Chapter Text
1. LLOYD — 07:22 AM
Nobody likes Lloyd Garmadon. And they especially don’t like him the day after a Garmadon attack on Ninjago City.
It hurts, but Lloyd can’t bring himself to blame them. His father’s attacks hurt people. They level buildings. They destroy lives. They make people angry, and angry people need a target for their aggression. Since Lord Garmadon is good at hiding, they turn to the next best thing: his son.
This makes going outside pretty dangerous. On normal days, it isn’t uncommon for strangers to yell at him, or attack him, or even try to follow him home from school. If a Garmadon attack is particularly destructive, Lloyd doesn’t bother leaving his apartment at all—people have the tendency to get a little stabby when the damage is bad enough. It just isn’t safe for him.
Last night was the worst attack they’d seen all year. Lloyd would need to have an actual death wish to risk showing his face on the street today.
Well, he doesn’t quite have a death wish. However, he does plan on going outside today. Just for a few minutes! That should be enough time for everything to fall into place, he thinks.
After getting dressed, Lloyd reaches below his sheets and sticks his hand into a slit in the mattress. He pulls out a small satchel of electronics. Now, these aren’t just any electronics—they’re gifts from Blue, resident tech designer of the Secret Ninja Force. Among the goodies are a stun gun, smoke pellets, by-pass keys, and a number of other devices he could use for self-defence. Their presence in his mattress has always made him feel a little safer at home.
Lloyd upends the bag over the floor. He pushes the smoke pellets out of the way, then crushes each device underfoot. Once they’re reduced to small enough pieces, he sweeps them up and dumps them in the toilet. He tosses in the smoke pellets and flushes them away.
Before returning home last night, he ditched his ninja communicator in a pile of rubble. His gi is stored under bricks somewhere else in the city. There is absolutely nothing in his apartment or on his person that could connect him to the Green Ninja.
You see, Lloyd doesn’t plan on being safe today. But he doesn’t plan on dying, either.
He intends to be abducted instead.
2. LLOYD — 08:10 AM
If this were a normal school day, Lloyd would leave his apartment building through the fire escape and make his way to school through Ninjago City’s alleyways. He would move with his hood up and head down to conceal his face. He would hide behind dumpsters and boxes when he heard other people in the alleyway. He would take different routes to make it impossible for someone to trace his path back to his apartment building. No one knows where he lives, and Lloyd has always intended to keep it that way—it’s the only place where he can be himself without facing danger.
Today is different. Today, he leaves his building not via the fire escape, but through the front entrance. He walks along a main road, hood down and chin up to give anyone passing by a clear view of his face. If anyone is looking for Lloyd Garmadon this morning, they’ll find him. And he knows people are looking for him.
A few blocks ahead of him, a couple of men stand beside an idling van with tinted windows. While crossing a busy intersection, he sees another van waiting on an adjacent road. One of the men posted outside is conducting a sweep of the area. When he sees Lloyd, he puts a handheld radio to his mouth and starts making rapid gestures to a few people standing nearby.
Lloyd steps onto the same block as one of the vans. His heart beats quicker in anticipation. As he moves to pass the vehicle, one of the men steps directly into his line of sight. Lloyd crashes head first into his chest.
It’s a little hard to act annoyed, but he does his best. “Ugh, watch it,” he grumbles. He tries to step around the enforcer, but he moves to block his path once more.
The enforcer opens his jacket, giving Lloyd a peak at the long blade strapped to his chest. With a smile, he asks, “Did you need a lift to school today, Garmadon?”
Before Lloyd can respond, the enforcer grabs him by his shirt and pulls him towards the van. Lloyd puts up a pretend struggle, pulling at the enforcer’s arms and kicking his knees, but refrains from using one of the many tricks he knows that could be used to get out of his grasp. Another enforcer opens the van’s back doors and helps drag Lloyd inside the rest of the way.
The doors are shut behind them. A thick bag is pulled over Lloyd’s head. Someone binds his wrists behind his back with scratchy rope. Once they're done, they use their weight to pin him to the van’s floor. As the van pulls away, the rumbling engine rattles his skull painfully.
“Ow,” he mumbles. He makes a half-hearted attempt to throw off the person on top of him. They punish him by pulling back his head and slamming it against the floor.
“Shut up!” they command. “If you keep talking, we’ll gag you.”
That isn’t threatening enough to silence him. “What do you want from me?"
Another voice—the enforcer from outside—speaks up. “We want your father. We want him gone. You’re going to help us do that.”
Lloyd opens his mouth to protest, but falls short of speaking when he feels something prick his arm. The effect is immediate. Within seconds, his body feels heavy as lead and he can barely think at all.
Sedation. Of course.
“Just sit tight, kid,” the enforcer says. “This will be over before you know it.”
With sick satisfaction, Lloyd smiles at how wrong they are. They want to use him as bait for Lord Garmadon. Unfortunately for them, Lloyd’s father doesn’t care for him at all—he won’t surrender his imperial ambitions for Lloyd’s life. This whole plan of theirs is going to end up as yet another fruitless attempt to save the city from Garmadon’s attacks.
That doesn’t mean it won’t save Lloyd. As long as he doesn’t die in the process, Lloyd will leave this kidnapping an innocent man. The world will finally realize that Lloyd has nothing to do with his father and leave him alone.
Nobody likes Lloyd Garmadon. This abduction is going to change that for good.
3. COLE - 11:44 AM
The news breaks while Cole is in gym class.
During a small break between exercises, one of his classmates opens her phone. Her immediate reaction—a gasped, “holy shit!” —gets everyone’s attention.
As usual, Cole stays back as the rest of his classmates group together to look at the student’s phone. Some of them laugh at what they see. Some of them swear in disbelief. Eventually, Cole can’t resist his curiosity and walks over to his pile of things on the bleachers. He grabs his phone and turns it on.
The news is pinned to his lock screen.
NCTV BREAKING NEWS: LLOYD GARMADON HOSTAGE VIDEO RELEASED BY VIGILANTES — LORD GARMADON’S SURRENDER DEMANDED IN EXCHANGE FOR RELEASE.
With a sharp inhale, he clicks on the notification bubble. It brings him to a news site with the posted video.
The scene in the video is simple. Lloyd is tied to a chair in a dark room. Cole’s stomach sinks when he sees the red markings on his face. Lloyd’s gaze is distant, like he isn’t all there. It’s impossible to tell if it’s from shock, injuries hidden by his clothes, or some kind of drug. Maybe all three.
A filtered voice speaks over the display. It’s cold and robotic.
“ Lord Garmadon! You have held our city hostage for years. Now, we have taken your son. Say hello, Lloyd.”
Lloyd is lucid enough to turn his unfocused gaze to the camera. There’s a confused and desperate haze in his eyes. At the prompt to say hello, he shakes his head—he can’t speak around the duct tape over his mouth.
The voice continues anyways.
“Our demands are simple: we want your complete, unequivocal surrender. You have seven days to give yourself up to city authorities. If you wait too long, we will kill your son. If you attack the city again, we will kill your son. If you send your Sharks on a rescue mission, we will kill your son. Understand?
As the voice lists off the terms, Lloyd’s hands start to tremble. His chest rises and falls rapidly. Cole has a feeling that this is his first time hearing the demands, too.
“The clock is ticking, Garmadon. Don’t mess this up!”
The video ends. Cole struggles to fight the horrible feeling in his gut as he realizes exactly what all of this means.
Unlike most people, Cole doesn’t think Lloyd is an undercover Shark secretly helping his father launch attacks on the city. In fact, he doesn’t think the two of them have a relationship at all. No loving father would allow their child to suffer what Lloyd goes through on a regular basis. Even Cole’s father, for all his flaws, would have found a way to put a stop to it by now.
Clearly, Garmadon couldn’t care less about Lloyd’s well-being. Why would he abandon his dreams of city domination for a kid that doesn’t matter to him at all?
By making such strong demands, the vigilantes have ensured they will not win. Garmadon will continue attacking the city, and Lloyd will pay the ultimate price for their ridiculous scheme when they kill him seven days from now.
Curious, Cole looks up from his phone to observe his classmates. They’ve all finished watching the video by now, and their reactions are mixed. A few of them find it funny, while others appear a little more apprehensive. No one seems upset. This is disappointing, but he doesn’t let himself get too annoyed by it. As far as his classmates are concerned, this hostage plot will lead to one of two results: Garmadon’s surrender, or the elimination of a spy. Both outcomes are positive.
After gym, he slides his headphones over his ears to block out the world. He waits impatiently for the school day to end, doing his best to drown out his classmates’ conversations about the video. When the final bell rings, he goes home to an empty house and eats dinner alone. In his room, he listens to music and does homework until the sun goes down.
Under the cover of moonlight, he pulls a black mask over his face and climbs out of his bedroom window. As Cole, there’s nothing he can do to help Lloyd.
The black ninja of the Secret Ninja Force, however, is a different story.
4. BLACK - 9:00 PM | 21:00
On his way to the warehouse, Cole takes a break in the downtown core. A large electronic billboard is playing a newscast where the two hosts argue over the virtues of Lloyd’s kidnapping.
Cole left a little early for the Ninja Force’s rendezvous, so he allows himself a moment to sit on the ledge of a building and watch. There is no audio to accompany the video and he strains his eyes to read the subtitles.
-Listen, I think it’s a good thing. Who is defending our city right now? No one!
-You think the Ninja aren’t defending the city?
-Of course not! They—
-Hold on, how can you think that? Have you ever seen the figures? Since they started fighting back we have decreased property damage, lower mortality rates, and get this: fewer Garmadon attacks. They aren’t useless.
-If the Ninja wanted to protect Ninjago, they would have attacked his volcano by now. Instead, they just wait around for him to come back. What’s the point of that? These new vigilantes—as in, the ones that kidnapped the kid—are the only people interested in stopping him for good. If this works and Garmadon is gone by the end of the week, they should be honoured as heroes.
-And what if they’re wrong? What if Garmadon is willing to cut his losses and lets them kill the kid?
-Then we’ll have one less Shark to worry about.
“Hello, Black.”
Cole jumps at the voice. In his panic, he almost falls forward over the edge of the rooftop and scrambles to find a hold on the building. He digs his palms into the concrete lip he’s sitting on and pushes himself back. When he’s a safe distance away from the edge, he sighs in relief and climbs to his feet.
He knows who to expect when he turns around. The other ninja have their own particular ways of speaking, but something about this one’s cadence makes him much more recognizable than the others.
Polite as usual, White offers a quick bow in greeting. Cole returns it.
“You scared me,” Cole says. He puts a hand on his hip. “I thought we told you to stop sneaking up on people.”
The mask covers White’s mouth, but he can see the smile in his eyes. “As a ninja, you should be more aware of your surroundings. It would be unfortunate if someone snuck up on you and killed you and you died.”
“. . . Yeah.” Cole has no idea how to respond. This is a common problem when talking to White—he has a bluntness to him that tends to leave everyone a little speechless at times.
Not that Cole is amazing with conversation in the first place. In all his sixteen years of life, he’s only ever managed to make one real friend. And even then, their early friendship was entirely due to Jay’s persistence. That really goes to show for his social skills, huh?
To make things worse, he's fairly certain that Red hates him. So, really, he has one good friend and one enemy. He’s fairly certain those cancelled each other out and left him with nothing.
White turns his head, looking towards the docks where they would find the warehouse. He looks back to Cole and shoulders his quiver of arrows. “Would you like to travel the rest of the way with me?”
Cole is given no time to mull it over. As soon as finishes speaking, White twists on his heel and takes off to his right. With a startled laugh, Cole breaks into a run and gives in to the chase. If White wants a race, then Cole intends to give him a run for his money.
He follows him across rooftops, clearing the gaps between buildings with practised ease. White is fast and agile, but Cole manages to overtake him when they’re only a few blocks away from the warehouse. The friendly competition is a welcome break from the dread he felt during the day, and by the time they reach the warehouse, Cole is struggling to keep a grin off his face.
White comes to a stop next to him at the building’s entrance, showing no sign of exertion. He smiles as he punches in his access code to the door.
“If that was a real race, I would have beaten you,” he says. The lock releases with a buzz and he opens the door, gesturing for Cole to enter. “After you.”
Cole rolls his eyes and steps inside.
5. BLUE - 22:30 | 10:30 PM
Jay Walker does not relax. As much as he would love to, he's come to accept that it just isn't possible.
For as long as he can remember, there's always been a tingling sensation beneath his skin. It courses through him like an electric current; a hum that travels from his toes, to his hands, and to his brain. It makes him fidget and overthink, pulling him back like a bowstring that will never fire. He's convinced the hum will only go away when he's dead.
Honestly, it kind of sucks absolute ass. Of all people, why was he the one cursed with an elemental power that carries the physical symptoms of an anxiety disorder? The all-powerful being that gifted him his powers should have given the lightning element to a worse person—like Red, for instance.
Not that he actually hates Red. Jay doesn’t hate any of his teammates. It’s kind of hard to hate or even like his teammates when he barely knows them.
The Secret Ninja Force has been working together for almost two years now. Ever since the group’s inception he’s trained with them, cried with them, laughed with them, and faced death with them more times than he can count. In the field, he trusts them to protect him when his back is turned—he trusts them with his life. Apparently, he’s just not allowed to trust them with his name.
When they first established themselves as a team, Green made the rules very clear: if they were going to work together, they had to conceal themselves from one another. They cannot know each other’s civilian identities. They must use colours to identify each other in lieu of names. They are not allowed to reveal any potentially identifying information to each other. It’s safer this way—if one of them were ever captured by the Sharks, they couldn't be tortured into giving up the identities of the other ninja. It protects them and their families.
Jay has never had a problem with the rule until today. Right now, all it's doing is turning a bad situation into something downright catastrophic.
Ten hours ago, a new vigilante group released a video announcing that they'd captured Lloyd Garmadon. One hour ago, the ninja convened at the warehouse for their usual follow up the night after a Garmadon attack. As far as Jay can remember, the Green Ninja has never missed one of these meetings. Even when concussed and half-dead, he's always found a way to show up.
So, here lies the problem: the Green Ninja isn't here. With each passing minute, Jay is becoming a little more convinced of something he's been trying very hard to ignore:
Lloyd Garmadon might be the Green Ninja.
This isn’t something he wants to know. He never tried to figure it out. The Green Ninja’s identity just kind of . . . revealed itself due to an unfortunate coincidence.
Shark Army attacks leave behind a lot of damage. Jay’s parents work in the scrap business, which means that their job is to look through rubble for recyclable metals and collect them for the city. It’s the kind of gig that pays by the amount of scrap you collect, but since almost anyone can do it, the earnings per piece are pretty low. For the first few days following an attack, Jay is expected to be on site with his parents by four in the morning to help them before school. If this falls on a weekend, he’s there all day. He spends a lot of his time digging through bricks and broken glass.
A little over a year ago, a residential building was struck by a Shark rocket. Believe it or not, this doesn’t happen often—Garmadon may want to take over their city, and he may try to do so by bombarding it with attacks, but he doesn’t gun for civilians. Residential buildings are typically left untouched. This time, however, a rogue rocket hit an apartment building’s base structure and toppled the whole thing over.
By law, all buildings are required to have bomb shelters for their occupants. On the rare occasion that an apartment building is downed during an attack, the loss of life is usually kept at a minimum. Unfortunately, this still entails the destruction of everyone’s personal possessions, and also leaves a lot of work for scrap collectors.
The destroyed building left behind enough of a mess that Jay was forced to skip school to help out. He wound up a little far away from the other scrap collectors, venturing into the area with piles of unstable concrete that required good balance and quick reflexes to stand on. Since one slip up could mean hitting your head or falling into glass, not many people bothered working there. A year of ninja training meant that Jay was incredibly agile, so he navigated to the thick of it without much fear.
It was here, isolated from the other collectors on uneven ground, that he found Lloyd Garmadon.
The teenager was sitting on a slab of concrete, a shocked expression on his face as he held a hand in front of his eyes. From where he stood, Jay could see streaks of red running down his hand and wrist. Lloyd was bleeding—injured, probably, from being reckless in the area.
Unlike most people he knew, Jay didn’t have strong feelings about Lloyd Garmadon. Everyone had theories about Lloyd’s true relationship with his father, but Jay didn’t spend enough time online or with other people to care about it very much. It just wasn’t very important to him.
That was probably why he didn’t turn away. After shouting to get Lloyd’s attention, he approached him carefully and stood a couple feet away. Lloyd had gone completely still, although Jay could see his eyes tracking his every move. He was tense. Afraid. It took a stupidly long moment for Jay to realize that Lloyd was probably waiting to be assaulted.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Jay said. He kept a backpack full of supplies on him while working, which he slipped off his shoulders so he could rummage inside. He found the small medkit at the bottom and pulled it out. “I have bandages in here. Hold on.”
His words didn’t assuage Lloyd whatsoever. Jay thought about offering to wrap the cut on his palm, but decided that would be a bad idea. Clearly, Lloyd wasn’t the type of person willing to accept help from strangers. Jay would just have to improvise.
“Do you do this often?” he asked. If the answer was yes, Jay intended on teaching him about the importance of safety while scrap collecting.
Lloyd looked away. His uninjured hand balled itself into a fist. “I’m not stealing anything. I’m just trying to help.”
Gently, Jay placed his roll of bandages and a sealed pack of medical disinfectant wipes on the chunk of concrete in front of him. “Okay,” he said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. “Next time, make sure you help with gloves.”
He wiggled his gloved fingers so Lloyd would see what he was talking about. Then he zipped up his backpack and walked away.
The ninja had weapons training that night. Jay stood beside Green as they chose their weapons from the armoury. It was here, in this moment, that a horrifying, dreadful kind of feeling settled into his bones. Through the corner of his eye, Jay watched as the Green Ninja picked up a sword with his good hand and then flinched in pain.
Jay tried to ignore it. He reminded himself that Green had sprained his ankle a couple months ago—maybe he’d just stepped on it weirdly and aggravated it. Yeah, that had to be it. No other reason for him to flinch.
For the rest of weapons training, Green hissed and tensed up in pain whenever he used his right hand. It was the same hand Lloyd had injured earlier in the day.
The thought entered Jay’s mind before he could stop it: Lloyd Garmadon is the Green Ninja.
Since then, he’s done everything he can to ignore this connection. Green doesn’t want him to know his identity, so Jay tries his best to convince himself that he hasn’t figured it out. The hand injury could have just been a coincidence, he likes to think. There’s no proof that they’re the same person.
Unfortunately, the proof is staring him directly in the face tonight. Lloyd has been publicly kidnapped. Green is missing in action. What else is Jay supposed to make of this? He doesn’t know if he can realistically keep pretending their connection is a weird coincidence at this point.
To kill time until the Secret Ninja Force decides their leader isn’t coming, Jay has been using the warehouse computer to ping Green’s comms unit in five second intervals. He bites the inside of his cheek each time the computer tells him that Green’s earpiece isn’t receiving any data. This can only mean two things: his unit is dead, or it’s been destroyed. Neither are a good sign for the ninja’s condition.
Jay isn’t the only one nervous about Green’s fate. The other ninja are equally tense, speaking to each other in hushed voices on the couch a few feet away from him. Red is pacing in circles around them.
Finally, it seems like he’s done with waiting. Red twists to face the rest of the group. “Are we just going to sit here, or are we going to look for him?”
Grey raises an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting we try to find a ninja? ”
Red huffs. “It’s better than doing nothing! What if something happened to him on the way here?”
“He didn’t report anything,” Black says with a shrug. He glances over to Jay. “Did you reach him?”
“His comm is dead,” Jay replies. He doesn’t want them to search for Green—he knows what a waste of time that will be. It makes the hum below his skin go haywire, but he manages to bring himself to keep speaking. “I think we should start our meeting without him. We have a bigger problem to deal with right now.”
Red shoots him a confused look. “Bigger problems than our leader missing?”
“Well, there’s the whole, you know…” Red’s expression is too intense. Jay looks away shyly. “Kidnapping thing.”
The change in subject makes Black sit up a little straighter. “Blue is right. We should be looking for Lloyd.”
White holds up a hand. “The Secret Ninja Force is only meant to fight Garmadon. Is it wise to intervene here?”
“Are you kidding me?” Black laughs in disbelief. “Garmadon won’t surrender for Lloyd. If we don’t do something, he’s going to die.”
Red presses his hands against the sides of his head. “I can’t believe this. Green has never skipped a meeting before. He’s missing! And you, what—you want to focus on someone who we know will at least be alive for another week? This is insane.”
“Okay, wait.” Grey stands up from the couch and steps forward to stand beside Red. “We all know that Green believes Lloyd is innocent. I mean, he’s even vouched for him publicly! What if he went after him earlier in the day and got into trouble?”
White nods. “I agree. If we are going to get involved, we should investigate the group behind Lloyd’s kidnapping. They may have something to do with Green’s disappearance.”
Red looks between the ninja with narrowed eyes. He’s pissed.
“Fine! If you want to abandon our leader, then go right ahead!” He stalks over to the weapons wall. After looking over his options, he takes two swords and slides them into the holsters on his back. “I’m looking for Green. Maybe I’ll find him before he’s dead.”
Red leaves through the side door. It slams shut behind him.
Jay shrinks back in his chair. If he could tell them what he knows, they could put all their energy into tracking down their leader. He just can’t—Lloyd is viciously protective of identity, to the point that Jay thinks he’d rather risk his life than expose himself to the world. If Lloyd has been unwilling to confess to his teammates until now, Jay doesn’t think he’s in a position to do it for him. Even when his life is at stake.
Grey glances between the door and the other ninja, a conflicted expression in her eyes. She curses. “Shit. Sorry, guys—I’m going to follow him and make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. Call me if you need me.”
She grabs the spear from the weapons wall and disappears out the side door. Only half the ninja remain in the warehouse.
Black stands up. Jay wonders if he’s going to leave, but the ninja instead rounds the couch and comes to stand beside him at the computer. “Is there anything you can do with the video to trace its location?”
Jay shakes his head. “I already tried at home. It’s a dead end.”
“Well, at least your head’s on straight.” Black rolls his eyes. “I can’t believe that Red doesn’t want to look for him. Like, come on—Green said he vetted Lloyd himself. He’s innocent and we should be helping him.”
“I wonder how they found him!”
Jay yelps at the sudden voice beside him. He turns his head and sees White standing right next to him—how did he get there without Jay seeing him move?
Oh, right. Stupid ninjas.
Black furrows his brow. “What do you mean?”
“Lloyd is very sneaky. When I decided to vet him on my own, I found him hard to follow around the city. He makes a great effort to hide his location from potential stalkers.” White stares ahead impassively. “It took months of dedication to uncover his home address. I am one of the only people who knows where he lives. And yet, these new vigilantes somehow abducted him on his way to school. Do you not find it suspicious that they knew which direction he would come from?”
That’s weird, but not for the way White believes. “Lloyd doesn’t go to school after Garmadon attacks. You’re saying they caught him going somewhere he avoids for his own safety?”
“How do you even know they caught him before school?” Black asks. “No witnesses have stepped forward yet. We have no idea when they took him.”
“Blue, please pull up the hostage video.” Jay does as he’s told. He finds the video on a news website and lets it roll until White tells him to stop. In the still frame, Lloyd’s face injuries are displayed clearly for the audience to see. “Those red markings are the beginnings of bruises. They are at most three hours old at this stage of colouration. If the video was released around noon, and we take into account any time spent applying voice filters and scrubbing the video of identifying information, then we may reasonably assume he sustained those injuries early in the morning. He was abducted on his way to school.”
“Like I said, Lloyd doesn’t go to school after attacks.” Jay can’t take his eyes off of Lloyd’s face in the video, wondering just what’s going through his leader’s mind right now. “Did they abduct him from his apartment?”
“Perhaps. However, I passed by this afternoon and there were no signs of forced entry.” White reaches over Jay’s shoulder to tap Lloyd’s face on the screen. “All of this fascinates me. Whether he was abducted at home or outside, these vigilantes have somehow managed to locate his domicile. Lloyd is too smart and too paranoid to have let them track him down. They could not have learned it from him. Do you know who does know his home address?”
Black frowns. “Enlighten me.”
“When I deduced Lloyd’s address, I decided to monitor it for any irregularities. I observed a pattern that you may find interesting: his city block is not targeted during Garmadon attacks. Sharks occasionally enter the area and do their own damage, but they do not fire rockets there. What is the natural conclusion here?”
Jay connects the dots immediately. “Garmadon isn’t targeting the block because he knows that Lloyd and his mom live there.”
“Wait, what are you saying here?” Black says. “Do you think Garmadon sent those vigilantes to kidnap him?”
White shrugs merrily. “Nope! I simply believe that there may be a bigger picture we have yet to see. Out of respect for Lloyd’s privacy, I intend to follow through on this line of thought independently. I presume you will conduct your own investigations, so I must advise that you proceed with caution. We do not know the true depth of the issue. Goodbye!”
With a small wave, White walks away from the computer and leaves the warehouse. Jay and Black exchange a knowing glance—what the hell was that?
Black sighs and puts his head in his hands. “Great. Everyone is being weird but you.” He pulls his hands away and meets Jay’s eyes. “Can I be honest with you about something? Promise you won’t tell the others.”
At this point, Jay is very confident in his ability to keep secrets from the other ninja. “I promise. What is it?”
“Red doesn’t seem worried about Lloyd at all. He’s always been a little more extreme than the rest of us, and it kind of makes me wonder if he had something to do with it.”
That’s a big allegation. “You think Red helped them kidnap Lloyd?”
“Maybe. I mean, look at how he flipped out as soon as White suggested we look into the kidnappers. Doesn’t that seem a little suspicious to you?”
Jay taps his fingers against the computer desk anxiously. “What about what White said about Garmadon? If he’s behind this, Red wouldn’t be cooperating.”
“What if the Sharks are undercover and he doesn’t know? They might have tricked him.”
It’s hard for Jay to take a side here. He knows that Black and Red have had their disagreements in the past—it’s true that Red is a bit of an extremist, and Black chastises him for being too reckless all the time. There’s a lot of tension between the two of them. Black may be right that Red could be pushed to kidnap someone by the right people, but Jay doesn’t believe he would undermine the team like that. Red is too loyal, and especially so to the Green Ninja, who he knows would never approve of hurting Lloyd Garmadon to make a move against Garmadon. It just doesn’t make sense.
At the same time, he’s curious about Black’s train of thought. Undercover Sharks . . .
“You should look into it,” Jay tells him. “I’ll try to find Lloyd on my own. We can cross-reference each other’s notes and see if it brings us anywhere.”
This seems to be exactly what Black wants to hear. He smiles behind his mask—a rare sight on the Black Ninja.
“Sounds good. I’ll check in with you tomorrow. Good luck.”
The Black Ninja leaves. Jay closes his eyes and leans back in his chair.
The team is going in too many directions. If they can’t get it together, then Lloyd will be left to die. They’ll lose the Green Ninja.
Still, Jay wants Black to look into the possibility of undercover Sharks being involved with Lloyd’s abduction. Jay has a feeling that White is correct to assume that Garmadon may have something to do with it.
In that case, he definitely isn’t going to surrender. And the vigilantes aren’t targeting their boss, either.
City authorities won’t step up to help Lloyd. The Secret Ninja force is a big maybe , since their primary focus is defeating Garmadon—why would they stop someone trying to accomplish the same thing?
But here’s the thing: this has to be targeting someone , and there’s only one member of the Secret Ninja Force who openly defends Lloyd Garmadon to anyone who will listen.
If White’s Garmadon theory is true, then Lloyd wasn’t kidnapped to pressure Garmadon. He was kidnapped to lure the Green Ninja into a trap.
Things are about to get messy.
6. GREEN - 3:25 AM
He learns of the plot to kidnap him on his way home from fighting Garmadon’s forces. From a rooftop, he sees a group of masked individuals with weapons standing around a few fallen Shark soldiers. This catches his attention—is this group also fighting back against Garmadon?
The group catches sight of the Green Ninja watching them from the top of a fire escape. They wave him down. Curious, Lloyd reluctantly climbs down from his perch but remains on the second story balcony. He refuses to get close until he knows their intentions.
A masked man with a spiked baseball bat speaks up. The others seem to fall in line behind him—this must be the leader.
“What’s your stance on the kid?” he asks Green, making eye contact so sharp that Lloyd briefly worries he can see through his ninja mask. “Do you still think he’s innocent?”
“We don’t care about the kid,” Lloyd responds automatically. The rest of the his team doesn't like to share their opinions about this kind of thing—not publicly, that is. “Until solid evidence comes up, we’re leaving him alone.”
The leader rolls his eyes. “I’m not asking about the other ninja. I’m asking about you.”
It’s hard to keep a controlled reaction to the line of questioning. Everyone knows how the Green Ninja feels about Lloyd Garmadon. Why bother asking?
“How I feel doesn’t matter,” he decides to say. “Even if he’s a Shark, Garmadon has other spies for us to worry about.”
The leader seems a little displeased, but offers a smile anyways. “We plan on finding out tomorrow. We’re going to kidnap him and demand his father’s surrender. Will you stop us?”
His heart pounds against his chest. “What happens if Garmadon refuses?”
The others exchange looks with each other, like they haven’t considered this to be a possibility. The leader just shrugs. “If the kid is innocent, I guess we’ll just have to let him go.”
Lloyd should feel threatened, maybe even scared. Instead, he feels something a little closer to hope. This group is offering him a chance to clear his name on a silver platter. A full public rejection from his father will be enough to prove his innocence. He’s sure of it.
He doesn’t need much time to mull it over.
“I won’t stop you. He’s all yours.” He lowers his voice to seem more threatening. “But if you don’t let him go at the end, I’m coming after you. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Quickly, Lloyd makes his way back up the fire escape. Once he’s sure he’s out of view, he finally lets himself grin and cheer in excitement.
Sixteen long years of rejection and public hatred are about to come to an end. He might get a little hurt in the process, but in the near future, Lloyd is finally going to be free.
He can’t wait.