A/N: All right! Now the angles are up! Tajeri Lynn takes you back to the spectacle of "Souls Between the Walls". JCA is still owned by Sony Television, Kids WB, and none other than the Chan Man.

That said, let's ring the bell!

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Souls Between the Walls

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Hsi Wu screamed harshly as the chains refused to make way for his escape. But the pain the chains beared upon him withered in comparison to the pain he felt over Jade's betrayal of his heart, or had it always been the other way around? Coming back to San
Francisco had not become the nightmare he had hoped it would not occur; no, it was far beyond that. Never did he deem Jade being a chi wizard and having the enchantment to remember his once betraying her trust to retrieve his lost tail. Why did he have to be born a demon in the first place? Nothing could be blamed for this but his demonic form and isolation. Had he been born a normal boy, he would've settled for any girl. But Jade had to be the reverie of Hsi Wu's thousand-plus years in this rather shallow and diminutive life. And for that, now he was about to suffer the entire makings of a mortal trap; mortal in that it came from such, and mortal in that he would be forced to depart as he had returned; abruptly.

"What a stuck-up f***-up," chuckled a grouchy, masculine man as the trap door flew open, the man making his jolly descent down the stairs.

"Shift!" Hsi Wu gasped, as he continued to strain himself out of the cocoon of chains as if newfound energy was arriving. "Help me here!" he pleaded with his throat caught up in dragging darkness. "I would rather be under your servitude than never again! Tell me what is to be done, and I will do what you bade!"

"You just don't understand this, do you?" the Shift looked at the demon's face, and held up his calloused hand, beckoning a chain to slither around his arm caringly.

"Of course I understand! The Jade I know has become a chi wizard, a chi wizard! All this time, she set me up so she could…so

she could…destroy ME!" Hsi tumbled out a thick sob of anguish.

"So it seems," the Shift replied, eyes still kept on the chain. "But I promised that you will never need to see me again. And I was honest when Jade couldn't remember anything before her present life. So answer me this question, Hsi Wu.

"Do you recall a time, any point of time, when Jade happened to be given the chance to remember?"

The Sky Demon's red orbs for eyes grew wide, shimmering in a hue of dying, blackish blood, a color of seething eruption. Now, he knew.

"It….Was….YOU!?!?!?" Hsi Wu wrested the chains even fiercer, compelling the chains to nip their beaks harder on his mortal body until thin arcs of his life fluid shot forth. Seymour gasped tiresomely, as his energy was again lost. It was irretrievable as long as he could not become the bat-shaped Sky Demon.

"Unlike your bat case, however," the Shift explained pompously, "Jade was given the chance by her own free will. While you procrastinated on dream street, I had already made my way into the shop, and she took my offer quite nicely, wanting to know who you were back then. Heh. That done, my immortality has been guaranteed."

"Immortality? Why do you still speak that nonsense? What did Jade and I have anything to do with your ambition of immortality?" Hsi Wu groaned weakly.

"Everything. You see, Hsi Wu, the allies downstairs granted me the power to shift from the dream dimension to another dimension. But I am not wholly individual. The reason why you have not seen me so often is because your soul, conscious or not, ensnares my own, a side effect of choosing you as my Another. My only way of being untiring and unending in this world now is if the very being who bridged my way here was to be killed."

Hsi Wu gasped, but his gasp ended with a sudden suspicion. "So why didn't you kill me, after all these months?" Seymour queried urgently, as if the wait over the explanations were killing him.

"If I had killed you, I'd have become directly responsible for ending your own existence, and these stupid rules of magic would have you and I to both be cancelled back into the Dreamscape. But take another, unrelated person to do the kill, and knowing then that it was your fault that you were to be killed, I will grow into the unending being I yearn to become."

"You are a fool. Jade and I will both kill you when we're given the chance!"

"Did my ears hear that right? 'We'? You see, Hsi Wu, I only gave myself the bit part in this charade. Your lies, your deceit, pitted against her wariness and curiosity, all summed up to a situation that had gone awry before I made my debut to you. Do you really think she would blame me for all the things that you have done?"

Hsi Wu frowned in guilt, and his head sunk down, not uttering a word.

"Still, you do want an escape out of here, don't you?" the Shift smiled as he found a large knife, and brandished the rusty edge with his hand. He haughtily threw it a foot afar from the cocoon. No way could Hsi Wu's hands or feet grab it.

"That may be your only chance of escape, if you could ever, ever reach it," the enigma laughed out loud. "Well, I ought to start my vacay right about now. Perhaps a sunny day at the beach ought to do it, so now, you will never see me again." He laughed some more up the stairs, and threw down the trap door with a painful slam.

"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" Hsi Wu exuded riotously, as if he wanted to retort to the trap door, which had to be echoing all the mockeries the Shift and Jade had done to him. The Sky Demon became quiet again, because, so he thought, the trap door was too.

To Be Continued…

A/N: Nothing now yet, but let me tell you amigos that so far "Say Uncle" is in the lead of the election with three votes. Don't worry if you missed the election. It'll come up in another few chapters. Heck, just read the complete "The Life Before the Party" and have another good time. Adios!