Morning aboard the Destiny's Bounty began so peacefully that nobody had any reason to suspect Lloyd was already several steps into a terrible idea. A small bird landed on the railing outside, chirped once into the cool morning air, and fluttered away when a cheerful whistle began drifting through the halls below deck. Inside the gaming area, Kai had already claimed the couch and settled in front of his console, controller in hand and all thoughts of training temporarily forgotten.
Just as the title screen appeared, the whistling grew louder and Lloyd wandered in behind him, hands clasped innocently behind his back with the expression of someone who had absolutely done something. "Hey, Kai!" Lloyd called brightly, waiting until Kai glanced over his shoulder before adding, "Ha. Saw Cole beat your high score. You should have seen it. It was pretty spectacular."
Kai barely reacted as he looked back toward the screen. "Uh, you must be talking about Sitar Legend. This is Fist to Face 2. No one beats me on my game." Lloyd merely shrugged, gave an unconcerned, "Huh. Could be wrong. See ya!" and resumed whistling as he strolled out of the room.
Kai tried to ignore him.
It lasted about three seconds.
Curiosity got the better of him, and he opened the high-score menu. Cole's Black Ninja profile sat above a string of scores that absolutely should not have existed: 9370, 7277, 5759, 4209, and 3224. Kai's eyes narrowed at the numbers before his grip slowly tightened around the controller.
"Huh?"
Then his shout echoed through half the ship.
"COLE!"
The yell carried into the kitchen, where Cole was far too occupied with his own morning project to realize he had just become the victim of an accusation. A steaming pot sat before him while he stirred its violet contents with painstaking care, breathing in the aroma with the pride of someone convinced he had achieved culinary greatness. "Mm-mm! Violet Berry Soup, my culinary achievement. If the recipe is not followed exactly..." he said to himself before dipping a spoon into the pot and taking a confident taste.
His expression transformed instantly.
Cole gagged, choked, and lurched toward the counter, barely managing not to drop the spoon. Before he could figure out what had gone wrong, Lloyd's voice floated casually through the hallway. "By the way, I saw Jay spice things up. I told him not to, but he said your cooking could use it. Bye, Cole!"
The whistle faded into the distance.
Cole spat the taste into the sink and stared at the ruined pot.
"Jay."
His eye twitched.
"JAY!"
Up on the deck, Jay had no idea that someone several levels below was preparing to murder him over soup. Dressed in kendo gear, he stood before one of the Bounty's sparring bots with his nunchucks ready, intending to begin the morning with something controlled rather than immediately getting beaten senseless.
"Let's ease our way into this," Jay said, reaching toward the controls. "How about level two, shall we?"
The display lit up.
LEVEL 9.
Jay froze.
Before he could touch the controls again, the machine snapped upright with a mechanical whir. At almost the same moment, Lloyd strolled past the training area, still whistling, and casually called, "Hey, Jay. I saw Zane try to repair the sparring bot earlier. Isn't that your expertise? Later, bro."
Jay looked from Lloyd to the bot.
Then back toward Lloyd.
"Wait! What?"
The sparring bot laughed.
Jay's face went pale. "No, no, no—"
It attacked.
Jay ducked one strike, took the next across the shoulder, and desperately reached for the shutoff switch only for the bot to smack his hand aside. "No! NO!!" he yelled as it drove him backward across the deck. "ZANE!"
Further up the ship, Zane was having what had, until that moment, been the calmest morning of anyone aboard. Still dressed in his pajamas, he stood beside a basket of freshly washed clothes and carefully arranged each uniform along the line with his usual precision.
Lloyd's whistle drifted upward before the boy appeared at the top of the stairs. Zane looked over with a pleasant expression and greeted him, "Hello, Lloyd. What brings you up here this fine morning?"
Lloyd did not miss a beat. "Kai wanted me to pick up his ninja suit. He said he threw it in with your whites." He crouched beside the basket, rummaged around for a moment, then pulled out Kai's red suit and held it up. "Here it is. Thanks."
Before Zane could question why Kai had supposedly placed a bright red uniform in with white laundry, Lloyd was already walking away.
Zane watched him leave, mildly puzzled, then reached back into the basket and pulled out one of his own ninja suits.
He stopped.
The suit was pink.
Zane stared at it in silence for several seconds, then checked another piece.
Pink.
Another.
Also pink.
His expression slowly hardened.
By the time everyone converged below deck, the situation had already collapsed into complete chaos. Kai stormed toward Cole, waving the controller in one hand as he accused him, "You couldn't just be happy with the top score. You had to rub it in my face!" Cole barely seemed to hear him because he was already glaring at Jay and shouting, "Do you know how long it took me to make that? Three days. Three days!"
Jay, bruised and disheveled after surviving the sparring bot, pointed angrily toward Zane. "It's an unsaid law, okay? You don't touch a man's robot!" Zane stepped into the argument holding one of his ruined uniforms and thrust the fabric toward Kai.
"How am I supposed to strike fear in this?" he demanded.
He shook the pink uniform once.
"It's pink!"
The accusations immediately began overlapping. Kai insisted Cole had sabotaged his game, Cole demanded Jay explain the soup, Jay accused Zane of nearly getting him beaten unconscious, and Zane wanted to know why Kai's red uniform had somehow destroyed an entire load of laundry.
None of them stopped long enough to ask whether any of it made sense.
That was exactly when Wu entered.
He stood in the doorway for a moment and silently took in the argument, his gaze moving from the controller in Kai's hand to Cole's fury, Jay's bruises, and Zane's pink uniform. Rather than interrupting, he turned toward the nearby bathroom when a faint snicker came from behind the door.
Wu walked over and opened it.
Lloyd was crouched inside, grinning so hard he could barely contain himself.
The room went silent.
Then the evidence started appearing.
Cole found the spices first. Jay spotted the tools used to sabotage the sparring bot. Zane found the detergent responsible for turning his uniforms pink, while Kai finally realized Lloyd had conveniently appeared before every single argument.
The four ninja slowly turned toward him.
"You did this?" they asked together.
Lloyd burst out laughing.
Cole stepped forward immediately and cracked his knuckles. "Boys, I get first dibs on—"
Wu calmly raised an arm in front of him.
"No dibs."
Cole stopped so abruptly he nearly walked into Wu's sleeve.
Wu looked between all four ninja before explaining, "I put him up to this for today's lesson. I wanted to show you the destructive power of rumors and that jumping to conclusions can only lead to trouble. Did you ever think to find out if the accusations were true?"
Silence followed.
Kai looked toward Cole.
Cole looked toward Jay.
Jay looked toward Zane.
Zane finally glanced back toward Kai.
Nobody had.
Cole folded his arms and sighed. "Uh, no offense, Sensei, but let me jump to this conclusion: today's lesson is lame."
Jay immediately nodded. "Yeah, why can't you just teach us to paralyze your enemy with one finger, or find out if a man is lying by the twitch of his nose?"
Wu sighed. "Because not all lessons are about fighting." His expression shifted slightly as he added, "And I misplaced my lesson book."
Kai's eyes narrowed.
Something white was sticking out of Lloyd's back pocket.
He reached over, pulled it free, and held it up between two fingers.
"You mean this lesson book?"
Lloyd's grin disappeared.
"It was the perfect plan until you have to show up and mess everything up—"
Cole shut the bathroom door in his face.
For a moment, nobody said anything.
Then Kai frowned.
"Wait."
The others looked toward him.
Kai glanced around the room as the thought finally occurred to him. "Why didn't Lloyd prank Jinx?"
The bathroom door slowly cracked open.
Lloyd peeked his head through the gap.
He looked genuinely horrified that anyone even had to ask.
"Are you crazy?" he whispered. "He will throw me off the ship, then catch me an inch away from the ground!"
Zane opened his mouth as though preparing to object.
Then stopped.
Everyone looked at one another.
Jay, in particular, went very still as the memory of accidentally spilling one of Jinx's milkshakes resurfaced with painful clarity. He had, in fact, experienced something uncomfortably similar.
One by one, they nodded.
That did sound like something Jinx would do.
The bathroom door slowly closed again.
Nobody questioned Lloyd's decision.
Nya's voice suddenly came through the Bounty's speaker system before anyone could resume complaining. "If you're done fooling around, I could use you guys on the bridge. We do still have a snake problem to attend to. Over and out!"
Kai groaned as the group started moving. "It's one thing to let the son of your nemesis live with you. But having my sister here? I mean, come on! I thought this was a ninja headquarters."
A brief silence followed over the speaker.
Then Nya replied with pointed calm, "You do know I can hear you... over and out!"
Kai slapped a hand over his face.
By the time everyone reached the bridge, Jinx had finally joined them, and one look made it obvious he had only recently remembered mornings existed. His hair was sticking in nearly every direction from sleep, one side flattened while the other looked as if it had lost a fight with a storm.
Jinx was still unsuccessfully trying to force it back into place when Nya noticed.
With an irritated little sigh, she stepped over and helped smooth the worst of it down before returning to the map table. Jinx blinked after her once, touched the part she had fixed, and wisely decided not to complain.
"Last we heard of Pythor, he stole the Map of Dens from Lloyd and is now on his way to open the last two Serpentine tombs," Nya explained, indicating the large map spread across the table. Lloyd, standing nearby after finally being released from the bathroom, immediately grimaced and muttered, "Ugh, don't remind me."
Wu's expression was considerably more serious as he studied the known tomb locations. "Pythor's our most dangerous threat. If he finds those tombs before we do, with his intellect and all four tribes unleashed, there's no telling what he'll do."
Jay leaned forward over the map and frowned at the enormous amount of territory in front of them. "But those tombs could be anywhere. Without the map, we might as well just throw darts at a map."
Nya looked directly at him.
"Good idea. Why don't we?"
Before Jay could clarify that he had been speaking figuratively, she picked up two darts and threw them.
Both struck precisely where she wanted them.
"These are the two locations of the Hypnobrai and Fangpyre tombs," Nya explained. Kai folded his arms and muttered, "Show off," but she ignored him and took another dart, placing it manually against another section of the map.
"And this is Pythor's tomb."
Nya stepped back and traced between the three markers. "After many hours of ruminating on why the tombs were placed in these three precise locations, I discovered a secret pattern. If you notice, all three are in line with the Ninjago symbol for serpent."
Everyone leaned closer while she traced the imaginary shape.
Once the pattern became visible, Jay's confusion disappeared almost immediately. He pointed toward two empty positions on the map and said, "So the last two tombs must be here and here. Ah, you are so smart."
Nya leaned back with a pleased smile.
"Ah, was there ever any doubt?"
Jinx, standing just behind Jay with his recently rescued hair, muttered a single word under his breath.
"Simp."
Jay whipped around. "I am not—"
Wu cleared his throat.
Everyone reluctantly returned their attention to the mission.
"There's little time," Wu said, indicating the two newly identified locations. "Kai and Jay, you head to the Venomari Tomb. Cole, Jinx, and Zane, you take the Constrictai Tomb."
He handed them what they would need for the mission and added, "And take this. You might need it if you run into Pythor. Good luck, ninja."
Nya immediately looked up. "What am I gonna do?"
Lloyd leaned beside her and added, "Yeah, what are we gonna do?"
Wu turned toward them both. "Nya, I need you here to make sure Lloyd doesn't get into any more trouble."
Nya's shoulders dropped.
"Yes, Sensei," she replied, clearly annoyed.
Cole was already moving toward the exit, rolling one shoulder as a grin spread across his face. "Let's go, boys. We got some snakes to club."
Jinx glanced at him.
"Pretty sure Wu's lesson this morning was literally about not jumping straight to violence."
Cole kept walking.
Jinx stared after him for a moment, shrugged, and followed alongside Zane.
Behind them, Wu remained near the map while the others departed, his expression tightening as his eyes settled on the remaining tomb locations. Pythor had already proven intelligent enough to manipulate Lloyd, steal the Map of Dens, and disappear before Jinx could trap him; now he was somewhere in Ninjago moving toward the final Serpentine tribes.
Wu slowly stroked his beard.
"Where are you, Pythor?" he murmured, his eyes remaining fixed on the map.
"What are you up to?
The journey to the Mountain of a Million Steps carried Cole, Zane, and Jinx far from the Bounty and into increasingly unforgiving terrain. Cole's Tread Assault thundered over the rocky ground while Zane's snowmobile-like vehicle skimmed beside him with far more grace than the landscape seemed to deserve, and Jinx followed on his own serpent-styled motorcycle, its tires occasionally burning with dark-rosé flame whenever he pushed it harder. By the time the mountain finally rose ahead of them, its summit was obscured by mist and the staircase carved into its face seemed to continue upward forever.
All three vehicles came to a stop near the first enormous stone steps. Zane climbed off his vehicle and immediately adjusted the pink gi he had been forced to wear after Lloyd's prank, his expression tightening with another quiet groan when the bright fabric caught the sunlight. Cole looked from their vehicles to the impossibly steep staircase and concluded, "Well, our vehicles won't traverse the steps. We go the rest of the way on foot."
Zane tilted his head back until he could barely make out the higher reaches of the mountain. "But this is the Mountain of a Million Steps. Aren't we pressed for time?" he asked, making Cole look upward as well. Cole considered the problem for all of two seconds before a grin crossed his face. "Then we'll take a shortcut."
Zane barely had time to ask what he meant before Cole grabbed him and hauled him onto his back. The Earth Ninja stepped away from the staircase entirely and began climbing directly up the rock face, fingers finding cracks and ledges while his powerful legs drove him upward. Zane wrapped his arms around Cole's shoulders and calmly accepted the arrangement as though being carried vertically up a mountain was a completely normal solution.
Jinx watched them for a moment, looked upward, then back at the two of them with an expression that made it obvious he had absolutely no intention of participating in this struggle. Wind gathered beneath his boots and lifted him smoothly away from the mountainside as he floated backward with a broad grin. "See ya up there, boys," he called before turning and shooting toward the summit.
Cole stopped climbing just long enough to glare after him. "Hey! Help us up!" he shouted, but Jinx was already rapidly becoming a distant figure above them. Whether he genuinely could no longer hear Cole or simply wanted the two of them to suffer was impossible to know, though Cole strongly suspected the second option as he grumbled under his breath and resumed the climb.
Several minutes later, Zane shifted slightly against his back. "Am I holding on too tight?" he asked with complete sincerity while Cole hauled them over another ledge. Cole grunted beneath the added weight and replied, "Light as a feather, Pinky. Almost there," prompting Zane's eyes to narrow at the nickname even though he apparently decided that insulting the man preventing him from falling several hundred feet would be strategically unwise.
By the time Cole finally dragged himself over the last ledge, Jinx had been waiting outside the tomb entrance long enough to become visibly bored. He leaned against one of the ancient stone pillars with his arms folded and regarded them without even a hint of guilt. "Shit, finally you two arrived," he remarked, earning a glare from Cole that promised retaliation at some later and considerably more convenient time.
The entrance beside Jinx was already open, however, and that immediately stripped most of the humor from the situation. Zane stepped closer and studied the disturbed stone around the doorway before saying, "Looks like Pythor was already here. Perhaps we should investigate." Cole bent over with both hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath as he waved them onward. "Give me a second. Phew. Go on and start without me."
Zane entered first, disappearing into the darkness below. Jinx glanced into the opening, shrugged, and simply allowed himself to fall through it, slowing his descent with Wind before touching down lightly inside the cavern. Cole followed several moments later, landing with considerably less grace and looking around at the enormous chamber carved beneath the mountain.
Ancient Serpentine images stretched across nearly every wall, their carved figures and symbols reaching farther into the darkness than the faint light above could reveal. Cole studied them with significantly less scholarly interest than Zane and eventually remarked, "Huh. Didn't momma snake ever tell them not to draw on the wall?" Zane ignored the joke and moved closer to the carvings, his eyes tracing the sequences with growing concentration.
"These images describe a legend about one tribe uniting them all," Zane explained, indicating several different Serpentine tribes arranged around a central symbol. Jinx stepped beside him and studied the images more carefully, remembering enough of the Serpentine's history to immediately find that idea questionable. "Those snakes had been at war with each other for centuries. I find it hard to believe they would work together."
"Perhaps willingly is not required," Zane replied, drawing Jinx's attention before moving farther along the mural. Another set of carvings depicted four blade-like objects surrounding the enormous image of a monstrous serpent, and Zane's expression steadily grew more serious as he deciphered them. "It says here, once they unite, they can find the Four Silver Fangblades that will unleash the Great Devourer, an evil that will consume all of the land, turning day into night."
Cole stared at the carvings, then back toward Zane with open disbelief. "You get all that from those little pictures?" he asked, and Zane answered with a perfectly serious, "Yes." Jinx, however, barely heard either of them anymore because his attention had settled on the enormous depiction of the Great Devourer coiled across the stone wall, its carved jaws wide enough to swallow buildings.
He tilted his head.
The creature was apparently supposed to devour everything in sight, destroy Ninjago, and plunge the world into darkness.
Jinx stared at it for several more seconds before a completely different question entered his mind.
I wonder what that thing would be like as a pet.
He imagined an enormous serpent curled around a mountain while he tried to feed it, then imagined attempting to explain to Wu why the apocalyptic world-eating snake was now following the Bounty around. The more he considered it, the more entertaining the idea became, though he wisely kept the thought to himself.
Zane had already moved on, unaware that Jinx had mentally reduced an ancient apocalypse to a potential exotic pet. His expression tightened as he said, "This gives me deep concern. If Pythor's not here and unites all the tribes together before Kai and Jay find him—"
"Relax, Zane," Cole interrupted, waving one hand dismissively. "They're a bunch of dumb snakes who believe in fairy tales. If anything, we've got all the—"
He stopped.
The ground beneath them shifted.
Cole slowly lowered his hand. "Did you feel that?"
Zane glanced downward. "What?"
Jinx was already staring at the floor, where tiny grains of dust scattered across the stone had begun trembling without any obvious cause. His posture changed instantly and one hand lifted slightly as he warned, "Don't move. There's something in the ground."
The stone erupted beneath Zane.
A massive Serpentine burst upward in a shower of dirt and shattered rock, thick arms locking around Zane before either of the others could properly react. Skalidor dragged him backward against his chest and grinned down at his captive as he growled, "I've been waiting for you. Pythor sends his regards."
Zane struggled once, tested the strength of the hold, and then looked remarkably unimpressed. "Did you stay behind just to tell us that? Pathetic," he replied, which only made Skalidor's gaze drift down toward the bright pink gi Lloyd's prank had forced him to wear.
The Constrictai's grin widened. "Look who's calling who pathetic, Pinky."
Cole's exhaustion disappeared instantly. "Only we call him Pinky."
Jinx's palm snapped forward.
A compressed blast of Wind struck Skalidor across the upper body hard enough to tear his grip apart and send him stumbling sideways. Zane twisted free while Cole immediately pointed toward a rope hanging across the chamber and ordered, "Zane, go for the rope."
Cole took one step forward.
The floor collapsed beneath him.
He vanished into the hole with a startled shout.
"Cole?" Zane called, moving toward the opening.
From somewhere below came the sounds of struggling, followed by the sharp first notes of the Sacred Flute. Cole had managed to pull it free, but before he could properly play, Skalidor dropped into the opening after him and wrapped one thick arm around his throat. The flute slipped from Cole's grip while he struggled against the Constrictai's crushing strength.
"Jinx—Zane!" Cole choked out.
Jinx reacted first.
He planted one foot firmly against the stone and swept his arms around his body. "Ninja, go!"
Black-magenta Spinjitzu erupted around him, streaked with dark rosé and grey as the vortex began spinning faster. The strange attraction within Jinx's Spinjitzu immediately tugged at loose stones and debris throughout the tomb, but he narrowed his focus toward the Sacred Flute lying below. The instrument lifted from the ground and shot upward toward the spinning vortex.
Jinx broke out of Spinjitzu before its attraction could grow unstable, caught the flute cleanly with one hand, and immediately brought it to his lips. The first proper note echoed through the chamber, and Skalidor recoiled violently as the ancient melody struck whatever instinct made the Serpentine unable to tolerate its sound.
His grip around Cole loosened.
Cole dropped away, coughing while he caught himself against the wall. Skalidor hissed and twisted desperately, trying to escape the melody while Jinx continued playing until the Constrictai could no longer fight effectively.
With Zane's help, Cole finally hauled himself out of the hole and took several deep breaths before recovering enough dignity to pretend everything had gone according to plan. He looked toward Skalidor and folded his arms before declaring, "Wrap your head around this."
Zane immediately nodded in approval. "Ah. Good one."
Jinx lowered the flute and gave Cole an unimpressed look. "Ehh. It was decent. I would've gone with, 'Guess you couldn't handle the pressure.'"
Cole considered that for several seconds before his expression tightened. "That was actually better."
"I know."
Zane glanced between them and added, "Both statements were thematically appropriate," earning a grateful, "Thank you, Zane," from Cole as Jinx handed the Sacred Flute back. Whatever satisfaction Cole had gained from the argument quickly disappeared when he looked toward the tomb entrance and remembered exactly why Skalidor had been waiting for them.
"But if he was expecting us, I think Kai and Jay are walking into a trap," Cole said, his voice becoming serious again. Zane's expression immediately changed, while Jinx glanced toward the exit and silently agreed that this was considerably more important than deciding who had produced the superior one-liner. Cole secured the flute and motioned toward the way out. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
Jinx started after them, but as they passed the mural again, his eyes wandered back toward the enormous carving of the Great Devourer. He slowed just enough to give the image another thoughtful look, imagining that colossal serpent somehow curled up beside the Bounty like an oversized house pet while everyone else screamed about the end of the world.
A small grin tugged at his mouth.
Yeah. I definitely want to see that thing.
Whether he wanted to fight it, study it, or somehow convince it not to eat him long enough to see if it could be domesticated was a problem for another day.
The Toxic Bogs announced themselves long before Kai and Jay reached the Venomari Tomb. Sickly green vapor hung over stagnant pools, strange bubbles continually broke the surface with wet pops, and nearly every patch of exposed earth looked as though it had been poisoned centuries ago and simply never recovered. Jay climbed off his vehicle and immediately recoiled from the smell, covering his nose as he managed a disgusted, "Ew."
Kai gave him an offended glance before realizing what Jay was reacting to. "Hey, it's not me. We're in the Toxic Bogs," he said, carefully stepping around a bubbling puddle. "This stuff will eat through you worse than Cole's chili." Jay looked at one particularly vicious patch of sludge eating away at the edge of a stone and decided that, for once, Kai's exaggeration might not actually be much of an exaggeration.
They found the Venomari Tomb embedded within the bog and cautiously forced its ancient entrance open, only to discover nothing waiting inside except darkness, stale air, and the lingering smell of Serpentine. Jay leaned into the entrance and immediately regretted breathing through his nose. "Pee-yew," he complained, only for his voice to travel deep into the stone passage.
"Pee-yew," the tomb echoed back.
Jay blinked.
Then he laughed.
Kai sighed and pushed past him. "Let's just make this quick before Pythor gets here," he said, already scanning the chamber for movement. The deeper they went, however, the more obvious it became that someone had beaten them there; whatever Venomari had once been imprisoned inside were already gone.
Jay looked around the empty chamber before his attention inevitably wandered back toward the subject that had occupied most of the ninja for the past day. "This place looks empty. We must've just missed them." He cupped both hands around his mouth and called toward the cavern, "Check this out. They say you're the Green Ninja, but I say I am."
"I am. I am," the cavern answered.
Jay's grin widened.
"I am!"
"I am! I am!"
He laughed at his own echo while Kai continued forward with steadily decreasing patience.
A croak sounded somewhere near Kai's feet.
Kai reacted instantly, drawing the Sword of Fire and spinning toward the noise. What he found was a small frog sitting innocently on a nearby stone, and his shoulders relaxed as embarrassment replaced alarm. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that," he warned the frog before giving a self-satisfied chuckle. "Heh, if I wasn't such a well-trained Nin—"
The frog jumped.
Something much larger rose behind it.
Spitta emerged from the poisonous water and spat a stream of Venomari venom directly into Kai's face before he could finish the sentence.
Kai staggered backward, wiping desperately at his eyes. "Ugh!" The cavern twisted around him almost immediately, colors smearing together while ordinary shadows reshaped themselves into impossible creatures. He spun in place, desperately searching for the one person he knew was nearby. "Jay? Jay!"
Jay was still enjoying the acoustics. "No, I'm the real Jay!"
"No, I'm the real Jay!" his echo cheerfully replied.
Kai stared into the chamber.
The world had become populated by tiny elves, gingerbread warriors, warped little monsters, and enough brightly colored creatures to make him question every decision that had brought him there. Worse, actual Venomari began slithering from hiding places around him, joined by several Constrictai whose forms blended seamlessly into the hallucinations.
"Oh, this is not good!" Kai cried, swinging the Sword of Fire defensively as everything closed in. "Jay! Jay! There's so many! Elves and gingerbread people everywhere!"
That finally got Jay's attention.
He hurried over, caught Kai by the shoulders, and tried to keep him focused despite the increasingly deranged look in his eyes. "Okay, I don't know what you're seeing, but this is no time to lose yourself. I need you, partner."
Kai stared past him in horror. "I've never fought little people before! We're toast!"
A voice suddenly echoed from above.
"Anyone order a little kick butt?"
Cole dropped into the chamber with Zane close behind him, while Jinx descended under his own power on a spiraling cushion of Wind and landed several feet away. The cave immediately threw Cole's last word back at them with considerably more enthusiasm than he had intended.
"Butt. Butt. Butt."
Jay snorted.
Then laughed.
Cole's expression flattened. "Really?"
Before anyone could answer, another voice suddenly erupted directly behind them.
"BOO!"
Jay screamed and nearly jumped out of his skin.
Pythor rose from behind a cluster of rocks with a delighted grin, clearly pleased with himself, while Zane reacted almost immediately. He drew the Sacred Flute and raised it toward his mouth, but Pythor had been expecting exactly that. The Anacondrai lunged forward, snatched the instrument from Zane's hands, and slithered backward before anyone could grab him.
"No, let's not let music ruin things, hmm?" Pythor said pleasantly.
The Serpentine surged forward.
Outnumbered and surrounded by poisonous bog water, the ninja retreated until all five were forced onto a large fallen log floating near the edge of the chamber. Their combined weight pushed it deeper into the sludge, and the wood gave an ominous creak as poisonous liquid gradually began creeping over its sides.
Pythor watched from solid ground with obvious satisfaction. "I've got a sinking feeling this may be the last I see of you four."
Jinx slowly looked around.
Kai.
Jay.
Cole.
Zane.
Then himself.
He raised one hand.
"Uhhhh… there's five of us?"
Pythor's triumphant expression faltered.
He looked over the group again and visibly counted them.
"Oh."
For perhaps the first time since meeting him, Pythor looked genuinely embarrassed. "Well, I assumed you could simply fly out, so logically I didn't count you."
Jinx stared at him.
Then glanced down at the Wind beginning to curl instinctively around his boots.
He looked back at Pythor.
"…You right."
The other four ninja turned toward him simultaneously.
"The fuck, Jinx?"
Jinx looked genuinely confused by their outrage. "What?"
"You're supposed to be on our side!" Jay shouted.
"I am on your side. That doesn't make his math wrong."
Before the argument could develop any further, Kai suddenly gasped and pointed toward empty space above the poisonous water. His pupils were still wide from the venom, and wonder replaced terror as he whispered, "Wait, do you see that? A magic floating rope. We can climb to safety."
There was no rope.
Kai stepped directly toward the edge of the log.
Jay grabbed the back of his gi and yanked him away just before he walked into the bog. "Boy, that Venomari Venom is some powerful stuff," he muttered while Kai continued staring longingly at whatever imaginary rescue line only he could see.
Jinx glanced at Kai.
Then at Spitta.
Then back at Kai.
"Wow," he murmured thoughtfully. "I need to hit some of that sometime."
Jay slowly turned toward him.
"No. No, you absolutely do not."
The surrounding Serpentine laughed as the log dipped another few inches into the poisonous water. Jinx could have lifted himself away at virtually any moment, but leaving the others to sink while he casually flew to safety would have been slightly harder to justify than making Cole climb a mountain. Instead, he crouched and examined the sludge below, considering whether he could carry all four of them with Wind before the log dissolved beneath their feet.
Zane apparently reached a more pessimistic conclusion first.
"For whatever it is worth," he said calmly, looking at each of them in turn, "it was an honor to fight beside you all."
Cole's expression softened slightly. "Me too."
Jay sighed. "Yeah, ditto."
Jinx looked between them and frowned. "Okay, I feel like we're giving up suspiciously fast here."
Something dropped from above.
A rope swung directly in front of them.
Cole stared at it. "Hey, what?"
Kai's entire face brightened with vindication. "The magic rope! Ha."
For once, the hallucination had accidentally been correct.
Jinx stared up at the rope and then at Kai, whose expression had become unbearably smug despite having almost drowned himself thirty seconds earlier. "Oh, that is going to make him impossible to deal with."
"Quick," Jay ordered, grabbing the rope. "Everyone, climb over."
Before they could get far, a mechanical figure descended into the bog with enough force to scatter several nearby Serpentine. Armor covered the newcomer from head to toe, red and white plates hiding virtually every identifying feature while a broad helmet concealed the face completely. A complex arsenal of weapons and mechanisms covered the warrior's body, making the ninja pause just as much as the Serpentine did.
Pythor's confidence disappeared.
"Oh, dear."
The warrior's helmet turned directly toward him.
"Pythor target confirmed. Time to bag and tag."
Samurai X raised a launcher.
Pythor immediately fled.
A dart shot across the chamber and struck him before he could disappear into the marsh, causing him to stumble with an outraged hiss. The other Serpentine moved to protect him, but Samurai X tore into their formation with brutal efficiency, alternating between mechanical weapons, acrobatics, and carefully placed strikes without ever remaining still long enough to be surrounded.
Cole watched from the rope, momentarily forgetting their predicament. "Who are you?"
Jay's eyes practically sparkled. "How about the coolest thing I've ever seen?"
Kai squinted through the remaining venom haze and offered another possibility.
"Santa?"
Jinx looked toward him. "Yeah, we really need that venom out of your system."
Within moments the immediate Serpentine threat had been scattered, and Samurai X turned back toward the stranded ninja. Zane climbed onto safer ground first and approached their mysterious rescuer with sincere gratitude. "Thank you, mysterious warrior. I owe you my life for saving—"
Samurai X struck him.
Zane dropped unconscious before finishing the sentence.
Jay stared.
"Now that wasn't nice."
Samurai X turned toward him.
Jay had just enough time to regret saying anything before he was rendered unconscious as well.
Cole tried to defend himself, Kai attempted something that probably made perfect sense through the Venomari hallucinations, and both joined the others on the ground within moments. Jinx lasted slightly longer, Wind instinctively circling his body as the mysterious warrior approached him; there was something about the movements that bothered him far more than the attack itself.
They were familiar.
Not the weapons.
Not the armor.
The way the person moved.
Jinx redirected the first strike and twisted aside from the next, catching the edge of Samurai X's helmet as the two passed one another. For the briefest instant, something beneath the mask shifted enough for him to glimpse part of a face.
His concentration broke.
Wait…
He knew that face.
Or thought he did.
Before Jinx could place it, Samurai X struck him hard enough to send his vision swimming. He stumbled backward and tried to gather Wind around himself again, but the world had already begun going dark.
"Hold the fuck up, are you—"
The rest never came out.
Jinx collapsed beside the others.
Some time later, the Destiny's Bounty swept over the Toxic Bogs and collected all five unconscious ninja, leaving behind an empty battlefield, scattered Serpentine, and far more questions than answers.
Jinx would remember only fragments when he woke.
The armor.
The movements.
And that tiny glimpse beneath Samurai X's mask that had seemed far too familiar to dismiss.
Dinner aboard the Destiny's Bounty should have been the first quiet moment any of them had enjoyed since the Toxic Bogs. Plates had barely reached the table, however, before Jay started retelling the rescue with enough enthusiasm to suggest that surviving it once had not been dramatic enough. Lloyd sat across from him listening with open fascination, while Jinx focused primarily on his food and only occasionally glanced up whenever Jay exaggerated something especially badly.
"So then, just when we were gonna bite it, this huge mechanical robot—" Jay began, sweeping his spoon through the air as though demonstrating the size of the thing.
"Samurai," Zane corrected without hesitation. He looked toward Lloyd when the boy blinked in confusion and repeated, "It was Samurai."
Lloyd tilted his head. "A Sama-what?"
Wu lowered his cup before answering, his tone carrying considerably more respect for the title than Jay's description had. "Samurai. Highest level of warrior class. They would protect nobility and serve with honor on the battlefield."
Jinx finally glanced up.
"So basically slaves who can fight."
The scrape of utensils against plates briefly stopped.
Zane turned toward him with a small frown. "I wouldn't say that, Jinx. They were the pinnacle of honor when it comes to fighting."
Jinx took another bite before responding, apparently finding the subject interesting enough to argue about but not interesting enough to stop eating for. "Here's reality, Zane. In fighting, there is no honor. It's only victory or defeat, and when there are victors, there will always be losers." He swallowed and tapped his fork lightly against the edge of his plate. "Most of the time, honor is what makes somebody lose, because they start making mistakes under the assumption everyone else is honorable too."
Zane considered that rather than rejecting it immediately. "Honor does not require trusting your opponent to possess it," he replied. "It can determine the limits you place upon yourself and what you refuse to become simply to achieve victory."
That answer earned a brief pause from Jinx.
He looked across the table at Zane, then gave a small shrug. "Fair enough. Still not letting somebody stab me because tradition says I'm supposed to bow first."
Wu hid what might have been the beginning of a smile behind his tea.
Kai had listened to almost none of this.
"He was a hundred feet high, with weapons coming out every part of him," he announced, apparently determined to drag the conversation back toward Samurai X. He spread his arms to demonstrate an increasingly impossible size, but halfway through the motion his eyes drifted toward Wu's face and slowly narrowed.
Kai leaned toward Cole.
"Look at Sensei's beard," he whispered with deadly seriousness. "It's moving like snakes."
Cole cautiously looked.
Wu's beard sat exactly where a beard was supposed to sit.
Cole looked back toward Kai.
Kai continued watching it with the concentration of a man expecting an ambush.
Nya closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. "When is this Venomari spit supposed to wear off? It's starting to get annoying."
Kai glanced toward her. "You don't see it?"
"No, Kai."
Wu turned his head.
His beard moved with him.
Kai recoiled sharply. "I knew it."
Nya groaned and lowered her forehead toward the table.
Cole decided immediately that letting Kai continue discussing Wu's murderous facial hair would accomplish nothing useful. He leaned forward, his expression becoming more serious as he redirected everyone toward the problem they had uncovered inside the tombs. "Okay, don't let this mysterious Samurai cloud what's really important. All the Serpentine are out, and if Pythor can unite them, the legend states some Great Devourer is gonna consume the land and—"
Nya straightened. "Great Devourer?"
Cole nodded. "Whatever it is, it's a can of worms I don't wanna see open."
That finally drew Jinx's full attention.
For a moment, the dinner table disappeared from his thoughts and the mural inside the Constrictai Tomb returned instead. He remembered the enormous carved serpent towering over the other images, along with Zane's translation describing something capable of consuming the land itself and turning day into night.
It should probably have inspired dread.
Instead, Jinx found himself wondering again what the Great Devourer would be like as a pet.
He pictured an impossibly huge snake wrapped around a mountain while everyone on the Bounty screamed at him for trying to feed it. The food requirements alone would probably be catastrophic, although some part of him remained convinced that anything capable of eating the world might also be interesting enough to justify the inconvenience.
Jinx quietly returned to his dinner.
That thought did not need to become a group discussion.
Lloyd, meanwhile, had lost all of his earlier excitement. The mention of the Serpentine made his shoulders slump, and he stared down at his plate as the consequences of opening the Hypnobrai Tomb seemed to settle over him all over again. "Unh, it's all my fault," he admitted quietly. "If I hadn't opened the first hatch, none of this would've happened."
Wu's attention shifted toward his nephew immediately.
"We cannot change the past, but we can affect the future," he told him, his voice gentle without allowing Lloyd to hide from the lesson behind it. Lloyd looked up, and Wu continued, "At least we have the Sacred Flute in our possession, so—"
Jay suddenly cleared his throat.
"Ahem."
Wu stopped.
Jay stared at his plate with remarkable concentration. "Yeah, about that…"
The table became very still.
Wu slowly turned toward him.
Jay looked at Zane.
Zane looked back at Jay.
Then, apparently deciding there was no version of the truth that sounded better, Zane said, "Pythor sort of stole it."
Silence.
Jinx took another bite.
"Wouldn't happen to me, though."
Several heads turned toward him at once.
Jay stared at him in disbelief. "You were there!"
Jinx gestured toward Zane with his fork. "Yeah, and he stole it from Zane."
Zane's eyes narrowed slightly. "That distinction does not improve our situation."
"It improves mine."
Wu slowly closed his eyes.
For a moment, nobody dared say anything else.
"The last Sacred Flute gone?" Wu finally asked, and the disappointment in his voice made even Jinx stop joking. Wu released a weary sigh before looking around at Kai, Jay, Cole, Zane, and Jinx in turn. "You five are Ninjago's last hope."
The alarm screamed through the Bounty.
Everything changed.
Nya shoved away from the table before the first alert had even finished sounding and hurried toward the monitor. The others followed almost immediately, the remains of dinner forgotten as the screen filled with incoming information. "Cold vision must have caught something," Nya said, already working the controls. "That means the Serpentine are near."
Cole moved closer. "Oh, no! Ninjago City?"
Jay leaned over his shoulder. "How many are there?"
The first cluster of signatures appeared.
Then another.
Then more.
The display continued filling.
Kai's lingering hallucinations no longer seemed nearly as interesting.
"Looks like all of them."
Zane studied the pattern for only a moment before reaching the obvious conclusion. "Pythor must be trying to unite them."
Wu was already standing.
The concerned uncle who had been comforting Lloyd only moments before disappeared beneath the authority of the Spinjitzu master. "Go," he ordered. "We mustn't let the five tribes unite."
The five ninja moved immediately.
Kai reached for the Sword of Fire while Jay snatched up the Nunchucks of Lightning. Cole collected his Scythe, Zane retrieved the Shurikens of Ice, and Jinx rose from the table as the first faint currents of Wind curled around his body.
There was no more discussion.
No more argument.
No more dinner.
Their voices rang together through the Bounty.
"Ninja, go!"
The alarm had barely finished screaming through the Destiny's Bounty before the room emptied in a rush of overturned chairs and snapping urgency. Plates were abandoned where they sat, dinner forgotten in an instant, and the ninja spilled out into the corridor at full speed with Wu's order still ringing in their ears. By the time they hit the open stretch of deck, instinct had already taken over. Weapons flashed into ready hands, feet planted, and one after another they launched into Spinjitzu, their elemental tornadoes flaring brightly as their training gi formed around them in mid-spin.
Zane emerged first and immediately looked down at himself with a faint, deeply pained sigh. The pink gi Lloyd's prank had condemned him to still clung stubbornly to his body, and the disappointment on his face was so complete that it almost overpowered the urgency of the moment. "I must get this taken care of," he said with quiet gravity, as though the indignity of the color had become a personal crisis.
Kai tried to answer with his usual swagger, but the lingering Venomari venom had other plans. He spun, lost focus halfway through, and stumbled badly to one side with a startled, "Whoa!" before nearly crashing into the railing. Jay caught him by the arm before he could go down completely and dragged him upright again. "Don't worry. It'll wear off soon," Jay told him, adjusting his grip when Kai wobbled again. "For now, you're coming with me."
Then the movement on deck faltered.
Not because of the Serpentine.
Not because of the mission.
Because Jinx stepped out of his own fading current of Wind, and for the first time the others saw him fully dressed in a proper gi instead of buried under layers, hoods, masks, or that strange jester-like coat he was so rarely without. His gi was a deep, vivid purple edged in black, fitted much more closely than any of theirs, and the effect was enough to bring the entire group to a halt. The cloth traced a frame none of them had properly understood before: a narrow, sharply defined waist, slim but powerful hips, long legs, and a chest soft enough in shape to suggest a subtle fullness that none of them had expected. It was not simply that Jinx looked different. It was that without the usual disguising layers, the body beneath them looked almost shockingly feminine.
What drew the eye even more, however, was his hair. Freed from its usual concealment, it fell far longer than any of them had realized, dark and heavy and almost absurdly perfect even in the rush of the moment, framing a face that suddenly made several half-formed details click into place all at once. Nya stared. Jay stared. Even Cole, who usually recovered from surprise faster than the others, needed a second.
The only one whose reaction went nearly unnoticed was Wu.
The old master had gone very still.
He had seen enough of Jinx's face before to know there was something familiar about him, some echo he could never quite place whenever the hood shifted or the mask came down for a moment. But now, with the full line of the face visible and the body no longer hidden beneath layered clothes, the resemblance struck him with such force that it momentarily hollowed the breath from his chest. An old friend rose in his mind with cruel clarity—a woman from long ago, bright and living and entirely gone now—and for one disorienting instant it felt as though time had folded in on itself and returned her image before him with impossible precision.
Nya was the first to recover enough to speak, though envy sharpened every word and made it almost funny despite herself. "HOW THE HELL DO YOU HAVE THAT KILLER BODY?!" she demanded, staring openly. "YOU'RE NOT EVEN A WOMAN!"
Zane, still wearing his tragic pink gi, looked Jinx up and down with a kind of fascinated sincerity that made the question somehow sound less rude coming from him. "I also wonder how you have such a body, Jinx."
Jinx glanced down at himself, then back at them all as though he had forgotten this was unusual. "Ehhhh, not too sure myself," he said with a small shrug. "But most people in my life wondered the same thing, so when I went to the doctor, apparently my body developed differently during the pregnancy. I was born with an extra X chromosome." He tapped his chest lightly, then gestured vaguely to the rest of himself. "It altered my appearance enough that I basically came out looking like a clone of my mother, who I never met. It affected my skeleton too."
He paused just long enough for that to sink in.
"Though before any of you get weird ideas," he added, "I have the bone and muscle density of three sumo wrestlers."
Jay blinked. "Wait, but when we spar, your strength is no different from ours." He hesitated, then flicked a glance at Cole. "Minus Cole, of course."
Jinx gave him a look that suggested the answer was obvious. "Oh, well, you see, when I was younger I had to hold my strength back twenty-four seven, or else I'd damage everything I touched. I did it for so long that it became my base setting." A faintly mischievous glint entered his eyes. "See?"
Before anyone could ask what he meant, Jinx drove his fist straight down into the table beside him.
Wood exploded.
The impact punched clean through the tabletop, and the force didn't stop there; when his fist drove into the reinforced floor beneath it, it left a heavy dent in the boards that made everyone instinctively look down in alarm. For one brief and intensely sincere second, every one of the ninja silently thanked whatever impulse had led them to reinforce parts of the Bounty after Cole's barbell accident.
Cole stared at the ruined table. "Okay," he said at last, "that's mildly concerning."
"Mildly?" Jay echoed.
Kai, who had been trying to focus on Jinx's demonstration and the mission at the same time, attempted another step, spun half a degree too quickly, and lurched sideways again with another helpless, "Whoa!" Jay caught him a second time with a long-suffering groan.
"I just said you're coming with me," Jay reminded him. "That wasn't a suggestion."
There was no more time for amazement after that. The Bounty had already shifted into position above the city approach, and the hatch below them yawned open to black night and rushing wind. One by one, they threw themselves out into the open air. The world dropped away beneath them in a blur of darkness, rooftops, and distant torchlight while the cold wind tore at their clothes and hair. Kai screamed all the way down, which nobody acknowledged because it was easier that way, while the others angled their bodies cleanly through the fall.
Then, one after another, the Golden Weapons transformed.
Jay's Nunchucks became his glider in a burst of crackling light. Kai's Sword of Fire shifted into the Blade Cycle. Cole's Scythe unfolded into the Tread Assault, and Zane's Shurikens formed his snowmobile-like machine with practiced precision. Their voices rose in exhilaration as they caught themselves from the dive and swung into controlled descent, all except Kai, whose shout remained only slightly less panicked even once he had a vehicle under him.
Cole grinned into the rushing dark and called over the wind, "Ah, I love the smell of land hurtling towards you in the middle of the night."
Jinx, lacking a Golden Weapon vehicle of his own, simply let his serpent-styled motorcycle sink into a ripple of darkness that opened beneath it like black water before closing again just as smoothly. He remained suspended on Wind for another instant, purple gi and long hair snapping in the night current, then angled downward beside the others as the team descended toward the ground and the battle waiting ahead.
The last stretch of their descent carried them over the outer districts and into a sea of light.
For several moments, even the urgency of the Serpentine disappeared beneath the sight below them. Ninjago City sprawled farther than any of them could easily take in, towers climbing into the night while illuminated bridges and crowded streets threaded between them like veins of gold. Neon signs burned along the buildings, advertisements covered entire walls, and streams of traffic wound through districts that seemed to have no clear end.
The ninja could only stare.
"Whoa," several of them breathed almost together.
Kai slowed as they reached street level, his eyes moving upward along buildings that seemed to disappear into the dark. "Ninjago City," he murmured, and there was something almost boyish in the way he said it. For all the places they had already traveled, this was different; stories about the city had followed them long before any of them had actually seen it.
Zane turned slowly, taking in the lights, traffic, architecture, and sheer number of people surrounding them. "Amazing," he said, his gaze lingering on a tower whose illuminated windows stretched almost impossibly high above them.
Kai nodded without looking away. "Always heard stories of this place."
Jay looked even more impressed. "Biggest city in all of Ninjago. Always wanted to come here."
Jinx's reaction was considerably less romantic.
He had been looking around since they arrived, but there was no wonder in his expression. If anything, the city seemed to make him mildly nostalgic and irritated at the same time. "Ehhh, I was born here," he said, earning several immediate looks. "Trust me, it's not that great."
That caught Cole's attention immediately.
Jinx continued walking while the others naturally drifted closer to listen. "I lived in an orphanage near the edge of the Southern District when I was little. It wasn't the worst of the five districts down south, but compared to the Eastern District we're in now?" He gestured loosely toward the glowing buildings around them. "This place is basically paradise."
Kai looked around again, apparently trying to reconcile the polished streets with whatever Jinx was describing.
"The outside looks nice," Jinx continued, "but that's half the trick. Around here you've got corporate drones, professional suck-ups, rich assholes pretending they aren't rich assholes, and people who'll charge you three times what something is worth because they think your clothes make you look stupid enough to pay it." He paused, then added with slightly less venom, "There are genuinely good people too, don't get me wrong. But you'll meet maybe ten decent ones for every hundred people who walk past you without even noticing you exist."
His expression darkened a little more at that last part.
"And don't get me started on the selective people. Those fuckers see exactly what they want to see. Somebody starving in an alley? Suddenly everybody is fascinated by the building across the street. Somebody rich drops a wallet? Half the block becomes helpful citizens."
For a second, nobody answered.
There was more personal experience beneath the bitterness than Jinx was openly acknowledging, and even Jay seemed to realize it was probably not the moment to make a joke.
Cole eventually broke the silence with a low whistle. "Damn, Jinx. We're just learning a lot about you today, huh?" He looked sideways at him, amusement returning carefully rather than mockingly. "I'm surprised you're this open."
Jinx gave him a small shrug. "You asked."
Cole accepted that with a nod, then his attention wandered upward toward one of the enormous billboards hanging from a nearby tower. His expression softened into something almost embarrassed before he admitted, "I always dreamed of one day being on a billboard here."
Jay immediately turned toward him. "You too?"
Cole looked surprised. "Wait, seriously?"
Kai laughed quietly and raised a hand. "Yeah. I did too."
All three looked up at the same glowing advertisement.
For a brief moment, they could apparently see it: their own faces towering over Ninjago City, crowds looking up at them, their names in lights instead of another company's logo.
Jinx ruined it.
"Good luck."
They looked toward him.
He pointed casually at the billboard. "A spot like that, in a good district with heavy foot traffic? Two million, and that's me lowballing it."
The silence that followed was immediate.
Kai's smile disappeared.
Jay slowly lowered his head.
Cole looked back toward the billboard as though it had personally betrayed him.
The same unavoidable thought seemed to hit all three at once.
They were broke.
Not merely short on money. Not temporarily inconvenienced. Between living aboard an old flying ship, training all day, saving Ninjago without wages, and possessing almost nothing that could reasonably be called income, they were catastrophically broke.
Jay's face went pale. "Two million?"
"Lowballing," Jinx reminded him.
Cole stared ahead in quiet devastation. "We might actually be poorer than homeless people."
Jinx thought about that.
"Some of them probably have savings."
Cole looked physically wounded.
Zane had allowed this conversation to continue long enough. While the others contemplated the financial impossibility of becoming billboard celebrities, his attention remained on why they had come in the first place. He scanned the surrounding streets, rooftops, alleys, and intersections before finally saying, "Uh, may I remind you: where are the snakes?"
That brought everyone back to reality.
Zane looked around the strangely normal street. "We should be standing in the middle of a massive Serpentine gathering."
There were cars.
Pedestrians.
Streetlights.
Late-night businesses.
But no army of snakes.
Kai's hand drifted toward the Sword of Fire while Jay stopped admiring the skyline. Jinx's attention sharpened as well, his earlier familiarity with the city giving way to suspicion as he listened to the movement around them.
Then Cole noticed the manhole.
It sat slightly crooked in the street ahead, its metal cover not quite settled into place.
The five ninja approached more carefully.
Cole stared down at it.
A faint sound came from beneath the street.
Something scraped against stone.
Cole's face fell.
"Ugh," he muttered, already knowing exactly where this was going. "I hate snakes."
Far beneath Ninjago City, the sewers had stopped resembling sewers and begun to feel like the foundations of an underground kingdom preparing for war. Serpentine from every liberated tribe packed the enormous chamber, their overlapping voices creating a constant hiss that echoed from wet stone and rusted pipes. Hypnobrai clustered around their own, Fangpyre occupied another section, Constrictai shoved through anyone foolish enough to block them, and Venomari lingered around the darker edges where fumes rolled over the filthy water. Years of hatred still separated the tribes, but for the first time in generations they were all standing beneath the same roof.
Near the makeshift stage, Skales watched the gathering with considerably less confidence than Pythor seemed to possess. He glanced toward two groups that were already arguing and warned, "You'll have to use more than words to bring the Serpentine together." Pythor barely looked concerned, smoothing himself down with the confidence of someone who had imagined this moment for years. "All I have to do is show them the way," he replied, just as Acidicus approached and informed him, "They're ready for you, Pythor."
Pythor's grin widened. "Ah. Showtime." He slithered into view and allowed the noise to gradually fall away before spreading his arms theatrically. "Friends, enemies, and enemies who pretend to be friends, I welcome you," he announced, and the chamber erupted with laughter as the different tribes recognized themselves in the insult.
Hidden inside an upper tunnel, the five ninja watched the enormous gathering below. Cole leaned forward just far enough to take in the true size of the crowd before quietly admitting, "That's a lot of snakes." Jay immediately ducked back from the ledge and asked, "What are we gonna do?" while Kai studied the chamber for several seconds until a dangerous little grin formed on his face. "I have an idea. Follow my lead."
Jinx stared at him.
Kai's expression alone was enough to tell him everything he needed to know.
"Why do I get a feeling this is gonna end badly?" Jinx muttered.
Nobody answered him, which somehow made the feeling worse.
Below them, Pythor had moved into the easier part of winning over a hostile crowd: making fun of someone else. Gesturing toward the Constrictai, he joked, "And what is with the Constrictai and their vice-like grip? Let it go already." Laughter spread through the chamber again, and one Fangpyre hissed appreciatively, "It's funny because it's so true," while Jinx slowly looked toward Kai and noticed him attaching a rope around himself.
"Oh, fuck me," Jinx whispered.
Pythor waited for the laughter to die before shifting into something more serious. "Heh, but in all seriousness, the reason why I called this gathering is because the good people of Ninjago imprisoned us in those insidious tombs, and I want to return them the favor." Weapons immediately rose throughout the chamber as Serpentine roared their approval, and the sound became loud enough to shake dust from the pipes overhead. Almost nobody noticed the red ninja lowering himself from the ceiling behind them.
Kai reached the perfect height before calling across the chamber, "That sounds like a great plan, but you know the Hypnobrai will screw it up." The cheering faltered almost immediately, several Hypnobrai turning suspiciously toward the tribes around them while Mezmo demanded, "Who said that?" Before anyone could find Kai, Jay called from a different location, "Those buck teeth can bite my rear end," provoking immediate outrage from the Fangpyre. Cole followed from yet another direction with, "I bet they're drinking their own venom," and Zane calmly added, "All that digging must have given them dirt for brains."
Old rivalries did most of the rest.
The tribes began snarling at one another, every insult appearing to come from a different section of the chamber, while Pythor's carefully constructed unity started fraying almost immediately. Jinx watched the chaos spread and realized the others were waiting for him to contribute something. He sighed, leaned over his hiding place, and shouted, "And the Anacondrai apparently spent so long starving underground they forgot betrayal isn't a personality trait!"
The chamber briefly went quiet.
Pythor slowly looked upward.
Jinx winced. "...Okay. Mine may have been less subtle."
Pythor's expression darkened as arguments began erupting all around him. "What's going on? Why am I losing them?" he hissed, but Skales had already stopped watching the crowd. His eyes had found Cole among the upper tunnels, and recognition flashed immediately across his face. "Ninja! Don't worry, I'll take care of it!"
The entire chamber exploded into motion.
Constrictai surged toward the upper passages with frightening speed, their thick bodies climbing stone and pipes as easily as crossing flat ground. Kai barely managed to loosen his rope before one reached him and wrapped both arms around his torso, while another caught Cole and dragged him away from the ledge. Jay tried to sprint toward the nearest side tunnel, only for a massive hand to seize the back of his gi before he could make more than a few steps.
"Run!" Jay shouted.
Zane and Jinx did not need to be told twice.
They bolted into the nearest tunnel while the sounds of struggling and angry hissing erupted behind them. Wind curled around Jinx's feet as he lengthened each stride, keeping pace beside Zane while they flew around one bend and then another. "I knew this was gonna go wrong!" Jinx shouted, earning the infuriatingly calm reply, "You did state that beforehand."
"That doesn't make me feel better!"
They rounded the next corner and stopped dead.
A solid wall blocked the tunnel.
Zane stared at it for a moment before observing, "This is inconvenient."
"No shit."
Heavy movement echoed from somewhere behind them, growing louder with every second. Zane's eyes swept over the cramped dead end until they landed on an old advertisement plastered against the wall—a brightly colored poster for Sitar Legend, complete with a performer dressed in almost exactly the same shade as the pink gi Lloyd's prank had left him wearing. He looked at the poster, then at himself, and quietly stepped against it.
Jinx stared at him.
Zane flattened himself carefully against the image and said, "Do not draw attention to me."
"That should not work."
"It is currently our best available option."
Jinx glanced toward the approaching tunnel, then toward a dented trash container shoved against one wall. Beneath it lay a deep patch of shadow untouched by the sewer lamps, and something inside him reacted almost before he consciously understood what he was considering. His Darkness seemed to recognize the space as more than somewhere to hide; it felt almost like an opening.
The Constrictai were getting closer.
Jinx had no time to think.
He stepped into the shadow.
His body did not pass behind the trash can.
It sank directly into the darkness beneath it.
For the briefest instant, the world disappeared into a cold, weightless black where Jinx could no longer tell exactly where his physical body ended. There was no floor beneath his feet and no wall against his back, yet he did not feel as though he was falling either. His vision returned strangely, reduced to the faint shapes and movements surrounding the shadow as though he were looking outward through darkness itself.
The Constrictai stormed into the dead end several seconds later.
They looked straight toward Zane.
Zane did not move.
His pink gi blended so perfectly into the ridiculous Sitar Legend advertisement behind him that for one unbelievable moment the Serpentine simply stared past him. One Constrictai narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but after several tense seconds he gave a frustrated hiss and turned around, the others following him back through the tunnel.
Zane remained frozen until their footsteps had completely disappeared.
Only then did he slowly step away from the wall and look down at himself. His eyes moved from the pink gi to the poster behind him, and for perhaps the first time since Lloyd's prank, some of his irritation toward the uniform disappeared. "Perhaps pink has advantages," he admitted.
Something tapped his boot.
Zane froze.
Another quiet tap came from below.
He slowly lowered his gaze toward the shadow beneath the trash container and found a pair of glowing eyes staring back at him. Their color sat somewhere between violet, magenta, and twilight, unmistakably belonging to Jinx despite the fact that there was no physical room beneath the trash can for a person to exist.
Zane shouted.
"AH!"
The glowing eyes blinked.
"Jesus, Zane."
The shadow rippled.
One hand emerged first, rising directly out of the darkness as though it were black water. Jinx's head followed, then his shoulders and torso, until he slowly climbed completely out of the patch of shadow and stood beside Zane. Even Jinx looked unsettled as he glanced down at himself, then back toward the darkness he had just emerged from.
For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
Zane finally pointed downward. "You were inside that."
"Apparently."
"That should not be physically possible."
Jinx looked at his hands and flexed his fingers, seemingly checking whether everything had returned with him. "Me and Nya were actually theorizing about something like this," he admitted. "Darkness already lets me blend into shadows, so we wondered if there was some point where blending stops meaning camouflage and starts meaning…" He gestured toward the patch beneath the trash can. "Whatever the fuck that was."
Zane crouched beside the shadow, examining it with immediate scientific interest. Nothing about it appeared abnormal anymore, yet he had watched Jinx physically emerge from a space far too small to contain him. "You converted your physical body into a shadowed state," he reasoned, "then occupied the darkness itself before returning to physical form."
"I noticed."
"And you did so without knowing whether you could return."
Jinx paused.
"Okay, when you put it like that, that sounds considerably stupider."
Zane looked up at him.
Jinx's surprise gradually gave way to fascination.
"I honestly didn't think it would fucking work."
He crouched beside Zane and experimentally pressed one finger toward the darkness.
His fingertip sank into it.
Jinx immediately pulled it back, stared at his hand, and a grin began spreading across his face. "Oh, that is useful."
Zane stood and looked toward the tunnel the Constrictai had disappeared through. "We should investigate the implications after rescuing Kai, Jay, and Cole."
Jinx sighed, though his eyes lingered on the shadow another moment. "Fine. Saving our idiots first, revolutionary Darkness powers second."
As they started back through the tunnel, Jinx glanced toward the Sitar Legend poster and then toward Zane's pink gi. A grin slowly returned to his face, and Zane noticed it immediately.
"No."
Jinx looked offended. "I didn't even say anything."
"You were about to."
Jinx laughed under his breath and followed him into the sewer tunnels, leaving behind the unlikely combination of Lloyd's prank and a discarded trash can that had somehow revealed two entirely new stealth techniques in less than a minute.
Back in the main sewer chamber, Pythor watched the tunnels with growing irritation while the Serpentine dragged Kai, Jay, and Cole back into the gathering. His carefully orchestrated meeting had already unraveled into shouting between the tribes, and the fact that several ninja were still unaccounted for was clearly doing nothing for his mood. When Skales finally returned, Pythor immediately demanded, "Did you take care of them?"
Skales folded his arms and answered, "All but two."
Pythor's expression tightened. He looked toward the maze of tunnels surrounding the chamber and hissed, "Search every nook and cranny. If they're a ninja, you'll never find them in plain sight." Several Serpentine scattered immediately, checking pipes, side passages, drainage channels, and every patch of darkness large enough to conceal a person.
Then Chokun pointed upward.
"Look, a Pink Ninja!"
Every head turned.
Zane came swinging out of an upper tunnel on a length of rope, his bright pink gi making subtlety completely irrelevant as he swept over the gathering. For once, however, the ridiculous color worked in his favor; the Serpentine were so startled by the sight that several simply stood there watching him pass.
Kai, Jay, and Cole immediately erupted.
"Go, Pink Ninja, go!"
Zane released the rope at the height of the swing and landed on a pipe above them, already searching for a way to reach the others. Jay's excitement faded after only a moment, though, when he looked around and realized somebody was still missing.
"Wait," he said. "Where's Jinx?"
Zane glanced down toward his own feet.
For the briefest instant, his shadow moved against the sewer light.
He said nothing.
Instead, he jumped from the pipe and caught another hanging line, swinging toward his captured teammates as he grunted, "Unh. Now let's get out of here. Let us blow this popsicle stand. Ninja, go!"
Then his shadow rose.
Jinx emerged from it almost like something crawling up through black water.
His hands appeared first, gripping the darkness itself for purchase before his head and shoulders followed. Rather than fully separating from Zane's shadow, Jinx flowed upward behind him and wrapped himself across Zane's back, one arm hooking over his shoulder while the rest of his body seemed to cling with the unnatural fluidity of shadow.
Zane nearly lost his grip.
"Jinx?"
"Keep moving."
Jinx's right hand was coated completely in Darkness, black-magenta energy flowing around his fingers like liquid smoke. His left hand was wrapped in spiraling Wind, the current so compressed that it whistled faintly around his palm.
Then both hands pressed against Zane.
Power surged through him.
Zane's eyes widened.
For perhaps the first time in his life, he understood what Jinx experienced every day.
His Ice remained there, familiar and perfectly natural, but suddenly it was no longer alone. Darkness moved beside it like something deep and cold lurking beneath frozen water, while Wind rushed around both with a freedom and pressure Zane had never possessed before. His senses sharpened as his elemental power multiplied in directions his body had never been designed to experience.
Zane inhaled sharply.
"So this is…"
Jinx grinned over his shoulder.
"Two elements at once."
The sensation was overwhelming.
Not painful, exactly, but vast. Zane had spent years learning precisely how Ice responded to him, how much power a movement required, how temperature, momentum, and concentration affected every technique. Now two additional forces were temporarily flowing through that familiar system, changing what his own element could become.
He reached for the Golden Shurikens of Ice.
The moment his hands touched them, the difference became visible.
One shuriken dimmed.
Its usual brilliant golden-white glow faded beneath a thin layer of Darkness, the metal taking on a muted grey sheen while frost crawling across its blades became pale and almost colorless. The second shuriken remained brighter, but Wind began spiraling tightly around it, forming a nearly invisible sheath of compressed air around the spinning weapon.
Zane stared at them for only a heartbeat.
Then he threw.
The darkened Shuriken struck first.
It spun through the center of the Serpentine formation before releasing its power, and the surrounding floor erupted with grey-white ice. Dozens of jagged frozen spikes burst upward in rapid succession, piercing clothing, trapping weapons, and skewering several Serpentine badly enough to send the entire formation scrambling away from the growing field.
The second Shuriken followed immediately.
Wind caught the Ice already spreading through the chamber.
A violent blizzard exploded outward.
Frozen air slammed through the gathering with enough force to tear Serpentine from their feet and hurl them across the sewer. Frost coated pipes and stone while razor-cold wind whipped through the chamber, turning Zane's normal freezing power into something wider, faster, and far more aggressive.
Zane caught both returning Shurikens.
Jinx released his grip.
The borrowed elements disappeared almost immediately, leaving Zane with only his own Ice again.
The difference was so sudden that he almost stumbled.
Both of them dropped toward the captured ninja.
Jinx twisted in the air and wrapped Wind around their descent, slowing them enough that he and Zane landed side by side without injury. Behind them, grey ice spikes covered half the chamber while Serpentine struggled to recover from the fading blizzard.
Kai stared.
Jay stared.
Cole stared.
All three spoke at once.
"Holy shit."
Jinx straightened his purple gi and looked extremely pleased with himself. "Yeah, that worked better than I expected."
Zane looked down at his hands.
He could still almost feel the phantom presence of Wind and Darkness moving beside his Ice.
"That was… extraordinary."
"Save the scientific breakdown for later," Cole said, already cutting himself loose. "We still need to get out of here."
That was enough to bring everyone back to reality.
Kai burned through the remaining restraints while Jay shocked another Serpentine attempting to approach. Cole tore free completely and shoved two attackers aside, while Zane and Jinx covered their retreat with Ice and Wind. Within seconds, the five ninja disappeared into the tunnels, leaving the gathering in chaos behind them.
Skales watched them escape with an expression that only became more irritated as Serpentine from different tribes immediately started blaming one another again. He turned toward Pythor and said, "You'll have to do better than that to unite the tribes."
Pythor tried to push through the arguing generals gathering around him.
"GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!"
By the time the ninja returned to the Destiny's Bounty, the adrenaline had finally begun wearing off.
They gathered once again in the common room, though this time everyone looked considerably more exhausted than they had at dinner. Cole leaned back and considered everything that had happened before saying, "You know, whether it was in a lesson book or not, we used the destructive power of rumors to our advantage."
Kai nodded. "And now the Serpentine are further away than ever from getting their act together."
Jay glanced toward Zane and Jinx. "You know, I don't think we would've gotten out of there if it hadn't been for you two."
Jinx immediately leaned back with a smug grin.
"Yeah, damn right."
Zane, however, shook his head. "Don't thank us. Thank Lloyd. If it hadn't been for his 'laundry skills,' we all would've been found."
That broke whatever seriousness remained in the room.
Everyone laughed.
Even Zane smiled faintly as he looked down at the ridiculous pink gi that had unexpectedly saved his life.
A moment later, Lloyd entered carrying something folded carefully in both hands. He walked toward Zane and presented the restored white gi with visible pride. "Well, it took me twenty loads, but your suit's no longer pink."
Zane took it from him and inspected the fabric carefully.
White.
Completely white.
His expression softened.
"Thank you, Lloyd."
Lloyd smiled, then turned toward Cole and held out a small can. "And to show that I'm sorry, Cole, I got you a can of nuts."
Cole stared at it.
His eyes narrowed.
"Uh, haha, yeah. Don't think I don't see what this is." He pointed accusingly at the can. "When I open this, a bunch of snakes are gonna pop out, right? Yeah, no thank you."
Lloyd maintained the most innocent expression he could manage.
Cole nodded knowingly, clearly proud of himself for avoiding the obvious prank. He walked over to the refrigerator instead and pulled the door open.
Several fake snakes exploded directly into his face.
Cole screamed.
The entire room erupted in laughter.
Lloyd doubled over, barely able to breathe, while Jay nearly fell from his seat and Kai slapped the table. Even Zane laughed openly this time, still holding his newly restored white gi against his chest.
Jinx looked from the refrigerator to Lloyd.
Then slowly nodded.
"Okay, baby boy."
He pointed toward him.
"That one was actually good."