Chapter 12
"Why throw the crates?" one of the newly awakened crocodiles muttered in confusion, still struggling to grasp what was happening. "That's our supplies in there…"
Some of the others who had just woken up were glancing back and forth between the leader and the crates, unable to understand what this creature "feeding on flesh" he was talking about was supposed to mean.
But before anyone could form a question, the same thin, unnatural voice drifted from the undergrowth again, the kind that turns blood cold:
"Papa?.. Are you here?.. I'm so hungry… I want to eat something so badly…"
The last words were delivered with a sweet, almost slavering breathiness that made several crocodiles' tails twitch involuntarily.
And at that same moment, like a living shadow, something small and soundless darted through the far side of the camp. A grasping shape coiled around the leg of the nearest crocodile — the one who had only just woken up and was still barely tracking what was happening.
"Aaah!" His cry was short and saturated with genuine terror. "It's got me! Something is—"
He didn't finish. He was yanked hard to the side, into the darkness. A dull impact against the ground — and then silence, broken a moment later by the same familiar, soul-freezing sounds.
Crack. Squelch. Wet tearing.
The sounds were close now. Right at the edge of their camp, which was still mostly in darkness. They could see something moving in the black, they could hear the horrible wet noises, but they couldn't see the source.
"Oh no, it ate Kenny!" someone screamed from the crowd of terrified bandits.
The leader, gripping his blade, roared in his commanding voice:
"What are you waiting for?! Carry out my order!"
That finally worked. Now there was no hesitation in anyone. The croc bandits, as though possessed, began hurling cloth, sacks of grain, their own belongings — anything combustible — into the fire. They scrambled to light torches and lanterns, frantically trying to push back the dark.
The flames surged high, illuminating faces twisted with terror and wide, frozen eyes — the eyes of those who had watched their companions dragged away by something nightmarish. And from the forest, in time with the chaos, the whisper came again, saturated with a mocking imitation of childlike hurt:
"How unkind… they eat… and give me nothing…"
Then the voice dropped, becoming low and vibrating and guttural, as though rising from the earth itself:
"But I can always help myself… Mama always said — a hungry child has the right to his supper…"
No movement followed.
"It's afraid of the light!" the young bandit cried, with a note of desperate hope.
"It's the demon panda come to punish us for our sins!" another voice joined in.
They were all staring into the darkness of the forest, seeing movement in every shadow, imagining hundreds of eyes and open mouths.
"Hey — up in the tree!" the leader called, raising his head toward one of the sentries. "Can you see anything?"
The crocodile on the platform squinted, peering into the dense undergrowth.
"Doesn't seem like anyone… wait, I can see something—" he began, but didn't finish.
From the darkness, like a whip crack, a loop woven from vines shot out. It coiled around the sentry's torso and snapped him off the platform with a sharp jerk, hauling him into the impenetrable black of the forest.
Crack. Squelch. Wet tearing.
The sounds came again.
"It's hungry!" someone shrieked, pointing wildly at the cage. "What if we give it the children?! Maybe then it'll leave us alone?!"
The leader spun toward the speaker so fast the bandit stumbled backward. His eyes were burning.
"One more word and I'll cut your throat myself!" His voice was hoarse and absolutely serious. "Anyone who suggests that again becomes the monster's supper personally!"
A deathly silence fell over the camp, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the heavy breathing of the bandits.
Then a new sound came from the forest — quiet, and amused. A low laugh.
"Papa is angry…" something whispered from the darkness. "And angry ones… I eat first."
"Try me," the leader said, and at that instant something came crashing out of the undergrowth with a deafening snap of breaking wood — something hurtling directly at him.
He didn't flinch. His blade swept upward in a sharp arc and split the projectile cleanly in two. Both halves flew off to either side, knocking down the crocodiles standing behind him.
"You see?" he hissed, not taking his eyes from the treeline, and continued: "I am not someone who frightens with cheap tricks."
He took a step forward, his voice rising, addressing both the forest and his own people at once:
"We will not feed you the children. We will not give you a single soul. If you are hungry — come out and fight! Or can you only hide in the dark?"
Tense silence gripped the camp. The bandits had frozen, holding their breath, staring at the back of their leader.
From the forest came a new sound in response — not furious, but contemplative. A quiet, multi-voiced hissing that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
"Brave one…" the voice rasped, and for the first time there was something in it that wasn't mockery but genuine curiosity.
"Soft bones… but a hard spirit. Interesting…"
And at that exact moment, when every eye was fixed on the forest ahead of the camp, a sound of breaking branches came from behind — from the bushes behind the children's cage. It lasted only an instant, but the leader was an experienced fighter and caught it.
He spun sharply. He was too late.
An enormous figure emerged from the undergrowth. Before anyone could make a sound, it launched something at the leader with the speed of a cannonball — something he had no time to block.
It was not a blade, not a stone, not a club. It was a massive head of cabbage, thrown with monstrous force. It exploded on contact with his skull, scattering pale green leaves in every direction.
The bandit went still, head snapping back, his hand releasing the blade. The weapon hit the ground with a dull clang. He sank slowly, almost ceremonially, to his knees — then toppled face-first into the dirt without a sound.
The powerful croc bandit who had been challenging an unseen enemy moments before had been felled by a vegetable.
And in that same moment, whatever had emerged from the bushes stepped into the light.
Its enormous body was distorted by unnatural tension. Every muscle bulged under the fur, rising in thick ropes. The coat, matted and darkened, was heavily smeared with something viscous and dark that caught the firelight with a sinister crimson sheen. Wet crimson ran down its arms and chest, dripping slowly onto the ground.
But the worst of it was the face. The maw was frozen in a wide, unnatural, teeth-baring grimace, white fangs gleaming, thick viscous saliva dripping from them in rust-red strings. The eyes were stretched wide, filled with a primal lunacy. There was no reason in them, no mercy — only an all-consuming, predatory hunger.
And then, slowly, with an inhuman fluidity, it swept its gaze across everyone present, and from its throat rose a low, bubbling growl that sounded less like a voice and more like boiling flesh.
In the silence that followed, everyone understood — the demon that poor Chan had raved about was real. And it was standing in front of them.
Most of the bandits screamed and ran in every direction, dropping their weapons. But a few desperate ones charged with wild shouts, raising swords and axes.
The panda didn't move. In one smooth, monstrously powerful motion it wrenched a young but fairly thick tree from the ground. Swinging it like a twig, it swept a devastating arc through the air — and the brave ones were thrown aside like scraps of wood before they could even cry out.
Without pausing, the creature released the same soul-freezing roar and hurled the uprooted tree at one of the sentry platforms. It exploded in a shower of splinters, and the crocodile guard came down with a deafening screech, vanishing beneath the wreckage.
Looking around, it found no one left — only the signs of mass panic. The last of the bandits had fled screaming into the trees in every direction.
Now it stood alone beneath the roaring fire, which was still growing in strength, while somewhere deep in the undergrowth the last dull rhythmic impacts continued — Mantis finishing his work.
Seeing no one left to perform for, the panda released the muscle tension with a loud exhale of relief, and all the definition disappeared back beneath the fat.
"How's it going, Mantis?" he asked, shaking the sticky mixture of cherry and cranberry juice — his imitation blood — off his paws.
Shortly after, Mantis appeared from behind the trees, laboriously dragging a garland of bandits trussed up with vines. The sight was inherently comic given the size difference — a tiny insect hauling a heap of full-sized criminals.
"Got almost all of them knocked out and tied up," he reported, dropping the vines with relief, and continued: "Only one managed to get away somehow. Didn't chase him — for obvious reasons."
He gave Po a meaningful look, and both of them spent a brief moment contemplating their shared navigational abilities.
"How did you come up with all of… this?" Mantis asked with genuine curiosity, gesturing at the false blood on Po's hide. "The vegetable-tearing, the fake blood — all of it?"
Po hesitated for a moment, rubbing one paw against the other with mild embarrassment.
"Well… I just really love vegetables and fruit," he began uncertainly. "And somehow it occurred to me that the crunching and tearing sounds could be… threatening, if you leaned into it."
He paused briefly, then added with more confidence:
"Also, we got lucky — these thieves had taken everything they could find. Their tents were completely packed with supplies."
"And the most important thing — the children in the cage didn't give us away. You warned them in advance, whispered that it was all a performance…"
Mantis gave a dignified nod, his small chest swelling with pride.
"Of course. Otherwise the poor things would have been traumatized for life by what they heard." He paused. "As it was — everything went perfectly."
Po was about to add something when four figures dropped silently from above. Crane, Tigress, Viper, and Monkey — with Crane having evidently carried the other three.
"What took you so long?" Po said with mild displeasure, deciding that offense was the best defense. "We've been waiting."
"Try finding you in this forest!" Crane said with exasperation, shaking his tired wings. "If it weren't for your fire, we'd never have found you at all."
Tigress crossed her arms and fixed Po and Mantis with a reproachful look:
"You found the bandits and didn't think to call for the others? You just decided the two of you could handle it? What if they'd beaten you?"
"We got lost and stumbled onto them by accident! And going back through the dark would have been completely stupid." Po answered with irritation. Mantis nodded in agreement.
Viper, meanwhile, was studying Po and the apparent blood on his hide.
"Po, are you all right? You look… not great. Is that blood?"
"No, it's fake," Po explained calmly, and noticed Viper visibly relax the moment he said it.
The four of them looked back and forth between a smeared Po and an unruffled Mantis with identical expressions of bafflement. Po and Mantis ended up taking turns walking the others through the entire operation — from the getting-lost, to the stumbling upon the camp, to the idea behind the blood-soaked performance.
Monkey was on the ground laughing, rolling and slapping his sides.
Tigress shook her head with disapproval. Crane muttered something important-sounding about unconventional but effective tactical approaches.
Viper, meanwhile, had already opened the cage lock and was talking gently with the freed children. Among the seven little ones were mostly rabbit kits, with a few plump piglets among them. They had already forgotten their fear entirely and were staring at the great kung fu masters with shining eyes, talking over each other with questions:
"Is it true you can knock down a tree with one strike?" the most curious of the rabbit kits asked, nose twitching.
"Can you show us a move?" the others chimed in, falling into clumsy fighting stances.
Viper softened, coiling around the children in a gentle protective ring and answering quietly:
"Everything in its time, little ones. First we need to get you home."
While the children were busy marveling at their rescuers, the kung fu masters hadn't forgotten about the remaining bandits that the panda had laid out. As the criminals began coming around, it was quietly amusing to note that most of them had sincerely convinced themselves that a forest spirit had attacked and hexed them, and that the Furious Five and the Dragon Warrior had somehow, reluctantly, become their saviors.
Only their leader sat in silence, giving an occasional derisive snort. He alone, it seemed, had worked out what had actually happened.
Fortunately for most of the bandits, they had gotten away with bruises. Those who had been unlucky enough to end up directly in Po's path had fared considerably worse — several had broken bones and were quietly groaning. One of the croc bandits hadn't regained consciousness at all.
Tigress, checking the tightness of the bindings and glancing over the injured bandits, shook her head:
"Next time you're hitting someone… try to control your strength."
"I was trying!" Po answered with mild indignation, rubbing his paw with an embarrassed look. "They kept walking into my hands. Or into the tree."
With that, Po pointedly turned away, conveying through his entire bearing that he was no longer part of this conversation, and became absorbed in examining the gang leader's blade, which he had been holding since picking it up from the ground.
The same blade that had split the log in half so easily, without any visible effort. Looking it over, Po understood that the quality was equal to the weapons hanging in the main hall of the Jade Palace.
While Po studied the blade, a relative quiet settled over the camp. The children had finally fallen asleep, tucked carefully under a sturdy piece of cloth.
Taking advantage of the lull, the Five and the panda gathered in a tight circle around the captured gang leader to question him.
Viper broke the silence first. Her voice, normally soft and fluid, was now firm and without warmth:
"Why children? Did you genuinely believe the Jade Palace would let that pass?"
"You're wasting your time," the leader rasped, before anyone could ask the next question, and added: "I barely know anything myself."
"You'll tell us everything regardless," Viper said without the slightest note of doubt, moving smoothly around him.
"We have someone among us who practices acupuncture. He knows the pressure points that will make even the most stubborn person speak freely. And believe me — it is very… unpleasant." She let that land.
"Or we could just sit him on a sharpened bamboo stake right now, let him enjoy that," Po offered, drawing looks of quiet reproof from every member of the Five.
"What? I think it's fair… shouldn't steal children…" he defended himself, but their combined silent stares wore his enthusiasm down quickly.
The leader grimaced, exhaled, and began:
"Fine. I'm not who you want — it's the one above me. Big Fang. He leads the whole clan. Not just this one gang, but everyone working these roads. He decides who to rob and when to strike."
"And where is this Big Fang?" Tigress cut in, the question landing like a thrown blade.
"Gone. Left this morning, right after we took the children. He was there personally for the grab, then told me to hold position and guard until the following evening, and disappeared. Didn't say where."
"But why kidnap children, even for a large ransom?" Crane asked. "Judging by what you had stockpiled here, you were doing fine without it."
"I don't know. Honestly." The leader spat, looking at the ground. "Before, we'd take ransom for adults — merchants, wealthy farmers. We'd done it under the previous leader. But Fang was always like a terrified rat. Trembled at the thought of taking anyone hostage, especially children. Said it was a guaranteed way to bring every clan and the Palace itself down on you."
He paused.
"Then recently he became a completely different person. Organized this child grab himself, in person. Like someone replaced him. Clearly found himself some powerful friends who gave him a new set of ideas. Or promised him protection substantial enough that he stopped being afraid of anyone at all."
A silence followed. The picture was becoming clearer without becoming less murky.
Then Po slowly raised the blade he had been holding throughout.
"And this? Where did you get this sword?"
The leader looked at the blade with genuine puzzlement, as though Po had asked him where the bump on his head had come from.
"The sword? We found it in one of the caravans. A couple of weeks ago. It was sitting among bales of silk. Good steel, so I kept it. What does it matter?"
"Out of the frying pan," Po muttered in response.
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