The Meeting
Po was in a dilemma. On the one hand, Tai Lung was crouched only a few feet from him, which in Tai Lung terms meant Po had probably been dead for about five minutes and just hadn't found out yet. On the other hand, Tai Lung had so far only glanced up at him, while whatever was in that soup pot was in dire need of attention. Po concentrated on the most immediate problem.
A search of his own far too empty pack produced some dried noodles and a few bamboo shoots he'd found the day before – the few he hadn't snacked on. Some salt, pepper, and ginger root. He was running way too low on supplies.
He turned his attention to Tai Lung's stuff. The shelf held a cup, a bowl, and three small, ancient onions. The baskets were almost empty – Po found only a single, dry garlic clove and what might have been a carrot in a previous life. The pack beside the wall held only a pair of pants, a worn cloak, and a comb.
Po sighed and went to work with what he had, mashing some ginger and the garlic clove, and cutting up the onions and probable carrot. He tossed them in with the noodles and seasoning, smelled, stirred, and tasted. Beside him, Tai Lung finally stirred, took a breath and seemed about to say something.
"This needs mushrooms," Po said. "Do you have any? Can you get me some mushrooms?"
The snow leopard looked somewhat baffled by the request. Obviously this wasn't the conversation he'd expected to have. After a moment, he got up, went outside, and returned shortly with a handful of mushrooms that looked better to Po than anything he'd put in the soup so far. He resumed his place, watching the panda intently.
Po concentrated on the soup pot, not sure what to say and not really wanting to ask for more ingredients. He hadn't expected the mushrooms; he just hadn't wanted to start another fight before he was recovered from the last one. Those crocs had been tough. And mean, his thoughts added. Why couldn't the two old sheep have mentioned those guys?
When he was as satisfied as he was going to get with the soup, he dished it up and handed a bowl to the leopard. That action got him a glance that was almost … wary? That couldn't be right. Po started on his own bowl. Not the best he'd ever made, but pretty good considering what he had to work with. He was pleased, and a little amused, at the sudden interest Tai Lung took in the soup after his first taste. Considering what it would have turned out like if Po hadn't come along, he was surprised the snow leopard hadn't starved by now.
After he finished his second helping, Po felt up to dealing with the situation he found himself in; but he politely waited until Tai Lung set his bowl down before he spoke. "How did –" he started.
Simultaneously, Tai Lung said, "What do –"
They both broke off abruptly.
"Go ahead," Po said, after a moment of tense silence.
Tai Lung had apparently decided on a different approach. "How did you find me?" he finally asked.
"I have no idea," Po answered. "How did I get here?"
"You… just came in and collapsed in front of the fire," Tai Lung said, a note of uncertainty creeping into his voice. "You weren't looking for me?"
"No," said Po, working through the likelihood of this scenario. "You mean, I'm wandering around in the rain and of all the houses in China I walk into yours? What are the odds of that?"
Tai Lung stared into the fire. "There are no coincidences," he muttered.
"Yeah," said Po, "Master Oogway said that."
"You have no idea how many times."
Po couldn't help but laugh, and was heartened to see a slight smile on the snow leopard's face.
"No, really," he finally said. "I was down here because I got sent on a mission. Well, kinda, maybe, it's more like a delivery … or errand… or something." He trailed off. "Anyway, I wasn't looking for you, because I, well, everyone, thinks you're … you know … pretty much… dead," he finished, not sure how Tai Lung was going to take the news.
"Everyone?" Tai Lung asked, a tone of disbelief in his voice.
"Yeah. Pretty much everyone."
"The Anvil of Heaven?" There was a definite note of suspicion now.
"The rhinos? They're down here hunting bandits."
"Bandits?" For a moment Tai Lung looked almost hurt. Then he gave a derisive snort. "Well. They've come down in the world, haven't they?"
Po wasn't sure what to say to that. "Yeah… so… what happens now?"
"I have no idea."
"You want more soup?"
"What?"
Po repeated patiently, "Do you want more soup?"
Tai Lung was apparently having trouble following what Po thought was a perfectly reasonable conversation. "Do I –"
"More soup. Because, no offense, but you look like you could use it."
Tai Lung stared at him for a long moment; Po couldn't even begin to sort out the mix of emotions that crossed the snow leopard's face. Finally, he passed Po his bowl; Po refilled it and handed it back. Not wanting to be rude, he took a third helping.
"So, I guess what I'm asking," he said, about halfway through the soup, "is, are we going to have to fight? Because I've already had one fight today, and I'd kinda like to … do something else."
Tai Lung looked up from his own untouched bowl. "We already fought. You won. I thought that was settled."
"Yeah, okay, that sounds like a plan."
"So what do you intend to do?"
Po gave him a puzzled look. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, now that you've found me, alive, what do you intend to do? Besides feed me soup?"
Po pondered this. "I … don't know. What do you think I should do?"
Tai Lung let out a frustrated sigh. "Look, panda –," his eyes narrowed, and his tone became bitter, "or should I call you Dragon Warrior?"
"You should call me Po," the panda said quietly.
Tai Lung stared at him, expressionless. There was no sound but the rain on the roof and the crackling of the fire. The snow leopard's shoulders slumped, and his gaze slid back to the bowl in his hands. "Po," he said finally. "Are you going to turn me in to the Anvil of Heaven?"
"They're the ones who were guarding you when you were in prison, right?"
"Yes."
"So what would happen if I did?"
Tai Lung sighed again. "If I was extremely lucky, I'd go back to prison."
"And if you weren't?"
"They'd kill me."
Po thought that over. "Is that likely?"
Tai Lung considered. "With Vachir in charge, probably not. Unless he had a direct order to do so. I'm sure he'd rather –," He broke off.
Po waited. "Rather what?" he finally asked.
Tai Lung's fingers tightened around the bowl. "Rather make me pay for killing his men. For trying to kill him. For escaping and making him look like a fool," he said in a flat, toneless voice. He looked up. "If you go to get them, I won't be here."
Po was thinking furiously. Tai Lung was the bad guy here, right? He was supposed to be in jail. It wasn't like he'd reformed over the years – Po remembered all too well his own terror at the thought of fighting the snow leopard. He remembered Crane bringing the Five back to the Jade Palace, paralyzed by Tai Lung's nerve strikes and lucky to be alive. He remembered Shifu saying he would stay to delay Tai Lung while they evacuated the Valley – and the unspoken fact that he knew he would die doing it. He remembered the townsfolk's fear as they fled their homes.
But he also remembered the look of crushing defeat on Tai Lung's face as he dropped the Dragon Scroll, the fear in the leopard's eyes when he was sure Po would kill him. And Po remembered his own regret at the thought that he had actually done it. He realized that he really didn't want Tai Lung dead. He remembered Master Croc, talking about how Thundering Rhino helped him straighten out his life. What do I expect, he thought, that Tai Lung will just turn good because I want him to? But what if he could? And what if I didn't give him the chance?
"Well," he said slowly, "isn't there anything else we can do? I mean, there's got to be another way, some other option, right?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, there's got to be some way to work this out, right? ' Cause I don't want to just get you killed, or whatever."
"You tried your best to kill me."
"Yeah," Po said uncomfortably, "but, you know, that was in battle, and you were trying to kill me, and steal the Dragon Scroll, and you almost killed Shifu, and the Furious Five, and…" he trailed off. "But you're not going to do anything like that now… anymore… right?"
Tai Lung just stared at him.
"I mean," Po tried again, "It's been like, what, a couple years, and you've just been here, not doing anything… bad… you know… so maybe…"
Tai Lung said, slowly and deliberately, "Why would you want to help me?"
"Are you kidding?" Po said. "I know about when you, uh, you know… when you tore up the Valley, of course, I heard about that all my life … But I also know about what you were like before that. People would still talk about the things you'd do, back in the day, fighting bandits, protecting the Valley, rescuing people… I mean, there was the time you stopped that rogue elephant warrior in Wuhan…"
"People still talk about that?"
"Yeah, of course, well, I asked them… okay, I bugged them to tell me, but, yeah, they remember. You were a hero, Tai Lung."
The spark of hope that shone momentarily in the snow leopard's eyes faded quickly to the desolate look Po remembered from the end of their fight. "That was a long time ago."
"Yeah, I know, but you've still got it. When we were fighting, some of things you were doing, I couldn't believe it, I don't know how I stayed ahead of you, and then when you just came down out of nowhere and we wound up in that crater -," he realized he was gushing, but what the heck, Tigress wasn't here to complain about him geeking out. "That was so cool, Tai Lung. You have got to show me how you did that!"
But Tai Lung seemed to have pulled back into himself after his brief flicker of hope. "Figure it out for yourself, panda. You're the Dragon Warrior, after all."
"Well, yeah, but I'm still pretty new at this. I'm still learning… stuff. And you're already there, you mastered the Thousand Scrolls and everything, and I've only read, like, five of them."
Tai Lung looked perplexed. "Only five? In two years?"
"I, ah, never was much of a reader. And Shifu won't let me skim."
The look Tai Lung gave him fell somewhere between concern and horror. "Of course not," he said faintly.
"So maybe you could show me some moves?"
"I thought Shifu was training you. He finally got his great hero, after all. Just what he always wanted."
Po ignored the sarcastic remark. He was beginning to recognize it as defensiveness, whenever Tai Lung started to open up a little. "Yeah, well, Shifu, he's… like with the scrolls, his training is on sort of, like, a schedule, you know…"
"So you're asking me," Tai Lung wanted to be clear on this, "to teach you techniques that Shifu doesn't think you're ready for yet."
Po hadn't thought of it in quite those terms. "Uhh… yeah?"
There was a long moment of silence while Tai Lung simply stared at him. Rain pattered softly on the roof. Then the snow leopard shrugged. "Alright."
The next morning Po woke up early without anyone having to yell at him. He yawned, stretched, and looked around the hut. He remembered the whole strange series of events the night before – he was still feeling stiff from the fight with the crocs, and a spot on the back of his head had serious issues with being touched. But he was looking forward to learning some awesome new moves this morning. Only problem was, he was alone in the room. He recalled the snow leopard's words from their conversation concerning the rhinos. Had he left during the night? Had he thought Po was going to turn him in after all? He'd said he wasn't – he had actually said he wasn't, hadn't he?
Oh, no, no, no! he thought. Tai Lung, you did not just do this to me!
Another glance around the room, however, showed that while the snow leopard was gone, his stuff, what there was of it, was still there. Okay, he had to be around somewhere, then. Relieved, Po sat down to finish off the soup remaining in the pot and in Tai Lung's untouched bowl from last night. While he still thought Tai Lung should have eaten it, he also thought he'd done pretty good not asking the leopard if he was going to finish that. How's that for self-control? he thought rather smugly.
Feeling a lot better after breakfast, he headed outside. The rain had ended sometime during the night, and the morning was brilliant. The sun was glinting off the wet leaves, the light breaking into a thousand tiny rainbows as it shone through the droplets. He looked around. Still no sign of Tai Lung, or of anyone else, for that matter. The hut was situated in a small clearing, with no other signs of habitation nearby. At one side of the hut was an overgrown garden, probably the source of last night's mushrooms. He'd have to check that later and see what was growing there. Tai Lung might be trying to survive on cabbage water, but Po needed something a little more substantial.
He walked around the hut, but found nothing else of interest. The clearing also still suffered from a decided lack of snow leopard. Po was somewhat at a loss – where the heck had Tai Lung gone? Po didn't want to leave the area in case he came back, and didn't know where to look for him anyway. But he didn't have a whole lot to do around here. He got a basket from the hut, then looked over the garden again, finding a few decent looking vegetables for later. He set the basket inside, and went back out into the clearing.
What the heck, he might as well practice. Po began going through one of the first forms he'd learned, back when Shifu had barely accepted that Po was the Dragon Warrior. He still remembered the time they'd spent in the Wu Dan Mountains. He still thought he'd learned so much more in those few days there than he had at any time since. Maybe not. Maybe it just felt like that because Shifu had taught him so much in such a short time.
He spun, kicked, shifted stance. It always seemed easier when he wasn't concentrating too hard. When he just let things flow. When he concentrated, he got all tangled up, physically and mentally. Too much stress. Shifu seemed to have realized that too, kind of. He was a lot less stressed and rigid than when Po first met him. He still had his moments, but he had really loosened up. He really did seem to be at peace, like he said. He'd found inner peace after all those years, and taught Po how to find it.
Po's hand brushed against wet leaves on the edge of the clearing. Without even thinking about it, he caught one sunlit raindrop on his fingertip and flowed into the movements Shifu had taught him, the droplet rolling down his hand, his arm, its surface unbroken. He felt at one with his surroundings – the cool breeze, the sun on his face, the damp grass under his feet. All concerns seemed to melt away, all the aches from his fight with the crocodiles faded, all his awareness was focused here and now, in this moment. He took a deep breath, opened his eyes – and saw Tai Lung standing at the edge of the clearing, watching him with a look of pure fascination.
Po smiled, glad he was finally back. "There you are, buddy! Where'd you go?"
Tai Lung blinked, either snapped out of his trance or surprised at being called 'buddy'; Po wasn't sure which. "There's another abandoned farm upstream. I went to get some fruit from the orchard." Po noticed the basket he held; it contained a peach and several plums.
"That's great!" Po's next words were somewhat muffled by the trio of plums he stuffed in his mouth. "I'm starving!"
Tai Lung swallowed the bite of peach he'd taken "Why didn't you just finish the soup?"
Po chewed, swallowed, and spit out the trio of plum pits before he answered. "I did."
"Ah." Tai Lung changed the subject. "How were you doing that?"
"Doing what?"
"The water drop?" Tai Lung prompted.
"Oh, that." Po hadn't actually realized what he'd been doing until then. "Shifu showed me how to do that. Master Oogway told him about achieving inner peace, and he –"
"Yes, I know what you were doing. I recognize the technique. I wanted to know how you did it."
Po thought about it. "I dunno. I just… did it."
Tai Lung nodded, considering this. After a moment, he took another bite of his peach and looked at Po. "So Shifu finally achieved inner peace?"
"Yeah, this last year or so. He seems to be happier and a lot less… cranky." He saw the quick flash of pain cross Tai Lung's face before his expression became a carefully controlled blank; Po realized the implications of what he'd just said. He found peace and happiness when he thought you were dead. Man, that must be rough. He quickly shifted to another topic. "Hey, you going to teach me any of those great moves today, or what?"
Tai Lung seemed relieved by the change in the conversation. He handed Po the basket. "Put these inside and we'll get started."
Po popped two more plums in his mouth as he headed for the hut. Tai Lung looked thoughtfully after him for a moment, then, when he was sure the panda wasn't watching, stretched out one finger to a drop of water at the edge of a leaf. It immediately soaked into his thick fur. He smiled ruefully, took another bite from the peach, and turned back to the far too enthusiastic panda.
