Julia

The day the framed photo in Julia's hands was taken on one of the happiest days of her life.

It was the day her younger son was born. The photo showed herself and her three boys: Cliff, Morro and the baby in the hospital. When Morro first saw his new brother, he was convinced (by Cliff, because of course he'd do something like that) that Jay was a shaved monkey.

It was all fun and games until Morro woke them up a few nights later, asking when they were going to give the monkey to the zoo, because he was annoyed with the screaming.

When Cliff snickered at that, Julia kneed him in the stomach and explained to her son that his father had made a joke when he said that the baby was a monkey.

Morro still wanted to give the baby to the zoo, however.

But the boy quickly warmed up to the idea of having a brother once the baby started moving around and crawling.

Then, when the baby was about a year old, there was an attack on the Gordon household and Cliff ordered Morro to take his brother and run.

She believed them both to be dead, but then she found some footage of the ninjas, and one of them had powers just like her own.

She contacted said ninja, and he discovered, from the worst possible source, that he was adopted.

Julia gave a sharp scream when the intercom for her room went off with a beep, snapping herself out of her thoughts.

"Mrs Libber? There's a pair of ninja and a Mr Borg here to see you. Should I send them up, or just make them leave?"

Julia pressed the button next to the intercom. "Who are the ninjas?"

"Mrs Libber, you have…"

Julia pressed the button again.

"Mrs Libber…"

And again.

"HOLD THE DAMN BUTTON DOWN!"

Julia held the button down as she was asked. "There's no need for that kind of language, young man. Who are the ninjas?"

"Sorry ma'am. They are Nya Smith and Lloyd Garmadon, and they're here with Mr Cyrus Borg of Borg Industries. Should I send them home, or may I send them up?"

Julia pushed the button for the intercom down again. "You may send them up, please," Julia told the man at the front desk.

When she looked down, she realised that she had dropped the photo.

Either her guests were very fast, or she was being very slow picking the photo up, but either way, they came in to see her lying on her stomach on the bed, picking up shards of glass and doing her best to spare the picture frame from more destruction, her face red from crying.

Morro made it for her with Cliff's help while she was still in the hospital after the baby was born, and she didn't want to ruin it any more than she already did by dropping it again.

"Um…" the boy hummed, "What happened?"

"I dropped my photo," Julia said with a sigh. "Be careful, okay? There's glass everywhere."

The girl got down to help Julia pick up the shards of glass and yanked the boy down to help. Julia couldn't help but notice that he had a freshly shaved head.

Wasn't Lloyd supposed to be the one with the long, flowing blond locks?

"What the hell happened to your hair?" Julia found herself asking. She immediately put her hands over her mouth to stop herself from cursing in front of the two teenagers again, and asking another potentially disastrous question. For all she knew, he could've gotten sick or something and his hair all fell out.

"He got a bad haircut and Cole decided that it would be better for him to just be bald instead," the girl told Julia. "We brought him a hat on the way here, but he doesn't want to wear it."

Julia tried to remember which one was Cole.

"Oh, right, the earth guy." Julia sat up. "So, you want to take this elsewhere?"

Julia put her new sweater on over her head. When nobody answered, Julia continued. "There's glass everywhere, so I'm just going to take my picture, and my frame, and leave so room service can clean this up. When I just came back, my son took me to this café, and they have the best coffee in all of Ninjago."

Cyrus looked up at her. "Are you sure he's really your son and not some…"

Julia held up her hand, instantly shutting the man up. "I have some pretty solid proof, kid. He demanded that we take every test known to mankind, and then some more, just to make sure that neither one of us are trying to trick the other." She handed the photo to Nya so the kids and Cyrus so they could see what it was. "That's me and the boys. The baby's just a day old there…" Her voice had gotten soft as she talked about the baby.

"That's Morro," Nya whispered. She looked up and looked Julia in the eyes. "I'm afraid that he's pretty dead, Mrs Libber."

Julia shook her head. "No, I'm talking about the baby. He's the one who took me out for coffee."

"That's Fritz Donegan!" Lloyd gasped. "I can't believe it!"

"Did Morro inherit his powers from you, or your husband?" Nya asked. "I'm sorry if I'm butting in on your personal life, but I'm just curious."

"Actually, it's a little bit of both," Julia told the girl as she put her shoes on, "You see, some elements are compatible, and some are not. If they're compatible, then it's highly possible for their kids to inherit both elements. If they're not, then their kids will only inherit one."

Cyrus froze up. "So Elemental Powers are hereditary. I didn't know that. I thought it just happened at random."

Nya made a motion as if she was about to say something, when her phone beeped.

She pulled it out and gave a surprised squeak once she read the text message. "What?!"

The phone beeped again, intensifying Nya's shocked expression, but it was the next beep that caused her to drop her phone.

Julia was curious, okay?

That was why she looked.

The first text was a picture of a walaber licking another walaber, titled "us".

In the next one, the sender apologized and said that they meant to send it to Nya's mother.

The final one clarified that there was a mistake and that they meant to say "brother".

Then the phone started singing "Let it Go" while the image of the robot she saw on TV with her baby flashed on the screen.

Nya just stared at the phone with wide, horror-filled eyes. Lloyd looked over her shoulder as if the phone was some kind of monster or something and he was in a horror movie. Apparently he had seen the texts as well.

Lloyd's phone started singing "This girl is on fire," in his pocket as Nya's phone continued ringing.

The four of them stood there and stared at Nya's phone for ten minutes, until Julia finally had enough and answered it for the poor girl. If she had to listen to Elsa sing another "Let it Go," she was going to scream.

Which was, much to the obvious shock of her guests, was how she answered the phone.

The caller's phone was dropped, judging by the noises in the background, then it was picked up. Julia handed the phone to Nya, who was giggling a little, and soon found out that she accidently put the phone on speaker.

"Nya, I am sorry for startling you with that photograph," the person on the other end said with a robotic voice. "I truly meant to send them to your brother."

"Zane!" another person scolded. "Can't you just make something up?"

"Just so you know, I've got the phone on speaker and Lloyd, Mr Borg and Morro's mom are all here with me, so I have three witnesses."

"I thought Lloyd was with Cole," the first person whispered. "What happened?"

"Lloyd shaved his head, so Cole grounded him and went to Ronin's to check something out and just now, I got the weirdest text from Zane that was apparently meant for you." Nya folded her arms. "What the hell…"

Everybody else in the room gasped.

"… are the two of you doing?"

"Nya, watch your language," the second person scolded. "And anyway, we're just doing laundry."

Nya froze up. "Laundry. Like you two were discussing this morning?"

"No, we are actually doing laundry," the first person replied. "And how did you even know about that? Were you eavesdropping?"

"They got into a fight about something," a third voice added. "Something about a headboard. Then they made up. Then they made out. Then they decided that they should be doing laundry, just in case somebody decides to…"

"She's got the phone on speaker!" the second person hissed. "And they're with your mother!"

"Jay?" Julia asked hopefully. She hadn't seen Jay since he took her to the coffee place and that was about five days ago, and she was getting a little worried about him.

The people on the other end of the line dropped their phone, followed by Nya's phone and Julia's photo. Lloyd looked like he might faint and Cyrus actually did. Or he fell asleep during the conversation.

Somebody picked up the other phone.

"Actually, it's Morro," the person who picked up the phone whispered quietly.

Julia shakily picked up Nya's phone.

She picked up her photo.

Yes, she heard what happened to him.

And yes, she heard how he almost killed everything.

But he was still her son.

She carefully put the photo down next to her before she spoke with a trembling voice. "Hi, sweetheart." She ignored Nya's shocked expression. "How are you?"

"I'm doing okay," Morro told her. "I died a while ago and now I'm a ghost, so bummer, but it's all okay."

"Aw, sweetheart, I know." She clutched the phone in her hand. "It's okay, it's okay. I'm here. I'm here."

She could hear her own heart beating in her chest as she waited for Morro to say something.

"It's all my fault!" Morro blurted out. "He's not moving, and if it wasn't for me, it wouldn't have happened!"

Julia gently squeezed Nya's phone, as if Morro could feel it through the phone. "No, no, honey, it's not your fault. Sometimes bad things just happen."

"Jay was hiding me from some bad ghosts, then my friend tried hiding too, then my friend got in a lizard, then Jay got sick and then I wasn't there when the ghosts came and now he's in a coma or something and we can't wake him up…"

Julia stayed quiet the whole time, listening as her elder son's ghost talked on and on for hours and tried to explain how his brother got hurt.

It reminded her a lot of back when they were still kids and Morro would annoy the baby so much that he'd start crying or blubbering and Morro would try to explain why the baby was crying and blubbering.

"Morro, I'm not mad." She was, but she wasn't going to let her already freaking out firstborn know that, and she had guests, so it was against her best interest to start yelling at him. "Just take a deep breath and listen to…"

The phone on the other end shut down very suddenly.

Julia handed the phone back to Nya.

"Are you kids okay?" Julia asked. Lloyd was sitting in an armchair now, white as a sheet. Nya was resting her face in her hands. Cyrus was breathing, thankfully, but he was still unconscious. "I understand if…"

"I don't believe you," Nya suddenly said, her voice as cold as ice. "Morro came here before he got to Jay and asked you to lie for him. They're not related and they're not brothers. I refuse to believe that Jay would just not tell me something this big."

Lloyd looked up at Nya. "It makes sense, if you think…"

"She's his mother, Lloyd. Of course she'll lie for him."

Julia swallowed her anger at being called a liar, and to her face at that too, and stood up. "So, the offer for coffee still stands. Do you three want to go with me, or do you want to continue insulting me to my face?"

Okay, so she didn't completely swallow her anger at being insulted like that.

Nya got up and started to leave the room, but Julia caused her to freeze at the sound of static crackling at her fingertips.

Jay had the exact same reaction when they finally met in person.

He refused to believe that he and Morro were related. He refused to believe her when she said that she was his birth mom. They had a DNA test done, and then he demanded more proof when the tests came in as positive.

She showed him her lightning, and that's when he just…

Broke down.

She didn't understand why he was like that, when only a year ago, he was perfectly fine with the idea that she was his mother and had the same element as her.

She had no idea what changed in all that time.

Nya still left, and poor, poor bald Lloyd had to run after her, pushing Cyrus ahead of him.

Julia fell back in her bed, and sighed.

Nya was the spitting image of Maya.

Sadly, she had Ray's trust issues.

Julia wondered to herself what happened to her old friends after she left Ninjago.

She received the news that they had gone missing a few years ago, and she never heard any news from them since.

Perhaps that was why Nya refused to listen to her.

As she lay there, alone with her own thoughts, she faded off into a dreamless sleep.

I have decided to continue this fic. I hope I'm not breaking any rules by removing the adoption notice or changing my mind. I was stressed, sleep-deprived, and have exams coming up. Thank you all to the nice reviews saying that they enjoy my fic. I hope this one is up to standard.

Julia knows Maya and Ray have gone missing, but she has no idea that they've been found.

Please review and sorry for scaring ya'll. :)