Shattered

Chapter 9

The first thing Lloyd noticed was he wasn't at home anymore.

He could smell the earth and fire around him, heat circulating through his bones, uncomfortable and sweaty and sticking against his skin. He clenched his fists and and tensed the muscles in his body, testing them, testing the strength and balance and force he could feel in each individual one. His body could sense danger, he was automatically tensed and almost crouched and his eyes were glancing around the area.

There was fighting going on.

He was in the volcano, during the first real battle with Chen, a little after his powers had been take and they had all been trying to get the staff, right. Right of course, but why was he here again? The last thing he could remember was...was...was what? What was going on?

"Lloyd, duck!"

He heard a voice, he recognized it, but not enough to pinpoint it to someone,  (probably one of the elemental masters he briefly met but didn't really talk to because why would he) and he ducked and rolled over towards a fallen spear on the ground, grabbing it before turning back around to see the person that was about to attack him. Well, not person, people since there were three of them, all Chen's men, pointing spears like the one he was holding at him.

He grinned, tightening his grip on the staff, and lunged, blocking the strike from the guy, who was tall and abnormally lean, in the middle and leaning back to dodge the swipe from his right. He ducked against a jab towards his head and swept the end of his spear under the guy on his left, beefy arms and tattoos covering them, grabbing his shoulder as he went down to jump over him, pressing his feet against the guys back and pushing off to send him tumbling towards the others.

He hit the bearded, beefy guy that got up on his head, watching his eyes roll back and fall hard, the second guy, the lean one with one blue and one green eye (holy shit that's cool), he stabbed the spear edge into his foot before taking it out and sending a hard turned kick to his side. The man flew to the side and rolled across the ground, he didn't get up again. The third, and last, man swung the spear high and in an arc, which he rolled out of the way, hearing the crack of the edge of the spear against the ground, before he twisted around and sent his pear edge into his back, diving it in deep before pulling it out.

Lloyd sighed and twirled the spear in his hand and glanced around the area, everyone seemed to be holding their own just fine except...

"JAY!" He ran towards him, throwing the spear into one of the guy's chest and then sliding across the ground to knock another one off his feet. By the time Lloyd for back to his feet an out of breath Jay sent a final punch to the last guy.

"Thanks." Jay rested his hands on his knees, leaning over and breathing in deep.

"No problem, what were you thinking taking on four at once?"

"Oh, like I can choose who was going to attack me."

Lloyd snorted and rested his hand on his hip, focusing on calming his breathing, the immediate danger he felt when he...whatever was gone and his body started winding down.

"It's weird fighting without powers, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it certainly is." He rested his side against the wall and took in deep breaths, scanning the area, mostly for the staff.

Which he found, being held my Kai, with a green energy ball, his energy ball, aimed at him and Jay. Green eyes met red and...Kai's eyes weren't red, this wasn't Kai. He wouldn't do this. He wouldn't try and hurt him, right?

Right?

Or maybe Lloyd had been wrong about Kai, about the ninja, about his team, about everything. Maybe this was all a sick prank for them and now was the time to finally get Lloyd away from them. Maybe they had meant Lloyd to die instead of Zane when facing the New Overlord. Maybe they wanted him to fall off the skyscraper or being consumed by darkened when initially fighting the Overlord. Maybe he wasn't supposed to wake up on the beach, back on the island.