Romance: None. Jack and Ashley if you squint/really want it.
Minor OCs.
This will be seven chapters in total.
I have no beta so feel free to point out any errors.
Warnings and disclaimer: This is about war so I've used politics and talked about countries. I've based this story in China (I always assumed Jack lived in China due to the design of his home). I do not think China is about to have a civil war or become a totalitarian state. I literally just needed to use the names of countries to further the plot. None of the countries in this story are good guys or bad guys.
"Very few tyrants argued for the slavery of the masses. Instead, they argued for their right to protect the people from themselves."
― A.E. Samaan
Jack stared out of the classroom window. It was open so the soft breeze from outside was able to blow sleepily against his face. It was so boring. Jack hated school with a passion, but in the last two months he had been forced to start going again. Why did the universe feel the need to punish him over and over again? Ok, sure he was evil but still...
He wondered about committing suicide by leaping out of the damned window but the classroom was only two floors up and he would probably just wind up horribly injured. Though, that could be kind of cool. Jack's eyes brightened as he imagined himself as a bitter paraplegic in a ghetto meets goth-cyber-punk wheelchair. It'd be awesome; like something out of Doctor Who or Repo the Genetic Opera.
Suddenly a board pen hit his head.
"Spicer, pay attention!" his teacher roared from the front of the class.
Jack rubbed his head incredulously. What was this, a Japanese manga? Why the hell did his teacher think it was ok to assault him? He looked down at the board pen. If this had have been a manga it would have been an innocent piece of chalk rather than-
"SPICER! I said-"
"What?" Jack roared back at the teacher, forgetting himself due to the pain of the pen; his natural insolence overrode his usual cowardice. "I could sue you old man!"
"Go ahead," sneered his embattled and weary math teacher, "I stopped giving a damn years ago. You know what Spicer? Carry on staring out the window pretending you're a 'somebody.'"
At that, Mr Cole turned around and carried on his explanation of Pythagoras' Theorem. Jack turned to grin at his classmates ("whoa, I totally yelled back a teacher and won! I didn't get sent out or anything!") but it seemed none of them cared. They were just staring blankly at the front of the classroom like a bunch of mindless zombies.
Pfft, figures. Someone like Zhang Wei, the school knucklehead, does a fart and the whole class is in hysterics whereas Jack totally called out a teacher and no one even cared.
Life was so unfair.
Not to mention boring.
"Ashley, hey Ashley!"
The blonde was leaning against the school wall as Jack came bounding over (nearly losing his footing at one point, but recovering well...or at least he thought so.)
"Don't talk to me loser," she drawled lazily. He put on his best cheesy grin and stood too close to her; Jack wasn't good at respecting personal space. "Someone might see me talking to you. Get lost" She turned and flicked his nose.
Jack yelped and grabbed it, tears welling up in his eyes. "Well I thought it was ok because you're the only person standing here," he responded in a morose tone. "Everyone else has gone home."
"I'm waiting for Tyson."
"Who?"
"My boyfriend!" she sighed and, taking out a mirror from her satchel, began to fiddle with her hair and make-up.
There was a momentary silence before, "It's pretty boring now, huh?" Ashley looked up at the geeky goth, surprised by the deep seriousness of his voice. His face was sombre.
"Yeah, it is." She sighed again, resigning herself to the conversation. "No Wu, no pass out of the country, no emails. Soon they'll stop us being allowed to text." She waved her phone at him. "It doesn't make any sense. It's like they want us all to die of boredom."
"They said they want to protect us," answered Jack, thinking of the news report he had bothered to watch last night. He had never watched the news before (Jack had always believed that television should only show cartoons and porn. It was one of the laws he planned to enforce when he successfully took over the world) but even he was becoming curious as to what exactly was happening in his country as it had begun to affect his own life so much.
"Protect us from what?" Ashley complained. She sunk to the floor and Jack copied her. "It's disgusting, the government not telling us anything," she continued feeling bitter about the whole situation, "it's like we're living in North Korea. My mom is joining the Rally next week."
"What Rally?"
"Honestly Jack do you know anything other than how to build robotic cheerleaders? The Rally! People have been going on about it for months! A bunch of people are marching in protest against the Government locking us all up and that Mayor being killed after saying he was pro-emigration and immigration."
"Oh." He drew his legs up to his chest. He remembered hearing about the Mayor being killed. Some extremist had stabbed him to death whilst he'd been out meeting the locals. The killer was found to have mental health issues, but some were arguing that it was the political climate that had triggered his illness and the resulting violence.
It was true that the media's rhetoric and the government's new protectionist rules had been somewhat disconcerting recently. Around six months prior to this afternoon, the Government had begun to issue tougher laws on who could come into the country. It was done to stop foreign criminals coming in, as they said drugs and rape crimes were sky rocketing. Not to mention that the economy was suffering and that was something to do with immigration levels. Thing was, there were a lot of rules on who could leave as well. Border control was heightened to an intensity never seen before.
Internet communication sites such as Facebook and Twitter began to be monitored by Governmental Watchdogs before being forced down completely- apparently for the safety of the young who were being groomed by masses of online paedophiles and foreign terrorist organisations. However it was not long after the deletion of Facebook and Twitter that emails were targeted; they were restricted to only being sent to other people in the same country. But after a single month the whole system went down, thereby stopping emails all together.
The Government insisted it wasn't them who had closed the email system but that the email companies had pulled themselves out of the country because they disagreed with the Government's new sanctions on freedom of communication, but the civilians had been already suspicious and very angry by this point. The protest marches began after Wikipedia was closed down as well.
One night, around two months ago, Jack had come home, beaten and bruised after losing another showdown only to discover soldiers on every border of his country. They had confiscated the Jack-copter and told him he wasn't even allowed to leave his little town anymore without the appropriate paperwork. It meant that not only could he no longer go abroad without permission, but he couldn't even leave his region.
They argued that it was because high levels of emigration was damaging the country. A 'brain drain' was occurring where the best and brightest citizens were, after receiving an education, living and working abroad. China was increasingly becoming a nation of old people unable to work and no longer paying taxes as they were retired. And with no young immigrants coming in to take on the jobs they could no longer do or paying taxes they could no longer pay, the only solution was the keep citizens in the country.
Another problem was that getting the 'appropriate paperwork' was impossible. Unless you were a politician or a scientist, you just couldn't leave the country. And even these officials still needed permission from the Prime Minister himself.
Jack had tried to complain to his father but had not been able to get through to him via the telephone, which was not so unusual in itself; Jack often went months without hearing a word from his father. His dad wasn't exactly paternal. In fact, none of his family were very orientated towards one another. It was why he liked to cling to his mother. She was his constant, though a little vacant. And she made really awesome cookies.
Remembering her cookies, he took one out of his pocket and began happily munching on it.
Ashley curled her lip in disgust; the cookie was covered in pocket fluff and looked like it had been in there for a few days. Why the heck did she know this creep? Oh yeah, because their parents ran in the same social circles and because of the Shen Gong Wu. Talking of Wu, maybe they could escape their little town of boredom with the help of some oriental magic...
"Jack," she purred, "Which Wu do you have left?"
"Just the monkey staff... What?" He protested at her rolling her eyes.
"Typical, you don't keep anything fun."
"What?" he shrieked. "How can you say that? The monkey staff is the very epitome of fun!"
"Stop yelling, you're getting spit on me... and move further away from me! God, you're such a freak." She shuddered while Jack crossed his arms and fell into a temporary sulk. "I have the Shroud of Shadows," she continued, "and the Shard of Lightning, but that's it. They won't be able to help us transport out of this sucky little country." She kicked a rock out of spite.
"Why didn't you get more fun stuff?" He complained, still unhappy that she dared to say that his favourite Wu was boring.
"Because," Ashley suddenly stood up and screamed at Jack, making him fall to the side with an effeminate shriek, "I hardly went to the stupid showdowns anyway due to actually having a life! I didn't know we were going to be stuck here! If I had known," she settled down as suddenly as she had gotten riled up, "I would have gone to more battles and I would have gotten more Wu." Sighing she sank back down to the floor. "Yes, Jack, it is boring."
Jack walked home alone. He had asked Ashley to come along with him ("you can come to mine! Mom will bake some cookies and we can watch Gilmore Girls and you can see my plan of which countries I'm going to destroy first-") but she had turned him down; turned him down with harsh words and much name calling. It was so unnecessary. He was only trying to be nice.
Cha! girls, who needs them? MGTOW all the way!
As he entered the dark corridors of his home, instead of the expected silence, he heard loud music being played upstairs. He followed it warily. It was 'Moonlight Sonata' being played too quickly on the piano. Could it be..?
He opened one of the doors letting the light of the bedroom shine out into the shadowy corridors. Inside the bedroom everything was white; the walls, the carpeted floor, the bed sheets and bed frame and even the piano. A tall, dark haired girl sat playing on it. She was around seventeen and had green eyes that reminded him of Wuya. Her face looked angry and she pounded at the piano keys distorting the beautiful piece of music with her fury.
"Hi Joanna," he said quietly, looking in wonder. How many years had it been since he had last seen her?
She stopped playing and fixed a stern look in his direction. She didn't return the greeting. "Is the other one here?" he asked. She shrugged in response and flicked her hand at him in a gesture that said 'go away.'
He did as she asked and quietly closed the door behind him. The corrupted classical music resumed. He went back downstairs and into the kitchen. "Mom, did you know Joanna is back?"
Jack's mom looked like a stereotypical Stepford Wife. She had fake blonde hair made up in heavy curls. He never had seen her without her make up on. She always wore heels, even though she hardly left the house and, unless hosting swanky party, tended to wear dresses reminiscent of the 1950's. She turned to face him, an oven tray of freshly baked muffins in her hands.
"Hello darling," she said without feeling. "How was school?" She always asked him this and he never answered. Most of the time he didn't even bother going to school, he was too busy running away to different countries and battling over magical items. It was only thanks to the new Government laws that he was stuck in his own country and going to school every weekday.
"Mom," he repeated, "Joanna is back. She's upstairs in her old room. And I think she's mad at Beethoven."
"Would you like a muffin?" was her response. He grabbed one off the tray and shovelled it into his mouth. He then screamed as it burned his tongue. His mother began to arrange them on a plate in the middle of the table, her serene, conventional beauty contrasting to her alternative son's ill-mannered spluttering behind her.
When he recovered himself, Jack ran out of the kitchen without thanking her for the muffin he had sprayed all over the floor and ran back upstairs to where Julie's old room was. Standing outside of it the strong stink of marijuana hit his senses. "Yep, she's back!" He thought happily to himself.
Joanna, by what he remembered had always been a bit of an up-tight bitch, but Julie, the oldest of the Spicer siblings, was cool.
He banged on the door, "Julie I'm coming in!" he yelled, "so I hope you're not naked or anything." He shuddered and tore open the door. The smell of various illicit herbs hurt his nostrils. Jack saw his sister sitting cross legged on the floor in front of a candle. Above it she held a spoon with something bubbling inside. Ha, crazy Julie and her crazy drugs.
"Hey Jack," she said in a strangled voice that screamed 'drug addict.' She didn't look at Jack but kept her eyes on the contents of the spoon. He sat opposite her in the same fashion. A big grin showing off his yellowed teeth was plastered on his face. "Why are you back?" he queried. "And where have you been all this time? I haven't seen you since I was like...ten or something."
"Dad sent me to a correctional unit," she responded without malice, her eyes still on her drugs. "I learnt a lot from the other inmates there."
"Cool, so why are you back? Did you finish doing your time? I wish I was cool enough to go to prison. I'm pretty evil now you know," he looked at her with bright eyes, hoping desperately for praise. She graced him with a small thin lipped smile. He ignored how artificial it was.
"Well done," she croaked. "But I wasn't in prison exactly. Anyway, the Government told us that we had to come back. I don't know why. But dad said to just do as they say."
"Did he say why they were doing all of this?" Jack watched her get out a syringe to use it to suck up the poisonous looking filth from the spoon. Julie shook her head, before slapping her skinny arms ready for injection.
"I-I don't like needles," Jack stammered, "see you dinner time, maybe." He got up and left her room, all in all feeling pretty good. His family were back home.
But wait- did that mean his father would be home soon?
Jack felt the blood drain from his face as he walked downstairs into the basement- or his 'lair'. Jack never bothered turning on the lights in his lair. Instead he simply switched on all the computers and cranked up his music. Sitting in his favourite spinning chair, he swung softly side to side pondering the afternoon; would he like it if his father came back home? Honestly he wasn't sure, and Jack tended to be very black and white in his emotions. If he was happy he was joyous, if he was sad then he was in misery. Jack wasn't a 'middle ground' person emotionally.
"Would you like some ice tea sir?"
"No," he barked at the servant-bot, which lowered its head and zoomed away despondently. Jack didn't notice. "Oh well," he thought to himself, "there's no point worrying about stuff I can't do anything about."
He unzipped his schoolbag and looked at all the homework inside. Yawn. As if he was going to do any of that. He was a boy genius, for heaven's sake, he didn't need any extracurricular work!
He clicked on to the internet. Nearly every site he went on was 'no longer found'. God this was bad. What was he going to do all afternoon? The time he had ahead of him stretched ominously. This was worse than being stuck in lessons all day.
He had no parts left to build more robots as he couldn't fly out to his usual stock supplier and he couldn't order off-line, as even that site had been pulled down.
He brushed his hand though his greasy, slicked back hair, "this is worse than I thought...maybe I should join Ashley's mom on the March. What am I meant to do, read a book?" He cackled loudly for a few moments before accepting defeat and picking up a book he was meant to read for English literature, The Things They Carried by some guy called Tim O'Brien.
On the same breezy day that Jack had lethargically not paid attention to class, his cousin Megan was in deep rural China. She had been up since five in the morning and, for the first time in her life, was handwashing her own clothes. It was the way the monks did things. And though it was hard, she couldn't help but feel a small strange joy from it.
"This is what they mean by working hard and being independent," she told herself whilst smiling softly, "I'm actually doing it. I know I can do this!"
For many years Megan had lived the same life as Cousin Jack or Ashley. Her family were very rich and Megan had a life of parties and excesses ahead of her. But unlike her cousin or even Ashley, Megan wasn't a moron; she saw what they had become. The pair were pampered, over indulged, petty and spiteful. She told herself that she would never turn out like them. She avoided Ashley wherever possible and treated Jack with dripping disdain and snappy comebacks.
But then, one day a few months ago, things suddenly went south.
Megan went to a prestigious school that specialised in the arts. Unlike most high schools where everyone fights to fit in, here no one wanted to look the same. Rather, they all went out of their way to look as unique and as different as possible; everyone needed to be The One Who Stood Out; everyone wanted to be the weirdo; everyone was Lady Gaga.
In her excitable youth, Megan was not cynical enough to recognise the mass of attention seeking and instead thought her choice of school and friends (a group made up of a couple Goths, a trio of black-clad theatre students, a white rasta and a wiccan) were further evidence of how she chose the high road over Jack and Ashley. It meant that she had a diverse group of friends which in turn made her a woman of substance. It meant that where Ashley and Jack were close-minded and stupid, she could accept anyone for how they looked or acted.
But then the new girl arrived.
They had all cried with laughter when they had seen her. She was a scholarship student, (which in itself wasn't too bad, if she had been wild, partially Hispanic and with a Bronx accent and a flair for dance) but she was as American as apple pie; she was sweet and short, two dimples on her freckled cheeks, she wore a pink cardigan (a cardigan for God's sake!), tidy mainstream pale jeans (complete with no rips, not even factory made ones) and white converse (converse, good lord, everyone and his uncle had those!) Her name was Chloe, and she was amazingly, offensively ordinary. From the start she had been sickening and they had all known immediately that she was not one of them.
So Megan started off with treating this girl with the same disdain as she did with Jack.
They began to talk about her, even if she was right there, just loud enough for her to hear. They would sneakily look her way to see her blush as she recognised they were bitching about her. It was her own fault they were mean to her, she looked ridiculous in her mainstream clothes and with her stupid curly hair, why didn't she bob it or design it in a way to be less annoyingly dull? Why didn't she dress in a way to show off her uniqueness, the way they all did? Why was she so arrogantly different?
Inevitably, bitching turned to gossip which turned to rumour. Anytime something strange happened, the new girl Chloe must have done it. She was too quiet, she never interacted with anyone, she wouldn't get up and do a main part in a play or stand up and sing centre piece, why was she even in this school if she couldn't even be bothered to try? What a waste of time she was!
Chloe would refuse every guy who asked her out. True, they had only asked her out as a joke, but why didn't she ever say 'yes'? She clearly thought she was too good for the rest of them! Chloe was a typical little prep, she looked down on those who were different and disengaged from the rest of them.
It was her fault a teacher left. It was her fault that a play got cancelled. It was her fault they didn't sell enough tickets for one of the school's concerts; it was her fault when a school trip went wrong and the school bus crashed and they all needed to go home; it was her fault that school heart throb Nikolai lost his clothes in a river and it was Chloe's fault that Megan did not get chosen for a lead part in an up-coming pay.
Megan did not know why or how exactly Chloe was to blame, but she was.
So with silly rumours and unsupported gossip, disdain turned to hate.
Chloe the Prep was hated.
Megan blinked, waking herself out of her memories. There was no point remembering Chloe now, what's done is done and all that.
"Besides," she thought, "I'm out here now. I'm far away from it all. I can become someone I like again."
She was starting a fresh in China. After the whole unpleasantness at school and the unfortunate outcome, Megan had remembered the monks. She had remembered how witty they had been, how athletic and strong. She realised that they were her ideal, so what better way to improve on herself and to attempt some sort of redemption, than by starving herself of her old life and starting a new, more basic one?
It had taken two weeks of constantly begging and whining to her parents before they let her go. Her mother only agreed when she found out her daughter would not have to shave off all her hair from her head, and her father only agreed because his wife had finally settled down about it.
Megan couldn't help feeling a little bit of vindictive pleasure that Jack would be miserable and jealous. He always wanted to either beat or join the Monks; he always wanted to be accepted and befriended but was never prepared to go through the hard work of actually being a good and selfless friend.
A determined frown settled on her face. "Well I'm not like that," she thought, scrubbing at a stain on her shirt, "no one really thinks I can do this. Mom and dad expect me home in a few months. Well I won't. I'm going to be a real Xiaolin monk. I just have to get through all these lame jobs, and then maybe they'll let me join properly."
The monks themselves had been happy to take on Megan. She wouldn't have an element like they did, as she wasn't a Chosen One, but she did have the right mind set and strength of will to make a good and loyal team member. They had agreed with Master Fung to allow her to live and train with them. Megan was considered by them an ally, and too many of their side had fallen into the clutches of evil, such as Jermaine and Raimundo. The fact that every Xiaolin Warrior had turned back from their folly was luck, Chase Young was evidence that such a desirable outcome was not always going to occur. So, unlike Jermaine who had been left to his own devices, they were happy to essentially adopt Megan once parental permission was provided.
It had also been a huge relief for Kimiko, she had another female living with her at last (the only female company she had all this time was her friend back in Tokyo) and Megan was young enough to play the cute little sister role rather than be competition in looks or feisty-ness.
"Hello Megan," said a cheerful voice too close to her left ear.
She shrieked and leapt away from a broadly smiling Omi.
"I am sorry, I did not mean to frighten you," said the boy, his expression not changing, "oh-ho-ho, you are not washing these clothes correctly!"
She smirked, blue eyes narrowing in a manner that was almost evil, "do you want to show me how to do them properly Omi? I trust you will lead me in the right path!"
Omi grinned at the thought that someone, at last, could take some constructive criticism and recognised his superior skills at doing everything.
"It would be an honour!" he cried, "now you should sit more like this, then you take one piece of the outfit, like so, and...wait... YOU HAVE TRICKED ME INTO DOING YOUR DIRTY WASHING FOR YOU!" He jumped up screaming and pointed a theatrical finger, but Megan had already vanished.
He sat back down reluctantly and continued scrubbing at her things, "she will make a good ninja," he admitted grudgingly, before shrieking once more when he realised he was scrubbing a pair of her stripy knickers.
Megan walked over to Raimundo who was busily playing another video game about zombies. A couple of feet away Kimiko was texting someone back in Japan. Distant rumbling and feeling of the ground shaking slightly made her assume that Clay was busy training his Earth skills on the other side of the temple.
"Is it always this boring?" she asked
"No," chimed the two monks in unison.
"Trust me, this is very rare, enjoy it while you can," Kimiko sighed and began to dial her mobile. Megan went to sit by Raimundo, as Kimiko would, no doubt, be chatting away to her best friend in Tokyo within the next few minutes.
"To be honest," muttered Raimundo, his eyes still on the game, "slow days are becoming less rare as time goes on. Hardly any Wu have awoken, and when they do, it's usually only us after them. Aside from the witch Wuya, the Big Bad's were never that into the Wu as they have mojo of their own, and Wuya is shacked up with Chase, so she's fine, and Spicer and Katnappe never turn up anymore. Maybe they got bored of getting beat all the time."
There was a moment's silence before, "Rai, could I borrow phone and contact my parents later?"
He looked up at her, "sure. You haven't spoken to them since you arrived." He sat up, "you shouldn't freeze them out you know. It isn't good, family need to stick together."
"Yeah I guess but..." she thought of how she left home, and why she left home, before shrugging and getting to her feet, "actually, forget it, I don't want to talk to anyone back home. I'm going to go find Clay, see you later."
Just then Dojo stumbled out of the temple, his scales glowing a bright red. "Heads up everybody!" he cried, scratching himself, "a new Wu has woken up!"
"Looks like you got yourself some action Megan!" grinned Rai, earning a grin in return.
'At last!' Megan internally cheered, running to get a Wu for herself and then preparing to leave.
A.N. There's going to be very little of the Xioalin Warriors in this, but a couple asides are needed just to show things from their side now and then. Overall, th story will focus on Jack and Ashley, especially when the shit hits the fan.