Uploaded: 24th July 2004
Chapter 4: Frozen Water
Jack Spicer trundled through the large caverns, tentatively clutching his black torch in his right hand, and his beeping Shen-Gong-Wu-tracking detecto-bot in the other. He had a group of his flying robots with him, which had their chest compartments wide open with large bright flashlights, making his own little torch seem a bit redundant. Still, you could never be too careful. That's why he was wearing one of his newest devices on his chest, just waiting to be used – he'd come extra prepared, this time, and he would be ready for the Xiaolin warriors when they came. And Wuya and Raimundo too. Heck, he could take on the whole world if he wanted once he got the Shen Gong Wu – if only it wasn't so dark in here ...
Jack jumped, suddenly. He looked around in a panicked fashion. "Erm ... Did you hear anything?"
"No, sir," replied one robot.
"Good," he said, trying to sound brave, but looking nervous. "I was, er, testing you. There's no-one else here."
If the robots had been programmed to be able to sigh, they would have. They might even have asked why humans were so irrationally fearful of the dark, too. That had been the third time he'd done that now ...
A light shone brightly from somewhere up ahead, and Jack continued walking in that direction, coming to a T-junction. The light came from the right, and he turned in this direction. Here, thankfully for Jack, there was enough light to see without the torch or the flashlights, so he ordered his robots to turn off their lights, and he pocketed his torch inside a mechanical compartment, ready to be used if he needed it again.
Five minutes later, he came to another T-junction, with a stream that ran from right to left. Jack turned left this time, following the flow of the river. Continuing on for another five minutes, he could see a forest a short way downstream. The detecto-bot's beeps steadily became more frequent, until the beeping was almost continuous, and, looking up, Jack saw why. There, in the middle of the river, standing upright, was a brightly glowing stag-like horn. The Horn of Qilin.
The water flowed over it, so that one third of it was underwater. It was rather odd, really, the way it was sticking out of the water seemingly without any help. It was also odd that the trees of the forest started growing in a line only after where the Horn was in the river. Any land upstream from the Horn was just barren rock.
Jack turned on his helicopter blades, and flew over to where the Horn stood in the water. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that there was actually a rock under the water, and the Horn was embedded in this rock. He grabbed the Horn with both hands and pulled it out with relative ease, and he landed with it on the opposite bank of the river, just where the trees had begun to grow.
"All right!" he cheered, holding up the Horn dramatically, congratulating himself on a job well done, even though he hadn't actually done anything really worthwhile yet. "The Horn of Qilin is mine! Too bad no-one's around to see it ..."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that, if I were you ..."
"Huh?"
Jack turned his head around just in time to see someone behind him, before being hit by a huge black ball, knocked against a tree, and falling to the ground.
And then there was blackness.
Omi went forward with a flying kick. Raimundo jumped to move out of the way, so that Omi went underneath him, and tried a whirling kick to counter – but Omi did an acrobatic flip in mid-air and avoided the strike. Still in mid-air, Omi used the Monkey Staff with his Water element to shoot a sparkling blue ice beam, which Raimundo dodged with a speedy roll to the side. As Omi landed, Raimundo used the Serpent's Tail to blow a fierce gust of swirling wind, but the little monk simply activated the Two Ton Tunic. Raimundo quickly used the Lotus Twister to stretch his arms and try and trip Omi up, but, with lightning fast reflexes, Omi deactivated the Tunic, leapt over Raimundo's swipe and landed a swift kick in the other boy's chin. The taller boy was sent flying, and he was knocked to the ground, the Serpent's Tail dropping out of his hand.
"Are you finished?" Omi asked quietly. He really had not wanted to do that, but Raimundo was leaving him with very little recourse.
"I'm just gettin' started," said the other boy, wiping the blood and dirt from the side of his mouth.
Clay sat calmly and patiently against the outside wall of Jack's house. Kimiko had gone inside the house with the Jet Bootsu and the Shroud of Shadows, leaving him behind with the Shen Gong Wu chest. He still wasn't sure that they should have split up like this, but they couldn't risk losing the Shen Gong Wu they owned in the chest, so someone had to stay with it at all times, like Omi had said.
He had to admit to himself that he was a little worried, but all he could do now was wait for Kimiko and Omi to return. No point in being too preoccupied. He had to have faith in his friends and know that they would return successfully. A little patience never hurt anyone. And being patient was Clay's specialty. The waiting game was one he definitely knew how to play.
Something beside him growled menacingly.
Really, thought Wuya, watching Jack lying on the ground. That was simply too easy. When he didn't get up straight away, she frowned. She hadn't meant for her attack to be that strong ...
She took the Horn of Qilin from his hand, and Jack's robots, which had been waiting on the other side of the stream, all of which flew across and surrounded her. Wuya was about to use the Golden Tiger Claws to return to where she'd left her Huai-Ren, when one of the robots emitted a small green beam that completely covered her.
"Initiating identification scan."
"What are you doing?" she demanded, blinking in the green light. These metallic contraptions were annoying at best, and if they didn't stop doing whatever it was they were doing – NOW – they would soon be a pile of scrap metal on the floor.
"Scan complete. Subject identification confirmed as: Wuya."
Now this was interesting. Jack's robots still recognised her, even though she was no longer a ghost. They had been programmed to ignore her, a program which was a remnant of the time when she and Jack had still been allies; and now, unless Jack gave the order, they wouldn't attack. But Spicer was unconscious, lying helpless on the ground. That meant she could do anything she wanted to him, and the robots would not try to stop her until it was too late.
She stared down at him thoughtfully. He was completely at her mercy. What should she do with him? He was nothing more than a child, really. Killing him would probably be a bit extreme. The boy was nothing if not resourceful. Without the aid of magic, he had given himself the ability to fly, constructed his own army, built a shape-shifter, and even had a machine that could detect the magical energy of a Shen Gong Wu.
If only he wasn't such a bull-headed bungler! She might have considered taking him back. But unlike Raimundo, he possessed no element, and thus she had no further use for him, other than perhaps to impede the progress of the other Chosen Ones. He was very unlikely to work for her willingly now, anyway, even if she wanted to tempt him back. He was too independent, too proud to accept assistance from others. Plus, there was the fact that they just irritated each other too much.
She wondered whether she should capture him and take him back to her palace. Jack might actually become more of a nuisance if left unchecked. But then, he had been the one to open the Puzzle of Gui Xian and released her in the first place, so she supposed she should have been grateful ...
For that reason alone, she would let the boy be. Knowing Jack, he would probably try to take the Horn back if he knew it was still around – especially since he didn't yet know she had been restored. And if Jack did manage to reclaim the Horn, she would allow him to use it. She hadn't brought the Reversing Mirror along for nothing.
Even when he wasn't using the Monkey Staff, Omi was a formidable fighter, and after reclaiming the Serpent's Tail, Raimundo had been forced to use it to become see-through, to prevent Omi from actually landing a hit. The Lotus Twister hadn't worked, because Omi was too fast to be caught by wandering limbs, and every time he used his wind element against him, Omi would just activate the Two Ton Tunic to stay in the same spot.
Dojo had tried to hold on as Omi and Raimundo started exchanged blows, but it had become too difficult, especially once Raimundo had started using the Serpent's Tail to blow gusts of wind at the two of them. The little dragon had let go of Omi's shoulders, finding himself between wind and water – both figuratively and literally – and had slithered into a tree where he could watch from a safe distance. Once or twice, he wondered whether he should risk growing to his larger size to help Omi out, but that might have attracted Wuya's attention, which was never a good thing to do if you wanted to live to see another day.
"We don't have time for this, Omi!" he called after a couple of minutes, when there was a lull in the fighting. "Wuya must be here somewhere, getting the Horn. And it's close – I can feel it."
"Oh ..." the little monk sighed. "If only the others were here..."
"Where are the others, Omi?" Raimundo jeered nastily. "Tired of your boring, repetitive lecturing?"
"None of your busy-ness, Raimundo!" Omi then looked at him sharply. "Do you really think Wuya will keep you now that she has her body back? She will only keep you for as long as she needs you, and then she will discard you! Do you not remember how she treated Jack?"
"Hey, we're cool," Raimundo said nonchalantly. "I'm living it up at Wuya's palace. And you know what? You don't even know half of what she can do, so if I were you, I'd quit while I was ahead."
"I would never quit! I am most unlike you, who prefers being idle to doing some hard work!"
Raimundo glared at him, a heated fury burning in his eyes. "You know, all my life I've had to listen to people tell me how useless I am, how I'll always be second best, and how I'll never amount to anything. The last thing I needed was to hear it from some stuck-up, know-it-all monk! Well, now I'll show you!"
Omi stood his ground boldly, frowning as Raimundo charged ...
The first thing Kimiko noticed when she floated over the walls was – Jack's robots were working perfectly. Jerk, she thought immediately. How come his stuff works and not mine? The next thing she noticed was that the lights inside the house were on too. Odd ... their electricity seems to be working fine ...
The Shroud of Shadows and the Jet Bootsu made an excellent combination for a potential thief; they allowed her to sneak easily past the robot guards and enter the house through a window completely undetected. She continued on without fear or hesitation; she'd been to Jack's lab twice before already, and knew exactly where she was going.
So when she heard the sudden crashes from a room nearby, she stopped immediately in her tracks. That hadn't sounded like normal 'house' noises ... but then again, this was Jack's house.
There were two loud, frightened screams, and then several more smashes and crashes – windows and vases – laser fire – glass had been broken – it sounded like some of Jack's robots were getting trashed – furniture overturned – a strange tíng sound, like a drinking glass had been tapped with a knife ...
And then silence.
Kimiko waited.
Her curiosity mixed together with her confusion, and, remembering that she still had the Shroud of Shadows, she changed direction and headed down the corridor for the source of all the commotion.
As expected, the room was a mess. Chairs and tables were upside down, the windows were broken, there was broken glass and debris from robots everywhere, wooden cabinets on their sides, a red sofa with a large ragged laceration across it ...
In the middle of the room were two people as red-haired as Jack, who Kimiko could only guess were Jack's parents. But neither of them were moving. Both were standing as still as statues, with open mouths and frightened eyes looking up in fear, but they were stuck in the same position, as if they'd been frozen in time. They may well have been wax statues in a museum to a casual observer.
What had happened to them?
A small white kitten came from under an overturned table. Kimiko was reminded of Katnappe, but the kitten walked past right her. It was clumsy in its movements, looking like it had had one drink too many. Suddenly, though, it hissed, and then half-ran, half-stumbled away, out of the room.
Click, clink, click, clink, click ...
Kimiko's first thought was that a dog had decided to capitalise on the fact that there were kittens here, but when she looked behind her to see, she was horrified to realise just how wrong she'd been.
A black, horned – monster – stood seven feet high, on two legs, and had seemingly appeared from nowhere. There was only one entrance to the room ...
And there were, in fact, two of them. They both took slow, deliberate steps, making those eerie clicking noises on the ground as they did so. They looked as though they were hunting something ...
Kimiko watched them closely; one of them would have looked like a dark, feathered dinosaur, were it not for the fact that it had bat-like wings. The other one looked like a mad scientist's experiment gone wrong; it had a crocodile's head, a fat elephant's body, two scythe-like claws for arms, a horse's tail, and dragon's feet. The dinosaur-like one continued to step forwards, while the other one hung back, and Kimiko realised that if she didn't move, she was going to get flattened, so, without saying anything, she used the Jet Bootsu to levitate herself higher.
The creatures' heads moved up simultaneously as she did so, following her movements upwards. They both stared straight at her. The winged one hissed menacingly, stretching its arms and flexing its wings, and she realised with a sickening feeling in her stomach: they can see me. The creature flew up towards her, charging as it swiped a huge hand, but Kimiko was too fast, and she swooped underneath it, darting through the door out of the room.
Raimundo ran towards Omi angrily, but Omi had fully activated the Monkey Staff now, and, as a monkey, was able to leap out of the way easily. Raimundo knew that his job was to stall Omi, and that's why Wuya had brought him along, but that wasn't enough for him. He wanted to actually beat Omi, to prove to him that he wasn't just a lazy layabout and that he was just as good at fighting as he was. But that itself was proving to be difficult. As each second passed, Raimundo became more and more frustrated at Omi's evasive skills, so much so that he actually kept making mistakes – which of course led to further frustration.
Just like earlier that morning, Omi eventually managed to knock the Serpent's Tail out of Raimundo's hand. He followed up by knocking him down to the ground with a swift sweeping kick. Raimundo stayed on the floor, but refused to give up.
"If you think I'm gonna come crawling back to your stupid temple, think again."
Omi shook his head sadly. "I did not come here to argue with you. If you want to work for Wuya, that is your choice. But –"
A throbbing tíng! sound filled the air, cutting Omi's words off; it sounded as if someone had struck a loud tuning fork. From the ground, Raimundo watched in bewilderment as Omi was immediately surrounded by a white light, and then simply froze in place.
From his hidden spot in the tree, Dojo shivered. With a sinister chuckle, Wuya appeared from the trees upstream, on the same side of the small river as where the two boys had been fighting. She was riding what Dojo recognised as a dragon-like Huai-Ren, which landed near where Raimundo was lying on the ground. In one of its hands was the Reversing Mirror; in the other was a glowing white stag-like horn, roughly twenty centimetres long, and with four prongs – the Horn of Qilin.
For a while, Raimundo seemed to have forgotten how to speak. "What ... did you do to him?"
"Huai-Ren have the ability to unleash a powerful Stop spell upon my enemies," Wuya said, looking quite like the cat that had eaten the canary. She gracefully jumped off the Huai-Ren.
"I didn't need your help to beat him, y'know," Raimundo said resentfully, getting up.
"Don't flatter yourself, boy. I didn't do that for your benefit. My original intention was to capture all three of the Chosen Ones while you distracted them, but only Omi came ..."
She walked to the statue-like Omi, who was still holding the Monkey Staff. As the Stop spell only affected living things, and as the Two Ton Tunic fit loosely around Omi, she was able to remove the Two Ton Tunic with a wave of her hand, using a Removal spell to make the Tunic appear in her hands. Omi had the Monkey Staff firmly gripped in his hand, though, so she would have to wait until they reached the safety of her palace before removing the Stop spell. It was a shame that only one of the Xiaolin warriors had decided to come, but it couldn't be helped – and it had made it easier for her to capture him.
She put the Two Ton Tunic on over the top of her purple dress, and took the Horn of Qilin from the Huai-Ren. The dragon picked Omi up, Monkey Staff and all, in its now free hand, holding him as if he were a small doll.
Raimundo frowned slightly; he wasn't exactly Omi's best friend right now, but, all the same, he couldn't help wondering what Wuya was going to do to him. Nothing good, that was for sure.
Wuya, meanwhile, paused to think again, contemplating on whether Jack would come to try to get her back for the little stunt she had pulled. Actually, he probably would, if he knew it was her; but her blast must have been more powerful than she'd thought. Either that, or Jack was just weak.
"What's wrong now?" Raimundo asked, now wondering how Jack ever managed to put up with her.
"Nothing," she replied, coming out of her thoughts. "Let's get out of here.
Chinese translations
ting – stop
Once again – thank you, Princess Viv, for this one.
Mythical creatures
I noticed that I made a lot of references to some mythical people/creatures in the previous chapter ...
Raicho: the Japanese version of the thunderbird.
Coyote: a trickster figure that appears in many Native American tales.
Thoth: Egyptian moon god of magic and wisdom. He's sometimes shown as a human with an ibis head.
Ma'at: Egyptian goddess of justice and truth, she's portrayed as a woman that's always wearing a feather in her hair. Thoth's wife.
Akhlut: In Inuit mythology, a shape-changing creature that takes both the form of a killer whale and a wolf.
Gui Xian: the tortoise. One of four magical beings in Chinese myth, he represents the northern point of the compass. Sometimes seen with a snake.
Long: the Chinese word for dragon. Also spelled lung. The dragon Long is also one of the four magical creatures, and stands for the eastern point.
La Befana: an Italian mythical figure. She's like the female version of Santa Claus.
Showdown info
There is a showdown in the next chapter, so for anyone unsure of who has what, here's a list of the Shen Gong Wu that everyone has at the end of the first series - going by season 1 canon, of course. Season 2 cacks things up when it comes to SGW ...
Xiaolin: Sapphire Dragon, Sword of the Storm, Star Hanabi, Monkey Staff, Sun Chi Lantern, Orb of Tornami, Longi Kite, Tongue of Saiping, Two Ton Tunic, Eye of Dashi, Third-Arm Sash, Fist of Tebigong, Helmet of Jong, Shroud of Shadows, Jet Bootsu, Heart of Jong. (16)
Heylin: Golden Tiger Claws, Serpent's Tail, Lotus Twister, Reversing Mirror. (4)
Jack: Changing Chopsticks, Tangle-Web Comb, Ring of the Nine Dragons, Mantis Flip Coin, Falcon's Eye. (5)
In addition, in this fic, Jack also has the Puzzle of Gui Xian.
