Everything was blurry as he opened his eyes. He blinked and he could see an orange and black shape sitting next to him on a bed—Po realized that it was his bed in the Jade Palace. Tigress was the one sitting next to him, and he could tell that something was wrong by the way her expression strained.

...Had she been crying?

"Ugh, what hit me?" he asked with a groan, trying to sit up. Tigress forced him back down to the bed by using her paws on his shoulders, and so he had no choice but to comply and lay back down.

"Tigress?" he tried, becoming more and more nervous by the second. Something wasn't right. "What is it? What happened while I was out?"

She had something in her paws—upon second glance, he could see that it was his staff. He could remember Longwei snapping it in half, and then dropping to the floor. The staff was mended, pieced back together—but when he took it gently in his own paws, it was still very fragile, bending a bit when he grabbed it around its middle.

"We tried fixing it the best we could," Tigress said in a mumble. Her voice sounded hoarse and dry—another sign that she'd been crying.

"Tigress, what's wrong?" he asked again, a little more firmly so that she would know he needed an answer.

Her only answer was a nod towards the crib, and Po turned his head slowly in their children's direction.

Well, only one child.

"Where is he?" Po asked in a whisper.

"Longwei took him, Po," Tigress nearly sobbed. He could tell that she'd been holding it in all the time he'd been knocked out, but now that he was awake and she had to tell him, it was tearing her apart. "He's gone. Chao is gone."

No. No, no, no! It wasn't true! Po glanced quickly in the direction of the crib for a second time just to be sure, but the only thing that he could see was their daughter.

She was the only one in the crib.

Just like his staff, his heart snapped in half right then and there. He wanted to be knocked back into unconsciousness. Chao had been kidnapped by a lunatic, and it was all his fault.

"He had dragons, Po," Tigress said wearily as she followed his gaze. Lotus was sleeping, curled up into a ball with the panda toy cuddled warmly against her. "Two of them."

"...Why would a dragon slayer have two dragons? Isn't he supposed to kill them?" Po questioned, entirely confused.

"He trained them, Po," Tigress explained. "He called them by whistling, and they both answered. One of them had Chao."

Po frowned, the thought of his little boy trapped in the claws of a huge dragon nearly making him sick.

"They weren't like you," Tigress told him softly. "They looked bigger, and they had wings. I think they were responsible for the fire, Po. They just took off with Chao..."

Po had no idea what to do except comfort her with a hug. She leaned into his body, freely releasing extra tears that poured mercilessly down her fur.

The dragons had started the fires in that village and here in the Valley of Peace. The village fire had been a diversion, a distraction so that Longwei could get the Furious Five away. A thought crossed his mind that if the Dragon Slayer could train two massive dragons to bend to his will, the thought horrified him what he would do with Chao if he found out that their son possibly had the ability to change into a dragon. Po knew that the possibility was high; Chao's powers were most likely developing slower than his sister's, as he had helped her by using his own Chi.

A small knock sounded and interrupted his thoughts. Tigress had fallen slack in his arms, too tired from sobbing her heart out to hold herself up any longer. He carefully laid her gently on their bed, making sure that it was comfortable enough.

"Come in."

It was Shifu. No matter how hard he had probably tried to hide it, he looked just as worse for wear as Tigress with bags under his eyes.

"I'm sorry..." he started slowly. "I should have known that it was a trap. I never should have sent you away. If the Five had been here too, then maybe..." Shifu trailed off, unable to finish. He knew that he'd had a big part in Chao's kidnapping by making him leave the Valley, but Po didn't see it that way. His master wasn't the one to blame.

"I don't blame you, Shifu...Longwei would have taken Chao whether or not you had us go to the village."

Shifu blinked, surprised. He nodded respectfully and then left the room just as soon as he had entered.

xxxx

Tigress was suffering from too much heartache. She was strong, but her fire was slowly dying and going out. He stayed up all night searching for the past week. He could still transform, but his dragon counterpart was weak; he couldn't take off into the sky. He scoured the surrounding mountains, forests, everywhere. He yelled out his son's name as a panda and wailed desperately as a dragon, trying hard to send out a telepathic string that Chao could latch onto and let him know where he was.

There was no reply.

Please Chao, please, Po begged, waiting for a response. An image of where he had been taken, maybe. His staff was a dud as he tried to picture his son in his mind, telling it to take him to his little boy, but ever since Longwei had broken it, the staff's teleportation powers appeared to have died altogether.

Silence was the only answer. While Po knew that by merging his Chi with his daughter's, he had activated her 'dragon powers' earlier. Chao was most likely still developing his, and so he couldn't—wouldn't—know that he had the power of telepathic communication with his parents, and probably not even when he would grow up.

The thought made Po sick—the thought that there was a chance he wouldn't get to see his son grow up.

It was going to be a big chance if he stopped searching.

So he kept it up for another week, and another even when the search party had given up and Tigress had snapped at him that it was useless, soon after breaking down and saying that she hadn't meant it.

He hadn't seen them, but according to Tigress, Longwei had two gigantic dragons at his disposal that had appeared to listen to his every command, and one of those dragons had taken Chao.

Where would I go if I was a dragon? Po asked himself over and over. But he was a dragon, right? Half dragon, at least. He thought and thought, searched and searched until every muscle in both forms were screaming at him to stop, and even then he didn't let up. He just couldn't think of anywhere that a creature that had just made itself known after thousands of years would go; he couldn't think of anywhere that they might have come out of hiding from.

"We're going to find you, Chao," he promised in an exhausted whisper as he collapsed on the edge of the cliff that he had found earlier—his secret spot that he'd found for himself and Tigress that only they knew about.

All Po knew as he fell into a restless sleep was that when he found the Dragon Slayer and his dragons, Longwei was going to pay.