Chapter Text
Harumi felt plaster land in her hair and pushed the little family onto the fire escape. She looked up as a louder crack sounded, just in time to see a chunk of ceiling falling right into her face.
She didn't even have time to scream.
Her eyes blink open, slowly, and the world filters back in as she regains consciousness. The ground beneath her feels like dirt, not asphalt, and the sky above is less riddled with stars than she expected. Distantly, sirens sound, though the cheers and relieved laughter she can hear almost drowns them out. She sits up and almost immediately regrets it, clutching her head as it screams in pain.
“Oh, you’re awake! Thank goodness, we were starting to get worried,” a voice says to her right. Painfully, Harumi turns to see the little family walking through a crowd of about three dozen people, all turned away from her. They’re facing what she recognizes as the skyline of Ninjago City, changed as it is by the recent near-apocalypse - several buildings are half-destroyed or missing entirely, Borg Tower got a haircut, and Garmadon’s - her father’s stone creature is nowhere to be seen. That - that means—
The same voice as before interrupts her thoughts, and she turns her attention back to the man speaking. “We pulled you out of the building after us, but not fast enough to keep your head safe from falling debris. I think you’re going to be okay, but you should still see a doctor as soon as you can,” he continues, setting a water bottle and a bag of pretzels next to her knee as the trio sits. “We tried carrying you, though we didn’t get far. Just when we were trying to find a safe place to hole up for the rest of the fight, the Black Ninja showed up on a dragon and evacuated us. All that was a few hours ago, and you’ve been unconscious the whole time - the fight is over,” he finishes, gesturing towards the city in the distance. Harumi says nothing, just processes everything in silence and opens the water bottle.
“Thank you for saving us! You have a weird face, what happened?” the little girl pipes up. Harumi turns to look at her, a small child clearly bursting with curiosity - if she had to guess, she’d say the kid had been sitting on that question the entire time she’d been out.
“Rin,” her mother scolds. “That was rude, apologize at once!”
“No, it’s—“ she pauses to take a sip of water when she realizes how hoarse her voice is, “—it’s fine, I don’t mind. It’s just face paint, see?” She rubs at some of the red around her eyes and holds her paint-stained fingers up for Rin to see.
“Look! It’s the ninja!” someone yells, and the cheering redoubles. Harumi runs through her options, briefly considering running, fighting, hiding, and just feigning amnesia, but a short self-assessment rules everything except the amnesia angle out. They would all be lost causes, considering she can see four of them flying in on dragons.
She watches them land and fights back her rage and disgust as the people flock to them. They treat them like they’re fucking celebrities, like they’re heroes, like they did something useful - Harumi looks at the ruined city and wonders, distantly, how many of the people around her lost homes in the city’s destruction. How many of them lost families. Glancing at the trio beside her, she thinks, One less.
Her thoughts are interrupted when the ninja walk over, grim expressions on their faces. It’s just Jay, Kai, Zane, and Cole, but she forces herself to her feet anyway. She won’t meet her fate sitting. “What, Lloyd couldn’t be assed to deal with me himself?” she challenges when they get closer, and pretends her voice doesn’t waver when she does. She doesn’t expect the brief hesitation, the shared glance, and it takes her a moment to puzzle out what they mean. When she does, she can’t help but laugh. “You didn’t tell him, did you? His precious brothers keeping secrets, hmmm?”
“This isn’t about Lloyd, Harumi,” Cole says, stopping a few feet away. “You know why we’re here.”
“Not to take everyone back to Ninjago City?” she asks in mock surprise. “All four of you flew all the way out here just to give little ol’ me a first-class trip to Kryptarium? I’m honored,” she spits, finally dropping her act.
“Sorry to disappoint, but only Cole is here to take you to Kryptarium. Jay, Zane, and I are taking everyone else back to Ninjago City,” Kai answers coolly. She whirls on him, an empty barb ready on her tongue, but a small voice interrupts her before she can get a single syllable out.
“Mr. Ninja, you can’t take her to jail! She saved us!” Astonished, Harumi turns to see Rin standing at her side, positively quivering with righteous indignation. “Jail is for bad guys, and she’s not a bad guy!” she declares, crossing her arms defiantly and giving a very impressive scowl. For a moment, Harumi is oddly touched.
Zane walks over and kneels in front of her. “What’s your name?”
“Rin,” she grumbles.
“Nice to meet you, Rin. My name is Zane. And while I don’t doubt Harumi saved you, she’s still done a lot of bad things, so she needs to go to Kryptarium so she can’t do bad things anymore.”
“But she doesn’t do only bad things, so why does she need to go to jail?” Rin whines, stamping her foot. She brightens after a moment. “She can stay with us! We can share a room and she won’t do bad things anymore, and—“
“Sorry, Rin, but that’s not how the world works,” Kai gently interrupts.
“Come on, Harumi. It’s time to go,” Cole says, reaching for her wrist.
She jerks out of his grasp and stalks towards the squat green dragon he flew in on, head held high. “I can escort myself, thank you very much,” she hisses as she clambers up and settles herself on its shoulders. She refuses to look around and keeps her gaze focused firmly on the middle distance as she hears the ninja start to organize the refugees below her. Cole swings himself up with considerably less scrabbling and panting than she had, and she grinds her teeth at his ease. Harumi bites back a scream and scoots forward slightly when his weight and body heat settle at her back.
“Get comfy and hold on tight,” he says right next to her ear. “We’re not stopping until we get to Kryptarium.” She doesn’t respond and focuses entirely on staring blankly ahead as Cole nudges the dragon with his heels, as the jolt of their liftoff throws her back against him, as the wind lashes her hair around her face. Something draws her eyes down to the quickly-receding ground, and she finds Rin’s upturned face watching them leave.
Harumi watches until they’re too high to see details anymore, and tells herself the tears working their way down her face are the result of the wind and the chill.