Year of the Goose
By corset-rebellion-follower
Disclaimer: I don't own Kung Fu Panda
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Chapter 4- The Rival
Mr. Ping smiled. All of his new students were progressing very well for only their second day of training. None quite as well as Master Mantis, but they were moving along nicely.
But his thoughts skidded to a stop at Master Tigress. She was the most powerful of the group at kung fu, and definitely the most beautiful, but she just wasn't cooking very well. I suppose some people just weren't meant to be chefs, but still… I've never seen anyone this… terrible.
He watched solemnly as Tigress garbled a bok choy while trying to dice it. She sighed and cleared the mess away before getting a new one and beginning again. Though I must admit, she is persistent. People were starting to fill into the streets and into the noodle shop. Mr. Ping hopped onto the counter.
"Alright, students. Here's your first test. Some customers can be grueling and picky when it comes to their noodles, and others don't care one way or another. But it's up to you five to make every single one of them happy and well-fed. I will be preparing the noodles, but you must use your head and your people skills to decide what goes inside. Good luck!" He scrambled down and started pulling out bowls and stirring pots of noodles.
Tigress bit her lip. Her people skills were better than her cooking skills, but not by much. This was going to be a long day. A long string of customers lined up at the counter, waiting for noodles, and a little shocked to see China's greatest warriors serving them their meal. But some of the customers were too hungry to notice. And one was just ignorant.
He was a large pig with a mole on his chin. He whistled lowly when he saw Tigress. "Hey, sexy. Come here often?" he asked as he leaned against the counter.
"Excuse me?" Tigress asked. Monkey and Viper glanced at each other with worry in their eyes.
"What's a beautiful girl like you doing in a dump like this?" he asked, brushing his hoof over her paw.
"Oh geez," Crane whispered.
"I'm sorry, but I'm not interested, and this is hardly the way you should treat people in public. Here." He pushed a bowl of noodles at him and turned her back to him to get something off the counter.
"Hey, don't be like that, honey. Maybe you and I should go somewhere a little less crowded," he purred, lowering his eyelids.
"I said no. If you'll be so kind as to take your soup and go," she snapped. The hog tried to grab at her waist, but Tigress kicked him swiftly with a well-placed spin kick over the countertop. It hit him in the nose and sent him into the side wall of the shop.
"Tigress!" Viper yelled.
"What's going on over here?" Mr. Ping asked, rushing over. A few of the other customers had ran over to help the pig. His nose was bleeding and had turned a deep shade of purple.
"What did you do that for?" Mantis demanded.
"Did you not just see what he tried to do to me? It was self defense!" she defended.
"But you can't go attacking our customers! No one will want to eat here if they think that they're going to be kicked in the face! And you're so much stronger than that guy, he could be seriously hurt!" Mantis yelled.
"So what, I'm supposed to let my honor be reduced to nothing and act like a whore so that he'll come back and probably do it again?" Tigress asked.
"Alright, alright, break it up. There's no need to fight about this," Mr. Ping insisted, coming between them, "You two just take a quick break from each other. Master Mantis, go back to preparing soup. Master Tigress, why don't you… um… take dish duty! We need clean bowls if we're going to have good soup! No one wants to eat out of something that someone's spit in," he said optimistically.
Tigress crossed her arms over her chest. "Fine." She walked out the back door to get water for washing. Mantis shook his head before returning to the counter. When Tigress finally came back with the water, the pig had gotten to his feet and was holding a cloth up to his nose to catch the blood. Tigress locked eyes with him and growled a little.
He ran out of there faster than Twitchy the Squirrel on caffeine.
Tigress chuckled at him as she added soap to the water and began washing the dishes. "Well, Ping, isn't this a pleasant sight. I see your new staff is causing just as much trouble as your son did."
Mr. Ping froze where he was standing. "N-no. It c-c-can't be!"
"What's up?" Monkey asked, putting down the knife he was using and waving a hand in front of Mr. Ping's face.
"I know that voice. I haven't heard it since I was a young man, but I would know it anywhere," Mr. Ping said.
"Well who is it?" Viper asked.
"M-Mrs. Ding!" There was a loud roll of thunder.
Crane looked up at the sky. "Where have all these thunderstorms been coming from?" A goose stepped through the crowd and appeared at the counter. He looked just as old as Mr. Ping. They looked a lot alike, except this goose had blue robes that looked a lot like the maroon ones that Mr. Ping wore. And she was a woman.
"Ping, it has been a while, hasn't it?" Mrs. Ding asked. Mr. Ping's usual happy demeanor was gone.
"I suppose it has. What are you doing here?" he asked.
"I'm here for the Championship Noodle-Off. My son and I are entering. Speaking of offspring, where is your son? Usually he would have tipped something over by now," Mrs. Ding taunted. Tigress twitched a little at that. Even though Po wasn't exactly graceful, he wasn't that clumsy. And she had come to respect him, clumsiness and all.
"Po is… not feeling well at the moment," Mr. Ping said tensely.
"What, did he eat too much?" Mrs. Ding asked.
"For your information, he's very ill. He hasn't been able to move for three days," Tigress said angrily.
"I knew that boy would eat himself to death! Ever since he was born, I knew!" Mrs. Ding yelled triumphantly.
"Hey, leave Po out of this. He's not helping his dad in the contest, but we are," Crane warned.
"Yeah. And we're all kung fu masters. Mess with Po, and you mess with us!" Mantis threatened.
Mrs. Ding scoffed. "Kung fu masters, huh? Well that won't do you much good in the Noodle-Off. Unless you plan to threaten the judges." Tigress clenched her teeth.
"Excuse me, madam, but this is a place of business. Unless you're here to buy some of our soup, we'll have to ask you to leave," she said sternly. Mrs. Ding looked her over.
"Very well. Good luck at the contest, Ping. You'll need it more than I." And she left the noodle shop.
"Who was that?" Viper asked.
"Mrs. Hua Ding. She and I were very good friends in our childhood. We did everything together. She even helped in this noodle shop. She's also Po's godmother. And when they were growing up, her son Dongwa and Po were best friends," he explained.
"Well it's definitely not good for us that she worked here. That could be a disadvantage to us. A big one. Does she know the secret recipe for your noodles, Mr. Ping? It could mean murder for us at the contest if she's using the same recipe as us," Mantis said dismally.
"Oh, of course not! No one outside of the family knows that recipe. And I'll be a dead rooster before she finds out the secret. She just helped around the shop, washing dishes and doing the supplies shopping for me. Then one day, she and Dongwa just up and left, taking everything they owned with them. We never saw her again until now," he explained.
"What about Dongwa's father? Did he leave with them?" Tigress asked.
"Dongwa was adopted, my dear. He never knew his real mother and father. Of course, Jia was motherly enough for the both of them," Mr. Ping said reflectively, a small smile forming on his mouth.
"Who's Jia?" Monkey asked.
"She was Po's mother. Yes, Jia loved Dongwa as if he were Po's brother. But, only a few days before Mrs. Ding disappeared, we found out that Jia was pregnant again with Po's sister," Mr. Ping added.
"I didn't know Po had a sister," Crane said in disbelief.
"He does not," Mr. Ping sighed. He was wringing his wings together. "Both Jia and Po's sister died shortly after she was born." The Five all looked at the ground. "Well, enough of this sadness we have customers to attend to!" Mr. Ping cheered. The Five exchanged glances, all wondering how he could bounce back so fast from talking about such a sensitive subject.
Most of the customers had gathered around the counter to hear Mr. Ping's tale, but quickly went back to their seats when they were noticed. "Looks like your storytelling is really great for business, Mr. Ping," Mantis noted, looking at the new people that had joined the crowd around the counter to order.
Mr. Ping shrugged. "It's all in the genes." Tigress sighed.
Genes that I obviously don't have. Back to dish duty. "Excuse me, Master Tigress?" She looked around to see who had called her name, but didn't notice anyone looking at her. "Down here, Master Tigress!" She leaned over the counter and looked down to the ground. A small rabbit girl was standing there, smiling brightly.
"Um, yes?" Tigress asked.
"I thought it was really brave of you to kick that guy. There are these bullies who won't leave me alone, but now I can just kick their butts like you did!" She imitated the kick that Tigress used, but fell to the ground in the process.
Tigress giggled. "Well, you shouldn't use kung fu just to get someone to go away, only for self-defense. But that was very good for a beginner." The rabbit's eyes sparkled.
"Really?" Tigress nodded. She took a bowl of plain soup and started chopping vegetables to put in it for the little girl.
"If you practice and work hard, you could be a kung fu master. All it takes is the drive," she explained.
"Do you think I could be as good as you?" the girl asked hopefully. Tigress smiled and scooped the vegetables into the soup.
"Anything is possible if you believe in yourself. To tell you the truth, I've never cooked before in my life. I'm doing this as a favor for a friend of mine." She handed the bowl of noodles down to the girl. "This one is free."
The rabbit grinned and thanked her before running back to her mother. Tigress was still smiling as she went back to washing dishes. But what she didn't notice was that all the vegetables she had chopped were perfect.
Mr. Ping smiled as he watched her scrub bowls. She may not know it yet, but that girl has the heart of a master chef.
A/N: Finally, I updated this! The fact that I hadn't updated yet was nagging at the back of my mind. So I sat down and wrote this all day. I've just been popping out these chapters that are a little over or under two thousand words. My usual minimum for word count is 1000, so that's pretty good for me. Holla!