Chapter Text
Jack woke with a hiss, flinching away from the light. Even that small motion left his head pounding, while the bed beneath him rocked violently. Jack groaned, eyes squeezed shut as he clawed at the sheets. He found nothing but cold, smooth concrete.
That wasn’t right.
Jack risked opening his eyes again. The light was as sharp as before, but Jack could make out some vague, familiar shapes before squeezing his eyes shut again. Okay. The flat, cold thing beneath his cheek was the floor of his workshop. Jack was in his workshop. On the floor. Why was he on the floor?
There was something sharp pressing against his forehead. Jack’s arm jerked, heavy, clumsy. He tried again. The third attempt worked, shoving at the thing. It caught on his hair, strap pinned under his skull, but the sharp bit fell away from his face, falling to the concrete with faint clinks. Glass shards.
Jack decided that was enough work for now. He lay still, waiting for sleep to return.
Instead of sleep, his body was just getting louder. Demanding.
Jack’s other shoulder was aching. He couldn’t feel that arm at all. Was it gone? Frowning, he tried to move his hand. A dull thrum travelled up through the nothing. Dull clicking. His nails against the floor. Okay. Good. He still had a hand. Presumably an arm too.
His hip felt numb. Hot, aching above the numbness. A wax figure on a hotplate, partially melted to nothing. His lips twitched in a smile.
A painful ache between his shoulders. Tenderness along his ribs and sternum. A solid log beneath his chest, pressing against his bruises.
Ah. That’ll be his missing arm.
The worst was his head. Still pounding. Rocks pressing up inside his skull. Had he gotten in a fight with a sledgehammer or something? Ugh.
Jack tried opening his eyes again, squinting as he adjusted to the light. Fuck. It wasn’t even that bright! Just the normal glow from his worktop and the various displays, and the red eyes of a dozen JackBots waiting for instruction nearby.
Slowly, Jack shifted upright, wincing as the blood rushing back into his freed arm did its best impression of flesh being eaten alive by fire ants.
His goggles had slipped off. One lens was fully shattered. There was a matching laceration on Jack’s forehead, the edges still tacky beneath his fingertips. A trickle of fresh blood escaped, hot against his skin. Dried blood on the floor.
How long had he been lying here? Hours? Why wasn’t Wuya hovering nearby, making some snide comment about Jack being lazy—
Jack froze.
Blinked, staring at the empty worktable. No Shen Gong Wu. No Heart of Zhong. No Wuya.
His eyes were wet. His breath caught.
Jack’s helipack was in broken pieces across the floor, destroyed by one contemptuous flick of Mala Mala Zhong’s hand. Jack had been lying here, unconsious on the floor, for however many hours it took for a bleeding head wound to scab over, long enough for spilled blood to dry—
A sob fell from Jack’s lips. He hid his face in his hands, curling up.
Wuya was gone. Mala Mala Zhong had smacked Jack into a wall hard enough to break bones, with only Jack’s reinforced Evil Coat protecting him from a cracked rib and she had still—she still—
An awful noise escaped Jack’s throat.
They were supposed to be partners! Evil best friends! Working towards that, at least. Jack saw the potential, and even if they weren’t best friends yet, they had been on their way there! Wuya’s praise, when she offered it, had been sounding more and more genuine lately. Her grumbling was less cruel and pointed. She was even playful sometimes, though often at Jack’s expense. Yeah, sure, Wuya had a mean streak a mile wide, but anyone would be moody if they were trapped as a ghost and locked in a puzzle box for 1500 years. Jack could handle a few stray snide remarks and mean jokes.
Wuya was Jack’s friend. He was her favourite. They were going to rule the world together. Everyone else would kneel before them or be eliminated.
Wuya was gone. She had replaced Jack the moment she had the chance. Abandoned him here, injured, unconscious, on the floor. Tossed aside like he was nothing. Like he’d never been important at all.
Jack was still sitting on the floor, tears streaming down his face. Each sob made his bruised ribs ache. His headache was getting worse. His face felt hot.
How could he have been so stupid? Only a week after they’d met, she had already been “joking” about wanting to replace him. She had even tried! Offering Katnappé everything she’d offered Jack, promising her that they’d rule the world together—all these months, Jack had been trying so hard to help Wuya—fighting her enemies, trying to keep her mood up, flying all around the world and risking life and limb in search for any Shen Gong Wu that might give her body back—they were partners! They had been—
Months ago now, Jack had won the Helmet of Zhong. Wuya had been so happy. That was when things had changed, when they really began to click as a team—
Jack’s breath caught. The floor disappeared from beneath him, and Jack was falling, tumbling through an enormous black void—
It had all been lies. A trick. Wuya had been planning to get rid of Jack for months. The mean jokes and snide comments had never held any twist of affection. The praise had just been empty flattery. Wuya had never given a single damn about Jack beyond his utility. He was just her idiot pawn.
It had never meant a thing.
It was some time later. Jack wasn’t sure how long. He wasn’t crying anymore. He was sitting on the floor. His insides had all been scooped out. A hollow chassis with no CPU or circuitboards left inside.
Jack should get off the floor.
Jack’s boot caught on something, sending a metallic fragment skittering across the room. Right. The helipack.
Jack gathered the pieces, collecting them on the worktop. The leftside rotor was snapped in half. The mast was splintered. The casing over the engine body had been cracked, though the mechanical components inside were mostly undamaged. A few wires loose. Some capacitors and one of the flight regulating chips to replace.
Jack’s hands were moving without him. Finding broken pieces. Repairing. Replacing.
Wuya didn’t come back. Why would she need to? Jack was useless to her. Not even worth the effort to check if he was still breathing.
The helipack was functional again. It was dark outside. Jack’s eyes ached. His body was heavy. His hands were empty. His head was spinning. Every breath hurt. He couldn’t—he needed—
Jack had a new project on the table. Not new-new. A work in progress from months ago. Never a high priority, because as long as he had Wuya by his side, he didn’t need—
Circuitry arranged in a bagua, coding shaped by the Liushisi Gua. Fine-tuned with the spectographic signatures Jack had recorded from the Shen Gong Wu. Once it was finished, it would be a compass. Magic and tech, combined into something impossible. Something ingenious.
Jack didn’t need Wuya. He could find the Shen Gong Wu without her. He could take over the world without her. When they next met, they’d be on opposite sides—
Did Wuya want Jack dead? Or did she just not care if he died?
Jack swallowed. There was a long piece of red wire between his fingers.
Red string.
Jack wrapped it around his wrist, twisting the ends together into a bracelet.
He’d had enough of ghosts.
Ice packs, some good food, some strong painkillers, and a long nap did wonders! Jack was fully a person again. A person with a nasty cut across his forehead, a black eye, a lingering migraine, and a whole tapestry of bruises, but his new goggles hid the cut, and the black eye only added to his Evil Aesthetic, so Jack wasn’t complaining.
(who’d he have to complain to anyway, the JackBots? With their EmotionChips, they’d just get bummed out and start moping around the lab again, and Jack was not in the mood to cheer up a dozen robots)
The Shen Gong Wu DetectoBot was almost complete. Jack had been fiddling with it most of the morning, referencing four different I Ching books from his parents’ collection upstairs and pondering if the order of the hexagrams actually mattered that much for divining directions. Swapping a King Wen arrangement and a Fuxi arrangement hadn’t made any difference when Jack was testing if it could pick up on the Lotus Twister at the far end of the room. He was probably overthinking this. King Wen arrangement, then. Jack could always finetune it later.
Getting the spectography right was more important anyway. Without tracking the unique signature of magical radiation, and filtering out known signatures from awakened Shen Gong Wu, there’d be no way to pick up on newly activated ones.
It was funny: just a year ago, Jack hadn’t believed in any of this magical crap, dismissing it the same as all the rest of his parents’ weird superstitions and fear of curses. And now, here Jack was, at the very leading edge of magical-mechanical engineering and programming!
Jack was finishing the welding on the outer casing of the DetectoBot when a weird shadow appeared at his side, hovering with an almost nervous energy. Oh no. Had something terrible happened to Wuya’s new buddy? Had Mala Mala Zhong fallen when he went up against the Xiaolin monks? How awful.
“Nice work, Jack! Excellent craftsmanship,” Wuya began, hovering nearer.
“Beat it, Wuya,” Jack growled. He should’ve scattered glutinous rice around the property line and thrown some warding talismans up on the doorways. The red wire bracelet on his wrist felt like it was burning.
“Now Jack, don’t be like that. Can’t we let bygones be bygones?” Wuya cajoled.
Jack slammed down his blowtorch, lifting his welding mask to glare at her.
“Your Mala Mala Zhong goes bust, and now you expect me to take you back!?” Without even an apology, or a mention of attacking him!? She could have killed— “Forget it, not interested!”
“But you are interested, Jack, if you want to rule the world,” she wheedled. “You see, you need me to locate the Shen Gong Wu.”
So damn confident! Jack wished he had a working Five Thunder Talisman he could throw in her face. He’d laugh as celestial lightning obliterated her.
“I need you?” Jack scoffed. “Actually, not so much. Behold! The Jack Spicer, Evil Boy Genius Shen Gong Wu DetectoBot! Patent pending.”
“The what?” Wuya muttered, trailing by Jack’s side as he attached the DetectoBot to the hood of his jetcar.
“Get this. Not only can it tell when a Shen Gong Wu is activated, but it can also lead me to it,” Jack said, smirking. “Face it, you old witch. You’re obsolete.”
Yeah! Jack wasn’t some desperate, whiny loser who only found success by clinging to other’s coattails! He was an actual, proven, engineering genius! Jack had invented and designed the world’s most advanced combat-grade autonomous robots! And a revolutionary energy-dense battery to power said robots! He was only person in history to combine real magic and programming!
But sure, Jack was the replaceable one in this partnership.
“Well, got that world conquering to do,” Jack said, gingerly climbing into the jetcar. Bruised ribs did not play nice with… well, most types of movement actually. Climbing and jumping were especially bad, though. At least the migraine meds were working.
Wuya poked her head through the jetcar canopy. Jack pulled a warding talisman out from his coat pocket and stuck it to the glass. Wuya hissed, retreating in tumbling loops as the faint humming of a magical barrier formed within the cockpit. Not that it did much good. A moment later, Wuya flew inside the canopy, tearing through the magical barrier like wet paper.
“You truly believe such trifling measures could do anything against me?” Wuya sneered, as the paper talisman burst into flames. Around Jack’s wrist, the red wire bracelet burned hot, before snapping. Wuya let out a dark laugh. “Afraid of ghosts, are you, Jack?”
Jack stared her down, unimpressed. Every single accomplishment Wuya had managed in the last nine months had been the result of Jack’s hard work. His bruises. His robots. Wuya literally couldn’t lift a finger to help herself out.
“Guess I’ll have to look into more extreme measures,” Jack mused. “How’d you feel about black dog blood?”
“Wretched boy!”
“JackBots! Release the firecrackers!”
Wuya screeched at the loud popping cracks, her ghostly figure phasing in and out like a CRT with a strong EM signal nearby. Jack smirked, powering up the jetcar.
“Later! And don’t be here when I get back!”
Shooting into the sky, Jack let out a delighted laugh, circling his home once before performing a wingover and heading straight for the horizon.
Jack was drinking an iced coffee from his favourite place in Bangkok when he got an alert on his JackWatch. The DetectoBot had sensed something! Grinning, Jack activated his helipack and flew right back to where he’d parked, scrambling to get going. See? He didn’t need Wuya. Not even a little bit.
The Shen Gong Wu was in some lighthouse in the north Atlantic. Setting the jetcar to hover mode (yet another one of Jack’s ingenious innovations, by the way!) he spotted Wuya inside, struggling over a mirror. Ha!
“What’s the matter, Wuya? Need a hand? Too bad yours are all ghosty!” he mocked, jumping inside.
She hissed.
“The Reversing Mirror is mine! I found it first!” Wuya snarled. Jack walked right past her and up to the mirror.
“Hey. You know what they say. Finders keepers, losers weepers!” he said. Reaching for the mirror, he caught sight of his reflection. Oof. Even with Jack’s normal eyeliner and white foundation, it was clear something had smacked him in the face recently. That black eye was wicked, and the bruising across his nose wasn’t much better. Jack glared out the corner of his eye at Wuya. Still no apology or even an acknowledgement that she’d fucked up—
“The only one who will be a weeping loser is you, Jack Spicer!” called a familiar voice. Jack glared over his shoulder as Omi and the loser monks pulled up, riding on Dojo’s back. Omi leapt over the gallery deck to join them in the lantern room. “And-and you, Wuya! You shall weep over your loss as well!”
Smooth, Omi.
“Wow… that is the lamest taunt ever,” Jack said, leaning against the lantern. “Stick to the jumping and kicking, Omi.”
“As you wish!” See? That was much better already—
Omi leapt into the air high above—
Jack aimed a punch his way—
Omi grabbed Jack’s wrist, smoothly pulling him off-balance while Omi tumbled overhead, closer to the Shen Gong Wu—
Gritting his teeth through the ache, Jack jumped up, activating his helipack right as Omi kicked the mirror off its mount, snatching it from the air. Yes! Fuck yes!
“Too slow—”
Kimiko came out of nowhere, striking Jack from the air. He hit the floor hard, bruises screaming, head spinning—
“Got it!” Kimiko said, mirror in her hands.
“JackBots, attack!” Jack wheezed. No time to lay down and groan! Jack staggered back onto his feet, grabbing onto the railing as the floor rocked beneath him, head ringing like a struck bell. Fuck. Couldn’t the migraine wait another five minutes before coming back to play?
Clay destroyed three JackBots, grabbing the mirror, but Jack was ready this time, launching himself in the air with the help of the helipack to snatch it from his hands—
“Yoink!”
—and fly straight for the jetcar. If he could get out above the water where there were no solid surfaces for these monks to bounce off—shit, where the fuck did Raimundo come from!?
“Spicer! I challenge you to a Xiaolin Showdown!” Raimundo declared, his hands on the mirror in Jack’s grip. Jack glared. Ugh.
“Flashlight tag is the game. My Golden Tiger Claws against your Lotus Twister. First one caught in a light beam loses.” Raimundo said. Hm. Not too bad for a challenge, and good choice of wagered Shen Gong Wu to try and gain an advantage. Jack couldn't have done better himself. Unlike all the other monks who kept setting fair challenges. Omi.
“Whatever, let’s go,” Jack said. He was gonna win, even if Raimundo thought he’d done something clever here. Jack was smarter. More ruthless. Had better ideas about how to cheat. He did actually win these showdowns pretty often, Wuya!
“Xiaolin Showdown!” Jack and Raimundo cried together, and the world around them began to transform.
The gameboard this time was actually kinda beautiful, like a piece of scifi art from the 70s. A midnight sky surrounded them, while brilliant white fragments of stone floated, suspended in the shape of a tower. Far above, a mini magnesium sun was sending out directed beams of light, constantly spinning and moving. Jack took a second to memorise the intervals and angles of the beams as he climbed up, wincing as the throbbing in his head intensified. It was fine, though. Jack would win this quickly and then he’d find a fresh icepack and a dark room to curl up in.
“Gong yi tanpai!” Jack and Raimundo shouted in unison, leaping into action.
The lotus twister wasn’t too bad a choice for this game, all things considered. Raimundo could have demanded far worse. Though, it wasn’t like Jack had many Shen Gong Wu to pick from, after Wuya had stolen them all for her dumbass Mala Mala Zhong scheme. Who was it exactly who was always losing Shen Gong Wu, huh?
All Jack had to do was outlast Raimundo. Or shove him into a light beam, if the chance presented itself. Those Tiger Claws would make it a lot harder to keep track of the shifting intervals of the light beams, and Jack was confident Raimundo couldn’t even manage memorising their basic pattern—
Aha! There! Jack stretched his arms high, wrapping them in knots around Raimundo to drag him down.
“Raimundo… head t’ward the light!” Jack taunted, yanking him back when he tried to use the Tiger Claws. Uh uh! No escape this time! The light beam was swinging closer and closer— “Sorry pal! You’re not going anywhere!”
Raimundo sneered, then tore open a smaller portal, sticking his hand through. What was he doing—
Something shoved Jack’s feet, sending him tumbling over the edge with a shriek. Jack flailed, trying to catch something, anything to slow his fall—his dumb rubbery arms stretched, momentum carrying Jack further down, right into the path—
Jack winced, eyes squeezed shut as the magnesium bright light shone directly into his face, immediately hammering a railroad spike into his skull, and losing him the showdown.
“…swell,” Jack muttered.
Reality returned to normal, and Jack found himself sitting a short distance away from the monks down on the rocks at the base of the lighthouse. They had seemingly forgotten his presence, congratulating Raimundo on the win, which was fine because with the way Jack’s head was pounding after that fucking lightshow, he was gonna stab anyone who tried to talk to him. Aiya. That mirror should have been Jack’s.
Well, nevermind, there was always the next Shen Gong Wu, and Jack was bound to do better when he felt less like refried crap—
Jack paused, narrowing his eyes. Why was Wuya hovering by Raimundo’s shoulder?
“You’re right, Omi. I’m not,” Raimundo sneered. Wait. Had Jack missed something? “So? Where do you want them?” Raimundo asked Wuya, smirking darkly.
“Hey!” Jack snapped, leaping to his feet while the monks all gawked at Raimundo.
“Well done, Raimundo!” Wuya purred.
What. The fuck.
Only this morning, she had been—that sneaky, conniving, backstabbing hag! Raimundo!? Really!?
The monks were whining now, begging Raimundo not to go evil, while Raimundo sneered at them and declared himself Heilin. Wuya was hovering by his side, praising him just like she had done with Jack, promising him the world and his every desire just like she had with Jack, and Jack could only watch, his blood turned to jetfuel and ignited, incandescent—
Wuya wasn’t even looking at Jack! Nine months of partnership and Jack wasn’t even worth a single superior smirk now that she had some other favourite! Jack had never been special. Never chosen. Not worth befriending. Not even worth gloating over.
Furious tears were gathering in his eyes. Wuya’s not-apology this morning—that had just been another scheme, hadn’t it? Making sure no matter which side won the next showdown, she’d still get the spoils.
She still hadn’t looked at him! She wouldn’t look at him! And then they were gone. Disappeared through a portal, escaping before any of the loser monks even made an attempt to grab them.
Wuya was gone.
With Jack’s next breath, his rage washed away to nothing, sputtering out like fire in a vacuum. That was that, then. It really hadn’t ever meant a thing. Jack was just the first sucker to give Wuya a chance.
Jack laughed. Loudly. Rocking forward so much his head was ringing and his bruised ribs ached. When he looked up, the loser monks were all glaring miserably at him. Poor little Omi looked like he was about to cry.
“Bet you didn’t see that coming!” Jack crowed, laughing again. “What d’you think he sold you out for? A new surfboard?”
“Raimundo has not sold us out!” Omi snapped. “This must be some… secret plan! Yes! A super secret plan to trick Wuya, in order to collect more Shen Gong Wu! Raimundo is simply pretending to be Heilin!”
Jack snorted.
“Right, that makes far more sense than Wuya offering Pendrosa whatever he wanted for the low low price of double crossing you guys,” Jack said.
“Raimundo is our friend! He would not turn against us! And, if he really has—” Omi sniffed, lips trembling—shit, he really was crying now, even if he still looked as determined as ever, “—if he really has gone to the Heilin side, then we shall convince him to come back as our friend once more!”
The other monks made some noises of agreement. Jack felt lightheaded.
“Right. Well good luck with that,” Jack muttered.
“Thank you for your well wishes, Jack Spicer.”
“I wasn’t—ugh. Whatever. Later, losers,” Jack said, heading back to his jetcar. Behind him, the monks flew off, already making plans for how to save their friend.
Meanwhile, Wuya was off somewhere promising Raimundo anything he could ever desire, as if she wouldn’t drop him the moment someone more useful came along—if Jack had done more fighting training, would she have left? If he’d won more showdowns, gloated less? If he hadn’t teased her so much, or mouthed off when she got too bossy—
Jack grabbed that train of thought and strangled it. No. He was never gonna go back to living like that, fitting himself into someone else’s mold just so they’d like him. When he did find a real best friend, they’d be someone who liked Jack as he was, Evil Boy Genius with a passion for robotics and a dream of ruling the world. Since freeing Wuya, Jack had almost thought…
Jack sneered, shaking himself. No. Fuck Wuya. And fuck Raimundo too. If he wanted to abandon his actual friends, people who were going around literally crying at the idea of losing him, all for whatever trinket that lying witch had promised, then they were welcome to each other.
Jack was done.
Jack was taking an easy night at home, watching some b-tier wuxia drama he’d seen a thousand times before, icing his ribs and head while he fiddled with a fork of ChameleonBot’s OS. He’d had this new, fantastic idea! See, while ChameleonBot’s software was great for imitating other people, especially ones that Jack had a bunch of datapoints for, in the end it was just a mimic. A really good mimic, with loads of extra processing power to react on the fly to new situations, calculating how each cloned person may act when exposed to any given stimuli, but still a mimic. Pretty much just an advanced model of a JackBot with shapechanging capabilities and Jack’s latest model of EmotionChip. It wasn’t a distinct person so much as an adaptive neural network.
Jack had this theory, though. If he modified the behaviour code, removed the personality presets, played around with the heuristic learning settings and how they interacted with the EmotionChips, then maybe Jack was on the verge of creating a bot that could actually achieve sentience! Develop its own personality, independent of Jack’s input! Its own wants and desires! That would be so damn cool!
Unfortunately, with the way his migraine was progressing, it was getting really annoying to read script. The code kept going blurry and jumping around, and for a moment Jack was certain he’d been writing in wingdings instead of English. Ugh.
Jack tossed the laptop aside, staring unseeing at the latest action scene on the TV.
His fingers found the new red string bracelet looped around his wrist, fiddling with the ties and the little charm. It was one of the hundred or so red string bracelets gifted from his mother over the years. She always sent him a few more in the weeks after Jack got ransomed, as if the reason hostile crime syndicates were able to repeatedly abduct Jack from school was because Jack just wasn’t doing his part to ward off bad luck, instead of being because his parents had forbidden him from summoning his JackBots while on campus.
This bracelet was one of the nicer ones. Soft silk threads, peachwood beads to fasten it, and a little jade charm of a pixiu beast hanging from it. Bixie, of course. Jack’s family were comfortable enough without needing Tianlu to drag wealth back home, though of course that hadn’t stopped Jack’s parents from placing a Tianlu and Bixie in the foyer of every one of their properties.
It did make Jack laugh though, how the jade charms they gifted him were always Bixie. Never a qilin or a dragon, a lion or a phoenix, or even Guanyin or Buddha. Always Bixie, the divine guardian beast that’s also famous for protecting treasure rooms and financial prosperity. The perfect guardian to protect your genius inventor son whose inventions had made the family millions in the global tech industry.
The little Bixie charm was cool beneath Jack’s fingertips. If he concentrated, he could sense the magic surrounding it, a strange faint tingling somewhat reminiscent of a Shen Gong Wu’s magic, though far weaker—
A loud, distant boom sounded, the ground rumbling. The power went out.
Jack froze, heartrate spiking at the darkness, the air suddenly gone—was that movement!? Enemies approaching with guns and tasers and rope, here to drag Jack away and lock him in some small cage—
The red glowing eyes of the JackBots crossed Jack’s frantic vision. He forced his breathing to calm, even as his nerves demanded he hyperventilate. Licking his lips, Jack ran to the door leading outside, his shoulders falling at the sight of the night sky above. A pair of JackBots followed him out, hovering, alerted for danger by Jack’s body signals.
“Stand down,” Jack murmured, trying to get a view of the town on the far side of the valley. No lights there either. What had it been, an earthquake? No, something else was off, the energy in the air felt weird.
Grabbing his helipack and Evil Coat, Jack flew high, surveying their surroundings…
There! On that distant horizon, far away in the hills, a thunderstorm was going crazy. The lightshow was definitely unnatural, the kind of thing a supervillain might pull off. As Jack watched, the lightning collapsed in on itself, and then the moon itself went dark. Seconds later, a wave of dark magic swept across the land, and all the trees turned black and dead, the grass gone.
“Fuck…”
It took no time at all to decide to go investigate. Jack only slowed down long enough to check his eyeliner and pop another couple painkillers, and then he was in his jetcar and flying right at the disturbance. The way he figured it, either this was some brand new supervillain making their debut, in which case Jack should offer an alliance if they were friendly, or study their abilities if they weren’t. Or else that was some massively powerful thing, in which case, Jack should grab it before Wuya, the Xiaolin monks, or anyone else had the bright idea to check it out.
It wouldn’t hurt to be a little stealthy on the approach, though.
Hovering near a mountainside, Jack watched as an elemental battle played out in the valley down below. That had to be the monks, right? So the green fire…
A chill ran down Jack’s spine. Was that Wuya? Fuck, it had barely been a day—had Raimundo really worked out some way to restore her so quickly!? There hadn’t even been any new Shen Gong Wu since the mirror yesterday! What had that mirror done!? Wuya had called it the Reversing Mirror, so what did it reverse—
Was that all Jack would have needed in order to restore her body!? All those vicious words and grumbling and those pointed insults, and it wasn’t even Jack’s fault!? The fucking Shen Gong Wu she needed just hadn’t been revealed yet!? Jack was gonna fucking destroy her—
Jack flailed, gaping, as an enormous mountain-sized evil palace erupted from the ground, all black stone and sharp edges. Oh. Okay. Jack’d have to table the Destroy Wuya plot and come back to it later once he’d upgraded his tech. Maybe also after he’d stolen a few of the more powerful Shen Gong Wu from the Xiaolin temple. For now, sneaking off was by far the smartest option—
Movement below caught his attention. Fireballs, though none aimed his way. A green dragon weaving between them, trying to flee from Wuya’s land, with presumably three Xiaolin monks on his back. As Jack watched, Dojo took a direct hit, falling into the black, dead forest below.
Now there’s a thought…
Jack flipped the jetcar from hover mode to flying, immediately rolling into a dive as he made a wide arc around the forest, aiming obliquely for their crash spot. A handful of stone golems were also searching for the monks, but they didn’t seem all that bright. None of them even looked up as Jack zoomed past overhead.
The jetcar’s directional mics caught audio before Jack could see them, Omi yelling about how he’d never beg for mercy, Raimundo laughing—
“Maybe you guys don’t get it,” Raimundo said darkly. “I’m the only one who can save you!”
Now how could Jack ignore an opening like that?
“Wrong!” Jack drawled, opening fire on the stone monsters. They crumbled easily before the power of high energy plasma. Jack rolled into a split S, catching the three monks on a wing before climbing back up to mountain height. Now, this next part would be tricky… hopefully the monks were smart enough not to let go.
Still climbing vertically, Jack let the jetcar’s momentum drop as they reached the peak of a tailslide, then in that moment, frozen suspended in the sky, he popped open the cockpit canopy
“Get in!”
The monks needed no further bidding, all three scrambling inside as the jetcar’s nose began to fall. Jack snapped the canopy closed, and then with another roll, they were off, Jack laughing in delight.
It was another few moments before the monks caught their breaths.
“Jack Spicer!?” Kimiko exclaimed.
“What’re you up to, you two-faced varmint!?” Clay growled.
“Rescuing you,” Jack said with an eyeroll. Come on. Did they think he’d do all that for fun? …well, this time it wasn’t just for fun. “You three dweebs are my best chance at defeating Wuya.”
“Heh, sounded like he said Wuya,” Dojo muttered somewhere in the back.
“He did,” Kimiko said.
“Why would Jack, Evil Boy Genius, want Wuya, Evil Witch Hag, defeated?” Clay prodded.
Oh, so many fucking reasons—
“Because Jack has finally rejected the ways of evil!” Omi declared, throwing his arms around Jack in a tight hug and pressing hard on all his bruises. Jack flinched, grimacing, before shoving him away.
“I’m still evil, right down to my greedy black heart,” Jack snapped, aiming a glare at Omi. Omi just blinked back, bemused, his brow furrowed slightly as he studied Jack.
“Okay… then count me among the confused!” Omi said brightly.
“Aiya,” Jack muttered, rolling his eyes. “I want to rule the world! Which I can’t do if Wuya’s—”
“Wuya’s already ruling it,” Kimiko finished, smirking.
“Thank you!” Jack said, while the other three went oohh.
“That is some mighty twisted thinking, but darned if it don’t make sense!” Clay said. Fucking hell. No one tell Clay about chess. A King’s Gambit might fry his brain.
Speaking of strategy…
“So, cueball, what’s your plan?” Jack asked.
“We don’t have one,” Omi said.
“We rarely do,” Kimiko chimed in.
Jack blinked.
“Really!? You’ve got nothing!? All this time I thought you were these amazing Xiaolin geniuses, but you’re just as lame as I am! Hahaha!” Jack said brightly, grinning, before his face flushed. “Wait, that didn’t come out right.”
Kimiko sniggered. Omi was still just watching Jack, smiling.
“We might not have a plan, but Master Fung sure will,” Clay said.
Jack nodded. To the Xiaolin temple, then.
The flight there was mostly silent, the monks all depressed after their disastrous fight with Wuya and near deaths. Jack was glad. His migraine meds were wearing thin, so he really wasn’t in any mood to chatter.
Omi was the only one Jack could see easily, sat in the other forward chair. He was meditating, the nine dots on his forehead gently glowing. Even through Jack’s coat, he could feel the slight tingling press of circulating qi.
“Look, there it is!” Dojo cried, leaping forward to press against the canopy.
“Out the way,” Jack snapped, shoving him aside while the three monks all perked up. Jack brought them in low, flying over the temple—the courtyard didn’t look right, strange stone cages set up throughout—
“Shit!” Jack cried, slamming on the acceleration—
Fireballs were flying their way—Jack went into a tumbling roll, ignoring his passengers’ shrieks—fuck, he was still too low to the ground for this, they needed to climb out of range—more fireballs, shit!—
Two missed but the third hit the jet propulsion—
“Fuck!”
The jetcar was struggling to keep level. Jack hit the emergency button, and the canopy flew off—Kimiko was yelling something, and suddenly Dojo was at his full size, the monks on his back—were they just gonna leave Jack here!? The proximity alert screaming about three more fireballs—
Jack leapt from the jetcar, wishing he’d had a parachute installed—the helipack would have to suffice, even if it left Jack completely exposed and too slow to evade the next fireballs—
Dojo’s tail swept into Jack’s chest—Jack caught on, wrapping all four limbs around the dragon, clinging so tight he was sure he’d leave scratches—they were flying! Bounding through the sky and up to cloud level like a living sine wave—
Below them, the jetcar exploded in fiery glory, but Jack could barely spare a thought for it, his head throbbing in time with the zenith of each waveform—
“Stop the undulating. Please!” Jack groaned, his stomach lurching—
Clay was saying some nonsense about dragonriding, but Jack couldn’t hear a word over the sudden urge to—
Grabbing Clay’s hat, he puked.
Clay didn’t like that much, apparently. Jack couldn’t really follow what he was saying though. He was spending far too much brainpower on not falling to his death, bleary-eyed and woozy, to also keep translating English.
Large, strong hands were gripping Jack’s shoulders, keeping him upright and somewhat steady. Jack tried not to puke on Clay. Again.
The moment they touched ground in the forest, Jack slid off Dojo’s back and lay in a crumbled heap on the ground.
Clay grumbled something in English before marching off. Kimiko was laughing. Jack just squeezed his eyes shut, trying to make everything stop spinning.
When he opened them, Omi was standing above him. Jack tried to rustle up a glare, but he didn’t think he managed.
Omi smiled, sitting by Jack’s side as he said something about Dojo and flying.
“Aiya, more English?” Jack muttered in Chinese.
Omi lit up.
“You speak?”
“Of’course I do, dumbass. I’m Chinese.”
“You always used English before! And your name—”
Jack twisted to the side, retching despite his empty stomach. With a groan he slumped back on his back.
“D’you have some point you’re getting to?” Jack said, covering his eyes. Omi giggled, and then icy cool fingers pressed against Jack’s temples. He gasped, shuddering as the soothing cold sank deeper.
“Simply that I find it surprising that Dojo’s undulations were so easily able to unsettle the stomach of such an accomplished pilot,” Omi said softly.
“It's different when you’re in control,” Jack mumbled, before peeking through his fingers. “You think I’m an accomplished pilot?”
Omi nodded, grinning.
“It was like flying on the back of a hawk!” Omi said, before producing a cup from somewhere and filling it with water. He offered it to Jack. Hesitantly Jack took it, washing his mouth out.
“…thanks, Omi.”
“You are most welcome!” Omi said, beaming.
Jack found he was smiling back.
“What you did to my hat, Jack… well. It just ain’t right!” Clay grumbled, washing his hat in the river.
“Stop whining. You’re lucky I had a light dinner,” Jack said, smirking.
Kimiko and Omi were a little downstream, Kimiko sitting by the waterside, while Omi meditated on a rock spire sticking out of the water. It was probably pretty soothing to hang out like that, surrounded by the sound and energy of your elemental affinity. It was nearly respectable how easily the little guy could meditate no matter the circumstances.
“Okay, I’m stumped. How are we supposed to beat Wuya if the Shen Gong Wu no longer work against her?” Kimiko pondered.
Jack raised an eyebrow. Really? The loser monks had no other ideas? This was why real geniuses diversified their skillsets and powers.
“Well, okay, I know this is a bit of a stretch, but what if we dump a bucket of glue over her?” Dojo suggested.
“Glue!? That’s gonna stop her global reign of evil?” Kimiko scoffed.
“I’m talking a really big bucket of glue!”
Fantastic. Jack was relying on idiots.
“I hate to say it, but without Master Fung to show us how, we’ll never be able to defeat Wuya,” Clay sighed.
Jack snorted, rolling his eyes.
“Can you guys not face a single real challenge without Old Man Fung holding your hand through it?” he scoffed.
“Oh, like you have a plan,” Kimiko sneered.
“I do! And it’s been going great so far!”
“Really. What is it, then?”
“Step one: rescue the loser monks from certain death—”
“Rai wouldn’t have—”
“Step two: convince the loser monks to work with me to defeat Wuya—”
“Now that’s just a needlessly belligerent way of putting things—”
“Step three: come up with an ingenious scheme to crush Wuya into dust!”
Kimiko and Clay shared a look.
“That’s not a plan, idiot!” Kimiko snapped.
“It’s more of a plan than you guys had,” Jack scoffed, crossing his arms.
“You know what!? I don’t think this little alliance is working out—”
“The only person who ever defeated Wuya was Grandmaster Dashi,” Omi cut in. Oh? Hello. Wuya was always grumbling about some guy called Dashi.
“Yeah, well, you missed him by about 1500 years kid, so good luck trying to ask him,” Dojo grumbled. That would definitely be a problem. Unless—
“At least not without a time machine,” Kimiko added.
“I have a time machine!” Jack blurted, grinning. He had it! The solution! Kinda. Maybe. Well, the next step, at least, and they could troubleshoot the rest.
The second flight wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the first, if only because Omi made Jack sit near the front, right behind Dojo’s head. A lot less undulating up here.
There weren’t any stone golems hanging about Jack’s place, and the JackBots weren’t reporting anything unusual, so Jack led the way sneaking back in and down to his workshop.
“Behold! Jack Spicer’s Evil Time Machine!” Jack said, unveiling the large, beautiful moon gate made of steel and circuits.
“You are so overusing the word ‘evil’,” Kimiko muttered. Jack ignored her.
“Ooh!!!” Omi said, his eyes wide and shining with wonder. Now that’s the reaction Jack was looking for! Yes, Omi, Jack really was so cool that he could make actual functioning time machines in his free time! “We can really use this strange device to travel back in time!?”
Jack’s smirk faltered.
“Uhm.. Sort of. You can travel back in time, but it’s kinda lame,” Jack admitted.
“What do you mean?” Kimiko asked.
Jack activated the machine. Lighting began arcing from the terminals along the outside of the gate, and a swirling mist appeared inside. Omi gasped, taking several steps closer, utterly amazed. Jack grinned, bouncing on his toes.
A second Jack stepped out of the veil.
“I bring you greetings from the future!” the other Jack said, striking an Evil pose.
Jack bit back a laugh, running up to the gate. He paused for a second on the precipice, eyes finding Omi again as he gestured between himself and himself, before leaping through the veil and out into his workshop from two seconds ago. Omi’s expression shifted from wonder to pure delight as Jack’s previous self ran up and through the veil, closing the mini loop.
“Amazing!” Omi said.
Jack grinned, nodding, before letting out a sigh.
“You see what I mean, though? Lame! I can only generate enough power to travel back two seconds.”
“And… why not just generate more power?” Clay prodded.
Why not just—
“Of course! Why didn’t I think of just using more power!? I’ll just run outside and connect to my backyard nuclear fusion reactor! So obvious! So with four gigawatts of energy an hour, that should give us an extra 504 million seconds of manufactured temporal distortion, on top of those two seconds we already have. That just leaves another 1484 years’ worth of energy left to produce! Generate more power! Thanks for the suggestion, cowboy!” Jack said brightly.
Omi leaned close to Kimiko, watching Jack with a puzzled look, as he said, “Is Jack Spicer actually thankful for Clay’s suggestion? This tone of voice leaves me very uncertain.”
“I don’t have a nuclear fusion reactor in my garden, Omi!” Jack snapped.
“It’s sarcasm, Omi,” Kimiko murmured while Jack crossed his arms and glared at the wall.
Clay looked unruffled.
“Why can’t you just use the Eye of Dashi for power?” Clay asked.
Jack froze.
Oh.
Of course, that was so—ha! That could work! Pure, boundless magic transmuted into lightning strikes—ten gigawatts per 0.3 second strike was—shit, that would be nearly a 300 million % increase in output compared to fucking nuclear fusion! Plugged into the temporal distortion formula—fuck, that couldn’t be right—the numbers checked out, it was correct—ten gigawatts per 0.3 seconds produced 4.7 billion years of potential time displacement— the maximum limit on years to travel back was fucking older than the age of the Planet Earth—
“Of course! The Eye of Dashi has a limitless supply of energy!” Omi said, beaming.
Jack just laughed, scrambling to the control panel to set up the destination time. It was gonna work! Jack could travel back whenever he wanted! Fuck, the things he could do with this once Wuya was defeated—and this opened up whole new possibilities about combining tech and Shen Gong Wu! What other possibilities were there—was the timeline fixed or flexible? Would any changes reintegrate? Were they already set in stone? What if—
“You really never considered using the Eye of Dashi to power this thing?” someone asked. Clay? Who cared. Time travel was fucking real! And Jack could go back to any time period on Earth!
“Made the machine before I knew Shen Gong Wu existed,” Jack said, not bothering to look up. And afterwards, he’d been far too busy upgrading his various robots and fine-tuning his jetcar to work on anything so lame as time travel.
But it wasn’t lame anymore! It was gonna be so damn cool!
“Okay, we’re good to go!” Jack called out, doublechecking the adjustments to compensate for Milankovitch cycles and daily planetary rotation. That should take them back 1500 years exactly! Now, hopefully the Xiaolin Temple historical records were accurate down to the year, and the brave traveller would arrive after Wuya had already been trapped.
Apparently, while Jack had been distracted, the monks had decided Omi would be the one to go. The air felt a little thin. Biting his lip, Jack checked the machine’s settings again. They couldn’t afford even a single little mistake, or Omi would be left floating in space, hundreds of thousands of miles from the Earth.
“Are you sure about this, Omi?” Dojo asked.
“My safety is of small consequence when the world is ruled by evil,” Omi said, resolute.
Jack’s stomach flipped, another laugh bubbling up. Now this! This! Was why Omi was his favourite of the four monks. Omi was the only one who ever tried to match Jack’s energy when it came to speeches about Good vs Evil.
“Yeah, but, don’t you think you need more Shen Gong Wu than just the Orb of Tornami?” Clay asked.
Jack rolled his eyes, leaning against the control panel. Like it was a bad thing that their water affinity specialist had chosen to take and use the water specialty orb of whatever.
“No. You may need the rest for your battle against Wuya’s forces,” Omi said, another classic Hero line.
“Please be careful, Omi,” Kimiko said, hugging him.
“I will have a legendary Grandmaster to protect me,” Omi said.
“The time machine is set to send you back 1500 years,” Jack announced. “Now I won’t bore you with the exceedingly complicated calculations involved, but I should be able to land you right at the base of the Xiaolin temple!”
Because Jack was fucking awesome!! Did no one else get how genius this was!? He was fucking amazing!! This was the first time in history that any tech would be able to do anything like this!!
“Goodbye, my friends,” Omi said.
Jack grinned.
“Okay Kimiko, light it up baby!” Jack called across the lab.
“Eye of Dashi!” she said, shoving the Shen Gong Wu into the second battery slot. The power surged, Jack gave a thumbs up, and Omi stepped through the portal and disappeared. Jack let out an Evil laugh, leaping into the air. Yes!! It fucking worked!!!
Across the room, Kimiko and Clay shared a high five, while Dojo called out something about a shirt. When Omi got back—
Jack froze.
Ohhhh fuck.
“Um… guys? Sooooo I have some bad news…”
“What is it, Spicer?” Kimiko said with a roll of her eyes.
“So I wanna preface this by reminding you guys that until an hour ago, this time machine only went back two seconds—”
“Jack, what is it?”
“I, uh—” Jack blinked, glancing from them, to the machine. A magnificent work of art it had taken Jack months to create, years if it included the research he’d had to do on quantum mechanics and string theory— “How’s Omi gonna get back to here from the past?” Jack asked.
“You sent Omi 1500 years into the past without any idea how to get him back!?” Kimiko roared.
Jack swallowed. Rolled his shoulders back.
“We sent him back,” Jack corrected.
“You—”
“I didn’t see any of you lot objecting!! Or-or asking any questions about how Omi would get back—”
“It’s your machine!”
“It only went back two seconds! Returning to the future never came up in beta testing!”
“You—you idiot! You trapped Omi in the past forever!”
“Easy, easy! I can fix this!” Jack said, shaking her off. He could! There was already half of a solution tumbling through his head—arranging a time for Omi to find the portal to the future would be simple enough, just set the machine to 24 hours later—the difficult bit would be working out some way to keep the portal open on Omi’s side— “Forever? Nah. Give me a week, tops—”
With a snarl of twisted metal, a stone golem burst out of the floor, immediately smashing the time machine.
“No!” Jack yelped staring at the twisted metal in horror. All that work, all those rare materials, the custom components— “Okay. I’ll need more than a week,” Jack lamented. His beautiful time machine—
Clay yanked Jack back right as the golem smashed the ground where Jack had been standing. Right. The imminent threat of death was probably more important than mourning a fully functional time machine.
Kimiko and Clay were squaring up to fight the golems. Jack crawled under the closest table and curled up in a ball.
“Well!? Aren’t you gonna get in there?” Dojo prodded, also curled up under the table.
“Aren’t you?” Jack asked.
“Ehh, I’m not about the punching and kicking. My specialty is cheering everyone on from a safe distance,” Dojo said, shrugging.
There was loud crash as Clay went flying into a nearby wall. Jack winced. Looks like Xiaolin style was once again proving ineffective!
“JackBots! Annihilatify!” Jack called out. The dozen Jackbots hidden around the room sprang into action, guns blazing with glowing plasma, destroying the golem in seconds.
“Ohh yeah! That’s my boys!” Jack cheered, jumping up from beneath the table. “Shifting gears and kicking rears!”
The Jackbots all hovered closer, whirring loud, their heads held high and proud.
“Easy, Jack. Wuya’s still out there,” Kimiko said.
“Yeah, this cattle drive is just getting started,” Clay added.
“Aaah you’re just saying that ‘cause you were getting pasted,” Jack said, turning back to the JackBots with a grin. “Not like my boys! Let’s hear it for the automatons that get it on! Raise the roof—”
And then Jack’s entire house was lifted from the foundations by a stone warrior the size of a mountain.
This wasn’t the first time Jack had been forced into a cage by people who wouldn’t care if he died. It was the first time he was certain no amount of money from his parents would convince his captor to free him.
By the time their stone cages walked into Wuya’s throne room, it was taking most of Jack’s focus just to keep his breathing steady. The cage wasn’t even that small! At least, he’d been put in smaller, less comfortable ones before, and made it out alive.
The gaps between the stone bars were pretty wide. Jack pressed his face against them, pretending the cage didn’t exist.
Raimundo was still up there by Wuya’s side. Guess he hadn’t fucked up yet. Well, he’d learn.
“Delicious. My domination of the world is now complete,” Wuya purred. Jack shuddered.
“Uh Wuya, you might wanna do a headcount. You’re short one Omi,” Raimundo said.
“Omi!?” Wuya gasped, teleporting down to interrogate Dojo.
Jack could feel stone pressing on him from all sides—
Wuya’s hands were glowing now with a sickly green fire, smirking sadistically as she threatened Clay—“we have ways of making you talk, brat,” spat the tall guy with the face scar—“if they wanted him back undamaged, they should have picked up the phone!”—fuck, Jack couldn’t breath—
“He’s in the past!” Jack shouted. The other monks gasped in horror, basically confirming his words, while Wuya turned to face Jack— “Yeah! Omi travelled back in time to ask some guy named Dashi for help.”
“Omi is in the past?”
“Yes. And now he’s trapped there,” Kimiko spat, glaring at Jack, but he didn’t give a single fuck about that, he had to—
“It was me who sent him back, Wuya,” Jack said, trying to smile up at her. “I was really on your side all the way—stupid Omi walked right into our trap—” pleasepleaseplease let me out “You can let me go now, right?”
Wuya smirked, her eyes alight with sadistic amusement.
“Forget it, Jack. I’m not buying,” she said.
“Please?” Jack whimpered, trembling, tearing up—
Wuya just grinned wider.
“This cage is a little too spacious, don’t you think, Jack? I’m certain you’ll be much more comforable somewhere a little more snug,” Wuya purred, clicking her fingers—
Jack shrieked, pressing up against the bars as the cage shrank—the other monks were talking about Omi and Jack could barely hear a word, English-sounding gibberish, he could barely breathe, the air was gone—Raimundo was begging Wuya for something—
Swear loyalty. Jack could do that. He could—
“—won’t believe the things she’s got! Videogames! Racecars! Speedboats!”
“Sold! You can let me out now!” Jack yelled, waving a hand through the bars.
“The offer’s not for you, Jack,” Wuya said.
Jack let out a high laugh.
“You really hold a grudge!” Jack said, falling back against the far wall. Tears were spilling down his cheeks now, definitely smudging his eyeliner. If Jack curled up, pressed into this corner, his eyes shut, it almost felt like he was safely back home hiding, maybe tucked inside the panic room—
Jack gasped, arms flying out as the golem cage started moving again—the walls were closing in, squeezing the air out—
Suddenly Jack was flying through the air, falling down into a pit of swirling dark energy, Kimiko and Clay falling beside him, certain death ahead and all Jack could think was “oh thank fuck I can breathe again.”
The dungeons actually weren’t that bad, all things considered. Of the various places Jack had been held captive in over the years, it ranked around fourth. Pretty spacious, not awfully hot or cold, no weird puddles of mystery liquid on the ground, something that could actually function as a bed in one corner. There weren’t even any bored violent henchmen threatening to cut off Jack’s body parts for fun, so yeah. A solid fourth place, after the three times he’d been held in actual motel rooms.
The other monks weren’t so impressed.
“So will Wuya keep us in prison here forever? Or let us out for good behaviour in 5000 years?” Kimiko griped.
“Might even get it down to five if you guys could stash your egos for long enough to cosy up to her. If you offer something useful, you could be out by dinnertime,” Jack mused, staring at the walls. Not that that would help much. Jack would go crazy within a week trapped in here with nothing to fidget with and no new coding to work on, and Wuya had never been impressed with his bots or tech. What else did he have? Money? Connections? Nothing special if you already ruled the world. The silence was stretching a little longer than it should have. He turned, and found three pairs of eyes on him. “What?”
“We’re not gonna team up with Wuya the moment things get difficult!” Kimiko snarled.
“Your funeral,” Jack shrugged.
“I was mighty disappointed by how quick you flipped on us, Spicer,” Clay said. “Hardly surprised, though, has to be said.”
“Oh gee, and you know I just hate to disappoint,” Jack muttered, already bored. He put his back against the bars, eyes falling shut, and hoped his legs wouldn’t fold beneath him. Jack’s whole ribcage had been at a steady ache for at least an hour now. That wouldn’t have been too bad on its own—jack had kept moving through worse, before—except that it felt like every few minutes someone was adding a bunch of rocks to his pockets, and now he was walking around with half a quarry. Even his eyelids were heavy.
He found the Bixie charm on his wrist, rolling the jade between his fingertips, rubbing his thumb across her antlers. She hadn’t done much to keep him from getting abducted this time either.
“Not to worry, my Xiaolin friends! The old hag made a tactical error!” Dojo cut in.
“Really, Dojo? Because from where I’m standing it looks like Wuya’s got it figured out eight ways to Sunday,” Clay said.
“Ah, Clay, Clay… she forgot that your standard Dojo comes in two sizes! In moments, I’ll supersize myself and bust out of this cage!” Dojo claimed.
Jack shifted opening one eye to peek out. Was the solution really so—
Oh. Nope. Dojo’s really obvious and well known ability for resizing himself had in fact been compensated for in the design of the magic cage.
“There has to be a way for us to get out of here,” Jack murmured.
“We!? You’re not one of us! You betrayed us to Wuya the first moment you got!” Kimiko snarled.
“At least I’m trying things instead of groaning about it!” Jack snapped, spinning to glare at her.
“Your ‘trying things’ got Omi trapped in the past!”
“I was gonna fix it!”
“Well that doesn’t do him or us any good now, does it!? Was anything you said to us genuine!? Or was this all some scam you were running with Wuya to get us to lower our guard—”
“Fuck you, Tohomiko!” Jack snarled, furious tears in his eyes. “Of the four of us here, I’m the only one who was gonna end up in this dungeon no matter what! If one of you had just taken the offer—”
“We would never!”
Jack squeezed his eyes shut, trembling as he held onto the bars, trying to calm his breathing while a wrecking ball was swinging around inside his skull.
“Guys…?” Clay called out, his voice oddly thin. Jack frowned. “I keep trying to find some ray of hope, but there just doesn’t seem to be any light at the end of this tunnel.”
Jack scoffed, earning another glare from Kimiko. Leaning heavily against the bars, Jack strained to spot Clay’s massive form in the next cell. He was curled up in one corner in a way that made Jack’s gut twinge.
Jack let out a deep sigh, rubbing the stray tears from his eyes.
“I’m telling you, quickest way out? Flatter Wuya’s ego. Offer something useful. You can scheme up new ways to defeat her when you’re free,” Jack said, a little softer. “But there’s more than one way out of a cage, even magic ones.”
“You found a way to escape?”
“No, but—”
“Loser,” Kimiko scoffed. Jack rolled his eyes.
“—we’ve only been in here like an hour,” Jack said, tapping the bars. They let out a surprisingly clean, crystalline sound. Maybe with a resonant frequency within vocal range. “Let’s just say, there’s a reason why you bring in someone from outside the coding team when you want to pen-test a network.”
“Learn that the hard way, did you—”
Kimiko’s venomous response was interrupted by a brilliant light shining from beneath the drain cover, and then the thing went flying, and Omi popped out.
“My friends!” Omi said, springing from the drain.
“Omi!”
“Look out!” cried Dojo, as the floor shifted, several golems rising from the stone. Omi leapt clear of their first strikes, smoothly changing momentum to sweep into a counter. Would this go like it had with Kimiko and Clay? Omi did have the strongest kick by far, the only one able to destroy the special alloy Jack had made—
“Orb of Tornami, ice!” Omi cried, freezing the golems. With a swift kick, they shattered into a thousand pieces, the glowing magic animating them dissipating to nothing as Omi landed in a cool action hero pose.
“Hello, friends!” Omi said, beaming.
Jack swallowed back a delighted shriek, though he didn’t manage to stifle some excited bounces.
“Omi!! But how!? How did you get here?” Kimiko asked.
“It is a lengthy but very engaging tale!” Omi began. “Filled with both surprises, and heartwarming—”
“Hate to interrupt your already riveting story, Omi, but maybe you should get us out of here first,” Jack said. “You know, before Wuya shows up and turns us all crispy?”
“Ohh yes, very wise,” Omi said. “Please step away from your cell doors!”
Jack backed up fast. The next second, Omi had frozen all the bars on their cells solid! Nice! The brittle fracture point would be far easier to reach to shatter them now—
Kimiko, Clay, and Dojo all smashed their way free of their cells easily. So easy Jack had to wonder if they would’ve been able to all along, had they stopped pouting for long enough to try—
They were all looking at him. Okay. Jack could do this. Just swing with enough force, angle the hips, move the hand as an extension of the whole body—
“Aiya!! Fuck!!” Jack screeched, his hand bouncing off the frozen bars, his whole arm aching. “Shit—little help here, please.”
Omi marched up, a serious expression on his face, and then with a flick of his pinky, smashed the whole front of the cell opened. Omi smirked, the little shit.
Really!? Fuck. Why’d he have to be so cool?
They set up camp in the dead forest near Wuya’s castle. The trees were twisted in odd shapes, reminiscent of tormented bodies turned to wood. Jack didn’t know why he found them so unnerving. This whole place just felt wrong, like the land itself was sick. His fingers found the red string bracelet again, fidgeting with the peachwood beads.
“We should be safe here, for a while at least,” Clay said, returning from a perimeter check.
“How’d you do it, Omi? How’d you get back to our time?” Dojo prodded immediately.
“A time travelling Shen Gong Wu, right Omi?” Clay said.
“Gotta be!” Kimiko chimed in.
“So obvious,” Jack added. Like really, what were the alternatives? Building a new machine? Ha.
“Not quite!” Omi said.
“Really!?”
“Then how’d you do it, Omi?”
“Well—” Omi began.
“Stop interrupting and he’ll tell us!” Dojo cut in. Omi pouted, before trying again.
“When I realised that Jack Spicer had foolishly sent me into the past with no way to return—”
Kimiko shot Jack a glare. Jack glowered back.
“—I admit. I was mildly worried,” Omi continued. “Fortunately! I had Grandmaster Dashi, greatest of the Xiaolin Dragons there to help me! Surely he would have an answer! And he did! Grandmaster Dashi knew of a Shen Gong Wu with the mighty power of allowing the wielder to travel through time at will! But it seemed that luck was not on my side, for Grandmaster Dashi had already hidden that Shen Gong Wu somewhere in Europe. Or possibly Egypt.
“My hopes to return swiftly to the future dashed, I once again asked Grandmaster Dashi for guidance, and he reminded me that when the spirit is disturbed, meditation will help the unruly ripples of the mind to settle into clear waters. Through meditation, I would find an answer. And that’s when I was struck by inspiration! The only way to get to the future was by waiting! So that’s what I did!” Omi finished, proudly.
Jack knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help it. That was it? That was it!? Waiting!?
“You… waited?” Clay asked.
“For 1500 years?” Dojo added.
“But you don’t have wrinkles or liver spots!” Kimiko said.
“Or that old person smell,” Jack added.
“No. Because I had—” Omi drew forth the Orb of Tornami. “—the Orb of Tornami!”
What.
“I found the exact place where Wuya would one day raise her palace. And then! I froze myself!” Omi said, grinning.
Jack gaped. Omi froze himse—what the fuck!? Was this screw-physics day!? He froze—for how long—with zero cell damage or braindeath or—and apparently ageing was completely paused while he was frozen too—fuck it! Okay! Apparently Xiaolin monks were fucking immune to being frozen alive!? Or Omi was, at least! While using the Orb of Tornami, specifically.
“There I waited, in frozen slumber, as the ages passed. Finally, 1500 years later, Wuya raised her palace, and with it, me! And so, I was free to help you, my friends! Though I am still very cold!”
Jack stared into the fire while Kimiko gave Omi a hug. Oh, don’t mind him! He was simply reevaluating everything he thought he knew about thermodynamics, cell biology, biochemistry and the properties of water.
“So, did Dashi find a way to help you defeat Wuya?” Clay asked, getting back on topic. Yes. Defeating the all-powerful witch queen of the world who Jack hated. A much more comfortable topic to wrap his brain around.
“Yes! He gave me this!” Omi said, pulling a new puzzle box from his sleeve.
“Hey, it’s a puzzle box. Just like the one Wuya was in,” Jack said.
“Correct, Jack Spicer! All we have to do is open this box in the presence of Wuya!” Omi said, attempting to open the box. Man, he sucked at puzzles. “The only problem being, I do not know how to open it!”
“Uh, Omi? This plan is starting to sound half-baked,” Clay said.
“Oh no, Clay. This plan is not at all baked!” Omi said, mangling the English phrase. “Master Dashi said that the box will open when the person who is supposed to open it opens it!”
“No problem then, Omi,” Jack said. “I opened it before, I can open it again.”
“Great! Now all we need is a plan to get into the palace without Wuya capturing us first!” Clay said.
“And I think I’ve got one!” Kimiko said.
All in all, it wasn’t a bad strategy, especially coming from Team No-Plans.
Somehow, some way, Jack and Omi had managed to creep into Wuya’s throne room while she lazed about reading magazines.
Now was the time.
“Okay. Open it,” Omi whispered, passing the puzzle box over.
Jack took it, poking at the buttons and sliding panels, feeling the way the box shifted closer and closer to open… closer…. And closer… any moment now… if he could just—why was that bit spinning, nothing here should spin—the box was still locked—
Oh shit.
“Stop goofing around and open the box!” Omi hissed.
“I’m trying. It won’t open,” Jack said, fiddling with it further.
“You said you could open it!”
“I thought I could! This box must be different from the first one,” Jack said, frowning at it. The pattern on it seemed to shift, restructuring itself as Jack watched. Stupid magic items.
“The puzzle box is supposed to open when the person who most needs to open it opens it! And I really need to open it!” Omi snapped, clawing at the box.
“Would you like me to try?”
“Oh thank you! That would be most—”
Jack screamed, scrambling away from Wuya, Omi right by his side as they ran for the exit—Wuya was shooting green plasma at their heels, the heat and static chasing up Jack’s spine—
Leaping aside, Jack sprang into the air, his helipack carrying him higher, dodging two more green fireballs—
Across from him, Omi was leaping impossible heights, tumbling from stalactite to stalactite to avoid attacks, like gravity meant nothing to him—fuck, it was like something out of a wuxia drama—
Jack shrieked, trying his best to avoid another fireball but it moved fast as a comet, Wuya laughing, watching as Jack was cornered—
Omi’s path to the exit was open, Wuya entirely distracted by tormenting Jack—why wasn’t he running—!?
A fireball hit one of the helipack’s rotors, sending Jack careening into a wall—he screamed, feeling something snap in his wrist—before he could fall to the ground, the green fire comets were orbiting him like a cage, levitating everything within—Wuya was grinning, a huge burst of green fire leaving her hands and headed straight for Jack—
Jack yelped, suddenly yanked down and out of the way of the energy beam—
“Omi!?”
The idiot monk was clinging to the ends of Jack’s coat, his extra bodyweight dragging them both down further—green fire hit Jack’s chest, sending him flying back against a wall, his head knocking—
Jack blinked awake again, floating in a cage of green fire. Omi was by his side, apparently meditating. They were also both upside down.
“How long was I out?” Jack croaked, trying to float his way upright.
His whole body hurt. Even more bruises across his torso, another bump on his head, flickering burns across his neck, but worst of all, most urgent, a severe pain in his left wrist. Jack winced even trying to move his fingers. Shit. Was his dexterity damaged? Even the possibility made his heart stop.
“Only a few minutes,” Omi murmured.
“Okay, so why are you here?”
Omi blinked, turning to him.
“Because… I was captured???”
“Omi, you had an opening to escape!” Jack snapped, cradling his bad wrist. Omi’s eyes darted to it then back to Jack’s face.
“Yes. But we are a team,” Omi said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Jack’s heart jumped. He scoffed, attempting to turn away. Fuck, his wrist hurt. At least Jack’s glove was acting as somewhat of a brace.
“Were you injured?” Omi asked.
“No.”
“You were.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Yes you were! Your left wrist! Let me see it!”
“No! Fuck off!”
The next few minutes were a mad tumbling scramble as Omi tried to grab at Jack’s wrist and Jack tried to keep it out of his reach without jostling it too badly, both of them rotating within the green flame cage.
“Alright! Sheesh! Fine, you can take a look,” Jack conceded, extending his arm in Omi’s direction and doing his very best not to flex even a single finger.
Omi smiled, before focusing on Jack’s wrist. His touch, when it came, was both very light and very deliberate. Without a word, Omi reached into his sleeves and pulled out another sash, identical to the one he was currently wearing.
“What are you doing?” Jack murmured.
“I have seen this kind of injury many times,” Omi murmured, beginning to wrap the sash like a bandage, bracing Jack’s wrist. “It is unpleasant, but with the proper treatment, you shall heal.”
“It’s sweet that you think you’ll live that long,” Wuya drawled, lounging nearby. Omi twisted to shout something back, but was cut off as Raimundo ran in.
“Wuya! The prisoners have escaped! I think they set a—” he pulled to a stop, staring wide eyed at Omi and Jack.
“Not to worry, Raimundo. They are no threat to me,” she purred.
“Raimundo! Help us! Please!” Omi called, while three new golems approached, dingy, tiny, dark stone cages in their bellies. And wasn’t that a wonderful thing? Jack was suddenly thrilled to be suspended upside down in an airy glowing green net.
Wuya chuckled.
“Well, well. The gang’s all here.”
“I’m guessing the box didn’t work,” Clay called out.
“Jack Spicer couldn’t open it,” Omi called back.
“Not like you did any better, chrome dome!” Jack snapped.
“You got this magic puzzle box from Dashi? Impressive effort, I must say,” she drawled, but Jack could barely hear a word because another golem was approaching, mouth open to gulp them down just like before—
Jack shrieked as they fell inside the stone cage of its belly, flailing wildly—there was something on top of him, some person trying to pin him down--
“Jack Spicer! Stop it—”
No, he wouldn’t let—
“Jack, your hand—”
The walls were crushing him, squeezing his chest and all the air from his lungs—
Two hands were cradling his face. A body was pressed against his. Jack squinted up at the other person—Omi, it was Omi, they were in a stone cage—and swallowed hard, trying to steady his breathing. Omi’s frown twitched into a smile, and he pulled back until he wasn’t sitting right on top of Jack—
Jack gasped, grabbing at him as he pulled back. Omi paused. After a moment, he slipped his hand into Jack’s, holding tight.
Jack trembled, trying to keep his breathing steady. Omi shifted closer, shoulder pressing against Jack’s chest. Warm. Alive. Omi was here, and holding his hand, and the cage suddenly didn’t seem that small—
“—to unfinished business! Crush them!” Wuya cried.
Jack wailed.
Tears spilling over, he braced his shoulders and feet against the wall, trying to hold them apart while they just shrank ever closer—Omi was by his side, sprawled across Jack’s chest and doing the same—maybe Omi would even manage to get them another few seconds, he was freakishly strong—
Suddenly the walls stopped moving.
“—can’t squish—!” Raimundo cried out, the words garbled. Jack blinked back tears, panting. Omi was still lying across his chest, a grim but resolute look on his face, like this was all going to work out—
The golem lurched, turning towards the dungeons while Wuya cackled nearby. Jack crumbled. Omi spared him a glance, squeezing his arms in reassurance, before calling out through the bars to Raimundo, words in English Jack’s brain was too scrambled to translate. Slumping against Omi’s back, he hid his face against Omi’s shoulder, trembling with silent sobs. Omi’s hand found his again, holding tight.
Jack almost missed the puzzle box opening. Only almost, though. Even freaking out and trying not to cry, the bright golden light and sudden heavy sensation of magic in the air was a clue something was up.
And even without that, their prison suddenly crumbling to pebbles was another pretty big indicator that things had changed.
Jack scrambled to his feet, swiping at his eyes. The whole palace around them was rumbling like an earthquake, rocks falling from overhead while the floor was cracking—
“Get a move on, gang!” Clay cried, as they all ran for the exit, falling into single file to cross an absurdly narrow stone bridge over an abyss—
Just jack’s luck that the bridge collapsed! He activated his helipack, the rotors catching him while the other four fell, Dojo chasing after them—shit, was it enough time—the cavern was collapsing around them—
Dojo was coming back now, one, two, three, four monks on his back! Jack whooped, flying out after, headed for the exit—shit, more rubble—dust kicked up, which way was the exit—Dojo’s tail swept across Jack’s vision. He grabbed it, fingers tangled through the thick fur—
They were outside! They were free!
The evil palace exploded in a massive green fireball, her dark magic dissipating in an instant and restoring the land, lush and green.
It was over.
Wuya was gone.
Jack was on a hill overlooking the Xiaolin Temple, the four monks and Dojo by his side. The others were laughing, leaning against each other, admiring the beautiful landscape.
Wuya was gone. Jack was never going to see her again.
“It’s like Wuya never even ruled the world!” Clay said.
“Which is just the way I like it,” Kimiko said.
“Yeah. Swell. I’m outta here,” Jack muttered, marching off.
This was a victory. Jack was supposed to feel triumphant. Maybe triumph always felt like getting stabbed.
For nine whole months, Jack had barely gone a day without her there. Her snide grumbling was the soundtrack to his workshop. They had schemed how to steal Shen Gong Wu together. In the days after Jack had won showdowns, he’d even gotten her to laugh at his dumb jokes.
She was probably still laughing at him, trapped within that puzzle box. Her little idiot pawn, who couldn’t even feel happy he’d defeated her—
“Jack Spicer! Wait! Please!” Omi said, grabbing Jack’s coat. Jack rolled his eyes and kept walking. Omi didn’t let go, dragging behind like a bunch of bricks in a pillowcase instead of just standing up or digging his heels in. Little weirdo. Against Jack’s will, he felt his lips twitch toward a smile.
Jack turned to Omi, raising an eyebrow.
“You have fought well! We could not have defeated Wuya without you!” Omi said, smiling brightly. Jack flinched.
“All true. You going somewhere with this?” he snapped.
“Yes! You should stay with us, at the Xiaolin temple!” Omi said, ignoring the groans and gasps from further up the hill. “Hone your skills, and join the fight for Good!”
Jack nearly laughed.
“Me? Fighting for Good? In a bathrobe!? Forget it,” Jack said, activating his helipack. “Next time we meet we’re enemies again.”
Jack had barely left the ground when he felt another tug. Looking down, he saw Omi, clasping the hem of his coat, staring up with the most woeful pleading gaze Jack had ever seen, and that included when his cousin Megan had obsessed over obtaining an ultrarare discontinued princess doll. Except, this time the prize worth begging to keep was—
Jack swallowed, while his heart did a flip. Omi held firm, the hint of a hopeful smile playing about his lips, as if he actually wanted—
“Maybe sometime we could go for icecream,” Jack found himself saying, very nearly melting back down to the ground by Omi’s side— “If we’re not fighting for Shen Gong Wu.”
Omi grinned, finally releasing him. Jack immediately darted out of reach, high in the air, his face red.
“That would be nice!” Omi called up. “We could get a Monday!”
“A sundae,” Clay corrected.
“Even better!”
Grinning, Jack waved, then flew off before he did anything else embarrassing, like inviting his Xiaolin enemies to a sleepover with movies and painting each other’s nails. Fuck. Was Jack really that pathetic? He needed better friends.
Omi had actually wanted—
A laugh bubbled free of Jack’s lips, flying in dizzying loops high in the air. Omi had wanted—
Obviously, they could never be real friends. Omi was Good, and Jack was Evil. They were rivals for Shen Gong Wu. Jack wanted to rule the world, and Omi wanted to be some warrior hero protecting people. It would never work.
But it had been kinda nice while it lasted. If only they weren't on different sides.
Well. Maybe Jack could do something about that...