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Well, this is the first half of a very long overdue chapter that I promised I would write over a year ago. It's gone through over 7 complete re-writes, and I have enlisted the help of quite a few SF users to help me proof read this, who I have listed below along with links to their profiles. I can't thank them enough for their patience in proof reading my work for me.

I really appreciate it guys :D

https://nheritor.sofurry.com/ - Nheritor

https://tew3.sofurry.com/ - tew3 (commissioner of 'The Musician' stories)

https://dragn62345.sofurry.com/ - dragn62345

https://th23matrix23.sofurry.com/ - th23matrix23

https://aliases.sofurry.com/ - aliases

All characters that appear in this story and this series that also appear in the Kung Fu Panda franchise are the property of Dreamworks animation studios, all rights reserved. They are used in this series without permission as a non-profit fan made work of fiction, I have no affiliation with Dreamworks and any and all views or content herein is not reflected by this company, it's employees or any of it's subsidiaries. I receive no money from this work, and I do not give permission for this work to be sold in any media; it has been created for free viewing under 'fair use', and will remain as such. I urge readers to support Dreamworks animation by purchasing the Kung Fu Panda films and the 'Legends of Awesomeness' TV series.

All original characters are copyrighted to 'The Black Marten' 2013

Now that the boring legal guff is out of the way, here's the first half of the story, with the second half (and the porn) soon to follow :)

Kung Fu Panda: Do you know this Song?

In the early hours of that peaceful morning, the entire valley of peace was suspended inside a moment of almost surreal calm. There were no chirping crickets to be heard in the fields down by the river mouth, there were no murmurs, shouts or burbling conversations of the people going about their regular business either, with it being still too early for anyone reasonably used to sleeping at night and being awake during the day to have woken up yet. Not even the children stirred.

A carpet-like expanse of tranquil blue advanced across the sky as the first bright rays of light began to illuminate the previously pitch black sky, the few lonesome clouds that lingers reflecting these golden rays softly down onto the lands below them. No morning calls or chirps could be heard from any of the small birds still relaxing in their nests, not a single lark daring to open its eyes until it felt it necessary; even the most active of the nocturnal animals were nowhere to be found, all long since returning to their various dens and hiding places in disgust for the daylight. As if sensing the calm of the still slumbering residents of the valley, the wind blew so subtly that not a single brown leaf was dislodged from its fragile hold on the tree branch it grew from, and even the grass didn't feel inclined to sway as it passed; the moon was already setting over the tall mountains on one side of the valley, but was yet to be replaced by the magnificent burning sun that was still to rise. With almost every single resident in the valley of any description still fast asleep at the moment, you could be forgiven for thinking that time had taken a brief pause. From the youngest child clutching his toy to his chest like a sibling, to the oldest grandparent who had gone to bed wondering if the previous day's sunset was his last, all were happily cradled within their own private dreams as they slumbered; with the exception of a certain black and white Panda, who was already wide awake in this strange limbo between the end of night and the beginning of day.

On the Top of one of the tallest mountain peaks in the entire valley, standing out like an ornate spear-tip from the landscape, rested the famous and far renowned Jade palace; home of the legendary furious five, the strongest martial artists of their time, Master Shifu, their equally legendary teacher and the last active member of the previous incarnation of the furious five that still fought to protect the valley rather than harm it, and the infamous Dragon Warrior himself: Po Ping, the said Panda who was right now lying on his back quietly looking up at the ceiling of his room at the palace in reverie. The cool yellow-ish white ceiling wasn't particularly interesting, even if you were the kind of person who got a kick out of observing how a room was constructed, but Po just wanted a little time to think, and staring at something so blank and un-distracting helped him to focus.

He somehow had accidentally woken up far earlier than was usual even for the strict regime he was in now, but instead of going back to sleep and risk doing so for too long, he decided to just let his mind wander where it would for a little while, letting his body slowly come to join his mind in being awake as he lay there. The morning light coming in from the window to his left bathed the room in a gentle yellow glow, accenting all of the various odds and ends littered around that he had collected during his time at the palace, some bearing pleasant memories, and some reminding him of things he would much rather forget.

On a small nightstand on the wall opposite the window (placed deliberately by Master Shifu to make sure that no-one particularly adept at scaling walls could reach in through the window and take it) was an ornate jewelled tube that contained the infamous dragon scroll, a treasure that he had long since discovered had far more symbolic value than physical value; it was actually little more than a scroll made out of a thin reflective sheet of gold, symbolising that the greatest strength of all come from within a warrior himself rather than some technique or weapon, but was still something to be treasured beyond all else considering that it was coveted throughout the entire country of China. In fact, he remembered all to clearly how much a previous student of Master Shifu had wanted it, bringing both the teacher and the five to their knees before the Panda had managed to defeat him.

Over on a table at the far corner of the room, curiously devoid of any small trinkets that might obstruct his view of it, sat what appeared to be an ornate silver vase vase decorated with a gold rim and strengthening lines up its sides, with dragonesque figures carved into the outside surface in detailed patterns, known to him and many others as 'the dragon chalice'. It was mainly used for ceremonies and the like, someone important would drink wine or some similar drink from it while ancient prayers were spoken (Po really didn't pay attention to much else as Master Shifu made the wise choice to carry out these ceremonies himself due to Po's tendency to break rare and fragile objects by accident).

However, it held a deeper meaning to Po on account of an experience he underwent at the hands of a beautiful silver-furred female leopard; not that long ago a troupe of dancing snow leopardess's called 'The Ladies of The Shade' had come to the palace after one in particular, by the name of 'Song', had gotten quite close to him, and had proceeded to try and steal it. After his genuine nature had brought about a change of heart in her when they raided the camp of the ladies of the shade, he, Viper and Crane had managed to steal the chalice back from the troupe of thieves with her help and get it back in time for Master Shifu not to notice it had ever went missing. They had decided to leave this same leopardess to see to it that the Ladies of The Shade changed their ways, given that she had been very honest with her feelings, and admittedly had tried to warn Po about her group's true intentions before they reached the palace. So far, no reports had reached them of this troupe causing anybody as much as a trampled flower pot; there were some rumours that the ladies of the shade had decided to act as a new elite guard force, protecting the imperial family and the masters of kung fu from danger, although it would hardly be wise to start prying into such closely guarded matters. Po hoped that Song was living well, wherever she was now.

Right now though, he wasn't thinking about his battle with Tai Lung where he had first discovered for himself just how much of a warrior's strength comes from believing in himself, and nor was he looking back over the dark incidents surrounding Lord Shen as he had attempted to bring all of China down to its foundations at his feet, where he finally came to terms with how he became an orphan at the hands of Shen's armies, and never knowing his real parents.

No, right now he was thinking about things that were much closer to home. Two things specifically, that just over two weeks ago had changed his entire life overnight, and made every sunrise he'd seen since then even more welcome than the last. These two things were not so much a question of 'what' as 'who', for they were the beautiful Lady Red Panda Leehra that had travelled over mountains and through blizzards completely alone to bring news of her home town's peril, and the simply stunning striped feline that was master Tigress, the very peak of physical prowess and self control with a heart warmer than the sun.

He had already been in love with Tigress for at least a year before any of this had ever taken place; if he was honest, he'd probably been in love with her since he first met her in person, or perhaps far earlier than that, even in spite of how coldly she had treated him when he first arrived. The eager panda had followed all of her advice when he practiced, made sure to try out any new methods of cooking foods (helped by his adoptive father's helpful teaching) that he thought she might like added to her food while not trying to change her diet against her wishes, and even made sure that he had always heated the bath water in advance before she headed towards the bath rooms. He had done all of this with the honest intention of making her happy while asking for nothing in return, seeing how a lot of the time she would be too serious and, as he put it, 'hardcore' to enjoy what she was doing; even if she was performing in front of hundreds of citizens with each and every single one of them chanting her name in awe, she had proven time and time again to have been too focused on her performance to even smile. That was no way to live, neglecting happiness for the sake of keeping up an image, or not even celebrating her own achievements with a feeling of accomplishment. Forcing her to change would be wrong, as it was her life, and her way of doing things after all, but he still felt the need to cheer her up.

Po had felt overjoyed when he had managed to make her smile when he first cooked for her, and had nearly leapt out of his chair in triumph when she had asked him if he would cook for her more often. Gradually the two had become closer and closer as time went on, starting out with mundane tasks like going out to market together when they could, sparring with each other when they had the chance, and eventually Tigress had opened up to him so much that once she had even agree to watch the sun setting over the mountains with Po by the sacred peach tree, which stood atop a small peak not far from the Jade Palace. He had been astounded by her showing this kind of trust in him, even after he was painfully aware of what he had taken from her.

Him, of all people, a chubby happy-go-lucky black and white Panda had taken the role of Dragon warrior, something which she had spent her entire life working towards, causing her years of pain and personal sacrifice to amount to nothing in her eyes. He knew that Tigress had hated him with a passion for that, perhaps with very good reason, until he had finally proved himself by saving the valley and defeating Tai lung without her or the five's help, and also saved Master Shifu's life. As she rested under the branches of the peach tree that tranquil evening, she asked him to sit beside her for a while; they had simply talked about some of the good times they had shared together at the palace since he'd arrived, both of them very tired from the hectic day they had spent fighting off a small bandit raid. Po had brought along a basket of coking ingredients, much to her confusion, and proceeded to make a fresh strawberry and cream pudding right there on the spot for her as a treat; he told her that he had made the cream from ingredients with virtually no fat when she tried to protest on dietary grounds. When she claimed to be watching her figure anyway, he had unintentionally made her blush by telling her that her figure was perfect already, only speaking what he knew to be fact even before they had met.

As they rested there, Tigress had insisted on sharing the pudding with Po, although she ate most of it herself, unable to resist the truly delicious offering Po had brought for her. The gentle fading rays of the sun combined with a now pleasantly full belly and Po's comforting presence had eventually lulled her into a light sleep beneath the tree. Not wanting to let her get cold outside, Po had gently picked her up in his arms and quietly carried her all the way back to the Palace and up to the door to her room, earning quite a few surprised looks from the remaining Five when he returned. Master Shifu had been just as shocked at first, but then smiled smiled warmly as Po cradled her gently, the panda making sure she was still comfortable enough. Not wanting to wake her up, he had opened the door to her room with Viper's help and laid her down on her bed-mat, making sure to put the covers over her to keep warm, not even thinking about undressing her. He didn't dare to stroke her face. That peaceful look was just too cute on that beautiful patterned muzzle of hers, and he felt she had more than earned her rest after the hard day's work. Stepping out quietly and closing the door behind him, he had had then gone back into his room and gone back to sleep soon afterwards.

Po smiled warmly as he remembered how the next morning he had got up to train as normal, and just as they made their way to the dojo, Tigress had stopped him and thanked him for taking such good care of her, and for not trying taking advantage. There was no way he could ever bring himself to hurt her, intentionally or otherwise. If it was between exile or insulting Tigress, he would choose exile every time without question.

Brought back from his deep daydreaming for a moment by a ray of light that swept over his eyes, he squinted and sat up in place, shuffling himself back to lean against the wall as he shook his head to clear some of the sleepiness still lingering in his mind; stretching his arms over his head to limber up as he felt that inherent weight in them from being unused as he slept start to lift, the monochrome panda yawned before relaxing and looking to his side and out of the window next to him, taking a glance at the valley below.

*Now, after all this time, I can finally hold the woman I love in my arms and tell her I love her, and she tells me that she feels the same way, meaning every word. I don't want or need any more than that, but Tigress has already given me so much more, actually wanting me to hold another woman in the same way, and tell her the same thing. I've got no idea what I did to earn this from her, but I sure hope this lasts.* Po thought to himself, as the sun started to touch the tips of the spires extending from the roof of the jade palace.

Just over two weeks ago a female Red Panda called Leehra had arrived at the valley with a message for Shifu. She was every bit as beautiful as Tigress was, although she was clearly not a kung fu master like the striped feline was. Back then, there had been nothing happening between the black and white giant panda and the martial arts master, as Po didn't even know that Tigress felt the same way towards him, sort of an unintentional stalemate. But Po, being a gentleman through and through, had tried nothing with Leehra for fear of upsetting her or the red panda, even trying his best to not look at her fantastic figure as hard a task as it was. Tigress at this point had only just discovered Po's true feelings towards her thanks to a talk with Viper, and was still trying to decide what to do about them. If left to her own devices, it was likely that she would have never worked up the courage to act, but fortunatley Leehra had talked to her along with master Viper over a warm bath, and finally convinced Tigress to act on her desires that same night.

The feline master had led Po to a room where Leehra was waiting for them and told him straight out that she felt for him more than she had felt for anyone else; he had at long last let her know that he felt the same way. Tigress had then completely stunned him by telling him she was happy for him to not only be in a sexual relationship with her, but Leehra at the same time! He had made love to both of the beautiful women one at a time, bringing each to the edge of ecstasy and far beyond; he would be lying if he said that he hadn't enjoyed them in bed, but the single most wonderful feeling he had experienced that night was the raw emotion he felt from the two of them, that unrestrained need to be close to the person they loved. When he cradled them as he felt them come down from their peaks, they had revealed sides of themselves to him they wouldn't show anyone else. He knew he was special to them even if he thought less of himself, and he had done his best to make sure that he was the man they deserved.

He took them both to market when he had the chance to buy them both a present for letting him join such a wonderful relationship; he had bought them a beautiful yukata each to wear, met with a very happy reception from both of them. He had shown Leehra some of the more advanced martial arts techniques that he had learnt while at the palace, helping her to improve her abilities vastly from her previous level. Also, he had began taking walks in the palace gardens with Tigress when the other members of the five were busy. Due to all of them living so close to the others in the jade palace, he hadn't been able to have any 'true sex' with either of them since the first night, but he still did his best to please them until the opportunity presented itself again. Po smiled as he thought about some of these 'near-sex-encounters'.

One time at night Tigress had been sitting next to him on a bench in the Gardens and told him that she was sorry for not being able let him make love to her, saying that she wasn't holding up her end of the deal as his lover, but in response he had turned her head to face him and kissed her full on the lips then and there. Po had then gently picked her up and carried her through the thick bushes in the grounds and out of sight from prying eyes, and politely asked her permission to pleasure her to prove that he wasn't dissatisfied. His blushing Tigress had agreed, and he had laid her softly on the ground and slowly pulled her black foot-length pants down to her ankles before bending them up onto her so that her feet were resting either side of her head. With her gorgeous nether regions exposed to him, he'd stroked, licked, fingered and massaged her to orgasm after orgasm, cleaning up her wet mess with enthusiasm every time she reached completion. After he was done pleasing her, round about the time when she started gasping for air, he had helped to clean her up for the night and helped her get dressed. Tigress could easily tell he was still pent up and offered to return the favour in kind, but he had declined her offer saying that her pleasure was as wonderful a reward as he could ask for. The look of adoration he received from her when he had said that had gone straight to his heart, giving him the courage to give her a final loving kiss before returning to training in the dojo with her.

There was also the time he caught Leehra teasing him as he was returning from a day working at his dad's restaurant. He could tell that she was feeling quite worked up, which was to be expected given what he'd learned of her life back in her village, but he also knew she couldn't ask Po for help with it while the others were around. The black and white panda had waited for his chance and asked her if she wanted him to help her with her problem just outside the palace. They had kissed fiercely while Po pressed her up against a shadowed wall, and after asking for her permission had slipped his hand down the front of her pants to bring her to her peak with his skilled fingers. He had made doubly sure that this was what she wanted, giving her every chance to stop as he would do for Tigress, and paid close attention to every movement of her face to see if there was even a brief flicker of displeasure as he brought the beautiful red panda all the way to release using just his fingers. One thing that still surprised him quite a bit was just how horny the she could get during their make-out sessions, and during her thank-you kiss she had offered to drop to her knees to thank him directly then and there; but Po had pointed out that they had already been missing a few minutes, telling her truthfully that was happy to have helped her to take the edge off her need, and that his own arousal could wait. Leehra had been truly touched by this gesture of being willing to wait for the sake of his partners, but had still made him promise to let her please him next time they got the chance to have some fun time alone.

He sighed happily thinking about the two beautiful females who cared for him so much, grateful that he could please them when they needed him. He would never treat them like outlets for his lust as he knew some men had treated Leehra, or simply a source of release for his sexual desire, or as 'trophies' to show off in public. He loved them both from the deepest depths of his soul, and if he had to stay pent up for a little while as he pleased them, it was a very small price to pay for knowing they were both content. There was no view in all of the lands he had visited that was more beautiful or more addictive to him than their smiling faces. Sex was by no means the base of their relationship; if anything, it was something beautiful between them that they did when they felt the time was right. All through the day when they spent time together, there was no hidden sexual tension in the air, but a warm relaxed atmosphere as they spent what time they could together.

The black and white panda blinked, realising that he had been daydreaming again, and decided to check how much time he had before he was summoned.

Blue was now dominating the sky outside with the remnants of night in full retreat, and there was the faint sound of one or two early birds calling to each other; there was the enchanting smell of all the sweet scented flowers that had closed overnight opening up to embrace the new day, releasing pollen into the air that they had stored all these long hours. He could feel the gentle breeze start wafting in through the open window as the room slowly grew steadily lighter as more of the new day's sun fell on the Jade Palace. The previously dark brown walls of his room now flared up into a light straw colour, his soft fur also being illuminated in the morning light and helping his muscles to warm up immensely.

Now that he was in a situation that he never even dared to dream of, he fully appreciated every new day he got to spend with Tigress and Leehra, even if it was just to say hello before training and then working, just to say goodnight and then go to bed again; he knew he was already far too deeply attracted to them to pull away now. For better or worse, his life belonged to them now. The large panda smiled warmly to himself at the thought of growing old with the two of them, maybe someday actually being allowed to start a family. Just what would Shifu say to that if he ever brought the subject up?!

Deciding that he had spent long enough sitting around like a dumpling at the bottom of a bowl, Po got up from resting by the window, about to start doing some stretches so that he was already fully warmed up before he was called out by Shifu in about 30 minutes time. He did his usual routine of first stretching his arms behind his head, un-cricking his neck and back before moving on to stretching his legs. He had learned a lot of these stretching techniques from Tigress, hearing about how they would help him to avoid his muscles seizing up after practice no matter how intense it had been; it was true, since he had started doing them he had never had any problems with stiff limbs, at least ones caused by martial arts practice.

He was about to start doing some press ups as an afterthought when he suddenly heard shouting in the hallway.

"Students! Wake up now! Time had run out and I need you here immediately!" bellowed the sharp voice that could only belong to Master Shifu.

Instantly alert, Po rushed to the door, opening it and standing in front of the open gap with his hands behind his back as a sign of respect, just as he had been trained to. He noticed that despite it being even earlier than usual, the rest of the five were already standing there when he had opened the door. To that day he still had no idea how they were able to react that quickly to master Shifu in the morning. The only evidence of their surprise was Crane's hat being at a slightly odd angle, resting off to one side instead of being balanced in its usual position

"Master Shifu, what's wrong" Tigress quickly asked, all of Shifu's assembled students turning their heads to look at the small, wise master of all their combined kung fu styles. Shifu had a look of grave concern on his face, his eyes not meeting theirs but rather cast down to the floor, but Po's attention was caught by the fact that he was holding what looked like a newly delivered scroll under his left arm. He recognised one of the symbols marked on it as being the same as one of the ones on Leehra's belt.

Master Shifu looked up at all of them before speaking up in a firm and clear voice, "I am afraid that I have just received some very grim news my students, probably the worst news that we could have foreseen about the situation at Nehabatou. This news could very well affect the lives of many good people, both in and outside the valley."

The small but strong kung fu teacher now whipped the scroll out from under his arm and pointed it directly at his assembled students in much the same manner that he would usually do with his bamboo flute, his expression deadly serious.

"I want each and every one of you to undergo the trials of ascension immediately."

This caused everyone's head to turn towards Master Shifu, all of them bearing shocked expressions. Tigress, Monkey, Crane, Viper, Mantis and even Po were fully aware of what these trials were, and they were anything but something to be joked about. An ascension trial at the jade palace was basically a challenge that was designed to only be possible for a martial artist at the height of their abilities that a lone potential kung fu master had to attempt to complete. Their achievement in the trial was based on how close they came to accomplishing the task, but the warrior attempting it was not penalised based on whether they succeeded or not; this was a direct reflection on how few masters actually managed to complete the tasks set for them in these trials, with even master Shifu admitting to failing on his first attempt at such a task. If they did succeed, it would be the sign of a true master of their art, something they'd been working hard at for a long time. Shifu had been training all of them for these trials true enough, but they weren't due for their first attempts at the trial for another year.

"Master Shifu, why now? We were supposed to go through these trials next year the last time you mentioned them." Monkey spoke up.

"Because I need to know exactly where you are in your training Monkey." Shifu replied, strangely calm and un-annoyed at being interrupted, "If what I have read this morning is true, then there is a very good chance that the valley may end up getting caught up in the middle of a war before the time for your trials has arrived".

Po's eyes opened wide at the prospect. He had been in battles that probably made war look like a rehearsal, and had the words of visiting Kung Fu masters to back up that claim, but he had always done his best to make sure that the people of the valley never had to go through that horror. It was the very nature of the furious five and the dragon warrior's existence to fight to protect those who could not protect themselves. The thought of armed soldiers charging into the valley while children were still playing in the streets filled him with pure dread.

"But master, the trials are almost impossible for fully fledged masters to complete. Shouldn't we at least wait until this afternoon so that we have the best chance possible after morning practice?" Tigress pointed out.

Behind her stoic expression and that steel-like gaze that had seen her regarded far and wide as the unofficial leader of the furious five, she was concerned for Po. The last master to attempt one of these trials at the palace had arrived while she was still in the early stages of her training, years before Po had been unceremoniously crowned as the dragon warrior. It had been a monkey with a deep red face and fur as white as snow, a fighter that she had been awed by in some of his public skirmishes with other fighters in the area. He had been so battered and bruised due to the severity of the trial he undertook that his face had been virtually unrecognisable afterwards; later on, she learned that his master had declared that he had passed the test, but it still took that ape more than 9 months to return to active duty while his bones healed.

Tigress felt a sharp, cold pain deep inside her at the thought of Po coming out of his ascension trial that worse for wear; after all that he'd already been through as the dragon warrior, and after she'd finally worked up the courage to start a relationship with him (that Master Shifu didn't know about just yet), the last thing that the kind Panda needed was to be beaten to a sorry pulp solely so that the older masters would treat him with respect. Some of the higher masters had a habit of forcing near-death experiences onto students in these trials, and Po had already had enough of those just from his work helping her and the rest of the furious five keep the valley a safe place to be. The feline master was dedicated to her training like no other master, but that didn't mean she would allow Po to be forced to undergo something so dangerous when he'd already contributed a lot more than most fighters did in their lifetimes.

Shifu caught Tigress's firm stare and nodded briefly, reading the hidden message behind her words. The small master was far more quick-witted than some would give him credit for, and had easily picked up on her unspoken concern for Po; although her expression was as stoic as ever, Shifu was much better at reading her sharp feline eyes than Tigress hoped, although fortunately for her he had made one mistake. He assumed it was out of concern for her friend that she was trying to protect, whereas in reality it was both this and out of concern for her lover.

The short, large eared master hummed sympathetically in reply before speaking up in a regretful tone.

"Under normal circumstances I would agree with you Tigress, and I will admit that in my opinion you are not ready for these trials, but I am afraid that time is simply not on our side at the moment. You have my word that if I see any one of you in potentially mortal danger during these trials, I will halt the trial immediately, and you will not be penalized for it. All of you meet me in the dojo in five minutes! Once you feel that you are sufficiently warmed up, we will begin the trials immediately!".

Master Shifu then turned around and started walking back down the hallway in the direction of the dojo, Po catching an apologetic frown make its way onto the kung fu master's face as he walked away. Looking at Shifu's ears laid down against his head as he walked, it was clear for all to see that whatever was on his mind must be of grave concern to everyone. There were a fair amount of worried expressions exchanged between his students as he left to prepare for their trials.

"Man, that's a rough deal to wake up to." Mantis said quietly, once he was certain that Master Shifu was out of earshot.

"If he's bringing our trials forward this far all of a sudden then it must mean that something has changed overnight. Judging by the look on his face, I don't think we will like it once he tells us" Crane voiced, "Anything that's more important than months of hard training and the titles we've been for our entire lives must be serious."

"I don't think that it's a coincidence this has happened so close to our mission to Leehra's village either." Viper commented, a thoughtful look on her face. "Maybe the situation is worse than we thought?"

"But do you really think we're up to it just yet?" Monkey said, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. "I mean we've all seen these tests before apart from Po, they make regular training look like a cool-down exercise. They're meant to be impossible from the start, and we already have a lot on our minds right now."

Viper turned to face Monkey at his voiced concerns, speaking to him in a soothing voice.

"Whether we are ready or not, we can't change that we're going to have to face them now. We've come this far by meeting whatever and whoever has tried to stop us head on, and giving up now will only undo all the hard work we've put in up to this point. We all know that nobody wins every battle that they ever take part in, but we've already beaten far tougher opponents when it really mattered".

Everyone in the hallway nodded in agreement, but Viper noticed that Po was looking at his feet dejectedly, all confidence drained from his face. The other members of the five caught Vipers gaze and followed it one by one (though Tigress had noticed while Viper was speaking), and their expressions turned sympathetic upon turning their heads to see the state of the Dragon Warrior.

"I don't think I'm ready for it." Po sighed in a defeated tone, "You guys can breeze through it, you're like the best kung fu fighters in the history of kung fu, and you make any move look like a work of art. Me, I still have trouble with the gauntlet run from time to time. Guess I won't be the dragon warrior for much longer" he admitted. The large panda was almost certain that he was about to embarrass the five in front of their peers, and he felt rotten to the core at the prospect of being the sole one of them that didn't pass these tests, like it was the final resounding fact that proved he didn't deserve to be at the palace. Po enjoyed Kung Fu as much as he enjoyed breathing, and tried to improve as much as possible by practicing regularly and having fun while doing so instead of the intensely focused regime that Master Tigress used; he hadn't been concentrating on any kind of trial that would come up eventually, considering that half the time he'd been too busy fighting for his life. It was only natural that he would feel pretty scared at such a big challenge appearing all of a sudden.

Hearing Po sound so down-hearted really cut into Tigress deeply, it was such a vast contrast to his usual jovial happy-go-lucky attitude; without them realising it, Po had unintentionally become the 'heart' of their group, the one who always seemed to cheer everyone else up and give them a reason to keep going when they were feeling hopeless. Tigress wanted so much to comfort her black and white furred friend any way she could, to hug him like she had done before, and she had made a solemn promise to be there for him, but she was still far more used to forcing her emotions to bend to her own will. Letting a feeling that came from the depths of her heart surface in front of others felt somehow unnatural to her, as much as she felt that she needed to. A horrible twisting feeling came from the pit of her stomach when she realized that what she was doing was deliberately repressing her feelings for the man she loved, even now when he was in harm's way. She hadn't held back like this before they were together, hugging him in front of Crane, Viper, Mantis and Monkey when she'd asked him not to fight lord Shen, so why should now be any different?

The feline kung fu master's fists clenched by her sides as she felt that granite hard determination that everyone had come to know her for return with a vengeance; no matter the location or potential consequence, she had never once backed down from a challenge in her life. She wasn't going to simply ignore or dismiss Po's pain when he needed her support, physically or emotionally. How could she call herself a warrior if she wasn't even willing to stand up for the one closest to her?

In that moment, seeing Po stripped of his usual child-like excitement and happy-go-lucky nature, she fully understood what it meant to truly need to please someone. It was more than just a nagging voice at the back of her head that suggested she act, more than a physical desire that could be ignored are appeased somehow, the raw and inescapable need to comfort him was what gripped her as she saw him almost cower within himself at the thought of being thrown out of the jade palace.

Po needed her now, and she wasn't going to let him down.

"Po, look at me." Tigress said softly, walking until she was standing directly in front of Po.

The down-hearted panda lifted his head, meeting her ensnaring gaze again. Those ensnaring deep red eyes captured his own green irises the moment he looked into them; there was nothing, no minor thought or reservation that he could hide from Tigress even if he tried to when she looked at him like this. Her beautifully patterned face now bore the warmest smile she could give him as she gently waited for him to focus on her, instead of his doubts about whether or not he could pass the test. He felt it working as bit by bit, the fears inside his head were replaced by thoughts of Tigress, the radiant feline proving far more attractive a subject for his mind than some ridiculous trial.

Tigress guessed that to some people it might have seemed a peculiar sight, something of a role reversal when compared to what she knew many considered the rightful place of a man and woman, with the man standing tall while the woman was comforted. Her stance was strong with her legs slightly apart and her arms folded as she waited there in front of the panda, her glorious orange and white fur accented by her stunning array of black stripes, shining more radiantly than any of the countless fields of corn down in the meadows as it reflected the morning sun coming in through the open windows while her long striped tail weaved back and forth in a slow unheard rhythm behind her.

Po felt all dread slowly lifting from him as he gazed into her eyes, those oh so beautiful eyes of hers reminding him that these tests couldn't take away what mattered most to him in the world: the woman standing in front of him. She mattered infinitely more to him than any title ever could. And besides, he'd already proven that he could defend the valley when it mattered time and time again, going to sleep with bruises in places that the panda previously didn't know he had as proof of his hard work. He would gladly suffer them all again if it meant keeping the valley safe, regardless of whether he had a title or not. After all, he never wanted to be rich or a warlord, he just wanted to keep the people of the valley safe from harm, and a title would not affect that in the slightest.

Seeing that adoration for her come back into his eyes made Tigress want to cup his handsome black and white face and kiss him on the lips right then and there, but for the sake of keeping their relationship a secret, she resisted that powerful urge for now. He had been there for her when she had broken down in body and mind, and supported her through some of the most emotionally painful times in her recent life in spite of all the physical pain she'd inflicted on him. It was time to give something back.

"You don't need to worry about passing these Po." Tigress spoke in a calm, comforting voice.

"Hardly any master succeeds on their first try; it took Master Charging Ox three attempts in a row, and Master Shifu was one of only 3 members of the furious five that came before us to succeed at these challenges. They are there purely so that the sensei can get a good reference of where his students are in their training, which I suspect is his reasoning for moving them forwards in the first place. In any case, the title of being the dragon warrior is life-lasting; for as long as you wish to remain here with us, you'll always be welcome." Tigress said, keeping her gaze firmly locked onto his the entire time.

"Even Master Shifu has to admit you've improved the fastest out of any of us." Crane added. "You had a lot to live up to when you first came here, and we weren't exactly the best of help at the start, but you've kept at it even with that kind of pressure on you, and you haven't let it change you either. Remember what happened with Lord Shen, how you tried to help him even though he killed your parents? I don't think any of us would have done the same thing. That alone should speak for your determination."

The other members of the five nodded in agreement to Crane's statement. None of them had experienced a particularly attractive childhood, Po not really having a childhood at all before he was adopted, but it was clear for all to see that he was the most emotionally resilient out of all of them.

"If there's one thing we're good at Po, it's watching out for one another." Viper added in a kind voice. "We'll stick up for you if Master Shifu doesn't think you've done well enough. He currently owes you his life twice over already."

"Absolutely. It'll probably be three times over soon, and I doubt it will be the last time then. You have a habit of helping out people when they need it, and with all the head-cases we've already fought against since you arrived, I'd say we'll need you around for a long time to come if we ever want to catch any time to ourselves in-between missions." Master Monkey contributed with a mischievous smile.

Not wanting to allow Po the chance to slip back into his own self-enforced depression now that the jovial panda was back to his bright, happy self at the support of his close friends, Tigress reached out and placed a paw on Po's shoulder to encourage him further.

"It doesn't matter what comes of this Po, none of us will think any less of you." Tigress continued, meaning every word wholeheartedly. It meant more than anything to her when she saw his face light up in a warm smile again, the panda looking like he was going to make a move to hug her before a look of realisation flashed over his face for the briefest instant. He covered up his mistake well though, replacing that moment of exposure with his signature goofy grin and starting to walk in the direction of the door that led to the steps of the dojo.

Po felt like he had just been given the biggest bowl of dumplings ever known to the world. He was surrounded by the best friends he could ever imagine asking for, each one of them supporting him when he needed it more than anything. He still didn't know whether he had even the slightest chance of completing his challenge, but now that he was sure that he would still be the same person in their eyes once the test was done, all of that cold terror that he had felt when Shifu had spoken the word 'trial' had disappeared. Instead he looked forwards to seeing the furious five in action and at their best, a daily (and in his opinion, unbelievably cool) perk of being the dragon warrior, once more certain that he was one of the luckiest people on the face of the Earth as the most famous group of martial artist in the country followed calmly behind him.

"Thanks guys" Po said to all of them, looking at each one of them walking behind him in turn, speaking up before he lost the nerve to. "You are the best friends that I could ever have."

That got a genuine smile from everyone. While it was true that they were seen as 'heroes' by the people of the valley, it was rare that they received such heartfelt praise from another master; they got so used to 'professionalism' that is was nice to have someone who just spoke their mind for a change. It was yet another of the many reasons why they enjoyed having Po as the dragon warrior.

As they stepped out of the doors of the building that served as their living quarters and into the fresh morning air, starting the long walk along the many stone steps towards the dojo, Tigress walked in silent joy at actually being able to accomplish a task so utterly foreign to her. Her way of doing things had always been to remove all obstacles by force, supporting herself and just continuing to move forwards; comforting others was something she had only really attempted a few times, and she was very glad that it seemed to work with Po. It was a strangely satisfying feeling that seemed to settle somewhere deep inside her as she followed the rest of the furious five in silence, although the smile that had made its home on her beautiful striped face proved that it was a comfortable silence.

Her unusually happy demeanour did not go unnoticed by master Viper, who caught sight of Tigress's bright mood when she glanced back at her from a few yards ahead. Being careful to not draw the others' attention, the feminine green serpent slowed down her pace until she was moving alongside her feline friend.

"Nicely done Tigress." Viper quietly whispered up to her once she was sure that Po, Monkey, Mantis and Crane were too busy talking to overhear them. The striped female feline looked down at the lithe green snake who was once again wearing a cheeky yet seductive grin on her face, emerald eyes fixed on Tigress's own deep red eyes as she waited to see how she responded. Considering it a better idea to just simply let her remark slide than risk answering, Tigress averted her eyes to look over at Po for a short while, although the nervous twitch in her tail gave away her embarrassment.

The feline Kung Fu master was still trying to work out why she was feeling this sense of pride over a few words when Po had given her so much more already. She thought back to when she had been injured in the incident with Lord Shen's armada, the resultant explosion nearly wiping out all of the furious five as well as Master Shifu, leaving Po to fight alone. Not only had the brave panda won bare handed against a barrage of incoming cannon-fire, but Po had gone out of his way to help all of them to recover, even if it kept him busy until sunrise; he had cleaned and re-dressed her wounds with clean bandages as they quickly healed under his care, cooked Tigress every one of her favourite foods no matter how long they took to prepare alongside the favourites of the rest of the furious five and Master Shifu, and never failed to encourage her when she got back into full-on training just 3 days later. Without his help they would most likely have been out of action for the best half of a month, but he got them back into action in less than a week.

Her strongest abiding memory of that time was coming down to the kitchen for a drink in the middle of the night on the second day since they came back to the palace, and finding Po fast asleep leaned against one of the kitchen units, a freshly made apple pudding (one of her secret favourites) standing on the table. He hadn't been told to make it, but had obviously decided to do so as a surprise for her, as she had been having some pretty intense muscle pains as the fibres knitted themselves back together inside her as she healed; this was made all the more impressive by the fact that apples were out of season, yet the pudding looked and smelt as mouth-wateringly good as if it were made from fruit picked only seconds ago. She had placed it in the cold store closet (basically a stone cupboard but kept constantly below room temperature thanks to some ridiculously complicated contraption that had been installed years ago which somehow constantly channelled cold air around it) to eat it with him the next day and quietly left Po to sleep, knowing that he had told her to keep her movements down while she was recuperating, and not wanting to worry him further if he woke up and found out she'd crept down for a drink of water.

It was one of the hardest things she had ever done in her life to keep herself from kissing him that night as he sat there exhausted from looking after everyone else, just as he always did, after all it wasn't like he would have noticed; but the thick wall that she had built between herself and others had stood strong, forcing her to keep her feelings buried yet again. Tigress was so glad that (at least in private) she didn't have to hide these feelings from him anymore, and only wished that Po knew just how much it meant her to know that someone truly cared for her.

The feline knew that she needed to be careful with how she acted. As Po had brought to her attention before, she was viewed by many (if not all) people as being the 'hardcore' member of the five, an almost emotionless killing machine whose only goal was the utter destruction of her enemies, although she had no intention for people to see her that way at all. Suddenly becoming openly warm and friendly around Po would almost certainly alert everyone within a five mile radius to what was happening between them, especially the other members of the five. It would be about as obvious as trying to hide a blazing fire behind a paper fan.

Viper wasn't an issue, after all she had suggested that she make an advance on Po in the first place, but Crane, Mantis and Monkey were a different story. She guessed that they already had their suspicions after Po had hugged her when they emerged from the river after defeating lord Shen and she hadn't thrown him headfirst back in. After all, they knew that Master Tigress still treated the mail-man tasked with delivering their letters and parcels with deep distrust even though he'd been coming to the jade palace for more than 30 years now, so letting somebody she had only known for less than 2 years so much as hold her hand would set alarm bells ringing in the mind of even the densest of onlookers.

At that thought, Tigress's brow furrowed.

Was she even capable of giving back the amount of affection that Po was giving her?

Maybe this was why people saw her as being 'hard-core', because she'd unknowingly supressed every emotion, positive or negative, dismissing them as nothing more than noise in her head that distracted her from her training; and yet all along the real reason for doing so was not wanting to face the deep well of loneliness inside her, something that had started in her childhood due to being different from everybody else, that matured as she slowly alienated herself from those around her as she transformed herself into something truly fearsome, and that had only had grown deeper and deeper the longer she choose not to confront it.

Had she really strayed that far from expressing anything other than her devotion to martial arts and her duty that even her mind now suffered the same affliction

For a few seconds, the feline could do nothing but stand there looking at Po, halting for a moment and wondering if she was even doing the right thing by being with Po and keeping him from being with a woman who could actually return his feelings. Leehra was certainly capable of doing that, but was her relationship with Po just one-way, with her taking and Po never receiving?

Master Viper caught onto this new air of depression in an instant, and eager to not see Po and Tigress's newfound love suddenly end prematurely, she gave her long standing friend a bit of helpful advice once she was sure that none of the others had noticed Tigress stop walking.

"Tigress, don't worry about it if you aren't able to show how you feel in public just yet, or even if this whole feeling of opening up to someone is new. That's a natural response; everybody feels that way when they first meet someone they that they know is special. You don't seriously think that you're the only woman in the world who has ever been in this situation do you?"

The feline kung fu master turned her head to look down as the helpful-yet-playful female serpent, knowing in her heart that the far more experienced woman spoke the truth.

"Po loves you just as much as he loves being alive, and we both know it Tigress. You are making him happy, whether you realize it or not. Unlike kung fu, there are no 'kata', there is no ideal 'form', and there is almost nothing that anybody else can tell you that will be guaranteed to work. Just take things slowly and as they come, sort out whatever problems occur as they come, and make sure to let Po know what is on your mind. The rest is in your heart."

Master Tigress looked down at Viper with a grateful smile. It was hard to argue with her, especially when she was absolutely right. Po had been even more upbeat than usual since they had become an item (along with a certain red panda female), and they both enjoyed the time they spent together immensely, from practicing together and going to the market to eating dinner together. If she was honest with herself, her 'private time' with Po has so far been the best experiences of her entire life, even though they had been given very little opportunity for it as it currently stood.

"Thank you Viper, for everything" Tigress replied after a short pause, nodding politely to her long-time friend.

"It's my pleasure. Who knows, you might just turn out to be a wonderful wife for Po someday." Viper teased the thoughtful feline, before quickly slithering forwards to catch up with the others, leaving Tigress speechless at her intimate taunt.

After a few long seconds, Tigress chuckled quietly to herself and resumed walking after them with the crisp morning air washing against her immaculately kept fur, the other members of the furious five much closer behind Po for the moment. She thought to herself as she looked at Po now happily making his way towards the dojo despite what was waiting there for him. The feline master felt warm and content inside, knowing that she had done this. She could make him happy. She had managed to take Po's fear away. She could protect him when he needed her.

She chuckled to herself yet again as she realised that it almost sound like she was describing a groom rather than a bride, though it didn't detract anything from her current mood. Po allowed her to show that softer, vulnerable side of herself without fearing that she would be taken advantage of, or that her trust was misplaced.

*Be brave Po. I'll be right her beside you every step of the way, for the rest of our lives* she thought warmly.

Tigress blushed furiously as she realised that she had just envisioned herself spending the rest of her years with him, along with Leehra, for as long as she possibly could; growing older and wiser with him, possibly going on to teach students of their own when Shifu retired, and even (making her blush most of all) teaching their children the secrets of their craft.

Her tail flicked behind her as she snapped back out of her brief fantasy; instead focusing on all of the techniques she'd practiced in her mind, keeping all of them fresh so that she wasn't likely to be caught out in her trial. Just as they reached the doors to the dojo she looked over to Po one last time. Nervousness was written clearly on his face, but it was being beaten down by his resolve to succeed. Pleased that he was taking this seriously without getting overly wound up, she returned her attention to the trials immediately, mentally going through all the possibilities for Po's test as she could imagine.

She didn't mind what challenge she got, she could cope with whatever physical test Shifu could throw at her; she was a warrior and she knew it, but she had already had to go through the pain of losing Po once before in the entire incident with lord Shen.

She remembered how horrible it had felt to see his body sailing through the air after the explosion hit him, and how empty she had felt knowing that he wasn't coming back, that she'd failed him in her duty to support and protect him. When he had turned up to stop Shen's armada she had felt so relieved she could hardly contain herself, and had done everything within her power since then to make sure she didn't let him down again.

And so, not knowing what lay in store for them, Po and Crane pushed open the doors to the dojo, and their most difficult training up to that day began.

---

Giant whirling circular blades, pressure triggered crossbows firing sedative tipped bolts, upgraded shifting floor tiles, swinging spiked maces, an automated rotating forest of wooden poles laced with spear-tips and a sea of newly improved randomly triggered flamethrowers. All of these and more were what greeted Po right to his face within half an hour of him stepping into the dojo. Sweat dripped off his black and white furred brow as he expertly dodged a swinging mace by mere inches, waiting for momentum to bring it back towards him before lashing out with his right arm and punching a blunt part of the mace with a well aimed strike, sending it hurtling towards another swinging trap of a similar design, tangling the supporting chains of the two simple mechanisms together and rendering them both totally inoperative.

His fur was already matted to his body with perspiration from his prolonged intense activity, and the white fur on his body was now mostly a grey thanks to loose soot belched out at him from the flame jets, not to mention the accumulated dirt from the dojo floor that also clung to it annoying persistently. The panda was given no time to waste on admiring a move well done, the dragon warrior catching sight of his quarry out of the corner of his eye and setting of instantly in hot pursuit; within a few seconds he was amongst the columns of rotating wooden pillars, barely metres away from the goal of his trial as it back-flipped over the traps with incredible ease: Master Monkey.

The acrobatic primate had already performed numerous mid-air twists, deft loops around the many dangerous obstacles, and countless impressive somersaults in-between this wooden array of horizontal branching poles and spikes, putting him a fair way ahead of Po, his smaller size and more flexible frame making it immeasurably easier for him to move amongst them than it was for Po. It was an unwelcome reminder that as much as he improved, he was still restrained by his own body in comparison to the furious five, and it was far from convenient timing in its arrival.

Po narrowly slid under a rather weighty-looking pole as is whistled over his head with far too narrow a gap for comfort, using his current momentum to roll himself forwards, kicking straight out with his left leg as he came out of his roll, blocking another pole that was heading his way. Not being given a moment to rest, he had barely put his foot back to the ground after pushing that same pole away from him before he was blocking from another direction with an arm; and the same after that, another second, another attack from another direction from these annoyingly persistent hunks of wood, and the dull pain from each impact was beginning to add up, the panda feeling his palms start tingling under the constant impacts.

Wisely deciding to get out of their range rather than stand there and be beaten to a pulp by polished mahogany, Po quickly clambered on top of one of the pillars he had just blocked, the apparatus groaning under his weight; not choosing to stay still, the panda deftly hopped onto another pillar close by as yet another trap was triggered, sending throwing stars whistling through the air where he had just been. He managed to leap-frog over a fair few of them one-by-one, and within a few seconds he made it to the edge of the makeshift phalanx of obstacles with all his limbs still intact.

Just as he made it to the final pillar in his path however, he was forced to leap urgently forwards to avoid a surprise flying kick from Monkey, Po only realizing that he was coming from having heard him rebound off one of the pillars behind him. Even as Po landed and turned to face his opponent, Monkey had already come back around to attack Po head on with the same ferocity he had shown throughout the entire trial, never letting up on him for an instant. Po gave every bit as good as he got, and in some cases returned the blows with extra added grunt: he blocked the lighting-fast punches that Monkey through at him no matter their intended target, caught his kicks to follow through and hopefully push him off balance (though the agile master simply back-flipped in place before attacking once again) and deftly avoided the countless pain-inducing traps being set off all around him.

However, despite his admirable progress, every time he got close to breaking through Monkey's defences and actually landing an unblocked strike, Master Monkey would escape in an instant by dodging the panda at the last second and disappearing back into the array of deadly obstacles that clicked, whirred, whistled and clunked all around him. Neither of them was gaining ground on the other in this battle, but crucially, Po was getting no closer to succeeding, and he was running out of time.

*This wasn't a good idea. If I don't come up with something very soon, I am so done for that I don't even want to think about it.*

Po thought to himself as he concentrated hard on not getting beaten up from every direction at once, catching an arrow headed for his stomach and throwing it at the gears for one of the circular blades hanging from the ceiling, silencing the damn thing and affording Po with a few moments to catch his breath.

Master Shifu had given him a clear challenge if there ever was one, simple in theory but much harder in practice; he had to defeat Monkey by landing a clear un-blocked, un-countered and un-parried punch or kick on him in less than ten minutes while they fought with the dojo's training devices on their highest setting. This was quite frankly a ridiculous task, and Shifu knew it, telling Po before the trial started that he wasn't expecting him to succeed, but was far more concerned with how he would handle himself under such intense pressure. What made Po uneasy was that reading between the lines, he suspected that he was being tested to see if he could handle fighting in a similar environment; with the dojo's gauntlet settings on maximum difficult, it was designed to simulate fighting very large numbers of trained opponents, in other words an army.

While that realisation hadn't mattered much to Po in terms of the challenge, as he always enjoyed it when he managed to master a difficult new kung fu technique, it did make him nervous for Leehra's hometown; the scroll that he had been carrying this morning could well have been about Nehabatou's downfall for all he knew. Her home could already be nothing but burning cinders, scattered ashes and torn flags where the banners of the town once stood. However, dwelling on it wouldn't have helped anybody, so he had quickly pushed the thought from his mind to put his attention to better use.

Always eager to please his master for giving him both a second home here at the palace and his tireless efforts as a teacher to both him and the furious five, he had accepted Shifu's challenge and got straight down to business, only to found out within seconds why the five had been training for years to pass these tests.

Now Po fully understood why so many of the kung fu masters had failed these tests on their first attempts: they were demanding the impossible, end of story. Master Monkey was the fastest moving out of all the furious five members, even including Tigress, making him the ideal opponent to escape Po in this environment, and coupled with the fact that he had been training in this very room for countless more years than Po had been here meant that not a single one of his jumps were miscalculated, every inch of the dojo committed to his memory long ago after an unfathomable amount of time spent practicing the skills he used to defend the valley. Just getting near him inside the gauntlet was turning out to be a big problem, let alone landing an unblocked hit on him once e got close enough.

It had only been 3 minutes in total so far, but by continuing to do what he had been doing so far and just following Monkey wherever he went, Po was only tiring himself out. The black and white panda took this fact to heart, and decided to let Monkey come to him until he found a way to pin the elusive ape down. Concentrating on every minute noise reaching his ears as Shifu had taught him to, Po managed to separate all of the various sounds in the room from one another, focusing intently on the gentle series of pats that could only belong to Monkey's feet. Po instantly draw up his right arm in a strong uppercut aimed directly at the incoming master's face, blocked by Monkey at the last minute as he once again rebounded back into the ever-moving deadly dancing traps that graced the room, leaving Po to wipe the collective sweat off his brow before looking around to take stock of what he had to work with. Nothing was impossible for a master; Po had seen the masters do the impossible time and time again, not even 20 minutes ago in fact; all he needed to do was think like a master...

Over at the side of the gauntlet, Master Shifu and the rest of the furious five watched silently as the almost inhumane trial continued, none of them allowed to interfere unless either Monkey or Po's lives were in danger. The smile that had played on the short Kung Fu Teacher's face as he usually watched them practice was now noticeably absent, in its place was an unreadable frown as he followed Po's every motion intently with his eyes, looking for even the slightest mistake or waver that might indicate a weakness in his student's technique.

The furious five had themselves already gone through similarly tough challenges individually, each one being designed to challenge their abilities to breaking point: Tigress had been asked to make her way through the dojo while the obstacles were on their maximum difficulty setting without letting a single one of the traps so much as touch her, which she had accomplished beautifully with more than half of her time still to spare; Monkey had been told to dodge small peaches being fired out of a cannon at him without leaving a specified area, forcing him to rely on purely his reflexes, and had succeeded for five whole minutes before a stray one caught his leg; Crane, Mantis and Viper had been told to make it from one side of the obstacle course to the other without ever touching the floor, and while not being permitted to fly, and although it took them a while to dodge the more dangerous of the traps, all three of them had succeed, with Viper being the first to complete the challenge as Crane and Mantis were far more used to flying.

Po was visibly scared of being the one to let down the five by failing to complete his task when he was called forwards.

Just off to Master Shifu's side, Tigress watched Po with baited breath as he attempted to accomplish this amazingly hard feat. She couldn't help but admire how much more aware of his surroundings and his opponent he had become than just a few short months ago, and just how much more natural and fluid his movements were in such a small space of time. None of Monkey's attacks were getting through Po's defences, not a single one, and she had been training with Monkey for years; it had taken her much, much longer to improve her reflexes to the point where she could actually keep up with the speed at which the orange furred ape launched his attacks. Watching Po as he ran right into the path of a circular blade heading right at him made her heart skip a beat, but the next instant she was inwardly smiling as she saw him flawlessly perform a Kung Fu evasion that she was proud to have invented, and subsequently taught him, the determined panda quickly regaining his footing and once again charging after Monkey as fast as his legs could carry him. Taking a side glance at Shifu, she saw him observing Po with as critical an expression as she had ever seen on his face, brows furrowed and eyes focused on every technique he performed. Hoping that Shifu could see just much effort Po was putting into this she looked back to Po, her tail twitching in anxiety as she watched him re-engage Monkey once again.

"I think he's doing very well Tigress, don't worry." came a voice from her right.

The light-orange furred master turned her head to see the woman who had helped her confess her feelings for Po not that long ago, a beautiful Red Panda lady dressed in her dark green pants and light brown tunic. She had already put on her platinum ankle bracelets and her jewelled necklace, but had neglected to tie her hair back this morning, her long crimson hair flowing down and stopping just after her shoulders which she was currently attempting to tie back into a ponytail. Tigress had to admit that the Red Panda had a very attractive body, with a full bosom, a nicely curved rear end and had a very nice face. She was a little jealous of Leehra having a slightly bigger chest than her, but she knew from very 'hands on' experience that Po didn't mind her own body in the least.

"He's performing even better than he usually does at these morning practice sessions. He'll pass this test easily, you'll see." Leehra continued in a comforting tone of voice, walking over to Tigress to get a better view of Po as she said this. Her dark blue eyes focusing on Po as had dodged another swinging mace, setting off after Monkey again, who had used the opportunity to make a quick escape once again. Leehra finally managed to get her hair under control just as Tigress glanced in her direction again, taking stock of the female panda warrior as she watched Po continue his trial.

Tigress knew that Leehra loved Po every bit as much as she did, and after their first night together she wasn't the least bit uncomfortable with him being Leehra's mate as well as her own. This way he would always have someone there for him even if one of them was busy, something that Tigress knew he needed. Leehra was also quite an experienced female in terms of how many males she had 'been with' before she met Po, so whereas Tigress was still unsure of herself in those matters, Leehra was undoubtably more than capable of 'catering to Po's needs'.

Leehra hadn't loved any of her previous boyfriends as all of them had simply treated her like a sex object, as she had confessed to Tigress earlier, but she had picked up some tricks during her time with them that Tigress was looking forward to trying out with Po sometime soon. Quickly shaking her head before her thoughts veered off too much in that direction, the flustered feline turned back to Po, and immediately noticed that his tactics had changed. Instead of trying to break through his defences like he had been doing up until this point, Po now seemed to be focusing on forcing Monkey to move back in a certain direction rather than going straight for his goal.

Concentrating harder on where he was heading, Tigress saw that he was pushing master monkey further back towards the rotating pillars, an interesting choice considering that this played to Monkey's advantage. Interested to see what he was going to do next, she stepped closer to the edge of the gauntlet, being careful to stay out of the area while the trial was still ongoing.

Leehra flinched every time she saw Po narrowly dodge one of the numerous deadly looking traps that were going off all around him. Her long red and white striped tail swishing back and forth as she watched intently, hoping that the trial would end soon and Po would be removed from danger. It wasn't exactly fear for his well-being that motivated this thought, as she was certain that Po could handle himself, but she still didn't want the only man in her life that she had truly loved to end up getting beaten senseless by moving traps just to satisfy someone's curiosity at how good a fighter he really was. Tigress had told her about just phenomenal he was when under pressure, and seeing him in action during practice had left no doubt in her mind that these stories Tigress had told her were true. Her black ears twitched at the sounds of gears whirring and mechanisms clicking as all the various dojo traps moved seemingly with a will of their own. Her own training had consisted mostly of learning how to fight one-to-one with her teacher, learning how to use various weapons and taking long walks around the mountain ranges to build up her stamina, so she wasn't used to the idea of trying to making things this dangerous during training; even if it was a trial she still didn't want to see Po get hurt.

Looking back at Shifu as he stared unerringly at Po's technique, she found it hard to believe that there was even a shadow of a doubt that Po could pass this trial. Seeing him move with such polished style and react so quickly to his ever-changing environment, he already put every soldier in her village to shame. If Shifu wasn't satisfied with this, then he would never be satisfied.

Both Tigress and Leehra wore the exact same expression as they watched him progress, equal parts admiration of his performance and concern for his well-being. Viper saw this as she turned to look at Tigress, taking a quick break from watching Po chase after Monkey, and almost burst out laughing at how comical they appeared standing there together. This went unnoticed by Mantis and Crane who were both watching Po with interest, both of them having noticed along with Tigress that Po had changed the way he was fighting.

Viper grinned at the looks of concern of the faces of the two beautiful women once she calmed down after a few seconds; it was a look she'd seen on many women that she'd met but always meant the same thing: pure love. The way that they watched him intently with their ears facing towards him, their hands clenching each time he blocked one of the traps from catching him unawares; the big giveaway was their eyes though, soft and caring but intensely focused on anything that they perceived as a threat to him. She briefly raised an eyebrow at how much attention Leehra and Tigress were paying to Po, wondering just how good a time Po had shown them to get that level of response from them, but swiftly returned her attention to watching Po herself. She didn't want to draw anyone else's attention to them after all.

As for the black and white panda, he had finally come up with an idea to bring Monkey in close to him, and was working hard to put it into action. As Po had been listening to the traps activating and the flame jets bursting out columns of fire then and again, he had unintentionally discovered that there was a repeating pattern to the traps, like a very upbeat rhythm for a song. Now he was forcing Monkey back towards one of the wall traps that lay just outside the array of rotating wooden pillars, guessing that it would go off very soon. Right before they reached the trap's range Po started pushed Monkey backwards with a flurry of punches, piling the pressure on him as much as possible. Although he blocked them, Monkey was nowhere near as physically strong as Po, and couldn't block his attacks forever. However, as he turned to jump backwards the wall trap triggered, firing arrows out of the wall to whistle in front of him and causing him to jump sideways towards the swinging maces again.

*Right, now I just need to keep pushing him further back so that he's right next to the flame jets in 30 seconds* Po thought.

He made sure to keep Monkey busy, using various holds, strikes and various other techniques he'd learned but neither managing or attempting to land a direct blow on his opponent just yet. Slowly but surely Monkey retreated towards the flame jets, with Po following closely behind him. He tried to catch Po unawares by spring-boarding off one of the rotating pillars and performing a dropkick, but Po caught his feet in mid air and used the momentum to swing him back round like a hammer-throw, throwing him forwards. He knew that there was no way the agile ape would land on his back, he just needed to keep pushing him forwards until he was right up against the edge of the small platform next to the pit where all of the flame jets were located. It's wasn't that much further now. Quickly running up to attack Monkey before he could run away again, Po once again began launching attack after attack his way while making sure there was no room for escape for the much smaller ape. He expertly blocked another flurry of blows Monkey made by incorporating all 4 of his limbs and his tail, using his greater weight to his advantage as he braced himself against the impacts upon his arms.

He saw Monkey move back out of his reach for a moment, looking like he was going to flip backwards and into safety within the array of traps still being triggered. Right as he bent his knees however, a large column of fire erupted right behind him as the flame jets triggered, taking Monkey by surprise and causing him to momentarily flinch.

This was just what Po had hoped for.

He quickly closed the gap between him and Monkey and let out an open palmed strike right to Monkey's chest. Still stunned from the flames coming from behind him there was nothing Monkey could do to stop him. The strike wasn't particularly hard, in fact it was more like a firm pat to his chest than anything else, not even pushing him backwards, but the fact remained that it was a strike that he had been unable to stop.

Monkey's jaw dropped as he looked as Po's face, covered in perspiration and his fur ruffled thanks to coming into contact with pretty much every one of the traps at some point even if he had blocked them. Not even Tigress had been able to do what Po had just accomplished. His amazed stare was mirrored on the faces of everyone watching, including Tigress and master Shifu himself, who was if anything more stunned than anybody at how intelligently Po had turned this in his favour. Panting heavily, Po pulled his arm back to hang loosely by his side, holding his other hand out in front of him to offer a hand shake. "Well done Monkey.....whew.....that was one fantastic trial! I hope the next one has slightly less pain in it though" Po said, rubbing his shoulder with his free hand.

"You and me both Po." Monkey said grinning, "I think we both need a bowl of hot noodles after this". He reached and shook Po's hand warmly, very pleased that Po had performed so well in his trial in spite of being so worried about it earlier.

Po laughed at Monkey's remark before saying, "As soon as I get to the Kitchen I'll start making us an early lunch. We all need something to eat after a workout like this". Master Shifu expertly threw a bamboo stick at the lever to deactivate the dojo traps, hitting it with pinpoint accuracy without even having to look. All of the whirling blades and rotating wooden pillars ground to halt as the mechanisms driving them stopped working, allowing Monkey and Panda to simply walk back to Shifu and the others waiting at the side of the dojo in a strange silence now that all of the gears were no longer whirring away in the background.

Tigress and Leehra were both overjoyed to see that Po had performed so well, but were still glad that it was over. Leehra wasn't all that surprised at Po's performance, as having not seen these tests before she was unaware of just how difficult these trials were intended to be; Tigress on the other hand was awestruck by Po's ingenuity. She herself had tried this task before twice and hadn't managed to complete it; she had performed well enough to satisfy master Shifu, but Po had gone completely above and beyond what she had achieved. She had watched Crane try to attack Monkey from the air countless times from the air without success, seen Viper Give Chase to Monkey while avoiding every trap effortlessly but still taking longer than ten minutes, and even Mantis who was small enough to not have to worry about nearly all of the traps was unable to do what Po had just done. With a new respect for Po as a kung fu master, she stepped over to congratulate him.

"Well done Po, that was absolutely incredible." She said warmly, while keeping her arms crossed so that she still looked more or less as un-emotive as usual

Embarrassed at such high praise from Tigress and reading her true feelings from her face, Po rubbed his aching shoulder while smiling meekly, "Aw come on Tigress. Your performance was much better than mine. You moved around the obstacle course like lightning!" he praised.

Not being deterred by his very welcome compliment, the striking striped feline smiled before she continued, "Whether my Performance was good or not doesn't matter Po, you've beaten a test no-one else here has. You see? You haven't let us down Po, just as we said you wouldn't."

She put a friendly paw on his shoulder as she said this, her expression softening into a sincere compassionate look as Po's face brightened up. "Thanks Tigress, That means a lot to me". Her red eyes sparkled as he gazed into them; god he could just stare into them all day.

He remembered then that he had seen Leehra waiting at the side while he was sparring with Monkey, turning to see her leaning against a pillar giving him the same caring expression that Tigress was. Not wanting to ignore her, he decided to greet her as well. "Good morning Leehra. Sorry about the noise"

She waved a hand dismissively, "Don't worry about it Po, I don't mind if you guys need to practice early in the morning, so doing trials doesn't bother me much either. Congratulations on the good performance by the way, you've really been paying attention in your lessons" she commented.

"I just have a great teacher that's all." Po replied, making Shifu smile to himself behind Po's back as he sat in the same position had had done all through the trials. Leehra shook her head at Po's humility, finding it a nice change from many of the warriors back at her village. She looked back at Po before continuing, "It takes a good student to learn the lessons of a good teacher Po. I think that you've done yourself proud today". Leehra walked over to where master Shifu was sitting and sat down next to him with her legs crossed, looking up at Po again. "You've already helped so many people in your lifetime Po, that means far more to most than any rank ever will." Leehra finished before turning to look at master Shifu.

Po was truly thankful for the praise both Tigress and Leehra were giving him. He had been so certain of his failure earlier, and showing himself to still be quite vulnerable in some aspects; but they still cared about him, and thinking harder on it, he was sure they would have still been there for him even if he had failed the trial. Taking in the beautiful little red markings on Leehras white furred face that accented her striking blue eyes and black ears, and then turning to look at the glorious features and patterns that danced over the orange and white fur on Tigress's face, he wondered why he ever worried. He already had something no other male would have: the love of two perfect women who accepted him for what he was. As long as he had them, he had all he would ever need.

And with that he was back to being himself again, a happy-go-lucky caring man who had fun with Kung Fu rather than seeing it as a task.

"That was amazing! You've passed the test with over 3 minutes to spare!" Viper exclaimed as she slithered over, Crane chipping in as he followed behind with "Yeah, smart thinking using all the obstacles to help!".

"Hey you guys were better in your trial. I've never seen such complicated flying from you Crane!" Po replied.

"It was either that or lose my tail feathers. But that's what it's like out there in a real fight anyway. You're improving massively all the time Po."

"I agree Crane." said Viper, "You really are improving much faster than we could ever hope for Po. You must be putting in lots of extra practice to improve your stamina this much." The emerald female serpant teased, giving him a knowing wink that Crane didn't catch. Tigress was glad for her orange fur, it hid her blush quite well as long as it didn't get too bad. Po on the other was less fortunate in having white fur on most of his face, his own blush quite clearly visible, as well as his embarrassment. "Erm....well.....I suppose I've had lot more reason to work out lately" Po admitted, making Viper grin, Leehra smirk knowingly, and causing Crane to tilt his head to the side in curiosity; before he could ask Po as to why however, master Shifu called them all over to discuss their performance results.

"Students, I am finished evaluating your performance today. Line up against the wall and I will tell you how you have done."

"Yes Master Shifu" came the chorus from Po and the five as they did just as he asked, waiting to hear his verdict on their trials.

"I am very pleased my students. Each and every one of you has exceeded my expectations as your teacher, and are truly worthy of bearing the title of master. You may now proudly call yourselves the true masters of kung fu. However, I am afraid that I must ask a further request of you all."

With reluctance, he grimly showed them the scroll he had been carrying with him when he woke them up this morning. "One of our messengers arrived with this urgent message this morning. One of the spies that the Emperor had spent to the area around Nehabatou noticed that there has been an unusual amount of activity near the bandit stronghold. Upon closer investigation, this same spy discovered that these bandits had somehow managed to steal a copy of our plan to extend the town's mine shafts to go all the way through to the other side of the landscape".

Po's heart sunk as he heard this. This village that they had been working so hard to protect was now it extreme danger; if the bandits were building up their numbers, it could mean that they were planning to either enslave the entire village before they got there, or cut off access to the pass altogether so that no help could arrive.

"These bandits would not be able to launch a direct strike on Nehabatou, the village is too well fortified. However, it seems they are planning to use explosives to seal off the pass that would allow us to send our supplies up to the village."

The panda's heart sank even further as he heard his worst fears read aloud.

"To this end, I want all of you to accompany Leehra, and a small group that the Emperor himself has assigned to us, and that have been given the high honour of being the new imperial guard; you will go to the bandit stronghold, and take control of the entire fortress down to the last centimetre. I will be sending word to the Rhino Guard to send a battalion of soldiers to March up to the stronghold a day after you have set out. This will make these bandits think that the main force will be there a day later than you will arrive, and hopefully give you the element of surprize. Good luck my students. You have until lunch time to prepare, and you will set off in the evening when this accompanying force reaches the valley."

Master Shifu looked over all of them one more time, giving them the same look a father does to his children.

"Watch out for one another, and all of you return safely. That is not a request, do you hear me?" the short master said compassionately and gruffly at the same time.

Everyone, including Leehra, bowed and put their right fists into their left palms in the mutual sign of respect for a master, all of them saying in unison, "Yes master."

Then they turned and headed off in the direction of the doors they had come in by, each intending to return to the sleeping quarters to prepare what they needed for the journey, and for their task. Shifu watched them leave with pride in his eyes, knowing that he couldn't have asked for better students to have trained; not even if he lived for a thousand years.

---

Later that same day, about an hour earlier than they had originally planned, the preparations for the journey were almost complete. The sun had started to descend through evening sky, throwing warm red rays of light across the valley and the few small clouds that passed above it in the last few hours it had before it set, giving the entire city below the palace an air of calm and tranquillity. Most of the other people in the valley were either getting ready for bed or settling down to have their evening meals with the rest of their family, relaxed in the knowledge that everything was well in their own little worlds. However, for the group about to set off for their mission in the mountains, it just felt like the calm before the storm. They would know, as they had already seen far worse than many masters that were twice their age in their relatively short lives so far.

The last hour had been spent finding everything that they felt they might need for the journey and going through the entire ensemble item by item, taking out anything they decided would be more dead weight rather than useful after putting it forward to the rest of the group. The process had taken quite a while, with Tigress and Leehra doing most of the decision making; Tigress because she was probably the most experienced fighter out of all the furious five as well as having the most knowledge of how much the body could endure, and Leehra because she knew the exact terrain that they would be crossing, so had the most accurate knowledge of what was necessary for the trip. Eventually they had succeeded in coming to a final decision on what they were going to take, and they had been packed within minutes after that.

Only now, as the entire party consisting of Po, Leehra, and all five members of the furious five suddenly found themselves with nothing else to do but mentally prepare themselves for the mission, was the nervousness starting to sink in.

Normally this wouldn't occur for just a routine retaliation to a bandit attack or even when they had to set out on a rescue mission of some sort, but in this case the stakes were much higher. The penalty for failure was not just one life, or a few priceless and irreplaceable relics of notable history, but the annihilation of an entire species. There were very few words spoken between them as they each attempted to combat their inner doubts in their own way, only the low whistling of the constant wind experienced at the high altitude of the palace attempted to break the silence that had settled over the group that was now standing in the palace courtyard while they waited for master Shifu to turn up with their final instructions.

Tigress, Po, Monkey, Mantis, Viper, Crane and Leehra were now all ready to head out, making a final check to see that there was nothing else that they urgently needed before they set off.

Po had decided that someone other than him should carry the food, knowing his own tendencies to eat when he was nervous or upset, so he had given the backpack with most of the food in to Leehra; despite her clearly feminine body shape, her years spent making long journeys through these mountains had given her a very strong pair of legs, leaving her with probably the greatest outright strength out of the entire group save for the dragon warrior panda himself and Master Tigress.

Po himself was still wearing his usual affair of endlessly-stitched-together pants and sandal, his thick fur capable of keeping him reasonably warm so long as they didn't get caught in a blizzard. He was carrying a small back-pack containing all the necessary tools to build a makeshift shelter should they need it, some specially prepared bandages that he had bought from Mei Ling with his own money just in case anybody got hurt, kindling to help start a fire and various other things that they might need to reach the bandit stronghold without too much of a fuss.

Also, on an impulse, he had decided to bring along a small bottle of incredibly strong sleeping draught, something that his dad had got him as a present and ironically made the joke at the time that he could use it on some super-secret-infiltration mission; one drop in a cup of water was enough to knock out a Rhino guard in less than 3 minutes, and according to Leehra there weren't any rivers next to the stronghold, and the aqueduct system that had previously supplied this fortress with water had been rendered inoperative due to a retaliation strike made by the Nehabatou militia only a few months ago. This meant that it was almost certain that their drinking water would be kept in large water-tight barrels that would have to be carried up to the fortress by hand; Po's idea was that if he or someone else managed to spike the drinking water when they got there without being seen, they could avoid quite a lot of fighting by knocking many of them out before they had a chance to lift a finger. This mission needed to be finished as quickly as possible to prevent anything from going wrong, or for word to get back to the stronghold that they were coming.

The purpose of Kung Fu was to protect those who needed protecting, self-defence and physical prowess, not to destroy any and all people who stood in your way, so avoiding combat when possible was not just common sense, but also encouraged. It was true that the infamous strength of the furious five did attract those who wanted to challenge them, but it was equally true that the five did not go out looking for trouble. Their job was to safeguard the valley of peace, not to terminate anybody who was a potential threat.

Master Crane was carrying a small backpack on his back that contained a small extending quarterstaff should he need it, some food that Po had made to go in all of their backpacks in case they got separated, and a small but robust flask of water. Fortunately for them, there was a river flowing down through the mountains that happened to run along the same path that they had chosen to take, so they could always fill up their water supply from the streams they went by, but they had to be very careful when doing so, as the bandits most likely used the streams for the exact same reason and would be sure to report any sighting of them, if not out of loyalty then out of self preservation. Thieves didn't work well in groups, but it was in their best interests to stay hidden from the Furious Five.

Master Monkey had a similar back pack on, the only difference in contents being an additional stash of ropes, considering there was the high wall of the fortress to get over it was self explanatory. With him being the fastest moving of them, he was one most likely to get to the top of the walls without flying, so it was logical for them to give these to him to save time where they needed it.

Tigress was wearing a thicker shirt than usual but with an identical design to her trademark red shirt on it, and she was also wearing black pants with a thicker weave than her normal ones, wary of the colder temperatures in the mountains that could cause her muscles to seize up if she wasn't careful. She had her normal clothes folded inside her backpack as spares all the same. She saw it as important to travel lightly and save as much energy as possible rather than trying to carry too much equipment that they may not end up using. Having had experience dealing with bandits before, she knew they generally kept most things they considered of value on their person to prevent other bandits from stealing them, so the chances were that if they caught a group of them together at once, one would have a map of the area, or at the very least would know where the stronghold was. Her plan was to do just that, cutting down the time it took for them to find the place, and then strike as soon it got dark.

Mantis and Viper carried no back packs, with it being very impractical due to viper having no shoulders and Mantis being Simply too small to carry much. Leehra was in the same travelling attire as when she arrived: Dark green pants, a brown tunic, both repaired from their previous damage with black string sowing the holes together along with brand new patches of fabric, hard brown leather gauntlets present on each forearm, but she had chosen to leave her Platinum trouser leg clips and necklace at the Palace so that they wouldn't glint in the sun, instead simply tightening small strings on the inner lining of her trouser legs which pulled the fabric together just as well.

While Mantis, Crane and Monkey were checking that they had packed the right maps for the journey, Leehra and Tigress were helping Po to strap his backpack on. It wasn't especially heavy, but he needed someone to tighten the straps on the back so that it wouldn't slide off his shoulders while they were travelling. The backpack was smaller than some, it didn't appear to be there if you were to look at him directly from the front, which is exactly why they had chose it. Po chuckled at how little Leehra had to adjust the straps for the bag to become firmly attached to his back, not even sliding slightly out of place as he rolled his shoulders experimentally.

"Guess it comes in handy to be a big guy once in a while" the monochrome panda said in good humour.

Tigress just smiled at Po's inward jab at himself, whereas Leehra giggled lightly before saying, "Po, Giant Pandas are big people as a general rule, the clue is in the name. You'd probably find that for a panda you really wouldn't be all that heavy compared to most of them. I'm only smaller than you because I'm a red panda, I'm actually really, really tall compared to most other people that share the same species as me."

She cocked her head thoughtfully at this. Po was intrigued, after all the only other red panda he had met other than Leehra was Master Shifu, and it was true that he was much, much smaller than Leehra was. At first he guessed that she was some kind of hybrid, but he quickly dismissed that though as her tail and general appearance in terms of fur, markings, paws, pretty much all of them signified that she was indeed the same species as his teacher.

She appeared to have sharper claws on her hands and feet for climbing than the black and white panda had himself, and a longer tail for balance. He loved the way that she had almost the same cute little black ears as he did, although they were ever so slightly pointed in Leehra's case, and he thought she suited hers much better. He also noted that her legs were long and toned like Tigress's, with quite malleable looking paw-pads, which pointed to Red Pandas being a much more active group than giant Pandas. He didn't want to pry into any of Leehra's personal matters without her consent, but he guessed that she probably wouldn't mind if he just asked her about her species.

"How big are red pandas usually?" Po enquired once Leehra was satisfied that his backpack wasn't going to come off anytime soon, the last clip closing with an audible click.

Leehra looked back to Po as she answered. "I'd say that most are about 3 quarters of my height, and are very lucky if they get to be half as tall as me. For my kind I'm more than a bit unusual"

It was a bit embarrassing as a subject as the males of her own species had been clearly devided on the subject of her beauty; half believed that she was a freak of nature that had to be avoided at all costs, and the other half were too busy ogling her to say much. She'd been taunted for her species once or twice, but generally with it being all pandas in the village not much bullying went on as a child due to them all being taught how few of them there were left. Generally most of the people in the village were grateful at having a place to call their own again, plus it was hard for the boys to get far with the girls if they were making fun of them and they were trying to re-grow their numbers.

Po smiled, understanding the feeling of being an oddity perfectly.

"I know how that feels to be the 'big guy'. I hope you weren't picked on as bad as I was." he said kindly.

Leehra shook her head, starting to gather up her hair to put back into a pony tail as she answered, "No not really. Most of the boys were too busy trying to get into my pants, and the girls were often too busy either getting chores done or letting the boys into their pants. There were a few times that I was picked on for my size, but being multiple times bigger than the people picking on you does give you an advantage." she said with a smirk. "I think that after a while people just got used to me being a freak of nature." Leehra shrugged.

The rest of the group were practically ready to go now, and Leehra was now just waiting until Tigress had finished packing Po's bag with the last of the special bandages that he'd requested that he bring along into his backpack, after that they would set off to meet this apparently elite force that was going to be accompanying them.

Po beamed at Leehra as he heard her describe her time growing up in the Panda village; "I'd say you're more of a miracle than a freak." Po said, instantly feeling his cheeks heat up with embarrassment as he looked at Leehra smiling warmly at him in response.

"Sorry, that was a pretty pathetic thing to say, wasn't it?" he apologized.

Leehra merely shook her head. "Not at all Po. That's probably the sweetest thing that anyone has ever said to me. Thank you", she said putting a hand over her heart. Her tail swung happily from side to side behind her, the tip coming up to about her shoulders. It never failed to amaze her just how genuinely kind Po was to her; they were going to be travelling together with the furious five and another group of trained martial artists that they didn't even know but were supposedly guarding the Imperial family most of the time, so the chances of him 'getting any' from either her or Tigress were very slim, but he still took the time to make them feel wanted. This was so different to what she had become used to from the males around her village.

Behind him, Tigress was putting the last of his supplies into his backpack, also smiling at Po's compliment, secretly stashing a few extra almond cookies into his backpack as a reward. As she finally got the last tool into the back pack and started clipping it shut, she called over his shoulder to Leehra while she worked.

"What kind of bandits will we be facing Leehra? Are they wolves, crocodiles, cats, which kind of species should we expect?"

"Wolves mostly, but there are one or two felines amongst them, and one of the fiercest of them is a giant of a crocodile who can go head-to-head with the strongest warriors from our village; their leader however is none of these, he is a large black bear with one ear torn apart. He is almost certainly foreign as there are no pitch black bears native to China." Leehra said, looking away from Po as she mentioned their leader, a frown quickly taking hold as her nose twitched in agitation.

Po picked up on this immediately, sensing that there was more history between them than she was letting on given that she already seemed to know so much about him, and behind Po's back the pause in the conversation hadn't slipped Tigress's attention either. One thing struck Po as odd though: she knew what species the bandits were which you'd expect from someone seeing them from a distance, but if this leader was a large bear then it was unlikely that he had taken part in any the raids as pitch black fur would have made him an easy target against the snowy background, and no bears were mentioned in the reports of these raids; also, he would've been too slow to pull of the hit and run tactics that the bandits had been described as using, meaning he would have likely stayed at the fortress during all these attacks.

So how had she known what their leader looked like if he stayed inside the stronghold?

Tigress walked around Po so that she could look at Leehra, having finished packing his backpack, instantly seeing her discomfort written clearly over her face. Po didn't want to cause her any more discomfort, but had a nasty feeling that he knew why she was acting like this, silently praying that his usually reliable instincts were wrong. "Did the warriors guarding the caravans tell you about him?" Tigress asked, also curious as to how she knew about the leader of the Bandits.

Leehra continued to avoid their gaze, looking down at the surface of the courtyard as she spoke in a deeply bitter tone, a new sharpness added to her words. "No, I met him in person once. This was just before the attacks started to become a regular occurrence. He came down to the village along with many of his armed henchmen, making harsh demands for food we had gathered during the harvest last year." Her face was mostly hidden by her hair as she said this, but Po could tell how much even mentioning this man was hurting from the way that her entire body was slightly shaking as she spoke. However, he felt he had to know the truth, if he didn't then it would only leave this deep pain to fester and spread. He knew all too well how painful old wounds could become.

A quick glance over his shoulder revealed that the rest of the five with the exception of Tigress had disappeared; he caught sight of Viper's tail as it flicked out of sight behind the doors of the dojo, showing that they'd most likely just discovered they had forgotten something really important. If Po was going to find out what this man had done to make Leehra hate this man so much, it would have to be now before they set off and before the others returned.

With his expression one of deep concern, he stepped forwards until he was quite literally touching her. She looked up at him with the most vulnerable looking pair of eyes he had ever seen, the black and white panda before her stepping forwards and softly wrapping Leehra in a warm embrace, feeling the soft, cold impacts of fresh tears on his fur as she stayed there while she continued to tell her story.

"We didn't have enough food to share with them that year. The harvest had been so bad that we were set to just barely make it through the winter ourselves." Leehra continued, "We couldn't meet his overwhelming demands. We hadn't been expecting he and his followers to be armed to the extent they were, we couldn't equip ourselves in time. Then he proposed that he would ignore this if we let them have their way with the women from our tribe that he chose. With no other way out that would avoid bloodshed, our chieftain reluctantly accepted."

Po was appalled at what he had just heard Leehra say. He was shocked that there were still men like this around who treated people so coldly; he clutched Leehra slightly tighter as he felt her shiver, reminding her that he was here for her as she painfully recounted what had happened next.

"He and his followers went round pointing at each female they wanted, and raped them one by one inside their own houses, wives, girlfriends, and some too young to be either. The black bear looked at all of us in turn, not seeming to like any of us particularly, and then he finally pointed at me. He took me into my own home and he raped me, over and over. He restrained me, beat me and forced me to do the most depraved things he could think of to satisfy his hunger for me, and then after he was finished with me he tore my clothes up and dragged me out into the snow in front of my entire assembled people of Nehabatou so that I, and everyone else in the village, would always remember what he had done to me with the clear image of my abused body laying half-dead in the snow. The dress I was wearing that day was the only one my mother made for me before she died. H-he.....took away....the last thing I had.......to remember her by.....and then he...he.....". Her next words fell apart in her mouth, as she buried her face in Po's chest and started crying openly. She had never cried at the time, or even cried in the village after she realized what had been done to her. All she had registered back then was a bitter resentment, a new burning hatred for the man had over-ridden all shame and self-pity that she'd felt, and given rise to the determination that no man would treat her like that again. Remembering all that had happened had brought all that hatred back in full force, but she couldn't bring herself to even feel hatred with Po cradling her in his arms just the way she had always wanted to be held; instead, all of that fear, that horrible feeling helplessness at what that awful bandit chief had done to her, all of it had suddenly crashed down upon her.

Her tears didn't last long though, as the best man to comfort her was currently doing just that. Her crying soon quieted into soft whimpers as Po softly rubbed her ears and held her close without saying a word to deter her, giving her all the time she needed to calm down once she'd let all of the pain out of her system. Without needing a single syllable, he let her know that he was here for her, silently cradling her when she needed it the most, not admonishing her for showing her weakness at this horrible experience or trying to get her to just ignore it and move, but recognizing it as a new part of her which he would help her to deal with, which is more than most people would ever be willing to do.

From Po's side, Tigress watched the pair's warm embrace with her ears flattened against her head and her face etched with deep sorrow.

She could never have guessed that the red panda had such a terrifying childhood, given how little she had shown of it on the surface. The feline master felt a new respect for the red panda woman start to grow inside her at the realisation that she had experienced just as much, if not more, emotional abuse in her life as she had herself.

No woman, regardless of bloodline or background, deserved to have such a horrible thing as that happen to them. When she caught Po's eyes as he gently held Leehra, rubbing her red hair softly with a free hand to comforted her, the feline couldn't help but be reminded of how glad she was that Po so dedicated to helping others, the very notion seeming to be a part of his nature. So often all he earned were bruises, cuts and sometimes far deeper emotional wounds, but each time he was just as willing to get back up and help again.

She knew from countless examples that Po was the most caring, selfless, reliable and honest man that she had ever met. The infamous master had heard rumours being spoken amongst some of the more 'well-travelled' women of the valley when she passed them in the street of some men changing once they had got past the first night together, as if they had already got what they wanted and so no longer felt they had to earn anything; once again Po was proving just how different he was from what so many expected him to be, and she sorely wished that they were not about to head out so that she could at least give him a kiss on the cheek as thanks.

Despite having had her own reservations about Leehra when she first arrived, thanks to the extremely suspicious nature that had helped her to survive for many of these long years, Tigress now believed that the Red Panda deserved to be by Po's side every bit as much as she did herself; the striped feline promised herself that if she came across this bear before anyone else did, she would give him an attitude adjustment the likes of which he would never forget, if he even got up from it afterwards. Putting aside that thought for now, she looked up at Po's sympathetic expression as he patiently looked down at Leehra while she let it all out. The soft sounds of her sobbing gradually became more and more quiet under Po's welcome attention, his hands never once straying into territory that they shouldn't stray into, nor applying lustful gropes or strokes, his mind focused solely on making her feel comfortable. He didn't look even the slightest bit annoyed about her tears wetting her fur that he would have to clean up before they left, giving all the time he could for her to bring her emotions back under control.

"It's okay Leehra, he won't hurt you again, we're here for you now. Tigress and I are not going to leave you, and this guy has more chance of having a snowball fight in hell than he does of lasting five seconds against Tigress." he comforted, while the beautiful feline kung fu master behind him smiled warmly at his compliment.

"As long as I live and breathe, you will never go through that again, I promise" Po said, gently lifting her face up with his finger so she had to look him in the eye again. He could still see the pain lingering there, just waiting for another chance to come back to the surface; she needed to be reminded that she was loved without any room for her mind to twist the facts inside her head, so after checking to make sure that they were indeed alone in the courtyard apart from Master Tigress, he leaned his head in closer to hers and planted a soft loving kiss on her lips. Trusting Tigress to let him know if anyone was about to disturb them, he cupped Leehra's face as he deepened the kiss, letting her know just how much he cared about her.

Tigress once again found herself unable to resist smiling at Po's actions. She knew exactly what kind of trust he was putting in her right now, and also admired how bold he was in reminding Leehra the somebody still cared. Still smiling at this, she quickly turned her attention to keeping an eye out for their companions returning from inside the Jade Palace, keeping her ears pricked in case they used a route that she couldn't see at the moment. Most people would have simply watched the door, forgetting of course that this was the furious five they were waiting for, who could just as easily scale down the countless-foot drop from the top of the palace to the gates in an instant.

Leehra's eyes were half-lidded as Po pulled his lips away from hers, still not quite sure of what had just happened. Her sorrowful pain-ridden eyes now sparkled back up at Po's as realisation came to her of what he'd just done, showing him that wonderful glowing smile that he had come to love as she flung her arms over his shoulder and hugged him tightly.

Reaching up one of her hands to stroke his cheek affectionately, she marvelled at just how lucky she had been when she came to the valley those few weeks ago. After that first night she had spent with Po, she had very quickly come to the realisation that she would never be able to forget him if she left, but honestly didn't know whether she'd be able to face down her own people if they opposed this, as despite their differences they were the last people of her kind that were still alive that she knew of. If they exiled her for choosing to stay with a man who wasn't from their village, she would potentially be turning her back on her entire species.

Now however, she was absolutely certain of what she was going to do, and she wasn't returning to Nehabatou to remain there once this mission was done; as soon as she had gathered her personal belongings and said her goodbyes, she would live in the valley of peace with Po. It didn't matter if she had to get a job as a cleaning maid at an Inn and work all the hours that daylight shined just so that she could keep a room to herself, just as long as she could see Po she would be content.

"Thank you Po." she said softly, her vibrant blue eyes once again sending a warm feeling straight to the black and white panda's heart as they met his own kind green irises.

Po's face broke into into a warm smile as he replied, "Any time Leehra."

He released her from the warm hug just as Tigress tapped him on the shoulder urgently to let him know the others were coming. The striped feline master nodded towards the door to indicate that they were coming from that direction, Po taking a few steps back so as not to arouse any suspicions while Leehra quickly dried her eyes with her paws and smoothed out her clothes where they had become crumpled in their hug, regaining her composure just in time for the others to make their way out of the doors of the dojo.

"I told you that we only had the map for the West passage through the mountains. We should have got the ones for all the routes when we started packing in the first place." Mantis taunted, hopping down the stairs as he confidently taunted the smooth-scale green serpent that followed closely behind him.

"Yes, but you didn't think to pick it up yourself either did you, otherwise wouldn't you have noticed that the map we actually have already was for the East passage, not the West one?" Viper retorted coyly, the small insect Kung Fu Master shutting up sharply at Viper's quick-witted return comment.

In quick succession, the rest of the furious five emerged from the doors of the Palace, all of them assembling alongside Po, Leehra and Tigress as they waited for Master Shifu to arrive with their final instructions. They didn't have to wait long, as only moments later, before they could even start up a conversation, their long-serving teacher stepped through the doors behind them and pushed them closed, turning to face his students from the top of the stairs. Within seconds, Po and the furious five were stood in a perfect line as they had been taught to do from the beginning of their training, Leehra quickly catching on to what they were doing and joining the end of the line as well and crossing her hands behinf her back just as Po and Tigress were doing.

Clearing his throat once, the wise master spoke clearly and without pause to his pupils.

"I apologize for not revealing who your escorts will be for this mission, but with recent events, I deemed it necessary to take extra precautions to make sure we had no further problems before you set off. The warriors you will be working with have achieved quite a high notoriety as the Emperor's new elite palace guard, with their performance far exceeding all expectations despite their slightly less respectable past. They are an all-female group of fighters made up solely of snow leopards, and while they are now formally called the 'Palace Protectors', you will probably know them better as the 'Ladies of the Shade'."

Po's eyes widened considerably as those words reached his ears. Surely this was some trick or mis-reading of the scroll Shifu had been sent, there was no way that the Emperor could have unknowingly sent the same troupe of women that he had encountered and freed from their thievery obsessed leader not long ago. He was unable to stop a light blush from growing as he remembered exactly who had decided to lead them once he had defeated the previous leader, his left cheek starting to tingle ever so slightly where this kind-hearted snow-leopardess had kissed him.

He didn't dare raise his hand to his cheek though. From the corner of his eye he saw Tigress clench her fists in fury behind her back just to the right of the panda, though he seriously doubted that it was out of jealousy for that kiss, as it was months ago and he never decided to follow up that relationship in that time because he'd been too busy fussing over Tigress herself. If he had to guess, he suspected that it was down to the fact that Tigress hadn't trusted the troupe of dancing leopardesses from the moment she met them, and had then subsequently been proven right when they attempted to rob the dragon chalice. One certain leopardess had got very close to Po, and thanks to their unintentionally strong bond, she had not only suffered a change of heart, but had helped them to steal the dragon chalice back, leaving with the promise that she would keep her comrades out of trouble by leading them out of their repetitive cycle of crime.

However, Tigress never, ever forgot people who attempted to deceive her or anyone she cared about, and the fact that this same leopardess had initially set out to fool Po by seducing him Po was something that Tigress wouldn't be overlooking any time soon.

He still exchanged letters with this particular lady up to this day, although they were never intended to be flirty or saucy in nature, the fact was that Po was genuinely happy for her when she had told him that she had found new respectable jobs for all of the ladies of the shade that would keep them out of crime for the rest of their lives, but she had neglected to tell him what those jobs were just in case one of her letters was stolen. The job of guarding the Imperial family was pretty much as high security as jobs came in China, so it would explain why she hadn't gone into detail about what they actually did in their new line of work.

Off to Po's left, Leehra picked up on this immediate reaction from the pair, but unlike Tigress and Po she had spent her entire life up to this point living amongst the mountains the Nehabatou was situated in, having first come to the valley when she first met Po just a few weeks ago. She had no idea of what had transpired between the furious five and this group, if indeed anything had, but she guessed that they must have been pretty famous as thieves or some other form or criminal to get that kind of response from the furious five.

Ignoring their visible surprise at mentioning the former name of the troupe they would be working with, and still completely in the dark about the whole affair with the ladies of the Shade that happened at the palace, Master Shifu continued giving them their last instruction for their mission.

"Regardless of what you may have heard about them until now, they will be working alongside you in this mission because of what's at stake. If we fail, there is a good chance that an entire species will be wiped out, which is crime that we will not allow happen while we still live and breathe. Make your way down to the foot of the mountains on the other side of the valley, and remain out-of-sight there until nightfall. Once the sun goes down, you should see a group of snow leopards walk past you, each carrying a red parasol; these are the warriors that have been sent to help you. Ask for a woman called 'Song', she is the leader of this group. I wish you all the best of luck in your task."

With that, the small red panda turned around and walked back towards the dojo, opening the door and stepping inside the large ornate entrance to the place where he had taught the finest martial artists of their age how to hone their skills, and then with a quiet clunk he shut the door behind him and removed himself from their sight.

"Well, that was a surprise." Mantis said in his typical lackadaisical tone of voice.

"We knew that we'd be getting help with this one, and we did hear rumours of a new guard in place at the imperial palace, so I don't think it's that big a surprise." Crane said, tilting his head to the side thoughtfully.

"Not that, I mean that we're working with that leopardess chick who practically threw herself into Po's arms last time we met her." Mantis replied, with little concern for the already embarrassed Po, the self-conscious Tigress or the Red Panda with very good hearing that were standing not 5 feet away from him.

"Mantis!" Viper chided, causing the small green warrior to flinch at her sudden anger.

Hissing at the small insect in annoyance, Viper turned to look up at Po who seemed positively stunned by the news, just absently scratching the side of his head as he looked over at Tigress sheepishly. As a show of trust to her, he had shown all of the letters he received from Song to her as well, even though she rarely showed much interest once she was certain that Po wasn't 'involved' with the shapely dancing leopardess. The feline master herself was looking back at Po, although instead of anger or betrayal showing on her face, instead it was the same look of deep concern that she had shown him when she tried to convince him not to fight Lord Shen.

What was actually going through Tigress's mind was a genuine fear that Song would attempt to steal Po from her.

The black and white panda was a trustworthy as people came, he'd proved this countless times, and there was also the fact that Po also had a tendency to be quite child-like in his actions as well. When Song had first arrived, she had been flaunting herself openly in front of Po, just asking him to try something naughty with her, and the lovable Panda had instead taken her on a tour of the city which included a visit to his dad's shop, buying action figures of the furious five, walking through the great bamboo forests and sliding down the thousands of steps from one of the holy shrines on large cooking woks. She wasn't the least bit worried about Po trying anything behind her back.

However, Song was both undeniably a beautiful specimen of a woman, and much more intelligent than most people would assume at first glance. The leopardess had decided to help Po in the first place because her feelings for Po that had started out as fake had instead become genuine, and she was a woman who was not afraid to let her feelings show when it was needed of her. What worried her was that if Song attempted to make any advances on Po during their mission, then she and Leehra could do very little to stop him. Until the red panda lady returned to her village and came back of her own free will, she was still an official guest of the valley, and the knowledge that she was Po's lover after such a short time could ruin the valley's reputation if it got out. Tigress would be in an even worse position, as not only would acting possessive of Po alert everyone to what was happening between them, but she honestly didn't know whether anyone besides Viper would accept their relationship. Shifu was a tough task-master, although he may understand having raised her, but at the same time it was too early to take that risk. Po was potentially wide open to Song should she choose to make a move, and considering that she had decided to come to the valley in person rather than remain in the imperial city despite what had happened with the furious five, it was almost certain that Po was the sole reason that she was coming on this mission.

"Po, I know that what you went through with Song was tough, and that you might have some personal matters that you want to talk out." Tigress said to the large black and white panda, keeping her voice calm and considerate, letting none of her inner panic show. "But the safety of all the people of Nehabatou is at stake, and this mission is going to require all of us to be on our guard. We will understand if you want to stay behind, and none of us will think any less of you for it."

Po's expression softened into a knowing smile as he listened to her offer, knowing full well that she wasn't worried that he couldn't handle himself. He was better at reading Tigress and her subtle mannerisms than she hoped, and although he didn't manage to pick up on just how vulnerable he was should Song make any advances towards him, he was determined to show Tigress that he could remain loyal to her, and to his duty as the dragon warrior when challenged. After all, she was always the one talking about self-discipline and facing challenges head-on, so to back down the first time anything like this happened would show himself up as being untrustworthy around other women. He knew that this wasn't what Tigress thought deep inside, but he was still very conscious of Tigress being very new to a stable relationship, and for the first time in all the time he'd know her she was showing a lack of confidence in herself; he felt that he needed to be there for her so that she could overcome this self-directed doubt, or she would become even more nervous of what few shortcomings she had, possibly even start to think that she couldn't handle being in a relationship because she was so inexperienced at it.

Regardless of her immense strength, he knew that there was a still frightened little kitten hiding just behind those beautiful red eyes of hers. Nobody was invulnerable.

"I'm coming with you." Po said with a determined tone in his voice, "I didn't get all packed up just to stretch my legs."

The rest of the furious five smiled approvingly at Po's decision, Leehra also admiring Po's resolve from out of the line of sight of any of the five save for Tigress. The radiant orange, white and black furred feline however, was now very worried, although as was her nature she let none of it show beneath an immaculately adopted expression of pride in the black and white panda.

"Alright, let's head out now so that we arrive before they do." She said after a short pause, taking a few moments to be sure that she would sound convincing. Fortunately, Po seemed to just accept her words, knowing better than to keep her waiting when they were on a mission, the panda checking the straps for his backpack on last time before turning and following the rest of the five who were already heading towards the large red gates that lead out of the jade palace courtyard.

Leehra walked behind Po as he did so, Master shifu having made the wise decision that the pair should stay close together during the mission due to Po not being as agile as the rest of the five and Leehra not having the same benefit of decades of focused training. For just a few seconds Tigress stood watching them while no-one else was looking her way to catch her; she almost wept as her mind replaced the image of Po walking alongside the kind, shapely red panda with the image of her black and white furred lover walking alongside a slim, seductive looking snow leopard while she twirled and open red parasol in her fingers teasingly. When it came to a battle of who could do most for Po as his woman rather than his ally, Tigress new that a battle between her and Song would be a massacre. She could only hope that Po cared enough about her to not break her heart.

For a split second as she walked to catch up with her comrades who were now walking through the door as Po held it open, her deep red eyes met his own green ones, and she swore in that second that he had seen right through her façade, certainly his gentle reassuring smile seemed to suggest so.

"Come on Tigress, or we won't get there until sunrise." the good-natured panda playfully jibed.

"Just for that Po, we'll make it there at full pace instead walking." she replied, thankful that he was still as talented at cheering her up as he had ever been. Before he even had a chance to reply, the gorgeous feline had taken a standing leap and catapulted herself clean over the gates in a graceful arc, her tail following her body like a long striped ribbon as she moved through the air.

"Aww no." Po said in mock dismay, quickly ushering Leehra out of the gate as the red panda struggled to contain her giggling at the pair's antics, cupping her beautiful white-furred face with her hands and doing her best to keep moving without tripping over a paving stone.

*They don't even know it yet, but they get along better than any married couple I've ever seen. Tigress, you've got nothing to fear from this 'Song' girl if you're already this close.* the red panda thought to herself, quickly breaking into a full-on sprint down the stairs as Po did the same to try and keep up with the phenomenal pace that Tigress was already setting for them.

None of them knowing just what lay in store for them, they rushed forwards in high spirits, secure in the mind that they would complete this mission just as easily as they had done hundreds of others.

---

*Later that night, just outside the city *

At the bottom of the Valley of peace, near a small stream that joined with many others to form part of a major river a few miles away, the entire group was assembled and laying in wait, completely out of sight in their various hiding places. None of them spoke, not even in a whisper, ensuring that their presence remained completely undetected until they decided otherwise. Sunset had occured a good half hour ago, the warm yellow rays of light having long since been replaced by the endless black expanse of the night sky and the cool blue aura given off by the moon as it hung like a snow-white ornament moving slowly over the landscape. There was no breeze blowing to carry scents towards or away from them, neither increasing the risk of being discovered or giving the troupe an advantage, apart from this there were still the sounds of merriment and bedtime preparations coming from the houses closest to them on the outskirts of the city. Nobody had spotted them heading out towards their meeting place earlier that day, the group having taken a deliberately visible false route to confuse an informers that might have been lurking in the crowds. To anyone going about their business, nothing would have seemed out of the ordinary at all, which is exactly what Master Tigress had hoped for.

Viper had been appointed lookout, being able to move more quietly than Mantis while still being small enough not to draw attention to herself out of the corner of your eye. She was currently entwined around the branch of a healthy tree that had somehow managed to grow quite a distance up a rock face close by; even in full daylight it would have been hard to distinguish her light green scales from the natural greens of the leaves, but now that dim light cast virtually everything into a dim blue hue, she was virtually invisible.

Leehra, Po, Tigress and Crane were crouched in the shadows of a massive pile of scree (fallen fragments of rock from a rock face, mountain or cliff), completely obscuring them from anyone looking in their direction from the city, and also had the added benefit of making them very hard to spot by anyone flying over them, their outlines very effectively smothered by the absence of light.

Tigress, as per usual on a mission, was utterly focused on her task, eyes darting back and forth in a regular pattern to make sure that she never left a single angle unchecked for too long, while her ears constantly swivelled towards even the slightest of sounds she picked up, her attractive black nose twitching every now and then just to be sure that there was nothing she had missed. Her task was to make sure that nobody found them before they met with Song and her group, which meant spotting somebody coming far sooner than they spotted her.

Leehra, Crane and Po were given the task of looking out for the agreed signal that the 'Ladies of The Shade' had arrived, while Mantis had been sent on ahead along their route to check that there weren't any unexpected ambushes or traps laid in their path. Bandits weren't known for playing by the rules, and considering what was at stake, they had every reason to. He was currently just out of sight, but there had been no signs of an incident yet.

Monkey had long since disappeared into his hiding place, as his light orange fur didn't lend itself well to staying hidden, and unlike Mantis or viper, he wasn't small enough to not draw attention to himself either. Consequently, he was simply told to keep his head down and try not to make any unnecessary noises. Considering just how contradictory this was to the primape's usual bright and fun-loving nature, Po was almost certain that he would be sitting there pulling faces and miming his orders in ridicule. He was just as experienced a fighter as any of them, but also had the additional trait of being the most laidback of the furious five, as proved by the constant betting matches he played with Po, with the stakes being either almond cookies or whatever sweets or rare foods they could get their hands on.

They had been stationed like this for quite some time now, having arrived long before sunset, but there had been no sign of anyone coming to meet them yet. If they didn't show up by the appointed time, then the group would have to move on without the help of these formerly vagrant felines.

After checking in with Tigress to verify that he had indeed seen nothing yet, Po was in the process of rubbing the back of his neck to help relieve a dull ache that had been building up, but then out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a small red shape gliding through the air. From the way is glided through the air on very soft thermals without any real direction, or indeed showing any signs of movement other than its own flight-path, it was almost certainly not a bird or an insect. As it gently drifted closer, Po's eyes opened wide as he recognised the intricate bamboo design of the tiny red parasols, no bigger than a thumb, which the ladies of the shade had used as weapons before now. He still had one as a keepsake in his drawer. Criminals or otherwise, Po had to admit that they had a really cool image all the same.

Not wasting a second, the black and white panda gently tapped Tigress on her left shoulder three times, indicating that he had seen what he was looking for. One meant he had seen nothing so far, and two meant that he had seen something that might be a threat. It was a simple system that Tigress had devised for communicating silently when changing the direction you were looking in wasn't an option until the last minute. Turning her head to look at Po, she followed the direction that he was looking in with her own eyes, immediately spotting the tiny trinket that served as the agreed signal from the ladies of the shade that they were there.

Looking back at Leehra, who was currently crouched just behind Tigress herself, the striped feline quickly gave her an easily readable hand signal, pointing towards another rocky outcropping about 40 metres or so behind them, in the direction of the mountains. The shapely red panda did as she was bid instantly, her bare feet hardly making any noise at all as she sprinted the short distance, taking up her position and peeking around the side of the outcropping to keep watch over the currently clear path in front of her.

Less than three seconds later Po nearly jumped out of his skin as Viper suddenly poked her head out from behind a bush not 2 inches away from his hand, he hadn't even noticed her come down from the tree.

"6 in total, all snow leopards and look just like the dancing ladies we've met before. All of them have those red parasols with them. They are all wearing black clothes, except for one who is wearing mostly red" the emerald scaled master accurately reported.

Po and Tigress exchanged a brief look at the last point, before getting to their feet and brushing some accumulated pollen out of their fur. "That's them alright; let's hope they're faster when it matters." Tigress muttered under her breath, although far too quietly for Po's ears to pick it up.

"Viper," she continued, this time loud enough to actually be heard, "I want you and Monkey to head up into the mountain pass and catch up with Mantis, if we want to keep to our schedule then we will have to move far more quickly than anticipated. I want the land ahead of us completed scouted out by the time we get to you."

"You got it Tigress" Viper whispered back, the next instant disappearing back into the bush she had come from. Amazed by how well she had concealed herself, Po watched Monkey's hiding place intently to see if he could spot how she did it. A few short seconds later he saw Monkey's shadow detach itself from the ink-like darkness around it, the ape Master being followed very closely behind by Master Viper, with not a single sign being given as to how the small green serpent had actually made her way there.

"Woah. I have got to ask Viper how she does that." Po spoke softly, wary that they were now probably within hearing distance of whoever had come to help them. With a final nod from Tigress, she, Po and Crane calmly walked out from their hiding place and into plain view, their eyes instantly taking in the sight in front of them from adjusting to the dim light not long after sunset.

6 pairs of sharp feline eyes all turned at once in surprise to look at the three famous masters, each striking pair belonging to an equally striking leopardess with soft silver fur adorned with patterns of dark grey spot marks. Each had a unique pattern of these spots decorating their face with different shades, the natural layout even extending all the way down their slender tails where the pattern terminated in a soft black tip. The only other exceptions to this monochrome design were their ears, which were pitch black on the back and on the outside, but were a dark shade of grey on the inside.

Stature-wise, all of them were just slightly shorter than Tigress, and also appeared less bulky overall, which wasn't that surprising considering the species difference combined with the sheer intensity of Master Tigress's training regime. Just as Viper had said, 5 of them were wearing jet black attire composing of a simple sleeveless shirt and almost skin-tight pants that wouldn't make any unwanted noise from flapping in the winds that they would encounter at the higher altitude, although it did have the added benefit of accentuating their already very fetching figures. All of them were carrying those signature red fabric parasols with the natural bamboo frames that had given them their name 'Ladies of the Shade', along with a pair of brown gloves that completely covered their white furred paws.

After a few moments of silence while the two groups appraised each other, the only snow leopard not wearing the same completely black clothing as her comrades slowly stepped forwards, her red parasol closed and resting on her right shoulder while she cradled the handle in her gloved hand; surpisingly she showed absolutely no fear towards the trio of famous martial artists as she approached, but neither did she show any sign of defience, bowing to them in respect once she was halfway between her group and theirs.

Po swallowed audibly and Tigress cracked the knuckles on her left hand as they looked upon the stunning creature. A perfect hourglass figure with slim hips and a beautiful face illuminated by the soft moonlight, made even more outstanding by the cool blue eyes she had, long feminine eyelashes helping to complete the enchanting image; her arms and legs were in very good physical condition from her years of both dancing to earn her keep and fighting for her very survival, and yet they remained smooth and slender, allowing her to retain all the grace of a female in her prime despite having seen more than her fair share of violence in her life. Another noticeable difference between this leopardess and Tigress was around the midriff area; Tigress, as Po knew from seeing it first hand, was in such amazingly good shape that she actually had a subtle six-pack of muscle that really gave her that whole 'warrior princess' vibe, but song had somehow managed to keep a very flat stomach with a relatively small waistline to go with it, really giving her the ideal body for a dancer.

The black and white panda had to admit that Song was still as beautiful as she had ever been, and a part of him did regret not trying to take things further with her, but his mind had already been made up on who his heart belonged to. He just hoped that Tigress didn't feel too insecure with him looking, as sensitive about herself as she. He still considered the orange, white and black feline to be the most gorgeous thing in all existence to him, but she was very nervous whenever he described her as beautiful.

Noticing that Po was looking at the nicely curved woman bowed in front of them out of the corner of her eye, although happily keeping his eyes away from 'those' areas, Tigress bowed her head and placed her right fist into her left palm as her own mutual sign of respect, hoping to get the talking over and done with so she could get Po away from this lady as quickly as possible. If she could keep everyone focused on saving Leehra's village instead of allowing anyone to become distracted, then perhaps she could finish the mission and send Song on her way before she had a chance to try anything with Po.

The curvaceous snow leopardess stood up straight again once Tigress finished her bow, facing the three Masters as she spoke in soft and gentle voice that constantly moved in pitch like a gentle melody.

"It's a pleasure to see you again Master Tigress, Master Crane, Master Po." she allowed her eyes to meet with Po for a brief moment as she spoke his name, causing the panda's cheeks to flush ever so slightly, something which did not go unnoticed by the orange furred feline standing just to Po's left. "I deeply regret that we first met on such bad terms. I am now the second-in-command of the royal guard at the imperial palace, and the former 'ladies of the shade' are my soldiers. I volunteered myself to help in this mission in the hopes that I could mend some of the bridges that I burned when I was last here, and I do owe you all a debt of gratitude for giving me the benefit of the doubt and not arresting me when it would have been well within your right to do so."

"Welcome back to the valley of peace, Song." Tigress replied sternly and directly, her usual serious attitude back in full effect, in spite of Song's genuine speech, "I'm afraid that we will have very little time to talk, we have to make the entire journey in a single day if we are to succeed. We understand you wish to redeem yourself to some of us, and we will give you the chance to do so, but not right now. Please introduce the rest of your group so that we can leave for the bandit stronghold like we agreed."

Song's head turned to look Tigress dead in the eye, not even daring to blink as she smiled warmly and politely to the woman that she had fought against not that long ago inside the walls of the jade palace. For a few long moments, no-one said anything, the leopards behind Song exchanging uneasy looks between one-another, while Po did the same to Crane, although neither of them turned their heads to look, lest they make it too obvious. To say the atmosphere was tense right then would have been the understatement of the century.

"Very well." Song replied calmly after a few painfully quiet seconds, "I believe that you have already met the twins..."

The leopardess indicated the two female leopards on the right-hand-side side of her group who both bore identical markings on their faces. Upon noticing the black and white panda looking their way curiously, the pair politely waved at Po, who decided to wave back at them in a friendly gesture. The twins had always seemed the type to just go with what each other wanted to do. In the letters exchanged with Song, they had been into their new lives at the imperial palace very well, happy to no longer have to worry about finding their next meal, or having to break into somebody else's house in order to make enough money to live. You could describe them as simply doing all they knew to survive in the life they had been given up until that point when he met them for the first time, and Song had done really well in helping them adjust to a new life outside of crime.

"The other three to their left are Shiki, Ta-min and Xifan." Song continued, "I can assure you that I have taken every precaution to make sure I can trust them."

Po had never heard of these three, but then again, the total number of leopardesses in the ladies of the shade numbered somewhere in the hundreds, so it wasn't really surprising.

"Really?" Tigress asked sternly, her gaze intensely focused on the shorter feline, perhaps understandably suspicious of her answer.

"Really." Song replied, keeping her voice completely calm as she in turn stared down the black striped master, not willing to give an inch of ground on the subject.

"Then they won't mind if they take their orders from me throughout this mission?" Tigress probed.

This question seemed to hit a nerve in Song, her smile instantly vanishing from her face to be replaced by an insulted frown. Behind Tigress, Master Crane felt a bead of cold sweat trickle down his neck, not expecting to have ended up watching Tigress face off against someone who had come to help them from the imperial city and completely unsure of what to do to stop the situation degrading any more than it already had.

Po was also becoming concerned for the two of them, not wanting everything to head south if he could help it. He had hoped that Tigress wouldn't mind having Song around and that the trip to the stronghold would go smoothly, letting him concentrate on the job at hand. The last thing he needed right now was for two women, one of whom was his lover and the other was the one who gave him his first kiss, to end up in a fight when he already had a lot going through his mind from his talk with Leehra earlier. The black and white panda just wanted to be able to help Leehra overcome the pain that the bandit leader had inflicted on her, and finally stop the threat to her people, he didn't want this argument to happen; but he sure wasn't going to try and argue with Tigress when she was in this state, that almost certainly mean cracked ribs or worse.

Crane also knew better than to try and talk Tigress out of what she perceived as doing her job, and so was keeping his beak firmly shut. In fact everyone else was keeping deathly silent during this exchange, nobody willing to risk suddenly getting stuck in between two very angry female martial artists with a bad history together, giving each pause in their quiet yet heated conversation. There were really only two good things about this verbal exchange: firstly, they had been sure to keep their voices down so that nobody overheard them, and secondly, none of the leopards had glanced at Po during this discussion, so hopefully none of them had guessed a second motive to Tigress's aggression.

"With all due respect, Master Tigress, I am perfectly capable of leading my own group, just as you are capable of leading the furious five." the shapely snow leopardess replied, once again keeping her voice level even if her face betrayed the fact that she was irritated at the insinuation. It was one thing not to be trusted, something she had expected, but she didn't expect to meet this kind of resentment from Master Tigress when she had asked to join the mission.

"I am well aware of that Song," the striped master answered, "but this isn't just your own group that you will be working with on this mission. The furious five and the dragon warrior have been mobilised to ensure the safety of an entire species, there is no room for error. You may instruct your fighters as you wish, but only unless I have not ordered otherwise, or if I disavow it."

Tigress paused for a few seconds, letting her words sink into the now visibly frustrated white leopardess before she continued with a very audible bite to her words.

"You need to understand exactly what's at stake here before you go any further with us. If we fail in our mission, as a consequence of your actions or by simply being unable to accomplish our task, then if the bandits launch a counter-attack on Nehabatou, Po might become the last of his kind in all of China, and for all we know there are no other pandas elsewhere in the world. His race could be rendered effectively extinct. Do I make myself clear, Song?" the striped feline master finished, fire-like orange eyes narrowing into a dark glare aimed right at the smaller leopard in front of her, tail twitching in agitation behind her.

By this point, Po was considering taking a few steps away from Tigress. As far as verbal battles went, Tigress had virtually proceeded to punch Song clean in the face and then rub grit into her eyes. He'd never seen her get this wound up this quickly since he first came to palace and unintentionally acquired the title of the dragon warrior; perhaps with the exception of the time when he left one of his throwing stars in the training yard and she'd accidentally stood on it, that same day she had actually left the jade palace to train at the Garnet palace but it had not gone well at all, the panda coming to see her just a few days later on a visit that quickly turned into a rescue mission, with the pair of them becoming even closer friends afterwards. The black and white panda just hoped that like that time, this was one of those 'it could be bad but it will turn out to be fine so long as I don't do something unbelievably stupid times', as opposed to one of those 'you had this coming and now it's gonna hurt like hell' times. A glance in Song's direct didn't help to soothe his mind much either, the leopardess seeming to have backed down from launching a rebellious reply, but the way her eyes almost burned with resentment towards the woman who'd just attempted put her in her place, almost staring daggers at her, told him that this wouldn't be the only argument they had on this mission.

This kind of act wasn't out of character for Tigress when it came to her professionalism on a mission, after all she had practically beaten Po to a pulp on several occasions before now, granted she always knew when to stop. He just hoped that Song didn't try and associate this behaviour with him, or it could lead to some serious problems if she looked even deeper and ended up deducing their secret. After all, she was a member of the emperor's guard, so she hardly had anything to fear by accusing a member of the furious five of being involved with the dragon warrior; the only person she could not accuse directly would be himself, i.e. the dragon warrior. Soon after the kind panda thought this, the penny dropped in his mind as to how little Tigress could actually do if Song decided to flirt with him.

Despite not being the most quick witted of people at times, Po suddenly realised just what kind of situation he might have got himself into by going on this mission. It finally dawned on him what Tigress had meant by suggesting that he stay behind, not because he would be a hindrance, but because he might end up being used as ammo in argument like this; despite his best intentions for being here, with Song and Tigress each attempting to defend him from the other, there was a very good chance that he could be caught right in the middle of the biggest catfight (literally) in the history of china if one of them decided to push the other too far. He never considered himself 'hot-stuff' as far as his reputation with girls went, but he knew that Song, despite being a good friend, actually did see him in the same light as Tigress, leaving him in a very difficult position if she tried to push that particular envelope during the mission.

Within seconds of realising this, Po found himself wishing that he had gone with Monkey and Viper to scout ahead instead, and that he wasn't currently presented with two beautiful women who both wanted him, probably something that no straight male had ever thought before.

All the while he thought this, the two feline women had been locked in their intense staring contest, with as long as half a minute having already past with neither of them so much as twitching an eyelid. It was so unearthly still while they did this that you could actually make clear distinctions between each person's breathing, even the sound of blood being pumped through the various arteries of the body suddenly became a deafening roar in their ears in comparison. Neither of the two felines engaged in this silent battle of willpower so much as moved their tail a fraction of a centimetre, waiting for the other to falter.

On and on the seconds slowly ticked by, nobody daring to say a word or even sigh or cough. Eventually though, maybe out of submission to her opponent and perhaps out of discipline from her new job or impatience to get going, Song blinked first, but kept looking fiercely right back at Tigress as she answered her in a quiet voice.

"You make yourself perfectly clear, Master Tigress. They will follow your orders to the best of their abilities."

Seemingly satisfied with her reply, Tigress nodded once towards Song in acknowledgement before addressing the group of Snow Leopards behind her, continuing with the task at hand immediately.

"The twins are to accompany Po and Crane at the back of our formation as they form our rear guard, just in case we're followed or ambushed; Shiki, Ta-min and Xifan will all move forward to join Masters Viper, Monkey and Mantis as they scout ahead to make sure our route is clear, but be sure to report back exactly how many bandits you see or take out should you do. I want a clear idea of how much resistance we're meeting as we get closer to the stronghold.

"Song and I will climb higher up into the mountain range so that we can get a better vantage point of the terrain and relate it back to you if there is a patrol headed your way or if there are any messengers flying overhead that might spot you. I know that you most likely have your own system of communicating without making yourselves easier to spot or hear, and we also have ours, which is why there will be no group that does not contain at least one member from both the furious five and yourselves."

As one, the five black-clad leopards behind Song bowed in respect to the famous kung fu master, the three leopards that she had ordered to catch up with Monkey, Mantis and Crane, sprinting forwards in the direction of the mountains to do just that, their black clothing allowing them to blend into the dark backdrop within seconds as they began leaping over the rough terrain with admirable agility.

Next Tigress turned to Po and Crane, who of course already knew what their jobs were at this early pre-planned stage, having actually been there to help plan it all out; with a silent hand signal from the striped feline that first indicated them, then the two twin leopards, and then the mountain range, they too set off running after the others, although in Crane's case, he took to the air while taking care to stay as low as possible so that he wouldn't be spotted by anybody casually looking up at the sky. Po gave Tigress a quick backwards glance over his shoulder as he left, making a silent prayer to whatever spirits were watching over him that she didn't end up fighting Song while he wasn't there. While it was true that Tigress's instincts on people were usually right, and indeed had proved to be true with the ladies of the shade before, he didn't want to end up losing a good friend Song. Deciding that there was nothing he could do to change Tigress's mind anyway, he turned his head back to looking forwards, doing his best not to fall too behind the much more nimble twin leopardesses running in parallel in front of him.

Tigress felt the strong urge to turn around and watch Po as he left, knowing that he most likely had been looking at her and simply wanting to show that she appreciated that he cared, but knowing how it might have looked to a woman who also had an interest in the black and white panda, she had to treat him as nothing more than another kung fu master for the duration of the mission, not so much as twitching an ear in his direction as he ran after the twins. The striped master had informed Crane to stay as close to Po as possible before they met up with the rest of the furious five though, just in case these leopards weren't trustworthy. She shivered inwardly as she was once again reminded that the presumably unfeeling, emotionless person she was now actively trying to portray in order to throw someone off was actually her not that long ago, despite never intentionally trying to be as such.

Now that left just the two female felines standing facing each other in the under the temporary shadow of a cloud currently passing over the moon. Rather than knowingly making things worse by pushing her luck and berating the snow leopardess further, Tigress turned around and started walking towards the high rock face next to them, speaking quietly to Song over her shoulder almost as a passing thought.

"If you can't keep up, then don't follow me up, just go and join the others scouting ahead. We'll be moving very fast and we'll be breathing thinner air than the rest, so it won't be easy to keep watch and keep going."

Behind the orange furred feline, Song just looked at the back of her signature red shirt as she replied in her usual calm voice, following the Kung Fu master promptly so that her would-be-rival didn't get the opportunity to tell her to hurry up.

"I assure you Tigress, I am perfectly capable of keeping up with you."

Without another word, Tigress tensed her legs and leapt up the entire height of the rock face in front of her in a single bound, grabbing onto the top of the ledge and spring-boarding herself towards the next peak as soon as she made contact with the hard rock on the top of the miniature sheer cliff. Once landed on her second perch, she looked behind her to check Song's progress, finding her making a series of smaller jumps in order to scale a similarly high rock face opposite her. As she watched her make a series of alternating bounds that incorporated both her legs and hands to throw herself forwards, the orange furred master couldn't help but admit that she had improved since they last met.

*At least she has the sense to spread out so we cover more ground* the striped master thought to herself.

Not wanting to spend any more time thinking about the snow leopard rather than her mission, she quickly turned her attention back increasing her pace to catch up with the rest of the group. With a powerful leap she catapulted herself clear over another higher mountain peak, coming to land perfectly on another rocky summit just beyond it, losing no momentum from the landing and quickly kicking herself away from it and towards the next one in a perfectly timed, graceful dive, crossing the tiny, incredibly high plateaus like they were nothing but stepping stones. She made sure to check her surroundings while she moved as thoroughly as she had been while waiting for the leopards to show up, taking in every little detail of the bare rocky ground below her for any evidence of movement, past or present, all in mid-air. If the years of fighting had taught her anything, it was that relaxing, even for a moment, while during a mission was likely going to be the only mistake you got the chance to make.

Jumping off a nearby plateau to begin running along a makeshift path made from the very top of the rocky wall, which was shaped similar to two waves crashing into each other as sea, Song started to think harder about the cold reception she had just experienced. Po had looked like he really wanted to get along with her like he had before, and had actually seemed quite pleased to see her at first, but before he could even speak, Tigress had interjected. She remembered Tigress to not be the trusting type, but the way she almost seemed to position herself in-between her and Po seemed a little odd.

*Maybe she was just protecting the dragon warrior in case we weren't who we said we were?* she thought to herself as she sprinted, never missing her footing as she sped over the cold mountaintops, *Possibly, but she had already met me before, and I doubt that she ever forgets a face. Perhaps she didn't trust us on this mission? That was obvious from the moment she started speaking, but that still doesn't explain why she was acting so protective of Po. Could it be that she has a romantic interest in Po?*

The leopardess rolled this thought around in her head a few times to see if it fit, it seemed both completely implausible and the most likely explanation at the same time.

*She never made any move that would suggest she liked Po when I met her at the palace before, but she didn't strike as the kind that was very good at expressing their feelings other than hatred, the 'hardcore' type as Po would put it. With her standards for everything else, she probably wouldn't settle for anything less than a 19 year-old, secretly virgin male Tiger stripper with a secret love for her since his childhood, but then again Po was always the lovable happy-go-lucky guy at the palace, and there's no way that she could possibly be that cold and reserved all the time, so maybe it's a case of opposites attracting? No, Po would have to have done something really big to have earned those kind of feelings from her. I'll keep an eye on her just to be sure though, I'm not going to give up the nicest guy in China without a fight*

Silencing those thoughts in her mind, she continued running, catching sight of the handsome panda somewhere ahead, she redoubled her pace, failing to notice the striped feline travelling parallel to her over the rock-faces doing the same. Considering what they might have done if either of them had noticed the other, it was probably for the best that they didn't. For now they just kept a lookout for anyone and everyone that might want to kill them or their friends travelling out of the valley below them, knowing full well that they would be meeting them soon, continuing to do so until the morning light broke many hours later, forcing them to travel down to the same level as their allies to ensure they weren't spotted.

---

*One day later, just after midnight*

Just like the night that had come before it, it was a calm, still night with an almost complete absence of movement anywhere you looked, with barely a single cloud in the sky. There was only a gentle wind blowing through the higher regions of the mountains, which also happed to come from the direction of the valley bringing warmer up to usually colder heights a welcome break from the usually ever-present crosswinds that came with the altitude. Added to this was the fact that it was nearly a full moon, making it the perfect night to safely go out on a walk, that is, if you were both brave and strong enough to fend off the muggers and would-be-thieves known to dwell in this area of the mountains.

Of course this didn't apply if you happened to be one of those people out looking for someone to mug. For this particular caste of traveller, the night was absolutely ideal; still enough to hear anyone's footsteps on the hard rock no matter which direction they were in, a moon bright enough to allow you to spot someone miles in the distance whether you were following them or they were following you, and thanks to the high altitude making it next to impossible for many plants to grow, it was easy to pick out the scent of anybody trying to hide as there was virtually nothing there to mask it.

All of these things put together were the reasons that a young male wolf bandit by the name of Yong had decided to make an outing on this evening. Relatively un-seasoned compared to many of the bandits that formed the gang he was in, the beginner was right at the bottom of the pecking order, which meant that if he was to keep anything of any value or even of any use that he found, he had to get it without anyone else noticing. This meant that he also had to avoid the usual 'hunting grounds' of the rest of the gang.

The colder temperatures of the cloudless night made hardly any impact on him thanks to his thick black fur, but the warm black top and pants he wore didn't hurt either. He was playing it safe tonight and keeping to the shadows as much as possible, seeing as he was pretty average in stature and build for a wolf, and there were much larger bandits than himself in the area; sure he was part of the most feared gang of bandits in the area, but that wouldn't count for anything if he was caught by another bandit as he was currently not a major asset to the gang anyway, and would most likely not even be considered a loss if he was killed. Consequently, he didn't feel too bad about keeping a few of the good things to himself behind their backs.

His keen brown eyes scanned the small pass that he had just reached; it was a small clearing with a fresh-water spring in the middle of it, grass and other various plant-life just starting to take over from the lichen that had grown over the rocks nearby thanks to natural succession, and only one other exit visible some distance in front of him with high mountains walling the clearing on either side.

This place wasn't known to many people up in these parts, in fact, only he knew of it in his entire group, making it the perfect place to find unsuspecting prey who had settled down for the night without anyone else interfering. Up in the mountains, food and water were the main concerns for any day, with food being supplied by raiding villages and travellers while the springs and rivers providing fresh water; the mountains actually had quite a few larger springs juxtaposed within them, but these were all part of various occupied territories, and the rivers were patrolled by Imperial soldiers so skulking around them was suicide, but this small spring however, was yet to be taken by any one of the gangs in the area. In Yong's experience, sometimes travellers passing through the mountains would camp near it so that they had fresh water to drink or wash themselves with in the morning. Upon surveying the entire clearing carefully from the shadow of a large rock-face, he discovered to his delight that just such a traveller was present.

Over in a far corner, nestled right against the tall grey rocks, Yong spotted what appeared to be a moderately sized sleeping bag, and a clumped black mass of charred twigs and cinders close to it indicating the remains of a fire. Close by was what appeared to be a slightly smaller bag, probably containing the belongings of whoever was currently resting in the sleeping bag, as indicated by the gentle raising and lowing coming from beneath the dark brown leather. There seemed to be no-one else on guard duty, in fact it appeared that this traveller was alone, a perfect target.

Keeping as quiet as possible, Yong decided to creep closer, skipping from each possible hiding place that kept him out of sight from the direction of whoever had set up camp. Luckily for Yong, the mountainous walls of this clearing were incredibly rough from years of erosion due to exposure to the elements, providing many deep crevices that were big enough for someone to squeeze into so long as they didn't mind the moss and countless sharp fallen rocks. Once he was within 50 metres of the figure he started to detect a faint scent reaching him on the breeze, it was so sparse in the air that it could almost be ignored but it was unmistakeable to a being with a keen a sense of smell as his: the scent of a female.

Yong licked his lips in anticipation as he double-checked that there were no other figures around the camp site or at the entrances to the clearing, finding himself alone save for his intended victim. Satisfied that this woman was not going to be getting help any time soon, he began to lustily eye up the covered figure again, this time taking note of the easily perceivable curves and round bump right where her rump lay, incurring a definite stirring in his loins as he imagined what lay beneath. Taking a deep breath of her scent, he made a quick dash to the last remaining bit of cover between him and the still covered figure, a sizeable boulder that left only a few metres between him and the woman lying in front of him. He could have easily just grabbed her sack of belongings and ran, they were virtually within arm's reach of him from here, and she would doubtlessly have had food with her, but that deep primal craving he felt from looking more closely at the woman sleeping in her warm sleeping bag changed his mind in an instant.

She was a beautiful female snow leopard, with light silver fur with dark grey spots that looked to be in very good condition, and an enchanting face that we was fortunate enough to see from this angle, confirming that her eyelids were closed as she slumbered peacefully. Her cute lips parted to allow a pink healthy tongue to lick them in her sleep, Yong sorely wishing to part them with something else pink in the near future. To his joy, she suddenly turned over in her sleep, leaving her back facing towards him, rendering her completely helpless in plain view of the horny, and most certainly not well-intentioned male; it was just too good an opportunity to miss, considering he might not get the chance to do this for months if he let it pass now. Besides, when was he ever going to find a woman this good-looking travelling alone again, especially when he wasn't the only one looking around for one?

With a quick sprint across the cold stone from his hiding place, Yong leapt upon her as she lay in her sleeping bag in an instant, simultaneously gripping the back of her head and turning it around to face the cold rocky ground as he forced it downwards with his left arm while pinning her body inside the sleeping bag with his legs. Not allowing the surprized female the chance to retaliate, he quickly gripped and pulled the rope chord that was woven onto the mouth of the leather bag, pulling the entrance tightly closed, preventing her from pulling her arms and legs free of it until he released his hold on it. He next moved his hand from the back of her head forwards to cover her muzzle, pre-empting that she would likely try to cause a fuss to get loose and stopping her from calling out for help. Unable to resist his rampaging hormones now that he was able to breathe in in her female scent this closely, Yong began to lewdly grind his nether regions against the crevice of her firm butt through the fabric of his clothes and the small sack, testing the firmness of her cheeks in his own degrading way.

Once the young dark-furred wolf was satisfied that he was in control of the situation, he reached down to the front of his pants and began undoing the buttons concealed there as he leant forwards to whisper into the cute black ear of his unwilling soon-to-be partner.

"Sorry darling, but I've waited far too long for this to let a hot piece of ass like you go, and boy am I going to put that hot ass of yours to work baby. Who knows, maybe I'll even give you a little something to remind you of me 8 or 9 nine months from now if you're lucky. I promise you, I won't be pulling out no matter how much you squirm."

As if seeking to prove this point, at that moment his average sized 6 inch canine member popped out from its confines, the bright red shaft bouncing excitedly at the promise of the warm and tight caress of her womanhood yet to come. Without relaxing his firm grip on the snow leopard or shifting the knees he'd firmly placed on the sleeping bag, the aroused wolf bandit shifted his free hand behind his back; making one more check around the clearing to see that nobody was around to disturb them, he gripped a hidden wooden handle in his tunic and pulled out a small curved dagger that he'd concealed there. It might have not looked like much to some, but the dark red stains around the handle that he had been unable to wash away spoke for themselves of its successful use.

Reaching down with the dagger, he cut a vertical slit in the sleeping bag just below the mounds of her rear, slicing it apart cleanly in one slow stroke before stashing the dagger back into its hiding place somewhere on his back. He was glad that the woman seemed to be aware enough of her situation that she didn't try to thrash about while he did this, making the task that much easier. Spreading the thin hole in the fabric open with his fingers, he was greeted with the sight of a very nicely shaped female bottom, hints of the soft white fur residing between those firm cheeks as opposed to the silver fur adorning everywhere else showing at the edges of a set of lacy black panties, the garment only partially concealing her succulent assets. It was the single hottest ass he'd ever seen on a woman of any species, and he wasn't ashamed to say that he actually drooled at the sight of it.

"Mmmmmhh, very nice lady." the horny wolf continued, "If you behave yourself and let me get what I want from you, I might just keep you around for a while so I can get something like that on tap, hehe. I bet you'd rather have some free attention and shelter rather than risk running into guys that aren't quite as nice as me."

Before he could even try to reach his black paw down and touch her panties however, a long, grey-spotted slender tail that he had completely forgotten about shot out of the small hole he'd made in the sleeping bag like a striking snake, the tip of it hitting him dead in the open eye, sending the young thief reeling backwards in pain, clutching his injured eye with both hands as he grit his teeth to keep himself from screaming. It was a perfectly timed attack, catching him right at the moment he let his guard down, and he mentally cursed himself for not restraining her tail earlier. A moment later he heard the sound of leather being unceremoniously torn apart, and with his remaining good eye, he looked over from between his clutched fingers to see his former quarry now smoothly getting to her feet, comfortably dusting herself off for a moment with her paws and pulling up her long black pants that he hadn't noticed she was wearing inside the bag, and despite the pain he was in he could help but feel a twinge of disappointment when he saw that she was wearing a tight fitting red shirt instead of going bear-chested. He had to admit that her figure was even better than he had given her credit for at first; such a slender form with curves in all the right places, her visage even putting the parchment portraits he'd stolen to shame.

The sight of the radiant feline calmly dusting herself off before turning to face him fully clothed suddenly made something click inside Yong's brain. Nobody would sleep inside a sleeping bag fully clothed at night, as that defeated the purpose of bringing it in the first place, and more to the point, her general demeanour wasn't sloppy or slouched as you would expect from someone who had just been woken up, and she wasn't even blinking frequently to clear her vision; she hadn't been asleep when he'd jumped her, otherwise she would have at least tried to scream or shout for help out of pure instinct, but she hadn't uttered a squeak thus far even now that she was free of him. More to the point, the fact that she wasn't attempting to run away or alert anyone else who might be listening was beginning to convince him that she had been expecting him, or at least a thief in general. Taking a quick look around the clearing behind him, he noted that there were plenty of better locations, even in this little untouched clearing, for her to place herself so that she wouldn't be spotted, but instead she had chosen to lay down right in an area that would left in clear view once the moon reached a certain position in the night sky. Even the most oblivious of travellers would have chosen a better spot than she had.

His heart sank like a lead Chinese balloon as the seductively shaped leopardess started to walk menacingly towards him, cracking her knuckles together underneath a pair of brown gloves and flexing her grey-spotted arms, displaying a very intimidating set of biceps in the process. Ignoring his injured eye and his still-hard member which was currently bobbing in from of him still hoping forlornly to be tended to, Yong decided to cut his losses and make a run for it, not wanting to wait and find out what this lady's punishment entailed. He'd already made the stupid mistake of not considering his target a threat, and despite the fact that she was a woman, he knew that three members of the furious five were also female; he wouldn't be surprised if she was one of those secret Kung Fu masters that never went for the high life and trained by beating up those idiotic enough to try and rob them. The young wolf had no intentions of becoming a training dummy

Sadly, he never got the chance to even walk away from her; the instant he comprehended running away, he heard two soft impacts on the cold stone surface behind him before his arms were suddenly restrained and bent tightly behind his back, his shins were kicked out from under him causing the wolf to land painfully on his knees and he felt a strong hand roughly grab the hair on the back of his head, forcing him to look at the approaching leopardess in front of him.

"Hello little boy" she spoke in soft yet dark tone, her voice as smooth as sweet milk to the ears, "my name is Song. I think that you have something that I want, and you are going to give it to me."

Trying to think quickly, Yong went through all the escape plans that he could think of, but every one of them came up short. Settling on going along with the leopardess for now and waiting for an opening, Yong decided the best way to create such an opening was to be coarse with her. Grinning wolfishly (quite an easy feat for him) Yong began to reply in a cocky manner, "Well I was about to give it to you sweet-cheeks if you'd just-"

"I am not referring to your meagre manhood." the slender female replied flatly, tail flicking in an irritated manner, "I have seen far better examples of your species where it matters I assure you, and you don't even come close to half the size of the man in my heart."

Yong's ears flattened and his tail curled right between his legs at the very personal insult, what little of his ego remaining within him retreating to his subconscious for now. Her angry blue eyes suggested that he make no further attempts at pushing his luck, and considering that she was not alone and he was already restrained with his junk hanging out in plain view, he decided to follow her unspoken advice.

"What do you want from me then?" he almost whispered, knowing that there was no one coming to his aid, and that even if he was found the best he could hope for was to be mugged and left for dead once this leopardess had left.

"I want a map of all the routes you know to your bandit gang's stronghold. I also want you to tell me everything you know about the other bandits in your gang, how many there are, what species, their age, everything you know." Song replied sternly.

"Are you crazy?" Yong exclaimed, hardly able to believe what he was hearing, "Our chief will kill me if he finds out that I gave away our location to anyone, let alone giving away any information on his gang, and even if I did tell you how to get there you'd be trussed up and tied down for all the men to use as they wish the moment you stepped through the front gates."

"Then I'll be sure not to use the front gates." the silver-furred feline stated in a tone of voice that demanded absolutely no argument. Next, Song leant in very close to Yong's face, so close that he could see his own face reflected in her icy blue eyes, and made a simple direct order to the frightened youngster.

"You will give us a map of the mountains around your stronghold, the number of bandits you've seen there, what species they are, and the main patrol routes they take; in return, we will take you to the valley guards who will assess whether you will a threat to the people of the valley. If they are satisfied, you will be allowed to live under the protection of the furious five and the dragon warrior, once you've undergone a series of tests that prove you're sorry about the life you've led up here as a bandit, but if you fail then you will be sent to the imperial prison until you have served out the time for your crimes. You can either do this politely and help a lady in her time of need-" Yong felt one of the people restraining him shift behind his back, then he felt another gloved paw take a painfully firm grip of his still erect penis as Song finished her sentence, "-or we can pull that thing off as punishment for trying to rape a member of the Emperor's guard. It's your choice."

Yong gulped loudly as cold sweat dripped down his forehead, the inexperienced bandit quickly accepting her terms as he began to spout all that he could remember about the mountaintop stronghold.

*A short distance away, at the mouth of a concealed cave higher up in the mountains.*

Po looked tiredly out across the rocky landscape visible from his position at the mouth of the high cave he was in, being careful not to shift about unintentionally as he did so, lest someone he hadn't seen spot his easily identifiable black and white fur pattern. He hadn't caught sight of anyone in moving since Song and the twins left to try and ambush one of the bandits about an hour ago, but neither had heard any signs of a struggle, which suggested that they hadn't run into trouble yet; he still felt quite uneasy about letting just the three of them go off on their own to try an capture someone who'd been living in these mountains for years, but he knew that he really wouldn't be fast enough to keep up with them if he went, and they couldn't risk one of the furious five being spotted before they reached their destination. Besides, from the looks of them, they'd been put through some serious training to become the new imperial guards, and they were far from pushovers to begin with, so maybe he should feel sorry for whoever tried to rob them?

Despite being quite tired from the long day and having to stay up hours longer than anyone else as he volunteered to take first watch, he didn't dare yawn until his shift was finished, understanding the danger of the place he was in right now. He still had to admit that it was so hard to resist the temptation to burp out loud and see how long the echo lasted with all the hard flat surfaces around.

For the first full day in the mountains, they had made far better progress than expected, with Leehra being able to provide a very good layout of the easier and much more hidden routes through the terrain that she'd used to get to the valley in the first place. She had also explained that she although she had arrived at the palace looking the worse for wear thanks to being attacked by a bandit, she had in fact been ambushed as she left the mountains, and hadn't been spotted on the journey through them, making her route perfect for their mission. However, as nobody had attempted this kind of retaliation before nobody from Nehabatou knew the exact location of the bandit stronghold, so as a group, they had made the decision to move into bandit territory and interrogate one of the scouts.

Getting to the cave they were resting in for the night had also been problem free on the whole. Earlier in the day, Master viper had spotted a bandit moving towards them through the pass they were taking and managed to subdue him easily by springing upon him from behind a rock and knocking him out before he even had chance to gasp in surprise. As it turned out, he wasn't from the correct gang of thieves they were looking for, so he wasn't of any use to them anyway. He'd wake up some time next morning with the mother of all headaches to find all of his weapons missing, leaving him much less of a threat to anyone else in the mountain passes. Other than that, they'd made sure to cover their tracks so nobody could follow them, but then again, up here in the mountains, they made very little tracks on the hard stone that required covering.

One advantage they did have at night is that unlike the bandits around here they all washed regularly, meaning they their natural scents were very subdued and hard to pinpoint, whereas you could smell a bandit coming from his body odour alone from a mile away.

Behind Po, further inside the cave, lay the rest of their group, most of them taking a well-earned rest while a few of them (like Po) stayed alert in case something happened during the night. Currently it was just himself, Leehra and Master Crane still awake from the jade palace, while Xi-fan was the only one still awake out of the group from the imperial palace guard. Granted that Leehra and Xi-fan were currently much, much deeper in the cave, bathing using some water that they had managed to bring up in refillable, water-proof leather canteens from a nearby stream. Fortunately the stream was also out of sight of the main trails in the mountains, so it wouldn't be too risky to refill them in the morning. The rest of them had already taken it in turns bathing at the stream, but Leehra and Xi-fan had been elected as lookouts, on the agreement that they would carry enough water with to wash properly once they stopped for the night.

In the midst of taking what felt like his 27 millionth look at the same empty surroundings, Po heard someone walking up behind him. It didn't particularly worry him, as just behind him were some of the most fearsome warriors on the planet, i.e. his friends, so it was very unlikely to be someone who meant him harm. Turning his head to look over his shoulder, he was greeted with the sight of Master Crane flexing his wings as he crept out of the near-total darkness of the cave, his signature broad hat in place despite the late hour. The tall Kung-Fu master stepped forwards and took a quick look at the jagged lands sprawled out in front of them before sitting down a few feet away from Po, nodding kindly to the black and white panda as he settled down for his portion of the night shift.

Keeping his mouth shut as he moved, Po slowly got up and silently slunk back inside the cave, giving Master Crane a friendly wave as he did so, although he knew that the large bird couldn't return it while on watch. It took a few seconds for Po's eyes to adjust to the much darker environment of the cave, having had the fairly bright moonlight to help him see outside, but soon enough the area around him began to come into focus. He was glad to see the relaxed faces of his comrades, the furious five, when he managed to make his way over to where they were sleeping, doing his best to make no noise as he too seated himself on a soft mat next to them to get some rest. The two leopardesses that had been elected to sleep through the night were currently slumbering soundly on the other side of the cave, tails curled around their waists to prevent them being stepped on in the dark.

Looking over to his right, the kind-hearted panda smiled warmly as he gazed at Tigress's peaceful face as she slept. He knew that despite her appearance she was a very light sleeper, ready to strike out in an instant at anyone attempting to sneak up on her. She always seemed to put a lot of pressure on herself as a group leader, having to make all the important decisions that could result in life or death, and dealing with the consequences if she made the wrong one; maybe that was why she had been so unwilling to allow Song that control, maybe she'd just become so used to bearing that weight herself that it felt unnatural for her to share it?

Reaching into his rucksack that had been laid beside his bed-mat, he quietly pulled out an almond cookie that he had stashed inside it, and carefully placed it next to Tigress's pillow, actually holding his breath as he set it down, just in case Tigress leapt up and kicked his ass out of instinct. He may be the dragon warrior, but Tigress was easily still a match for him when he wasn't 'in the zone', and he never really felt the urge to beat up the beautiful orange furred feline anyway. The panda let out a small sigh once he was sure that his beautiful striped friend wasn't about to launch a surprise roundhouse kick at his face, pulling his hand away and lying back on the mat, the toll that the long day and gruelling hike had taken on his body finally catching up with him and sending him to sleep within a few short minutes.

Just as he slipped into his slumber, unnoticed by Po, Master Tigress opened one of her eyes just a fraction, looking at the exhausted panda lying a few short feet away from her, letting a warm smile spread across her striped muzzle before closing her eyelids again.

*In the Back of the cave*

Further down inside the darker recesses of the cave, in a secluded area littered with stalactites and stalagmites, lit only with a few wax candles that had been placed around the floor, lay the impromptu bathing area for those who hadn't had chance during the day. It was here that Leehra and Xi-fan were currently washing their fur before they slept for the night, as they would have to move very quickly in the morning to reach the stronghold by tomorrow night, leaving no time to bathe before they left. Both women were stripped down to a single item of their undergarments, with Leehra only wearing a set of black lace panties that clung to her firm backside like body paint, while Xi-fan wore a simple white pair devoid of any decoration. Neither of them were wearing the bandages that they normallyused to cover their bust, as they removed them to replace them with fresh ones once they were finished bathing. This would have provided quite the display to a straight male if he were watching, with Leehra's large white breasts jostling proudly as she moved with her black nipples clearly visible against her fur, whilst Xi-fan's smaller yet perky pair also bore white fur but demonstrated cute pink nipples instead. Leehra had already finished cleaning her fur, having been used to washing very quickly with all the practice she got near her village with the colder temperatures, and was at that moment currently drying herself off as best she could with a towel she'd brought, while Xi-fan was still washing her tail with meticulous care in the soft yellow light using a comb she'd produced from her pocket.

The gorgeous red panda had to admit that she felt a certain sense of confidence in being naked in front of the snow leopard; with her soft red fur covering most of her limbs (save for her hands and feet, which bore pitch black fur instead), the similarly smooth snow white fur covering her face (along with the symmetrical red markings below her eyes), chest, abdomen and on the more private regions between her legs, she made quite the colourful contrast to the white, black and grey leopardess, not to say that she was any less of a beauty. Despite doing her best to conceal it as reaching down for another water container or for the soap, Leehra managed to catch Xi-fan sneaking a look at her chest while the red panda was drying her legs off, an expression of mild jealousy on her face as she beheld the red panda's bountiful 'frontage'.

Leehra really didn't mind it in the least, but neither did she feel that dark twinge of pride that she knew a lot of other women got when they saw that they had bigger boobs than another girl. She felt it was something women were born with and so had no control over it anyway, much in the same way people couldn't control their height, or fur colour, or even their gender. Poking fun at others for what they didn't have only seemed to reveal that person's own insecurity in her mind, and despite not being a giant panda, Leehra had been pleased to put many of these said 'show-offs' back in their place back in the female baths in Nehabatou; smaller species or not, her large round orbs had out-classed many of the other married women, but as there were no red panda males, she had never really come across as their ideal taste, and become something of a 'consolation girlfriend'. She was glad that had changed now she met had Po.

It wasn't like the red panda didn't sneak a few looks at the snow leopard as she washed either, a good looking woman was a good looking woman after all. Many years of failed relationships with self-confident men (prior to meeting Po of course) had resulted in her bisexual nature taking hold on numerous occasions. She had been more than willing to experiment with women once in a while, and with the sole exception of the lovable panda she was in love with, she had always found female partners to be far more dexterous in bed, as they had the same body as her so they knew how to work it. It had only taken her a short while after her first encounter with a woman before she decided to turn openly bisexual for good, as there were far more women available than men anyway. She had also come to develop a specific taste in women just as she had come to have a taste in men, and she was delighted to find all of the right things in the leopardess cleaning herself next to her. The leopardess had a really nice bum, with strong muscular cheeks that curved very smoothly into her sleek yet strong thighs, but parting just enough to allow the red panda a glance at her pink nether lips. Checking that Xi-fan was still looking away from her first, Leehra licked her lips at the enticing sight.

As women went, Xi-fan was a knockout, and the red panda couldn't deny that she wouldn't mind getting a chance to taste her sometime.

Leehra was careful not to give the slender leopardess any hints as to what she was thinking however, keeping herself calm and collected as she finished drying herself off. Not all females were appreciative of longing glances from the same sex. Having seen enough to put that nice bottom of hers in her memory, Leehra folded the now damp towel she had been using and placed it near the water containers before walking over to the her pile of clothes just a few feet away and starting to re-dress herself. There was still a tiny bit of moisture left in her fur, but nothing to be concerned with.

"Thanks again for helping to carry the water Xi-fan, I'm going to get some sleep now, okay?" the red panda politely spoke back to the still-washing leopardess over her shoulder, who in turn turned her head to appraise the attractive red panda before replying.

"It was my pleasure to help, Leehra." Xi-fan spoke, letting her eyes linger on Leehra for a few moments more before she continued.

"Do you mind if I make a suggestion to you before you go?"

"Sure, what is it?" Leehra replied, intrigued by the unusual request.

Xi-fan now turned to face the red panda, showing off every inch of her dripping wet body in full glory to the other woman unashamedly. Leehra couldn't help but stare for a few moments at the fantastic display of feminine grace displayed before here, instantly understanding how so the 'ladies of the shade' had managed to hypnotise so many men with their exotic dancing. She even felt slightly jealous of the flat stomach that she'd managed to maintain.

"If you wish to look at my body in future, then just ask." Xi-fan stated calmly, catching Leehra off guard, "I won't mind, so long as you let me take a peek in return."

Momentarily surprised at being found out by the now smirking leopardess, Leehra's eyes made a quick search of the small cave to see how she could have known. Unable to find anything like a small mirror, an exposed knife or even a piece of metal body armor, her eyes sunk to the floor, whereupon a broad smile crept onto the red panda's face.

All the indents in the stone floor around them were covered in small puddles where the water had collected, providing many smooth reflective surfaces that could have easily allowed Xi-fan to keep an eye on the red panda. Leehra noted however, that the leopardess didn't seem at all displeased with being looked at by another woman, and the open invitation to look again told her all she needed to know about what her preferences were.

"I thought that you might swing my way." the red panda teased, a coy smirk gracing her face as she pulled her pants back up with the leopardess watching with rapt interest all the while, tightening the belt that ran through the straps at the waistline of her pants after pulling them up.

"Ooooooh, is that an offer I'm hearing?" Xi-fan retorted, still making no attempt to hide her fully exposed and dripping wet dancer's body while the other woman re-dressed.

Picking up a fresh set of bandages and starting to re-tie them around her bountiful bust, Leehra shook her head in reply. "Sorry Xi-fan, but I go both ways, and I'm taken at the moment."

"He or a she?" the leopardess asked.

"It's a he." Leehra answered, "Also, feel free to call me crazy on this, but I think that he's 'the one for me', you know? It sounds so pathetically romantic I know but, out of all the relationships I've had, this is first one where there's nothing about it that I would change about my partner. He's everything I could ask for, and I really don't want to lose that."

"Oh, well I'm certainly not going to try and break that up." Xi-fan quickly replied, although not without a hint of disappointment in her voice, "I'm sorry, it's just that when I saw how gorgeous you looked without your clothes in the way, I wanted to ask you for some time alone after the mission is over. I have to admit, I do go both ways as well, although I'm more into women nowadays. I still think that the most incredible feeling you can get from having sex though is the feeling of having a man unload himself inside you. They just look so cute when they're unable to hide how much you've turned them on, all quivering as they hold themselves inside until they're done."

Leehra blushed deeply as she remembered her first night with Po, where he had pretty much done just that to her. Even with the amount of experience she'd had, Po had succeeded in giving her one of the most pleasurable experiences of her entire life, surpassing all of her previous lovers in a few short minutes. She still clearly remembered the feeling of his warm semen filling up every available space inside her as he mated her doggystyle, right up to the point where it could fill her no more and began to pour back out and trickle down her thighs in long white trails.

"Don't I know it." the red panda agreed, remembering that pleasant night, "If you'd like I might be able to convince him to let you in on some of our fun in the future. We have a sort of unique relationship, and we don't mind having guest appearances now and then."

In response to this, Xi-fan seemed to genuinely consider this proposal for a few seconds before she chuckled light-heartedly, turning her attention to finding an un-used towel to dry herself off as she continued their conversation.

"I really do appreciate the offer Leehra, really, but I'm afraid that I only swing one way these days; too many bad boyfriends that only wanted love to be one-way kind of spoilt it for me, and if this man is as nice as you say he is, then I might end up getting too attached. I'm happy with the way I am right now, and I'm not ready to stick to just one stable partner. Women are what do it for me, with their swinging hips, their juicy lips, and the way that you can easily convince so many of them to just lie back and take it. An added bonus is that you don't risk getting pregnant after a night getting dirty with them if they have a rather short fuse, know what I mean? Not that I'm saying anything about your man, you understand."

"I understand perfectly." Leehra replied while tying off a knot, "I have to admit, I really enjoy girl-on-girl fun myself, I was just curious because I think that he's earned a little extra reward for his patience recently."

"Hmm? How so," the snow leopardess asked, her curiosity piqued by the red panda's statement.

Leehra waited until she had finished tying the last of her bandages before she replied this time, wanting to finish her task quickly so that she wouldn't have to continually look down in front of her. The task completed within a few moments of fiddling, the white bands of fabric encased her entire upper chest tightly for the sake of manoeuvrability, and to a lesser extent to keep herself looking decent around others. The size of her 'assets' left a very noticeable cleavage when they weren't restrained like this. Satisfied with her improvised solution, she replied to the leopardess as she reached over for her light brown tunic, sliding her arms through the short sleeves of the garment during mid-sentence.

"Well, we've both been pretty busy with this mission these last few weeks. My responsibility is to lead you and the five as close as I can to the bandit stronghold, and then once you're there I am going to put a stop to the threat they pose to my village. As for my partner, he -" Leehra paused for a split second, stopping herself from continuing her sentence before she could unwittingly give away the fact that her partner was the dragon warrior. It wasn't that she felt she couldn't trust this leopardess, but the fact that she simply couldn't risk the knowledge accidentally getting out right now.

Thinking quickly on the spot, she soon had a suitably convincing explanation made up in her head, "-well, he's had a lot of weight put on his shoulders with the whole operation. He's the guy who was put in charge of the mop-up operation afterwards, you know, making sure there's nobody we missed on the way here and taking care of setting up the guard once we've left, all that sort of stuff. With all the other gangs in the area, he's had to prepare for weeks, and then the entire thing was moved forwards without him being informed, so he's had to complete a month's work in less than 2 days. We really haven't had much time to ourselves since he started preparations."

The red panda hoped that Xi-fan bought this lie, or at the very least didn't question it if she did suspect anything, because she honestly wasn't that convincing when she wasn't telling the truth. Unlike Tigress, who came across as the type of person who was very good at hiding her emotions on cue, or just in general for that matter, Leehra had always been the kind of person that had no problem letting others know how she felt. In her eyes, trying to hide how you felt was being dishonest to yourself and to others, and she'd lived her life by that moral up to now. It was another reason why it felt really unusual to have to keep things a secret between her, Tigress and Po, but she fully understood why they had to be kept so for the moment.

Looking back at the leopardess, she felt a small shiver run up her spine as she saw the suspicious, calculating look that had come over the slender feline's face as she too re-fastened her pants around her toned waist, having finished drying her fur while Leehra was talking. The red panda gulped quietly as the saw the leopardess flash her a knowing smirk, her expression that of a woman who had seen that kind of ploy used a million times already.

"Leehra, I don't think lying is in your nature. You may be a great martial artist, but you would be a really poor thief." Xi-fan responded, her smile expanding as she saw Leehra flatten her ears against her head at being caught, "Don't worry honey, you don't seem like the kind of woman who does things without a good reason to me. I'm not going to try and get something out of you that you don't want to share. My love life isn't any more attractive than yours; being homosexual still isn't accepted in this country yet like it is overseas, even if the rest of the ladies of the shade don't mind it at all. I'll say that for our group, we never saw anyone in our group as an outsider because of who they fell for. If you've fallen for someone you really shouldn't have, then it's none of my business, and I promise I won't point anyone in your direction so long as you return the favour to me. Just remember that forbidden relationships aren't easy to keep up no matter how much you might pretend it is, so you make absolutely sure that he's the one for you if you're going to all this effort for him."

Her small speech finished, Xi-fan cracked a warm smile in understanding as she continued getting dressed, making not attempt to pressure or scrutinise the younger red panda any further. As for Leehra, she had been certain that Po was the one for her since their first night together, and everything he'd done since then had only reinforced her decision. She knew what she was getting into from the beginning, and din't see any reason to stop now.

"Oh believe me, he's the kind of guy most women dream of Xi-fan, body and soul. Sometimes it's almost like he's determined to give me the better half of our relationship." Leehra commented.

"Oh? Do tell." Xi-fan purred, her curiosity once again peaked by the red panda's insinuation in the midst of bandaging her own breasts.

Taking a quick look down the cave to check that they weren't about to be disturbed, Leehra walked up to Xi-fan's side, motioning for the leopardess to lean in closer. Arching an eyebrow, Xi-fan did so, leaning forwards to allow the red panda lady to whisper quietly in her ear, using her black furred hand to cup her muzzle just to be sure they weren't overheard. Within seconds, Xi-fan felt her cheeks turning bright red at what she was hearing, hardly able to believe the syllables reaching her ears one-by-one.

"No way! He seriously did that for you and didn't ask you to go down on him afterwards?" the leopardess replied incredulously in a very hushed voice.

"Mmmh-hmm." Leehra replied, one of the most satisfied grins imaginable plastered over her face.

"Seriously though, not even a hand-job?" Xi-fan pressed.

"Didn't even get it out for me to play with." Leehra attested, still grinning from ear to ear.

"Wow. Well, if he's that generous even when he can't get any from you thanks to his job, then he's a real catch. Don't you dare let him go without a fight honey, there are so few men like him around that you can count them using your fingers and still have some to spare." Xi-fan replied, still amazed at what she'd just heard.

"I certainly don't plan on it." Leehra answered, pulling her head away from Xi-fan's ear and turning around to head back along the cave in the direction of her sleeping mat, calling over her shoulder to the leopardess as she left. "See you later, I'm going to go and get some sleep for tomorrow."

Behind her, Xi-fan gave her a friendly wave in return before she set about dressing herself as well, thoroughly invigorated from their personal talk.

Leehra felt the strong urge to shiver as she began to walk back along the cave, the left over dampness in her fur letting the cold air chill nearly all the way to her skin. It didn't matter how thorough she was with a towel, it would still take a few minutes at the least to allow her body heat to completely dry her fur out. Rather than dwell on it and spoil her good mood, she decided to think more on the offer that she had made to Xi-fan.

*mmmmmhh, it's such a shame that Tigress will want us to keep Po to ourselves, even if he doesn't physically touch another woman. I know why she's so protective of him, after all I nearly took him away from her myself, but she should know better than anyone that he's not going anywhere without her. Still, I'll bet that if I managed to convince her to let one woman join us for special occasions, Po would get a real kick out of seeing those leopardess sweet cat-cheeks pressed tightly against my face. Ah well, at least there's always the hope that I could talk Tigress into a three-way sometime.* she thought to herself as she walked, deciding that she'd postpone trying to convince Tigress to allow 'guest appearances' until they were a few months further down the line, and the striped feline was a little less possessive of Po. The striped feline had her heart in the right place, she was just scared of it getting damaged at the moment, the same as any woman would be.

A few steps later, some faint whispers started to reach Leehra's white-furred ears, coming from the direction of the darkness up ahead. Thanks to her keen sense of hearing, she was able to distinguish the voice of Song, the leader of the leopards helping them on the mission, from two other female voices, presumably another two leopards as she didn't recognise either of them.

Acting on instinct, Leehra quickly dived into very dark crevice right behind a rock to her left, where not even a faint spec of light fell upon the ground beneath her. Looking out from her hiding place with her cool blue eyes, she watched as three leopardesses slowly came into view, making their way down the cave in the direction of the bathing area she and Xi-fan had set up. Song, easily distinguishable from her red shirt, led the trio, while the other two, presumably the twins going by their identical facial patterns, followed closely behind her on either side. They spoke to each other in very quiet voices as they walked, not wanting to wake the others sleeping near the mouth of the cave.

"But Song," the leopardess on the left started, "are you sure that you can't wait until we return to the valley once this mission is over? You would have plenty of opportunities there once we're out of danger."

"No." Song replied instantly, "If I wait then there is every chance that I will get to him too late. We have been ordered back to the imperial city once our mission is over, just in case somebody noticed us leaving. Besides, he's the dragon warrior, and that's something that every woman in China wishes they could say about their husband, including that uptight orange feline in the furious five whether she wants to admit it or not. I didn't come all this way to see him again just to let an overly territorial tiger stop me from getting close to him."

Leehra had to cover her mouth to supress her gasp at what she heard. This lady was after Po as well, and from the sound of it, she and Po had been very close once. The red panda stayed perfectly quiet, looking very closely at the shapely dancers as she lay in wait, ears pricked forwards to hear every single syllable the three of them uttered.

The Leopardess on the left spoke up again, "I'll agree that he's the nicest guy we've ever met, he got us out of being thieves on the run and into working at the Imperial Palace where we never go hungry at night. All I'm saying is are you certain that you want him as a boyfriend? If it goes wrong then you'd be in seriously deep trouble with the furious five, and you've already been proposed to by hundreds of men since we moved into the Imperial palace. Compared to them, this panda seems like just another guy from the valley. One of the guys who proposed to you was even royalty himself!"

"He's the only one who ever looked at us without suspicion both before and after he knew we were thieves." Song responded, "When I first met him and started putting the moves on him, all he could think of was being the nice guy and showing me around the valley, more interested in making me happy than making out with me. He went out of his way to recommend us to the Emperor even though we had already caused him so much trouble by stealing the dragon chalice, and he never once tried to grab something he shouldn't while we were around, which is something we can't say for many men we've known. If there ever was a man that you could be sure wouldn't mistreat a woman, it would be him."

"I know that. But what I mean is, do you really think he's any good at giving a woman what she needs? I can't really see the big guy as having much opportunity to practice." The leopardess on the left prodded once again, causing Leehra to feel more than slightly annoyed at the personal jab at her lover. The curvaceous red panda knew from first-hand experience that this wasn't true, with Po being better with his hands than anyone else she'd ever met.

At this, Song merely turned her head to look at the questioning leopardess over her shoulder, flashing a knowing grin as she elaborated for her, "I wouldn't be so certain of that. In the time we've been away from the valley, I've been looking into our friend's exploits and personal life when I can get the chance, to make sure that he isn't getting so deep in trouble that we'd have to be called in. Aside from defending the valley from serious threats, like rouge members of the previous furious five, rival Kung Fu masters and even full scale invasions, I came across some very interesting information from two women who live, or in one case lived, in the valley themselves."

"Who were they?", the leopardess to Song's right asked curiously.

"One was a middle aged Hare lady who claimed to have had a long lasting relationship with a black and white panda, who I met at the docks in Edo a few months ago. The other was a Chinese mountain cat that I had to sneak into the valley to meet; as it happens she was the doctor that the furious five all like to visit when they are injured during practice, and sees them all on a regular basis. Both of them had some rather interesting information about Po that they were willing to share with me, so long as I was prepared to keep it to myself and away from ears attached to loose tongues." Song stated, maintaining her pleased grin all the while, but much to Leehra's surprise, she spoke with a warm passion that sounded as if she were reciting about an old friend rather than a possible boyfriend. This slightly worried the red panda, knowing Po's unintentional ability to charm people without knowing it.

"This doctor's name was Mei Ling. Whenever someone comes into her parlour with an injury, she is the one who personally sees to bandaging up most the patients, and she is always the one who treats the furious five if they come in, never one of her assistants. As it so happens, Po came in with an injured leg and two bruised shoulders about 5 months ago thanks to Master Tigress getting carried away and throwing him clean through a wall during training. Needless to say he needed bandaging up after that. This doctor had to get him to undress completely in order to fix up his bandages though, so she got a completely unrestricted view of his male equipment. According to her, Po's packing enough meat down there to make a fully grown stallion blush."

The two leopardess twins gasped lightly at the very graphic comparison, while Leehra grinned to herself from her hiding place, the red panda having seen and used it for herself.

*'Bigger than a stallion'? Humph, She must have only seen it when it's soft.*

"Seriously?! Are you sure that she wasn't exaggerating?" the leopardess on the left hurriedly inquired, hardly able to believe that such an average looking man could be hiding such a surprising gift.

In response, Song continued smiling nonchalantly as she continued with her explanation. "I'm certain, because the Hare lady who had openly admitted to sharing her body with him on numerous occasions said that he was even bigger than that. *giggle* And, although Mei Ling never attempted anything sexual with him, this lady seemed to be an old flame of his. She described his personality perfectly, from his love of eating and cooking right down to his childish obsession with Kung Fu."

Unnoticed by the trio of felines, within her cover the red panda who had been eavesdropping on them made a mental note to ask Po about this 'old flame'. The description of Po's habits fit him too perfectly to be a coincidence. Seeing as Tigress had never mentioned it to her either, there was a strong chance that in fact even she didn't know about her. Surely if the striped feline was concerned about living up to a past lover of his then she would have said so or at least mentioned a name.

"The strange thing is, I couldn't really place her." Song continued, now commanding the undivided attention of the two twins, "We all had to learn to pick up on someone's character quickly in order to survive, but she kept virtually all information about herself a secret. When I asked her what her business was, she just said that she had been asked back to China for a meeting with someone, and would be staying for a while until it was finished, but she seemed both pleased and sad as she said this, so the most I could be certain of was that she wasn't from China initially.

"Anyway, she was more than willing to talk about her experiences with a cute black and white panda, as they seemed to hold a special meaning for her. Although she never once mentioned his name or her own for that matter, there is only one panda in the entire valley of peace where they both lived, so it's impossible to be anybody else. According to her, our black and white friend has a real talent for making a woman feel wanted with his hands, and is more than capable of putting his silver tongue to other uses when the occasion calls for it. I know the look a woman gives when she recalls something she never wants to forget, and that was the look she gave me as she told me about her time with Po."

*That's my panda* Leehra thought to herself as she heard Song reiterate what she'd been told. *There's only one panda who has that kind of talent and can get that kind of emotional reaction from a woman.

"Hmm...well, if she was telling the truth then you won't have anything to worry about once you two are together." The leopardess to Song's right spoke up, "But you might have a problem getting closer to him with that large orange furred bodyguard of his in the way. We can't fight her; she's one of the furious five and his close friend, and if she reported it once the mission is over we'd be in serious trouble with the imperial magistrates when word gets back to them."

At this, Song turned to face this leopardess, keeping her voice low as she replied just in case it carried back down the cave towards the mouth where the others were resting. "Sooner or later, there will be an opportunity. When that opportunity comes I am going to take it, whether Tigress likes it or not. It's not against the law for the dragon warrior to share a bed with the captain of the imperial guard, and I have planned ahead in case she tries to intervene on social grounds."

Song paused for a moment before turning back around to walk in the direction of the bathing area with the twins in tow behind her. "The key is the Emperor himself, whose daughter is already a close friend of Po's. With the dragon warrior in a relationship with one of his leading officers, his position amongst the people of china would be increased tenfold overnight. You see, the dragon warrior is considered a force of nature that exists solely for the protection of the people, and has to be chosen from one amongst them and not above them. The title cannot be given to a warlord, Shogun, or any other person that already possesses a title of their own by the law of Kung Fu. The Emperor on the other hand, is given his title through birth-right, and nobody else can ever claim that title unless they overthrow his entire regime, and kill the emperor themselves. It wasn't that long ago that normal people were banned from even looking at an Emperor. He has never been considered a part of the masses, or at one with the people, and has never had to dirty his own hands with the work that we have, which makes a lot of people dislike him for his easy and relaxed lifestyle. By showing off to all of China that their own national hero is in love with one of his guarding ladies, he would be able to defuse a lot of this resistance to his rule, making it much easier for him to focus on ruling his country without widespread complaint from the masses. If she tried to prevent it, the emperor could order Tigress to give Po to me on a silver platter, and there would be nothing she could do to argue back under her oath as a master. Po deserves more than getting beaten up by a girl too ignorant to give him a chance as a boyfriend, and I will make sure he gets it. She won't stand a chance."

And with that, the three leopardesses quietly walked on down the cave, their subdued footsteps sounding on the cold stone floor as they rounded the corner some distance further back in the recesses of this temporary hideaway. Once the last of their grey spots had vanished around the corner from her view, the hidden red panda carefully extradited herself from the tiny crevice she had squeezed herself into, looking down the cold natural corridor in the direction the leopards had walked with a look of utter hopelessness on her face. Now more than ever she wished that she had agreed with Tigress on getting Po to stay behind.

Turning on the spot and making her way back towards their sleeping area, Leehra's shoulders shook in fear of losing the man she had fallen so hard for so quickly. She had never wanted to cry so badly as she wanted to right now, but knew that she couldn't. It would both hinder their mission if the droplets froze and clung to the fur around her eyes, and it would let everyone else know that something had seriously upset her. Right now, the only person she could trust enough to tell this to was Tigress, but even then there was so little that they could actually do. She couldn't tell Po outright, because as much as she loved him, she knew that he needed his mind focused on the mission or he could get seriously hurt as a consequence.

They were far from the valley, surrounded by bandit gangs that would be more than happy to get rid of them or worse if they knew where they were, and above all Leehra and Tigress couldn't risk revealing their relationship with Po yet. Song on the other hand, would be congratulated by the Emperor of China for doing the same. On top of this, from the way that she spoke so passionately of her beloved panda, she seemed to be just as genuinely in love with him as Tigress and herself were. With Po's kind-yet-oblivious nature pushing him to join them in this mission, he had left himself totally defenceless against her. The only thing left standing between Song and his heart was his own willpower, and as they had likely met before, and possibly been romantically involved before, she had every advantage imaginable.

Leehra sat down on her bed mat, looking over as Po and Tigress slept contently just next to her and found herself doing something she never thought she'd do.

She lay down and sorely wished that she could cry herself to sleep, only barely able to achieve a painfully lonely slumber.

To be continued...

Very soon...