The door slammed into the wall of the alley with a heavy metallic clang as it was flung open. A small girl stumbled into the wall across from the door, falling to her knees and scuffing them on the hard, wet cement. If only her pleated skirt and knee socks were a little longer!

She struggled back onto her feet, bracing with one arm against the wall. She might have landed on the filthy water briefly, but she’d avoid staggering into the actual trash in the alley if she could help it.

Unfortunately, the choice was removed from her when Liu Wuhao and his band of sycophants burst into the alley just steps behind her. Liu slapped her about the head and swept her foot out from under her, sending her sprawling into the mound of trash bags waiting to be taken to the curb on garbage day.

“That’s where you belong,” Liu jeered. “In the trash because you are trash!”

Most of the boys with Liu laughed, but his chief toady, Hong Haoren wasn’t satisfied with that. Bigger and meaner than the other boys of their age, Hong stepped forward and shoved her again as she struggled to get to her feet.

“Wu Lihua? More like… more like, Poo Stink Ho!”

Lihua felt her ears warm. To be addressed in such a manner was one thing, but to have her very name transformed into a vile slur? And not even in the tongue of their homeland?

Yet she was outnumbered and outmatched.

Not only were the boys all carrying their heavy sabers, each was at the very peak of their foundation building, on the verge of forming their golden core. Liu may even have formed an early-stage core, seeing as his father was head of the sect and favored him with the best resources for their cultivation.

Even if she were armed, she could not stand against so many and of such power. Her only hope was to bear their abuse with dignity and hope they did not take offense. If they felt they had lost face…

Lihua shuddered at the thought. Even in Xindalu, they would not be able to abide the disgrace of bearing an offense from a lowly orphan their sect had taken in. Especially not now!

“To think the Zandoudaogong took you in, a lowly urchin with no family, and you rejected our teachings,” Liu said. “You are soft!”

“You have dishonored our most ancient and venerable sect,” Hong added, a note of giddiness in his voice.

She knew what Hong was doing. He wouldn’t be satisfied with her expulsion, not after she rejected his advances. Lihua had tried to be polite and hid her disdain for the large boy behind her poverty, claiming that she lacked the means to dress appropriately for a date to the shopping mall, but Hong had not been satisfied.

“To think of all the resources our Shifu invested into trying to make something worthwhile out of you,” Hong continued. “You are little better than a thief!”

Hong paused for a moment, letting the idea settle into Liu’s mind as the other boys cajoled and harangued Lihua. She still had not mounted the courage to make another attempt to rise to her feet. If she did, she feared the next blow would be something far less kind than a trip or shove.

“If only there was some way we could recoup at least some of that investment,” Hong mused. “Alas! You have nothing of worth to offer, peasant scum! Even the rags you wear are barely good enough to sop up your monthly frailties.”

Lihua might not have the temerity to return to her feet yet but she could use her hair to give her some cover. She angled her head slightly, just enough to let her see Liu’s face. She tried to suppress her grimace at the sight; Hong’s suggestions had made their mark and Liu was following them to their logical conclusion. Logical according to the teachings of their sect, anyways.

“My father- Shifu Liu, that is — only wanted her expelled from the sect,” he said slowly. “But Lihua has barely even begun to build her foundation after all these years. All the pills and spirit herbs she has been given… pointless in the hands of a yin-brained shabi.”

Hong tittered ominously and licked his lips. “What do you mean, big brother Liu?”

“Only that she isn’t exactly lacking on qi,” Liu said, still taking his time to work through his thoughts. “The reason she’s so far behind is because we’ve been giving her yang-aspected resources and she’s too soft and weak to use them efficiently. Yet the qi itself remains.”

“If only we could access it,” Hong said in frustration, though the quirk of his eyes in Liu’s direction made it clear he knew exactly what water he was trying to lead this particular horse to.

“Perhaps we can,” Liu said, stroking his chin to give the impression of wisdom. “My father- I mean, our Shifu- wanted her expelled from the sect. Now she is no more than a mediocre pedestrian, so surely he wouldn’t begrudge us a… harvest.”

Hong said nothing, but the other three boys with them exchanged nervous glances. Lihua could see they were excited and terrified in equal parts. Illicit resources for refinement would surely be shared among them, after all, if only to keep their silence.

Liu continued speaking, slowly, exploring the edges of ‘his’ idea. “I’m certain old master Cao in the alchemy lab would be willing to quietly refine some useful components without any questions.”

Hands began drifting to the handles of the heavy sabers favored by their sect. Lihua tried to keep her breathing steady as she considered her options. Would begging for mercy work? Unlikely, her sect favored strength and saw triumph over the weak as eminently honorable and worthy. Could she run? Not without a fight.

Since it seemed likely they were going to kill her, she might as well put up a fight anyways. Perhaps the difference in their cultivation wouldn’t be so much of a handicap, as long as she fought with a heart that was pure and true.

Who was she kidding? She was going to get chopped to pieces in this filthy alley and her parts refined into powders to empower these assholes. Not for the first time, she regretted being less than honest with that guidance counselor at the school she’d attended in Nolita.

Someone laughed nearby. It was a deep sound, ponderous and rumbling like boulders tumbling down a mountain. Lihua, like Liu and his henchmen, turned their attention to the mouth of the alley, where the laughter had come from.

A giant of a man stood there, six and half feet tall if he was a foot and powerfully built with a thick, bushy brown beard. He had a small, button nose and a twinkle in his eyes, but the most unusual thing was his sweatshirt. One wouldn’t expect to see an adult — especially one so large — wearing a fuzzy brown hoodie with animal ears on it. They were wide and flopped forward slightly. Lihua thought they might have been mouse ears.

Hong, nearly six feet tall himself despite his youth, took a step towards the man and waved a hand to shoo him away.

“Begone, gweilo, this doesn’t concern you.”

The large man looked down at Hong, then his eyes traveled to the other boys in the alley with their heavy, brutish swords, surrounding a small girl with scuffed knees laying on a pile of literal refuse.

He produced a white oyster pail from the pocket of his hoodie and popped it open. From within he plucked a bao so fresh, steam was still rising from the bun in the cool morning air.

“Keeping bees in your mouth is a poor way to make honey,” the gweilo said around a mouthful of bun. “Uhm, idioms aside… you wouldn’t happen to have any actual honey, would you? It would go great with my pork buns.”

“You dare?!?” Liu said, taking three forward until he had passed Hong.

The stranger pulled out another bun and began to eat it. “I do.”

He took two steps into the alley, looking down at the young men surrounding Lihua, then letting his eyes settle on her. His face crinkled in a smile and there was real warmth in his eyes, something Lihua had never experienced.

“Don’t play the youxia, peasant!” Hong proclaimed, pointing an accusatory finger at the stranger. “If you take another step, we shall show you your place and make you kowtow in the muck.”

“You child,” the stranger said, pointing to Lihua. “Are these ruffians being disrespectful to you? Do they need to be taught a lesson?”

The five young disciples of the Zandoudaogong sect blustered at the insult and Lihua was torn. If she told this stranger the truth and he tried to intervene, she would be putting him in just as much danger as she faced. She wanted help, but she couldn’t condemn another to be refined into qi resources for the benefit of her tormentors.

“Please, sir, they are xiumozhe,” she warned. “Powerful cultivators of an ancient sect.”

Liu and his cronies turned to sneer at the stranger, confident he would flee before the advertisement of their might. Instead, the large man placed another entire pork bun in his mouth and chewed it slowly.

“Xiumozhe, you say? Is that some kind of kung fu thing?”

Lihua would never admit to it, but she was almost positive the large ears on the man’s hoodie twitched, matching the mischievous little chuckle he gave. It was impossible, of course; it was just one of those cute animal hoodies.

“You dare?” Liu spat.

“You keep asking that and I already told you I do,” the stranger said. “I dare. I double dare. I double dog dare. I… well, I could go on as high as quadruple dog daring but you get the idea. I am very daring.”

He smiled at the young disciples and Lihua blinked. Did that man have rather, er, pronounced canines?

The disciples seemed to have noticed something as well, as they leaned away from the large stranger slightly. Still, they had lost face many times in this conversation already and had little choice but to try salvaging the situation. There were very few ways that could satisfy their honor, especially for a mortal gweilo.

“Tell me your name, gweilo,” Liu threatened. “I will remember you as my first victory on the path to apotheosis!”

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“My name? Oh, I know that one,” the stranger said. He crumpled up the oyster pail in his meaty fists and tossed the crumpled wax paper box into Liu’s face. “I am Xiong Bao Bei, of course.”

The stranger didn’t use a foreign name, even though they were in a foreign land and had all the markings of being a gweilo. Lihua thought it was a rather cute name and Bao Bei’s parents must have been very fond of him. She wondered who this stranger was. The disciples of the Battle Island Palace sect burst into laughter upon hearing the stranger’s name.

“Are you laughing at my name?” Xiong asked, head tilted in curiosity.

Lihua thought there was a dangerous gleam in his eyes, but the disciples either failed to notice it or didn’t care.

“You’re no precious treasure!” Hong guffawed.

“I didn’t know little babies could grow such beards!” Liu hooted.

Xiong took another step into the alley. One foot forward, then the other coming up to meet it, though not quite even. Lihua saw the poise in the motion, how it was so measured and precise even while looking completely casual. Who was this strange man?

“You! Nameless goon number two!” Xiong called, pointing at one of Liu’s cronies. “Do you know what my name means?”

Lihua forced herself to stifle a laugh. She didn’t know that boy’s name, either. She just referred to him as Wang Pim Po in her head because he was a dick with the worst acne in the sect. Did he even have a name?

Wang, or whatever, stopped laughing. “It means ‘tiny young bear.’”

Xiong laughed while Pimple Dick’s fellow disciples winced at the clumsy translation.

“I am Xiong Bao Bei, yao moshou of the Air in the Dragon sect,” Xiong said. “I was called Baby Bear by my master and, through the power snuggles and fuzziness, I have cultivated enough qi-yootness to be uplifted.”

He allowed a moment for that to sink in, although from the expressions on the disciples’ faces they might have thought Xiong was a crazy person. Unbothered, Xiong went on.

“You stand before a demon beast and you dare to behave like arrogant young masters?” he scoffed. “Have you no vision or wisdom? I am a bear-ogant young master and I will punish you for your in-xian-ity!”

The puns exploded across the alleyway, their corny power washing over the arrogant disciples. Liu and Hong managed to hold their ground, but the other three hurtled into walls and landed, spitting blood.

“Gross!” Xiong exclaimed.

Liu and Hong drew their sabers and charged the uplifted beast. Lihua wanted to look away, for she couldn’t bear to see the kind man hurt, yet she was mesmerized.

“Your inelegant dao are no match for my Dao,” Xiong said. “Watch me cast a booty blast!”

The big man spun around in place, leaned forward, bent his knees, and then threw it back. Lihua realized there was a furry little tail sticking out of the seat of his pants, but then his powerful glutes made contact with the charging disciples.

They were knocked forcefully into the walls on either side and barely managed to keep their footing as they landed. Hong managed to hang onto his saber even though he was dazed, but Liu growled in frustration and positioned himself to charge in again.

Xiong pointed an accusatory finger at the two boys. “You were going to harvest that poor girl to further your own cultivation, when she is so clearly in need of snuggles with soft, cute things. How dare you?!?”

When Liu rushed in to attack, Xiong pulled one arm across his body. He released it like an ax-hand strike, only instead of striking with the blade of his hand, he hit Liu across the face with the flat of it.

“Bao Bei Bitch Slap!” Xiong called out, as Liu did a complete flip upside down as if he had been clotheslined.

Liu got back to his feet even though he was clearly dizzied and winded by the ferocity of Xiong’s mighty blow. He rushed back in, trying to latch onto his larger foe with the Fearsome Eagle Grip technique their sect taught. It was designed to establish brutal grapples that could immobilize an opponent with agony as well as disrupting their meridians.

Xiong stood his ground. He let Liu grab onto him several times, but each time he twisted his body and escaped! His hoodie was too loose and the faux fur on it too thick for Liu to maintain his holds! But Liu was only meant to be the distraction; Hong had regained his bearings and was coming in from Xiong’s blindspot, swinging the heavy blade of his saber and a great overhand arc.

“Watch out!” Lihua called, finally rising to her feet. “Aieeee!!!”

Xiong turned his face to look in her direction in the midst of the fray and, she would swear to it, winked at her.

Hong’s blade struck Xiong high on the shoulder, near the neck, from behind with all the force the young cultivator could muster. It was enough to shatter bricks and bend iron, yet the blade was stopped dead on the fuzzy hoodie.

“Eugh?” Hong uttered in disbelief. “Impossible, impossible!”

Xiong turned his head so that Hong would see him in profile.

“You overreach yourself, young master,” he chided. “The devil’s cultivation only breeds demons in your heart and it has made you weak. Annoyed Donkey is Sick of Your Shit!”

Xiong lifted one of his knees, then his foot shot back like a piston. It struck Hong in the chest and he flew across the alley, only to crumple on the other three fallen disciples.

He tried to lift himself off the ground, but he spat blood and his arms gave out, causing him to land face first in a puddle of what would only be dirty water if the Heavens smiled on him. Although in New York City, even in Chinatown, Lihua wouldn’t have taken those odds.

“Gross,” Xiong said.

The ascended spirit beast turned to Lihua with a smile on his face, which was a mistake. Lihua saw Liu lift himself off the ground and draw forth a long needle, the tool of the Sevenfold Vengeance Pathway Shattering Strike, a forbidden technique her former sect taught only in secret to avoid conflict with other cultivators.

She rushed forward, throwing her body between Xiong and Liu’s ruthless attack. The long needle pierced her breast, digging deep into her spirit roots. The qi she had spent so long cultivating, trying to make work with her own affinities, began to bleed out of her meridians, poisoning her flesh with yang-aspected qi.

“Earrrrghhhhhhhh,” she cried, following into another pile of trash bags. Why were there so many trash bags just laying around in New York?

Before she had even landed, Xiong had spun, grabbed Liu in his powerful hands, and hurled him across the alley to land atop his fallen cronies, blood spurting from his mouth and spraying him and everyone beneath him.

“Gross,” Xiong repeated, turning to Lihua.

She lay on the filthy cement of the alley, her qi ravaging her flesh. Even if she survived, somehow, she would never cultivate again after the damage Liu had done to her spirit roots.

Xiong knelt beside her, scratching one of his floppy ears. “Why’d you do that, cute little person?”

“T-to save you,” she gasped. “As you s-saved me…”

“Save me?” Xiong asked, tilting his head. “From this?”

He yanked the deadly needle out of her sternum and looked at it curiously. Then, defying all sense, he poked himself in the face with the needle. It didn’t even leave an impression on the skin. He pushed harder and the needle bent, then snapped. Her sacrifice had been for nothing!

“Well, it was very nice of you to try to be helpful,” Xiong said. “I guess there’s some kinda karma farm you could do by making heroic sacrifices that you miraculously survive over and over again, but let’s try to just make it this once. Okay?”

Lihua tried to swallow. She didn’t really understand what Xiong was saying, not because her English was poor — it wasn’t! — but because the qi poisoning was making its way to her brain and she could barely think.

Xiong reached out and lifted Lihua off the ground. “What I said earlier is just as true now as it was then: what you really need is some nice snuggles!”

The big man pulled her tight against his body, his powerful arms wrapped around her. Lihua hung there limply, unable to even enjoy the first and only hug she would ever receive due to her impending death.

It was a pretty great hug, though. Xiong’s arms were strong but gentle, and his fuzzy hoodie was soft and warm. Lihua sort of wished her face weren’t pressed into his beard, though. It was very soft but… it tickled!

Actually, the longer it took her to die, the more she wanted to move her head or brush the scritchy little hairs away. But she wouldn’t. She held firm to her resolve to enjoy the hug with what little time she had left in her life.

Xiong also smelled really good, like pork buns, egg rolls, and noodles. Lihua’s stomach rumbled and, a moment later, Xiong’s chest rumbled, as well, only with laughter.

“I guess you might want a nibble on some of the stuff in my pockets,” he said. “Well, even the bestest of snuggles can’t last forever. Otherwise they wouldn’t be special.”

Lihua found herself being set down on the ground. For some reason, she didn’t seem to be dead. Or even dying. What was going on? Maybe she could ask…

“What’s going on?”

“Well, it seems like you’re hungry is what’s going on right now,” Xiong said, withdrawing another oyster pail from the capacious pocket on the front of his hoodie.

He opened it to reveal a small heap of jiaozi, commonly called dumplings or potstickers here in New York. Lihua immediately began to salivate and had to slurp to stop the drool from flowing out of her mouth.

“Here,” the spirit beast said, offering her the container.

He only used one hand, but it was big enough it probably counted as two. If not, Lihua found she was having trouble caring about the impertinence of it. That didn’t stop her from accepting the carton with both hands (she was not a foreigner, after all!). She tried to be as dainty and refined as she could with the treats, but it was hard without chopsticks so she shoved an entire dumpling into her mouth so as not to spill juices all over herself.

“Mmmm,” she groaned, finding herself so ravenous that the flavor alone was enough to make her feel as if the delicious morsel was already in her stomach.

After she had finished swallowing the first, she abstained from taking another. She had an important question to ask and she had learned from Xiong’s last answer that she had to be specific.

She bowed low before him. “Master Xiong, how am I still alive? The technique young master Liu employed should have killed me with qi poisoning.”

“Oh that?” Xiong said. “Pooh on that. I snuggled it away. Nothing’s better for you than a good snuggle!”

“H-how is such a thing even possible?”

“Qi isn’t all that complicated,” he answered. “I honestly don’t know why all you cultivators get so obsessed over it when it’s really boring stuff. Of course, so few of you have what it takes to focus on the energy that truly matters.”

Lihua bowed her head again. “What energy is that, Master Xiong?”

“Qi is only one part of the equation. Like yin and yang, nothing is really complete without the other half. So if you’re going to cultivate qi, you might as well try to cultivate it in its whole form: qi-yoot.”

“A hundred apologies, Master Xiong, I do not know this term.”

“Qi-yoot, y’know? In Korean it’s qi-yeop-ta, in Japanese qi-wai-ee, and in English it’s just plain old cute. Cuteness is the most venerable and true form of spiritual energy. Why do you think bad people are always ugly in stories, silly?”

Lihua blinked at Xiong several times. She thought there was something deeply, profoundly wrong and stupid with what the large man with the spirit of a bear was saying, but… well, she did like cute things. She’d simply never had the means to explore that said of her personality.

Maybe this was her opportunity? A chance to study at the feet of a secret hidden elder master sage… she had to at least try!

“W-would you… would you be my m-master,” she implored. “And teach me the ways of cuteness?”

“You’re funny,” Xiong said, his laugh practically a giggle. “I’m nobody’s master, but I will be your friend. Let’s get out of here, I’m sure we can find some Hello Kitty stuff somewhere nearby. This is Chinatown, after all.”

And with that, Xu Lihua left the sect of the Battle Island Palace behind forever, embarking on a fresh journey with her new master. Together, they would cultivate cakes, cookies, cuteness, and cuddles, as well as things that did not begin with the letter C (like snuggles). They would strive until they could defy the very mandate of the heavens, which seemed to be getting a job and being a boring jerkass who never has fun and doesn’t appreciate the simple things in life.