Kung Fu Panda: The Hunt For The Heir (OC x Tigress fanfic)

Chapter 20: Progress

It had been a day since Hunter's outburst in the Kitchen, and things seemed to have cooled down between the Five, Po and Hunter, although he still went about his day without interacting much if at all with any of them unless they approached him first to talk. He had at least stopped glaring at them like he had in the Training Hall after their rather brief apologies. If what happened still bothered him, he didn't let on to any of the group that it was the case.

However, he had seemingly taken extra precautions to avoid Tigress in particular since she and Viper ran into him on the way back from their night out. Both were just glad there were no... 'Incidents' this time around during their night out. They were sure Master Shifu had heard about last time and had let them off, but if it happened again he might instead caution them to bring their alcohol back to the Palace instead.

While that might be nice to do at some point, Viper wanted to actually get Tigress to leave the Palace once in a while for something other than a mission to protect the Valley. Tigress herself was actually warming to the idea of maybe taking weekly or monthly nights out on the town with Viper. It was... Rare that she felt more like a 'lady' and not a badass Kung Fu Master of The Jade Palace. She found she enjoyed the lack of pressure to maintain her image of the stoic warrior, even though she did it on instinct by now. 'Getting in touch with your feminine side' Viper had called it, although she wasn't sure she'd go quite that far. Although, as greasy and gross as those two guys were from the first time they went out, it was oddly refreshing to not be seen as Master Tigress but as just... Tigress. Po still treated the Five with some amount of reverence of course, but he was the first to bring out that side of Tigress that she didn't even know she had.

Tigress shook her head of her thoughts as she was currently running on pure instinct and muscle memory on The Seven Swinging Clubs of Instant Oblivion. She had completely mastered Shifu's training course by now, as had the rest of the Five, and even Po had much... MUCH less trouble than he did at first with the gauntlet. She turned her head upwards feeling something liquid splash on her head and spotted Hunter once again high up in the rafters, his legs hooked around the ironwood pole with him curling his upper body upwards as far as he could go before dropping and continuing the exercise over and over again. He had the weights strapped around his arms this time, weighing his upper body down much more than it would be.

Tigress wiped her paw over her head quickly, seeing it was blood that had landed on her forehead, quickly jumping to another rope to avoid a club while making sure she got the spot of blood out of her fur before it stained on her. They'd found him in the morning punching the metal-infused Ironwood bark once again, but this time around Hunter had stayed and moved onto his usual workout routine. She knew his exercises were some kind of strength builders and core strengtheners, but she wondered why he never seemed to practise his Martial Arts forms like the Five did. They constantly practised on the gauntlet and even against one another to hone their forms to perfection, while he seemed to simply focus on building up his strength. Tigress, perhaps more than any of the Five and even Po knew the value of strength and the importance it plays, especially in her own Tiger Form. But to her, simply building strength wasn't enough...

"Tigress? You good?" came the voice of Po, which brought her back to reality as she realised she had been staring up at Hunter while still practising on The Seven Swinging Clubs of Instant Oblivion for a good while now. At this point she didn't even need to look to be able to work on this part of the course as she easily backflipped onto the twisting rope nearest to the door and continued the flip to land on the ground on her feet while facing the training area before turning around to face Po. "It's totally badass the way you do that without even looking!" he exclaimed to her with a wide grin on his face.

Tigress gave a small smile and rolled her eyes at Po's fanboy attitude, but she did find it rather endearing that he still thought of her as a badass even though he himself was no slouch. "Thank you, Po." she nodded to him.