It wasn’t as simple as picking sides. Raimundo hadn’t understood it when Wuya… when he let Wuya change him. Sometimes it didn’t seem fair, but he’d learned at a young age that life wasn’t fair. Who puts a bunch of teenagers in charge of saving the world in the first place?
He’d fought it as long as he could, letting Omi’s needling become a source of strength. He’d prove that he was still just as good as he’d always been. When the shadows in his heart were almost too much to bear, he trained harder.
It got worse as he got older, as the stakes became more obvious to all of them. He was starting to understand what immortal meant, and how long a thousand years of darkness really was.
The first time, they were in some big, interchangable American city, and they’d split up while they hunted down some wu. All four of them were on edge after a fight with Hannibal only the day before, and when Rai felt something sharp press against his back, he reacted before the young man could even announce that he was being mugged.
Raimundo stared down at the body as the mugger bled out, as he made choking noises and batted ineffectually at the wound the Sword of the Storm had left. Somewhere along the way he’d forgotten how fragile humanity was. How much stronger he’d become. And yet they still had the same capacity for evil as Hannibal Bean or Wuya or Chase Young.
Maybe he hadn’t prevented a thousand years of darkness by reacting too quickly, but he’d probably stopped some other sucker from getting mugged and maybe ending up stabbed. The act unwound the springs Raimundo hadn’t even realized were pulled so tightly in his chest.
And it was much, much easier the next time…
He’d thought world domination would make him happy, but when he toppled governments under the banner of privatized peacekeeping, it just felt hollow. Like college had, like running his dad out of the company just to spite him, it was almost so easy it was insulting. None of this was a challenge, not the crap they called weapons, not the so-called resistance, not even the inevitable betrayals in his own ranks.
The monks didn’t move against him, and he was sure it was because they thought he was beneath them still. Well, he’d show them. His jackbots were built for serious combat now, and he wasn’t fourteen and playing kick the can anymore. It wasn’t easy, and that was the best part. It was a challenge.
Then he turned his attention to the Heylin. First he strung the monks along, setting them against Wuya or Chase or even Hannibal when the opportunity presented itself while he worked on his own projects. Designing technology that could defeat and contain them, that was a stunning challenge. A real thrill.
And when he was ready, the monks even helped him defeat his rivals, so he could betray them one last time and imprison them too.
Of course, then it was boring again for a long time, until Omi showed up and everything…well, the crunches the monks made were satisfying, at least.
But Omi escaped his attention, and then everything started to slip away from him, the whole world around him dissolving into sand and slipping through his fingers.
…
Jack Spicer bolted awake in bed, confused for a long minute about why he was in his parents house - hadn’t he burned that to the ground? No, wait. Wait. Was it a dream?
Maybe it was a dream. It had to be a dream.
But try as he might, he couldn’t get that crunching sound out of his head. Instead of sleeping more, he took a long, hot shower and went in search of some loud music and something to weld to something else. Anything to distract him from that sound.
The humiliations had been… juvenile. Jack realized that a few short years after choosing them, but the idea of trying to move any of his captives presented too many logistics issues, and he didn’t want to display any weakness by suggesting he’d changed his mind. He ignored them for a while longer, but eventually it occured to him that he might as well just build a new control room with superior technology anyway. He wouldn’t have to see them anymore, and he could leave the so-called Heylin threats in a forgotten pit, which was exactly what they deserved. They were inconsequential to him now.
Not taking any chances, he left everything online. He didn’t want to risk any small breakdown or technical issue going unreported and allowing them to escape. He didn’t even tell them what he was doing; he’d long ago learned not to bother gloating. Instead he just left one day and locked the door behind him so that only he could enter.
It was only later that it occurred to him what a perfect hell he’d probably created for the three of them, left alone in the dark with only each other for company. He imagined reinforcing it with additional titanium and cement, enough to ensure they’d stay there until the earth’s core collapsed or the sun expanded into a red giant, but in practice he never got around to it. He sometimes even forgot they were down there, and of course he didn’t trust anyone enough to tell them, for fear someone would get it into their heads that one of them would help overthrow Spicer’s reign.
But after decades pass, things change. His original plan had been to achieve immortality by uploading his consciousness into a robotic body of his own, but he kept putting it off in favor of other projects. When he first noticed his memory failing, Jack was able to shore up his systems with ever-better programming, robots that followed him around and reminded him who he was speaking to and that he needed to eat. Soon, though, he realized that no matter how much he tried to compensate, the damage was too great. When he was lucid, he was desperately switching more and more systems over to the AIs, all while trying not to think too hard about why he was even bothering. To give up, though? He’d worked too hard to get to this point, and there was no one he wanted to leave in charge. He might as well let the machines have it. They were doing a better job than people ever had anyway.
The AIs treated him kindly, no matter what kind of day he was having. He lost track of how much programming he’d done; were they improving each other? Or had he told them to do that? On his good days, he stopped around, trying to make sure all the holes were patched and the robots would be able to maintain each other when he was gone. On his bad days…
Eventually he told the AIs that he just didn’t want to know.
-
It had been, oh, around fifty years since Spicer had left them in his pathetic attempts at insults and not returned. Not much time in the grand scheme of things, and still forty nine years, eleven months and twenty nine or so days more than he had really cared to spend with either Wuya or Hannibal, let alone in his underwear and being /painted/. It wasn’t that Chase couldn’t meditate under those conditions; he could, and he did, despite the screeching noise of Wuya’s insults, but there were so many better ways he could be spending his time. That Spicer, of all people, was responsible for his predicament only added to his annoyance.
Chase was quite sure he’d find the right time to tear Jack limb from limb eventually, or the worm would die as mortals were wont to do, and then…
Well, that was the thought that worried Chase, just a little. Given time and effort, he could probably escape from the manacles holding him, but without any kind of traffic through the control room, he had no idea whether he could escape from the room. Better to be patient, at least for the moment. If he was lucky, he’d find a way out that left Hannibal and Wuya trapped, and that was worth a little patience.
When his thoughts were finally interrupted by the hiss of the automatic security doors, Chase looked up in surprise. He thought about making a cutting remark, but Wuya was already yelling and Hannibal’s insults weren’t far behind. Spicer didn’t seem to notice.
Mortality was definitely catching up to Jack Spicer. He was wearing an exoskeleton to support what was obviously a frail body, his skin was paper-thin and wrinkled, and his hair was thin. None of this seemed to deter the evil genius, however, and he moved with a sprightly step that reminded Chase of when he’d first met him as a teenager.
“Hey, losers,” Spicer greeted them, pausing for a minute to snicker in front of each of their containment devices. It was surprising how little could change in fifty years.
That thought echoed in Chase’s mind as Spicer kept himself busy in the control room, attended by a steady stream of jackbots. He’d watched Spicer age and even mature into his thirties. This was not the person Spicer had been the last time he’d seen him. This man didn’t seem to realize how much time had passed.
Spicer had never seemed particularly worried about his mortality, at least night in the years Chase had known him. Perhaps, like most mortals, he didn’t truly believe in his mortality until he was confronted with it, or didn’t understand what it would mean to lose it.
It was notable how many enemies Chase had simply needed to outlast in his lifetime. Instead of losing his life, though, Spicer seemed to have lost what he valued most: his mind. Now that bitter irony was worth waiting a few years to see.
“Is it true, then?”
“Jackie, my boy, near about anything’s true if you squint long enough.”
“Stop screwing with me, Largest Bean. Was I supposed to be a Xiaolin Dragon?”
“I wouldn’t say you was supposed to. Had your luck gone a different, sure, but it ain’t like you got much luck to speak of.”
“So it’s, what, genetic but not expressed? What do I have to do, sell you my soul and you’ll activate it?”
“Magic don’t work like that, soul or no soul. I can magnify what you is, I can make you something else altogether if I’m feeling real generous, but I can’t make you what you coulda been.”
“Christ, that doesn’t - how does that make sense? You know what, fuck you. If it’s genetic, and it’s there, I’ll get into genetic therapy, I’ll get into nanotechnology, I’ll do it myself.”
“You sure you don’t just wanna be a monster, kid? Like your evil idol?”
“Hell no. If I’m going to be a monster, I’m going to be of my own making. That’s the scientific method.”
It is a mountain dragon, old as stones, worn down by time and glaciers but no less implaccable for it.
Wuya watches it come and swallows hard, but she’s come too far to change her mind. She maintains the meditative posture Hannibal taught her and fights to find her center. Reaching out to the stone around her, she anchors her energy deep into the earth.
When she opens her eyes again, the dragon is there, staring her down.
“I offer up all that I might have been,” she says. “I offer up my eyes and hands, my blood and breath.” These are not the words Hannibal taught her, but she thought he was too careful. She needs to succeed. What that power costs is not important.
“What you ‘could be’ is considerable,” the dragon says to her. “What do you ask in exchange?”
“Power,” she says simply. “The power to make those who have wronged me feel as I felt.”
“Is that all?”
“Power enough to change the minds of men who look at women and see only weakness.”
The mountain beneath her shakes like laughter. “That will take quite a lot of power, mortal. I cannot promise that.”
“You’re enough to start,” she answers, confident.
The dragon could be affronted by that, but she has judged well, and it is amused instead. “Then your bargain is struck.”
For a moment she thinks the dragon has gone, but then her entire body shudders and her skin cracks like fault lines. Her muscles harden. Her body slumps against the mountainside, and when she wakes she feels the dragon like a particularly bad headache, whispering to her as she tries to make sense of the auras everything around her glow with.
“Let us lay waste to your enemies,” the dragon says, and it is her voice speaking. “It has been quite some time since I had a body this nice.”
When Hannibal first came to him with the proposition, Jack wasn’t sure what to think.
“Why aren’t you a bean anymore?”
“I could be, if you wanted me to,” Hannibal smiled, all teeth. “Spending that long in another universe ain’t good for your sanity. Part of you ended up there for a while, didn’t ya?”
Jack nodded.
“Was he right in the head when you got him back?”
“It’s kinda hard to tell with good!me, really…”
The Heylin master laughed at that. “Look, boy, you either say yes or no. You want to be a proper Heylin student or you want to keep getting your ass handed to you. It’s your call.”
“And it’s not just me?”
“Nah, I got a list. You’re near the top, though.”
“Do we have elements? Do I get an element?”
Hannibal crossed his arms. “You saying yes, then?”
“Yes. But I reserve the right to change my mind later,” Jack hedged his bets.
“So do I.” Hannibal laid his hand on Jack’s shoulder and held tight as he teleported both of them away from the boy’s basement lair.
-
“I don’t know as I oughta,” Jessie said. “I got my girls to think about.”
“I heard tell you liked flying,” Hannibal answered, “and you like showing your brother up even more.”
That earned him a glare from beneath her hat. “And who told you all of that?”
Hannibal gestured behind him, where Jack waited in the distance. The redhead startled when he saw them looking and waved.
“I gotta work with that varmint?”
“That gonna be a dealbreaker if I say aye?”
Jessie considered that. “We gonna fight so’s I get to beat him up?”
“You’ll be sparring, yes,” Hannibal answered.
“You got me, then,” she said, and offered her hand to shake.
-
Jermaine, on the other hand, was entirely skeptical. Hannibal sent Jack and Jessie away while he and the young man had a lengthy discussion about Xiaolin and Heylin philosophy, Hannibal’s honesty as a teacher, and Jermaine’s refusal to fight Omi.
“I ain’t gonna make you do anything you’re uncomfortable with,” Hannibal told him. “Chase may not’ve told you the whole truth but I can tell you got the basics. No hard feelings if you decide it ain’t for you.”
“Jack doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me,” Jermaine admitted.
“I’m figuring that out,” Hannibal conceded.
“But I’m willing to get it a shot.”
Hannibal put an arm around the boy. “You’re gonna see how good it’ll be for you.”
-
“You know her?” Jessie asked Jack. The three new Heylin apprentices were watching from a distance as Hannibal spoke to a willowy young blonde woman.
“Why would I know her?”
“You knew both of us,” Jermaine pointed out.
Jack threw up his hands. “Well she’s not Ashley and she’s obviously not Vlad or Tubbimura. That’s basically my contact list.”
“Shouldn’t surprise me you ain’t got friends,” Jessie shrugged.
“Hey!” Jack shouted, but before he could say anything else, he noticed that Hannibal was returning to them - along with the young woman he’d been talking to.
“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a first class,” Hannibal said as he walked up. “This here’s Willow.”
-
“They’re an interesting bunch of children, Chase, I’ll give the two of you that.” Hannibal stood in the doorway of his makeshift temple and looked out over the training field. An African American boy in his mid-teens was leading three others - two blonde girls and a redhead - in simple martial arts forms.
Chase merely shrugged. “Neither Wuya nor I have ever had the patience for teaching.”
“I noticed. There’s some bad habits I’m gonna have to fix, but your Jermaine’s doing the best out of all four of them so far.”
That made Chase smile. He’d quite liked the young American dragon, even if it had ended rather messily when the Xiaolin got involved. “I knew he’d excel, given the opportunity. Tell me about these other apprentices of yours, though. That one must be Bailey’s sister.”
“Uncanny resemblance, ain’t it? She’ll be a fine Dragon of the Mountains, gonna give her brother a whole mess of trouble.”
“She looks like she’d give you trouble as well.”
Hannibal nodded. “Less than you’d think. She’s fond of being in charge, might give Jermaine a run for his money soon as she catches up in training. But she’s not really had anybody have faith in her before, and she’s getting fond of it real fast.”
“Interesting,” Chase said, trailing off. After a moment, he continued, “What about that other girl?”
“Oh, the young lady of the Swamp? I think she’s gonna be full of surprises,” he said, and then changed the subject. “Now Wuya’s boy…”
“I still can’t believe you took Spicer.” It came out sounding more incredulous than Chase had intended.
Hannibal laughed. “I’ve known more stubborn Heylin students in my day,” he said, smirking at Chase. “He’s got more experience than any other folks I could rustle up. And he put up with Wuya. If I can get through to him, he’ll do just fine.”
“And if you can’t?”
“Then he’ll be… what’d I hear them saying the other day? Voted off the damn island. What’s it matter to you who I’m teaching, Chase?”
“He’s always seemed like such a mess of wasted potential. He sets my teeth on edge.”
“Now there you go,” Hannibal answered. “That’s why you aren’t cut out for teaching. You can’t say someone’s a mess of wasted potential when you ain’t done something about the potential yet.”
Chase rolled his eyes. “Jermaine did just fine. I just didn’t have the experience to teach a Dragon of Thunder, not after Dashi.”
“Jermaine had no bad habits and only a passing familiarity with magic,” Hannibal pointed out. “He’s talented, and you gave him a good foundation, but you also bailed when it got hard.”
“He’s the one who decided to-!”
Hannibal put a hand on Chase’s shoulder. “I’m not judging you,” he said, “but I don’t need you questioning my choices here, not about Jermaine and not about Jack.”
Chase huffed but didn’t argue. “What’s his element? I was never able to get a good scent on him.”
“Jack? You ain’t figured on him? Chase, my boy, he practically drips creation energy. Boy’s a Dragon of Heaven.”
Chase opened his mouth to argue and closed it again. If Hannibal was wrong, it’d be plain soon enough, but if he was right and the Heylin had managed to get ahold of a Dragon of Heaven, well…
Maybe Hannibal was less insane than he gave him credit for.
I burst into my lair feeling particularly awesome and triumphant. “Woohoo! I showed those stupid monks, didn’t I?”
Wuya floated in behind me, sounding unimpressed as always. “Of course, I’m very impressed you succeeded for a change.”
“So what does this wu even do? You never said.” The Wheel of Fortune was about the size of a frisbee and I had to keep resisting the temptation to toss it in the air.
“Go ahead and try it, Jackie,” she said, so I did. After I called the name of the wu, there was a flash of light and my whole body went numb. When my vision cleared, I was no longer staring at Wuya’s mask, I was staring at my own face.
“What the-” My first thought was that it was some kind of duplication thing, like the Ring of Nine Dragons, or maybe a shapeshifting thing. But the other me laughed and I instantly recognized it as Wuya.
I looked down at myself, startled to see my limbs and torso trail off into plasmodic tentacles. “What did you DO?”
“Why, I got myself a body, Jackie. But you did the work, activating the wu, so I should congratulate you on successfully carrying out TWO of plans for me today. I think that’s a first ever for you.” The smile on my face looked all wrong. “Why are you so upset? It’s not as if you were particularly fond of this body.”
“Yeah but it’s the only one I have!” I argued.
“Had, dear, had. Past tense,” she answered in the singsong tone I’d teased her with before. “And now, I’m going to enjoy myself.”
I followed her, having nothing better to do, while she made a big show of enjoying a shower, warm food, and sleep. I hung in the corner of my own room, wondering how many times she’d watched me do the same things. I didn’t need any of them but I missed sleeping, watching her do it.
The next morning, I watched in horror as she got dressed. No binder. Makeup, and not just eyeliner. She dug deep into my closet and pulled out things my mother had bought, things I’d never worn. She looked over the half dozen or so options and pulled on a sundress, even contorting herself into a bra.
Wuya ignored all of my screams and insults, and eventually it was just too much to watch, so I fled my house.
It was surprisingly hard to keep track of time as a disembodied spirit, and it didn’t help that I had nowhere in particular to go. When I started feeling a weird, magnetic pull, I didn’t know how long it had been, only that I was being all but dragged away. I figured out about the time I saw the monks what was going on; apparently sensing shen gong wu was part of the whole ‘going ghost’ package.
“Hey, Xiaolin losers!”
I winced. Was that really what I sounded like? The monks were starting with something between confusion and fascination, and I didn’t want to turn around.
“Jack?” Omi called across the field. I turned around anyway.
“Something like that,” Wuya answered, holding up the detecto-bot in one hand and a wu I couldn’t make out in the other. Today she was wearing an outfit with an even shorter skirt, one I didn’t recognize from my closet. She’d gone shopping. Worse, my hair was cut in a feminine pixie style that framed my face.
I was suddenly, incredibly glad ghosts didn’t eat, because otherwise I would have been throwing up.
“So sorry I beat you to it,” she said, sauntering up to Raimundo using hip muscles I didn’t even know I had. She leaned up against him. “Guess you’ll have to catch me next time.” She leaned in to give him a quick kiss and then took off before he could react.
“What happened to Jack?” Kimiko asked, as Omi was declaring that they needed to go after me.
“That’s not Jack,” Raimundo said, almost to himself. “I don’t know what’s going on, but Jack doesn’t kiss like that.” Kimiko and Clay looked awkwardly away from him as Omi stared in confusion. I could see the moment he realized he’d spoken out loud, and the blush that darkened his cheeks.
“When did you and Jack-” Omi started to ask, and I took that as my cue to butt in.
“So, hey guys.”
“Jack? Is that you?” Clay asked.
“Well, duh.” I shrugged.
“Jack, you- have you seen yourself?” Raimundo asked.
“Uh, no. But I’m a ghost, right? And anyway, it’s not like I can really go looking for a ghost mirror or something.”
Clay tried. “It’s just that you ain’t exactly yourself.”
Now I was getting frustrated. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I complained.
“Kimiko, you got a mirror?”
“No, but my new phone’s camera should be able to take ghost selfies,” she said, pulling it out and turning the camera on. She held it up and posed in front of me. “Smile for Instagram!”
She showed me the screen before she posted it. I’d expected to see, I don’t know, my face? Being ghostly, I guess? But I should have guessed I’d be wearing a mask. It was simpler than Wuya’s, with a line down the center and round eyes that replicated my goggles, with a mark like my eyeliner usually left.
“This just keeps getting worse,” I moaned.
“Definitely the second-creepiest version of you I’ve met,” Kimiko agreed as she tagged me in the post.
“Second-creepiest?”
“Good you is nice and all but he is way more into hugs than I’m comfortable with.”
–
I spent a lot of time as a ghost thinking that when I got my body back, everything would go back to normal. Everything did not go back to normal.
For one thing, Chase wouldn’t let me leave his lair. At first I thought this was pretty cool, that I was so close to my evil idol. I thought maybe he’d seen some potential in me from Wuya’s possession and he wanted to keep me close.
But when I say he didn’t let me leave, I mean… no showdowns, no shopping for materials, no projects without my broken helipack to fix. Nothing but sitting around, begging the cats to bring me things to read from his library and taking apart and reassembling the detecto-bot because I had nothing else to work on.
At night I was called on to dine with Chase, though that mostly consisted of him ignoring me to talk to whoever else was there, usually Wuya but sometimes other people. He would look at me possessively, and ask how I was doing, but never seemed to care much about the answer. He would put his hands on me, gently but not so gently it wasn’t clear what he meant. He wanted his guests - and me - to know that I belonged to him as much as the table or the floor or the cats did.
I only had the clothes Wuya had been wearing in my body: no binder, nothing masculine. I had one pair of skinny jeans, and I wore them every day because the alternative was skirts. I couldn’t even find my damn boots because of Wuya’s stupid barefoot fetish. I hated getting dressed so much that I threw up from nerves almost every day. Everything seemed so wrong that it was easy to overlook tiny, individual kinds of wrongness.
Until I couldn’t ignore them anymore, because the one pair of jeans I had didn’t fit. I threw up at the idea of putting on a skirt, and sat around in my underwear instead, trying to think.
Before I could get anywhere, Wuya came by. She laughed at me laying there and asked what was wrong.
I was on the verge of tears, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction if I could avoid it. “What did you do to me? Why am I sick all the time now? Why is my chest so sore?”
I had already started putting together the answer, though. I wasn’t doing the best job of counting days, but I was pretty sure it’d been more than a month and I hadn’t had to ask the cats to go shopping for pads.
“Oh, Jackie, haven’t you figured it out?” And she slipped across the room and put her arms around me from behind, and rested one of her clawed hands on the lower part of my exposed stomach, and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know anymore.
“You got me pregnant?” I squeaked.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Jackie? I finally found a way you can be useful to the heylin side.”
“That’s why you let me have the body back.”
She shrugged. “Well I certainly didn’t want to go through all the unpleasantries. Besides, I’m much happier with my own body now.”
“I don’t want to go through them EITHER!” I was shouting now and probably hysterical. “I don’t even have clothes that fit! I couldn’t leave if I wanted to!”
Wuya laughed. “You wouldn’t leave, Jackie. Chase finally wants you here. We both know that’s worth too much to you.”
“I can talk to him, maybe. Convince him how wrong this is for me. I can’t, can’t do this.”
“Of course you can, and you will. Women have been doing it for thousands of years.”
“I’m not a woman!”
“Besides, Jackie, this is the only way Chase will ever find you attractive or useful.”
That thought cut right through me. Hadn’t I said a hundred times that I’d do anything to get Chase to notice me? To see me as valuable? Was I willing to be a woman, if that was the price?
And I could think myself in circles about that all day, but did it matter what I decided?
Wuya began to bring me a tea every day that she said would help with my nerves and the morning sickness. The nausea went away almost instantly, and I found myself doing even less than I had been before. It was hard to care about things I couldn’t change, and so much easier to follow directions.
The cats brought me formal dress for dinner now, so I could be presentable for Chase’s guests. After showing me off at dinner, Chase would come to my room and order me to strip and hand over the robes. Now I think he liked to see me humiliated every night, but at the time I didn’t know why he did it.
Sometimes he ran his hands over me gently, what I imagined was lovingly. Sometimes he pulled me down onto the bed with him, and I was so desperate for his approval that I was willing, even happy. He warned me to be careful and quiet, that I didn’t accidentally set off his predator instincts. Sometimes, after, he’d tell me in his low voice how lucky I was, to be his consort, to be the vessel for such great evil plans.
Wuya would bring me extra meals, always reminding me that I was eating for two. She seemed to take great pleasure in pointing out to me all the ways in which my body was becoming more womanly as I gained weight and rounded out. I’d never had much to speak of in the way of hips or breasts, but that was changing too. Wearing only t-shirts and panties, there was no way I could hide from myself. Even my hair was growing out in ways I hated.
Once or twice, when he seemed pleased with me, I asked Chase if I could have real clothes. In response he would lay his hands on my belly and ask if I was ashamed to serve him, and there were enough sharp teeth in the question that I let it go.
As the months went on, the cats let me roam instead of keeping me in my room all day, so I wandered through the parts of Chase’s lair they considered safe. I had access to most of the library, the rooms where food was stored and prepared, Chase’s meditation room (as long as he wasn’t in it) and a dozen or so smaller, unused rooms.
In the back of one of these rooms, covered in dust and still badly broken, I found my helipack. I took it back to my room, grateful for something, anything to focus on. Repairing it took longer than it should have because I didn’t have much in the way of tools or raw materials, but after cannibalizing the detecto-bot I managed to get the helipack functional again.
I did this when I was alone. The cats didn’t seem to object, but I was sure Chase or Wuya would, even if I still couldn’t go anywhere.
I was probably six months along when Wuya and Chase had another blowout fight and Wuya went stomping off to god-knows-where. Dinner that night was just the two of us, and Chase seemed genuinely interested in talking to me. I allowed myself to wonder if maybe he was coming to like me as myself.
After dinner he led me to his bedchamber, a room I hadn’t actually seen before. Rather than make me strip, he removed my robes himself, his touch so soft against my body. He took off his own shirt and laid on the bed, motioning for me to join him. His cold hands felt good against my tight skin, and he pulled me close to him and just held me at first.
That night was the closest he ever came to the fantasies I’d had about him.
“I want you,” I thought he whispered. I leaned in closer. “I want to keep you,” he repeated.
I tried not to flinch.
After he finished, Chase slept, sprawled across the bed like a lizard under a sun lamp. I took the opportunity to grab not just my robe but his trousers as well. They were styled to be loose on a man, but when I slipped into them, I was barely able to pull them up. I pulled the robes on over them, and hurried back to my room, where I pulled my helipack from where I’d tucked it after the repairs were finished.
The cats didn’t seem interested in stopping me as I left. I imagined they’d gotten too used to seeing me wander. When I reached the mouth of the lair, I looked down from the high cliff face. It was a long way down, and I hadn’t been able to test the helipack.
Either it would work, and I could escape, or it wouldn’t, and I would die. That seemed like an acceptable answer, maybe even the best one.
But I didn’t die.
And I flew to the only place I could think to go, the Xiaolin Temple.
It was the middle of the night when I set foot inside it, calling out for anyone who could help me. Omi came out first, not even recognizing me as he took my hand and lead me inside. Raimundo and Kimiko were there a minute later, and soon Clay followed. I watched their faces as they figured it out, one by one - except for Omi, who just looked confused.
Clay blushed and looked away, and them brought me a blanket with no explanation. Kimiko brought me warm tea and didn’t ask any questions. I overheard Raimundo telling Omi who I was, before he announced he’d go make sure my old room was comfortable.
Omi was still staring. “What do you want?” I asked him finally. “Haven’t you ever seen a pregnant woman before?”
“I thought you were a boy, Jack Spicer!” Omi blurted out.
I stared down at my tea. “I was always a girl,” I lied, defeated.
When I met him, I didn’t know what I wanted. I was a mess, all anger and sloppy stances and wasted movement. I knew I wanted something more; I burned with it. I didn’t have anything to direct this at. Oh, there was some ideal I could reach in my training, but those were just poetic sayings my master pulled out to avoid answering questions, I was sure.
I roamed away from the temple more than I should have, begging off with the excuse of meditating in nature and finding quiet spaces. I thought at the time they were glad to be rid of me. I still think they might have been.
The mountain the temple sat on was not completely empty, but aside from those making a pilgrimage to the temple, there wasn’t much traffic. Those pilgrims were easy enough to avoid. They took the same path, and they looked only ahead, toward their destination.
I had spent more time wandering than training for over a year when I first found him. I had been to the quiet stream dozens of times. It was good for meditation, and more than that, for sitting next to when I needed to think. Today, however, there was a figure sitting near where I usually sat, his eyes closed, his body nearly turned away from me. His skin reminded me of pears, while his hair was tightly curled and lacquer-brown.
Despite my efforts to move silently, I was barely into the clearing when he spoke.
“It’s rude to sneak up on people,” he said without turning.
“How can I be sneaking if you know I’m here?” I answered, the kind of thing that would get a long-suffering sigh from the monks who were meant to teach me.
Instead, this man only laughed and opened his eyes. They were green as spring, and his smile carried all the way into them.
“So what are you looking for out here, boy? You’re a long way from your temple, aren’t you?” I thrilled a little when he called me boy.
“Not so far,” I answered, because I roamed a lot, and for me it wasn’t. “And I’m not looking for anything in particular.”
“Makes it hard to find it,” he answered. “You’re welcome to come sit with me, if you’re not in a hurry.” I couldn’t place his accent, but it carried the sounds in a different way, as if he were a different instrument than the voices I’d known.
I was still not sure what he was doing here, but he was warm and inviting and I guess that was one of the things I’d been looking for, because I was happy to drop onto the grass beside him.
He closed his eyes again and didn’t say anything, so I stared down at the river and allowed my thoughts to wander. Who was this man? Not a monk, I was sure.
I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, though I wanted to ask him questions. We sat there together until the sun was quite high, and then he opened those brilliant eyes again.
“Will you join me for a meal?”
“If you don’t mind.” I looked around for his supplies, but saw nothing. “Do you need me to retrieve something…?”
He smiled, and this time there was something different in it. “Not at all.” He reached into his robes and pulled out a small box, small enough to fit into the palm of his hand. He tapped it and said something in a language I didn’t understand, and it unfolded open…
… and kept unfolding, half a dozen times, until it had turned into a low table already set with food. “Help yourself.”
I whistled in appreciation. “Very nice. Dashi’d love to get a look at that.”
He looked startled and a little disappointed. “You’ve seen such magic before, then?”
“Dashi - one of my fellow monks - he likes to tinker around and build devices like that. Mostly he makes them for training, or as jokes. Some of them are funnier than others.”
“Well, that tells me why I’m here,” he said, and I couldn’t help being a little disappointed.
He must have seen it on my face. “Something wrong, boy?”
I felt my cheeks burn. Why did I care so much about the opinion of this one man, a man I’d just met? “Nothing’s wrong. It’s entirely normal for me.”
“Spit it out,” he pushed.
“To be pushed aside as soon as one of my fellow Xiaolin dragons enters the conversation, this is normal. It always happens.”
He nodded. “And yet you’re showing a lot of disappointment for someone who’s used to it.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it!” I shouted, and immediately clammed up, horrified at myself. This man would go to the temple, he would talk to my master if he wanted to see Dashi, he would tell them-
“I see your heart is running on ahead of your mind,” he said quietly.
I stared resolutely down at the grass.
“Eat some lunch, boy, you’ll feel better.”
At least he still saw me as a boy. I chose a peach and bit into it angrily.
“You don’t sound like someone who doesn’t know what he’s looking for,” he said. “Why don’t you try telling me again?”
“I don’t know why it matters.”
He didn’t answer that, just waited on me.
“I want to stand out, to be remembered for what I can do, not my…” I trailed off quietly. “The best warrior ever born. Better than Guan or Dashi or Wuya. Better than my masters. Good enough that they can’t try to tell me who I am. I want my name to be remembered. I want to be the one people seek out.”
When I looked up, he was nodding. His face was serious. He was /listening/ to me.
“I want to be myself, and be seen as myself,” I finished.
And then he stood, the table folding back into a box that disappeared into his robes. “May I see you fight, then, young warrior?”
I thought he was making fun of me as I scrambled to my feet, but his look was still serious. I wasn’t sure what he meant by doing this. But I had said out loud something I’d never even let myself think before and I was feeling brave and stupid enough to fight this man. I fell into a ready stance, wondering what style he used, whether it would be unfair to call on my element.
I barely had time to realize he was moving before he was on me, and it quickly became obvious that his style was based on grappling - his emphasis was on getting me on the ground, whereas mine allowed me to gracefully avoid his movements. At first I thought I was doing well, but after fifteen minutes or so I realized he wasn’t even breathing hard.
“You’re holding back,” I accused him.
“Shut up and dance, boy.” He closed the space between us in seconds, far faster than I’d seen him move so far, and when he got me on the ground I felt the earth reaching up for me.
Elements were fair game, then. I called on mine to escape from his hold, and then we were fighting in earnest. The longer it went on, the less I fell into my proper forms, instead letting water carry me, riding the edge of the wudai state.
He pinned me again, hard enough to shake me out of the right mindset and make me aware of just how close he was, how the ground gave beneath me so I didn’t get hurt, how I could feel his grip tight against the pulse in my wrists. My breathing was shallow, and not just from the workout.
Abruptly, he dropped his grip on me and was standing, offering me a hand to help me up. “Well done, boy. That was fun.”
“Yes, it was,” I answered, letting him pull me to my feet. There was no way he couldn’t know, after being that close. He knew and he didn’t care. I knew I would be sad when he left.
“Would you take me to meet this Dashi of yours? I am an alchemist, among other things, and I came here in search of some unusual energy disruptions. I suspect it may be his doing.”
I nodded, no longer quite so bothered that he was asking after Dashi. “I’d be happy to show you the way to the temple. Travelers and scholars are welcome.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “If I stay for a while, perhaps I will get to know you better. Mind telling me your name?”
“I think I’d like that,” I told him. “I am called Chase by my fellow monks.”
“Suits you,” he nodded at the nickname. “You can call me Hannibal.”
When it came to Jack Spicer, Chase had long ago decided that the less you saw of him, the more you should be worried. The boy didn’t show up as often for showdowns anymore, but it had been two weeks and three missed showdowns, and today he was uncharacteristically cautious.
Chase hung back and watched as Jack approached the wu’s location, keeping an eye on the sky the entire time. As soon as the monks came into view in their approach, Jack yelped, winced, and skittered away from the wu.
That was certainly different. Content to let the monks retrieve today’s trinket, Chase dropped silently behind the redhead.
“Spicer,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. Jack startled and pulled away, and Chase couldn’t help but notice him wincing again. “What happened to you?” He expected perhaps a fight with Katnappe or another accident like the one that had cost him the last three fingers on his hand.
Instead Jack smiled widely.
“Twentieth birthday present from my mom,” Jack said, spreading his arms wide and then quickly grimacing and bringing them back in. “I think she feels guilty that she kept telling me it was a phase and didn’t let me transition before I developed, so we went to Bangkok and it was a big mother-son bonding thing for her to take care of me.”
“There were a lot of words in that sentence.” Chase would have rolled his eyes if he were a lesser being. He still might. “Try again.” Jack’s inability to speak English that wasn’t steeped in memes, pop-culture references and high-context terminology had never stopped annoying Chase, but he’d eventually trained Jack to slow down and explain himself on command.
“Sorry,” Jack apologized automatically. “I had top surgery. I’m not supposed to raise my arms much or pick up anything heavy or get my ass beat by Xiaolin Dragons for probably six more weeks.”
That was better, anyway. “Top surgery?”
“Yeah. You know, top surgery.” Jack cupped his hands in front of his chest as if holding breasts. “No more binders!”
That was just enough detail for him to figure it out; Wuya had explained to him once, in the middle of a litany of everything that had ever annoyed her about Jack, about the effort he “wasted” on his appearance: binders and needles and tailored pants and contouring make-up. Of course, Wuya thought gender roles were only useful if she could manipulate them to get what she wanted out of someone, so that was to be expected.
“That’s something they do now?” It came out harsh, because everything Chase said to Jack came out harsh, but Jack looked more bothered by it than usual.
“Hey, not all of us are born perfect,” Jack snapped back, and he turned to stomp away.
“I wasn’t born perfect,” Chase answered. How dare he take that tone? How dare Jack assume he knew anything about-
Jack had stopped and turned back, and he was looking at Chase with confusion. Before Chase could say anything, they both heard Raimundo in the distance asking if anybody had heard something.
Neither wanting to deal with the monks, Jack activated his helipack and Chase simply left.
“Min, I said it could wait until-”
But it wasn’t Min.
“Chase…” It had been… fifteen years? Twenty?
He looked exactly the same, because of course he did, he’s immortal, that’s what that means. But to actually see him in front of me looking the same as he did when I was fifteen made all the years in between crash in like high tide, reminding me of every scar and ache and how fast the time had gone.
Because suddenly that fifteen or twenty years was nothing at all, and I swallowed hard. I knew I looked like shit - I’d been sleeping even less than usual in the last week, and flown to the US and back twice to smooth over investors. I probably needed a haircut. I definitely needed a shave and a shower. I felt like a mess.
“Spicer. I see you’re still getting into the same trouble.”
I blinked. No one had spoken to me like that, like I was a kid, in years. It took me back, but it made me a little angry too, that he would just waltz in here after all this time to insult me.
“Totally different troubles, my lawyer would assure you. Entirely un-magical troubles. At least you never asked for paperwork.”
He was approaching warily, catlike, as if he wasn’t sure where we stood. And that was probably fair because I didn’t know either. He was also several inches shorter than me, and clearly unhappy about this.
“I’d say your troubles are entirely magical. Did you not just have a factory full of shen gong wu destroyed?”
“I could sure use some magic, but… um, no. Cell phones. We were making cell phones.”
He just looked at me. “Explain.”
“So I figured out a way to draw ambient electrical energy from skin contact to keep a cell phone charged indefinitely and developed a smart screen that starts as a watch and can unfold. Why do you care?”
He just raised that damn eyebrow of his. “And how did you ‘figure this out’?” Why did he still have to be so intimidating and so hot. He looked young enough to be my kid now.
“I was going through some of my old work a couple years ago and noticed the shen gong wu detector picked up on tiny amounts of ambient energy around most humans, so I basically rebuilt it to store the energy and then miniaturized it…” I trailed off.
Oh that was just too stupid for words.
“You’re not telling me I built magical cell phones by accident.”
“That would appear to be what you did, yes. Well done, Spicer. Same trouble as always.”
I bent over my desk and laughed. “I am not nearly equipped for this conversation. Hang on.” He looked a little perturbed that I had told him to wait, but he didn’t say anything as I dug into the back of one of my cabinets. “Do you drink?”
“Do I drink what?”
“Tonight? Whiskey, because that’s what I have back here. No proper glasses, though.” I poured what I estimated was a good two shots into a water glass and looked at Chase.
He sighed heavily. “Normally I would not but I suppose on the day you’ve managed to build shen gong wu in a factory by accident I’ll take you up on it.”
"I'll take that as a compliment." I handed him the glass and held the bottle in one hand and an empty glass in another before stopping myself. I left the bottle and grabbed my coat instead. "I need some air. You're welcome to join me if you want to talk."
The six-block walk to Philippe's consisted more of him glaring than talking, but the slightly sticky LA air still felt better than the dry stuff in my office. I took a few breaths and started to relax. Maybe I could get enough information from Chase to fix this - heck, maybe now that I had this point of view on the work, I could probably fix this. Losing the factory sucked but even if the insurance didn't pay out, I'd figure out something. I always did.
“Hey, you’re Jack Spicer, right? Who’s this with you?” I was so distracted I didn't notice the man until he was almost on top of me.
“This is Cha- who are you?” I stopped myself when I noticed the cameraman. Maybe I had left my brain in my office. That would explain a lot.
“I’m from TMZ,” the man said, smiling wide. “So I hear you’re having a pretty bad week, huh? Does the new boyfriend help?”
I looked at the reporter, then slowly turned back to Chase, who had realized what they were implying before I did and had the most amazing look of disgust on his face.
“Sorry, gotta go! Hey, is that Beyonce?” I said, grabbing Chase and hustling toward the security exit when the cameraman looked away.
“What was that?” he growled, and then looked down at my hand, which was firmly clamped around his upper arm as I dragged him past the line and into the restaurant. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Getting where I need to go,” I answered. “You coming?”
“Those who give me orders often don’t live long enough to regret it, Spicer,” he grumbled, but he followed me in.
Controversial technology mogul Jack Spicer seems to be taking a break from failing to release his highly anticipated “magic” phone to meet a new boyfriend in LA. He didn’t want to talk to us but we can’t help but wonder: is that guy a college intern? An up and coming model? Is he even legal? We couldn’t figure out who he is and calls to SpiceTech went unreturned.
Jack was on high alert, sneaking into Chase's lair and hoping to catch his evil idol unawares before the cats found him and dragged him out. Usually he had to go a fair distance in to find Chase, but to his surprise, he found him sprawled on the throne in his entry room, playing with something Jack couldn't identify.
"Chase?" Jack asked, wondering if maybe something was wrong. If maybe Chase would let him help. They'd been playing this game for two years now, where Chase pretended he wanted nothing to do with Jack and Jack just... put up with it, he supposed. He'd been wondering lately if he shouldn't be moving on, except he wasn't wondering about it enough, because he was still here, wasn't he?
"Oh, Jack my boy," Chase said, turning to look at him. He voice was less carefully controlled than it usually was. The sneer was different, in a way Jack couldn't put his finger on, and wasn't that a depressing thought to have. "It's good to see you."
He curled two fingers, beckoning Jack closer. Jack did so, still not sure what was going on, and he was so focused on Chase's face that it startled him when Chase pulled him close.
"What's- what do you need?" Jack asked. Wait- what had Chase pulled him with? Both his hands were right there.
"I want you to cultivate with me, Jackie," he said, leaning forward, pulling Jack onto his lap. Jack's eyes were wide now- one of Chase's hands was on his cheek and one was in his hair and one was pressed against the small of his back- wait-
Jack started to pull away, confused, and in an instant his wrists were held tight. Not by hands, but by- tentacles? Vines? They seemed woody and moved like they were growing, pressing tighter as they spiraled up his arms.
Whatever was against his back slid down, grabbing his ass and putting him neatly back into Chase's lap.
No, not Chase. His eyes weren't warm gold but red ringed in jaundiced yellow.
"Hannibal?" Jack asked quietly.
"Come on, boy, you'll make a lovely furnace for me," Hannibal said, and Jack knew he'd heard that term before but he was having a hard time concentrating, let alone remembering details from xianxia novels. "I know you want it, and I'll make sure you enjoy it right up until the end."
"I don't know..." Jack hesitated.
The tentacle at his back had slipped into the waistband of his jeans now, and Jack squeaked as it slid lower.
"Only if you say yes," Hannibal murmured, but it felt like Chase's breath on his cheek. "You gotta say yes."
God help him, Jack was weak and he knew it and in that moment he didn't care. He never got what he wanted, and here it was for the offering. "Yes," he whispered.
Hannibal- Chase- Hannibal leaned in and kissed him, slow and hard and the way Jack had always imagined it would be with Chase, except he was held tight, and there was something longer than a tongue pressing into his mouth and something else moving him below and it felt like a circuit completing, like the time Jack had electrocuted himself except it didn't stop and he didn't pass out, it just kept running through him, faster and faster, until his skin felt like it was on fire. It was amazing, right until he blacked out.
"I've got to do something about where we're going," Jack said to the empty room.
Chase had left, as he usually did when they were finished. Jack knew it wasn't healthy, it wasn't ever going to be healthy. They were evil, weren't they? Of course it wasn't going to be healthy.
Jack's whole body itched. He sat up on the edge of the bed and noticed a teacup sitting on the table beside the bed. It was a small cup to begin with, more like an espresso cup, and hardly half-full even then. He started to reach for it and hesitated, his hand shaking.
He'd fought with Chase earlier about it, about how he didn't want it anymore, not like this. Not doled out in thimblefulls that made him fly and crash.
"Either take me or throw me out," Jack had demanded, before Chase had calmed him with his hands and his lips. The warlord knew how to get what he wanted, and Jack was...
"weak," Jack whispered, reaching for the cup again. He'd believed Chase at first, that this was an easier, less-painful way to get what Chase had, the power, the respect, the-
The cup fell to the stone floor, shattering, and Jack himself couldn't be sure if he'd dropped it on purpose.
Had he really believed Chase, or had he just wanted to be Chase so badly that he was willing to literally accept the man's dregs? Not that it mattered. The result was the same now.
Jack reached down, trailing his fingertips through the spilled soup and then licking them clean.
He shivered.
He could go to Chase and apologize, and Chase would give him another tablespoon to reward his weakness. He would hate himself for it, but he hated himself anyway.
Or... he could walk away. Jack could almost hear Chase laugh at the idea, but he could, dammit. He could walk away any time, it wasn't like Chase was keeping him prisoner here. Hell, once he had walked up to Chase and told him he was leaving, and Chase had just offered to see him out.
Of course, Jack had no idea where he would go, and he'd no idea where his helipack was, so Chase had taken him outside as if he was expecting Jack to simply walk away into the Land of Nowhere. Except he didn't, and Jack knew it when he looked at the side of the volcano lair.
Chase knew perfectly well Jack wasn't leaving. He was calling Jack's bluff, and making sure Jack was aware exactly how much he belonged to Chase. That he was as much Chase's property as the jungle cat warriors or the mountain itself, something he kept around because it was useful or entertaining.
Jack still thought about it sometimes. Like now, he thought about going, but Chase's laughter at his hesitation remained in his mind.
The itch was worse now, and Jack realized he was about to lick his fingers again, they were sticky with the spilled soup. He stared at his hand like it had betrayed him, and not only because he'd started shaking too hard to work on anything. If he'd had the fine control, he could work on replacing his helipack, building something else to get him out of here. Maybe something better, maybe a teleportation device like the Golden Tiger Claws.
Wait, he'd seen those. Chase had brought them back from a showdown a couple of weeks ago; he'd won them from Raimundo, but only bothered to complain that the Dragon of Air kept him from fighting Omi.
Jack crept through the lair to one of Chase's lower rooms, the secured space where he kept things like Shen Gong Wu, when he bothered to hold onto them. His hand shook, but the door opened for him.
He picked up the Golden Tiger Claws and swallowed hard. Chase would not forgive him so easily if he really left. And where would he go, anyway?
Well there was... Omi. Who insisted he thought Jack could get better, every time they had the chance. Could he do that?
"Golden Tiger Claws!" he said, as loud as he dared, and thought of the Xiaolin Temple as he dragged them through the air.
Jack wasn't sure he could be what Omi wanted him to be, but he knew he couldn't keep being what Chase wanted.