A/N: *Gasp* :O could it be?? ANOTHER update?? But...so soon?? Is Lizz feeling okay? What is this witchcraft?? Who is she and what's she done with our beloved author??

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Once the snow settled down, Lizz's mech could be seen standing upright, just fine, with a shaking, almost crying pilot sitting in the seat with her eyes scrunched shut.

"Lizz, ye can open yar eyes," she could tell that Zane was watching her, his voice worried and empathetic; even with the growly pirate voice...

"I want to go home." she grit out, slowly opening her eyes.

"You can't," Jay moved closer to her, "We need you. We'll go back to the Monastery after we've gotten the Sword."

"Home," she stressed with a snort, pressing her feet into the boots under the dash that she was almost nine-percent sure were for controlling the legs of her mech, "Not the Monastery. Home."

It seemed to click with the group that she wanted to go back to the Serpentine, "Lizz-"

"I'm freezing my nucks off," she muttered, taking the joysticks in each of her hands. She glanced over the rest of them, eyes skipping straight over Cole, "Ready?"

Cole was still looking uneasily at his mech, "You guys sure you want me along? I can barely control my new body, let alone this hunk of metal..."

"Hey," Jay started gently, "We all have our bad days. We'll pick you up so next time, you can return the favour."

"Jay be right," Zane chimed in, "The only way we be gettin' up the mountain, is if we be a hearty crew."

Kai's voice hardened into his typical leader-voice, "This isn't about who's a Ninja, a Nindroid, or... or even a ghost. Above all else, we're brothers. And as iron sharpens iron, brother sharpens brother."

"And sister," Jay added in, "Lizz sharpens us just as much as we sharpen her."

"I have no quarrel with being referred to as a brother," she told them dryly.

Yang's voice was still echoing around in her head, has been since the Temple Incident. It was only helping to confirm Lizz's fear of never being completely part of the team, making her want to go back home, "Never apart of the team... always alone... they don't want you here..."

A high pitched whine escaped her throat, though it seemed to go mostly unnoticed by the boys, and Cole nodded, "Alright, brothers. Let's do this!"

He began leading the trek up the mountain, and Kai, who was at the back of the line, stopped his mech next to Lizz's, "You comin'?"

"I have no choice," she sighed again, trying to shake Yang from her head as she followed Kai and the others, and it was at that moment that she noticed how much smaller her and Cole's mechs were compared to the others'.

It was always a bit difficult walking uphill. Doesn't matter if you were in a fancy metal mech or not. It was gonna put stress on your leg muscles and make you want to cut your legs clear off your body. Add on the layers upon layers of snow that's about knee-deep on the mech and you're in for a real treat.

"Huh," Cole sounded like he shrugged, "Not so bad once you get the hang of it."

"I really do hope you're talking about controlling your mech," Lizz grit out, "Because walking through this Goddamn snow is not a picnic."

"So..." Jay began happily, "This Sword of Sanctuary. You really think you can see all your opponent's attacks? If we had that kind'a power, not even Morro could stop us."

"But if Morro got his hands on it," Kai just had to chip in with his glum addition, "Nothing would stop him. Which is why we cannot fail. We just have to keep climbing."

"No freaking way," Lizz huffed, "I thought we'd just turn around and go back down."

"No need to be salty, now," Jay chided gently.

The group lapsed into a moderately comfortable silence, the only noises being the robotic noises of the mechs and that of nature around them, the wind breezing by and the snow crunching underfoot.

That is until Kai groaned, "Zaaannneee, ugh. How much further until the top?"

Zane answered in a bit of a gloomy voice, "Arg. Thar be a long way. At least a hundred thousand steps up."

"A hundred thousand?!" Kai and Lizz both yelled it, but Kai added on, "Good thing I'm not counting..."

Meanwhile, Jay was groaning in a hushed voice, "Two hundred sixty seven, two hundred sixty eight, two hundred sixty nine, two hundred seventy, two hundred seventy one... two seventy two, two seventy three, two seventy four... Oh look!" they'd come to a small landing of some sort, "A little goat!"

Jay, Kai and Lizz all stopped for a breather, looking at the animal. It raised it's snout and mooed angrily at them, "That's not a goat," Kai informed, "Don't you remember? We rode one of those."

"It's got horns," Jay mocked, "It's a goat."

"Even giraffes have horns," Kai continued arguing, "And that's not a goat. It's a yak."

"A yak?" Jay scoffed, "No way. Maybe it's a cow."

"I'm about to have a cow..." Kai sighed in defeat.

Before Jay could continue walking his mech after the other two, though, a blast hit the snow right next to his mech's feet, making him jump back and almost into Kai, "Holy-!"

Lizz's eyes were wide, "Sorry! I was trying to figure out my buttons. I didn't exactly get a crash course on this thing, you know."

"Just... wait on it, alright?" Kai told her, "We don't want to start an avalanche, or get one of us injured."

"It's a Walliber, by the way," she added, "And fine. If we get attacked, I don't know how to aim and I barely know how to shoot."

"You'll be fine," Cole told her, "Now you three, hurry up."

They came up on Cole and Zane stopped up ahead, looking at something. Zane's mech pointed at the ground, "Arg, look. Tracks!"

"Maybe it's another yak," Kai suggested, inching closer.

"Or a cow," Jay countered.

Lizz took the joysticks and swung the arms of her mech into the back of Kai's and Jay's, causing them both to wobble, "Walliber," she corrected. After a moment she added to herself, "Huh. So that's how you move the arms..." Obviously it should've been, because the boots she had her feet in.

Zane crouched, getting his face up close and personal with the snow, then stood up again and faced the rest of the group, "Pixal has analyzed ye tracks. We not be the first ones to climb this pass today!"

"You think it was Morro?" Kai was a bit spooked, Lizz could tell by the tone he was using.

"Obviously!" Jay snapped, "Who else is crazy enough to be at this altitude?! If he's ahead of us," his voice lowered and he sounded angry, "We're bound to cross paths."

Cole made a distraught noise, "Uh, what's that sound?"

The wind had picked up, sounding much like the echoing moans bouncing off the waterway walls of NinjaGo that the little ones made when they and Lizz were playing Demon. She shuddered heavily, taking a few steps back, "Guys...? What's making that sound?" it sure as hell didn't sound like any normal wind.

Snow was blowing in her face, which was nice, though what Zane said next made the nice feeling go away, "Wind gust! Anchor down!"

All at once, the boys tipped forward and jammed their mechs' arms down into the icy ground. Once Lizz saw that, she followed suit, but she could still feel her feet slipping in the snow, so she bent her knees and pressed them to the ground as well.

The wind picked up even more, howling in ghostly waves as it blew past at a wicked speed. The mechs groaned in resistance. Kai was grunting with the effort it took him to hold his ground against the mountain, "Hold on, everyone!"

As soon as Kai said that, Cole lost his grip on reality and went tumbling backwards, creating a domino effect through the group that was not helped by the winds that were gaining speed with every second. And while Kai, Zane, Jay and Lizz caught themselves on something, steadying themselves out, Cole was teetering on the very edge of the mountain, "I can't hold on!"

His arms were waving as he desperately tried to regain his balance and Zane shot out a grappling hook and caught Cole's mech on the shoulder, steadying Cole out so he didn't slid off the steep face of the Wailing Alps, "That was close," Cole sighed, starting to walk up back up to the group, "Thanks Zane. I owe you one."

Kai was the farthest up the mountain right now, and released an arm to swing out to look back at the group, "Come on," he called, "There's still a lot of mountain to go."

They all fell back into single-file line and began slowly making their way back up to the landing they were at before, and time seemed to be going even slower than before. It was probably a good ten minutes of silence throughout their group -- they were making pretty good headway, too -- when a horrific scream rang through the quiet air. It sounded like a knife being dragged across a piano wire. Lizz -- who'd somehow gotten up front by Cole -- was the first to stop, and she groaned in slight fear, "What was that?"

"Another gust?" Cole had stopped, too, and judging by the silence of mechanical noises, the others had, too.

Lizz's heavy intake of breath could be heard through the communications systems in their hoods when the rush of snow could be spotted barreling down their pathway towards them, "AVALANCHE!" she shouted.

It didn't help that the path they were taking was essentially a large funnel, either.

The Ninja tucked tail and began bookin' in back down the mountain, but the snow was faster, "Here it comes!" Kai, who was at the back of the group, warned, "Hold on-" he got gurgled when he was swallowed by the avalanche.

"Kai!" Lizz wasn't sure when she'd shouted it. Probably somewhere between Zane falling victim to the avalanche, and herself falling victim to it.

As far as she could tell, none of them were hurt, but they were all turtled in the snow, squirming like worms as they were carried farther down the mountain, "I can't control my mech!" Cole yelled.

"Me neither!" Jay screamed.

"The avalanche is too strong!" Kai managed out, struggling with his mech the most.

Lizz had to watch as Jay's mech got hit right between the legs on a rock in the mountain, the mech itself both flinging Jay forward and falling to pieces simultaneously. The wreckage got swallowed in the snow, while Jay went flying through the air, "Jay!"

Luckily -- or, well, not quite as lucky as he could've been -- Jay landed on a piece of his broken mech and was now sledding down the mountain, screeching in terror, "Jay!" Cole urged, "Jay, grab my hand! Grab my hand!"

Jay sighed heavily, "Concentrate, Cole!"

Judging by Jay's reaction, Lizz was sure Jay wasn't caught.

So. Being carried unceremoniously down the mountain in an uncontrollable mech was not something on Lizz's bucket list, let alone on the to-do list for getting Lloyd back. That wasn't her main concern, though. Her main concern was getting out of her stupid mech. While the boys -- save for Zane. Se couldn't see him -- were snow-surfing on their mechs, Lizz's had been turned upside down, and she was essentially face-down on the snow. She couldn't turn it upright and she couldn't undo her roll-cage, either, so she was trapped, "Guys!"

Can't see what's going on, can only hear my brothers screaming in terror... Oh, look at how pretty that freaking snow is. Lizz was getting an intense face full of spraying snow, and no matter how much she'd have usually enjoyed the feeling, now wasn't the time for making snow-angels.

She cursed when her mech hit something and jerked off the ground, flying ass-over-tea-kettle. The hit destroyed her mech, pieces flying everywhere before disappearing into the roaring avalanche. It also -- obviously -- popped open the roll-cage, letting gravity take control over her. Lizz felt something in her left foot snap when the boots were pulled unceremoniously from her feet, and in the process she got a good glimpse of her mech before it disappeared into the snow. The mech she loved at first sight but never got to get to know, and it sent a fleeting feeling of sadness washing over her.

The sadness was very short lived.

She was screaming. There was no doubt about that. Heights had always been a touchy thing for her. Though, her screaming was muted from the wind whizzing through her ears. Her hood had fallen down and with the zero-degree temperatures of the Alps, her ears were already burning with numbness. Round and round and round the world spun as she hurled uncoordinatedly through the air, unable to aim her flailing limbs in any orderly fashion.

Time seemed to have slowed down. She could see individual trees one moment and wispy clouds the next, ignoring the blank slate of white mountain in the space between. Once in a while she could see the boys' mechs -- Kai's had been abandoned and he'd somehow joined Jay on his makeshift sled, and both were watching her, yelling something.

It was way too late that she'd noticed how close the ground was getting. Lizz had no time to try to adjust herself and she hit the snow with a sickening crack. She was pretty sure she'd dislocated her right shoulder, having landed pretty hard at such an awkward-ass angle -- even she wasn't too sure how she'd landed. She was stuck in the snow, and it was dark, and something just grabbed onto her shoulders and yanked her free.

She shook the snow from her face, cradling her right shoulder with her left hand as she held back tears, "Oh, hey guys..." she was now on the half-sled with Jay and Kai. They'd been kind enough to pull her up when they went by.

"Lizz, what's wrong?" Kai asked, eyeing up her expression.

"What happened to your shoulder?" Jay was looking, too, now.

"Now's not the time!" she snapped, her voice high pitched and squeaky, "I'm fine. Where are the other two?"

She was pretty sure Zane was answering her, "Blimey! I'm trapped!"

Cole, meanwhile, was surfing his mech straight towards the edge of the cliff while grumbling to what Lizz assumed was himself, "What do I do? What do I do?" there was a beat of silence, "What do you do, Cole? You don't. give. Up."

Lizz averted her attention to Zane's mech, instead, and -- with all the courage she could muster -- jumped the distance between her and Zane, scraping her foot through the snow in the process. At the speed Zane's mech was going, almost took her foot clean off, "Zane," she panted, situating herself so she was nearer to him, trying to pry him free of his mech. With one good arm, it wasn't working too well, "Zane, we gotta get you out."

"'tis no good, Lizz," he was pushing at the roll-cage, too. It was bent all to hell, no chance of it moving an inch, "Your arm-"

"Is fine."

"Is dislocated and fractured in three places." he corrected, giving up entirely on trying to free himself.

"Yeah," she didn't know it was that bad, "Like I said. Totally fine."

There was a crash, some shrieking, and two thumps on the mech behind her, and the only meaning could mean Kai and Jay had crashed into something and were now with her and Zane, "Lizz! Be careful!"

"Don't tell me to be careful when Zane needed help!" she snapped, "Still needs help! He's stuck!"

All four of them began working on attempting to free Zane from his mech but to no avail; even with Zane's Nindroid strength, the roll-cage wasn't budging, "Wait, wait, wait, wait!" Lizz began looking around frantically, "Where's Cole?!"

"He's a ghost, he can't be hurt by any of this!" Jay shrieked.

They all began just wordlessly shrieking when the dead drop-off of the mountain loomed just feet away, but as they were screaming, a giant snowball unfurled itself into a snow... monster and grabbed the hands of Zane's mech. The sudden change in velocity essentially flung Zane from his trap, but luckily Kai and Jay both grabbed Zane before he could fall through the clouds below.

Lizz would've helped, but reaching for Zane would have meant she'd fall to her death, too.

The avalanche fell right over the edge of the mountain, the snow monster holding it's ground against the force of the snow, while... "safely" dangling Zane's mech -- with the four extra Ninja -- over the edge of the mountain, out of harm's way.

"Whoa!" Jay shook his head, trying to shake the shock out of him, "Cole! Is that you?"

"Just picking you up to return the favour."

Lizz screamed and accidentally let go of the mech, falling a little ways -- with more screaming -- before Zane caught her left arm and righted her, again. It's Cole! That thing is Cole!

Cole is your friend. Your brother in arms. You know him, she reminded herself to no avail, Stop being afraid of him.

She couldn't.

Her terror didn't subside, either, when Snow Cole pulled Zane's mech back up and onto the mountain. The Ninja -- save for Cole -- hopped off the mech and were now safely on the ground, and Lizz had just decided to collapse onto her back instead of stay standing. She was still shaking, trying to catch her breath.

"Cole!" Kai was astonished, "You possessed the snow!"

The snow, then, crumbled back into just a pile of snow, with Cole standing in the middle of it looking at his hands in amazement, "Yeah... I guess I did..."

Jay was cackling, "First we get Cyclondo, then we get a ghost on our side!"

"'tis good to see you smile," Zane told Cole with an intense sincerness.

Kai turned back to look at the last surviving mech, "Alright. We're down three mechs. But, we're up in spirits. Still," he turned his attention back to the mountain's peak, "How're we gonna catch up? We lost a lot of ground."

Jay, Kai and Cole jerked their attention back to Lizz when she cried out in pain. It tore through the calm air like a shard of glass, a high-pitched, drawn out yelp. You can never truly feel another person's pain, but Lizz's scream was one that came close. It was the type or scream that froze all thoughts into the same agony as she felt, and all three immediately went running to where her and Zane were.

Cole was the first to speak up, "Zane?! What'd you do?"

"Aye, I did nothin' to the lass," Zane defended, "Only aiding in treatin' her ailments!"

"She hurt her shoulder," Kai translated for Cole.

"Dislocated, actually," Zane held out his hand for Lizz to take, "And fractured 'er arm in three places. An' also broke three toes and sprained 'er ankle."

Lizz took his hand and pulled herself up, rotating her right shoulder to grind out the kinks, "And I'm fine, now. Let's go get that damn sword."

"Lizzi, you can't continue on with this mission with a hurt arm and a bum ankle," Jay argued, "Go back to The Bounty, sit this one out."

"I said that I'm fine," she snorted, "I'd freeze to death before I get back down to the Bounty's altitude, anyway."

"She's got a point," Cole agreed in defeat, "We'll take her with and when we get the sword and get back to The Bounty, then she's getting taken off the mission."

"I just love being talked about like I ain't here," Lizz started trudging through the leftover avalanche snow, "We going, or what?"

Jay ended up having to carry Lizz back over to Zane's mech, and she refused to have any more help in climbing to the shoulders where she, Jay and Kai sat. Zane was in the driver's seat, as expected, and Cole had decided to take matters into his ghostly hands to see if he could give them an upper hand in Mountain Climbing 101.

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A/N: This entire chapter is like 3000 words long wth [3391 to be exact] 

And oh LOOK Lizz is like hella maimed. She gon' be hurtin' a helluvalot whoOps

Feedback is welcome and appreciated but not a requirement

I love yooouuuuuuu

Xx Ninja Out xX