A Second Chance

Part 69 - Hostility, Friendship, and Capture

"One day, Wu decided that me and Maya not being able to stand each other - well, I was fine with her, but she wasn't fine with me - was a team problem and sent us on a scouting mission together to fix it. Just the two of us. I want to say that was a good idea but I really don't think it was."

"I literally went to get her when it was time to leave and she threw a freaking shoe at me! Ray tried to say that I just needed to get to know her more, but she literally kicked the door open and yelled that I was making her wait, like hello? I was on time and she was late!"

"The mission was straightforward. Sit on a snowy hill, watch for serpentine, report back. Nothing complicated. What it meant in practice was that we sat in the cold not talking for a long time. I tried a couple of times to start a conversation and she made it very clear she wasn't interested. I genuinely couldn't figure out what I'd done. I'd never had someone dislike me that purely for just existing before."

"And then five Hypnobrai appeared right behind us... worst news, we weren't even prepared for them! Mind control, resistant to cold, bad combination. Make it sound satisfying, Maya slipped and rolled the way down the hill. Even the snakes seemed confused by it."

"Long story short, we fought off the Hypnobrai, which involved me making a decision that Maya did not appreciate at all. The only way to stop a Hypnobrai from getting you is to make sure you can't see them, and Wu told us that one way to do it was by using Venomari Venom. And as you guessed, she got pissed. I had to carry her home the entire journey as she kept cursing me,"

"Ray was waiting when we got back and Maya immediately blamed everything on me, which opened up the longest and most unpleasant conversation of my entire time at that monastery. She said a lot of hurtful stuff. About how I thought I was better than everyone, how I didn't belong here, how I should go home to my parents and let the real fighters handle it."

"I don't think she knew about my parents when she said that last part. But it still hit. I disappeared, but on the good side, I think Ray and Ice got pissed at Maya for that."

...

"There was one master I absolutely loved sparring with. Benton, master of earth. Big guy, very patient, and had an element of creation, so we were on equal grounds! We had some good fights, bunch of trash talking, and guess what - he's Lilly's father! He was fighting in the war to keep her safe."

"Next day, he went out on a mission and didn't come back. The alliance's first loss. But, spoiler - he never died! He was just mind controlled by the Hypnobrai and we saved him. But, y'know, hat's the part of the war nobody ever prepares you for."

"Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I turned fifteen. Everyone, except the usual suspect, threw me a birthday party! Ray said she went home to check on her family, but that was probably a lie or something. Crazy that we celebrated that in the middle of war. But, to me, that was the day I saw the elemental alliance as a family."

"Sh*t changed by then. The first year I was their youngest, good for keeping everyone's spirits up, but not always trusted with the serious work, which greatly annoyed me. A few successful missions later and people started treating me like an actual operative."

"Then, there was the mission where it all went bad. There was this Hypnobrai meeting happening in the glacial barrens. A general would be there carrying a map of every serpentine base in Ninjago. If we got that map, the war could turn completely in our favor."

"Wu said it was a job for his two best covert operators. Someone who could get in, get out, and handle anything unexpected without making a scene. So, it was me and Garmadon! I was overjoyed and I made sure everyone in the room knew it!"

"Garmadon was my best friend at the monastery. We just clicked in a way I haven't really been able to explain since. He knew how to have fun, which sounds simple but at fourteen in a wartime alliance it really wasn't common. We'd been pulling pranks on people for months and never got caught once, which is exactly why Wu trusted us with this!"

"The walk to the glacial barrens was mostly us bickering about the cold. Garmadon was bundled up and absolutely miserable and I was fine because growing up on a mountain with Ice will do that to you. He made it very dramatic. I enjoyed every second."

"And, it was clear he was spending time with Misako, so I teased him about that."

"We spotted two Hypnobrai at the edge of the Birchwood Forest, which was nowhere near where the meeting was supposed to be happening. So, we split up and took them out discreetly. Pretty unique way as well, my particular approach involved a tree, a lot of momentum, and sending one of them through several other trees in a wide arc, which Garmadon found very funny. He started calling me Libby, which I refused to accept, and I called him 'Lord Garmadon' in retaliation, which he found even funnier. We were twelve seconds away from a critical mission and laughing in the dark about movie references. That was just how we were together."

"We got to the meeting point and there was nothing there. Just an empty valley. But then, it all clicked - think about those two back at the forest, the way they'd just been standing there. Not moving, or searching. They were sentinels, not scouts mwhich meant the general didn't move through the forest. She was still in it."

"And boom, we found that camp. Garmadon used his destruction to terrorize the camp from the outside while I moved through the trees above and grabbed the map. Just your average stealth mission. But the real problem was the general knew we were coming since we knocked out her sentinels back at the forest edge. She'd had twenty more waiting in the dark the whole time."

"We got surrounded fast. They had us both off the ground before we could do much about it, and the general was very pleased with herself about having the master of destruction in her hands specifically. She was right to be. Garmadon was the commander, losing him would have been devastating for the alliance."

"So I made a call... I put the map in his hands and told him to run. He argued for about half a second and then he went, and I caused enough chaos to make sure he stayed gone. I got the scroll back in the confusion and bolted through the trees."

"I was small and fast and the forest worked in my favor for a while. But I'd used a lot of power getting us both out of that situation and I was running on empty. I went over the edge of a small drop in the dark and fell down the hillside, and when I stopped at the bottom I just... couldn't get up. That's when everything went dark."

"I woke up surrounded by serpentine."

"The general tried to hypnotize me. I fought for long as I could, but I eventually tired out and gave in."

"I got mind controlled and did a lot of bad things with the rest of the serpentine. I don't remember my memory through it all because that general hypnotized me and yeah, it took a while to get me back."

"The year I was controlled is mostly blank. I have fragments, flashes of things I did and places I was, but nothing coherent enough to piece into a full picture. Honestly that's probably a mercy."

"What I do know is that Ice was the one who stopped me. He froze me solid until the alliance could deal with Adhara, that general ,and when they did, I came back. Just like that. Libber's back, everyone! Except not really."

"I lost my teleportation. Apparently, I'd burned through so much of my element during everything that whatever that ability was, it was just gone. I found out later that most lightning masters before me had something similar happen, a burst of special power that eventually fades. I'd had mine young and used it hard and that was that. It should have felt like a bigger loss than it did, but I didn't really care."

"The war was close to over by now, and turns out, the culprits were whoever Garmadon went to train under. It was this guy called Chen and his right-hand man, Clouse who stoked the war. We just needed to finish them and we were done once and for all,"

"This was supposed to be a happy moment, but that never happened. This was when my life went downhill,"

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Total Word Count: 1537 words