Hi, y'all! I'm baaaack! Before you read, however, I've got some fun facts about this chapter! I hope you enjoy!

1. The chapter title "Specter" is a hint to the main theme. A specter is a ghost or apparition that takes form and in my experience, is usually associated with fear.

2. I would highly recommend playing or listening to "Shadow" by Livingston, an amazing song that I think would fit this entire fanfic. Additionally, "Monster" by Imagine Dragons would fit any chapter from Lloyd's POV from here to the end of the fanfic (which is coming up pretty soon!)

3. I have a twisted imagination, as well as a fixation on eyes, tentacles, and slime, which inspired a good portion of this chapter and a chapter in the near future. So, if you're sensitive about the eyes, like I usually am, I would suggest skipping until you get to the italics. Though, you'll probably be confused. I might explain in a later chapter...maybe.

When I hear the Overlord roar in fury, his eyes no longer pinned on me, I turn and bolt the other way. That must be Kai. At least, I sure hope that is Kai, breaking away from the Overlord's hold. If that's the case, which I am hoping with every fiber of my being that it is, that's my cue to get out of the temple. Fast.

I yelp as a Crystal Warrior crashes at the corner of the intersection of two halls, just four yards ahead of me. I duck as pieces of Vengestone shoot toward me, covering my head, and quickening my pace. I am almost knocked off my feet as the Overlord runs after me, his thundering gait making the ground shake heavily. Luckily, years of training keep my balance, though it does slow me down slightly.

I reach the top of the temple, the Overlord's booming steps right behind me. The Omega, his back turned to us, spins around, a growl twisting his lips into a sneer. He stalks toward me, giving me only three places to go: to the left, to the right, or up. I charge at the Omega, surprising him enough to cause him to slow slightly but it doesn't do much, and just as we are about to crash into each other, I jump and flip over him, gracefully landing on my feet.

Maybe I can climb down the side of the temple, and jump onto a building. I may break a bone, but it's better than being held captive by the Overlord. But when I get to the edge, there's no building close enough where the jump to it isn't fatal. I have to duck as the Omega thrusts a hand out at me, nearly catching me. I dash to the other side, looking for a building close enough to jump to, but there's nothing. And suddenly, the back of my gi is yanked up, pulling me up to eye-level to the giant, centaur-being that is the Overlord.

He flings me to the ground, near the center of the temple's roof, right at the feet of the Omega. "Put him back," he barks. "I am keeping him alive solely for our deal, but if you do not keep him under control, I will change that deal!"

"You are bluffing. You do not want to deal with Oni anymore than you want to deal with the Ninja," the Omega snarls, yanking me to my feet by my hair.

I yelp, struggling to pull free, but his grip on my arms is unyielding despite his more slender form.

He drags me into another cell, flinging me into the corner. Standing in front of the open cell door, his form growing to block any possibility of escape, he raises his staff. "Perhaps it's time to take more drastic measures," he says, leveling the tip of the staff with my eyes.

Before I have time to ask what that means, a black cloud tinged with a little purple the shade of amethyst erupts out of the end of his staff and hits me in the face, slowly congealing into slime that worms its way across my face and into my eyes. It's cool and feels like nothing more than a wisp of air. I know it isn't, but I'm grateful that the slime is sliding in easily and painlessly. I know it should hurt, but I'm afraid that if I think about it, it will hurt.

I want to scream, but I can't. My voice has left me, my body unwilling to obey the typhoon of commands down the central nervous system. I can only breathe, only able to perform involuntary tasks, unable to see the Omega leave through the slime covering my eyes.

And then, the slime thins, allowing me to see the cell ceiling, though slightly tinted with purple, until eventually my vision clears entirely and I can move my body. The first thing I do is tenderly touch the skin directly under my eyes, expecting to find that the slime took refuge under there. But it's gone.

"What?" I ask, though there's no one around to answer it. Before I can even ponder the event, my eyes slide shut and I topple over, just like someone flipped a light switch off.

I am searching through the dark, cluttered shelves of a cramped room. Everywhere, if there's the least bit of space, it's crammed. I guess the Explorers Club doesn't care much for the relics it pilfers and hoards rather than sharing with the museum. The room is one of the biggest fire hazards I've ever seen, and I live with a Fire Elemental.

I am alert, bouncing on the balls of my feet, hyperaware of my surroundings. Sure, I was clumsy earlier, but now my every move is deliberate. At least, until I stumble across it.

I yelp in surprise, jumping back and raising my hands and powers at the sight in front of me. I put on my fighting face, biting back mixed emotions, trying to appear calmer than I had been a few seconds ago. Then, I realize it's the mirror.

The mirror showing your greatest fear, I realize with a jolt, my eyes in both the mirror and the real ones widening.

But… I appear to look like myself. Why? I'm not afraid of myself. I'm afraid of becoming like my father. That's what my greatest fear is.

"Maybe," my reflection says. His voice is the same as mine, except for one thing. Not like hearing yourself in a video. He sounds confident, and not in the way Kai was – is. He reaches out, out through the surface of the mirror, offering his hand. "Or is that just the way your subconscious words it?"

I reach for his hand, hesitating just a millimeter from taking it, so the hand thrusts upward, grabbing my hand. And my reflection pulls me in.

I land with an oof on my stomach on a forest floor. I raise my head, looking around for my reflection in a concrete form; instead, I am looking at a lake with a surface like a mirror. My reflection smiles up at me, gesturing for me to go on.

I glance at the forest, get to my feet, then turn back to my reflection.

"Go on," he says.

I hesitate for another second, before taking its advice, and heading in the direction it pointed. I step lightly, despite there being no sign that anyone is nearby, my footfalls soft among the pine needles and dead leaves. My breath is hushed, steady, comforting in its own kind of way. The air is cool and still, no breezes playing among the tops of trees. No birds are flitting between trees, no babbling brooks, no other animals rustling through the undergrowth. The silence isn't unnerving, though. I feel more at ease than I have been since I was a child.

As I walk, I admire the scenery, the perfect shades of green, the vibrant blue of the sky, and the pleasant brown of the tree trunks. However, it doesn't last.

Soon, I am trotting through a wasteland, everything blackened and burnt to a crisp. I tap the charred remains of a tree trump, and it crumbles to dust and ash. The air is foul and smoky, causing me to cough and my eyes to water. The sky is a ruddy, ugly shade of brown. The earth seems to pulse with dying heartbeats, the wind wheezing tiredly, everything parched and starving. I shudder as I feel my powers sputter, trying to pump life back into the earth even as it tries to draw energy from the sun itself. I can't control it.

I also can't control the battle being waged in front of me.

I don't recognize him at first because he's older-looking, but after he shouts a few words at the monster he's battling, I can't stop seeing him. Kai. His clothes are torn and more dusty brown than red. His hair, always carefully sculpted into a mountain of flame, droops, his pride messy and more than a little greasy. I catch a glimpse of his face as he dodges the monster lunging at him, and his face is haggard, pitch black ringing his eyes, rough stubble under his chin. But what gets me the most is, he doesn't want to fight. I mean, he is, but he's not trying to hurt the monster or even get away. I turn my attention to it, examining it.

I can tell what it is even before I spot the four arms: it's an Oni. It has the same face, the same chiseled, wickedly sharp chin, the glowing purple eyes that can make you sick if you look into them for too long. However, instead of the typical black, leathery skin of most Oni, this Oni is covered in golden scales, with an emerald green underbelly, both of the colorings clashing horribly with those eerie purple eyes. Long, curved claws burst from the fingertips of the Oni, wicked things of sharp, natural evil, able to cause just enough pain to incapacitate your enemy just by raking them across the scorched ground.

I have never seen this Oni before, not even in my worst nightmares, but I know who it is.

It's me. I'm fighting Kai, and unlike him, I am putting everything into my attacks. I'm not holding back.

A blast of purple light, in an amorphous, billowing, spiraling cloud from Oni-me hits Kai square in the chest, knocking the breath out of him and his body to the ground. His eyes faintly glow violet for a second, before returning to their shade of familiar brown. He grunts, struggling to pull himself to his feet, only managing to sit up. Oni-me lunges at him, just as Kai frantically scoots away, and the Oni manages to catch Kai's legs. Oni-me pulls Kai to him, the grip around Kai's legs loosening and shifting to his arms before Kai can use it to his advantage.

"Lloyd! Please!" he cries, "Fight it!"

I am in a ruined city, much like it is now, sans the crystals. I pass by buildings that have been knocked over, cutting into the building next to it. The streets are choked with rubble and crushed, rusting, and abandoned cars. Vines twist up the buildings, the little visible life in the city, but most are blackened and slowly crumbling to ash, the process speeding up as a soft breeze whispers past.

I gag at the stench the breeze has been forced to carry; the odor of everything that could rot mixed together in one gargantuan soup several times all the mass in Ninjago. It's overwhelming, making my eyes water and my brain, the machine hardwired to survive, reluctant to breathe. I turn to the source, despite my protesting nose even though I've pinched it closed as tightly as I can. The Oni-me glares at me, though as it roars and swipes at me, its claws go right through me like I'm some sort of hologram. I stumble back, trying to send a blast of green light at it, but all I can produce are sparks. Oni-me has devoured almost all the lifeforce of Ninjago, the once steady stream of green thumping through everything only a few trickles.

Yet the imminent death of Ninjago does not concern it. All it wants is to destroy whatever it can, to bring as much of Ninjago down as possible. Even from here, I can feel the storm of emotions always denied, always pushed back, erupting up, up, and all around the Oni-me.

Snorting, the Oni-me stomps away, each footfall heavy and resounding, despite it being no bigger than me. I scamper after it, avoiding the craters its footfalls create. There's power in them, the Oni-me's footsteps leaving flickering embers in their struggle to ignite despite the lack of fuel. Though I've never seen that kind of ember before, I know that I can't touch those embers. They aren't ordinary embers.

Oni-me stops in front of a pile of cars, lifting the closest up, growling at the family huddled beneath it. The father stands up, while the two children and the mother draw further away from the monster.

"Leave us be!" he shouts.

Oni-me knocks him aside, into another car, the man's form slumping.

"DADDY!" one of the little girls screams. She makes for him, but the mother grabs her around the waist, pulling her closer to the woman's body.

The older girl, wriggling out of her mother's grip, steps forward, red hair framing her pale, freckled face, color defying the gray all around. "This isn't you, Lloyd! Mommy says you weren't always a monster, so PROVE IT! Fight it!" She stands tall and strong, her head tilted up to Oni-me, eyes looking straight into its. Her bright blue eyes challenge the Oni, demanding it to show its true form. "Please."

The Oni hesitates, but it still makes to lunge for the girl. The mother and younger child scream, which snaps me out of my haze. In seconds, I dash across the ruined, uneven field, my arms outstretched and I jump at Oni-me.

As I pass through Oni-me's form, I am thrust into a featureless black plain. A mirror framed in sleek, black steel only adding about a millimeter of thickness to its edges, faces me. My reflection blinks back at me before it starts moving of its own accord again.

"Have you figured it out yet?" it asks.

I don't respond, trying not to think about what Oni-me might have done to Kai or that family….

"I guess you haven't," it says, sighing. "You're not afraid of becoming your father. You've seen so many sides of him that that statement's clarity is a bit…lacking. And even the one now, the one who isn't supposed to care, does. You just say that because he's done exactly what you're most afraid of…–"

"Losing control," I whisper, "I'm afraid of losing control." I think back to the sickening scene I just came from, remembering how frozen I'd been, how I was unable to do anything but watch for the longest time.

My reflection nods. " Like your father did."

I wake with a start, trying to steady my quick, ragged breaths and my racing heart. Where did that come from? My dreams are usually just random snatches of memory or fantasies. There's only been once or twice where they were coherent, but they're vague, barely in my consciousness.

But is it true? Do I really fear losing control more than I fear becoming my father? I close my eyes, trying to remember what I had thought when I first saw the Mirror of Dread. I remember trying to be a villain, longing to be just like him, back when I was a little kid. I remember idolizing him, how I had longed for his approval because he didn't choose to leave me, he was forced to. I remember how happy I had been when my father had been purged of the Great Devourer's venom, and years later, how truly desperate I was to get that same man back when Harumi resurrected him. The horror that I felt when I realized I was wrong when he disowned me and threw me out of Kryptarium. Since the Ninja took me in after Pythor betrayed me, I never wanted to become him, but even if I tried, I wouldn't be him, just like him. Out of control.

But losing control, giving in, and losing control, is the only way the Oni Form is effective. That's what my father said, and he knows a lot more about Oni Form than I ever will.

I'm at a stalemate, and it's going to last a while because I have no idea how to get around it, but time is the last thing I have. I have no idea how much I have left, but it won't be enough. I can't break out. I can't help. Ninja never quit, but what if there's no possible way to keep it that way? At this point, fighting is a waste of energy, especially since it won't get me anywhere.

I sigh, closing my eyes. Maybe if I think, if I meditate like Master Wu so often does, I might be able to live up to the mantra.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that! Chapter 7 will come out in a week or two, maybe sooner, if we're both lucky. Until then, Sivi out :) -