Chapter Eight: The Clash
"Chase Young!" Dojo gasped.
Chase Young bowed as he kept the Lunarcanum extended at arm's length in front of him. "Nice to meet you again, reptile." He cast his gaze across the amassed clans clustered around the rock. He could make a year's worth of Lau-Mang-Long soup out of this delicious horde, but he didn't have time for that now. He was only here for the Terrarcanum.
"Hi, Chase!" Jack called. "How's it hanging?"
"Where is the Terrarcanum?" Chase said evenly, ignoring Jack.
Dojo gave him a taste of his own medicine and ignored that question. "What have you done with my uncle, you…you…master?"
Chase arched an eyebrow. "Nothing." Chase said. When he saw the disbelief on Dojo's face. "Nothing that wouldn't have come about eventually, anyway." He tapped the black dragon on the head, and it opened one eye to reveal that it was now bloodshot and latticed with electric-blue veins. "
Dojo scowled. He didn't want to give Chase the Shen Gong Wu. But he couldn't just leave it. His senses were pointing him directly below, and he could guess that it must have somehow been buried there.
"Wasn't that Shen Gong Wu on the shield that the black dragon was carrying?" Jack asked.
"That?" Chase said scornfully. "That was just a wooden disk, as my mental control forced the lizard to reveal. No, the real artifact is around here somewhere."
"Leave this place at once!" The Elder cut in. "Or we shall fight you with our army of millions--,"
"—hundreds--," Jack interrupted.
"Hundreds!" The Elder said. The other dragons gave a booming roar that seemed to shake the island itself.
"Find me the Shen Gong Wu at once," Chase Young countered. "Or I shall fight you with my army of water!" He held up his own Wu. "Lunarcanum!"
The magic of the Lunarcanum was especially effective on the island which was surrounded on all four sides by water. The dragons screamed and hissed as the ocean around them frothed and churned as if it were being boiled by some gigantic undersea oven.
If that was not bad enough, the dragons' unified terror was compounded as the water began to overrun their island. It started on the southern and western shores, destroying the gardens and grasslands and reducing them to just more water. The dragons, who were feeling fearsome just a few minutes ago, were now all shrinking to their diminutive forms and attempting to escape to their tunnels.
A few didn't make it, however. Chase's water attack rushed forward with even more speed than before, washing back a couple of lizards. The last Dojo saw of them, they were sinking helplessly into the all-consuming wave.
"There it is!" Dojo and Jack yelled at the same time. A small glowing red disc, about half the size of the Lunarcanum, was floating in the water between Chase and Dojo.
They both seized on it at once. Chase leapt from the back of the ensorcelled Tiamat and placed one long, gloved finger on the tip of the disk. He thought that he had claimed it for a split second, only to see that Dojo had one of his claws on the underside of the Shen Gong Wu as well.
"Aw, man!" Jack whined. "I wish I was in this climactic battle!"
Chase smirked at that. "Dojo Kanojo Cho, I challenge you to a Xiaolin Showdown for the Terrarcanum!
Dojo gulped. Oh boy. The world is depending on ME! Now I know how the Chosen Ones feel! He replied, "I accept your ch-challenge, Chase Young."
"I wager my Lunarcanum against your Manchurian Musca." Chase declared. "The game is…Stairway to the Heavens! First to make it to the top platform…rules the world!"
"Let's go then!" Dojo said, and in unison, the two last hopes for the Xiaolin and Heylin sides yelled "Gong Yi Tanpai!"
Clay was plagued by uneasiness. "Are you sure that this is a good idea? I mean, it ain't fun being trapped in this cave, but it's better than ending up lookin' like a turkey on Thanksgiving Day!"
Kimiko gritted her teeth. "It's fine." She said. "I can do big things with my element, you know."
"That's what I'm afraid of," Clay muttered, but he didn't raise any further objections.
Kimiko's concentration – the focus of all her energies – was entirely on the slab of stone blocking the exit. But this time, she was trying to take away heat from the entrance. It was a completely new experience for her, trying to use her fire chi to actually create cold energy.
Deep breaths, Kimiko. She thought to herself. You've been doing things like this ever since you came to the temple. Just pull the fire towards you, and you're done.
She took another breath and began miming the act she was envisioning. Clay shivered and took a few steps away from the entrance as the temperature started dropping. It didn't take more than a minute before icicles began to grow over the slowly freezing rock. The heat energy was forming white-hot gloves of flame around Kimiko's hands, which the dragon of fire didn't seem to be noticing.
"Brr!" Clay shuddered as he regretted not bringing a jacket. "I reckon that's enough, Kimiko. Kimiko?"
She wasn't stopping. Her hands were now completely encased in fire, and the gate slab of the cave as well as several things around it was frozen solid. "Kimiko, you can stop now! C'mon!"
Kimiko thrust one hand forward. A torrent of fire escaped from it, erupting in a titanic inferno that engulfed the frozen ice cube. It started melting, creating gusts of hot steam and chipping off layer after layer of rock.
"I think…" Kimiko panted after it was all over. "We can go through now."
Clay looked at the entrance. The rock and everything around it had completely disintegrated, leaving nothing but some fragments of stone to show that it had all been there. He whistled appreciatively. That was some real craftsmanship!
The two monks ran out of the cave. It did not take them too long to notice that something was very, very wrong.
Hovering over the darkened horizon were glowing platforms, hundreds of them, of all different shapes to sizes. They were arranged in a loose pyramid form, with the top platform containing nothing. As they ran, they could see more and more of what was happening, and both of them were able to guess what was going on.
"Someone's just challenged someone else to a Xiaolin Showdown!" Kimiko pointed out.
They made it from the caves to the Green Rock in less than ten minutes. Even though they were out of breath when they arrived, the adrenaline rush had not worn off. They saw the two combatants grow larger and larger until they finally saw who it was.
"Dojo!" Clay cried.
"Versus Chase Young?" Kimiko added.
"Hi, guys." Dojo said sheepishly, looking down on them from a platform. Chase Young merely cast them a scornful glance as he stood on his own platform.
"I see we have an audience now." Chase Young remarked airily. "Perhaps I will allow you to die together after I win the Terrarcanum."
"You mean, it's revealed itself already?" Clay demanded.
"Well, duh," muttered Jack Spicer from a cage underneath the floating platforms.
"I can do this, guys!" Dojo said. "I have the Manchurian Musca."
"And I have the Lunarcanum, one half of the world's most powerful weapon, as well as the unbridled power of Heylin magic and an infusion of strength from the magic of the Dragoncircle." Chase retorted. "Still feel confident about your chances, worm?"
Dojo gulped. Don't panic! Don't panic! DON'T PANIC!
"Let's go!" Chase snapped, and he leapt from the first platform to one of the oval ones on the second tier. Then he jumped over two more and landed on a rectangular space without expending any effort.
The dragon squealed when he saw that happening, and Kimiko and Clay had to cover their eyes.
"I can do this. I can do this." Dojo repeated. He flexed his muscles and sprang, Slinky-style, from his base platform to the closest one. "Woo! I did it! Awesome!"
"Yeah…great, Dojo." Kimiko said. "Just ten million more to go!"
"Hey!" Dojo snapped. "I'm balancing the fate of the world here, which, by the way, is your job. I'm at least entitled to some positive reinforcement!"
Chase had just made it to another platform.
"Dojo!" Clay called. "I love you like my own two boots…but if you don't get your butt up in there I'm gonna negatively reinforce you all over this place, you hear?"
Dojo groaned. If Clay wasn't going to the pillar of positive feelings in the group, then they were definitely in trouble.
He stretched out his arm muscles, catching his claws on the next platform. He had just dragged his body onto it when all of a sudden a sigil in the center began flashing.
A game-show announcer's voice began chuckling. "You, dear Dojo, have just landed on a Xiaolin spring token! Move on up three spaces!"
To his surprise, the platform zoomed straight through the next two layers, causing them to disintegrate as Dojo went up to a higher space.
Chase Young was at the fifth top-most platform right now. The Terrarcanum was just out of reach.
"Oh, you lucky dog!" said the announcer voice as Chase jumped to the fourth top-most platform. "You just landed on the good old Heylin switcharoo!"
"What?" Chase demanded, but he went unheeded. The platform spun around until he fell off. As he plummeted down to the lowest platforms, Dojo went sent skyrocketing to his own position.
"Way to go!" Kimiko called.
Chase brandished his Shen Gong Wu. "Lunarcanum!"
His gestures called up a colossal tidal wave from the other side of the island. Dojo's eyes widened as Chase egged it on, bringing it onto land safely with the magic and ordering it to charge through towards the platforms. It did so quickly, rising up in a killing force of dead fish, soon-to-be-dead fish, ocean plant life, and silt. Dojo tried to run, and indeed after changing to his larger form he managed to get a few feet away before the water crashed around him.
The last thing he heard before he cried out was a distorted, unfamiliar voice calling out his name.
"Doooojooooooooooo! Doooooooooooooojooooooooooo!"