A/N: Tajeri Lynn will now send you to chapter 12 of the aerial war entitled "The Life Before The Party". "Jackie Chan Adventures" is presented to all amigos thanks to Kids WB and Sony Television.
Extremo Luchadore has made his mind; at the ends of both this story and "SBTW", I will announce the three possible projects that will begin following the completions.
Tajeri Lynn has also made another announcement, one that won't please everyone; the conclusions to both my current fables will take longer to arrive than anything I've ever written. Those conclusions shall be due somewhere in two/three weeks.
Until then, raise yourself into the world of Extremo Luchadore's JCA!
The Life Before the Party
Chapter 12: Confidence
"What are your intentions?" gasped Kepler at the sight of a gunman with a red cloth encircling his face, his rail rifle firm at the doctor. He turned around and saw Jade, Mama Tohru, and Tohru cornered by five other men bearing similar weaponry.
"The 13th Gear", the soldier spoke threateningly. "Your superiors couldn't grant us what we want. Don't end up like them. We know you have the key."
He thrust a dusty glove into Kepler's lab coat as the doctor helplessly raised his arms in surrender. Kepler turned back at his acquaintances, who could only afford to do the same gestures he exhibited.
But hold on a nano-second.
Where was Xu Lin?
The soldier grunted at every empty pocket Kepler possessed. Upon searching even the duffel bag, the soldier pulled Kepler's collar, causing the rocket scientist to yelp like a toddler, and demanded to him, "Where'd you hide the key? Tell us or we add you a hole!"
A rectangular shadow with spaces of light beaming in it loomed over the soldier's head. He turned and was met with a collapsing ladder that made him see white…then black.
The five remaining soldiers pointed their guns up towards the source of the ladder. It was Xu Lin, standing above the cube encasing the 13th Gear.
"Aim up at her, but know that she must have the key!" one soldier barked.
Shoom!
The soldiers turned excitedly towards the sudden sound of a blast, and saw smoke trailing from around Kepler, who was containing his fallen captor's weapon.
The terrifying coalition growled as one and pulled their triggers, and elicited nothing but fumes even more vast and gray than what Kepler's gun had reaped.
"Tsk, tsk," Kepler shook his head almost pitifully. "Coalescing together in a single line is a most compromising tactic, wouldn't you declare?"
"Not quite," replied a desperate soldier as he fiercely pitched away his useless arm. As it dropped before Kepler, a Ginsu knife seemingly emerged behind it, soaring up to Kepler's drooped face.
The doctor yelled and parried the skewing projectile with the rail gun, but sparks burst off the weapon and forced Kepler to ditch the weapon away, and crumple onto the floor as the sparks stung his eyes.
"Forget the captives, get the girl!" declared the desperate new leader. At that command, the band strode up onto the 20-foot ladders situated by the gargantuan cube. Together. Again.
"Pssh! When will they learn?" Jade spoke, as she jogged hurriedly and leapt onto Kepler as a pummel horse, flew in mid-air and shot both her legs onto midsection of the front-most ladder. With that, the ladders collapsed like a stack of dominoes. The gangsters were depraved of equilibrium as they fell head-first onto the fold-up chairs encircling the ladders, brunching the seats of the chairs in awkward angles.
Jade grabbed Kepler and looked up at his face, which he still rubbed patiently. "I'm perfectly prevalent", the doctor replied.
"Good. Stay with Tohru. Me and T-Mom will handle this."
Before Kepler had chance to object, a soldier thrust a folded chair onto the doctor, who raised his chin to barely evade the taste of cold steel. Jade leapt, spun her legs, and sent her right leg darting dead set through the chair, pressing it through the attacker's facade and banishing him into a dazzling world of dreams.
Kepler complied to Jade's request and grabbed Tohru's wheelchair and motioned himself and the incarcerated sumo into safer grounds.
Mama Tohru cartwheeled next to Jade, standing one leg up and raising both hands awaiting the villainous response. So was this her typical shotokan karate stance.
The five men groaned and held up knives, chairs, and ladders.
Mama Tohru observed her attackers' uncertainties, and cocked an eye to Jade. "You ready to whup some butt, little girl?"
"I'm not the only little girl," Jade couldn't help but smile. Mama Tohru eyed her oddly.
Momentarily, two men ascended into the duo with two more chairs in hand. Jade and Mama Tohru slid underneath the assailants who, upon aiming at the elder woman's head, vigorously slammed each other's implements and vibrated each other's hands violently. They comically leapt up and down while massaging their hands, only to have their boots swept off by Jade's swift legwork. Now they were groaning and holding their backs.
"Heh. Guess now you need a place to sit. Whoa!" Jade was grabbed from behind by the largest soldier, armed with 27-inch pythons, and easily kept Jackie's niece off the ground. She strained and flailed her cherry-red sneakers in irritance, but was left immobile.
Mama Tohru saw Jade in a problematic outlook, and was then grabbed by another man who had the brazen nerve to sloppily drag her beneath the rungs of one of the fallen ladders. The senior rubbed her oval brow and heard Jade's elongated screams become louder by the minute. Mr. 27-inch Pythons laughed in uproarious sadism as he lobbed the 11-year old onto the top leg of the ladder, sandwiching the rungs with Mama Tohru beneath it! Both were gasping and lying with little time to recover.
Xu Lin gasped at the sight of her injured friends. Noticing how focused Kenzo's men were in dispatching the two women, she took the initiative to leave the key card on the rough-hewn roof of the cube. She scurried to the far end of the wall, shifted towards the front, and then leapt at the rope suspending the only source of light in the underground base. Swinging along with the pendulum, Xu Lin dropped her petite self off the rope and wrapped her elbows onto Mr. 27-inch Pythons' cranium. The velocity of the descent was just enough for Paco's girlfriend to spin her grapple on the behemoth and forcefully pull his face down to a broken chair left on the floor! The behemoth grunted as he lost all consciousness and became nothing more than a heavy burden, his face dug in a hole on the chair.
"Just two more. I hope what Paco told me is enough," she whispered anxiously to herself as the only soldiers left now were the man with a hand for Ginsus and a lankier, taller soldier pointing a ladder as if it were a portable battering ram.
The ladder swinger was first to assail, swinging the ladder and rather unpredictably nailing the girl's stomach with the interconnecting rung. But Xu Lin held her bearings tightly and then somersaulted to step down on the ladder. The swinger growled as he momentarily lost his new fetish on the oversized tool, and maniacally struck severally kicks against the little Lin. Lin suddenly lost footing as her heel collided with a chair behind her, and as she looked up, Ginsu Man yelled in anticipation as he compulsively spun two knives to stab down on her. Xu Lin hoisted her foot to tow the nearby chair, and spring-boarded the chair square between his eyes. She nimbly rolled to her left, as Ginsu Man this time screamed in confusion and landed his face with the chair seemingly glued onto him.
The remaining cohort gasped as he saw Xu Lin, narrow-eyed and readily holding her chair in a laggard gyration. If matters weren't lame enough, he heard Mama Tohru and Jade standing up for a little more action.
"No, I'm too young to die!" he cried as he lost breath rushing up back to the elevator, tapping furiously at the button. He hoarsely yelled at the female trio, even though they weren't even pursuing him.
As the elevator door opened, Kepler was revealed to the last soldier and, as if his life was on the line, flung the most head-splitting chair shot he could possibly do to the now harmless assailant. The hit sent the man spiralling downward, bemoaning, "That's it…I'm going back to McDonald's…Ohhh….", and with that, the adrenaline of the J-Team came to a comforting halt.
Kepler, noticing how quiet the room had become, went behind Tohru, who was also inside the elevator for sanctuary, and took the giant back inside where Xu Lin, Jade, and Mama Tohru were.
"Whew!" the doctor observed and took a checkered handkerchief to wipe his greasy neck. "We ought to be required to tone down on the commotion. The adrenaline is crushing to my arteries!"
"Hah!" Mama Tohru replied haughtily. "They not so tough as their employer. Should've stayed in school. Didn't take Butt Whipping 101 yet, I bet."
Jade stretched her bruised back, and turned to her age mate with exultation. "Xu Lin, those were some amazing moves! How did Paco teach you these things?"
"TLC."
"'Tender Loving Care'?"
"No, 'Tables, Ladders and Chairs.' He's always showing me how these tag-team matches work. No tables this time, though. Just shows that Paco is best, and El Toro Fuerte just the same." Xu Lin smiled, skipping on one foot to celebrate her successful endeavor.
"We'll continue this debate some other time," Jade frowned at her proud friend.
"Mommy, are you okay?" Tohru mused as he rode the wheelchair next to her. "You look hurt."
"Bah, pretty as a picture, my boy," Mama Tohru said as she playfully pulled her son's cheeks. "Maybe this time I will go along with Jackie's little trip."
"Mommy, this isn't a trip!" Tohru reproached urgently as he stood up and stamped a foot in defiance. "I won't let you suffer much more."
"Tohru, why can you stand up now?" Mama Tohru asked in wonder. The other members nodded agreeably.
Tohru looked at his legs, and then held a knee up. "Ouch, ouch, I should have not have done that!" He retreated to the wheelchair, but then Jade pulled the instrument away, and Tohru paused in his upright position when he noticed there was nothing but ground.
"Cool, you're cured!" Jade said. "That means you can now help us save Jackie and the others!"
"I…I'm not so certain of that. I can't leave my precious grape soda. I won't leave it!" Tohru held the wheelchair and sobbed in decibels as tears flew out of his eyes. Everyone looked at each other with no answer in sight.
"Tohru, don't dwell in agitation," said Dr. Kepler as he knelt on the 13th Gear's locking cube, sliding the card into the proper slit, and effortlessly tapped the password. "The 13th Gear will harbor all your required provisions. Since you are now mobile without additional peripheries, I am assigning you to take direct command of the 13th Gear."
"Me?" Tohru pointed to himself with his retinas shrunk, leaving gaps of white in the eyes.
"Affirmative. It is demanding that someone of your strength secure its hefty levers and wield them to efficient use."
"But…why can't anyone else drive the 13th Gear?"
"Because no one else possesses your torque. I hadn't fully modified the android in years, and its outer technology is still quite primitive. On other fronts, the remaining individuals will be downloaded into its digital modifier, storing them in a neatly fastened hard drive, until the redemption of Chan and company is to commence."
"We…are going to be in a computer?" Jade pondered. "Yyyyeeeeessssssssssss! Life's a comic book. Life rules!"
Tohru looked up at the ceiling, hoping someone above would hear his words.
Sigh. "Why must this life happen before the party?"
To Be Continued……