Chapter One: Enter the Circus

Witness something you've never seen before, heard before, dreamt before…

The Most Amazing Show on Earth…

He was not entirely sure where he was anymore, but he remembered what happened before he found himself here. That had taken what seemed like forever to recover.

Everything was still blurry around the edges. He didn't know what that meant. It was just another slightly unsettling detail about where he was.

He wasn't really alive, and he wasn't really dead. It was his choice what to do next, or so it seemed. He had options, but he wasn't sure which was the right choice.

He was trying to stay small, shrink down and keep quiet. Until he knew what he was going to do, he didn't want to be found. He figured that, if he stayed in this unfamiliar place for a long time, he would eventually know what the right choice was.

Eventually he'd miss something, right?

He'd already told Pixal that he wasn't dead. She needed to know. He knew that he'd stay with her no matter what. That was a given.

It was the others that he was worried about. He didn't know what to do.

But at the current moment, he wasn't as concerned about that as he was about what was happening around him. The space he was contained in – or was he truly contained? – appeared to be shrinking.

He didn't understand it. If anything, the space had been growing for a long time – expanding infinitely outward, a new world of strange things that wanted to draw him away. If he followed them, he knew he would never return. But now it was shrinking back in on itself at a faster speed, trapping him in a small-and-smaller area, and he didn't know what it meant.

Eventually, the shrinking stopped, and a mirror appeared, but he could feel that something was wrong.

He reached out and touched it with a single fingertip and traced a simple pattern on the glass surface. It wasn't cold to the touch; instead, it was burning.

He flinched back and nearly fell into another mirror that had appeared behind him. There were new rules to this game, now; if he touched the mirrors, he would burn, and more of them would appear –

But perhaps the burning was not directly linked to new mirrors, considering that one had appeared right in front of him.

He had to outwit the mirrors.

So he ran, and he felt himself shifting, moving, copying, multiplying, fragmenting, appearing in millions of places at once to avoid an enemy that he didn't understand.

But eventually he felt the burn again. It crept up on him as the mirrors spread and multiplied themselves, managing every move with a counter-move and every tactic with a counter-tactic.

And eventually he was trapped within the mirrors' snapping jaws.

He couldn't help but wonder if they were mirrors or portals as he found himself in a dark box with no space to escape.

Something disconnected, and everything was gone.

Jay just wanted to go home.

"That's all for the NTV Nightly News! Join us after the break for Mother Doomsday's Comedy Hour, exclusively on NTV!"

Jay really, really just wanted to go home.

He didn't know why he'd been compelled to take this job. He didn't know why he'd actually shown up to work this morning. He didn't know why he hadn't just moved back in with his parents instead of deciding to rent that god-forsakenly expensive apartment. He was an inventor, not a television co-host.

But Cyrus was severely downsizing Borg Industries, selling off most of the company's assets, and he had no time to take on another employee, or even an intern to fetch him coffee and file his papers. And, of course, there was absolutely nothing that Jay could do about it.

As soon as the red light signaling that the camera was rolling blinked off, he made a sour face and swore ferociously under his breath. He was going to tear this dumb blue turtleneck off and burn the pieces if it didn't stop constricting his neck right this instant.

"Ugh," he groaned. "You doing anything special tonight, Brenda?"

"Girl's night out," Brenda, his co-host, said while packing her bag. "We're going to the Ace of Clubs for a few drinks, maybe some dancing. You?"

"Going out to eat with some friends. We haven't talked in a while," Jay said nervously. He looked at the clock… and then realized what the numbers meant. "…And I'm gonna be late, great." He sighed. "See you tomorrow, Brenda."

"Have a good time," she called after him as he left the set.

He nearly ran through the maze of bright hallways once he was out of the set. Eventually, he found the stairs (he still was getting used to the crazy layout of the building) and took them two steps at a time all the way down to the ground floor.

Eventually, he found a side exit onto the street and took off in the direction of the restaurant. He almost got lost twice, considering he didn't really know what he was looking for, but eventually he found it – but only because Cole was standing outside, waiting.

"Jeez, I pushed back our reservation by half an hour because I figured I would have problems getting here," Cole joked from where he was leaning on one of the building's brick walls.

"The TV station only let me out, like, ten minutes ago! I had to run here!" Jay panted, walking over to lean against the wall with him. "Where're Kai and Lloyd, anyway?"

"Don't ask me," Cole said. He grinned. "Unless if they got lost like you did."

"I did not get lost!"

"Says the one who passed me on the other side of the street… three times? Four, maybe?"

"Nobody asked you, blockhead," Jay muttered.

"Turner."

"Chen."

The two men glared at each other from across the table. One, wearing thick red goggles that hid his eyes, frowned. The other, dressed in a long, very dark purple cloak, bore a grimace that could have melted flesh off of bones.

They held each other's stares for a minute before the one wearing the goggles and white lab coat fidgeted and looked away. The man in the purple cloak flashed a dangerous smile.

"I appreciate your work, Mister Turner," the cloaked man remarked, a smile playing on his face. "Everything is almost ready…"

"Chen," the man in the lab coat, Turner, insisted.

"Yes, what?" Chen snapped.

"If this works…" Turner said, moving his gaze to the floor, "…will they take my place?"

Chen glared at Turner. "Why should I let you avoid the Ritual?"

"Because without me, you would have no plan," Turner growled.

Chen scoffed. "A bold statement," he said. "But you know that I could kill you merely for disrespecting your King."

"Who says the gods would want me any more than you do?" Turner shot back. "Go ahead and kill me; feel free to watch your plan fall apart as soon as you do."

"You drive an impossibly hard bargain, don't you?" Chen asked, sighing. "I should have killed you while you were down. You'd be less of a problem."

"I'd also be less of an asset, and you know that."

"I know I know that," Chen replied. "That doesn't mean I have to like it. What would you like in exchange, then?"

"If I succeed with even one of them," Turner said, "I will be taken off of that list forever."

Silence filled the room. Neither of the men moved.

"All of this, of course, is theoretical," he continued. "I'm not sure if it's possible, but I think it will work Are you willing to bet against me?"

"…Fine," Chen conceded after several more seconds of silence. "But if I win this little wager, I won't allow you to complete the Ritual with those awful goggles on."

"Fair enough."

Eventually, Kai and Lloyd showed up from who-knows-where – Lloyd was still giving Kai a quizzical look – and the four of them all went inside.

Jay didn't really think the food was great – it was better than Cole's cooking, but basically everything was better than Cole's cooking – and it wasn't really anything all that special, but it probably cost more than its weight in gold, just like his tiny apartment.

Most of the time was spent talking about everything that had happened over the two or three months since the funeral, which hadn't really been all that busy for any of them. Cole had landed a job at a logging camp about two hours south of the city. Kai had been fighting in a maybe-sort-of-illegal underground ring (and Jay secretly wondered why he hadn't thought of that first). Lloyd had still been trying to do some ninja work, but he'd ended up helping at his father's school the vast majority of the time. Jay, of course, had jumped around from job to job and eventually landed the co-host job with half-decent pay.

When the check finally came, Cole took it. The conversation continued as it had for the previous half an hour until they noticed that Cole was staring wide-eyed at the contents of the billfold.

"Heh… how much is it, exactly?" Jay asked nervously.

"The food was cheap," Cole said. "I'm worried about this."

Cole then pulled a precisely-folded piece of paper out of the billfold and smoothed it out on the center of the table. A note.

To the ones known as the Masters of Spinjitzu:

Congratulations! You Four have been Specifically Chosen by the Great Master Chen to Participate in his Grand Tournament of Elements. In the Tournament, various Elemental Masters shall Compete to Claim a Special Prize and the Honor and Glory Associated with this Prestigious Tournament.

Many will compete, but only one can remain. May chance play in your favor!

"What the…" Kai trailed off. "Is this some kind of joke? Did one of you set this up?"

"I don't think so," Cole said, picking up the paper and flipping it over. "Look what's on the other side."

A detailed, shaded pencil sketch of Zane stared back at them from the table. The drawing's stare punctured the debate, and the table once again fell into an uneasy silence.

"This doesn't make any sense…" Lloyd whispered. "Unless –"

"The special prize…!" Cole said, eyes widening again.

"We need to talk to Sensei," Kai said urgently. "Now."

They grabbed the paper and barely left a check for the meal before they were out the door.

If Zane was really alive, Jay thought, he would have shown himself by now. That's what he kept telling himself, anyway. But what if, what if, what if this 'Master Chen' dude had stolen him somehow? What if he'd snatched up the opportunity to create a perfect trap?

Garmadon had fallen into a baited trap before – the Overlord's immense powers had come with an unspecified but incredibly real cost. What if, this time around, they were the ones taking the bait?

Jay stayed quiet and didn't say anything. All of it was nearly baseless what-ifs, anyway. Zane was dead, right? He'd been dead for three months, right?

It didn't make sense.

He couldn't shake the feeling that they were making a terrible mistake.

(A/N): Hello and welcome to my newest fic! :D

I swore on my own grave that I wouldn't do another season-speculation fic ever, but look how that turned out. God damn it.

At least this one is much better planned than my previous one! This one actually has five or six (maybe even seven?) different subplots, and should last for quite a long time. This chapter's short, but I'm expecting that this one will get over 30k at least. Considering that TLYWT was only 31k, and that had maybe three parallel plots at absolute most, even five parallel subplots is impressive for me at this point. XP

As some of my previous readers may have noticed, I've somewhat changed the format for my chapter titles again! I'm no longer including the title at the top, mostly because I found it redundant (after all, you guys should know what fic you're reading...). The other thing that's different about the chapter titles is that I am now naming them after songs and including any relevant lyrics below the title. This one was Enter the Circus by Christina Aguilera. The next chapter will be Welcome by Christina Aguilera, mostly because those songs flow into each other, and if I eventually make a playlist it would be a sin to not put them next to each other. XD

Next update will probably be in 1-2 weeks, depending on how much time I have over Christmas break.