A Touch of the Master's Hand

Organ Grinder

With a laughable sneer but quiet serious spite, Kinkomi threw out a spout of dust from one of his vials. The aim was directly at Kai, but Kai saw it coming. He blasted it with fire.

With a shriek, Kinkomi ducked behind the palanquin and tried to put the flame out of his hair piece, but before Kai could begin pursuit, the fire made the dust explode. Kai fell back as smoke the scent of stink bombs assailed him. He tumbled down, face first into the ground. He was up in seconds, though, despite the smoke still sifting the air and monkeys nearby were still coughing. Kai himself coughed enough as it was, and tears stung the sides of his irritated eyes, but he ignored it.

He had to hope that burning it had made it lose its effect. He sure did not want to prove Master Wu right and he would soon be as green as Lloyd or some other strange color.

Both he and Cole saw that Lloyd's gorilla captors were quite disoriented. On either side of Lloyd, the two ninja promptly slipped him out of the loosened grasp of his captors. As fast as they could, they fled behind one of the towers. They could hear Kinkomi climbing bodily over the side his sideways palanquin after the smoke had cleared and shrieking in his glass-clawing way. The monkeys were organized in a moment, but the ninja were out of sight.

To make sure, they ducked into some overgrown brush by the side of the wall.

"Get him out, Kai," said Cole, and he lifted his hammer. "I'll cover you, and you make sure he doesn't touch the ground. I don't want roots growing out of his feet."

"Right," said Kai with a firm nod. "Meet back at that cave we saw on the way here?"

"Yeah."

Immediately, Kai lifted Lloyd up, and he cringed to see that the reason his hair looked a little different was because it was starting to look more leaf-like. It almost looked like young shoots were coming out of the middle of his head.

"Uh, guys, I'm not a vegetable, I can still do stuff," said Lloyd.

"Barely," Kai said with a frown, but he put Lloyd down again.

Lloyd lowered his head and closed his eyes. "I'm sorry, you guys. This is my fault. I should've..."

"Later!" hissed Cole. "There are some monkeys coming. Hurry. If they come too close they'll be tasting metal."

Kai grabbed Lloyd's arm and pulled him to the wall, but Lloyd outdid him to the top with surprising speed. Kai could not help but raise a brow, but he had no time to think about it as Lloyd pulled him into a tree. As the monkeys went by, Lloyd looked back down after Cole.

"Cole!" he hissed. "C'mon!"

Cole visibly hesitated, and Lloyd rolled his eyes impatiently. He almost looked like he was going to jump back down and drag him up, but Kai did not have to stop him and do it himself as Cole began climbing. Lloyd then jumped out on the outside of the wall. He assumed Cole was coming or maybe he just had a lot of energy. Kai was not exactly sure which, but he followed.

However, he was surprised to find not much ground to land on. Behind the tree was a drop about twenty bricks down and an angry river roaring.

But the sound of the water did not drown out the swarm of monkeys entirely.

Lloyd was already leaping back up into the tree like a monkey himself. The sunlight gleamed strongly through the leaves of the tree and onto his lively green skin. For a moment Kai stared at him. He looked like a cat ready to pounce.

Is he really turning into a plant? thought Kai. Or some kind of green ninja mutant?

He swayed a little as he craned his head up and gaped, but he snapped out of his stupor as he steadied himself and leapt up the tree after Lloyd. He heard the grunt of Cole between monkey shouts and a small cry as Cole was dragged from the wall overwhelmed. Then there was a tremor of Cole's hammer.