Chapter Text
Didn't have too many ideas about the main story, just the beginning and the beginning of the end
So, I'll put what I wrote for it and mention some ideas
And ofc it's my guy Lloyd but you could add any of them or replace him idfk
I literally just wrote (popped off my abstract writing skills) instead of planning so here you go
It starts with the Merge
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It was all chaos. The Destiny's Bounty labored against the wild shake of the air. It was like a nebula crammed into Ninjago's atmosphere. Space itself had lost control. Parts of life surged through the sky—chiming cars, stands with food spilling out, the screams of civilians swept up by the storm.
Lloyd's lungs breathed quick and steady, but the air was different. His eyes flicked across the melting sky, but the stars were different. He dropped back onto the deck of the Bounty, but gravity did a different job at letting him.
He didn't know what was happening. Why it was happening. But it was.
Worlds were crashing into each other in cracked fragments. All new colours were dripping between them as if a cosmic glue was the only thing greedily holding them together. Not only did the messy chaos push people and structures and life into each other, it dragged them apart. Images of realms Lloyd hadn't even thought about in years were swallowing those who couldn't keep their grip on whatever was left beside them.
The Bounty sailed through the frenzy of debris and colour with little grace and ease, like an earthquake between clouds. His friends were shrouded in a flurry of colour and light that all just looked so wrong. Each were busy grabbing the hands of helpless people as the chaos tried to snatch them with a jumbled grip. But all Lloyd could do was stand, body rigid in the wavering temperatures, as he tried to grasp onto clarity. Yet clarity, like every other thing caught in the sky's turmoil, was scarce and plenty at the same time. His body was locked in autonomy, stilled by shaking terror. Everything was loud, and everything was different.
Feeling the changing air swirling around him in a harsh, uneven breeze, all he could do was watch in confusion as his beloved city was ripped apart shard by brick, and put back together in weird, novel structures. Every crowded space was full of an overwhelming emptiness. Fibres that were never meant to touch entwined into messy threads of structure.
Everything burst and imploded into new formations, deafening everything and making Lloyd's ears ring in a surrounding thrash of pain. The blare of sunlight from a dozen stars collided into one threshold, splitting the air with enough light to whiten everything.
He was shoved off balance with a shockwave of pure, synaesthesic energy. A painful fizz was splitting every cell in his body and filling it with a dead, empty cold. He opened his eyes again and saw... nothing.
A pale, hollow white, a bright husk around him. He could barely feel the pressure enveloping him, though he registered it was there. He felt as if he were not dead, but not alive. Caught inbetween. Like every rapid inhale was unneeded, like it did nothing at all to blink or feel his heart thumping. Like he was in Prime Empire.
He looked around, his brain searing with a pain so forceful it made his mind go blank. As the pressure built, he shut his eyes. The quiet was so deafening, the emptiness was too much to look at, the numbness was crowding his senses. Lloyd took a step back, vertigo swaying his world. Wait, a step? He felt a solid floor beneath him, and his eyes fluttered open.
The vibrant colours put a strain on his gaze, before his surroundings focused. Red curtains fell to the top of his vision, blocks were stacked up high and topped with a truck-sized dice, and the floor was paved in monochromatic tiles. It was as if he was in a child's toybox, as vast as his city, tubes curling above him. "Oh, my! Another human so soon?" an ecstatic voice announced as someone sprung up in front of him. Mismatched eyes fit into a jaw of teeth, with a tophat sat upon it. Lloyd jumped in surprise as a gloved hand outstretched itself to him, yet he found he couldn't let out a shriek.
"What's that on his face?" a woman's voice questioned from behind him, and he spun around to see braids of apple red yarn knitted into the head of a moving ragdoll. She was dressed in a cornflower outfit littered with patches, tucked beneath her shirt collar. Matching her dress and bow, the blue button replacing her eye seemed to observe him.
His attention passed her to the array of people—or, at least he thought they were people—that backed her: a jumble of shapes and patterns forming a disfigured individual, a king chess piece cloaked with a velvet purple robe, and a smooth-faced, timid jester standing shorter than the rest. Lloyd couldn't fully absorb every character before his thoughts were drawn back to the sensation on his face. With alarm, he reached a hand up, his fingers brushing against something stiff and cool, almost like metal, over the lower half of his face. It fit snugly, reaching over his nose. He traced markings across it, ones that interlaced with each other down the front.
"That's a pretty good costume, kid," one of them spoke, and Lloyd's eyes snapped back into concentration at him—a periwinkle rabbit whose ears stood straight above him, his sclera a sun-filled yellow like his buttons and teeth. His thin, slender arms were slung behind his head, excluded from the dusty pink overalls, as his shiny block pupils fixed on Lloyd.
The teen reflexively straightened his stance, flustered from the chaos that filled his memory, and feared where his friends were. He had to find them. More so, he was debating how the heck a mask attached itself to his face without him noticing, and if any of these uncanny people had any idea about it.
"Hey, we won't hurt you. Do you remember your name?" the ragdoll lady asked, putting seamed hands up. Lloyd gave her a perplexed look; why wouldn't he? He tried to open his mouth to speak, but it was clamped shut. His expression tightened as did his hand on the surface, as he grabbed hold of the blunt corners and tried pulling it off. It wouldn't budge.
"Whoops, someone pressed mute on you!" The eccentric denture ringman clicked his fingers, planting a hand to his hip. This was when Lloyd realised that the guy-of-sorts was floating. Right in front of him. The heterochromic eyes then drew in a confused expression, repeating the action with his fingers continuously as his shoulders hunched. He then stopped, and his eyes found themselves pointing to Lloyd again.
"Well, it looks like you won't be saying anything anytime soon," the small man declared, "I'm afraid I can't get rid of it. For some reason..." He scratched his theoretical chin. Lloyd blinked in bewilderment, glancing at the others.
"Anyway," the teeth zoomed closer to him, throwing his arms out theatrically. "Welcome to the Amazing Digital Circus!" Lloyd threw himself back a step at the invasion. "I'm Caine, the Ringmaster! And you, my new friend, are now a part of the show," he waved a hand around them like a presenter showing off their set, "You're stuck here with me and the others in the Amazing Digital Circus! That's what I call it, anyway."
Lloyd's alarm multiplied as he scanned the area, looking to see if his friends possibly ended up around here too. He tried to speak again, to move his jaw, just to no success, and the ragdoll lady noticed.
"Do you think you can nod or shake your head?"
His eyes flicked to her, and with a short thought, he nodded.
Then ig they'd chat some, maybe find a pen and paper, but for some reason the game knows he knows too much, so anything like that disappears before he can access it despite Caine's efforts so he's just mute (it adds to the story ig, could find a way to remove it later)
Anyway they need a name for him so if you're going with the mute version they could try to spell the alphabet but it gets annoying and difficult in a funny way so Lloyd gives up after the L or Ll and they take the Oni from his mask and call him Loni or Lloni
I see him with like a (hear me out) diagonally striped black and green leotard long-sleeved top, poofy clown pants/trousers, like a trapezist look, but the stripes of the Leonard intersect in the middle to look like a Gi collar thing, same with the trousers the poofs are like Gi trouser leg things (I'll look the things up) ((edit: so it's just a really big poofy hem, it's like where it's tucked into the bandages things and it gets poofy but like here it's at the ankle idk)) and his mask is like a golden Oni half-mask and he has those golden oni horns because in my headcanon he doesn't have those traits so that it'd be weird to have them in the circus
That probably made sense
It will when I make drawings for it
Some day
anyway so they go on a bunch of adventures, bond over a long while, Lloyd tries to find exit but he's not crazy about it because he's used to missions, could develop some lore for the characters, even abstract some or add OCs, or keep it simple, up to you
So then they chat and eventually get settled for a tour, tried to make it not a copy of episode one, and then ideas would be like the adventures but Lloyd is busy investigating an exit without going crazy, which confuses them, like he's really calculating and light-hearted but also absolutely tweaking because he's worried about his friends and the city
Gradually they become close friends or found family, and then they're together for like three years as they try not to abstract
I also had this random scene idea because of Lloyd's trapezist fit there could be a thing where he uses a makeshift trapeze over a canyon thing tense scene with smth like abstracted things below and it's the end bit of the story where they try to find the exit
Anyway my ideas beyond that was that when he exited, he woke up (as the DR series did) in the monastery, without any memory of the circus, but he'd been asleep for weeks or months, which was the time scale of his years in the real world anyway
So the series happens as it did until like after season one part two, everything's calm again, and I wrote the next scene
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Lloyd was calm. He leaned against a beam that was tucked under the cardinal red tiles of the monastery, and watched his students train and make a ruckus of the courtyard as the sun warmed the breeze of the air. He felt himself smile at their midday enthusiasm, revelling in the calm after all the chaos of the (Dragon cores searches and wolf mask fights) over the past couple months.
Arin leapt over shrapnel Sora directed at him with the glow of her eyes and the stiffening of her hands. In response, he threw his own offence—an oak katana—which she sidestepped by a breath's width. Lloyd observed her blip in timing, noting to himself that he would have to help her improve that later. As the two trainees bounced banter and attacks back and forth across the mosaic of the ground, Lloyd glanced away as the monastery doors slid open, and Zane stepped out to discuss the plan for dinner.
In his burnished hand was a cup of floral tea, the steam wafting up as he approached the blond. The others inside had just shared a pot, and the nindroid thought Lloyd would appreciate the beverage after his morning's work. The blond gave the robot an appreciative smile as he stood away from the beam.
"Unless I am due to update my database, I believe you like osmanthus?" Zane asked in a synthetic voice as he stood beside his teammate. Lloyd nodded once, reaching to take the gently hot cup.
Just as he raised a hand, Riyu plowed into Sora, overestimating his own size in his attempt to aid his amber-clad friend. Sora yelped as the hefty dragon tackled her to the ground to barrage her with slimy licks, and her powers—aiming for the misshapen tech discarded behind Arin—swept itself with her pivot to delve into Lloyd.
The instant the powers interacted with his body, he seized up with a sudden hitching distortion. He let out a mangled cry—his nerves were frazzled and his head was sent into a flare of fuzzy agony. Zane flinched, nearly letting the cup slip as his sensors picked up his friend's spike of distress.
Riyu's onslaught of slobber froze, and Sora pushed up on the stone, her eyes wide with alarm as she immediately let her powers cease. Arin dropped his sword as fright fell over his face.
"Lloyd?" Zane took a pace toward his team member, but Lloyd's palm shot up, warding off the others. The Green Ninja brought a hand to his tingling head, scrunching up his face. His other was still held in front of him, his fingers shaking ever so slightly. He took in a hesitant breath, his mind struggling to catch up.
Lloyd's students watched him closely, taking a half-step to him in sync. They could tell something was undeniably wrong; why would Sora's powers basically glitch their mentor?
"Yeah, I-I'm fine. I... don't know what that was, but I'm fine," Lloyd strained to speak. He raised his eyes to meet theirs, his concern equal.
The ninja forced his mind into a state of clarity, gripping onto that sense of serenity he had been holding only moments ago. He squeezed his eye shut as pinwheels and images of a woman's round, white face flashed across the inside of his lids. Why did it feel so unnaturally familiar? That glitchy spasm... he let out a breath, opening his eyes again to focus on the uneasy looks of his companions.
"I'm alright," Lloyd assured them, his voice barely shivering. He straightened himself, willing his body to return to its normal state.
"Are you sure?" Zane's eyes swept over the blonde in concern. Lloyd nodded, his hands leaving his face to clench into fists.
"You don't look alright," Sora commented with scepticism as she tried to heave a confused Riyu off of her.
"I'm fine," Lloyd repeated, "I think I just... I just need a break. Can you watch them for a bit, Zane?"
Zane responded with a wary nod, and Arin formed a frown in anxiety. His rose pink-haired partner slowly got up from the sunny ground as Riyu plopped himself backward.
"Are you sure? That looked pretty weird," the boy questioned while he fiddled with the scuffed hem of his marigold hoodie. The former pushed forth a smile and nodded. The last thing he wanted was for the team, and especially his budding students, to start worrying over him, especially after months of battles and tension.
"Keep sparring, Arin, I'll just see if there's anything inside I can help with," Lloyd urged, meeting Arin's gaze to give him reassurance despite his own apprehension about what occured. The noirette gave an unsure nod as Zane extended his hand and offered the forgotten cup of still, sweet tea. Lloyd glanced at his offer, and finally accepted the ceramic with a gracious expression. "Thank you."
He held the antique and glimpsed at Zane, the latter's metallic brows drawn together in concern, analyzing his leading friend. The blond brought the cup up for a small sip, the honey-like flavour oddly intense on his tongue, yet palatable, before lowering it and letting out an empty breath. His edge eased, and Lloyd gave them another glance before retreating to join the others inside and search for some task to help with. Glance
When the sun fell below the routinely cracked and smoothed walls of the monastery, Lloyd dozed to the snores being carried down the halls. It wasn't until long into the night that anything shifted within his mind. Like the sudden zap of a static shock, Sora's powers touched the recess of memory banks buried by the transition between realms, and shocked it to life.
Firstly, a memory, [memory of being in the circus with the others, one of the whatever adventure happens], interloped his dream. His droopy mind's eye watched the playback of his experience as if it had never left his awareness. Then, as the thoughts slowly fronted in his brain, rising like bubbles to the surface, and his body started to toss and turn, curling the covers, it snapped back into place like a disc being slotted into a sleeping computer.
The two planes collided, like all the colors of a kaleidoscope bursting and crashing into one. Lloyd shot up in bed with an outburst - terror, confusion, sheer relief - that merged into a muddled fright. A digital displacement split his body as a whole, his every system malfunctioning, only to be returned to normal in the same moment. Blistered pain ripped through his head, and his hands flew to grip his hair and stifle a scream.
He remembered. He remembered everything.
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and then he faints
Sorry this whole chapter is lazy writing, I'm so burnt out man
He wakes up the next morning to his name being called by Kai as the fire user walks past saying breakfast, Lloyd heard Lloyd not Lloni and goes woah, sits up, looks around, silent disbekief
And then he's like woah I'm back, stuff. Then he gets up to look at himself in the mirror parallel to in circus, woah again, touch face, pinch himself, he's real, relieved but worried about the others (circus others I mean), looks at hallway
Okay timeline explanation, so Merge happens, then Digital Circus, then he wakes up and it's Dragons Rising, then he remembers so the Digital Circus effectively happens again in full detail so he has the memories of DR but it's like three years back, so it's weird like that
Slowly walks out and follows voices to kitchen, he doesn't remember the new DR characters just the ninja, feels detached relieved all these things, hugs Kai who gets caught off guard but laughs it off, they eat, he eats like he's savoring every bite (he couldn't taste it in the circus), noticeably off behaviour from him
Then other stuff where they slowly realise smth's up, list of it:
He forgets the DR kids' names, and a scene where it's really noticeable that Lloyd avoids saying Sora's name. People really know smth's up when Lloyd manages to call Nya Pixal (she's still missing)
After that or the rest of the stuff, debriefing about what Sora did the day before
stress habit or just general habit he had in the circus was holding his horns, so he does that but has a jarring moment where his hands go through the space and He realises he has no horns anymore, but he keeps doing it subconsciously and realises they're not there
He doesn't speak as much and nods/shakes his head/uses hand gestures a lot
He doesn't know the layout of the monastery or city despite being alone there for years
He mentions Caine and other stuff, like a passing under his breath kind of mention about smth being Caine's fault (because it always is)
And more stuff like personality changes, maybe more loco, then confrontation, dk what next
It then there'd be some reunion, catching the ninja up, and defeating an enemy or something
So yep, that's that