Chapter 26. The Final Assault Begins

The Xiaolin Monks leapt from the YinYang world portal one after another, with Evil Seek Patience bringing up the rear, back into Chase's deserted palace.

"Are we all here?" Raimundo asked, taking a quick check. "Good. Now, let's go find Jack so we can find Chase so we can find Dojo!"

"This is going to take forever," Kimiko muttered as Seek walked by her.

"But first, a pit stop," Seek said, quickly jogging down a hall.

"Hey! Where're you goin'?" Clay demanded as he and the monks chased after her.

They followed Seek all the way to the massive vault door that guarded Chase's horde of Lao Mien Lonsoup.

"Good luck," Raimundo rolled his eyes. "You need, like, ten combos and Chase's handprint to get in there."

Seek gave him a nasty look over her shoulder and held her right hand against the door. There was a strange sound, like someone sanding a board, and the monks watched with curiosity as Seek tensed and clenched her fists. The metal under her hand began to morph and melt, slowly spiraling counter-clockwise. She gradually bore a hole in the door, the extra metal expanding out to the sides and rejoining with the rest of the door. In just a few moments, it was large enough to fit Omi inside. But, Seek suddenly stopped.

"That bastard!" she exclaimed. "There's a layer of rock in here!"

Just then, her concentration thrown off by the interruption, the potion's effect finally began to get the better of her. She dropped her hand and doubled up. In a flash, her cry of pain turned into an enraged growl as she was replaced by the sinuous maroon dragon.

"Holy shit!" Raimundo screamed out as he and the other monks jumped back. "I thought she was just leading us on this whole time so she could get to the potion and steal Chase's powers!"

"But Good Seek told us that this happened," Omi retorted.

"Yeah, as though we should trust a Seek, good or evil!"

The Seek dragon went up on her haunches and, gnashing her teeth and muttering profanities, dug both sets of claws into the door. She drew up all the metal she had previously dug out and yanked it back. The metal stretched like some kind of shiny goo, thick strands of it still sticking to the door. Then, when Seek had pulled back as far as she could, the metal around her claws solidified in a flash, forming a jagged spike. The strands of metal drawn from the door shattered like icicles as Seek slammed the spike of metal back into the hole she'd begun, smashing right through the layer of rock. The whole action took about five seconds.

Beyond the rock there were only a few more inches of metal for Seek to carve out. The tunnel she carved in the door was just the right size for her to slither through, so she disappeared inside to snag a can of soup.

The monks stared for a few seconds, taken off guard by the fit of rage.

"Those SMART bots don't stand a chance," Kimiko said with a half grin.

They heard the ripping sound as Seek yanked the lid off a can from within the vault.

"How can he drink this shit?" they heard her snap, apparently returned to her human self. There was an unexplained silence, during which Raimundo began running through all the possibilities for betrayal at hand.

"Hey, guys," he whispered. "We gotta watch our backs here, ya know? I bet…"

Before he could go on, Seek returned through the portal feet first. She was back to normal, pinstripes and all, and had brought the empty soup can with her. It clanked to the ground and rolled by the monks as Seek righted herself and, with a little bit of concentration, returned the door to its original state, hiding the blocks of broken rock within the door.

"I doubt he'll ever even notice," she said smugly, admiring her perfect patch job. "He must've had the entire Northern Cho-Cho clan bottle up in there," she laughed, adjusting her collar as she walked by the monks.

"WHAT?" Kimiko exclaimed, just about catching on fire. "Are you serious? What did he do? Label the cans?"

Seek shrugged.

"Search me. But, it looked to me like he might keep track of which families of dragons make the best Lao Mien Lon."

"That's sick," Raimundo snapped, picking up the loose can.

"Hey- not only does Lao Mien Lonturn you into a dragon and turn you Heylin, but I'm beginning to think it might be some sort of Evil energy drink. And…a mouthwash…" Seek added as she ran her tongue over her teeth thoughtfully. "Yeah, I think so. I'm definitely getting a rush from chugging that whole can…"

Raimundo gave the empty can a sniff and handed it to Clay.

"Smells pretty rank to be a mouthwash," Rai said flatly.

"I'll bet a fella could make a mountain a' money if he found away t'keep all the energy in the soup but take out the evil and nasty transformation," Clay thought out loud, pushing the jagged top back inside the can.

"He did," Kimiko said frankly. "It's called Coca-Cola Blak."

"Hey- where's Omi?" Raimundo suddenly noticed. Seek was halfway down the hall, too pumped up to stand around and contemplate that soup any longer.

"Found her!" they heard Omi call out from a nearby room.

Good Seek nearly collided with Evil Seek in the doorway.

"Hi there!" Good Seek said happily. Evil Seek gave a short scream of disgust and revulsion, pushing Good Seek backwards through the door.

"Hey! How dare you push Good Seek!" Omi snapped, jumping between the two.

"I've got every right to push myself around, you little pop corn kernel. But, as much as I'd love to stick around and tell Good Seek horrid stores about the bloody deaths of small, fluffy animals," she went on as the other three monks came through the doorway, "I have a previous appointment to knock all Jack's teeth out! Look alive, kiddies! We need to track down Jack!"

They all ran after Seek as she left for the main part of the palace where the ceiling opened up to the sky.

"According to the BBC," Kimiko informed them, reading off her PDA, "the Spicer Mother SMART is practically in orbit. We'll have to fly up quite a few miles to get to him."

"Okay, but where is he?" Raimundo asked.

"Directly above…" Kimiko stopped and looked away from the screen as a shadow fell across them all. She looked straight up and stared at the sky. "Us," she said.

Everyone craned their necks and saw the Mother SMART, tens of thousands of feet above but still big enough to block out the sun a bit.

"Boy howdy!" Clay exclaimed. "That thing gets bigger every time we see it!"

"Yeah," Rai said sarcastically. "C'mon guys, let's go do this!"

The four summoned their Dragon abilities and changed into the impressive dragons of Water, Wind, Fire, and Earth, and Seek turned into the rather evil looking Dragon of Metal.

"Wait just one second, you!" Good Seek shouted. "I'm coming with you!" Good Seek, too, changed into the Dragon of Metal, though she was slightly smaller and much less lethally adorned than Evil Seek.

"You're not coming," Seek snapped back. "You'll just get in the way!"

"I am coming and there's nothing you can do about it! I'm going to make sure that you keep your word and don't double cross these nice young people."

Seek gave such an intensely aggravated and sickened sigh that the others wondered if she hurt her voice box in doing so.

"Ugh! Fine, whatever! Can we just go?"

So, finally, the uneasy alliance took to the skies and left the palace. As they raced straight through the air, the monks took a final count of their Shen Gong Wu.

"YinYang yoyo, Hero Glass, and Honest Argot," Clay said ruefully.

"We can use the Honest Argot to find Dojo," Omi said, "and the Hero Glass on Meg."

"Oh yeah," Kimiko remembered. "You still have to tell us your plan for Meg."

"If we can do to Meg what Chase did to Seek with the YinYang yoyo, we can get a Meg that will fight on our side. Then, we can use the Hero Glass on Meg and she will gain all her Light powers!"

"I will be damn impressed if that works," Evil Seek told them bluntly.

"You don't think they can do it?" Good Seek asked, trying to fly along side her other self.

"No. I don't think they can."

Just then, the SMART bots guarding the Mother SMART spread the alert of the approaching threat.

"Megas and regulars comin' in!" Clay shouted, clenching up the massive rock talons of his Dragon form.

"Something just occurred to me," Kimiko said sharply, flaring up to prepare for the fight. "Why does it have to be just us? We've got the Hero Glass, so why don't we just find a bunch of people who want to fight Jack and give them all their potential powers?"

"You would be surprised at who such quick, easy power would corrupt," Omi warned her, glancing at Raimundo quickly.

"'Sides," Clay added, "no sense in draggin' anyone else into this mess. No knowin' who would get hurt!"

Meanwhile, Evil Seek listed off all the reasons why Good Seek should help her destroy the SMART bots.

"Just think of it as defending, not as attacking!" Evil Seek shouted as she melted a regular SMART like a candy bar in the sun. This, finally, seemed to be the key to convincing Good Seek.

"Well, I guess you're right," she sighed, putting out her hands.

"Dragon's Body!" they called out in unison.

The two Seeks mirrored each other exactly, zipping through the air and bursting every SMART that came near them like a blister.

The monks sat back and watched as the Seek annihilated upwards near a million tons of metal, detonated munitions that got in their way, and often left nothing but the carpeting from cockpit floors.

"It's kinda nice to have someone else to all the heavy liftin' for a change," Clay said with a grin.

Not too far above, standing at the control deck with his hands behind his back, Jack Spicer, ruler of Earth, was watching the battle with interest. He glowered at the monks, wondering why they wouldn't just learn their lesson and go home. He scratched his stubble on his chin, wondering what he would do about Seek. For inspiration, he decided to take a walk down his Hall of Evil Trophies he had been collecting lately.

Jack had returned himself to just one, so he was his regular self again, but he had learned a few things from his temporary improvement. Now, if only his sidekick would do the same.

"Meg! Shut up! I can't hear myself think!" he hollered over at the now-seven Megs running around the ship. "Don't make me turn you back into one person!"

"Aw, you're no fun any more, Jack!" a Meg whined.

"Yeah! I thought this whole world domination thing would just be a big party!"

"Well, you thought wrong!" Jack shouted. "Now, make yourself useful and keep an eye on the battle down there."

The Megs stuck their tongues out behind Jack's back and bounced off to the control deck.

Jack passed through the retracing door that let him into the long, dimly lit hallway. Technically, it was the ship's prison, but it was an all-star cast of inmates.

He walked by the heavy metal doors with narrow windows of bulletproof glass. They were all locked up in this hallway, everyone from Wuya to the cop that pulled him over once for doing 68 in a 65 zone. Katnappe, Tubbimura, Panda Bubba, Panda Bubba Body Guards, Le Mime, Vlad, the Heylin seed, Cyclops, the Chameleon-bot: all locked away! He even had four empty cells awaiting the Xiaolin monks. The real pride of his collection, though, was behind the heaviest door on which Jack had the patience to put the toughest locks he could find. There was even an electrical current running through the door to keep its prisoner at bay.

"How're ya doin' in there, C.Y?" Jack laughed after pressing the little intercom button. However, there was no response, but he could see the pacing outline of Reptilian Chase through the narrow window. "Jack bots takin' good care of ya? I sure hope not! Listen, I got a proposition to get you out of here. A good friend of yours is on her way here and it looks like she's ready to melt my entire SMART army. I'll let you out if you swear your loyalty to me and get rid of Seek.

This time Jack got a response, but it was only Chase laughing uproariously at the suggestion.

"You're eternally a fool, Spicer!" Chase growled. "If Seek is headed this way, then it's not to destroy the SMARTs."

"Uh, news flash, soup breath! She's destroying them right now!"

"That's just because they're attacking. If you call them off, she won't exactly go hunting them. She's looking for me."

A few seconds later, Jack burst back onto the control deck.

"Megs! Call off all the SMARTs! We're setting a trap!"

"A trap? What kind of trap?"

"A sinister one," Jack shouted at her, tiring of her silly questions. "Actually, you know what?" Jack grabbed the Wu from his pocket. "Ring of the Nine Dragons!"

The seven Megs flickered and quickly rejoined into one body.

"Aaaww!" Meg whined. "What was that for? We were having so much fun!"

"Yeah, well, play time's over. I don't want a stray Meg to give my plan away when they get here."

Meg glowered at him and slid her jaw to the side.

"And, what is this plan?" she asked, already coming up with ways to ruin it.

"I think Seek teamed up with the monks so she could get at Chase. If we let her find Chase, then we can trap all of them down in the prison."

"But, Seek will just bust out of the dungeon," Meg reminded him.

"We trap the monks in the dungeon, Meg."

"And Miss Seek?"

Jack gave her a dark, truly sinister grin. This wasn't just one of his boyish bully evil grins- this was a deep snarl of true malevolence.

"This time, we let Chase kill her!"