Po stood still in absolute shock, feeling the stinging pain on his face. A large lump started to form in his throat and it took everything he had to swallow it down. Considering everything that had happened at the Jade Palace within a span of six years, it was kind of surprising she hadn't lost her cool at him earlier. Say, more in the beginning. Now? Right here and now was a surprise. However, Po blamed a lot of this on himself. He wasn't trying to complain! But all he could think of was...what would he do if it was just him? 

How on earth did Oogway manage doing everything by himself? 

Po thought that over, still standing frozen to the ground. Oogway didn't always have students. How did he manage protecting the valley all by himself? He was eventually interrupted out of his thoughts by the stinging and made his way to the kitchen to get some medicine and maybe grab a snack. He didn't feel like making dinner right now. His mind hadn't really cleared up since yesterday. He was a still stunned. Tigress had almost clawed him once, but that was a moment of pure vulnerability ruined by Mantis' acupuncture mistake. Now was...different. And Po felt he should have just kept his mouth shut. Let them walk. It wasn't the first time he had to deal with weird things by himself. Shifu was never one to chat, and Tigress wasn't much different. The peach doesn't fall far from the tree, turns out. He supposed he could have waited and talked to the Five, but they had been masters all their lives. And Tigress was right; they didn't start out at the Jade Palace like he had. Crane trained at an Academy before transferring to a second temple and then eventually was transferred to the Valley of Peace. Viper took over protecting her village until her sisters were old enough and it was fine for her to help someone else. Monkey had done something similar, and Mantis had protected multiple villages and even held multiple jobs before training at the Jade Palace. So for them this wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Just another stage of their job. 

Po had never done that though. He was expected to be the one and only master of the Jade Palace. he had gone from idolizing the Five to viewing them as friends. And now his friends were leaving. 

No one had ever left before. Even his dad, who he found, came to stay with Po. 

Po wasn't used to losing people. 

Would they even write? 

Would they remember him? 

Would they still care? Or was he a passing friend they'd vaguely remember in a few years? Shifu never discussed past masters Oogway had trained. Did they keep in touch? 

Po winced as he finally cleaned off the wound and bandaged it up. He then grabbed a basket and threw some apples into it before heading off in the direction of the Sacred Hall of Warriors. Once inside, he noticed Mrs. Jun sitting at her desk and tried to keep the wound hidden from her sight. However, Mrs. Jun was picked as an advisor for her keen eye, and so Po couldn't hide the wound for long. 

"Oh my dear! What happened to your face?!" she exclaimed, seeing the bandage across Po's cheek and nose.

"Oh...just...a sparring wound," Po lied, not wanting to get too much into what happened. Nor make Tigress look bad. "Kinda' common." 

Mrs. Jun looked suspicious. "Are you sure?" she asked. "You look really wounded. And I don't mean physically."

"I'm...I'm okay. Really," Po lied again. He quickly grabbed the green and blue scrolls from Oogway (they were now placed on the wall by the moon pool) and then quickly ducked out of the Sacred Hall of Warrior before Mrs. Jun could ask him any more questions. The master made his way up to the Wu Dan mountains and settled by the Pool of Tears and began to look through the scroll, hoping for some more direct advice. Or at the very least an example of what to do. Po went carefully over the blue scroll, detailing all of Oogway's adventures before he finally started to train new students. The first thing Po noticed was that Oogway's first group of trainees weren't actually students serving in the Valley of Peace. Most of them were either refugees or leaders over a certain province who wanted more help in trying to protect their own people. Like Oogway, they were one person against a whole army, or even one extremely powerful entity. He stayed pretty focused on the reading, munching away on multiple apples, not even noticing the light drifting away to make room for the night. However, with a full moon out reflecting the water of the pond and Po's eyes adjusting to the dark, he hardly noticed. At least until he ran out of apples and realized he was still hungry and it was probably past dinner time. 

Po groaned and put the scroll away, thinking over what Oogway had written. He supposed if Oogway could handle hundreds of years of managing alone and wielding chi and kung fu, he could do it too. It just felt like a lot. 

Maybe too much. 

The Dragon Warrior suddenly heard gentle coughing coming from a few feet away, and he sat up in surprise and looked to see who it was. 

"Hey..." Zhen said nervously with a wave.

"Oh. Hey," Po groaned sullenly. He laid back down in the grass and just sighed. Zhen walked over to him and put a bowl of dumplings by his head. 

"I figured you were hungry," she told him. "You didn't come in for dinner." 

Po glanced at the bowl and sighed before taking it and stuffing some food into his mouth. Zhen sat next to him in the grass, placing the lantern she had brought right next to her. "That looks bad," she noted, seeing the bandage on Po's face. 

"I'm fine," Po lied, swallowing his food. "It'll heal. Just...just some sparring stuff." 

"You don't have to lie to me. I overheard the fight this afternoon. Saw the end of it too." 

Po's mind immediately went back to the screaming, the scratch, the feelings. He stuffed more dumplings into his mouth. Neither of them said anything for a while. Zhen just stared at the water in the pond and listened to Po eat. Po felt too miserable to sit up and do much else.

Finally Zhen said, "I didn't realized masters moved around."

"Some of them do," Po corrected. "Not everyone. It's just...The Five have been here for years. I actually think this is the longest place they've served."

"And you can't live without them for five seconds?" 

"Of course I can! We go on missions all the time. But there's always at least one person here if something goes wrong! Shifu's retired, Oogway's dead, and if all five of them leave, it'll be just me! And I can't always handle people by myself! I mean, it took all of us plus my dads to get your butt to jail!" Po stopped and sighed. "No offense," he tacked on lamely.

Zhen snorted and rolled her eyes. "Hey, don't sweat it," she promised. "I will happily accept that as a compliment." She thought for a second and then added, "Why don't you get some of your villager chi students to help?" 

"They're learning chi as a protection. None of them are actually interested in being full time students. They have other stuff they want to do. Not even dad. The panda one, not the one who runs the restaurant." 

"Oh." 

Po stuffed the last of the dumplings into his mouth and chewed them while still staring up at the sky. He sighed. It sounded fatigued. 

"Po," Zhen admitted quietly. "I'm sorry I freaked out the other day. I heard you say which masters were visiting and it brought back bad memories.... Master Orazdou used to oversee part of the old province I used to live in, but he was never there half of the time and when he was he hardly did anything. At least that's how it seemed to me...."

Po looked at her in surprise. "Oh...." he said sympathetically. "Was...the province bad?" 

"Depends on how you look at it. To the high and mighty, it was a dream come true. But to us who got scammed and robbed....." Zhen folded her knees together and looked down forlornly in the water. "Nobody cared. Not even the masters who were supposed to be protecting the people. It was our fault for being dumb. Our fault we were lowering the property tax. Our fault they couldn't catch bandits. We were worthless." She aggressively threw a rock into the pond and then fell back into the grass. "Home wasn't home anymore," she lamented. "And when I found people who did care...I stuck with them instead." 

Po sat up and put a paw on her shoulder. "I really am sorry," he said. "I wish you had said something earlier."

"I know.... I just..." Zhen growled. "People like him make me so angry! I didn't think I could control myself. That's what they're all like! Every city or village I ever visited had masters who thought they were above the law and they showed little care for the common people. To them we're just thieves with no heart and no feelings. None of us mean anything to them." 

Po pushed the bowl away and scooted next to her. "No wonder it's been hard for you to be up here," he said. "Everyone you love is trying to move on and do better, and you decided to go for the most ironic career choice." 

Zhen laughed. "Yeah, I suppose that was kind of a dumb move," she admitted. "I really just wanted to prove you were no better than the rest of us. Looks like it's me who has a lot of learning to do." 

Po squeezed her shoulder. "Well, don't feel too bad," he said. "You had a rough start. It happens to the best of us. I was going to say before the counsel meeting that you should meet Master Croc. He used to be in an underwater battalion gang that terrorized the ancient countryside rivers and lakes."

"Wait...really?" 

"Everyone comes from somewhere different," Po promised. "And maybe some of us have forgotten what it was like to be at the beginning....but not everyone has. I promise. I know I remember. As everyone loves to tell you." 

Zhen smiled at the idea, trying to hold in her laughter. "What finally got your butt moving with the kung fu stuff?" she asked. 

"Food." 

Zhen did a double take. "Wait...seriously?" she asked. "Food?"

"Yep. I overthought kung fu a lot since I was trying to imitate the five, so doing things with food help me learn the moves on my own turf." 

"Ah. I guess that makes sense." 

She looked back in the water. "Can't really see myself as a kung fu master," she admitted. "Like, I know this is more community service, but...well...." 

"Your origins aren't mighty and grand?"

"Yeah. Though it sounds like nobody's is. So I guess I shouldn't complain." 

Po sat with her in silence for a while, looking at the rippling water slowly getting calmer. After a while, he told her that he should show her the Dragon Scroll. 

"Maybe tomorrow, since it's late," he said. "I think looking at it could do you some good." 

Zhen glanced at the scrolls on the ground. "What about those scrolls?" she asked curiously. 

"Oh, those are from Master Oogway. He was the grandmaster before Shifu. He died right as I started my training." 

"Oh. Isn't he the guy Shifu was talking about at great length at dinner the other day?"

"Yep. That's oogway." 

Zhen crawled over to look at the scrolls, Po following suit. "What are you looking at these for?" she asked. 

"Ideas, mostly," Po admitted. "I figured since Oogway was the one and only master in the Valley for a while, maybe I could learn a thing or two. Since it's probably going to be just me for a while." 

Zhen was quiet for a minute. "I'm sorry I gave you so much trouble," she apologized. "I didn't realize I was stressing you out that much. Well...I mean...I kinda' knew. But...now I feel bad." 

"Apology accepted. And...I figured you were having a hard time adjusting. So no hard feelings." 

Zhen smiled at Po and decided to look in the bright green one Po hadn't yet opened. She was surprised to see the bold illustrations through out the paper. 

"He could draw," she admired. 

"Yeah. Who knew." 

Zhen read through the scroll a little further, her eyebrows furrowing in surprise as she read.  "He wasn't a kung fu master when he started?" she asked. 

"Nope. He's actually the one who invented kung fu. His old friend Kai, that's the crazy bull guy in the green there, turned evil and tried to steal it, so Oogway made up kung fu to protect people from anyone else who turned to crime or other scary stuff." 

"Gotcha'. Guess that makes sense. Gotta' keep your people safe someho-"

Zhen paused on a certain passage, interrupting herself. 

"You okay?" Po asked. 

Zhen blinked, her eyes going back and forth over the words she had found. She then glanced at Po. "You said this Kai guy was the one who turned evil over chi?" she asked.

"Yeah." 

Zhen handed him the scroll. "Ya' might want to rethink that story," she told him. 

Po took it from her paws and read: I've returned to face Zheuang and relieve him of his territory. The battle was fierce. After all, he did teach me everything I knew. But I have not returned as I left. And with the villagers by my side, we will return the land to what it should have been all along. No more armies. Just peace and genuine prosperity. As it should have been from the beginning. Po sighed. "Sounds like Shifu's not the only one with multiple traitorous masters under the belt," he noted.

Zhen shook her head. "No," she corrected. "No no no.... Have you never heard of Lord Zheuang?"

"No...not really. Why?"

"He used to serve the emperor, but then rebelled and took a territory he renamed Guao. He served as warlord until a rebel army took him down, one led by a commanding general that used to loyally serve him. Then the provinces split up and were eventually returned to the crowned prince." She glanced back at the passage. "I think your Master Oogway was that rebel army." 

Po thought that over for a second and then gasped. "Oogway was a warlord?!" he exclaimed. He glanced at the other scroll. "Secrets I can't tell Shifu," he muttered to himself. "That's what he meant! He was waiting for a good time to tell Shifu about being...misguided. Guess he never found a good time." 

Zhen looked over the scroll of Oogway and Kai's adventures as warriors and sat there for a second in contemplation. 

"He has such a good reputation," she noted. "From how Shifu gushes over him, I wouldn't have guessed."

"Me neither, if you didn't find that passage. Or knew the area's history. I had no idea." 

Zhen kept looking at the scroll and finally smiled. "Do you really think I could turn over a new leaf?" she asked hopefully. "Maybe I'll be the next Oogway." 

Po smiled at her. "You never know," he said. "No one would have thought I would have been Dragon Warrior until I just showed up one day and almost set myself on fire." 

Zhen laughed. Po laughed with her, remembering the disastrous choosing ceremony. He turned to say something else, but caught a strange aura. It was strong and overwhelmed him with a warm and powerful feeling, like the one he felt in the spirit realm. He watched Zhen go back to looking at some of the illustrations that Oogway had drawn, his thoughts going around in a circle, until they finally settled on something. Something he could feel in his gut. Something hopeful. Something a little surprising. 

Zhen. 

Zhen could be the next Oogway. 

She could be the Valley's new Dragon Warrior!