I didn't make the wish.
Not yet.
The Mega Weapon lay suspended in front of me, bound in rings of rotating sigils—containment, translation, limitation. Golden light pulsed faintly within it, like a heart that refused to stop beating.
I paced.
Golden Power.
The thought alone made my pulse quicken.
I wasn't naïve. I knew what it was. I knew what it meant.
The First Spinjitzu Master didn't just wield Golden Power—he used it to write reality. Mountains, seas, life itself. Ninjago wasn't conquered or discovered.
It was authored.
Why wouldn't I want that?
I laughed quietly, shaking my head. "Who wouldn't?"
Golden Power wasn't just strength. It wasn't like fire or lightning or even time. It was totality—every elemental expression compressed into a single, unified force. Sound. Size. Form. Motion. Energy. Matter. Creation and destruction woven together so tightly they became indistinguishable.
Fire and ice were footnotes.
Even the Sorcerer—dangerous as he was—played with fragments. Borrowed strength. Stolen magic. Tools and lies layered on top of ambition.
Golden Power didn't need artifacts.
That was the point.
I stopped pacing and stared at the Mega Weapon again.
Lloyd had wielded Golden Power once. So had the Overlord. And both times, it had been… wasted. Burned away in spectacle and desperation. Neither of them had truly understood it.
They had reacted.
I planned.
"I'm more deserving," I said aloud—not arrogantly, but clinically. Like stating a proven theorem.
I had restraint. Patience. Knowledge. I wasn't trying to win a single battle or fulfill a prophecy. I was thinking in decades. In systems. In inevitabilities.
Still, I didn't rush.
The Mega Weapon granted wishes—but only within limits. It corrected reality; it didn't replace it wholesale. And Golden Power wasn't something you simply wish for. That kind of shortcut would end badly. At best, rejection. At worst, annihilation.
No.
If I was going to take Golden Power, I would do it properly.
I began to research.
Days blurred into weeks. Weeks into months.
I dismantled the Mega Weapon conceptually without ever taking it apart physically—mapping how the Golden Weapons resonated together, how their unity created a bridge between raw creation energy and structured reality. The Mega Weapon wasn't the source.
It was a key.
Golden Power existed independently. It always had.
The First Spinjitzu Master hadn't created it—he had become compatible with it.
That was the secret.
Golden Power didn't belong to anyone. It responded to balance, intent, and—most importantly—capacity. Lloyd had burned through it because he wasn't ready to hold infinity. The Overlord had tried to dominate it and was consumed.
I wouldn't repeat their mistakes.
I wrote theories. Ran simulations. Tested tiny, infinitesimal corrections with the Mega Weapon to observe resonance patterns. Every use confirmed my suspicion.
Golden Power could be grown into.
Not taken all at once.
Not stolen.
Earned—through expansion of the self.
Years, then.
That was fine.
I sealed the Mega Weapon deeper, locking it behind layered dimensions that even I would struggle to reach without preparation. I would not rely on it forever. Artifacts are crutches. Power should be internal.
"I'll take it," I said quietly, already committing to the path. "But I'll do it right."
Golden Power wouldn't come from a wish.
It would come from transformation.
Somewhere in Ninjago, the ninja continued their path, unaware of how close reality had come to changing forever. Lloyd trained. Wu planned. Garmadon schemed.
And far beyond their sight, I prepared for something much larger than any of them realized.
Because once Golden Power was mine—
I wouldn't just be able to manipulate the world.
I would be able to decide what kind of world deserved to exist.