Jackie Chan Adventures Chapter 5

Author Note: Yeesh, it has been a very long time. This is becoming something of a theme for me, but I am sorry for leaving you all hanging like this for so long. In my defense, I have just started a new job with horrendous hours, atop school, the holidays, and my own lack of determination. Unfortunately, my issues are unlikely to leave soon, so updates are likely to remain extremely slow. Still not stopping, though.

Today was not going to be a good day, Jade decided as she stumbled in through the front door of her school with her eyes half opened, nearly running into the doorframe. Jackie had woken her bright and early, like usual, and everything had been fine for a while. But by the time they reached the car, she was constantly fighting off yawns, and it had only gotten worse during the drive. She hadn't said anything to Jackie, of course, terrified of the return of his nursemaid side, but she was seriously beginning to regret withholding the knowledge. Her feet felt like lead, her eyes burned, her tongue felt like sandpaper, and her head was pounding.

Then she walked face-first into the wall after failing to turn the corner. It hurt like hell, and it woke her up like a bucket of ice water; it also pissed her off, so that she had to fight off the urge to give the perpetrator one of her infamous flying kicks. "That's it," she growled to herself as she stalked into her classroom, slumping into the available seat closest the door. "First chance I get, I'm asking the teacher for a note to the nurse's office. This is ridiculous." Unfortunately, there was no sign of the instructor for an eternity (or three minutes, whichever was longer), and she quickly found herself drifting off again. Finally her head hit the desk, and she was asleep before she had the chance to recognize her old teacher when she walked in through the classroom door.

"Drew Mosuke?"

"Here!"

Another year, another room, but the same bundle of messy, smiling faces. 'Why oh why did I agree to teach the same class two years in a row,' Miss Hartman groaned to herself as she checked off Drew's name. 'Oh, I remember, it had something to do with a huge raise, a bigger office, preferred parking, and several threats of termination. Anything it took to keep my little hellions out of the wider population.' The new classroom was a nice bonus too; built in the new school building, it was startlingly wide and spacious, with huge windows and brand new florescent lighting. She hadn't even had the chance to put posters up, so the walls were totally bare.

"Amanda Potts?"

"Here!"

Of course, she was certainly due to earn her new gifts. Her old last class had contained more than a few rambunctious troublemakers, who went above and beyond the usual limits. The thought of Drew or, god forbid, Jade, set free to wreck havoc on a new teacher was enough to make her wince in sympathy. 'Speaking of the devil, she thought to herself as she came to the next name on her list. "Jade Chan!" She waited for an answer, then frowned when she heard no reply. "Jade Chan?" She looked up from her list to peer around the room, filled with the usual collection of plastic desks and sleepy eyed children.

"Jade?" Finally, Miss Hartman spotted her most creative hellion in the corner desk farthest from the front. Jade's head was slumped over her desk, her arms around her head to shade herself from the sun, still wearing the same orange hoody and blue jeans. Miss Hartman tsked to herself. 'Poor dear's still tired from vacation,' she thought as she marked Jade present. 'No surprise. If she travels half as much as she claims, she's probably permanently jetlagged.' "Drew, if you could please shake Jade awake? Gently, mind you." She returned her attention to her list, and cleared her throat. "Miranda?"

"Here!"

Five names later, Drew's wildly waving hand caught her attention. "What is it, Drew?"

"Jade's ignoring me!" he cried, obviously annoyed. "She won't wake up!"

She sighed, readjusting her spectacles. "That girl," she muttered to herself as she put her clipboard down and stalked up the isle. "Always causing trouble." She reached down and pulled Jade upright, leaning down to glare at her closed eyelids. "Jade, it's not naptime." There was no response. "Jade? Jade?" A mist of worry began to rise in her heart, and she shook her student as hard as she dared. "Jade!"

The young girl failed to wake, failed to react at al, and Mrs. Hartman noticed for the first time that Jade was barely breathing, and her skin was cold and clammy. "Amanda," she said as calmly as she could manage, "could you please run to the principal's office, and let him know that I need someone to watch over my class. Oh, and tell him to call Jade's uncle, would you? I'll be taking her to the nurses office, in the meantime."

Mrs. Hartman watched Amanda dart out the door, and then pulled out one of the tiny seats, tugging out her phone at the same moment. She longed to scoop Jade up into her arms and just charge over to the nurse's office herself, mowing down anybody in the way, but she couldn't afford to do that. That wasn't how things worked. She had a class full of students to take care of, after all, no matter how much a single girl concerned her. So she sat, and waited for backup, and performed the only other task she could by dialing ten numbers and putting her phone to her ear.

"Hello, LA County Hospital? One of my students has collapsed."

Drew was smarter than most people realized. Most of the kids just heard his whining, and assumed that was all he was. Jade knew better, of course; she was never one to stick with the obvious. And Drew knew Jade too; he had known from day one that she was more than ordinary. The way she talked, the way she moved, it was like nothing he had ever seen before, and before he knew it, he was compelled to learn more.

Her stories were, of course, patently ridiculous. Most of them were impossible, and the rest were improbable at best. Drew figured that they were a smokescreen, to keep people from looking for the real Jade, and he kept pushing at them, to see what she hid underneath. Until, one day, he found out that the stories were a lot more than stories, and that magic was real. Suddenly, every tall tale Jade had ever told took on new significance; every brag about dark wizards and magic talismans dragon demons was a look into the real Jade, who he had somehow missed. And he kept looking, too, checking out the news for stories about the unexplained and impossible around the world, and taking note of the odd events that had occurred in his very home town:

-The cloud of utter darkness that had spread from San Francisco, only to vanish hours later.

-The storm of berserk weather that had appeared a few months ago, and the destruction of the stadium

-And, of course, the mysterious attack of the haunted house last year.

It was astonishing how many of his classmates had dismissed the events as random weirdness. Frightening, almost, that anyone could be so blind and forgetful. But Drew remembered. And when his favorite mystery and rival refused to wake up, he paid very close attention, because if he had learned anything, it was that Jade attracted weirdness the way rotten meat attracted flies.

Which is why he was the only one who noticed when Jade's shadow started fading away.

And when Mrs. Hartman finally scooped Jade up and carried her away, he was sneaking out right behind them.

"Full house! Read 'em and weep!" Jenkins smirked at his fellows, and scooped up the pile of cash and knickknacks. "Pleasure taking your money, boys."

"Wait just a minute!" George, who was very tall, shot out of his fold-up chair, slamming his hand on the table. "Jenkins, empty your pockets!"

"What? You think I'm cheating? Would I do that?" The others rolled their eyes at him as one, and he chuckled cheerfully. "All right, all right!" he sputtered, pulling out a trio of cards.

"Dude, have you ever played fair?" Lily asked, fiddling with her long, blonde hair.

"Once, when I played against the devil." Jenkins fluttered his hands around himself in a corny pose, and then fell over when the door slammed open hard enough to rattle the walls.

"Something's happening," James shouted, scrambling into the room. "The school is calling the hospital, the police, the Chans. They're saying something about the subject collapsing in class!"

"What?" The others all scrambled to their feet, scattering around the warehouse to their separate stations. "Is she still alive?" Jenkins demanded.

James nodded furiously, but added, "She's fallen unconscious, though."

"Good," Jenkins replied. The slender man turned to look at Lily and George intently. "This might actually be an opportunity; if the school is panicked enough, we can probably walk right out with the girl."

"Except that Section 13 is on it's way too," Lily retorted. "If the school called the Chans, then Black knows too, and he'll get there before emergency services."

George looked pensive, brow furrowed in recollection. "We're closer, though. If we leave now, we can be in and out before they get there."

"And if we screw up?" she demanded "We are not prepared to take on Section thirteen head on, not now! No, I say we wait for this to blow over, and take the girl when it all calms down."

"A good plan, but it won't work." The four of them turned to look at the door, where the last member of their group had entered. He was impeccably dressed in a green suit and gold tie, and wore his pale hair in a tight ponytail. With his angular features, and sly expression, he possessed the manner of a particularly vicious lawyer; at least until you saw his eyes, which were far too reptilian for a humans face. "You forget, Jackie Chan is woefully protective of his niece at the best of times. If your intel is correct, he has become even more so as late. With yet another disaster falling down upon his family, he will likely drag your prize into Section 13 to keep a close eye on her until further notice. Hardly conductive to your goal, I believe?"

The four of them exchanged glances and then turned to face the newcomer. "I hope you'll excuse us for taking your advice with a grain of salt," Greg said with frown. "Your track record with the Chans is less than impressive, after all."

"My previous attempts to…negate the Chans were hindered by outside factors. Shendu's instructions were disturbingly restrictive, even when they didn't actively run counter to my own efforts. And my enforcers were ill-equipped to handle an opponent of Chan's caliber."

"And you expect to do better with us?" Lily replied with a skeptical frown.

"I can hardly do worse, after all. In any case, the choice is yours; go now, and risk revealing yourself, or wait for another three to six months for your target to be available. Your call."

The four of them exchanged another significant glance. "We can only get the element of surprise once," Lily finally says in protest.

"We were always going to lose the element of surprise eventually," Jenkins countered. "This way, we get a bit of control over when and how it happens, and I think it's worth a shot." The rest of the team quickly came to a decision.

"George, get the trucks," James ordered. "Lily, some disguises. And Valmont, I need you to finish telling us everything we need to know about Jade Chan, and how we're going to catch her."

Tso Lan loathed his imprisonment in the demon realm. True, all of his siblings hungered for freedom, but only His Wu could match his sheer hatred for their prison and trap. In here, there was no moon, no sky, and no magic. The only spells that could exist here was what they had brought with them, and there were only so many times he could go over his old spellbooks before he was ripping them apart in bored frustration. Which meant that Tso Lan was stuck, unable to advance his studies after a thousand years retreading the same material. A true hell, as could only be imagined by a mortal's madness.

Now, in search of something, anything better than simply scratching his thoughts into the rock, he had started yet another catalogue of his old treasures, in the hopes of finding something he could do to stave off his boredom. So when he heard Shendu calling out to him across the void, followed shortly after by the dragon himself, he almost felt a sense of relief that he wouldn't have to repeat the same experiment for the three hundredth time; at least, not for a few minutes more. Still, it wouldn't do to show Shendu his thanks.

"What do you want, Brother?" Tso Lan hissed, turning to face his youngest sibling. "I am busy."

The Demon Sorcerer of Fire shot Tso Lan an incredulous look, and ran his gaze across the Moon Demon's lab pointedly, but his only words were, "I need your help."

Tso Lan blinked at that, focusing his full attention on Shendu. None of them would willingly ask another for help, and Shendu was inclined to be caustic at best (assuming he wasn't pleading for his life); a plain request, unaccompanied by a sarcastic remark, was odd in the extreme. "I repeat my previous statement, brother. What do you want?"

Shendu scowled, but managed to hold his temper. "My talismans, brother. They have gone missing."

"And this matters to me…why?" Tso Lan drawled. "Do you wish to accuse me of purloining them?"

"Do not be ridiculous, brother," the dragon said. "No magic could have separated me from my talismans without my notice!"

"And yet you claim they are gone? How contradictory, even for you."

Shendu growled deep in his throat, but held back his flames with grave effort. "That is why I am here, Tso Lan. Whatever has taken my talismans is beyond my knowledge, and so I seek out the expertise of my wisest sibling. If you help me, I will be sure to repay the favor in kind."

The alien nature of Tso Lan's face left his expressions inscrutable, but his hands and body showed his skepticism. "What favor could possibly do for me?" he hissed. "Particularly with your new…demotion. Still," he continued idly, "I suppose I might as well. It can hardly hurt, and sometimes even a lizard can prove useful." He turned back to his lab and began tugging out books with his gravity, then scooped one of his more valuable trinkets in a free hand. "Now, stay still, and say aw." He stuck the magical baton into Shendu's open jaws, ignoring the muffled protests after they ceased to amuse him. Exactly ten seconds later he pulled the device back out and tugged on both ends, uncovering a glass display that showed…

Absolutely nothing.

The oils had not flowed through their tubes, the dials and levers remained unchanged, and the vials of sand lay undisturbed. It was as if the device had simply stopped functioning all at once, sometime between now and three hours ago, when he had last checked it. "Most curious," he said as he set the device down. "When did you say your talismans disappeared?"

"I didn't," Shendu said darkly, "but I first noticed about two hours ago. What does it matter?!"

"Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything." Tso Lan ran through a catalogue of his artifacts in his head, and then reached out for one in particular, a magical toy he had liberated from a sage of some renown; the trinket was a minor thing, but entertainingly intuitive, and built to last for millennia. Running his claws across it, he found it completely and utterly dead, as if it had never been magical at all, when he knew it should last for centuries more. "Most curious indeed," he said as he stared at the disenchanted bauble. "It appears that my tools have been drained of magic."

"They have? So it's not just me," Shendu said, rubbing his scaly chin in contemplation. Then his red eyes widened and his tail stiffened. "It's spreading."

"Perhaps. But this has clearly gone beyond the scope of your lost talismans, Shendu." The dragon looked as though he might protest, but remained silent, instead nodding grudgingly. "As such, it would be wisest to gather our siblings so that we may consider this situation in it's full scope. Do you disagree?" he asked when he saw Shendu twitch in protest. "Are you dismayed at the thought of our sisters and brothers knowing that your power has been halved by your loss?"

"Do not insult me, TSO LAN! I am SHENDU, demon sorcerer of Fire! My power is no less great than yours!"

"Perhaps." And with that Tso Lan dismissed Shendu from his mind, focusing instead on his other siblings, scattered across the emptiness of their prison. He placed his four claws together, gathering his power into a singular orb of pure dark energy. "I call my siblings," he whispered, "the demon sorcerers, to attend me." He compressed the orb, feeling his powers strain against the urge to expand, explode, forcing it smaller and smaller and smaller…

And then he let it go, releasing a wave of eldritch mass that rippled through the aether around them, fading into the distant horizon at the speed of dawn. "I suggest you begin preparing excuses for inadequacy," he said as he watched the wave disappear. "Our siblings will be arriving shortly."

A thousand dimensions away from the mortal realm, a shadows width away from the demons netherworld (and, indeed, vice versa), two girls stared at each other across an bone white table, in a room with walls made out sleeping shadows, and a ceiling that sparkled like the night sky. "Well," one of the girls said as she reached over to the cup of tea laid out out before her, "that went well." She took a sip,a don put her cup back down. "Helloe, Jade."

Author Commentary: Sod, this was short chapter. Still, I figured that it'd be better to get it out now, rather than wait another month. In any case, you might have noticed some familiar characters popping up this chapter. Valmont, in particular, was a tricky bastard to work around. I was originally planning to keep things suspenseful, using hints and clues to keep readers guessing, until I realized that I was getting caught up in the details, instead of the story, so I kept things simple. I'll have plenty of other chances to try again later; after all, the worst fault of the series was all the amazing characters that popped up once, but never got a second chance to show off their stuff. Expect plenty of call-backs.