#bc I have three whole badly-spaced-out drawings in there wheeeeeeee

[knowledgequeenabc]

See No Evil

[alternatively: In Which Kai Really Should Have Brought Sunglasses]

[or Kai gets his eyes stolen by the eye snatcher. Tw for eye horror I’m so sorry I have nothing to say for myself except the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. it’s not even Halloween, what am I doing]

They land up in the unassuming little village, surrounded on all sides by dense forest with only a dirt path winding through it, on a tip to take out some local mafia kingpin.

The mafia ends up being the part of the experience they nearly forget when they look back on the story. 

When they anchor the Bounty outside the shadowy thicket and walk in on foot, Kai feels a faint rush of nostalgia for Ignacia, his own dirt paths and straw huts and small storefronts, before he squashes it underfoot and reminds himself to stay focused. Something isn't quite right here; for one, there are no kids playing in the dusty streets. 

The villagers here have wary faces, not unfriendly but approaching every interaction like they’re waiting to be jumped by a panther. Every forager, farmer, or shopkeeper they ask about suspicious activity in the area is surprisingly blasé about the prospect of a criminal syndicate under their noses, but their faces go dark when they whisper about something else—the vengeful spirit of a man, one whose eyes were gouged out by highway robbers, that collects the eyes of unsuspecting victims in death.

Cole, never one for appreciating the supernatural, immediately hates it. Jay snorts and dubs it the “eye snatcher”, but there’s a waver to his voice when anyone gets graphic with their rumors. The others are also appropriately spooked, unnerved by the unforeseen threat added to their radars. 

Kai, for one, doesn’t think much of it. Yeah, it’s definitely creepy, but quite honestly he’s heard worse from old wives’ tales about creatures in Ignacia. Heck, they used to say that Serpentine would eat your children whole if you whistled at night, and that one was definitely false, so sue him if he’s not entirely buying the story. 

As they work their way through the village, asking questions as inconspicuously as possible under the guise of curious travellers, the vengeful thieving spirit is a recurring theme. Jay, with his mismatched blue and brown eyes, is chagrined beyond belief when a caned old man walking the street eyes them suspiciously for a second, before pointing his cane at Jay and stating, “You young ones should probably get off the street. The eye spirit likes odd eyes like yours.” 

The thing that solidifies it in their imagination far too vividly for comfort is the shopkeeper who turns to answer their queries about funny business with a colorful bandana wrapped around her eyes. She does the same thing everyone else does, brushing off questions of illicit activity and incidents with the casualness of a Slither Pit fighter, then fusses about why they were stupid enough to come at all. 

“Laugh all you want about our tales, they’re borne of truth,” she grumbles. “I used to be one of the best blacksmiths in the village before I had my eyes taken.”

Kai winces. As a fellow blacksmith, he can attest to the fact that you do, in fact, definitely need eyes to forge. He’s had enough dumb mishaps that the burns on his hands and face speak to, and he’s got a perfectly working pair of peepers. (Debatably.)

“It was only a few years ago, and I remember it in my nightmares like it was last night,” the shopkeeper continues, clearing items off the small counter separating her and the ninja with practiced ease. “I needed more metal to smith, and I was foolish enough to set off alone.”

The ninja prick their ears up politely, faces a mix of intrigued and perturbed. Kai stifles a sigh and makes himself comfortable on his feet, knowing full well they won’t be able to stop her now. At the very least, whatever she says will probably be important.

“As the sun set and the shadows started to go long—that’s when they tell you you should never be outside alone, you know—I had only just left my shop, because taking inventory took longer than I planned. I left the outskirts of the village and hit proper forest, and that’s when I heard it.” 

Jay gasps a little too dramatically, and Kai rolls his eyes. Lloyd’s looking pretty invested, too, owlish and worried, as if he doesn’t know how this is going to end already. Poor Cole looks ready to puke, and Zane and Nya are divided between sympathetically patting his back and weary amusement at the others. 

“I thought the rustling was going to be bandits, except I should’ve known better. I was in my cheapest clothes,” their shopkeeper says wryly. “When I turned, the forest was completely black. There was no moon, just …” Here she shudders, and her voice begins to shake.  “Just a sea of eyes, of every color, in a black abyss, staring me down.”

By now, they’re all properly terrified. Kai isn’t loving the imagery, himself; it makes his own eyes twitch uncomfortably.

“I couldn’t think to run. I was too afraid. Before I could even catch my breath to scream it swept in and-” Another shudder. “-and it’s like my entire face had turned to ice. Then it turned to fire. Then I realized I couldn’t see. I put my hands to my face and there was nothing there.

"That, young ones, is why you don’t want to be here. Every second you’re here is overstaying your welcome, frankly; we only remain because we fear subjecting ourselves to the forest long enough to move away.” 

A moment of stunned silence. Then, Lloyd steels himself and thanks the woman for sharing her story, promising they’ll heed her warning. Cole pipes up next to ask if she has any other information she’d like to share, and then asks to buy some food. (Fair enough; Kai would want something to compensate for the fact that they had to be here, and he’s seen Cole eyeing the colorful packets hanging off the ceiling and lying on small shelves.) Jay announces he’ll leave them to it after asking Cole to buy him something, then steps back.

Kai, deciding everyone else can handle themselves, follows him.

“Penny for your thoughts? Though,” he muses, “I probably shouldn’t pay, you offer those up for free anyway even when we don’t ask."

“Har har.” Jay isn’t amused.

“Okay, but seriously.” 

A beat.

“Sure, there’s a mafia or whatever,” Jay opines at length, leaning against the short counter. “But if you ask me, they don’t seem too worried about it, maybe it’s not as bad as Zane made it sound! Maybe we should just let them loose into the woods and let the eye snatcher take care of ‘em before we hightail our little ninja hineys out of here at the speed of fast because this eye snatcher thing is really creepy.”  

“You believe it?” Kai raised an eyebrow.

“You don’t? You heard the lady.”

“I did. It’s awful what happened to her, either way,” Kai concedes, before Jay can accuse him of being a total skeptic. “But you heard her, she was scared stiff when it happened. Sometimes you don’t see right when you’re spooked, I’m just saying.” 

“What do you have to be on to make that up?” Jay gapes at him. 

“I don’t know what they eat out here, don’t ask me.” Kai puts his hands up. “Wives’s tales and rumors can get crazy in villages, I should know. If you won’t take it from me, ask Nya. Weird stuff happens when civilization is this far out, but that doesn’t mean the stories people tell about them are true.” 

"Yeah, but … " Jay idly kicks up a cloud of dust. He's not convinced, Kai can tell, and this mission will be significantly easier if he's not keyed up over something they haven't seen. That weirdo going on about "odd eyes" earlier probably didn’t do anything for his nerves, either. 

"Well, either way." He claps Jay's shoulder once as he spots Nya pulling away from the shop window. "We’ll be on our guard when we bust this ring up. Small or not, they probably won't go out without a fight." 

Maybe they had something to do with it … it sure can’t hurt, if you’re a crime boss, to have people put up with you because they’re afraid of something worse, after all. 

The next day, they finally get a lead after a day of nearly-fruitless interviewing. The "base" for these small-town maniacs is an abandoned rest stop of sorts in a clearing, a ways out from the village.

Kai and Nya, resident village experts and least likely to draw suspicion with their mannerisms, go to ask for directions to "Lala uncle's shop", a codeword they'd managed to deduce yesterday stood for the old rest stop the dacoits were operating out of. The other four are waiting at the Bounty, but Kai and Nya have already given them the go-ahead to raid the place if they don't come back quickly—the four of them can handle themselves fine, and the local jail isn't too far off. The less time they spend in this whacked-out forest, the better. 

The entire ordeal of convincingly selling their interest in shady dealings has them both sweating bullets through their old civvies, but Kai manages to pull through in the end by promising the seedy old guy that he’ll hook him up with Venomari spit dealers in Ninjago City for a discount. Kai definitely has to draw on more old knowledge from his Slither Pit days than he’s comfortable with for that one, and Nya’s hard side-eye burns his back when they leave. 

Presumably, the thug’s just relieved that someone is willing to risk operating with the eye snatcher (to use Jay’s name) as an occupational hazard, but he eventually nods and tells them how to get there, what landmark will signal the right spot, and a warning to come alone. 

Once Nya’s texted the directions to the group chat, along with a warning to stay together in the forest, the two of them start the trek in earnest, trunks towering up above them to stroke against the sky. Kai nervously looks at the orange streaks in the sky, the sun’s low position painting the clouds golden, and the shadows of the trees lengthening, and decides they’d better hurry along before something can pounce on them. Eye cryptid or no, forests are home to plenty of big animals that Kai isn’t exactly in the mood to have a wrestling match with. 

The walk is comfortably quiet, at first, both he and Nya having worn out their conversational energy on the low-level mafioso from before. Crickets have started chirping, and the brush shakes with life their eyes don’t see. It’s not so bad, once Kai puts away the paranoid thoughts of the eye spirit sneaking up on them. 

Then he turns to ask Nya what to do after they reach the fallen log, and he’s met with empty space instead. 

The first thought he has is that he should’ve let her drown in that rice paddy as a kid and saved himself the heart attacks down the line. 

The second thought is that this is very bad, and he has to find her yesterday because this forest is dangerous and also not the place to throw caution to the wind. (Rich words coming from him, he is well aware, but Nya is missing and he definitely wanted her to be careful.)

Trying to keep his head on, Kai lights a fist into faint flames and retraces his steps, calling Nya’s name.

No luck, so he searches the areas near their path, then goes back to his starting point and keeps looking slightly beyond that, hoping that she’d just gotten caught up in the moment and forgotten to stop and check the directions. That has to be all. Nya is fine. Of course she’s fine, he hadn’t looked out for her so long only to fail so stupidly at protecting her now— 

A faint rustle of grasses behind him shakes Kai out of his worried spiral, and he’s so relieved he almost laughs. There’s Nya, and he should’ve expected that she’d be competent enough to find him- 

The greeting dies on his lips.

The forest has gone an inky black, the twilight sky blotted out entirely. The feeble streams of light that are left glint against a carpet of eyes, glittering with malice and pinning him where he stands. They’re all around him, no matter where he turns. Colorful irises, like so many gems, like demented stars in a ghastly night sky, stare straight through him as if to size him up, and it feels violent, somehow. A crushing chill has seeped into his bones, and his brain screaming at him to run doesn’t register to his legs.

Kai moves his arm, to draw his sword, maybe, or to set it alight, to do anything at all, and hundreds, thousands, of eyes immediately fly to the motion as one. The sharpness of the action freezes him in his spot, and his breath is arrested from his lungs. 

Kai knows anger like the blood in his own veins, but even he can’t imagine clinging to a grudge this obsessively.  The eye spirit is the village’s penance, one unfortunate ghost lashing out hundredfold yet still hungry for more. The shopkeeper’s words are ringing in his ear, mockingly, as if to say, didn’t I warn you? Shouldn’t you have run when you had a chance?  

He doesn’t think he can run now. 

The spirit in front of him of a thousand and one eyes closes in, and a long, dark shadow falls over his terrified face. A faint beam of light hits his wide eye, illuminating it alone in a warm blaze of amber. 

Kai, paralyzed, legs shaking, his stomach violently turning in on itself, cannot quite summon the thought that at least it’s him, and not Nya, that’s here. 

“You have quite beautiful eyes, you know.” 

His world goes midnight-black. 

            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nya has always liked her brother’s eyes, although she’d rather spray herself with perfume than admit anything so sappy to his face. Ever since they’d been young, warm brown eyes held a promise that nothing would happen to her without his permission. They’d burn furiously whenever she was hurt, and soften to reassure her that they were safe and the world couldn’t touch them. On unlocking his true potential, they’d flashed a bright fiery amber, all the more fitting for the passion he constantly wore on his sleeve around the other ninja. Since then, she’s seen those eyes harden with determination and gleam fondly at their family’s antics, as they had with her so many times. Even now, when she’s nervous that things will break under their feet again, when she feels powerless in the face of the fate her family has taken on, Kai’s warm, determined gaze brings her comfort and strength. 

Now, though, she’s afraid, not that she wants to admit it, and she’s got no one but herself. It’s been over half an hour since Kai vanished on her, and if those things the village folk whispered about as they walked by are any indication … they’re both in trouble. The sun has almost fully set, and it’s getting difficult to see under the dense foliage that blocks out the sky. Her phone screen makes decent light for now, but she needs to save the battery on it in case she gets any more texts from the group— 

Her phone buzzes, and Nya almost jumps. Right, she’d taken it off silent mode.

It’s Cole, in the group chat. They went on and raided Lala’s shop without her and Kai, and apparently it went without a hitch. According to him, Lloyd and Zane are taking the last few criminals they rounded up to the local jail, but he and Jay are already at the Bounty and they're asking if she and Kai are okay.

Good. If anything ends up happening before she can find Kai, she’ll need the extra hands to help her out once she gets back. 

She fires off a couple words about her situation, then walks a couple paces longer before an acrid tinge in the air halts her in her tracks.

Cautiously, she follows it, weapon out in case anything jumps her.

A couple more steps reveals charred bark on a nearby tree, singed leaves and grass in the undergrowth, and the familiar taste of smoke. She strokes the bark gently, feeling it crumble away at her fingertips, and her heart sinks. Her steps quicken, dumping her in a small clearing before she can break into a proper run. For a second, two, three, Nya can’t do anything but stare, unsure how to process what she’s looking at, why it feels so wrong. Then she takes a hesitant step forward.

Kai is sitting in the clearing on his knees, his back to her and softly glowing in the light of dusk. The grass around him is haphazardly burnt, but none of it is on fire, at least. His head is oddly hung, hair messy(-ier than usual, anyway), shoulders low and vulnerable. He looks smaller than she’s ever seen him, she thinks, and her chest squeezes painfully.

Her tentative step crunches on leaf litter. Kai sits still as death—no, not death, she berates herself for even thinking the word—but as he hears her coming, he stiffens, shoulders flying back up and hands at his sides curling into weak fists.

Nya stops again, appraising his reaction. 

“... Kai?”

Immediately, his head pops up.

She cuts herself off as she closes the distance between them and catches Kai flinching.

“Nya.” There’s so much relief in his voice it almost hurts, but there’s something else she can’t pinpoint that isn’t quite right. “You’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay!” It comes out harsher than she means, but he’s been gone way too long and Nya’s thoughts have been starting to head pretty unsavory places. “Where have you been? Do you have any idea how long we’ve been out here, the others already finished the mafia raid without us and everything—”

She cuts herself off as she closes the distance between them and catches Kai flinching.

Why isn’t he running to the Bounty by now? Come to think of it, why hasn’t he immediately jumped up and hugged his concern out on her? Kai fusses and she knows it, and he sounds happy to see her, but he’s just been. Sitting there.

Around now is the time Nya’s brain stops letting her ignore the horrible idea that’s been bouncing around inside her skull like an annoying pebble since she noticed Kai wasn’t with her. Her stomach bottoms out. 

“... hey, Kai? What’s wrong?”

She’s crouched behind him and is about to reach for his shoulder when he finally speaks up again, low and rough.

“I suppose it’s real, then.”

There are many things she was expecting out of his mouth, but that’s not one of them. 

“Huh?” 

“The eye snatcher.” Finally, Kai’s head turns towards her, and her heart stops. She swears it stops. “I guess it’s real.” 

Where her brother’s fierce amber eyes used to be, there’s nothing. The faint outline of eyelids is obscured by a dark shadowy haze slashing across Kai’s face in a jagged line. 

She understands why the shopkeeper wore that bandana now.

Nya’s hand flies over her mouth before she can stop them, except she figures it doesn’t matter if he can’t see her do it. 

“Oh, Kai …” she breathes, her eyes welling up. With shaking fingers, she cradles the side of his face; Kai flinches back initially, but reluctantly lets her trail where his eyes used to be with her hand when she tries again. He leans into the touch despite the chill her fingers have picked up from walking outside so long, and she swallows the sob fighting up her tightening throat. Her tears are the last thing Kai needs right now, after all.

With her other hand, she pushes back his more unruly bangs, and examines the awful void left in place of what the spirit stole from her brother as if it might hold any answers. 

She might have had somewhere to look, except the spirit took them. 

They’re both still like that for a minute or so before Kai tentatively reaches out, feeling for her neck, her shoulders, down her arms, and pulls her into a desperate hug. He’s still shaking, and Nya probably is, too. She’s struck right then by how helpless she is, how little she knows about where to begin fixing this once she leads Kai back to the Bounty, and if there’s one thing she hates, well. That’s it. Seeing Kai so openly vulnerable is breaking her a little. 

That’s fine, though, she thinks, tightening her grip as Kai’s shaking intensifies and the shoulder of her dirty robe goes wet. Kai spent so long trying to be tough for them, so … she should be able to return the favor. 

Nya just doesn’t know how she’s going to do that, under the crackle of snapped twigs and twisted branches’ shadows dancing in the soft light of the rising moon.

An owl hoots, ominously certain of its place in the forest. Its unblinking eyes, honey orange and piercing, burn against the night.