Ann delicately led the group through the forest, her head swivelling from side to side every second. Then, she stopped. The pause in the atmosphere was unmistakably tense, and Jay instantly recognised the situation for what it was. Right on queue, Ann turned to them and motioned for them to be quiet as they inched back to their lookout position overseeing the construction sight.
“How many did you see?” Zane asked as quietly as he could.
“Too many. They must be patrolling,” Ann answered. “It’s sheer dumb luck that we didn’t run into them earlier.”
“Yeah,” Jay repeated as he slowly turned to look at the falcon who was still perched in a nearby tree. “Dumb luck...”
“So now what?” Keaton asked, sitting down and propping her head on her knees.
Ann’s face seemed to turn to stone any time she was deep in thought, and right now, she was practically a brick wall. Her eyes were locked on the ground and you could almost hear her mental mutterings floating through the air.
“We can only wait,” she finally said. “We watch the patrols and see if there’s a good opening for us to sneak away. More than likely, we’ll end up waiting until tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, come on!” Jay wailed. “Can’t we ever catch a break? Or a nap?”
“We’ll take lookout in shifts,” Ann explained. “Clearly, you’ll be going last.”
“I’ll go first, thank you very much. I’m not that tired,” Jay said, somewhat indignant, and immediately turned around only for his foot to snag on a rock. He got a face full of grass and a stubbed toe for his trouble. Everyone’s laughter was not going to deter him, though. He picked himself right back up and dusted off the dirt from his shozoku. “What’s so funny about a pratfall anyway? It’s, like, the oldest gag in the book,” Jay muttered to himself.
As the others began working on camouflaging their lookout, Jay swung up a handful of branches and moved to a good vantage point in one of the taller trees where he could see for several yards. Already he spotted three Serpentine slithering over the dead leaves and brittle pine needles. He made sure to document this in his mental log; three Serpentine at—he looked up at the sun—roughly eight o’clock.
Would they really be here all day?
* * *
“We messed up big time,” Kai lamented.
“Yup,” Cole agreed.
“But why hasn’t he said anything?” Kai wondered, frowning. Cole only shrugged.
The two of them had been sitting in the confinement room for over 24 hours now, still being punished for their fight in the dining room. Normally, a day would be the standard amount of time for something as trivial as infighting, but now, as the sun rose on the second day, they knew that Wu had extended their stay.
“Mmm... by the way...” Kai started. “When you helped me out of Jamanakai...”
“When I saved you from Jamanakai,” Cole corrected, feeling a touch playful. Unfortunately, he failed to make his comment sound as light as he had meant to. Instead, it came out flat and matter-of-fact.
“Gloat much?” Kai said, turning to look at the boy sitting next to him.
“Who said anything about—“
“Oh, don’t even with your self-righteous—“
“You’re the one who’s trying psycho analyse—“
“Good morning, students.”
“Would you let me finish talking, Mr. Blabbermouth?!”
“Ahem!” Cole and Kai looked up and saw Wu standing in the doorway, coughing very intentionally. “‘Mr. Blabbermouth’ has something to say.” They both shrunk back a bit as their Sensei entered the room. He didn’t seem angry, just like yesterday, but he didn’t seem happy either. Then he continued, “Normally, you’d both be facing extended punishment... but due to certain... circumstances... I’m allowing you this one chance to redeem yourselves. Ann and Keaton have not returned. You’ll be tracking them down. Alone. You’ll have no back up, and no extraction.”
Kai and Cole rose to their feet and stood tall. Cole felt that annoying dizziness cloud over his brain like a swarm of bees, but he pushed through it, not wanting to look weak in front of his master.
“We’re on it. Where were they last seen?” Cole asked.
“The southeast side of Jamanakai village, heading east.” Wu paused as he slowly created some sort of walkie talkie and handed it to Cole. “Contact me every two hours and give a status update.” As Cole now noticed, something in Wu’s demeanour seemed strained. He wasn’t his usual, jovial self. No punishment, keeping in touch on an assignment, looking for his top student after only a day... something big must be going on.
Suddenly, a server came to the door, looking frantic. “The Emperor is on the phone for you, Master Wu,” he said.
“Grab whatever supplies you need and leave at once,” Wu said to them as he briskly walked out of the room.
Kai and Cole exchanged amazed glances. Well, no time to waste, apparently. They made a beeline for the weapons vault first and were greeted by that familiar smell of steal. Kai gravitated toward the katanas, and Cole assumed that he must be familiar with them, but as for this Earth ninja, he needed something with a little more “oomph.” There were all sorts of unusual and pointy things stacked along the walls, but there was something in the corner that really caught his eye.
“That’s what you’re going with?” Kai asked, eyeing the large metal scythe Cole had picked out.
He just shrugged. “It’s familiar.”
“All right, well, no time to argue I guess,” said Kai.
They grabbed as many throwing knives as they could carry, then swung by the kitchen to pick up some dried pork for the road. Alarmingly, there didn’t seem to be an abundance of people at the monastery. They hadn’t really been around all that much the day that the staff had returned, but it seemed like only a fraction of them were at their stations. Only half of the cooks were in the kitchen, a third of the maids were missing, and all the guards had completely vanished. Was something wrong? Did this have to do with the Emperor somehow?
All thought of the Emperor was driven out of Cole’s mind when he and Kai realised that they had not discussed transportation. They were standing in the northern courtyard, ready to go, and twiddling their thumbs.
“Well, he did say ‘grab whatever supplies you need’,” Kai pointed out. “So let’s just grab a car.” Cole grumbled in his head, but outwardly he was complacent. He just followed Kai as he ran over to one of the military jeeps and plopped down in the passenger’s seat. Was this really the best thing to be doing? Something about it didn’t feel right, and yet, Kai was already going ahead with it. Whatever. If Kai wants to be an idiot, it’s... it’s whatever. He didn’t want to think about it.
Cole hopped in and started the engine. As they pulled out and into the gravel road, he couldn’t help but take one last look at the monastery in the rear view mirror. Again, something didn’t feel right. Not with Wu, not with this mission, or... or with himself.
No! Everything is normal. Everything is normal. Everything is normal. It’s whatever. Just complete the mission, he told himself over and over again. There was no need to worry whatsoever.
This trip to Jamanakai felt far more different than their last. For one thing, Cole wasn’t trying to chase down a drugged-up Kai and avoiding being found out by his Sensei. But, surely Wu had to know by now what they had done, right? He saw Kai walking around. Okay, well, perhaps that didn’t link them to Jamanakai, but why had the old man not asked about it? Right as the question hit him, so did the answer. Dr. Lee must have told him. Whatever Kai had done in the medical room must have tipped off the doctor, it only made sense. And that must have been what Wu had implied earlier in the confinement room when he said, “Normally you’d both be facing extended punishment...”
These thoughts were his only pastime as they drove. By nine o’clock, they were getting close to Jamanakai, but were met, quite abruptly, by a blockade of soldiers. They had completely cut off everyone from the village and were investigating the scene thoroughly.
“Well, now what?” Kai asked.
Cole gave a frustrated huff. “We don’t need to get into town. We’ll just park the car and go the rest of the way on foot.”
Which is precisely what they did. The car was parked off to the side of the road, out of sight, and the two boys walked down some old, pothole-filled, dirt roads until they finally reached the southeast side of Jamanakai. Well, as close as they could get to Jamanakai, anyway.
Right away, they noticed a lot of footprints on the ground, and a lot of damaged foliage. Some kind of fight took place, but where and why had they others run off? At any rate, Wu’s directions were to head east, so they headed out with barely a word said between them.
Being back here, even if they had only been on the outskirts of town, made Cole’s mind race with flashbacks. He felt so guilty about not telling all of what happened to Wu, and he was still rather unsettled by his encounter with... with... no. No. He refused to think about it anymore. No. No no no.
But... if Ann and the others had run into trouble... that could only mean... they had run into the... the... Serpentine. Just thinking of the word was enough to send shivers down Cole’s spine. He wouldn’t need to face off against them again, would he? No no no, please, no.
Now he had done it. With the floodgates opened, his mind began to race. If he had to fight the Serpentine, then what if he ran into that one Hypnobrai again? What was his name? Scales? Aargh! Why did he know his name?! And then the flashbacks lunged at him, rapid fire.
“Keep your eyes open! What, are you trying to fall over?” Kai quipped as they went. Cole opened his eyes and looked around. He hadn’t realised that he had broken into a run and Kai was now keeping pace with him.
Taking a look and around and trying to focus on the mission seemed like the only thing that could distract him from all those... other thoughts. So he replayed Wu’s instructions over and over again to keep himself on task. They must be on the right trail. There were footprints on the ground now, and they looked to belong to four familiar ninja.
At ten o’clock, they took a short break and pulled out the radio Wu had given them to report in.
“This is Fireboy, calling Tortoise. I repeat, Fireboy calling Tortoise, over,” Kai said into the little device. There a short pause of silence.
“This is Tortoise, I read you loud and clear, Fireboy, over,” Wu’s voice crackled.
“Status update...” Kai went on, but Cole had stopped listening.
He was wondering how Ann was doing. He hadn’t seen her for a while now. It would feel strange to see her again, after everything that’s happened. Did she... did she think of him at all whenever she left on missions? With a sunken heart, he realised: probably not. She probably thought he was annoying.
“Hey, rocks-for-brains, let’s go!” Kai jabbed. Cole lifted his head up and saw Kai walking down the path again. Reluctantly, he followed.
No matter how hard he tried, the memories from his... experience... kept coming back to haunt Cole. He couldn’t stop it now, especially with his fear on the rise, and Kai’s little comments didn’t help, either. And then...
“Cole...”
“GET OUT!!!” Cole yelled as loud as he could. He instinctively reached the hardest surface there was nearby and—
CRACK!!!
His head was ringing instead of hearing voices, and he was breathing so fast, it felt like he had just run a marathon. In front of him was a large tree with a forehead-sized dent in it, laying on the ground.
“What the heck just happened?!” Kai shouted, rushing over. Cole didn’t know what to say. What could he say? Was there a logical explanation for all of this? Was he just going crazy? What was going on with him? “You just blew our cover!” Kai continued. “Everyone within a ten mile radius will have heard that!” Oh, shoot! Kai was right! What had he done? “Don’t stand there gaping, come on! We need to hurry!”
Well this was going great so far! How else could things possibly go wrong?!
* * *
“We’ve been watching the patrols since yesterday morning,” Jay whined as he stretched his sore arms. “Let’s just face it, we’re stuck here!”
“There has to be an opening somewhere,” Ann said for what felt like the millionth time.
“We know, we know, but where is it?” said Jay, straightening up.
Construction down below was still very much underway. In fact, it hadn’t stopped all night, giving the gang a rough night’s sleep. By now, they had a good chunk of the walls going up.
Keaton looked around and said, “If only we had some sort of—“
“Sound the alarm!!”
All four of them got low to the ground.
“Did they spot us?” Zane asked.
No one dared answer as they listened for the tell-take sounds of the Serpentine’s slithering, but nothing seemed to be coming their way.
“Over there!”
“Get them!”
That sounded too far away. Who had tripped the alarm if it wasn’t them?
Very slowly, the four ninja rose to their knees and peered over the bushes. Ten, maybe twelve Hypnobrai were chasing two figures running through the woods. One in red, one in black.
“By the First Spinjitsu Master’s Beard!” Ann cursed, flabbergasted. “What are those two doing here?”
“We gotta help them!” Keaton cried.
“No, we can’t risk blowing our cover!” Ann pressed, her face becoming stone once again.
“Everything’s protocol-this, and discipline-that with you!” Jay burst. “Live a little!” He suddenly jumped from behind the bushes and charged at his friends.
“Jay Walker, you get you blue butt back here!” Ann hissed desperately, but it was too late. He was already flagging down the Serpentine troops.
“You want me to go after him?” Zane asked.
“Gladly,” Ann replied. As he left, she turned to Keaton and said, “Come on. We’ll need to create a diversion so we can escape.”
* * *
Back with Cole and Kai, who were running for their lives, things were going about as well as they had expected.
“Why did you knock down that stupid tree!?” Kai yelled.
Cole silently cursed himself, but still didn’t know what to say to Kai. “I don’t know!” he finally snapped.
“How could you not know?!” Kai shot back. “You knocked over a tree, and you just don’t know why?!”
“Just drop it already! There’s nothing we can do about it now!” Cole yelled, throwing up another stone wall that the Hypnobrai just went around. Ugh! Seeing them did NOT make him feel better.
“Aaaaaaah!!!” Someone had just charged at the Serpentine with a torrent of lightning.
“Jay?!” Kai and Cole shouted together. He had just successfully blown away their competition with a terrific explosion, but not without sacrifice. Cole could tell that his legs were shaking terribly.
Before they could do anything, Zane swooped in and scooped Jay up. “Go! Go! Go!” he shouted at them, waving his free hand to urge them forward. Okay, and they were running again.
“Where are we going exactly?!” Kai wanted to know.
As Zane drew closer, he said, “Ann and Keaton are here too. We just need to lay low. She’ll handle the rest. See any good hiding places?”
All of a sudden, half a dozen Serpentine leapt out of the bushes to attack them. Cole’s nerves were working double time, and in that split second of terror when his lungs refused to breathe, he had created a dome of stone all around him and his teammates.
“Well as hiding places go, it’s not... terrible,” said Jay.
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