Work Text:
If there was anything that the past thousand years have taught Lloyd, it was that humans did weird things when they think they’re alone.
Oh, and it gave him more than enough time to master the Art of Not Giving a Flying Hoot, too. It sounded inconsequential, but it’s pretty damn important in the long run, especially when his entire job revolved around looking after Ninjago, and by extension, humans.
Fun…
Though, if he thought humans were odd, the Ninja cranked that weirdness up by a hundredfold. It was a truth as old as time, and after witnessing several dozens of Ninja lose their life to the stupidest of reasons, he was inclined to believe that all the training his Uncle put them through had given them at least some form of chronic brain damage. At the very least, it made for some interesting scenarios.
But none of them compared to the oddball that was the modern group of Ninja. Not only did they have quirks of their own, they were loud, dramatic, overreactive – practically everything the Ninja stood against. Almost everyone in Ninjago knew their names, faces, and how much creamer they liked and their coffee. Lloyd was already struggling to remember their names. He did not want to know their internet history as well.
So when Lloyd witnessed four of his Uncle’s students parading in town, showing off their elemental powers to promote his Uncle’s teashop, he walked in the other direction while suffering from secondhand embarrassment. Which was impressive, considering they managed to elicit some form of reaction from him when he was capable of looking at Kolleen Bawlinger’s apology video without batting an eyelid.
“Oh, Grandfather,” he prayed to no one in particular, wishing a meteorite would come and crush him whole. “Please tell me Uncle Wu hasn’t gone senile from training these monkeys.”
His prayers were left unanswered; but then again, he wouldn’t be a Garmadon if he always got what he wanted. Besides, compared to these four grown idiots, training half a dozen monkeys didn’t sound so bad. Maybe he could throw in some pandas and sloths while they’re at it. Make it a whole attraction.
“Hey! Have you heard about those guys at the square? The ones pulling those crazy stunts?”
“You believe those? Heh, I bet they’re some publicity stunt with tons of props and levers. You know you shouldn’t believe everything you see…”
“No no, people are saying they’re the Ninja.”
“Seriously? You still think they’re real? Get a life, girl.” A huff. “Maybe they’re promoting the concert in a few days. Whatever they’re doing, it’s working.”
From the other end of the ice-cream shop, Lloyd massaged his temples to nurse a coming migraine, sighing into his double-scoop chocolate sundae. Saved by cynical skepticism once again.
One way or the other, the Head Ghost managed to get his hands on the Allied Armor of Azure by possessing a civilian girl. Which spelt trouble – lots of trouble.
Lloyd hid in his Uncle’s tea shop until the Ninja escaped from the Bounty, being forced to retreat after they discovered a hidden message in Uncle Wu’s staff. The Head Ghost, now known as Morro, summoned dozens of ghosts using the armor and were now in the middle of a strategy meeting.
From where he was, he could make out at least fifty of them, all sporting some kind of uniform representing the Preeminent. Only the main four – Bansha, Morro, Ghoultar, and Wrayth had individualism in their clothing, making them relatively easy to identify.
“… spread out and look for any information on the Ninja!” Morro, using the girl’s voice, was saying. “This body is untrained and weak. I will need a more suitable vessel to reach the First Spinjitzu Master’s tomb.”
His ghostly lackeys saluted and spread out, taking off in every direction possible. Lloyd kept his back pressed against the wall, holding his breath as several ghosts passed by his hiding spot.
This… is bad. The Ninja were already struggling to fight one off, Ninjago itself would stand no chance against an entire legion. And did he say his Grandfather’s tomb? Who in the right mind had the audacity to desecrate someone’s grave?
Lloyd gnashed his teeth together. Oh, Ghosty just had to make it personal.
The first batch of ghosts he found relatively easy. He quickly learned that most of them hadn’t seen Ninjago in decades—some of them weren’t even from Ninjago—which meant they had not a single clue on its geography and history. With a well-timed bucket of water, he sent three of them back to a hellhole where they rightfully belonged.
Three down, at least forty-seven left to go.
Tracking them down was another issue, but that’s where modern technology came in. After stealing someone’s phone (and spending another three hours to learn how to use it), he searched up any possible sightings up on the internet and made his way there. Those poor souls never saw that water balloon coming. Who knew humanity’s curiosity and busybody attitudes could be so useful?
50% down, another 50% left.
After three days, that remaining half became another problem on its own. They were smarter than the rest, and by this time, they’d blended in with the populace to avoid detection. At first glance, they would be difficult to spot, especially if Lloyd didn’t know any of them personally. He was on the verge to tear his hair out when he spotted a couple children in their garden, using their hose to mimic rain, singing “Rain, rain, go away!” as they ran around shrieking with laughter.
A light bulb popped over Lloyd’s head, and he made his way to Mystake’s shop.
“Aunt Mystake!” He barged into her teahouse, slamming the doors wide open with guts that would have Mystake shove a healthy amount of Subtle-Tea and Humili-Tea down his throat. “I need tea! Lots of them!”
From the counter, Mystake’s eyebrows hiked to her hairline, wondering if he’d died and been replaced by an evil doppelganger. “Which one, boy?” she drawled, looking him up and down skeptically.
Not that he could blame her. He looked like he’d run around the entirety of Ninjago without any rest—which he did, for the record. His high bun had fallen out of place, blond curls sticking out in every direction possible. His jeans were torn and caked with dust and dirt, and the purple of his sweater was completely covered by black grime.
“Stormy Wea-Tear!” he huffed. “I’ll take your entire stock- Ow!” Lloyd held his head after Mystake smacked the side of his temple. “What was that for?!”
Mystake levelled him with an unimpressed stare. “You look like you haven’t slept in ages!” she chided. “Ninjago will live if you stop and take a break, kit!”
“I’m a thousand years old,” Lloyd stressed, blushing. “And no- there’s this ghost apocalypse going on, so—”
“And I am ten times your age,” Mystake snapped. “No sleep, no tea!”
Lloyd’s jaw dropped. “But-!”
“No buts!”
Maybe coming here was a mistake. Heh.
For the next two days, Mystake had all but physically forced him to take an hour-long bath (“You stink like a rotting dragon’s corpse.”), change into a new set of clothes she bought from the nearest thrift store (“I am an upstanding citizen now. And it means paying mortgages and taxes, even if I was here longgggg before their ancestors.”) and aggressively tucked him into bed (“If I come back later and I don’t see you sleeping like a newborn baby, I will use your skull to demonstrate how sturdy this old teapot can be.”).
Ghosts didn’t scare him. Maybe he’d lose some sleep over a post-apocalyptic Ninjago.
But Aunt Mystake? He’d rather kiss the Overlord than tick her off.
On the third day, as Lloyd was beginning to head out with a burlap sack full of tea leaves, Aunt Mystake stopped him by the door. Not to wish him good luck, but to tag along with him on his (mis)adventures.
“Are you sure?” Lloyd repeated for the fifth time, not wanting to be saddled by a babysitter older than Ninjago itself. “Your shop—”
“If it can survive the Great Depression and fifty economic collapses, it’ll be here after a few closing days,” Mystake reiterated stubbornly. “Now, onward! Danger awaits us!”
Left without a choice, Lloyd gave Mystake a rundown of his plan. She listened intently through it all and by the end, she nodded slowly, impressed.
“Very effective,” she commended. “But just how are you supposed to pull that off? Oni don’t grow wings, you know.”
Lloyd paused. “Right.” His face burned. “I am… getting to that.” He was not getting to that. “It’s a work in progress.”
Mystake’s expression fell flatter than a pancake dropped from the thirtieth floor. “Really?”
“Uh, yes. Definitely.”
“…”
“…”
“You have no idea, don’t you?”
“… no.”
There were three phases to Lloyd’s plan. It all boiled down to a classic hit-and-run, with the added spice of impromptu exorcisms by whacking unsuspecting ghosts upside the head with a frying pan. The gist was:
- Get to someplace high,
- Sprinkle copious amounts of Stormy Wea-Tear in the clouds,
- Profit.
It sounds simple, but the holes in his plan came apart at the seams right away, because Mystake was right – Oni don’t grow wings. (He was like, half-Oni, but the point still stands!) Lloyd may be able to teleport, but after looking at the size of the main town square, the massive crowd and the mountain of tea he needed to throw, he gave up on that idea in a heartbeat.
The second issue: with the development and evolution of humanity, humans have built hundreds of shelters in fear of being exposed to the elements. Even if a storm were to happen this instant, all they’d do is run into the nearest roof or pull out an umbrella; and after three days of integrating themselves into modern society, those fossils would’ve already figured out the wonders of raincoats and nondegradable plastics.
This plan could only work if a) he could get all the humans in a crowd without any shelter in sight, and b) he could get to said clouds in the first place. Both were easier said than done.
He was down in the dumps in some random ice-cream parlor, driving himself crazy on all the possibilities when Mystake tapped him on the shoulder and passed him a poster.
Lloyd raised an eyebrow, but he let his eyes fall on the colorful piece of paper nonetheless. The language had evolved immensely in the past few decades, but he could make out the general message it wanted to convey.
“‘The Fold?’” He squinted, brows furrowing. “‘Live Concert scheduled—today?’”
A plethora of loud noises echoed from the window. Lloyd’s head shot up to be met with a crowd full of merchandise, fanny packs and glowsticks shuffling past the ice-cream parlor, chattering and squealing with excitement. Eyes sharpening, he fished out the phone he stole a while back, looking up any details he could find about this concert.
Oh.
Cloud Kingdom be damned.
“This is it,” Lloyd realized with a jolt, showing the screen to Mystake. “Never thought I’d say this ever- but thank my Grandfather for modern pop culture!”
They made their way towards the avenue faster than anyone could say Worcestershire sauce, hopping over buildings because the streets were overflowing with overzealous fans queuing for the concert, which was a perfect layout to trap dozens of ghosts in one place with no way to escape. It was open air, all items save for mobile phones and water were confiscated in fear of any injuries, and no one’s allowed to enter or leave after the gates closed. Practically everybody and their mothers were heading to this event, and he doubted those fossils would pass up a chance to experience the thrills that was modern fanatic shrieking.
From a skyscraper, Lloyd peered down from the roof, eyes squinting at the seating area that was beginning to fill up. That solved crowd control, but not the main issue. Before he could tear hairs over his patchwork of a plan, he stumbled on his footing as gusts of winds picked up around the buildings, too harsh and prominent to be natural.
He held onto the railings, keeping his hair out of his face, looked up—and grinned.
Convincing the helicopter pilots to do whatever he wanted was easy. All it took was a little promise (to send them all crashing down into the crowd below) and some bribery (to not send them into a fiery doom) that got them to cave in seconds. It was a trick as old as time, but still effective nonetheless.
“W-Where to, s-s-s-s-i-ir?” stammered the pilot, entire body shaking like a snowflake. It was a miracle they haven’t crashed yet, considering how much panic these humans were in. “P-please, I have a wife a-a-a-and a son—”
Lloyd shoved him aside and peered out of the windows, ignoring his meltdown. The co-pilot was already out cold, body hanging limp in his seat and only held up by his seatbelt.
From below, the concert had begun, the band on stage hyping up the crowd as the last of the attendees filtered into the main square. It was so crowded that it made a can of sardines look like a luxurious resort on a private island.
“How high can this thing go?” he asked, frowning. The clouds were few in-between, just barely enough for him to go through with his plan.
“H-High? I think—”
“Start heading up,” Lloyd ordered, flinging the sack over his shoulder. “If you try anything funny, you can kiss your wife and son goodbye.”
“Ye-yes! Yes sir!”
He spun on his heels, and headed towards the entrance, grunting. A trembling cameraman sat further in the helicopter, cradling his camera like his life depended on it. It probably did.
The sight below became smaller and smaller as the helicopter ascended further. Lloyd tapped his foot, humming as if he were waiting in a mall’s elevator and listening to its generic soundtrack on loop.
“Hey, you.”
The cameraman snapped towards him, eyes wide. “Y-yes?”
Lloyd glanced behind his shoulder. “What’s your name?” His eyes landed on the nametag pinned to his shirt. “Vinny, huh? A word of advice.”
The window passed through a layer of clouds.
“Huh?”
“Hold on to something.”
He slammed his hand down onto the release button, forcing the door to open. Almost immediately, turbulence kicked in, the difference in atmospheric pressure forcing the air to surge outwards. Miscellaneous loose items flew outwards, including but not limited to a cup of mocha, a laptop bag and various kinds of recording equipment.
Lloyd grinned manically, holding onto the sides as his hair flapped wildly in the air. Before he could continue, a dark shape shot past him and out the hatch, screaming. He blinked, eyes twitching when he saw the camera fall freely into the sky, taking Vinny with it.
Without thinking, Lloyd forced his body to lurch forward, pile of tea forgotten as he reached for the flailing human. His feet left solid ground and stepped into air the same moment he grabbed a fistful of fabric.
His horns and tail emerged in a flash of purple light. His violet eyes sharpened as the tip of his tail curled around the helicopter’s landing skids, their freefall coming to a complete halt as they were left dangling mid-air, with one of them freaking out significantly more than the other.
Lloyd craned his head up, coincidentally watching as the burlap sack scatter into the wind, the leaves melting into the clouds like tea, dyeing them a shade of gray. Thunder brewed within its confines, gathering and thickening as it prepared to unleash hell upon those Cursed Spirits.
“That worked out, somehow,” Lloyd muttered dryly, still hanging upside down and holding onto a shrieking cameraman. He glared down at the human. “Would you shut up already? You’re nowhere close to the ground.”
“That’s even worse!”
Like an acrobatic, he swung his body like a pendulum, throwing Vinny back into the cockpit at the right moment. He followed soon after, teleporting back to the safety of the helicopter before shutting the door once again.
“Take us back down, will you?” Lloyd called, smirking. He summoned a new weapon he discovered from the nearest toy store into his hand—the Ultimate Ghost Buster: a pink water gun half his size.
“It’s time to take out the trash.”
Of course things didn’t go to plan, but at least it still had the same effect.
Lloyd slammed the water gun on the floor like a toddler throwing a tantrum. “Oh, come on!” he groaned, pulling at his hair. “I was gone for half an hour! Tops!”
From the other end of the closed ice-cream parlor, Mystake calmly sipped on her tea (Where did she even get that?), unphased by the thousand-year-old brat’s hissy fit. “You’re welcome, boy!” she chortled. “Merry early Christmas!”
In the span of Lloyd’s descent back to ground, Mystake had worked a miracle, rounding up the hidden ghosts. With how the stadium had been set up, there was only one probable exit for them to escape the rain, and that was the entrance that had been sealed off since the beginning. She’d simply remained in the shadows, waited until the burning ghosts started getting violent, then dumped a massive bathtub of water atop their heads to perform the world’s most anticlimactic exorcism.
She’d gotten rid of most of them, but some still escaped her watery wrath. But if there was only one truth in the world, it was that Oni were stubborn creatures. However, rather than giving them a one-way ticket back to the Cursed Realm, she rounded them up and dragged them back to the ice-cream parlor Lloyd frequented.
“I made a speech and everything,” Lloyd whined. “Now I just look like an idiot!”
Mystake levelled him with an unamused stare. “What’s new?” she grumbled. “Ain’t you the one who barreled into my shop telling me there’s no time to waste?”
Lloyd snapped back to her, nostrils flaring. He might not like it, but she was right. It’s already been a few days since the ghosts infiltrated Ninjago, and the Ninja were still no-show. Grandfather knows how much information they’ve given the Preeminent in that period of downtime.
“Fine,” he relented, picking up the water gun. “How are we doing this?”
Mystake grinned, teeth showing as if she were a predator who’d found her prey. “Bad cop, good cop. That always does the trick!”
The two Oni exchanged a look, then snuck glances at the struggling prisoners and nodded in agreement. Brandishing a pair of blackening claws and a very menacing water gun each, they towered over the incapacitated ghosts, both promising a world of hurt.
“I will count down from three,” Mystake started, breathing violet flames, “and if ye don’t tell me what that no-good Preeminent is up to, I will make ye wish for a second death.”
“Come on,” Lloyd continued, horns elongating from his skull, his skeleton crackling as it rearranged itself like a horror film, “I’ve always wanted to know how loud the dead can scream.”
The pair kept up their menacing act, forcing the ghosts to cower and whimper under the sheer pressure. It wasn’t until Lloyd broke character and turned to Mystake with a perplexed expression, nudging her elbow.
“I thought I was playing the bad cop,” he admitted.
Mystake’s eyes widened in realization. Almost instantly, the tension in the room dissipated as the pair of Oni planned their next move. “Oh, oh right! I thought you were playing the good cop.”
“Well we can’t both be bad cops. Let’s start over.” Lloyd spun to the tied-up ghosts, expression painfully gentle like a simple smile was killing him from the inside. “I’ll tell you lovely undead people what; you tell us what we need to know, and we won’t drop you in the nearest deep fryer we can find. Capiche?”
“Here’s some dehydrated tea!” Mystake slid a tray of cups towards them, filled with only dried tea leaves and no water. “Feel like talking yet?”
They held this persona for another moment before they realized their mistake yet again.
“Grandfather above, we suck at this!”
“You did your best,” one of the ghosts offered.
“Thank you,” was all Lloyd said before he picked the same ghost up, threw them across the room and held them against the wall. He pressed the water gun’s muzzle into the bottom of their chin, forcing them to look him in his flashing, glowing eyes.
The ghost whimpered and squirmed under his hold, but Lloyd was unrelenting. For a second something inhuman took over Lloyd, the shadows cloaking him into a sinister, eerie force of nature.
“Now, let’s give this one last chance.”
His finger tightened around the trigger.
Lloyd grinned as the ghost’s skin burned as if he were pressing hot iron to its skin.
“What is the Preeminent after?”
The next few days were spent in a blur, summarized by:
“Who got turned into a ghost?”
“The Ninja went to which realm again?”
“Who has the Sword of whatchamacallit?”
“THEY BROKE INTO WHOSE GRAVE?! FOR A ROCK!?!”
Lloyd was so skinning the Ninja alive.
In the end, all’s well that ends well, and Ninjago was not turned into the second coming of the Cursed Realm. It took a lot of self-restraint for Lloyd to not flay the Ninja and broadcast it across the Sixteen Realms as a form of revenge for desecrating his grandfather’s grave, but he managed.
(Read: he took most of his anger and frustration out on the ghosts he brutally slaughtered in Stiix, Kurosanji style. Those Ninja were too damned absorbed in their own world to be self-aware, in which Lloyd begrudgingly played support and evacuated lagging civilians from the ruins and onto the boat.)
By the time it ended, Lloyd was back in Mystake’s tea shop. He spent days laying face down in one of her guest rooms with an ice pack atop his head, nursing a killer migraine.