Just like my dad, I don't hate my mother.
As I've been given time to grow up and understand who I am, why I am, who I am, and the lengths that others have gone to in order to make sure I got to those places, I think I get it now. My mother made perhaps the hardest choice a mother can make to give me up so I wouldn't follow after my father. She did what she thought she had to do in order to prevent what must have looked like the end of everything. The ninja didn't learn about the Green Ninja prophecy until I was already a child, but my mother seemed to know about it either before I was born or just after I was born. Given that I only remembered very vague things about her before I met her, I must have been super young when she gave me up.
That doesn't mean I don't resent her for what she did. I grew up without my mother in a school of bullies, told to be like my dad but always failed to even get close to what he represented. My mother wanted me to not fight my dad, but put me in a place where I couldn't escape from who he was. I'm not saying that leaving me with Wu would have been better, but the fact she abandoned me altogether instead of finding some other way… hurts. It still hurts to this day.
It took me years to be able to feel that connection to Misako that I know the other guys feel to their parents. Whenever I met Ed and Edna outside of trying to steal from them, I was jealous of how they looked at Jay, and even more importantly how Jay looked at them. They all cared about each other, loved each other… they were there for each other. If I'd known that Jay was blowing his parents off earlier, I would have forced him to go and talk to them. He was throwing away a relationship that I never got to have. But I was never jealous enough to actually say anything, and when we would leave talking to them, I would instead just feel… sad.
My mother tried for a long time to get me to see her as a parent. It was hard, given that she wanted to drop back into my life and have that sort of connection without us ever having truly met. She didn't know anything about me. Sure, she said she always looked in on me when she wasn't busy researching and cared about me, but… but looking at me from afar and claiming you're helping me by leaving me alone in the world isn't parenting! It's abandoning me saying you have something better to do! It doesn't matter if that better thing was helping me, you still left me. I never got to know what it was like to have mothers praise you, or teach you how to manage your rooms, or scold you for doing dumb things, or even saying that they love you. My mother had never told me she loved me until that day. She wouldn't have ever gotten the chance to say it.
Looking Misako in the eyes in that museum was a feeling completely different from when my father rescued me from the volcano. With my dad, it'd been a feeling of relief, happiness and joy seeing that someone had come to rescue me. With my mom, I just felt… angry. When she tried to say she was happy with how much I'd grown, something in me felt like it'd snapped. Something told me that she wasn't allowed to say that. I wasn't holding it together well to begin with, but the second Misako said she had a reason to leave, I couldn't take it. I stormed off, leaving her behind and trying to figure out how to deal with all the anger I now had inside of me.
I eventually wound up at the bottomless pit my mother had dragged the new Stone Warrior exhibit out of. Looking at it didn't make me feel better, but I wanted to be far away from Misako. I didn't want to talk to her after she'd tried to tell me she had a reason to abandon me. She found me, of course, but it wasn't like I wanted to talk to her. She managed to get me to listen long enough, though, for her to tell me about the Overlord.
It was strange to hear that the tale we in Ninjago knew by heart about the First Spinjitzu Master was only half the story. It was almost like hearing that your favorite bedtime story was written to be about, like, class divide? Okay, that's a random example, but my point is that I somewhat understood where she was coming from with what happened. The Overlord was the embodiment of all evil, and that evil was now reflected in my father. She knew that one of us would be going down in that final battle, and if she could prevent it she'd save her family. I somewhat got it.
Somewhat. Regardless of whether or not I would have died being raised by her, I ended up facing death multiple times in my life without my dad even being there. I unleashed the Serpentine, who in turn released the Great Devourer and caused suffering across Ninjago without even knowing I'd cause that. I was a dumb child who just wanted to be like his dad. If she wanted me to grow up without my father's influence, she failed. If she wanted me to grow up to be a good person, had Wu not been there I likely wouldn't have gotten that far. So many things that happened in the final battle only happened because Misako put me in Darkley's. That, to me, is the worst thing about this all. I can somewhat understand her, but only because destiny put me down the path to lead to that point with her decision as the starting place.
During all of this, the Giant Stone Warrior awoke, and after getting our first taste of the fact the Stone Army would be indestructible and only susceptible to elemental powers -with even mine only managing to stun it briefly- we had to find a way to fight it. I came up with a last minute plan to lure it around to confuse it. Once he was fully focused on just taking us out, I tricked him into falling down the massive sinkhole. We managed to defeat it, if only because that hole was too deep for him to climb out of. I know eventually the police captured him and sent him to Kryptarium, though.
The first incident with the Stone Army was a victory, but one that was really the event that kickstarted everything else. It's like the chapter in my life that had been about getting stronger was over. Misako was in my life again, and almost immediately, it's like I was in a car that was suddenly being gunned right towards my dad. That first Stone Warrior changed everything, without any of us knowing it at the time.
It was at that point Misako joined the crew of the Bounty, and began what really led to the final battle. To try to gain power to stop me, my dad took the Serpentine Generals out to look for the fabled Dark Island. Skales betrayed him, and Garmadon eventually washed up upon what was left of it. He managed to raise it from the ocean, and that just so happened to be the same day the Giant Stone Warrior awoke. When my mom stumbled back into my life, that was when the lead up to the final battle began.
Most of you remember the day the Stone Army rose up from Ninjago City and forced us to evacuate the citizens out of the city. Misako had details on the steps towards the Final Battle that I didn't even know existed. Apparently, the earthquakes were part of it. Later on we learned that Skales was burrowing under Ninjago City to collapse it under its own weight, but accidently stumbled upon the tomb of the Stone Army. Misako mentioned that when the islands were split, the Stone Army lost the connection to the Overlord and went dormant. Apparently, Ninjago decided to build right on top of the remains of an ancient evil. It wouldn't be the last time either (looking at you, Borg).
Skales opened the tomb of the warriors, and Misako later realized that it was likely Skales' destiny to do so, though unlike me and my father, he had no idea that was what he was doing at the time. The fact that the Stone Army were able to beat the Serpentine, a race that was known for its wars, in seemingly minutes given the proximity of the earthquakes to the first warrior rising was probably the single biggest indicator for me that these guys were tough. They were tough enough that facing just one of them was a challenge.
I guess I should mention how ironic it was that fighting drove the Serpentine into their tombs, and trying to fight again was what got them sealed away again. They were able to get out before another Pythor situation came up -something that I still haven't figured out how the other tribes didn't have- but I wanted to mention that. I would have said more on how the Serpentine started this whole mess through me and were sealed away indirectly through me, but I was focusing on bigger things at the time. Namely, saving those still stuck in the city.
Nowadays, Ninjago City is pretty good about handling crisis situations. Anyone that lives there clearly knows the risks and can get out of the city fast if they need to. The Great Devourer was still fresh on everybody's mind, so most of the people were able to get out fast once the quakes started. Those that stayed were the ones in the inner part of the city where the streets were getting torn up. We got our first taste of a stone warrior pretty quickly once we tried to fight them.
I think using the term 'indestructible' isn't entirely selling why those guys are terrifying. It's not the fact that you can't hurt them, it's the fact nothing slows them down. They don't get tired, or act hurt, or anything. Elemental powers are all that ever seem to stop them, but that's just temporary. Nothing is truly going to make them stop coming at you unless you have pure light in your hands. And green power isn't bright enough for that.
We used the Ultra Sonic Raider to clear a path to the NTV tower to use for evacuation. I don't actually know what happened to it after that. Wu thinks that the army simply destroyed it, and we never saw it again. We even built another one we called the Ultra Stealth Raider kinda recently, so I guess that was our way of saying we were never going to find it. The Ultra Dragon was there to help us defend the people as we got them to the roof. We evacuated a lot of people, so somewhere in the fray, Misako lost her research.
Once we were on the Bounty, Misako said she wanted to go back. I wasn't mad at the fact she was leaving me, I was mad at the fact that she was literally running headfirst into the middle of an army and praying she wouldn't get cut up. I wanted to go and help her, but the army was already starting to attack the Bounty, and she leapt off before I was able to say anything. Wu decided to take charge and help her, leaving me stranded on the ship. I literally could only watch as my mother ran off to what, from that last kiss she gave me felt like, was her last battle.
I have to say, the fact she made it all the way to her research without getting hurt was impressive. I guess it was true that she sparred with Wu and Garmadon growing up. Wu was there to help her, and I even managed to see her doing Spinjitzu. She never did it again from what I saw, but it was at least cool to see her do that. Actually, come to think of it we don't tend to use Spinjitzu a lot. I guess it's because it's tricky to use right, since you need space and better to use when you're solo so you don't end up throwing guys into your teammates. But, then again there have been times that we could have used it, right? Wait, we started using it a lot more when the Sons of Garmadon started up. I wanna say we were using Airjitzu during that time but, even then we kinda didn't use that one much at all after the ghosts. So, why don't we use it more?
Anyways. She made it back to me. I didn't realize that I was holding the breath I was until she landed on the deck. I was glad she was safe, but that was really it. I was glad she was safe. Again, I didn't feel like she was my mother at that point given that I'd literally only had her in my life for less than a week. I felt more like I would have it Dareth had managed to make it back to the Bounty. Maybe I'd be more relieved if it was Dareth.
Ninjago City fell in less than an hour. The Stone Army was tough. Then, of all things, they vanished. We don't know how they made it back to the Dark Island. Personally, I think that they built boats and sailed over. Kai said they walked on the ocean floor. However they did, we were left stuck in Ninjago, and in waiting for the citizens we'd gotten the Bounty damaged. We had to get over the Dark Island, of course, so we decided to sail. I will say this about that experience: I have, to my knowledge, only ever sailed once. I will never sail more than once.
While we were getting ready to sail, it was at that point that it hit me again that we were sailing for me to meet my father. When I was training as a kid, I didn't have to think much about the end of it all. I could train for the purpose of just getting stronger while my dad was still doing whatever he was doing with the supposed Mega Weapon. Now that Misako had entered my life, everything was starting to accelerate towards my father. Everything was going right for him, and I couldn't turn away anymore. The second I left Ninjago, all my thoughts had to be on the prophecy. That's what she told me, Wu told me, the ninja told me, and to an extent my dad had told me when he left me after the Fangblade.
I remember one moment that stuck with me: I was staring off into a telescope at the newly risen Dark Island, and while I was, I felt a weird cold chill run through my body. I summoned a bit of my power to blast some rocks around me to get rid of it. When Misako found me, she asked me what was going on. I don't know why I said this, but I told her I was looking at my destiny, and I was scared. I was scared of the fact that once we got there, my father was going to be all I had to focus on. It was the first time that I actually thought of what 'defeating' him meant. I didn't think I could do it.
What she told me somewhat ties together why having her there was a blessing and a curse. She told me that destiny would guide my hands even if I couldn't, and if I had to strike down my father, then he wouldn't make me regret it. She didn't deny that I would have to… have to kill him if it came to that, but she told me I wouldn't have to feel bad about it. She didn't give me any other option, or tell me that I'd have the strength to do it, just that when it was done I'd be fine.
Both she and Wu were like this. They assumed before I ever stepped foot on that boat that I already had the strength in my to fight my dad. I don't think I ever had that strength. The entire time I was on the island, I was believing in strength that the others said existed. IMsako told me without words that I had to act like the Green Ninja in the prophecy. I had to be the Lloyd they all thought I was. I had to believe in the Lloyd that believed in me.
I wasn't strong. I still don't think that I'm as strong as everybody thinks I am. I made mistakes, and on the island, I made one decision that a lot of people say was a mistake. But before I ever got there, I made a decision to try to be the Lloyd that they all thought I had to be. I had to be the strong, grown up, action ready Lloyd they all needed to help save Ninjago. I didn't know what that meant, but I knew what he had to do. I felt that by forcing myself to accept that I had to kill my dad, it would somehow make me better. That somehow, I'd be this, this image of myself I had to be. I made the mistake of deciding who I was going to be not for me, but for everyone else. It wasn't until the last possible moment that I had the revelation that unlocked my True Potential.
Back to the Bounty, we ended up getting halfway there and then going wildly off course once we were attacked by Starteeth. The Bounty's rudder was damaged, and so we were at the mercy of the storm. We ended up drifting into the middle of the Endless Sea, and by pure chance, we found the Lighthouse. Misako said it was destiny that we found who we did there.
I don't know really what to make of Dr. Julien. He seemed like a very nice man who was willing to take us in without question. I don't know if he would have done that without Zane being there, but knowing that Zane said his father was dead according to his memories, I was just as confused as everyone else was. He let us in, took us upstairs and showed off his robotic contraptions he'd made while stuck on the Lighthouse, something that was incredible when we learned he made them all with what amounted to just scraps.
How Dr. Julien had managed to survive his death never made much sense to me. An elixir that Samukai just happened to have, and so happened to revive him? How did Samukai escape the Underworld to go and do that? Where did that elixir come from, and how did it wear off after the Dark Island? If Dr. Julien was making the designs for the vehicles but not building them himself -since he was on an island barely big enough for the Lighthouse itself- why did Samukai keep him around longer than just the designs? When Samukai vanished after the ninja defeated him, how did… I think I'm missing the point here.
What I was thinking about at the time was how happy I was for Zane. I thought I'd be jealous, actually. I probably expected myself to see Zane and Dr. Julien talking together and having the relationship I wanted to have with my dad and want it. I actually guess it's probably a good sign of maturity when you know the childish thing to think and think something else. I was happy to see the two of them interacting like this. The longer I looked, though, I felt sad. Sad that I felt at that moment I'd never get that with my own dad. I was still upset with Misako somewhat, so I had already ruled that out with my mom as well. I guessed seeing what I wanted a father and son to look like made me realize I'd never have it.
There is one thing about Dr. Julien that I don't know how I feel about. Erasing Zane's memories is something I've thought about. I thought about whether or not my life would have been easier if perhaps before I had to fight him, my memories had been erased. If I could have gone into the final battle without worrying about what he thought of me, or what I thought of him, or any of that, I wouldn't have hesitated on the island even once. It would have saved a lot of suffering. But it also would mean that I wouldn't be me today. I wouldn't be able to look back like this. But then, is the person I became really the best version of myself? Zane turned out fine. But, what would Zane look like without that gap in his memories? I don't know. So, I don't know how I feel about that. I choose not to think about it much anymore.
The biggest thing we had to focus on was getting the Bounty fixed and escaping the Leviathan that was chained around the Lighthouse. I guess it was only taught to stop things going out rather than going in, since we were able to get there just fine. Dr. Julien thankfully agreed that sailing was a dumb idea, so making it fly again was easier. He would have just fixed the jet if we had the parts, but the fact we were working with table scraps and a prayer led us to making it into a zeppelin instead. We worked whenever the massive creature wasn't watching us, which turned out to be rather often.
By the time we were ready to launch, we were fighting the clock. The Leviathan came for us before we were fully able to take off. I never got to see what it fully looked like, and I know from the fact my power only briefly stunned it that it was powerful. We were in serious danger of being dragged into the sea and likely drowned or forever stranded on the Lighthouse. Had it not been for Zane diving into the ocean, we'd have been done for.
Zane made it back onto the ship, and when he did, he said the reason he freed the beast was because no one deserved to be held captive, not even a monster. The way he said that reminded me of my dad. My dad had always aid the evil flowing through him was what made him the way he was. He was, in a way, held captive so tightly he could never hope to escape. It made me wonder, was the final battle going to free him from all of this? Would I do something to set him free, or would I hurt him, like I was trying to do with the Leviathan? Would I be able to do what Zane did, or was I trapped?
I didn't have much more time to think about it. We were on our way to the Dark Island, and I didn't have the chance to think about it anymore. My dad was on the horizon, and it was time for me to finally begin facing my destiny.
Zane finished listening to the recording Lloyd have given him. Lloyd hadn't ever told him he couldn't listen to the chapters he recorded on his own, and given that he'd listened to all the others ones in person it made sense. The recording, however, perplexed Zane, if only because it was strange this was the first chapter that Lloyd had recorded all on his own.
The comment about memories was what was making Zane wonder if it was the reason he'd done it alone. Zane never talked much about the memory switch, if only because by now it wasn't even apart of his system anymore. The others always were strange around the topic, given that it meant that his father had taken away Zane's choice of remembering him. He hadn't allowed Zane to move forward into his future remembering his past, why he was built, or anything. He'd thrown Zane out into the world, and let him stumble his way into his life.
It was less so the reality of what the switch was, and more so the comment on who Lloyd would have been if he hadn't had the memories of his father. Zane knew that knowing Garmadon was his father was what pained Lloyd the most of the Dark Island. It was the biggest source of pain for him during those events, and if he hadn't had any hesitation, then perhaps the final battle itself would never have happened the way it did.
Yet, that was a branch of thought Zane was hesitant to open. Lloyd wouldn't be the same person he was, so how would events play out? The goal of their time on the island had been partially around preventing the final battle from happening. An unfeeling Lloyd would change how Garmadon would approach everything. Even if somehow Lloyd ended up facing the Overlord as he did, Zane suspected Lloyd mentioning a certain revelation as the key to his True Potential. How could he have reached that, without the emotions that he had?
"Zane?" Pixel's voice snapped Zane out of a deep train of thought, "Zane, Lloyd has requested that we all arrive for the award ceremony for the Resistance's efforts. Are you presentable?" She trailed off as she saw the look in Zane's eyes, "Zane, something appears to be wrong, am I within my bounds to ask what it is?"
"It's just a thought, Pixel," Zane replied, standing up as he did, "Lloyd has asked me to help him in writing a book. He has some very unique opinions on what has happened in Ninjago's history. Some of them have given me insight into him that I previously would never have uncovered. It has led me to think about my own past, in some light, and how I've grown as a ninja."
"Perhaps I may be of some assistance?" Pixel asked curiously, her tone slightly worried, "I know that you have had issues with your identity in the past, if you are having those again, please let me know so I can-"
"It's nothing like that, my love," Zane reached out to take one of Pixel's hands, "If I were having issues like that, I would tell you right away. I promise."
"Thank you," Pixel tightened the grip between them, "You know that I am always here for you, right?"
"Always," Zane smiled, "Come, let us go to the others, we can talk about this after we've resolved this situation."
Pixel led Zane out of the room as he requested, holding his hand all the way. For now, Zane put aside the thoughts he had about Lloyd and his past, and instead turned to look towards the future.