This is what happens when you're challenged to come up with a story based on a meme. (The barbarian sword in the stone character concept meme if anyone was curious.)


Wu kept his head down as we walked along the path. Tree roots were everywhere, ready to trip anyone who didn't pay attention. He came to a clearing and paused. He was about a mile from the monastery, deep in the forest where a pile of boulders sat. A large sword stuck out from one of the boulders. Wu couldn't pull the sword out. No one could. Legend had it that only the Green Ninja would be able to remove the sword from the stone.

"What are you doing?" Garmadon asked.

Wu gasped and turned around. He hadn't heard his brother walking down the path.

"It's not like you to miss a training session," Garmadon continued.

"Sorry. I was just thinking about… stuff," Wu said. He turned back to the sword.

"Why are you looking at that old thing?" Garmadon asked.

"No reason."

"If you think one of those bozos we're training is the Green Ninja, then put them in front of the Golden Weapons."

"I'm not bringing those out." Wu crossed his arms. Not a day went by that he wished he could go back in time and stop himself from showing Morro the Golden Weapons. He hoped the boy was alright.

"Why not? If one of them is the Green Ninja, we should find out before Chen attacks."

"What good would it do to get their hopes up? Besides, I couldn't even begin to guess which one of them might be the Green Ninja," Wu admitted.

"Well, Ray has the whole dead mom, homeless sob story going for him, and Ice has the best morals of the bunch, but out of all of them, Cara is the one I definitely do not want to be the Green Ninja and the universe tends to be ironically cruel."

"Unfortunately, I can see that too, which is another reason why I don't want to get the Golden Weapons down. This could be a good test, except I don't know how I would explain it to them."

"What if we didn't tell them what we were really testing for?" Garmadon asked.

"We're not going to lie to them."

"Not lying, per se. Just follow my lead." Garmadon grinned and started back towards the monastery.


"What are we doing out here?" Hermes asked.

"A test," Garmadon said. He led the group of elemental masters through the forest.

"What exactly are you testing?" Ice asked as he nearly tripped over a root stretching across the path.

"That's for me to know and you to find out." Garmadon stopped when they entered the clearing. He stood next to the boulder with the sword sticking out.

"What's that?" Maya asked.

"A sword in a stone. It's been stuck in here since before Wu and I were born. Your task is to pull it out of the stone."

"Easy enough," Hermes said.

"Except, you aren't allowed to use your powers."

"Come again?"

"You aren't allowed to use your powers," Garmadon repeated.

"Any one of you could easily pull the sword out with your powers, but we want to see what happens when you face a difficult task without your powers," Wu explained.

"That's stupid," Cara said.

"Cara, thank you for volunteering to go first," Garmadon said.

Cara stepped up and put her hand on the handle. She pulled at the sword with all her might, but it refused to budge.

"Thank goodness," Garmadon muttered under his breath. He had his hands over his face so no one could read his lips.

"Okay, Cara, that's enough. Ray's next," Wu said.

Cara huffed back to the group while Ray stepped up. He tried to pull the sword out, but it refused to budge for him. Maya, Ice, Libby, Acronix, and Krux were equally unsuccessful, as were the masters of metal, mind, and form. Hermes was the last to go.

"Remember, you aren't allowed to dissolve the rock around the sword," Garmadon said. Truthfully, Garmadon didn't think anything would stop Hermes from somehow damaging the sword. The Master of Earth was too strong and too stubborn.

"Dissolve the rock? Do you even know how my powers work?" Hermes said.

"Just go," Wu said.

Hermes huffed and grabbed the handle. Like the others, Hermes could not get the sword to budge. However, as he leaned back and pulled, the rock surrounding the sword suddenly broke free. A large chunk of rock was still attached to the tip of the sword. Unfortunately, the momentum of the pull caused Hermes to stumble backward and fall down. He held onto the handle, but the sword, which was not designed to handle a large weight attached to the tip, broke off at the base as it flew through the air behind him. The others scrambled to get out of the way. The sword slammed against a tree and shattered into a hundred pieces that went flying everywhere.

Wu covered his mouth in shock and Garmadon slapped his forehead.

"Um… sorry," Hermes mumbled. He handed the sword handle to Garmadon.

"That sword was an ancient relic from when our father was a child, and you completely destroyed it!" Garmadon said.

Wu walked over to where the pieces of rock and sword had landed and picked them up. The tip of the sword was still stuck in a part of the rock. There was about half an inch of material sticking out of the rock.

"Maybe Ray can fix it?" Hermes said sheepishly.

"There is no fixing it," Wu said. He began to gather as many pieces of sword as he could find.

"Oh."

"Everyone go back to the monastery."

The elemental masters all started back.

"This is all your fault," Garmadon said once they were out of earshot.

"My fault?" Wu said.

"Yes. If you really wanted to see if one of them was the Green Ninja, you should've just brought out the Golden Weapons instead of coming up with this convoluted plan!"

"This 'convoluted plan' was your idea!"

"All I'm saying is you really should listen to your older brother more."

Wu threw the pieces of broken sword down and tackled Garmadon.