Chapter 14: Am I Going to Die?

"Nya! Nya, wake up!"

The water ninja cracked her eyes open with a groan.

Cole was leaning over her, and he immediately sighed in relief. "Oh, thank goodness."

"What…?" She tried to sit, then gasped in pain when she put pressure on her arm.

"Don't move!" Cole warned her too late. "Your arm- it's broken."

She closed her eyes, letting her head fall against the ground again. "No…" She attempted to move it again, only to confirm Cole's hypothesis: it was definitely broken. Daring to look, she saw it bent at an unnatural angle, and she almost threw up. "What happened?" She asked instead to get her mind off the very, very sickening sight of her arm, closing her eyes once again.

"The bus was attacked," Cole told her, perhaps also trying to distract himself from the gross reality of the damage done to her body. "I saw the whole thing. It was… It was a huge scorpion. Monster size. It ripped the bus apart, and we fell into the canyon, but I don't know where the others are…,"

Nya let that sink in, then opened her eyes again. "Okay, we have to find everyone else."

"But, your arm-"

"You're going to have to set the bone."

Cole's eyes widened. "Nya, I can't! What if I hurt you?"

"I can take it," the water ninja reassured, determined now more than ever not to show weakness. Her family needed her. "Please, Cole, just set it so it's straight. I can't leave it like this."

Cole swallowed, then nodded resolutely. He gripped her upper arm with one hand, the other hovering over her wrist. "Ready?"

"Yes. Just-" she stopped him just before he did it. "Be gentle. No super strength please."

Cole hesitated before untying the blue sash from around her waist, folding it over twice, and holding it up to her face. "Bite down."

She did so, shutting her eyes.

"On three. One. Two-"

Nya screamed.

Jay's head snapped up, hearing Nya's scream. He'd woken up inside the bus- well, half of the bus. The huge scorpion creature had effortlessly ripped the thing in half and dropped it into the canyon. The front half of the bus lay several hundred feet away, and everyone had been thrown out of it. Except for him. Because of course, by virtue of some undeserved miracle, he had come out of the accident unscathed. Sure he had a few cuts and bruises and a headache to boot, but if Nya, one of the toughest people he knew, screamed like that, she must have been really, really hurt.

Jay pushed himself into a standing position and half-stumbled, half-crawled out of the bus, grimacing as broken glass lacerated his skin. Closer to the "entrance" of the bus he could now clearly hear both Nya's and Cole's voices though they sounded like they were coming from a distance.

Glancing about, he saw that the bus was leaning against an almost vertical rock wall, the top of which being where his friends' voices had come from. He placed his hands and feet on the footholds he could-

"Jay…,"

It was the first time he'd ever heard Kai whimper.

He turned on his heel to see his brother caught under the bus, his body from the waist down trapped by its gargantuan weight.

"Kai!" He shouted, rushing to the red ninja's side- then gasping in horror when he saw the blood pooling under him, soaking deep into the dirt.

Just like his dream.

Kai was biting his lip so hard that he broke the skin, and the scarlet droplets stood out against his deathly pale face. He reached blindly for Jay, and the blue ninja grabbed his hand and squeezed it in response.

"Oh my-," he whispered, eyes wide as he took stock of the situation. Kai was trapped. He was bleeding. Jay didn't know what to do. He couldn't get him out. Jay was useless and unreliable and-

"Am I going to.. to die?" Kai mumbled, face turned toward Jay though his eyes were squeezed shut in pain.

"What? No! Of course not!" He replied, though at this point he was afraid that… no, no, he couldn't kill another one of his brothers- but the bus was too heavy, he couldn't get Kai out, he couldn't…

But, Cole could.

"I'll go get Cole, alright?" He said hurriedly to Kai, moving to stand-

Kai's hand tightened around Jay's in the the tough guy equivalent of "Don't leave me."

"Okay, okay," he said. He tried in vain to quell his own panic, but he was pretty sure he only succeeded in scaring Kai more. Taking a deep breath, he called, "Cole! Nya! We need help! Kai's hurt!" His voice caught, but he repeated, "Kai's hurt bad!"

There was only a moment's hesitation before he heard, "Nya, just stay here! I'll get him. I promise."

Then Jay sagged in relief when he saw Cole sliding down the rock wall's face. The ghost took only one glance at Kai's inert body and Jay looking up at him pleadingly before crouching to get his hands under the bottom of the bus.

"Get ready to pull him out," is all he said before lifting with a pained grunt of exertion.

Jay hopped to his feet, and keeping his grip on Kai's hand and grabbing him under his other arm, barely managed to drag the dead weight of his brother out from the little space Cole had created.

Kai was free, and luckily it seemed that, while he had been trapped, most of the weight of the bus had not been resting on him. While Kai's legs and hips were whole and intact, now Jay saw that a huge gash stretched across his stomach and blood was gushing from it - so much blood- and this was all really Jay's fault wasn't it so-

The bus crashed back to the ground, and then Cole was kneeling by Kai, pressing both hands to the wound even as he hissed in pain when the liquid touched him.

"Jay, give me your belt," Cole commanded as he untied the red sash from around Kai's waist. When the fire ninja whimpered again, Cole patted his head before returning both hands to his midsection. "You're going to be okay, Kai. You're going to be totally okay, and you're going to have a really cool scar to show off to all the girls."

A weak chuckle from Kai. "Yeah…"

Cole comforted his brother when Jay couldn't. He knew what to do when Jay didn't. He was able where Jay was incompetent. He helped when Jay could only hurt those he loved, and now Kai was bleeding out like Cole was in that dream and it was Jay's fault and he couldn't even do-

"Jay!"

Jay's eyes snapped up to Cole's.

"Snap out of it! I need you here. Kai needs you here." His voice was level for his patient's sake, but his eyes betrayed the urgency of the situation.

Jay nodded.

"Good. Now, give me your belt, and go get Nya so she can wash out the wound." Cole ordered, still pressing both hands on Kai's stomach.

"Nya…," Kai muttered as Jay clumsily undid the knot in his belt and handed it to Cole. A sob caught in his throat, and tears leaked down his cheeks. "I want my sister."

"She's coming," Cole reassured soothingly, jerking his chin at Jay. The blue ninja pushed himself to his feet and hurried over to the ledge Cole came from- and gasped when he saw Nya had already slid halfway down it, struggling to steady herself with one hand while the other was supported in a makeshift sling fashioned from her blue sash.

"Nya!" He shouted, rushing to help her. "Your arm- what happened?!"

"It's broken," she replied matter-of-factly, ignoring the hand he offered her and stumbling the rest of the way to the ground on her own. "It doesn't matter. I can still manage. Kai needs me."

With that, she zoomed past him, pure water already pooling in her hand.

The next few minutes were some of the worst of Jay's life. Kai tried so hard to keep his composure, but no matter how gentle Nya tried to be, the water running over his open wound without the aid of a painkiller was agony. He screamed and cried while Nya apologized and Cole squeezed his hand and Jay sat by like a statue, pale, dumb, crying as he covered his ears to shut out Kai's screams…

Slowly he became aware of the fact that someone was hugging him and eventually he hugged Cole back, burying his face in his shoulder.

"It's over. Kai's alright."

He hesitantly raised his eyes to see Nya cradling her brother's head in her lap. Both Kai's and Jay's belts were tied tightly around the wound in place of gauze, but they seemed to be holding up.

"Sorry," Jay hiccupped, turning his face into Cole's shirt again. Sorry I'm no good under pressure, sorry the blood makes me sick, sorry he looked too much like that dream, sorry I almost killed him, sorry I killed you, sorry I killed you, sorry I killed you, sorry-

"It's alright," Cole tightened his grip on his brother. "But, I need to know if you're going to be okay."

"Yeah."

"Are you sure?"

Jay took a deep breath, nodding against Cole's chest. "Yeah."

"Guys?" Nya called, though she continued stroking Kai's hair. "Does anybody know where the others are? Zane, Lloyd, Morro? I didn't see anyone else."

Jay separated from Cole and shook his head miserably.

"We have to find them," the black ninja decided.

"How are we going to move Kai?" Nya asked, and the red ninja opened his eyes a slit at the mention of his name.

"I can walk," he insisted.

Nya whacked him very, very lightly on the shoulder. "Yeah, right," she said sarcastically, though she was beaming because Kai was well enough to make jokes.

"I'll carry him," Cole offered.

But, Jay couldn't help but think, even if Cole didn't get tired as a result of his super-strength, all that movement and jiggling couldn't be good for Kai's healing process, not to mention Cole needed to be ready to fight in case that giant scorpion monstrosity decided to return.

Searching about himself, he saw sand, rocks…, the carcass of the bus…

"I have an idea."

When Zane woke up, he was alone, on his back and being pecked by a bird.

"Ah!" He shouted and sat up, causing the bird to panic. It flew and landed on a rocky mound and watched him curiously from a good distance away.

He checked himself over for injuries and confirmed that, other than a few small dents, one particularly large dent in his arm, and a small crack in the corner of his optical sensor that was more irritating than obstructive, he was fully operational. He scanned his immediate surroundings… and confirmed that, save the bird, he was utterly and completely alone, without a sign of civilization or anything besides desert.

Before he passed out, he remembered catching only a glimpse of a monster. It was very clearly an arachnid with its eight huge legs; the imposing stinger suggested it was a scorpion. He attempted to analyze the scene to see if he could calculate his teammate's positions from how they'd fallen out of the bus to no avail. He had been sent careening through the windshield before any of his other friends had suffered the same fate.

He sighed, placing his head in his hands and trying to stifle the rising panic. He was totally out of his element here, and without even a clue as to where the others may be…

He started when he felt a tug on his sleeve and turned to see the bird right beside him now, cocking its head at him. Scrutinizing it at such close range, Zane realized it wasn't a vulture like he'd assumed in his first moments of wakefulness, but actually a falcon.

He smiled, reminded of his own falcon. He reached out a gentle hand and the bird let him pet its head. "Hello, my friend. Are you lost too?"

The bird cooed in response and nuzzled his palm.

Unlike every other organism that was native to this realm, this falcon didn't seem dead or ghostly in the slightest. Then again, it didn't look alive either. In fact, it looked almost exactly like…

As if guessing Zane's thoughts, the falcon's chest plate shifted and slid out of place, revealing that it was, in fact, a robot.

A robot that his father invented.

Using its beak, it dug in its chest cavity until it procured a flash drive, and this it presented to Zane.

The nindroid held out his palm and the bird deposited the flash drive with a cheerful caw.

Reverently, Zane turned it over and over again in his hands. "Thank you, my feathered friend." He said, patting the bird's head.

He plugged the flash drive into the port in the back of his head and caught his breath when his father appeared on the screen.

"Hello, Zane!" Dr. Julien greeted cheerfully. He was wearing his usual lab coat and standing in a cluttered, achingly familiar lab, speaking to the camera. "This is a pre-recorded message. If you are seeing this, that means you are… dead. I know, I know, it's a lot to take in, but it's really not so bad once you get here." He smiled warmly. "Besides, it means we will be together again."

Zane did not realize how much he wanted that until he saw his father, heard his father say those words.

"Everything's so disorganized here in the Departed Realm," Zane chuckled at the irony of the disdain, seeing the similarly disorganized environment his father was standing in, "so I've devised my own system to lead you to me. I've left several falcons stationed in the different areas of the Departed Realm to search for you whenever and wherever you may appear upon arrival. Once you are finished listening to this message, the falcon is programmed to guide you to my home. Or, should I say house?" He smiled, eyes shining with affection. "It will not be home until you get here."

Home.

Dr. Julien sighed, "The truth is I don't know if you'll ever receive this message. Since your consciousness is capable of being backed up on a separate hard drive, I don't know if you'll ever truly 'depart,' but… wherever you are, Zane, just know that I am so proud of everything you have done and that I love you more than you could ever know. I hope to see you soon."

Zane froze for a long time after the video disappeared from his field of vision. So long that the falcon pecked him a few times to urge him into motion.

Of course Zane had known that he was now in the same realm as his father, especially after reliving the time he had almost flipped his own memory to switch to forget the pain of losing him. But, it had been an abstract idea, a fleeting notion at best, because they were here to save Cole, not visit their loved ones. Lloyd had not mentioned Garmadon, nor Kai and Nya their parents, nor Cole his mother, so Zane had thought it best not to bring it up.

But, here was an actual, physical tie to his father, a bridge connecting them and making that fleeting notion a possibility.

Then again, his friends needed him. What if one of them was injured or worse? Besides, he could not leave them to wander aimlessly in the desert endlessly searching for him while he had gone gallivanting off toward his father. And, if Gem was as formidable as Morro claimed she was, then they would need all the help they could get to secure Cole's Soul Stone.

But what his father had said in the video message troubled him. If Zane could never truly depart (and he had mulled this over in his head numerous times; exploding himself to defeat the Overlord and subsequently returning to "life" had left him with plenty of existential crises), then what if this was his last opportunity to see his father again… ever?

What if his father asked him to stay?

To rest, to put down the weight they had to carry on their shoulders, to stop putting everyone else in Ninjago before their own selfish desires. To get back all the time he had lost with his father. Isn't that what he wanted? Isn't that what almost drove him to forget?

He had been too scared to do it last time.

He gasped when he saw a firework go off in the sky at least a mile away. No… not a firework. Lloyd. Sending up a flare. Showing him where to go.

He dropped his eyes to the falcon waiting patiently.