Chapter 3: Slow Old Men and Evil Cookies
As the amazing and intelligent bbst pointed out, I am following this story episode-by-episode. The Showdowns I have planned aren't very imaginative, but I'll try my damn best to deviate from the canon as much as possible.
I don't want to copy word-for-word, but for right now I have to. These next few chapters deal with some serious character development. Everyone HAS to trust Clay's 'slow and steady wins the race' tactic; Kimiko HAS to learn how to control her temper better; Raimundo HAS to learn that studying and listening to people can ensure victory.
I will change up the chapters eventually, but for right now they'll follow the canon very closely. So please, please, please stay with me as I go through some of the more important episodes.
"I hate math," Valerie moaned as normal lessons ended for the day. Since the Xiaolin Temple was still technically a school, all students had to take normal classes in the morning and early afternoon. It was hell.
"At least they don't give us homework," Kimiko told her cheerfully as the girls went to their rooms, their textbooks in backpacks slung over their shoulders.
The rooms the students slept in were door-less and right next to each other, with rice paper walls dividing the rooms. Raimundo had been right about the beds; there weren't any, only mats to sleep on. At least then the teenagers had more room for their belongings.
"Come on, girls, hurry it up!" Raimundo called out to them as they put away their things.
"Why should we?" Valerie called back.
"We've got an obstacle course today!"
Omi screamed a victory cry as he used a pole to fly himself over a little green swamp full of fake crocodiles, which were snapping their mouths.
Omi landed on the other side of a wall, and immediately spears were thrown at him from large wooden shooters on poles. Omi dodged them all using fancy footwork, and then ran up to the box with three blue vases on it. He jumped up and smashed one of them, and then glided around the second vase to destroy the third.
Omi then ran past sharp, axe-like pendulums and narrowly dodged swinging sand bags. He ran and leaped to grab the target, a stuffed dog on a pedestal. But first Omi had to get past the flaming ring, which was really fake. With a theatric duck-and-roll, Omi dodged the ring of fire and grabbed the dog, landing like a cat on his feet.
Kimiko stopped the time on the stopwatch. "Nice going, Omi!" she congratulated him. "You were eight seconds faster than Raimundo."
Raimundo grabbed the stuffed dog out of Omi's hands and put it back on the pedestal. "Yeah, you are one slippery little dude," he said.
"Yes, but I shamefully and pathetically lost a quarter of a second on the sand bags," Omi replied sadly. "As you might say, I smell bad."
"You mean, 'I stink'," Raimundo corrected him.
"I stink?" Omi asked dubiously.
"Yeah, and you smell bad, too," Raimundo said with a snigger. Omi began to pout and Valerie punched Raimundo in the shoulder, knocking him back.
"You're the last one up, Clay," she told the cowboy. Kimiko readied the stopwatch as Clay strolled towards the entrance of the obstacle course, a wooden gate with two pillars on each side.
"So all I got to do is be the fastest one to get to that doggie?" Clay asked for clarification, pointing to the stuffed dog.
"Correct," Omi confirmed.
"Alright then," Clay said, taking a deep breath. He then began to stretch out his arms, taking his time.
Raimundo crept up to Omi and Valerie and said to the little guy, "Your record's safe. His element his Earth; the speed of a rock." Valerie rolled her eyes but didn't say anything.
"Ready?" Kimiko readied the stopwatch. "Go!"
Instead of instantly leaping towards the obstacles, Clay calmly turned around and walked towards the back. He got the stuffed animal away from the "flaming" ring and went back towards the finish line.
Clay handed the dog to Omi and said, "I think I shaved off a few seconds on your record there."
Valerie, Kimiko, and Raimundo all burst out laughing, because they had all went forward with the challenge with such gusto that they hadn't stopped to think about the easy way out of the challenge.
Omi would have none of it. "But you are supposed to run and jump and kick!" Omi said indignantly, giving the doggie back to Clay.
"But I didn't see the point of all that hoopin' and hollerin' so long as I got the dog," Clay explained, still with that relaxed smile on his face.
"Or you knew you couldn't beat us with your old man kung-fu!" Raimundo joked, mimicking the weird gestures Clay had made at the beginning of the challenge.
It took Omi a second to get the joke. "Oh, I get it. Raimundo is mocking Clay's Tai-Chi by calling it 'old man kung fu'! He implies Clay is like an old man!" Omi literally fell on the floor laughing just as Master Fung showed up to see our progress.
"Ix-nay on the teasing!" Valerie hissed at Omi, who couldn't hear him. Raimundo began to whistle like he was totally innocent.
"Is there something funny about old men and their kung fu, young monk?" Master Fung asked Omi. Omi immediately stopped laughing and got up from the ground.
"You do recall that the oldest oak in the grove is by far the strongest, yes?"
Omi bowed down as an apology. "Yes, master." But that apparently didn't last long, because he then said, "Clay cheated!"
With everlasting patience, Master Fung replied, "There is more to being a Xiaolin Dragon than running and jumping, young monk."
"Oh, yes, master," Omi said, "there is kicking too!"
"Yes, but it also means seeing the world in a different way; for example, finding simple solutions to complicated problems." Fung went over to Clay and patted him on the shoulder. "Well done, Clay."
Clay tipped his hat. "Thank you, sir."
"Look alive, people!" Dojo suddenly slithered over to the monks with the Ancient Scroll in his little green hands. "We got a hot Shen Gong Wu!"
Dojo opened the scroll to reveal a moving picture of the next Shen Gong Wu, the Fist of Tebigong. From the look of it, it packed some serious punch.
Master Fung led the Dragons to the giant white temple in the center of the village. Inside was a little circular room with a bunch of old monks sitting around a gold pot filled with incense. There was a large, red circle motif around the cauldron, which the monks took care to avoid.
Master Fung tapped the bells next to the doorway in a quick little ditty, and with a rumble, half of the red circle fell to the ground, revealing a staircase that led into the underground. Valerie followed the others down the dank winding staircase, which conveniently had lit paper lanterns on the walls so no one would be completely blind.
"Quick young ones choose your Shen Gong Wu for battle," Master Fung ordered as the teenagers went over to little stone shelves in the wall. All of them had an engraving for the type of Shen Gong Wu that was supposed to go in.
Valerie was about to grab the Eye of Dashi when Raimundo yelled out, "Dibs!" and grabbed it away from her.
"Hey, I wanted that!"
"Neither of you can have it!" Omi exclaimed. "You don't know what it will do."
"Sure, I do," Raimundo said as he dodged Valerie's grabby hands. "It's supposed to shoot lightning…and stuff. Besides, I called it."
"I had the shelf open," Valerie retorted.
"And I won it in the Showdown!" Omi said. "I should be the first to use it."
"Fighting over a Shen Gong Wu?" Master Fung looked at the three of them, disappointed. "Are you trying to start a Xiaolin Showdown?"
Valerie calmed down enough to not grab the Eye of Dashi out of Raimundo's hands. Besides, she wanted to know how Master Fung would divvy up the Shen Gong Wu, since there were three of them and five Dragons.
"I believe the Eye of Dashi should go to the winner of the obstacle challenge," Master Fung said, taking the mystical artifact out of Raimundo's hands.
Omi threw his hands up in the air like he just didn't care and turned to Raimundo and Valerie. "In your head!"
"It's in your face," Valerie corrected him sourly.
"Talk to my fingers." Neither Valerie nor Raimundo bothered that time.
"Actually, Omi, I meant Clay," Master Fung clarified. "He was the fastest."
"WHAT?!" Omi shouted in disbelief, even though it was technically true.
Master Fung gave the Eye of Dashi to Clay. "Use it well," he said.
Clay tipped his hat. "Much obliged."
Master Fung got out the other two Shen Gong Wu and gave Raimundo the Mantis Flip Coin and Kimiko the Two-Ton Tunic. Valerie was a little disappointed that she didn't get a Shen Gong Wu, but the thought of winning another one helped.
After getting the Shen Gong Wu from the vault, the Dragons sans Omi went back to their rooms to change. Valerie pulled her hair out of its braid and let it loose. She quickly changed into a raglan shirt with short yellow sleeves and a black torso with the yellow Batman symbol on the chest. Valerie paired it with jeans and black and white Converse sneakers and a black baseball cap with the word "Dork" on the front colored in white.
Raimundo was dressed once again in green cargo pants, a short-sleeved white sweatshirt with the yellow medallion, red wristbands and red sneakers. Clay was dressed once again like a stereotypical cowboy: blue button up shirt, jeans tucked in tan cowboy boots, a red handkerchief tied around his neck, tan gloves, and his signature cowboy hat that he never took off, not even in Xiaolin uniform.
Kimiko was once again the most colorful out of all of them. She had on a pink wig with her hair bunched in two side pigtails, a pink t-shirt with a green frog on it, a white skirt with blue go-go boots, and a furry blue backpack.
Valerie eyed the girl while they waited for the boys to finish changing. "What are the chances that you won't dress in something loud and colorful?"
"Slim to none," Kimiko replied.
The Fist of Tebigong was in a mountainous forest region, like the Eye of Dashi. Dojo set the Dragons in a clearing due to some sort of Shen Gong Wu rash.
"Can you tell us where the Shen Gong Wu is?" Valerie asked as Dojo shrunk to his normal size and scratched all over.
"Yeah, tell us instead of making us look for it," Raimundo demanded as he began to look through some bushes.
But instead of the Shen Gong Wu, it was Jack Spicer with his posse of Jack-Bots, right behind the bushes. Everyone immediately struck a kung fu pose, because they were awesome like that.
"Jack-Bots, attack!" Jack ordered his robots. The robots immediately went to attack with their bladed shoulder blades.
"WATER!" Omi shouted and began to jump on the Jack-Bots and kick them away.
"WIND!" shouted Raimundo as he took the head of a Jack-Bot and threw it at another, making it explode. Another tried to take him from behind, but Raimundo jumped over it and took its head off.
"Hey, robot; forget something?" Raimundo taunted, brandishing the head.
"FIRE!" Kimiko launched herself into the air and started to slash at all the Jack-Bots aimed at her, easily destroying all six of them.
"AETHER!" Valerie shouted, taking her arms up in a kickboxing pose. She punched a hole through one of the Jack-Bots and kicked another one's head off. Valerie did a back flip and landed on a Jack-Bot, twisting off its head and throwing it at another robot.
Valerie jumped off the headless robot and landed near Clay, who was standing smack-dab in the middle of the fight, doing those weird, slow kung fu poses. "Um, Clay, you can jump in at anytime," Valerie told him.
"Just taking my cleansing breath." Clay sucked in a breath and let it go. "Now I'm ready to fight."
Only it didn't happen that way. A Jack-Bot slammed into Valerie, knocking her into Clay. They both fell off the rocky cliff with a hapless Dojo, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Clay grabbed onto a conveniently placed branch and grabbed Valerie's arm just before she plummeted past them. Dojo fell on top of Clay's hat, shaking in his scales.
"Are you guys okay?" Kimiko called from the top of the cliff.
"We're fine just get the Shen Gong Wu!" Clay called out to her as Valerie shifted her weight onto the other side of the branch. She looked up towards the edge of the cliff and noticed some rocks jutting out of the side.
"We can climb up," Valerie told Clay. She grabbed a part of the side of the cliff and pulled herself off the branch. She put her foot on another rock and slowly began to climb the wall towards the top. Clay followed her lead, and they both eventually found themselves at the top.
Grabbing some grass for leverage, Valerie pulled herself over the edge, huffing as she did. When she had both two feet on solid ground, she helped Clay up. Then they noticed the remnants of the battle and the other Dragons just standing there in the middle of the clearing.
"Uh, guys, why aren't you looking for the Shen Gong Wu?" Clay asked. They all began to talk, but voices didn't come out of their moving mouths. They mimed beating and pushing against a wall and shouting.
Clay put a hand to his ear and said loudly, "I can't hear you!"
"Ooh, their playing charades!" Dojo exclaimed happily from the top of Clay's hat.
"Odd time to play," Valerie remarked. But she shrugged and tried to guess what they were saying.
"Pencil sharpener!" Dojo called out. "Igloo! Tooth decay! Cured ham, it's so cured ham!"
Kimiko and Omi had given up trying to talk to them at that point. Only Raimundo was still at it, jumping up and down and hollering like an angry monkey.
"Ooh, Raimundo's a monkey!" Valerie called out happily, glad she got it right. Kimiko and Omi said something-Clay and Valerie still couldn't hear them-as Raimundo seethed.
Suddenly Raimundo walked up to Clay and pointed to himself. "Um…you?" Clay guessed.
"Ooh, ooh, Raimundo!" Dojo called out.
Then Raimundo turned around and pointed at his butt. "Okay, butt," Clay said hesitantly.
Raimundo stood up straight and kicked the air. "Kick…" said Clay.
And then Raimundo pointed at Clay. "Me?" questioned Clay.
"Raimundo's gonna kick Clay's butt?" Valerie deduced, snickering behind her hands. Clay tried to get all up in Raimundo's face, but was blocked by some sort of invisible wall. Valerie went up to the invisible wall and felt it out, feeling a cool, solid substance blocking her path. Clay was touching the top of the wall, saying that it felt like some sort of box.
Kimiko suddenly got out her PDA and typed a message out. It read: Trapped by mime magic. Stop Jack, get Shen Gong Wu!
"Why didn't she do this earlier?" Valerie asked exasperated. "It would have saved us a lot of trouble."
"A magic mime?" Dojo said in disbelief. "I knew they were obnoxious, but now they're dangerous too?"
Without a word, Clay began to run down the safe side of the cliff, a route Jack would have certainly taken. Valerie took one last look at the others before following him.
Instead of grass, the forest ground turned into a dusty brown color. Clay had Dojo in his hands, and the little dragon was acting as a tracker.
"Warmer, you're getting warmer," Dojo reassured them as they walked. And then he screeched, "MIME!"
They stopped in front of a smiley mime in black pants and a red-and-white-striped polo shirt, who was just standing there like he had been waiting for them.
"I don't want any trouble, mime," Clay warned him as he and Valerie got into position.
The mime tipped his little black bowler hat over his face and mimed Clay's actions, an obvious challenge against the cowboy. Valerie did the sensible thing and backed away from the fight.
"You keep the mime busy," Valerie told Clay. "I'll get the Shen Gong Wu."
"Take this!" Clay tossed the Eye of Dashi at Valerie, who caught it easily. "Just in case you're in a Showdown," he explained. Valerie gulped and went on ahead towards the path. The mime tried to block her, but Valerie punched his chin, and his head went upward, his eyes disoriented.
Valerie took the chance and ran away.
Valerie didn't have to try hard to find Jack Spicer. She just followed the sounds of forest demolition.
Hiding in the bushes on top of a hill, Valerie spied on a row of Jack-Bots with drills for feet and arms. They were clearing a path through the forest to find the Fist of Tebigong and to give Spicer a pathway.
Valerie did not have much of a plan. She usually looked at a situation and followed the most logical path. Knowing that Jack would be too careless to look out for Xiaolin monks, she crept down the hillside, trying to be as silent as possible.
...That is, until she accidentally stubbed her toe on the Fist of Tebigong.
"OW!" Valerie screeched, hopping on one foot and grabbing the hurt one. But she ignored the pain when she heard the sounds of Drill-Bots after her. She scooped up the Shen Gong Wu and tried to run away, as much as her injured foot would let her.
A Drill-Bot nearly decapitated Valerie, put she pushed it aside into Spicer, who ducked. Thanks to that, the two Drill-Bots protecting him were vaporized.
Spicer, having enough of this, yelled out, "Third Arm Sash!" A blue cloth shot out from Jack's waist and circled around Valerie, ensnaring her in a lasso. Jack pulled her back into his arms, and he grabbed the Fist of Tebigong.
"Too slow, Batgirl, too slow," Jack taunted as he let her go into the middle of a circle of Drill-Bots. Valerie would have thought that the robots would instantly kill her, but instead they waited for further orders from Jack.
"You know, you're actually not bad looking. I like the tomboy style," Jack admitted to Valerie. Valerie could feel bile rising in her throat. But something else ticked her off.
"Dude, do you even know my name?"
"Umm…"
"How can we say witty comebacks if you don't know my name?"
"Good point. Tell me your name," Jack ordered.
"Only if you give me the Fist of Tebigong."
"Uh, how about… no." Jack pressed a button on his watch and the Drill-Bots slowly crept towards Valerie threateningly.
"My name's Valerie! Now put your toys away!" Valerie glared at the Drill-Bots until Jack stopped them in their tracks. Normally she wouldn't have given in so easily, but Valerie didn't feel that she should lose her life or something so trivial.
"Now, was that so hard?" Jack asked in a mocking tone, putting on the Fist of Tebigong. "So, how about it: join the Heylin Side? You know, the winning side?"
"As what, you're girlfriend?" Valerie snorted.
"Yeah, I like that actually," Jack said, making her shudder.
"In your dreams!" she yelled at him, glaring daggers.
"Oh, but my dear, it wouldn't be so bad." Wuya had somehow managed to slither her way up to Valerie and was now playing the devil's advocate with her.
"I'll never join the dark side!" she growled at Wuya, who never lost that sleazy smile.
"But we have cookies!" Jack called, trying to sweeten the deal.
"Hell no!"
"…What do you have against cookies?"
"I have nothing against cookies; I just don't want to go over to the Heylin side. The bad guys never win, anyway."
Jack gestured to his Drill-Bots surrounding Valerie. "It looks like I'm winning."
"Haven't you ever seen the movies? It doesn't matter how close he is to victory, the bad guy never wins."
"This isn't a movie, Val," Jack said, gesturing again to his robots.
Valerie raised an eyebrow. "I'm hunting magical artifacts with incomprehensible powers to stop a thousand years of darkness from happening. You're hunting those same weapons to take over the world. How does it not sound like a movie?"
Jack rubbed his chin like he was thinking. "Again, good point."
"Enough talking!" Wuya roared into Valerie's ear, making her cringe and cover both ears. She leered over at Valerie, who did not like that look on Wuya's face. She didn't like the words coming out of her masked mouth either.
"Tell me, my dear, are you sure you don't want to turn evil? You could have anything you ever wanted. You could have riches, men, and more than you can possibly dream!"
Anything? For a second Valerie actually considered Wuya's offer. But then she remembered the two people who neglected her all her life, how they made empty promises to see Valerie but never did. She used to wish that she could see them, but when they never came around, Valerie gave up on them. Now it was just wishful thinking on her part.
Steeling herself, Valerie looked straight into Wuya's yellow eyes and said, "You just want to get rid of Jack, don't you?"
"Hey!"
Wuya didn't even spare Jack a glance. "Very perceptive; tell me, what Dragon are you?" she asked Valerie, her voice sickly sweet.
"Not telling."
"You're very calm in a situation like this, so you can't be fire," Wuya said, slowly listing off the elements. "You're fighting style is rather disciplined, so you can't be wind. And we can tell that Omi is the Dragon of Water."
"I say she's the Dragon of Earth," Jack said almost helpfully. "She seems pretty down to earth to me."
Valerie groaned inwardly at Jack's super-lame pun, but remained stoic. She slowly turned to Wuya, looking vaguely amused.
Wuya saw the look and asked, "What's so funny?"
"You almost got it. Just one more element left."
Wuya's yellow eyes widened and she growled out, "You're the Dragon of Aether?"
"The one and only," Valerie replied pompously, giving a little mock bow.
Wuya let out a howl and glided over to Jack's side. "Destroy her quickly before the others find her!"
"Finally we can get down to business," Jack drawled out, pressing the button on his watch. Valerie struck a fighting pose, waiting for the Drill-Bots to close in on her. They were coming in pretty slowly though.
"What are you waiting for?" Wuya roared at him. "Finish her!"
"Wuya, Wuya," Jack chided, "how long have you been at this villain game?"
"I was wrecking havoc with the world was still young, when man began to crawl out of the mud!"
"And yet you still make amateur mistakes. You're supposed to gloat first, vaporize later." Jack turned to Valerie and did his evil monologue. "You've come far, Valerie, but you didn't count on the magnificently evil mind of Jack Spicer! MWA-HAAA-HAAA-HAAA!"
Valerie got out her Shen Gong Wu and shouted, "Eye of Dashi!" A bolt of lightning erupted out of the talisman, going out towards Jack. The boy shrieked and ducked as the two Drill-Bots behind him exploded.
The explosion made Jack lose the Fist of Tebigong. Valerie looked around desperately to find it, but the Drill-Bots were getting in her way.
"Valerie!" a very familiar voice called out to her. Valerie was glad to see Clay finally catch up to her with Dojo clinging to his hat.
"Find the Fist of Tebigong!" Valerie shouted back as she threw a Drill-Bot into another Drill-Bot. She could see out of the corner of her eye that Jack and Clay had spotted the Shen Gong Wu at the same time-it was lying on the ground a ways from her-and both were running for it like their lives depended on it.
Valerie knew what was going to happen next.
Jack and Clay both reached the Fist at exactly the same time, and the Wu began to glow.
"Clay, I challenge you to a Xiaolin Showdown," Jack said to start off.
"But I don't have any Wu," Clay said, looking at Valerie hopefully.
Valerie got the hint; after she used her arm to swipe off the head of a Drill-Bot, Valerie got the Eye of Dashi out of her pocket and threw it at Clay, who caught it in his big hand.
"What's the game?" Valerie shouted from the rubble.
Jack spotted a blue song bird resting on a tree branch not two feet away from him. He gestured to it. "The first one to catch that robin wins!"
"Let's go: Xiaolin Showdown!" the two boys said in unison, and the whole area began to tremble and change to fit the match. Valerie felt her feet shift, and she nearly fell backward as she felt herself slide towards Raimundo, Kimiko, and Omi, who had somehow joined up with her and Clay at the last minute.
As Raimundo grabbed Dojo out of the air-how'd he get there? - Valerie closed her eyes as she felt the ground shoot up into the air like a pillar, the wind whistling around her body and nearly dragging her off the cliff she was standing on, the light nearly blinding her.
When Valerie opened her eyes, the playing field was a simple clearing with a little bit of trees off to the side. Flowers were at the edge of the clearing, and the other Xiaolin Dragons were standing on a cliff, looking down at the fight below.
That was when Valerie noticed that Clay was in his monk uniform. She looked at the others, who were also wearing their training clothes, with the exception of Dojo. Normally, something like this would have surprised Valerie, but she was rarely getting surprised anymore.
"Ready, cowboy?" Jack said to Clay as the shaking stopped.
"Ready as I'll ever be," Clay responded stoically.
Both leaned over to each other to face off, and once again in perfect unison, they shouted, "GONG YE TAN PAI!"
Jack was instantly in the lead, cackling as his weird backpack sprouted two winged poles to let him use the air to chase the blue robin. As Jack chased the bird into the trees, he used his Third-Arm Sash to try it catch it, only to no avail.
The bird flew out of the forest and over the Xiaolin Dragons with Jack following it as quickly as he could. When he was gone, Kimiko remarked, "Jack's on fire."
Omi looked down at the clearing. "Yes, but Clay has yet to become a flame!" He pointed to Clay, who was standing there doing his weird kung fu stretches like always.
"Clay?" Valerie called out to him. "Now is not the time to do your old man kung fu!"
The others joined in with "Clay, please join the Showdown!" and "Clay, do something!" and "Move, you stupid cowboy, MOVE! Or at least shoot some lightning! I just wanna see it once!"
But all he did was saunter off towards the edge of the clearing where the sunflowers were. He took off his hat and began to pick out the black seeds out of the yellow flowers, humming a little tune.
Valerie widened her eyes as a wave of nostalgia hit her like a tidal wave.
Forests were common in Poland's countryside, and they were close to Valerie's house; so close, in fact, that sometimes Valerie saw a deer at the edge of the forest, grazing on the grass near Eric's garden.
Sunflowers were also plentiful, at least in some parts of the country. The last tenants of the lovely country home had left behind their patch of sunflowers in the backyard. A scarecrow in old men's clothes guarded the plants from birds, not that it did much.
Eric had taken out a clean but old baseball cap to the sunflower patch and began to pick out the little seeds. Bored, Valerie went out to help him. She had assumed that Eric was going to eat the seeds himself, so she was surprised to see him go towards the edge of the forest with the capful full of sunflower seeds.
"What are you doing Eric?" Valerie asked a bit too loudly. Eric shushed her and held the hat out towards the edge of the forest. Valerie impatiently waited for something to happen.
Just when she was about to ask again, a pretty little swallow bird came flying out of the trees and landed on the edge of the cap. It began to peck at the sunflower seeds as more birds came to join it.
Eric looked over at an astonished Valerie and gave her a cheeky wink.
"He's going to win," Valerie said quietly, a grin stretching across her face. The others looked at her like she was crazy.
"How is Clay going to win?" Dojo asked incredulously from Omi's shoulder. "All he's been doing is pick sunflower seeds the whole Showdown!"
"And that's how he's going to win," Valerie said simply. "Just watch, will you?"
Jack, who had been chasing the robin energetically, almost had it in the Third-Arm Sash's grasp, only to have it squirm out at the last second. Jack would have gone after it, but then he slammed himself into a tree.
Meanwhile, the bird had spotted the tasty treats in Clay's hat, and it fluttered over to it. "Hey, there, little fella. Enjoy the grub," Clay said gently as the bird landed on his hand. A flash of light, and the Showdown was over, with Clay holding three Shen Gong Wu in his hand.
"You did it!" Kimiko congratulated him as she and the others ran towards him.
"That was awesome!" cried Raimundo.
"Aw, thanks y'all," Clay admonished, putting on his hat, the bird flying away long ago.
"Clay has me tripping on very cold stones!" Omi said, crossing his arms. Valerie cringed at his horrible mangling of modern language.
"No, no, no," Raimundo groaned, "Clay's got you stone cold trip-ah, forget it." As Kimiko and Omi went over to congratulate Clay more, steam came out of Raimundo's ears in annoyance.
When he calmed down, Raimundo turned to Valerie. "How did you know he would win?"
Valerie gave him a soft smile. "Because it was something Eric would have done."
I've actually been to Poland's countryside-I've got family over there-so I know for a fact that some people grow their own sunflowers in their back yard. I used to have an aunt who did that.
Yeah, I'm having Valerie talk about Eric in about every chapter. Just to show you how close they are.
Like I said, I'm going to follow the episodes, but I'll try to change them as much as I can. You can tell with this chapter that I added quite a bit. Not much change, but I'm working on it, so please don't judge too quickly.