AUTHOR'S NOTE:

In my part of the USA, today is a chilly, dreary, rainy Saturday. Hope the weather is nicer where you are!

Shoutouts to Kai Lover911, FirstFandomFangirl, TitaniumMasterOfAquaLightning, StoryMaker7, AveXCninja11, and lovesgod12 for your great comments on the previous chapter!

In the chapter below, there is a mention of a spell by the sorcerer Sebastian. The original account is found in Chapter 6 of The Fire Within: The Valentine Incident.

Read on to find out how the captives react after the meeting with their captor...


Chapter 11 - Planning a Villainess' Defeat

No one dared speak until the metal door clanged shut after the last tumbleweed soldier left.

Sam swallowed. Was she really never going to get out of here alive? According to Fiora, Sam's days were numbered. Yet Sam did not regret her action of following the ninja to the witch's lair, for she had found her missing fiance, the love of her life, and so would no longer have to endure the agony of not knowing his fate. She only regretted that she would not be able to hug her parents, her little brother Todd, her dear friend Brooke, and the rest of her loved ones one more time.

Kai sensed her distress. "Don't worry, Sam. We'll figure out a way to get you out of here before Fiora finds out you're not - AH!" he winced. The pain in his forearm flared up as he reached out to comfort her.

Zane hurried over to Kai. "I need to finish tending to your wounds after having been interrupted by Fiora."

"I believe Kai was about to say that we'll get you out of here before Fiora realizes you're not pregnant," Cole piped up as he sat down on the stone floor next to Sam, patting her shoulder. "We have roughly 18 hours to defeat Fiora, or at least escape from her, before she tries to brainwash us, so we should be able to come up with a plan."

As the ice ninja began to clip off Kai's torn sleeves and apply bandages around his cut forearms, the others came and took seats on the floor around Kai and Sam in order to discuss escape plans, based on the information Fiora had revealed to them in the past few minutes.

"Fiora may have neutralized our powers, but we could still do Spinjitzu. I'd sure like to send some tumbleweeds tumbling!" Jay commented.

"I'd like to see what's beyond that metal door over there," Lloyd mused.

Cole placed his hand on his stomach. "I wonder when her minions will come back to take care of our 'human needs,' as she put it," he pondered. "My stomach is telling me it's about lunchtime. Jay, get your backpack and let's have some of those snacks now so we can keep up our energy to deal with whatever comes up."

Jay complied, reaching for the bag. "Maybe next time the tumbleweeds show up - or the time after that, depending on how Kai feels - we could get them to open the jail doors, if they weren't going to anyway, and then we could literally blow them away," he commented.

Kai raised the one arm that Zane had finished tending to, while Zane and Sam traded places so that the ice ninja could work on the other arm. "I'll be fine by the time we see the minions again. Thanks to Zane, this arm already feels as good as new," the fire ninja declared. He sought Sam's hand and held it tight.

"If blowing away the tumbleweeds doesn't work, I thought of something," Sam said, speaking for the first time since Fiora left. "Since Fiora's brainwashing won't affect me - 'cause I don't have an elemental being in me - I could pretend that I'm under her spell and then take her down in a surprise attack."

"Well, I hope we're out of here before then," Kai frowned. "If you try to defeat her and it doesn't work, we won't be able to help you, 'cause at that point the rest of us would have our brains fried. But out of curiosity, how would you go about defeating her?"

Sam searched her brain. The memory of filling the coffeemaker on the Bounty earlier in the morning popped into her head. "I could...dump some water from the bottles from Jay's backpack into that bowl she's attached to…"

"Theoretically that would work," Zane agreed as he finished bandaging Kai's other arm, "but I fear it would be too slow of a method. She would probably have time to summon help before she would be totally doused." The platinum-haired ninja began to pack the first aid supplies back in the knapsack.

"Thanks, Zane," Kai said to his brother in appreciation of his medical skills. Then, after having reclined on the ground for such a long while, the red ninja decided to sit up, so Sam helped him do so, moving his fire jacket "pillow" out of the way so he could slide back and lean against the nearby wall.

The fire jacket! she thought.

"I could smother her with my fire jacket!" Sam announced.

The others contemplated her idea.

Zane slowly nodded. "If the jacket sealed the bowl that apparently serves as her power source, it would cut off her oxygen supply." There were murmurs of agreement from the other ninja - except from Kai.

"Not that I don't agree that sealing the bowl would finish off Fiora, but like I said, we need to get out of here before things get to the point where Sam is the only one left of us who's able to defeat that witch." He carefully put his bandaged arm around Sam, who was sitting next to him. She rested her head on his shoulder, wishing that at this moment they all were sitting around the Bounty's living room chatting about some trivial topic instead of sitting in this jail cell discussing their fates.

"Hey, Zane, once Fiora would die, wouldn't all her spells become undone?" Jay asked. "That's kinda like what happened when Sam took Sebastian's ring off his finger back in February at Lake Ninjago. As soon as she did that, that bubble over the burning concession stand disappeared."

Zane became inert for a moment as he searched his internal databases for that information. "Yes," he finally said, "the scrolls of the ancient Council of Nature make mention of the reversal of spells upon the demise of witches of nature."

"So as soon as Sam would smother Fiora, we'd be back to our normal selves," Jay concluded.

Kai sighed with impatience. "But, guys, what if something goes wrong while she tries to get Fiora, and she fails? I'm afraid of what Fiora would do to her..."

"...because that would certainly be an awful twist of fate if Fiora ordered one of us to kill Sam. I don't want that part of Sam's dream to come true."