Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There were a lot of things Lloyd hated about his life. If he were to write a list, the cons would likely outweigh the pros.

He did his best not to think about it.

The past couple months had been… particularly bad though. It was harder not to think about it than usual.

There was a lot to be happy about. The Oni were defeated. The ninja weren’t dead. Jay had finally proposed to Nya and hopefully that ended all that awkward drama. There was a lot to be happy about. Everyone else was in a good mood. Lloyd wasn’t going to be the one to ruin it.

Damn it, he’d snapped his pencil.

“That was my pencil you know.”

Lloyd sighed “I’ll get you a replacement.”

Zuki rolled her eyes. “It was a pencil, Lloyd. I’ve got boxes of them. I don’t need a replacement. That was a strong grip though. Picture not going how you want?”

Zuki Enyo. His one kind of friend outside of the ninja. They’d only met recently. She’d robbed him. Then she’d been impressed that he’d pickpocketed his wallet back from her. An unusual start to a friendship. He’d tried to arrest her at first, but he’d quickly found out that she wasn’t really a thief and her ‘crimes’ were more pranks than anything. She’d known he was the green ninja and had found the idea of stealing his wallet funny. He wasn’t sure if she would have kept the contents or not if he hadn’t caught her.

Lloyd wasn’t sure what it said about his mental state that he’d found her more trustworthy for not even trying to pretend to be trustworthy. She was incredibly honest about herself in a way Lloyd admired, maybe even envied a little. She also didn’t gawk at him for being the green ninja like most average people did. And having attended Darkley’s School for Bad Girls, they had a lot in common childhood-wise. She was overall oddly refreshing.

“The picture’s fine,” he mumbled. He’d been drawing a patch of flowers that were beneath the treehouse. Just to have something to do.

Zuki waltzed over. “Why the pencil crushing then?”

She was his technical age, seventeen. Long black hair, pale skin (probably from not getting out of the shadows enough), silver eyes usually alite with mischief. She was always dressed very stylishly. Or he presumed she was. He wasn’t very in the know about female fashion or fashion in general.

“I didn’t mean to crush it,” Lloyd non-answered. “It must have been… a fragile wood.”

“Mmhm,” Zuki hummed, clearly not believing him at all. “And that’s why you suddenly asked me if you could hide out in my treehouse.”

“I’m not hiding,” Lloyd protested. “They were just talking about wedding stuff- and, I don’t know anything about weddings so I wouldn’t have been helpful.”

“Huh,” Zuki said. “Can’t help you there. I don’t know much about weddings either. I’ve only ever been to one but it was… unusual. I don’t think most weddings involve so many weapons. Which is a shame. It makes things loads more exciting.”

“Thanks for letting me stay here for a bit,” Lloyd said, glancing around. “You’re living every Darkley kid’s dream with all these hideouts you have.” Every young villain-to-be dreamed of having an elaborate system of cool secret bases across Ninjago. “Do you have other treehouses?’

“A few, yeah,” she shrugged. “Depends on the forest. Caves are usually better if you can get a good spot.”

“That’s so cool,” Lloyd marveled. “How long did all that take you?” Ninja could use secret bases too. Nya had one for her samurai stuff. Surely the green ninja could use a treehouse or two.

“Oh, you can set it all up pretty fast if you know what you’re doing,” Zuki told him. “And ignore select laws.”

“Are you done with your nails already?” he asked, noticing the new color on all her nails. That was fast.

“Yep,” she said, fanning out her fingers to show them off. They were now gold, each with a different symbol or picture painted in black. For painting so small, that was really fast. And she was playing with her kunai like they were already dry.

He quirked an eyebrow. “And they’re dry? How did you do that so quickly?”

“Practice,” she said simply. He didn’t have a response to that.

“What are they?” he asked instead. “Just random pictures or…?” He swore at least a couple of them looked familiar.

“Oh, they’re magic symbols,” she explained breezily, tapping her fingers together. “To help me do magic.”

Lloyd rolled his eyes. Sometimes Zuki would say random nonsense just to be funny or to mess with him. “Fine, don’t tell me then.” He turned back to his drawing. “I really shouldn’t stay too much longer. They’ll notice if I’m gone too long.”

“Why do you care if they notice?” Zuki asked. “Aren’t you the leader or whatever? You can go wherever you want.”

“But they’ll ask where I went,” Lloyd countered. They’d also ask why. Plus, he hadn’t told them about Zuki yet. He wasn’t sure if they’d… approve. And having someone separate from the ninja stuff was nice, but he couldn’t tell the ninja he wanted friends who weren’t them. The mere thought made his blood run cold.

“Just lie,” Zuki shrugged. “Or tell the truth and tell them they were annoying you.”

“They weren’t annoying me,” Lloyd lied. “And it’s just easier if they never ask.”

Zuki let out an exaggerated sigh. “Oh, Lloyd, when will you learn? You need to let loose a little sometimes. How you make being a crime fighting ninja with magic powers seem boring is beyond me.”

“It’s definitely not boring,” Lloyd sighed, a bit bitterly.

“Stress-exciting and exciting-exciting are two very different things,” Zuki corrected. “You must have felt the thrill at some point. Like snowboarding, or skydiving, or robbing a bank, or watching a barricade crumble to pieces.”

“Not the examples I would have gone with,” Lloyd said. Though they did all appeal to him, depending on the circumstances.

“I’m a naturally destructive person,” Zuki chuckled. “I try to keep it tame though.”

Lloyd sighed. “Being a ninja can be a nice thrilling sometimes, yeah. But I’d rather avoid excitement right now, I’ve had plenty recently. I just want some peace.” Not that there was any real peace to be had. His dad was still out there somewhere, corrupted by his oni blood. Blood Lloyd had in his own veins. It disgusted him. Sure, it had been helpful one time, but otherwise it was a blight.

“I don’t know,” Zuki said, rocking on her heels. “I think you and I are of a similar spirit. We crave exhilaration.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Lloyd grumbled, tossing the broken pencil on a nearby table. “And I know this is just you trying to talk me into helping you blow something up or vandalize a statue or something.”

“Frankly, I am hurt by such an accusation,” Zuki pouted, placing an offended hand over her heart. “Truly hurt. Wounded to my very core. And your lack of appreciation for carnage is depressing.” She handed him a new pencil.

Lloyd gave her a flat stare before taking the pencil and returning to his drawing. It was quiet for a few minutes. He was grateful Zuki understood he wanted some silence.

He was distracted from his sketch when a strange whispering floated into his ear from his right. Frowning, he glanced up. Who on Ninjago was that? It wasn’t Zuki, she was quietly scrolling through her phone to his left. And it sounded like a lot of voices. Too quiet to make out the words though.

“What is that?” Lloyd asked aloud.

Zuki looked up. “What is what?”

Lloyd got up and walked to the window on the other side of the room, but the forest looked empty. “Who’s whispering out there? Those sound like people, right?”

Zuki tilted her head. “Whispering?”

Maybe she couldn’t hear it. Lloyd could barely hear it himself. “It sounds like a bunch of people are whispering out there,” he explained, scanning the area and straining his ears. “It is really quiet though. You don’t hear it?”

Zuki’s face grew pensive. “Hm, no, I don’t hear anything. No one comes out this way. One of the reasons why I chose this spot. But you hear something?”

“Yes,” Lloyd said, eyes narrowing in concentration. “I can’t make any words out though. It’s weird.” There was no way it was some weird bird call, right?

Zuki shrugged. “Well, you’re more celestially balanced than I am.” What? What did that mean? “I’m sure your ears have a wider range than mine. Does it get louder or quieter when you move?”

“No,” Lloyd told her, confusion really kicking in. It should have gotten at least a little louder. The window was even open. “Oh-“ it was silent again. “-it stopped.”

Zuki shrugged. “Must not be important then.”

“I guess?” Lloyd said, a little thrown off by her wording. Maybe the wind had been blowing weirdly. Or something. Could also be lack of sleep. More likely than he’d like to admit.

Sighing, he went back and plopped into the beanbag chair again. “I wouldn’t be against a smaller scale, not destructive prank,” he acquiesced.

Zuki straightened eagerly, eyes sparkling. “Oooh, yeah! Perfect! I’ve already got some stuff set up!”

Lloyd gave a small grin. One little prank, then he’d go home.

Chapter Text

Another batch of scumbags down and out.

The satisfaction Kai felt at seeing another batch of Sons of Garmadon goons carted away was intense. They hadn’t known anything about where Garmadon might be, but at least they were off the streets.

The remaining Sons of Garmadon had scattered across Ninjago once Harumi died and Garmadon disappeared. The ninja were running all over Ninjago to hunt them down. If left unchecked, they’d definitely try to restore the gang and/or return to Garmadon.

“They went down quickly,” Kai commented with a sharp grin.

Lloyd nodded beside him, but he seemed distracted, not even looking at the retreating police cars. Now that his mask was off, the dark bags under his eyes were once again visible.

Kai grimaced internally. He was really worried about Lloyd. His little brother always said he was fine when asked, but that was bullshit and everyone knew it. Even if it wasn’t obvious Lloyd wasn’t sleeping and was unusually quiet, this whole shitstorm had been specifically and almost solely designed to destroy Lloyd on every level, of course he wasn’t going to be okay.

Sometimes Kai dreamed about bringing Harumi back to life just so he could kill the bitch again.

The pure hatred Kai held for that girl could not be put into words. It would just be unintelligible, enraged screaming.

Her motive for hating Lloyd didn’t even make sense. Yes, Lloyd had released the Serpentine, but he’d been a child. An abandoned, desperate, homeless child that most of the world had already hated just because of who his dad was. Lloyd hadn’t fully understood what he was doing. His intentions hadn’t been good, but Lloyd had never wanted to hurt anybody, even when he’d wanted to be ‘evil’. And Lloyd definitely hadn’t wanted the Devourer released. Lloyd loathed the snake, probably more than anyone. Lloyd was indirectly partially responsible at best. There were tons of people/snakes who were actually responsible.

And Harumi had no right to point the finger at Lloyd. She’d actively, willingly, and purposefully hurt and killed people. The girl had been a sociopathic lunatic. She’d helped murder her adoptive parents (royalty who had taken her in and treated her as their own) just for pity points. She hadn’t needed to even hurt them. An attack on the palace alone would have been all she really needed to convince the ninja and her parents to have the ninja take her with them to protect her. But noooo, she’d killed them so she could fake bond with Lloyd over dead parents. Who did that? How could someone do that? It was a type of evil Kai could never fathom.

How her anger and hatred had all condensed on Lloyd, Kai wasn’t sure, but it had become her obsession. Everything had been to destroy Lloyd. Even down to the name of her gang. She’d only used ‘Sons of Garmadon’ instead of ‘Children of Garmadon’ to make Lloyd more uncomfortable. She’d played up a romance just so it would hurt more when she stabbed him in the back. Everything had been to cause Lloyd as much pain as possible.

Maybe it hadn’t even been real hatred for Lloyd. It couldn’t have been at first. Even today it wasn’t common knowledge that Lloyd had been the one to release the Serpentine. Her real obsession might have been Lord Garmadon and being his kid. It would (in her crazy mind) explain why she was so quick to toss away her loving adoptive parents and why she hated Lloyd and wanted him gone. She hadn’t wanted to compete with Garmadon’s actual child. Kai didn’t care what her reason was. He was just glad she was dead.

“We should get back to the Bounty,” Kai prodded, since Lloyd was not moving. When Lloyd didn’t respond, Kai frowned. Was he zoning out again? He’d zoned out a few times over the past week. Enough that it was starting to get concerning.

“Lloyd?” Kai tried, louder and pushing the kid’s shoulder a little.

“Oh, um,” the blond startled. “The Bounty? Yeah.” Lloyd glanced to the side then looked back at Kai nervously. “Um, Kai, do you hear anything… strange?”

“Strange?” Kai repeated, senses sharpening at a possible threat. But after a few seconds of almost total silence except for some distant cars, he said, “No. Why? Do you think we missed an SG?” They’d abbreviated the name to make it less grating.

Lloyd was quiet for a long moment. Then his eyes hardened. “No.” He stood up. “I don’t hear anything either. Let’s go back.”

Kai scrambled to get up as Lloyd started to walk away. “Are you sure? Why’d you ask then?”

“I just wanted to make sure you didn’t hear anything either,” Lloyd said shortly.

Kai sighed. “Lloyd, can we talk?” Maybe now was a good time since they were alone.

“We’re talking now,” Lloyd replied, not looking back at him.

“Yeah, well, I guess,” Kai said, stumbling with his words. He hated these tricky, delicate talking situations. “I just- why did you come with me on this mission?”

“Why wouldn’t I have?”

“Well, this was a pretty easy job,” Kai began, trying to word things correctly on the spot. “Which is why we agreed we only needed two of us. And Cole was totally willing to come.”

“Your point?”

“You could have used tonight to catch up on some sleep,” Kai said, trying his best not to sound accusing. “You’ve been keeping busy and you seem tired lately.”

“I get plenty of sleep,” Lloyd countered. “If I hadn’t come, I would just be at home doing something else. I wouldn’t be sleeping.”

“Is it that you’re having trouble sleeping…?” As nice as having their own rooms in the Bounty now was, it did make it harder to keep an eye on Lloyd and make sure he was sleeping okay. It was harder to sense Lloyd was having a nightmare through a wall.

“No.”

“Lloyd,” Kai said, frustration blooming.

The blond stopped suddenly and turned to glare at Kai. Kai met his gaze. Lloyd looked away first. “Race you back to the Bounty,” Lloyd challenged, then sped away over the rooftops.

“Wha- Lloyd, wait!” This was literally running away from his problems.

Lloyd, the talented little brat, got back to the Bounty first and had disappeared into his room by the time Kai got there. From the end of the hallway, Kai glared at Lloyd’s bedroom door. He didn’t go over though, Lloyd didn’t seem to be in a reasonable mood right now. Probably because he was tired.

Cole came down the hallway heading to his own room a few minutes later. “Kai?” The earth ninja glanced between the glaring Kai and Lloyd’s bedroom door. “Mission go okay?”

“It was fine,” Kai reported. “We got them all, no injuries. Lloyd’s just refusing to sleep properly.”

Cole sighed, understanding in his eyes. “Yeah, that’s the main reason I wanted to be the one to go with you.”

“What, you didn’t want to come because of my stunning personality?” Kai joked halfheartedly.

“Oh, it’s stunning all right, but no,” Cole sighed, glancing at Lloyd’s bedroom door again. “I did try to ask him about it a couple days ago and he just mumbled something about it being too loud.”

“Loud?” Kai asked, eyes narrowing. Jay’s room was next to Lloyd’s. “Jay better not be keeping him up at night with his tinkering.”

“No,” Cole shook his head. “I haven’t heard anything.” Cole’s room was on the other side of Jay’s. “He was probably just giving an excuse. I’m not surprised he’s struggling. First Master knows the kid’s gone through more than he ever should have. I don’t think I’d hold up as well as he does. I just wish he’d open up more about it.”

“We all do,” Kai grumbled.

“Y’know, Zane made cookies while you two were gone,” Cole informed him. “Maybe that will help ease the tension?” A peace offering for Lloyd?

“Cookies? And some survived?” He didn’t want to tell Lloyd there were cookies only to find out they were all gone.

“I do have some self-control,” Cole sniffed.

“Well, it’s worth a shot,” Kai decided.

Cole nodded. “Well, I’m going to bed. Make sure Lloyd doesn’t stay up too late after the cookies.”

“Will do,” Kai promised, giving a two fingered salute.

Approaching Lloyd’s door, Kai gave a couple knocks. “Lloyd?” No answer. Lloyd could be ignoring him to avoid ‘a talk’ or he could be asleep. If he was asleep, Kai didn’t want to wake him.

Carefully creaking the door open, Kai peeked in. Lloyd wasn’t asleep, much to his disappointment. The teen was hunched over his desk, looking disheveled. Kai creeped in closer, curious.

Lloyd had a map of Ninjago out. Some locations were circled and each had a little arrow going off it. Kai recognized most of the locations as places they’d been recently. Was Lloyd trying to track down the Sons of Garmadon? The arrows’ directions didn’t make sense for that though.

Lloyd suddenly straightened, shoving the map into a drawer and whirling on Kai. “Kai?!” he hissed. “Why are you in my room?”

Man, Lloyd must be really out of it if he’d only just registered him. He held up his hands. “I’ve just been informed Zane made cookies. Wanna raid the jar?”

Lloyd’s defensive posture melted away. “Oh, um, okay.”

“Great!” Kai cheered. “C’mon, we better hurry before Cole goes for a midnight snack and finished them off.”

Chapter Text

It was getting worse. Ignoring it wasn’t working.

What was wrong with him? He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t. Yeah, hearing voices no one else could wasn’t a good sign, but it wasn’t like the voices were telling him to kill everyone or that everyone was out to get him or that the squirrels were preparing to rise up and take over. Or maybe they were and Lloyd just couldn’t make out the words.

The voices didn’t seem… bad though. He wasn’t getting an evil vibe. It wasn’t friendly, exactly, but it wasn’t malicious. It felt like something was reaching out to him, but he didn’t know why or who.

He sounded crazy even to himself.

“Well, good news,” the doctor announced cheerily. “Your ears look just fine.” And there went that last shred of hope.

“Oh, that’s a relief,” Lloyd said with a strained smile. He’d made up a story about worrying his ears might have been damaged in the field to get the doctor to look at them. He didn’t know what he’d been hoping the doctor would find.

“Yes, you said you weren’t having any symptoms or ill effects, but it’s always good to check if you have concerns,” the doctor continued. “Fortunately, your ears are the picture of health.”

“Yep, thanks.”

Lloyd stared down at the sidewalk as he trudged his way back to the Bounty. What else could he do? That had already been a bottom of the list idea. He supposed he could go to another doctor for a second opinion, doctors were wrong all the time, but, deep down, Lloyd had already known there was nothing physically wrong with his ears. Another doctor visit would just be a waste of time and money.

So what did that leave him with? Hoping it would eventually stop? Seemed unlikely, it was only getting more frequent and louder (no more understandable though). Was he just supposed to ignore it? That would be easy enough if it were just a sound, but he did want to-

No.

Lloyd shook his head sharply. None of that. Absolutely not. He was staying right here. He already had other things he was dealing with; he was not dragging himself and his family into something else. Because it had to be something, no way whatever-it-was was just trying to say hi. It had to be something evil trying to lure him into a trap, or something that would turn into a whole big thing, or someone who needed hel- no,no, not that one. And if someone did need help, someone else could help them for once. Lloyd was not leaving. Even if the voices made his heart thrum, he was going to stay put.

 The voices did seem to be coming from an actual place, it was one of the things that had convinced Lloyd the voices weren’t just something his own brain was making up. As far as he could tell, they were coming from the northeastern part of Ninjago. He couldn’t pin an exact location from the points he had. It was a very large area that he’d only be able to narrow down by following the voices, which he was not going to do. So all his efforts to charting down the voices’ directions as he traveled around Ninjago wasn’t turning out to be that helpful.

“Lloyd?”

Startled, Lloyd jerked his head up to see Zane looking at him from further up the path.

“Oh, hey, Zane,” Lloyd greeted, feeling guilty even though he hadn’t done anything wrong. Nothing technically wrong. They were still a little way out from where they’d parked the Bounty. Zane must be going into town for some reason.

“I was not aware you were in town, I would have suggested we meet up,” Zane said, coming closer. “I thought you were in your room.” Was that an accusation or not? It was hard to tell with Zane sometimes.

“I was just kind of walking around,” Lloyd shrugged, answering the possibly unspoken question. “I wasn’t really doing anything. What’re you going to town for?” Hopefully, that question would distract from any weirdness from that no one had seen Lloyd leave the Bounty and from wanting to know exactly where Lloyd had gone.

“I wanted to get groceries before we take off again,” Zane explained. “We are low on quite a few produce and ingredients.”

“Oh, cool, you want some help?” Lloyd offered.

Surprise flashed across Zane’s face. It wasn’t that Lloyd had been avoiding the others recently exactly, but between dodging their ‘concern’ and trying to hide the hearing voices thing he hadn’t spent as much time with them as he usually would. He shouldn’t have anything to worry about with this though. They’d be in a public place most of the time so no talks and he’d gotten used enough to the sudden voices popping in that it wouldn’t throw him off if it happened.

“I would appreciate the company and the extra set of hands,” the nindroid confirmed.

“Cool,” Lloyd said, “so what do we need?”

As they walked, Lloyd did his best to fill any awkward silence. It was harder than usual, he had to flail for any random topic. Birds, the weather, the town’s architecture, anything his eyes landed on was a potential talking point. Zane talked back, but he didn’t start any new conversations. Was this some kind of strategy to make Lloyd crack? Did Zane think he was suddenly going to burst out talking about his problems if given the silence? Sure, Zane wasn’t the chattiest of their group, but he talked more than this. Or could Zane not think of anything not touchy to talk about? Both options weren’t good.

Thankfully, things got more normal once they were in the store. It was easy to talk about what they needed and what Zane planned to make with them.

“What did we use so much coriander on?” Lloyd asked, raising an eyebrow. With how little of the spice recipes usually called for it seemed like the jar should last forever. And they’d had to replace basically everything since the Bounty had been destroyed. He couldn’t imagine how they’d used up a whole jar in just three weeks.

“I used the last of it in the noodles last night,” Zane explained, grabbing various other spices off the wall. “I didn’t get much of any of the spices to start out with. Now that everything in the Bounty is more settled, I’m ready to fully restock.”

“Yeah,” Lloyd sighed. “It took me hours to-“

“Oh my gosh!” an excited voice cried out. “Is that Zane?!”

Lloyd turned to see three teenagers, two girls and a guy, watching them from the front of the aisle. His heart sank at the sight. There was no way they were going to mistake Zane for anyone else, he was the only robot dude running around Ninjago. And once they knew who Zane was they’d also-

“And is that the green ninja with him?!” the other girl whisper shouted. Did they seriously think they couldn’t hear them?

Lloyd was used to getting recognized in public at this point. He could avoid it, especially outside of Ninjago City, but it usually took a little effort on his part. Hoodies were a big help. Not wearing green also really threw people off. Zane could escape being recognized quite easily, if he used his holo-science whatever to look human. The robot form was always immediately recognized though. The people of this village already knew the ninja were here but Lloyd still would have-

“Thanks for everything you guys do for us,” the guy called out, hanging back out of either respect or shyness. The girls were more bold.

His hackles rose as they rushed up to them. “Wow,” the brown-haired girl exclaimed. “You’re actually here! I mean, I heard you were here and I saw you on the fire ninja’s socials, but I thought you’d already left!”

Lloyd groaned internally. Of course Kai had posted something. Lloyd didn’t use social media much himself. Really the main reason he ever went on was to monitor what Kai was posting. His older brother wasn’t stupid, he didn’t constantly post where they were and what they were doing, but he did need to be reminded to reign it in a bit sometimes.

“We will be leaving shortly,” Zane informed them. “The bad guys have been dealt with and your town is now safe. We are just doing some errands before we depart.”

“Can I take a picture with you guys?” the black-haired girl with purple highlights asked, already taking out her phone.

A mix of unease and suspicion crept through Lloyd’s skin. What did these people want? Were they actually fans or did they have another reason for pretending to like him? Why did people always want pictures? Why couldn’t more people just be like ‘oh cool’ and leave?

“Oh, er,” Lloyd hesitated. It felt mean to say no. There wasn’t really a reason to refuse. Their location wasn’t a secret at the moment, and he was dressed fine, his hair wasn’t a mess or anything.

“I apologize,” Zane broke in, moving to stand between Lloyd and the girls. “Due to the nature of our work, we must be selective with when we allow pictures. Now unfortunately is not a good time.”

“Oh…” The girls deflated but didn’t try to argue. A wave of relief rolled over Lloyd. He hoped Zane could sense his gratitude.

The guy who had been staying back before had crept forward to rejoin his friends. “Well,” the brown-haired girl said, “it was still cool to meet you.” The other two nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, thanks,” Lloyd replied, always unsure of what to say with this kind of stuff. The automatic response was ‘thanks, you too,’ but that didn’t make sense.

“Good luck with Garmadon,” purple highlights called out before the group disappeared from view.

They’d been well meaning. They hadn’t even been that intrusive, immediately backing down when they’d been told to. He shouldn’t be feeling as annoyed as he was. He’d dealt with more obnoxious fans in the past and been fine. He was being unreasonable. He knew he was. So why didn’t the feeling go away?

“I am sorry, Lloyd,” Zane said.

“For what?” Lloyd asked, turning back and grabbing the shopping list Zane had written out from the cart. “They were fine.”

“They weren’t the worst,” Zane agreed, “But they did not properly account for your feelings.”

Lloyd scowled down at the list. “My feelings are fine. I don’t need people tiptoeing around me.” Damn, his eyes were so dry and itchy. He really did need more sleep. Or some eyedrops. “If anything, I’m surprised they even wanted a picture with me. I’m basically a walking battery to the bad guys. I’d probably be more useful to Ninjago if I took a sudden fall off a steep cliff.”

When Lloyd glanced up again, Zane was looking at him with a horrified expression that many would think a robot incapable of making. Confused, Lloyd rewound his words in his head.

“Lloyd!” Zane whispered harshly, a rare anger sparking in his frosty eyes. “What are- never say things like that! That isn’t true! You know that isn’t true. Ninjago would have been lost long ago without you. We would have been destroyed.”

It all finally clicked in Lloyd’s sleep deprived head. “What?! NO!” he rushed to correct as he realized how his last sentence might have sounded. “No, I didn’t mean it like that! I just worded that badly.” He understood his powers were necessary. It was one of the main reasons he’d never tried to leave. He just hated that the bad guys so often seemed to be able to easily drain his powers and take them for their own. “I just- was frustrated. I didn’t even mean to say anything at all. I’ve never even considered doing anything like- that.”

Zane’s eyes bore into him for a few seconds longer before the nindroid relaxed. “Lloyd,” he sighed, placing a firm hand on Lloyd’s shoulder. “When we return to the Bounty, get some sleep. No excuses.”

“Yeah,” Lloyd mumbled, gazing down at the floor. “Okay.” He’d try at least. The one benefit these voices gave him was that they distracted him from all the other bad stuff in his life. And he’d heard the voices just an hour ago so he should have time before the next batch of nonsense.

“Good,” Zane said, returning to their cart. “We’re almost done with the shopping. We just need some produce from the dairy aisle. And while it is not on the list, I believe some candy would be a nice treat.”

A small smile tugged at Lloyd’s lips. “Well, if you say so.”

Chapter Text

“So are you going to tell me where you are going?”

Lloyd winced slightly at Zuki’s question. She had every right to ask, of course. He’d asked her for a ride in the middle of the night with no explanation and no solid end goal. He was just telling her when to turn. “You’re only asking that now?” They’d already been driving for an hour.

Zuki shrugged. “I’m trying to plan out our gas situation. If you wanted to tell me where you’re going, you would have told me already.” She glanced over to where he was sitting in the passenger seat. “I’m also getting the vibe you don’t actually know where we’re going.”

Lloyd sighed. “I have… a pretty solid idea.” He knew the path directly in front of him, he just couldn’t see the destination at the end. “Turn right up ahead.”

“Mmhm,” Zuki hummed, turning right at a very high speed. She’d only been very loosely following the traffic laws this whole drive. “I do feel the need to warn you that if this goes on too long, you won’t be able to sneak back to your ninja friends before they find out you’re missing.”

“I know,” Lloyd said, staring out the tinted windows of Zuki’s fancy black sportscar. “I’ll… figure it out as I go.” Once he’d scouted out what this, whatever it was, was he’d be able to decide what to tell the others. “I’m sorry for dragging you out here like this.” Nya had been in the garage and Lloyd had needed a vehicle to cover enough ground in time. A taxi or bus wouldn’t follow his strange directions and also risked him being recognized. He’d almost decided to give up on trying this tonight altogether but then Zuki had said yes.

“I’m a night owl anyways,” Zuki waved off. “Didn’t have any plans for tonight either.”

They were coming up to another village, so Zuki slowed her speed back to legal levels. A sprawling forest lay just behind the village, many times bigger than the village itself. Glancing at the map on his phone, he saw the village was called Dorus. He’d never heard of it. The voices were at a pretty steady volume now, just getting quieter if he wasn’t going the right way instead of getting louder, and hadn’t stopped the whole trip. Maybe because it knew he was following it now? Whatever the case, he was doubtful this village was his end goal.

As they drove through the village though, Lloyd realized the voice was shifting in his ears. It was also getting quieter again. In such a short distance. Did that mean…?

Lloyd looked at the map on his phone again. The forest was large but didn’t have a name listed. That must mean it was nowhere important, right? Were the voices coming from the forest or someplace beyond it?

“Hey, Zuki,” Lloyd said, “um, let me out here.” He’d try to ask around for info first. Someplace had to be open.

“Here?” Zuki repeated, slowing to a stop. “Er, not saying it’s not a nice village, very quaint. But this is the middle of nowhere. Why in the realm would you sneak off to here?”

“It’s… complicated,” Lloyd evaded. He’d never told Zuki about the voices either. He hadn’t told anyone.

Zuki frowned. “Do you want me to come with you?”

Lloyd hesitated, heart jumping at the offer. Did he? It wasn’t like Zuki would tell. And after how Morro had lured him, this whole thing made him very uncomfortable. But… he wasn’t going to do anything. He was just scouting this out. And what if this was… he didn’t want anyone to know he was hearing things. No, Lloyd could do this himself.

“No, I’m fine,” Lloyd assured. “This is just a… personal thing. You don’t have to stick around, I can make my own way back.” He wasn’t sure how long this was going to take and at this point he was probably going to have to tell the ninja something anyways. “Thanks again for the ride.”

Zuki eyed him for one more long second then shrugged. “Sure. I’ll probably still be in the area if you change your mind.”

He nodded as he stepped out of the vehicle. “Okay. This really isn’t a big deal or anything though. I’m not leaving you out of anything, you’d just get bored.”

“Ugh,” Zuki scowled. “Bored, huh?” She shook her head. “I’ll never understand you h-people. Maybe it’s the fragile bones or something. Well, see you later.”

“Bye,” Lloyd returned then shut the door and Zuki sped off.

All right, so, sleuthing. At least as much as a guy could do at four in the morning.

Lloyd didn’t want to go straight into the forest blind, but there weren’t many people he could ask as this time of night/morning. Pretending to be an early morning hiker, he asked a gas station worker about the forest, but that didn’t reveal anything. At least nothing helpful. There was nothing weird going on, the village was peaceful, the forest was pretty, but ordinary. The locals called it the Winding Woods, people went in there all the time.

As unilluminating as the information was, at least it hadn’t been bad news. No vanishing people or local monsters or cursed temples or anything. There were even paths, apparently. It didn’t seem like a place mysterious voices would come from. The only warning he’d been given was to stick to the path, so he didn’t get lost.

So into the forest he went.

It was dark out, but Lloyd was used to moving around in the dark. He could always use his phone or powers if he needed more light. There were no clouds blocking the moon and fireflies were fliting about so it wasn’t anywhere near as dark as it could be.

It didn’t take long for him to realize the paths only went around the edges of the forest, none of them went deeper in. After only ten minutes he had to leave the path to keep following the whispered calls. He’d be fine though, he had a good sense of direction. And he knew the village was to the east so he could always just start heading that way.

Despite the darkness, the forest wasn’t spooky. If Lloyd wasn’t so distracted by his rapidly increasing anxieties, he would have thought it was pretty, especially with the fireflies. Now that he was alone like this though, his thoughts were eating at him.

What was he even doing? This was so stupid. Why was he wandering through an unfamiliar forest in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night? Maybe he should have just told the ninja about this. Yeah, they would have called him crazy and forced him to stay in the Bounty even though he was the leader and they didn’t have the authority to do that really and it would have ruined Nya and Jay’s wedding discussions and all of them might think Lloyd was…

Lloyd gulped, feeling like his skin, his blood, was crawling. No need to think about that. No way that was what this was. Oni didn’t hear voices. And if they did, it would be evil voices and these voices didn’t seem evil. He was fine. There was nothing wrong with him. Just because he’d been angrier lately, even though he was trying SO hard not to be, didn’t mean his blood was turning against him. He was imagining it. It was paranoia, it had to be. Once he had proof that these voices weren’t Oni related in any way, well, he might tell the ninja about it. Depending on what it ended up being.

A patch of flowers ahead momentarily distracted him from his spiraling thoughts. Black flowers and white flowers bloomed next to each other, mixed together. They were both the same type of flower, but he didn’t know their name. Seeing flowers growing in the wild wasn’t unusual, but the two contrasting colors along with how many there were really made them stand out. As he got closer, Lloyd realized the band of flowers stretched out into the forest farther than he could see. He would be able to step through it in a few steps but going by wideness the size of it was huge. It kinda reminded him of a garden border. He couldn’t tell if someone had deliberately planted them like that or if they’d grown like that naturally. It was probably natural; this would be a weird place to plant flowers.

Lloyd was careful as he stepped through the flowers, not wanting to damage them. As he came out on the other side, he noticed the breeze had stopped. Completely. It made him nervous, but he knew it was just his head messing with him. Stupid Morro…

After two minutes of walking and the forest continuing to be dead still, Lloyd’s nerves had crept so high he was on the verge of panicking. Then the breeze picked up again and he let out a sigh of relief. It had just been a lull. Dammit, he’d thought he’d gotten over his fear of wind. Mostly.

He felt like he was getting close now. Somewhere deep in his core he could feel it. And it was exciting. He didn’t know why or if he should or shouldn’t be, but he was. The increasing voices lifted his spirit and spurred him forwards. It had been a long time since he’d felt like this. Diving into the unknown like this, no one else around. It was… freeing in a way. He had to remind himself to be cautious even though it felt like his heart was soaring.

Beginning to move more stealthily through the forest, Lloyd kept an eye out for… anything, really. His sneaking was made easier by some fog that was forming, though it made it harder for him to see too. Was it fog? Or was it mist? Was there a difference? Zane would know, Lloyd did not.

As he kept moving, the fog eventually thinned, then disappeared. He could now see that some of what he’d thought were tree trunks in the distance were in fact pillars. Their colors had blended them with the pale bark of the surrounding trees. That seemed worth investigating, and that was the direction he was being guided anyways.

The pillars weren’t from a crumbling building. They stood alone, hooks sticking out of them with a few of the hooks still having their unlit lanterns hanging from them. It all looked ancient and kicking away some leaves revealed the broken remains of a cobblestone path.

As Lloyd followed the path, the whispers crescendoed to the loudest they’d ever been. He had to be close to… something. The path led to a large open area with a shrine in the center. It was a little wayside shrine, nothing grand, not a building.

Curious, Lloyd approached it, noting the dragon statues in and around the shrine. Seeing dragons and not oni or other evil things did soothe his nerves a bit. When he reached out to touch the still surprisingly intact wood- the voices stopped.

Eyebrows furrowing, Lloyd froze waiting for them to start up again. One minute. Two minutes. Fifteen minutes. But there was no sound except for the now eerily silent forest.

But… this didn’t make sense. Confusion overwhelmed all other emotions. He’d been doing what they’d wanted. Ever since he’d started trying to follow it, it hadn’t stopped. Why go quiet now? Had he done something wrong? Had something happened?

“What are you doing?!” Lloyd called out aloud, frustration beginning to override his confusion. “I’m here! Isn’t this what you wanted? Whether you’re good or bad, I’m here, this is your chance! You’ve been bugging me for ages, you can’t just leave now!”

Silence.

Lloyd glanced around for any clues, any signs of life. But he couldn’t tell what this place was, or what it used to be. There were letters on the shrine (from the ancient alphabet, not the modern one), but they were so faded, some completely gone, he couldn’t read what it said.

Like a switch inside him had been flipped, confusion turned to anger.

Usually, Lloyd would just swallow the anger, ignore the energy burning his blood. He was the green ninja, the hero, the leader of the ninja, he couldn’t allow his negative emotions to have power over him. He shouldn’t be feeling these things to begin with. Especially when so much of the bad stuff was due to his own shortcomings, things he’d done or failed to do. He couldn’t lose his temper and he definitely couldn’t let anyone see him lose it.

He was alone now though…

Lloyd felt bloated as he staggered away from the shrine to a more open area. Maybe bloated wasn’t the right word, he felt like the swirling energy within him was going to explode any moment.

As soon as he was far enough away from the ruins, he just… stopped holding it in. Green energy burst out of him, as did little particles of ice, lightning, and fire, and the rocks around him shook.

Everything awful that had happened over the past few months thundered through his brain.

The grief of his dad’s death becoming something somehow worse when his dad came back only for the man, thing, to not really be his dad and the monster attempted to kill his own son. The first girl he’d ever had a serious crush on had turned out to be a lunatic who hated him and tried to destroy everything he loved before trying to kill him. He’d thought his brothers had died and even though it had turned out they hadn’t the trauma still scarred him. Lloyd himself had almost died, maybe he had been dead for at least a little while, multiple times. Ninjago had been thrown into chaos by those idiot Garmadon Oni cultists. Lloyd had found out he was part monster; his blood was infected and there was no way to fix it. This stupid voice thing was screwing with him. And that was just the shit from the past few months. Why did this stuff keep happening to him? He knew he probably deserved it but…

Lloyd let out a single shout then flopped to the ground, energy fading. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, but he did feel… better somehow. Maybe because his energy was no longer trying to crackle out of his skin.

Turning his head so his cheek rested against the surprisingly intact grass, Lloyd observed the surrounding area for damage from his little… episode. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The fire had fizzled out before anything caught. And he’d been away from the ruins. There was just a jagged circle of semi-scorched grass around him. Although… Lloyd’s eyes shifted downwards. The grass directly beneath him was fine. Huh.

Shame was a different kind of burn than anger was. Even if the damage wasn’t bad, it was still destructive. And unlike Oni, he didn’t like destroying things, even if it was just some grass.

First Master, he felt tired now. He knew he couldn’t lie here all night though. How was he going to explain this excursion to his family? He could just lie… again.

As he lay there, a firefly flew past him, low to the ground and directly in his field of vision. Lloyd’s lips quirked weakly, a memory from a couple weeks ago sparking in his head.

Kai and Jay had each been trying to claim the unique bug for their own element; Kai arguing for fireflies and Jason insisting on lightning bugs. A silly argument. Banter really. He didn’t think either of them had actually won the debate.

…

Lloyd would tell his siblings about the voices when he got back. They’d worry and maybe call him crazy but so be it. He wasn’t making any progress on his own. Even if they did think he was crazy, they wouldn’t leave him.

But would they think he was bad?

Sighing, Lloyd stood up, running a hand through his hair. He gave the shrine a final glance before giving up and starting the long walk home. As he made his way back through the forest he attempted to brainstorm the gentlest, most sane sounding explanation he could give the others.

After a while fog rolled in again, but Lloyd knew he was going the right way. And the fog cleared up pretty fast. There must be a water source close by.

There were the flowers again. He’d be out of the forest soon. The sun was starting to rise though, he wasn’t going to make it back before the others noticed he was missing. How long would it take to get back now that he wasn’t wandering around?

Pulling out his phone to get a rough estimate, Lloyd frowned when the app wouldn’t pull up. His browser wasn’t connecting either. No signal. Dammit. Oh well, he already knew he wasn’t going to make it in time, no shortcut would change that. It was weird he had no bars though. He was nearly out of the forest and his connection had been fine in Dorus.

About fifteen minutes later, he checked his phone again. Still zero connection… He should have hit one of the paths on the forest outskirts by now. A flicker of doubt entered Lloyd’s mind. Was this not the right way? But it had to be. The sun was even up now, he knew he was going the right direction. Maybe he was misjudging the distance, or he was misremembering the map of the paths. His stupid phone wasn’t giving him a map right now so he couldn’t double check.

Soon, the edge of the forest came into view. Lloyd felt a wave of relief. Good. Weird that he’d never hit a path, but he’d be able to get his bearings once he was out. The town should be easy to spot, or at least a road if he was somehow way off from where he thought he was.

…

None of this looked right at all. He didn’t recognize any of this.

Lloyd gazed out at the unfamiliar landscape, baffled. That was a mountain over there. That hadn’t been there before. This wasn’t even the same type of environment. The terrain around the village had been very flat and these weren’t the same type of plants and trees and there was no sign of civilization.

Annnd of course his phone still wasn’t working. What in the realms was going on?

Exiting the forest fully, Lloyd spun around, trying to figure out where this was. This didn’t make sense. Even if he’d somehow popped out nowhere near the village, he would’ve seen the mountain on his way in. Mountains didn’t spring out of thin air and the sun hadn’t suddenly decided to change directions…

Scowling, Lloyd stalked towards the nearly half a mile away cliff face. A better view might help him out. That or he might at least get a better signal for his phone.

Lloyd was only halfway there when he tripped on seemingly nothing. As he stumbled, he looked down to see that a root that had been firmly buried in the ground just a second ago was now hovering an inch above the dirt. He looked up again just in time to see a wall of teeth lunging towards him.

Chapter Text

What in the realms was this thing?!

Lloyd jerked back to avoid the giant snapping mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. It was some kind of plant monster. Its stalk had red eyes bulging out of it about a third of the way down and its roots acted more like tentacles than roots. Only three roots appeared to be buried in the ground to anchor it down.

Dodging another lunge, Lloyd cursed that he only had his knives on him. He hadn’t been able to conceal his swords properly, so he’d left them behind. The extra reach of his swords would be really useful right now. None of the locals had mentioned any plant monsters!

The creature let out a snarl and this time when Lloyd tried to dodge the attack, something wrapped around his leg and yanked him to the ground. He grunted at the impact and looked down to see one of the vine roots wrapped around his leg. Another vine used his moment of surprise to trap his left arm. Crap. When he glanced up, rows of teeth were inches from his face. His powers would-

The chomp never came though.

Before he could even activate his powers, the monster jerked backwards with a screech. As its mouth thrashed, Lloyd got another look at its stalk and was startled to see the stalk had been slashed in half right through its eyes. The monster disintegrated into black smoke.

“Are you okay?”

Lloyd blinked up at the girl that had suddenly appeared above him. She looked about his age, long blonde hair that was up in a ponytail and held with a butterfly pin. She was wearing a more armored version of a traditional kimono with a skirt that ended at her knees and big sleeves that ended at her elbows. The kimono was a sage green with white and pink flowers on the edges and a golden obi sash. It was a strange outfit to be wearing just running around, girls usually only pulled them out for special occasions, if at all. The girl also had a quiver and bow as well as a katana, which was probably what she’d used to slash the monster. Yet another strange bunch of things to be walking around with, most civilians weren’t strolling down the street with weapons like that. Her blue eyes were bright with concern as she gazed down at him.

She was really pretty.

Wait, crap, no. Lloyd shook his head in an attempt to center himself. “Um, I’m fine. Thanks.”

“Oh, good,” the girl said, sounding relieved. She sheathed her katana. “What are you doing out here?”

Lloyd stood up, dusting off the dirt. “I, um, didn’t mean to be. I think I might be lost?” He didn’t know where he was so that counted as lost.

“Lost?” the girl repeated, confused. “How? From where? The only village around here is Haven’s Gate and I’ve never seen you before.” Her eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you’ve been travelling by yourself?! It’s dangerous to be out here alone!”

Haven's Gate? He'd never heard of the village. It certainly wasn't the name of the town he'd just been in. Attempting to stall and cover his confusion Lloyd pointed out, "I mean, you're out here alone."

“She’s not alone, actually.”

Lloyd spun around to find himself at the end of a different blade. This katana was being wielded by a boy with spiky red hair who also looked roughly Lloyd’s age, maybe a little older. The boy was, similarly to the girl, unusually armed and armored. His outfit reminded Lloyd a lot of the ninja’s own gi, though there were enough differences that Lloyd couldn’t accuse the boy of copying them. The gi itself was black with silver detail while the sash tied around his hips and the belts on his pants and sleeves were red. The guy looked like someone who knew how to use the weapon he was currently pointing at Lloyd.

Not wanting to start a fight, Lloyd raised his hands in surrender. It wasn’t that he didn’t think he could take the guy, but these people didn’t seem like enemies. The dude seemed a bit trigger happy, but maybe Lloyd had unknowingly done something wrong? “Er, sorry if I’m- intruding on your land or something.”

The redhead’s eyes narrowed further. “Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?”

“What? No,” Lloyd rushed to assure. “I just-“

“Zeo,” the girl interrupted, stepping past Lloyd and pushing the boy’s katana down. “Don’t go around sticking your katana out at random people.”

“What?” Zeo bristled. “I’m not- you’re the stupid one for sheathing your blade in front of an obviously suspicious stranger.” His hostile gaze shifted back to Lloyd. “What even are those clothes?”

Lloyd glanced down at his clothes. “Um, it’s a hoodie?” He wasn’t the one wearing weird clothes here.

Zeo rolled his eyes. “Yes, I can see the hood. I mean the style, the way it’s made. And that’s really the least suspicious thing about you.” He tried to raise his blade again, but the girl batted it down again.

“He seems alright to me,” the girl shrugged.

“How could you possibly know that?” Zeo shot back. “You only just laid eyes on him, like, thirty seconds ago. For all we knew, he’s a jaakuna spy.”

“I’m, um, not a spy,” Lloyd informed them, feeling the need to defend himself. “I don’t even know what a ‘jaakuna’ is.”

Zeo raised an eyebrow. “Okay,” he admitted to the girl, “so he does seem too stupid to be a spy.” Hey! Lloyd would be more offended if he weren’t so confused. “Did he, like, hit his head when he fell or…?”

“This is Ninjago, right?” Lloyd checked. Had he fallen into another realm somehow without noticing? Because none of this was making sense.

“Yeah,” the girl confirmed, puzzled. “Where did you think you were?”

“No, I thought I was in Ninjago,” Lloyd clarified. “I just- where exactly is this? Like, what part of Ninjago?” This clearly wasn’t where he’d been, and he didn’t recognize it at all.

“Um, western Ninjago,” the girl answered. “We’re near Haven’s Gate and-“

“Western Ninjago?!” Lloyd yelped, confusion deepening. He’d been in eastern Ninjago before. To now be in someplace that could be considered west Ninjago… he’d have to be at least a thousand miles westward from where he’d been. How was that possible? “But I was in the east, like, ten minutes ago.”

“Ari…” Zeo whispered warningly to the girl, his expression clearly conveying he thought Lloyd was crazy. Which was honestly fair at this point.

“The East?” supposedly Ari repeated, tilting her head. “You mean like…” her eyes sparkled, “the other half of Ninjago?”

“Don’t be stupid, Ari,” Zeo scoffed. “Of course he doesn’t mean it like that. There’s no way.”

“But the Spinning Forest is right there,” Ari reasoned, gesturing to the forest Lloyd had just left.

“I thought it was called the Winding Wood,” Lloyd said, trying to piece together what was happening in his head. But he didn’t think he had enough pieces because he couldn’t think of any logical explanations.

“I’ve never heard it called that…” Ari pondered thoughtfully.

“Neither have I,” Zeo agreed aggressively. “Besides, the forest doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked in ages.”

“The forest was supposed to do something?” Lloyd asked.

Ari nodded. “It was once able to transport people from one side of Ninjago to the other. There’s an identical twin forest in eastern Ninjago that connects with this one. The stories make it sound like you are technically in both at the same time and then when you step out you either come out on one side of Ninjago or the other. People used to use it to flee the Overlord, but it stopped working a little after Ninjago split.”

“Wait.” Lloyd’s eyes got huge as the puzzle suddenly slammed together to create an impossible answer. “Is this the Dark Island?!” Oh no, had he really gone crazy? Was it the lack of sleep? Because there was no way this was real, right?

“Uh, no,” Zeo frowned. “Does this look like an island to you?”

But it was the Dark Island, wasn’t it. Because the Dark Island was Ninjago. Of course if these people were from the island (the continent really), they’d just consider it Ninjago but-

“But, the Dark- I mean, the Overlord side of Ninjago doesn’t have people living on it,” Lloyd protested. If it did the implications were… “No one goes there, it’s all- evil and stuff.” There had been a few exploration teams that had investigated the edge of the island, but it had been deemed too dangerous to be worth it. Most people were too scared of the Dark Island to even attempt. And it was very out of the way with the ocean between them.

Zeo rolled his eyes. “For all his faults, the First Master didn’t make half the world inherently evil.” Wait, did these people not like his grandfather? “Things were fine here before the Overlord came.”

Well, yeah, maybe he’d unconsciously known that before, he’d just never really thought about it. It made sense that people would have lived on the Dark Island at one point but… His grandfather wouldn’t have just- abandoned loads of people when he submerged the island. And if that were true, then these people should have been frozen in time like everything else on the island. That would explain their clothing, but-

“But… you should be speaking ancient Ninjargon then,” Lloyd deduced. “We wouldn’t be able to understand each other if you were. Modern Ninjargon is way different.” Lloyd could read ancient Ninjargon fine enough thanks to the lessons with his mom, but he wasn’t fluent. And he’d almost never heard it spoken aloud.

“I agree,” Zeo growled. “Another point of suspicion against you. You really aren’t making a good case for yourself here.”

“Maybe we should just take him to the village for now,” Ari suggested. “The elders will have a better idea of what is going on.”

“You want to take him home?” Zeo gasped, outraged.

“Well, what were you going to do with him anyways?” Ari shrugged. “You weren’t going to kill him when you know almost nothing about him, and you weren’t going to just let him go either.”

Zeo glared at her for a second, then sheathed his katana, grumbling under his breath.

Nodding in approval, Ari turned back to Lloyd. “I suppose we should introduce ourselves properly. I’m Akari and the growly one is my cousin, Zeo.” The redhead growled unhappily beside her. “What’s your name?”

“Er, Lloyd,” Lloyd told them, feeling like his basic understanding of the world was unraveling.

“Well, Lloyd,” Akari said cheerily. “Let’s head back to my village. Our elders will be able to help. Probably. They’re our best option at the moment.”

Lloyd was not going to make it back to the Bounty before the others woke up. Not even close. And he couldn’t even call them to explain what was going on, there was zero cell service over here. Kai was going to kill him.

Chapter Text

Man, sleeping in was great.

Kai hadn’t slept in like this for months, things had been so crazy. They’d all agreed to sleep in today to give themselves a break and to encourage Lloyd to sleep in too. With Wu and Misako off researching the Oni Masks, there was no sensei to drag them out of bed.

Zane was up and cooking breakfast when Kai walked into the kitchen. “Hey,” Kai greeted sleepily. “Anyone else up yet?” A.k.a., had he seen Lloyd yet?

“Nya passed through about five minutes ago,” Zane answered, whisking some soon to be delicious mixture in a bowl. “I believe the others are still asleep.”

“Lloyd’s still asleep?” Kai double-checked hopefully.

“Neither I nor Nya have seen him elsewhere on the Bounty,” Zane informed him. “And neither of us have seen him leave his room.”

“Good,” Kai sighed. Finally.

“Yes, Lloyd needs the rest,” Zane agreed, placing a pan on the stovetop. “Lack of sleep is only exacerbating his distress.”

“I cannot wait until the SGs are all behind bars,” Kai declared, flopping into his chair. “Lloyd will really start getting better once those bastards are gone.”

“It will help, at least,” Zane nodded, robotic tone grim. “But I fear with the state his father is in…”

Kai huffed angrily. “The world has been shit to both of them.” His old resentment towards Garmadon, the real Garmadon, had faded a long time ago, once he’d gotten to know the real man, no evil venom corruption. Kai didn’t even consider this- thing- that came back to be Garmadon. There was nothing of Garmadon left. Emperor Oni Garmadon barely even seemed to remember Lloyd. It was bullshit, fucking unfair bullshit, and for all their searching, there was no cure. At this point, the merciful thing would be to send the evil back to the Departed Realm. It was what Garmadon would have wanted. Lloyd would not be the one to do it. Kai would make sure Lloyd wasn’t even anywhere nearby when it happened.

“Yes,” Zane agreed mournfully. “It has.”

They broke off their conversation as Cole strode into the room. “Ooh, breakfast!” Cole grinned. “What’s on the menu?”

The conversation turned to lighter topics. Jay walked in about twenty minutes later, Nya following behind. First Master, his sister was engaged. It still didn’t feel totally real. He’d known it was going to happen eventually but…

Nya glanced around at the group and frowned. “Is Lloyd…?”

“We think he’s still asleep,” Cole told her, piling up his plate.

Unease crept up Kai’s spine. He hadn’t been worried at first, but everyone else was up now and no one had seen Lloyd yet. It could be now that Lloyd had finally crashed from sleep deprivation, he was just out like a rock. But would they really be that lucky?

“I’ll go check on him,” Kai volunteered slowly.

“I think it’s fine if you wake him up at this point,” Cole shrugged. “He’s slept plenty and he won’t want to miss breakfast.”

“Yeah,” Kai nodded. It took barely a minute to reach Lloyd’s room. Should he knock first or just go in? Nah, he’d just go in, Lloyd wouldn’t mind.

The door didn’t creak as he opened it. Lloyd was very particular about his door not creaking. Had tinkered with it until it was silent. It was some Darkley’s thing they still didn’t fully understand.

Kai’s heart sunk and his annoyance spiked. Lloyd wasn’t here. His bed looked like he’d maybe slept in it a little, but he’d probably been gone for a while. But where? No one had seen him. Was he hiding? Why? He was still on the Bounty, right?

The phone went straight to voicemail. Kai didn’t attempt to muffle his groan. Sometimes, he wanted to strangle the kid. Well, not strangle, but the frustrated urge resembled the desire to strangle in many ways. Go to sleep, it wasn’t a hard ask. Why did Lloyd struggle with the simplest things?

Instead of what he really wanted to say, he texted. “Breakfast is ready.” Something non-aggressive, something Lloyd would answer, something that would get Lloyd to the kitchen with the others. Kai could occasionally be tactful.

He started to stomp back to the kitchen. Everyone’s mood dipped when they saw Kai’s stormy expression. “He wasn’t in his room,” Kai growled. He checked his phone. Still no reply from Lloyd. That was… even when Lloyd went off to be by himself, he answered their texts. The kid knew they worried. “He isn’t answering his phone…”

The other ninja frowned, pulling out their own phones. “We can’t all call him at once,” Jay pointed out.

“Right,” Nya nodded. “Zane, you call him.” Good choice, Lloyd wouldn’t expect a chewing out from Zane.

They were all checking their messages to see if Lloyd had sent them anything and sending texts. Zane frowned.

“Straight to voicemail,” he told them, metallic eyebrows furrowing. “Which means either his phone is off or is in a place with no coverage.”

“Okay, fine,” Kai said through gritted teeth. “Manual search it is.”

They split up, searching the Bounty and the area around it. Kai’s anxiety was rising with every passing minute. His anger built up alongside it.

An hour later, everyone was panicking. Kai paced around the room like the walls were going to close in any second, his chest tight. He felt like he was going to burst any second.

“Can’t you track his phone or something?” Cole suggested.

“Our phones aren’t that easy to track, Cole,” Jay shot down. “We’re ninja. If our phones were easily tracked, we wouldn’t use them.”

“If he were to answer,” Zane inserted. “We would have the ability to start a trace. But his phone seems to be shut off entirely.”

“Does anyone remember him doing or saying anything odd?” Nya asked, nervously tapping her foot.

“He’s been acting odd for weeks now,” Jay moaned. “Nothing from yesterday really stands out.”

“So you all noticed it too?” Kai asked, pausing his pacing.

“I mean, yeah,” Cole shrugged. “Kind of hard not to.”

“What exactly did you guys notice?” Kai questioned heatedly. This might not have anything to do with Lloyd’s disappearance, but they didn’t have much to go on at the moment.

“He was easily distracted,” Zane noted.

“Yeah,” Cole nodded, “he was zoning out a lot.”

“It’s weird because he wasn’t like that at first,” Nya recalled. “It started sometime after the oni invasion. I’m not sure what triggered it.” Hm, she was right. For the first few-ish weeks Lloyd had been sad and struggling to some degree, but at some point, it had seemingly randomly gotten worse.

“You think something was bothering him?” Jay asked.

“There were loads of things bothering him,” Kai snapped. What a dumb thing to say. “Lots of shit happened. None of us thought he was okay.”

Jay looked offended and a bit annoyed. “I meant something specifically connected to this. Something that would help us figure out where he is now.”

“I’ll take a look at nearby camera systems,” Zane volunteered.

“I’ll help,” Nya added. Kai couldn’t help with that so he spun around and marched towards Lloyd’s room.

“Where are you going?” Cole asked, hurrying to keep pace with him.

“I’m going to look for clues,” Kai told him shortly, slamming through Lloyd’s bedroom door.

“That’s invading Lloyd’s privacy,” Cole said hesitantly, but followed him into the room.

“Then he should have picked up his damn phone,” Kai growled. Lloyd was moving back into Kai’s room when he got back.

“You think there’ll be any clues in here?” Jay asked, poking his head around the door.

“Maybe,” Kai shrugged. “We can at least see if his phone is in here.”

No phone. So Lloyd probably had it with him. Why wasn’t he picking up then? It wasn’t like the phone could be dead, Lloyd had mastered charging his phone with his powers. Had he lost it? Had someone taken it from- no, no, don’t go there yet. They had no reason to think that yet.

Cole was examining something on Lloyd’s desk.

“Found something?” Jay questioned, peering around Cole’s broad shoulders.

“I’m not sure…” That was a maybe. Kai moved over to see what Cole was looking at. It was a map of Ninjago. Certain areas, areas they’d recently been to, were circled and had arrows pointing out of them. What did it mean?

“This was in one of his drawers,” Cole explained. “It’s recent at least, but I’m not sure what he was trying to do.”

“The arrows are all pointing in the same general direction,” Kai noticed, icy dread growing thicker. “Was he trying to narrow down Emperor Garmadon’s location?”

“Lloyd wouldn’t hide that,” Cole protested. “Not after what happened the first time. And how would he know something we didn’t? We interrogated the SGs together. And there’s no way he found useful intel that narrowed things down at every spot we stopped. Some of these places didn’t even have any SGs.” All true. Cole was probably right. That was a relief. A huge relief.

“What was he tracking then?” Kai asked, frustrated.

“Guys!” They turned to see Nya beckoning them from the doorway. “We’ve found Lloyd on the cameras!”

“Really?!” Kai said eagerly. They all raced to the tech room, leaving the map behind.

Yeah, that was Lloyd all right. A store’s security camera had caught him walking down the road. Kid was in his civvies, no visible weapons. At the end of the street, a fancy car with tinted windows pulled up. It was hard to see what exactly was happening. Lloyd and the car were only partially visible at this position. Lloyd seemed to talk to the driver for a few seconds then got into the car, which sped away a second later. That was the last footage they had of Lloyd. Kai wasn’t sure if he was more or less worried now.

“That was the best angle we could get?” Cole checked.

“Yes,” Zane nodded. He rewound and closely scrutinized the part where Lloyd got into the car. “It at least seems like Lloyd was not forced into the vehicle.”

“Yeah,” Jay nodded. “He walked up to it too. If the car weren’t so expensive, I would have just assumed he was taking a taxi.”

“Why would Lloyd take a taxi somewhere in his civvies in the middle of the night without telling us anything?” Kai asked, anxiety coming through as anger.

“I don’t know,” Jay worried. “I don’t think it even is a taxi. Zane, can you track the car?”

Zane’s eyes zeroed in on the car. He nodded. “I believe so, yes.”

Lloyd was so grounded when they found him. Kai would chain him to his bed if he had to.

Chapter Text

“We found it!” Nya declared triumphantly.

“Really?” Cole gasped. They all crashed and stumbled into each other as they rushed over to where Nya and Zane were staring intently at their computer screen. Cole’s eyes honed in on the familiar car that they’d spent the last hour searching for. It was only half visible in the bottom left of the screen but was definitely the same car. “Isn’t that the bar in this town?” He remembered passing by it yesterday. While it was great it was so close, this didn’t seem like a good sign. The chances that Lloyd was just hanging out at some bar was almost zero. The kid wasn’t old enough to drink, even if he was, he had no interest in it. And Lloyd still wasn’t answering his phone…

“It is,” Zane nodded. “However, the vehicle seems to have left town for some time before returning. That paired with the vehicle’s location being at a bar, the probability that Lloyd is still with the car is extremely low. And he was not accompanying the driver.”

“So did you see the driver?” Kai demanded, glaring at the screen as if it had offended him in some way.

Nya hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah… Not really sure what to make it though…”

She rewound the feed, everything moving in reverse as the minutes ticked back. Cole was watching out for any one suspicious so he was blindsided when a normal looking teenage girl slipped into the drivers seat. He’d seen her coming, but he’d been expecting her to just walk past the car. Nya sped forward a little more then paused on a frame with a full view of the girl. Yeah, the girl looked normal. Around Lloyd’s age, long clean black hair, off-shoulder black and silver shirt, no tatoos, no weapons, no weird scars. Maybe it wasn’t the same car? No, it had to be. But…

“He was sneaking off to meet a girl in the middle of the night?!” Jay gasped. It took Cole a second to process what Jay was implying, then he blanched.

“There’s no way,” Kai said, taken aback.

Cole was baffled. “Have any of you ever seen her before?” He definitely hadn’t.

“No.”

“Nope.”

“Never seen her in my life.”

“Negative.”

“It doesn’t have to be- like- a romantic thing,” Cole reasoned, but he was freaking out a bit in his head. There was no way this was some kind of crazy romantic rebound to get over Harumi. Lloyd wasn’t emotionally ready for that, Harumi had crushed him by turning out to be an evil bitch. The kid wouldn’t want to move on to another girl so quickly. This new girl was pretty, and Lloyd was somewhat emotionally volatile right now, but Lloyd wasn’t the type to rush a relationship like that. And he would have told the rest of them. “Maybe they’re just friends. Or maybe she’s just a Lyft driver.” Lloyd had a car though, and a bike, there was no reason to pay someone else to give him a ride.

“We know all of Lloyd’s friends,” Kai scowled, giving the girl on the screen a look of supreme dislike. “Are we sure she was the one driving the car when Lloyd got in it?” That was a good point.

“No,” Nya frowned. “It’s possible she wasn’t the one driving the car at the time. She’s our best lead right now though.”

That was enough for Kai. “Right, let’s go!” the fire ninja almost shouted, already halfway to the door. Jay hurried after him.

“I’ll stay behind to monitor the cameras,” Zane volunteered. “I will also see if I can find any information on this mystery girl.”

“Good thinking,” Cole nodded. “It’s not like we all need to be there to question her anyways. She looks like a normal civilian. And she isn’t trying to hide or anything.” She didn’t seem guilty of anything.

Jay’s voice called out to them from down the hall. “Guys, hurry up! Kai’s leaving without us!”

This was a rare occasion where Cole supported Kai’s impatience.

They were standing in front of the bar fifteen minutes later. In their rush, none of them had put on their gi, which was probably for the better, they didn’t want to draw too much attention. The girl might have taken them more seriously if they were in uniform though. Hm, it was fine. They were just asking her what she knew.

As he gazed up at the bar’s neon sign which looked dull in the sunlight he realized, “It’s kinda weird to be in a bar at this time of day, right?” Or maybe it wasn’t. Cole wasn’t familiar with bar culture. Why have alcohol when you can have a milkshake.

Kai was seething beside him, heat radiating off him even without any fire. “It’s shady as the cursed realm.” Kai had already decided this girl was some kind of demon in human skin out to hurt Lloyd. Admittedly, they were all more protective of Lloyd after the Harumi betrayal. They all felt like they should have noticed something, stopped it somehow. Even Cole was struggling not to jump to the worst conclusion. This girl could easily be totally innocent.

“It’s got normal food too,” Jay pointed out.

“She could be meeting up with someone else,” Nya theorized.

“Kai, maybe you should stay out here,” Cole suggested. “In case she tries leave.” Kai’s approach might be too aggressive.

“What?!” Kai snapped his head to glare at Cole. “No way I’m staying out here. You stay out here.”

Cole didn’t want to stay out here either. Really the girl running away wasn’t likely to be a problem. Even if she did for some reason, they were four fully trained ninja. A teenage girl didn’t stand a chance. “Ugh, we’ll all go in. Just don’t scare her off, Kai.”

“Yeah, Kai,” Nya seconded, elbowing her brother.

“No lady runs from me,” Kai puffed. “Except for the evil ones. And even then, they’re tempted.” The rest of them rolled their eyes.

“Let’s just approach her normally,” Cole cautioned. “And you should probably take the lead Nya. Talk to her girl to girl.”

“Cool,” Nya nodded. “I’m on it.”

There weren’t many people inside. An older man in a corner booth, a young couple in a window seat, and the girl was sitting alone at the bar in the center, drinking a vibrant pink and blue drink from a tall glass.

The girl turned to face them as they got close. She didn’t seem offput by strangers coming up to her, only vaguely curious.

“Hi,” Nya greeted. “We were wondering if we could talk to you.”

“You’re already talking to me,” the girl answered, taking another sip of her drink. Cole noticed her nails were painted in very fancy patterns. He wondered what her brightly colored beverage tasted like.

“We think you might have given our friend a ride last night,” Nya continued.

“Oh?” The girl raised an eyebrow. “And who is this friend of yours?”

“Um, Lloyd,” Nya answered, a bit of uncertainty creeping in. “Blonde, green eyes…” Should they mention Lloyd being the green ninja? She had to know, right? But Lloyd hadn’t been in his gi…

“Hm,” the girl hummed, swirling her cup so the straw spun in circles. “Why exactly are you asking?” The way she said it made it sound like she knew. Why not just tell them? Was it because she didn’t know who they were, or did she have darker reasons?

“We want to know where he is!” Kai burst, taking a step forward.

The girl was silent for a moment. Then, “You don’t know where he is?” Her lips quirked.

Cole’s opinion of the girl took a steep downward turn.

“We’re asking you if you know where he is!” Jay snapped, prickling up angrily. Cole covertly bumped the lightning ninja’s shoulder. They were all on edge, but losing their cool wasn’t going to make this girl answer their questions.

“Kind of a private question to ask before even introducing yourself,” the girl said lazily. “You could want that information for all sorts of reasons.”

Cole grudgingly had to admit that was fair. “We’re not Lloyd’s enemies,” he assured her, but something felt off. Surely a friend of Lloyd’s would have recognized them and already know that. Maybe she was just a rando. “We’re the other ninja.” Saying they were Lloyd’s brothers and sister would just complicate things. “Maybe you didn’t recognize us out of our uniforms? I’m the earth ninja, he’s the fire, he’s the lighting, and she’s water.” Cole nodded at each of the other ninja in turn.

“Oh no, I already knew who you are,” the girl snorted, amused. “I was just pointing out that you were being rude. My name’s Zuki. Zuki Enyo. So, Lloyd didn’t come back then?” The news didn’t seem to worry her.

“No, he didn’t,” Nya confirmed, struggling not to sound annoyed. “And you’re the last person we know saw him.”

“Hm.” Zuki tapped her nails against the countertop. “Maybe he’s just avoiding you.”

“What?!” Cole was so genuinely surprised by the accusation that he wasn’t even angry. Kai didn’t have that problem. The fire ninja was livid.

“He would never!” Kai shouted, getting right into Zuki’s face. The girl didn’t react to having an enraged man looming aggressively over her. She just kept her somewhat smug confidence that was really starting to grate on Cole’s nerves. “Just tell us where Lloyd is!”

Zuki gave Kai an unimpressed look. “My, my, not the cleverest out there, are you? If your leader is missing, I wouldn’t go around screaming it to the world. Especially considering Ninjago’s current state.”

Cole glanced over at the couple in the window seat, who had twisted around to see what the commotion was about. “She’s got a point, Kai,” he admitted in a low voice. If Lloyd was out somewhere by himself, they didn’t want any bad guys to know about it. And, if Garmadon wasn’t responsible and he found out Lloyd was gone…

“Well- she- urgh,” Kai stuttered. In a quieter voice, he told Zuki. “If you were Lloyd’s friend, you’d tell us where you took him.”

Zuki tilted her head slyly. “I never said we were friends.”

Nya’s eyes narrowed. “You aren’t going to tell us, are you.” It wasn’t a question.

The strange girl smirked. “I’m no snitch.”

The tension in the air grew thick. Cole’s jaw clenched, Kai’s hands tightened into fists, Nya’s expression went cold, and Jay’s muscles went taut.

Zuki looked as calm as ever.

“You are going to tell us,” Kai threatened.

“And how are you going to make me?” Zuki asked silkily, silver eyes glinting like daggers. “You don’t even have your weapons. I’m not impressed with those paltry powers you’ve got on loan.” What did that even mean? “Lloyd is the only one of your lot that is even remotely threatening. And, as you’ve so aptly pointed out, Lloyd isn’t with you.”

They stared each other down for a few long seconds. Neither party backed down.

“You’re coming with us,” Cole ordered. They couldn’t properly interrogate her in public if she was going to be uncooperative.

Zuki smiled, putting down her drink. “Nah.”

Suddenly, Cole was choking on thick silver smoke and couldn’t see an inch in front of his face. How had she-?

The bell on the front door jingled.

“Shit,” Kai swore. At the same time Nya cursed, “Crap.”

Cole made for the entrance; he knew it was basically straight behind him. He bumped into someone, probably Jay judging by the grunt, on the way but once they burst out the door the air was clear again.

“There she is!” Kai shouted. Zuki was already on the roof of the next building, just standing there as she watched them stumble out of the bar. She didn’t seem in any rush to get away. Cole’s teeth ground together. If she wanted to be cocky and make it easier for them to catch her, that was fine with him.

The ninja surged forward. Jay threw a bolt of lightning at her in an attempt to stun her but she merely leaned to the side to avoid it. Then she took off running.

And she was good.

Any lingering doubt that she wasn’t your average teenage girl was wiped away as she effortlessly led them on a chase across town, jumping between streets and rooftops as needed without pause. She was dodging attacks, making incredible leaps, throwing smoke balls at just the right moment… The four of them should have been able to cut her off and pin her down easily but she’d always do something unexpected at the last second and she’d slip away. They needed to corner her.

Finally, she made a mistake.

Cole grinned triumphantly. “We’ve got her now,” he told the others. “She just went into that storage building. There’s no other way out.” She must be getting tired if she was trying to hide to shake them off. But Cole had gotten a glimpse of her as she closed the door and now she was trapped.

“Great,” Kai panted, landing next to him on the roof. “Let’s go get that confession.”

They all crept into the building, more of a shed. Cole stayed in front of the door to block any escape. There were only a few light bulbs to illuminate the room so the visibility wasn’t great but there weren’t many places to hide. Which was why a few minutes later…

“Cole, are you sure she ran in here?” Jay questioned, anxiously tapping his fingers against his side.

“Positive,” Cole insisted. He was sure.

“Well, where is she then?” Kai challenged, sweeping an arm out at the room.

“I don’t-” Cole started, only to break off when Jay suddenly leapt back from the racks he’d been checking. Something small ran past Jay’s legs, way too small to be a human. A black cat scurried up a stack of crates then gazed down at them from its new perch. It probably thought they couldn’t reach it up there.

“Sorry, kitty,” Jay apologized. “We’re looking for someone, we didn’t mean to bother you. You didn’t see a girl run in here, did you?”

“The cat isn’t going to answer,” Kai snapped.

“She definitely came in here though,” Cole argued, but he was beginning to doubt himself. “And there’s no other way out. Do you think she has powers?” Could she phase through walls somehow? But why wouldn’t she have used that before now?

“Powers?” Nya frowned. “From where? She didn’t seem to be using any powers.”

“I don’t know,” Cole shrugged. His phone started ringing and for a moment Cole was hopeful that it was Lloyd finally calling back. But that hope withered when he checked the ID and saw it was just Zane.

Cole answered the call. “Zane, what’s up? You find anything?”

“I have gathered more information on the girl,” Zane reported. “Her name is Zuki Enyo, and she has a fairly extensive criminal record."

“Criminal record?” Cole repeated, surprised. Lloyd was meeting up with a criminal? Why?

“Yes, she’s been especially active these past couple months,” Zane informed him. “though she has crimes dating back to her childhood. Supposedly, she was a student at Darkley’s School for Bad Girls, but I have yet to verify that. Darkley’s didn’t keep any official records so that information isn’t easily accessible.”

Darkley’s sister school? That could explain how Lloyd knew her… But Lloyd almost never even mentioned the other school except to say how scary the girls were. Cole had never gotten the impression that Lloyd had been friends with any of them. The two schools weren’t exactly close to each other either. There was a lot of Darkley’s stuff Lloyd just didn’t talk about though, it was possible he’d just never brought it up.

“None of them were violent crimes,” Zane continued. “Vandalism and theft mostly. They also appear to have been solo crimes with no ties to any villainous organizations.” That was good, right?

“Did you manage to figure out where she might live?” Cole asked. It must be somewhere nearby.

“No, she seems to move around a lot,” Zane noted. “I will continue to investigate. Have you not talked to her yet?”

“She wasn’t in a chatty mood,” Cole sighed, ashamed to admit their failure. “I… think we might have lost her.”

“How unfortunate,” Zane said. “I will attempt to locate her on my end.”

The others were now huddled around Cole trying to eavesdrop on their conversation. Kai’s gaze was particularly intense.

“Thanks, Zane,” Cole nodded.

“I will call if I find anything,” Zane assured him, then hung up.

“What did Zane say?” Nya prodded. Cole told them what Zane had just told him.

“So she’s a criminal?” Kai scowled. “Why would Lloyd hang out with a criminal?”

“Maybe she was a childhood friend?” Jay suggested.

“But he’s never talked about being friends with any Darkley’s girls,” Nya countered. “Plus, she would’ve been, like, at least four or five years older than him. Little boys aren’t generally friends with girls five years older than them.” Oh yeah, Cole hadn’t thought about that.

“Maybe they didn’t know each other before last night,” Cole shrugged.

“Hey,” Jay realized. “Couldn’t we go and search her car? There might be clues in there and she’s bound to come back for it eventually, right?”

They all blinked at the lightning ninja with slightly stunned expressions.

“First Master,” Kai breathed. “Jay coming up with a good idea? What is the world coming to?”

“Hey!” Jay gasped, offended.

“That’s a great idea, Jay!” Nya beamed and Jay blushed at the compliment.

“We better get there quickly,” Cole urged. “She might already be going back for it.”

They all raced out of the building. The cat watched them go. Once the door had shut, the feline rolled her eyes.

Chapter Text

Here is a drawing I made for Ari. I tried my best. Overall, I think it came out okay. I just couldn't get across everything about her design in her description without it getting too wordy/exposition-y. Her butterfly theme is much more obvious here. I tried to give even her pauldrons a butterfly look.

“Wow! So do all Eastern Ninjagans have these?” Ari asked, tapping at Lloyd’s phone screen with wide eyes. She’d been asking Lloyd questions about Ninjago nonstop as they walked to her village. Her excitement was contagious, though his worrying over how he was going to get home kept him from getting too upbeat. Zeo was a grumpy storm cloud silently leading them through the wilderness.

“Pretty much, yeah,” Lloyd nodded, hopping over a fallen log.

“And it doesn’t use any magic?” Ari checked. She’d found the wallpaper settings and was cycling through all the default wallpapers. Zeo glanced back at them to side-eye the phone mistrustingly.

“Nope, just electricity and science,” Lloyd told her. If it were powered by magic, it would probably still be able to make calls. There was no way the others hadn’t noticed he was missing by now.

“That’s definitely a lot more accessible than magic,” Ari noted, not having any problem accepting how advanced science had become. Both her and her cousin were a lot less- barbaric? Was that the word?- than he’d been expecting when he’d realized what time they were from. Like, there was a lot they didn’t know, but they weren’t stupid. Ari turned to look at him. “Do you know how to make one of these?”

A phone? Images of all the little parts and the pages of nonsensical code flashed through his mind. He wouldn’t even know how to start. “Er, no,” he admitted. “They have professionals make them.”

“It’s too bad it doesn’t work properly here,” Ari lamented.

“Yeah,” Lloyd sighed. It wouldn’t have fixed the problem, but it would’ve lessened his family’s freakout. Kai was literally going to chain him to his bed when he got back. They weren’t going to leave him alone for even a second. Any semblance of privacy would be gone, poof, like the concept never existed.

“Is this what Ninjargon looks like now?” Ari asked, pointing to the digital keyboard she’d opened on the screen.

“Yep,” Lloyd nodded. “That’s the whole alphabet.”

Ari squinted down at the letters. “Hmm, I can see the similarities, I guess. But I haven’t been able to read any of the words on here. Like, some of them are almost words, but they aren’t right and don’t really make sense.”

“That’s how most people view ancient Ninjargon,” Lloyd shrugged. Stuff where the letters seemed recognizable but weren’t really. A sentence might look kinda like ‘And pa pylveaf heorn aba don ar reoccum’ but you couldn’t even begin to guess what that might mean. The two languages were obviously related, but knowing one helped very little with understanding the other. Lloyd could read it better than most thanks to his mom, but he’d never really bothered to learn to speak it aloud. Why would he? It was a dead language (or it had been a dead language), being able to read it was enough. So he was very confused as to why they weren’t having any problems talking to each other. Logically, they should be babbling gibberish at each other. He didn’t think they were lying though.

Zeo suddenly lunged forward and stabbed something in a bush. There was an animalistic screech and Zeo’s blade had a dark liquid on it when he sheathed it.

“So how dangerous is it around here?” Lloyd asked, concerned. “Are there monsters every few steps?” He’d known the island was dangerous, any would-be explorers of the Dark Island always gave up very quickly, but they’d made it sound like their village wasn’t far. Were all these creatures right at their doorstep?

“You telling me Eastern Ninjago isn’t the same?” Zeo groused.

“I mean, we have problem areas,” Lloyd answered, shrugging one shoulder, “but we don’t generally build our towns near them.”

“People were trying to run,” Zeo said dully, staring back down the trail. “Get to the forest to go through to the part of Ninjago wasn’t about to sink. People weren’t even sure they’d survive the sink. The First Master said anyone left behind wouldn’t die, but people weren’t inclined to believe him. Haven’s Gate was created by the people who fled here only to discover there was no escape to be found here either. There was no point running after that, this was people’s final hope.”

As Zeo spoke, the guilt weighed down heavier and heavier on Lloyd’s soul. He knew that it didn’t make sense, all this had happened ages before he was born, but it still felt like he’d done something to cause these people’s suffering. How could his grandfather have left these people behind like this? Had he been… unable to save them? His grandfather had always been a perfect being in Lloyd’s mind, barely even human. He hadn’t been human really.

But the First Master hadn’t been able to defeat the Overlord.

He hadn’t been able to heal the Devourer venom in his son either.

So he hadn’t been perfect, but…

“So you guys were, like, alive when the First Master was?” Lloyd asked cautiously. He didn’t want to offend them, but Wu and his dad had always seemed somewhat evasive when Lloyd asked about the First Master.

“Yeah, never saw him ourselves though,” Ari shrugged. She was silent for a moment, then, “So he is dead now then. We’d assumed so, but we weren’t sure.”

“Yeah, he died long before I was born,” Lloyd told them. These people had been waiting for such a long time…

“So who defeated the Overlord then?” Zeo demanded, spinning to pin Lloyd with piercing eyes.

Lloyd’s heart sped up. “Zane, the master of ice,” he answered truthfully. No need to bring up Lloyd’s failed attempts.

Zeo came to a dead stop, Ari and Lloyd nearly crashing into him. The redhead’s expression was one of utter disbelief. Lloyd rewound his words in his head but couldn’t find anything that would cause such a reaction. “Who?” Zeo gaped. “Master of ice? What does that even mean?”

“Er, he’s the elemental master of ice,” Lloyd expanded. They must know about the elemental masters if they were so familiar with the First Master.

“What’s an elemental master?” Ari asked, mystified. Or maybe they didn’t, apparently.

“You guys don’t know what elemental masters are?” Lloyd blinked. The cousins shook their heads. “Then who helped m- the First Master, fight the Overlord?”

“I mean, everyone tried to help,” Zeo shrugged. “Only the First Master could square off with the Overlord himself though. And that still doesn’t explain what an elemental master is.” His grandfather had been fighting the Overlord by himself?

“Well,” Lloyd started, trying to think of the simplest way to explain it. “Uh, the first Master gifted certain people power over an element so they could become protectors of Ninjago. So, like, fire powers, ice powers, water powers, etcetera. And then the powers pass down through bloodlines.” Mostly. Zane was an exception; the previous master of ice had chosen Zane to receive his powers. Zane would eventually do the same thing, lacking real blood to pass down.

Zeo stared at Lloyd, processing this information. “So,” he said slowly, anger building in his voice, “the Overlord, after all this time, lost to just- some guy?”

“Hey, Zane’s awesome!” Lloyd protested, offended on Zane’s behalf. Where did this guy get off calling the person who defeated the Overlord just ‘some guy’? Who did he think he was? “And he isn’t a rando, he’s the master of ice, one of Ninjago’s greatest protectors.”

The hysterical laugh that burst out of Zeo’s lips had Lloyd seriously questioning the guy’s mental functioning. “What does ice do?!” Zeo exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “The First Master had ice powers. He could do a lot of crazy shit. Ice powers were not the thing missing from the equation.” He stepped up to Lloyd aggressively. “Do you have any idea how many people died in the war against the Overlord? And you’re telling me a guy with ice powers and ice powers alone, somehow managed to finally defeat the Overlord?” Okay, so out of context, Lloyd could understand why this news might be upsetting.

“I mean, other elemental masters helped,” Lloyd amended. “Zane was the one to finish him off though.” The familiar pit of trauma and guilt tore open in Lloyd at the memory. Zane shouldn’t have had to die, or almost die, doing something meant to be Lloyd’s job. Lloyd’s supposed destiny.

Zeo still looked disbelieving, but Ari was looking at him curiously. “Are you an elemental master, Lloyd?” she asked shrewdly. Alarm bells rang out in Lloyd’s head like a siren, and he just barely suppressed his reaction. What had tipped her off?! Had it seemed like he knew too much? Was it the way he’d said it?

“Er.” Panic swelled up within him. Would admitting it be good or bad? These people didn’t seem to like the First Master but that didn’t necessarily mean they wouldn’t like elemental masters. What if he walked into town and they ambushed him and tied him down and drained his powers dry? He would be literally doomed. His friends and family were thousands of miles away and they had no idea where he was. But these people had never heard of elemental masters before now, they wouldn’t know stealing powers was a thing. They didn’t really understand what elemental powers were.

Lloyd’s heart was going a mile a minute. He was taking too long to answer, they were going to get suspicious. But he’d probably need these people’s help to get home. He might even need to break out his powers on the way to town if they were attacked by monsters again. And if their reactions to his powers were bad, he’d know going into their town was off the table. Better to know now, right? Ugh, but it was so risky. But these people were fighting the Overlord monsters, they couldn’t be evil, right? But what if it was an act? But they couldn’t have known he was coming or who he was, could they? Also, they didn’t even have to be evil to want his powers or to see his powers as a threat, they could just be scared and desperate. But what if they were just normal, good people? If they found out he’d blatantly lied to them… Maybe he could tell a half truth? “Yeah, I am.”

“You are?” Zeo asked, eyes narrowing. “What’s your element then?”

“Um, energy,” Lloyd answered. That wasn’t a lie.

“Energy?” Zeo said flatly. “That’s not an element.”

“Yeah, the word ‘element’ is used very loosely,” Lloyd shrugged. “Speed, shadow, and form are elemental powers too. I guess they are more just things you find in nature. They don’t need to be the building blocks of the world. I don’t super get it either.” Were mind and amber natural things? They weren’t unnatural.

“That’s stupid,” Zeo griped, frustration boiling and looking very much like he wanted to reach out and throttle him. “What in the cursed realm does ‘energy’ mean? That’s so vague. At least the other stuff are solid concepts. But energy? Technically, everything is energy.” Was it?

“Um.” How to explain it? Lloyd created a small green orb in his palm. “I don’t know. It’s this. Whatever this is. That’s energy.” He flicked the orb away. It hit a bush, breaking the branch before dissipating.

Zeo glanced between Lloyd and the spot where the orb had disappeared. “Why didn’t you use that against the Root Chomper?” The way he said it, he thought Lloyd was an idiot.

“I mean, I was about to,” Lloyd defended. “It caught me off guard. I was kinda distracted by being somewhere that looked nothing like the place I’d been just thirty seconds ago.”

“So did you help fight the Overlord with the other elemental masters?” Ari asked, eyes wide.

“Yeah, I helped,” Lloyd confirmed, managing to sound like shame wasn’t eating away at him. “I wasn’t…” He’d made things worse. “The others did more.”

“Wow!” Ari breathed. “That’s incredible!” Her posture wilted. “I’m glad you were able to pull it off so fast. The Overlord was so focused on taking down eastern Ninjago when we came back, he didn’t double back and actively come after us. I doubt we’d have lasted a day against his full forces.”

“It didn’t feel fast,” Lloyd muttered.

“The Overlord and the First Master were at full war for over a hundred years,” Zeo pointed out drily. “You somehow managed to take him out pretty damn fast.”

“Did the Overlord being defeated not make things better over here?” Lloyd asked. Surely, they must have helped these people at least a little.

Zeo rolled his eyes. “Of course it did. That’s how we knew when he was gone. It used to be way worse, but a lot of darkness still lingers. And many of the Overlord’s followers are still around.” He raised a finger. “His champions still taint the temples.” Another finger. “the Jaakuuna haven’t accepted he’s gone.” Well that semi-explained what the Jaakuuna were. And they must be human or capable of looking human if Zeo had suspected him of being one. Zeo ticked another finger. “Monsters and mutated wildlife are everywhere. Really only the stone army and the Overlord are gone. Though the monsters’ numbers have lessened and they are less aggressive.” They still felt pretty aggressive to Lloyd.

“I didn’t even realize the Overlord had other followers,” Lloyd confessed, a deep worry settling in his gut. The type of nervousness he only got when it was really, really bad.

“Well, the stone army were the most dangerous,” Ari said. “Very few weapons exist that could hurt them.” She glanced towards one of the more distant mountains. “The infernals, the champions, are the second most powerful of the Overlord’s minions, but they don’t leave the temples at least.”

Oh great, the second most powerful Overlord lackeys were still alive. Today was full of good news and happy circumstances. Maybe Emperor Garmadon would turn up here too. Lloyd’s blood went cold at the thought. There was no way this was where his da- Garmadon was hiding. Biding his time.

Lloyd was very conflicted on how to deal with all this. Obviously, the ninja would have to take care of all the problems here, but Emperor Garmadon was still out there. The darkness on this island, there was no way Lloyd could uproot it by himself. He needed the others. If he could just get home quickly, they could- finish dealing with Garmadon, then come back here and clear out these Overlord leftovers together. These people had lasted this long and didn’t seem to be in immediate, mortal danger, Emperor Garmadon seemed like the more pressing threat. Maybe Lloyd could at least help clear out the monsters near the town before he left though.

“They’re doing plenty of damage from where they are anyways,” Zeo sighed bitterly.

Lloyd wanted to ask ‘like what?’ but wasn’t sure if now was a good time to really go into it. Especially now that they’d gotten to the top of this hill and could see Haven’s Gate.

Or he assumed it was the town. He couldn’t actually see any buildings; a massive stone wall was in the way. Towers lined the wall at equal distances, each one having a couple people in it. It looked kind of imposing, but also not as secure as he would like. Such a structure wouldn’t have stopped the stone army for long.

“That’s our village,” Ari declared brightly, pointing at the structure. Lloyd really hoped the people inside were more like Ari than Zeo.

Chapter Text

Once they reached the front gate, Zeo went to talk to the guards. Lloyd couldn’t hear what they were saying, they were whispering, but the huge gate was cranked open, and the guards looked curious rather than hostile as they passed through. So Zeo probably hadn’t been bad talking him.

The town within was larger than he’d been imagining. He scanned the old timey buildings, disguising his search for an escape route if needed as normal curiosity. The building placement seemed somewhat random, like they’d just added new buildings as needed instead of having a layout planned out beforehand. Almost none of the buildings were as tall as the wall and none of the ones that were tall enough were close enough to the wall to make the jump. The wall itself was pretty smooth on the inside too, the outside had been a bit more beat up, more footholds. Lloyd could probably scale the inner walls if it turned out these people weren’t friendly, but if he was being chased while doing it that could get real messy. The opening plaza, rather than the usual fountain or statue, just had flowers so it was very open. But the roofs were the better option anyways, if he stuck to the ground the locals knew this place infinitely more than he did.

Now having at least a rough idea of the terrain, Lloyd turned his attention to the people. There weren’t too many people just out and walking around at the moment. They looked normal. Well, they looked like they’d stepped out of a painting in a museum, with the old timey clothing style, not a graphic tee to be seen, but that was to be expected in this bizarre circumstance. They weren’t armored up like Ari or Zeo, no need for it unless you went outside, he supposed. No suspicious matching clothes or tattoos or any super obvious cult indicators. The full range of ages too, from elderly to children.

Lloyd relaxed slightly.

The locals had noticed him by now and were glancing at him nervously. He knew he must look weird though, it wasn’t too worrying.

“We should probably go straight to the town hall,” Ari suggested, also noticing the attention Lloyd was getting. “Before any crazy rumors start going around.”

“Alright,” Lloyd agreed easily. He wasn’t overly hopeful these elders could help him, surely if they knew a way back to Ninjago they would have used it by now, but right now it was all he had to go on.

The cousins began to lead Lloyd through the dirt streets. There were occasionally stone paved streets, but paved streets didn’t seem to be a priority. He supposed if you didn’t have cars, it wasn’t as big of a deal. Everyone they passed looked surprised to see Lloyd. It wasn’t just his clothes. How rare were visitors here? How far was the closest town? If travel was so dangerous…

They were nearing the center of the town when they were approached by a couple of curious kids, a redhead girl and brown-haired boy.

“Is he a trader?” the boy asked Zeo and Ari. The way he said it and his straightforward approach led Lloyd to conclude the cousins knew these kids. Maybe everyone knew everyone here.

“No,” Ari corrected gently and both children’s faces fell in disappointment. “Just a visitor. He’s fine. We’re taking him to see the elders.”

The little girl cocked her head. “Who’s he visiting?”

“Just, the town, in general,” Ari shrugged. “No one in particular.”

Both children’s faces scrunched. “That’s stupid,” the boy scoffed. “Why visit somewhere if you don’t know anyone and you don’t have any trades?

“Yeah, it is dumb,” Zeo agreed, side eyeing Lloyd. He’d warm up to Lloyd eventually. Hopefully.

“He’s a bit lost,” Ari explained. Zeo snorted so hard that for a second Lloyd worried he was choking. “Don’t worry everything’s fine. Zeo wouldn’t have let him in if he was dangerous.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” the boy considered, then sighed. “I was hoping we’d finally get something besides boring old rice.”

The realization hit Lloyd and he took a closer look at the two children. He’d thought their clothes were just a bit roughed up from playing outside, but that kind of fraying and worn-down cloth didn’t happen in a day. They were also both a little too thin for comfort. They didn’t appear to be starving but their arms weren’t quite as thick as they should be and their skin that he could see around their neck and chest was a tad too tight. None of the people here had looked outright starving but he hadn’t seen anyone overweight either. Had there been any farms here before? These people had been fleeing to the forest, had there been any sort of town here originally? If trade was so rare and unreliable, they must be relying mainly on locally grown food. How could there possibly be enough to sustain what had been a huge and unexpected influx of people?

“C’mon,” the girl tugged the boy away. “We gotta finish our chores.”

“Yeah,” the boy grumbled, allowing the girl to lead him away. “Bye.”

“Sorry if they came across rude,” Ari apologized. “We really don’t get visitors except for traders and the rare person searching for a family member. Even traders are fairly rare. Your clothes are strange too. You’re bound to draw attention.”

“It’s fine,” Lloyd assured. “I’d be curious too.”

It only took two more minutes to reach the town hall. Lloyd didn’t realize it was the town hall until they turned to enter the building. He’d been expecting something more ornate.

Ari went to speak to the lady at the front desk. After a quick, rather vague, exchange, they both went to gather the elders, leaving Lloyd alone with Zeo. The other boy watched Lloyd like he thought he might try to dart away at any moment.

“They aren’t going to be able to help me, are they,” Lloyd stated more than asked. He got the feeling that Zeo would be more honest (realistic) than his cousin.

Zeo’s lips twitched downwards before evening out again. “I doubt it,” he said bluntly, then shrugged. “But maybe you know something they didn’t. You managed to get here after all. If something’s changed, they might know something that could help.”

“The forest is supposed to go both ways, right?” Lloyd hypothesized. “I should be able to just- go back the way I came.” Maybe he should have tried while he was still there. But he’d been very distracted by the fact that there were people on the Dark Island. He had to talk to them first. He’d feel like he was abandoning them if he didn’t.

“Theoretically, yes,” Zeo nodded, but the way he said it he should be shaking his head instead. “But we’ve been trying to pass through at least once a week, and it’s never worked. Did you do anything special?”

Something told Lloyd that saying, ‘I followed the voices in my head, but they’re quiet now’ would not go over well. “I don’t think so?”

“Hn,” Zeo tsked. At least he seemed to believe Lloyd was from Ninjago now.

There was an awkward beat of silence then Lloyd asked, “So, how many people live here?”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Zeo grunted shortly, grouchily leaning against the wall.  

“Oh, okay, sure,” Lloyd fumbled. He wasn’t asking unreasonable questions. But if Zeo wasn’t in the chatting mood…

There was a much longer awkward stretch of silence between them. It was a relief when Ari came back.

“We had to send someone to get your dad, Zeo,” she told her cousin. “But everyone else has gathered.” Turning to Lloyd, Ari beckoned him down the hall. “C’mon, they’re all eager to meet you.”

“Right,” Lloyd said, fighting down his anxiety. The weight of his isolation was suddenly crushing, briefly making it hard to breathe. He had no back up. No one was coming. He hadn’t felt this alone in a long time. Even if bad situations- a fight with not great odds, kidnapped, even possessed- he’d known someone, multiple someones, was doing their best to come help him. Not even the ninja were going to be able to find Lloyd here. They wouldn’t even dream of the possibility.

He took a few deep breaths to calm himself before Ari led him into a large room where the elders were waiting. They were- not as old as he’d been expecting. There were plenty of grey-haired heads, but there were a decent amount of middle-aged looking adults too. Not young, but not what he pictured when thinking about the word ‘elder’. They were all sitting around a big mahogany table, watching Lloyd approach with sharp interest. Sunlight filtered in from windows along the tops of the walls.

He copied the short bow Ari gave the group, not wanting to come across rude. Hopefully the action made sense and didn’t make him look stupid. This culture was alien to him, he had no idea what he was supposed to be doing or what would be considered offensive.

“So you claim to be from Eastern Ninjago?” one of the grey haired ladies questioned, expression skeptical.

“Um, yeah, I guess that’s what you call it,” Lloyd confirmed. “Which makes sense. It is Ninjago. And it is east from here. Across the ocean.” The elders leaned in closer to their neighbors and whispered to each other. He couldn’t make out any of the words, they were too fast and quiet and there were too many overlapping voices.

“And you came through the forest?” one of the younger men with a still full head of black hair asked.

“Well, I walked into the forest then ended up here,” Lloyd explained. “I didn’t realize it was a magic forest. It was just- a normal forest. People walk through it all the time. There are paths and everything. I think I went deeper than most people, I went off the path, but there was nothing to indicate it was some portal, teleportation forest.” He wouldn’t have gone in alone if it had seemed like anything but a normal forest.

More whispering. At least it didn’t seem to be hostile whispering. No one seemed mad at him.

“Come now, everyone,” the man with greying blonde hair at the head of the table (who looked suspiciously like Ari. Her dad? Her uncle?) remarked, drawing everyone’s attention. “I know these are rousing circumstances and we do not often receive guests but let us not forget our manners.”  The man addressed Lloyd directly. “Welcome to Haven’s Gate, young traveler. I am Argus Caddel, chieftain of this village. I understand what has happened to you is distressing, but rest assured, we will help you where we can. We too have great interest in establishing contact with Ninjago’s other half. My daughter said your name is Lloyd?”

So this was the dad. Ari’s dad was the chief? “Yes, sir,” he nodded.

“And what is your surname?” Chief Caddel asked.

Would they recognize Garmadon somehow? “Smith,” Lloyd blurted out. “Lloyd Smith.”

“Hm, a fairly common surname,” Chief Caddel mused. “I had wondered if I might recognize it. There were many who were able to flee the land’s sinking.” He sighed heavily. “But I suppose there is no point in searching for families at this point. I doubt there is anything to be found that could grant peace after so long.”

That was… awful. Really, really awful. How many families had been separated? Surely most families had been close together. Unless there’d been some sort of war conscription… To know your family member had died thousands of years ago, you’d never see them again, you would never know what kind of life they lived on Ninjago, you couldn’t even be sure if they had truly managed to escape. There wouldn’t be records of random civilians at that time period. Was sinking the Dark Island really the best option his grandfather had available at the time? Lloyd knew that saving everyone in that sort of situation was virtually impossible and the First Master had saved these people’s lives too but- there had been no perfect solution. This was the method that had saved the most lives. But harm had still been done.

“But back to the matter at hand,” Chief Caddel continued. “Akari tells us you have some sort of power gifted to you from the First Master. Could this power be what allowed you to successfully pass through the barrier?”

“Uh, maybe?” Lloyd replied uncertainly. “I wasn’t using it at the time.” There had been that- outburst- but it hadn’t seemed to do anything. Nothing had glowed or reacted or anything.

Another round of whispers. Ari’s dad asked Lloyd another question. “Akari says you were part of the group that defeated the Overlord?”

“Yes,” Lloyd nodded. “There are other people with powers like mine. Well, not exactly like mine, we’ve all got different elements, but we worked together to take down the Overlord.” Kind of an unfair description, it didn’t take into account all of Lloyd’s failures, but that would all be too much to explain at the moment. He needed to keep the focus on getting home.

“So he really is gone…” a brown haired man marveled.

“We already knew that,” the elderly woman who’d been the first to speak snapped. “The question now is how to reestablish contact with the rest of the world.” Lloyd was very happy with where this conversation was going.

“If the forest is working again,” a bearded man pointed out. “We can just use it to cross.”

A flurry of excited whispers and nodding spread through the table.

“If the forest doesn’t work,” Ari pipped up. “How would we get Lloyd back home then?”

The elders’ silence was not reassuring.

“He’d be stuck here with the rest of us,” a male voice came from behind. Lloyd turned to see what had to be Zeo’s dad (they looked similar, had the same hair color, and Ari had already said his dad would be arriving late) striding in, fully armored. A guard? Hunting outside the city walls? Paranoid? Probably a guard.

“But I have to get home,” Lloyd asserted. “I have- responsibilities.” What would his da- Garmadon do if he found out Lloyd was no longer in Ninjago? Or even just missing? “And my family will be freaking out. I  just disappeared, I went out on a walk and didn’t come back.”

The ninja maybe would be able to find out he’d gone to the forest once they started investigating where the hell Lloyd had gone, especially if they managed to figure out who Zuki was and hunted her down. It wouldn’t be easy, but the ninja were very capable of finding that stuff. Lloyd hadn’t even been hiding his tracks that much, he’d been banking on them never really looking. Like, the gas station he’d gone to next to the forest, he hadn’t bothered avoiding the security camera. But unless the forest teleported the ninja too, the trail would end there.

“Well if the forest doesn’t work,” Zeo’s dad said gruffly, “that only leaves making the journey on  foot. And that’s months of traveling across dangerous, uninhabited- heh, well uninhabited by humans- land with often treacherous terrain.” He pinned Lloyd with an accusatory glare. “We can’t give you an escort, we are already struggling with what little manpower we have. You’d have to go alone.” A hint of a sneer appeared on his face. “Trying to make the journey is suicide even for a Western Ninjagan. A foreigner, even one with light up powers, wouldn’t last a week.”

Months. Cold dread pooled within Lloyd. That was- no, the forest would work. It had to. Why wouldn’t it? He’d just used it. If it didn’t work…

“We can worry about that if the forest remains closed,” Chief Caddel assuaged. To the wider group he announced, “We will gather a team and attempt a crossing immediately.” Shifting his gaze back to Lloyd he asked. “Do you think you can retrace your path through the forest?”

Narrowing his eyes in focus, Lloyd nodded. He had a good memory for that kind of thing. The way the forest layout had changed going in and out did throw him off some, but there hadn’t been any big twists or turns. Even without the voices, it was totally doable. “Yeah, I remember the way.”

Chapter Text

Why couldn’t he find it?

Lloyd’s frantic frustration was setting every nerve in his body on edge, and he felt like he might explode any moment. They’d been scouring this forest all day, entering and exiting it over a dozen times, but they never came out in Ninjago. This was so stupid; he was certain he was retracing his steps. He was able to get back to the black and white flowers easily. It was the misty area after that where it got tricky. He was so sick of it. All the trees merged into a vast, amorphous blob of indistinct branches shrouded in a veil of white.  Even though he was pretty confident he was going the right way, he couldn’t be certain because everything looked the same. The misty parts were so quiet too, no wind or animals, just the eeriy echoes of their own footsteps. This place hadn’t seemed like a maze when he first came through, but he couldn’t find even a trace of the shrine now. Why couldn’t he find it? Because that had to be the key to getting home. Just walking in and out of the forest wasn’t doing anything.

The group that had come with him were also frustrated and quickly running out of patience. Ari, Zeo, Zeo’s dad, and five other guards had joined him in his search. Ari had been the only one optimistic about success. The others had been curious but only had a sliver of hope that had evaporated after the first hour.

It had been a full day now and Lloyd hadn’t even left a note. The ninja were definitely freaking out by now. What was he supposed to do? He had no way to get a message to them. The way he got here wasn’t working now. Walking was apparently super dangerous and would take forever. So… he just had to keep trying to find the shrine then. He couldn’t do anything else and he hated it.

He was pulled out of his fretting inner monologue when Zeo’s dad suddenly announced, “We have to start heading back to the village.”

“What?” Lloyd startled. “Why?”

The man pinned him with a withering look. “Things get far more dangerous at night around here. And if you can’t find your way through the forest in daylight, you have no chance in darkness.”

“You all can go back,” Lloyd said. Honestly, he was surprised they’d stuck around as long as they had. “I can keep trying on my own.” He couldn’t stop trying.

“Don’t be stupid,” Zeo’s dad scoffed. “Stay out here if you want. You won’t get anywhere but six feet under.” He turned his head to the rest of the group and sharply ordered, “C’mon, let’s go.”

The other guards were a bit hesitant, giving Lloyd worried glances but they followed after their leader. Zeo had no qualms about ditching Lloyd, merely rolling his eyes then following his dad. Ari lingered, even after the others disappeared from view.

“You don’t have to hang around,” Lloyd assured her. “I’ll be fine.” Her familiarity with the area and local wildlife was useful but he could survive without it.

“I get that you want to go home, Lloyd,” Ari sympathized glumly. “But my uncle’s right, we aren’t going to figure this out today. It would be best to get some rest then try again tomorrow.”

Lloyd’s jaw tightened as he glared into the misty part of the woods that was concealing his way home. He could keep going.

Ari came closer. “C’mon, you know it’s the right thing to do. If the roles were reversed and it was one of your siblings stuck here, what would you want them to do?”

……Lloyd could acknowledge that he was a hypocrite. But the others weren’t the leader. The others weren’t the green ninja. The others hadn’t done something stupid to get them into this mess.

A gentle tug to his arm got Lloyd to turn and he immediately regretted it. Ari was looking at him so pleadingly. “Please, Lloyd? It’s the smart choice. The forest clearly isn’t letting anyone through right now. It isn’t a problem of you not doing it right. Let’s go back to Haven’s Gate to recuperate and then we can look for answers in the library in the morning.”

Lloyd wavered, then his shoulders slumped. Dang it. Getting some sleep and doing some research was the right move, he knew it was. He was so tired; the exhaustion was really starting to hit him. He hadn’t been sleeping well lately and he hadn’t slept last night at all. He probably wouldn’t sleep great in a strange place surrounded by strangers with no allies to watch his back, but even just some sleep would be beneficial. And more intel would be good.

“Fine,” Lloyd relented. “I guess it’s probably for the best.” Relief washed over Ari’s features.

“Oh good,” Ari sighed, then she perked up. “I can get you set up in one of the visitor rooms. We don’t really have an inn, not enough visitors, but we have a wing where the traders stay when they come.”

“Thanks…” Lloyd mumbled tiredly and the two of them started the walk back.

They didn’t say anything to each other for the first few minutes. It wasn’t an awkward silence though; it was oddly calm. Then some rustling bushes drew his attention, recalling the warnings of danger and monsters.

A little mossy-fur fox looking thing hoped out of the bushes. It wasn’t a fox though; its ears were too small, and it had more of a bunny tail than a fox tail. And it had branches growing out of its head like antlers. It was pretty cute but…

“It that a monster?” Lloyd asked Ari uncertainly.

Laughter burst out of Ari’s mouth, a melodious sound that seemed to bounce among the trees scattering the gloom and easing the depressive atmosphere. “That?” she giggled. “A brushie? No, of course not. Do you not have brushies in eastern Ninjago?”

Feeling vaguely embarrassed, Lloyd shook his head. “Nope. Not that I’ve seen at least.” The brushie, which had gone still at Ari’s laughter, gave them a quick glance then dashed away.

“Brushie are harmless,” Ari chuckled. “What about it said ‘monster’ to you?”

“I mean it didn’t look like a monster,” Lloyd defended himself. “But I don’t know what kind of weird monsters live around here. The plant thing looked normal until it started moving.”

“That’s fair I guess,” Ari said, laughter tapering off, though she was still grinning. “It’s sad that you easterns don’t have any brushies. I’ve always liked them.”

“It did seem cute,” Lloyd noted. Hm? A familiar prickling sensation crept up his back and Lloyd’s attention to his surroundings sharpened. It was the feeling of being watched by unseen eyes, the brain having subconsciously picked up on something the person had yet to fully process. Lloyd subtly glanced around. Where…?

Oh.

Lloyd tilted his head upwards, bemused. “What are you doing?”

There was a moment of stillness, but Lloyd could see bits of him through the branches now. Zeo couldn’t pretend he hadn’t been caught. The redhead softly dropped to the ground with a look a supreme irritation.

Ari sighed, exasperated. “Why pretend to stomp off if you were going to stay and make sure he was okay anyways?”

Zeo bristled. “I’m not here for him,” he denied heatedly. “I’m keeping an eye on you, stupid. Staying out in the wilds with a stranger at night is crazy even for you.”

“Well, we’re going back now,” Lloyd assured him, not wanting the cousins to fight.

“Yes, I could see that,” Zeo rolled his eyes. “Nice to know you aren’t completely braindead, I guess.” He turned and started briskly walking away. “Now hurry it up you two. The sun’s already starting to set.” Only just barely. But he was right, they shouldn’t linger.

This was a different part of the forest than where Lloyd had come in so the route they took was unfamiliar to him. He just followed Zeo and Ari, not paying much attention to the path they were taking. His mind was too occupied with half baked plans, worries, and overwhelming guilt. He should have told the ninja what was going on, or at least told them where he was going. He shouldn’t have snuck out in the middle of the night. This really didn’t seem oni related at this point, he could have just told them.

Despite the anxious thoughts eating at him, Lloyd’s life experiences prevented him from totally tuning out his surroundings. So as they were walking beside a river (presumedly the river that ran past the town), he did notice something odd.

A patch of black gunk, about the width and length of a car, was flowing down the river. It was gross looking, like very gooey oil. For a fleeting, fearful moment, considering where he was, Lloyd panickedly concluded it was dark matter. But no, it wasn’t. There was no purple and his skin wasn’t crawling from just looking at it. So what was it then? It didn’t seem like the type of pollution these technologically primitive people would have. And the current was going towards the town, not away. But it didn’t look like a natural substance either.

Zeo and Ari had both come to a stop, also spotting the gunk in the water. They both appeared to be very concerned about it. Lloyd understood why. Maybe it wouldn’t turn you evil at a touch, but it still didn’t look good. Not something you’d want in your water.

“That’s a lot of taint,” Ari observed worriedly.

Nodding, Zeo leaned over the water to closer scrutinize the gunk. “I’m not sure if the filters will be able to handle that much.” Crap, was this their main water supply?

Ari gazed down the river towards the river source, searching for something. “Do you think the water dragon’s alright?” she fretted.

Dragon?

Lloyd’s brain latched onto the word, the lifeline that it offered giving him the most hope since he’d come here.

“Dragon?” he repeated eagerly. “There’s a dragon nearby?” He could ask it for a ride back to Ninjago. It would still take a while, but flying was way faster and safer than walking.

“Hm?” Ari turned to look at him, “Oh, yes. A dragon lives in Lake Seiryu.” Lake Seiryu? Why did that sound so familiar? “Don’t worry, she’s quite friendly to humans. Nami’s the protector of the Water Temple.” Ari bit her lip. “Usually she keeps the water mostly clean. Wisps of taint still leak out, but our filters are able to handle that. This much is unprecedented though. Lake Seiryu is the source for all the water in this area. If something’s happened…”

Lloyd frowned, processing all this new information. Haven’s Gate was in danger, a dragon might be in danger, and there was an elemental temple on the Dark Island. The Water Temple too. Oh, that’s why Seiryu Lake sounded familiar, his mom had been searching for the Water Temple for a long time. But there were so little clues about its location, mainly just that it was in a place called Seiryu Lake, nothing had ever lined up. Why would- well, the Temple of Light had been on the Dark Island. And as had been pointed out, this was a part of Ninjago. Still, it was weird to think that Nya’s elemental temple was on the Dark Island. His mom would be over the moon to finally be able to research the temple in person. If she ever made it out here. Not a very accessible location.

“We should go check on her,” Lloyd encouraged.

“We’ll need to, yes,” Zeo agreed, but he side eyed Lloyd in a way that made it clear that when he said ‘we’ he wasn’t including Lloyd. “But we’ll have to wait until tomorrow. The waters around the temple are already dangerous with all the monsters trying to get in. Swimming around in there in the dark would be suicide. Maybe the Infernal’s gotten the upper hand at the moment, but it can’t have killed the water dragon, the taint would be far worse than this.”

“Wait, Infernal?” Lloyd checked. “Are those the super powerful Overlord minions you were talking about before?” That made things more difficult.

“Yes,” Ari confirmed. “I’ve never seen it myself; I haven’t been allowed in, but the Infernal and the water dragon have been at a stalemate for more than a year now. It’s taken over half the temple.” She crouched down and ran a hand through the clean part of the river. “It wants to poison the water supply and kill everything in this area, us included. The water dragon usually keeps it at bay and keeps the taint levels down, but this much taint making it this far isn’t a good sign.”

They’ve been fighting for a year straight? “Have you tried to help her fight it?” They must have, so why hadn’t it worked?

The question seemed to offend them. Well, Ari only winced, but Zeo bristled, eyes flashing. “Of course we’ve tried,” he spat, words laced with bitterness. “Many were killed. We’re just not built for underwater combat. In the end, we were more of a hinderance than a help. Nami had to waste time and energy protecting us and we weren’t able to contribute in any meaningful way.” Huh, Zeo spoke as if he’d been there. What he said made sense.

“Yeah, no that makes sense,” Lloyd nodded. “I wasn’t trying to imply you hadn’t tried, I just wanted to know how it went.” Terribly, apparently. Crap, he wasn’t much help underwater either. Did it not come to the surface? But he could still blast it at least, even without going into the water. “So have you seen the Infernal then?”

Zeo’s fists clenched. “Yes, I was there,” he confirmed. “So I know the best we’ll be able to do is provide the water dragon medical care if needed. We can’t fight that thing.”

Hmm. Well, he’d need to see the situation for himself to decide how to move forward. Ask the water dragon what she needed.

“I’m not good for underwater combat either,” Lloyd admitted. “But I can shoot my powers through the water even from land.” He could do some ice stuff too. That could potentially be useful. “I could help without having to get in the water.”

Zeo’s eyes narrowed, but Lloyd could tell he was grudgingly considering it. “Hm, I suppose your abilities could be of use. I guess I could talk to my dad about letting you come with.”

Ari stood up. “I want to come this time too.”

Zeo hesitated, a look of conflicted guilt passing over his face. “Ari…”

“C’mon, I’ve proved I can take care of myself,” Ari insisted. “I may not be as physically strong as the men, but I can still help.”

Lloyd cocked an eyebrow. “Wait, you didn’t let her go because she’s a girl?” Like, in general, he understood that. He wouldn’t pick a random girl off the street over a random guy for this type of thing, but if the girl had proven herself, of course he was taking the girl. And Ari was very clearly competent, he’d seen her take out monsters with ease. The way she moved, she had plenty of training and skill.

“Only our top warriors were allowed to go,” Zeo explained.

“She’s a great fighter though,” Lloyd protested. Or was everyone around here trained in combat, so the bar was super high?

“Of course she is,” Zeo snapped irritably. “But only the best were sent.” His aggressive stance wavered, voice softening slightly. “I didn’t- agree, with it, exactly. And it wasn’t just her being a girl, she’s also the chief’s daughter, it- was just decided she couldn’t go.”

“Well that seems stupid,” Lloyd commented. The fate of their town was on the line.

“I’ll be able to convince them this time for sure,” Ari stated confidently. “I’m even stronger than I was last year. And I’ve read more books on the water temple than anyone. They’ll have to let me go.”

“We’ll see,” Zeo mumbled, but he didn’t sound hopeful. Not about any of it.

Chapter Text

It had been more than twenty-four hours now. Lloyd had been missing for over twenty-four hours. Kai hadn’t slept since the kid went missing. He was half feral as he tore through the town searching for any clue to what had happened to their leader.

Had Lloyd been kidnapped? Was he hurt and stuck somewhere? Who had dared to go after his baby brother? Emperor Garmadon? Was that Zuki bitch working for him? Or was it unrelated? The ninja had no shortage of enemies, any of them could target Lloyd. Why had Lloyd left in the middle of the night without telling anyone? Had he been threatened? Tricked? There was no way Lloyd had snuck away for a solo mission after what had happened last time he’d run off on his own. Lloyd had been acting a bit off recently, but the kid was going through a lot. None of it had seemed alarming. Nothing that would willingly push the kid into this vanishing act. Lloyd always told someone where he was going if he wanted some space. He knew better. It didn’t make sense.

Kai paused on the rooftop of some café, gaze sweeping the area for the sign of anything even slightly suspicious. But this was a small town. There wasn’t even a criminal underbelly to infiltrate.

It was dark again now. Maybe that would help. Bad guys were often more active after dark. Pulling out his communicator, Kai tensely asked, “Any luck, Zane?” The ice ninja was searching the east side while Kai was searching the west.

“Negative,” Zane responded wearily. “No sign of Lloyd or the girl. Or any criminal element. It is highly likely they’ve long left the area.”

“I know that!” Kai snapped, clenching his fists. “I know that. But what are we supposed to do? We’ve lost track of the car, the girl, Lloyd- everything. We have nothing to go on.” Lloyd would have come up with something clever by now if he were here.

Zuki’s car had somehow vanished by the time they got back to it. The cameras had glitched for a few convenient minutes (how the hell had she managed that?) so they didn’t have footage of it leaving the bar. And they hadn’t been able to find any footage of the car leaving the town either. It was like it had poofed out of existence. It could be that the car was still in town and that was why they couldn’t track it, but Kai was pretty sure she had just found a way to sneak out of town unseen.

They had a ghost of a lead; a vague direction the car had taken the previous night. But the open roads, unmonitored and sprawling, offered a thousand escape routes. They’d still be basically searching blind. Checking along every possible path in that direction- it would take forever. They didn’t have forever. Every second that ticked by was a second longer Lloyd was in danger.

“We need to come up with a different approach,” Kai insisted, pacing the rooftop. The arm not holding his com was jittering with anxious energy and maybe a little sleep deprivation. “Do you think Darkley’s might have more info on the girl? Maybe they might know where she could be or they know who might have a connection to her.” If they could narrow things down even a little-

“I’m working on it,” Jay assured, jumping into the conversation. He was back at the Bounty doing digital reconnaissance. “We don’t really have any connections to the girls’ side of the school, so it’s been… difficult. They held out longer than the boys on the evilness, but they ended up going good too. But if it went down like at the boys’ side of Darkley’s, the shitty teachers shredded every scrap of documentation they could on the way out. And Zuki is older too. Finding someone in modern Darkley’s who knew her is going to be tricky. It would probably have to be a student’s older sister who was at the school the same time Zuki was. Or we could try to track down some of the old teachers, that’ll be harder I think though.”

Jay had taken a two-hour power nap then plunged back into the search. Nya and Cole were having their naps now so at least a couple of them were well rested. Zane didn’t technically need sleep. Not for energy at least. The nindroid did need ‘sleep’ for mental reasons. His brain and system processed things while asleep and his cognitive functions would degrade if he went too long without going into rest mode. But Zane could last a lot longer than them without sleep before that started to happen and he wouldn’t get physically tired.

Kai? Kai didn’t need sleep. He was fine. He wouldn’t be able to sleep until he knew Lloyd was safe anyways.

“Social media’s still a bust too?” Kai checked again.

“So far,” Jay confirmed dully. “No fans taking pictures when they shouldn’t be. No posts claiming they think they saw the green ninja. The algorithm’s keeping an eye out.”

“Crap,” Kai cursed. He shook his head. “I’m heading back to the Bounty; this is going nowhere.”

“I agree. I will return as well,” Zane seconded. “My time will be better utilized assisting on the computers rather than running in circles hoping to stumble onto something.”

Half an hour later, Kai, Zane, and Jay were all huddled together around the central console. “Are Wu and Misako still out of range?” Kai asked. The pair were out in the deep wilderness searching for information on the Oni Masks, but they were supposed to be checking in soon. The masks could wait, Lloyd was in trouble.

“Not yet,” Jay sighed. “They have a scheduled check in at noon tomorrow though.” He blinked, glancing at the clock. “Er, or noon today.”

“That’s not so bad, I guess,” Kai grumbled. “But ‘noon today’ still means hours. And it’ll take them time to get back, even if they drop everything.” He ran a hand through his disheveled hair (he hadn’t had time to style it today). “We need to get everyone together and decide what to do next.” They needed a plan. A good, concrete plan.

“Cole’s already up,” Jay informed him. “He’s in the kitchen. I can go get Nya.”

“Alright,” Kai nodded sharply, jaw set. “We can all meet in the kitchen then.”

When he and Zane walked into the kitchen, Cole was hunching over something on the table. Kai couldn’t see what at first, the older boy’s broad shoulders blocked his view, but as he came closer, Kai realized it was the suspicious map from Lloyd’s room. Kai’s interest immediately sparked. Had Cole managed to find some sort of clue from it?

“Have you figured anything out?” Kai asked eagerly, belying the gnawing anxiety in his gut. Lloyd had been tracking something. Something he hadn’t told them about and was actively trying to hide. But Kai hadn’t been able to put together what all the little arrows meant. They were all pointing towards the same general area, but nothing else had stood out. There was nothing at the area the arrows were pointing too. And the arrows didn’t line up perfectly either, they could be pointing at multiple places. Multiple seemingly unimportant, middle of nowhere places.

As much as Kai would like to believe the map held some answer to Lloyd’s location, he had his doubts. Surely if Lloyd had willingly left to sneak off somewhere, he would have come back or called by now. It was possible he’d been attacked when he got to wherever though. It was at least worth checking out.

“Kind of,” Cole answered. “Not really.” He sighed, pointing to the second map of Ninjago he had on the table. He had been writing on that rather than messing with Lloyd’s copy. “I’ve narrowed down the general areas the arrows might be pointing to, but as far as I can tell, they aren’t places Lloyd would have any interest in.” He ran a hand over the section he’d highlighted. “And I can’t figure out how he was adding new arrows at every single place we stopped. We should have known or noticed the same things he did. I wish he’d left some notes or used symbols or something. What could he possibly have been tracking? The wind? Birds? The direction the bad guys were coming from? We would have noticed that though, right?” His frustration grew with every far-flung theory. “It wasn’t from interrogations, there were definitely guys he was never left alone with. It must have been something he could see, something the rest of us missed.”

Zane peered over Cole’s shoulder, analyzing both maps. “So you believe the arrows either point to the small town of Dorus or the equally small town of Ripplebrook?” he inquired, looking troubled. “Why would Lloyd wish to go to either? Have either town reported trouble, strange activity, or any unusual fluctuations of energy signatures? Or do we know someone from those towns?”

Cole shook his head. “They’re both quiet towns. Sleepy little places. Biggest excitement they get is probably the weekly farmers’ market. Nothing weird. Nothing out of the ordinary. No temples, no museums, no one we know lives there, no landmarks. As ordinary as little rural towns like that get.”

“We should check both towns,” Nya said decisively, having just entered the room. Jay was right behind her. They were all here now. “And the surrounding areas.”

Zane nodded. “I agree.”

“But what about Zuki?” Kai snapped, already imagining himself nailing the girl in the face. “We have to track her down. She knows where Lloyd is, she must. She’s the last one we know he was with and she was clearly playing some kind of twisted game. She basically admitted she knew where he is, ha ha, I’m not telling.” He paced the kitchen, rage thrumming through his veins.

Kai loathed this chick. Her whole smug ‘I think I’m better than you’ attitude. She’d clearly done something to Lloyd. She’d straight up said that she wasn’t Lloyd’s friend. So she was an enemy. An enemy who had manipulated his little brother. Kai didn’t know what she’d done exactly, but she’d somehow managed to lure Lloyd away. Lloyd had such a big heart and was so willing to trust, even after all the hurt and betrayal in his life and this bitch had taken advantage of that. Kai would revel in making her talk then dragging her to prison.

Cole’s voice cut through Kai’s somewhat violent fantasies of what he’d do to Zuki when he caught her. “We should split up. Two of us go to investigate the towns, the other three hunt down Zuki.”

“I’ll be on the hunt down Zuki team,” Kai volunteered immediately.

Jay, however, seemed less confident in the suggestion, his doubt contrasting sharply with Kai’s burning intensity. “Do you think three of us are enough to take her down?” he asked nervously. “We didn’t do such a great job catching her last time and there were four of us then…”

"She caught us off guard,” Kai argued. They’d approached her as if she was a civilian. They hadn’t even had their gear. “We know better now.”

“Three will have to be enough,” Cole shrugged pragmatically. “No way we’re sending anyone off alone right now. Buddy system.” He was right. Last thing they needed was someone else going out solo and disappearing.

Cole tilted his head thoughtfully. “Kai’s obviously going on the Zuki team. I’ll go too; I’m better at fighting than investigating. Zane should go on the town search, he’s smart and his scanners can pick up on things the rest of us might miss…” he trailed off, glancing between Nya and Jay, uncertain on where to place them.

What would Lloyd do?

There was no obvious choice between the two. They were both good fighters. They were both observant (or Jay was when he was trying to be), they both had skills with computers and stuff, and without knowing the environment they were heading into, it was unclear if either of their elements would be more or less useful in one place than another.

Kai attempted to recall similar situations they’d been in before and what they’d done then. There had been one time they’d had to split into teams, one for fighting, another for investigating. Back then, Lloyd had sent Nya on the investigating team with the reasoning that, as a girl, Nya could talk to some people easier than a guy might be able to. That made sense. There’d been another scenario though where they’d been trying to find a girl witness and Lloyd had put Nya on that team because Nya could get into girl only spaces. And there would be some sleuthing to find Zuki too, it wouldn’t just be fighting. So which option was better? Lloyd would have considered all the little details that never would have even occurred to Kai. If he were here. Ugh. Maybe Jay and Nya were about equal enough in this case that it would be fine either way. There were pros and cons to both choices, but none felt like they tipped the scales.

But Nya made the decision for them. “I’ll go on the Zuki hunting team. I’m the most familiar with the Darkley’s school system. I’m the one who went through their stuff to find Lloyd’s files. The girls’ side is a separate entity, but the underlying structure will be similar. And if we do end up having to actually go to the school, I’ll blend in better at an all girl’s school than you guys.” Yeah, that made sense. Kai had no complaints.

“You all may take the Bounty,” Zane offered. “Jay and I can drive our vehicles, it will be more efficient.”

“Yeah, okay,” Kai agreed, shoe tapping impatiently against the wooden floor. The sooner they got moving, the sooner they could find answers, and the sooner they could bring Lloyd home. And then Kai would move the kid into his room and ground him for at least a month. At least. Lloyd clearly needed the break. They should have put their foot down sooner. He didn’t care if Lloyd was leader, Kai was his big brother. The ninja were all Lloyd’s family.

“I can start flying towards the towns,” Jay pipped up, seeming brighter now that they had a plan in place. “We should use the travel time to eat breakfast. Then you guys can drop me and Zane off and start going after the girl.” He shifted on his feet nervously. “Er, you should maybe use your traveling time to get some rest while you can.” He was looking at Kai as he said it.

Kai bristled. “I don’t need rest! I’m fine.” He wasn’t even that tired. He’d gone longer without sleep in dire situations.

Nya rolled her eyes. “C’mon, bro. You’re the only one who hasn’t had any sleep yet. It’s stupid to run on fumes when you don’t have to.” She ignored Kai’s glare and gestured towards Cole. “You and Cole should both rest while we’re traveling, actually.  I can drive and do some research on the way. I just woke up, I’m fresh. There’s no reason to waste this opportunity. We have time now, we might not later.” Her gaze was steady in the face of her brother’s determination (stubbornness).

Kai flexed his fingers. “Fine,” he bit out grudgingly. It wasn’t worth arguing. He could think up plans and dig into things on his phone from his bed just as well. And maybe he could catch, like, an hour of sleep. Maybe. If his brain let him.

Zane had been pulling out bowls from the cabinets to make breakfast. “Good,” he nodded, pleased. “Rest is important.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kai muttered.

Cole stood up and put his hand on Kai’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Kai, we’ll find him.” The older boy’s eyes were fiery steel. “Or heck,” he added, a flicker of a wry smile playing on his lips. “maybe he’ll find us first. The kid’s as smart as he is tough- he’s a survivor. But either way, we will find him. We’ll scour all od Ninjago if we have to.”

“Of course we will,” Kai vowed. “We’ll always come for him,” Always.

………..

Meanwhile…

Down on the ground, on top of a flat shed roof in the shade of a nearby tree, Zuki watched as the ninjas’ flying ship started to sail away. She was lying casually, belly down with her head laying on her crossed arms.

“Well, well, well, Sable,” Zuki grinned, eyes glittering with amusement. “Looks like the ninja are on the move.” Her precious pet, a fox looking animal with black fur and red tipped ears and tail, let out a yip from his spot in the deepest shadows on the corner of the roof.

Propping her chin on her fist, she considered the situation. “Humans are such silly creatures. Freaking out over the smallest things.” She shook her head mockingly. “Lloyd wants some me-time and they act like the world is ending. They really can’t manage without him for a few days?” She was glad Lloyd had taken her advice for some time away. He’d clearly needed it. So much stress. And she was happy to buy him more time by distracting his little human friends. However…

“Can’t say I’m happy they’re going to be trying to look into my past now though,” she mused. Lloyd had bought all her stories pretty much right away. She didn’t blame him, she was very convincing. And it was a weird thing to make up, she supposed. Almost impossible to verify too, that was one of the main reasons she’d chosen that backstory. She thrummed her fingers against the weathered roof tiles. “I guess that can be avoided easily enough though. Just have to show up before they get to that point.” If Lloyd found out she’d lied… “It should be fine. So long as Lloyd’s little sabbatical doesn’t stretch on too long.”

She’d been wanting to play with the ninja for a while now, but had abstained at Lloyd’s request. But Lloyd would understand the situation he’d put her in, he couldn’t blame her. The ninja were weaker than Lloyd, and clearly not as intelligent, but having multiple opponents should mostly make up for it. It would be fun enough.

She frowned, a prickle of slight, irrational worry surfacing. It was a bit odd that Lloyd had snuck off like this for so long. A bit out of character. He was kind of a goody two shoes wimp about this sort of thing. But he hadn’t been acting like he was going into a dangerous situation. Honestly, she wouldn’t be worried at all if it wasn’t for that he wasn’t picking up her calls either. Like, not answering the ninja made sense, but he had no reason to be avoiding her. It wasn’t like she’d tattle on him.

“It’s probably fine.” She pondered aloud. “But still, it might be worth checking into. Just in case.” She turned to her pet. “Sable, sweetie, be a dear and see if you can find where Lloyd slunk off to. Pretty sure he’s just gone off to get some breathing space from his family, but he does have a lot of enemies. There is some slim chance he’s gotten into trouble. Do try to avoid mauling anyone though unless absolutely necessary. They really frown on that sort of thing here.”

Sable, the good boy he was, immediately rose to his paws, giving a yawn that opened his jaws just a bit too wide to be completely natural, the mouth itself getting momentarily bigger. Then he shook out his pelt and with a graceful leap, launched himself off the roof and bounded away.

Well, that took care of that. Sending Sable was really just a formality, a way to extinguish her little spark of doubt. She wasn’t truly concerned. She’d left her family all the time as a child. Everyone did. It was a totally normal thing to do. Maybe humans didn’t do it as much because they were so weak and squishy and couldn’t survive on their own, but Lloyd was only part human. He was made of tougher stuff. He was more like her. He’d be fine.

So now the question- how would she play with these new toys?

Chapter Text

Lloyd hadn’t slept great last night. But he hadn’t been sleeping great for a while now. And what sleep he had managed had rejuvenated him quite a bit.

The voices hadn’t bothered him as he tried to sleep. The one time he actually kind of wanted them to pipe up again. He hadn’t heard them since he arrived here. And he still had no idea what their deal had been. Had they been the forest itself somehow? That was the only thing he could think of, but it didn’t really make sense. He supposed a magic forest maybe could ‘talk’, but why had it started talking to him? What had it wanted? And why had it stopped when he got here? What was the point? Had it been a trap? Ugh, why had he fallen for it? Just because they’d sounded friendly, or at least not evil? Stupid.

The voices might have not been bothering him last night, but his own thoughts hadn’t been able to shut off. Lying down in the quiet dark like that had made thinking about certain things unavoidable.

Why hadn’t he told his family what was going on? Why had he gone out without telling anyone? What did the others think had happened to him? What would his da- Emperor Garmadon do when he realized Lloyd was gone? Would he care at all? Would he see it as an opportunity to strike? How could the First Master have left so many people on the Dark Island? Dragons too, he’d abandoned dragons as well. How could Lloyd help these people? Would the water dragon actually be able to help him? Should he tell these people who he really was? Would they hate him for it? Would they turn on him? How would all the pro-overlord minons and monsters react if they realized who Lloyd was and that he was here? Was Lloyd putting this village in danger the longer he stayed? What if all the bad guys stormed the village if his identity got out? If this area really was overrun with monsters, Lloyd wouldn’t be able to fight all of them. The only reason this settlement hadn’t already been wiped out was probably a lack of leadership among the bad guys and them not really caring about some group of humans they didn’t see as a threat. If Lloyd hung around here too long…

Yeah, he hadn’t gotten the best sleep.

Ari had met up with him at breakfast and they’d gone to the library right after. To his surprise, the library was actually huge. Fortunately, Ari had already had an idea on where to start their search. Two hours later though and they hadn’t found anything. There were books that mentioned the forest and what it did, but nothing on its purpose or how it worked.

“It was a longshot,” Ari sighed, closing the book she’d been reading. “We’ve been trying to get the forest working for years now. If we had that knowledge in a book here, we would have found it by now. Our only hope was if you knew something we didn’t and one of these gave you some new insight. I guess not though.”

“I’d never heard of the forest before,” Lloyd said, shoulders slumping. “Not even something similar or something from a myth or fairytale. This was completely out of nowhere for me.” He glanced around at the towering shelves of books around them. It was like the library from The Maiden and The Monster, just not as fancy or grand because this wasn’t a castle. All these books and no clues. He’d been able to read everything fine, his mom’s ancient Ninjargon lessons really paying off. And he could apparently speak it too maybe. “You guys have a ton of books in here,” he noted, impressed. “I was expecting, like, a normal sized room.” This was a whole building for books. The scale was insane for what was a somewhat small town of refugees.

Ari nodded. “Yes, many scholars dedicated their lives to preserving these tomes. A great many of these books are from the royal palace.” Her gaze drifted to one of the windows, a wistful melancholy washing over her face. “Before it fell. They carried what they could as they fled. We did lose much of it, but a lot of the library was saved. Some brave, rather zealous conservators even risked sneaking back into the palace to save more books. Very dangerous, but some did manage it.”

Lloyd’s eyes widened, looking around the vast collection of books with newfound awe. “Seriously?! Oh man, my mom would freak! This would be, like, the biggest discovery ever. This is the kind of thing archaeologists only dream of finding! They’re in such good condition too!” Being able to interview actual ancients would also be a big deal. He probably wouldn’t see her for a year if she got her hands on these. And that was- no, he couldn’t think about that now. “Oh, she’s an archeologist, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that yet.” He paused, then rephrased. “Er, she studies history.” Did ancient people have a concept of ‘archaeology’? He wasn’t sure. They probably just saw it as history.

Ari tilted her head, eyes lighting with curiosity. “She studies history? Is that how you can speak our language? She taught you?”

“No, or, at least I don’t think so,” Lloyd considered, leaning back in his chair. “She taught me how to read it, but she rarely spoke it out loud. I don’t think anyone even knows how to pronounce some of it. It’s a dead language- or, it was, so I never even tried learning how to speak it. They still use it for, like, mottos and certain traditional ceremonies a little bit, but nobody uses it for talking anymore. And I don’t think being able to read a language makes you fluent speaking it. I’m not sure how that happened.” It must be something weird with him. It couldn’t be everyone else.

“Hm, that does seem unlikely…” Ari agreed. “But maybe you just have a natural super talent for languages?”

“Maybe,” Lloyd said skeptically. He supposed he’d never really tried to speak another language. There hadn’t been a course for other languages at Darkley’s. But it didn’t seem like the type of thing someone could just inherently figure out.

“So do you know a lot of history?” Ari asked eagerly. “Since your mom was so into it?” She probably wanted to ask more about Ninjago. Even after only a little more than a day, he understood she was a very inquisitive person.

“Nah,” Lloyd shook his head. “Well, I guess I probably know more than the average person.” Mostly because old threats kept coming back to try to kill him and his friends. “But I’m not a history buff or anything.” His eyes dropped down to the book he had open in front of him and he fiddled with the edge of the page. “I- really didn’t see much of my mom when I was a kid. She was- busy. We’ve really only started hanging out more recently.”

“Ah, I get that,” Ari nodded. “It was the same with my parents. They had a lot of responsibilities being leaders, and constantly had to navigate so many dangers. Not that they completely ignored me or anything. But sometimes I could go three or four days barely saying a word to them.” She shook her head and turned her attention back to Lloyd. “I suppose your mom had to travel a lot for archaeology?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Lloyd replied tightly, feeling uncomfortable. He didn’t want to talk about this. And he definitely didn’t want to start going on some- empathy spiral. She might not even be being totally honest about her parents, since people apparently lied about that kind of thing. Harumi had certainly managed to spin a good sob story. Ari could be exaggerating to get in his good graces. Just trying to be ‘relatable’ so that he was more likely to help her or whatever she wanted. He wasn’t going to be so easily swayed this time.

“Did you guys have a castle over here then?” he asked, changing the subject. “I assume you aren’t talking about the royal palace from my side of Ninjago." Repairs were still being done on the palace. The old emperor’s brother’s son and his family were supposed to be moving in once it was finished. Lloyd had no plans on going to see it once it was fixed.

“The primary palace used to be on this side of Ninjago,” Ari affirmed. Really? Well that explained why no one could ever find the original palace. People had concluded it must have burnt entirely to the ground. Turned out it had just been WAY more west than they’d thought. And underwater at the time. “Still is, I suppose. I’ve never seen it myself; it fell before I was born. I spent most of my childhood in a different castle.”

Lloyd raised an eyebrow. “You grew up in a castle?”

Ari paused, something flickering across her face, then answered. “Yes, many took shelter in the still standing castles. They were some of the safest places, built to be strongholds.” A shadow fell over her expression. “We had to flee the one I was living in when I was about ten.”

Her whole life had been war. It was crazy to think about. The legendary clash of the First Master and the Overlord felt so distant to him, but to these people it had just happened. The scars hadn’t faded, there were wounds still bleeding. It must have been such a struggle to survive this long. They were still struggling now.

He shifted in his seat. “I’m sorry. That’s-” he cut off as the door behind him slammed open, ringing through the quiet room. Lloyd tensed for a moment, muscles coiling, before he registered who it was.

"Zeo," Ari scolded, glaring at her cousin. "Don't bang through doors like that. Especially in the library."

“You’re the only ones in here right now,” Zeo defended. Not the best defense. It was the kind of defense Kai would give. Lloyd wished Kai was here.

“That’s not an excuse,” Ari retorted, standing to put her hands on her hips. “What does that even mean? You think the rules vanish if nobody’s watching? Which isn't even the case, me and Lloyd are here.”

“Kind of,” the redhead shrugged. “A lot of the time. But forget that. Study time is over. The team to go check out the water temple will be leaving soon.” He turned to Lloyd. “You still want to come?” There was an undertone of skepticism to his voice.

“Of course,” Lloyd replied. This was currently his best chance of getting home. And it sounded like these people, and the dragon, needed the help. He couldn’t just stay behind and do nothing. Hopefully the situation at the temple wasn’t too bad…