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so apparently it's a habit for me now to just not proofread 🙃 guys it's 23.26 i can't do this please take the chapter with a gallon of salt i'll read tomorrow
Blue mountains rolled past in the distance as the ninja trekked down the path to the Cliffs of Hysteria. The land surrounding the worn trail was perfectly flat, making the fact that Prime Empire had never been finished quite apparent. It was as though an entire section of the game had never loaded in, leaving a long stretch of level grass and not much else.
Y/n was fortunately no longer disintegrating, and her arm had not, in fact, fallen off. Sadly, the images of her friends getting shot down one by one still scarred her mind. She sincerely hoped their next mission would be slightly less traumatic.
"How are you?" Lloyd asked from beside her.
"I've been better," she said honestly. "This place really makes everything feel . . . fragile." Y/n paused, frowning. "That made no sense."
"Don't worry, it did," Lloyd assured her, giving her hand a comforting squeeze. "I know we only have one life in the real world, but seeing the four we get here blip away is pretty scary."
"Especially when everything in here is trying to kill us," Y/n grumbled.
Lloyd chuckled. "That's not too far off Ninjago."
"True."
The group continued walking in comfortable silence until the shrill sound of metal scraping against the ground caused them all to cringe. A certain samurai sauntered behind them, dragging his katana in the dirt.
"I'm worried about Okino," Lloyd said, side-eyeing the samurai. "He took the news pretty hard."
"Wouldn't you if you found out your whole world was nothing but a simulation and you were part of it?" Cole pointed out.
Nya decided, "We gotta cheer him up."
"Yeah," agreed the team's green bean. "Okay, nobody say anything about Unagami, or Prime Empire, or the Key-Tana," he instructed.
"Well, what do we talk about?" questioned Kai.
Lloyd shrugged. "Anything. Just keep it cheerful."
The ninja collectively stopped to give Okino a chance to catch up to them. They resumed walking when the samurai arrived, matching his slightly sluggish pace.
Jay piped up, "Uh, so, Okino, what do you do around here for fun?"
"Fun is an illusion."
Cole winced. "Hey, how about that sky?" he tried, gesturing up to the blue spread above. As a literal master of the skies, Y/n had to say, there was something uncanny about it. When she squinted, she noticed the repeating pattern of pixelated clouds. "Look at those clouds!" Cole exclaimed.
