A fire's shadow

A flame hides his pain

A/N This is going to be a long one. With sad moments. And the last part of it is going to be in Lloyd's POV. But after that, it will continue being in third person POV.

The next day the ninjas thought Kai slept in again. But when the sun started setting they realized something wasn't right. Lloyd went to check if Kai was alright. But when Kai didn't answer Lloyd's knocks, Lloyd went inside. Lloyd stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Kai's room. The smell of smoke was stronger than usual and there were drops of blood on the floor leading to the bathroom. Lloyd went inside Kai's bathroom and the scene in there was worse than in the bedroom. The mirror was shattered and there were shards all over the floor. A few shards had blood on them and there was lots of blood in the sink. The smell made Lloyd want to throw up. He covered his mouth with his hands and ran out from Kai's room. He rushed into the living room earning worried looks from the others. "What happened?" Nya asked. Lloyd removed his hands and let out a hasty breath of disgust, "T-There's blood in Kai's room, but no sign of him." The others shared worried glances and then ran to investigate the red ninja's room. Lloyd followed them after gathering up some courage. When they got to the room Zane scanned the blood. As well as the mirror shards. "There's no doubt about it, it's Kai's blood. It's dry, guessing it's from last night. Kai was also the one who shattered the mirror, he punched it with his right hand. But I don't know why." "What happened last night?" "We should have checked up on Kai before going to bed..." The ninjas walked out of the room and went outside to get some fresh air to get rid of the blood smell. They all took deep breaths of air once outside. But an evil chuckle disturbed the silence. The ninjas turned to the roof. On the roof, a shadowy figure sat with lowered head. The night had started to fall on Ninjago giving the figure perfect darkness to hide in. The ninjas all stared at the figure on the roof. "Who are you!?" Lloyd shouted. The figure chuckled and lifted their head to reveal two glowing blood red eyes. The ninjas all took a step back when they saw the eyes. "I guess I should introduce myself." The figure's voice sounded like Kai's only a bit darker. The figure disappeared from the roof and reappeared in the shadows created by mast behind the ninjas. The ninjas turned around and took a few steps back. The figure left the shadows and the ninjas all gasped. In front of them stood Kai. His eyes were blood red, and he was wearing a wicked smirk on his face. "K-Kai?" "Close Lloyd, but not quite right. The name's Shadow, I'm Kai's dark side. Or his, shadow, if you prefer that." Lloyd took a closer look at Shadow's eyes and realized where he'd seen them before. "You! You were the one who almost killed me on Chen's island!" "I'm flattered that you remember that. But don't take it personally. I don't have any intention of becoming the green ninja anymore." "What did you do to Kai!?" Nya shouted, her voice sounded angry and worried. "I tricked him. I made him believe you all hated him. He then agreed to let me help him when in reality, I was only helping myself." "Why are you doing this?" "Simple, I was created by the magic power stealing staff, it gave me the ability to steal others powers. Kai may not have known I was there, but he unintentionally kept me locked away in the deepest, darkest parts of his mind. The place where he is now. I eventually found my way out, but it was too good to be true. I wasn't real. I was only a shadow, and I could only touch Kai, the rest of Ninjago was out of my reach. It was infuriating. But then I realized that I could give Kai illusions and pain, so I used it to my advantage. I really thought it would take longer, but all I needed was two days, and Kai believed me." "What are you going to do?" "I'm going to take what should have been mine ages ago. Ninjago. All I need is to steal powers from the elemental masters and once I have enough powers, I will become real and get a body of my own. And then I will make sure Kai goes through the same pain I went through." "We won't let you do that!" Lloyd shouted and they all got into fighting positions. Shadow let out a laugh, "You really think you can beat me. I know all your strengths and weaknesses. I know everything that Kai knows, maybe even a little bit more." "Just because you have the advantage of knowing our weaknesses and strengths, but that doesn't mean we won't try and save Kai." "Why would you want to save him? He was already doubting your friendship and trust before I started messing with things. He's been feeling out of place for months. And you haven't really helped. Teasing him, annoying him. You didn't even ask him what's was wrong last night, even though he came back here being angry. How can you call yourself his family when you never even tried to listen. He's been having a bad feeling for a long time, but every time he told you about it, you just said he was paranoid and stressed. When in reality, that feeling was a warning. A warning about me." The ninjas all stood silent, their guard dropping slightly. They hadn't realized what they had been doing to Kai. Or that they had been ignoring his feelings. "We did that....." Nya's voice was low and filled with guilt. Lloyd looked over the guilty expressions on his teammate's faces. He did feel guilty too. He turned his attention back to Shadow, and when he saw the smirk on his face, he lifted his guard back up and stomped his foot on the floorboards, "Maybe we have been bad friends to Kai! I know we have! But that's another reason why we need to save him, so we can apologize for what we've done! We can defeat you because we care about Kai!" The others lifted their guard up too and agreed with Lloyd. Shadow chuckled in response, "You are so stupid that it's almost funny. But I would like to see you try." Shadow got into a fighting stance and made two sais appear in his hands. The steel on them was silver and blank, the handles were red leather with some gold details. "Nice weapons." Cole said and took out his scythe, "But they won't help you now." Cole charged at Shadow and tried to hit him with the scythe, but Shadow was surprisingly good at dodging, almost as if he already knew what Cole was going to do. The others joined Cole and they all tried to hit Shadow, none of them realized that they were, in a way, trying to hurt Kai too. Shadow dodged all the attacks, not attacking back at all, proving he was different from Kai who usually went with attack rather than defense. They were all getting tired, but Shadow didn't seem to get tired at all. They stopped attacking for a second and surrounded him.