Zane ran into the Samurai-X Cave, trying to keep up with his friends. They were all so tall and so quick!
"We got here as fast as we could," Kai said as they reached the big room in the Cave.
Nya nodded and gestured at one of the big screens, which was showing a map. "Twenty noodle trucks have been spotted heading toward Ninjago City just fifty clicks away."
"Let me guess, they ain't hauling noodles," Cole said heavily.
"Twenty trucks could hold two hundred Anacondrai," Pixal reported from a small portion of the screen.
Zane waved to her, happy to see her again, but she just kept talking. That was okay. It sounded like she was saying something really important.
"If they get to the city before we do, the city will be theirs," Pixal said.
Garmadon slithered forward. "And they'll have achieved the pivotal first foothold in the war."
"We have to stop them," Lloyd said with certainty.
"Are we gonna use our powers?" Zane asked, a little excited at that idea. He liked the feeling using his ice powers gave him, even if it meant he might be in a fight.
"We'll do our best to stop them, so yes, probably," Cole said.
Zane grinned.
"I've already warned the others to head them off at the pass. They should be able to hold the line until you offer support. I had them equip themselves so we could communicate," Nya explained.
On the screen, a new face popped up. Zane recognized him as Shade, one of the Elemental Masters from the island. Shade said, "We're in position. If they show up, we'll be sure to put up a fight."
"They're coming to your location soon!" Nya warned.
"I see them. Let's show them what we're made of," Shade said with a smirk.
Zane watched the screen in anticipation. Maybe if the Anacondrai got stopped quickly, his friends would have time to bring Zane to go see his father? Zane liked being with his friends, but he missed Father and really wanted to see him.
"The trucks," Shade reported, sounding shocked. That probably wasn't a good thing. "They're going every which way."
"What do you mean?" Jay burst out. "Aren't they going to Ninjago City?"
"I don't know where they're going, but they ain't going together," Shade said tensely.
Watching the faces of his friends in the room, Zane saw confusion and fear. Definitely not a good thing, then.
Misako stepped over to a different screen and pointed to it. "There are over twelve densely populated villages within a ten-click radius."
"They aren't planning to launch one attack, they're planning multiple," Kai realized as they all crowded around the new screen.
Zane stood on his tiptoes, trying to see what was on the new screen, but it was just another map. He thought through what Kai had just said. "So it isn't just Ninjago City that needs help?"
"What do we do? You told us to stay together," Shade asked.
"Chen knows you can't take you all on at once. He's trying to split you up," Garmadon said.
Misako nodded. "But even if just one of those trucks makes it to a village, the people won't be able to defend themselves."
"We have to protect the people," Lloyd said with certainty. "Tell the Elemental Fighters we have to split up. We'll each intercept a truck and stop it from reaching those villages."
"Split up?" Zane repeated. He didn't like the sound of that.
Apparently Jay didn't either. "Whatever happened to 'we fight as one?'"
"This isn't a vote, Jay. This is stopping the end of our world as we know it," Garmadon said gravely.
Lloyd nodded sharply, and he turned and began running out of the Cave.
Kai, Jay, and Cole went running out too.
"What about me?" Zane asked, looking around. "Do I get to go fight?"
"Stick with us," Nya invited, coming over to stand by him.
Zane frowned. "I can help. I really can."
"I bet you can. I want you to help us," Nya said.
Zane paused. "You think I can help?"
Nya nodded and smiled.
"Okay," Zane said slowly. "I can try."
"Nya, ready the Bounty. We must prepare for the worst," Wu ordered.
Nya nodded. "Come on, Zane. We need to get ready."
She ran off to a different part of the Cave, and after a moment, Zane trotted after her.
"What are we getting ready?" Zane asked as he and Nya came to a stop by a tall line of multiple curtains.
"The Destiny's Bounty," Nya explained, and she stepped forward to a gap in the curtains and started flipping switches.
Zane tilted his head to one side. "The what?"
"Our flying ship," Nya said.
Zane paused. "I think I heard you wrong. A flying ship?"
"It's like a ship, but with rocket boosters," Nya explained.
"Rocket boosters?" Zane exclaimed, bouncing a little in place. "That is cool!"
Nya grinned at him. "It is. Here, come help me. This line of switches all need to be flipped."
Zane stepped forward eagerly and began flipping the ones Nya had gestured to.
"Nya, why aren't we in the air?" Wu asked, coming over to them.
"We just gave the old gal a makeover. It's gonna take some time for her to warm up," Nya reported.
Wu turned away and started talking to Garmadon and Misako, but Zane didn't pay that much attention. He carefully flipped the last switch in the line and turned to Nya. "What now?"
"Now we head over here," Nya said, gesturing to a different part of the line of curtains. "Come on!"
Zane followed Nya to another gap in the curtains. She started turning a large dial, grunting as she did so.
"I'll help," Zane said, and he grabbed for the other side of the dial and pulled at it, but it barely moved. "Oh!"
"Yeah, it's a little tricky," Nya said with a smile. "Keep going."
Together, they pulled the dial, and it slowly turned in place.
"There," Nya said, stepping back. "That should-"
Everything went dark. Well, dark-ish.
"Ah!" Zane yelped and looked around hurriedly. He could still see, but it was a lot harder. The unexpectedness of the darkness made him a little scared, and he stepped closer to the outlined shape of Nya in the dim light.
"Nya, what just happened?" Wu called over.
"I'll have her back online in no time," Nya called back. She went back to the first gap in the curtains, muttering to herself as she examined the panel.
Zane stuck close to her side, listening. Some of the words she was using sounded like ones his father would use when Zane needed a repair. Zane sighed. He missed Father so much. He stayed with Nya for a few moments, hoping to help, but she just kept talking to herself and messing with the different parts of the ship. So Zane walked away, over to the big screen where a video of Jay was showing and Wu and Skylor were watching.
"Have you diverted the truck away from the villages?" Wu was asking.
"You got it, and once I get it farther, I'll take care of those snakes," Jay said.
"Good work. The people are safe," Wu said.
Skylor gasped. "No they aren't. We aren't pulling them away from the people, they're pulling us!"
"Stop the trucks!" Wu shouted. "Everyone, come back now!"
"It was all a trap," Garmadon realized as the screen showed empty truck after empty truck that the Elemental Masters had tracked down.
"Then that means…" Misako began, but her voice trailed off.
"The greatest victories have no battle. Our worst fears have come true." Wu shook his head.
"The new Serpentine War has just begun," Garmadon said gravely.
Zane swallowed hard. He had thought dragons were really scary, but a whole war? That was really, really scary.
A loud rumble startled Zane, and he whirled around to see the tall curtains pulled back and a huge ship hanging in the air.
"Come on, we need to reach the others," Nya called from the ship's deck. "Let's go!"
Garmadon, Wu, Skylor, and Misako ran for the ship, and Zane was right behind them, pausing only to grab Pixal's neural drive from the Cave's computer. They all climbed aboard and followed Nya into a room filled with screens and buttons, which Nya began frantically tapping and shouting at. She was trying to get out of the Cave and reach the others, Zane realized. Out the windows, he could see the Cave's walls turn into blue sky. They were taking off!
But they weren't getting in contact.
After a minute of desperate action, Nya turned back to them. "All communication is cut!"
"If our fighters don't know where to go, who's going to stop my father?" Skylor said with a deep frown.
At that moment, a picture popped up on the screen of a man in a weird hat. He was purple and scaly, just like Skylor and Garmadon, but he was grinning. "Hello. As you can see, I've taken control of the airwaves, just as I'll take over Ninjago."
"You'll pay for this, Chen," Garmadon threatened.
Oh. This was Chen, the bad guy they'd been against this whole time. Zane crossed his arms and frowned at the screen. Then he had an idea. He hurried over to one of the screens and began looking for a certain type of input. He found one just as shouting erupted from behind him. Startled, Zane turned to see Skylor stepping between Wu and Garmadon.
"Don't you see what he's doing? He's divided the ninja, now he's dividing you," Skylor said firmly.
Wu frowned and gave Garmadon a long, hard, stern look, like Garmadon was the bad guy here. But he wasn't. Chen was.
"Don't fight," Zane said earnestly, stepping over to them. "We need to win the war, right? So we have got to fight the Anacondrai, not each other."
Wu turned away from Garmadon, but he was still looking stern.
That was going to have to be enough for the moment. Zane nodded. "So let us figure out how to win the war."
"What can we do?" Nya asked. "We're out of communication with everyone."
"Not everyone," Zane said, and he went back over the screen he had just seen and pushed Pixal's neural drive into the input.
Pixal popped up on the computer. "What has just happened?"
"We cannot get to anyone," Zane said. "We need to get in contact with the others, but we have no way to do it."
Pixal thought for a moment. "From what I have learned about the Elemental Masters, one of them may be able to help. If you could get into contact with Neuro, the master of mind, he could likely reach all of the rest of the Elemental Masters."
"I'll try to pinpoint his communication device," Nya said, and she stepped up to one of the screens and began typing.
Before she had done much, though, a wave rippled through the air. Zane's hands shot up and grabbed his head, which felt like it was being squeezed then quickly released.
A thought appeared in his mind, one he hadn't thought up himself.
"Go to the Samurai-X Cave."
"Did anyone else just feel that?" Nya asked, looking around.
"I believe someone else just had the same plan we did. Neuro has sent a message to us all," Wu said. "We must return to the Cave."
By the time the last Elemental Masters were filing into the Cave, Zane and Nya had gotten Pixal connected from the Destiny's Bounty to the Cave's computers so she could be with them wherever they went. Now Nya was looking over the screens and talking with Pixal about what was on them. Zane stood to the side, looking around at all the people and trying not to feel scared or confused. There was a war going on. He needed to be brave.
"So why were we asked here? We should be fighting snakes," Griffin asked.
"Because anyone can fight. Only one side can declare victory," Wu said firmly.
Nya pulled up a map with lots of red dots on it on the big screen. "In the time it took you to get here, Chen has taken over the entire Eastern seaboard and is moving inland. With each village destroyed, they grow stronger."
Karlof grunted. "That's a lot of red. Karlof not like red."
"How are we supposed to stop them? Most of us have lost control of our Dragons, not to mention we're outnumbered ten to one," Gravis scoffed.
Lloyd stepped up to the front of the room. "Look, I'm scared like the rest of you. It may look like we've lost, but it's not over. When we thought we lost Zane, it nearly tore us apart. But we didn't quit. We let it fuel us. We grew stronger."
Zane frowned. There was something here that he didn't understand, and he was confused yet again. His friends all knew him, but he didn't know them. And Lloyd was talking like Zane had been taken away from them somehow. What was that about?
Wu cleared his throat and pointed to the big screen, which was now showing a different map. "There's hope. The Corridor of Elders."
"Corridor of Elders?" Shade repeated.
Wu nodded. "I know we don't stand much of a chance taking on his entire army at once, but after he's controlled the East, he'll move West tomorrow and have to pass through Echo Canyons. Our best tactical position is to make our stand where it bottlenecks: here, at the Corridor of Elders, the monuments honoring our ancestors. It's the narrowest channel, but our greatest chance."
"If we can't stop them here, the rest of Ninjago will fall like dominos," Garmadon said gravely.
"Karlof not like to lose. Karlof fueled!" Karlof said.
"Then we have one day to save tomorrow," Wu said firmly.
All of the Elemental Masters cheered.
"We're going to need all the help we can get," Nya observed.
Wu nodded and looked to the rest of the room. "Let's all go out to the citizens of Ninjago. They have the right to fight for themselves."
"We'll have to split up again," Cole said. "But we'll come back together at the Corridor of Elders even stronger."
"When we split up, can I go too?" Zane asked, stepping closer to Cole. "I want to help."
Cole hesitated.
"Please?" Zane asked.
Cole sighed, then he smiled, a little wearily, but still a smile. "You know what? Sure. You have the right to fight for yourself too. Come on, you can come with me."
"Here we are," Cole said, stepping forward. "New Ninjago City. Now we just need to find a place where a lot of people are gathered."
Zane followed Cole down the sidewalk, looking around with interest. He had never been to Ninjago City. He hadn't even known there was a "New" Ninjago City. The buildings were all so tall, and the cars all moved so quickly. It was a little overwhelming… Maybe more than a little. Zane stuck close to Cole.
"If we go down here, maybe-" Cole said, turning a corner, then his voice stopped abruptly. "Nope, not down there."
Zane peered down the street curiously. "But there are a lot of people gathered there."
"Uh, no there aren't," Cole said quickly.
"Yes? There are? Right there, in that park," Zane said, pointing. "We can talk to them there."
Cole hesitated.
"We are supposed to be gathering people," Zane said, confused once again. Why didn't Cole want to go to that park? Lots of people were there. It looked nice, too, lots of trees and grass and even what looked like a big statue.
Sighing, Cole nodded. "Yeah. Okay. But stick close."
Cole started down the street, and Zane followed.
When they reached the park, Cole stepped to one edge of the sidewalk. He cleared his throat and began speaking loudly, almost shouting. "Everyone! I know this is hard, and I know this is scary."
Those two things were both true. The crowd of people started turning toward Cole, coming closer to him.
That made a clear path for Zane to see right through the park…
To the statue.
The very familiar statue.
Zane almost couldn't hear Cole shouting to the people. He couldn't pay attention to anything but the statue. It was like the whole world was just Zane… And Zane.
The statue was of Zane.
Cole was still shouting, and the people were starting to shout too.
But Zane didn't pay any attention to them.
He couldn't.
Zane stepped away from Cole. He walked right up to the statue.
His own face stared down at him. It was his real face, not the one he had at the moment that looked like a kid. The statue was wearing strange clothes, a uniform, just like the uniforms Cole and Jay and Kai and Lloyd wore. The statue looked forward and up, almost to the sky. Its face looked brave and sure.
Zane was not brave and sure.
Why was there a statue of him? What was wrong with his memory? How had he met his friends, and how had he forgotten them?
Zane's gaze fell to a plaque at the base of the statue.
"Zane Julien," He read aloud. "In memory."
What could that mean?
"As the White Ninja and the Ninja of Ice," Zane continued reading, seeing words that seemed to refer to himself but that made no sense to him. "Zane was created by-"
No.
It couldn't be.
No! No!
Zane sat down, right then and there, plopping down on the pavement.
"The late Doctor Julien," Zane read, those four words from the plaque searing into him.
That meant…
"Father is dead," Zane whispered, and he buried his face in his hands and began to cry.