In The End - Chapter 6 - CassandraCainBB (2024)

Chapter Text

Below the territory of the Capital Region and bordering Inno, the southwest corner of Ninjago City was controlled by the rich region of Geum. Like the Capital Region, the Geum Region went along the western coast and was home to more powerful figures and companies that were well endowed with money. That money was visible in their cityscapes, transportation systems, and public accommodations.

Geum Region’s main district, Opal, was home to the most famous marketplace in all of Ninjago. It was an annual affair that began early in the spring and did not die down until very late in the fall, when the weather at last got too cold. It was one of the most notorious traditions in all of Ninjago and inspired many travelers attempting to sell their wares. As such, it was under tight imperial control and supervision at all times, but the tax revenue that the empire gained from it was far too valuable for the empire to have any reason to shut it down. It was safe, it was beautiful, and it was full of Ninjagoan culture.

The Opal District spared no expense on the beautiful parkways that housed Goldgrain Market. Gracefully hanging willows provided shade over the unending, wide pathway that cut through shops draped with tapestries, tent shades set up over cheap fold-out tables, expensive jewelry protected by hired ruffians, and endless amount of heavenly smells coming from foods stalls. There were delicacies, sweets, and meals from every corner of Ninjago, from the northern village towns and their rice balls to the central city’s craze of fake dragon meats. Colors covered tents and tarps, fruits and vegetables spilling over the front of stands, trinkets hanging along strings and swaying in the breeze, sellers wandering the crowds and offering items. Sunlight spilled over the pathway, warming the brisk spring day through the clear sky above.

Above all, the noise of the crowd was overwhelming and all-consuming. Families chatted, traders haggled, sellers shouted enthusiastically. A mother pushed a stroller through the crowd, her husband with another child sitting on his shoulders, a hat too big on the child’s head. A man in a sharp suit was followed by a scurrying woman in a pencil skirt, a holoscreen being tapped on in front of her. A man in a colorful poncho carried a guitar bag, shifting through the crowd. Some people wore puffy coats and hanbok, both, traditional and modern mixed as it often was in Ninjago City’s upper regions. Street performers played from various points in the crowd, a guitar strumming a slow ballad while somewhere else, a speaker played some mixtapes.

Kai had at first worried Lloyd would be as overwhelmed as Kai had been his first visit. After all, the boy had never seen a crowd so large and never-ending in his life, even with his late-night excursion. On the contrary—Lloyd could barely keep his hands to himself, shoving through people and reaching toward every stand they passed. Kai was considering putting one of those kid-leashes on the teenager, already having near lost him three times. Luckily, Dreadmaw’s leftover qi that had been left in Lloyd was allowing Kai to sense his presence.

Lloyd’s green eyes all but glowed with wonder as he leaned into the personal spaces of traders and customers alike. They spoke loudly over the commotion of the crowd.

“What’s this?”

“Candied strawberries. They’re better frozen.”

“Oh, what’s this?”

“Kebabs. Crab…? Yeah, crab and shrimp. Not a bad combination.”

“I love shrimp. I’ll take two!—Ohhh, what’s this?”

“You know what an egg roll is.”

“Why is it the size of my head?”

“I don’t know, why are you shaming size preferences? People like what they like.”

“…You’re a bad person.”

“Aw, that means a lot coming from you. Eat your kebabs. Hey, look, gelato.”

“I don’t know what that is, either.”

“…Oh, Master. Two bowls, please! Amarena, yeah. Kid, would you stop double-fisting those things already? You can’t eat all that.”

“…You want this one?”

Kai huffed, but traded the bowl of gelato for the long stick of alternating roasted crab and steamed shrimp. It did smell absolutely divine, especially with the breeze being chillier under the shade of the tent they stood under. But Lloyd was not leaving this place without trying some gelato.

Kai juggled the shopping bags that lined his arms, shifting them until he could drop their coinbag back into his pocket, then finally took a bite of the crab. It melted in his mouth—it was real crab, savory and fresh. Someone had outdone themselves, but honestly, he’d already forgotten where they’d gotten it from. The prince had grabbed so much random sh*t for Kai to fumble to pay for, Kai wouldn’t be able to tell the kebab place from the homemade soap place.

“Maybe we should take a break!” Kai shouted over the crowd, but he could already see Lloyd eyeing the next place—some sort of fresh honey stall.

Lloyd predictably pouted at him, but Kai raised his tired arms and made a dramatic grimace at the shrug of his shoulders. Lloyd rolled his eyes at Kai’s guilt-tripping. “But I want to see them all! Look, they’ve got painted bamboo hats over there!”

The prince gestured insistently across the river of people. Kai sighed. “Alright, fine! Then we’re sitting down to eat this stuff!”

He grinned so brightly and Kai couldn’t regret that. He hadn’t seen Lloyd so irrevocably joyful since…well, it had probably been years.

Kai struggled to keep up with Lloyd as the boy rushing through the throng. He excused himself and bumped into people, especially with his wide girth of bags. He cursed to himself—he was far too used to people parting for him. Now, he was nobody, forced to scramble on the level of the rest of the mortals. He’d forgotten what this was like.

Some people did glance over and stare or move out of the way if they happened to glimpse the scars that dug through his eyebrows and disappeared beneath his mask, but the mask covered most of it, so they were left wondering. He ignored them, gritting his teeth, and focusing on Lloyd’s retreating back. Doing this for him, Kai reminded himself. He’s enjoying himself. It’s the least I can do after what he went through.

“That one!” Lloyd pointed to one of the bamboo hats hanging from the top of the stall. It was a gorgeously hand-decorated scene of a bamboo forest, quite fitting for the material it was made from. Pandaphants were painted with gentle strokes, a glistening river flowing across the scene. It was expertly made.

The man nodded with a smile below his pencil mustache. “Of course, of course, young master! Here you are! Pandapants are such wise creatures, and they say the bamboo forests are the oldest in the world! You must see more than most.”

The man handed it down. He’d probably recognized Lloyd was someone with money because of the haori. Though it was more casual than most of his closet, it was still finely made, and Lloyd’s clothes were pristinely clean. Or maybe the man was just a real smooze who was good at flattery. A lot of the sellers were.

“Wow,” Lloyd repeated with awe as he put it over his golden curls. The hat matched the green of his haori and the white of his T-shirt. His eyes sparkled. “Kai, you should get one too! Oh, what about that one?”

He gestured toward one hanging on the wall behind the long-faced seller. The man turned, delighted to be making twice the profit. “That is a good choice!”

The man brought the hat around. On closer inspection, it was reinforced with dried palm leaves—they would last years, but the beauty of them would eventually begin to splinter. The second bamboo hat was covered in painted layers of tiger lily flowers, more red than their traditional orange, their angles exemplified and the strikes of ink thick over the paint in a rendition of ancient styles.

“Tiger lilies are said to bring good luck and prosperity!” The man said, handing the hat into Lloyd’s waiting hands. “In the southern regions, they represent success and honor. A good fit for your friend, here, I’m sure!”

The man’s unoccupied hand had subtly reached out with an open palm towards Kai while he was speaking so excitedly to Lloyd. Kai scoffed softly, but set down a few bags to dig out his coinpurse. He dropped a handful of gold coins into the man’s hand. The man’s mouth dropped open when he glanced over.

“Keep the change,” Kai dismissed.

The man stared at him with a look that said his greed had been satiated for the first time in his life.

“Thank you!” Lloyd sung as Kai grabbed up the bags he’d set aside, then took up his gelato and licked the top. His nose got cold.

As Kai elbowed their way back through the crowd, Lloyd took the second hat and hovered it over his head. Kai eyed him with warning and Lloyd very carefully lowered it over Kai’s done hair. It did it’s job very well and the sun disappeared from Kai’s eyes.

“If only he’d had fire lilies,” Lloyd sighed dramatically, digging his spoon into his gelato. “It would have been the perfect fit. I wonder if he does commissions.”

“I doubt he was the artist,” Kai told him, lifting his right arm higher to avoid taking out a child with Lloyd’s giftbags. “Artists usually aren’t so fawning when they’re sharing their work. They are well-made, though.”

“Oh, I should have gotten one for—”

Lloyd cut himself off. They briefly separated to avoid a couple walking arm-in-arm. Kai glowered at them, but they didn’t seem to notice, masked and now with the low brim he wore.

Lloyd’s expression was downcast when he stuck back to Kai’s side. He shoved a spoonful of gelato in his mouth and shook his head.

“Gotten one for who?” Kai prompted.

Lloyd shrugged. “…No one, I guess. Who would I get one for?”

A week ago, he probably would have begged to get one for his father. The man had been promoting some imperial-inspired ones with the symbol of the phoenix and the colors of the emperor. Perhaps Brad, but he was gone.

“What about Kurogane’s daughter?” Kai asked. “She’s your friend, isn’t she? I’m sure she’d like a gift.” That brat would love to be rained with affection from anyone royal.

“No.” Lloyd’s face pinched. “We’re not friends.”

Kai quirked an eyebrow. Last he’d heard, Lloyd had been vomiting his adoration for her all over Kai, before his last execution duty. Now, Lloyd looked upset, but…that scowl spoke of anger.

“C’mon,” he bumped Lloyd’s shoulder and tilted his head toward an escape between two crowded tents.

They slipped through the alleyway of tarps, stepping off the stone roadway and onto the grasses of the park. They were fresh and green, the trees above them ancient and heavy, leaves full. They swayed in the light breeze, throwing the sunlight between their branches. The noise of the crowd was still present, but it faded into background noise. Others looking for solace from the chaos had wandered into the grasses of the park, sitting and eating, wandering away from the food trucks that sat between the lines of stalls, some picnicking on blankets, others spreading out their prizes from the market. A dog on a leash barked at them briefly before it was hushed by the owner. A group of young adults, or maybe older teenagers, were kicking around a ball and being generally rowdy with one another.

Both Kai and Lloyd took a deep, body-odor free breath. Kai was the one to cave to the ground first, finding a spot near a tree and sitting into an immediate cross-legged seat. He hooked a finger over his mask to pull it down under his chin again, like Lloyd’s was. The bags set down on either side of him. His back breathed a similar sigh of relief—after his fourth day of treatments, his wounds had almost closed, leaving behind the ache of tender skin. He let the straps hang on his arms while he chomped on the seafood stick, the gelato bowl quickly melting in his other hand.

Lloyd glared into his gelato bowl, eating from it aggressively. When he looked up at Kai, his gaze was serious. “I think Lady Harumi told my father about me being in the city. It must have been how he found out.”

“What a bitch,” Kai muttered, his mouth full of crab. He swallowed. “What makes you think that?”

“She came to the party with us,” Lloyd sighed. “I don’t know why on earth Brad thought it was a good idea to invite her. She saw me and left immediately after that—then the boneguard came. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I should have seen it coming—even if we were ever friends, she’ll always be more loyal to my father.”

Kai took another bite and chewed, stewing with annoyance. That little brat was the one responsible for his punishment? Her attitude had always been annoying. Even as a child, she’d been bossy and had made Lloyd cry of frustration on a few occasions.

Then, there was the way she’d been allowed opinion during the Governor’s Assembly. With every decision the governors made, the emperor would look to Kai first, for approval—then to the brat. She was barely nineteen years old, and a mortal, she shouldn’t have an opinion on state matters. It had irritated Kai endlessly during the three-day period that the girl was treated to be on the same level as him. It had given her a boldness she had far from deserved.

“Bitch,” Kai repeated. Lloyd nodded, rolling his eyes under the brim of his hat.

“For some reason, I just didn’t believe she’d be so willing to betray me like that,” Lloyd continued. “I’m going to have political power over all of the governors come my coronation, and maybe one day my father will pass on the crown to me. And if I’m right about her, I’m going to do everything to stop her from being successful in politics. Doesn’t she understand that? Why would she even risk betraying me? Just to get praise from my father? It doesn’t seem worth it.”

“Maybe she thought you wouldn’t find out,” Kai offered, tossing his finished crab stick into the grass. It’d decompose—eventually. Probably. “Poor planning, if that’s the case. She’s young.”

“I don’t think so,” Lloyd tapped his spoon to his lips. “She’s far from stupid. She must have known what she was doing.”

“Then maybe she just didn’t care if you found out.”

Kai frowned at his gelato bowl. It sloshed around under his glum look. f*ck! Lloyd’s was still solid and wafting cold air. Life was so unfair.

“But that would mean she’s not afraid of the consequences. Does she think I don’t have the spine or something?” Lloyd scowled. “She had you punished in front of me. I’m not just going to forget that.”

“I have no idea,” Kai shrugged helplessly, setting his melted gelato aside, and pulling his mask back over his nose. “Politics are always so annoying. They’re all always trying to get what they want in the most roundabout ways possible because that’s all they can do, weak as they are.”

Kai sighed and pulled his arms from the straps of the bags—the wrapped hands had been a good call, they’d saved his forearms the stress lines—and laid backwards. The cushioning of the bandages, his hoodie, and the plush grass beneath him allowed him to lay in relative comfort for the first time in days. He lifted the hat and put it over his face, turning the sunlight a warm orange through the bamboo strips. The sway of the grass and the chirping of dancing birds, chatter distant, filled him with an old nostalgia. He laced his fingers under his head.

This was nice. Maybe Lloyd hadn’t been the only one in need of a break from his responsibilities. Sure, the purpose of the trip was to keep Lloyd from spiraling completely into despair and forever associating Ninjago City with the worst day of his life—but Kai could multitask.

Feet approaching them through the grasses had Kai lifting his hat and glancing up through a narrowed eye. One of the kids fooling around with the leather ball was fearlessly walking up to them, the colorful ball tucked under his arms. His friends were chatting, some waiting for him.

“Hey, my name’s Zhonyi,” the guy stopped, gesturing back from Lloyd to his friends. His smile was genuine and he was breathing hard. “We’re trying to play a game of twida but we’re one man down—you wanna chill with us?”

Lloyd’s face split into a smile, forgetting his concerns about the Kurogane girl. He glanced at Kai. Kai’s body remained relaxed, one hand still under his head, and he studied the boy. No one around, including Zhongyi, had any sort of qi presence, which automatically made them no threat.

Kai dropped the hat back onto his face and waved his hand vaguely in permission. His fingers laced back together under his head. “I’ll watch the bags.”

He heard Lloyd pop up to his feet. “That’d be great! Uh, I don’t know what twida is, though.”

“Oh, seriously? Dude, you’ve gotta be the first person I’ve ever met to not know. Are you from the outskirts or something? Don’t worry, it’s really simple—there’s these two teams and they each have a goal…”

The two of them wandered off. Kai didn’t bother keeping an eye peeled, like he usually would—being able to sense Lloyd’s qi presence had it’s perks, strange as it was to be able to do. The longer they stayed away from Dreadmaw, though, the stranger it became. The bond should have faded the way that Kai’s bond with her had, and he would assume that would get rid of the leftover qi, but still it remained. Weirder still, the qi didn’t feel like Dreadmaw’s hot blaze of energy. It was…calm. Peaceful, like the sway of the trees and the songs of the birds. It no longer felt like Dreadmaw—it just felt like Lloyd.

Had Lloyd somehow developed qi overnight? It was…well, it should have been impossible. Qi was a layer of the soul that only celestial beings were aware of, including elemental masters, dragons, and oni, along with some mortals born with more attuned senses. Every person had a certain potential of qi. A small portion of that potential would be reached naturally, and the rest could be gained through practice. If Kai hadn’t trained as hard as he had since childhood, his fire would only be a fraction of what it was now, as the strength of his element was connected to the strength of his qi.

Normal people had next to no qi, so little that Kai could barely sense them if he had his hands on them. That was their full potential.

If Lloyd had ever had the potential to grow his qi, and whatever inherit powers he may have from his oni side, Kai would have been able to sense it since he was a child. These things didn’t just happen spontaneously.

But it had. Lloyd had gone from having no qi presence, to having one above that of a normal person. And his eyes were green. And he was talking to dragons.

Kai had a sinking feeling. But whatever he suspected these powers were—nothing explained where they had come from. Kai was at a complete loss. And, if he were to be honest, he was a bit afraid. What if something unholy had given Lloyd these powers? What if they hurt him? What if his father discovered them? Kai couldn’t think of anything worse—the emperor would probably lose his sh*t. Kai would have to find a way to hide Lloyd’s eyes when they got back. Captain Hutchins and Chamberlain Noble would help him—they’d always been willing to protect Lloyd from Garmadon.

He looked up at the peaked inside of the bamboo hat, his gaze dull. Another thing to add to the list.

He forced it from his mind and tried to relax.

At one point, Kai’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He blinked blearily and lifted his hat to pull the holoscreen up to his face—he had about a thousand messages, but the only one he cared enough to be notified of was Skylor’s. She had a few tips she’d found especially intriguing, the rest of them going to Tox and Ash for them to hunt through. ‘Free tonight?’ she’d messaged.

Kai sighed and turned it off, letting the empty black frame fall onto his chest.

Lloyd came running back up to him, out of breath, red in the face, but grinning like a madman a long while later. He’d wrapped his haori around his waist and his new hat hung on his back by the string over his throat. He didn’t seem to notice the discomfort. He was also sweaty—Kai offered him one of the fresh new deodorants they’d gotten from the market. All-natural and everything.

Lloyd rolled his eyes, but grabbed it. He slipped his mask back up over his face after regaining control of his breathing.

“See ya, Kazuki!” One of the young guys called out.

“Yeah, see you, man!”

Three more of them waved.

Lloyd waved back. “Travel safe, guys! Man, they were so nice. How’s your tanning been?”

“Too much shade,” Kai sighed in dramatic disappointment. “Guess next time we’ll have to go to the beach, instead.”

Kai didn’t know which part of that was making Lloyd burst with excitement—the promise that this wouldn’t be their last field trip, or the fact that they’d go to the beach.

But there was also the implication of ‘next time.’ “We don’t have to go home, yet, do we? There’s so much sun left in the day.”

“There’s only so long we could realistically be hanging out in the Dragon’s Keep before the servants get suspicious.” Even with Captain Hutchins’ help. “But I’ve still got another place to show you today. You ready to go?”

“Oh, yeah!”

Kai collected the mounds of bags, Lloyd tossed their gelato bowls, and they went off to flag down a taxi service. There were plenty hovertaxis along the streets, moving along with the traffic of other hovercars and the rare wheeled automobiles. Most that passed him and Lloyd at the edge of the park had red neon characters saying OCCUPIED, but one finally zoomed towards the side of the street reading VACANT in green.

The inside of the taxi was sleek, but it smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. It seemed even in the rich districts, not everything could be so clean. Kai wrinkled his nose, but Lloyd didn’t seem to notice the faint smell. Curse Kai’s heightened smoke perception.

They slid into the leather seats. Lloyd was much calmer than he had been on their ride over to Goldgrain Market—he’d been touching all of the taxi’s blinking panels with the curiosity of a kitten. Kai settled the bags at their feet and typed in an address to the holoscreen above the backwards-facing seats. Lloyd sat across from him.

“So, can I ask, or is it another—”

“Surprise,” Kai confirmed with a crooked grin.

“Alright, keep your secrets,” Lloyd waved him off, diving into his bags of goodies.

Lloyd had gotten three jars of jam, wrapped with potato sack bows—the soaps prior mentioned, swirled with all kind of colors—handmade candies of even more colorful variety—a scarf, a blanket—seeds, a small cactus plant—knitted gloves?—some odd-looking jewelry—herbal tea—a whole trove of entirely useless things. But Lloyd looked down at it all as if it were greater than the treasure in the Keep. He cradled a handful of wood-carved statues that seemed to be some kind of reptile—he picked up each candle and sniffed it pleasantly.

Kai attempted not to read too far into Lloyd’s strange joy. But it was impossible to ignore the complete lack of purples and blacks in all of the things he’d gotten. It seemed unlikely, considering the amount of imperial-themed trinkets there had been in the market, that it had been by chance. Lloyd finally had things, had chosen things that weren’t gifted to him or provided for him. And they were all useless—but Kai supposed they were all his.

The ride didn’t last very long. The Opal District was not only famous for it’s market. It was more likely that the market had grown famous because of the District’s claim to be the most beautiful corner of Ninjago City. It had a few places outside of the market that made a stake like that possible—including it’s legendary botanical gardens. The largest in the world, with the most extravagant and varied plants from all over Ninjago.

The green house was something that truly captured the word grandiose. It was larger than the palace of Shadowspire, the main dome in the center of the green yards, fenced in by four walls of greenhouse pathways. Smaller domes rose where the corners of the pathways met. Beyond the clear glass windows, built with condensation, rows and rows of flower beds and carefully manicured lawns lay. Toward the large green houses, the stone pathway was protected on both sides by cherry trees.

Lloyd’s mouth dropped open. Every cherry tree was in full bloom, apparently made of nothing but gorgeously delicate pink petals, some of which floated down with a majesty in the light skip of the breeze. Families and other Ninjagoan citizens out on walks strayed under the might of the cherry blossoms.

While Lloyd got out, under a trance, Kai ordered another two hours out of the taxi so that it would hold onto their bags. After he got out, it remained locked down on the side of the street where it was.

“They’re beautiful,” Lloyd breathed as they walked beneath the cherry trees. “I heard there weren’t many left in the city.”

“Yeah,” Kai murmured. “They were a symbol of the royal family before your father. Most people won’t ever know—but the emperor remembers. They are pretty, though, aren’t they?”

Far ahead, the stone steps lay. Though people wandered the grove before the front of the botanical gardens, no one climbed up or down the massively wide steps into the numerous glass doors that offered entrance. The reason was immediately apparent—on every door, there was a flyer that said Closed For Maintenance. Reservations May Be Rescheduled.

Lloyd slowed beside them as they went up the steps. He was visibly disappointed under his hat. “Damn. What a day for them to be shut down.”

Kai just smiled, shrugged, and pulled open one of the doors. A burst of warmer air greeted them. Lloyd gave him a strange look, but stepped inside.

They were immediately greeted with a man with a nametag and a badge. He smiled at them above his slick zhongshan suit. “Good afternoon, sirs. We’ve been expecting you. Here are information pamphlets with maps included—would you like the private tour of the gardens or would you prefer to wander the grounds?”

Lloyd took the pamphlets, opening one up curiously. The map was a large one. The prince fumbled to open it up all the way.

“We’d rather be left to ourselves,” Kai told the man shortly.

He nodded, folding his hands together with a pleasant smile. “Excellent. If you don’t mind, our staff will be using the day to prune the plants. Say the word if you would like them to leave any of the areas. Lord Shiroki sends his regards to the Shogun.”

The man bowed to them, gesturing towards the opposite doorway that would lead them into the yard of the gardens. Kai tugged at Lloyd’s haori to pull him forward when the boy got too absorbed in the map, his eyes blown wide.

“Did you rent Opal’s Botanical Gardens?” Lloyd snickered as they stepped out.

“No,” Kai said, mock-offended. “…I just called in a favor.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

And you’re a prince! It didn’t seem ridiculous to Kai.

“Hey, you like flowers, don’t you? Come on—I’m sure there’s some weird-ass plants we can find somewhere.”

“Bet I can find weirder ones than you.”

“You’re on.”

-

It wasn’t until they had landed that Kai realized that Lloyd’s qi had vanished, along with any presence in Kai’s mind aside from the dragon that had set them down so carefully. Lloyd was busy pulling the bags from the horn of the saddle, smiling to himself while Kai worked to loosen the saddle under Dreadmaw’s girth. She rumbled with annoyance, Kai able to feel the irritation the saddle straps had left between her scales. The metal bits of the saddle had warped a bit, stuck to her heat for so long.

When Lloyd’s emotions didn’t react to her annoyance, Kai glanced over at the prince. His qi presence was abruptly back to being just as negligible as it had been his whole life. Kai supposed the shared qi of the dragon communication was gone, after all. Strange. And Lloyd’s eyes had gone back to their usual mute red. Both of their hats sat over their shoulders, the string a light pressure at the base of Kai’s throat.

“Can you still sense her?” Kai asked while he worked. He finally unhooked one of her shoulders and ducked under her neck to unhook the other. The dragon let out a smokey exhale and flexed her joints.

Lloyd set down the bags and seemed to concentrate, looking towards Dreadmaw. The dragon reached her mind towards Kai with confusion, as if to ask why the connection had broken. He didn’t have an answer.

Lloyd huffed. He reached up to grab his head with a grimace. “No. Not a thing.”

“Don’t worry.” Kai unhooked the last strap and began to carefully tug the saddle off the side. The dragon laid herself on the ground with a heavy huff, giving Kai a better angle to catch it. He grunted under the awkward weight. “Newly unlocked abilities can be fickle—hard to control. We’ll start working at it during training and you’ll get the hang of it.”

“Awesome.” Lloyd’s grimace didn’t convey much enthusiasm. He made a sound of pain, wincing, and dug his palm into his temple.

Kai hooked the saddle back up on the wall of the colosseum. The orange torches flickered, sparks jumping as Dreadmaw’s large movements made them sway.

Kai patted Dreadmaw’s neck, ‘Good job, girl,’ and she rumbled, resting her head down on the stone floor. He felt her exhaustion through their bond. She’d spent much of the day flying to keep suspicion off of them on their return.

“You okay?” Kai’s hand trailed off the dragon’s scales. “Those elevation changes from flying are no joke. It takes a while to get used to.”

“Yeah, I’m…I’m good,” Lloyd dropped his hand, his smile a bit wearier. “Just a headache. Good idea to come back, actually—I didn’t realize how tired I was.”

“Hate to break it to you, but it’s almost time for supper with your father,” Kai told the boy, eyes flickering up out of the coliseum. The sides of the mountains were being painted with a warm glow, the sunset sliding through the cliffsides of the Pass. “But you can rest afterwards. I won’t be joining you tonight—I’ve got more work in the city.”

Lloyd groaned. “I don’t want to be alone with him. He’s going to make me talk to him again.”

“There are worse things he could do than asking how your day’s been,” Kai reminded him dryly, eyebrow quirking. “Maybe try to keep him happy instead of pissing him off.”

“But…I can’t just be okay with him. Things can’t…They can’t go back to the way it was before. I can’t unsee it. Every time I look at him—I…I just see the blood. And…him laughing.”

“So pretend.” Kai shrugged.

“Like you do?”

“It hasn’t failed me for ten years, so I’d say it has a pretty good track record.”

Lloyd did not look encouraged by this. “I don’t want to pretend for ten years—or my whole life! I…Look, I’ve been thinking—ever since that night, really…I love the empire, Kai, I do—but it has problems. The corruption from the top trickles to the bottom, I can see that now. Innocent people that are supposed to be under our protection get hurt because of it. I know it amuses my father, so he lets it go on, but—when I become Crown Prince, I want to change that. I want the empire to really be for the people. It’s our job to give everyone the happiest lives they can have and it’s about time we start doing that for the world, isn’t it? Or else the empire is no better than the serpentine or any of the other failed kingdoms of the past.”

Dreadmaw’s head perked up when the swirl of Kai’s emotions took her off guard. Her tail beat the ground and she swung her head his way—childish giddiness on her end of their bond in response to the swoop of Kai’s heart.

He couldn’t form words to respond to Lloyd for a moment. Not because he’d thought of what to say in the face of such an announcement a million times, but because he’d thought of it too often. Because this is what he’d done it all for. And Lloyd was saying it so easily, as he picked some ash off of his haori and frowned down at a smudge on it.

Lloyd looked up when Kai didn’t respond, his face a bit red from the boldness of his statements. But his determined gaze didn’t back down—filled, now, with a fire that hadn’t been there, even before the incident in the throne room.

“Will you help me?” The prince asked.

Kai couldn’t even smile—the breathless relief in his chest was too overwhelming. Dreadmaw shook her body, attempting to shake off the crash of the emotions.

No matter how he replied, his tone could not ever portray to Lloyd just how much the request meant. “Yes. Of course I will.”

Lloyd’s smile was of a relief that paled in comparison, even if he would never know to what extent.

The two of them left Dreadmaw to rest, Kai closing the heavy doors of the Keep behind them. The pale light of Shadowspire swallowed them outside of the colosseum. On the stone steps beyond, Kai nudged Lloyd and challenged him to sneak back into the palace without anyone noticing—mostly because Kai needed to do the same, dressed in civilian clothes as he was. If Lloyd had been shocked to see him in high tops, he might legitimately give a guard a heart attack. The Lord Chamberlain was getting up there in years—Kai didn’t know how much more grief the man could take.

Lloyd grinned at his challenge and melded into the walls of the garden. Kai was able to eye him flitting through the foliage a few times, but the boy was doing well for himself. Kai knew the moment he disappeared from Lloyd’s view completely, because the prince whipped his head around with a frustrated frown. Kai chuckled silently. As soon as Lloyd was safely within the palace walls, Kai peeled off from him.

There wasn’t a soul that noticed him between the stone steps and his own bedchambers. He sighed as he closed the door behind him, as silently as he had opened it. He didn’t need to flick his wrist for the fireplace and the torches in the room to burst to life with a healthy glow. Finally, out of the pale light once again. He glanced at his desk—the amount of papers piled up were deceptively few, but the holoscreen next to them seemed heavy enough to cripple the wood. He just knew he had thousands of unread documents that would sooner or later demand his attention. He groaned and thumped his head against the door behind him. Give him a master-damned riot any day. He was going to have to do paperwork while putting in the legwork for Garmadon’s new orders. The First Master truly hated him.

His heavy armor sat upon it’s stand, facing him as if a menacing being of it’s own. In the reflection of his mirror, it looked like he was facing himself. Poetic—and ridiculous. He stripped, his back providing far less complaints than it had the day before, and he donned the heavy armor.

With it on, he returned to Lloyd’s bedchambers to walk him to supper. He was afforded a new report by one of his young lieutenants on the way there.

“The captain told me to inform you, commander, that the glitch in the system at the barricade is being looked in to, as per your request,” the young guard said, striding alongside Kai. “Reports have confirmed that the glitch seemed to have been caused by physical damage rather than electrical interference. The hardware of the on-sight scanning systems were crushed. They don’t know how—there were no harsh weather warnings and there are at least a dozen witnesses that say no one touched the scanners or holos before they blew.”

Kai hummed. He’d suspected as much. “Anything else?”

“No, my lord. Aside from the arrival of Lady Harumi Kurogane earlier this afternoon. The Emperor has requested that she and Doctor Borg join him and the prince for evening meal.”

Kai frowned under his helm. “That will be all.”

The guard bowed his head and broke off from Kai’s heavy stride.

Kai had not been made aware that Kurogane’s daughter would be invited back to the palace. The emperor must have made it a private message. And the only reason Kai wouldn’t know was if Garmadon had wanted specifically to keep the information from him.

He gritted his teeth. What was it about this girl? Garmadon continued to invite her back into his counsel despite her being a nobody. She was not even twenty and Garmadon rarely acknowledged regular mortals as anything special. So why did he continue to show her fondness? What could she possibly give him?

Kai briefly considered that the Emperor has taken her as a mistress or concubine—she was widely considered to be a very beautiful woman, who garnered the praise of the people before her father’s death—but that seemed unlikely. The emperor hadn’t taken a lover for the entirety of Kai’s service with him, so he doubted the emperor would change his mind for a brat like the Kurogane girl. She was manipulative and too clearly had ambition of her own—Garmadon didn’t keep company like that so close. It was why he had valued the previous Kuroganes so highly, and Kai, of course. They were satisfied where they were and weren’t lusting after the emperor’s power.

And she’d f*cked up Kai’s plans and Lloyd’s night out, so of course, Kai didn’t like her or the friendliness that the emperor was favoring her with.

He and Lloyd didn’t exchange small talk, dressed as they were, on the way to the Dining Hall. There was a new confidence to the way that Lloyd walked in his robes, not just the practiced superiority, but a determined march and a tilt to his chin that spoke of a new, unmoving resolve. Kai suppressed a smile. The boy who had brooded so readily the night before was gone.

The doors were pulled open before them. The emperor, along with Lady Harumi, Doctor Borg, and the android woman were sitting along the dining table. The women stood from their seats, Doctor Borg bowing properly in his chair. The emperor smiled in greeting.

“Your Highness, Lord Shogun, greetings,” Doctor Borg and the mechanical voice of the android echoed.

Lady Harumi curtsied, “Prince Lloyd, good evening.”

The room felt as if it had swallowed it’s breath for a long moment. Doctor Borg’s eyes flickered toward Harumi, his face pale and pulled with shock. Lloyd twitched at Kai’s side. The emperor’s eyebrow even raised, but he looked amused, of course, not put-off.

To an outsider, it would seem as if nothing was wrong. But Lady Harumi had not afforded Kai a greeting at all. In the emperor’s world of strict grace and tradition, it was proper to acknowledge anyone afforded more authority than you. Even Governor Kurogane, whom many would have considered the most powerful mortal in the land before his death, had bowed and shown humility toward Kai.

The fact that Lady Harumi had ignored him, as if he were just another guard, spoke loudly in the room of those trained in etiquette.

And her seating arrangement—she had taken the seat to the right of Garmadon, leaving the one to the left of Garmadon empty for Lloyd.

The seat to the right was the prince’s place.

The fact that the emperor seemed unbothered enough not to mention either of these things gave his unspoken approval.

Kai could hear Lloyd’s teeth gritting beside him, and he wasn’t sure if it was because of the bold slight towards Kai or the blatant disrespect towards Lloyd. Kai, too, could feel rage boiling inside him—who did this girl think she was? Kai had dug her whining ass out of pricker bushes as a child after she’d tried to trip Lloyd into them, and she dared act as if she held any importance at all?

Kai’s eyes slid over the occupants of the room as if they were background noise until he bowed his head toward the emperor. “Your Majesty, I will be taking my leave, now.”

“You may go,” the emperor lazily waved him off. The man-demon’s glowing eyes were only on his son, studying the prince’s face.

Lloyd glanced at Kai—Kai eyes flickered down to him—Calm down, Kai insisted wordlessly. Be a prince.

Lloyd looked away, raising his head to gaze at them all down his nose. His steely gaze was the perfect picture of a young man who knew he was worth more than the might of the palace that surrounded them. The tension between him and Lady Harumi was palpable.

Kai didn’t know what Lloyd did—whether he confronted the brat or if he had taken the insult with grace and sat in the other seat. Kai had already turned his back, leaving the prince to fight for himself.

Captain Hutchins was waiting to see him off. The persistent man waited in the Great Hall, which Kai just happened to have to walk through. In the Great Hall, the boneguard stood outside the throne room, still as statues, a signal that the emperor was not in his usual place. Kai snapped his fingers to get their attention—their previously still as death bodies twitched, heads screeching as their skulls turned towards him. The grit of bone on bone echoed in their metal armor.

Kai nudged his chin back where he’d just left—the boneguard, intimately familiar with this process, immediately stepped off, mechanical marching taking them back towards the Dining Hall.

“Commander,” Captain Hutchins murmured, falling into step beside him. “A gift from the physician. How do you fare?”

The man offered a small glass bottle on a leather cord. Kai scowled behind his mask, but took it, slipping it into his belt. “I am perfectly fine. I’m headed back into the city to begin my investigation. I will return within three days.”

“Of course,” Captain Hutchins sighed. “As you will.”

“Ensure any inquiries of mine related to the gate incident remain quiet,” Kai reminded him. “And—for the extent of Lady Harumi’s stay, I want four guards on her at all times. Our most loyal. Command them not to speak a word to her and to allow her no privacy outside of her bedchambers. If she leaves before I return, have them escort her all the way out of Shadowspire.”

“It will be as you command.” Kai could sense the man’s curiosity, but he was too loyal to think of questioning Kai’s word.

“She is not to be allowed to request the prince’s company.” Watch her.

“Understood, my lord. And if the prince requests hers?”

“…He may do as he wishes.”

They turned a corner, the next hallway being far more empty of guards and servants. Simply being without audience made the captain’s company feel far less stiff.

“Did your morning plans go well?” The man asked, an invisible tilt to his lips.

Kai glanced over out of the corner of his eye. “Yes. Thank you for your help.”

The captain hummed. “Always. Good luck, commander. I will watch over Prince Lloyd until your return. Please take care of yourself.”

Kai nodded, closing his eyes briefly. He couldn’t be concerned with the matters of Shadowspire while he was in Ninjago City. Thankfully, Captain Hutchins’ presence in his absence was enough to reassure him. Kai could set his sights elsewhere.

-

Half-lidded, unwavering, with loathing contained within. Scorched orange, ringed with a halo of golden flecks. The color melded deeper into the dark pupil that reflected with the flickering, sparking light. Warm yellows, hot orange, raging red in the deepest crevices. Close enough, and the hair-width of a nick over the glistening layer of the eye would be visible, lined up with the scar that dug through skin when the angle was just right.

Against the backdrop of the dark night sky, the colors were brighter and more glaring than they could ever be in the day. The air was heavy, dark, and smelled of burning wood, burning plastic, burning flower petals. The smoke swallowed any of the fresh pollen that had once remained, turning it to another speck of ash that rose into the sky like a great wave of the earth. Bursts of sparks and ash followed harsh crackling, loud in the dead of night.

The building was entirely consumed by the flames. It was only two stories, a shop beneath a condo that had been owned by those who ran the shop. It had a basem*nt—that had been their condemnation. Fire roared out of the windows, up the sides. It was unnaturally large, had burst to life quicker than any normal fire would, and it seemed to be finding fuel where there should have been none. Even the stone bricks that made up the outside of the building were aflame. The heat of the structure should have set the buildings around it on fire—it had forced residents from the buildings next to it—but it seemed isolated in it’s own hell, the flames jealously clinging to it.

People stood in their doorways, ducked out from alleyways, their eyes reflecting the devastating fire as surely as those ringed with gold. They did not dare make a peep, they did not watch on in awe, they did not point and smile towards the hulking, scaled beast that filled out the street beside the fire. In the darkness, half-lit, scales glowing along her back, the dragon’s face was held within the shadow of the skull-helm, pulled far above them all. The dragon was transfixed by the destruction, and so clearly held the power to raze the entire neighborhood to the ground in the same way that the building would be reduced to nothing. It’s jaw hung open, rows of terrible teeth releasing smokey pants with ever breath.

Before the building that had once been a flower shop, the Shogun’s emotionless mask turned away. The glare of the scarlet eyes gave away his cold annoyance. Among the street that felt as if it were being punished by the high summer sun, those eyes could have been an ice tundra.

“Useless,” the vocoder intoned.

The general crouching before the building tsked and tossed in what seemed to be a handful of papers. They did not even have to hit the flaming pots near the front steps before they burned away, glowing embers joining the raging fire. The fire was mirrored in the reflective helmet and the metal pieces of armor over her dark gi.

She shook her head. “It’s safe to assume that they were an isolated cell. Not associated with the Resistance, judging by their lack of resources, and their meeting below. And if they were, they didn’t know anything useful.”

“Another waste of our time.”

“Seems like it. Do I need to alert the locals of any possible survivors?”

“No.” The oni helm tilted towards her. “Unless any below escaped.”

“No worries there.”

“Then we move on.”

The dragon tore her gaze from the dancing flames that transfixed her. The longing was shared along the bond, but Kai forced the both of them to ignore it. Dreadmaw stretched her neck down—people peeking out from their homes quickly slamming windows shut or slipped back inside at the movement of the legendary monster. The darkness of the night pulled them all into shadow beyond the great fire.

Skylor leaped up behind Kai, settling pressed against him and grabbing his waist for stability. His wounds had healed enough that it was no longer excruciating. Her warmth matched that of his own. The flap of the dragon’s wings only swirled the tongues of flame, but did nothing to put them out. The locals would handle it. Kai was counting on the place burning down to cinders before they could handle it properly. As they had with the other tip that had turned out to be a genuine instance of insurgency.

The other five tips they had followed up on had been worthless. Even the two that had held some promise had turned out to be groups of people working alone against their local imperial posts. But a message was a message—even if they hadn’t worked directly for the rebellion, the rebellion would understand well enough what it mean for every stint of terrorism to be burned to the ground by him personally. He was coming for them. Those in the Tonge District, far from the rich arch of districts to the west, understood that as well. Here, to the east, the Shogun was no savior, rather the devil incarnate. Here, it was easy.

“Have the others come up with anything?” Kai asked as they flew above the shorter, stockier buildings of the eastern Inno Region.

“No,” Skylor reported, pulled a hand away from him to look at the screen on her forearm gauntlet. “It seems like General Tox broke up an illegal drug ring down in Styxx associated with the rebels, but she got carried away. None left to interrogate—all of them escaped or killed.”

Kai cursed. “It was a mistake sending her out on her own. She’s too reckless. We should have forced them to work as a pair.”

“I’ll contact General Ash now,” Skylor shouted over the wind of their flying. “He’ll be thrilled to be given the authority to reign her in.”

Kai sighed. He wasn’t surprised that they hadn’t yet found anything—it was only a few hours in to their first night hunting for clues. But his impatience had always been a constant companion.

Dreadmaw rumbled in agreement. She had been promised some kind of action tonight—but all she’d done so far was fly them around. She wanted to snap her jaw around something, tear something apart—she wanted to help Kai burn buildings to the ground. Unfortunately, her control was far more chaotic than Kai’s. To release her wildly into the city would be too dangerous.

He patted her neck. ‘Don’t worry. We’re not stopping until we find something. You’ll get your fun.’

“Keep heading south!” Skylor pointed around his shoulder. “It’s about ten blocks that way!”

Dreadmaw swooped over the city.

Their next target was just as unassuming as they had all been that night. It was passed curfew, so there were no people out on the streets, but as Dreadmaw’s weight made the street quake, lights turned off and windows were quickly latched closed. An MP patrol car happened to be passing and it blew to the side on it’s hover technology before rightening and continuing down the road. Dreadmaw’s head followed it until it turned a corner.

Skylor leaped down gracefully, her feet silent as she hit the ground. She flicked her wrist, gesturing towards a building with two fingers in a smooth military motion. It was a private animal shelter. They could already hear dogs barking inside. Dreadmaw sniffed toward the shop curiously.

Kai slid down. As soon as the street cracked under his feet, a buzzing under his obi belt stole away his attention.

He patted his side, then slipped his hand under the red sash to pull out his personal cell. The holoscreen was lit up with an incoming call—only so many people had access to direct communication with him, so a call was concerning in itself—doubly so because it seemed to be Captain Hutchins. He’d rarely called Kai while he was on duty, not since Kai had left Lloyd for over a week for the first time and the kid had not stopped throwing a tantrum until he’d gotten to speak to Kai. Even when the assassination attempt had happened a few weeks before, the captain had only sent him a message.

Kai held up a hand to Skylor while he answered the call. With that hand, he gestured for her to go on. Her helmet nodded and she went on to investigate alone—starting by twisting the handle off the locked door with a screech and slipping inside.

“Hello?” Kai’s voice modulator greeted. Luckily, it prevented the concern from appearing in his tone.

“Hey, hi—So, I’m not Captain Hutchins.”

The voice sounded…totally casual and unbothered. Kai sighed, putting his free hand on his hip. “Your Highness. I’m working right now. And you’re not allowed to make calls out of Shadowspire.”

“Yes, I know, I know—” Lloyd made a pfft sound. “—It’s not like my father’s going to notice. He’s too busy with his new consort or whatever the hell is happening there. He allowed her into his meeting with Doctor Borg, you know! Some dragonspit about her being a technical advisor! What, she can be involved, and I can’t?! Who does she think she is?”

Kai rolled his eyes. Skylor’s light flashed across the windows from within the building—the lights flicked on when she found them. “Did she threaten you? If she threatened you, I can get rid of her.”

“No,” Lloyd grumbled. “She’s still pretending to be civil. But she knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s acting like she’s winning something—but I have no idea what she thinks she’s competing with me for! We live in entirely different worlds!”

“I’m sorry that you’re frustrated,” Kai said with no sympathy. “But I’m dealing with some very important business, so you’d better have something better than complaints.”

“Sorry, I do, I promise it’s important.” Lloyd took a deep breath. “You said you wanted to help me, right?”

Kai furrowed his brows. The street remained desolate around him. “Are you talking about cleaning up the empire? Right now? It’s only been a few hours.”

“I know, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I know how big of a job it is, but—we have to start somewhere, right?”

“…Sure.”

“Right. So, I have an idea. The other night, I was in the city with Brad. I don’t remember exactly where we were, but it was in the Crowns District, and, uh…I think it was down the main street because the parade had gone through there and…”

Lloyd prattled on and Kai was struggling to understand how the hell any of the kid’s words were relevant to the topic of conversation—or why they couldn’t talk about this later. But the prince seemed rather insistent and fired up, so Kai let him talk.

While he did, Skylor came back out, barking following her. She held up a small square chip—half of it was illuminated with a blue LED. A microchip that she must have used to download information from a computer. That meant she’d found something worthwhile.

She was nodding in response to his silently raised eyebrow. “Guilty as all hell. Hacked into his laptop and recovered some deleted files—he’s involved with the main host of rebels and has been for months, at least.”

Kai nodded, pulling the phone back from his vocoder. “Good work.”

He tilted his head toward Dreadmaw. ‘I told you there’d be something for you to do. Burn it to the ground.’

The massive dragon turned her head down his way. But her immediate response was not excited, even if he could tell she was holding back the instinct to do just that.

Dreadmaw refused, staring down at him.

“What?” Kai pulled the phone away from his ear, losing Lloyd’s convoluted story. Had he understood her right? ‘You’ve been demanding a chance to go wild all night!’

She resolutely turned her head from the building, her smoking jaws further from it to prove a point. She sent him the image of a small, furry creature. He couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be—it was like she didn’t even fully understand what she was referring to.

Realization dawned over him. But he couldn’t believe it was making a beast such as a red dragon hesitate. They cared little for the world outside their own kind.

He flipped up his free hand in exasperation. ‘You’ve never cared about mortal humans, but you’re worried about some mutts with a fraction of your lifespan? They’re just animals.’

Lloyd was still going on. “—but then he hit her! And I was like ‘what the hell’ but Brad was like ‘there’s nothing we can do’ and so—”

“Your Highness!” Kai snapped. Lloyd immediately quieted. “Please, give me a moment.”

Dreadmaw shook her head, huffing, and a rumble vibrated up her serpentine neck. The scales along her back flashed orange. Skylor looked between her and Kai. Her face was hidden, of course, but Kai could read the shock in the tensity of her shoulders. She probably hadn’t even known Dreadmaw had her own intelligence, as in tune as her and Kai’s actions usually were.

‘Then I’ll do it myself,’ Kai threatened. ‘No fire-breathing for you tonight.’

The dragon hissed, high pitch and whiny. She still wanted to let lose, she just didn’t want the animals in there.

Kai gestured aggressively. He sent her images of strays dying on streets and being kicked at by stupid kids and shot down by troopers cleaning the roads. Animals being euthanized after too long in the joint. They were all going to die, one way or another. The dragon did not budge.

“Fine!” He grumbled, glaring at the dragon. To Skylor, he scoffed, “Bring the rebel to me. Take this lazy lump with you.”

Dreadmaw preened at his agreement, thumping her tail on the road. The street shuddered, the concussive bangs echoing. She overflowed their bond with her satisfaction and pleasure and Kai pushed it away with annoyance. She tugged at the hidden guilt. Kai scowled under his mask. ‘Go! Shoo! Do your damn job! Freeloader.’

Skylor clambered up, shooting Kai an unknowable look, before Dreadmaw lifted them both into the sky. Kai watched them go, shaking his head as the street went quiet once more.

But in truth, he knew Dreadmaw hadn’t cared. She’d never even known a pet animal, she would probably kill even Captain Hutchins if he annoyed her too badly—she didn’t have the understanding or the capacity to care like that. Dragons weren’t built to give a damn outside of their own species.

But Dreadmaw had sensed Kai’s true feelings. The flicker of the thought he’d considered. Even when Kai could deny it up and down to himself and everyone else, the dragon had known better. She’d been trying to protect him from living with heavier guilt. The bastard. Her bringing such attention to it made it impossible for him to ignore, to push down.

He couldn’t care about such meager things. Old Kai had might have had the privilege, but he hadn’t been able to for a long time.

He gritted his teeth. He brought the phone back to his face as he strode toward the animal shelter. He kicked the door in haphazardly and it splintered, wood shaving off at the joint.

“Lloyd—Go ahead, now. You were saying something about an apartment?”

There was another door leading into where the animals seemed to be kept overnight. It looked sturdier, outlined in metal. This time, when Kai dug his heel in, the doorframe cracked and the door left it’s hinges. The door flew into the room, smacking down into the floor with a loud BANG! The animals on either side began to go crazy, howling and yowling. Kai surveyed them with distaste.

“Uh, yeah…it’s okay. I know you’re working. I just—figured—Okay. So, basically, there were these three MPs arresting a couple. They were being way too violent, though, and they hurt some innocent kids. I don’t think people like that should be allowed to police citizens. Police should be people that citizens can trust, not people they’re afraid of.”

“In an ideal world,” Kai looked around. Three dogs in bigger pens, and six cats in layered ones. They were all different levels of mangy. “Yes, that should be how it works.”

“Ideal world has to be the goal,” Lloyd said firmly. “I was talking with Doctor Borg’s assistant, Pixal—”

“The android?”

“Yes, she’s actually very nice and thoughtful. I understand why people are wary of androids, but—she just seemed like a person to me. I think we’re friends, now.”

One of the mutts looked up at Kai with watery eyes beneath dark fur. Those eyes rolled in the dog’s head in his excitement at a visitor—the one next to him was turning in circles, pausing to bark at Kai, then doing it again.

Should Kai just kill them? Dreadmaw had only made it clear that she wouldn’t, not that she cared whether or not Kai did. It would save them the pain of starvation—a pain Kai knew more intimately than anyone.

“Since she’s the doctor’s assistant, she has access to all of the BorgTech cameras in the city that the empire uses, so she was able to identify the troopers for me. I’ve got their names—I want you to fire them. You can do that, right? Since you’re the Lord Commander of the military?”

“I can do that,” Kai rumbled.

The dog whined hopefully as Kai reached forward. No, he wouldn’t do it. Killing rebels was a direct order from Garmadon, and an expectation Kai didn’t have a choice but to follow. But taking these lives would hold no benefit for Kai. It would be meaningless violence.

“Awesome,” Lloyd sighed with relief. “I have their names. Are you able to write them down?”

Kai pulled up the latch of the dog’s cage. It swung open—Kai stepped passed it. The dog barked in excitement, tail wagging hard enough to shatter bones. It shot from the kennel and pounded out the door.

He unlatched the next cage. “I’ll remember them.”

“They’re part of the 7th precinct. Crowns District, remember?”

Kai hummed. He unlocked the plastic door. The cat within was pressed against the back of the cage.

He unlocked the others. All of the cats shot out, much less excited to be around him than the dogs, but escaping just as quickly. They yowled and hissed, bounding off one another in their rush to get out the door. Paws scrambled around Kai’s heavy boots. Lloyd rambled off the names by Kai’s ear.

The first cat, when Kai walked back, had been the only animal to remain. He glanced in—there was some sort of wrapping on the animal’s leg. The shelter, judging by the equipment in the other room, seemed to double as a veterinarian's clinic. This cat was too weak to join the others. It was weary, helpless—it wouldn’t be able to survive on it’s own. It looked old, as well—even if it hadn’t been injured, it would end up being the bottom of the food chain.

For this one, it would be a mercy to leave it behind.

“Anything else?”

“No, that’s all. They have the night shift, that’s why it was urgent enough for a call—I figured you could handle it right away if I caught you in time.”

“I will, Your Highness. Now, sleep.”

“Yes, yes, I know. Thanks, Kai. I knew I could count on you.”

Kai hung up.

The shop was very quiet. The light from the other room spilled into the hallway and the room with all of the opened cage doors. It barely illuminated the abandoned street beyond, which was so empty in the night, it almost felt apocalyptic. It was like Kai was the only one in the world.

He walked into the other room, listening to the silence. The computer was still booted up from Skylor’s splicing of it. There were posters advertising all of the animals pinned to the board behind the office desk. There were a few that had been absent—either adopted, or put down, Kai didn’t know. There were no obvious signs of rebellion. Skylor was good at her job.

Kai put his hand on the desk. His hand heated and heated until the glove began to burn off of his fingers. Beneath, his skin glowed a hellish red-orange. A handprint immediately melted into the wooden surface, his hand sinking into it as if it were nothing more than soft butter. The area around the molten liquid burst into immediate flames.

The flames shot over the desk, down the sides, eating even the metal legs of it. The computer was quickly consumed and burst, sparks exploding from it. The papers all over the board were engulfed, the photos of the animals turned to white-hot remains.

The fire crawled up the walls, across the floors, into the other rooms, like a predator searching for it’s prey—every inch of it’s wake was consumed in the hunt.

Kai felt when Dreadmaw drew near once more. The flames swallowed the threshold of the door by the time the building shuddered with the great landing. The fire did not bother Kai as he walked through it—the flames caressed him with love and devotion.

The street was lit up with the spectacle, as the last street had been. And, like the floral shop, it would be too late to save the building by the time the fire department arrived.

Beyond the door, the veterinarian in pajama pants and a T-shirt had been thrown to the ground, his hands scraped on the street. Blood was pooling under his palms. He looked up, eyes blown with horror, mouth dropped open, his face contorted. The side of his jaw was swelling and darkening. In his eyes, Kai’s form blot out the raging fire, like a sun eclipsed, as Kai loomed over the man. He was unimpressive, small—helpless.

“No—No, no, no! Please, First Master!” There was hatred in his terrified gaze. “You–You—monsters!”

Kai walked right passed the sniveling wreck as a sob burst from the man’s throat. He watched his life burn, limbs shaking, spots on his clothes singed from the ride on the dragon. In his horror, he was glued to the sight of the building engulfed by the growing inferno.

Skylor stood in Dreadmaw’s shadow as the man’s cries and wails of despair echoed toward his destroyed dreams.

“General,” he eyed her. “How much longer do you have?”

The grimace was in her voice. “I’m going to hit my limit in maybe twenty minutes. We’ve already been out here for five hours.”

“You won’t be able to ride with me when you lose the fire resistance,” Kai murmured. “You’re dismissed for the night.”

“No, no,” the man behind them mumbled, face pressed into the ground.

“Understood,” she nodded. She couldn’t say, Are you sure? or Thanks, sounds good, or Then you should get some rest, too. Her helmet tilted toward the groveling man.

“I will see to him,” Kai growled. “You deal with this.”

“With wha…?”

Kai reached up and under his ridiculously large shoulder pauldron and pulled out a curled mass of mangy, striped fur. Skylor’s helmet silently stared at it as the cat tiredly lifted it’s head and blinked open it’s half-greyed eyes. She fumbled to reach up and catch it as Kai dumped it into her arms.

She forgot all about how she was supposed to act in front of the suspect.

“Wha—What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” The cat slumped into the soft folds of the woman’s gi, content to go back to sleep.

“I don’t know and I don’t care. We’ll resume our investigation tomorrow. See what you can find from the contents of the holochip.”

“I—Sho!” She hissed, but he had already turned away.

The man was standing and had tried to run, but Dreadmaw’s large maw had snapped the air before him, causing him to stumble back again. Dreadmaw growled in delight, leaning her form up and flapping her wings, then roaring. The man collapsed in terror, staring up at the dragon, paralyzed.

The whole block shuddered under the roar. Windows wobbled. The fire raged on, spitting embers over them.

“You,” Kai rumbled. The man’s head whipped down to him. “You will tell me everything you know and I will ensure your death is swift.”

“N-No! You won’t get anything from me!” He shook his head, scrambling backwards. “If dying for the cause is what it takes, that’s what I’ll do! I’ll die a thousand times! Revolution is coming! Not even you can stop it, you demon bastard!”

Kai grabbed the man by the shirt and began to drag him. The man clutched onto his hand, but yelped at the heat—his fingers sizzled at the brief contact with Kai’s skin. He tried kicking out his legs, to no avail.

Through the monotone of the vocoder, Kai’s tone sounded inevitable.

“We will just have to see about that.”

He gave Dreadmaw the go-ahead.

She made a beastal, almost bird-like, echoing bark, raising herself up into the sky. She coiled her head back, winds blowing across the man’s hair—and a wide jet of flames bigger than a semi-truck FWOOMED! The air itself burned away as the yellow-hot flames smashed into the upper levels of the building. The jet of flames was powerful enough to mold the wall inward, blow bricks out of place, as molten spittle dripping from between the dragon’s teeth. It hissed and formed small holes where it hit the pavement.

Dreadmaw’s growls and roars of joy were eerie in the silent night, shaking the foundations of the area. The man had screamed initially, and was now shaking like a newborn—newly terrified of a world that his eyes were now realizing he’d never had a chance in. There were apex predators in this world and he was so far below them, it was laughable.

Kai was doing nothing more than holding him by the hem of his shirt and the man was utterly worthless. The fight had drained out of him as the burst of fire echoed in his gaze over and over as Dreadmaw circled the building, leaped onto it, burrowed her claws and tried her best to knock it in, like a child destroying a lego tower. Finally, the roof caved in under her pressures and she roared as her mass sunk into the building.

Windows exploded into the street, then bricks, then a whole corner of rock wall tumbled over the front. It shattered into large piece not a few feet away from Kai—the man screamed. Any debris that got too close to Kai melted into in the air and turned to molten, dripping on his armor harmlessly. Kai let the pieces of rock hit the man, cutting across his skin, until he was forced to roll up and hide his face.

Finally, Dreadmaw had enough and leaped down from the ruins of the forth floor, where the wall had totally blown out. The fire still raged as angrily as ever, consuming what was left of the lower floors and the debris that scattered across the street. Flaming papers floated over their heads.

When Kai glanced back, Skylor was gone.

Kai let the man scramble to hold onto him to avoid the burning scales of Dreadmaw as they flew through the air. The nearest base was happy to detain him for Kai when he dropped him off to finish the other errand he had just been assigned for the night. The man panted and ripped away from Kai, clutching multiple burns he’d accumulated as a consequence of the fight, and he could only limp as the troopers dragged him inside.

Thankfully, Crowns wasn’t far from where he was. It was a quick trip, really.

The streets below them were emptied and dark. Some street lights were turned on for safety reasons, but majority of them were not to discourage people from wandering after curfew. A few more MP patrol cars passed by below, silent and fast without their lights on. The city didn’t feel asleep, though. It just felt tense, like over the course of the night, Ninjago City only knew how to hold it’s breath.

Dreadmaw had spent her extra energy, so she was quiet and droopy over the ride. She did more silent gliding than flapping of the wings. No one below would even know they were passing. It allowed Kai to clear his mind and lower his own temperature, so to speak.

He took deep breaths. It was just him and the air.

His back was beginning to ache again, but it had taken much longer, this time, with the aid Captain Hutchins had given him on behalf of the physician. He was almost healed.

That veterinarian man had been with the Resistance, at last—but he had been far from an elemental master, much less a ninja. It seemed like there was much more investigation ahead of them, no matter what. Were these new ninja even out there? Or had it all been a fever dream by those shocked by the labor camp invasions?

No. Kai could sense it. The old man was back.

And he’d replaced his old brainwashed soldiers with new ones. How many times had he done that over the course of his lengthened life? How many had come before Kai’s time? How many would he continue to target after Kai was gone?

No. Kai thought. The cycle stops here. I’m stopping it.

He refocused on the task at hand.

The 7th precinct soon appeared between the middling buildings of the Crowns District. It was the only place that had all of the lights on, with cars frequenting the area beneath it, and people actively coming in and out of the glass doors. They were all uniformed, the state of their helmets or type of uniforms varying. Some were in dress uniforms, others in armor with blasters at their sides.

All stopped and stared as Dreadmaw dropped Kai before them. Knowing that he would not take long, she drew her torso up and waited, eyes lazily gazing down the street with disinterest.

Kai heard some quiet exclamations of shock, but every officer and trooper scrambled to bow, slamming their fists over their hearts in a salute. Some nervously offered proper greetings—“Good evening, lord commander!”—but the tension in the air was thick. All of them wondering, of course, What in the realm was the great commander doing at their nobody precinct at this time of night?

The buzz followed inside. The receptionist woman craned her neck up, her face utterly void of color as his shadow fell over her. Her glasses fell from the tip of her nose, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Get me your captain.”

His vocoder loud and shocking in the utter silence of the frozen greeting room.

“Right away, Shogun, of cou—” He walked passed her. “—of course.”

The main lobby of the building was high-ceiling’d and full of desks. Pairs of MPs chatted, leaned on each others’ desks. Most, to their credit, looked to be in serious conversations, pointing toward computer screens, discussing over papers. There were many coffees in hand for the beginning of the graveyard shifts. The amount of troopers heading out of the building suggested they had only begun their assignments. Good. More likely that few were out on patrols. Kai would rather keep this brief.

The room stilled when he walked in. There were the quite noises of a video playing unpaused, but people otherwise quieted with awe. Kai hooked his thumbs under a weave rope at his waist and waited without a word. Troopers and officers uneasily attempted to go back to their work, but it was obvious they were all too aware of his presence at all times.

It was only a minute, perhaps less, before the precinct’s captain greeted him. It was a minute long enough to earn Kai’s irritated glare. If it hadn’t been Lloyd that had asked him specifically to do this, he’d have chalked it all up as a waste of time. But…for Lloyd. Kai could be patient.

“Shogun,” the captain bowed low, saluting with his fist. “My sincerest apologies for not giving you a proper greeting—We…had no idea you were coming—We must have missed the message, otherwise, I promise we would have prepared—”

Kai put a hand up. The man immediately silenced, straightening. A smart one, then.

“No need. I came unannounced. My task was considered urgent.”

“Of–Of course, my lord,” the captain nodded. “And what, if I may…what do you want with the 7th? We’ve had no large cases in our sector, far as I’m aware, and we haven’t had any large issues within. But if there is anything I can help the empire with, I would be honored.”

Kai eyed him. He let the man wait a moment longer, waiting to see if he would squirm. He was clearly uneasy, but he remained steadfast. A loyal man.

Kai took pity on him and ended the quiet consideration. “Ping Chen, Banner Park, Futsu Takahashi. Your men?”

“Ah—Yes, sir. Two of them have worked under me for more than a decade.”

“Bring them to me. Now.”

Sweat appeared on the man’s brow as he nodded. Kai hadn’t touched the temperature of the room. The captain turned back to the officers and shouted the names out, then around the corner, to call them up to the front. It seemed Lloyd’s suspicion had been correct—all three were working tonight.

The three men came to stand before Kai, one after the other. Those in the room were attempting and failing to appear as if they weren’t watching every moment—that was fine with Kai. Perhaps they’d even learn something, should they bear witness.

“These are them, my lord.” The captain bowed a final time.

The three men saluted, following suit. All three looked on edge enough to throw a punch had Kai been anyone else. None dared look near his eyes, theirs trained firmly on the ground or the wall behind Kai’s back.

Kai flicked his hand the captain’s way. “Step back.”

The man did so, throwing a nervous look toward his men.

“Four nights ago, the three of you committed several acts of police misconduct in the form of assault and battery, including against children. Do you deny these claims?”

The men were too afraid to speak. One, an older one, opened his mouth, but he froze, any words choking in his throat. Some troopers in the background looked at each other with pale faces, a few giving the three men wary looks.

“Speak!” Kai boomed.

“No, lord commander, we do not deny them,” the man in the center said—rasped. He knew better than to lie.

“Abuse of police power will not be tolerated in the precinct from this moment going forward. As for the three of you, your fates have been decided personally by the crown.”

“Th-The emperor is angry with us?” the youngest choked.

Kai gazed over them with cold eyes.

“For your criminal negligence and use of excessive force against criminal citizens and minors, you have been sentenced to immediate execution. Your fates will be shared with any who may repeat your mistakes.”

“Wha—?”

“Wait,” the middle said, shaking his head and backing away. “Wait, wait, you must be mista—”

“Lord Commander—pl-please reconsi—”

Kai did not move. His amber eyes remained indifferent, the gold ring seeming to burn when all three bodies burst into flames.

The stench of burning hair, of cooking meat, was half filtered through his mask, but the smell was not new to him. Neither were the bloodcurdling screams that only lasted a moment. There was nothing quite like the sounds a human being could make when one was burning alive. Kai couldn’t quite comprehend the feeling of skin boiling and bubbling off of muscle, the pockets of heat expanding and blowing through flesh, the endless pain of every nerve—but he liked to believe that he had enough experience with pain to imagine it in his own way.

Their brains melted within the confines of their skulls, their eyeballs blackening and dripping from their sockets as every inch of skin went from red to red to burnt brown to blackened flesh. They could be considered lucky, Kai thought. Burning alive of a natural flame took much longer.

One body, then another, then the last collapsed after a brief stumble and wave of their aflame limbs. The frantic twitching of the bodies soon slowed as the inhuman noises were cut short, though the blaze didn’t falter.

The smell would stick. It would remind every one of the troopers with their utterly horrified eyes reflecting that flame to not make a mistake. It would remind them for the rest of their lives.

A trooper collapsed to their weak knees and threw up on the carpet between desks, pulling up the visor of their helmet in order to do so. Another vomited into a garbage can at the back of the room. Others, like the captain, could not seem to pull their sickened, white gazes from the trio of burning pyres. But none dared make as much as a terrified sound.

“May fortune favor you tonight, captain,” Kai’s vocoder dismissed as he walked by.

The captain flinched, but his eyes did not move.

Those in the front room had leaned around the wall or had been close enough to hear and understand everything that had happened. One trooper was leaning against the wall for support. The young woman doing her receptionist work had both hands clamped firmly over her mouth, wide eye darting from the doorway to Kai and quickly down to her desk. Her fingers dug into her cheeks. Kai thought he heard her whimper as he strode passed.

Dreadmaw was already lowering her head by the time Kai stepped out into the fresh night air. His eyes were dull. His chest felt utterly empty, as if nothing had ever been there.

Mission complete.

-

The following two weeks passed. Kai’s life consisted of balancing his usual duties with setting hours at a time aside to bring Lloyd into the city. Every time they were out in it, something seemed to inspire him, and the bright magical green would return to his eyes. The first days after the market, they ate disgustingly greasy pizza, visited the beach, went to an arcade, and Kai introduced Lloyd to a very old hobby—rooftop hoping.

Lloyd’s new powers quickly proved to operate similarly to an elemental master’s in that he was granted enhanced speed and strength above that of a normal person. He wasn’t beating Kai in any contests, yet, but if the boy kept training, he’d likely be able to reach Kai’s level—the kid beamed like none other when Kai told him as much. Which just made Kai eager to prove that he still had a lot to learn.

“Come on, wait up already!” the prince called from two rooftops back, voice carrying over the daytime rush of the city. The green bamboo hat was firmly back on his head, but his fresh modern flannel was flapping in the breeze.

“I told you to keep up, didn’t I?” Kai shouted back from under his own flower-painted hat. He grinned under his facemask—yeah, being unfair, but who else was going to rib the kid?

Kai leaped up from a roof, foot launching him from a concrete barrier, only for metal to dig into his palms as he caught the next building’s fire escape. He climbed it with the dexterity of a spider, flipping himself up the last of the rungs and tucking into a perfect landing. He posed for no one—because Lloyd was still being slow, only barely getting onto the rooftop below.

Above, a blimp slowly floated passed. The airtram blared it’s horn in the distance.

Kai leaned over the edge, flicking the edge of his hat to teasingly mock the boy. Lloyd was panting, his mask tugged down, and he scowled up at Kai.

“Are you coming?” Kai asked, leaning onto his hand with a dramatic sigh. His voice echoed down the alleyway. “I never thought I’d die of old age, but you’re making me wonder!”

“Yeah I’m coming, and when I get up there, I’m going to wipe that dumb look off your face!”

Kai laughed. “Prove it!”

Lloyd rolled up the sleeves of his flannel—he’d taken quite the liking to green ever since gasping at his reflection in the city for the first time—and braced his feet. With a running leap over the chasm (that Kai only had a small heart attack watching) Lloyd caught the supports of the fire escape and begun to scramble up. He was less graceful, less practiced, but the prince was catching on to the movements of the city far faster than Kai had in his youth. He was eager and glad to learn.

Kai leaned away from the edge, digging into one of his larger cargo pockets. Inside were two wide cylinders, about the length of his forearm. He flicked one open—it extended into a full bo-staff with a sharp shink! Ancient characters glowed up the sides of it before fading away. Ah, how he loved his access to magical artifacts. Almost as much as Ninjago’s ancient people loved their fancy weapons.

Lloyd’s hand finally appeared on the lip of the building and he pulled himself up, grunting with the weight of his body. He threw a leg over, then rolled sideways onto the roof, catching himself on all fours.

He grinned at Kai, huffing and puffing, as he used the barrier to pull himself up. “I’ve always wanted to climb up one of those.”

The fire escape? Kai raised a brow. “That’s a very specific dream to have. Heads up.”

He tossed the second bo-staff, the weapon extending as it sailed through the air. Lloyd caught it skillfully, spinning it into a backwards grip.

“I guess it is. I don’t know.” Lloyd pondered, slowly circling the bo-staff behind him. “Ever since I was a kid and we would watch those old movies where the superheroes would do it…I just think it’s cool. The city is so cool.”

“No arguments there,” Kai agreed. He spun his own bo-staff before stopping it in a sharp grip. He immediately loosened it as he begun to circle around to Lloyd. Lloyd mirrored his movements. “You think you can do it this time?”

Lloyd made a face. “We don’t even know if I have more powers. How many times will I have to practice until you know for sure?”

“I’m not exactly the expert on oni, kid,” Kai said dryly. “If you had the same powers as your father, maybe I could help you out on that one, but he sure as hell can’t talk to dragons. There’s no rules on how to figure stuff like this out. It just happens. And unless you want to put yourself in a life-or-death situation to force it—and no, put your hand down, I’ve already told you that there’s no way in hell—you’re just going to have to wait for it to happen naturally.”

Lloyd groaned. “But what if it takes another seventeen years?!”

“Don’t worry.” Kai pulled his mask down to breathe easier, studying the glow of Lloyd’s emerald irises. “It feels like the time for waiting is over.”

The bo-staffs cracked! together as Lloyd lunged and Kai defended. The staffs were a whirl of constant motion, their feet skidding and throwing the gravel across the rooftop. Kai, in a cheeky move, spun his staff up and knocked Lloyd’s hat back, causing it to fall from his head. He instinctively moved to catch it, but it caught on the string at his throat anyway, and Kai swiped the feet from under him.

Lloyd went down hard, but was skilled enough to roll through it and end up back on his feet, staff up. He was scowling at Kai again. “If you had ruined my hat, I would’ve kicked you off the roof.”

“You mean you would have tried?”

“You are such an jerk.” Lloyd circled with him again. Kai shrugged innocently, a smirk settled on his lips.

“You’re such an jerk, sensei.”

Lloyd just narrowed his eyes and shifted his grip.

The shift warned Kai of the next attack, even as Lloyd swung the staff fiercely. The swing blind sighted him to the elbow that Lloyd snapped forward—Kai barely managed to dodge by leaning backwards, but the elbow caught the brim of his own hat and it tipped upwards. Kai locked their bo-staffs together, then leveraged his to pry Lloyd’s from his hand—he skidded backwards as it thumped into the gravel.

Kai pulled his hat back down to his eyebrows. He conceded. “Alright, yeah, I deserved that.”

Lloyd gave him a cheeky smile and scooped his bo-staff back up.

It only took a few more crosses of their staffs before a small burst of green sparks exploded between them. It sent a concussive shockwave out from the point of impact—both of them were blown backwards. Lloyd’s staff flew from his hands and he landed hard, his back slamming into the concrete barrier at the edge of the roof.

Kai planted his feet, but they drug through the gravel, and he thrust the bo-staff into the ground in front of him for it to add to the drag. He slowed as his back heel approached the barrier.

Both of their hats had been firmly blown from their heads, this time, the force making his throat ache where the string held tight. His own black haori had blown down his shoulders with the force.

He dropped the bo-staff. “Lloyd?!”

It took three long strides before he was by the boy’s side—but Lloyd was fully aware and trying to push himself up already. His eyes were large and sparkling with satisfaction, a grin growing on his face. Kai grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet.

“You okay?” Kai kept a hold of him, pulling him around. “Are you hurt?”

“That was me,” Lloyd exhaled. “That was me, wasn’t it?! I did that! Kai, was that me?!”

He didn’t seem to be hurt, other than the harried state of his golden curls. Kai sighed, the sigh turning into a breathy laugh at his enthusiasm. “Yeah, pretty sure that was you. How did you do it?”

“I have no idea!” Lloyd grinned. “But it was me! WHOOO!”

“Don’t get too excited.” Kai shook his head, but his own grin remained. “Let’s see if you can do it again.”

Kai wasn’t blind. He’d seen the green. He kept seeing the green and green and green. But his denial deep. It can’t be, he repeated to himself over and over. It’s Lloyd, so it just can’t be.

After Lloyd had properly exhausted himself, both of them finding that he was unable to do it again, Kai directed him to slip his bo-staff away and raise his mask up again. Lloyd didn’t think to question it as he followed Kai to the edge of the rooftop. Kai swung his legs around to sit on the lip of it, hooking his ankles together and taking a long breath.

Lloyd curiously followed suit, kicking his legs a bit under him. He peered from beneath his hat, but asked no questions. Beneath them, the city street was alive in the middle of the day, a few more traditional motored-cars among the hovervehicles. A boy passed, pedaling away on his bike with groceries hanging on both of his handlebars. He stood up on the pedals to pick up speed, Lloyd following his path with his head. On the other side of the street, a pair of woman seemed to be waiting before the steps of their building. Soon enough, a hovertaxi pulled up to them.

“Do you know where we are?” Kai asked.

Lloyd glanced around. He was far too new to the city to be able to identify areas by the way they looked—but Kai could tell from the middling-sized buildings, everything a bit older than the west districts, but more well-kept than the east.

Lloyd shook his head. “No…should I?”

Kai huffed, waving him away. “Crowns District, Inno Region. Sun, and all, this time.”

“…Oh.” Lloyd’s shoulders hunched a bit. He looked over the skyline with a new, guilty, light. “…It looks a lot different from up here.”

“Mhm,” Kai agreed.

Their rooftop was a bit more than ten stories, made of red brick, the sidewalk below greyed and stained. Some of the windows had plants outside of them, some with decorative flags hung from within—all up to imperial standards, of course. An apartment buildings. Far below, doors opened, bell ringing.

He and Lloyd glanced down below when voices began to float up. They were to far to be clear, but Lloyd twitched—seeming to recognize at least one of them.

Below, a group of six teenagers emerged, chatting among themselves casually. One carried a skateboard—a girl was pulling her hair into a pony tail. A boy with glasses held the free hand of a girl who had her arm in a sling, cased in white, but her fingers were revealed hanging out of it. And, among them, was a nineteen-year-old who lived with his mother within the apartment building they sat on top of—sun-darkened skin, freckles, and shiny raven hair. The boy was smiling.

Lloyd lurched forward, barely catching himself before flinging off the rooftop. He breathed in shock, “Brad?”

Kai hummed in confirmation. Lloyd glanced up at him, wide-eyed. Kai quirked a brow at him.

Lloyd looked back down. “Tommy, Gene…that can’t be…is that Marla? But her hand…I saw…”

“She got to the hospital in time for it to be reattached,” Kai told him. “I pulled her medical records. She’s expected to regain most motor function.”

Kai didn’t tell him that her hand wasn’t expected to be able to feel sensations and textures any longer. Unnecessarily cruel and all.

“Thank the Master,” Lloyd said, squeezing his eyes shut. His breathing came out a bit shaky.

“She’s lucky.” Kai flicked lint from his pants.

Lloyd looked up at him. Back down to Brad—then to Kai. The emotions in his eyes were so torn. There was guilt, regret, fear of rejection, but also hope…longing. “…Can I…Can I talk to him? I just want to say that I’m sorry. I just…want him to know.”

His eyes were wide and vulnerable. The teenagers began to walk down the street, some of them throwing arms around one another. One of them threw their head back to laugh. They were carefree and happy, just the way they were.

Kai sighed. “No. I’m sorry. We can’t risk anyone knowing we’re out here. Maybe one day you’ll have a chance. But, if it makes you feel any better…I’m sure he already knows.”

-

Meanwhile, Kai’s wounds healed up and his investigations with Skylor, General Tox, and General Ash continued. The more rebels they interrogated, the more it became clear that the rebellion was planning on making a big move soon enough. With Lloyd’s coronation over the horizon, it didn’t take a genius to know what the target was to be. The celebration, or the boy himself, would undoubtedly be used for a show of terrorism. But it would only happen over Kai’s dead body.

Every moment that he was not with Lloyd, he was working in the city. There were little times for breaks, for rest, for reconsidering. It was simply go and go and go. They bounced from one tip to the next, some leading to short investigations, some leading nowhere at all. They heard more whispers of the Green Ninja, which Kai tried his best to ignore. Morro, from his reports, had found next to nothing on the Sage of the Bamboo Forest. He still seemed unconvinced that the rebel leader was any more than a story. But Kai knew better.

The Sage hadn’t been around when Kai had known the rebellion best. But he had a very good idea of who it could be. An ancient elder, who inspired endless hope, who held strength that countered so many. The only piece that did not fit was the Sage’s role as an ultimate leader of the resistance—but that is where Kai thought the stories failed. The man in his memories had never been interested in leading so many—but he had certainly been interested in leading the most powerful he could get his gnarly old hands on.

As a result, Kai didn’t exactly return home often. His eyebags became permanent. Some nights he got no sleep at all and he desperately depended on caffeinated tea to keep himself going.

The one to ground him was the person it often ended up being.

“Hey,” Skylor leaned over the couch. “How would you feel about noodles?”

Kai lifted the hand he’d been massaging his temples with. A weary smirk played on his lips. “Is that the only thing you know how to cook?”

“Maybe.” Her hair had been released from it’s cage of a military hairdo and now fell around her face as she leaned over, messy and filled with specks of hair spray. She challenged him with a sharp brow. “You got a problem with that?”

He huffed, closing his eyes and using both hands to dig his fingers through his hair. It was wet and undone after his shower. It was getting long, he only realized when it wasn’t gelled back. “You made noodles last night and the last time you cooked, and also the time before that.”

She puffed, crossing her arms and leaning on them. Kai crossed his ankles down the length of the couch. “Yeah, well, you know my father only taught me two things—how to fight and how to make noodles. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Kai smiled softly. He squinted his eyes open.

Her penthouse apartment was high above Ninjago City, in the Capitol Region, of course. Only the best of the best for a general of the empire. When it came to luxury, that was. Her living room was wide and tall, windows lining the space with long curtains that were pulled to the edges of the room. Her couch was lengthy and modern, the leather cushions white and crisp. The carpet below was shag—no specs of dirt—and the open kitchen behind the marble countertop was gorgeous and undoubtably worth more than the house Kai had grown up in. Lights hung over it, convoluted glass shapes. There were a few dishes left in the sink—a clock on the wall next to an artistic piece told him it was almost two in the morning.

Kai didn’t know why on earth she’d have such a fancy kitchen if all she ever made was goddamn ramen bowls. But he’d forgive her because she let him use the kitchen to cook, too.

It was only ever at her place that he cooked. Servants handled it in Shadowspire, or he was given quick meals by the military posts. But way back when…a million years ago, it felt like, a different lifetime…he’d liked cooking. He’d cooked with his friend, the only one who could be trusted not to burn the kitchen down. His friend had made the best food, too. It was like it had been hardwired into him how to make a delicious meal. Sometimes Kai had spiced it up a little, just for his own tastes, but he could never compare to his friend as a chef.

No, he reminded himself. Don’t go there.

“I’ll cook,” he offered, despite how dead tired he felt. “Your fridge is fair game, right?”

“I mean, I won’t complain—you sure, though? I can order something. Not sure who’s open at this hour, but…”

“It’s okay,” he exhaled, reaching up to play briefly with her curtain of hair. “I’ll make something easy. It won’t be noodles, sorry to disappoint.”

“Oh, First Master, I can’t believe this!” she groaned, letting her head fall onto her arms. Kai chuckled and took the invitation to run his deft fingers across her scalp. Her voice was muffled. “I’m going to have to kick you out for even suggesting that.”

“Yeah, yeah, kick me out tomorrow,” Kai murmured. “Go shower. I’ll finish by the time you’re done. Probably.”

She hummed and let him run his hand through her hair roots for a few more moments before she bemoaned her responsibility to shower and pulled herself upright. She was still half in her gi and felt way too professional for Kai, who was in sweatpants and a T-shirt with his wet hair beginning to shag.

He found himself having a hard time getting off the couch, too, even after she’d left for the bathroom. It was just so peaceful there. There was the gentle ambiance of the air conditioning, the quiet of the city, lights dotting the world outside. The moon was bright and shining, and the light behind the glass modernism art created a beautiful mosaic of white and yellow light across the floor.

Everywhere else, he had to be worried, on the alert, ready for anything. At Skylor’s…he could almost fool himself into believing that he was just a man. And, on their best days, they could fool themselves into thinking they were both just people who could have something.

When he heard the shower turn on in the other room, he managed to push himself up.

The water of the sink was cold under his fingers. He turned the water to warm and waited, holding a towelette. Wiping down the counter was methodical, and so was pulling up a pan and finding some spices in her cabinet. He opened the fridge—there wasn’t much he could make in twenty or so minutes, but she had leftover rice in a big container, and fried rice was rarely difficult.

He dug through her leftovers for some steak and veggies, throwing it all in a frying pan, along with some quickly-chopped garlic, a sprinkle black pepper, and two types of soy sauce that she for some reason had that he honestly didn’t know the differences between. Some sesame seeds added an extra pizazz that he would only use to impress her.

His hand looked out of place around the wood of the stirring spoon. Nicked with scars, his last two fingers uneven from too many breaks, and the skin over his knuckles as thick and calloused as the inside of his hand. It pulled it from the illusion of normalcy.

To distract himself from the consuming silence that drew his eye, he began to hum. He tapped on the marble countertop in time with an imaginary beat.

The door to the other room opened. Skylor walked out still adjusting the towel wrapped around her head, hiding most of her hair, but for the slim pieces that were sticking to the skin of her forehead and cheek. She looked about as tired as he did from days of non-stop, but they were adjusting to the strange hours. She wore short bed shorts and a tank top with thin straps that revealed the sinewy muscles of her back. Her biceps flexed as she wrapped the towel tighter.

She sighed at the smell of food, wandering passed the counter and into the kitchen to pull open the cabinets. “Nothing is sexier than when you’re making me food, just so you know.”

“What?” He lazily gasped in offense, side-eyeing her. “I thought it was the helmet with the spikes and the menacing shoulder pads.”

“Oh, please,” she complained, putting out two bowls and setting some chopsticks aside. “If you ever try to seduce me while wearing that thing, I might have to turn traitor and let Garmadon kill me.”

He huffed, turning off the stove. Everything from the pristine ceramics to the too-fancy chopsticks were expensive. Kai dumped the fried rice evenly, the food smelling simply divine after the long day they’d had. A long day of nothing—again.

But that was for later-Kai to worry about.

He sat at the stool next her her, their backs to the gorgeous view of the city over the living room. Their shoulders bumped together occasionally, their movements languid and unhurried, words soft and quiet, sleepy, almost. Domestic. Kai…longed. Longed for the world to let them be, to let him have it and let it be real.

Skylor gestured behind them with her chopsticks. “Hey, can you…?”

He flicked a hand up, chewing his mouthful of rice and veggies while he leaned against the counter with the other arm. The slick electric fireplace that ran across the wall opposite of the couch began to crackle, the flames relaxed and contained behind a thin layer of glass.

“Thanks,” she sighed. “Burnt myself out by holding on too long again. At least I think I’m extending my times, borrowing your fire so often.”

“Nice,” he commented, mouth still full. His voice was muffled.

“Mhm,” she agreed, taking a bite. “Remember when I couldn’t even hold one element for an hour? That seems so embarrassing now.”

“Still kicked my ass,” Kai recalled. “You were the best fighter I’d ever seen in the empire.”

“Am I not still?”

He pursed his lips and made the so-so motion. “Eh, I don’t know, I might be better at this point.”

“Yeah, we’ll see about that.” She bumped his shoulder, shoving him a bit. He chuckled, but scooped up more rice. “It’s been a while, though, huh?”

“…Yeah, I guess it has. It feels like we were just kids. Lloyd’s almost as old as we were, then.”

She cracked a smile. “He’s growing up. How are your field trips with him going?”

“Good.” Kai smiled tiredly down at his rice. “Good. He’s…happy. He loves the world. Doesn’t know how…sh*t it is, yet.”

“…Some things you have to learn the hard way, Sho,” Skylor reminded him. “Even Lloyd. You can’t protect him forever.”

“I know, trust me, I know. But…we never got to…I don’t know. If we never got to be happy, it had to go somewhere, right? So why can’t it just…be him?”

“The world isn’t fair.”

“No. It isn’t.”

They ate in silence.

Skylor took their dishes and Kai didn’t complain. She scrubbed some half-heartedly before dumping them into her too-rich dish washer. While the water was running, Kai unwound the towel from her hair and tossed it over the side of the couch. He sighed, crowding behind her to run his hands under her wet hair, dragging his fingers across her scalp once more. She sighed and tilted her head back while dealing with their leftover mess.

After they finished with the kitchen, she asked to check on his wounds. “How are they healing up?”

He shrugged. The movement no longer ached more than a dull feeling. “The physician said I’m almost back to one hundred percent.”

He sat back down on her couch, the fire crackling, and he pulled his shirt up over his shoulders. For the first time in many days, it didn’t make him grit his teeth or wince outright. The skin was still tender, but the stitching had been plucked, and he was given the mostly-clear.

“No more bandages?” Skylor asked quietly.

Her gentle fingers prodded against ridges of skin that had healed mangled. His body didn’t flinch. No doubt his back looked even more of a mess than it had been before. At least it hadn’t been waterboarding.

“No bandages,” Kai agreed. “I’m alright.”

“Hm,” her hands trailed down his back and his sides, before wrapping around his bare stomach. Her warm lips spoke against the nape of his neck. “I’m glad.”

He snorted softly. “You know you don’t need to worry about me.”

Her thumbs stroked across the ridges of scarring and muscle on his stomach and she kissed the arch of his shoulder. She murmured, “I know.”

Goosebumps rose on his arms when her lips brushed against the tender scarring over his shoulder blades. It was ugly, he knew, but he also knew she wasn’t one to mention it—not when the marks on her body left it as mangled-looking as Kai’s own. She could let him pretend, for a moment, that maybe they were beautiful.

He twisted around, cupping her cheek to pull her face to to his level, capturing her lips in his. Her hands trailed up his arms and wrapped around his neck. They kissed once, twice, more desperate, and fluttering warmth filled Kai’s gut. He pressed harder into her, exploring her mouth with his tongue. She made a noise of approval, shifting herself across his lap and wrapping his waist with her legs.

His hands ran from her strong thighs, up her sides, and over the tight material over her back—his fingers slipped under the thin straps, tracing over the ridges of scars oh-so-similar to the ones that she’d worshiped on him. Her fingers dug into his hair, still damp at the roots, sharp finger nails gliding over his scalp as their tongues pressed and their teeth clacked together in a vain attempt to distract themselves enough to forget it all.

Her ankles hooked behind him and his fingers sunk into the soft flesh between tough muscle. Her arms tightened around his neck, pulling him down, her fingers carding through his hair. His mouth wandered from hers, finding the angle of her jaw with an open-mouthed kiss, then the hollow of her throat, where he closed his lips and swirled his tongue. She groaned in approval.

He slipped his hands down and under her ass before abruptly standing, lifting her along with him, barely pausing to find a spot lower on her throat to devote himself to, her limbs pulling closer and her hair falling around their faces as her angle got higher.

She tugged at his hair, urging his head back up to hers, and she kissed him hard and messy. They both panted already between demanding attention, her humming and smiling into his lips as he carried her to her bedroom and—

He abruptly stopped returning her advances, ignoring back from her enticing lips and looking around her shoulder. “What the hell is that?”

She leaned back, arms loosening around his neck, breathing hard. “What?”

She glanced back.

On her king-sized, posh bed of silk sheets, in a room of atmospheric burnt orange mood lighting—a cat was curled up near the foot of the bed. It had a white cone on, a bandaged front paw, and it was covered in thinning striped fur.

“Oh, uh,” Skylor shrugged, elbows on his shoulders. “I haven’t gotten around to naming her, yet.”

“I told you to get rid of it, you didn’t have to bring it home.”

“No, you said deal with it.” She leaned in close to his frown, a still-seductive smirk on her face. “I dealt with it.”

He huffed and abruptly dropped her. She landed on her feet easily enough, despite pouting at her abandonment. Kai wasn’t happy about it either, frustrated by his own arousal, but there was an elderly cat with medical issues in the place he’d been planning on using.

“I meant toss it in an alley or something,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair.

“No you didn’t, you would have just done it yourself.” She rolled her eyes, grabbing onto the front of his shirt and attempting to pull him down to her. When he didn’t budge, she groaned. “Would you just kiss me already?”

“We are not f*cking with a cat in the room.”

“What, are you shy now?”

He glowered at her.

“Fine, fine, you’re right.” She let him go with a puff and turned to the bed. “That would probably be weird. I’m new to the pet thing.”

“Why did you even keep it?” He asked, crossing his arms. “You’re a bit busy for an animal, aren’t you?”

Skylor ran a hand over the mangy fur and the cat raised it’s head, opening it’s eyes a slit with a curious purr. The woman lifted it carefully, pulling it to her chest and the cat was more than happy to be carried around, it’s lame foot hanging beneath it.

“Her feeding bowls are automatic, and the vet said she’s pretty independent in a house,” she said, brushing passed Kai with her full arms. “Litter trained and all. I just thought…well, she’s old, and she doesn’t have much more of a life. I figured I could give her gourmet foods and a nice view on the way out. Not like I get to use this place for myself very often, with how much we work in the field.”

Skylor nudged the door to the living room open with a foot. She crouched, gingerly setting the cat down on the floor. It managed to wake itself up enough to stand on three feet, the other held up loosely. The cat gazed up at Skylor, blearily annoyed to be moved, as Skylor stood up.

Kai had rarely seen her so gentle with anything. If Skylor was anything, it was a force of nature, contained under strict military code. It didn’t leave much room for gentleness in either of them, even during their time together.

“She’d just die alone in some shelter,” Skylor shrugged. “And it’s hardly a hassle. So…why not, right?”

Kai watched the cat limp across the shag carpet, shaking it’s head with annoyance under the cone. It jumped up onto the leather couch, kneaded at a pillow, then curled back up. “…Sure.”

“Great.” She firmly closed the door. This time, Kai let her pull him down and his hands fell back down to her hips. She brushed their noses together, arms snaking around his neck. “Now, where were we?”

-

His next problem soon made itself known.

Lloyd began to get sick following their trips into the city. At first, it was nothing much. A headache here, some nausea there. Things Kai could blame on power overuse or flying vertigo or a small stomach bug. But every time they came back, it got a little worse. And a little worse. And a little worse. And him getting sick just happen to coincide with the way his eyes lost their green glow by the time they landed back down in Shadowspire.

The red eyes felt like less of a burden to see, but watching Lloyd vomit into a bucket that stayed beside his bed was not easy. The chamberlain began to chastise Kai harshly every time they emerged from the Dragon’s Keep and Lloyd was worse than the last time.

“What are you doing to that boy?!” The chamberlain eventually demanded. “Just when he begins to recover, you and he lock yourselves in that damned place and he is unwell again, worse than before, even! If this keeps up, I will have no choice but to inform his father!”

The emperor had yet to notice, Lloyd’s body usually recovering in time for supper with His Majesty. But he would certainly suspect all kinds of treachery if he were to be informed. That aside, Kai was getting nervous about how sick Lloyd would become if they kept up on the trips.

“You may be right,” Kai sighed. “This is getting out of hand.”

“No, he is not right!” Lloyd argued. He sat on his bed, skin whiter than ever. His eyes were sunken where they’d been glowing with heath just a few hours ago among the rooftops of Ninjago City. He clutched his sick bucket. “Chamberlain, you will not tell my father. I am perfectly fine. It’s just a little—”

His body heaved. He leaned over the bucket, his grip on it white-knuckled.

Doctor Eun-ji gave Kai a baleful look, sitting at the edge of Lloyd’s bed. The physician had a hand on Lloyd’s shoulder, but used his other hand to make a mocking gesture. “‘I am perfectly fine,’ he claims, when he is so clearly not. I wonder where he got that habit from.”

Kai gave the old man a weary glare. His arms were crossed over the bed.

“I am fine,” Lloyd insisted. “It’s just a bit of nausea. Chamberlain, you cannot tell my father. The truth is—Please, understand. The truth is that my powers came in and Kai has been helping me develop them.”

Oh—don’t f*cking tell them that, kid! Kai grimaced, even before Chamberlain Noble’s head whipped up toward him. The man was getting so old, Kai was dimly afraid that he may break his own neck moving to so quickly.

The advisor’s glare was absolutely deadly. Kai reconsidered how much of a threat he saw in the man, after all.

“You…That is forbidden,” the man hissed through his grinding teeth, eyes alight with fire toward Kai. “You are perfectly aware that the boy was never to be trained. You would dare go against the emperor’s wishes for his own son?! You have truly gone too far, this time!”

“All I have ever done is what I believed to be best for the prince, including this.” Kai threw a hand out toward the sickly-looking boy. “I want him to be able to defend himself!”

“Do you see, now, that the emperor forbade such training for a reason?!” the chamberlain shot back, pointing at the bucket. “Did you not think that the emperor would only command his son to be helpless if was for his own protection?! His supposed powers are doing this to him!”

“We don’t know that.”

“I see no other explanation! Unless you are keeping something more from me?!”

Kai snarled at him. The old man glared back resolutely, despite how small he was in the face of Kai’s stature. He had always been steadfast and stubborn when it came to Lloyd.

He wouldn’t tell the emperor about Lloyd’s training for the boy’s own sake—and, honestly, perhaps for Kai’s sake, as well. For all of his harsh words, the old man cared somewhere deep down, not that he’d shown it since Kai had been years younger. But Kai was also wary that if he were to know Kai was taking him into the city, he might as well cave under all of the secrets and inform Garmadon.

So he couldn’t tell the chamberlain that he didn’t think Lloyd’s powers were what was making him sick. It was when his powers disappeared. And they only seemed to do so when they returned home to Shadowspire.

“Both of you, calm down, or remove yourselves from the prince’s chambers,” Doctor Eun-ji scolded the two of them, scowling their way while patting Lloyd’s back—the kid was vomiting again. “He is my patient at the moment, and I will not have arguments above sick patients.”

Chamberlain Noble bowed his head. Kai squeezed his crossed arms, but huffed.

“Alright,” Kai begrudgingly relented. “I see your wisdom, chamberlain. Your Highness…no more visits to the Keep until I find out what is making you so unwell.”

Lloyd looked hurt. Kai couldn’t imagine how painful an idea it was to lose the city after he’d only just discovered it. “But—!”

Kai held a hand up. “There will be no discussion. I will not risk your health any further. Your coronation is only a week away and we cannot have you in bed for your own parade.”

A week, and you’ll get back to the city anyway. Just hold out a week, Kai’s eyes implored.

Lloyd closed his mouth, pressing it into a thin, upset line. But he nodded, pouting over the bucket of sick.

-

“This is where he stood?” The Shogun rumbled.

The trooper with the glasses behind the screen nodded nervously. “Y-Yes, milord, sir. The one who called himself Kazuki was in the center of the scanning system when our equipment malfunctioned.”

Kai stood in the spot outlined with painted yellow feet on the metal plate. He could imagine the damage around him—the bent scanning arm, the computer screens that had fallen away, the shattered projectors. His gaze swung around…he thought.

Kai was fairly certain that the damage that day had been Lloyd dipping into his powers. They’d quickly learned that his powers were quite combustive and it was difficult for Lloyd to tap into them—but bursts of emotion always had a good chance of bringing them to light. Especially feelings such as anxiety or fear. It was a defense mechanism for any inherently magical being. But the question was why here? Why in the city, why in this spot, but not within the prince’s home?

Kai looked up. Above him was the wide threshold of the open gates, and he knew that troopers were stationed just above on the walkway. It blocked his view up the cliffsides of the Pass, but…hm.

“Captain,” Kai suddenly said. “Would you say that I am still within the Veil where I stand?”

Captain Hutchins stood just outside the gates, in the sunshine of the day, his boots crunching down the green grasses. His imperial guards were corralling the lines on both sides of the gate, preventing people from entering and exiting the valley while Kai conducted his investigation.

Captain Hutchins squinted under his helm. “I would consider the area of the gates to still be a part of Shadowspire, but…I suppose that they extend outside of the cliffs of the Pass. If you are judging the area by the mountains, then technically, you are outside of them.”

Kai hummed. “As I thought.”

Captain Hutchins’ curious side-eye burrowed into him. Why is that important? his gaze asked. Kai shook his head. No reason at all.

Kai stood a step to the side and leaned out the opposite side of the gate, gaze up toward the sky of the Veil. The emperor’s dark clouds of oni magic hung as low and as thick as ever among the peaks, sealing the valley away. He took steps toward the other side—a bright blue sky with layers of picturesque clouds.

Technically, indeed.

-

Finally, there was Morro’s investigation. Kai and the general found a shaky ground for the two of them to discuss on without threatening each other every moment, though there were a few close calls during which Kai nearly set the man’s head aflame. They hadn’t talked so civilly in years.

It helped that Morro had at last, although begrudgingly, accepted that the Sage of the Bamboo Forest was not just a figment of the rebellion’s imagination. It took many shreds of evidence that he had to find and put together himself, but he believed it. He had to concede that Kai was right and the show of humility was enough for Kai to go from outright aggressive to warily stewing in his dislike of the man.

In the quiet of the meeting room, both of them with their arms crossed, deep in thought, Morro spoke lowly.

“You believe he is the Sage. Do you not?”

Kai’s eyes flickered over to him. “…I believe there is a possibility. The motif would fit with his inflated opinion of his own wisdom.”

“Perhaps,” Morro put his chin in his hand. “But Wu was not one to bring attention to himself. Though it has been twenty years since I was in his presence, I find it hard to believe a being such as him changes much with the passing of time. The possibility is there, I suppose…”

Kai grunted, leaning against the wall in his armor and helm. Morro’s deep hood hid his face from sight in his contemplation, despite the privacy of the room.

“You knew him more recently than I,” Morro stated. “Do you truly believe that it could be him or are you searching for a chance at revenge?”

Kai scowled under his mask, eyes tightening. “More petty jabs, general? I thought we’d agreed to move on from our childishness.”

To his credit, Morro’s tone was even and matter-of-fact, not as slimy as he so often was. “I am asking a genuine question. I would love nothing more than to find him and wring his neck myself for what he did to me, long before he moved on to you. But I do not want an opinion of yours based on blind anger. So I ask again: Do you truly believe he could be the leader of the larger Resistance?”

Kai glanced off to the side. Did he?

No. That answer was easy. That elderly man had never been after kingdoms or people or armies to follow him. All he’d been after was control over those who walked the earth with primordial grace. Kai could only assume it was to regain some semblance of control in a world where the mortals were dominated by a force he did not dare reckon with directly.

That was almost the reason that Kai hated him. More than Garmadon or his parents or all of the horrible, disgusting people that filled the miserable world. But no—the real reason…was that the elderly man was so good at manipulating those around him, convincing them to to fight and fight and fight forever, and in the end, not having any qualms about asking those who fall for his lies to die for him. He was Garmadon’s mirror—but the emperor, at least, did not string anyone along like a pig following the stick. Both were evil—but only one played at being pure and benevolent.

So, he said, “No. He has reaped and used groups of elemental masters since the rise of the empire to further his goals. A creature of habit does not change. He’s certainly among the ninja I am hunting. The Sage must be someone else.”

Morro’s hood bobbed up and down. “I agree. I will continue my investigation. I can sense something drawing near in the future. I cannot see what…but it is dark and it is looming. Perhaps a delay of the prince’s coronation would not be—”

“No delays. We cannot afford to show weakness. The peoples’ trust in the empire has become more unstable than ever and the economy is struggling to compensate for the lack of resources following the camp shut-downs. The crowning of a new successor will give hope to those unsatisfied with the emperor’s rule.”

“Depending on that to prevent more riots and protests is reckless. None of us have any idea how the public will react. They will more likely despise the spoiled brat and the promise of the empire’s perseverance even in the event of the emperor’s…disposition. You’re grasping at straws.”

“What else would you have me do?” Kai asked bitterly. “With Kurogane’s seat remaining empty, the politicians are at each other’s throats. There have been three assassinations within the upper chambers of the government already, and I am sure there have been more attempts that have been foiled. Governor Hikaru has accused Governor Raiden of treason and they will soon force my attention. I am shocked Clouse has survived as long as he has. With the political unrest, none of the issues of wheat and rice shortages have been handled, and production of imperial assets as well as civilian companies dependent on Camp Tetsu have been forced to halt. So, tell me—how, exactly, would delaying the coronation inspire confidence in the empire’s ability?”

“None of it will matter if the rebels are not dealt with in time,” Morro growled, splaying a hand out. “Riots can be put down, protests and strikes can be properly managed, if that is what comes of all this. But the organization of the Resistance Against the Empire is the most dangerous threat this empire has faced since it’s founding. They could bring the entire empire down if they knew where to target. You are well aware of this! We may have our differences, but I always believed that I could depend on your judgement when it came to matters of security—you have never been swayed by the state of politics, unlike some. Why is this different? Why are you acting the stubborn fool for a royal coronation, of all things?”

“It is our emperor’s will,” Kai glared coldly.

“You have argued on behalf of security matters before, and I know that the emperor has headed your advice in the past,” Morro pointed. “I have grown weary of that excuse.”

“Think no further of it.” Morro’s hand curled into a fist on the table. “I appreciate your attempt at counsel, but you have your own assignment to concern yourself with. Find me the Sage—the other generals and I will ensure everything else is handled. We will not need a delay. The rebellion may be strong, but they will never be strong enough to overcome the will of the empire.”

The air felt tight in the room, dense, but still cold. Kai’s mask filtered out any differences in the air so that it was no more difficult for him to breathe, but Morro’s intent were still there.

“…I hope you are right, commander,” Morro said, distaste in his tone. “For all of our sakes, and for the prince’s.”

-

Six days before the prince’s eighteenth birthday. Gongjang District. Late morning—almost ten o’clock. Layers of grey hung at different heights above the city, the only reassurance that the sun still rose being the vague white glow of the sky. The overcast day would not lead to rain, but the threat was enough for Ninjagoans to be carrying umbrellas, ready to trudge through their day’s work regardless of the weather. Down in Gongjang, it was never a question of whether or not anything would be canceled. Even if it were raining lava rather than water, employees would still be expected to arrive to work ten minutes early. Most of those in the district during the day lived elsewhere, but they flocked to the factories and disrepaired blocks of warehouses in a sad attempt to risk their lives for minimum wage.

It was, honestly, a miracle when any of the factories were in full working conditions. Not simply due to poor infrastructure, rather due to the fact that the laborers down in Gongjang were on strike more often than they were getting a paycheck.

The warehouse that he faced now was clearly one that had fallen under those strikes. Graffiti made the outer walls unrecognizable with old messages of blame and hate, the paint so old that it was chipping away, leaving dry piles of red flakes to pile up at the angle of the wall. He craned his neck back—the wall was large, the warehouse wide, but none of the windows had been broken. Strange. It wasn’t impossible—the abandoned, haunting buildings that lined the block on either side of the warehouse were mostly in single pieces, but there were still the occasional hole in the frames.

Upon closer inspection, the windows of this warehouse were blacked out—painted from the inside. They would look completely unsuspicious at night, and nothing special in the daytime.

He’d been informed of the details. No electricity, nor gas, ran into the building from any of their connected plants. There was no one around enough to identify whether or not any strange noises came from the warehouse. The usual informants had been ordered to simply report anything suspicious rather than take their time to spy, as the Shogun’s generals were in a rush to handle this situation themselves.

Nothing made it different from any other tip they’d followed up on. In fact, it was a relatively poor tip, with no suspicious characters attached. It was only a location.

Kai gestured silently and Skylor slunk around the side. They had no idea if there was anyone inside, but it was safe to assume there was. They didn’t have the element of surprise—Kai glanced up at Dreadmaw, who loomed across the street—but they didn’t need it.

The dragon waited on the street obediently, prepared to roast anyone who attempted escape, while Kai went inside. There was a chained padlock between the bars of the front—they melted away without him even having to touch them, the metal bars of the door disfiguring inward. He shoved the doors open with one hand—they flew back and slammed into the wall behind, the metallic CLANG-CLANG echoing throughout the warehouse.

Inside was a scene pulled from Kai’s deepest nightmares—or his most yearnful dreams. And he learned, in that moment, that he was unprepared for the confrontation that he’d been so hoping for.

Half the room, a set up of mats and muk jong dummies for intensive martial arts training were set up, pristine and well-taken care of. The other half, an engineer’s playground, with tools ranging from welder’s torches, to car jacks, to circular saws, to piles and boxes and shelves of nuts and bolts and screwdrivers. Discarded or stolen mismatched metal, clearly brought in to reuse, sat in a pile at one end of the warehouse. Half the skeleton of a motorbike sat on a stand in the center of the area.

This was all illuminated by the grey light that came in with Kai’s entrance. The doors folded him into darkness not a moment later.

He reached out with his senses—there was something. Something faint, as if it had already come and gone. But there was no one in the warehouse.

He raised a hand, numbly lighting a fire in the palm of his glove. He found a wide lever and wrapped his other hand around it, cranking it up until it locked into place with a thunk.

The sound of a generator sputtered and coughed before beginning to chug along. The warehouse hummed with the sound of electrics and piping coming to life. From the lever, lines of blue and white fairy lights began to light up. The lights trailed across the edges of the lived-in area, hanging across some of the chains above, drooping over the training mats. They revealed, in the corner of the room, some piles of what seemed to be blankets.

The lights continued, running up the arms of a metal staircase that led up to an office space, ringed with a catwalk. The dark windows of the office were deep and foreboding, giving away nothing. Had Kai not been able to sense the fact that was empty, he’d be wary of any threats hiding in wait. He supposed that a handful of mortals could be holed up—but this was not the rebel hold-out of a few mortals.

He picked across the area of metal-scrap to the piles of blankets.

Four bedrolls. Some half-rolled, then hastily abandoned. Color-coded. It shouldn’t have mattered what color they were, but Kai noticed. Four.

He folded his fingers into a fist to keep his rage steady. They’d been easy to replace, hadn’t they, old man? White, black, royal blue, cyan—their colors. He’d given away their colors. There was, at least, no red. What, had the old man decided that Kai had been so worthless in the end that he would not even curse his new students with his color?

Did the replacements wear their old gi, too? Had the old man pulled the gi from their old packs before giving them away, or had he let his new students pull them out themselves? Would one of them carry his sister’s old backpack, the one that she stitched her initials in to? Did the old man even remember the difference between any of the elementals he’d killed at this point? Kai couldn’t recall if the man had ever even bothered to call him by his name.

He gritted his teeth, turning his back on the abandoned pillows. The bedrolls were still there—he had always been trained to take the bedrolls first. Either the old man had changed his training, which Kai doubted, or his new students had been rushed to leave.

A door at the back of the warehouse groaned with rusted hinges as it opened. Kai glanced over, but it was just Skylor’s reflective helmet.

“Anything?” She asked.

Kai’s eyes ran across the warehouse, landing on the office. “Yes. They were here.”

She paused in shock. “The ninja?”

“Yes.”

He strode toward the office. After two weeks of nothing, they’d walked directly into their lair.

Skylor called up as he went up the stairway. “How can you be sure? It looks more like a rebel manufacturing depot for weapons or illegal transports.”

“I’m sure.” He opened the door.

Inside, a meeting room. Candles. A coffee brewer. A portable stove.

A small bag sitting on a side table, the one that overlooked the rest of the warehouse. Skylor was picking through and scanning some of the metalworks with her gauntlets. Very old memories were attempting to push themselves to the forefront of his mind. Memories of before Shadowspire, before he’d been on the run, even. Sometimes he thought he’d lost the ability to recall so far back.

Memories of a home. Memories of waking up early in the morning, waking from nightmares, and finding something like comfort. Warm tea, plain at first, but leaving the aftertaste to soak in, every exhale tasting of sweet lavender. Not his favorite tea—he had a black tea preference—but someone else’s. Someone who made tea far more often than any one old man should.

The herbs lay innocently in the pocket-sized brown weave bag. His fingers trembled minutely as he picked it up.

Rage burned up, so hot and true, it made him tremble under his armor. The bag burst into flame in his hand, immediately turning the herbs to ash. They scattered over the desk.

The smoke had the faintest whiff of lavender beyond his mask. He had been here. He and all of his pets.

Kai was going to find them. And when he did—no more. No more doomed, violent attempts to fight back. No more training children for war against a foe that was never their own. No more forcing parents from their home and their children, leaving little boys and little girls to fend for themselves before repeating over their own mother and father’s failures. No more.

“Sho! Come and take a look at this!”

He inhaled, corralling his emotions to keep from burning the office down. There could be evidence anywhere—they should call in a team to search it top to bottom after his and Skylor’s initial investigations. Perhaps, then, they would be able to know which exact elements they were contending with.

Skylor’s visor had slipped up over the head of her helmet, revealing her pinched concentration as she crouched next to the half-built motorbike. It was nearly a finished piece—it was missing wheels, and a good paint job to cover the discolored scraps that made it up, but it had solid shape.

Kai could understand her earlier confusion. But elemental masters were not only skilled in one area, more often than not, he’d found.

“What is it?” He hummed, stepping next to her.

She pointed at a spot under the front chest of the bike, under which the wheel would sit. “This symbol. I swear I’ve seen it before…”

He sighed, glancing toward the front doors, then dropped into a low squat next to her. The skirt of his armor shifted, falling over his legs. He still had to crane his neck at a downwards angle in order to see where she was pointing.

It was not an accident. It was not a leftover mark from the scrap piece. Kai knew the difference. The symbol had been very purposefully pressed into the metal by a blacksmith’s seal. During welding, most likely. Blacksmiths used such seals as a trademark to advertise and retain credit for their work. They were rare to see—after all, the only people still doing their own blacksmithing were those in the Outer Regions, far from the industrialized city.

Kai knew of seals, but he’d spent so much of his life in the Central Plains, he’d only ever seen one.

And on the bike was that seal.

“It’s more than a pretty thing for my work, Kai. It means family—our family. You, me, your mom, and your sister. This means you’re not alone. Because we’re stronger together, right?”

“Yeah! When I’m big as you, I’mma be strong!”

“I think you already are, big man. You carried Nee all day yesterday!” A laugh.

“That’s ‘cause she’s smoll.”

“That’s true. You’re going to have to keep getting stronger if you want to carry her when she’s big. Tell you what—why don’t you help me in the forge? I have a feeling you’ll have a natural talent for it. What do you say?” A hair ruffle.

“YEAH! I wanna help!”

“Whoa, whoa, okay—give me that—uh, maybe let’s start with you bringing me the tools I need, how’s that sound?”

“Okay, papa! Dis one? Dis one? Whaddabout dis one?”

A thumbs up. “Yeah, there. Let’s start with that one. Thanks, big man.”

Within the confines of the circular mold, flames in the shape of a crashing wave climbed the sides.

Kai had never been able to be completely sure whether or not Wu knew what had become of him. It would have been easier to believe that they had all died. Kai’s identity was kept incredibly tight outside of the palace. Wu could most likely only suspect all these years, rather than have any suspicions confirmed. Kai had silently griped with his anger at the possibility that he knew—that Wu had known and had left him to rot to his fate.

But this…this being here, after Kai had been sending so clear a message to the rebels of their inevitable doom…Wu was sending a message right back. He knew exactly who Kai was. And he was mocking him. With his dead family. The family that Wu had lead to their deaths, one after the other.

He was mocking him. He knew Kai had survived and didn’t care. He’d left him to his fate. He’d never f*cking cared.

“Yeah. I’ve definitely seen it. It was from our first mission together, a few weeks after my father’s execution. Remember that abandoned smithy? I’d bet that whoever…Sho?”

Kai traced the lines of the symbol, staring at it, his eyes wide and unhinged.

The smell of burning leather filled the air. His glove sizzled, then melted from his hand, catching fire as it hit the ground. His hand, going from mute red, to middling orange, to burning yellow. His fingers sunk into the metal like it was nothing, going right through the family crest. He squeezed his hand into a fist, molten metal disfiguring and slipping from between his fingers. The motorbike skeleton groaned as the proximity to his hand began to warp the rest of it, the entire front of the bike staring to droop down and lose it’s shape.

Then, the carboard that had been spread across the ground around it caught, flames eating across it, slowly rising smoke trapped above them. For a long moment, the destruction was so isolated.

“…Sho…hey,” Skylor lowered her visor. “Come on. We should call in the evidence team.”

“Don’t touch me.”

Her hand froze near his arm. His vocoder prevented her from hearing his tone—and he did not look her way. But she must have known because she pulled back, edging away from him.

“…We need this evidence. It’s been two weeks and this had been our only—”

“Get out.”

The flames jumped to the mats. They took to the sweat and mold festering within them like a dry grass field, racing across them. The air was quickly becoming thick with smoke. Skylor’s visor reflected the flickering sparks.

“This is our only lead—!”

“General.” Kai rose to his feet, molten metal drawling after his clenched fist and dripping from it. It sizzled against the concrete. “Get. Out.”

The voice of his vocoder warped as the mask against his face began to grow soft. It made his voice even less human that it had been before. The black teeth began to lengthen as gravity tugged at the softened metal, the oni sneer slowly dipping down into a scowl, sticking to the arch of his nose and cheekbones.

Skylor clenched her fists, but didn’t have to be told again. The wooden muk jongs abruptly went up, cracks, like lightening hitting, at how abrupt the flames began. The blankets in the back of the room—the bags in the office, the leather gloves within the equipment. The plastic handles of screwdrivers—boxes of iron fillings.

The lights that lined the space began to blow in the heat—crack, crack, crack, crack! Sparks flew with them, glass blown into the room. The structure of the office groaned as the supports beneath it began to lose their shape. The flames consumed every speck of dust across the floor, climbing the walls. The glass nearest Kai exploded, shattering inwards and outwards both. The fire became so high, the smoke so thick, that Kai could no longer make out where the exits were, or hardly where the walls began.

He couldn’t find it in himself to care. He, in fact, wished that he had the ability to abandon his heat resistance so that he could catch fire and burn to death, because a person couldn’t live with the hatred that burned and burned and burned through him, until it began to consume him from the inside out. The cabin of the office finally collapsed down into the larger warehouse with a WHOOOM, sending debris flying—all of them turning to ash or molten liquid one they were within two feet of him, like they were hitting an invisible barrier. The glowing molten debris splattered against his armor.

This time, the flames did not hold him in their comforting embrace—rather he who was a captive by them, and the unending pain they came from—twisting in his chest until the world didn’t seem to matter anymore.

-

To work in Shadowspire was considered the greatest honor there was among the loyalists of the empire. Some worked their whole lives for the chance—the chefs in the kitchen could sleep easy, knowing their meals had been judged the greatest in the Realm. The gardeners beyond the walls had been challenged to make the oni-corrupted vegetation look beautiful, and by the First Master, had they somehow succeeded due to their talents. And, of course, the guards were not only the best of the military, but the best of the best.

Takeshi Hutchins was not one of these people. He had not dedicated his life to achieve the honor he had been bestowed. It had not even been a thought across his mind a decade before. He’d had little ambition in life, but to be loyal to his empire and to be good, working at the only imperial post in a southern village as far from the city as one would find. It had not been the village he’d been raised in, but he had been instructed to post there, so he had. Life had been simple. Things had been black and white.

Things within Shadowspire were rarely ever so, as he had learned long before he’d truly arrived. Though, on the surface, the palace itself was calm, the home of the emperor would always be the center of everything in the empire, metaphorically, when not literally. Takeshi was forced to find a new way to understand life following his recruitment, in order to keep up with the myriad of alliances, betrayals, corruptions, and controls. It was true that he regretted many things in life—many, many things—but, in the end of it all, he had never regretted taking the hand that had been offered to him when he’d found himself in hell.

“It won’t be easy,” he’d been warned. “It will never be easy.”

Still, he had taken the hand. The warning had been mostly true—most of Takeshi’s job was stressful, difficult, even while it was straightforward. But some parts of it were allowed to be easy.

It was early in the evening and the royal family were occupied with supper once more. Lady Harumi was not joining them—she had been escorted out of the valley the day before following her unwelcome stay. Her guards had reported multiple instances of her attempting to talk them into or bribing them into giving her freedoms. Any lesser guards would have surely caved under her offers, but luckily, Takeshi had good men. He did not like that she was up to something, but he only knew as much as the Shogun had passed on to him, which was nothing but a suspicion.

She was gone, at least, so he no longer had to be concerned about that security risk. Now, only officials around to discuss the coronation filled the guest wings, though their numbers seemed to double by the day.

Takeshi was growing tired. He set down the holotablet and rubbed his eye under his reading glasses. Reading glasses. Had he really gotten so old? Or perhaps it was just a result of a lifetime’s worth of paperwork in a scant few years. But if he could ease the burden of someone who trusted him so deeply, he could handle a few documents.

A knock came to the door to his office. A muffled voice from behind. “Captain, it’s Lieutenant Cha. I have an urgent message to deliver. May I come in?”

Takeshi pushed his chair out and stood. “You may.”

The door opened and one of Takeshi’s older guards stood there, a small envelope of paper in his hands. His faced was lined with serious wrinkles, mustache greyer than Takeshi’s salt-and-peppered beard.

Takeshi stepped around his desk. “What news is so urgent?”

“I do not know, sir,” the man held up the envelope. Takeshi took it. It was sealed with a prestigious military crest on the back—a message from a grand general. “It was given to me directly by a courier of General Skylor Chen for the Shogun.”

Takeshi frowned. Why would the general not simply send an electronic message? It was must faster. “Thank you, Cha. You are free to return to your post.”

“Of course.” The man nodded, then stepped out of the room.

Takeshi studied the seal with his single eye. He could only assume that a physical message was being sent because the general was concerned that an electronic one would not be secure enough—which could be considered outrageous, considering the empire controlled all flow of information across the internet.

Unless, of course, that was the concern. Takeshi was no fool and he’d grown long used to keeping an eye out for threats from within. But what threat could be high enough to attempt access to some of the most secure communications in the Realm?

Takeshi shook his head. It was not his business unless the Shogun saw fit to involve him.

He took up his helm, slipped it under his arm, and walked out of his office. He needed a break from the paperwork. Besides, he’d been…mildly troubled to hear that the Shogun had returned so early in the night, after weeks of non-stop work in the city, hardly a day stayed in the palace. He hadn’t even greeted the prince when he’d arrived, from what Takeshi understood. That, more than anything, was reason for uneasiness.

He took to the hallway and it was not long before he was joined in his walk by none other than the physician. He wore his heavy medicinal robes of white, the black sui’ie on his head. His long grey hair, braided under the hat and down his back, swayed with his robes as he walked.

“Captain, what a pleasant surprise,” the man greeted. His tone always sounded mildly amused, as if there was a joke that Takeshi was unaware of. “I suppose you’re on your way to visit our esteemed commander as well?”

“I am.” The letter was tucked into his armor. “You must not be delivering another treatment to him? He has been healed completely for more than a week, now.”

“I suppose.” The man smiled, unfolding his hands to reveal another vial of his hanging from his hand. “But he hasn’t seemed to realize that, yet, and I will be taking advantage of the fact. If you hadn’t noticed, the last few weeks have been quite a tense time for the empire and I don’t believe it’s unreasonable of me to assume that the lord commander has had little time to retain his health. These mixes are only to help him along.”

“That would be kind of you, if you were not using trickery to fool him,” Takeshi pointed out dryly.

“Yes, well, if he did not bemoan my every attempt at aid,” Doctor Eun-ji rolled his eyes, folding his arms back together and hiding the vial again. “I would not have to resort to such barbaric methods. But alas, he’s still the foolish boy he’s always been.”

They walked passed a pair of guards, and a servant girl rushed by them, carrying a platter of an iced wine glass and three exquisite silver cups. Takeshi politely shifted aside for her, the physician doing the same.

“Doctor,” Takeshi chastised gruffly, glaring out of the corner of his eye. “We are not in private. Please, do not speak so candidly.”

The physician huffed. “Yes…First Master forbid that anyone is reminded that he is a man and not some creature-spawn of the emperor.”

Takeshi’s disapproving look didn’t seem to humble him. Takeshi sighed and instead attempted to change the subject of conversation. “How fares the prince? Has he recovered from his illness?”

“Yes,” Doctor Eun-ji bobbed his head. “He recovered within the day. I still have not found what was causing his fevers. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you, captain?”

Takeshi resolutely stared forward as they walked, able to feel the stink eye given to him. But the physician’s suspicions were meager compared to the tongue-lashing that the chamberlain had given Takeshi for enabling the Shogun’s actions. Takeshi was only glad that Noble did not know the extent of what he had helped his commander get away with.

“I have far less training in the medicinal arts than you, doctor,” Takeshi said matter-of-factly. “I would not dare give my opinion on His Highness’ condition.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” the doctor drawled.

The two of them stopped before the humble wooden door.

Takeshi knocked, his metal gloves rapping loudly. “Lord Commander, I have a message from one of your generals. May I enter?”

Takeshi waited. The doctor waited. No answer came.

They glanced at each other warily. Beneath the door, warm light could be seen. He was in there.

Takeshi knocked again. “My lord?”

No response.

Takeshi quickly ran through any possible reason that the Shogun’s return would have been as strange as it was. “Was he injured while in the city?”

“Not as far as I’m aware,” Doctor Eun-ji frowned. “But I suppose we both know how often he informs me of such situations.”

“Commander,” Takeshi called out, louder this time, as he reached for the door knob. “The physician and I are coming in. I apologize in advance for the intrusion.”

Takeshi was put off-ease when there was not even a response to that. The Shogun valued his privacy highly. Takeshi closed his other hand around the hilt of his katana, then pushed the door open. Doctor Eun-ji leaned in over his shoulder, concern on his aged face.

Takeshi felt a shock run through him, but he released the wrap of his blade. The shock was not borne of him witnessing the sight of a gruesome scene.

The hearth was lit with it’s fresh orange flame, the grand desk strewn with the work that Takeshi had been unable to collect when he had taken some of the burden from it. The velvet drapes hugged the warmth of the room, identical scarlet drapes hanging from the posts of the bed. Beneath them, the Shogun lay, half-dressed, curled on his side. The man did not snore, but the relaxed expression on his face and the even rise and fall of his shoulder told Takeshi that he was most definitely asleep.

He still wore the heavy zubon pants and tabi boots that sat under his usual armor, which was haphazardly set aside on it’s proper stand. Some of the metal of it seemed to be disfigured, most notably the mask and helm. It must have been terrifying for anyone in the halls of the palace to see pass by. The man’s chest was bare, revealing the shredded scars to Takeshi and the doctor at his back. His uwagi and under robes were piled on the ground.

The doctor sighed. “Well, if that isn’t a miracle.”

Takeshi shot the man an annoyed look. Still, the physician kindly took Takeshi’s helmet when he nudged it out to him, freeing his hands.

He stepped over to the bed. On it, there was a small metal chest, about the size of a shoe box, that had been unlocked and opened. A few papers remained within—scattered across the bed before the Shogun, there were more of them. Upon closer inspection, a few were photos. One was a photo of a couple that Takeshi did not recognize. A woman with beautiful dark hair that fell over her shoulders like a smooth river and a man with a sharp goatee and short, brown hair like licks of flame. Both were laughing as they held each other, as if in the midst of a dance. Another featured the same couple, the woman holding a bundle in her arms in the background, while the man reached for the viewer, and a young child’s face in the foreground was blurred, too close to the camera.

Beside the pictures, there was a drawing, clearly done by a child’s hand, scribbled with dark pencil. It showed a dark, armored figure with spikes producing out of it being hugged by a smaller figure with blonde hair and purple robes.

And, clutched in the Shogun’s hand and held close to his chest, even in sleep, there was another drawing. This one must have only been done by a truly talented artist, and it was a rendition of a beautiful girl with dark hair in a bob with bangs. Her smile was familiar—not unlike the man’s in the photograph. Being close as he was, Takeshi also noticed—the Shogun’s eyes were bagged and his eyelids were bloodshot.

His heart sunk. He did not know any of these people—but he could guess very well. This was clearly personal, not meant for them to see.

He went to the opposite side of the bed and quietly began to collect the photographs and drawings, gentle as he placed them back into the metal chest. He tugged the drawing from the Shogun’s hand and returned it to it’s home. The Shogun did not stir. There was no line between his brows for the first time in a long while.

“What is it?” The physician asked softly, looking over the sleeping man’s shoulder.

Takeshi reverently closed the chest and set it on the ground next to the bed. “No business of ours. Let us leave him to rest.”

Doctor Eun-ji nodded, pulling out the vial and setting it quietly on the bedside table. Takeshi took the decorative blanket at the foot of the bed and unfolded it, the golden fringe around the edges brushing the carpeted floor. He knew that the man did not need the extra warmth, but he hoped it would instead provide some meager comfort. Takeshi laid it across him.

Of course, he should have known better. But his own paternal instincts, curse them, had gotten the better of him.

The Shogun twitched when he was touched, shifting. Takeshi had time to berate himself internally and grimace before a calloused hand shot up and grabbed his armored glove.

“No need for alarm,” he murmured. The Shogun’s sleepy eyes squinted open. “It is only me.”

“Captain?” The grip relaxed. The voice was groggy. “…What time’s it?”

“An appropriate time for rest,” Takeshi reassured him, pulling the weave blanket up his shoulders, even as the man moved to rise. “You are not missing anything. The night is long, still. Sleep.”

“No,” the Shogun grumbled. “No, you have news. What is it?”

He pushed Takeshi’s hands back and sat up, letting the blanket fall to his waist as he rubbed his forehead. From next to the bedside table, the physician shot Takeshi a disapproving look. Takeshi was aware enough to look properly culled by his silent scathing, this time.

He had half a mind to tell the man not to worry until the morning, but Takeshi knew that the Shogun would not want that. He pulled the envelope from his obi and held it out. “A message from General Skylor. I am sorry to wake you in order to deliver it.”

“And your medicine,” the physician said firmly, thrusting a hand forward to hand the vial in the Shogun’s face by the leather string. The Shogun jerked back a bit to avoid being hit in the nose. “Here, drink.”

The man gave him a desperate, disgusted look. “Still? I feel fine, honestly.”

“I don’t trust you,” the physician turned his nose up. “Perhaps when you learn to be properly attentive to your injuries, and inform me of them, your treatments won’t have to last so long.”

The Shogun glowered, but popped the vial open and threw it back. He gagged briefly, but swallowed, handing the glass back in order to break open the seal on the letter. He slid it out and read it while he was still grimacing from the taste.

His grimace deepened as his eyes ran over the words written. After a long moment, he exhaled, crumpled both letter and envelope in his hand, and they burst into flames. It quickly burned to ash, and the man dumped the handful onto his desk.

“Great,” he muttered. “We found the ninja’s hidden base, but when we got there, the forge was still warm. I had her look into some of the bases the generals had come across over the past few weeks that were also hastily abandoned. It seems like our suspicions were right.”

“Your suspicions, commander?” Takeshi asked, intrigued.

The man sighed, massaging his head and closing his tired eyes. “There’s a traitor among the generals.”

Takeshi traded a scandalized look with the physician.

The older man’s face slackened with his low exclamation. “By the Master’s light. You’re serious?”

“They’re the only ones who have access to our investigative activities. One of them is warning the rebels when we’re coming and probably providing all kinds of information on our military affairs,” the Shogun continued, voice muffled under his hand. “It would explain how the rebels have only grown into a bigger and bigger problem despite all my efforts. To have a mole in so high a position…f*ck me. I should have realized sooner.”

In his exhaustion, the commander clearly did not care to keep his decorum. Both Takeshi and the doctor raised their brows. The Shogun didn’t bother looking up, now rubbing his face and groaning into his hands.

“The past is the past,” Takeshi reminded him, putting a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t look up. “You may not have known then, but you do now, and you are more than equipped to handle it. But first, I would implore you to rest. You will be no good in an additional investigation strung out.”

“I can’t. I have to order the generals to halt all movements. We’re so close, but if they find something now, then our mole will warn the rebels again.” The Shogun shook his head. “The entire operation will fail if they’re not found—and Lloyd’s coronation is in six days. Rest can wait.”

He reached to the bedside table and grabbed the dark holo, lighting it up. Takeshi put a hand over the phone screen—the Shogun looked up, mildly irritated.

“Let me pass the message on to General Skylor to order the generals,” Takeshi offered quietly. “I will ensure they are all aware of your command. You should sleep.”

“I can’t—”

“Do as the captain says—your body needs it,” Doctor Eun-ji inturrupted. “Hutchins will ensure all of your duties are handled. Don’t make me tell the prince that you’ve been taking poor care of yourself. You will make him very sad and he has already been in a sallow mood.”

The Shogun gave the physician an offended glare, opening his mouth, then closing it again with a scowl. The prince card always seemed to work on him. It was fortunate that a man as stubborn as he had such an obvious weakness. Fortunate for them, that was. Takeshi hoped his enemies never learned how close the Shogun and the prince were.

“Kai,” Takeshi insisted. The Shogun’s eyes flickered over at his name. “Please, place your trust in me. Rest.”

The Shogun worked his jaw. But the heaviness of his eyes and limbs seemed to win out. Takeshi gave the physician a suspicious side-eye, wondering if the man’s smug look was the result of slipping some sedative into the commander’s ‘medicine.’

“Alright,” the Shogun conceded, very much begrudgingly. “Fine. Four hours. I’ll rest for that long. You’ll give my orders to General Skylor right away?”

“I will.” Takeshi bowed his head low. “The moment I leave this room, you have my word.”

The man nodded, exhaling and running a hand through his hair. “Go on, then.”

Takeshi turned when he was dismissed. He opened the door once more and held it as he waited for Doctor Eun-ji.

The physician had paused with a frown at the Shogun’s bedside, however. The flickering hearth lit only half of his face, drowning the rest in his troubled expression. “…Would you not like to know the prince’s condition, my lord? The last you saw him, he still held his bedside bucket, if I’m not mistaken.”

The Shogun ran forefinger and thumb across his eyebrows without looking up. “Yes. Right. Of course—how is he?”

“Well,” the doctor reported quietly. “He is doing well.”

“Good. That’s good,” the Shogun replied, distant, eyes far from them. “Thank you.”

The physician bowed, this time without any smart comments. He and Takeshi were able to share a look right in front of the Shogun, and the man did not even seem to notice, abruptly deep in thought. The line between his brows had returned, like it had been etched there all along.

Takeshi held the door open for the physician to walk through. He gave the Shogun one last glance—he still sat up, blanket over crossed legs, face in his hands. Takeshi somehow doubted that his four hours would be filled with sleep as peaceful as he had been getting before. He sighed silently and closed the door behind him.

Perhaps the Shogun had been right after all. Not even the simplest of things could be easy for them.