Everyone Ages (XIAOLIN SHOWDOWN)

Secret Sweet Shop

The candles guttered and the fire burned low. The party glittered to a close.  Chase Young rose, and all the room rose with him, except for me who tried to hide. I was the first one to leave, quickly through a back passageway, doing my best to cover my face. I had lost my mask. I was as exposed as one could be. Kimiko, Clay, and Raimundo could walk through the front path safely. I'd have to watch for the moment to spring out and find my own way back to the room.
Alas, I had no idea where that place was from here. Straight ahead of me at the end of the corridor was an elevator.
A small boy in a black hat operated the elevator. There was barely room for me inside. I covered my entire face with my hair, beginning to look a lot like the grudge at this point. The boy squealed and pushed me off halfway through. I dropped through space, bounced off the ledge, turned once in the air, and limped off running. I ran for my life, doing my best to cover my face as I did so. Where ever I was, I needed to be somewhere else. I ran down one passageway after another, up decks and down. I was like a..rat in a maze. I ran toward music, an orchestra playing a rag-time tune. I swerved another way and heard the sound of pool cue against ball.I ran where heylins were, beneath their very feet. A lady switched her skirts aside.
"Rude," she said. A walking stick swatted my legs as I pushed passed people. A polished shoe stamped on my toes. I bounded through the room. I raced through a fanning door, and skidded upon open deck. I drew up by a table. Damp wind cut my eyes. I huddled, shaking like a wet chihuahua. There beyond the railing tossed the endless black and unforgiving sea. Water everywhere. Above in the night the sparks from the funnels spiralled upward to join the firmament of stars. A terrible and lonesome beauty, and I was far from the temple.
I allowed myself a single whimper, but only one. The sea area whistled through my mind. My feet throbbed. My head rang. My hands wrung. Still, I pulled myself together, there next to the glass table.
In the next moment or the moment after that, I knew I wasn't alone. The sea made a swishing sound, but there was this other sound too. Nearer, much nearer.
It was the sound of metal clanking, getting closer. A nearly silent clank, but there's nothing wrong with my hearing. I froze. Then above me a dark shadow loomed over me, against the starry sky.
I dared look up at the awful outline of a square shaped body. Then- oh, the horror - two burning LED eyes, a sickening yellow. It was one of Jack's ship bots. And kill-crazy as heylin devices are.
I was numb, naturally, but alert. Another click as Jack's robot's blades revealed from it's makeshift arms for a sudden ambush.  I sensed the gas expelling from it as it fixed to hyper-drive.
And there I was just below, with nothing between us but thin night air.
A horrid crack from its inner wires arched above me from the hurdling, glowing android. It's blades stretched out towards me, it's circling saws twinkling by the starlight. I went blind and deaf for an instant. In my mind's eye flashed an awful scene of my own limbs ripping from my body.
Then, I was travelling as Jack's robot cut through a bar with a smash upon the deck where  I'd just been. The deck was slick but I am quick.
I had to get back inside the ship. Otherwise I could be chased off this pitching deck and into the fathomless sea. The android lost a moment, wondering where I went. A door fanned,and I made for the door, swerving. Trying to stay on blind spots of an android is uphill work. I shot through the door into the ship, hoping it would swing shut onto the metal face - slam it one, cracking a glass eye.
But luck was not with me. It was through that door and on my ass. Now I ran at random. my feet went faster than my thoughts. I might have been headed anywhere, even onto the ballroom floor around all those heylins.
Instead, I seemed to skim over the carpet of a corridor. It was a deck nearly as grand as Chase Young's royal suite. Maids bustled from door to door, carrying bed linens. I fled too fast to be acknowledged as xiaolin. But they couldn't miss the huffing robot. With any luck, a maid would deactivate it.
It wasn't to be. I picked the first closed door, and was in it in a flash. Without a second to spare. If robots could open doors, there'd be fewer xiaolin. Far fewer. Clanking issues from the corridor side. Blades cut at the  door-sill. I seemed to smell hot gas even through the solid door. The chattering metal rattled in my head. I sagged there, gathering myself. The cabin before me was shrouded and dim. But darkness is nothing to void. Another door was cut into one of the walls, so this must be part of a suite, possibly a grand one. Starlight showed through a porthole. Beneath it was a bed, a small one. I crept my way there and I sat on the side of the bed. Maybe I thought I'd be safer there, this far from the clanking door. I wasn't
All manner of strange shapes littered the bed. Before I could make sense of them, light flooded. A hand had switched on the electrified lamp. Somebody was in the bed. I liked to have fainted.
I ducked down and froze, of course, one hand drawn up, my eyes staring from halfway under the bed now.
Two eyes stared back, small hazel ones above thin pale cheeks. It was a little girl. Tiranny, the heylin princess of Cambodia. Six years old and possibly a handful. She may have sensed me sitting on the side of her bed. I didn't have Kimiko's light way of movement. I didn't have the practice.
We stared at each other, up and down the rumpled blanket. It was littered with her stuffed animals. The cat. The opossum. The dog. The ram. Little kids live in this kind of clutter. I was reminded of Omi's bedroom. A fake sword, the stuffed dog, the drum with sticks. The mess.
Another clank came from beyond the door. I nearly lost hope then.  I'd spent the whole of my life keeping my distance from killer robots and heylins. now look at me.
Little princess Tiranny peered down her bed, blinking and interested. Her thin head was covered in straight, thin, black hair.She stuck a bony finger into one of her cheeks.