Lloyd

It was around midnight when Jay woke him up by throwing an empty backpack at him.

"Get up. We have to get going soon."

Lloyd made a moaning sound, but he allowed Jay to pick him up and help him pick out what they were taking with them when they went to live with Uncle Wu and the ninjas.

"You're only taking one extra pair of shoes, Lloyd." Jay rolled up a pair of Lloyd's bright green socks and stuffed them in one of his sneakers. "We can come back for the rest of our stuff later, or one of the others will bring it once we let them know where we are."

"How are we going to tell them?" Lloyd asked as he threw one of Kai's shirts across the room to get to his jacket at the bottom of the bag. "Nobody has a phone."

Kai's shirt seemingly folded up by itself while Jay threw everything out of Cole's bag to find his own things.

The stuffed bear the woman from three months gave him when shopping with Cole plopped to the ground with a soft thud along with the rest of the stuff in Cole's bag.

Lloyd almost forgot he had it.

Everything on the ground started floating up, including Lloyd.

"Jay!"

Jay didn't seem to hear him. In fact, he didn't seem to hear anything. Lloyd screamed louder, hoping that somebody would hear and come in to get himself down from the ceiling and maybe get Jay to calm down about whatever was wrong with the dumb bear.

Speaking of the bear, it was the only thing that didn't float all the way to the ceiling, along with Jay, who was the only thing on the floor.

"How did you get here?" Jay asked, apparently talking to the bear. "Did you follow me?"

Lloyd tried to get down, but it was like something was pressing him against the ceiling, keeping him from going for help and keeping him from trying to calm the older boy down enough to stop the floating madness that was going on in the living room.

"Where'd you get her?" Jay asked all of a sudden, looking up at Lloyd with an amazed expression on his face. "I didn't have her with me when they took me away from my parents…"

Before Lloyd had the chance to answer, everything was put back where they were before Jay freaked out about the bear, and he was lowered onto the couch.

The bear, however, was getting the stuffing squeezed out of it by Jay, who seemed to be crying over it. He kept asking Lloyd where he got the bear over and over again, like a broken record.

It was distressing, seeing his friend acting like that.

"A lady gave the bear to me when Cole took me to get some clothes," Lloyd told Jay, who had curled himself up into a sad little ball on the ground. "I think she lost her kid or he ran away or something, so she and her husband brought his stuff in for donation… she ran off with the box…"

"I didn't…" Jay words trailed off into the unintelligible.

"Are you okay?" Lloyd tried reaching out to the older boy, but it was absolutely no trouble for him to use his powers to pick him up and gently carry him to the other end of the room.

"Should I go get someone to help?" Lloyd asked, getting ready to go and wake Cole or Zane (Kai would not be a good choice) if things escalated. "Should I get Cole or Zane?"

Jay shook his head, as if he was coming out of a dream, and put the bear in his bag. "No, I'm fine, why don't you go get your toothbrush while I finish up in here?"

Lloyd was uncertain about leaving Jay alone, because of his earlier freakout, but he had a feeling that he wouldn't be able to convince the mind-reader to let him stay. "Okay. Should I get yours too?"

"Sure, thanks. It's the blue one."

Lloyd almost considered waking up Cole to get his help, but then again, Jay seemed fine now.

He took his and Jay's toothbrushes from where they were by the sink and hurried back to help finish the packing, but when he got there, everything was already in their respective backpacks, ready for them to leave. All that was needed were the toothbrushes.

"So are we going to say bye to the others?"

Jay looked like Lloyd just suggested they set themselves on fire or go and bother some killer bees while covered in honey. "They're sleeping. We have to get out of here before they wake up."

"Are you running away?" Lloyd made himself ready to go and wake someone. "You can't do that, you have to take me to my uncle! THIS IS KIDNAPPING!"

Calm down, nobody's kidnapping anyone. But if you keep screaming like that, I'm going to have to knock you out. You'll wake all of Ninjago with that racket.

Lloyd tried to run to Cole's room to get him to help, but before he was even close to the door, he felt a sharp pain in the back of his skull, causing everything around him to go completely dark.

Next thing he knew, he was sitting in a bus, with his backpack by his feet and Jay sitting next to him, fiddling with his collar.

"Morning, kiddo," Jay greeted, almost as if what happened earlier didn't even happen. "How'd you sleep?"

"Why are we on a bus?" Lloyd looked around. "What's the time? What did you do?!"

Jay continued pressing the buttons on his collar as he answered. "You almost woke the others, so I knocked you out. I told you to stop that racket. And now, because you didn't listen, I have to reset my collar again."

Jay muttered some curses as he continued his fiddling. "You do know that I'm an impressionable eight year-old, right?" Lloyd scolded. "What are you going to tell my uncle and the others when I pick up cursing?"

"To mind their own damn business," Jay answered, obviously not caring. "I'm going to have to fix my collar later…"

Lloyd opened his mouth to ask what was wrong with the collar, but he had a feeling that it would be an unwelcome question.

Then the weirdness started.

"Mommy, the snakes are kicking people off the bus," a tiny voice cried out from the front area of the bus.

The mother didn't seem to believe her kid, but he was quickly proven to be telling the truth when a pair of scaly red claws grabbed Lloyd and Jay, throwing them both out of the bus, along with every other human they could find.

"See, mommy?" the little boy aid smugly. "Snakes."

Lloyd actually wanted to slap that smug little kid. Then one of the ninjas appeared.

If memory served correctly, his name was Griffin something.

Very politely, he helped the confused and frightened people calm down and checked to see if any of them were hurt or got bitten by one of the Serpentine.

In the meantime, Jay was sprinting after the bus, screaming about their bags.

"Come back here, you thieves!"

His screaming and running was stopped, thankfully, when the bus stopped and the two bags were thrown at him, along with everything in said bags. Griffin hurried over to see if he was okay, which Lloyd wasn't so sure of himself, considering that the older boy had not gotten up since he had the bags thrown at him.

That was why he ran after Griffin with his short little legs going as fast as they could.

Griffin immediately recognised both him and Jay.

"What… How… What are you two doing here?!"

"Concussion…" Jay mumbled, groaning as he sat up. "Looking for you… Uncle Lloyd… Ma… Mom… Up since midnight… headache… ow…"

Griffin studied both of their expressions. "I didn't get any of that."

Jay shook his head wildly, then he stood up and handed Lloyd his bag. "We were looking for you. We're going to stay with you guys now."

The white ninja glared at him. "No, you're not."

"Okay." Griffin clearly didn't expect Jay to give up so quickly, and walk away, and to be honest, neither did Lloyd.

"You're just going to accept that?" Griffin watched as Jay combed his fingers through his newly dyed pink hair. "You're not going to demand to talk to Skylor or whoever?"

Jay shook his head again, smiling. "Nope. I don't know about kiddo here, but I know how to survive on the streets. Kai and I did just fine before we ran into Cole and Zane, and I was doing great that one time I got separated from them for a while."

Lloyd ran after Jay. "We're going to live on the streets now? Why can't we go back to the woods?"

When Lloyd turned his head to see if Griffin was still there, he saw someone who was clearly having a moral dilemma.

"We can't go back to the woods because it's too far, and there are those tree-monsters running around in it." Jay hopped over a crack in the concrete.

Griffin audibly groaned behind them. Right behind them.

"Fine, you two can come to the Bounty with me. But you better not cause trouble!"

The two of them nodded innocently. "We won't," they said together.

Griffin groaned again and brought out his golden shrukens, throwing them up in the air, where they promptly turned into a bike.

"Wow!" Lloyd ran over to get a better look at the magical bike-weapon. "How did you do that?!"

"That doesn't look very safe…"

However, Jay's protests didn't do much to make the bike safer.

In fact, before he even had the chance to protest, he was picked up and gently set on the bike, right behind Griffin, while Lloyd was in the front. The bike moved very smoothly, as if they were flying through the thin air. It was the coolest thing in all of Ninjago.

It didn't even take that long to get to the Bounty (which was a huge ship in the middle of the Sea of Sands) because the bike was so fast.

"Everyone else is out on patrol," Griffin told Jay, who was still clinging on to the White Ninja for dear life, "and Morro's out at the library. Let go of me before I freeze you to the wall."

Very quickly, Jay let go of Griffin and looked up at the ship. "Wow, she's huge."

"Lloyd, I'm sorry, but your uncle isn't here right now. He went to get help with the Serpentine problem, but he'll be back pretty soon, I'm sure."

The little blond boy nodded. "Okay. Can we explore the ship now?"

Griffin froze at the question, as if he hadn't expected it, but he (hesitantly) nodded.

And so, Lloyd was abroad the ship, running around and exploring every room he could find and throwing everything out of every closet to see if there were any secret hiding spots for treasure, like back at Darkly's.

So far, there were none.

But he did get a shocked look from Jay when he accidently threw a giant leather jacket into his face.

"Oh no…"


Somebody's going to get very grounded. The person who made the mess, and the person who brought the mess to the ship.

Let's just hope that the other ninjas are going to be nice about Jay and Lloyd staying with them.