1 Chapter 1: Young prince
Many regarded the Tower of Sacred Flame as Gongmen's heart. The tower had first been constructed to celebrate the peacock family's centralization of power and had quickly become a symbol of the prosperity they had brought to the city.
The Tower of Sacred Flame was a tall, impressive monument. Sturdy. Strong. Supposedly everlasting. It shaped the skyline of Gongmen City, a pointed edge that reached towards the heavens.
When the peacock rulers passed, and with the young crown prince seemingly vanishing into thin air, the tower had been entrusted to the newly formed Master's Council.
Master Thundering Rhino, Master Storming Ox, and ferocious Master Croc. With the recent defeat and reimprisonment of the Wu Sisters and the blessing of Master Oogway himself, trust in the new rulers of Gongmen City had only been questioned by one.
Lord Shen.
It had been unknown at the time, but the young prince had been watching, Listening ,Waiting.
He was not yet ready to return to what he deemed to be his city—the city which he had been banished from in near secrecy, but he would return one day, when his power had grown too much for the Master's Council to contain and the former prince deemed the time to be right.
And now, Lord Shen had returned and destroyed his once ancestral home, the Tower of Sacred Flame.
She supposed it was funny—in a perverted, deranged kind of way. The Tower of Sacred Flame was Shen's home—a home he had spent decades waiting to return to—and he had destroyed it without a second thought.
When he had finally returned, he had not brought prosperity or peace, as his parents and their ancestors had, but chaos and destruction.
Even now, with all but one true encounter with the madman, Tigress felt the effects of his presence. Just remembering their encounter left a tightness in her chest and a dryness in her throat.
Even now, surrounded by her comrades—her friends—and hidden in the shadow of Shen's own factory, the feline couldn't help but feel anxious.
With a silent huff, Tigress hoisted a the last of the gunpowder barrels up into her arms. As the strongest of the Furious Five, her job was a relativity straightforward one.
That wasn't to say her task was unimportant—it wasn't—but it was mindless. Her job was to gather gunpowder and centralize its location atop a cart the group has deemed "pushable".
She had no doubt she was going to be doing the pushing.
Tigress slammed the barrel onto the cart with a mighty thump—a careless one too—and the cart shook violently, a mimicry of how all of Gongmen soon would.
She let an irritated chuff escape her. The feline wasn't one to usually mind the silence—quite the opposite, really—but right now, in this particular moment, it grated on her nerves.
She had expected some level of idle chit-chat as they worked, but it was silent. Even Monkey and Mantis were not talking as they usually would.
Tigress knew she should have been grateful for the unexpected silence—getting caught by Shen's forces now would do them no good—however, the quiet ate away her in a way that it shouldn't have and, unfortunately, her "busy work" was not busy enough to keep her mind focused on the task. Her mind was wandering, and she hated it.
Because the truth was clear. The situation at hand was a dire one. A simple mistake—any mistake—could cost dozens of innocent lives; a major one, hundreds.
The fate of Gongmen City, and maybe even China, were in their collective hands. They could not afford to fail.
And she had benched the Dragon Warrior.
Tigress exhaled sharply, as if the negativity that brewed within would be carried out along her breath. It certainly didn't feel like it. A heaviness remained.
A foreboding feeling. She wasn't sure if she was right to forbid Po from "tagging along" or if something was going to go wrong because of his absence. As confused as he had become, he was still the Dragon Warrior.
His achievements and growth had not become any less impressive because of his recent actions since meeting Shen.
To those who irked his ire, the panda was a powerful opponent, and he had a creative mind that could have been quite useful for the destruction of the factory.
That was, if Po would have followed her orders.
Tigress had been growing more and more irritated over the last few days and something had finally snapped after their encounter with Lord Shen.
The Dragon Warrior had froze up not once but twice since the wolves' invasion of the musicians village. He had been having nightmares, which wasn't something to hold against him, but his performance, which she knew could have been quite impressive, had degraded the longer they were on this mission.
In all honesty, Tigress had expected Po to be more of a challenge in the prison—not that she had expected him to win—but his show of power and skill had been downright pathetic and that had been disappointing.
He was distracted and that was not good.
Tigress tried not to let her emotions get twisted. She was not angry, though sometimes she felt like she was—no, she was worried. For a lack of a better term, Po had become obsessed with Shen or, more rather, obsessed with what Shen supposedly knew of his past.
Tigress even dared to say that Po had become obsessed with Shen in a similar manner that Shen was clearly obsessed with him, minus the whole murderous intent thing but Tigress knew that there was no good ending with Po and Shen involved with each other.
Someone was going to die and she knew Po didn't have the stomach for killing—not intentionally at least.
After all, when the adrenaline of Tai Lung's defeat had worn off and Po realized he had killed the deranged snow leopard, the panda had been devastated.
Tigress shook her head, if only to shake the thoughts of her adopted brother from her head. When it came down to it, Tigress felt she was to blame, at least to some degree.
