Chapter 10. Four, Three, Two, One...
Fire, Earth, Water, Wind- Battle for the Core
The Element SMART rushed at the Dragons, parting the fire below it as it moved. The monks whipped around to try to encircle the E.SMART, their sinuous tails trailing after them.
"We must find a weak spot!" Omi cried out, barely audible over the roaring flames and thunderous machine. "Dragon's Blood!"
The watery dragon around Omi became denser and its arms developed solidity. In a rushing blizzard of hail and ice, Omi shot towards the E.SMART's body to try to pierce the armor. The turbines on the bot's arms activated, however, and blasted him back with a whirling torrent of hot air. When this happened, the E.SMART was thrust forward towards Clay.
"Fire burns the Earth!" Jack laughed manically, though no one could see him. The bot raised its arms and sucked up the fires from the battle filed in a hell-storm tornado through its turbines.
"Dragon's Talons!" Clay cried out. At this whim, the dragon around him became an armor of solid rock, with scales ranging from granite to diamond. At first, the fire only splattered off the rock, forced to stray away from its target by Raimundo's Dragon's Wings move.
Undiscouraged, the E.SMART rolled to the side as Clay's crushing punch nearly crippled the bot's left arm.
"It responds too fast to our moves," Kimiko shouted. "Dragon's Breath!" The shadow of a fiery dragon became a steady burn around her and she rushed at the E.SMART.
"We have to use the Dragon Deity Formation!" Raimundo said, trying to avoid getting sucked into the E.SMART's turbines.
"No!" Omi protested. "We must stay split up and give it as many different targets to focus on at once as we can!"
Suddenly the E.SMART's stubby little tail lengthened considerably and sliced through the air, snapping right into Kimiko. In the moments before she recovered, the bot reached out and grabbed the twisting fires of her dragon embodiment.
In a fit of the fires of rage, Kimiko conjured up a massive, swirling sphere of fire, like an explosion forbidden to expand. The bot's hand started to glow red slightly, but not before it used the three other turbines on its arm and legs to pull in the fires and blast it out in a stream of white, blue, and orange- straight at the Dragon of Earth.
"Kimiko!" Raimundo screamed. "Stop! Stop! It's using you!"
But, under the deafening roar of the flames, she couldn't possibly hear him.
Omi rushed forwards, bent on pouring water over the flames.
"Wait!" Clay shouted, but not soon enough. The stone dragon was glowing red, pressed to the very edge of the battlefield. When Omi poured a small sea of water Kimiko's fire, he also doused Clay's stone.
Some of the rock shattered, some had already melted away under the fire, and some of it hardened only to shatter away at a flick from the E.SMART's talon.
"Clay!" Kimiko screamed when she saw what had happened, letting her fire subside.
"Oh, man!" Raimundo lamented.
There was a flash and Clay was on the side lines with Dojo, lying with the backs of his hands and arms badly burned.
"You Okay, Clay?" Dojo pleaded, giving him a gentle push. Clay just moaned.
Meg jumped up and down on the sideline, waving her Jack pennant.
"Go Jack! Go Jack! Woo- woo- woo!" She did a little dance, much to Patience's distaste. On the international villains' sideline, Chase looked over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow to see the others placing sickeningly substantial bets on the fight.
The fires went out and turned into darkness. All present were raised from the first arena to the second, the cracked and crumbing battlefield of Earth.
Fire, Water, Wind- Battle for the Land
The platform was crumbling along the edges, and the whole field was sprinkled with sharp, rising crags and bubbling lava spots. Kimiko glanced at Rai and saw him gulp nervously.
"Earth halts the Wind," he muttered.
The E.SMART landed heavily on the platform and made the whole thing rumble and tilt dangerously.
"Maybe, but Fire still burns the Earth," Kimiko reminded him, building up the Fire Dragon around her again. "We'll keep an eye out for ya, Rai."
Meg waved her arms from the sidelines.
"Ha ha! Raimundo needs his little girl friend to protect him!"
Rai glared at her fiercely, but he had little time to contemplate his grudge. The E.SMART reached out with both fore-talons and hefted up two massive chunks of earth.
"Incoming!"
The three Dragons split in different directions as one of the huge slabs of stone cut into the arena like a spearhead. Magma spewed from the gash like blood filling a wound.
The E.SMART broke the other piece of earth into two smaller, more manageable weapons. At first, Jack tried to swat the encircling Dragons out of the air like bugs.
"Jack, you fool," Patience muttered, holding the bridge of her nose.
"C'mon, Jack!" Wuya screamed in her slightly hoarse voice. "Squish them!"
The Dragons easily dodged the E.SMART's vain attacks, but they couldn't yet make any kind of offensive move until they found a weakness.
"If Metal is an element," said Omi, "then what beats that?"
"I don't know, but I have a pretty good idea," Kimiko said, noticing the pools of lava all around. She flew down and hovered over one while Rai and Omi kept Jack distracted. Holding out her arms, the lava began to swirl around and rise up in a thick spiral. Keeping the rock molten with her fire, Kim created a jet of lava that, with a wave of her arm, she launched straight at the E.SMART's core body.
"Maybe Fire and Earth combined will beat Metal!" she explained as the boiling rock smashed into the bot's body, hardening in places and clogging up at least one turbine.
"All right, Kimiko!" Raimundo exclaimed, giving her the thumbs-up.
There was a screaming of gears from within the bot's right upper arm as it tried to move while locked in place by the hardened rock.
"Crap!" Jack exclaimed, pushing a number of buttons on the control board, all to little avail. Suddenly, inspiration came to him. "Time to play rough!"
Lifting the cover over one of three little red buttons, he ordered the launch of his first missile. It shot out from the bot's free arm and immediately chased after Omi. The Water Dragon easily flew much faster than the missile, taking it on a course around and around the E.SMART. Kimiko rose up and melted a small tunnel through the rock on the bot, between its stuck arm and torso.
"Through here, Omi!" she called out. Omi saw the small clearance of the hole and whipped straight through, the missile in tow, dousing the rock in an explosion of water at the dragon shape slipped through. The missile was to large for the hole, jammed right into it, and detonated on the spot.
"Ha!" Kimiko cried triumphantly. "Take that!"
"Thanks for the assistance, Kimiko," Jack laughed. The rock, already softened slightly by Omi's water, cracked and shattered away from the bot's body under the force of the explosion. "You didn't think a tiny little tracking missile like that could put a dent in this thing, did you?"
A drill, like the one of the Mini SMART, rose up from the top of the E.SMART's torso and, dropping down on all fours, Jack tunneled down into the arena. Lava spewed up and filled the hole he made. It swallowed the bottom talons as the bot went deeper into the platform. Everyone watching wondered if Jack would tunnel straight through the platform, or if he was trying to break the whole thing apart.
There wasn't a sound for at least a minute. The Dragons hovered tentatively over the still-crumbling and cracking battlefield, awaiting Jack's next move.
"What is his doing?" Wuya hissed over her shoulder at Chase.
"Patience," he muttered with his arms crossed.
"What?" the dentist with above namesake asked from the near bystander platform.
Raimundo was getting nervous.
"I don't mean to sound like I think Jack has a chance," he said to Omi and Kim, "but that robot it out of control, and just look at what he did to Clay. Clay, man! The kid's a mini Mount Fuji!"
"Don't worry, Rai," Kimiko assured him. "We won't let…"
Suddenly, a geyser of magma blasted up from the center of the platform, followed by a glowing hot E.SMART.
"Surprise, surprise!" they heard Jack laugh. Using the turbines on its arm, the bot directed the lava flow straight at Raimundo. Rai tried to hold it back with a rush of air, but he didn't have enough time and the lava poured right over him.
"Raimundo!" Omi screamed. He flew for him and drenched the lava all the way to the source, the gaping crack, which Jack had created.
"No, wait!" Kimiko cried out, but it was too late. A boulder of hardened rock dropped to the platform, dangerously close to the crumbling edge.
"Go back to your Brazilian alcohol-powered Volkswagen Beatles!" Jack taunted, laughing manically. There was a tornado of wind whipping around the boulder, powered from within the rock. The winds began to slow at an alarming rate and, once they stopped, the rock platform shattered and the two remaining Dragons proceeded to the next round.
The rock vanished and appeared on the other side of Dojo. It crumbled and dropped Raimundo, burned, bruised, and other wise broken but at least breathing beside Clay.
"Two down, two to go!" Jack laughed as he, Omi, and Kimiko ascended to the Water arena.
Fire, Water- Battle for the Seas
"Oh, this is going to be way too easy," Jack laughed. "I've got a small saltwater sea to use to take out the Fire Dragon!"
"Do not speak so swiftly, Jack Spicer," Omi warned. "This is also my element, so I am strongest here! Dragon's Blood!"
"Dragon's Breath!"
Kim and Omi, rather than again search the bot for the weak spot they now assumed it didn't have, backed off and waited to see what Jack would do.
"Aww! Are the two tiniest monks scared of the big bad robot?" Jack teased sarcastically.
"I can't handle this kid," Kimiko muttered flatly.
Spreading the water below it under the force of its engines, the E.SMART hovered tentatively. Both sides took a moment to consider their next move and, though it really wasn't that much time without action, Meg was throwing a conniption on the sidelines.
"Hurry up, Jack! You can squash them in about TWO SECONDS! Pick up the pace! Put your rear into gear! C'mon!"
"You haven't been watching all this in Bullet Time, have you?" Patience asked with one eyebrow raised.
"Of course not! I'm just having a wicked case of A.D.H.D right now!"
Then, the monks made their move.
Kimiko expanded the Fire Dragon around her, spreading its arms and lengthening its tail. She began to fly around the disk of water, resting hundreds of feet above the earth.
"Hey! What are you doing?" Jack demanded. Kimiko didn't answer. Omi concentrated and turned his Water Dragon into an Ice Dragon.
"If you plan to use water to defeat fire, Jack Spicer," Omi told him, "then we will make sure there is not a single drop of water for you to use!"
Inside the cockpit, Jack almost panicked.
"Grab her! Grab her!" Jack ordered the computer, pressing some buttons high up on the panel. "Knock her into the water! Get the water before it all evaporates!"
The E.SMART dipped forward and flew after the blazing Kimiko, but torpedoes of ice dropped down to impede him every yard of the way. Weaving between whistling pillars of ice, Jack launched two more heat-seeking missiles after Kimiko. The body of the fiery dragon acted like the perfect shield, the intense conditions of its heated body detonating the missiles before they even reached her.
"I hope you brought the snacks," Dojo muttered to Clay and Raimundo, recovered somewhat.
"Why's that?" Clay asked slowly.
"Because we're about to come into a small fortune in salt!"
Sure enough, the tremendous white and blue fires of Kimiko's dragon dried up the arena before the E.SMART could catch her. Nothing but a slab of about three feet of slightly damp salt remained, scorched back in some places by the whipping motion of her sinuous body.
"For the love of God!" Jack snapped. He honestly had no idea where he was going to get the water he needed to beat Kimiko.
"Hey, you guys, can we call, like, a timeout or something?"
"Yeah right!" Kimiko laughed. "We know you aren't smart enough to have built that robot on your own, so there's no way we're going to let you take pointers from someone who actually knows what they're doing!"
"Aw, c'mon!" Jack whined a little.
"Composure, Jack!" Patience shouted up at him.
"Yeah! Whiners aren't winners!" Meg added, jumping up and down.
When Meg said this, Chase couldn't help but grin a little.
"That explains Jack in a nutshell."
Jack landed the E.SMART of the salt field and looked up at the two hovering monks.
"Well, whatever! This thing can still crush you whether I take your elements into consideration or not!"
"Dragon's Blood!"
Omi sent down a hail of razor sharp icicles on the bot, aiming for its turbines. The bots computer reacted fast enough to deflect all the icicles as they came, but some of the ice managed to force the bot back a few steps and dent its armor in places.
As the robot's computer handled the onslaught, Jack noticed something about the icicles. Leaning close to the blast shield, he looked down at the salt where the ice buried itself. Sitting in so much salt, the ice began to melt quite quickly.
"Cha-ching," Jack said quietly. "I: am a genius!"
He switched the computer's motivation to offensive mode and set the bot's turbines to run on Low.
The E.SMART knocked some of the iceless back towards Omi now, but with little effect.
"Gimme all ya got, Tether Ball!"
Jack successfully incited an increased barrage of ice, which developed into a respectable ice storm.
"That armor is too strong, Omi," said Kimiko, who didn't want to use her fire for fear of melting the ice, "and its reflexes are too quick! We need to take it by surprise somehow."
"Surprise!" they heard Jack yell. The E.SMART's turbines suddenly cranked up and started to suck up all the salt around it. It launched salt straight up, drying it more in the process. The bot left its feet and began to sweep over the salt field, filling the air with a cloud of salt that it kept perpetually aloft.
"Ack!" Kimiko choked a little. "That tastes awful! That's worse than regular salt!"
Whipped around at high speeds and in such great quantity, the salt both embedded itself in some of the stronger masses of Omi's ice and ate away at the smaller pieces. The bot reached out, grabbed the largest icicle, and held it like a club.
"Have you ever put salt on your arm and then pressed ice into it? Trust me, it kills!"
"You must have been really bored," Kimiko pointed out sarcastically.
Without comment, the E. SMART took to the air for the last two monks. First, it directed a strong jet of solid salt at Omi, some of which got in his eyes once it burned through the glassy shell of his dragon. Then, it took a swing at Kimiko with the giant ice club.
"It's just going to melt," Kimiko reminded him.
"Good!" Jack laughed as the bot redirected the melted water back at Kimiko. Steam erupted in a foggy haze before it even reached Kimiko, making visibility even worse.
"Kimiko! Where are you?" Omi cried out. She and Jack could see his dots through the salt and steam, but Kimiko vanished once she put out her Dragon to stop the ice from melting.
"Not much of a choice, is there, Kimiko?" Jack laughed. "Stay a dragon: I wash you away! Don't stay a dragon: I step on you! Muahahahahaha!"
Kimiko's plan was simple: drop down to the salt field and jump up on the E.SMART's talon. From there, she could wait for inspiration as she looked for a way to get inside the bot and pull Jack out. It didn't look to her like the kind of machine that could touch its toes.
As she dropped down, however, the bot's reaction time proved to again be its most useful feature. One giant arm shot out and snatched her right out of the air between three tapered claws.
Pivoting in a full half-circle, still obscuring almost everything in salt, the bot literally flicked Kimiko to the mountain of ice that had built up where the E.SMART had been standing during Omi's ice storm.
Rather than break her back on a razor sharp collage of salty, stinging ice, Kimiko enshrouded herself in protective shell of fire. With the salt and fire, most of the ice melted away in moments, leaving Kimiko in a wading pool.
"Aw, crud."
Though Omi had spotted Kimiko's shield through the salt storm, he couldn't navigate effectively at all once it went out again.
Using one turbine to absorb the water and another to blast it back down again, the E.SMART dumped thousands of pounds of pressure in water on Kimiko's fire-shield. With most of its energy into this effort, the bot ended the salt storm. It only took a few more moments before the overwhelming strain on Kimiko became too much. Her shield broke and she was essentially flushed out of the showdown.
Kimiko found herself sitting on the sidelines with Dojo, Raimundo, and Clay, gagging on water a little, but still feeling thirsty.
Water- Battle for the Sky
The salt field broke in half. Omi and Jack rose with their onlookers to the last stage of the showdown. There was no platform here, just thousands of feet of open air dropping down below and the reaches of outer space rising above, all surrounded by the six pillars of the elements.
"One more to go, Jack!" Wuya cheered him on. "Dry him up like a raisin!"
"Is anyone surprised that Jupiter's missing satellite here is the last one standing?" muttered one of the undistinguished villains behind her.
Clearing the last of the salt from its turbines, the E.SMART easily hovered level with Omi's Water Dragon.
"You're going down, Pac Man!" Jack declared. "And when you do, the world will be mine for the taking! Boo-yeah!"
"Refrain from registering your babes prior to their surfacing!"
Dead silence.
"That was a dusey," Dojo muttered.
Meg tugged on Patience's pant leg.
"What did he just say?"
"Don't count your chicks before they hatch…" Patience translated, a bit awestruck as she considered just how much had been lost to fourth-rate translation.
"Just for that," said Jack flatly, "I'm going to make you suffer!"
"Unlikely!" Omi retorted. "We may be in the Wind arena, but there's nothing in that phrase of yours telling what beats ice! Dragon's Blood!" The water around Omi hardened and crystallized, shattering Omi's image and reflecting a warped picture of the E.SMART and the pillars on every surface of its body.
The E.SMART and the Ice Dragon smashed into each other, splintering ice and joggling Jack violently. The E.SMART unleashed missiles, though the heat-seeking devices were useless against Omi.
On the side, Patience opened up an umbrella and watched the battle as though she was doing nothing unusual whatsoever.
"What's that for?" Meg asked.
"Remember what the weather looked like when we first got here? And remember when Kimiko evaporated all that water in the last battle? Where do you think all that water went?"
The others on the sides overheard his comment and glanced at the skies. The sky, however, was all around them. Dark clouds laden with water were gathered close now, and they could see flashes of thunder shivering though the gray. Then, the rain began to pour. Though most of it feel below them, the damp air and freezing winds still soaked them and the dark clouds still blocked out the sunlight.
The E.SMART had one bottom talon completely encased in ice, and Jack detonated a missile to free another. Omi tried to fill its turbines with ice, but he couldn't get behind the bot fast enough and the blades always shredded anything he did manage to get back there.
"Die, Cheeseball, die!" Spicer shouted from within his cockpit, furiously launching the remainder of his missiles, but they only detonated on the armor of ice and did no damage.
"This is going to have a messy ending," Wuya predicted.
"You can do it, Omi," Clay and the other monks quietly cheered him on from the side.
The Ice Dragon rushed forward and sunk its icicle teeth into the E.SMART's shoulder joint, the first time in the showdown that something had penetrated the armor. The very tip of the tooth actually entered the cockpit, causing a small shower of sparks.
The computer's voice suddenly came on, noticeably louder than usual.
"Nuclear detonation in two minutes," it informed Jack.
"WHAT? NUCLEAR DETONATION! I didn't ask for that! Computer! Cancel detonation!"
"System malfunction. Nuclear Detonation in one minute and fifty four seconds."
Everyone heard the alarming report.
"Nuclear detonation?" Meg repeated. "There's a nuclear bomb on that thing?"
Patience cringed and ran her hands through her hair.
"Well, yes. It's a small warhead, but…I don't know how the computer came to that conclusion…I don't know how Omi bit through my armor!" Patience climbed up into the Mini SMART and started it.
"Wait! Where are you going?" Meg demanded.
"I just need to get the professional opinion of they who know much more about showdowns than I do," she explained, not bothering to lower the blast shield. Once its wings extended, Patience flew the bot over the platform that carried the world's most prominent villain spectators.
"Chase! Wuya!" Patience shouted down from the diver's seat. "Those pillars may have held back the salt storm, but can they hold the force of the blast if that nuke goes off?"
"You're asking us?" Wuya exclaimed. "How should we know?"
"You fought in the first showdown ever, Wuya! You've got to know!"
Chase looked from Wuya to Patience slowly.
"Why do you care? If the pillars can't contain the blast, you can still fly off."
"Sure, but World War Three will break out if a NUCLEAR WEAPON goes off in the Taiwan Straight!"
"Nuclear Detonation in sixty seconds."
Chase, his arms crossed, tapped his fingers pensively for a moment.
"Well, there's one good way to find out," he said calmly. Abruptly, he looked over his shoulder and snatched the nearest villain by his stiff collar. But he could react, Chase threw him off the platform and straight towards the pillars. He smashed into an invisible barrier between the Fire and Earth columns. Like a piece of thrown food, he stuck for a moment before peeling away and plummeting out of sight.
"But will it stop a nuke?" Patience repeated.
"It should," said Chase. "I threw him pretty hard. But, I can test it again, if you like." He looked over his shoulder to see that all the other villains had seen enough of the battle and taken their leave. Wuya was still here, but she was noticeably father away.
"I think you just like throwing people," the dentist muttered.
Patience turned her attention to Jack.
"Jack! This is the sky arena! Fly UP and lose the bomb in space!"
"What if it explodes inside the bot?" Jack screamed. "I can't get blown up now!"
"Don't TALK, Jack! Just go! Go, go, go!"
Jack was about to direct the bot on a course with outer space, Nuclear Detonation in thirty seconds, when an idea came to him. Surely, he would never have enough time to fly up, drop the bomb, and fly back down fast enough that he could escape the falling bomb. So, he released the bomb right there, and then flew up.
"Fly up, Omi! Fly up!" the monks on the sidelines screamed. "Get away from the blast!"
"You couldn't handle salt, kid!" Dojo snapped. "There's no way you can handle a nuke!"
"Jack, you idiot! How do you expect to take over the world when…" Patience began, holding her head in her hands.
"You almost sound like you're rooting for the world," Chase commented. "Because countries fighting against each other will only be that much weaker when you come along."
Patience looked up and watched the nuke drift down through the clouds and out of sight.
"That's a very good point," she said quietly.
Omi, meanwhile, was clearly considering as fast as his brain could compute whether it was right to fly away, save his life, and allow the bomb to detonate, or if he should fly after it and risk his life to somehow stop it from going off.
"We're over open water, Omi! It won't hurt anyone out here!" Kimiko shouted.
"You can do a lot more good alive!" Dojo reminded him.
"Nuclear Detonation in ten seconds," Jack heard as he neared the edge of earth's atmosphere.
Omi looked to the sky, into the endless reach of the pillars, and down at the hole the bomb made when it passed through the clouds.
"Go ahead, Omi," said Chase in a cruel voice. Patience and Wuya could tell he was essentially saying I dare you to blow yourself up.
Ultimately, Omi shook the thought out of his head and left the bomb.
Nuclear Detonation in five, four, three…
Omi flew up the tunnel of the pillars as fast as he could, his icy form melting back to water as he did so.
Two, one…
Everyone cringed slightly except Chase.
Detonation.
They were met with only silence. Meg looked around sharply, clearly viewing the event in Bullet Time. Dojo and the three monks held their breaths.
Patience took a deep, angry sigh.
"I don't even want to see the price on the receipt," she muttered. "They sold me a DUD?"
It looked like a tremble of thunder at first, until it filled the battlefield with a blinding light. Only after the light did the deafening sound reach them. Everyone covered their ears and ducked away slightly as the explosion erupted up the pipe formed by the pillars. In a truly unique incident, all the power of a nuclear bomb was compressed into narrow space, with no place to go other than up.
Radioactive fire rushed up through the pillars like hell unleashed. The heat, light, and sound, though contained, was still too much. Because the force of the explosion condensed, it all lasted longer than usual. For what seemed like an eternity, the fire rushed up, the storm clouds ripped and spewed lightning, and the sound of a thousand shrieking steam engines made the very atmosphere shake.
Mercifully, the contained hell eventually began to subside. The pillars were packed with smoke and wisps of wandering fire.
Then, just as it had begun, the pillars vanished. The Shen Gong Wu known as the Master Pen appeared and waited for the victor to claim it. In a flash of light, all returned to land, a field in southern China. They could see the tower of smoke formed by the showdown fading out miles away. Wuya had fallen on her rear, as had Meg, and Dojo was inside Clay's hat. Patience opened the Mini SMART's blast shield and peeked out, seeing the E.SMART in a heap on the ground. Chase was apparently the only living thing among them that had kept up on his own two feet.
When neither Omi nor Jack appeared to take the Master Pen after a few moments, Chase asked what they were all thinking.
"Who won? Or, rather, who lost?"