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Chapter 27: The Sanctuary
"Maria…Maria….HEY, MARIA!"
The Pink Ninja snapped out of her trance and faced back at the other Ninja. They all had impatient looks on their faces, except for Jay who looked smug.
"I told you I could get her attention."
"Sorry, guys. Did you need something?" she sheepishly asked.
"We were in the middle of training, then you started ignoring us," Kai said annoyed.
"I'm sorry! It's just so nice today. It's warm, there's a nice breeze, everything is so peaceful. I just can't help myself, I love it so much."
Cole grabbed her arm and pulled her back to the center of the deck. "Yeah, yeah, save your hippie urges for later, we've got to squeeze in some training before we reach the village." He stepped back in line with the others as they pulled their hoods down and got into a fighting position.
"Are you ready?" Lloyd asked.
"Bring it on!" Maria replied.
First came a wave of fire and earth shots that she dodged easily. One burning ball of flame came close to her face, but she quickly bent backwards over to avoid the attack.
"Good job, Maria! Get ready for the next round!"
Jay stepped forward and began zapping away at her, but once again she managed to dodge at every. "Come on, Jay, this is the best you got?" she playfully teased as she stepped out of the way of another attack. "I know the others aren't as fast as you, so why are you lagging behind?"
"I don't lag behind! I was going easy, but since you're so confident, I'll show you what I can do!" Jay summoned a huge ball of lighting and hurled it at her. "Take this!"
In that moment, Maria couldn't move anymore. She didn't understand, she had already planned to do a side dodge, but her mind and whole body was..frozen. Maria couldn't even think and hear her inner voice, until a deeper and familiar voice that was once her own screamed in her mind. "FATHER!"
"Maria, move!"
She quickly snapped out of her trance once more,but was pushed back into darkness as the ball of lighting had hit her and knocked her out cold.
The Ninja quickly ran by her side and hovered over her to try and help.
"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to kill her!" Jay quickly apologized.
"She's not dead, idiot!" Kai shouted. "She's clearly breathing, but she could've died!"
"I think someone should give her CPR just in case," Nya said. She then quickly shook Maria by grabbing her shoulders, but she didn't respond. "Look, she's not reacting to stimuli, that's a sign you need to give someone CPR!"
The guys just tensed up and exchanged disturbed looks.
Nya put her hand on her hips and gave them a look. "None of you want to do it because it'd be awkward for each of you, right?"
"Absolutely," they said in unison.
"Nya's right, we gotta do something or Maria might not-" Lloyd was interrupted at the sound of a weak moan. They all glanced back to see Maria sitting back up, her eyes fluttering open.
"Maria, do you remember what happened?" Zane asked.
"Yeah, do you remember me chucking a huge ball of lighting at you that knocked you out cold?" Jay asked.
"I…don't think so."
"Good, 'cause that never happened." After Jay quickly tried to cover up his mistake, Cole elbowed him in the side, making the Blue Ninja scream silently in pain.
"I think I remember something that caught me off guard. We were training and I heard a voice…but I don't remember what it said. It's just..gone."
"Ninja," Wu's voice said from behind them. They quickly stood in a line as Sensei and Misako approached them. "We have finally arrived, pupils. The time has come for us to get answers that Destiny kept from us."
"All I'm hearing is that I'll be the first one down there!" Cole ran to side with Kai and Jay at his heels. The three prepared to summon their dragons as they exchanged smirks. "So what's the bet gonna be this time?"
They were about to continue the conversation, however Sensei quickly gave them a hard whack on the head with his staff. "There will be no bets or racing to the village! Flying on your dragons will have the villagers think you are a threat; more importantly, I sense a strange force close by, possibly a shield of some kind."
"I'm calculating all possible options, and as I suspected, the safest choice would be to travel on foot and have the villagers invite us in," Zane explained.
"I guess that's it," Lloyd said. "Lower the anchor, we're heading out on foot!"
"'We can do this on foot,' he says. 'It'll be so easy,' he says."
"Jay, Lloyd didn't say all of that," Maria called from the group as she walked by Lloyd. The others were starting to fall behind little by little as the ground was loose and muddy, sucking their footsteps in as they got deeper into the woods.
"Well, Lloyd didn't say it wouldn't be torture, because he's such a great leader!"
It was Lloyd himself that responded this time. "You know that Lloyd has ears, Jay….and feelings."
"Jay, you're hurting his feelings!" Maria scolded him. "Apologize to him!"
"Why should I?!"
"Will the two of you can it?!" Nya shouted. However, she had stopped walking and immediately sunk in the mud to waist level. "I'm stuck!"
Kai and Cole positioned themselves on opposite sides of her and began to pull. They pulled and pulled until they realized they were sinking themselves.
"Great plan, Kai," Cole said sarcastically.
"I didn't come up with this plan and I didn't work alone," Kai shot back.
"Please, brothers," Zane calmly said, "we must not let frustration ruin our mission and our bond with another. Don't move, I will freeze it and break it." He shot a beam of ice and froze the area around them, allowing him to pull out his shurikens and throw them into the ice, having it crack and free the three.
"I can't take much more of this," Nya complained. "Are we almost at the village, Lloyd?"
The Green Ninja was unresponsive; he just stood standing and staring off with a blank look on his face. "Um, are you okay, Lloyd?" Maria asked with deep concern.
"I..remember this place," he softly said. "This is the same place I was remembering back at the museum when I was overcome."
RUSTLE RUSTLE
"What was that?" Maria asked as all seven of them pulled out their weapons.
RUSTLE RUSTLE RUSTLE
"Whoever's there, show yourself, cowards!" Jay shouted.
From the thick bushes popped out two big,unrealistically blue eyes and a pair of white cat-like ears that stuck out from the bushes. Another pair of normal eyes appeared, along with yellow eyes that had black irises and a long, brown tail.
"Okay….anyone else?" Jay asked with slight fear in his tone.
In reply, a pair of red eyes popped up with two gray horns that ripped through the leaves. And, to his discomfort, three light purple eyes blinked into sight.
"I take it back, leave us alone!"
"Jay, relax," Kai said annoyed. "We outnumber these….things. We can take 'em and whatever they have to throw at us."
"Mama!" In a blur, five little kids tackled Maria and nearly knocked her off balance. They still clung to her legs and pushed each other away to receive more attention.
"I take it back. I was not expecting this to happen."
"And I wasn't expecting to be fought over like a toy!" Maria was being shaken back and forth as the children kept fighting for her attention. "This is getting really uncomfortable for me. Can you get them off just for a second, please?"
"Okay, kids," Cole said in an overly cheery tone, "how about we leave the nice girl alone for a second?" When they ignored him completely, he became agitated and started to pluck them off, starting with a chubby boy with red eyes and horns.
"Put me down, or I'll get nasty!" the boy protested.
Cole tried to hold a laugh. "Okay, that's real cute. A little butterball like you is trying to act all tough and take me on. Hate to break it to you, but you don't have a chance."
"Or muscle!" Kai joked as he poked at the boy's belly. The two began laughing, failing to notice the boy was growing with anger, his turning red as his rage.
"I think it would be wise to apologize to the child," Zane said.
"Why?" they both asked. Zane simply pointed at the boy's condition, making them turn pale in realization at what they'd done. "Oh, snap."
In a blink of an eye, the boy grabbed them by their throats and flung them into the trees. The two crashed and went halfway through a tree, spitting out leaves and pieces of bark.
"Are you guys ok?" Maria asked.
"DOES IT LOOK LIKE THEY'RE OKAY, WOMAN?!" Jay asked while shaking her by the shoulders. He stopped as he saw a hand on his wrist, which was connected to the three eyed girl with sharp fangs that intimidated Jay a little….a lot. "Heh, heh, hey there…you little cutie."
"DON'T. TOUCH. MAMA!" The girl quickly pulled him back and pinned his arms behind his back.
"Owwww! I tap out, just let me live!" Jay pleaded. "Do something, Lloyd! This one did something to me, I can't use my powers!"
Even the leader was confused and frightened by what was going on, but quickly tried talking to the most normal looking child of the group. "Hey there, buddy," he nervously said to the boy. "By any chance, could you and your friends stop all of this?"
"You're thinking of hurting me if I don't do what you say, aren't you?"
"What? No, I just want to talk about this peacefully so we can get going-"
"You won't take my mama."
Without even moving a single muscle, the boy had lifted Lloyd in the air and flung him back and forth in the branches. He finished by slamming him into the ground in an unconscious state.
"Stop it!" Maria begged them. "Stop hurting them!"
"Don't worry, mama," a little girl with matching brown hair and tail assured her. "They won't take you away."
"Yeah," another with cat ears and white hair said, "we'll destroy them!"
The two had shape-shifted their hands into whips and locked onto Nya and Zane. The two stepped slowly back as the girls approached.
"Now, children, we don't want to hurt you," Zane said calmly, but had a hint of nervousness leak through.
"You're all lying!" they screamed in unison.
"Now, girls," Nya spoke, "he's right. We don't want to fight a couple of kids. So calm down and we can all-"
In that spilt second, the girls had trapped them in their whips. Their grip on them became tighter and tighter, making it hard to breath for them.
'What am I doing?' Maria thought. 'I'm standing here like a ninny, I can't move. It's just like…' She stopped had her hands over her mouth as a gasp escaped her lips, all because of an incident she regretted played back in her head.
"I don't want to be friends with a selfish coward! I should've dumped you when I first met you!"
It was just like with the bullies and her old friend. She was a coward, selfish, stupid, naïve, and weak. She was Maria Psyche; a girl who got powers, became a Ninja, and learned she was someone important and loved in another life…but still failed in using them to help herself and others. She was…pathetic.
"Let them go," she whispered. "'Let them go, let them GO!" In her rage, she shot a spirit ball at each of the kids, making them turn with tears in their eyes.
"Mama, why would you try and hurt us?" the normal boy asked.
"I am not your mother!" she yelled at them. "Here's what I want: I want you to stopping pinning them, I want you to stop squeezing them to death, I want you to get them out of that tree, and I want you stop hurting them all! And I want you to do it now!"
They lowered their heads. "Okay, miss." They did as asked with a sad look on their face. The sorrow spread to Maria and overwhelmed her, that she ran over to Lloyd, who, was gaining conscious and began to stand up, and hug him tightly while crying into his shoulder.
"Hey, what wrong, bud?" Lloyd asked as he rubbed her back in comfort.
"I-I yelled at the kids because I-I didn't want to loose my friends again like I did before! Am I a horrible person for trying to take action and be a-a good Ninja? Are you gonna hate me because I acted like a monster?"
"Maria, you're not a monster," he said with a chuckle and a smile. "You're normally unsure of what to do, but you just overcame an obstacle that you couldn't do in the past; you spoke up for your friends. Only a great ninja could do something that brave, and you just did that."
She pulled back and wiped away her tears, allowing a smile to form on her face. The two turned at the sound of the others footsteps. "Are you all alright?" she asked.
"Ah, we're fine," Jay waved off. "Ya know, in some weird way, that little girl got rid of this knot in my back as she was pinning me. I need to stretch like that more often!"
They all shared a laugh at Jay's joke, but it was ended by the five kids walking up nervously. They quickly fell to their knees and began apologizing.
"We're so sorry!"
"We didn't mean to make you cry!"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"
"I'm sorry for throwing the green guy around!"
"I'm sorry I threw those meanies in tree, even though it was funny!"
"You're all forgiven," Maria assured them. "But I know two certain Ninja that have to apologize to a certain little boy…." She glared over at Kai and Cole, who, immediately began apologizing under her burning stare.
"I'm sorry I called you a butterball," Cole apologized.
"And I'm sorry I said you didn't have any muscle. You proved me dead wrong," Kai said.
"Now that the issue has been solved, why did you keep calling Maria 'mama?'" Zane asked the kids.
"She is our mama!" the cat-eared girl said as she stomped her foot. "She's our mama! Mama Seraphina!"
"Mama Seraphina?!" the Ninja exclaimed.
Jay grabbed Maria by the shoulder and whispered, "You never told us you had kids when you lived before!"
"I think I would've remembered that, and I definitely would tell you guys!"
"Ohh, I get it!" Lloyd exclaimed. "It's like Basil told us, Seraphina liked to be called by Sister, Mother, Friend; she didn't like to be called a Queen Seraphina!"
"You're right," Maria said. She kneeled down to the kids eye level and spoke to them. "You could've just told me from the start; it would've been easier for all of us."
"We're sorry," they all replied.
"It's fine, but unless I'm wrong, I'm pretty sure all of you live in a village nearby. And this village is where the Seven Gems came from."
"You're right!" the three-eyed girl said. "You're so smart! But you don't have the gem bearers with you this time. You're alone."
"AHEM!" Kai cleared his throat loudly. He, Jay and Lloyd showed them their gems, getting a loud 'ohhhhh,' from the kids. "I'm surprised you guys didn't notice them."
"We're kids, not geniuses!" the yellow- eyed girl snapped. "But we can still show you where Hybrid Village is!"
The kids began grabbing Maria's hands and leading her to the village. She just smiled and shook head as they all tried to be the one to hold hands with her. Kids will be kids.
"We're here!" the kids shouted. They raced each other to be the first one to reach the village first that was at the edge of a wide field.
"This place is beautiful!" Nya exclaimed.
It truly was; flowers were in bloom at the edge of a bubbling brook, the houses were built from stone and gave off a nostalgic feel, and the people looked liked the kids. Each one with different eyes, hair colors, some with horns or animal like ears, some more muscular and some so normal at first glance.
"Hey, Cole," Maria said with a smirk, "you think it's okay for me to let me hippie urges loose now?"
"Yeah, yeah, sure. If you'll excuse me, I smell something cooking and I want in!" He took off, the others following suit, laughing as they raced against each other themselves. Ultimately, Cole and his stomach won the race, but it was short lived as the villagers stopped and stared at them.
"Um..hi, everybody," Maria managed to say. "My name is-"
"SERAPHINA HAS RETURNED!"
They gathered around the Ninja, each wanting to shake their hands. They were patient in getting a turn to greet the visitors, but all had a huge smile on their faces.
BONG…BONG…BONG
A gong went off, signaling the villagers to step to the sides and form a row for an old lady in a white cloak and a wooden stick in her hand to observe the visitors herself. She walked slowly towards them, giving Maria chills as she got nearer.
"Hey," Kai whispered in Maria's ear, "look near the lady's collar bone. Her cloak has a symbol like the one you have on your gi."
Maria squinted to see a three spiraled symbol embroidered in pink, just like the one she had on her pin for her gi. She turned her head back and whispered, "You're right, but I don't know what my symbol even means. Sensei Wu is the one who had the design picked out."
"The three spirals represent spirit," the old lady spoke. Maria turned back to see the old lady face to face, making her nervous. "It is said to be what each spirit looks like before it comes into existence as a being with a body or just as a spirit. Child….are you the reincarnation of Seraphina?"
"Yes," Maria said as she lowered her head. "I know I don't look exactly like her, but I have her curl."
The old lady gently held her face in her hand and turned the other half towards her. She looked deeply in Maria's eye, and back at her curl, before saying, "In this part of you, I can see her. There she is alright. But…you don't remember me or anything, do you, child?"
"No, I'm so sorry," Maria said while turning her whole face forward.
"It's all right," the old lady replied. Without warning, she threw her arms around Maria hugged her tightly. "All that matters is you're home….daughter."
THATS RIGHT, IT'S A CLIFFHANGER! MUHAHAHAHA!
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Next chapter on Ninjago: Legend Reborn...
Getting To Know You
Until then, God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.
