Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Morro, right? Well… Do you still, uh- think we’re completely useless?”

Morro looks out into the city- he sees citizens all over coming out of their hiding places, Nya putting out the last embers of buildings that were set ablaze, and most notably of all, he hears cheering all around. He knows it’s not for him, but he tenses all the same. 

“Not bad,” he smiles a little. 

Jay’s voice calls out on the radio, “Good job, guys.” Lloyd looks over to it as they hear the others agree. “Let us get food to celebrate!” Zane replies, his robotic voice sounding a tad more enthused than usual. 

“I’m in.”

“Let's do it.”

“Only if it’s not that crappy steak restaurant,” Nya sounds disgusted. “Yeah! They’re- They’re the worst,” Jay laughs a little too loudly, and then mumbles a little farther away from his radio, to someone else, “Cancel that reservation, please.”

Lloyd takes out his phone from the semi-safe place it was tucked into within his gi and checks his notifications. “I’m out,” he then responds to them, “My mom just reminded me I have to be home for dinner. Another time, guys.” He turns his radio off and flies them back to the warehouse to drop off the mech.

“Hasn’t anyone tried to follow you before?” Morro asks as they fly, glancing between the mech and the amazed civilians on the street staring up at it. The other boy answers with a shrug to his shoulders, “Garmadon tried once. He pretended to leave and then just hung off the tail. Well- I mean, of course I knew he was there, and I flung him off into the ocean off the beach. That’s where they come from every time- so.” 

He can’t say he understands the point of the ninja keeping their identities secret. If there was one thing he knew about his Garmadon, aside from his battle prowess, it was the love he had for his son; and vice versa. If he found out he was near-killing him everyday, there’s no way he’d keep attacking him. At least not without some semblance of change.

He looked at Lloyd, “Just tell him who you are.” 

“Umm... He wouldn't really, well, care," He runs a hand through his hair, and then adds, a tad quieter, “I don’t think he even remembers he had a kid.” Morro stares at him, “Oh.” The rest of the ride is pretty quiet.

When they arrive back at the warehouse, they’re the only ones there. Lloyd hops down from his dragon mech, Morro following behind. “So, are you following me, like, all the time now?” He finally asks when they get outside and he’s still there.

“I have nowhere else to go,” Lloyd turns around when he says that. He looks like he wants to ask something, but he just turns right back around and keeps walking. “Feel free, then… I guess,” he says, looking ahead. He wasn’t exactly looking for permission, but he supposes it’s nice to have anyway. 

As they walk, or float in Morro’s case, he takes the silence as an opportunity to think about how he’s going to train Lloyd. He hadn’t exactly had a lot of guidance himself when learning Spinjitzu, only having vague memories of guiding comments made by Wu before he left- the memory of which grew a little hazier with every day on the road. His skill in it was unpracticed to the point where he didn’t typically use it in battle - but he’s assuming that the real Green Ninja will excel at it a lot more. 

And after he learns Spinjitzu, Airjitzu is sure to come easily to him afterwards. Both Morro and the ninja’s team learned it on the fly. No pun intended. 

The biggest piece of advice he could remember from Master Wu was what he had already told Lloyd- find your inner balance, channel your wind, Morro. It looks like he’d have to put in more practice himself to be a half-decent teacher. 

When Lloyd opens the apartment door, his mom is on him in a second. “Lloyd, I was so worried- did any of them hurt you? I swear, when I get my hands on him–”

“Mom! Slow down, I’m fine,” He says, pushing her hands away from his face. He sighs when she begins to diligently check his arms and legs for injury. “I saw on the news that you were on the scene of the attack today,” She explains, face crumpled into worry. Lloyd clams up immediately, “Uh- What do you- I wasn’t there. I was just hiding with the other kids. I don’t know what you mean.”

“But there was a picture they showed on the program. Don’t you dare lie to me, Lloyd. You’re supposed to be staying out of trouble, like we talked, right?” She scolds him, and somehow she sounds both soft and harsh at the same time. She brings up the news clip on her phone and shows him. The news anchor Morro remembers from before is seen claiming that Lloyd Garmadon was at the scene of Garmadon’s mayhem, possibly being there to join his father. There was a blurry picture of a blonde teenager in a hoodie caught from behind shown on screen. 

“See? You’re right here,” She points at the near-blob, as if he couldn’t tell what she was talking about. He glances at Morro with an almost exasperated expression, as if to say, Look what I have to deal with. “That’s not me. I promise, Mom, I was hiding,” he then points at the figure’s outfit, “Have you ever seen me wear that much blue? That’s more of Jay and Nya’s thing.” 

She looks between Lloyd and the photo and sighs after a moment, nodding. “I’m sorry for accusing you, I just worry, Lloyd.” He’s already started to walk away and into his room, “It’s fine. I- I get it. Really.” 

Morro sticks behind for a moment, and watches her face as his door closes. She frowns, upset at his abrupt leave, but then shakes her head and puts on a smile. “Dinner, okay…” she mumbles as she walks over to the kitchen. 

He follows after Lloyd then, simply phasing through his closed door. If he thought the rest of the apartment looked cramped, it was nothing compared to this room. It was all-too narrow, with only space to walk a few steps before you’d run into his bed. There was one, lonely poster pasted on the wall and a shelf, but not much else. 

Lloyd himself was laying face-down on his bed, weary from the day. “Your mom’s nice,” Morro comments, and he jumps, sitting up to look at him like he already forgot he was there. “I- Yeah,” He fiddles with the strings on his hoodie, “She can be a lot, though. As you just saw…”

“So she doesn’t know you’re the Green Ninja, either?” He crosses his arms. Lloyd shakes his head, “She’d never let me do it if she knew.” 

Lloyd’s mom here was completely different from the woman he saw in his Lloyd’s memory. She was a whole lot younger, for one, and she seemed much more present. “Morro, about earlier- when you said that you didn’t have anywhere to go,” he glances between Morro’s face and his clothes, “You don’t have, like, family to visit? Or- or any friends?”

“I’m not from here. But, no. I don’t have a family, and I did not make friends when I was alive,” He shakes his head. Before Master Wu took him as a student, he went from place to place stealing what he could too fast to form connections, and after… He definitely didn’t make any friends after.

“Oh. Um, sorry. I hate it when people bring up my family and I just did the same thing. That’s… not great of me.”

Morro ignores him, caught up in the memory of tearing down his peers, physically and emotionally. He was always hungry to grow stronger, and the other students Wu would put him up against to spar were puny in comparison. He’d call them all pathetic, and Wu would simply apologize to them later. They all hated him, but no one could touch him. He supposes it’s a form of karma that he quite literally cannot touch anyone now. 

“You said you weren’t from here. What did you mean by that?” Lloyd asks, frowning as he unzips the backpack that’s been shoved to the side of his bed to make room for the floor. The question of his situation is a little more interesting than distant memories, and he snaps back to reality and watches him shuffle through folders and papers in the bag while he replies, “I’m from a different Ninjago.” He’s not sure how else to describe it. 

“What, like a different timeline or something?” Lloyd glances over, his hands pausing in his bag. 

Morro takes a moment to think. He’s been questioning what this place is all day, considering all sorts of explanations for why everything’s different. While an alternate timeline doesn’t explain how he got here and why, it does seem like a good description for what he’s seen thus far. “Perhaps,” he answers.

Lloyd pulls out a piece of paper from his backpack and Morro flicks his wrist out of curiosity, summoning a breeze to flip the paper on the bed so he can see it. There’s a bunch of symbols he doesn’t understand written on it. “That’s my math homework?” Lloyd answers him before he can ask, picking it up. He gives him a weird look, “Did your Ninjago not have school, or…?”

“We did, but I didn’t go to one,” Morro says, watching him take a pencil from his bag and begin to write. The only semi-school he went to was Master Wu’s dojo, and he didn’t exactly teach him science or mathematics there. “Where I come from, the ninja didn’t hide their identities. They didn’t go to school, either,” Lloyd glances up at him, intrigued.

  “What was I like? If- If there was a different me, that is.”

Morro hums and thinks of how to put it into words. The most he saw of Lloyd was through the memories he carded through, or the constant resistance he felt while inhabiting him. The moments he remembered most clearly from Lloyd’s memories was his struggle against his father’s darkness, and the final battle between them. “He always kept going,” is how he decides to describe him. 

Lloyd seems to contemplate that. He stares down at the paper, apparently homework, and is quiet for a moment. Morro himself wonders if this Lloyd will live up to the expectations that the other version of him set, or if he’ll diverge and become something entirely different. “Is there- I mean, you being here, does that mean there’s another- you here- that’s going to join the team?” He speaks with pauses every few words, like he’s confused just by thinking about it.

Morro looks away, “I am not a ninja.”

Lloyd seems to pick up on the fact that it’s a touchy subject, simply nodding and going back to scribbling random symbols on his homework. Morro feels like it’s a good time to take a step back and think about everything going on. He exits the apartment and floats up into the dusk sky, closing his eyes and wishing he could feel the dimming sun rays on his face. No rest for the wicked, he supposes.

He wonders if he’ll ever see the Ninjago he came from again- if he’ll ever see his Master Wu. They left things on pretty good terms the last time he was an apparition, but having been around crowds of people for most of today, none of whom can see him – it makes loneliness creep up in his chest, and he can’t help but long for the one person who had always seen him. He’s sure that feeling will only worsen once the Wu belonging to this place returns from whatever mission he’s engaged in. 

Teaching Lloyd Spinjitzu was going to be a challenge for him, to say the least. He was quite unpracticed with it himself, and he didn’t know how to use it without wind – which he kind of has to, since Lloyd doesn’t have access to his element. Or even knowledge of what it is, apparently. As far as he knows, it’s the combination of the other core elements, along with energy itself. In any case, he’ll likely have to take the time to sharpen that skill. 

It was a sort of cruel twist of fate, being made to believe that he was the Green Ninja, and end up only having to help him. He likes it better than attacking him, and perhaps that’s the reason he was sent here in the first place, to aid a team of ninja in need of training. 

The stars have begun to shine in the sky by the time he returns to Lloyd, and he finds him asleep. The homework he had been working on earlier was tossed along with the backpack on the limited space of the floor. He blows it face-up again, and it’s only half-completed - that makes him smile a little.

After a night of frustration that only his feet can touch the ground, Lloyd’s mom wakes up and begins to prepare breakfast. Not ten minutes later, Lloyd himself comes out from his room, maybe drawn out by what Morro would assume is a nice aroma from the food. His eyes widen a little when he sees him, like he’s only just remembering that the events of the previous day were real. “Uh, hey,” Lloyd says, awkwardly waving at him.

“Good morning, Lloyd!” His mom calls from the kitchen, a little ways away, “Breakfast is ready.” She gives him a big smile, and he returns it with a smaller one as he walks over. His plate is already set out for him, and he takes a moment to feed his fish before sitting down at the table. 

He’s about to grab his fork, and Morro uses a controlled gust to make it move away from his hand. He does this several times before Lloyd glares at him, “Do you mind?” Morro laughs while the other’s mom gives him a strange look and asks him what he means. 

As soon as Lloyd is finished eating, it’s off to school. Morro is semi-curious about what he missed out on, though it probably won’t be the same as it would be in his own world. When they reach the bus stop, Lloyd’s met with a withering glare from each and every one of the students already waiting there. 

“It’s usually like this,” Lloyd says when his confusion shows on his face, though it’s not really an explanation in of itself.

Everyone within Lloyd’s radius is immediately repelled as he gets on the bus and finds a seat. He’d assume that this was because of the photo mistaken for him from the newscast, but Lloyd had already told him this was the norm. Morro simply stands in front of his side of the bus seat, his legs phasing through it. “They’ve always thought I worked for my dad, so,” Lloyd explains further, staring out the window. 

“But not Cole, and Kai, and all of the other ninja?” 

Lloyd makes a so-so gesture with his hand, “I- I think Nya might’ve been on the fence about it, but everyone else was pretty much the same as them.” He nods his head in the direction of the students that were not-so conspicuously whispering about him. “When we started training, they saw for themselves who I was and.. yeah.”

Morro isn’t too surprised by that revelation and voices that, “The Green Ninja from my timeline started on bad terms with the ninja as well.” Lloyd smiles at that, happy to share something with the mystery version of him that he’s definitely already put up on a pedestal.

There’s only more coldness to be greeted by the rest of the student body when they arrive at the actual school. Morro thinks he has to be imagining it when the people in the courtyard go silent, all at once, as soon as Lloyd gets off the bus. He smiles through it, walking only a little stiffly as he enters the building’s high doors. While he knows it’s not directed at him , the bad attention is already getting on Morro’s nerves. 

They walk inside, and Cole and Kai spot him right away. “Hey, guys,” Lloyd smiles at them, but it strains a little when he sees how serious they look. Concerned, maybe. “Dude, did you see the news last night?” Cole gets straight to the point.

“Does anyone here talk about anything other than you?” Morro grumbles, and Lloyd chuckles. “Not the day right after an attack,” he glances at him. He looks over, back at the other ninja when Kai places a hand on his shoulder. “This could get bad, Lloyd. It’s always just been rumors but now there’s proof. Be careful,” Kai pats his shoulder and then slides his hand off it. 

Lloyd sighs and deflates a little, “But it wasn’t me. It didn’t even show the guy’s face.” 

“We know it wasn’t you, but how do you think they feel?” Cole motions to the several students watching them with contempt. Lloyd looks at them and then at Morro, “I don’t really see a difference.” One of the students watching them takes a picture and then walks away, showing their friends the photo and laughing. This whole thing was starting to feel a little over-the-top. It could all be solved so easily, too.

“Lloyd, why haven’t you revealed who you are to them?” Morro asks while a group of cheerleaders walk past the four of them, each glowering. Lloyd shakes his head, “It wouldn’t be right. I’d just be doing it for- for people to like me, you know? Master Wu always tells us to rise above that kinda stuff.”

Morro pushes, “The Green Ninja deserves respect. They’ll never stop if you keep taking it.” 

“Uh, Lloyd?” Kai stares while he, to their knowledge, talks to himself.

Lloyd waves a hand at the two other ninja dismissively, “Hold on, Kai- I don’t think it would even work, Morro. They’d probably just start hating the Green Ninja too, and I cannot be dealing with that on top of everything. Okay?”

The other two look at each other. “Should we call his mom?” Cole mutters to him. “I… don’t know. He’s coping, I guess,” Kai shrugs.

A loud bell begins to ring from speakers high up on the walls. Morro looks around, a little disoriented at the god-awful sound, and Lloyd tells him, “That means it’s time to go to class.” He finally turns back to the others, “Alright, lets go, guys.” The three of them get going, and he follows behind them.

Morro’s curiosity of school was quelled within the first thirty minutes - the rest was just torture. At some point, he started making random papers, pens, markers, and other items fly off of random people’s desks out of pure boredom. Lloyd had mumbled to him to stop, that he’d get him in trouble - which didn’t even make sense, because how would they connect that to him? He obliged when a student did, in fact, accuse him of being behind it. 

He could’ve cried in relief when he followed Lloyd out of his last class. Finally, they’ll be able to train, and he can do something. 

“I can do the first half of it,” Jay says, about some arbitrary assignment they were tasked with. He was the only other ninja Lloyd shared his last class with, so he was the only one present, besides Morro- not that anyone could know that. 

They round a corner and Lloyd’s reply is cut off as he runs right into someone. She staggers back, and her face instantly grows hostile when she realizes who it was. “Sorry, sorry- I didn’t see you,” He apologizes and tries to side-step around her, but she steps in front of him. 

Jay backs away a little as the girl’s friends stand around her, already sensing this would be trouble. “Everyone knows, Lloyd. Don’t pretend you’re a nice guy,” Morro is almost caught off guard by how serious the hatred in her voice is. Lloyd just sighs, exasperated already, “It wasn’t me in the photo.”

One of her friends, a large guy, takes a step closer to him with a look too threatening for comfort. Morro raises one of his hands, ready to blast the lot of them away. Lloyd turns around, almost like he sensed it, “Don’t attack them, Morro.”

The guy rolls his eyes and gestures wide with his hands, “Oh, great, you told off your imaginary friend for us.”

Jay quietly interjects, “Let's go, Lloyd.”

“No, he doesn’t get to leave,” The girl looks at him, and he shuts up; his hands visibly shake where they’re fidgeting with the frays of his scarf. She turns back to Lloyd, “My dad has had to rebuild his store six times! Six! All because of you and your shitty dad.”

Lloyd stares at the floor, apparently trying to bury his head in the sand like he usually does. Over the next few minutes of her insults, his face barely changes.

He only reacts when she laughs meanly and says, “I kind of feel bad for you sometimes. I bet you have to bend over backwards to get him to love you. It didn’t work, though, did it? Considering you’re still going here and not living with him. At least you had the decency to try to keep it secret before.” Only then do Lloyd’s legs move, and he walks right out of the school. Jay hesitates to go after him, and the group watches him go, the girl’s sneer unmoving. Morro doesn’t hesitate, on the other hand, and he floats - more like glides, really - through the air to catch up with him quickly. He stops right in front of him, nearly mirroring how what just happened started.

“They’re worse whenever my dad attacks, okay? It- It’s whatever, I’m used to it,” Lloyd tells him, and yet it’s pretty clear from the way his eyes are shimmering that he’s about to cry.

“Why did you just stand there? You would have defeated them easily,” Morro asks, disbelieving. “Green Ninja! Answer me,” He demands after almost a minute of silence.

“I’m not going to attack random people for not liking me. I can handle it, it’s always been- I’m fine with it, okay?” He has half a mind to possess him and make him go back. Having that thought makes a taste of guilt fill his mouth, but to be fair, it was progress. There was a time where he would’ve actually done it. 

Morro pushes that inner conflict to the back of his mind, “We have to train,” he reminds him; Lloyd shakes his head. “No. No, I- I don’t want to train today anymore.” He goes to keep following him and try to motivate him, but Lloyd interrupts him, “And don’t- don’t follow me right now, okay? I want to be alone.”

Morro lands his feet on the ground, and stops. “Fine.”

He watches the other boy walk away, his shoulders hunched together with his forest green hoodie pulled over his head. 

He can’t understand.