Chapter 27
Movie Ninjago
Luh-Loyd awoke to a killer headache and a slap to the face. A second later his mouth was forced open and a hot liquid was poured into his mouth and he swallowed it on reflex.
He regretted swallowing immediately afterward as while the pain was still there it was harder to notice as an odd haze filled his mind.
It didn't take a genius to realize Luh-Loyd was in trouble. 'Or, guess I'm just Lloyd right now,' he thought after looking around blearily, and not seeing his counterpart. A few moments of pain later the implications of that settled in. 'Wait, where's Lil'Loyd?!'
Before he could fully process this he was slapped again, and forced to look at the one who did it.
A man dressed like Dracula in a turban was sneering down at him. For some reason, the mere sight of the man was setting off alarm bells in Lloyd's head. Or maybe that was just the ringing in his ears. Did he know this guy? Why was it so hard to think? Why did it hurt so much?
Oh yeah, that means snake guy hit him with a tray and then bashed his head into a wall. That would do it. He probably had a… a… whatever you called it when your head got hit real bad. The fact he couldn't remember the word right now was probably a good sign he really had it.
Oh yeah, Turban Dracula was still talking to him and looked ready to slap him again. He'd better listen so he doesn't.
"-You listening to me?" Turban Dracula demanded with a scowl.
"Uh, yeah," said Lloyd woozily. "Where-" he started to ask, but Turban Dracula cut him off.
"Finally!" he said, throwing his hands into the air in exasperation. "Now, you will answer my questions honestly or else." He then smirked and taunted. "Not that you can lie. The Tea of Truth will compel you to blab whether you like it or not."
"Or… else what?" asked Lloyd, realizing he probably shouldn't ask that as soon as it passed his lips, but he kept talking anyway. "And you really shouldn't have given me the Tea of Truth right now. You don't give it to someone with a…" he trailed off and thought hard through the pain, trying to remember the word for why his head was hurting.
Turban Dracula looked at him like he was stupid. "Do you even realize what situation you're in?" he asked rhetorically.
Slowly to mitigate the pounding in his head Lloyd looked around him, actually taking in where he was for the first time.
He was kneeling on the floor of a fancy-looking office, his wrists and ankles were wrapped in chains made of that same stone that he'd fought ghosts with (the name of it escaped him for now), and he was flanked on both sides by burly men dressed like the thugs he'd fought the other night.
"Heyyyy! You're the jerks who tried to blow up Poisinthia's house," Lloyd blurted out without meaning to, giving a glare at the thugs beside him.
The thugs looked confused at that, and Turban Dracula let out an impatient sound in the back of his throat.
Lloyd got slapped again and his head swam.
"PAY ATTENTION!" snapped Turban Dracula. "You will answer my questions!"
'I'm… not so sure I should,' Lloyd thought to himself but didn't say so to avoid getting slapped a fourth time. The pain in his head was already intense, he didn't want it to be worse.
"Now tell me," said Turban Dracula, pacing in front of Lloyd like a tiger. "How does your power work?"
Lloyd knew there were some things he couldn't tell him (it was hard to think of it right now), but there were parts of it he could answer to satisfy the Tea of Truth, "With love," he said with a woozy grin.
Turban Dracula looked incensed. "You think this is a joke, do you?" he asked.
Lloyd tried to shake his head but stopped when it hurt too much. "No-no really," he said almost drunkenly. "Spiky Kai says I'm a living per-per-personifitiction of the power of friendship," he said, stumbling over the longer words.
"Personification," one of the thugs corrected.
"Yeah, that," Lloyd agreed.
"Don't patronize me!" snapped Turban Dracula. "Your power is to make others stronger. How does it work."
"Power of friendship~," Lloyd said in a singsong voice. "B'cause Green is life, and life is connection and stuff. I do a connection thingy with people and then we're friends."
Turban Dracula looks ready to strangle him, but takes a deep breath and composes himself. "Very well, friendship, love, all that ooey-gooey nonsense," he said with a sneer. "If that is how you empower others, then how is it you-you empower yourself?"
Lloyd stared at him in bewilderment. Maybe it was the concussion talking (That was the word for it, concussion!), but did this weird, probably evil guy in a crazy outfit just ask him if he could empower himself? "I… can't…" Lloyd said slowly.
That was crazy! Sure he could power up other people, but himself? Nah! Couldn't be… Could it? He'd never made himself stronger. He couldn't blast things with elements like his friends. That was so cool, he wished he could do that. He couldn't even use the version of Green Lil'Loyd had. There was no way he could use Green to make himself stronger…
Except, something Morro had once said to him chose that moment to ring through his head despite how foggy so much else was.
"Shrimp, you were able to lift my scrawny butt when you were eight. A normal eight-year-old can't hold up a thirteen-year-old, much less carry them four blocks and up a couple flights of stairs to get home."
Had… had he made himself stronger by believing he could do it? And if he missed that, were there… other things he was missing?
These were not questions he should be asking himself when he had a con-con… oh darn it, he'd had that word a minute ago.
Turban Dracula suddenly bent his head down so he could hear better, and Lloyd realized too late he'd been muttering all that out loud, but from the frustrated look on his face, Turban Dracula hadn't been able to understand anything Lloyd had been saying and was still without answers.
Hearing that Lloyd's word vomit had finished, Turban Dracula stepped back and looked ready to throttle someone as he shouted, "What's wrong with you?!" He then glared at his goons and asked, "You numbskulls didn't get me the wrong tea, did you?"
The goons frantically shook their heads, clearly fearful of Turban Dracula's retaliation if they'd messed up.
But given Lloyd's uncle was an avid tea collector, and he and his cousin had enjoyed sneaking peeks at his magical ones throughout their youth out of curiosity, Lloyd knew exactly what was going on. "I told you before," he said emphatically. "You don't give the Tea of Truth to someone with a con… con…" He shook his head at the word, giving up on saying it and instead said, "Hurt head. Hurt heads and Truth Tea have wonky, Ummm, I think it was side effects? Yeah, that was it." He let out a giggle. "Yeah, it has terrible, terrible side effects."
Turban Dracula frowned even more hearing that, and grabbed Lloyd's chin and forced him to look up at him, no doubt taking in his pupils and seeing the signs of his cccc-that c-word.
"Tsk, trust that lousy snake to give us damaged goods," Turban Dracula scoffed.
At that moment, the constant pain and dizziness in his brain caused Lloyd's stomach to revolt, and it must have shown on his face, because one of the thugs grabbed a terrarium off a nearby bookshelf, pulled the snake living inside out of it, and shoved the glass box under Lloyd's chin just in time to catch the vomit. Doing so emptied most of the Tea of Truth out of his system along with it, though he still felt woozy from it.
Turban Dracula reeled away in distaste. "Urgh, disgusting!" he said. He then turned to his other thug and ordered, "Shove some healing tea down his throat and throw him in the dungeon with the rest of them. He's useless to me like this! We'll try again when he's actually able to answer basic questions. I'll get answers out of him one way or another. And clean up Chelsea's terrarium while you're at it!" he added, scooping up the now homeless snake as it tried to slither away and began stroking it.
Lloyd felt himself being hoisted up by the thug not holding a barf-filled terrarium and begin being dragged out of the office.
"Waaaait!" Lloyd called, making them all pause and look at him. Lloyd weakly lifted his finger to point at Turban Dracula. "Look, I'm guessing, you're a bad guy, but you don't have to be the bad guy," he slurred, hoping to convince the man to be good. "You can turn this all around and-"
"Urgh, spare me," said Turban Dracula with a roll of his eyes. "Get him out of my sight."
With that, Lloyd was hauled away, pouting that he'd failed to give his turn bad guys good speech.
At least until one of the thugs forced more too hot tea down his throat, and the healing mixture sent him to dream-land once again.
His last thoughts before drifting off were to wonder if Lil'Loyd and his friend were okay.
Lil'Loyd paced back and forth in a prison cell. Next to him, SJ sat in a corner curled up in a ball and looking scared and miserable, not that the little Green Ninja blamed him.
He was worried. Pythor had driven the Vengestone laden carriage far out of the city and handed the two of them and a knocked out Luh-Loyd off to some jerks in snake masks and face paint. They'd then been stuffed into a smaller Vengestone box and shoved onto what sounded like a helicopter. After flying for who knows how long, they'd finally landed somewhere, and Lil'Loyd and SJ were thrown into a Vengestone cell while Luh-Loyd was slapped into Vengestone cuffs and dragged away while still unconscious.
Needless to say, Lil'Loyd was really getting sick of Vengestone. The only small mercy they had was Pythor apparently forgot to mention Lil'Loyd had elemental powers, so he was spared being shackled as well, not that he could summon his element in a cell made of the stuff.
What worried him most was Luh-Loyd. The cut on his older counterpart's head had stopped bleeding, but he hadn't woken up the entire trip. And now he was taken away to who knows where in some villain's island lair and not knowing what happened to him was killing Lil'Loyd.
A loud clang caught his attention, and SJ flinched at the sound. Looking towards the source of the noise, Lil'Loyd saw the thugs coming back dragging Luh-Loyd between them.
One of them shoved Lil'Loyd back from the bars so the other could open the cell and toss Luh-Loyd in.
Despite the shove, Lil'Loyd was at his counterpart's side in an instant, shaking his shoulder in hopes he'd wake up. When he didn't, the little Green Ninja wheeled around to face the thugs as they finished relocking the cell. "What's wrong with him?" he demanded.
"Concussion," said one of the thugs dismissively. "Don't cry brat, he's got some healing tea in him, he'll be fine." He then added with a chuckle, "Oh I wish I'd recorded all that, he was so loopy. Some 'hero' he is. Best interrogation I've ever seen."
The other thug scoffed. "Considering we got next to nothing out of him, I wouldn't call it the 'best'," he said.
"Aw, we'll get another chance," said the first thug nonchalantly as they walked away. "Once he's healed up Master Chen will take another shot. And if that doesn't work, we'll get answers one way or another, even if Clouse has to dissect him to do it."
"Man I hate that creepy scientist. Better the kid than me," said the second thug with a shudder as the two passed out of earshot.
It was a good thing neither of them looked back otherwise they would have seen Lil'Loyd glaring after them with his eyes flashing furiously.
He didn't know how long he sat glowering after them, but he was brought back to reality by SJ speaking up. "I didn't know humansss could growl, or that your, what'sss it called, hair? Could do that."
It was only then Lil'Loyd realized he was growling deep in his chest, and his hair was fluffing up as it tried to stand on end.
He quickly reached up to smooth his hair down and tried to quiet the growls. It wouldn't do any of them any good if their captors heard it. Especially with creepy scientists on hand.
He then pawed at Luh-Loyd's hood, and reached inside it for the radio earpiece he knew was there. But when he turned it on and tried to use it to call for help, it remained silent. Looking at it more closely, Lil'Loyd saw it some wires were pulled out. It must have happened when Pythor was manhandling him.
With a sigh, Lil'Loyd pocketed it in hopes that the Ninja, both of this world and his own, could maybe use it to track them, but he wasn't holding out much hope for that.
They were on their own.
Still, inside he was seething. If he'd heard correctly, these jerks just interrogated one of his big brothers while he was concussed, forced a cure down his throat only so that they could interrogate him a second time, and if Luh-Loyd failed to comply (as Lil'Loyd was sure he would, no way he'd ever help the bad guys), they'd have some scientist that scared even the goons here to experiment on him.
That was something Lil'Loyd would not let happen.
Standing up decisively, Lil'Loyd pulled up the ninja hood of his gi and turned to look over at SJ, his expression determined behind the mask.
"We're busting out of here," he said.
A/N Friendship speech denied. Though, to be honest, I highly doubt Chen would have gone for it anyway. Luh-Loyd's having a rough time right now. Needless to say, the Tea of Truth and a concussion should not mix or else this is the result. You get the truth, but the person saying it is too loopy to make sense. Lil'Loyd is NOT happy with this situation at all, and is determined to get them out of it before it gets worse.
Big thanks to Kay Hau for helping with this chapter. She contributed a good bit to it, from Luh-Loyd's lines to the tea having terrible, terrible consequences, to Lil'Loyd's hair puffing up when he's angry and growling. It comes from her oneshot in Greener Gift-Fics where both Lloyd discuss any nonhuman features they've found about themselves.
Next Time: Lil'Loyd's escape plan commences with SJ's help and Luh-Loyd dragged along for the ride, but will they be able to escape Chen's men or be locked back in the cell once again.
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