Why had destiny picked me to be the Green Ninja?

There are two ways of answering that question. The easiest way of answering it is like how I talked about last time: I was the only one that would ever confront Lord Garmadon the way that destiny needed me to. If I hadn't hesitated, then the Overlord wouldn't have been defeated in the way that I did. I don't know how much destiny planned for the Golden Master, but as for what the actual prophecy said about me that was it. I was there because I had to defeat the Overlord in the Final Battle, which had to be triggered that way.

The thing is… I don't know how exactly to answer the question as to why destiny picked me specifically. Anyone could have gone and defeated the Overlord like that. Someone could have hesitated to kill my father on the Dark Island, or never even gotten that to happen at all. So many things had to happen the way they did. But, that's not what I mean. I'd never thought before that someone other than me could have done what I did. And the more that I was forced in my own head to think about it… the more I started asking myself that question again. Just because you can answer a question in one way doesn't mean you've solved it.

Morro was always there to talk to me. After he showed me his past, he started to act more like he did when I first fought him. He was arrogant, always talking down to me like I was just a kid to him. I know what that's like specifically after having spent a very long time dealing with that while I was training to become the Green Ninja in the first place. Morro started to tell me that no matter what I did to him, I couldn't stop his plans. Each time I pushed against him, I was just delaying the inevitable.

The thing was, all I could do while I was trapped there, was think. I couldn't go anywhere, and I wasn't in control of my body. I was just my own head, trapped inside of myself. And that meant that I just had time to think. I know that I've had times I've gotten too wrapped up in my own thoughts before… but that was literally all I could do.

The first thing I had to do was actually get all of the memories of Morro's past out of my head. I wasn't sure how to go about that, since they all felt so real to me. I had to sit there for a long time and just remember my own life. I had to go through each event in my past since I'd met the ninja one by one, just to be able to get my head back on straight. Each time that I felt something from Morro's memories starting to encroach on me, I had to just push it all away again by remembering something about my own past. I, thankfully, had a very raw recent memory of my father, which made pushing away Morro's thoughts easier.

I don't know how long that took me to do, but Morro must have noticed. I had finally started to come down from my own confusion when Morro appeared in front of me again. This time, though, he wasn't wearing those green robes. Instead, he looked like what I thought he did: a ghost. He was wearing those strange tattered robes with the large dragon emblem on the front, his entire body glowing green, and his hair still sporting that green streak inside of it. He wasn't smiling anymore either.

Morro asked me a simple thing: what did I hope to do by fighting against him? I told him that was pretty obvious. I wanted to get him out of my head so I could stop whatever plans he had for Ninjago. When Morro asked me if I actually knew what those plans were, I told him that it didn't matter. If he'd taken over my body and hurt my friends, I'd stop him no matter what. Not that I had any way of actually getting out to stop him.

After that, Morro asked me another question: why did I protect Ninjago? I don't know why, but I wanted to give him an answer that would provoke him, so I told him that I did it because I was the Green Ninja. That was when I felt Morro's anger for the first time. Since we were connected, I could sense his emotions. I'd never felt someone looking at me with such pure anger before. This wasn't like when I put an enemy on the run and they were cursing me. This was someone being so just, completely enraged with me that I actually felt worried. I felt sick to my stomach just looking at him. And he must have felt my fear, since he didn't let up on the anger as he spoke.

Morro told me a lot of things while we were together like that. He told me that Ninjago was ruled by destiny, in a way that nobody should have to abide by. He didn't care about what happened to Ninjago itself, that was up to will of whomever his master was. Said master had given him a chance to finally defy destiny, something he'd wanted from the day that Wu told him that destiny had spoken for him. I couldn't figure out who that master was. Morro was guarding those particular memories, and sharing memories with him wasn't as straightforward as it was for him to do with me.

Whenever Morro spoke to me, I always felt like somehow, he was right. Morro was filled with such anger, such dedication to his goal, I don't know how else to put it other than saying that I felt like he was right. He wasn't a good person. He'd already gone and hurt my friends, and he was planning to do something horrible to Ninjago. I knew all of this in my head. And yet, the more that I heard him talking about why he felt he was justified in taking over Ninjago, I just felt like he was talking sense.

I think the reason for that is because Morro was just so dedicated to it. Every villain that I'd met had a goal, but Morro's goal didn't feel like it was something that was evil. I'd felt what Morro went through. I understood why Morro wanted to defy destiny. And on some deep down level I didn't want to acknowledge… I wanted to too.

Morro saw that. He saw right through me. I don't know if it was just because he'd gone through my head to get inside my body in the first place, but he figured it out. When he started talking about defying destiny, he told me that I knew why he wanted to do it. He brought up everything. He brought up how destiny meant I was abandoned by my family, how it meant I had to deal with my father being my enemy, losing Zane… and then losing my father.

The thing was, I did get it. I wanted to deny it, but I did. I opened this book by saying that I thought that Morro was right. That wasn't just me trying to grab attention (did I say that already..?). When Morro was inside of my head like this… I couldn't help but feel like I agreed with him. Destiny had taken a lot from me. It took away my childhood so I could be ready for the final battle. It took away my father from me, forcing me to have to come to terms with having to fight him. It forced me to actually go and fight my father, when there was no choice for me to do anything but kill him. But most of all, destiny took away the one reward that I was given for powering through everything. The one thing, the one person that I finally had in my life as a way of reconciling everything that happened… was gone.

I know it wasn't destiny that took my father away. I was the one that sent him off. I could have let Wu do it, but I chose to do that. It wasn't how my father got taken away from me, but the fact that he was. The reason that I dedicated an entire chapter talking about that, was because this was why it was important. Whenever Morro talked about my father, I felt like I couldn't do anything. Whenever I tried to argue that I didn't care about destiny, it just took him mentioning that one little memory to get me to stop.

I thought I'd gotten over it by then. I'd thrown myself into being a ninja, and I'd been doing good with it too. Now that I had to actually try to say that I was over it, however, Morro was able to just take me down. I thought that I'd worked past everything that happened. There was always just a small bit of anger, a small bit of guilt in me that I couldn't get over. No matter how much I pushed it down, Morro would always be there to dredge it back up.

There was only so much I could do. Whenever I got upset, I would try to use that feeling to push against Morro's influence on me. A few times, I would get close to actually breaking out of Morro's grasp. However, Morro would always manage to hold me back. I could only push on Morro for so long before I got exhausted. Morro was going to hold me back no matter what, and there was nothing I felt I could do.

I tried. I kept trying, and trying, and trying! I did everything I could to get out of Morro's control. I knew that Morro was doing something horrible outside of my head. I could tell that Morro had just learned something new, and I started trying to grasp it. I didn't know what it was at the time, but I knew that Morro had gotten something important. I had to go and stop him, somehow. So I kept trying to peer into his thoughts. That was actually how I learned Airjitzu.

Since I've talked a little bit about Airjitzu before now, I guess that I should at least touch on it a little bit here. I'm not sure what exactly to really say about it, though. It's a martial art that requires you to at least understand Spinjitzu. The motions aren't actually that complicated either. It has a completely different feel to Spinjitzu, though. Whenever I'm doing Airjitzu, it doesn't feel like I'm using it to attack someone. It's more like just something I can do to get around. Spinjitzu feels more like an attack, and Airjitzu is more like a tool.

The thing is, after everything that happened with Morro, we didn't use Airjitzu that much. I guess part of why is because it's more of a tool. With Spinjitzu, you can attack someone and use the speed of the tornado you make to move around quickly. The only times I remember using Airjitzu was when we had to jump off of things or climb things quickly. It's useful, but… I think it's just situational. It was usually faster to just climb up something, or to just summon my elemental dragon if I had to do something big.

Trying to learn Airjitzu from Morro's thoughts was one way that I was able to keep myself busy. If I stopped to try to think about things, I'd get wrapped up in what Morro showed me and thinking about destiny. I didn't want to think about either of them, so I kept learning and training. I wasn't able to actually do Airjitzu, since I wasn't actually moving my body to do it. Doing all of that also gave me a lot of time to read Morro's thoughts and start to understand what exactly he was doing a lot more.

I figured out what Morro's plan was, to an extent. Somehow, his master was going to come in and curse all of Ninjago. I didn't know what that master was, or how the staff symbols he was going after factored into it. Morro was driven to do only that. I never sensed any sort of hesitation inside of him. I thought that if I could get him thinking about Wu, I'd be able to maybe slow him down. But each time that Morro even thought of Wu's face, it was more like I'd actually just given him a boost to keep going. I'd never seen someone that ran so single-mindedly on hate before.

That's another thing that made Morro so different from other villains: his determination. When I was fighting on the Dark Island, I was constantly having to muster up the determination to keep going. Morro, however, never had a single moment where he didn't have it. That was why he was able to keep me possessed for so long. Whenever he started to feel his control slipping, I could feel him summoning his anger and then shoving me right back down. He wasn't just some bad guy, though. Morro was a person. This was a person that had been hurt so badly, he wanted to just, hurt everyone else. Every other villain didn't feel like they were determined in the same way that Morro was.

I think that's because Morro, wasn't just some evil person. Morro felt that he was right. I don't mean in the way that Chen said that the Anacondrai deserved to rule, or in how Pythor saw the Serpentine as the superior race. Morro, deep down, believed that he'd been wronged. There was nothing I could do to change that. Right up until the end, I think Morro felt that everything that he'd done was justified. He thought that he needed to show destiny up for what it'd done to him. And that meant that I couldn't try to get through to him. There wasn't any doubt in his mind for me to try to use to show him what he was doing was wrong.

That wasn't to say that I didn't try. I constantly tried to tell Morro that he shouldn't do any of this. I told him that he couldn't just hurt innocent people with whatever plan he was following. I never got him to even flinch. I could feel his thoughts, so I knew if I was getting through to him. No matter what I said, what memories I referenced or just whatever I tried to tell him, nothing worked.

So there I was, trapped there with Morro. I didn't have any chance to do anything to stop him. Morro was currently on his way now to steal gear he needed to ascend the Wailing Alps and make it to the next thing he wanted. All I knew was that he wanted some sort of sword, something that would help him find the location of the tomb of the First Spinjitzu Master. I had figured out from listening to him that was what he wanted. Yet any attempts to glean anything further than that, I was being shut out.

Telling how much time had passed wasn't easy. Without anything to actually look at, I just had to guess what was happening. It felt far way longer than I thought it was. All I could really do was just try to keep getting things out of Morro's head. I think he noticed that I was always picking at him, since he was very careful with what he was thinking. He was quick to cut things off if he was saying something important. I didn't even learn the names of the ghosts that he was talking to for a long time, since he was even careful enough not to say them as well.

Eventually, I wasn't able to keep listening. Morro was just taking too much time and doing too much for me to really keep at it. And soon, that just left me with thinking again. I was left to think about how Morro was using me to accomplish some evil goal, how he wanted me to see that somehow, I wasn't worthy of being the Green Ninja. If that was his plan, it was working. I was powerless against him.

I remembered one thing, however, that kept me going. Kai had been there when I managed to break out of Morro's grasp. He'd been there to tell me that he was going to help me. Somehow, I knew that Morro had encountered Kai again. I think it was when Kai was chasing down Morro for the scroll he stole from Ronin. I knew from Morro letting slip in his thoughts he was happy to 'show up that pathetic ninja' that Kai had to still be after me. The others weren't giving up on me. They were still coming for me.

That was the thing I had to hold onto. Whenever I would break down and start to feel hopeless, whenever Morro would slam me back down after I tried to push back against him, I had to hope that somewhere, somehow, the ninja were coming after me. Kai, in particular, said that he was going to look after me. That meant that the ninja were coming for me. I had to hold out, and had to keep up the fight inside of Morro.

So that's what I did. I kept fighting. It felt hopeless, in a way. Morro's will was completely solid. There was nothing I could say to him that wouldn't either make him ignore me or just strengthen him. Morro was in charge of the situation, and in turn, he was going to be in charge of whatever destiny happened to me. And because of that, I was going to have to just resist him. Whatever it took, I just had to keep going. I had to. I couldn't stop.

Soon, Morro and I were going to have our heads in the clouds. I was about to learn more about destiny than I ever thought possible. I was about to learn more about Ninjago than ever before, and it was all thanks to a certain kingdom. I was on my way to Cloud Kingdom.

"And there we go," Lloyd stretched his back out, "You, don't think it's too short, do you?"

"Why's that a problem?" Kai asked, leaning forward with a sigh, "I think if you got across what you wanted to get across."

"Is it too hard to follow?" Lloyd asked nervously, "I tried to make it clear what was going on. I… I know I was repeating myself a lot. But, I know that Zane can maybe edit some of that out too. Were you able to understand what was happening?"

"Relax, Lloyd!" Kai sat up, "You're writing a book not giving a huge speech! You were trapped inside your own head. I think you're doing fine."

"Are you sure?" Lloyd stood up, "I know I'm asking a lot, but, it's just really hard for me to talk about. It's like, an entire other set of things happened while I was possessed. I mean, you guys made that deal with Ronin, and then Cole got turned into a ghost, and you had that whole stuff with finding the tomb…"

"Lloyd, it's your book!" Kai exclaimed, walking over to put a hand on Lloyd's shoulder, "You tell it how you wanna tell it. I was following along just fine! It's not like anybody else we know has any real experience with being possessed, nobody is gonna try to tell you that what you said is wrong. You're getting way too worked up around this."

"Ermm…." Lloyd blushed, feeling a small sense of embarrassment rising in him, "Yeah… I… I guess that I am. Heh. I'm just, you know, I'm worried, cause I already know this book is gonna be something a lot of people are gonna think it weird so, I don't want to make it confusing on top of that."

"You're fine, man," Kai shook his head, "Write your book how you wanna write it. I'm not really the one to talk to, but I think I got everything you were trying to say. If that's all you were worried about, then I think you're good."

"Yeah… thanks, thanks," Lloyd nodded his head, "So… are you liking this, so far, Kai?"

"Hrmm?" Kai looked over at the seat Lloyd recorded in, "Yeah, I'm enjoying it. It's nice to get to hear what you were thinking. Is that what you mean?"

"Uh… yeah, actually," Lloyd hadn't expected such a straightforward response, "Well… uh, next time I need to talk about Cloud Kingdom so… you might hear me get a little angry with that."

"Really? Those weird guys?" Kai blinked, "Why?"

"It's… complicated," Lloyd assured him, "Let's just say I'm not exactly looking to go there, ever again."