Love of the Dragon Warrior

All my love

Po and Ella left the underground dance room sometime after noon and made their way back to the Jade Palace. Ella was still a bit unnerved by the mysterious shadowy figure in the trees and thus opted out of her original idea of eating at a restaurant with Po.

"Best to limit social activities to necessities until these guards take care of the problem," she told Po matter-of-factly as they started up the stairs of the Jade Palace. "But we'll have to do this again once everything is settled."

The two eventually made their way up the stairs with Po being forced to carry Ella when she got too tired. Once they got to the top, Ella left to freshen up and change clothes while Po collapsed in a heap by the door and tried to get his breath back. He was very glad Shifu had never had him carry anything up the stairs when he trained at the Jade Palace. Going up the stairs was difficult enough as it was for him; he couldn't imagine carrying extra weight on top of that. One would have thought he'd be used to it by now, but Po was coming to the conclusion that stairs were forever going to be his enemy. He sat there for a little bit trying to catch his breath and eventually got back the energy to stand up and make his way to the kitchen. To his surprise, he was greeted by Jai-Rong chopping up different vegetables and throwing them into a pan with some noodles. Some of the girls had also arrived early for lunch and were busy quietly chatting at the table, though they turned to greet Po when he showed up.

"Hey, you're okay!" Lu-Shi exclaimed happily. "I was expecting a look of utter boredom or utter despair!"

"I was expecting him to look pretty wan," Ordai jumped in.

"Nah, I'm alright," Po promised. "It was a very weird...very weird...morning. But..." Po paused, thought, and just shrugged and sighed. "Yeah, weird. That's the best way I can describe it."

He sat down at the table and asked if anyone had gone down to check on Lam since it was clear she hadn't yet returned to the Jade Palace.

"We don't even know where Lam is," Ordai told him. "Otherwise Ming wouldn't be lingering around the barracks waiting to get her apology."

Po's face fell. "She's in the barracks?" he asked.

"She went in this morning to wait for Lam to come back, and she took a book with her to camp out in front of the door," Jai-Rong told him from the stove. "Master Snow Leopard went to the barracks an hour ago to grab a game to play with Kay and she was still there, so....she's pretty serious."

Po sighed. "I'll make a note of that," he said, though this was more to himself.

"Have you seen Lam?" Ordai asked curiously.

"Yeah. I passed her and dad while Ella and I were out today. I didn't really get to say hi though. We got chased by a creepy mystery guy."

"What?!" everyone exclaimed.

"Didn't you catch him?!" Lu-Shi asked. "Was he ugly?!"

"We don't know who it is," Po explained. "Whoever it is, they're really sneaky. I didn't even realize he was following us until Ella pointed it out."

Ordai laughed. "Really?" she asked with an incredulous look on her face. "Ella tracked down a bad guy?"

"Surprisingly yeah. I told you it was a weird morning. Apparently Ella's really good at tricking bad guys into traps. She threw a water filled tea pot at him so one of the guards could track him down."

"Get out of here! Really?!" Lu-Shi exclaimed in shock.

Jai-Rong moved the pan off the hot stove and began dishing out bowls. "Well good for her, I guess. I wouldn't have guessed that based on how she acts. I thought she was more lazy. Of course, I guess it's not fair to make judgments since she hasn't been here that long," she noted.