(Warning. This chapter contains violence, mild gore, and some strong language).

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Jay woke with a start when Nya abruptly banged on the door, her fist full of fear and desperation.

"There's been an attack! At the shopping centre in Ninjago City! They need our help!"

She turned and darted down the hall, heading straight to the other boy's room, undoubtedly to wake them up as well.

Jay was awake in an instant, springing over to the drawer Lloyd had cleared for him and snatched his blue ninja suit from where it lay at the side, starting to change straight away.

He briefly realised that he'd slept in his binder, and suffered a quick pang of regret, before brushing it away and continuing to get ready as quickly as he could.

Lloyd took a little longer to get awake and get his suit, but soon enough, both of them were rushing down the corridor to the bridge, where they met Sensei and... nobody else.

Wu was already steering the Bounty into the city, as close to the mall as they could get without crashing into another building.

As they flew, Lloyd tried to understand the situation as best he could.

"What the hell happened?! What's going on?!" Lloyd exclaimed as soon as he entered the room, and rushed over to Sensei, desperate for answers.

"We got a message from the Police Department asking for help, Nya went to get you straight away!" Their mentor replied, clearly very panicked and worried.

Lloyd and he exchanged a few more words, about the attack at the mall being the work of armed terrorists, and that the attack started soon after a Pride event took place inside the centre.

The pieces slowly fitted together, and... Jay spoke for the first time that morning.

"... It's Dei Noctis... isn't it." He stated, with utmost certainty.

Sensei Wu turned around to look at him, meeting his eyes and settling into a regretful expression.

"... yes." He answered, before turning back around a focussing on the flight.

Nya and Zane came through next, then Cole after a couple minutes. All of them asked pretty much the same questions except Nya, who knew what was going on already.

Finally, after what must have been about ten minutes - three minutes after they had landed the Bounty near the site in question - Kai rushed into the Bridge, in his suit and ready for combat.

"What the f*ck took you so long?!" Lloyd near shouted, and waved for all of them to follow him off the ship, and in the direction of the mall.

They communicated as they ran, and it was hardly a nice interaction.

"I didn't know where my suit was, ok?" Kai huffed, pulling his hood up over his face and sprinting as fast as he could.

"You should've come out without it then! Everybody knows who you are, and it's not like they give us much protection anyway! People's lives are at stake here!"

"You could've left without me!"

"Going into this situation without all of the team is bloody dangerous!"

The bickering carried on for a little while, until Nya shut them all up.

"Be quiet, for god's sake! We don't have time for arguing now!"

She was right. The shopping centre was coming up soon, and they ideally needed to have the element of surprise. Shouting at each other and being loud would give them away in an instant.

Jay noticed something as he was running. When they were in the midst of their Ninja careers, he was hardly the fastest runner. He was fast but, Cole and Kai could both beat him in a sprint.

Now - despite the constant pain of his binder around his chest - he was actually drawing ahead of the group, who were all running as fast as they could. He was having to slow himself down to stay at their pace.

On top of that, they were all gradually decelerating, their endurances all failing them slowly.

It was extremely worrying. All five of them, exhausted before the undoubted fight even started.

What the hell was going on?

At last, the group reached the police cars outside, and joined the police officers who were entering the building, hoping to take out the terrorists and save the people inside. The terrorists had blockaded all entrances with rubble, setting off small bombs to create piles that made what once was a mall into a fortress. The police hadn't had any luck at all, so, the Ninja had been called in.

Instead of the conventional way, trying to dig through the front and side entrances, with a small bit of effort, they scaled the building, dropping in through a large vent and entering the third floor, all falling silent in synchronisation.

The entire mall, was silent, and seemingly desolate.

Shop windows had been broken in, and consequently, shards of glass were scattered across the smooth concrete ground, and a large number of incredibly racist things had been spray painted on the walls.

After a bit more observation, looking around, they were more than racist.

Transphobic, Homophobic, Antisemetic, Ableist... it went on. It made many of them sick to the stomach.

Without even having to communicate, they all agreed that finding the perpetrators first without being uncovered would be the best way to go, so tried their absolute hardest to stay light on their feet and silent as they crept across the floor, staying close to the ground and next to walls as much as they could.

The shattered glass made it very hard though, as a single wrong step meant that a sickening crunch of a piece breaking would fill the air.

There were two occasions in which somebody did step on glass, once with Kai and once with Lloyd. Both times, the whole group froze in place, waiting in anticipation for a dozen assailants to fly out of nowhere and attack them, but they didn't.

It really did seem that the place was empty.

Until, there was an outbreak of gunshots on the second floor.

They realised that the time for silence and sneak was over, and rushed towards one of the escalators - which weren't running - and sped down it.

The scene they came upon was horrible.

There was blood all over the place, hostages tied up and thrown to the glass-covered ground, motionless bodies of a few lying around and... a group of maybe fifteen men and women - some with knives, some with guns - standing in the centre, undoubtedly the terrorists they were looking for.

There was only a split second to think before they would notice them and attack, and Jay hyper-focused on this moment, eyes darting from enemy to enemy, evaluating which ones to take out first.

The ones with guns obviously, but which one to start with? The one with the automatic machine gun most definitely.

He just hoped that he and his friends would survive this. Surprisingly, they had never commonly fought anybody who used guns.

Their lives were in danger here.

There was every possibility that one of them could die.

That all of them could die.

But they couldn't give up, not when there were lives to save.

Before any of the terrorists could react, Jay sprung into action, sending a powerful arc of electricity sparking over to the one clutching a sub machine gun.

He tensed up and screamed with pain, before crumpling onto the ground.

All six Ninja dispersed, darting towards their targets with years of practice and skill.

Jay rolled forward to avoid a spray of bullets, catching somebody in the legs and knocking them over, jumping back to his feet and jabbing another in the throat, winding them and then kicking them in the stomach.

Left, right, up, down, all around. It was turning out to be a lot easier than he thought it would be.

A bullet grazed past his ear but missed him, he picked up an abandoned metal pipe off the ground and sent it spinning at a fifth attacker, hitting her square in the forehead and knocking her over too.

Adrenaline pumped through his system, as he moved and evaded and attacked with ease and success.

Back in combat, doing the right thing, it felt good.

Jay felt alive again, and as he jumped on a fifth opponent, making his whole body live and giving the man a huge shock... he stopped for a second and turned to see how his friends were doing.

He expected them to be doing well.

After all, he had taken out six of the fifteen himself, leaving the others to deal with nine between all five them...

But the scene he saw was far from that.

Kai was on the ground, three bullet wounds in his arm gushing blood, and Zane crouched over him, having created a blockade of ice to protect the two of them, and fought a ranged fight against a particular assailant who owned throwing knives, returning his own attacks with quickly made ice blades.

Cole was engaged in unsuccessful combat with 2 different men wielding knives, and had a nasty bleeding gash across his right shoulder and left leg.

Nya was doing the best out of them. She had been able to pull water directly from the pipes of a nearby water fountain, and had managed to take out three, blasting a fourth in the face, forcing her to drop her pistol in shock.

Lloyd was trying his hardest to back up Cole, and the remaining two terrorists were moving towards Jay, warily after seeing that he was clearly the most dangerous of the group.

Jay was horrified, scared to see his team reduced to something so pathetic in under a minute, but moved quickly once more to help Zane and Kai, tackling the attacker with throwing knives and sending her under with a hard punch to the head, he then shot his second arc of lightning at one of the two attacking Cole and Lloyd, taking him out.

Lloyd yelled a thanks, but Jay had no time to respond, instead turning to the two on his tail.

Electricity charged him his arm, and he rolled forward, dodged a swipe from a knife, grabbed hold of one's arm and electrocuted him.

He noticed in the corner of his eye that Lloyd and Cole managed to take out their person.

Spurred on by their win being so close, he ran forwards, tackling the final one and slamming them to the floor, grabbing their collar and staring into their disturbingly joyful eyes.

"This is over! We've beaten you!" He yelled, clearly looking for some sort of surrender, but... all the man under him did was grin, in the most disturbing and spine-chilling way.

"... oh... dear Ninja... how wrong you are..." he chuckled.

Jay's intuition sensed something wrong, and he was about to say something else...

But the terrorist started maniacally laughing, distracting Jay enough to lift a detonator out of his pocket and slam his thumb down on the button, without the blue Ninja being able to stop him.

"SH*T!" Jay yelled, slapping the detonator out of his hand, but it was too late. The deed had been done.

"DEI NOCTIS IS COMING!" The man screamed hysterically, his eyes rolling back into his head - revealing the whites - and he laughed more, "IT IS COMING, AND WHEN IT COMES, THE WORLD WILL BE PURGED OF SINNERS!"

"What the f*ck do you mean?!" Jay ordered, grabbing his collar once more, but the man seemed to be in a state of intoxication, and hardly noticed.

"Answer me god damnit!" He yelled, desperate now, his heartbeat filling his head, knowing full well an explosion was going to go off at any second in any place, but he had to know, he needed to know what Dei Noctis really was.

He had an awful gut feeling, that it was much much worse than a cult's fictional creation, become real in their heads.

All of a sudden, the man clutched onto Jay's wrists, with a strength he didn't expect, and fixed him with an eye-to-eye stare that chilled him to the bone.

"DID YOU REALLY THINK WE KEPT THE HOSTAGES IN HERE?! THAT THERE WERE ONLY TEN OF THEM?!"

Jay quickly looked around, and indeed, there were only ten people tied up. He should have noticed. God, why didn't he notice that?

They'd been played. The team had been played. The gunshots were to lead them there.

"THEY'RE ALL DOWN ON THE FIRST FLOOR, AT THE BACK! READY TO BE SACRIFICED TO OUR GOD! THE SICK WILL BE KILLED, KILLED FOR GOING AGAINST NATURE, AGAINST DEI NOCTIS! YOU'LL BE NEXT, NINJA!"

His hands squeezed tighter and tighter, and Jay was unable to wrench his wrists free, but all of a sudden, the man collapsed, unconscious, and of course, let go.

There was silence for a second, as they all took in what they had heard...

Then Jay jumped to his feet, and bolted over to one of the escalators leading to the first floor.

"JAY, NO! YOU'LL BE KILLED!" Somebody screamed after him, but he didn't catch who, and didn't listen either.

There was a chance that he'd get to the bomb, perhaps be able to disable it, overload it with his electricity, at very least get some of the poor hostages out to safety before it went off.

Who cares if he died?

He could save lives, he had to try at least, he had to save somebody.

That was why they were there.

To save people.

Jay reached the bottom of the escalator, hearing somebody else enter the top of it to follow him and stop him, but he payed no attention.

At the bottom, he could see the people, sitting around at the opposite end of the floor, tied up, unable to move.

He saw no bomb in sight, but knew there was one there, and knew that it would be placed in a way to kill every single one of them.

The only thought in his mind at that moment was to save them, get to them and save them.

He sprinted faster than he ever had before, feeling like the very lightning he created as he ran.

"JAY!" His follower shrieked, desperate for him to stop, but he didn't, he ran and ran and ran and ran.

Faster, he had to be faster.

His feet his the floor over and over again, gaining distance, getting closer.

Closer.

Faster.

Save them.

He had to.

Some of the hostages looked up as saw him, called for help, called for him to get to them, untie them, get them out of here.

He knew time was running out but he pressed on, sprinting.

He had to save them.

They were innocent.

They didn't deserve to die.

Faster.

Closer.

Quicker.

Faster and faster and closer and time seemed to slow down and the length of the building seemed to increase and they got further but he still pressed on, running with all of his strength and energy...

"JAY! TURN AROUND! JAY YOU'LL GET CAUGHT IN IT!" The follower screamed again, and for the first time Jay used part of his breath to respond.

"NO! I WONT GIVE UP LIKE-"

Boom.

Just as he reached the halfway point, and as he was about to reply to his friend, the bomb went off, sending a rippling shockwave throughout the mall, unsettling ceilings and walls alike.

Rubble flew outward in every direction, like jagged bullets and crushing sledgehammers that sought to hurt.

The last thing Jay remembered before he blacked out, were the hostages, just as they were smothered with the debris... screaming for help.

A second after, he was smothered too.

That was it. The concrete and rubble and debris was going to kill them... and kill him.

He wasn't fast enough.

He should have been faster.