The Tales of the Dragon Warrior

Embarrassing Two Boyfriends with One Stone (Except the Stone is Affection)

A few days had passed since Jade had had her little breakdown with Guan under the peach tree, and while she still wasn't completely fine emotionally, she did feel like a complete dumpster fire anymore. Training continued as usual for those next few days, and it was during training when an interesting topic of conversation came up.

It hadn't been brought up with much warning. Jade had been hitting some of the revolving dummies, and Hou had been on the sidelines watching her with a fond expression when he said something out of the blue.

"You know Jade, I've been meaning to ask... why don't you ever use your sword anymore?", Hou asked curiously. Jade paused her training and looked at him in bewilderment.

"What do you mean?", she asked, kind of confused as to where he was going with this.

"I mean, you never use your sword. You know, the Sword of Heroes. The one you stole from the Hall of Warriors. The one that you had to convince Oogway, Shifu and the Masters' Council to let you keep. The one that you- ", Hou listed, reciting every significant thing he knew about the sword. Jade rolled her eyes at his attempt at teasing.

"I know what you're talking about. But why are you asking about it?", Jade asked. Hou shrugged.

"I don't know, I was just curious. I mean, you have this awesome sword that can turn into four different types of weapons, that I helped teach you how to use, that Oogway helped teach you how to use, but you never use it. Hell, you didn't even use it against Tai-lung! And you know how to use other weapons that I know you could have used instead!", Hou exclaimed in disbelief. Tai-lung, who was wiping the sweat off his face after finishing his own training, tuned into the conversation and nodded in agreement with Hou's words.

"It's true, you never used any sort of conventional weapon against me when we fought.", Tai-lung confirmed, and Hou pointed to him with a vindicated look.

"See?!", the black haired young man said. Jade's eyes widened at how impassioned he sounded about his argument.

"Dude, chill. It's just a sword. If you want to know why I never use it, I'll tell you; I've just... never seen the need to use it.", Jade admitted with a shrug, wanting to defuse the potential argument she could see on the horizon. Both Tai-lung and Hou looked deeply confused.

"What, why?!", Hou asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, what he said! You have the Sword of Heroes! You could have beaten me even easier than you did if you just used it!", Tai-lung exclaimed. Jade rolled her eyes at the pair's short-sighted reasoning.

"Yeah, and likely killed you in the process. Because swords are, in case you've forgotten, sharp and pointy. Aspects that don't pair well with the squishy parts of your body. And I'll remind you, I very much did not want to kill you.", Jade explained, and Tai-lung and Hou's eyes widened in realization.

"Oh. Right. I uh... I forgot about that.", Tai-lung said awkwardly.

'And besides, I'm saving the weapons for when we go up against Shen and Kai, aka the two villains I actually need weapons if I want to fight them on an even playing field.', Jade thought privately, before she sighed at Tai-lung's stammering.

"Of course you did. But yeah, that's one reason I never use the Sword of Heroes.", Jade said. Hou raised an eyebrow at her.

"What's the other reason?", inquired, since the wording of her sentence implied there was at least one other reason. Jade shrugged once again.

"The other reason is that it just seems kinda taboo to use weapons in fights here. I mean, all the people I've fought so far haven't used weapons to fight me, including you guys and the rest of the Five. I know you all are capable of using weapons, but you still never use them, even when it would put you at an advantage. It seems like there's some unspoken rule about using weapons in a fight here that I'm unaware of. Which would be frustrating if I... ya know, actually cared about the rules.", Jade continued. Hou and Tai-lung exchanged looks.