#i just think it'd be really fucking funny if s!cole was really really good at getting under m!cole's skin

[razzle-zazzle]

Anyway. Now that both halves of Cleaved are out I can talk about the alternate version where instead of being split across the realms the Rift of Return just spits Cole wholesale into Movieverse. Just yeets him at a building in the middle of the night and he lies there unconscious with possible head trauma until the Secret Ninja Force go out to investigate the "meteor" that fell from a hole in the sky. And the story would focus on Show Cole having to readjust to being human again while also searching for a way home. He's 20ish but he couldn't tell you that because ghosts experience time differently. He doesn't drink any water and doesn't shower at all for the first week he's there. He forgets that he actually needs to eat food again for three whole days, then gorges himself on all the foods he's missed while he was a ghost. He keeps forgetting that he's not intangible anymore and keeps walking into walls expecting to phase through them. He teaches the movie ninja spinjitsu and how to fight hand to hand (he's not the best teacher). He's broken several cups and other things because trying to maintain corporeality in his already corporeal hand translates to gripping too hard. M!Cole invited S!Cole to try driving the Earth Mech but because S!Cole keeps forgetting he's fully corporeal and doesn't need to use all of his strength just to interact with the world he accidentally smashes the record player controls. He's a mess and he's homesick and M!Cole, the chillest guy around, is inexplicably infuriated just by S!Cole's presence for no reason that either of them can place. S!Cole's strong and kind and it's impossible to not like him at least a little, unless you're M!Cole in which case there are actual fistfights every week after the first two weeks. He's a big brother and a weird uncle and a divorced dad and a hero and a disaster. He's S!Cole, and neither Ninjago is ever going to be the same after he and the movie ninja find a way to travel between the two.