Before Sunrise

Act II - Chapter V - Saffron Serenity

Author's Notes:

Why hello and good day to you all! Gosh, does it feel nice to be back with another act of Before Sunrise! I will advise all of you now that thanks to this being a new act, there will be an obviously associated time skip. I'm not exactly proud of having to do this considering I usually try to keep things consistent but think of Act I as a prelude for where our true story begins, with Act II serving as some reinforced foundation! This story, truth be told, ended up becoming far bigger than I was expecting it to be in my head and I am hoping to update it every month or two with four to six new chapters, which I am hoping to edit to my fullest capacity!

As for right now, these chapters are still fresh and as much as I do enjoy getting things off the press, I will have to warn you that there may be some inconsistencies here and there. As much as I do make attempts to go through every chapter and catch mistakes that I may make... Updating an entire fanfic with over 30K words of new content for people to enjoy would take a long time, I'm going to be cleaning everything up throughout the week and to correct some errors that I may have made along the way. We all make mistakes, it's all about learning, but it's also about being human and well... As much as one can wish they were a supercomputer, I do not have the capacity to manually comb through 30K words of writing within one day!

Maybe I should've held onto this for a little longer but hey! I'm excited to bring out these new chapters, it's been a month already! Okay, okay, as much as I do enjoy my rambles, I should probably let you lovely folk get into this latest release, shouldn't I? Alright, thank you all for your patience and your input, I hope you enjoy this latest act of adventures that I'm bringing out for you all and I shall see you on the other side!

Act II - Chapter V - Saffron Serenity

Two years had since passed since Po's fateful encounter with Tigress, an encounter that would not only shift the balance amidst the Jade Palace and the Valley of Peace but would have substantial ramifications for the entirety of China. Their adventure to witness the coronation of the Ferocious Four was relatively underwhelming and the pair of them would instead continue to hone in their craft as talented restaurant workers whilst practicing the basics of Kung Fu inside of Tigress' bedroom once the day had come to a close. As it turned out, the relatively underwhelming reveal of the Ferocious Four didn't take away from the fact they were aces at their own craft and at defending the valley by themselves, yet their attack strategy would often come at the brutal cost of leaving them vulnerable to pure brute-strength driven attacks considering they had no muscle leading them except for the times in which Master Shifu would accompany them to take down their foes.

Furthermore, the newly declared Ferocious Four happened to have the rather burdening responsibility of rushing to the villages of the Yangtze river, or those that remained ever since it had been flooded by an unseasonably moist summertime. The Ferocious Four couldn't do much whilst away from the Jade Palace and therefore, that left the protection of the valley up to Master Oogway, with the occasional visits from Master Shifu when he wasn't attempting to raise funds for those affected by the floods.

Therefore, this opened up the valley to numerous raids alongside a tsunami of instability, and many civilians soon had to abandon part of their trade. Sure, the valley still mostly functioned the same way, yet secure trading routes were hard to come by. A lot of people thankfully had retreated to the neighbouring Saffron Valley, of which their army was capable of defending the ridges of their borders against foreign foes. A massive cascade of irony soon fell upon the ageing tortoise which led the Jade Palace considering the Valley of Peace was presently anything but peaceful.

Yet, in spite of all of the chaos and the reduced visitations to the valley, life happened to continue pressing forth for two young chefs who had a knack for incorporating Kung Fu within their cooking regiment... At least, one of them. Tigress was still experiencing issues with her patience which often led to some mild outbursts whenever attempting to cook with Po, and Po often had to neutralise such an outburst using nothing more than his will as well as his own patience.