Chapter 6. Kashmir

When Dojo landed amongst the hideous destruction of Kashmir, the monks were a little bit hesitant to jump down. The air was rancid with decay and the sharp scent of burning rubber and melted metal.

"Is that a body?" Raimundo asked with a tone of severe concern.

"Who knows?" Dojo replied, shrinking back down. "Did you know that Kashmir is the most dangerous place on Earth? So, keep on your toes, guys. You've got a better chance of survival with your neck in the jaws of one of Chase Young's jungle cats!"

Dojo pointed in the direction of the Shen Gong Wu and swiftly hid under Clay's hat.

"This place is creepy," Kimiko whispered, tiptoeing around the remains of a shrapnel-stuffed Jeep.

"I'll say," Meg added. "How come my first time out had to be to Hell On Earth?"

"Hey, we didn't plan this," Raimundo reminded her.

A cold wind swept through the wreckage, carrying with it more stench and slightly nauseating suggestions of distant events. Clay was in the lead, so he was the first one to spot the Green Thoughts.

"Hey, Meg, does that look like the Wu you saw in the scroll?" Clay asked, pointing to the little object resting on a disembodied car door.

"Uh, yeah," Meg confirmed. "That's the baby."

The five of them trotted up to grab the Wu and get out of Kashmir as fast as possible.

"There's no sign of Jack or Wuya," Kimiko stated with a glance around. "Why don't you take it, Meg?"

Meg nodded quickly and stepped up a small heap of loose junk to pick up the Green Thoughts. It looked like a green winter cap with long earflaps and a couple of vine-like drawstrings.

"That's cute," Meg said to herself quietly as she reached out to pick it up.

Suddenly there was an insanely loud screech and power-up sound from Jack Spicer's SMART bot as it jumped up, sent debris flying, and terminated its camouflage, returning to gold and black. The bot rose up and, headlights blazing in the darkness, unfolded a series of machine gun turrets from its body.

Jack broadcasted his voice from the cockpit of the SMART.

"Mua ha ha ha ha! I hope you brought your riot gear, you Xiaolin epitaphs, because even you can't doge bullets!"

Meg screeched and leapt out of the guns' crosshairs.

"What is that?" she screamed, leaping behind Clay.

"That's Jack Spicer," said Omi violently.

"But it doesn't look like one of Jack's robots," Kimiko noticed.

"Yeah, it looks more like the Shen-garoo," Rai pointed out.

"Maybe!" Jack hollered sarcastically. "Except this thing won't make ya puke!"

Before they could add any more of the meaningless banter that newscasters are so famous for, Jack opened fire. The monks just barely had time to leap out of the way. Clay grabbed Meg and dropped her on the lee side of a decommissioned tank.

"You stay here," he told her. "Let us handle Jack- he's a pushover!"

The SMART bot stood over the Green Thoughts with its feet planted and pivoted all around in its attempts to hit the four monks.

"Tangle Web Comb!" Kimiko held out the Wu that shot ensnaring vines in an attempt to squeeze the SMART bots legs to get it to trip, but Jack merely pushed a button and a pair of razor sharp wheel-blades sliced through the vines.

In a swirl of spit-fire, Jack flickered bullets everywhere, but all the monks escaped unscathed.

"We can't escape those guns forever!" Omi shouted.

"None of our Wu will even put a dent in that thing!" said Kimiko.

"Hey," Jack snickered, "How many bullets does it take to stop four monks? Four! And I've got at least another 4,000 rounds to burn through, baby!"

"Give us your best shot, Jack!" Clay taunted. "Dragon of Earth!"

The ground began to rumble and an illusion of a stone dragon appeared around Clay, as though he was inside the beast's ghost. He rose off the ground about a foot and flew, fists first, straight into the side of the SMART bot. "Dragon's Talons!"

"Holy Crud Muffins!" Jack cried out as the entire body of the SMART bot shook and vibrated. The thing teetered on one foot for a moment before resettling heavily with the screech of gears.

Seeing that Clay's Dragon Talon attack had an effect on the bot that none of their Wu would, each monk took on his or her Dragon form and attacked in unison.

"Dragon of Wind! Dragon's Wings!"

"Dragon of Water! Dragon's Blood!"

"Dragon of Fire! Dragon's Breath!"

All at once, Jack's view was blurred out by a raging storm of the elements. Four ghostly dragons enshrouded each monk, weaving a tight yarn-ball shape around the SMART with their trailing tails. A cyclone, part of Raimundo's 'Dragon's Wings' move, drifted down from the bomb-scorched skies and beat up a swirling torrent of scrap metal and other debris. High-speed blast of icicles and super-heated water threatened to scar straight through the SMART's blast shield. Plus, Kimiko's white, blue, and orange fires turned the nearby metal white hot and, combined with Omi's water, produced huge clouds of steam that reduced visibility to almost zero.

Even with all this, the SMART bot managed to hold its ground, even if that meant crouching down to become the smallest possible target.

Inside Jack's cockpit, a number of blinking alarms and gauges lit up and the blast shield was hot to the touch.

Systems overload, the SMART began to repeat.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!" Jack continued to unleash every single missile and bomb at his disposal. Frequently, a monk would go flying as a result of an explosion, but Jack quickly realized that regular weapons couldn't stand up to magic powers. So, amidst the chaos and commotion of the raging battle, he fired up the tunneling drill on the nose of the SMART bot. And, before the monks even realized he was gone, Jack had tunneled down through a layer of scrap metal, found the long-lost, once-fertile ground of Kashmir, and vanished into the earth, taking the Green Thoughts with him.

"What's the big deal?" Jack cried out. "This thing was supposed to be unstoppable, but it barely did any more good than my Jack Bots! I'm calling Patience."

Jack set the SMART's guidance system to tunnel on a homebound course as long as underground plumbing would allow. In the dim lighting from the illuminated control board, Jack switched on the video-phone and called Dr. Patience's office. He was met with only a recorded message.

…open 8am to 6pm, Monday thru Friday on most business days…

"Crap!"

Jack tapped his fingers impatiently. After a moment, he remembered Patience's letter from earlier. He found it, a bit crunched, in the shadows by his feet. Turning the pages over and checking the letterhead, he found a second number that he hoped would put him through to Patience.

"Bingo!"

Using the video-phone on the control panel again, Jack only waited a few moments before Patience picked up.

In one of those rare and candid villain moments, Jack discovered Patience in what looked like her bedroom, in a pair of red and white pajamas that showed the Canadian Maple Leaf on one shoulder and the Scottish Thistle on the other. Her hair was completely disheveled, as though she had just woken up.

She sighed irritably.

"What is it, Spicer?"

"Patience! W.T.F? This SMART bot isn't half of what it's cracked up to be! I only just barely escaped those hyper-active little monks!"

Patience rubbed a knuckle in one squinting eye.

"First of all, Jack, it's 2 a.m. where I am. Second, you need to put the SMART on autopilot before it can be even remotely useful. Like I said, humans can't react fast enough."

"It doesn't matter how fast I react," Jack snapped back, "when they use their Dragon Element powers! They've got Shen Gong Wu! Your robots completely can't stand up to them. Just look!"

Jack pressed a square little button that, at the turn of a dial, e-mailed Patience a video of the SMART's last twenty minutes.

Patience glanced away from the camera for a moment to view the video. Her only response to the monks powers came in the form of briefly raised eyebrows.

"Who is that fifth one, there in the beginning?" she asked.

"No idea," Jack replied truthfully. "I've never seen her before."

"She looks like she jumped out of a Dr. Seuss book."

Jack just rolled his eyes.

"Well, what are ya gonna do about the robot?"

"You'll need to enter them in a Showdown with high stakes," Patience yawned, "and you'll need a specialized SMART robot for it. Call me back next month," she said flatly.

"Next month?" Jack exclaimed. But the screen had already gone blank. "I can't a month! What if…" Jack smacked the armrest. "Aw, whatever. She'd better come up with one damn amazing robot!"

Next time: Jack becomes the proud owner of one damn amazing robot!