lloyd

"Junior, are those butkicks? Do they look like buttkicks? Do they feel like buttkicks? No, they don't, because they aren't buttkicks! Drop and give me twenty. Now." Barked Arkade, their fitness trainer, rather sharply.

Lloyd had learnt well enough that 'drop and give me twenty' meant drop and give me twenty excellent push ups with fantabulous form and no grunting. He attempted to do so, at least, and Arkade begrudgingly accepted his push ups. But honestly, how were Lloyd's noodle arms going to help with that? If he really made his arm look buff to blow up his ego in the mirror, yeah, Lloyd had muscles, but normally they were barely there.

He envied Cole who bulked easily and could do most of the fitness effortlessly. The ones that struggled the most were probably him, Jay and Skylor. Nya, maybe a little, since she was still pretty strong from when she used to be on the swim team. Cole, Kai, and Kade had football (but from talking with Cole before everything had happened, Gorski hated football), Astra and Titanium (whose real name he still didn't know yet) had been training for months, Titanium longer, and Zane and Pixal were robots with no regards to endurance.

Groaning, Lloyd got to his feet again and went over to the treadmills, directed to the one next to Astra. Arkade had made her run two extra kilometres for cursing at him (for no reason) when she'd over extended her injured knee. She really needed a better outlet for her anger, since running two k's more would surely worsen her knee. But she'd scowled, rewrapped the sports brace around her knee and got to running.

"Hey Astra," He gasped out after his first few kilometres. She made a grunting sound of agreement without taking out an earbud. "How are you doing?"

"Not well."

"Oh."

He drew in a wheezing breath and regretted it as it made his mouth ten times drier and he didn't have a water bottle with him. Astra got off after she finished, slowing to a walk and then hopping off as she chugged her water. After a whole minute of him giving raspy breaths and the treadmill automatically increasing incline, Lloyd heard someone's footsteps approach from behind.

"You forgot your water bottle."

He twisted around to see Astra drinking from hers, a purple towel around her shoulders and a green bottle stretched towards him. Unfortunately he hadn't mastered the art of looking behind and running on a treadmill simultaneously and it was inevitable that he tripped and face planted onto the track. Astra was at the dash in a flash, turning off the speed and incline.

Massaging the side of his cheek gingerly, Lloyd took the water bottle from Astra and sipped slowly. She'd made a trip to a medical station (there were many set up all around the base for obvious reasons) and returned with paracetamol, a bandaid, rubbing alcohol and a cotton square. He hadn't even noticed the small trickle of blood on his forehead though Astra shuddered and looked away as she handed him the stuff.

Using the cleaner and cotton he wiped and cleaned the area, slapped a plaster on top and swallowed the pain reliever with water (he couldn't do it without water okay, was that a crime?).

"Thanks, Astra." The paracetamol had kicked in and his aches from previous training and this one ebbed into the background. He stood up with a grateful grin, watching his sister nod sharply once.

"No problem, Lloyd."

Lloyd.

She called me Lloyd.

"Um, I meant later, Junior. You have terrible running form by the way, stop staring at the sky like you're worshipping the Dragon. Look forwards, and use your arms so that the socket of your elbow goes to your pocket."

Annnnd it's gone.

"Noted. Thanks anyway, Rea." The nickname felt strange on his tongue and Astra's normal angry resting face flickered for a second, but she nodded again and walked away to the rotation cycle for cardio.

Lloyd rested for a minute more and then cleaned off his treadmill - and Astra's, apparently she'd forgotten (she was incredibly forgetful, Lloyd knew, she'd even left her bow in the boy's dorm once after visiting her friends Kade and Zander) which wasn't surprising. The rest of his fitness morning fell into a repetitive daze since they had a rotation on the cardio exercises, and Lloyd found it easy to zone out but stay relatively focused so he wouldn't hurt himself.

It was something he'd picked up in school when he listened to teachers droning on and on, he'd keep his mind in a doze but aware of key terms or topics. And now, as he started forwards doing sit ups, Lloyd wondered if they'd ever finish their schooling, or if they even needed to

That question was answered when they entered the classroom post-shower and training. They had been doing casual schoolwork ever since the Final Battle which gave their lives some sense of normalcy aside from powers, training, weapons and being wanted criminals. Lloyd huffed in frustration and rubbed out his pencil work for an algebra problem (really, what was the point now they had their lives to really protect and Ninjago's fate before them?) and stuck out his tongue in deep concentration. After jiggling x around a few times, Lloyd smiled in triumph and double checked his answer. Big brain.

They sped through Maths, Science, English and Social Studies, with studies in elemental masters thrown in as well. Magis was the agent that supervised them, and was quite helpful with Science and Maths since Lloyd struggled with those the most. A lot of the squad was restless however, and Lloyd could tell that Astra, Cole and Kai did not value time they would consider wasted on school.

Kai was bored enough to result in spitballs aimed at Astra and Skylor, the former who drew out a dagger after the first round. Astra went as far as throwing it and puncturing a painting of the Sea of Sand, shaving off the top of Kai's hair. Lloyd had to conceal his snigger as Kai wailed and whined, fist bumping Cole under the table when Kai's bag did not contain his hair gel.

'School' broke up for lunch, and Lloyd was the first one out of the door (narrowly beaten by Cole who was strangely agile and did some weird pirouette past Lloyd) towards the cafeteria. Dragon Squad was also trickling in from the showers, having just finished their intense fitness block.

Lloyd grabbed a red plastic tray, the feeling of deja-vu washing over him as the members on rota served the food grudgingly. Once upon a time, he'd been in Ninjago High waiting for his own lunch being served by grumpy lunch ladies, Kai in front of him and Zane behind just like it used to be. The only difference was that in Ninjago High, less of the food was being thrown at him to 'test his reflexes'. Lloyd saw the apple fly at his face and quickly bopped it down to his tray with a flat hand.

Destroyer, who was standing nearby (not sweaty at all from fitness, she and Valley were exempt from following Dragon's schedule since they were just supervisors, Zane had told him) might have raised a judgy eyebrow beneath her mummy-ish bandages.

"That does not look like catching, Junior."

"It's still reflexes," Lloyd countered Cassandra mischievously. The senior agent was unperturbed, the bandages around her mouth lifting slightly.

"Oh, go and eat you rascal."

Clutching his tray and keeping his feet quite balanced and not at all trippy, Lloyd sat down next to Titanium at the very end of the table, Skylor opposite him. The redhead picked at her food half-heartedly, pushing around the spirals of pasta without eating them. Lloyd leant forwards to take a napkin (he may have dribbled chocolate milk next to him) and accidentally brushed by Skylor's hand. Chen jerked back and Lloyd was very aware of the fact that her hands were like ice blocks.

Nevertheless, he had to return to wiping up the chocolate milk mess next to him before Titanium moved and sat on it by mistake. He mopped up the mess, balled the napkins up and then shot a perfect arc over to one of the bins. Kai nodded approvingly and handed Lloyd a Milky Way mini bar from the depths of his bag (Lloyd suspected there was a hair dryer in there as well, amongst all the other bits and bobs).

When lunch passed, sadly, Oni Squad was introduced to an even more rigorous training schedule - set and directed - by his father himself. Lloyd found himself instructed to heat up a teapot with no outside help whatsoever (as in, no shock bracelets, no memory triggers, no advice) alongside Kai. The difference was, Kai was using fire to simply heat his pot up, and it wasn't that hard for him, all he had to do was control his flame and not melt the teapot without over exerting himself.

Although Kai tried to conceal it, it was obvious he was pushing himself hard in training and didn't see past the point of exacting revenge on, well, Harumi. And Lloyd was torn between helping his brother or siding with the girl who had quite unfortunately stolen his heart - and still had it. Family first, he told himself firmly. But what sort of family did he have? A mishmash of his father who had been a bare presence, a mother who was always away at work and a pair of siblings who had their eye set on getting even with Harumi.

It was awful.

Lloyd breathed in long and slow, staring at the tea pot with a mind full of cotton - how was he supposed to do it? Energy, his father had casually mentioned earlier, was in everything.

"It's green," he'd said, very unhelpfully. "Energy is everything, Lloyd. Your power is simply, say, a focus, on a gun. It focuses the energy into a certain type that you want to use. You change out the types of energy with every different gun you use, but if you fail to focus it properly, it will backfire. Concentration is key."

Of course his father had to relate it to weaponry. Lloyd could not imagine himself holding a gun - his sabre, yes, but not a gun. It felt brutish, and Lloyd was taken with the graceful slashing dance of the avarian sabre. Sighing, he returned to his fruitless efforts with the teapot. It was ceramic, oddly, and had watercolour flowers like lillies and poppies bobbing up and down around the body. The lid was edged with decorative gold and that was the fanciest thing about the pot.

Lloyd was not, however, taken with the fact that he had to apply science of all things to his element. Energy came in many different forms, and the one he was supposed to 'focus' with was thermal energy. How was he supposed to do that when he couldn't even get raw energy to stabilise for more than ten seconds? And then, possibly the smartest idea of his life (it was one of those spurts of brilliance Lloyd got) came to Lloyd.

He'd been imagining energy as just - energy, hadn't he? Not anything else, he'd just seen it as his father said, green. Rushing to a desk in the ET hall, Lloyd dug around the drawers for a pen and a piece of paper, both of which he found alongside a curling iron. His hand took control of his inspiration, and before he knew it, the page was covered in delicate whorls of black pen all relating to his element.

There was thermal, represented in the curling stretches of flame that reached towards radiance, rays of black sun that stretched down to kinetic energy, a series of cogs, shaded to detail. Then sound, electric and some others he didn't quite understand at the moment, but something inside him had put the pieces together.

With the pot in his hands, Lloyd imagined himself, not holding the weapon as his father's analogy had told, but a paintbrush he'd assigned to thermal. The blank canvas before him stood ready for pen and pencil to sound and electric. Instead of trying to force raw energy through that little focus, Lloyd held firmly onto the thought of heat - of sunny days, of cold winters with the kettle boiling, getting sunburnt in the summer and guided those sure thoughts through. His drawn symbol of thermal blazed over the rest bravely as he poured what felt like all of soul into it.

It was as if there was a machine, a generator inside him that had roared to life and Lloyd opened his eyes to absolute green encasing the kettle. His concentration wavered, and instead of the pot growing colder, the heat returned in a flood and Lloyd dropped the poor tea pot and muttered a soft swear as it shattered into shards of broken art. Someone had made that, and he'd accidentally destroyed it.

"What happened?" Kai, Cole, and Kade were around Lloyd in an instant, all assuming he'd cut himself on the broken shards.

"Are you bleeding?" Kade already had a sphere of Healing forming in his hands and Cole and Kai were fighting over damage control, settling on brushing the pieces aside.

"I'm fine," Lloyd smiled, showing off his unharmed hands. "I just figured out how to do something I've been struggling with."

Kai made the connection quicker than Kade and Cole since he knew the exercise, and guffawed before pulling Lloyd into a brotherly headlock.

"I knew you could do it! Nice one, Lloyd!"

"He bet me five bucks that you wouldn't be able to until the end of the week," Titanium called out, and Kai gave Lloyd a sheepish look. "Hand it over, Forge."

Instead of money, Kai handed Titanium a fireball which the elemental deflected with his 'wing shields'. Unfortunately it slammed right where Astra was working and a very elemental fight of chaos followed.

o o o

Gen wasn't Lloyd's favourite thing to do. It involved the sneakier side of their task, something people like Astra, Skylor and Kade were better at. He preferred to be out in the open so he could see everything that was going on clearly. Lloyd imagined Jay would be having a field day because most of this work constituted ninja sort of stuff.

"Shadows, Junior, shadows," chatisted Thorn with an exasperated sigh. "Arete, your cloak is twisted and you can see your—gods, why did we ever let kids join?"

"Hopping on the Joker train, Thorn?" Astra grinned, her smile a slash of light from the corner she'd been hiding in.

"And I thought you loved us," Lloyd agreed playfully. Thorn looked like they wanted to tear their hair out but reconsidered and the lesson moved on.

Oni Squad had a very well deserved break (at least in Lloyd's opinion) after Gen, before they had their last exercise in the Simulator. He took the chance to quiet his grumbling stomach with a chocolate muffin from the cake tier in the communal kitchen. Astra and Pixal had made them a few days ago and they weren't stale yet luckily. The muffin was studded with chocolate chips - gooey again, now that he'd zapped it in the microwave.

"Junior! We're going to the Sim now." Astra yelled from the corridor outside.

"Coming!" Lloyd hollered back, the muffin sadly crumbling from his mouth.

Lloyd was still getting used to the uncomfortable shock the SimPiece gave whenever they were swirled into a new world. It was his second experience in the Sim and it was not getting any more comfortable. His mind was in internal battle because although his surroundings looked very real, he knew that it was not. Something Valley had said to them, that you really had to believe, did little to help.

He'd rather fight reality than be bamboozled that he could get scratched and hit in the Sim and come out unscathed but achy. Yet he couldn't argue that the Sim was going to be one of the most useful tools they'd have in order to combat Wu's forces.

The most common exercise they ran through that day was simply fighting against the Emperor's Legion - Wu's city army, gathered of his loyal followers, a mix of volunteers, army, police and thugs. They would be their biggest challenge as they'd been training in the same weapons as them (if his father's sources were correct) and were plentiful in number.

"Is a rooftop chase really the best way to train?" Lloyd gasped, quite out of breath. Astra laughed and ducked underneath a beam, rolling forwards in a somersault that she used to bound over a sheer gap between buildings. Cole, who had been behind Lloyd, jumped over easily, the tiles shaking underfoot. Then came Titanium, Kai (rather weakly, he almost fell, but Rema hauled him up grudgingly) and Skylor.

He walked back a few paces and then ran full-pelt towards the edge, pushing off hard with his right foot. Lloyd sucked in a garbled shriek as he felt that foot slip on the edge of the clay-tiled roof. The momentum carried him over to the over roof but not fully, he was much aware of that as his stomach slammed into the corner of the slanted tiling, his chest slumped over the top and his legs dangling over the edge.

Utterly winded, Lloyd lay there and gasped for air, his face smeared with pinkish tile dust. Cole and Skylor helped him stand up and he thanked them with a grateful smile as he patted down his sore ribs for any broken bones. With no found, just a very sore rib cage, Lloyd went to run forwards to the next rooftop, determined, and slightly ashamed. He wouldn't make that mistake again.

"Kade, you can do it, c'mon!" Cole yelled in encouragement.

The Master of Healing peered down the gap on the other roof, containing a shudder as he backed away. Lloyd narrowed his eyes. This was the guy his sister had nearly died protecting - and whether Astra accepted Lloyd or not, he was wary of this Kade guy. He seemed nice, but a lot of the guys at Ninjago High also seemed nice but were jerks.

Lloyd remembered Kade, like most of Ninjago High, as that kid who still hadn't grown up from middle school. He had been tubby with wiry blonde hair and still had baby fat until one day he showed up at school and he'd shot up like a beanpole. He suddenly had lean muscles and his fair was floppy in that way girls liked. But despite all that and the baby fat that he hadn't quite lost, people just remembered him as that middle school kid.

Kade shook his head, his owl like eyes - a green darker than Lloyd's, shot with warm yellow like Rema's - widening in fear.

Astra hopped over the gap easily to Kade's side. "Hey, what's wrong? You aren't scared of heights, are you?"

Kade shook his head again.

Lloyd saw Kade's left hand tighten its grip around his right arm, his nails digging into the flexible fabric of his uniform, but Lloyd still wasn't sure what was wrong. Astra seemed to realise something, standing on her toes to whisper something into Kade's ear. His head tipped her way and he nodded slowly, muttering something back. Astra smiled briefly, her mask shutting down again as she jumped back over to Lloyd's side.

Kade glanced up to meet Lloyd's eyes, swallowing nervously.

Lloyd looked this kid in the eyes as if he could stare into his soul and see his intentions, and then slowly nodded.

With a final calming breath, Kade Gorski launched into a run and jumped.

—

A/N: i am me. I'm back baby i just wrote a book in like a month and a half feeling good, how have yall been? Im about to strangle my maths and science teacher. Even though Iva knows I'm a total scientist, I'm afraid I'm not the best at the subject and would like to strangle the teacher who assigns a shite ton of work.

This chapter's song is 'Internet Ruined Me' by Wilbur Soot

This chapter's Q is: what are your predictions for season 14?

My A: cole dying. Im sorry. I said it. But I really think he might die as much as I dont want him to :(. Or jay dies. Someone dies.

-dommie out