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The ninja were sitting in the monastery living room and playing video games, waiting for Kai and Lloyd. The pair had disappeared this morning, Cole and the others had no idea where they could be. If the ninja said they weren't stressed about that they would have been insane.
Cole was feeling unusually unnerved (funny because he was the rock of this team always keeping stability). We're they fighting Garmadon or out looking for him? He wanted to be out there with Kai and Lloyd, but that was not in the cards. To be honest, they all wanted to be out there right now, fighting alongside their family. What made it worse is Lloyd's dad (if they were fighting him), Garmadon, had changed a lot for the worse after his reanimation. He had also gained quite a bit in strength since the last time they had fought him. Cole just didn't understand why they had to fight him alone. It seemed so impossible for them to even have a chance without all of them together.
Master Wu was probably the one person in the monastery who actually stayed calm. But they supposed someone had to stay in their senses.
What surprised everyone most was Nya though.
She also got herself worked up with nerves, which was highly unusual for her 'always calm and collected' demeanor. Jay got her to calm down after a bit. However, Kai was her big brother, who protected and took care of her when they were kids. They had already lost their parents, neither of them could stand to lose the other too. Made sense.
Jay hid his concern with jokes.
Zane had been... Zane.
Pixal was the only really helpful one if they were honest.
About thirty minutes had passed when they all heard a noise, probably sounding more like a shout.
Cole was the first one to react, being the one who had been on edge for a while. He ran outside with the others clipping his heels, and in few seconds all of them were outdoors. They all stopped dead in their tracks. One of Cole's two assumptions had been right. Lloyd had few painful looking bruises on his face, and his shoulder had a cut on it that almost looked fully healed. One of his sleeves was singed off (wonder who could have done that), but relatively he was fine. Next to him was Kai, who was looking relatively not fine. He was pale and glazed over with sweat. Lloyd was trying to hold him up and was probably the reason Kai was still conscious and standing. But what made the other ninja stop and was Kai's left side. It was bleeding.
A lot.
It was a nasty, deep looking stab wound, and was freely gushing blood like a garden hose and onto the floor. The red ninja was holding onto it with his unoccupied hand, breathing hard. That put the others into action immediately.
"What the hell what happened?!" Jay asked, helping Lloyd to stand on his feet. With a hiss, Kai took to leaning on the the nearest wall trying to keep up the facade of his injury being minor.
"It was.." Lloyd coughed, holding onto his friends for support.
"Garmadon." Kai said breathy and uncharacteristically quiet.
Lloyd glanced worriedly at Kai, "Yeah- it... it was my dad and-" Lloyd coughed again, "It was all my fault." He went into another dry coughing fit.
"Shit..." They heard pained breath from Kai.
They all looked over nervously while Nya and Cole rushed over as Kai slid down the wall.
---
"We need to get Kai inside." Zane hastily instructed the others.
'Dont have to tell me twice...' Cole thought. Cole took his friend's body carefully up in his arms. Super strength pog.
"Put me down dumbass...it's just a scratch..." Kai growled, and Cole smirked at the insult. Although Kai's voice was full of animosity, he didn't try to fight back. Everyone thought that was reassuring (if he was still being a hothead then maybe he is okay) but at the same time much more worrying because not fighting back was out of character.
"Watch your tongue." Wu said as he came into the room hearing all the commotion.
"Dude, we're trying to save your life," Cole stated bluntly.
He set Kai down on the couch in the monastery living room. Zane went to go get a med kit, and Nya winced at her brother's blood soaked shirt. He didn't fight back either, only being half conscious at this point. They all froze up after she did so. The wound looked ugly: torn muscle, bruising, and probably millions of other problems that were unidentified. Kai was paler than before, and Lloyd was now sitting on a chair looking at the floor feeling guilty.
He looked up at Kai with teary eyes, "I'm sorry, I-I got so angry at you but-"
"It's ok, kiddo," Kai said breathlessly as he tried to sit up, instead tensing up from the excruciating strain on his abdomen, "My... choice..." He eventually was able to finish.
"Rest, son." Wu said, pushing him back down carefully. He rested his hand on the brunet's forehead, and Kai closed his eyes giving into the touch while exhaling painfully. Master Wu thought he was oddly cold. Kai usually had a higher body temperature to be able to summon flames, and blood was starting to trickle out of his mouth. A symptom of internal bleeding.
"We will not be able to do much here at the monastery," Zane told the others. A quick scan of Kai suggested his injuries were way to dire for anything they could do there.
---
They (actually just being Pixal) decided the best course of action was to take Kai to the hospital. The front desk worker looked at Kai with wide eyes and proceeded to make a code blue over the intercom.
In under a minute there was a team of trauma nurses putting Kai onto a gurney and rushing him down to the ICU. Nya held his hand while nurses went straight into working with well-trained efficiency.
"Look who's dying now huh." Cole said.
"Shut..nngh-," a nurse put on a pressure bandage to help control the bleeding and Kai, out of pain, squeezed Nya's hand tighter, "-up.."
Jay and Cole were arguing with Kai the whole time, but that was until Kai stopped responding to insults. One of the TCRNs said that he was going into shock. It immediately shut the two of them up. Once they got there, the other nurses took Kai down the hall behind some white metal doors. One nurse gestured for them to go back up the hallway, "I'm sorry, but your friend here is needing emergency surgery. You guys need to go to the waiting room."
"Will he be ok..?" Nya asked with tears forming in her eyes. Jay grabbed her shoulders and pulled her close to try and comfort her.
"We still need to assess the internal damage the hemorrhaging has caused. He is in critical condition, and the effects of it are most likely listless."
Then she gestured at Lloyd who was looking distressed as she was, "You should get him checked out too."
And with that short remark, she shut the door in their faces.
---
Uno was fundamentally the best way to pass the time.
Even though they weren't super into it because they were worried about Kai, it was a way to help take their minds off of it slightly. Pixal kept winning though.
"Uno." Pixal said.
Everyone threw their cards, "Ughhh..."
"What did they say?" They all questioned Lloyd coming back from the examination.
"I had a handful of bruises and some scratches, but apparently most of them have already healed because of my oni/dragon blood." He looked down the hall longingly and then stared at his feet. Tears spilled onto the white tiled floor.
"Hey, it's ok man." Cole said, resting his hands on the energy master's shoulders. Lloyd wiped his eyes, "No, it's not! If... if I hadn't been so stupid then this wouldn't have happened in the first place."
Nya steeled her own emotions and walked over to him. Then pulled him into a careful hug (which he fell right into), "It isnt your fault Lloyd. Kai has always felt the need to protect you. He's dumb like that." She studied his emerald eyes for a second, "Can you tell us what happened though?"
Lloyd swallowed thickly, "Yeah...okay."
"When we left, we were looking for my dad, as you probably all put together. I knew he had changed, but I turned his heart before, so I though I could do it again. I was so stupidly naive to think I could do that again. And... Rumi was there too."
"And Kai had agreed to help me, even though he hates my dad. He didn't even tell me he got hurt either! I only noticed it because he almost collapsed out of nowhere!
Lloyd shifted his stance and continued, "We went back to the place where Rumi had resurrected him and I-I tried to reason with him but... he was like- completely different than my father." Lloyd wiped his face again.
"It wasn't him, and that realization I guess put me into shock or something. He was too powerful and all he wanted to do was to kill us. I pleaded for him to stop hoping that I could break through to him. I went absolutely ballistic on Kai because he thought that my dad had gone too far and that he understood what I was going through. Kai was right though, there really was no saving him. He did fully understand."
---
"Hey Lloyd, you sure you can help your dad?" Kai said as they made their way through some debris. The fire master was moving gingerly because of broken ribs he got from an earlier skirmish they had to deal with on the way here.
Lloyd looked at him with determination and slight annoyance, "He's my father Kai. Besides, I've done it before haven't I?"
"And what if you can't. What then?" The red ninja questioned.
"I will, he wouldn't hurt me in a million years."
Kai still didnt look convinced.
"You're just upset because you've never had any parents, let alone a dad!" Lloyd retorted.
He looked slightly hurt at the insult. Understanding wanting to believe that his father was still a good person in there somewhere. Heck, Kai wanted to still believe that his parents would come back. It's the farthest thing from the truth unfortunately. It's never going to happen. They continued traversing the caverns in complete silence. That was until they came across a huge room, and in the middle was where the mask supposedly used to be. Lloyd looked at the empty spot with a grimace.
Kai saw this and went to reassure him, "I really do understand-"
"You wouldnt even BEGIN to understand Kai!" He lashed out and the brunet flinched in surprise. Then Lloyd turned around and faced him with his eyes in a now purple hue, "You JERK!!"
Lloyd harshly pushed him back aggravating the red ninja's already broken ribs.
"Agh.. shit-" Kai staggered slightly and then cautiously moved backwards like he was trying to calm a wild animal.
"YOU REALLY THINK YOU CAN KNOW ME OR SYMPATHIZE?!!" The blonde glared ferocious and dangerously into Kai's eyes, "YOU THINK YOU COULD EVEN HELP ME?!"
The fire master just gazed back blankly, clutching his side.
"HA- DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH, I CAN'T EVEN BELIEVE HOW SELF-IMPORTANT YOU ARE ALL THE TIME! IM SICK OF EVERYONE THINKING THEY CAN HELP ME BUT ONLY MAKE THINGS WORSE!!"
Kai glanced behind him and in the distance he heard more sound coming from the cavern, and almost like clockwork a huge piece of the ceiling caved in. Causing the cavern to be filled with dust, and make everything extremely hard to see.
"What are you doing here?!" Garmadon boomed sounding more like a threat than a question. They both oriented themselves towards the sound and saw Lloyd's father, plus Harumi right next to him with a smug look. To make things even better, they had backup. Lots of it. They wouldn't have known where to look if not for Garmadon's eyes glowing through the grime.
"Aw... only two ninja? I was hoping to get rid of you all in one fell swoop." She said in a sing-song voice, probably not really caring that there was only two of them.
"Rumi, dad... why can't we just come to an agreement?" Garmadon glared at Lloyd so piercingly, the green ninja felt like he might've been impaled if looks could really kill. But he could change him, his dad. Kai was wrong.
Without any warning, he threw several destruction daggers at them. They both successfully dodged the attack, and Garmadon immediately went after Lloyd. He threw more daggers at him and the green ninja promptly put up his energy shield.
Kai, on the other side of the cavern was dealing with the serpentine and Harumi. Wielding his sword, Kai slashed through the snake people killing rows of them at a time. All while he parried off attacks from Harumi. One precise attack caught his sword and knocked it out of his hands, but then he set his hands ablaze went hand to hand.
"Dad, please! Just listen to me!" Lloyd begged.
"THERE IS NOTHING FOR YOU TO TELL ME!"
After a bit of Garmadon fighting in mele, Garmadon picked up Kai's lone sword off the ground. He swung it a couple times to check weight and charged.
"You don't have to keep fighting, Harumi was just using you," Lloyd shouted, "let us work it out like we used to!"
Garmadon continued staring straight through Lloyd like he was in a trance. He stabbed and slashed the sword and an off-guard attack caught Lloyd on the arm, making him cry out and collide with a wall.
Harumi at this point had fled, and Kai was swiftly wiping out the serpentine. The cavern rumbled as he watched his little brother get thrown into the side with a sickening crack. He immediately dropped his current fight and sprinted over to him.
"You ok?" Kai asked carefully remembering how upset Lloyd was earlier. He scanned over Lloyd for any big injuries. Lloyd didn't meet his eyes or even respond, but at least he seemed decently fine while he stood back up. The only recognition he gave the red ninja was a huff of annoyance and him slapping Kai's outstretched hand away.
'I really upset him...' Kai thought kind of guilty.
Continuously full on fighting for several minutes drained the two ninja. Their reaction times got slower and slower, but Garmadon's attacks just seemed to get even more precise and fast paced. Lloyd was eventually out face to face with his father.
"Dad.."
Garmadon raised a dagger attack but Lloyd just walked closer oblivious and blinded by emotion.
"Lloyd-!" Kai tried to get his attention so Lloyd might have a chance to dodge.
Too late.
"LLOYD!!"
Kai roughly shoved him out of the way. The sharp pain in his side signaled he was successful in his goal: he made sure Lloyd didn't get seriously hurt. Both of them were sent tumbling to the ground. Lloyd quickly rolled off of his brother in a daze, and stood up leaning onto the wall with his arm. The jostle on the wound from Lloyd falling on top of him was enough to take Kai's breath away. He touched his side, and cringed when his fingers came away in a sticky, deep red. For almost a second, the fire master considered just bleeding out lying on the cold floor, but he noticed the cavern was about to collapse and Lloyd was still here.
By some mental willpower Kai was up, adrenaline being the only thing keeping him moving around. The red ninja wasted no time grabbing his little brother's arm and making a run for cave entrance.
They made it out just as it collapsed, and were both were breathing heavily.
"Kai-" Lloyd took a moment to catch his breath and continued,"-You were right... about my dad."
Kai looked at him solemnly.
"Let's keep moving forward. Alright?" He suggested gently.
As they moved, Lloyd continued apologizing vigorously. Kai wished he could have stayed more attentive, but he was just trying to stay conscious. Adding to it, if he tried talk he might've passed out from pain. He was also thankful that Lloyd didn't seem to notice his condition. The dagger had dematerialized and now there wasn't anything stopping blood flow. He felt it dripping all down his side, but Lloyd was already stressed enough so Kai thought he didnt need to know.
'He needs more support than I do.'
---
Beep beep beep
Kai was laying unconscious on the hospital bed hooked up to numerous machines, mostly protruding from his stomach area. Nya was sitting on the edge of his bed holding his hand without the IV. She has been the only one allowed into the room for the last few days because she was his only immediately family. However, today they were all allowed to.
"How is his condition?" Zane inquired.
"Well uh... it's been better obviously. The nurse said the surgery went well but it was touch and go for a while. I mean- he had broken ribs, internal bleeding, internal organs damage it was pretty listless. They said it was worse because he got stabbed by a destruction dagger which ate away at the injury more."
"It's been three weeks already. Is he even gonna wake up?" Jay huffed.
Cole grinned, "Me personally, I would just wake up but-"
Kai shifted,"I heard that shithead..." His voice was scratchy from disuse.
"Kai.." Nya hugged him in disbelief now on the verge of crying.
Kai held her and stroked her hair while wiping her unshed tears,"Its ok sis. I haven't seen you cry in a while."
He quickly surveyed the room for Lloyd and realized he wasn't there.
"Where's..." Kai started.
"Lloyd?" Pixal finished for him as if reading his thoughts, "He felt at total fault for what had happened and chose to distance himself."
"Oh.."
A few hours later
After everyone had left just before visiting hours ended, Kai heard a knock.
Lloyd awkwardly walked in.
"Uhm... hey." He murmured.
Kai already knew what he felt.
"It's not your fault kiddo."