If No One Will Listen

Part I

Being a prince, an only child, and the sole heir of a wealthy and powerful family sounded like the ideal scenario for any young child. But for Prince Sheng Li of Gongmen City, it was both his everyday life and his worst nightmare.

And, of course, it was so BORING.

Sheng Li – or Shen, as he was more commonly known – wanted to be anyone but himself. And it wasn't his so-called elite life that spawned his unhappiness, either; of course he was perfectly content living in a palace and having servants at his beck and call. He enjoyed things like playing outside with his nanny, who was the court soothsayer, and taking kung fu lessons from Master Thundering Rhino. When he wanted a new toy or a more elaborate game to play with, his request was almost immediately granted. Yes, Shen had everything that his mind wanted – but nothing that his heart needed.

For one thing, he was sick a lot, thanks to his being born an albino with a practically nonexistent immune system. It seemed like once a week he would wake up feverish, or get a horrible stomachache from just one germ getting into his food. But when he was healthy – or whatever "healthy" meant for someone like him – people still TREATED him like he was ill and fragile. They lowered their voices so as not to damage his delicate hearing, and some even spoke slowly and over-enunciated each word. Morons. Shen wasn't slow; he had a quick wit and could think quite well for a five-year-old. He had always been that way. That was why his Nana had given him his nickname – "Shen" meant "deep thought."

His Nana was the only one who really took care of him. She fed him, bathed him, and made sure he didn't get into trouble. For a long time, Shen had been ignorant of his real parents, not understanding that all of the other children in Gongmen were being raised by a Mama and Baba instead of a Nana. Eventually, he had learned about his parents, the peacocks who ran the city. But to him, "parents" was an abstract word that referred to the remote presences he never saw. Shen's concept of normality had been twisted; he hadn't understood that regular children didn't get sick all time, had other friends to play with, and were loved by their birth mothers and fathers.

These days, though, he had long since realized that something wasn't right.

Whenever he was taken out into Gongmen, he would be urged to go play with someone his own age – but every child he came across acted like he had a deadly, contagious disease, and mocked him rather than played with him. There were children in the palace, too, the offspring of guards or nobles or servants, but they found him even stranger than the city kids. Even when families from outside of Gongmen came in, for festivals or vacations, Shen was gawked at and endlessly reminded that he was wrong, wrong, wrong. His color was wrong; his size was wrong; everything about him was wrong, and no one could seem to get around that. "Everyone is different," his Nana always reminded him.

Well, some people were more different than others.

And sometimes, while Shen milled about the palace, he would catch glimpses of the world behind the walls through the windows; he would see families walking together, happy families with children that looked like their parents, and parents that loved their children, and everyone was healthy and happy and didn't seem to have any problems. He wondered why they were happy when he wasn't. He wondered what they had that he didn't.

Nothing about today seemed to deviate from the norm. It was a hot, humid morning in early summer; bees flounced about the last pollen of the flowers in the courtyard, and Shen was seated by the well, listlessly rolling his ball back and forth. The soothsayer, his nanny, stood back a ways, watching him pretend to play.

"What's wrong, my prince?" she finally asked.

The ball rolled against the well and was caught up in a patch of rough grass. Shen didn't bother retrieving it.

"I have no friends," he declared unhappily.

The soothsayer sighed. "You will find some, dear heart."

"Nuh-uh," Shen couldn't help but contradict. "Everyone in the palace thinks I'm weird! Even the other kids from outside-a Gongmen call me 'bad color, bad omen'!" Shen hated to be called "bad color, bad omen." Supposedly, the fact that he was white while his parents were blue was a foreshadowing of darkness that would come upon the city. He wasn't even quite sure that he understood why being white was such a big deal, but it had long since been drilled into his head that he was wrong, wrong, wrong.

His nanny was still trying to be vainly optimistic. "Nevertheless, there must be someone who – "

"You don't get it!" Shen yelled, scrambling up, his still-developing head feathers bristling. The soothsayer flinched. "Nobody's ever gonna wanna play with me, Nana! Never EVER!"

She placed her hooves on his shoulders, catching his eyes pleadingly. "Shen, calm down…"

Shen tore away from her angrily, running across the courtyard. His progress was hindered by his enormous robes, and he looked altogether awkward and laughable, but his frustration was still clear. The soothsayer didn't even have the heart to go after him and reprimand him for his behavior; she understood his anger well enough. She settled down by the well, sadly watching the chick that was practically hers as he trundled through the flowers.

Once Shen saw that his Nana wasn't following him, he hitched up the long hem of his robe with hands masked by oversized sleeves and began stomping through the gardens of the courtyard. It was nearly deserted out here today; the only other people he saw were servants, pruning bushes or sweeping paths, and one lone wolf cub – one of the guard children. He always steered clear of the wolf pups. They usually snickered at him if he happened to pass by them, and he figured that they might decide to push him around if he tried talking to them. He did know a bit of kung fu, from his lessons with Master Thundering Rhino, but he was still in no position to fight with children who were older, bigger, and stronger than him.

The puppy he saw was running around erratically – chasing something, by the look of it. Butterflies? No, bees! Shen rolled his eyes at the stupidity of the situation. Didn't the cub know that when you chased bees, you got STUNG?

He turned his attention back to the flowers, admiring the blue and green and purple blossoms and their vivid colors. He wondered if he would get in trouble if he tried to pick one. He would never pick the white flowers, though; anything that was white couldn't be as beautiful as things that had color. Anything that was white was a bad color, bad omen –

Something barreled into him.

Shen cried out, tumbling face first into the nearest flower bed. Sprawled out on top of him was a lithe, furry form that was much heavier than he was. He struggled to free himself, but he was completely pinned, and his weak body wasn't adequate to escape. Finally managing to lift his head a bit, he saw what had knocked him over: it was the crazy wolf cub.

The puppy shifted a bit, shook his head, opened his eyes…and then immediately scrambled up when he saw what he had run into. "Oh, um, um, I'm very sorry, um – my prince!" he flailed.

Painfully, Shen pulled himself to his feet (having a bit of trouble finding his feet inside his huge robe). "You…don't have to call me that," he muttered.

The wolf cub had now raised himself to all fours, and his eyes flitted back and forth in confusion. "Um…my lord…?" he tried again.

Shen bristled. "I'm not a lord and I never will be! I'm too…" He trailed off.

"…little?" the pup finished. "Oh, that's just cause'a your age! You'll get bigger!"

"No, I'm too…" Shen struggled to remember the word his parents always used. "Sick-ly. I'm too sick-ly."

The cub blinked in confusion. "Well, you look fine to me! You're just a different color!" He grinned, his bushy tail wagging. The few fangs in his mouth were quite blunt, and many of them were missing, creating spaces between his teeth. He couldn't have been much older than Shen. "I think your color is cool!"

Shen was thunderstruck. "Cool? But it's…wrong?"

"There's no wrong color," the cub responded. "They're all special in their own way."

Shen's feathers drooped a bit; that sounded an awful lot like something his Nana would say to make him feel better. "But…none of the other chicks look like me…"

"That just makes you cooler!"

He was secretly quite pleased by that, although all he said was, "I'm not cool, though. I don't have any friends."

The puppy shrugged. "Neither do I."

Shen's head feathers went up in curiosity.

The two boys settled down into sitting positions on the grass, almost without realizing it. "How come you don't have any friends?" Shen asked.

The little wolf cub didn't seem too bothered by not having friends, unlike Shen. "I don't go out much."

"How come? Are you sick-ly too?"

"No, Mama and Baba are palace guards. I gotta be trained to be a guard too."

"They should still let you go out! My Mama and Baba are the rulers of the city, and they still let me go out! But…" Shen looked down, drooping quite a bit, as always happened when his parents came up in conversation. "They don't have time for me…"

"Oh, that sucks," said the puppy brightly. "Mine don't have time for me either."

"Who takes care of you, then? Do you have a Nana?"

"No, I take care'a myself!" He stood up proudly, this time only on two legs, although Shen was soon to learn that he wasn't too fond of this position and was much more clumsy when he wasn't standing on all four feet.

"Oh," said Shen thoughtfully, then added, "I have a Nana!"

"The bearded lady?"

"Yeah!"

"Oh, I seen her before. Isn't she a soupsayer?"

"SOOTHsayer!"

"Oh." The cub's ears lowered a bit in embarrassment, and he grinned sheepishly. "Heh. I hearda those, too."

Shen got to his feet, straightening his baggy robe. "She's really smart," he declared. "She can see the future and she knows all kinds a stuff!" He looked the other boy in the face and smiled, the last of his reservations dissolving. "Wanna come meet her?"

The soothsayer was just beginning to wonder where Shen had gotten off too when she saw the boys trundling towards her. She watched as her familiar little chick pointed at her, chattering happily to someone that she didn't recognize. One of the guard children, by the look of it.

"Shen, who's this?" she asked, standing.

"Nana!" Shen ran up to her, his stride so adorably awkward in his giant clothes that she couldn't help but smile. "This is…uh…" He suddenly realized that he didn't even know the wolf cub's name.

"I'm Xun," the puppy offered, rising back to two legs from all fours.

"He's one'a the guard kids," Shen said.

The soothsayer was overjoyed beyond belief. A broad smile overtook her face. "You made a friend?"

Shen's eyes widened. "Huh? But we're not…" His voice faded.

Xun smiled, strode forward, and put his arm around the peachick's shoulders. "Yeah, he made a friend."

A/N - This story was based on a roleplay between me and my friend Jordan and was originally posted on deviantART after gaining attention through some pictures I did.

Guide to Names:

Sheng Li - Shen's full name; means "victorious, of high success"
Xun - the name of the wolf boss/boss wolf; means "swift and fast"

Oh, by the way, I don't own Kung Fu Panda. I bet you're so surprised to hear that.