Chapter 22 - Together

Walking into Ninjago's town was like a punch in the gut.

It was mostly deserted, with people choosing to keep hidden instead of stepping out to face the hordes of pirates and brain-washed soldiers. Some houses and stores had been burned down completely, windows were broken, doors maliciously kicked in.

Kai tried his best to keep his face from showing any emotion, determined to keep his mind on the task at hand. Besides, things would be fixed. All they had to do was take the Djinn down.

"So. . . what should we do?" Jay piped in, looking around the eerie town. Being out in the open felt extremely uncomfortable after the warm shadows that the jungle had provided. He felt that any second, one of the Djinn's men would hop forward to drag them away.

"Well, last time I was here, Nadakhan was in my uncle's mansion." Lloyd turned to look, but he couldn't see his former home from where he stood. "So. . . we go there."

"We need weapons first. And now that we're here, we need a plan. A real plan," Kai stated, finally making a decision. He began to move forward with more purpose, forcing the others to follow him. "We can stop by my place."

"Let us hope they did not already take every weapon available," Zane pointed out, and Kai nodded.

"If you're going to your place, I want to go to mine," Jay said. "I need to know if my parents are okay. They need to know that I'm okay. And maybe they'll be able to tell us what's going on. Their house isn't in the town, so maybe they escaped the worst of it."

"We'll go to my place first then," Kai said. "Since it's closer."

They continued forward, reaching Kai's home a bit too soon. Despite the efforts to steel his mind against whatever might have happened while they were away, he couldn't help but falter. Each of the windows had been shattered, and the door lay on the ground, a couple of feet away from its rightful place. The blacksmith shop itself was a mess, with discarded, rusted weapons thrown about, ashes coating the ground, and the walls black with soot.

Tools were missing, and Kai knew bringing the place back to its feet would take a lot of money, money that they did not have. The business his father had worked to establish might never again return. He felt sick to his stomach, and he didn't dare enter the house itself. For what? To see his childhood memories and possessions destroyed?

"Whoa. . ." Lloyd looked around, and he couldn't help but feel a little guilty. All of this had only been possible because of his father. If Lloyd had allowed Wu to try and stop him. . . "I'm sorry."

"It's. . ." Kai shrugged. "Let's just focus on finding a weapon. There's got to be something useful, somewhere."

They began to search, each of them silent, each enthralled by their own thoughts. Despite their efforts to search, the only weapons that were left were either rusted beyond repair, or misshapen. The closest they came to something that might be sharp enough to inflict any sort of damage was a small silver dagger, hidden beneath a mound of ashes.

"I mean," Jay held the dagger in hand, twisting it around. "All we need to do is cut him, right?"

"Yeah, but you would have to get really close to be able to do any damage." Lloyd pointed out. "He'll probably cut up whoever fights him before they get close."

"Ha, that's reassuring."

"Well, it's the best we've got." Kai shrugged, a strange numbness dragging down his feelings. "So guess we'll have to risk it."

"It appears that is the only option." Zane nodded. "But the question does remain. . . who will fight the Djinn?"

"I vote Zane!" Lloyd smiled. "He's probably the one with the most chance of success."

Kai shrugged. "Sure."

"As long as it isn't me, I'm good," Jay said.

"I have no problem with that." Zane agreed. "And once he's down, we will make the wishes necessary to fix all of this."

"So should we poison the dagger now, or right before we fight him?" Lloyd asked, looking at the weapon.

"Before we fight him," Jay answered. "Just to be sure the poison will work."

"Agreed. But we should do it where the Djinn himself won't see. If he does not know about the poison, he will not see us as much of a threat. Overconfidence on his part might give us more of chance to defeat him."

"Well then," Jay shoved the dagger onto his belt, alongside the canteen of poison. "Now that it's settled, let's go see my parents."

For Edna, the past weeks had been a whirlwind of unbelievably strong emotions.

And none of them had been pleasant.

It all started on a day that should have been like any other. Neither her nor her husband had much planned to do, other than tinker around with the things they had collected throughout their travels. She wasn't surprised when she was the first one to wake, and she wasn't surprised when she'd finished cooking breakfast, and both her husband and her son were still locked up in their respective rooms.

After setting the small table, Edna had headed towards her son's room, knocking loudly before stepping inside.

But the room was empty.

For a moment, she was surprised. Then Edna waved the worry away, deciding that Jay had most likely decided to head to the market earlier than usual. To spend time with the secret girl Edna was most definitely not supposed to know about.

She couldn't have guessed that everything from that moment on would begin to spiral down, with one bad occurrence after another.

For a while, Edna's morning carried on like usual. But when the sky began to darken, and Jay still hadn't returned, she finally admitted to herself that something wasn't right.

Jay did not return that night. Or the night after that.

On the fifth day, early morning, as the sun slowly rose, something did arrive onto the island of Ninjago, but it wasn't her son.

It was pirates. Led by the infamous Captain Garmadon, they swept onto the island, creating chaos and destruction simply because they could.

Luckily for Edna, her and her husband had stubbornly built their home far away from the town. While some people were robbed of any and all valuables, and forcefully kicked out of their homes, they were left alone.

On the sixth day, with Jay still nowhere to be seen, Edna headed into the town, along with her husband. They guided the people who had no refuge towards their home, determined to help as much as they could.

Things continued on in this manner, to the point where Ed wound up adding an additional room to their already oddly shaped home. A week passed, and things fell into a rhythm. Edna got to know most of the people fairly well, and they all worked together, even going to the point of planning a siege to the large mansion, where the pirate captain had been last seen. Things couldn't continue in this manner, and when it became obvious that no one was going to step in to their rescue, the people of Ninjago decided that this battle was in their hands.

On the thirteenth day, someone new stumbled into their safe haven.

She was one of the Admiral's cooks, and she had been trapped in the mansion throughout all of the strange occurrences. It was through her that Edna learned the pirate captain wasn't the one in charge of their demise any longer. There was something more sinister pulling the strings in Ninjago, something that sounded like it came out of a fairy tale, something that didn't quite click with reality.

"Last I heard," the girl stated, holding a warm cup of tea in her hands. "The strange creature seemed to be preparing for a wedding. There are still more people up there, working for him. We were ordered to prepare a feast. And everyone seemed happy to do it! It was strange. They were as devoted to him as if he was the Admiral himself. It was all too bizarre. I'd only just began to work up there a couple of days before it all happened, so I don't know any people there. Figured I had no reason to stay so. . . I ran for it."

Edna didn't know what to do with this information.

Wu's people, loyal to the creature?

A wedding?

"Are we almost there?" Lloyd muttered. His feet had begun to ache long ago, but the pain was now bordering on unbearable. The food Julien had given them was all gone, and had been gone for a good while, due to lack of self-control. To top it all off, the rest they'd gotten at the lighthouse was fading fast, and Lloyd couldn't remember his eyelids ever feeling as heavy as they did now.

Jay nodded, unable to really form any words. They were walking alongside the beach now, on a direct path to the home his parents had built not so long ago. The closer they came, the more his anxiety heightened, the worry for his parents making his knees weak.

A couple of more steps forward, and a whiff of something traveled on the warm breeze. Jay recognized the smell as his mom's cooking instantly, and he could feel his body almost crumbling in relief. Without looking back at the others, Jay ran forward, eager for proof that his hopes were right.

"Mom!"

Jay's voice boomed loudly, and Edna turned, startled out of her wits. For a moment, she was frozen, sure that the figure of her son before her was nothing more than a cruel apparition. When Jay continued to run closer without fading, Edna allowed herself to smile.

They embraced, both of them holding the other a bit too tightly. For a second, Jay felt the weight of everything begin to unwind, and he struggled to fight back tears. He pulled away from the embrace, trying to step forward.

"Is dad here? He's gotta be right? I have to-"

Jay's movement was halted as Edna pulled him back, none too gently. Now that she knew her son was alright, her worry bubbled up into anger. "Oh you'll see your father soon enough, Jay. But first! What happened? Why did you leave? You had me worried sick, Jay! And then everything started happening, and I. . . I hoped you were alright, but I was beginning to fear the worst! What's your story then? You better have a good explanation. You could have left us a note at the very least!"

"I did leave a-" Jay froze, thinking back on the night he had left. It was so long ago, that the details had begun to melt into one another. He had planned to leave a note. He'd even planned out exactly what he would say. But had he actually ever written it? Jay gulped. He wasn't sure. "I'm sorry mom. I didn't think I would be gone so long. It was all so sudden. There's. . . Well a friend of mine wound up getting kidnapped. Really bizarre stuff. And I couldn't just, do nothing you know? So I met this kid, and then we went off on a ship, to get her, stowed away really, and-"

"Shh." Edna pressed her hand against Jay's mouth, knowing that was the only way to stop her son's mouth from moving. She looked behind him, at the people who were coming up along the beach. "You brought friends."

"Oh! Yeah." Jay nodded, stepping away from her mom's hand. "That's Kai. He's the brother of my friend, the one that got kidnapped. And that's Zane, he used to work for Wu but. . . well. Long story. And then that's Lloyd. He's Garmadon's son."

Edna's gaze traveled quickly from Kai to Zane, until finally settling down on Lloyd. The small child looked utterly exhausted, and Edna had to fight the sudden urge to pick him up and hold him tight. "Garmadon has a son?"

Jay opened his mouth to answer, but it was Lloyd that spoke up. "Yes. And we're here to save him. Save everyone really."

"Save him?" Edna frowned. As far as she knew, Garmadon was the cause of everything. Alongside the strange newcomer that now haunted the Admiral's mansion.

"Long story! Again." Jay stated. "Short version, Garmadon released a Djinn but the Djinn is evil and he's into trapping peoples' souls. So the Djinn trapped Garmadon and that's who is currently our enemy. Plus he kidnapped Nya. My friend. He kidnapped my friend."

"Oh." Edna massaged her temple, Jay's words struggling to make any sort of sense. She could feel a slight headache beginning to form. "Things are just insane lately. You go missing, pirates raid Ninjago, people kicked out of their homes, people preparing for a wedding, of all things, and now a Djinn! I simply-"

"A wedding?" Both Lloyd and Kai said in unison.

Edna halted her train of thought, turning towards Lloyd, then Kai. "Yes. It seems whoever is at the mansion was planning to marry somebody. Out of nowhere! I can't understand how that fits in with anything? I don't understand anything, to be honest."

"That's bad." Lloyd shook his head. "If a Djinn marries, he will receive the power to make unlimited wishes. He won't need to take anyone's soul anymore. He'll be able to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants."

"What!?" Jay swiveled around. "Ah!? If, if he does that, there is absolutely no way we can take him."

"Well, he'd still have to grant the wishes he hears. But yeah. He could literally make it impossible for us to reach him." Lloyd frowned, then yawned widely. "I'm too tired for this. . ."

"Is that why he took Nya?" Kai's voice shook, whether from worry or anger, it was impossible to tell. "Why her?"

"That's it! It's impossible. We can't." Jay shook his head. "It's over. Might as well get used to living under a power crazy Djinn. That's what life's gonna be like for the rest of eternity."

"No." Edna smacked the back of Jay's head, making her son flinch. "We can still do this. Don't talk like that. All you boys need is a little rest. We will worry about these things tomorrow. For now, come in. Talk to the others. Eat. Rest."

With bright eyes, Jay and Lloyd nodded, heading towards the smell of food. Zane followed behind, finding no flaw in the woman's orders. Kai, however, stood his ground, his face forming a tight frown.

"But we have to hu-"

Edna held up a finger, silencing Kai's words with a look. "All hurrying will do is bring you trouble. Now listen to me and go on inside."

It was odd, but there was a certain tone of command in Edna's voice that Kai couldn't ignore. He scowled, but the fiery look in the eyes of Jay's mom didn't falter. In the end, Kai gave in, following the others in a sulking manner.

Edna smiled, following close behind.