Chapter Seven: The Last Goodbye

I saw the light fade from the sky; on the wind I heard a sigh

As the snowflakes cover my fallen brothers, I will say this last goodbye

The last battle of the day had finally finished. Chen had ended up tired, and, dare he say it, a bit bored before the Master of Sound eventually won out over the Master of Water. He had clicked the button to vanish the loser with a disappointed sigh, and prepared to move on with the rest of the night.

Most of the contestants began to get up and leave after a moment; the day was done for them. Chen still had several hours of petty tasks ahead of him, and was already coming to terms with the idea of a sleepless night supervising his soldiers.

Perhaps he'd check in on Turner as well. An argument wouldn't be as boring as falling asleep on his feet, or as the case may –

"Master Chen, sir?"

Chen furrowed his brow at the voice, and turned to look. The sunset behind the figure was staining the edges of his clothes red, but Chen was able to recognize the person almost immediately.

"Yes, Master of Lightning?"

"I, um, wanted to… talk to you. About… tomorrow." The blue-clad figure appeared to be struggling with his words.

Chen pressed him. "About what? Your fight?"

The Lightning Master had not expected the last two words, it seemed, and struggled to get his tongue back. "Yes," he said quietly. "I wanted to… ask about an… alternate challenge?"

Chen resisted the urge to smile. "What kind of 'alternate challenge'?" he asked dangerously.

The Master of Lightning seemed to realize that Chen was not opposed to the idea, and began his pitch… or, as Chen could tell, his excuse. "Well, you know how boring some of those battles earlier were, and I thought I'd just… shake things up, you know? Make it more interesting. Otherwise I bet I could punch that Earth guy really hard and then run for the Jade Blade or something. Maybe something where we don't have to fight each other directly?"

Chen thought about it for a moment, and found his conclusion.

He could use it to his advantage. If this competitor was rattled enough to ask such a favor…

Chen smiled. "I will think on it some more. We can keep this between us."

"T-thank you, Master Chen, sir. Thank you," the Master of Lightning repeated. "I'll be here tomorrow I guess, or something."

"Good night," Chen said.

If the competitors were already this confused and scared…

…his job had been done for him, hadn't it?

He left the arena, and prepared to spend the night planning.

The four of them were talking in Kai's room again late that night. Someone's radio was on the floor blaring static, but Lloyd had forgotten whose it was.

Either way, it was an open invitation for people on the other end to listen in on the conversation, though Lloyd certainly hadn't heard any voices from the other end yet.

He wondered how Nya and his father and uncle were doing. The last time they'd checked in, the three of them had been working on finishing up the hull and interior, and they'd been planning on working from the outside in.

Nya's voice came through the radio at some point, and Lloyd listened for a few minutes – the hull was almost complete now, it would need some sanding and painting to preserve the wood but it was complete – before phasing out of the conversation again as the other three told her about some of what had happened today.

Lloyd just watched the others tell the story, and imagined the others from so far away sitting in the room, too.

Kai was the one to break the news of the impending elimination to Nya. Kai was staring at the floor, and Lloyd imagined that, somewhere across the world, Nya was doing the same. They were siblings. (And sometimes, as Lloyd would think quietly to himself, he envied that they always had each other at their backs.)

The tone of the conversation shifted when Cole started speaking, and Lloyd could see that Cole was holding Jay's eyes with a stare. Lloyd knew that Jay still wasn't completely okay with the idea of either one of them being eliminated, and Cole was trying to force him to come to terms with it. Cole nearly whispered something across the room and it made Jay recoil violently.

Jay was crying. Lloyd could only see it because he was laying on the floor and Jay was sitting next to him. Jay stared back and forth between Cole and Kai with a betrayed look on his face, until he finally gave up and curled his legs up next to his chest and whispered something that Lloyd wasn't able to catch.

But Cole and Kai did, and Lloyd didn't understand how they could, but they each shot Jay a suspicious glare and suddenly Jay was scrambling for an excuse for whatever forbidden thing he'd said.

Jay said something but his words kept tripping over each other in their crazed race to reach the outside world. Lloyd just reached out a hand to grab Jay's arm to steady him, because Jay looked like he was close to passing out.

If Jay's bad feelings were centered on this fight, Lloyd would make sure to watch it extra carefully. Lloyd would secure his friend's peace of mind, even if Jay couldn't hold on to it anymore.

Jay hadn't slept.

Jay hadn't slept at all, and he didn't care.

Chen gave him a tiny smile when he came downstairs that morning. The look was gone in an instant as Chen immediately focused on another group of competitors, but Jay wasn't sure whether he was supposed to be reassured or scared by that smile, considering how close he had come to telling the others that he'd asked Chen to change the rules.

As soon as all ten remaining competitors assembled downstairs, Chen launched into another of his signature speeches. "I am… generally disappointed with the results of yesterday's fights," Chen admitted, and Jay felt the little stares on his back ease off slightly. Chen had said exactly what Jay had told them last night. "Not with the people who won, or anything… I was just expecting this to be more of a challenge for you, competitors.

"So, I'm changing this up a little bit," Chen said. "For these last three rounds, the competitors will not directly fight each other; instead, they will complete similar timed challenges, and we'll see who wins."

Jay gave a sigh of relief and he felt his friends' stares come back to him, but he played it off as a cough.

All of them were behind him, so they couldn't see the tiny tears of relief that he wiped away.

"Hopefully this will be more interesting. I apologize to yesterday's audience members for any boredom," Chen concluded. "Moving on. The first matchup today is the Master of Mind versus the Master of Metal; those two can head to the front of the assembly, thank you."

Jay walked with the others, but he didn't talk to them. They weren't talking either, and while he felt like he should try to explain himself…

If he explained himself all of it would fall apart. No, that was a terrible idea.

They arrived in the first arena to watch the contest. Jay didn't know whether they would be similar, but he wanted to at least have an idea of what was going to happen when it was his turn.

Chen quickly explained the rules: the competitors would be released one at a time into the arena. They had to get the Jade Blade and return to their starting position, and the faster one would win. Instead of fighting other competitors, they'd be fighting some of Chen's strongest servants who were well-versed in battle.

Jay thought that sounded simple enough. It was simple, and he didn't have to fight Cole. And, considering that he was pretty fast, he was pretty likely to win, right?

He didn't really care about that last part as much as the first two, but the third piece was still bothering him. He didn't want to find out what losing meant…

One of the competitors for this round was pushed into the arena: a big, gray man with fists that were probably the size of Jay's head. As soon as he was out of the gate, he stormed through a clump of some of Chen's servants like they were nothing.

The biggest problem the Master of Metal had was figuring out how to get the Jade Blade from on top of the tall pedestal. Eventually, he smashed it down with a single punch, took the Blade without a moment's hesitation, and jumped down and ran back to the starting position. Jay made a mental note to stay away from this guy if he won – and it certainly looked like he would, with a time of just under two minutes.

Chen's servants in the arena below spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to reattach the broken pole to its original base, and eventually decided to just lean the top half of the pole against the broken section and pile dirt around it, because any other fixes would have taken hours.

After they reassumed their positions, the second competitor began his fight. Jay thought it was amazing watching him fight; he seemed to know where his enemies were going to attack him before they knew where they would hit him. The Master of Mind half-dodged half-fought his way through the crowd, skittered up the side of the broken pole like a spider, grabbed the Jade Blade and fought his way back.

One minute, forty eight seconds. A full ten seconds faster.

The Master of Metal was shouting about something being unfair, but Chen and the rest of the competitors ignored him to congratulate the Master of Mind instead, and they moved on to the next arena without paying the loser much thought.

Jay was worried again. Even as the next fight at another strange, but different arena went underway, Jay was too distracted to watch.

Something was going to go wrong, and he knew it. He'd get hurt, or he'd drop the Jade Blade, or he'd end up running the wrong way… Why couldn't he shake the fear?

Why couldn't he?

Shouting the question inside his head wasn't helping anything. The Master of Smoke or something like that won out over the Nature guy or something else and then they were moving toward his arena. Jay's confidence plummeted with every step he took.

The walk to this one seemed longer, and Jay couldn't tell whether it was because the distance itself was longer or he was just suffocating under the stares of all the other competitors and the pressure of the fact that this was going to be his challenge now. Cole was walking next to him, but he wasn't talking or even looking in Jay's direction, so Jay figured that he was either suffocating on the pressure, too, or sensed that Jay just didn't want to talk right now.

Because he didn't. He did not want to talk right now. Thinking about the fact that this might be the last time the two of them would get to talk to each other – at least for a while – repulsed him even more. He didn't want to hear about it, he didn't want to talk about it, he didn't want to think about it…

One of Chen's servants led them off in a different direction: away from the path leading to the stairs up into the grandstands, and instead toward the side of the open space that was probably the arena.

He looked at the grandstands again. Why were they lit so strangely…?

And then he looked at the little arena itself.

The main structure of it looked easy: there was a simple wooden bridge, held up by two ropes anchored at each end. In the center was a small island, and on the island was a little 'hill' about ten feet tall with a spiraling path leading to the top. On top of the hill a short pedestal sat, which held the Jade Blade up to the light.

Some of the light came from the late afternoon sun, but the strange lighting on the grandstands and the strange twinkle in the Jade Blade came from the same source: a pool of lava, situated about fifty feet below the rim of the deep crater.

Jay simultaneously appreciated the mood lighting and was terrified of stepping onto the rickety wooden bridge because of self-preservation instincts.

The servant that had led him to the edge of the crater tapped him on the shoulder to make him turn around again.

"Heads or tails?"

It took Jay a moment to realize that the servant was holding a coin, but Cole wasn't saying anything. Cole eventually nudged him, and Jay finally figured that Cole was letting him decide.

"Heads I go second," Jay finally said. The servant tossed the coin in the air, caught it in his palm, and turned it over on his wrist.

Tails.

Jay gulped as he realized he'd have to get on the bridge now, and turned around. The servant flashed some sort of hand sign at Chen, and then…

"Begin!"

Jay started across the bridge as fast as he could. The bridge bounced under his feet and nearly knocked him off balance, but before he was even half way across the bridge, the servants were there, too.

There were only three of them on this one, compared to the five or seven that had been in the other challenges he'd seen. Jay decided it was probably compensation for the fact that this arena had noticeably less space to run away in.

The first one had some kind of spear and tried to stab at him, but he shot a little spark at the guy's chest and ran around him while the attacker flinched from the pain. There were two others standing close together behind the first attacker, and Jay kicked one of them in the shin and jumped over him when he fell down.

He had two of them temporarily disabled, which left the last one to chase him the rest of the way across the bridge and up the hill. Jay really didn't like the way the bridge bounced under every footstep, but as soon as he got back on solid footing he tore up the hill as fast as he could.

His pursuer was finally able to slice at him on the hill's tight spiral, and cut his side. The cut wasn't very deep, but it stung, and Jay retaliated for it with a discharge of sparks behind him.

The Jade Blade was in his hand before Jay realized he even made it to the top of the hill. He jumped off the side towards the bridge and floated on the sparks for a moment before his feet touched down. It took focus for sustained flight and he didn't have that right now, so he just ran across the bridge as fast as he possibly could.

The two attackers from earlier had recovered now, and the one with the spear was acting aggressive again, but he didn't care. Jay shot sparks in the face of any attackers bold enough to get too close, and then he bolted for solid ground.

His feet touched down and in some simultaneous moment he heard his time called.

One minute, fifty-four seconds.

Cole could hardly believe that Jay had only been out on the bridge for less than two minutes. He came back looking rattled and stumbled around for a minute on the flat ground before he finally made his way over to Cole.

"The bridge," Jay said slowly, "is super sketchy. Don't spend any more time on there than necessary."

Cole took the advice to heart and traded places with Jay while the course was reset. The three opponents he was supposed to fight also appeared to be uncomfortable with the bridge, and Cole planned to use that to his advantage: if they were uncomfortable being on the bridge, he could storm across it and fight them on the stable terrain.

One of the opponents placed the Jade Blade back in position, and Cole prepared to make a running start.

"Begin!" Chen shouted again, and Cole was off. Just as he expected, his opponents didn't venture as far onto the bridge – only one came out to meet him in the center, and Cole was able to stun him with a punch to the gut and pass around him. He was already prepared for the sword that came at his head from one of the waiting opponents, and he blasted that one back with a mound of dirt. He didn't bother taking care of the one with the spear, and instead shot dirt down underneath his feet to boost him up to the top of the hill.

Cole grabbed the Jade Blade as soon as he saw its golden handle. He turned around and leaped back onto the bridge.

The bridge rocked under his feet as he landed and began to run. He only realized that one end of one of the ropes had snapped as soon as he started to tip. He threw the Jade Blade at the end and dropped to the twisting surface of the bridge to keep from falling fifty feet to certain death.

But the Jade Blade had other ideas. As he grabbed at the ropes to try to pull himself back up, the Jade Blade cut the other end of the thin rope holding the bridge.

He tried to grab the boards. In one last, desperate move, he tried to grab one of the boards hanging from the other rope.

But the sudden force snapped the rope.

The rope fell, and Cole fell with it.

Jay's world slowed down.

He heard screaming, but he didn't know where the sound was coming from. He didn't want to know.

He just watched the black-clothed body tumble down through the air, like the first spiraling snowflake from a winter storm.

Cole made eye contact with him several times. Maybe he was just looking in their direction, but Jay didn't care. He didn't care.

For a moment, it looked like Cole was waving goodbye.

Jay ran before he saw the body hit the lava. He couldn't hear anything but the screaming. He felt his footfalls on the dirt but he didn't know where he was running but away, away, away.

He couldn't keep running.

A low-hanging vine strewn across the narrow path tripped him. Jay fell on his face but he didn't care. He ripped the tiny radio out of his pocket and he didn't care if he broke it he just needed to scream and hope that someone far away would be around to hear it.

"We need to go home!" he screamed at the tiny microphone. "We never should have come here, this was a bad idea and now we can't fix it and, and, and –"

"Jay?" Nya's voice. Nya's voice came out of the little transmitter and he didn't know what he thought about that anymore because he couldn't think anymore. "Jay, what happened?"

"JAY!" Kai's voice. "JAY, COME BACK!"

"WHERE ARE YOU?" Lloyd's voice.

Two voices missing, two voices that would never speak again, and he couldn't deal with that now. He couldn't think about it, he couldn't handle it, he didn't want to see that one died of fire and the other of ice, and wasn't there some sort of poem about that how ironic was that.

"HE'S DEAD!" he screamed again. "COLE'S DEAD! AND IT'S ALL MY FAULT!"

His vision was blurry and he couldn't tell what he was seeing but there came the sound of branches cracking in the bushes and then there were red feet and then he was being pulled up by his shoulders and he was being held by one of his last surviving friends and he was crying on Kai's shoulder and he hated crying but he couldn't stop and it didn't feel right to stop and Kai was crushing him in a hug and he was holding on to Kai for dear life because he couldn't stand up and both of them were crying and then he was laughing because with the way things were going he was going to die next and then Kai and Lloyd would be alone and it'd be all his fault again and then Lloyd would go home with a worthless cash prize and two caskets and a bucket of lava and one last fragile piece of the first friend to die.

More footsteps came from the bushes. Jay couldn't even see Lloyd's face through his tears, but he couldn't find it in himself to wipe his eyes and try to pretend that everything was fine.

Because nothing was 'fine' anymore.

Cole was dead.

And it was Jay's fault.

The stars shone brightly in the sky, distant and cold. A steady sea breeze blew through the large sandy mountaintop clearing. A pile of reeds and small branches sitting in the center of the clearing shivered slightly in the wind.

The ceremony had been Lloyd's idea; the location had been Jay's. Kai was the one who actually had to say the goodbye.

But he couldn't think. He'd had two or three weeks to prepare a speech for Zane's funeral. The grief had still been strong, but it hadn't been suffocating like this was. The quiet white noise from Lloyd's tiny radio was screeching in his ears. He couldn't focus. Nothing was coming.

So instead, Kai was honest.

"You deserve better than this, Cole," he said, lowering his gaze to the reed pile. "You didn't deserve to – to die here. This – you deserve more than this. You deserve more than a pile of reeds on this mountain."

Lloyd grabbed Kai's hand slowly, and Kai squeezed it softly. Jay's hand came up a moment later, and he grabbed it, too.

"You were our brother," he continued. "No… You are our brother. And – and someday we'll see you again. Someday… we'll be together again."

He couldn't say any more. If he said anything else he'd crack. He had to be strong for Jay. He had to be strong for Lloyd, for god's sake.

Kai dropped both of the hands he was holding and cupped his own in front of him. A tiny orange flame, a single light in the darkness, sprung up from his palms. He walked forward with the tiny light in his hands, sheltering it from the wind to prevent the little fire – their last hope – from being snuffed out.

"Goodbye," he whispered, and dropped the light.

The liquid flame fell through the air, twirling in the wind, and then it hit the reeds. The entire pile was ablaze in an instant. Kai had to step back to avoid the suffocating smoke. He walked back to where the other two were standing, and together, the three of them sat down to watch the fire die.

The wind could not kill the fire now; it was sustaining itself on the reeds, burning with a raging speed. As it devoured the reeds, it let off tremendous amounts of smoke and ash. The wind stole the little fragments and ran with them to the horizon, spreading them across thousands of miles of sea.

The fire fought to hang on to its life-source, but it was in vain. The reeds and leaves had all burned away; there were only a few narrow branches sustaining it now. The flames slowly began to die as they ate the last of what they had been given.

"…We'll be there in five days," Nya whispered through the radio. Kai had forgotten it was even on. "We're going to land on the uninhabited side of the island at midnight. Don't – don't die, okay?"

"No promises, sis," Kai said, turning his gaze back to the fire.

He turned the radio off, and the three survivors waited for the fire to burn out.

(A/N): Scream at me with your pitiful "what-have-you-done"s and "how-could-you"s, and then wait two weeks for Chapter Eight. And then realize that this was merely the start of the suffering. Go ahead. I dare you.

Seriously, though. Everything goes downhill from here. Suffice to say, there have been no permanent changes to any characters... yet. The permanent changes (or, rather, one huge permanent change which will forever differentiate this character from their canon self - and no, I am not counting my!Turner vs. canon!Turner in this) come in the next chapter. Make of that what you will.

On the other hand, hoo boy, this chapter was quite a honker, wasn't it? 4061 words without this A/N. It's okay, though - Chapter Eight, which has been finished since the week before I posted Chapter Five, weighs in at 5022 words without any A/Ns, which makes it the longest one-part thing I've ever written. On top of that, it's going to have an A/N that will probably amount to a total of about... 1000 words, perhaps? The reason for that is mostly because Chapter Eight is Headcanon City, and is the moment where I start to say "Screw canon" and make up my own little extra Serpentine Lore, magic, etc. etc. etc.

Chapter Eight is also incredibly violent, so I basically have two choices: put a huge A/N at the top of the chapter listing some various safe-words in case anyone gets super uncomfortable with some of what happens (guys there's like self-cannibalism and stuff in there okay), or up the rating to M (which I would prefer not to do, since it wouldn't display in the archive by default - not to mention the fact that Ninjago's M-rated fanfics are almost exclusively porn and I'd rather not associate TSC with that kind of stuff). I'll figure that out when we get there.

This chapter was obviously The Last Goodbye by Billy Boyd, and the next chapter is going to be Blue Lips by Regina Spektor!

FYI: For those of you that have not read Chapter Eight on Tumblr already, I would advise you to not visit my writing Tumblr under any circumstances, because there are tons of untagged/exposed spoilers. You'll get Chapter Eight in two weeks, anyway, and I appreciate the reviews on here more than the likes and occasional reblogs on Tumblr. :)

Anyway, what with Chapter Eight being already written, I now have a huge amount of time to build up a nice writing backlog, so that'll be good. I'll probably be able to get done with at least Nine and Ten if not Eleven, after which the angsty part of Act Two is going to be winding down and the suspense-building-action part of Act Two is going to be starting up.

If you've already lost all hope about this fic having a happy ending, though, I'll tell you three things:

1. It does have a happy ending.

2. Happiness and death are relative terms.

3. The next chapter starts immediately after the fourth POV in this chapter (aka, Cole's).

See you in two weeks~