Review Replies:
INFJwriter: Haha, it kinda was, wasn't it? Except you don't have to wait almost an entire year to find out what it meant.
StoryMaker7: Whoever doesn't love brotherly fluff need to see a doctor.
Erio99: Aw, thanks!
TheAmberShadow: Hmm, that's a pretty good theory, and it also makes Julian seem less a-hole-y. But he left Gizmo there too.
LucyBrick123: Thank you! I'm a bit bummed there's not a lot of stories about Echo-Zane, or don't even have him in it.
Chapter Three:
Gone
Screaming.
That was all Echo could hear. It drowned out everything else, it rattled the gears in his metallic skull, it was so loud that he could barely hear Lloyd speaking only a few feet away from him, and it appeared as though he was shouting.
He was starting to regret coming. He should have just stayed at the Bounty like Misako had suggested, but she and Wu were going out shopping or something, so it would've been only him and Gizmo. Of course, he loved his little friend's company, but he doesn't believe he would be able to stand losing yet another game of chess to him.
Still. It would have more than likely been a lot better than the high pitched screams of the surrounding fans.
Echo stepped closer to Zane, practically glued to his hip, Gizmo violently shaking from where he was cradled against the bots chest. The titanium droid reached out and hooked his shiny fingers around Echo's, sending him a comforting smile and leading him into the building after the other Ninja, thankfully away from the camera flashes and the screaming fans.
The door closed behind them, muffling the screaming, if only slightly. Echo's shoulders slumped in relief, although he didn't let go of Zane's hand, who gave it a small squeeze to show it was alright.
"I think Misako might have been right." said Nya, shooting the shaken bot a concerned look, "Maybe you should have stayed home, Echo."
"Well, we're here now," Lloyd sighed, placing a hand on his hip and looking up to see a man wearing all brown swaggering (yes, literally swaggering) towards them, "Might as well get on with it."
"Well, well, well," said the man in brown, a lazy grin on his lips, his stance reeking arrogance, as he came to a stop in front of him, "Isn't it my favorite Ninja!"
Jay put a hand over his heart, a mock-touched look on his face, "Why, thank you!"
"No problem." the man drawled, before starting to pace back and forth, "Now, here's what we're going to do. Jay," he pointed to said boy, "I need you and Nya to stay close together, got it? And maybe you and Cole can exchange a glare or four-"
"We're not doing that, Dareth." Cole deadpanned. The man, Dareth, made an annoyed noise in the back of his throat.
"Fine, fine. At least don't stand next to each other." This gained many eye rolls. "Now, Zane- wow, wait, why are there two Zanes?" He came to a stop in front of the two brothers, Echo moving to hide behind Zane again. Dareth's eyebrows hit his hairline, his eyes lighting up as he looked from Zane to Echo. "So you've finally decided to bring him out into the public! Have I got some idea's for this guy!"
"Dareth-" Zane began, but the man in brown was already prying Echo away from him, throwing an arm over his shoulders. Echo wrapped both arms around Gizmo in fear of the man taking him away too, said small bot starting to shake again.
"Now," said Dareth, not seeming to realize Echo was trying to desperately lean away from him and get back to Zane, "Being the long lost little brother to everyone's favorite Nindroid has gotten you a lot of curious on lookers, obviously not as much as Nya choosing Jay over Cole-"
"Oh, not this again."
"-But we can still milk this for all its worth! Maybe we can get you all rusted up and take a few pictures of you with Zane, you know what I'm saying?"
"You can't be serious!" exclaimed Cole. Dareth waved him away.
"They want to have an interview with you guys this week, and they'll mostly be asking questions about Jay and Nya, but we can weave together a story about Zake here." he patted Echo-Zane on the back, so hard that he was afraid some gears would come loose.
"M-My name is not-"
"There's tons of theories on where he's been." Dareth continued, as though Echo hadn't even spoken. The air was getting rather cold. "One of my favorites is he was built to replace the real Zane, and that's why they look so much alike, but he turned out all wrong and retarded so-"
Zane leaped forwards, face twisted into a look of rage, frost coating the tips of his fingers, and shoved Dareth so hard that he fell flat on his back, Kai and Cole stepping aside instead of catching him. Echo immediately latched onto Zane again, hiding behind him and peeking over his shoulder at the man in brown on the floor.
Dareth blinked at the ceiling slowly, startled and a bit sore. Then his eyes lit up, and he jumped to his feet again, his grin widening when his eyes settled on the brothers, Echo still hiding behind Zane, who was shooting the brown haired man a venomous look.
"Yes!" Dareth exclaimed, gaining a lot of surprised looks, "That's it! Protective big brother, it's perfect!"
Lloyd sighed. "Can we just do this already? I want to get home tonight."
"Hey," said Dareth, pointing at him, "I apologized for that."
Zane, Kai, Lloyd, Cole, Jay and Nya were dragged off to a dressing room, where Echo and Gizmo watched from the corner, out of the way. Eventually, around an hour or two later, they were given scripts of sorts to memorize, and were then put under the camera and had to do the same thing multiple times.
Meanwhile, Echo took a seat on the floor away from everyone else, but with a decent view of what was happening. Dareth had come up to him at one point and dropped a Ninja coloring book and a pack of sharpies in front of him, said so he could entertain himself and not get in the way. Echo wasn't truly sure what to make of this 'Brown Ninja' (as he appeared to have dubbed himself), but he'd given him the coloring book, so he couldn't be all bad, he supposed.
For the next two or three hours, Echo kept to himself, coloring in pictures of his brother and the other Ninja (he wondered why there wasn't many of Nya), Gizmo passing him the sharpies and beeping occasionally, but they mostly sat in silence. Eventually, a break was called, and the rather relived looking Ninja wandered over to him with sandwiches and water bottles in hand.
"What'cha doing, Echo?" asked Kai, raising an eyebrow at the sharpies. The bots metallic hands were covered in colorful lines.
"Dareth gave them to me." Echo explained, climbing to his feet as Nya handed him his own sandwhich and a water bottle filled with black oil. She stooped down and picked up the coloring book, rolling her eyes when he realized that it was of the Ninja.
The coloring itself was messy, some places darker than others because he'd pressed down hard, like it had been done by a five or six year old that was still having a little trouble holding the utensils properly. Nya sent Echo a smile. "Looks great."
"Why don't you go wash up?" suggested Zane, gesturing to his brothers stained hands, "There's a bathroom just over there." he pointed to a door half hidden behind the corner, what appeared to be one of those bathroom signs on it. Echo nodded, setting his sandwich and oil on a crate and starting to make his way over to the bathroom.
He weaved passed people walking to and fro, some carrying foam cups filled with a steaming black-brown liquid, others equipment and lunches. Echo slipped into the bathroom, the door swinging shut behind him, the lights flickering on as they sensed his presence. He glanced around, before going over to the sinks and turning on a tap, squirting soap onto his hands and starting to scrub them clean under the warm water.
The sharpie stains gone, he dried his hands with a paper towel and exited the bathroom. He moved to head back over to where he'd left the others, but loud whispers met his robotic ears, and he turned to look for the source. The hallway he was in was empty, and there was some crates sitting near the end. Brow furrowing, Echo slowly made his way over to them, fogged yellow eyes narrowing.
"What if we get caught?"
"Shh! Not so loud."
"We just need to get close-"
Echo peered over the edge of the crate, and came face to face with five or six girls, wearing either Ninja t-shirts or hats. They immediately went silent, their eyes widening. At least three looked as though they were about to faint.
He blinked. "Hello."
The girls looked as though they were hyperventilating, their chests going up and down rapidly. Then they started squealing, a high pitched sound that made the talking in the other room almost come to a complete stop, Echo wincing as it assaulted his ears. He barely had time to recover from the sound before the girls were leaping towards him like cats after yarn, Echo stumbling backwards with a surprised yell.
They latched onto his arm, most of then still screeching, and Echo suddenly found himself in a rather odd game of Tug of War. A painful one, too. He planted his feet onto the ground, but it was six against one, and he soon found the screws and gears in his shoulder creaking loudly.
"L-Let go!" Echo gasped, the pain in his shoulder intensifying. He could hear footsteps pounding towards them. "You're hurting me!"
Arms wrapped around his chest, practically lifting him into the air and pulling. The girls eyes widened, their mouths opening in shock, and Echo abruptly found his arm free, and then he was falling backwards onto the person behind him, who let out a grunt as they hit the floor.
Ushers ran passed them and began to force the girls out the door, who were starting to shout and screech again. Echo rolled off the person, which turned out to be Zane, reaching up and rubbing at his sore shoulder. "Are you okay?"
Zane blinked, sitting up and nodding, sending a glare in the girls direction as they disappeared around the corner. He turned to Echo, eyes softening. "What happened?"
Before Echo could answer, the other Ninja were helping the two brothers to their feet, Gizmo zipping over and bumping against his leg. Echo sent him a small smile, although it was more of a grimace. They'd really hurt his shoulder.
"I can't believe that just happened." said Jay, moving Echo's hand to take a look at his shoulder, "Why would they go after Echo like that?"
"They must have thought he was Zane." Lloyd said, glancing in the direction the girls and ushers had disappeared, "Sorry about that, Echo. They've never gotten inside like that before."
"I-It's fine." Echo winced, as Jay did something that put his shoulder right. He sent him a grateful smile.
"How did they mistake Echo for Zane?" asked Kai, looking between the two bots, "I mean, sure, they share some similarities, but they're honestly not all that alike."
Nya shrugged. "They must have not heard about Zane having a brother, or haven't seen any of the pictures of him. They probably just saw a robot with the same structure as Zane and thought it was him."
"Plus," muttered Echo, rolling his shoulder to make sure it was alright, "They were rather busy screaming." The Ninja chuckled.
"Come on." said Zane, after a moment of silence, reaching out and taking Echo's hand, "We're going home."
"But we haven't finished filming." Cole pointed out, although he and the others started following them. Zane brushed him off.
"We can reschedule."
Kai shrugged, stuffing the rest of his sandwich into his mouth. "Guess we can say we had to go repair Echo's shoulder or something."
"Let's just go before someone tries to stop us." Nya said quietly, picking up Gizmo and looking around, "We can have Dareth reschedule later."
"We can go out back." Zane said, changing direction. They jogged out an unguarded back door, probably how the girls got into the building in the first place, and turned down into an alley. Echo could hear the fans on the other side of the building, thankfully no longer screaming.
He heard the doors they'd just exited open, and looked over his shoulder to see Dareth standing in the doorway, waving his arm above his head frantically. "Guys! Hold up! We can totally milk this!"
Zane rolled his eyes, and they kept walking, Dareth still calling after them.
"Alright!" the brown wearing man called, as Echo and the Ninja turned the corner, "Same time next week!"
Yes. Echo wasn't quite sure what to make of him.
Birds, twittering to each other up in the tall tree's, flying across the clear blue sky. Leaves and sticks crunched and snapped beneath their feet, small stones getting pressed deeper into the earth, unseen bugs scuttling away in fright.
Echo followed them up the hill, carrying Gizmo so the smaller bot wouldn't have to struggle to keep up. Zane's arms were laded with plastic cutlery, paper plates and paper cups, while Jay carried three large bottles of fizzy drinks and juice, Kai and Nya carried shopping bags, Misako a basket and Cole a large, blue blanket. The only one who wasn't carrying anything was Wu, but Echo wasn't incredibly surprised by this. He was Wu, after all.
"Here we are." said Misako, as they reached the top of the hill and she placed the basket on an old picnic table. There was a small grill a little ways away, it's insides filled with twigs and dried leaves, as well as a filled trashcan. "Garmadon and I used to come here all the time."
"Aw," Nya said, she and Kai setting their bags on the table too, "How sweet. Maybe we can do something like that, Jay."
"Yeah, sure." Jay smiled, lacing his fingers with hers, "It sounds fun."
Echo sat Gizmo down, and made his way over to the others to help set up. Kai got a fire in the grill going and they started cooking sausages and toasting cheese on bread, while Jay and Cole got the cups and plates all set up, the blue blanket draped over the picnic table.
After everything was set up and the only thing to do was to wait for the sausages to cook and the cheese to melt, Echo took a seat on the ground, picking up a stick and starting to doodle in the dirt with it, unintelligible squiggles that crisscrossed and looped over each other. He wrote his name a couple times, then Zane's and Gizmo's, and eventually the entire Ninja.
Bored, he wrote his name again, then turned it into 'Echoes' instead. He looked at it for a moment, before raising his head and looking around, his eyes landing on an empty plastic cup next to Jay. Shrugging, he wrote 'Empty' in the dirt as well, right above Echoes. He blinked, realizing he'd accidentally created a sentence. Not that it made much sense, however.
"Kai!" Misako gasped, Echo's head snapping towards her, "The food!"
"What?" Kai looked over at the grill, his eyes widening upon realizing the food upon it was burning, "Oh, crap!" He leaped to his feet, picking up the sausages with his hands and dropping them onto the paper plates, which Nya held out for him.
Wu took one of the forks and poked at a crispy black sausage, before cutting it open with a knife, his noes wrinkling at the smell. "Hmm. Good thing we have another packet."
"I'm cooking this time." Zane declared. Kai winced.
"Whoops."
"Jay, why don't you go get more things to burn for another fire?" suggested Misako, seeing as how the flames had almost gone out entirely. She glanced over at Echo, watching them silently from where he sat on the forest floor. "You can take Echo-Zane with you."
"Echo?" Jay blinked, looking over at the bot in surprise, "Um, sure, if he wants to."
Echo smiled at the prospect of having something to do, dropping his stick and climbing to his feet. He followed Jay back down the hill, the smell of burnt food and the voices of the others fading away until it was only the crunch of leaves and sticks.
"So," said Jay, after a moment, "What do you think about PIXAL?"
Echo blinked. "Who's PIXAL?"
"Oh." Jay's eyes widened, mouth forming an almost perfect 'o.' "I guess we forgot to tell you about her. She's kinda like Zane's girlfriend but kinda not at the same time. She's, um, well she's a robot, and she's also inside Zane's head." he looked at Echo, "Not- Not crazy-inside-his-head, I mean, like, literally inside his head. Yeah?"
"Huh." said Echo. That explained the quiet mumbles he'd sometimes hear when no one was talking. "What's a girlfriend?"
Jay came to an abrupt halt, Echo stopping as well. "Y-You don't know about... ?"
When Echo's face remained blank, Jay groaned. "Of course you don't. Well, uh, how do I put this?" he turned around, kneeling down and starting to pick up sticks to burn. Echo was quick to do the same.
"Right, so, take me and Nya, for example." said Jay, not looking at him, "We hold hands, we go out together, we're, well, we're together, yeah? We're a couple, we're, uh, we go out to the movies and stuff, we go on dates-"
Echo looked up, Jay's voice fading out as he spotted a tiny insect, no bigger than his thumb. Curiosity sparking, he put his sticks down and got to his feet, Jay still babbling on and gathering up sticks.
Echo-Zane's fogged yellow eyes focused on the tiny creature, it's colorful wings flapping up and down as it flew away, deeper into the greenery of the forest, as light as air and as delicate as standing frost. He'd never seen anything so beautiful before, so enchanting, and for a moment he was near convinced it was some sort of magic. His legs moved without him even realizing, and he ran after it, stepping over a dead brush.
"-I mean, we certainly haven't done it, and I've got no idea how Zane and PIXAL will, or even if robots can have- Echo?" Jay blinked, looking around in search of the bot, startled to find himself alone. Eyes widening, he straightened, the sticks and twigs tumbling to the ground. "Echo? Echo?!"
Above him, a bird made a startled noise, leaping from it's branch and flapping away. Jay shook his head. "Oh, no." he looked around frantically, trying to spot his second metallic friend, his stomach going cold. "Echo?!"
He was gone.
And now things'll get interesting.