Archive of Our Own ^beta

Pull the yellow handle. Arms crossed. 

Canopy jettisoned. Seat ejected. Parachute deployed. 

Seat exploded to pieces on the ground. 

Jay sailed between toppling skyscrapers with as much control over his trajectory as a lost kite. 

“Can anyone hear me?” he called into the radio. “Come in! Anyone!” 

Static and vertigo were the sole responders as Ninjago City rushed past his feet two hundred metres below. Wind pushed him towards the ocean. That was a problem, but least he wouldn’t have to worry about his ankles shattering, or landing in the middle of a human stampede, or that thing coming back for him. The monster abandoned his ruined jet on the overpass and disappeared behind another building. When he heard it screech again it was muffled by several blocks, but the sight of Kai’s mech ablaze in the middle of an intersection scorched any sense of safety. 

Losing altitude, he tried again. 

“It’s Jay, I deployed my parachute. Does anyone co - augh, get away!” He waved his arms wildly at the squawking bird intercepting his flight lane. “Does anyone copy? I’m headed for a water landing, off the east shore. No sign of Garmadon’s forces past the city centre. Come in! Guys!” 

Jay passed over the abandoned beach and his heart froze with the realization he wasn’t losing any speed. He tried and failed to detach as the high tide surged an ever-shrinking distance below. He forced his heels down until they dug into the spray, nearly catching on an adrift volleyball net, until the rest of him submerged, hardly slowing the efforts of the wind in the sail he was tethered to. 

“Come on - stupid - !” He couldn’t tell if it was a malfunction in the straps or his own trembling hands that were at fault. The wind relented long enough for the parachute to settle directly on top of Jay and he floundered, vision drowned by safety orange. 

His radio crackled. Nothing came through, but the sound pulled Jay to his senses long enough to force a deep breath into his lungs and swim down. He wondered if Nya was as scared as he was when the monster tore the legs off her mech. A brand new bicycle glittered on the sea floor. 

Unearthly wails of a city besieged hit him the instant he surfaced closer to land. 

“Agh!” Thirty metres from the sand, his limbs yanked against abrupt resistance. When had he gotten so badly tangled? The parachute was caught on unseen debris and every stroke gained no ground. His splashing became frantic as exhaustion flooded his chest. 

“Help me!” Jay shouted. “Can anybody hear me? I need help!” His mask wasn’t on. He recalled taking it off at some point while hyperventilating, which didn’t narrow down the window of time much. Not that it mattered. Nobody was around.

“Jay!” 

The sun was in his eyes. “Nya?” She swam toward him at terrific speed. “Watch out for the - !” Jay spluttered. “The cords! I can’t - !”

“I’ll cut you free!” In a matter of seconds, every cord was severed. Before Jay could even think about trying to swim again, Nya was pulling him swiftly to the dock she had dived off. 

“You’re, how did you, how are you?” Jay babbled.

“I’m fine! Doing a lot of swimming today,” she said, hauling him out of the water. “Glad you’re okay. You know, relatively speaking.” Jay was less hearing her words and more experiencing the sensation of the sun-warmed plank against his cheek. “You had a pretty good view of everything, right? Did you see what happened?”

“Yeah,” he croaked. 

“Is Kai okay? Lloyd? Anyone?”

Jay sat up and stared at a crooked gap between planks. He could still smell the smoke. “Nobody answered me.”

“I was answering you!” Nya exclaimed. “Couldn’t you hear me?” 

Bewildered eyes met hers. “No?” 

“How do you think I found you so quick? Here, lemme get that off you.” Nya carefully cut the twisted straps off Jay’s shivering frame, and the soaked backpack that previously held his parachute hit the wood. Dark splotches spread where water fell. 

Rapid footsteps made both ninja look up. “There you guys are!”

Kai, more singed than usual, charged to the end of the dock with Zane and Cole close behind. Nya had already crashed into Kai’s embrace at a velocity that would’ve knocked most people flat onto their backs by the time Jay realized the sight of his friends wasn’t a wistful mirage. 

“You were too shrimpy for that thing to wanna eat, huh?” Definitely not a mirage. Jay squinted up at Cole. 

“Thanks,” he groused. 

“Jay,  I responded several times to your transmissions but you gave no indication - ”

“Radio’s wonky, I know,” Jay said in a rush. Zane’s unblinking eyes on him made the process of standing up exponentially more challenging, but he managed flawlessly for five whole seconds before his legs quit without notice. A familiar immovable wall caught him.

“Jeez, you’re always staticky,” Cole said, easily supporting Jay’s weight with one arm around his waist, other curling solidly over his shoulders. Jay was not going to cry. But Cole was so much warmer than the saltwater still stinging his eyes.

“Why are you guys soggy?” Kai asked brilliantly. 

“First of all, I had to swim half the canal to get away from that thing, then I heroically saved Jay’s life because he thought it’d be a good idea to land his parachute in the ocean…”

“That wasn’t intentional,” Jay said wretchedly. Kai and Nya’s voices sounded far away and muffled. Cole patted the top of his head.

“Kai, your hair’s still smoking, you wanna go for a swim too?”

“No. NO!”

“There is a ninety-three-percent possibility that Lloyd will return to headquarters if he makes it out of the city,” Zane interrupted the imminent fratricide. “We should head there immediately.” 

“You gonna be able to walk, dude?” 

Jay suddenly squeezed Cole with strength that would’ve shocked anyone who hadn’t been subject to it before. Cole laughed and lifted his best friend several inches off the ground. “Okay, you’re good.” He set Jay down and Jay found that his legs worked again. “Great, now my clothes are wet too.”

“That’s what you get,” Jay squeaked.

“For what?”

“I don’t know. Let’s go find Lloyd.”