Chapter Nine: I'll Try
My whole world is changing; I don't know where to turn
I can't leave you waiting, but I can't stay and watch the city burn…
"In light of recent events," Chen began slowly, hanging his head over his folded hands, "I have decided to declare this to be the first of three days of mourning for the lost Master of Earth."
Chen was dressed from head to toe in black, as opposed to his usual royal purple. Jay simultaneously appreciated that and wanted to slap him for it. Chen didn't deserve to wear Cole's color.
Not even Jay did, but he still kept the ribbon of black fabric tied around his wrist. Kai and Lloyd had similar ones wrapped around their own.
Maybe they'd broken into Cole's room after they came back from the little funeral they'd held. Maybe they'd torn a long strip off the edge of one of the black sheets, and ripped that into four pieces. Maybe one of the pieces was still in Kai's pocket, waiting for the moment when they would find Zane and tell him what had happened to Cole.
Maybe Chen either didn't know about the break-in or didn't judge them for it if he did.
And maybe, though the others had scolded him for it, Jay had briefly questioned why they were cutting the strip of fabric into four pieces.
Because as far as Jay was concerned, they didn't have to waste any time trying to find Zane, because he was probably in the same sorry state Cole was:
Dead. Dead, and never coming back.
And Jay just wanted to go home.
Jay just wanted to go home, cry, get evicted from his apartment because he hadn't paid and now couldn't pay his rent, cry some more, find his parents, cry again without explaining anything, move on with his stupid life, and never mention any of what had happened ever again.
Heck, maybe he'd take his anger out on Kai's illegal fighting ring. He hadn't wanted to fight Cole head-to-head because he'd been afraid that they'd hurt each other, but now that all of that was over and done with and Jay had no way to fix the horrible way he'd betrayed his best friends, Jay wanted blood.
"As such, to properly respect this loss, I have adjusted the Tournament schedule to allow for this time to mourn," Chen continued, looking up from his hands.
Jay met Chen's eyes and didn't look away. He wanted Chen to know that he didn't want an apology.
He didn't want Chen to be nice. He didn't want Chen to go out of his way to help them. He didn't want compensation for what they'd lost.
Jay wanted his best friend back.
But Chen couldn't give him that, so Jay stared at him and didn't blink until Chen looked away instead.
"The Tournament will resume in three days' time," Chen announced. "Until then, there will be no scheduled events, and all competitors are free to do as they please so long as they do not break any of the rules associated with the Tournament. We should all use this time to reflect and recover from this shock, such that we might return to normal and resume our lives."
Chen was being nice, and Jay wanted to hate him for it.
He knew he couldn't, though. Jay couldn't hate Chen for Cole's death. He could hate Chen for the Tournament – that was entirely Chen's doing – but it felt empty to hate him for that. Chen hadn't intended for anyone to die…
The tiny, paranoid part of his mind tried to remind him of something, but Jay blocked it. He counted the seconds until Chen turned around and left the room through his usual back door, and then the seconds until the door finally swung shut again, and then the seconds until Kai hit him on the shoulder to snap him back to reality.
And that reality was this: Jay had betrayed his best friends. He had struck a deal with Chen to – to what? What would it have accomplished either way? – do something, and in the process, he'd rung the death toll for his best friend. Cole, his first true friend, the one that he fought with a lot, but it wasn't fair to call it fighting because it was just…
Just…
Why did it matter anymore?
Kai hit his shoulder again and this time Jay actually turned to look at him. Kai was saying something, but Jay couldn't hear him over the blood pounding in his ears.
Kai tried to get him to go somewhere with him and Lloyd, but Jay shook his head and pushed the two of them away. When Lloyd tried to grab him again, he ran out of the room. He knew he needed to be by himself right now.
He'd betrayed them once. If he stayed with them, he'd probably do it again.
Now that Chen had changed the rules slightly, Jay had free access to almost everywhere in Chen's palace. The only place that still appeared to be off limits was behind the door Chen kept disappearing into, but Jay didn't care about that right now.
He wandered aimlessly through the halls, looking over his shoulder every now and then to make sure Kai and Lloyd had decided to leave him alone. Eventually, he stumbled upon a side door leading out into a broken courtyard. A small folding sign indicated that the area was under construction due to some damage that had occurred earlier that week. Looking around the area, with its scorched tiles, eroded walls and dead weeds, Jay absently wondered if it had anything to do with Kai's fight that he still wouldn't talk to them about.
Jay decided that it would be the perfect place to just be alone for a little while. He ducked behind a pile of rubble near the back and sat down next to it. When he turned to look back over his shoulder, he couldn't see the entrance, which meant that nobody could see him, either.
The sun beat down on him overhead, but he didn't try to find shade. The oppressive heat and slowly gnawing pain of a sunburn growing on the back of his neck helped him think.
Cole was dead.
He didn't really want to think about it anymore, but the thought bit him and wouldn't release its jaws. Cole was dead, and what did that mean to him?
…He could figure that out later.
The sun stared down at him with its condemning light, waiting for him to admit his crimes.
He couldn't look up.
The silent courtyard around him filled with spirits, standing and watching.
He wouldn't look up.
The devious snake of guilt wrapped around his chest, coiling slowly and steadily.
If he looked up, he'd…
He'd…
"…You look like you're going to pass out."
Jay jumped at the voice and looked around quickly. His eyes finally settled on a strange man with an even stranger hairstyle standing in the opposite corner of the courtyard.
He didn't understand how the man could have seen him. Even from where he was standing now, Jay still had to stand up to see him. "How did you –"
"I followed you out of there," the man answered before he even finished asking the question. "I had to talk to at least one of you, and the other two disappeared into the crowd after the scene you made back there. It was an either/or situation, and I figured it would be easier to find you."
"…I checked for people following me," Jay said quietly. "I checked a lot. And there's nowhere to hide in these hallways – they're all completely straight. No corners, no vases, no statues to hide behind. And then I hid back here where nobody should have been able to see me."
The stranger didn't answer. He turned his attention to the ground, and kicked at some of the dead weeds.
"…How did you really find me?"
The man sighed and walked over to his corner behind the rubble. "Master of Mind. My friends call me Neuro."
He offered a hand to shake, but Jay ignored it. They stood in silence for a few moments before the Master of Mind understood and pulled his hand away.
"…So you followed my thoughts," Jay began again. "How long –"
"About five minutes," Neuro said, answering Jay's question before he finished asking it. Jay wasn't sure whether or not he was annoyed with that. "I… didn't hear everything, if it… makes you feel better."
Jay sighed. "It's not like it makes much of a difference," he said. "Why are you here?"
"I have to talk to one of you –"
"One of who?"
"Your group," Neuro said. "You, or Kai, or Lloyd."
Jay glared at him. "How did you know our names?"
The Master of Mind tapped his head with one finger and raised his other hand defensively. "Though I didn't get them from you first, if you care."
"Who, then?" Jay asked suspiciously.
Neuro turned away and leaned on one of the broken walls. "It was during the first wildcard elimination. We fought over a Jade Blade on one of the upper floors in the palace. He saw another one behind him, I told him to grab it, and we truced."
"So, Lloyd," Jay concluded. "What's so –"
"No," Neuro whispered very quietly. "The… other one."
That… didn't add up right, Jay thought. Kai had been fighting in this courtyard, probably, and he'd been the last one –
Oh.
"It's hard to explain my powers to someone who's never experienced them for themselves," the Master of Mind continued. "It's like riding a bike, kind of. The more you do it, the better you get at it."
Jay wasn't…
"But it's a little different than that – it's like every mind is a different bike. It's still a bike, but every bike has different brakes, different ways to switch gears –"
Jay didn't…
"So the more I ride a specific bike, or look into a specific mind, the better I get at it."
Jay was going to…
"So when he… your friend…"
If he heard any more of this…
"When he fell…"
He couldn't handle this now…
"I heard –"
"Stop it," Jay growled.
Neuro turned to look at him. "What?"
"Stop. It," he repeated, fixing the other Elemental Master with a hard stare.
"I haven't even told you the important part yet," Neuro said. "Look, don't shoot the messenger, I'm just –"
Jay clenched his jaw. "Don't give me hope," he said, spitting the last word out like it was a vile taste in his mouth. "I didn't watch him die because I knew that I would never be able to forgive myself if I did."
Neuro just stared at him.
"And do I regret it now?" he asked. The rhetorical question struck Neuro right between the eyes, freezing him in place. "Yes. Yes, I do. Because now I don't know whether two of my friends are dead. And even if there's still a shred of hope left for the other one, there definitely isn't any left here."
The Master of Mind continued to stare at him silently. Whether he wanted to hear it or not, Jay kept going.
"I could have done something back there," Jay whispered. "I don't know what. But probably something really stupid. Probably something that wouldn't have done anybody any good. Maybe even something that would result in an empty bracket lasting all the way to round three. But it's pointless now."
Neuro shuffled his feet on the tiles. Jay couldn't get a good read on how the other Master was reacting to all of this, but he didn't really care. He turned away from the other man and crossed his arms.
"So if you're going to give me hope, just forget it," he concluded. "I've lost all of mine already. If you want to help me, then leave."
Neuro looked conflicted for a moment, and Jay felt accomplished finally getting a read on the mysterious man. Finally, the other man said something.
"If I can't give you hope," Neuro said carefully, "Then can I just talk to you instead?"
"About what?" Jay asked, turning around.
"Anything you want," Neuro answered. "I… owe you," he suggested vaguely.
He frowned and turned away. "Why should I talk to you?"
"You need someone to talk to," Neuro continued. "You're trying to deal with everything, but you're not sure how to take it. You can't talk to your friends because you're not sure whether they can trust you. You need a stranger to talk to, someone who doesn't have anything at stake here, because keeping it all bottled up won't help anything in the long term."
Jay turned away and crossed his arms tighter against his chest. Neuro set a hand on his shoulder.
"If I can't give you hope," Neuro whispered, "Can I at least help you like this?"
Jay's composure finally broke.
Turner never wanted to contact Chen under usual circumstances. He was more than content in his little underground section of the island, and unless if it was absolutely necessary, he never left his little complex. Turner remained isolated in his own little world, away from the rest of his brethren, unless if it was absolutely necessary.
And, considering how extraordinarily unusual the current circumstances were, and how necessary it was to inform Chen of what he'd done, Turner was forced to do something that he had only done perhaps once or twice since he had banished himself to his own little section of the gigantic tunnel system.
Turner barely remembered the layout of some of these further tunnels, though he did at least know that he was heading in the right general direction. Some of the others passing him threw disgusted glances in his direction as he passed through the Den toward Chen's aboveground palace, but that was all. As soon as he found the side-tunnel that connected the Den to the palace, the traffic was reduced to nothing and he no longer needed to fear any attempts on his life.
Some sort of bright light began streaming in from somewhere in the tunnel and nearly blinded his one usable eye. The red-lensed goggles he wore only helped reduce the light to a certain extent; the rest of it just burned until his eye finally adjusted and he was able to see the damage to the tunnel.
The breach appeared to have been hastily half-sealed. Turner wasn't sure whether it was important or not, so he paid it no mind; he continued on his way after he let his eye adjust to the darkness again.
He finally reached the dead end after what felt like far too long, and tapped the lightly-glowing mark on the back of the false wall. It slid to the side to grant him access to the inner palace.
The interior lighting wasn't as bright as the sunlight pouring through the breach in the tunnel wall had been, but he still had to take a moment to let his eye adjust and remember where Chen's office was. He set off after a moment and eventually found exactly who he was looking for engaged in a heated discussion.
"I'm not going to give you a choice in this, Clouse," Chen said, spitting the name. "You go by your own free will or I drag you there, do you understand? - Oh, Turner. What a pleasant surprise."
Turner fidgeted slightly under Chen's gaze, and his eye settled on the vague, blurry form that must have been Clouse standing in the corner of the room. "I'd like to talk to you, Chen," Turner said. He gestured at what he assumed to be Clouse with his chin. "Alone."
Chen dismissed his favored servant with a wave of his hand and motioned for Turner to come in and shut the door. "Have you any progress to report, Turner?" Chen said, grinning nastily.
"I'd rather call it… a development," Turner conceded. "I finally got the test subject you've been begging me for."
"Wonderful," Chen said, uninterested. "Have you performed the procedure?"
"Yes."
"Total time?"
"Six hours, but –"
"And the results?"
"…Inconclusive."
Chen scowled. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means," Turner said, "That I found my subject dying in the bottom of a pool with what I could only assume to be half-hardened lava in his throat, completely unconscious, and I had to perform the procedure to save his life."
"So?"
Turner took a deep breath. "When he woke up, he… severely mauled himself. If I had gotten there even a few minutes later, he would have been dead."
Chen became eerily still after Turner made his declaration, locking his gaze on Turner with an expression that Turner wasn't able to read. When he couldn't stand the silence anymore, he broke the stare to look at the floor and continued.
"I don't know what's wrong," he said very quietly. He could feel Chen's ice-cold gaze still focused on him, but he didn't look up again. "The way I see it, it's either the fact that he was half-dead and disoriented when I started the operation, or the operation itself, or a combination of both. Either way, I had to use the last of our Venomari venom supply to put him to sleep, and he's going to be out for another day or so."
Turner looked up at where Chen had been sitting, only to find him examining files in one of the cabinets nearby. Turner hadn't even heard him move, which he found odd –
"We had four liters of that left," Chen said, still turned away from him. Turner was still reeling. "Half a liter or less should have been enough to put him out. If you're selling it on the black market to my soldiers –"
"Half a liter only works if you have a choice on where to use it," Turner shot back, lacing his words with venom. "He stopped breathing for three minutes. I gave him a shot of adrenaline, and once I could hear his heartbeat again, I gave him the Venomari venom via injection."
Chen continued glaring at him, but didn't say anything, because he knew that Turner was right.
Serpentine venoms all worked a little bit differently: the Constrictai's caused paralysis; the Hypnobrai's increased the effectiveness of their hypnosis; the Fangpyre's could convert other life forms into new members of the Serpentine; and the Venomari's either caused intense hallucinations or a deep, dreamless sleep, depending on the dose.
The Constrictai and Fangpyre could only use their venom with bites, but the Venomari and Hypnobrai had options to either bite or spray the venom as an aerosol-like liquid through special glands hidden near their fangs. It was an evolutionary quirk that made their powers all the more ferocious and convenient, as their venoms were most effective in the eyes and respiratory systems.
Turner hadn't necessarily needed to use a full liter of Fangpyre venom during the initial operation, but he needed it to be over as quickly as possible. He could have made do with half a liter or less, but they'd had plenty on hand.
But when his patient had stopped breathing, and his veins filled with air because he was bleeding far too much far, far too quickly, he'd had no choice but to use all four liters of the Venomari venom, because it wasn't anywhere near as effective when injected.
And even though the odds were against it all, and every passing hour brought more and more complications…
Far away, across the island, in a white-walled prison cell that he'd had to clean the red out of…
"He's still alive," Turner whispered, turning back to Chen. "I have no idea how, at this point, but he's still alive."
Chen shut the filing cabinet and turned around to look at Turner without saying anything. Turner ignored his aggressive stance and continued his thought.
"He's not going to last much longer if he doesn't get one," Turner insisted. "We're out of Venomari venom. As soon as he wakes up, all bets are off. If you can't get Clouse to consent, he may very well end up in the same state this one is in."
Chen grinned smugly. "Let him take yours."
"You know what that would do," Turner threatened. "If I die, you can't keep Clouse."
That remark forced Chen into silence for a moment before he finally responded. "So, he needs an amulet. Make one for him and be done with it."
"There's not enough time for that."
"I don't care if there's not enough time," Chen growled. "You –"
"– are going to let him use yours, until Clouse can fashion you a new one," Turner finished.
"I refuse."
"Then you have no favorite servant in the end."
Chen clenched his jaw and bared his teeth at Turner. "…Fine," he said, reaching inside his shirt. He pulled out an object a moment later, untying the black cord holding it from around his neck and setting it on the table.
It was a round piece of solid ivory. A gold hoop threading through a hole in the ivory kept the chunk attacked to the chord. On the front side was an elaborate inlay of obsidian and amethyst that depicted, in the geometric style of their ancestors, the reason why Turner's patient had mauled himself.
The Anacondrai on the pendant smiled, and the Anacondrai sitting across the desk from Turner mentally fixed the length of his teeth, the glow of his eyes, and the color of his skin without the assistance of the amulet.
"Leave," Chen said forcefully.
Turner grabbed the amulet and left, taking the long trek back through the Den of All Snakes alone.
"We should have installed the engines," Nya insisted. "We should have waited –"
"We couldn't wait," Garmadon said, standing next to her at the ship's railing. "If we waited, we would make things worse."
"But is that the case for the radio hub?" Nya said, staring at Garmadon. When he didn't turn to look at her and didn't answer, she turned her face back to the waves. "We can't even contact them now. We're all out of the loop."
Garmadon slowly blew out a breath next to her before speaking. "We can't worry about it now," he whispered. "Besides, even if they get separated, they should still have their radios. They can contact each other – that's most important."
Nya closed her eyes very slowly and leaned on the railing for support. "No, they can't," she admitted.
Garmadon's eyes widened and he turned towards her. "What?"
"Their radios can only transmit signals to and receive signals from the hub," Nya explained. "Without someone to approve the connections at the hub…"
She trailed off slowly, letting Garmadon process the words himself. When Garmadon turned his sad gaze back at her, she didn't know what to say.
"We can't worry about it now, but…" Garmadon said. He looked around for a moment and dropped his voice, becoming almost completely silent. "Please… don't tell him. He… can't handle it at this point…"
She didn't need to hear that. "I won't," she promised.
Nya had watched Wu's face crumble when they gave him the news.
Nya didn't want to see that again.
Kai had seen things.
Kai had watched his mother die. He had been six years old. Nya had been three – she claimed that she didn't remember it, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't.
He'd seen it happen in slow-motion. One day, his mother had been perfectly fine. The next, she'd been wasting away in bed, and the local doctors had no idea what was wrong.
His dad did, though. Kai's dad, forced to become a single parent, temporarily abandoned his job, and whatever time he didn't spend taking care of Kai and Nya, he used to just sit outside. Whenever Kai would ask why, he would respond that he was 'waiting for someone'.
Eventually, 'someone' showed up, and Kai hid around the corner inside the house to listen to their conversation. "My wife is wasting away upstairs, and I have two kids to take care of now!" his dad had screamed. "I'll keep your damned map, but I can't help you anymore!"
It took him a week to gather the guts to ask his dad to explain what had happened.
"Well," his dad had said, "I can't be with 'that kind' of people anymore. I've got a target painted on my back from working with them, and I can't get rid of that, but I have to take care of you and Nya."
"What do you mean, a target?" Kai had asked.
"Someday, you'll understand," he'd answered. "Until then, I have to keep this from happening to you."
When his mother finally closed her eyes for the last time, Nya was sitting on the pillow next to her mother's face, not quite understanding the situation; Kai was holding the hand his mother had given to him, wondering why it was suddenly so cold; and their father had been sitting on a stool next to her bed, clutching her other hand with exhausted, fearless beads of pure sorrow streaming down his face.
And then, of course, Kai could definitely remember the day when he was thirteen and his dad never came home.
He told everyone their father was dead because it was easier to say that than that he'd been gone for one month, three months, three years, five years, three-quarters of a decade. But he never was that blunt with his little sister.
She'd probably forgotten it by now, but Kai had told her that their dad would come back someday.
Kai had seen things. Kai was no stranger to death of family members, of friends. He knew how to break down the pain into smaller pieces that were easier to pack away and hide.
So did Lloyd, for the most part. He never had a proper childhood at the orphanage, and he'd spent all of his childhood without either of his parents consistently around. Kai saw that Lloyd was hurt by the fact that his childhood was literally taken from him, and Kai could appreciate and sympathize with that in a much less literal sense.
But Jay… did not.
Kai thought Jay was going to strangle Chen earlier, the way he'd stood there with his jaw locked and eyes wide and breaths hissing through his clenched teeth. Jay had glared at Chen with such ferocity that Chen, the legendary Master Chen, the ferocious war criminal who had fought against humanity for fun, had been forced to break the gaze first, and Jay had kept staring at where Chen had been until Kai hit him to make him stop.
Jay had run off somewhere after that, but Kai had no idea where, and after what Lloyd had told him just now, Kai wasn't sure if he should try to find Jay at all.
Lloyd was curled up next to Kai on the couch in Kai's room. Kai hadn't known how to react to what Lloyd said, so he just leaned back against the back of the couch and said nothing.
"What are we going to do?" Lloyd whispered, but Kai couldn't get his mind off the earlier subject.
Lloyd was scared of Jay.
Lloyd was scared of Jay because while Jay was probably just as sad and confused as the Lloyd and Kai were, he expressed it with rage.
Lloyd was scared of Jay because Jay didn't get angry without a reason, and Jay was absolutely furious at six people now: Lloyd, Kai, Zane, Cole, Chen, and himself.
Lloyd was scared of Jay because Jay wasn't himself anymore, and Lloyd wasn't sure if Jay would ever be himself again.
Lloyd was scared, and Jay was angry, and Kai was just…
Kai had seen things. He'd seen change come quickly and leave nothing behind. He'd lost both of his parents to mysterious circumstances and he'd carried on.
But now…
Now, he was thirteen again, trying to comfort a scared child, a close sibling, a good friend.
Someone that he knew would be crushed by the truth of it all.
"Everything's going to be okay," Kai whispered back. "It's all going to be okay…"
But he couldn't stop his tears, and it was enough to show that he was lying.
(A/N): JESUS CHRIST JAY CALM YOUR TITS. YOU GOT SIX PAGES OUT OF AN ELEVEN PAGE DOCUMENT OH MY GOD
The angst is not over yet, my friends! Oh, no, we're just beginning the angst! Every single chapter until the very last one is going to have some amount of angst in it! Hooray for angst over dead people!
...Except it's even worse than that, because they're not dead. Oh yes, Cole is in a very sorry state right about now. We'll be seeing him in the next chapter~
For that matter, does anyone remember that Zane still exists? Because I almost didn't. We're going to be checking in on him, too, and Pythor is gonna do more suspicious things.
Anyway, the song for this chapter was I'll Try by Jonatha Brooke. Next chapter is going to be And So It Goes by Billy Joel. After Chapter 10, I think we'll be transitioning into the more active part of Act 2, in which we'll be getting into more of the pop/rock stuff with good beats. It's going to be fun picking songs for that section~
Basically, we've got one more chapter of pure angst and then we have to get the show on the road again. I can and will make Cole's arc last that long underground, but I'm not sure if everybody else has enough stamina to give even another two chapters. I'm just going to go for one more at this point, and then we get into the fighting again.
AND WHEN DID THIS BECOME MY LONGEST STORY WHAT I WAS NOT INFORMED OF THIS
For those of you who may or may not be interested, clumping all of these rest days together was actually a last-minute change. It ultimately makes more sense once we kick off Kai's arc, though, which is why I changed it. :)