63 days and counting....

(Thank you, WinterDragons, for your suggestion. I was more than happy to include it in here....)

The next day, after hashing out training plans and settling the remaining masters in Li's house, (much to Mei-Mei's annoyance, Tigress figured), Li and Po went down to the village to announce the incoming danger. Tigress, Viper, and Mantis followed them as a way to offer any help at any point in time. After everyone in the village was called to the center for announcements, Li cleared his throat and said, "Everyone, I'm afraid I have bad news."

The pandas looked at each other in slight worry, unsure of what was going on.

"I've just been informed that there is a terrible evil on the way here to threaten us all," Li continued slowly, not willing to cause any alarm amongst the villagers. "Our visitors tell us that he brings an army more powerful than they can defeat. Meaning, alas, that we are both helpless and vulnerable when he arrives."

The villagers started looking at each other in alarm and a small, fearful chatter began.

"However," Li interrupted, glancing at Po and his friends. "As some of you are well aware, Lei-Feng knows professional kung fu along with his friends who have just arrived. They've offered to teach us how to fight so that we'll be ready once this Kai villain arrives to our village. How does this sound to the rest of you?"

Happy cheers went around the village at anticipation at being able to literally kick someone's butt kung fu style.

"Hold on a moment," one villager called out suddenly, stopping the barrage of cheers. "How can we learn kung fu? We can barely run around without catching our breath!"

"It'll take a lot of practice," Po told them, stepping up to lend a hand. "I still can't catch my breath and I've been doing it for almost eight years."

"You don't take that long to catch your breath," Tigress reminded him from a few feet behind. "You just take longer than we do."

"I know," Po assured her. He turned back to the pandas and added, "It'll take a lot of hard work and discipline, but if you guys can work together and help each other out, I know that you guys will learn how to kick butt in no time!"

The panda watched the excited looks on everyone's face and merely shrugged with a small smile.

"Now," Po announced. "Who's ready to begin?!"  A loud rumble from his stomach got everyone's attention and Po let out a sheepish laugh. "Although maybe we should break for lunch first," he added.

"Oh, come on, Po," Tigress called over from behind. "At least give them a demonstration first."

"But I'm hungry!" Po complained quietly, turning to look at her.

The master whipped out a cookie she had snitched from the kitchen, figuring that Po would try and pull a 'first snack, then kung fu'. The Dragon Warrior, seeing what she had in her paw, said, "Well, maybe if it's a short demonstration."

"Good. To start, you can show them how to get the cookie away from me."

Po smiled and pulled her up to the front. The villagers looked slightly confused since Po had already called a lunch break, so the panda quickly explained, "Really quickly though, Tigress and I are going to show you a basic demonstration about how you can get a cookie back from a thief."

Everyone looked interested in such a matter, so they looked on while Po and Tigress assumed their kung fu stances.

"Ready, Dragon Warrior?" the master asked, holding the cookie a bit away from her so that Po didn't have a chance of getting it.

"As always," Po assured her. He then leaped forward to grab the cookie from Tigress, but the master flipped back and kicked him right under the chin. Po went flying backwards and landed on his back, but he quickly got up and ran over to Tigress for another round. Tigress flicked the cookie high in the air and blocked Po's incoming punches and kicks. The cookie began to fly back down and the master made an effort to catch Po's arm in the crook of her own with the intention of yanking him backwards so that she could catch the cookie. However, the Dragon Warrior saw this coming and grabbed Tigress' arm with a tight twist of his hand, pulling her towards him and belly bumping her out of the way. He ten caught the cookie and triumphantly ate it. Tigress smiled and stood up, walking back over to him.

"That's quite an improvement from last time, Po," she pointed out. "Keep it up."

"Thanks," Po answered with a happy grin. He turned back to the crowd of villagers and told them, "See? Once you guys learn basic kung fu stances, you'll be able to do something like that. Of course, I'm sure Tigress would take it easy on beginners. Right, Ti?"

"I didn't take it easy on you."

"That's just because you didn't like me."

Tigress simply shrugged, as she watched Po break for lunch and agree for everyone to meet back after lunch. While they walked away, she pulled her friend over to the sidelines and said, "Po, I know you're really excited to teach everyone in the village, but you have to be firm in their training otherwise they won't learn anything in time for Kai's arrival."

"I know," Po promised. "I am going to try my best. And if I start doing something wrong, you can hit me on the head."

Tigress smirked. "I won't hit you on the head," she told him. "But I can do something worse."

"Um...and what exactly is worse than a smack on the head?"

"Try me holding your action figures hostage."

Po went wide-eyed in panic. "Hold my action figures hostage?!" he exclaimed. "Are you insane?! Wait, how did you know I brought my action figures?"

"Monkey went through your bag," Tigress replied. "He thought you might have had his almond cookies in there."

"I didn't have time to take the cookies, so he can relax on that one."

The two headed back to Li's house along with the rest of the masters where they proceeded to eat lunch and take a quick break. They then went back to the beginning of the village where most of the villagers had regrouped. After putting Li, Mei-Mei, and Bao among the gathered pandas, Po divided everyone into groups so that it wasn't an enormous group of pandas tripping on each other while trying to do kung fu. Tigress (much to her joy) got the group without Mei-Mei. (Mei-Mei's group was given to Viper). Po got the group with Bao and Monkey got the group with Li. After everyone was divided up, the groups began basic training. It was extremely difficult at first since most of the villagers kept knocking each other over while performing a move or ran out of breath almost immediately while training, but after two or three days, most of the pandas finally began to get the hang of it. Following correct stances, Po helped to teach them his style of punching and kicking which Bao took great pleasure in copying since he enjoyed bouncing himself around. After almost a week of intense training, (which for the pandas was simply getting up at 6 and training for a few hours at a time before breaking for food), Po felt they were ready to start learning actual kung fu moves.

"Are you sure, Po?" Li had asked earlier that morning while rubbing his sore muscles. "We get exhausted from just trying to stand correctly!"

"You'll feel better the more you do it," Po had promised. "When I started kung fu, I thought I was going to die because my muscles were so sore."

"That's because you got beaten up and fried by the training equipment," Tigress had piped up.

"Exactly! But I'm fine now! Except when Shifu made us train on The Blushing Spikes of Impending Demise, but we're still working on it."

Later, they had met the pandas at the center of the village and began to explain what the plan was for the day.

"Today, we'll be teaching you guys actual kung fu moves based on what area you seem to specialize in," Po announced once he had everyone's attention. "Me, Tigress, Viper, and Monkey will divide you into groups based on which specific skills we can better teach you. I'll be helping some of you guys work on more powerful kung fu moves. Monkey will help some of you guys with stealth and some weapons training, and Tigress and Viper will help the ribbon dancers learn both ribbon-fu and how to use nunchucks."

The ribbon dancers let out excited squeals at this idea before Po was able to get them to calm down and finally start dividing everyone up into three groups. Afterwards, each groups was assigned to meet in different spots to better practice their skills: Po's group was to meet near a mountain base, Monkey's group was to  move over to the pond, and Tigress and Viper's group was to move over to  the ribbon dancer's performance center. As each group went to their designated spots, Mei-Mei quickly barreled over to Po to engulf him in yet another suffocating hug where she gave him a passionate kiss on the lips and wished him luck with his group. Tigress, happening to notice, yelled at Mei-Mei to stop dawdling and simply left in a bit of a huff behind the rest of the ribbon dancers. Viper was quick to follow her with a concerned look plastered on her face.

"Tigress, was that necessary?" she asked as they walked over to the dance center. "She was just wishing him luck."

"Oh, please," Tigress grumbled. "She did that on purpose! She thinks that kissing him and whispering sweet nothings in his ear is going to win him over."

"Just be careful," Viper warned gently. "You're letting your jealousy get to your head."

"I'm not jealous!"

"Tigress...."

The master growled. "Fine, I'm a little jealous," she admitted. "But I'm not letting it get to me!"

"Says she who "accidentally" tripped Mei-Mei this morning when she came over to say hello to Po and who also interrupted almost every moment she tries to hug or kiss Po. And then there was the mysterious presence of salt and hot chili pepper in Mei-Mei's food the first day we were here. I wonder who that was...."

"The spices probably fell from the cabinet when she bumped it with her big fat, egotistical head," Tigress suggested poorly with a venomous hint in her voice.

Viper sighed. "Po's trusting us with teaching these ribbon dancers kung fu," she reminded her friend. "Please don't purposely injure anyone, okay? Especially Mei-Mei!"

"No promises. Especially if she tries to insult me again."

Viper looked at her in surprise, but she didn't get the chance to ask the master anything since Mei-Mei came running up to them and interrupted the conversation.

"So you're both ribbon dancers?" she asked as everyone reached the dance center. "I can't see Diress over here dancing with a ribbon."

"Tigress," the master corrected sharply. "Viper's the ribbon dancer. I'll be teaching you how to use the nunchucks."

"Ah. Well, I suppose that makes sense then, doesn't it?"

Tigress said nothing as the group settled into the center of the dance area, soon joined by Mei-Mei who awaited instructions. The master placed the box of nunchucks in front of her and proceeded to take them out of the box and hand them to each dancer.

"As you are all highly skilled with your ribbons," she stated. "You shall learn both the art of ribbon styled kung fu as well as how to correctly wield a nunchuck. It won't be able to twirl around and look pretty like your ribbons, but you do possess the skills needed to quickly master it. Today, you'll learn how to properly hold one and how to correctly whip it around. If you want my advice, pay attention, don't hold back, and don't do anything stupid with them. Am I clear?"

The ribbon dancers all nodded.

"Good," Tigress said. She picked up a nunchuck and kicked the box backwards where it expertly hit the wall behind her. "Assume the basic fighting stance," she announced. "And hold onto one end of your nunchuck with a firm paw with the other tucked firmly under your arm."

The ribbon dancers copied the master, waiting for the next instruction. Tigress stepped out of stance to see how everyone was doing.

"Fa-Ren," she said, while checking their grips on the nunchucks. "You're grip is too loose. Yar, you're putting too much weight on your front foot. Lean back. Iris, lean forward a bit before you knock everyone over like dominoes. Kei, you need to tuck the other end more tightly so that it doesn't keep falling. Mei-Mei, stop twirling the nunchuck; we haven't gotten that far yet."

The master went back to the front of the group to continue to the next part when Mei-Mei leaped at her with the nunchuck in hand. Tigress spun around and grabbed the panda's wrist where she started to squeeze it so hard, everyone heard a slight crack. Mei-Mei started crying out in pain but Tigress interrupted her by twisting her arm back, grabbing her nunchuck, and using it to tie her paws together and smack her against the nearby wall. The ribbon dancers let out cries of fear and backed up, hoping to avoid being next.

"Tigress!" Viper yelled. "Let go of her!"

"Does everyone see this?" Tigress asked the group of pandas, flat out ignoring Viper. "This is what happens when you don't follow instructions. Does anyone else think they know how to use a nunchuck better than me? Anyone?"

The pandas quickly shook their heads and quickly resumed their positions to avoid more of the master's violence.

"That's what I thought. Now, lets try this again."

The master released Mei-Mei where she wince and rubbed her wrist, shakily rejoining her friends. She stood back in position with a scowl, yelling, "That hurt!"

"Next time don't take on opponents you can't fight. Now-"

"Didn't your mother ever teach you to play nice?!" Mei-Mei demanded. "I've never been treated so horribly in my life!"

"That's how I learned kung fu," Tigress answered flatly.

"I'm sure your parents are proud. Do they mind you being rough?"

The master froze, unsure of how to answer the question. She had never had parents, the only ones she had known having abandoned her when she was barely a month old. Shifu had raised her, but their bond was never strong enough for her to call him 'dad'. Not until recently that is. And even then, she didn't feel comfortable calling him that around other people. She didn't know her real parents well so she didn't know how they would feel about her type of kung fu, but she knew that Shifu probably wouldn't have minded. (She hoped).

"Tigress doesn't have parents," Viper answered, seeing her friend getting tongue tied. "She was left at the orphanage  as a baby."

"Aw," one of the girls said sadly. "I'm so sorry about that. I hope your adopted parents were nice though."

"Actually," Tigress replied. "My master raised me. But that's not relevant now, so lets please resume training."

"Your master raised you?" Mei-Mei stated with an amused smile. "That explains a lot."

"I just said that isn't relevant right now," the master reminded her. "Please get into position."

"I always feel bad for abandoned children," the panda noted, ignoring the command. "I mean, it must be so hard not knowing why your parents didn't want you. With the exception of Fengy, obviously."

"Position, Mei-Mei!" Tigress snapped.

Mei-Mei shrugged and got into position. Tigress took a deep breath and began, "Alright, now...once you have your nunchucks positioned correctly, begin quickly flicking your wrist to get it to move."

"As I was doing just before you attacked me," Mei-Mei pointed out.

"MEI-MEI!"

"Um, Tigress," Viper said quickly, nudging her leg. "Maybe we should work on ribbon fighting first? You know, before we get to the hard stuff?"

"Why? Afraid they'll prick a finger?!" Tigress snapped.

Viper quickly nudged her friend out of earshot before quietly adding, "No, because Mei-Mei is being difficult and you're starting to do that thing you do when you get upset."

The master groaned. "Give me ten minutes," she said. "I'll be right back."

"I'll be here."

Tigress then proceeded to walk away in order to get herself together. She really did not want to work with Mei-Mei, especially knowing that Mei-Mei was going to try everything in her power to keep her away from Po, but she had to get herself together and keep it like that otherwise things would get out of hand real fast.