A/N: Well, when life gives you lemons.....chuck the lemons back at life! Welcome back, amigos to Chappie 6 of "Say Uncle", another product of Totally Bored Enterprises. My legions of fans are lying dormant from college work. Sigh....but the escapist adventure MUST go on.
I have to confess that the story's about to take a new direction. I've concocted its plotline since the summer but now it may change, if not because I've taken too much time starting the actual adventure feeling, which I don't think really has occurred. Well, here we go...
Say Uncle
Chapter 6: Know-hows
Captain Black began nursing his bruised eye with a cloth heavy with warm, mineral-free water. Nurses at Section 13 tried tending with him, but Black strayed off from their arms' reach for fear that he'd tingle their hearts. He'd rather not get cozy with women in the workplace. The blood-sucking Feds would love bumping off rebels off their elitist posts. Job opportunities were harder to catch than the flu, after all.
"I thought you said this would find Jackie's Uncle in minutes," Black half-urged, half-questioned to Tohru.
"May need more time," was all Tohru could come up with at the present moment. Checking up with Jackie proved more fulfilling.
Jackie rested upon a foldable steel chair in the midst of Kepler's private Eden, allegedly the safest room within Section 13. Coils of vast electronic wiring matted down the walls while populaces of lazy machinery had been given random spaces to occupy under the cap-wearing, science-fiction loving, no-time-for-bullshitting rocket scientist. Since the devastating incident with Xu Lin, Section 13 awaited days (though for Black, days felt like months) to incur the vast pool of funds necessary for conjuring every bone, every flesh, every drip of authoritative blood that the goliath of Section 13 had housed and always must house. Until the right day came, Section 13 had remained a shell of its former self, and Kepler's lab was the safest for reasons as a harbinger for every security device to the nation's quaint knowledge. Jackie looked up at the ceiling, groaning as several unused cannons lay dormant, their incendiary noses pointing towards him like predators, predators aware of a prey's futility to escape. If this was the safest room in Section 13, what would be the safest room in the world?
Thinking about Uncle wasn't the proper strategy. So Jackie picked up a thingamajig his elbow had deliberately bumped into, and blew off the aged dust lounging across its metallic sheen. "Will you be coming with us, Black? I know it might be asking too much, but...."
"You never ask too much, Jackie," Black frowned, "You're always right on target. Least I still got my three eyes, including our satellite far off in the heavens. Once you work your magic, Jackie, I'll let X-3 pinpoint your uncle and keep him at every minute."
While Black provided these explanations, Dr. Kepler took the liberty to add the incentive right on cue. "The senior will be a most daunting task to probe about, so I'm bestowing you an incentive for your maximum advantage, a com mechanism, to be succinct."
"Thank you. Um, how do I operate it?"
"Forgive my boorish language," Kepler corrected his glasses as he stood next to Chan and held up the hand holding the mechanism. "This is Silicon Ghost. Hate to use such a common word, but it was requisite to hasten the patent. Unlike previous ghost devices, no heat detectors can perceive where you are when you blend into a choice environment. Under strict executive orders I've been advised not to disclose the full schematics. For the time being, though, Black is entitling you to use it, provided your uncle will remain too unkempt to neutralize face to face."
"Please understand this, Jackie," added Black. "We tried reasoning with Kirishima before, but he nearly tore the whole roof down on us, you and I both. In this kind of situation, stealth may be your best means to handle him. I know he's your uncle, Jackie....And I know how much you love him. But as much as it stings me to say this, your Uncle doesn't know that, not as long as he has that curse on him."
"I'll have to agree with you."
"Affirmative," added in Kepler. "Now let us proceed into more privileged territory. I may be neither an Einstein nor a Hawkins when it comes to magic, but I possess intellect enough to configure one variable isn't sufficient to save him, or you, alone."
"Luckily for us, I still kept the Horse Talisman," Tohru spoke. "Magic must defeat magic, sensei always said. Black, on Jackie's part, I ask of receiving the other talismans to find Jackie's uncle."
"Accepted," Black spoke without warning, and with that, Tohru left the main office.
Kepler offered the Silicon Ghost to Jackie and awaited the Chan Man to deliver the object to his khaki pocket before continuing on. "So I see you have yourself the cure, but as is the case with all cures, it's commended they be assisted by varying forms of treatment."
"Treatment?" Jackie puzzled.
"Defensive treatment." He fished through a shelf of gadgetry that lied with one side pointing up like they were dead. Kepler's hands touched a percentage of salvation; a bag carrying orange plastic bottles with bits of pills inside. "Here, take one."
"Ah, what's this?"
"Aspirin. Relieves headaches 99.99% of the time, at least to an individual such as myself."
"Hmm? Ah! AGH! URGH!" Jackie's mind suddenly felt like a vehicle, a vehicle stripped of control, slamming its brakes just as it collided to solid concrete at hundreds of miles an hour. He tossed away the bottle of aspirin and Kepler ducked as the bottle was lobbed like a discus, spinning furiously at a speed that would fine-tune a man's face to a despicable hue of rotten grapes. In his mind's eye, Jackie watched himself leave himself and dash through miles of earth so blindingly that it felt like a furious flipping of epic photographs rather than an actual trip. The sunny skies submitted to the tsuki's white gleam and the domineering kingdom of darkness just as it paced towards a ancient castle controlled by.
"Uh!" Jackie collapsed knees banging painfully to the floor, gasping, sweating. He wasn't aware of the sweat pouring to the floor like he had dove down a dastardly deluge, but he did catch a look at Captain Black, his arms outstretched as if wishing for some way to subdue the madness of his friend.
"Jackie! Kepler, get Tohru back here now!" Black commanded, eyes set at the scientist in a literal jiffy as the sound of a squeaking door became the mere testament to Kepler's obedience. Black turned back at Jackie, who was now clutching his chest. "Jackie, did you see Uncle?"
"No, no," Jackie calmed. "Now I know. He has Uncle, Black."
"Who? Who has him?!"
CRASH!
"DA-DA-DA-DA! Here comes the pain!" ululated a swirling cerulean cloud as it morphed into the spectacle of three dauntless figures. These three once were normal human beings, much as you and I, beings who had unwillingly sold their souls to the mastery of Dark Chi, Daolan Wong, after a botched robbery left Wong's original chi warriors imprisoned under the good chi wizard's know-how of the good arts. Now, these three beings felt soaring new power with each objective given to them, as well as weapons who listened to them, muscles that knew no exhaustion, and a skin more orange than one could gain out of consuming a thousand carrots a year. And that ominous power was to be directed once more, against the very man whose uncle was their master's most treasured asset.
"Daolan Wong," bemoaned Jackie to Black. "Oh boy," said Cappie B.
"Hey," said the thickest and baldest of the chi warriors. "It's Jackie Chan who's got that finding spell."
"Aw great!" yelled the oval-headed elf of the trio, who also sported a whipping ponytail and a Tong-Fu sporting the guise of a quarter stave. "We're supposed to stop Jackie Chan of all people?! We should've just spent our lives buying Lotto tickets!"
"Forget it, Chow!" chided the loudest chi warrior, who bore the most pointed proboscis despite his former reputation as a ladies' man. "Let's wipe clean the old mistakes of the past, after we clean the Chanster off of his slate!" The warrior opened up his right palm and in reply was born a triple-bladed chakra that whirled its razor presence, cutting through air molecules as it aimed towards Jackie.
"Bwah!" Jackie screamed and rose both hands into the air, before he himself whirled blindingly like he became the chakra itself. He crouched up and instead found himself in the hallways of Section 13.
"Wha-wha?" Finn gawked at the site as his hands retrieved the clean chakra. From his left, the Dark Chi Enforcer found himself sidelined by a charging cannon ball of white and black. Finn hit both Chow and Ratso as they all joined together , banging the wall.
"You!" Tohru arose from the whirls, the Rabbit Talisman in hand. His teeth clenched uneasily. "Daolan Wong's trying to keep sensei away from us, isn't he?! What does he want from him!?"
"What's it to you, Big T?" Finn smiled, his hands beneath each other's elbows.
"Yeah, stick to yourself!" Chow cried as he thrust his staff towards Tohru's face. Tohru clapped both rough hands into the weapon and threw its foolish bearer face-first into the wall again. Bang "OW!" mumbled Chow jarringly. "Biting my tongue hurts!"
"Raah!" Ratso ran in wielding sledge hammer in hand, aiming the weapon from behind the sumo's skull.
Feeling left behind by a corner, Captain Black whirled the secretive hems of his dark black coat before rising up a shiny, one-armed friend dearest to his side. He aimed the friend at Ratso's hammer and launched forth three of his friend's little babies, each doing enough to render the sledge hammer into a whisk of blue smoke.
"Hey!" Ratso shouted as if he had just been cheated off the game. Tohru turned and didn't waste any mercy on the magic being. He slapped a suffocating palm to the neck of Ratso and slammed him to the ground. Ratso instantly shattered into bits of wispy smoke.
But from behind the half-ton sumo, Finn guided his chakra up overhead and permitted it to skewer the iron chains suspending a unpatented cannon model above the laboratory. "Look, ma, no hands!" Finn taunted the sumo with palms widespread next to his ears. Before the sumo could react further, his current position became occupied by a tumbling amalgam of steel that had cost taxpayers billions, and now was worth no more. The quaking vibrations sent shrapnel and Kepler's other invaluables raining over Angus Black, who disappeared among mists of black smoke and broken metal clashing onto one another.
"Heh. Ssscore!" Finn spoke up before the mess. As Ratso would've put it, it was like the Fourth of July, only without gunpowder.
"Time to cut Tohru down to size!" declared Chow.
"Hello, Chow, Priority One?! Chan's the real deal," Finn called over to Chow, at once pulling his pancaked friend as they ran out the lab door.
Captain Black groaned as he opened the door off a vehicle prototype that had fallen onto him. Luckily, the prototype was hollow on one side; if Kepler had completed everything that was in the lab, Black would most certainly have been doomed. Well ain't it great that Kepler was only human?
"Tohru!" Black exclaimed as a massive forearm rose out of a hill of metallic spheres and computer chips.
"Ur...." the forearm motioned in reaction to the friendly voice. "Black, take the Rabbit Talisman and get to Jackie! I'm only stuck here for the moment."
A silent red alert was sounded in the lab. Apparently, Finn and Chow were still in Section 13, and so was Jackie.
"Right!" Black's emerald eyes grew alert as an eagle's. He caught the talisman and zoomed off just as a wide-eyed Kepler croaked and slumped back first, completely dazed at the ruins of his bizarritorium.
Black raced through with Rabbit Talisman in hand. In no time, he'll get to Chan's location, and in record time at that.
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Obeying the masses before him, a federal agent cocked back a service Glock and pinpointed it in the midst of the elitists' cafeteria. "Got a good shot here!"
"You can't do it," said another agent, "not with the archaeologist being followed and us in the way."
"Then why'd we take out our guns!?"
The agent looked at the hopeless crowd of armed servicemen. "Uh, good point there."
Chow lashed his staff at Jackie but only succeeded in cracking the yellowing green brick wall. Jackie at once saw Finn racing at Jackie's tail. Proving his legibility for a circus act, Jackie planted his right boot against the wall and spun 360 degrees vertically, whipping Finn's chin to the stratosphere while banishing Chow's jaw to the cold, unfeeling floor.
Finn acrobated in midair as he brought back the chakra. "Face it, Chan. You're no match for Finn-kin Park!"
"But you're not even a park!" Jackie ran frantically as he rolled across a couple of cafe benches. "Scuse me, whoops, sorry, didn't mean to smash your sandwich, I promise to buy you another, thank you!"
"Hah!" Chow sprung his wiry feet just as Jackie was about to tumble off a bench. He aimed a boot and guillotined Jackie across the back of the neck, causing the Chan Man to yelp as he lost momentum and collapsed into another table of dishes, which awarded Jackie plenty of food worth stuffing into his face but instead got stuffed over his face.
"Take a time out, Chan. A permanent one!" Chow split the staff back into its veritable three-way nunchuku, the Tong Fu, and came homing in on the archaelogist's raven-haired gourd.
Shaking the bits of delicacy off his face, Jackie felt an annoying glass apparatus tingle at his shoulder, but just as he instinctively dusted it off, he recognized the tool to be an unmistakable pepper shaker. He popped open the metal stopper in the shaker before letting its contents prey their might over Chow's squarish snub.
"A-ah-achoo!" Chow sneezed to his right.
"Hey!" Finn yelled as he cowered from Chow, just inches beside him. "Sneeze at someone else, would y-" WHAP! Jackie rose his knee delicately up to the ceiling before the leg swung and thrust both Finn and Chow dead on to the distance, where the sound of a bizarre gnawing whirred instantly towards Jackie Chan. "AAH!" Chan's eyes bulged before Chan springboarded off a table that declined into two clean halves from a zooming chakra.
"Now you're not playing fair!" Finn chided in unkempt rage, as he blindingly threw the chakra without a care as to who got minced in the process. Splinters of wood threatened to assist the chakra in disabling the Chan Man. Jackie jumped up at one time with birch darts barely bouncing off his loafers. Jackie leapt over one table just as its legs got caught in the grip of the chakra and flew seemingly miles afar to hammer a flying boot onto Finn's face, with a whistling whack! Finn gasped as he poofed into a cloud of temporary dust.
"Uh..." Chow looked around with Jackie, arms ready up for another fight, and the secret agents, arms ready to fire their arms. "Uh, I surrender?" He rose up his hands.
"You do?" Jackie asked bewilderingly.
"Hey, it hurts to vanish, you know. Don't think immortality's painless!" Chow explained, as if assuming the whole world would know such facts.
Jackie stared at him. "O.k., then. What does Daolan Wong want to do with my uncle?"
"Uh, I don't know that." The guns were artificially cocked again like the agents really meant to shoot him. "Um, actually I do know that. Daolan Wong needed that sword, but he can't get it off your old man's hands. He's too clever."
"Why does Wong need the sword?"
"You really want my master po'ed, do you!" Chik-Chik-Chak! "Uh, um, uh, okay! Wong's after some kind of treasure, says the sword of Krishima's linked to it!"
"Kirishima," corrected Jackie Chan. "Where will he be going?"
"Can't tell, and don't shoot me, cause I ain't lying. Daolan Wong hasn't figured it all out, he can't read the sword. All I know is that he's still in our bungalow and that he won't let us hurt your old man."
"So Uncle's being kept alive," smiled Jackie deeply inside. "He's still alive!"
"Yes," came an glowing portal swirling between Jackie and Chow. "The old chi wizard will be spared until his usefulness comes to an end!" A yellowish-gray face arose in the portal, dotted with all manners of freakish makeup.
"Daolan Wong!" growled Jackie. "What are you here for?"
"First of all, to rid the scene of my most futile minion!" Chow poofed into a blue wisp inside Daolan Wong's crooked scepter. "And second of all, to warn you that it won't be all sunshine and meadows for much longer. I will unpuzzle the puzzle of the sword, and I will find a way to make your uncle my personal minion....for all eternity! Hah hah hah! Hah hah hah! Hah hah-cough, cough, cough, cough! Arr! This is why I never laugh every day!" Poof!
"No!" Jackie roared defiantly, hands gripping his hair. "You will not have Uncle! Are you listening? You will NOT!"
"Jackie, please calm yourself!" Black arrived. "He's gone. And like you heard, Uncle will be alright!"
"Black, you're okay, uh, except...how'd you get two black eyes?"
Black rubbed his eyes and felt the bruises, sighing as he rose a talisman. "Um, Mr. Rabbit here led me straight to a wall. I'm still a klutz with this whole magic thing, believe me. But let's not dwell too much about me. Was that Daolan Wong who spoke?"
"Yes. He has Uncle, Captain Black. Daolan Wong's being delayed by the sword of Kirishima. And from the chi spell, I don't think Wong has any intentions of leaving his place. He's at the castle nearby the Ben Shui order of Tibet."
Black smacked a knuckle to one palm. "I remember that place far too well. Been a long while since I wanted to bury Wong neck deep in mud! We're going there to rescue your uncle faster than a speeding rabbit!"
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"If only I were fast as rabbit! Bah, what has old junk monger been doing in spare time? Not cleaning filth across his library, I see!" Mama Tohru took each book off the shelf and handed them over to Jade Chan, who was groaning with each multi-paged burden added to her arms.
"T-Mom, where are we going to place these books?"
"In trash can. Your billy goat keeping books to invite roaches in. Roaches must be his best friends."
"Hey, don't talk to Uncle like that! He cleans up the library, well, at least Tohru does."
"My point exactly. My son cleans up, not the old billy goat. Sigh. But it is a chore. I am getting too old for cleanup myself," Mama Tohru spoke taxingly as several texts were permitted to slip off her fingers.
Jade dropped her pile of books. "Then let's stop trying to clean up and join Jackie and Tohru! They won't notice much of a difference once they come back."
"Oh, you sound like such a clever child, except lambs must realize who their shepherds are, and I am your shepherd! It not even Fourth of July and people use fireworks everywhere but here! I almost get heart attack 1000 days a year! You glad you so young, I almost die million times from Jackie's adventures!"
Ring Ring!
A mocha-skinned woman entered into the shop, donning sunglasses and a bandanna over her felicitous face. Evidence showed of her unfamiliarity with the area, as her boot bumped right into a vase of Uncle's used incense sticks. All newcomers fell for that.
Mama Tohru jumped onto the cashier's desk. "If you are customer, do not come, cause junk shop's being closed here to eternity!"
"T-Mom!" shouted Jade to the shameless matriarch of the sumo. She approached towards the customer with a serviceable grin. "No need to worry about my friend here. Whatever you're looking for, stick around and I can make it a sale!"
"Actually, I'm just pursuing a Mr. Jackie Chan," the woman spoke. "Is he here?"
"N-No..." Jade spoke uneasily. She so distrusted strangers who asked about uncle Jackie, but wisely refused to admit that. "Maybe I could give Jackie a message."
"No, it's best I make a greet and meet him with personally. I appreciate your help."
"Hey, don't you go anywhere, I know who you are!" Jade pointed a finger, eyebrows slid down in anger. "You're that woman from India who conned uncle Jackie!"
The woman remained quiet, but agreeably unclipped the sunglasses concealing her purple eyes. "So much for conning my accent. You're still the perceptive one, I see."
"Don't go flattering me, Portia! I remember who you are and I can bring you back in the slammer once and for all." Jade threatened with a telephone. "So what are you going to do now, huh?"
"Just leave. You do know Jackie never called the police on me."
"No. Wait. He never did?"
"Figured I'd learn a lesson by myself. I can never thank him enough."
"Oh my god!" Jade held her face, eyes a-bulging. "There's a criminal in the shop and Jackie never had her arrested? What-was-he-thinking?!"
"What criminal?" Mama Tohru spoke in irritation over such confusion. "All I see is woman wanting to make bargain at old man's junk shop. Though I doubt we earn little more than a penny!"
"Quite right," Portia mused as she toyed a bit with some antique tea cups. "I was just hoping I'd catch up to Mr. Chan before he went out on another artifact spree."
"Hah, I know exactly what you mean, little girl," Mama Tohru replied with a wry smile, preparing a certain put-down. "When Jackie comes back with his billy goat for an uncle, he-mmpphr!"
"T-Mom, quiet down!" Jade rode on the shoulders of Mama Tohru, trying to silence the louder but taller of the shop's dual supervisors. "Heh, heh. Mama T. gets a little out of the head once in a while."
"Not as much as billy goat going crazy with a sword. Next time, I try and tear down big convention roof on him! See if he likes that!"
"Ooh! Why you!" Jade stammered.
As the conflict between the youngest Chan and the eldest Tohru unfolded, Portia found it best to enter back to the void outside of the shop.
"Chan's uncle has gone AWOL? And I thought I precipitated the sour mood," Portia smiled, then frowned. "But from the sound of it, he's the old man under Daolan Wong's custody. What a coincidence. Helping his uncle will be quite a hassle....without an intervention from yours truly, that is!"
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To Be Continued....
A/N: Memo to Me, need to revise final half of this chapter. Till then, enjoy my faithful amigos!