Chapter 3: The Shard of Lightning
While Omi and Raimundo were celebrating their win, Clay and Kimiko were following a trail through the jungle, on the lookout for the second of the Shen Gong Wu that had become active. The Silver Manta Ray wasn't far - probably at the end of the trail, Dojo had said. They reached the end, where the path opened out into a clearing. The sun shone brightly through here, the rays feeling strong and prickly on the skin.
"Phew!" said Clay, taking off his cowboy hat briefly to wipe off some sweat.
"Yeah, sure is hot," Kimiko agreed. "Glad I wore sunglasses." She was kitted out in khaki shorts, and today her hair was orange. "I wonder if Jack will show up," she said.
"Even he can't be in two places at once," said Clay. "Not without becoming really dumb like Omi did, anyway."
"Yeah, but the last time more than one Wu went active at once we had to fight Tubbimura and -"
Whump!
The cat-costumed form known as Katnappé landed almost directly in front of them.
"Speak of the devil," muttered Clay.
Katnappé was an acquaintance of Jack Spicer's. Clay wasn't sure what the relation between the two so-called villains was, though they didn't seem to like each other much, even when they were on the same side. Katnappé tended to think smaller than Jack. She was a petty thief, only interested in materialistic gain, and she didn't care a whit about ruling the world. But the flip side was that she also tended to be a lot more competent than Jack. She'd beaten both Kimiko and Omi in Xiaolin Showdowns on separate occasions, and without resorting to cheating as Jack so often did.
On the other hand, both Clay and Kimiko had grown stronger since then, too. Compared to a fully-powered Wuya, Katnappé was small fry.
"Well, well," said Kimiko, giving the cat burglar a haughty look. "Look what the cat-nappé dragged in."
Katnappé bared her teeth and hissed, swiping at the air with her claws. "Me-ow!"
Clay had never quite understood the rivalry between the two girls, but sometimes he thought they were both as bad as each other, if only because it seemed to bring out the awful cat puns. His eyes widened as a familiar spirit hovered into view, from behind Katnappé: the purple, ghostly form of Wuya, archenemy of Grandmaster Dashi.
"Wuya?" Clay exclaimed.
"You didn't think I'd stay in that box forever, did you?" she said.
"Another fifteen hundred years would have been nice," he responded, frowning. Katnappé must have found the second puzzle box that Raimundo used to seal Wuya away. Clay cursed lightly to himself. They should have been more careful about that, really. No wonder the Shen Gong Wu were still becoming active.
Katnappé opened her rucksack, revealing several red-eyed, rabid kittens that leapt out, ready to scratch and bite anything that got in their way.
"Ack!" said Kimiko, getting the full brunt of the kitten attack. She twisted and turned, struggling to get the hissing bundles of fur off her. Katnappé took advantage of the distraction and ran ahead, climbing straight up a tree at the edge of the clearing. Through the kittens' flying claws and fur, both Xiaolin warriors saw why. In that tree's branches, a black and silver metallic object glistened in the sun. It was the shape of a manta ray.
"Dang-blasted cats!" said Clay. "I'm more of a dog person." He chucked the two kittens that had gone for him in the bushes, and ran towards the tree, activating the Two-Ton Tunic.
Now, Clay had a unique sense of chivalry. He wouldn't hit a girl, but he'd since added a hidden rule which stated: "unless it's Katnappé". In this case, though, he didn't technically hit her; he utilised the force of the protective armour and slammed into the tree trunk, and Katnappé came crashing down. He held out both hands, and the Silver Manta Ray neatly fell into them.
Beginning to lose her patience, Kimiko performed the latest move she'd perfected - the Judalet Flip, where she somersaulted into a spinning ball of fire, to force the remaining kittens off her. She then immediately sent the kittens flying all the way across the clearing with a powerful gust courtesy of the Sword of the Storm. The kittens would be back, but she and Clay would be gone by then.
Clay threw the Silver Manta Ray out into the open space, where it transformed into a futuristic jet-plane that resembled one of Jack's many creations. Katnappé recovered and stood up, glaring at Kimiko and Clay as they quickly climbed inside. The cat burglar sprinted nimbly towards them, but it was too late. The plane rose high up, out of her reach.
"Later, Katnappé," said Kimiko tauntingly, and, with Clay at the helm, they flew off. Mission accomplished!
Down on the ground, Wuya was a floating balloon of frustration, just seconds away from popping. It was so infuriating, being reduced to nothing but a purple ghost with a freaky floating red mask for a head. After Jack had released her from the first puzzle box, she had often thought that turning her into this thing was Dashi's idea of a cruel joke. She couldn't do anything in this form. She couldn't touch anything, or make any objects move, like you would think a ghost could. She couldn't even possess anybody. All she could do was watch helplessly and shout angrily while everyone else around her screwed up.
"Arrgh! You're useless!" she hissed at Katnappé. "It's bad enough you decided to go for this Shen Gong Wu instead of the Sands of Time, but you went and lost this one, as well!"
"Shut it, you old hag! I'm outta here. I quit." With that, Katnappé picked up her rucksack, and trekked off to look for her crazed kittens.
That could have gone better, Wuya thought, folding her ghostly arms. It had been a bad idea to team up with Katnappé anyway; all Katnappé was interested in if it didn't involve cats was money. Wuya supposed she was better off with Jack, at least to start off with. This was one of the few occasions where being a ghost came in handy; she'd be able to materialise at Jack's house without having to bother with magic to travel all that way. Jack very likely wouldn't take her back, but she'd try anyway. If there was one thing Wuya was good at, it was finding an opportunity.
"No," said Jack, scowling at the ghost-witch. They were both in his basement lab. He was a little surprised to see her, but then again he didn't remember what had happened to the puzzle box that Raimundo had used to trap her inside.
"C'mon, Jack," she said. "You need me."
"No, I don't." He purposely turned his back and grabbed a spanner, mending his broken down Parrot-bot. It doubled as a lozenge dispenser, and right now he really needed a lozenge. Proclaiming to the world how evil he was, in such a loud voice, took its toll on his throat from time to time. "I can find the Shen Gong Wu without you. Go away."
To his annoyance, Wuya grinned. "Did you get the Sands of Time? I bet you didn't."
He shrugged. "Yeah, so what? It's not the end of the world."
"So what? You idiot! You don't even know what it does, do you?"
This was true. His Shen Gong Wu detecting device didn't tell him the powers of a Shen Gong Wu, only its location.
"It freezes time," he guessed.
Wuya's grin became even larger.
"Fine, whatever," he said shortly, turning back to his robot. "I don't care what it does."
"Jack," she said, losing the smile. "Try to understand. I was mad because you turned me away before."
Well, of course he'd turned her away! He had bent over backwards getting the blasted Shen Gong Wu to create the demon Mala Mala Jong out of them, and Wuya had repaid him by ordering it to smash him into his own bookcase. That hadn't been fun. Never mind the entire incident with Raimundo.
"That was only because you betrayed me first! Why should I trust you?"
She blinked, and looked away. Then, after a thoughtful pause, she turned her gaze back to him, seeming to have decided something. "The Sands of Time gives you the power to travel through time," she said quietly.
"A time-travelling Wu?" he exclaimed.
"Yes... I suppose I'll have to find someone else to get it." She turned back around, starting to float away.
Against all better judgement, Jack called after her. "Wait. There aren't any hidden side effects to this one, is there?"
"There might be..." she said enigmatically.
Jack sighed. "Okay. You can stay... But no eating any of my pudding cups!"
"For the last time, that wasn't me! I can't eat!"
As it turned out, the Sands of Time were put to a much better use than chores: the collection of other Shen Gong Wu. The way to avoid time paradoxes was to use the invisibility powers of the Shroud of Shadows as well; it wasn't really a paradox if no one had seen you arriving in the past. So one person would go back in time, invisibly, and cause Jack, for example, to trip up. The warriors of the past would get away with the Wu, only for one of them to go back in time to do the tripping.
In this way, several new Shen Gong Wu were collected by the Xiaolin warriors. Even Wuya was unable to give much assistance to Jack, though the more times they were defeated, the more they began to suspect that the Sands of Time was somehow involved. Master Fung gave a stern warning not to use the Sands of Time unless absolutely necessary, but Raimundo reassured him that they were only using it to travel back in minutes, and that they wouldn't use them to travel back or forwards for any longer than that.
It came as a surprise, then, that one day Jack had retrieved a Shen Gong Wu first. At a small sea harbour that was flanked on one side by a large hill, Jack and Wuya faced the four Xiaolin monks amidst the sounds of seagulls and boat bells and fishermen.
Raimundo was the first to notice the odd clock-shaped robot standing next to Jack. It was short and round, had little stubby hands sticking out at angles on top on its body in such a way that they looked like its ears; a couple of longer arms were attached to the side of the body with at least six watches on each arm; the body was a clock, that is, a clock face complete with moving minute and hour hands; and its feet were wooden blocks. Its general appearance was that of a wind-up toy, except it was missing a twisty knob on its back.
"Wow," said Raimundo, shaking his head. This was ridiculous, even for Jack. "What are you calling this one, Jack? The Clock-bot? Real original!"
Jack huffed in annoyance. He was a stickler for people getting the names of his creations right. "Time-bot, Time-bot! Get it right."
Clay sighed as he connected the dots. "Ya didn't make a time machine robot, did ya? Because going by how well that other time doo-hickey of yours went…"
"This is an even better version!" Jack whined in protest. "I've fixed the problems with the previous one, so there!"
"Being able to return to one's own time…?" Omi suggested, with narrowed eyes. The last time Jack had built a time machine, he had forgotten to include a way of getting the person back once they'd entered it, and he had accidentally stranded Omi in the past.
Omi held the Sands of Time tighter. Two could play this time travel game.
"Shut up," Jack snapped. "I got here before you guys, didn't I? Now we're even Stevens!"
"No way are we even," Raimundo smirked, looking ready to use the Serpent's Tail.
"Ready to get your butt kicked for the umpteenth time?" Kimiko added, also settling into a battle stance.
"No, not really," Jack returned lazily, holding up the newly revealed Shen Gong Wu high above his head with his right hand, the other hand on the Time-bot's head. Wuya ducked into Jack's body to avoid the effects of the Wu as he called out: "Shard of Lightning!"
The blue orb flashed with a bolt of electricity, forcing Time to slow to a crawl, and the Xiaolin monks froze in place.
Time was getting fed up of this, really.
A world of nothing wasn't too bad, Dashi decided. At least nothing could go wrong. But then again, nothing could go right, either. This was the kind of nothing that signified a collapsed universe, which meant that nothing would ever happen at all. He didn't know why he was happening, why he was breathing, and alive, in Nothingness. The Sands of Time conferred a degree of protection on its holder during a big disaster like this, but he didn't have it any more. It had vanished, along with Wuya's puzzle box, though he still had the triangular glass fragment.
Very odd indeed.
He'd only just beaten Wuya as well. So much for relaxing for a while...
Fortunately, he was only in Nothingness for the best part of two minutes, before the piece of purple glass teleported him out of Nothingness and into what looked like the completed Xiaolin temple.
Completed.
Oh dear. Completed without him.
Yep, there was something screwy going on here, and he was pretty sure it was a timeline related issue. He couldn't tell how much time had passed, but, also rather fortuitously, Dojo was curled up, snoozing on the floor. Thank goodness for the longevity of magical dragons, because no matter how many years had passed, Dojo would still be Dojo.
Hopefully.
"Hey, Dojo." Dashi bent down and nudged said magical dragon on the snout.
"Zzt–! What-what? Eh? Dashi? What… I thought you'd left to chase… um, Chase?"
Chase Chase?
"Why? What's he done?"
"What's he done? What's he done? Have you been sniffing the Woozy Shooter gas again? He's drunk the Lao Mang Long soup, that's what he's gone and done! He tried to eat me! He-!"
Dashi placed both hands over Dojo's snout and forced his mouth shut. "Dojo. I'm currently experiencing a bit of temporal displacement."
"Oh," he said in a muffled voice, his snout still clamped, "that old thing."
"So, please, do not tell me any more, lest you start up some kind of time paradox."
"Right."
"Good." Dashi let go, and he stood up, holding the piece of glass in a loose fist. "Now, let me ask you this: how long has it been since Wuya was defeated?"
"Hmm, let's see now. About six months?"
"Six months, huh?"
Suddenly, the piece of glass floated up, out of Dashi's hand, and fired a beam of purple light straight up, high in the sky. The beam kept going up, until it abruptly changed direction and made a sharp ninety-degree turn to go horizontally, as if it had hit an invisible mirror in mid-air that had changed its trajectory.
Dashi tried pulling the piece out of the air to see what would happen. The purple glass piece easily moved, but the beam of light remained stubbornly in place, even though its source had been removed.
"What do you make of all this, Dojo?"
"Me?" He sounded surprised at being asked. He scratched his chin. "Well, it… it feels like a Shen Gong Wu, really, and yet… not like a Shen Gong Wu. There's some kind of weird static energy inside it. Like one of Wuya's lightning blasts."
"In that case, let's follow it and see where it goes."
"That light?"
"It's doing all this for a reason. I don't want to risk leaving it as it is in case it damages the timeline. I shouldn't be here, remember." I wonder if Wuya did something? he added to himself.
"Well," said Dojo, growing to his huge size, "nothing like a good mystery to take one's mind off things. Buckle up!"
"One minute," said Dashi, and he bent down, picking up a pebble with his other hand and holding it out in his palm. Moments later, another puzzle box appeared in his hand.
"What's that for?"
"Just in case," said Dashi.
Following the beam of light didn't take long at all. After a couple of minutes, the line of light made a sharp right-angle turn downwards. As Dojo landed, Dashi could see what the beam of light was "pointing" to: another piece of glass.
Dashi bent down to pick it up, and the world turned not to black, but to yellow.
"Well, damn," said Dashi.
In the present day, the effects of the Shard of Lightning wore off, and time went back to its normal speed.
Actually, for the Xiaolin monks it felt more as though time had been abruptly skipped forward, like skipping to the next scene or chapter marker on a DVD – one second Jack had been there with them, in the noisy harbour, the next he had completely vanished. No one could remember what had happened during the interim.
"Darn," said Raimundo, "he got away!"
"But…" said Omi slowly. He stared at the ground, where the Sands of Time lay on its side. "Look."
"Huh," said Kimiko. "I wonder why he didn't take that one? Out of all the Wu here, you'd think that one would be the one he'd definitely grab."
"I've still got the Golden Tiger Claws," Clay added, looking suitably confused. Raimundo and Kimiko checked: they still had their Wu as well. It was all rather odd, frankly. What had happened while they'd been frozen?
Omi picked the Sands of Time up with some unease, as they'd been in his hands only a moment ago, he didn't remember dropping them. How much time had Jack had, he wondered? Only as long as the flash of lightning? How long was that?
"One of us could try to go back in time," Raimundo suggested. "See what happened."
"I don't think that's going to work this time," said Kimiko. "Jack's got a time machine too. He'll just use it to stop us from stopping him. Then we'll try to stop him stopping us stopping him, then he'll stop us stopping him stopping us stopping... erm, well, it'll be a never-ending cycle, anyway. Unless we break his time machine robot, but what's to stop him from building another one? Besides, now he's got the Shard of Lightning, he could just freeze time."
"What should we do then?" said Raimundo. "We're trying to avoid paradoxes, aren't we? 'The fate of the universe depends upon it', and whatnot."
"Just continue as normal, I reckon," said Clay. "With any luck, the same kind o' reasoning'll stop Jack from using his time machine like we were using the Sands of Time."
"Jack was right, then," said Raimundo glumly. "Even Stevens."
"We do not need the Sands of Time to beat Jack Spicer!" said Omi, who, out of the four, had liked using the time travel in this way the least. It had been a bit underhanded, and he'd seen it as cheating. The honourable way to get a Shen Gong Wu would be to face your opponent and have a proper Xiaolin Showdown.
"Probably not," said Kimiko, "but we'd just better hope that Jack doesn't do something completely moronic to the timeline..."
Funnily enough, at his house, Jack was thinking the same thing. Not that he was a moron, but he was beginning to wonder whether he had pushed time just a little too hard. Well, it was the Xiaolin Dragons' fault, they forced him to do it!
He sagged.
So tired.
He stared at his Time-bot, which, on their return to his home, had gone phut. He didn't know why it had suddenly stopped working, but he could easily find out.
"I told you your robots were useless," said Wuya.
"Shut up," said Jack, unscrewing the robot's back compartment to retrieve a small black box. He placed the box on one of his tables, then attached a wire from it to his computer.
"What are you doing?" Wuya asked, never really at home with modern technology, and even less at home with Jack's robotic inventions.
Jack sighed. "Look. Time gives off waves, right? Every event, every decision that's made, every cause and effect, it gives of a sort of... temporal signature. My Time-bot was recording them. I'm going to see if it'll give me some sort of clue as to why it's suddenly malfunctioned."
He typed on the keyboard, waiting for the computer to import the data from the robot, then he created waveforms and graphs, and then ran some calculations and extrapolations.
"Well, crap," Jack snarled.
"What?" said Wuya. Obviously he could see something in the graphs that she couldn't.
"The universe is coming to an end."
"What? Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure!"
"It just strikes me as unusually competent on your part, to be able to know for sure..."
"Listen, I don't ask you about how you can sense Shen Gong Wu or take over the world in minutes with your magic. It's the same with me and robots and temporal mechanics. I just know, okay?"
"Except most of the time your robots don't really work."
"Look! Time does not exist. Or, it will not exist. In sixteen hours, thirty-three minutes and -" he glanced at his computer's monitor "- fifty-two seconds' time, and counting - time itself... breaks down. Well, technically what's going to happen is that the laws of physics are going to break down and matter and energy and anything made up of either will be squeezed together tightly into a tiny particle-sized ball of non-existence. Everything collapses, do you understand? This isn't something I'm guessing. It will happen. It's like I'm using the Crystal Glasses to see into the future. I can see it happening in these graphs, too, I'm just using a different way."
There was a moment where Wuya's thoughts appeared to be wrestling with themselves as she decided what to say next. He was so certain...
"What can we do?" she said eventually.
"Sixteen hours isn't long," he said, yawning. "I'm going to need more than that to repair the Time-bot."
"The Xiaolin warriors still have the Sands of Time," Wuya reminded him.
"Yeah, but they're never going to believe us," said Jack wearily, eyelids drooping. "We might need to..."
Jack slumped over his computer desk and fell asleep.
Idiot boy! He was harping on about the end of the universe, and here he was taking a nap! What a buffoon! Wuya tried everything to wake Jack up, but nothing would rouse him from his slumber.
Jack slept on into the night.
He dreamed of the past.
Memories.
And fire. Cold, and fog. Confusion. Colours. Shapes.
Memories...