" ORB OF TORNAMI!" yells Omi as he leaps up into the air, directing the ancient artifact in one evil boy genius's direction.
Said evil boy genius yelped loudly and ran out of the way, evading the full force of the attack, but still getting swept off his feet and soaked in the process.
Yes, it was an ordinary day in the life of the Xioalin Monks, retrieving some newly uncovered Shen Gong Wu, being stopped from a peaceful retrieval by one Jack Spicer, then beating his butt into the ground, successfully winning the Wu.
However, something was different this time around, Jack did not ambush them with his beloved Jack-bots as he usually did. Instead, he tried to take them on fist-to-fist.
" Oh, you'll pay for that! I just got this coat repaired!!!" yelled Jack as he stood there soaked, angrily wiping at his trenchcoat.
" Ch! Whatever Jack!" said Kimiko, waving her hand in dismissal.
" Say Jack," Clay started, looking around in confusion, " Where's your bots?" he asks.
" Yeah," says Raimundo, a huge smirk on his face, " Did we finally break all your little toys?"
Jack scowled at the 'Xiaolin Losers' and clenched his hands a bit.
" For your information, I'm giving them an upgrade right now, besides, I don't need them to kick you guys into the ground!"
They all started to laugh.
" That is most funny!" says Omi, one hand holding his stomach and the other pointing at Jack.
" You could not defeat us if your life force needed it!" he said mockingly, both hands now on his stomach as he laughed so hard that he fell to the floor.
" That's, "If your life depended on it", Omi!" Raimundo forced out as he too went to the floor, laughing his a** off.
Jack scowled even more, his lips going into a pout as he huffed and crossed his arms.
He knew that it was true, he didn't often defeat the monks, however, he'd hoped he'd get some credit for actually trying. It wasn't really his fault, they all had teachers, someone who taught them how to fight with their fists and the magic of the Wu and all that stuff. With Jack, everything that he had ever learned was self-learned.
In fact, the only things he learned from someone else was ice-skating and ballet, and the only reason he took those classes was because his mother had made him do it.
Besides that, he'd taught himself everything he knew all by himself, he'd read books and research about anything he wanted to learn.
However, it was hard to learn something like martial arts on your own, you never know if you're doing it right unless you tried it out with someone else there telling it was right.
Or you beat the crap out of them using the moves.
But, that's the thing Jack knew no one would ever do for him, he knew he was hopeless, so who would ever want to actually teach him?
Someone like Jack was always left alone, this was proven to him many times in his life. Do you really think the reason he lived in the basement was because he wanted too? True, it made a great evil lair, however, he'd been living down there from the day his parents brought him home from the hospital.
He was a freak, he was an albino, so his parents hid him down there, especially when they had company, which was always.
His mother would say it was to protect him, to keep him away from such greedy people, but Jack knew better. He knew it was because there was something wrong with him, he was a genius you know.
There was a time where he would beg them to let him out, to go play with the other kids. However, as soon as he stopped asking and they said they thought he was anti-social and shipped him off to school, he'd learned why he should never try to make friends with normal people.
They'd beaten him up more times than he could count, either that or they were so afraid by his appearance that they ran in fright at the sight of him screaming " MONSTER!" or "DEMON!!!".
That was the reason he'd decided to go "evil".
On the evil side, no one can really judge him for his looks, they all looked kind of freaky, with only some exceptions (Like Chase Young). This was something he'd discovered after his first few months at school, bad guys looked weird, freaky, but, because they were feared, no one ever made fun of them for it.
Plus, when you're evil, it doesn't really matter what anyone else thought, the only thing that matters is ruling the world.
Which he was aware that he was failing at.
He'd been trying to get Chase Young to teach him for a couple of years now, but nothing he did ever worked. Chase Young would never make him his apprentice, all he wanted was Omi.
So, he'd been reading a bunch of books about martial arts, trying to learn things the way he always had, self-learning. He'd even stolen a few scrolls from the monks, but, he didn't have anyone to try the moves on.
So he decided to try it during the next showdown, WITHOUT his bots to help him if he found himself in a tight spot.
But, it was going horribly; the monks didn't even recognize that he was trying to do some martial arts moves. Really though, he'd known he wouldn't do any good, but he'd hoped he'd at least do better than this.
Now they were laughing at him, which of course made him feel horrible, but what made him feel worse was the fact that these people, the monks and the heylin side, were the closest he'd ever had to friends. He truthfully really liked them, which was why, instead of glaring and scaring them away the way he did with everyone else, he would laugh, make jokes, and act silly instead.
However, the others didn't realize that they had any kind of special treatment from him, which was exactly the way he'd wanted it to be. He really didn't want them to see how cold and emotionless, how broken and lonely he actually was. He wanted them to see that he was normal.
There was one problem with that, he didn't quite know what " normal" was.
As a result, he often made a fool of himself.
Jack only ever remembered being happy once in his entire life, and the memory of how he'd acted while he was happy was the only reference he had to how to act normal.
He was about five years old at the time, his mother had been trying to hide him from a friend of hers that had unexpectedly come over on one of the only days his parents had let him out of the house. They had been out in the garden, he was looking indifferently at a small flower as he sat on the floor, his mother standing next to him, ignoring him as she talked on the phone.
Then the woman had come, Jack's mother had scrambled to pull him off of the floor, he harsh nail digging into the shin of his arms and back as she threw him in the woods that were next to their huge mansion, the one in Japan.
" Hide!" she'd yelled, " don't come back until I call you!"
As she had shoved him behind a big tree, he stood there for a moment, then she turned back and glared at him, telling him to go deeper into the woods and hide. So he had, running past the tree and bushes, trying not to think about the large animals that lived there, that would eat him and mutilate his body until he was no longer recognizable.
As he'd run through the forest, he hadn't noticed the large, fat tears falling down from his eyes and into the wind.
He'd always tried not to cry, so this was foreign to him, crying, what was the use of it?
However, it'd felt good, so he'd stopped running as he came into a large field next to a small stream, slide down the bark of a tree, and cried, silently at first, but then they all started to come down like bullets. He'd started to put all of his lungs into it after awhile, no one was there anyway, so they wouldn't see.
He was crying so hard and loud that he hadn't even realized the sound of feet upon grass drawing nearer to him, until he heard a voice that is.
" What is the matter, little one?"
Jack remembered how he'd jerked his head up so fast that his neck had hurt, how he'd wiped his eyes so hard they felt raw.
He looked up to see the most beautiful man he'd ever seen. Long hair that went past his waist, soft lavender eyes, long, slender body that wore the most beautiful and elaborate kimono he'd ever seen before. However, what had caught his attention the most were the colors of his hair and skin, they were white, just like his own, the same shade even.
" Oh, what beautiful eyes you have," the man had said as he crouched to his level, " they're so red, like rubies or poppy flowers."
As the man said this, Jack had pulled away from him, glaring coldly at the man.
" Now, now, you shouldn't do that."
" Do what?" Jack remembered himself saying.
" Pull away from everyone, it isn't healthy, everyone needs someone, or they'll get lonely."
The man was looking at him so softly, and, without his permission, he'd felt his own eyes soften on the man.
" Now," the man said, lifting up Jack's face to look at him, " What is wrong?" he'd asked, and Jack had almost told him too, ready to spill his guts out to this mysterious man.
Then he remembered, he was a freak, no one, especially not someone this beautiful, would ever actually care about him.
" What do you care?" he'd asked sullenly.
" Why wouldn't I care that such a beautiful young child like yourself was crying his little eyes out in my forest?" the man asked, a soft smile on his lips and an eyebrow lifted as he looked at the albino child.
Jack was shocked, no one was ever this nice to him, treated him like a normal human child. Why? Why? Why was he acting this way towards him? Why couldn't his own parents act like this towards him?
" Your forest?" he'd asked in wonder, lifting up bright red eyes to the man's lavender ones.
" Yes, My forest, I rule over it, protect it, look over all of it's inhabitants." The man said, lifting a long, slender arm to gesture to the forest.
" R-really?" Jack had asked, eyes widening in child-like wonder.
The man had just smiled at the small boy, pulling Jack up onto him feet and looking him straight into the eyes.
This really got to Jack, no one looked him straight into the eyes, no one, not without shrinking in fear or cringing in disgust.
" Really," he'd assured Jack, pulling him into his arms and standing up, and Jack did nothing to stop him, " and maybe, maybe, one day it can be yours." The man had said as he looked on with pride at the large area.
" It can?" Jack had asked.
" Anything can happen Jack, remember that." The man had said, and Jack didn't even question as to how the man knew his name.
Instead, he played with the man the rest of the evening, telling him his dreams, telling him about his robots and machines, he even spilled his guts about how everyone treated him, especially his parents. The man had listened with great interest, laughing at the young boys antics. Jack remembered acting extremely silly around the man, giving large, toothy smiles and acting as dramatically as he could. He liked to exaggerate his actions, make them comical, because he wanted to make the smile at him again, make him feel like he mattered and that he was wanted.
As the sun went down, all thoughts about anyone else in the world still hadn't returned to Jack, it was still only thoughts about the feminine-looking man.
As time went by, Jack started to wonder what life would be like if this man were his father, if he were to live with him, instead of with his parents. He really didn't want to leave, he wanted this moment to really last, he didn't want to go back to his dark, dreary basement.
He wanted to stay with this man.
He was so happy.
Then, he heard his mother call him.
" Jack, your mother is calling you." The man smiled, Jack's expression became upset, eyes watering as he looked to the ground.
" You'd better go to her." said the man as he turned to walk away.
But, something stopped him.
He looked down to see a small, white first curled up into his kimono.
" Jack, you have to let go." He said, a light frown on his face.
" Can't I go with you? Can't I stay with you? I promise I'll be good." Jack remembered saying as he lifted his eyes, his long, white hair falling away from his bright red eyes as tears streamed down for the second time that day.
Then the man smiled again, a soft, reassuring smile as he crouched down to the boy's level again.
" Jack, I can't just take you away, what about your parents?"
" I told you, they don't care."
The man frowned again for a minute, then smiled.
" I'll tell you what," the man had said, " I can't take you right now, there is a lot of things going on, things that would put you in great danger. So, in a few years, I will come back, if you still want to go then, I will take you away from them, okay?" the man asked.
Jack was a little disappointed that he couldn't go right at that moment, but was happy that, one day, he could possibly leave this place with the only person who had ever treated him decently.
So he nodded his head in confirmation.
" Okay."
" Then I'll be back one day, Jack. But you won't see me again till then."
Jack put his head down again.
" Don't worry, I'll be back, but, if you ever were to need me, just call my name, my name is…"
And, for some reason, he couldn't remember that name.
He'd gone back home to his mother, who automatically put him back into his jail cell. Years passed by and the memory of the man still stuck as he taught himself more and more about robotics and technology.
He even made himself a helibot so that he could fly, something he's always wanted to do.
Then, one day, his father had sent him another puzzle so that he could solve it and his father wouldn't have to hire someone to do it and waste precious money.
He'd solved it without a problem.
And that, was how he met Wuya.
" Spicer? Spicer? JACK!!!" came a loud voice, snapping Jack out of his memory.
Somehow, during the time that he'd been in his own little world, Wuya and Chase had appeared.
Both were scowling at him, both obviously thinking that he was pathetic.
" Jack Spicer, are you not okay?" asked Omi in a worried voice.
Omi was the only one other than that man that had ever given him a chance, but Jack had gone years without friends and even people who would betray his trust and friendship by eventually telling him that Jack was just a tool to do better in school. There was even a time where someone had even turned Jack into the bullies at school because they'd promised never to beat him up again if he gave them Jack.
Needless to say, it was hard for him to completely put his guard down around others, he lives expecting the worst out of people, so it never surprised him anymore that people would hurt him.
" Whatever, I'm going home." Jack said, turning to leave and go home, he wasn't feeling all that great anymore.
The battle went on again as he left the battle field, thinking about how that time in the forest really wasn't as long ago as many would thin, it was only three years ago, actually.
If he were to tell someone that, they would be very confused. A thirteen year old boy met a man in the forest when he was five years old, and only three years had passed since then. It just didn't make any sense!
Or did it?
As Jack was walking away, he didn't notice that Omi had shot another attack from his Orb of Tornami, an attack that was headed straight for him as Chase had dodged the attack.
At least, he hadn't noticed until he saw the shadow of the huge wave headed straight for him.
So, as he turned himself around and saw the massive wave about to crush him, only one thought came to mind, only one name spilled from his lips.
" METARU!!!"
And then all went black.
To be Continued….
