icon by me! | she/her or vae/vaer | Please call me Polis! | I reblog Ninjago stuff and occasionally make original content. Please ask me to ramble about my OCs, especially my fankids!
I feel like Jay, Cole, and Zane really helped Kai be a teenager again when they met and bonded. Like Kai was running a whole ass business at what… 15-16?? And he acts so serious, and he comes off so high strung with that pilot moodiness/angst. We also have no indication Kai has ANY friends his age besides Nya.
Then he meets these 3 teenage boys his age, and yeah, they have a rocky start cuz Kai is a rude and stressed to the max over losing Nya.
But like as he bonds with the other three, to me it feels like being around them lets him finally be a teenager. They play video games. They screw around. They do dumb stuff. Kai and the others bully Lloyd. Kai fucking just lets Nya get an allergic reaction to perfume. Like he’s still a jerk sometimes, but in such a teen boy way. Teenage boys are mean!!!!!!!! Look at the core 4 in the early seasons!!!!!!! They’re roasting tf out of each other!!!! They’re being mean!!! That’s how teen boys are!!!
Like once Nya is rescued and Kai is a ninja full time, he finally gets to be a teen boy. Sure not a normal one because hero stuff. But he has a friend group. He has an adult watching over his basic needs. He has his sister back, and they can have a normal sibling dynamic.
Like i really think that early bonding with Jay, Cole, and Zane in the pilots and early s1 reminded Kai how young he was and helped him be a dumb teen boy like them.
@ninjago-valentine-exchange my contribution as the writer for Cole/Kai B! my artist was the wondrous @ninjapolis and their art is here.
fic is under the cut (i lost some of my work to the horrors of offline storage, but im still proud of what i salvaged and hope to revisit the concept later :salute:)
some content warnings for depression, smoking, references to smoking and drinking, some graphic description of nausea and pain, and a scene that can easily be read as following suicidal ideation or attempt
and also for, you know, killing kai before the fic even started whoops? :sweatdrop:
Boba Rewind
Shock & Denial
Cole rushes in, breathless.
Kai looks up with a lopsided grin on his face.
Cole's heart twists at his brown eyes, sedate and somehow predatory.
"There you are! Was wondering if I needed to go find you myself," Kai ribs him.
"Ah, haha," Cole gulps down air as he collapses in the chair beside him. "No, not this time. Just—huff—just give me a minute…"
Kai chuckles, humming a song he can't quite place. He's fiddling with something on a long ribbon. The shop door tinkles again, arrival or departure.
"Okay, right, let me grab my—our?—my drink, then," Cole wheezes, feeling his legs strain as he stumbles back to his feet, the wet grassy patches of his pants sticking to his legs. Did he really need to run the whole way here? … Looking at Kai's half finished boba, yes. He did.
Kai fluidly swings to his feet in a motion that makes Cole very conscious of how his own knees popped when he stood up. "Eh, I could go for a snack." He shakes his cup and, closing his eyes, drains the rest of it in one long slurp. "And maybe a refill."
"Oh, beautiful! I mean, wonderful!" Cole squeaks out as Kai grabs his (sweaty, so sweaty, why did he run here again?) hand and starts walking to the counter. His face feels just as hot as it did a minute ago.
"Hey, Kai, going on seconds?" the droopy eyed bobarista asks as she brushes off a chipped violet nail with her thumb. She's not wearing a nametag.
"Yeah, and another one for Cole here, and an almond tapioca pudding." He tilts his head as he looks at Cole sideways, "… and two tiramisus."
The white-haired girl takes a fresh cup and scrawls on it. "Same order, I'm sure. And for Cole?" she asks, lips curling up slightly at his name, and for some reason his head goes bright and cold as she speaks.
She's not looking at Cole, though. Her half-lidded eyes are focused on Kai, who seems to be very interested in one of many suncatchers turning lazily in the windowed corner. Their colored light splashes across his face as they twist.
"Uhhh," Cole stammers, "… number nine?" It's hard to think over the noise of the doorbells. (He didn't realize this place was so busy when he came in.) He flicks his eyes up at the menu, "with the chocolate syrup."
He vaguely remembers wanting to try that, at some point. He's stuck on the smear of red on Kai's cheek, stubbornly remaining after the light has moved on.
Kai catches his eye, grinning as he rubs it away with the heel of his palm. "Messy," he says, like it's a bit of a joke.
Really, it kind of is.
Pain & Guilt
Cole feels sick.
He feels like he'll vomit any minute: expel the acid traitorously trying to keep him alive. Purge himself of his digestive tract as it consumes itself, maybe follow it up with his heart and lungs. Take out all the living, beating, pulsing things and toss them out in a cardboard box.
His eyes are aching and burning and that's only because he hasn't slept properly in so long. (How long? It feels like forever.) Not because he's been crying. Definitely not because of the slowly disappearing cigarette hanging from his cracked lips.
"You know he wasn't supposed to have those either, right?" Lloyd drops down beside him onto the cracked pavement, concrete pebbles grinding under his shoes.
Those rocks were part of a big rock once. Cole wonders if they ever miss being what they were.
"It's why I took 'em," he mumbles when Lloyd doesn't say anything for a minute. And it's true, and Cole never did figure out the appeal they held to Kai: not when all they've done for him so far is make him want to puke up everything he ate in the last week (not much) or give him a headache strong enough that the single dim, flickering streetlight on this block makes him want to bash his head against the curb (tempting).
He holds the little baby stub of a thing in his hand, watching the cherry end burn closer to his fingers: playing with his half-empty bottle with the other.
There's a distinctive klick klick beside him and he looks up to see Lloyd playing with the flint on a familiar lighter, reddish brown eyes locked on his. No cigarette in hand, just the look of a dog with a bone on his face.
"We haven't gone out much lately, the two of us," he says, almost casually, "let's change that."
Cole flinches as the cigarette burns his drooping hand and slips it in his bottle. Kai was always particular about where he dropped his stubs.
Anger & Bargaining
Kai is already half done with his drink by the time Cole sits heavily at the table, a trail of puddles between him and the door.
He shivers, teeth chattering as he rakes his eyes over the shorter brunette. Smaller but hardly dainty, his skirt and hoodie covering one of the strongest bodies Cole ever knew.
"Number nine for Cole!" the bobarista hoarsely calls out, lip rings catching in the warm sunlight filtering through the corner windows.
Cole stays seated, looking at Kai.
Kai takes a long sip, looking back at him. "Gonna get that?" he asks, the sound distant and muffled.
"Does it matter?" Cole breathes, his body rattling. Cold, or rage, or something else he doesn't want to touch. He can't stop drinking in Kai's face, the way it's too still and too calm and too quiet and too
"Drink for Cole?" the man calls out again.
"Guess not," Kai says, one hand fiddling with a long hoodie lace. "but your ice might melt."
"Fuck the ice."
"I'll pass."
Cole snorts, slumping forward to rest his head on the sun-warmed tabletop.
He can feel his heart thumping in his chest. A good thing, probably.
Kai rattles his cup and takes a longer slurp than before.
"Please don't go." He doesn't know why he says it (liar), forehead still pressed to the rapidly cooling wood.
Kai breathes deeply for a moment.
"COLE. NUM-BER. NI-NE."
"You should get that," he murmurs back. He sound sad, and that sounds wrong.
"Okay." He stands, turning to the scowling green-streaked man behind the counter.
Depression
Cole drags another breath through his burning lungs (poor lungs, they don't deserve this), coughing again. He doesn't have to look to know Lloyd is pissed beside him. Pissed and radiating fury like he's fueled by it.
"What," Lloyd hisses, "the hell were you thinking."
Cole doesn't answer. Honestly, he's trying to move as little as possible right now aside from the painful breaths he still needs to take.
"Were you thinking? Did you have a single thought for whoever was coming after you? For anyone on the team? For what Kai wanted!"
Cole flinches, curled up on the sand, eyes focused on the grains and seeing nothing at all. The moon is high and bright in the sky, and it watches over as a chill curls up along his spine and gut.
"Fuck," Lloyd sobs. It's a horrible whining noise, and as Lloyd drops to the sand next to him, Cole can only echo the noise, shaking.
There is sand and salt in places the First Master did not intend for there to be. He can feel it in his hair, and taste it on his tongue, and knows that despite the numbness seeping into his legs pressed against the rocky sand they'll still burn when he finally moves again.
Maybe he doesn't need to move again. He could be a statue, right here.
“Cole,” Lloyd starts firmly, but Cole can hear the tremors, “if you ever do that again,” and his voice cracks. “Don't do that again. Just, don't.”
Cole swallows, “Copy that.”
“And I'm still telling Nya.”
Cole laughs roughly, “Understandable.”
“I can't look at you right now.”
“I'm sorry.”
Reconstruction & Working Through
There should be more to someone's life than a shoebox. There is more to it than a shoebox, but for what Nya and Lloyd have decided needed to personally filter through Cole? Shoebox.
Cole doesn't know why he's surprised, like he wasn't there when Kai was carefully hoarding away the surprisingly sturdy cardboard box all those months ago. Of course Kai was going to have his party favors of doom in his shoeboxes, they had to be used eventually.
Kai wasn't there to use them anymore.
There's not much in Cole's shoebox: a few trading cards, a familiar lighter. A Prime Empire NG+ cartridge. And a little metal bear, hanging on a long ribbon.
It's familiar, in a way that something he's never really seen before shouldn't be. But the ribbon seems like something he's seen in a dream, and the little bear feels warm and comforting in his hand.
There's a picture, too. Not a team picture or a school picture. One of just the two of them, blurrily taken from Kai's phone at a bad angle with worse lighting.
It's one of Cole's favorite pictures, probably.
That wasn't a great day for him either. He remembers being grumpy the whole day, suffering injustice after injustice such as: sleeping through his alarm clock, running out of milk halfway through his cereal; his shoes coming untied for the first time in a long time; the ice cream from the truck melting before he could even take a bite.
He's pretty sure it was a good day for Kai, though. He aced his test, right?
The truck had almost exclusively his favorites, his allergies didn't crop up despite the spring flowers. And he got that awful picture of the two of them.
Yeah, that was a great day.
Acceptance & Hope
Cole slides into the chair across from Kai.
"I have no idea what this tastes like," he admits, shaking his cup slightly. "I never drank it that day after everything, and I never went back after. So, I don't even know if it was something I liked or not."
Kai snorts, absently scratching at the gouge on his cheek. "That is literally the easiest problem to solve right now, man. Just go when you're awake this time."
"It won't be the same, without you."
"I hope not. Besides, you barely know what this place is supposed to be like outside of a dream, anyway."
Cole breathes, rattles his cup to hear it shake.
"Did you like it?" Kai asks, the picture of shyness in a flavor unique to him. "My little bear?"
"Yeah," he sighs, "yeah, I wish I'd gotten to tell you before. It's totally sick, man."
Kai grins, "Radical. And, uh," he leans back in his chair, fiddling with his skirt, "you should try the tiramisu, I wasn't kidding. You'll like it."
This is sort of going off my recent artwork but I really wanted to take a moment to talk about Jay's adaptability. Specifically weapons. With the other ninjas, they seem to stick to one thing. Kai seems to always stick to a sword, Zane a long distance weapon, Cole an impact-based weapon, and Nya a spear-type weapon. (Lloyd still has the same sword he's had since season 11.) And while Jay does stick to chained weapons, he shows a lot of comfort with continously changing weapons in situations of need.
Personally, I think it's to make up for his element. Lightning is an incredibly powerful element that is likely very difficult to control. He probably doesn't WANT to use it much outside of his usual shocks and power outages. Unlike Lloyd, he doesnt need that much power because he's usually not fighting The Big Bad.
So he makes up for it with variety. With hand to hand combat, agility, speed, adaptability of weapons.
I mean, just look at all of them.
(And dont get me STARTED on how insane it is that he reguarly uses kusarigamas. That's RIDICULOUSLY DIFFICULT TO MASTER. I think this guy needs a ton of respect just for using chained weapons.)
But the coolest thing, to me at least, is that it looks like he specifically trained in the other ninjas weapons. (Maybe the others did too? But i dont really see it as much with them.)
This scene in crystallized is what got me.
Cole literally just threw his weapon to Jay, trusting him to know how to use it. And Jay kicks butt.
I wonder if a little 15 yo Jay trained in the training yard for hours, frustratedly hacking at something with a katana, then training with a hammer, switching to a spear, then to a bostaff, then to sai, and just keeps going and going until he's comfortable with all of them. He cant be the weak man on the team. If his power isnt going to cut it, then he needs to master weapons. Master combat. He wont be the weak link. He refuses to.
Addition 2: Wu's staff (EDIT! just realized it was already on here but I'll leave the cool gif)
Also I love seeing this pointed out because not only that, but he's also the king of improvised weapons!! In s4 he goes toe to toe with an anacondrai warrior using a toothbrush.
plus whatever the heck was going on here:
He swordfights Morro with dual wielded icicles in s5.
This lol
And also in like s1 or 2 he fights off a gang of robbers using,, this freaking thing???
Anyway Jay isn't just well-versed in actual weapons, he's also an expert in things like "stab you with the nearest pointy object I found" and "run you over with my vehicle." Bro is scrappy. Watch out.
Kai's the type of guy who would hold onto a blue shell in mario kart for several laps JUST so he can hit jay with it the second he gets into first place.
I hate that everyone just constantly forgets what Kai went through/the trauma he has.
People constantly forget that Kai literally raised Nya Of course hes going to be better at cooking, stealing, sewing and treating wounds, even just handling situations. He was 5 when his parents left. 5!! Nya was 3. Thats a baby taking care of his little sister. Kai may act like a child sometimes but that is quite literally because he never even had a childhood.
Speaking of people not talking about his trauma i dont think the other ninjas even really know? Like he offhandedly mentions it once or twice, but we literally never get to see him talk to someone about it and that hurts because that must have been hard.
And everyone constantly saying how selfish he is??? Like no he is not. My guy raised Nya then practically raised Lloyd as well (everyone did lol but i feel like Kai was most helpful/protective of him) Literally the only reason he became a ninja was because he needed to save Nya. And he was a bit selfish at times but it's mainly because he saw himself as a burden to the team because he thinks he isn't as useful as the other ninjas, plus part of his entire arc was him learning he didnt need to be selfish because he was just as good as the other ninjas. Selfish isn’t the word im looking for but im not sure what i am looking for lol. But that is one of the main reasons he wanted so bad to become the green ninja. He wanted to be validated because his entire life he was looking after Nya or helping others, putting others before himself. Becoming the green ninja would have validated all that he went through because he would finally be recognized for helping people.
Wu even says that Kai pays the price for Wu’s mistakes in season 11 (i think its episode 11 or 12 i don’t remember). Kai is constantly self sacrificing (or attempting to) to save others. (Except season 8 episode 10 when for some reason Kai doesnt want to give up his powers to save Lloyd? Which does not make sense because he was always the one to give up anything and everything to keep Lloyd safe, best shown in season 5) (while on the topic of weird character choices for Kai why did they make him suck at negotiating? Cause he was a blacksmith woth a shop he ran on his own, of course he is going to be good at negotiating. Unless customers were scamming him all the time)
I hate that people just straight up ignore his trauma, and make him out to be some dumb guy. Of course hes not going to be book smart because he literally did not go to school (did Nya even go for that matter?) but he was constantly finding ways for them to survive while he and Nya were on the streets. Hes not books smart but he is very street smart.
Sorry about the giant ass rant but i hate that his character get so misunderstood
