When The Wind Blows

Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown or any of its characters.

Chapter 13: Delusions

"Still going to let me leave when I want?"

"If I said no, and your team came looking for you, would they be upset you didn't escape right away?" He countered, raising an eyebrow. He sat at a long table, enjoying his soup.

Kimiko tried not to stare, because really that was the last thing she wanted to watch Chase eat. She didn't know the exact reason, but something about it made her skin crawl, so she figured she knew what it was all about at one point or another.

She puckered her lips and tossed her hair, feeling totally confident, if not a little eerie, in his presence. "They wouldn't be mad. They know I want answers."

"They also would have never let you come here alone…"

"Why'd you bring me here?" She asked him, peering a little closer, "If you aren't going to kill me, and you aren't keeping me here… Wouldn't it be better for us all if I just left?"

He shrugged, "Sometimes I want a little company."

"Ew," she told him, rearing backwards, her expression teetering towards disgust.

It took him a few moments, but he also made a sour face, "Not like that. Ridiculous Xiaolin monks and their notions that everyone desires them –"

"Stop," she demanded. It was weird – her sitting here, talking to Chase like she'd talk to her team. Commanding him to do things, or feeling a prick of a smile at what just passed. She wondered if she'd feel the same, had she gained back her memories. She realized with surprise that Chase had bit back a smile as well.

Kimiko knew he was bad. She knew that Chase was dangerous, and all logic steered her towards the exit he pointed out earlier… and yet, without knowing exactly why she thought this way, a feeling pulled her here and kept her planted in place, sitting patiently at the other end of the table, still leaning forward for answers.

She voiced this exact reasoning to him, hoping maybe he would be honest and shed some light on the situation.

He shrugged, "There is a little bit of good in everything that is evil, and a little bit of evil in everything that is good…"

"Explain," Kimiko asked him a little more forcefully than she should have.

But he didn't take offense as he took another thoughtful bite of his soup. "Your evil lies in the fact that you're still here. The fact that you don't want to destroy me right now, but listen to me give you answers that you can't decipher if they're true or not."

"And the good in you?" She questions, skepticism in her eyes.

"The fact that I'm not lying to you…"

She stopped then, thinking about what he had said. A little good and a little bad in everyone, huh? "So what's Charlie?" She asked finally. "You knew Raimundo was the Dragon of Wind… You knew that him leading me back here, feeding me the memories of what should have happened, would create a problem." She stopped as realization slowly sunk in. "You knew that Charlie would be upset, and you knew he'd abandon the Xiaolin Team. That's what you wanted."

His lips grew into an ominous smile, and she stood, realizing she should get out while she still could.

She turned away from him, her shoes tapping daintily as she began to cross the large room, aiming for the door she'd followed him through earlier. The girl heard no movement behind her, and that somehow propelled her faster over the shining floor. She could see her shoes' reflection in the sheen, and she continually moved faster, the silence between her footsteps decreasing with every second.

As soon as she made it to the large archway however, three jungle cats walked carelessly in front of it, sitting down and gazing at her with an uncomfortable intensity.

"This is about the time," Chase's voice rang out, "that I unfortunately have to keep you against your will…" She could hear the smile in his voice. "Because you know too much."

Her eyes widened. She was confident that while she couldn't defeat Chase, she wasn't in any creepy danger… Just your average getting-kidnapped-by-a-dragon-lord sort of deal. If nothing else, that was at least the only upside to the situation.

"Get comfortable Kimiko… I feel like you could be here for awhile…"

Despite her knowledge that Chase wouldn't do anything weird, it didn't stop the hair from rising on the back of her neck.

(A/N: Gah! Sorry if that bit was awkward, I just really wanted to get it through to you all that Chase is not a creep like that in this story.)

"You're working with Chase!" Charlie accused, shoving him backwards. "You gave Kimiko that necklace so that bastard could track her! You're the reason she's been captured!" He howled, shoving Raimundo back again.

The Brazilian stared at him with a confusion that wouldn't let him speak. He was flustered – to say the least – at these accusations. Why would he think that? Surely Charlie hated him, but to accuse him of being the reason Kimiko was gone? That was just stupid. There was nothing else to it.

"Charlie," Clay tried to wheel him backwards, "Calm down, buddy –" But instead of complying like he normally did with the gentle cowboy, Charlie spun around and sent a punch square into Clay's jaw.

The crack rang out like a whip just caught somebody's back. Clay's blue eyes narrowed in suspicion and had a deep underlying of anger as he pressed his jaw back into place. It didn't hurt – it'd happened to him before with the cattle kicking him back home, and he knew it hadn't dislocated – just popped.

But that didn't change the fact that Charlie was no bull; he really shouldn't have consciously done that.

And Charlie seemed to think the same thing, for a moment. His eyes were wide with panic and disbelief, before they narrowed and he fell into a leisurely fighting stance. Omi would have pointed out everything that was wrong with it before, except… no longer did he want to help the British boys correct his flaws. Every flaw was an advantage on an enemy.

Omi's heart ached as an invisible hand clutched it. Pain sliced through his stomach. Someone he had once considered part of his dysfunctional little family, he now called the enemy.

"And you guys!" Charlie bellowed as these thoughts filled Omi and Clay's minds. Raimundo continued to stare, bewilderment freezing his body. "You're no better! You're letting the enemy into your lives! You let him replace me! Someone who was trained by your worst enemy and –"

"Raimundo wasn't trained by Chase… He didn't even know who Chase was 'til he came here with Kim."

"He's stealing you guys little by little!" The brunette insisted, his eyes wide and angry.

"You do not have your facts tidy!" Omi told him, falling back into his own battle stance, ready to duke it out with the bigger teen.

"Straight!" Charlie bellowed, "It's straight!" He leapt forward, ready to take Omi down. He was really delusional if he thought he could beat the little guy at his own game. Omi was the most dedicated and the best fighter out of all of them. His style stuck to the book, but that's what made it so good.

"If I remember correctly!" Omi called out to him as he spun to dodge one of Charlie's brute attacks. "It was myself who trained under Chase Young for a time! I was the one who was lured by his promises of better skill! Not this person we have just befriended!"

"Befriended?!" Charlie growled. "You're letting someone come between us?! Your family member!?"

"We didn't tell you to leave!" Clay jumped into the fray, stomping down on the Earth to shake Omi a fraction higher than Charlie's striking hand. It would have hit, Charlie quicker in his rage, had Clay not intervened.

"You did! By letting him stay!"

Raimundo came in and swept underneath the other boy, knocking him on his back. "Why do you think everyone's out to get you?! Are you paranoid?!" He demanded with a light grin on his face. He didn't mind taunting Charlie, especially when he was acting utterly insane.

"Look at all of you! Gain up on me when I'm not the problem!"

Omi stumbled back first, suddenly on the defensive until he splayed water all over everyone, drenching them and forming puddles under their feet. He jerked his feet on the ground, sliding them to the left, while his body went to the right, freezing everyone to their spots.

Raimundo and Charlie almost fell over by the sudden speed drop, and the ice groaned underneath Clay's heavy movement.

"You are correct, Charlie…" Omi suddenly said, surprising everyone. "While you may have notion that are not true, right now, our quarrel is not the problem."

"That's not what I meant –"

"Kimiko is who we should be tracking!"

Charlie was silent, his face flushing when he realized he'd forgotten all about this predicament that Kimiko was in, in his rage.

"But, we must clear something of this up. Why do you think this necklace Raimundo bought for her, helped Chase get to her?"

"Because! He told me!" He ripped the note from his jeans pocket and shook it wildly in the air. "He told me all of this! He told me that you can't trust Raimundo!"

"Why would you trust Chase?" Clay suddenly asked, his eyes narrowed as he tipped his hat out of his eyes.

That stopped Charlie. Wasn't Chase the one he had been trying to shake from his mind? His movements? There was that unintentional pull towards Chase that Charlie knew was just a lure to get him to join the Heylin side… His leaving had been to protect himself and his friends from the dragon lord's grasp.

But he couldn't show them that he had slipped up in judgment. He couldn't tell them that he was slowly losing it to this obsessive thought that Chase would get a hold of him, and Charlie would be back with a vengeance to kill them all. That sounded crazy.

"Why would he lie?"

"Because it's Chase!" Clay argued, trying to defend Raimundo. He liked the Brazilian, and somehow, everything felt right when he was there. All the drama had vanished, and he thought their team would work without flaws – especially when Master Fung told Charlie he could get the help that he needed to be a mage, instead of a Wind Dragon.

Omi was busy reading the note, and he shook his head in disbelief. "Charlie, do you forget the stories Master Fung, and Chase Young himself told us? Chase used to train here. How else would he know where to find Kimiko? Of course she would be slumbering where she was supposed to be at night." His eyes narrowed, "You also know that Chase has his hawks, his jungle cats, and the Eye of Zhen that allows him to see what he wants if he has the right ingredients. You know all of this, and yet you still insist Raimundo is the traitor?"

"Are you insinuating that I'm the traitor?" He spat, and suddenly, the ice around them melted.

"You are twisting my words –"

"I'm going to find her! Because all of you insist on protecting Raimundo instead of caring about Kimiko! I'm the only one who cares! I'll save her, and she'll tell you all about how we shouldn't be abandoning Charlie!" He turned on his heel and fled with a speed they hadn't seen from him before.

"We have to follow him… We have to get Kimiko before Charlie does something stupid!" Raimundo told them.

"Right!"

"I'll go get Dojo!" Omi informed them, running off.

"And we'll get some Wu," Clay added with a determined nod.

Raimundo and him walked to the vault, both delving into their own thoughts.

Somehow, Raimundo had this awful feeling about the rescue. He felt like someone was going to get hurt… and it wasn't going to be pretty. Betrayal was lingering ahead of them… something he knew that Omi and Clay felt as well. But were they ready to take it on? Could they?

He thought about Kimiko, and wondered what was happening at Chase's lair. He wouldn't hurt her, no… Despite tearing away Kiniko's memories, Raimundo had come to believe, hearing the story with an outsider's view, that Chase wanted nothing to do with Kimiko. She was a pawn to bring him someone else.

Whether it was him or Charlie though, he hadn't any idea, though the brunette had a looming guess that it was Charlie he was after.

His thoughts flowed from Kimiko's abduction to Charlie's behavior. He hadn't know the guy before Kimiko had lost his memories, but to him, again with an outsider's opinion, the guy was an absolutely lunatic. Raimundo believed there was more going on than the three of them knew about the mage, and that's what was clutching his gut in nervousness…

He had these delusions that everything was out to get him. Whether he was paranoid, or something that was said to him was driving him to insanity, Raimundo didn't want to find out. But he knew if his crawling suspicions were correct, and Chase really wanted the mage, he knew it wouldn't turn out good.

If Omi had succumbed to the darkness, Charlie's much weaker spirit would too, and with a mind turning a different direction than the others… He knew that could prove to be the most dangerous thing of all…

A/N: I know it's a little shorter, but I hope you enjoyed it anyways! I wanted a really good place to stop before the action, and I think Raimundo's thoughts about how crazy Charlie is acting was the perfect place to do so.

I'm surprised at how much attention this story has gotten lately! And I think that's what is propelling my quick updates. So if you want to continue with quick chapters… feel free to keep leaving me all of your kind words! :)

You guys are really great! Love you all!

No editing once again, though I'm coming to learn none of you care as long as I'm pumping out some chapters ;)

-zesty-