Ninjago: The Purple Ninja - Book 2

Prime Empire: Chapter 1 - Would You Like to Enter Prime Empire?

Re-reading the first book of the Purple Ninja makes me think about what Katarina's life was before she met the Ninja and reunited with Wu and Garmadon. She went from having little to no friends to having a lot of friends, she became truly happy, and if she hadn't stayed with the Ninja, she wouldn't have been able to heal and grow like how she is right now.

Might be a great AU I could do as a oneshot one day. It would be fun. 

During the daytime, citizens of Ninjago City were enjoying their modern life; People played games on their phones as they walked down the streets, Nelson and Antonia were delivering the daily newspaper to houses, apartments and buildings, and Dareth was trying to impress Gayle Gossip, who seemed...flattered by his efforts to please her.

Everything was perfect.

But the nighttime was when the bad guys came out to play.

Late one night, a noodle truck for Chen's Number 1 Noodle House stops outside an empty warehouse. The back of the truck opens, revealing the Mechanic - who had escaped prison again - and a gang of low-leveled street thugs that were working for him.

They eagerly run towards the warehouse. The Mechanic uses his mechanical arm to bust the door wide open, letting it fall to the ground. "We're in, boys!"

The thugs get a good look inside the warehouse. It was all just old computers and tech junk, nothing valuable. They were very displeased.

"Huh, look at all this old junk." One of them scoffs. The Mechanic grabs him by the collar of his black hoodie and glares at him threateningly.

"Just because it's old doesn't make it junk, just forgotten." He shoves the thug away from his sight. "Find the motherboard!"

The thugs nod and spread out in the vast warehouse, looking for what they came for. He walks down the aisle, as the gang looks around nooks and crannies, in crates and open boxes for the motherboard.

Until finally, he spotted it, on the highest shelf in the center of the warehouse. "There! The top shelf." A thug nods at the request and grabs a ladder. He climbs up on the ladder and grabs the box of the motherboards. But doing so made him fall back down into a crate of styrofoam, while the motherboards spill all over the area.

The Mechanic walks over the thug and grabs him by the collar of his black hoodie. "Careful with those!" He throws the thug out of the crate and quickly but carefully scans his eyes for a specific motherboard.

"What are we looking for, boss?"

There, amongst the scattered motherboards, was a motherboard that stood out like a sore thumb. He grabs it, and examines it happily. It was a dark red and black color, with a strange symbol right in its center. He laughs. The group of thugs gather around him. 

"This is it. A needle in a haystack. A very, very valuable needle."

Suddenly, the lights turn on in the warehouse, one by one, shining down on the Mechanic and the group of thugs.

"Sorry to crash the party, boys!" Nya says. The Ninja, who were standing on top of the aisles. They had heard and saw everything in the cover of darkness. Nya, Cole, Jay, Zane, Lloyd, Kai and Katarina jump down and land mere feet away from the thugs, one by one.

"Guess our invitations got lost in the mail, huh?" Jay reaches behind his back and grasps his hand around his kusarigama.

"But hey, there's always such a thing as being," Katarina summons her daggers with her magic in a to and fro flourish, until she points one of them at the Mechanic. "Fashionably late."