The Ticking Contingent: The Countdown vo.2

A New Dawn

"Of course you'd say that," Po grumbled, rubbing his cheek where the guy had hit him. "You like anyone who has no problems beating me to a pulp."

"I'm being practical," Tigress retorted flatly.

The next person to interview was an old goat who was very good company and had done many years of service under a high official of the eastern province. However, he had a lot of difficulty with his hearing, which meant Po wound up practically screaming and meticulously enunciating the entire interview. Because of this, the Dragon Warrior wore his throat out by the end and the furious five had to ask the questions for the third interview, though this wound up insulting the man who decided to walk out since Po couldn't be bothered to greet him above a raspy "Hey."

The fourth interview went okay since the person wasn't too boring nor a pain to interview, but they had pretty generic answers to Po's questions and pretty much seemed more like a yes-man if anything. The next candidate reminded Po a lot of Shifu since the woman gave him a measuring look the entire time, scolded him for slouching and not addressing her properly (Po called her ma'am and not Mrs. Eleida-Chou, ma'am). Viper wondered if she was a school teacher at one point since she reminded Viper of her primary school days, but since Mrs. Eleida-Chou, ma'am did most of the talking and was fairly intimidating, the masters never did find out if this was the case.

One by one the candidates that Shifu and Zeng had picked out came and went. Some of them were fairly decent people who Po was more than willing to write down, while others were so bad or annoying not even Tigress wanted to hire them. By the time the interviews started finishing up, it was close to lunch time and the last person to be interviewed was currently running five minutes late.

"Well that's not promising," Tigress noted after Po poured the tea back into the pot to warm it up. "Should I just cross them off the list? Or do you want to wait?"

"Let's just wait a little longer," Po told her. "Maybe she has a good reason for being late."

He glanced down at the name on the list, which read Jun, Wan-Xia. According to her information, she was the third oldest interviewee they had, being 75 years of age. She was described as quiet but hard-working and with sterling qualifications. She had served several nobles in the past and had been born and raised in several big cities in China, so she was familiar with bustle and chaos.

Another ten minutes passed by before finally a knock sounded on the door and the big doors creaked open after Po called out for them to enter. An old looking sheep slowly walked in huffing and puffing, leaning on her cane for dear life. She paused half-way to the table and apologized for her tardiness. She hadn't been informed about the large number of stairs and would have come earlier so she could take her time going up them.

"Oh, there's a riding platform," Po said. "Sorry about that. It's relatively new and Shifu I think keeps forgetting they're there."

"It definitely beats the stairs," Monkey agreed with a little laugh.

Po walked over and helped the old sheep sit down in a chair and quickly poured her some tea to help her hydrate.

"Thank you, dearie," the old sheep said gratefully. She took a few long sips of tea before sighing and giving Po a smile. "So, what can I answer for you?"

"Well, we have all your qualifications on paper," Po said. "So, why don't you just tell us a little about yourself?"

"Oh. Well, I was born seventy-five years ago in a little town, and there were lots of nice people around. I was an itty bitty little thing, but I had a lot of ambition in my youth, so I put in a lot of hard work to be useful. I married a charming young man, but he died shortly after our wedding. There was a bad flood."