The next few seconds or minutes passed by Jack Spicer in a yellow-tinted blur. One moment, he stared down into an alley where Raimundo held a bloody knife over a corpse that still twitched. The next, Jack's legs and arms burned under him while he fled, dashing across dozens of unfamiliar rooftops and screeching at the top of his lungs.

The panic in his veins and the magic in his Wu muddied his brain. He didn't know where he was. He didn't care where he was going. Clutching the Monkey Staff, he ran on all fours, and soon he was panting too hard to scream. Missing a jump, he stumbled over the edge of a roof. He collided with a dumpster and rolled down a set of stone stairs into another deserted alley. The Monkey Staff fell out of his hands and clattered against a pair of metal trash cans.

For a second, Jack's human hands scrabbled against the uneven stone pavement. His goggles pressed into the ground, he gulped for air, and he struggled to process exactly how he'd gotten here. He remembered following Raimundo; he had wanted to find out if he could successfully sneak up on his vigilant teammate. He had watched Raimundo pause at some random house and talk to some fat guy in Portuguese. They had ducked into a dark alley, Jack had watched from above, and then- and then-

"Jack?"

With a strangled gasp, Jack scrambled to his feet, yanked the goggles off his eyes, and spun around. Raimundo stood at the stone stairs, breathing hard and holding the Mask of Rio loosely in one hand. The knife was gone, but his empty hand still had blood on it. Raimundo licked his lips and took a step closer. "Jack-"

"No!" Stumbling back, Jack bumped into the silver trash cans. Grabbing a lid, he threw it at Raimundo and yelled, "METAL!" The disc flew across the alley, and to Jack's utter shock, Raimundo barely had time to widen his eyes before it collided with his skull with a clang. Raimundo dropped, and the Mask of Rio bounced down the stairs.

Jack's legs quaked while he grabbed another silver lid, shielded his body with it, and took a half step toward the Shen Gong Wu. When Raimundo groaned and clutched at his head, Jack somehow found the nerves to speak. "W-what- What- What was that?" Leaning his body against the graffiti-coated brick wall, he managed to nudge at the Mask of Rio with his foot. Fingers clenching and releasing in front of his chest, he glared at Raimundo and stuttered, "What was that? Why d-did you-? Who was that guy?"

Raimundo gingerly sat up and rested a forearm on his knees. Matching Jack's glower with his own, he said, "He was a bad guy."

Jack waited for clarification, and when none came, he echoed, "A bad guy."

"Yeah, Jack. A bad guy, the kind of evil we mighty Xiaolin Warriors are supposed to be fighting. He killed a bunch of people, and then he moved out here, just a couple blocks away from my family. Wuya told me-"

"Wuya?" Jack yelped. "You're still working for Wuya? I thought you dumped her!" He swallowed the bile in his throat. "She ordered you to k-kill some random-?"

Raimundo slammed his fist onto his knee. "You're not listening, Jack! Wuya didn't tell me to do anything; I told her to find him!"

Jack gripped at his own shirt and leaned back into the wall. "You... what?"

Raimundo sighed. "Back when we were starting out with this whole Shen Gong Wu thing, Wuya must have seen..." Revealing a bruise blossoming on his head where the lid had struck him, he ran his red-stained hand through his hair. "Look, I didn't just find the Sword of the Storm. I had to take it from some Tubbimurra guy. He was being a pain in the butt about it, so I took his ninja sword and sliced him up."

If possible, Jack's face turned even paler. "Sliced...?"

"He was fine," Raimundo said with a roll of his eyes. "I don't kill random dudes who're just annoying. He waddled off to the hospital, whatever. I got the Sword. But I guess Wuya saw what I did, and I guess it impressed her or something. She came to me one night when you were all sleeping, and she tried to make me join the Heylin side. I told her to shove it. But she kept talking, and..." He shrugged. "We made a deal."

The trash can lid shielding Jack started to rattle. He gritted his teeth and forced his hands to still. "What kind of deal?"

"Info for Wu. I got her a bunch of Shen Gong Wu she wanted, and in exchange, she lurked around in Rio and watched for anyone dangerous who got too close to my family." Raimundo sneered and shook his head. "I knew I couldn't trust her, so I had her watching half a dozen districts. Rio has six million people in it; that's a lot of Pedrosas scattered around. She had no idea which ones were mine."

Jack stayed pressed against the wall while he tried to piece all this information together into something sensible. Distant sounds of the city echoed over the thin, poorly lit alleyway, almost as loud as the blood pounding in his ears. The moments trickled by, and Raimundo stared at him silently, barely blinking.

Fingers still twitching, Jack finally managed to say, "So. You knew you couldn't trust her, but then she told you that this random guy was dangerous, and you just believed her?"

Raimundo's eyes narrowed, and his nose wrinkled. "I'm not stupid, Jack-"

Jack pushed himself off the wall and let his empty hand flail in front of him. "And not only- haha- not only did you believe her, but you decided, 'Hey, better go straight to murder. That's the smart thing to do!'"

"Yes, Jack. That is the smart thing to do." Raimundo pressed his palms to his knees and stood. "I don't know what Chase and Fung taught you about being a Xiaolin Warrior or whatever, but you can't just walk up to an evil person and ask them nicely to stop. You can't just beat them up a little and hope they learned a lesson. Leaving the enemy alive just gives them the chance to strike back." Clenching his fist for emphasis, he hissed, "When your home is infested with roaches, the only way to get rid of them is to exterminate them."

His words hung in the air like a dozen detached cobwebs. Jack took a step back and asked, "Have you... done this before?" Raimundo only stared at him in silence, still not blinking. Jack grabbed at his own hair and yanked. "You can't- People aren't roaches, Raimundo! That guy, he probably had family—"

"So what?" Raimundo said, voice finally rising. "The people he hurt had families! I have family, and I'll do whatever it takes to protect them!"

Out of all the noises Jack expected to fall out of his mouth, a sudden bark of laughter was not one of them, and yet fall it did. Breathing hard, he paced in a small circle before whirling back at his teammate. "And here I thought Omi had a massive ego!" In a surge of either immense bravery or astounding stupidity, he marched over and jabbed a finger right into Raimundo's chest. "You don't get to decide all by yourself who deserves to live and die! You're not that special!"

Every visible muscle in Raimundo's body tensed. With a vicious scowl, he grabbed Jack's hand and flung it away from himself. "So, what? Am I supposed to just let them live? Let them walk around my home and kill my friends and family because killing is wrong?!" He pushed Jack, who stumbled backward. "I don't know what kind of rich-boy life you got before you came to the temple, but whatever it was, it was better than mine. You have no idea what it's like, fearing for your life every day when you're that young. To lie awake at night wondering if your sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles will come home in a body bag, just like your dad did."

As Jack swayed to maintain his balance, he was silent. He looked up at Raimundo, trying to recognize his teammate in eyes as cold as jade. For just a moment, his own resolve wavered. "You know what? You're right. I don't know! I don't know." Wiping cold sweat off his face, he babbled, "I don't know whether all this is wrong or right or who can decide that. People kill each other all the time. They get hired to go across countries and kill lots of people and are called war heroes, and cops kill people without even getting fired, and what makes them better judges than we are? I don't know! I don't!"

His fingernails dragged across his scalp. The metal trash cans behind him rattled, seemingly of their own accord, but he barely noticed. He could only glare at Raimundo, who was scarcely a teenager, only a year older than Jack and maybe half an inch shorter. With a deep breath that shook in his lungs, Jack said, "But you, Beta Brawn? That's not your call, either! Just because you're a Chosen One doesn't mean you get to run around stabbing anyone who looks at you funny!"

Raimundo scowled. "I already told you, Jack: I don't hurt people just for being annoying. I only hurt people who really deserve it."

"How do you know that they deserve it? You just trusted Wuya to pick someone out; how do you know she wouldn't lie to you?" Jack threw his arms up and gestured outward. "In fact, what would you have done if Wuya hadn't found anyone? What if she had floated all around the neighborhood and never found a single person who 'deserved it'? What if you kept bringing her Wu, and she just said, 'Sorry, no serial killers in that district...'?"

Raimundo snapped, "Then I'd know she's not doing her part of the deal, and I-" The heat in his words abruptly evaporated, and the rest trailed out, "I... I would have made her... look again..." He blinked a few times, and his gaze ducked down as he processed what he had just said.

Emitting another noise that might have been some sort of terrified laughter, Jack snapped his fingers and pointed at him. "So her part of the deal wasn't about protecting your family, was it? You wouldn't have been happy enough to see all your brothers and sisters safe, oh no. You would have made her keep looking until she gave you a target." Raimundo took a step back, and Jack stepped forward to follow him. "You didn't want Wuya to protect your family; you wanted her to find someone for you to kill."

Jack had never seen color drain from someone's face as fast as it left Raimundo's, leaving nothing behind but the multicolored bruise on his forehead. The teen's feet scuffled beneath him, and he wobbled as if Jack has punched him. "No. No, that's not... It's not like that!" Breaking eye contact, Raimundo paced back and forth across the thin alleyway, stuttering, "I'm getting rid of- I'm doing this to help people! I'm d-doing the right thing. I..." Voice loud and manic, he whirled at Jack and shouted, "I have to be doing the right thing!"

Like a ship losing the wind in its sails, Raimundo deflated and sank to the ground. Jack's fingernails ground against the edges of his metal lid. Watching the other teen shake like a dead leaf at his feet, Jack's fear and anger dulled into something almost like pity. He took a cautious step and mumbled, "Y'know, most people who want to help others just... donate to charity or something. Why did you...? How did this even start?"

Gulping for air, Raimundo screwed his eyes shut. "When I was a kid, Os Anjos Da Mortes hit the city, and I lost my dad. I don't... I don't really remember it. My sisters said that crime and stuff went way up after that; no one knew what happened, and it got everyone scared. I don't remember much of that, either." His eyes opened, and he stared off into space. "But then a few months later, there was this one guy hanging around near the schools. He kept attacking people, stealing their money, and the cops couldn't find him. Or maybe they didn't care, I dunno. But then Leticia got mugged, and sh-she had all these bruises..." His hands dug through his hair like he wanted to yank it out. Through his teeth, he hissed, "She reported him and everything. Nothing changed. My sisters didn't know what to do, and one day I was hanging around at the train tracks, and he came after me because I was an easy target or something, and I fought him. He had a knife and I pushed him a-and..." He took a gulping breath and looked up at Jack. "There was a train coming."

Jack's mouth felt stuck in a permanent grimace. Letting the trash can lid hang loose at his side, he slumped his shoulders and said, "But. That was an accident. Right?"

"An accident," Raimundo echoed with a nod. "But no one got mugged anymore." When Jack didn't respond, his eyes got rounder, and Jack couldn't remember when he had last blinked. Pitch rising in his voice, Raimundo said, "I did that. I fought the bad guy, and I got rid of him. The neighborhood was safe again because of me. No one suspected any foul play, either; eight-year-olds aren't exactly prime murder suspects."

"Eight?" Jack squeaked. "You were eight? That's not- There are eight-year-olds out there still wetting their beds- n-not that I was one of them-" He let the lid drop to the ground, and he wiped the sweat off his face with both palms. "You were just a little kid! Didn't that mess you up?"

Raimundo's frantic expression turned oddly blank. "I survived Os Anjos Da Mortes; I was already messed up." His gaze drifted away from Jack. "Ask any of my old classmates. They all thought I was a freak. So, y'know. Not much sanity to lose, I guess." His fingers absentmindedly started doodling in the dirt between his feet. "Things got easier. The next time some creep got too close, I snuck into his car and messed with his brake lines. I thought it'd just send him to the hospital or something, but there was a steep hill and... Well. No more headlines about missing women after that."

Shaking his head, Jack wrapped his arms around his stomach. "This is..." His voice died before he could say the word "wrong." His own moral code had never been as rigid as Omi's, and Master Monk Chase had taught him that Xiaolin Warriors existed to protect the world from evil. Wasn't that exactly what Raimundo was doing? For centuries, the Chosen Ones of the past were allowed and even encouraged to meet violence with violence. Even if the elderly monks in the temple were pacifists, the Xiaolin Dragons among them were not. Could it be possible that Raimundo really was doing the right thing?

Jack looked down at his friend. Raimundo was still pale, and the blood on his fingers had dried to a crusty brown. His sweaty hair stuck up in weird angles. The bruise on his head was turning a sickly mix of blue and purple, matched only by the dark circles under his eyes. Jack finally said, "But what about you?"

Raimundo blinked. "What about me?"

"Do you like doing this? Do you like killing people?"

Raimundo blinked again, and his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Who cares how I feel about it?"

"I do!" Jack gulped, and his voice raised an octave, "You're my teammate. You're my f-friend, a-a-and I don't want you to keep doing this! Whether it's right or wrong or heroic or barbaric or whatever, this isn't normal for you!" He instinctively reached out to put his hands on Raimundo's shoulders, but he shuddered and pulled back at the last second.

Raimundo winced at the movement, and he bowed his head. "I wish you hadn't followed me, Jack. You weren't supposed to ever find out. I liked having you as a friend."

Absurdly, Jack's mouth curled into a pout. "I'm still your friend."

"After what you just saw? Not likely." Raimundo snorted, heaved himself up, and gave Jack a half-hearted smile. "What are you going to tell the others when you go back?"

For just a second, an icy block of fear dropped into Jack's gut. Snitches get stitches. Against his will, he had become a massive liability to someone who just admitted to murdering at least three adult men. Not a single person had entered the alleyway during their entire argument. If Raimundo turned on him now, not only would he be swiftly outmatched, but there would be no witnesses.

Raimundo's smile dropped, and the green glass of his eyes cracked. "Are you going to tell my family?"

"N-no." Jack's teeth scraped against his bottom lip, but then he gasped and added, "Actually!" His hand jerked out in front of him, palm sideways and fingers straight like a businessman bracing for a handshake. "You like deals, Beta Brawn. Let's make one: you turn a new leaf over. You stop being a-a vigilante, or whatever you call yourself, and you never ever listen to Wuya again. Don't ever hurt me or any of the other Xiaolin monks or anyone else I care about, no matter how much I tick you off-"

Raimundo had the gall to look wounded. "I'm not going to hurt you, Jack-"

"A-and you have to try to be the best, most noble Xiaolin Warrior you can be." Jack squared his shoulders, attempting to mimic the long distant memories of his entrepreneurial father. "Do all that, and I'll never tell anyone anything. My lips will be sealed."

Raising an eyebrow, Raimundo tentatively reached out a hand and paused. "Just like that? You sure?"

Jack's smile was fixed when he bobbed his head in a nod. "Mm-hmm! It'll be like today never even happened." Before Jack could really listen to the little voice in his head telling him that this solution was no better than slapping a cheap coat of paint over an ancient wall of mold, Raimundo reached out and closed the gap between their hands.

"Deal."