Chapter Text
The warriors came on so fast. One moment Kai, Zane, Lloyd, Cole, Jay, and Nya were walking through what they thought was an empty hallway, the next there were half a dozen masked bandits springing from the shadows. The ninja retreated through the nearest unlocked door, fighting all the way. Suddenly Cole cried out, a fresh dagger wound bleeding through his right sleeve. He lashed out with his left hand, punching the black-cloaked attacker across the face. The warrior stumbled back through the door, followed by their comrade, who was still crackling with electricity. Jay, Lloyd, and Nya fought off two more raiders as Kai chased another until they jumped out the window, into the open air above the busy street. Kai watched as they shot a grappling hook to the building across the street and swung away.
With the attackers gone, Cole collapsed in one corner of the room. Jay hurried to his side, ripping off the edge of his own gi to wrap the bleeding cut. Lloyd joined him with scrunched eyebrows, working in silence. Kai turned to his sister. “Nya, are you alright?”
“I’m fine, Kai. Jay, do you need help?” Nya conjured a ball of water and leaned over to inspect Cole’s stab wound.
Still wary, the fire ninja glanced around the room. Something was wrong… “Wait!”
The others turned to stare at him.
“Where- where’s Zane?”
Nya’s eyes widened as everyone realized the Nindroid was missing.
“We must have left him in the hallway,” Cole said through clenched teeth. He inhaled sharply as Jay tightened the makeshift tourniquet. “Ow!”
“Sorry,” whispered Jay.
Kai, confident that Cole was in good hands, whirled around, unsheathing his own dagger as he rushed out the door.
“Oh no…” he muttered, taking in his surroundings. The hallway was littered with shards of ice, little balls of hail, and flurries of snow leading farther down the dark hall.
Igniting a small sphere of fire for light, Kai sprinted toward the end of the corridor, heart pounding. “Oh no.” He stumbled to a halt.
In the shadows was a larger snowbank, and lying on top was a figure.
“Zane!” The ice ninja was lying motionless on top of the pile, surrounded by a foot-high wall of icicles. One of the spikes was dripping with a bandit’s blood. Kai’s heart lurched as he stepped toward the scene. Vaulting over the icicles, he knelt beside his teammate.
“Zane? Zane, please, wake up… Zane…”
The droid didn’t respond, even when Kai propped up his cold head with one arm and placed his other hand on the metal-plated chest. “Zane, please…” He couldn’t feel a heartbeat. Did Nindroids have hearts? He couldn’t remember. Zane would have known. But Zane was lying cold and still in his arms and Kai didn’t know what to do. Zane looked… he looked dead. Kai wasn’t sure how a robot could die, exactly, but… Oh.
In his haste to get to his friend, he hadn’t noticed: there were two throwing stars buried in the wiring of the droid’s chest, piercing the metal plating with razor-sharp teeth. “Oh no,” Kai whispered again. “No. No, no, no, no, no, no-“ He grabbed one star, yanking it out of Zane’s chest and throwing it away.
That was when the tears started falling. He wiped them away harshly and pulled on the other star, tugging violently until it dislodged itself. Kai threw that one away too, and it clattered off the wall discordantly in the silent hallway.
The fire ninja gasped through a now-running nose as a tangle of wires pulled out through the gap in Zane’s plating. He didn’t know what to do with wires, and they were everywhere now, Zane was full of wires, Zane could have fixed this, Zane always knew what to do, but Kai didn’t, Kai wasn’t good enough, Kai couldn’t help Zane. Zane was reliable but also unpredictable, and he was interesting and kind and funny and real, Zane was real when Kai’s world seemed fake, Zane was always there. Now Kai realized how much he needed Zane. Not just on missions or for emergency tech repairs, but all the time. More than anything he wanted the droid who was so human to power back on and wrap his arms around him and tell him everything would be fine, the world wasn’t crashing down, they were going to be okay, but Kai held him, crying, rocking back and forth, and Zane didn’t wake up. Kai could feel the fire inside him growing and raging out of control, and this time the ice ninja wasn’t there to calm him down, so he just let it burn. It hadn’t felt like this since skeletons had kidnapped his sister. And like before, all he could think about was finding the people who had hurt the person he loved… and taking revenge.
The familiar sensation filled him up, boiling his blood as he shouted out, shooting a burst of flame out into the hallway with his hand.
Then there were footsteps from the direction he’d come- were the bandits returning? He wouldn’t let them hurt Zane anymore, he couldn’t, he’d kill them- he let go of the droid again, twisting his hands jerkily in the air to form a two-foot sphere of spinning, blazing fire that illuminated all their surroundings.
“Kai?”
It wasn’t the attackers after all, it was Jay, and he was coming closer, Jay who used electricity, Jay who might be able to fix Zane-
“Kai, are you- oh my gosh!” Jay had frozen at the sight of Zane, lying motionless, and Kai, kneeling above him with a wild gleam in his eye.
“Jay. Jay, can you fix him? You can fix him, you have to do it, get him to wake up, Jay, please-“ Kai’s voice was beyond frantic in a way Jay had never heard before. With a worried glance at the fire ninja, he knelt in front of the droid to inspect his wounds. “Zane… oh gosh… there’s a lot of damage here, Kai, i don’t know how much i can do here-“
“Come on, you’re the electricity one, do something, you’re supposed to know what to DO!”
Jay shrank back at Kai’s rising tone and volume. “L- listen, I’m just as worried as you are…”
“Are you? You seem pretty nonchalant about all this, Zane is d- NOT HERE- and you aren’t-“
“I’m trying! We can bring him back to the Bounty, we’ll figure something out! I care about Zane-“
“Not like I do!” broke in Kai, who was now pacing the floor. His hands were shaking and sparking as he spoke. He turned to look at Jay, the fire in his hands dying down, his voice becoming slightly more measured, quieter. A steaming tear fell down his cheek. “I care about Zane in a way none of the rest of you do. He was always the one who was there for me when no one else was.”
“Kai-“
“Zane is as important to me as Nya. He’s the only one who knows how to deal with me-“
“Kai-“
“Because the rest of you might put up with me for a while, but then I get annoying, or out of control, I know, and you don’t know what to do-“
“Kai.”
“Zane always knew what to do!” Tears were streaming down his face now, and he sank to the floor, sobbing.
“Kai! Listen,” Jay finally interrupted.
“What?” Kai scowled at the lightning ninja, who took a shaky breath before continuing. “I understand. I really do!” he emphasized before the other could argue. “Zane is important to you. He’s important to me, too, just apparently in a different way. That’s okay. He’s special to you, and you’re special to him- Maybe you’re in love, I don’t know. Whatever.” Kai looked up sharply, and Jay noted how small and scared he appeared. Jay brushed away a stray tear. “What matters right now is getting Zane back to the Bounty so he has a chance.”
He smiled carefully at Kai. “Okay?”
“…Okay.”