Disclaimer: I do not own Jackie Chan Adventures
Inspired by: Her Shadowed Realm, a Yu Gi Oh-JCA Crossover by CryptIXeeper
Waring: Sanity Slippage and other unpleasantness both of the mind and body occur in this story.
Ages of Shadow
First Age:
The Exile
The Shadow Realm stretched before her, impossibly vast. Shades of darkness, swirling in impotent flurries or cyclones, enduring for ages or subsiding in moments. And she had looked long enough to realize there could be even briefer disturbances that passed so quickly, only attentive staring revealed their existence.
Stillness and stability was to be prized, even though the strongest of winds here could only send her hair flying.
The Queen of the Shadow Realm watched her realm pass her by with disinterest. Her beloved serpents, the only subjects she could now claim, swam about her, their wind canceling any disturbance. Two rested on her blue lap, while another draped across her shoulder. They were cool and smooth, soothing against her skin.
The throne she sat upon was hard, black stone, which truly was merely condensed shadows. As was the dais it sat upon, the courtyard the dais rose from, and the four walls that rose like a child's drawing of a castle all around it.
The fortress now floated aimlessly in the shadows, the throne raised as ever to look beyond the walls.
It was drifting, possibly turning upside down, though Jade could only tell such by the shift of her hair. The tangled spikes hung over her glowing red eyes and covered her blue chest before spilling out around the throne to hang off the platform. She had only recently realized, through inquiring of the snakes, that the first tip had touched the floor.
She looked without looking on her realm. The Queen by default. Her thoughts far way, in time and space.
XXX
"WHAT?!" she had roared, clutching her belly. Pulling her clawed hand away, red eyes widened at the sight of blood. Despite everything that he would spill her blood was not something she expected.
She looked up at the mostly silver-haired sumo, who watched her sadly through his glasses. And then everything truly went wrong.
The glorious shadow fortress she had raised evaporated before her eyes, the legions of Shadowkhan holding her enemies captive releasing them and sinking back into the nothingness of shadows once again.
Spreading her arms, she willed them back, invoking the power she had stolen by right of duel from the King and all his Generals. She was the Shadowkhan! She was the shadows! They would obey her!
Only they did not, as the light of day reached her and her freed foes she continued to stand alone.
"How!?" she demanded of Tohru as the wizard approached her with infuriating calm. His wand, a simple quill? No…
"The Book of Ages?" she questioned.
"The pen that it can be written with. The other you gave me the clue, and I still just barely figured it out in time," he said, looking to the sky with her. The rogue planet was passing, freed of her influence, the Earth no longer in danger of being trapped in the shadow of the lifeless world.
Ten years of waiting for the right time to escape her cell for nothing?!
"It's over, Jade," Jackie said. She cast an irritated look at the old man who she had once thought of as a second father. With the other one long dead, she supposed that made him the position by default. His once cool wife was with him, and those annoying twins looked ready to spring into action.
As if it would make a difference what those two posers would do. She sneered, taking in those surrounding her in the once more pleasant Chinese meadow. All of them either past their prime, or the lesser, younger generations.
"Over? It is never over for me, Jackie. Every chapter's end leads into the next. Ever since I ascended, you have never done more than set me back. For nearly a decade you thought I was beaten by Uncle's spell, reduced to a mere long-lived human, and that I would have decades to turn back into that do-gooder agent I was before I put on the red mask?" Jade laughed.
Tohru spoke again as the agents leveled their weapons at her.
"You put that mask on to save us all. You were willing to risk yourself then for those you loved. I now know it was a sacrifice of life. You won the battle of wills against Tarakudo and all his Generals, but at the price of your own. It wasn't just that you became the Shadowkhan race, your own will was broken by the ordeal, propped up by the power that began to corrupt you the moment you achieved your goal.
"Sensei could not restore your flesh because you had traded your soul to darkness to save us all," Tohru sadly recalled his late teacher.
"And I killed him for it! And I only felt vindication for offing the old goat! My only regret was how quick it was. You won't get off so easy.
"Because you can lock me up! But I will be back! I am inevitable! You will never be able to kill me, and no prison on this Earth can hold me."
"Jade, look at your stomach," Tohru sighed. Jade looked down at the shredded patch of her robes, wiping the blood away to reveal designs etched there. Glowing green. She read the spell – it cut her off from the Shadowkhan… and the Earth plane?
"No, you can't seal me! I anticipated that – I can't be imprisoned like those scaly losers!" Jade hollered as the spell started to glow.
"This isn't imprisoning, it's evicting! You were able to take all that power into yourself, and I wondered, why did Tarakudo not do the same? Why was he the only one of the Oni Lords to take refuge in the Shadow Realm or hide his mask there?
"Because power comes with a price! Each General had the risk of being too attuned to an element; the Shadow Realm gave them power, but like a magnetic pull, drawing too close could imprison them. Tarakudo was wise enough to let his subordinates carry the risk while he ruled the power through them!
"But you have that power inside you, all of it! Even if you can't use it, you can never rid yourself of it, not if even sensei's best effort failed."
Jade cried out as she fell into her own shadow, grabbing the ground in front of her as tendrils of darkness rose from the shadow.
"Jade!" Jackie called. Viper and his children grabbed him, restraining even him from taking a step forward.
"Jade's long gone, Jackie. It's time to bury the dead," Viper whispered to him, before burying her face in his back.
Jade began to chant a spell, before a tendril slipped under her chin and tightened like a noose. She didn't need the air much, but that didn't make it any less impossible to speak.
"Goodbye, Jade. Know that I wish I had died before it came to this. I protect the world in the name of who you were, and perhaps will be again with a lifespan of terrifying length before you.
"Farewell," it was said with a whisper; the last sight before her claws were ripped free was a tear falling from behind the glasses. It was so small, but caught the light. Looking back, she could not deny it was beautiful, as far as the last sight of light went.
XXX
And it was the last, she admitted. Her mobile fortress built of mastery of shadow had let her track down the spark flashes. They were indeed portals that existed so quick they ended as soon as they began. But she was repelled from them. Even if she could find a way to stabilize or prolong them, she would never be able to step through them.
And her hair – the last time indicator left – by her calculations, told her a hundred Earth years had passed.
She was not Shendu. There was no point in avenging yourself on strangers. Revenge was dead, and there was no escape.
Her scream moved the shadows and birthed new storms.
XXX
Rage is like a fire. It needs fuel. And frankly, she had realized she no longer saw the effort of fueling the rage as worthwhile. Thus, rage passed.
The snakes had suffered at her hands, she recalled regretfully. Several had surely escaped her claws, spells, and fangs, but they would be scattered, difficult to herd back. And perhaps even more difficult to win their affection back.
She realized she had fallen asleep sometime after demolishing the fortress. She had not slept since escaping her cell back on Earth. But then, she had been sitting in that blasted chaos for how long, obsessively searching for escape?
Was she thinking more clearly because she let some poison out with the tantrum, or because of sleeping after a hundred years and more of wakefulness?
Come to think of it, how long had she been asleep? Opening her eyes, she saw she was floating in the shadows. No debris of the demolished fortress was in evidence. Some time then, judging by her hair…
She frowned at the tangled mass draping around her. Since the shadows had rotted her clothes, it had been her only claim to modesty, and the only way to measure time in this place.
Really, there wasn't any point to either concern now, was there? Her snakes did not have clothes either, and if there was neither escape nor vengeance to be had, what was time?
Gathering up the mass, she managed with some effort to grab most of it in one fist, while sharpening her claws on the other hand.
Snip, snip, snip.
"Ah, much better," Jade smiled, exposing her sharp teeth.
Much of the mass hung free now, and with patient snips, she cut the rest free. There was no hurry, and while no stylist, she wanted an even cut.
She decided to leave her hair at waist length, and coating her hands in liquefied shadow, began to work the much-reduced mane. She had not realized how much the tangles had bothered her until her hand was floating free through her fingers.
Her appearance tended to, she considered the mass of hair. Was there a use for it? No reason not to take the time to find out.
XXX
She had napped three times before finishing with her cut hair. Untangling it had been fair more difficult. Then she had decided to braid it, a task made difficult by the winds trying to take it from her. But at last, she had a rope of her own hair three times as long as she was tall.
"And what to do with it?" she wondered. On a lark, she decided to imbue it with shadow and see what happened. The shadows poured over it, seeping into and around the tightly bound follicles, smoothing it out until it was just a smooth cord, with a slightly scaled texture.
It felt nice, but still, she wasn't sure what to do with it. Wrapping a portion of it on her torso from her waist to below her chest, she set off into the shadows, the free rope trailing behind her.
Finding the new schools of snakes had been difficult. They had been trying to avoid her, and could seem to sense her as she did them. Judging from the haircuts she had given herself since, she guessed it took twenty or so years to gather back up two hundred of the durable creatures to keep her company.
The rope had been critical in letting her tie her wayward darlings up so she had time to pamper them back into trusting her. Well worth it.
But now that she was content with her flock, she was wondering what to do next?
She had disposed of the rope as a gesture of trust in her snakes, fussing it into a circular mat, which she now sat on.
She supposed she could build another fortress. But she had never liked the thing. And it was too delicate – it had quickly crumbled under her assault.
She recalled how she had made it like her fortress back on Earth. That one had quickly collapsed between being cut off from her power and the sun.
"I must make something that can last," she decided. Holding out her hands, she narrowed her glowing eyes in concentration. When sweat was running down her brow she stopped, holding a shimmering black brick in her hands.
With a grunt, she squeezed it between her hands. Then squeezed again with her magic flowing through her limbs. It cracked slightly just before she let up the pressure.
"Well, this is something," Jade grinned.
She decided a box with a door to sleep in on her mat would be a good start.
XXX
A dozen snakes trailed behind Jade as she walked though the West Gallery. Her eyes roamed over the columns; this gallery was in the Greek style learned from Jackie and a long line of long-suffering teachers. The other three had their own styles, including her old native China's styles.
She looked on them, recalling the labor and accidents in making this fusion of Western and Asian tastes and styles. Her Grand Palace of Shadows.
Still, even as she built up chamber after chamber, taking the trial and error approach to mastering engineering and architecture, the allure was fading. By her estimates, the island was now 1.75 kilometers across. About half of that was covered by her palace complex. But it was just a bauble, save for the serpentarium and her bedchambers.
There was no one to impress – the snakes could be impressed, but she had realized she was just having conversations with herself. She had stopped talking to them for years she had been so offended they would trick her like that.
The very idea that they weren't really impressed with her budding talents as a designer of palaces hurt more than she cared to admit. So she just had to impress herself, which sadly was harder than she had appreciated.
How was she to have known she was such a tough audience?
She blew a stray spike of hair out of her face. Without the conditioning regularly, her longer hair had long since reverted to the old spikes, just longer.
She had tried making clothes out of her hair, making just some underwear, but found herself out of the habit. Just as she had never liked shoes much, and hated to wear socks, it seemed the trend had moved up from her feet. In retrospect, she was glad she wasn't too well endowed; that might have forced her to make practical concessions.
Still, she found it annoying that her hair was only useful when she cut it off…
XXX
A fine mixture, to create liquid from shadows. The shallow pool before her was all her efforts so far. Both to complete the Roman look of this gallery with a proper pool, and to finally create a mirror. After all, she wanted to be able to appreciate what she had done with her body.
It had started with her hair. And realizing she could ensue shadows into it while it was still attached.
That first spike had been a shock, as the imbuement unexpectedly carried from the follicle down into her scalp. She could feel the roots being infused, in her head!
She had waited awhile to see the result with that one spike. It reminded her a bit of a rhino horn, the hair compressed to the point of being a solid. Only, rather than being like a bone, this was more… membranous. It was soft, and quite flexible, flopping about in her hand even as she sharpened its point so it could leave a mark on her palace.
She had still not been sold, until after one snake swiped another away from snuggling her cheek. Without thinking, her spike had slapped the bully aside.
Gathering every last stray hair into its spike and then infusing them all into head tails was only a natural reaction as far as she was concerned. After all, she had eight more appendages now that were even longer than her arms!
It was only after waking up from the resulting long nap she realized she no longer had any hair to grow and harvest into cushions.
Oh well, she had been meaning to further experiment in different textures and densities in creating what she had dubbed shadow mass. Tossing one such rock between two of her head tails, she turned away from the mirror.
XXX
Making rocks that were soft but not crumbly and worthless was much harder than it seemed. The closest she had gotten was something resembling pumice.
Frustrated, she had decided it was high time to expand the island project again. By her guess, it was over two and a half kilometers now, with foundations for the next levels of construction. One, she planned to be a bathhouse, where she would concentrate her further shadow water works. But before she could begin construction in earnest, she needed to expand the island so it could support it without destabilizing, or worse, part of it crumbling!
Still, she had always hated walking the perimeter beyond the walls she had raised. Looking up through the skylights at the red and black tides, or through the windows, she could pretend it was a world.
But when on the literal edge, and when flying around to inspect the lower mass, she could not quite ignore the fact. Her palace was just a speck in her kingdom of emptiness.
No one came, and she could not leave. Normally, between sleep, work, experimenting, or planning, there was no time to think about the old days. Really, she was surprised Jackie had not gone rogue to try and bring her back. And no one came in all this time to see the Shadow Realm? Had Tohru used spells like the old ones on the Demon Netherworld on the Shadow Realm?
Shadow Netherworld did sound pretty badass.
'Oh look, eleven snakes flying in a v formation! Awesome!' she thought.
They certainly moved through the void better than she did. And it did not seem to bother them, even though there were now thousands wandering her halls and resting in the nests she had built in the serpentariums. The new one she had planned would include little snake-sized holes in the wall to help prevent potential traffic congestion.
Another triumph of engineering by the finest architect in the Shadow Netherworld!
There was no competition! None. At. All.
Back to the snakes. They came from here, so that meant they were adapted. So they held up great here because they were adapted, like how easily they swam here.
Of course! It was staring her in the face the whole time.
She abandoned the current task. The palace expansion could wait. It was time to treat herself some.
XXX
Jade moaned, rolling her eyes as she swam though the bathing pool. The purple dark chi lights in the corners were the only light, as this room's two doors did not face any sky. Her head tails shook themselves as she slid up the slope out of the black liquid. The heat from an earlier spell was wearing off, time to get out.
If not for self-imposed limits, who knew what kind of crazy stuff she might get up to?
In he before life, she had always taken time to admire herself after bathing, and she had revived that tradition.
A more fruitful revival than eating had been. She didn't know if lack of use had shriveled her stomach to the size of a grape or if shadows just tasted that bad. Either way, any more than a few bites of spongy shadow dumplings made her cough them back up as useless pumice rocks.
But the bathing pool worked just as well as its cousin the reflecting pool, so long as you did not mind purple lighting.
She flared the flames with a gesture, and beheld the glory of herself.
Extending her spine had been her sole intent. A tail to better travel through the void and better fit in with the snakes. But once the tail was working, she hated how scrawny and bony it was.
By the time she was done, that boney atrocity was a relic; shadow infused muscle and bone growth had occupied her for ages. Why, she might have gone another five centuries in her makeover, it occurred to her. Maybe a thousand, it hardly mattered, there was still time to touch up the palace a bit.
But the results, like with the former waste of space known as her hair, had been well worth it. The majority of her body was a thick, powerful, smooth tail. It had a snake texture to appeal to her subjects, shades of blue and black worked into it as a simple but elegant geometric pattern. The sheer sensation of slithering, as all those muscles and bones moved, was… very painful at first. But pain had been such a novelty at that point she had not cared.
But once the final kinks and ligaments were worked out, she was certain the tail was better than walking had ever been. And it allowed a smooth transition from land-based travel to flying through the island's air or the void.
She had left her torso fleshy because she already liked her ever-youthful figure up there. But her obsolete legs had puzzled her, before yet another flash of obvious.
Compared to the tail, that project had been sheer simplicity; she smiled at her reflection, clasping all four of her hands as she did so. The new arms were naturally far longer, and stronger, than the upper arms. The fingers were not quite as dexterous, and bigger to go with the bigger hands, but still, four arms, a great tail, and a head full of handy razor-sharp appendages.
She finally looked like a Queen fit to reside in the Grand Palace of the Shadow Netherworld.
XXX
She felt she was finally getting the Grand Palace right. Between the plantless gardens, grand and lesser buildings from the styles and cultures across the world and history, it had still lacked something.
Art.
It had begun with a worry that she might be forgetting things. Such as her mother's face.
That worry had lead to her carving the face from memory into the stone of a bedchamber wall. Granted, it took a few tries, and she had to replenish the wall with a fresh coat a couple dozen times. But as ever, her persistence had triumphed.
The key, she found, was limb delegation. While her tail could steadily lift and lower her, Jade's greater arms did the big work, detail work fell to her lesser arms, and her head tails with their clever tips handled the fine detail.
Her mother had come back from the dead in a stone likeness.
After which, it was only fair to give her father the same courtesy. In his best suit, no less.
And so, the Grand Carving of Memory had begun. Not since the Becoming of True Serpentine Self had a project held such attention, stirred such interest in her. Or rendered such a variety of praise or biting criticism from the snakes.
Kwon was always on her for the noses, but Bob thought her art was really developing to master level. Though she wished they didn't all sound like they had the same voice. Sometimes it sounded suspiciously like her own voice. But of course, her voice was not so hissy or husky.
Hmm, she should check to make sure they weren't smoking behind her back. Terrible habit.
And she should ask why they had manly names when they were all girls. Sometimes she did not know about those adorable buggers she kept inviting over for sleepovers.
The Garden of J was planned for a long time; she had wanted to get it perfect the first time. And she had, creating the stone chunks, bonding them, cutting them, adding here or there. It took several nap cycles just to finish one.
But in the end, the J-Team stood rendered in stone, looking over the rock garden. Jackie Chan in his prime, mighty Tohru in his massiveness, El Toro with a mask that could not be removed, sexy cool Viper, Uncle in his senior ass-kicking glory, and a double for Paco – the kid sidekick edition, and the luchadore man he became.
It was perfect, but whenever she went to look at the J-Team, she felt like something was missing from their silent ranks in the tribute to the heroes. The vacant spot… she had forgotten why she set it aside. She had captured them all in stone, so why did that empty spot make her want to curl up in some corner and weep?
All the more reason to not go into the Garden of J. Besides, she had her life story to preserve in stone. Murals carved into the wall.
And while a picture was worth a thousand words, words were also worth words, and she thought too many of her murals upon the walls and columns were mute.
But what language to immortalize her epic story in? Chinese, the language of her homeland? English, the language of her adopted home? Japanese, the language of the friend/foe who had defeated her, as well as the tongue of her race? Or perhaps Spanish, the language of…
Well, she had opted for all, after a fashion. A new language, made from a combination of the four written languages. It took a couple of decades, and many a discarded stone tablet, but Chanish was now the official language of the Shadow Netherworld.
She could now add scholar to her list of Queenly virtues, achievements, stats, etc.
XXX
There was nothing quite like finishing writing your life's story. So she had decided not to find out, stopping the prose/pictograph narrative at her epic curbstomp of that one bad guy she put the red mask on to defeat. Seemed like a good stopping place, for some reason.
But there was still space to decorate, so she kept sculpting. One courtyard she filled with statues of her favorite comic book heroes. Another with villains, of course. She captured all of their adventures she could remember on the walls and columns, the most epic edition ever, without a doubt.
When that well went dry, she both resumed expansion of the palace and island, and moved onto cartoons, movies, musicians, books, and other stuff.
Now it had come down to all the history and mythology she had learned over the course of her life.
Her memory seemed quite improved from what she recalled. Perhaps it was because reaching down into her head to transcribe it made her feel like she was living in that world of light and people again?
Well, the important thing was that her wing on Germany – drawing from school lessons, adventures there, and the five months she had lived in Frankfurt – was coming along well. Her Grand Palace was also the Library of Stone-Etched Knowledge.
With how much time had passed, it occurred to her that this record of hers might be the last record that these people, stories, and places existed. Such a solemn duty only naturally fell to a Queen.
The feeling caused her to destroy the nose of Fredrick the Great.
Lowering her back to rest on her coils, all four of her hands stroked her stomach.
She had not tried to eat anything in ages. But this didn't even feel like that.
And now the sensation was in her head, entering her brain though the nose and eyes and making its way back out through her head tails.
She did not know this feeling; she needed to get outside. Getting outside was very important right now she knew.
It had been a long time since she slithered at full speed, kicking up a cloud of dust in her wake and startling the school of snakes making their way through the corridors. It occurred to her this was fun enough that she should do it more often. Maybe build a race track?
Reaching the courtyard she wanted, she slithered up the black, and still blank, obelisk that dominated the open space. Reaching the top, she curled her tail around the monument to a monument, and peered to the distant horizon, just beyond the city limits of her palace, and beyond the undeveloped shadow land destined to be covered in the ages to come.
Something was stirring in the void of red and black.
She had never felt it, but looking out there with a belly full of feelings she could only half recall, a word made its way to her lips.
"Company."
NEXT CHAPTER: Second Age: The Goddess
Author's Note:
It was only after I was mostly done with this chapter I realized Jade is in many ways a crazy cat lady by this point.
To quote Genie: "Then Thousand years will give you such a crink in the neck!"
Well here we start this fourshot OI have been kicking around in my head. I happened to update SotT next, but horror is hard to write. At least unlike other new stories this one will be a brief project. War of Nations is also coming along nicely.
Hope you enjoyed it. Long days and pleasant nights to you all.