Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, plot, etc. of Xiaolin Showdown, I can barely even spell it.
A short one-shot about what may actually happen somewhere in the timeline of the after-the-show that we never see. Meant to be dark.
The black figure, about five foot five, head and shoulders, dragged it's feet through the dark hallway, lit only by the street lamp that shone through the glass front door. It walked out of the light and into the darkness of the rest of the house. It wound its way down the hallway, through the door to the basement, and down the stairs with practiced steps. The figure ran a gloved hand along the banister, paying no mind to the blood it currently spread across the polished wood.
It knew precisely where the chord would be that, with one pull, would illuminate the bulk of the underground workspace. The figure looked around at all that was lit before it. The workbenches left cluttered and unkempt, the plans half-finished, and the oddities strewn everywhere with no purpose left to them. The only thing that caught his eyes and kept them was a large desk directly a few feet in front of him. It was laid mostly flat with a bit of an angle to assure proper lighting. There were two lamps on either far-end corner of the desk that would turn on with a singular button-push. He had connected the two lamps years ago and the wiring still worked. Waiting at the desk was a simple stool meant to match the figure's height and it was beckoning him rather loudly. Come, it said, rest your weary body here...
...for old time's sake.
As he pulled his seat out from the desk and sat with a small groan of weariness, he reached up and removed his helmet, made similar to a welder's mask, with a slit of glass where his eyes looked out. Looked out at his victims. He then removed the dark gloves that adorned his hands, tossing them onto the floor with hardly a care. The blood would be rinsed off later. He ran his fingers through his hair, shaggy and nearly down to his back. He had had it pulled back,but several of the front strands and fallen out of the ponytail and framed his pale face. He turned on the two lamps and looked at the wall ahead of him, letting out a tired chuckle.
"Forgot I used to be so narcissistic," he mused. He hardly recognized the face in front of him, peering out from behind the glean of a large square mirror. He looked so tired. So old. He was only 25 now, but he looked like he'd been through hell. In a way...it wasn't far off. Then something caught his eye that he truly had forgotten. A photo, tacked above the mirror. His eyes widened and he reached up, pulling the picture close and holding it in both hands, staring down at the old faces he hadn't seen in ages. The faces that, at a time, only gave him grief but that now he'd actually give anything to see.
He ran a finger down the frame of the photo, words whispering in the back of his head. Words that were never silent. Words that never ended.
Murderer.
Monster.
He fought the tears that weren't there. Tears that had long ago dried up. There was no use spilling them. They didn't wash away what he'd done.
"I didn't mean it...," he whispered. "I didn't...it was an accident..."
But Chase's words still rang in his head like a damn church bell.
"Bravo, Spicer..." There was a smirk on the old dragon's lips, half-mocking the other half...well Jack never really knew. He had clapped slowly, just staring at the simpering genius with that horrible smirk. "You've taken a life. An innocent life at that...I'm impressed."
Jack looked up again, into the mirror. He had long ago abandoned the markings under his eyes and instead wore them in red on his black mask. His red eyes were lined with exhaustion and filled with regret. He hadn't meant to do it, he would say for years and years to come, words repeatedly falling on deaf ears. It was never serious, this whole "evil genius" thing. It was a game he played with the monks. Just a game, attempting to outwit them time after time. He had been a bored teenager with a stellar I.Q. and this...this entertained him. He lost...a lot, but it was a fun game. No one ever really got hurt. Bruises healed, scars formed, and that was that. He had never been serious about it. It was just a game they played.
Just a game.
His shoulders shook lightly. He hadn't known the bolts were loose. He hadn't known they weren't screwed in all the way. He hadn't known Raimundo wouldn't get there in time to grab her hand before she fell. How could he have known? It...it was an accident. He hadn't planned it. He hadn't wanted it.
But it happened, the voice in his head whispered again. The voice was deep and gruff, mocking him in his misery, his guilt. It was the voice that had finally pushed him away from the teenage genius who only wanted worthy playmates to liven up an otherwise dull existence. The voice that had reminded him over and over whether he was awake or asleep that he had killed. And now he would never stop. Now...after so long of just playing the bad guy, now he was the bad guy.
Jack Spicer abandoned his quest for Shen-Gon-Wu at the age of seventeen. He no longer sought world domination, he just wasn't meant for it and it had never actually interested him anyway. Now, he would truly act like the villain. He would go on to kill indiscriminately and send whole corporations to ruin. He would dishonor his family to the point of disinheritance and disownment. His mother and father would deny ever having had a son and Jack would deny having any living relative. He grew in his infamy on and on as his life progressed. At age twenty, he finally had his place with Chase Young as one of the masterminds of evil. He was treated with both respect and fear thru ought most of the world. Even Chase himself ever so slightly bowed his head in respect to the redhead. He finally had everything he said he'd wanted in his youth.
And yet every day he returned to a dark, empty house. He looked into mirrors, only to see dark, empty eyes. And every night brought him dark, empty dreams.
He dropped the photo and held his head in his hands. He didn't mean it. It was an accident. He didn't want this.
But it was just like when Chase had drunk the soup that turned him into a dragon. He had done it. There was blood on his hands. Whether he'd meant to or not, it was done. There was no undoing it.
"No going back," Jack whispered, lowering his hands and lifting his head to look into the mirror."You can never go back..."
He switched off the two small lamps and picked up his helmet and gloves. They needed cleaning. On his way toward the stairs, he looked back one more time, part of him remembering what it was like when this was all a game, when his current state seemed impossible, when Jack Spicer was just a bratty teenager who wouldn't really harm anything, who wasn't even competent enough to harm anything.
But this was Jack Spicer now. A killer who had grown as cold and mechanical as the very robots he had once created. Here he stood as a man. A man covered in blood and haunted by the souls of the dead.
He reached up, clutching the chord in his pale hand. He looked around one more time at his old work space. The place he had invented, plotted, and come back bruised and marred sometimes beyond recognition.
It was nothing more than an old basement now, gathering cobwebs and dust.
"No going back," he whispered to the darkness, turning of the bulb with a soft click. But there was no silence in the dark. The same thing, over and over.
Murderer.
Monster.