A/N: Hey there! Sorry for the slow update, but unfortunately I had two weeks of mid-terms to deal with, and then immediately after those were done I sprained my hand. Lovely! And now that I'm done being a big baby, here's the next chapter.
Disclaimer: Kung Fu Panda belongs to Dreamworks.
Chapter 6: It Is Around the Table That We Understand Best the Warmth of Being Together
It was only a few minutes until dinner time, and Tai Lung was starting to get nervous; he knew that his plan had a lot of potential to backfire. He peered into the kitchen, and almost had a heart attack when he saw only two places set at the table. "Lin!"
"Hold your horses, kid." She stirred something in a large pot, then turned around and raised her eyebrows at him. "What?"
"You're not eating with us?" He was ready to give her another dose of adorable pleading, but she shook her head.
"I said I would. The thing is, I can't just siddown with you guys. Shifu'd definitely pop a vein. You gotta ask him if I can eat with you guys, pretend that we never planned this."
"But what if he says no?" This turn of events worried him a little.
"He won't," she replied, wiping her hands on her apron. "All you gotta do is turn on the charm, just like when you asked him to eat with you in the first place. He's gotta feel like he's in control of the situation, or he'll never go for it. So, are you in or out?"
"I'm still in," he replied. After all, his determination was one of the things that helped him succeed in kung fu. "You just follow my lead."
"Now that's more like it." She licked a clean corner of her apron and used it to wipe at a spot on Tai Lung's face.
"Hey!" If there was one thing he hated, it was to be babied. "Would you quit doing that kinda stuff to me?"
"Sorry there, Master Tai Lung." She made a show of bowing deeply to him.
"What is going on here?"
Tai Lung jumped a little, then turned to Master Shifu and bowed. "Good evening, Master." He watched as Master Shifu stood hesitantly in the doorway, glancing between him and Lin. "Um, I was actually just going to ask you, Master, if... Uh..." He widened his eyes as far as they would go and let his ears droop a little. "If Lin could eat with us?" He even let his tail twitch pitifully.
Master Shifu's eye twitched.
"Oh, I couldn't possibly," Lin jumped in. "You two should have, y'know, bonding time. Family time." She was doing a good job of pretending to be surprised.
Tai Lung turned to her. "It would mean a whole lot to me, Lin. Please?" He then gave Shifu another simpering look.
"Well..." Lin rubbed at her chin, furrowing her brow thoughtfully. "If Sh-" she stopped then, and pretended to cough. "If Master Shifu has no problem with it, then neither do I."
Tai Lung turned the full force of his cute attack on Shifu, hoping the tactic would work. If not, it would result in an ill-tempered dinner partner, and he did not want that.
"...Very well," Shifu sighed, his shoulders slumping. He walked over to the table and took his usual seat. "I suppose it could be... Interesting."
"Thank you, Master!" Tai Lung hopped into his seat, feeling like a heavy weight had been lifted off of him. However, the room quickly became silent while Lin set her own place at the table and started rummaging around in the cabinets. "So..." He looked back and forth between Master Shifu and Lin; neither seemed ready to start a conversation. As usual, it was up to him to be the least socially retarded person in the room. "I started learning a new style of kung fu today," He said to Lin. "Leopard style."
She chuckled a bit. "Well it's about time; you are a leopard, after all."
"He needed to learn some more basic styles first," Shifu replied harshly.
Tai Lung flinched on her behalf; Master Shifu had probably taken the comment as a criticism of his teaching methods. "So what's for dinner?" he asked, hoping to divert an argument.
"A family recipe!" Lin replied jovially, as she scooped whatever they would be eating out of the pot and into a large serving dish. "Stuffed cabbage." She brought the serving dish over and slapped two gigantic rolls onto his plate, along with some red sauce.
Tai Lung thought he might throw up just at the sight of it. "Stuffed cabbage?" he managed to croak out, grimacing.
"In tomato sauce! It's delicious and full of protein and vitamins... All that good stuff." She dropped some of the cabbage onto Shifu's plate, then served herself. "I been eating this for years. Dig in!" She left the serving plate in the middle of the table and sat down, grinning widely at him.
"Okay..." He would have given the stuffed cabbage a try, but Lin and Shifu had started to eat, and it was a little bit distracting. Tai Lung tried not to let his jaw drop. Watching Lin and Shifu eat together was like watching a grotesque race. Lin was shoveling food frantically into her mouth, a protective hand on her plate, as if she thought someone was going to try to steal it right out from under her. Meanwhile, Shifu's chopsticks were moving so quickly between his plate and his mouth that they were only a blur to the naked eye. Not to mention they were glaring at each other the entire time.
He looked down at his own plate, which was still full of food.
"Whatsamatter, not hungry?" Lin asked.
Tai Lung looked back up to see that both she and Shifu were done already. "I, uh..." What was a polite way to say, 'Sorry, I just don't eat like a couple of circus freaks'?
"'Cause if you ain't gonna eat..."
He quickly grabbed his chopsticks and shoved some cabbage into his mouth when he saw her hand moving toward his bowl. "I'm okay," he worked out around the half-chewed food. "I'm still hungry." It actually tasted good, to his utter shock.
Lin shook her head. "You're so slow. Honestly!" She grabbed another roll of cabbage from the serving plate and immediately began to devour it.
Tai Lung turned to Shifu, hoping that he would break his pattern of silence during meals, but was dismayed to see him getting up to leave.
However, Lin somehow knew the perfect thing to say. "You'll miss dessert," she managed to spit out in between bites.
"I see," Shifu replied, slowly sitting back down. "And... What is for dessert?"
"You'll see." She winked at Tai Lung, and he suddenly had a bad feeling about the meal. "I got a big surprise ready."
"What kind of surprise?" Tai Lung and Shifu asked in unison, both in a very dubious tone of voice.
"The kind that you can have after you finish your dinner." She raised her eyebrows and looked pointedly down at Tai Lung's still half-full plate.
"Sorry," he replied, and quickly dug in. He wasn't especially hungry anymore, not after Lin's proclamation. In the short amount of time he'd known her, he had learned enough to realize that a surprise from her would be far from a good thing- especially when Master Shifu was involved. He thought that maybe if he ate slowly enough one of them would get impatient and leave, but they both waited patiently for him; what was even more unnerving was that they waited in complete silence. Somehow it made him feel like he was about to be sacrificed. "So..." If he couldn't prevent whatever Lin was planning to do, he could at least stall. "It was... Really sunny today." Unfortunately, he couldn't think of anything to discuss that wouldn't end in someone getting insulted.
"It coulda been sunnier," Lin dismissed. "You ever been in a desert?"
"Why would he have ever been in a desert?" Shifu interrupted, sounding annoyed.
"You never know." She shrugged. "Anyway, in some deserts the sun is so strong it bleaches your fur and burns you so badly your skin peels off."
"Awesome," Tai Lung marveled at the story.
"She's never been to a desert." Shifu crossed his arms, frowning.
"Maybe, maybe not," Lin replied casually. "But one thing's for sure: I was quite well acquainted with a Bedouin camel who'd become a trader of rare spices and silks- he grew up in the Sahara, the biggest desert in the world. I never went to that one, to be honest. Anyway, last time I saw him he was on his way up to Mongolia to visit family."
"Would you please stop lying to him?"
"Well if I'm such a big liar then you could tell a story," she grumbled back at him.
Tai Lung perked up, hoping to hear a story about heroic ancient kung fu masters, or maybe even a story of Master Shifu's own exploits.
"Very well. What about the story of how Master Oogway created kung fu?"
"Now, old friend, you wouldn't want to bore them with that story, would you?" Master Oogway appeared in the doorway seemingly out of nowhere, and Tai Lung nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Master Oogway! Please join us." Shifu stood and bowed, but Oogway just chuckled.
"No need for such formalities," he replied. "Now, how did our pie turn out?" He took a seat at the end of the table and smiled at Lin.
"Well it certainly looks good." She turned to Tai Lung, a wide grin on her face. "Are you done with your dinner?"
"Yes." He handed her his plate, then glanced at Master Shifu; he looked confused, but not angry. Yet.
She turned back to Oogway, still smiling. "I gotta say, though, you have a knack for baking."
"You give me too much credit," he dismissed congenially.
"What's going on?" Shifu asked flatly as Lin cleared off the table and returned with a large dish.
"Dessert!" She placed the dish in the middle of the table. "It's a peach pie."
"I haven't had pie in years," Oogway sighed. "I still remember a hazelnut tart I ate in my youth, during a visit to Rome. Delightful!"
"Looks good," Tai Lung said hesitantly as he eyed the dessert; he took note of Shifu's stony silence and wondered what Lin could have possibly done to the pie.
"Why thank you!" Lin cheerfully began to slice up the pie.
"So you decided to go back to the market for some peaches," Shifu spoke up. He seemed suspicious, though that wasn't unusual when it came to Lin.
"Nope," she replied as she served each of them a gigantic slice.
"They're from the sacred peach tree of heavenly wisdom, aren't they?" he asked flatly.
"Yep." Lin took a large bite from her slice of pie. "Mmm!"
"Quite delicious," Oogway agreed.
Tai Lung glanced down at his pie and wondered if he should eat any of it. Despite having Master Oogway's permission to eat a sacred peach pie of heavenly wisdom, Master Shifu still looked incredibly annoyed.
"Well..." Lin sighed, "Guess this means I'm right!" She gave Shifu a friendly pat on the back, smiling. "Eat up."
Shifu glared at her, then glanced at Master Oogway, who smiled benignly. "I... I am not hungry."
"Okey dokey." Surprisingly enough, Lin took his plate away without argument. "So who wants seconds?"
Tai Lung took one look at Shifu's face and decided that he did not want seconds, not even a little bit.
Lin dried off the last of the dishes and put it away, reflecting on how dinner had gone. She really hadn't intended to be so pushy, at least not from the beginning, but it was just in her nature. She supposed that learning to socialize through confrontation hadn't done much for her, either. Still, she could have shown a little more restraint.
She decided to quit kicking herself over the whole incident; the pie was, after all, a masterpiece.
The clearing of a throat snapped her out of her contemplation, and she wasn't surprised to see Shifu standing in the doorway to the kitchen.
"Hi," she replied, feeling somewhat sheepish. "Look, I-"
"Whatever you are going to say, I don't need to hear it," he interrupted. "I came here to tell you how out of line you were tonight."
Lin paused to consider her options. She had been on the verge of apologizing, but his interruption gave her reason to reconsider. One of the things she hated most in the world was being interrupted; and beside that, if she agreed that she was out of line, she'd be admitting that she was wrong. "I'll be honest," she sighed as she dipped a washcloth into the water basin and then rung it out. "I'm impressed by your resolve. However... More pie for me."
"What you did was just- just low," he replied harshly. "I can't believe you actually planned that, just to get me to eat a pie!"
"Well, my grandmother had this saying. Men are always dreaming, women are always scheming." She walked over to the kitchen table and started wiping it down. "You're gonna hafta keep your head in the game if you wanna stay ahead of me." She glanced up at him to see his expression; he was looking at her with narrowed eyes, a frown on his face. "I know, I'm kinda a bitch."
He pointed an accusing finger at her. "There is something wrong with you."
"That's it? You can do better 'an that- you're worse than my brothers. I think the best was when I got them blamed for setting the house on fire, and the worse they could think up was moving my bed out into the mud." She shook her head, sighing. "Pathetic. My sisters weren't too pleased, though, since we all shared the bed."
"You set your own house on fire?"
"I was a kid. Y'know how kids are." She almost laughed at the look on his face, but thought better of it. "Anyway, that's not the point. You really should consider tasting the pie. It was my best yet."
"I'll pass," he grumbled, and headed for the door. "And by the way-" he paused to glare at her- "don't think I don't know what you're up to."
"Um... Okay." She furrowed her eyebrows, somewhat confused by the statement. "So... You do know what I'm up to?"
"Yes!" he snapped, then left in a huff.
"G'night!" Lin called out in as friendly a tone as she could muster, knowing how much it would annoy him. She shook her head and kept cleaning the table; she sincerely doubted Shifu knew what she was up to. She barely knew what she was up to half the time. All she knew was that if she was going to be staying at the Jade Palace, she might as well have some fun.
A/N: That's Oogway for ya: doin' it for the lulz.
Expect more bonding time with Tai Lung in the next chapter. Maybe someone will even mention kung fu! ;) In any case, thanks to all you readers for the patience. Seeya in two weeks!