lloyd

Lloyd wanted to give his uncle a good ol' slap in the face. His last-minute decision as headmaster to have school continue for the day, when he and his friends had already planned an epic afternoon and morning.

"I still don't see why," he grumbled to his mother as they locked the apartment door behind them. Most of the power in Ninjago had come back on, and oh so luckily for him, the school was back too.

"Your uncle just wants what's best for your education. For all of you." his mother reasoned, retying the green scarf she always wore. "And you've skived off plenty of times Lloyd."

"But still." he insisted, hopping into the front seat of their beat-up Toyota. "We could just have the day off!"

The pair spent the thirty minute ride through traffic half-heartedly arguing as to why school should or shouldn't be cancelled. When his mother pulled up to the steps of Ninjago High, he leant over and hugged her tightly, forgetting their argument already.

"You're staying after school?" Misako confirmed with worried eyes as her parental instincts kicked in.

"Yeah, just for a little bit. I have my phone, and yes find my phone is on." Lloyd reassured her, closing the car door. "Love you."

"Love you too Lloydie-bear."

"Mum." he groaned, spinning around to find Nya grinning madly.

"Lloydie-bear?" she chortled. Lloyd rolled his eyes pushed her ahead of him so he could walk to the entrance.

"Are we going to Chen's Noodle House after school or tomorrow?" he asked, toying with the green strings of his hoodie.

"Tomorrow," entered a familiar voice. Cole walked beside Nya to Lloyd's left, headphones around his neck. "That's when the deal ends and we will be the last to eat."

The three of them laughed as they pushed their way through the crowd to get to their lockers. Somehow, they managed to wrangle lockers next to each other in a practically abandoned corridor, namely because the library was around the corner and nobody went that way. An extraordinary discovery on the part of Cole and Lloyd. On the furthest end, closest to the library was Zane, followed by Pixal and then Nya, Jay, Cole, Lloyd, an empty locker, and then Kai. He was busy putting away his homework folders and textbooks that must have weighed about ten kilos each when someone stumbled into him.

"Oh, hi Skylor." he greeted, his mood still dampened by the continuation of school.

"Wish the power outage had lasted longer too?" she grinned, a backpack slung on one shoulder and a lock-in one hand. "I am in the right place?"

"Yeah, locker eighty-three is next to mine." after a short pause, he asked his next question. "How come you're moving lockers?"

With a sigh, Skylor struggled with her lock for a few seconds and then it popped open. "The principal came and told me that someone needed my locker for extra space."

Lloyd scoffed in response and locked his lock, narrowly missing locking in his fingers as well. Skylor was placing her books on the top shelf when a red blurry figure fell back into her.

"Oh sh—" Kai stood up and handed her the fallen book. "Sorry about that." he smiled sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

Skylor mumbled something incomprehensible under breath, climbed out of where she had been pushed into her locker awkwardly, and cursed loudly as she looked at her locker. Lloyd stood on his toes to peer in to find that the back of her locker had disappeared. What was even more curious was the faint outline of a room behind the wall. All eight of the lockers were pushed up against the wall and drilled in with metal sheets as the backing.

"What is that?" she asked as Cole and Nya came to get a look at the mysterious room. Even in the darkness, he could tell it was huge.

"I dunno," Kai said, then he reconsidered and added, "I'm going in there."

He moved to push Skylor out of the way gently, but the girl remained steadfast looking into the darkness. She pulled out her phone and shone the flashlight into the space. His earlier thoughts were confirmed. It looked as if the walls were concrete and smooth grey, cobwebs hanging in the darker corners and another door towards the back.

"Secret hangout spot!" cheered Cole excitedly, shouldering his way to the front to climb through Skylor's locker.

"Woah there Mister Explorer," she warned, standing in front of the locker with crossed arms. "I'm not going in there just yet."

Cole, Kai and Lloyd whined in annoyance. Despite its mysterious appearance, Lloyd was very much interested in exploring the room and the other door.

"After school," Skylor promised, closing and locking the door with a click of authority. "And we'll check out this secret room."

Lloyd groaned loudly and picked up his books. "But the temptation."

"Unless you know my locker code, you aren't going in there," Skylor said, turning to Kai. "Don't try to watch me do it either you creep."

"Hey!"

Skylor was in a completely different homeroom to him so Lloyd couldn't pester her to let him investigate earlier. Luckily, Zane was with him so they headed off to the science classroom they spent fifteen minutes of each day in.

"All I'm saying is that we might not have to wait until after school," Lloyd said, dropping his bag to the ground as they sat down.

"What are you going to do then? Break into her locker by using a metal cutting laser machine and cut the door out?" Zane replied dryly.

Lloyd was actually considering going to the metalworking classroom and stealing the exact machine he'd need when his homeroom teacher interrupted his scheming.

"Okay kids, I'm sure you all know about the power outage last night. Principal Wu is sure that it won't happen again today but he does want everyone to be careful with electrical and power lines if you manage to come across them. Now, everyone knows that the Environmental..."

Lloyd zoned out after she spoke on his uncle's announcement, taking to doodling on a square sticky note with a cheap ballpoint pen he'd stolen from Nya. Now Lloyd was nowhere near an artist but he could draw one thing fairly well, and that was how he ended with a bunch of sunflowers on the yellow sticky note.

"Off you go then." sighed Mrs Katell, putting her head in her hands. Lloyd thought she probably wanted the day off too.

When he walked into his English classroom he was surprised to find Skylor in the back row with her headphones in, and Cole demanding something in a hushed voice. Cole was in his class usually, so he guessed if he had looked into the back row and he would have found Skylor all of earlier this week. He slid into the seat next to Cole in the back row-normally he sat further up to avoid the gossiping back girls.

"Look, it sounds cool in theory, therefore it will be cool!" Cole reasoned to Skylor, who had a slightly bemused smile dancing on her face.

"Tell me, how exactly are we going to fit a mini fridge through my locker?" Cole opened his mouth goldfish like to answer, but the redhead continued "How is it supposed to run? And, I want the place clean first if we're going to hang out in there."

Cole wrinkled his nose as if hygiene wasn't a problem, but then Chen added "There could be spiders. Snakes. Rats. Who knows what could be living in there." The boy shuddered and then turned to Lloyd.

"You reckon we can squish a couch through or just beanbags?"

Lloyd thought about it for a moment. "Bean bags. They'll be easier to clean anyway."

"Listen up! I'm handing out your pop quiz sheets now..." Lloyd groaned and fumbled around his pencil case for a pen. This was going to be a long day.

He was correct, unfortunately. English and History dragged by like a sloth up a tree, both with horrible pop quizzes he hadn't studied for, but luckily didn't count towards his grade. At break, Kai, Lloyd, Cole, Nya and Zane hurried over to their usual table to stumble over each other's words and tell Jay about their discovery. It went something like:

"Locker —"

"The back just disappeared —"

"And then woosh, the magic fairies came?"

"Shut up. Anyway, we —"

"It was a room and it was dark —"

"And the Skylor used her phone and it was like —"

"Woooaaaaaah 'cause it's huge, you see?"

"But she won't let us go in until after school —"

"Makes sense you poncy prick —"

And then he had to slug through Science and Maths, one after the other and tottered into lunch with his head pounding relentlessly.

"Stupid fractions." he muttered darkly, plopping down next to Jay.

What felt like two minutes later but really was thirty, they were up and at it again as he made his way for art and sports. The former subject was something he mildly enjoyed-they'd had to pick electives earlier in the year and he hadn't been paying proper attention, but he'd managed to incorporate sunflowers into the majority of his projects so at least something looked good. Sport was bearable, at least. Lloyd was fairly fit and liked to keep it that way, so their basketball unit was a breeze for him. Hair dripping with water from a quick shower, he sprinted around the corner, taking the shortcut to the lockers past the library when he ran smack bang into someone.

"Oh, sorry —" but he was cut off short when he realised exactly who he'd run into.

"Harumi."

"Garmadon."

And then she skipped away, her stark white hair swinging behind her. Lloyd found his eyes watch her round the corner, his stomach feeling something it shouldn't be. He shook himself out of the daze and remembered he was supposed to meet at Skylor's locker. There, he discovered the rest of his friends, very disgruntled at his late timing. Cole somehow had gotten his hands on bug spray, Kai was holding three torches and for some reason, Jay had a coil of rope in his hands. Lloyd decided not to ask why. All of their bags had been dumped in a circle around their lockers, almost like a protective semi-ring incase they got cursed inside the room.

Skylor opened her locker and took a torch from Kai, banging the end with her hand until the light stopped flickering uncontrollably. "Where did you get these?"

When the spiky-headed boy didn't respond, Lloyd knew better. Whenever Kai got something shifty it was because it came from somewhere shifty. Skylor ducked as she crouched inside the locker gracefully, and a second later, she stepped into the darkness.