Story #6: Colors Have Meaning
Ninjago—movie-verse (AU); set during The LEGO Ninjago Movie
writing prompt: colors; "Red is for rage."
Summary: Morro is a member of the Secret Ninja Force. What no one really knows is that he is a dimensional traveler from the series-verse, who was adopted by Master Wu (movie-verse) five years ago after being displaced in time/space following DRS2. But this little-known secret about his life doesn't become too much of a problem—until the day that movie-verse Master Wu explains to the Ninja (and to Morro) each of the Elemental Powers. Water, Fire, Earth, Lightning, Ice, Wind, and…Green. But to Lloyd (of course), Green isn't good enough for him. When Morro (who is horrible at pep talks) tries to comfort Lloyd, Lloyd complains that Green is a color, not an element, and therefore has no worth or meaning. But Morro knows that even colors have meaning—and one of those colors is red. And red in his mind and memory means rage.
TW: series-verse major character deaths mentioned
"Okay, I'm just going to come out and say it." Morro declared as he clambered out of his Wind Mech, jumping to the floor with a soft thud. "The drama between you and Garmadon—yikes!"
"Ugh!" Lloyd groaned, gritting his teeth as he and the others dismounted their own mechs. "Why is it always so difficult to get a straight answer with him? I answered his call on my phone this morning, only to find out he never meant to call me. Then, I ask him multiple times if there was something—anything—that he cared about—truly cared about—in the entire city, and the only answers I get are a jacket and a pizza place. Why does my life have to be so complicated?!" he finished, burying his face in his hands, frustrated and mortified beyond belief.
"Yeah, I was really feeling for you back there." Nya commented, blowing her flyaway ponytail over her shoulder. "You know…with all the dad…the dad stuff."
"It's not really all that important." Lloyd murmured, trying to pass the situation off as totally cool and not at all heart-shattering and mind-numbing. Morro answered that by laying a gentle hand on his…adopted cousin's shoulder, and Lloyd smiled sadly back at him.
"But hear me out, Lloyd." Nya was saying. "We all know it's totally not your fault your dad just so happens to be the worst guy in the universe. No one's parents are perfect, you know."
Morro could've written a whole list of villains that he'd found to be even worse—Pythor, Chen, Samukai, the Hands of Time, Ras, Cin—no, no, no, no, no, not him—but he kept his mouth shut. If Lloyd could keep a secret, so could he.
"Yeah." That was Jay, who was known for stumbling over his words when his anxiety got the better of him. He was currently spinning a little…what was it called again?...oh, right, a fidget spinner...and exclaiming softly and shyly, "I mean, my mom is weird and collects seashells. Your dad…levels cities and attacks innocent people. So, they've all got their quirks, you know."
"Thank you for summing that up." Lloyd remarked sarcastically, and Morro patted his back sympathetically. Lloyd responded by giving Morro another sad smile. His cousin always knew how to make matters seem better than they really were.
"Hey, you know, Lloyd, it could be a…a lot worse." the Wind Ninja ventured. Giving pep talks had never been his strong suit, especially since he was known at the high school for being shy, withdrawn, and completely anti-social—simply because he kept mostly to himself when not with his friends, the Secret Ninja.
"How?" Lloyd asked incredulously, gesturing wildly with his hands as he exclaimed, "I get bullied and shamed at school simply because my father attacks Ninjago on a daily basis. You don't know what it's like to be rejected, abandoned, or betrayed by someone!"
Morro had to bite his lip and chew on the inside of his cheek to keep from shouting, "Yes, I do. And trust me, the situations I've been through are a lot worse than your life is right now!" Hot, stinging tears were already springing to his eyes as he suddenly recalled bitter memories of the past—the Cursed Realm, the Preeminent, Ras, the Blood Moon…
Suddenly, Morro's ears picked up the sound of a flute playing. Zane's auditory sensors picked it up too, and he pondered, "What is that sweet, serene music I hear?"
"I think it's…" Kai started, before Nya suddenly cried out, "Master Wu's ship! Master Wu is back!"
"He's back?" Cole exclaimed joyfully.
Before anyone could blink, a low, calm voice exclaimed, "Ninja." as Master Wu popped up seemingly out of nowhere.
"Master Wu!" everyone else cried out at the same time as Morro exclaimed happily, "Dad!" He then bolted over to the ninja master and embraced him in a gigantic hug that would have put a brown bear to shame. Wu chuckled from under his ridiculously long white beard and then proceeded to muss up Morro's shaggy mop of silky raven-black hair wisps, broken only by a singular emerald-green hair streak—which was not a hair-dye highlight, no matter what the kids at school said.
Wu had found Morro five years ago, a scrawny teenager of fourteen or fifteen years of age (no one among the Ninja could remember which), weak and starving, distrustful and frightfully withdrawn, trying to find even the smallest scraps of food by digging through Wu's dumpster. Within a few days' time, and before Morro even understood what was happening, Wu had the adoption papers all drawn up and ready to go. Morro had never confessed his last name, so there was a little confusion with the legal side of things, but now it was pretty obvious that he considered Wu a father in character as well as in legal status.
Though sometimes Wu took the "loving father" thing a little too far. Especially when it came to Morro's hair.
"Dad! Quit tousling my hair!" Morro exclaimed, his voice a mixture of playful annoyance and cheeky mirth as he pushed Wu's intrusive hands away. No matter how much the wind-child protested, Wu never lost an opportunity to mess with Morro's wind-blown, unkempt, surprisingly soft hair (thanks, Nya, for figuring that out) and ruffle his feathers with a subtle mischievousness akin to Morro's own.
"We are most pleased that you have had a safe return." Zane piped up, proper and robotic as usual.
"It is indeed good to be back with you, my students." Wu replied in like fashion as Morro stepped away from him and returned to the group. "I have had a wondrous contemplative journey full of new insight and wisdom I wish to share with you all."
A smirk played at the corners of Morro's mouth. No matter which version of Wu he was talking to, they were both the same—hopelessly enigmatic and eerily cryptic in word and action. Now if this Wu still had a teapot and a borderline obsession with tea (both white and green), he would have been just like the Wu that Morro had once trained under.
"So, Master Wu, did you see us totally hand Garmadon's tail to him?!" Nya asked excitedly, thrusting out a side-kick for emphasis.
"I saw you fight. I saw Garmadon retreat. But you did not win." Wu replied, his voice scruffy with firmness and solemnity.
"WHAT?!" everyone couldn't help but cry out.
"You mean all that fighting was for nothing?!" Morro shrieked in frustration, burying his own face in his hands and shaking his head in disbelief. How many times would they have to beat Garmadon up before he'd surrender already? Why couldn't it just be a one-and-done? It would make life here a lot simpler.
"You place all the emphasis on fighting." Wu scolded lightly, as he padded over to the group. "But there may come a day when you no longer have to fight."
When? Morro wondered—but he kept his questions to himself.
"When you use your minds, you will not need to rely on mechs and machines." Wu explained, weaving in and around the Ninja as he looked deeply into the eyes of each member of the team. "Your callouts are not just cool codenames. They are the Elemental Powers each of you were born with."
Here we go, Morro thought to himself. He'd known for years this day was coming someday. Just play it cool and don't look too out-of-place.
"Nya—" Wu addressed the Water Ninja. "You can create water—on your own."
The ninja master created an orb of water. Nya gasped in amazed delight.
"Kai—Fire."
A single kindling flame.
"Awesome!" Kai did a fist pump into the air—with both hands.
"Jay—lightning."
A current of lightning that could electrocute a normal person with one touch.
"So ninja." Jay's fist were clenched in wonder, and his eyes shone with giddy, unbridled glee.
"Cole—Earth."
A quake. Cole tumbled to the ground with a huge grin on his face. "We both spin." he exclaimed, whipping out one of his myriad record discs.
"Morro—"
That's me. Act surprised and excited.
"Wind."
Master Wu created an orb of wind similar to the water orb he'd crafted for Nya. Morro sucked in a breath and cried out, "Oh, su-WEET!"
"Zane—Ice."
Frost on Wu's hands.
"Ice is nice." Zane jogged a little in place to show that he was just as stoked as the others over this (in a good way).
"Each of these Elemental Powers is a gift." Wu explained. "If you use them wisely, nothing can stand in your way of facing Garmadon."
"And wha-what about me?" Lloyd stammered, grinning in anticipation. "What's my Elemental Power?"
Oh, here we go, Morro thought in the back of his mind, mentally rolling his eyes. He was not wrong.
"Your Elemental Power is…" Dramatic pause, then in a rather mysterious tone, "Green."
The stunned look on Lloyd's face was not surprising—at least to Morro. "Wait, can you repeat that, Wu?" Lloyd asked, his face blanching with shock.
"Green."
"I'm sorry." Oh, no, now the kid's cheeks were flushing a ghostly moonstone-pale. "I don't think I heard that right. Green isn't an element."
Wu simply stated matter-of-factly, "You are Green, Lloyd."
"Can I be Gold?"
"No." Wu was quick to reply. Morro could feel his own cheeks beginning to flush white-hot. Why must this kid be put through so much? And why did this Wu have to be so…hardcore sometimes?
"What about Form?" Lloyd suggested, and the wind-child barely managed to hold back a facepalm. "Form isn't taken." the green-machine persisted. "Or-or-or I could be Precognition. I think I could handle Precognition, easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy."
Oh, if only your counterpart could hear you now, Mr. I-Have-Never-Had-Horrible-Visions-About-A-Blood-Moon-And-Freakish-Wolf-Warriors-Taking-Over-The-Merged-Realms.
"No, you may not."
Good move, Master Wu. Good move. He does NOT need that kind of trauma.
"Earth, Green, and Fire. Rolls right off the tongue."
Quite the sarcasm. Quite the sarcasm indeed.
"Lloyd…" Master Wu's warning voice showed quite poignantly that he was starting to run out of patience with the greenhorn.
"Could I be the Element of…Surprise?" Jazz hands.
"No—that's the Fuchsia Ninja."
"Surprise," from right behind Wu.
Boy, you sure do get around, Fuchsia. Just once I'd like to see who exactly is behind that mask.
"There are so many elements here." Lloyd complained, his voice quivering with disappointment as he added, "It feels unfair that I don't have one."
Wu was about to say something, but then Morro cleared his throat abruptly. Lloyd whirled around in surprise, and the wind-child stammered sheepishly, "Sorry. I…I just wanted to say…" His lips quavered and puckered and pursed incessantly as he quite visibly struggled to fish for the right words. Then he finally sucked in another breath and explained, "Look, I'm sure that Green means something special to you. I mean…"
He began to stumble over his words, poignantly aware that his pep talk skills had much to be desired, but he continued nonetheless, "Look at all the elements here. Earth, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Water, and…"
He just barely held back from saying Energy, and Wu thought this the perfect opportunity to murmur enigmatically yet again, "Green."
"But the point is…oh, how do I explain this…" the wind-child continued to stammer and mutter bashfully, feeling a little mortified as he felt all eyes on him, "each one of those makes sense…when you take a look at our individual personalities...oh, what I mean is that this whole thing explains how C-Cole is so grounded and loyal and s-steady all the time, and w-why Kai is such a…such a…"
He fumbled for the right word to describe Kai's personality lightly, but then Kai himself spoke up. "Say it! A hothead."
"Right." Morro replied, feeling his cheeks turning hot and his whole body begin to sweat and swelter from sheer nervousness. "Anyway, it also ex-explains how Zane can be so cool and calm and collected all the time, and how J-Jay is so hyperactive and light-footed, and how Nya's s-so adaptable and tough yet chill and focused, and, well…" He scratched the back of his head self-consciously as he murmured, "It explains how sometimes I feel shy and quiet and restful and awake and free, and other times I feel restless and wild and spirited, like I have to run, to climb, to be in constant motion. So, Green has to connect to your person-sonality somehow in a w-way that is unique to you, where y-you are the only one who c-can walk the path you were meant t-t-to walk."
Lloyd flushed three shades of ghostly pale. He shuffled his feet. He stared melancholily at his shoes. Then he looked back at Morro and, shivering convulsively, breathlessly exclaimed, "But Morro! Green doesn't have a meaning! It's a color! Not an element—a color! Colors aren't worth anything. They're—they're meaningless!"
Now it was Morro's turn to blanche. His almond-tone skin flushed a sickly moonstone-pale white, and his emerald-green eyes began to well with crystalline tears as his hands semiconsciously shook convulsively at his sides. His chest was heaving with heartbroken sobs, and he whisper-whimpered, his voice growing smaller and smaller as he grew more and more distressed and heartsick, "Just be glad you're Green—and not Red."
Then, as Lloyd was opening his mouth to ask what Morro meant, the wind-child turned on his heel and fled the basement HQ, sobbing softly as he went—but not so softly that it couldn't be heard by the others. For a second, the other Ninja just stared after him, mouths agape, feet seemingly rooted to the ground. Then Cole took a shaky breath and murmured, "Whoa, that…now that was intense."
"You're telling me!" Jay piped up. "I've never seen Morro react like that before—and I mean never."
"I must inquire as to whether Morro was intending to insult Kai in some insensitive fashion." Zane pointed out.
"Eh, I don't think so." Kai said, for once in his life cool as a cucumber in the face of Morro's outburst. "Red's not really my color. More like a reddish-orange."
But it was Lloyd who was the most mystified and bewildered by Morro's reaction to his words about colors not having meaning. "What did he mean I should be glad I'm Green, and not Red?"
Down at the harbor, on an old, rickety dock that had been overgrown by moss and seaweed and was slightly damp with sea spray, a young wind-child sat all alone, forlorn and forgotten, his heart shattered and his core wounded with a sickening, panging chord of bitter sadness and woe. His chest heaved erratically as he curled into a little ball sitting upright, his legs drawn up to his chest, his hands cupped under his knees, and his head buried in his kneecaps. His nose was runny, and when he looked up and gazed at his reflection in the water, his emerald-green eyes were clouded by a sage-green mist—the color of deep, dark despair and imploring and lost longing for what had once been.
Lloyd was wrong. Colors did have meaning. He knew it firsthand. How he knew was linked back to his hidden secret.
He was not from this universe. This world didn't have a counterpart to himself. The Master of Wind didn't exist in this world.
And the reason Morro didn't have a counterpart in this universe was because his counterpart was dead—dead and gone.
And the Morro who was here now was not of this world. For he was actually a dimensional traveler.
He had come here five years ago in this dimension's timeline—but he was, in reality, from a world where Ninjago and all the Sixteen Realms had fused, merging together in what was called the Coalescence. Six years after the Merge, as the Coalescence was now called, struck, Morro and his friends, the Ninja (not the Secret Ninja Force, but simply the Ninja), had fought against a Black Tiger named Ras—and lost.
Jay's heart had been shattered. He became little more than a shadow of his true self, without any of his memories left from before the Merge.
Kai had gotten himself lost forever in a mystical prison called Nether-space, where he was attacked and killed by four members of the Forbidden Five.
Cole was trapped in a dream world where he communed with no one save Master Wu, who had lost his humanity and was reduced to nothing more than a ghost-sprite. His waking-world self—his physical body—was now locked within a perpetual coma, and though efforts were made to awaken him, they all failed miserably.
Nya's core had been absorbed into the Dragon Ivory. Her lifeless body had been placed in a small sailboat and sent out to sea, as a memorial to her life and her power.
Zane was captured by the Administration and dismantled—before being incinerated to ashes.
Arin had joined Ras.
Sora and Riyu had left to search for their lost friend—and never returned.
Wyldfire was captured, along with her dragon, Heatwave, and placed into a power-draining chamber on the hunch that she was part Dragon—and never came back out.
Only Morro, Lloyd, Sylph, and Tasha had escaped.
But then Cinder, the Master of Smoke and Ras's evil second-in-command, found them, knocked Lloyd out, wounded him with a crimson crystal dagger, and then captured Sylph and Tasha. And Morro had been the only one to flee.
But before he escaped, he heard Sylph cry out in panic and whirled around—only to see Cinder unleash his Shatterspin.
The last the wind-child saw of his little sister was her cold, senseless body lying unmoving at Cinder's feet, her own core cast into a deep, long, dreamless sleep.
And as for Tasha…
He had seen a crimson scar stretching across her chest as well.
It was of the same cut and jagged edge that his scar—the one that had bound him to the Cursed Realm—had been.
Cinder had corrupted Tasha and Lloyd with Shatterspin.
Their hearts would be shattered of all goodness, all hope, all light and love and life.
And all Morro could do was gaze back sadly and run away, sobbing the whole way until he found his way here.
Lloyd is wrong, he thought bitterly to himself now.
Colors do have meaning.
And red…is for rage.
Because Red…is for Shatterspin.