After a brief break for lunch and then even more kung fu exercises where Po tried to quickly adapt and Tigress and Shifu cast daggers at the girls who wouldn't keep their comments to themselves, everyone retired from the training hall and headed over to the kitchen for dinner.

"That was so exciting!!!" Lu-Shi exclaimed from the back to nobody in particular. "We should watch kung fu sparring more often!"

"But then we wouldn't get to spend any time with Po!" Ordai protested. "And there are so many things we could do together! Take long walks, paint, bake a cake in the shape of a heart...."

"I wrapped a vase one time and made an origami heart out of it!" Xiao-Niao offered. "They're so pretty!"

"I'll never understand why hearts are such a favorite shape," Tigress muttered as the girls went into more depth about art and dancing and wallpaper and traveling. "It's a shape. That's like being fascinated with the way the road twists and turns."

"You really haven't grasped the concept of favorites, have you?" Viper said.

"I understand the concept; I don't understand why hearts have to be the shape of romance. Why not a circle? Or a trapezoid?"

"Tigress, there's an organ in your body called A Heart," Mantis pointed out. "I think the fact that there's a shape named after it AND that shape is used to symbolize love is not a coincidence....."

Tigress rolled her eyes slightly. "Well, I think circles are better at representing romance," she commented.

"You're just saying that because you don't want to agree with us," Viper joked.

"I'm being serious."

Eventually everyone got to the kitchen where Po then began to make dinner. The girls sat at various parts of the table still reeling from the excitement of watching live kung fu matches.

"You only get to hear this stuff in stories," Destiny was saying, keeping her hands folded on her lap with jittery excitement. "I've never seen real kung fu before!!!"

"I take it your village is not under official imperial protection then?" Master Leopard asked.

"We're more rural," Destiny explained. "There's a giant river that separates us from the main town and it's difficult to get to, so no one usually bothers us anyway. Not that we really have anything aside from rice."

"Rice is a very valuable commodity," Madame Zhou told her matter-of-factly. "People would pay a FORTUNE to get their hands on it!"

"Wouldn't you know......" Tigress told her with a hard suspicious glare.

Master Shifu gently tapped the back of her shoulder as a way to say, Not now, please. Seeing the potential tension starting to mount, Po quickly announced that dinner would be ready in a few minutes and asked what the girls liked the most about the sparring session.

"Seeing the weapons!" Destiny exclaimed giddily.

"Seeing you and Tigress go head to head!" Lu-Shi replied. "That was epic!!!"

"The planking exercise," Master Leopard said with a smile. "That really brought back old memories."

A couple other answers went around the table, most of them being the excitement of watching Po in action.

Then Kay said, "I liked the foreshadowing."

Po stirred in the last of the spices and gave her a weird look. So did everyone else at the table. "Huh?" he asked.

"The....the colors, I meant," Kay explained quickly and quietly, her voice dropping considerably low as everyone turned to look at her. "And...the shapes. They're very...revealing."

"Oh! You mean the Hearts of Yin and Yang!" Viper suddenly interjected. "Yeah, I can see that. It takes a lot of teamwork and effort to work with those. Especially when you struggle with one of the weapons."

"Something we will be reviewing at another date," Shifu noted.

Kay said nothing in response and just watched Po dish out the bowls of soup and serve them to everyone around the table.

"It's too bad we can't practice with them," Destiny sighed. "They look like so much fun!"

"I'd take just sparring with Po if it boiled down to it," Ordai added. She looked at him and smiled. "That would be so much fun! And maybe we could help with your little kung fu classes if we knew any kung fu!"

"I'd be down for that," Jai-Rong admitted. "I love kids! Don't know anything about teaching them, but I'd love to try."

"It takes a lot of patience," Po told them. "And flexibility. But I think it's a lot of fun at the end of the day."

"It certainly sounds like it," Master Leopard admitted with a smile. "Of course, I wouldn't want to try and practice sparring and risk getting in your way, Shifu. Your students take precedence, of course."

Po suddenly jerked his head up from his bowl and slapped a hand on the table. Swallowed. "I remember now!" he exclaimed. "My list! I wrote down night time kung fu sparring on my list!" He glanced at the girls. "Quick question actually, was anyone in my room at all during the day?"

No.

"What list?" Madame Zhou asked.

"He wrote down fun activities on a little list in his room," Ordai explained, directing a smile at Po. "I offered a few of my own..."

"Sometime between Ordai's interview and mine someone inked out one of the suggestions," Song added. "We don't know who, but it leaked all over the paper. Fortunately none of the other lines got lost in the ink.

Shifu frowned with a slight look of concern on his face. "You said it was the Kung fu suggestion that was inked out?" he repeated.

"Yeah," Po confirmed.

"That's odd.... I wouldn't say everyone in the room is a fan of kung fu, but to that extremity?"

"Hate kung fu?! Who'd hate kung fu?!" Lu-Shi exclaimed. "I love it! Let's do it right now!"

"It's late," Tigress remarked flatly.

"And it's out of your guy's way! It's perfect!"

"Whoa whoa, hold on!" Po protested quickly. "Just doing interviews with you guys took all day! We should probably figure out if we're doing it one on one or in a group, because if we're doing it one on one, we should plan for that."

"Master Po has a point," Shifu interjected. (To Po's relief). He eyed the girls and then asked, "Is there anyone not interested in trying out kung fu?"

Madame Zhou, Xiao Niao, and Kay all raised their hands immediately. Lam thought it over for a second before following suit.

"Nothing personal against your interests," Lam offered to Po with an apologetic smile. "But I'm not all that interested in kicking people in the face."

"Hey, that's fine," Po assured her. "No hard feelings." He then glanced at the rest of the girls who were sitting at the table. Seven of them had seemed interested in doing kung fu, and while the number was significantly lower than eleven, it was still a lot of people.

Seeing the look on his face, Mantis suggested, "Why don't you guys just do 15 minutes for sparring and have everyone else just wait outside the training hall for their turn? Just do a little quick warm up for now, and if anyone's interested in doing more, make a date of it for next time."

"I love taste-testing!" Destiny screeched giddily before quickly taking a sip of tea to hide her embarrassment from the word looks she got from a few of the masters.

"Sounds like a plan to me," Po agreed, trying to help move the conversation forward. "Maybe after we let our food settle we can head out to the training hall?"

"Sounds perfect!" Ordai exclaimed giddily. "Can I go first?!"

"Sure. If you want."

"If she goes first then I want to go second!" Destiny piped up.

"Why don't you settle that later when you're at the training hall?" Shifu told them. "That way we don't spend the rest of dinner engulfed in conversation about taking turns."

"Sorry."