KFP 3: Stripes of the Past Chapter 11

Po, Tigress and Crane had seated themselves at a vacated table, indulging in a meal of noodle soup, having decided that there no point in interrogating captured bandits on empty stomachs. The bandits, still unconscious and tied up, were seated next to the table. One of the crow bandits seemed to be coming to, for Tigress could hear him humming. When she turned her head to see what the crow was doing, she could see the bird’s eyelids (still shut as they were) and brow twitching, as though his eyes were about to open; sure enough, they soon did.
 As the crow’s eyes began to flicker open, his beak began to lift, and the sound of sniffing issued forth as his beak pointed towards the bowl of noodles on the table. His eyes were now wide open and gazing at the bowl intently.
 Tigress tapped Po’s shoulder and pointed to the stirring bird bandits, who were starting to direct their attention towards the bowls of noodle soup of the three warriors. “Take a look, Dragon Warrior; it seems our bandit friends are up, and they seem pretty hungry, too.”
 Po, who was chewing on a beetroot, looked to the tied-up bandits gazing longingly at his bowl of noodles. He smiled slyly. “Indeed. Too bad for them that the only thing we feed criminals and wrong-doers is a full serving of justice.”
 “What’s justice taste like?” asked a scrawny, clueless-looking crow. “I’ve never had it before.” He was pecked in the head reprovingly by the largest crow in the bunch.
 “Shut your beak!” snapped the large crow. He turned his attention to the panda. “What do you want from us?”
 Tigress suddenly stood up from her seat, gazing fiercely at the crow. “We want an explanation.”
 “An explanation, for what?” asked the crow in a tone that sounded almost scornful.
 The athletic big cat took a step closer. “We don’t want any denial out of you lot. We know you’re in league with this gang of crocs, wolves and leopards—they were wearing the same emblems as the ones you’re wearing. We fought them not too long ago back at Bao Gu Orphanage, and they were after something called a Yang Stone. We already know what it is; what we want to know is why they want it.”
 The big crow narrowed his eyes. “Why should we tell you?”
 The thewy feline began cracking her knuckles and flexing her biceps. “Because I’ve battered some of your falcon friends to the other side of Asia. Would you rather join them?”
 The crow blinked nervously as he watched the tiger’s arms swell. Neither he, nor his cronies, wished to share the same unfortunate experience as most of the falcons. He gulped. “L-Look, w-we’re just scouts. Our job is to scavenge the lands for supplies. We’re not as involved the the obtaining of this Yang Stone as those other guys, so we don’t know so much about what all that business is about. If you want some real answers, you’d have to ask them. But I can say this: we’re not just some common street thieves. We’re troops, soldiers, men of the Róulìn SteelClaw Army, led by Tai-Huang Mei, Lady of Dài Bào. She sent us to this valley to retrieve the Yang Stone—why, that is beyond my knowledge. As I’ve said before, you’ll have to ask the others.”
 “Well, then we might just have some luck there,” said Po. “We’ve got some of those guys locked up at old Jìng-Suǒ Prison. We can ask them after we’ve sent you guys to join them.”
 The bird bandits groaned and squawked in complaint. Crane thrust his face towards them to shoot them a reproving look, but then he noticed something curiously familiar about the sash on one of the two falcons. He narrowed his eyes as he focussed hard on the raptor’s sash, gasping as a sudden realization struck him. “Those silks, that color. That’s one of Mei Ling’s leg strappings!”
 Pushing himself away from the table, Crane leapt towards the tied-up bird bandits, standing imposing before the falcon, who quailed at the sight of the tall bird’s eyes, which were blazing with rage. “How did you get that from her?!”
 The bandits shrank in fear, but Po and Tigress were frozen with shock—they knew Crane could be a fierce fighter, but never had they seen such a calm and diplomatic bird display such aggression. Even Crane, himself, would be stunned if he had watched himself from another body.
 There was a long, tense silence, until finally the falcon blinked up at Crane in apprehensive inquisitiveness. “Y-You know Mei Ling?”
 “Um, I hate to interrupt, but who’s Mei Ling?” asked Tigress.
 “Ooh, ooh! I know this one,” Po exclaimed with an arm raised as he bounced in his seat in excitement. “Crane told me about her.” He paused, turning to face Crane. “Or, uh, would you like to tell this one, Crane?”
 Having calmed down, Crane turned to face the panda. “No, it’s okay,” he sighed. “Be my guest.”
 “Okay, so Mei Ling was, like, a classmate of Crane’s back when he used to train at the Lee Da Kung Fu Academy,” Po began, pointing a paw up sagely. “She was his closest friend there and motivated him to participate in the new student tryouts. He started out in the academy training; he started out as its janitor. He always wanted to train there, but uh…”
 Crane sighed and extended one of his long, spindly legs to finished Po’s explanation to Crane’s hesitance to join the academy.
 Po coughed. “Er, right, but Mei Ling saw his moves as he was sweeping up the place and said that he should try out for the academy. She was the only one who supported him and believed him on it when everyone else doubted him. No one else thought he was Kung Fu material at first, but boy did he prove them wrong when he showed them his moves in that obstacle course. On top of that, along with Mei Ling, he became one of the best students to train at Lee Da Academy.”
 With his foot tracing circles in the ground modestly, Crane nodded. “I wouldn’t be where I am now if it hadn’t been for Mei Ling. I owe it all to her.” He sighed in nostalgia. “When the day came that I was summoned to Jade Palace to continue my training there, I gave Mei Ling one of my hats for her to remember me by, because, well, who wouldn’t remember me for a hat like mine. In return, she gave me this.” He reached a foot into his sash and produced a small golden badge made into the likeness of a phoenix. “It was given to her by a vagrant Tibetan monk. She insisted that I have it, and I promised both her and myself that I would keep this close to me, always.”
 “She gave you something to remember her by, too?” asked the falcon, visibly touched by Crane’s statement. “She did the same for me with her leg strapping. I met her when she was questing to Mao Bao City. I helped guide her there, and I suppose you could say we grew a companionship.” He dipped his head slightly in rumination, then he looked up at Crane. “At some point she did mention a friend of hers; she said it was a crane like you, she said his name was Fēngcǎi.”
 Po was caught completely off guard by this. “Whoa! Time out! Hold it! So, there was, like, another crane in Lee Da Academy?”
 “Uh, no, Po—I was the only one,” said Crane. “I am Fēngcǎi.”
 Po blinked dumbly. “But, but…wait a sec! I thought–”
 “Po, I’m called Crane because I’m Master of Crane Style Kung Fu. It’s an honorary title—see, if…er, when you become Master of Panda Style, you will be called Master Panda, or just Panda. I mean, can you imagine having the name of your own species as your birth name?”
 Po turned red underneath the white fur of his face as he scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “Oh, yeah, I guess you’ve got a point there. Heheh. But then, why do you guys still call yourselves by your titles, even when you’re just hangin’ with each other.”
 Crane shrugged. “Respect, mainly.”
 Po looked to Tigress. “So, Tigress, if Crane’s real name is Fēngcǎi, what’s yours?”
 “Qiángyǒulì,” Tigress answered. “In Bao Gu Orphanage, they used to call me Kuáng, but Master Shifu renamed me Qiángyǒulì after he had adopted me.”
 “And Viper?”
 “Qīngqiǎo. ”
 “And Monkey?”
 “Kāilǎng.”
 “Mantis?”
 Crane and Tigress answered this in unison. “Piāohàn.”
 Po looked to the falcon. “And you?”
 “Lǎoyīng,” answered the falcon. “But don’t you guys have more important matters to deal with, like getting us to prison and asking interrogating our comrades there?” Fierce glares from the rest of the bird scouts were directed at Lǎoyīng. “What? We’re captured, what else can we do but cooperate? That tiger’s gonna whack us to the other side of Asia if we don’t.”
 “Let’s get these birds to Jìng-Suǒ,” said Tigress. “This talk of an army really sounds like something to take seriously.”
 “Even more so with the fact that this Tai-Huang Mei is after a highly important artifact,” Crane added.
 Po quickly sprung out of his seat and walked up to the tied-up birds. “Right! Let’s get to it.” He then picked up one of the two captive bundles, this one holding the two falcons and the big crow.
 Tigress picked up the bundle holding the other four crows and gave a single nod. “Let’s move out. The sooner we get to Jìng-Suǒ, the sooner we can get to the bottom of this Yang Stone business.”
 Without further delay, the three warriors set off, departing Golden Harvest Noodle Restaurant and traversing towards Jìng-Suǒ Prison. The travel from the noodle restaurant to Jìng-Suǒ, of course, was not as far as it was from Bao Gu Orphanage.

The bandits caught at Bao Gu all sat miserably in their cell, either griping about their injuries or cursing the warriors that subdued them.
 “Man, that lousy tiger and that lousy snake,” muttered the commander of the crocs, leaning sullenly in the corner of his cell. “I won’t be able to sit for a week.” He then heard a tittering from the wolf commander not too far from his side.
 “To have your tail handed to ya by just two women,” the wolf giggled. “That’s really something.” His laughs became less suppressed.
 “It’s not funny, Lang,” the croc hissed warningly at the wolf.
 Lang immediately ceased in his laughter and adopted a more solemn expression, with paws held open passively. “You’re right, you’re right. It’s not funny at all…” He remained silent for a few seconds, and then his lips began to purse and his cheeks inflated. His jaws then flew open wide as a huge guffaw exploded forth. “I-hi-hit’s absolutely flipping hilarious!”
 “Shut up!” the croc barked. But Lang continued to laugh unrestrained. Finally, the croc had lost all patience and pounced on the insolent canine. The two brawled about on the floor of the cell, biting, scratching and punching each other as they did. Many of the other crocodiles and wolves watched in fascination and even cheered the two duelers on.
 “Give him another bite, Lang! That’s it, right on his tail!”
 “Haha! Lín Jīn’s got him by his tail! Slam him to the floor, Lín Jīn!
 “Hah! A good old kick to the chest! That’s right, Lang, you show that lump of scales!”
 “Ooh! He’s got him by the leg, Lang’s in trouble now.”
 One wolf onlooker cringed at a painful sight. “Youch! That’s one place you don’t wanna get punched in.”
 “Come on, Lín Jīn, get up! Don’t let that Lang take ya down! Put a leash on that dog!”
 The leopards, finding this scene to be simply idiotic and pointless, merely rolled their eyes in disdain and averted their attention.
 “Lowbrow brutes,” one of the leopards muttered.
 The skirmish quickly ceased as the warden’s voiced boomed out, “Look alive, Bao Gu bandits—you’ve got some visitors.”
 The prisoners all watched in sour despair as Po, Tigress and Crane came stepping up to their cell.
 “Oh no,” groaned Lín Jīn. “Not you guys again.”
 Focussing most his attention on Tigress, Lang wore a sardonic smile as he cocked his head towards Lín Jīn. “Come back to give old Lín Jīn here another whooping, eh? Say, where’s your snake friend?”
 Tigress shook her head as she dropped the four crows before the bars of the cell. “We’re not here to deliver another beating. We’re here for answers.”
 “Yeah, we know about this Yang Stone you’re after, and this Tai-Huang you’re serving,” said Po. “Your little bird buds told us all about it.” He then dropped the two falcons and the last crow next to the rest of the crows.
 Lang and Lín Jīn turned their heads disdainfully away from the birds sitting before them.
 “We don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Lín Jīn. “We don’t anything about this Tai-Huang, and we’ve never seen those birds before in our lives.”
 “Then how do you explain this?” asked Crane as he held up Lǎoyīng’s sash in a taloned foot. “They’re all wearing it, and it has the same symbol you’re all wearing. Now, we don’t want to hear anymore denial out of you. We know that you know who this Tai-Huang is and why she wants the Yang Stone—that’s right, we know you were finding it for her, and we also know where she is. So you lot better come clean.”
 Lín Jīn folded his arms and looked down his long snout haughtily at the Warrior trio. “Alright, so we can’t lie to you to hide the truth, that doesn’t mean we can’t still hide it. I mean, what can you guys do to us? We’re in here, and you’re out there.”
 For answer, Tigress seized two of the bars separating her comrades and herself from the Róulìn soldiers, and began to pull on them. An ominous, metallic creaking began to issue from bolts holding the bars in place as they slowly began to dislocate. “We easily beat before back at Bao Gu,” the thewy big cat growled menacingly. “Don’t think we can’t do it a second time just because there’s only half our number. Besides, there’s even less of you lot than when we first fought you.”
 The warden whistled in astonishment at the sight of the bars caving in to the stunningly power pull of the athletic feline. “I’d be spilling the beans if I were you. If she can rip those bars out like that, I’d hate to see what she can do to you fellows.”
 The prisoners all quailed at the sight of their only protective barrier being torn out. This was enough for Lín Jīn. “All right, all right! We’ll talk, just please stop that!”
 Tigress released the bars and placed her paws to her hips. “Well, start talking.”
 Lín Jīn gulped. “Y’see, the Yang Stone is an emblem of power. Our leader, Lady Tai-Huang Mei, requires the possession of the Yang Stone so that all will recognize her as the powerful warrior she is as she reclaims what is rightfully hers.”
 Po raised a brow skeptically. “Uh… What’s this…thing that’s rightfully hers, exactly?”
 The Róulìn soldiers all gasped in shock, then began growling and snarling in outrage.
 Lín Jīn thrust his long-jawed head through the spacing of the bars as he pounded a scaly fist against one of them and roared, “Recognition as the most powerful warrior in all of China, possession of Garnet Palace, and…” He suddenly paused, narrowing his eyes as he shifted them side to side, as though to survey for any eavesdroppers. He finished, his voice now a secretive whisper. “The Phoenix Scroll.”