A Second Chance

Part 71 - My turn

"So, what's your deal?"

"Well, my story is way less eventful than yours, just putting that out there," I said. "Ed and Edna raised me, they were great, I had a thing for inventing, some of which was genuinely cool and some of which was a disaster. Normal childhood mostly."

"It really kicked off the day I tried to paraglide off a rooftop. It started fine, and then it really didn't, and I crashed into a billboard. I was sitting there being furious about it when this old guy in white robes showed up and basically recruited me. Master Wu. He brought me to a monastery, ran me through this brutal training course, and that's where I met Cole, master of earth and Zane, master of ice."

"Wait," Libber said. "Zane, Master of Ice?"

"Yeah, master of ice. Nindroid, full-on database, forma, has a wife, really good cook actually."

She was quiet for a moment, and I kind of understood why. "Okay. Keep going."

"Wu eventually sent us to ambush someone who turned out to be Kai, master of fire. His sister had been kidnapped by the Skulkin so we went after her. I may have immediately asked Kai if she was into guys who liked blue, which he did not take well. Solid start to the friendship."

"We had to collect the four golden weapons the First Spinjitzu Master used to create Ninjago. Mine was guarded by a dragon that made everything harder than it needed to be. We also figured out spinjitzu on the way, which was the whole point of the training course. I was the first one to do it, which I feel never gets enough credit."

"And then we ran into evil Lord Garmadon. Wanted the weapons to power himself up in some dark realm."

"Then we met Lloyd, who was just this annoying kid at the time. Nobody gave him candy so he released the serpentine."

"He what?!" Libber exclaimed.

"Released the serpentine over candy,"

"Over candy," I confirmed. "He released the Hypnobrai, they betrayed him, he tried the Anacondrai next, most of them were already dead somehow, the one survivor betrayed him too, and he still ended up on our team. Turned out he was the legendary green ninja. Nobody saw that coming."

"We trained him and then he accidentally aged himself through some tea thing and we were suddenly the same age. After that it was a lot of everything. There was a tournament where the host wanted to steal our elements and turn himself Anacondrai. Kai ended up stealing his daughter and they're married now I think. Then Nya, Kai's sister, turned out to be the master of water. Her true potential basically destroyed an entire realm."

"We had all kinds of adventures after that and somewhere in all of it we found out Nya and I had actual feelings for each other, which took embarrassingly long for both of us to figure out. But we got there."

"Then somewhere in all of that I got a letter saying my biological father died and left me his inheritance. I thought it was Ed at first, which was a whole panic, but it turned out to be Cliff Gordon. He'd been keeping tabs on me for years apparently. Had this whole room dedicated to it. Pictures, suits, basically a shrine."

"That bastard," she said quietly, and it wasn't directed at me.

"Yeah I didn't exactly have great feelings about him either, but the next parts are better. After all of that we kept building on it. The six of us became real family. It was going well for a long time." I paused. "Until it wasn't."

...

"One day, some man killed Cyrus Borg and Milton Dyer and framed me for it."