Disclaimer: None of these awesome characters are mine :(
"Dude, it's so cold out here. Kimiko, could you like, conjure up some fire with your hands or something?"
"We told you it was gonna be cold, Rai." Kimiko said while Raimundo shivered behind her. "But I think Clay packed an extra coat in his backpack." Clay knelt down on solid ice and slung the backpack off his shoulder. Before it hit the ground a green dragon jumped off.
"Excuse me, but when do I get bumped up to first class? You kids ride on me, (a fairly smooth ride, if I do say so myself), but when I ride on you, you throw me off!" Dojo inched along the ground indignantly.
The plain tan bag slid a few inches on the ice, and so did Raimundo as he as he scrambled to open the clasp on Clay's backpack. In a few seconds he pulled out a fur coat of the same color. He held it up to see if it would fit him; looking over at Omi, he knew that there was a possibility it would swallow him whole.
"Well partner, it ain't leather, but it'll keep you warmer than a rat in a haystack." Clay assured him.
Just as Rai pulled the heavy garment on over his red tunic, he saw Omi go sliding across the ice. His coat was in a pile to the side, as it would just drag behind him. But… it would have stopped him from turning into a Popsicle when he landed headfirst in a snow bank off to the side. He made a stifled "oomph" noise and lay still.
"Star Hinabi, fire!" said a voice, which melted the snow. Pretty soon everyone was standing in a puddle of water.
"Thanks, Kimiko, I owe ya. Fire's never a bad thing to have when you're in the next Ice Age," commented Raimundo.
Dojo felt a tingle run through him from his head to his tail. For most people (or dragons) it would be from the abrupt change in temperature. That, or… "Guys, I think I'm picking up a Shen Gong Wu." He scooched over to the backpack and withdrew a scroll. Unrolled, a foggy circle in the center showed the last magical item that had revealed itself. The name appeared on the bottom. By this time Omi had shaken all the snow off of his round head, and everyone gathered around Dojo.
"The Crown of Sound", he read. "It allows the wearer to amplify, reduce, or mute any sound he or she wishes." A stick figure demonstrated this on the scroll until Dojo shoved it back in the backpack. "It should be close. Maybe it's around this cliff somewhere."
The cliff loomed behind the snowy bank that had just had Omi's face in it. The four Xiaolin warriors had been following it ever since they landed; it served as a barrier from the worst of the blizzard. Kimiko's feet felt soaked inside her shoes from walking through the ankle-deep snow, and the indentation in the top of Clay's hat was no longer there. There were about five inches of snow on top.
"So, uh, Omi, since you're a Wudai warrior now, you don't use the Orb of Tornami as your primary weapon anymore, right?" Raimundo asked.
"No. I do not think I will be needing it anymore. But it sure did help me grow into a strong warrior." Omi responded.
"Well I think it misses you," Rai continued while they were walking. "It swelled up to the size of your head."
"Oh, you are asking for it now! I do not have a big head!" Omi yelled, his voice rising.
"Come on, give him a break," Kimiko encouraged. Raimundo stopped and pointed ahead.
"No, I'm serious! Don't you see that big ball of ice ahead of us!" Kimiko, Clay, and Dojo, who had gotten back on Clay's shoulder, also halted beside Raimundo and Omi. In front of them stood a gigantic spherical iceberg.
"Well that's strange. There's no way this is from the blizzard." Kimiko thought. "If the Shen Gong Wu is in there, how are we supposed to get to it? The ice looks thick and shows no sign of melting." She sighed. "I hope it's not some Heylin trap."
Dojo's tail tingled again. "But the Wu isn't that way. I'm getting signals from this direction, over to the right."
"You sure about that? I mean, you have been doing this for a long time, maybe you're just not as sharp as you used to be," suggested Clay.
"I'm sure it's this way!" Dojo insisted, waving his arms in that general direction, then quickly rubbing his goose-bump-covered arms.
"If we split up we can cover more ground. Dojo, you can go with Raimundo and Kimiko to find the Shen Gong Wu, and Clay and I will check out the ice-ball." Suggested Omi.
"Sounds like a plan," Kimiko agreed enthusiastically.
Further away from the cliff the ice was beginning to break apart, so the two warriors had to hop from piece to piece. Dojo rode on Raimundo's shoulder. The wind let up, so the snow stopped blowing so hard in their faces. Kimiko looked up, down, and scrutinized each pile of ice or snow to make sure it wasn't concealing anything.
"You sure it was over here?"
"Yes! Never been more sure," Dojo replied.
"I've got an idea," said Raimundo. "Falcon's eye!" The golden eye modified his vision; the snow disappeared and he could only see flat ground. Flat, except for a whitish-gray object. Raimundo pulled the Wu away from his eye.
"I got this one," he said. He dashed across a wide expanse of ice to his left where he saw a circle under the ice. It looked frosty and transparent through its cold covering. "Darn it, Clay has the fist." He reached into his red tunic and fished around. His hand touched a smooth object with a spiral etched into one side. "Ah! Serpent's Tail!" Dojo and Kimiko watched as Raimundo dove into the ice. He felt a strange sensation as his body faded. Then he passed through the ice; it was unsettling how he couldn't feel it inside him (not that he wanted to). After going down a few feet under the thick ground he pulled up and wrapped his insubstantial hand around the crown. In less than a second he was at the surface and felt like he could breathe again.
He casually wiped the crown on his red shirt, and it shone in what little light there was. Dojo suddenly grew about 50 feet in length and as tall as a building.
"I wonder what Clay and Omi have found," he said, climbing on. Kimiko jumped on in front of him, and Dojo swiftly lifted off the frozen tundra.
"Now that I can sit down and relax…" Kimiko took out headphones from her top, and slipped one inside her ear. The other one dangled as she used the cord to pull out the actual mp3 player. It wasn't very slim. Her dad had given it to her years ago, and she couldn't wait to get an upgrade.
While Raimundo waited, he looked out over the side of the dragon at all the rocks, mountains, and cliffs below searching for two mini-warriors. He put the crown on his head so he didn't have to hold it anymore.
"Can you see them?" Raimundo asked Kimiko. She bobbed her head back and forth, but she wasn't nodding. "Kimiko? Ki-mi-ko. Can you hear me? Crown of Sound," he whispered, exasperated.
The noise level in Kimiko's ears steadily got louder without her realizing it at first. Then she jumped in her seat and fought to pull the headphones out of her ears. By now her music was so loud that even Dojo could hear it with the wind rushing by his ears.
"What? What's that? Are we being chased?" Dojo started freaking out and started flying faster. Kimiko already looked shaken, and her eyes got even wider as she held on tighter to Dojo's back. Raimundo would have fallen off if it weren't for his quick reflexes.
"I must be sitting on the volume or something…" she thought at first. Her thoughts changed when she saw the crown on Raimundo's head, though. "Hey! Take that off! It's not a joke! You could have blown my eardrums!"
At this point words had started to make their way to Dojo's ears and he figured out that it was the sound of music, not pursuers from the Heylin side. He slowed down, but it didn't completely calm everyone's nerves.
"Well, you weren't listening to me. And besides, who listens to K-Pop when they're 500 feet up in the sky anyway?"
"My headphones are probably broken now, thanks." Kimiko held them up by the cord and they hung limply over her hand. Come to think of it, Raimundo could hear a crackling noise coming from them.
Aang was lying down on the broad back of Appa, enjoying his freedom. The clouds looked nice today. There were an awful lot of them, though. Suddenly he big sky bison made a flying U-turn.
"Where are you going?" Aang asked, surprised.
Down below, Dojo and his passengers recognized the cliff that they had come around earlier and the strange ball.
"I see them now!" Dojo said. "They're behind the ice!" He flew around the big ball and landed on the ground behind it. Landing made a fairly deep imprint in the snow; Dojo was stuck in it when he returned to his normal size, so Raimundo let him climb on his shoulder.
Kimiko was the first to greet her friends. "Hey, guys!" she waved. She walked over to where they stood. "Rai found the Crown. Did you find anything?"
"To me this just seems like a regular iceberg. But Omi found footprints." Clay said.
"Are you sure they're not yours?" asked Kimiko.
"They were here before we got here. But I cannot figure out who would be walking around in such a cold place at this time of year. Or what these big prints are," Omi said, pointing to a set of larger, round prints. His eyebrows bunched together and he put his hand up to his mouth in a "thinking hard" pose.
Kimiko glanced down at her own stylish fur-lined boots, and at the others' heavy boots. They were obviously way too big to have made the footprints scattered around in the snow.
"Appa, that's where we came from. That's the wrong direction!" Aang tugged lightly on the reins trying to encourage Appa to turn around. He squinted his eyes and saw four figures in red. "Turn around!" He pulled harder. "Fire nation!"