The day passed by for the warriors: they sparred, went to relax at dinner, and then went promptly to bed. At least everyone except for a certain tiger master who crept out of her room so that she could go and spar in the training hall. She wanted to keep training so that she could be at the top of her game before another threat, like bandits, loomed back into the valley. Surely the bandits would have told someone else along the road that she was still recovering, so someone else was bound to arrive to try and take over sooner or later. Tigress snuck across the grounds so as to avoid waking anyone up, eventually reaching the grounds where the training area was. She then headed into the training hall and shut the doors behind her, heading over to the Swinging Clubs of Oblivion. She then proceeded to launch herself into the training equipment, feeling a bit wobbly on the spiraled beams as she wasn't quite used to doing extensive kung fu. Tigress managed to duck a few of the swinging clubs before she wobbled a bit more and wound up getting hit onto the floor. She moaned and shakily stood up, wincing in pain as she felt a surge of pain go through her left shoulder. The master glanced at it, seeing a large gash etched deep into it.

Just ignore the pain, she told herself. You punched iron wood trees for twenty years. You can deal with a simple gash.

She began to head back over to the swinging clubs so as to train only to see Po standing there in the doorway with his hands nervously squeezed together in front of him.

"What are you doing up?" she asked flatly.

"I heard you get up, so I thought I'd follow you and see what you were doing."

"I'm training," Tigress answered simply. "I need to get my strength back from that extended bed-rest ordeal."

She turned around towards the alligator limbs and got into a fighting stance. "I wouldn't be fighting with that shoulder gash," Po called over. "You might really hurt-"

"YAHHHH!"

The Dragon Warrior watched on helplessly as Tigress began to start the course, completely ignoring what he was trying to say. She kept hitting all of the limbs out of her way, wincing every time she moved her shoulder.

"Take it easy, Tigress!" Po called over. Tigress started hitting the alligator limbs even harder, trying her best to ignore the searing pain that ripped through her shoulder. As she began to approach the end of the course, she was hit hard in the side and went flying across the training hall, landing unceremoniously onto the ground.

"Tigress!" Po cried, dashing over to her. Tigress tried to stand up, but she took in a sharp breath as she leaned on her bad arm. Po reached her and exclaimed, "Are you okay?!"

"I'm fine," Tigress told him.

Po grabbed her uninjured arm and helped her get to her feet where he looked at the nasty gash she had. "We're gonna' go and dress that wound," he told the master, starting to pull her towards the training hall door.

"I don't need any medical attention. It's just a scratch."

"Scratches don't show any openings in your arm that are bleeding like crazy. Now come on."

Tigress groaned in aggravation, but let Po help her out of the training hall where they began to head towards the kitchen so as to help her open wound.

The two warriors reached the kitchen after about five minutes upon which Po took the liberty of sitting Tigress down at the table while he went to get the bandages and healing ointment out of the cabinet. The tiger master let out a sigh.

"I hope Shifu doesn't notice," she grumbled. "He might yell at me for training too hard."

"He probably will," Po said with a sad smile. "You have scratches all over the place too, so he'll know you were up to something. Especially if your arm still hurts tomorrow."

Tigress sighed and leaned back in her chair as Po sat down in front of her and took her injured arm.

"Let me just get the sleeve out of the way," he said, rolling it up to the base of her neck so that he could see better.

Tigress glanced down at the gash and grimaced. She didn't realize that it was that bad until that very moment.

"I'm gonna' clean this up for a second, okay?" he said. "It might sting a bit."

"I don't feel pai-" Tigress began to say, but then took in another sharp intake of breath as Po ran a cloth over the gash. "You did that on purpose!" she snapped.

"Hey, I said it would hurt. It's not my fault you were out training late against Shifu's orders."

Tigress opened her mouth to protest, but then thought better of it and said nothing. It was true that she had been told to take it easy, the most likely reason being that she wasn't used to training. However, the master didn't want to be rendered helpless since after she had been defeated easily by the wolf bandits almost a week earlier, so she decided that amping her training would be better. She winced in pain as Po cleaned up the nasty gash that was on her arm and began applying some ointment to it.

"So," Po said nervously, trying to be casual. "What's been going on lately?"

Tigress eyed him. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, for the past couple of months, you've been a lot...uh, nicer."

"Nicer?"

"Yeah, you know, you've been hanging out with us instead of constantly being in the training hall, you laugh at our jokes or whenever we do something kind of embarrassing, you've learned to relax...." Po looked at her, putting the ointment back onto the table. "But today, you've been acting kind of weird. Almost like you're trying to revert back to how you were before you loosened up a bit.

"Maybe I hate acting soft," Tigress answered flatly.

"Or maybe you're not telling me something because of...something."

Tigress tried to yank her arm away so that she could walk out of the kitchen, but Po held onto her tightly.

"Ah, ah, ah. I didn't say I was done tending to the gash," Po said, picking up the bandage.

Tigress sighed and watched him bandage her arm. She didn't say anything for a while and left the room in a stiffening silence. Once Po finished tying her wound, she said, "You're not going to let me leave unless I say something, are you?"

"Nope," Po answered. He stood up to put the medical supplies away and then sat back down in front of Tigress. "I'm your friend, Tigress," he said. "And when my friend isn't acting like herself, I want to make sure that she's alright."

Tigress sighed. "I'm fine," she told him. "I just...I'm just trying to get back into the swing of things a bit faster, that's all."

"Well, you need to take it slowly," Po reminded her. "Slow and steady wins the race."

"Slow and steady didn't help you or your dad now did it?!"

Po looked at her in surprise. Realizing what she had just said, Tigress stood up and quickly walked towards the door with the intention of leaving quickly.

"Does this still have something to do with that cannon I got hit with?" Po called after her.

Tigress froze, just reaching the door and beginning to open it. She hesitated for a moment before saying, "Yes."

"Why didn't you tell us that earlier? We could have talked about it."

"Talk about what? How I almost got you killed because I was too slow?!"

"You weren't too slow," Po assured her. "Just too far away."

"Distance has nothing to do with it! If I had been faster and stronger, I could have helped you!"

"But I'm perfectly fine; there's no need to worry about it."

"But what if it happened again? Your dad almost got robbed because of me too!"

"You just got off of bed-rest and you were out of practice."

"Exactly!"

Po sighed and stood up as Tigress folded her arms across her chest. "I need to be strong in order to protect this valley," Tigress told him. "And everything I've been doing for these past three years, playing and joking around, have done nothing but made me soft and weak!"

Po walked over to her and stood directly in front of her. A second of silence passed by before he engulfed the tiger master in a hug. Startled, Tigress stiffened, unsure of what to do.

"Listen to me: none of those things were your fault," Po told her firmly. "I'm sure Shifu's been telling you this stuff too since I know he was paying visits to your room and stuff, but I really want to keep it in mind because that's the truth. Yeah, you didn't reach me in time when I got hit with the cannonball. You were just a little bit too far away to reach it in time. But in hindsight, that was a good thing because then I found the village where I was born and I remembered what happened to my parents."

Tigress lifted her head to look at him. "You did?" she asked.

"Yeah. And then I could finally come back and beat Shen. So you missing me by a split second was kind of a good thing. It was an unexpected consequence, but a good one. And you just so happened to run into bandits the day after your were finally able to move about. Yes, your kung fu was a bit rusty, but you did manage to help dad hold them off until I bounced into the scene. They might have gotten away with a few seconds of no stalling."

Tigress sighed and felt herself start to hug Po around the middle." I guess," she said quietly.

"You may feel weak right now," Po told her. "And you may feel kind of helpless since you haven't done kung fu in a little over a month. But think of this as your issue with your broken ribs. You had to wait a while in order to do things, it was a pain in the butt, and you felt like you had no control, but once you got up, everything was better. At least until you got upset that you couldn't do kung fu."

Tigress chuckled.

"See? Same thing. It may take a while, but you'll be back to your old butt-kicking self. Just give it time. And don't even think about going back to the non-humorous Tigress I met when I first arrived here. Otherwise we might have a shortage of almond-cookie bets."

Tigress rolled her eyes and pulled out of the hug. "I'm not doing bets too often," she told him. She finally smiled and added, "But thanks. I guess it's been awhile since I've just felt so weak."

"You're welcome. And you still owe me that tray of almond cookies alongside the chocolate chips. I didn't see any of them for dessert."

"I'll see if I can persuade Monkey with it tomorrow. He tried to make a bargain with them earlier and they wound up not getting done."

Po laughed. "If he thinks he's gonna' be eating my cookies," he said. "He has another thing coming."

Tigress chuckled. "We should be heading back to bed," she said. "It's getting late."

"Right. We have training in the morning."

With that, the two warriors headed back towards the barracks, Tigress playfully slugging Po on the shoulder as another way of saying thanks.