Chapter Text
The average teenager thinks that everyone hates them.
Lloyd does too, but he also knows that it's true.
Because multiple people have told him this to his face.
To be fair, Lloyd wasn't an average teenager, unless everyone has a Dark Lord for a father- but, he highly doubted it.
His mom liked to think that people just wrongly direct their anger they get from his father destroying the city on a weekly basis. His mom is definitely right about that- and she always is- but he also knows that she never has to go through the constant barrage of threats and violence he experiences on a daily basis.
Because his mom looks like a nice woman that spends her time working at a museum that nobody goes to, while he has pointed ears, purple eyes, and razor sharp canines that scream “I’m Lloyd Garmadon and am super evil.”
Despite this, only about half of Lloyd’s life is super terrible, because in the other half he isn't Lloyd.
He’s the Green Ninja.
The super awesome, heroic vigilante that fights against Lord Garmadon every week with the other members of The Secret Ninja Force.
Call him selfish, but the best part of being a ninja wasn't the fact that he was saving the city or that he had an amazing team of friends. Or that they didn't care who he was under the mask and didn't feel the need to harass or fear him. It's the fact that everyone felt that way, people applauded him on the street and online there's articles about how everyone loves him.
It’s that everyone gives him a chance even when they don’t know who he is.
Right now, Lloyd really wished he was the green ninja, because the thought of going to school the day after a Garmadon attack made him want to swim to his fathers volcano and throw himself in.
If he could, he’d probably try, but the only thing stopping him would probably be the fact that he loved his mom way too much for that. But, the searing pain that rippled through him as he shifted in his bed wouldn’t even allow him to get in the shower, let alone the ocean.
Apparently, staying up until 4 in the morning to fight your fathers army and clean up their mess wasn't really good for his health. Shocker.
It also didn't help that today was the first day of the new semester, so he was practically walking in blindfolded on what he would experience going into school. Although last semester was awful and he hated almost everyone in the building, he at least knew when to dodge the crumpled up balls of paper and the particularly brash people’s fists.
It also also didn’t help that today was his birthday.
Which for some reason always led to his FSM awful yearbook photo plastered all over the news, and sparking the fire of even more Garmadon hate across the city.
Days like today made him especially wish he was normal, or as close as he could be. Being able to wake up and know he would have a great day. Maybe he’d be able to snicker with friends in between periods about something funny that had happened in the class before, with people wishing him happy birthday in the halls, and maybe even a birthday party waiting for him after school.
And although his ninja life could usually cover these feelings of absolute loneliness, telling his teammates that his birthday was the same day as the son of their enemy could probably lead to them connecting a few dots.
So despite how hard he tried, Lloyd couldn’t even put a positive spin on the celebration of his own birth.
His mother could however.
Every year she always made a special breakfast, and bought an expensive cake from a place they could barely afford, covered in fancy swirls of buttercream and rich fillings. He never had the heart to tell her it would go to waste because there were no friends coming to share it. It would sit in the fridge and he would watch it slowly mold and dry out, and it would eventually be thrown into the garbage half eaten.
But, Lloyd Garmadon was a wimp, so he let his mother do that and let her hope, because without that filling the space between them, he didn't know what else would be left.
So, he begrudgingly dragged himself out of bed, ignoring the dull ache in his body, and threw on an outfit found on his bedroom floor. Already he knew he would hear the sounds of his mom cluttering and clambering by the time he would walk into the kitchen down the hall of their small apartment.
Now he’d love to barge in with the scent of his foul mood trailing behind him and tell his mother that he was not going to school today, but he knew that would only make him feel worse than he already did.
Because he loved his mom, and he hated destroying her dream of him having a great birthday, or a great day in general. She had this overwhelming idea that if he just held his head high enough and stayed positive that everything could work out eventually.
So walking into the kitchen, he saw its usual worn cabinets filled with mismatched dishes and the morning light bathing the chipped counter tops, covered up by the mismash of dirty dishes, utensils, and scattered food debris. Within it, stood his mother, who lit up and grabbed his “special birthday breakfast” when she saw him emerge from the hallway.
“Hey birthday boy,” his mom exclaimed, “how are you feeling honey?”
There was just something about the way she stood in the albeit disaster of a kitchen and found a way to look like she was surrounded by kittens and rainbows - which probably explained how she dated a dark lord - so he shoved all of his feelings of absolute dreadfulness deep down into some place in his chest and smiled widely at her.
“Same as yesterday,” he said, lightly rolling his eyes.
She scoffed, “Wow, only a few minutes into being fifteen and you already have an attitude.”
He grunted and sat down at the island, staring down at his eggs and bacon forming a smiley face on his hot plate.
In those few moments of silence his mom already began to fill it, “And your new classes are starting up today, that's gotta be exciting, huh? No more math?”
If the honest part of himself was speaking he’d probably say something along the lines of “Yes mom, I'm really excited about the new semester because even more people can get the opportunity to beat up and fear the Lloyd Garamadon. But hey, at least I don't have to deal with trigonometry anymore right?”
But luckily that part was shoved so far into his throat he’d probably choke on it, and he instead said, “Well now I have science, and that's pretty much just even more math.”
That made her chuckle, and she began to say something else when her phone rang and she rushed out of the room to answer it.
Lloyd started eating his food, eyeing his mothers coffee on the kitchen counter, knowing that if his mother wasn’t five feet away from him he’d probably gulp down the mug and whatever was left brewing in the pot.
He was close to it though, the exhaustion from last night during what the red ninja would call “his beauty sleep,” left deep caverns under his eyes and left him incredibly exhausted.
If he had to make a list it would probably look like this; today Lloyd was tired as hell, sore in every nook and cranny of his body, and forced to go to a school where everyone hated him, more so today.
His mom burst back into the room, “I’m so sorry Lloyd, but a pipe broke near the ancient paper exhibit,” she said, rushing around and rambling,” so I have to get there before it becomes a paper mache exhibit.”
Lloyd could add one other item to the list, “So you can't drive me today?” He cringed.
Now he had to ride the bus, which was totally not an enclosed space filled to the brim with teenagers with world hating attitudes, which included him, obviously.
“It seems so,” she admitted sheepishly.
“But, now maybe you have the chance to ask some friends to hang out after school, yeah?” She said, “I’ll try and order some pizza if you want?” her face formed a hopeful glow as she grabbed her work bag and ran for the door.
“Yeah I guess.”
The door slammed shut.
Now he was alone in their apartment with the only thing accompanying him being the noticeable drip of a pipe from the bathroom.
It wasn't as if he felt a weight on his shoulders, but a heavy sunken feeling laid heavy on his entirety. Right now, it was so heavy, almost unbearable, pressing down on his lungs and making it hard to breathe, wetting the backs of his eyes. Occasionally it was barely noticeable, like when he was the green ninja, but it was still always there.
In these awful moments, he couldn't help but wonder if this feeling would follow and trail behind him for the rest of his life.
Oh well.
At least now he could finish the rest of the coffee.
***
When the bus finally scraped its way to the curb of the school, Lloyd almost cried tears of joy.
And by scraped he meant literally, with the entirety of the bus refusing to get within his vicinity. This led to them refusing to cross the middle walkway and instead piling up on to the opposite side of the bus.
Admittedly, this was one of his better bus rides he’s taken, he could at least stare out the window and pretend his friends just took a different bus than him. Rather than being smushed up against the glass while someone berated him.
When the bus finally parked, everyone sprinted out the doors, including the driver somehow. He followed behind and just held his head high, putting on a brave face and headed for the front doors wearing his mothers optimism.
Facing the tall building, and its menacing columns that the entryway door squeezed between, he could begin to see students make their way up the granite steps from the courtyard. So, Lloyd quickly followed suit, settling in behind a large group of kids.
Turns out he couldn't even get inside the building before he was hit with a curve ball.
Like an actual ball, probably sent from someone on the soccer team.
Thankfully, the soccer team wasn't very good and instead of hitting his face, it hit his backpack.
This was when he prayed that none of the other ninjas went to his school and saw that the graceful green ninja was sent pinwheeling off the first flight of stairs, and landing flat on his back, with his bag sprawled across the front courtyard all because of a kid who sat on the bench all season.
The group in front of him, which included a couple boys he knew, specifically a boy named Zane from his math class last semester, all spun around to look down at him.
A couple threw their phones out, chuckled, or walked away as fast as they could, this included the rest of the kids in the courtyard behind him.
He shouldn’t have really cared but the boy Zane just… stared at him. But with a blank face, almost as if he was analyzing him, and it was odd, because the blonde was actually looking at him. Not through a lens of maliciousness or fear, but as if Lloyd was any other person in the crowd.
It almost looked like Zane felt bad for him?
Then, a girl with a dark swishing ponytail peaked her head out the front door, and called him over. On the ground he slowly watched as the boy and his cotton vest reluctantly disappeared into the crowd.
The giggles emerging from the student body slowly died out when the bell rang, saving him from even more embarrassment and humiliation.
That relief was cut short when it seemed that every student in the courtyard had the bright idea of walking into the school through, or rather, on top of him.