Chapter 1
Cole's eyes are slow to drift open and begin to almost immediately adjust to his surroundings as much as they possibly can in such a dark area. The only light that was around was the dim glow of flames filtering through a barred wall. He frowns and shifts, eyes widening as he realizes his wrists were shackled to the wall of stone at his back. That would explain why he was incapable of moving much, and the soreness in his arms. The earth ninja gives a few more jerks of his arm to test the toughness of the items keeping his wrists pinned. No luck, they were tight and too strong to break, even for Cole. Now that he thought about it, his body felt weak, and not just the typical daily workout weak. It felt like he'd been drained of all magical energy. Meaning his apparent super strength was gone.
He gave up on jerking his wrists free and instead did his best to test out where his limits are; his legs were shackle free at the very best. He wasn't flexible like Jay, so there was little to no possibility of using his legs to somehow get himself out of his prison. Defeated for the time being, he sighed and slumped against the wall as he squinted his eyes to try and make out the bulky shapes in front of him. There was an off smell about this room he was in, but he couldn't quite pin it on what that would be.
The earth ninja was jerked out of his thoughts when a soft groan was heard to his left, causing him to turn and look towards the source of the sound suspiciously. The little panicked shout that came shortly after along with the jingling struggle against chains could be heard, Cole's suspicions were put at ease. No one had such a squeaky voice when scared.
"Jay." Cole speaks softly, voice cracking even on the singular word.
The other ninja pauses in his panicking, head whipping around as his gaze searched for Cole throughout the darkness of the room, "Um. Yes?" He asks, eyebrows furrowing as he calmed down some.
"Can you see anything?" Cole asks, turning his gaze back to the dull light that still shown in the darkness of the room. "All I can make out, is that we're in a cell of some sort, and we're chained to the wall."
"Oh." Jay sighs, leaning his head back against the wall as he allows his eyes to slip shut, "weren't we fighting the serpentine a moment ago? How'd we even get here? Where IS here? Where's the others?"
"Stop. Calm down. I don't know the answer to those questions any more than you do unfortunate as that is." He responds, "I would assume that the other ninja are here with us, likely still knocked out."
Jay nods and gives a muttered 'alright' as he turns his focus onto the chains, trying to electrocute them or just generally do anything to free himself of their harsh, bruising grip. The blue ninja struggled like this relentlessly, and Cole stayed silent as he tried to attempt to make sense of everything happening to them. While the two were lost in their own thoughts and actions, a soft buzz could be heard as two icy blue lights flickered on. Cole turned to look at that, eyes narrowed slightly as he waits for something to happen.
"My brothers, were are we?" Zane speaks up, voice flat as ever.
Cole sighs, "Neither of us know. We're in a cell, that's the most information we have right now. As for how we got here…that still remains a mystery."
Zane hums, and as his gaze drifts around the room, it illuminates some items in a light similar to that of a small flashlight that one could hook onto their keychain. "Where is Kai and Nya?" He asks finally.
"What do you mean, they should be in here too." Jay speaks over Cole's response, frowning at the ice elemental.
"I do not sense their presence." He responds flatly, "They do not share the same location as us. We are alone in this cellular prison."
"What? Than where could they be? Oh! Maybe they're out getting help! Yeah, that sounds like Kai to me." Jay nods a few times, pleased with this idea.
As Cole opens his mouth and starts to ask a question, he's cut off again. If not for the fact it was a loud scream, he would've been annoyed. The three ninja fell silent as the brutal scream echoed throughout the cell. They shared glances throughout the cell with Zane, since he was the only one capable of having eye contact with. Shouting follows shortly after the scream, which had clearly been that of a female. The yelling was of two men, one's voice rumbled low and gave a dark aura to it, while the other was fiery and angry.
"I…believe that would answer where Nya and Kai are." Zane says, frowning slightly.
"NYA!" Jay shouts, trying harder now to free himself of his shackles as he calls for his girlfriend, alarmed.
Cole hisses at him, "Hey! Shut up, stupid, we need to remain quiet!" He snaps, causing the once against panicking ninja to simmer down.
The three ninja stay silent to listen in on the conversation taking place in an entirely different location the best they possibly could. Cole asks if Zane is capable of enhancing their voices or something, but the ice ninja shakes his head sadly and informs their leader that he has little to no power left to do so. That means they have to wait in silence for something to happen. Jay was doing his best not to freak out over Nya's screams, while Zane and Cole both kept quiet and focused on planning a way to escape. Before they're able to develop a proper plan, the stone hallways of their prison falls deadly silent, until footsteps are heard. Cole whispers to the other two ninja to pretend to be asleep so they're not caught being awake. It may provide them with more time. They do as told, going limp with their eyes shut.
The man that had been coming down the hallway unlocks the gate to the prison, and throws two people in, which land with a thump on the cemented ground.
"You b-bastard! You're not going to get away with this!" Nya shouts angrily, trying to get up onto her feet, but being unable.
The bulky guy give a short laugh, "Oh girlie, I'm so frightened." He responds, stepping in to grip her chin between two calloused fingers, turning her head up to face him. "Watch it, kid, or we'll have to hurt you and your friends more."
Nya jerks her chin out of his grasp as he takes a step back, and retreats out of the cell, being sure to lock the door behind him. He whistles a tune and walks away from them, spinning the loop of keys around a finger. His retreating footsteps soon come to a stop. Nya turns her focus down to Kai who had been thrown in after her.
"Nya?" Jay asks, causing the girls head to shoot up as her large eyes scan around the room.
"J-Jay?" She croaks, struggling to stand up and head over to his voice as the other two ninja shift.
Zane uses the light from his eyes to help lead her over to her boyfriend, serving as a very soft flashlight, "What happened?" He asks.
Cole looks the girl over, guilt twisting in his gut as he takes in the sight of her. Nya's clothing was torn, and she was wearing nothing more than a bloodied shirt and under garments. Anyone was capable of guessing what she had generally gone through. Jay gasped as soon as he saw her, blue eyes widening in horror. Nya was sobbing, but she still struggled to reach up and try to get her boyfriend unchained from the wall. Jay went off on a rant about asking every single question of 'what happened' mixed in with death threats to whomever hurt her like this. She eventually had to give up and collapse onto her knees, having said something about her ankle being broken.
Zane looks over to Kai, his frown deepening, "As for your brother?" He inquires.
"O-oh god, Kai." She covers her mouth with a hand as she looks over her shoulder at him. She'd hoped that she could free one of the ninja and get their help with him.
"…I see. Cole, I will melt your shackles." Zane says, turning to their leader, "Hold still." He warns, lasers shooting from his pupils to melt through the metal. "This is the last of my energy." He says, coming to a stop once Cole dropped to the ground on his feet.
Nya hiccupped, sobbing as she crawled over to her brother with Cole darting over as well. Cole collapses onto his knees beside him, eyes widening as he goes to carefully roll the fire ninja onto his side. He was…damp. With blood. When he pulled his hand back it was soaked with crimson liquid. He paled, gasping.
"Kai!" He shouts, shaking his shoulder as gently as possible to get him to stir.
The other's eyes barely open to look up at the earth ninja, sage green meeting vibrant amber, "C-Cole. H-how're you doin'?" He asks, cracking a smile.
In the dim light drifting through the barred wall, Cole could just barely make out the faint trace of blood that stained his forehead and leaked from the corner of his mouth. He shakes his head, quickly going to slip his top off to press to Kai's wound while Nya explained that he'd been brutally beaten by the same man who'd done this to her, but after the fighting he'd been pierced through with a katana.
"Don't talk, Kai." Cole hisses hurriedly, reaching up to press his fingers to Kai's lips with a shake of his head. "I'm not in the mood for your sarcasm right now."
Kai nods just a little, eyes drifting closed as he gives a ragged breath, which is quick to dissolve into a cough, spattering blood across his chest and the floor as he rolls onto his side.
"Kai, hey- don't move." He snaps, pushing the fire ninja onto his back as he looks around. Reluctantly he calls Nya over to press the cloth against his wound as Cole gets to his feet, darting over to Jay and Zane to yank their shackles apart with all the ease of crumbling paper for him.
The other two elementals fall to their feet, rubbing at their wrists a moment before darting over to circle around their wounded team mate. Cole frowns deeply and turns his focus onto breaking them out. He grabs onto the bars of the prison and presses, grunting and straining to bend their metal. These took a bit more, but eventually they too bent to his will. The short male darts over, nudging everyone away as he slips his arms under Kai's knee's and shoulders to lift him up.
"Right now our top priority is getting everyone out safely, we'll figure out who did this and why later. Zane, we need you to go first. I'll stay in the middle with Kai and Nya while Jay guards the back. Go!" Cole instructs, making sure Nya stayed at his side as told.
Kai's head tilts against his chest, eyes fluttering open to look up at Cole as he's carried carefully from their cell. When the gray-green eyes meet his own amber, he flashes him a bloody grin which causes Cole to sigh and look away from him, lips pressed in a thin line as he follows after Zane. This wasn't looking good for their team, more than half of them were wounded or something, their best bet was Jay and Cole at the moment. Zane was low on battery, Kai was…well, that's just self-explanatory, and Nya was wounded as well. She ended up falling back some to hold her boyfriend's hand close, watching Cole's back as he carried her brother. Surprisingly there were no enemies of any sort as they left the castle like building, eerily quiet. Once outside, the ninja called for their respective Dragons.
The dragons drifted down and landed with all the grace of a raven, blinking their golden eyes down at their owners as they lowered their heads to allow for them to clamber into their seats. Nya parted and slipped onto Kai's dragon's back, telling him that his owner would be okay soon. Cole kept the fire dragon in his arms as he sat down, telling Rocky to keep it as gentle as possible for he had the most wounded of the five with him. Kai curled up slightly, grimacing at the cruel breeze that washed over his wounds as they took off to the skies.
"Kai… How are you doing?" Cole asks quietly, his voice finally breaking some from that stoic leader mode he'd forced himself into for the sake of the others.
When he receives no response however, his eyes widen as he shakes Kai in hopes to wake him from his apparent slumber, crying out the red ninja's name out of pure panic. Kai's head lolled to the side, and more blood leaked from the corner of his mouth, dripping from the edge of his chin and onto Cole's arm. The dark haired male barks an order for everyone to quicken their pace, which Rocky bobs his head to as he flaps his wings at a faster pace. The Ninja all land in the city, Cole not hesitating to jump off his dragon and to run into the hospital Zane had directed them to.
"Please, Kai you can't do this to us, me!" He hisses as he presses his lips to his forehead in a chaste kiss before he's pulled away from him.
Cole pulls Nya to him in a hug, burying his face in her raven locks as he can't help but weep out of fear for his friend, his love interest. Jay and Zane stand aside and cry silently as well, neither of the two brave enough to break the awful silence as they sat everyone down in the waiting room.
Well well well, lookie who got to writing for this again? Haha. I did this over thanksgiving break mostly, it IS in fact a rewrite of the original "The Dungeon of Pain and Sorrow" so i can take an updated take on it for upcoming chapters. I replaced the original chapter, sorry about that everyone, however I know some of you prefer the original story so I WILL be copying and pasting it in a new...thing of mine. It's called "Original's" where I post the original chapters and such to my writing of different fandoms of which I am currently going to update and re-write overall! You can find it on my profile d: I hope this chapter turned out way better than the original! I think it'll get about 5ish chapters long since I'm not super into Ninjago anymore as it is, and have a couple other fanfictions i need to wrap up.
Please share your thoughts in the reviews, thanks!
KhaoticVex (previously known as SilverShadowJynx)