Masked Mania

❥Chapter 6: What about the plans we made?

It was already afternoon by the time that Lloyd finally finished preparing another bag to escape the city. Only, this time, he was doing it with the hope to see his friends, instead of terrified and alone. He'd like to say that he'd overslept earlier that day, but that wasn't exactly true; getting up at noon had become the new normal, now that he didn't really have much to get out of bed for.

He placed the stuffed bag on the kitchen counter and looked around the penthouse one more time. Lloyd had to admit, he was going to miss this place and perhaps even Harumi. Living in a sort of forced paradise had actually been a nice break from life, as well as his moral obligations to the Ninja and Ninjago City.

Back with his father, he'd never dared to really get close to a villain. This time, however, in the penthouse, there hadn't been anyone watching his back and silently judging the morality of every single one of his actions, and it had admittedly been quite relieving to just be able to do whatever he wanted to do for once - taking into account certain limitations.

Some little voice in his head always liked to remind him that it could've been much worse. After the Skeleton Army, the Snakes, the Ghosts and the Sky Pirates, he was honestly rather used to captivity by now, and this one had been much more pleasant than every possible nice thing of all the past ones combined. At least he'd been able to keep up with what was going on in the rest of Ninjago, this time.

With one more glance around the room, Lloyd noted that Harumi's cleaning guy had probably come by in the morning. The whole room smelled like flowers, everything blinked under the sun, and their blanket from yesterday was folded up and laid down onto the cabinet. All the chairs were neatly organised at the table, except for the one he'd sat on to eat breakfast.

Maybe, he could trash the room to make Harumi think he'd been kidnapped. She would be less angry with him, then, when she found out that he was gone. Lloyd knew she would be furious to find him gone if she discovered he'd just gone along with whoever had taken him, so if he could possibly prevent that anger for him and the people taking him - his friends - by staging a kidnapping, he definitely would. He could decide later whether or not he would pretend to be kidnapped by them if she did end up finding them, but he hoped it wouldn't have to come to that.

Making up his mind, Lloyd went up to the trashcan and carefully tipped it over onto the floor, making sure that the lid didn't come off; sure, he wanted to make a mess, but not a disgusting mess that some innocent cleaner would have to tidy up later. He pushed over the bottle of soap that stood at the sink and one side of the knife stand, so that it wasn't perfectly centred anymore, before deciding that there wasn't a lot to mess up in the kitchen and he'd better go do it somewhere else.

Passing by the kitchen table on his way to the living room, he stuck one of his arms out to knock over one of the chairs, and pulled back another chair, leaving it asymmetric to the table. Next, he pushed the tea table aside haphazardly, folded a corner of the carpet, and ruffled up the cushions on the couch - and while doing so, found a bouncy ball that he'd lost a while ago.

Lloyd turned and got ready to throw it across the room, when a vase with flowers on the kitchen table caught his attention. He smirked to himself, having always wanted to actually hit something with a ball, and chose to aim at the vase instead. Lloyd threw the bouncy ball against the vase as hard as he could, and didn't miss his target. It fell over, rolled on the table for a few inches, before landing on the ground with a loud crash, soaking the carpet and floor.

One quick glance at the clock told him that Kai would be here soon.

As the ultimate sign that he supposedly hadn't wanted to leave, Lloyd began making dinner as if nothing was wrong, so that when Kai came and took him, his progress would be left abandoned. Time dripped by slowly - figuratively and literally, because occasionally a drop of water from the vase trickled down onto the floor, and the sound it made every time felt unnecessarily loud to Lloyd, it was driving him positively insane.