Chapter Text
“Luh-Loyd?”
There on the hearth stood the four-armed warlord himself. His red eyes widened as he stared at the teen with a…concerned expression? “You shouldn’t be here. Where’s your mother? Why aren’t you with her?” He moved forward and helped Lloyd to his feet, then almost-gently guided him off the grated flooring and onto the solid obsidian brick. “Scratch that, how are you even here? We’re in the middle of the ocean. Not exactly close enough for a casual swim over.”
Blinking at the absurdity of the gesture from the man, Lloyd scrambled out of his grip and searched for something to say. “Y-yeah, well it wasn’t exactly my choice to be here. Some creeps kidnapped me and dragged me out here against my will.” He frowned as he glanced toward the window. “They’re probably on their way now.”
In a moment of sick coincidence, two SotO members fell through the ceiling and landed in the middle of the room. Before they could even stand, Garmadon pushed a button and a couple of the floor panels opened up beneath them, swallowing them whole before returning to their proper positions. “Oh, I already knew they were coming. That’s why I’m waiting in here for them.”
Lloyd stared at the floor in disbelief before frantically turning to his counterpart’s father. “You just killed them!”
A scoff escaped Garmadon as he rolled his eyes. “I didn’t kill them, I fired them. It’s like an amusement park ride but with lava. I do it to people all the time. They’ll be fine.”
While Lloyd floundered for words to even describe the wrongness of those statements, the warlord quickly moved toward the wall. “Come on, we need to get you back home before Kokes finds out you’re here and really kills me.” He pulled a lever and grabbed a hidden microphone that lowered itself from the ceiling. “General Number One! Take over for me in the firing room, will ya? I have some…other business to attend to.” After reversing the lever, he grabbed Lloyd’s wrist and half led, half dragged him out of the room.
In the hallway they passed a soldier with a crab helmet who was just a little too starry-eyed as he entered the firing room.
Strange leader, strange underlings.
When trying to squirm out of the strong grip didn’t work, the teen let Garmadon lead him through several dimly lit corridors before finally coming to a halt, the resistance causing the man to stop also. “What are you doing? Don’t stop now! We have to get you out of here!”
“How do I know you’re not kidnapping me and taking me to your dungeon where I’ll never see the light of day again?”
The warlord dared to look offended. “Did you not hear me? It is in my best interest not to kidnap you, because Koko will kill me otherwise. If there’s anything she fights for harder than she did for the side of good, it’s you.” Scoffing, he shook his head. “And besides, what kind of dad kidnaps their own kid? Like, seriously? They’d have to be some sort of monster to think of doing something that messed up.”
Lloyd felt the warmth of admiration coming from his counterpart, although whether it was for his mom or his dad he didn’t know. He himself was somewhat impressed that Garmadon had any standards at all. It almost reminded him of his own father, back before the venom was purged from him…
A warning alarm started going off, and the warlord stiffened. Turning toward a nearby door, he and Lloyd pushed through into a random lab and Garmadon immediately started tapping at a screen on the wall. Security camera footage soon appeared, and he scrolled through several different views until he landed on one that showed him what he was looking for. His eyes blew wide open and he opened his mouth to say something, paused to cautiously look down at Lloyd, then put one set of hands over the teen’s ears as he cursed. “Of course it’d be him!”
The man broke away and started pacing anxiously back and forth across the room, while Lloyd took the opportunity to examine the footage. A small sleek aircraft was making its way across the ocean toward the island, but it was too far away and too dark for him to see the pilot.
“The Secret Ninja Force may be annoying, but Ghost? Forget annoying, that guy is a straight up nightmare.” Garmadon stopped in the middle of the room, one hand on his chin and two clasped behind his back. “Okay, new plan. You’ll have to make it to the docking bay on your own while I keep his attention away from there.” He walked back to the door, guiding Lloyd through it as he pointed down the hallway. “Just go down this hall, make a left, go down three doors until you see the one with a giant trophy on it and make a right, straight some more then two more lefts, a right at the green door, and you’re there. All the doors have fancy DNA scanners on them so you should be able to get through. Got it?”
The blond’s mind was reeling with so much information. The directions already made him dizzy; he figured the biometric locks were why Harumi needed him, but what was Morro doing? Did the wind master know he was here? He couldn’t possibly, unless…
His phone! He had made sure to turn on location sharing that morning; of course Morro would have access to that! But wait, if Morro knew his location, then surely Koko also knew by now-
“Good!” The warlord’s voice cut through his thoughts as he gave Lloyd an almost-gentle push forward. “Now get going! Daddy’s got a ninja to deal with.”
As Garmadon left down the opposite side of the hall, the blond started making his way to his own destination. As he tried to remember the directions he was given, he had to ask a question. “Is he usually like that with you? ‘Cause that was… um…” His voice trailed off as he turned into another corridor, amazed at how many times the warlord had left him speechless in the span of a few minutes.
‘…I don’t know. Outside of fighting him as the Green Ninja, I‘ve never actually met him.’ His counterpart’s voice felt conflictingly neutral, and Lloyd could sort of relate with how he felt about his mother before meeting her. He hummed in acknowledgment and returned his focus to the task at hand.
Slowly but surely he made his way to the docking bay with the help of Other Lloyd reminding him of the directions, and once the final door slid open they both gasped. It was huge! There was an inlet inside the volcano that housed dozens of docks and hundreds of mechs. Manta ray jets, jellyfish subs, crab mechs; any sea creature that could be imagined, there was a mech version of it. Running to the closest manta jet, he unlocked it with another DNA scanner and cautiously climbed into the cockpit. The control panel had so many buttons that even his counterpart had trouble deciphering what even half of them did.
Working together, they eventually managed to get the jet into the air and out of the docking area mostly intact. However, it wasn’t long before there was an explosion behind them and Lloyd turned to see fire and smoke coming out of the archway he had just escaped from with Morro’s jet—perfectly silhouetted against the burning yellows and oranges—heading his direction at full speed. In that moment, Lloyd came to a horrible realization.
“He thinks I’m one of Garmadon’s soldiers. He’s gonna shoot me down!”
So much for keeping Morro’s attention away from the docks.
Laser blasts sailed past the manta jet way too close for comfort and Other Lloyd tried to guide him through evasive actions, but his opponent was much more experienced in aerial combat. Several shots started hitting the glass and the wings, leaving smoldering indentations across the surface of the craft. “How do I get him to know it’s me??” A few seconds went by before the natural answer came to him.
Oh. Duh.
He gathered his element in his hand, letting it fill the cockpit with its bright green glow and hoping the wind master would get the message. Unfortunately it was too little too late, because shortly after a shot hit one of the engines. As it sputtered and cut out, the jet began a spiraling nosedive straight toward the rocky beach of the small volcanic island and both teens started panicking. Neither of them could remember where the button that controlled the canopy was, so Lloyd smashed his energy-filled fist into the glass and used the momentum to jump out, just barely rolling away before the aircraft slammed into the ground and exploded.
Tumbling out of the roll rather ungracefully, he let himself lay sprawled out on the uneven ground as he caught his breath and mentally checked himself for injuries. His ankle hurt a little and his back and shoulders were sore, but nothing felt broken or out of place. Bracing himself, he tried to roll over or stand up or do something, but exhaustion held him in its grip even as he heard the sounds of fighting steadily grow nearer.
Not long after, Morro’s jet landed on the beach near the crash site and the man quickly dismounted and stalked over to the prone form on the ground, announcing his presence with a rather colorful string of swears. “What were you thinking?! I could’ve killed you!!! What kind of budget imposter are you that you don’t even care about your own safety??”
Lloyd tried moving again and managed to sit up, arms placed behind him on the ground for support. Sighing, he attempted a glare at Morro. “Well, excuse me for not expecting you to show up while I tried to get out of here.” There was no bite to his words. The practically non-stop psychoemotional roller coaster of the past day and a half was starting to fly off the tracks, and he just wanted everything to leave him alone for the next millennium or so. His not-glare moved to the side as he heard Garmadon’s voice finally join the rest of the battle sounds in the distance. “His mom’s already going to have words for me when she finds out; I don’t need it from you again.”
When nothing but silence responded, he looked over to see Morro searching his face with one of his unreadable expressions. “…I don’t know if you actually stole his body or if you just look eerily identical to him, but you can’t… I just… aaAUGH!!” The wind master threw his head back and tangled the fingers of one hand in his hair. “I made a promise… and you’re making it extremely hard to keep it.”
‘Tell him I’m here!’ A small pang of desperation poked at his heart as Other Lloyd’s voice filled his mind. ‘Tell him he can still protect me!’
His eyes brightened slightly before sheepishness took over and he averted his gaze again. “Speaking of your Lloyd, I found him.” He tapped his head with a finger and let out a snort. “Completely not where I intended to look, but it worked out somehow.”
“So you are possessing him.”
“It’s not…” Lloyd winced, trying to compartmentalize and not to fall back into old memories that didn’t apply here. “Don’t call it that. It’s more like… we’re two people sharing different parts of the same brain. I’ve got the motor control and he’s got the emotional control. Mostly.”
“How do I know you’re not just saying that to get me off your back about him?”
His counterpart hummed for a moment before piping up. ‘I know! Ask him about Veggie Man! Or the emu thing! There was also that one time we accidentally ordered waaaaaay too many pizzas, or…’
“Wait, stop! Too much at once!” Lloyd squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head lightly. “Let’s just… one thing at a time? I have no context for any of those.” His counterpart quickly stopped, apologizing for the rambling, and Lloyd opened his eyes to look up at Morro. “He said to mention Veggie Man and an emu thing?”
The man raised an eyebrow but otherwise kept his frown. Before he could say anything however, the fighting finally reached them and a woman that looked like Ultra Violet stopped to squint at them before pointing. “I found the kid! Get the Quiet One over here!” Not long after, a group of the gangsters rushed their direction with a pack of Shark Army soldiers following closely behind.
“Well, that explains things.” Pulling a dark gray ninja mask over his head, Morro helped Lloyd to his feet and stepped into a fighting stance. “We’ll continue this later. The Sons decided to make good on your supposed “key” ability?” Receiving a simple nod from him, the man continued. “Then we have two options here. One, deal with them before they can get to the crystal, or two, grab it ourselves. And personally, I’d rather the first option.”
As the two groups of enemies closed in on them, Lloyd squared up and positioned himself next to the wind master, ignoring the twinge in his ankle. It had been a while since he’d had to fight hand-to-hand, but with Garmadon nearby he couldn’t use his element without revealing Other Lloyd’s identity.
‘Didn’t you mention that you trained with weapons in your world? Morro might have something you could use.’
After asking as much of the man, he was given a retractable bō staff. Now armed, the two began fending off the coming onslaught. Wave after wave of them tried to overwhelm the ninja, but the wind would trip them up while Lloyd’s bō and Morro’s shurikens knocked them right out. It was chaos everywhere as Garmadon’s soldiers chased after the SotO, who fought back against the shark army, who both attacked the ninja.
Which, as it turned out, was actually the whole team, having arrived shortly after Morro did.
“Ghost? You’re here too?” Kai had joined them at some point, and was now fighting back to back with them as their foes surrounded the trio. The red ninja was currently wielding a katana and Lloyd was impressed at his decent grasp on swordsmanship, awkward and clumsy though it was. “If we had known you were going after him, we wouldn’t have gone to Miss Koko. Although, she did give me a ride over, so I guess I can’t complain too much.”
Several shark army soldiers rushed at them and subsequently fell on their faces as Morro subtly manipulated the wind to push them off balance. “Koko’s here? Like, right now?” He ducked under a thug’s right hook and returned with an uppercut of his own, then turned around and kicked a couple more who were trying to sneak up on Lloyd. “That ought to be fun. Has she made it to Garmadon yet?”
Looking past the immediate enemies, Lloyd could see a slew of shark soldiers flying through the air as someone carved their way through the midst of them. Kai saw the same thing as he replied, “Not yet, but I think she’s about to.”
And sure enough, the warlord’s screams were soon echoing across the battlefield as an armored figure threatened him with a sword. The red ninja threw an exasperated look at Lloyd as he slammed the handle of his katana into the stomach of a thug with a mohawk. “We’d better get you over there before anything serious happens.”
“Aw, come on. Let him squirm a bit longer,” the wind master snarked before promptly being ignored as Kai and Lloyd fought their way to the other side of the island.
They had almost made it to their destination when he suddenly got a bad feeling from his counterpart. ‘Look out behind you!!’ Whipping around, he saw too late the blade that came slashing down across the red ninja’s back. Kai stumbled forward and fell to the ground, revealing a clean gash that stained the surrounding fabric a darker shade. ‘NO, KAAAIIIIII!!!’ The other’s panic and fear overlapped with Lloyd’s own horror and anger once he fully registered the masked culprit.
“So they came anyway. I should have destroyed the phone earlier.”
In his periphery, Lloyd could see Kai struggling to get up, but he couldn’t turn his back on Harumi. The girl kept the shortsword trained on the downed ninja, stance confident and infuriatingly casual. “What will it be, Lloyd? Will you make the right choice, or are you going to let your friends suffer for something that you could easily resolve?” With her mask on, he could all but see the sneer on her face.
Lloyd moved into a defensive stance, gripping the bō tightly. His eyes darted between the mask and the sword as a fire raged inside him. “I won’t let you hurt anyone else!” Rushing forward, he switched to offense and swung at her with his staff, forcing her several steps away from the downed ninja. She moved with the grace of a dancer, dodging backward as he missed strike after strike until eventually he made a stupid mistake. A swing too wide that left him open for too long. Harumi used that moment to kick his legs out from under him, the impact falling on his injured ankle and pushing it far outside the “only hurts a little” zone. He landed hard on his back and lost his grip on the bō, seeing stars as his head crashed against the stones that made up the ground.
Before his vision could clear, the girl’s sickly sweet voice bit through the air. “I don’t suppose you’ll be needing your legs to operate the Realm Crystal, will you?” She pinned his ankle under her foot and he screamed at the white hot pain that shot through it as she increased the pressure. She raised her weapon in the air above him, and he shut his eyes to brace himself.
But Harumi's blade never touched Lloyd. The ring of steel against steel echoed in his ear as he looked up to see the orange-haired warrior parrying with her own sword. “NO ONE touches my son!” The pressure on his leg disappeared as the girl was forced to find better footing.
‘Mom…is Lady Iron Dragon?’
Lloyd breathed a shaky breath of relief as confusion and awe practically radiated from his doppelgänger. ‘I can’t believe it! Mom’s a ninja! The Lady Iron Dragon!’ His excitement soon devolved into incoherent mutterings, and Lloyd hoped the enthusiasm meant that Other Lloyd couldn’t feel the searing pain radiating through the surely-broken ankle. The weapons above him finally separated and he did his best to focus on moving out of the way of the fight.
Compared to her confidence when she cut Kai down, Harumi’s posture was much more tense now. The two women circled each other, sizing each other up; Koko was like a mother bear ready to protect her cubs, while Harumi was like the mischievous child with a stick.
Harumi let out a roar and made the first strike, rushing toward the older woman with a frenzy that was not present before. In turn, Koko parried and deflected with ease, a dangerous dance learned only from the experience of a hundred battlefields. The skill difference was a gaping chasm, and the girl knew it.
While they clashed, Lloyd took the opportunity to carefully crawl over to his friend who had given up on trying to stand and was currently lying on his stomach over the semi-smooth pebbles of the beach. “Kai!! How bad is it??” His eyes couldn’t help but drift to the wound, and he noted gratefully that it wasn’t as deep as he first thought.
The brunet grimaced and hissed as he lifted his head slightly. “I think I’ll be all right. It just stings, like a lot.” He moved the arm not affected by the injury and brought his hand to his ear. “Guys, we need backup. Lady Iron Dragon is holding off the boss of the other group, but the rest of them won’t stay away for long.” He waited a bit for the responses, then let his head fall back to the ground. “Y’know, after six months of being a ninja, you’d think I would carry around basic first aid supplies…”
As the red ninja gathered up his strength and finally pushed himself off the ground, Lloyd’s eyes moved from his back to the fight behind them, the smoldering anger in his chest beginning to ignite. If he had just been quicker, Harumi wouldn’t have been able to hurt Kai. If he had been smarter, he wouldn’t have gotten caught and ended up in this situation in the first place! Punching his fists into the ground, he managed to stand himself up and balance on his good leg. He tried putting weight on the other one only to nearly fall over as his vision darkened from the burning sensation.
Before he knew it, Kai caught him and was keeping him steady. “We need to get you back to the mechs. The others will-“
“No!” He tried to shake the taller one off of him, only to slip and crash into his chest. “That should be my fight! I just need to get the staff and I’ll be good to get back out there!”
“But your mom’s already taking care of it-“
“I WON’T WATCH HARUMI DIE AGAIN!!!”
The world seemed to slow as Lloyd felt warm tears gather in his eyes. “…I couldn’t do anything but watch last time. But if I’m the one to take her down, then we can just take her to jail, and maybe…”
“Lloyd, look at me.”
Scrubbing at his eyes with one hand, he looked up into his teammate’s softened amber eyes. “Nobody here is going to kill her. Koko and Morro know what they’re doing, and Harumi will be brought to justice.” At the mention of the master of wind, he turned to find that Morro had joined the fight and was helping to corral the girl. “I know we’re not your team, but that doesn’t mean we don’t care about you. You don’t have to do everything alone, you know.” Kai gave a little chuckle and squeezed his shoulder. “You Lloyds and your hero complexes.”
A warmth of embarrassment soaked into him from his counterpart, cooling the internal fire slightly. Staring at the ground, he allowed himself to be led away from the scene as the other ninja one by one joined up with them, giving varied reactions and scoldings over their injuries. Nya escorted them back to her strider mech and helped him (and Kai, much to the brunet’s annoyance) inside while the others kept working on incapacitating the enemies.
He really hated sitting out of the fight, but with a Nya-appointed babysitter he was effectively grounded. All he could do was watch whatever action happened near the mech and listen to Kai struggle—and fail—to find medical supplies behind him. After radioing the rest of the team with a strong reminder to stock up on bandages and antiseptic when everything was over, he and Lloyd made a game out of watching an enemy’s movements and pointing out countermoves. Other Lloyd joined in too, which thoroughly confused Kai until he explained their situation.
After a while the enemies thinned out until there were only shark soldiers left, who had apparently made some sort of truce with the ninja and were helping to round up the SotO members. The rest of the team came back shortly after with the good news that Harumi had been restrained and her gang was temporarily held in Garmadon’s dungeons until they could come back with transports the next day.
The battle was officially over.