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Only last week, Cole had been fighting the Skull Sorcerer alongside them and now they stood in the pouring rain, clas in white, down one particular Black Ninja. They didn’t even know how he had died.
That day, during an unusually quiet and boring day, Cole had gone out into Ninjago City for the day, which had not been unusual as any of them could take off for hours as long as they told someone when they’d be back.
Only, Cole hadn’t returned to the Monastery at two PM, when he said he would be. As the time ticked over to 2:15, Jay called him, hopeful that Cole had just lost track of time and would pick up, he didn’t.
Five, ten, then twenty minutes later, Kai tried, no response again.
“Cole always calls back, what if something’s wrong?” Jay asked, panic seeping into his voice.
“I-I’m sure that he’s fine - probably just lost track of time,” Nya said, trying to sound confident.
“What if he isn’t?” Kai asked, anger barely concealed beneath the rising fire at his hands.
Lloyd was about to say something when his phone rang, interrupting him.
As he listened to whoever was on the other end, his face fell.
“We are needed at Ninjago General, now,” Lloyd told them, after he had hung up.
“Why?” Zane asked.
“I’ll tell you on the way, come on,” Lloyd said as he shrugged on his hoodie as he left the room, the others following suit.
“They wanted us at Ninjago General ‘cause Cole was brought in, or at least they think it’s Cole, they want us to identify him,” Lloyd said.
“Are you saying he’s dead?” Jay demanded, frantically.
“Yes, the pathologist and the coroner both couldn’t determine the cause of death and the parameds who brought him in said it was an anon call-in,”
With the exception of him and Kai, they were shocked into (temporary) silence.
When they arrived at Ninjago General, the head doctor met them at the entrance and it didn’t take them long to confirm that yes, it was Cole.
“Are you sure you don’t know how he died?” Kai asked a few minutes later when he and Lloyd were talking to the head doctor while Zane had led Nya and Jay outside.
“Unfortunately, no I, nor the pathologist or the Coroner could determine the cause of death, he had no outward injuries, not even the day-to-day scratches, his blood was clean, no sign of any drugs that could have killed him,” the head doctor told the Green and Red Ninjas. “Is there any way his...powers could have killed him?”
“No but we know next to nothing about our powers or how they work,” Lloyd said.
“Pardon me for asking so soon but do you have an idea of what you’re going to do with the body?” she asked.
“I’ll need to confirm with the others but I think Cole wanted a Tree Burial,” Kai told her.
Them, all of them, had long since realized with what they were doing on a daily basis, the chances of them dying were high, very high.
“Ah, that’s fitting - well whatever you decide on, here’s the number for a funeral home that deals with different types of burials,” the head doctor of Ninjago General Hospital handed Lloyd a piece of notepaper with a phone number scrawled on it.
In the days that followed, there was a whirlwind of funeral preparations, police investigations, and of course, grief.
Then, a month and a few weeks later, on what would have been Cole’s nineteenth birthday, during December, they had the first of the two memorial services, the one for just the Ninja and close friends.
In the end, they had decided on a traditional ground burial in Ninjago City Park, done slightly differently, a large boulder would mark the spot and on it would be a portrait of Cole carved by Seliel.
The second of the two memorial services was held a week and a few later, a few days before Christmas Eve and was for greater Ninjago City.
“We never realize how great someone is until they’re no longer with us,” Jay said, at the first service. “When I met Cole almost six years ago, I thought he was crazy to have climbed that mountain without any equipment and passed him off as just another of my team-mates, I was wrong,” Jay added.
After both services were finished, a few days later, Ninjago City Park was renamed Ninjago Memorial Park by the Mayor.
“A week ago, Ninjago lost one of its protectors, the Black Ninja, Cole Brookstone, how? That’s still under investigation. But don’t take this as a sign to unleash holy hell upon Ninjago once again, you will be stopped immediately ,” the Mayor said, in a televised press release.
As much as they didn’t want to, life moved on without Cole and they adapted to it.
And then Jay woke up one morning being able to control another element that wasn’t his lightning.