Legends of Ninjago: Book 2: Rise of the Serpentine: Chapter 14 — Silence is Survival

“Our numbers are too small at current for such an undertaking, and in any case, the Serpentine are far too strong for any man to fight,” said Wu, leaning against the large table in the middle of the room.

“But we have to do something, it’s our responsibility,” Ann said. “We can take them.”

“Well, we’d better get to Jamanakai pronto!” Keaton blurted.

Wu sighed. “Keaton is right. We must leave at once. We must keep the people safe.”

“And what if the army doesn’t take kindly to us interfering?” Ann asked quietly.

“All the more reason to stay hidden and work quickly,” said Wu. “Especially considering the fact that Loyd is there leading them. Be sure that you don’t underestimate him. The latest report says he effortlessly defended himself against an entire platoon of soldiers and escaped before anyone could lay a finger on him.”

Jay swallowed hard, and silently hoped no one had noticed. He didn’t want them all to think that he was scared, even though he totally was. Just a little. He and Zane stood off to the side watching the three veterans strategise over their massive map of Ninjago and awaited their orders.

“Jay, Zane,” Wu was saying now. “You will accompany us and provide long distance support, but under no circumstance are you allowed to openly engage with the enemy in close-quarters combat. Understood?”

“Understood, Sensei,” the boys said in unison. It felt kinda cool to be doing all this official military stuff, Jay thought, and he had to admit that a part of him was excited to be accompanying Wu and the girls on their first real mission in months, but the majority of him was having some very not happy flashbacks.

“Girls, you know what to do,” said Wu as he turned his attention back to his students. They nodded stoically and then left the room. “Boys, come with me,” and he led them to the armoury.

It was a fairly sized, stone room lined from ceiling to floor with all manner of weaponry, from daggers and shurikens, to swords and maces. Wu walked passed all of these, much to Jay’s dismay, and instead made a beeline for a row of crossbows stacked neatly side by side.

“Crossbows?” Jay asked.

“As I said: long distance support,” Wu explained. He handed one of the wooden contractions to each boy and then supplied them with a quiver ammunition.

“Let’s hope those few weeks of target practise paid off,” Jay said, tightening the quiver strap to his belt. They hadn’t spent a great deal of time with these automatic arrows, at least compared to all the time they spent growing muscles and running for miles and doing push-ups, but they should be alright.

After that, Wu led them to small courtyard near the rear of the monastery where Ann and Keaton were already loading up a small armoured car. There was nothing for them to do except stand by and wait to roll out.

As they were standing there, patiently watching Ann stow their crossbows safely in the vehicle, Jay could’ve sworn that he heard something not too far off. It was almost like a whooping sound, followed by a thud, as if someone had just fallen from a great height.

“Hey, did you hear something?” Jay asked Zane.

Zane looked up. “No,” he said. “Why, what did you hear?”

Jay shrugged. “Nothing, I guess.”

In a flash, they were ready, and everyone loading into the car. They sped off down the road at about half passed one, expecting to arrive at the town within a few hours.

Jay’s mind wandered back to Cole and Kai while they speeding along. Knowing the two of them, solitary confinement was NOT going to be fun. As a matter of fact, he’d be surprised if they weren’t pulling some sort of crazy hijinks right this very moment. Hopefully, it wasn’t anything TOO crazy. They were in enough trouble already.

“Jay, Zane, you remember your instructions?” Ann drilled them as they drove, making sure that they had every last detail memorised.

“Find a high up, protected location to snipe from while you three go in and get Lloyd,” Jay recited for what felt like the millionth time.

“I still don’t understand...” Zane suddenly said.

“What’s not to understand? We get there, we grab Lloyd, we skedaddle, and try not to die,” Jay yammered on.

“Not about that,” said Zane. “The Serpentine. I still can’t believe that they’re actually real. I mean, Sensei, you taught us all about them as if they were real, but honestly, I still doubted the fact. And where could they have come from? I was certain they had all gone extinct centuries ago.”

“Perhaps some of them have, that is always a possibility, but it is surprisingly hard to kill a snake,” Wu explained in the passengers seat. “They were locked away and left to die, but it seems Lloyd managed to stumble upon one of their tombs.”

“You really think it’s the Hypnobrai?” Jay asked, swallowing hard again.

“It is most likely. Out of all the locations of the tombs, Lloyd was closest to this one. However, do not be alarmed. Their powers have no effect on us.” Wu seemed so confident and at ease with all of this. Jay envied his apparent levity of speech.

“No effect?” Zane repeated.

“Will you two be asking questions all day?” Ann asked irritably.

“Hush, Ann,” said Wu. Ann seemed to shrink in the driver’s seat. “They are merely curious. Better to be asking curious questions than to act on curious impulses.”

“Yes, Sensei,” said Ann. She turned her attention back to the road.

Wu turned around in his seat (as much as he could managed anyway) and continued talking. “Their hypnoses has no effect on us due to some unique propers we possess as elementals.”

Jay was relatively satisfied with that answer, but he could tell that—in his head—Zane was asking the next logical question: what kind of unique properties?

The group turned off onto a dirt road that looked relatively abandoned. Jay suspected that they would be approaching the town from a more covert angle. After all, they could risk being seen by Lloyd or the army.

Wu seemed to have an interesting relationship with the government. He was an old veteran and a trusted ally, so he was given all sorts of resources without any question as to what he was using it for, but he chose to keep Ann, Keaton, and all the rest of them off the radar. Were elementals that big of a secret?

Right about when the sun was setting, they had finally reached Jamanakai village, and they parked the car in a dense part of the surrounding woods where it could remain hidden. No words were spoken, only hand gestures. Wu spearheaded the group, with all the teens in tow, anxiously holding their weapons.

The town looked fairly normal, with all the usual town-y things like houses and lawns and shops. The only thing it was missing was people.

‘Are we too late? Did the Serpentine get to them already?’ Jay asked himself. Did this mean they had hostages? How would they get Lloyd now?

No time for worrying, Wu was giving another hand signal. He was telling them to fan out and watch his back. Jay and Zane both took up the most advantageous spots they could find in suburbia, and continued to follow their Sensei in utter silence.

The housing district was clear of both civilians and Serpentine, and the shopping district seemed empty so far, too. Jay’s hand was hovering over the trigger, and he kept his eyes peeled for the first sign of trouble, but one street after another turned up empty. He couldn’t tell if this made him feel relieved, or terrified.

They were coming up on Main Street now, and Jay climbed to the top of an old, two story building where he got a good view of the several hundred people tied up on the road below. The entire town must have been there, or at least most of them, and they all looked like they had been traumatised. Wu came up to them and began untying their bonds, Ann and Keaton following suit, but then he paused when one of the townsfolk handed him a small piece of paper. Jay wished he had better eyesight, but he’d just have to wait and see what it was later.

They stayed until all the civilians were freed, and then came the sound of helicopter blades and trucks. That would be the military, right on queue. Jay retreated from his post and met up with Zane and the others down on the street.

“To the sewers,” Wu commanded.

Oh no! Seriously? They couldn’t be completely surrounded, could they? They could find another way that didn’t involve the dirty sewers, right?

It was too late to argue. Ann was already popping the lid off of a man hole and was jumping down into the darkness below. Jay was the last to follow, and held his breath as he climbed down into the gross black tunnel. Ann placed the lid back and they all fell silent again.

A light began to pulsate and Jay immediately recognised it as Wu’s signature power. The tunnel was small and dingy, as he had expected, but he wasn’t really given the time to dwell on it. They started running down the corridors but overhead, Jay could hear footsteps and loud voices. Finally, the sounds died away, which meant that they were safe for the moment.

“I don’t get it,” said Jay. His voice sounded strange in the tunnel. “Where was Lloyd? And the Serpentine?”

“He knew we were coming.” Wu held up that piece of paper from earlier and now Jay could see its contents. Someone had taken a pencil and hastily sketched a snarky face with the words “Ha ha” written underneath.

“But what did he hope to accomplish here?” Zane wondered.

“Didn’t you notice?” Keaton asked. “All the shops were looted.”

“And I’d bet that they’ve got a handful of hostages too,” said Ann darkly.

All eyes turned to Wu for orders. Jay had learned to identify his beard scratching as his “thoughtful pose” and could tell that he was thinking deeply about what to do next.

“We must catch him. He can’t have gotten far. Let’s go,” said the master. Well, I guess that meant the mission wasn’t going to be over any time soon. Now that the town was safe, their rescue mission had become a hunting party.

They came up another manhole on the edge of town and slipped away before anyone had the chance to spot them. Keaton was the best scout in the group, and naturally she took point. It seemed to take forever to find their first clue with soldiers filling up the place more and more every minute, but as they skirted the perimeter of town, Keaton discovered a disturbance in the grass; a clear trail to follow.

They followed the impressions in the ground while Jay and Zane kept lookout, waiting for any chance to warn Wu of soldiers coming their way.

“Oh no,” Keaton mumbled as she scanned the thickening foliage.

“What is it?” asked Wu.

“You see this?” she said, gesturing to a broken branch. “It’s broken this way. This is the way they came to the town, not the way they left.”

Wu stroked his beard again and Ann came over to peer at the trail ahead of them.

“Sir, yes sir!”

That was a nearby platoon. If they didn’t move soon, they’d find them here.

Wu gestured for them to keep moving and follow the trail. Jay tentatively walked with them, doing his best not to make a sound, the way Wu had taught him.

“So what’s his plan?” Ann pondered after they were out of earshot of the soldiers. “He stumbles upon the Hypnobrai, somehow manages to form an alliance, and then comes to this backwater town to loot and burn it? They didn’t even take anything that valuable.”

“They mostly seemed to be looting the grocery stores and restaurants, which would seem to indicate that the Serpentine were hungry,” Wu replied, moving a branch out of his way.

“But why Jamanakai?” Ann pressed.

“It’s the same place he tried to bomb,” Jay piped up. “Maybe it’s an important place to him.”

Wu only mumbled a “hmm” in reply and kept walking. They followed the trail for a while, and began to get an idea of how many Serpentine Lloyd had aligned himself with. Keaton estimated that they had a group of about three dozen or so. Not an army, but enough to cause a considerable amount of havoc, especially if they hypnotised a few more people to join their group.

Jay was beginning to wonder about Lloyd. After all, he was the only one in the group who had never seen the boy. He was a boy, right, not a full grown man? The way Wu talked about him made him seem immature at least. Kai and Cole seemed rattled by him, which gave Jay the idea that he really meant business, and was probably really powerful. Come to think of it, Jay had never actually met Lord Garmadon either, so he had no idea what Lloyd could possibly look like except for the rough description of Garmadon Senior that Kai had given him once when they were recounting their journeys. An image of a tall, black-skinned man jumped to mind, towering over him like a shadow... hang on a moment... that...

Jay’s memory was suddenly jogged. His dream the other night... that had been Garmadon... he knew it was Garmadon... and he had been exactly as Kai had described him. Tall, black skin, white fangs, bulky armour, and four arms. It was such a vivid image that it was almost as if it had been plucked from a memory, and yet... Jay had no such memory. And he had definitely known that it was Garmadon when he was having the dream... what did all of that mean?

“I hope Cole and Kai are doing okay at the Monastery,” Keaton absentmindedly said. “I don’t know much about what happened, but solitary confinement is never fun.”

“You’ve been in solitary confinement before?” Jay asked, bewildered. Surely that sweet, innocent little Keaton had never gotten herself into trouble before? She always followed the rules so well it that made everyone around her seem like rebellious punks!

“Well, isn’t it basically the same thing as a time-out?” Keaton asked, starring down at the tracks beneath her feet. “I’ve had one of those. I’ll never forget that day... the day I swiped a cookie from the kitchen...” Her voice sounded absolutely shaken by the memory.

“Pfft, I bet Ann was the one who tattled,” Jay muttered.

“And?! What’s it to you?!” Ann shouted, suddenly reeling on him.

“They say silence is golden, but in this case,” said Wu, turning toward them with a serious look in his eye. “Silence is survival.” Everyone quickly quieted and went back to focusing on their jobs. Lloyd’s capture and the defeat of the Serpentine was now their sole objective again.