Chapter 19. Evil, evil, evil

"What do I do? What do I do?" Meg was pacing up and down the marble staircases of Chase's palace at about 3,000 feet per second. Patience and Chase hadn't moved much in Meg's eyes since she left the battlefield, but she knew time was truly passing as it always had and always would. "I want to get Jack, but…"

Nutmeg Kake's ability to move in bullet-time came with a few other handy powers. To begin with, Meg could do things like run on water. Because she was moving so fast, she could lift her feet before the water had time to break. A bullet, after all, will hit its target before your hear the shot, just to give you a sense. Or, if there were a number of falling leaves or other objects in the air, Meg could jump from one to the next, as long as she kept her balance. The trade-off was that it was almost impossible for her to, say, push someone out of the way of an approaching object. Though, if it was the bullet, which was moving at the same speed as Meg, then she could simply redirect the bullet. She had to be quick, though, because bullets get pretty hot.

The other nifty ability, which partially explains Meg's hyperactivity, was this: if she started running in bullet-time, she would only become as tired in bullet-time as she would if she ran for the amount of time it was actually taking her in real time. For example, if Meg decided to run, say, three thousand feet, she would do it in a single real-time second, and she would only be as tired as if she had run for one second. To her, however, it would take almost four minutes.

"I could try to whip back to Hollywood in bullet-time," Meg told herself, "and it would probably only take, an hour and a half in real time…Oh, but that's still way too long, and it would take even longer for Jack to get back over here! The Pacific is, like, eight thousand miles across! That's, like, 40 million feet. Even if I never did run out of energy, I would be enjoying good and boring Pacific scenery for, like, fifteen hundred hours! Arg! I'd be frigin', like, sixteen by the time I got there! Well, not really…But I'd've been at it for about two bullet-time months."

(Author's Note: Meg was actually using numbers like three zillion, seven bidgillion, and one gigabyte. I may be only a secretary, but I have plenty of time to pull out these slightly more realistic numbers while Ms. Patience pulls out teeth. I used Google Earth).

Meg threw her hands in the air and let out a long, whining sigh. She dropped to the stairs and sat with her head in her hands for a few bullet-time moments.

"What am I supposed to do? I don't want Chase to turn Miss Seek into a chinchilla or a cougar. Though, maybe she might play with me then." Meg looked over at a crouching tiger near the base of the stairs and sighed. "Maybe Miss Seek will beat Chase?" Meg got to her feet and started pacing again, ever restless. "Yeah, that's likely. I wish I knew what they were fighting over…"

Just then, Meg stopped and shook her head.

"DUH!" she cried out, reaching into the pocket formed by her two shirts. "The Master Pen! That's what Chase wanted, and that must be why he kidnapped Miss Seek! Oh, I feel so smat!" she cried happily with a thrown in, random, Bostonian accent. "How is it that I'm figuring all this stuff out so easily? This must be what it's like to be an Evil Genius! Maybe it's because my brain is in overdrive? That must be it! I must get smarter in bullet-time because I think faster! Ooh, this is awesome! I can't wait to tell Jack. Jack! Wait, what do I do about Miss Seek?"

Meg then remembered Jack's bag of Shen Gong Wu.

"Let's see what's in that thing," Meg decided.

Practically flying back out to the SMART, Meg was forced to return to real time just long enough to pick up the bag and empty its contents into the air. Returning to bullet- time immediately, she inspected the collection of Wu that froze in the air before her.

"Backn'Forth Bracelets, Ring of Nine Dragons, Green Thoughts, Monkey Staff, Reversing Mirror, Changing Chopsticks- Oh, perfect! The Shroud of Shadows!"

Meg returned to real time and stuffed all the Wu back into the bag except for the Monkey Staff and the Shroud of Shadows. Finally, she bullet-timed back to the palace, this time with a plan formulating.

"I've never formed a plan without Jack before. He's usually the mastermind…"

Meg took a deep breath and ran back to the scene of the showdown. On her way there, however, she passed Wuya, who was making her way down a flight of stairs with the four stolen Wu.

"You know what?" Meg said to herself, pulling out the Master Pen. "All Jack does is dream of taking over the world and complain about Wuya. Wuya was never nice to Jack, and anyone who isn't nice to Jack isn't my friend. Let's see what makes this thing so special." She held up the Master Pen and began scrolling though it's almost infinite selection of objects it could create. When Meg finally found the 'Mystical Objects' section, she delved deeper into the contents of the pen until she found just what she was looking for.

"I'm sure Miss Seek won't mind if I play with this a little," Meg snickered. "MASTER PEN!"

There was a bright green flash and Meg was forced out of bullet-time. A stream of black ink poured from the pen and took on a shape. It was a small, brown and red puzzle box, and it was already open.

"So long, Wuya! The Heylin side is just getting too crowded!" Meg laughed.

Wuya, who hand no idea where the hell Meg came from or what was happening, barely got a scream in sideways before she was sucked back into the Magic Puzzle Box for the third time in her Evil career.

Meg looked at Chase's Wu, her own, the puzzle box, and then to the Master Pen.

"Can you just make me, like, a burlap sack, Master Pen?"

Obligingly, the Pen produced a sack for Meg to stuff all the Wu, and Wuya, in for the time.

"Arg! What is this?" Meg screamed as she ran all the way back to the SMART to dump the sack. "I hope Jack appreciates me!" she growled. "Movin' all this shit around…"

Since Meg's three returns to real time, the battle had progress about fifteen seconds. Patience was almost horizontal, a fist extended in a punch that Chase had just ducked below. Meg could tell by the position of his feet that he was about to swing around and kick her in the side.

"Let's try this…" Meg said, standing just outside the throne room. "Master Pen: Cell phone!"

With a green flash and an upending of ink, a pink and orange cell phone formed in Meg's hand.

"Cool," he laughed as she dialed Jack.

"Hey, Jack…Yeah, I'm in Chase Young's Palace. …I don't know! I was coming to tell you that I found Miss Seek. Yeah, Chase kidnapped her to get the Master Pen that she…yeah, that she stole from you in the first place. Well, I guess it wasn't really stealing…Can you come pick me up? And, come get Miss Seek, too, before Chase turns her into a Mountain Lion. …Chicago? Well, can't that wait? I'm serious, Jack! Just come and get me!"

Meg tossed the phone over her shoulder and put the Master Pen in her shirt-pouch.

"Shroud of Shadows!" Meg said quietly, going invisible. She still had the Monkey Staff under her arm as she returned to the transformed throne room.

Chase had slammed his foot into Patience's side and sent her flying into one of the blue window shards when Meg returned to real time to speak with Jack. Seek recovered quickly, kicked off, and lunged back at Chase. It was close, fast fighting, and if Meg hadn't been such a hyper personality she wouldn't have been able to see about a third of the moves the two made.

They jumped from one platform to the next, dodging, defending, and always thinking two moves ahead. Patience was vicious, but Chase was merciless. In the midst of a series of fast punches and kicks, Patience even tried to bite Chase.

"Hyper-aggression was always your approach," Chase said, jumping back to a higher platform to get a few words in.

"It's the fight in the dog, Chase!" Patience snapped back, wiping blood from the edge of her mouth.

Chase just scoffed.

"Dog-person," he sneered.

"Cat-person!" Patience shouted back, pointing an accusing finger.

They didn't hear Meg giggle on the sidelines over the din of their own exerted breathing and the constant rumble of the molten rock and metal far below.

And the fight went on. Patience and Chase tore at one another for a good hour, falling to just a few feet above the fire, climbing to the highest platform in the battle, and always pushing their hardest to win. Eventually, Meg began to notice a trend. Patience had a repertoire of moves that came with being an experienced fighter. However, Chase not only recognized each move and countered it the moment she used it, but he was clearly pulling off stuff that Seek had never seen before.

They were all the standard moves that forced Meg to stifle high-pitched giggles.

"Snake tying shoelaces!"

"Janitor winding clock!"

"Penguin taking flight!"

"Gopher wielding hedge clippers!"

"Hack writing script!"

Seek didn't know 'Hack writing script.'

"I actually invented that one a few seasons ago, right after I had to say 'the prophecy has been fulfilled,' line," Chase explained casually as he knocked Seek into the air with that exceptionally powerful move.

"I'll have to remember that one," Seek said with a wince, rushing at Chase again once she recovered.

Suddenly, there was a strange turn in the battle when Patience attacked with unusual force. Meg was too far above to see, but it looked like Patience slammed both her fists into Chase's side. The odd part was that it looked like sparks jumped up where her hands met his armor. They were on a far platform, high above the fire but without another platform for some distance. Chase disappeared over the edge, but Patience reached out and grabbed him by the forearms.

"Did you ever watch 'The Lion King'?" was all she said.

She let go of Chase and watched him fall for a moment. He disappeared below the platform, so Patience stood up and turned around. Suddenly, something smashed into the marble and smashed it to pieces, sending Patience sprawling.

"But I can fly, so it doesn't really matter!" Chase yelled, hovering in the air for a moment before landing on a new section of floor.

Patience, who'd fallen on her rear on another platform, rubbed a knuckle in her right eye to clear out some blood seeping form beyond her hairline.

"Yeah, about that, Chase…How come you only fly some of the time? Can you only do it during neap tides, or when the NASDAC is up, or what?"

Chase just crossed his arms and lowered his eyes for a moment, slowly shaking his head.

"Get back up, Patience. You can go about the folderol after you lose."

"Right, Chase," Seek snapped, jumping to her feet. "I've been waiting to kick the shit out of you ever since you-know-what! I'm not about to lose."

Chase snickered and contained an evil laugh.

"I still get a laugh out of that. You went insane…"

Apparently, Seek was still insane over who-knows-what and lunged for Chase again. The fight picked right back up, with swiping kicks, flipping around, and general Kung-Fu chaos, most of which Meg only wish she knew how to do.

"Master Pen," she whispered quietly. "Popcorn."

Big. Ass. Mistake.

That green light flooded the room as the Master Pen created a box of hot popcorn for Meg.

"What the hell was that?" Seek asked aloud, turning away for a split second. Chase wasted no time in landing a spinning kick clean and hard, right in her stomach. Patience was thrown back, all the way to the glass walls again.

"I thought you noticed," Chase taunted, jumping towards Seek. "Didn't you smell the reek of Jack Spicer blended with Fruit Juice the moment she came in?"

"Sorry, Chase- I don't have a big, ugly-ass, pig-dog snout like you do. Oh, wait, you're still in your human form. I couldn't tell."

With a death-hiss, Chase grabbed the weakened Patience by the collar and tossed her diagonally into the air. She slammed into another window shard higher up, this time with an excruciating cry of pain.

"Sure, kick 'em when they're down," she gasped. "It's because I live in Germany, isn't it?"

Chase leapt up in one strong bound to a platform across from Seek.

"Just go ahead and use your powers," Chase seemed to dare her. "You already did it once this battle, and I've got the singe marks on my armor to prove it."

Patience was down for a few seconds, the wind knocked out of her. Chase stood with his arms crossed and waited, glaring fiercely. The red, shimmering light from the fire below only made it all that much more creepy. Seek groaned and strained to get back to her feet, and even then she was unsteady. She had a slightly wild look in her eye as she inspected the blood on her hand when she touched her head again.

"Do you not bleed?" she sarcastically wondered aloud.

"I'm not bleeding because you haven't touched me yet."

"I completely have, Chase, and you know it. I've just been going easy on you because of your mental retardation issues."

Chase shook his head slowly, containing an evil grin.

"Ha! We both know that this is the best you can do."

Chase evidently struck a nerve, for Patience finally lost her…um, patience. Apparently, Seek Patience had a few issues with the thought of being weak.

She clenched her fists and went to jump at Chase.

"You asked for it! Never fool with molten metal! Dragon of Metal! Dragon's Body!"

Meg's jaw fell open and she dropped her popcorn.