Chapter Text
"Concentrate..." A voice echoes across the endless sea. It wasn't spoken, but it was fully audible.
Another conscience rose to life at this sudden interruption of the watery silence that surrounded her.
"Remember..." The voice continued.
"... Remember what?" The consciousness asked, and the water around her rippled slightly.
"I know it's hard, but I'm here to help you." The voice said softly in a silken voice, and the conscience swore it saw a black shape pass before its eyes.
But wait... She didn't have eyes, she was just... Water. Pure and crystalline.
She doesn't remember her name.
The conscience struggles to maintain control of its thoughts, distracted by the constant ebb and flow of the sea.
She shouldn't be able to think.
"Concentrate and remember... Remember where you came from, remember who you once were..." Again, the consciousness saw a figure appear in front of her, and this time she managed to follow it.
It was floating in circles around her. It had no shape, but she knew it was there. It had no eyes, but she knew it was watching her.
Intangible and indescribable. Omniscient and omnipotent.
Seeing that the thing was still waiting for an answer, the conscience determined: "I am the water and the waves. I am the sea. I am the ocean."
"Nop. Try again. Think deeper. Think about how you got here..." The voice insisted, which irritated the conscience a little. Why wouldn't that voice just let her go back to sleep...?
Should she be able to feel anger?
The consciousness tries to obey the figure, it really does, but...
She doesn't remember her name.
"I-I don't know... I can't-
"Keep trying. You must keep trying!"
The water grows more turbulent, making it even more difficult to separate the waves from the other thought fragments that seem to be floating around like pieces of an endless jigsaw puzzle.
She doesn't remember her name.
"Keep trying, kid. You're so close to the truth..." The voice whispers encouragingly.
The consciousness tries again, grabbing at anything that seems to stick out of the sea itself. The fish swim aimlessly. Boats sail above her head. A-And... And...
"I... I'm..."
"You can do it!" The voice exclaims floating closer to her.
She doesn't remember her name.
Suddenly, the whole sea seems to stop. A name comes to her mind like a flash. And then a second, and then-
"...... I am Nya Smith. Inventor of Samurai X. The ninja and elemental master of water."
"Good job! I knew you'd get there eventually." The voice says to Nya looking satisfied.
Now that she was starting to remember, she could feel herself taking shape in the water. Nya hadn't felt this conscious in what felt like an eternity.
"But if I'm Nya, then that means you must be..."
"Nyad?" The figure completes with a low chuckle, slowly beginning to take on a more solid form, though it was just as black. "Unfortunately not. She has already crossed over to the other plane of existence long time ago."
Nya frowns, confused. None of this should be possible. Maybe she never became one with the sea and this is all just a sick dream? Trauma can cause weird dreams, right?
The figure had now morphed into a shadowed figure a little taller than her, but it was still possible to make out a mouth on its slightly unstable and ghostly face and hands holding a scythe carefully behind its back. Honestly, if Nya had to compare it to anything, she'd say that this thing looked like a shadow with a mind of its own.
"I've been calling you for weeks, trying to help you remember who you are." The entity says with a smile. "It's time for you to go home, kid."
Time passed so fast. Her family had probably given up hope...
"Wait what? How?" Nya backed up a little. "B-But according to the legends... It should be impossible to separate yourself from the sea once merged with it... And yet you're here telling me that I can back?" She muttered, unable to process what was being said to her.
"Yeah, I know it sounds crazy. But luckily the legends aren't entirely accurate." The entity shrugged. "And even if that were true, that wouldn't apply to me. Since I have the power to make the impossible possible."
Nya narrowed her eyes at the shadow. "And who are you?"
The smile on the shadow's face widened. "I am someone who has never set foot in the physical world. But millions of mortal creatures have passed me by in their final moments."
The ninja didn't have to think too much about that sentence to come to a conclusion that seemed simply absurd in her head, but after everything she's been through throughout her life, she wouldn't be the one to question the logic of it. "...... You're the death, aren't you?"
The entity laughed in amusement. "Smart girl." It joked making its scythe disappear into the air as if it were made of smoke. "And I'm sorry I delayed our meeting for so long, but I didn't want to scare you off by just throwing all of this in your face at once."
"All of this what?" She asked confused. Still wary of the thing smiling a little less than 1 meter away from her. "Did you come here to finish killing me and take my soul?"
Nya couldn't decide if the creature's laugh that followed her speech was meant to be smug or genuinely happy.
"No no no, you still have a lot to live before you go to the next realm, child, don't worry about that for now." Death explained with a playful tone. However, its smile flinched a little as it continued. "And look... As much as I'm usually in charge of breaking the bad news to the others, I hate to say that unfortunately you're kind of right about being impossible for you to go back to what you were before."
Nya opened her mouth to ask one more question, but the entity lifted a hand for her silence. "You won't be human again, not in that time, at least. It would just be too boring to just send you back to the monastery like that."
And there it was again, that twinge of frustration and anger had returned in full force to the water master. "Is that your way of saying you're treating my and my loved ones' misery like a game?" She asked through clenched teeth, and for her utter indignation the black-clad devil nodded without a second of hesitation.
"Exactly!" The Death exclaimed floating happily around her. "Do you have any idea of how many centuries I've been waiting for something interesting happen between these 16 realms? I'm just too bored... And I swear that what I'm about to give you will make you think about my proposal very carefully!"
Nya suddenly stopped her mental curses at the entity as she processed that last sentence. "Your... Proposal?"
"Yea!"
"And what would that be?" She asked with a suspicious frown.
And of all the things she expected that thing to say, this definitely wasn't one of them.
"A second chance, of course!" The Death said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I'll give you the opportunity to alter anything you want during your journey with your knowledge of the future completely intact in your little head! You'll be able to create a better timeline and I'll be entertained for a long time. Isn't that the perfect deal?!"
The utterly shocked expression on Nya's face was priceless. ”W-What in hell? Are you crazy?!"
"Only if this means crazy for fun, kiddo." The entity laughed. "And ah, I know what you're thinking about right now. What would happen to this present if you altered the past too much?" They laid their head between their palms sharp in the fingertips. "And I answer you, my friend, nothing would happen!"
"Nothing?"
"Of course! You will go to an entirely different timeline than this one we're in now. So no matter how much you change or alter, your little friends will stay safe and well here." The shadow moved closer to her, before extending an inhuman hand towards her. "Sooooo? What do you think? Would you like to stay here in this water ball until the end of eras or try to correct your and your friends' mistakes without any restrictions?"
Nya eyed that bleary hand skeptically, but after giving herself a moment of contemplation and looking into the entity's face (where she assumed its eyes would be if it had them at first place), the ninja decided that if she was really never going to go back to being human and seeing her friends there, then she had nothing to lose.
The last thing Nya remembers after she shook hands with the fucking death was its excited laughter in the background and colors flashing in front of her eyes. At first she saw red, then white, and finally the last thing before she passed out, black.
When she woke up (or maybe not really...? She didn't feel very awake), an excruciating pain shot through her head immediately, causing her to let out a quick hoarse yell as she held her head in both hands. The pain quickly spread to the rest of her body, not just the head, making Nya cringe with every micro movement she made.
It felt like all of her bones were continually breaking and rebuilding without pause, and her skull really did feel like it was splitting from the inside out as she writhed between ragged breaths and very audible 'cracks' that would probably make her throw up if she had anything in her stomach.
Her body. Her real flesh body was trying to remake itself after simply disappearing when she became one with the sea, and it was an absolutely horrible experience.
With another cry of pain escaping her throat with a particularly strong stab of agony in her spine, the ninja struggled to open her eyes, barely able to breathe as she stared at the cloudy, blurry sky in various shades of blue and gray with black lines. It would be worthy of a Van Gogh artwork if she were in a position to properly appreciate the view.
Was this what it seems to die? Or come back to life? Or... Agh! Simply having a physical body again?!
A movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and as she turned her head with another round of pained gasps, her eyes widened by seeing a huge dark blue snake (?) with glowing details watching her, two stones purple and blue crowning its head with praise.
"W-Wojira..." Nya gasped trying to get enough air into her lungs, and it took her a moment to realize she'd said it out loud.
It was actually strange to have a voice after so long.
Her suffering whisper apparently not only got the attention of the water and wind entity, managing to have a glimpse of a tiny figure compared to the serpent moving behind it.
Nya noticed the pain starting to give way to numbness, not even being able to feel her chest rise and fall slowly, trembling after it's painful ordeal. She felt like something was pulling her down, and she honestly didn't know if she wanted to let that happen or not.
"You!" Heavy eyes wandered up when she heard someone call out to her, seeing that it was the same translucent green thing she had seen move behind Wojira before, who now just stared at the water master as if judging her.
And looking closer at the snake's company, Nya saw that it was a ghost, a teenager, if she had to guess, possibly even younger than she was.
But... The problem is that it wasn't just any ghost.
"Hey you there!" The ninja remained in stunned silence as she watched the fricking Morro start to run towards her, and suddenly whatever was trying to pull her down started to get more insistent. "You're the red ninja's sister, right?! Listen to me, you have to-
Too late, she was dragged under and felt herself slipping back into sweet unconsciousness once more.
*Cabum~*
"That's not just any storm, that's an electrical storm!"
"And we have a Nindroid aboard! He have to go below deck!"
"NO! Zane shouldn't be alone!"
"We all need to stay together! TOGETHER!"
Nya coughed as she suddenly jumped back to her senses, still too confused to really get a feel for her surroundings. Her mind registered only the way the ground beneath her felt unstable, rocking back and forth the way the Bounty sometimes did during a very intense storm.
Water. She was on top of something in the water, she knew that feeling like a second nature now, after spending so much time literally being the ocean.
And of all the situations she imagined herself in in the past when she heard this "second chance" proposal, almost being toasted alive by a lightning when she woke up was definitely not one of them.
Looking around startled, Nya flinched as she realized she was on a ship- No, that was practically a mini-cruise!
And there was an electrical storm all around her.
And she remembers that ship.
Remember that situation.
Remember what would come after that.
"Lloyd!" She tried to scream over the sound of waves and lightning crashing mercilessly against the ship, still sounding a little hoarse from her lack of need to speak. "Lloyd, where's Zane?!"
The blonde turned to her, his hair as short as she remembered the last time they'd seen each other after the Hands of Time's defeat, his green eyes looking as desperate as Cole's to manage to steer the ship as they tried to redirect it. "Lightning could short-circuit him! He went below deck!"
'No...' She felt her stomach turn as she confirmed her suspicions of when exactly she was sent, being even more certain that her fate was sealed when she looked up and saw Jay (a much younger Jay than when she last saw him), on top of the mainsail serving as a makeshift lightning rod.
It can't be...
Dropping the ropes she didn't even remember why she was holding on, Nya stumbled toward the stairs that led to the bottom of the ship.
No damn no! She couldn't be reliving this from any other time in her life!
She couldn't let that fucking genie do whatever he wants again!
[*Final author note there cuz I don't wanna this showing at the end of every chapter*
Did I mention Morro in the inicial notes? No? Well, now find out, for those who charge me so much in TFTM for that damn kid, we'll have Wojira Duo here soon! <3
But don't expect too many frequent updates here, my focus will still be on TFTM which is my main fanfic and this will just be me trying to give the spotlight that was so unfairly stolen from Nya this season. It also may soon diverge a bit from canon due to her actions, so yeah, I'm not going to fry my head trying to write two Ninjago stories at the same time.
Useless fun fact: The second scene is actually a deleted scene from TFTM, I removed it because it just didn't make sense with where the story was going to go and like, one moment she's almost dying in pain and the next she just wakes up like if nothing had happened?
Anywho, comment what you thought of this intro chapter and your theories for the rest of the season!]