I'm really sorry this took so long. I had a huge writer's block and a certain clashed heap of fur and feathers was too lazy to help me with it for quite some time. To be fair, male lions do sleep for twenty-three hours a day. I guess I'm lucky Iorek doesn't always sleep for that long. But enough excuses, here's the chapter.

Clay could hardly believe Raimundo was holding a knife to his throat. Raimundo, his old buddy. He and Kimiko knew Rai had changed, but they didn't think he'd changed this much. He remembered Kimiko saying Raimundo killed anything that breathed and wondered if there just may be some truth to that. "Say it." Rai's voice hissed again.

Clay looked up at Raimundo and was shocked by what he saw. There was something in Raimundo's eyes that Clay had seen once before a long time ago and had hoped never to see again. Malice. Pure malice. Clay gasped in horror at what he was looking at. Then he cringed when he felt a sharp pain at his throat, and then feeling warm liquid run over it. "What's my name?" Raimundo asked.

Clay closed his eyes. What did it matter if he called him Raimundo or Silvertongue? But he was in no position to question him. Clay looked back up at him. "Silvertongue."

Raimundo grinned in a way that made Clay uneasy. "Good. Glad to see you're finally paying attention. It'd be great if you could keep that up for a couple more minutes. Look, what I'm about to say I'm only going to say once and it's pretty important if you're interested in keeping your life, so listen up. What happened back then may not seem that long ago to you, but for me that was practically decades ago. Some stuff I can't even remember and you know what? I don't care. It doesn't matter. Here's the part that may help keep you alive. You need to stop living in the past and focus on the present. What matters is what's happening now. For example, I'm sure what matters most to you most right now is getting yourself, Kimiko, and Omi out of this forest alive. Then afterwards stopping Wuya, and then probably after that Master Fung will have you try to bring us down."

Before he could stop himself, Clay blurted "Who's us? What side are you on?"

Clay feared that might make Raimundo sink the knife deeper, but Raimundo frowned thoughtfully. "Fair question. Let's see, you know that there's Xiaolin and Heylin. We don't really have a name, but we're not with them if that's what you mean."

"You mean you're neither good nor evil?" Clay felt little danger talking since Raimundo seemed to have regained some sanity.

Rai looked confused by his question. "Who said anything about-"

He was interrupted by a twig snapping nearby. They both automatically looked over to where the sound came from. Clay's heart skipped a beat. Slithering out of a bush was Dojo. He didn't see them until he was all the way out. When he did, he froze. His eyes bugged out and he started shaking more violently than Clay had ever seen him. Clay was so happy to finally see Dojo again, he wasn't at first aware that Raimundo had removed the knife and gotten up.

Dojo turned to run (or slither away quickly, whatever), but Raimundo tossed the knife. It pinned the furry part of Dojo's tail into the ground. Dojo frantically pulled at it, but it was too deep for his tiny front legs to manage. Raimundo reached for him. Clay was up off the ground in a second. There was no way in hell Rai was going to hurt Dojo if he could help it. He grabbed Raimundo and threw him at a tree trunk. Raimundo landed on it like a tree frog and pushed off, torpedoing back to Clay, who was ready this time. He dodged him, grabbed his legs, and tossed him into the air. Raimundo used the wind to hold himself up, then held a hand out in Dojo's direction. A strong vacuum-like gust sucked the knife out of the ground along with Dojo, up to Rai. Clay jumped forward and caught Dojo just in time. "Let go of him, Clay." Raimundo said a bit too calmly. "This is between him and me."

"Over my dead body." Clay growled.

Dojo shuddered. "You could've said anything and you had to say that."

Raimundo smiled insanely. "I might take you up on that."

Suddenly there was a hideous inhuman shriek that made Clay's skin crawl. Rai looked in its direction surprisingly at first, then he looked annoyed. "I told him it would be a mistake."

He made a hacking sound and spat on Clay's hat. Clay took it off and shot a disgusted look at Rai. Dojo was looking at the hat. "Clay, you might want to throw that away."

"I'll just wash it."

"No, Clay, look at it."

Clay glanced down at his hat and did a double take. The saliva was growing and forming into something long. Clay threw down the hat, but at that moment it jumped on him and began wrapping around his arms and torso. He tried to fight it off, but it was sticking to him and he couldn't break though it. It was still growing. One end by Clay's head was shaped into a flat rounded object of some kind. Two areas of spit on opposite sides parted slightly to reveal a sickly green color. The saliva had become a snake. Clay lost his balance and fell on his back. The snake opened its mouth and sank its jaws into the ground so he couldn't move around much. Clay looked down in front of him to see if Dojo was okay. He was. His head was sticking up between the coils so he could breathe. Half amazed, half grossed out, Clay looked up at Raimundo, who was grinning mischievously. "Trust me, you do not want to know how I can do that. Now don't move, I've gotta go take care of something. I'll be back as fast as I'm gone."

As soon as the last word was out of his mouth, he vanished. Just like that. Clay blinked. How many new tricks had the kid learned? Dojo squirmed against him. "Any ideas on how to get out of this before he gets back?"

Clay eyed the head beside him. "None come to mind." He looked down at Dojo. "Wait, can't you bust through by growing larger?"

"I can't. Awhile ago Silvertongue did something to keep me in this size."

If Clay wasn't baffled by all this stuff Raimundo was able to do, he may have noticed Dojo calling Rai Silvertongue.

"How?"

"I don't know, he's got tons of tricks up his sleeve."

"Speaking of which, Dojo, do you have any idea on how in tarnation Rai did what he just did?"

"If you mean the spit thing, no and I'd rather not think how. If you mean the disappearing thing, I think that's what happens if you use the Tiger Claws and the Serpent's Tail. I'm pretty sure now that he wasn't affected by the Reversing Mirror after all because he didn't activate it."

"You mean the Tiger Claws and the Serpent's Tail enable him to just go where ever he wants by himself in the blink of an eye?"

"No, it's not as simple as that. You know the phase 'vanishing into thin air'? That's similar to what Raimundo's doing. Except he's becoming the thin air. Pretty appropriate for his element, huh?"