A/N: Lloyd is back! A longer than usual chapter today to make up for the wait.
Lloyd was vaguely aware by the pressure and the silt in his hair that he was lying on his back. The waves lapped quietly on the shore, and the wind rushed gently through the trees.
Everything hurt. His head felt like it'd been hit by a rock. Lloyd rolled his head slowly to one side, and then to the other, struggling to open his eyes.
His mom was close by his side, then Uncle Wu beside her, and Zane at his feet. With a groan, Lloyd pushed himself slowly until he sat up. His head still spun.
"Did I...did I win?" His voice sounded so weak. It didn't even feel like it was coming from him.
"No," Wu answered. "But you're alive."
Jay and Misako helped him to his feet. Lloyd stumbled as the beach swam in front of his eyes. He tried to step forward.
"But...the prophecy..." The second he put his weight on his right leg, pain lanced up through it from the shin, and he stumbled and fell on his face with a groan.
"Easy, kid!" exclaimed Jay as he and Misako helped him back up. "You've been through a lot."
Lloyd leaned on them and stood up, panting. "My leg..." He limped towards the shore, trying not to put too much weight on the right side. Dark clouds hung over the ocean, almost turning it to night over the spire rocks offshore.
"Did we lose the final battle?" he asked miserably.
Wu came to his side. "What's important is...we didn't lose you."
Lloyd hung his head. So they had lost. All of that buildup, all of the preparation, all of the worrying and the heartache—and they'd lost.
A piece of driftwood lay broken in the sand at his feet. Painted on it was a crude outline of the sun.
"The symbol for destiny..." Lloyd remembered the pictogram from Wu's lessons. How strange that it should show up here, after everything seemed lost.
He picked up the piece of driftwood and held it out in front of him. It couldn't have been a coincidence that this showed up here, now. "Destiny showed us who was stronger today," he said, feeling years older than he was.
The others stepped towards him. To see the symbol? To offer comfort? He wasn't sure.
"But..." Something else had occurred to Lloyd. He remembered Uncle Wu saying that with destiny, nothing happened by accident. If Ninjago was really lost, then her defenders wouldn't be around to protect it. There had to be a reason they were still breathing. He looked out over the ocean. "Destiny also wanted us around to fight another day."
Cole put his hand on Lloyd's shoulder. Everyone else had already gathered around him.
There was hope. There had to be. The forces of darkness had most of the pieces, but not all of them—not yet.
The shape of Ninjago's hills and mountains wasn't even visible across the sea. "We didn't lose the battle," Lloyd said quietly. "Today, we just lost the fight."
He turned, still tired, and looked over his shoulder. A familiar red ship was crashed on the sand in a purple smoldering mess. He felt his eyebrows lower. "What happened to the Bounty?"
"The doctor flew it into the path of a missile from the Ultimate Weapon that was aimed at you," Misako answered.
"You were almost evil-ified, Lloyd!" cried Jay. "That's not good. That's like the opposite of good!"
Lloyd turned to Dr. Julien, who stood near Misako looking humble and embarrassed.
"How did you-?" Lloyd asked. He stepped toward the doc before a pain shot up his right leg. "Argh!" He collapsed onto the sand.
Misako and the guys were at his side in an instant, and Dr. Julien knelt beside him to search the bone with his fingers.
"Not again," said Jay. "I told you to take it easy!"
"What's up with this, anyway?" Kai asked Julien. "If he got a little banged up, shouldn't it have worn off by now?"
"Oh, I'm afraid it's not that simple. This looks like a bad sprain," answered Julien.
"A sprain?" Lloyd asked, feeling his face scrunch up.
"The way that thing handled you back there, it could have been much worse," the doc said quietly.
Lloyd couldn't help but resent the fact that he'd called his father "that thing".
Julien looked up at the older boys. "Is there a medical kit on board the ship?"
"Well, there was, but the ship's almost all gone now," answered Cole, waving at the Bounty—or what was left of it.
Kai grunted. "C'mon, it's Lloyd. We've got to give it a shot. Let's go." He led the charge, and Cole and Jay leaped after him, carefully skirting around every spreading puddle of blackness on the deck.
Zane stayed behind, rubbing his palms together. Lloyd could see a cold mist spreading from between his fingers. "Would a cold press help with the swelling?" he asked Julien.
"Yes, thank you," the doc answered. "But be gentle."
Zane knelt beside Lloyd. "Let me know if this hurts," he said quietly.
Lloyd nodded, and Zane gently folded his hands over his bad shin. The touch stung anyway. Lloyd bit his tongue and tried not to make any noise.
He wanted to believe it wasn't over yet. But things weren't looking too hot now, either.
Thankfully, the guys found a roll of cast tape that hadn't been corrupted—and no one got hurt doing it. The dark clouds had moved offshore over Ninjago, and the sun shone bright as it should on an early afternoon.
Lloyd sat on the sand, waiting for Dr. Julien to finish wrapping up his leg in the cloth tape. He figured he should say something while it was just the two of them alone, but he was having trouble finding the words.
What are you supposed to say to the person who risked his life to save yours?
"Almost finished," the doc announced, sounding pretty proud of himself, as he neared the end of the tape. "It's not the sturdiest thing ever, but it should help keep the joints in place for you."
Lloyd looked down at the fat white case on his his leg. He couldn't help but wonder how a robotics nerd knew how to pilot a flying ship and wrap a sprained leg.
He looked back up. "Can I still fight?" he asked, almost fearing the answer.
Julien clucked his tongue. "Hm, I'm sorry. That leg will take weeks to heal."
"We don't have weeks!" cried Lloyd, his mind already whirling, and in his panic, he pulled a muscle in his bad leg. "Ow!"
"Easy, there," the doc said worriedly.
Lloyd huffed as he got to the end of the tape and clipped the loose end into place. "Get me up," Lloyd said.
"What has you in such a rush?" asked Julien, but he offered his shoulder anyway.
Lloyd leaned on him to stand, making sure to keep the bad leg lifted. "We have to find a way back to the fight. I've messed up twice already, and it keeps costing us more. First Nya—"
Julien winced, a flicker of sadness ghosting across his face.
Lloyd stopped. He remembered how close they'd gotten, and figured it was probably a sore spot for him. "And then the villages in Ninjago..." He shifted his arm on Julien's shoulders so that he could hold it easier and started walking. "If I mess up again, it could doom the whole world. But if I win, then I can save it."
"Even if we could get back to the battle, it would take a miracle to win with an injury like that," retorted the doc. "I'm sorry, but if you want to make your chances best, I suggest you rest. You're not in fighting shape."
"And what if we don't have that time?" Lloyd asked, glaring at him.
Julien looked at him in surprise, and then frowned in thought.
Lloyd leaned on him a little heavier to adjust his weight. They were getting close to the shore where the others stood talking.
Lloyd's voice fell. "All this time, I hoped I could do this without hurting my dad." He felt tears in his eyes, but he held them back and clenched his fists. "But the Overlord already did. All it's going to take now for evil to win is that we do nothing."
Julien was quiet. "I think you're right."
Lloyd set his jaw. "I know I'm right. We've got to take the fight to them."
They were just a few steps away now.
"Oh, and...Julien?" Lloyd felt much smaller than he was.
"Hm?"
"About the, uh, the ship thing...thank you."
Lloyd felt his face burning. What? That's it? He saved your life and that's all you have to say?
Dr. Julien looked at him with a grin, blue eyes twinkling behind his glasses. "You're welcome," he said.
Lloyd smiled back.
Apparently that was enough after all.
Lloyd couldn't believe what he was hearing. Kai had been ranting and throwing rocks into the water—that much wasn't hard to believe—but it was everyone else who sat in the sand staring helplessly across the ocean who were saying the crazy stuff.
Zane acted like Nya was gone forever when he said, "Perhaps it's best that we remember our friends as they are in our hearts, not as they are now."
Misako acted like the only chance for their family was in the past when she told Lloyd, "You father loved you! It was the evil of the Great Devourer that corrupted him."
And Sensei acted like everything was lost when Kai asked desperately how the prophecy could have been wrong—how the Green Ninja could have lost—and Wu answered, "I...don't know."
"Don't know?" Jay had cried. "You're Sensei! You always know. You have a long white beard!"
"There must be some message to learn. A lesson. A word of wisdom. Just the word?" Kai pleaded. "Something."
"For once," Uncle Wu had said with a sigh, "I'm afraid there is nothing to learn. Only that...evil has won."
And that's were Lloyd found himself, leaning on the shoulders of a friend, looking out with the others at the purple clouds of evil swelling over unreachable Ninjago in the distance—and unlike them, feeling his blood boil.
No. This couldn't be the end.
Not today.
"If Sensei doesn't have a lesson, then I do," he blurted, and suddenly every eye was turned on him in surprise. Lloyd tried to pace the beach to collect his thoughts, but he ended up slipping off of Dr. Julien's shoulder and hopping across the sand on his good leg instead.
"I used to be nothing but trouble," he said, letting his mind slip back to when he harassed villagers and made deals with treacherous snakes for fun, "but then I met you guys. You took me in," he said with a chuckle, thinking of their first weeks and months together.
"You showed me the importance of being brave, the importance of being strong." He pounded his chest with the side of his fist. "And most importantly, being good."
The sand was uneven, and without thinking Lloyd put his right foot down to keep his balance. Pain lanced up through it, and he winced with a groan. He'd press through. His thoughts were coming more easily now, and he could hop back to the others and look them all in the eye one by one.
"When this battle first began," he said, looking at his friends, his mentors, "when the First Spinjitsu Master fought the Overlord, and his back was up against the wall and he knew it was all over, did he quit?" Quit like they were going to? Give up like they seemed so willing to do?
"No." They all knew this story. "He found a way to keep the fight going. He passed his elemental powers to us. Of all people, a bunch of kids!"
He paused and looked around at Cole, Kai, Zane, Jay, as they stared back at him—holders of the elements, just like him. Just kids. Older than him, yeah, but at the end of the day, they were just a bunch of scared, stubborn...really brave kids.
"But there must have been a reason he chose us. I'd like to think it's because he know we'd never back down," he cried, pushing his fist to the sky, "we'd never give up! We've learned the ancient ways of the ninja, and ninja never quit!"
"He's right!" said Kai. "If that means we have to swim off the sea to get off this island, then so be it!" And with that, he marched into the water.
Well, his intentions were in the right place. He hardly got waist deep in; the boys ended up flying off the island on an ancient mech hidden away in the Temple of Light instead, and the ninja's dragons showed up—fused together into the Ultra Dragon—to carry Uncle Wu, Misako, and Dr. Julien.
But Kai got one thing right. They'd never quit. Not if they had to swim across every ocean, climb up every mountain, and face every danger that evil could dream up with only their courage and a sword.
They wouldn't give up.
Not until they'd won, or they died trying.
tbc...
A/N: Next time, for the return of the Big G.
Reviews are never giving up.