Chapter 30. The End.
If Jack Spicer was victorious, then the Xiaolin Monks could never challenge him again. Jack would keep all the Shen Gong Wu, and, finally, Jack would be the undisputed ruler of planet Earth.
If the Xiaolin Monks won, all the Shen Gong Wu, via the magic of the Master Pen, would be deactivated and returned to new hiding places all over the planet, including Wuya's puzzle box. Jack would have to give up his domination of earth, and, eventually, peace and balance would return to Earth.
These were the terms of the Heylin Homicide that Jack Spicer laid down aboard the Mother SMART, drifting through Earth's upper atmosphere.
"Wait a second! Aren't we part of this fight?" Evil Seek exclaimed, finding herself and Chase on the outskirts of the battle.
"Apparently not, bi-atch!" Raimundo laughed down at her.
As soon as the fight was declared, all those on the Mother SMART deck were transported to the flat top of the ship. It wasn't too different from fighting on an open field, only it was exceptionally windy and cold. There were no twists or special complications to the battle: just a straightforward fight to the end.
"What a rip off!" Seek snarled. "I go through all that trouble to get up here, and we get excluded from the fight that determines the fate of the world!"
"Perhaps," Chase said calmly, "but if you were in the fight, whose side would you be on? You couldn't possibly fight both sides."
"Good point," Seek agreed almost instantly, taking another cigar out of her breast pocket.
"Gong Yi Tempai!"
At those words, the rim of the battleground began to rise, lifting Seek and Chase high above the combatants. A solid metal wall over a hundred feet tall and five feet thick thus contained the fight.
"That's more like it," Seek said, sitting down on the wall and letting her feet dangle over the edge. "I'm putting my money on Jack. I still can't stand him, but he'll fight dirty, so he's bound to win."
Chase looked down at her with a glare, and just for the sake of an argument, contradicted her.
"So you think you're modern technology is superior to the ancient martial arts?"
"No," Seek sat back. "I think Jack wants it more."
From the very start, the Heylin Homicide was a fight to remember.
"Bots!" Jack ordered from the cockpit in the chest of a fifty-foot Controls Bot. "Bring out all the battle Shen Gong Wu! I don't want any of that Eagle Scope or Lunar Locket crap!"
In the meantime, the four monks were quick to attempt the Dragon Deity formation.
"As long as the six of us remain in the formation, we should be able to get past any Shen Gong Wu Jack uses!" Kimiko reminded them quickly. The group had to jump apart quickly, though, when a laser blast scorched the ground beneath them.
"Quickly! We don't have an instance to spare!" Omi shouted.
Because they all knew what he was trying to say was true, no one bothered to correct Omi.
"Dragon of Wind! Dragon's Wings!"
In a whirl of white wind, Raimundo was engulfed in the ghostly body of the powerful wind dragon.
"Dragon of Water! Dragon's Blood!"
A rushing wave of water and ice surged up from nowhere to float Omi in the heart of the fierce water dragon.
"Dragon of Fire! Dragon's Breath!"
With a burst of flames, the blindingly bright and lithe fire dragon lifted Kimiko into the air.
"Dragon of Earth! Dragon's Talons!"
The whole Mother SMART shook as the rock body, held together by hidden bones of diamond, of the earth dragon incased Clay in heavy armor.
"Dragon of Metal! Dragon's Body!"
Good Seek vanished inside the metal dragon made of bolts and gears that flexed with joints and flew with magnetism.
"Dragon of Light! Dragon's Soul!"
Adult Meg receded into a blinding light that took on the shape of a dragon with scales that reflected the entire light spectrum and caused every person and object in the enclosed battlefield to throw a pitch-black shadow.
Each Dragon took on their form simultaneously, so Jack had very little time to respond.
"Attack! Attack!" Jack ordered a hundred robots at once. "Rip them apart! Strength in numbers! Overwhelm them! Don't let them combine their powers! It'll be like another bad Japanese Transformers climax where each vehicle forms a different part of the body, and I won't be able to handle that! Destroy! Destroy!"
Swarms of robots, of every shape and size, came flooding into the battle. Some of the designs were old, familiar Jack Bots, while others were brand new and never released models with bodies and guns that looked like they belonged in an intense video game.
"Show 'im what y've got!" Clay called to Good Seek as he crushed an oncoming robot like a ball of tin foil.
Good Seek held out her hands and reduced a wave of robots to a puddle of metal and the flat, plastic squares on which computer chips are built up.
Kimiko flew straight into the chest of a thirty-foot Jack Bot and melted it from the core, out. Omi finished that robot off by hosing it with icy water, causing the metal body to crumple up with a deafening crunch.
Clay could knock apart any Jack Bot easily enough, no matter how large, but it was flattening them that was effective against the ones with the ability to reform. Raimundo could rip them apart with Mount Washington-force winds, and a wall of super-condensed air actually stopped bullets.
Meg, however, made an interesting discovery. As the Dragon f Light, she was invincible. Every robot, laser, bullet, rocket, and bomb passed straight through her. But, as a result, she was incapable of attacking the robots. If she tried to hit them, she met with zero resistance and passed straight through.
"Well, that sucks," Meg muttered to herself. "At least I'm sparkly and colorful."
"Quick!" Raimundo shouted. "Spicer's gonna break out the Shen Gong Wu as soon as those robots get back! Join up!"
Busting through robots as they went, the six Dragons reunited and began the formation.
Each called out his or her specialty again, only this time added "Deity Formation" to the end. In a single sunburst of pale, multicolored light, the Deity Dragon took shape.
Fire was the head, breath, teeth, and rolling mane that ran all the way to the tale. Wind was the powerful wings that spread from the spine and lifted the whole creation with total ease. Earth was the deadly claws, as well as the basis for the arms, shoulders, and spine. Metal filled in the gaps of the body, shot spine scales all the way to the tail, and completed the body. Water was the blood running throughout the dragon, physically binding each element together, as well as balancing them. Finally, Light was the very soul, combining six minds into one and brining the Elemental Dragon to life. Light took no specific place in the Dragon, but was instead throughout, occupying the entire form without taking up even the smallest space.
With the addition of Metal and Light, the Dragon now radiated a light of its own as well as reflecting everything from the Jack Bot's lasers to the sun.
"Finally!" Jack exclaimed. "A worthy enemy!" Reaching into his jacket, Jack pulled out a pair of snappy black sunglasses to fend off the light from the Dragon.
"What are you talking about?" came the distant voice of Kimiko. "You're robots are bugs and we're a windshield."
"Give up now, Jack, and you won't get hurt," warned Raimundo. "Even though we fight with honor, there are still no rules."
Jack laughed and directed his robot up so he met them at eye level.
"You are all idiots!" he snapped, broadcasting his voice as usual. "Your plan isn't exactly a surprise to me! You only repeated it about fifty times in loud voices for I-don't-know-how-many months now! Do you seriously think I'm just going to jump into your trap? See, I have the upper hand here, kids, because you don't know my plan!"
Jack leaned forward and held down a button.
"Move in for phase one!"
As Jack was speaking, a number of small Jack Bots came to his robot and loaded it up with dozens of Shen Gong Wu. By entered each one into the computer's system, wired with SMART technology, Jack had each and every one ready to use at the push of a button.
"Let's just flatten him and get this over with!" Meg's voice snapped.
The Element Dragon spread its claws and launched a wave of Seek's power that was guaranteed to destroy every metal object it passed over.
But, it had no effect on Jack's robot.
"Pretty cool, no? As though I'm dumb enough to set up shop in a metal robot!"
"It's not metal?" each dragon cried out at once.
"Then what the hell is it?" Raimundo exclaimed.
"If I told you, it wouldn't ruin the magic, wouldn't it? But, I can tell you that it's made out of the same stuff as…"
Jack's robot leapt back about a quarter mile to make room for bay doors opening up from the ship.
"All of these!" Jack laughed as the robots of 'phase one' made their appearance.
From the surrounding wall, Evil Seek, who had lit her cigar on a stay laser blast, nearly did a backwards somersault.
"Jack!" she screamed, jumping to her feet. "How could you make those? It's a damn good thing you own the world because Steven Spielberg would eat you alive!"
"What are they?" Chase asked, eyeing Seek's behavior suspiciously.
"They're…" Seek was half panting. "That's an Imperial Fleet!"
And it was.
There were AT-AT Imperial Walkers, AT-STs, octagon-winged Ty-fighters, tri-finned Shuttles, miniature Star Destroyers and about six Super Star Destroyers of about thirty feet, and even a single honorary black Ty-fighter with inward curving wings.
"Isn't this so cool?" Jack nearly screamed. "At first, I was going to get ships and weapons from Halo and the Covenant, but then I figured that those games were more of a fad. I had a few other ideas, too, like building the robot from 'The Incredibles', or maybe some cool Urkin Empire 'Invader Zim' stuff, but- hey, c'mon- nothing can best Star Wars. I was going to make some of the ships that appear in the new movies, but then I remembered that the new movies sucked unprecedented wind, so I scratched those. And, after I win this battle, I think I'll build me a life-sized Death Star!"
The mock Imperial Fleet flew straight at the monks, not too unlike a swarm of mosquitoes and hornets equipped with lasers.
"Don't say it, Rai!" Kimiko warned as wave after wave of Ty fighters looped around the Dragons. "I'm warning you!"
But, how could Raimundo resist.
"Ah!" he quoted. "There's too many of them!"
"Concentrate all firepower on those Super Star Destroyers!" Clay laughed, swiping at one with the Dragon's massive talons.
The monks were actually cracking up a little as they smashed away at the fleet, though Omi didn't get most of it.
"That's right, losers," Jack muttered to himself as he dropped from the back of his robot. "Laugh it up, because I got this one from Star Wars, too. And you're the Death Star."
As Jack hovered behind his robot, hidden from the monks, one of his Jack Bots handed him the Changing Chopsticks. Another handed him his Evil Toolbox.
"Never mock the Chopsticks!" Jack snickered as he took the toolbox. "Changing Chopsticks!"
In a white flash, Jack and his toolbox were shrunken down to the size of a grain of rice. The single black Ty-fighter approached and let him hop aboard.
Zipping around and into the fight, Jack flew straight for the monk's Dragon form, weaving through waves of other tiny ships and dodging a few attacks that weren't meant for him. The ship was so small that it could land right on the Dragon's back, in the shadow of a spine scale, without notice.
Jack jumped out with his toolbox under one arm and ordered the ship to leave and return only when he signaled for it.
"This all began when I decided to find an alternate to Shen Gong Wu," Jack dictated to himself thoughtfully as he knelt down on the metal skin of the Dragon. "Sure, they're fun for shrinking and turning into a monkey, but I'd lost faith…" he paused as he selected a tool, "in my prodigy-like skills of metalwork!"
Lighting up his blowtorch with a flint clicker, he went to work boring a hole through a thin, numb place where metal skin converged with stone bone. It was Jack's manhole into the inner workings of the Elemental Dragon.
Flinging the scale-like piece of metal away, Jack packed up his torch and dropped down through the hole with his toolbox held over his head.
Inside, matters weren't quite anatomically accurate. The watery blood flowed throughout the body in self-contained streams, and Jack could see the stone shield set in the Dragon's collarbone from where Clay controlled the rock arms. Behind him was a water heart, with Omi in the center, pumping blood throughout. Jack zipped about with his Jet Pack, totally unnoticed by even the Omni-present spirit of Meg Kake. He knew he was near the head of the Dragon because of the intense light and heat from its fiery mane. But, he was looking for the metal bone at the top of the spine, which branched the remainder of the Dragon's body.
"I guess you could call it the central power tower!" Jack laughed, flying up towards where Good Seek filled the physical gaps in the Dragon.
There was a tiny gap between the metal bone and metal skin at the top of the spine, more than enough room for Rice Jack. Landing on the back of the shield, as it truly was, Jack had to steady himself against the constant turning and jerking of the Dragon's head.
"Bet you never saw this one coming, Xiaolin suckers!" Jack laughed as he put his goggles over his eyes and took out some tools. Getting through a metal spine bone would be much more difficult than the surface skin.
But, luck was with Jack Spicer that day.
"No way!" Jack nearly laughed. "It's an access panel! I see they never counted on my genius skills finding such a small flaw!"
Jack cackled evilly and swapped his torches for a power drill. Setting it to run in reverse, he pulled up six screws from a panel no more than a centimeter square.
"What's the point?" he wondered as he let the screws and panel slide away and drop into the distance. Taking just a hammer and a box of tacks with him, Jack dropped through the next panel.
He entered into a pitch-black space, but the light from his Jet Pak illuminated enough of Good Seek's back that he could tell where he was. Rising up about a foot, he was right behind her ear, but she noticed nothing.
Jack held a bunch of tacks in his teeth and put the box in his pocket, approaching the veins behind Good Seek's ear and below her temple.
"Sorry about this, Good Seek, but Evil's got to do what Evil's got to do."
And just what Evil had to do was the rather fine-tuned art of acupuncture. Somewhere along the line, during the fight for knife-throwing lesions that turned into figure skating, Jack picked up a single useful tidbit on pressure points. With a hammer and tacks, Jack put a row of pinpricks up behind Good Seek's ear that first paralyzed her, and then knocked her unconscious.
As Chase and Seek Patience watched the pointless battle of Jack's Star Wars toys against the Elemental Dragon, they both reached the conclusion that something was amiss.
"Does this seem not quite right to you?" Evil Seek asked, shaking ash off her cigar.
"In so many ways," Chase replied.
Just then, the little Imperial Fleet retreated to the edges of the massive arena. And, at the same time, the Dragon lurched and reared up, arching its back. Like water retreating on plastic, the metal that filled the gaps between the other elements began to quickly recede, drawing back towards the top of the spine. A few seconds later, as tension mounted in the sudden, shocking silence, Good Seek dropped right out from the Dragon's body and landed on the Mother SMART's hard top with a distant bang.
Chase and Seek looked at each other for a moment, silently passing the message 'they're in trouble now' to each other.
"Good Seek!" Kimiko screamed. "What happened to her? What's wrong?"
"Looks like she passed out or somethin'," Raimundo said, now that he could see straight through the Dragon to the ground.
"Looks like she fell asleep," Clay muttered.
Suddenly, Jack appeared in a flash of white light just twenty feet from the incomplete Dragon Formation.
"Looks more like sabotage, if you ask me!" he laughed, brandishing his hammer and spitting out a remaining tack. He passed his toolbox and the Changing Chopsticks to a Jack Bot and called his Controls robot to come pick him up.
"They were right when they said that the Dragon Deity Formation was the key to beating all my robots and Shen Gong Wu, but no one ever counted on the power of power tools, did they?"
The oval shield in the chest of the Controls Bot opened up and let Jack take his seat once more. And, since he was right up in front of the stunned monks, he decided to have a little fun. He had seen the insides of the Dragon, and with the metal skin gone, he didn't need to reach in blindly. Controlling the robot's right arm, he thrust a massive metal grip into the Dragon's chest and yanked out Omi!
"It's a downhill slide from here, Opi!" Jack laughed, face to face with the baffled little monk. "All forces move in and attack!"
Every single fighting robot in Jack Spicer's possession aboard the Mother SMART swarmed over the walls of the arena to fight. Chase and Seek didn't bat an eye as hordes of Mega SMARTs and Killer Jack Bots blackened out the sun, but the incredible wind of all the machines together actually put out Seek's cigar.
Jack laughed manically as his Evil Army came down on the Dragon. Water rained down from the body in a solid sheet, steaming near the head.
"Stick together, guys!" Raimundo called out. "We can take them!"
"We've always pulled out on top in th' past!" Clay shouted, raking the Dragon's Talons into the side of a regular SMART.
"Yes!" Omi said. "Jack Spicer make have the technology, but we…"
A Mega SMART, sixty stories tall, dropped down from above and smashed its feet right into Clay, knocking the shoulders from the Dragon, severing the head and disconnecting the wings.
"Son of a…!" they all heard Raimundo, but the last word was drowned out by the stone shoulders and arms crashing to the ground. Good Seek was spared being flattened by about three inches.
Jack SMARTs slammed into the monks, knocking them away from each other quickly. With the Dragon no longer intact, Meg returned to her physical form, but she still passed straight through objects.
A regular SMART came up on Raimundo from behind and tried to trap him in its cockpit, but Rai snapped the blast screen clean off with a powerful gust. So, instead, the SMART turned around, flipped its head upside down on the pivot point between its legs, and dropped down on top of Raimundo.
"Ruby of Ramsey!" Jack ordered, and instantly his Controls Bot used that Shen Gong Wu to pin the SMART down on Raimundo and trap him in the hollow of the cockpit.
That trick wouldn't work on Omi, though, as he could simply reduce himself to water and drain out through the smallest gaps. But, neither water nor ice had much of an effect in the super-heated air from SMART jets. He realized that these were similar tactics to the first Xiaolin Showdown with the Element SMART, just in a different medium. Plus, by that point in the battle, every monk was worn down from the effort of taking on the Deity Formation.
Clay was treated to a rather cruel pick-up-and-dump maneuver by a Mega SMART, in which he was carried just about out of the atmosphere and driven back into the body of the Mother SMART at a devastating speed. Kimiko's fire melted the Jack Bots and Killer Jack Bots with little trouble, but the unusual materials of the SMARTs were a little more challenging. But, when a Mega SMART sacrificed all its coolant for the cause, Kimiko was fully extinguished in a nauseating downpour of chemicals.
Jack went to throw out another command, when he realized that the battlefield had fallen strangely silent.
"Did I win…?" he wondered cautiously. He quickly scanned for signs of movement, and his eyes fell upon a pair of befuddled Mini SMARTs that had accidentally shot each other trying to take out Meg Kake.
"You're in trouble, Jack Spicer," Meg shouted at him.
"What're you gonna do?" Jack teased. "Dance on me?"
"I'll throw a rave on your grave!"
At the speed of light, Meg jumped from 'over there' to right in front of Jack.
"Now, really, Meg," Jack sighed sarcastically, putting his hands behind his head. "We don't need to fight! I mean, would you rather live in a world controlled by your best friend or your worst enemy?"
"You're not my friend, Jack! You were using me from the very beginning! As soon as you found out that I was the Dragon of Light- you only hung out with me to keep me away from the monks!"
Jack smirked and waved his hand through Meg's body.
"I'm glad you give me that much credit," he said sincerely, "because I really do want to be your friend and chill with you. I just haven't had time lately."
Meg was taken aback a bit and she cocked her head to the side.
"Really?"
"NO!"
Jack through his head back and laughed, feeling nothing as Meg tried to slap him. After a sharp sigh, Meg returned to a solid form and reached back to slap Jack as hard as she could. But the Killer Jack Bot that had been waiting for Jack's signal opened fire and knocked the now-solid Meg all the way to the ground.
"Ha ha!" Jack laughed, throwing his hands in the air. "I've got you all…"
"Not so fast, Jack Spicer!" Omi warned.
Jack looked up, shocked, to see some of his SMARTs incased in ice and Omi drifting in the air just a few feet away.
"If there are no rules in a Heylin Homicide, then I challenge you to a contest within a contest!"
"Oh, great. This should be rich."
"I challenge you to a game of…tag. We play in a Smoke Screen and whoever is it at the end of three minutes loses!"
Jack's jaw dropped a little.
"Tag? Are you serious?"
"Yes, and no Tag-Tag-Backs!"
"Shen Gong Wu?"
"No!"
"Robots? Weapons?"
"No!"
"Okay, fine, whatever! I've got way longer arms than you anyway. Let's go!"
All the robots withdrew to the nearest edge of the arena, but Meg and Good Seek were left where they had fallen.
"You may have beat me last time, but this time, with no technology at your hands, you shall not win!" Omi declared.
"Three minutes on the clock," Jack said officially, looking up at a Mega SMART with the time displayed on its blast shield. "And…go."
Out of nowhere, a huge cloud of smoke grew from a point in the air directly between Jack and Omi. It filled most of the arena in just a few seconds, and soon the gray and orange cloud was spilling over the walls like dry ice in a glass.
"You're it!"
"You're it!"
"You're it!"
"You're it!"
"You're it!"
"You're it!"
"You're it!"
"You're it!"
"You're it!"
The back and forth of voices was so fast that it was sometimes easy to get the voices confused. Seek and Chase watched intently from the sidelines, but the smoke was so thick that neither could see more than a few inches in. Sometimes, they glimpsed light from Jack's Jet Pak or from Omi's dots, but beyond that it didn't seem as though their movement even disrupted the cover.
The minutes ticked down. In the last thirty seconds, Jack quit saying "You're it!", and soon Omi did the same, simply to save breath. The dense air carried sounds well, so they could hear every quick breath and every rustle of clothing, but not much more.
The last ten seconds came, then the last five. Four, three, two…
They heard Jack yell out loud, either in pain or in effort- and then one second- there was a thud as someone hit the ground hard…
"Time Up!" the Mega SMART announced in its digital voice. Instantly, the smokescreen began to recede. And, as it thinned consumed itself, the victor of the challenge, and therefore the Heylin Homicide was revealed.
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And it was Jack Spicer.
"OH MY GOD!" Jack laughed, throwing his fists in the air. "I WON! And it wasn't by default! It wasn't because someone else messed up! It wasn't because someone else pretended to be me, or possessed me, or helped me out, any anything! I won!"
Omi picked his head up carefully. The walls were retreating back into the Mother SMART, and the Master Pen reappeared for Jack to claim it. Omi looked around to see Good Seek on his left and Meg Kake on his right, both the former on her face and the later on her back.
"This is not good…" Omi muttered.
The other monks were released by the SMART bots, which retreated back into the ship. When they saw what had happened, they barely bothered to get up.
"You lazy bums better get up," Jack laughed, landing on the ship and walking into the strong upper-atmosphere winds. "You don't want to be late for your first day of school, do you?"
"What…?" Raimundo moaned, looking over at Jack with a glare.
"That's right! Now that I rule the world and therefore control every aspect of everyone's lives, I'm sending all four of you to your home countries so you can go to…public High School! Take that! Now you can suffer through all the shit that I had to put up when I was your age and you were just prancing around in your PJs at that Temple! Oh, burn!" Jack paused and tapped his chin thoughtfully. "But, you better not tell them who you are- you know, the kids who are indirectly responsible for Jack Spicer taking over the world- because they'll dump you in trash bins. They'll need a dumpster for Clay, though."
Jack walked away laughing at the top of his lungs, too ecstatic to contain himself.
Meanwhile, Evil Seek was wondering if her Good Side was dead or just unconscious. And, she tested by kicking her other self a bit. She noticed the tacks behind Good Seek's only because she could sense the metal, but she didn't feel like removing them.
"Forgetting something, Spicer?" Chase called over to Jack before he returned to the control deck.
"Um, defeat enemies, check! Conquer planet, check," Jack listed off on his fingers. "Nope, don't think so!"
Chase put his foot on Meg's side and gave her a hard push that slid her body all the way over to Jack.
"Oh…" Jack muttered, glancing down at her. "Is she dead?"
But, when Jack looked up, Chase Young and both the Seeks were already gone.
"That was fast, even for them," Jack muttered, crouching next to Meg. "Yoo-hoo! Anybody home? Hello-ooo?" Jack knocked on Meg's head and tugged on a dread, but there was no response.
"Uh oh," Jack whispered.
"He warned you," Kimiko snapped in a deliberately annoying tone. "He warned you that people die in Heylin Homicides, and I think you killed Good Seek and Meg Kake!"
"Good Seek is just unconscious!" Jack yelled back. "Unfortunately," he added to himself.
The monks made a point of getting away from the Mother SMART quickly, as they had no intention of going to High School. Ever.
"Hey, Meg, quit playing around!" Jack said angrily. "You can be mad at me, just don't…"
"It's hard to imagine someone like Meg Kake dying," Seek Patience said, walking up to Jack.
"Where did you come from?" he asked, looking around.
"I still have SMARTs of my own, Jack," Seek said with a grin. "And now, thanks to you, I plan on making a fortune in real estate equipped with ANTI-SMART technology. That's what drug companies do, you know. They invent and illness and then they sell the cure."
"Got a cure for death?" Jack asked sarcastically.
"Yeah," Seek replied immediately, "but Meg will eat you alive the way I almost did." Seek let this sink in for a moment. "You've got the Master Pen, kid! You'll think of something." She turned away and walked towards Chase, waiting by the SMART.
"Wait," Jack said, finally tearing his eyes away from Meg. "Does it matter?"
Seek stopped abruptly and turned around in two steps.
"What?"
"Do I…I took over the world. No one else has ever done that. No one else probably will. But…" Jack paused and looked back down at Meg. "Does it even matter? In the end, we all end up…"
"Jack," Chase interrupted him, surprisingly. "You're asking the wrong person. Seek will tell you, no, it doesn't matter. Soon, you'll be dead and everything will go back to the way it was and you'll be forgotten."
Jack looked shocked, but Seek was smiling.
"He's got my number down, that's for sure!"
"But," Chase went on, now standing just beyond Seek, "she hasn't been around as long as I have, so what the hell does she know? Everything 'matters', Jack. As insignificant as it may seem, every action and every word matters. I've seen hundreds of generations live, age, and die: I know what I'm talking about. Events that took place fifteen hundred years ago still 'matter' today, don't they? Everything that has ever happened in your life, and will ever happen, is somehow a result of what transpired thousands, millions of years ago, in some ways more direct than others."
Jack was impressed and a bit confused by Chase's sudden change of attitude towards him. Could this be his long sought after respect?
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because," Chase said, turning away as Seek started up the SMART, "you were never going to figure it out for yourself, and you were showing figurative soft under belly by giving a rat's ass about Meg Kake!"
Chase hit a nerve. Suddenly, Jack was so deeply insulted, he couldn't even understand it. In all the years he had been angry at the world for his dirty deal in life, he had never known such a burning loathing as he did just then.
Chase jumped up into the SMART bot just as Jack rushed at him.
"SMART bots! Attack!" Jack screamed as Seek's SMART got to its feet and took flight. But, every SMART that pursued melted like a ice cream left out in the sun as soon as it neared Seek.
Jack cursed under his breath and called off the robots.
"Ah, forget about them!" Jack hissed. "They're just stuck up and jealous that I took over the world. I'm the one with everything I wan…"
He cut himself off when he turned around and saw Meg again.
"Aw, hell."
Jack dragged his feet back over to Meg and dropped down beside her. He knew she was dead, but he didn't want to accept it. He had always imagined she would grow old as one of those eccentric old ladies who isn't really senile but just pretends to be in order to get her way. It just didn't seem right for the life to vanish from such a lively personality. And, just for a moment, Jack realized that he probably killed a lot of people just like Meg while taking over the world. A lot of people.
"I wonder if they throw great raves in the after life?" Jack muttered.
He glanced down and saw Meg's I-Poo poking out of her pocket. With a faint, unhappy grin, he reached down and picked it up, letting one ear piece fall by Meg as he took the other to listen.
We are the cartoon heroes! Yeah! We are the one's who're gonna last forever!
"We learn to run at speed of light," Jack laughed sadly along with the song. "And to fall down from any…"
He dropped the little white box and drew his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around.
"Damn it," he scolded himself. "I destroyed Chester, too, didn't I? What was I thinking?" He looked away and looked into the distance. "I wonder where my parents are? I can't believe this! I took over the world, I finally defeated the Xiaolin Monks, I finally have everything I always wanted…!" Jack threw his hands out to the side. The Master Pen slipped out of his jacket sleeve where he'd been hiding it.
Jack glared at that pen with his red eyes, redder still from the smoke of the battle.
In a sudden fit of anger, Jack grabbed the pen and jumped to his feet. In a single powerful action, he threw the pen as far as he could.
"What good are toys if you don't have any friends to share them with?" he screamed, panting a little from emotional exhaustion.
"That's a damn good question."
Jack screamed and jumped back.
"Holy shit! You're alive!"
Meg jumped to her feet and snatched up her I-Poo.
"Damn straight I am! Watched those bullets graze right by me, and then I faked my own death! You think you can just shoot me, Jack? I'm a hell of a lot faster than that!"
"You're alive!" Jack wheezed, holding his hands out in disbelief.
"Yeah, uh huh. Death isn't really my thing. Now, about this…"
"Meg! Stop right there!" Jack held up his hands. "How about this? Rather than you yelling at me for the nine millionth time in the last forty eight hours about how you feel betrayed and all that feminine crap, why don't we just be happy that you're alive and I'm ruler of planet earth, and go get some pudding cups?"
Meg thought about this for a moment, putting her weight on one hip. The Master Pen came sliding back along the top of the ship, bumping up against Meg's brightly colored shoe.
"You know," she began, picking it up. "Since you rule the world, we don't have to eat pudding cups."
"But we will."
"We'll just eat more."
Meg was tired of her adult body- it was a cool novelty at first, but she realized now that she was in no rush to grow up. So, using the Master Pen, she returned herself to her small, slightly, bright-eyed, high-pitched, and bouncy self.
"Let's go buy the remains of a giant animal," Meg suggested.
"Yeah, all those crazy elephant bones," Jack sighed thoughtfully.
They turned their backs on the scorched battlefield and walked off towards an air lock back into the Mother SMART. In the thin air of high altitudes, voices fade quickly, but Jack Spicer and NutMeg Kake seem to always find a way to make themselves heard.
"How about a pet monkey? I've always wanted a pet monkey!"
"Hey, we'll break out the Monkey Staff and I'll be your pet monkey."
"Okay, now that just sounds weird!"
"Speaking of weird, did we ever find out what it was that Chase posted of Seek online that made her so flippin' made at him?"
"Yes, we did! I searched it out on line."
"What was it?"
"Only the funniest thing I've ever seen! But, it's really only funny if you know Seek and you know it's Chase behind the camera."
"Well, what was it?"
"I could tell you, but then Seek would eat us alive. That, or pull out all our wisdom teeth at once."
"C'mon, what was it?"
"You really want to know?"
"YES! TELL ME!"
"All right…here goes! Picture this…"
First, we see a simple wooden door opening and someone stocking feet as the cameraman glances up for a moment. There's steam all across the floor and building up on the mirror of a bathroom. The counter top is aqua marble and the floor it tile of a similar color. The cameraman has to whip steam off the lens, but there isn't much to see other than a bathrobe crumpled up on the floor. Then, the volume is turned up and we realize that all along someone has been singing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, and doing her best to cover as many parts as one voice can. The camera pans up towards the fogged up shower curtain and we can just barely see the outline of a woman using a Homer Simpson soap-on-a-rope as a microphone as she gets to the "Very, very frightening!" part of the song. The cameraman steps tentatively closer to the shower, wiping the lens feverishly. Suddenly, and hand reaches out and pulls back the shower curtain. The lyrics "a devil put aside for me" are morphed into "HOLY HELL!", but that scream is lost under the cameraman's uproarious laughter. The lens is so fogged up that there's no need for censorship. The clip ends with her hand blocking out the visual and about four more seconds of angry yelling to the effect of 'give me that film, you bastard', mixed with his uncontrolled laughter.
Dear Readers,
Several times over the course of the creation of this FanFiction, I was often begged, warned, not to let Jack Spicer lose. I assure you: never, at any point from beginning to end, did I ever have even the slightly whim to let Jack lose. After all, the TV show has hinted several times that the world is doomed to end up in the hands of evil, one way or another, though it likes to convince the very young viewers that there's still hope. And, we did get ripped off in Omi's trip to the future in which Jack took over the world- that was just lame and upsetting, and apparently won't even happen. Jack Spicer is an amazing character, and it's mercilessly unfortunate that the creators of the show decided to make him more pathetic and idiotic as each season passed. So, this is my salute to Jack Spicer and all his hard work and amazing talent, which has gone unrecognized and unappreciated far too many times.
Also, this story is a gift to someone very special who likes to wear wild clothes and dance around in her kitchen to techno music while making breakfast. And, you know it's someone the author thinks of like a sister if that author is a Chase Young fan and she writes a FanFiction of over 70,000 words, all about Jack Spicer, just for that someone.
Sincerely,
Dr. Patience's Secretary
P.S: I would also greatly appriciate it if, in any review you might write, you did not reveal the conclusion, since there would be little point in reading the story if you already knew Jack won in the end. Thank you.