Consciousness returned with a jolt. I opened my eyes and saw not the familiar grey ceiling of my rented apartment.
Stone.
Rough, dark, granite-like stone was right in front of my face—hell, I was literally sitting on it.
What the...?
I tried to get up. Nothing. Tried to twitch my hand. Stillness. Move a leg? Void. It was as if I were paralyzed.
Panic flared in my chest. What happened while I was asleep? Did the ceiling collapse? Was I kidnapped? Why the hell am I paralyzed and not in a hospital, but in some sort of… cave?
I tried to calm down, to take a deep breath, but it had the opposite effect. My breathing obeyed, but my body...
I couldn't FEEL it.
And no, it wasn't just that I "couldn't control it." It felt as if only my head remained, floating in the darkness, while everything else—arms, legs, torso—had simply vanished.
But... no. There was one sensation.
Something long and covered in fur twitched behind my back.
A tail.
Hold on. A tail? What the hell?
I'm a normal human being. I trained as a mechanic, worked at a repair shop, helped my elderly mother. I've never had a tail in my life, and I never could!
But I felt it, and unlike my arms and legs, I could move it.
No, no, no... This is a dream. Exactly, just a stupid, realistic dream! I've had dreams where I could fly, where I even flapped wings, and this is just like that! I just need to wake up, and it will all be over. Yes, absolutely...
I involuntarily twitched an ear, trying to listen.
And the sound... the sound shifted. I distinctly felt the ear atop my head swivel to the side, catching a distant hum.
An ear. Also not mine. Goddamn crazy dream.
Okay, fine, I need to calm down!
Pull yourself together...
Uh... what the hell is my name?
Memory responded... and provided a flash—an image, and then a name.
Tai Lung.
What? No. Nonsense. That wasn't my name. I... I was...
Memories of my past life—the mechanic job, the apartment, my mother—suddenly became dim and distant. But the name "Tai Lung" was vivid, hot, and heavy. And along with it, a wave of alien emotions flooded my consciousness: rage scorching like fire, icy resentment, and a disappointment so deep and black that it stole my breath for a moment.
These weren't my feelings. But they were inside me.
Tai Lung... That's a character from a kids' cartoon. The main character was there too—a huge, fat panda who became the Dragon Warrior...
No sooner had this thought formed than a foreign pride roared within me. "A stupid, fat panda—the Dragon Warrior?!" The mere acknowledgement felt like a personal insult, like a slap in the face.
No, no, no, this can't be true! I just went to sleep at home! I couldn't have ended up in the body... in the body of a villain from a childhood cartoon?! I couldn't have, right?!
Suddenly, something cracked. Chains rattled, and the creak of a heavy mechanism echoed.
"Well then, kitty cat, I see you're not in a cheerful mood today either?"
A rough male voice that made me instinctively flinch.
Gathering all my strength, I managed to lift my head slightly, and my eyes focused on...
A huge, hulking guy with an elongated snout and a real, honest-to-god horn. A rhino-man.
The dissonance of what I saw snapped me out of my introspection and attempts to figure out who I was. In his right hand, the stranger held a torch burning with a strange, steady red flame, and in his left—a heavy leather bag.
I twitched my ear again, and the world exploded with sound once more. My hearing was magically amplified many times over: I heard the creaking of mechanisms somewhere high above, the rustle of his armor, and a quiet, ominous metallic clanking coming from the bag. A shiver ran down my spine.
"Still silent, huh?" the rhino said with a grin. He was wearing some kind of armored skirt and pauldrons. Setting the torch into a wall bracket, he started toward me.
"Upstart and weakling. He is no warrior..." The contemptuous thought flashed through my mind. It belonged to me, and yet, to someone else at the same time.
"Then stay silent. I'll drag a sound out of your throat eventually, Tai Lung. I hope you've recovered from yesterday's... massage session?" Laughing nastily, the rhino circled behind me. "That Chi of yours works wonders. I see you really have recovered. And I didn't even hold back yesterday..."
He set down the bag and took something out of it.
"Well then, all the worse for you."
And then HELL began!
I won't describe it in detail. My human mind simply couldn't handle it. But I felt it.
I felt something sharp, like daggers, piercing my muscles, sending them into spasms of agony. I felt red-hot tongs tearing out chunks of flesh, leaving smoking wounds; felt steel claws slashing through skin; felt red-hot needles coated in something caustic being driven under my claws... and then felt those claws being ripped out.
The pain was unbearable. Even though my connection to the body still felt weak, the pain... It erased thoughts, the world around me, my very "self." My human side wanted to scream, to thrash, to beg. I could have sworn that if I'd felt even a tenth of this before, I would have screamed my voice hoarse.
But I remained silent.
Only a contemptuous snort escaped my throat in the worst moments.
It wasn't my will. It was his will. An inner core of pure, unbreakable pride wouldn't let me... us... give that bastard the satisfaction.
"This worthless piece of shit doesn't deserve my reaction. He is no warrior."
The thought rang in my head, drowning out the agony.
Finally, just when I started to... get used to it... The rhino stopped.
"Excellent, kitty. Until tomorrow..." The satisfied executioner said, licking his dry lips. He was clearly enjoying this. Scum.
I didn't say anything. My consciousness was already drifting away, unable to cling to reality any longer, but before I finally plunged into the darkness, the body reacted on its own.
I felt something warm, some kind of internal energy... Chi... instinctively rush to the wounded parts of my body, dulling the pain. And then—silence.