Infected

By: CrystallicSky

Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown, or any of its characters, nor do I make any money nor attempt to from the writing of this.

Warnings: Slightly mature implications (pornographic websites, but really, just the words 'sluts' and 'tits' ), implied romantic, homosexual feelings, etc.

A fist pounded heavily on the door before the knocker abruptly barged in and upon identifying who it was, Jack was highly surprised that they'd even bothered to knock at all.

Martin Spicer loomed rather threateningly in the door frame of his son's lavish room, scowling darkly to see the youth cross-legged on the floor, video game controller in his hands.

"Get up, Jack, he demanded, pleased to see the boy drop what he was doing and scurry to his feet. "I need your help."

Despite appearances, Jack was not dumb: his genius intellect was enough to know that when his father needed his 'help,' it usually meant that he was about to be forced into using his skill in technology (of which Martin was woefully deprived) to fix something that the elder man had screwed up.

Knowing this, the goth asked, "Where is it?"

As he'd expected, it was an object that needed fixing and a laptop was shoved into his hands.

"It's not working right," the fire-haired man imperiously announced. "I need it for a business conference in two hours. Fix it."

Jack sighed and took the machine obediently, sitting with it upon his bed and turning it on to see what the problem was.

Mere seconds into a diagnostic, the problem was abundantly clear: Martin's computer was infected with a virus, caught from visiting...less than savory sites upon the internet.

Creepily enough, as he went about attempting to rid the laptop of its infection, he felt...an odd sense of kinship with this machine.

It, just like himself, was an advanced piece of equipment, capable of feats that could outshine any other technology of the day.

However, its potential was bogged down, impeded by entirely unprotected access to the web (Martin hadn't had the foresight to install a very advanced firewall, nor the foresight to instill a sense of self-protection in his son, for that matter).

Of course, there were differences.

Instead of sites like 'crazycollegesluts. com' and 'titsgalore. net' inviting malware and worms upon Jack as they'd done to his father's laptop, it would more accurately be sites like 'heylin-r-us. net' where he was offered partnerships and chances to better himself only to be caught by a knife in the back when he optimistically tried to take up the offer and 'monksbeatdown. org' where he could be educated as to the ways of hypocritical monks so dishonorable as to brutally whoop the ass of an untrained, unarmed teenager as trained, armed, and super-powered teenagers themselves.

Having cleaned up the small-scale infections, Jack's long, pale fingers darted across the keyboard in search of the main virus.

And there it was: 'bltrojan. exe'

The goth could relate to having a main virus, too.

His had infected him on the spot and had embedded itself deep within his hard drive; mussing up his files, causing him to run quirky and slow, and pulling all of his available attention to it and taking it away from other, more important functions.

Just like 'bltojan. exe,' unfortunately, 'chaseyoung. exe' was irremovable, no matter how many times the icon was deleted and its data given a failed wipe.

"I've got most of the problem cleared up," Jack informed his father, crimson eyes locked on the laptop screen as he futilely continued to attempt a removal of the virus, each try proving just as useless as the one previous, "but the actual problem is still there and its not leaving."

"Is that a big problem?" Martin demanded of his pale son, folding his arms over his broad, Armani-clothed chest.

"Kind of," the goth admitted. "This virus is the main source of all your problems. With all the littler stuff handled, your computer should be back to running at top-efficiency, but the virus is still there and it'll just draw the littler malware and bugs back again until it's removed for good."

"Can it be removed for good?"

"Yeah...but I'd have to wipe the whole hard drive and you said you had that business conference in a couple of hours, so I figured you had some business-type documents that you'd rather not get wiped before you need them."

The middle-aged man 'hmm'ed thoughtfully. "How long will it be able to work with the virus still on there before it starts acting weird again?"

"Depends, Dad," Jack shrugged. "You're a filthy pervert that gave your computer an STD from all those porn websites, so if you plan on doing that again, I'd say it'll last a couple of days. If you stay off those kinds of sites, though, it'll be closer to a couple of weeks."

Seeing his father's apprehension at abandoning his pornographic images and videos, he instead suggested, "You could just back up your important files and documents on a flash drive," at the look the man gave him, he amended, "I could just back up your important files and documents on a flash drive after you go to that meeting and then I can wipe the hard drive clean of the virus and reupload the files. It'll be good as new."

Martin seized the laptop from his son, agreeing, "That sounds fine. I'll be back later tonight so you can fix it completely."

Jack watched as his father turned on his heel and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

What Mr. Spicer wasn't aware of, the goth thought to himself, was that so long as he kept going on those unsavory websites, even after the laptop was wiped and given a fresh start, it was only a matter of time until the virus was back and once more infecting the hard drive.

Similar to his own situation, so long as he kept associating himself with the monks and the Heylin, he would be further infected by his infatuation with Chase Young, impeding his performance and making himself vulnerable to the other beings of evil and to the monks.

The worst part of it was that, like his father's insatiable and self-destructive addiction to porn, Jack's love and desperate desire for Chase was destroying his own potential for advancement in his field and he knew it full well...

...but was entirely unable and unwilling to stop it.

The goth sighed raggedly and did his best to put it out of his mind, plucking his video game controller from the floor and resuming his game.

Golden eyes stared contemplatively at him through the Eye-Spy Orb miles and miles away, Mind Reader Conch held firmly in their owner's hand.

Chase Young, having been idly curious as to the thoughts that might run through his number one fan's head when the teen was in his element and doing something he was actually good at, had head everything the youth had just reflected upon: his true intelligence without the guise of external stupidity, his feelings on his position in the Xiaolin-Heylin conflict, and of course, his genuine, not-at-all-just-a-fanboy-crush affection for the warlord...

"Hmmm...."

A/N: So! As some of you may be aware, AnubisAdmirer's birthday was awhile ago.

Now, when I heard about the birthday of a fabulous artist and lover of Chack, my immediate desire was, "WRITE A GIFT-FIC FOR HER!"

However, I found out about the event a little less than a day beforehand and was unable to come up with something until (technically; it's after midnight) yesterday at school, which I've just now gotten to typing up and posting.

About five weeks late, but better late than never, right? XD

Happy (REALLY) belated birthday, Anubis-Admirer! \O/

Hope you guys liked it, too! :D