"Shh, he's waking up!"

Kai barely made out a voice through the ringing in his ears as he came back to his senses. First he felt a cold, hard floor beneath him, but then Kai became strongly aware of his splitting headache when he opened his eyes. After a moment of readjustment, Kai gradually began to become aware of what the voices were saying.

"Hey man, you okay?"

The red ninja pushed himself up. "Yeah, I just— Wait, Jay?"

Jay, the one who had spoken to him, eyed Kai suspiciously. "Hey, how do you know my name?"

"Of course I know your name, Jay. And I know Cole too."

Cole, who was also there, exchanged glances with Jay. "Listen, man, we don't know who you are."

"Ugh, of course you don't. I'm still in this nightmare realm!" Kai said in frustration, purposely banging his head against bars. Wait, bars? "Hold on," he said, "are we in jail?!"

Cole rolled his eyes. "Well look who's catching on. There's no use trying to be a hero around here, those days are over. All you'll get is a lifetime in this quaint place."

"What do you mean there's no use?" Kai said. "Do you guys even hear yourselves? How could you two give up so easily? You're ninja for crying out loud!"

"Uh correction," Jay said with a point of his finger, "we used to be ninja."

"Yeah, now we're just some average guys stuck in jail," Cole added with a humph.

Kai did not seem satisfied with that answer. "Well I'm busting us out of here so this mess can be fixed."

"And just who do you think you are, thinking that this can be 'fixed'?" Jay asked.

"Listen, you may not know or remember me, but I'm Kai, the fire ninja." Kai then pointed to Jay, "You're the ninja of lighting and the son of Ed and Edna from the junkyard. Your favourite colour is blue and you used to go to the mother and son roller skating derby."

Jay's mouth was left agape with a look of utter confusion and almost fear on his face. How could this seemingly random person, Kai, know all this about him? He was just about to pour out a torrent of questions upon the spiky haired lad, but Kai shushed him and gestured to Cole.

"Cole, your father [a/n does his dad have a name?] was a member of the Royal Blacksmiths and wanted you to go to the Marty Oppenheimer School of Performing Arts but you instead dropped out. Oh, and you say you're not scared of anything, but really you're scared of ghosts and dragons."

Cole looked equally as astounded as Jay. "How did you—?"

"Listen, guys, I'm from an alternate timeline or something sciencey like that where things are a lot different. We're all friends and things are pretty great, well, at least compared to this. The lady who brought me here baled on me and said she wouldn't fix things until I realised I was important or something stupid like that. So I really need you to believe what I'm saying so we can fix things here. Maybe then I can somehow get back and away from this disaster."

There was a moment of silence where Kai was certain he could feel himself begin to sweat. He honestly did not know what to do and getting Cole and Jay to help him fix things seemed like his only option. If they would not help him, Kai supposed he could always try to escape and fix things on his own, but that would be much more difficult and—

"Yeah, I believe you," Jay said, slicing through Kai's train of thought.

"You do?" Kai said hopefully.

"You do?" Cole said questioningly.

"Yeah, sure I do."

Cole could not believe what he was hearing. "Look, Jay, you're my best friend—"

"I'm your only friend," Jay said with a smirk.

Cole sighed. "But don't you think this guy sounds just a bit crazy?"

"Well yeah, maybe just a bit, but I think we could use a little crazy right now. We haven't had crazy since..." Jay trailed off.

"Since Zane," Cole said wistfully.

"What—what happened to Zane?" Kai's expression fell.

"Well Zane kind of reminded me of you, ready to be a ninja and a bit reckless," Cole said.

Kai laughed to himself. Zane? Reckless? Boy things are strange in this timeline.

"Yeah," Jay added, "he always said it was his purpose or destiny or something like that to protect those who can't protect themselves, so that's what he did, or at least tried to do. Until he was caught and scrapped."

And that was it, that was the final straw. Kai had heard enough. He was willing to risk anything to somehow escape this horrible place and go back to the Ninjago he knew. The Ninjago where Nya was his confident and strong sister, the Ninjago where Lloyd and Zane were alive, and the Ninjago that was ruled by good, not evil.

Kai was filled with determination. "Guys, we're gonna bust out of here, reclaim Ninjago for good and then hopefully I can get back in my own place."

Jay looked equally as determined, but Cole? Not so much. "Yeah, but didn't you say that the lady who brought you here—"

"Cole," the red ninja interjected, "I honestly don't care about what Rayla said. Everything she said made no sense so we're going to do this my way, and tonight we escape."

Hey so sorry it's been so long! With everything going on I kind of forgot to update... But I hope everyone had a great holiday!

Quick question: was there too much dialogue? I kind of felt like there was but didn't know how to resolve that. Please give a review and tell me what you thought of that and the chapter in general :)

Shoutout to RandomDragon, MoC, Bluepaw265, SpitfirewaterNinja, Ebony umbreon, iidaemii03, and GreenFlame-Lover-Forever for reviewing and a huge thank you to everyone who has followed/favourited! That really inspires me to continue

RandomDragon: if no one had discovered the green ninja scroll, the prophecy would still be there to come true

God bless and happy 2018!