Chapter Text
“The Universe has brought us the Dragon Warrior!”
“WHAT?”
Po asked it. The Furious Five asked it. Probably at least fifty more people in the crowd asked it. But Oogway had no answer—or if he did, he was too pleased with himself to share.
Po felt a gentle forward pull on his caught wrist, towards the center of the courtyard. He stumbled after it in a daze—the Dragon Warrior, the Dragon Warrior, the Dragon Warrior—but was brought to a halt after just a few steps. Po couldn’t remember where much of his body was, at the moment, so he had to turn and look just to remind himself that he had a death grip on the handle of the noodle cart.
Po blinked at the cart, his link back to the crowd, and then turned to do the same at the ancient tortoise guiding his opposite paw. …He may have repeated these steps a few too many times.
“Uh,” Po articulated, intelligently. “I don’t… think I can leave the cart alone. Sorry.”
Oogway chuckled warmly, like Po had just told a joke. “I’m sure we can ask someone to watch it for you. It won’t go anywhere.”
“Uh,” Po pronounced, a bit more urgently. “I’m… not sure my dad would be okay with that.”
“Then I will ask for his forgiveness,” Oogway informed Po earnestly, like they were having the most natural conversation in the world. “But until then, I will make sure it is well cared for.”
Po almost smiled in thanks, because that’s what you do when someone offers to do you a favor like watching your stuff, but the reflex faltered halfway when his brain caught up—because WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?
While Po’s head swam with half-formed questions, his eyes caught on the Furious Five. Po, by chance, made eye contact with Viper, who stared back, lidless and open mouthed. Po’s gaze darted between her and Oogway, asking for—well, he wasn’t sure what he was asking for, really. But—one of the Five glanced over at the podium and the crowd, and the others reacted to them, and then the Five were bowing, hands or adjacent body parts put together in respect.
Not for him, Po realized this. No—their gazes lingered, not meeting his eye but on him, stuck somewhere between stupefaction and mortification. Po wasn’t sure who the pose was for. Maybe it was just what you did at the end of Kung Fu tournaments, no matter who won them.
Or, did anyone win? Po didn’t think he won. He didn’t even compete.
With another soft tug, Po felt his numb grip dislodge. He floated forward until he was right in front of the Furious Five, right in front of everybody. It wasn’t until Po was looking dead into Tigress’s thin-slitted pupils, able to make out the minute specks in her orange irises, that he remembered just who and where he was.
“Hey man—Master! Oogway. Sir.” Po wheezed a bit, almost laughing, because WHAT? “So, this is nuts. You know there’s no way I’m the Dragon Warrior, right? You gotta know.”
“The wise man knows he knows nothing,” Oogway returned, instead of goggling at Po in disbelief like the other five Kung Fu Masters before him.
“That’s not reassuring,” Po’s mouth uttered without input from his brain. “You know. Considering.”
Oogway chuckled. Again.
“I don’t know any Kung Fu!” Po blurted out, like it wasn’t extremely obvious. But hey, the tortoise was supposedly, like, a thousand years old or something. Maybe he couldn’t see very well.
“Kung Fu can be taught. But being the Dragon Warrior…” Oogway tapped a claw to his chin in thought. “…well. Who’s to say?”
“But,” Po scrambled for—anything. “You already have people who know Kung Fu! I mean Tigress is right there!”
“She is,” Oogway agreed serenely. “And yet, here we are.”
Po clutched his head, an ache pounding somewhere underneath his skull. “I gave you soup!”
“Mmm,” Oogway shut his eyes, fond. “And it was delicious.”
Po had half a mind to explain to the greatest Kung Fu Master who ever lived that you can’t go passing out title of Dragon Warrior to anyone who gives you good soup, but he couldn’t quite decide how to begin before a parade of people in silk uniforms descended upon them all.
The silk-clothed people set down one of those… fancy guy-carrying boxes, in front of Po. It looked… delicate.
“…Nice box.” Po complimented sincerely, really, really hoping they just wanted to show it to him because it looked cool and no other reason.
“Thanks.” Drawled one of the geese who carried it in. “Get in.”
Po side-eyed Oogway. Oogway seemed spaced-out, all calm and happy like nothing was amiss, which had been par for the course so far.
“Oh…” Po cringed, sucking air in through his teeth. “I don’t think—this one is—my size?”
The same goose pursed their bill, like how his dad did on the odd occasion he couldn’t say exactly what was on his mind to a rude customer. “It’s one size fits all.”
“That’s… cool.” Po took a small step back. “But, uh… I should probably ask my dad if it’s okay to get into strange boxes and get taken to strange places by strangers, first.”
The goose’s eye twitched. “It’ll be fine. We’re just going up the stairs.”
Po took a larger step back, squinting. “…Am I being kidnapped?”
“No.” The goose deadpanned. “Get in.”
“Uh, I don’t know.” Po hedged, twiddling his thumbs in lieu of—anything else he could or should have been doing, like possibly either jumping for joy or running away to his dad or insisting that they this was all a mistake because—Po, the Dragon Warrior. Po? “I read a play that went like this once. It was definitely kidnapping, then.”
“You’re the Dragon Warrior, you’re not being kidnapped,” the goose hissed, growing tenser by the second. “Get in.”
“Are you—sure?” Po asked to his surroundings in general, since maybe this wasn’t a good question for one of the people trying to kidnap him. No one answered.
Po looked around. Oogway said nothing for or against the box. The Five just—stared. Further beyond, the crowd had grown a bit looser and more spread out in their celebration. A few were close enough to hear what was being said. Po made eye contact with a rabbit he knew lived on his street—not that they knew knew each other, or anything. But still, they came to the noodle shop a bunch. “I don’t wanna be kidnapped, even if it’s just up the stairs to be the Dragon Warrior.”
“Are you a child?” The goose scoffed over Po’s stuttered response. “Just get in!”
The rabbit looked away. Po got in.
“I just wanna say,” Po warned over the first creak of the carrier’s bamboo, “that I could totally walk to wherever you’re kidnapping me. This carriage thing seems like a really bad idea.”
“Please,” the goose said in that customer service way that was both overly friendly and entirely condescending. “We insist.”
The geese’s knees all collectively buckled the moment Po sat his full weight on the box. For once, vindication won over embarrassment. Or, at least it did, until the box’s floor splintered and broke before they even got to the first set of stairs. Oh well. At least he didn’t have to climb them, this time.