One of Those Days

Jack Spicer had considered not bothering to get up this morning, even with his Wu alarm blaring in his ear. He was rather tired from the night before and really just wanted to take a hot shower then relax with some nice, sweet pudding cups. Really, if he missed one or four Wu, would it kill him? No. Today he simply wouldn't go, that sounded wonderful.

Too bad by the time he finished this chain of thought, Jack's body had already gone through the motions of getting ready, and he was in the sky on his way. He sighed heavily as he flew. When he got home, he would take a nice hot bubble bath with pudding cups and a good book.

The new Wu was apparently located in some sort of forest in the middle of... Jack didn't really care where. By the time Jack arrived he saw that the monks were already there and searching for some obscure Wu that honestly he could care less about at the moment. In fact, Jack decided to take a page from his evil idol Chase Young. He powered down his heli pack and perched lightly on one of his Jackbots. He settled himself lazily on the Jackbot's head, his legs swinging gently. Now was as good a time as any to test his new invention.

"Jackbots, shields!"

Immediately the bots produced a surge of energy that shimmered as it surrounded Jack and the rest of his entourage. It went about two feet out and around the group. The real beauty of his invention was that if he, or any of his Jackbots, left the main bubble it would adjust to the size of the new group. He tested his shields by moving the furthest Jackbot out of the group and then letting it come back in by briefly powering down the shields because he was too lazy to say the passcode. That done Jack settled in to watch the Xiaolin monks bumble around and break stuff while yelling at each other. It was actually pretty amusing to watch.

"Jackbot, pudding."

Jack was handed a delicious pudding cup and watched the search like a movie. Amazingly enough, it took a whole half an hour for them to notice he was there.

"Jack Spicer!" Omi yelled with his typical fervor.

Jack waved lazily and continued to eat the snacks he stored within one of his many loyal minions. Leisurely he swallowed what was in his mouth, and then replied, "Sup Cueball."

"You shall not-"

"Not interested."

The monks looked stunned that someone from the Haylin Xiaolin conflict, other than Chase, could be not interested in Wu. Kimiko reacted first, "We're not falling for another one of your tricks Jack! What's your plan? Wait until we find it then snatch it for yourself? You know you'll lose-"

"Kami! Do you ever stop talking? There is no plan, stop yelling at me."

Clay was next to speak as Kimiko was stunned into a silent in rage. "Why are you here if you don't want the Wu?"

Jack shrugged "Habit." He answered honestly.

Kimiko, however, had had enough talking. "If you won't tell us the easy way, we'll do it the hard way." She stated before using a combination of her powers and her signature Wu. Angrily, she shot a ball of fire at Jack who looked neither surprised nor alarmed. The large ball of fire raced toward him as Jack spooned up some more pudding. He glanced at the monks and watched their expressions as he said one thing.

"Jackbot, record."

He didn't have to say it; he had a button on his watch that did the same command but the looks of confusion and, in one case, anger on the monks was priceless as the fireball hit. When the burst of light from impact ended Jack checked his watch. The flames were primarily made of magic and partially ignited chemicals in the air, interesting. He'd set the shields to storage and the shield had absorbed it completely, converting some of it into power and the rest into an extra layer of defense.

As the last of the smoke cleared Jack took another leisurely bite of pudding, watching with hidden glee as the monks stared at him in astonishment. That was going to be a nice picture once he cut it out of the video he'd just made. He swallowed the pudding in his mouth, then adopted a bored look he'd practiced many times in front of the mirror, and had seen even more on the face of his evil idol, Chase Young. He was proud of how straight he was able to keep his face as he suddenly came up with the perfect thing to say.

"Do you feel better now? I'm pretty sure that was step three in most anger management classes," he asked, raising one bright red eyebrow. Then he watched as Kimiko turned the same color as her purple pigtailed hair, also interesting. "That does not look like a healthy color Kim, maybe you should go back and do some review."

Omi spoke first, "What new magic is this?"

"Well Cueball it's called not telling."

Raimundo was confused now, "What? You're always eager to tell about some new invention, are you even the real Jack?"

"Let's take him apart and see!" And with that statement another barrage of fireballs large and small bombarded Jack. Who reached to get a water as he watched the light show. Since he knew what the fire was made of and had already saved the results to study later, Jack set the shield to absorb and relaxed. The funny thing was the more she fired, the faster and easier the shields were able to absorb her fire and magic. As a bonus, the more they absorbed, the stronger they became. After her impressively long temper tantrum, the dragon of fire tired herself out and stopped.

Jack took another sip of his water before looking back at the monks, a patronizing expression on his face. "Don't you guys have anything better to do? Something like find some mystical toy so that someone else like oh, I don't know... Wuya or Katnappe, who are right over there by the way, don't snatch it up from behind your backs? Or you could continue wasting your energy on me. I don't mind either way." He shrugged putting down his water and retrieving another pudding cup. And with that the monks attention was well and truly diverted. They spotted their two new opponents climbing a large tree a slight sparkle in the leaves towards the top.

"Why those no good sneaky varmints."

"Let us go cut off their tails!" Jack looked at Omi and wondered, not for the first time, if Omi wasn't secretly evil or super smart and older and messing with them all. The kid said some really violent messed up things without flinching.

"That's "clip their wings Omi.""

"That too!"

Jack was grateful as the group hurried toward the two Heylin yelling insults and something about good and evil. Really it all got so repetitive after awhile-

"Hello Spicer." Jack nearly slipped off of his Jackbot as he swallowed a scream.

"Ch-Ch-Ch- Chase! Um, ah, are you not interested in this Wu?"

Chase stood lightly on a branch near Jack's hovering group. He smirked arrogantly and his voice was sharp. "I merely came to observe the young monks' improvement."

Jack was then instantly bored. He was honestly tired of his idol's obsession with the annoying, possibly evil Cueball. "Well then enjoy the show." Jack said as he turned back to watch Wuya hit Raimundo out of the air when he got too cocky and Kimiko try to brutalize Katnappe, obviously trying for new, much less protected prey. It was as amusing as it was sad that these amoral, childish thugs were supposed to be the good guys.

"Why do you not join the battle, I have never known you not to be interested in one of these toys."

Jack shrugged still facing the entertaining scramble for the Wu. Did it look this ridiculous every time?

"Not interested today, but you know, old habits, so I here I am."

"And you brought your new toy."

Jack looked over at Chase with a smirk of his own. "Well, I needed some entertainment, and nothing is more fun than annoying those self-righteous monks." Suddenly the land began to shift and Jack found himself and his robots hovering over the branches of a large tree with Chase Young beside him.

"Gong Yi Tempai!!"

It looked like some type of race to the top of a mammoth tree, complete with the moving branches and ridiculously large and heavy falling leaves. It seemed to be Omi and Kimiko against Wuya and Katnappe. Katnappe used her speed, agility, and cunning to outsmart the raging Kimiko. It was fun to watch as she tricked Kimiko into burning the heavy leaves to ashes so that she could climb on unhindered towards the prize.

Wuya was having a harder time with Omi who managed to unbalance her with a blow followed by a shot of water which he used to to freeze her to a branch causing both Jack and Chase to chuckle though for different reasons. Jack was amused at Wuya's incompetence but he was willing to bet Chase was excited for Omi's improvement. Jack shook his head as Omi sent an arc of water up knocking Katnappe away for Kimiko to grab the prize, though Jack still didn't know its name or abilities.

With the battle over the earth shifted back to its original form. Wuya and Katnappe were covered in frost and trembling as they retreated and Jack took the end of the showdown as his cue to leave. The departure would be too slow with the shield up so he opened his heli pack, and with a quick salute to Chase, powered down the shields and turned towards home only to feel a blinding pain in his side and a blur of ground rushing his way.