Chapter Text
Lloyd snaps his eyes open, scrambling to move as his limbs jerked to get away from the fiery sensation that crawled all over him, the memory of the dragon’s fire burned like nothing he had ever felt, scorching through what felt like his entire being. The smell of decay was still fresh and heavy on his senses, and the image of far, far too many unnamed gravestones sat hauntingly clear in his mind. His chest heaved while he looked around, the fact that he only saw unfamiliar scenery not doing anything to slow his panicked breathing. Lloyd forced himself to sit back on whatever he was laying on previously, a cot, he realised distantly, digging his nails into the material to ground himself. He takes the time to focus, a distant echo of a lesson learned long ago assisting him.
It takes a while, moving through multiple scarily well-practiced breathing exercises usually does. Memories of being sat down by Master Wu right next to a riled up Kai resurfacing while his breath slowly returns to a normal pace. Now his mind could finally have a chance to deal with what he assumed was Source Dragon energy. Lloyd looked over himself, he was (relatively) uninjured, no melted flesh or broken bones from a fall. His gi was torn in a couple places though, and stained all over with a worrying amount of dried blood now that he looked closer, add that to the list of things he had to fix once he got out of here. Wherever ‘here’ was.
Lloyd took a minute to actually look around, greeted by bland walls and the only light source coming from an eye-level grate in the otherwise solid door. It made the cramped space the slightest more bearable, at least he could see clearly, though not that there was much to see. He craned his neck so he could peer outside, his heart sinking when he caught sight of unfortunately familiar guard attire. He was still in Imperium, though how he had ended up here was…unclear.
The last thing his memory supplied clearly was going deep below the Monastery of Imperium with Zane and receiving power from the source dragon of Energy, everything past that was bits and pieces. He remembered powering the gate, the dragons fleeing, the sound of doors bursting open along with a splitting pain to the back of his head.
He reached up, rooting through the dishevelled mess of hair on the back of his head to try and find any wound, his fingers found a section clumped together and Lloyd grimaced, gingerly picking the strands apart so he could find the root of the issue. Thankfully, it seemed like all of the blood was dried (Still hatefully matted into his hair, but he had bigger problems right now), and the precautionary concussion tests he quickly ran through yielded no signs of one, only an admittedly pretty bad headache, thank FSM.
At least the long braid Kai and Nya had put his hair into had stayed in, a little loose and probably at least three steps away from coming out entirely, but it was there, a little token of his family here with him. He really hoped the others weren’t here too, especially Arin and Sora, those kids had already been through enough, he didn’t need to drag them through more.
He anxiously worried his lip between his teeth, a bad habit he’d never been able to train himself out of. If he was here, the other ninja probably were too, sitting in the exact same predicament that Lloyd was. He shook that thought away, stubbornly clinging to a flicker of hope that maybe, just maybe they had made it out, that they were safe on the Bounty, or better yet the monastery. Not here, from what he had heard from Sora, Imperium was not kind to it’s prisoners.
With a long sigh he dragged a hand down his face, just sitting here sulking was getting him nowhere, what he needed was a plan, and a damn good one at that. Luckily, there were no shackles around his wrists or ankles, or anything else connecting him to the floor or wall. An amateur mistake, in his humble I’ve-Been-Kidnapped-More-Times-Than-I’ve-Had-Birthdays opinion. He quietly stood up, moving to the door and inspecting it.
It looked…like metal. He wasn’t exactly an expert on trapped doors, but this one had nothing truly out of the ordinary. A carved in Imperium insignia along with several strangely worshipful statements to ‘the Good Empress Beatrix,’ whoever that was. He carefully reached out to touch it, and thankfully the weird love for electrified forcefeilds didn’t extend to the prison cells, or he would have a much harder time getting out of this place.
Lloyd retreated back into the space, calling a flicker of green into his palms, there was just one thing he had left to test-
Unfortunately, the sound of footsteps clicking towards him caught his attention, making him quickly dismiss the little ball of energy. Listening closely, he was able to pick out two pairs, one lighter and clicking, the other heavyset with what sounded like claws scraping on whatever material they used for flooring here.
He only caught glimpses of them now, but one was clearly Imperian, her odd city-mandated clothes partially concealed by a white lab coat, oddly pristine despite its purpose. The other was harder to place, a large dark-furred man with feline features and purple tiger markings, along with huge menacing fangs protruding from his mouth. The man (Tiger? Man-tiger?? Tiger-man???) reminded him of an oni, in a way. He fixed his best glare on the grate, the two figures now properly coming into his line of sight, continuing their conversation as if he wasn’t even there.
“-thank the Empress Rapton actually managed to be useful for once, grabbing this one even after you had been…overpowered.” Lloyd got the sense that this woman was picking her words carefully, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose when she turned to look at him.
“I was not overpowered.” The other growled, feline features twisting up into a snarl. “Those two got lucky. That is all.”
“You were incapacitated by two children. But no matter, we traded up from that baby dragon anyways.” She smiled, gesturing towards the door in front of her. “My research tells me that this one can provide much more power than your usual dragon. And, it doesn't bite.” Lloyd scoffed at that, making sure it was loud enough for the two to hear. Labcoat lady ignored him, continuing her discussion. “With this type of energy we may even be able to power the Photacs without Ana’s assistance. I haven’t looked nearly enough into the effects of meshing elemental energy into our current grid, though I suppose it can’t be that difficult. All elemental abilities do come from dragons, after all.”
Lloyd crossed his arms, he was absolutely not in the mood to be used as a living battery, thank you very much. He had already been there done that, and definitely wasn’t going for round two anytime soon, much less for Imperium. He had just about tuned out the woman’s rambling by now, her voice was no benefit to the current headache he was trying to fight off. He busies himself with watching the tiger-man’s face instead. He’s listening with an utterly bored expression, eyes narrowed and flicking from him, back to her.
“The fact that they’ve existed for this long is utterly fascinating! We could power entire city blocks with just one-” An annoyed growl cut through the woman’s words, her mouth clicking shut when the other spoke.
“Just tell me where you want me to put him.”
“Ah- yes. The reason I brought you.” The Imperian woman fixes her glasses again. “Bring it to the advanced systems lab. We have space there.” She pulled something from the lab coat’s pocket, a thin keycard, it looked like.
Lloyd uncrossed his arms, angling himself so that the green light gathering in his hands was mostly obscured by the rest of his body along with the door.
He watched as both stepped closer to the door, several beeps could be heard, it was probably the woman entering a passcode. A louder sound was followed by two low clicks, the door just beginning to slide open when Lloyd threw a ball of energy through it, aiming for the first of the two he saw, which happened to be the tiger-man. The force of it threw him to the ground, arms over his head.
He darted out of the cell, eyes narrowing at the new harshness of the fluorescent lights. Another energy ball was lobbed at a group of three Imperium guards to his left, they had just grabbed their blasters and were preparing to aim them at him. He stamped down the twinge of guilt he felt for possibly hurting them, he could feel sorry for enemy soldiers all he wanted once he was out of here, but now was not the time. He stepped back as the dark-furred tiger-man grabbed at his legs, he had drawn a very large hammer, and was currently in the process of getting to his feet. Lloyd, very reasonably, did not want to know what that thing could do to his bones. So he chose the better, much more reasonable option, running.
He took off down the right-side hallway, shoving soldiers into each other as he ran past, ducking preemptively to avoid the oncoming blaster fire. He turned right again, and then left. Doing as Jay had taught him long ago: throw your element at the keypad and pray to the First Master that it opened. And so far Lloyd would report a resounding success rate for it. Especially right now. He did his best to take increasingly random turns, he sure as hell didn’t know where he was headed, but he needed to get the guards off his tail.
It brought him further into the building, (It was more of a maze than anything, which was absolutely false advertising.) He ran into more and more civilians, startling random scientists and technicians, even running into a clearly frazzled worker who by the looks of it, was probably just an intern, but their collision caused him to drop all of his paperwork. Lloyd cringed, calling out a quick “Sorry!” before breaking back into a run when he saw the familiar gold plated armour of soldiers appearing around the corner.
After far too many turns he eventually noticed there were no more thundering footsteps chasing after him, he let his pace slow to a brisk walk, trying to find anything that might lead to an exit. Though it seemed his luck had run dry, there was no text in any language he could read, all of the boards and information panels in the hallways were useless to him. So he had absolutely no direction in where he was going. Great. Just, great.
He looked around frantically, finally latching onto what he really hoped was a map of whatever section he was in. There were several arrows of different colours pointing different ways, he decided to follow the red ones, red usually meant exit in Ninjago, he just hoped Imperium followed that trend.
“Left, straight twice, left again, and then right.” Lloyd murmured to himself, reciting the directions as he hurried through the halls once more.
He got about halfway through the list before one of the doors slammed down with a scrape of metal, effectively cutting him off. He immediately turned, hoping to get through one of the other two doors instead, but they were shut as well, their keypads flashing a bright red. Lloyd spun around to head back the way he came, only to be met with a blur of black and red, and a large hammer swinging into his side.
The impact sent him flying, and he was pretty sure that he had heard something crack with the blow. He landed in a heap on the floor, momentarily dazed before he drew in a gasping breath. Trying desperately to heave air back into his lungs.
“So this is the master of energy, destiny’s chosen.” A growl rang through the room, the tiger man from before circling him as Lloyd pushed himself up with shaky hands, looking at the other and seeing that his purple striping had been replaced with red. “What a waste.”
“At least introduce yourself before you start insulting me. Bad guys are usually all over that stuff.” He muttered, quickly rolling out of the way as the warhammer came down right where his chest would have been, hitting the floor with a crunch of metal. He used the wall for support to stand, watching as the tiger hefted his weapon back into his hands. The other bared his teeth at him, Lloyd mirroring the gesture as he dropped into a fighting stance of his own.
“I am Lord Ras of the Wyldness, you insolent child.” He snarled, words punctuated with a swing that the elemental barely dodged.
“First of all- rude. Second, I’m twenty-seven! Hardly a child.” He darted around the larger man, throwing a few blasts of energy at him. It was easily blocked by his hammer. The weapon was…strange, to say the least. He could feel an odd energy from it, faintly similar to when he could still turn his energy into the element of earth, but not exactly. Stranger yet, it seemed to absorb his power, the item holding strong when it should at least be thrown a little bit backward.
Lloyd frowned, deciding to try a new strategy. Attempting an, in hindsight, frankly pathetic sweep-the-leg maneuver. Only succeeding in stumbling over his feet and earning a harsh slam to the middle of his back for it as the tiger lunged into him. He hit the ground hard, the impact dazing him for a moment before quickly twisting around so he couldn’t be pinned as effectively.
The two wrestled on the floor for a few moments, he had managed to get ahold of the large hammer and shove it away, the object sliding across the floor as Lloyd kicked at Ras’s stomach, shoving a hand into his face and clawing at it, aiming particularly for his eyes. Partially to obscure his vision, partially to try to damage him.
The tiger grabbed his left hand, wrenching it away from him and easily pinning it to the floor, so Lloyd tried the same with his other hand, only to find that one meeting the same fate just as easily. He curled his hands into fists the best he could, calling on his power and pushing it towards Ras.
The small blast was just what he needed, a flash of green light and the grip on his limbs loosened just enough for Lloyd to elbow the man in the face as hard as he could. An enraged cry filled the room, deep and growling loud enough to seem like it shook the very floor he was laying on. He attempted to go in for another, aiming to sock the tiger right in the nose, pairing it with shoving his feet up at his stomach once more.
Nothing could have prepared him for how easily Ras caught his wrist between his jaws, fangs sinking into flesh as he crunched down on it with a sickening CRACK. Lloyd screamed, the sound of his bones scraping against each other grating on his ears as he tried to pull his hand away from the tiger’s maw. FSM it hurt, he had had broken bones before, yes. But it’s one thing to cleanly break your ankle from a rough landing, and it’s entirely another to have large teeth put through your right hand as it’s essentially used as a chew toy.
Several more crunches echoed around the room, the fangs squeezing tight once more before finally dropping him. Lloyd immediately pulled his hand close, shoving himself as far away as he could get from the lord, which all things considered wasn’t very far before a hand grabbed his braid and tugged, the painful sensation stinging his scalp as he was dragged backward.
“Enough of this.” He twisted around, watching as Ras swiped his tongue over his now crimson-stained fangs before spitting the blood from his mouth. The tiger stood up, letting go of him and walking over to where his weapon lay discarded on the floor. “You are going to come with me. Or I am going to kill you here, and spare myself the trouble.” He growled, staring down at the elemental.
Lloyd glanced down at his wrist, blood still dripping down the limb and dirtying his gi even further, then looked around the hall. All three of the other exists were blocked, leaving no chance for him to run. His only other option would be to fight, and that hadn’t gone well when he wasn’t down a hand. There was likely no way he was getting out of this, even if he used his element, the hammer Ras was carrying could deflect it much too well for his liking. Not to mention it’s physical properties as well.
He sighed, and reminded himself that this was not giving up, he was not quitting.
“...fine.” He gritted out, wincing as he raised his hands in surrender. “I’ll come with you.”