Kau woke up who knows how much later with an immense headache and a corpse slumped over him. Scales body had a wound like from a gunshot in the head, and as Kai inspected more closely, he saw that his doctor had a gun in his hand. The body hadn't yet begun to rot, but Kai didn't know how long that would take for a serpentine. Then it hit him. Scales was dead. Scales, one of his oldest enemies. Scales, who had told him the most sacred of the serpentines stories. Scales, who now would never see his son go to a real school. Kai broke down crying.
For a minute or two, he remained silent, hugging the snakes corpse. Then, Kai finally realized what was wrong. There was no noise from outside. No children were playing, no adults having conversations, no barkers advertising the price of their wares. The whole town was silent. Dead silent.
Nya woke up only seconds after her fall, with a crushing pain in her leg. The air was smelling differently. Had it before smelled like a midsummer breeze in unknown lands, was it now smelling like someone had left a ton of eggs to rot in a swamp. As Nya got up, she realized that she was, in fact, in a swamp. Luckily, she had landed on a small "plateu" of around two square meters. Jay hadn't been so lucky. He had fallen into the water right next to her. Quickly, Nya hurried to pull him out. Then she looked for the others. But there was no sign of Cole, Zane or P.I.X.A.L. anywhere around. While Jay was coughing up swamp water, Nya pulled out her cellphone. No reception. Of course, after all, they were... where?
It took Kai half an hour to lift Scales body off him and another hour to free his arm. Then, he finally stood up, still shaky in the legs and drowsy in the head. With unsure steps, Kai made his was through the portal. His worst fear was to find a bloodbath, that the spider had come. It was worse. The corpses on the ground showed no sign of violence commited by a monster. Instead, they were stab-, claw- and bitewounds. They all had fought to the death. As Kai looked at the terrible piles upon piles of bodies, he understood why Scales killed himself. What he didn't understand is why he hadn't been infected himself. But then a sound that sounded a lot like a mouses squeak threw him out of his thoughts. Quickly, Kai ran to the pile and saw a small child trapped under it. He lifted the bodies with the left hand as good as he could and pulled the child out with his right one. A sniffle. "Dad?", it asked.
A crushing guilt befell Kai. Of course. Scales son. "No, little boy. Come on, I'll get you out of here. Just close your eyes and let me pull you." And so the child did. As soon as Kai had pulled him out, the corpses fell right back to where they were. He was still far away from being at full strength. Yet, he felt strangely accomplished. Until he remembered what happened here, what he might have prevented if he had slit Harumis throat. A ninja didn't have those thoughts. But Kai was no ninja anymore since he killed Lloyd. Again, the little boy pulled him out of his thoughts. "They all... They all started fighting! I was so angry at them, that I started hitting their knees or tails, but suddenly one fell on me. And then they all fell on me!", he said with a tearful voice. "Come on, little guy. We're gonna get you out of here. By the way, how is your name?", Kai asked. A little tear ran down his face. "Scales Jr. What about my dad? And my mom? Or Mr. Scale?" "Scales - is it okay if I call you that? - your mom and dad can't be with you for a while. They told me to take care of you for that time. Now come, let's get Mr. Scale."
Nya had slowly come to terms with being betrayed by Harumi, but the fact remained that she had no idea where she was or what they were going to do. Fortunately, a solution to the second question offered itself up when they saw a behemoth of a snake in the distance. It was as big as the Borg Tower high and about two times wider than a threefloor building. That led to an unanimous decision to go the other way. Technically, they didn't go the other way, but instead hopped it. The islands were rare, but you could never see how deep the swamp was, and after Jay almost drowned, they decided to avoid the water as good as they could. It also seemed smart as they didn't know what lived in the water. On the islands, the worst thing they could encounter was a bear or a medium sized snake. In the water, the personification of death could lure.
After about two hours of island-hopping, Nya spotted a landmass on the horizon. She nudged Jay. "Look, maybe there's people over there?", she asked. Jay nodded and slappe one of the mosquitoes out of the air. "How are those things everywhere?" he complained. Nya shrugged and climbed a close-by tree. From its top, she jumped to the next island. It was a lot bigger, at least 12 square feet. Nya stood up with mud on her face and feeling on edge. Something was close by.
Jay jumped into her back and deviated her thoughts. "Jay, can you maybe not?", she asked in an annoyed tone. Jay gave her his best TV-moderator grin and said in an overly deep voice "You know you love me, baby." Nya laughed. It felt good. She couldn't remember the last time she had laughed. "But only if you stop jumping onto my back!" Now they both chuckled like maniacs, happy to at least have each other.
Kai was alone. He had realized it before, but hadn't really had time to process it. Nya, Jay, Cole, Zane, Pixal, Scales... They all were gone. But Kai still had a duty to fulfill. Maybe the world was going to end, but that wasn't going to stop him from getting Scales Jr. to safety.
Mr. Scale wasn't a pet, as Kai had thought. Instead, he was a kind of plushie, which seemed to have been specifically designed for scales. Kai couldn't exactly make out what it looked like, but if he had to guess, Mr. Scale looked like a fat orange cat with oversized eyes. Could also be a wombat though. Kai picked up Scales Jr., who in turn picked up Mr. Scale, and they went to the tunnel that led them out of the cave.
It took another hour to get to the landmass, in each second of which Nya was reminded that they didn't have any food or water. Water they could find easily, but Nya shuddered at the thought of what they would have to kill for food. When they finally reached the landmass, Nya fell to the ground and started massaging her limbs. "I'm out of shape. Jay, do you see anything important?" "I see bright colors in the distance, and something that seems like ruins. Even if there is nobody living there, we still have a place to sleep." "That seems reasonable." So they headed off into the distance again, every step more hesitant, at the fear of what they might find.
When you walk for a long time without water, you usually get really moody. Especially so when you're the ninja of water. After four hours of walking, Nya started seriously considering drinking the mud water. Luckily, the sight of the ruins distracted her. They were tall and imposant, but didn't seem like they were ancient. Really more like New Ninjago City, it's houses and it's skyscrapers. But it was way too small to actually be NNC. The colorful flags also were a dead giveaway that it wasn't NNC. They were ritual flags, something you would only put up on the day of the departed. On a place that meant something to you. Not in the middle of New Ninjago City.
After what seemed like a lifetime and probably was only an hour, they arrived in the city. It didn't seem to be inhabited, so they made shelter in a small building. Nya decided to take the first watch.
The first few hours went over swiftly. She saw a shadow once, but blamed it onto a small animal. At around midnight, Nya thought about waking Jay when suddenly the ground before her erupted. Where only seconds before a rock had been the only thing now a man stood. His clothes were a kind of grey-brown and his face was painted in the same colors, but his hair and his beard were so incredibly blonde that not even the mud in them could conceal them. The stranger held a sword out, in a way that made clear that he could use it but would rather not. Nya punched him in the teeth.
The stranger definetly didn't expect this. He flew back a meter and almost dropped his sword. But before he could stand up again, Nyas sword was on his throat. "Who are you?" she asked. "A man who believes in a better future." Fucking idealists, Nya thought. "That's no answer to my question. What are you doing here and what's your name?" The man sighed. "I'm a Scavenger. I wanted to recruit you for the our tribe. And concerning my name" he paused "I'm Lloyd Misako. Hi."