Nya's POV

"And voila! Zane and PIXAL should both be back online in several minutes," Jay leans back in the rolling chair he's sitting in. His hands are behind his head with his feet crossed and resting on the counter next to the massive computer he's been glued to the past several days. "I'm pretty cool, aren't I?"

I roll my eyes, but I have a smile on my face. "The absolute coolest," I reply.

Ever since we reached the Destiny's Bounty, Jay has hulled himself up in here and has been trying to fix Zane and PIXAL's systems after they were roughed up by the master of magnetism. Other than their frames being dented beyond belief, a lot of their internal systems were either severely banged up or completely broken. With Jay and I both working together, we made fairly quick work of it though.

I had never truly collaborated with someone on a project before. Back when Jay and I lived together, I was his assistant, and while he taught me things, I could never really help him because our knowledge gap was so vast, and I knew relatively little. Then, with the elemental masters of creation, no one was even near my level, so it was impossible to work with anyone. I thought that was what I preferred after doing it for so much time.

However, other than what (or should I say who) we were trying to fix, working with Jay was very mentaly stimulating and rewarding. Although some of his technology is still way out of my wheelhouse, we were able to bounce ideas off of each other about what we should try to fix first and how to tackle it, and we divided off work to get the job done sooner. Plus, with how dismal it is to have to essentially revive your friends, Jay did a really good job of keeping the mood light and the atmosphere pleasant.

"Are you excited? By this time tomorrow, you're going to have the elemental army back," Jay looks over at me as I sit in a rolling chair right beside him, rocking back and forth slowly.

"I just hope things go off without a hitch. Are your drones still doing reconnaissance?"

"Yep. They're already located three entrances, all of which are regularly guarded by some of the unnatural elemental masters. It also doesn't help that their headquarters is right outside the capital since even with the current situation, the guards would rather attack Kai, Lloyd, Zane, or me than the unnatural elementals since we're deemed 'bigger threats' or whatever. I just hope that once this is all over with they'll finally take their heads out of the sand and let us free," Jay pulls up footage from the drones on the computer as he talks, showcasing two doors guarded by elemental masters.

Looking at his face and the way he stares intently at the screen, I fully soak in how impossible everything would have seemed to me even the day that I left the camp in a frenzy. I went into finding the elemental masters of creation hoping to appeal to the fact that they would want to get rid of the "fake" elemental masters to withhold their glory, yet the four that I have found so far have genuinely wanted to help either for me or for the sake of Ninjago.

Additionally, my close bond with at least two of them is mind boggling. I knew that the master of fire was my brother when I went into the situation, but I didn't expect him to want to be my brother this badly. Over the past several weeks, we've bonded like we should have a long time ago, and I genuinely can't see a life without him in it.

Then, there's Jay, honestly the biggest curveball of this entire experience. I was less shocked when PIXAL was still around than when I found out that my Jay was still alive. It's still weird to think about how he has been alive for all of this time, living his own separate life and creating a nation. However, when I look at him and talk to him, it still has the same ease as it did back then.

"What's your plan for when all of this is over?" I ask him, realizing that I have no idea what anyone is going to do once we finish fighting the unnatural elementals. Jay, Kai, Zane, PIXAL, and Lloyd are already so important to me even if I haven't known some of them for a long time. A life without them in it already seems weird.

"I dunno. There's so many variables still in the air. Ideally, the king will pardon us then I can go with you wherever you want. Hopefully, we could find Cole along the way too," he shrugs, and his answer catches me off guard.

I raise an eyebrow at him. "You wouldn't go back to your little nation?"

"Honestly, being there just made me sad," he gives me a meek closed mouth smile that makes my heart ache for him. "The people were great, don't get me wrong, but I was never a part of their community. I was treated like I was different just like how I was treated for the rest of my life. The only people who've made me feel normal are you, the guys, their soulmates, and my parents. PIX helped fill the void, but I still felt alone there for the longest time."

I scoot my chair over to him and wrap my arms around his frame, tightly holding him. I run my hands up and down his back. He hugs me back and buries his head into the crook of my neck. "I spent every day of the last 471 years missing you," his hot breath fans across my neck, sending shivers through my spine mixed with the energizing prickle of his touch.

"Same here. I replayed the last night we spent together over and over again in my head," I admit.

He sits up and gives me a mischievous little smile, "and now you replay that night in the inn."

My jaw drops and cheeks instantly turn bright red as he starts to laugh. "You're so brazen today!"

"Hey, today is the last day that I have you all to myself, so I need to make the most of it," he brushes a strand of hair out of my face.

"What do you mean?"

"Shade is coming back tomorrow, and you could easily choose him. I want to make the most out of today since it might be the last one I really spend with you," he gives me a sad little closed mouth smile.

"Don't say that," I grab his hand and intertwine it with mine. "You sound like you've given up.

"I'm...afraid of losing you again, and the thought of another guy hugging you, and kissing you, and..."

I interrupt him with a kiss. It's slow and passionate as our lips move against each other, the electric current that enters through my lips and trickles down my body making me weighless. I move from my chair onto his lap, straddling him as I use one hand to cup his right shoulder and the other to run my fingers through the back of his hair.

When Jay's hands slowly travel down the side of my body, stopping to squeeze the tops of my thighs, I hear a gagging sound from behind us. I pull apart, and standing at the doorway, my brother is there, facing away from us, utterly disgusted.

I climb off of Jay, moving back into my own seat with heated cheeks that match Jay's. "You can turn back around, Kai."

Kai looks back at us, peeking through his fingers. "It never won't be disgusting to see you two kiss. I assumed it was safe to just walk in since Zane and PIX are up."

I whip my head around, and Zane and PIXAL are sitting together, both completely conscious on the other side of the room. The embarrassment seeps through my entire body as my entire face turns scarlet.

"Hahahaha," Jay lets out an awkward laugh, scratching the back of his neck. "Why didn't you guys stop us when you woke up?"

"You appeared to be having a moment, so Zane and I conversed via digital chat and concluded that we would wait for you two to finish before we made our presence known," PIXAL explains, and I internally thank my brother for walking in before anything picked up too much.

Jay sighs, but drops the topic. "Now that everyone is awake, we should make a plan for tomorrow..."

"We've been brainstorming ideas since we got back from the mountains several days ago. We should go talk about it on the deck," Kai says, and not seeing any reason to refuse, the rest of us follow Kai through the hallway and up to the table we set up on the main deck. Since we fly the ship above the clouds as a cover, we have a plush cloud sea as our backdrop.

"Lloyd and Harumi, when did you two make our acquaintance?" Zane asks as he sees the two of them sitting beside each other, talking quietly. When Harumi sees PIXAL, she stands up and walks over to her sister, giving her a super tight hug.

"I missed you so much, PIX, you have no idea," I barely hear her whisper in her sister's ear.

"Harumi? You have gotten exponentially taller! You are no longer a child," PIXAL places a hand on her sister's cheek and gives her a smile. "You have grown up to be a wonderful woman. Lloyd is extremely lucky."

"So is Zane."

---

Once everyone catches up, we finally all get seated around the table, a bowl of chips that Kai poured into a bowl sitting in the middle of us for a snack.

"If we're planning on saving Ninjago, we need to attack the unnatural elementals in two waves. The first wave is the recruitment phase," Lloyd draws on a little handheld whiteboard, writing the heading for this little section. "The main objective is to rebuild our forces and get rid of any hostages they have as well as gathering any intel that will be able to help us in the next phase, the destruction phase.

We have two objectives for the recruitment phase. Our first objective is to free the elemental army. Sadly, seeing as we have no layout for the inside of their hideout, we're going to have to figure out where they are staying while we're trying to execute this.

Kai and I are going to take the south entrance, Nya and Jay will take the east entrance, and Zane and PIXAL will take the west entrance. Once inside, Kai and I will try to draw all of the unnatural elementals to a common point, preferably their main area with a lot of space, and will try to hold them off for as long as possible.

Hopefully, Skylor will be there, and I can suck enough energy out of her to make her pass out. If she encounters another group, then Zane can freeze her or Jay can electrocute her. Either way, knock Skylor out so Zane and PIXAL can carry her out and bring her back out to the Bounty.

Because the elemental army will only trust Nya, Jay and Nya have to be the ones to break them out. This means that Jay and Nya have to slip past the fighting and locate them as well as the key to get them out of their cells. Once they do that, then they can rendezvous back at the center with everyone, and we can use our powers to barricade them there while we make our escape."

"It sounds good in theory, but how are Jay and I supposed to find the key to unlock all of the cells? What if it's their leader, who we're actively trying to avoid, who has it? What are we going to do then? Neither Jay nor I have powers that can bust the cells open," I bring up a valid concern with the plan.

"I've been working on a little gadget, it looks like a bracelet, but it actually turns into a buzzsaw that can cut through metal. It should be able to cut through the cells," Jay brings up, easing some of my worries.

"For supplies and housing for the army, I'm having it brought to the desired location by Theodore, so we shouldn't have a problem with any of that type of stuff," Kai adds. "The only thing we couldn't find some sort of solution for is Sky. Yeah, we'll have her, but that doesn't do anything if she's still being controlled by them. She probably doesn't know that she's brainwashed, so she can't help us at all."

"Nya, do you know of any of the unnatural elementals that could do that to her?" Jay asks me, and I purse my lips, quickly scanning through the ones I've come into contact with.

"The master of mind is the only one I can think of. He's the one with the white hair that has the black stripe down the middle. I'm not quite sure what his powers are, but considering his name..."

Kai's eyes go wide. "He wouldn't leave Skylor alone the whole time I was there. She wouldn't even talk to him, but he still followed her around anyways. I thought he was just hoping to get with her, but that would make sense."

"So we need to break his hold over her mind? But how?" Lloyd looks down at the little whiteboard in his hand, and all of us sit there in silence, trying to think.

After several minutes of silence, I speak up. "He would lose a hold on her mind if there was no mind to hold onto."

"What do you mean?" my brother flares up, clearly threatened by what I said. I place a hand on his arm, and Lloyd does the same to the other side. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

"If her brain were to have no activity for let's say one one thousandth of a second, she technically would not have a functioning mind for him to maintain his hold. Once her brain started back up, she should, in theory, not be under his hold anymore," I reason. Zane nods at my words from across the table.

"She is correct. He would need to reestablish his connection, which I hypothesize would be extremely difficult at such a range. Additionally, with the resistance she would put up, it would become nearly impossible," Zane agrees with me.

"Yeah, this works in theory, but how would we actually go about this?" Jay asks before taking a chip and trying to dip it in the salsa. However, it breaks in the salsa, and he lets out a sigh, just letting it sit there instead of trying to fish it out. I look at him pointedly, making his eyes open. "Me?"

"Oh hell no," Kai stands up from the table. "Jay can't even eat chips correctly. Why do we think he could do this? We don't need to temporarily kill her! There has to be another way."

"This is our best option..."

"Fuck this! Would you all let the same thing happen to the person sitting right next to you?" my brother's jaw is clenched as he scans across all of us.

I lived for years thinking Jay was dead, so I know the dread and agony that comes with it. If I were to purposely cause that fate for him, even if only temporarily, I couldn't bear it, especially if we based it all off of a theory that could still be wrong.

Plus, who knows if there will be any health repercussions for turning off a brain for even that short amount of time. It's completely untested.

"I'll just trigger her hypothalamus to continuously release melatonin to keep her sleeping until we can think of a safer solution," Jay suggests, placing a hand on my knee.

"Thank you," Kai sighs, running a hand through her hair.

"On a brighter note, for the past several days, Rumi and I have been making some low key yet fashionable outfits for us for tomorrow. Everyone should try theirs on to make sure we don't have to make any alterations," Lloyd suggests, standing up to match Kai.

Everyone follows suit, walking towards the stairwell down to our rooms where Lloyd and Harumi are most likely keeping the outfits. However, as we are about to head down, I grab onto Harumi's wrist, making her whip her head in my direction and glare at me. "What?"

"Can I talk to you for a little bit?" I ask her. Every time Skylor was brought up in the conversation, Harumi would recoil as if she didn't want to even think about her. I remembered that Kai said that Harumi didn't like her older sister, but I didn't know the distaste was to this degree.

"About?"

"Your eldest sister..."

"No way," she rips her wrist from my grip.

"Rumi, talk to her please," Lloyd, who was eavesdropping on the conversation, butts in, looking up at her with puppy eyes. "I can deal with the guys. Just talk to Nya for a few minutes, and if nothing good comes out of this conversation, we can do whatever you want for the rest of the day."

Harumi sighs before pausing to think the situation over, "Fine, but only because you want me to," she gives him a peck on the lips. "Now go before I change my mind."

With a little smile, Lloyd turns away from us and chases after the others who have already walked farther down the hallway. When I look back at Harumi, she has her arms crossed, and her eyes slightly glaring at me.

"I know just how you feel about Skylor..."

"No you don't," she quickly snaps, her eyes now in a full glare. "You know nothing about how I feel."

"I spent hundreds of years hating my brother and wishing he was never born because if he was never born, I wouldn't have had to hide my powers, and I wouldn't have lost someone that I care about for so long. I resented him for years because I thought that he killed PIXAL and that made my life hard. The only reason I ever went looking for him was because I needed his help, not out of any concern for him.

Yet, do you know what happened when I broke into his kingdom, and he caught me? He ran to me crying and immediately pulled me into his arms. I had spent centuries villainizing him for something he hadn't even done all while he was hoping that I would come looking for him so that he would have some sort of family again. I completely misunderstood him, and now, I'm so happy to call him my brother," I take a pause to take in Harumi's features. They've softened significantly, the glare in her eyes gone. Instead, she's deep inside her own head.

"I've heard a bit about what happened with you and Skylor, and I'm so sorry about it, but she herself never did anything to you. The whole kingdom idolized and praised her, sometimes at your expense, but she never asked for that. All that she wanted was to be a good queen with her soulmate by her side.

Then, the situation with your mother..."

"I'm leaving," Harumi turns her back on me and starts to walk away, interrupting me mid sentence.

"From what Kai told me, she wanted a relationship with you so badly, Harumi..."

Harumi whips her head around and clenches her jaw, "Leave me alone! You don't understand how impossible it was to reach the bar she set for us. You don't know how tiring it was for her to receive every compliment ever thrown at us while PIXAL and I were casually thrown aside by the whole kingdom. You don't understand how painful it was for not only my father but also my mother who wasn't even her mother to be absolutely obsessed with her to the point that she was all they ever talked about.

You were your parents' golden child, the one they poured all of their attention into. You would never understand how it feels to practically be parentless. Kai, Jay, Zane, Cole, PIXAL, and Lloyd were the closest people I ever had to family, so forgive me if I'm upset with you when you pretend to know more than me about my own past while you're bringing the people I care about into imminent danger, so please, don't try to preach to me again," she continues to stride down the hallway until I hear the loud slamming of her and Lloyd's door, making me let out a sigh and rub my temples.

I can only hope that by the time we get Skylor, Harumi will have opened up a bit more to the idea since if there's anyone who will be able to gain Skylor's trust, it's her own sister.

A/N: Hi everyone! Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all had an amazing day!

I'm entering the last few weeks of my semester, so it's VERY likely that I won't be able to update until mid-December, but I'm hoping that this is not the case! I'll try to find a time to fit in writing.

Any questions or comments?

Thank you all so much for reading! Y'all are the best!