"Goodnight boys."
"Goodnight Grandpa!"
Grandpa Mori turned off the light and went back to his bedroom.
Nick sighed and lay on his back watching the stars through the window in the roof. For many years he had laid here each night alone, watching the sky. Dreaming of his true family. Of his brothers. And now his dream had come true. Only, he did not know how to keep it real.
Rocky, who was lying next to him suddenly turned around and faced him.
"Now, are you gonna tell us the truth?"
Immediately the others also faced Nick. He started to laugh.
"Allright allright. Don't push me."
He sat up and leaned his back against the wall. Rocky came to sit next to him on his left side and Colt laid his head in his lap. Tum Tum joined at his feet, still with some jelly beans in his hand. But Nick noticed that the next hour Tum Tum didn't eat any of it.
"When I was eight years old I came to Grandpa for a holiday cause dad had to go to South-America for one of his assignments and mother was pregnant. She couldn't keep me at home cause she went living with a friend of hers, and she allready had two to care for. You two."
He patted Rocky's and Colt's heads.
"Her friend was also able to help if she had to give birth. Grandpa agreed with the idea of my holiday here and so I came to live here. I know you cried when I left the house," he said to Rocky, "you were pulling my trousers and when I drove off with Grandpa the last thing I saw were the tears on your little face."
Nick turned his head to Rocky.
"I'm sorry I didn't come back. I guess I've been a pretty lousy brother."
Colt shrugged his head. "No you're not! We didn't even know you were still alive. Mom had told us you were very far away and that we would probably never see you again. She never talked about you. All your pictures are taken out of the photobooks. We never came across something of your belongings. We forgot about you." He whispered and Nick patted his hair.
Tum Tum grinned. "Guess Mom was wrong."
"Anyway, so I came to live here, and I really had a great time. Off course I missed you guys a lot in the beginning but Grandpa filled most of the gaps. After a week or two Grandpa started to tell me about ninjas. Off course I'd heard about them but I'd never thought Grandpa was one of them. And that summer my training began."
Nick sighed and shook up his blanket.
"At the end of my holiday, when I was supposed to go back, the ritual for my ninjaname had to take place. And that night my whole life changed."
The three boys suddenly were wide awake. Each of them remembered being given there own ninja-name. Rocky for strength, Colt for vivacity and Tum Tum for energy. But their ceremonies had been in broad daylight. They all wondered what could have been so strange about their brother's.
"It was a dark warm night. Grandpa lighted a fire under the large chestnut tree. You know, where the dummy with the burning eyes is."
The boys hummed. They knew.
"So. Grandpa had been saying Japanese verses for quite some time and suddenly i saw lightning coming up. I was really scared but the fact that Grandpa was there kept me from running away. Grandpa started to talk louder and louder and it sounded very weird, like some kind of chant. Suddenly the lightning hit our campfire and i felt a burning pain on my forehead. I shouted and I cried because it hurt like hell. But Grandpa was angry with me and forced me to take my hands of. With his fingertips he salved the burn and the pain took off."
Nick clenched his hand to his forehead as if he felt the pain again.
"And when I saw myself the next day in the mirror, I saw I had a five- angled star on my forehead, like a strange-formed scar. Though it's faded through years, I still have it."
He pushed his spiky blonde hair back and showed it to the others. The all stared at him with amazement.
"It was also the next day Grandpa told me my new name. I was no longer Thomas Douglas, but from then on, I would be known as Nick. From the Greek "niké".
"Victory." Rocky whispered.
"And I asked Grandpa lots of stuff about the ceremony. At that time I thought it was pretty cool. But I noticed Grandpa was worried. And after a few days he told me everything."
Not a sound could be heard. The boys didn't dare to move, afraid of missing a part of the story.
"Once, in China, a long long time ago, the woman of the Ninja who reigned the country gave birth to a twin. A boy and a girl. Although people feared this would cause problems later on, both children were raised. Often, one of them was killed," he explained to his brothers.
"but not this time. They raised both. And when they had reached eighteen, they started to reign the country. They were such good rulers and fighters the people demanded that there should be a spell spoken so they would live on forever. But the twins didn't agree. Instead they demanded for a spell, so that, if they should die, their powers would be given to other children somewhere in the world who would always be there to resolve problems and to fight evil.
And that particular night I got my name, the twenty-fifth ruler died and passed on his powers to me. And that same night, the female ruler did so to. Somewhere in the world lives a girl with equal powers."
He stared at the opposite wall but he didn't notice. It was like he saw through it.
"From then on I lived very happily. Grandpa helped me to develop my powers. But i felt different. I knew I had to do more. I don't remember anymore how he got it done, but Grandpa got mother to let me live with him for the rest of his life. I guess he told her everything about it. But after some years things started to change. At that time I had become thirteen. It was the first summer you were to arrive. I was so looking forward to seeing you again, all day long I kept asking Grandpa to tell me things about you. How old you were, what you liked to do, if mother had told you about me and things like that.
But it never came to our reunion. Three days before you were to arrive, three days before my thirteenth birthday we got a visit from a man who called himself the Black Dragon. I immediately didn't like him. But he did us a great offer. He offered Grandpa to complete my training. At that time I fully realised that when I turned thirteen my job would be to help others in the world. I thought that man could help me to develop myself better than Grandpa would ever be able to. Boy was I wrong…"
He grinned cynically.
"It was only when I had gone with him I realised this man was nothing but a thief, who had been a great ninja but now had left the correct path and used his skills to steal. And he trained other ninjas too. And he wanted me to take part in his thefts."
"But why didn't you run off? I mean, you were a ninja! I'm sure you could have beaten that jerk!" Colt said.
Nick sighed. "I tried to. I really did. We were on "an assignment", that's what he called it, when I tried to escape. I knocked out several of his men and was about to take him out when he suddenly spoke to me in a strange dry voice. And he showed me a picture. It was a picture of you."
"Us??" Rocky yelled. "Did he show you a picture of us??"
"Yes he did. It was a picture of you getting your ninja training from Grandpa. The photographer had been hiding in the bush, I could see. Though it wasn't a very clear picture, I could see it was you.
"So, if you try anything on me, I know three little kids whose life will not be much longer then." He said to me and that day was the last day I tried something."
His voice raised a bit when he thought back of that day. The first time he saw his brothers on a picture. But that picture was held by a man he hated more than anything on earth.
"But I'll tell you from the beginning. The day he took me with him, he gave me a book to read. It was a very old book, with dark yellow crumbled pages. It was written in Chinese. But someone had written the English words next to it, so I could read. It was the history of the twin rulers in China. In the end I discovered a blank page where someone had written about fifty names. And I was astonished when I saw that my name was the last one in the list. How did he know? No-one was supposed to know!
But as soon as this guy knew that I had figured him out, my real training started. He learned me to use my powers. I had the powers of the four dragons in my reach, but didn't know how to use them.
At first, he learnt me to use the Red Dragon power. Or the power of fire. I had to blow up small things like boxes but later on he learnt me how to demolish entire buildings by sending spirals of fire. I didn't know what to do. At the same time I felt humiliated I had to use this powers for bad purposes, but also I felt powerful.
Then he learnt me to use the power of water, or the Blue Dragon. We went to the Atlantic and I had to push back the ocean as far as I could. We had to go at night, and I spent almost an entire month in the dark at the beach, with stretched arms and blinded by the wind and my tears. No-one but me and him. And I learnt how to control the see, how to sent a deluge, how to raise typhoons and how to make it rain.
But that was nothing compared to the day I learnt the White Dragon. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and there were no clouds. "Make them come." He said. I didn't know what to do. So I raised my hands and like I had to call the power of the fire I called the power of the wind. But there was no reaction. Nothing changed. "You'll not move until you have defeated the White Dragon." He said. And after two days with no food and only water from rain, I was proud to show him the rain outside, how a single click of my fingers made the lightning burn and the thunder roll."
Nick shut his eyes and almost started to cry.
"But the worse was yet to come. The last and most ferocious Dragon I still had to win. But the Black Dragon could not be defeated. The Power of the Earth I was never going to have. I was sure of that. But this guy has his methods to get what he wants. So I really really tried. I tried very hard. I spent months trying to control the Earth, but whatever I did, it didn't matter. I couldn't make that power mine.
And when I told him one day, he went crazy with anger. He shouted at my and slapped me in the face. He told me that the other three Dragons were nothing if you compared them to the Black Dragon. I said I didn't care. I was about to give up my life. I told him that I was gonna let my powers go, that I would release the Dragons which were locked up inside me. But the minute I had said that, I suddenly understood everything. He was only a thief because he liked to steal. His main goal was to have the power over the four Dragons. And the only way to get them, was through me or through the girl. It didn't take me half a minute to understand and when I looked back at his face I saw he had figured me out. I tried to evoke the power of the White Dragon so I could make a strong typhoon blow everything away and save me, but it was too late. I felt nothing. I didn't have my powers anymore. The same day I acquired them, that same day I lost them.
He started to laugh. He didn't say a word. The only thing he did was laughing and obeying someone to take me away. I couldn't do a thing. I was ashamed, humiliated and I would rather have died there than face someone ever again.
They threw me on the street with nothing than a bag with some clothes. I lay crying on the street, and people passing my by ignored me. I dragged myself to the woods. After i spent a few days there, I cleared everything up for me. I was no longer involved, the only thing for me to do was to complete my task as rightful ninja, to help people in need. And that's what I've been doing since the day I left for Australia.
I phoned Grandpa from the airport and told him everything. He really tried to make me come over, but I didn't. But when I phoned him about two weeks ago, he told me about you. And that's the day when I decided to come back."
He became silent.
The three boys started to mumble, but they were too amazed to talk.
"But…what…"
"Ain't you gonna…"
"The only thing I'm worried about now and then is that he's still after the power of the Black Dragon. The only way he can get it now is through the girl which has the same powers as I have. Had." He corrected himself.
"And i feel I have to help her. I don't know how. But if there was only one thing in life i could do, it would be to help her to get her rightful powers. The Black Dragon still flies around somewhere, unleashed. And there is only one rightful owner."
"That's not true! There are two." Said Rocky.
"Yeah! And we'll help you to get your powers back!" Tum Tum said
"Damn right!" Colt concluded.
Nick laughed.
"You will?"
"Yea we will!" The three shouted.
"Goodnight Grandpa!"
Grandpa Mori turned off the light and went back to his bedroom.
Nick sighed and lay on his back watching the stars through the window in the roof. For many years he had laid here each night alone, watching the sky. Dreaming of his true family. Of his brothers. And now his dream had come true. Only, he did not know how to keep it real.
Rocky, who was lying next to him suddenly turned around and faced him.
"Now, are you gonna tell us the truth?"
Immediately the others also faced Nick. He started to laugh.
"Allright allright. Don't push me."
He sat up and leaned his back against the wall. Rocky came to sit next to him on his left side and Colt laid his head in his lap. Tum Tum joined at his feet, still with some jelly beans in his hand. But Nick noticed that the next hour Tum Tum didn't eat any of it.
"When I was eight years old I came to Grandpa for a holiday cause dad had to go to South-America for one of his assignments and mother was pregnant. She couldn't keep me at home cause she went living with a friend of hers, and she allready had two to care for. You two."
He patted Rocky's and Colt's heads.
"Her friend was also able to help if she had to give birth. Grandpa agreed with the idea of my holiday here and so I came to live here. I know you cried when I left the house," he said to Rocky, "you were pulling my trousers and when I drove off with Grandpa the last thing I saw were the tears on your little face."
Nick turned his head to Rocky.
"I'm sorry I didn't come back. I guess I've been a pretty lousy brother."
Colt shrugged his head. "No you're not! We didn't even know you were still alive. Mom had told us you were very far away and that we would probably never see you again. She never talked about you. All your pictures are taken out of the photobooks. We never came across something of your belongings. We forgot about you." He whispered and Nick patted his hair.
Tum Tum grinned. "Guess Mom was wrong."
"Anyway, so I came to live here, and I really had a great time. Off course I missed you guys a lot in the beginning but Grandpa filled most of the gaps. After a week or two Grandpa started to tell me about ninjas. Off course I'd heard about them but I'd never thought Grandpa was one of them. And that summer my training began."
Nick sighed and shook up his blanket.
"At the end of my holiday, when I was supposed to go back, the ritual for my ninjaname had to take place. And that night my whole life changed."
The three boys suddenly were wide awake. Each of them remembered being given there own ninja-name. Rocky for strength, Colt for vivacity and Tum Tum for energy. But their ceremonies had been in broad daylight. They all wondered what could have been so strange about their brother's.
"It was a dark warm night. Grandpa lighted a fire under the large chestnut tree. You know, where the dummy with the burning eyes is."
The boys hummed. They knew.
"So. Grandpa had been saying Japanese verses for quite some time and suddenly i saw lightning coming up. I was really scared but the fact that Grandpa was there kept me from running away. Grandpa started to talk louder and louder and it sounded very weird, like some kind of chant. Suddenly the lightning hit our campfire and i felt a burning pain on my forehead. I shouted and I cried because it hurt like hell. But Grandpa was angry with me and forced me to take my hands of. With his fingertips he salved the burn and the pain took off."
Nick clenched his hand to his forehead as if he felt the pain again.
"And when I saw myself the next day in the mirror, I saw I had a five- angled star on my forehead, like a strange-formed scar. Though it's faded through years, I still have it."
He pushed his spiky blonde hair back and showed it to the others. The all stared at him with amazement.
"It was also the next day Grandpa told me my new name. I was no longer Thomas Douglas, but from then on, I would be known as Nick. From the Greek "niké".
"Victory." Rocky whispered.
"And I asked Grandpa lots of stuff about the ceremony. At that time I thought it was pretty cool. But I noticed Grandpa was worried. And after a few days he told me everything."
Not a sound could be heard. The boys didn't dare to move, afraid of missing a part of the story.
"Once, in China, a long long time ago, the woman of the Ninja who reigned the country gave birth to a twin. A boy and a girl. Although people feared this would cause problems later on, both children were raised. Often, one of them was killed," he explained to his brothers.
"but not this time. They raised both. And when they had reached eighteen, they started to reign the country. They were such good rulers and fighters the people demanded that there should be a spell spoken so they would live on forever. But the twins didn't agree. Instead they demanded for a spell, so that, if they should die, their powers would be given to other children somewhere in the world who would always be there to resolve problems and to fight evil.
And that particular night I got my name, the twenty-fifth ruler died and passed on his powers to me. And that same night, the female ruler did so to. Somewhere in the world lives a girl with equal powers."
He stared at the opposite wall but he didn't notice. It was like he saw through it.
"From then on I lived very happily. Grandpa helped me to develop my powers. But i felt different. I knew I had to do more. I don't remember anymore how he got it done, but Grandpa got mother to let me live with him for the rest of his life. I guess he told her everything about it. But after some years things started to change. At that time I had become thirteen. It was the first summer you were to arrive. I was so looking forward to seeing you again, all day long I kept asking Grandpa to tell me things about you. How old you were, what you liked to do, if mother had told you about me and things like that.
But it never came to our reunion. Three days before you were to arrive, three days before my thirteenth birthday we got a visit from a man who called himself the Black Dragon. I immediately didn't like him. But he did us a great offer. He offered Grandpa to complete my training. At that time I fully realised that when I turned thirteen my job would be to help others in the world. I thought that man could help me to develop myself better than Grandpa would ever be able to. Boy was I wrong…"
He grinned cynically.
"It was only when I had gone with him I realised this man was nothing but a thief, who had been a great ninja but now had left the correct path and used his skills to steal. And he trained other ninjas too. And he wanted me to take part in his thefts."
"But why didn't you run off? I mean, you were a ninja! I'm sure you could have beaten that jerk!" Colt said.
Nick sighed. "I tried to. I really did. We were on "an assignment", that's what he called it, when I tried to escape. I knocked out several of his men and was about to take him out when he suddenly spoke to me in a strange dry voice. And he showed me a picture. It was a picture of you."
"Us??" Rocky yelled. "Did he show you a picture of us??"
"Yes he did. It was a picture of you getting your ninja training from Grandpa. The photographer had been hiding in the bush, I could see. Though it wasn't a very clear picture, I could see it was you.
"So, if you try anything on me, I know three little kids whose life will not be much longer then." He said to me and that day was the last day I tried something."
His voice raised a bit when he thought back of that day. The first time he saw his brothers on a picture. But that picture was held by a man he hated more than anything on earth.
"But I'll tell you from the beginning. The day he took me with him, he gave me a book to read. It was a very old book, with dark yellow crumbled pages. It was written in Chinese. But someone had written the English words next to it, so I could read. It was the history of the twin rulers in China. In the end I discovered a blank page where someone had written about fifty names. And I was astonished when I saw that my name was the last one in the list. How did he know? No-one was supposed to know!
But as soon as this guy knew that I had figured him out, my real training started. He learned me to use my powers. I had the powers of the four dragons in my reach, but didn't know how to use them.
At first, he learnt me to use the Red Dragon power. Or the power of fire. I had to blow up small things like boxes but later on he learnt me how to demolish entire buildings by sending spirals of fire. I didn't know what to do. At the same time I felt humiliated I had to use this powers for bad purposes, but also I felt powerful.
Then he learnt me to use the power of water, or the Blue Dragon. We went to the Atlantic and I had to push back the ocean as far as I could. We had to go at night, and I spent almost an entire month in the dark at the beach, with stretched arms and blinded by the wind and my tears. No-one but me and him. And I learnt how to control the see, how to sent a deluge, how to raise typhoons and how to make it rain.
But that was nothing compared to the day I learnt the White Dragon. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and there were no clouds. "Make them come." He said. I didn't know what to do. So I raised my hands and like I had to call the power of the fire I called the power of the wind. But there was no reaction. Nothing changed. "You'll not move until you have defeated the White Dragon." He said. And after two days with no food and only water from rain, I was proud to show him the rain outside, how a single click of my fingers made the lightning burn and the thunder roll."
Nick shut his eyes and almost started to cry.
"But the worse was yet to come. The last and most ferocious Dragon I still had to win. But the Black Dragon could not be defeated. The Power of the Earth I was never going to have. I was sure of that. But this guy has his methods to get what he wants. So I really really tried. I tried very hard. I spent months trying to control the Earth, but whatever I did, it didn't matter. I couldn't make that power mine.
And when I told him one day, he went crazy with anger. He shouted at my and slapped me in the face. He told me that the other three Dragons were nothing if you compared them to the Black Dragon. I said I didn't care. I was about to give up my life. I told him that I was gonna let my powers go, that I would release the Dragons which were locked up inside me. But the minute I had said that, I suddenly understood everything. He was only a thief because he liked to steal. His main goal was to have the power over the four Dragons. And the only way to get them, was through me or through the girl. It didn't take me half a minute to understand and when I looked back at his face I saw he had figured me out. I tried to evoke the power of the White Dragon so I could make a strong typhoon blow everything away and save me, but it was too late. I felt nothing. I didn't have my powers anymore. The same day I acquired them, that same day I lost them.
He started to laugh. He didn't say a word. The only thing he did was laughing and obeying someone to take me away. I couldn't do a thing. I was ashamed, humiliated and I would rather have died there than face someone ever again.
They threw me on the street with nothing than a bag with some clothes. I lay crying on the street, and people passing my by ignored me. I dragged myself to the woods. After i spent a few days there, I cleared everything up for me. I was no longer involved, the only thing for me to do was to complete my task as rightful ninja, to help people in need. And that's what I've been doing since the day I left for Australia.
I phoned Grandpa from the airport and told him everything. He really tried to make me come over, but I didn't. But when I phoned him about two weeks ago, he told me about you. And that's the day when I decided to come back."
He became silent.
The three boys started to mumble, but they were too amazed to talk.
"But…what…"
"Ain't you gonna…"
"The only thing I'm worried about now and then is that he's still after the power of the Black Dragon. The only way he can get it now is through the girl which has the same powers as I have. Had." He corrected himself.
"And i feel I have to help her. I don't know how. But if there was only one thing in life i could do, it would be to help her to get her rightful powers. The Black Dragon still flies around somewhere, unleashed. And there is only one rightful owner."
"That's not true! There are two." Said Rocky.
"Yeah! And we'll help you to get your powers back!" Tum Tum said
"Damn right!" Colt concluded.
Nick laughed.
"You will?"
"Yea we will!" The three shouted.