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Phetiamwantip- So definitely not for now since the ninja don't really know Lloyd's location. Good point though, thank you so much for reviewing!
Chapter 26
As the last remains of night gradually faded and gave way to a bright sun rise that filled every nook and cranny of the cottage with its golden light, Lloyd found himself unable to think of anything besides his findings in the hidden bedroom. His hands moved independently from himself and he barely realized he had begun cracking several eggs (saved from the female chickens they kept alive in the backyard) onto a stark black skillet as the stove's flame below burned with ferocious intensity.
The energy master had never considered himself a masterful cook, but any idiot could make half decent scrambled eggs (even if they were unfortunately not able to add milk on account of there being not being a cow within a hundred miles of the valley)
From his spot at the table, Morro's grey-green eyes were lackadaisically narrowed with exasperation.
"So, how did you find that room?"
"Jasper." Lloyd quickly answered, not seeing any point to lying( at least about that detail). "I just woke up in the middle of the night and he just led me straight to it."
"Huh. So, you scared about Koso finding out?" The wind master bluntly asked.
"Umm well I was kinda just hoping it would go back to being invisible before he returns. I mean there's nothing else I can really do about it." The blonde admitted as he lifted the scorching hot skillet off of the stove, scraped the eggs onto two wooden plates, and bent down to put the stove's flame out.
"I've got it." Morro suddenly spoke before reaching out a palm and channeling a narrow gust of wind towards the opened oven door. The fire was out in seconds.
"Thanks." The green ninja politely replied -both for the kind gesture and for the fact the former ghost had kept his promise about not asking about the books- , as he closed the door and moved to the table, thankful that he had already set the wooden utensils out.
Despite the less than average setting, Lloyd couldn't help feel a sense of normality as he slid Morro his plate. Unsure if he should waste the energy fretting over this feeling, the blonde chose the former and began attempting to take his mind off it with more pedantic conversation.
"So, today I think the goal should be to get you to write your name."
"You think so?" Morro questioned around a mouthful of egg, Jasper couldn't have looked more heart broken at not being offered any.
"Yeah, I mean once you've practiced copying the alphabet a couple of times, it really shouldn't be that much of a challenge your name's not long or complicated or anything."
"Oh…" The former ghost looked unsure if he should take offense or not. "Umm, alright."
"Cool, we'll start after breakfast." Lloyd promptly decided, as he shoved a forkful of egg into his mouth so as to avoid the increasingly awkward atmosphere.
ForgottenFamily
"Ok so, what I want you to do is copy each letter. The big ones are what the letter is supposed to look like capitalized and the small ones are uncapitalized, got it?"
Upon Morro's nod of understanding, the blonde began to slowly back away from the kitchen table in which he had laid out the wind master's writing supplies towards their room.
"Okay, if you have trouble let me know."
"What are you doing?" The former ghost pointedly asked, dodging an affection lick from Jasper.
"Umm I just wanted to rest some more you know since Jasper and the door and all." Lloyd lied before turning on his heel and hastily dashing away so as to avoid the former ghost's further scrutiny.
Upon reaching their door Lloyd couldn't help but release a relieved sigh when he saw the mystery bedroom door had in fact reverted back to being invisible, completely indistinguishable from the cottage walls.
Once inside their bedroom with the door shut behind him, Lloyd wasted no time diving towards his bed and reaching under the frame to pull out Koso's spellbook.
The blonde wasn't sure what he expected to see upon flipping past the first warning page however that did little to dim his slight surprise at seeing no actual verbal instructions written ,but instead a long list of strange black symbols each accompanied by what was most likely supposed to be a visual depiction of what external consequence each spell was meant to bring.
Skimming over the top few, Lloyd could easily guess each spell's purpose thanks to the simplistic art style of the illustrations. Whoever's steady hand had drawn them was definitely someone to be commemorated for his/her work. The first page held nothing that the green ninja could deem worthy of being considered as important with most of them having to deal with healing various wounds and injuries.
'Why Koso didn't use any of these when Morro was injured?' Lloyd wondered as he slowly flipped through the pages,carefully scanning the image beside each symbol until suddenly he finally found one that piqued his interest.
The bottom half of the stark black symbol was a narrow oval with the top curling around to form a sharp hook. The illustration beside it depicted a faceless man standing beside an arrow that pointed directly to what appeared to be a dog.
'Wait so, is this...how to turn someone into an animal?' Lloyd's eyes widened in perplexity as he contemplated the potential uses of the spell.
"Lloyd!" The green ninja jumped upon hearing Morro's voice echo against the cottage's thin walls.
"Hang on! I'll be right there." The blonde yelled back, before sliding the spellbook back under the bed frame.
ForgottenFamily
"Ma!"
"What?!" The tea shop owner shouted back cursing her old bones, as she slowly slid off her son's guest bed. Hank had come barging in like the house was about to burn down. \
"Look!" Her son yelled, all ,but shoving the tiny crank T.V. he still insisted on using instead of buying an electrical one.
"Alright,alright calm down." The elderly woman sighed as she reached out for her reading glasses before carefully sliding them on. "What's all this ruckus abou…." Greta trailed off as she stared at the static image in front of her.
On the T.V. Gale Gossip stood- obviously dreading the early morning heat as beads of sweat rolled off of her like waterfalls, effectively ruining her makeup- in front of the ruins of her destroyed shop.
Only it wasn't destroyed. It was standing tall as it always had, not a single brick out of place.
"Turn up the volume." Greta commanded as she adjusted her hearing aid.
As her son obeyed, the sound of Gale's high pitched voice slowly began filling the room.
"You heard it here first, the man suspected of kidnapping the green ninja was reported to be seen here by this humble tea shop yet again. Numerous eye witnesses say they allegedly saw the man put this entire previously demolished shop back to its prior state with nothing but the snap of his fingers."
"He didn't…" Greta thought aloud. Did..did Koso feel guilty for what he had done?
"That's not all though!" Gale hastily shouted as if she could see her viewers through the camera. "Another sighting was reported later on, by the Garmadon Monument. We have actually managed to secure an interview with the witness. Since they wish to remain anonymous we will conduct it over the phone." The reporter explained as an assistant of hers appeared at her side, with said phone in the palm of her hand, the call screen completely blurred out.
"Yeah it's true." Came the sound of an obviously auto tuned voice over the smartphone's speaker.
'Probably prerecorded.' Greta guessed, as she felt the edges of her grey hair start to stray upwards because of the T.V. static.
"I didn't realize who he might be at the time, just thought his eyes looked freaky. I was just taking my kid to see the monument and saw him standing there. I asked him to hold my camera so we could take a picture, he seemed really confused even after I told him to just press the red button."
Despite her best efforts Greta couldn't help chuckling at the irony of a man younger than her having more trouble operating modern technology.
"After a few minutes he eventually got the gist of it and he snapped a couple pictures for us. When I went to thank him, I thought..well you know I thought maybe it would be polite to make friendly conversation so I just you know I asked him how his day was and all that and then I asked him where he was heading and he just said he was heading to Ninjago City."
'Why would he-unless...oh...oh Koso.'
"Then before I even know what's going on, I turn my back for a second and he's just gone. I guess…..I guess he really needed to get to Ninjago City."
ForgottenFamily
Lloyd couldn't help ,but feel impressed to see Morro had already copied the alphabet three times over, with most of the characters looking pretty legible( if a little…..wobbly)
"Wow, alright so-"
"Show me how to write my name!" The wind master snappishly ordered, his impatience almost coming off as anxious.
Stifling a sarcastic retort, Lloyd slowly pulled up a chair beside his fellow captive and sat down before taking up an extra pencil and blank piece of parchment paper.
"Ok, look close." The green ninja gently commanded. "This is an M" Lloyd pointed to the letter on one of the handwritten copies, then with practiced ease casually made the necessary strokes to form the letter on his own paper. "That's the letter your name starts with." The energy master explained before repeating the same process with the rest of the letters that formed Morro's name (or what he assumed the former ghost's name to be spelled like since no reference was available).
When it was completed Lloyd slid the finished product closer to Morro.
The wind master silently stared at it for a few moments, his gaze completely blank as it seemed utterly consumed by those five simple characters. When the lack of noise eventually began to feel somewhat suffocating, Lloyd hastil cleared his throat, effectively tearing the former ghost out of whatever reverie he had lost himself in.
"Okay, so now try writing it yourself." The blonde causally ordered, the words barely out of his mouth before the wind master was already all but attacking the frail parchment paper with his pencil.
ForgottenFamily
The rest of the morning seemed to pass by in a blur of ashy pencil strokes and rubbed raw red fingertips whilst stacks upon stacks of used paper steadily began piling up at the edge at the kitchen table. Morro barely moved from his hunched over position over his work as Lloyd casually explaining the concept of vowels to the former ghost.
Throughout the entire 'lesson' in the back of Lloyd's mind, his thoughts couldn't help ,but be pulled back to Koso's spellbook. It felt like an eternity since he had grasped the dusty black cover in his hands. The desire to just look at it again was a strange one, and try as he might the blonde could not rid himself of it.
When they eventually took a break for lunch ( which was conceived of more eggs, they really needed to start a vegetable garden or something) Lloyd realized his back was beginning to ache after leaning against his chair's stiff frame for so long.
When he got up to stretch, the blonde barely registered the fact that he had a significant amount of egg residue attached to his fingers to which Jasper of course couldn't help ,but try to desperately nip at.
"I think now's a good time for a break. Maybe about 10 minutes, yeah 10 minutes then we'll continue. " Lloyd announced, refraining from waiting for a reply as he abruptly dashed back down the hallway towards their bedroom yet again.
The energy master had never before found a bed so alluring ( okay well that was technically a lie ,but everytime he did he felt like it was his first time).
In the span of a microsecond he was sprawled out onto it's cushie surface, his fingertips hanging over the edge like a corpse.
After a few moments of simply laying there and lazily listening to the sound of Morro getting up and cleaning the dishes (the blonde was very grateful to have one that round of rock paper scissors), the thought of looking through Koso's spell book some more began to taunt him again and just like that, before the blonde could even fully register what he was doing he had already pulled the book back into his right hand and opened it.
'Okay, think Lloyd. How can I use this to escape?' The question immediately spurred a million possibilities within the green ninja as he picked up where he had left off and began flipping through page after page, making sure to bookmark the few and far between spell symbols he believed could be potentially useful by folding the page's corner down.
In this midst of this process however, a small problem arose. Lloyd realized he knew nothing about how to perform magic.
"What I am thinking?" The green ninja softly inquired aloud, hoping no one was within earshot to actually provide him an answer. "It's not like I can actually use any of these…..right?"
Then again, the way Lloyd remembered Koso explaining the details of his magic sounded simple enough.
'Just have to picture this symbol in my head right?' Lloyd thought as he unwittingly went back to the page with the animal spell he had found interesting earlier. 'Surely that can't be too har-'
The green ninja's thoughts were abruptly brought to a halt, when the prattling sound of sharp claws clashing against hardwood floors filled his ears as the sight of Jasper's pitch black fur came into his field of vision.
When Morro's silhouette did not immediately follow the wolf's, Lloyd couldn't help ,but arch a confused eyebrow.
"What's up Jasper?" The blonde asked, jokingly wondering if the animal was about to lead him to another mystery door.
Jasper obviously being unable to answer did not reply and came up to the green ninja's beside before suddenly hopping up onto the bed and assaulting the unsuspecting fingertips of Lloyd's left hand with his tongue. The energy master's efforts to stifle a giggle instantly failed, and he had no choice ,but to release a quiet breathy chuckle.
"Stop, that tickles." Lloyd squealed, feigning protest whilst his gaze casually strayed back towards the book.
Once again eyeing the animal spell, Lloyd couldn't help ,but jokingly imagine the possibility of using the spell against Koso.
'Maybe I could turn him into a rabbit.' The blonde briefly considered, his eyes momentarily flickering back to Jasper.
"Or, I could turn him into a wolf like you." The energy master chuckled, raising his left hand away from Jasper's mouth to pet the wolf's large pointed ears. "Wouldn't that be great, what do you say boy? Want a friend?"
Without really realizing it (a disturbing pattern for almost all of the blonde's actions thus far today) Lloyd had begun to picture the symbol for the spell in his mind as he continued to lazily stroke Jasper's fur. Lloyd wasn't sure why ,but that bizarre possibility in particular was so amusing to him he couldn't resist facetiously snapping his fingers, his gaze never once leaving Jasper.
Predictably enough when no proof of his success was to be seen anywhere, the blonde simply shrugged before sitting up and stretching.
"Well thanks for coming and getting me, Jasper. Almost forgot about Morro."
Even it was to get lick up the remaining bits of egg residue from his hand.
"You're Welcome."
Lloyd froze. That….that definitely was his imagination right? He hadn't actually just heard an unfamiliar voice speak to him right then...right?
Emitting a quiet gulp, the blonde carefully got to his feet and slowly very slowly turned around towards the direction he had sworn the voice had come from.
'...WHAT!'
There on his bed in the exact spot Jasper had previously occupied now hosted the bare body of a tall, ungodly tall man with short charcoal black hair that was shaved on each side to give him just enough raven strands to be pulled back into a short ponytail.
For a split second, Lloyd considered the possibility that this was a hallucination and would disappear the moment he blinked. However that theory was quickly tarnished along with his hope of surviving this ordeal with even a modicum of sanity left when the lanky man turned to the blonde and opened his eyes.
They were stark blue...just like…...like...Jasper's…
"AHHHHHHH!" Lloyd screamed as he threw his head into his hands and fought the urge to start sobbing out of sheer shock and confusion.
"Woah, are you oka-Hey wait a minute how am I talking?" The man/Jasper/whoever the f**k this suddenly asked as he stood up still on the bed. Lloyd had to quickly avert his gaze when he realized the man had no clothes on. The male's voice sounded gruff and timber much like that of a seasoned warrior and yet the innocent confusion in his inflection almost made him sound like a child. "And in your language, how did I learn how to speak like this? Lloyd? That's your name isn't it? Lloyd?"
Unable to handle the barrage of questions, the green ninja could think of nothing better to do than throw his head into his hands and scream his panic into them.
He would have kept his head nestled there for eternity were it not for the sound of steadily approaching footsteps suddenly entering his ears.
"What it is it now!? I swear Lloyd if this is…." Whatever threat Morro had intended to make must have died on his tongue the second he saw Jasper.
After a brief stint of debating ever leaving the comforting darkness of his cupped hands, Lloyd bravely lifted his head just in time to see, Morro's surprised expression before it quickly contorted into an angered snarl.
Lloyd vaguely recognized the sound of wind whistling against his ears, before Jasper was abruptly lifted off of his feet and suspended into the air like a pinata. With a flick of Morro's wrist the former wolf was sent careening into the opposite wall with a loud thud so loud and painful sounding the blonde immediately felt the desire to wince out of sheer habit.
Fortunately the impact left no trace of damage to the wall, the same could not be said for Jasper however as evidenced by the faint trickle of blood beginning to stream down his forehead as he slowly slid down the wall onto Morro's bed. The cover of Lloyd's bed was thrown with the wolf, so when he was slammed into the wall the blankets fell right on top of him.
"Who the F**K are you and how did you get in here?!" Morro shouted, raising a self contained sphere of rapidly rotating air as a silent threat.
The words "WAIT STOP!" came tumbling out of Lloyd's mouth with the force of a cannon as he hastily threw himself between Morro and his victim.
The now confused wind master looked ready to demand an explanation ,but before the query could leave his tongue, Jasper had already torn a hole through Lloyd's blanket, causing the fabric to fit around him like a loose skirt as he shot to his feet. The ferocious look in his bright blue eyes was unlike anything Lloyd had seen from the wolf up until now.
In the span of a few seconds, the former wolf had abruptly lunged right for Morro. In self defence the former ghost aimed his ball of air right at Jasper and promptly released it. However before the sphere could come into contact with its target, Jasper suddenly twisted his body in a feat of acrobatics so improbable the best circus performer in all of Ninjago would be shamed into quitting their profession entirely, and just narrowly avoid the blast.
Before shock could even register with Morro, he was suddenly thrown to the ground by the weight of Jasper's body colliding with his own. As they both landed on the floor, with Jasper on top, the former wolf fisted Morro's grey shirt into a vice grip whilst he snarled down at the pinned wind master like...well like an animal.
"That's it! I'm done! I've tried, my very, very, very, best to be kind to you! Hell I even let you push me around some, but you know what THIS is the last straw!" Jasper furiously declared, the underlying grit in his voice increasing with each word. "I don't even care WHAT Master Elizabeth told me!"
Lloyd's eyes couldn't help ,but immediately widened with newfound confusion.
'What the-Whose Elizabeth!'
Morro, who had yet to utter a reply, simply stared at the former canine with a blank look upon his features, amazingly contrast to his earlier menacing guise.
A minute or two passed and Jasper had yet to relinquish his hold on Morro or let up on his nonsensical ranting.
"ALL THESE YEARS WAITING HERE FOR HER TO COME BACK AND WHAT DO I GET?! A F**KING UNGRATEFUL,RUDE,LITTLE-"
"Lloyd." Morro suddenly spoke up, his voice as unreadable as his expression.
"What did you do?"
Hey guys! So real quick I feel like I should clarify, I with my stinky poopoo brain didn't realize the tea lady actually had a canon name, Mistake! I'm so sorry I honestly didn't realize it until freaking Fallingtoast told me XD. Thank you Fallingtoast! Anyway yeah Greta is supposed to be her, so if y'all wouldn't mind just going with it, I'd be so grateful.
Anyway thank you so much for reading! See you next chapter.