Sometimes, cynical people said hope was a bad idea. Sometimes they said it was suicide to hold onto your dreams. Sometimes Lloyd wondered if he should listen to people like that, but every now and then something happened that reassured him they were wrong. Like today, for instance. He'd finally managed to pinpoint an open spot in Koko's busy work/minion-reforming schedule. He'd sent tactful reminders so Garmadon wouldn't forget. He'd picked the restaurant, Omakase, the one Garmadon had spoken of nostalgically once—and it had worked! Garmadon had actually showed up. Koko was here too. They were going to have a family dinner, all together, at last.
Everything Lloyd had ever wanted!
He had arrived with Koko. Now she and Garmadon were standing a healthy ten feet apart, sizing each other up. For a second Lloyd thought he saw one of those little manga lightning-bolts of animosity crackle between them.
"Garmadon." After what seemed like a solid five minutes, Koko inclined her head crisply.
"Koko." Garmadon's nod was equally frigid. "How are you."
"Good, thank you. Yourself?"
Oh, I'm good. Good," mumbled Garmadon, his eyes elsewhere. He cut glances at Koko for a moment, ruffling himself for the next salvo. "Been having a good time stealing my generals?"
"Yes, it's time-consuming, but fun," said Koko, a little too off-handedly. "Very rewarding."
Garmadon made a noise like a diesel engine stalling. At this moment Lloyd finally lost nerve and barged in to intervene.
"Oh heyyyy, looks like they have a free table!" he drawled, pointing towards the restaurant. "Dad, you said you liked this place, right?"
"Oh, absolutely!" Garmadon immediately recovered his good spirits. "The guy running this place loves me, great guy! I'll have to have a chat with him for old times' sakes."
He swept into the restaurant without further comment. Lloyd breathed a sigh of relief, while Koko smiled and draped an arm over his shoulders as they set out for the table. It was small for a party of three, but Lloyd didn't mind. Maybe tonight would be perfect after all.
Despite its name, Omakase was not only omakase—you could order from a menu as well. Seeing that Garmadon had charged off behind the counter to talk with the head chef, Lloyd looked nervously around for the waiters, worried that he and Koko would be mistaken for a party of two and they wouldn't get enough menus. He didn't think Garmadon would take too kindly to getting passed over like that.
"How was school, sweetie?" asked Koko.
"Uh, good . . . " said Lloyd distractedly. He didn't realize that Koko was watching him with a very particular smile. He was keeping tabs on a waitress moving about on the other side of the restaurant.
A second later Koko tapped him on the shoulder, and Lloyd realized for the first time that someone was standing right behind him, trying to lean over his shoulder. He swung aside hastily, feeling his face heating up—what kind of ninja let a random civilian sneak up on him like that?!—but the next second he forgot all about his embarrassment. The waiter had slipped a large pink cake with a single birthday candle onto the table.
"Happy birthday, Lloyd Garmadon," he said, smiling, then withdrew. Lloyd stared at the cake, the candle reflecting in his eyes.
"I know your real birthday didn't go so well," said Koko. "So I called ahead. I know it's pretty late, but . . . this was really the first time we could all get together, I thought you would like . . . "
"Mom." Lloyd finally found words. "I love it! Thank you so much."
Koko smiled and squeezed his hand.
Just then there was a stir over by the counter.
"Hey!" called Garmadon. "Catch!"
Lloyd registered that a delicate china teacup was lofting gracefully through the air in their general direction. He grinned despite himself. Garmadon had taught him the basics of how to catch, but Wu had been drilling him on dexterity ever since. He caught the first teacup effortlessly. The next four did end up taking a little effort, but in the end he caught them all safely. Koko applauded as Lloyd beamed, and even Garmadon came over looking rather impressed, if also a little disappointed.
"Not bad, Luh-Lloyd," he said, then regarded the birthday cake. "What's that here for. We having dessert first?"
The cake was put aside for the time being, and they ordered udon and nigiri. The food here was excellent, and for the first few minutes they were all too busy taking the edge off their appetites to talk.
"So, Lloyd," said Koko eventually. "I feel like we get so little time together these days. What have you been doing lately?"
"Ah, kinda the usual," said Lloyd, smiling. "Keeping up with school, trying to hang with the crew. Kinda hard though, they're all still pretty grounded. And, well, lots of training with Uncle Wu."
"Eh?" Garmadon had been shoveling down sushi all this time, but now he suddenly looked up. "You're still training with Wu? What d'you wanna spend your time with that old geezer for?"
"Well, uh—" Lloyd hesitated, wondering how to couch this. "He says I still haven't unlocked my elemental potential fully, so he wants to work on that."
"I guess that's fair," muttered Garmadon, eyeing a distant table as he picked his teeth with a chopstick. "What was your element again? 'Green'? And it did basically nothing? Not surprised the old man is digging for something less disappointing."
"W-well, I—" Lloyd stammered, thrown. From the corner of his eye he saw Koko's jaw tightening, which only threw him further into mute panic.
"Bet it must be burning him up, though," continued Garmadon, grinning. "His prize student is a complete flop. Good for you, Luh-Lloyd. Keep it up."
"Oh, I don't know," Koko cut in smoothly. "I don't know if it burns him up as much as being related to such a disgrace."
Garmadon regarded her with exaggerated forbearance. He had finally registered the fact that she was no longer "into" him, and as such she had fallen to the lowest possible dregs of his contempt.
"You mean Lloyd?" he said, very innocently. "Come now, that's a bit insulting, don't you think? He's only his nephew—"
"You!" snapped Koko. "And I'd watch who you call a disgrace, mister, he's your son."
"That's no fault of my own," said Garmadon, taking another piece of sushi. "He'd have made an excellent warlord and probably had incredible elemental powers, but there's a limit to how much you can do when the other half of his gene pool is dragging him down so hard." He smiled blandly across the table. "To say nothing of upbringing."
Koko lurched to her feet, one hand already drawn back. Garmadon leaned away, looking a bit nervous but overall smug. He knew how hard she could hit, but the sting would be worth it for the knowledge that he'd driven her to the breaking point.
"Please—"
Koko froze at Lloyd's barely-audible plea. Still breathing hard, she looked over at her son. He was huddled back as small as he could get in his chair, his head down, his insides visibly collapsing with misery. This had to be killing him to watch.
Koko gritted her teeth. After a second she shut her eyes, took a long, slow breath, and sat back down.
"Therrrrre we go." Garmadon was purely smug now. "That's more like it."
Koko turned her head away, ignoring him.
"Still hungry, Lloyd?" she said, a little too evenly. "Or do you want to move on to the cake?"
They moved on to the cake. Maybe Omakase wasn't so good in the bakery department; somehow it tasted like sawdust. They ate in silence.
Koko and Garmadon parted in silence as well. Wordlessly Koko paid the bill. Lloyd cowered under the curious eyes of the waiters, who could clearly sense the knife-edge tension still simmering around the small table.
"Well, bye Dad," said Lloyd awkwardly, as they stood on the sidewalk out front.
"So long, Luh-Lloyd," said Garmadon. He cast a jaundiced eye at Koko as he turned away. "Don't believe everything she tells you about me."
Lloyd flinched, while Koko looked away in stony silence. As Garmadon went his way, they went theirs.
They walked along the darkened streets for a few moments, both pulling themselves together.
"I'm sorry, sweetie," said Koko at last. "I wish—"
"No Mom, don't be sorry," said Lloyd. "I'm sorry. I know that was rough on you. I wish I hadn't put you through that."
Koko gave a small, bitter smile as she walked. Her son shouldn't have to apologize for wanting to be with his family.
"I know it was important to you," she said quietly. "Having a family dinner. I . . . "
She couldn't find the words. What could she say? That she wished they could have come together for him? Been a family, or at least pretended to be one, for just one night? Big help. They hadn't. A lot of good wishing did.
"It's okay, Mom," said Lloyd. "I know you tried."
There was a certain finality in his tone that made it clear there would be no more attempts at family dinners. Not out of anger or petty spite; simply out of the resigned understanding that it wasn't going to work.
It could have worked, though. Lots of divorced parents managed to have civil get-togethers for the sake of their children. Just . . . not her and Garmadon. Koko bit her lip. Was it Garmadon's fault things had gotten so out of hand? Or hers? She was tempted to blame herself. She was already parsing through each word, each reaction, reproaching herself for each thing that escalated the situation. She could have had better self-control. She could have worked harder to keep it together. For Lloyd. But, just . . . Garmadon made her so angry. He knew how to instigate.
What had she seen in him, sixteen-plus years ago? Why could she see none of it now? Had Garmadon changed that much? Or had he always been like this, and she had simply been that young, that stupid, that blinded by infatuation? How blind would she have had to be? To take that entitled, dismissive, self-absorbed joke of a man as a charismatic "bad boy"—what had she been thinking? Love ignores logic, of course, but had she given no thought to how this relationship would work long-term?
. . . Why had she first married him, borne him a son, and only then awoken to the fact that she didn't want to raise a child in the ways of evil?
Speaking of Lloyd. What was she to do with Lloyd? Was he as young and blind as she had been? Or was it just different for him? She didn't want to tell him that he couldn't spend time with his father. That was his choice to make. But still . . . a part of her felt sick somehow, sick with worry that her son couldn't see what he was throwing himself into.
She tried to distract herself by chatting with Lloyd, but she knew she wasn't fooling him. When they got home, Lloyd kissed her cheek goodnight, asked if she was sure she'd be okay, and went to bed. Tomorrow was a school day.
Tomorrow was a work day. Koko stood barefoot in the unlit kitchen, knowing that she would never be able to sleep like this. She was shaking.
Despairing, she stumbled over to the phone. Maya was still a little angry with her for Koko's kid dragging Maya's kids into a ninja gig. But she had nobody else to call.
"Hello?" Mercifully, Maya picked up.
"Maya," said Koko, letting out the breath she'd been holding. "I know it's late, I'm so sorry, but I just—"
"What's the matter honey?" Maya was immediately concerned at her tone. "What happened?"
"Nothing," gasped Koko, slumping back against the kitchen wall as her composure finally shattered. "I just—please, can we talk? Please."
"Of course, sweetie. As long as you need."
Koko swallowed tears of exhaustion, or rage, or relief.
"Eff ess em forsake it, Maya," she managed to choke out. "Why did I ever marry?"
Ninja senses were highly developed. Lloyd could tell his mom was trying to keep her voice down, that he wasn't meant to hear this, but through the drone of distant words he could still hear the fury and tears. He knew why. He shut his eyes and covered his ears.
The Omakase fiasco troubled Lloyd non-stop. He realized that what had gone down wasn't right; he knew Garmadon had said some horrible things to Koko, and he felt terrible that his idea to have a family dinner had gotten her so hurt. But what could he do to fix it? Given how his dad had reacted in the moment, he clearly wasn't about to come out and apologize.
Or . . . maybe not on his own account, anyway. Maybe he just needed some encouragement, some guidance. He'd been an evil conqueror for decades, after all. The habits must be deep-seated. Maybe if Lloyd could just talk to him, explain how he'd made Koko feel, maybe he could nudge him into doing the right thing. You never fixed anything by giving up on people, right?
So he got to work nagging Garmadon over texts again. By Wednesday he'd convinced him to come over for a father-son fishing trip in the afternoon. Just the two of them. He glowed delightedly when Garmadon agreed: he could already picture a tranquil afternoon on the wharf, flicking fishing poles and having lazy conversations about life. He'd be able to ease Garmadon into the right direction in no time!
Lightning struck twice: Garmadon again showed up.
"All right Luh-Lloyd, let's see some action!" he crowed, sweeping over. "Ey! Where's the boat?"
"No boat, Dad." Lloyd laughed, holding out two fishing poles. "We'll just be fishing off the wharf."
"With those?!" Garmadon pointed at the poles as if they were something Lloyd had pulled out of a sewer. "You'll never catch anything with those dinky little sticks."
"You'd be surprised," said Lloyd, already heading off to the best fishing spot. "And besides. It's not about what you catch, it's about the experience!"
"About the experience?" Garmadon followed, albeit reluctantly. "Listen Luh-Lloyd, I'm a busy man, I didn't come all the way out here for an experience."
Lloyd's dream of a lazy afternoon sharing heartfelt conversations quickly settled to sleep with the fishes. He kept waiting for the right moment to start a nice father-son topic, but whenever that moment started building, Garmadon would launch into another loud, angry complaint.
"Are we seriously just sitting here holding two stupid sticks and staring at them?"
"Unbelievable. I could be ordering generals around right now!"
"We look like complete morons, who does this kind of dreck?"
Lloyd bit back a tiny growl. He wanted to point out that lots of people did fishing just like this, but that would be difficult to back up right now. The few other people on the wharf had all fled within a few minutes of the former Dark Lord showing up.
After Garmadon's sixth or seventh round of complaints, Lloyd sighed and gave up trying to explain that this was popular and fun and supposed to be father-son time.
"Okay, Dad," he said. "What do you want to do?"
Garmadon's eyes lit up.
"Fishing!" he said, tossing his pole into the sea and standing up. "But the right way! Wait here, Luh-Lloyd, your old man's going to show you how a man does his fishing."
He swept away, leaving Lloyd sitting alone with his pole. The teenager sighed, hanging his head. Well. Sitting alone on a cold, windy wharf. This was really shaping up to be a great father-son talk.
Five minutes later he got a bite, and caught a pretty impressive bass. His heart thrilled as he hoisted the fish up into the air, admiring its flashing scales—then it sank again as he turned to show off his catch and remembered no one was there. Sighing, he took the fish off the hook and tossed it back.
He waited quite a while after that. He wondered if Garmadon had forgotten him. Just as he was starting to fumble for his phone, planning to text a reminder, he realized that the sea a few hundred feet away from the wharf was boiling. Bubbles frothed up to the surface in one particular spot, and that spot seemed to be . . . moving closer . . .
Before Lloyd could get a decent panic started, a giant black amphibous vehicle surfaced where the bubbles had been, its wedge-shaped bow nearly scraping the wharf. As Lloyd gaped, Garmadon popped up from the turret.
"Get in, Luh-Lloyd!" he bellowed over the sloshing of shedding saltwater. "We're going to do some real fishing!"
Lloyd hesitated for a moment, too confused by this sudden development to process. After a moment, though, he cautiously put his pole aside and stepped aboard.
Garmadon sank the amphibous vehicle again, then resurfaced a mile or two away from the harbor. The vehicle did some Transformer-type things that Lloyd didn't quite catch, and suddenly it was more like a normal boat, with railings and a sort of deck. Lloyd sniffed the salty air, intrigued despite himself.
"How are we going to fish, Dad?" he said. "We don't have poles."
"Real fishing doesn't use poles, Luh-Lloyd," said Garmadon. "It uses these!"
He flicked a lever, and suddenly a spring-loaded net shot from the boat's turret, splashing into the water. A mechanical arm began to drag the net in a broad arc around the boat.
"Ahhhhh." Garmadon grinned as the arm groaned and slowed. "Good pickings today."
He pulled another lever to retract the net. It came up pulsing and glittering, filled with thrashing gray forms. Lloyd's amazement suddenly lapsed into shock.
"Dad, I think those are sharks!"
"Dang right they'd better be sharks!" retorted Garmadon. "These nets are woven too big for much else."
"But, like . . . some of those are endangered and stuff," said Lloyd, dismayed. "I'm pretty sure fishing for them is illegal."
"Pff." Garmadon was supervising the net as it swung over a small pool built into the boat, dumping the load of sharks into the holding tank. "Where did you think I always got my attack sharks, Luh-Lloyd?"
Lloyd swallowed, knowing this would have been the way. He didn't know what he should do now. On one hand, he'd wanted so badly to spend the afternoon with his dad, and now that Garmadon was doing something he enjoyed it might be easier to strike up a conversation. On the other hand, even aside from this just being wrong on its own terms, Lloyd couldn't help worrying that the coast guard might pop up any minute. He was already facing so much suspicion and so many accusations of conspiring to do evil with his dad. What would happen if he got caught illegally shark fishing with his dad?
. . . But back to the first hand. Even if he did refuse to do this, what where his options? They were miles away from shore. He was more or less a prisoner here.
Sighing, he sat down with his back to the railing and watched as Garmadon carried out his work. He dipped a pole with a loop of rope into the teeming pool of sharks, wrangled out a single writhing specimen, then dumped it into a holding trough. Then he took up what looked like a large piercing gun and stapled a little plastic tag into the shark's pectoral fin.
"These tags are just the transponders that receive the signal," he explained as he worked. "Each shark gets programmed with its own mind-control signal, but I don't handle that part. That's my science nerds' job."
"You're . . . mind-controlling them?" Lloyd winced as the tag gun made a brutal stapling noise, and the current shark's thrashing intensified. "Doesn't that hurt?"
"Of course it hurts," snorted Garmadon. "It's supposed to! Keeps 'em mean." He held up one of the tags for Lloyd to look at. "See the metal ring that goes through the fin? It has these little barbs in it so it never stops bothering the critter. Perpetual frenzy. My own personal invention!"
"Oh," said Lloyd. He could tell that Garmadon expected him to be impressed, but honestly he felt sick. Sure, he'd seen Jaws, but his love of animals still extended to sharks. They were innocent wild creatures that wouldn't be harming anyone if they weren't shot up with piercings and mind-control rays. He hated watching them getting dragged into suffering like this.
The afternoon was really not going as planned.
Garmadon brought in a couple more nets of sharks, while Lloyd sat aside quietly and tried his best to appear composed. It seemed like forever, but finally Garmadon determined the pickings had gotten too poor to keep fishing. He was in high spirits at the day's catch.
"Sit tight, Luh-Lloyd," he said. "I'll drop you off at the harbor on the way back."
"Thanks, Dad," said Lloyd, feeling weak with relief.
"You had a point, son," said Garmadon, turning the craft landwards. "This whole father-son fishing business is great!"
" . . . Yeah," mumbled Lloyd, watching the waves parting under the bow. After a moment he sighed, realizing that his time to have the planned talk with Garmadon was running out.
"Hey Dad?" he said. "About the other day . . . When we met for dinner . . . "
"Hey, Luh-Lloyd!" Garmadon, one hand still on the tiller, swung an old-fashioned film camera towards him. "Take a photo of our catch, eh? Otherwise nobody's gonna believe what we caught, you know how it goes."
Lloyd hesitated, but snapped a few tentative photos just to keep the peace. He did not have plans to tell the others about any of this.
"Where are those little nerd friends of yours anyway?" asked Garmadon. "Haven't seen them around."
Lloyd again hesitated, but finally decided any conversation was better than none, and allowed himself to be distracted.
"Yeah, we haven't been hanging out as much these days," he said. "Everyone's still grounded, so it's hard to find something we can all do. Plus I have—" He broke off, remembering what had happened last time he mentioned training with Wu. "—"stuff going on, and most of them spend the weekends at the scrapyard anyway."
"The scrapyard?" Garmadon snorted. "Well. That's just about the right place for them."
Lloyd ducked his head, somehow irked.
"Nah, they say it's pretty cool," he said, trying to sound casual. "There are literally hundreds of cars and big vehicles, they get sent to find super-rare parts sometimes, and the guys say they might get to practice elements out there soon."
"Huh." Garmadon smirked. "So is that why you're not joining them?"
"Uhh—"
"Seeing as you don't have an element and all." Garmadon waved a hand abstractly. "Or, well. Green."
"Dad." Lloyd grimaced.
"I mean, they get to blast things to pieces with fire and lightning, and what are you gonna do? Stand there and be green at things?"
"Dad." Lloyd tried his best to sound no more than archly miffed. "Come on."
"What?" Garmadon snorted again. "Does this bug ya?"
"Well, actually—"
"Oh, did I hurt poor Woyd's wittle feelings? Is he gonna cry?"
"Dad—"
"You're even more of a wimp than I remember. Sheesh!" Garmadon shook his head. "How did they raise you?"
Lloyd put his head down, mute.
"I suppose you want to have the whole mushy-drippy talk about how your feelings matter and things bother you and you want to be respected, eh?" Garmadon wheezed. "Please."
Lloyd didn't try to talk for the remainder of the boat ride. When they reached the docks Garmadon let him hop off, jauntily called "we'll go fishing again on the weekend, eh Luh-Lloyd?", and turned his craft towards his volcano lair.
For a moment Lloyd stood in the fish-scented, rumbling harbor, his fists clenched. So. That had been their father-son fishing trip.
A stray mutt yipped at him from nearby, tilting its head curiously. Lloyd looked at the dog, and for a second he was seized with the overwhelming urge to snatch the creature by the ears, dash its head against the pavement, hurl it out into the harbor. Anything to take out his bottled-up rage, his shame, his helplessness. Quell the boiling inside him.
The next second his head cleared and he felt repulsed by himself. It was a perfectly innocent creature, just minding its own business. What was wrong with him?
He slumped down against a dock piling and sat there for a while, his head in his arms.
Surprisingly, now it was Garmadon text-nagging Lloyd. He'd never even been the first to text before this.
Hey, kid! Lloyd's phone buzzed first thing Thursday morning. About that get-together this weekend . . .
Lloyd groaned. He'd had nightmares about fish in a torture chamber, screaming to him for help.
Don't really feel like fishing again so soon, Dad, he texted back. It was much more assertive than his usual, but so help him he was not going through that again.
Not fishing! Garmadon texted. I got to thinking, why don't we go see your friends at the junkyard?
Lloyd blinked, puzzled.
I thought you said the scrapyard was lame. You won't be bored?
Eh, there might be some classic cars or something. You mentioned rare parts, yeah?
Well, yeah . . .
Besides, you'll get to see your nerd friends again! And I know they'll be happy to see me, the kids love me!
Lloyd bit his lip, trying to process what all of this meant. He was still smarting a little from yesterday, but the feeling was rapidly fading under the warm thought that his father actually wanted to spend time with him for a change. Maybe the father-son fishing trip had made some progress after all.
Sure, he finally texted back. I'll try to see if I can get out of training.
Master Wu was surprisingly easy to convince, once he heard that this was to spend time with Garmadon. His eyes were strangely sad, but he said that he didn't want to put any obstacles in the way of a better relationship between Lloyd and his father.
So it happened that on Saturday morning, a growling crab-mech pulled up to the junkyard along with all the usual cars.
"What the—" The other teens, already in their oil-spattered work clothes and overalls, swarmed up on top of wrecked vehicles to peer over the fence. Then they came hording over to the gates.
"Lloyd!"
"Buddy!"
"You actually came!"
Lloyd started as several of the others tackle-hugged him, roughing him up lovingly. For a second he felt a long-lost but familiar warmth in his chest as he considered that his friends actually did want him here. They might have actually missed him. The moment passed quickly, leaving Lloyd snatching for the feeling as it once again vanished.
"What brings you round?" asked Nya, fixing her ponytail.
"Ah, thought I'd help out for once," said Lloyd, smiling. "And my dad wanted to come check the place out."
"Hey, kiddos!" Garmadon sashayed through the gates, towering over the assemblage of teens. He squinted out over the acres of wrecked cars, trucks, and construction equipment. "Nice place you got here."
"It's our uncle's," said Nya. "Hi Mr. Garmadon."
"Hey," said Garmadon, and sauntered off to start examining the cars. The teens looked after him curiously, then shrugged it off.
"Hey Lloyd, c'mon, let us give you the tour!"
They got out of babysitting Gus today—when it came to light that the Dark Lord was wandering around Morton Scrapyard, Aunt May, her lips pressed into a tight line, took Gus out to the playground. Meanwhile Uncle Chet lurked behind the counter, hovering near the till. This left the teens free to drag Lloyd to every corner of the scrapyard, showing him the car with the really sick flame paintjob, and the one with the good suspension that let you do extra-cool flips off the hood, and how you could do stunts with a tire and how they were working to recreate that one scene from High School Musical 3.
Lloyd had an amazing time. He felt like he was almost right at home again; for a little while he almost forgot. The junkyard really was cool, he and his friends had so much catching up to do, there was so much to joke about and goof around with. He did feel a little bad about mostly ignoring his dad on this supposed father-son outing, but Garmadon seemed to be off in his own little world anyway. He was meandering amongst the cars, poking and tugging, occasionally exclaiming to himself and extracting some component or other. At one point he came staggering into the shop weighed down with an armload of converters and chrome tailfins.
"You mind if I take these off your hands?" he asked.
Uncle Chet was about to say hey, this was a business, not a free buffet, but after looking up at Garmadon's fanged face for a moment he didn't say anything. Eventually he shrugged helplessly. Garmadon nodded, satisfied, and staggered off to dump his haul into the crab mech.
Eventually the teens dithered their way around to actually working again, bringing in parts for orders. Garmadon also began to wander a little more aimlessly, and eventually he and the teens got into conversation. As before, they were taken by his pointed wit. For a while there was a lot of chattering and laughing over Garmadon's incisive commentary on junkyards and life in general.
"This is what the four arms are good for, see?" Garmadon was saying, yanking things around under the hood of an old SUV. "You never have to yell about where the other guy is holding the light!"
"Awesome," laughed Nya.
"Ah, yeah, I was pretty handy with mechanical stuff back in my day," said Garmadon, dusting off all four of his hands as he stepped back. "Course I just have my nerds do it all now. I don't like to show off."
"If I had four arms, I'd show off all the time," said Jay wistfully.
"Yes, well." Garmadon preened, pleased.
"Hey, hey, I know what we can do!" Nya looked around furtively. "Wanna see our elements, Mr. Garmadon? We've been practicing a little in secret, we're getting pretty ninja! Just, uh . . . don't tell anyone, 'kay?"
"Oh, absolutely!" Garmadon followed the teens to the secluded semi-circle of heaped cars where they did their practicing. "Breaking the rules, are we? I like your style, kiddos."
"Watch this, watch this!" Kai lit a leaping tongue of fire in one hand, then dropped into a breakdance sequence, trailing ribbons of flame around him. He ended with a lock of hair smoldering, but quickly slapped it out and still looked very pleased with himself.
"I too have been fine-tuning my abilities!" Zane swept one hand up towards the sky, and a swirling pillar of frosty air leaped up from the ground and congealed into a crude but recognizable ice sculpture of a falcon, its wings opened to take flight.
"Huh." Garmadon rubbed his chin, inspecting the statue. "Why the bird?"
"I do not know," admitted Zane. "I always end up with falcons somehow. I do like birds, though."
"Now me, now me!" Nya pulled a shimmering globe of water from thin air, swirling her hands to grow it above her head. Then she split it into two smaller globes, then molded them into two long streamers of water, which she twirled smoothly in a ribbon-dance routine.
"I know where this is going," said Kai, backing away. "Nya, don't you dare—"
"Whoops!" called Nya, abruptly losing (or maybe just loosing) her control over the water streamers. Momentum took over and most of the water ended up drenching Kai.
"Every stupid time, Nya!" he spluttered. "WHY?"
Nya spread her hands, laughing, then bowed to the others' applause.
"Hey, you kids are doing pretty great!" said Garmadon. "Boy. I bet you could wipe the floor with any bad guys you had to fight, huh?"
"Oh, totally." Nya smiled ruefully. "Not that it matters, though. We're banned from being ninjas anymore, probably forever."
"That's a shame."
"Yeah. Sure is." Nya twirled a bracelet of water onto her wrist absently. "But at least we get the cool powers, I guess."
"Yeah, you did luck out that way," said Garmadon. "Still a better deal than Luh-Lloyd here."
Lloyd tensed. He'd gotten swept up in watching his friends show off, but all throughout there had been an anxious wriggle at the back of his head, waiting for Garmadon to drag out the Green topic again. And now here they went.
"Hey, he's got Green," said Kai lazily. "That's pretty cool. He gets to be the color of connection and stuff."
"Oh, come on," scoffed Garmadon. "You wanna compare shooting fire from your hands to that? It's pathetic."
"Heyyyyyy, come on." Nya looked a little irritated. "Go easy on him."
"Yeah, c'mon, not cool element shaming." Kai paused, tilting his head. "Is element shaming a thing?"
"Guess it is now," said Cole.
Lloyd was really tensed now, and lapsing rapidly into panic. Desperately he tried to signal to the others with his eyes, begging for them to back down. He knew how Garmadon was, you had to tread lightly around him. He was used to generals trembling at his every glance and scrambling to obey his every whim, he would not take kindly to any criticism. Especially from scruffy oil-spattered teenagers half his height and one-thirtieth his age.
"Oh great, now you're starting too?" Garmadon groaned. "Don't tell me you're gonna give me the whole namby-pamby spiel about feelings."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Jay squinted.
"You know!" Garmadon waved abstractly. "Geez, you should have heard Luh-Lloyd the other day." He pitched his voice up three or so octaves and adopted a wheezing gasp for punctuation. "'Oh, boo-hoo, don't talk about my element! It bothers me, I'm sensitive! Nobody hurt my poor delicate wittle feelings!'" He looked around, grinning and waiting for appreciation. Finding only a mixture of disgust and dismay, he switched to a scowl. "What. Does nobody here have a sense of humor?"
"Hey, he said it bothers him," gritted Nya, while Lloyd covered his eyes in despair at the inevitable oncoming trainwreck.
"Yes, and?" Garmadon put all four of his hands on his hips. "Welcome to the real world, kids! Buck up or get out."
"Dude, you're his freaking dad—"
"And that means I have a right to have standards!" interrupted Garmadon. "And I have a right to be disappointed when my son's a disappointment."
"That's ENOUGH." Zane was suddenly taking this a lot harder than you'd—oh.
"Yeah, shut the heck up!" snapped Kai. "We don't care if you're his dad, you can't talk to our friend like that!"
"He said to quit, so take a hint like a grown-up, you jerk," said Nya. "Use those being-nice and not-bullying skills they taught you in what, like, kindergarten?" She narrowed her eyes, dead-set on blood. "Or let me guess. You never graduated preschool."
It got very, very quiet. Some of the others shivered, awed at Nya's fury in the face of death. Garmadon stared down at Nya in awful silence. Lloyd peeked through his fingers, each breath burning; he was honestly not sure if Garmadon wouldn't kill her with his bare hands.
Finally Garmadon shifted.
"I see how it is, then," he said, very cold. "You've turned them all against me. Eh, Lloyd?"
"Wh-what?" Lloyd started. "N-no, Dad, wait—I'm—Nya runs her mouth sometimes, I'm sure she didn't mean it. Please don't be mad—"
"I'm not going to stand around here to be insulted," said Garmadon, turning away with a flourish. "If your friends can't respect their elders then I have nothing to say to you."
"Dad, wait—" Lloyd set out after him desperately.
"Lloyd, you wait—" called Kai.
Lloyd skidded to a halt by the gates and looked back to the others with fire in his eyes.
"Thanks a lot—"
The crab mech's engine revved, and Lloyd darted outside, even though there was no chance he'd be able to catch it. There also didn't seem to be much chance he'd be coming back to the scrapyard after he failed.
The others stood where they'd stopped, staring blankly after the receded Garmadons.
"What the actual heck?" said Nya at last. "He'd rather chase after that son of a Skulkin?"
"You did kinda blow up at him," mumbled Jay.
"Well yeah, but was I wrong?"
" . . . In theory, no. Still coulda . . . toned it down a little."
"Look, nobody puts down my friends like that," said Nya. "Maybe I couldn't fight the whole school, way back when, but if somebody's gonna be in Lloyd's family he better be ready to treat Lloyd right. 'sides. Garmadon's the grown-up here."
"Doesn't mean he's going to act like one," said Cole wryly. "Come on, guys. Lloyd's panicked right now. Let's get back to work and talk to him once he's cooled down a little."
A/N: *jamming on synthesizer* They've got the ultimate, power in the universe! And before it gets better it's getting worse!
Who knows. Maybe it'll get even worser. Maybe it'll even STAY worser! Who can say . . . *rubs hands ominously*
