Xiaolin Showdown

Jack Spicer Centric

Title:

Chapter 1

A young teen stood in his badly lit basement, hunched over the remains of a robot that had been destroyed.

"Again," He muttered to himself as he pulled his yellow-orange goggles over his eyes to use a melding tool, allowing his vibrant red hair to fall slightly forward. He absently brushed it back with a gloved hand, rolling his shoulders to loosen them up before continuing the repair of the mound of metal before him.

After more than a year of building and rebuilding the bots, he had become quite efficient at repairs to the point where he could fix multiple in one night, without struggle. He even managed to upgrade and add to his collection of drones.

But this was not the case tonight.

Jack growled in annoyance as the blow-torch refused to light for a few moments as he fumbled to correctly grasp the trigger. He held the metals he was fusing carefully with metal tongs, but after a few minutes of struggling to keep the piece in place, he finally just grabbed it in his gloved hand and carefully melded it in place.

He sighed as he thought back to when he had enjoyed this. Every time spent with repairs he had been abounding with confidence that his upgrades would make the next fight count in his favor. But as time passed with one failure after another, repairing and upgrading and yet never getting any closer to the goal, it had begun to be routine, a required task that was not met without loathing.

Yet he wouldn't complain. It wasn't as if anyone listened anyways. He'd get the job done, and put on a strong face for his next engagement with the Xiaolin Dragons. He may have often complained in the past, cried even (he denied this though, even to himself), but he'd reached a point where he had finally told himself, Shut up, they don't care! This had caused slight surprise and suspicion from the Xiaolin, especially when he only let out a small peep when almost crushed by a falling boulder. Soon though, it had become generally understood that, yes, Jack Spicer had grown a backbone.

His attitude hadn't really changed the past year and a half aside from that though. He was still making world domination speeches and grand entrances to battles. He had just begun feeling a little down when faced with the remains of his defeat, but that was nothing a little pep talk to himself wouldn't fix. And of course, coffee wouldn't hurt…

Jack released the trigger for a moment to look at his mug. Empty. He sighed forlornly, picked up his goggles for a moment to rub his eyes before resetting them and resuming his task. He let out a cavernous yawn, eyes closed for a moment to accommodate it. A searing pain touched his hand and he dropped his project with a screech of pain. He held his left hand close to his chest, panting for a minute, before looking at the damage done. He peeled off the leather glove covering his hand with a whimper, revealing his hand which still wore his biker style glove underneath, and a shallow burn wound near the joint of his pointer finger. After taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, he pulled his goggles up to his forehead, kicking the fallen wreckage of the robot to the side to head up the stairs. He knew a blunder like that could only be followed by worse if he didn't get any rest, and he needed to bandage up the wound.

He went into the master bathroom to retrieve the first aid kit from in the cupboards under the sink, opened it and set it on the counter before turning on the faucet to run cool water over it to relieve the swelling. He relaxed slightly at the cool feel, shoulders slumped. It was probably a second degree burn, he figured. He had been amazingly fortunate not to have his finger severed from his hand. He shuddered at the thought as he carefully wrapped his finger with gauze, secure, but loose enough not to put pressure on it. He had learned a lot about first aid the past year as he came home with scratches and gashes from fights with the Xiaolin dragons and other wounds when he worked on his robots. Most of the time it was all minor, hardly worthy of a band-aid, but that hadn't stopped him from worrying and looking up first-aid. He had read up on all possible small wounds, fortunately including burns, or he may have foolishly put ice or cotton on it.

Jack put away all the supplies with a tired sigh. He finally decided to prepare for bed. He looked contemplatively at his electric toothbrush, debating whether to brush or give in to his mounting exhaustion. He heaved yet another sigh as he decided he would regret not cleaning his teeth, which would probably result in some horrible taste in his mouth.

When he was finished he trudged heavy-footed to his bedroom with his injured left hand cradled by the other, kicking off his shoes and glaring at the digital clock on his bedside table that read 3:15 AM. There was not enough time in the day, he thought, not for the first time.

He dropped heavily onto the bed, lying on his stomach with his arms thrown to either side, too tired to bother with taking of his heli-pack or to lie more comfortably.

He sighed into the bed sheets, suppressing a shiver. He didn't bother to pull on the covers. Sleep didn't come as easy to him as it had in the past, when he could just fall into the sheets and asleep instantly. It seemed the more tired he was, the less easily sleep would come to him. That was why even now with his improved hygienic habits and attitude, he still would sleep as long as his body would let him in the morning. Even that, though, was getting shorter. He found that when he got up at 12:00 he felt like a portion of his life had been wasted, so at the latest he was found up at 10:00.

Jack found sleep still eluded him after a long while of waiting blankly, so he got off the bed and started undressing, carefully setting his Heli-pack aside and hanging his coat in the closet. As he did this, his ever-moving mind thought to what the next day would bring.

"The Xiaolin idiots have been getting cocky lately…I need to do something unexpected." He thought as he finally lay comfortably on his back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. "Maybe I should finally install that cloaking device for the jack-bots. Then when their eyes are on me, I could have them sneak up behind and surprise them, then I would get the Wu. But first I'd need to harness the power on the shroud of shadows…oh right they took that one in the last fight. So I'll need to see if I can win it in a showdown. Or I could take it from the vault. Of course, that would be a lot easier if I had the shroud of shadows, but even then I would already have it. That would be rather pointless." His face scrunched up in thought for a few moments, before shrugging and grinning to himself. "I'll just wing it."