-Thoroughfare of Jade Palace District, Pom Vs. Tai Lung-
On one side was Pom, slowly approaching at a slow and steady gait. Her entire body was shivering and she had a frown on her face.
On the other was Tai Lung charging straight for her at full speed with excitement on his face. Once Tai got close enough he lunged for Pom.
This wasn’t a time for words in Tai Lung’s eyes, especially not after the first blow she landed against him.
Pom looked up at him as he raised back his right paw, she inhaled and then unleashed a powerful bark that fired a small oval shaped blast of energy.
Said energy hit a surprised looking Tai Lung’s belly. He just took the direct hit from Pom’s Bark Blast and was sent backwards.
Tai Lung caught himself on his claws and glared at Pom who continued to slowly walk forward while shivering oddly.
He darted forward and slapped his left paw outwards towards her, she caught the blow her right foreleg while going onto her hind legs.
Pom’s right leg now quivered even worse than the shivering. The mass of this quivering slowly slid its way up around her back and shoulders into her left leg that was already pulling back.
Said leg started vibrating wildly before she snapped it forward into the right side of Tai’s face not only causing him to skid backwards, but it also made him spin dazedly on his feet to almost topple over.
Tai Lung barely managed to stay standing and stomped his right leg down to regain his balance. He narrowed his eyes at Pom, he saw something unusual surrounding her form.
The shape had two horns and looked like, a cow?
Pom glared at Tai Lung grimly and then opened her mouth.
“Are, you ready, for this~? You need to tell yourself Pom, are you ready, that you need to stand up strong~! Are, you ready, you’re in trouble and I’m going to tell you that you’re cruel and you're a fool that you would ever be so low as to hurt a kid~!” Pom sang as she continued walking forward while glaring at him. “Baa-Ram-Ewe, it’s-it-is all I need right now, given it is only meant for you~. Do you really think you’re so great, for beating up on a kid~? Well let me just say it again, baa-ram-ewe~!”
Tai Lung charged forward and started throwing palm thrusts at her to test the waters, but he found each thrust blocked by a hoof gently gliding into the path of each thrust that was moving at a blur barely visible to the eye.
“Baa-ram-ewe, I can’t take it back~. Now come on Pom, really~? You need to stand up strong~!” Despite being in the middle of blocking his flurry of attacks, Pom dodged left under a punch and shot her right hoof up into his chest where his heart would be. He went sliding away gripping at his chest grimacing. “Give up, what’s that~? You really don’t know what you just did and I’ll give you that you fool, so you better be ready for this~! Because I won’t, give in, to you~! That’s right, I won’t ever… give in~! I will stay standing strong~!”
Tai Lung when back on the offensive as soon as Pom got within range of him with her slow walk. She just stood up and started taking his attacks, but he couldn’t push her back no matter how much force he put into his blows.
Pom anchored herself to the ground to stay in place as she jerked left, right and back under Tai Lung furious blows. She was taking a beating, but she was waiting for the right moment.
“To give in, would be to spit on my kin, and the rule of the warcry that I just howled out~!” Pom smashed her head into his gut between one of Tai Lung’s attacks, lashed her left leg up into his chin and then jumped straight up to bucked him a good thirty feet away. “And right now I won’t give up just like I didn’t on my kid~!”
Tai Lung was very durable, was beginning to worry. He was fierce, powerful and one of the best kung fu warriors ever. What he was seeing and feeling was very much opposing this fact and he decided to change tactics.
Charging forward, Tai unleashed a blistering round of quick jabs and blows. He danced out of range of the slow, but powerful return attacks Pom tried for and ignored the fact that she wasn’t singing anymore or that she even started singing in the first place.
Why she didn’t move faster? Tai Lung didn’t know why she was only walking, but there was something that disturbed him greatly about her easygoing gait and the unusual look in her eyes.
Tai Lung had somewhat figured out that this had to be the Shanty’s teacher, she was actually quite formidable. Far more so than Tai Lung expected, then again Shanty had been partly talented. Only now she couldn’t hit him anymore.
Tai Lung was now tagging Pom a lot with light attacks and not trying to go in on her too heavily. His nerve attacks didn’t seem to be doing anything to Pom at all when he successfully landed them on her. His pummeling should be making her feel pain, but she eerily wasn’t reacting to any of his hits.
Pom managed to get Tai Lung to back off with a quick swipe of her left hoof through the air and then shifted her stance widening her legs a bit, she lifted chin higher and narrowed her eyes at Tai Lung.
Tai Lung saw a shift in the energy from a cow to a… odd looking deer? What exactly was he seeing?
“Yeah, you see, it’s there~. My unbelievable fear, its here~. I can feel it building, and it always has been with me all along~!” What Pom was singing and what Tai Lung was seeing were two different things, the haughty spirit puffed up her chest and huffed as if the snow leopard was entirely beneath her. “Now, let’s see, what you got~. I really want to know, if I can stand up to this feeling, or at the least last for very long~. Why do you bleed, why is it that you fight, where did this all… suddenly go so very wrong~?!”
Tai Lung had backed up a bit and then shot forward and when he attacked this time, Pom wasn’t taking a pummeling to get in strong hits.
Pom was hopping around his attacks and wasn’t giving him an inch of ground as she performed a series of hops that lead into rapid fire kicks that came at odd angles. She wasn’t allowing him to push her back at all.
Pom twisted out of the way of a thrusting knife hand attack and looked to be balancing dishes as she flipped sideways over his left leg and tail sweep.
Tai Lung swung his left paw out to backhand Pom and missed when she bent backwards at an insanely flexible angle, grabbed his wrist. She pulled it over her head, while thrusting her left hind hoof straight into his throat.
Tai Lung gagged, Pom hooked her left hoof into his belly and spun so that her back was to him while he was busy doubled over and clutching at his throat. She thrust her right hoof back and straight up into Tai’s chin dazing him as his head snapped back.
While he was stunned, Pom grappled both her front legs around his neck, then kicked up her with her left rear leg into his face. Her right leg soon followed in an equally painful manner. To finish her attack, Pom curled her entire body upwards using her leverage on Tai Lung’s neck to slam both her rear hooves into his face in a bloody display that broke his nose.
Staggered and bent over as Tai Lung was, Pom managed to get her rear hooves on the ground. Her wool immediately anchored her to the ground and gave her the leverage she needed. With a heave Pom flipped Tai Lung onto his back, rolled on top of him and slammed the knee of her left leg into his chest harshly before rolling into position to bring her legs up for a buck.
Tai Lung recovered quickly and rolled backwards away from Pom and started to back away from her with narrowed eyes and rubbing at his nose, his tail twitching angrily.
He switched his stance and went to attack Pom, this time a bit more cautious of her despite her frail shivering appearance.
Pom turned around and continue to walk, the shivering was becoming worse until she stopped to inhale a bit and it weakened.
“I should be feeling baa-ad~. My body, my body, is under quite a dangerous trick and no it’s not related to anything you ever saw~.” Pom sang as she leapt, rolled and dodged Tai Lung’s attacks with an odd grace. She took a few opportunities to prod him with only straight hoof jabs every once in a while, he certainly felt it when a left landed in his kidney and right went up into his liver at an angle. “I really should be in a lot of pain, but I’m currently glad that I did what I did… because I currently can’t feel, a, thing~!”
“Are, you ready~? I hope, you at least know that my name is, Pom, who is the weakest guard of Huoshan~!” In a display of supernatural strength that was clearly beyond Pom’s capabilities, she stomped her back right hoof into the edge of a cabbage cart and to send it flipping upwards high into the air. How she did this without the cabbages spilling out of it, was something nobody who ever heard about this fight would be able to figure out. “You see, I’m not the greatest that there ever would or will be in any lifespan~. I really hope you can understand what it is that’s exactly coming for you~.”
As Pom sang her last line she ducked under a kick coming from her left, hopped to the right and then slammed her right hoof up into the left side of Tai Lung’s face. She then came at him with a blow from her left, for another equally powerful stunning blow. She started to rhythmically hit him from the right and left with hopping uppercuts, pushing his slightly stumbling body back.
Tai lung bided his time, because he was starting to get the rhythm of the fierce constant left and right attacks as he tried to block them. Even when he started block them, his arms were taking quite an absurd amount of damage from the sheer force of the constant rhythmic blows.
Pom was doing what was known as a Flimsy Roll, but she was doing an incredibly slow version of it and it was relatively easy to counter it for all the power one could put into a full body uppercuts.
“I won’t, give in, to you~. Come on Pom and, don’t dare give in, you need stay standing strong~.” Pom’s next rightward thrust with her left hoof was interrupted by a set of claws coming for her face, she jumped into a rightward roll over the attack. When she was upside down in front of Tai Lung, she thrust her left hoof straight up into his chin and finished her roll to land on her hooves. “You won’t, give in, even knowing that your body is tearing up and that all of this really won’t last… for very long~!”
Pom leapt upwards and wrapped both her hooves around the right handle of the cabbage cart and slammed it downwards, cabbages and all, into the dazed Tai Lung with a devastating force.
Tai Lung went sprawling backwards a good fifty feet covered in bits of cabbages and splinters of broken wood from the destruction of a cabbage cart.
Pom landed, gasping for air. She soon stood up and kept walking forward and was sweating quite profusely, Tai Lung was already back up and coming at her again with an angry growl and a roar.
Pom stopped moving forward took a few breaths to try and slow her shivering down, she then changed her stance to standing on one leg and hopping slightly while wiggling her other three legs at him. She was breathing heavily, her eyes were wild with fear and her body was shaking badly, she was actively taunting him to come get her by showing an absolute lack of defense.
Tai Lung stopped and regarded Pom a bit, he saw a change in the flow of energy to that of a fierce flaming creature that was glaring at him angrily as she wavered about like a snake.
“I… know that… you won’t… listen to me now… but I, have hope that you will soon understand~.” Not listening to Pom’s words Tai Lung surged forward and Pom inhaled deeply, time seemed to slow down as Pom hopped over the incoming sweep ducked under the high left backhand. “I… will give… my life… I hope you’ll understand… I’m ready… to give my life for them all~. Now… let’s see… if you can really… ever truly understand~. I want you, to hear my heart’s song-ong-ng-g~!”
When Pom exhaled time seemed to speed up and she thrusted her left hoof forward it so fast that it caught fire before it struck Tai Lung in the forehead, thus scorching him. The flash from impact caused him to clutch at his eyes and stumble backwards.
Pom was now crying, she didn’t feel any pain despite her face now looking rather unhealthy and pale. She was crying for a different reason than pain, she wanted Tianhuo to be there to hold her.
Tai Lung managed to blink the spots out of his eyes and he went on the offensive.
Pom was raked across the face and body from the left to right, her blood went spilling to the ground along with a small bit of wool from the three gashes below her chest. Tai Lung snapped back and slapped Pom hard across the right side of her face. He followed up by punching her tiny torso making her bend over his fist, yet she didn’t go down screaming.
Instead, Pom half blind by the blood now streaming down over her right eye, simply thrust her right hoof into his left shoulder and an explosion of flames erupted from the impact.
Tai Lung roared and tried to back off, only for Pom to surge forward at an incredible speed while inhaling, she pulled her two front legs back and then thrust them both forward at the same time while trying to run on her hind legs.
“Two hooves… four hooves… eight hooves… sixteen hooves…” Which each count, the speed of her attacks was increasing exponentially as she let a small amount of air out of her lungs between each attack. If one were to look at her from the side, they would see a longma following Pom’s movements exactly as she pushed into Tai Lung trying to block the rapidly increasing number of blows with small flames coming off of each strike. “Thirty two hooves… sixty four hooves… one twenty eight hooves...”
Inhaling deeply again as her body was practically quaking, Pom then became very still.
“Fiery… flurry…” After quietly intoning those two words, Pom threw her two hooves forward while exhaling explosively as she could. Her two hooves became encircled by ten other hooves, those ten were encircled by twenty and they kept replicating even further.
All the hooves seemed to come down on Tai Lung all at once at differing speeds and strengths, each one burning Tai Lung’s body with every single hit.
“How… are you… doing… this?!” Tai Lung barely managed to ask under the assault as his fur was being singed away under the rapid blows of the crying lambkin… the blows were coming at him from all side and angles at speeds he couldn’t even comprehend.
Tai Lung was utterly surprised by the ferocity of the attack and was barely managing to weather through it, he couldn’t block or stop all of it. He was having enough trouble concentrating making sure the fire didn’t burn him and all the blows were quickly weakening over time to the point that he barely felt them.
As soon as it had started, the attack suddenly stopped a second later.
Tai Lung’s body was a mess of bruises except for his back and tail. Never before had he been hit with such spirit and power, but he was still standing.
That Tai Lung was still standing was almost surprising to him, he was completely drained of any ability to recover from that attack. What was truly surprising to him was that his opponent was still standing.
Her two front legs were hanging limply as she stood on her hind legs, her right eye closed due to the blood flowing over it, she was gasping for air and yet despite how badly she was shaking, she was still quite alert as her left eye stared into his very being.
Tai Lung couldn’t move, mostly because of what he was staring at.
Almost dead on her hooves, her body was quaking and her rear legs were threating to drop her to the ground, Pom started growling at him softly.
Tai Lung saw the promise of death in the energy surrounding Pom, it had taken on the form of a large wolf surrounded by an army of smaller wolves that were judging him silently with all their eyes as they protectively circled his opponent.
Tai Lung shivered and was actually afraid of the damaged, broken and bleeding frail looking thing now. He couldn’t push her back, he couldn’t get past her without killing her and he found that he didn’t want to kill her.
Despite his rampage and rage, he had never actually killed anyone before and this being was going to kill herself on him. Tai Lung was actually afraid of Pom for this one thing alone.
Pom started to weakly walk towards him on two legs, her low growling noise hauntingly reaching his ears just as loudly as her slow methodical steps.
Tai Lung thought he clearly went insane, because there was no way that she should be standing or moving if she was as badly injured by her own attack as he thought she was.
She kicked off the ground and rocketed towards him, her mouth wide open and then she bit down on his right shoulder drawing a large amount of blood from it painfully with an incredible crushing force.
“AGH!” Tai Lung quickly, and carefully, pried her off and dropped her onto her back on the ground in fright. He no longer wanted to fight or hurt her, he was actually afraid of her dying now.
He watched as, despite the lack of her front legs to help, Pom slowly rolled over and stood up on her hind legs while continuing to stare him down.
She slowly started to step forward, her breathing haggard and quickly weakening. Even moving was killing her and Tai Lung’s nerve attacks weren’t going to stop her. She was going to keep going?! She’s…. she’s clearly insane!!!
Tai Lung didn’t actually want ‘this’, whatever Pom was, to actually die in front of him on her hooves.
She said she was a guard of a place called Huoshan and the weakest of their number?! Did they not know talent when they saw it?! He had to know more about her, her story, where did someone like this come from?!
“Tai Lung, leave my friend alone, this is what you want isn’t it!” Looking beyond the crazy being before him, Tai Lung backed up a bit so as to not be bitten by the crazy thing before him with blood covered teeth now slowly turning to look back. “If you back away from her and let her go, I’ll give this to you.”
He saw the Dragon Warrior Scroll, bizarrely enough, being held by a rather big and rotund panda.
Pom had froze and looked back at Po, the wildness in her eyes disappearing as she continued to gasp for air her hind legs were wobbling and her whole body was quaking oddly.
“Of course, look over your friend while you’re at it, she doesn’t look to be too healthy... or long for this world.” Tai Lung easily backed away from the violently shaking... and now coughing up blood... creature that scared him to his very soul.
He was going to be given what he wanted? He smiled a little and thought about how the frail one fought for nothing. He smiled about the thought of ‘Once he had the power…’, not knowing that it wouldn’t be exactly what he wanted.
-A minute earlier, Po-
“Ocellus, Smolder, have you seen the Dragon Warrior scroll? It’s not up at the Jade Palace, I need to look at it one more time… in the right light like… Pom… said…” I froze and noticed the state that the two were in as they were hugging Shifu and Shanty together.
Shifu blinked at him, he looks like he has been paralyzed by Tai Lung.
Shanty looked battered and beaten.
At least Ocellus and Smolder looked okay.
“I have it Po, here…” Ocellus’s horn glowed and she opened up her carapace a bit. She levitated the scroll out of it to me, I reverently took it and opened it up to look at it in the light and saw my own face staring back at me in my reflection. “Pom told me to hold on to this, as she had a feeling you’d want to look at it again and was waiting for you to ask her about it.”
“There is... no secret ingredient.” I now knew the secret of kung fu… I really bet this Tai Lung guy wouldn’t be able to get it. Pom probably would, because she’s good at things like that and she’s the nicest lady I’ve ever… wait. I slowly closed up the scroll. “Where’s Pom? She’s always with you guys, why isn’t she here? Weren’t you guys with the Furious Five and the evacuating people?!”
“We could ask you why you are here too you know, but I’m more worried about Pom. She’s currently fighting Tai Lung down the street. Saw a cabbage cart go up a minute ago, so she’s thankfully still alive against a guy that can take quite a beating.” Smolder was a really cool dragon, you know, despite not being a holy one, or even local for that matter. I wanted to make a figurines of her, Smolder, Shanty and Pom. “I don’t know what state she’ll be in, but please help her Po. I know you got this Po, you’re the Dragon Warrior. Now go show that Tai Lung guy what you’re made of.”
“Don’t worry, I know that I’ve got this Smolder. I promise that Pom will still be alive by the time I get back to you.” I quickly started running down the street. “I just hope I make it in time.”
When I arrived, I saw Pom bleeding, with what looked like two broken front legs, dripping with sweat and when she looked back at me, her face was incredibly pale with the blood coming out of it.
-Present-
“Are you okay?” I asked Pom as I got up next to her sitting form.
“Don’t kill him Po... break him...” Whispered Pom, she's clearly out of it. “Tigress needs... brother... to love...”
I laid Pom down on her back and carefully stepped around her with the scroll in paw.
I looked at her limp form and closed eyes, I turned to Tai Lung.