Freedom

Perfect. Kaytake fought against the rough ropes itching his skin. Oh, this is just perfect. The ropes refused to loosen, preferring instead to dig deeper and make his wrists begin to ooze blood.

He had woken up several hours ago, gagged and bound on the floor in a dark room with a wicked headache throbbing against the inside of his skull.

The throbbing had eventually faded away, but his larger problem stayed with him like the plague. The darkness that surrounded him felt thick enough to cut with a knife, and the ropes refused to loosen no matter how hard he worked.

Now if only he had a knife that would cut both the ropes and the thick, tar-like blackness. He had wondered for a long time if he had really just gone blind, but when he heard the sound of footsteps and saw a thin crack of white light along a short stretch of the floor (possibly under a doorframe?) he knew otherwise. Needless to say, he was quite relieved.

But the white light? That was strange. It was obviously being carried by someone, seeing as there had been footsteps accompanying it. But no lantern produced white light, so it had to have been a flashlight.

But that theory only sparked more questions. Why would sailors carry flashlights? Only rich people, mostly in the Northern realm, could afford them. Poor sailors in the South? Not a chance, unless...

Kaytake groaned and went limp, giving up on the bonds for the present time. Unless they had been paid by Cyrus Borg to kidnap him and bring him to the Northern realm, where he would be held for ransom. That was a feat worth quite a lot of money; enough to purchase flashlights.

Not for the first time, Kaytake was glad that Jay and Lloyd had gone with Nya. Those maps in Jay's possession were invaluable, and the information contained in the prophetic scroll had the potential to be the country's undoing, if it ever fell into Cyrus' hands.

Kaytake quickly got his mind back on track, making assumptions and evaluations based on his dark environment. So...

Because the white light had covered only a thin stretch along the floor, he was probably in a small room with a presumably locked door that opened into a hallway below a ship's deck. He assumed that he was in a ship because of the way the floor swayed beneath him, and the occasional thumping of feet above his head suggested that he was below the deck, not in the bridge.

Also, bridges usually had windows so the navigator could steer the ship properly. This dark room told him that the world had either been plagued by total darkness, or the more logical answer, that he was in a room meant to keep a captive contained.

Also known as a prison cell.

You are a fool, Kaytake scolded himself. You should have taken Malian up on his offer to send me an escort. But no... You think you can conquer the world, huh? Traveled the same path so many times, what's so wrong about doing it again only a few measly days after your son gets kidnapped from his favorite afternoon hangout?

Kaytake would have sighed if the gag had not prevented the exasperated action.

Absolutely perfect.

Cole ran across the deck and into the Bridge room, soaked to the bone from the storm. His hair tangled in his face from the wind, making him wish he had tied it back instead of leaving it loose. He stopped breathless in the entrance, then gasped and backed up a single step.

Two stone warriors stood with their back to him, managing the ship as any good crew-mate would.

Under normal conditions, Cole would not care. But at this moment, it was a problem. He needed to slow the ship down so he could descend the rope safely. These two stone men were in his way, and they were not fools by anyone's description. The ship was getting so close enough to its destination that his men would be expecting the ship to speed up, not slow down.

Granted, Cole was strong. But taking on forty armed invincible warriors was more than even he could handle. And what about Kai?

Cole wondered what mind of emotion was pressing against his chest when he thought of his men abusing Kai as punishment for trying to escape. Empathy? He thought. Certainly not. Perhaps it is rage.

Yes, that was it. Rage. He hated it when anyone, let alone his temporary ally, was subjected to the stone warrior's tortures.

Cole did not really care what would happen if he were to be caught; Kai was his main concern. The Dark Knight had gotten himself into this mess, dragging Kai down with him. Now he was determined to fix his mistake and make sure Kai stayed as far away from the Overlord and his men as possible.

Cole shook his head to clear it as the two stone warriors turned to face him with a respectful nod. What was he saying? He did not care what happened to Kai. Cole was doing this for himself. Kai was just in the way. He was the weak link in the chain, the chink in the armor.

...So why was he bothering to take Kai with him?

"Krakk dri?" The stone warrior at the wheel asked him what he needed.

Cole was frozen in place with fear. He could make them leave the Bridge, but Kai was out there with a rope dangling over the railing, just waiting to be discovered by one of the stone men.

So what else was there to do? Cole considered just turning on his heel and leaving, but that wasn't much of an option either. His sudden appearance and disappearance in this Bridge would surely arouse suspicion.

This certainly screws things up good, Cole thought angrily. What can I do to make sure I will leave the ship undetected? He took a step forward and closed the door, muffling the sound of the wind to some degree.

There was only one thing he could do to mask his subterfuge, and that was to be nonchalant. He could do this. He just needed to be patient, and hope that Kai didn't get knocked over the edge the same way Zane and Pixal did.

Cole casually walked up to the screen where the second warrior stood and peered at it hopefully-

-Hopefully, eh? It was a nice alternative for despair, that was for sure.

Anyway, he looked at the numbers and felt his heart calm a bit. The ship was going fast, but not too fast. If worst came to worst and he couldn't slow the ship down without raising suspicion, he could slide down the rope to the ground with minimal damage to his person.

"Just checking the progress," he said casually. The blank look he received in return from his men reminded him that they could not understand a word he was saying. Right... All this time around Kai and the late Zane Julien had redeveloped the bad habit of speaking Ninjago's mother tongue around these beasts. He repeated his words in the Dark Tongue, this time receiving two stoic nods of understanding.

Good, he thought. That worked out okay, I guess. He decided to back out of the room with as much confidence as he could, as to maintain the two-year facade of total control, and get back to Kai. Hopefully, neither of them would get hurt during the escape.

He told the two men to stay put and continue guiding the ship until they reached their destination, receiving two more of those empty, stoic nods and a couple curt 'yes sirs' in that horrid language.

Cole left the room without another word. Once back out in the storm, he began to question the logic of what he was doing. He was escaping the ship so he could spend the rest of his days hiding out on the Dark Island, running for his life every time a stone samurai gave chase? Chances were that the Overlord would find him right away and sent some of his other cronies to drag him back to their pretty little hell on earth.

"Draak shi!" A voice rose above the storm, drawing Cole out of his thoughts. He looked across the deck, heart sinking into his gut as he saw what had made the stone warrior call out in alarm. Kai had been spotted.

Cole took off in Kai's direction immediately. They needed to get down that rope now, before the dark samurai could reach them.

His feet slipped several times as he shot across the wet deck. "Get down that rope now!" He shouted.

He had hoped that they would be on the ground and miles away before the stone warriors realized they were missing, but that was just life, and life seemed to hate him with a passion.

He peered into the darkness and examined Kai's face as he came close. "Why are you hesitating?" He shouted over the winds angrily. "We've been spotted, for heaven's sake! Get down that rope!"

Kai gave him an awkward grin and gestured to the railing. "I should've said something sooner," he said. "But I have no idea how to tie a proper knot."

Cole looked at the rope. If his heart could sink any lower, it would be in his bowels. "What is this?" He hissed angrily, glancing over his shoulder once to see the stone warrior staring at him quizzically from across the deck. So it did not yet understand that Cole was going incognito. It thought that its master was about to punish their prisoner, not shouting about how terribly wrong this escape was going.

Cole stared at the bulbous knot attaching the rope to the railing for under one second before making the declaration. "Kai, your knots are terrible." He said it bluntly and without hesitation.

"Sorry," Kai held up his hands and backed up a step. "I did my best."

Cole grumbled under his breath and jerked as hard as he could at the long end of the rope, which lay coiled on the floor. "I guess it'll do," he said. "Mind you, this isn't the end. I've got a long lecture planned for you once we're in a relatively safe area."

"Yeah," Kai said. "I guess I kind of deserve that much."

Cole threw the rope over the edge of the boat. "Climb quickly," he snapped. "That stone warrior watching us will raise an alarm the moment he realizes that I'm climbing down with you."

Kai nodded and swung himself over the railing, straddling it carefully with one leg. He looked down at the ground with hesitation. "I don't think our altitude has dropped at all," he said. "It still looks like a drop of about fifty yards, give or take. What exactly were you doing in there?"

Cole barely restrained himself from slapping the wild-haired man in the face. "Get over that bloody railing before I shove you with all my strength," he hissed. "So help me, I will break every bone in that ugly face."

Kai's face looked quizzical for a short bit as he got both hands around the rope and prepared to drop down to the ground. "I...don't think the face actually has more than one bone..." He said before sliding down the rope and out of Cole's sight.

The Dark Knight growled obscenities under his breath. There's the jaw, he thought. That would make two bones? But then again, I guess the face doesn't really have its own bone. It shares with the rest of the head. He was not even sure what he was talking about anymore, but the sudden thought of making Kai's jawbone snap had a certain attraction that was hard to ignore.

The stone warrior behind him suddenly had a fit, running toward Cole as fast as he could while shouting curses of the worst kind in the Dark Tongue.

Cole cringed at the harsh words. Even he dared to use only a few of those in this dark soldier's vocabulary.

The Dark Knight countered the stone warrior with one of his own obscene curses before grabbing the taut rope and sliding down after his prisoner.

The rope was cold and slippery, a small blessing in a time such as he was in. Because of the amount of water that the fibers had absorbed, the friction on his palms was much less as he gripped the rope with hands and dropped at a mind-numbing speed.

After looking down, he realized that there was a minor flaw in his plan. The ship was moving notably fast, so even a gap of a few seconds between Kai and himself hitting the ground could leave them far apart with no effective means of finding each other apart from wandering and calling each other's names.

He felt a sudden jerk of the rope, and saw another flaw in his plans:

He should not have let Kai tie that knot.

Cole felt the rope fall slack in his clenched hands as the knot untied itself and left him suspended for a terrifying second before gravity threw him mercilessly toward the ground.

His feet hit the sand first, followed by a painful nerve reaction that flew up his legs and surged up through his spine, bringing him to his knees.

Curse Kai and his knot tying disabilities, Cole shouted in his mind. May his egotistical self rot in a deep dungeon until the end of time.

He cried out involuntarily, then cut it short by gritting his teeth and inhaling a slow, controlled breath. He had faced worse pain that this, he would be fine. He clenched his fists and he fell onto his stomach, lying still for a long moment before his mind remembered how to make the rest of his muscles move. His head rose out of the wet sand slowly, and he watched as the ship flew off into the distance.

It would take a few minutes for that stone warrior who had seen them to get the ship turned around, and even longer for them to find footprints to follow.

Cole cursed himself. Footprints; just another one of the many flaws in his plans. The wet sand would make the task of finding him much too easy.

In all honesty, he did not want to leave the ship. The Overlord had been good to him. He had no lack of food and drink, always had clothing to wear, and a warm bed to call his own.

Well, sure. The Overlord suffered from terrible mood swings, and Kozu seemed to love that whip of his a little too much, but still... Cole only got punished because he had disobeyed his master's orders; orders that should have been followed to the letter, instead of ignored or misinterpreted.

Yes, Cole had definitely deserved those punishments. His master was wise, kind, and very much his friend. So it really begged the question...

Why was he running away, if he loved his master so much?

Cole shook his head firmly and ground his teeth as he got to his feet and began to wind up the tangle of rope that had fallen next to him. Every bone in his body screamed for him to find Kai and drag him straight to the Overlord. Sure, he would receive terrible punishments for losing Zane, and for attempting to run away, but the Overlord was his master. Cole loved his master, and his punishment would be just and well earned.

No, a tiny voice, barely above a whisper, tried to make itself heard above the storm in his mind. You need to leave that monster, Cole. Kozu and Overlord will only harm you if you return. What can they give you that you don't already have the capacity to obtain yourself?

"Satisfaction, that's what." He snapped back. It took him a moment to realize that he had answered himself out loud. But did he really care? No, not at all. Listening to his own voice was strangely soothing. "My master gives me a sense of satisfaction whenever I please him. That is what I live for. I need my master's approval."

His feet stomped through the sand angrily as he argued with himself- or reasoned, he couldn't quite tell which. "My name has been marred forever. I cannot just go back to Ninjago and expect a warm welcome." He chuckled lowly, although his face maintained a steady scowl. "Oh, I'll get a welcome all right. A thousand red, white, and green cloaked guards to escort me to the stockades. So I can't really leave this islan-"

"Stop talking to yourself already!" An angry voice shouted from the brush, barely audible through the winds, which had begun to die down just as fast as they had appeared. "Of all the men who could have kidnapped me, it had to be a delusional sociopath with a bloodlust and voices in his head. Hooray for fate and its manipulative relationship with luck and cruelty."

Cole was caught between a disappointed groan and a sigh of relief as Kai's face became visible in the pre-dawn light. So they had not landed too far apart after all. "I don't have voices in my head," he argued. "I'm simply thinking out loud."

Kai limped closer and examined his captor's face from a distance of ten or so paces. "A pretty heated head cannon," he remarked. "And did you seriously mean all that stuff you just said to yourself? How could you possibly be defending the Overlord when he's reduced you to..." He fumbled for a moment before gesturing to Cole's entire body. "This."

Cole folded his arms over his chest. "You just gestured to all of me," he said. "But you know that each moment we spend arguing is another moment we come closer to our death. Let's get going before my men turn the ship around and recapture us."

Kai swept his arms out from under his grey cloak with dramatic gesture. "Lead the way, master." His voice was sarcastic, but not particularly hateful.

Cole sensed the sudden honor on Kai's part was slightly derogatory, blatantly disrespecting his leadership instead of encouraging it. This, he thought angrily. This is why I don't like making friends. Kai is a bastard, but he's a likable bastard. Those are the worst, because when you want to kill them, you find that your conscience is on their side.