Ninjago: Crystalized

Episode 5-Collapse

What seemed to be a success, felt more like a complete failure.

They returned to the Hangar Bay, defeated.

Those New Ninja's cocky behaviour was seriously heating Kai up. Jay was right: the city really did forget them, forget everything they've done. And now they had become so incompetent and unimportant that they were being replaced? And for the record, not replaced by some random vigilante gang, but by a bunch of adults with the support and training under the approval of Mayor Trustable himself?

"Ex ninjas? Old timers? Who do they think they are?" Lloyd couldn't accept how downgraded they had become. After all that time of saving Ninjago, this was what they were given? A pat on the back for them to piss off?

"The New Ninja of a ninjago City. And their arrival was fortuitous. Without their help, it is likely we would have been defeated. I calculated the odds–" Zane started speaking

"I don't want to know our odds, Zane!" Lloyd snapped, "I want to know what we're gonna do about this."

"About what?" Zane's emotionless state had made him unable to understand the simplest human emotions.

They all knew this was Zane's special way of coping with Nya's loss, but his apathy was seriously getting on their nerves.

"About the fact that we're being replaced!" Lloyd almost felt like barking at Zane's face, but he had no expression whatsoever, "Do you even care?!"

"Nobody's replacing us Lloyd. And you know Zane doesn't care. He turned down his emotion chip, remember?" Cole quickly calmed Lloyd down before causing another break out like last time.

The team was not getting along well.

Cole knew he needed to get them together but it was starting to really take a toll on him, in terms of stress. He really disliked how chaotic and destructive everyone was towards each other.

He could see Jay going back to his work on Nya's tracker

and Kai becoming more and more enraged by everything as he tried his best to suppress it all in.

Nya would have cried if she found out this was what happened to her brothers.

"Look," Cole tried once more to act as a pillar, "we're all dealing with losing Nya differently."

"Right, and some of us are doing nothing but talking to glasses of water, and working on that thing!" Kai slightly accused Jay. He could feel his rage slipping off. It was like all the emptiness he had within was suddenly combusting into flames of rage which he could not explain.

An unspeakable feeling that everything was going to fall apart, dawned on them all. Like a shade of desaturation wiping away all kindness, the tension grew and it didn't stop.

Vexation filled the bay.

"I was the one who figured out the N line in the first place, yet you– You are the one who did nothing. All you do is berate me so that you could hide the truth that you're the least of us!" Jay provoked Kai with full on resentment.

Clearly aggravated, Kai approached Jay and his working table, forcing all his power not to fight back. Veins streaked under his skin with his arms contracting. "Don't act like you're the only one hurting from my sister's loss."

They all knew that Kai was enraged to the very limit, but they had never heard of him speaking in this awfully duped voice of gentleness. The anger he was holding was too much for even him. At some point, he could feel himself lose all control.

Cole rushed to stop the two, extremely worried. "If you choose to walk this path, there will be no return." His tone was as serious as ever, "You're hurting each other. Please, just stop it now."