I'm glad to hear that you all enjoyed Kai and Nya's stories. I made sure to put quite a lot of foreshadowing in those. Thanks for the feedback!

When I was initially planning the orders of these stories, I split them up into three sets of three. The first three about Lloyd, Kai, and Nya; the second three about three of my favorite side characters in Ninjago; and the last three about the remaining three ninja. This tragedy of a story begins the second set.

royalty

"One ninja will rise above the others and become the Green Ninja, the ninja destined to defeat the Dark Lord." Harumi quietly read aloud the small note scrawled on the notepad. Then she took note of the little sketches of five ninja with various colors and weapons in their hands. This had to be the most interesting one yet, she thought to herself.

Her mother had fallen asleep on the kitchen table once again. The move from the village to the city was financially rough for them, so she had picked up an extra job to make ends meet. It required her to work late hours, even later hours than Rumi's father. Translating scrolls for the museum by night was hard on her, so she usually fell asleep during the five hours she had at home.

Most mornings, Harumi woke herself up, braided her own hair, and grabbed a tiny bag of cereal before running down the street to the small makeshift school that had popped up due to the influx of new residents. Her mother would be there to see her home in the afternoon before she left for her workplace, and her father would be home in time to tuck her into bed.

But that day was a bleary, winter weekend. The apartment her family rented must have been the cheapest in the city. The wind blew snowflakes through the cracks in their window. And even though the entire building had space heaters constantly running, they did little to ward off the cold. Rumi made sure to wear an extra coat indoors or wrap a large blanket around her before sitting down by the TV or at her drawing table.

Harumi reread her mother's notes again. She grabbed a blank piece of paper from a drawer and sat down with her crayons. She drew the other four first: blue, red, black, and white. Every now and then, she looked at her mother's sketches to see what weapons they were holding. Those she finished quickly. They were merely blobs surrounding a large white portion of the page.

Then she picked up a royal green crayon, her favorite color. When she and her father walked around their section of Ninjago City, he always pointed to a jacket that was the same color just waiting in the store window. He promised her that once they had a little more money, he would buy that jacket. And move to a better apartment too. But the promise of the jacket dyed that glorious shade of green seemed to stand out much more to her.

She tried her best to copy the intricacies of her mother's sketches. When her mother finally stirred awake, she was nearly finished. "What time is it, Rumi?" she asked her.

Harumi put down her crayon briefly. "Nine. You fell asleep in the kitchen again." She giggled a little, although she didn't quite know why it was funny.

"Oh, again?" Her mother slowly pushed herself up with the chair and surveyed the papers on the table. "I have to return this to work before lunch." She looked over at Harumi's work. "What are you drawing?" she said with a yawn.

"The Green Ninja," she replied without looking up. She just had one more patch of green to color before she was done.

"The Green Ninja? Where did you hear about that?"

Harumi silently pointed to her mother's work. Then she set her crayon down and showed her mother her drawing. Her mother looked back and forth from her sketches to her daughter's. It was fairly accurate although crayons don't make much of clear lines. Rumi's drawing looked like hers just blurrier and with an exaggerated green ninja.

"Why are these four—" she pointed to the four blob-like ninja, "—so small? And why is this one—" she pointed to the green ninja, "—so big?"

"Because he's the green ninja," she said, emphasizing green. She picked up her mother's copy of the prophecy and read with her finger holding her place, "One ninja will rise above the rest." Then she pointed to the ninja on her drawing. "He's my favorite."

Rumi's mother sighed. Her daughter always had quite the aptitude when it came to the ancient writings she would bring home from the museum. It was almost like she learned how to read the foreign language at seven! Her art was clearly improving too, but they couldn't afford to buy new supplies fit for the budding nine-year old artist. But one day, maybe.

Her father stumbled into the room, still a little drowsy from his long day of work yesterday. He came over to give his wife a kiss on the cheek, then stopped to see what Harumi had drawn. "And what has my beautiful daughter drawn today?"

"The green ninja," she said excitedly, having finished her drawing. "He's way better than all the other ninja, and he's going to fight the—" she checked her mother's notes again. "The dark lord." She looked up puzzled. "Who is that?"

"That sounds like a good story for later. I need to drop off these manuscripts to the museum right now, so we can enjoy our Saturday together." Her mother began to bundle up her papers. "Let's hang up your drawing on the refrigerator first." She was halfway there before she stopped. "Or should we frame it?"

Harumi shrugged. It didn't matter to her either way. "Then the refrigerator." Her mother cleared away some advertisement or an invitation to something, and put her daughter's picture in its place. It was cobbled among a plethora of physical reminders.

"That's where it belongs," her father said proudly. Then he suddenly said, "Wait here. I have a little present." He dashed off to his room while her mother shook her head. Harumi knew that she was thinking of something to the effect of, we can't afford this.

Her father returned to the small kitchen with a paper bag from the clothing shop downtown. Harumi looked up at her father. "Is it—?"

"Open it for me," he replied with a smile and a wink at his wife, who was shaking her head. But she couldn't hide her smile.

Harumi pulled out the royal green jacket that she had seen in the store-front window. "Whoa," she quietly said, her eyes gleaming.

"Whoa, indeed," her father replied before putting it on. "How does it look? Eh, eh?" He started to do a few silly poses that made both Rumi and her mother burst out into laughter. He took it off and put it around her although it was several sizes too big for his daughter of nine. "This will be yours someday," he said with pride in his eyes.

But in her eyes, there was never a better shade of green.

…

Harumi wasn't nine anymore. She sat in the back of an ambulance in a dead-end street, her drawings and her mother's drawings, fluttering down from the sky. Then a picture without a frame. Her father had hoisted her upon his shoulders, so she could see the cherry blossom festival floats passing down the street for her 10th birthday. That was only a week ago.

Winter had passed into spring or was it the other way around? It didn't make a difference. All she knew was that they were supposed to move into their new apartment in a week's time, until-well, until this. She saw the ninja on TV, the four colored blobs trying to fight the snake. Her parents were watching it all morning.

What did the EMT's say? Something about how the ninja couldn't do anything, but someone called Lord Garmadon saved their day. What a terrifying name for a dark lord. And there was a little kid standing by the Samurai. She remembered faintly. But he was wearing green. She hated green.

She hated green because all around her royal green leaves were falling from the trees. She hated green because her father was wearing that stupid royal green jacket when he died. She hated green because the king and queen wore royal green when expressing their empty condolences for the public. Spring brought death, not life. A couple of paces away, her father's jacket fell. She didn't want it anymore.