrior on full display: he had just superseded Tigress, of all people, to show respect, mercy to someone who most assuredly hadn't deserved it.
The villagers were now starting to emerge from their hiding places, and while thankful to the masters for saving their lives, they were demanding the lynx's head on a pike; Po began to busy himself keeping the mob at bay. It wasn't long until Crane had to join him.
Tigress was falling into a pensive state over what had occurred, staring blankly at her own paws, as if gazing right through them. She had not been herself.
Why?
The tumultuous emotions of late were starting to level an unhealthy weight on her mind; these thoughts had no place in her line of work. How long would it be until she would be just as compromised as Po had been in Gongmen City? It was getting worse by the second.
I need to get out of here.
Uncharacteristically, Tigress abruptly left, unannounced; seeing the feline's departure, Po decided to follow her.
"I'm going to talk to her - something's not right, Crane."
"Obvious as that is, what are we going to do about this, um, situation?" the bird asked, gesturing to the screaming villagers all around him.
"Won't be but a moment – you can handle it, buddy!"
The bird's head perked up from the crowd. "I… can?"
He left the avian alone to fend off the bloodlusted mob – probably not the most advisable move – and walked back through the village and near the stream they had crossed earlier. Seeing the feline stop near the water with her arms crossed and looking away from him, Po started to close the distance on her timidly.
Sensing his presence, the tiger sighed inwardly, as she wasn't surprised that Po had followed her; she had practically expected it, actually.
"Tigress, if this is about the whole 'master' thing, I'm sorry. I just didn't wa-"
"It's not." she cut him off. "And don't apologize for that; it's about time we start taking our new roles seriously."
He was about to counter, but she turned, holding out a paw and shaking her head to keep him from doing so. She figured she might as well speak her mind, as there was no better person to confide in than the Dragon Warrior.
"Po, I feel that I'm… unbalanced. I fear it will jeopardize our mission."
Po was becoming a little uncomfortable, nervously tapping his rounded claws together, his stance rocking back and forth.
"Unbalanced? Like… physically?" he offered with an outstretched paw.
"No – not like that. Ever since we've been here, I haven't been myself."
Tigress and emotions? Oh dear.
"I don't know what you're talking about – I'd say you've just been 'normal Tigress,' nothing too out of the ordinary."
Po Ping, you are the world's worst liar.
"But maybe 'normal me' isn't really me." she spat out.
This broke Po's brain a little. He wasn't prepared for any such foray into existentialism.
Okay, there is definitely something wrong with her.
He finally took the chance to fully take in Tigress' present condition. To be frank, she looked vulnerable, and not just because he could see a lot more of her white fur than he was used to. She did seem, in her own words, unbalanced. He'd only seen her this way a handful of times before, like after her battle with Tai Lung, or when he'd sacrificed himself to defeat Kai. She was distressed... volatile - but over what, he could only guess.
"What is that supposed to mean?" he asked after an extended pause.
She shook her head and walked over to sit near the edge of the stream. It was surreal to see someone who was nigh untouchable on the battlefield so unsettled.
"Do I strike you as a violent person? Are my actions warranted?"
Po nearly rolled his eyes. "Can we just put that behind us? I know you weren't really going to kill that guy."
Well… that might have been a lie.
"Are you so sure about that? After all..." She got up from where she was sitting and placed her paw on the panda's chest near his wound. "I did this to you, Po."
"Come on, you don't know tha-"
She had just unsheathed her claws, so he could see the damning evidence for himself. Their eyes met in a momentary silence; he thought he could see the tiger's looking for something in his own, and it frightened him. The panda shook off his initial surprise quickly to comfort her.
"It... it was not your fault. We were not ourselves back then."
She began to walk back to where she had been sitting before, but this time Po followed her. She didn't speak for a while, just watching the water flow by.
"That substance - whatever it was - it was eye-opening in a way... made me think about what my purpose is."
She started to ball her fists in annoyance, but it was unclear to Po if it was directed toward him or the tiger herself. Tigress looked at the infinite expanse of steppe and desert for a few moments, took a deep breath to calm herself, and answered in the best approximation of her typical indifference she could muster.
"I've been searching within myself lately, trying to meditate on things; all I find is anger."
There was a long silence before Po spoke.
"Well... I'm no Oogway, but I might have some words of wisdom for you." he said quietly.
The tiger was still looking to the horizon, but her ear twitched a little to show she was listening. A gust of wind that blew over her and towards Po revealed that her usual fragrance of incense had long since departed.
"Nobody is going to judge you for not being an emotionless object every second of your life."
Tigress got up again and started to walk back towards the village, unable to look Po in the eyes.
"The world needs more people like you, Po." she said as she passed.
It shocked Po to see that she had remained unconvinced. As the tiger continued pacing away, he noticed the Crane had rejoined them; the bird quickly announced why he had sought them out.
"I finally convinced the villagers to let the poor fool live. I talked to him for a while... got some information out of him. I know where we need to go to find the ruler of Mongolia – a place pretty far southeast of here called Khanbaliq."
It's amazing what you can get out of someone when you aren't trying to kill them...
"Then we better get going." Tigress answered abruptly, starting to walk back toward the village.
Crane knew right away from her weak tone that something unusually emotional had transpired before his arrival. He moved closer to the panda.
"Did I… interrupt something?"
"No." Po replied emptily, unable to take his eyes from the increasingly distant tiger.
Despite knowing that the true answer was undoubtedly "yes," Crane could see that this wasn't his business, and started to follow the feline master, leaving the Dragon Warrior alone.
Po was still glued to the ground, frozen in shock from the whole conversation. He had never, not in a million years, expected Tigress to be so inconsistent and conflicted like she had just been. Something had the striped cat fixed, so much so that she was starting to question herself, and that scared him tremendously; it scared him because he knew exactly what it was like. He knew how it felt to have questions that threaten to eat you alive, how it felt to be kept awake every night confined to disharmony and discord.
But while Po's own struggle for answers had manifested itself in the form of Lord Shen, he feared that Tigress had no such single adversary to guide her frustrations toward; instead, she could only become her own worst enemy.
As the tiger walked back through the burnt houses of the village, she kept her head down in distraught contemplation; she almost didn't see the female musk deer that was standing in her path. Stopping to avoid running into the ungulate and raising her head, Tigress saw that the deer was outstretching something to her - a gift, which appeared to be some kind of blue cloth.
"What's this?"
The deer only smiled widely at the muscular feline. "Thank you."
"For what?" Tigress asked confusedly, having completely forgotten about the fight as she took the bundled cloth into her paws.
"For saving our lives, of course! You have our people's eternal gratitude; surely you must be favored by Kunkh Tengri, lord of the skies."
Tigress just nodded respectfully in response, and as the deer returned to her family, she spread out the cloth to look at it; it was a dark midnight-blue tunic of the finest Mongolian textile work. Like her previous outfit, it had a drapery between the legs, which was emblazoned with a bright gold symbol that she didn't recognize.
It was a gift worthy of royalty. The tiger looked back over at the deer, who was now hugging her parents, and she was reminded of another gift - one that she would never receive.
Author's Notes:
- I envision the 'warrior code' that the masters pertain to allows for kills in the heat of battle, as long as the practitioner does not go out of their way to use lethal force; but killing a defenseless enemy is still a huge no-no
- Needless to say, Tigress' actions here really throw her fellow masters for a loop; they're used to her being the level-headed leader figure, so Po kind of has to go out of his element here to make her stand down
- Even though Po does outrank Tigress now, that technicality means very little in practice, as her experience usually makes her the authority on all mission-critical stuff
- The clothes Tigress gets at the end here are the same color and bear the same symbol as the (previous) cover art for this story
- And as usual, I'm very grateful for your support of my story - the reviews, viewership, etc. all continue to defy my expectations! Thank you!