Chapter Three:

More Than One

It felt like an eternity to get to the Monastery atop the Mountains of Impossible Height. Sensei Wu was an old fashioned type, and liked to travel on foot, rather than use a bus, or train. If Wu was a certified driver, I’m sure Mom and Dad would have allowed me to take one of the cars. Fortunately, I had packed only a backpack and my violin, so I had relatively light luggage. After a few days we finally made it to the mountain where the monastery stood at the top. We were three quarters up the stone stairs, when I saw the gates. It had grown very dark. I didn’t have a watch, but I could have sworn it was eleven or twelve at night. My feet were sore and I was exhausted. Of course, for Wu’s old age, he never showed signs of tiring; and that made it hard to persuade him to stop and rest.

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We had about fifteen more steps to climb, when I heard a grunt. It was rather loud, and it was coming from the monastery. I was alarmed, because I knew Wu lived alone at the monastery, or so I thought.

“Sensei, who’s that?” I asked.

Sensei paused. But he didn’t answer, and continued forward. I was beginning to get worried. Then, I could sense multiple people fighting within the monastery.

“Sensei?” I asked again.

Once again, Sensei didn’t respond. I was growing more concerned. By the time we got to the stairs, I heard a shout in pain. I threw down the stuff from my back, completely disregarding what Sensei Wu would think and kicked the door down. Before me, in the middle of the courtyard, was a pile of boys. One with red pajamas and unkept brown hair was on the very bottom, while the three others were dress in black outfits, like ninjas. They all turned to me in shock.

“A GIRL!?”

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I front flipped and thrusted my hand forward. The wind started to violently pick up and one of the ninja was shot backwards inside the open doorway. The two other ninja raised their weapons and one threw his shurikens towards her. I swiped both hands in an “X” formation and the shurikens went flying in the opposite direction of her. I sped forward and roundhouse-kicked the other in the face. The one who formerly had the shurikens tried to throw punches, but I jumped back. I took the wind currents and pushed them lower, swiping all the beings off their feet. Suddenly, I felt someone grab my arm and pushed me to the ground, holding my arm behind her back and pushing their weight down on me.

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“Stop!”

Sensei Wu was standing in front of the kicked down doorway. He had a firm look on his face, with one hand behind his back, and the other holding his bamboo staff. The person holding my arm immediately let go of me and jumped to their feet. Everyone except me and the pajama boy bowed in respect to Wu. The boy and I exchanged glanced in confusion. We had so many questions running through our brains.

“Wait, they’re your students too?” the pajama boy asked, “and who’s that?” he gestured to me.

“I could say the same you! All of you!” I exclaimed.

I turned to Wu. “Sensei, what’s going on? You didn’t tell me there were others!”

“Yeah!” One of the ninja exclaimed in a higher-pitched voice for a teenage boy, “we didn’t know there was gonna be two more! There’s always three: Three blind mice, three musketeers, three-”

The ninja with the bushy eyebrows cut him off. “Er, what he’s trying to say Sensei Wu, is that the three of us have trained together. We’re solid.”

The pajama boy scoffed. “Didn’t look so solid to me!”

“I don’t know. They seemed to be kicking your butt okay!” I commented.

He glared at me.

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“You five have been chosen,” Sensei Wu explained, “Each with the gift of elemental abilities. But first, your uniforms.”

He suddenly spun around into a golden tornado. He flew towards us, the shimmering power surrounding us. We spun around with it for a few seconds before Wu stopped and appeared to the left of us. Everyone was different. The boys dressed in black had their colors drastically change, all except the boy with the bushy eyebrows, who remained the same, with the exception of the dragon symbol on his chest for “earth.” I immediately recognized all of our symbols, and discovered each element they possessed before Sensei introduced them:

The boy who was a bit of a rambler was wearing a blue uniform with the dragon symbol for lightning on his chest. His name was Jay.

The boy who wore the black uniform previously mentioned was Cole.

The quiet and calm boy, who had barely said two words since I met them, wore a white uniform with the dragon symbol for ice was named Zane.

Lastly and leastly was the cocky, pretty boy, who wore the red uniform, and the dragon symbol of fire, was Kai Smith.

“Finally, Kamara Silverknight, master of wind” Sensei Wu introduced.

I was met with respective bows, but they didn’t look happy. Was it merely because I was the only girl among them? Did they feel like they needed to defend their masculinity?

“So, why does a girl need to be here? She doesn’t even have any of the four main elements!” Kai asked.

“Come on man, it’s the 21st century, there have been plenty of influential women. Get with the times, dude” I said cooly.

Kai glared at me, but I ignored him and turned back to Sensei. I wasn’t going to let him push me around.

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“You are the masters of the elements, and I have chosen you five to help me retrieve and protect the four weapons of Spinjitzu, from Lord Garmadon. You are right, Kamara does not have one of the four main elements. But I have asked her to assist us” informed Sensei.

“Well, sounds like we’ll need all the help we can get” said Cole.

“But what about my sister? She is worth more than those weapons!” Kai snapped.

I was surprised to find out that he had a sister. But what surprised me even more is that he seemed to care about her. But did he really?

“We’re saving a girl!? Is she cute?” Jay asked.

“Ja-ay!” Cole warned.

“I just wanna know what we’re getting ourselves into!” Jay exclaimed in defense.

“Eh, nope. Still sounds wrong” I added.

Jay leaned closer and spat out one last question, “Does she like blue?”

“Back off!” Kai barked.

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“When we find the weapons, we will find your sister. Come. We must rest well before we retrieve the first weapon!”

“Aren’t you gonna teach us Spinjitzu?”

“Spinjitzu is inside each and every one of you. But it will only be unlocked when the key is willing to be found.”

Then, Sensei Wu turned his back to us, and went inside the monastery. I sighed.

“Well then! We’ve got our work cut out for ourselves” I stated.

The four boys looked at each other, a bit dumbfounded, still taking everything in. Kai put his katana behind his back.

“Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: I’m not here to make friends, I’m only here to get my sister back!”

“Sounds good to me” Cole responded.

“I’m just here to help Sensei” I informed, folding my hands, “I want to do my job and get home.”

Kai glared at me once again, while I tried to give off an aura of a purposeful smug sense of superiority. As everyone went back inside to settle in to sleep. Cole went up to me.

“So, you’re Sensei’s first student, huh?” he asked.

I shrugged. “It’s a long story. If you’re interested, I’ll tell you about it when we hit the road.” Cole nodded, smiling invitingly.

“Okay. It was nice to meet you, Kamara.”

I smiled politely. I appreciated his genuinity.  When he left, I sighed. I went inside and found my own room. I reminisced a little bit about when I lived here nearly ten years ago, then went to bed, wondering what was going to happen the following day.