“My son.”
“But what if the wound is me?” Po whispered.
Po faltered. For a split second, he saw the radish crate again. The rain. The red. Shen saw the hesitation and struck. A blade of metal caught Po across the chest, sending him crashing through a wall.
Po nodded, not understanding. He tried to meditate. He tried to clear his mind. But all he saw was the cruel, laughing face of Shen, and the phantom of his real mother, setting him in a radish crate to float away. kung fu panda 2 po
Shifu opened one eye. “The past is a wound, Po. Do not pick at the scab.”
He looked at his paws. The past was not a chain. It was a river. It had brought him here, to this moment, to this dusty floor.
That night, Po sat on the roof of the Jade Palace. The stars were out. He no longer felt a hole inside him. He felt a garden. And in that garden, a peach seed was finally beginning to grow. “My son
The fight was a blur of fists and tail feathers. But Shen was cunning. He didn’t fight Po’s strength; he fought his mind. Every strike, every taunt, was a needle into the old wound.
“Master Shifu,” Po said, finding the old red panda meditating on a peach tree branch. “I keep seeing… a face. A lady panda. And a lot of… red.”
The fireball shot back, striking the cannon. The explosion was colossal, swallowing Shen’s war machines, tearing the tower apart. Shen looked up, his perfect feathers singed, his madness finally meeting reality. The rain
Inner peace.
Outside, Shen had cornered the Five. He had his ultimate weapon: a giant cannon loaded with a hundred pounds of gunpowder and metal shrapnel. “The age of kung fu is over!” he shrieked, lighting the fuse.
The cannonball struck his open palms. Instead of exploding, it began to spin, a furious sun of destruction. But Po didn’t fight it. He guided it. He shifted his weight, turned his wrists, and with a soft, gentle exhale, he redirected the blast.
Po sobbed. For the first time, he didn’t feel the pain of abandonment. He felt the weight of sacrifice. His mother didn’t throw him away. She saved him.
“You don’t even know who you are!” Shen screeched, dodging a Wuxi Finger Hold. “You are nothing! A mistake left in a box!”