I am back!
I have been pretty busy during my five week holiday and now I only have a little over a week to publish new chapters until I once again, become too busy to write.
Thank you for your patience.
-Stupid Asian
He had put up a front. A façade if you will. A façade that displays him as an egocentric, selfish, Heylin wannabe. Something that will portray him as a nuisance.
He needed it to be that way, so he could observe from afar. All their techniques, strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes. Every little bit of info he could get his hands on. Analysing and scrutinising every little hint, every subtle detail, and every little lapse in form. He learnt where their bodies drew the line, before they would collapse; and he knew where their bodies thrived. He knew every little combination of attacks. What would affect them the most. Everything. He knew their bodies as intimately as they did. Hell, he probably knew even more.
A small sigh escaped pale lips. Looking up at the high ceiling of his office, a much older Jack Spicer leans back in his plush desk chair. The chair was quite evidently high quality, lined with Italian leather, with Brazilian cherry wood framing and arm rests. The leather could've been hand stitched as well.
Ruffling through unruly red hair, Jack looks down at his desk, to the little handheld mirror next to his laptop. Picking it up gingerly, he eyes his little gift. A gnarly looking scar, deep and jagged, coming down from his right eye.
Delicately stroking at the scar, carefully as to not accidentally scratch at the sensitive skin. Flinching at the memory it brought on, he ignores the screams within the depths of his mind.
A cacophony of cackles.
His mother and father butchered before his own eyes, a mangled heap of corpses almost unrecognisable to their once glittering selves.
And a fork, a lone fork with what looked like a rather large cube of meat forced into his mouth.
Wincing at the faint headache, Jack stares up at the clock in his lab, reading that it was six in the morning. He had stayed up to finish some commissioned work by the KGB, had it packaged in a box and had just sent a Jackbot to send it to them. It would most likely arrive to them in a couple of minutes, if there wasn't any trouble when it passed over Mongolia.
Yawning as he stood up, Jack heads to the kitchen of his family's old manor in the Chinese countryside. Going through some new designs in his head, he faintly wonders what monk tasted like.
Needless to say, the murder had done its intended job to traumatise the monks. Although Master Fung had already taught them all they needed to know and no longer needed to assist the monks on their path to becoming Dragons, in favour of letting them grow on their own terms; the monks still miss the old master. Since they were in the temple for a significant part of their lives, the mentor has become a sort of second parent to each of them, and to see a parent so brutally butchered…
Standard procedure for when a master died, would be to embalm the body and then to place them in a casket in a special room, unlike other lower level monks who would just be cremated and have their urns placed in the same room. The traditional Xiaolin embalming process was long and extensive, with the foremost part of the process being praying extensively to release the spirit from the body. The body was placed in a stone pedestal in the front of a room, then certain monks would kneel in front of the body and pray for extended periods of time. The certain amount of time for this praying was unknown, but it could be from several hours to several days.
Master Fung's body was treated similarly and was now on the stone pedestal previously mentioned. The monks have come and go, praying for nearly six hours before leaving, possibly to their beds so they can continue the following day. Due to this, they left Master Fung's body on the pedestal.
To the convenience of Chase Young.
The immortal's aura had entered the room suddenly, darkening the atmosphere and thickening the air, only interrupted by that strange perfume emanating from the body. Circling the corpse, Chase had noticed a few things upon teleporting into the room: the body has already been cleaned and the monks had stitched back whatever they could, and that the same intoxicating perfume was clinging onto the body. The perfume had hit Chase' sensitive nose as soon as he entered and it quite thoroughly distracted the being for several moments, before he finally started to examine the carcass. How they did not notice that utterly intoxicating scent, he did not know.
The chest has been wrapped in several layers of gauze and the eyes, lips and back have been removed of the thread. Parts of the arms, calves and the abdominals where the fat and muscle have been cleanly sliced off underneath were stuffed in a strange thick liquid that has solidified, and the skin on top has had the stitching reinforced.
Despite the cuts and the gauze wrapped around the chest, the corpse seemed almost normal, as if Master Fung had never been slaughtered and the monk was just sleeping.
Chase had stopped circling the body at this point, standing near the head of the pedestal and was just about to leave before he noticed something.
He did not notice these before, as they were small and seemed like a very light cut. Marring the skin merely a shade darker, and with no blood and barely any redness, it almost seemed invisible, similar to a paper cut. But it was there. And Chase saw it.
The outer wrist of Master Fung's right hand had a pair of initials imprinted just over the wrist bone:
'J.S.'
The bright-near blinding-sun in the sky did nothing to help the cold. Most wouldn't even consider it being just cold, it being subzero temperatures in the frozen tundra. Of course it didn't help either that the ground was slippery, or that the icicles hanging from the edges of various cliffs overhead were startlingly large and seemed like they could drop any minute. Adding that to the uneven terrain covered by seemingly smooth snow and ice and the nearly obscured view of the change from flat land to dangerous slopes, the monks were having a really hard time trekking through the frozen desert.
It also didn't help that their mentor and caretaker of five years was recently butchered.
The monks were restless for a week! They were angry, confused, anxious, frustrated, even depressed. They all swore to avenge their fallen master and proceeded to train their hardest, so that when they do find the one who killed their teacher, they will make that person pay.
So when Dojo had come rushing to the courtyard, distressed and violently scratching at several boils littering his snake-like torso, alerting them of a Shen Gong Wu that had just revealed itself in northern Greenland, they were notably irritated at the interruption of their training.
It turns out, that it was just what they needed. It took their minds off of the murderer and made them focus on something that now seemed fickle in comparison, hunting for a trinket instead of a killer. But it did help them calm down.
Slipping on the icy ground with a yelp, for what seemed like the fifth time in an hour, an annoyed growl followed.
"Dojo! What the hell does the Wu even look like! We've been walking around forever and we don't even know what we're looking for!" Raimundo exclaimed, rubbing delicately at the sensitive scratch on forehead.
"Yeah Dojo! My feet are aching with trying not to slip on the ground and I don't even think my lip balm is going to help with how chapped my lips are getting!" Kimiko added, spreading even more lip balm on to her lips. Clay nodded while rubbing his hands together fervently, letting out a sneeze.
"We're looking for a small diamond the shape of a tear drop, it's clear but it glows brightly so it shouldn't be that hard to find," The little green dragon responded,
"It's not called the Lover's Tear Drop for nothing." Dojo followed.
The Lover's Tear Drop was an inconsequential Shen Gong Wu that many people forgot existed, but its power was actually quite interesting. To look at someone through the tear drop, manipulated that person's image to what they actually were or the closest thing that would describe them. It also gave a white or black glow around the image to show whether the person was affiliated with the Xiaolin or the Heylin.
"Dojo, is that the Wu?" Omi questioned, pointing at a rather bright glowing near the top of a tall mountain. His companions' eyes followed up the mountain, all of them blanching at the idea of having to trek up a mountain that high.
"Well, well, that saved me quite some time looking for the Wu. I thank you, young Omi."
The confident voice that came from the side startled the monks, and when they saw Chase Young at said side, they all threw their worries away and ran up.
No way in hell were they going to let Chase Young get this!
Chase chuckled to himself at this, giving the children a head start before running up the mountain himself, easily catching up to and surpassing them.
As they all raced up the mountain, while Chase knocks each of the monks down along the way, all of them rushing up to reach him; another figure appears, hovering several meters above the impromptu competition. Softly landing in front of the Lover's Tear Drop with a faint padding sound, light footfalls stepping over uneven terrain before reaching down to pick up the Shen Gong Wu and when the figure got a firm hold of the tiny object he stood up and turned around to leave.
"Wait, the wu is-"
Omi's voice cuts off, the little boy noticing the other figure facing them. A tall figure in the blackest of leather. The person turns around to face the five, meeting all of them with a bored stare. Unruly red hair falling over redder eyes, cupped by the palest of skin… it brought about a faint sense of nostalgia, like they've done this previously but for the love of all that is Xiaolin, where had he seen that face before?!
He certainly looked familiar. With the exotic colouring. But the face just threw him off. High cheekbones, a strong jaw, faint eye bags, those definitely seemed different about the person's face, but the person's presence just seemed familiar. The person's clothes seem different too, a fitting leather jacket, matching leather pants and military boots.
"Ummm… who are you?" Kimiko questioned.
And yet, silence was the answer. The new character locking eyes with everyone before dropping his eyes back onto the diamond, blinking lazily.
"Sir, please excuse my rudeness but I do not believe you should be here." Omi stated, worry, frustration and questions staining his face.
"You might not know this but this object is very powerful and you migh-"
Omi didn't manage to finish his sentence, when the new character suddenly punted Omi's head with the front of his steel-toed boots, similar in the fashion of kicking a soccer ball.
It was only at this that the new character raised his hand to show the Shen Gong Wu, pinched between his thumb and his forefinger and brought it up to the bright arctic sunlight. At the bright reflection of the sun through the crystal, he mumbled to himself,
"Oh, I know exactly what this is."
At the same time the new character spoke, Chase stares at the image within the crystal as it manipulated itself into the closest thing that can describe the strange man.
A body of black skin and bones with the longest limbs that stretched for miles and no hair or facial features, the body rotting away.
If you don't watch Supernatural, then you might not understand the last bit. I tried to describe a Wendigo. :P
There is quite a bit of lore on cannibalism and what it can do to the human body, I decided to do something similar but make Jack more human. Not a Wendigo and not exactly Hannibal the Human either. You will see what I mean in the next chapter.
My writing abilities are getting rusty, as you can see.
Regarding Bellette07's review question, 'what led Jack to start eating people?', I haven't exactly explained it well enough here, but I did show a little hint in the chapter. It will be more in depth in the next chapter.
I also described Jack as a grotesque artist in the previous chapter so that the 'J.S.' will kind of make sense in this chapter, as the initials almost act like an artist's tag. Or simply something to show that an object is yours. I write my name on my instant noodles all the time so my brother won't eat them.
Once again, thank you for your patience. I hope that my writing abilities will get better as I write more chapters.
-Stupid Asian