to rule the world | a ninjago au

[13] zap zap zippity zap

lloyd

He shouldn't be doing this.

He shouldn't be doing a lot of things.

And yet he still typed a reply.

you: yes please i want a bagel

cream cheese spread

astra: im not making bagels im making donuts dipshit

you: oh fuck you

cream cheese donut

astra: no

Lloyd groaned along with his rumbling stomach, flopping off his unmade bed bunk. Straightening the checkered sheets slightly, he ran his fingers through his blonde hair and then hopped out of his tiny cabin on one leg whilst tugging his boots on.

"Mornin' Junior," Charlie called sleepily from the scanner room. Lloyd nodded in silent greeting and began drinking a large tumblr of hot coffee. The hot sugary liquid burned his tongue but it was an excellent wake up drink for early mornings that were becoming routine. "We're half an hour out from the Floating Ruins. You need to strap yourself into the drop bay in about fifteen minutes since it's going to get rocky."

"Are you flying?" Lloyd would have thought Skylor was.

Titanium nodded. "Skylor doesn't have enough training for the environment up here."

"Which is?"

"Lightning storms that never stop, extreme turbulence, lightning bolts five times hotter than the sun, that sort of thing."

"So you've flown in these conditions before?"

Charlie burst out laughing. "Oh, hell no. I just have a better chance of steering us to survival."

"Reassuring," Lloyd quipped just as Kai strolled in, tousled hair and hands stuck in the pockets of his red Dragons jacket. Why his 'brother' insisted on still wearing it like he was clinging to some fragile hope of the past baffled Lloyd. He'd much rather leave behind the times where he couldn't use his powers, when he didn't know the truth behind his uncle. But there were parts he clung to. So maybe Kai was doing the same, just with a jacket and not a girl.

He didn't really think about Principal Wu anymore. The guy who always had tea, who offered semi-inspiring quotes often paired with millennial cat memes, his uncle who had to bring Lloyd in for whatever prank had been pinned directly to him. That guy had been demolished and wiped clean with Emperor Wu. Heartless. His two assassins standing beside him always, Morro on his left and Harumi on his right.

Oh Gods, Harumi.

Someone he simultaneously wanted to forget forever but spend more time with because whatever they'd had was short lived and packed with time spent in each other's comforting presences. Maybe that was why Harumi had insisted on spending so much time with Lloyd before everything had literally blown up. Every spare second between classes in deserted corridors or janitor closets, weekend subtly browsing at the mall, falling asleep with the lyrical hum of her voice in his ears.

He wanted to kill her and kiss her at the same time.

Lloyd didn't want to think about her a lot. He had no one to talk to - as far as his friends were concerned, Harumi was nothing but the enemy. He didn't blame them. Nya and Kai had basically lost their parents to her, and that hurt him almost as badly as it did them. But that tiny, little string of hope and love intertwined kept him from jumping on a side.

Love was so, so stupid. Yet so powerful Llyod knew when he had to make the choice - his family or Harumi, it would be like tearing himself apart. It hurt that bad.