While I love my dad, I can't say that he was a very forgiving teacher.
After we'd managed to get far enough away from any major city we were out on our own, we spent the first night making a camp. My father decided that we would only make a camp to stay at for a full night every two days, and on those other days we would simply sleep for small amounts during the day so we could keep moving at night. I found this odd at first, but it taught me how to quiet my mind enough to sleep in almost any situation, so in truth it was a rather worthwhile experience.
It wasn't until we had built a full tent and got the fire going that it actually hit me that this was the first time I was alone with my father. I'd helped him build his new Monastery, yes, and I'd spent a bit with him after he'd been purified, but this was the first time we were actually alone together. We weren't focusing on some task that was taking up our time, we weren't fighting, we were just a father and son, out where nobody could bother us. And when that happened… I realized that it was going to be the first time I truly got to talk to my dad like this.
Since we were alone, I felt the urge to ask him a lot of things. I tried to ask him about what it was like for him growing up, about his father, but he said that he didn't want to talk much about his past. He'd spent so much of his childhood being slowly poisoned by the Devourer, so I understood that. He told me that he'd open up and tell me what I wanted to know in a bit, but to ask about something else. That kinda left me at a loss, since that was the easiest thing I could think of asking him about. I wanted to know more about who the First Spinjitzu Master was, what it was like growing up, how he met my mother, those sorts of things. I wouldn't learn many of these things until a long while later.
We spent a long time by that fire in silence. I felt bad, since this was the first time that I was actually going to get the chance to talk to him. I felt guilty that I couldn't think of anything to say! I couldn't even just open a conversation. It was so easy to talk to him when we were on the run, doing things, but when we had nothing in front of us, I was just kinda at a loss for words.
So he broke the silence by asking me about how I was. I started to tell him I was okay, but I stopped myself. Because I wasn't fine. I had just been forced to flee the very guy that I'd thought I destroyed. I was angry that the Digilord was back, confused about my new Golden Power and why he wanted it, and wondering what he was thinking. I was thinking a lot of things at the time. I tried to think of some way to tell him that without just blurting it all out, but in the end I sort of rambled my way through it to him without thinking.
After I finished doing all of that, my dad stood up and walked over to me. I figured Wu would have probably smacked me on the head for thinking too much, but my dad instead put his hand on my shoulder and told me that what I was feeling wss natural. It was a natural feeling for me to feel angry and confused over why someone I thought was gone was back. I told him that Wu said a ninja shouldn't let his personal feelings get in the way, and that me feeling like this, wasn't what a ninja should feel like.
My dad said something that I wasn't expecting. He asked me how I felt when I first vanquished the Overlord. I told him what I felt: powerful, angry, determined and ready to end it all. When I finished saying all of that, he told me that was all exactly what I should feel. My emotions were part of who I was, and while I had to learn how to control them, to fully suppress them would mean that I wasn't making decisions the way I should. When I fought the Overlord, I made a decision to channel my emotions into letting me finally see who I was meant to be. But what I did was allow myself to use my emotions at that point. I had made a choice to use them.
Right now, I was angry at the Digilord. But as he talked, I realized that I was angry at myself. I thought I'd finished it. I was upset that my job wasn't over, upset that I hadn't done my duty, and upset I hadn't thought that he could come back. I thought my job was over, and wanted to move on from it. I had thought my adventures as a ninja were over, and I'd get to hang up the hood.
That was when my dad actually did hit me with his staff. I was upset at first, but he told me that if I thought that my journey was over after the Overlord, that was the sign of how far I still had to go. Threats would always arise in Ninjago, he said, and that I took an oath when I became the Green Ninja to help defend the land. No matter what happened to me, I'd have to be there to help defend it. I was confused at first, but the more he talked, the more I started to get what he was saying. I was being selfish to think that I was going to be done protecting Ninjago, after all.
I think to try and help me get my thoughts straight, he told me about how he and Wu first learned Spinjitzu, and how their dad had been the proudest the two ever saw him when they first showed it off to him. He told me that he felt that same pride when he saw me as the Golden Ninja, the sun shining behind me as I landed and embraced him. That the first night that we spent together, he hadn't ever been able to stop smiling embracing his son again. He told me how much he loved me, how much potential I had, and how I would only continue to grow no matter what. I would grow into a man, and that he was going to help me grow into that man.
I went to sleep that night feeling more confident than I had since this all began. In the span of two days, my entire life had changed again. Everything was spiralling. But being out there with my dad, helped give me something to latch onto. Something that I could really grapple and run with. I just wish I'd known that he was going to be an even harder teacher than Wu.
I was woken up from my sleep before the sun had even come up and forced to break down camp so we could keep going. In order to build my stamina, my dad made me run with him for nearly two hours, only allowing me three breaks that I would need to choose wisely. Each day that we were out there, the day would start the same. We would wake up and get running. It wasn't a very pleasant way to start the day, but I'm proud to say by the end of the two weeks we spent out there, I only needed to take one break.
After we'd finished running, he took me through basic training drills and exercises. According to him, I had to learn how to keep my heartrate up and stay alert for longer periods of time. I wasn't very keen on it, but he wasn't about to let me stop and think about it for very long. I always had to keep running, training, and working. By the time that we even stopped for breakfast, I was ready to collapse.
Each day was a completely different lesson too. One day the lesson was about learning how to control my breathing and such. We climbed to the top of a mountain and stayed in an area where the air was thin, and I had to work hard to keep my breathing under control so I could focus long enough to climb up. He claimed that if I learned how to breathe properly, I'd be able to do amazing things. I was so hallucinatory I swear I saw him punch a frog just to prove his point. I ended up passing out at some point and having to do so two more times just to be able to last up there long enough for my dad to declare I could move onto the next lesson.
One that I remember the most vividly was when my dad forced me to balance a massive stack of rocks on one foot. He claimed that everything in Ninjago was in balance, and that I had seen what happened when it was out of balance myself. Since Ninjago had leaned too far into machines, it had allowed the Digilord to abuse that new balance and return. If I were going to learn how to defend Ninjago, I needed to learn the importance of balance. Of course, he was also randomly throwing rocks at me to force me to completely rethink how I was standing at any given point, which didn't exactly make it any easier for me.
My dad stressed to me during that lesson that I had some sort of True Potential that I hadn't unlocked. I still don't know fully what he meant. I had beaten the Overlord, and I still feel I unlocked my True Potential when I first defied him on top of the Garmatron. That was when I felt all that power for the first time, after all. But I have a bit of an idea what he meant. I mean, the First Spinjitzu Master literally shaped Ninjago. He created everything we walk on. If I had his power, that meant I could one day do the same thing. I can't say that I wouldn't like to one day see what that would have been like.
Still, at the time I couldn't move mountains like my dad wanted, so we were forced to instead go over them. Every day he'd tell me that I could shape the land around me if I wanted to. When I was able to carve a mountain with just my mind to let us go through them, we wouldn't have to keep going around them. It was awesome to think about doing it, but actually trying was hard. When you lift weights, there's always that one hurdle you have to push past before you can actually push it up. Each time I tried, I could feel the hurdle, but actually trying to overcome it felt impossible. I mean, I was trying to literally move mountains!
So each day we hiked. My dad wasn't one for long conversations as we walked, more so giving me advice and talking about how the balance in Ninjago was important. Wu had talked about balance before, but when my dad did I always felt like he was talking from someplace more personal. After all, he'd literally helped destroy the balance and corrupt Ninjago. And when he did talk about it, it felt like he understood something about it that I didn't.
When we think of balance, he said, we think about just one side of it. Ninjago is a land of light, and so all we think about is the light side of the balance. But, if you truly wanted to understand the balance, you have to see the dark side too. If you focus on one side too much, you tip the balance that way. Ninjago leaned so far into technology that it allowed the Digilord to rise. But the fact everyone relied on it so much in New Ninjago City didn't mean that we had to get rid of all of it, just that we had to learn how to actually pace ourselves with it.
I think that's something that helped me to understand myself a little better. We always talk about our flaws, right? We focus on the fact that we have to get better. But if we focus on just erasing our flaws, then we don't really think about why we have them in the first place. Yes, it's important to work on improving yourself, but someone that sees the flaws in themselves and uses them to their advantage is the person that's stronger. My dad knew that. He knew what it was like to be evil, corrupted, completely flawed, and even now he was quick to anger. But he never let that anger, or his guilt, consume him. He used it to help him understand himself, to understand everything more. I hope one day, I can be as talented as that.
One moment I remember well was when we came to a broken bridge, and my dad said that I could form a bridge for us. I tried, but I wasn't able to do it. Moving rocks wasn't the problem, since I'd learned how to use earth when I was training to become the Green Ninja, but there was something just, different about all of it. Something felt off. I think it was because I wasn't just moving earth now, but I was moving Ninjago when I did it. Even just building a rock bridge across a gap felt like something incredibly powerful. I guess, the easiest way I can compare it is like, if you change using a weapon? Using two katanas is going to be different from using a spear. If you switch to the spear, you'll have to start from square one. But in this case, the spear was the power to literally reshape Ninjago, so it felt like a lot to learn. If I could master it, I could do literally anything.
I ended up simply using my dragon to create a bridge out of the Golden Power instead. Dad was disappointed in me, but he recognized that it actually worked. I had a long way to go, yeah, but when I told him that I wasn't going to be the First Spinjitzu Master, he accepted that. I had to learn how to blaze my own path, and he got that. Sure, maybe I was taking the easy way sometimes, but that didn't mean that I was going to turn out wrong or anything. Wu would have just smacked me with his staff and told me to try it again.
Though, as a punishment for that, my dad didn't let me use the Golden Dragon anymore. If I wanted my power to obey me, I needed to be stronger. A lot of getting stronger is actually improving on your fundamentals. Of course, he did this right before we had to climb a massive mountain that was nearly straight up, so it definitely felt like a punishment. What would have taken five minutes was nearly five hours of nearly constant climbing. Once we got to the top, we'd be able to rest for the night.
I learned an important lesson on that climb. We found the nest of a Ravture, specifically with a baby inside. I didn't understand at that time that a Ravture baby would have to learn how to fly by falling out of the nest. If we were closer to the ground, I wouldn't have freaked out when it did and grabbed it. We were already above the clouds at that point, so it wasn't like me trying to save it was me doing something completely unwarranted. But the fact I touched it meant that when the father came back to check on its baby, well, it was after us
My dad was the one that it attacked first. I tried to use my power to save him, but my dad continued to insist upon me needing to learn not to rely on the power for it. I thought at first he was perhaps pulling a Wu and trying to martyr himself, but he had every intention of surviving. So when he did fall, I was scared. I knew that I couldn't catch him on my dragon in time, and I was still trying to protect the baby. I couldn't get to him in time.
So I did what he'd been telling me to do all day. I reached out, and felt that hurdle again. Before, I'd been trying to just power through it. This time, however, I felt the need to actually save him. And so I did. I reached out, and felt the world around me. I didn't just ask the world to save him, I commanded it. I wasn't talking to it, I was more… feeling to it. I was telling it through my fear to save him. And that's when I heard the rumbling. I saw a massive hand made of mountains reaching up and carrying my dad up to safety. I had moved a mountain.
That's when I realized what I needed to do. The Golden Power, wasn't like my Green Power. It wasn't a power that I could just mindlessly call on and use like the other ninja did. It wasn't tied to me, or the elements. It was tied to everything. I saw the Ravture baby finally fall again, but this time I hesitated to save it. And when I did, I saw it fly. If I saved it again, I'd be depriving it of learning how to fly. And so when it soared up to reunite with its father, I understood why my connection to the Golden Power was so important. It was tied to Ninjago as a whole. It was tied to the land, the life, the people in it.
To test it, I willed the mountain to form stairs for us to climb down the other side. Being able to do that felt amazing. I felt like I finally was on track to becoming the Ultimate Spinjitzu Master. It was like I'd finished one race and just been shown the next race with a reward I never knew I wanted. I was going to be able to do things nobody in Ninjago could ever dream about!
...
Remember how I said that destiny was cruel?
Well, this was one of those moments when I felt it. The ninja sent the Falcon to us while we were descending the mountain, telling us that not only had the Digilord turned Wu into a cyborg, but he'd been revived by some stranger that was a Serpentine. We'd knocked out the power in Ninjago, but that hadn't even stopped him. We needed to get farther away, get lost even further. So my dad decided we'd go to Hiroshi's Labyrinth.
While we made our way there, with my newfound abilities, we made it there in only a day. I learned I could control water that way too. I reshaped a massive river to let us go by, then created a bridge across a massive ravine that just the day before I would have barely been able to do. It was somewhat exhausting, but my dad encouraged me to keep using it. The more familiar I got with it, the more I'd be able to control, the more I'd be able to do. Everytime I used it, each change I made to the world, the closer I felt to my own power.
Hearing that the Digilord was still out there, however, was infuriating though. I thought by taking out the power, we'd be able to just waltz in and take him out. Nothing was ever that simple. Dad told me that I had to protect the Golden Power. The stronger I got using it, the more people would want it. He even implied one day that my friends could even try to take it one day. One of the hardest people to fight are your friends. The thought that one day my friends could turn on me, try to take it all from me, it hurt me. I used to think it was just a distant dream. Now that Harumi happened… I understand even more what my dad meant.
The labyrinth was a massive jungle, and a dense one too. Thankfully, my new powers let me command the plant life to obey us and clear us a path so we didn't need to kill anything. Having the power made me feel more attuned to the life around me, oddly enough. If you think of Ninjago as like, this one big massive life of its own, then the Golden Power is me making changes to that life. So I felt more connected to it, more unique to it. We spent an entire day there, just taking in the beauty of it all. If you ever get the chance to go, I say take it. We even managed to find the 'jewel' of the labyrinth. It was beautiful.
Beautiful for all of a minute. We had literally just gotten there when we suddenly heard someone coming after us. When we'd talked to the falcon, it'd allowed for the stranger to hear we were going to Hiroshi's Labyrinth, and it seemed that I'd given them a path straight towards us by using my power over them. That was when I first saw what they'd done to Wu.
Wu, like Borg, had been turned into a full cyborg. Now, how this was possible I wasn't sure. My dad even commented on the fact that the two always seemed to fall on opposite sides. He was scary to look at, with a black beard, metal hat, machinery covering most of his face and wires and tubes plugged into him. I am certain that I remember that he had wires and tubes plugged into him. I mention that since as you all know today, he doesn't have those wires and tubes. I'm still not sure how that was reversed. It, was rather weird when he just, suddenly no longer had them.
My dad said he'd hold them off while I ran. I used my power to create a bike and fled all the way to the edge of the jungle until I reached an actual cliff. When I did, the mechanical dragon was back. While I was stunned, the Nindroids overpowered my father and managed to get him onboard the dragon relatively quickly.
That's when I heard the Digilord again. He told me that if I didn't submit to him, my father would fall. They had him over the cliff, and at the time I wasn't thinking of the fact there was water underneath. I used to think I was dumb for not realizing there was water, but Zane told me that you could easily snap your neck if you fell into water from a big enough height. So my fear at that moment was justified.
I wasn't ready to just give up that easily, though. Even if I knew that it would just strengthen them, I knew I could knock that dragon right out of the sky. All I had to do was snap its wings off. So I started to charge my power. I was so focused on saving my dad, on my anger at the Digilord, that I never even heard something coming up from behind me. Something slithered around me, and my powers cut out. That's when I heard his voice again.
It's strange. None of us ever considered that Pythor could have been alive. Wu had made it out, and the two had been eaten at the same time. Pythor was the stranger, and he said that he'd been digested before Wu, so he was now bleached white. The other ninja figured it out from Skales, but I was the first one to see him. Honestly, what confuses me now is how he fit his giant neck inside that tiny hood of his. There wasn't even physically enough space inside that hood for it!
As if to taunt me further, the Digilord ordered my father thrown off anyways. I saw him hit the water, and the Nindroids dragged me onto the dragon just fast enough I didn't see him resurface. All of the time we'd spent running, all of the power I'd just unlocked, was gone just like that. When I was loaded onto that dragon, it would be the last time I would ever have access to the Golden Power. Even as my dad began to swim after us, I knew it was over.
It was the last time I would ever feel the power that slipped through my hands.
"Done," Lloyd sighed, "I still don't like talking about that one."
"Why's that?" Zane asked as he logged the audio file and began the transcription, "Your power?"
"Well, yeah, that," Lloyd nodded, "But it just… reminds me that I never spent a lot of time with my father."
"You refer to the amount of time that you spent in total with him before Chen's Island, yes?" Zane inquired.
"Yeah, exactly," Lloyd sighed, "It's… It's not like I didn't make time for him. I tried to spend all the time I could with him. But after what happened to you and all the ninja broke up, I had to do a lot of things to keep Ninjago safe… I didn't spend enough time with him. And, even the time I did spend, was always while we were in danger."
"I see," Zane paused, "Might I offer my opinion on this matter?"
"Yeah, of course," Lloyd smiled, "I appreciate it when you do."
"Time that is spent with someone you care about is independent of the circumstance," Zane bowed his head, "I cherish the time that I spent with my own father during our reunion, regardless of the fact that we were dealing with the ultimate evil. I do not see any of the conversations we had as tainted by that. I simply keep the memories of us sacred and keep myself happy with those. Does that perhaps mean any thing to you, Lloyd?"
"I, think so," Lloyd nodded, "You're saying that, I spent time with my dad, and as long as I spent time with him that means I was able to have him in my life."
"Precisely," Zane agreed, "Thinking of it on those terms is a way to separate the reality of a situation from the emotions and lessons you gained from it. We all learned things through hard times, but we mustn't let what we learned make us upset to recall it. We take what we have and move forward with it. Remembering things with emotion is important, but to let it cloud our past is where we begin to fall apart. That, at least, is how I have come to see it."
"You really are pretty wise Zane," Lloyd frowned, "I… realized that I never mentioned your dad in my chapters. Maybe I should go back and add something about him?"
"What would you like to add?"Zane asked curiously, "He passed on when his time came. He lived a wonderful life and he loved me. I will miss him, but I do not carry any regrets when it comes to him."
"It was just, so sudden!" Lloyd sat up, "It, it was like we never really knew him that long. He had that elixir, but it just wore off? It felt wrong when we learned he had died. He was only with us for so long and, it feels wrong that he just died like that!"
"That is why we should remember the time we spent with him and not regret not having more,"Zane informed him, "I miss my father. He gave me life, I can never thank him enough for that. But when he passed on, he knew it was his time. Yes, it seems unfair and strange when he did, but that is a reminder that we all must cherish our time. We must make the most of it, and make a legacy that is worth remembering. That is the lesson that his passing has taught me."
"I… don't think I could have said that any better myself," Lloyd smiled gently, "Thanks. Do you wanna go get something to eat now? That one kinda took awhile."
"I believe dinner would be good to have around now," Zane closed his eyes, "I will send a message to the others."
"Sweet," Lloyd stood up, "Oh! Actually, after dinner, Kai and I are going out to buy some new games and controllers for the console Jay has to buy us."
"That was quite a sight," Zane recalled, "I've never seen Jay so completely drained before. I would suggest you be quite careful reminding him of this. Gaming is his hobby, after all."
"I know, I know… I didn't even know he could rage like that," Lloyd shuddered, "If he was half that angry in battle, I don't even know what would happen…"
"Best not to think about it then," Zane pointed out, "I will join you, I could use some time to escape."
"Sweet!" Lloyd beamed, "Come on, let's go eat."