Cole

Jay was keeping secrets.

Big secrets.

Cole couldn't help but be worried about his friend.

And not just because he was in some kind of a coma and turned into a living (hopefully) tazer.

He hid the fact that he found out what happened to his biological family. He hid the fact that he was related to Morro. He didn't tell anyone that he brought Morro home.

Why was Jay so mad at Wu? It's not his fault that Jay was adopted and related to Morro, and if Wu didn't tell him, it was most likely for his own good.

The Blue Ninja freaks out way too much.

But this was over the top, even for him.

Cole knew that he was wrong for not telling anyone this, but about six weeks ago, he walked in on Jay having a mental breakdown. He was crying in the bathtub, fully clothed and soaking wet. Jay bolted. Cole chased him.

They ran through Ninjago city.

The Ninjagoans thought they were running some kind of a marathon, as Cole later realised, and joined in.

The others thought that Cole was chasing Jay because he was mad that Jay broke his laptop.

Cole didn't even have a laptop. Jay must've accidently broken his own and dumped it in Cole's room…

Jay, on the other hand, just didn't want to talk about what was going on and when they were back home, they both mysteriously had marathon numbers stapled to their shirts. Jay was 48 and Cole was 19.

Cole thought that it would be easy to catch Jay, with him being less athletic than Cole, but Jay's powers allowed him to go faster.

Not "Master of Speed" fast, but much faster than Cole.

It was a good thing (for Cole) that Jay tripped, fell down and broke his arm and also badly scraped said arm and one of his knees.

Jay still tried to get away, but Cole was faster and managed to catch his limping friend and forcibly carry him to a nearby hospital.

Jay got some anaesthesia, which made him very chatty (and confused, because he thought that the doctors stole his thumb) and among the gibberish Jay was saying, Cole managed to catch the name "Ronin" before Jay started crying again and let loose a string of (loud) curses.

Lloyd pulled Cole out of his inner musings by asking him what he thought about his new haircut (why would you do that to yourself?!) and Cole had to ask the hairdresser to fix it, much to Lloyd's disappointment, and when the kid started protesting, Cole threatened to fix it himself unless he sat down and allowed the hairdresser to fix it.

Which meant that Lloyd's hair was shaved off, the hairdresser got a tip, and Cole had to take the newly bald Lloyd to get something to cover his head (no, Lloyd, you're not getting a wig).

"Why can't I get a wig?" Lloyd asked when they left the hairdresser. "If I have a wig, then…"

"Lloyd, I kind of have to talk to Ronin when we're done, so I don't have the time for an argument. You're not getting a wig." Cole ignored the death glare Lloyd was giving him. "And you're grounded until your hair grows back for asking the hairdresser to give you a Mohawk. I know you're becoming a teenager… you know, for real this time… but what were you thinking?"

"I wanted to have a Mohawk."

Cole sighed.

"And you're not my dad."

Cole sighed again.

"You can't ground me."

"No," Cole admitted, "I'm not your father. And guess what? I don't care right now."

Cole took off his belt, which he used to lasso Lloyd and tie him up, after which he lifted the boy up over his shoulder and carry him like a sack of flour.

"We're getting you a hat, you're grounded from television, games and going on patrol for a month, and just to make sure you understand that you're being punished, I'm getting you the stupidest hat I can find, and you have to wear it the entire time, except when you're showering, and I'm carrying you like this until we're at Ronin's, so stop squirming."

"You can't do this!" Lloyd argued. "Let me go!"

"What the heck happened to you two?" the familiar voice of Nya asked behind Cole.

Cole swung around, ignoring Lloyd, who was hitting him as hard as he could (it hurt, but Cole wasn't going to let go) and saw Nya standing right in front of him, looking very confused.

"Lloyd asked the hairdresser for a Mohawk," Cole said, "and she gave it to him."

"What happened to it?" Nya asked, looking very amused.

"I asked her to shave it off."

Nya nodded. "Good, good. Kai would freak if he saw Lloyd like that."

"I thought you were going to get Mr Borg to help with Jay."

Nya nodded. "Yeah, I have him. But we got attacked by a ghost and I'm taking him to see this actress he has a crush on before we head home."

Cole looked around. "Where is he?"

Nya nodded her head in the direction of a flower shop, where Cole could see the businessman's head among the millions of flowers.

Lloyd groaned.

"So, why are you carrying Lloyd like that?"

"He's grounded." Cole had enough of being hit over and over like that, so he put the boy down on the sidewalk. "For a month. Look, I have to ask Ronin something, and I don't think it's very smart to take Lloyd with me, because, you know, he's mad and not in the best mood right now, so I was wondering…"

"I'll take him home the moment we're done meeting this woman," Nya said with a feeble smile.

Cole knew it was a bad thing to leave behind Lloyd with Nya while he was in a mood like that, but he had to find out why Jay was so mad at Wu, and he had a feeling that Ronin knew the reason.

He said goodbye to Nya (just for the moment) and summoned his dragon to fly to Styx faster than a car could ever take him.

There were so many questions.

The first one was, of course, why Jay was mad at Wu.

It was dark by the time Cole was in Styx, but if he used a car or a train, he would've been there much later.

He banged on Ronin's door.

And banged.

And banged.

"What's your problem? I'm trying to sleep here!" Ronin's voice complained from inside. "If this is about the…"

The door opened, revealing Ronin in his pyjamas and slippers, looking like the terrible mess of a human being which he was.

"Cole, what are you doing here at…" Ronin looked at his watch. "Six pm…"

"We need to talk," Cole told the mercenary.

"If this is about the time I kidnapped your friend and sold him to Chen, I'm sorry," Ronin groaned. He moved out of the way, though, and let Cole in.

"No, this is about…"

"If this is about the time when I betrayed you guys to Morro to save my own ass, I'm sorry."

Ronin put on the coffee, yawning and groaning at the same time as he scratched his face.

"No, this is about…"

"If this is about the time when I had to remove your friend's memories, then I'm sorry, but the old man paid me to and I put them back the moment he figured out what happened."

"No, this is about… Wait, what?" Cole got a cup of black coffee set down in front of him.

Ronin yawned again. "If this is about the time I…"

"No, wait, what was that about removing someone's memories?" Cole asked, nearly spilling the coffee as he stood up. "What was that about?"

Ronin stopped yawning and stared at Cole. "He didn't tell you?" The mercenary laughed. "And here I thought you guys were friends."

"Whose memories did you take?" Cole demanded. "Was it Jay?"

Ronin took a sip of his coffee. "Yep."

"Wu paid you?"

"Yep."

"And Jay figured it out at some point, right?"

"Right." Ronin took another sip of his coffee. "Yelled at me until I gave 'em back."

"When exactly…" Cole took a sip of the coffee, but it was so very bitter that he spat it out. "When exactly did this happen?"

Ronin put his coffee down on the counter. "Wu had me remove his memory of finding out about… something… for a very nice sum of money. He made me swear not to tell anyone."

"That thing is that Jay and Morro are brothers, right?"

Ronin shrugged. "Well, yeah. They had a pretty big fight about it. He locked himself in his room for a month during that fight and Wu spent a lot of time trying to coax him outa there with baskets of fruit. Then he called me, and the rest is history."

Cole's theory about the relation of Jay and Morro now proven to be true, he now had a different question.

"Right now, Jay is in some kind of a coma and his eyes are glowing and everything." Ronin's eyes widened. "Do you know anything about that?"

Ronin opened his silverware drawer and removed out an old book as a response.

The pages were turned until Ronin found one with a painting of a woman in green clothes, who had a ghost sticking its hand in her chest. Her eyes were glowing green and she didn't show any emotion, while there were plants all around her, wrapping themselves around her leg.

"It's called Overpowerment, and only ghosts from the Douai era can cause it, and it only affects Elemental Masters," Ronin told Cole. "They mostly use it to torture the living. Survivors say it's like being in a white room, filled with nothing, and you can see what's going on through some kind of a magic mirror, but you can't do anything and your powers slowly kill you from the inside. They're never the same again…"

"That's stupid. Our elements can't hurt us," Cole scoffed. "Trust me. Jay got hit by lightning, electricity and electric eels, and he was fine."

Maybe Cole was in denial. Maybe Cole was trying to tell himself that Jay was going to be fine and wasn't being…

"Nope. Jay's powers are going to kill him if he doesn't wake up. If you dump him in the middle of nowhere and leave him there, he'll either wake up pissed, or he'll turn into some kind of elemental bomb which will, in his case, vaporise everything." Ronin shook his head. "There's nothing about how to wake someone up from this state, though."

"So there's nothing we can do to help?"

Ronin stood up. "Well, in most of the cases when somebody woke up, magic was involved."

"You just said that there's nothing!" Cole argued. "Why…"

"Look, like I just said, those who woke up were never the same again," Ronin told Cole, showing him a picture of a woman dressed in various shades of grey. "This is Mera, an Elemental Master of Smoke from a long time ago. She was Overpowered, and when she woke up, she wasn't herself again."

Cole glared at the former mercenary.

"Look, when she woke up, she was different. People who knew her described her as "not Mera" because she stopped talking, avoided people and locked herself up in her own home, never leaving again." Ronin returned Cole's glare as he spoke. "Her children never saw her again. They were one, two and five, and her husband was dead. She died fifty years later. Before the incident, she loved people, was almost never in her home if she could help it and even threw elaborate parties for the village."

That's an isolated incident," Cole argued.

The book's pages turned again, this time revealing a man with the symbol for Wind behind him. "Arrin Skye, an Elemental Master of Wind. Great guy, loved by all, woke up and buried himself alive three days later, and had to be looked after by the other Masters for the rest of his life so he wouldn't do something like that again."

"So you're saying we shouldn't help Jay?" Cole asked. "That we should just let him die?!"

Ronin opened the book on another page, revealing a man wearing a creepy mask. "Hermes, Master of Speed. He woke up without the use of magic. He didn't freak out as badly as Arrin Sky and Mera, and he lived a normal life after the incident, and again, he woke up without magic. Listen to me, usually I don't care what you guys do, but this time, I'm warning you, don't force him to wake up if he doesn't want to."

The book was shoved into Cole's hands and Ronin vanished upstairs, telling Cole to close the door behind him when he left.

Outside, Cole summoned Rocky to fly back home, but the ghost wouldn't let him.

Shrieking and howling all around him.

Then one of them got close.

It looked like one of those old samurai warriors, with a cape and a sword.

Cole tried to fight him off as well as he could, but in the end, high in the sky, the ghost stuck its hand in Cole's chest.

Everything flickered between the dark night and a white room.

It was like someone was flipping the switch on and off over and over again, until the switch stayed on.

He was in the white room.

He wasn't standing, he wasn't floating, he was just… there.

Then he hit something.

Hard.

Very hard.

He was pretty sure he broke several bones.

In front of him, there was a screen making static.

There was the ghost. The same ghost who attacked him. The ghost was in the screen.

"Give us Morro, and we might spare you and your little blue friend," the ghost demanded.

Cole struggled to find his footing.

"We will release your friend, we will release you, and we will not harm anyone else, all you have to do is…"

"You're one of the ghosts who attacked Jay, aren't you?" Cole interrupted. "You wanted Morro for a petty scheme of revenge, but you can't get to him because of Jay. So you did this to Jay, but you still can't get to him."

The ghost looked like he bit into a lemon. "We can't get to Morro because his brother is currently keeping him safe. My associate, June, went to extract Morro from him with force, but unfortunately, Morro wasn't there to be extracted. He almost got Jay to talk, but Yang chased him away. For allowing himself to be chased away by a much simpler ghost, June was… assimilated for treachery and cowardice."

"So why are you guys working for this guy?!" Cole yelled at the ghost in the screen. "Shouldn't you do something to help your friend?!"

The ghost groaned. "I can't. Just like you can't help your friend. It's too late. It's too late…"

The ghost vanished from the screen.

Cole had no idea where to go now.

He had no idea how to get away and help Jay while he was stuck in this cold, empty, white room.

It was over for him now.

Big day. First, we're getting our first rain of the season here, then, I finally finished this chapter, and now, I put in two of my favorite OC's in this fanfic. The ghost who put Jay in the coma is called June and the one who attacked Cole is known as Millie or Milla(not his real name, just a cute nickname June used for him).

Also, yes, Lloyd had a Mowhawk and is now bald and grounded because of it. (Lol)

Poor Cole.