As the dragons soared higher, Harumi's heart dropped lower and lower. A dizzy feeling bounced off the walls of her mind, a combination of déjà vu from being the Quiet One, unbridled rage burning to get revenge, and tiredness; it wasn't the first time Ninjago City had gone down in ruins because of the countless villains attacking it. At this point, all they could do was defend.
She side-eyed the hands over mouths and closed eyes, lips pressed thinly together.
"Our home...what has Zephyr done?" Cloud was barely holding on to Harumi as her paws covered her leaky eyes.
"This looks like something out of that one Avengers movie..." Jade mumbled.
"Yeahhhhh, you're right! Except we aren't good enough to play heroes," Kaitlynn deadpanned.
"'Powers don't make a hero'," Harumi whispered, quiet enough that they didn't hear her.
"Well then we're the sidekicks who haven't been captured, and it's up to us to fix this," Lilla calmed them down. She turned to Harumi. "We need a plan."
Harumi instantly focused back on the task at hand.
"Let's split up," she instructed them, as Firstbourne spun around to face the others. "Cloud and my uncle are with me, the rest of you are together. We'll search different areas of Ninjago City at the same time. We need to find the ninja. Meet us back at the Jade Palace in an hour."
Cloud pointed across the canal to the inkling in the distance, the Temple of Resurrection.
"Will do, where should we go?" Jade asked.
"Check...the museum. They're most likely not there, but the ninja would have to be spontaneous here, not at a location Zephyr would easily find them," Harumi explained. "We'll--"
"Help! Help us!"
All of them spun around to see a woman with high-styled brown hair and a young man with a blue cap, the first holding a microphone, the second holding a camera.
"Uh..." Harumi was slightly confused. "Gayle Gossip. And...Vinny. Are you guys okay?"
"We're fi--"
"No!" Gayle burst out dramatically, cutting him off. "Ninjago City is in ruins because of some weird sorcerer guy and we didn't even get any footage! Now how are people going to know what's going on in the city?!"
"With all due respect," Kaitlynn snorted, "that's probably the least of our worries right now. Can you tell us where the museum is?"
"T-Take a left by the town square a-and it's on the right of Borg Tower, the tall s-spiky skyscraper thingy. You'll know it when you see glass p-pane roofs," Vinny stammered, hearing the blasts and explosions from deeper inside the city.
"We've got it," Jade saluted Harumi before dragging Lilla and Kaitlynn into a run towards the museum.
"You two, leave Ninjago City," Acronix told them. "Have most of the citizens evacuated?"
"Y-yes," Vinny stammered, before dragging Gayle along with him towards the city's outskirts.
"Now that that's taken care of, we three can look for the Bounty. If it's in the same place they left it, then that's a sign the ninja are still in the city," Harumi told Acronix and Cloud. "This way."
~
When they came upon the Destiny's Bounty, it was still in its old, familiar condition, beautiful white and red sails dancing in the breeze.
Harumi immediately took the cabins while Acronix searched the deck and Cloud went to the control room. She stumbled on an empty room, the color-coded mattresses cold with no grooves, showing that no one had been there recently.
Her eyes cast down, wavering defeat but not quite yet, she quietly slipped deeper inside, her hands coming to a rest on the photos at the far wall. Harumi scanned over the picture of Garmadon and Lloyd from many years ago, the one he always carried around in his pocket before having it framed. She saw selfies with the ninja, embarrassing moments by Jay and Nya, and Master Wu getting his beard cut a few inches; all the photos on the wall were things worthy of their own blooper reel.
Finally, she settled on her old favorite: a picture of herself, laughing at Lloyd, who was sticking chopsticks up his nose, all captured in a selfie pinned to the board. Her fingers grazed over it, and Harumi picked it up, trying to ignore the tears falling onto it.
Eventually, she felt like crying a river. All she could think of was his face and all the things tying herself to it.
When Cloud wandered into the cabin looking for Harumi, to tell her that the ninja weren't there, she stopped abruptly, seeing the blonde on her knees, sobbing uncontrollably.
Harumi had already picked up Cloud's presence by then.
"It's all my fault," the girl said, her voice emotionless, despite the tears streaming down her cheeks. "Zephyr got away because of me-"
"Harumi STOP," Cloud firmly cut her off. "You need to take all of it into perspective. You can't blame just you. It's on all of us, too."
Harumi just shook her head, wiping the tears away, facing away from Cloud. When she turned to face her pet, her muscles had relaxed back to normal, much too used to suppressing the pain and the loss all her life. Used to controlling.
"We need to go," Harumi deadpanned, when she reached Acronix by the deck, Cloud running at her heels. Not wasting another moment, she leaped off the Bounty and headed straight for the Jade Palace, waiting for nothing and no one.
"...Should I ask?" Acronix looked at her, concerned, turning to Cloud.
"It's best if you don't."
~
"I think this is it..." Jade mumbled, as she saw a large white sign with black Ninjagian letters printed on it. Not knowing the language, she just assumed it was the museum.
"Let's take a chance," Lilla pulled them both along through the entrance.
"Whoooaaa, what is THAT?" Kaitlynn gasped in horror.
"I know, isn't it AWESOME?!" Jade squeaked.
They went over to the exhibit, staring up at a huge assembly of bones, made to look like some sort of dinosaur.
"Didn't know these guys had a Jurassic time," she commented. "It says that these are the bones of a Grundal, a creature that used to terrorize Ninjago before going extinct. On the day one was resurrected, the ninja were the ones who fought against it with light despite having been turned into kids, and that was the day Lloyd used an aging tea to turn forward time. He ended up turning everything back to normal, except that by moving time forward, he also skipped a few years of his childhood..."
"Huh. So they're Harumi's friends?" Kaitlynn peered over Lilla's shoulder at the poster.
"Supposedly," Jade shrugged, already having moved on to the other exhibits. "Almost everything in here mentions them. They must be famous."
"Town heroes indeed," Lilla agreed. "It's good to know more about them. It looks like they've been able to defeat all the evil that's gone through the city before, but...not this time."
"And that, my dear friend," Jade grinned, "is why we're gonna play heroes!"
"Let's get to the palace," Kaitlynn sighed.
~
"Anything?" Harumi asked tensely, as they finally found the girls near the stairs leading up to the Temple of Resurrection.
"Nothing," Lilla sighed. "We searched little buildings near the museum, too."
"We didn't find them either," Cloud informed them, downcast. "We need to search somewhere else."
Harumi nodded. "We have to find them, at all costs."
~
And although the cost was another hour and more pain, they found nothing.
They were gathered at the bottom of Borg Tower, after searching that, Dareth's Mojo Dojo, and Chen's Noodle House, but still, the ninja were missing.
Harumi looked down; she didn't know what to do. She had been purposely avoiding the place she distinctly remembered where the ninja had died, but now there seemed to be no other clues leading to their whereabouts.
She looked up again, her eyes red with tears threatening to fall.
"We need to search the sewers."
Another half hour flew by, and they arrived at the sewers.
Harumi's hands could feel the cold, slimy rust as she traveled down the ladder, one rung at a time, before her feet landed in smelly green water. The others followed shortly after, slipping a little as they did, and Cloud came last, jumping straight down into Harumi's hands.
The blonde took a few steps forward. She looked to the left. To the right.
She saw nothing.
And that was the moment the cracks split.
No one could stop the ear-splitting sobs that echoed through the sewers after Harumi's knees hit the ground underwater, the splash sending green water up into the air. Her hair fell around her face, hands covering her face as the tears sliding down her face were lost in the sewer river.
Despite their attempts to comfort her, Harumi just couldn't stop. After holding in the pain for so long, it finally started to show, little by little, until she couldn't take it.
Then, she heard a noise coming from the shadows in the right tunnel. It was small, but her trained ears picked it up.
She immediately wiped her tears and stood up, drawing her dagger.
"Who's there? Show yourself, coward!" she yelled, then, catching herself, let her limbs go limp. "What am I saying...I sound like the Quiet One..."
"Harumi," a familiar voice hissed. "It'ssss not ssssafe here."
She put her dagger back into its sheath. "...the Serpentine...?"
"Come with us," one of them said. "You can't be out in the open."
They turned to leave, and without waiting another beat, Harumi went after them, the rest of the group shrugging before following.
After a series of twists and turns in the sewers, they came to a rusted, silver door. When they went through, Harumi noticed a light at the top of a stone staircase, climbing higher and higher. Finally reaching the top, she was astounded to see what was on the other side: the dungeons of the old Sons of Garmadon headquarters.
When she saw the faces of Killow, Ultra Violet, Master Wu, Misako, Dareth, Skylor, and Cyrus Borg, she nearly cried, thankful they were all safe and alive.
"Why did you bring us here?" She turned around to face the generals.
"Because you aren't the only one who has unfinished business with Zephyr."
(A/N: Hope everyone is safe :) Stay happy and blessed! ~Ash)