tw: mentions/signs of domestic abuse (please skip over the parts, i'll put a sign there if you feel uncomfortable, skip over them)

astra

"You've dyed your hair." she said stupidly, staring at the very much alive and working body of her sister Cassandra.

"Yes, well, believe it or not, being dead meant I had to change up a few things." Cassie stuck out an arm, picking up Astra's school bag with the other. "Come on, I'll take you back."

"Back where?"

"Headquarters."

"May I remind you," Astra said in a shrill voice punctuated by shock, "That you are supposed to dead."

"As a dodo." Cassie interjected, nodding her head along.

"And you work for the Sons of Garmadon? A street gang?"

"You're taking this quite well," her sister noted, her hand still jutting out in offer.

"No I am not. Answer my questions!"

"For your first, yes, I suppose I do work for the SOG, and the second, oh ho, it's more than a street gang." Cassie's voice had changed, if possible it was even more confident, not cocky, but strong and unwavering. As for her looks, her hair was a blinding white, the tips fading out into her original dusty blonde. She was wearing a swishy cloak that danced behind her with every step, and she was fitted out in tight, all black clothing, a belt strapped across her waist holding the sharp looking dagger she'd whipped out before.

"And why should I come with you? A—an assassin?"

"I wouldn't call it that." Cassandra took another look at her outfit. "Yeah, I would call it that. And that broken kneecap of yours, Obi and Joker might have to operate."

Astra backed up even further into the corner and almost screeched in pain. "How can I trust you, miss-oh-i'm-not-dead, surprise bitch?"

"You can't." Cassie said plainly, crouching down so her cowl fell over her face, darkening it in ominous shadow. "But I doubt you'd want to go home with that." She pointed to Astra's crooked knee. "Also, we might want to ask the big guy about, the uh," she mimed shooting something out of her fingers like Astra had done earlier.

tw: da / start

"I don't want to go home full stop." Astra muttered darkly, narrowing her eyes as she let a controlled, slow breath escape her lips. She had two options, neither of which looked very bright for the future. A), she could trust her back from the dead older sister who apparently was an assassin working with the Sons of Garmadon and have her friends operate on her knee. If it needed operating. B), slink back home, well, hobble like the hunchback of Notre Dame, cough up her money that she'd earned from her baking, earn herself a few bruises, maybe a slap because she was late again and she needed to do all the chores for the house and make dinner.

She winced, imagining a hard hook to her jaw that was still healing over, it'd broken skin and was bleeding, altogether a terrible night, just because she'd failed to get the carrots out. Tempers, she'd learned, were easily triggered if you were tense all the time and wanted an outlet, a punching bag. Fortunately for Astra's parents, and unfortunately for her, it was Astra. And they weren't the happiest with each other either.

Anger channelled in hurtful words bounced off her harmlessly, she couldn't care less, and she'd developed a thick skin against their curses, but her skin wasn't strong enough to deal with the more... physical things. It had started small, mostly verbal, after Cass 'died', until the point where every little movement sent them into a torrent of anger and vengeance.

All in all, home was not a place she liked. It hurt like a bitch, but where else was she supposed to go? And if she showed up with a broken knee, accusing her father after he pushed her down the stairs, she might as well toss herself out of the house.

tw: da / finish

"I'll go. You promise to let me go...home after?" Astra took Cassie's hand finally, groaning as she got up.

"Depends," she said dubiously, craning her neck. "It looks pretty bad. But Joker and Obi are better at this stuff than I am."

"What kind of names are Obi and Joker? Are they Jedi?" her poor attempt at a joke fell flat as Cassie helped her limp down the street, the older Harlow's expression grim.

"I don't think you want to joke about that. Those aren't their real names anyway, Obi's is Obliterate and Joker's is Joker. We have our names coded to protect our identities, so when we get to HQ, call me Troya, or Destroyer."

"That's dark." Joke through the pain.

"Precautions, and we take them seriously. I'll have to blindfold you when we get close to an entrance, by the way."

"Extra." Astra quipped quietly.

"Extra, but you have no idea how important our identities are, and I think for your sake, I'll just give you your own."

Astra tilted her head in question as they rounded the corner of a smoothie shop.

"Rea," Cassie smiled like a cat, cunning with her creativity.

"What does that stand for?"

"Reaper. Grim Reaper has a nice ring to it, actually".

o o o

"I still don't get why I need a code name. Like, I'm not going to be one of your targets or hits. Am I?" Cassie was basically carrying Astra and her school bag at this point, as she could barely touch a toe to the floor and put pressure on it.

Her sister made a snort sound dignified. "Again, for your safety."

"But why is it so ominous? Like Grim Reaper means death. I mean a barrage of curses and possibly a broken knee heading your way."

"A definitely broken knee, and you'll see. The Lord'll see you about that." Cassie turned into another dark alley that looked perfect for a mugging. Perhaps they were doing some mugging. But Cassie gently set her down and rummaged around her utility belt, pulling out a dark strip of cloth.

She wound it around Astra's head three times and tied the knot off. Astra couldn't see a thing, but Cassie asked if she could see the fingers she was holding up. She couldn't, but she tried anyway.

"Three?"

"Eight."

"Ah."

Cassie moved around a bit, and even in total darkness, Astra barely heard anything. Her sister must be good at this kind of work, and she should be since she'd disappeared well over a year ago and better have a good excuse as to her faked death. Then she was lifted again, and lowered into a space darker than her blindfold, significantly colder as a chilled breeze fluttered past. Her sister started walking again, but even her assassin training couldn't conceal the sloshing of water that Astra's ears perked up at. Water, underground, cold. I'm in the sewers? Her sister wasn't doing a very good job at the secrecy, but she'd mentioned that this was only one of several entrances to the Sons of Garmadon headquarters.

It was then Astra realised that her sister was trusting her not to run off at the first chance to tell the police. But the Ninjago City police, in her opinion, were a bit pathetic. Right now, her opinions were mixed and blinded by biased pain, which hopefully, this 'Obi' and 'Joker' could fix. The sloshing stopped, and Astra was set down on hard, butt-freezing ground that was probably sewer concrete.

"Name?" came a new voice, lower, and gruffer, sounding vaguely like her history teacher. If it was, she'd pass out. As it was, it was a surprise she hadn't fainted from her knee, however, as long as there was no blood, it was all okay. Bruises were fine, maybe a scratch or too, but too much blood and you might as well knock her out with a club.

"Troya."

The silence left lingering in the air was incredibly uncomfortable and Astra was about to say something when Cassie - Troya, spoke again.

"He likes sausages and mash for dinner, but he's allergic to both."

The strange phrase granted Cassie through because Astra was lifted up again, and she went limp as her knee decided to bite back in pain again from the little movement. They went through this process several times, Cassie stopping to set Astra down on the ground again, giving her code name and a new weird phrase. There were also short patterns of buzzes and beeps that varied each time. Strangely enough, Cassie never deigned to explain the body and school bag she was carrying. Maybe it was normal in the Sons of Garmadon to carry bodies around. After the third phrase and checkpoint, Cassie seemed to walk through some sliding door as the air hissed around her. It became a little warmer, though it was still cold this far underground.

The blindfold slid off once Cassie undid the knot, and Astra found herself in a waiting room. It looked identical to the stereotypical doctor's front room, even with a receptionist's desk in a white curve of a table, chairs lined on either side of the room. Astra was sitting in one of them, and it was quite comfy. The aesthetic of the room, however, was ruined by a trail of splattered blood, dark red as it was dried, leading to what must be a consultation room.

Her head began going dizzy, from the growing pain and the sight of so much blood casually painting the floor. Squeezing her eyes close, she focused on the plain darkness and forced the swimming image of blood out of her mind.

"Still hate blood?"

Astra opened her eyes again and deliberately kept them on her sister's face. Cassie still had her hood on, and she hadn't changed out of her clothes, though her platinum white hair was tied back.

"Yes. A lot. Are Obi-Wan-Kenobi and Arthur Fleck coming?"

"Obi-Wan is going to lop you in half with her lightsaber if you make another joke like that." scoffed another new voice from behind Astra.

Her clumsy half turn was anything but graceful when she came face to face with Obliterate. She was wearing a surgical mask, and her short bob of frizzy, curly hair was kept prisoner by a plastic blue scrub cap matching her scrubs.

"Troya told me you've broken your knee?" Obi, real name unknown, knelt down to examine Astra's knee. The surprise came with the ease and friendliness Obi had for Astra, a total stranger, who could be plotting against them. Trust runs strong, she noted with a brief smile.

Obi gently ran her thumb across her left kneecap and frowned as Astra flinched. She stood up, taking her cap off carefully, and stuck her hands in the pocket of her scrubs. Black, and with a tiny emblem of something Astra couldn't see over her heart.

"Patella fracture, you were right to bring her in, Troya. Who is she, by the way?" The earlier openness was replaced with strict suspicion.

"New recruit," explained Cassie quickly. Astra opened her mouth to object to that lie, then closed it. Troya must have a reason. "Rea, or Grim Reaper."

Obi sighed. "Always one for the dramatics, eh?"

Cassie shrugged. "So, what's in store for Rea here?"

"I'll need to examine it further and check if she has hemarthrosis, and she hasn't got an open fracture thank goodness as that would make my job ten times harder. Rea'll need an x-ray as well. How did you break this? Joker will have to come in if her bones are displaced, but I'll need results from an x-ray for that. I want to wait until those bruises heal before, if, we need to do surgery. We could just get her a cast, but as I said, that all depends on the x-rays."

She said this all very quickly, reminding Astra of her English classmate Jay Walker, who had a tendency to rattle off his thoughts when he was nervous. English presentations and speeches took forever with that guy. The prospect of surgery was not a good one, but anything to get her knee working properly again. Even if it meant trusting a gang member to operate on her.

"Lord Garmadon wants her to come speak to him," Troya said suddenly, looking up from a tiny black device that had been clipped to her belt.

"No ominous name?" Astra tried weakly. The joke fell flatter than her Jedi joke.

"He doesn't need a name to be ominous. Don't speak unless spoken to, and don't give him a smart ass answer." advised Cassie, though it was more of a sombre order.

Astra nodded and moved to get up, momentarily forgetting about the fracture of her kneecap. Obi forced her down by her shoulders, looking to Destroyer.

"He can come to her. She's in no shape to walk."

Cassie's face turned into a dour mix of a frown and a grimace. "He won't like that."

"I bet he doesn't like anything. Like, not even ice cream." piped up Astra, trying to cut the Lord Garmadon-angry-gang-leader tension.

"It's comments like that," Cassie said pointedly, "Which are going to get you stabbed."

"How utterly terrible." she said simply, earning herself a synchronised sigh from both the SOG members.

"I'll go prep the x-ray generator. I have to adjust the detector..." Obi rambled off as she opened the doors to another room, muttering to herself.

"I'm serious," Cassie took a quick look around like a jittery chipmunk. "Starra, you can't mess with him. He's the leader of a gang, and he won't hesitate to kill you if he sees you as a threat. This isn't a kid's tv show."

Astra flinched at the mention of her childhood nickname. So Cassie was being sincere. And Garmadon really was dangerous.

"Troya, what was that about me being a 'new recruit'?"

Her sister shrugged again. "A cover, for now, at least. There wasn't really another way for you to get in."

Cassie left with another reminder not to sass Lord Garmadon, and a few, painstaking (literally) minutes later, Lord Garmadon strolled in, sporting a pair of pinstriped golfing pants. Anything but menacing. Astra's brain jumped at the first thing she thought of.

"Tiger Woods?"

His hand was at the hilt of the dagger at his waist, in a second, the blade whizzing through the air, his face expressionless. She ducked a second before it drove itself into the wall above her. Her heart beating, she straightened her spine and yanked the knife out of the wall with all of her depleting strength. She'd already dug her grave, she might as well cover it with fresh soil.

"You missed."

He remained quiet, and then something hard hit the back of her head. She reached behind her in a blundering movement to draw out a minimalistic clock that had assaulted her. The string holding it up was snapped neatly into two.

"I don't miss."

She made a good decision to keep quiet, squirming under his gaze. Making another note not to compare him to golfers, she was puzzled by his informal dress. He was the leader of the biggest crime group, yet he looked relaxed at a potential spy sitting in his secret base. His face, unsettling, stayed pokered, and his hands went to his pockets. His shirt had a slight stain, and his expression flickered with something, pain, she recognised, as she was feeling a lot of it too, and his hands went to his stomach. The edge of a white bandage poked out from under his polo shirt, and that confirmed her suspicions. He was definitely hurt, but he'd nearly killed her without flinching.

He looked at her for another second, made a hmphing noise, and turned on his heel, exiting with soulless dramatic flair.

zane

"I'm an... android?" The words fell out of his mouth before his brain truly processed the magnitude of the words.

Pixal, half standing up in her chair, was frozen in shock like he was. Her shoulders were shaking - with tears, he realised, and in deadly quiet, she stalked forwards to where her father was on call with Dr Julien.

"Is he lying?" Her voice was low and threatening, and Zane shivered at the venom spiking every word. He felt sorry for Borg. "Is. He. Lying?"

"No." Cyrus Borg's voice quivered at the end, changing the tone to a question, but the answer was there. Zane and Pixal were androids. Robots. They weren't human. And Evan wasn't either.

"Did you know?" he rounded on his brothers as his feelings, were they even real, or zeros and ones feeding him lies?, struck out in anger.

"Yes, yes, but I — I only remembered when you found me earlier today. I could remember him, I could see him building me, and I have memories, or whatever they are, about him talking about building you."

"And if I hadn't gotten injured, would you have told me?" Zane said coldly, his eyes piercing his brother's.

Dr Julien interrupted before Evan could spit out a reply. "He's telling you the truth, my boy. I — I missed you so much and I needed help with some of my projects. I'd been building Evan for a year when I realised that his core, your heart, I couldn't replicate that. A stranger, an old man who carried the frost with him came just as I finished building you, and he gave you your core. I couldn't make another one, so I gave up on Evan."

"And then — one night, I was working late and suddenly Evan jerked upright from that very table you're sitting on, and he had this look in his eyes just like when you powered up. He was covered in this layer of frost, shaped into little gears. And I thought that stranger who gave you your core, Zane, he must have given Evan a new one, somehow. But I looked him up, and I'm afraid he died shortly after he visited us. I was researching my suspicions every spare minute I had to give, and I even asked Mr Borg here help me with that. For a month, I kept Evan down in my workshop, until I couldn't wait any longer. I let you meet, right before I discovered the truth about the man who gave you your core..."

Christopher Julien hesitated there, but Zane's glare, clenched jaw and sharp, icy look in his eyes egged him on with spite.

"He was something called an Elemental Master, and it was very difficult to find this information, my boy, and I realised that he'd passed his power onto you, Zane. You're the next Elemental Master of Ice."

A/N: holy crap even i didn't see that coming. Okay, i sort of did but like bruh. I did not plan on that reveal, but zane and dr julien hit me in the head with a club and told me to get on with the fcking plot dommie (zane wouldnt swear ik unless its bad). Yes zane's part is short, but i am a dramatic writer, and yes you can expect like 2.5k-3k chapters to make up for the once a week update. Depends, again, on school deciding to *murder* me. Also, i have become accustomed to inserting possible muggings anywhere i can because i've been watching tommyinnit's streams and his muggings (cough, quackity) are beginning to get into my writing.

With the subject of 'cores' you'll see how evan has one, and zane's is gifted from the em of ice. I was wondering for pixal, if you guys wanted her to have elemental powers, or just to be a samurai? I have backstories for both instances, so let me know!

ANNNNND today's chapter is dedicated to Iva!!!!! today is her birthday I couldn't finish a oneshot in time, so happy birthday iva, chapter 21 is yours! iva_951 also has a few books up which I totally suggest reading :)

tw: da

On a separate note, domestic abuse is a serious subject. It does not take just physical forms. It could be a family member, a carer, or a partner. It's when someone controls, threatens, shows physical and verbal abuse to you. The signs may start out small but it slowly becomes apparent to the victim, and they often struggle with the idea with someone they trust(ed) hurting them. Despite what some people think, you can't just up and go. This happens all around the world and even where you least expect it. People may discount verbal abuse as domestic abuse, but that is not the case. You slowly grow numb to the things thrown at you, and often, you can't tell if it is verbal abuse or normal everyday happenings. You can be scared to reach out to people. An abuser uses fear, guilt, and shame to keep you under control. And it doesn't happen just to girls as well, though statistics show that it is more likely. Your situation may seem small compared to the brave people who have reached out for help, but any domestic abuse is abuse. I've attached links below if you'd like to read more about it. Astra's situation at home is definitely toxic, and I urge you all to read more on this topic. It can easily be swept under the rug as it can/has become 'normalised'. Please remember you can always pm me on wattpad or dm me on either of my accounts on instagram if you need to talk.

https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/

https://parents.au.reachout.com/common-concerns/everyday-issues/domestic-violence-and-teenagers

https://www.thehotline.org/resources/statistics/

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/abuse/domestic-violence-and-abuse.htm

It's been a long a/n, so

-dommie out