For once, the city of Ninjago was peaceful. Kai, Zane, and Lloyd had decided to take advantage of this peace to go out into town and just hang out. Nya had decided to tag along because Jay and Cole had headed off somewhere else to hang out.
At the moment, the four of them were hanging out in the local arcade. Kai and Zane were going head to head in a fighting game as Lloyd watched and cheered them on. Nya sat back and watched with amusement as she drank a smoothie she had bought.
"Ha! You can't touch me Zane, you can't touch me!" Kai bragged as he flipped the controls around expertly. "Prepare to be defeated, because you're toast!" The nindroid smiled as he put up a fight against his friend's game character.
"Do not count your chickens before they hatch, Kai. I am not going to be crispy bread quite yet." Kai smirked a big. Though Zane had finished unlocking his full emotional scale, his sense of humor was still a bit whacky.
"Whatever dude! You're still going down!" Nya shook her head in amusement as she watched her brother get so concentrated on the game.
"Boys," she muttered good-naturedly. Lloyd was literally jumping up and down with excitement.
"Yeah! Go you guys!" He cheered. With a smirk, Kai punched the buttons in rapid succession. On the screen, his character did a complex and ultra powerful combo move, completely annihilating all the green left in Zane's health bar. His nindroid friend shrugged and smiled, accepting his virtual defeat.
"It seems I have lost this round, however, you shall not be so lucky next round, my friend." Lloyd got between them and put his hands on his hips.
"No fair! You guys said I could play winner!" Kai chuckled and gave Lloyd a sort-of noogie.
"So we did. Alright Lloyd, grab your control stick." The boy cheered and ran up to the game, eager to play. As Kai turned back around, a glasses-wearing employee of the place walked by, carrying a heavy-looking tool box. "Hey buddy, you need some help with that?" The man shook his head, a strained look on his face.
"No thanks, I've got it. Thanks for the offer though." Kai shrugged and turned back to Lloyd.
"Alright then. Okay Lloyd, prepare to be-" he cut off in mid-sentence as the employee, hands slick with sweat, accidentally dropped the box right on Kai's foot. The red ninja yelled out from the pain, but the cry quickly became higher in pitch in the matter of a few seconds. The employee, who had been prepare to apologize, covered his ears from the sound. Lloyd and many other patrons in the arcade did similar, clamping their hands over their ears to try and block out the sound. Zane, however, had a different reaction. Instead of reacting to the sound like everyone else, a quick zap of electricity went through his circuitry and he dropped to the floor on his back. When Kai finally stopped screaming, Nya, who seemed to be the only one unaffected by the noise, rushed to her brother's aid.
"Oh my gosh! Kai!" She set down her smoothie and knelled down, pushing the metal box off of her brother's foot before taking it into her hands. "Are you alright?" Her brother grunted with pain when she took hold of his injured foot. Lloyd, once he recovered, looked around. The employee still sat on the ground, but his glasses were shattered even though they were still on his face. In fact, some of the screens of the games and all of the windows were either cracked or shattered as well. He spotted Zane still on the floor, eyes blank and wide open.
"Uh oh." He got next to Zane, opened up his chest plate (this caused a female patron who had recovered from the sound of Kai's scream to faint from the sight), and rebooted him. Zane sat up straight, rubbing his head.
"Oh, my circuitry," he moaned. "What happened?"
"Some guy dropped a box on Kai's foot. And when he screamed, all the windows and stuff shattered, and I think you short-circuited," Lloyd explained. Zane looked at his friend, where Nya was still looking at her brother's foot.
"You sure you're alright? That sounded painful." Kai grunted when she touched a sore spot, but nodded.
"Yeah, I'm fine." To emphasize his point, he stood up, gingerly putting his weight on his other foot. "Man, I haven't done that in years."
"I know," Nya agreed, "I can't believe you still remember how. You and I haven't practiced at all since we quit." Lloyd was about to ask what they were talking about, but the door opened with a jingling of the bell that hung over it.
"I knew it! I knew it came from here!" A woman stood in the doorway, a large smile on her face. She had a large, fluffy hairdo that arranged into somewhat of a beehive shape on top of her head. She wore many dangly pieces of jewelery such as large bracelets and hoop earrings. But the most impressionable thing about her was her dress, which was such a bright orange color that you almost had to squint just to look at it. Kai and Nya saw her a moment after Lloyd and Zane did, but they scowled as soon as they did. "Oh my, I simply can't remember how long it has been since I've heard such a perfect shriek as that!" She saw them, and her eyes up even more. "Oh dear! Of course! How could it have been anyone other than the two of you! Kai and Nya! How good it is to see you two again!"
"Actually, that was just Kai," Lloyd butted in, but the woman didn't seem to hear.
"Madame," Nya said, an angry edge on her voice. "What are you doing around here?"
"Yeah, shouldn't you be at your school with you little drones?" Kai added. Lloyd and Zane looked between the siblings and the woman, confused.
"Do you know this woman?" Zane asked. The woman smiled at him and placed a hand on her chest.
"Well, I should say so young man. Especially considering that I, Madame DeBrick, trained these two since they were children, in order for them to become classical opera singers!"
"Huh?" Lloyd said, going slack-jawed.
"Of course," Mme. DeBrick said dreamily, I remember it as if it were yesterday when I first heard their outstanding talent.
Mme. DeBrick, younger than at the present time, was walking along the road on the outskirts of Ninjago, hoping to find inspiration for her next opera show. She happened to stop and saw a group of children playing in an open field, kicking balls and building things with sticks and such. Two children in particular caught her eye, a young Kai was showing something to a small Nya. She felt a spark of inspiration coming on, when she heard a scream from one of the children.
"SNAKE!" Indeed, a small garden snake had slithered into the place where they were playing. However, the children, who had been raised with stories about the Serpentine and other such things, screamed as they ran in terror. The two young siblings hadn't seen it in time, and it wound up right in front of them before they realized it. When they saw it, they clutched each other and screamed in fear.
When they did, everyone within hearing range (which was quite far) covered their ears. Across the road, the windows of a building shattered simultaneously from the power and the pitch of their voices. Unlike the rest, Madame DeBrick smiled, a spark in her eyes.
"After I heard that, I knew they were born to sing. I found out who their father was from the locals and asked if I could take them under my wing to train them. He accepted, and so began their training in the art of opera."
Kai and Nya, a few years older from that day, stood on a stage next to each other, holding their hands together as the high and low notes tumbled from their mouths like water from a stream. A few people present clapped at the beautiful, refined sounds they were making. DeBrick stood there, smiling half gloatingly and half approvingly.
"As the two of them grew older, their talent likewise grew more refined. They came so close to hitting the synchronized YX sharp over Z major; the highest and hardest synchronized note known to mankind. It had only been a theory before then, attempted by many accomplished singing duos, done by none. They were only days away from reaching it. However..."
Kay and Nya stood on the stage again, their voices reaching higher and higher as DeBrick clapped her hands, cheering on her students.
"Yes, yes!" she cried. "Just a little higher my students!" They tried to follow her command, raising their voices to a pitch no one had ever heard before. But, just as they were about to break the barrier and hit that coveted note, they both began coughing and dropped the note they had been simultaneously building.
"My throat hurts," Nya whispered, her voice sounding scratchy and raw. Kai patted her back comfortingly.
"Mine too, sis," he agreed, his voice sounding similar. He glared out to where their teacher stood. "This is too much Madame, we won't do this anymore. Our voices won't go any higher no matter how hard we try. And these tights are too tight!" He reached to the top of his head where a hat sat, then grabbed it and threw it to the ground. "We quit!" Nya nodded to agree, throwing off a scarf so it landed next to her brother's hat. "Come on Nya, we're leaving." And so they turned their backs and just walked right off the stage, much to the horror of the Madame.
In the present day, the woman gazed at the two from under her lashes. "That's right. And I haven't found anyone as beautifully talented," that gaze turned to a glare for a second, "or as mortifyingly rebellious, since." Lloyd stared at the two, scratching his head after the story
"I don't know what's weirder. The two of you singing opera," he looked at Kai, "Or Kai wearing tights." Krai crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes.
"They're both weird. That's why we quit when we did."
"Yeah," Nya agreed. "The woman was a slave-driver." Madame DeBrick suddenly grabbed one of each of their wrists.
"Well, I've heard about what you two have been doing since you've left your father's shop in the care of your friends. And it is ridiculous. Come, you two have wasted enough time on this silly ninja business." She began dragging the two towards the door, much to their brief shock. "I must have you two perform in my latest opera!" The siblings pulled their wrists from her grasp and stopped themselves from being dragged.
"Hey! Hands off!" Nya shouted.
"Yeah! We're not going anywhere with you!" The woman smiled evilly and pulled a thin, silvery object from a hidden pocket.
"Well, we'll just see about that." Zane stared at the object, a sense of foreboding coming over him.
"What is that?" Kai scoffed and waved his hand at it.
"Just some stupid dog whistle the old hag used to use to keep her students under her control." Nya had a similar reaction, turning her head away from the Madame.
"Yeah. Sorry DeBrick, but those days are over now! That's not going to work on us. You don't control us anymore!" With a smirk, DeBrick put her lips to the whistle and blew. Unlike a regular dog whistle, it let out a sound that Lloyd and Zane could hear, but it just sounded like a garble of strange, off-tune sounds. Kai and Nya, however, reacted differently. Their eyes snapped wide open, blank and empty, as their arms hung at their sides.
"Come along, we have work to do," DeBrick said as she put her whistle away and headed for the door. The siblings followed, that blank look still on their faces.
"Yes Madame," they said in sync. "We must train." They left the arcade, letting the door slam behind them as they followed her out. Lloyd and Zane stood there, watching with confusion.
"Uhh... what just happened?" Lloyd asked.
–
This will be a short fic' (in terms of number of chapters; probably only two or three, four at the very most.) I got inspired when I was watching an episode of Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, "Opera Yumi". If you like it, please review. If you don't, please don't hate. Please review and I hope you will wait for the next chapter. Bye for now!~