(Editor’s note: I know this is super unprofessional, buuuuut in my hurry to get the first few chapters written and done, I realised that I neglected to include several important moments from the show in the last two chapters. Namely, Zane’s dream sequence. I have since then updated the chapters, and if you’re not inclined to read them over again, the gist of it is: the Green Ninja is now back on everyone’s mind. That’s all. Happy reading!)
Zane watched the purple Serpentine bend over him with his freakishly long neck and forked tongue. His eyes were a vibrant neon pink, squinted into conniving slits, while his weighty tail continued to crush Zane.
“But I don’t really see what all the fuss was about,” he said to someone just out of Zane’s view. “They’re hardly what I would consider a great threat.”
Zane kept trying to push himself up, or to throw the snake off his back, but all he was getting was exhausted. Then he stopped and breathed in. He needed to think of something clever, not just brute force his way through. The answer made itself clear straight away in the form of the cold snow pressed up against Zane’s skin. Closing his eyes, he called out to it, asking it for help.
“Now let’s see—how close are we to discovering the beast’s nest?” The Serpentine was saying.
“Pythor! Look out!”
Zane barely processed the conversation, as all his mental energy was going into creating a tidal wave of snow to wash his assailant away. He was up on his feet again the moment he heard the snake—Pythor—hit the ground and then was promptly buried, his long neck sticking out of a mound of white mass.
“See? I told you they were annoying.”
Zane turned to face that second voice and saw a young boy dressed in a tattered, black uniform. His pale—almost yellow—skin looked rough and bumpy in places, giving his complexion a blotchy sort of appearance. His hair was undone and flowing messily in the wind, with more than a few tangles in it. His most striking features, however, were his slitted green eyes and fanged teeth.
“…Lloyd Garmadon?” Zane guessed after half a minute.
Something flashed in those green eyes; an emotion too tumultuous to comprehend. Without a word, the boy summoned a handful of dark energy and flung it at Zane who created a shield of snow. With everything else still happening around him, Zane couldn’t afford to wait for Lloyd to fire again. While the shield was busy evaporating into nothingness, Zane took off toward the last place he had seen Cole.
The crowd of Serpentine was steadily growing larger, attempting to surround the queen Treehorn. Zane decided he needed to move quickly, and carefully created a train of ice beneath his feet to help him fly past his enemies without starting a tussle with any of them. He wove his way through the ever changing legs of the Treehorn and froze many snakes along the way—accidentally or otherwise—until he found Cole having the living daylights squeezed out of him by a group of black Serpentine.
“Unhand him!” He cried, launching a barrage of ice spikes at the snakes.
The second Cole was free to move, he summoned three stone slabs to push the last remained Serpentine away.
“Thanks,” he breathed.
“We need to retreat!” Zane yelled as the Treehorn gave a mighty screech. The Serpentine were becoming more and more preoccupied with the army of smaller Treehorns emerging from the forest. “Let’s go!”
“What?” Cole blurted. “But this is our chance to—“
“To die? Yes, that is exactly why we are retreating!” Zane said, grabbing Cole by the sleeve and pulling him along. “The others are in a bad enough condition as it is!”
“The others?” Cole repeated, suddenly following Zane willingly. “What happened to them?”
“They’re—“
Zane stopped in his tracks as he looked around the mottled snow.
“They were right here… where did they go?!”
“Hey, onion-head!”
They turned around and saw Lloyd glaring daggers. “Forgot about me, huh?” He taunted.
Zane quickly looked over at Cole. “Does my hair really look like an onion?”
“Shut up!” Lloyd snapped. “S-surrender or somebody gets hurt!”
“Sorry, kid. We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” said Cole, stepping forward with a boulder at the ready and a deathly serious look on his face. “Stand down, or you get hurt.”
His eyes flashed red. “DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!”
Zane only remembered a streak of purple whizzing by, uncomfortably close to his face, before his battle instincts took over.
His first attack—a direct blast—pushed Lloyd back a few feet but ultimately crumbled in a cloud of purple smoke. Cole followed up with a quick attack: two triangular stones, like sharks in a powdery ocean, hungrily charged at the boy. He leaped away from them both with alarming grace, letting them crash together as he landed, untouched.
Lloyd looked up and his slitted eyes were positively on fire. With a throaty scream he launched a hurricane of purple at them, forcing them to throw up shield after shield after shield. Zane could hardly find time to launch a counter attack. Lloyd had been using this time to get closer to the boys, but if he thought he could win in hand-to-hand combat, he was sorely mistaken.
Zane feigned weakness and stumbled back and few times, luring the boy in, and when he was close enough, Zane threw aside his ice shield and grabbed Lloyd by both arms, twisting them around to his back and making him grimace. Desperately, he tried to stomp on Zane’s foot, but he barely felt a thing.
“Let me go!” He screamed, and Zane adjusted his grip to make sure that his own hands were as far away from the poison dripping down Lloyd’s fingertips as possible.
“Not a chance,” Cole said solemnly. “Where are our friends?”
Lloyd suddenly sprang up and kicked Cole square in the face. Zane saw blood trickling down from his nose.
“That’s it, you little punk!” Cole grabbed Lloyd by the scruff of his shirt and lifted him off the ground, ready to punch him if he didn’t tell them what they wanted to know.
An angry Treehorn screeched in the background.
“You’ve got one last chance before I pulverise you!”
All Lloyd said was, “Eat wasps!”
There was a golden glow from his other hand and then, in a single moment, the air was filled with a swarm of angry hornets. Lloyd was instantaneously forgotten as Cole and Zane scrambled to get as far away as possible. He hadn’t felt any stings yet, but Zane knew better than to let them try.
He ran and ran and ran until he ducked behind a tree, the sound of buzzing wasps completely left behind. More and more Treehorns wailed nearby, echoing far and wide. A lonely cry in the dead of winter.
Zane’s train of thought went back to the mission at hand. His insistence on following the falcon had led them here, into the heart of battle and danger, and now it was only fitting that he be the one to bring them out of it.
A splash of red in the white forest caught his eye. He zoomed in on it and saw Kai trying to climb a tree. For what purpose was anyone’s guess, but Zane quickly made for the fire ninja without another thought.
“Kai!” He yelled as soon as he got close. “What are you doing up there?”
“I’m not coming down! You can’t make me!” He yelled back.
Zane actually had to take a breath and rubbed his temples. “Come down this instant or I will cut down this tree!”
“Help! Help! This gingerbread man is threatening the environment!” Kai cried to the whole forest.
“Kai, get down here at once!” Now Zane had started climbing up in an attempt to grab him, but Kai just kept climbing higher.
“I will eat you!” He screamed.
“Kai—“
The tree started moving, and not in an “earth-shaky” kind of way. It was moving, moving. Like they had accidentally climbed up the leg of a Treehorn.
“EEEooooogghhhh!!” It moaned, lumbering toward its kin, leaving Zane and Kai to scream in terror as it tried to shake them off.
“Curse you, Muffin Man!!!” Kai yelled at the top of his lungs.
With a roll of his eyes, Zane set his jaw and started climbing up. Kai was still screaming bloody murder, but he eventually climbed passed him and then clawed his way onto the Treehorn’s back, keeping his body low so that the wind didn’t blow him over.
From up above, the battle looked quite different. He could see Cole still chasing down Lloyd, the Serpentine were largely still biting at the Treehorns’ feet, and at the edge of his vision, Zane could make out a second crowd of multi-coloured snakes, though what they were doing was impossible to tell.
At the moment, the Treehorn they were riding was headed straight for the queen, but Zane knew better than to enter back into that maniacal ant farm. He crawled along the creature’s back until he was within arm’s reach of its neck.
‘Now what?’ He asked himself.
‘Grab its neck,’ he heard himself answer, as though it were obvious. So he did. The monster screamed and wailed, but Zane refused to let go. With both hands now in a death grip, he found himself able to push the Treehorn left and right and used this newfound control to steer them toward a small patch of teal on the forest floor. It was making snow angels while a smaller, grey figure was trying desperately to pull the other up to her feet.
“Grab on!” Zane yelled down to them.
“Zane?!” Keaton called.
“Naturally,” he replied.
“I’m not with him!” Kai cried to no one in particular.
With some effort, Keaton used a wind blast to launch her sister and herself up onto the Treehorn’s back. They crashed landed with a loud “OW!” and Ann—seemingly unaware of the events currently unfolding around her—nearly rolled off, but Zane’s reflexes caught her by the leg just before she fell.
“I believe I can flyyyyyy,” she was singing as she dangled upside down.
“Keaton!” Zane gasped. “A little help!”
The two of them hauled Ann up and Keaton made sure to hold on extra tight to her as they started moving again.
“What’s the plan?” She asked, her voice cutting surprisingly well through the wind.
“We are leaving,” he said. “In style.”
The Treehorn kept moving until they found Jay fending off a group of Serpentine with the last of his strength. They didn’t stand a chance against four walking tree trunks. Jay clung to one of the legs for dear life and off they went again, looking for Cole.
* * *
If Cole had to guess, he’d say that the wasps eventually succumbed to the cold and froze to death. Either that or they had gone off to form an insect boy band. The point was that he was free to chase down the little brat who had unleashed the bugs in the first place, which was fairly easy since that blonde mop of his was hard to miss in a crowd of green scales.
Cole launched himself into the air like a canon ball and landed on top of Lloyd, making more than one of his bones pop.
“Did you think I was gonna let you get away so easily?” He asked, rubbing Lloyd’s face in the snow somewhat.
“Please! Let me go!” He cried suddenly. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone!”
“Oh, so I guess kicking me in the face was accident? Or trying to blow up a whole town was just a practical joke?” Cole asked as he lifted Lloyd up by the back of his collar.
“You don’t understand!” Lloyd was crying. As Cole looked closer, he saw tears brimming his eyes. “You don’t understand!”
“I understand plenty,” said Cole, still contemplating what he should do with him now that he had him. “You’d say anything to save your scrawny neck, wouldn’t you?”
“…let. Me. Go!” It was like a switch had just been flipped in Lloyd’s brain. His eyes flashed red again, his pointed teeth were barred, and he had a hand of dark energy pointed directly at Cole’s face. “NOW!”
He got what he wanted. Cole dropped him like a sack of potatoes and a second later he was scurrying away into the forest in an almost animalistic way. ‘What a messed up kid,’ he thought.
Then, a quartet of Treehorn feet stomped over to him and he lifted up a boulder from the frozen ground, prepared to not get squished.
“Need a lift?” Keaton shouted from high above. Cole looked up and saw her sitting on the creature’s back.
“How are you even doing that?” Cole cried, eyeing the ruby eyes of the Treehorn.
“Just hop on! We gotta hurry!”
Cole carefully grabbed hold of the branches on one of its legs and let it start to slowly carry him away. Serpentine scrambled beneath them like worms when the sun comes out, which gave him at least a little satisfaction.
He looked around their Treehorn and counted five people. “Where’s Nya?” He called up to the others.
“Up ahead!” Zane yelled.
They made straight for the tree bunker where they had left her and already Cole could see her figure poking through the door nervously. Just behind her, however, through the forest, was another horde of snakes.
“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Cole asked.
“You’re welcome to try,” Zane replied.
Thankfully, Nya seemed to be paying close attention and ran out to meet them, stumbling once or twice in the snow.
“Nya!” Cole called to her. “Take my hand!”
As the Treehorn’s legs threatened to whiz past her, Cole reached down and they locked arms. With some effort, he swung her up in to the branches with a surprised “yelp” from her.
“Please tell me we’re getting out of here!” She cried.
“I think that’s the plan,” Cole reassured her. “Or else we are one crazy flying circus.”
The horde of Serpentine was getting much closer, to the point where, if Cole squinted, he could just make out the figure and face of a certain specific Hypnobrai holding a dagger above his head. The Serpentine who had been distracting the queen Treehorn—it now seemed—had abandoned their mission and were now slithering up behind the ninja in order to meet their kin halfway.
“We have it!” The first crowd was chanting.
“Victory!” Cheered the second.
Well, a victory for the Serpentine was no victory for Ninjago, that much was for sure. The Serpentine were eagerly rushing to meet each other, seemingly unaware of the ninja about to ride straight between the two crowds.
“What do you think they’re cheering about?” Nya asked with a twinge of worry.
Cole was too busy listening to really answer. He could just hear Zane’s voice above them, barking an order of some kind, and the next thing he knew, Keaton did a swan dive down to the chief Hypnobrai and—with a cute little “thank you!” thrown in—swiped the silver dagger clean out of his hands. She flew back up to her teammates in a matter of seconds, leaving Scales staring after her, his mouth still wide open, mid-cheer.
“Nice one, half-pint!” Jay called from the next Treehorn leg over.
“After them!” Someone suddenly bellowed, and the entirety of four Serpentine tribes was now at their heels.
“Guys? Do we still have a plan?” Cole asked, still fighting to be heard over the wind.
As he looked up, expecting to see Zane again, he saw Ann’s face peering over the side of the Treehorn’s back.
“Helloooo tiny people!” She called, grinning.
“Ann!?” Cole stammered.
All of a sudden she was yanked out of view and Keaton took her place. “We’re working on it!”
Well, if they had things handled up there, then the least Cole could do was offer a little support down here. He looked down at the Serpentine and tried to use his powers to block their path, but since he was so far up, and since his powers weren’t strong enough to handle every last one of them, the most he could manage was a handful of pathetic stone walls which only seemed to slow them down instead of stop them.
* * *
Zane’s hands were positively aching from holding on to the Treehorn’s neck, but if he let go for even a second, it would try to shake them off.
“So where are we headed?” Keaton asked, still trying to keep Ann from falling.
“Back to the caves was my first thought,” said Zane.
“And lead the Serpentine—Ann, sit down!—and lead the Serpentine straight to our base?”
“Well,” Zane huffed, feeling cornered, “We can’t very well hide from them when we’re riding this monstrosity, but without it, we won’t be able to out run them. At the very least, we can hide in the underground cove.”
“Hopefully,” Keaton added. “Ahh! Ann! Please sit still!” She had to wrestle her away from the edge of the Treehorn’s back again and was looking more and more grumpy by the second. “What exactly happened to her?”
“Venom spit, as far as I can tell,” Zane replied. “I seem to recall Sensei Wu mentioning it once during our lessons.”
“Do you know if it wears off?”
“You know about as much as I do.”
“Beetles can fly!” Ann shouted.
Zane watched as the forest slowly disappeared beneath them. The falcon, the bunker, the potential clues, were now being abandoned. Again. How cruel was it to be constantly teased with these little bread crumbs only for them to be snatched away as quickly as they came? Zane sighed as he focused again on controlling the Treehorn. One day he would come back and look around again. One day he would resume the search for his father. Patience was the key to victory, not haste.
“So what can you tell about that dagger?” He asked, remembering what Keaton had stolen from the enemy.
“Not much,” she answered, trying to keep it far away from Ann. “It’s definitely unusual, and decorative by the looks of all these inlays and carvings. Plus it’s not even sharp.”
“So why did the Serpentine want it so badly? Why go to all this trouble for it?”
“Maybe it’s magic? It wouldn’t be the first,” Keaton mused. “It does look old, though. Like, really old.”
“Well, keep it safe for the time being,” Zane ordered.
The creature lumbered on with a steady “thumping” of its massive feet against the snowy ground, meanwhile the angry swarm of snakes was becoming slowly more distant. If it weren’t for the massive footprints in the ground, they might have been able to loose them. Sadly, the Serpentine, it would seem, do not give up easily. They would need to have a backup plan in case this all went from bad to worse.
“Jay?” Zane called, an idea coming to his mind.
“Yeah?” Jay called back.
“Is the ship ready for sailing yet?”
“What?”
“I said, IS THE SHIP READY FOR SAILING YET!?” He yelled, making extra sure Jay could hear.
“The ship?!” He echoed. “Uhhh… why?”
“We may need it!” Zane explained, weaving the Treehorn around a hill.
I'm ready for the spinoff about the insect boy band