It's probably mean, but Raimundo thinks he really hates Omi sometimes.

He hates how the little guy just has to rub everything in, can't seem to let anything go – Raimundo the last apprentice, Raimundo the traitor, Raimundo who can't seem to do anything right – especially not compared to Perfect, Chosen Omi.

Yeah, well I'll show him! Raimundo thinks fiercely one day mid-battle. He and the other monks-in-training are scrambling for the latest Shen Gong Wu up against Jack and Wuya in southern India. The monks are winning.

Raimundo soars up on the wind, riding the air currents like it's second nature, and effortlessly he shatters a pair of Jack-bots with a solid right kick to their ugly metal heads.

I'll show all of them, Rai thinks confidently, glancing around to see how the other monks are faring. (It's Jack Spicer they're up against, so of course they're winning, but it never hurts to check.) Just wait and see! I'll be the best darn apprentice there ever was, in all of Xiaolin history, and THEN we'll see just what Omi has to –

– has to –

"Omi, man, you gotta move!" Raimundo screams, throwing himself toward the smaller monk as a stray Jack-bot plummets down toward them in a blaze of smoke and sparks.

Omi turns, baffled, and asks, "Raimundo, what – "

And then the bot explodes, knocking them both a good thirty feet across the hilly grass. Without thinking Raimundo clings frantically to the smaller body in front of him, to shield it from the worst of the blast. To protect Omi.

Rai feels his clothes char in the explosion, burning through to his skin, but the pain hardly registers over the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears. By the time he can breathe properly again, Omi's wriggling (with some difficulty) out of Rai's trembling locked arms, giving him the same innocently perplexed look that Omi always seems to wear, even at his most insufferable.

(Which is really, really annoying, for the record.)

"Raimundo, you saved me!" the smaller monk exclaims, seeming genuinely shocked. "That was a very heroic thing to do! ESPECIALLY considering you were the last one to – "

"To become an apprentice, yeah, yeah I get it!" Raimundo snaps, flushing red. Part of him wants to shove Omi away immediately and stalk off to rejoin the fight, forget he ever risked his neck for an egoistic brat who would never appreciate it anyway.

Instead Rai tightens his grip on a whim, burying his face into Omi's shoulder with a muffled groan.

"Quit scaring me like that, you moron!" Raimundo snaps, holding onto the younger monk for all he's worth. "You trying to get yourself killed out here? I don't do 'heroic' stuff because it's FUN!"

Omi at least has the good grace to look away while he rolls his eyes, patting Raimundo absently on the back.