Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jay steadies himself on his feet -- since when did an airship rock back and forth like this? -- and braces himself for another blow.

One comes, a flimsy, mocking imitation of a punch, and he jumps at the opportunity. He grabs the outstretched fist and pulls, and kicks and lands it, and stumbles, and his leg buckles underneath him and he falls. A distorted-sounding jeer from under a layer of white noise he can’t get rid of. There’s a buzzing, under his skin, an itch, growing louder and louder. The vengestone chain had broken off what seems like an hour ago, but it was probably less than ten minutes total. He couldn’t— wouldn’t — use his elemental power — the long buildup made sure he had gigawatts, hundreds of amps, all furious and unwilling to restrain themselves. As much as he wants them to go away, he won’t kill anyone. They don’t do that. What would his brothers say..?

Jay shoves down the sparks that claw at the surface, begging to be let out. Not now. He scrabbles at the deck with the arm that isn’t pinned under the rest of his body, trying to push himself away at least, but it’s kicked away, and his head slams back into the floor.

The buzzing is so loud, and so hot. It’s so loud. Someone kicks him again. First Master, it burns. He won’t kill anyone. He can try.

“That’s enough,” he rasps.

“I beg your pardon?” a saccharine voice coos next to his ear.

“I s-said,” Jay growls, “that’s enough. ”

The buzzing escalates to a shrill screeching fury in half a second, audible to anyone within a thousand feet, and he lets the sparks out.

A dozen frenzied bolts of white lightning slam into the deck of the ship, threatening to snap the thing in half with the force of their thunder. Jay curls in on himself as the screaming electricity arcs over and around and from his body, dancing like a scrap of fabric in a hurricane. It’s getting hard to tell what, or who, is making the noise. It’s so loud. That’s enough.

It smells like burning and ozone. Smells coppery. Tastes like it, too.

It’s silent.

And a sole peal of roaring laughter breaks the silence, and makes Jay flinch.

“Well done! That may indeed be enough for tonight. I’m sure we’re all tired. Anyone else want to try?”

No one raises their hand. Someone coughs.

“Very well,” says the voice, dripping with honey and venom, “someone make sure Veena is still alive. And you--”

Something grabs Jay’s collar. He protests, barely, for a moment, but everything is too hot and won’t move like he wants it to anymore. He can’t feel the deck under his feet. He wishes Nya were here. He’s really glad she isn’t. Nadakhan’s face blurs into his vision, backlit by tiny flickering fires and scorched wood.

"You are coming with me."

Chapter Text

They only get a… well, a corrupt police commissioner once. More like “doesn’t understand how things work around here”. Also, pretty corrupt.

He’s shuffling through papers and unopened letters, ignoring the growing noise from outside, when the door is forced open by a freezing gale-force wind, snatching the paper from his hand and scattering it. 

“We need to talk, sir,” says a voice.

Oh, geez. These guys.

“About?”

“About how you personally authorized a veritable raid on innocent citizens, destroyed their homes, and left them in the dirt.”

The commissioner sighs. “Look, kiddo. That ain’t your jurisdiction. They’ve been suspicious for a long time, they had it comin’.”

“Their entire families had it coming to them?”

“Yeah. It was necessary, I don’t expect you to understand the complex politics and such behind preemptive action. Boring stuff. I promise you, I was just doin’ my job. Ain’t you people supposed to protect Ninjago? I’m doing the same thing you are.”

Zane’s features tighten ever so slightly. “I was built to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Even an apology would have alleviated this situation somewhat, but you have issued no such thing. Clearly, you have violated --”

“Listen, kid, it’s complicated. Alright? Get outta my office if you’re only gonna tell me how to do my job.”

The floor cracks beneath Zane’s feet and filthy, insulation-littered ice creeps its way through.

“If you would just listen to me--”

“Guys--”

“You listen to me--”

Zane grabs the commissioner’s shirt collar, a frozen piece snapping off and clinking to the ground a second after he pulls it towards him. The temperature plummets 20 degrees. The commissioner’s breath wafts up in controlled drafts past Zane’s unmoving face.

“...Zane,” Cole says, warning buried underneath his words, “drop him. We can talk from across the table.”

“Take your hand off my shoulder,” he responds, flatly.

“You need to calm down before we freeze out the office.”

“Cole. Did you hear me.” It’s not a question. Cole recognizes that voice. He lets go.

The commissioner shifts under his desk. “Son,” he says, “I would advise you to listen to your friend, and get your hands off me.”

“I,” Zane says, hissing ice creeping up his arms, “am not your son.”

The man’s eyes narrow. In a flash, Zane lets go of his collar with one hand, grabs Jay’s hand with the other, and barely flinches as an angrily buzzing taser is slammed into his palm, snapping electricity between three metals, as if it would do something. A burst of freezing cold energy explodes from the impact, cracking the walls and shutting off the buzz with a weak snap. Jay sucks air in through his teeth, caught off guard, as the voltage courses through Zane, through him, through his other hand. He clenches his fist. Cole backs up half a step.

Zane’s grip is vicelike as he stares the commissioner down, cracks forming in the pathetic battery-powered weapon, until it shatters in his fist and reveals its frozen, geode-like core. It clatters to the ground in pieces, useless. For the first time since they stormed into the office, Zane can detect fear in the man’s glare.

He vents a shaft of freezing opaque air from his lungs.

Good.

“We are going to talk.”

Chapter Text

“What’re you doing out here, moping?”

Nya turns from where she leans against the railing of a musty-smelling pier in one of the maze-like alleys of Styx. “Oh. You.”

“Me,” Ronin says, gesturing with his hands. Nya turns back to the railing. “So, am I right? Moping?”

“No,” Nya snaps. At that look Ronin is giving her, she glares at him, and then at the ground. “I’m just letting off steam. It’s not moping if I’m not sad about it.”

Ronin laughs shortly. “Better not bottle that up, sweetheart. You tend to explode. Kinda like your brother.” He waits as Nya shoots him another glare. Her eyes soften at his subversive attempts to be a good person, friend, probably neither, whatever. She shakes it off. The water beneath the pier sways and laps at the posts and slimy rocks.

Nya huffs, bracing her hands on the railing. “I… It’s been a week and I’m already sick of this.”

“Sick of ghostbusting?”

“No, you know what I mean. And I know it’s insensitive, my brothers are having an awful time, and I just got water powers. But I hate it.”

Ronin says nothing, but nods and hums as if to motion her forwards.

“How would you react if you spent half your life building a person for yourself to be, only to have something you’ve been all along yank the rug out from under you? And then everyone just acts like you’re supposed to be fine with it. Again. ”

He knows better than most, but he stays silent.

“I don’t want this. I don’t want to be picked up and dropped into something I never wanted to be, that I have no experience being. Cool, it’s neat, but I’m not me at all. In this,” she tugs ruefully at her gi, wondering how long it sat in a box, how long it waited, tailor-made for her.

The ocean growls and ripples around where Nya stands, circling her like a single-minded pack hunter. She makes no indication that she’s noticed.

“Be mature, Nya. Be responsible, Nya. Act your age, Nya,” she snarls. A wave crashes into the rocks at her feet, flinging water across the pier, staining the dry wood with its sudden attack. She turns on her heel. The water turns with her, jumping at the spaces between the slats.

“Act my age? What is that , act my age? The ocean is as old as the sixteen realms, ” Nya says, her voice taking on a threatening echo, an implied howl. “And it will still drown you with vigour.”

The sea slams into the walkway with the force of a hurricane, tearing splinters into the wood in an inverse cone with a long fit of horrible screeching cracks. Ronin, despite himself, flinches back and raises his arms, but not even a fleck of water hits him. It chainsaws through half the length of the pier, cascading in glittering dirty destruction, and then falls. Nya stares at the triangle of untouched walkway between them, then at the torn and dripping remains of it that stretch a good eight feet in either direction.

“Huh,” Ronin says. “We probably shouldn’t stick around.”

“Let them come,” Nya says, slowly recovering from the shock of her powers reacting so strongly and turning her back to him. “I’m being responsible. ”

Chapter Text

Kai is eight, listening to someone tell him their parents aren’t coming back. He wants to cry, but he doesn’t really… he doesn’t understand. They don’t look sad. They look angry. They look like they pity him. He doesn’t like it.

Kai’s nine, and he’s the big brother. He’s always been, but now it seems like less of a position and more of a title. The big brother. He wants to cry, but a fire sparks in him, and lights that fuel ablaze, and instead he is angry . And that’s that.

Kai is fourteen, and they took his sister, and he rides that inferno through weeks of searching and training and fighting for her. It takes a second, but it dies down enough for him to realize he’s gained brothers as well. It takes him a bit longer, but he melts for the new demon-child, too. His name’s Lloyd Garmadon, he’s told, very proudly, a little squeakily.

Kai is sixteen, and he couldn’t protect him. He watches, and can only watch, as Lloyd’s body moves and says things it would never if he were in control. Kai is losing control— Nya’s being thrust into the danger he’s supposed to be there for, Cole is technically dead. This can’t keep happening.

He’s nineteen. He’s the big brother. He’s the reckless one, the one who would risk anything to protect his family. So when he jumps off the deck of the Bounty , the surprised cries of his family behind him and the air burning as he falls with each whir of the engines, almost dead-silent near the isolation of Kryptarium prison, he doesn’t see Lloyd on the ground in a crumpled heap. He sees two of the Sons of Garmadon, frantically trying to back up and run in the opposite direction. He sees the enemy.

Kai lands on the dirt in a burst of flames, flinging gravel and chunks of now-burnt grass. One of them throws a walkie-talkie at him, it glances off of his shoulder. Fire curls along his arms unbidden, but he welcomes it and raises them.

“Get BACK.”

He’s never been one for eloquence.

A tornado of blue flame explodes from his hands and burns in his throat. The air ripples with the heat, distorting the shape of his body to where he looks sharp and feral. The fire writhes as if in pain, casting harsh light across the field like a miniature sun. Kai feels something thick and heavy inside his chest, and he doesn’t understand. His breath hitches and he coughs, embers flying from behind his hands.

The two gangsters are gone.

“Kai, we need to go--”

He ignores it and turns. He can feel fire curling at the edges of his mouth, he can feel himself start to storm towards the prison itself, but--

“Kai, we need to leave now,” Nya snaps, grabbing Kai’s shoulder and roughly jolting him back to the present. He almost snaps back -- almost. He sees Zane carrying a shivering bundle of torn green fabric, Cole speaking tightly into the comms, and the Bounty ’s lift being let down as quickly as it can go, and he stops.

The fire inside him sputters out, enveloped by heavy, smothering dismay. The fires outside, on the ground, by his feet, do not. Kai runs his hands through his hair, lips thinning, and dashes back towards the airship, blinking ash (it’s ash.) out of his eyes.

He couldn’t stop it, but by the First Master, he will this time.

Chapter Text

The skin on Cole’s hands is rough and cracked in places, his nails are worn (chewed down a bit too much, on some), his knuckles are scabbed and scored over. They’re pleasant enough to hold onto; he can pretty much put his whole hand around Jay’s, though the latter insists on nervously brushing his thumb back and forth across his palm.

Cole’s had to get used to doing that again. He’s getting there.

He’s still not used to the sensation of eating it on the pavement, however.

Cole growls and shakes it off, rolling and shoving himself onto a knee and swinging his hammer up to barely block a harsh downswing with a CLANG! Their attacker zips off immediately, letting Cole swipe at the air and scowl at the lack of satisfying contact. Whatever it is that’s attacking them, it’s tiny, and it’s fast , so much so that he can barely see it through the gentle fog that covers the mountain they’re on. The road winds upwards, lit by soft diffusions of blue flame, and they’re supposed to be making their way up to a peaceful settlement to scout for more information on Master Wu, but apparently someone didn’t get the peace memo.

It’s silent again, aside from the shuffling sounds of the snow underneath Cole and Jay’s feet as they circle each other, trying to anticipate where it would come from next.

A step, a crunch, from two places in succession.

…

A shift.

Flash -- CLANG -- Cole whips around in time to glance the (metallic? robotic.) thing off the handle of his warhammer, flipping it upwards -- Jay snatches his hand and steps, once, twice, launch, chasing it up, CLANG -- it sparks angrily and tears off into the mist again, leaving nothing but snow dust.

“So,” Jay quips, cheerfully. “Robot spider? Cyborg crab come to eat our brains? Alien sent to integrate us into the hivemind, and the whole mountain settlement is actually a sham made by the aliens? Thoughts?”

“My thoughts are I wanna know what it wants.”

“It wants to take over our brains.”

“If it wanted to, it would have already. It’s too small a bot to be that intelligent, it’s probably been following us since we left that shady village down South. Besides,” Cole takes a second to look behind him. “it couldn’t take over your brain. Your skull’s too thick.”

“Hey, I resent that remark!” Jay drops his stance into a cartoonishly petulant one, but he’s grinning the whole time.

SWHSH -- a flash of silver skids through the snow and snaps past Jay’s distracted face, slicing a clean line into his cheek. He stumbles backwards, startled, and whips around, only to jolt downwards as the thing jabs its leg down on his back. Cole darts forwards, interrupted by a stinging pain in his left hand as it swings past. He clenches his fist, a soft orange glow beginning to emit from between his closed fingers. Jay lurches forwards with a yelp as it zips past out of the fog, his power starting to react in frustration as well. He lashes out with his nunchucks at the figure -- no dice. Another glint, and the side of Cole’s forehead stings. He digs his heels into the ground itself and slams his warhammer down onto the stone pathway, driving a sizeable slate of rock up out of the ground, blocking the droid’s path towards him for just a second as it pings off of the frozen stone and vaults over the top, arcing in midair and slamming itself into Jay’s chest instead. The two crash to the ground with a dry crunch and a sharp crackle, flinging snow into the air as Jay manages to smack it off of him.

“I told you, dude, it wants my brain! It’s trying to find a way in or something so it can do nanomachine stuff or whatever!!” he pants, scrambling upright. The snow stings the sharp cuts on his exposed skin, and Cole can’t help but consider that possibility. It’s just being annoying, instead of doing any real damage, yet.

He probably shouldn’t have thought that out loud.

Jay’s hand snaps with electricity, waiting for it to come back for another round, which (politely, he thinks sarcastically) it does, pivoting in a snowbank and launching itself straight into his line of fire (lightning. But. Whatever). It shrieks for a second, jittering in place, before returning fire, shooting a white line of forked lightning back at Jay, and dashing away again.

“Oh, you thought you could shock the master of lightning, you little--”

And a sonic boom blasts the fog and earth away from its tiny robotic frame, punching through the air and throwing the both of them yards across the once-serene field, skidding through the dirtied snow. He doesn’t hear the thunk -- he hears that annoyingly shrill eeeeeeeeeeeee that’s always so disorienting in movies. Cole blinks hard, vision swimming and one glowing hand sinking through the rapidly-melting ground, trying to find purchase again, some steadiness to whatever the heck that was. Jay’s arm shudders as he pushes himself sort of upright, his other hand pressed to his ear.

The droid, too far away now to be hit while it’s weakened, sits and sparks with residual energy, then seems to shake itself and take off in an unknown direction.

Perfectly known, really. It jumps into his vision like a bad horror movie scare.

...and the world slows down, for a second.

He hears Jay, which is weird, he hears him moving awkwardly along the ground and sending echoes of contact through the dirt and muttering something to himself. He can feel the earth beneath his feet, all the miniscule movements of everything living (or dying) in it. The air, too -- it whispers and hums his exact position, he sees through it as if it were just another part of him. Bits and pieces of dead matter, dead metal, they litter the ground underneath the snow, ghostly trails in a faint green where they used to be.

And he can see the trail their little robot friend is making through the snow as it leaps towards him.

The world snaps back to real time the instant his outstretched hand touches its metal.

Cole slams the screeching droid into the side of a tree, the impact causing the ground to shudder momentarily with its leaves and disrupted snow as if the earth itself were possessed. The metal glows and protests, but the wood screeches and pops and shrivels into mangled black nothing beneath his glowing palm, dripping slowly and deliberately with a magma that oozes from between the cracks in his fingers, hissing on the snow. Lines of hot orange creep threateningly up his forearm, breaking as if his skin were rock instead.

The little creature -- looks like if someone hit General Grievous with a shrink ray and subtracted a face, to be honest -- flails its six swordlike limbs uselessly against Cole’s hand, which is slowly eating through the width of the tree and melding into it. He pulls away, thick magma whining and tearing like hot taffy, and shakes it off. It sputters, both the wood and the metal, and screeches until it’s still.

“... I feel like I just squashed a bug,” Cole says, awkwardly brushing his (cooled, somehow more cracked than before, which kind of stings) hand against his coat.

“Yeah, like a level 50 bug,” Jay grumbles, rubbing at his ears. “Can’t believe we’re in an rpg now. On a quest… fighting random encounter robot bugs…”

“A bug meant to knock us out, probably, so SOMEONE ,” he says, loudly, “can steal our STUFF! Which isn’t gonna happen, because I’m holding most of it, and it’ll take more than a sonic bug to take us down.”

“YOU GUYS HEAR THAT,” Jay yells into the echoey valley. No one responds (of course), but a big cheesy grin plasters his face all the same.

Cole snorts and bends to pick up his warhammer, which lies in the snow a few feet away from the tree.

The earth and its dead clutter whisper to him, almost smug , in a way.

“Yeah, yeah,” he murmurs to it. “Thanks. I don’t forgive you for whining at me the whole time I was a ghost, but thanks.” Cole brushes the earth with his hand as he stands, still leaving crumbs of pseudo-igneous rock from where it melted off.

(The earth got quieter, from the screeching wind-like howl it gave off when he had the ears to hear it. It wasn’t dead, itself, but it wasn’t alive, either. He supposes neither is he, in a way, though he doesn’t put too much thought into it)

“Are you talking to your hammer, dude?”

“What? No, I didn’t say anything.”

“I think you were.”

“I think your ears are broken.”

“You know they MIGHT be --”

Chapter Text

…

mhhgh.

he cant…

its hard to.

to…

something.

it’s so quiet.

…

and it’s really cold.

…

how did he get here? it hurts, being. here. and thinking… about.

um...

it’s cold. It’s not warm , there’s barely anything left of the warm glow in his chest like he’s so familiar with there being. It got -- it was, it’s gone, it was st- take- s- something.

it hurts.

its so quiet.

… the stars are nice.

...

Lloyd wants to go home.

…

Something touches his arm. Sudden adrenaline shoots through his system, and the instant the jolt reaches his chest something leftover inside him reacts and practically shatters, sending a surge of green energy across him protectively. He feels it leave him and it feels like snapping your own ribs and it’s agony. A sound catches in his throat. Zane (oh, it’s not-- okay) flinches back, but picks him up all the same. He’s cold too. And quiet. And he doesn’t feel like anything. Usually he can…

… that’s bad, right?

…

… moving really hurts.

The…

mm.

…

…

It’s getting really hard to tell if the hazy noise is from the Bounty, or something else.

...

He finally falls unconscious, slowly, blurring the staticky sounds from the ship and the noise he remembers there being, some four or five years ago. Was it four or five? Or three? It doesn’t really matter. Lloyd finds himself sitting, on the Bounty, before it was rebuilt a number of times, cautiously twirling a ribbon of ethereal light between his fingers.

It’s beautiful. But...

Not that he’s complaining or anything, but the ‘golden power’ or whatever is super loud.

Even when he’s not actively using it, it clings to his fingertips, eager -- too eager -- to be used. Move that rock, it whispers gleefully, bring down a blizzard, burn the stars, storm the heavens, rattle the skies!

It’s so much, all the time. The green was nicer, it spoke in feelings and concepts, not imperatives. This power is so… much. And it doesn’t help that he feels like he stole it (he swore off doing that! Kind of!).

You will build bridges, be triumphant, become a force of nature if you so wish! Anything you want, I will help you create.

At least it’s positive. But it feels… a little too… he doesn’t know. Powerful? Obviously, since it’s the ultimate power and all that. But he’s like, 13, or something. There’s only so much he can do.

It sings, loud and resplendent. It sang when he shred holes of blinding light through the monster that used to control his father. He didn’t much hear it. Lloyd very much wanted to tuck it away, right when he collapsed into his father’s arms, right then and there, he was done (of course he wasn’t, though).

Eventually, his dad tries to get him to use it properly, and it kinda works? It sings again, when he does something right for once. But it’s loud. And it attracts… company.

He lets it go, when it overstays its welcome, when it screams and tears at the borders of his consciousness determined to stay, though it can’t , though it’s being ripped away thread by thread, he lets it go. He’s worried, of course, about the Overlord, but he wishes he were more choked up about it. Only when they actually see the power in someone else’s hands do th-ow, ow ow ow stop—

(“Whoa, whoa, whoa, easy, buddy, easy, deep breaths. There you go, good. It’s okay, you’re okay.”

“What was that?”

“H-hey, run and grab me a clean towel. And get yourself some water while you’re there, okay?”

“I d-“

“Do it, you lo… awful. How long u…l we g…city centre?”

“Es… ty minut… seconds.”

“Okay. G… st…”)

The… um. The, what was it. What was it?

There was a day, once, when they were all sparring on the deck. Jay had spun into him a little too fast, and he flipped upside down and smacked his head against the railing, and he could’ve sworn instead of his vision going black it went bright gold. Something happened there, because when he blinked the clouds out of his eyes, Jay was rubbing his hands and shaking them until tiny sparks popped between his fingers again, and across the room, Kai had tripped and fallen across the old wooden training weapons. They told him later their powers had just disappeared , gone, for a second. And Jay had run over and apologized, profusely, and then he clapped his hand on Lloyd’s shoulder and very, very seriously said “that was super weird my dude. Don’t ever get hit on the head again.”

‘Course, he did get hit on the head after that, a few times, but that never happened again.

Turns out that the golden power never left him, not really. Like when you rip stitches out of a shirt you patched together and a year later you find a random piece of old string on the collar.

Maybe that’s just what his power is. Maybe they’re interconnected, or the same thing, just in different forms.

Lloyd learns that though everything has its own feeling and own energy and own voice, people, especially elemental masters, just talk louder.

Kai’s might be the most comforting to him. He’s warm, and confident, and seems like he’ll never run out of the willpower to keep burning. He’d never give up -- Lloyd likes that about fire, though it worries him sometimes. It doesn’t stop until it’s made to stop.

Nya is everything, predictable and unpredictable, powerful and gentle, sharp and soft. She’s made of and molded by opposites, and the malleable desire of water -- that ability to fall into any situation and triumph , confident in a different way -- that’s what draws him to her power.

Jay is fast, and excitable, and either at 100% or no percentage at all. Lightning comes in flashes, bursts of extreme power that leave leftover buzzes, and it’s exhilarating. It’s also exhausting , but he seems to keep up and stay positive the whole time. Determined to go and be and make an impact.

Cole is a steady, constant hum, the melody line to a deep orchestra. When he moves, he moves with surety, and when he strikes, he knows it will land. Sure, there are cracks, and fissures, but his power is the feeling of being stronger than you ever knew you could be, and taking it in stride.

Zane is a cheerful wind, a playful snow, an immovable glacier. They’re not opposites, they work together, every single line of thought firing on all cylinders. All to tell you what you need to hear. Calculated, not cold; cold, not inaccessible. And somehow it all feels like an organized chaos of a perfectly executed plan.

Master Wu radiates familiar power like the sun itself. Neuro’s energy hums as if it were a deep bassline, inside and outside, picking answers from everywhere at once. Ash nearly makes him choke, ironically, it stings inside his senses like he’s not even there. Morro, the wind, it screams , a shrill indignant fury that will not be tamed, and will not do as you tell it, no matter how many times you plead it to stop; he can hear the cries behind it, though he can’t reach them. Clouse takes and doesn’t exchange, giving off a sour afterthought in the form of whatever dark magic he uses. Pixal, when she has a physical form, is as complex and direct as Zane, but her energy is more curious and pings around restlessly. Mystake is hiding it, somehow, but he can still feel the deep echoes and recesses of power.

He wonders if Skylor knows (he has the feeling she doesn’t quite feel it the same).

He wonders why he can feel so much of their energy right now. As far as he remembers, he’s not anywhere near...

...

It fades, and Lloyd’s mind turns to voices again. He’s not sure where those are coming from, exactly, but he’s sure they’re talking about him. He can pick out Zane’s. What’s he -- okay, first of all, he doesn’t know what a new-mo… uh, pneumoth… whatever. Whatever that is. Second of all, someone mentioned chocolate chips, and there’s no way he’s not getting in on that. He’s only been with these people for a few weeks, but he can hear “dessert” from miles away, and he can shove down any and all anxiety relating to interacting with them for sugar.

Lloyd pokes his head into the kitchen, following his very acute nose, and finds exactly what he was looking for: Zane standing at the counter, wearing a pink apron (hah!), mixing a huge batch of chocolate chip cookie dough. He remembers this day really well, it ended with a giant cookie in a pan. With ice cream.

Zane notices Lloyd before he can sneak under the counter. “Hello, Lloyd,” he says, giving him a smile.

Lloyd scoots out from behind the door, pulling the hood down off of his head. “Are you making cookies?”

“Yes,” Zane says, leaning down to pick him up and set him on the counter next to the bowl of unfinished dough. He does, however, smack his hand away when he reaches in to grab a big glob to eat it, so his kindness only extends so far, apparently. “I’m making some to bake for after dinner. Not before.”

Lloyd huffs in disappointment. “If you’re just gonna bake it, what’re you makin’ cookie dough for?”

“Raw cookie dough can make you sick.”

“I’ve never gotten sick from it!”

“That doesn’t change the fact that it can. But, if you promise not to tell anyone,” he grows conspiratorial, leaning in as if exchanging a big secret. “You can lick the spoon.”

“Yessss!” Lloyd cheers, and then quieter, matching Zane’s hushed tone, “ yesss!”

Zane laughs, in that way of his, and measures out a half teaspoon of salt. “Really, though, I trust you to keep the secret. We’re --”

“-- just breathing in slowly,” Cole says, folding his hands across each other and closing his eyes.

Huh? Where did… You know, Lloyd doesn’t quite remember what he was thinking about before this moment.

“I bet he falls asleep before he gets to the next step,” Jay whispers, learning over closer to Lloyd’s ear. Lloyd exhales an almost-laugh, trying to concentrate on calming his jittery nerves and staying in good posture. The wind still howls outside, audible through the walls and the one slightly-faulty vent in the bedroom. They should fix that. He loves to listen to the storms, but recently, they’ve been kinda...

“I don’t blame him. Extra meditation is boring, and it’s almost midnight.”

“That’s why we want him to fall asleep, duh.”

“I thought Master Wu told us to practice with Cole because --”

“Wait, I think he’s actually asleep.”

“Really?”

“That was like, twenty seconds max. Can you do that?”

“I don’t know, you keep talking to me.”

…

“Hey, do we have the spray kind of whipped cream?”

“ Why?”

“I wanna put a mustache on him.”

“.......... you know, the fridge is probabl--”

“ Ahem. ” Cole interrupts, opening one eye. “I said breathing, not conspiring. Unless you’re going to go sleep on the fridge again, get--

“-- out of the way!” Lloyd shouts, and forgets he’s set his hand alight with power, and he grabs Kai’s arm and yanks him out of the way of the incoming blade. It doesn’t hurt, but Kai gasps in surprise anyways as a shock snaps into his arm and echoes across his body. It lingers, not like electricity would linger and buzz and twitch, it lingers like a good movie or a pleasant surprise. The feeling grows, and grows and spreads and it’s warm, not hot, and it’s alive.

(A burst of pure heat floods through the hand he grabbed Kai with — Lloyd is sure it’s burning, but it isn’t. He’s filled with the need to move and go and protect and win and this is the first time he realizes what fire really feels like. And so he does.)

Kai stands there, reeling, for another half second before catching his balance on the hilt of his sword. Lloyd has already let go and dashed off a couple feet to the left.

He feels clearer. Better, sort of.

Man, he feels powerful.

He laughs. That’s what you do, after you get an adrenaline rush, after you’ve dropped off the high point on an insane roller coaster. He feels great! Alive! Something he can’t promise these monsters will be, soon! With a flick of his wrists, Kai sets his swords ablaze and leaps into the fray, curving so he sends a charging monster’s blade flying with one hand, and their body flying with the other. The fire snaps and sparks off the metal joyfully, and he dances to its wild rhythm, orange and yellow flames glinting off the bronze like flickering ribbons.

And then they’re gone, and the music fades, and so does the feeling. Nya runs over to give him a high five. He super does that, and adds a victorious whoop in for good measure. He can’t get this dorky grin off his face, and when he sees Lloyd dusting off his gi and giving himself a wondering little half-smile, it only gets more dorky.

The dots kinda connect themselves in Kai’s mind. Energy, power. The “prophesied strongest ninja”, that’s what he is, that’s what he just did. Made him stronger with his powers. He’s so proud, gosh darn it.

“Dude,” Kai says, enthusiastically ruffling Lloyd’s hair (to his dismay), “did you do that?! Whatever that was, that was awesome .” Lloyd grins in spite of himself, shoving --

-- the plants down beneath his hands, concentrating on just those, those only. Not Nya carefully stepping through the impromptu garden, giving off an air of concern more than anything else. He really doesn’t need that right now.

She sits down next to him anyways, of course. “...Whatcha doin’?”

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, I don’t believe that at all. Out a good number of miles away from the shop, sitting in the middle of a bunch of weeds I’m sure weren’t this crazy yesterday? One of which is trying to attach itself to my foot? I saw like a hundred birds on the way here, which I ran the last few miles, by the way, and I’m not tired at all. I’m pretty sure that’s not just my frankly impressive stamina. C’mon.” Her voice softens. “What’s up?”

Lloyd takes a breath, and lets it out with more of a shudder than he wanted to. “Nothing’s up.”

He can’t see the look Nya gives him, given that he’s closing his eyes and facing straight forwards, but he can feel it.

He sighs. “It’s fine. I just -- I need to take a minute. You know. Because everyone else seems to be fine even though my -- ” A snap, and a wave of dizzying force sweeps across the field he sits on, shaking the new flowers and blurring Nya’s vision, pulling her heart into her throat. It’s -- it’s weird, is what it is, she feels like she just downed three cups of coffee, but it’s the same sense of urgency she felt when they were fighting the faux Anacondrai after Sens -- oh. Lloyd jolts to a stop and screws his eyes shut again.

Nya slowly regains her voice as Lloyd gets his powers under control.  “...This about a few weeks ago?”

Lloyd nods, almost imperceptibly.

“And about your dad’s monastery being torn down?”

“I have to be… very calm,” he hisses. “Please don’t remind me, right now.”

“Sorry.”

Nya picks a little green and yellow flower from the ground and fiddles with it. “...you know, you don’t have to be.”

At no response, Nya keeps talking. “I know how bad bottling up your feelings is, trust me. And I can’t help but notice your ninja superpowers are super-connected to your feelings.”

“That’s just-”

“Super-true. It’s like… you ever tried gunning the engine while your brake is on?” She tosses the sprout aside and--

-- claps him on the shoulder, and Kai gives him a soft look -- one that rarely appears on his face in public. The wind makes a gentle sort of white noise, mirroring the quiet radio Lloyd had turned on near the ship’s main computer. It’s broadcasting the escape-slash-takeover of Kryptarium still, though littered with commercials and other news stories.

“Hey, bud. Whatever’s going on out there, we’ll get through it together, okay?” he says, searching his expression.

“Yeah,” Lloyd sighs. “Yeah, okay.” He puts the keys down with shaking hands.

Something about this feels off.

Kai brightens, and squares his shoulders.

“Good. I can’t imagine what’d happen to us if you --

--saved me, my son, ” Garmadon murmurs, hoarsely, pulling him into a tight embrace.

Lloyd’s heart stutters and nearly stops. His legs almost give out from under him, and his father holding him tighter and trying to speak but not being able to, that’s not helping. It doesn’t matter that he’s literally broken down the middle, it doesn’t matter that his eyes are a solid red again and his four hands are tipped with ragged claws, it doesn’t matter, because his dad recognized him. It worked. It worked it worked it --

Near-silence echoes around the prison walls, letting him process every little detail of the stone directly behind his father as he stares ahead. Harumi must have stepped out into another room, he almost wonders what she’s thinking right now. He can’t imagine she isn’t watching.

He doesn’t really want to pull away, so he doesn’t, shaking slightly. This is so… it’s so nice, and unexpected, and he’s missed it so much , that he feels tears prickle at the corners of his eyes, and he shuts them. He came here for… he was going to…

...Wait.

This never happened. Did it? He’s remembering this wrong. It was... more like…

The gentle pressure on his chest intensifies until it hurts, and Lloyd’s eyes snap open and he frantically pushes himself up out of a rapidly-crumbling pile of rubble.

The energy in this room feels like it’s being sucked out, like the air is slowly escaping through a gaping hole he just can’t see. The walls, the empty cells, the terrifyingly familiar figure in front of him, none of them are giving him anything. His power relies on the energy around him, harnessing it and giving it energy in return, and there isn’t any more. There isn’t any m-- there is , there is, it’s just -- he’s stealing it. He’s taking it, his father --

There’s no time to think about these implications, there’s not time to find a way to stop it, there’s barely time for him to jump out of the way of a crackling blast of purple fire --

It hits him anyways, knocking him backwards into the wall again. The broken rock cuts angrily into his back, but in comparison to what exactly just hit him square in the chest, it’s pitiful. The black fire digs itself into a piece of his core, like the feeling he gets when he pulls energy from someone else, but unlike the constant warm hum, it burns like a sword slowly sinking in to the hilt. And then it rips itself out, and some of him goes missing with it, and it keeps draining the life from him like poison.

Thousands of people are watching him and he feels more isolated than he ever has in his life.

Lloyd’s power isn’t loud -- it’s not insistent and it doesn’t scream but please listen, it’s demanding that he get out right now it can’t protect him--

It’s leaving and there’s nothing he can do to stop it and he doesn’t know what to do and nothing is working and if you would just… just listen. Please listen, we can’t keep--

-- running, they’re running and the Bounty is burning beneath them.

This isn’t real.

Something crunches horribly and rips itself from the wall, a growl that reverberates through your ribs echoing above the alarms and howling wind and cracking wood and frantic yells and this isn’t real but it’s so --

The ship lurches, screeching, throwing them all to the floor as it’s jarred to the left. The ceiling splits open, rain from outside lashing against the dry wood, revealing the edge of the mountain they’re slowly grinding to a halt against. Lloyd crashes into a chair that was sent skidding with the rest of the furniture, nearly losing his footing entirely, but a hand closes around his forearm and pulls him up. Cole braces his feet and pushes Lloyd in front of him with his other hand, following the rest of the ninja as they burst through the door towards the deck. Whatever’s chasing them crashes through one of the walls, sending a fresh bout of screeching through the joints and beams of the ship. One of the alarms shuts off with a whine.

“C’mon, c’mon, there’s not that much farther to the monastery, if we could just --” Kai pants, turning back towards the now-shut door and brandishing his katanas in front of him.

Nya presses a couple buttons on the Bounty’s navigational computer, cursing under her breath. “Just got this thing fixed, too, I swear.”

Lloyd finds himself saying words without realizing it. “What about Pixal? Do we have any contact?”

“No,” Nya spits, “we’re just gonna have to hold on until we can re-establish comms links.”

“What are the --” an explosion cuts him off mid-sentence, throwing fragments of wood up onto the deck from below.

And, each step splintering the floor with its weight, a monster steps through the fire, saliva stringing from its tusks, snarling and wreathing itself in the flames like a demon from Hell.

It’s huge , and seems to become the space around it, melding with the harsh shadows cast by the fire. Massive horns protrude from its forehead, entangled with long, weblike silver hair that cascades over its almost quadrupedal body. It holds a single greatsword in one of its massive fists, and scrapes its claws along the ground with the other. A long tail edged with the same silver hair thunks against the broken doorway, swaying through the ash and smoke like it’s enjoying this. Even its empty purplish-white eyes flash gleefully as it straightens, towering over the ninja, illuminated for half a moment by a synchronous thunderclap.

(An oni, his mind says. Like the story. Like the cave. Like his --)

“You,” she snarls, her voice like a dragon’s roar layered with ten women speaking in perfect unison, “have nowhere left to run.”

“Says you,” Jay squeaks, but eyeing the steep cliffs that border the outcropping they crashed into, he lowers himself into a defensive stance and backs against the railing.

Master Wu said specifically not to engage these things if they could avoid it. Of course one found them. How else would this have gone. Lloyd’s eyes dart around the mountains, looking for literally anything that could help them. No trees, no loose boulders, no snow. No b- one, one tiny pathway trodden down through the dirt, leading who knows where. Not helpful. The others slowly draw their weapons, noticing the same things.

She speaks again, more of a rumble than a voice. “Answer. Where is the son of the firstborn?”

“Of the dragon? He’s super dead, lady.”

“Not the dragon,” Nya hisses, elbowing Kai. “She means Wu. The oni must have a different word for the First Master.”

“Oh! That firstborn. If I said ‘also super dead’, would you stop trying to kill us?”

Her eyes narrow.

“Fair enough,” Kai mutters, backing further into the tight cluster of ninja and placing one hand on the blade of his katana. “Run when I say so.”

“Don’t you dare—“

Kai swipes his palm along its length, catching it ablaze in a flash of red, spinning forwards and slashing the blade through the air towards her with a yell. An arc of flames roar from the invisible cut in the air, and Kai motions as if to grab them and throw them upwards. They obey, swirling into a wall of fire and obscuring the oni completely in vivid light, and he shoves them back into the beam supporting the ceiling. She howls, startled, and snaps the beam, causing the roof to buckle dangerously.

Kai whips around to face them, uncharacteristic terror covered by a mask of determination.

“Okay now run, it’s not far, we can —“

He’s cut off. Kai stumbles forward and inhales sharply, and Lloyd almost loses it.

The oni, burned and furious, draws herself up to her full height, bringing her sword back to her side, dragging a stuttery, shaking Kai with it. She thinks, for a long, agonizing moment, and slowly, purposefully, places a massive hand around his shoulders. And yanks the blade out, and lets him crumple to the floor.

.

Four screams pierce the messy silence, but Lloyd is held back by a firm (unsteady) hand and pulled further backwards, towards the pathway between the rocks, and he’s too shocked to do anything but watch as the oni lunges towards him.

She doesn’t make it more than two feet; Nya reaches her first, raindrops following her as she runs and gathering into a jagged spear that slams into her full-force. The storm swirls around her like bees around their hive, lashing out to attack the oni on all sides. Jay swings around her, grabbing her matted silver hair and landing squarely on her back, electricity whining as it builds in his hands. Nya only relents for a moment as a bolt of lightning redirects itself from the storm above and crashes through Jay and the oni, garnering a howl of pain as she drops to a knee. Nya flips the clasp holding her sai and twirls it in her hand, leaping back towards the oni. A fist swings at her, catching her around the throat, while the other grasps at where Jay was standing moments before. Nya struggles for a moment, and then her knee shoots upwards and cracks against the oni’s jaw, throwing her off enough to wrench out of her grasp. In that second, the oni turns and deflects Jay’s nunchaku as it comes towards her, and slashes her claws across his chest, knocking him back into the ship computer with a foreboding crackle as the screen shatters and goes black.

Three arrows lodge themselves into the oni’s turned back, encasing half of her shoulder in ice. Zane darts out from his position under one of the counters on deck, where he (dragged—) carried Kai out of the way. He grabs Nya’s hand, sending a frozen shock through the rain surrounding her, turning them into icy bullets that attack with even more ferocity than before. The oni roars, black fire bubbling at the edges of her mouth, spilling down the length of her greatsword. It clears, greatsword gone, hands burning with destructive energy. Expression hard, Zane draws his bow back and fires another volley, strafing around past the oni towards Jay. She doesn’t let him. Her claws slam into the floor, destroying the deck, barely missing as he dances around them. Nya grabs the opportunity, launching her sai into the monster’s shoulder. The oni snarls, grabbing her around the waist and ramming her through the already damaged ship computer with a shower of glass. Nya tumbles to a stop over the navigation controls, messy streaks of blood following her down.

Something in Cole snaps, and he shoves off of Lloyd towards her, his arms beginning to glow a harsh orange. Lloyd can’t move. As much as he wants to, as much as he’s screaming at himself to go or run or fight or something , he won’t move. Something isn’t letting him. The most he can do is cry out as Cole leaves, too late to stop him.

The rain has completely soaked him through, but he doesn’t notice. He doesn’t notice that, or the crashing thunder, or the creaking wood or the smoke coming off of the fires as they burn where they still can and are doused where they can’t. He just hears a high-pitched note, and sees as Cole’s hammer clangs against her horns and they crack, hears Jay stumble and fall from where he pushed himself off the ground, hears as she throws Zane to the side, his arm making a sickening crunch as she wrenches it off.

“Stop—“

The oni turns towards him and takes a step, yanked backwards by Cole’s hands burning through her tail. She growls and swings at him, tearing the sleeve of his gi. The stairwell behind them crumbles into the wreckage of the rest of their ship.

“ Stop—“

The oni kicks out, knocking Cole over the railing, and he burns through the first beam to catch himself on the second. He pulls himself back up, only to have himself shoved back to the ground by a heavy stomp.

“ STOP, leave them alone—” Lloyd’s voice cracks terribly, but she stills and turns to him.

The rain, the crackle of the fire, the thunder, seem to wait for them in anticipation.

“What are you going to do?” she spits, ever so slowly lifting her foot off of Cole’s chest and taking heavy steps towards the bow. He sputters and heaves for breath. “You failed.”

“I c- I, I can, y-you, I can still s-“

“What, save them? There is nothing left.”

Lloyd flinches, his father’s words echoing viciously in his ears. And suddenly her form contorts and changes and it is his father — the oni, the monster, it takes on his voice, his characteristics, the on- overl- My- Garmadon . Still monstrous, still terrifyingly close, an extra pair of arms half-dragging across the ground towards him. It is uncanny, and familiar, and his fault and it stares him down, shaking, sobbing mess that he is, and it has the audacity to grin.

He can move. He can move Lloyd trips backwards across the deck and lights a high-pitched ball of energy in his hand and launches it at the monster. It dodges, barely, deflecting it with a hand covered in that bubbling black fire. He tries again, and again and again and again, until his hands hurt, and he can barely see through his blurring vision. The thing probably laughs, though it sounds like metal forcing its way through wood.

“I sense my brother in you, boy. But where is the master of creation now? The great, golden warrior.” It spreads its arms, gesturing mockingly to the nothing he has. “You are alone.”

And there’s a noise like a bell breaking, and the remaining air is ripped from Cole’s lungs, and his arms’ glow puts itself out. Jay’s half-conscious attempt at sparking his powers fails, his hands going numb instead, and Zane falters as the ice just… stops.

And though there are hardly any human beings to see it, a blinding golden light explodes across the mountains.

It’s deafening. It swirls and sparks and flashes in a tempest of a chorus, bright ribbons of light humming through the air, absolutely euphoric in its presentation, backed by distinct heartbroken tonalities. Of course, this power creates. It creates whatever it wants. It creates destruction. It creates shredded sails and whirlwinds of grass and rock and it creates a hole of nothing where the oni used to stand. Lloyd presses his hands over his ears to no effect, sinking to the crumbling deck of their ship. It’s hard to get air into his lungs, and he can’t tell if it’s because he’s forgotten how or because there just isn’t enough of it.

And it does not stop. The light becomes overpowering, overwhelming, he can see it through his tightly closed eyes and feel it like thousands of tiny needles on his skin. The high-pitched melody swells louder, and louder, and --

And he jolts awake with a strained yell.

And good gravy is he immediately disoriented, leaning back slowly and breathing through his teeth, trying to calm down the iron spike of pain he can feel running through his head. Focusing on some other part of himself doesn’t help, he’s a bit sore in the ol’... everywhere. Lloyd blinks, the details of the past hour leaving a harsh afterimage in his memory against what he’s pretty sure is the ceiling of an old tea shop.

He immediately notices that he can feel the clothes on his skin — he couldn’t, a few seconds ago, on the ship. That means something. He’s really cold, almost shivering — that means something too. He thinks.

Mystake bustles through a bead curtain, looking almost joyfully surprised. “It actually worked!” she exclaims, whacking Nya with her hand as she darts behind her.

Mystake mutters something to herself, but Nya’s voice is closer. “Are you okay?!” she says, in a very restrained sort of whisper-yell.

Nya— Nya. Where is -- he? He should be— Nya’s okay, but where is… should be worried. Where are the others? What happened, with…

“Where’s… where’s the rest of, our...“ Lloyd has more of the sentence, but he’s out of breath, and he stops to get it back.

Nya’s brows furrow. “They’re out trying to stop G- Harumi. Something’s happening out there, but they’re fine. I’ve got ‘em on comms. Are you okay? ”

Trying to stop… oh, that’s what it means. Harumi’s still here. That was a nightmare. Not a real thing. Not real. Right. He forgot. Lloyd mentally tracks through where, and when, exactly, he is, right now. He… sort of pins it down. Sometime after...

It doesn’t matter. He’s alive (probably), awake (maybe?), and by all accounts… okay (definitely not).

“I- I had a dream — of a giant, and my father—“ Lloyd says, dizzily, trying to get upright as Nya helps him. “he’s…” what was he doing? It wanted something. He wanted something, on the Bounty, he said so. She said so. “He’s looking for Wu.”

Mystake scrutinizes him for a moment. A long moment.

“That was no dream,” she says, carefully. “That was a vision.”

“But—“

He stops at the look she gives him, and his heart sinks, his mouth getting drier than it already is.

Not real. Right?

...

Before they leave, Mystake bursts out of the tea shop, something bundled under her arm. She rushes up to Lloyd, leaning close to his ear and pressing the thing into his hands.

“Take this with you, master Garmadon. Your vision does not have to come to pass. We can’t be certain of the accuracy of what you saw, but I know there is much truth in it. Be careful. Use it wisely,” Mystake says, the quietest he’s ever heard her.

“What is it…?”

“You’ll know.” She winks, which doesn’t seem super situation-appropriate, but when is she ever? Lloyd squints at it (he has no idea what this is, but the woman just saved his life, so she’s on to something) and shifts under Nya’s arm to put it in his bag.

“Thank you,” he whispers, averting his eyes from her gaze.

Feeling worse than he ever has in his life, he sets off to find his family.