Hey thanks to everyone who read this, faved and put on alert. Hope you all enjoy this and review. Want to know what you all think. If you feel it's missing something tell me but please be kind about it.
A few days pass and the ninja were helping Esme train. That meant waking her up early and that also meant having her be grumpy with them.
"Oh man who knew she could have such a bad attitude." Kai frowned.
"Hey, she's not used to waking up early. I bet you weren't all sunshine and rainbows when you first started training." Jay crossed his arms.
Kai sighed "Yeah you're right about that."
"Just give her time guys she'll learn." Cole nods.
As the guys talked Zane just looked on, he could see that Esme was not at all used to training. It was obvious in the slow motions she made. 'Perhaps she needs a rest or someone to help motivate her.' With that Zane walked up to her.
Esme was exhausted by the training, her body not used to this kind of physical demand. 'I did say I wanted to train.' She growled inwardly.
Zane then came up and asked "Are you okay Esme?" and began to do katas with her.
"Just still not used to this." She pants slightly.
"You will, even if I am a nindroid I still had to work hard to get used to Sensei's training." He smiles.
"Being a ninja sure seems demanding." Esme sighs.
"It is, but it is also very rewarding." Zane nods smiling.
"I hope you're right Zane." Esme takes a break at last, Zane joining her.
As they sat Zane couldn't help but notice a few more things he had caught a glimpse off of Esme during her time with them. She always seemed to wear a silver necklace with a silver wing hanging from it, her nails where always painted black, and she wore tiny studded star earrings. 'I wonder why she would chose these specific items to decorate herself with?'
Suddenly the others came up and Kai said "Okay Esme we're done for now."
"Finally." Esme slumped against the mass.
They all chuckled at this and Jay said "So any ideas on what we should do today?"
"I wish we could go out and have fun." Esme groaned.
"Sorry Esme. Sensei says not till you're trained enough to at least fight off snakes." Jay frowns, feeling sorry for her.
"Perhaps we can make our own fun on the bounty. We do have video games?" Zane suggested.
"You guys go on ahead, I can't stand fist to face four anymore." Esme sighed.
"Yeah, we've beaten that game so many times it's not fun anymore." Cole frowns.
"We could always watch a movie." Jay shrugs.
"Hey that could work. We should be able to find something." Kai smiles.
"Yeah let's do that." Esme smiled glad to have something not so active to do.
And so, they headed off to choose a movie.
Meanwhile….
Garmadon paced about, trying to figure out how to get rid of the ninja.
"I can't destroy them simply wishing it, and I've already tried outside sources. Grrr, why can't those ninja simply get lost for once." Garmadon hit the wall and cracks appeared making it look almost like a map, that's when an idea occurred.
"Lost, yes. Lost where no one can find them. I wish the ninja lost in the maze forest!" Garmadon wished and soon he was sapped of energy.
Back at the bounty…
The ninja and Esme were watching a buddy cop movie. So far it was funny, but then they all felt weird.
"Hugh what's going on?" Kai looked at himself turning invisible.
"Oh no not again, we're being teleported!" Esme recognized the sensation.
"Hey guys what….Waugh your all…" Lloyd walks in shocked.
"Lloyd get Sens…." Cole calls but it was too late, they were gone.
At that Lloyd jumped and rushed off to find Wu and Nya.
Out in what looked like a normal forest…..
The ninja all fell to the ground as they shouted and then gasped for air.
"Oh, that never gets easier." Esme groans.
"Where are we?" Jay looks around.
"A forest?" Cole looks around.
Zane took a better look and found something off about the forest, one of them being that the moss was a strange blue color "Not just any forest." Zane got up slowly and looked closer at the moss "The maze forest."
"Wait I thought that was just a myth, you know a scary story to tell kids?" Cole looks on confused.
"The maze forest is no myth. It is a forest that is an actual maze and tends to move around to confuse it's captives." Zane explains.
"And we're inside it. Please tell me there's not some monster in here that's going to eat us." Esme shakes.
"No, the maze forest is not inhabited by any monster that I know of. Just normal creatures of the forest that have learned to move along with the forest's changes." Zane looks around.
"So Garmadon thinks he can get us lost out here, well he forgot one thing." Kai pressed his communicator but all he got was static "What's going on?"
Everyone tried their communicators', but it didn't work.
"It seems the rocks are polarized." Zane picks up a rock that no matter how hard he tried, it wouldn't connect to the other.
"That means all tech is useless here." Esme frowns.
"AH! What are we goanna do, we have no way to escape and no way to survive here! We, we….!" Jay panics.
"Jay calm down, if the animals of the forest know how to survive here then we should be able to figure it out too." Esme holds his shoulder.
"So what should we do, fallow a rabbit or something?" Kai frowns.
"No, a rabbit lives in a warren and it won't leave it's home maybe a fox or a bear?" Esme starts to think.
"Fox yes, bear no." Cole crosses his arms.
"Yeah, but where do we find one?" Jay looks around.
"That's the hard part." Esme sighs.
"True, foxes are not known for wanting to be found." Zane nods.
"Great then maybe instead we should try looking for a way out ourselves." Kai throws his arms up.
"Best we can come up with. Okay everyone, stay close." Cole waves to them.
They're about to go, when "Wait!" Esme grabs a rock and marks a tree with an x.
"We need to leave trail marks, so we know where we've been and where we're going." Esme walks up to them.
"Good idea. That way it will be easier for us to figure this place out." Cole nods.
They then start walking, trying to stick close, they walk, and walk, and walk, but as they did they felt like they didn't get anywhere and then "Hey this is where we started!" Jay exclaimed.
"I thought those marks were supposed to work." Kai frowned.
"I thought they would. I don't know what happened." Esme frowned.
"Perhaps there is something that we are missing." Zane frowns as he looks about.
"I don't know but we need to find some shelter and make a fire or we won't survive the night." Cole looks at the setting sun and makes a large rock tent for them.
"Good idea, can anyone help me make a fire pit?" Kai asks.
Jay concentrates on the ground and his lightning helped scorch the earth deep enough to make a whole.
"I'll get some fire wood." Esme nods and stays close as she grabs some branches on the ground.
Zane looks about and finds some edible plants and berries for them to eat. Now only if he had something to stir them in.
"Hey Zane going to make some grub?" Cole asks.
"I would like to make a stew, but I have nothing to put it in." Zane frowns.
"I can help with that." Cole grabs some rock and shapes it into a bowl.
"Thank you Cole, you have really gotten better at shaping the earth as you please." Zane started cooking.
"Thanks, Sensei was right about getting a pottery kit." Cole smirks as he comes over to see that the fire pit is ready. Zane puts the bowl in and some ice to turn it into water.
Esme looked uncertain at the stew, but Jay said "Relax, Zane can make anything edible."
"It's not that, I'm just picky eater ever since I was a kid." Esme frowns uncertain still.
"Trust me, you'll be fine as long as Cole's not cooking." Kai smirks.
"Hey!" Cole glares and the others laugh.
Once settled down and eating Esme still looked uncertain, but as she took a taste, well she couldn't stop eating. The other laughed and said they told her so.
"Wow that was amazing, where'd you learn to cook?" Esme smiles.
"It is something I just picked up." Zane shrugs.
"Yeah Zane's always been the better cook. My stuff always ends up too spicy for everyone or charred." Kai shrugs.
"So, it's still kind of early, what should we talk about?" Esme looked on curios.
Jay then jumped "Oh I know, let's tell her about how we all met Sensei Wu and became ninja!"
The guys all agreed and told the said story. Esme looking on interested, laughing at how Kai always ran ahead, shocked when they faced the dragons, and awed at how they did the tornado of creation.
They all laughed at her amazed look and she said "Wow that was so cool." She jumped.
"Don't worry you'll get your chance to do stuff just as cool." Kai smirked.
"We'll I'm on my first adventure. Just hope it's not my last." Esme sighs.
"Hey, don't worry we'll find a way out of here." Jay patted her shoulder.
"Yes, we usually figure out a plan out of these situations." Zane smiles.
"Thanks guys that does make me feel better." Esme smiles.
"So, what about you Esme. Any stories about your life before you came on board." Cole smiles, chomping on a berry.
"Not much, I was living a very ordinary life writing my stories, hanging out with my family, and going out for some fun once in a while." Esme shrugs.
"I guess that is pretty ordinary. But writing? Is that why you tend to stay up late? Nya says she's always hearing you up late at night." Kai smiles.
"Oh sorry. I tend to get inspired at night so yeah, and that's why I tend to be so grumpy in the morning." Esme flushes.
"So what kind of stories do you write?" Jay looks curios.
"Usually sci fi with romance. Lots of star fare fanfic actually. And animal stories too." Esme smiles.
"Cool can we read some?" Jay smiles.
"Some I guess, but only the ones I say you can." Esme flushes.
"I would like to read some of your animal stories." Zane looks excited.
Esme smiles, calmed at that and says "Sure I hope you like wolves, I have a lot of those."
"Oh, so you like wolves." Zane looks on curios.
Suddenly they heard a wolf howl and Jay jumped "We're wolf food!"
"Wolves don't eat people!" Esme and Zane say at the same time and flush.
The others laughed at this as Jay frowns.
"Well off to bed." Cole yawns and the other fallow.
The guys each took a spot next to the other while Esme kind of curled up to the back of the tent 'It be way too weird to sleep next to them.'
And soon they were all asleep. What no one noticed was that outside, the forest was moving and shifting.
As the night went on though Zane sensed something and awoke to see Esme shivering and frowned 'She will get ill without something to keep her warm.'
He crawled over to her, sat in a lotus position, and opened up the panel on his arm to adjust his temperature.
'Hopefully she will feel better soon.' He smiles kindly as he puts a hand on her shoulder to hopefully warm her up quicker.
Esme frowns in confusion at first in her still asleep state but soon relaxes as has feels the warmth relax her body and soon she was out like a light, snoring slightly.
Zane had to inwardly chuckle at her serene and opened mouth face. Knowing his job was done he closed his eyes and sleep as well, keeping in arm on her so she would stay warm.
The next day Jay was the first to wake up and when he came out, he found the forest completely different and well…
The others heard a yell and they rushed outside to find Jay screaming. Zane and Esme too shocked to notice the position they were in or remember last night as they rushed out to see what had happened.
"Jay what's wrong?" Kai asked.
"The forest! It changed overnight, or someone moved us?" Jay looked around, confused.
"What, that's impossible, unless….." Cole frowned arms crossed.
"Um guys." Esme pointed to where the fire pit had been but now it was a bunch of flowers in place.
"What? How?" Kai asked.
"The forest truly does change. It would explain why we could not find our way out yesterday and why today the landscape has changed." Zane looked about curiously.
"Oh great, so we're really are in a moving forest. How are we ever going to get out of here!" Jay yells.
"If the forest moves around then there has to be a pattern, otherwise there couldn't be anything living here." Esme brought up.
"So, we try looking for a fox again?" Kai crosses his arms.
"How about a squirrel." Cole pointed up to a tree where the bushy little creature twitched about and climbed.
"That could work, but how do we get it to move about?" Esme raises a brow.
"Um, hey an acorn." Kai looks down and grabs it "Here little guy. Want an acorn?" Kai shakes it between his fingers
"Kai that's not a good idea." Esme tries to warn.
"Relax it just a….AH!" Kai starts running about as the squirrel landed on his head "Evil squirrel!"
Zane shot a bit of ice at the creature sending it off from the shock of the cold.
"I was trying to say it could have rabies." Esme flinched.
"What!" Kai jumped.
"We'll get you checked later, fallow that squirrel!" Cole calls and they all rush off.
As they fallowed the little critter nothing seemed off at first, till "Hey look, what's that?" Jay pointed out.
The squirrel, instead of climbing up a tree like they thought, shifted between two rocks and "Hey did those rocks just move?" Kai called.
"They apparently did, but it was so slight you could barely notice." Zane nods.
They all stop at this and look about. Now that they really looked, they could see the little detail of one or two things shifting every few minutes.
"Okay so this forest does move, now what?" Cole pants, he was the muscle, not the stamina.
"Maybe if we see how the forest moves, we can figure out how to get out." Esme thinks on this.
"That may be a problem. We have no way to record how the forest moves." Zane looks worried.
"Argh? This is giving me a headache. There has to be a way out of here!" Kai hits a boulder and suddenly it glowed. He jumped back calling "Wo!"
"Look at that." Esme came up to touch it and noticed the blue light heading somewhere else.
"Should we fallow it?" Jay looks uncertain.
"Nowhere else to go." Cole shrugs and so they head on.
As they did, they decided to hit other stones, as merely touching them didn't seem to work.
As they did, they saw the way the forest moved along with the outline the stones seemed to make.
"It's like the stones are a sort of road map to this forest and what happens in it." Esme looked on curios.
"That seems to be the case, but I wonder how this all came to be?" Zane looked on curios as well.
"As long as we get out of here, I don't care." Jay groaned, tired of all this.
As they kept following the stone light's they saw the pattern that some animals took as well.
"Is it just me or does this place work a little too well, now that we know what's going on." Cole tried to get a closer look.
"Yeah like someone made it so that everything had to go a certain way at a certain time." Kai glared.
"Like clockwork in a way." Esme looked on a bit worried.
"Perhaps that is the answer." Zane suddenly stopped.
"What do you mean?" Jay raised a brow.
"Everything now seems to be going at certain schedule at a certain time. And all of it is planned out through these lights from these rocks." Zane pointed down at the marks.
"Yeah this is getting creepy." Cole frowns worried.
"Perhaps someone made this place?" Zane frowned as he looked around.
"You mean it's not natural." Esme looked shocked.
"Sounds reasonably to me. I mean why would a forest move around?" Jay shrugs.
"To keep outsiders like you away!" Suddenly someone in a black cloak jumped down and raised their staff at them.
The ninja and Esme took battle poses.
"Hmm, ninja, it's been a long time since ninja have entered my woods. And I see you've discovered the pattern." The cloaked man looked curious.
"Yeah and we're hoping it will lead us out." Kai glares.
"Hmm. So, you want to leave like all the others. No one seems to admire this place." The cloaked figure sighed.
"But you yourself said you made this forest to keep others out." Zane pointed out.
The man chuckled and said "True, but that doesn't mean it doesn't get lonely or boring. Sure, I created a prefect environment, but having others trapped here can make it fun." He smirks.
"We are not toys for you to play with you jerk!" Esme frowned as she stepped up.
"Oh a girl, haven't seen one of you for an even longer time. My I forget how pretty you all are." He tried step up to her but Esme kicks him away and the man rubs his stomach and growls "And fickled."
"Okay you've had your fun, now let us go." Cole glared.
"You don't seem to understand. I made this place, I know the way out, and how it works. If I want you to stay, I'll make sure you stay." The man clenches his fist and the forest moves again.
They all shouted at that and the man chuckled, then Esme punched a rock and clinched her fist at the pain.
The blue rocks glowed again, and Esme called "Fallow it!"
They all started jumping off, Esme trying to keep up. Zane notices and helps her with jumping, the others taking turns to help her as they go.
They keep punching rocks to find the way out, but the forest was changing so fast they could barely keep up "How is he doing this?" Esme looked shocked.
"Maybe he has elemental powers." Jay says shocked.
"But what would be his power, if the forest is not real?" Zane looks on confused.
At this Esme realized something "It could be illusion! This all feels and looks real but isn't. Maybe the way out is with our minds!"
"What, like if we know that big bolder isn't real then we can just smash through it?" Cole looks on annoyed.
"Not exactly, but maybe we can break through another way. You guys once combined your spinjitsue to make a skeleton cage. Why not use it to break out of this place?" Esme suggests.
They all looked at each other and shrug. It was worth a shot, at that they all did spinjitsue. Esme holding on tight to Zane as they all formed into one big tornado, as this happened, Esme felt something surge in her.
Suddenly her powers mixed into the tornado and at that the forest disappeared. They ninja all fell and when they stood up, they found themselves in a field.
"Wough!" they all said as they all stood out in a large field of tall grass.
"Where did the forest go?" Kai asked.
"It was never there." Esme was put down as she looked around "None of it was real."
"You were correct, it was our minds that helped us escape that prison." Zane came up and smiled at her.
Esme flushed slightly and smiled.
Then "NO!" they turned to see the cloaked figure on his hands and knees shivering "It's gone, all gone. My paradise." He sobs.
"What do we do with him?" Jay glares as they walk up to him.
"Send him to prison. He's probably trapped plenty of people in that forest of his." Cole glares as well.
"But none of them died." They all looked at Esme shocked.
"She is right, there are no bones around here, no torn-up bags, nothing. There were never even any other prisoners from what my scans show?" Zane walked up with a confused frown.
"Why does that matter?" The cloaked figure glared at them.
"It means you were the only true prisoner in that forest." Esme frowned.
"It wasn't a prison to me. I could leave whenever I wanted!" He yelled.
"And yet you didn't." Kai frowned.
"Why would I? I have nothing waiting for me in Ninjago." The figure kept shivering.
The ninja all looked at each other, what could they say to a man like this.
Suddenly the bounty flew overhead and landed in front of the ninja. Nya came out saying "Esme, guys!" she ran up to them and hugged her brother and then kissed Jay on the cheek.
Lloyd ran out too "What happened, you guys were gone for a whole day?"
Then Wu came out and said "I believe I know what happened." He walked up to the man and took off his hood "Hello Tem, it seems someone finally broke your illusion."
"So, they're your students." The man with reddish hair and dark eyes looked up crying.
"Yes, they are. Now Tem, are you ready to go home?" Wu smiled.
"Home? I don't have a home anymore remember." Tem frowned.
"Not so, there are people waiting for you Tem." Wu lends his hand out and Tem looks shocked.
"They waited for me. But I thought…." Tem shakes as he takes the hand.
"It was a misunderstanding. Now come I'll take you home." And Wu started to help the man only a little older than the ninja, walk towards an unknown direction to them.
"Sensei?" Kai looked on worried.
"Go on back to the bounty. I'll be fine." Wu smiles as he heads off.
They all looked confused but did as told.
It was later at night when Wu returned and said "Tem is with his family again and happy." Wu nods to them as he entered the kitchen.
"How did you know him Sensei?" Zane looked confused.
"He was an old student." Wu sighs.
"You mean we're not the first?" Jay looks surprised.
"Sadly no, and I have made several mistakes in my years of teaching. Tem one of the worst." Sensei sighed sadly.
"Do you think we'll meet others?" Kai looks on curios.
"Perhaps, but for now, it is best we leave this be. Tem had been a student who was promising and I wanted him to be a ninja one day, but a misunderstanding with his family and myself caused him to shut himself in and create that forest." Wu frowned sadly "I tried to get him back several times but couldn't. I am glad someone was able to finally release him. Thank you." He nodded to his students and left.
The others nodded back and let him go, knowing he was going through a rough time.
"Wow, so Sensei had more students before us. How crazy." Jay says excited and also confused at the thought.
"I'm more worried about the several mistakes he mentioned." Esme looked worried.
"If it was important Sensei would have told us." Kai nodded.
"We all must trust each other if we are to defeat Garmadon." Zane looked at Esme worried.
"Sigh, I guess that's true. I just hope there's no more surprises like that." Esme frowned.
"Can't say there won't be, the craziest things always happen to us." Cole sighs.
They all nod at this and Esme says "Oh boy, you guys better prepare me for this stuff with some more stories." Esme smiles.
They all smiled back and began to tell more of their adventures.