PART THREE

"The Rise of Jack Spicer"

Chapter 21. The Fall of Seek Patience

The world was a horrible place. Seek wanted to die. She wanted to escape all the pain and all her problems and just drift away. She couldn't breath, she couldn't see, she couldn't think. But, she could feel. The pain was so great that her nervous system was ready to shut down, just to end the suffering. There were voices speaking words she didn't understand, and everything was like a dream. Some of it was a dream. She hallucinated during her bouts of consciousness, but she knew she wasn't really moving. She only hoped she would die. She wasn't even thinking about the possibility of an afterlife- she just wanted it all to end.

But, then, a strange taste filled her mouth. She recognized the smell and recalled her youth, as well as feelings of outrage. She wanted to spit it out, but she didn't have the strength to do anything other than lie there and imagine drowning.

Suddenly, she assumed she was dead. But, she realized that she was assuming, and therefore could not be anything other than alive. All the pain drained away. All her senses cleared. Her vision returned and she understood the words around her. Her memory came back to her, along with her will to live, push on, and even fight again.

Something was amiss.

She felt a little too good. She hadn't felt like this in…almost a decade.

Patience looked up and saw Jack Spicer- who was overdue for a shave- kneeling beside her. He looked worried, but in a disgruntled way.

"Hey, hey, hey, Evil Partner," he said with a weak smile. "Looks like you're back in action."

Slowly, Seek pushed herself to a sitting position. The battle returned to her. The pain she went through to win, only to lose in the end.

"Jack…" she said slowly, looking around. She wondered about the crater they were sitting in. She also wondered why she was covered in blood but hadn't a scratch on her. "What happened?"

"That's what I want to know," Jack replied, getting to his feet. "Don't you remember?"

Seek looked up slowly, and then looked to the sky where she had been fighting.

"I do," she began. "Once I turned into the Dragon of Metal, I thought there was no way he could touch me. I don't know how he broke through my armor…It wasn't right. But, he climbed inside and…" She paused and broke off her speech, filled with more hate than ever. "Bastard," she muttered. "He was relentless. He beat me from the inside. An element warrior is the heart of their Dragon, and he forced me right out, didn't he?"

"Yeah, that was creepy," Jack admitted, scratching the back of his head. "Anyways, since you're better now, I think we should get out of here. I'm keeping this, though," he held up the Master Pen, "since it is rightfully mine after the last showdown, and I did save your life."

Seek took Jack's hand and he helped her to her feet.

"You certainly did, Jack," she said quietly. "I feel incredible! I can't remember the last time I felt this way. I could fight Chase all over again! What did you do?"

With an almost ashamed expression, Jack looked down at his hand.

"What?" Patience asked.

She looked down sharply to see what he was holding.

It was a light, wooden bowl with a dark rim. There was a sip of light green liquid left over, with what looked like scales floating in it.

Patience's eyes went wide. She backed away from Jack quickly and nearly lost her balance.

"No! That's not what I think it is!"

"It was the only thing I could do," Jack said, insulted. "It was this, or let you die a painful death. Do you want to give Chase that kind of satisfaction?"

"Nor this kind of satisfaction!" Seek screamed out. She held her hand out, cried the command, "Metal!" and a swirl of perfectly reflective metal grew from her hand. It hardened into a flat, circular disk- a mirror. Seek held it close to her face and peered at her eye.

Her face was ten years younger- she was twenty five again! And, sure enough, her pupil had reduced to a reptilian sliver, and her iris had changed to dark gold.

The mirror slipped from her hand and shattered on the metal-coated ground.

"Jack…" she began slowly, raising her eyes to him. "You should have let me die!"

In her rage, the ugly side effects of the potion for eternal youth took control. With a horrible roar, Seek began the quick but ghastly transformation. Her armor and clothes ripped away, and in a flash she was entirely changed.

"I've spent my adult life trying to escape Chase Young!" she screamed in a gravelly, dragonized voice. "But now…!"

Seek was a maroon dragon with black, angular stripes. She had a long body and she walked with her knees almost to the ground and her ankles high. She had a long, narrow snout and long, slender horns that swept back from her brow. Her spine scales were squat, but it only stood to reason. Chase's long hair resulted in long spine scales, as Seek's short hair resulted in similar scales.

"Holy Hell on Earth!" Jack screamed out when he saw dragon-Seek. He jumped back with a boost from his Jetpack, back to the edge of the crater.

"What HAPPENED?" Meg shrieked, staring at Miss Seek, completely aghast.

"I gave her some of Chase's potion to keep her alive," Jack explained. "But, she's not exactly thrilled to be here! C'mon, Meg! Forget about her! Let's just get back to taking over the world! Master Pen! SMART bot!"

Jack held out the Pen and, with a bright green flash, ink poured forth to produce a brand new SMART bot. Jack flew to the cockpit, Meg under his arm, and snapped the blast shield shut just as dragon-Seek landed on it.

"I'll get you for this, Jack Spicer!" she shrieked. "And when Chase finds out, you'll be lucky if I get to you first!"

She jumped down from the window right as Jack started up the engine. Meg leaned forward and watched her disappear into the forest, tears brimming up in her eyes.

"Now what's going to happen to her?" she whimpered. "Chase already said he was going to kill her if she was still alive! Now they're going to be fighting over that stupid soup! Oh, no fair!"

"I said don't worry about it," Jack snapped. "Evil up, Meg! We've got bigger, more important things to deal with! Like InterPol. And the UN. And…God."

"But, Miss Seek is my friend…"

"News flash, Meg!" Jack suddenly cried out. "The only reason Patience never flipped out on you or threw herself out a window is because, as I can see by your perfectly aligned teeth, you were a considerable source of income!" Jack, as he spoke, suddenly realized that he was about to fulfill the 'Evil' in his title. "I am your only friend, Meg! I'm the last one in the world you've got, and I'm the only one who'll look out for you!"

Jack had flashbacks to the other evil villains in his life that used similar plots. This was how Wuya got a hold on Raimundo, how Chase caught Omi, and how Hannibal Bean only thought he tricked Raimundo.

Meg's eyes were watery and pathetic again, but this time for the sake of being touched.

"You really mean it?" she asked, her hands clenched.

Jack shrugged slowly, looking ahead.

"Yeah. I mean, I'd be assassinated by now if I didn't have you around."

"Oh, Jackie!" Meg cried out, leaping forward and throwing her arms around Jack.

"Yeah, yeah," Jack muttered, trying to control the SMART.

"Oh, by the way," Meg said when she finally released him. "Changing Chopsticks!"

Out from Meg's pocket sprang a bulging burlap sack. Meg stuck the Chopsticks inside and opened the rim.

"I forgot to mention that I picked up a few things in Chase's palace," she giggled. "I got the Eagle Scope, Fountain of Hui, WuShan Geyser, and the Serpent's Tail. Wuya was stealing them."

Jack stared into the bag, amazed at his good fortune.

"Holy crap, Meg," he muttered. "How did you get them from Wuya?"

Meg grinned as she reached down into the bag. She pulled up the puzzle box to display for Jack.

"I used the Master Pen to make another one of these," she laughed.

Jack just about cried.

"You're the best, Meg! When we get back to the Mother SMART, I'm making…oh, wait a second! The Mother must have fallen apart, too. Shit! My sentries! I'm gonna have to repost hundreds of SMARTs before the world starts to assume that I'm just giving up or something! Damn…"

Just then, as they flew over southern Russia, a light started beeping on the display board.

"Oh, give me a break! Now?"

"What is it?"

"That's the Wu detector. Something just revealed itself in Iceland. Well, I suppose that with the monks sworn out of the game and Wuya back in her box, no one's going to be out looking for it. Still…"

Jack tapped his chin for a moment in thought.

"I know. Here," Jack changed the screen to a map of the world, accompanied by a number of exponential charts. "Take a look at this. For the last four years, I've been recording the frequency, location, and power of Wu that have revealed themselves. When the Shen Gong Wu first started to appear, they appeared very quickly, one after another. Also, none of them were particularly impressive Wu. The Mantis Flip Coin, the Third Arm Sash- nothing outstanding. But, as time went on, they gradually revealed themselves less and less frequently, for a while maintaining a rate of about one Wu every seven to twelve days. Now, they're coming about even less normally, and constantly increasing in power. Now we've got Wu that vaporize your enemies, turn you into pure energy, and unlock the knowledge of the universe. So, with all this information, as well as a sequenced chart of where the Wu were hidden, I've come up with a computer program that will predict all the likely locations of Wu before they activate. Also, it can predict how powerful that Wu will be. After the Master Pen, I can't imagine what will come next!"

"Why are you showing me this?" Meg asked.

"I'm showing you," Jack went on, "because I want to put you in charge of the Shen Gong Wu, as well as finding them all. I may not need Wu to take over the world, but it's like any other collection: once you begin, it's hard to just stop. McDonalds makes a fortune off that, y'know."

"Tell me about it," Meg said gravely. "I once spent a whole year collecting every single Teenie Beanie. That was…unfortunate."

"Mm-hmm, anyway, that's what I'm gonna put you up to. In the meantime, I need to resurrect all the SMARTs and you need to make sure no one tries to sniper me down while I do it!"

Meg gave him a smart, three fingered salute.

"Yes, Sir!" she said.

"You do realize that you're using the Boy Scout salute, right?" Jack asked as he created a new Hodoku Mouse to fix his SMARTs. Meg just giggled and nodded.