A/N: Hello! Hmm, is not working real well today… oh well. Guess I'll just work on this little chapter. Thanksgiving break is now over with and time to learn what changes are going to be made around the school. And start on the mystery. Yeah! *claps hands excitedly*
Disclaimer: I own Nothing! The riddle is courtesy of RandomDragon2.0! Thank you!
Chapter Five: Cole finds a Treasure Chest
Cole plopped down on the cool grass next to the other freshmen…and surprisingly Lloyd. They should have started P.E. already, but Misako had announced that there was to be an assembly today. Not something that happens very often. Sensei Wu made his way slowly to the front of the large lawn.
"Students! It has been brought to my attention that the serpentine tribe of the Hypnobrai has escaped their icy prison!" Sensei Wu paused dramatically, before continuing. "We are now going to have to start doing patrols and take the skills we have learned in this class; and in our Power Training class as well." Sensei Wu paused, before suddenly looking straight at Cole. A bad feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. "All freshmen this year will stay behind and not partake of the patrols or fighting. That includes you too, Nephew." Sensei Wu sent an extra hard glare at the ten-year old boy. Lloyd ducked his head quickly, a pink tinge flushing his cheeks at the public scolding. Cole reached out and squeezed the small boy, understanding how he felt at the moment. Sensei Wu certainly had put them on the spot right then. "You may continue on now." Sensei left, leaving Lord Garmadon to take over his class again.
"Ok! Due to the Hypnobrai returning, we are going to kick ALL training up a notch. Expect that P.E. and Power Training to be harder than ever before!" Lord Garmadon bellowed as he went through the students pairing them all up for sparring. When he arrived at Cole and his friends, he quickly skipped over them. "Spar amongst yourselves. No point in challenging you if you're not going out to fight the Hypnobrai."
Cole sighed as he stood up, looking his friends over. There were only five of them. Not an even number for sparring. Unless…"Hey! Lloyd, do you want to spar with us? We need one more person."
Lloyd immediately perked up. No one has ever asked him if he wanted to join in on their lessons before. "Sure! Umm, I don't know how to though…" Lloyd shuffled his feet in worry.
Nya quickly placed a hand on his small shoulder. "Don't worry. We're just learning ourselves. Here, you can spar with me. Zane? Why don't you go with Kai? That leaves Jay with you Cole, if that's ok?"
Cole nodded in agreement; making mental notes about what he knew about each person's fighting style. Kai just went for it and doesn't think of any plans, while Zane typically over plans his attacks. Nya was fast, but she preferred to be able to throw different weapons at her opponents, and over thinks the whole process. Jay relied on his speed, and if possible would throw weapons at his opponents, never trying to get too physical. Cole himself was more lenient towards using his strength, planting heavy blows when possible.
Breaking off, they started off with a quick warm up, and then started sparring. They didn't continue for long however. They all very soon were caught up with teaching Lloyd how to correctly block basic blows and land his own blows. A smile tugged at Cole's lips, as he realized he was rather enjoying himself.
…
Cole groaned as he closed his History textbook. The new alarm system that had been set up specifically for the serpentine had gone off in the middle of their history lesson, meaning school had been cut short. Apparently after they had failed to kidnap the girls, they had released all of their prisoners…and started to attack people publicly, taking in huge offense that the majority of the citizens of Ninjago didn't know who they were at all. Cole glanced over to where Zane was helping Lloyd with some math. He could vaguely hear Kai and Nya arguing in hushed tones whether or not they should be worried about the serpentine sighting near their home. Jay was already fiddling with something, a pet project he had brought back to the school after the break ended.
"I'm officially bored. Can we do something to keep our minds off of the fact that the entire school is basically empty?" Cole loudly asked, catching everyone's attention.
"It is not entirely empty. Father is just down the hall in his office." Zane pointed out, puzzled over why Cole would say that the school was empty.
Kai groaned as he leaned back, stretching out any sore muscles he might have. "Zane…Cole meant that has in we're the only students here. And Dr. Julian is a smidgen busy right now."
A soft oh escaped Zane has he registered what it was that Kai was telling him. Lloyd squirmed suddenly, an idea lit up in his eyes. "Bolobo has started a vegetable garden…sort of. He needs to remove the rocks from inside of it. We could do that for him. I mean, umm." Lloyd shifted slightly, nervous about what the others thought about working in a garden.
"Well, we did learn how to be gardeners right before the break in Random Class." Cole quietly agreed with the younger boy.
Now with an idea on something to do, they left the study room. None of them aware what was about to transpire…
…
Cole hummed to himself as he lifted up several stones at once. They were almost done removing the rocks from the garden. The labor making it difficult for any of them to talk with each other, though that could be caused by the fact that they had started up a competition to see who could remove the most rocks. So far, Lloyd and Cole both had removed the most, and were tied in first place. Flinging the rocks he collected onto his pile, Cole turned to check on the kid. And immediately froze. Several Hypnobrai were slipping into the school's courtyard, unaware of the five students and one little kid standing around in the vegetable garden.
"Hey you! Only students and staff are allowed in!" Jay suddenly yelled, not helping one bit in this situation. Cole slapped his face, wondering if he should tell Jay that they really don't want the serpentine to notice them at the moment…
"Ssssstop them from alerting the otherssss about our pressssssssssence here!" One of the serpentine hissed as he pointed straight at the six minors.
Lloyd stumbled back, panic flaring in his eyes. "What do we do!?" Same time he asked that, Kai gave off a yell of Jay, annoyance flooding his voice.
Cole quickly scanned the vegetable garden in hopes of finding something to use as a weapon against the serpentine. Only problem was, all he could see were some weeds and rocks lying around the place. No weapons what so ever. Cole groaned as he glanced back to the advancing serpentine, worry creasing his brow. At least until Zane spoke up. "Quickly! We can use the rocks we've been clearing out as ammo!"
Cole grimaced, wondering why he hadn't thought of that. Bending down, he picked up a rock. Squeezing his eyes shut, Cole threw the rock in the general direction of the serpentine. Within seconds, the air was filled with soaring rocks. Cole cracked open his eyes to see what was going on. The courtyard was littered with different sized rocks, most of the serpentine having already retreated; only one was left. Unlike the others that had legs, he had a tail that he slithered along on, a staff grasped tightly in his hand. Frowning, Cole looked around the garden, only to realize that they were out of rocks…except for a rock that was semi buried at the edge of the garden. Grasping it, Cole tugged on the rock. Only it didn't budge. Grunting, he pulled even harder. It still didn't budge. Frustrated, he gave it one extra hard yank…and the rock went flying. The serpentine headed towards them quickly scrambled backwards, barely missing getting hit by the rock as it crashed to the ground.
"Retreat! I'm not going to fight someone that will use everyday items to crush my tail!" He snapped as he fled away from them.
As soon as the serpentine were all gone, they burst out cheering. Jay quickly hugged Nya, only to jump apart, a blush flaring up on his face. "Nice thinking Zane! All of the serpentine are gone now!"
Zane frowned, brushing the dirt off of his jeans. "You mean they're gone for now. I fear that they may come back."
Silence fell amongst the friends as they stared down at their feet. Zane had a point. The serpentine would most likely be back, sometime. Just not right now. Lloyd suddenly began hitting Nya rapidly. Nya promptly snapped, whacking the kid. "Lloyd! Stop hitting me!"
Lloyd dodged Nya's hand, a huge grin crossing his face. "But Nya! Look! Cole unburied buried treasure!"
"What?!" All eyes turned to face the kid.
Lloyd sighed, before pointing to where the rock that Cole just threw used to be sitting. Sure enough there was a treasure chest sitting in the large, surprisingly deep, hole. Launching forward, they all banged heads together, literally banged their heads, as they pulled the surprisingly light chest out of the hole. A frown crossed all of their faces as they noticed that it was locked with a strange looking padlock. Jay picked up the chest and promptly began shaking it.
"How do we open this? Where's the keyhole?" Jay demanded as Cole wrestled the box out of his hands.
"Jay! Careful! What if it were fragile!?" Cole demanded as he brushed his right middle finger along the strange lock.
Immediately, the lock sprang open, the force of it doing so strong enough that it forced the lid of the chest to open. Mouth's dropping open, they stared at each other for about five seconds before they tried crowding each other out to see what was in it. Once again, they banged heads with each other. Zane managed to pull out a small piece of rolled up parchment, and a pendant of some sort. The pendant was dark in color and appeared to have a golden scythe engraved into the front of it. Zane gingerly pinched the pendant…only for green lightning to shoot out and zap him. A yelp escaped him as he dropped the pendant. Kai snatched it up, only for it to zap him, only instead of dropping it, he handed it to Nya. Nya was also zapped, and she very quickly dropped it on top of Jay. It then proceeded to zap Jay, who very quickly threw it at Lloyd. Lloyd yelped as it zapped him, before throwing it at Cole, who very quickly dodged the pendant.
"Dude! I do not want the apparently magical pendant!" Cole yelled as he scrambled back, his foot brushing alongside it.
Immediately, the pendant sprung up and placed itself around Cole's neck. Even though no mysterious green lightning zapped him, Cole still yanked on it, screaming like a little girl. "Get it off! Get it off!"
Nya and Lloyd giggled as the other fourteen year olds tackled Cole to the ground, trying to pull of the pendant without getting zapped.
"No use! It seems as if it has a mind of its own!" Kai growled as he jumped back as the pendant zapped him again.
Zane rubbed his chin thoughtfully, eyeing the pendant. "If that is true, then it appears to like Cole, and not the rest of us. Perchance we should respect its wishes and leave it be with Cole."
Cole stared at his friends, his mouth hanging open in shock. "You would just leave me like this?! What kind of friends are you?!"
Jay nervously laughed, eyeing the pendant as if it could jump out and attack him any moment now. "The kind that don't want to get barbequed. Face it Cole…its stuck, and we can't get it off without hurting ourselves."
Cole groaned as he looked down at the pendant. Reaching up, he quickly tucked it under his shirt, the phrase out of sight out of mind flashing across his mind. "What about that parchment that Zane found with it? What does it say?"
Zane quickly unrolled the parchment. Clearing his throat, he quickly read it out loud. "I am something that can be found in every city, yet with a single touch I can kill you. I can travel faster than light, yet can be contained in a small glass orb. What am I?" Zane paused, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion. "Strange. That is all that is written on the parchment."
Everyone scratched their heads, confusion flashing across their faces.
~Back with the Spiritia~
Earth banged his head over and over again against the wall, muttering about how Cole was an idiot to himself. Meanwhile the others were doing some sort of victory, chanting over and over again the fact they could read Lightning's hand writing. Lightning was not at all bothered that they were poking fun of his handwriting.
"Earth! Come on! This is great! We know it's really them now!" Water cheered as she danced giggling like crazy.
"He used super strength and didn't even notice!" Earth roared as he continued banging his head. "And technically, only Zane read the riddle. This means we have confirmation that he is one of them."
Groans immediately escaped the others as they realized that Earth was telling the truth. Only Zane had read the riddle that was written in their native tongue.
A/N: Ok…two things.
One: I am the only person that I know of that can get stuck on the pantry shelves reaching for something that Cat can reach from the floor, without any problems…
Two: You can guess the answer to the riddle if you'd like, RandomDragon already knows because I asked her for help. I don't necessary care if you do or not. They will find the answer…eventually.
Oh! Cole used super strength to remove not a good size rock like he thought, but an actual boulder buried deep into the ground. Yeah…this just means we get to watch Earth hit his head against the wall constantly.
Till Next time!
SkyTalon
