Hikari clung tightly to Lloyd's hand, being careful to stick much closer to Lloyd than most girls her age would. Most seven-year-old girls would think that boys were gross or icky and make sure to keep away from the boys as far as possible, but not Hikari.
No, she was clinging to his hand and sticking so close to him that their sides were bumping into each other a little. The reason was because she was so absolutely tiny that without the one-head taller boy next to her, she'd get lost or trampled by the surrounding crowd of people in Jamanakai Village very easily.
Hikari could see several people glancing at her. Understandably; even without Lloyd she got quite a few looks. Hikari had been compared to a porcelain doll before, with pale skin and shiny black hair and looking thin and fragile, especially for a seven year old. Her eyes were big and a lovely shade of gray- some people had described it as silvery. She rather liked looking at herself sometimes. It was interesting to peek into a mirror and see how she'd changed from only a few months ago- her hair was longer, her skin no longer looked like a sheet of paper, her eyes had lost that slightly glassy look... she looked healthy.
Now if only she wasn't so short...
Suddenly, Hikari realized that Lloyd's hand, which had been cradled in hers for the past twenty minutes, was suddenly gone. She looked around in confusion, actually turning around in a little circle on the spot to search for him. "Lloyd?" she called out, more confused than afraid. He was only a seven year old boy, he couldn't have gone that far...
Screams and yells of fright started ringing out, and adults began to run in the other direction. One woman actually ran straight into Hikari, knocking the much-smaller girl to the floor with a yelp of surprise. "Ah!" she squeaked out, cold from the cobblestoned streets seeping through her sweater from where she was now lying on the ground. Now more and more people were running away from something, meaning that they were running towards Hikari, meaning-
Oh.
Hikari let out a terrified squeak as a storm of feet descended upon her, trampling and stomping and storming in an effort to get past her. She hastily curled up into a tight ball to avoid getting stomped on, but a flurry of shoes still battered into her sides, knocking her little ball around in a huge mess-
"Whoa, whoa!" Someone grabbed her wrist and towed her out of the crowd, cold still seeping through Hikari's clothing but no longer quite as acute as when she'd been getting knocked around. She looked up to see a young man with brown hair that stuck up in spikes all over the place, the telltale gleam of hair gel indicating that it wasn't a natural hairstyle. His amber eyes were slightly wide, and a scar ran through his eyes and through one of his eyebrows, giving him a 'tough-guy' sort of look.
Hikari's big, gray eyes blinked. He looked... familiar somehow?
"Are you okay, kid?" the young man asked, looking her up and down with a slightly alarmed expression.
Before Hikari could even think of an answer, three more young men ran up behind him. One had unnaturally pale skin and hair, his icy blue eyes looking like tiny ice chips that had been placed in his face; another one had a shock of ginger-brown hair and a scar through his other eyebrow (comparing it to the amber-eyed man in front of her) and electric-blue eyes that gave him a permanently surprised look, and the last one had slightly wavy black hair, very bushy black eyebrows, and a face that seemed to be set in a permanent scowl.
"Kai!" the one with the ginger hair exclaimed, looking a little annoyed, "you can't just run- oh, who's this?" His eyes moved from the red guy- the amber-eyed man was wearing clothing that looked a bit like red footie pajamas, except looking considerably deadlier with all the weapons strapped to it- to Hikari. His expression changed from irritated to curious.
Hikari gave a little wave as Kai looked up from Hikari to look at the other three. Now that Hikari was paying more attention, the one with icy blue eyes was wearing a similar outfit to Kai's, except it was snow-white, the one with bushy eyebrows wore black, and the one with ginger hair wore a deep blue. With the similar outfits, they looked like a team...
... were they like those magical girls in Sailor Moon or something?
"She was caught in the crowd and getting trampled," Kai answered the blue guy's question. "I couldn't just leave her to get stomped on, Jay."
Hikari almost giggled at the name. With the blue guy's- Jay's- blue outfit, the first thing that came to mind when she looked at him and heard his name was blue jay. Like the bird.
"Oh. I guess that's a good reason." Jay leaned down and waggled his fingers at Hikari cheerfully, giving her a friendly grin. "Hey, kiddo. What's your name?"
And okay, Hikari had definitely heard the 'don't talk to strangers' philosophy before, but she'd talked to Lloyd way back when, and look how that had turned out. Besides, the red guy had saved her from getting trampled on, and these three appeared to be friends with the red guy- maybe even in a team. It was only fair.
"I'm Hikari," she said cheerfully.
The guy in white tilted his head immediately. "'Hikari'. That means... 'light', in Japanese, does it not?" he asked her, in a voice that was surprisingly pleasant and warm despite his icy appearance. He was therefore rewarded with a nod from Hikari.
The guy in black glanced over at the guy in white, raising one eyebrow with a both curious and amused look. "Why do you know that, Zane?" he asked, more curiously than anything else.
'Zane', apparently, simply shrugged. "I... don't know. I just do."
The man in black leaned down a bit, getting down on a more eye-level, uh, level with Hikari. Hikari just blinked at him. Now that she was up close with him, she could see that his eyes weren't black, like she'd initially thought- they were a very dark, chocolatey brown. "Hi. I'm Cole. Where are your parents, kid?" he asked- not rudely, but not exactly kindly, either.
"I'm not here with my parents. I'm here with my friend." And it was speaking those words that reminded Hikari exactly why she'd been caught in the middle of the crowd in the first place. "I don't know where he went, though..."
The four men exchanged looks with one another, to Hikari's slight confusion. "I guess we're going to have to watch her until we can find her friend- it's dangerous for a little kid to be alone with Lord Garmadon on the loose."
Hikari blinked.
That was the first she'd heard of that... and she wasn't sure if the little kid was referring to her size, or her age. If it was the second option, she wasn't that young! She was seven years old! That was so much older than being a six year old.
"Have you seen my friend?" she decided to ask. Worst thing they could do was say that they hadn't seen him.
Or kidnap her, but they didn't seem like that sort of people, so she figured she was okay.
"He has pale blonde hair," Hikari persisted when she saw they were paying attention now, "- although I guess you can't see that right now since he's got his hood up, and he's got green eyes, and he's seven years old like me-" If Hikari hadn't been so anxious to find Lloyd, she would've been appalled at her own terrible grammar, but she was more worried about finding him than anything else right now, "and he's wearing a black hoodie, and his name is-"
"It is I! Lloyd Garmadon!" It was as if she'd conjured him somehow by saying his name.
"Oh, that's him!" Hikari immediately turned around and started running for his voice, not noticing the startled expression on Kai's face.
"Hey, kid, get back here!"
Hikari ran towards the town center- which had a fountain- to find Lloyd standing up on the fountain and waving his can of snakes trick he usually carried around with him. "Lloyd!" she called out.
Lloyd looked down from where he was on the fountain, and immediately his mischievous grin was replaced with a relieved one, green eyes with the red coloring in the center lighting up with relief and happiness. "Hikari! There you are, I thought I'd lost you! Where did you go? I started moving off and you weren't with me."
Hikari returned the relieved smile. "I didn't realize you'd started moving off. You should've told me!" and she pouted a little at him, crossing her arms.
Angry mutters started filling the air, and Hikari blinked and looked around to see the adults emerging from their houses, scowling at Lloyd for some reason. She blinked, before looking up at Lloyd blankly. "Why are they angry?" she whispered up to him, keeping her voice low.
Lloyd paused to think about this for a second, green eyes growing glassy as he quickly considered this thought. "I don't know," he whispered back, before raising his voice again, the mischievous tone returning to his voice. "Give me all your candy, or I'll release the Serpentine on you!" he shouted, raising his 'can of snakes' prank and waving it around.
In response, the villagers started throwing vegetables at him.
Hikari had to disguise her uncontrollable giggling as light coughing.
A moment later, she was distracted and managed to stop giggling as the four taller guys who'd helped her earlier elbowed their way through the crowd to reach Lloyd. Kai picked Lloyd up with seemingly no trouble and started walking away again, Cole saying to the crowd, "Uh, nothing to see here, folks!"
Hikari had to give chase and run after them to keep up with Lloyd, who was flailing and squirming in Kai's grip. "What do you think we should do with him? Spank him?" Kai asked nonchalantly.
Zane frowned at Kai. Or, at least, from what Hikari could see of his icy blue eyes, he did. "Kai, that was a rather immature suggestion and we are not spanking a small child, regardless of his behavior," he scolded, gently. Though Hikari didn't know why he called Lloyd a 'small child'. Lloyd was a good half-head or maybe even a full head taller than she was, and he was seven too. They were both way more mature than six-year-olds!
"Whose side are you on, Zane? His or ours?" Jay joked. Hikari could practically hear the smile in his voice, even though his face was covered by the mask and all Hikari could see where those electric-blue eyes.
"I am merely stating my opinion, Jay," Zane replied firmly, apparently having not heard the joking tone in Jay's voice.
"Yeah, well, he can't just go terrorizing people and make them think that Lord Garmadon's back. Besides, it's just a kid, it won't hurt if we do something just this once— enough to let him get the point," Cole said, shrugging nonchalantly.
"We could give him a wedgie," Kai mused. "How about that for an idea, Cole?"
Thankfully, they finally came to a halt, and Hikari was able to run up to Kai and grab ahold of the arm that was keeping Lloyd in the air. "Hey! Put him down please!" she puffed out, pulling as hard as she could on Kai's arm. Unsurprisingly, she didn't even budge it half an inch.
Lloyd blinked at Hikari, all of the ninja turning to see Hikari doing her best to pull Lloyd back to the ground and not doing a very good job of it. Although she was keeping her grip on Kai's arm, even as he slowly lifted it even more and pulled the little girl above the ground, her toes dangling several inches above the ground.
She really was tiny.
"Why are you friends with this kid?" Jay asked, pulling his hood off and giving Hikari a rather odd smile— actually, it might've been a bit of a smirk— as he tilted his head at her, "he's the evil son of Lord Garmadon for the First Spinjitzu Master's sake!"
Hikari had to pause and process the weird statement he'd just made (who was the First Spinjitzu Master?) before shaking it off and releasing Kai's arm, dropping her back to the ground as she thought about it. Her silvery eyes clouded over as she considered the comment Jay had just made, before they cleared up as her thoughts coalesced into a proper explanation.
"Because... because when I first met him, I'd been alone for a long time. My mommy and daddy..." Hikari paused. She wasn't exactly sure what had happened— just that she'd woken up in the basement without her parents and they hadn't come back to get her for some reason. ""Well, they weren't there for some reason. But then I left the house, and he was the first person I met, and he let me follow him. And he took care of me, and he didn't let me get lost. He was like... he was like the nightlight in my room. Whenever I felt sad or lonely, he would always be here. So, where he goes, I will follow. Even if he joins the dark side," Hikari said simply, looking at Lloyd, who was staring at her as if she'd sprouted a second head. "Because when I look at him, I don't see the darkness. I see the light."
Jay's smirk had faded and he was now sniffling a bit, surreptitiously trying to hide the fact he was touched. Cole's expression, rock-hard and a little stern, had softened a bit, and it looked as though he were hiding a smile. Zane was smiling openly, not even bothering to try to hide it. Kai's face was mostly hidden by his mask, but Hikari could've sworn she could see a smile in his eyes even as he started speaking again.
"Well... that might be the case, but we still have to punish him." And before Hikari could do anything, he was hanging Lloyd up on a nearby signpost, although the sign wasn't too high up and Hikari could just tug him back down. Which was nice of him because she was absolutely petrified of heights.
The ninja all proceeded to walk away, while Hikari ran over to Lloyd and hopped up and down, trying to unhook his pants (yeah, that's what they'd hung him up by) with limited success. After three mistimed grabs during her jump and one instance of tripping backwards and landing in a huge snowbank, Hikari managed to grab ahold of the area they'd hung him up by, although now she was basically hanging a foot or two off the ground and about to fall off.
With a few good tugs, his pants finally came loose, and the two of them tumbled off into the snowbank Hikari had fallen in earlier, sending up a little fountain of snow as they both yelped in surprise.
A moment later, Hikari popped her head out of the snow, Lloyd following suit and brushing snow out of his hood. Hikari had a good amount of snow in her hair, and was working on just dashing it out as she looked over at Lloyd— before giggling, because Lloyd had snow on his nose. "You look funny," she told him, reaching over and brushing it off his face. A blush came over his face, although because of the way the hoodie caused shadows over his face she couldn't see it.
"Thanks, Hikari," he told her, digging himself out of the snowbank and floundering through the waves of snow as she chirped back a cheerful "no problem". He had to wonder how there was a snowbank this big right here. When he finally unearthed himself, he reached down and pulled Hikari out as well, once again wondering at how light she was. She ate more than she'd used to nowadays, but still. She was a lightweight.
"Thanks, Lloyd," she parroted back to him politely, taking ahold of his hand again. He gave her a little smile, before checking over his shoulder and starting to make his way towards the mountains. He had the feeling he wasn't going to be welcome in the village after that fiasco, and while he didn't particularly care about getting chased out of town he'd rather not have Hikari go through the same thing just because she was with him.
Kai finally allowed himself to grin as he took off his hood, allowing his spiky hair to spring back to normal, walking back to the dragons. Even though she and Lloyd seemed to be good friends, it was kind of obvious that Hikari kind of loved Lloyd a bit, although she didn't seem aware of it herself. It also might've only just been platonic— it was kind of hard to tell.
Since he wasn't paying attention, as he moved to climb onto Flame, his foot bumped into something and knocked it off of the dragon. Blinking himself out of his thoughts, he looked down to see a scroll shake out of the leather satchel that he'd just knocked to the ground. His eyebrow went up, the scar on his face stretching a little bit along with his face. "I didn't pack this," he mumbled, sounding slightly confused.
Cole looked at what Kai was picking up off the ground, blinking in surprise himself. "Oh, that's Sensei's bag— you must've taken it in the confusion earlier." Kai grinned absentmindedly as he opened the scroll, vaguely allowing the chaos of the morning to come back to him. Running back and forth, unable to grab the reins, Jay trying to jump right onto Wisp but jumping over and faceplanting, and pizza flying off to the side.
Looking back at the scroll, a frown came over his face at the sight of some pictures and a lot of weird written gobbledygook. It could've been Sanskrit and he wouldn't have understood it. "What are all these weird letters?"
Zane came to have a look as well, shaking his head as he took the scroll from Kai gently. "Those are not 'weird letters'— this was the writing of our ancestors," he said thoughtfully.
Kai raised both of his eyebrows this time, amber eyes looking at Zane. "Can you read it?" he asked, slightly expectantly. Zane might be a little weird, but whenever it came to this type of thing, he was definitely the expert.
"I think so..." Zane rubbed his chin, before tapping the paper. "This symbol is 'prophecy'."
Jay cocked his head to the side slightly, looking slightly bewildered. "Uhh... prophecy?"
Kai rolled his eyes. Seriously, sometimes Jay was too much like a kid. He was willing to bet that even Hikari knew what it meant, and she looked like she was hardly six. "It means something that tells the future, bonehead," he shot back.
Jay rubbed the back of his neck with a sheepish chuckle. "Oh, um, yeah! I... knew that," he lied.
Zane squinted at the paper, slowly reading it aloud. "Two ninjas... will rise above the others... and become the green and purple ninja. These ninja are to defeat the Dark Lord..."
"That must be Garmadon!" Cole interrupted.
"... and bring peace to Ninjago. But the purple ninja... is at a bigger risk of being corrupted... because..." Zane frowned, leaning back a bit and blinking uncertainly at the paper, pausing in his interpreting of the scroll. "And if the purple ninja is corrupted... they will bring... Ninjago's demise."
Jay shot Zane a slight scowl. "Zane, I think you missed something. Like, oh, I don't know, WHY IS THE PURPLE NINJA AT A BIGGER RISK OF BEING CORRUPTED!?" His voice rose into a shriek at the end, making both Kai and Cole flinch away a little in surprise. His voice could get really loud.
Zane scratched his head, frowning at the page. "I... do not know. The paper is smudged and the symbols are harder to read. I... think I see the symbol for darkness, but that could easily be the symbol for death as well."
The four ninja all looked at each other, the page resting in Zane's hands. "Are you guys thinking what I'm thinking?" Cole asked, after a moment of pause.
"Uh, you mean how awesome I'm going to look in green?" Jay retaliated with a smug grin.
As the four ninja began to banter competitively but still in a friendly way, preparing to get back on their dragons to fly back to the monastery, they were blissfully unaware of the evil that was about to be released on Ninjago.
A/N: Well, that's a good place to stop for now!
So, if you've been following me for a long-enough time, you will probably have noticed that I wrote a fanfiction called A Pure Heart. I never got past the third season, and I've been thinking and rereading it, and my reaction was:
"Oh gosh this is horrible"
So, I've decided to use my newfound writing skills to rewrite the story! I'll be writing every single season in the Ninjago series from my OC Hikari's point of view, and don't worry, she's not a Mary Sue, she's not going to replace Lloyd or anything. If you've read A Pure Heart, you know the basics of what are going to happen, but you should read it anyway because... well, I might just shake things up. (Winks)
Chapters will be at least 3000 words, and never too long. Most chapters will be from Hikari's POV. Please review/comment and feel free to ask questions! I'll do my best to answer the questions in the review replies!
also check out my other fanfictions if you want they're not too good though haha
Welp, that's all for this time! See ya, so long, and g'bye!
x.X. A.L. X.x