A/N: Trigger warnings here, skip them to avoid minor spoilers. Okay, here the warnings come.
The warnings are for hospitals and for some narration Jay has that some readers may find disorienting.
End warnings.
AU ending to Rebooted where some different things are possible. It exists not because I feel the original season needed a fix-it or because I feel I am writing a fix-it, I would not want to replace the original show with this—it exists to explore it.
The amount of power Zane is channeling right now shouldn't be possible. Jay made darn sure to learn everything he could about Zane's possible repairs while Dr. Julien was still alive—the other guys didn't like to think about it back then, but come on, he was old, Jay knew, everyone else knew too even if they weren't saying it— so anyway, he'd spin wild hypotheticals, ask what happens if one tiny piece of machinery goes wrong.
Lloyd would hit the point where he wanders off, self-consciously chuckling that this isn't really his area but he feels like he's kinda learning things, and Jay would watch the clock tick until Nya got bored... and then, that was his opening, to fire off whatever question would come off as too rude while the others were around.
The doctor would smile in a sort of understanding, if slightly flummoxed, way, and he'd start answering. Jay got a lot of answers! He figured out how to put all of Dr. Julien's numbers into his numbers, you know, the kind we learn in the modern century, and made a copy of Zane's schematics with his notes. He had a harder time finding the focus to figure out the Falcon, but Nya and Lloyd are on that anyway. Logical division of labor.
What is he talking about. What was he thinking about. Zane's dying.
Distractedly, he answers- "I said critical mass. If he doesn't contain that, he could go nuclear."
"He's containing it, right?"
"It doesn't- matter." Containing it also means dying.
"Why wouldn't it matter, Jay-"
Jay asked a lot of questions, but he never did even think to ask about Zane's power source. Shouldn't that be the first thing? Why weren't we asking questions about the power source?
He knows approximately how much power Zane runs on. He knows it isn't this much. He knows how a storm feels, right before lightning is about to strike, what builds up in the air and how much damage it can do, right before he—
Jay takes a step forward.
Wu puts an arm across his shoulders, pulling him back. Jay just about smacks him away before realizing that's a quick way to get himself thrown to the ground, shut up before he can start,
So he waits, a frustrating two, three seconds, until he finds words.
"I can help." His throat is dry and he wouldn't mind except that he needs to be louder. "Get me to him, I can help!"
The rest of the ninja are turning to look at Jay… so… slow. Cole looks like he could be swimming through molasses. Jay seethes, and flexes and unfurls his fists by his sides to let it out, and takes a small step back instead of forward.
It works. Sensei releases him, almost.
Kai looks like he might be committing a crime if he lets himself look away from Zane, which isn't helping. Finally, though, he opens his mouth before Jay can repeat himself. "Your powers? …Do you think?"
"'Do I think-' yes, I think, that's electricity. Or, electromagnetic- whatever. It's energy. I can feel it, Kai- this is taking too long! Where's Pixal- Pixal! Pixal, yoo-hoo, tell them I can help!"
"That won't be necessary," says Wu. Everyone is moving like an old man right now, taking their time; Jay's sure of it. Remember that comment about Cole? It feels like Jay's the only thing who isn't wading through molasses. Jay and the Digital Overlord, that is, and Zane, who cries out so bad Jay spends that moment sure that everything's over and Zane is gone now-
Everyone is moving like the slow old man Sensei talks like, but then Jay sort of- must have blinked, or something, because suddenly, they're all shifted. Cole sets a hand sturdily against his shoulder. It takes him a moment to realize that they're all on his side.
Jay finds a hardened, gold feeling deep in his chest, and latches onto it, and uses it to find his voice. "Okay." Okay. Look. Think. "Cole, I'm going to run at you and I need you to launch me, onto that web. Lloyd, use your energy to boost me."
"But-"
"We don't have time! It's just a scratch."
"Keep him on the edge of the blast. Try to center it about two meters away from him." Jay looks back at Nya, Nya looks back at him. It's like they're both realizing how small everything has been. They're nineteen- Jay's nineteen, Nya's eighteen. It's like- like, we didn't need to know the shape of the care right now, I care about you.
Nya waves him away to the task at hand with a smile that means What? Anyway, you're coming back.
Jay looks at Cole and Lloyd. They look back at him. "Well, let's go." With a serious expression, not a word in response and not wasting a second, Cole stoops, palms up and fingers intertwined, a foot-sized platform.
"I'm ready for you, Walker."
He gulps. Time freezes for a second and then skips forward again, like half a second that definitely shouldn't be allowed to be that long. "Okay."
Kai steps forward, like he's going to- hug him, maybe? Rub his back? Push him forward?
"Okay ninja-go—" he kicks off and twists. Off the ground, off Cole's intertwined hands, launching him into the air- about to panic and yell Now, Lloyd when Lloyd finds the right moment anyway, blast re-aiming him just as he's about to fall-
He's sailing through the air, back sore and ears still ringing as the wind whistles past them. Ninjago city sails beneath him. He's two feet short of Zane's hand. He's going to miss.
He's going to miss, he's sorry, and they don't have a second shot, and not that it would be okay if he didn't but now he's going to get all caught in the explosion too,
And Zane reaches back, and grabs his hand.
The jolt that immediately moves through Jay is an absolutely massive electrical discharge. It tries to run from him straight to ground; at first, he was not connected to the circuit, so the electricity is looking for him as its way out. Here's the thing about electricity—it doesn't ask questions. It's already moving by the time your question is halfway out of your mouth, and that's why you need to either be five steps ahead or be ready to start improvising right now or else you're dead.
Something about that isn't how electricity should work, though. It doesn't rush into... a wire that isn't connected to a throughline. Batteries have two ends, positive and negative, and a wire that isn't connected to both of them might as well not be a wire at all— electricity isn't trying to get out, it's trying to get to somewhere, electrons hungry to get to that battery's positive side. Picture a battery as two little connected rooms, one stuffed full of positive charges and one stuffed full of negatives. If you opened a door between them, the charges would mix between both rooms in less than a second. Every single electrical invention in the world is formed by humans forcing those electrons to take the long way.
This electricity doesn't have a destination.
The Digital Overlord is always destroying. That means energy in him is leeching outward; this isn't just entropy, this is entropy gone rogue. Jay doesn't know where he's getting the electricity from, but- if he can destroy, maybe he can create. Who knows. Whatever. What becomes apparent right then is that it seems like the Overlord needs to always leech outward, and what Zane is doing is containing him. Sooner or later the snake eats its own tail.
Zane nods, with a firm little hum, as if he can tell from Jay's face what's going on in his head. It's businesslike, and it jolts Jay back to work. Jay can stand this for a few minutes longer, but Zane- Zane's dying.
So: parallel paths. Create two paths, two options, and the electricity will keep looking for how it can be the least crowded. It's like the reason air leaves a popped balloon, kinda like pressure but with a thousand electrons that all hate each other and feel indifferent about you. Or picture... getting into a crowded convention center, and someone coming running to announce they've just opened a second doorway, and that you can get in through either line. Create two paths, and only half of it goes through Zane.
Zane releases his hand.
They really, really need to have a talk later, but Jay is relieved it's not a talk about being willing to be saved. He's helping himself be saved.
Jay holds one of the golden contact points in one hand, and one in the other. The energy rolling around his ligaments and bones deflates, taking the easiest path.
"I had hoped you would do that behind me," says Zane, whose eyes are now closed.
Jay doesn't really try for a little laugh, so much as his body tries for a little laugh, like his brain is fine-tuned into making his excuses with or without him. "You could've said that earlier."
"No, it's alright. Just… here, scoot a little to the side-"
"This is pathetic," hisses a condensed-evil murmur over their shoulder, like it's obligated to, "YOU THINK YOU CAN DEFEAT ME?"
"Yes," says Zane.
And the bluewhite what-is-that-stuff that Zane had once used to take down a plain old treehorn beams... closer past Jay's cheek than he can really say he's comfortable with. It's almost like being near a fire, a live wire, static. He's not too cold, but he's sure if he touched it, it would move straight through rapid-action frostbite into part of his face falling off.
"Jay, now." Jay isn't sure what he means by now, that uh, isn't very clear, but he spends a half-second in panic before realizing Zane's ice is running a cable to ground. It'll keep a direct hit from coming back for them. It means, since this is the only window before it connects, they need to hit him now.
Jay pulls the electricity out of himself, out of the air- he takes whatever excess Zane will give him, when he touches his hand- and he breaks the circuit. He shoves it, with force, the opposite of the ways electrons want to work, not the way lightning wants to work—but that's the first step of making lightning. You build up a gap. The buildup snaps from him into the Digital Overlord's metal body. The bolt it makes is thick and unfamiliar. Something is wrung out of him like a sponge.
There's a thunderclap that shakes the city and an explosion that's- like a video game character died. Like it's not a real explosion, it's just something- dissipating. The city just turns white.
Jay becomes aware that he's flying again for the first time in two years, and Zane is holding onto him but losing strength. Turns out, his senses belatedly inform him, that he's got his arms around Zane, too. He only figures that out when he starts to panic that Zane's going to fall, and the tug of Zane's weight on his arms doubles, and alerts him that they're there, secure. His body was thinking ahead, even if he wasn't.
Zane's out. He's… fine. He's fine. He's got to be fine.
And while we're at it, Jay's hoping he's fine. His heart feels- wrong.
The first thing he needs to do is get back to land, the second thing he needs to do is look at… is get Nya to have a look at Zane; he's not even sure he can trust his senses. Huh, hang on, speaking of that, there's a sound other than the ringing in his ears.
"Jay!"
That's Pixal.
"Jay!"
She's standing on the roof of Borg Tower, waving her arms, and just as Jay starts to settle enough to realize he's not frozen, adrenaline's not gonna stop him from moving and he should fly somewhere. ...Huh. He has to pick where.
It would be a really good move to let their friends see they're alive. Nya's good at robotics.
Pixal and Borg… can probably fix him faster.
Zane sparks, hard.
Like Superman, made of light, Jay descends toward Borg Tower in a graceful arc. His feet connect with the roof with a very soft patter. He locks eyes with Pixal to hand off their boy to her.
"Whoa, okay, Sparky, geez. Just thought I'd keep the sweat out of your eyes."
Well. That's not correct.
There are the tiles of a hospital ceiling in front of his eyes, which feels more correct. Apparently, Kai is also in the room, because—
"Yeah. He's okay."
—well, because that's Kai.
Cole, of all the things that could happen here, squeezes Jay's hand. It occurs to Jay that he could have died on- on really, really weird terms with him.
Whoof. Jay takes stock of his body. He starts by feeling the sheets, just to figure out where his body is, then investigates the muscles and aches beneath them. He's in one of those medical gowns that closes in the back.
Everything feels... pretty okay? No, everything feels like he's just been stretched in every direction like a piece of taffy.
No, everything feels like he's just been stretched in every direction like a piece of taffy, but also maybe like he is taffy, so he's fine.
He, uh, definitely can't move. And that feels wrong, but at least he's identified the reason he's in a hospital bed, rather than wondering. He'd find this a lot harder to process if he had walked away from it without a scratch at all, even though it would have been cooler. He sort of wonders if anyone would bring his chart over where he can read it.
"Uh, yeah, that's all great, but what about Zane?"
Kai lets out a small, slightly-amused very-concerned snort. "Jay, you asked that already. He's okay."
"Go easy on him."
That's Lloyd. There are, wow, a lot of people in this room. It's gotta be a pretty small room? Hospital rooms aren't that large. Are his parents here?
"They're on their way."
"My mouth keeps saying whatever's in my brain."
Cole laughs. "Hey, don't worry everyone, he's back to normal."
Jay's breath does a weird thing in his lungs. It's like his body is focusing on every sensory detail except where it hurts. "Yeah, you're just jealous of how I looked up there."
Cole could nearly double over laughing at another time, but right now everything about him is subdued, gentle. Jay could picture him ruffling his hair if he wasn't, you know. In a hospital bed. "Sure am, sparkplug."
And there's quiet for a beat.
Jay continues, still staring at the ceiling, "Hey, Nya, how bad are you gonna kill me."
"Oh, uh—" That's Lloyd again, kicking one heel awkwardly back against the wall. Kai speaks quickly—
"She wanted to be here. It's killing her not to, I mean— everyone did. Sensei, too. We told them we've got you."
"That's nice."
"I-I said I'd run and call her once you're awake, just to let her know. I should probably go do that now. She's—"
"With Zane," Jay finishes, no bones about it. Kai nods. "That's nice." The way energy thrums from Jay's palms feels different now, like he's not just pulling it from the air, like there's a battery under his skin, but that's. That's a question for training time. It's sleep time, now,
A/N: Why did the writers say "it's reaching critical mass." I still don't know what that means. Presumably, it means Zane's power source is running on some kind of sustainable nuclear energy, but it's hard to tell what that had to do with his death, or with what he did to the Digital Overlord.
Anyway, critically, this is an AU where it is possible for Jay to help, not an AU where Jay notices he can help. It's built on the assertion that there was nothing Jay could do in the original, but in this universe, different things were possible.
The original concept has an entire scene or several scenes where Zane and Jay get to process this - originally, they land somewhere else because the blast knocks them back, and they need to wait for the others to find them. I may come back and write that scene, or I may write a follow-up to this. We'll see. Let's call it complete for now, but subscribe if you want to be notified if I ever do a new chapter.
Reviews are lovely.
Hey, hope you're taking care of yourself out there.