Chapter 1
Something has gone awry
Emailing your enemies always was telling something about desperation. Jack Spicer at this very moment was completely desperate and hadn't any idea, other than just beg for help and hoping that Xiaolin monks decide to play heroes yet again. Otherwise he was screwed.
Completely, absolutely screwed, not the usual type of screwed.
That's why he was hiding in the bathroom, kneeling on the cold, pale tiles next to the toilet bowl, using his father phone to send message to Kimiko. His own stuff was taken away and it was too risky to try to take it back. He didn't even dared to actually call her, deciding that tapping a text message would be his best option. Because someone might hear him and that would lead to the whole new level of trouble.
Jack bit his lip and tried to concentrate on putting all the important stuff in the short mail, while eyeing doors. His hands were shaking terribly, no mention that breathing was actually pretty painful. Nothing was broken, for now, but they suggested pretty clear that it might change any given time. He wanted to curl in the tiny ball of misery and just cry, but it wouldn't lead to anything.
The worst thing about whole situation? There was no running away. Not an option this time, even if he was actually able to sneak out of the house. There were other things at stake here and no matter how scared he was, he just couldn't leave it all and act like nothing happened.
Evil by genius or not, Jack had that irritating thing called a soul. And was just about to start understanding why Chase Young decided to actually sell the blasted thing away.
xxx
The day started like they always did.
Jack woke up after falling out of his chair on the cold, basement floor and then jumped up with high–pitched shriek, ready to run away from foes from his dreams. When he was sure that nobody else was in his evil lair, he sighed and relaxed a little.
He really should stop sleeping in the basement, Jack through with grimace on his face, massaging his shoulder. He was completely stiff from staying all night in strange position. On the other hand, last night he was too tired to actually care. He just finished another little fun project, that one he was so excited about for quite some time.
Jack sighed and started to moving around a little, to make the stiffness go away. During his few exercises, he started to reading through the calculation once again. Boy genius or not, math wasn't his greatest strength in the middle of night, when he was already half–asleep.
His stomach growled, but he didn't fell like going up there just now. Besides, he had a lot to do today. The monks managed to trash his Jackbots one again and somebody needed to put them together. Nobody could tell when new Wu decide to show up, and Jack without his inventions would be rather in big trouble. He really didn't want to lose to the monks because of his own laziness.
Deciding that it was as good as any day for repairs, he went through his food reserves; Jack always kept a lot of junk–food and granola bars just for occasion like that. Besides if he will be crawling for something else, he always could send first freshly repaired Jackbot to snatch it from the kitchen for him. So, no biggie.
He probably should take shower, but that one could wait too. There wasn't any sense in cleaning himself just now if he was about to get dirty from oil and other things that happened to be in his robots, on his robots and in places around.
Jack just chewed on the last part of his bar and started going through parts of destroyed Jackbots, trying to decide if he could salvage some parts or it or should he just threw whole thing away, when he heard sudden crash coming from the upstairs.
"What the…?" Jack blinked, looking at the ceiling. The noise was more than just strange.
Jack was used to being alone, hanging all days in his basement, while his parents showed up in the house from time to time, mostly to host some sort of boring party or just to try to act like normal family for a few hours. Mom usually spend her day in the kitchen, completely concentrated on her baking–spree. Something about feeding family sweets was making her fell less guilty about not being around for the rest of the time.
Jack hadn't anything particular against the whole deal. He could do whatever he wanted all year around without anybody telling him what he was supposed to do or not. It was absolute freedom, thing that every teen was dreaming about. Not even school was standing between Jack and his shenanigans, since he was homeschooled – meaning as long as his exams were on the acceptable level, nobody really cared if he was learning anything at all.
Not that he didn't. He just preferred the other stuff… no mention that all of the so called hard–sciences were just to frustrating to sit through. He was able to build his own mechanical army and yet the school was all about memorizing a few rules, so simplified that he didn't know if he was supposed to laugh or lie down and cry.
Anyway, nobody was supposed to be up there today. Unless he got his calendar wrong, that happened from time to time, especially with all that jet–lags coming from hunting ancient artifacts from all over the world. Sometimes it was quite hard to remember what time zone he was currently in.
Jack scratched his head while trying to decide if he should check it out. Mom never was making crash–like noises, so no cookies as a prize for defeating all these stairs. On the other hand, he was curious. And uneasy. Something deep inside him was screaming in fear, trying to crawl its way out as fast as possible. Like something just went terribly, terribly wrong up there, and he just wasn't on the right floor to tell what it was.
But what in the hell could happen? A burglar, crazy enough to do his job in the daylight? Xiaolin monks deciding to crash other parts of the house rather than just his basement? Wuya punching a wall, because Chase still didn't gave her powers back? Or dad falling on the floor with heart–attack, or maybe a stroke, or something else, twitching on the soft carpet and unable to call for help?
He started slowly climbing the stairs, trying to find the most plausible answer. Only more crazy idea came, so Jack shook his head and walked out of basement, closing the door behind himself. The automatic lock clicked, to get inside Jack would be going to need insert password on a console next to the doors. He didn't like intruders in his basement, while he was away and installed the whole setup quite long time ago. It didn't stop monks, Kimiko was able to hack her way through, but many others wasn't even near her level. Well, from time to time he was forgetting about closing it, or just left them open at purpose – putting the code every single time he moved somewhere else was just too irritating to deal with on daily basis.
The corridor leading to the basement was empty as always, so he slowly moved on, looking for some sort of a clue. Then he saw one of precious café–tables lying on the floor, precious glass from the countertop smashed and sparkling all over the expensive carpet. That definitely was a bad sign, Jack decided.
Just before he was few familiar faces and cold shivers marched down his spine.
A/N: Hello there!
Writing stories in XS world is fun, even if it is still quite a fight to get my English straight. If somebody is crazy enough to point out my mistakes - feel free to do so!
