Of every single horrible thing that I have to thank for Chen, learning how to rollerskate is probably the oddest. I know, it's weird to thank someone for forcing you to rollerskate in Thunderblade at one in the morning while under threat of having your powers stripped away and then taken to some sort of 'factory,' but I learned a lot that day. It's not even something that's even that useful, really. I was named the new Thunderblade champion, a title that I still hold to this day, so I guess that's neat.
It happened just after the match of Skylar versus Jacob, Amber versus Sound. It's actually kinda important that I mention now that Skylar was the master of Amber, since it paved the way for Kai to stop thinking that they were potentially related. It was something that I knew he had on his mind, given how attracted he was to her. It wasn't until recently that I was able to understand how that actually felt for someone… and also know what it was like for someone to be manipulating you the entire time. You know, come to think of it, both Skylar and Harumi romanced the two of us knowingly until they were able to get the upper hand on us and betray us. The only difference is Kai can still go see Skylar, and she wasn't as evil as she really seemed all along. He learned it in the first match after Cole was knocked out of the tournament.
The match was an interesting one, but it was also the most tame in terms of action. It was a game of cat and mouse between Jacob -Master of Sound, whom I not only learned was blind but that my dad had met him before, and Skylar. The arena was set up with several pots that had a jadeblade inside one of them. Skylar had both a bow and arrow and a spear on her, while Jacob just had his guitar. I realized after a few minutes of watching them that Jacob was strumming his guitar in order to see the area around him, like some sort of like echolocation. Skylar, meanwhile, was trying to avoid that and attack him to give herself more time.
Somehow, Kai was late to the match, which was odd given how much he cared about Skylar. When he entered, he managed to, literally, step on everyone's toes getting to us in our seats. With the numbers of the elemental masters in play whittling down, it became obvious that a clear divide was forming between all of us. It didn't help that I was still reeling over the fact that we'd just lost Cole and hadn't made any progress in finding Zane. We knew that Chen was always watching us, and we had to keep playing along. Given that he often had these weird trapdoors hidden almost everywhere in the entire island, it wouldn't surprise me if he would be able to snag us at any moment. But more than that, he had some sort of plan, and we needed to figure out what that plan was. We couldn't just go confront him about it, and had to keep pretending that we didn't know. Yet, everytime I saw Chen, I felt like he was just giggling that he knew our little secret. I didn't realize just how true that was until that night.
Skylar won by breaking a hole open in the wall, causing Jacob to get confused and for her to finally realize which pot had the blade. Kai was… very enthusiastic about the fact she won. Again, I didn't understand the feeling of being head over heels for someone until recently. I guess I can forgive Kai for his actions, kinda. I mean, he never made any sort of move on Skylar, or did anything to ever get to her. A lot of people say Kai is dumb, but he never did anything that could have been seen as creepy. I don't even think he even tried to talk to her unless the two saw each other. All things considered…. he was pretty cool about the whole thing. But this was mostly after my dad confirmed she was the master of Amber.
Skylar… I have a lot to say about her. It's nothing bad about her. She's a hard worker and incredibly easy to talk to. You don't have to worry about what you say around her, she'll likely just throw a joke out at you if you mess up. She also has brought Chen's Noodle house up several stars in terms of food quality. He was great before, but now that it wasn't being made by slave labor, she turned that place from 'pretty good' to 'must eat' in just a few months. I guess what always gets me, is how odd it was that she was only ever got involved with things recently.
We can all count on Skylar to help clean up some small crime around Ninjago City. She's worked with Samurai X before, but she seems… content to be in that noodle shop. Now, I'm not saying that's a bad choice. I actually think it's pretty neat that she does that! But… I realize that she actually could be incredibly powerful if she tried to be. There didn't seem to be any sort of limit on how many powers she could hold. Chen even specifically later used her for that very purpose. Whenever something big happens in the city, though, she never gets involved.
Like, for example, during the Vermillion raids on Ninjago, where they stole all that metal, she was in the city at the time. I know she was, cause Kai went and talked to her during all of that. Not only that, but Nya too. Skylar seemed perfectly happy to be in that noodle shop. Kai said that Nya made a comment about it and rattled her, but she still decided to stay in the shop. Even when the city was under attack, the only time she came to help us was when the city was under Emperor Garmadon's rule. I get why she did, since it meant her business was taken out… but even then, that was the only time.
This might sound strange to say, but I've noticed that whenever powerful people tend to get involved with us, they often don't get involved again. Skylar, who can use any element she wants to if she can find the right person, decides to run a noodle shop and stay out of any conflict unless it hurts her business. All of the other elemental masters all left to go back home, which I get… but after they arrived to help the Resistance, they were all captured and taken out, almost as soon as they got there. When Master Yang got involved with Cole, he was left behind as a spirit in the temple (which I still wonder where it is). If Jay's wild claims about us having an entire adventure that got erased from time are true, we befriend an entire pirate crew… which were then un-befriended. Even recently, when the others met the Dragon Hunters, Faith said she'd stay behind in the First Realm and help them there instead of coming to Ninjago (we will get to them a lot later). Whenever we make allies, they get… sidelined, I guess.
I guess that comes to mind now since this is when Skylar became important. But, back to the match. After Chen had captured Jacob -and I admit, seeing them fall like that made my gut churn whenever I saw it knowing what happened next- he decided to pull a bit more manipulation on us. He told everyone for their participation he'd give them all extra jewels, only to then say he was instead taking away our fancy rooms for the night due to Jay and Cole. Chen really wanted to have a target on our backs. On top of that, we'd all have to sleep in the chow house. I realize now why he did that, but after that I knew none of them were going to help us. It stung a lot that Neuro was included in that, given that he knew about Chen now.
That night, while we were sleeping, my dad told me that I needed to focus on maintaining my enemies. By strengthening my bond with my friends, I strained those with the others. Given that it was a tournament, that was to be expected, but I'd already learned from my dad that they could fight a lot harder if they were angry. They were more likely to become a much larger threat than being just competitors if we weren't careful.
We saw that in action that night. Clouse woke us all up and had the cultists strap rollerskates to all of us. My back was hurting from the bed, I'd gotten little sleep, and to top it all off, our plan to sneak around and try to find where Chen was keeping Cole and Zane was ripped apart. And as if that wasn't enough, the match was between me and Chamille.
Now, I'd never even heard of Thunderblade before. Apparently, the game was that we were given a jadeblade each, and had to do laps around the arena. Whoever did more laps with their blade, won. That was easy to understand -why it had to be on rollerskates I guess was just Chen being Chen- but what sealed the deal was the fact that Chen allowed everyone else to pick a side to help. Everyone but Jay and Kai decided to help Chamille. My dad had said that we were making enemies, and now it was coming to light. Chen wanted me out of this tournament and soon, and he'd picked the best way to do it.
Chamille was someone I hadn't paid much mind to. She didn't really have a power that was 'flashy' or had fought before now. She'd always been in the background, and I think that was by her nature. The first thing she did was disguise as Kai and talk herself up. She must have been studying him, since I didn't even realize it until the actual Kai came up behind me and tripped over his skates.
Chen's plan was really simple. He told the others that they could fight for whatever team they wanted to. So, of course, that meant everyone by Kai and Jay went to help Chamille. Given that Kai couldn't skate, I basically only had Jay on my team.
The only reason I knew how to skate was because I'd done it when I was out partying with Pythor the first time. I'm completely serious. One of the things that we did was go and learn how to rollerskate. It mainly requires you to have good balance and keep a good forward speed going, so once I became a ninja it clicked for me pretty well. Now, as for why I took Pythor skating… I'd wanted to see if he'd figure out a way to skate with that giant tail of his. So, not only did I have all of the other elemental masters against me, I was being forced to fight for my power and my spot in the tournament while Chen was shouting to us that he wanted Chamille to win.
Once we started, Chamille and I were neck and neck. She was one of the people there that seemed to actually know how to fight, since she was able to block me pretty much whenever she wanted. The race was a battle between her, the other masters, and me. She refused to let me get a lead. I thought about trying to use my power -which oddly Chen has called me master of power and energy before- but I knew the second I tried I wouldn't be able to control myself. Later on, Kai did the same thing with his fire, and he nearly went into a wall. I would have done that, but also gone through the wall.
So I was forced to just rely on keeping up with her. While I was racing, the others started to fight. We were both so fast we started to outlap the others, who immediately blocked me off. That was when I started to realize just how much this entire thing was going to be stacked against me. It didn't help that the second Jay got me an opening to go through, Kai grabbed me and knocked us both down! In the span of about ten seconds I was put down a lap, and that was just at the start!
Okay, so not only were all the others masters out to get me, but Chamille told Shade to literally strike me in the back! If he'd had a knife, he'd literally have stabbed me in the back! And then, on top of that, Chen started to use all of his stupid buttons to start raising and lowering platforms all over the track, just to knock me down again. I know that he wanted me out, but at this point he might as well have just opened a trapdoor and taken me out that way, since he was just piling it on!
Speaking of piling it on, Griffin decided to grab Jay, accelerate him all the way around the track, and throw him into me. Like, sure, it actually helped knock my back into place again, but at that point it was just completely ridiculous. And then Chen released a buggy, a gigantic big brown snake and spiky buggy, onto the tracks just to let Chamille hang on and outlap me even more! It was getting more and more hopeless by the second, and I was just trying my best to keep up and watch my back!
This happened a bit later, but as if to say that even when things started to go right they weren't going to get better, I offered Chamille a chance to stand with us against Chen. I reached out my hand and told her that we could all win, together. And not only did she pull me out of a moving buggy, but she didn't even take it for herself! She spouted Chen's line about how 'only one can remain' and then just kept going!
Oh! And just to add to that, at the very end when I was about to win, Chen started to rig the score that I would lose by total laps, even if I was going to outlap Chamille by the end! And Clouse was going to try to attack me with dark magic too. Had my dad not leapt on him, he would have probably just ended the entire match right there. I know he didn't like me, I know he wanted me out, but he couldn't have just been… a little less obvious?!
The only reason that I won was because Jay and Kai suggested that we try to tell the others about Chen. I was so annoyed, in pain and tired at that point I was willing to try anything, anything at all. I put on a smile and told the others that it wasn't too late to make a difference or, something like that. I don't even remember… it was something really silly I'm sure. Either way, Neuro decided that was the right moment to say that we were telling the truth. He said he waited so long because he wanted to be on the 'winning side.' I wanted to both punch him and thank him at the same time. I didn't say anything.
That was when Kai and Skylar took the buggy that was still on the track and gave it to me. It, for some reason, turned into this really nice green buggy with golden swords and all sorts of things on it. I just poured a little bit of my power into it to charge up the engine, and it transformed. I… don't actually know what happened. Honestly, I forgot that I did that. I don't know how to do that and, I guess it was just at the moment? I never saw that buggy again… or, maybe one more time. It was, kinda random. But, that was when I managed to catch up with Chamille in laps despite Chen's meddling and she dragged me out.
Once I got up, we were almost out of time. The two of us were right there, fighting with each other. Whenever I get really into a fight, I don't remember that much. I was so focused on pushing her back, I wasn't planning out my next move. I was just fighting her, and it wasn't much beyond that. The others had fallen so far behind they couldn't interfere anymore. I, actually think this was the only time I ever used the jadeblade as an actual weapon. The next time I was thinking, the game was over.
The look on Chen's face when I revealed I'd managed to knock Chamille's blade away was worth it. Almost. On top of that, Skylar had used gravity to knock down my score to read that I had 106 laps. I don't know if that's official or not, but if that is true then I am technically the world recorder holder for most Thunderblade laps. Not that I've ever done that again. Chen was so angry he screamed at us, saying that I'd cheated. I was terrified that he might actually decide that I lose right then and there.
Thankfully, our goal to make friends paid off. The others said that if I lost, they'd withdraw from the tournament. Chen couldn't steal our powers if we weren't willing to fight. Since we still had so many of us in the tournament, we could take Chen and everyone there if he tried to fight us. So, out of rage, he instead declared Chamille as the loser. Watching her go down after all of that stuff she pulled… it was both really satisfying, and a bit gut wrenching, since I knew she was going to lose her powers now. I get what Kai was saying when he felt bad for Karlof.
It felt like we'd made progress in the tournament. We had an alliance going. We could now force Chen to play to us, to make sure he didn't try anything like what he wanted to do to me. If the others didn't' believe us, they wouldn't have raised any objection to Chen dropping me out of the tournament. Now… we had something. We could finally start to work our way towards Zane, as long as we had the alliance on our backs.
This is where Chen's real genius comes into play. Chen doesn't just let you think that you've won. You might have actually pulled one over on him. But the first that he'll do is set his sights to tearing you apart. He takes what you thought was your strength and then makes it your biggest weakness. And as soon as you start to have that happen, you don't know what's happening until it's done. He'd already turned the fact we were a team into our weakness, making us both compete in the tournament and put us at a disadvantage to keep us down. He now was going to make it so whatever we did, we'd lose.
Shade, the master of Shadow, at some point dueled Tox, master of Poison, and knocked her out of the tournament. It really happened really quickly. I don't even remember the match, given how fast it was. Chen had finally, after changing around the bracket, gotten us through the first round. There were only eight of us left: myself, Kai, Jay, Shade, Skylar, Griffin, Neuro and Paleman. At this point, my dad reminded me that with every victory, Chen would just get stronger. By now, we needed to focus on keeping together, rather than winning. If Chen got more powers, he'd be too powerful. Neuro had already made clear by now that Chen was having Clouse do some sort of spell that required elemental powers.
It was the day after the match, after I'd gotten way too much sleep to make up for missing so much that night, and we were at my feast. Chen didn't seem to harbor anything towards me, but he was trying to serve me eyeballs and wasp eggs, so… he might have still been trying to mess with me. Either way, we were going to try to make a plan together with the alliance.
In the middle of the meal, Chen stood up and said he had an announcement. He said that he heard a rumor that he was taking everyone's elemental powers and keeping them. I was glad I wasn't eating, since I nearly choked on my food. I couldn't even say anything before he then said that he was! He shooed his creepy dancers away, and then brought the actual staff!
With just a few sentences, everything we had an advantage on was cracking. Chen told us that he was storing the elemental powers, and the staff was the prize for whoever won the tournament. Just like that, all of the others started to turn on us again. I tried to tell them Chen was lying to them and he needed them for something, but Griffin brought up we could just be trying to win it for ourselves. The thing is… if I hadn't seen what Chen was doing, I'd totally believe them. Chen was owning up to what we were accusing him of. But that was when the real kicker came in.
I said that Neuro had seen inside of Clouse's mind, and that he was doing some sort of spell. It wasn't until I said it, I realized why I shouldn't have. Neuro, who was the only one that we could truly trust to believe us in full, was now forced to pick between us. He could either stand beside us and paint a target on him like we did to ourselves, or he could believe in Chen's lies. Whether or not he actually thought Chen was lying, wasn't important. Chen forced anyone who was on the fence to believe him by using my own words to paint me as the enemy to the tournament. Even my dad realized as soon as I sat down that the alliance was over.
We, however, were given something of good news even as I was getting angry at having Chen take that away from me already. Nya showed up, disguised as one of those dancers. She'd snuck onto the island to help us, and was working undercover. That alone made her invaluable to us. At the same time, Skylar found a fortune cookie saying that Cole had found Zane and they were planning on breaking out. Those two things gave us hope that we could do this. We agreed to have Nya attempt to go and take the spell by using her disguise, while Skylar reminded us that the fact Chen knew what we'd told the group meant we had a spy.
In hindsight, we should have realized that Skylar was against us the entire time. She had been manipulating us from the start. She didn't reveal her power, she leveraged Kai's affection for her, and she had gotten way too involved with the idea of an alliance. If what Chen was doing was accurate, she would have been compelled to do what Neuro did and give the cookie to Chen and stop us from knowing. She needed us to believe here, though, for what was about to come next.
After the meal, we gathered everyone up and told them that we knew there was a spy. I wasn't very subtle about saying I thought it was Shade. Shade hadn't made an effort to talk to any of us, and Griffin said he'd refused the idea of teaming up with us. He wasn't against the alliance, but he wasn't joining. I realize now that some people are just like that, and us pushing for him to be on our side actually just annoyed him more. But, still, at the time it was just very, very suspicious for us.
Thankfully, my dad came up with an incredibly simple solution: everyone that worked with Chen had the mark of the Anacondrai on their backs. Everyone was able to supply the fact they didn't have the mark, until we got down to Skylar and Shade. Skylar got defensive at the time, which was suspicious, but Shade decided to peace out of there. I guess he felt cornered, and worried that he would get labeled as the spy and dealt with somehow. The fact he bolted by turning into shadow and traveling to my dad's own to get out, only seemed to confirm this. In doing so, he caused Kai's big picture to fall and break Jay's leg. Knowing how that feels… that was rough. Just to make sure we felt it was him, Skylar then guilted Kai by showing she didn't have the mark. None of us even thought to question it, since we felt so guilty at having our alliance break down right at our feet.
While this was going on, there were two things that were happening: Dareth had come with Nya to the island, and had accidently alerted everyone to his presence by… singing along to a rock song and turning the speakers on by accident. I know that sounds incredibly dumb… but it actually worked out in a lot more ways than you'd think. While that was happening, Nya managed to get ahold of the spell, but was roped up in her kabuki role again before she could get it to us. Because of that, when the island was put on high alert, most of the guards in the temple were being sent out to try to find where Dareth was.
The reason I say this worked out is that when Nya was found out by Clouse, she was able to escape. Had the guards not been away from the temple, she'd have been overwhelmed. When she was simply fleeing from Clouse, however, she was able to take the time to get back her Samurai X gear and then flee into the jungle with the spell. While Dareth was captured, it mean that Nya was able to get into the jungle. If she hadn't been… it would have gone a lot worse.
At the same time, Cole had found Zane in the factory and broken him out after performing… I think Karlof called it an all you can eat breakout. He got captured in the end, but he used that to snag the keys to then go and find Zane. The two managed to escape, but knew they wouldn't make it far if they escaped. Instead, they let everyone else think they'd escaped, and then returned to the factory. If you haven't guessed by now, the factory was Chen's slave labor system to make all of the food he then sold in his restaurant. While the two remained hidden among the workforce and let Chen think they were escaped, Dareth was taken there as well.
Everything had been lined up perfectly. None us knew it yet, but the next round of the tournament was going to be the last one. When we woke up the next day, Chen had given us new ninja suits, and told us that we'd be having a brand new round. After the last one I'd been in, I didn't think twice about what was about to happen. My dad demanded that he come along, and all of us loaded up into a small hanger to be flown over the island.
The tournament was about to begin again… and end.
Lloyd gave a massive gasp of effort as he pushed the weights away from his chest. Above him, Cole stood with his hands waiting to catch him if Lloyd couldn't do it. Lloyd, however, huffed hard, feeling the wall of weight that was preventing him from fully extending his arms. Cole, seeing his face starting to turn red, gripped the bar just in case.
"Come on!" Cole encouraged, "You got this! This is the last rep! Finish it out, Lloyd! Show me just how strong the Green Ninja really is!"
Lloyd focused hard, digging down into his chest to find that last push of strength he could. With a gasp of effort, he shoved his arms outwards, finally cresting the weights right overtop of him. As he overcame that final barrier, his arms began to tremble violently trying to support the weight. Without missing a beat, Cole quickly pulled the weights back, slotting it into the bench and letting Lloyd finally yank his sore hands down and fall limp off to his sides.
"Woohoo! You did it!" Cole pumped his fist, "Told you you could do it!"
"Y-Yeah… d-did…" Lloyd gasped out, his throat dried out, "W-Water?"
Cole, seeing Lloyd's arms looked like they weren't moving for a bit, reached down and gave him his bottle. Lloyd slowly reached up and squirted a long stream of what felt like life giving liquid straight into his mouth. After he managed to finally swallow it down with a large gasp and start to wash out the bad taste filling his throat, he focused on his core and forced himself to sit up on the bench.
"You're moving up a lot faster than I thought you would," Cole gestured to the multitude of weights Lloyd was already adding to the ends of his handle, "We might want to keep you at this one for a few days though. Moving too fast might end up burning out your muscles. It ain't all about just going bigger all the time."
"G-Glad you know about this stuff…" Lloyd groaned, finally finding his arms able to move, "Really, I am. I really have been meaning to work out outside of training… just, been busy, you know?"
"Always easier to go with someone else than alone," Cole pointed out, "I may climb mountains for fun, but I also work out with some guys down at the gym. Well…. I mean, I used to, now that the city is still, rebuilding and all that, I've had to make do here."
"If it helps," Lloyd offered him, "You still look really strong."
"Thanks," Cole smiled to him, "Am, uh, I still a good, book partner, you know?"
"You've been a great one," Lloyd pointed out, "I was worried you'd stop me and ask for clarification and stuff… but, you seem to really know how to let me just, finish. I got a little into it there with the whole Thunderblade thing."
"Honestly, if you sit back and listen, usually you can answer your own questions," Cole crossed his arms, "Figured that out when my dad sent me to school. A lot of the time, instructors didn't answer questions directly. I figured out I could pick up dance moves by being quiet and only asking things when I had no clue. It's a skill Jay could probably learn."
"Don't go starting up that whole fued thing again!" Lloyd snapped at him. The two locked eyes, then both began to laugh.
"Whew, oh man, you really think I'd do that again?" Cole grinned, "You've been bringing that up a lot, you know!"
"Well after this I don't think I need to mention it again," Lloyd pointed out, "Might as well just put it behind us now and laugh about it instead."
"Agreed," Cole smirked, "You ready for more?"
"More?" Lloyd paused, "T-There's more?"
"Of course there is! You can't just work your arms. Normally, I'd have you alternate, but I figured I'd give you a taste of it today," Cole turned.
Lloyd saw something that looked… scart. It was a bench that was tilted down, so he'd be laying with his feet in the air. There was a massive metal sheet that looked like he would be pushing it up with his legs. He could tell there were weights put on it.
"That's a leg press. It'll help build up your core and a bunch of your leg muscles all at once," Cole explained, "Come on, you should have a lot of energy down there."
"Y-Yeah, of course I do!" Lloyd shuddered, "Let's get to it!"