Readjustment
(733 words) Continuation from “Stuck in the Layers”
Acronix blinked at the old man before him. Old and wrinkled, with a long beard and a staff. Sitting off to the side with a pot of tea. “It’s been a long time,” He stated as he put down the cup and stood.
The young man scrambled to get on his own feet, “I’m sorry, but who are you?” The old man seemed to know him, but Acronix knew no man like him. This man had the body of an ancient but the aura of a warrior.
“Do you not recognize me Acronix? How amusing! I’ve spent all this time thinking and preparing for this moment, and you’ve seemed to have forgotten me?” The old man smiled, a warm crooked smile that Acronix could not believe was on that old man’s face.
“Wu… Is that you?” The old man moved into the opening stance that Wu always went into for their spars, seemly as an answer.
“How much time-”
“40 years. I’ve been waiting 40 years for this day.” Wu interrupted as he raised his staff, and centered his balance.
Acronix froze, 40 years, trapped between the layers of realities. In what felt like seconds, eons. It felt wrong, how could someone put a number, a measurement on the limbo he spent forever and no time in. He stood there, thinking, as he has forever. Forgetting Wu was there, unused to the idea of action, as Wu brought his staff down on his shoulder.
Gasping at the sensation, the young man grabbed the shoulder. Stumbling back at confusion. “What?”
The fire in Wu’s eyes was bright like they were always before a battle. Just as they have done when he last saw them.
“You’ve come back for the time blades, to try once again to take over Ninjago. And I must prevent that at all costs. You will not take Ninjago Acronix.” Wu stated as he swung again. Aiming to take him down.
Acronix stumbled back, again as Wu continued his frontal attack. “Wu, Wait! ” Acronix stumbled, “stop!” He said as he tripped over something and fell backwards. Finally noticing the wreckage surrounding him.
The monastery of his childhood was just debris, burned, and destroyed. He remembered how he and Krux would come here, they’d escape their tumultuous lives, for a few hours of purpose.
Their childhood reprieve was as burned and crushed as they were the last day he saw this place.
Acronix watched as Wu recentered himself, studying him, yet never lowering his staff. “You haven’t seemed to have aged Acronix. Yet you act very differently from that young man I banished so long ago. Tell me, how long you were trapped in time?”
Acronix scoffed, how was he supposed to answer a question such as that. “I don’t know old man. I’ve been trapped and cornered. At the mercy of my element, for so long, yet so little. Time doesn’t have time for itself, so I didn’t either. I wouldn’t believe you if you said I was stuck there for five minutes or five hundred years.” He bit his tongue, at the helplessness, he escaped from. At the full submission of time itself, the power he once held within him was around him controlling him.
“I no longer desire to control Ninjago. I’ve seen, I…. I’ve been through the complete control that I once desired for others to be under…. And I can no longer wish to obtain that.” He finished, thumbing through the debris he sat in, not seeing the old man approach until he felt his hand on his head. Patting him like he was a child again, the familiar affection Wu gave the boys since he was always taller than them.
“I am sorry that you had to go through that. I never wanted to send you through time, but after you jumped….” Wu softly said, sitting down next to the young man, pulling out his teapot, from where? Acronix never knew.
The two sat there, in silence. As if they were back when they would do morning meditation. The silence full of questions, yet empty with action. One readjusting to the other, how they’ve changed, how they stayed the same.
And they continued their silence as another portal opened and dropped the green blade.
They continued their silence as time skipped forward a few minutes.
They continued their silence as something descended from the heavens.
