Chapter 27. So Long, Suckers!

"In your face, Jack SMARTs!" Evil Seek shouted triumphantly as the last bot dripped away and the others went into retreat.

"Why are they leaving?" Kimiko asked, flying up alongside Good Seek.

"Jack probably doesn't want t' waste any more SMARTs," Clay assumed.

"C'mon guys," Rai shouted. "Let's go find Jack and put an end to all this!"

The group flew the final few hundred feet to the Mother SMART, vanishing into the almost complete darkness of its shadow. The two Seeks could have bore a hole into the body of the ship, but there was no telling how thick the armor was and whether or not they would electrocute themselves in the process.

"Hey, there's a docking bay over here," Kimiko called out, pointing to a tall set of round, retracting doors. "It looks like it's for a Mini."

"Perfect," Good Seek said as she and her evil side hovered before the door and forced it open. They all had to fight to get inside, as the sudden change in pressure caused a temporary vacuum.

"Jeeze Louise!" Clay exclaimed when Seek slammed the doors shut as soon as they were all inside.

"That really takes the wind out of ya," Rai gasped, leaning on the wall.

"How ironic," Kimiko said with a smirk.

Omi ran past them, following the two Seeks who were already leaving the tube-like tunnel of the port.

"Focus!" he snapped as he ran by.

Through the bay, they found themselves in a massive hanger, equipped to hold several regular SMARTs. It reminded Raimundo of the hanger in A New Hope, minus the giant docking bay window and storm troopers.

"All right," Evil Seek got their attention. "If you want to fight Jack, we need to get Meg on our side. But first, we need to find Meg. We should all split up because this ship is roughly the size of New York City."

"That is awfully big," Omi commented, remembering his own fiasco in the city. "Wait, I want to go with Good Seek!" he protested.

"Ugh, fine. The rest of you split up…"

"Oh, no you don't!" Raimundo cut in. "No way we're letting you run off on your own, Miss Backstabber! I'm going with you to keep an eye on ya!"

Seek raised her forefinger and opened her mouth, but she was cut off again.

"Yeah, no kidding, Rai. And, I'm not running through this stupid ship by myself! Who knows what kind of weird stuff we'll find in here?"

"It will take forever if we do not split up, though," Omi reminded her.

"Yeah, so unlatch from Good Seek!" Evil Seek snapped.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up!" Clay stopped them all, holding up his hands. "Here's what I think: No one should go into the ship by themselves because of all the SMARTs! Jack only called off those last 'uns in the first place because of the Seeks. So, I think we should split up into two groups. Omi and Kimiko are the smallest, so they can sneak around with Good Seek. Raimundo and I will go with Evil Seek to keep an eye on her."

"Sounds like a good plan to me!" Kimiko agreed.

Raimundo was about to agree, too, when he noticed Evil Seek was missing.

"Hey! Get back here, you sneaky bitch!" he screamed, running after her.

"Well, are we gonna stand around all day patting each other on the back or are we gonna do something?" she yelled back over her shoulder, running towards an open hallway.

Clay ran after Rai, and Omi, Kimiko, and Good Seek took an opposite route. Raimundo had the YinYang yoyo, Omi had the Hero Glass, and Kimiko had the Honest Argot.

Raimundo and Clay followed Seek's pinstriped form down a number of industrial, pipe-like hallways, all lit with long lights and branching off without instruction periodically.

"Where the hell are we going?" Rai demanded.

"Yeah, how do ya know where ye'r goin'?" asked Clay.

"I'm looking for Chase," Seek explained.

"Chase? What about finding Meg?"

"Let them handle Meg! They have the Hero Glass, anyway. Besides, I think Kimiko speaks 'Meg'."

"So, why don't we look for Jack?"

"Because," Seek said patiently, coming to a three-way fork in the hallway, "you want to find out about Lou Mien Dojo, and I want to give Chase a piece of my extremely pissed off mind." She suddenly looked to the side and sprinted down the hall to her left.

"Uh-uh," Clay said, grabbing his hat as he ran. "And, how do you know where Chase is?"

"Use the force, young grasshopper," Seek said sarcastically, mashing movie quotes. "That crazy soup lights up your senses, and I can just about smell that rat bastard all the way out here. And, I think we're getting close."

Sure enough, the hall finally came to an end at a tall steel ladder bolted to the wall. Seek never stopped running but jumped right on to the ladder and shot up eagerly.

"Going up," Rai muttered, looking into the darkness of the ladder shaft.

It was a good six-flight climb, and at the top Seek had to pop off a hatchway to escape. The ladder brought them to the opposite end of the Detainment "Trophy" Hall, dim with enclosed lights and dead silent.

"There must be a thousand cells in this place!" Rai complained, seeing the vast hall.

"But most of 'em are just regular doors," Clay noticed. "I think we're looking for somthin' a little tougher than these."

Rai and Clay followed after Seek, well aware that she could open every single one of these doors at once and unleash a flood of ticked off villains.

"Hey, check this out, dude," Rai whispered, pointing to a door on his left. "These ones have our names on them! Like, literally!"

Clay let out a low whistle, a bit humbled by the prospect. It was sort of like seeing a tombstone with your name already printed on it.

They turned when they heard Seek scoff.

"Notice how I don't seem to have one?" she asked.

"Well, duh," Rai rolled his eyes. "Even Jack wouldn't try to lock you up in a metal cell."

"No, but there are a myriad of other materials he could have used," she pointed out. "Makes you wondered what he had in mind instead," she side slyly.

"Ah, here we are!" Seek exclaimed, coming to the heavy-duty door that withheld Reptilian Chase. "Home stinking home!" Seek leaned against the wall and pushed the intercom button. "Good morning, Shang Tsung," she said with an evil grin. "Feeling soul-hungry today?"

"Hey, soup suds!" Raimundo snapped, pressing the intercom button. "We want to know what you did with Dojo!"

"Burn in Hell," the voice of Reptilian Chase snapped back fiercely.

"Don't give me that, you XXL iguana! I wanna know where Dojo is!"

"Let me out, and I might tell you," Chase snickered.

"Like we're gonna let you out of here!" Rai said contemptibly. "You can either tell us now, or Seek here'll bust down this door and we'll whip you through the YinYang world and make Good Chase tell us!"

There was a pause before the reply.

"I thought I smelled treachery," Chase growled. "So, Seek escaped the YinYang world," he said, feigning that this was news to him.

"Damn straight, Sherlock!" Seek snapped. "And if it weren't for Clayton Moore and Nacho Libre here, I'd open this door right now and smack you around a while!"

"Clayton Moore and Nacho Libre?" Raimundo repeated slowly.

"Listen," Chase said sharply, "we all want the same thing: to stop Jack! Let me out of here and we can all put Jack down!"

"And Dojo!" Clay reminded him.

"Yes, yes! I'll tell you where to find him!"

Seek cracked her knuckles and put her hands up, switching off the intercom.

"All right- time to enact a little revenge!"

"One second there, Patience," Raimundo stalled her. "I gotta talk to Clay about something first."

Seek rolled her eyes and waited with arms crossed.

"Hey, do you think we're building up too many untrustworthy allies here?" Rai whispered to Clay to the side.

"Yeah, I know what ya mean pardner," Clay agreed. "But, what choice to we have?"

Raimundo held up the YinYang yoyo.

"I think it's time we did a little double-crossing of our own! As soon as Seek opens that door, we YinYang-yoyo Chase in and out of the other dimension so fast his head'll spin! A Good Chase would definitely keep his word."

"I don't know, Rai," Clay said. "Won't that just put a second, extra-evil Chase in the YinYang world plotting vengeance on us? I don't think we should mix things up too much here."

Raimundo sighed, extremely frustrated with the situation.

"Know what? I'm the Leader here, so I'm going to do what I think is right!" He turned around and walked back up to Seek. "Open that door!" he shouted, holding up the YinYang yoyo.

"Can do," Seek said with an evil smirk.

But, instead of opening Chase's door, she opened the door to Raimundo's empty cell.

"So long, Xiaolin suckers!"

The floors melted under the monks' feet, wrapping bars around their feet. Raimundo cried out in pain as an iron cord dropped down from the ceiling and wrapped around his hand, shaking the YinYang yoyo free.

"Earth!" Clay retaliated, shaking the floor violently with an intense Dragon's Talons attack. But, the earth was many miles below so the attack was weak, and Seek simply pushed her hands to the side, sliding the both of them into their respective cells. She slammed the doors and locked them, adding an extra few inches of armor around the inside of the cells to contain the powerful Dragons.

"You bottom-feedin', scum-suckin', double-crossin' whore!" Clay absolutely lost it! "This is a cheap move even for evil! Ain't you got no standards?"

Seek scoffed and pocketed the Wu.

"Ain't you got no grammar? Hey, you've only got yourselves to blame. Leave the backstabbing to the evil, Raimundo! You never should have plotted against Chase," she reprimanded.

"Why the hell not? You were planning to do the same thing!" Rai exclaimed.

"Actually, I wasn't," Seek said with a grin. They heard the familiar groan of melting metal as Seek opened the doors to Chase's cell. Clay and Rai stood in darkness and could only wonder about the sounds that came into their cell from the hall.

Immediately Reptilian Chase jumped at Seek and slammed her to the floor, nearly plunging his talons straight through her shoulders. But, he drew back a bit when he saw that Seek was just being submissive.

"Finger off the trigger there, C.Y!" Seek exclaimed, putting her hands behind her head.

"What are you up to?" he snarled, expecting her to pull a fast one any second.

"As I was just telling the new inmates," Seek explained, carefully unhooking one of his lethal claws from her jacket, "they came here to save Dojo, and I came here to save you."

"Likely!" Chase growled, bearing his teeth. "Why shouldn't I just kill you now?"

"Because…" Seek paused and caught her breath. "Ugh, get off me first!"

Chase slid to the side and rose up on his hind legs, letting Seek jump to her feet.

"All right, here's how I see it," Seek went on. "I still don't like you, but I think I got that grudge out of my system in the last fight. And, as things are now, I don't see why we should be enemies. I'm the one who can fight off the SMARTs, and you're the one with the Lou Mien Red Bull recipe, so…"

Chase held his claw up with a disgusted sigh.

"Don't even finish. Let's just get the hell out of here!"

Chase went to walk by, but Seek held up her hand. She reached into her breast pocket and withdrew a flat, silver flask.

"Swiped a little extra just in case it came to this," he explained, holding the drink out to Chase. He eyed it skeptically, but, after a quick sniff, decided she hadn't poisoned it. In one long swig, Chase emptied the flask and tossed it to the ground. In a flash, he was restored to his human self and back in business.

Before leaving to find Jack, Chase tapped on the narrow window in Raimundo's cell door.

"You'll find Dojo on the fourth and fifth shelves, far to the left!"

Chase left the two depressed, bewailing monks with a cruel but smooth evil laugh as he and Seek ran from the prison hall.