Mystic Roots
By: CrystallicSky
Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown or any of its characters, nor do I make any profit or attempt to with the writing of this or any of my other pieces.
Warnings: Language, homosexuality, some violence/gore later on, etc.
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Chase stood at the side of Jack Spicer's bed, looking down at the slumbering youth.
That he was standing in Jack's bedroom in the Spicer Mansion was beside the point.
Currently, he was looking at a young man who was sleeping with his chest and stomach on the mattress, one arm tucked under him. The other arm was wrapped around the back of his head and aligned along the top, with the palm facing up. Spicer's left hip was resting on the mattress, with his right hip canted backwards and his legs scissored apart as if he'd been running.
He was also snoring; a harsh, guttural, grating sound that had a phlegmy rattle. Beard stubble had darkened the skin of his face from the nose and earlobes down.
Chase grimaced. "Sloppy..." Reaching down, he caught hold of the sheet that was wrapped around Jack's waist and yanked. "Up, Spicer!"
Jack was awake in an instant as he hit the floor with a painful thud and the startled screech of, "Fuck!"
It took a bleary moment of consciousness to even semi-realize the situation: that he had been quite unceremoniously turned out of bed and that a certain Heylin warrior was standing above him.
"Chase...?" he inquired in a half-tired slur. "What are you doing in my room at..." he paused to glance at the clock upon his bedside table, "5:00 AM?!"
Chase lifted an eyebrow. "What I would like to know is why you returned here."
"...what d'you mean why?" Jack demanded. "I live here."
"Not any longer. I am teaching you, now. You are my student. You must be in close quarters with me so we may work whenever we must, no matter what hour of the day."
"You want me to move in? Right now?" The goth glanced around the room, finally making the effort to actually stand. "It's 5:00 AM," he protested. "I haven't showered or shaved or packed or anything!"
Chase rolled his eyes. "You seem to think it's a big deal for someone who has magic to move a few items, Spicer."
Jack winced at the subtle jab at his necessity of relying on the man in such matters. "Okay," he conceded, "so, packing's not an issue. What about the rest of it? Can I get ten minutes to take care of the essentials, or are you gonna willingly deal with my morning breath and scruffy, homeless drifter visage all day?"
Chase hesitated. He looked Jack over slowly, very thoroughly. The young man was wearing black boxers with skull-'n'-crossbones all over them, and a black tank top with the words "I FEEL A SIN COMING ON" decorated with devil horns and a tail from various letters. Despite the inane clothing, it covered a long, lean body.
Gold eyes met crimson eyes; sarcasm and something else in the glittering yellow orbs.
"Your appearance is fine, though I will admit I do not want you reeking of unwashed monkey. Bathe. Dress. Then, we go."
Jack snorted at the comparison. "Thanks," he offered, heading for the bathroom.
While there, he kept his stay quick; shortening his usual routine considerably by only staying in the shower long enough to get clean and lingering by the sink for but a few minutes to brush his teeth and shave off his five o'clock shadow.
Emerging from his bathroom moments later, a fluffy black towel knotted around his waist, the fourth-fae paused to see Chase hovering around his desk, viewing something with a mix of puzzlement and interest.
"What're you doing?" Jack asked, curious as to what of his could possibly be of interest to the dragonlord.
Chase reached down, but hesitated to touch. He was looking at what appeared to be a domed, magnetic sculpture with metallic liquid pooled at the bottom. "What is this?"
Catching sight of the object in question the genius grinned and wandered over. "Oh, this is awesome," he assured. "It's something I've been messing with a little bit recently called ferrofluid. It's got some useful applications in machines and robotics, but it's fun to screw around with, too, because of how it reacts with varying degrees of magnetism. In fact...let me show you."
Jack reached out to the bottom of the enclosed sculpture where a small, unassuming knob lay. He twisted it and carefully watched Chase's reaction.
Chase's eyes widened. Abruptly, the liquid metal began whirling, like clay on a potter's wheel. It began forming different shapes that flowed from one form to the other. Tiny spikes shot out and then began whirling in counter-opposite rows and circles as a cone of the metal fluid rose up from the center of the sculpture. Spicer twisted the knob again, a teeny-tiny bit, and the spikes withdrew into the cone for a moment, and then abruptly burst from the top and danced around each other. With each twist of the knob that Spicer gave, a new dance of the liquid metal took place; a small, contained ballet of the element.
"This is... amazing," the Heylin lord said quietly. He glanced at Spicer. "Did you discover this?"
"No," Jack denied, "but I do like messing around with it. There are the boring, practical applications for ferrofluids, and then there's this. I like this." He switched the knob to the off-position, watching as the hundreds of little spikes at the top of the sculpture began melting until the shape was distinctly lotus-like in nature and the dark, metallic petals began dripping off one by one.
"It's fun to play with," he said. "It's...beautiful and it looks totally random and unpredictable, but it's still perfectly controlled with just a twitch of that knob."
The goth abruptly realized he was still clothed in only a towel and very nearly blushed, turning away from both his desk and the warlord. "Lemme just put on some clothes and we can go."
Chase gave a wolfish grin. "Don't hurry on my account, Spicer."
Jack's step faltered briefly, think he'd heard something...interested in that tone...
But, no, that couldn't be it. Chase was probably just teasing him.
Deciding not to be teased, the youth threw open his closet and picked out of a few items of clothing to wear. Then, unabashedly, he dropped his towel to the floor and began dressing.
Chase smirked. He knew bravado when he saw it.
Crossing his legs at the ankle and his arms over his chest, Chase leaned against the desk and watched Jack get dressed.
"You could do with some muscle definition, Spicer," he opined. "While the basic form of you is aesthetically pleasing, you are little more than a stringy piece of meat."
"Sorry," the goth shot back, "nobody ever bothered to help me learn that stuff. Or anything, for that matter." He bent over to pull on a fresh pair of boxers, pointing out, "On both sides, you guys mock me for sucking as bad as I do, but nobody ever tried to do anything about it. I've pretty much been on my own from Day One."
Chase tilted his head to get a better view. "On second thought, Spicer... your definition appears to be just fine."
Jack purposefully ignored the statement and put on a comfortable pair of black jeans, as well, before reaching further into his closet and deciding on a slim-fitting t-shirt (also black, of course). He eventually determined that he would leave his trench coat off and snatched his goggles from his bedside table so as to sling them around his neck.
This done, he turned to the waiting warlord and inquired, "Are we going, or what?"
Chase grinned; a sharp-toothed smirk. "By all means."
A snap of green-gloved fingers, and the two of them vanished from the Spicer mansion.
Several moments later, they sat in preparation of beginning the necessary training.
Chase had landed them in his throne room. After assuring Jack that his things were neatly stored elsewhere, Chase ordered the younger man to sit down on the floor for meditation purposes.
"But why?" Jack whined. Sitting on cold, hard rock...? Ack. Why not a comfy chair?
"Because, Spicer, if you're going to get anywhere with rejuvenating your powers, you must meditate," Chase replied, exasperation beginning to turn his tone acidic.
"Can't I just...wing it?" he asked. "How come I have to meditate?"
Chase narrowed one eye slightly. It was an expression that suggested madness.
"You must learn to let go your conscious mind so that your instincts may gain strength. In your instincts lays your magic, for naturally, it wants to be used. As a novice, you must let your magic take the lead. Once you recognize it and learn the feel of it, you may begin taming it to your will. But, first, the rise of your instincts. So, if it's quite alright with you...?"
Jack sighed and frowned, but offered no further protest. "Okay," he said, "you're the expert here. What am I supposed to do?"
"We will start with the absolute basics: steady your breathing and focus on it. Allow all other thoughts to dissolve away save for those regarding your intake and exhalation of air."
The goth sat cross-legged upon the ground and instinctively closed his eyes so as to shut out any visual distractions. He set his mind to the task of doing as Chase had instructed and brought his attention to the sound and feel of his own breath.
This worked for all of a few seconds.
Listening, Jack realized his breathing was sounding a mite wheezy. God, he hoped his asthma wasn't acting up. He hadn't used an inhaler in six years; he didn't want to start up again now, of all times.
Then again, he could be getting sick. That'd suck. Or maybe he wasn't getting sick, maybe he'd been made sick. The genius wouldn't put such a thing past Katnappé, not at all.
God, could Katnappé be any more of a bitch? Seriously, she was the biggest twat Jack had ever met outside of Wuya.
And speaking of Wuya, where the hell was she at? Probably getting it on with Hannibal. Gross. Then again, those viney tentacle-thingies probably made for some interesting bed play; kinky witch was probably into that kinda thing.
That reminded Jack: what'd ever happened to that robot he was building, like, a year ago? It was really badass. It had those metallic tentacles coming out of it that had the strength of twenty men. That would definitely whoop some Xiaolin ass if he could just remember-
Oh, yeah. The monks pretty much blew up his lab while he was building the damn thing and it got incinerated. Fuck.
God, were those Xiaolin monks assholes. Didn't they realize that they weren't supposed to go blowing up shit for no good reason, in enemy possession or not? Fuck…when he figured out this whole magic thing, the first thing he was gonna do was-…
Oh…he was supposed to be focusing on his breathing right now, wasn't he?
…damn….
Jack sighed aloud and opened his eyes in a subtle gesture of surrender.
"Yeah, this isn't working," he said to Chase. "Sorry…"
Chase opened his own eyes. He had been sitting in meditation across from Jack. He scowled at the younger man. "Spicer, you will never succeed if you do not want this badly enough to even attempt meditation."
"I do want it!" the goth protested immediately. "What, do you think I'm just blowing smoke out of my ass, here? Do you think I fucking swore my loyalty to you for kicks? I want this, Chase," he assured, scowling darkly. "I want to not suck at something useful for once in my life! I want to be able to stop having my ass handed to me in Showdowns just because my robots can't even hope to match up against fucking magic! I want this, Chase, so…so don't even think I don't, okay?!" Jack was positively glaring by the time he finished speaking, his breathing heavy.
Chase blinked; breathed out slow, and then grinned. "Very passionate, Spicer. Now, for a moment, might I direct your attention to your hands...?"
The youth's brow furrowed in confusion. He glanced downwards even as he began asking, "What-..." His eyes widened almost comically at what he saw and he stopped speaking entirely.
His hands, his hands!, were glowing with a sheen of mystical energy that warped the air around them, blood-red sparks crackling erratically off of his clenched fists.
Jack had just tapped into his magic for the first time ever.
"H...holy fuck," he muttered weakly.
Satisfaction was very evident on the dragonlord's face as he said, "We have found the conduit for your power. Calm acceptance or searching is not your way, Spicer. Intense want - greed. If you want it so bad you ache for it; if you feel you must have it or die, then your magic comes to you."
Jack knew there was an insult to his character in there somewhere, but he didn't much care right now.
He had just done something no ordinary human could ever do; him! Weak, klutzy, underdog Jack Spicer had just made his fucking hands glow and spark because he'd so badly wanted to.
Awesome...
"I guess," he agreed with Chase's statement, his lingering awe obvious in his tone and actions as he continued to stare at his pale palms and fingers. A thought came to him, then, and he asked, "What now? I mean…I found my magic, I guess, but…where do we go from here?"
"Now, we work on making that--" Chase gestured at Jack's glowing hands. "--happen intentionally, on command, whenever you need or want it."
Jack frowned, doubt beginning to express itself on his face.
Chase sighed. "Practice, you ninny."
"Oh!" the goth realized. "Okay, yeah...that's worth a shot, I guess." Jack took a deep breath and attempted to repeat the small show of magic.
At first, nothing came and the youth was nervous that the first happening had only been a fluke. He forced himself to relax and remembered how the first time only moments before had happened. His magic had come into play because he'd wanted it to, because he had been feeling at the moment that he absolutely needed it to work and refused to settle for anything less than that.
Jack tried the same here. He explained to himself logically that he needed to tap into his magic again. If he didn't, he never be able to learn how to use it, and if he didn't learn to use it, he'd lose it completely, and if he lost it completely, he'd turn out just like his asshole father and no, no, no, no, NO. He didn't want to let that happen; he didn't want to go that route; he wanted to learn this; he wanted to be skilled at something outside the spectrum of mathematics and science; he wanted to be good at something Chase wouldn't fucking laugh at for once…!
A sharp tingling sensation in his hands caused red eyes to flicker open once more and Jack grinned brightly to see a perfectly round ball of concentrated energy between his palms. It was small, but it was undeniably there.
"Sweet," he crowed, "I did it!"
"Excellent work, Spicer!" Chase said firmly. "I am pleasantly surprised you have done so well so quickly. However, let us test the nature of your magic."
Jack blinked, clearly puzzled. "How do we do that?" he asked his mentor in magic.
"I will need to know the innate inclination of your energy so I will know how to best instruct you. If it is destructive, I will have to teach you how to effectively rein it in so that you don't end up destroying yourself. If it is defensive, I will have to teach you how to use the defensive to the advantage of your offense. Do you catch my meaning?"
Slowly, the youth nodded. "I think so..." he replied. "What do I do exactly...?"
Chase lifted one hand and circled it expansively. "Direct the ball you made at a nearby object. We shall then see what happens and determine the nature of the beast, so to speak."
Jack made a noise of acknowledgement and gave a cursory glance around the throne room, looking for something easily-replaceable and unneeded in case his magic turned out to be destructive in nature. He eventually spotted a planter in which a flowering of some sort grew. The genius recognized it and knew that it was not some extinct genus of flora and the planter itself was not an ancient artifact that, once gone, could never be replaced.
He turned his eyes back to the small, red ball of magic he cradled in his hands before nudging it experimentally towards the object he had decided upon.
Having never directed magic without a Shen Gong Wu before, Jack had miscalculated on the force with which to send out his energy and so the ball drifted slowly towards its target. It did not take more than a handful of seconds to get there, but there was no doubt that had it been a moving human target, it would've been easily dodged.
Nonetheless, the magic did get there and a light as red as the ball had been flashed when it did so, fading away to reveal…a column.
The planter had turned into a column. It was not an unordinary column and matched perfectly with every other column in the vicinity of it. The only thing that made it look slightly out of place was the fact of its positioning in the throne room; out of line with all of the other columns.
"Cool," Jack murmured, looking at the result of his mystic energy. "So…I've got transmogrification magic, then?"
Chase frowned at the newly formed column. It looked perfectly ordinary, perfectly and really there. But something felt... off.
"I'm not certain," he murmured, getting to his feet. He went over to the column; walked all around it, inspecting it visually. Finally, he reached a hand tentatively forward... and his eyes widened as his hand went through. Grinning, he made contact with the flowers that were still there in the planter and pulled one free, which dispelled the illusion immediately.
Turning to Jack, he quirked a smile of amusement and satisfaction at his student. "Just as I suspected: your magic does not change things physically, Spicer. Instead, it changes the way material objects are perceived. In short, your magic is deceptive and illusory; quite fitting, actually."
Jack was sure there was an insult to his character there. He scowled, demanding, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Chase tossed the flower to Jack. "You yourself are illusory and deceptive by nature, likely out of an innate instinct to survive. You lie to your benefit; you cheat to gain whatever advantage you can; you use disguise to evade outright death. Though less than honorable, it is a clever strategy and one that has obviously kept you from the worst harm throughout your years."
The goth caught the flower and stared at it a moment before turning his gaze back to the warlord. It was obvious he could hardly comprehend what had been said: that certainly didn't sound like an attack or verbal abuse, and that was unusual.
The dragonlord gave a catty smile to the younger man. "Not everything I say about you need be an insult, Spicer. I am capable of compliments - when they are warranted."
Jack flushed ever so slightly. "Yeah, well..." he began awkwardly, "...could've fooled me..."
Chase laughed; a rich, husky chuckle of dark amusement. He walked slowly past his still-seated student. As he did so, he dropped one large hand onto Jack's head and ruffled the thick, sunset-red hair.
"Continue practicing," he ordered. "Learn what it feels like to summon your magic; know every nuance of the sensation of calling upon your power. Find and know your limits. This is particularly important, Spicer. Every being has limits. If you know what yours are, then you will better be able to budget your power for attack or defense."
He felt Spicer nod beneath his hand. Lifting his hand from his student's head, he began walking away as he added, "While you're at it, see if you can directly influence the form of illusion the energy takes. Since you are brand new at this, I will not fault you if you cannot get it the first try. Remember that my duty is to teach you if you find you cannot do it on your own."
He was almost gone from the room when he heard Spicer's voice calling for him.
"Chase...?" the youth inquired, almost hesitantly in tone.
The Heylin lord stopped and glanced over his shoulder at the younger man. "Yes...?"
Jack was quiet for a second, thinking on what exactly he should say. He eventually decided on, "Thanks. For helping me with this, I mean..."
Pleased, Chase nodded his head graciously. "You are welcome, Spicer."
With that, he quit the room, giving Jack peace and quiet with which to get his "studying" done.
The youth breathed deeply in the silence and emptiness of being alone.
Then, he got to practicing.
Jack spent hours by himself learning the ins and outs of his magic: he practiced the summoning and dismissal of it, the precision and the force of it, and as Chase had instructed, his limits.
He found out the hard way that his limit was somewhere around two and a half hours of straight magic usage, at the end of which he simply could not summon any more of it.
The goth got to his feet at that point, knees oddly weak and a dizzying feeling of vertigo overtaking him to the point he actually had to latch onto a nearby object for a few moments until it dissipated.
Dissipate it did, however, and Jack inhaled slowly thinking over the progress he'd made today alone.
He had managed to learn the amount of force with which he should direct his magic so as to avoid missing moving targets (theoretically, of course) and he had little doubt in his ability to call up and to order back his magic at his will.
He hadn't made any significant improvement in terms of making objects look like what he wanted them to. They simply took on the shape of something that would appear natural and least out of the ordinary in the room.
Still, not bad, the goth decided. Chase could help him with that part later; the man had said he would, after all.
It was with a grin on his face that Jack at last sauntered out of the room, proud of that which he had accomplished.
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A/N: Chapter Four of Mystic Roots! ^^
Thanks for reading, and I hope you guys like it! :D
