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Everyone, except for Zane, knew that they would die eventually. They just didn't realize that it would happen so, so soon. When Kai died, it was only then it really set in.
Thinking back now, everyone's deaths were caused by accidents. The Master of Fire died on a snow day, now wasn't that depressing? The exact opposite of his element. A drunk driver, of all things, had hit him on his way back to the monastery after spending the day at Skylor's noodle shop.
When someone from Ninjago Hospital called to tell them that Kai hadn't made it, was how they found out, the Master of Amber had arrived minutes later after Nya had told her over the phone.
He got a statue in Ninjago City Park, near Zane's.
From then onward, life was very different. For a brief time, they wondered who the Fire Element would go to, Kai hadn't had any kids (of course) and hadn't had the time to pass it onto someone.
The Master of Water had finally burst into tears while on the phone to Ray and Maya about Kai's death a week after his funeral.
Nya and Jay were murdered, a year and a half later, by a crazy trigger-happy psycho who escaped from prison and just happened to in Ninjago City Park when they were there.
That evening, Cole had turned on the TV just as a news report of the incident came on. The two Ninja present (no one knew where in Ninjago Zane was) had been frozen with shock. They couldn't quite believe their own ears.
Jay and Nya couldn't be dead, it had to be someone else (not that it was a good thing if it was). But there was no denying it, the photo proof that a bystander had caught confirmed it.
Zane met them at Ninjago Central Hospital, where they had been a year and a half prior after learning of Kai's death.
'Why is everyone dying like fucking flies?' The Green Ninja didn't know that both the Master of Ice and the Master of Earth had heard him.
Nya and Jay both got statues in Ninjago City Park, it was pretty much a tradition by now. Cole was the one to tell Ed and Edna of the Lightning Master's death, Zane told Ray and Maya of Nya's. When Pixal and Skylor started helping the three remaining Ninja more, no one said anything but were they ever so grateful.
The next one to die was Cole, killed in a rockslide, how ironic was that? He had been on his way back to the Monastery after visiting one of the outer villages. And the fact that he had been in the Earth Drill at the time, didn't matter.
Some of the mountainsides had been eroded by the floods, that had been occurring a lot recently, and the impact the Drill had on the ground as it moved shook some of the larger chunks loose and sent them rolling down onto him.
They found him buried within what looked to be two meters of debris after Cole hadn't arrived back when he said he would and hadn't checked in. Zane and Pixal traced his phone to the mountainside and the five had all taken off to the location.
Cole also got a statue in Ninjago City Park.
Three years and seven months later, Wu is dead. He died from old age (it didn't add up, the man was thousands of years old).
They had thought that the Sensei was 'dead' before but he had only been lost in a time stream, this time he wasn't coming back. A memorial was erected at the foot of th Unclimbable Mountain (where the Spinjitzu Monastery was built on top of).
Zane and Lloyd were the only original Ninja left.
The Master of Ice wouldn't 'die' unless his power source ran out but that hopefully wouldn't be for many, many years yet. They didn't know just how long Lloyd would live due to him being half Oni half Dragon but like Zane, it would be a long while, hopefully.
More than a century had passed since Kai's death and Ninjago City had gone through some changes, so much more than it during the last one.
Pixal is now the CEO of Borg Industries and had been for more than a century, having taken over alongside Zane after Cyrus' passing five years after Kai's death.
Borg Industries, which had survived against other tech companies that had arisen over the years, was still the main source of technology and hardware for Ninjago City.
As for Lloyd, they later determined that he would live for at least another few centuries as he was part-Oni and part-Dragon. He kept being a Ninja for nearly forty years, mainly to find the elemental descendants of Jay, Nya, Kai, Sky, and Cole. But never did find all their descendants, only Jay's and Nya's but neither of them had inherited their parents or grandparent's powers.
Lloyd gave up on trying to find their descendants and opened Master Lloyd's Academy, just over twenty years after Kai's death. His days now were uneventful and rather boring, his students were so much more tech-absorbed than kids of all those years ago.
A century later, to the minute, since the Master of Fire's death, Zane run into Kai. (It was him, but not really).