JMJ

Chapter Sixteen

Dueling Storms

This really had to suck, didn't it?

The worst day was turning into the worst days of his life. Even worse than when they had to go through that horrible adventure to go get the Ultimate Ultimate Weapon that didn't really do anything even if it did in the end bring Garmadon to his senses enough to give up his criminal life to be Lloyd's dad. This was worse than that adventure because A: he did not know what the goal was anymore, B: he had no idea where Lloyd, Kai and Cole were, C: even if he did know where they were, Lloyd was probably still in danger of dying from some horrible poison, D: at any moment those monkeys could show up and poison any of the others including himself, E: he was starving and alone and it was up to him alone to find something to eat. Most of all though, was F: Besides the fact that at this point it all depended on him, in survival skills or anything by himself he would be graded an "F" and he knew it. Zane knew it, and Nya certainly knew it.

Jay sighed miserably.

Hunting had ended in dismal failure even with Zane's bow and arrow. He just got too nervous to fire without tripping up or making too much fuss so that the animal ran away. At least, he had found something to eat, though. It was not much, and he still was not sure how they were going to split it or even if it was a good idea to have taken it if they did not eat it right away, but it was better than nothing. Besides, he was not good at making decisions under pressure.

That is, with people counting on him even if being hungry did not help matters either. It was rare that anyone ever had to count on him. Not since the old days before they all decided to go to school again, and so much had changed since then. The world was so much more complicated than when he was a little boy.

Besides, now more than ever, he felt that he had gone backwards in courage and strength instead of forwards.

He reached the canyon and made his way down more dexterously than he had on his way up. Nya and Zane had not even noticed how close he was in the canyon's brush before he was close enough to overhear. He had made it just in time to hear Nya say that Jay had been gone too long, as a matter of fact.

"We gotta go find him, Zane," she said. "We shouldn't've let him go alone."

Nya was right to think of him as nothing more than a baby. While the grownups were hurt they still had to worry about the baby, after all. Slowly he was a little angry, but it was only at himself.

He should not be that way. He knew that he could do better if he tried hard enough, but why wasn't he? What was keeping him down?

Although, he had stopped quite abruptly upon hearing Nya even suggest that she would go look for Jay in her condition with heart in his mouth, he quickly marched onto the scene shortly after Nya had finished.

"Jay!" cried Nya when she saw him. She winced as she moved on her ankle funny.

She had not even been able to stand up straight yet, and she quickly sat back down from her impulsive movement at Jay's approach.

Jay's determined scowl slipped away, and he grinned nervously after looking at Nya with worry.

"Hi, guys," he said with a weird little titter. "I got breakfast. Or, uh, lunch. Or whatever time it… is."

"Time for… tzzt, tzzt, exploding," said Zane.

Jay sighed. "Yeah… sorry it took so long."

"Where'd you get that?" asked Nya pointing to the large egg that Jay carried.

"Uh… in a nest," said Jay.

It was a pretty large egg, Jay had to admit. Larger than an ostrich egg, and there were no ostriches on Ninjago Island since those few escaped from Ninjago City Zoo after a Garmadon attack, but the Secret Ninja Force had long ago recaptured them all.

"Bird found his nest," said Zane apparently well enough to tease, but he looked uncomfortable about it as well.

It was speckled with yellow and rather glossy in between.

"Well, let's cook it," said Nya. "Zane managed to get some wood in case you found something to cook, and he's still got lots of matches."

Zane nodded with jolt or two. The wood he had found was rather skimpy as Nya pointed it out. Zane's movements were stiffer and slower than ever too, and Jay sighed.

"Maybe we should get some more wood, too, just in case."

He looked around, but just as he was about to set the egg down in search for the further-needed firewood, he stopped. So did Zane and Nya. The whole canyon stopped. This was because up above it came a deep echoing, Jurassic Park-type roar.

"Oh, this was the worst idea ever…" moaned Jay cringing into his shoulders.

He wanted to just sizzle into nothing on the spot and blow away on the breeze.

"But you were the one who got it!" snapped Nya.

"I know, and that's what was a bad idea!" sobbed Jay.

"Rocka—rocka—tzzt—tzzt—bye-bye baby but don't let—tzzt— falling cradle," said Zane nervously.

"Huh?" Nya gasped.

"He means… I think, that I should put it back," Jay squeaked.

The sound of air pumping sounded above the canyon and the hissing trees far closer than the roar had been, and everyone knew it had to be the sound of giant, angry, mommy wings.

Jay gulped. "Oh, man…"

"It's too late for that!" cried Nya.

Despite her pain, she stood up.

"Nya, don't!" cried Jay.

"We have to do something!"

The roar sounded again, and the trio cringed. They felt the air this time of those powerful wings, and although it is always a shock to see something huge coming at you, it was no surprise to see that mommy was a dragon. Sparks flew from her mouth, and she shot them right at Jay frozen to his spot with terror.

Nya and Zane pulled him out of the way just in time as the egg fell to the ground and tumbled away.

Nya moaned the loudest, though she tried the best to hide it.

"Nya!" cried Jay pulling himself out of the dirt and spitting it out of his mouth. "Nya! Are you okay!"

He sprang to his feet and jumped to help her while the dragon was busy inspecting her egg.

"Hopefully," whimpered Nya fighting the pain. "Hopefully, she'll go away now."

"Storms in her eyes…" said Zane.

Jay only gulped.

What Zane had said had been the most literal since he had come into his condition. As soon as the dragon saw that her egg was alright, she lifted her yellow eyes to the trio, and her pupils narrowed perilously. Electrically. Sparks literally escaped the sides of her mouth like smoke from a traditional maiden-eating dragon of European folklore. And it looked like they were going to be the maidens.

Jay tried not to whimper, but he did.

Zane jumped out first, fighting everything for the sake of his friends. He managed, if just for a moment, to overcome any magnetic interference in the canyon. This was no time to let one's personal problems get in the way, and Jay always knew that if anyone was a hero in the group, it was certainly Zane. How many times he had sacrificed himself for the others, Jay could not count. He had even died at least twice for the stupidity and selfishness of the rest of the team. Luckily, he was a robot and could be fixed easier than a human, but that did not mean he had to sacrifice himself again or risk it now. It was all Jay's fault, not Zane's.

"Zane!" cried Nya as he jumped in front of them shooting ice as well as he could towards the dragon.

If the dragon's electricity managed to get through Zane's body it would just destroy what was left of his system in this canyon, already weak as he was, and Jay feared that his mind would never be fully intact afterwards from such an attack. Just as he and Nya also feared, Zane's ice was no match for the dragon, whose jaws broke free of the frozen block around it in seconds and exploded it in an electric burst that made the river behind them spark like a livewire.

They cried out and stumbled as best as they could away from the water's edge, but that pushed them closer to the dragon, and the dragon made a swipe at Zane.

"No!" cried Jay.

Zane's clumsiness in this condition gave him no chance of avoiding that feline-like finesse as the paw struck Zane and threw him across the canyon. He banged into the wall there and fell limply onto the ground in a cloud of dust and hopefully that was not also smoke and sparks.

"Zane!" cried both Nya and Jay together.

Jay jumped to his feet and started to run for Zane after he instinctively pushed Nya into the shrubbery and out of sight. His heart pounded furiously, and he heard the sizzling behind him as the dragon aimed to shock him, but he was not afraid of a little electricity— at least… well, never mind, yes, he was!

He spun around.

Nya threw water at the dragon's face as a distraction before the dragon could throw a lightning rod at Jay's head.

"Nya, don't!" Jay wailed.

Sparks flew like some wild and strange desert storm and circled around Nya and the dragon like a living cage. Jay ran back, pushed her further away into the dirt into a sort of ditch, and just as the dragon fired at her too. Jay held out his hands, hoping that he had the strength to hold it back.

This was his responsibility.

Ice and water would do nothing against this angry animal even if Nya and Zane had been in better shape. This was his doing. He was the one who fell in the hole. He was the one who brought back a strange egg. No more letting others save him and themselves from his own mistakes! But he did not know if he could hold back electricity even if he could throw it out, and he did not know if his body was resistant to it, really. After all, he had been shocked by static before, even if it had always been his whole life that he usually shocked other people with static rather than the other way around.

Let's just hope that it's a sign that I can at least repel it better than attract it, thought Jay, holding back a choke.

Electricity came from him, and he cringed at the dragon's current ramming into his. The force was almost enough to knock him down and the wind from him into a faint, but he held firm and steadied himself after a stagger. He was expecting an explosion, and he braced himself as well as he could, but as he slowly opened his eyes and nothing happened he saw to his surprise that he truly was holding it back. He was so surprised that he almost lost his hold, but then the dragon was surprised too that a little creature could fight back with the same electricity that she had.

The sparks settled a little.

Maybe in her confusion the dragon would leave.

No such luck.

It seemed that it angered the dragon more or maybe even scared her. The power of her electric current grew stronger with a roar, and Jay shook with fear from head to toe. Though, it could have been the current more than fear. He was beginning to feel it despite how well he was repelling it.

Nya was sitting near at hand dumbfounded with her hand on her ankle. Tears were withheld in her eyes, but Jay was far too busy to look back at her.

At first, the electricity only felt heavy against him like the weight of rippling water above a person at the bottom of a pool, but it was not taking long for the current to become painful. His whole body was shaking again, and uncontrollably, he realized, but he was still keeping the current from hurting himself or anyone else. His heart was pounding, but maybe it was also skipping a few beats. His mind was numbing. It was difficult to concentrate. The prickling needle-like pain was mounting. He could feel it in his bones.

Then suddenly, he let out a miserable cry.

"Jay!" shrieked Nya.

He tried to fight it. For Nya. For Zane. For them more than himself, he realized. His fear for his friends' lives was in the end still stronger in his love for them than his fear for himself, but he was not strong enough. He could not fight it anymore. His body would not let him save his friends. More than friends. They were his family. Zane was his brother, and Nya, if she could not be anything else, she would always be as dear to him as a younger sister.

He could not even breathe with this weight of the current, and he was beginning to feel dizzy. The dragon was just far too strong. His teeth were grinding into each other so hard that they seemed to be sealed shut and made his jaws ache. His eyes burned. Maybe even electricity was coming out of his tear ducts. He thought it might be coming out through his teeth. His chest felt like it was going to explode. His heart was racing so fast. His legs buckled. He could hear them clattering together. Then his hands faltered for just a second.

That was all that was needed.

Just as he felt the relief from the weight of pushing back, the dragon's electric pulse overtook him, and just like a light switch, he went out.

"Jay!" screamed Nya at the top of her lungs tears flying from her anime-style as she squeezed her eyes shut.

Jay fell, limp as a rag. An explosion took the space between him and the dragon blocking Nya's vision of either of them in smoke.