Autobiography of a Legend

The Semifinal Round, Jungle Style

There is a reason that I never will fly in a plane unless I know exactly where I can find the parachute or failsafe system, and that's thanks to Chen too. The tournament had been so strange, all of us piling into a big zeppelin was just normal by that point. None of us had any reason to suspect something was up. We didn't know yet that Nya had been found out on the island, so we were instead still rolling along with the tournament. We figured we'd be taking us somewhere new, but instead he flew up several hundred feet up over the island.

Everyone inside of the seats was tense. Jay had broken his leg and everyone, Griffin especially, was gunning for him. Everyone was still on edge after the entire bit with the spy, and we'd gone from being trusted to hated even more than we were before. I wasn't exactly feeling good either, since Chen was being coy and we hadn't heard from Nya yet. We all assumed Shade was the spy, and it didn't help that he didn't deny Kai provoking him either. It was a very awkward ride with all of us thinking, for better or worse, that we were going to get knocked out of the tournament soon. Even my father told me I should be wary of what was going to happen next. He always gave the practical advice that I needed.

Neuro panicked after seeing how high we were, and I admit I wasn't exactly feeling good about it either. We were so high I could cover the island with my hand in front of my face. And when Neuro finally snapped and threw the cockpit open, we got ourselves another surprise from Chen: it was empty. Chen came on the console and told us that the next round had started, and the objective had changed. Rather than fighting for a jadeblade, we were going to be sent off into the island to go and search for an 'intruder:' Nya.

As soon as Chen told us this, the floor to the entire zeppelin started to open up. There were 8 finalists, and there were 8 parachutes. We all scrambled to go and grab a parachute... until I realized that my dad had come along with us. Chen casually said he wasn't good at math, and then cut out his feed. I've never seen someone be so calm about telling someoen they were going to murder them, but Chen didn't even blink. Even the other villains that said they were going to kill us at least acted like it was something important!

But we didn't get another chance to think about it. We were all spilled out with our parachutes, right into the open air. If I hadn't already been used to flying on a dragon for months during my tour of Ninjago, I would have probably developed a phobia of the sky or something. Everyone was being whipped around in the sky until we could get ourselves steady enough to focus on getting a parachute. My father was right behind me. The wind was so loud I could barely hear my dad yelling at me as loud as he could. I'd flown before, but I was so rattled, terrified, I couldn't think straight.

One of the others said I should use my energy dragon. After I lost my golden power, I'd tested to see if I could make a golden dragon. It turns out that I could, but it wasn't golden anymore. It was now completely green, and I thought I was the only one that could. The others couldn't, even with their full elemental powers. But as soon as I tried to summon it, it wouldn't form!

My dad shouted that I wasn't controlling my fear. I had to center myself if I wanted to use it. At the time, I didn't know what he meant, but it was true. Elemental dragons require you to focus hard and put aside all your fear to control them. Think of it like balancing a plate on your head. If you get scared or tense up, you'll drop it and shatter it. You have to be able to hold still and stay calm if you want to use one. That's the biggest disadvantage to them, alongside the fact they took a lot of energy to make. Using a dragon feels like running a marathon after awhile, so you had to pace using them. But of course, I was falling down to my imminent demise, so I wasn't thinking about that at all. I was just trying to figure out what I was going to do about my dad!

By the time that I got a chance to even grab a parachute, everyone else had already opened theirs. I kept trying to form my dragon, but every time I looked at the ground that was moving up to splatter me across the ground I couldn't do it. It feels like when you do a pushup, and you get halfway up before you feel that big push you gotta do to get all the way up. Only that push was me forming a dragon of energy, and the pushup was me rapidly hurtling towards the ground.