Darker Places (Ninjago)

1: Cole

Look, I'm not saying that being a ninja is easy. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It gets tiring, running around trying to save everyone all the time. But being a ninja is mostly a lot of fun, and it's how I met the greatest friends a guy could have: Kai, Zane, Nya, Lloyd, and...

"Cole! Cole, help! It's an emergency! I'm about to die in Prime Empire!"

And Jay. Jay is my best friend. But he is also a complete jerk-idiot-stupid-headed-baboon. In a good way, though. Sometimes.

"I'm busy!" I yelled back at him.

"Oh, come on! You've been training all day! Take a break!" Jay shouted in reply.

Sensei Wu, our master, was gone for the day with Nya, Kai's sister, who is also Jay's girlfriend, and Master of Water, so it was just us boys in the Bounty.

"Maybe you should take a break," I heard Lloyd's voice. "From video games, Jay." Jay sighed, and Lloyd spoke again. "Plus, I don't know why you all insist on playing Prime Empire."

"I don't get why you don't like it. It's a great game." Jay replied.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe because WE ALL NEARLY DIED IN IT?"

Despite myself, I had to laugh at that. No matter how many times we had told Lloyd that Unagami and Milton Dyer had sorted out all the bugs and the game was perfectly safe, he was always cautious with it.

"Well, if I do recall correctly, and I do," Jay was saying when I walked into the drawing-room where he, Lloyd, and Zane sat. "Is that you all did die. I was the only one who didn't," He grinned. "And you totally should have seen me saving your butts. It was AWESOME!!"

"Oh, blah, blah," Kai grumbled, walking into the room. "I'd rather not talk about our time in Prime Empire, thank you very much."

"Ninja! Ninja, come in!" Master Wu's voice came over the intercom.

Oh, yeah. I may have forgotten to mention...

"We have discovered a great evil like no other we've encountered before."

We are kind of flying over the middle of nowhere on some island and have been since Sensei decided we would go 'wherever the wind takes us,' and from then on, we've been in constant life-threatening danger.

"We hear you, Master Wu." Zane's eyes turned a glowing blue. "Projecting image now."

An image of Master Wu and Nya appeared in front of us. They appeared to be running from... something.

"Great," Jay laughed. "More evil! Sounds fun! Because the Skull Sorcer wasn't enough for a month!"

"Ninja, Rajin has awakened. Jay must-"

The connection broke, and the hologram disappeared.

"Jay must what?" I wondered aloud.

"Who Rajin?" Lloyd asked.

"Rajin is a Japanese god of lightning, thunder, and storms in the Shinto religion," Zane informed us.

"Oh great, more evil that has something to do with me! This day just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?" Jay chuckled. "But that's fine. That is totally okay! Because who needs to not be in mortal danger when you have the power of positive thinking!" He took a deep breath. "Bro-bro-goo-goo!"

"Oh, gumdrops," I muttered.

"Not this again." Kai groaned. Then, as if as an afterthought, he added, "What is bro-bro-goo-goo?"

"We have to find Sensei and Nya and find out what they were trying to tell us," Lloyd declared because the rest of us couldn't have figured that out on our own.