For the next few days, he pushed himself in training. He couldn't let the team down anymore. They were already so mad at him for slacking. He needed to work harder to hide the physical pain he was in.
Everything ached.
His chest hurt so much.
He could barely breathe.
But it was worth it. The team was finally congratulating him on working so hard again. But he had no idea how long he could keep it up. It had almost been 2 weeks, why hadn't the pain gone away yet? He thought that within time it would ease. It hadn't. The rough training probably wasn't helping though.
It was the stupidest thing he'd ever done.
But telling the team the truth and risk losing their trust was the last thing he wanted. If he kept lying for a little bit longer then everything would be alright. The pain would go away. He'd be back to his usual happy, healthy self.
Surely he would.
Right?
Right.
But the thing he'd been worried most about was missions. If he was in this much pain during training, what would he be like during a fight with his enemies? He almost passed out the other day when sparring with Cole and he was going easy on him. There was no way a villain going full out on Jay would be any better.
He was stuck.
And his worst nightmare came true. The team had been called out to a mission one afternoon. It wasn't anything big, just another escape convict. You'd think they'd have better prison guards or the police would actually do their job instead of getting the ninja to do it all for them.
Half the time they couldn't complain though. They liked having something to do.
Everything had started off fine but then Jay's chest started hurting and the scars on his arms were stinging. That hadn't happened before. And obviously his hands burned.
But then it came to the proper fighting. Oh god.
His head was light and his vision was blurry but he couldn't let the others see that. He was strong. He could handle it. The rest of the team had been in pain so many times yet they'd pushed through it. Why couldn't he?
Just when he thought he was doing well, his head started to spiral. Everything became dizzy and the world was spinning. Spinning faster than it should've. He felt himself beginning to topple over a little.
No Jay. Keep going. You have to keep going.
You're not weak.
You have to be strong.
Stop being a baby.
That's the stupid mindset he'd always had. Wasn't helping him in the slightest.
Suddenly he was losing track of where he was going and what he was doing. Who was in front of him? Who was around him? Where was he? What was he supposed to be doing?
And then he fell. A stone had tripped him up but he was secretly thankful for that.
Because then everything went black.
"Jay, come on, get up," Kai rolled his eyes, standing in fighting stance in front of the enemies.
"Jay you can't just lay down," Lloyd sighed.
"It was a stone," Cole groaned, "It's not the end of the world."
Then when they looked back at him, he wasn't moving. His head was facing away from them so they couldn't even see his eyes closed shut. They had no idea of the pain he was in.
