Chapter Text
“Cole!”
Jay’s voice cried through the grayish sky, a desperate and tearful shout following the harsh snap of rope. As Cole fell, he briefly glimpsed the look on his best friend’s face, horrified and anguished. But as the bounty took off at a high speed, the features on Jay’s face blurred together until they were gone. Cole could only stare in shock at the retreating floating ship, soaring away through the sky on flaming rockets. He reached upwards despite knowing it was pointless.
Before he realized what was truly happening to him, Cole felt his body dropping faster. His vision was overtaken by empty blackness. Suddenly, he felt weightless, drifting alone in the silence. Almost like he was stuck between worlds. He might as well have reverted to a ghost… he was nothing but a specter.
Soon it would be over, he was sure. But he only continued to plummet. Dark, cloudy tentacles reached for him hungrily as he fell. The ninja shivered violently as he felt the tendrils grab for him, the inky fog all too excited to squeeze the life from him and leave behind nothing but a statue.
So that was it, he thought desperately, squeezing his eyes shut; it made no difference in complete darkness. The earth ninja would end his legacy with an unforgettable death. Turned into stone, then smashed into rubble on the ground. How ironic for a master of earth. But there was nothing he could do. His dragon had abandoned him years ago and the bounty would have to be hundreds of miles away by now.
At least everyone else is safe.
The thought oddly calmed Cole. The idea of his family’s security filled him with a better sense of clarity. Not only them, but he’d succeeded in liberating the entire news crew and everyone else trapped in the building.
But even that reassuring thought would help nothing. He was only plunging deeper into the black abyss, getting swallowed by the darkness. The only thing to be heard was ringing in his ears. The pull of gravity and even the powerful wind and biting tendrils had begun to numb away into nothingness. It was as if the fall was his only existence and all else in the world had been erased.
Cole’s lungs were growing heavy. He could almost feel his heart literally harden. He was dropping faster. If he could see, he’d notice his breath fogging as an unfriendly cold seized his body. And if he could feel anything, he would notice the horrified expression spreading across his paling face.
He would be gone soon. Best to embrace it. He calmed his body and tried to conjure up the best images to his mind, at least to make his last moments less painful.
Jay’s laugh. Nya’s snarky wit. His father’s warm ballads. Kai’s unapologetic boldness. Master Wu’s calming incense. Lloyd’s inspiring heroism. Zane’s bright blue eyes. Zane’s smile. Zane’s cooking. Zane, his dad, everyone…
A single tear flew past his cheek. Something other than the frigid cold warmed his chest, and for a moment, he was at peace.
Then the impact hit. It jarred Cole worse than any earthquake he’d ever produced. He let loose a soundless scream, a massive outlet of air that shook him to his core. Every molecule of his body was erupting into pain, a sheer agony he could never have even conjured up in his darkest nightmares. There couldn’t possibly be a single bone left unbroken. Cole heaved out a weighed breath, exhaling a cloud of dust which was soon followed by a hacking cough that pinched his sides and rattled his ribs.
Cole only felt pain, and nothing else. Laying there on an alien surface entirely detached from his body, staring at a sky of black, he knew he was a dead man. There was no other explanation nor remedy for his pain. But still, somehow, some impossible way… he was alive. He was in agony, yes, but he certainly knew what being dead was, and this wasn’t it.
The black ninja gingerly sat up, clutching his broken ribs with a fractured wrist. Pains immediately stabbed and shot into every inch of his body with the movement. Almost as if it sensed human despair, Cole sensed another black tendril slithering towards him. He felt his innards begin to succumb to the cold allure once again, vying to accept numbing stone over endless torture. But the small part of him- the warrior inside- simply refused to quit. Not knowing what else to do, he thought back to the warm feeling he felt while falling. Cole anchored himself in the memories of his loved ones, and once again, warmth bloomed from his chest and spread throughout his body, energizing him with a feeling that reminded him of the moment he returned to a man after living years as a cursed spirit. From seemingly nowhere, Cole managed to summon enough strength to stand upright. If he wasn’t in a garish wasteland, he would have sobbed with joy. His bones miraculously held up!
It was not a time to celebrate, though. Survival hasn't yet been achieved. He swiveled around in a slow circle to analyze his surroundings. He appeared to be standing on an upper level of the Ninjago News Tower. The streets below were unrecognizable. Whatever Cole could see (and there was hardly anything to BE seen with the darkness clouding his vision) would make any ordinary civilian fall to his knees and declare the world over.
He witnessed empty buildings shrouded in blackness, cars that had been hastily parked or completely crashed off road, and, most disturbingly, the stone bodies of ninjago's population. Children, the elderly, young couples, mothers- no one was left untouched by the plague of the Oni. All were left behind as horrifying statues with limbs frozen in grotesque positions and face painted with pure horror.
Cole, however, did not faint nor lose control at the sight of such mass terror. After all, he never was an ordinary citizen.
He was a ninja.
He had seen enough suffering to last several lifetimes. Destruction, death, violence, panic. It was all too familiar to him, and yet somehow, nothing ever could prepare him for each depressing situation. Imprisonment by Chen. Running out of the haunted house of a madman only to find yourself dead. Watching your city be torn apart by a man you once respected. Time after time, wreckage after wreckage. Disaster was simply part of his job.
But this was different. Cole was alone, in the dark, with no backup and no hope of escaping. Hell, he shouldn’t even be alive. Why hadn’t the darkness taken him like the stone civilians surrounding him?
Cole shook his head. He couldn’t spare another thought that didn’t lead to his survival. Besides, despite the dread sinking in and his situation objectively fucked, he was alive. That stood for something. He had enough strength to get back to his friends, and with that, Cole knew he could make it.
Only a minute of descending to lower levels of the tower led him to inevitable danger. The dark hairs on the back of his neck stood up straight as a chill swept over the air. Cole didn’t need to turn around to know that a misty tendril was curling towards his alive self. Not only that, but faint footsteps began to grow louder by the second from below. Cole could see his words coming out in clouds of fog as he spoke quietly to himself.
“Well, shit.”