Ninjago's Tournament

4: Ninja Roll

The picture is of Leray looking at herself in the mirror and she is touching the frame of the mirror.

No POV

Leray finishes getting into her clean gi for the tournament then stands and looks in the mirror. Her hair is loose and a thick folded square of gauze is over her right eye, held in place by a strand of gauze wrapped twice around her head. The gauze square is already misted with blood around the corners and there is dried blood around her ruined eye. She reaches up and rests her hand on the simple steel frame of the mirror. She lifts her hand away from the mirror, recalling the doctor's words. "You'll never be able to use your eye again."
She sighs then looks up as there is a knock at the door. "Come in."
Lloyd comes in, shutting the door behind him. "I'm happy to see you back on your feet."
"Well why wouldn't I be? I get to go back to the tournament today. I'm not going to let anything stop me from getting my brother back." She says, crossing her arms in determination.
He looks at her till she looks away, turning her now blind right side towards him. Lloyd steps forward and rests his finger tips on the side of her head, careful not to disturb the gauze.
She jumps in surprise then leans into his touch. "Don't come up on my blind side like that."
"Then you better not give me the chance to do so." He replies with a smile to show he means no harm.
"Whatever," she sighs.
Lloyd closes the space between them with a kiss then whispers against her lips, "I should never have let that happen to you."
"I can learn to live without an eye. I could never live without you." She whispers back then wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him against her again. They kiss for a bit then break apart and hold each other.
"There was another battle today, wasnt there?" Leray asks.
"Yep." Lloyd answers.
"What happened?"
"The battle was inside because of the storm and all around the room were big vases with weapons inside them, one of the vases had the jade blade. The fighters were Skylor and Jacob, do you remember him? He's the short guy with the black afro and star glasses that he wears all the time because he is blind, uses sound to find his way and 'see' like a bat, and he always carries a guitar because he is the master of sound." Leray nods so Lloyd continues explaining the battle. "Turns out that Skylor is not a master of fire like Kai so she isn't related to him. She the master of amber, meaning that she can take on the powers of anyone she touches. She ended up winning the fight by getting Jacob the make holes in the screen wall that opened up to the sound of the storm outside, so my guess is that the added sound distorted his ability to locate Skylor. She ended up finding the jade blade and won."
"Okay, so the master of sound is out and Kai's crush on Skylor is even larger." Leray says.
Lloyd sighs. "But that's not all. Apparently Chen was going to give us all fancy jewels and other "shiny things" but because Jay and Cole tried to undermine him in the battle yesterday, he didn't give them to us and is making everyone sleep in the chow house."
"You mean the mess hall?" She asks. "Are we going to sleep on the tables?"
"Yep." Lloyd sighs, not sounding very happy about it.
"If you ask me it sounds like he is purposefully aiming at us to get the others to hate us and split us up."
"I think that is exactly what he is doing."

~oOo~

Leray rolled over in bed and looks at Lloyd. His eyes are distant with thought. Everyone is indeed sleeping on a mattress on top of the tables. A few people are even in makeshift bunk beds.
"Lloyd?" She whispers.
He looks at her. "Can't sleep either?"
She shakes her head then Kai pokes his head over the side of the mattress from his bunk over Lloyd. "Neither can I."
"These mattresses are so hard it's making my back sore." Lloyd sighs.
Then the lights flick on and a gong clangs.
"Quick!" Kai whispers, "look like you are sleeping!"
Leray, Lloyd, and Kai get back into their beds and pretend to sleep then sit up as if they were just woken up.
Clouse walks in, many of the thugs at his sides. They come in and go to the foor everyone's bed. Everyone except for Leray.
"Hey!" Jay splutters as the thug fastens something onto his feet.
"Do you know what time it is?" Kai grumbles.
"Why yes." Clouse says smugly. "It's the middle of the night."
Everyone gets up, wobbling a bit as the roller skate clad feet hit the ground.
"Roller skates!" Jay says gleefully. "I love roller skates!" He glides around easily, doing one foot spins as he turns corners. "Did I ever tell you that I placed first in the mother-son roller skate derby?" He laughs awkwardly. "I probably shouldn't have said that...."
The master of light looks at Jay. "Weirdo."
"Wait." The master of poison says. "If only two of us need to fight, then why are we all in skates?"
"Because the rest of you have a chance to, how should I put this... affect the outcome." Cloue explains.
"Then where are my skates?" Lerays asks.
"Oh, you don't get any." Clouse says with a smug smile. "You see, the fight is between the master of power and the master of form. Because you have the ability to shape shift like the master of form, you can not participate since we can only have one shifter in this battle. Not only that, but you are injured."
"More like you don't want my vines to get an easy win for Lloyd." Leray mutters, crossing her arms.
Clouse looks at her, raising an eyebrow. "I heard that."
"Well maybe you should keep your nose in your own business and let me participate in the tournament like I came here to do instead of booting me out with stupid reasons in order to cheat so that we will lose and you can get-"
Jay covers her mouth with his hand. "Okaaay.... that's enough speaking for you Leray."
Clouse's eyebrow is twitching from anger. "For the arrogance of your tongue you get to spend the time of the race here."
Leray pulls Jay's hand off her mouth, but Lloyd asks, "But who's the master of form?" Eager to cut of her remark so she doesn't get in anymore trouble.
Kai looks at him like he is crazy. "You mean you don't know who the master of form is? I hear that she could be right under your nose and find out all your weaknesses though you'd never know. But you're the green ninja, you don't have any weaknesses. Right?"
"Well I guess my back is a little sore from the matres..." Lloyd trails off, slightly suspicious.
before Kai can reply, Lloyd looks behind him to see Kai wobbling over to him. "Roller skates... why did it have to be roller skates....?" Kai mutters.
Lloyd steadies him by holding onto his elbow. "What?" He looks over at the first Kai which turns to a different form, a woman with blue hair cut in a bob and misty gray eyes. Her skin is pale and her clothes are slightly ragged.
"Crud...." Lloyd mutters.
"Contestants,"Clouse says, gesturing to the door behind him. "Come with me."
Leray huffs and sits down on her makeshift table top bed.
Lloyd stays behind as the others leave. He looks at her. "Don't worry, they have to let you participate in the tournament eventually. We will get Zan back." Then he leaves.

~oOo~

Leray looks up and stops pacing as the door opens. Lloyd comes in and hugs her then wipes away a trail of blood that ran down her cheek. "You need to change your bandage again."
"I'll do that later. Tell me what happened." She insists.
Lloyd sighs then starts explaining, "Well, there were no rules, but the master of form and had to cross the finish line with the jade blades in our hands. Everyone else could choose a team and either help their team or sabotage the other team. Everyone teamed up against us so it was just Jay, Kai, and I fighting everyone else. I was pretty much one point behind the master of form the entire time, but near the end we started telling people about Chen and Clouse's real plans. Neuro, the master of the mind, helped us convince the others by telling them that when he looked into Clouse's mind he saw the spell that Clouse and Chen were going to use to drain our powers. So after that they started helping me instead of the master of form and I won because she crossed the finish line without her jade blade as the timer went off and I had my jade blade. However, Chen tried to say that I cheated in order to get me to be the looser. Luckily this only further helped us because the rest of the contestants realized that Chen was being unfair. They even pointed out how you were left out and made to wait here, so now you get to be in the rest of the tournament for sure."
Leray smiles. "That's great, now they are on our side and we have a better chance of finding Zane."
"Yeah," Lloyd agrees. "Now go change your bandage. I don't want you getting an infection."
"Fine." Leray huffs then leaves.