TW: forced consumption of drugs

"Tell us where they are!"

A snarl made its way onto Jay's lips as he flew backward when a guy punched him in the face, making him see bright stars dancing in front of his eyes. He unlocked his jaw that received most of the blow. It felt like it was on fire, but he did not let any hint of pain show on his face.

"Never!" he exclaimed, already knowing what would follow.

Another blow to his face. Then another. Then another.

Oh, how he loved being a ninja sometimes.

It had all started with a failed mission. Jay had been taken by a gang of criminals, and the others had not been able to save him in time.

Nya's screams still haunted Jay to this minute, but at least she was physically unharmed.

A part of him was glad it was him and not the others. The thought, the possibility, of Nya being in the exact same situation he was in right now, being beaten and threatened and surrounded by malicious men...

He did not even want to imagine that. Neither would he want any of the other guys to experience the same thing.

The guy, who had been the lead man this whole time, stepped closer to Jay until they were face-to-face. Jay tried to lunge at him, but his arms were severely restrained, tied to the chair he was sitting on. His feet were tied to it as well.

"Tell us where your little ninja friends are, and we'll set you free."

Those words meant nothing to Jay. He knew they were not intending on ever letting him go, no matter what he said or did. They would find out where the others were and still keep him there.

Jay smiled, a polite glint in his eyes. "You can kiss my beautiful, voluptuous, perfect a—"

That earned him another blow to the face.

Groaning, Jay's head slowly came back around, his face in flames. He tried to move his jaw, but the pain was too unbearable. It had to be dislocated by now. Jay willed himself not to give the bad guys what they yearned for: seeing him cry.

"Bring it here, boys," the man told his henchmen, who had been in the back of the room and watching this whole time.

They nodded and walked out of the room. A minute later, they came back. One of the three men was holding a small package. The closer he came toward Jay, the more his nerves spiked up, his heart in his throat. The label on the packaging was not in English. Neither were the letters from the Germanic or Latin-based language tree.

An Asian language, Jay guessed, since the characters looked either Japanese or Chinese. He didn't know the difference between those two languages' characters. Not that he could see the package all that well since the man ripped it open and pulled out a pill sheet before tossing the torn package to the side and out of his way.

"This'll surely get you to talk..."

Nope. Nuh uh. Jay did not like the sound of that.

The man pressed against the foil and popped open at least four pills, possibly more—Jay couldn't tell for sure from his line of sight. He collected them in his palm and rattled them as he watched the fear spread on Jay's face, a mischievous grin on his own.

When he tried to feed Jay the pills, the Blue Ninja did everything in his power to avoid them touching anywhere near his mouth. Jay dodged every attempt until the man harshly gripped his jaw, squishing his face in his calloused hand.

Jay's chest rose and fell with rapid speed, his eyes darting over to the other men in the room. They did not look like they would jump in any moment to save him, and Jay also knew it was very unlikely that his friends would come and save him right this instant.

He was doomed.

"You will take these," the guy said, his fishy breath infiltrating Jay's nostrils, making him gag. "And you will swallow them."

"No!" Jay's response came out rather wobbly since his face was smushed by the man's large hand.

Jay tried his utmost best to keep his tears in, but one slipped out. The man grinned triumphantly at the sight of the Blue Ninja at his mercy, frightened and tearing up.

"You will. Unless you want your precious girlfriend to suffer the consequences once I have her in my hands."

— — — —

Nya's pacing back and forth did not help clear her thoughts. All kinds of scenarios played in front of her eyes, none of them good, every single one ending in death.

Jay was gone, kidnapped, not a trace of his found, and she was trapped in her own misery, with no mental clarity.

Zane and Pixal were working triple the speed and strength to locate him. Cole and Kai were helping Lloyd in creating a master plan. And Nya was supposed to make sure their vehicles were all in top shape and loaded with gas, extra food rations, and weapons.

She had been done for a while now, and all she could do was worry. She was left alone with her thoughts, a dangerous place where she dove into the deepest corners of her mind to find something about herself to blame for Jay's kidnapping.

Her hands would not stop shaking on top of that.

How could they have allowed them to capture Jay and get away with him? How stupid of them to have let it all happen. Anything could be happening right now, at this exact moment, and there was no way Nya could help her Yin.

Well, Nya had tried to follow them, but she had been pulled back by her brother, claiming they needed to regroup and gather themselves. They had been worn out. All of them had been tired, and most of them had been injured during several of the altercations.

One moment of weakness ended with one of them being taken.

Jay was strong, stronger than he let on, but even the strongest warrior in the world was not invincible. The enemy could be doing anything to him.

Nya visibly shuddered.

"Hey sis," Kai said, appearing in the base.

His sister stopped pacing and looked at him expectantly.

"We found him."

— — — —

"Remember, guys," Lloyd said quietly, his eyes firmly looking at his team, his demeanor strong and serious. "Follow the plan. I don't need anyone else getting hurt or kidnapped, understood?"

The other guys nodded, but Nya's eyes were set on the building in front of them. Lloyd walked over to her and gripped her shoulders to make her look at him. "Understood, Nya?"

Nya glared at him but complied, knowing he was right. "Yes."

She shook his hands off her body and moved to the front of the group. They were on the rooftop across from the warehouse Zane and Pixal had tracked down. She put on her mask and turned to Lloyd.

"Can we go now?"

Lloyd nodded and watched as his teammates followed Nya one after the other until he was the last one to leave the rooftop.

Nya's soft footsteps landed on the ground. She quickly ran toward the backdoor and waited for her team to follow her. After Cole broke down the door, the team stormed inside, weapons drawn, ready for a fight. Stealth had been thrown out the window as their method of action, seeing as the ninja were fueled by anger and frustration at the loss of a team member.

Low lights illuminated the empty warehouse, only a few stray crates were in sight, not a single soul was present. The ninja stayed put in the center of the large area and waited. The chance of being surrounded was high, but that was part of the plan—they wanted to be surrounded.

It wasn't for nothing that Wu, Misako, Skylor, and every other Elemental Master they could reach on such short notice were all surrounding the warehouse on the outside, with easy access inside if the ninja so much as whispered a broken "help" into their ear pieces.

They were going to get Jay back. That was a stone-hard fact.

Their waiting lasted longer than expected, and Lloyd soon told his teammates to slowly step forward into each direction to check behind closed doors and underneath large crates.

Kai and Lloyd busted open their respective doors, but the rooms on the other side turned out to be a supply closet and a small bathroom. Cole kicked back a crate and sent it against a wall where it shattered into pieces, but nobody was hiding underneath it. Zane checked up in the air, looking for anybody who might have been hiding on the wooden posts that were holding up the warehouse, but no one was there.

When Nya advanced toward her door, she couldn't stop her hand from shaking as she prepared to check if the door was locked or not. The cold metal grazed her hand and sent an involuntary shiver down her spine, and with her heart leaping out of her chest, Nya twisted the knob.

It was unlocked.

Before she fully opened the door, Nya stepped back, took a quick, deep breath, then kicked the door open. She needed to expect the unexpected, and with her upper body getting in first, that could have lowered her chances of making it out alive at a worst-case scenario.

The door collided with the wall on the other side and bounced back but left enough room for Nya to look inside. The single light bulb flickered on the ceiling but still served as a good-enough light source and showed Nya what she had wanted to see.

From what she could detect, the room was empty and only had the one door Nya had opened, but in the middle of the space sat Jay on a chair, his hands and feet bound. His head hung low so Nya couldn't see his face.

"Jay!"

Nya ran inside and dropped to her knees in front of him. She pulled out her pocket knife and cut the ropes binding his feet before cutting the ropes wrapped around his hands.

Jay slumped forward and would have face-plummeted on the floor had Nya not caught him. "Jay," she said, carefully lifting his head to get a look at him.

Her heart stopped when she could barely see his face. Not because of the bad lighting, but because his face was covered in purple and blue bruises that hid his skin. His jaw had most of the damage, his lips were busted, and his eyes were closed.

The others stormed inside the room just as Nya let a tear slip out. She tried to get him to wake up, but Jay didn't react to her pleas.

She let Zane scan his body for any internal damage, and while the nindroid confirmed he had no life-threatening injuries, Jay still had a few cracked ribs. Luckily no concussion, though.

After Lloyd spoke to Wu and their other allies and told them there was no danger inside the warehouse, Nya carefully lifted Jay up bridal style and walked out of the room with him. While they all stayed close together to protect her and Jay since Nya was incapacitated to protect herself at the moment, Jay stirred in her arms.

"Jay," Nya said, causing the others to look at him.

His eyes opened slowly, revealing a pool of dark blue surrounded by bright red. The veins in his sclerae were prominently red—alarmingly red. His eyes could barely focus on her.

"You...came..." he slurred.

Nya's mouth dropped open. She whipped her head up at the others to make sure they were all seeing and hearing the same as her.

"Jay, what did they do to you?" Lloyd asked, seeing as Nya was still trying to gather her thoughts.

Jay's head slowly turned. "Lloyd." He grinned but then grimaced at the sharp sting of pain in his jaw. "What? Where is my...face?"

"He is stable but unable to form coherent sentences," Zane said.

"Is he on something?" Kai asked.

"Uh, duh!" Jay exclaimed. "I'm on my...Nya."

Kai blinked. "He's definitely on something."

"Let's get to the monastery before the bad guys come back," Lloyd suggested.

The others agreed but Jay yelled out a firm "no."

"Why not?" Cole asked him.

"They're pink...and monastery. With beards!"

The others stared at him.

"Jay, are you okay?" Nya asked. "Are you high?"

He turned to her, smiling brightly. "I'm perfect. They gave me this...thing...and I've been amazing since." He stared up at her but gasped when a fly flew over her head. "A butterfly!"

All alarm bells sounded in Nya's ears. "They gave you what?"

"Something. It was, like, small. Like Cole's—"

"Okay, buddy, you're high as heck," Cole said. "I would kick your butt but I can't because it's already been kicked by the enemy."

"Thank you?"

"Zane, what is he on?" Nya asked her friend.

The White Ninja scanned him but quickly shook his head. "It is very unlikely I can answer that with a hundred percent certainty. I will have to get a blood test. Let us venture back to the monastery where I can conduct said test."

"No!" Jay yelled. "Not monastery!"

"Why not, Jay?" Lloyd asked heavily, annoyed with how his friend acted.

Jay's red gaze stayed on him. "They're going there to kill you," he said, although his grin didn't match the urgency of the information he just dropped on them. "And they also, like..." He furrowed his eyebrows, losing his train of thought.

"They also what?" Nya asked.

"Some cave," he said vaguely. "Some cave offended them. Don't know, don't care." His eyes settled back on the fly buzzing around their heads. "Look at that butterfly! It's so cute!"

"The Samurai X Cave," Cole said, decoding Jay's words. "They're on their way over there."

"Where else are they headed to, Jay?" Nya asked her boyfriend.

He tried to hitch a shoulder but groaned out in pain instead, clutching his stomach. "Why the heck is my tummy gone?"

Lloyd sighed. He told the others to go outside and talk to Wu and Pixal, to tell them the story Jay had told them, so that they could quickly conjure up a new plan. They needed a new hideout until the enemy was taken care of.

Then he turned to Nya. He instructed her to take care of Jay until they had a foolproof plan. He then went outside to join the others as Nya slowly walked after him.

"Jay, I know you're not in our right mind, but you have to get better again. This version of you is weird."

"I'm weird?" He frowned.

Nya almost yelled out in frustration but contained it at the last second. "No, you're not weird, Jay. You being high is weird."

"I'm very high." He smiled. "You're carrying me so I'm reaching the skyyy." His eyes widened. "That rhymed!"

Nya had a lot to say on the tip of her tongue, but for now her priority was to get Jay to safety so that his injuries could be treated and his blood could be tested.

She also planned on taking good care of the people who had hurt Jay and drugged him to get information out of him once she so much as got a whiff of their exact location.

Jay's gasp made her think there was danger in sight, but instead he was pointing in the air, his grin bright and joyous. "A butterfly!"

"That's a fly, Jay!"

A/N: I'm not feeling this oneshot, guys, ngl. But I also can't deny the fact that it almost felt refreshing writing a oneshot that didn't require much planning and thinking. I just freestyled it like I used to do in the good ol' days. Think of this as a filler oneshot of some sorts.