One thing you have to know about Master Chen is that, even if he was holding an underground fighting tournament meant to entrap all of us, he knew how to give people something to talk about. I said it before, but I really want to reiterate here: I don't know how someone that was meant to be exiled onto an island was able to get that much money and resources to build what amounted to a completely themed palace filled with facilities to support some rather complicated and strange arenas.

Once we were on the island, yy father began to fill us in a bit more on Chen. Apparently, Chen had decided to 'side' with the Serpentine during the Serpentine Wars, marking him as a traitor to Ninjago. In exchange for a surrender from him and an agreement not to take action against him, Chen and his followers were exiled off to this island. My father spoke of him building up a 'criminal empire' which to me seemed to imply they somehow knew Chen was making all of this. The best guess I have is that part of Chen's surrender would have been invalid if my dad or Wu attempted to intervene, so they were willing to let things slide. I guess if Chen didn't leave the island, then it was okay for him to send his followers out for things?

Along with that, my dad revealed the reason why he'd taken the title of Lord Garmadon: it'd been given to him by Master Chen. During the time before I was born, my father had decided to seek out a different way of guidance. Since the venom was slowly corrupting him, he wanted to find a different way of fighting. Without my grandfather, my father and Wu were more or less secluded for however many years. He sought out Chen and was trained in his more aggressive style of fighting I saw him use before he was purified alongside Clouse. Both him being a Lord ad Clouse being hostile towards him was due to my father cheating during a training match when Chen declared the winner would be named Lord of Chen's estate. I always thought the 'Lord' bit was just him exaggerating, but it turned out he actually held claim to Chen's land. My dad implied that Chen had been a big motivation behind what he became when he finally and fully gave into the evil inside of him. I wish I knew before we got there just how important that really was.

Either way, Chen had an entire entrance ceremony laid out right for us. Now, most people would tell you that first impressions are everything. Most people would do their best to introduce themselves as a nice person, maybe with a handshake or by saying hi. Not Chen. Chen began by playing some sort of old-time cheesy music around the room where we were all sat, making us rise up for him, and lowering himself down from the ceiling on his personal chair. Just looking at him was… interesting. He was clearly the same age as my dad, but he was wearing far more elegant and darker robes, and I couldn't tell if he had hair and had woven it into the massive snake-skull headdress he wore at all times, or if he was bald. His voice was a lot higher than he initially looked to be, and his laugh sounded like he was sucking in a balloon.

His face, however, was something else. I don't know what it was about him that made me feel so off. It wasn't like he had some sort of messed up face or anything. His eyes had red paint around them, making them almost look like a snake, and he had a lot of facial hair. Something about looking at him altogether, however, told me that I couldn't trust him. No matter what he said, or what he tried to get me to do, I knew that I couldn't let my guard down around him for even a single minute.

Chen didn't waste time showing himself off. He was able to identify everyone in the room, and Garmadon in particular right off the bat. I thought that he would have made more of a big deal about it, having just heard that he'd apparently trained my father, but he mentioned it more like he was just ad libbing from a script…. Which, now that I think about it, he probably was. The way he talked to us made it feel impossible to tell how much of what he was saying was him playing some sort of role, given his big theatrical introduction, and what was actually him. For the record, it was all naturally him. Chen was a natural actor.

He explained to us what, on the surface, our tournament would look like. He showed us a jadeblade, the key to moving on in the tournament. Fights would revolve around the jadeblades, and by obtaining one we would win and stay in the tournament. Apparently, those things were carved out of the bones of Anacondrai and used by the generals as a sign of their power. Given the fact that he had so many of them, I'm not quite sure where he managed to get more Anacondrai in order to build them. He must have raided their tomb after I'd already opened it?

Of course, we were all more worried about what would happen if we lost, which my dad thankfully asked. After blowing my dad off and making his question out to be a joke -something that Chen was surprisingly good at- he only implied that we shouldn't lose. Since we were now on an island with only one way to get back -the boat- and how strange and eccentric Chen seemed to me… we weren't exactly impressed or swayed by his words. Something was up, and we knew it from day one.

That, however, was when he decided to split all of us up. Not only did he have an entire cult, but he had an entire squad of servants that my dad called Kabuki. By that point I was already so weirded out that I wasn't even thinking about the fact that he had so much influence to literally have all of these personal servants. It was a little funny in hindsight of my dad telling us to stay together as we were literally dragged apart to our own separate rooms. Yes, Chen had built and prepared separate rooms for all of us.

Once we were inside, I saw something on the bed. There was a note on top of a folded set of new robes that read 'For My Esteemed Guests' that was signed with a large C. Chen had made us all completely new robes, specifically for the Tournament of Elements. Now, I haven't talked much about our outfits so far, since we go through new ones so often. It feels like everytime there's a new threat, Wu has either made us new robes or we find new ones waiting for us. I don't know why, but I don't really like to question it that much.

However, something about Chen making us robes stood out. I can kinda see two reasons he did. The first one was actually pretty obvious: by the four of us all wearing the same style of robes, we stood out as a group among all of the other smaller competitors. Chen made sure that by us wearing them, the others would feel threatened by us. I think that was the intended effect, since the biggest issue we faced with the tournament was everyone else thinking we were ganging up on them all the time.

But… there was something more to it. I might be looking into this too much now, but all of the others were wearing different robes when we got to the island. None of us looked like we were together. Sure, we were ninja, but we were still divided. I was still pulling the team together. But… Chen made us robes that made us look whole again. We came back together under the goal of finding Zane. We'd of course lost a lot of our teamwork since we'd been out of commission for so long (and they were rusty since I was the only one that was still in training at the time), but that had been because none of them wanted to continue pushing on as a team in the first place. We were a team again, and working to reform it by finding Zane. So, for the first time, we were not only a team again in our goals, but in our look too.

But either way, I'd only gotten a little bit of time to admire my awesome room before we heard that weird song come from the phonograph again. Apparently, Chen didn't want to give us any time to actually settle in. I guess if he wanted to put us all on edge, he waited for the right time to do just that. My dad was actually kicked out of the building by Clouse, so we didn't get any good warning it was going to happen. Chen came over an intercom and gave us our instructions: he'd hidden jadeblades all over the building, and we had to find one and return it to his throne. He'd hidden one less blade than people. I was pretty impressed he coordinated all of that so quickly.

It was during this first round that I got my first taste of what the other elements could do. I found a blade inside of a nearby statue. I was so focused on getting it I let Ash trip me. When I got up and attacked him, he turned into smoke. He snuck off towards the blade while I ended up grappling with several of the others. I could tell they weren't exactly trained to fight the way I was, but I didn't want to turn my green power on them. I knew how much it could hurt, and it wasn't a good idea to be throwing that around.

While Griffin Turner, master of speed, went to steal a blade from Cole, I managed to throw most of them off and was about to go and claim by blade when something grabbed me. I turned to see that the carpet itself had reached up to attack me. It was like the snake designs had come to life and were strangling my leg. Neuro made a run for me during it. My dad explained that Clouse was using dark magic after the fight. My dad tackled him and stopped him long enough to let me claim the blade and race my way down to the throne. Once I locked the blade into the slot, I saw that a faceplate of me rotated on a big board nearby.

I didn't see much of what happened with the others. Cole apparently first had a blade stolen by Griffin, then was cheated out of one by Paleman, and finally ended up finding one under the table. He said he had just eaten a big meal and wasn't feeling good. Jay apparently fought Bolobo naked in his own room, and the less I say about that the better. The three of us managed to get out blades, and the conflict came down to Kai and Karlof.

None of us saw the fight, but Karlof was the one that brought the blade back. As he was gloating that he had won, however, Kai had found some tools and figured out that Karlof had his big metal gauntlets screwed together over his hands. Why, I don't know. But before Karlof could physically put the blade into the throne, Kai unscrewed his gauntlet holding the blade and put it in himself. This declared Kai as the winner.

I remember seeing Chen giving Kai the biggest smile out of all the ones he'd given us. He was honestly so entertained by the sudden change of events, I think it overpowered his desire to knock one of us out of the tournament so early. Chen made very clear what his motto was in this tournament: "Only one can remain." Chen then followed this up by dropping Karlof down a trapdoor in the blink of an eye. Right then, we knew if we lost, something bad was going to happen to us.

None of us felt good after that. Kai especially looked like he'd been punched in the gut. We'd all thought until then that we'd just be sent off the island and have to find our way back… apparently, there was more to it. Chen had set up a 24/7 buffet line for us of all food from his restaurant which I admit was a sweet deal. Chen allowed my dad to stay on the island with the promise that he wouldn't interfere with the tournament anymore, and in turn he promised Chen would keep his dark magic out of it. None of us really trusted that, but my dad said that he'd rather play by Chen's rules and stay to watch over us than let us brave this without him.

Now, while we were eating, Paleman came over and asked if we could join us. Jay told him off while we were stressing over this tournament, making him go away. I don't know why, but it was sort of the first sign to me that not everyone there was really going to be out to get us. We learned later that most of them were just like us really: young adults that had been given powers and forced to learn how to understand them. We were a bit younger than many of them, but they all weren't bad people. The tournament, however, was pitting us against each other.

In order to figure out what happened to Karlof, that night we decided to try to find a way to get inside Chen's operations. One thing you need to remember about Chen, is that he had an… unhealthy obsession with trapdoors. Literally anywhere you stood on the island could be a trapdoor. We all snuck our way into Cole's room, which took a lot of effort. Chen didn't want us to go snooping around. Cole found out while we were talking that his bed was rigged to actually act like a trapdoor by pushing a pillow and dropping him into the catacombs inside the island. I guess Chen decided he could silently get rid of us if he didn't like us. We all made sure to destroy that mechanism in our beds later just in case.

Now, it turned out that Chen not only had massive elaborate buildings with rooms that could configure to Jay's electricity or let Kai light fires wherever without burning up, but he had an entire system of tunnels that ran all over the island. It actually explained how he was able to clean the buildings without us ever seeing a cleaning crew. Come to think of it, anything weird that happened on the island was probably linked somehow to those tunnels. They weren't small tunnels, either: they were big enough for a snake that could swallow all four of us whole to go through.

We got a bit of an idea of Skylar's power when, while sneaking by her room, the others saw her using fire. For a little while there, Kai worried that he may have been related to her, which would have made his attraction to her… odd. I'd already mentioned that he'd white-knighted for her pretty hard, and after that, he'd been pretty flirty with her. In a way it was kinda nice that he had that happen, since it meant for a while we didn't have to see anymore of his poor attempts at romance. The fact that Skylar actually seemed to like them later on… well, there's someone for everyone, I guess.

Anyways. We made our way through the tunnels and soon found that all of the cultists we'd seen (until now we thought they were just Chen's allies) were going to a specific room. We stole some of their outfits and then used, of all things, chocolate to help paint on the big Anacondrai tattoos. Never let anyone tell you disguising yourself requires makeup, just a lot of ingenuity. We formed into the back of a massive group of the cultists bowing to a massive statue of an Anacondrai head, and Chen appeared.

The entire atmosphere of the place just felt… wrong. We were in this massive underground chamber that reminded me of the Serpentine headquarters Pythor had constructed, with all of us painted in snake tattoos chanting at Chen in some weird language while Chen stood over us. I'd never been apart of a cult before, but that was when we figured out what it was really quickly. The entire place was lit by torches and really dark at the same time. To start the ceremony, Chen had Karlof brought before him.

That was when we first saw Chen's big staff. Just looking at it made me feel sick inside. I didn't know why at the time, but now I know that it was there to help suck out elemental powers. There was a crystal inside that was apparently able to do that. I've seen the Time Blades now, so it wasn't as terrifying the second time. However, when you watched Karlof being held down as Chen held a staff to his head and declared that only one could remain while he sucked something straight out of Karlof's body as he screamed and fought back… it was honestly horrifying.

We learned what we needed to after that. Chen was stealing elemental powers. Sadly, our disguises began to fall apart, so we were forced to flee before we learned more. I wanted to get Karlof, but Chen had already sent him off to the 'factory.' Now, it turned out he was just making him labor away in his noodle factory, but it sounded a lot more sinister at the time. We were running away as fast as we could, though, so I guess it didn't matter.

That was when we saw it. I don't know where Clouse got such a big snake: my guess is that he used his dark magic on it. I don't really understand dark magic, or magic for that matter. I know that it's drawing energy from other realms to help fuel spells, but I'm not sure how you learn it without a spellbook or something else. Either way, that snake used its body to start to trap us inside the tunnels, so we ran our way back to the room.

Just before we were able to get back, the snake managed to bite Jay and tear a small hole in his pants. We thought at the time that Jay had just torn it during one of his matches. This, however, meant that Clouse was given confirmation that we had gone snooping around. Chen had it out for us after that point, which I'm not sure he needed that much of a reason for. He just needed us to be in his tournament. If we broke the rules, he could use that to justify capturing us.

We agreed at that point not to go looking down there again. After that close call, we realized it was far too dangerous to try. Chen was stealing our powers. I had already had my power taken away from me once before, so I don't think I was as terrified as the others were. After you'd already had something ripped out of you once, having it happen again only made you as nervous as you would be going into any dangerous situation. I could tell they were seriously shaken up though, and Kai told us we shouldn't do that again. We all agreed. We were going to play by Chen's rules and stay in the tournament long enough to figure out a way to get to Zane.

Our first round had finished with us and Chen tied. It wouldn't stay that way for long.

"Mind if I say something?" Cole spoke up as Lloyd finished.

"Huh?" Lloyd blinked in confusion, caught off guard by the question after his usual way of talking down with Zane, "Uh… sure? I'm pretty sure I didn't miss anything."

"Nah, it was about what you were saying with all of us not being a team and all that," Cole explained, "I uh, don't think any of us ever really apologized for just, leaving you alone like that."

"You don't have to apologize," Lloyd countered, "You guys were hurting over Zane. We all were. I don't blame us for breaking apart. What matters is we got back together."

"That still doesn't mean I didn't just up and leave you guys and go off into the woods to cut trees to try to get away from being a ninja," Cole pointed out, "We're a family and a team, I shouldn't have done that. I should … I should have been there with you. I don't even know why I did all that… I don't even think I looked good as a lumberjack!"

"Uh… I don't think it mattered how you looked? Jay was the one that needed to worry about that," Lloyd pointed out with a coy smile.

"It wasn't cool of me," Cole put his hands in his lap, "And I didn't exactly make it easy either. All I did when I got there was argue with Jay and overeat! I know we were all worried about Zane and everything but, it still wasn't right of me to not try to make an effort."

"You made up for it," Lloyd told him, "It doesn't matter how long it took us to get there. We got there. You made a big sacrifice too, which, I was planning on getting to next time. After that you'll get caught up with everything else that happened while you were down there in the factory."

"I'll let you know more about that before you do the next one, case you wanna mention it," Cole smirked, "I made sure I was fighting Chen too! I ate as much merchandise as I could get my hands on while I was down there. They don't even know how much money they lost to me!"

"I'm sure they don't," Lloyd smiled awkwardly, "Well, I would like to know. I've gotten the gist of it but it'll help provide some context. I've only ever really talked about things that involved me. I mean, it's my autobiography, after all."

"No sweat," Cole stretched, "You wanna go work out?"

"I was planning on doing some training after this," Lloyd shrugged, "Sure, why not?"

"Awesome. I'm gonna help you work up to bigger weights," Cole flexed his muscles, "Zane said you normally need time to cool off after these things, and what better way is there other than lifting?"

"Hitting things until they break?" Lloyd offered with a chuckle.

"Uh… yeah, but weights work too!" Cole shook his head, "I just figured I could help you out, you know? Kai isn't really into it and Jay spends all his time on cardio. And well, Zane can lift anything he wants without effort-"

"I'll go with you, Cole," Lloyd stood up, "Come on, let's get going. Those weights aren't gonna lift themselves."

"Sweet," Cole followed after him, "Trust me, you won't regret it!"