Chapter 24 – Great terror
Lloyd was first to scrunch up a fist and put a game face on.
"Guys, this is not who we are. We're the good guys, and the good guys are always supposed to beat the bad guys. I hate that we lost Hope too, but this isn't symbolic that everything is over. It never is, and never will be," Lloyd explained firmly making everyone, even the dragons look up at him. Kate's eyes were still red from tears, but she stood up and looked at Lloyd, and as she walked up to him, Lloyd turned and faced her. The two were about to grab each other's hands when Kate's eyes sparkled again and she stepped back. This got everyone's attention as Kate balanced herself before she fainted and she came to.
"What now?" Cole asked with concern since Kate's eyes were wide and full of worry.
"We gotta get to the city—now," Kate replied in a scared voice.
In Ninjago City, a lady with black hair in a tight bun, tan skin, and wearing formal attire was walking her small white poodle dog down a side walk. There were other pedestrians, kids, parents, adults bickering on their phone, and they were all minding their own business. But the peacefulness was not to last.
The woman and her poodle were walking by an ally, and the woman didn't notice a tall dark figure with a hood in the ally approaching her. But the dog stopped and growled at the figure. The lay stopped and scowled at her dog.
"Snickers, bad boy. No growling," the lady scolded her poodle, making him stop and growling and whimper from his master's firm command. But Snickers looked into the ally to find the dark figure that was once there was now gone.
The lady and Snickers continued to walk unaware that the figure was hiding behind the dumpster and flicked his snake tongue as his watched the woman with his red ringed eyes and rattled his long general tail.
Inside a surveillance room where a few men were chillaxing and drinking coffee as there was a screen that had colorful dots and lines that represented trains and rail roads on the many computer screens. Some of the dots were moving slowly, like they should e, and some weren't moving at all, but there was one outlier line red rail road on the screen that had a green dot moving at high speed toward a subway station below the city. One of the men noticed the fast moving dot and hopped out of his office chair and stared at the dot with worry.
"Bill, what is it?" one of the other men asked, soon all of the people in the room were glued to the quick green dot on the screen.
"That's just it: I don't know. What ever it is isn't a train or a sub, but it's coming into the station too fast. I can't contact it or anything," the man, or Bill, explained with much worry.
There was a not so busy subway station below the city, and people were minding their business when the heard a rumble coming deep down from the subway tunnel. The people got concerned and decided to check and see whether or not it was a train. But they soon discovered it wasn't a train when they saw a pair of two large orange glowing orbs with black slits for irises. Everyone gasped and shrieked as the two orange eyes burst that belonged to the Great Devourer burst into the station while slithering and squirming from the tunnel. The giant snake stopped and looked around, but there was one grown man dressed like a hippie and he took out his iPhone and took a picture. Unlucky for the man, the phone's camera flash was on, and it caught the attention of the Great Devourer.
A camera man with a reporter lady, with ridiculously big hair, was standing in a park in the middle of the city as the ground began to shake.
The camera wore a red and white t-shirt, blue, tennis shoes. He had blue eyes, and red hair, but he wore a red baseball cap on his head. The reporter lady wore formal attire in a pink color, and she wore glasses over her green eyes. She wore black flats on her feet.
"I'm Gail, and reports have been made of strange and unpredictable shaking activity beneath the city in its subway tunnels. If you viewers see what is causing the shaking, report it immediately," the reporter announced for the camera in a loud and clear voice as she held her microphone to her mouth. Though the camera didn't go off, the lady, or Gail, began to fix her big hair. While Gail was busy, the camera man continued to shoot and saw through the camera's lens that there was a mounds of dirt forming and getting larger very quickly as it was many yards behind Gail.
"Uh, Gail…" the camera man began, but his voice trailed off.
"Not now, Mike. I'm fixing my hair!" Gail snapped at the camera man, Mike.
"But-!" Mike began again only to have Gail interrupt.
"I said not now!" Gail snapped. But that's suddenly when the Great Devourer appeared out of the mound of dirt and let out a loud roar/hiss, and it looked in Gail and Mike's direction. This made Gail finally turn around, and she shrieked and ran off, and Mike wasted no time in running away too.
Running only made the Devourer want to chase the two humans, and so he glared and began to slither, but a sudden giant bolt of lightning shot down from the sky and shot down the sky. This time the snake was a bit paralyzed from the hit.
The lightning bolt came from Wisp as Jay rode atop him, as did the other ninja and Lloyd ride their dragons, Nya was in her Samurai X robot suit, and Wu and Kate were at the steering wheel of the flying Destiny's Bounty.
"What are we?!" Kai yelled.
"Ninja!" the other ninja and even Lloyd shouted back with excitement.
"And we are a ninja team!" Kate yelled out of the blue, but it encouraged everyone as they cheered.
A familiar, tall, dark figure with four arms and red eyes stood outside the window that looked into a store with T.V. sets on shelves and each T.V. was switched on.
What was airing on the T.V. screens was Gail was reporting before the Devourer showed up. The shadowy figure watched as the Great Devourer appeared on the T.V. sets, making him growl.
The Great Devourer eventually came to and rose up again as he scowled at the good guy team.
"How are we gonna defeat it?! It's been hit, the First Spinjitzu Master knows, how many times, and it never could be stopped!" Jay exclaimed with worry.
"It's simple!" Cole exclaimed with a smile as he bared his Golden Scythe of Quakes, "we just beat it senseless," Cole continued to himself in a dark tone.
Rocky sensed what his rider wanted, so he lifted his backside upward, causing Cole to be flung off Rocky and toward the Great Devourer. Cole did some summer-salts in mid-air before he landed in front of the big snake and he crashed his scythe into the ground, making giant spears of rock and Earth fly from the ground and toward the Devourer's head. The big snake bared his fangs and hissed loudly. Since his mouth was open, when the rocks spears Cole made hit the snake's head, it hit one of the fangs in the Devourer's mouth.
But when the fang was hit, the fang quickly changed back into one of the Four Silver Fang Blades, but pretty soon the fang blade returned back into its other form in which being on of the Great Devourer's fangs. Everyone noticed what happened with the snake's fang and realization hit their faces, but suddenly the Great Devourer opened the giant hood on its body that allowed it to fly, and no sooner did it take off and fly right toward Zane and Shard.
Unlucky for Zane, the big snake was too fast as it flew above Zane and Shard and aimed its spiked tail at Zane.
"Zane, look out!" Kate shouted but it was too late. The tip of the spike hit Zane smack-dab right in the face, causing him to fall off of Shard and plummet. Everyone was terrified as Zane was falling too quickly for them to go after him, but that's not what Shard believed.
Shard dove head first after his beloved rider and reached his claws after Zane. the whole time Zane was falling he wasn't moving. Finally, before Zane could hit the ground, Shard grabbed Zane's body with his claws and landed safely on the ground as he put his master down gently. The others came down to the spot to see if their nindroid buddy was ok.
But everyone let out a sigh of relief as Zane began to move and stand, but his back was turned as no visible scars could be seen. But Zane stumbled a bit, so Shard put his muzzle in front of Zane to catch his fall and steady him.
"You alright, buddy?" asked Jay making Zane slowly turn, but everyone gasped when hey saw the one big scar on Zane.
Half of Zane's face was gone, and there wouldn't be blood and flesh like normal. Zane was a robot, so underneath his 'skin' were wires, metal, and the eye was a smooth round, glowing blue orb. The other, perfectly fine, face half still had Zane's other eye and mouth.
"Still wasn't your time," Kate sighed and even cracked a small smile, but Zane didn't smile. Zane opened his mouth and was about to say something when a dark voice interrupted him.
"If you don't mind…" Garmadon's deep voice started making everyone turn to look at him in surprise, "I know how to defeat that monster," Garmadon continued as he looked up at the still air-born Great Devourer as it flew away.
"I believe we have the same idea," Zane stated. Garmadon nodded.
"If you've noticed, the fangs of the vial beast is, ironically, is its weak spot. If we do this correctly to knock some teeth from the snake—then we can stop it. But only if you do as I say," Garmadon explained. They all exchanged unsure glances at each other, but Lloyd smiled at his dad.
"I'm with you, Dad," Lloyd said with a smile, making Garmadon smile. But Lloyd suddenly felt something gripped his hand, so he looked down to find Kate's hand holding his. Lloyd looked beside him to find Kate standing next to him and smiling at Garmadon.
"Me too, sir," said Kate. Garmadon sighed with a smile as he walked closer to Kate.
"This may come as a shock to you, but I knew your father well," said Garmadon, making Kate's eyes widen and her smile go away.
"Y-you—you knew him?" Kate stammered.
"Yes, I did. It was his fault that he decided to join the Serpentine, even if it was by force; no matter how risky it was, he should've stood up for good. But I can tell you're not like him, at all. Kate Chen—always stand for what's right," Garmadon said firmly.
"I thought I always have," Kate said softly with a smile. But the moment was ruined at the Great Devourer's roaring hisses were heard at the other end of the city. Garmadon growled and bared his sharp teeth as he balled his four hands into fists.
"You need to give me the Golden Weapons!" Garmadon said out of the blue.
"What?!" the four ninja exclaimed. But everyone went silent as they watched Wu slowly walk up to and look Garmadon in the eye.
"Brother, if you really are willing to stop the evil we face now—then I can trust you with Ninjago's most important means of defense," said Wu, and Garmadon only hugged his younger brother, and Wu hugged back.
"You know as well as I do that I may hide away with the weapons," Garmadon began as he pulled away from Wu, "but it's for the greater good now, isn't it?" Garmadon asked.
"I fear that it is," Wu sighed and turned to his four men students, "do as Garmadon says, and follow any other directions he gives us," Wu explained firmly as he looked around at everyone.
The four ninja reluctantly walked up to Garmadon and gave him the four Golden weapons; each of Garmadon's four hands grasping a weapon. Garmadon grinned evilly as he finally had the weapons it place.
"I'll need a lift. A lift at one that can get me close enough to the Great Devourer's mouth," said Garmadon.
"We'll need a diversion," Cole pointed out.
Suddenly crashing and the screams of people where the Devourer was causing havoc could be heard.
"Ninja and Nya, you distract the Devourer and/or protect the people in any way you can," Garmadon demanded.
"Ok, but who's going to get you close enough to the Devourer?" Kai asked out of nowhere.
Lloyd and Kate looked at each other and nodded before looking back at everyone else.
"We will," Lloyd and Kate said in unison, making everyone give them quizzical looks.