The Lies You Weren't Told: One

THE LIES YOU WEREN'T TOLD

One: Prelude

Awake.

Awake.

I am... awake.

The Overlord, weaker than he had ever been, summoned a small, dim, electric nonphysical form to be his temporary new body.

He searched his surroundings - the Dark Island appeared to have sunk back into the sea. Barely visible along the horizon were bright flashes of light.

Fireworks? he thought. The land of Ninjago must be throwing a party because I am 'gone'. I must not have been truly banished for very long.

The Overlord realized many things in the next moment: his army was defeated, lost forever; all of the Ninja were more powerful than they had ever been; and most importantly, destroying almost all hope of his own recovery, his servant Garmadon was probably cured of the venom of the Great Snake.

He had almost no chance to get his revenge now. However, he had the advantage that he was awake and active as he had not been in so long.

Now he had to wait.

TWO YEARS LATER

Zane looked closely the blueprints of the Juggernaut Mark II again, and then quickly pointed out his father's error.

"Excuse me for interrupting, but the green wire is supposed to be connected here, not there."

"Hmm?" Dr. Julien mumbled. He examined the blueprints, with his glasses pushed high up on his nose. Zane pointed to a certain spot to help him.

When his creator noticed his mistake, he beamed at Zane. "I'm getting too old to do this, but it's just so much fun!" he smiled his wide grin. "Go ahead and fix it."

Zane slowly uncurled the end of the green wire from the attachment site and replaced it in the correct location. He felt the Falcon land on his shoulder and looked up at it, smiling, before turning to its creator.

Each day over the past two years, he tried to memorize something about the man before him that his memories didn't tell him - today, it was the strange way his eyes sparkled when he discovered something new, or the exact position that his glasses perched in right up next to his eyes.

He knew, of course, why he was doing this. Zane had almost lost his father once, had the Skeletons not revived him and set him to work. He never allowed himself to linger on the subject for very long, however.

"Well, then," Dr. Julien said, crinkling his brow, "I think this one is finished. Is that all of them?" he wondered.

Zane called up the list of where all the guardian robots were supposed to be sent.

"Forty-two, one for every major town and city in Ninjago."

"We have enough for that now," Dr. Julien commented. Zane remembered the next item.

"Fifteen for use in and around Ninjago City."

"Yep," the old man answered.

"One to stay here and guard the Warehouse."

"That's this one, then," Julien mumbled. "We're done!"

"Now they can protect everyone, and we'll barely have to worry," Zane said. "There's no one truly evil left in Ninjago anymore to cause problems."

A strange expression crossed Dr. Julien's face as Zane spoke, but it was gone just as quickly as it appeared.

"What should we do now?" he asked.

A few hours later, the two found themselves in the small private library attached to the building, a few rooms down from where the machines had been built. Zane sat in one of the armchairs reading a battered history text while Julien looked over the shelves, trying to find something he hadn't already read.

Zane tried to focus half of his attention on the book and the other half on Dr. Julien's hand helping scan the shelves, but ended up watching his creator look over every title on the shelves that lined the walls.

His hand eventually lingered over one large, black volume, and sat there for a while before the old man pulled it off the shelf.

"What is that book, Father?" Zane asked simply. "I don't think I've ever seen it."

Dr. Julien walked back over to his chair with a slight frown on his face. "An old scrapbook. I don't think I've touched it in forty years."

He sat down and positioned the book on his lap. Zane set down the book he was 'reading' and walked over to stand behind his left shoulder.

Julien opened the book to the first set of pages. On the page was a set of pictures of him when he was much younger, most likely in his mid-to-late twenties.

One picture in particular caught Zane's eye, and he stared at it for quite a while. The black-and-white photograph was of the younger Julien bending over a strange, dark shape he didn't recognize. A welding mask was pushed up on top of his head, covering most of the short hair that lay there. A blowtorch sat on the desk nearby.

"What's that?" Zane asked, pointing to the dark object.

Dr. Julien sighed and thought for a little while before answering.

"I think - I think it's you," he said, stuttering slightly. "I don't know when this was taken."

Zane stayed silent, drinking it in. A new memory.

Dr. Julien turned the pages clumsily every so often. He skipped a page every now and then, but Zane couldn't tell whether he realized he was doing it or that it was completely accidental.

Zane was reading a newspaper clipping attached to one of the pages when he noticed an interesting paragraph:

Dr. Julien, who has won many awards on his previous robotics research, expects he will probably be able to pick up multiple awards with his newest project that he claims is 'a hundred years ahead of its time'. The conference will be held at the Ninjago City Conference Center next week in Hall C at 3:00 PM.

"I never knew Ninjago City had a conference center," Zane said. "Where is it?"

The old man thought for a moment. "If I remember right, it got torn down the year after the conference due to a high chance of structural failure," he said, "and it never got rebuilt."

Dr. Julien closed the scrapbook, and Zane noticed he skipped the last set of pages.

He realized that he'd seen the book before, and felt a question form in his mind.

"What was in that box we left behind, anyway?"

Zane could have sworn he saw his creator's eye twitch.

"Which box?"

"The box where I found that book," Zane said, pointing to the scrapbook in his hands.

It was in a third room, one that Zane could not remember ever setting foot in, that he found a large storage space filled with all kinds of machinery, gadgets, gizmos, and spare parts. He could not have named more than half the things in the room even if he tried.

He had found the doorway behind a few stacked boxes of parts in the room off to the side of the main area. He had a sense that the things that were back here were forgotten for one reason or another, and left to turn to ash and dust with time.

There was a shelf of books he had never seen before at the very back, and he walked over to them, wondering exactly what he felt was wrong about the scene.

Tucked back in a corner next to the bookcase, hidden barely out of sight, was an old, beat-up cardboard box. A large black book sat on top of it that must have been at least as old.

Dr. Julien caught him snooping, though, and came over. "I was wondering what you were doing in here. Now it seems we have another shelf of books to pack."

The old man smiled, and Zane picked up the book. It was lighter than it looked.

"We'll have a look at that later," his creator promised. "Let's finish packing."

Dr. Julien thought for a moment while he waited. Zane knew it probably was nothing important - another box of spare parts, for instance, which had been quite abundant in the room - but something bothered him about that box, and the way Julien had been randomly skipping pages in the scrapbook.

He wasn't exactly sure what it was that bothered him, either - was it simply the fact that he wanted to know, or was it the same kind of gut feeling he had had repeatedly with the Falcon those many months ago?

"That was a box of some of my old tools," Julien finally answered, expelling all rumors of anything otherwise. "I started putting some of them away over time when we lived there, remember? I wasn't using them as much, and didn't need to. Samukai wouldn't let me take any of them with me - he supplied tools, although I would have preferred my own."

Zane was satisfied with the explanation, and it matched up with what he could remember, but it still bothered him somehow.

"Tomorrow is the day you go back with the others, anyway," the old man reminded him. "We'll talk more when you come back."

There Zane was, standing on the deck of the Destiny's Bounty, doing some quick catch-up with his brothers. Jay was filling everyone in on how his date with Nya had gone, with Kai giving him a death glare the whole time. Zane was only half-listening, his attention drifting in and out of focus.

It had been Sensei Wu who had first suggested their new 'schedule' eighteen months ago. He, Garmadon, Misako, and Lloyd had wanted to get used to being a family again after so many years of struggle, pain, and fighting. And due to the fact that Garmadon was no longer evil, the Overlord was defeated, the Skeletons had no means of returning to Ninjago, and all the Serpentine had mysteriously disappeared, there really was no reason for them to stay on alert all the time.

Once they thought about it, though, everyone realized that it was just what they needed - Cole wanted the time off to spend it with his father; Jay wanted it so he could have time with Nya and visit his parents (which wasn't entirely his idea); Kai wanted the time so he could make absolutely sure that Nya was not getting into trouble; and Zane had wanted it so that he could spend time with Dr. Julien, his creator, partner and friend for almost fifty years.

So, thus, for four days out of the week, the Ninja would stick together on the Bounty - training, joking, and just hanging out - while the other three days would be spent however they would like.

The rest of the day passed quickly for him - it felt good to be back with his brothers.

The Overlord flew over Ninjago in his ghostly form, no longer truly confined by the prison of the Dark Island. He was searching for something - anything - that he could turn to his cause.

It was not easy to find anything - it was night now, and although it was not difficult to see, it was difficult to find villages and towns without light or heat radiating from them.

He was flying over some sort of cold, deserted space, when a strange string of formations caught his attention. The Overlord floated down to them and examined them, eventually noticing the building built inside a nearby tree.

He went inside and through the rooms within - a maze of locations that he did not know how to maneuver through. Eventually, he recognized what he was looking for - the object that pulled him here was inside a box at the far end of the room.

The Overlord zapped it with some electric energy from his form, and the grotesque figure slowly rose out of the box. There it was, a mass of rusting metal and wires and melted plastic and a deathly gaze. A red light snapped on, and it slowly began to emit heat that he could sense.

"I aM zAYun," it said in a strange robotic monotone. "I wiLL Kill yOO nOw."

"You cannot kill me," the Overlord hissed. "I have come to ask a favor of you."

"NO mOR favORs," the robot said in as fierce of a tone as it could make. "OnLY reveNGE."

"I will help you with yours if you assist me with mine," the Overlord promised.

"WhaT dOO yOO ASk mEE tOO dOO, sIr?" it asked, trying to make a deal. "ANd hOW wiLL It hElp mEE?"

"I only ask you to get your 'revenge', and do the best possible job with it."

The robot was silent. "ISS mY OlD mAstER stiLL aLIve?"

He was not sure how to answer this question. He pretended he knew. "I believe so," the Overlord answered. "I know your successor is, Zane, assuming that is your name."

"YeS."

"Good," he said. He would have smiled, if he could in this form. "I want you to find a friend of mine... we've never met, but I'm almost certain he is still alive in a city far from here."

"WhOO iSS hEE?"

"Let me tell you everything you need to know..." the Overlord hissed, staring at the red light he could not truly see.

This was going much better than he had expected.