Asides from the obvious stench of hot ash and molten metal—overlaid with just a subtle hint of burning—and the faint, sour tinge of evil that the two Heylin fiends left wherever they went, there was nothing to suggest a cunning trap or that one of them had remained behind. Still, Dojo was careful when he began to crawl out from under the debris of Spicer's former house. He'd just crawled out into the open air when a large hand with black claws seized his tail, and Dojo screamed like the sky was coming down around his ears.
"LET GO LET GO! OH GODS, PLEASE DON'T HURT ME! I'M TOO YOUNG TO DIE!" he shrieked, his voice reaching a pitch reserved for soprano opera singers and frightened young girls, as he closed his eyes then flailed and scratched at the thing with a death grip on his tail. A rusty groan and the creak of much-put-upon metal reached Dojo's ears above his screaming and, with a sound like a siren suddenly sputtering and dying; he stopped wailing and opened his eyes.
The remnants of what the dragon assumed was a Jack-Bot lay before him, half submerged beneath the rubble from which Dojo had just emerged. At least, the dragon assumed it was a Jack-Bot; there was no way he could mistake the characteristic skull-like print on its face or the freaky hands, even though the metal exoskeleton was warped horribly out of shape from intense heat and falling debris, licked with tongues of suit, and oozing engine oil like viscous blood. In truth, Dojo thought as he wrinkled his sensitive nose at the acrid stench of the oil, it didn't look much differently than it might have coming out of a battle with the Xiaolin monks. But then he caught sight of the vicious gouges scored into the back of the android's head, exposing sparking bits of wire and circuitry, and the lack of its entire bottom half and the little dragon had to suppress a shudder.
The Xiaolin dragons would have just smashed the Jack-Bot to bits; they wouldn't have battered it around like this, played with it, before leaving it to die.
Can robots die? Dojo wondered before the android before him let out a hacking noise that sounded quite similar to a man's dying breaths.
"Identifying...organic life form...accessing memory-d-d-d-daaaaaatabase—" Dojo had to wince when the android's low drone skipped and dragged electronically, scratching over eardrums that were not partially blocked by shrunken Shen Gong Wu for once "—processing...processing...life form identified."
"You could have just asked," the dragon muttered irately.
"Dojo Kanojo Cho...dragon...guardian of the Shen Gong Wu scroll of the Xiaolin Temple," the Jack-Bot recited in a tone that sounded almost human in its weariness.
"Yes yes, that's me," Dojo confirmed, struck with the sudden urge to shake the pile of junk to move things along, after all he had questions to ask, but then he felt terrible; such a thing would probably mark the end of the Jack-Bot, though it probably wouldn't have made much difference anyway. "Where is Spicer? Jack Spicer. Was he here?"
"I do not know where Master Jack is," the Jack-Bot answered, vibrating a little as blue sparks spat from the deep rends in its armour plating. "We have not seen him since early morning yesterday."
"Then Jack hasn't been here," Dojo sighed. "Chase Young hasn't got hold of him."
At that the Jack-Bot unleashed a tirade of angry beeping and whirring all of which was stopped dead by a spurt of fresh blood—no, oil!—spilling onto the ground and that same harsh, clanking cough. The red glow in the android's eyes flickered, dimmed, and it groaned mechanically.
"Chase Young will not find Master Jack," it determined, voice radically weaker than before. "Master Jack has made sure he will not and we have made sure also."
"Spicer's alive?!"
"He contacted us and sent us orders just this morning. I was the receiver for that call."
"Then you know where he is," the little dragon exclaimed, so excited he could barely get the words out.
"I repeat, Dojo Kanojo Cho, I do not know where Master Jack is."
"And why not!"
"Upon delivering his orders we asked if Master Jack would like to be picked up from his location and he said no. He said to delete his coordinates and to erase them from our hard drives."
"What kind of orders did Jack give you?" Dojo asked, hoping for some clue at least.
"That we initiate emergency responses RP1, AGS6, and H5SGW."
"And what are those?"
"Protocol dictates that we erase all memory of such responses and the code sequences within us that tell us what to do upon completion of said responses," the Jack-Bot recited.
"Well then what the heck can you tell me?!"
"That Master Jack is a genius and he knew what he was doing," the android seemed to sigh. Dojo paused to contemplate this, quickly coming upon a realization.
"He was protecting himself from Chase Young..."
"So we assumed, my compatriots and I, when Chase Young came looking for him. We could not tell him where Master Jack was hidden and then he attacked..." the robot's eyes flickered again and a small tinny sob issued from its speaker. "...but for those who left to complete Master Jack's orders...I am the only one...left."
Dojo was immediately struck with the memory of a battle for a Shen Gong Wu not long after Omi's time-travelling stint to change Chase's past; as per usual Jack had shown up with his posse of robots, had all of them but two or three kicked to pieces, and was then mocked shamelessly by the monks. Wuya and Chase, watching the proceedings, seemed to be smirking in synchronised agreement.
"Seriously, bro," Raimundo had choked out around helpless laughter. "They're useless. Do them a favour and just send them to the great scrap heap up in sky, huh?"
The metal creations had been insulted before—that was nothing new—but they'd never actually been told by the enemy that their master should effectively euthanize them. They'd never been made to feel so worthless and the robots seemed to slump miserably. One of them actually put its head in its hands and a companion wobbled over on busted flight-stabilizers to pat it gently on the back. Jack had cast his creations one profoundly despairing glance and then shocked them all by producing a wrench from nowhere and hurling it at the Wind Dragon's head. Taken by surprise, the monks did nothing to apprehend the projectile and it struck Raimundo directly between the eyes, sending his arse tumbling straight to the ground.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP! THEY HAVE EMOTION CHIPS AND DO NOT NEED YOU BITCHING AT THEM ALL THE TIME!" Jack had screeched, a wholly unholy gleam entering his scarlet eyes even as he'd plunged a hand into his scuffed leather trench coat, presumably searching for something else to throw at the tormentors. It was the first time the young Dragons-in-training had ever heard Spicer swear like that and, quite frankly; it scared them a little bit despite knowing they could effortlessly trounce Jack in a fight. That had been their cue to snatch the Wu and hightail it out of there.
"DO NOT INSULT MY BABIES. EVER. NEVER EVER EVER." Jack had hollered after them, and Dojo had glanced back to see the youth soothingly rubbing the dejected Jack-Bot's shoulder. "AND THAT GOES FOR YOU TWO D-BAGS AS WELL!" the youth had continued on to a simply stunned Wuya and Chase. "PICK ON ME ALL YOU DAMN WANT BUT YOU LEAVE THEM OUT OF IT."
Dojo didn't know how the witch or dragon-lord had reacted to being told off in such a way, but Jack hadn't shown up to the next two showdowns in a row after that. When he finally did make an appearance, there was no disguising the limp or fading bruises.
The flashback seemed to grab hold of Dojo's throat and squeeze a little until there was a definite lump taking up residence there. This Jack-Bot knew its fellows were dead, and also knew that it itself was going to die very soon if the damage done to its body was any indication. Carefully, Dojo put his hands on the android, ignoring the hiss of singeing scale, and sort of awkwardly cradled its head in his stubby little dragon arms.
"Hey hey, it's okay," he soothed, though his voice was a little thick with emotion. Dojo didn't know this Jack-Bot personally but the androids themselves had been around since the beginning, since the very first day when the Mantis Flip Coin had gone active and Jack had claimed it before them. It saddened him to think of one of them going out of the world in a slow and painful manner, not surrounded by its comrades and felled nobly at the hands of the enemy...
Then anger started to boil up from within him. In all his many centuries of living, and only a few years less than that travelling around the globe atop the shoulders of countless Grand Masters, he'd seen a great many Lords, Kings, Emperors, all heady on the sense of Divine Right to Rule, sending thousands upon thousands of men to die for them in battle, not once lifting a finger to fight alongside them. Spicer was no different sending his Jack-Bots to fight in his stead, and in fact he'd gone one step further. Rather than keeping the androids cold, unfeeling pieces of steel, which would have neither known nor cared that they were flying to their demise, he'd imbued them with human emotion. Among others, he'd given them the ability to fear facing the enemy and the death that would follow, and to grieve for their fallen comrades, but not, apparently the freewill to resent their creator or the desire to rebel. As Omi might have said, it really grabbed Dojo's goat.
"How can you serve him?" Dojo growled in the same voice he used when people called him a gecko, of all things, and threatened the young monks or Master Fung. "How can you live like that, serving a boy who sends you all out to die day after day, and doesn't even acknowledge how brutal it is that you've all got emotion chip things while doing it? He's a monster!"
His tirade was cut off by another angry screech from the android, though this time it seemed to realise it should not exert its energy with displays of robot fury and stopped after only a few violent beeping noises.
"Master Jack is no monster!" it argued. "We serve...we served him willingly and he was good to us. He maintained us and ensured we were running smoothly. Master Jack has limited resources and a pitiful allowance in comparison to his desire for expenditure. He made us from inferior materials, yes, but it was the best he had, and he spared no expense on our internal workings. Master Jack is a genius with a ridiculously high IQ; it would be unfathomable to think that he would not reuse salvageable parts of his creations. We do not die, Dojo Konojo Cho. Our bodies might not be those we were originally given, back when we were first manufactured and allowed by Master Jack to choose our own personalities and gimmicks, but our hard drives are still the same. I have been around since your first meeting with Master Jack. I was the Jack-Bot smashed to pieces by the monk, Clay Bailey, and soon after I was kicked apart by the girl, Tohomiko Kimiko, on a mountainside. I've been present for every battle and this is because I cannot die so long as Master Jack is my Master. With each new Jack-Bot he makes, he programs them reusing the identity chips of those he has lost in battle, and thus we are reborn."
Dojo was speechless, his eyes welling with tears at the truly heartfelt words.
"The only Jack-Bots Master has ever lost forever are those very select few who have taken damage directly to their identity chips, and Master Jack has mourned them as he would any living creature. He is not just our Master but our friends, and we his only friends."
Dojo's bottom lip wobbled and a fat tear snaked down his cheek. He clung to the android and sobbed, missing the fact that the Jack-Bot's flickering eyes were barely brighter when they were illuminated than when they weren't. The oil had stopped leaking copiously out onto the ground by now, instead slowed to a steady dribble, but the wiring inside was still sparking occasionally.
"Don't you worry, Jack-Bot! I'm gonna go find Jack, I'm gonna go find him and once I do he can fix you, yeah? He can fix you up good as new and you'll be reborn again!"
"No, Dojo Konojo Cho, I am beyond that, as are those who Chase Young vaporized when we tried to defend Master Jack's house. Our identity chips have sustained irreparable damage; I cannot remember my existence before Master Jack began his quest for World Domination, and even in the timeline I can remember, huge chunks are missing. No, this will be the end of me. For good."
"But...but, you can't die. You just can't..."
"I shall go to...ah...where was it again? The great scrap heap in the sky?"
Guilt surged through the dragon even though it had not been him who'd made the disparaging remark towards the androids some years ago. He burbled apologies in Raimundo's stead and vowed that he'd give the Wind-Dragon a stern talking-to once he returned home. The Jack-Bot gave a hacking chuckle, or maybe it was another sob. Dojo couldn't tell.
"Make good on your promise to find Master Jack. Make sure he's safe," the android merely said, powering through the dragon's apologies. "I...I entrust him to you."
Then the light in the Jack-Bot's eyes died out and, with an ominous whirring sound much like a laptop powering down, the android's body slumped lifelessly, never to move again. Much affected, Dojo gently lowered the Jack-Bot to the ground and, stepping back respectfully, pulled a handkerchief from nowhere and noisily blew his nose, hiccupping and sniffling. Calming down, the dragon rubbed salty residue from his red-rimmed eyes, and pondered on that.
He remembered Good-Jack, whose ultimate goody-goody attitude had irritated and scared the monks and Dojo for all its intensity, and how he'd sacrificed that part of himself—a wholly more competent and happy version of the original they'd all come to know—for the purpose of defeating evil. Dojo had seethed with jealousy and displeasure when Good-Jack had gone around and integrated himself with Master Fung, seeming to replace the little dragon with all his fawning over and caring for the elderly monk, but had not been able to help getting over all that and feeling a immeasurable sadness at losing Good-Jack and gaining back the one firmly ensconced on the side of evil.
But then anyone who called their own creations their babies, and reacted violently towards anyone insulting said creations, couldn't really be evil, could they? No. It seemed not. At first, Dojo'd only gone looking for Spicer to put the young monks' minds at rest, and put down his own churning guilt that his actions had potentially lead to the boy's death, but now he had better, iron-clad reasons. He would honour the Jack-Bot; he would scour the whole globe until he found Jack Spicer and personally ensure that the youth was restored to his entire robot-building glory. Dojo'd be damned to Diyu before he let the many Jack-Bots destroyed by Chase Young go without anybody attempt to restore them to life, and Spicer would be the lad for the job. And we wouldn't just do it for the Jack-Bots; he'd do it for Jack too. He'd do it for the goodness he knew existed in the Goth, regardless of how the Spicer boy insisted he was evil through and through.
But first, Dojo produced the Changing Chopsticks and started rootling around in his left ear. He had a call to make.
Somewhere in the Xiaolin Temple, a cell phone started to ring. Shockingly, it was not Kimiko who answered it, but Master Fung.
"Dojo?"
Well, as the elderly, eternally-wise, mystical Master of the Temple it simply wouldn't do to ruin the whole image by showing the young monks the array of techno gismos he had at his disposal, which were far more reliable and a lot less likely to be stolen, for keeping in touch with the outside world.
"Jack Spicer's alive," were Dojo's first words in lieu of a greeting.
"Is he with you now?" Master Fung's heart leapt in his chest.
"No, but I know for a fact he's not pushing daisies..." and then Dojo went on to recount his morning to Master Fung, his voice becoming muffled with suppressed emotion down the line when he got to the part of the now-deceased Jack-Bot.
"I see," Master Fung said when Dojo had finished. "The news of Hannibal and Wuya is most troubling, not only that they have successfully spied on us without our knowledge, but that they too are hunting for Jack. Worst of all you must also contend with Chase Young."
"Hey, they might have superior magic in terms of combat, but I'd like to see them sniff out something better than a dragon. In any case, they're flying blinder than I am with the kid's whereabouts. All three of them aren't even entirely sure he's still alive, but I am."
"This is true. But we shall have to keep a watchful eye out for them in the future. Have you at least an idea where Spicer might be?"
"Not yet, but I'm gonna go visit where he was last seen. With any luck I might find some clues there."
"Very well. Report back when you next can, Dojo."
"Sure thing. Oh, and by the way," the little dragon said before hanging up, his voice taking on a lecturing tone. "If this takes longer than we thought it would, I'd better not come home to you cozying up to that lady dragon again..."
"Dojo."
"All right, all right, I'm going. Make sure to wash behind your ears and clip your toenails while I'm out, sheesh."
Master Fung could only sigh in exasperation at the dial tone when it began to drone in his ear.