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“PIXAL, any luck?” Kai pleaded, hoping that just maybe Lloyd's beacon had come back online and that they would be able to get a rescue plan together.
“Negative, but I’ll keep looking.”
Kai couldn’t suppress the frustrated groan as he continued to pace in the control room; due to still being fugitives, they were staying as far away from the city as possible in The Bounty , but he couldn’t help but feel like they should have stayed.
The others came in and out periodically, but it had just been PIXAL, Kai and Sensei for the most part; in any other situation, he would have been helping catch his little sister up on the happenings of the last year but this was an exception.
‘After everything, Lloyd is as much my brother as Nya is my sister.’
“We will find him, Kai.”
“How do you know?” Kai demanded while making sure his anger was directed toward his sensei even though he knew that they were all just trying to fix the mistake of sending Lloyd in there.
“Because if I know my nephew, he is looking for a way to get into contact with us as we speak. All we can do while we find him is trust him.”
“I hope you’re right, Sensei” Kai replied with a sigh as he turned back to the map that was displayed on the large monitor with no sign of the green beacon, “I really do.”
…
“Spider’s in the house. Sleep, sleep. Spider bit the mouse. Sleep deep. Don’t wake up or else you’ll find a spider in your mouth.’
Lloyd struggled to pull himself from the darkness with his head throbbing and the swirl of recent memories that he so desperately wanted to be a bad dream formed from the depths of his mind; it was the throbbing in his shoulder that forced him into consciousness and confirmed the reality of his situation.
Held captive by some of his worst enemies in a vengestone cage high above the ground.
“Oh, look. He’s awake,” Harumi’s sickly sweet voice made his gut twist with nausea, “I’m sure you’re wondering just where you are. It might be a familiar location to you.”
Lloyd blinked a few times, trying to clear his vision and dull the pounding long enough to focus on the walls and the drawings that surrounded them.
“Seems we hit your head just a little too hard,” Harumi cooed before her voice flipped to a much more brash one, “our beloved Crystal King decided to make Prime Evil’s Eye, specifically the Oni Temple, his lair.”
“What do you want with me, Harumi?” Lloyd smeared with little to no reaction from the former Jade Princess, “what are you planning on doing to the others?”
“You are always so concerned with the others and yet, you tend to be the one who is taken captive,” she lamented as she got to his level and looked him in the eyes, “when will you finally do something for yourself, Lloyd? When will you finally break free from their hold?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, I know a lot of things about you. I know about the young Lloyd Garmadon. The boy who terrorized villages and released the Serpentine while proudly carrying his father’s name. Why did you let them seal that side of you away?”
Lloyd managed to sit up straighter with a glare, the throbbing in his right shoulder renewed with a vengeance as he managed to speak through his grated teeth, “I don’t know what sick mind games you are trying, but it will not work. The ninja saved my life-”
“Yes, by constantly putting you in danger. I’m sure that they just make you fight all of their battles out of love,” Harumi grinned as the sarcasm oozed from her mouth, “your father, the Overlord, Morro, The Oni…but they love you, so it’s okay.”
“My friends are not the enemy.” Lloyd seethed, the anger rising in his chest as he now realized that Harumi had Shintaro wings attached to her back.
“They are the reason that I lost my parents! All of you are!”
“We are not the reason they’re dead! If you want to be angry at someone, blame Pythor, He’s the one who released the Devourer!”
“And you didn’t get there in time! I was a child and you took that away!”
“I was a child too!” Lloyd screamed back at her, the words on his tongue having the same bite as venom.
“And yet, you can’t see just how alike we are.” Her voice was quiet as she reached through the bars, her hand just gracing his cheek before he flinched away out of her reach, his body heaving with every word.
“I will never…be like you.”
“Oh, Lloyd,” she pulled away, ready to leave him alone in the darkness once again, “you just need time to embrace it. You’re an Oni and a Garmadon. It’s your destiny.”
Before he could attempt some sort of curse in her direction, she was gone and he was once again engulfed in darkness aside from the faint yellow glow of the vengestone surrounding him; it was futile to keep himself awake with his self destructing thoughts, so he adjusted into a slightly less uncomfortable and let himself be lulled to sleep by the faint hum of the cage.
…
Kai was starting to lose hope for a swift and smooth rescue. It had been nearly forty eight hours and the screen hadn’t illuminated with the tiny green glow that was Lloyd’s beacon; even PIXAL and Master Wu had made their way out of control to attend to other business, but he couldn’t leave.
‘Not when Lloyd’s life is at stake.’
“Anything?” Jay’s voice entered the room like a burst of lightning on an otherwise clear night and nearly made Kai jump due to how shot his nerves were.
“No, not yet.”
Jay groaned as he sat in a chair with his head on his arms before speaking again, “I hate this. We shouldn’t have let him go.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Have you made a plan on how to get him out? Because some of our worst enemies have him hostage along with that Kabuki mask guy and they have a ton of vengestone at their disposal. They aren’t just gonna let us waltz in, take him and go.”
Kai sighed; admittedly, he had been so focused on waiting for the beacon to appear that a plan had completely slipped his mind and he knew that a plan was the make or break to every single thing they had ever tried to pull off.
“I just wish we knew what they wanted other than revenge on us. That crystal king guy they keep talking about needs vengestone for a reason, but what?” Jay added whilst twirling a pencil in between his fingers.
Kai let out another sigh but before he could help Jay think about just who would want revenge on them that badly, the control panel let out a little beep noise and Kai couldn’t contain himself from screaming.
“That’s his beacon! That’s Lloyd!”
As Jay nearly fell out of his chair to tell the others, all Kai could focus on was the pulsing green dot.
‘We’re coming to get you, Lloyd. Just hold on.’