The Ticking Contingent: The Countdown vo.2

Cards On the table

True to her word, Mrs. Jun started working at the Jade Palace two weeks to the day that she was hired. Li and some of the villagers were quick to help her settle into a house down along the riverbed close to the Jade Palace, and once this was taken care of, she immediately went to work. The Jade Palace servants directed her to a nice little desk in one of the rooms in the Sacred Hall of Warriors where she got to work writing down incoming meetings Po needed to have, as well as Po's usual schedule of teaching the Five, teaching the villagers, and noting when Po had to interrupt his activities to fend off bandits and other evil personnel.

Something she noted quite frequently were any incidents regarding the bakery thieves, which was becoming a sore spot for Po and the Furious Five. When the thieves first struck, the masters had asked around to see if they had struck anywhere else, and it turned out that the answer was yes. They usually robbed several bakeries and restaurants in a particular province for two or three months, usually causing the owners to go out of business. Once the area was cleaned dry, they would move on to a completely different province and repeat the process all over again. What was so strange was that they never stole money or anything valuable. They stole bread, pastries, vegetables, fruit, noodles, and much more. The masters initially tried to set traps and catch them in the back of the alley when they tried to escape, but usually the mysterious thief leader would cause a distraction and the thieves would escape. And since the masters tried to keep the robbed bakeries in business by supplying them compensation, it didn't take long for the thieves to strike again.

One particular day, while pacing the Jade Palace trying to figure out what to do, Po decided to ask Mrs. Jun if she took any notes on the thieves. Mrs. Jun, being extremely organized and meticulous, took quite a bit of notes on the different incidents. She noted where they attacked, the days they attacked, the times, which bakeries or restaurants, and how the masters approached the issue and how the thieves vanished. A surprised and impressed Po looked over the notes and soon noticed something interesting: usually the thieves scattered about, grabbing the attention of every master until all six of them had them cornered into an alleyway. Then the leader would strike. On top of that, the thieves had robbed almost every single place on the map, since the masters didn't have an endless supply of money to offer compensation. The only place they hadn't attacked was Mr. Ping's noodle shop. And when Po saw everything clearly, he suddenly had a very interesting plan.

"You're going to let thieves rob my shop?!" Mr. Ping cried in shock. "How on earth is that going to help anything?!"

"It'll help a lot," Po promised. "I have a plan."

"Better than what we've been doing?" Mantis questioned.

The Furious Five were gathered in Mr. Ping's noodle shop enjoying a nice quiet breakfast before the rush of customers that came in. Po was excited to get there and put his new plan into action, so much so that he wanted to tell it in one go to everybody involved. Li was also there super early, though since he never got up before noon before, most of his contribution to the conversation was loudly yawning, falling asleep for a few minutes and snoring, and then suddenly jerking his head up with a startled, "huh-wha-where-who ate my dumplings?!" Currently he had fallen back to sleep on a table right between Tigress and Monkey.

"We've been seriously underestimating these bandits," Po admitted. "I think we're dealing with a legit crime syndicate, not just a ragtag group of thieves. They're very organized, they have a good element of surprise on their hands, and they obviously have a method to their madness. But we can give them a taste of their own medicine. We have a couple of surprises in our corner too. We just have to actually use them."

"Like what?" Mr. Ping asked.

"Well dad, you're full of surprises," Po told him, tossing a dumpling into his mouth and swallowing it. "We only got robbed once, remember? And you didn't know kung fu back then."