Modoru.

The various beeps and snippets of ringtones had echoed around the moored Destiny's Bounty as Ringo's message had flooded through their group chat, the ninja gathering and moving as one quickly to under the tree in the park, the hanami festival still in full oblivious swing around them.

Kai paced, Converse clad foot nudging the abandoned pocky stick packets and soda cans out of his path; their presence the only evidence anyone had been sat under the candle lit tree.

"Where could she be?" Exasperation peppered his tone as he muttered to himself, turning suddenly as Zane placed a cooling hand on his shoulder.

"We will find her, brother."

"You looking for that curly haired chick that was sat under here?"

"You've seen her?" Kai pushed past the other gathered ninja, coming to an urgent halt in front of the reveller who stood at the edge of the tarpaulin, his arm thrown around his partner's shoulders as they swayed together, cheeks rosy from the sake they were both cradling. "When did you see her? Where did she go?"

"Don't know about where she was going," the rosy cheeked male hiccupped, his partner snickering gently alongside him, "but she was tearing through here like a mad thing. Made her way out there." He gestured with his sake cup, tsking as some of the precious liquid overflowed onto his hand.

"Hold on Kai!" Nya grabbed for the red t shirt as he immediately span, turning towards the gate the drinker had gestured towards.

The brown eyes narrowed, briefly appraising his sister. "Nya it's my fault she was still out here, I'm not going to waste any time trying to find her."

"Well it is kind of my fault as well." They all twisted and turned to see the newcomer, Skylor, averting her eyes under their gaze as she came to a stop under the tree, leaning on its trunk, chest heaving from having sprinted over from Mr Chen's Noodle House.

Kai locked eyes with her momentarily before turning away, grunting. "We're wasting time."

His face was tight as he swept past the amber ninja, the rest of the team following. Jay patted Skylor's arm as he passed, pulling her into line with him.

"Don't worry, he'll get over it." Skylor gave the blue ninja a thin smile, eyes thanking him as she fell into pace alongside him. "But we'd better hope for all of Ninjago's sake that we find Ringo soon, or who knows what he'll set light to!"


Ringo groaned, the laughter and loud, cheerful voices of the people on the sidewalk around her swamping her senses, making her wince. She leaned back onto the park wall, ignoring the various looks of sympathy and disgust from the passing party-goers. The nausea flooded her again and she screwed her eyes shut, willing it and its apparently good pal dizziness to pass. And quickly.

She concentrated upon her breathing, trying to shut everything else out.

There was only one other time she could remember feeling like this.

Her eyes flickered open as she felt the pull, pupils dilating in her hazel eyes as she shakily stood. Her limbs restarted their autonomous pull, dragging her heavy, resisting body back out onto the pavement. She clumsily stumbled straight out into another group of revellers, their indignant cries washing over here as they scattered around her.

"Watch it, curly locks!" "Too much sake dear?"

Their cries and mocking laughter washed straight over her, barely registered.

All that mattered was the pull.

She didn't flinch as a car came to a loud, screeching stop as she stepped into the road, lurching across the tarmac to the other side. She didn't hear the driver or the car horn blaring out as they leaned out of their window, shouting various profanities. The smell of the hot rubber made the air acrid but it was all just a blur. A muted, pallid haze clouding around her.

Except for that. The pull.

She just needed to get there.

Her pupils blew wide as she rounded the corner to the alleyway, the slowly pulsing light surrounding them shakily cutting through the fog of the living world. Ringo gasped as she looked up, the light bringing sudden clarity to the pull. She grabbed her hair, which was whipping around her wildly with a sudden wind coursing through the alleyway, her other hand shielding her eyes as she looked up at the soul of a girl, no more than 10 years old, floating above what must be their body lying crumpled in a pool of blood at Ringo's feet. The light desperately pulsed around them.

The nausea hit her again as the pull fiercely threw her to her knees, stooped down next to the body, her hand flying out as her lips formed the words automatically.

"Modoru."

The word came out as a whisper, Ringo's lips forming the unfamiliar syllables. All noise around them slowed and stopped as she looked down, the pulsing light around her suddenly growing in intensity, throwing out all of the darkness in the alley as she tipped her head back, shouting out the words.

"Modoru! Back!"


"Here! At the Hajimari Walk." Lloyd's voice crackled over the com links as he eyed the strange green luminescence coming from the small alley opening, Cole muttering "First Spinjitzu Master…" as the light grew, radiating out. They looked at each other, Lloyd's green eyes glowing with a not dissimilar hue.

"Come on, this has got to be where she is." The earth and energy ninjas nodded as Kai landed alongside them from where he had been high up on the rooftops, Nya not far behind.

"What in this realm…?" Nya's perplexed voice filled the small space as they rounded the corner, all of them shielding their hands from the beating light.

Ringo was bent over the body of a young girl, her lips chanting silently as her hands worked over the girl's chest, fingers moving with a fluid purpose. The light shone around the two, encasing them with the soft green which was a brighter white green closer to its source; Ringo's eyes and hands.

"Ringo?" Kai took a tentative step forward, his features silhouetted in the radiating light. She looked up, her lips still working their chant as she briefly met the red ninja's gaze before looking up, her pupil-less soft green eyes fixing on something a couple of metres above them.

Nya stepped forward, eying the light reflecting off the sickening large pool of blood underneath the body of the girl lying on the floor, whispering to her brother, "Is this her power?"

"Yes." It was not Kai who answered the water ninja but Skylor, softly walking alongside the now assembled ninja.

Nya blinked, turning her head slightly to one side as she watched. "What is she doing?"

Skylor shook her head, her own green eyes reflecting the intense illumination.

"I'm not entirely certain; I can't absorb her power as she's not yet reached her full potential. But I think, I think this is what she did to me." The red head swallowed as the hazy memories of that day came back, of her looking down at her body before Ringo had reached up, sending a ribbon of that same light up, grasping her around the waist and pulling her back down. A tentative hand in hers pulled her back to present day reality, small relief flooding her as she looked down at Kai's rough, battle scarred fingers interlinking with hers, squeezing gently. He quickly let go as the light suddenly grew, blinding them before flickering out abruptly. Ringo's eyes closed as she fell back onto the alley floor, dark curls laced with pink cascading around her.

"Ringo!" Kai skidded alongside her, hands gently lifting and cradling her into him, sighing with relief as she lifted her head and groaned at him.

"I – I'm fine." She squirmed slightly under Kai's grasp, twisting to see the body lying alongside them. "How is she?"

Zane looked up from where he crouched next to the girl, his fingers expertly assessing and analysing. "I am pleased to say she has a pulse, which appears to be strengthening."

"Did, did Ringo just bring her back to life?" Cole stooped alongside Zane, pointing at the drying out stab wound in the girl's side.

"Of that I am not certain." Zane's eyes flicked over to the curly haired girl where she was now propped up against Kai, Skylor resting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "But Ringo most certainly appears to have saved this girl from leaving us for the Departed Realm."

Jay skipped over, hands on his hips. "Wow! That is so cool! You must be the elemental master of life or something. Oh, maybe you're the master of death!" They all groaned, Nya quickly hushing the excited blue ninja.

"I don't know what I am Jay," Ringo sat upright slowly, a finger pushing her dark rimmed glasses back up on the bridge of her nose. "But I think it's time we found out."