Jack Spicer awoke the next morning (well, more like noon really), yawning, and absent mindedly scratching at his neck, unaware of the healed over puncture wounds that could be found there. He knew nothing of what had transpired last night; the Upir, Wuya, none of it was remembered even as a weird dream. To him, it had never happened so he acted accordingly, going about his morning as he normally did.
Well, sort of.
"OUCH! DANG IT!" the evil boy genius shouted in response to stubbing his toe on the end of his bed.
While he proceeded to hop around yelling; he didn't notice the coat he had haphazardly thrown on the floor last night was still there and stepped on it, sliding until he fell with a 'whumph'. He rubbed his head, glaring at the wall and picked up the black trench coat he'd slipped on, throwing it over the messy sheets.
Oh, how he hated mornings. Especially Monday mornings; when he ruled the world he was definitely getting rid of Mondays.
For now, the young boy simply yawned again and let his growling belly lead him to where the food was. The Spicer dining room was beautiful, like a magazine picture really; like no one lived there at all. Which made sense, Jack never used it, and his parents ate somewhere else more often than not. He walked right past the dining room into the kitchen which, though not as lovely, was actually used.
He probably could have made a Jack-bot years ago to cook him breakfast every morning, but for some reason he only thought about making one when he was hungry. Besides, there were some days he actually liked cooking, but today was not one of them. He grabbed a box of Franken-Berry and a bowl, poured the cereal, got the milk and a spoon. He left the carton on the counter after pouring it, and, still standing, took a bite.
He instantly spit it out.
"Yuck! What the heck?" The Goth boy stuck out his tongue dramatically in distaste. "Gross! That milk must be rotten."
He dumped the cereal out of the bowl and into the trash and angrily threw out the milk as well. If he had bothered to check the sell-by date on the carton however, he might have realized the milk was not expired at all, and therefore might have questioned why it tasted so horribly to him. But he didn't, so he didn't, and remained oblivious.
Somewhere along the way of finding something else to eat it occurred to him he felt more thirsty then hungry, yet wanted something salty. There, in the door of the fridge, a can of tomato juice, that would work. A few weeks ago his mother had gotten it into her head that if she ate or drank nothing but vegetable juice she would lose a few pounds, which was a silly idea for many reasons, but explained what it was doing there. She'd given up on that diet in two days; her love of chocolate pudding rivaled her son's.
Jack ordered a 'bot to clean up the bowl in the kitchen and drank the juice as he made his way to his evil lair. Much better than spoiled milk, he thought.
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At the Xiaolin temple the four monks had been awake for quite a few hours by now. In fact, Clay was already talking about being ready for some lunch as they continued going through the training course. There was no specific lesson today, just working to maintain their shape. The rest of them agreed with the Earth dragon's suggestion and began to wind down from their exercises.
The four friends went straight from training to the mess hall; they fixed lunch from whatever happened to be available then sat around the table eating and talking, or in Kimiko's case, checking her PDA.
"Girl, are you ever ioff/i that thing?" teased Raimundo, so far today she'd been glued to the thing even more than normal. And that was saying something.
Kim was aware of her actions, she didn't mean to seem far away or anything, but a recent news story had gotten her attention. She said as much to her friends now.
"What kind of story?" asked the ever inquisitive Omi.
"It's really weird actually, since early this morning all sort locals have been calling in and complaining about some kind of monster thing."
"Monster? Yeah, right. They probably all just saw a stray dog with mange or something."
"I don' know Rai," said Clay, "After all the dragons, ghosts, witches, an' other things like that we've seen it could be anythin'."
"Clay is correct Riamundo," agreed Omi, "it could very well be a new force of evil!"
"I don't know about ithat/i guys, but whatever it is these people have seen killed someone."
At the Fire Dragon's statement the tone of the room suddenly lost its humor.
"Whoa, does it really say that?" questioned a more serious Rai.
"Not directly, but it says witnesses who were near the murder saw a humanoid creature-thing running off on all fours close to the crime scene. Local authorities don't believe it, but, oh man…"
"What? What happened?" asked the Water Dragon.
Kimiko looked up at her friends with wide eyes, "Whatever killed that poor guy drained him of his blood."
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Jack Spicer moaned on the floor of his lair. He bet it was food poisoning. True, technically he hadn't eaten any food all day, but what else could have made him so sick so suddenly? It had to be that tomato juice. He was sure of it.
Aside from stubbing his toe and almost eating spoiled milk, the day had been rather uneventful. He'd spent most of the day fixing the Jack-bots that had been destroyed in yesterday's showdown. No one had showed up to bother him, no monks, no villains, just him and his machines. It had been rather peaceful actually, and so he lost himself in his hobby.
That is, until the food poisoning set in.
One moment he was fine, the next he was spewing the contents of his stomach into a trash can. He felt cold and achy and desperately wanted something to drink. He'd ordered a 'bot to bring him a ginger ale but one sip had him ready to puke again, not because of how sick he was feeling either, because it had tasted like mud.
"Wh-what's wrong with meeee?" whined the boy genius. And much to his surprise, he got a response.
"How are you feeling Jackie?" asked a woman's voice sounding falsely sweet. A voice he recognized.
"Wuya?"