to rule the world | a ninjago au

[28] boater hats & generational trauma

astra

Kai was quite possibly the stupidest person she'd ever met.

Someone with a First Tier destructive element like fire should not be running into fights they couldn't win. Yet he did anyway, just proving to her that he was as hot-headed and revenge-hungry as ever. Lloyd had exchanged one look with her after the Smith siblings charged off into battle, leaving her to sigh and drag her feet into a run behind her twin. Nya and Kai's aftermath had burned - figuratively and literally - a path they could follow, mutilated corpses still alight with fire, bodies drained of water.

She kind of hated how powerful she felt surrounded by dead bodies.

The trail reached a point where they didn't need it anymore, the giant flames swirling around the forest said it all. Lloyd ran after Nya, throwing up his newly-perfected energy shield to cover her shrinking dome. The soldiers who'd been hacking at the water paused for a second, then resumed the savage stabbing in earnest. Astra took one look at the out-of-control fire festival in front of her and summoned the bones from the nearest bodies, ignoring the sickening squelch when they reassembled into her mindless servants.

She sent the three skeleton warriors into the fray with the only instructions to kill those in white and gold. The weapon on her hip had become more familiar in the past few weeks; hard to train with, hard to avoid in battle. The night-dark scythe had been engineered by none other than Tellum, one of her favourite people in the Sons of Garmadon. The weapons master had crafted the scythe so the curved blade could retract and form an atypical curved katana blade. The extra length from the scythe shortened into a katana was the perfect complement to her bow.

Her favourite trick traced a purple glow through the night air wherever she struck, darting from soldier to soldier to find the heart of the fire. Kai, the idiot, who lay unconscious on the ground bleeding out from one arm, was about to get bludgeoned in the head by an Elite. Astra flicked her weapon out into scythe form, the curved blade just reaching Kai in a nick of time to deflect the blow from the crudely melted sword.

She spun, countering the knife jab and making quick work of the Elite, who already seemed a bit incompetent after fighting Kai. The energy in her skeleton warriors pulsed, a sign they were losing power - her power, their fuel - so she sent more of the darkness to them. Surrounded by death, she had an unlimited battery. Astra flipped the blade to slice downwards through the nearest soldier, dispatching an elemental pulse that decayed the fighters closest to her as she spotted her brother and Nya inching back towards headquarters.

"You are a waste of space." she muttered, hauling Kai over her shoulder.

Astra mentally beckoned to her skeletal soldiers, instructing them to form a shield behind her and Kai's unconscious, unhelpful body as she ran. Cutting through battle was never easy, especially when you had a six-foot-something piece of comatose flesh on your back. Nya and Lloyd seemed to notice her thundering towards them with half a squadron of soldiers on her tail. The two picked Maya up, sharing the load of the Smith's mother (a bit unfair, considering she was still lugging Kai along).

"Nice day, no?" she yelled over the clang of metal against metal.

"Are you kidding? Great day!" Lloyd shouted back, extending his energy shield over the five of them. With more energy than Nya, he was able to take a passive approach and watch out for any threats. The water elemental's face had turned pale with exhaustion, and she was limping every other step. Wonderful.

"Hey guys, Phantom's swinging by. Time it right, and you have your ride out of there." came her sister's voice, not a hint of worry or fear.

Astra squinted, searching the horizon for the familiar metal box that Seliel drove like a menace.