#haha betcha thought you'd seen the last of ME

[roseverdict]

The Ebb and Flow of the Times

oOPSIE I WROTE POST-SEABOUND ANGST ABOUT THE TIMESKIP

there are at least 2 different outside-ninjago references in here. one i did on purpose but the other just kinda happened, ljashfjkask

It's been two months, and Kai is once again standing on a beach.

It's been four months, and Zane cannot function at maximum capacity.

It's been six months, and Jay isn't as relaxed as he'd make himself believe.

It's been eight months, and Lloyd just wants to blend in.

It's been ten months, but the Sea doesn't know what it's been ten months since.

It's been a year, and Cole needs something to motivate him.

Luckily, there's a news broadcast on that's about to give him one of the best motivators in the world: spite.

(or, how in the HECK did we get from the s14 ninja team to the beginning of crystalized?)

~

It’s been two months.

Kai never goes out in uniform to do this, and he makes sure the others can’t hear him when he leaves, but…here he is again.

It hurts, and yet he keeps coming back for more.

“Hi, Nya.”

There’s a quiet thump as he plops down on the sand, and he leans forward to let the waves lap against his hand as though they were strands of hair that could be ruffled.

“It’s the two-month anniversary today,” he says to the sea. “Mom and Dad have been super clingy, y’know. It took a hot second for the news to make it all the way back home, but-”

There’s a heat in his throat that is most definitely not his fire, and he swallows before trying to continue. “It’s almost everything we could have wanted when they first left. Mom insists on making my bed, even when I already did, and Dad’s basically evicted Zane from the kitchen at this point. You’d think it was hilarious if you saw it.”

The tide slowly drifts up the shore as he speaks, and the sea reaches all the way around Kai’s back now.

“It’s just...there’s just the three of us,” Kai croaks. “Sure, the others bring it up to nine, but...”

Nine isn’t four.

Kai and Lloyd and Jay and Zane and Cole and Pixal and Wu and Mom and Dad aren’t Kai and Nya and Mom and Dad.

Kai forces down the steadily-thickening lump in his throat, but before he can continue, he hears a new voice a short ways away. For a moment, his insomnia-addled mind thinks it’s Nya.

It’s not.

“Hi, Miss Nya.”

Kai glances in the direction of the voice to see a kid in purple down the shoreline.

“I wish you were still here,” says the boy. “The other ninja are trying to keep it together, but whenever I see ‘em in the news, it’s like they’re all nindroids.”

With a jolt, Kai realizes he recognizes this kid. It’s hard for a moment to figure out where he’s seen him before, but then the kid pulls a piece of purple fabric out of his pocket and grips it tight.

“You said my hood looked legit back in the hospital, remember?” asks Li’l Nelson, one of the paperboys who’d played hot potato with the pendant and dragged Kai from the river during one of the fights against Kalimaar, the one who’d alerted Pixal and Wu to the ninjas’ pyramid predicament, the one who’d gotten the Grant-A-Wish Foundation to contact the ninja for a visit. “You and the other ninja were trying to get away from the crazy fangirls and stop a bad guy from doing something evil, and when we were rushing down the hall, you asked if I made it myself.”

Kai realizes what Li’l Nelson is going to do mere moments before he does it.

Li’l Nelson walks into the water and bends down, putting his hands beneath the waves. He sniffles and forces out a “Please come back, Miss Nya. Please remember us.”

Kai lurches to his feet and stumbles over, only his ninja training keeping him from sloshing as loudly as humanly possible. “Woah, kid, what are you doing?”

Nelson glances up in surprise, and as Kai gets closer, he can see redness in and around them that speak of crying as much as Kai himself. “Wh-?”

Kai pulls his hood down and unzips his hoodie, showing that he’s not some weirdo who approaches kids for some reason, just the ninja of fire in his civvies. “You should keep that. You worked hard on it.”

Nelson sniffles again. “But...she hasn’t come back. There...there has to be a way, but she hasn’t come back. What if she just needs to see that we miss her?”

“If it were that easy, she’d be back already,” Kai says wearily as he comes to a stop. “Don’t tell anyone, but this isn’t exactly my only time coming down here.”

Nelson swallows and nods, bringing the now-soaked handmade hood up to his chest like a stuffed toy.

Kai realizes he has to give some sort of Sage Ninja Wisdom to Nelson now, or else risk breaking down into an emotional mess in front of someone who looks up to him.

He sits back down in the water- his pants are already ruined, anyway- so that he’s not standing over the kid. “Look, it looks hopeless. Believe me, I get it. But...we thought we lost Zane after the fight with the Digital Overlord, right? And then he came back to us, titanium and better than ever. And, and we thought Cole was gonna be stuck a ghost for the rest of forever, and then the Day of the Departed happened and he got his body back! And Master Wu was lost in time, but he’s back, and even though Garmadon died and got resurrected evil Lloyd still got a little while with his dad and no prophecy or venom or anything beforehand, and then we lost Zane again but we still got him back from a whole other realm-”

Kai’s not sure who he’s trying to convince anymore.

“-we just, we gotta have hope, right?” Kai finishes weakly, staring off into the horizon. “I mean, this can’t just be...it.”

There’s a splash, and then Nelson is hugging him for all he’s worth.

Kai takes a shaky breath, and then-

(The seawater drifts all around, even pouring hot and wet down his cheeks.)

-they’re both sobbing.

The waves that wash around them grow cold, the way the water Nya would use to snap Kai out of a temper tantrum with would be.

A distant part of Kai’s mind, a part that’s distanced so far away from the rest that it feels emotion as if through a thick fog, makes the spontaneous realization that Nelson and his friend knew CPR. Therefore, even with the six ninja protecting the city, children still learn CPR.

And now there are only five.

The world is now that much more dangerous, and children, maybe even children with siblings like Kai had Nya, already learn CPR.

“Maybe I could start a self-defense class,” says Kai quietly once both he and Nelson have run out of tears to cry. “This...this hurts. Nobody else should have to feel like this.”

Nelson nods, his voice hoarse as he says, “That’d be neat. My friend Antonia and I would definitely go.”

Kai snorts thickly and stands up, pulling Nelson to his feet and clapping a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll hold you to that, kid. I’d better see you in that hood, too, got it?”

“Got it,” says Nelson with a wobbly grin.

Kai pastes on one of his trademark smirks. “Good.”

~

It has been four months.

Nya has been the sea for four entire months.

Kai left a month ago, citing that “The world is only getting more dangerous. I’m gonna spread around some self-defense skills. See you later, I guess.”

Cole left just a few weeks ago, citing that “I’m gonna go look around for some more leads. Maybe that monastery me and Jay went to will let me back in for research if I’m alone. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

Now, here he is a month after that, and Zane can barely function.

The logical course of action is to remove whatever is reducing his capability to be an efficient ninja.

Unfortunately, the others do not see it his way.

“Zane, you can’t just turn off your emotions!” protests Jay for the 17th time in the past seven days.

“Of course I can,” Zane says for the 17th time in the past seven days, gesturing to the open panel on his arm. “It was actually a fairly simple procedure-”

“But our emotions make us human, Zane!”

“Then it is a good thing I am instead a nindroid,” says Zane simply.

Jay makes a noise with a waveform not entirely dissimilar to that of the noise produced by an oboe with a broken reed, but relents and stomps back into the monastery.

For now.

Zane finishes his chores for the day in record time and heads inside just a few short minutes after Jay, intending to go to his room and connect himself to the monastery’s computer systems. Doing so will boost his computing power and allow him access to the furthest corners of the internet, thereby preventing any leads from hiding from him.

However, he is soon set upon by Pixal.

“Zane, please, you cannot continue on like this,” she insists as he walks down the hall.

Zane blinks, then turns to her. For a moment, her eyes widen and her cheeks pull up at the corners.

“But I see no obstructions in the hall.”

Pixal’s face immediately drops back into her previous expression. “Zane.”

“Pixal,” says Zane in response. He turns to her to better continue the conversation. “Believe me, this is not the optimal mode of operation my creator had in mind when he first powered me on, but to remain as I was would have made me...”

As he searches for the right terminology, Pixal cuts in, “A grieving young man missing one of his closest and dearest friends with all his heart?”

“...a suboptimal ninja and an inefficient researcher,” Zane decides on. “Like this, I can function.”

“You have not laughed or cried in 33 days, 10 hours, 27 minutes, and 42 seconds!” Pixal shouts.

“Exactly,” says Zane. “Such displays would cause me to lose any time-sensitive leads about reversing what has happened and making things the way they should be again, and we cannot afford to lose such.”

“Zane...” says Pixal, her cheeks pulling up in the middle and her eyebrows forming a tent-like shape. “...you are going to have to deal with all these emotions sooner or later. If you put it off for longer, it will only result in a more intense overload later on.”

“That is merely speculation,” Zane says, already turning to continue on his way.

“No, it is not.”

Zane looks at Pixal again. “It...is not?”

“How do you think I was able to keep myself together before the day of your memorial all those years ago?” asks Pixal. “Why else would I have nearly shorted out when you asked if we were compatible? My design was based and expanded on yours. You were able to recover from the overload of joy upon realizing the world had not ended and your youngest brother had gotten his father back. Compared to that, finding out that the one you love does not have to stay dead, while intense, is nowhere near as emotionally draining. The fact that I nearly shorted out was caused solely by the fact that my joy came as the rest of my unprocessed emotions finished loading, and I was only like that for a handful of days. You have been at this for a month!”

“And I will continue until such time as I no longer need to,” Zane informs her.

“And what if that time never comes?” Pixal demands. “What if you stay like this forever because there is no way to fix this?! What if the time does come, but you have been repressing every emotion for so long that when the time comes to begin feeling again, all you can do is scream?!”

There is a moment of silence.

Zane locks eyes with her and states, “...then that is a risk I will have to take.”

There is another moment of silence.

Pixal’s face sets into a new expression, somewhere between the cheeks pulling up in the middle and the expression she’s worn for the entire conversation. “I cannot watch you do this to yourself.”

She turns and strides away stiffly, her hands clenched into fists.

Zane stands there for a moment more, then turns and heads into his room, closing the door behind him.

~

It’s been six months.

Jay hums to himself and trails his hands along the surface of the water as he sails. Zane definitely had the right idea, honestly. It may have taken a few months to get it, but once he had…

Jay smiles and looks up from the sea. “Hey, Nya, look! It’s the warehouse we found Zane’s dad in! And then Echo!”

The water rushes playfully around his hands in response.

“Haha, I know!” Jay beams and starts steering again, bringing his boat in closer. “Thanks for keeping the starteeth off of me on the way here, too. Those things still give me nightmares!”

The waves whisper and giggle.

Jay starts humming again as he beaches the boat, and he keeps humming as he gets out, stretches, and drags it up and onto the rocky shore.

He keeps humming as he props open the lighthouse door.

He keeps humming as he starts carting in the supplies he’s brought.

He keeps humming as the sun goes down, and he keeps humming as the moon rises.

Once he’s gotten everything inside and shut the door, Jay turns to the wall. “Now, let me see...eenie, meenie, miney...”

There is a lamp on the wall that is tilted ever-so-slighty.

“You!” laughs Jay. He gives the lamp an experimental tug, and just as smoothly as it had in the aborted timeline, the wall opens up to reveal a way down into the secret basement.

Jay happily makes his way down in relative silence, only the crashing of the waves from outside breaking it.

“Hey, is anybody down here?” asks Jay, because ‘lost his freaking mind all over again’ or not, he has enough common sense to know that calling for a stranger by name will more than likely freak them out, Cole. They can’t all go on an adventure, come back empty-handed, and head back out!

There is no response. There’s not even any quiet shuffling, like there had been the time he and Nya had come to hide from Nadakhan.

For the first time in the past few days, Jay’s smile slips. “Seriously, is anybody here?”

Still, there is nothing.

Jay frowns in earnest now, then he scours the basement.

There is no one.

He heads back upstairs and inspects the lamp that doubles as a switch for the secret basement.

Aside from where his hand had gone, it is covered in a thick coating of dust.

Jay grimaces and wipes his hand on his pants, then shrugs. Previously, there had been several things that had prevented him and Nya from coming back here. First there had been too much going on, then the Time Twins had attacked, then the whole thing with the Sons of Garmadon, and then by that point it would have hurt too much to come back and look Echo in the face and say they’d made him wait to leave on purpose.

Of course, Nya is the sea now, and nothing else matters anymore, so of course it would be just his luck that Echo would be gone.

Jay hopes Echo is out seeing the world for himself, and then he heads up to the highest room in the lighthouse tower.

Out this far from civilization, the sky is filled to overflowing with glimmering pinpricks of light, and one part of the sky in particular has a milky swathe cut through it of nothing but stars.

The stars reflect in the ocean, and they look just like the faint freckles that dotted Nya’s human face.

Jay smiles, picks up a blank canvas, and begins to paint the sea.

~

It’s been eight months.

Lloyd’s shirt and jeans are tight and constricting, or maybe that’s just nerves.

His palms are clammy, too, actually.

Definitely nerves, then.

A door opens, and a black-haired, middle-aged man walks into view. “So, kid, are you the applicant for the open job listing I posted online yesterday?”

“Yes, sir,” says Lloyd, standing up.

“Good to meet you. My name’s James Papadokalis, but you can call me Jimmy.” Jimmy holds out his hand for Lloyd to shake, and he does so after subtly wiping it dry. “Now, I gotta tell you, you got a resume a mile long, but tell me: what makes you think you’d be a good window washer?”

The man’s tone is light, so Lloyd knows in his head that it’s not supposed to be an accusatory question. Still, he has to swallow the childish urge to snap at him. “W-well, sir, I’m physically fit enough to get into any nooks or crannies that would otherwise get missed, and I don’t have to worry about falling several stories and hurting myself. Plus, I don’t have any outside obligations that could prevent me from making it to my shifts on time.”

That last part makes Jimmy blink. “You don’t? But I thought-”

“With all due respect, sir, I think I’d do better as a window washer than anything else,” Lloyd says, trying to respectfully cut him off before he can say it.

Jimmy stands there for a moment, seemingly dumbfounded.

The expression is startlingly like the one Uncle Wu had worn when Lloyd had finally told him what he’d been planning for the past few months.

Unlike Uncle Wu, however, Jimmy seems to shake it off and smiles. “Well, alright then. Sounds like you’ve got open availability, then?”

Lloyd nods. “Yes, sir.”

“Alright,” says Jimmy. “Now, I know the national minimum wage has been all over the news lately, but I was thinking this job could net you, oh, say, two, two and a half times that? That sound good to you?”

Now it’s Lloyd’s turn to be struck dumb. “But the listing only said one and a quarter-?”

“With all due respect, kid, your previous job apparently took and took and took for multiple years,” says Jimmy soberly. “It’s about dam-ng time somebody gave something back to you. Gave you some leverage, y’know?”

The simple statement shouldn’t have Lloyd’s face screwing up into a hot, wet, ball, but it does, and his face is.

“Aw, c’mon, kid,” Jimmy says, reaching over and squeezing his shoulders.

Lloyd is quick to shove his reaction down with a ruthless efficiency, and he smiles and pats Jimmy’s hand in a signal for him to let go. “It’s fine.”

“It really isn’t,” says Jimmy, holding up a printout of the page of Lloyd’s resume displaying his birthday and the alterations made for the Tomorrow’s Tea.

Lloyd stubbornly does not look at the page.

Jimmy lets the paper fall, and he steps back. “Well, I’d say the job is yours if you want it. When would you be willing to start?”

Lloyd does some quick mental math in his head. If today is Friday, then… “I’d be good for Monday.”

“Sounds like a plan,” says Jimmy. “Welcome to So Clean Window Washers, kid.”

Lloyd’s chest aches hollowly.

He smiles. “Thank you.”

~

It has been ten months.

Or at least, that is what the land-dwellers say.

Ten months since what? The Sea does not know.

Perhaps it could find out?

It winds small tendrils of its awareness into the land-dwellers’ purification devices and looks around.

All that is visible in one place is a dweller with yellow head-fins and green scales. His face is moist and his voice quiet enough that the Sea cannot make out the words, but they seem to be murmuring some sort of mantra. He almost looks like Green Dweller On The Mountain, but as this green dweller is not on the mountain, it is probably not the same person. Other people go outside their homes, but Green Dweller On The Mountain hasn’t left the mountain in all the Sea’s time watching him, so this can’t be him.

Still, so long as he remains by the water, he should be fine.

The thought that this yellow-and-green creature is fine is satisfactory to the Sea, and it turns its attention to someplace else.

The Painter comes to mind, and the Sea quickly flashes away to watch him. Today he seems to be painting a sunset with dark clouds and a smile. If the Sea focuses enough of its attention on his work, it almost looks like the face of another land-dweller-

Pain lances through the Sea, and it quickly shoots away to avoid splashing the Painter or his work. The last time it had done that, the Painter had laughed until he cried, then cried until he laughed, and the idea of seeing him do that again was...distasteful.

Well, this is more than mildly frustrating, thinks the Sea. How is it supposed to watch the land-dwellers if it can’t even enjoy watching the Painter?

Annoyance flickers through the Sea like something hot and un-Sea-like, but it is quickly tempered by the sight of the land-dwellers’ city once more on the horizon. Perhaps some of its other favorite dwellers to watch would be easier to handle?

Ooh! That would be fun!

The Sea searches for a moment, its awareness reaching and reaching until it can locate the rest of its favorite Dwellers. Spiky Dweller is where he always is, so the Sea saves him for last. The Chilly Dweller On The Mountain is working with Warrior and Teacher, and Solid Dweller and Researcher are off somewhere across the continent for some reason, only now heading back to the Mountain.

Huh. Weird.

Well, if the rest of the Sea’s favorite Dwellers are scattered all over the land, maybe it will check in on Spiky first after all.

The decision made, the Sea winds and twists through the land-dwellers’ water tubes until it can finally take a good look at Spiky’s masterpiece.

The building really is quite nice, as far as the Sea can tell. Spiky often has many tiny dwellers come to visit him here, and from what the Sea has seen so far, he teaches them how to keep themselves safe.

...even if the zeal with which he does so is somewhat off-putting. Is it normal for teaching land-dwellers to urge their young charges to tear their opponents limb-from-limb?

Spiky freezes in place, and the Sea realizes that he’s spotted the droplet hanging from the water tube that it is using to watch.

It quickly retreats to the sea for which it is named.

Perhaps it is not a smart idea to continue to watch the land-dwellers like this.

The Sea does not know if it can stop.

...it does not know if it even wants to.

~

It’s been a year.

Cole sighs as he works on whatever mech they’re trying to fix. It wouldn’t be taking so long, except the rest of the ninja had been drifting away one by one.

Cole gets it. Really, he does. He did the same thing at first.

The world doesn’t need Cole to drift away, though. The world needs him to be there to save it, and he came back for good just a few days ago to do just that.

“This was the scene last night,” says Gayle Gossip’s voice, cutting through his thoughts instead of providing a helpful drone to let his mind wander, “where a vengestone smuggling operation was thwarted by a group of heroes calling themselves ‘The New Ninja.’”

“What?” Cole gasps, turning to face the monitor.

“Newly-elected mayor, Ulysses Norville Trustible issued this statement earlier today,” Gayle continues.

The news story cuts to a video feed of the mayor- and seriously, how had Cole missed that there had been an election already???- who is sitting at his desk with his cat. “It’s been a year since anyone’s even seen the ninja, and frankly, whenever they do show up, they cause millions in property damage!”

Cole makes an affronted face at that.

“So I say, it’s about time we had some new heroes!” declares the mayor. His cat chooses this moment to plant its butt between the mayor and the camera, but he shoos it away to finish, “Maybe these guys will be less destructive!”

Cole turns off the news feed, invigorated by spite. It’s a welcome feeling, and it gets him through the horrifying realization that Zane had turned off his emotions, snapping Master Wu out of his sleeplessness-addled obsession, and the preparations to find the others and bring them back into the fold.

~

A year after Nya sacrifices herself for the good of the world, Li’l Nelson sees a “CLOSED” sign on the door of Kai’s dojo and smiles.

It’s about time he took a break. All of his students could tell he was running on fumes for weeks.

~

Pixal watches as Cole, Zane, and Kai start sparring, and while Zane does not smile, there is a lightness in his shoulders that she last saw 12 months, 2 days, 17 hours, 12 minutes, and 39 seconds ago.

~

A no-longer-functioning gizmo in an old lighthouse watches impassively as the painter who’d taken up residence there over the past few months leaves with his friends.

~

Jimmy sees a request for time off from his newest employee.

“About damn time. Hope he gets to do something great.”

He stamps it with a big, green “APPROVED.”

~

“Nya...do I know that name? I think I do...”