Autobiography of a Legend

The Time Between The Change

Whenever I tell people the story of fighting my father, I kinda fast forward through the Great Devourer. That's somewhat surprising, given how important it is to not only Ninjago as a whole, but a very important person later in my story. But, when I think about the battle with my father, the Great Devourer just seems more like it's not as connected as the rest of everything. It's important, just not as important as the rest.

Part of the reason is that right after the Devourer, my memory gets somewhat fuzzy. The ninja said they did something to the past that ended up changing a lot of what happened between the Devourer and the Stone Army. I remember one version of events, but those events often feel like I'm almost trying to give just the key points of what happened. How I was trained to become the Green Ninja... it confuses a lot of us. Even my dad refused to talk about it when I asked.

But before we get to that, we should get back to the Devourer. Pythor somehow recovered the blade from the volcano, somehow, and the Serpentine just vanished after it. They ninja got information from grabbing a Venomari off the streets. I wasn't involved, and I spent most of my time after my father had rescued me training on the dummies in the Bounty. Wu had reconstructed some equipment that would teach me Spinjitzu, and so I threw myself into learning it. If any of you reading this want to one day learn Spinjitzu... it takes a lot of getting knocked onto your face by spinning dummies.

Part of the reason I spent so much time training was to keep my mind off my father. My dad was still around on the Bounty, of course, but whenever I talked to him, we would never be able to do it for long before we remembered what Wu had said. We could hold small talk, but given enough time we'd both fall silent. Neither of us wanted to talk about it, especially when he had just rescued me. It seemed to seep into everything we wanted to do together, so we just ended up... not talking.

Training didn't give me time to think about that. It was easier to just, throw myself at the obstacle course and get thrown out. Each time I could make it a little further, and that gave me hope to keep moving. I think Jay actually said some video games are built that way, off you making tiny amounts of progress and you wanting to keep going as you master the parts you used to fail on. Only in video games, you don't end up with bloody noses after enough attempts.

Of course, the ninja, Wu and Nya were always busy, so I had to teach myself. I like to think now I've grown to be a decent teacher, but when teaching myself how to fight... I can see now why I wasn't ever even a threat to the ninja. Wu had told me if I could finish the course before a timer ran out, I would be able to do Spinjitzu. The best I'd gotten at my best was thirty seconds, and the timer was for seven.

When I wasn't training, Nya taught me how to fly the Bounty. It was honestly easier than it seemed. The Bounty was rigged to mainly just go up and down, so it was all about just adjusting for the wind. The computers often did that a lot, so I only had to handle just listening to them. I'm glad she did, since it meant I learned how to drive. My dad tried to show me how, but whenever he went to touch the Bounty's controls, the ninja would get him out of the room.

So, I came up with a plan to get back the Fangblades. After the ninja realized Pythor was already on his way to the last Fangblade, I suggested that we try to get back the other three by raiding the Serpentine fortress. It was a simple plan, if not somewhat ruined by the fact that the entire fortress was swarming with Serpentine. I don't know why the ninja were captured, and honestly, I still don't know. I wasn't paying attention to that.

Like I mentioned before, my dad was still living on the Bounty while all this was happening. I was making it a point to avoid him. I regret it now in hindsight, since it meant I wasn't getting to spend time with my dad when I really, really wanted to. But I couldn't look at him without my destiny coming back up in my head. I wanted to be the Green Ninja, sure, but I also wanted to have a dad. It seemed like, I couldn't have both. It hurt. It really, really hurt. I wanted to just go talk to him, but I couldn't. So, I wasn't in a good mood when I found him stealing secrets from the ninja.