"This is it, then," Kai said, looking with a lot of skepticism at the tall apartment building in front of him.

Jay shrugged. "I mean, I guess it's it. Lloyd checked Master Wu's notes about all of the elemental masters and their last known locations, and this is the address he gave us as the best one for the Elemental Master of Spirit, right? This is 2011 Ethos Road?"

Glancing at the bulky mailboxes next to him, Kai nodded. "Yeah. Looks like it."

"This is it, then," Jay said, more nervously than Kai had said it. "It's gotta be it."

"It'll be it," Kai said reassuringly. "Before you know it, we'll be back to our normal selves. Well, I'll be back to my normal self. You'll be back to your generally dorky self."

Jay gave Kai a shove, but not a hard one. "Whatever. Let's just do this."

"Apartment 1011, right?" Kai asked.

"Uh-huh, so I'd guess it'd be on the tenth floor," Jay mused, stepping forward and opening the door into the entry room.

Kai stepped along right behind him, looking around. "Elevators, I hope?"

"Elevators," Jay confirmed, walking toward a set of double doors at one end of the empty entry room.

Kai groaned in relief. "I was not looking forward to walking up a bunch of stairs, especially with our breathing being what it's like right now."

"Okay, but, uh. Heh heh." Jay chuckled nervously and turned around as he reached the double doors. "It says they're out of order."

Kai groaned again, this time angrily. "Figures. Okay. Where are the stairs?"

Far too many flights of stairs later, Kai and Jay both heaved strained breaths as they stopped on the tenth floor's landing.

"We're in shape, right? This is just a side effect, right?" Kai asked, trying and mostly failing to catch his breath.

"So in shape," Jay wheezed, leaning against one of the stair handrails. "Definitely just a side effect."

Kai heaved another strained breath and straightened up, taking his hands off of his knees. "Yeah. Good. Ready?"

"No," Jay said quietly.

"Me neither," Kai said back.

"Let's do it," Jay said, and with a sigh, he stood up straight and pushed open the door from the stairwell to the tenth floor.

"Apartment 1011," Kai thought out loud. "Apartment 1011. Apartment-"

"1011!" Jay said triumphantly as he turned the hallway corner. "There!"

"Cool," Kai said, joining Jay in front of the door with the "1011" sign posted next to it. "Let's do it."

Jay nodded, stepped forward, and knocked on the door.

"Really? You're knocking?" Kai asked.

Jay shrugged and looked back at Kai. "I mean, it's not like we're expecting a fight?"

"I guess we're not really expecting a fight," Kai said slowly, looking at Jay thoughtfully.

"But maybe I am expecting a fight."

Kai and Jay whirled to face the now-open door.

A woman stood there, her long gray hair streaked in a few places with slivers of dark brown and her face fairly well-wrinkled, her red dress neatly pressed and her hands shimmering a light blue.

"EMOS?" Kai and Jay said together.

"Kai and Jay," the woman said calmly, looking curiously back and forth between the two ninja. "Or, should I say, Jay and Kai?"

"You should say, the guys who are gonna kick your butt for messing with us," Kai said, raising his fists.

Jay shoved Kai, a lot harder than the last time. "No, no she shouldn't say that! We want her to help us, Kai!"

"I mean, yeah, we want help, but why do we think she's gonna help us without us making her help us?" Kai asked.

Jay paused and raised his own fists. "Huh. Good point. Okay, yeah, she can say 'the guys who are gonna kick your butt for messing with us.'"

The woman laughed. "Really? I seemed to overcome you fairly easily last time. Besides, when I said I was expecting a fight, I didn't mean a fight with me."

Jay and Kai frowned at each other, lowering their fists in confusion, before frowning at the woman.

"I meant a fight between the two of you," the woman said. The blue shimmer left her hands, and she propped her head up on one fist. "I have to say, you solved my mystery far more quickly than I expected. However did you do it?"

"We're just that awesome," Kai said.

"All of us are," Jay agreed.

The woman raised her eyebrows. "All of you? Do you mean, perhaps, that you got help from the other ninja?"

"Well, yeah," Kai said.

"And you managed doing that… How, exactly?" The woman asked.

"It wasn't easy, but we figured out how to show them that we were our real selves and the selves that we looked like," Jay said. "We acted like our real selves."

"Basically, we argued," Kai said.

"Basically," Jay agreed.

The woman frowned. "So you are still arguing."

"Of course we're still arguing," Kai said. "It's pretty much our thing."

The woman sighed. "So it was all for nothing. I created this mystery to help you stop your constant fighting. Really, you must stop arguing. Bickering and brawling like you do will tear you and your teammates apart… Just as it did to many of the previous elemental masters."

"Oh," Jay said softly. "You were worried about us."

"I was worried more about the state of Ninjago and its overall well-being," the woman said. "But, yes, I was worried about you too. If you don't care about each other-"

"But we do," Jay interrupted.

The woman blinked at him, apparently puzzled.

"We care about each other. A lot," Jay said.

"More than we want to admit, most of the time," Kai added, laughing a little.

Jay nodded. "I mean, we're not just teammates."

"We're brothers, and we're some of the best of friends we could have," Kai said, clearly picking up on what Jay meant.

"And yeah, we argue," Jay said.

"But we love each other, you know?" Kai said, fidgeting a bit awkwardly at saying it so bluntly. "And we love arguing with each other."

"It's pretty much our thing," Jay agreed, repeating Kai's earlier words.

"You're brothers," the woman said thoughtfully. "Hmmm."

"Did you ever have siblings?" Kai asked. "I mean, arguing with each other is one of the biggest things siblings do. That and agreeing with each other, usually but not always at different times. It's kinda two sides of the same friend-style relationship."

"I have no siblings," the woman said. "And, admittedly, I've never really had friends close enough to be consdiered siblings. I suppose I have no basis for what that's like."

"I've got a sister by birth and four brothers by choice," Kai said. "Trust me. I know what it's like."

The woman laughed lightly, but her smile looked sad. "I believe I am beginning to understand. Not fully, yet, but beginning to."

"Do you understand enough to turn us back?" Jay asked eagerly.

The woman laughed again, her smile turning into something more peaceful. "That, I believe I do understand."

Jay and Kai fist-bumped victoriously, and in the next moment, as the woman's hands shimmered with blue light once more, they both gave a forceful cough, the kind that clamped their eyes shut.

Opening his eyes, Kai grinned as he looked at the curly-haired blue-clad guy in front of him. "Hey, Jay."

Jay had his eyes open too, looking at the guy in front of him, with spiky hair and red clothes. Winking, Jay grinned back. "Looking good, Kai."

"Looking good?" Kai asked. "You mean, looking great! Looking like myself!"

"Me too," Jay said. "And I bet I look better than ever."

Kai scoffed. "Nah. I mean, you're still dressed in blue. Now, if you were dressed in red, yeah, I think your look would improve some."

"I feel like I could say the same about you and putting on some blue," Jay countered.

"It wouldn't be true, though," Kai said, giving the woman in the doorway a friendly wave before heading off down the hallway toward the stairs. "After all, red is the perfect color to wear."

"It would too be true," Jay said, waving as well and following Kai away and out. "'Cause red is okay, sure, it's fine, but really, blue is the ultimate best color!"


AN: Let me know what you thought of this chapter and of the story as a whole! Because that's all, folks!