Zane

by Greg Farshtey

  TITLE PAGE

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF SENSEI WU

  GETTING THE JOKE

  THE CHOICE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  COPYRIGHT

  Ah, Zane … will I ever solve the mystery that surrounds him? More important, will he ever learn the answers to all his questions? Sometimes, I fear not.

  I had first heard rumors some time ago about a youth in a northern province capable of withstanding extreme cold. At the time, my other duties kept me from seeking him out. When my brother, Garmadon, threatened to steal the Four Weapons of Spinjitzu, I was forced to seek out potential ninja. This caused my path to finally cross that of Zane.

  I found him in a most unusual place. He was sitting at the bottom of an icy lake, meditating. On the shore, a crowd of villagers had gathered, all of them marveling at how long Zane had managed to stay underwater. Anyone else would surely have surfaced after a few minutes due to lack of air or the freezing cold, but Zane seemed to be hardly bothered by either condition. He was, however, quite shocked to open his eyes and see me seated down there with him.

  Zane was an orphan … or, rather, he thought he might be but was not sure. As it turned out, he was a young man without a past. He said he had awakened one day near his village with no memory of how he had gotten there or where he had been before. All he knew was his name. He made his way into the village and earned a living doing jobs for various people. The fact that Zane was able to do work outdoors in brutally cold conditions made him much valued, especially by those who preferred to stay indoors by the fire during snowstorms.

  When I asked him about training to be a ninja, he was slow to say yes at first. As we talked, he realized that there were many secrets he could uncover through this training. That was how I discovered that Zane loves to learn and is always trying to find out new things.

  Zane is, in fact, possibly the smartest of my four ninja. That is, if you measure how smart someone is only by what they have learned from books. Zane can tell you why the grass is green, how a flower grows, what makes a babbling brook sound the way it does. But I have never known him to lie in the grass and look at the clouds, smell a flower, or relax by a brook. I have seen him study the structure of a snowflake, but I wonder if he sees the beauty in the fact that no two are alike?

  My other ninja — Jay, Cole, and Kai — have certainly noticed that Zane is a bit different from them. They talk about how he has no sense of humor. He rarely smiles and never laughs and doesn’t seem to even get the jokes the other young men tell. Although they like him and respect him, it is sometimes hard for them to feel close to Zane. There is something about him that just feels … unique, and no one can identify what it is.

  Despite his dedication to his training and the mission, I know Zane is troubled by the questions about his past. He wants to know the answers, but perhaps he fears them as well. What if his parents are still alive and searching for him? Or what if they are bandits and would want him to use his skills for crime? What if the story of his early years holds the key to everything about him that seems so strange to others?

  Still, he has shown me again and again that he was the right choice to be my Ninja of Ice. When he faces an enemy, he seeks out points of weakness and targets them. When he strikes, it is not out of anger or fear. Even when faced with a mighty Ice Dragon, Zane does not panic. I have seen Kai let his love for his sister blind him to danger, and Jay’s humor desert him in a moment of crisis. But Zane is ice.

  What does the future hold for this most mysterious of ninja? I do not know. I believe he hopes his adventures with Kai and the others will somehow lead him to answers about his past. I truly believe he would go to the ends of the world to find out who he really is — and I and my ninja will stand beside him as he searches for clues to this greatest of mysteries.

  Zane picked his way carefully down the rocky hillside. His eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, but it would still have been easy to trip and fall. If he were to tumble and cry out, he might be warning Samukai’s skeleton warriors that the ninja were nearby. Worse, if he was badly injured, Sensei Wu and Zane’s three friends would have to leave him behind. The mission they were on was too dangerous and too important to risk its success.

  The “mission” Zane was undertaking at the moment seemed far less important. Sensei Wu had sent him off to gather sticks so a fire could be built. Although it was a cold evening in the mountains, Zane didn’t see the sense in making a campfire. They were very close to the Caves of Despair, the place Sensei was sure would be teeming with skeleton warriors. Why build a fire and potentially give away their position? Not for the first time, Zane wondered if the sensei truly knew what he was doing.

  The hillside suddenly grew much steeper. Zane found himself running faster than he wanted to toward the bottom, and only reaching out for a nearby tree slowed him. He glanced up and noted there were a number of branches that would make good firewood. As silently as possible, he began to climb the tree.

  There could, of course, have been another good reason why the sensei sent him off on this task. He had been traveling with the other ninja — Cole, Jay, and Kai — for days now, but he did not really fit in with them. Despite the danger they all were facing, the three youths were always laughing and joking. Zane never joined in. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever really doing that. He had always been a serious person, devoted to meditation, and hadn’t had time for humor and games.

  The others didn’t know that about him. All they saw was someone who didn’t “get” the joke. Maybe they were beginning to wonder if Zane was afraid of the challenges ahead of them, and that was why he was so grim. If they had doubts about him, it might cause problems in battle. Maybe the sensei wanted time alone with the three to discuss this, so he sent Zane off on a pointless job.

  Zane didn’t think he was afraid. He certainly respected the power of Garmadon and Samukai; only a fool would not. But the feelings that came with fear — cold sweat, trembling, heart pounding — were absent from him. Much of what the ninja would face was still unknown, and Zane saw no point in fearing the unknown. It was a waste of energy.

  He was about to break off a small branch when he heard a twig snap down below. Flattening himself against the tree trunk, he waited and watched. In a few moments, he saw the moonlight gleaming off the polished bones of a skeleton warrior. The skeleton was alone and muttering to himself as he walked.

  “ ‘Go get the wood, Nuckal,’ ” grumbled the skeleton. “ ‘Pick up those rocks, Nuckal.’ ‘Stop eating all the donuts, Nuckal.’ Orders, orders, orders, that’s all I ever hear.”

  Zane knew what he had to do. This Nuckal might stumble upon the camp and see Sensei Wu and the others. He would then rush back and report to Samukai. If the skeletons found out about the ninja now, it would be a disaster. The success of the mission depended on surprise.

  He waited until Nuckal was right under the tree. Then Zane let go of the trunk and jumped down on top of the skeleton. Nuckal let out an “oof” as Zane landed on him, and the two rolled around on the ground until they smacked into a big rock. Zane was stunned for an instant, allowing the skeleton to get to his bony feet.

  “Ha!” said Nuckal. “You’re my prisoner!”

  Zane rolled aside and sprang into a crouch, a shuriken in his hand. “No. You are my prisoner.”

  “I said it first,” insisted Nuckal.

  “I hardly think that matters,” Zane answered. “I have a shuriken. You dropped your sword fifteen-point-two feet up the hill. How can I be your prisoner if you have no weapon?”


  Nuckal smiled and tapped his head with a long finger of bone. “I have my brain … well, actually, I don’t really, but I’ll bet I’m still smarter than you.”

  “Why would you think that?” asked Zane.

  “For one thing, when I climb trees, I don’t fall out of them,” Nuckal said, with pride in his voice. “And I don’t run around in the dark by myself in the middle of the night where I might run into trouble.”

  “Actually, I am pretty sure that is what you were doing when we met,” Zane replied.

  “Shows what you know,” snapped Nuckal. “When you work for Samukai, you’re never alone. Someone is always watching you to make sure you don’t eat all the donuts.”

  Zane frowned. “How can you eat donuts when you have no stomach?”

  Nuckal started to answer, then paused, looking confused. A moment later, he opened his mouth again to speak, and stopped again, seeming even more puzzled than before. He looked down at the ground and scratched his skull. Finally, he glared at Zane and said, “That’s none of your business!”

  “Turn around,” said Zane. “I am taking you back to my friends.”

  Nuckal shook his head. “You turn around. Samukai will want to talk to you.”

  Zane threw his shuriken. It glanced off Nuckal’s skull and into the woods. The skeleton staggered for a second, but his bone was like armor so he wasn’t harmed. Then the two began to fight furiously. First one was winning, then the other, but they were too evenly matched for either to win. They were rolling around on the grass when Nuckal hit his head on a rock and stopped fighting, dazed.

  Zane got to his feet. If I knew Spinjitzu, I could win, but I don’t yet. We could fight all night, and if I lost, it would put the others in danger. Still, he’s not too bright, so maybe …

  “You can’t capture me,” Zane said suddenly. “I’m not really here.”

  “Huh?” said Nuckal. “But you fell out of a tree and now you’re standing right there.”

  “A tree?” Zane said in disbelief. “Did you ever hear of a ninja falling out of a tree before?”

  “Well … no,” Nuckal admitted.

  “Then it doesn’t make sense that one did tonight,” said Zane. “Want to know what really happened?”

  Nuckal nodded. Zane couldn’t tell if the skeleton was genuinely starting to disbelieve his own eyes or just waiting to see how far the ninja would push this, but he pressed on anyway.

  “You were in your camp,” said Zane. “Someone told you to go out and look for wood.”

  “Sure, Kruncha did,” said Nuckal.

  “Just before you left, Kruncha told you a joke,” said Zane. “Ummmm … how did the ninja get up in the tree?”

  Nuckal brightened. “I don’t know, how?”

  “He hid inside an acorn and let a squirrel carry him up,” said Zane, doing his best to sound the way Jay did when he told a joke.

  Nuckal laughed. “Ha! An acorn! Some big ninja hiding inside a little acorn … that’s a good one.”

  Zane took a step backward. “Right. In fact, you were thinking about that joke the whole time you were walking here.”

  “I was?”

  Zane took another step back. “Sure. Think about it — a little squirrel carrying a ninja up a tree. That’s funny.”

  The ninja wasn’t really sure if it was funny or not, but he had heard Cole tell the joke once and the others had laughed. Nuckal certainly seemed to like it, as he started laughing even harder this time.

  “So there you were, minding your own business, thinking about the joke, when you tripped and hit your, um, skull on a rock,” Zane continued. “Naturally, you got all confused. When you got up, you thought you really were seeing a ninja who had been up in a tree. But, of course, you weren’t.”

  “Right,” said Nuckal. “Of course. That would be ridiculous. A ninja up a tree? You would have to be really stupid to believe that.”

  Zane took another step back. He was almost completely hidden by darkness now. “One more thing: I wouldn’t tell anyone back at your camp about what you thought you saw. They wouldn’t understand.”

  “Yeah, they wouldn’t …,” Nuckal began. But the ninja he had been talking to — well, the one he imagined he had been talking to — was gone.

  Shrugging, the skeleton turned around and started picking up sticks to bring back to camp. It had certainly been a strange night, but he was glad that the imaginary ninja had been nice enough to admit he wasn’t real. It would have been embarrassing to tell Kruncha he had seen someone who clearly wasn’t there.

  Zane had gathered an armful of wood and was on his way back to camp. No doubt the others would be waiting for him. He looked forward to telling them about his adventure … and that, maybe, he finally got the joke.

  Zane sat at the bottom of a half-frozen pond, eyes closed, meditating. The water was so bitterly cold that the average person would have been shocked into unconsciousness by exposure to it, but Zane was not bothered at all. He had taught himself how to put the sensation of cold out of his mind, just as he mastered how to slow his breathing. This allowed him to stay underwater for an extraordinary length of time.

  The last chance he’d had to meditate this way had been in his village. He had been at the bottom of an icy lake then, when he opened his eyes to see the amazing sight of Sensei Wu, teacup in hand, down there with him. That was when the sensei recruited him to join his team of ninja. Their mission was to stop the evil Lord Garmadon from getting his hands on the Four Weapons of Spinjitzu. So far, they had retrieved two of the four artifacts.

  Now, as he pondered in the frigid water, Zane wondered if he had made the right choice in joining Wu’s team. True, what they were doing was vitally important to the safety of the world of Ninjago. But Zane had joined for other reasons besides fighting for justice. He had hoped that the chance to travel the world would lead him to answers about his past.

  Thus far, that effort had produced no results, and the fact gnawed at him. The frustration he felt at the thought of his failure actually broke his concentration. Suddenly, his lungs were burning. He had to rush to the surface and get a breath of air. Clawing his way back onto shore, he inhaled deeply.

  Zane looked around. He was alone. But that was not unusual. In a sense, he was alone wherever he went — for without memories, what does a man have? Zane had awakened one day on a road outside a small village, with no idea how he had gotten there or where he was. He knew his name and little else. The people of the village had taken him in and there he had stayed until Sensei Wu’s arrival. Since then, he had been haunted by questions: Who was he? Where had he come from? The answers remained elusive.

  Not long ago, he and his friend Kai had traveled back to that village in search of clues to Zane’s past. Instead of finding any answers, they found themselves in the middle of a plot by Samukai, ruler of the Underworld, and his skeleton warriors. The two ninja had smashed the plan, but found nothing to fill in the gaps in Zane’s memories.

  Zane stood up. There was no point in regrets, he decided. A commitment had been made to Sensei Wu and he had to live up to it. Perhaps when Ninjago was safe from Garmadon, there would be time to resume his search for his past.

  Zane was about to leave the pond and head back to camp when he heard a noise nearby. It sounded like a low moan, as if someone were in pain. Zane stopped and listened intently. Yes, it was coming from a cave nearby. The ninja sprinted off in the direction of the sound.

  The cave mouth was small and narrow. Zane noted that if the cave itself was the same size, there would be little room to maneuver in a fight. In a split second, he ran down a list of what might be causing the noise. Someone might have been hurt by an animal inside the cave; someone might have been exploring the cave and been injured; the noise might be coming from a wounded animal of some sort; the sound might even be caused by the wind blowing through a gap in the rock somewhere.

  Naturally, there was one other possibility: It was a trap. Samukai had already tried tricking Zane and Ka
i to get what he thought was a treasure. He might try it again.

  Zane stood at the edge of the cave entrance and called out, “Is someone in there? Are you hurt?”

  Silence was the only answer.

  A voice came from the darkness of the cave. “Help me….” It was a man’s voice, faint, as if the person it belonged to was very weak or badly hurt.

  Zane didn’t hesitate. There was no time to go for help. If someone was injured, he had to aid them, even if it meant risking an ambush. Now with the power of Spinjitzu at his command, he figured the odds were on his side even if it was a trap.

  He took a few cautious steps inside, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The sounds had stopped. Zane peered into the cave, hoping to spot whoever had been calling for help. He saw no one.

  “You won’t find me here,” the voice said, stronger now. “But I do require your help.”

  Zane looked around, his hands already curling into fists. “Where are you? Show yourself.”

  “The answer to the first is the reason I cannot do the second,” the voice replied. “I cannot come to you, Zane. You must come to me.”

  “Thanks,” said Zane, turning around. “I’ll pass. Somehow, I have the feeling the cost of helping you would be a little too high.”

  The ninja intended to head for the exit, but there was nothing there but darkness now. He couldn’t see a way out. Still, he did not panic. That wasn’t Zane’s way. If this was an elaborate trap — and maybe even his last battle — he would still face it calmly. As Sensei Wu always said, an angry fighter has already lost the war.

  “I am afraid I cannot let you leave until you have heard me out,” the voice said gently. “All I ask is that you listen. No harm will come to you, Zane. If I wanted you dead … well, you would be begging for death by now.”

  Zane turned back toward the direction from which the voice was coming. “Since I don’t seem to be going anywhere, say what you have to say. Start with who you are.”