Lloyd jerked awake with a shout of pain as he was kicked in his shoulder. That shout came out muffled, and Lloyd could feel that several things weren't right immediately. The first and most obvious was the gag in his mouth.
He had been—
The last thing he remembered was—
Lloyd rolled onto his side, pushing himself up with hands cuffed tightly together in front of him. Before he had much success, he felt his arms get jerked upwards, yanking him upright. The room was still so dark, he was confused where was he—
Lloyd only heard a few footsteps before he felt the burn of a knife slicing down the back of his hoodie, tearing downward without care if the tip of the blade caught on his skin or not. He tried to twist himself away from his captor—he could get out of this. He knew he could, he'd been kidnapped before he was pretty familiar with the drill by now, and yet, all of Kai and Cole and Zane's plans to make sure he always knew how to get out of danger weren't coming to mind. His head throbbed and he groaned, dropping his head and screwing his eyes shut.
He remembered some of the night before. Flashes from lanterns swinging in the breeze as a fire spread over the poorest part of the city.
"You have to help—my sister is still trapped inside!" a woman his age had shouted, dragging Lloyd towards one of the houses on the edges of the fire. She had pointed at a window, Lloyd hadn't been able to see who she was pointing at.
The knife tore his hoodie to shreds and it was pulled away from his body, leaving him vulnerable and exposed, chained up to the ceiling. FSM, he hoped it was the ceiling. He hoped he wasn't in some dangerous, far off cave. He was getting lost in his thoughts, head pounding.
Fire danced across his back, rolling from a fresh new cut and Lloyd
There was a noise in the room that he swore couldn't come from a human, and yet, his vocal cords were the ones in pain. It came from him, and he twisted miserably in the chains as another slash decorated his back.
The smell of his own blood and the sound when a few wayward drops finally hit the floor made him gag. With his mouth gagged, he wasn't sure he could take this much longer.
Surely whatever sadistic villain had kidnapped him this time wasn't going to let him die by inhaling his own theoretical vomit, right?
Lloyd waited for the next wound to land, but it didn't come. He inhaled deeply, letting himself breathe to try and stave off the darkness in the corners of his vision. Everything became so far away and so close at the same time. Footsteps swirled around him like Zane's snowflakes had during that hospital fundraiser. A bloodied, and surprisingly soft hand gripped his chin and lifted his head up. His vision swam, unable to focus on the face in front of him. Their grip tightened, like they were trying to crush his jaw.
"I will make you suffer, Lloyd." They dropped his jaw, and instead chose to punch his cheek instead. Lloyd let out a weak wail, feeling his shoulder popping painfully out of place from the way his body swung. "For every crime you've ever done."

In that moment, Lloyd realized this was different from every other villain they had faced. His vision cleared for a second, just long enough to make out the eyeliner around her eyes. It was the woman from last night. She had….she had tricked him?
And now she had him, in some unknown location. With his last known location officially being at the scene of a vicious fire.
Lloyd felt sick to his stomach, and tried to lift his head, tried to argue that they would find him, but the words died in his throat. He didn't know that for sure. He wasn't even technically on shift, he had just been on his way back with an order of takeout food for himself when the fires started. He wasn't supposed to have helped, and yet…
The gag was removed from his mouth and Lloyd couldn't help the way the hollow thoughts settled inside him as the words his captor said swam around his head. "What crime?"
The words hung in the air, and the answer came in another punch to his jaw, followed by another. Blow after blow knocked him around on the chain. He felt a tooth loosen with one blow, the slimy gush of blood that spattered from his mouth with his next shout dotting his lips crimson. He tensed against the next blow, getting his feet properly underneath himself to roll with the blow.
This time, instead of him shouting in pain, it was a howl of anger from his captor as she dug her nails into the cuts on his back, her other hand twisting his head to look at her. "You think everything you've ever done came without any consequences? What a naïve little brat you are." It didn't take much for Lloyd to notice the venom in her eyes, the sheer anger seeping through her every pore. "You're a murderer, a traitor to Ninjago, the list goes on, Lloyd." She sang his name with such sweetness that Lloyd's head spun dizzily with the whiplash she was giving him. She loosened her grip, caressing his cheek. "I'm going to make you pay, and Ninjago will finally be safer with you out of the way."
Lloyd felt sick. The others weren't expected to be back for days at the earliest. Still, he knew when he didn't show up on patrol, or if Pixal reached out to him about a concern, she'd at least realize something was wrong. "The others will find me."
The woman laughed, letting go of Lloyd and stepping back, gesturing at the room around them. Room being a…stretch. It was underground for sure, maybe in some kind of tunnel? Lloyd couldn't be sure, but he knew this wasn't the sewers just from the smell. It wasn't dirty, just damp. The faintest bit of spice wafted through the air, clinging to the woman in front of him. "No one is going to find you here. Especially when we're right in the last place in Ninjago they'd even think to look." There was something unhinged in her eyes, and she grinned further. "No one is going to find you here. No one knows you're here except me. And no one knows the way out except me either." She walked over to a table she had brought into the room at some point before he woke up, hands moving over several tools as if deciding what way she wanted to hurt him next.
"You're never going to hurt anyone again, Lloyd. And when I win, you'll be little more than an ornament of a bygone era."