Taking place shortly after the events of The Hands of Time: when a mission to save kidnapped kids goes wrong, a mysterious clan believes Jay holds the secret to a magic spell that can turn someone into a dragon. Nya, Kai, and the other ninja attempt...
A/N THIS CHAPTER!!!!! ARGHHHH! I spent an entire evening editing this bad boy and forgot to hit save. ALL of my work was lost! And my stupid program couldn't recover it! I had to do it all over again! (And my second edit is nowhere near as good as my first). It doesn't help that this chapter is really angsty so I'm already not in a happy mood. Yikes, the rough writer's life.
Anyways, I'm not an overly visual person so I used a website (https://watabou.github.io/city-generator) to make a layout of Okuura village for my reference. If you struggle with visualizing landscapes too, totally check it out.
Here's my layout if you are interested. It's not overly relevant to the story, I just needed a little help.
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Anyways, thanks for reading! It means a lot to me. I didn't think anyone would like my work, but I got positive feedback on my previous chapters and it really made my day!
Now for a whole schwack of angst and sarcasm:
"And Jay, make sure you don't get left behind." Cole chuckled to himself. He must think himself quite clever. But Jay wasn't in the mood.
Jay made a sarcastic comment as Cole followed after Kai. Jay was supposed to be the funny one. But nothing was funny about Cole and Kai's lack of empathy.
Jay was usually better at taking jokes than he was that day. None of Jay's friends cared about his hurt feelings. Except for Nya (she was amazing, always looking out for him).
If anyone had their value to the team undermined, the others would comfort them. They'd tell them it wasn't true. When it was Jay, they laughed and told him to get over it.
No one said it, but everyone thought it: Jay was the weak link in the team.
Jay tried to push his bitter thoughts away but he couldn't. He had never been able to control his nagging pessimism before. At least, he couldn't control it whenever Nya wasn't around. He needed to find her so she can tell him: "We need you on the team."
Finding new inspiration to leave, Jay took one last look on the bus to make sure they didn't leave a child behind. Empty. Easy mission. Again.
Not that Jay was complaining. After the craziness of Lloyd's possession and the Time Twins (plus those extra days fighting Nadakhan that Jay had to remind himself didn't actually happen), Jay wanted to take it easy. He wished he could relax. But he couldn't.
Even if the missions were easy and he had lots of time off, he was still stressed for two reasons. One: everyone wanted to be ready for when they found Master Wu again. And two: no one was ready. The team was out of shape and out of practice.
Lloyd was doing his best as their new leader. But everyone knew that he was struggling to lead.
Jay forced himself to focus on the mission. He was the last person in the garage.
