The Mentor

Master Bamboo

The legendary ninja panda who taught the Slow Style on Mount Tranquil for thirty-eight years. Three students. One promise. A great many things never said out loud.

“Speed is what you do when you didn't see it coming. I'd rather you saw it coming.”
— Master Bamboo, opening lesson

I
The legend
Master Bamboo was once a young ninja panda in the northern forests — the kind that spent his early years training with everyone, fighting with most of them, and losing only to ones who could surprise him. The story most people tell is that he won fifty consecutive duels against the Iron Fist school, then walked away from the tournament circuit mid-sentence and climbed Mount Tranquil to live alone.
What he tells people, when they finally ask, is that he stopped fighting after he realised every duel was the same duel. Two people who'd agreed to be in a hurry, against each other. He found this exhausting. So he went up the mountain to teach the opposite — but only to students patient enough to make the climb.
Mount Tranquil is not a difficult climb if you have time. The reason most who attempt it never arrive is that most who attempt it are also in a hurry.
II
The three students
In thirty-eight years of teaching, Master Bamboo accepted three students. He turned away forty-one others. He has never explained the criteria.

Inkfoot the Quick

Arrived first. Left second.

A snow leopard with reflexes faster than thought. Master Bamboo told him on the first day that the Slow Style was not about speed; Inkfoot heard this as a koan and decided he understood it before the lesson finished. He could parry a falling cherry blossom in the air, three blooms at once. He could not, it turned out, parry the same thought twice. He left after eighteen months to teach what he believed he'd learned. He's listed in some texts as the founder of the Cherry School. The Cherry School has thirty-one students. None of them know the Slow Style. None of them know they don't know.

Drifted east. Built his own school. Forgotten.

Reedwhisker

Arrived second. Stayed.

An otter who came to Mount Tranquil already mostly trained — a prodigy from a river village, sent up the mountain by elders who'd run out of things to teach her. Master Bamboo took one look and gave her smaller exercises than he'd given anyone, on the theory that someone who already moves well needs to learn how to be still. She stayed eleven years. She founded the Quiet Water school in a river-bend monastery downstream. They've turned out perhaps forty students since. The good ones can wait so long that the answer arrives without them needing to ask the question.

Master of the Quiet Water school. Still teaching.

Sloth Lee

Arrived third. Waited three months at the gate.

A sloth who came up the mountain so slowly that two seasons changed during his climb. Master Bamboo refused him at the gate — "You're a sloth, not a ninja" — and went back inside. Sloth Lee waited. After ninety-one days of polite waiting, Master Bamboo opened the gate again and said "I'll teach you, if you can promise me one thing." Sloth Lee waited (again). "Promise me you'll never try to be fast." Sloth Lee promised. He learned the Slow Style for seven years. He's the only student Master Bamboo ever asked a promise from. Nobody's quite sure why.

Came down. Became a bot. You know this one.

Things he never said out loud

The philosophy, mostly

None of this is written down anywhere on Mount Tranquil. These are things he'd say after a long pause, when asked a different question, and only sometimes.

On patience

"A bandit who runs at you is making a decision. A guardian who runs at the bandit is unmaking it."

On force

"The strongest move is the one you never had to make. The second-strongest is the one the bandit didn't see coming. Most fights end at the first."

On students

"Teach the ones who arrive. Don't recruit. The ones meant to learn already know the way to the mountain."

On rules

"A rule that needs to be enforced is already a problem. The good rule is the one the grove agreed to before anyone wanted to break it."

On retirement

"I am not retired. I am very still. There is a difference, and it matters more to me than to anyone else."

On Sloth Lee, asked directly

"He was the slowest student I ever had. He is the only one who never disappointed me." Said once, at a tea ceremony, to nobody in particular.