Chapter 1

This is my first fanfic I have submitted ever, so I hope all of you like it!

GONG! GONG! Po started awake to the unwelcome, jarring notes bringing him away from his sleep. He raised one arm to fend off the attacker he knew would be arriving any second, for what else would make such a hideous noise at this hour? He flailed his arm around while opening his eyes, the momentary shift in balance caused by his arm made him roll off the bed. He hit the floor face down with a bone shaking crash. "Damn it!" he mumbled, his voice muffled by the hard wood floor of his Jade Palace Barracks room as he realised what the noise was. He heard it every morning, after all. "Of course I wake up when my dream gets to the good bit! Every time!" Cursing Shifu and his blasted gong, he heaved himself up and sat on his bed, while trying to mentally think back through the dream. It had been a really good one, super vivid. Po furrowed his brow and massaged his ears to stimulate his memory. Something about a dancing bean bun, fireworks and - "PANDA!" Shifu called from down the hallway. Grumbling, Po stood up and opened his door.

The first thing to greet him was a pair of amber eyes staring at him from across the hallway. Po's eyes were drawn to them and their owner, Tigress. He nodded hello, before letting his gaze drift downwards to rest on another pair of eyes, this time blue, and very exasperated. Shifu tapped Oogway's staff on the ground impatiently.

"Every day you sleep in, Po. It has gone too far. You must be punished for your lack of punctuality, and so you will go and study the scrolls of Kung Fu 456 - 480. No breaks! They are in the storage room. Here is the key." Shifu tapped the staff on the ground again and threw Po the key, before turning away. With his back to Po, and facing the rest of the Furious Five, he said: "The rest of you will resume your normal morning routine, but at midday you must all be present at the courtyard outside the Training Hall, I have a new technique to show you all. You included, Po." This he added with a backwards glance to the panda, before limping out of the barracks.

Po called out to the Furious Five as they began to make their way out of the barracks to the kitchen. "Can someone start making breakfast? I'll take over after I get the scrolls Shifu wanted me to read."

Tigress looked around at him and nodded. "I'll start -"

"Oooh no you won't!" Mantis interjected. "We all know your reputation in the kitchen. I'd like my day to start without having to take care of the burning down of half of the Jade Palace! Monkey or Crane can cook, I can't, on account of all the vegetables needing to be cooked are bigger than I am." He chuckled. Being as small as he was had it's perks. Tigress rolled her eyes and they all continued down the steps to the kitchen.

Po watched them leave and then turned around and trotted to the storage room. He unlocked the heavy wooden door, and strode over to the open cabinets that held the thousand scrolls of Kung Fu. He crouched down and read along the labels until he located the numbers he needed. He grabbed all of the scrolls in his arms, them creating a huge pile so that most of his head was obscured behind them. Po sidled out of the storage room, closing the door with his foot and making sure the lock clicked before awkwardly walking towards the kitchen with his bundle.

As he approached, he could hear muffled laughter coming from the room where his friends were in. He could hear Mantis telling a story about Mr Hueng, the bartender from the village. He quickly tapped the door open with his arm, while keeping all of the scrolls balanced in his arms. "- And the look on his face every time he thought he lost the money people were giving him, he was so confused, and really i was putting it all into his hat!" A fresh bout of laughter came from Crane and Monkey as Mantis, who was standing on the table, concluded with his story. Po set down the scrolls in a pile on one end of the table.

"So has anyone started making breakfast yet?" Po asked around the room.

"Well no because Tigress got the idea that if she wasn't allowed to cook, then no one was!" Crane said, while casting Tigress, who was sitting across the table from him a dark look. Tigress crossed her arms, a smug look on her face.

"Well it wasn't fair on me, so I thought we should just wait until you got back Po, so we can enjoy the cooking of someone who actually knows what they are doing - ." Her eyes found Po's. " - and is good at it."

A compliment from Master Tigress? Either she got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, or Po got up on the right side, for once, Po thought to himself, as he felt warm inside at the compliment. "Thanks, Tigress." He smiled at her, and she raised one eyebrow at him, her tail swishing behind her chair. Po turned around and began to cook. After such a compliment, not a huge one by most people's standards, but as this was Master Tigress, and she was awesome, he decided to do an even better job at breakfast than usual, and chose to make his Secret Ingredient Soup, something he usually reserved for special occasions. He got to work, and before long had 6 steaming bowls of it played out in front of the warriors, and everyone tucked in. After much slurping, praising and other eating noises, everybody was finished and the Five trooped to the Training hall to train and go about their other activities.

Po sighed. That was a good soup. He burped and picked a noodle out from in between his teeth. His gaze travelled over to the corner, where the pile of scrolls were sitting. He sighed again and stood up. Better read them now, he thought to himself. He walked over to the pile and sat down to start rifling through them, he needed to find number 456, as Shifu always wanted them read in order. Po stuck his hand in the middle of the pile and pulled out a handful of scrolls. The one he wanted wasn't there. He repeated the process till he found what he wanted. Po opened up the scroll and began to read.

This is soo boring. Po looked up after reading through to number 469. He looked up at the sun which was peaking through the window. He estimated the time at about 10 o'clock, so he still had a fair bit of time before Shifu wanted to meet them. He looked back down at the scroll pile after discarding his current one. Something strange caught his eye. One of the scrolls, previously hidden in the pile but brought to the front by his sifting through, was differently bound than all the others. The outside was jade green, and looked practically new, like it had never been read. Po picked it up, interested, and studied it. It definitely had not been read, there were no creases whatsoever. Odd, he thought. There is no number on here.

Po unrolled the scroll slowly. It was fairly short and had an inscription, under which a drawing of a volcano was made in fine calligraphy. He began to read:

The Pairing of Yin and Yang. He read. The Pairing of Yin and Yang is the singular, most powerful ritual of the joining of souls capable in the Universe. It is even more powerful than through love, as some souls bond. However, with the love bond present as well, the Pairing of Yin and Yang's potency is increased tenfold, giving the two souls that bond almost unlimited power.

The true nature of Yin and Yang may only be revealed through a baptism of fire and water. A blood pact must be given before the ritual, transferring each other's Qi with the pact. Only after this, and the baptism, can almost unlimited power be acquired.

Po looked up from the scroll with glee. "This. Is. Awesome!" He shouted. He looked quickly over the scroll again before closing it, jumping up from the floor and putting it in his back pocket. Po ran outside the kitchen imagining what it would be like to have almost unlimited power. I'd be able to see through walls! And hear a butterflies' wing beat! And harness the flow of the Universe! It would be like better than the Dragon Scroll, 100 times better! Po moved out to the Training hall, miming punches and kicks and acting out in his mind the awesome battles he would have once he had almost unlimited power! He was going through a battle secret in his mind, and kicked the Training Hall door open.

"HIYA!" The door crashed back on its hinges. As Po looked inside, he saw the Five on their various favourite areas of the Hall. Tigress, at that very moment, double fist struck one of the Swinging Clubs, making it explode into pieces, with one of the pieces flying straight to Po's face, almost mirroring the first time he saw the Training Hall when he first became Dragon Warrior. This time, however, Po reached out and spin roll kicked ("Spin Roll Kick!") the shard right back at Tigress. She blocked it, and taking it as an invitation, jumped into a Tahlia Leap to begin sparring with Po.

Po saw her fly up into the air, and got into his fighting stance. He watched as she did a forward flip, extending one of her legs to try to smack her foot into Po's head from above, hopefully forcing him into the ground. He watched, ready for this move, and just as her leg was about to come into contact with his face, he stepped to the side. When tigress' legs hit the floor she immediately rolled to the left, dodging Po's retaliation flat palm strike. They began to move through a number of battle sequences, going from striking to arm locks, to blocking each other's moves. The two were fairly evenly matched, which was saying something as Po had only been the Dragon Warrior for about 6 months, so he had improved at a startling rate.

As the fight wore on, Tigress' superior endurance began to tell on Po, she had succeeded in backing him into a corner of the Training Hall, both were sweating and gasping for air, Po more so than Tigress. Tigress did a spinning kick and knocked Po's hand away from where it was heading, towards her face. Suddenly her foot slipped on the polished wooden floor of the Training Hall, and she fell onto Po, her face in his chest fur as they both fell back against the wall.

All of a sudden, the whole training hall went quiet. Tigress quickly pushed herself off Po's surprisingly soft and warm fur. "Sorry, Po." Her amber eyes met his for a split second before she looked away.

"It's alright Tigress! That was awesome!" Po said enthusiastically. Why is she behaving so awkwardly about it? Its not like we haven't come into contact with each other during training before. Wait, what am I thinking? It's Master Tigress! She never gets awkward! It must be something else. Maybe she is tired, maybe she is allergic to my fur! That would be terrible! Po thought to himself. He looked around and noticed the others were staring at Tigress and him. "What?" he asked with a bemused expression.

…..

"Inner peace…inner, in-in-inner peace…" Shifu's ear twitched as his exceptional hearing picked up a loud "HIYA!", followed by a bang. He sighed. Ever since the panda had fallen from the sky to assume the mantle of the Dragon Warrior, the peace and quiet usually found in the Jade Palace grounds had been broken. No longer were there silent, neutral faces all around him during his waking moments. No longer was there sole and one hundred percent devotion to Kung Fu. No longer was there a discord within him, that had plagued him all these years since his beloved son had almost destroyed the Valley of Peace and attempted to take the Dragon Scroll for himself. The grief Shifu felt at having to fight against him, and Tai Lung's eventual death was still present, but hidden under the many layers of annoyance Po brought to the table every day. He had to thank that Panda, life was indeed better since he had come into the Jade Palace. It was like the fire of life had been rekindled in all of them, himself and the Five. There's more to live for, now that he's around. I'd never let him know that though. He would never let me live it down, arrogant Panda he is.

Shifu flipped off the tip of Oogway's staff to land with a barely concealed grunt while he remarked at the state of his creaky knees. One day someone will have to invent a moving chair, with wheels! I can't go on like this forever. He limped off from his room to the Training Hall where he knew his favourite student and daughter was currently obliterating that sorry excuse for a Dragon Warrior. He continued on, till he reached the door of the Training Hall.

The sight that met Shifu's eyes was nothing like his prediction of what he would find once he looked inside the Hall. Shifu stopped at the door, and looked on with concealed apprehension and surprise. Tigress had slipped! Never once had Shifu known Tigress to lose her footing. And then she was against the Panda. Shifu took in the momentary tension and stiffness Tigress acquired when pressed up against the fur ball. The quick, shy glance up that was returned by the Dragon Warrior. And the hurried back-pedalling and apologising. Interesting. Very interesting. I shall have to keep my eye on this. "Students!" he called out, saving his two best fighters from their embarrassment. "Down to the courtyard, please. It is time."

First chapter done, what do you guys think? Please rate and review!