The loud commotion had caught everyone's attention in the Jade Palace, and soon not only was Po running down the steps, but so was Zhen who had been admiring the artifacts in the Sacred Hall of Warriors.  Once they reached the village they immediately ducked out of the way of flying cannonballs.

"What is that?!" Zhen cried.

"Something I totally thought we stopped!" Po answered. "How is this possible?! Shen and his cronies have been gone for years!"

He was interrupted by the sound of the Furious Five coming down the stairs, Crane dropping them down at the bottom after flying as fast as he could.

"How are these things here?!" Mantis cried.

"I don't know, but let's focus on getting the weapons out of the way before someone gets hurt or killed," Viper insisted, and the masters immediately scattered about to stop the threat.

Po spent a lot of time ducking and dodging and trying to get civilians out of the way, even encouraging them to hide in the river since the cannonballs were flying towards their houses. Li naturally was in a very panicked state with all the commotion and he did his best to grab as many people as possible and dive into the river. Po tried to get him to come out and help him destroy the cannons, but Li insisted on staying close to the river and helping the villagers, so Po wound up looking for the weapons alone.

Zhen in the meantime was immediately focused on helping her clan evacuate to a safer area and wound up trying to avoid enemy fire to get a family and several veteran thieves out of a house that had gotten set on fire from the flying cannons.

"I try doing painting again to get through the PTSD and this is what I get!" cried an older boar woman who was being hurriedly dragged down the stairs by Zhen and another former thief.

"We'll be fine, Granny, just worry about the running," Zhen promised her, and she quickly had the two escorted out of the building. As she did so, she heard the sound of a cannon form behind and tried to duck, only to get badly scraped on the shoulder and fall to the floor in agony.

"Zhen!!!" the two former thieves cried, but the cannon had caused the front part of the house to collapse before they could go back in and help her. Zhen's ear twitched at the sound of a distant boom! and immediately screamed "DUCK!" before diving out of the way of a flaming ball. She coughed, choking on the smoke that filled the room. She quickly looked around, trying to find a way out while also keeping an ear out for anymore flying hunks of metal. However, between the crackling of the wood in the house and her own coughing on the suffocating smoke, it was hard to gauge where she was and how to get out. The young fox soon found herself surrounded by flames in an unfamiliar part of the house and decided to lay on the floor for a moment to get some air and figure out which direction to go in. The flames obscured pretty much every part of the building, so it was hard to tell which way was further in and which way was out.

As Zhen carefully surveyed the room and tried not to panic, she heard crashing coming from the front part of the house and heard, "ZHEN?!"

"Po??!!" Zhen called out, immediately coughing violently.

A few minutes later, creaking was heard followed by violent coughing and Po soon came into the room, shielding his eyes from the flames and the smoke.

"You're okay!" he cried, looking very relieved.

"Yeah," Zhen promised. "Just got a little turned around. I think I've been in here too long."

"Follow me. This side isn't fogged up with smoke yet."

Zhen got up and quickly started to follow him, both of them narrowly avoiding a flaming metal ball that crashed through the house.

"Where did you see thi-?" Zhen tried to ask Po, interrupting her self with a violent wheezing cough.

"Long story short," Po explained, coughing as well. "We stopped a psychopath using gunpowder to launch balls of fire and destroy kung fu. Wasn't fun."

A loud crash came through the hallway and Po and Zhen found themselves face to face with the fiery ball. Both of them screamed in terror, and with no time to duck, Po instinctively reached out and knocked the ball through the roof.

The Dragon Warrior paused for a moment to compose himself and blink away his surprise. Then said, "Right. Inner peace blocking. I can do that."

"Wait...how did you do that?" Zhen asked. However, she was interrupted by another fire ball coming through the room. This time, Po focused and reached out to catch the ball and immediately threw it right back where it came from. From off in the distance, the two heard a metallic crash and small boom. Po pulled Zhen after him and followed the path the ball had made, going out of the house the back way. There was a ton of smoke and fire, but Po was determined to follow the trajectory. Soon they were out in the fresh air and through the woods where they saw scorched trees and a few singed plants. Then they came across what was left of the weapon that had caused all of the trouble. Nobody was tending to it. It was standing completely by itself.

"That's odd...." Po noted.

As he looked it over, Zhen felt the leftover metal scraps. "This thing is what made all this mess?" she asked.

"Yeah. Lord Shen used to have a whole army of them in Gongmen City."

Zhen whistled. "I remember the story of that province," she admitted. "Lots of Mongolian raids and natural disasters and stuff until the last prince died childless. Or something like that. No one actually knows what happens. I just know it was one of the divided territories among the royal family up north. Juniper city went to the second prince, Gongmen city to the third...or was it the fourth? Wait...how many sons did they have? Mom told me once. Can't remember now. She used to live up north until she married dad. What the-?!"

Zhen sifted through the grass until she could firmly grab a collection of charred rope that seemed to have once attached itself to the weapon. Or what was left of it. Po noticed that the blackened dust seemed to trail through a different part of the forest and frowned in thought. "Let's follow it," he said, and he and Zhen followed the char through the grass, keeping a close eye on the remains so that they didn't lost their place. Eventually they came across another weapon that was of similar design, but had no one manning it. Instead, it was attached to a machine that fed metal balls inside of it and then had a mechanized metal arm strike the match to let it go flying through the village.

"Well...that's weird," Po admitted. "Seems easy to shut down though."

"Yeah, except it could be repurposed," Zhen pointed out.

"Fair point. Alright. Give me a second."

Po ran away from the machine in the direction that the hall was going in and then stopped right in front of the destruction path. When the balls came flying at him, he reached out, grabbed it, and then sent it flying back into the machine where it completely destroyed everyone with a loud BOOM!! Zhen had ducked out of the way of the debris and waited for Po to come back so they could track the rest of the machines down. This took a great while to do since there were fifty-four of them around the village, but soon all of them were destroyed, and there were still no goons in sight. Not even Lord Shen.

"I have no idea what is happening," Po admitted to Zhen. "But let's regroup so we can figure this out."

"Right with ya' on that one," Zhen agreed. As she and Po headed back to the village, she added, "I don't suppose you'd be willing to teach me how to do that?"

"Sure, I can. Just might take a while. Inner peace is s little different than traditional kung fu stuff."