Ninjago: The Purple Ninja - Book 2

Master of the Mountain: Chapter 4 - The Two Blades

A palace guard swoops down by one of the castle rooms outside, and gives a wave to Lloyd and Wu, who wave back. Once the guard flies away, Wu gives the princess a skeptical look.

"Princess Vania. Are you sure this is necessary?" Vania sets the cardboard cutout of Lloyd down and grabs another of Zane.

"My father is a good man, but very strict. If he knew the ninja had defied him and gone into the mountain, he would be quite upset." She gives another guard a wave with the Zane cutout, and sets it down.

"Mm, perhaps you're right. Best that he does not know, then. Give Cole another appearance, would you?" Vania nods and picks up the cardboard cutout of Cole. She sighs.

"Oh, I do hope the ninja are okay. Are you sure we shouldn't go after them?" She asks as she walks up to the window and shows the cutout to the people outside.

"Positive. The ninja are quite capable." Wu says with confidence. She smiles.

"With Cole as their leader, I suppose they must be well-trained." He raises an eyebrow at her.

"Did Cole tell you he was the leader?" She shakes her head.

"I assumed it, based on how courageous and daring he is. Isn't he?" He shakes his head in response to her assumption.

"They are a team. And rest assured, they'll be fine. I would be very surprised if they hadn't found Cole already, and were on their way back, victorious."

Katarina groans as she opens her eyes. Her vision swam and blurred, until it cleared after a few more moments of being awake. Her body was sore from all the bruises she had recieved from the Skull guards. She tries to get up, but found that she couldn't, as she was hanging from the ceiling with chains cuffed to her wrists.

"Ugh...c'mon...c'mon..." She tries to spark her magic, but it wasn't easy. She was too weak to do anything in her current state. She needed more strength to summon her powers.

"Dammit." She looks around for Keres, keeping an eye out for her bright purple holographic form. "Keres! Keres! Are you here? Say something!"

"Katarina!" Katarina looks at the far side of the cavern to see Keres' holographic form glitching violently a few dozen feet away from her. Her voice was becoming distorted from all the glitching. She was weaking by the Skull guards too.

"Keres! Are you okay?"

"No! Those damned skull guys hurt me too!" Katarina looked a bit more closely to see Keres was on her knees. She was tugging harshly at the chains cuffed around her wrists and waist. She screams in pain when she glitches again. She was too badly hurt to keep this up.

"I need to retreat back in your head so I can heal properly. I'm not sure I can keep this form up, Yang."

"Yes, you can! Just hang in there! I'll figure something out!" Katarina looks around her surrounds and finds there was a ledge behind her. She was close enough to it to swing over and try to get out of her chains without being spotted.

She executes her plan and swings on her chains multiple times, until her feet caught onto the ledge. She steps back a little more, until she was able to get herself full onto the ledge without having to fear falling off it. She examines her chain cuffs, and see it needed a key to free them.

"You've gotta be kidding me." Suddenly, she gets another idea. She summons the strength to use enough magic to remove the bobby pin from her hair, and levitates it to her mouth. She grabs it, and does her best to pickpocket the lock on her cuffs while keeping a close eye on one of the guards.