Damage Control

Master Shifu stared at the devastation before him. It was disheartening, and yet, he felt, inevitable. He should have known.

It was, after all, a recurring affliction in the history of the Jade Palace. Just, usually, not so… so…

The beginning, at least in his experience, had come in his own youth. Taotie's experiments usually caused some damage to the masonry, but the real problem had come when he and Junjie, in a youth the latter would barely admit to now, had taken to sledding down the steps to the Palace on shields. The divots and slick spots they'd caused resulted in any number of trips and falls, to this day.

And that was only the beginning.

Pham, bless him, had wanted so badly to be a ninja, and had been so singularly unsuited to the role. The carpenters and roof tile makers of the Valley had loved that elephant.

His companion in the previous Furious Five, the leopard Shihao, had never broken the habit of sharpening his claws. On anything that came to hand. Intricate carving and laquerwork be damned.

Of course, nothing had been quite as spectacular as the time Tai Lung set the training hall on fire. If the boy had only asked, Shifu could have told him that while putting several of the Wooden Warriors on top of the Field of Fire might make for a challenging and dramatic training session, there were certain obvious drawbacks to the plan…

Tigress, of course, had been much more reserved, much more focused on controlling her strength and improving her dexterity – while training. Outside of training, however, was another matter. Especially during her brief but misguided attempt to learn to cook, since, as she said, all young women knew how to cook… Before she got that out of her system, he'd had to replace all the kitchen crockery. Twice.

Mantis was not particularly destructive in his own right. However, he could have a temper, and the flying bodies of larger, less observant folk who tripped over or stepped on the insect tended to land in unfortunate places…

Monkey's problem had stemmed purely from curiosity. His first year at the Jade Palace had been a hard one on drawers, shutters, and cabinet doors.

Fortunately, Crane and Viper had proved to be calm, conscientious students who left no damage in their wake. They were so much easier on his nerves.

But now there was Po. Oh, there was Po! It was his own fault, he knew; he should have given strict orders that the panda was not to be allowed into the Hall of Heroes so soon after his first visit. But somehow he'd overlooked that simple precaution.

And so he surveyed the aftermath of the rolling catastrophe that was Oogway's choice for the Dragon Warrior.

There was a small puddle of blood on the floor near the Sword of Heroes, reputedly so sharp you could cut yourself simply by looking at it, which was apparently the least the panda had done. All of Master Dog's shuriken were imbedded in various pillars, from which two of the pigs employed by the Palace were attempting to remove them. The painting of Pham seemed to depict him sporting a second trunk, which on closer examination turned out to be a stray noodle. The Invisible Trident of Destiny was missing from its stand (according to the pigs) and would likely not be found until someone tripped over it. And Zheng was still trying to glue the Urn of Whispering Warriors back together.

Shifu's shoulders slumped, his ears flattened close to his head, and one eyelid twitched. He heaved a deep, heartfelt sigh.

This is why we can never have nice things.