Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You all have to promise that you won’t freak out,” was the first thing Kai said as he set his mech down at their base.

Every member of the Secret Ninja Force knew that if Kai was willing to admit he’d messed up then whatever this was was serious.

Kai could be determined and quick witted and strong, but was often almost recklessly impulsive. There was always a fire behind his eyes, bright and almost as sharp as the perpetually gelled spikes of his hair.

“What did you do?” Jay shouted, quickly scrambling out of his mech and up to Kai’s, careful to maintain a relatively safe distance from it. None of them had forgotten about what was referred to as the ‘Shark Rabies Incident’, as much as they had all tried. Zane had literally deleted it from his memory files, but still woke up shouting about ‘the teeth’ some nights.

Jay could also be determined and quick witted and strong, but in small, relatively rare bursts, like the freckles that dotted his nose. He had a lot of energy, but it tended to bounce around and eventually ball up into anxiety. He argued, following events such as the aforementioned ‘Shark Rabies Incident’, and presumably whatever mess Kai had made now, that his nervousness was not undue. “Kai?”

Kai didn’t answer, too busy trying to think up an excuse that didn’t make things sound as bad as they were.

“There appears to be someone in your mech.” Zane commented, pulling off his mask. Underneath, the ninja had quite sharp features, (somewhat literally with metal muscles hiding behind his facial tissue), and if he wasn’t smiling his face occasionally took on an uncanny quality. Somehow this didn’t take away from his occasionally odd but always charming demeanour. Zane’s eyes lit up a faint blue as he stared at the mech. “Scans indicate that they are not conscious.”

“What did you do?” Jay demanded again, voice getting louder the more panicked he became.

“Yeah, Kai. Care to share with the class?” Nya teased, well aware of what he had done. He glared, knowing she was just trying to separate herself from any blame that could come from this.

Nya could be easygoing or as rough as rapids, flowing with the situation and getting the job done. There was somewhat of an untouchably cool quality about her, despite the fact that she was an open book to the other ninja. She was the kind of person you saw at school and wished you could be friends with, but never bought up the courage to do more than compliment the blue streaks in her hair, or her piercings.

Kai and Nya were siblings. It was clear enough in the warm tan in their skin and the almost identical slopes of their noses, but even without seeing their faces you could hear it in how they spoke to each other. That was why, despite having secret identities, the whole city knew that the Red and Cyan ninja were related.

“What,” Jay was shouting even louder now, almost hysterical, “did you do?”

It seemed that this was loud enough to actually make Cole notice something was happening, and he finally pulled off his headphones, jumping down from his vehicle. Everyone gathered around Kai, eyeing his mech’s cockpit suspiciously.

Cole also shared that unspeakably cool quality, but more so because, to people who didn’t put in the effort to know him, he could come across as aloof and uncaring. It was probably the headphones he wore almost constantly, or the dark sharp lines of his eyebrows. In reality, he was tough and strong, with fierce morals and a soft heart. He could be very dependable when he wanted to be, which was usually only for his fellow Ninja.

In this instance, though, he had not been paying any attention to the conversation, and couldn’t really be bothered to piece it together through social cues. He was a recovering theatre kid, after all.

Kai knew he was running out of time for excuses.

Cole briefly tried to gauge the situation simply by staring, before giving up. “What’s happening, exactly?”

“I swear you’re gonna lose your hearing one day,” Kai retorted.

“You can’t change the conversation that easily,” Nya retorted. FSM, Kai seriously regretted inviting his sister to join the team.

Cole, apparently completely oblivious to the situation - and to his teammates’ shouts of ‘no!’, proving Kai’s point about his hearing - climbed up to the cockpit and yanked it open.

“Uhhhh, Kai?”

“Yes…?”

“There’s a guy in here.”

“I know that.”

“A guy with fangs!”

Everyone else stared at Kai.

“You didn’t,” Jay’s eyes were wider than Kai thought possible. “Please tell me you didn’t!”

“A guy who I’m pretty sure is Lord Garmadon’s son!” Cole slammed the cockpit shut again, spinning back around to face Kai, eyebrows set in angry lines.

(To answer Jay: He had.)

“It was an accident!” He cried. He was never going to live this down. “I didn’t realise he was his son until too late!”

“So you were willing to kidnap an ordinary person?” Zane quizzed, tilting his head. “This is highly illegal, and not within my perimeters for ninja-like behaviour.”

“It’s not kidnapping-“

“It looks like kidnapping,” Zane argued.

“Kai, you literally kidnapped him,” Nya said. “I watched it happen.”

“You- what? And yet you did nothing? I thought he was just some injured guy! I was gonna take him to the hospital! Before I noticed the, uh, you know...”

“Fangs and glowing red eyes?” Nya’s voice was deadpan. Kai thought she was awfully calm for someone who had apparently noticed him kidnapping the guy but hadn’t stopped him.

“I panicked, ok?”

“I can’t go to jail!” Jay fretted, pacing. “My parents would kill me! Do they have comics in jail? I can’t miss the next issue of Starfire! The last one ended on a cliffhanger!”

“Most prisons will allow soft cover books like comics or magazines. However, you would be unlikely to get them up to date, as there would be delays in shipping due to security protocols.” Zane tried to reassure him. It didn’t work, as Jay looked even more alarmed.

“Delayed?!”

“Maybe we can just return him?” Nya suggested. She seemed a little too amused with the whole situation, and Kai was seriously considering rearranging her perfect rainbow-ordered watercolours when they got home. Maybe switching the lids of her felt-tips around. Putting the green on the red would really mess with her, because they were opposite colours that didn’t go together.

“Return Jay? Or the guy I accidentally kidnapped?”

“Obviously the guy!”

“Right,” Kai’s jokes were unappreciated in his time. “If we’re, like, really fast, maybe no one will have noticed that he was gone?” He looked to Zane as the well-known holder of the brain cell, hoping he might help to convince the others.

No such luck.

“That seems unlikely.”

“He’s the son of Lord Garmadon!” Jay shouted. “Do you really think-”

“Students,” a voice came out from behind the warehouse door. Everybody froze, eyes flickering towards it, then back to Kai. He frantically shook his head, pleading silently with them not to say anything.

“Act natural!” He hissed, and, because they all cared about him when it came down to it (even if he had done something excessively stupid), they all scrambled to do such ordinary, unsuspicious things as reading a comic upside down, inspecting a plastic house-plant, tying the laces on the sandled feet of their gi and stirring an empty bowl with a hairbrush, all with forced grins on their faces. Really, the only person who looked remotely ‘natural’ was Cole, who had pulled his headphones back on, but the effect was rather taken away by the fact that he was inexplicably on top of Kai’s mech.

The warehouse door opened slowly enough for Wu to stare at them for ten whole seconds, the only sound that of grating metal that Jay was supposed to have oiled three weeks ago. Said ninja awkwardly turned a page of his upside down comic to avoid Wu’s eye contact. He was in too deep to flip it back around.

“Ninja,” Wu greeted. He seemed to debate whether to mention their strange behaviour. Maybe Kai had suddenly become uncharacteristically lucky, and Wu was so old that he had forgotten what teenagers did and might assume their forced smiles and odd choices of pastimes were normal. “You should be training.”

Thank the First Spinjitzu Master.

“Yes!”

“Of course!”

“On it!”

They all scrambled to the centre of the warehouse and immediately started warm-up stretches.

Master Wu eyed them suspiciously. “I appreciate your newfound enthusiasm. However, I am concerned that it is not being fostered for the right reasons.”

“What makes you say that?” Kai asked, making sure his stretches were edging him closer to the left and further away from where his mech was parked. Wu’s eyes tracked his movements very precisely.

“I am a ninja master, Kai. I can tell when something is off.”

They all held their breaths (even Zane, who technically did not need to breathe, though he quite enjoyed it. ‘Breathing’ had even been listed on his CV when he applied to be a ninja, despite the fact that it is, in fact, not a hobby or even really a qualification, and that Master Wu had never asked for any such documents.)

“You are all supposed to be at school now that the attack is over.” Everyone let out a collective sigh of relief. A ‘knowledge is power and school is good for you’ lecture was far preferable to whatever it was that might happen after he found out that they’d kidnapped the son of their sworn enemy.  Even if it was an accident. “Mental strength is just as important as physical strength, students. There may come a time when you cannot beat an opponent in a physical battle, and must outwit them.”

Then again, was this all really worth it? Kai glanced at Cole, who was discreetly checking the time on his phone. If this speech was even half as long as the one post Shark-Rabies incident then there was no way they’d be back at school on time anyway.

“Knowledge comes in many forms. Knowledge of history, current events, fighting techniques; they all matter. As does emotional intelligence. As you all know, the best way to defeat an enemy is-” he gave them all a look. Even Zane was forced to shrug, lost, and Kai was pretty sure the guy had near constant access to Google. Wu sighed, pressing a hand to his temple under his trademark hat. “...To make them your friend. Which takes great emotional intelligence. You must be able to empathise with another’s point of view.”

None of this meant much to Kai. Why would Wu train them all to kick butt if he wanted them to give Garmadon a hug, or whatever? He didn’t think he would ever care about any villain, be it Garmadon, his son, anyone.

Not that he’d say that to Wu’s face. He did not want to be stuck on gutter duty again. The ninja master’s voice faded in and out of Kai’s attention as he droned on.

“-matter if they see things differently to you, everyone has something in common. You ninja all seem very different. Lightning, water, earth, ice, fire and green?”

“Green?” Jay blurted, confused. Wu ignored him.

“They are all so different-”

“Water and ice are, like, the same thing,” Nya whispered. Wu ignored her too.

“- but all fit together perfectly. It took more than one kind of strength to form this team.”

There was a sound, quiet but distinct during Wu’s dramatic trademarked ‘let that wisdom sink in’ pause. It was the sound of someone moving around in a mech, clothes scuffing against the metal floor behind the seat.

Wu spun back around from where he’d started looking off into the distance very wisely and dramatically.

Kai let out a loud cough, hoping to cover it in a way that wasn’t suspicious. It might have worked, if his teammates hadn’t had the exact same idea.

“Wow, there must be something in the air here, huh?” Nya offered after a solid three seconds of awkward silence.

“Oh yeah, wow,” Kai agreed, while Cole nodded enthusiastically and Jay added another cough for good measure.

“I do not sense anything-“ began Zane.

“Anything safe!” Kai offered, knowing Zane meant the best but also that they could not, under any circumstance, let Wu see the guy they had just kidnapped. “You should really leave so we can, uh, air the place out.”

Wu did not look very convinced, but eventually the team managed to guide him out the door. Master Wu often complained about their ability to work as a team, but there was nothing like the threat of his wrath to get them all to collaborate.

“I need to make a trip,” Wu told them as they accompanied him to his boat. “It is urgent. I trust you will keep up your training while I am gone. Nya is in charge.”

“What?” Kai shouted, forgetting that they didn’t exactly have time to argue. “But she’s the youngest!”

“And the smartest,” Nya countered.

“No way she’s smarter than Zane,” Jay pointed out.

“There is more than one way to be intelligent-” Wu began again, and all of the Ninja were quick to shut up and accept Nya’s temporary leadership. They waved at the boat from the deck for as long as Zane approximated he could still see them, before all rushing back into the warehouse and to the red mech.

It was still shut, thank the First Spinjitzu Master, but they had all heard something move earlier, and who knew how long it would continue to hold the son of Lord Garmadon?

“Ok, who’s gonna check?” Kai asked, and then startled when he realised all of his teammates were looking at him expectantly. “What? Why me?”

“Because it’s your turn,” said Jay, who was roped into this sort of thing too often.

“Because we all looked at you,” said Zane, who had spent a long time studying such social interactions and was glad to put his observations to use.

“Because you’re the one who caused this mess,” said Cole, who could actually be quite sensible if and when Zane relinquished the brain cell.

“Because I’m in charge,” said Nya, who was in charge.

“… Doesn’t seem very fair.”

“Why don’t we put it to a vote?” Zane suggested.

Cole decided to take a less democratic approach, shouting “Bags not it!” Quickly followed by the rest of the team before Kai had a chance to even blink.

“Traitors.”

Carefully, Kai made his way up his mech, hesitating at the cockpit.

He could barely believe he’d thought he was just some injured guy when he’d caught sight of him, even in the heat of battle. Sure, he looked quite peaceful now, what with his rather small frame, a probably misleadingly young-looking face and hair that looked like it got in his eyes too much.

But the guy had fangs, for FSM’s sake! And his clothes looked weird, with an armoured chest-plate with Garmadon’s symbol on the back, nothing a civilian would wear. And, before he’d hit his head, his eyes had been a bright, burning red, a perfect replica of his father’s.

That was how Kai had known who he was, once his brain actually caught up with him halfway to Ninjago City Hospital.

For the last decade or so there had been rumours about Garmadon’s son constantly floating around. Though, now that Kai thought about it, very few people claimed to have actually seen him. It was always heard from a friend of a friend. Supposedly was all too important to the Dark Lord to go out and fight in battle most of the time. He’d apparently joined Garmadon’s ranks years ago, and was his right hand man. Some rumours said he was the brains of the whole operation, and as someone who had actually met and spoken to Lord Garmadon… let’s just as Kai could well believe that he wasn’t able to come up with half the stuff he did alone. Others said he simply carried out his father’s every will like a robot, or that he was a spoiled brat who reaped the benefits of Lord Garmadon's many thieving trips. One rumour even circulated that he wasn’t Lord Garmadon’s son, but his clone instead, trained to become just like his older self so that Lord Garmadon could keep trying to take over the city even after he died of old age.

Even if the rumours changed a lot depending on who you asked, everyone knew the man was probably just as ruthless as his father, if not more so. Apparently the whole three arms and horns thing wasn’t true, and Kai wasn’t about to get close enough to move his hair and check if he had pointed ears, but no one could mistake those red eyes and sharp canines as belonging to anyone else.

(Except Kai, apparently.)

“He’s still knocked out,” Kai whispered, as if Jay’s shouting earlier wouldn’t have woken him up if it was possible.

“He was knocked out?” Zane asked. “Perhaps I should provide medical attention.”

“What? You can’t go near him!” Jay panicked. “Haven’t you heard all the rumours? What if he’s faking?”

“I was built to protect others when they cannot protect themselves. If he is injured, I must help him, even if he is our enemy.”

Reluctantly, they all agreed, although Jay did not look happy about it. In all honesty, Kai wasn’t either, but even he didn’t want the guy to die or something. If nothing else, Lord Garmadon would be sure to enact his revenge for that.

Eventually, they managed to get Cole, as the strongest of the group, to carry and restrain him simultaneously as they carried him into the little dorm-style room they had tucked away in the warehouse. There was a little kitchen downstairs, in addition to enough bunk beds for each of them upstairs. They’d set it up after they first became ninjas the year prior and realised they might be spending a lot of time at their new base. They thought the rooms had maybe been an office overlooking the warehouse before that, but none of them were sure because Wu had been unclear about the building’s origins.

(As he was with most things until they sprung out of the shadows to kill them, or whatever.)

They even had a bathroom with a shower, and Wu gave them money to keep the kitchen well stocked, which all of them were grateful for after training or a particularly bad battle. Shopping usually fell to Zane, who could be trusted with both money and food.

Thankfully, because bunks came in pairs, they had a bed spare, the one with the green bed sheets. They used a set of chains that were supposed to keep Nya’s motorbike safe from thieves or really bad weather to keep him restrained by one of his wrists while Zane examined his head, peeling back his eyelids and shining a light in them.

“He does not appear to have sustained major injuries, but he will likely have a severe headache when he wakes up, and should avoid bright lights, sudden movement and caffeine, as they could exacerbate the issue.”

“No worries, he’ll be out of here by then, and we can forget this ever happened!” Cole said, far too optimistically.

“Like the [REDACTED] incident?” Zane clarified.

Everyone shuddered, knowing exactly what the nindroid was trying to refer to.

“…Yeah. So, where are we gonna dump him?”

They all turned to Kai, who appeared deep in thought.

“Kai?”

“Huh?”

“Kai, you have that look on your face,” Nya remarked, “The one you make when you’re about to do something really stupid.”

“I was just thinking-”

“That’s new!”

“Kai? Thinking?”

“I wasn’t aware that was within your skillset, Kai.”

“Hey!” Kai wished his friends weren’t such comedians. “Just… Well, what if we… didn’t return him?”

“What?!”

“Ok, hear me out! He’s the son of Lord Garmadon, right?”

They all nodded in agreement, with varying levels of distrust and confusion.

“So he’ll want him back,” Kai explained, “if we play our cards right, he might even agree to stop the attacks, even hand himself over!”

Everyone mulled that over. As was often the case, Zane organised his thoughts first. It probably helped that he could literally put them in folders.

“It’s one thing to accidentally kidnap someone,” Zane began, “but quite another to hold them for ransom. This could cause him undue harm and stress, and seems like a dangerous course of action.”

“Plus, he could be, like, super dangerous!” Jay reminded them, glancing in the guy’s direction suspiciously as if he might wake up, break through his chain and start attacking them at any moment, in spite of how suspiciously small and peaceful he looked.

“But think of the good it could do for Ninjago! One tiny bit of very minor kidnapping for the safety of an entire city! Cole, you’re with me on this, right?”

“I mean…” Cole looked conflicted. “It would save a lot of people from being hurt. And, you know, our time. And rebuilding.”

“See! Less construction! Imagine the drive to school not being redirected due to construction every day! Imagine your favourite noodle stand not having to relocate every other week!”

“Master Wu did say we needed to start fighting smarter, not harder…” Nya mused, still looking not entirely convinced. Kai pounced in it, counting it as a win.

“Nya agrees! Three against two! And she’s in charge, so…”

“Sure, it’s fine that I’m the one in charge when it helps win your argument,” Nya grumbled.

“He said we needed to use physical, mental and emotional intelligence to fight. We do not want to hurt this person in any way. We also strive to maintain our anonymity. This course of action does not seem intelligent at all, Kai.”

“We’d wear our masks, obviously,” Kai said, though in all honesty he hadn’t thought about that before Zane had mentioned it. Everyone quickly pulled their cowls up. “And we wouldn’t hurt him! I can understand why you don’t want to do this, but this isn't just some random guy. This is the son of the evil dictator-to-be! His right hand man! Maybe even his evil-er clone!”

This seemed to be enough for Zane, who, although he still looked hesitant, nodded in agreement. Everyone turned to Jay.

“No! Absolutely not! What if he, like, escapes and steals all our mechs while we’re at school?”

“We’ll take turns watching him! Besides, it’s basically the weekend. It won’t take Garmadon long to notice he’s gone, this should all be over by Monday,” Kai spoke with the conviction of someone who had done all this before with zero consequences, despite the fact that this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Jay scowled, but Kai could tell that he was scared, rather than angry. “… Promise I won’t have to watch him alone.”

“Deal!” He said, glad when Jay finally smiled. He gave him a good natured shove. “Wasn’t so hard!”

“Alright… I might as well start packing my bags for prison right now…”

“Hey! Like I said, this isn’t even a proper kidnapping. For all we know, Garmadon will have already noticed that his son is gone and will already be finding a way to contact us.”

(If only things were that simple.)

Chapter Text

Apparently Lord Garmadon had not noticed that his son slash maybe evil-er clone was gone. It turned out to be extremely boring just watching a guy sleep, even if he was the son of their sworn enemy. By the time school would have actually ended the ninja were getting extremely restless.

“Perhaps we should devise a schedule for watching him, so that the rest of us can continue on with our days,” Zane suggested after Cole had to be shaken awake for the third time, even though he was listening to rock music at volumes not recommended for human ears.

“If some of us are staying overnight we need clothes,” Nya reminded them “and excuses for our parents.”

“My dad has a concert tonight,” Cole admitted, which meant he couldn’t snitch on them if someone’s parents called and asked if they were over. Not that Kai and Nya’s parents ever did, but it was always good for a ninja to be prepared.

“Ok, so we say we’re staying at Cole’s?”

Eventually it was agreed that Kai would take the first shift, which would last at least until Zane had had dinner - his dad was big on ‘quality family time’ - after which they would share the overnight shift between them. It was agreed Zane should try to be there when he woke up. Not only was he almost as strong as Cole, but he had the most medical training in case the head injury was worse than they thought. Or, you know, if the guy went crazy and attacked one of them right off the bat.

“How come I have to go first?” Kai moaned, but was quickly shut down when literally everyone reminded him that he was the one to kidnap Lord Garmadon Junior in the first place.

“I doubt he will wake up before 9,” Zane assured him as they said goodbye. “And Nya will be back quickly with your clothes.”

“Don’t go through my stuff!” Kai reminded her. He had coupons for half off at Chen’s noddles hidden under his mattress that she would 100% steal if she were to find them.

“No promises!”

So Kai was left alone with the son of his sworn enemy. And the worst part of all was that he’d forgotten to get Cole to help him lug the gaming system upstairs.

And First Spinjitzu Master, he was bored. Like, started counting the amount of beams there were on the celling kinda bored.

Kai’s phone battery was dwindling, and he needed it to call someone if the guy woke up unexpectedly. He would just charge it, but cables were constantly in short supply among the ninja and if he kept one in the warehouse it would get snatched up before he could blink. He had to wait until Nya showed up, which could take hours yet.

FSM, maybe Master Wu was right. He was always nagging about how ninja needed patience and endurance, but Kai usually tuned him out if he didn’t get to the point within the first couple of minutes.

… Nothing bad could really happen in the ten or so minutes it would take to carry the TV and gaming system upstairs, right?

Kai had just unplugged the gaming system and was searching the couch cushions for the controllers when the noise started.

It was the clanging of metal against metal, followed quickly by a thud not unlike the sound of somebody falling to the floor.

Oh no, oh dear, oh FSM, Kai thought frantically as he dropped the couch cushions and bolted toward the stairs, please, please still be asleep.

Kai was never that lucky though, was he?

The guy had fallen to the floor - hopefully not headfirst, as it was probably a bad idea for him to experience any more head trauma today - and was twisted at an odd angle with how his arm was chained to the bed. He was evidently pulling at it quite hard, as the red ring forming around his wrist suggested, but the chain was almost as strong as vengestone (Nya loved her motorcycle a lot, maybe even more than she loved her own brother) and the bunk was screwed into the wall. Unless being related to Garmadon gave him Cole-levels of strength the guy wasn’t gonna get anywhere.

What did startle Kai a little bit was the absolute terror in his beady red eyes. Sure, he was kidnapped, but he was also a Bad Guy. Capitals, because of how much of a serious, actual Bad Guy he was. The idea of him so openly expressing fear made Kai falter at the top of the stairs, watching, almost entranced.

The guy continued to struggle, pulling even as the chain around his wrist was obviously cutting into his skin, baring his pointed teeth in frustration.

“You’re not gonna get out of this that easily, son of Garmadon.” FSM that sounded so much cooler in Kai’s head. He really hoped the hesitation wasn’t as clear in his voice as it felt, because that would totally ruin it. He wished he knew the guy’s actual name, calling him ‘the guy’ wasn’t nearly as intimidating, and ‘son of Garmadon’ was going to get old fast.

Immediately the young man stopped struggling, body going ramrod straight as he made direct eye contact with Kai. It took all of the red ninja’s willpower not to flinch away from their unnatural burning glare. He was glad the mask covered his mouth, or his fear might have been obvious. (He hoped it wasn’t obvious.)

Oddly, the guy seemed to calm a little upon catching sight of him, raising his eyebrows. Kai tried not to be offended by that - the Red Ninja should be a scary sight for the son of his sworn enemy, especially one that he fought and defeated on a near daily basis. He should be scared, not the other way around!

“We aren’t going to hurt you if you don’t hurt us,” Kai promised, regardless of the fact the guy was apparently not scared of him anyway. They were ninja after all. “We’re only going to use you as ransom against your father.”

The young man’s face slackened, eyebrows creasing together in clear confusion. Carefully, he shifted himself closer to the spot where he was chained so he didn’t have to keep his arm suspended in the air, and slowly rubbed his wrist with his free hand, the metal clinking together with the motion.

“You-“ he began, but his voice was hoarse, crackling between the letters. Carefully, he cleared his throat and started again. “You’re going to do what?”

Kai found himself frozen once more. Sure, the guy looked young, but Garmadon had been alive for hundreds of years or something, and his skin looked great. (Like, Kai had actually asked him what moisturiser he used, kinda great. He’d regretted it when he gotten a starfish to the face, though.) He’d kind of assumed his kid was the same. But he sounded just like that. A kid, maybe near Nya’s age. Maybe younger.

It wasn’t time to get distracted though. It was a ploy, probably, to gain Kai’s trust.

“We’re going to use you to stop your father from attacking the city and endangering innocent lives.”

“Me?” He asked, sounding a little incredulous.

And suddenly Kai felt his stomach drop. He would never live it down if he’d somehow kidnapped some other guy with fangs and glowing red eyes. He briefly entertained the idea of re-kidnapping the guy, so the other Ninja would think the son of Garmadon had escaped, before his brain caught up with him. Best to check, first.

“You are the son of Garmadon, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he agreed immediately, with a smile like it was something to be proud of. Possible fatal error forgotten, Kai breathed a sigh of half relief and half annoyance. He supposed pride was better than him lying about it.

“Okay…So of course we’d use you.”

The guy seemed to think about it for a second too long before nodding. “Okay then.”

“… That’s it?” Kai knew it was probably stupid to keep talking - he should be calling Cole or Zane or Nya or even Jay, telling them the guy was awake and they should get back here immediately. But. Well. It seemed like an odd reaction. And when else might he get the chance to talk to the son of their greatest enemy unimpeded?

“What do you mean ‘that’s it’?”

“We’ve kidnapped you and all you have to say is okay?”

“Sorry, did you want me to be a bit more upset?” He asked, sounding genuine, tilting his head like a confused animal. “You said you wouldn’t hurt me, and even if I don't believe it there isn’t much I can do about it.”

“I… guess…?”

“And it’s not like it’ll really work, anyway.”

“You think you can escape? I have the other ninja on call, we’d have you recaptured in an instant.”

He hummed noncommittally, in a way that didn’t quite sound like disbelief but Kai was sure wasn’t agreement either.

He continued to stand in the doorway, staring at the guy he’d kidnapped, wondering if maybe this was more of a mistake than he’d first realised. Why hadn’t he let Jay talk him out of this one? This was an actual crime. Like a crime crime.

“So… are you going to interrogate me? Or just stare?”  The guy asked, starting to shift a little under Kai’s gaze, hand still rubbing at his wrist carefully, though surely it couldn’t still hurt now. He tried not to feel bad for hurting the guy. “Most people just get on with it.”

Kai suddenly felt a spike of indignation at his tone. How could someone quite literally tied up sound so condescending?

“Of course,” Kai said, though he’d planned nothing of the sort. “This is… an intimidation tactic.”

“Right… I’ll let you know if it starts working.”

Kai scrambled to think. It was hard to be intimidating when the guy you’re talking to is sitting cross legged on the floor looking like a child about to learn about the times tables for the first time (albeit an annoying child). It just made him feel like a bully.

If anything, it felt like he was looking at five year old Nya when she was pretending not to be scared for her first day of school. He’d already been going for a full year, coming home sniffing angrily about bullies and teachers pestering him on why his parents didn’t pick him up, and he hadn’t realised that she was worried the same would happen to her. (He’d insisted on walking her in that day - for his benefit of course, not her’s. Or at least, that’s what he’d told her.)

But this wasn’t his little sister. This was a son of a warlord bent on taking over Ninjago City and terrorising its residents.

“How old are you?” He asked, figuring it was a normal enough question to ask until he thought of something better, and it wouldn’t matter if the guy decided to lie about it. Until he pulled a weird face.

“Umm… it’s kind of… complicated?”

“What kind of an answer is that?” He shrugged in lieu of a proper response. “Okay… uh… are you really a clone?”

“… No? I don’t think so. Wow, that would be kinda cool though.”

“Then… Why do you help Garmadon?”

He scoffed. “What do you mean ‘why’? Why wouldn’t I?”

Now Kai was getting somewhere. He could feel the anger bubbling in his gut, overtaking the feeling of wrongness that he was steadily ignoring. This was a conversation he could shout his way through, which seemed as good an option as any.

“Because he’s evil! He’s a monster!”

“Oh yeah?” The guy’s eyes glowed even brighter as he grinned a too wide smile, fangs bared, and fear pulled Kai’s heart to a stuttering stop. “And what does that make me?”

There was the sound of metal hitting the floor and Garmadon’s son leapt to his feet, fangs bared, hands outstretched, ending in claws that Kai was sure had never been there before and -

And Kai ran and slammed the door behind him with a very un-ninja-like scream.

Chapter Text

“Kai, why are you cowering at the bottom of the stairs?” A robotic voice broke Kai out of his panic. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, exactly, just that he didn’t think he’d blinked as he stared up at the door at the top of the stairs, internally begging the guy not to come barrelling out and kill him with those inhuman teeth and bright red eyes and  -

“I’m not cowering!” (He was definitely cowering.) “It was… a tactical retreat. He got out of the chain! I was about to call-“

But Zane was already rushing upstairs with determination that made Kai feel more than a little stupid.

It wasn’t his fault, ok?

There was just something about those red eyes, the conviction in his voice as he declared that he was evil, that he was happy to be a monster, sending alarms ringing in Kai’s head, and he really, really hadn’t been ready for the chain to come off. It had all been too much.

He took a deep breath, thankful that Zane was the one to find him - with any luck he wouldn’t have realised Kai’s behaviour would be something worth bringing up to the others. He did not feel like getting made fun of for this, not when his teeth were still on edge.

By the time he made it back upstairs Zane had cornered Garmadon’s son and was trying to reason with him, because of course he was.

“It would be much easier if you allow me to chain you back to the bed, as it is the safest way to contain you that will cause minimal harm and still allow movement, such as eating and comfortable sleeping arrangements. We have much more comfortable shackles available now.”

The blonde bared his teeth in an obvious attempt at intimidation. Unfortunately for him, this didn’t work as well as it did on Kai; Zane, for whatever reason, seemed to interpret it as a smile, grinning in response.

He dropped the snarl quickly.

“I’m going to leave now. I won’t mention this to my father or anything, so no harm done,” which, yeah right, but Kai could at least appreciate the effort.

The guy was eyeing up the window way too much for Kai’s liking, like he was trying to gauge how far down the drop may be, so he edged himself between it and the guy, glaring him down.

“I’m sure this is all very confusing for you, combined with your recent head trauma, but we promise that we mean you no harm.” Zane reassured him. Oops. Kai had forgotten about him being hit in the head, but now that Zane mentioned it he had winced a bit when Kai was shouting. (…Served him right.) “You personally have no legally viable criminal records with the city. The only records of you are a birth certificate and a brief retracted ‘missing persons’ report.” Kai blinked at that. He’d have to ask Zane about it later - how exactly does the son of a warlord go missing and nobody hears about it? Though, he was still in their base after several hours, so… “Therefore it is highly unlikely that you would experience jail time or similar consequences if you cooperated with us.”

“Cooperated?” He scoffed, and ran his tounge along his sharp teeth. Kai did not wince, thank you very much.

“Yes. Cooperate; work together. Or, if you prefer, we can offer you up as ransom to encourage your father to stop terrorising the city, Lloyd.”

The guy - Lloyd, apparently - went ramrod straight, eyes finally peeling off the window and snapping to Zane with a fierce red intensity. His eyebrows were dipped in fear.

“How do you almost know my name?”

“I am not sure what you mean by ‘almost’, but it is in several public records.” Lloyd’s shoulder’s dropped, and he returned to his usual low level annoyance. “However, if you prefer to be called something else, it is entirely possible to for us to-“

“It’s pronounced Luh-Loyd.”

Kai couldn’t help it. He burst into laughter.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”

Lloyd’s red eyes continued to glare, “Like ‘Red Ninja’ is any better!”

Kai’s laughter only increased in volume.

“You- you think my name is -“ he kept having to stop to gasp for breath “-is ‘Red Ninja’? That’s just my title! My name is K-“

Zane slapped his hand over Kai’s mouth. It was cold and sudden enough - even through the fabric - to make Kai stop in his tracks. “It would be advisable not to reveal your identity to our sworn enemy’s son.”

Kai’s face flushed as red as his mask. Even redder when he caught Lloyd’s (and he did mean Lloyd, not Luh-loyd, because that was just stupid) grin.

“Alright, K.” He giggled, like this was all just some stupid game.

Kai felt himself getting angrier, something hot bubbling in his core. “Can’t we just tie him back up already?!”

“I was trying to reason with him. A mutual decision may lead to much better outcomes for both parties.” Zane smiled at Lloyd, like they were old friends. Lloyd smiled back in turn, though much more viciously, showing off his teeth again. Kai repressed a shiver.

“Well, he’s a monster and a brat, so he can’t be reasoned with.”

They did get a proper shackle on him eventually. It took Zane holding Lloyd’s shoulders down firmly while Kai put them on, having to watch Lloyd grin the whole time face on. They looped it around the bed frame again, deciding they’d just have to undo it when he needed the bathroom. Kai had no idea how he’d gotten out of the first lot and didn’t want to take any chances. He was pretty sure the guy had only let them put on the shackles because he wanted to creep Kai out by looking him in the eyes the whole time.

He was actually scary, ok? It wasn’t Kai’s fault! There was just something about this whole thing that rubbed him the wrong way, and it had to be because Lloyd was creepy and annoying, because what else could it be?

“Let us know if these are hurting you. We do not wish to cause you any harm.” Zane assured Lloyd, who gave him a weird look.

“Uh huh, that’s how kidnapping works.” He was smiling as he said this, of course. Kai pulled a face back, but he didn’t seem to care. “Have you guys seriously never done this before?”

“No. And we do not desire to harm you,” Zane repeated. “We only wish to stop your father from hurting others.”

“If you say soo-” Lloyd said, letting his voice trail off disbelievingly.

“I do say so,” Zane agreed, smiling broadly and unmaliciously.

“I’m sure...”

“So am I.”

“Well-“

“Well! This conversation will literally never end if I don’t stop it, like, right now,” Kai announced, getting bored of the pointless back and forth.

There was a brief silence. Kai felt rather awkward standing in the middle of the room in the complete quiet, staring at Lloyd sitting casually on the bed in a pose that could not possibly be comfortable if he had any bones at all.

Lloyd seemed to decide he should be the one to break the silence.

“You guys are, like, really bad at this. You didn’t even check me for weapons.”

“Do you have any weapons?” Zane enquired, but Lloyd just shook his head.

“No, but asking isn’t good enough.” His tone made it sound like he thought Kai and Zane were little kids, and that he was trying to teach them that gravity meant you went down, or not to pick up possibly venomous snakes - something that was obvious to everyone else, and only they were silly enough not to understand. “If I did have weapons, you guys would have been doomed! You should be more careful! Next time, check the victim’s pockets.”

Kai didn’t know what to make of any of this. Next time?

“White Ninja, could you message Cyan and see if she’s got my stuff yet?”

Lloyd nodded sagely. “See, now you’re getting it! Code names. Very important if you don’t want the kidnap-ee to know who kidnapped them, K.” Kai glared.

“Of course, Red,” he made a show of getting out his phone, even though he could text without it. Zane’s status as a nindroid was not particularly well hidden, but not exactly public knowledge either. It was better to keep their enemies guessing. “Message sent.”

“You didn’t type anything.”

Zane blinked, unused to being called out.

“I will send the message, I meant. Now.”

Lloyd laughed. “You guys are so bad at this! It’s almost not as fun.” He considered. “Or maybe it’s even more fun…?”

“Like you could do any better!” Kai couldn’t help but shoot back.

“Red, it is best not to argue with him. That did not go well for you before,” Zane reminded Kai, typing out a message with exaggerated movements before putting his phone back into his pocket, the only sound a clinking of the keys hitting each other. Lloyd smiled devilishly. Kai got the feeling he wasn’t fooled by Zane’s performance.

“You’re talking to the son of Lord Garmadon,” Lloyd reminded him.

“You’ve kidnapped people before?” Zane asked. “I might have to update your criminal record, as currently your only recorded crime is ‘Being the son of the Dark Lord’, which I do not believe constitutes grounds for an arrest.”

“Well…” Lloyd’s grin slipped a little, and he finally tore his unblinking red eyes away from Kai and onto the floor, looking ashamed. “Not yet. I will! I just… haven’t got ‘round to it.”

Kai laughed. He wasn’t sure if it was at the absurdity of that statement or just shock at how he seemed to think that was a bad thing.

“Maybe we should be giving you tips,” Kai teased.

“It’s easy though, right? Just getting kidnapped, but in reverse.”

“Yeah, but if we’re bad at kidnapping, how can you have enough experience for that?” Kai smirked. “Didn’t think about that, did you?”

Lloyd just stared at him.

“I don’t… what?” He seemed to think over what Kai had said, puzzling it out like he was the one saying the most insane things imaginable, not Lloyd himself. His eyes widened as it seemed to click. “… Wait, you think this is my first time being kidnapped?”

“Yes?”

“I would hope so.”

Lloyd burst into laughter. “You guys really are stupid. I know I said my age is complicated but I didn’t mean I was, like, a baby!”

“What do you mean, your age is ‘complicated’?” Zane enquired at the same time Kai asked;

“What? Are you saying you’ve been kidnapped before?”

“Obviously. And yeah. I’m sure you can scan me or whatever to guess my age? Or are you still pretending to be human?”

“I am human.”

“Your eyes are glowing blue.”

“And yours are glowing red.”

“Oh!” Lloyd rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, I didn’t change them back! I was trying to scare K. Distract him to get the shackles off. I think it worked!” When he opened his eyes, they had become a much more muted reddish brown.

(Kai couldn’t help but feel just a little relieved.)

“And I never pretended to be human, unlike you.”

“How did you do that?” Kai asked, wondering if he maybe did have a tail and horns, like some of the rumours said, and was just hiding them. Maybe he even had the extra arms, too.

“I assume that it is due to his parentage. I’m far more interested in your age. May I scan you?”

“Go ahead! I’ve never had that happen when I was kidnapped before.”

“I feel like we should revisit the whole ‘you've been kidnapped before’ situation,” Kai commented. He didn’t like the guy, but that didn’t mean it was right for him to get kidnapped. And sure, maybe Kai was doing that right now, but that was different. He was a ninja, he was doing it for a good reason. And, you know, it had been an accident at first.

“It’s just part of living in the volcano, you get used to it. That reminds me - it’s freezing here!” He shivered exaggeratedly. 

“No it’s not.” Kai rolled his eyes. Leave it to the guy they'd kidnapped to complain about every little thing. Zane, apparently feeling a little more sympathetic than the Red Ninja, walked past Lloyd to the window and pulled it closed. It had barely been open. Lloyd smiled anyway, presumably as if in thanks. FSM knew the brat wouldn’t stoop to saying it out loud.

“K, you have fire powers. I doubt you’d be cold, you could just warm yourself up. And the robot over here has ice, so if he was cold it would be pretty useless.”

Kai couldn’t argue with that logic. Though he was more than a little annoyed that knowledge of their powers had apparently spread so quickly after they’d discovered them. They hadn’t even really had a chance to use them in battle, and yet the guy who no hadn’t been seen and apparently lived literally under a volcano knew all about it.

“I’m human,” Zane repeated, immediately seeming less legitimate when he let a blue beam shoot from his eyes, scanning Lloyd up and down. He moved a little closer to Zane in a surprisingly helpful fashion, bringing himself more into the beam. His eyes reflected the light in a way that reminded Kai of a cat. A creepy, demonic cat, but a cat nonetheless. “You are right. It is complicated.”

“And what does that mean, exactly?” Kai asked.

“Well, his records suggest he should have just turned 13. He appears to be closer to 15 or 16, based on his development. It is hard to be sure. And yet his dental records, minus the anomalies, match the earlier age, more or less. It is difficult to determine, and his skeletal structure is very different from our own.”

“See! What did I say? Complicated.”

Kai gaped. “You’re 13?”

“I mean, maybe in my brain? Or whatever? Probably not. Is that how that works?”

Zane shrugged, clearly lost. "I could give you an MRI, but not without a proper machine."

“You are 13? Years old?” Kai repeated, voice becoming shrill. He was starting to sound a little like Jay did when he panicked, but Kai didn’t really care because Lloyd was 13. “Zane! Why didn’t you tell me he was 13?”

“Zane. Nice.”

“Shut up! The adults are talking.” Never mind that Kai wasn’t quite an adult yet - his point still stood. “You’re literally a child!”

“I thought you knew,” Zane looked confused, “that was why I was so hesitant to agree to kidnapping him-”

“Don’t call it kidnapping! And no, I didn't know!” Kai was pacing now, “Of course I didn’t know! 13! Freshly 13!”

“I’m not really 13,” Lloyd tried to explain, looking a little uncomfortable now that Kai was panicking for all the wrong reasons “I’m probably older even on the inside, because my brain grew too.”

“Oh yeah, because that’s not something a child would say. FSM!”

“… I preferred it when you hated me.”

“Oh I still hate you,” Kai reassured him, “you’re a brat. But we can’t kidnap a literal kid, even if he says he is the son of Garmadon. I thought you were gonna be, like, at least 20! Or, like, one hundred years old, or - or something!”

“How do you plan on returning him, Red?”

“I don’t know! Garmadon’s gotta come looking for him soon, we can just kinda… give him back?” Kai suggested. The nindroid stared back, unblinking. “Okay, so I know that it’s not really a plan, but-“

“Perhaps we should decide when the rest of the ninja get here. We could more effectively come up with a strategy that safely returns Luh-loyd together.”

“I’m not good enough for you?” Kai teased, but felt indignant when Zane just nodded in agreement.

“It would appear that way.”

“I get to meet the rest of the gang! Sweet. Can’t wait until you tell me their names too, K.”

Kai glared. Lloyd seemed to take this as a sign to continue, instead of the very obvious one it was to shut up.

“Or maybe I don’t need to. Nya’s the girl one, right?”

Zane made a staticy, fax-machine like noise of surprise.

“What!” Kai found himself shouting. He could feel the panic and anger surging through him again as he grabbed Lloyd by the shoulders. Everything felt hot. If he knew Zane’s name, that was bad. But Zane was a nindroid, he could change his appearance and records if he really had to. Lloyd knowing the first letter of Kai’s name wasn’t too bad. If Garmadon really wanted to know their identities he would have put more effort into unmasking them. It wasn’t like he was going to go through the records of everyone whose name started with a ‘K’ in the city.

But if he knew Nya’s name, knew Zane’s name, could use them both to find Kai’s name, it wouldn’t be long before all of them were completely exposed.

(And, as much as she could look after herself and was technically in charge until Wu returned, Nya was still Kai’s baby sister.)

Lloyd did not seem to appreciate being grabbed. He froze, and then pulled back and bared his teeth angrily at the contact, wriggling and struggling to get out of his grip.

“Hey! Let me go!”

“How did you know her name? Have you been watching us?”

“No! No, I’m not! I wasn’t! Let me go!”

“Red, he seems genuinely scared.”

“Maybe he should be! How did you-”

“What is happening here?!” A shrill voice, followed by someone crashing into the back of Kai and interrupting his impromptu anger-fuelled interrogation. It was Jay, looking particularly frazzled, his curly hair sprawled every-which way like he’d been running his hands through it anxiously again.

Lloyd seemed to want to take advantage of Kai’s distraction, suddenly snapping, eyes glowing red as he leaned forwards and bit down on Kai’s arm, forcing him to stumble back in surprise, gripping the arm tightly. He hadn’t bitten too deep, mainly just leaving little red indents in his arm except for where his sharp fangs were, leaving two spots of blood dripping through Kai’s now torn sleeve, staining it a deeper red. His brain short circuited, and all he could do was stare down at the markings, transfixed. He’d been bitten. By the little demon brat!

“Red!” Jay screamed, right into Kai’s ear. It stirred him to speak.

“Ow! The brat bit me!”  (Briefly, absurdly, Kai noted that it looked like he’d been bitten by a vampire. Would be cool if it wasn’t - you know. Painful. And possibly very dangerous.)

“You weren’t letting go!” Lloyd accused. He’d shoved himself back on the bed, up against the wall, eyes still a too-bright red in warning.

“Red, may I see your arm?” Zane tried to get a closer look, but Kai was being pretty non-cooperative, just standing and staring at Lloyd with anger clear on his face. “Red? Do you require medical attention?”

“Is he venomous? Did he pierce skin? Is Red going to die?”

They all turned to Lloyd. He scowled, looking almost offended.

“I’m not venomous!”

“Oh thank the First Spinjitzu Master! It’s a good thing my anxiety wouldn’t let me stay away. I was so worried” Jay sighed. Then began shouting again. “But, wait! That doesn’t explain why he isn’t tied up!”

“What do you mean?” Zane asked, tilting his head at Jay. “He is tied up.”

A creeping sense of dread overcame Kai as he slowly moved his eyes down to Lloyd’s hands. Lloyd’s clawed hands, which were free by his sides at the opposite end of the bed than the shackles, which were hanging limply off the bunk-bed’s frame. Lloyd’s hands, which he could use to murder one of them, or uncover all of their ninja secrets. Lloyd raised said hands in defence, which was not the smartest move because everyone else tensed up in response.

“When-? How?” Zane was near speechless. “I bolted those myself. And- and where is my phone?”

Lloyd pulled it out of his pocket, pushing it across the bed towards Zane with a grin fit for the son of the devil himself. “Nya says she's on her way. And your calendar says you have calculus homework due Monday.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank him! How did you get out, you little brat?”

Lloyd grinned again. “Zane kept the keys in the same pocket as his phone. He walked past to close the window.”

“Oops.” Zane smiled sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head.

“You told him your name?” Jay was nearly hyperventilating now.

“Not on purpose! It was accidental.”

“That doesn’t make it better!”

“I mean, it’s, like, a bit better than us telling Lloyd outright. Right?”

“I also know Nya’s name! And our lovely K here’s.” Said the ever-so-helpful brat.

“He knows Kai’s name too? What’s next? Mine? Cole’s? What? Why are you both trying to shush me? I-” Jay pulled a face as he realised what he’d said. “Oh. Oh FSM-”

“Everyone just needs to shut up before this kid does anything else!” Kai shouted, “we all just need to calm down and stop this from getting any more out of hand.”

There was a silence as the other two ninja stared at him. It was always vaguely awkward when someone tried to take charge, because they were all sort of on equal footing. Kai wished that Master Wu would hurry up and appoint a permanent leader, instead of just a revolving door of temporary choices. Nya worked alright, but a lot of her orders came with threats of violence if they didn’t get their acts together, and it was super weird taking orders from his baby sister. Zane worked pretty well, but he didn’t always understand the others and they didn’t understand him, leading to jarring differences in viewpoint and priorities. Kai and the others didn’t like to bring it up too often though, because they worried it might be a sore point for him. Cole was simply a little too laid back a lot of the time, and Jay the opposite. None of them were all too good at talking to the press, which was more important than one might think when they signed up to become a ninja.

Kai secretly - or, perhaps, not so secretly - thought he should be the leader.

(But at this point he’d probably take anyone.)

Lloyd, who seemed all too aware of the power vacuum in their little group, decided to pitch in. “You tell them, Kai. Great leadership! This kidnapping is almost coming together.”

“You shut up the most!” Maybe that was a little childish to say, but “you’re literally a child.”

“He looks maybe our age,” Jay remarked, glaring suspiciously. “And why haven’t we tied him back up yet?”

“His records state that he should be 13 years old today. Perhaps his… heritage from his father is affecting his form.” Zane studied Lloyd intensely. Kai was glad his gaze wasn’t aimed at himself; Zane could make anyone squirm if he tried. Almost as bad as the kid’s red eyes themselves. “And I’m not sure that if we did tie him up he would not just escape again.”

“We can’t let him free! What if he figures out where we are? What,” Jay leaned in close, stage whispering “what if he stabs us when we’re not looking?”

“Uhmm… Not to spoil the fun, but I can literally hear the ocean.”

Oh FSM. They forgot about the ocean. Because they all spent so much time at their base that they completely tuned it out.

Maybe the little devil was right. They weren’t cut out to be kidnappers at all. This was a huge mess.

“How are we going to give him back now? He knows everyone’s name but mine, could easily figure out exactly where we are and is a baby, apparently?”

“Convenient that you didn’t spill your own name,” Kai couldn’t help but mutter.

“Don’t worry Kai, I’ll figure it out sooner or later,” Lloyd promised.

Everything had completely fallen apart. The only thing that could make this worse (minus Master Wu showing up) would be-

“…What have I just walked into?”

That.

“Ohhh, Cyan, hey,” Kai said casually, turning to Lloyd and mouthing ‘don’t tell her anything you little brat’. It was pretty hard to read lips, but Lloyd seemed to get the idea as he pretended to zip his mouth closed and held his hands close to the shackles he was no longer attached to. He looked far too pleased with himself. Great. He’d accidentally kidnapped someone and instead of jail time he was gaining yet another person to make fun of him. Why did that somehow feel worse? “Things are just fine- great here. Awesome, even.”

“Don’t bother, Kai!”

Kai pretended to be shocked. Jay and Zane just watched with that horrified expression people get when they have to watch their friend argue with their family members and can’t leave the room, so they have to just stand there very still and try not to make eye contact or breathe loud enough that someone remembers you’re there. That sort of thing happened far too often with the siblings around.

“I can’t believe,” he began, puffing his chest up in indignation, “that you would just reveal my identity like that! You-”

“Kai. I have been standing here almost as long as Jay.”

“Jay! Yes! The whole set!” Lloyd cheered, and was entirely ignored. Nya’s wrath was not to be taken lightly.

“Ahhh,” Jay nodded, hissing through his teeth, “yeah, um, I maybe saw her on my way up…”

“And you didn’t warn us?”

“I was a little distracted! Because the evil son of our greatest rival is here and- and he’s still not tied up!”

“And he bit Kai,” Zane recalled.

“And he bit Kai,” Jay agreed. Then began to shout again. “And he isn’t tied up!”

“I’m not sure how well I could keep him contained,” Zane repeated, “we might need Cole to come here and keep an eye on him. His strength could work to our advantage.”

“Ahh yes, let's get the whole team down here! Kai, Nya, Jay, Zane and Cole. And, hey, maybe your Sensei Wu can come too, and complete the set!”

“Master Wu, Luh-Loyd” Zane corrected absentmindedly, still thinking about how to contain someone who was clearly so determined not to be, while everyone else went insane.

“How do you know Wu?” Kai demanded, anger flaring inside of him again.

Lloyd laughed. And kept laughing. He only cut off suddenly when he looked around and realised that no one else was laughing, and then laughed some more. By the time he’d calmed down his eyes were back to their softer brown, though.

“He really doesn’t tell you anything, huh? And here I was thinking he was just cagey with me because, you know,” he gestured at all of himself vaguely, as if that was the part of the conversation that everyone was struggling to follow. “But if he doesn’t even tell you guys the basics, well… no wonder you guys are completely incompetent.”

“The basics?”

Lloyd sighed, and got up, hands on his hips. “If we’re doing this, get Cole.”

Chapter Text

They all ended sitting in the warehouse piled on the couch with Lloyd sitting on an uncomfortable folding chair in front of the TV. They’d locked all of the doors and put another shackle on his foot connected to the chair, but at this point were really just banking on their ninja skills to keep him in the room until they thought up a way to contact his dad or keep him from causing more chaos than he already had. Just in case, Zane was on standby, ready to call the police in an instant, which, based on Lloyd’s reaction, was enough of a threat to keep him from trying anything.

The couch wasn’t really built with all of them in mind. In fact, it was probably - at a stretch - a two seater - so Nya, Kai and Jay were squished too close for comfort on the cushions while Cole did his own sprawling thing on their one coveted armchair in a position that could almost definitely cause spinal damage and Zane sat criss-cross on the floor like a child at school.

Lloyd didn’t seem to quite know how to sit on the rickety little fold out chair. He laughed and snarled and teased on the bed but now that they were all staring at him he was fidgeting, sitting with his feet on the seat, apparently thinking better of it and putting them on the floor and then repeating the process.

If Kai didn’t know any better he’d say he looked almost shy, but he wasn’t sure if it was the fact that the guy was some form of 13 years old colouring his perception of him. It helped that his eyes looked almost natural by that point, and Kai could easily feel the thrum of his power under his skin even stronger than usual, which meant he was ready in case Lloyd tried something.

“Explain.” Nya commanded, remembering that she’d been put in charge.

“Uhm,” Lloyd stopped fidgeting and sat up straight, “Interrogation time. Right. Uh…”

Kai couldn’t help but roll his eyes. He’d been so eager to talk, like, two minutes ago. This was barely any different. It felt like he was trying to manipulate them. Again.

“Wu's been teaching me spinjitzu. Or he was. We kinda had an argument.”

“He was training the enemy?” Jay’s arms spiralled out in surprise, accident hitting Kai due to their close proximity. “He barely even trains us!”

“Ow,” Kai complained, rubbing his nose. Everyone was beating him up today, apparently.

“I don’t care if he’s an old man, I’ll take him,” Nya announced, apparently sick of Wu’s constant evasion of important evidence. It was like he enjoyed waiting until one of them was on death’s doorstep (or on fire, as had happened before he'd explained that, oh, by the way, you guys will probably get actual real life superpowers) before he’d tell them anything at all.

“Wu may be old, but he is more than capable of beating any one of us in battle,” Zane reminded the Cyan Ninja gently, just in case she wasn’t being hyperbolic. 

“Why would he train you?” Cole asked, eyes trained on Lloyd. They’d filled him in as best as they could, but how could Kai possibly explain that he’d immediately learnt their identities and location? Oh, and that he was apparently a 13-year-old demon child who could shape-shift? How was he supposed to react to that?

(Cole had laughed. Especially after Kai showed him the bite marks. Kai had mostly forgiven him.)

"No offence, but you don't exactly look like you're gonna be Ninjago's next big hero."

"It's the bowl cut, isn't it?" Kai asked, only to be ignored. "And those teeth."

“Maybe he should have been here all along,” Lloyd said instead of answering either question, pointing at the Black Ninja, “he actually wants to ask important questions.” He was keeping a close eye on Cole. Kai had seen his face after Cole ripped the first set of chains in half to prove how easily he could have gotten out of them too; apparently the guy hadn’t fully realised their abilities. (Cole hadn’t either, apparently, based on the gleeful surprise on his face at his own impressive display. He’d gone on to singlehandedly move the couch, too.)

“So… why? Why has Wu been training you, of all people?”

“Well, uhmm…” Lloyd seemed to be considering, fidgeting on the chair. “You guys won’t like it.”

“It’s ok,” Nya made her voice all soft and sweet like she used when she wanted to get out of a detention or extra practice with Master Wu. “We won’t be mad.”

Kai frowned, because he certainly hadn’t promised any such thing, but it seemed to work. Lloyd nodded.

“Right. Wu is kind of. Uncle Wu. Because he’s my uncle. Master Uncle Wu.”

Everyone shouted variations of “What?!” And, “Wu is your uncle?”

“Wu has a sister? Who had a relationship with Garmadon? No wonder he’s so cagey,” Nya announced. They all nodded in agreement. Especially Kai, who was the only one who knew what it meant to have a sister.

Zane seemed especially surprised, letting out another static-y sound. “I - I don’t believe that you all understand.”

“Um. Yeah. Not- that’s - that's not right.” Lloyd fidgeted again as the focus shifted back to him. “I don’t have a mum. Garmadon is Wu’s brother.”

“What!”

“He’s-“

“That stupid old man never tells us anything!”

“H-hey don’t call him stupid! What if he does that ninja thing where he sneaks up on us?”

They all glanced around, expecting Wu to pop up out of nowhere. He didn’t, thank The Firsts.

“This information is a matter of public record,” Zane offered carefully, “I’m surprised that no-one else was aware of it.”

“Zane knew?”

Zane shrugged.

“That means we didn’t just kidnap Garmadon’s son…” Kai realised with a jolt of shock hot in his stomach, “We kidnapped Wu’s nephew.”

“Oh no! There is no ‘we’ about it, Kai,” Jay declared.

“Yeah, why should we take the downfall?” Cole agreed.

“We did kinda all go along with it,” Nya reminded them. As this week’s leader, she decided she should at least try to take some accountability. (So long as everyone else did too.)

“I didn’t want to kidnap him! I never agreed to this!”

“I believe you acknowledged your involvement when you said: ‘Alright… I might as well start packing my bags for prison right now…’”

“You recorded that?”

“I record most of our interactions in the same way you remember them.”

“Cool!”

“No, not cool! He could get me sent to prison with that!”

Kai tuned the conversation out and let his gaze drift back to their sensi’s nephew, apparently. How had that never been important enough to tell them about, again?

Lloyd watched them argue with an unreadable expression on his face, staring intently, eyes red once again. Kai tried not to let it creep him out. (It did.) He didn’t seem like he was using the opportunity to untether himself from the chair, which was good. Kai didn’t really know what to think about him anymore. He couldn’t be a real enemy yet, if he was really 13. Not a proper Bad Guy, just a very annoying little monster brat.

Kai scrutinised Lloyd as he watched the Ninja argue. He looked absurdly smug and all-knowing for a guy who was tied up and had been fidgeting and awkward, like, two seconds ago. Maybe Garmadon-inherited evil set in early… It would certainly explain the whole 'I'm a monster' show from earlier.

“Is this still part of the interrogation?” And that condescending tone definitely came from the same side of the family as Master Wu.

They all stopped arguing to stare at Lloyd, as if most of the ninja had forgotten he was even there.

“No,” Nya answered, at the same time Kai declared “Yes.”

“Come on,” he continued, “don’t you have any questions for the son of Garmadon?”

They all pondered this.

“Does he practise his evil speeches in front of the mirror?” Cole asked, voice deadly serious. When they all protested, he defended himself, saying; “Hey! Don't argue; you were all wondering too!”

Lloyd frowned, like that wasn’t a question he’d been expecting. In all fairness, it wasn't what Kai had expected, either. It wasn’t what he'd meant when he said they could ask the guy anything. He'd been thinking more along the lines of evil plans, greatest weaknesses, what Wu thought he was doing teaching the demon spawn spinjitzu, etcetera…

But now he was curious too.

“So? Does he?”

“Uhm… maybe? I don’t really know.”

“Awww!”

“Boo!”

Lloyd sank lower in his seat, bravado gone, looking upset.

“Okay,” Kai didn’t like how his expression made something cold and heavy sit in his gut. He shouldn’t feel bad for Lloyd, the son and maybe co-conspirator of a supervillain. Hm. That was an idea. “Do you come up with his evil plans?”

Lloyd considered. “You didn’t tell me the rules of the interrogation. What happens if I lie?”

Kai shrugged. Lloyd nodded, looking thoughtful. “Well, I think it’s the ‘mess-around-and-find-out’ department that come up with most of the plans. That is- that’s the scientists, I guess. Or sometimes his generals. I’ve tried to be involved in making plans, but I’m not really supposed to. I'm not his General Number One.”

“So you’re not the evil mastermind?”

Lloyd scoffed, like the very idea was absurd. He’d obviously not heard the rumours going around. “No… But, I guess if I was gonna take over the city I’d just climb straight up the building, without the sharks or anything! Secret, like a nin- well, uh. You know.” He gestured broadly to the ragtag collection of multicoloured teenagers sprawled across the couch (and floor). “I’d do something really loud and annoying on the other side of the city - pretend to be robbing Ninjago’s giant vault, maybe get myself to shape shift to look more like Garmadon or- or dress someone else up so it looks real and stuff. Maybe do fake attacks constantly so no one takes a real one seriously. Then I'd just climb right up. If there's some weirdo law that says whoever sits there is in control of the city, why crash the stock markets or mess with people’s cars and stuff? You want the city you control to be, like, still a city, right? I’d make everyone confused, not just do violent chaotic stuff, and you could just take the city right out from under people’s noses. Some of them might not even mind that much - everyone on the news says they hate the destruction so much that they’d probably want any way of making it stop. The takeover would be easy. But… It probably wouldn’t work, otherwise my dad would have already done it, right?” He added as an afterthought, “that’s why I’m not General Number One, I guess.”

“...Garmadon doesn’t want to look after the city,” Nya told him, apparently the first to recover from… whatever that was. Was it actually so easy to think up ways to take over the city? They were lucky Lloyd wasn’t the one making the plans. “He wants the city in a violent chaos. He only wants control.”

Lloyd shook his head, mouth twisted into his patent you-are-such-an-idiot smile that Kai in particular was getting all too familiar with. It was like a more vicious version of Wu's my-students-would-be-lost-without-me one, or a slightly toned down version of Garmadon's I-think-I've-won-and-don't-currently-know-about-the-ninja-sneaking-up-behind-me smile. How hadn't he seen the similarities sooner?

“No. Why would he want to hurt people? It’s stupid. And it feels-” He hesitated, searching for a word. “Icky.”

“Hurting people feels ‘icky’?” Cole echoed, bemused. 13 years old indeed. Everyone chucked at the word choice.

Lloyd huffed, cheeks getting darker and eyes stonier.

“What is General Number One?” Zane queried. "A rank, or person?"

Lloyd crossed his arms.

“Are there other numbers?” Nya asked, after Jay whispered in her ear.

Lloyd scowled. With teeth.

“Who is the current ‘General Number One?’” Zane asked.

The silence continued. Eventually, Cole broke it.

“... Are you going to answer us?”

Lloyd continued to stare, eyes red.

“Is this because we laughed at you?” Kai asked, trying not to let the annoyance (and maybe a little fear) take over.

Lloyd’s face twitched.

“Oh FSM, he is a child!”

“Hey! I’m not!” Lloyd protested. They all laughed, and he continued to fume. “I’m not!”

“This is getting nowhere,” Cole decided, “I’m gonna get some food. Unless…” He looked pleadingly at Zane, who smiled.

“I’ve already eaten, but I would be happy to make food. I think I have just enough ingredients for… Pizza?”

“Yessss!”

“Zane-made pizza!”

“Can we choose our toppings?” Jay asked, excited. It was good to hear him speaking up again; he’d been kind of quiet around Lloyd, clearly uncomfortable with his presence. Kai wished he could make him feel better about it, but in all honesty he was becoming more and more uncomfortable with the whole thing himself, just in a whole new way, and had no idea what he could possibly say to make things better.

Zane nodded in answer to Jay’s question.

The ninja scrambled to follow Zane to the kitchen, with Kai hanging back.

“Uh… shouldn’t someone keep an eye on this guy?”

He should have expected the chorus of ‘Bags not it!” that followed, but apparently Kai didn’t learn from his past mistakes in the slightest. Man, they were not forgetting that this whole thing was (technically) his fault in a hurry.

“I know what toppings you like, Kai,” Zane promised.

“And I know what he hates,” Nya teased. Kai stuck out his tongue, but stopped when he realised that Lloyd was staring intently at him with judgy red eyes.

Chapter Text

It was very awkward sitting in the lounge area, staring back at Lloyd, listening to the happy chattering of his teammates while he couldn’t even turn on the TV. The kid’s eyes were getting to him. Kai was supposed to like red - it was his colour, after all. But they just felt unnatural, and reminded him too much of Garmadon. They usually meant he should be leaping up and fighting. Now, he just had to sit and wait.

“Can I move you without being bitten again?” He asked, finally fed up with the awkward silence, contrasted with the loud and cheerful kitchen.

“Why?” Lloyd narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

He gestured to the box behind the little demon.“So I can watch TV? Not much airs this time of night, but-”  Kai raised his voice a little, “I think that gameshow Jay was on starts soon!”

“I thought that we agreed never to talk about that!” Came the shout from the kitchen. Kai grinned. That always worked.

Instead of waiting for Kai to come over, Lloyd simply got up, pushed the chair out of the way - apparently oblivious to the very loud and annoying scraping sounds that followed - and sat down on the floor next to the sofa, legs crossed like a kid at school. The chain that had been attached to him was hung open on the chair like he’d never been in it, and Lloyd was acting like nothing happened. He didn’t run straight out the door, or leap at Kai with a knife, or try to bite him again or anything.

Kai lowered his voice to a whisper so his team couldn’t hear him. “What was that?”

The little demon looked up at him, oblivious. “You said that you wanted to watch TV? Jay's gameshow, or whatever?”

“Not- I meant. You got out of the chain again?”

“Oh. That.” He rolled his eyes. “I can go back, if you want. I thought the chair would be in the way though?”

And, well, Kai couldn’t be bothered to fix it. Sue him. It wasn’t like all the doors weren’t locked. If Lloyd wanted to get out it would take some effort, and 5 ninjas would definitely be able to interfere with that. The promise of pizza might help to keep him still, too.

“Is my dad attacking right now?” Lloyd asked far too eagerly, once it was clear Kai wasn’t going to answer his first question. He’d apparently gotten over his grump, instead looking interested at the TV. “Are you checking if he’s noticed I’m gone?”

“We can, I guess. But I just told you, we should watch Jay’s gameshow.”

Lloyd gave him an odd look. “Wait - we can watch Jay’s show on the TV?”

“...Yes?” Kai switched it on, flicking to the game show channel, the one with the super long ad breaks aimed at grandmas who had a lot of money and no grandchildren to warn them about scams and cybersecurity.

Lloyd looked absolutely astounded, shuffling forwards, closer to the pixelated man shouting about why they needed to buy his shark repellent right now! Quick! Before this exclusive, limited time offer ends!

“This isn’t the news…” Lloyd stated, sounding far too confused.

“…no?”

“What… is it?”

“An advertisement?”

Lloyd nodded, but in the sort of way someone did when they were at a loss for words for how amazing something was, not the sort of nod you do when someone is telling you something really obvious. And the nephew of Master Wu definitely knew how to do that nod too.

“Have you never seen an ad before?”

Lloyd jumped to the defensive. “Of course I have!”

“…Really?”

“No.”

“How? There’s more ads than shows nowadays!” Kai considered. “Well. The news channel is ad free so it can live broadcast Garmadon attacks 24/7… have you literally only ever watched the news?”

Lloyd finally ripped his red eyes away from the screen, looking somewhat put out. “I guess. So we can't watch the news now, then?”

“No! Obviously not, oh FSM… There are so many shows you haven’t watched. No wonder you're like," he gestured vaguely, "this. Forget the game show; embarrassing Jay will have to wait. You need cartoons! I’ll find my DvDs.”

They ended up getting two episodes into the first season of Kai’s favourite cartoon before Zane called them for dinner. It already smelt amazing, so it wasn’t an unwelcome interruption.

“Shoot. I should probably tie you back to a chair, huh?”

Lloyd seemed to have forgotten he was kidnapped. He had started off pretending to still be in a bad mood, and like he wasn't paying attention, but had ended up sprawled out on the floor on his stomach, asking questions too loudly and kicking his feet behind him whenever he got excited at the show. It made him look his alleged age - or perhaps even younger - in a way that made Kai feel even more guilty over the whole thing… But it couldn’t be that long until Garmadon came calling for him, right?

Lloyd nodded, sitting himself back down on the chair with a frown.

“Do you have a roll-y one?”

“A what?”

“A- um, what’s it? It spins?

“Oh? A swivel chair?”

A swivel chair did make it significantly easier to move Lloyd about, though Kai didn’t like how much he seemed to enjoy it, whooping like it was a game as Kai shoved him towards the kitchen area and practically begging to be pushed down the stairs on it (which was somehow not as tempting as it would have been two hours ago). The shackle didn’t seem damaged, so Kai clipped it back on, ignoring how easily Lloyd could apparently pull it off. And that he hadn’t tried to run away without it. None of the other Ninja knew, and it was easier to think about one thing at a time. Right now that thing was food.

The pizza smelt amazing, as Zane’s cooking always did, so Kai didn’t hesitate to dig right in to his slices. Zane plopped a plate down in front of Lloyd, the extra slices they would usually save to heat up next time they were too exhausted to cook. They were mostly plain cheese, but he’d also thrown in a piece of pepperoni and one of Hawaiian, too. Lloyd stared at Zane like he had a wire loose.

“It’s the apron, isn’t it?” Kai asked. “He doesn’t think it’s weird.”

“It stops my clothes from getting dirty while I cook,” Zane explained, still confused as to why the others teased him. Jay snickered behind his hands.

“Lay off it guys,” Nya shoved Kai, which felt targeted because Lloyd was the one who was staring. “He can wear whatever he wants.”

Lloyd continued to stare. “… ’S not the apron.”

Nya raised her eyebrows. “See! Even the son of our greatest enemy is more sensible than you lot! Leave him and his fancy apron alone. I think it's cool you wear what you want, Zane.”

"Thank you, Nya."

They all groaned at her, but Kai did feel a little guilty. She had a point. They’d started teasing Zane for it when they were all younger and stupider. He knew it didn’t really matter if his friend wore pink. He promised himself that he’d apologise to the nindroid later.

Lloyd continued to stare. “…You gave me some?”

“Yes. It would be rude not to. If it is not to your liking I can also make you something else, though our options are limited as I have not been grocery shopping yet this week.” He pointed to the list on the fridge. It was particularly long, and held up with three magnets.

“But… you kidnapped me.”

“Technically Kai kidnapped you-”

“I’m going to give him back!”

“- but there would be no reason for us not to feed you either way. Do you have any allergies?”

Lloyd shrugged.

There was a small silence as everyone tried to reconcile with the fact that he thought they weren’t going to feed him? Because was that really what he thought of the ninja? The Good Guys? (Capitals, because of how much of a set of serious, actual Good Guys they were.)

Kai felt the hot, unsettled feeling continue to fester in the pit of his stomach, but he tried to push it away. He hadn’t done the right thing, he knew that now, but as soon as Garmadon called they would just send him back, the consequences of him knowing their names be darned.

“This is amazing Zane,” Cole offered, finally ending the silence as he took a rather large bite of his pizza, struggling to eat around the mask before deciding to forgo it, throwing it over his shoulder uncaringly. “What? Lloyd already knows our names. And I wanna enjoy this.” His pizza was loaded with all possible toppings - except for anchovies, because he had taste. Nya’s was practically the opposite, because she had none.

“Where is the tomato sauce?” Zane asked, also flipping up his mask. He’d already eaten, but could never turn down pizza. Every teenager was the same, and he was just like every teenager.

Jay wordlessly pointed to the bottle with a tired look on his face. He kept his mask firmly down, only pulling it up just enough that he could get the pizza into his mouth before shoving it down again. It probably did little to hide his identity, but apparently made him feel better about everything, so Kai didn’t point it out.

“Dude, you already put sauce on before you cooked it,” Cole reminded him. “I watched you do it.”

“You’re an animal Zane.”

“No, I’m a nindroid.” Because apparently they’d already given up on that secret too. Or maybe because he just found the joke too good to pass up; sometimes it was hard to tell how serious Zane was being.

Nervously, Lloyd picked up his pizza, watching the rest of them happily munching. He sniffed it, and Kai tried very hard not to look like he was watching him intently while doing exactly that.

Had the guy seriously never tried pizza before? He'd never watched cartoons, so it was possible.

Only, that didn't feel right. Was he confused by the pizza or... Did he think they would stoop so low as to poison him?

Lloyd seemed to find nothing wrong with the smell, taking a big bite with his fangs, tearing half of the slice off viciously. He liked it, apparently. His teeth seemed even sharper than before, and Kai had to pull his eyes away to feel comfortable. 

Even so, Lloyd devoured his slices with the same vigour as the rest of the team, which made the Red Ninja feel a little more comfortable about the whole thing for reasons that he couldn’t really explain.

Chapter Text

They couldn’t roll the swivel chair upstairs, of course, so the ninja all had to argue for several minutes about how to get Lloyd up there. Half the team demanded that he be kept chained up as much as possible - perhaps Cole could carry him and the chair upstairs, Nya suggested - Jay was scared about him sleeping in the same room as them and wanted him on the couch, without him escaping, somehow, and the rest thought they could simply retie his hands together to get upstairs, but with no real plan for how to keep him contained once they'd made it. The only thing they could agree on was that unkidnapping him was most definitely a tomorrow problem, and they were all too tired to think of a real solution right then. Especially since he knew their names and approximate location. FSM, this had become a mess.

Lloyd decided to solve their (current) issues by simply walking upstairs - untethered - while they were distracted with their argument. He went so far as to remove his Garmadon themed armoured chest plate, use the bathroom and sit down on the unclaimed green bunk, using one of his claws to begin to carve something unintelligible into the bed-frame before anyone even noticed he was missing. They were lucky he hadn’t taken the swivel chair with him, because he had seemed very keen on rolling down the stairs on it earlier, and it was too late at night to deal with broken bones.

Jay practically had a panic attack when they finally realised Lloyd had disappeared.

“If he can get out that easily he could attack us in our sleep!”

“I think that if he were going to attack us he would have done so already.” Zane’s rather rational comment was ignored by everyone but Kai, who had to remind them that he had been attacked, actually, and he had two holes in his Gi to prove it.

“You’re right, Jay - I could smother you with your own pillow,” Lloyd agreed lazily, poking his own, oblivious as Jay’s eyes widened in horror. “Whoa, this is soft! There are feathers inside? That's so cool! Did you kill a bird for them? Can I see the bones? Are the feathers mine now? Can I have them?”

“No,” Kai told him firmly.

“Aw. Why not?”

“Are we not going to talk about how he’s threatening me?”

“What? That wasn’t a threat!” Lloyd protested, claws dangerously close to the pillow. “That was me agreeing with you! I can actually threaten you though, if you want?” This was said far too seriously, without any hint of a joke. Jay was almost hysterical.

“See! He’s threatening me!”

“Jay, I do not believe he was genuinely threatening you.”

“Zane, I’m gonna have to agree with Jay on this one,” Cole decided, “that sounded a lot like a threat!”

“Lloyd has grown up in a very different environment from us. Perhaps this is how people speak to each other where he is from.”

Everyone considered Zane’s words, except for Lloyd who scowled deeply at him.

“I’m still sleeping downstairs,” Jay told Zane, grabbing his blankets and marching away, shouting back over his shoulder; “Have fun getting murdered in your sleep.”

“…He does know I can get downstairs, right? It’s not, like, safer there, or anything.” Lloyd began picking at the stitching in the pillow, movements deft and precise.

“Maybe don’t mention that in front of him,” Nya warned him.

“If you say so.” The pillow suddenly exploded open in a burst of white. Lloyd grinned at them, teeth sharp. “Now can I have the feathers?”

“No!” Kai repeated, just to spite him. It would be difficult to find another use for them now.

(They were gonna be pulling feathers out of their hair for weeks, weren’t they?)

Kai was put on the first watch. It was unfair for several reasons. One, because he’d already had to watch him alone, twice. Two, because Zane technically didn’t need sleep, just to shut down for an hour every now and then, and Kai sorely missed his 10 hours. He wasn’t sure how he’d survive on 8. Three, that meant he had to wake up Nya for the next shift, and no one liked to wake up Nya.

His three very good and very loudly argued points were dismissed. Apparently none of the Ninja were going to be quick to forget that this whole thing was sort of his fault. It was absolutely devastating and completely unnecessary.

Everyone settled down surprisingly quickly for highly trained ninja who had their sworn enemy’s son sleeping in the next bunk over. Their comfort was also unfair, because Kai had to be up for two more hours. Cole was snoring, as usual, but the sound was honestly a little comforting as it got darker and spookier. (Not that Kai would admit that. If anyone asked, it was annoying and literally nothing else.)

He would have believed that Lloyd was fast asleep too, what with how quiet he suddenly was, if it wasn’t for the two pricks of red glaring right at him through the darkness. It made it difficult to focus on the comic he’d stolen from Jay, because he knew it wasn’t just his torch causing that odd light, and Lloyd only seemed to blink half as much as Kai thought he should.

Sure, the kid was definitely only doing it to freak him out, but that didn't mean it wasn't working.

When Nya came home from school at 8 years old crying because one of the other girl’s from her class kept throwing plastic snakes at her to scare her, he told her that her best bet was to ignore it. “If she doesn’t think you’re scared then it won’t be fun anymore, and they’ll stop.”

(Okay, so, maybe that story was about him, and his fear of snakes, and that was actually his sister’s advice. Nya seemed to love all kinds of creepy crawlies, which Kai did not understand at all. But his point still stood.)

If he ignored Lloyd, didn’t give him a reaction, then he would have to get bored eventually.

Any second now.

Any second…

But it was working.

The longer the eyes glowed at him the more on edge Kai got. The feeling kept creeping up his spine and into his throat, clawing and clogging, and he had to really focus to keep himself from screaming. Or crying.

“Lloyd,” he couldn’t take it anymore. It took all his effort to keep his voice at a sharp whisper. “Lloyd, what are you doing?”

The red disappeared and reappeared in a quick, blinking succession. He had the audacity to sound confused. “What?”

“Sleep.”

“I can’t,” Lloyd’s whisper got dangerously close to being not a whisper at all, and Nya mumbled a little in her sleep.

“… It’s okay,” Kai felt the creeping feeling fade into blissful tiredness as he looked on at Lloyd. In the dim red light, not quite so piercing as before, he looked more human. Like the kid he’d watched cartoons with, and watched leave the crusts of his pizza behind at tea. “Any reason?”

A rustle, probably Lloyd shrugging.

“It’s late.” Kai prompted.

Lloyd just shrugged again.

Kai wasn’t sure how to proceed from here. Nya had always been a sound sleeper (unless you woke her up, then all hell broke loose), and on the rare occasions she wasn’t they would go and sit on the balcony of their parent’s apartment and watch the stars. Sometimes they’d sit on the ledge with their legs dangling over the side, even though - on the rare occasions they were home - their parents had told them they absolutely could not do that. It was fun to do something silly and rebellious when he felt like he had to be an adult the rest of the time. At night, under the stars, it didn’t matter. Even if Nya was inevitably grumpy in the morning, and even if he had to be shaken awake at lunch.

(His 10 hours was important, but not as important as those moments. As his sister.)

But Kai couldn’t exactly take the child they’d accidentally kidnapped to go look at the stars.

Maybe he could get the next best thing.

He concentrated on that little spark of warmth, the one that sat just above his gut, breathing deep and stoking it and -

A flame flickered to life in his palm, a little sooner and a little stronger than he expected, given how much trouble he’d been having with it before. He would have whooped with excitement (finally, he was getting a hold on his powers!) but didn’t want to wake anyone more than he already was.

Lloyd gasped, sitting up in his bed, eyes locked on Kai’s cupped palm. The orange light dulled out the red. Kai hoped that they didn’t have a little arsonist on their hands, with the way he was staring.

“Whoa-“

“Sh!”

“Did you make that?”

“Yeah. It’s a new thing, started a couple of months ago. Elemental powers.”

“I knew that. I just thought you were rubbish at it.” Kai would be offended, but he’d thought the same thing two seconds ago. “That’s so cool! Can I hold it?”

“No. One; I don’t think that’s possible. Two; you’re not fire proof!” He scrutinised Lloyd, thinking about his father’s scaley skin. “…Are you fire proof?”

Lloyd nodded, red eyes going up and down, dimmer in the light of the flame. “Can I try? Please?”

“Sh!” Kai was pretty sure that the flame would go out the second it left his palm - he could barely throw them yet, but they were all having the same troubles with their newfound abilities, so he tried not to feel too embarrassed about it.

Instead, as Lloyd tiptoed close, leaned forwards and cupped it, the flame jumped higher, brightening from cherry red to a deep orange, licking the top of the bunk, where his teammate slept soundly onward.

“Hey!” Kai shook his hands out and the flame fizzled out. Thankfully, nothing caught, but he could smell a faint wiff of smoke. He could still feel the embers pulsing through his veins, settling in his chest - where had that come from?

“Whoa!” Lloyd, despite his excitement, remembered to whisper this time. “I guess I am fireproof!” He pulled himself into Kai’s bed, completely ignoring his personal space and accidently elbowing him in the stomach, either not noticing or simply not bothering to apologise. “Why don’t you use that when you fight my dad?”

Kai wasn’t sure how to explain that he had been right and usually he was terrible at this actually, and Lloyd had just caught him on a lucky day. Perhaps Master Wu’s dreaded dull breath training was actually doing something? Maybe he should start doing it as often as he claimed to, instead of just when said old man’s eyes were on him…

Instead of admitting any of that, he pounced on the other thing Lloyd had said. “What do you mean ‘guess I am fireproof’?”

Lloyd shrugged. The brat! What if Kai had set him on fire?

“I did live in a volcano. Maybe that’s why it’s so cold here!” He moved even closer to Kai, accidentally elbowing him again. “You’re warm though.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond to any of that. Lloyd was very close, leaned up against his pillow, shoulder to shoulder. He and Nya used to sit like this sometimes, when he used to read her bedtime stories. Their parents always worked long hours, leaving them to their own devices, even back then. He understood it was for their benefit - to keep them in their house, and at the nice school, eating enough food. But sometimes it felt like he didn’t have parents at all. All of his family memories were just him and his sister, doing all the things for each other that parents should. More recently, he might even add the other ninja to the family memories pile.

Lloyd was looking at him, blinking heavily, waiting for Kai to say something.

“You didn’t live in the lava, surely.” He decided on.

Lloyd shrugged again. His breathing got just a little slower.

Maybe it was his memories with a young Nya and the warmth still leftover from the fire, but it was awfully cosy. He kept finding that he was blinking just a little longer than he last had, and surely it wouldn’t matter if he closed his eyes for two seconds, would it? He could wake up… whoever was supposed to cover for him in a second. It would be fine. Besides, Lloyd was right there, it wasn’t like he’d get far without Kai noticing.

Yeah, he’d keep watching him in... just a second…

Chapter Text

It was the easiest thing in the world to sneak away from the Ninja’s not so secret base. The pizza and cartoons had been nice and all, but Lloyd’s dad had to be looking for him by now. He stuffed a handful of his feathers in his pockets as he left - because they were his now, Kai had practically said so. They hadn’t even locked the door. Unless the handle wasn’t supposed to come off like that, in which case they might have locked it, but hadn’t even bought a very good door if all it took was digging your claws into the mechanisms and a bit of pulling to break it.

Easy.

Ha. Stupid Ninja.

Lloyd went to steal some food for the journey before he left - they would have fed him anyway, so it wasn’t even really stealing. Then again, even if it was they were his enemies, so… But he found that the Ninja’s kitchen was severely lacking. Especially in the sweets department. He poured the crumbs from the bottom of a box of semi-sugary cereal in his mouth and snatched the list off of the fridge absentmindedly. Who knew, maybe it would be useful - a fun little token to remember his kidnapping by. People took souvenirs for this kinda thing, right?

Plus, maybe it would be annoying, and Zane would spend all day looking for it. That would teach him for being a Ninja. And for being so good at making pizza that Lloyd would never be able to have again.

He’d been right about where they were too, of course - an old warehouse on the port, looking out at the ocean. He loved the ocean. He liked the sound of it, how it was always very loud and alive, and it never sat still. They had some things in common.

There were ways to get to the ocean from the volcano, and of course Lloyd knew every secret passage and hidden path, but none were so easy as just slipping outside. If he was the Ninja - well, actually he would never have taken the son of his enemy to his base. That was basic secret identity stuff. But, if he had been short-sighted enough to do what the Ninja did, he would have played loud music while the person he had kidnapped was at their base, to mask the sound. He knew that the earth one - Cole - had the speakers for it. He’d seen him blast music as he and his dad fought on TV.

It was weird seeing them in person after he’d spent so many days watching recordings of their fights. They were taller in real life. Louder. Interesting. Mostly, though, the Ninja were disorganised. Unbalanced. When Uncle Wu visited he was always going on and on about balance, and it was just so boring. Maybe he was thinking about the Ninja when he did it, because there was no way he thought Lloyd, the dreaded son of the Dark Lord, was actually listening to all that nonsense.

Lloyd had seen the Ninja's disorganisation on TV too, of course. It was clear in the way that they all leaned too far in different directions. It was like they didn’t have a central force, or didn’t know about the ties their powers had to each other. It was as if they couldn’t even feel that thread that obviously draped between them, vibrant and humming. It was worse in person - and also much funnier. They argued so much they’d forget he was there, and it was easy to pluck at the loose, unseen thread and watch them unravel. The Ninja were quite fun to be around, all things considered. His best kidnapping yet.

Lloyd would have believed them when they acted like this wasn’t all planned simply because of how incompetent they were. He would have, if they hadn’t done that one thing right. If they hadn’t pretended that his father wasn’t looking for him. That was smart, way smarter than anything else they’d done by a long shot. A way of bringing down hope, and making him compliant. Distracting him with pizza and cartoons and fire. But he was two steps ahead, as always.

(He had wondered when he first woke up, however briefly, if this was some kind of trick. Being captured by the Ninja was too perfect, too impossible. He’d wondered if the Red Ninja was a General - or ex-General - in disguise; another kidnapping, another distraction. Then he’d promised he would never hurt him and asked, sincerely, flame flickering, if Lloyd was actually Garmadon’s son. And then he’d run screaming like a little baby at Lloyd’s fangs. So that theory had gone right out the window.)

He wondered whose idea it was to pretend Garmadon wasn’t looking. Maybe Jay, who clearly hated him. Or probably Cole’s; that guy had asked the right questions, and seemed to have his head close to the ground. Maybe it was Zane’s idea - he was a robot, so he must be smart, and they relied on him to check the news, apparently. It would be easy for him to lie about. Nya hadn’t spoken to him much at all, but he couldn’t rule her out - it seemed like the others were scared of her.  He didn’t think that it was Kai’s idea, and not just because the Red Ninja had smiled at him like that before he drifted off to sleep. There was a different reason that he couldn’t have thought of it. Um… Because he was just so incompetent, probably. Yeah.

Lloyd had never been to port before - he’d never really been anywhere in Ninjago city before yesterday. He usually stayed in the volcano, but that hadn’t been hard to change.

Stowing away on one of the General’s sea-creature themed vehicles had all too been easy. He should have done it years ago. They always got all worked up before a fight, and rarely paid attention to what was actually happening around them because his dad yelled to much and made them rush. Lloyd knew how to be quiet and quick on his feet when he had to be. His plan had been to join the battle, obviously. He would show his father what he was made of, that he should be General Number One... Or just any number at all, really. Lloyd was a lot of things, but he wasn’t picky.

He was just gonna scare a few people with his partial Oni form - apparently most people couldn’t make their eyes red and murderous on command, who could have known - avoid the Ninja, rob a really cool looking candy store he’d seen, and maybe climb the tower and claim Ninjago City for his father. You know. If he had time.

That would finally make his father see Lloyd for the asset he truly was. That he was worth paying attention to.

It would show his annoying Uncle Wu that he was wrong. Once and for all.

Only, once he’d gotten onto the battlefield…

It was really loud, okay? There was so much going on - people screaming, Garmadon’s booming laugh echoing on all of the speakers and TV screens he’d taken over, rubble flying this way and that, weapons and sea creatures clashing. He could feel the ground rumbling beneath his feet under the weight of the battle. It had all been too much.

Don’t get that wrong, he hadn’t been scared. He was the son of Lord Garmadon, part Oni and part pure evil. He lived in a volcano. He had fangs, for FSM’s sake! So he wasn’t scared.

… It had been a tactical retreat, when he’d ducked under a partially collapsed building’s colourful awning. He’d been regaining his breath, meditating like Uncle Wu said, planning out his next move. Lloyd’s eyes had been closed - to meditate, obviously, not to panic - so it wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t seen that stupid metal lamppost coming when it smacked him in the back of his head. And no one could have predicted that the Ninja would recognise him and kidnap him!

(No one would have predicted how bad they’d be at it, either.)

But that didn’t matter now. He’d escaped the Ninja’s clutches. His father was looking for him, and would take him back to the volcano, and he wouldn’t even care that Lloyd hadn’t quite faired as well as he’d hoped in battle. He’d have plenty of chances to prove himself in the future.

Even though he’d only been in Ninjago once, and had been unconscious for, like, half of that time, it was easy to make his way towards the all too familiar skyline. The news sometimes aired evacuation routes when things were really crazy, so he knew how to get out of the city, and just tried to do that in reverse.

He wondered what his father might be doing? Had he taken over the TV channels again to look for Lloyd? Had he staged an attack under threat of his return?

The city seemed quiet at night. He didn’t like it when the odd person lumbering past cast a shadow much longer than his own. The armour Lloyd had stolen and was still wearing chaffed a little. He’d switched it and put it under his hoodie before he left - it was a good way to look big and tough. His teeth did most of that for him, but in the dark he felt just a little exposed and small. Not that he was. He just looked it. There was a difference.

The streets were all too quiet. No attack, just the stars, the flickering streetlights and the gentle lapping of the sea.

Maybe hoping for an attack or the TV takeover was a little optimistic. His father was a busy man, and probably needed to save that kinda stuff for his own stuff. That made sense. No problem.

(It wasn’t a problem.)

Maybe he’d sent some Generals to collect his wayward son? Not Number One, of course. Maybe Number 7, or. Number 8? Number 8 wasn’t all too bad.

Only he couldn’t see anyone dressed like a sea creature, and he’d walked right along the front of the city where they would have come from.

Lloyd pulled his hoodie up closer around himself, suddenly cold, despite the fact that the sun was just starting to inch it way onto the horizon.

Maybe he’d - maybe it was on the radio. Or the newspaper. Maybe he’d put up posters, like Lloyd was some kind of lost puppy.

(There were no posters. He’d checked every lamppost on the seafront, every shop front. There were no newspapers. There was no radio special alert.)

(His father was not looking.)

It was really cold, and that was why Lloyd was shaking.

Or maybe he was angry. People shook when they were angry. Kai had, after Lloyd had revealed he knew the Cyan Ninja’s identity. (He'd shaken himself and Lloyd, actually, which Lloyd had graciously only bitten him very shallowly for.)

So yeah. Lloyd was shaking because he was angry. He could feel something, hot in his gut. The feeling threatened to jump up to his eyes, but he pushed it down, and balled his fists. He was angry, he decided. He wanted to punch something.

(Didn’t he realise? Didn’t he care?)

Lloyd was punching something. It sparked and creaked, and fell over with a crash. He had to jump back not to get electrocuted. The lamppost lay sprawled across the pavement, broken and useless. He hoped it was related to the one that had smacked him in the head the day before and caused this whole mess. Would serve it right.

(Lloyd had done this for him. He’d snuck into the battle to prove himself. To show that he could be helpful.)

(Lloyd had done this for his dad.)

He stared at the lamppost, something like regret pooling in his gut as it let out it’s final little spark before surrendering to the shadows. It wasn’t the lamppost’s fault that everything was ruined.

(He had failed.)

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, mostly to the lamppost.

(Garmadon was not looking for him.)

Lloyd took deep breaths. Uncle Wu was wrong about a lot of things, but meditating did help. Not that he’d ever tell him that, because he knew exactly the annoying, wise, soft little smile he would do in response, and it would undo all the work meditation did.

In, and out. Slow and steady, until he stopped shaking. The sun continued to pull itself over the ocean, silhouetting his dad's volcano. 

… What was Lloyd supposed to do now?

He turned away, and looked up at the city instead. And. Well. He’d never been to Ninjago before. He should sightsee, obviously. Like a tourist. He’d help rule this city one day, so he should know it. Maybe it would be as alive as the ocean, in it’s own ways.

He dug his hands into his hoodie pockets as he walked, and found - oh. Zane’s shopping list.

Hm. Lloyd had never been grocery shopping before.

Chapter Text

“Kai!”

Someone was yelling at him. It was Saturday and early still the morning and he was still really cosy, but someone was yelling at him. The world was cruel and unfair.

“…. Hm?” He mumbled blearily.

“I can’t believe you!” He opened his eyes, only to immediately regret it. Nya was standing above him, looking furious. The other members of the Secret Ninja Force (sans Jay, probably still blissfully asleep downstairs - what Kai wouldn’t have given to be asleep downstairs right that second) stood behind her, looking all too serious.

“Um…What did I do this time?” The events of yesterday slammed into him, and he sat up, suddenly awake. Nya had far too many reasons to be mad at him.“I’m sure it can’t be worse than accidentally kidnapping a child.”

“Try loosing him. You were supposed to be on watch! You were supposed to wake me up!” And she was right, of course. The little demon was no longer at his side, and there was a trail of feathers leading to the doorway.

“…Oh.”

“Oh? That’s all you have to say for yourself?”

“It was really cosy,” he argued. “He - um, I made a fire - like, a proper one! Look!” He cupped his hands again. This time, however, he could only produce a small spark, followed belatedly by a weak, cherry coloured flame that barely reached his thumb. He peered in disbelief at his own hands, and wondered if last night had actually been a dream. If Lloyd had stared at him with those horrid red eyes, and he’d been hypnotised into sleep and dreamed of a world where he was powerful and things were warm and like his childhood, while the demon ran off with full knowledge of their identities, and probably his Mech for good measure.

“My mech! Our mechs, I mean! We need to check-!”

The Ninja didn’t have to be told twice. They all rushed downstairs, and were very thankful to be greeted by the sight of their well loved machines. And Jay, of course. When he was finally woken up the Blue Ninja was not pleased about the most recent development to the whole kidnapping situation.

“You mean he snuck downstairs? Alone? He could have killed me in my sleep!” He spied the trail of pillow feathers. “He probably tried to smother me, but I super Ninja kicked him in my sleep or something, and that scared him off.” Ridiculous, but they had all seen Jay sleepwalk before, so not completely impossible. (But also; ridiculous.)

“I’m suppose that’s… possible,” Zane offered, obviously trying very hard to be nice while also staying honest. Everyone else snickered, then remembered how serious this whole situation was.

“Yeah, okay buddy. Good thing is you’re safe.” Cole patted Jay on the shoulder. “You didn’t wake up and see him escaping?” He and Jay both dealt with crippling anxiety, though they carried it differently. Cole’s sat deep below the surface, unmoving and pitted, seemingly dormant to those who didn’t know him well enough to see the signs. Jay’s sat on his skin, jumping and jolting like a live-wire, obvious like storm clouds on the horizon. It meant that they both often understood how the other was feeling, even if not quite how they were feeling it.

Jay shook his head at his friend. “Sorry. I was wearing noise cancelling headphones to sleep, I didn’t see or hear anything. The one night I decide your snoring is too loud… I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

“We need to prepare for whatever comes next,” Zane reminded them.

“Right. No thanks to Kai,” Kai frowned, but his sister was right. Unfortunately, she often was. He felt that familiar fire hot and growing in his stomach again, unsure if it was shame or annoyance this time. “We have no idea how long he’s been gone, or how far he could have gotten.”

Zane immediately jumped to planning mode. “We should canvas the nearby neighbourhoods, and ask if anyone has seen a young man matching Luh-Loyd’s description.” He did love to play detective. “I could print out an image of him from my memory files. Perhaps one where he is not tied up. Or growling.”

“That’d be useless, he could have been gone for, what, 8 hours?” Nya pointed out. Kai knew he hadn’t gotten his full 10. “Who knows how far he’d have gotten.”

“He could be back with his father by now!” Jay worried. Despite himself, he hoped that was the case.

“I say we do nothing,” Cole put in. Everyone turned to stare at him. “What?”

“Nothing?” Nya shouted “Kai lost a child!”

“The child of our sworn enemy,” Jay added.

“Who bit me!” Kai needed to remind him, waving his arm in case they’d forgotten.

“Who bit him!”

“And knows our identities,” Nya added, obviously not over what Kai felt was a very minor facet of this whole kidnapping business.

“That does not seem like a viable course of action. In fact, it isn’t a course of action at all.”

“Think about it. We wanted to unkidnap him anyway. He’s just… done it all by himself.” Cole shrugged, cool and calm as ever. “Saves us a day’s work. I see this as a win.”

“No it isn’t! No it isn’t!” Jay was nearly hysterical. Nya seemed to agree.

“He could be dangerous! We can’t just- what? Pretend it never happened?” She turned to Zane, unsure. “…Can we?”

The nindroid shrugged. “There’s nothing about him being found in the media, as far as my searches indicate. Or about him being lost. The only thing of note since Garmadon’s attack was some minor vandalism.”

“Wow, this city has really gone downhill. We should be patrolling more often.”

“But, even so-  I’m not sure. Kidnapping is a serious offence. And he is young. What if he cannot make it home alone?”

“What if he’s out there right now, biting more people?” Jay added. Kai rubbed the bandage on his arm absentmindedly.

“Cold?” Teased Nya. He was sure she remembered, and would keep bringing it up forever, but he had to remind her.

“No, I was bitten.” He thought about it. “Actually, yes, I’m cold. There’s, like, a breeze in- oh for FSM’s sake.” Kai pointed to the back door. The back door, which was now distored and half off of it’s hinges, the handle pulled practically out. So much for the Ninja being aware of their surroundings. “That was not like that when I went to sleep.”

“Was this the vandalism you were talking about?” Cole asked Zane, who shook his head.

“I had not noticed that our door was broken. This may imply that -” He hesitated. “…That an extrenal force may be responsible for Luh-loyd’s disappearance.”

“You mean - you think Garmadon was here?” Jay was very aware of the fact he’d slept right there.

“Hold on,” Cole pointed out, “how would he know where we were? Zane, did you catch any signals leaving the base in the last 24 hours?”

“… None that were not our own.”

“But we don’t know Lloyd’s abilities! He can - um, there’s a rumour that he can hypnotise people!”

“Where did you hear that? Chen’s hate blog?”

Kai tried to decide how to respond to that. Now that he was fully awake and looking back, his actions last night seemed impossible. Falling sleep with the enemy curled up next to him like his little sister? But it felt real, somehow. He knew that, if Lloyd sat next to him again, he wouldn’t push the brat away. Because he was a brat. But enemy felt like a stretch, somehow. (Unless he tried biting again, then all the bets were off.)

“Either way, he is not here. I still believe we should ask around for clues.”

“Hey, we wanted him back with his dad,” Cole shrugged.

“His dad, the warlord, who could know where we are!” Jay countered.

“FSM. I don’t like any of this,” Nya crossed her arms.

None of the ninja were quite sure who to look at for answers. Nya was supposed to be in charge, but she kept looking around too, as if hoping for an answer to spring out of thin air. Jay was almost frantic, hair standing on end like he’d been electrocuted, probably because he must have been running his hands through it again. Or maybe he’d managed to get his powers working a little, there was no way to be sure. Cole had apparently given up, even though not giving up was, like, their whole thing as ninja. Kai wasn’t certain how much of Zane’s desire to search was motivated by his love of detective work, and how much was because he seemed more aware than all of them that Lloyd was some form of a child.

“It’d be so easy to forget about the whole thing.” Cole repeated. “It’ll blow over.”

“Blow over? We kidnapped someone!”

“Kai did.”

“We all participated, Jay, and would be implicated in the crime. I have footage.”

“Then don’t show it!”

The arguing went on.

Kai wasn’t sure how he felt, or what they should do. He just felt hot, still unsure if it was his anger or his shame or something else. Maybe the pressure of the whole situation. He wanted another two hours of sleep. He wanted a bowl of cereal. He wanted Master Wu to come and fix this for them - never mind that the most useful thing the old man usually did was gesture at the problem and offer up some kind of vaguely made-up sounding story, or long winding lecture. He could really go for a long and winding lecture right now, if it came from eyes that did not waver and hands that did not shake.

(FSM, all it took was kidnapping and subsequently loosing one child for Kai to get sentimental, apparently.)

The arguing was still happening, and had apparently elevated to Nya tipping a glass of water over Cole’s head.

… Or not.

They all froze. Water dripped. Nya did not have a cup of water in her hand. Jay had one. At the foot of his makeshift bed on the couch. Several metres away. It was empty. The cup rocked slightly in place before settling.

“Did you- was that - your elemental powers?” Cole spluttered, shaking his head like a dog to dry his hair. The other Ninja were too shocked to remember to cover their faces, so they all got splashed. Somehow it didn’t matter.

“How did you do that?” Jay was practically jumping up and down.

“I-” Nya looked down at her hands, shocked. “I don’t know. I’ve never been able to get water that far before. I was just frustrated, and thinking about how it would be nice if-”

“If I got hit in the face with a glass of water?”

“I guess. I can’t believe it worked! Is this why Master Wu put me in charge this time? He knew I was getting closer to my True Potential?”

“…You’re lucky I wasn’t wearing my headphones.” FSM knew what the Black Ninja might do if they got broken.

“Perhaps? Master Wu does work in mysterious ways,” Zane pondered, studying the Cyan Ninja carefully, as if he might see exactly what had changed about her since their last failed elemental powers training session.

“I can’t believe my kid sister is mastering her powers before I am.” Kai ruffled her hair, argument forgotten, proud (and only a little jealous). “…No one cared when I said I’d made a proper fire.”

“That’s ‘cuz you’re always saying stuff like that.”

“Okay, fair. Congrats, sis.”

“Whoa, why is Cole all wet? Are you guys having a water fight without me?” A voice came from the broken warehouse door. All the ninja spun around, not as aware of their surroundings as Wu had been training them to be. Even Zane, who had some kind of extra sensors going on, seemed taken completely by surprise.

It was Lloyd. As alive and un-unkidnapped as ever. He looked slightly bulkier than usual, and appeared to be without his armoured chest plate - Kai suspected it was under the hoodie. His fangs were on full display and eyes red, making his whole face take on a reddish-tinge that still sent Kai shuddering. But he was smiling, and his arms were overloaded with paper bags, as he stood upright under the weight of the ninja’s collective stares.

“Lloyd!” Kai cheered, suddenly and inexplicably overwhelmed with joy at the sight of the little demon. Maybe it was that leftover feelings from last night, where he had seemed small and almost little-sibling shaped. Now he just looked surprised that they were surprised to see him. Maybe Kai’s joy was actually relief at not having been the guy to mess everything up again. “Where were you?”

“I was only gone for, like, three hours.” He complained, rolling his eyes like any amount of time was a normal one to return to your kidnappers from.

“We thought you’d escaped! Or, you know, been re-kidnapped.” Jay explained, looking very suspicious. “Are there weapons in those bags? Did you come back to kill us?”

“Technically speaking, Luh-loyd did escape.”

Kai studied the demon. He tried to see what about him might point to why he’d returned. He looked the same as ever. “But you… came back?”

Lloyd shrugged, and the bags wobbled. Zane and Cole took a couple each, pulling faces at whatever they saw inside.

“You came back with… groceries?”

“Well,” Lloyd dumped the other bag on the ground unceremoniously, and Cole shuffled his own to pick it up. “I was gonna escape back to the volcano, obviously, but my- um - my dad’s not looking for me yet. He just needs a bit more- anyways. Zane forgot to go grocery shopping, and I’d stolen his list. I’ve never done that before, so I thought I’d try.”

“You’ve never stolen a list before?” Kai asked, struggling to catch up to… all of this.

“Grocery shopped. Honestly,” Lloyd rolled his eyes. “How do you guys keep beating my dad, again?” He threw the list - very crumpled - at Zane, who scrambled to catch it without dropping all of the food. He just about managed, loosing an apple in the process, but said apple already had claw marks in it, so it wasn’t much of a loss. It didn’t bode well for the state of the rest of the food. “I couldn’t find ‘aagh!’ batteries, so I got ‘aaagh!’ ones instead. Hopefully they taste the same.”

Zane looked at the list. “I think you mean ‘double A’ or ‘triple A’ batteries, and they are not safe to be consumed.”

Lloyd scowled at him. “Hey, you’re a robot, I don’t know what you eat. Plus, it’s your food list, ’s not my fault you put something un-edible on it.”

“Nindrioid, and inedible,” Zane corrected without really meaning to.

The rest of the Secret Ninja Force just stared. The whole situation was ridiculous, and no one had any idea what to make of it.

“I’m sorry, but unless I’ve gone absolutely off the rails,” Jay began, “the son of our sworn enemy, who we kidnapped and tied up - and bit you, yes, we haven’t forgotten about it, Kai - he went out and… bought us groceries?” He rooted around in one of the bags, pulling out a tube of chips and inspecting it. “Seems… normal?” Kai made grabby hands, so he handed it over.

Lloyd looked unfazed. “Yeah? And?”

Kai pulled open the jar - and was immediately hit in the face with several brightly coloured plastic snakes.

“Agh!” Kai panted heavily. “FSM, why?” Lloyd simply laughed maniacally.

Jay sighed, and looking longing at the couch. “… I need to back to bed.” Kai couldn’t help but agree, only…

“We’ve been putting this off for too long. We need to sort…” he gestured to all of Lloyd, “this. Now.”

“First question,” Zane asked, “where did you get the money for these?”

Lloyd tilted his head, the picture of innocence. “…You wanted me to pay for them?”

(Well. At least he probably had a criminal record now.)

Chapter Text

After they’d put away the groceries (Lloyd had done a… mixed job, at best, Zane would definitely need to go back out again before the weekend was over) they tried for the better part of half an hour to teach Lloyd about how stealing wasn’t okay. Kai was painfully aware that they sounded like a particularly preachy kid’s cartoon, where a message had to be shoved at the end of every episode, and had to be spelt out very obviously to the 3 year old’s watching. It was hard explaining something that was so fundamental to them in a way that didn’t sound corny and exaggerated, okay?

It was also hard to tell if the brat had taken anything in, because he yawned his way through most of the conversation and, when the Ninja finally ran out of steam, he’d produced Jay’s phone from his hoodie pocket, saying, “Oh, you probably want this back then.”

“This has gotten us nowhere,” Zane announced, once Jay had stopped checking his phone for bugs or malware. (Thankfully, all that Lloyd had done was drain the battery and take a couple of blurry candid shots of Jay and the other Ninja from the last half hour. How he’d managed that when they’d all been watching him like a hawk, in case he decided to disappear again, none of them knew. It was easier to just be grateful that he’d given it back at all.) “We need to refocus. Though stealing is serious, Luh-loyd, we have other matters to address.”

Kai agreed. Things were so muddled. And unfortunately kinda sorta completely his fault, so he should probably encourage them to come to some kind of a conclusion about where to go from here.

On the one hand, it was obvious they had to return him. Lloyd was practically a child. He was a demon, with glowing red eyes and sharp teeth and claws. He’d robbed several grocery stores. He’d destroyed one of their pillows. He was the son of their sworn enemy. He’d pickpocketed both Zane’s and Jay’s phones. And he’d bitten Kai (who felt like they’d all forgotten about that part too quickly).

And yet.

And yet he’d gone grocery shopping. And yet he was some kind of 13 years old, apparently. And yet Kai looked at him and, when his eyes weren’t too bright, and he was smiling around his sharp fangs, he looked kinda like he could be one of his friends. It was in the way he teased and pushed and prodded, and demolished Zane’s cooking, and curled up next to Kai on a warm night.

(Had it really only been one night? FSM, he was going soft.)

Kai felt, deep within him, so deep that he wasn't sure he could explain it, that Lloyd shouldn't go back to the volcano. What they were supposed to do with him instead was a whole different story, because Kai was not willing to babysit the brat every night for the rest of his life. Take him to boarding school, or something? Did they take evil half demon teenagers?

“We can’t just keep him like he’s an untrained puppy.” Kai hesitated. “…Can we?”

“As much as that may be appealing, I should remind everyone that this is still kidnapping.” Zane’s eyes glazed over as he mulled the issue. “At least, I think it is… the legality of this situation is become less and less clearcut.”

“I should remind everyone that I’m right here. And I’m not a puppy.” He scowled deeper. Maybe he’d decided he’d seen something in their eyes or something, because even though no one had said anything in response, he demanded; “I’m not! I’d be, like, a wolf, if anything.” He snapped his teeth demonstratively. Kai only flinched a little bit. “Or, like, a lion.”

“No, Kai, we can’t keep him. He’s a kid, he needs to be returned to his father,” Nya said firmly, crossing her arms, eyes set. That usually meant she’d decided that she couldn’t be argued with, and you might as well give up right now. Kai was very familiar with that Look. (Capital L, because of it's power.) The Look was how his sister had ended up on the Secret Ninja Force team to begin with. She’d discovered Kai’s secret (within two days, which he had not been pleased about) and then simply declared that she was going to be a member too. She'd shown up at the warehouse for their training and acted like she'd been invited, and given all of them the Look when they asked who she was. Master Wu hadn’t objected, but even if he had… Well, Kai suspected there would have been a Cyan Ninja no matter what.

“You think we need to return him to his dad even if he’s-” Jay’s voice dropped to a whisper “-Lord Garmadon?”

“Yes.”

"I thought you wanted him gone, Jay," Kai reminded him.

"I mean, yeah, but. Lord Garmadon. Shouldn't it be to, like, the authorities? Or something? I don't know! I'm not a kidnapping expert!"

“Um. Hello? He’s gonna come looking for me anyway,” Lloyd announced. “So this whole conversation is pointless. Can we watch more cartoons while we wait?”

The team exchanged glances. 

“… Secret Ninja sidebar,” Kai demanded.

The Ninja huddled in the corner. Lloyd sighed dramatically and flopped on the couch, running one of his claws along the part where the leather was flaking and peeling. It didn’t seem as though he was trying to listen in, but they lowered their voices, just in case.

“Look, it’s clear we can’t contain him, so I say we just send him back. Give him a raft, or something, and push him towards the volcano. He’ll get there, he’s crafty. Win-win.” Cole shrugged, like any part of this situation was clear cut.

“We can’t do that!”

“What? I’d give him a lifejacket.”

“Not that! He knows our identities! And our base!”

“Jay, he doesn’t seem to really care. And he said he wasn’t involved in Garmadon’s planning.” Kai reminded him.

“He said he wanted to be.”

“But he came back,” Kai said, because he wasn’t sure what that really meant, but it felt important. 

“Yeah, can we talk about that again actually,” Jay asked, “because …what?”

“I’ve been trying to figure out that one myself.” Zane mused. “I can’t see a reason for it that makes sense. Perhaps… no. This isn’t behaviour I’ve ever encountered before. Is it-”

“No, Zane, it’s not normal.”

“Then we are all as lost as each other.” The Nindroid agreed.

“Do you think he’s just messing with us?” Cole asked. “He does seem to enjoy that.”

Kai frowned. It made sense. He did enjoy messing with them; the display with the phone was evidence of that. But that didn’t mean Kai liked it. It felt like it fell short of the whole truth of the situation. He managed a noncommittal; “Mm...”

“We could still ransom him,” Nya mused. “I mean, since we already have him. Doesn’t matter what he thinks he’s up to, it’s still an option. And we’re going to return him anyway. Eventually. Isn’t this just doing what Wu said? Using our intelligence to fight battles without-”

“Actually kicking butt?”

“If you wanna put it that way, I guess.” Nya sighed. “So... we’ll keep him until his Dad comes calling, then we use him to stop the destruction of the city. It lets us procrastinate doing anything else for now, at least. It’s decided.”

“Uh, it’s not decided,” Kai found himself saying, mostly out of principle. “We should vote, or something.”

“Master Wu put me in charge.” 

“…Vote over. It sounded like as good a plan as any, anyway.” Kai glanced back at the couch, checking that Lloyd still seemed to be ignoring them. He’d started stacking the DvD cases in a precarious little tower. Kai almost wanted to yell at him, but he really didn’t want the guy listening in to his next question. “Zane? Is there still nothing from Lord Garmadon? You’re completely sure?”

“Nothing has come up since I last checked. I will keep an alert at the ready. This behaviour seems to fit in with Lord Garmadon’s usual pattern of attacking and then disappearing for an average of 4 to 12 days to regroup, recover and come up with a new plan. Or just rebuild his previous weapons. There is no obvious deviation yet.”

(Was Garmadon not looking for him? Did he even know that his son was missing?)

“…Well, he’s probably like this at home too,” Nya gestured vaguely towards Lloyd, then to the door.“It’s probably- he probably disappears occasionally anyway. So. I’m sure he’ll notice soon.” Kai couldn’t help but notice that she sounded like she was trying to convince herself, too.

(He hoped she was right.)

“Hm. That actually makes sense,” Cole agreed. “Maybe it was a good idea putting you in charge.”

“Actually? Maybe?” The Cyan Ninja’s tone turned sharp as she stared at Cole, unimpressed.

“Oops. I just meant-”

“Oh for the firsts!” Jay suddenly groaned, pulling his hands over his freckled face, interrupting before the Black Ninja could dig himself into a deeper hole.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I forgot to put on my mask when you woke me up. Now he knows what I look like, too.”

“Yeah,” Kai looked around at all of his teammate’s unmasked faces, “I think the whole ‘secret identity’ ship has definitely sailed.”

There was a slight crash as the DvD tower toppled.

“You done?” Lloyd shouted. “Now can we watch cartoons? I don’t know how to make this thing work.” He had a DvD between his clawed fingers, probably smudging and scratching it beyond recognition, and was surrounded by both opened and unopened cases. Kai sighed.

The kid was lucky the Red Ninja somehow liked him.

Chapter Text

The Secret Ninja Force did not often meditate without Master Wu there to force them into it, but sparring and the obstacle course were different matters all together. Everyone enjoyed letting out a bit of energy. Plus, now they had someone to show off to.

“Why can’t we just keep watching cartoons? And before you all start, I don’t care that we can’t change the volume anymore because I got the wrong scream of battery.”

Surprisingly, Jay agreed with Lloyd. For an entirely different reason, but it it was probably some kind of progress.

“We can’t just show him all our moves!” Jay argued. “It’s bad enough he knows who we are. Cartoons are safe, we should just keep doing that instead.”

Lloyd smiled what was probably supposed to be a disarming smile, but it was hard to tell around the fangs. “You don’t think I could figure them out from watching you on TV? You need to be more careful with your victory dance, by the way, you could accidentally bump into weapons doing that.”

Jay pulled a face. He turned to Nya. “I don’t like that every time I’m stressed he says something to make it even worse!” Lloyd’s smile widened, and Kai wasn’t sure if that meant he was doing it on purpose or not. Based on everything else they knew about him... probably on purpose.

“You can sit this one out if you want, Jay,” the Cyan Ninja assured him. “Why don’t you keep watch, or something?”

“… I do have a new issue to get through. Okay.”

“That guy is all issues,” Lloyd declared as Jay ran off to get his comic, and received muffled laughter and sighs of disappointment in response.

“Unkind. Don’t say that again…” Cole checked that Jay was definitely out of hearing range. “Funny, though. You’ll fit right in,” and he ruffled his hair. Lloyd, apparently not knowing what to do with the gesture, backed off, snapping his teeth. Thankfully, the Black Ninja seemed to find it funny. Kai didn’t.

“Hey! No more biting! Even if Cole is probably, like, at least 50 percent cake.”

"Mmm. Cake..."

“Don't touch my hair, then!”

“I dunno,” Kai studied Lloyd’s hair, which was now sticking up almost like his own - though it didn’t look nearly as cool, obviously. “It does kinda look better that way. The bowlcut is not doing you any favours.”

“Oh! Oh! Do you remember Nya’s bowl cut bob haircut?” Cole asked, grinning. She glared.

“Seriously? This again? I thought we were supposed to be training!”

“I have several images saved in my ‘frequent use’ memory folder relating to Nya’s bob. I can show you later, Lloyd, when we have finished training for the day.”

“Okay. Do you guys have to meditate like Uncle Wu too?”

“… I still can’t believe he’d been training you, I have so many questions.”

“We were thinking we’d probably just go straight to the fun part.” Cole answered. "You'll really like the course, Lloyd."

“Yeah, we should definitely show him that. Meditation sucks.” Kai tried to be good at concentrating, but it was just. So. Boring.

“I usually ignore him for that part too,” Lloyd agreed.

“We should focus on our elemental powers,” Nya suggested. They all still remembered the cup thing from earlier (Cole especially).

“Yes! I can prove that I made a proper fire last night!”

“I did have a question about that,” Nya stared her brother down, the infamous Look making a comeback. “Were you trying to light the base on fire? The top of your bunk is all singed.”

“So you did believe me!”

“Yeah, but I was mad at you. That was way more important.”

“Does that mean you’re not mad anymore?”

“… Eh. We'll see.”

“So are you guys gonna train, or just argue?” Lloyd demanded, hands on hips. Annoyingly, he had a point.

“And I thought I was in charge,” Nya muttered.

The Ninja’s obstacle course supposedly it was to train flexibility and all that kinda stuff, but it felt more like it was like a grown-up playground - at least for the first couple of rounds, before the tiredness set in. There were hoops to jump through, monkey bars to climb on, platforms to jump from, walls to get over… Kai was expecting Lloyd to be very impressed as it raised from the warehouse floor, like the Ninja all had been when they were first recruited. He’d been completely taken by surprise by the mere existence of DvDs and advertisements and shows that weren’t the news, so Kai couldn’t imagine how excited he might be to see the training grounds.

But maybe Kai should have known that things with Lloyd never went how he expected. Instead of jumping up and down with joy at the thing, the kid just watched it raise with a frown, unimpressed.

“...That’s my dad’s.”

Kai spluttered. “No it’s not. Master Wu made that. And it’s our ninja training grounds.”

Lloyd shrugged. “The volcano is full of those floor raising… thingys.”

Cole pondered. “D’ya mean elevators? Elevators are everywhere.” He turned to Zane, who usually knew things. “Does it count as an elevator if it’s not, like, in a box?”

“Most elevators need to be raised and lowered in some kind of shaft - the kind people in movies are always climbing into. However, there are some without. This could count, but you might also call it a trapdoor,” Cole nodded.

“Sick. Thanks Zane.”

“Well, I’m sure that the volcano isn’t the only place in Ninjago with a trapdoor lift thingy,” Kai told Lloyd. “Wu could have got this from anywhere. Or he could have made it.”

The little brat’s grin was wide. “Your precious Sensei Wu stole it from my dad. And you guys just lectured me about why stealing is wrong and blah blah blah.”

“No, you’re trying to do another joke. Like that tube of snakes.”

“And biting Kai.” Jay added helpfully over his comic, apparently listening in just enough to add insults, the traitor.

“Hey! That wasn’t a joke! I’m still wounded! I was lucky he wasn’t poisonous!”

“Venomous,” Zane corrected, like it mattered when Kai had been bitten.

“I’m neither. I think. And biting him was funny, so it’s kinda like a joke,” Lloyd pointed out. “Also, the snakes were a prank. Big difference. I’m the prank king back home, so I've got heaps more like that, just you wait.”

Kai’s eye was twitching. His felt like his head was about to catch on fire. The White Ninja placed a cold, bracing hand on his shoulder.

“Kai, perhaps you should calm down. Stop rising to his bait.”

“I should stop-?”

“And Luh-loyd, stop provoking Kai. Why don’t you explain to us why you believe this is your father’s invention.”

He gave the ground a little pull in just the right spot, and it came up just a little. He pointed down into the mechanisms, at some of the screws. Zane illuminated it fot them and, sure enough, they had little red skulls on the ends.

“… Maybe Master Wu had a goth phase, and he doesn’t like to talk about it” suggested Nya, who had also had a brief goth phase that no one was allowed to talk about. She shot Kai a don’t bring that up right now or else kind of glare. It was almost scarier than Lloyd’s red eyes.

“Before he went into the whole sea creature thingy, my dad loved skulls. He bulk ordered these screws, because he always loves a good discount - he says it's like a different kind of stealing, which is apparently not allowed anyway." He rolled his eyes. "But he got so many that we’ve still got them everywhere. I spiked the seat of General Number One three General Number Ones ago with them, he was not happy. And! I didn’t say he made it; usually the scientists do that for him.”

“… Huh.” Kai felt himself calm as Lloyd's rambling story went on, but the warmth in his gut remained as he stared at the screws. They were evidence that maybe things weren't always as clear cut as he may like. The Secret Ninja Force trained on Lord Garmadon's equipment? Or was only the raising mechanism his, and Wu made the actual course? Did it matter?

“I'm sorry for doubting you, Lloyd," the Red Ninja admitted. Lloyd stared at him like he’d grown another pair of arms. Though, if Kai thought about it, out of all of the people in the warehouse the son of Lord Garmadon was probably the most likely to do such a thing. (Followed closely by Zane, who could have his father build him another set of arms if he wanted. He’d offered to do so on the lead up to Zane’s last birthday; at the time the Nindriod had taken up juggling, and his father thought it could help. He’d declined, as four arms would not aid his quest for anonymity, but it had been a very nice gesture, and they still had the blueprints in case he ever changed his mind.)

“I guess Wu and Garmadon are brothers,” Cole reminded everyone, still wincing at the words because it was such a strange, alien concept. “Maybe they… got along at some point? And shared designs?”

Brothers. Master Wu and Lord Garmadon. It was almost impossible to think about. Kai made a promise to himself to never let Nya become like Garmadon. Or have either of them ever become like Wu. Now that he was thinking about it, avoiding being anything like anyone in the family altogether would be ideal.

“Well I think he stole it,” Lloyd announced, looking extremely smug. “Awesome! I love it when Uncle Wu is wrong! It happens more often than you’d think, you guys should keen an eye on your Sensei.”

“We don’t call him our sensei,” Zane reminded him.

“Really? He tried to make me call him sensei when he tried to train me. And I’m his nephew.”

“... Again, I still can’t believe he was training you.”

“It’s true! I’m not a liar! Well. Not right now, anyway.”

“Are we gonna argue all day? Or train?” Cole complained, stamping the platform back to it’s normal hight with his foot, then grinning at his own display of strength. “Is that cool or what?” He asked, only slightly dampening his coolness factor by doing so.

Lloyd frowned. “I think you broke it. It’s not supposed to go back unless you push this part.” He pushed it, and nothing happened. The Black Ninja better not have broken it, because Wu would definitely make the whole team pitch in to fix it, because of teamwork, or something.

“How strong are you?” Kai studied Cole. It wasn’t like he looked physically stronger than the week before, but Kai was suddenly remembering a few of the feats of strength he’d displayed in the last 24 hours and starting to wonder. There had been so much else going on that the Ninja had all brushed it off, and assumed the Black Ninja was always that strong. But now that he was thinking about it…

Nya remembered something. “Wait. How strong is Lloyd? How’d you break the back door?”

Lloyd rolled his eyes. “That thing? It was badly made. Your sensei didn’t steal that from my dad. And I don’t even think you locked it.”

“I definitely locked it,” Zane confirmed, because he was good at remembering that kind of thing.

"And I double checked it," Jay added over his comic book, because he'd slept downstairs last night and his anxiety would not have let him sleep without it.

“Um. No. If you'd locked it, would it have come out of the wall like that? Locked doors stay locked. With like metal bolts and stuff.”

“Every conversation with you is impossible,” Kai complained.

“And mildly concerning,” Zane added.

“Again. Like I said, we should just train. And pretend everything is normal. It’s so much easier if we just go with the flow with this guy,” Cole pointed out. And he wasn’t wrong.

“I hate it when you’re right,” Kai complained. “It’s almost as bad as when Jay is right.”

Jay pointedly and very loudly turned the page of his comic, and said nothing.

It didn’t take long to get back into the obstacle course. Kai had run it what felt like hundreds of times, and even if they shuffled around the individual pieces, they all felt familiar, and all of the movements he had to make had some kind of muscle memory behind them. He knew already that he needed to carefully time his jump from that platform to that one, because it had a tendency to sway, that he needed to pause before sliding under that wall, that he had to avoid that dent Cole had accidentally made in that spot so he didn’t trip up, that he had to start by putting his left foot on that foothold to easily get up that wall…

Unfortunately, the Ninja all knew how easy it had gotten over the last year or so, and had taken to throwing things at each other to keep things interesting.

In all fairness, Kai loved the addition to their training... When he was the one doing the throwing. It was nowhere near as fun being the one who was dodging.

Even more unfortunately, they had recently decided that they should add their newly discovered elemental powers to the mix. Gone were the days of dodging pillows and the occasional nerf bullet. Now, he had to learn to dodge sprays of water and zaps of electricity and ice and the literal ground shaking under him.

And even more unfortunate than all of that, he and Nya were apparently not the only ones who had suddenly hit a stride with their powers, as had been evidenced by Cole earlier. Now, instead of dodging the equivalent of half a snowball, aimed poorly and melting quickly, Zane was freezing small portions of the floor and throwing semi-sharp little shards of ice with much better accuracy. And Kai could throw fire, but he had to be far more careful than the others, because no one wanted to treat burn scars, or worse, explain to Wu how they’d burnt down their base. So he mostly got stuff and powers thrown at him, and then didn’t get to take proper revenge.

The whole powers thing was, overall, a far more effective training method that worked towards two of their required skill sets, but dear FSM, it made things harder.

Lloyd seemed to love it, at least. Zane had cut him up some fruit to try and keep him busy, which he’d rejected at first, but apparently the joy of throwing orange peels at his father’s enemies made eating said orange worth it. He laughed uproariously whenever Kai got hit, and then laughed harder when doing so distracted Kai and made him miss his next handhold on the monkey bars and fall onto the floor in a heap.

“My turn!” Declared Nya, who proceeded to run into the exact same troubles, making the whole experience a little bit better.

“Zane,” she complained, after a particularly funny looking slip on some ice, “do you have to freeze the floor?”

“Master Wu tells us that we need to be prepared for all scenarios. Plus, this is vital research into the depth and strength of our powers,” he reminded her. Then he smiled broadly at Lloyd, and Kai knew that meant that the nindriod was having just as much fun as the rest of them.

Chapter Text

Eventually, Lloyd ran out of orange peels, and the whole watching his dad’s enemies fall over and over thing got slightly less engaging.  It was still pretty funny, especially when it happened to Kai, who always had particularly explosive reactions (sometimes including actual fire again, which was awesome), but the novelty of it all did wear off. Plus, they were all only getting better as they went on.

He complained of being bored, but the Ninja didn’t seem to care at all. Even when he whined, and even when he stamped his feet, and even when he flashed his teeth. Zane stayed weirdly calm and patient and deliberate, and it creeped Lloyd out. The only other person who was like that was his Uncle, and even he could usually be provoked into yelling after just the right prodding - or at very least into doing his whole I’m better than you so I’m gonna take a deep breath and count to ten, then lecture you for an hour thingy. He was sure he could find the White Ninja’s breaking point, if he tried hard enough, but for now Zane seemed to find him amusing.

“We will not train forever, Luh-loyd.” Was basically the only thing he would say. “Be patient.”

Well, Lloyd had decided that he hated being patient. Being patient was actually literally the worst thing ever. And that was saying something, because he'd been kidnapped a day ago.

Cole landed a perfect jump, despite being hit in the side with a big spray of water (courtesy of Nya), and the Ninja all cheered him on. The thread between them seemed to tighten, just a little. It was really quite exciting, because that particular spot had been giving all the Ninja trouble. Lloyd found himself cheering before he clamped it down, reminding himself that he was bored, actually.

(Lloyd was not excited for them. He was not happy that they were seemingly building on their powers. These were his father’s enemies, so if they got better that was bad. Also it wasn’t nearly as funny when they succeeded, so…)

He roved his eyes around the warehouse, wondering if anything else was stolen from his dad. The mechs weren’t anything he could imagine his Uncle Wu building, but they were all so specifically Ninja, each wrapped closely to a member of the team. Lloyd couldn’t picture his dad’s scientists dreaming any of them up.

They were really cool actually - he always payed extra close attention to them when they showed up on TV. The stupid camera operators usually focused on his dad and the destruction he was causing over the Ninja and what they were doing to protect the city, though, so glances of them were few and far between. It was extra stupid, because they played right into his dad’s six hands when they did that. Lloyd was pretty sure that he wanted the chaos and the fame and the focus. Being in the news seemed to be part of it for him. It made people way more panicked and scared, and easier to take over. If the news people really wanted the Ninja to win and the citizens to help them, they should make them feel confident in and sure of their Secret Ninja Force, and more likely to help them if they were ever able to try.

The Ninja didn’t help it by barely ever talking to the cameras, just zapping in and saving the day and then disappearing. He knew they were supposed to be secret, or whatever, but even a don't worry citizens or something like that had to be helpful, right?

He considered telling the Ninja this, lording over them that they’d been so shortsighted with their media presence, but they were all too focused on their obstacle course. And it was probably wrong to give your dad’s enemies career advice.

So he went back to being bored.

There wasn’t much of anything else cool to look at in the warehouse. He knew where it was and what it was for and who ran it, so the small details weren’t that big of a deal. There was a lot of personal bits that his dad wouldn’t care about, if he did decide to tell him about this... whole experience. Lord Garmadon might not deserve it, what with the not coming to get his only son yet and all.

“I cannot help but feel like we’re all very close to our True Potential,” Zane commented, as Nya landed another hit, this time in a spluttering Kai’s face, and Lloyd rolled his eyes. That was definitely one of his Uncle’s sayings. The dreaded 'True Potential'. Wu had loads of stuff like that. Lloyd, you have so much Potential. Lloyd, destiny has laid out two paths for you, you need to choose wisely. Lloyd, destiny says you could do so much more than this. Lloyd, there is a better life available to you. What did he know?

He kept looking around. He enjoyed being a little bit nosy, even if there wasn't an evil use for it. Lloyd liked some of the personal details, honestly. It was cool how their base had splashes of different colours, little pieces of each of the Ninja. He wondered why they didn’t live here. Because apparently they didn’t, because Nya had texted Zane when he’d stolen his phone that she’d picked up supplies for herself and Kai. Wouldn’t they already have them if they lived here?

He didn't know where they all usually lived, but it must be really cool if they didn't want to stay here. Or maybe they were just avoiding Uncle Wu, who he was pretty sure lived on his little boat, and could visit the warehouse at port any time he wanted.

Hm. If he figured out Zane’s password he could probably get more information. He could send messages without his phone, being a robot and all, so he’d probably miss it the least. Then again, he seemed like the kinda guy who might know how to pick a good password. Unlike every one of his dad's General's locker combinations. (It was always either 666, because they were evil, 001, because they wanted to be number one, or 000, because they weren't smart enough to change it from the default. It was usually easy to tell by looking at someone which one they were... And usually it was the last option).

Lloyd’s eyes caught on Jay, and the little… thing he was reading. It couldn’t be a book, it was too floppy. An instruction manual? He thought he’d seen Kai looking at something similar last night, but it had been kinda dark. He squinted… was that the guy from that poster?

Lloyd doubled checked, and yeah, it was the guy from the poster. Instead of a triumphant pose, aiming some kind of gun, he was in some kind of a ship. Kinda like a mech, actually, but with huge wings. And… where was he? Was he in space?

Lloyd inched closer. And closer. He was just trying to get a better look - the picture did look quite interesting, with all those colours and details. The guy was bent over the ship’s controls, red-knuckled, clutching a steering wheel, eyes determined. He looked like he was mid-battle. It was awesome. Above him it read; ‘Fitz Donagan; Starfarer,” in big block letters. It looked like a cartoon, but drawings.

He studied Jay’s face. He seemed completely taken by the book, not even looking up to cheer with the others when Kai deflected a burst of icicles from Zane using his fire as they both jumped across the course. Lloyd figured he wouldn’t notice if he got even closer - he was real good at sneaking when he wanted to be. All you had to do was shift your weight carefully, watch where you were putting your feet, and he’d found that retracting your claws was always a good idea, in case they accidentally scraped along something (which was real good for scaring people, not so good for sneaking).

Honestly, he was so good at sneaking you’d think he was a ninja. Not that he had to be good at anything around here, because the actual ninja were so unobservant. Jay didn’t notice when he got right up behind him so he could read the little book right over his shoulder.

It was all pictures. Like, at least six on each page, usually more. All bright and action packed and occasionally punctuated with ‘pows’ ‘zaps’ and ‘bangs!’ Lloyd had never seen anything like it. He could understand why the Blue Ninja was so enthralled, Jay was halfway through a story, apparently, and read a little faster than Lloyd, so he kept turning the page before he was quite ready, but it was still pretty easy to follow, honestly.

They stayed like that for a few minutes in a content silence. The Blue Ninja couldn’t be that bad, actually, if he liked something this cool. Fitz was fighting some kind of aliens, who were trying to steal the crystals that powered his super cool weapon - a glowing sword - leaving him scrambling for new ways to fight, realising he relied on the same strategy too often. Lloyd thought that was stupid, and tried not to think too hard about how his dad was doing just that.

The battle was gearing up, and Fitz was pinned behind a space station, laser blasts raining above him. The air was heavy with tension, and he was gripping his side. He was desperate, cornered. There was no way out; they had him surrounded. Then, a look of triumph overcame his face. He had an idea. He reached forwards, to something off panel. If Fitz could just-

Jay turned the page unexpectedly fast - perhaps Lloyd had spent too long lingering on the really extremely super cool art of the vast expanse of space lit up by a bunch of glowing weapons. He completely missed Fitz's solution. Now, inexplicably, Fitz was standing triumphant, wound apparently gone, the aliens retreating. Lloyd was completely lost, which was absolutely unfair, and he would not stand for it. He reached over Jay’s shoulder, and turned the page back, so he could get another look.

“Aghh!” Jay screamed, pushing Lloyd back and throwing himself and the little book thingy forward. Lloyd could have sworn that a jolt shot through him at the contact, and the Blue Ninja’s hair was standing on end.

“Hey! I was reading that!”

“How long were you back there?” Jay was panting, and clutching his chest. “For the Firsts, were you trying to give me a heart attack? Is this your super convoluted way of killing me?”

He was gesturing with the floppy book, and Lloyd’s eyes followed it, struggling to catch back onto the story. “No? There are way easier ways to kill you. And you’re gonna give me an actual heart attack if you zap me like that again! Electricity is bad for your heart, did you know that? I learnt that from a book at the volcano. Wait, when you zapped me did you see my skeleton like in the cartoons? What did it look like? Do I have all the bones? Like, all the normal ones, I mean? Also, can you hold still? I wanna see that page again, I missed the most important part..”

Jay stared at him. Lloyd waited for him to say something; he’d given him plenty of questions to respond to, Lloyd didn’t mind which one he picked. But Jay seemed intent on just cycling between anger, confusion and an expression that Lloyd could only describe as an ‘are-the-Firsts-testing-me?’ look. (Named after a certain General of his father’s who used to ask that exact question all the time when Lloyd was much younger there were still Generals put on babysitting duty.)

“You can read? You were reading my comic?” He eventually managed, which didn’t answer any of Lloyd's very important questions, but he decided not to point it out. Though he might still bug the Blue Ninja about the skeleton thing later, because if Jay got to see and didn’t even tell him about it that would be so unfair. If anyone should get to see his skeleton it was Lloyd. It was his, after all.

“Yeah? Obviously? I wanna read that, actually. So if you could-”

“Why? To get into my head and use it against me?”

“No? It just looked cool. And the other ninja were being sooo boring. But Fitz is awesome! And he was completely surrounded, so how did he-”

“You were actually reading it, not just looking at the pictures?”

“Yeah? You do know I’m not a baby, right? I can read. Speaking of, I’d love to read what happens-”

“No.” Jay shook his head, and slapped the comic shut, putting it behind his back and completely out of view. “Absolutely not.”

Lloyd bared his teeth, and did his best to look threatening. “I will bite you. Even more than I bit Kai.”

Jay squeaked in surprise, scrambling back a few more steps.

“Jay, is the 13-year-old scaring you?” Kai teased from the training course, despite the fact that he was the one Lloyd was sure he’d scared the most out of all the Ninja. By quite a bit, actually.

“You alright over there?” Called Cole.

“We’re fine. Keep throwing stuff at each other.”

“No! We’re not fine.” Lloyd pouted. “I know you hate me, but that’s not a good enough reason to hide the comic from me! This is torture.”

“What? That’s not why- torture? That’s a little dramatic.”

Lloyd crossed his arms.

“And anyway! I don’t hate you! You just can’t read this.”

“So you do hate me.”

“No- this is the newest issue.” Lloyd blinked unknowingly. Jay continued, a little too enthusiastically. “You’re missing so much context! So much backstory! All the callbacks! The references to obscure, vaguely contradicting, lore!”

“… What?”

Jay grabbed Lloyd’s hand, ignored how he immediately started pulling away and hissing, and looked him deep in the eyes, hair suddenly crackling a little with excitement. “You need to come with me. Right now.”

Lloyd gave up trying to pull away, remembering that Jay could probably strike him down with lightning at any second, and allowed himself to be dragged toward the stairs. “Does this count as a second kidnapping? Are you going rouge and rekidnapping me right now? Should I be calling for help?”