A/N: Well, to all y'all who've kept their patience on this one, do not fear. Get jet set, cause the ultimate payoff is a-coming. As always, "Jackie Chan Adventures" is from Kids WB, Sony Television and the Chan Man himself.

Souls Between the Walls

Hsi Wu begrudgingly stared at the glinting knife, which began pointing back at him with its sickly orange spots of age littered across its metal helm. Like the knife, wedged neatly upon the creaky oak floors, the Sky Demon had grown sick, wasted, and trapped, though more in an inward sense this time around. Most torturously of all, he had discovered that he was being used all along for someone's own pleasure, much as a knife was used only because a person wanted to ease the trouble of eating his delicacies. There was no use but to be used. There was, however, one startling contrast between Seymour and the knife. The knife could not know a will to be ended. Hsi Wu did.

Could the ending of his life be the best road back to beatitude? The mortal he had allowed to wander his mind, the only mortal he wanted in his mind, had grown with the intent to rankle it. He had no siblings in this world, they were gone from his sights in this life. He could find no friends to help; they'd think he was as mad as Jade. Certainly nothing can be depended on Jackie and his fellow company; Jackie had known who Jade was since the beginning, and that was why he kept such private conversations with the girl. If only he knew, if only he knew…neither he nor Jade would have to wait while these minutes acted like hours just for the amusement of knowing the inevitable would arise…and crash down into the nothingness.

Hsi Wu shut his eyes, hoping and dreaming that the demon inside would grab a helpless Jade and tear her tenderness apart, but that vision never existed. That same, foolish vision, of him lusting for a girl that dragged him to who knows where, that was all he could see. Now he knew what this meant. Jade had to be destroyed, for she could only be a cruel illusion, one that was always being used against his whim and will.

"Jade…Jade…" he bemoaned audibly. Then his face cringed in resolution. "No, Jade was a dream, always a dream!……She must…remain a dream…But...how, how…?"

As if reading his mind, the chain wound tightly about his neck nipped closely to his face in reprehension. An angered Hsi Wu spat at its apparent beak, and it clapped its ends more rapidly, demanding a challege. The Sky Demon then recognized the opportunity at claw.

"Why do you still keep me alive, foolish chain?" he taunted at it haughtily.

The chain turned away from him.

"Ignoring me? Ignore this!" the Sky Demon bit his mortal mouth on the chain's jugular, scratching away at the iron density of the chain's linkages. On wary impulse, the other chains constricted him tighter, grasping him tighter, attempting to dispose of his breathing, allowing him no choice but to spew back his would-be casualty. In seconds, the bitten chain rose weakly, and apparently observing the workings of its own mutilation, it darted straight to Hsi Wu's throat in riposte. But the Sky Demon haggardly opened his jaws and he frightened the chain and had it scurrying under the table.

"All of a sudden, you are scared?" the Sky Demon continued to gibe, the chains locked on him in anticipation. "Having a hard time keeping me bound? Then why not you kill me, right here, with that knife upon the floor? Go ahead. No wait, you're still listening to the orders of your mistress, Jade, are you? Face it, you steel serpent. She wouldn't mind whether she does the kill or you do, just so long as I am dead. Take the chance. One swift slash, and it shall be done."

The other chains gripped Hsi Wu's neck, hoping to listen to a few cracks as they continued their torture. But the lone chain eagerly scurried toward the knife, and whirled its beak readily around the handle. The other chains peered at their crony's manner, and began to slightly open a way for the chain to stab the knife deep into the heart of the Sky Demon.

Familiar thumps began arriving from above the basement. The chi sorceress had made her return, ready to be his final undoing. The keys were once again rattling as one clearly began to unlock the trap door.

Hsi Wu kept his patience thick. "Every second of life here is torture to me," he baded the chain. "End it, now!" he gave another swift spit to it.

The chain grew mad and blindingly dashed the knife point forward into Hsi Wu's chest. His veins nearly erupting off his skin, Hsi Wu pulled himself one step to the right, dragging the edge of the cocoon right in the route of the seething knife. The knife skewered through the cocoon of chains, slicing through many of them into fragmented rings of metal. The torrent of fragments confused those chains still in one piece, granting the Sky Demon time to loosen himself and throw all of them up against the walls.

"Yes!" Hsi Wu yelled as he quickly balled himself and cast a Chi spell upon himself. Whipping flames of light engulfed his every inch to as a familiar metamorphosis was coming into form.

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Jade hummed a disturbing tune as she opened the trapdoor and giddily hopped down the stairs with a pouch tied up in silken rope clutched in one hand. She had to ponder several miles away from the shop to find this ingredient. Her feet had already grown tired from all the walking she had to do, but it was going to be worth it, what she wanted to do with His Wu.

"Alright, Hsi Wu, now comes the time to-No!" Jade screamed. All of a sudden, she looked down the flight of stairs. She abruptly dropped her bag, which tinkered off the stairs down somewhere.

And there he stood once again. Hsi Wu.

Hsi Wu, not Seymour Jahoositz.

Hsi Wu, the reptilian bat demon with his spindly wings and hideously hollow torso, reared his scarlet glare and a toothy smile against the girl of his dreams, and now his nightmares.

Hsi Wu leapt with both his claws upon Jade's shoulders, but the girl blindingly flashed her fingers, emitting a teal flash that thrusted the Sky Demon off into a wall. Regrettably, His Wu's thorns were stabbed through the firm masonry, forcing him to wile away his refreshed vigor on his own self. His claws latched onto his spikes, and he pulled in frustration, knowing what Jade was capable of wielding at the moment.

"You won't leave this time! I won't let you!" The chi sorceress hastily skipped across the goliath stacks of books. She slid under a study desk and began to collect the remnants of her snakes of steel. Pulling the pile closer to her face, Jade muttered several incoherent words.

Hsi Wu gasped as he finally wrenched his head off the wall. With renewed panic, he leapt off his former confinement as several chains crashed through it, some of them spilling back down to the floor in a cacophony of clangs. The Sky Demon unfurled his leather wings and blew away a mess of the airborne chains from his sphere. All books standing on their ends collapsed down and knocked their nearby artifacts like dominoes. But the chains persevered, and they resorted back to slithering across the walls in pursuit of their mistress' presumed enemy.

Jade was now growling, clasping her teeth at the unnecessary chaos before her. "There's no running away, Hsi Wu! You either taste my spell or taste my wrath!"

"Spell? The spell!" Hsi Wu's face scrunched in aggression, but the demon was awaken by a trio of chains whapping his scaly cheek to and fro. His Wu yelled and backhanded the chains down with unkempt force. His scarlet orbs skimpered his vision across the chamber, till they stopped at the presence of Jade's spell book. The Sky Demon neatly folded his wings into a sleek stance that enabled him to barely graze over the floor. Leaping over the stacks, he grasped the stumbled book upon his disheveled claws, and madly tore off the aged page that Jade had kept her minute fingers on.

"NO!" Without any precautions, Jade levitated her red sneakers off the stairs and fell onto the unwary His Wu's body. The fall knocked the wind out of both of them. At once, the storm of flying chains dissipated upon Jade's collision with the Demon, and soon enough, the steel snakes withered back to the floor, harmless as rain drops.

Despite his state, Hsi Wu, having had the bigger structure, had the advantage and crunched the page into a ragged ball. Still a pressing weight on the Sky Demon, and gasping at the mess done to the spell, Jade angrily lodged a fist into his jaw, and Hsi Wu gagged at the punch, his reeling face titled on the floor with a thud. Jade used her confidence to send another fist for good measure, until the Sky Demon took advantage of the feigned unconsciousness and whipped one of the chains onto her hands. Kneeling on the balls of his feet, Hsi Wu hopped backward, rendering Jade confused at the chain's lock around her arm. Hsi Wu held the chain hard, and stamped it down so Jade slipped off her shoes and fell flat on her face. He pressed a knee onto the small small of her back, and weaved more chains under the duress still looming inside him.

By the time Jade opened her eyes again, she had become confined to a cocoon of the steel snakes, much like the contraption she had wielded upon the Sky Demon. The demon, too, had an angry smile as he stabbed the last chain to the wall, screwing it neatly into the masonry, keeping the chi sorceress down.

"Ooh! I'll show you!" Jade replied menacingly, before casting another chi spell. Teal light began to encircle the cocoon, and the chains whipped in their vibrant recourse. But then, they started to screech as neither one could leave the cocoon. "Huh? Urrr! What have you done to me? You're…unh!…not going away from here! I'll find you wherever you…unh!…wherever you go!"

Hsi Wu spoke nothing, but raised up the crumpled ball of paper before the bound Jade, and tauntingly peeled away a strip off the ball, one after another, until a mess of the strips twirled upon her feet.

Jade's face softened in panic. "No, please…Hsi Wu, I was wrong," she suddenly whimpered. "I'll…I'll change…I-I promise I won't chase you. Please, just don't tear the page, please?" She batted her puppy eyes at him.

Hsi Wu's face narrowed in contempt and distrust, and the Sky Demon was only compelled to hasten with the peels on the sphere, until the sphere shrunk and vanished. A pile of peels scattered over the floor was all that remained of the page. The Sky Demon's steps elicited the peels to dance and spin over the feet of the chi sorceress.

"I guess now that the spell is gone, I won't need to worry about you anymore, eh?" Hsi Wu chuckled and spat a dab of viscous saliva onto Jade's hair, her bangs growing more disheveled from the saliva's uneven binding threads. Jade quivered her head to ward away the saliva, and the gestures only allowed the saliva to trail down her face, blinding one of her eyes.

Hsi Wu walked up the stairs, and saw the pouch, the one containing the chi spell ingredient, lying there on the lower steps. Looking back at the bound sorceress, the Sky Demon silently grabbed the pouch, coiling its silk rope about one claw, and soared through the doorway.

The trap door clanged down with a shut, and the jingle of keys rotated the lock on the ceiling. And then, there was nothing but the sound of nothing.

"Hsi-Hsi Wu?" Jade squeaked in her innocent tone of voice, but only echoes approached her from the cracking walls.

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Hsi Wu threw the keys away, not caring where they had been sent off to. All he knew was that this new offer on life had become a lie, all of it.

Was there anything to be grateful of now? Ah yes, the Shift. That over-bearing imbecile assumed Jade would become His Wu's undoing, but the Sky Demon outwitted both mortals. There was no way the Shift can gain the privilege of immortality. By now, a truck had probably zoomed by and banished the Shift back to the stale Dreamscape. The fool must be weeping away at his latest folly.

"I must make myself a new domain," Hsi Wu abruptly pondered to himself. Indeed, while entertaining himself at the thoughts of everyone's catastrophes but his own, the Sky Demon now knew he can no longer depend on the mortals as he had done so. "Thriving in this mortal life was useless. Why can't I abandon it right now?" His claws curled up in uneasy concentration over the prospects to be undertaken. The Sky Demon noticed one claw was carrying a burden unlike the other. He raised up this claw in annoyance, and there was the pouch still twirled on it. He pulled it off, and untied the band strapping the pouch.

"Perhaps this should tell me what I must do to Jade. One horrid favor deserves another. Hee, hee, hee," Hsi Wu chuckled in mad obsession as the pouch opened wide, and then, a small octagon rattled down to the floor.

Hsi Wu knelt down and raised the octagon to his glowing red eyes. There was a Chinese symbol etched on its broad side. Hsi Wu read the incantation, and bewildered at what he read, blinked and read it again. This wasn't any usual chi spell he was staring at. The calligraphic swirls arched in this design weren't telling him that this was a symbol meant to destroy demons. It wasn't meant to even destroy mortal beings.

Ai. The symbol read Ai. But Ai meant lo…lo…..lo….

His Wu wished he couldn't make out this revelation, yet he did. His knees dropped and banged the floor to its understructure. All of a sudden, it made sense to him.

Jade was making a spell so HE could love HER.

And now he knew. Amidst the storm, he had denied himself of his wish, and hers…

Hsi Wu's throat became stark dry and a rattling jolted it more. The demon groaned in anger and threw his claws onto his face, but it was no use. Already, his eyes flowed with strings of tears, something his demon brethren would be disgraced to see, had they ever lived. His hands recklessly tried to parry the tears away, and to no relief. The tears elusively sank through the crevices between each scrawny claw, dampening the scales lining across them. Groaning as if to disguise his hulking sobs, the Sky Demon gripped where his heart was, fearing to himself that the pain desired it to explode. But he resentfully pulled the claw away, now growing paranoid that maybe his claw would rip into his innards.

"I…need…to…get out!" he outburst sobs again as he tumbled his demon shape towards the allowable oak door. Hsi Wu slithered his way into escape, his claws stabbing over the surface with bits of splintered wood sprouting upon every stab of the claw.

Hsi Wu's sobs vibrated the panels right below his face, and the echoes made him sob more, until the sobs began to contrast with his own. The sequence no longer obeyed his way, and instead went in the way of another….

Another…

Jade!

The Sky Demon reared his face to the trap door that laid beside his feet. He could hear her pleas, her anger, her dying among those sobs. Jade was now sad, broken, weak, and trapped in her own little magical chamber. Hsi Wu shut his eyes and knew he couldn't do anything about the death of her happiness. But keeping her trapped…that was something he could rectify.

His tear-stained claws scattered around the card collections aimlessly, and with luck, a claw caught the touch of the rusted key. He grabbed the key and rapidly screwed the key through the lock on the trap door. When the lock clicked, the sound quieted down Hsi Wu, as he hoisted the door to the cracking wall without incurring any noise to tell her that it was the Sky Demon. But a small bang grew out of his demonic haste, and upon the abrupt pitch, Jade let out a husky gasp that took Hsi Wu aback.

The world resorted to silence again, and then, a clatter grew, and grew, and grew…

Hsi Wu gathered his breath, knowing it came from the knife, the one laying upon the mess of broken chains, overturned books, and teetering artifacts. Jade's chi spell had brought the knife to life.

"NO!" Hsi Wu yelled in utmost dismay. Hurriedly spreading his wings, the Sky Demon lunged into the chamber, right into Jade, aware that he had to dispel the greatest fear in his life, the one that he never had during his millennial imprisonment in the Netherworld, and the one that only was born in a brief chronology of recent memory.

"Ah!" Jade squeaked desperately as she felt it. But…not a trickle of blood was pouring from her throat. Jade opened her eyes and pouted audibly, before her eyes caught notice of Hsi Wu.

Hsi Wu stood next to the mortal girl. His claws were furiously abound the knife, whose tip was quivering as an attempt to pierce Jade's throat, and spill her elixir of life to the ground. The demon looked at the knife, and stabbed the sinister object on the floor, snapping the rusted knife in two lifeless pieces.

"What…are you doing…you stupid demon?!"

"I wanted to ask you the same question, save for the stupid demon part," Hsi Wu stared up at Jade, and his face fell when their eyes connected.

Jade looked horrible. That angelic face was disfigured by the multitude of tears that shone across her skin. Even when she didn't want to speak, Jade reluctantly choked at the sobs pouring with no clear end. And her lustful golden eyes were being intruded by red threads seeping through her corneas as if to crack them at any moment.

Hsi Wu sighed, tenderly raising his claws up to her. "Jade, I-"

"I won't hear any of your-!" Jade shook her head with psychotic defiance, and suddenly, she paused as she took notice of something. "Hsi Wu, w-were you…crying?"

"Ah? Um, no..yes..no…I mean yes! I didn't know, Jade. I should've known…" his sentences faded into mumbles.

"Known what?" she queried, her eyes narrowed back again in anger.

"That…you loved me," Hsi Wu whispered.

"Hsi Wu…" Jade struggled against another choke, and faltered miserably. "Did you ever truly love me?"

"How could I not?"

Jade spun her face aside from him, shutting her eyes, knowing how helpless she was under the demon at her state. "Everywhere I go, you're always going the other way. You're never around to stay for long. When I first met you as Seymour, you didn't want to be my friend, you just wanted your tail, and you've done the same things over again. But that's the problem with all of you demons, isn't it?" she softened at the last words, as if aware of guilt, "Mortals are like the cards of a game to play."

"Jade," Hsi Wu walked over to her, "this is not a game, and you're not a card. You live, you breathe, and that's not what a card can be. You're better than that. I didn't want to go away, Jade, not from someone special like you. I…got frightened of losing my own life. Had I been denied of my life, I can never have you. When you kept me in this chamber, I was afraid that you were going to kill me. That would've been the saddest thing I'd ever known, to be killed by someone you love, and maybe never assuring to that mortal how much you love that being. But you couldn't know that, not while you were living without knowing who I really was."

Jade twitched her eyes at all her ears had caught.

"I cried up there because I misunderstood what you wanted to do," Hsi Wu continued. "You wanted to cast a spell on me with a love talisman. Jade, you can't control someone to choose as you please. That would be like turning that life into a card, giving that life little choice, and only one direction. I thought after hurting you, keeping you in these chains, that I had lost my chance to regain your love. Well here I stand, choosing to regain your friendship, choosing not to leave you thinking that the only choice left was to kill yourself, and choosing to beg forgiveness for what I couldn't understand. I have no desire to play you, no more, not after knowing even more about you. Jade, let this be known to you.

"I love you, and I am here to stay close to you, if you so choose to, of course. That can be a choice to make……can't it?"

Jade stared at the Sky Demon with eyes watering in pure relief.

"Hsi Wu….I'm sorry that I didn't let you know. I…I want to stay with you. Please don't go away, okay, Hsi Wu?" Jade spoke softly, trailing tears that were quickly being brushed away by Hsi Wu's delicate gestures of his claws.

Hsi Wu perked his giant jaw into a smile. "I shall not, Jade. May I remove your confinements now?" Jade acquiescently remained still as the Sky Demon observed the nest of chains, and pulled away at a single knot on her side. With that, the chains all fell onto the floor, and a tired Jade would've slipped from the momentary atrophy had Hsi Wu not grasped her entire self around his arms.

Jade chirped a long sigh that was melodic to Hsi Wu as her arms grasped over his own self. In reply, Hsi Wu expressed a sigh to match that of his asserted lover. The two, demon and mortal, remained silent, permitting each other's arms around each other's waists and each other's heads upon each other's shoulders.

Hsi Wu could hear the mews and feel the gracious aura of Jade Chan surrounding every bit of him. His face perched to the back of her neck, and willingly bestowed her a kiss there, feeling her skin for what felt like the first time.

As he did this, though, Jade nudged his face away from her neck and closer towards her vibrant face. Their eyes, he of scarlet, she of golden, met as they did many times before. Only this time, both began to discern a newfound intent for their inseparable other.

And their intent was only getting stronger…

To Be Continued…

A/N: This is especially for the one who I said this fic was going to come up next week. If she believes what I said, she's not going to be pleased one bit…

Then again, the next chapter will take a LONG time to finish, so adios, amigos!