Blarrrrrrrgh. How long has it been since I've updated this thing? Shame upon me. I'm really sorry about the delay, guys; things have been insanely busy and this chapter was just clinging to the doorframe throwing a tantrum. But the next one should go much better!

Also, turns out I've been calling half of 'em by wrong names up till now. "Tox" and "Toxikita" are close enough I guess, but it turns out "Invizable" is really "Mr. Pale" and possibly "Shadow" is actually "Shade." Too bad for them, though! Mr. Pale is not as cool as Invizable.

And it would appear the official spelling is "Chamille," with an H. I don't know how to take this. T_T

Disclaimer: Own nothin' and no one!


Things had been chaotic during the last few hours in the Factory. By the time the captured Elemental Masters (minus Kai) had been chivvied onto the assembly line, Karlof was already putting the finishing touches on the Roto Jet and all they really had time for was to fill the newcomers in on the plan. Oh, and instill in them a passion for Positive Thinking. That was Jay's fault.

And there hadn't been much time for enmity while they were breaking their way out of there either. The gang who'd been spending a longer stint at the Factory was already pretty tightly-knit—one day at the mind-numbing production line, one night in a lonely cell, and when someone offered you a smile and a conversation you didn't say no. Ash and Camille had become great friends, and Bolobo seemed to share a different in-joke with everyone. Even the quiet, broken-spirited workers who had been laboring in the Factory for years after Chen shanghaied them seemed to be warming up to the boisterous newcomers.

However, now they were all free again, and while Chen, Clouse, and Skylor had disappeared, the hunt was on to capture all of Chen's underlings. In the midst of the rout, match winners mingled with the very ones they had sent down Chen's trapdoors—and some clashes were inevitable.


10:48 AM

"Woah, woah, guys!" protested Cole, prying apart Toxikita and Shadow. "Come on, the Tournament's over. Can't we just put it all behind us?"

"He cheated," hissed Toxikita. "I would've won that match!"

"You don't know what you're talking about," Shadow growled back. "There is no such thing as cheating in a no-holds-barred fight."

"Hey, hey." Cole waved his hands for quiet and pointed off into the jungle. "You have issues, you can take them up with those grunts who were keeping us chained up. There's no point in fighting each other anymore! Come on guys, how about just shaking hands?"

Both sides involved folded their arms and looked away. Cole sighed, threw up his hands, and left them. He spared a glance for Gravis and Griffin Turner, who were also giving each other dirty looks, but didn't even bother intervening.

"Geez, with these people!" he muttered, rejoining his teammates. "You'd think they'd have better things to do than rehash stupid arguments."

"You'd think so, yeah," said Kai. If sarcasm could drip, there would have been a small pool of it forming around his feet. Cole, catching his implication, gave him a disgruntled look.

"Don't get too smug, hotshot. You owe something like half the island an apology by now."

"What?!" Kai folded his arms rebelliously. "They're not getting one."

"Yeah, we'll just see about that. Last I heard, Ash wasn't—"

Cole was cut short by a whoop of "found some!" from the jungle ahead. Griffin had apparently tracked down a sizeable posse of Chen's henchmen, and for a while everyone was busy chasing them down, knocking them out, and-or tying them up.

"They're getting away!" called Invizable, dodging one snake-skulled henchman and pointing after a cluster of others who were dashing off into the forest. Everybody was currently busy except Toxikita and Jay, who both dove after the escapees with a will.

"Be careful! The jungle is full of booby traps!" Nya shouted after them, but they were already gone. Unnoticed by anyone else, Shadow looked after them with narrowing eyes. Then he abruptly melted into the dappled forest floor (leaving his opponent highly bewildered) and slid off after them.


11:05 AM

The fleeing henchmen didn't stick together, and Jay was slow on his bad leg, so he and Toxikita split up. Unfortunately, the grunts knew the jungle better than either of the Elemental Masters did, and in no time they had both lost their quarry.

Eventually Toxikita slowed from a dash to a jog, then stopped altogether. She turned around slowly, listening, but she couldn't hear anything besides regular jungle noises. No sign of the grunt she had been chasing, no sign of Jay either, and she mayyyyyy possibly be the tiniest bit lost by now. She was about to mutter an oath when a soft noise suddenly caught her ear. It didn't sound quite like a human being, and yet . . .

"Who's there?" she called, turning around again. No reply. The leaves rustled, jungle birds cried out, and yet there seemed to be an odd sort of . . . whisper . . .

Frowning, Toxikita began to walk slowly along, peering at her surroundings. The sound seemed to follow her; was it behind her? Ahead of her? You could almost say it sounded like a sha—

Her foot landed on a tripwire. There was a sharp click!, a bark of "Look out!", and a dark shape exploded from the forest floor and knocked her aside. A long spear thwacked into the ground exactly where Toxikita had been standing a second ago. Toxikita herself, plus Shadow, tumbled safely into a large fern.

"Where did you come from?!" spluttered the Master of Poison, sitting up and glaring.

"I followed you," replied Shadow coolly, glaring back. "I figured it was a good time to settle this match."

"Oh yeah?" Toxikita clambered to her feet. "Fair enough. Let's finish this!"

They both backed apart slightly, digging in their toes. They were just tensing to spring at each other when there was a call of "Hey, what's all the noise? Tox, that you?" Jay appeared from the trees nearby, looking surprised. "Say Shadow, when'd you get here?"

"Get lost!" hissed Toxikita, annoyed at the interruption.

"I already am," said Jay ruefully. "Don't suppose you guys know the way back to the main compound?"

He limped towards them, seemingly ignoring the fact that they'd been poised for combat. Both the would-be brawlers growled under their breaths and moved to shoo him off—but it proved to be a poor life choice for all three of them. At the exact same instant they all stepped on the same camouflaged pit, the ground caved away, and they tumbled down into darkness with a yelp.


11:15 AM

"Owwwwww!" groaned Jay, once they'd had a second to recover from the shock. "Not another trapdoor!"

"Not exactly. Just a pit trap," growled Shadow, nursing a sore shoulder. "Nice going."

"Don't pin this on me!" Toxikita snapped back. "I didn't see you noticing it first!"

"Woah, woah, it's all our faults," said Jay hastily. "Let's just get out of here." He peered upwards, frowning; the pit was pretty deep and the walls slanted inwards slightly.

"You think either of you could jump high enough to grab the top?" he asked.

"Nuh-uh. You're the ninja, aren't you supposed to do that kind of stuff?" said Toxikita.

"Sure, normally I could, but this foot isn't gonna let me jump anywhere," said Jay glumly. "Man, this bites. Guess we'll just have to wait until the others find us."

Toxikita and Shadow traded looks of dismay. It would take long enough already for the others to notice they were gone, who knew how much longer it would be before they managed to track them down?

"What about those shadows of yours?" asked Toxikita, folding her arms. "Can't you use those?"

"Look, just because I can turn into a shadow doesn't mean I can ooze straight up walls," Shadow gritted back. "Why don't you—"

"Woahhhhhh, woah woah woah," cut in Jay nervously. He was not keen on sitting here witnessing a heated quarrel—or worse, a fistfight—for who knew how long. "Let's just . . . sit here calmly, for a little while." He winced at the twin glares that were promptly directed his way. "Uhh . . . heard any . . . good jokes lately?" He winced harder. "Okay, forget I asked."


11:20 AM

The minutes ticked by. No help came. Shadow tried to cover his ears.

"Rock, paper, clamp, shoot. Rock, paper, clamp, shoot. Rock, paper, clamp—"

"Will you just shut up?!" the Master of Darkness finally exploded.

"But I can't stop now!" protested Jay. "Just let me break the tie. I've never seen one go on this long!"

" . . . You're playing against yourself."

Jay blinked down at his hands.

"Well what do you know! Finally, a worthy opponent." He shook hands with himself gravely.

Toxikita dragged a hand down her face, while Shadow slumped back with a groan. Jay gave them both an innocent smile—after years on the ninja team, he was well-versed in the art of driving people up the wall.

"We have to keep making some kind of noise, it'll help the others find us," he explained. "Don't suppose you guys would feel like keeping up a little friendly conversation?"

"I've got nothin' to say," grunted Shadow, leaning back against the wall with arms folded.

"Tox?"

The Master of Poison rolled her eyes uncooperatively.

"Well, okay then," said Jay, shrugging. "Guess it's up to me!"

"On second thought—!" Toxikita held up one hand hastily, but Jay was already off at full-speed.

"Okay, so do either of you guys watch Starfarer? No? Yeah, I kinda figured you weren't the science-fiction type. But it's really good, for a sci-fi! And they have a lot of other stuff going on so it's actually super-deep sometimes, especially in Season 5 . . . "

Toxikita and Shadow exchanged scowls.

"This is all your fault," hissed Toxikita under her breath.

"Liar," Shadow retorted. They both scowled again and fell silent; talking around Jay's wall of sound was difficult.


11:25 AM

"—And so it's actually probably a continuity error, but a lot of the fans have come up with theories to actually have it make sense in-canon, because I guess they don't like there to be holes like that. But I kinda like it, because then it makes you think about—"

Toxikita pulled out a packet of poison powder, aiming to blow it into Jay's face, but Shadow grabbed her arm.

"You can't knock him out," he said. "He's right, we do have to make noise if we're gonna get found, and if you poison him that means we'll have to talk."

Toxikita gritted her teeth, but had to agree with his logic.


11:30 AM

"Nobody's ever explained it! His beard just grew insanely long in like, ten years! Kai says he probably drank Tomorrow's Tea to get wiser, but that doesn't really make sense because—"

"I can't believe I'm saying this," sighed Toxikita, covering her eyes, "but if you gave me the choice to go back to the Factory right now . . . "

"Quit whining," grunted Shadow. "At least this is your first time; I was trapped in a prison van with this guy too. That one time was already twice too many."


11:35 AM

"—And then they just went pow! and disappeared! And we never saw them again. Which was really lame, you know? Because they were seriously awesome and glowy and stuff, and you didn't have to worry about the blade when you weren't using them and mine could shoot really awesome lightning—"

Toxikita looked at Shadow wearily.

"Are you sure it wouldn't be better to just knock him out and talk ourselves?"

"I'm starting to wonder," groaned Shadow. He tilted his head back against the wall, staring up at the patch of jungle and sky showing through the top of the pit. "When I ask myself why I ever bothered to follow you here in the first place . . . "

"Hmph. See, I told you this was your fault," said Toxikita. "We wouldn't be in this mess if you hadn't knocked me over."

"You would be dead by a spear if I hadn't knocked you over," retorted Shadow drily.

"I probably wouldn't have walked there in the first place if I hadn't heard you following me!" Toxikita snapped back. Still, her expression grew a little pensive.


11:40 AM

"—I mean, what was the big idea with Chen's whole tournament anyway? It took forever and we coulda all died and stuff, and that would've messed everything up for him, but he still made us go through all those crazy challenges! That guy is psycho, I'm tellin' ya—"

"Say . . . " ventured Toxikita. "Why did you save me from that spear anyway?"

Shadow grunted, rolling his eyes.

"It's not like I could just stand there and let it happen. Besides, I needed you alive if we were going to have a rematch."

"Oh."

"I don't need to cheat to win," said Shadow tersely, scowling at the opposite wall of the pit. "And I intend to prove that."

Toxikita tossed a pebble thoughtfully. Jay switched to discussing the domestic habits of the common beaver.


11:41 AM

"What makes you think I cheated, anyway?" said Shadow suddenly. "The rematch isn't going to do much good if you just accuse me again afterwards."

"Well, the—" Toxikita hesitated, then shook her head. "I . . . okay, I guess I didn't really have anything to go by. I just . . . I guess I just couldn't believe you beat me. That quickly, too." She shrugged, looking away. "You're pretty good."

"Ehh." Shadow shrugged in return. "I didn't cheat, but I probably could've stood to be less rough with ya." He hesitated. "How bad exactly was the Factory?"

"On a scale of one to this?" Toxikita waved at Jay, who was insisting that he used to know Bolobo way back when he was a pizza deliveryman. "I'd say a one-point-five."

Shadow chuckled ironically.

"So, conversation?"

"Conversation," Toxikita grinned, fishing in her pocket and retrieving the poison packet.

"—And according to the theory of relativity, it's possible for two observers moving in different inertial reference frames to disagree about the time order of two events, but since both of their claims are equally valid—"

Toxikita was just about to put Jay into a very deep sleep when the lightning ninja suddenly stopped. The silence was practically alien; Toxikita hastily hid the fistful of poison behind her back.

"Did you just hear that?" said Jay, looking up. "I think I heard someone!"

"How in the world . . . " muttered Shadow, but Jay waved for quiet. Sure enough, there was a distant call in a familiar voice.

"Hey! We're over here! Down here!" shouted Jay.

"Guys? Where?" The voice drew nearer, becoming recognizable as Cole's. Toxikita gave a muffled cheer, while Shadow breathed a sigh of relief.

"Cole! We're in a pit trap!" hollered Jay. "Watch your step, you don't wanna—"

There was a sudden scuffle and yelp, and the bottom of the pit suddenly became a little more crowded. Jay and Toxikita groaned.

"Congratulations!" Shadow gave a sarcastic "woo-hoo" gesture. "You found us."

"Really? Awesome," said Cole, rubbing his head dizzily. "What do I win?"

"Noodles," deadpanned Jay. "All the noodles."

"Awwwwh man, that sucks. Trust me, I never wanna see another noodle." Cole shook out his head and sat up.

"Tell me you at least brought some of the others?" said Toxikita wearily.

"Tell me you didn't," corrected Shadow. "We don't have room for all of them to fall in here."

Cole chuckled awkwardly.

"Heh, sorry about that. Don't worry, I think I can pull a staircase out of the wall; we'll be out of here in no time." He started to inspect the walls, then registered a mild double-take as he realized the Masters of Darkness and Poison seemed to be getting along uncommonly well.

"Huh. Good to see you guys are, uh . . . all in one piece," he ventured.

"I managed to broker an agreement," chirped Jay, folding his arms smugly. Cole glanced at the others.

"Talked you into submission?"

"You do not even want to know."