The Countdown: In Between the Lines

Up up and away!

The next morning when the masters woke up, Crane was nowhere to be found. There was no training for the day in order to accommodate for Mrs. Fan's frail heart, (As a precaution, Shifu and Crane had explained), so the masters were free to look around for any sign of their friend. It turned out that Crane and his mother had been having a long talk in the kitchen since the early hours of morning. The masters caught the tail end of a conversation concerning silk factories and fireworks right before they came in interrupting everything.

"You're up early," Po noted as his friends went to sit down at the table.

"Mom always gets up early," Crane explained. "I figured I'd get up with her so we could talk a little more."

"I used to work as a healer in our old village, so I'd get up at all hours," Mrs. Fan explained. "I can run on 3 hours of sleep every day. But I definitely prefer a full night's rest."

"I had a lot of trouble getting up early when I first came here," Po said sheepishly as he started on breakfast. "Shifu used to punish me so hard when I wouldn't get out of bed."

"You know, I've never understood that," Mantis admitted. "You used to work at the noodle shop with your dad from probably the second you were able to hold a spoon and yet somehow getting up early is an issue for you."

"It's easier to get out of bed when you can smell food," Po admitted. "Dad would always get up early and start the noodles and that would wake me up. So when I came up here and started sleeping in the barracks with you guys, it kind of threw me off. Except of course for my first day here. I couldn't really sleep all that much on my first night."

As he continued cooking, Mrs. Fan turned to Viper and said, "I was thinking, Viper, that maybe you and I could go to one of those lovely cafes later this morning and try to get to know each other a little better. It might be a good way to break the ice."

"That sounds like a good idea to me," Viper replied as she went to go refill the tea kettle that Mrs. Fan had left on the stove. "Maybe we can even go window shopping while we're down there."

"Window shopping?" Mrs. Fan repeated.

"Yeah. Just browsing all the local shops to see what's new. It gives me good ideas for festival outfits."

"You should see her lotus clip collection," Monkey said with a little laugh. "I swear she has one from every province we've fought in."

Viper rolled her eyes. "I only have 12," she remarked. "And they're only for special occasions. The ones I have on now are from my mother."

"Is your mother dead?" Mrs. Fan asked with a subtle frown crossing her face.

"No. But when I first started ribbon dancing, she gave me these before my first performance, and I haven't stopped wearing them since."

"Aww! I didn't know that!" Po admitted.

"Well, now you know."

Po finished up breakfast and began to hand it out to everyone at the table. As they began to dig in, Master Shifu and Mei-Ling entered the kitchen, having smelled the aroma from the Sacred Hall of Warriors where they had been hanging out. Mrs. Fan became a little quiet as the masters took over talking and began to discuss what they would do for the day and also any other topic that happened to spring up. (Such as Po almost getting smacked through the wall  by Tigress when she found out that he had eaten all the tofu dumplings, thinking everyone had eaten already). Once everyone had finished eating, Viper offered to go window shopping with Mrs. Fan while they waited for their food to digest. Afterwards they could head over to the café and talk further. Mrs. Fan agreed to the idea and the two were soon gone from the Jade Palace grounds, leaving the rest of the masters to debate further about what they would do for the day.