Hm? Oh, don't mind me, I'm just strangling my brain, because this was supposed to be A SHORT ONESHOT! So yeah, this has three parts now, apparently. I'm almost done with the last one so I should post it in a couple days. Let Jay's shenanigans avert your wrath!

Enjoy

Jay's head was pounding when he woke up, and really, he wasn't even surprised. Sure, it took him a moment to remember exactly why it was pounding this time - a sword to the head of all things - but it was far from the first time he woke up with headache. At this point, he was almost expecting it whenever he woke up elsewhere than in his bed.

He slowly peeled his eyes open, grimacing at the sharp light that only escalated his headache. Why do so many captors feel the need to shine a bright light in his face?

He waited for his eyes to adjust, slowly putting his thoughts in order in the meantime.

Since he was alive and apparently tied up - he tried and, yep, his hands were suspended above his head, and he couldn't move his legs much - the soldiers from before must have captured him. They obviously knew the other ninja, and not in a good way, meaning it wasn't a stretch to assume he was going to be used against them in some way. The woman that called herself queen Beatrice or something seemed to hate his friends in particular.

Although the thought of being used as blackmail was demoralising, Jay couldn't help but feel excited. One way or another, that queen was still helping him contact the other ninja.

Soon, he would get to see his family again.

His eyes finally adjusted and he looked around, slowly and with half-lidded eyes to keep up the illusion that he was still unconscious.

From what he could see, he was in a cave, most likely one that the soldiers had been living in for a while, judging by the various equipment and remnants of food strewn about, a large smoldering fireplace, and the sleeping mats lined up along the wall. A strange mass of metal was piled up to Jay's left, almost as if someone kicked it there when it was no longer needed. Jay felt a tingling of power along his skin when he looked at it for too long, and wondered whether this was the weapon they were sent to find.

The tingle grew uncomfortable and he looked away.

The light that initially blinded him came from the entrance to the cave that was directly opposite him, where the sun was just dipping below the horizon.

He thought he could see some guards at the entrance, but it was hard to tell with the sun directly in his eyes. Nonetheless, the cave itself was empty.

That was quite an amateur move from his captors, but then again, it was kind of obvious he wasn't dealing with professionals. His kusarigama wasn't even taken away, it was still hidden in his suit for crying out loud! He almost felt sorry for these guys.

Once the last remnants of dizziness fell away, he gingerly tested his bonds. The ropes were tight, but if he dislocated his thumb, he could probably slip his hand out and the other would follow easily. It would hurt, but it shouldn't hinder his escape much.

So he had a way to escape. The question now was if he should actually attempt it. He didn't know anything about these new Merged Realms. If he didn't get eaten by something right away, who knew how long it would take him to find his way home. But he didn't really feel like waiting around for rescue either...

Before he could decide, sounds of people talking bounced off the walls in a faint echo. He had to turn his head as far as he could just to see where the conversation was coming from. It was a dark tunnel almost all the way behind him, which was why he hadn't noticed it before.

"...and we will have to make some preemptive countermeasures to make sure an uprising like this doesn't happen again. I don't want anyone like those ridiculous color-coded ninja to ruin my kingdom ever again."

Jay frowned when a chorus of agreements followed. The ninja had been called a lot of things, but ridiculous? That was simply not true. And did that person say uprising? Did his brothers stage an uprising without him there?!

As he was fuming at that thought, the white-haired woman from before emerged from the tunnel, flanked by a majority of the soldiers that were with her before. She noticed Jay was awake almost immediately and came to stand in front of him, hands on her hips and a victorious smirk on her face. She could be considered pretty, but something about her reminded Jay way too much of Harumi when her mask of goodness finally fell.

"I see you're finally awake, ninja, and just in time."

"Oh good, is it time for dinner? I'm starving," Jay quipped, deciding to mess with her a little. He felt satisfaction when her smirk dropped a little.

To his disappointment, she ignored his remark and instead turned a soldier that Jay recognised as the general. He wasn't wearing his mask anymore, but his medals gave him away.

"Has our messenger left already?" she asked, just loud enough to make it obvious this exchange was meant for Jay.

"Yes, queen Beatrix, just about an hour ago. But the way is long and he is on foot so it will most likely take him a couple days to get there."

Jay carefully filed that information for later. Since a soldier could reach the Monastery from where they were in days, if he, as a trained ninja, ran, he could probably get there in half the time. The fact remained however that he wouldn't know which way to go.

A loud smack returned him to reality and he saw with great surprise that the queen had slapped the general across the cheek. He couldn't understand why she did that, but what confused him even more was that no one else seemed surprised or angered by it.

"Next time I ask you a question, you answer it and nothing more. Understood?" Beatrix growled.

Jay couldn't see the soldier's face because of his mask, but when he spoke, his voice was just as even as before.

"Yes, good empress. My apologies."

Apparently satisfied with what she did, Beatrix turned back to the flabbergasted Jay. What in the First Master's name was wrong with these people?

"See? Because of you, soon, your ninja friends will be in my grasp," Beatrix continued boasting, drawing Jay's attention back to the situation at hand, "As long as you cooperate, I may consider even letting you talk to them when they get here."

"Uh huh, great. And when exactly are they getting here?" he cut her off, trying and failing to hide his excitement.

Beatrix's eyebrow twitched and a look of deep irritation and disappointment crept onto her face.

"You don't seem very concerned about the fact that you are currently my hostage."

"Lady, my friends and I have been captured sooo many times, you would have to do something totally crazy to faze me. You're not anything special so far," Jay laughed, waving his hand dismissively as best as he could in his current position.

If humans could actually produce steam when angry, Jay was sure that he wouldn't be able to see anymore with how much Beatrix was seething. A couple soldiers behind her moved strangely, and Jay was sure they were holding back laughs. That made him grin.

"I am going to use your friends to take back my throne, you pathetic clown!" Beatrix suddenly yelled, causing all the soldiers to step back, "I will use you as a bargaining chip to make them hunt down every single dragon in existence to power my machines, and then I will cut off your head in front of their eyes before I dispose of them one by one! And then nothing will stand in the way of Imperium conquering the world!"

Jay watched her with an unimpressed expression, trying very hard not to roll his eyes. She wasn't very good at withholding information, was she?

"Um, I said 'totally crazy' not 'standard supervillain rambling'," he said when she paused to take a breath, "I guess the idea with the dragons is actually kind of original, but-"

A flash of gold was all he saw before something once again collided with his temple and he fell back into unconsciousness

...

"She has quite the temper, doesn't she?" Jay groaned as he pushed back another bout of nausea.

The force with which Beatrix knocked him out after their talk left him with a concussion and a sizeable cut on his temple that needed bandaging so he wouldn't bleed out. For that reason he was untied and placed on one of the sleeping mats just as he was waking up. Now, two guards were standing by his sides, ready to spring into action if he tried to escape while he was being treated. Jay was quite sure he could easily overpower them, even while concussed, but he decided playing the waiting game would be better, even if it was testing his nearly nonexistent patience.

The medic cleaning up his wound flinched when he spoke, obviously not expecting him to talk to his captors.

"Queen Beatrix is our all-knowing monarch. There isn't a single bad quality about her," she said, sounding like a pre-programmed machine.

"Yeah? Well my head says otherwise," Jay rolled his eyes, and immediately regretted it when a pulsing pain flared behind his eyeballs.

He stayed quiet until she finished cleaning his wound and reached for gauze to wrap it up. She was so small and thin... Was she even an adult yet? How did someone like her end up in this... whatever these people were a part of.

"What's your name?" he asked, trying to keep his voice gentle. She still flinched hard enough to drop the gauze.

"H-Hanna," she answered after a moment of hesitation.

"Hanna. That's a cool name. I'm Jay, if you haven't heard," he answered with a smile, lowering his head to give her better access to his wound.

"Why are you here, Hanna?"

He felt her hands pause before she resumed wrapping up his wound.

"I came to serve my queen, as everyone should have. After the outsiders dethroned her, we rallied to help her reclaim her title. Such is the duty of any proper imperian citizen."

Jay frowned. The way this girl talked was setting him on edge. He had only seen this level of borderline fanaticism a couple times, always on the minions of the villains he and the other ninja faced.

What happened while he was gone?

"Do you mind telling me how your queen lost her throne? I've kinda been out of town for... a very long time," he chuckled humorlessly.

Hanna stayed quiet even longer this time, and Jay was beginning to fear he pushed his luck too much, but finally she started speaking again, first slow and unsure, but gradually gaining confidence.

The rest of the time she was treating him, she told him of all the things the ninja had done against Imperium, from the first time they crossed path with the Claws of Imperium, all the way up to the kingdom's ultimate fall. Although his friends were portrayed as the villains in her story, Jay could pretty easily pick out the pieces that were true and figure out the rest.

He smiled slightly. His family hadn't changed a bit. And Lloyd apparently had students now? Their little brother really grew up so fast.

Arin, Sora, and Wyldfyre... he couldn't wait to meet them.

"So you stayed with her even after she was exposed as a fraud and lost her throne?" he asked when Hanna was done with both with her story and bandaging his wound.

"She is not a fraud!" she immediately protested, "The evidence had to have been forged. Queen Beatrix would never..." She trailed off, like she got caught up in a memory. Jay considered her for a moment.

"Well, that's... brave. Really stupid, but brave. And this is how she treats you as thanks?" he asked, Jerking his head towards the general. The man was yet again wearing his mask, hiding the outline of a hand on his cheek.

Hanna exchanged a confused look with the soldiers guarding him.

"This is how we've always been treated," she said, "Queen Beatrix is our sun, moon, and stars. We are just tools at her disposal. How else should she treat us?"

Jay was pretty sure that if his eyes went any wider, they would fall out of his head.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe with basic human decency?" he flailed his arms around, but forced himself to calm down when he saw the motion was putting them on edge, "Not convincing you that you have no worth is a good start. Maybe a please or thank you every now and again? Look, you guys don't strike me as bad people, so you're obviously just extremely loyal to the wrong person. That kind of loyalty deserves more than to be thrown some scraps and get yelled at for every little thing."

He paused to take a breath, and saw to his satisfaction that his words were actually reaching not only Hanna, but also many other soldiers who started listening in from all around the cave. Before he could talk more, he noticed the general move towards them. He had to wonder why he didn't intervene before. He and Hanna were definitely talking loud enough for him to hear.

"Alright, that's enough. He's patched up so tie him back up already," the general said, drawing the attention of the other soldiers.

Jay momentarily considered bolting, but then just let them tie him up to the hook that was crudely hammered into the wall. He could see they were relieved he didn't fight them. As they all dispersed around the cave back to their usual task, he looked to the entrance of the cave, wondering how long it would take his friends to get to him.

No matter, he wouldn't just waste that time. He'd lost too much of it already while in the Administration.

And maybe, just maybe, these people weren't beyond help yet.

"Arin, even out your pace! You're going to tire yourself out right at the start again. Sora, lift your legs more, I know you can do better than this!"

Lloyd nodded in satisfaction when his students did their best to follow his instructions.

"Good, keep it up. Just a few more laps."

He looked back to stairs behind him where the other ninja were sitting, having finished up their own round of training earlier.

"Are you sure you don't want to join them, Wyldfyre?" he called to the girl sat between Kai and Cole, who had only recently returned to the Monastery, "It would do you good to work on your teamwork."

Wyldfyre's face scrunched up, and it occurred to Lloyd that she looked like a cat that someone was trying to convince to take a bath.

"Sweaty training on a boring training course is nothing for me. Real fighting is the only preparation I need for battle!"

Lloyd shrugged, "Suit yourself, but if you want to learn Spinjitzu, you'll probably have to go on the training course sooner or later."

He could see that intrigued her, but her pride still won out, and she continued sitting grumpily, although now she was watching the two other teens' training much more carefully.

Lloyd turned back to the training course and focused on correcting Arin's flailing movements and boosting Sora's ever-vanning confidence. Snippets of his friends' conversation occasionally drifted to him, and he felt more relaxed than he had since before the Merge. Everything felt prefect.

Almost perfect, his mind reminded him with the memory of a certain blue ninja, and the warm sunlight suddenly felt a lot dimmer.

Before his thoughts could go down this familiar dark path, a pounding on the Monastery's gate echoed through the courtyard. Lloyd looked to his friends with a raised eyebrow, silently asking if they were expecting anyone. All four shook their heads or shrugged.

Intrigued, Lloyd went over to the gate and pulled it open a crack. He barely managed to hide the way he jumped when he saw a man in imperian armor outside. They made peace with the distant city weeks ago, but his body still remembered the bruises and cuts soldiers in these uniforms gave him.

"Uh, can we help you?" he asked, head tilted to the side, "Is something wrong in the city? We told Rapton to call us directly if he needed anything."

The soldier gulped and looked to he stairs behind him. Something was strange. Didn't Imperium switch out their soldiers' uniforms after Beatrix's defeat? The man continued fidgeting uncomfortably, very obviously terrified but trying to put on a brave and arrogant front.

"I, um, I-I bring a message... f-from Queen B-Beatrix," he stammered.

Lloyd's eyes narrowed and he moved a hand behind his back to signal Danger to the other ninja.

Beatrix was alive?

"What kind of message?" he asked, his hard tone making the soldier flinch.

The man opened his mouth a couple times and then just started silently fumbling with the bag that was slung over his shoulder. Finally, he threw it to Lloyd's feet, and the contents came spilling out. There was a name tag of some sort, a slip of paper, and a punch card that was unpleasantly familiar to Lloyd, but his eyes were immediately drawn to the largest, and most definitely familiar thing.

A gold and blue kusarigama.

He slowly bent down to pick it up, his world narrowing on that single object. It was exactly the same, the handle was well-worn, with imprints of fingers and scratches in the same places he remembered. Even though it had been years, there was no doubt in his mind as to who the weapon belonged to.

"Q-Queen Beatrix wanted me to tell you that if you want your fr-friend back, you should come to the coordinates on that paper," the soldier continued, making the crucial mistake of drawing Lloyd's attention back to him.

"Lloyd, who is it?" Kai called from the courtyard, his words laced with worry. Quiet footsteps, meant for only Lloyd to hear, told him his team was standing ready behind him.

The realisation that there was more than one ninja in his immediate vicinity was enough to make the soldier take a step back. He met Lloyd's eyes again and finally realised they'd lost what little warmth was left in them.

"I-I'm just a m-m-messenger," he squeaked, "Y-you can't hurt-"

His words were cut off in an even louder scream when Lloyd grabbed the front of his chestplate and threw him inside the courtyard, slamming the door afterwards. The soldier scrambled to his feet, but wisely decided to stay down when he found himself in the middle of a circle of ninja, all with their weapons half drawn.

"You're a fool if you thought I would care about who or what you are after you showed me this," Lloyd growled as he stalked towards the soldier, one hand going to his sword while the other gripped Jay's kusarigama.

The soldier's eyes widened behind his mask, and he scrambled back, but was met with the sharp tip of Kai's sword. Lloyd's four friends watched the man with suspicion, seemingly understanding many things just by looking at him, but their looks changed completely when they noticed what Lloyd was holding.

"Lloyd, is that..." Cole started weakly, staring at the weapon. Lloyd gave a short and jerky nod, gripping the kusarigama even tighter. He could see understanding dawning on his friends, and then slowly transforming into variations of horror, rage, and carefully controlled fear.

Arin, Sora, and Wyldfyre had joined them by then, all keeping a wary distance from the soldier. They looked confused as to why the weapon was riling the ninja up so much, although Lloyd thought he saw a hint of recognition in Arin's eyes.

But everything else faded into the background when Nya suddenly lunged forward, stabbing her spear through the soldier's chestplate with a yell that was echoed by the man himself. The weapon effortlessly pierced through the metal and pinned the man, whose life undoubtedly flashed before his eyes at that moment, to the ground.

Lloyd could only guess whether the spear didn't catch his side along wwith the armor, but at that moment, he frankly didn't care.

"You will tell me everything, or you will die," Nya growled, bringing her face inches from the soldier's. Her spear let out a metallic screech when she twisted it in the chestplate to emphasize her point.

No one doubted the man would tell her anything she wanted.

Beatrix paced back and forth in the cave that was her bedroom, trying not to look at anything that made her angry (which was hard considering that was pretty much everything).

Her current predicament was completely unfair! She was a queen! She should be housed in the most lavish room of her palace, with servants fussing over her every need while her only concern was choosing which shoulder pads to wear that day. Instead, she was stuck in this damp, tiny cave, living off the same scraps as her worthless soldiers. All because of those stupid ninja.

But that would change soon.

She knew all too well that the ninjas' biggest weakness was their soft hearts, and the love they had for one another. Such a worthless thing. And now that she got her hands on a lost member of their team, she would use him to transform the very people that dethroned her into her own slaves. What better way would there be to take revenge?

Her plan was perfect, foolproof, and anything but not special!

She glared at the tunnel leading to the main cave. The ninja's voice was carrying through it just like it had almost nonstop for the past week. His constant quips, snarky comebacks, and general indifference to her threats were so vexing! And she thought his friends were the annoying ones.

Another shout, one that sounded distraught, carried through the tunnel and Beatrix smiled. At least her soldiers were truly putting him through hell like she ordered. It will only add to the other ninjas' suffering when they saw their friend broken by her.

Her revenge will be perfect.

...

"How can you guys be so mean?!" Jay whined, his voice bouncing off the walls of the cave.

The soldiers sitting around him laughed as he threw his cards down and crossed his arms to pout. It was the fourth game in a row that he was forced to fold first and everyone except him seemed to be enjoying it.

"I thought you ninja were supposed to be the unbeatable masters of elements," a tall man with long black hair elbowed Jay in the side, "What did you say you were again? The master of Blabber? MAster of losing?"

"Ha ha, very funny, Smithy," Jay rolled his eyes and shoved the man back, putting just enough of his lightning into the motion to make his hair turn into an uncontrollable ball.

When Smithy got back up, revealing his altered hairdo, the cave exploded with laughter.

"What? What are you guys laughing at?" Smithy looked around, completely confused and unaware of what happened to his hair. He reached up, first patting his face and then going to his hair, where his fingers immediately got tangled up in the floating mess, only adding to the general merriment.

Jay used the opportunity to glance into Hanna's cards while the girl was caught in a fit of uncontrollable giggles. If he could just get her to go all in on the next round-

The laughter cut off abruptly when the general entered the cave. The group sat awkwardly, cards in hand, waiting for the possible reprimanding. Jay was supposed to be tied up unless he was being interrogated, which this didn't look like at all.

Then Jay broke the silence when he waved at the man, smiling widely, "Hey Nox. Did the patrol go alright?"

The general gave him a dry look clearly saying 'You're still a prisoner, you know.' but then he nodded slightly, and the corners of his mouth even curled in a semblance of a smile. The tension in the cave lifted and the group around Jay returned to their game, teasing him about his losing streak. Soon enough, Jay's offended shrieks picked up again, even louder than before.

Behind them, the general turned away and steeled himself before walking into the cave Beatrix inhabited. Perhaps the news of their messanger's return would spare him punishment for his lateness.