The Fire Burns Inside
Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown or any of its characters.
A/N: I don't even know what I was doing with this story… I read over it, and immediately I'm like WTF? But, I have sudden inspiration to finish it, but beware if you read it, it'll probably be pretty short…
Chapter 4: To Whom It May Concern.
Clay and Omi stood in the meditation room, eyes widened and jaws slackened at what they just heard. They couldn't believe that one of their best friends was part of such a destructive prophecy…
"Why?" Omi choked out, tears pricking his eyes. "Why must it be her?"
Master Fung hung his head sadly as his favorite student grieved. "We do not know what will happen, Omi," he began wisely, "all hope is not lost…"
"But it's already begun, hasn't it?" Clay asked, his tone serious. He tipped his hat backwards on his head, so the two could see his sky blue eyes. "Master Fung, how bad is this here prophecy gon' get?"
It was time to stop beating around the bush with his students. "I fear that Kimiko may not awaken herself… I fear that all life in the temple will be at danger… Clay, Omi… if the time comes, you must be willing to protect the side of good…"
"So yer sayin…"
Their teacher turned away.
"No!" Omi broke in, anger rising in his normally oblivious and calm tone, "That would be breaking the Wudai code –"
"I'm sorry, Omi, but people could get hurt…"
"What of Raimundo?" He demanded, "He is not going to walk around, okay with this!"
"I know…" Fung said in despair.
"Then why –"
"Omi…" Clay put a hand on his shoulder to try and calm him down, but this, in turn, upset the little guy even more, and he whipped around, running from the room. "Isn't there anythin' we could do, Master Fung?"
"WE would need time to come up with a solution… But we have been trying for the past sixteen years…" He shook his head, "I fear the worst, Clay… Prepare as you see fit…"
He bit his lip, and turned to walk away.
"Clay?" The voice was so soothing, it was hard for the blonde to freak out – for the moment anyways.
"Yeah?" He asked, tilting his head.
"We will try to find a way to save her…"
"Okay, Master Fung… I…" He thought for a moment, "I believe you…"
"Thank you…" Suddenly his sensei looked far older than he remembered, and the stress was bringing out the age lines in his face. "Please… hurry to the Shen Gong Wu vault, and remove all Fire Shen Gong Wu…" He nodded, "And any Wu that Kimiko is particularly good at using… I want you to go into the forest beyond the temple walls, and burry them as deep as you can…" He knew the Dragon of Earth could get this done quickly.
The blonde nodded solemnly to his master, and walked out of the room.
What could they do? It was already going to be hard enough to save the people, let alone the whole temple and the girl… He was torn. He had grown to love these children, and pride swelled in him as he thought of each of them individually. Kimiko had done so well in her years of training – succeeding greatly in ways that the boys on her team couldn't even compare to.
He bit his lip… He needed to think of a plan… and fast…
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Raimundo leaned out the window of the infirmary, watching the stillness of outside. He glanced over at the girl, still unconscious in the bed, his eyes flickering to the wound on her arm. How had it gotten there? He wasn't sure as he shook his head, and continued to glance outside.
The sky was an everlasting blue, as though it would never change from its cheery color. The grass shivered in the cool breeze, and it ruffled Raimundo's chocolate hair as he closed his eyes. His skin seemed to soak in the rays of sun, before he heard footsteps behind him.
"So they told you?" The voice was quiet, but sturdy.
He turned, showing his profile to his visitor, as he captured eyes that matched the everlasting sky outside. He gave a curt nod, and gestured towards the window. Clay moved to his side, and leaned against the sill, staring out with his best friend.
"What are we going to do?"
"Protect her… no doubt…"
"But what if –"
"Kimiko will always be Kimiko… We are still her friends, and she still has a family at home who is hoping to see her again some day…"
"Are you just saying that because of your feelings for her?" Clay challenged, wondering if he was treading in dangerous waters.
Raimundo shrugged, giving a surprisingly mature reply, "Maybe… But, it doesn't change the fact that we can't just kill her." He said the harsh words so simply that Clay flinched. He was really beginning to see the reasons why the Brazilian was chosen to be leader.
"So what happens when Fung gives the command to… kill her?" The Texan tried to be as brave as his friend.
"We don't listen, of course… Even the most purest of evils have a little bit of good in them… Chase taught us that with Ying Yang… The only damned thing we'll ever learn from him… It might take time, and though Kimiko might go into a frenzy, destroying everything that she doesn't mean to, we'll have to make time so that we can save her life… You don't just kill because your comrade is controlled by something unexplainable."
Clay nodded, truly astonished at the brunette's words. "What do we do to prepare?" He questioned.
"We have to get every anti-fire advantage possible… If Omi isn't willing to go through with this, we aren't going to have anything…" He shook his head, "Omi will be the key, because of his control over water…"
That made sense to Clay, but he couldn't see the youngest of all of them really cooperating. "Do you think he'll cooperate?" He decided to ask out loud.
"I think if he knows we aren't going to kill her… From what Omi told me, he's as much against this idea as I am…"
Clay nodded once again, not knowing really what else to say. "We'll have to use the order of the elements…" This was something he knew much about, while his class mates lagged behind with the scientific ways of their powers.
Raimundo glanced at him, urging him to continue.
"Water quenches fire, earth swallows water, wind scatters earth, and fire absorbs the wind… If we can bury her fire deep enough within our own elements, perhaps we can win…" The burly teenager glanced at the brunette, "But that would be putting you in the most danger…"
They thought about this for a moment as a bird landed on the feeder outside and sang a familiar tune of nature, plunging his beak into the food in little ticks, careful of what was around him.
"As long as we approach the situation right, I think we'll be okay…" He glanced at the girl again, who lay unmoving. "But, we need to know some things first… Why couldn't she control the fire? And why did she get burned?"
"I might have answers you so gravely need, Raimundo…" The two boys turned to see the Dragon of Water wandering closer to them.
They assumed he'd listened to most of their conversation, seeing what they had to say on the matter before he decided to enter. Now was the perfect time, as he walked forward, looking far older than they'd ever remembered seeing him.
"In this prophecy, I do believe, hypothetically –" now he was sounding a hell of a lot smarter than they had remembered as well, "- If Kimiko couldn't put out a simple candle fire, she couldn't control the fire…"
"Right, but she was moving the fire without even knowing it…"
"Perhaps, but after she flicked the fire away from the candle, she couldn't put it out…"
"She was in a ball on the floor, Omi…"
"We will just say," he insisted, "And then she gets burned." He glanced at the girl as well, "I think she might have lost control of her element consciously."
"What do ya mean, 'consciously'?"
"To her thinking mind, she cannot control fire anymore…" Omi retorted back, walking as close as he dared to the girl, in fear she'd fling up and scare him. "But subconsciously, perhaps she is losing control in the sense that she has too much power to know what to do with…"
Clay scratched his head, trying to wrap his mind around it. One look at Raimundo said he was trying to do the same. "So yer sayin' that she has no control in a sense of not being able to control all of the power and losing her power, being just like an average person?"
Omi nodded, believing his theory to be well enough explained.
"That actually sort of makes sense…" Raimundo decided. "It's the best guess we have so far… so I think that…" He sucked in a breath, "I think that we have to go with it…"
"Now what?" Clay asked as Omi joined them at the window. He could barely see over the sill, but stood with his best friends anyways.
"Now…" He took one last look at Kimiko, "We wait… and do any last minute preparing we can…"
The boys nodded, and watched as the bird flew away, far into the horizon.
Go far away from here… Raimundo sent the bird his wishes with his thoughts, hoping that that same creature wasn't caught in the crossfire that was bound to happen here.
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A/N: That feels like it was super short, but it was a start right? Wow how much my writing has painfully improved. I hope you enjoyed! I don't really know where I'm going to go yet, but I'm just going to wing it!
-zesty-