Chapter 23 – The loss of Hope
As the ninja, Nya and Wu went after Pythor in the Rattle-Copter with the dragons and Nya's Samurai X robot suit, they traveled quickly over the desert, and many miles in the distance, the City of Ouroborus was becoming visible.
Zane's dragons, Shard, was first to attack as he sprayed a cloud of cold air and hit the whirring helicopter blades, and turned into sheets of ice slowly beginning to affect the speed of the spinning blades. But there were a couple Venomarai on the aircraft as they climbed out to each side and looked up at the spinning icy blades. The Venomarai sprayed their green acid venom and the wind directed the venom right at the blades. Things slowed down so the fact that when the acid venom hit the ice on the blades, the acid burned and ate away at the ice. And things sped up again.
"Oh, you scaly basturds aren't getting away that easy," Kai cursed angrily to himself, "fire away, Flame!" Kai yelled at Flame, and soon enough Flame shot out a large cloud of flames at the helicopter.
The flames hit the Rattle-Copter and it instantly caught on fire and began to plummet. Everyone stopped in their place as they watched the Rattle-Copter fall in a fire ball. Though as the aircraft fell, it continued to move toward the City of Ouroborus.
There was a loud BOOM when the Rattle-Copter crashed to the desert floor, and there was an even bigger explosion.
"That's it?" asked Cole.
But everyone started to get their hopes up high too quickly because a tall and slim figure emerged from the flames. The figure was Pythor as he also appeared to be holding the four Silver Fang Blades. And the latest found blade gave off a silver and white glow. But given his abilities, Pythor turned invisible, as did the blades.
"This isn't over! We need to get to Ouroborus, now!" Wu shouted, and with that they continued to make their way to the ancient Serpentine city. When they were just outside the city, the ninja and Wu landed and dismounted the dragons, and Nya remained inside her robot suit. Golden Weapons were bared and ninja masks were pulled up as they ran into the large and ancient city.
"Where are we going? This place is a maze!" Jay exclaimed.
"Get to the center!" Wu replied. They all wove their way through the maze-like columns of the city until they finally reached the center arena, in which they saw two things. One: Pythor and the four blades, and two: a giant towering statue in the form of a snake.
"Pythor, did you plan another ambush for us, huh?!" Cole asked angrily and brought out his scythe. Pythor grinned.
"Not thisssss time. I wanted Ninjago's most beloved place and capital, Ninjago City, to be 'prepared'—sssso I have sent the rest of the Serpentine to give the warning of the Great Devourer's triumphant return," Pythor said evilly. "Oh, and I wouldn't come closer because before you can even take a sssstep, I would've already awakened the Great Devourer," Pythor continued. But no one listened as they charged after Pythor. Pythor glared at them and turned invisible, making everyone stop in their tracks and look around the silent and empty arena.
"Up here!" Pythor called up high from somewhere in a sing-song voice. Everyone turned to find Pythor in the open stone mouth of the snake statue with a fang blades and a grin. There were four bared stones that acted as the two sets of fangs in the statue's mouth. Pythor took each Fang blade and fit them perfectly into the holes in the rock fangs. Once inserted, each fang began to glow brighter.
"Oh no," Wu said softly with worry as he also gave off a worried expression.
"What 'oh no'?! 'Oh no' what?!" Jay asked as he panicked.
Suddenly the whole place began to rumble very roughly and loudly as Pythor laughed maniacally. But the stone in which the giant serpent statue was made of began to crack and shake. The cracking resolved in large pieces of the statue to fly everywhere, making the ninja, Wu and Nya to shield themselves from flying debris. Bit as the statue pieces went flying, underneath the stone were giant dark green scales that were moving and squirming as if it were trying to escape the statue. Even the rock fangs began to glow so bright that they were no longer stones, but they transformed into much longer and real snake fangs, and the Four Silver Fang blades couldn't be seen either. As more and more scales became visible, Pythor's maniacal laughter began to die.
"What?! But where's the Devourer?!" Pythor exclaimed as he looked around, but Pythor's question was answered.
The entire statue completely exploded only with a giant snake covered in dark green scales, with huge fangs; giant, glowing and piercing orange snake eyes. The giant snake's long tail ended in a giant curved spike, and there was a giant spiked frill in the back of the snake's head.
This was no doubt the return of The Great Devourer.
Pythor was terrified as the Great Devourer noticed something in his giant mouth, and that thing was Pythor.
"Oh no! No, no, no, no, no, no!" Pythor pleaded, but it was too late, the Great snake clamped his massive jaws shut and tilted his head back to swallow. But the giant serpent looked down and snarled at the ninja team, Wu and Nya, and they were all terrified.
But luck was on the good guys' side as the ninjas' dragons suddenly swooped in and grabbed everyone. Being the grounded dragon, as Rocky scooped up his master, Cole, he roared at the Great Devourer, and the Great Devourer let out a loud blood curdling hiss at Rocky. Rocky reacted quickly and swiped his tail across the giant snake's slender body, and the snake did fall to its side in defeat as Rocky quickly turned and ran off after the others, but the Great Devourer didn't stay down for long. The snake whipped itself back up and chased after our heroes.
Jay looked back and twirled his Golden Nun-chucks of Lighting while keeping his balance on Wisp's back. Jay shot an electrical light blue rod toward the Great Devourer, but the great serpent was too agile and dodged the lighting bolt, so the lightning bolt crashed into the sand and caused a small explosion with a few sparks of electricity.
"What are we gonna do, now?!" Nya yelled in fear. But Nya's question was quickly answered when, again, the rapid sound of a machine gun being fired was heard. Everyone looked back to see The Great Devourer being shot in the face by a machine gun high in the sky. But where was the machine gun firing from? And who was even firing?
The Destiny's Bounty ship was seen flying high in the air over the Great Devourer. At the helm and steering the ship and holding the machine gun was none other than Kate. But Kate was still weak as she wore her blood stained bandages around her torso, and she hunched over the ship's steering wheel while holding the wheel in one hand and holding and firing the gun in the other. And the enchanted necklaces Pythor placed on Lloyd and Kate appeared on Kate's neck as the purple magnetic line shot from her necklace too. The purple line traced all the way to the side of the ship where Lloyd was wearing his 'turned on' necklace as he rode his dragon, Titan, beside the ship. But Kate's dragon, Hope, couldn't be found. Titan opened his mouth and a green glow emitted from the back of his throat. Before the Great Devourer could finish another hiss toward Titan, the green dragon shot a large ball of green fire at the snake and shot him down. But the giant serpent wasn't knocked down to the ground this time.
The Great Devourer was raging mad now, and he proved it when a sudden hood opened up on him, but not on his head. The open hood opened wide from his head to the tip of his spiked tail. With a single jerk of his head down and then up the giant snake was air born as the hood waved through the air to take the massive serpent off the ground.
The snake flew toward Lloyd and Titan with great speed, but Kate saw this and so she fired at the snake again. But the rapid firing bullets had no affect to it and only made the snake break in mid-air before he reached Titan and Lloyd. The snake growled as it turned its head toward Destiny's Bounty and scowled and Kate.
The Great Devourer suddenly flew toward the ship and bared its fangs at Kate. But a roar was heard, and that's when Hope appeared and turned visible, just like Wisp could disappear and reappear, and was flying quickly to save Kate. Kate wouldn't move and dropped the machine gun as she practically had a seizure from seeing the Great Devourer this close as it approached her.
Things went slow and silent as the Great Devourer and even Hope both came in contact with the boat and Kate. Kate disappeared behind Hope and Hope curled her wings around Kate. And at the same time, and the ninja team, Nya, Wu or Lloyd couldn't really see everything that happened between Kate, Hope and the Great Devourer, but what they did see was Destiny's Bounty flying ship coming in contact with the Devourer's large fangs, causing the whole thing to be demolished and get turned to nothing but splinters left. The Devourer and Hope were both plummeting toward the ground.
"Keep up with Hope, Titan!" Lloyd yelled at Titan because the purple electric line from Kate's necklace was pulling on him, so Titan did what his rider told him and dove after Hope to keep up with Kate, who was still engulfed and wrapped up in Hope's wings.
The Devourer made a clean landing and closed his flight hood. But the snake only hissed at the heroes and then dove into the ground and disappeared into a large hole. But Hope didn't even open her wings, so she plummeted to the ground very harshly.
Lloyd landed Titan and everyone else approached Hope's motionless body as the sand cleared. Lloyd dismounted Titan and ran up to Hope and lifted a wing, and he luckily found Kate who was coughing, alive, and clutched within Hope's front claws' grip.
"Kate!" Lloyd said happily and helped Kate get out from under Hope's wing, but the entire time Hope still didn't move, and this got Kate worried. So Kate immediately shook from Lloyd and ran up to Hope's face; Hope's eyes were closed and her jaw was slack.
Kate used her strength to cradle Hope's head, but Hope still didn't show signs of life.
"H-hope…?" Kate whimpered as she dropped Hope's head and the dragon's head plopped back down to the ground with a soft thud, and tears filled Kate's eyes. Kate sobbed and hugged Hope's lifeless head, along with the rest of the brown dragon's lifeless body. And everyone bowed their head in sorrow for the loss of Hope.