Darker Places (Ninjago)

3: Lloyd

Two hours, fifty-three minutes, and fourteen seconds. That's how long it took us to catch all one hundred of the lightning chickens Sensei Wu unleashed as a training exercise.

"We caught the chickens," Kai smiled as we all stumbled into Sensei's meditation room, our hair burnt and fringed, our t-shirts ripped and ruined. Sensei had been smart enough to make us change out of our new gis before finding the chickens.

"It took you long enough," Sensei opened one eye, sipping tea. He stared at us. "You all look horrible." He stood up, poking Kai in the stomach with his staff. "If you cannot fight the chickens, what makes you think you can fight a god?"

"But, Sensei, we did fight the chickens." Cole pointed out. "They're all in their boxes."

"Who cares? I wanna know where you got all of those chickens in the first place." Jay questioned. He was the least beat-up of us all, probably because he was the lightning elemental of the group, and the shocks only tickled to him.

Sensei sighed, whacking Jay on the head with the staff.

"Ow," Jay grumbled, rubbing his head.

"All of you failed. We shall try a different exercise."

We all groaned.

"But, Sensei..." Nya started, but then Sensei interrupted her.

"Where is Zane?"

"The lightning chickens messed up my circuits," Zane replied, walking into the room. "I'm fine now."

"Good," Sensei stated. "Now, if you all fail the next task, then you all will have no video games until you can complete a task in the given time."

I saw Jay twitch out of the corner of my eye.

"Um," Jay took a step back. His hands were alive with sparks. A bolt of electricity shot from his hand and zapped the ceiling.

"Jay, quit it!" Kai shouted.

"I-I can't!" He replied, just as loud.

Sensei's eyes grew wide.

"They're coming."

"Who?"

"Rajin's minions."

"Oh,"

Sensei pulled rubber gloves out of nowhere and threw them at Jay. "Put these on. Now. They cannot know who has what power. We can't let them figure out that Jay is the Master of Lightning, or they'll target him."

Jay chuckled, sliding on the gloves. "This day just keeps getting better and better."

BANG! The ship lurched forward, causing us to lose our balance. Most of us managed to keep standing, but Cole slammed into Jay, who tripped over his own two feet and landed on his butt.

"Oh, uh, sorry, Jay." Cole helped him up.

Together, we all burst out of the meditation room door, to see... nothing. We ran into the break room, running up the stairs and onto the deck. But still, there was nothing.

"Where are they?"

"Bock."

I whipped my head around. Behind us was the herd of evil-laser-lightning chickens.

"Sensei!" Kai groaned.

"Not this again," I put my sword back in its sheath on my back. We were on very specific orders to not hurt the chickens.

"BOCK."  The chickens charged. Both forward and electrically.

We had come up with a strategy. And that strategy was...