3rd Person POV
"Please!" Garmadon's voice was still audible from inside the cat as Lloyd and his team ran towards Meowthra and the people were starting to surround the area behind them to cheer them on,
"Go, ninjas, go!"
"Hip hip hooray! The cat ate Garmadon!"
"Now all we have to do is take out the cat and Ninjago is saved."
However, Lloyd didn't seem to agree with the crowd as he made eye contact with his uncle as he gave him a knowing look, even as the people continued to shout from behind him,
"Get him!"
"Take out that monster!"
"Blast that cat with your awesome hand powers.
"La-Loyd! Please help me!" Lloyd could still hear his father's pleas as Meowthra started shifting in place as though it felt guilty about eating the warlord.
"Oh, I can use my fire. But is that too much?" Kai suggested, but with some second thought to it.
"Or I could blast him with my water. Cats hate water." Nya input.
"Guys... I don't think..." Aeria trailed off as she saw Lloyd speak to Wu,
"You were right, Master Wu. I need to walk the path that only the son of Garmadon can walk." Before he walked forward and took off his mask, revealing his identity to the whole city.
"Oh, my gosh! The Green Ninja is Lloyd Garmadon?"
"Lloyd!" Koko cried out after she managed to push her way through the crowd to the front, but was stopped by Wu before she could go any further.
"All we have to do is scare off Meowthra and we've won." Jay tried to reason, but Lloyd responded with a quiet,
"No..."
"What?"
"Uh, Lloyd, where are you going?" Kai questioned as Lloyd continued to walk forward.
"Lloyd? Come back." Zane tried to advise him, but Aeria held out an arm to stop the others from either following him or prevent him from going forward.
"Let him go..." Aeria quietly told the others, who looked at her in disbelief,
"Why?"
"He's doing the right thing..." She lifted her mouth into the tiniest smile conceivable as she watched him try to coax the cat to him, gripping onto her brother's hand with a tight grip from her anxiousness nonetheless, but she trusted her friend with his decision.
"Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. Yeah, come here." Lloyd called the cat to him with a few whistles and tongue clicks, earning another shout from his mother,
"Lloyd, no!"
"It's okay. He's got this." Wu held her back and assured her as her son kept going toward the cat.
"That's a good kitty. You're okay. Yeah, you're okay." The cat got close enough to Lloyd to where his hair was blown back by a single breath, but he continued to urge the cat to come to him, until his hand was right on her nose, "Yeah, yeah, that's a good kitty. What a sweet, sweet kitty. Everything's gonna be just fine. Hey. I know it. I know it. You don't mean to destroy everything." Lloyd sighed before he continued, this time, it became more apparent that it wasn't the cat he was talking to anymore, but his father inside,
"When, uh… When people look at you, they see a monster. But I know that you just feel scared and alone. I know how that feels. To be judged unfairly. So, um... I just wanna say that I forgive you. And… I'm sorry. When I said 'I wish you weren't my father,' I didn't really mean it. What I… What I should've said is…"
At this point, Lloyd was softly sobbing, tugging on everyone's heartstrings as he continued with a significant stammer to his already teary voice,
"I wish we didn't fight all of the time. I-I just I-I wish I could've spent more time with you. And that that you could've seen, like, everything I've been through, but but you weren't there. I just I-I wish we could get that time back, and… I-I need my dad. I just... I need my dad."
From inside the cat, Garmadon had listened to his son the whole time with thoughts of guilt and regret for all his past actions and to hear those words coming from him, he couldn't hold back the tears and one fiery drop fell from his eye, causing the cat to cough as if she were about to release a hairball.
"Oh! Whoa! Whoa!" Garmadon yelped as he came out in a puddle of cat saliva onto the street.
"Dad!" Lloyd rushed over to his father as he attempted to cover his face, but he was adamant about checking to make sure his father was OK, "Are... Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine." Garmadon managed to choke out as more tears threatened to come forth.
"You're alive!" Lloyd threw himself onto his father to give him a hug before getting off as Garmadon spoke,
"Son?"
"Yeah?"
"Did you... mean all that stuff you said? To the cat?"
"Every word." Lloyd answered honestly.
"Well, I know for a fact that the cat feels exactly the same way."
"Dad? Are you crying?"
"No! It's just that I'm kind of allergic to cats." Garmadon started blubbering with all the tears that began to run down his face until Lloyd pulled him to his feet.
"Lloyd!" Koko finally ran forward from the crowd to hug her son.
"Mom!"
"Let me look at you. Let me look at you. Are you hurt? Let me see your fingers and toes." Koko checked for said appendages, only to add, "Okay. You still don't have fingers and toes. That's good."
"Is everything okay?"
"I'm... I'm fine. I'm good."
"Lloyd, I was so worried about you."
"Mom. Mom, wait! I'm, uh... I'm sorry." Lloyd apologized to his mother with sincerity.
"It's okay. I'm just… I'm just so happy you're all right."
"No. Mom, I'm really sorry... I took you for granted. All you ever did was support me. The real me. The person I am on the inside."
"Oh."
"I'm really sorry, Mom."
"I love you so much." Koko told her son as they embraced in a hug no one and nothing could break.
"I love you, too."
"Bring it in. Let's hug this out." Just as Garmadon was going in to hug his wife and son, Koko pushed him away to not ruin the moment for her, "Okay. That's cool. Uh… I found two people to hug me over here." Garmadon made the "hugging" motions from earlier until he was stopped by a sarcastic,
"OK enough with that lame trick already." Coming from Aeria and Morro as they both stood to the side with their arms over each other's shoulders.
"Hey you two…" Garmadon hesitated as he walked over to the two of them.
"Yeah?" Morro looked at him in question as he started,
"What happened to your parents… that-"
"Was your fault?" Morro finished for him.
"Yeah…"
"I know…"
"You do?"
"Yeah, even before Ari told me."
"Man you never tell me anything…" Aeria grumbled before her brother ruffled her hair and she let a smile crack through her moody expression.
"Then how come you guys aren't more mad at me? I know if I found out the worst warlord of the land had my parents inadvertently killed I'd be.. be-"
"Shooting them out of a volcano?" Aeria supplied helpfully.
"Exactly!"
"Because we know how much our father meant to you as a friend…" Morro started.
"And we know you didn't do it on purpose, and there's nothing to do to change the past, so we could either spend our lives feeling angry about it or forgive." Aeria finished with a light smile.
"And we choose the second one."
"Oh you two!" Garmadon grabbed both of them into a hug that threatened to crush them.
"Can't breathe…"
"Now you know how I felt earlier…"
"Sorry!" Garmadon let them go and they spent a few seconds regaining their breath before Morro told him,
"Besides, we have each other's backs and we always will."
"Yeah I heard you guys were doing pretty good, aside from you falling behind on rent payments every so often." Garmadon commented mildly, but it caught the sibling's attention.
"Wait, how did you…?" Morro looked at him in surprise until Aeria pieced it together,
"Ms. Tyson."
"Come on you really think I'd do something like that and just leave you guys on your own like that, I may have been pretty wicked, but I'm not completely heartless."
"I find that a bit debatable." Aeria remarked and she and Morro laughed before Lloyd went up to his uncle to tell him,
"Uncle Wu, I know why you wanted me to be the Green Ninja."
"Oh, you do?" Wu asked, intrigued to hear what he would say.
"Yeah. Green is the color of life. It flows through all living things, connecting them all. The way I connect the Ninjas. Or the way I connect my family, whether we're together or not."
"Some powers are ones you cannot see, but those are the most important powers of all..." Wu advised in a sage tone before talking to the fourth wall, Garmadon being the only one to notice,
Lloyd was a hero.
"Who are you talking to?"
He saved Garmadon and he saved his family.
"We're standing right here."
And the whole city of Ninjago.
"Where are you going?"
They even made Meowthra the mascot.
"She's so fluffy!"
"I love her."
"Wu, come back!"
Koko, Nya, and Xia opened a school to teach former shark generals life skills.
Koko, clad in her Lady Iron Dragon armor, and Nya and Xia, in their ninja gi's, spent one day teaching the generals Spinjitzu as a method of releasing their past of evildoings.
And Garmadon taught Lloyd two very important things.
"Hey, catch!" Garmadon, Koko, and Lloyd had gone to Omakase and Garmadon tossed five bowls to his son.
"Whoa."
Lloyd, thrown off by the surprise pitches, only narrowly caught them with two in his hands, two under his arms, and one under his chin.
Lloyd's face burst out in a grin as his mom and dad were clapping to celebrate another learning achievement before embracing as a family.
And…
"Come on son you can do it…" Garmadon cheered from where he was hiding behind the school sign an hour after class ended, leaving the front lawn nearly empty as Lloyd walked up to Aeria with a violet colored rose hidden behind his back.
"H-hey Aeria…?"
"Yeah Lloyd?" She turned to face him, starring him with her minor appearance change, instead of down, her hair was up in a ponytail with the dragonfly clip holding her bangs out of her midnight black eyes.
"Umm uh… I uhh..." Lloyd started to choke on his words before looking back to his dad, who made a 'breathe' motion and he took a deep breath before starting,
"Aeria Wiater, I think you're an amazing, smart, funny, brave, and confident girl. You've always been there for me no matter how bad the situation looked, usually with some criticism to help put things into perspective, and had my back no matter what anyone told you otherwise and ever since we first met I've been amazed at how much you've been able to teach me about accepting myself for how my friends truly see me when it seemed like the world was against me." Aeria's eyes widened a bit when Lloyd pulled out the rose and asked, "Will you go out with me and uhh if you don't totally hate it or y-y'know me b-by the end of it, will you be my-" Lloyd was cut off as Aeria threw her arms around his neck and hugged him before pulling away to smile at him and answer,
"I'd love to…"
"G-great I-I mean uh yeah…" Lloyd gave her the rose and she took it and smelled it right as her brother pulled up to the front of the school on his motorcycle.
"This weekend, right?" Aeria asked after stopping from walking toward her brother.
"Y-yeah." Lloyd stuttered out.
"See ya." Aeria waved as she climbed onto the motorcycle and they drove away, leaving Lloyd standing there dumbfounded for a few seconds before celebrating in place.
"Yes yes yes yes!"
"You did it La-Lloyd!" Garmadon scooped up his son in a hug before he clutched his own smiling face with a slightly panicked, "I'm being overwhelmed with another new feeling, I think I'm p-proud of you..."
"Heh thanks dad..." Lloyd smiled up at his dad before he commented,
"Y'know maybe in the future she'd make a good daughter-in-law."
"Daaaaaaad." Lloyd playfully whined.
"What? What'd I say?"
They both walked home with their arms over each other's shoulders laughing and smiling at each other.
And Lloyd taught everyone that even if you're different, you can still do great things.
The End
AN- That's a wrap for the Lego Ninjago Movie! I hope you all enjoyed it and I have some good news concerning my other Ninjago fanfic "The Second Master of Wind"; I have completely finished revising it and am set to republish the whole thing, but I wanted to know if you all thought the chapter setup as it is is too short since each chapter usually has a range of 1,000-2,000 words and there are 28 chapters in all, counting the Day of the Departed segment.
Would it make it easier for you all, those of you who actually read it, to read if the chapters were longer and the whole book had fewer chapters, or are they good as they are? Please comment or send me a review to let me know what you'all think.