The Golden Back Scratcher
Part 1 - The Kiss
“Oh, for… why does it have to be this way?” whined Jack. “Evil versus Good versus Evil… it should be Evil versus Good, period!”
“Excellent idea, Spicer,” Chase drawled, his arms crossed. “Very kind of you to take yourself out of the equation.”
“Not what I was talking about,” Jack snarled. “But if that’s the way you wanna play it – fine. I’m not letting you or the Xiaolin Has-Beens near the Golden Back Scratcher!”
“Jack, Jack, Jack,” sighed Chase. “Why haven’t you learned by now that lying to yourself is only going to hold you back?”
“Yeah, yeah, nice rhyme!” Raimundo snapped. “But the Golden Back Scratcher is ours!”
“And owe you dweebs a favor? As if!” Jack yelled, and he pulled out his Shen-Gong-Wu.
The monks all leaped for the new Wu, but surprisingly, Jack was faster.
“Silk Spinner!” the evil boy genius yelled, and a strand of webbing shot from the Spinner, snagged the Golden Back Scratcher, and snapped back to bring the new Wu to Jack’s waiting hand.
Clay, Kimiko, Omi, and Raimundo all looked at each other in shock. How had that happened?
“Hah! I’m not as lame as you like to think I am!” Jack yelled. He started to laugh, but something made him stop and duck instead, just in time to avoid being kicked across the room by Chase Young’s attack.
“Yay for Spidey-senses,” Jack muttered as he ducked behind a display case.
Chase turned from where he landed and gave Jack an inscrutable look. “You have improved, Spicer. But it won’t be enough to save you!”
He intended to launch a new attack at Jack, going through the obstacle the brat was hiding behind, only to find himself on the defensive as the monks attacked him.
The four monks figured that if they managed to beat Chase Young back far enough, they could then easily take the Golden Back Scratcher from Jack.
The five martial artists battled each other ferociously in the museum while Jack kept an eye on the exit and the warriors.
Then, to his immense pleasure, the unthinkable happened: Chase Young left his back vulnerable to Jack.
Fast as lightning, Jack lunged from behind the display case and swiped the Golden Back Scratcher across Chase’s back, then ducked and ran for all he was worth to the exit. He bolted through the door, down the hall, and through the exit that led to the outside and launched himself into the air, activating the heli-bot and making his get-away.
Chase shuddered as he felt the Shen-Gong-Wu magic settle into him and hoped Spicer would be true to form – a fool – and waste his magic-granted favor as stupidly as possible, thus enabling Chase to slaughter the idiot boy for putting him in this position. Still, the fact that Jack had managed this much….
The monks stopped fighting as they gaped in stunned disbelief at the fact that Jack had actually managed to get the Shen-Gong-Wu. Not only that, but—
“Ewww,” commented Kimiko. “Can you believe that? Chase owes Jack a favor now!”
“Eurgh,” agreed Raimundo, grimacing. “I wouldn’t want to have to owe the little weirdo a favor. It’s too scary to contemplate what he’ll ask for.”
“F’r sure,” said Clay quietly. “Whoo-ee, but if’n you’re lucky, Young, the worst he’ll ask you to do is wash his socks!”
“Or his—“ Raimundo started to say, but Kimiko clapped her hand over his mouth, halting that train of thought. There some mental images she didn’t need, thank you very much.
Chase sighed roughly. “Be that as it may, I now owe Spicer a favor – one that will not be repaid until he demands it of me.”
“You could always go after Jack, take the Golden Back Scratcher from him, and use it on him,” Omi suggested. “Just because you owe Jack a favor does not mean he cannot be attacked – unless that is the favor he asks of you.”
“Yeah – or we could go get it!” Raimundo snapped, giving Omi’s head a hard rub.
Chase shook his head. “Not this time. Spicer – despite all expectations – not only managed to acquire the Shen-Gong-Wu but to make use of it before safely escaping. I admit I am intrigued to see what he’ll come up with.” Then he smirked cruelly and added, “It is not as if I have any need of the Shen-Gong-Wu, anyway. I only came to test the lot of you.”
All of the monks frowned, but Omi said quietly, “By now, Chase Young, you should have our mettle.”
Chase made no verbal reply. He simply grinned wickedly at Omi and then vanished, leaving the monks staring at the empty spot where he had stood.
~*~*~*~
Much later that evening, Jack was working on a project in his Evil Lair when he heard a familiar voice behind him say: “Ahem.”
Instantly, Jack was on the other side of the large work table with a wrench clutched in his trembling fist, ready to use it to defend himself and then run if he had to. However, to his relief, Chase was merely on his wide screen computer monitor.
“Chase!” Jack said with a grin. “What an honor to have you visit – kinda.”
The evil everlord raised an eyebrow and said, “You know why I’m calling, Spicer.”
“I do?” Jack decided to tease.
Abruptly, Wuya was leaning over Chase’s shoulder, her face filling most of the screen as she screamed, “You know very well what Chase wants to talk to you about, you pathetic ninny! Do not play coy with a situation so serious!”
Jack scowled. “Well, lookee here – the corpse bride.”
Wuya seethed angrily and Chase sighed as he pushed her back to stand at his left shoulder.
Lacing his fingers together and setting his chin upon the bridge formed by the digits, Chase stared through his own computer monitor to study the youth on the other end of the transmission.
Jack, realizing he was under observation, felt an incredible urge to fidget but controlled himself as he stared defiantly back.
Finally, Chase said, “I was wondering if you’d decided yet what favor I will owe you.”
At that, Jack smirked nastily. “No, I haven’t as yet decided. But I am considering my options, so don’t breathe easy just yet.”
Chase’s lip curled slightly while Wuya bared her teeth and snarled, “Moderate your tone, boy! If he wants, Chase can come over there and take the Golden Back Scratcher from you to turn you into his puppet!”
“Nice try, Wuya, but I’m not fallin’ for it!” Jack spat. “If Chase cares to try, he can get his scaly butt over here and whup up on me. But even if he does take it from me, he’ll still owe me the favor!”
“Unless I manage to tag you with the Golden Back Scratcher and use your favor to cancel out my own,” Chase replied, his tone soft and dangerous.
“Sure, there’s that,” Jack agreed. “But we won’t know until you try.”
Chase grinned, abruptly delighted with the young man. Wagging his finger at Jack, he said, “To use your own words, Spicer: I’m not falling for it.”
Jack very much wanted to pout, but controlled himself.
“Very well, then,” said Chase. “You and I have arrived at a stalemate – for now.”
“How? You owe me a favor!” protested Jack.
“You and I both know that it would be child’s play for me to ‘get my scaly butt’ over there to ‘whup up’ on you,” Chase replied. “I do not choose to do so at this time.”
“Which means you’re granting me a freebie favor and thus the stalemate,” Jack grumbled.
Chase’s smile was dark and amused. “Oh, very good, Jack. You know, when you talk like that, I can almost believe you to be the genius you always promote yourself as.”
“Conceited ass,” Jack sniped, and with that, he terminated the connection from his end.
In his own evil lair, Chase nearly gave in to the urge to laugh himself sick with delight.
“Why are you so happy?” grumbled Wuya as she and some of the jungle cats followed Chase away from his computer console.
“Our young Master Spicer is growing up,” Chase said with relish. “He’s no longer quite the bumbling idiot he once was – and did you hear what he called me?”
“Yes! Disrespectful little snotmuffin!”
“Ah, but he does have the courage to say as much to my face now, as well as to use such language. If we proceed with caution, we may be able to turn him into a true evil force to be reckoned with.”
Wuya sighed and shrugged. “I would have thought you’d welcome the chance to vaporize Jack off the face of the earth once and for all. After all the times he’s stalked you and touched you without permission….”
“True,” said Chase. “But I have time, and as the saying goes: ‘Haste makes Waste’.”
“I suppose,” said Wuya glumly.
“Oh, come now, Wuya – what has you so gloomy? I would have thought you would be pleased at some sign of competence from Jack Spicer.”
“Yes!” she agreed. “I simply do not want him to become too competent.”
Chase paused and turned to look at the red-haired woman for a long moment. Then he grinned at her and said, “It could almost be cute that you and Jack are jealous of each other in regards to my attention.”
Wuya sneered. “I am not cute! Great and powerful witches are not cute!”
“I’ve heard tell there’s a first time for everything,” replied Chase with a smirk, and he led the way up to the dining room.
~*~*~*~
Jack stood to one side of Chase, while Wuya stood on his other side.
They each had a grip on one of his arms and were looking up at him imploringly.
“Chase, marry me!” Jack begged.
“No, marry me, Chase!” argued Wuya, her nails digging into his arm.
“No, me!” whined Jack.
“No! Chase, me!”
“Chase, please—“
“Chase—“
“Gyaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!”
Yelling, Chase thrashed awake in his bed, shaking as he pulled himself free of the nightmare.
He sat up slowly in bed and scrubbed blearily at his face, sighing, as the covers pooled about his naked hips.
Finally, he dropped his hands to his lap and muttered, “Those two are going to be the death of me.”
With that, he flopped over onto his back again and tried his level best to put all thoughts of Jack and Wuya out of his mind so he could get at least another hour of sleep.
~*~*~*~
Chase arrived at Jack’s home only minutes after Spicer had contacted him, asking him politely to come over, but stating clearly that just showing up was not the favor, though Chase coming over was necessary to get the favor done.
He teleported himself down into Jack’s Evil Lair, bypassing the other residents in the house; he wanted to get this over and done with, not spend hours answering questions by a reasonably protective mother wanting to know who was the strange man in armor arriving to visit her son.
“Chase,” said Jack, grinning. “Good of you to come over. Care for anything to eat? Drink?”
Chase folded his arms across his chest and gave the youth a menacing look. “As pleased as I am to discover you have some rudimentary knowledge of etiquette, I believe I am here to do you a favor?”
“I never figured you for being impatient,” Jack teased, shaking his head slightly.
“I never figured you for being competent,” Chase replied angrily. “We all face surprises in life.”
Jack scowled and said, “Fine. Let’s get this over with, shall we?”
“Yes – let’s.”
Jack brought out the Golden Back Scratcher and Chase tensed at the wicked smirk on the youth’s face.
“The favor I ask of you is for you to stand still and allow me to scratch you again with the Golden Back Scratcher five times without fighting me or trying to take the Shen-Gong-Wu away from me.”
“Only five times?” Chase asked, raising an eyebrow as he felt the tingle of the Shen-Gong-Wu’s magic activate.
“Hey, I could’ve asked for five hundred, but every time I get too greedy, something happens to kick my butt up between my shoulder-blades – usually you.”
Chase allowed a pleased chuckle or two to escape him. “Jack, you do surprise me. What’s happened to you that you suddenly seem so clever?”
“Be nice to me or the favors I ask of you will be both functional and degrading!” Jack snapped.
Chase stopped laughing and instead fixed Jack with a black glare. “Very well – I will not fight you or attempt to take the Shen-Gong-Wu from you while you scratch me five times.”
Jack, knowing that Chase took his oaths seriously, confidently approached the totally still warrior with a hint of a swagger in his steps. He looked up into Chase’s gold eyes for a moment and then moved around behind Chase. He took a moment to admire the long, gleaming black tresses that spilled down Chase’s back to his waist. He gathered the hair into his pale white hands, being careful not to pull – knowing it would be an injury Chase would brutalize him for once he could move again – and held the long, silky hair out of the way as he scratched Chase’s back five times with the Golden Back Scratcher. When he was done, he immediately let go of Chase’s hair and hurried away to the other side of the room.
Chase watched him go; noting the quick, furtive movements that told of Jack’s nervousness, and tamped down his inner lizard when his instincts began clamoring that prey was nearby.
“Very well, Spicer, you’ve gained five more favors,” he drawled. “May I go now? I have evil havoc to wreak and I’d rather not be obliged to stay in the company of a little boy with delusions of grandeur any longer than I have to.”
“Little boy?” Jack echoed, his eyes narrowed angrily.
Chase smirked darkly. “I have been a man longer than your mind can truly comprehend; you are a puling schoolboy.”
“For the last time, I am not whiny!” Jack yelled, his hands clenched into fists.
“Believe me, boy – you’re a whiner.”
“Oh, really.”
Abruptly, Chase really did not like the look on Jack’s face.
Jack wasn’t about to listen to anymore of this nonsense; not without getting some of his own back. So he ordered: “Chase, the favor I ask of you is to kiss me for ten minutes. Like a… like a l-l-lover would.”
Chase bared his teeth in a snarl as he felt the Shen-Gong-Wu magic take hold. “Children who can’t bring themselves to say the words have no business making such requests!”
“I’m not a child,” Jack declared defiantly. “And I did and I have!”
“Yes,” Chase agreed, his own eyes narrowing dangerously. “So you did.”
With that, he stalked forward towards Jack, who stared back with wide eyes.
Jack watched the approach of the dangerous warrior and thought that maybe, just maybe, he’d bitten off more than he could chew. Looking down, he noticed that he still held the Golden Back Scratcher and thought he’d better put that away. Yanking open a certain drawer in the worktable, he tossed the Golden Back Scratcher inside and then slammed the drawer shut again. He knew it would be safe enough for now; that particular drawer was designed so that anything placed inside was immediately removed to a hidden safe in the room by tiny robots.
“I’m being asked for a kiss from a child,” Chase rumbled, angrier than he’d been in a long time.
“Hey! I’ve been kissed before!” Jack sputtered, then glanced away as he added, “It… we were playing ‘Spin the Bottle’ and it was wet and I didn’t like it much, but I’ve been kissed!”
“One kiss,” retorted Chase. “One clumsy kiss. Very well, Jack – you want my mouth?”
Jack had no time to answer the rhetorical question when Chase was suddenly upon him.
Jack squeaked as Chase, growling low in his throat, caught him by the waist and pulled him up against the warrior’s strong body. His arms went around Chase’s neck and he shuddered as Chase’s right hand slid down his body, the both of them bending slightly as Young caught Jack’s right leg behind the knee and hoisted it upwards to hook around Chase’s hip while the warlord pushed Jack backwards, using the worktable to brace the youth against.
Then Chase angled his head, dipped forward, and caught Jack’s mouth with his own, consequently blowing Jack’s mind away.
Jack found his mouth kissed and caressed; tasted and stroked and touched by Chase’s lips and tongue. Chase was growling the whole time, but that didn’t stop Jack from giving himself up whole-heartedly to the wonderful new sensations skirling through his body. At one point, when one of Chase’s hands attempted to stroke his hair and was impeded by his goggles, Jack grinned through a kiss and yanked the goggles off of his head and then draped them over Chase’s head. That prompted an even more ferocious growl from Chase, but Jack buried his hands in Chase’s hair and kissed back, thrilled at the pleasure he received when the older man caught his lower lip between his teeth and nibbled on it. He shuddered in Chase’s arms, enraptured by the man’s skillful performance.
The kiss went on and on for what seemed like eternity, and Jack, extremely hot from the activity, partially shrugged off his jacket, trying to cool his feverish skin. He couldn’t seem to get cool, though; not when he was staring into Chase’s narrowed eyes and wrestling his own tongue against the older man’s.
Eventually, however, the ten minutes was up and as soon as Chase felt the Shen-Gong-Wu magic fade, he tore himself free of Jack’s grip and stood as far away as possible. He quickly got himself under control and ripped the goggles from his head, throwing them hard at Jack, who ducked and allowed them to sail over his head, shattering against a nearby wall.
“I hope you had fun, Spicer,” Chase snarled, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “It’s the last kiss you’re ever likely to receive from me.”
Jack grinned impishly and replied, “Unless I invoke my other four favors.”
That’s when Chase abruptly went lizard and loosed an ear-shattering roar in Jack’s general direction.
Jack cowered back against the worktable and held up one hand. “Whoa! Simmer down, T-Rex! I didn’t say I would.”
“See that you don’t,” Chase snapped, his voice layered and amplified by his mutated voice box. “When I kiss someone, it is because I choose to start the kiss!”
An ugly glower stole over Jack’s face. “Like, who? Wuya?”
“Who I kiss is none of your business, Spicer!”
Jack stared at him for a moment. Then he turned away, his hand reaching out to rest lightly on a screwdriver as he muttered under his breath.
Chase, however, heard him quite clearly.
“You know nothing,” he said, returning to his human form. “You asked for five favors and wasted one of them by extracting a kiss from me. Now you are left with four and will probably waste them just as—“
Jack turned to glare at Chase, his red eyes glittering with anger. “What I do with the favors you owe me is my business, Young! I got what I wanted – go on home to your girlfriend. Just… get out of here.”
“She is not my – why am I telling you this? I do not have to explain myself to anyone!” growled Chase.
Jack opened his mouth to say something nasty, only to be interrupted as the large screen flashed to life. He turned to face it while Chase did the same and saw one of his robots there with a science facility in the background.
“Mr. Spicer,” said the robot in its’ mechanical voice. “We are experiencing problems with the third generation of growth production.”
Jack sighed and waved his hand. “I’ll be right over. Can you put everything on hold until I get there?”
“Affirmative.”
“Do it. Spicer out.”
He terminated the connection on his console and then turned to Chase.
Chase looked back at Jack and asked, “Were those dragons I saw floating in those tubes?”
Jack narrowed his eyes, said nothing, and turned away.
“Spicer—“
“Don’t be here when I get back,” Jack tossed over his shoulder. “I’ll have thought of something for you to do by then.”
With that, Jack went bounding up the stairs so he could exit the house entirely; he had a project to see to and then he had to be home so he could finish his homework before his parents could sprog an entire herd of cows.
Chase watched the youth leave. Then he turned to Jack’s computer console with a smirk. Walking over to the complicated looking nest of machines, he tapped out a few commands, accurately guessing Jack’s current password. Once he was in the computer system, he went looking for certain topics. In less than a second, several files were brought up and he read about Jack’s plan of using a cloning facility to make several hundred insentient copies of Dojo.
Chase logged out of the computer system and stood staring at the blank screen for a moment. Then he turned and went over to the worktable and opened the drawer he’d seen Jack put the Golden Back Scratcher into, only to find that the Shen-Gong-Wu was no longer there.
“Clever, Jack,” he drawled softly. “Very, very clever. Alright, then – you win this round.”
As he got ready to teleport back to his Mountain of Doom, Chase decided to leave The Kiss out of his recitation of the evening’s events to Wuya. She would only go berserk in a jealous fury and possibly do severe damage to Jack. If that happened, Chase would never know if Jack’s potential would be – or even could be – realized.
He had the feeling that the future was going to be quite stimulating.
