"Woah, amazing," Cole whispers.
"It is like anything I have ever seen," adds Zane.
"So cool!" Jay marvels.
The three of them have been staring at the Time Blade for the past ten minutes. I honestly think they've fallen in love. They think I'm not watching. I've got The History of Ninjago and It's People propped up in my lap, but really the only reason I'm not in the court yard training is to make sure they don't do something stupid.
"I must caution, Jay. The Time Blade is a powerful weapon." Zane is always so sensible.
"Uh, you think I don't know that? Check this!" He throws the blade at a stack of empty boxes, impaling the center box. "Boom! Ha! Eight bull's eye in a row. Beat that."
"I did," says Cole.
"Oh really?" When?"
"When I got nine in a row."
"Okay, yeah, if you wanna count that."
"But watch this!" Cole throws a box into the air and uses the Time Blade to make it's descent back to the floor in slow motion.
"Haha!" Jay exclaims. "You missed!"
"Did I? Slow-moving target. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy." He jumps into the air and cuts the box into a million little pieces. "And that's how you recycle an empty box."
"That box was not empty," says Zane.
I glance up from the pages I weren't actually analyzing to see a small, blue, stuffed dinosaur on the floor. It has tears in it's side with stuffing falling out.
Jay gasps and runs to the stuffed toy. "Mr Cuddlywump!" He sniffles, then clears his throat. "Is a teddy bear I used to love when I was five, but now he's totally lame and . . ."
"We know you still sleep with him."
"And I don't care who knows it!" Jay cuddles the stuffed dino to his chest. "Oh, Mr Cuddlywump."
"Switching to playful mode," says Zane.
So maybe he's not as sensible as I thought. He does a spin and throws the blade in Nya's direction. It nearly hits her and the stuff she's working on. Safe to say, she wasn't happy.
"Hey, watch it! I'm working here."
"Sorry, Nya."
"What's with Nya?" Cole says in a not-so-quiet whisper. "She's been on her computer since we got back from the desert."
"Her attempt to locate her stolen Samurai X suit is consuming her," says Zane.
"Ugh. She's as bad as her brother."
"Ah-ha!" shouts Kai. "I've got a clue!"
My oh-so comfy pillow stands up abruptly, causing my head to fall hard onto the bench he's vacated. I shoot him a glare, but he doesn't notice as he flips frantically through a book older than mine. His face falls and he closes it.
"I haven't got a clue."
"He's been reading those Ninjago history books all day."
"I don't get those two," Jay says with a groan. "But we finally get a victory and they choose to celebrate by dorking out instead of doing something cool?"
"I'm dorking out too," I say, slightly offended that they didn't include me in their desire for fun.
"Yeah, but that's normal."
I open my mouth to argue, but then close it. They're not wrong. A few years ago, maybe they would've been. God, what has happened to me?
Jay gasps, suddenly, and his eyes light up. "Let's run straight at each other and see if this will slow us down before we collide."
Okay, now that's just a stupid idea. I can't watch.
"I'mma go see what Lily's doing," I whisper to Kai, closing my book and setting it where I was laying.
He doesn't acknowledge me, so focused on that marking inside the helmet. I sigh, and press a quick kiss to the top of his head.
Lily is outside in the courtyard, training. She's been doing that quite a bit lately. Every chance she gets, she's destroying a new dummy. Nya and Zane even had to engineer a new, more difficult model for her because she was destroying the old ones so quickly. Despite not having any elemental power, she's extremely powerful.
"Hey," I say, and she pauses her fighting, which earned her a whack in the face by the dummy.
"What do you need?" With a grunt, she kicks the dummy's head clean off his shoulders.
"Nothing. I just came to watch."
She raises a curious eyebrow. "Why?"
"Just because."
Now she's sighing. "What did Kai do?"
"Nothing," I say in complete honesty.
Now she's really confused. "Then why would you want to watch me?"
"Honestly? To escape the bozos playing with the Time Blade inside."
"Is one of those bozos my boyfriend?"
"Yep."
"Figures."
Lily walks across the courtyard and starts picking up pieces from the dismembered dummies. She puts them in a box under the cherry blossom tree for Zane and Nya to reassemble later.
"Hey, aren't you a sensei?"
"I am."
"Then why don't you reprimand them for messing around?"
I shrug my shoulders, though I know my answer. "They're not doing anything wrong."
"But couldn't playing with the time blade cause a large enough temporal disturbance to set off the temporal energy scanner things?"
"No," I say, shaking my head. "None of them are powerful enough to control that amount of energy."
Lily is silent for a moment, thinking. Then she says, "Are you?"
I purse my lips and that is answer enough for her.
"Is that why you're not playing with them?"
"I--"
"Don't bother lying to me," she says. "I used to be you, remember."
"It's not the reason I'm not playing with them," I say truthfully. "But it would be a pretty good one."
She nods and sits down on the stairs. I take the seat beside her, and together we survey our plot of floating land.
"How did we get here?" she asks.
"What do you mean?"
"I've done everything in my power to separate myself from you. I never wanted to be like you. But the more time I spend with you, the more I realize that I am you. Just without the power, without the titles, without the good reputation. How did it come to this?"
"Tell me, Lily: who is it that you want to be?"
She looks me in the eye and I almost shiver. We are the same in every aspect except for our eyes. Her eyes are blood red. Intense eyes to match the intense girl she used to be. I used to fear them because they reflected the darkness that has always been within me. But now these bloody eyes are glassy from fear and confusion. They're the red eyes of a lonely girl.
"I want to be special," she says, and her voice cracks. "I want to be someone other than your shadow, but no matter how hard a try, I always seem to fall back to where I once was. It's as if I wasn't meant to exist at all."
My heart aches for her. She speaks what I once felt many years ago. Back before I became good. Back before I fell in love with Kai. A lonely girl who didn't know where she belonged.
"Do you love Cole?"
She sniffles, wiping away the tear that slid down her cheek. "Why should that matter?"
"Do you?"
"I-I don't know."
"How does he make you feel?"
She breaks eye contact to stare at the ground. I can tell she's lost in thought, searching for the right words. If she didn't love him, she wouldn't be thinking so hard.
"He makes me feel safe," she finally admits. "He makes me feel like I'm not alone. He makes me feel like I belong, like I was meant to be let out of that prison, like I was meant to come live here, like I was supposed to be created in the first place. He . . . does he love me?"
"That is for you to find out for yourself."
"Do I love him?"
"It sounds like it."
"Oh, god. Oh, god, Tasha, what do I do?"
"You gotta tell him. And trust me when I say, it'll make you feel better."
"How do you know?"
"I'm you and you're me, remember? As much as we hate it, it's true. Also, I was in the same position once. If it weren't for Kai, you wouldn't exist and I'd be ruling Ninjago by my father's side."
"Honestly," Lily says with a small giggle. "That doesn't sound half bad."
I smile, imagining myself in a long purple dress and silver crown on my head. I'd be an empress. "You're right. Damn Kai and his love!"
"It was worth it though, right?"
"It was."
I'd bask in this moment if I could, but it is ruined by a loud crashing sound inside the temple. The ninja come running outside, and Lily and I follow them to the edge of the island. Beneath us is an army of snake warriors, with Crux and Acronix at their head.
"I've run a fourth-level analysis," says Zane. "It appears the snake warriors have returned to retrieve the blade."
"Really?" says Jay. "I could have told you that with a third-level analysis. Or a no-level analysis!"
"Well," says Cole, "we're all the way up here and they're all the way down there. No chance they could reach us."
As if on cue, the snakes launch a giant metal pod, and it crashes into the rock behind us. Snakes slither out of it, as if they've hatched from an egg.
Nya groans. "Oh, come on. They built catapults?"
"Whatever," Cole says. "It's just a bunch of snakes."
"Remain on guard, Ninja," says Uncle Wu from the door way. "There is more to your adversaries than you may think."
Another pod flies up, unleashing even more little snakes.
"Whatever. It's just a bunch of warriors. I mean, they're not armed, but we are."
"Oh, big mistake!" Jay yells. "Never bring fists to a nunchuck-sword-scythe-katana-shuriken fight."
Another pod lands in the courtyard. This one is full of armor and weapons. Sometimes I really wish Cole and Jay would just shut their mouths.
"Oh, wow. They went from unarmed snakes to fully weaponized Vermillion Warriors really, really fast."
"Doesn't matter," says Kai. "We can-- wait. That's what they're called? Vermillion warriors?"
Jay giggles. "I know, right? So lame. There are so many better names."
"Actually, the name is quite clever. You see, vermillion is a shade of red with a slight orange tint, a color which symbolizes life and eternity. So in that sense, they should actually be commended for--"
"Guys, focus!" I snap, sick and tired of their blabbering. This would be why we never get anything done. "Is everyone ready?"
"I will sit this on out to preserve my strength," says Wu.
And then the fight begins. It doesn't last long, though. We quickly take out the snakes scattering them through the tall grass. The scent of victory is in the air, Cole starts picking up the rubble while Kai begs Wu for answers to his questions. It's not over though. I can feel it.
The snakes begin to regroup. The drag pieces of armor together, forming a giant Vermillion Warrior, bigger than Nya's Samurai Z suit. The battle recommences, and this time we're getting our asses handed to us--at least until Nya and Kai jump into action.
"Hey, you! It's not my bedtime!"
The scene that unfolds is quite comedic, and I suddenly feel bad for the Evil Mrs Grubmiller Kai once told me about. Together, the siblings trip that giant snake monster and it tumbles off the edge of the island.
"C'mon," says Nya. "We can use the Destiny's Bounty to fly above all this and get a good view of the other's position."
It's like the snakes read her mind because they launched rocks at our air ship, sending it crashing to the ground. More snakes are sent up to the island, and the battle restarts as soon as it ended.
Lloyd says something about taking an offensive stance. I don't really listen, because while the other's weren't paying attention, Lily becomes overwhelmed. Her lack of elemental power really shows against these snakes, and in a tragic accident, she gets shoved off the side of the island.
Almost simultaneously, Lloyd and I summon our dragons, but we take off with different purposes. Lloyd flies toward the snake army with the intent of taking out their catapults. I dive down in an attempt to save Lily.
Despite having conjured it out of thin air, I can feel the beast breathing beneath me. It's wings are powerful as it pulls us downward, inch by inch. We grow closer and closer, but so does the ground.
Even though she's falling, Lily looks peaceful, like she's accepted this as her fate. Her eyes are shut, but not squeezed tight if she were afraid. Her skin is smooth, free of any wrinkle or blemish. She looks like an angel, falling. And there's an upward curve to her lips. She's smiling at the premise of her own death. Some would call it naivety, but I call it maturity. Despite being so young, she has seen so much and become so wise.
Just like me.
I swoop beneath her and catch her with my dragon.
She gasps and her eyes fly open.
That's when the fear hits her.
"I'm alive," she asks, though it sounds more like a statement.
"You really thought I would let you die?"
We soar back upward, and I don't see Lloyd's dragon anymore. I assume that means Lloyd has succeeded and landed back on the island. But as soon as were back safely, Kai jumps off.
I sprint to the edge and peer over the side. Nya is clutching my arm to keep me from going after them.
Lloyd is falling, another angel. Kai is diving after him, his dragon huffing with effort.
Curious how fictional beasts that are made purely from our elemental energy can behave so much like real creatures.
Another falling angel is saved.
But it's not by my lover.
Kai got caught up in flying Vermillions. Samurai X snatched up my brother.
There's a huge kerfuffle. Nya is screaming at the Samurai Warrior. I feel light headed. My limbs become heavy, as if there were rocks attached. My vision begins to cloud with vines of purple and silver.
I close my eyes.
Blackness.
I open them.
A double infinity in the sky. Green, blue, yellow, red. Flashing lights. Dark clouds fill the sky. Acronix and Crux fly into the portal. Uncle Wu follows after them. Then Kai and Nya on a combined dragon. I feel hollow, like someone has scooped out all my insides. I cant breathe. Everything is cold and hot at the same time. Is this what the end feels like?
I hear someone laugh.
Someone who I never thought I'd hear laugh ever again.
It's my father.
It's a cruel laugh.
The laugh of a villain.
It's Lord Garmadon.
I scream.
Everything goes black.
~
Happy Friday :)
Word Count: 2521