Back with another chapter! I was actually going to continue a part of the next chapter into this one because I thought this would be shorter, but ultimately I decided not to because it would be too many words for this chapter and would cut into the next one. It would also be kind of useless because you'll only read like 100 words from the next chapter so it wasn't really worth it. Anyways, hope you like it!
Chapter 54: True Colours
Midnight was fast approaching to mark the end of this long day. It started off with Brisa receiving the letter from her parents and doing Spinjitzu at will. In the afternoon, they had went to Zoe's house to meet her parents, but only Lloyd and Zoe stayed there for a longer period of time. The other major thing was that Zane took Astra to the hospital. Later in the evening, they were called to the hospital by Zane so that Zoe could work whatever power she could on Astra. Even before the yellow kunoichi had been healed, the Five showed up to attack and all the ninja and kunoichi minus Zoe and Astra went out to go fight them. Now here they were, past 11 o'clock, meeting the Five's leader for the first time ever. There, they found out that he is the cousin of Wu and Garmadon, which made their day much weirder than usual.
"I don't get it – if you want to have fun, why would you try stunts like these?" Misako asked Byron.
Byron's eyed widened in excitement. "Stunts, you call them? Well, it's fun to go against the majority! You have to be rebellious! That's why I was banished and exiled from my hometown when I was younger."
"And doing something that could cost the lives of many people is fun?" Garmadon wanted to clarify to know if he should go knock some sense into his cousin.
Byron shrugged. "I lived a pretty boring and lonely life. I figured this would be great to…uh…add some spice into it. If I end up dying, so be it, I'm going to die sooner or later anyways. If I live to see my plan succeed, at least I'd have some fun fighting against you before I can succeed."
Brisa felt like she was going to blow up on him, and Kai felt the same way. "Then how about you die right now?!" she screamed at Byron. Her voice could be heard echoing throughout the entirety of their underground home.
Byron pretended to be scared and put his hands up. "Oh, but we made an agreement that we would not fight each other here. If we didn't make that agreement, I could've had you all killed immediately and nobody in the world would know about it except for us."
The ninja and kunoichi put their hands on their Blades as if to challenge that threat.
"Now now, don't get hasty," he quickly told them. "I plan on keeping the promise I made. Unless, of course, one of you break it first. Then I'll have no choice but to order for all of you to be dead."
Kai and Brisa glared angrily at the man. He was acting like he had supernatural powers that could kill them in an instant.
"Why do you value this promise so much?" Wu asked a dangerous question. If Byron changed his mind, things would get ugly – really ugly. "You said so yourself: you could easily have us all killed, so why don't you do that?"
Byron was confused as to why he was asking that. He was being nice by sparing their lives. He straightened up and gave a proper answer. "Well, Wu…and actually, everyone else here. You may view me as the bad guy, but I'm actually not evil. Greedy, yes. Bored, yes. But I do have some principle. After all, my parents still raised me to be a nice guy like all of you. You see, I just…want…power." He gave a smile that was completely fake at the end.
He's definitely lying about being nice and having principle, Wu thought in his mind. He wants to make it seem that way to us. Misako and Garmadon also picked that up, although the ninja and kunoichi didn't think of that. The problem was, if any of them said it out loud, they were almost certain the Five would attack them.
"So, tell us about this boring life of yours," Zoe commanded him.
Byron acted like he was honoured. "Yes, definitely. You see, after I was exiled, I wandered around Ninjago for so many years – decades, in fact. I had no place I could call home. It didn't help that I looked like a liar and a criminal not long after that-"
Still do, Garmadon thought in his head.
"-So naturally, people wouldn't trust me because they think I'd mess something up. I made no friends in all the places I went to, and hardly got much out of anyone…it was, clearly, enough to survive until this day."
"One day, around 20 years ago, I bought books and scrolls from Ninjago City based on old legends. One of those legends mentioned the Five – there wasn't much information on them, but it said they were extremely powerful and locked away a long time ago. It didn't say where, so I spent the past 20 years trying to find where they were. When I found the first One, Palmer, I figured out how to find out where the rest of them were. What that idea was, I cannot and will not tell you, but you can guess that it worked."
"That does sound pretty boring," Jay commented after the story seemed to be finished.
"How did you even survive that long?" Astra asked, actually amazed at his will to live even after being turned down so many times.
He shrugged. "You get used to feeling rejected. I did, however, earn a lot of money through certain jobs. I was occasionally attacked by people whom I'd easily defeat. Then their masters would approach me with a job for assassinating someone, which, of course, was illegal, but people had their reasons to do it anyways. They offered big money, so I took up those jobs and succeeded at them."
"So you're not a real Mr. Nice Guy, are you?" Cole asked in a threatening tone.
"Yes, you did dirty jobs like those!" Zane practically accused him even though it happened a long time ago.
Byron let out a big, booming laugh. "I was good at something, and I got money for doing it. It's no different than an ordinary job in that sense. Obviously, it's not a good thing, but…I don't regret it."
With each passing minute, the ninja and kunoichi were more and more convinced that he was a bad guy, even if he didn't say so himself. His face and personality changed since when he first spoke to them. Now, they could see his cruel and dangerous personality. In fact, if he took down groups of people single-handedly, he might not even need the Five to beat them.
The anger in the ninja, kunoichi, and sensei quickly turned to fear as they realized they had another dangerous enemy they might need to fight.
Byron broke into a smile. "So, is there anything else you'd like to know?"
The throne room went silent. Everyone began to fear him rather than hate him. Well, they still hated him for his personality and goal, but they were much more scared of him now. He could be a strong and dangerous opponent for them.
"I don't think there's much left for us to say now," Misako spoke on behalf of them all, looking around to see if there were any objections.
Byron waved his hand away. "Then you're free to go back to your ship. Follow the same path you came on."
There was a great deal of displeasure while the ninja, kunoichi and sensei were shuffling around to walk back the way they came. They hardly talked as they walked back out to the Bounty.
Once the Five were sure that the ninja, kunoichi and sensei were gone, they turned around to look at Byron.
"Why?" Lucas asked him fiercely, assuming that Byron knew what he was talking about.
Byron looked a little surprised. "Why what?"
"Why did you want to 'honour' your promise? Why can't we just blast their ship out of the sky right now?" Lucas was angry, which wasn't a good thing.
Byron chuckled a bit. "Like I said, I have some ethics. We agreed we wouldn't harm each other, so I wanted to keep it that way."
"Well, right now would be the perfect time to blow them up," Lucas still tried defending himself and his perspective. "They should be on their ship by now, so they left our property. We're free to do as we please."
Byron also got a little angry because Lucas was so persistent. "I said no. We will not do this right. I won't allow it." He stood up and stepped down. Lucas made the slightest movement to approach Byron, and he instantly knew he was trying to attack. Byron moved at lightning speed and clamped the One's arm down. "Another moment, and I could've disabled your arm for a few days," he whispered in Lucas' ear. "I hope you will not betray me, else you will face my full wrath." Being angered by Lucas' words, Byron stormed off and went to a different place in their underground base.
Also angered, Lucas walked out ready to explode. Only Allen followed him, and the rest went about to mind their own business. Allen sure was brave to walk around and follow Lucas, who was headed straight outside, maybe to get some fresh air.
They got outside and saw that the Bounty had just left and was slowly ascending to the sky. It was 10 minutes until midnight, and the sky was very dark, but the fuel released by the flying ship was unmissable.
"Lucas, don't," Allen warned his ally. None of the Five had ever seen Byron fight; the incident right now was the closest it had gotten to that. But, they could easily judge that based on his current display of speed, it would be hard for Lucas to beat him if Byron was angered to his limit. That could very well occur if Lucas decided to attack the ship.
Lucas turned around, seething at Allen. The anger wasn't necessarily directed to the One of dark fire and air, but he had added on to it. "Nobody gives orders to me, got it?" he said in a very deadly tone. Allen almost stepped back, but he knew he shouldn't. Lucas turned back around and put on a small display of his power. There were breezes of air that flew around them, and Allen could see Lucas' power collecting around him.
The power was increased, now blowing real wind. It still didn't faze Allen, who was the Master of Dark Wind. He had used wind far more powerful than this.
Lucas tilted his head ever so slightly, giving Allen a view of his eyes. They were glowing purple. It's his ultimate potential! But still, that's not even half of his power… Allen jumped back several meters. It was dangerous to be around his deadly power, which was still collecting outside of him. Small pebbles also began to fly around at this point.
"Nobody tells me what to do. Nobody gives me commands!" Lucas raged. He wasn't used to being bossed around. His power spiked tremendously high, the wind was blowing around them rapidly. The ground underneath Lucas cracked and created a crater. Allen jumped back again and covered his face: the wind was that powerful.
He could clearly see Lucas' purple eyes. That's what it looked like when one of the Five used their ultimate potential. The wind was blasting around in all directions, even straight up far above the two of them. Bigger rocks began to fly around, and even the walls that Allen was standing next to were beginning to crack.
Slowly, Lucas began charging up an attack. It looked deadly, even to Allen. He knew if he tried stopping him, he'd end up dying in the process. It wasn't worth it; if Byron became furious and killed Lucas, that's on him. So why should Allen interfere?
Even still, seeing the tremendous display of power, which still may not be Lucas' full power, was somewhat…comforting. They couldn't possibly lose to the ninja and kunoichi with that kind of power on their side.
Lucas' beam of death and destruction got bigger and more powerful. He was about to launch it at the Bounty, but in a split second, he changed directions and blasted it to his left.
The impact of the release pushed both Lucas and Allen back as the stream of dark energy rocketed from Lucas' hands. Allen didn't need to see it, but based on the impact and how it sounded as it got farther from them, he could guess it was going somewhere at the speed of sound. Anything in its way would get destroyed until it hit something big enough where the beam could no longer travel.
They waited many seconds, maybe even a minute. And then, in the distance, an explosion. They had no idea what it hit, but if it was daytime, they could probably see the explosion. In the night, they only heard it. Whatever it was…it would be absolutely ruined, maybe even cease to exist now.
The sound of the explosion calmed Lucas down at last. His eyes returned to normal, and his power disappeared back inside of him. He didn't even look the least bit tired after such a powerful attack. He silently stormed past Allen, who was still a little shocked. Well, a to be fair, anyone would.
Wow, the power is real. Luckily, he decided not to blow up the Bounty...it would've immediately killed everyone on it too. There'll be some bonding time in the next chapter and a new day to follow! Thanks for reading!
