Chapter Text
The days flew by quickly. Every time he slept, he woke up a little bit better than before, and he was miraculously out of the hospital within a week. His eyesight had fully returned and the gash on the side of his head had closed up with only a slight scar, but the dream world was still the only memories he had of before the accident. Thankfully his friends had been more than willing to share stories of their exploits as both high school students and the Secret Ninja Force.
Yeah, apparently they were supposed to hide their identities. He was just glad he hadn’t accidentally revealed anything to his mom during his hospital stay.
Speaking of his mom, she pulled him out of school—under the reason that he was still recovering from the accident, which wasn’t entirely wrong—until he figured out what he wanted to do. That was a huge load off his chest, because he had no idea how he’d do relearning his routine while also dealing with high school drama. The other ninja expressed their disappointment at his absence, but they understood the reasoning.
Maybe he would try going back to school eventually, just not now.
His first day back at home started out pretty normal. He got up at the crack of dawn, to which his mom expressed surprise at. Apparently he normally slept at least another hour, so he told himself that he would try to be more “normal” about that tomorrow.
And how sad was that, that he had to find out what was “normal” for him. Yes, his friends and family were different to him, but now he was different to them too. With knowledge of who they were but not of their history with him, he might as well have been a completely different person.
Based on the dream memories, he could actually be a different person.
The rest of the morning was uneventful. His mom had fixed up some eggs and sausages for breakfast, and they sat together and made small talk until she left for work. Once she was gone, Lloyd familiarized himself with the small apartment. The kitchen was neatly organized and well stocked, and he had no trouble locating anything he might need in the way of meal preparation. The small living area between the front door and his mom’s bedroom was also tidy and put together, ever ready for guests.
His bedroom, however, was a different story. While his loft bed was…passably neat, the rest of the room seemed to have no organization at all. Random piles of papers littered the desk beneath his bed, clothes were strewn out over a well-worn beanbag chair, and the little space he had in his closet was taken up by more haphazardly put away clothes and shoe boxes filled with random items.
He had his work cut out for him, for sure.
Choosing the desk as the first area of attack, Lloyd began to make order out of the chaos there. He sorted through the papers—most of which were school assignments—and put them inside an empty binder he found on one of the shelves underneath. The few papers that weren’t school related were set aside for him to look at later.
The desk was a relatively quick task, so he kept it clear for use as a staging area and moved on to the closet. He removed the precariously stacked boxes and set them on the desk, then went through them one by one. There was a wide variety of items spread between the boxes; one contained several well-used toy cars, another contained pieces to a racetrack for the aforementioned cars, and yet another contained a black training gi. His favorite box, though, was filled with an assortment of individually wrapped candies; best of all, wintergreen pillow mints.
And if he were to pop one every now and then while he worked, who was to stop him?
He sorted the boxes into a useful pile (the candies) and a less-useful pile (the toys). He debated on throwing some of the less-useful boxes away, but something inside him told him he shouldn’t yet. He decided he would come back to them at a later date and kept working.
Stacking them back in the closet in a much more stable way, he finally began putting the clothes on the beanbag away. The primary colors of his wardrobe were green and black, and aside from a few random t-shirts, he took special note of the comically large amount of green jackets and black jeans.
How often were his clothes ruined that he felt the need to own so many? He didn’t want to think about that right now.
As he folded and shelved the last pair of pants, he grabbed one more mint and stepped back to admire his handiwork. The small room was much tidier and looked more open, and everything now had a place. He plopped into the beanbag chair and stared at the sky out the window next to him. The sun was high in the sky, indicating the midday mealtime was near. That, accented by a growl from his stomach, prompted the boy to drag himself off the cozy beanbag and into the kitchen.
After a quick lunch of a ham and cheese sandwich, he decided to explore the city. He was supposed to meet the other ninja at their warehouse base once they all got out of school, so he had some time to kill before then. He grabbed a green jacket by muscle memory, and then armed with that and his phone GPS, he headed out into the big wide world.
Getting out of the apartment building was simple enough, but once he was outside, he realized just how big this Ninjago City actually was. There were skyscrapers everywhere, monorail lines crisscrossed between buildings, and a river ran straight through the middle of the city.
Still staring up at the ginormous buildings around him, he started walking in a random direction. His gaze slowly lowered to the smaller buildings along his chosen path, and he could pick out some familiar names among the businesses here.
Unfortunately, the one good thing about being disliked by an entire city of people was that he never had to walk in the middle of a crowd. The sea of people parted for him as everyone gave him the widest berth possible. It was kind of nice, if he didn’t think about why they made way for him. In addition, several shops and businesses had signs hung on them that explicitly said “NO SERVICE TO LLOYD GARMADON.” That was fine, he was just taking a walk right now anyways.
…okay, maybe it was a little less than fine.
The further he walked, the more frustrated he became. How were so many people against him? A kid, whose worst offense was getting a D on a report card in Middle School? (If he ignored the whole ‘releasing the Serpentine’ thing, which apparently didn’t happen here.) What if his mom got sick and he needed to pick up medicine for her? What if his mom needed him to run errands sometimes? …what if they treated his mom similarly?
That thought alone officially ruined what was supposed to be an enjoyable stroll. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and kept walking, trying to ignore the stares and glares he received as he passed by people. Eventually, he pulled up his hood to block out most of his peripheral, and at that moment he understood why all of his outerwear had hoods.
He was so worked up that he hadn’t been paying attention to where he was going, and when he became conscious of his surroundings again, he realized he had found his way to Ninjago High.
After realizing where he was, he nearly turned and left immediately. However, his curiosity got the better of him and he decided to scope out the place.
He ducked into an alleyway and jumped up to the top of the tallest building nearby. He didn’t have binoculars with him, but his phone camera had a pretty impressive zoom distance which he used to look around the campus instead.
It was a relatively small campus for the size of the city, with only three buildings and a couple of sports fields behind it. Compared to Darkley’s, however, it was pretty impressive.
The building he was on was positioned on the side, so he used his camera zoom to try and see if he could find any of his friends. Unfortunately he couldn’t, so he decided to head back the way he came. He didn’t see a point in exploring the city anymore since there wasn’t really anywhere he would be able to go except to the warehouse, which was the opposite direction from his apartment.
He also debated using the rooftops instead of the sidewalk to get around, but it was already risky just being on top of a building in the middle of the day. If anyone were to see him bounding through the top of their concrete jungle, his secret identity could be compromised.
Begrudgingly he leapt down off his perch and retraced his steps, setting the GPS endpoint to the warehouse. The trek to the Secret Ninja Force’s base of operations was long, and compounded with his newfound (re-found?) reason to be disappointed in the people of the city, he was not in a very good mood by the time he arrived.
He walked around the seemingly-abandoned building trying to get in, but none of the doors were unlocked. Made sense, seeing as the others were still at school, but surely there had to be a way for him to get inside, right?
…a way that he would have forgotten after the accident. Right.
Scanning the surroundings, he saw a dock leading out to a boat that looked suspiciously like the Destiny’s Bounty. As he was currently locked outside the warehouse with no other options, he figured that would be as good a place as any to go. Maybe his uncle could tell him some more stories while they waited for the rest of the ninja. At this point, even a swim in the bay would be a good distraction from his current mood.
He made his way down the wooden dock and carefully stepped onto the ship. Wandering around the deck, he was surprised to discover that the Bounty was almost exactly the same as he remembered it, and he welcomed the familiarity. There were slight differences such as the design of the railings and the hanging lanterns strung between the masts, but the twin dragon heads, the three masts, and the covered upper deck were all shared elements. He took a moment to just absorb the normality of his surroundings before going back to his original task.
He didn’t immediately see any signs of Wu on the main deck, but he might be around somewhere. After a quick check of the bridge yielded no wise old master, he ducked inside the cabin…and was met with a room full of weapons. Big weapons, little weapons, sharp weapons, dull weapons; they really had it all in here. There was even a huge metal cylinder in the center of the room that had a big “DANGER” label across its front. He really didn’t want to touch any of this stuff, but he had to poke around a bit before he found the trapdoor leading to the lower deck.
Gingerly, he climbed down the creaky ladder and made his way through the still-familiar layout. Looking through each of the rooms, however, revealed that although the building of the ship was the same, the rooms and furnishings were not. Many of the rooms were filled with storage boxes and layers of dust, as if they hadn’t been used in years. Other rooms were only lightly furnished for one or two people at most.
He resurfaced from the depths of the ship disappointed and confused. Disappointed that yet another aspect of his life betrayed his memory of it, and confused as to where in the world Wu was. He climbed back up to the bridge and actually took a good look at everything. All the screens and buttons and other mechanical parts seemed to be in order, but when his eyes caught on the main navigation display, he had to do a double take.
The map shown on the screen was of a single small island. There was no dark island, although that could have just been because it still hadn’t been added to maps yet, and the half spiral shape was nowhere to be found.
Lloyd took a few seconds to examine the details of the map, and then a folded piece of paper sitting on the control panel caught his eye. As he picked up the paper, something slid out between the folds and would have fallen onto the floor had his reflexes been slower. It was a key of some kind.
The note was from Wu, explaining that he was out until the others got off school and giving instructions on where to use the key to get into the warehouse. How his uncle knew that he’d be here before everyone else was beyond him, but he was thankful nonetheless for his foresight.
Having nowhere left in the Bounty to explore, he headed back across the dock to the warehouse. Wu’s instructions brought him to a small side door that had clearly seen better days. It took a bit of jiggling the key around, but the lock eventually clicked and the door slowly creaked open.
As soon as he stepped into the huge room, his breath was nearly taken away by what he saw. Surrounding the walls like guards were six gigantic mechs, one for each ninja. The red and black mechs were somewhat humanoid, with the red having flamethrower arms and the black having a single gigantic tire as its mode of mobility. The white mech was a tank, the blue mech was a jet that looked vaguely similar to the Storm Glider, and the cyan mech looked like a water strider bug.
Finally, there was Lloyd’s own mech. A massive green tatsu dragon, with random bits and pieces lying on the floor around it as it was still being repaired from its pilot’s last fight. The teen picked his way around the debris and climbed into the cockpit, eyes wide with wonder. It reminded him of the elemental dragon he had in the dream world, but where that dragon was made of energy that required focus and concentration to maintain, this was made of physical materials and the only concentration required was for steering the metal beast.
Seeing as there was still plenty of time until the other ninja got out of school and there wasn’t much else to do aside from some video game cabinets against a wall, the blond picked a random mech and started examining.
After all, who doesn’t like seeing what all a bunch of giant mechs can do?