Chapter Twenty One: The Dark Half

Whoa, you guys seriously did some spinjitzu?" Jay questioned, it wasn't really hard to tell that he was rather shocked that we were able to on the first go. I wasn't exactly sure how they went through training, and how long it took, but I was guessing that it took them a little time to master it. I was willing to bet that he was starting to think that we got it down right off the bat, but I couldn't call it that. I informed him that it wasn't perfect. but it was a good start. "Oh, okay. Well, it's going to take a little time to master. It took us a while to, just so you know."

"That's good to know," I admitted. Like I expected, it wouldn't be easy to master it at first and would end up taking a little bit of time to do so. I was about to ask them about how long it took them to learn it themselves until I was interrupted by the loud buzzing noise of some kind of alarm. "Uh, should I be worried?" I had the feeling that it wasn't going off for just some random reason, but for something important.

"Most likely, yeah," Nya told me as she checked the red glowing bracelet on her wrist, which she used to bring up some kind of holographic screen. A map of Ninjago popped up in front of us, and a red light flashing where Ninjago City was on the map. "Something's in Ninjago City, and it's something big! And what ever it is, is all over ninjago! " she exclaimed. I had the feeling that this had something to do with the shadows that came up a few weeks ago, what else could it be? "You think the shadows are back?"

"I don't doubt it," Cole said. As I fears, that's what was the most obvious and what everyone else was thinking. "We need to split up into teams and cover as much ground as possible!" We all agreed to that, deciding to slip up into groups of four: Kai, Nya, Lloyd and Shadow. And Zane, Jay, Cole, and I.

We all got a closer look at the map until I noticed something. I gestured my hand around the entire map "Hey, they're at two locations. We can take the north, you guys take the south," they nodded in agreement. Before I knew it we were off, and unfortunately I still had to ride on the back of one of the guy's dragon. I stuck with Cole because i didn't want to get shocked by Jay's again and I didn't want to see what Zane's resulted in. Yeah, Coles left me with an uncomfortable ride but that best being shocked and having frostbite by the time you got there.

It didn't take that long for us to reach Ninjago City, and when we got there we split up into the two teams we agreed on, and we headed north. "I just realized that you guys never told us about what these shadows can do exactly, as in how they fight," I told Cole and Zane. I wasn't sure if they learned anything about them, as in their fighting styles or anything along those lines, and if they did I was hopeful that they'd shared anything with Jay and I. I mean, why wouldn't they?

"We didn't learn much. We saw them come out of the snakes, but that's about it. The thing is, they didn't even try to fight us, which is why I'm worried," Cole told us. I wasn't sure what to make of that, it had to mean something if they didn't fight. And with the idea of them coming out of the snakes had to mean something too. They obviously had control over them somehow, which is what worried me the most. I'd never heard of something like that so I wasn't exactly sure what to think at this point.

"Then we'd better keep our guard up," I suggested. It was the best idea since none of us knew what to expect. We'd be somewhat ready to face up against whatever they threw at us which could be anything at this point. "I have the feeling that that's why the snakes were acting so weird, because of the shadows," I admitted. "You said how you saw them come out of the snakes, right? It sounds to me as if they're possessing them. What do you guys think? It makes the most sense, seeing all the facts we know so far."

"It's a fair guess, but we should find out why before we draw any conclusions," Zane chimed in. I agreed with him, but the shadows being able to take over someone was something that would still be on the top of my list of suspicions here. I still thought that was the case, but I wouldn't come to any conclusions until I knew more. At the corner of my eye I saw something come out of his arm, and I glanced over to see a metal bird. "I'll send the falcon out to get an aerial view of the city," he let the thing fly away, and I just stared at it in confusion. Did I see that right… It came out of his arm? I just shrugged it off and didn't think much more of it, and instead looked down on the town.

"Down there," Jay pointed over to a spot with a couple of destroyed building, along with smoke… No it was something different. It was dark and a blackish gray color, just like smoke, but it still didn't look like it exactly. I got a better look at it as we grew closer and realized that it was shadows, a big cloud of shadows.

"What the hell," I murmured to myself, I didn't know what to make of it, but there was no doubt in my mind that there were some of the shadows there, there was no way that it was a coincidence that something bad was attacking Ninjago City and a big cloud of shadows where it was happening. The three landed their dragons and we all jumped off, and looked at the cloud of shadows surrounding us. "Okay we need to cover as much ground as possible and find out what is causing this."

"Right," Cole nodded. "Cass, you're with me. Jay you go with Zane. Stay close to each other and search every single inch of this area, got that?"

"Yep," the two nodded and ran off in the opposite directions that we started heading in.

"Okay, so we're looking for these shadow things, correct?" I questioned and got a nod from Cole. "Okay, got it," we continued to run and tried to avoid any clouds of darkness so we could see what was around us. For a while nothing caught our eyes, so I began to wonder if we were even going run into anything. That was until the shadows around us started to move closer in on us and trapped us in a barrier of shadow. "Cole, stick together, we don't know what's causing this, and I'm not sure I want to find out."

"Wasn't thinking about it," he told me as we stood pretty much back to back. I looked around and put my hands in defense, ready to fight what ever came out at us. "We know you're out there, might as well come out now!" I heard Cole yell out into the darkness in hopes that who or whatever was causing the shifting of the shadows to come out like he demanded.

Things remained quiet for a moment until a small portion of the shadows started to clear, revealing a young girl who I suspected to be around my age. Her long black hair was mostly covered with a light gray hood. "I was wondering where the fun was, I've been getting bored of looking for you guys," she smirked. There was no doubting that she was the one behind all of this, and the one controlling the shadows. The questions were: how and why?

"Who are you?" I demanded an answer, and wasn't going to let her go anywhere until she gave us one, along with answers for the million other questions I had for her. I created a sphere of wind around my fists, same with Cole but with earth, and stared at the silent girl in front of us. "I said: Who are you? I want an answer!"

"You don't need to get hostile," she told me in a rather calm voice, one that was too calm for my liking. She was there for less than a minute and she was already pissing me off. "I'm the elemental master of darkness: Kiara Hartley."

"Why are you doing this?" I questioned.

She just laughed and continued smirking "I'm trying to bring back my master!" She told us, making me wonder who the hell her master was. I wasn't sure what to make of that but I knew that it couldn't be good. "All I need are a few things and then I can make it happen! And I'm not gonna let anyone get in my way! I will bring Alvah back if it's the last thing I do!" I could see the anger in her eyes before she moved the shadows around us and made them surround us completely.

The shadows were pitch black and prevented me from seeing anything. "Cass, where are you?!" I could hear Cole's voice call out to me in the void but I couldn't tell which way it was coming from.

"Cole, I'm over here!" I called back. I couldn't see anything around me, I was left waving my hands in front of me in order to find Cole in it. My hands his something, and I felt it to see what it was, which ended up being his hair. "Sorry!" I claimed before adding "We need to stick together and find a way out of here."

I grabbed into the back of his shirt, gripping it tight and not letting go, knowing we could get separated in the darkness if I did. "We need to find the others and fast," he said as we walked out of the big blinding cloud of shadows. I nodded, and soon we found a source of light.

"Finally," I looked around and right away spotted Zane not that far from us. "Zane!" I ran after him, Cole close behind, and stopped behind him. "Zane, you won't believe what just happened, we need to tell the others and fast!" I told him, but he didn't move at all. He was just standing there faced away from us. "Hey, you okay?"

"I'm just fine," he implied, still facing the other way. A chill went down my spine for some reason I couldn't explain, I felt as if something was off. The way he said I'm just fine seemed off. I raised an eyebrow at him jogged over to him and turned him around, as he wouldn't himself, and back up when I saw what was standing in front of me. He quickly made an ice ball in his hand and threw it at me but I dodged it.

"What the hell Zane!" I snapped, what the hell was he doing? And why was he… like he was? His normal icy blue eyes were white and the glare he was giving me was almost devilish. "What's wrong with you!" I demanded. I knew something was wrong with him, he wasn't fine like he claimed to be, he was anything but fine. His eyes were just full of hate, and I wasn't sure why.

Cole ran up beside me and looked at Zane, his eyes widening. "Zane-" he started to say until we saw some kind of black tint in his eyes behind all of the white. No, don't tell me, was he… He had to have been possessed by one of the shadows from before. I now knew that that Kiara girl could control them somehow, her being the master of Darkness and all, she did this to him.

He was going to run up to him but I blocked him with my arm. "Don't he's possessed by one of the shadows," I snarled at him, or rather the shadow that was taking over his body. I wasn't sure what to do, because I hadn't had much experience with these shadows if any at all.

I jump back, startled, when Jay jumped in front of us. "Guys, you need to go. I saw what happened to him, and you need to get out of here and tell the others about what happened," he told us. "We're not getting anywhere if he's chasing us, I'm gonna hold him back while you guys go. Don't argue with me, there's no time to do that. So just go!"

I looked at him and Zane, then over at Cole, waiting to see what he did. I wasn't sure what to do because I didn't just want to leave Jay there alone, we had no clue what these shadows could do. Before I could actually react Cole grabbed my wrist and started pulling me with him as he ran away. "We can't just leave Jay!" I yelled at Cole, trying to pull away from his strong grip.

It was no use, he just held onto my wrist even tighter and there was no way he was going to let go any time soon. "You heard what he said, we need to tell the others. This is something big and we can't risk not getting back to the others and not telling them," after hearing his argument I gave up, he had a valid point. Everything that happened in the last fifteen minutes proved that this was something far worse than we expected, and we had to tell the others, and we couldn't stop until we brought this information back to Sensei and the others to figure out what we were going to do. Sensei was bound to know what to do, I've learned that he's good with this kind of stuff.