The Master of Nature

An Unexpected Sleepover

A week after the Great Devourer incident, Hope lay in bed, wide awake. Everything had happened so fast.

After Garmadon had defeated the Great Devourer and vanished, the ninja had helped to clean up the city. Nya had helped Alyssa find her parents. Hope had been responsible for looking after some children orphaned by the incident.

It saddened Hope to see that so many people had lost their lives. There were many people, adults and children alike, who had been trapped under rubble just like Alyssa. Alyssa had been one of the few people who had survived. 

Hope felt really sad as she tended to the crying children. Most of them seemed to cling to her, save for a girl Lloyd's age with blond pigtails. Hope never got a good look of her face, and the girl never said a single word. 

There were also many parents who had lost their children, and they were quickly adopting lost children they saw. Hope thought of her biological parents. Were they even still alive?

In the next few days, the ninja rented a very fancy apartment and worked a ton of jobs to pay the rent. But things came to a head one day when Lloyd almost got kidnapped by Scales, so the ninja moved into a tiny apartment which they could afford.

Hope finally drifted into a restless slumber. But she soon became plagued with a nightmare. She was six years old and riding a bicycle, her parents cheering her on. But then some random people came and tried to grab her.

Hope screamed for her parents. "Help me!" she screamed. A hand went over her mouth. All she could do was kick and struggle until...

"Hope, wake up. You're having a nightmare."

Hope opened her eyes to find her friends looking at her in concern. Nya was carrying a sleeping Lloyd.

"Hope, are you okay?" asked Kai. "You kept screaming for help, and we thought that you were being attacked."

Hope started to cry. She couldn't help it. "I... Had a nightmare about... A memory about my past."

"What happened?" asked Zane.

Hope rubbed her eyes. "I was riding my bicycle when some people tried to kidnap me. Luckily my parents came and pushed them off me and took me home. I was too frightened to leave for months."

Nya put her arm around Hope's shoulders. "It's just a dream about the past. You don't have to experience it again. Now you could use your powers to defend yourself."

"I have an idea," said Jay. "Why don't we have a sleepover!"

Lloyd's eyes flew open at once. "Did I hear someone say sleepover?"

That's how the seven of them had an unexpected sleepover, spending the night telling each other silly stories and cracking jokes. Cole even sneaked to the kitchen and came back with cake.

Hope found out some things about her friends. She had realized that she had come to think of them as her brothers and sister.

"Once when Nya was a toddler, she refused to take a nap, so I put her into a cradle and sang to her until she fell asleep," said Kai. "But I'm not a good singer, so I sounded more like a sinking ship."

"Really?" asked Nya. "I don't remember that."

"You were a toddler," said Kai. "It was shortly after our parents disappeared."

Hope felt a little better. It was nice that she knew that she could depend on her new friends. However, it made her miss Alyssa again.

After a while, some of them started to yawn. Lloyd rubbed his eyes tiredly.

"I think that it's time for bed," said Nya as she picked Lloyd up.

"Noo," said Lloyd. "I want to stay up all night."

"Lloyd, it's six hours past your bedtime," said Nya.

"Looks like we are going to be exhausted in the morning," said Cole.

"It's worth it though," said Jay. "I haven't had this much fun for a long time."

"We should get all the sleep we can get," said Zane. "We will have to be up in a few hours."

Everyone agreed, and even Lloyd was secretly relieved to get into bed. Everyone was so tired that they all fell asleep the moment their heads hit the pillows.

I know that it's kind of a filler chapter, but I want to write something different.