Kung Fu Panda: The Hunt For The Heir (OC x Tigress fanfic)

Chapter 16: How Not To Make Friends

:The next day:

The Furious Five and Po woke up as usual to the gong, the Five in perfect unison with Po slightly lagging behind as he usually did. Passing near Peach Tree Hill on their way to breakfast, this time the Five and Po spied Hunter making his way down the Hill as they got closer to the kitchen from their sleeping quarters. Hunter eventually reached the group and bowed slightly to Shifu with a slightly weary expression. Tigress' nose visibly twitched as he got closer to her. "You smell like alcohol." she commented offhandedly, not meaning much by it from the tone of her voice and expression on her face.

Despite this apparent lack of hostility on her behalf, Hunter snorted dismissively at her words. "Well, maybe that's because I was drinking alcohol, you fucking genius." he spat back in response. Everyone was completely shocked at the rather unearned venom and the sheer bitterness that was laced in Hunter's words as he pushed past the group and walked down the steps without even looking back at any of them as he just kept going. Tigress was, for once, shocked into inaction and silence. While she definitely hadn't been all that nice to him since he'd arrived, she didn't expect him to just insult her without some form of provocation from herself... Everyone stood there for a good few seconds and watched after Hunter as he still continued on without looking back at any of them for a second. They more slowly made their way up towards the training area now for their pre-breakfast training, although Po was hanging back a little from the looks of it.

Meanwhile, Hunter kept on walking until he came upon a natural spring with a waterfall running into it and water pouring down into another spring below, so it was self-cleaning. Sighing in relief, Hunter had luckily found somewhere where he could relax a bit on his own hopefully for a little while. He was sure that display back there would hopefully discourage any curious enough to come snooping. Deciding this would suffice for what he was intending, Hunter stripped out of his clothes and placed the pack he had brought with him against a rock that was close to the spring.

He then took out some cleaning supplies, put them next to the spring and slowly lowered himself into the water with a groan of pleasure. Quite a few scars were visibly scattered along his rough skin, denoting his years of being a warrior and a few close calls or failed sidesteps. His muscles were also rather obvious out of his usual clothing and had clearly been worked on to fight with and weren't just for show. As to be expected he was incredibly fit and had clearly been in many brutal fights if the severity of several of the scars littering his body were anything to go by. He even had some tattoos inked across his skin from the looks of it.

Along his right arm was a coiled red dragon, its head stretching over his shoulder and coming to its end with a roar just above his right pectoral facing his left. Along his left arm was a green snake running his arms length, its head like the Dragon's coming over his shoulder above his left pectoral where its head rested as if hissing at the dragon on the right, while the dragon was roaring at it in turn in some form of symbolism known only to him. Lower on his left arm above his wrist were, painfully from the looks of it, branded Hanzi words in a straight line up:

惡魔
殺手

Which roughly meant 'Demon Slayer'. On the right side of his neck was a Camellia flower, the green leaves of which spread to the top of his shoulder leading to the blooming flower on the side of his neck. At the bottom of his back was depicted half of two flags merged into one flag. One half was China's flag and the other was the Rìběn rising sun flag. On his upper back was an incredibly detailed Oni Mask that was looking slightly to the side. Lower on his right arm slightly above his wrist was also branded, painfully from the looks of it in Kanji:

浪
人

This was the word 'Rōnin' and above that halfway down from his elbow in Hanzi once again was branded


贼


Which meant 'Thief'. Usually ink markings like this were only used by rhinos or other species with no fur on their bodies, and although that also applied to Hunter, it still looked rather different than usual. Most of the time their ink markings denoted some kind of rank or honour they'd been bestowed by official authorities, whereas one could definitely question the origin of at least two of the brandings he had...