KFP owned by Dreamworks.

And this chapter and the next would be a lot more fun :-)


Best friends are forever

I think of you

And all the days we have spent together

You are my best friend, my soul mate

And I know you will always be there until the end

Your shoulder to cry on will always be there

Whenever there is something wrong

When times are tough, you are always there

It shows me your love and care

-My Best Friend My Soul Mate/Mahnoor-


The next morning, just like many hundreds morning before, habitually, Tigress beat the voice of the gong by at least an hour. Soothing chirps of birds singing was waking her up from her relatively light slumber. She stretched herself at her bedroll and watched the gentle ray of sun peeking through her window. Deeply inhaling the fresh cold air into her lung, she slowly sat on the brink of her cot. She growled lowly as the cold wooden floor met the sole of her feet. Surprisingly, she still felt as energetic as yesterday, considering she had very little sleep, being overly overboard and engrossed reading some of the herbal scrolls from the palace collection.

After her encounter with Zhi and Bai, Tigress had embraced a 'scroll reading bedtime' obsession, normally the topics would be something light - like herbal potion, poetry, and even sometime... romantic stories (not as lurid as the one Viper was reading!). Still lying motionless while she let her mind wandered aimlessly, her ears caught a familiar stride on the corridor followed by terrible resonating creaking sound of the floorboards. She would bet on 100 almond cookies only one creature in the entire Jade Palace could torture the unfortunate wooden beam into agonising creak. She hastily stood up and tidied her fur, just in case the creature in question decided to turn up. Precisely enough, she saw his shadowed stopped towering outside her door and stood there in silence for a minute or so.

"Po, you can come in... I already awake." Slowly, the rice paper door slid open. Behind it emerged the Dragon Warrior, grinning ridiculously as he often did, and two bowls of soup rested upon his paws.

"Morning Tigress." He said with an upbeat tone, there was a certain secretive aura etched on his smile.

"Morning Po. What bring you here so early?" She asked concisely, her gaze yet to leave the bear large form that made a careful entrance, manoeuvring his large frame and closing the door nimbly without the assistance of his paw.

"Weeelllll..., I thought we can start early... y'know, doing cool kicking the butt business...since no one else besides us would train... I know you love to train right?" The panda expounded, and purposefully putting more emphasis on the last bit of his sentence. Tigress had to double take his statement. What? It was so unlike Po that he sacrificed his sleeping hour, to make soup, and came to her bedroom. She contorted her brow and landing her suspicious gaze on the grinning panda in front of her, digging for the ultimate truth. Tigress swore Po would make such a terrible spy, he was hardly capable of concealing anything, let alone pretending or telling a lie. The panda animated facial expression could almost tell her every unspoken word in his mind.

"Po, are you trying to bribe me so I do chi training with you?" She snickered victoriously. His face dropped instantly. Realising his plan was uncovered, Po grunted. Clearly, the bear was excessively excited with the prospect of training chi with ferocious Master Tigress. What else she could possibly showed him today. And supposedly, all the extra chi boost they exchanged last night making him even more hyper than usual.

"Ermm... well... if we finished early, I'll take you out for dinner." He implored, attempting further retaliation. The tiger in front of him did not react,...no...,not a single flinch. However, unseen to Po, Tigress heart jumped in incredulity. 'Did I hear that right? or was I over thinking things?'

"Po, are you asking me on a date?" The panda blinked, exchanging an incomprehensible look with the tiger. Realising what he'd been saying, he swallowed nervously. Not that he regretted it, particularly if she agreed to participate. He could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks but determined to keep his cool.

"Hmm... you can say that." He pushed his words to sound as confident, truthful, as possible.

A smile came to her maw witnessing his undeniable discomfiture. "I'll come, Po." The panda eyed nearly jumped out of their socket, he clearly couldn't believe his luck.

"Wait, you said you'll come with me?" Absentmindedly, he threw a disbelief look making the creases on his forehead intensified. She paid a little nod as approval.

"Thanks, Tigress." His green jade dazzled in thrilling response, he gave her a tenacious, warm, bear hug. The gesture was unanticipated, Tigress stiffen like a log at first but instantly went lax and returned his hug. "My pleasure, Po."

They both walked side by side to the training hall.

"Now what shall we do first." He probed as he glanced through the entire training hall looking for ideas. Tigress, instead, sat down on lotus position, leaving the panda dumbfounded.

"Tigress, we are... going to...train right?" Still baffled, he raised his brow and scratched the back of his head. Tigress he knew was normally going to attack the seven swinging club of instant oblivion without further command.

"Of course Dragon, Warrior, what do you think I am doing?" She remained still on the spot, retaining the same posture.

"Ermm... sitting, cross-legged, in the middle of the training hall?" He deadpanned. The striped feline briefly opened her eyes to deliver a reprimanding glare.

"I challenge you, now try to hit me." She muttered.

"Are you sure?... I mean... I am dragon warrior you are talkin' about, you can get seriously hurt y'know. Especially when you do it with your eyes closed." The panda blurted, the feline seemed to hardly take notice.

"Go ahead, try me." She stood up with her eyes shut.

"Okay... skhakaboeyyy..." Po hurled and charged to Tigress who was just stood quietly in the middle of the room. She deflected the kick with ease, Po landed a double fist attack, followed by a spin kick, again Tigress was quick enough to deflect it. Po halted his assault for a minute, he was scheming what he can do to break Tigress's impregnable defences. He decided to try to do a short distant attack. He closed their distant until Tigress was a mere two foot away from him, she still didn't react. Mentally, he planned all his attacks, and abruptly throwing a sequence of punch and kicks so quick it appeared like a black blur in the air, but again Tigress either averted or blocked them completely as quick as he did.

She smirked and opened her eyes, both coherently bow to each other indicating the end of the spar.

"WHOAAA..., that was cool!" Po shouted hysterically. "What was that?"

"It's a form of chi tracking, when you close your eyes and concentrate, you can see see the person's chi, detect and read their movement. It's especially useful to fight in the night or on a day with bad visibility." She described.

"That was severely awesome, can you teach me? please...please...please?" His puppy-eyed expression, with his paws, clutched into each other, making an irresistibly adorable plea. Tigress smiled at the panda absolutely immature behaviour. She instructed Po to follow a few steps, and in less than 15 minutes and a few futile trial - which end up Tigress completely chopped and battered him into pieces while his eyes were closed - a success finally came at last!

"You are a fast learner Dragon Warrior!" She complimented sincerely. Then a mischievous smile curved on her maw. "Now, shall we do our usual sparring, with a twist." She suggested. Sensing danger, Po clearly not liking the tune of her voice. "What twist?" He asked gingerly.

"We can use chi to attack each other beside kung fu... but we'll have to be careful. I don't want one of us to end up dead." She advised, causing Po to fret on the prospect of him being a target of her chi attack, especially after he testified how much skilled in mastering chi she was. But again, curiosity might have killed the bear, but he didn't care.

"You gotta deal kitten." He taunted.

"Po!" Tigress growled hearing him calling her kitten.

"Get ready to feel the thunder!" He bellowed.

"Bring it on Dragon Warrior!" Both warriors prepared and stood with their stance.

Tigress, as usual, was the first to launch her attack, she leapt closer to Po and did a double palm strike, Po quickly blocked it, and counterattack with his right fist, Tigress fluently avoided it by doing a tornado back flip. Then Po rapidly spun around, suddenly stopping, and then placing his palm out towards Tigress creating a gulf of golden ball. "Thundering wind hammer" he shouted. Instead of avoiding the chi energy, Tigress closed her eyes and did an inner peace stance, and she captured the ball and aimed it back at Po, whom quickly deflected it. Unfortunately, the ball of energy hit the wall of the training hall creating a large hole.

"Impressive Master Tigress, but I am just warming up." He scoffed, but he was quite impressed how much Tigress had mastered some of the stuff that he usually knew only him and Shifu were able to replicate.

"Try me, Dragon Warrior." She sneered in return.

Po tried to do a double kick on Tigress, but she swept his supporting foot. Po reacted with impossible speed to avoid his fall and landed in a perfect split as Tigress planted another strike, but Po blocked it right on time crossing both of his arms. And the as they engaged in close battle, Tigress saw an opening, she found her centre and focused her chi, Po notice a small red ball appear on her left hand in between her finger, and she accurately threw it at him. Because their distance was so close, Po didn't have time to deflect the attack, instead, he quickly counter-attacked with the same technique. "Five-Fingered Blast Punch" he made similar looking ball, except his was gold. Both spheres clashed creating titanic blow, both warriors hurled into each side of the training hall with some of the fabric of their cloth was visibly burnt.

Tigress chuckled. "I had to admit, that was fun, Po."

They ended their spar with a bow.

"It's no fun... is super awesomely very fun! But looked at the training hall... aw man, Master Shifu gonna kill us." He moped.

True enough, the diminutive master, although retaining his cool, commanded two of them to clean, fix and patched all the roof, wall, floor and the training equipment. Po just let a heavy sigh. 'This going to be a looooong day.' But as soon as he saw the feline next to him, his forlorn spirit lifted up with the prospect of spending the long night with her, albeit it was still... punishment, let just say Tigress presence made it a tad bit sweeter.


That late afternoon, both Po and Tigress heading down for their dinner - well, a date as Tigress did clarify.

Although this was technically a date, both warriors were still casually wearing their usual training costume. Po purposefully didn't want to make too much deal about it, worrying the tiger master might not be comfortable facing the gossipy villager witnessing them actually went out to spend some quality time together. However, Po still wanted to make it special. He'd asked his goose dad to set up chairs and table up in his old bedroom so they could enjoy a moment of privacy. Both of them came down the thousands step in silence, Tigress was a few pace behind Po.

As they arrived in the village, a familiar face emerged from the crowd.

"Oh hi Lu..." Po greeted her in friendly tune. Tigress, who was lagging a reasonable distance did bring her own step to a halt.

"Po, nice to see you." The female panda smiled sweetly. "What brought you down here?"

"I am on the way to my see dad." Courteously, he returned her smile. Tigress was immediately surprised to see another panda in Valley of Peace. The group of pandas she ever saw were those in Secret Panda Village. She decided to walk slower and stood a few pace away from Po, not wanting to disturb his conversation. Po realising his friend was behind him, he quickly grabbed Tigress's wrist and pulled her next to him.

"Oh Lu, meet Valley of Peace most bodacious fighter, Master Tigress, we both trained together at the Jade Palace. Tigress this is Lu, she just moved to the valley a few weeks ago, and I helped her and her mom moving their stuff - that's how we get to know each other." Po explained cheerfully, his right paw was on Tigress's right shoulder. Tigress blushed on Po's compliment, but keeping her poise and usual expressionless face. Acknowledging the closeness between Dragon Warrior and the tiger, the ambience of the conversation made an unexpected turn. Tigress bowed affably to the panda in front of her.

"Nice to meet you, Lu." While the female panda looked less than impressed to see Tigress. She gave a stern, fiendish stare to Tigress in return, which did surprise her. That's the least Tigress would expect from a panda, a gentle, cordial possibly shy creature. Lu sweet, passionate, first impression suddenly evaporated and replaced with aggressive, flirtatious self as she began to make her move on Po. Although Tigress wasn't the most experience dealing with opposite sex, relationship and all, probably her woman's instinct in her telling her that this female panda saw her as worthy contender.

"Yes Po, I have not invited you for dinner as a thank you. I bet you are lonely being the only panda here, you could do with some company with the someone same species as you." She winked seductively, making use of her feminine proclivity. Unfortunately, Po wasn't really registering her intention. But her words did sting Tigress, whom quickly reminded that they are probably the only two pandas in a good 100 miles radius. She let a low growled, but most likely their panda's ear couldn't hear it.

"Pfttt... no biggie, it won't be necessary. But thank y..-" Po casually replied, but his sentence was curtailed by Lu.

"Well, I insisted." She moved closed and tugged Po on the arm - moving him away from Tigress and compelling him to release his grip on Tigress's shoulder, causing him to cringed and blushed. Tigress sensing something was off-kilter with this female panda, and in addition to that, she felt a strange feeling creeping in her chest. Was it worry? disappointment? but why? But one thing she knew, she just wished to vanish and stop witnessing whatever she was seeing now.

"Po, I'll go first and meet you at your dad's." Tigress excused herself. Po was about to stop her when Lu pulled him even closer and tightened her grip.

"Are you free tomorrow night?" She questioned with a fabricated, ravenous and enticing voice that send chills upon Po's spine. He wasn't sure he liked the sudden advances Lu was making.

"Err..." Po minds went blank. But Lu didn't plan to lose this battle, and she was not prepared to give any room for rejection.

"I take that as a yes, I'll see you at your dad's tomorrow, Po." She giggled adorably.

"Look Lu, I had to go now..." Po attempted on his escape.

"See you tomorrow Dragon Warrior!"