They say when you die you see a bright, hypnotic white light.
A light that etches itself into your memory, beckons you to follow it with every fiber in your being.
Harumi tries to imagine the light, plots out every detail it must contain in the moments after the fall that cracked her ribs and splintered her breath.
She's great at plotting, she killed the ninja afterall.
The light inches closer into the corners of eyes. She can see it so clearly, feel the warmth enveloping her.
Death will whisk her off to Mom and Dad and her work in Ninjago is finished. She's sure Emperor Garmadon must have finished off Lloyd by now.
Her mind sowers at the thought of the green ninja.
Her enemy.
Her parents' murderer.
Her ex-whatever it was he thought they were.
And suddenly, and she swears it's green, there's a harsh tug where her ankle should be, if dead people had ankles that is. A green, murky darkness that is pulling her away from the comfort of light.
She wonders if she's going to the bad place, Lloyd destroyed the Cursed realm years ago after Mako, or whatever his name was tried to destroy Ninjago.
She admired him for his efforts initially, After all possessing the green ninja? It's brilliant emotional manipulation.
Lloyd might have the power of Oni and Dragon but he's too trusting, too soft on the inside.
And then using that to utterly destroy the ninja emotionally and render them powerless? She doesn't stop hearing about the ninja's hollowed faces and flickering powers from Ultra Violet for weeks.
She finally hears about the ninja's victory as her lady in waiting is bleaching her hair at her "father's" request.
"The blonde roots aren't attractive to your suitors" the older woman tells her, raking the bleach through her hair.
The smell of it is suffocating, and with every harsh yank on the thin strands of her hair she hopes, no prays, that stupid ghost will defeat the ninja.
But moments later Hutchins excitdelty bursts through the door with word that the Ninja have defeated Morro and his army.
The woman envelops Hutchins in a hug and gives one last painful tug at her hair before motioning to Harumi to join the celebration.
She forces a smile on her face for the thousanth time that week, and silently curses at that stupid ghost for his pathetic loss.
There is a banquet that night, her parents have the palace decorated with strands of bright green lights to celebrate the return of their beloved green ninja.
The table is lined with warm noodle dishes, expensive meats and mountains of fruit but Harumi knows not to eat too much, or her "mother" will lecture her for hours to come, before she inevitably forces her to spit it back up.
Perfect princesses have perfect figures, she supposes.
But as she picks at her food she realizes the flaw in Morro's plan, in every other pathetic villain's plan who tried to destroy the green ninja before her.
They all knew the obvious, Lloyd is willing to sacrifice everything for his friends, those stupid five, no-now six ninja.
And vice versa, the team relies too much on one another, but that is an easy weakness to exploit and prey upon.
No what they were missing she concludes, was silence.
They were too showy, so bombastic in their plans and presentation that they laid out every card in their hand before the game had even begun.
She remembers encountering Pythor as a young child in her old village, moments before Samurai X had swooped in before the ninja to save her.
The anacondrai boasted about stealing the fang blades, monologed about Lloyd releasing the serpentine and uniting them without even trying and cackled about awakening the great devourer as if the ninja were powerless to stop him.
She supposes they didn't stop him, but Lord Garmadon did.
And the ninja would stop Pythor again and again. He was only the first in an endless cycle of showmanship among Ninjago's evils.
The overlord knocked down half the city with a spider mech, and announced his plans to half the city giving the ninja ample time to freeze him into oblivion.
Chen stomped around with an army of anacondrai and had announced and left papers laying around with key pieces of his plan, or at least that's what she heard from what some ex-employees of his had stated after joining the new Sons of Garmadon.
And as much as she admired his cunning, Morro had fallen victim to this as well. Summoning an army of ghosts and some demon queen from the Cursed Realm without regard for their obvious weakness in a city surrounded by water.
She won't be so careless. She just needs to keep her cards close to her chest, keep the ninja close to her chest. She ponders if Lloyd would be foolish enough to let a stranger get that close to him, get so close to his precious team.
He will though, she's a helpless princess overall.
She can stay quiet.
She is brought back from her memories as the force beneath her feet pulls her down with a final harsh tug.
She spirals through the deep green and pitch black of the world around her cursing Lloyd's name with every breath left in her spirit.
Lloyd arrives at the morgue faster than he wants to.
He almost wants to yell at Jay and Nya for building such perfect bikes for speeding down the open road, but he wants to end this and the sooner the better.
He parks his bike in front of the building, it stands alone a few miles outside of ninjago city. Thick layers of dust and sand cover it's roof and cobwebs and nestled between the beams of it's entrance.
Lloyd muses that it's only fitting a morgue looks so dead on the outside.
He hesitates at the entrance, his hand ghosting over the doorbell.
He's gonna have to identify her, confirm it's her body and not someone else killed in the wreckage he caused by letting her into his life.
Another smear of blood that stains his hands after every destructive battle he could have prevented.
He wishes Kai were here, his big brother would give him some form of encouragement before making some dumb joke about Harumi's fashion sense already having killed her long before the building did.
He wouldn't have laughed at it, but Kai would anchor him to the ground and help him through it all, taking him out for some emotional support ice cream like he always does when Lloyd is dealing with his mountain of trauma.
Your seventeen, get a grip he snaps at himself. Forcing his thumb to press into the doorbell and let out a pleasant chime.
An attendant of the morgue greets him, the man is so pale he reminds Lloyd of one of the zombies he and Jay had seen in that old horror movie last week.
"Mr. Garmadon I thought you would be the one here to identify her" the man muses.
Lloyd forces an emotionless stare, he doesn't know how to feel but looking disgusted and paranoid probably wouldn't be very "Green Ninja" like.
"Yea- well, it only seemed proper," he says to the morgue attendant. And the man nods in response.
"We need you to identify her, Follow me please" He walks towards a back door, motioning for Lloyd to follow.
The walls begin to close in around him, he can feel the anxiety crushing into him. Panic bubbles in his brain. Out- I need to get out his brain screams and the light bulbs are flickering around him.
Oh FSM now my stupid powers are losing it too. He sees a wooden door in the corner of his eye with a faded sign of "Bathroom" taped on.
"BATHROOM" he shouts and the morgue attendant whips his head around at the green ninjas outburst.
Lloyd quickly composes himself reigning in his panic and the energy threatening to shatter all the lights in the building for just a few seconds longer.
"I-uh need to use the bathroom" he says before speeding to the wooden door at his left.
He slams the door behind him, coughing as the dust of the clearly dirty bathroom rains down on him. "Aw Gross" he mumbles and rakes his hands through his hair to clean it.
The bathroom is strangely cold, and Lloyd briefly wonders why they keep the bathroom AC on and not the lobby's.
He decides to splash some water on his face, and work on those deep breathing techniques Cole showed him for dealing with panic attacks.
The mirror in front of him is cracked and the light of the bathroom is only being given from an old lightbulb in the center of the room, giving him even less of a reflection.
Something creeps it's way up his spine, a force that's cold and empty ghosting across his body and his eyes once again drift to the mirror.
But instead of his own disheveled reflection he sees the familiar green glow of what he knows can only be a ghost, and his heart stops thinking Morro might be back.
But the figure has long almost silver hair flowing down to its back, and it's outfit is tattered with deep gashes and a missing sleeve. He finally meets it's eyes and sees the smeared paint on the figure's face, now a dark green from the transformation.
Harumi stares back at him, eyes widening with his.
And with that surge of overwhelming panic the lightbulb shatters above him.