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Kai was in trouble. Big trouble. He was bleeding out in an alleyway and there was no one around to help him.
Oh, why did he decide to go scouting alone? On a day the ninja had all decided not to scout on, no less.
Deep down he knew why. He was scared something was going to happen to one of them so he decided to go alone because out of all of them, he was the most expendable.
He looked down at the knife wedged between his lower ribs. Every breath he took was agony.
In, out, in, out, c’mon Kai. What can we do? What should we do?
His vision had sparkling dots in it. They would be pretty if he wasn’t dying. Briefly, his mind went to the other ninja.
What would they say if they knew he was there? There would probably be a lot of yelling. Nya would probably be telling him off.
He wished he could call them and tell them one last time how much they meant to him, even if he didn’t know their names. Or their faces. Wait, he had their numbers though. They had an anonymous group chat specifically for patrols. He… he could call someone. If someone picked up.
Who would be-? Ice. Ice would be the best person to call. He knew how to deal with fatal wounds the best- other than Nya, but Kai didn’t want her to watch him die. That would be cruel.
His phone was on the pavement next to him. It would hurt to reach over.
What’s a little more pain anyways?
Kai suppressed a scream as he leant over to pick up the device. His hand was soaked in blood. Hopefully his phone wouldn’t get ruined because of it.
It was a painful few seconds to get onto Ice’s dial page. He clicked the button, not bothering to check which one he’d pressed. As long as he could hear someone’s voice before he passed out he would take anything. He’d given up on someone saving him. He just needed to give Ice his location so they would know where his body was. Then Nya might get some closure. Maybe. If she got past her well deserved anger towards him first.
Zane did not expect to get a FaceTime at 8am on a Sunday. He was still in bed, bleary eyed, and waking up. He didn’t even register whose name came up on his phone before pressing the accept button.
“Hello?” He said, cracking open his eyes in an effort to seem awake.
An agonised wheeze answered him. Zane jolted upright. On the other side of the phone was a boy in the red ninja gi with his mask off, covered in blood. The boy happened to be someone Zane recognised: Kai Smith from his maths class.
“Kai!? Where are you!?” Zane yelled, stumbling out of bed, neglecting to get changed and simply grabbing his first aid kit and clothes off his shelf and jumping out his window.
Kai let out a raspy breath before attempting to answer. It took him three tries to utter the barely audible words “School bins.”
School bins? What could that mean?
The phone seemed to slide from Kai’s hands, revealing his location. Ah. The alleyway wear the schools’ giant skips were kept. That wasn’t too far from Zane’s house.
Kai could hardly keep his eyes open. Ice said he was coming. Wait. Was it Ice? It sounded like someone from school. His brain felt fuzzy. Kai wouldn’t make it if it was someone from school. Where was that noise coming from? Where did his phone go? Kai couldn’t care. He could barely feel his hands. The noise stopped. Maybe he could sleep now. Yeah. Sleep felt good.
Zane hung up on Kai. He hated it. But he had to call an ambulance. Kai was mumbling incoherently, hiccuping and crying. Zane couldn’t stand it. He was trained to help people- but not like this. Not his friends.
“Hello!? Hello, my name is Zane Julian! I’m calling for my friend Kai Smith- he’s been stabbed in an alleyway behind Ninjago High School and he’s bleeding out- please hurry! -No im not with him he just called me and he looked awful please, please send out your best crew!” Zane started choking up.
Not now. Not now. Not now. Not now. Not. Now. Focus. He was still sprinting.
He had to get to Kai before they did so he could change his clothes- oh by the First Masters Kai looked worse than he thought. Even through the red gi he could see the massive amounts of blood that had come from the boy. Another wave of tears threatened to take over Zane.
No. Not now. Get to work.
Sirens approached as soon as he’d dumped the red gi into the nearest bin.
Kai felt like he was on a cloud. His consciousness was fading in and out. There were voices above him that wouldn’t let him sleep. Go away. He needed to rest.
“Are you in any way affiliated with this boy?” The policewoman asked him.
Zane didn’t so much as hesitate. “Yes, he’s my friend,”
“Do you know what happened?”
“No, he just called me out of nowhere and was lucky I live close enough to get to him in time”
“Do you know who he lives with? Who his carers are?”
“I know he has two younger siblings but we don’t talk about that stuff much”
The policewoman grimaced. “Okay, thank you for answering our questions, you can stay in here until we come back.”
Zane was finally left alone. Well, not alone, he was in a hospital room with Kai, but he was still heavily drugged so that didn’t really count. He should probably contact Kai’s family members, and the ninja -Kai’s phone was still in his pocket- but Zane felt guilty even thinking about going through the phone.
Suck it up Zane, he thought grimly, reaching over and opening the phone using Kai’s Face ID. Yeah. That felt illegal.
He went through the phone quickly, going straight to Contacts and searching up every possible term for ‘mum’ and then ‘dad’. Nothing came up.
Damnit. What was Kai’s sisters’ name again? Kai kept mumbling the names ‘Nya’ and ‘Lloyd’ earlier, maybe that would help.
He typed in ‘Nya’ and previous conversations came up. Yep. Nya was his sister alright.
How would he go about this?
It took him several rewrites, but eventually he went with “Hello Nya, this is Zane Julian, a boy from Kai’s year level at school. I don’t know how to say this lightly, but Kai is in hospital with a stab wound. Please alert your carers and come to the hospital soon, as I’m not sure whether I will be able to stay here for long and I don’t want him to be alone.” alongside a picture of Kai in the bed, leaving out the massive bandages covering Kai’s entire torso.
The reply was immediate.
“WHAT HAPPENED? I’M ON MY WAY”
“I will tell you when you get here. Room 72, Section A, Urgent Care.”
Nya was panicking. Her brother was in hospital with a stab wound. It was nine in the morning. She wasn’t even aware he’d left his room that morning, or, come to think of it, whether he’d even come home last night.
“Lloyd!” She yelled to her ten-year-old brother, her voice shrill. “Kai’s in hospital! We need to go!” Lloyd came running.
A black haired girl with blue highlights walked through the door of the room hurriedly, a small blond boy following in her wake. Zane jumped up and put a finger to his lips, leading them back out of the room.
“The nurse said to be quiet, he’s sleeping off the drugs,” Zane started, he realised the girl -Nya- was shaking and quickly stopped himself from saying anything further. “Are you okay?”
Nya’s eyes welled up as she turned to Lloyd, “Go inside and be silent. Don’t touch him.” The boy nodded scampering into the room. She turned to Zane with a look of determination mixed with worry on her face. “What happened?” She whispered.
Zane looked down to his feet. Her voice was familiar, and he always had a hunch. “Do you know of Kai’s… late night activities?” He asked quietly. Nya cocked her head suspiciously.
“What do you mean ‘activities’?”
He had to take the jump. “Rain?” He whispered. Nya’s eyes widened.
“Who are you and how do you know?” She hissed.
“Ice.” He replied simply. She nodded pensively. She was overwhelmed. “It seems he… went out on his own. I threw his gi is in the dumpster behind school. The clothes he was found in were mine.”
A tear rolled down her face. “Thank you,” she replied hoarsely. Zane hugged her.
“Of course.” He whispered. “What will you tell your carers?” He asked, “You should probably think of a cover story now.”
She shook her head. “Kai is our carer, he’s a part of the Young Carers Program,” she sniffled, wiping the tears from her eyes. “If the police are here I should go sign some papers for them not to investigate this.”
Zane wiped his own tears away and nodded, “Do you want me to contact anyone else?”
She gave a watery smile, “May as well call the whole gang.”
Zane sent out another message, this time from his own phone and in the Patrols group chat. “Ice reporting. Blue, Earth, you need to come to the Ninjago City Hospital room 72, Section A, Urgent Care, within the next hour. Civilian clothes. Ask for K Smith’s room if questioned. This is mandatory and extremely important.”
Immediate replies once more.
Earth: “What’s going on? How do we know if this is for real?”
Blue: “Yeah! How do we know this isn’t a trap?”
Zane sighed. Lloyd was sitting next to him staring blankly at Kai’s face, watching, waiting for any sign of him waking up.
Ice: “We have a ninja down, Rain is already here. It’s time to come clean.”
Earth: “Wait what!? What happened?”
Ice: “Please just get here. Too risky to explain online.”
Nya entered the room, appearing to send off a text as she collapsed ungracefully on the floor next to Kai’s bed.
Rain: “Rain confirming. I’m here with Ice and Red.”
Blue: “I thought we agreed no patrolling today??”
An angry grunt drew Zane away from his phone. Nya punched the floor next to her.
Rain: “JUST GET HERE FUCK YOU. RED WAS JUST STABBED.”
Earth: “Omw.”
Blue: “Oh shit coming”
Cole wasn’t sure whether this was a trap or not, but he made his excuses and hopped on the bus to the Ninjago City Hospital. He walked straight through the doors and to the room without any trouble. He used to go to the hospital all the time before his mother died, so he knew the place back to front. He made it to room 72 A before knocking cautiously.
Jay walked out of the shopping centre and to the train station. It would take him approximately 12 minutes to get to the hospital. Hopefully he was on time.
When he got to the hospital he had to get directions, a nurse leading him down the corridors with ease. When they got to the room, a boy with a black hoodie and black jeans with a chain hanging from the belt stood outside. He had just knocked the door when the nurse left.
“Blue?”
“Earth?”
The door opened.
Zane opened the door to two boys he recognised instantly: Jay Walker and Cole Brookestone, alternatively known as Blue and Earth.
“Be quiet, we will explain.”
It took Zane and Nya ten minutes to explain the situation to the others, and two hours for Kai to wake up. Another twenty minutes went by as Nya whisper-yelled at Kai, and twenty more until Lloyd unstuck himself from his brother’s side. Until finally, finally, Kai admitted that maybe he owed everyone an apology.
“Still, my little accident brought everyone together, didn't it?” He grinned. If a nurse hadn’t walked through the door at that very moment, Nya would have slapped him.