Wu never raised his voice above his regular tone, but every word he spoke carried such weight that every syllable came crashing down on Jay like a stack of elephants.
"Would you mind explaining where you've been?" Wu asked them expectantly.
Oh boy, where to start? There was so much that happened and very little that Jay could rationalise as competent behaviour. At least they could get some brownie points by saying that they had been trying to stop Kai in the beginning, right?
Cole was the first to open his mouth, probably about to reveal exactly what happened in a very straight forward kind of way--
"It was my fault, Sensei," said Kai. Everyone turned to look at him, especially Cole, who seemed genuinely surprised. "I... I snuck into your study the other night and... well, it's kinda hard to explain..."
"Uh, Master Wu, perhaps you could come back in the morning when they've had some rest and treatment?" Dr. Lee suggested, filling up the uncomfortable silence.
Wu closed his eyes solemnly and breathed in. "Very well," he said. "But mark my words... don't you ever do anything like this ever again, do you understand me?! I was worried sick!" He rushed forward and smothered Zane, Cole and Jay in an enormous hug that felt so very wrong in so many ways, but it was kinda touching to know that he cared about them. All of a sudden, the old Wu seemed to come back. He pulled away and straightened himself before saying, "Ahem, that will be all. Rest well. I will see you in the morning." With that he walked out of the room and closed the doors behind him.
Jay felt his whole body begin to melt as all the stress he had been building up was finally released. They could, at last, sleep safely tonight. Before he collapsed on the floor, though, he stumbled over to one of the beds next to Kai and plopped his body down on the soft mattress.
"Fiiiiiinallyyyyyyyy...." he sighed. "I thought he was gonna kill us for sure!"
Cole gave a soft chuckle. "Yeah," he said. He seemed a little off-balance in his composure as he sat down on the mattress opposite to Kai and Jay.
"Well, one thing's for sure," said the doctor as he came back over to Kai with a special, mint paste. "You're all very lucky that you didn't die out there. Judging from Kai, you four must have gotten into some serious trouble."
Dr. Lee continued to strip away Kai's dirty pyjamas and smear the mint paste over as much of his body as he could while the other four boys washed up and changed.
Jay felt so relieved to be in a pair of fresh pjs as he walked back into the medical room. They were fresh out of the dryer, too, so he was all warm and toasty and ready for bed. As he walked, he peered over at Kai who was on his stomach, having the last of the cream applied to his back.
"Ha ha," Jay laughed. "Now who's getting the mud mask?"
"Soooo not the time, Jay," Kai grumbled, half of his face smushed by his pillow.
He sat down on the bed he had claimed earlier and watched Dr. Lee finish up with the paste before he moved on to inspecting Jay instead, just as Cole and Zane came into the room. He prodded Jay with thermometers, checked his heart rate, tested all of his reflexes, injected a shot of some kind of gold-looking liquid into his arm, then gave his skin and muscle tissue a once-over. He had, in fact, sustained no major injuries except a black eye, quite a few cuts and bruises, and a fractured wrist. Jay hadn't even noticed.
"And you said that you were thrown through the windshield of a car? And then fell down into a river?" Dr. Lee asked as he wrapped up Jay's wrist.
"Yeah. But Cole caught me and Zane before we hit the bottom... he didn't have enough time to get Kai," Jay explained.
"Incredible," Dr. Lee mused.
"Speaking of that," Cole piped up. "Exactly how is Kai's injury not--"
"Ah, ah, check up first," said Lee as he walked over and shoved a wooden stick into Cole's mouth to check the back of his throat. "Did you use your powers much?"
The moment he took it out, Cole began again, "Yeah, but how does--"
Dr. Lee then shoved a thermometer into his mouth and brought out one of those little flashlights to check his eyes. The thermometer beeped twice and Dr. Lee removed it, walked back over to his counter, and returned with his stethoscope and a needle filled with more of that gold, liquid stuff Jay had been injected with before.
"Woah, wait a minute," Cole said as the doctor pulled his muscular arm forward and pushed the slender needle into his skin without warning.
"Don't worry, it doesn't hurt," he said, trying to calm him down a little. After the needle was out, he slapped a small bandage over the hole it had left and moved on to checking Cole's heart rate.
"But--" Cole started.
"Pull up your shirt and breathe in slowly," the doctor interrupted.
"But--"
"No talking!" Dr. Lee told him. Cole was looking more and more frustrated by the minute, but at least the slow breathing seemed to help a little.
Jay wasn't entirely sure what to do, and clearly no one else was either. They didn't really want to interrupt the doctor while he was trying to focus, but the way he was dodging Cole's questions was getting kind of annoying.
Dr. Lee's 'shushing' continued while he was checking Cole's reflexes and then some--he was absolutely determined not give Cole an answer--then, after giving a similar diagnoses to Cole and a quick look at Zane, he told them to go straight to sleep and disappeared behind his bedroom doors.
"Well that... happened..." said Jay.
"Yeah, no kidding," said Cole as he stared after the doctor. "What was with him? And what was that stuff he injected?"
"Injected stuff?" Kai repeated. "Like, with a needle?"
"Yeah, I think I saw a bandaid on your arm," Jay said, leaning over to see if he could spot it. "I have no idea what it was, though." He reached up and began to feel his own bandaid as an unsettling feeling came over him.
"But I've never had a shot before!" Kai exclaimed, still laying on his stomach.
"Not even when you were born?" Jay asked.
Kai seemed to think about it for a minute. "I don't know, but my parents said I was born at home, no doctors."
Huh. That was interesting. Come to think of it,
"I don't think I had shots either," said Jay. "In fact, I can't even remember the last time I went to the doctor's office. Besides, you know, here."
Suddenly, the attention seemed to shift to Cole and Zane.
"Yeah, me neither," Zane conquered.
"Woah, woah, woah, you mean to tell me that none of us have ever seen a doctor before Dr. Lee?" Cole asked, looking incredibly shaken.
"Don't look at me! My parents hated doctors, they never told me why," said Kai.
"My parents, too," Cole added.
"I don't think it ever came up for me," Jay replied, feeling more and more unsettled by this revelation. "We just kinda ignored it."
"The people of my village treated me when I first arrived, but I don't remember it," Zane joined in. "And there was no need to see a physician until recently."
There were a few moments of utter silence as each of the boys stared at one another in disbelief.
"This has got to be some sort of crazy coincidence, right?" said Cole, trying to understand all that he was hearing. "Right?"
"Could be," said Jay, not finding any other explanation. Honestly, what other answer was there?
"But why, though?" Kai asked. "Why would none of us have ever gotten shots? Aren't they kind of important?"
"Do you think it's, like, an elemental thing?" Cole wondered, reclining back on his bed.
Kai suddenly stirred next to Jay.
"Lloyd Garmadon said something interesting back at the Citadel," he started. "He wanted to know how I got my powers, and he made it sound like I should have gotten them from my parents."
Again, there was silence. Jay's first reaction was to search his memories for any time when his mom or dad had shown signs of using lightning, but there was nothing. Maybe those times when his dad was welding? No, probably not, and besides, those memories were far too fuzzy to make any confirmations.
"I guess that makes sense," said Cole. "I mean, the little punk did seem to have the same powers as his dad."
"Yeah, but I don't remember my mom or dad having fire powers," Kai told them.
"But logically, where else would they have come from?" Zane pointed out, beginning to look very tired. He yawned and leaned back onto his bed as well.
"The man makes a fine point," said Jay, suddenly feeling drowsy. Just then, another memory popped into his head and he straightened up. "But what about the Green Ninja?"
That grabbed everyone's attention. If Kai could move, he probably would've sat bolt upright.
"I completely forgot about that," said Cole.
"Who do you think it'll be?" Jay asked, rubbing one eye, then he realised it was his black eye and flinched.
"It'll probably be me," said Kai, confidently. "Obviously a powerful warrior requires a powerful element."
"Mmm, nothing says 'powerful' like minty fresh skin," Cole teased, looking over at Kai's green back.
"Oh, like you'd make a good leader, Rocks-for-Brains?" Kai retorted.
"Hey, out of the four of us, who here has a consistent track record of actually leading the group and getting stuff done?" Cole asked as he looked around at his companions expectantly.
"Zane?" said Kai.
"Yeah, Zane," Jay agreed. He couldn't contain his childish grin, though, because he knew what Cole's reaction would be. His scowl came right on queue, and Jay let out a small chuckle. Zane himself only shrugged. "Well, who knows. Maybe it'll be me?" Jay leaned back onto his pillow and put his arms behind his head as he thought about what being the Green Ninja might be like.
"But is there even a way to tell right now?" Cole asked, relaxing again.
"I'd need to read the scroll aga—" said Zane, but stopped mid-sentence and sat up, looking very panicked. "The scroll," he said again. Everyone turned to him. "We lost the scroll."
"It's still in the woods, right?" Kai asked.
"It could be, but... Lloyd also could have found it." Zane's stern tone sent shivers down Jay's spine.
"How long do you think we can keep this secret from Sensei Wu?" Jay asked, not feeling quite as peaceful.
"He probably already knows," said Cole, flopping back and slamming his pillow into his face. "Well, that's it. We're doomed. It was nice knowing you guys." Then he gave a particularly long yawn and reached for his covers.
Jay felt pretty drowsy, too, and said, "Well, I guess we can figure it out tomorrow." The others absentmindedly agreed with him as he got up and turned out the light.
"Uh, hey, mind turning me over first?" Kai asked. "I think the paste is dry now."
So after a little while of turning Kai's body over, which wasn't difficult in the slightest, (I'm using my sarcastic voice there) the boys finally got comfortable in their beds.
It only took about a minute after Jay's head hit the pillow for him to fall asleep, and for a long while he felt very relaxed and at peace. A real bed, real sleep, but then, real dreams.
It began with Jay walking down some sort of dark hallway that felt vaguely, kinda, sorta familiar, but whatever, it was a dream, things can feel familiar all the time. Then, all of a sudden, somewhere down the hall behind him, came the cry of a baby. He turned to look, but it was all shadows. Not a single person could be seen in the dark, but he could hear their voices.
"Urghein un gugoonch lie... ierrung jerll key... Jay..."
"Jay... such a sweet little thing..."
"...seems healthy..."
"He's got his daddy's eyes..."
The voices weren't familiar at all to Jay, but they made a strong impact nonetheless. This felt like a memory. It felt like he should know this.
"Hello?" He called out into the echoey dream void. "Hello? Who's there?" He got no reply. It sounded like there were a bunch of people all gathered to see... him, but when he was a baby. "Who are you?" he called out. When the voices kept ignoring him, he started running forward into the dark, hoping to find answers, but instead ran straight into a mirror. It sounded like the voices were coming from behind it, so he placed his hands on the glass, hoping to move it. Instead, gravity shifted, and he fell onto his stomach. Suddenly, he began to sink into the glass as if it were liquid and a sickening feeling of dread crept up inside of him.
On the other side of the glass, there was sunlight and heat. There was a constant clanking noise that pounded Jay's ears like a drum.
CLANK! CLANK! CLANK!
Each time he heard the noise, it became hotter and hotter until he was literally sweating beads.
"I don't understand..." came Kai's voice.
Jay began to feel like a ghost without a body as his consciousness started floating through the next scene.
There was Kai, maybe about seven years old, sitting in some kind of forge with who he presumed to be Mr. Rayson.
"I don't understand," Kai said again. His father didn't reply. "Why didn't you tell me?"
A fire sprang up around them and devoured the little forge. Kai screamed, but he seemed to be untouched by the flames, even as they began to chase him this way and that.
Then, the fire disappeared, everything quieted, and Jay felt such a strong urge to start crying. Wherever they were now, it was filled with unimaginable sadness.
The face of a woman suddenly appeared--a beautiful woman with long, dark hair--who looked incredibly sick and pale. He felt like he should reach out to her, hold her tightly, but he had no idea why. This was unlike anything he'd ever dreamed before.
She appeared to him again, this time she was trying to tell him something, but was being pulled back by a curtain of death.
"Cole!" she cried. "Eerum gru grtchid! Ferggrr! Ogree dreg korumtikee!"
In a flash, she was gone, and in her place were a million terrifying faces all staring at him. The immediate response was: RUN! Run as fast and as far as possible! But the ground turned to tar under his feet.
"Help!" he yelled.
Three voices came crashing down around him.
"Where are you?"
"Hello?"
"What's going on?!"
Then, a white out. There was a freezing blizzard that blew in out of nowhere, and soldiers came marching through the snow. Their swords were drawn and their bows were loaded, so the only option was to fight. Fight for his life amidst the snow and ice and wind. Then, a blow to the head from a mace sent him tumbling backwards down a hill, until he crashed onto a stone ledge above a furious ocean.
The world disappeared again, and from the pitch blackness came one voice:
"Wake up! You mustn't stay here any longer!"
* * *
"Ahh! Who's--what--I'm alive!" Jay was shouting as he sat bolt upright in his bed.
"Ium dreg korumtikee!!" Cole was yelling on the other side of the room, sweat pouring down his chest.
"NOOOOOO!" was the first thing Zane said before stopping and looking around with a wild look in his eye and an ice dagger in his hand.
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" Kai was screaming, and after Jay and the others had a moment to collect themselves, they all turned their attention toward him. It looked as though Kai had attempted to sit up like the rest of them had, but now he was just writhing in pain.
Covered in sweat, and still very disoriented, Jay threw his covers back and went immediately to Kai's side.
"Kai, what's wrong?!" he asked stupidly. Cole and Zane came up next to him with the most insane bedhead Jay had ever seen, and started looking around for anything they could do.
"His feeling's back," Zane noted. "Are there any pain relievers?"
"As if I know where things are in this place!" Cole cried.
Just then, the door to Dr. Lee's room flew open and out came the doctor in a disheveled mess.
"Out of the way, out of the way!" he ordered the boys, and he quickly grabbed a bottle of small capsules and another needle filled with more of that gold stuff.
Kai was practically doubled over in pain and his screaming wouldn't stop, not even when Dr. Lee forced him to take three of the tiny capsules which looked like it took him a tremendous amount of effort. Next, the boys had to help Dr. Lee hold Kai still while he injected the liquid into his arm.
"Is he gonna be okay?" Cole asked as they began to back away so the doctor could work.
"He should be fine," Dr. Lee replied. "But the next few hours will be painful."
Jay didn't know what to think or feel. There was just something so awful about seeing Kai like this. It was a deeper pain than he thought possible, and he desperately wished he could make Kai better with a snap of his fingers.
Just then, the doors opened and a familiar voice called out, "Kai!?"
Jay turned and saw Nya running up toward them, and that's when he realised that the morning sun was pouring through the windows. He and the others stopped Nya from getting too close, but they could see the panic and worry in her eyes.
"He's gonna be fine," Cole reassured her. "He just needs time to heal."
"What happened to him?" Nya asked.
"He fell, and kinda broke his spine," Jay answered.
"Oh my gosh..." Nya breathed.
For a long time they just stood there, watching Dr. Lee do his best to help Kai, but after a few minutes he turned around and said,
"You're free to leave the medical room. Why don't you go down to breakfast and check back in an hour?"
The boys and Nya all nodded their heads reluctantly and shuffled out of the room without another word. They made a quick pitt-stop by the boys' rooms so that they could change before heading down to the dining room while they explained everything that had happened to Nya. Jay felt especially sorry for her to have to endure seeing her brother like this, not to mention her probably being worried sick while he had been missing.
"It'll be okay," said Jay, trying to make her feel better as they approached the dining room. "He'll be better soon, he's too stubborn to let something like a broken spine get him down." She gave him a weak smile, but didn't seem any happier.
Cole sighed loudly up ahead of them just as he opened the dining room doors. "Can't we have a normal day for once? Or at least a normal night?"
"To do that, you would need to stop breaking in to people's offices and running off in the middle of the night." Ann was sitting at their usual table with Keaton at her side and she did not look happy. Her clothes looked kinda frumpy and there were bags under eyes, leading Jay to believe that she had been out looking for them the whole time they were missing. She slapped a newspaper down on the table just as they were sitting down and Jay tilted his head to read the front page headline.
Terrorist Attack Gone Awry:
Suspects Still At Large
"Uncontrollable forest fires spreading, eight people in the hospital, three in the ER, gasoline and oil polluting the river, part of a road completely destroyed, a one million-dollar car stollen, and--this is my personal favourite--a freak ice formation in the river bed," Ann recited, folding her arms and squinting. Jay couldn't decide what was worse: the fact that they had messed up that badly, or that they had to hear about it from Ann. "I'm going to skip the explanation here because I'm sure I'll be hearing about it all week. No, what I am here to say is this: in one day the four of you boys have left a bigger footprint on Ninjago than Keaton or I have left in our entire lives. Not only did you cause an extremely dangerous explosion, but you also put yourselves in danger, not just from the Skulkens, but also from the military." She pointed to a black-and-white picture on the front page. "A street camera caught the four of you last night just before you got back. You're lucky we were able to interfere with police investigations in time, or else you would be in jail and our cover would be blown."
"Do we at least get a prize?" Jay asked after everyone was silent for a while.
"Your 'prize' will be disciplinary action," said Ann coldly. "I don't know what Sensei Wu has in mind, but I'm sure it'll be harsh."
Everyone was sitting around the table, not talking or even looking at one another. That bombshell of a conversation seemed to really destroy any hint of a good mood Jay had been mustering before.
Something moved in the corner of Jay's eye. He looked up and saw Keaton lean her head against Cole's shoulder which slowly led to her arms rising up to grab his torso in a slow hug. She appeared to be even more sleep-deprived than Ann did, to the point that her eyes looked almost hollow. Cole seemed fairly unsure at first, but as Keaton's hands began to clamp down on his shirt, he realised that there was no getting out of it, so he gently put his arms around her. No one was really quite sure what to do--not even Ann--until Keaton looked up with her big eyes at Zane and reached out her hand toward him. Slowly, Zane approached them and was sucked into the group hug with the skinny thirteen-year-old at the center. Then, Keaton's eyes fell on Jay and he felt his heart get pierced by her large, watery eyes. When she reached out to him, he felt practically obligated to get up and join the hug. He had one arm around Keaton and one around Zane, and there was a lump forming in his throat the longer they stayed there. Nya joined on her own and one of her arms came down across Jay's shoulder which made his heart do a weird flip.
Jay's vision shifted from Keaton's face--buried in Cole's shirt--up to Ann who was still sitting in her seat and looking on with her jaw locked and her eyes looking glassy. Her gaze was fixed on her sister, seemingly lost in painful thought which almost softened her expression in a way that Jay had never seen before. When she saw Jay starring at her she blinked several times, fiddling with her hair, and got up to leave.
"I'm heading back to bed," she said quietly, and then left.
At the same time, the group hug began to unravel and Keaton released Cole's shirt so she could rub her nose.
"I thought I'd lost you," she said, so quietly he almost missed it.
Jay didn't know what to say at all, so he gave Keaton a reassuring rub on the shoulders before going back to his own seat and finally eating breakfast in stunned silence.
* * *
After a slow, uneasy breakfast, it was back to the medical room for the group. Whatever Dr. Lee had done in the last hour, it had quieted Kai and he was lightly napping now. Everyone was sitting on various beds in silence, listening to the sound of their own breathing and the quiet twitter of birds just beyond the windows.
Nya happened to be sitting right next to Jay and he felt the urge to comfort her with a side hug, but he couldn't seem to do it. He still remembered when they had met for the first time, back in the Underworld. It was a brief introduction, but it stuck with him, and the more he had gotten to know Nya over the past few months, the more he realised why. Well, kinda. They didn't spend a lot of time together, but that just made the time they spent all the more special. Something about her just sent Jay's heart fluttering, and although he didn't know the reason yet, he never wanted it to stop.
"You sad sacks gonna just sit there moping all day?" Kai asked, sounding half-asleep. He didn't even open his eyes when he spoke and his tone was very flat and sarcastic.
Nya chuckled. "How're you feeling?" she asked.
"Like I broke my spine," Kai replied in the same tone. "I also can't move anything."
"That would be the paste working," said Dr. Lee as he glided through the room. "I had hoped that I gave you a good enough coat last night to stop you from hurting yourself in the morning, but I suppose I miss-calculated."
Jay noticed Nya taking a shaky breath in and then he cleared his throat. "Maybe we should let Kai get some rest?" he suggested. He looked around at the others who started to shift in their seats and detach their gaze from Kai's bed.
"Yeah... okay," said Cole. He slowly slid off of his mattress and everyone else began to do the same.
As Jay started for the door, he stopped and looked back at Nya who walked over to Kai's side. She bent over him and whispered something in his ear which made him chuckle a little, then she straightened and started filing out with everyone else. Jay made sure to stay next to her as much as he could and he wanted to make conversation, but he couldn't think of anything interesting to say.
"So, uh... where you from, anyway?" He asked nervously, even though he already knew the answer.
"Harper Vale," she replied. Her face was toward him, but Jay could tell her eyes were still with her brother. "Where're you from?" She asked.
"Oh, uh... you know, uh, heh heh, I'm... just from..." he started to panic the more she looked at him expectantly. What should he say? Being born in a junkyard didn't sound very cool or suave in the slightest. "Ninjago City," he lied.
"Really?" Nya replied. "That's cool." She still sounded pretty tense, nervously fiddling with her hair and tugging on the fabric of her shirt.
"Do you miss it?" Jay asked, trying to keep the conversation going.
"...yup," she said with a sigh. "Hopefully, we'll be going back soon."
"You're pretty anxious to get out of here, huh?" said Jay, uncomfortably. He hadn't realised that Nya might not be completely happy to be here. Nervous about her brother? Sure. Wanting to see her parents again? Of course. But anxious to leave and maybe never come back?
"Well, don't get me wrong, you guys are great," she started. "But our whole world was completely torn down, and... all I want is to have things feel normal again."
Jay understood what she meant. Even though his old life had been kinda dull, it was more familiar and filled with less imminent danger than the life he was leading now. And... now that he really thought about it, he did kinda miss his mom and dad... a lot, actually. He hadn't heard from them since the day he left, and something kinda moved inside of him. It's not like he hadn't been thinking about them this whole time, it's just... his point of view seemed to shift a bit.
"Well, don't worry. I'm sure things will take a turn for the better soon," Jay said, pulling his thoughts together and trying to make Nya feel better. This time she smiled a real smile and they continued to walk down the hallways together. Where they were going was anyone's guess. It was just nice to talk with a friend.