Episode 3: I Dream of Beavers – Part 1

Ethan had been right. That night, Ethan, Jess and Kaela relived the same dream together. They were standing around the strange chrome ring that sat solidly over the fountain at Washington Square Park when the same golden light had appeared above them and a shadow descended, as if someone were coming out of the sky. Then they had awoken.

It made it all the more difficult for them then to rehash every excruciating detail of how they had snuck out, were captured by the Kraang and escaped. Now Master Hamato paced quietly in front of them, his hands clasped behind his back. Ethan felt his face growing hot. I am never doing that again. He thought. Disappointing Master Hamato felt like the end of the world. He was the only father figure Ethan had ever known. Now that he thought about it – Master Hamato had been something more than a father.

He glanced apprehensively over at Jess and Kaela who were both sitting seiza next to him. Their heads were bowed like his own, their eyes on the ground. Finally, after the terrible silence, Master Hamato spoke. "I am unsurprised at your actions." He said.

"Because we are teenagers?" Kaela asked quietly.

"No, because I saw you leave your room at about 11:40 and walk outside with your weapons."

Ethan blanched at this. So, they hadn't been as sneaky as they thought. "Why didn't you stop us?" Ethan asked, not daring to lift up his head when addressing Master Hamato.

Master Hamato did not answer immediately, but paused, closing his eyes as if the question had wounded him in some way. He then looked up at them, "One of the greatest skills a warrior can develop is the ability to discern which battles one should choose. I chose this battle, not the one I could have fought at 11:40 last night."

Jess looked up. "You should have stopped us! We could have died!"

Master Hamato finally smiled, "And that would have been my fault?" he asked.

Jess opened her mouth to say something more but nothing came out and she eventually closed it and bowed her head to the floor again. "You should all be thankful that this mistake ended well. That said, you must not disobey me again. Should you three be killed, the world may suffer the consequences."

"Woah. What?" Ethan couldn't resist the words that came from his mouth.

Master Hamato smiled again, "The meditation sessions I have been conducting have been centered on you three. It was fate that brought us together. We cannot let fate change it's mind and separate us. I have yet to learn to meaning of the dream that you three have experienced together, but what I do know is that your destiny is bound to that of this world's." He shook his head, but his smile did not vanish. "Heaven help us."

Ethan, Jess and Kaela smiled at one another as the room lightened up.

"But if you disobey again, you will get a face full of nunchaku!" Master Hamato's sternness as a Master had vanished in the wake of his fatherly voice.

"Hai Sensei!"

"Good." He nodded approvingly, "Jessica and Kaela, you are dismissed."

Ethan's heart sank again. The two got up apprehensively, glancing nervously in Ethan's direction and then walked back to their bedroom. Ethan looked up at Master Hamato and tried to read his face, but he could not see any emotion in the man's deep wrinkles and gray eyes.

Why did Master Hamato have to be so good at stretching out these long silences? Finally he said, "The shadow has already been cast over us." His voice was deadly serious. "And I fear this is only the beginning. More than one force is at work in New York."

Ethan nodded intently.

"I am old, Ethan." His voice shook with emotion and he turned to look out at the garden. "One day, I will not be here. A leader will be needed. I want you to be the leader of this group."

Ethan's mouth dropped open. "B-but, I – I don't think that's a good idea, Sensei." Ethan spluttered out. Master Hamato didn't speak and so Ethan continued, "Sensei, I got us captured by the Foot clan on our first night out and nearly got us killed. Then, I disobeyed your orders and snuck out and again got us captured and nearly mutated by the Kraang. I don't think picking me as leader is a good idea. Kaela would probably do a ton better – or Jess, she's –."

Master Hamato held up his hand to silence Ethan. "I have meditated on this, my son. You are young and there are many things you do not know yet. Mistakes are bound to happen. I have made my decision."

Ethan wasn't sure how to feel. Half of him felt overjoyed at the chance, the other half felt the guilt inside him swell all the more. Leader? It sounded so wrong to him – but so exciting. Realizing that there was no arguing it, he said, "Thank you, Sensei. I'll do my best." He bowed his head low.

Master Hamato nodded towards the door, "Go let them know. And make sure you all do your homework. You are grounded still – so, this time, if you try to leave, I will stop you." Ethan nodded again obediently and then quickly picked himself up off the floor and went into the room.

It felt awkward explaining to the other two that he was leader now. The immediate feeling that he was being bossy and self-centered followed him as he paced the room. Kaela graciously nodded, "Yep." She said with a white grin, a textbook in her lap. "That sounds about right to me." She nodded and then flipped a page as if to seal the deal.

Jess shrugged her shoulders. In her hands, she was clasping the metal portal projector that Ethan had stolen from the Kraang at the zoo. "I'm good with that too." She said and then smiled weakly, "Better you than me, I suppose." She turned away from him, flipping the metallic object over and over again in her hand. The light from their bedroom lamp glanced off of it. Kaela looked up apprehensively at the device and then back down at her textbook – then back up again.

Ethan ignored it, not wanting to think about what had just happened and he fell backward into one of their bean bags and grabbed the remote. With a solid push of the red button, the screen flickered on. The show that was on was clearly anime in style. The eyes of the characters were huge and they wore school uniforms. One blonde male spun around, his voice not quite matching his mouth, "We must defeat the ancient ghosts of the dream land." he stated boldly and Ethan cringed at the horrific voice acting.

"But how?" One of the red haired boys asked, his motions over-exaggerated.

"My face is beautiful enough to destroy all of the monsters of dream land." the blonde replied.

"What on earth is this?" Kaela asked, looking up from her book.

Jess had spun around as well, the portal projector still clutched close to her chest, but her eyes were on the screen, wide. Ethan couldn't read that expression. "I . . . don't know." Ethan said. "But for some reason I don't want to change the channel."

Another boy had appeared, tall, lanky but just as ridiculously perfect looking as the others. "But what about school—."

The blonde boy back-handed him.

"Silence!"

Ethan, Jess and Kaela burst into fits of laughter and Ethan quickly turned the TV off again. "Wow." He said, wiping away a tear from his face, "That was the lamest thing I have ever seen."

"Why are high school students in Japan fighting dream monsters?" Kaela asked between gaspy fits of laughter.

The room slowly went quiet again and Kaela returned to her book, Jess to her gazing at the portal projector. She looked up and carefully brushed away a strand of her hair, hooking it behind her ear. This usually meant that she was thinking hard. "Hey, Ethan." she said.

"Mm?"

"You got this from those Kraang at the warehouse right?" She asked.

"Yup."

She looked over at Kaela who looked back at her.

"Kaela and I were thinking. . ." Jess began. Kaela stuck her head behind the book, hiding it from Ethan. He looked suspiciously up at Jess, craning his neck as she was standing above him. She looked down at him with a smile.

"Yeeees?" Ethan asked.

"We were thinking that – um – we still really need to take care of those Kraang." Ethan nodded affirmatively. "And who knows what they are doing with those animals!" Jess continued, her voice getting quicker. "I mean – you said yourself that Master Hamato keeps saying we need to save the world or something right? What if this is what we are supposed to do? We can't let those Kraang do anything to those animals."
"Right." Ethan said. "I agree. Once we are ungrounded, we will go straight back to the warehouse and take care of them."

The room went silent and Jess tapped the portal projector against her palm nervously. Kaela peeked at them from over the edge of the book. Jess sighed, "Look, Ethan, Kaela and I think it would be a good idea if we opened a portal here with this," She waved the portal projector in the air. "And then we can take care of it sooner rather than later."

"No way." Ethan replied firmly. "We are grounded remember?" he stated it more than asked it. "Last time, we almost got blown up by those things! There is no way we are using that portal projector right now."

Jess glared at Ethan. "Don't think that just because you are leader now means that you can make the decisions by yourself."

Kaela vanished behind her book again.

Ethan stood up from the bean bag with a groan. "Jess, I am just saying, first we don't have the greatest track record. Second, we are grounded. We aren't allowed to leave the house. And thirdly—."

Jess interrupted, "Technically we wouldn't ever be leaving the room. We would be stepping into a portal."

"That qualifies as leaving the room, doofus." Ethan rolled his eyes.

"Look," Jess snapped back, "What if I'm right? What if Sensei is grounding us, not realizing that this is actually what we are supposed to be doing!"

"Sensei has been meditating, and I trust his word! If we were supposed to stop the Kraang right this second, then he would have told us that."

"He makes mistakes. He was wrong about his son being dead – now he's the leader of a giant ninja clan that likes killing people! Kind of a big mistake."

Ethan and Jess glared at one another.

Kaela finally set her book down, stood up and in one solid motion, shoved the two away from each other. "You are both acting like idiots!" She said loudly, but calmly. She looked at Ethan, then Jess, her chocolate colored hair whipping from side to side.

Sighing, Ethan let his anger drop. Being leader was harder than he thought. "Sorry, Jess." he said quietly. "How about this, you open the portal for a few seconds, and stick your head in and just get an idea of what is happening. Then we close the portal. If the Kraang are doing something crazy, then we can ask for Sensei's blessing to go stop them."

Jess nodded, "Fine." she brought the metal device up to her face and then hummed under her breath, flipping it over, looking at it's edge. Kaela and Ethan watched silently, eyebrows raised. "How do you turn it on?" She asked.

Kaela took it from her and glanced at it, tapping her finger on her chin and then looked up at the ceiling. "Didn't these things glow?" She touched one of the three strange pentagon shapes and with a zooming noise, the two ends shot out and Kaela shrieked and backed away as the pink triangle grew in their room.

Ethan immediately snatched up his weapon and held it out at the portal, nervous that Kraang were going to suddenly jump in and attack. He was already regretting his first decision as leader. "Hurry, Jess, shove your head in!"

"What?"

"You agreed to this idea!" Ethan quickly said, "Hurry, and take a look so we can be done."

Growling under her breath, Jess stepped forward and with a grimace, leaned forward as if dunking her head into a sink of cold water. Her head vanished. Her legs and torso remained in their room.

"What do you see?" Kaela asked excitedly, getting so close that Ethan thought she was about to put her head through the portal too.

Jess's head appeared again as she leaned back out. Her eyes were wide, but a grin was on her face. "Wow!" She said.

"Did you see animals?" Ethan asked.

She shook he head, no. "There is a hallway in there."

"A . . . hallway?" Kaela asked.

"Yeah! It's like a hallway of portals!"

Kaela didn't hesitate for a moment, but threw her head into the portal. Ethan, eager to see it as well, leaned in until only neon pink filled his vision, and then with an odd feeling that only his head was being sucked in a vacuum, he was suddenly gazing at . . .something.

At first, Ethan had no idea what he was looking at. It was a spray of color and shape and then as he began to wrap his mind around it, he began to see aspects of this new world. Colorful clouds floated in yellow, red, green, blue and purple. Colors that Ethan was sure he had never even seen circled around a hallway with seemingly no path, and no end. Triangular, Kraang portals lined both sides of the cosmic nothing in a succession of gateways to who-knows-where. Ethan took his head back out from the portal and nearly fell flat on his butt from the sudden change in his orientation. "That was crazy." he said, bewildered. Jess and Kaela turned to him eagerly. "W-well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to just explore a bit and make sure the Kraang aren't doing any . . . Kraang things." Ethan managed to get out. He then nodded at their weapons, "But we take those."

"Deal." Jess and Kaela said simultaneously.

With a haste the three had never shown with their school work, they snatched up their weapons, turned to the portal and vanished into the neon pink color and into the enchanting hallway. For a horrifying moment, Ethan remembered as he moved through the Kraang portal, that it appeared as if there was no ground for his foot to land on, but just as his foot fell, it hit something solid – although that ground wasn't visible in the slightest. Jess and Kaela followed next to him, weapons out. Amidst the cosmic colors and strange dusty, nebula like clouds, claps of thunder boomed and flashed their lights across their faces. It was almost more like seeing stars explode than seeing lighting flash across the sky.

"This is so crazy!" Kaela said excitedly, and she sprinted farther down the rows of portals, gazing into each one curiously. "Guys you can see where all the portals lead here!" She pointed at a nearby one. Ethan followed close behind, but couldn't decide what to put his eyes on.

He leaned in to where Kaela was pointing. One of the pink triangular portals revealed a world that looked like it was made out of multi-colored yogurt, rather than earth and sea. Blobs of purple and globs of vibrant green smacked into one another like Jello and merged. "Weeeeird." Ethan muttered under his breath. "I don't even know what to think of this place."

Jess had eagerly jogged down the hallway and had paused at another pink doorway at the far end. "Wow." She sighed in awe at whatever she was seeing. Ethan looked around the other gateways, walking slowly towards Jess with Kaela. Above him, yellow, orange and red melted together into a golden amber color that sparkled before fizzing out and transforming into blue's and purples that separated again. It almost made him dizzy to look at it. "Hey." Kaela had stopped at one of the portals and leaned in. "That's the warehouse!"

Ethan stopped and spun around quickly and walked until he was at Kaela's side, gazing in. She was right. Kraang droids were patrolling around the same metal tables that the sloth, monkey and armadillo had previously been strapped to. Sounds of lions, birds, cats, and some animals Ethan couldn't identify could be heard. The giant vat of mutagen glowed ominously. The whole image looked a little disfigured, as if it were a photograph submerged in water. Kaela and Ethan didn't move for a few minutes, but nothing in particularly interesting was happening. "Looks the same as before." Ethan said blankly. "In which case, we probably don't need to worry about it too much."

Kaela pouted at him.

"Hey guys! Come look at this."

Using Jess as an excuse to leave the conversation, Ethan turned and walked across nothingness down the hallway of portals. Jess had moved far, quickly. She was standing in front of a triangular gateway, but this one did not give off the usual Kraangy color. As a matter of fact – it gave off no color at all, because it seemed to be closed. A strange black metal covered it, like a large door. Chains that looked like they had been there for at least a thousand years, given the cankering rust, stretched across the doorway, with a key hole the size of Ethan's fist on a padlock in the middle.

Words had been scribed above the padlock and Ethan leaned in closer so he could read it. The words looked like they had been carved there so long ago that they had faded. Squinting, Ethan could read the lines:

Beware all those who enter here

for this place is the realm of fear

Once you've entered, you can't go

until you've faced the dreamer's foe

Jess folded her arms across her chest. "Creepy, right?"

Ethan nodded, feeling a chill go down his spine. "Sounds like there is a pretty good reason why this place was sealed." Ethan said. Kaela caught up to them and her mouth dropped open as she gazed at the giant black door.

"Let's go. We've seen enough." he pointed with the pointed end of his naginata back at the doorway out to their room.

"I still think we need to do something about those animals." Kaela muttered.

As Ethan turned to leave, he noticed Jess reach out at the chains from the corner of his eye.

"C'mon Jess, we –." He stopped mid sentence as he heard Jess yelp.

Ethan spun on his heels. Jess's hand was outstretched towards the padlock, but the chains had shattered at her touch, falling backward and Jess cried, lunging out of the way as the rusty metal came crashing down around her, disintegrating as it hit the non-existent ground. "Jess! What the crap!" Ethan cried as he sprinted next to her with Kaela.

"I didn't do it! All I did was touch the padlock!"

Ethan stooped down to help her up. "Well, let's not touch stuff anymore then."

Kaela reached down to help Ethan straighten Jess back up.

"Those chains must have been really old." Kaela commented.

Before they managed to say another word, the sound of metal grating against metal rang over the sound of thunder, and the noise echoed down the hallway of portals. The three turned to see the metal doors were slowly opening, and white was pouring into the hallway. Ethan glared at the doors. "Jess. What. Have. You. Done."

With a clang the doors flew wide open and the sound of the air around them being vacuumed in filled Ethan's ears. With a cry and trying to grapple at nothing, he felt himself be thrown forward towards the doorway. He snatched at Kaela's wrist who squealed in fear and before he knew it, the three of them had smashed to the floor and vanished with a final cry into the light, the metal door slamming shut behind them.