A/N: 3 am... Sorry 'bout that... I had to take it down quick... But its back up again... Remembered something I meant to put in... Glad I caught it before anyone read it... Well, this is the end of the battle. I'm sorry if it seems a bit anti-climactic. The past few chapters were the only times in my entire life that I had to write an outline for the plot... I must say, it was mighty humbling to have to organize my thoughts before diving into a story. I just hope it lives up to your expectations. Enjoy! Only one chapter left...
A sickly calm fell over the battlefield. From the bright-blue heavens came a gust of hot air. Dust was kicked up form the parched earth and managed to fill every crevice in the sweaty bodies that stood upon it. In the silence, Jeremy Spicer regained his balance. Leaning on a rock to help him struggle to his feet, Jeremy looked down the field. The last three Heylin warriors stood before the four opposing Xiaolin monks and their ally. He was still new to this world of good and evil and he himself had never encountered the Heylin forces, but something told me that these last three warriors would be the hardest to defeat. In that instant, a feeling of shame and disappointment filled him. He wanted to help the warriors so badly, but he was just a kid. An unskilled, untrained, useless child. Sliding back to his knees, he crawled over to where Dojo sat near the field.
"Dojo dragon," he said.
"Hm? What's up kid? You gonna get in there?"
"I-I'm scared…"
"You can't be scared. You won't get anywhere in life if you're always afraid."
"But…" the tears were welling up in his eyes, "I don't want to die…"
"'Die'? You can't die. Not in a Showdown…"
"Really?" the boy sniffed.
"Really, really. Goodness. There'd be no warriors if that were the case!"
"But… I don't want to fight for the creepy lizard man…"
Dojo sighed, "I'm sorry, kid, but the rules are the rules…"
"What happens…" he sniffed, "If I choose not to?"
"Well… You can always choose not to, but you can't attack anyone on the Heylin side…"
"Why not?"
"It's in the rules..."
"What happens if I do?"
Dojo opened his mouth to speak, but he closed it once more when he realized that he didn't honestly have an answer. Reaching into the pocket he didn't have, the dragon pulled out a tattered book. Flipping through the pages, he came to the chapter on the Showdown Royale. He scanned the pages until he found the answer he was looking for.
"Says here that if you turn on the team, any wounds inflicted by your own team are retained. Mortality is an issue."
"Huh?"
"Remember how I said you can't die in a Showdown?"
"Yeah…"
"Well, in this case, that only applies to you as long as you're fighting for your assigned alliance."
"Umm…"
Dojo sighed heavily.
"If you are supposed to fight for the Heylin and you fight only the Xiaolin, any wounds inflicted by your opponents disappear once you are removed from battle. Now, let's say you're fighting for the Heylin and you choose to turn on them. Any wounds inflicted from that point on are retained. Basically, you can only be injured in friendly fire, and I use the term 'friendly' lightly. It means that if someone on your team breaks your arm, it stays broken. The same is true for if you did it to them. In the event that you…" he didn't want to say it, "die…"
"I stay dead?"
"Yeah," Dojo choked as he closed the pages of the book.
Jeremy sat a moment in silence. His mind weighed in his options. He could risk dying and fight for the good guys, or he could just stay out of it all together. No. He couldn't do that… He couldn't just sit around and watch them fight. Even if he was no help, he had to try… he had to… If anything… He had to do it for his brother… For Jack… A dull pain filled the boy's chest as he remembered how he had left his brother lying in a hospital bed. Tears welled up in his eyes and the world around him became blurry as his senses sank into a numb state of emptiness. What if… What if Jack was dead now? What if he was gone? Loneliness filled Jeremy. It would be all his fault if Jack died… Leaning against the barrier, he collapsed on his side and pulled his knees into his chest.
"Please watch over me, Jack," he wept quietly into his black coat, "Wherever you are, watch over me… Please… I need you…"
All around him the battle raged on, but Jeremy remained alone. Dojo stayed near the boy. He knew there was nothing he could do to help, besides simply staying near the poor boy.
Yells and screams crossed the rocky field. With every shout, Jeremy's body shuddered in fear.
The shrill scream of a girl's voice riled the poor boy's frame. Snapping out of his daze, Jeremy whipped around to find a rather gruesome scene. In one of the bean's tentacles was the neck of the Japanese girl. The plant's appendage was tightening its hold around her air ways. Beneath her kicking feet stood the Brazilian boy in utter terror. He tried to jump to reach her legs, but the mutated bean held her too high over his head. Laughter boomed from the evil fruit's crooked jaws. Jeremy looked to see who would aide the boy and the girl only to find the smallest of the monks in an energy field constructed by the Heylin witch. Finally, the cowboy and the dark skinned boy made a combined move to attack the warlord, but their efforts were deflected, sending them soaring across the field much like Jeremy had done before them. Seeing an opening, Chase made a dash for Raimundo. Jeremy jumped to his feet and made a mad dash to knock the boy out of the way of the charging evil. Building up his momentum, he instead careened into the bean who lost his balance and released the girl from his grasp. Falling on top of the boy beneath her, they were both open to Chase's attack. Dashing between them and Chase's reptilian form, Jeremy stood ready to accept the onslaught on his own.
It was in that instant, that he arrived. Walking in from the distance, Dojo was first to hear the ragged footsteps. Turning away from the perilous fight, the dragon saw the last thing he had expected to see. The red hair burned in the high sun and the black figure as a whole was distorted by waves of heat bending the sun's rays. Dojo froze as the figure approached. It was a stiff and lifeless march that ended beside the dragon.
"Jeremy…" the pale white lips moved.
"Jack?"
"I… I need to help him…"
"You can't fight, Jack…"
"I have to…"
"But you can't. According to the rules, people can't just walk in…"
"He's going to die…"
"You would too. You're in no shape to fight any of them…"
"Let me… Let me take his pain…"
Dojo looked up at the boy, but his hair lay limply over his goggles casting shadows over his eyes.
"You knew about that, huh?"
"Let me…" Jack reached out for the barrier, "Take his pain…"
Jeremy turned just in time to see his brother reaching out to him.
Dojo sighed and invoked the spell.
Chase's maw opened to snap down on Jeremy's tiny form, but instead, his fangs sank into something entirely different. His eyes looked down his snout to find a ball of fiery red hair resting beside his jaws. He bit harder into the shoulder causing blood to seep out of the wounds staining the dark coat he was wearing. His head was downcast until the pain finally registered with his broken body. Turning slowly to see Chase's mouth around his shoulder, a small shudder wracked the red-head's body. His eyes narrowing, Chase released the shoulder just to bite down again on it once more. Jack flinched this time, but his red eyes turned their gaze on Chase's reptilian slits. A small laugh came from Chase, but it was stifled by his full mouth.
"You wanted to kill him…"
Chase scoffed as he released the child. As the teeth pulled from their respective wounds, stains of blood followed them. Jack's body arched back as he was lifted lightly from the ground only to fall to his knees in numb pain.
"So you'll die instead?" Chase laughed.
"Someone has to…"
The lizard grinned as best as a lizard can, "Indeed."
"JACK!" Jeremy screamed from outside the barrier, "Dojo, what happened?" he shouted frantically, "Why am I here?"
"It's in the rules… Blood can replace blood. Not just any blood, mind you, but a kin can take the place of a warrior in this battle. That's how you got into this in the first place…"
"Oh, Jack…" he whispered slowly, "Don't die…"
His brother's screams were only faint sounds in the back of his mind. The blood pouring out of his shoulder only made him more aware of the fresh stitches in his stomach. They wouldn't hold out much longer, but he wasn't going to pop them lying down. Clutching his shoulder, he struggled to his feet once more.
"NO JACK, NO!!! PLEASE, JACK!" Jeremy screamed until he became hoarse and his head became light and empty.
As Chase laughed at his misfortune and licked the Spicer's blood from his maw just to force salt into the wound. All the while, Jack studied the terrain in search of something he could use against the monster. There, near the bean that now held two monks, the Japanese girl and the Brazilian boy, in its grasps, laid Chase's spear. Following Jack's gaze, Hannibal found the same object.
"Oh no you don't," he spat as he saw Jack's muscles tighten for the sprint.
Hannibal sprouted and extra root that he shot after the spear, but Jack made his move. He beat the monstrous frond to the weapon and made a dive to snag it in his hands and rolled promptly out of the way of the bean's root. It was lucky that it missed him; with the speed it had accumulated, a small crater was formed where it impacted with the ground. Jack smiled at his amazing reflexes and attributed it to the morphine in his blood.
"JACK! BEHIND YOU!"
Jack turned at the sound of his brother's voice. Another frond was after him. Ducking beneath it, he raised the spear, severing it from the rest of the bean's form. A terrible bellow filled the air around the battlefield. Hannibal released the monks once more and they made their retaliation against him.
It was with that final move that Jack felt his flesh separate from itself. His stitches popped beneath his shirt and the blood began to flow again. Even the internal sutures were released. Not only was he bleeding out, but he was bleeding in to his own body. He coughed and sputtered with the strain he had put forth only to find blood accompanying his discarded saliva. Looking down at the droplets of blood that fell from the bottom of his coat, he gave a forlorn sigh followed by a defeated chuckle.
But he had no time to dwell on his own pain. Chase was after him once more. The blood trickled out of his mouth, over his lips, and down his pale chin. It was over, but he wasn't going down without a fight. Shedding his blood-soaked coat, he turned one last time to his foe; his blood still staining the black t-shirt he wore beneath the coat.
Chase gave it his all. He wanted to feel the boy's body crushed once more between his jaws, but no such thing happened. A sharp pain wracked his monstrous form; something had forced its way into his flesh. Looking down, he found his own spear lodged in his rib cage. On the other end of the spear stood the blood-soaked form of Jack Spicer. Chase's own blood dribbled down the shaft of the spear and on to Jack's arm, mingling with his own hot, red blood. It was satisfying enough for Jack that he brought the arm with Chase's blood on it to his lips and lapped up the mixture of his and the reptile's blood. Chase sank further onto the spear until it penetrated his back. Jack smirked and used the last of his strength to force the butt of the spear into the ground beside him. Stepping back, he confirmed his work with a grim smile.
"That's it… then…" Chase murmured as his reptilian guise faded and his human form remained on the end of his spear.
Chase Young, skewered by his own weapon, died on its bloody shaft; his lifeless body continued to travel down the propped-up shaft.
Pain wracked the older Spicer's body. His legs became weak and he collapsed in a dizzy lump on the hard ground. Resting on his side, the faint, ragged breaths began to slow until they faded all together. A bloody pool formed around his unconscious form.
The field was silent. The individual conflicts had come to a momentary halt. The same warm breeze from before came down from the heavens and washed over their bodies, cooling the sweat that drenched the mortal forms of the monks. The red hair danced lifelessly in that very same breeze.
"No…" Jeremy whispered in silent pain.
Death. Death was a powerful tool. Turning from the pale body on the ground, to the living blood on the other side of the barrier, a spark filled the body of the Xiaolin leader. Anger filled his body as he watched the tears stream down the child's cheeks; tears mourning the loss of the only person he had in his entire life. With a powerful roar, Raimundo slammed his naked fist into the body of the bean, knocking it to the ground where he promptly smashed his foot into its face.
Wuya was the last warrior standing on the Heylin side. A snarl crossed her lips. Clenching her clawed hands at her side, her body was engulfed with a green flame. Her body floated into the air as she prepared for the attack that was to end it all. Coiling in on herself, she charged her every muscle for the grand attack. Unfortunately for her, she had forgotten about the smallest of the monks. Omi jumped up into her fire ring and wrapped his small and around her ankle. Startled, Wuya released her attack prematurely. The only one injured, was herself. The charred form of the Heylin witch joined Hannibal on the exterior of the battlefield.
And that was it. The battle was over. Good had triumphed over evil. They should have been happy, had it not been for the casualties. Once the powers that be registered the Xiaolin victory, the Wu gathered themselves up and were placed in a sack beside Dojo. The sea retreated and the dry land returned once more. The plateaus went back into the earth along with the rocks that had been scattered about the terrain. Soon enough, everything was back to as it had always been. Finally, the barrier itself faded away.
Jeremy staggered to his feet as he made his feeble way across the field to his brother's body.
"Jack…" his voice shook as he wept, "Oh, Jack…" he gasped as he came upon Jack's broken form, "I'm so sorry…"
His legs gave way and he collapsed to his knees beside his only brother. The man who had raised him, who had given him everything he had, made him who he was… That man was gone… Bending forwards, he rested his tired head on the empty chest and wept into his brother's blood-stained shirt.
"Oh, Jack…" he murmured as exhaustion washed over him. It was all so overwhelming…
Dojo slithered over to the body and made a few checks before turning to the others with wild eyes.
"He's still alive…" he spat hastily.
"But… How?!" Kimiko gasped, "There's so much… blood…"
"Who knows? Let's not question it and just get him out of here," the dragon spoke hastily as he turned into his larger self.
Raimundo reached down to lift Jeremy off his brother's body.
"Come on, Jeremy," he spoke to the unconscious boy, "Come on…"
The body was limp and that scared the young man. He lifted Jeremy's limp body into his arms while Clay came over and gently lifted Jack into his own arms.
"He's gone…" Jeremy whispered weakly into Raimundo's shirt.
"There's still hope, kid… Just… Just hang on to it, okay?"
Jeremy nodded slowly as he sank back into unconsciousness.
"Stay with me… Jack… I love you…"
Once they were all on the dragon's back, they took off into the sky to return to the Xiaolin temple. Beneath them, Wuya and Hannibal released Chase's body from the hold of his own sacred weapon. Looking up in disgust, the remaining evils vowed that they would have their day... One day... One day, they'd take it all back from the forces of good...
A/N: Me again! So what do you think? Am I gonna kill him? I know what I'm doing, but do you? Five bucks says no matter what you think, you'll never guess the exact ending. I'll give you a cookie if you do...