Kai flinched as Jay screamed in pain. He looked away, unable to do anything to help Jay. Jay was being whipped constantly by Nadakhan, forcing him to endure a punishment after Nya escaped. Nadakhan moved over to Kai, and Kai braced himself for a lashing. Instead, Nadakhan shoved several rolls of bandages at Kai, as well as some rubbing alcohol and cotton balls to him.
"Fix your friend up for me," Nadakhan said. "You and him will be my slaves once I get that girl back, so I don't want him dead yet."
Kai looked up as Nadakhan disappeared. He gathered up the materials before Nadakhan could change his mind and ran over to Jay.
"Kai?" Jay questioned.
"Are you Ok, Jay?" Kai asked softly.
"Yeah, I'll be fine," Jay replied.
"I have things to clean you up," Kai told him.
"Please, just do anything," Jay begged.
Kai nodded. He was lucky and unlucky that Nadakhan had forced Jay to remove his top before hands. Lucky because he wouldn't have to try to get it off him, but it also caused the marks to be much deeper and cause much more pain for Jay. Jay, of course, was chained in the cell, unable to move. Kai wet a cotton ball with the rubbing alcohol, and gently dabbed it onto one of the marks that went straight across Jay's stomach. Jay flinched and moved with a soft moan.
"Jay, hold still," Kai said. "Moving will only make things worse."
"It hurts, though," Jay replied.
Jay's eyes remained closed, quiet moans escaping his mouth every couple minutes as Kai treated and bandaged the markings on him. After about ten minutes, Kai stood up with a cotton ball in his hand.
"Are you done?" Jay asked, opening his eyes.
"Almost, just the one on your face left," Kai replied. "You're doing great, Jay. Just a little longer."
Jay sighed, looking at Kai. Kai brushed Jay's hair away from the mark along Jay's right cheek. He cleaned it and bandaged it, using a little bit of tape to hold the bandage on his face.
"There," Kai sighed.
Jay looked down at himself, seeing most of his chest and stomach covered in bandages.
"He got you good," Kai told him quietly.
Kai placed the lid back on the bottle of rubbing alcohol, putting it and the other supplies off to the side. He turned back to see Jay looking at him.
"Did Nya ever get found?" Jay asked quietly.
"Not that I know of," Kai replied. "She's out there, and Ali's with her."
Jay nodded. Really nodding was the only motion Jay could do. His arms were chained at the wrists, the other ends tightly attached to the walls of the cell. Jay's ankles were chained in the same way, but a little looser to allow movement. In his position, Jay was forced to stand in the one spot, unable to move.
"Will you be Ok?" Kai asked him.
"Yeah," Jay sighed. "I've been through Nadakhan's punishments before."
"When?" Kai asked.
Kai sat in front of Jay, allowing the blue ninja a clear view of him.
"You don't remember, but we've fought him before," Jay said. "Even if you did remember, only Nya and myself know what he put me through."
"I see," Kai sighed.
"All that time is bad memories that Nya and I wi-," Jay cut himself off.
Jay flinched, and Kai saw it.
"What?" Kai asked him.
Jay shook his head.
"It's something Nya and I always want to be able to forget," Jay answered.
Kai nodded, realizing Jay was rephrasing his sentence to avoid the use of "wish".
"Do you mind if I ask about your arm?" Jay asked.
Kai flinched at the mention of it.
"I guess I can tell you now," Kai sighed. "When I was kidnapped by Zane, all he seemed to want was me under his control. He ended up taking my powers, which has caused them to be lost in Borg's system, and then cut off my arm. He gave me this robotic one in return."
Jay looked away from Kai, feeling bad for bringing it up.
"It's OK, you had to know at some point," Kai replied.
There was an awkward silence between them, neither of them knew what to say to break it. It just remained silent for a while.
"Incoming!"
Dash looked up from talking with Zack as Nya and Ali stumbled into the room.
"Ali! Nya!" Dash cried.
Everyone else came running as Nya set an exhausted Ali on the ground.
"Ali? Where did you go?" Zane asked, running towards her.
"That wasn't Ali," Nya explained. "Nadakhan kidnapped her a while ago. I broke free with her, but he still has Kai, Jay and Cole."
"What do we do?" Dash asked. "He would be expecting us, right?"
"We can't just leave them," Zane noted. "But Ali is too weak to fight at the moment."
"Let's start by getting her to bed," Mai said. "She needs to sleep and regain her strength before we do anything else."
Zane and Mai carefully lifted Ali up and helped walk her to the infirmary. They laid her on a bed, and she was almost instantly asleep. Mai sighed as the others left. Once the door was closed, Zane turned to Nya.
"You said Nadakhan still has Jay and Kai?" Zane questioned.
"Yes," Nya replied. "I'm worried sick about them. Who knows what he could be doing to them."
"Do you know what he might want with them?" Dash spoke.
"No," Nya shook her head. "At least, not with Kai. I know he was Jay either dead or a slave for life."
Everyone flinched.
"And Cole is still there," Zack added.
"He's under a spell," Nya said. "No one will be able to get through to him."
"What type of spell?" Dash asked.
"I'm not a magic user, I don't know," Nya replies.
Dash frowned, thinking about it.
"What are you thinking, Dash?" Zane asked her.
"If I could reach Cole, there is a possibility that I could reverse the spell's effects on him," Dash explained. "But there is also a high chance that I won't be able to, or that we'll be caught too."
Everyone went silent.
"Besides Ali and Lloyd, is there anyone we know who can travel between realms?" Zane asked.
"Why?" Dash asked.
"Maybe we could get you there and get Cole out," Zane explained.
"No way," Nya spoke up. "You aren't getting a single person in without being noticed. There's no way."
"So, what do we do then?" Zane asked.
"I think that all we can do is wait until Ali is rested and at full strength," June spoke up. "We need as much of the team as we can to get anywhere right now. I think it's our only option."
"But my brother is in the hands of the enemy!" Nya snapped.
"Hasn't he this whole time?" June asked Nya.
Nya went silent.
"Evil Jay, he was kidnapped, Evil Cole, held hostage, Zane, kidnapped," June listed. "He's still alive, he's still fighting."
"He's broken," Dash added quietly.
"What?" everyone turned to her.
"It's the reason he was so quiet before, why he isn't acting like his hot headed self," Dash explained. "He's broken, everything that's happened as created an opening, a way for the enemy, no matter who it is, to reach and possibly destroy him without even trying."
"But he's with Jay, right?" Zane said.
"Jay can only do so much for him," Dash said. "Who here even knows their position? For all we know, they could be separated. In completely different areas. Dealing with completely different issues."
"Dash is right, but what can we do?" June replied. "We are in no position to fight back right now. We are down about half the team, we can't leave Lloyd on his own in his state, and there's an evil djinn that can appear from nowhere and take us at any moment."
There was silence. No one spoke.
"There must be something," Zack said. "Anything at all."
"Not without losing more," June said.
"We've lost too much already," Nya agreed.
"Sometimes, you have to lose to win," Zane said.
"What does that even mean?" June turned to him.
"It means that sometimes, things don't go to plan, but we cannot give up," Zane explained. "We cannot lose hope. Good will always triumph over evil."
"Zane's right," Dash said.
"So what do we do then?" June asked.
"We wait until Ali is awake, then we go for Cole," Zane said. "It's our only hope at this point."
