The morning after Raimundo's and Jack's secret Xiaolin Showdown in the vault, Jack learned that either he was an extremely talented liar, or Omi was the dumbest person he had ever met. The tiny monk followed Jack around the entire day, demanding details of Jack's "battle" with Heylin Warlord Guan. Under the constant prompting, Jack's fibs grew more elaborate and ridiculous, describing his own epic genius dramatically triumphing over the intellectually inferior Guan, who could only weep at his own inadequacies as he surrendered the stolen Shen Gong Wu and fled the Xiaolin vault. If Raimundo happened to be nearby during these tall tales, Jack could spot muscles in his face twitching.

If Master Monk Chase had doubts about Jack's honesty, he did not show it. In the following weeks, his training of the young monks grew more intense, leaving Jack almost too exhausted to sneak to his lair in the night to work on his robots. Meanwhile, only two more Shen Gong Wu revealed themselves. Omi took surprisingly little interest in the Orb of Tornami; he seemed to have already selected the Sword of the Storm as his favorite.

The second reveal was the Monkey Staff, and it brought all of Jack's robotic fixations to a sudden, screeching halt.

Unfortunately for everyone, the screeching was literal.

"I HAVE A TAIL!" Jack yelled from the roof. Barely noticing that brown fur had sprouted on his hand while he waved down at the other young monks, he wrapped his new tail around the Monkey Staff and raised himself up into the air. His voice broke into a cacophony of loud, hooting gibberish for a moment before he could form another sentence. "Let's see you climb up this high all by yourself, Cue Ball!"

Omi shouted up at him, "I have been able to climb a roof for years, and I did not need a Shen Gong Wu to do it!"

"Hey! Hey! Watch this!" In a movement more fluid than Jack had ever performed in his life, he slid down the roof, sprang over the heads of the others, and grabbed onto the tallest branch of the cherry tree behind them. Swinging down in a series of front and back flips, he landed gracefully on his furry feet and took a dramatic bow. Another burst of monkey-like gibberish spilled out of him before he finally managed to say, "Ha! Look at that! I've got all the agility and strength of a monkey!"

Omi scowled. "Jack Spicer, the longer you hold onto that Shen Gong Wu, the more monkey-like you become. For the sake of your sanity, I insist that you drop the Monkey Staff at once."

Jack raised a foot to his head, and his toes picked a flea out of his hair. "I think you're exaggerating."

Raimundo pressed a palm to his mouth to mask a snicker. When Kimiko tilted her head to give him a rather pointed side-eye, he coughed and crossed his arms. "I dunno, Omi, this Wu seems pretty useful for Jack, at least. Now he can keep up with us in physical strength and stuff."

"Exactly!" Jack nuzzled his fuzzy cheek to the Shen Gong Wu. "Besides, the Monkey Staff and I have a special connection. I'm Year of the Monkey, you know."

"No, you're not," said Omi flatly. "You're thirteen years old, which makes you Year of the Rooster. You would have to be fourteen to be Year of the Monkey." When Jack ignored his fact-checking, he glanced back at Raimundo. "And since when do you have an opinion about this sort of thing? You do not even like the Shen Gong Wu. "

Kimiko glanced down at her phone with a smirk. "He likes Jack, though."

Raimundo narrowed his eyes at her, and she smiled blandly at him. Jack, who did not notice Kimiko's implications, and Omi, who did not care, stared at each other in the briefest impasse. Then Omi lunged, and Jack dodged with a swift jump and an earsplitting monkey screech. When Omi rolled back onto his feet, Jack landed and cackled, "HA! Too slow, Chrome Dome-"

He yelped when Raimundo stepped forward and yanked the Monkey Staff out of his hands. Jack stumbled at the immediate change in balance, and the monkey-like noises spilling out of his mouth dissolved into pained whimpers while his fur and tail receded back into his body. Raimundo stiffened at the noise and stuttered, "W-whoa, dude, are you okay?" Jack coughed, pressed a hand to his knee, and held a thumb up. Raimundo said sheepishly, "I didn't think that was gonna hurt."

Jack blinked rapidly and shook his head. "N-neither did I, it's cool..." He rubbed at his throat, raw from all the shrieking. He hadn't noticed how fuzzy his mind had turned under the Monkey Staff's influence, not until the Wu had been ripped away from him, but he was still going to miss that short-lived body strength.

Raimundo gave him a sympathetic half-smile. "I think Omi's got a point. Maybe you should only use this thing during battle, when you need it." He raised an eyebrow. "For the sake of our eardrums, if nothing else."

"For once, I agree with Raimundo." Omi raised his chin. "Though you should strive to not need it at all. The Monkey Staff can be dangerous if used too often, and besides, Master Monk Chase says that Shen Gong Wu are merely crutches for true power. You should not become too reliant on anything outside your own strength and will."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Jack stretched his arms and laced his fingers behind his head. Beaming at the group, he said, "But come on, a Wu that turns me into my favorite animal and makes me fast enough to dodge Omi? I call dibs, baby! It's got my name all over it!"

"Monkeys are your favorite animal, huh?" said Kimiko, idly tapping at her phone. "Raimundo is Year of the Monkey, isn't he? He's a year older than you."

Raimundo turned to give her another bewildered, calculating stare. Jack bobbed his head in a nod. "Yeah! Monkeys are great! They're the only animals that know how to use tools." He puffed out his chest and wiggled his eyebrows. "They're the geniuses of the animal kingdom, just like me."

"Actually, Jack," called out a familiar voice, "While there are a lot o' tool-wieldin' species o' monkeys, they aren't the only ones. Folks have seen Tursiops truncatus and Enhydra lutris doin' the same thing." When the monks looked up, Clay blushed from the porch, glanced down with a shy smile, and added, "Uh. Yeah. Dolphins and otters."

"Clay!" Kimiko, Omi, and Jack rushed to the cowboy, and Kimiko jumped to wrap her arms around his neck. Clay's cheeks turned pink when he caught her. Her wide smile turned into a pout when she lightly punched his shoulder and said, "You never wrote back to me, you jerk!"

"Sorry," Clay mumbled, face still red as he gently set her back down. "Didn't have much interestin' goin' on for a while. Nothin' to write about. I liked your letters, though."

"Were you able to teach your father the error of his ways so you could return?" asked Omi.

Clay bit his lip and shrugged. "Somethin' like that." His head snapped up when Master Monk Chase walked past him with an enormous trunk and saddle resting casually on his shoulder. "M-Master Chase, I'll get those! They're awfully heavy-"

"I am far stronger than I look, young monk," said Master Monk Chase with a raised eyebrow and a smile, "and I believe you and your friends have some catching up to do. Not to worry; your room will be as it was by the time you come inside."

"I... Y-yes, sir."

Omi tugged at Clay's sleeve. "Did Kimiko tell you about Guan's attack on our vault? Jack Spicer brought shame to the temple in our fight for the Jetbootsu, but then he redeemed himself by outwitting Guan with his Jackbots!"

Clay's gaze quickly swept across the group. Kimiko rolled her eyes and shook her head, and Raimundo kept his expression utterly neutral. Omi beamed at Jack with pride, and Jack hoped his answering smile didn't look forced. Clay said carefully, "I sure did hear about that."

"Yeah, it was really cool!" Jack swung a weak fist. "See, I had all these Jackbots hidden away, and Guan, he- he had never seen a robot before, and it freaked him out, you know? He's like those old grannies that have never used a computer, and uh-"

Clay decided to spare Jack from the hole into which he was digging himself. "Really? Guan doesn't strike me as someone who's easily intimidated, 'specially when he's got all those tigers to fight for him."

Jack cleared his throat. "Uh. Tigers?"

"At least three o' them." Clay crossed his arms and frowned at the dirt. "They start as crows, and I reckon that's to spy on you without lookin' too suspicious. At least, that's what they were doin' at the ranch."

Kimiko gasped, and Omi's hands clenched into tiny fists. Jack glanced over at Raimundo, who raised an eyebrow and asked, "The ranch? Like, yourranch? He went to your house?"

Clay scratched at his hair while his mouth curled into a scowl. "I still don't really know why. He tried talkin' about how we have stuff in common or somethin', and then he attacked my dad, but then I fought off his cats and he left. Didn't seem to be much point to it. But I figured if I'm the one he's after, then my family'll be safer as long as I'm here."

"Wait, back up." Kimiko took a step backward at her own words and held up a finger. "You fought three tigers? But you don't have a scratch on you."

Clay blushed again and kicked at the dirt a little. "Uh. I was kinda mad."

Kimiko's eyebrows went up into her bangs, and Raimundo's mouth actually fell open. Jack's body briefly debated between recoiling in fear or swooning on the spot, and it finally settled on an impressed nod and a golf clap. Omi bounced on the soles of his feet and cried out, "Excellent! Between your strength and Jack's robots, Warlord Guan will surely suffer a humiliating defeat the next time he sees us!"

"Yeah, whenever that is." After staring at Clay with a hint of newfound misgiving, Raimundo's posture relaxed, and he turned to the others. "Guan doesn't really seem to have a pattern. He fought us once, and then he fought Cl- he fought Jack in the vault, and then he fought Clay in his own turf. What does he want?"

"Not to mention that Wuya is supposed to be out there somewhere, too," said Kimiko, "and she still hasn't shown up. We don't even know what she looks like."

Raimundo, to his credit, nodded compliantly and said, "Right. We haven't seen Hannibal Bean anywhere, either." He shrugged and rolled his eyes. "Not that I blame him. Can't be too hard for us to fight off the musical fruit himself." His mouth curved up a bit when Jack giggled at his words.

"All of these villains have behaved most mysteriously," said Omi with a somber nod. "We should consult Master Monk Chase and see what he thinks about their actions... or lack thereof..."

Jack drummed his fingers across his chin and nodded with the rest of the group. Personally, he didn't mind the Heylin side's inexplicable stalling; it gave him more time to perfect his Jackbots and catch up with his teammates. Now that he had the Monkey Staff, though, he was as eager as the others to see how much evil butt they could kick.

As if on cue with Jack's thoughts, Dojo's voice rang out across the porch, "Look alive, kids! We got a hot new Shen Gong Wu!"

While the young monks gathered around the dragon and the open scroll, Clay smirked and said, "I ain't even been here for five minutes, and y'all are already puttin' me to work." Raimundo gave an amused snort, and even though the noise wasn't loud, Clay glanced at him in surprise.

"It's called the Mask of Rio," said Dojo, spreading his little arms across the round display on the scroll, where a stick figure put a large, ugly mask on its face and turned translucent. "It allows the wielder to blend into their surroundings."

Kimiko tilted her head and blew a pigtail out of her face. "So... it's just like the Shroud of Shadows?"

"Ehh, sort of." Dojo held his palms up and shrugged. "They basically do the same thing, but they have different weaknesses. The Shroud of Shadows can slip off pretty easily if you aren't holding onto it, but it turns you completely invisible. The Mask of Rio will stay on your face without you holding it, but people can still see you if you move around a lot."

"So it's more like camouflage," said Clay, tilting his hat back.

"Perhaps it is not as impressive as the Shroud of Shadows," said Omi, yanking the scroll out of Dojo's hands and rolling it up, "but we still must ensure that it does not fall into Heylin hands!"

Dojo pouted for a second at having his scroll ripped away from him, but he recovered quickly and bounded out into the open courtyard, expanding to full size. Clay, Omi, and Kimiko followed, but Jack glanced over at Raimundo, who stood with his muscles tense and still. With a shaky breath, Raimundo looked up at the dragon and asked, "Might be a stupid question, but uh, where is the Mask of Rio? Is the name just a coincidence, or...?"

"Rio de Janeiro," said Dojo, arching his neck high. "Now, whether the mask is named after the city, or the city is named after the mask, I have no idea. Dashi had a tendency to know things, even the names of places that wouldn't exist for another thousand years, apparently."

Jack watched a bizarre range of expressions flash rapidly across Raimundo's face before the teen finally murmured, "That's where my family lives."

"Your family is in Rio?" Omi gasped and grinned. "Ooh, can we meet them?"

"Sure." The answer seemed automatic, almost distracted. Raimundo's eyebrows furrowed. Jack leaned over and waved his hand in front of the teen's face, prompting Raimundo to blink and shake his head as if to clear it. "Uh. You know what? Yeah! I haven't seen the fam in a while." He scratched at his hair, smiling fondly. "I kinda miss them."

"A whole family of dark, broody, handsome types?" Jack asked with a smirk, resting his chin between his thumb and index finger. "This I gotta see."

With another snort of laughter, Raimundo rolled his eyes at him. "Sorry to disappoint you, querido, but my family's a cheerful bunch. I'm the odd one out."

"It is decided, then!" Omi clambered onto Dojo, followed by the rest of the group. "First we shall obtain the Mask of Rio, and then we shall meet Raimundo's family!"

As the group swiftly crossed the Pacific Ocean, Jack sat behind Raimundo and watched him grow tenser and twitchier. Though Raimundo's grumpiness had been fading for the past few weeks, which Jack had assumed was connected to Wuya's disappearance, the Mask of Rio's reveal seemed to have brought it back at full force. Raimundo's gaze remained fixed on Dojo's back, his fingers squirmed in his lap, and his back and shoulders looked as stiff as an oak tree. Jack's own shoulders drooped at the change; he hadn't realized how much he preferred the new Raimundo until now.

Scooting forward, he poked Raimundo's arm, and the teen jumped at the contact. Leaning over, Jack asked, "What's got your goat, Beta Brawn? Got some dark, embarrassing secret about your family you don't want us to know?"

Eyes round, Raimundo grabbed at the spot where Jack had touched him. "My family? N-no, my family's great!" Suddenly talking rapidly, he said, "I mean, Leticia can get kinda grouchy, but she works the ticket booth at the circus, so she's kinda lost faith in humanity. And Estela's always itching for a fight, but she's a big softy at heart. Giovanna's the only embarrassing one, but that's because puns are her favorite art form."

Delighted to have somehow pulled Raimundo right out of his anxious funk, Jack bounced in place a bit. "So you've got like, at least five brothers and sisters? What's it like having siblings?"

"Eight. It's, uh," Raimundo puzzled over the right word before he answered with a weak smile, "loud."

Dojo started to coast downward through the clouds, and an enormous glittering city opened up below them. As they drifted past the Christ the Redeemer and approached a small patch of forest within the buildings, Raimundo leaned down and said, "Wait, that's Floresta da Tijuca. I've been there. My family is, like, a few kilometers away."

Eyeing the massive city to the south, Clay whistled and said, "That's pretty lucky. We won't have to wander far, then."

Jack nearly jumped when Raimundo suddenly leaned closer to him and murmured, "Do you think things happen for a reason?"

A little too distracted by the intense green in Raimundo's eyes to focus on the question that had honestly come out of left field, Jack said, "Uh."

"Master Fung believes so!" said Omi, who must have assumed the question was for everyone. "He says that destiny is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. However, Master Monk Chase disagrees with him and says we are the makers of our own fate. Why do you ask?"

Raimundo pulled away from Jack, scowling into the distance. Completely baffled at the teen's mood swings, Jack let his own hands flail in front of him in bewilderment. Clay and Kimiko shrugged sympathetically at him, and Dojo finally touched down in the middle of Tijuca Forest.

The monks explored their surroundings with their usual caution, unconvinced that Guan or Wuya would show up but ready for battle nevertheless. Jack clung to the Monkey Staff, and Kimiko had the Tangle Web Comb nestled in her ponytail. They spotted a bunch of wild animals in the trees, including a few brown monkeys, a possum, and a silver and black parrot with red frills, but there was no sign of the Heylin side. After about twenty minutes of searching, Raimundo pointed out an arm-less white statue on display among the trees. On the statue's face sat a frilly, red and gold mask.

"Easy pickings," said Clay, watching Raimundo climb onto the statue and pull off the mask. "Kinda surprised none of the Heylin baddies wanted this one."

The other monks shrugged, and Jack puffed out his chest and swung the Monkey Staff around. "Guan must have been too scared to fight me again. Didn't want me kicking his butt with an audience this time."

Omi bobbed his head in a nod, and Clay said, "Something like that."

As the group gathered and started migrating toward the paved road that led out of the forest, Raimundo approached Jack and said quietly, "Dude, you know the best lies are the ones you don't keep drawing attention to, right? What are you gonna do when you see Guan for real?"

"I'll burn that bridge when I get to it," said Jack.

Raimundo blinked at him. "You mean you'll cross it, right?"

"I know what I said. Lead the way, Beta Brawn."

Raimundo's eyes rolled skyward. "Sure thing, idiota."

The other monks followed him out of the woods and into the city. The north section of Rio looked a little shabbier than the shiny, touristy pictures Jack had seen online and in books. As the group walked through the streets, he and Omi hovered close to the others, completely unused to the cramped designs of the residential buildings. Raimundo glared into the dark windows as he passed, clutching the Mask of Rio close and muttering something about "favelas."

After a few miles, they arrived at a worn-down but fairly pleasant neighborhood. In front of one house, large but shabby, Raimundo finally came to a stop. He scratched at his hair and said, "Kinda quiet. My little brothers must still be at school. I wonder if-"

Before he could finish his sentence, the door to the Pedrosa house opened, and chaos ensued.