"Did you find her?" Xiao Niao asked when Po and the others got back to the kitchen. She had missed out on the activities that day due to a bad migraine she developed right before lunch.

"No," Po said leaning against the wall with a perplexed look on his face. "I don't know where she went!"  He sighed and looked back at Xiao Niao, asking how her head felt. 

"Better," Xiao Niao assured him. "I took some medicine and then I had a pretty long nap after you guys left."

"How's Zhou?" Jai-Rong asked, noticing that she wasn't at the table.

"She's feeling better," Destiny told her. "She showed us what her business associate got her in that little box. It's so cute!"

Lu-Shi laughed. "She asked if the brooch was a romantic gesture, but then we had to remind her that if it was, Zhou wouldn't be in the contest." 

Destiny flushed a light shade of pink and started immediately pouring herself tea to cover it up.

Shifu, who had been pondering quietly in his chair, got up and turned towards Po and his group. "I'll have the guards help you look for Song," he said. "I'm sure she's more than capable of taking care of herself, but I'd still like to make sure she's alright. Better safe than sorry." 

Po looked over at Tigress who was quietly drinking her tea. "No snarky remarks, Tigress?" he asked. 

Tigress glanced at him in surprise, but then finished her tea and said, "I promised Shifu I wouldn't say anything." 

"I don't suppose this means you'd like to help us look for her?" Shifu asked with a small smirk. 

"I'll stay out of it. I already know how I'm going to react and I don't trust myself." 

"A very mature response," Leopard told the Dragon Warrior, though she didn't get a reply. 

"I'll round up some of the south wing guards to help you look," Shifu told Po. "That side isn't usually busy." 

"Why not off-the-clock guards?" Tigress asked. 

"The guards are on a strict shift to ensure a good sleeping regime. I don't want to mess with that." 

"Neikan doesn't go to sleep until 11:45. That's pretty late." 

"Your friend is also considerably shorter than the other guards, so that would make sense." 

"Wait, that's a thing?" Po asked in surprise. 

"Makes sense to me," Shifu told him. "I'll be right back." 

He left the room to grab some of the guards while Po, Leopard, Tai Lin, and Jai-Rong waited in the doorway for him. 

"You'll need lanterns," Tigress told them as Viper finished dinner and put it on the table. "It's going to be dark soon." 

"I'll grab some," Monkey offered, quickly leaving the room. Tai Lin offered to go with him and ducked out of the kitchen after the master. 

"I'm just surprised she's not back yet," Viper noted thoughtfully. "You'd think she'd notice you left already. Ordai and Lam thought maybe she was sleeping" 

"Hey, what about my theory?!" Destiny complained. 

"Being kidnapped by mutant cloud ninjas and taken away to a mythical volcano temple that has never been proven to exist doesn't count as a plausible theory," Tigress told her firmly. 

"Not even if we're talking about the Wu Sisters," Crane seconded. "They've been dead for at least 30 years." 

Destiny sighed and just slumped in her chair in defeat. 

Po thought for a moment as Viper handed him, Leopard, and Jai-Rong some food before they went back out. Po took some bites of food, closed his eyes and yawned, and then ate some more food before finally remembering the different forks. "Ordai, you said you two split up at the fork," Po said suddenly. "Which fork? There were a lot of them"

"There were? I thought it was just the one." Ordai said in surprise. 

"There's a lot of them around here," Mantis corrected. 

Ordai closed her eyes in thought. "Hmm..." she mumbled. "There were a lot of trees...not much too distinguishable...oh wait, there was this one tree that we kind of laughed at. It looked like it was waving at us." 

The masters all looked at her in shock. "The waving tree?!" Leopard repeated. "With the two thin branches that go in opposite directions with leaves just on those two ends?"

"Yes, that one. I took the scenic route and she took the shorter path." 

Po gasped in terror and ran out of the kitchen while Leopard and Jai-Rong quickly followed him.

"What's wrong with the tree?!" Jai-Rong called out.

 Tigress told Crane to follow suite to give them a birds eye view, which he was more than happy to do.

"What's wrong?" Ordai asked nervously. 

"The shorter path has a steep hill and ravine," Tigress told her immediately. "If she wandered off to explore outside the path and went too far....." 

She didn't finish the sentence. 

"Oh no!" Viper cried. "I hope not! We keep trying to put signs up on that path to keep people from slipping and somebody keeps taking them down!" 

"Who does?" Destiny asked. 

"Who knows," Tigress said. "No one's ever confessed." 

As Po went outside calling for Shifu, Monkey and Tai Lin returned to the vicinity of the kitchen with the lanterns. Confused by the shouting and frantic commotion, they asked what was going on and were informed by Leopard that it was possible Song went down a path with a dangerous ravine, which was cause for concern if she slipped. 

"If she fell though, wouldn't her umbrella catch her?" Tai Lin asked. "She showed it off when Po was sick, remember?"

"That's true, but that doesn't mean she'd be exempt from fall damage. If she's hurt and can't move, it's best to get her out of the ravine." 

"Anyway, it's good to just check and make sure she's not there anyway," Jai-Rong added a little more hopefully. "She may not even be there, but Po said it's dangerous so it's good to check there first just in case." 

Shifu soon arrived back at the kitchen with the guards and upon being informed of which path Song had taken, the guards immediately took the lanterns and set out in search of the clouded leopard with Po's group in tow. It wasn't completely dark outside, but dusk had started to settle and soon it would be too dark to see well. The large group made their way back to the lake as darkness finally settled across the valley and the lanterns lit up leaves, dirt, flowers, and the water surrounding the area. Leopard and Po led the guards to the fork in the road that Ordai had described which was about fifteen minutes away from the lake, and Leopard told them to keep an eye out for footprints since Ordai and Song had been sopping wet when they had taken the path. 

"The tracks won't be too noticeable," she admitted. "But even a faint imprint can give us an idea as to where she went." 

They made their way down the path, eventually coming across several faint footprints in the dirt. However, it was clear that other people had been on the road which didn't help explain where Song had gone off to. So everyone split into pairs to figure out what direction she went in. Leopard and Po went with two of the guards towards the ravine to see if Song had gotten stuck on the slope or wandered through that part of the forest while Tai Lin and Jai-Rong went with the other two guards further down the fork to see if Song had gotten lost or fallen asleep. Crane offered to do a general sweep of the ravine so that no one needed to risk their neck peering over the edge for Song.

"Be careful," Leopard warned the guards as they slowly made their way past the road and toward the ravine. "The ground up ahead slopes down really quickly and I don't want anyone falling down and going over the edge." 

"They should put up a gate or fence then," the one guard noted. 

"The emperor didn't want to spoil the landscape," Po sighed. "And the warning signs keep getting randomly taken down whenever we put them up. 

The four made their way towards the ravine with Leopard telling everyone to keep an eye out for any other footprints or something a little out of the ordinary. The two guards accompanying them offered to go a little further down the ravine to get a wider range and Leopard and Po continued on through the forest. Po was sort of glad to not see any footprints or even a hint of footprints in the grass, but this still didn't tell him where Song was and this bothered him a bit. 

"I feel like we're sort of just walking around blindly," he admitted to Leopard as he tried looking for footprints. Damaged bushes. Something. "Or not covering enough ground." 

"What I'm more concerned about is just getting a good view of the slope and making sure she's not there," Leopard admitted. "I'd like to hope that she didn't come this way." 

As the two continued to walk forward, Leopard stumbled over an object on the ground. She stopped and lowered the lantern to her feet and immediately moved the long grass aside to get a better look. She and Po were both alarmed to realize that it was Song's parasol. 

"SONG!!!" Po cried, running forward. 

"Po wait! The ravine!" Leopard warned, running after him. 

As the two ran forward, they finally reached the edge where the ground suddenly sloped down, and Po found himself sliding through the grass and trees at an alarmingly fast speed with Leopard not too far behind. The master's first response was to panic and scream, but then he started looking around in a desperate effort to catch onto the base of a nearby tree, a task that was made nearly impossible by how fast he was going. Leopard managed to grab hold of him and dug her claws into the dirt in an effort to slow them down. The ravine didn't take too far to show up, and just as the trees started to fade into the clearing and the edge came into view, Po grabbed a hold of one of the trees and stopped him and Leopard from falling to their deaths. The lanterns they had dropped in the commotion slid after them, with one going right over into the ravine and the other one stopping right at the edge. Po and Leopard took a moment to catch their breath. 

"Sorry," Po apologized. 

Leopard didn't say anything. She looked towards the edge and called out for Crane, hoping he would hear her and help them get the lanterns back so that they didn't have to climb back up in the dark. But when there was no answer, she carefully placed her paws on the ground and let go of Po before slowly and steadily going down the slope. Po followed suit and watched her use her tail to grab the lantern before it went over the edge. 

"Well, I guess that explains the umbrella," Po said worriedly. "I hope she was able to stop herself and climb up?"

Leopard asked him to hold her arm while she looked over the edge, just to make sure she didn't fall to her death. She started frowning in thought at what Po had said, but was immediately jolted out of it when she noticed something in the ravine. Straining her eyes to see better, she noticed that the second lantern had fallen next to someone laying motionlessly at the very bottom of the ravine. It didn't take long to figure out who it was. 

"Po," Leopard said slowly. "We are going to slowly go back up the embankment so that we don't fall over. Right now." 

"Is she down there?" Po asked with a look of terror crossing his face. 

"I'll explain it when we're on safer ground and we can go down there and get a better look." 

Po complied and the two slowly started crawling up the steep ground, using the trees as anchors once they got past the clearing. When they finally made their way up the hill and onto more even ground, Leopard turned to a concerned Po and said, "Yes. And it didn't look good from where I was looking." 

They quickly trekked out of the woods and back onto the path just as the 4 guards, Jai-Rong, and Tai-Lin came back. 

"We heard you scream!" the one guard said as he came back from the woods with his friend. "We tried looking for you, but then we heard you come up this way. Are you okay?"

"We fell down the slope," Leopard explained. "And so did Song too by the looks of it." 

"What?!" Tai-Lin cried in shock. 

Po displayed the clouded leopard's umbrella which he had picked back up on the way out of the woods. "We think she slipped and fell and couldn't stop herself from going over the edge." 

"So much for our theories," Jai-Rong noted to Tai Lin as everyone followed Leopard and Po back down the path to find the safer route to the ravine. 

"She's dead??!!!!" Destiny shrieked in terror when Po and his group finally returned to the Jade Palace. 

"She dropped her parasol when she fell down the slope, so she didn't have anything to slow her down or help her float to safety," Jai-Rong explained. 

Leopard stood off to the side still deep in thought, though she glanced back at everyone every-so-often to check out if she needed to interject at any point in time. 

"Did she look bad?" Xiao Niao asked, clearly a bit shaken from the news. 

"From falling from that height?" Tai Lin told her with a curt laugh. "Yeah. She looked awful. I won't describe it. I'll spare your innocence." 

"Yes, and Master Crane was a huge help," Shifu said, pouring himself some tea. He had been well informed of the situation the moment Po had returned to the Jade Palace since the guards had rushed to fetch a doctor to help properly deal with the situation. (Not that there was too much he could do to help). "He heard Leopard calling for help when she and Po slipped and was too shell-shocked to answer them!" 

"Where is Crane?" Mantis asked. 

"We gave him a sedative and sent him to bed," Po told him. "Honestly, I don't really blame him. It was bad." 

Shifu just sighed as the rest of the table sat in silence. They had finished dinner over an hour earlier and had decided to wait in the kitchen until the group came back with Song. Something that obviously wasn't going to happen. 

After a long silence of no one not really knowing what else to say, Viper asked, "What's going to happen now?" 

"Someone needs to let Song's troupe know what happened," Shifu said after drinking some tea to collect and compose himself. "They'll probably know what the funeral arrangements should be....Obviously if some people aren't comfortable or are upset by this, they're free to go home to their loved ones. That's understandable..." He thought again and then sighed. "We'll talk more details in the morning. I think I need to go meditate to get my mind back in balance." 

Tigress offered to make more tea for everyone and stood up to put a pot on the stove. Tai Lin and Jai-Rong moved to sit down at the table while Po still stood in shock on the wall and Leopard remained lost in thought. Tigress got them both a glass of water to hold them over and bring them back to reality and headed back over to the stove just as Destiny fainted and fell face-first on the table. 

It took a day for the masters to get over the initial shock of Song's sudden demise, but afterwards, it didn't take long to spring into action to try and take care of the incident. Shifu and Po looked through Song's room to find the address she used to write to Seia and wrote a letter explaining the bad news and what funeral arrangements would be best in consideration of the circumstances. Shifu also offered for the remaining members of the troupe to stick close to the Jade Palace and lay low until the incident with the rogue members died down. Shifu wrote to ask Seia to inform Song's family of the situation, but Po told the grandmaster that Song's family had died years ago. Shifu left the question in, just in case.

A few of those in the Jade Palace were overwhelmingly upset by the news to the point of being sluggish or outright ill. Destiny had a migraine for a few days (though since she had also fainted hard on the table, this wasn't much of a surprise), Kay spent most of her time by herself picking some flowers around the grounds, and Crane pretty much ran on autopilot for the next few days. Even Tigress seemed pretty upset over it, which took the masters by surprise, but she explained this was mostly because she felt bad about all the things she had thought about and said to Song before the accident. The Dragon Warrior admitted to wishing to have been a little nicer, though Shifu and the other masters tried to console her by saying that she had done a pretty good job with being civil during the past few days and shouldn't feel too bad about it. 

Seia was quick to get back to Shifu, which she did by means of physically showing up at the Jade Palace with what was left of the splintered troupe. It turned out that, excluding Seia and Song, there were only eight other troupe members who hadn't decided to go rogue. The ladies had shown up in the Sacred Hall of Warriors, startling Master Shifu who had shown up five minutes later from talking with the doctor. Seia explained that they wanted to have Song buried closer to the east sea since that was where her family was buried. However, they'd stay a few days if the masters wanted to plan a memorial before they left. (Song's hometown was a two week walk away, so the ladies didn't want to inconvenience everyone with a long journey). Everyone was in agreement with the idea and set aside a day later that week to hold the memorial. It was a very quiet if not almost silent day with some spending it in their room while others spent it in quiet conversation with the Ladies of the Shade or each other. No one had been expecting a death while at the Jade Palace, so the girls had fashioned white armbands to wear during the memorial day. The masters generally didn't attend funerals and made do with anything they could find in their drawers. The Ladies had brought white parasols since they had already planned a funeral procession on the way out. Even Mr. Ping wore a little something out of respect for Song' death, though he wore something more subtle just on his robe that pretty much went unnoticed by his customers. 

And so the day passed by with little to no ceremony. No bandits arrived (which Shifu was glad of since the whole incident was weighing on everyone's mind), Po made a simple meal, and afterwards the remaining ladies took their fallen comrade and friend and headed out of the Valley of Peace, promising Shifu they would stay in contact to help out with the splintered group. The following day training resumed as usual, though the masters had to take a moment to refocus their minds on their training rather than the unpleasantness of Song's death. Po and the remaining girls managed to rally enough to talk and eat, but the next few days passed by in a bit of a blur. They would have preferred it to stay quiet so that they gather their thoughts and keep trying to pull each other up out of the sadness, but this unfortunately was not to be the case once Superintendent Woo finally arrived after a week to help the Furious Five set up the presentation of legends. 

Sorry. Let me correct that. Ming showed up at the Jade Palace to help with the presentation of legends while her father stalled at the bottom of the Thousand Steps to argue with the rickshaw driver about why he would not be carried up the stairs and how dare they make his only child make the exhausting trek up. (Not that Ming seemed too concerned about that). 

"Hello!" Ming called out, after Zeng introduced her to Shifu and the Furious Five. They had been gathered at the front of the gates still making preparations with the help of Po and their guests since they had not been expecting the father-daughter pair for another two hours. "I know you all must have missed me! But I'm back! I do hope everything goes right as rain!"

Ming's extra cheeriness rang out sharply among the depressed group which gave a few of them a bit of a headache and caused them to groan audibly. Others felt the cheery rings triggering a deep well of sadness which started to erupt, and they quickly left the room to avoid being seen. Po watched them, wanting to head out of the room too, but he was managing to keep himself together since he wanted to save a quick escape for another occasion. 

"Well, you're all quite rude," Ming complained. "Just because my father isn't here to accompany me doesn't excuse you idiots to not say hello!"

No one answered her, minus for a person or two who managed to just wave hello or say a quick hi. 

"Okay, what is wrong with everybody?" Ming complained again. "You're acting like somebody died!"