"This is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the single most catastrophic blunder I have ever seen in all of Ninjago's history," said Sensei Wu as he marched back and forth in front of the boys. They were in the medical room where Kai was still bed-ridden and they were finally paying for their actions. "This monastery and my reputation are both teetering on a knife's blade because of you, not to mention the countless other casualties you inflicted. You were reckless, irresponsible, and foolish, to say the least. However, you did manage to stop my nephew from inflicting far worse damage, and you also took out quite a large number of his forces in doing so. As it would turn out, there is some good work to commend you for, but you also let Lloyd slip away and we currently do not know his whereabouts. So while we search for him, you four will be cleaning the entire monastery, top to bottom, giving our staff a well-deserved rest. After that, your training will resume, with twice the work load."
Keaton wished she could say something, but she technically wasn't even supposed to be here behind the med room doors eavesdropping. She could just picture the boys' faces, though, as Wu told them what their punishment was going to be. Even she was shocked when she heard it.
"The three of you will begin tomorrow morning, and young Kai will join you as soon as he is able. You are also confined to the monastery, and if I catch you stepping one toe out of line, you will be sentenced to solitary confinement for one week. That is all. Dismissed."
That was Keaton's queue to vamoose. She used her wind powers to boost herself down the hallway and out of sight as fast as she could, hoping that when Wu opened the med room doors, he didn't see her pony tails flying around the corner at the end of the hall. She leaned against the wall and tried to keep her breathing to a minimum as she listened for the sound of her Sensei's footsteps.
"Who are we hiding from?"
Keaton whipped around and nearly punched Nya who had snuck up on her.
"Oh, it's just you," Keaton sighed with relief, glad she had not actually harmed Nya.
"Expecting someone else?" asked Nya with a raised eyebrow.
"Uh... no, no, just out here taking a stroll," said Keaton with a smile.
Just then, Sensei Wu walked by and said, "Good morning, girls."
"Good Morning Sensei Wu," the girls replied together. They watched him glide away and out of sight before continuing with their conversation.
"So," Nya started, "I've got my nail polish and MP3 player all set up. In my room this time."
Keaton looked down at the floor and felt her lips grow tight. "Thanks, Nya, but... not today."
"Aw, come on!" said Nya as she folded her arms. "You're gonna let what Ann said that one time stop you from having fun?"
"She's my sister," Keaton said firmly, setting her expression as serious as she could. She looked up at Nya who seemed to be caught off guard by her sudden change in tone. "And... she was right. I am a ninja in training. I shouldn't let myself get distracted."
"You may be a ninja, but you're also a kid," Nya pressed. "You didn't even know what sweet sixteens were until I told you, for crying out loud! What kinda childhood is that?"
"Can we stop talking about this?" asked Keaton, looking away. Her voice had become very small all of a sudden, and she could feel how tight her throat was.
Nya didn't say anything after that. The two of them were silent for a little while, listening to the sound of the wind howling outside. Keaton didn't feel particularly nice for blowing Nya off like that, but she had inadvertently struck a nerve, and a particularly prickly nerve at that. As the mood continued to plummet, Keaton started to worry that maybe Nya would get the wrong idea about her and Ann, so perhaps now would be a good time to clear up a few things?
Keaton coughed a few times and said, "I'm sorry, Nya. But... you gotta understand... having a 'normal' childhood was never an option for... Ann and me." Nya had turned to face Keaton and seemed to be listening intently. "You see... Sensei Wu found us when we were little. We've been raised here ever since. I don't even remember what our parents looked like."
"I'm so sorry, Keaton," Nya said in a softer tone. "If you don't mind me asking... what happened to them?"
Keaton took a deep breath. "I don't know. Nobody knows. And Ann doesn't like talking about them. I think something happened between them."
That certainly did not help to ease the tension in the room. Now, a new kind of awkward silence hung in the air, and Keaton was desperately searching for something to fill it with.
"But that's why we always have each other's backs. So, I'm gonna listen to her." Keaton felt confident that this was the right course of action, but the silence returned again. "So... where were you off to?"
"Oh, I was just gonna go check on Kai," said Nya, inching a little closer to the med room. Keaton nodded. "If you ever change your mind, though, I'm always here."
"Thanks." Keaton smiled and watched Nya walk down the hall and out of sight behind the med room doors.
Once again, she found herself alone in the monastery walking to another lesson. However, Nya had no idea how much those words had stung... Keaton's whole life had been abnormal, but a part of her was proud of that fact. She genuinely wasn't like most other girls--neither was Ann, for that matter--and she generally thought of that as a strength, but now... living with someone around her own age... suddenly it didn't seem very special. Suddenly she felt like there was something wrong with her. But was that true, or just in her head?
* * *
The monastery was a different sort of place when it was empty. There was no sound of hurried feet going this way and that, no creaking floor boards, or idle chatter. Even the lack of presence felt all too tangible to Keaton as she passed by the dining room. It was as if the building itself had become a cave; nothing more than a shell which had been emptied. Except, of course, for a small group of boys.
Keaton found her brothers in the garden where they usually trained, but today they were doing laundry. There were three large, metal tubs loaded to the brim with soapy water and dirty garments. They sat on the soggy ground next to the stream and beside them boxes of soap—hastily and sloppily opened—were scattered, with little thought given to them. The boys themselves (minus Kai, of course) were hunched over the tubs, scrubbing and rinsing the clothes, bedsheets, and linens by hand, per Wu's request.
"This sucks," Jay was whining as he sat up straighter and massaged his neck which had been bent over the laundry for the past hour. "How many bed sheets does Sensei Wu own?"
Keaton had just come within earshot of the boys when she heard this and almost felt bad for bringing down her own personal laundry. Taking pity on them, she attempted to be as discreet as possible as she placed her hamper down next to Zane who had just gotten up. He walked over to the mound of dirty linens still to be washed, grabbed an armful, and dumped it on top of Jay and his empty wash tub.
"Less complaining, more working," said Zane.
Jay's head was covered by a white bedsheet, but Keaton could still see him turn toward Zane and say, in a muffled sort-of-way, "Easy for you to say. You're built like a machine!" Then he sniffed the air under the linen. "Ooh, lavender."
"Hello, Keaton," Zane said with a relaxed smile, as he walked back over to her. "One for the wash?" He added, noting her hamper.
"Heh, yup," she replied. Zane always seemed so nice and gentle—like she could tell him anything and he would never be stern or cross. Then she looked around and noted a certain someone's absence. "Where's Cole?" She craned her neck around to see if she could spot him somewhere nearby.
"He's taking care of some bees—" Jay started, then Zane interjected,
"Wasps."
"Whatever," said Jay nonchalantly. "They were buggin' us, so he went to go get rid of em'."
Keaton looked back at Jay feeling surprised and confused. "All by himself?" she asked.
"He's fine, it's just bees," Jay shrugged, finally taking off the bed sheet.
"Wasps," Zane corrected again.
Keaton was not put at ease in the slightest. She'd dealt with wasps before, and could attest that there was nothing "fine" about them.
Just at that moment, a startled yelp came from the other side of the garden. There was no mistaking Cole's voice, and all three of them stood up to try and see what was going on. There was nothing at first, but then, across the stream and out from behind some plump bushes, Cole tumbled, running away from something. There was a small swarm of wasps behind him now, make no mistake, but just as Keaton was about to get over there and help, she noticed that Jay and Zane weren't moving. Instead, they watched as Cole raised up a stone slab and crushed the swarm under its weight.
"Aren't we gonna help him?" she asked, looking at the two older boys expectantly.
"Eh, he's fine," Jay said again.
Cole was now lifting up his stone and finding that the wasps were still very much alive and angrier than ever. They rose into the air, only for Cole to slam the stone back over them again. This time, he missed some, so he moved to crush the wasps which were still airborne, but none of the insects seem to waver after each attack. Eventually the scene turned into a kind of ridiculous whack-a-mole with Cole slamming his stone slab down over and over again, trying to kill the wasps.
"Are you sure we shouldn't help?" Keaton asked again.
"Eh, he's got this," Jay answered confidently while the loud slamming sound that Cole was making continued to bounce off the walls of the monastery.
"What on earth is going on out there?!" Nya suddenly asked, appearing in one of the medical room's windows which overlooked the garden.
"Nothing!" Jay lied quickly.
"Sure sounds like nothing!" Kai's voice called from his bed, just barely audible over the ruckus.
At that moment, two tendrils of floating water appeared and scooped up the wasps, drowning them, before finally discarding them somewhere out of sight.
"Hit the deck!" Jay cried, diving headfirst under the bedsheets for protection. Keaton knew exactly who he was hiding from, and soon her sister was walking up the stone path toward Cole, who seemed a little nervous as he dusted himself off and greeted her.
"It's only Ann," she said, not quite sure why he was overreacting like this.
"Does she look mad?" Jay asked from the pile of linens.
"Why?" said Zane, suddenly curious.
After a short pause, Jay answered, "No reason."
Keaton smiled to herself in befuddled amusement and turned back to her sister who was still talking to Cole. The boys had added so much colour to her otherwise bleak life and she could never thank them enough, which only served to remind her of how upset she'd been when they'd disappeared. She still remembered that night with terrifying clarity.
She had just gotten back from her scouting mission, soaked to the bone from the frigid rain, and was running through the monastery in a panic. She bumped into Ann first, who went to get the war room ready while Keaton got Sensei Wu. Once they were all behind closed doors, she told them everything she had discovered.
An alarming amount of explosives and ingredients used in explosives where disappearing in the South. She had managed to find an armoured truck loaded with such cargo and followed it back to it's source: the Undead Citadel. Sure enough, the driver and his companion were Skulkens, and before she left, she listened in on the conversation they were having. One of them had distinctly mentioned "Lord Garmadon" being the head of the operation, and that's when she was sure that Lloyd was there and planning an attack.
That night had been spent writing encrypted messages to other high-ranking officials and coordinating a takedown before it was too late. Keaton had been given a warm meal after her debriefing followed by strict orders to get some sleep. She had been grateful for the rest and the warmth and comfort of a full belly and her own bed, but a few hours after nodding off, she was awake again.
Ann had dragged her out of bed and told her, in her serious yet casual way, that someone had broken into Wu's office and that the boys were missing. Skulkens were the natural first suspect, of course, but as Ann explained the events that had occurred while Keaton was asleep, that theory slowly dissolved.
Wu had first discovered the disturbance his office. His keen, old eyes knew immediately that someone had been in there, and after a little investigation, he went to put the whole property on lockdown, coming to the same assumption that Keaton had. It wasn't until a little while later that one of the house keepers came to him and told him that she had seen Cole and Jay out of bed just a bit before the lockdown started, but thought nothing of it at the time. Sure enough, a quick check on the boys' rooms revealed their sickening absence.
It was well passed midnight when two teams were sent out into the surrounding forest to look for the boys, each team led by one of the Haruto girls. Keaton had been unusually nervous as she marched through the pitch black night with her team. She was still a decent bit groggy, and her body was still somewhat fatigued, but the real reason for her disposition was the knot in the pit of her stomach, twisted up by fear and suspicion. She was worried, not only about the boys' safety, but also their intentions. Why had they been out of bed? Why had they run off? Did they not like Wu and Ann and herself anymore? We're they trying to prove something? Would they ever come back? Did they even care?
Eventually, Ann's team found a clue as to their whereabouts. There were tracks in the soft, wet ground leading from the monastery into the woods where they seemed to stop for a bit. There must have been a fight, based on the muddled ground and the various ice stalagmites. At that point, they were all thinking the same thing: Skulkens.
The boys' barefoot tracks stopped there and were replaced by heavy bootprints which lead, to no one's surprise, in the direction of the Undead Citadel. By that point, it was a race. The girls set out with a team of soldiers down the main highway—far faster than the Skulkens would be traveling on foot over the mountains—and by the time they reached the border of Wayport City, home of the Undead Citadel, it was almost noon.
The local authorities had been alerted to this startling new development, meanwhile Ann and Keaton made sure that the other officers and military officials didn't see them slink off into the rough terrain of the countryside. Ann had used her hours in the armoured car to roughly triangulate the most likely path that the Skulkens would take through the mountains, carrying the boys, and found a small pass that would be an ideal place for an ambush. She led Keaton there and they made themselves comfortable in the trees above the little-worn path below them. By Ann's estimates, the Skulkens would probably be there within the next few hours or so, giving them time to rest. But in the end, they never did arrive.
Half an hour into waiting, at about a quarter to one in the afternoon, they were completely startled by a very loud explosion somewhere not too far off. It was the worst way for a sleepy Keaton to wake up again, as the explosion left her ears ringing.
They decided to investigate the explosion, positioning themselves atop the nearest peak where they could see everything below fairly clearly, and what they found was quite alarming.
The blast had occurred in a relatively unimpressive canyon, walled by two sets of stony, tree covered mountains with a shallow river at it's bottom. There was a road that snaked through, clinging to one side of the canyon, and a dozen-or-so vehicles appeared to have launched off that road and had fallen down into the river, where they now sat in pieces, unmoving and blackened. From their vantage point, they could see the road on the opposite side of the river and all the mass destruction that had followed in the wake of this accident.
By this point, Keaton was pale with worry and delirious from lack of sleep, but Ann reassured her by pointing out the large ice formation further up the river. They boys had been there and more importantly, they had survived. Within minutes, military and first responder vehicles were arriving, so Ann and Keaton politely excused themselves from the immediate vicinity, choosing instead to follow the path the boys had most likely taken to escape.
Further upstream, Keaton spotted a nice river house with open access to the water; an easy escape route considering that most of the land beside the river was sharp cliffs and dense forest foliage. Carefully, they crept onto the property and they could see impressions left in the grass which were still springing back into place. The had just barely missed the boys. Further snooping about revealed an empty driveway and a small pile of shattered window glass. It didn't take a super genius to figure out what they had done or where they were going. At least they were alive, free, and avoiding the military, who technically weren't supposed to know that the ninja students even existed. Now it was a matter of making sure they got home safely.
Ann and Keaton, abandoning their original ambush idea, raced back to their special team of Wu's personal soldiers to inform them of the change in plans. They were sore and tired beyond belief, but their mission wasn't over yet. They all got back into the armoured car and rode in relative silence back to the monastery where Ann proceeded to collapse on her bed in exhaustion.
Keaton remembered how, even though she was bone-dead tired, she wanted to go make sure that the boys had gotten home safely. She found one of the monastery guards who told her that they found them just a little while before the Haruto girls had gotten back, and that they were in the medical room at that very moment, being looked over by Dr. Lee. At last, this whole mess was over. The guard told her to get some rest and she was more than happy to oblige.
The relief she felt from not losing another brother was the only thing that allowed her to sleep that night.
"Hmm?" Keaton asked, looking up and clearing away her daydream. She looked from Zane to Jay and back again, thinking one of them had said something. Apparently she had been imagining things.
"I didn't say anything," Jay said as he turned toward her.
"Now that actually was nothing," said Zane, grinning at Jay.
Keaton looked back up at Cole and Ann walking over to them now and reaffirmed her previous thought. There was nothing she could be happier about than having her family together again. At least... most of it.
"Here's your little joke back," Ann said once she was close to the group, and she flung what appeared to be a whoopee cushion filled with water at Jay's head. It hit him so hard that he splatting onto the ground and got his clothes all wet. "Stay out of my room." She walked off with her icy eyes fixed on the path before her.
Then everyone turned to Jay as he sat up.
"What?" he smirked.