Without even blinking, Harumi didn't even begin wondering why Lloyd had showed up in her bedroom. Did he suddenly grow comfortable in doing so ever since the little incident with Omega? Glancing at the equally silent Cloud for merely a second, Harumi didn't blabber out any words wondering why Lloyd was suddenly here.
"No time to explain, really, just follow me." The blonde looked over to the white haired girl, his face showing no expression of concern whatsoever. He was rather confident and focused at the moment, Harumi learned that much. But deciding not to put up a fight to his request, both Harumi and Cloud followed him out of the room.
The little trip with no conversation whatsoever turned out to lead all three of them to the control room. Harumi was a little shocked, if she admitted it, to see everyone there, especially Garmadon who stayed close to the door. Seeing Lloyd, the natural team captain of the resistance, walk back inside of the room, Kai smiled a little. "There's our little ninja, let's get started." The fire ninja briefly started with a tone of delight in his voice.
However, he was cut short at the call of his younger sister. "Um, bro. You're forgetting," Nya quietly whispered to the spiky haired ninja before her eyes made contact with Garmadon. Right, no one had agreed to have Garmadon here aside from Mistaké, who felt the need that everyone, literally everyone, needed to be here. Even if he was not exactly reliable, he was a powerful asset to the resistance.
Kai groaned and glared over at the oni lord.
"Do not try anything funny, Lord Garmadon. I'm watching you." He snarled through beared canines. Now hearing that almost inaudible threat of his, the oni lord merely chuckled and glanced away from the red ninja, seeming to have understood the threat. Hah, of course he wouldn't exactly 'try something funny', but it didn't mean that he needed to listen to something as patronizing as that.
"Alright well, shall we begin?" The green ninja sat down by the round table in the room. Listening and looking at him, the resistance nodded. There was some commotion happening in Ninjago, they have all been informed about it. But never had they all grouped up to find a solution to their problem until right now.
"Zane, show them." The blonde turned over to the nindroid, who already seemed to know his task at hand. The ice ninja pressed a button and a whole new image of a single noodle truck appeared on the ship'a screen. At first, the girls including Jay gave confused looks at the seemingly non-threatening deal. They were noodle trucks, who found those menacing?
"You're kidding, they're noodle trucks!" The lightning ninja felt no need to hold back his remarks and practically exclaimed his initial shock. Zane nodded but he didn't laugh at his particular complaint, in fact, something as comical such as the noodle truck can be the next main threat to Ninjago city. They shouldn't be judging on appearances.
Zane pressed another button and the picture zoomed in a little on the driver's seat. There was a punk-dressed citizen sitting there with a big smile on their face.
The nindroid raised his hand and pointed at the figure. "But the noodle truck isn't exactly what we're after, it's the criminal inside of it." He explained briefly.
"Alright, that seems pretty understandable. Tell us why we're after that guy anyways," Nya inquired, taking into account most of the details said by the ice ninja. The criminal has been identified and the resistance and ninja were aware of what they had to do next.
Harumi and Lloyd gave a quick glance to one another, they had both realized it far sooner than the others, haven't they?
Almost immediately, the two blondes quietly growled at one another before whipping their heads back to the screen.
No, there was no way they'd work together, even if it meant saving Ninjago.
They just couldn't, the riff was too broken to heal. Picking up on the conversation, Zane answered the water's ninja concerns. "According to the news and Sensei Wu's intel, they have been causing havoc to the city. Either breaking buildings or scaring the townspeople." He responded politely.
With such an answer, it caused an uproar among the former SOG generals, especially Ultra Violet. She shook her head back and slammed her fist to the wall to gather everyone's attention. "That's our job! How dare they!" She complained loudly.
Despite all that, Garmadon puffed in his own spot. He didn't seem at all concerned for the the actual trouble being done to his city. He didn't seem to care about the mission itself, proven by his next phrase.
"So pathetic, the oni is a bigger threat than someone who drives really badly." He remarked. "We should focus on stopping them, first."
Lloyd shook his head, turning to face the oni by the side of the wall. He narrowed his eyebrows, no, with a comment like that, it'll just confuse everyone. It is his job to guide everyone to their first priorities once more. "No, the oni haven't shown themselves to us yet after what has happened with Omega, it is safe to say that they won't bother us during the mission."
"Besides, Omega is smart, he wouldn't send out his forces to attack a squad with two onis in it." The elderly woman remarked, glaring at Garmadon briefly.
Hearing along her comment, the nindroid nodded in agreement. "Omega didn't anticipate to see two onis here when he attacked us last time." Zane added quietly. However, that just earned a chuckle coming from the oni lord as he headed towards the door.
"Do whatever you'd like, Mistaké, don't act like you are stronger than the king himself, have you not recognized his power?" With that snide remark, he exited and allowed the elder woman to refrain from storming off after him. Lloyd gulped but watched his father left, resisting any urge to call him back.
This was supposed to be a team mission, the resistance still needed a powerful oni to help out. He had not realized it but this may as well be the start of the fallout tradition in every mission they've had so far.
Instead, Mistaké shook her head, brushing away Garmadon's final message and turned over to the resistance. "Everyone should prepare." She pronounced softly and kindly.
It was like that, that the resistance began their preparations. The ninjas minus Zane and Nya rushed over to their room and grabbed their respective weapons and the two other ninjas navigated the ship to fly over to their next location.
~~~~~~~~~~
Knowing full well that he should be preparing himself, Lloyd couldn't help but make his way towards the white haired princess' room. The door was moderately opened and anyone may as well be able to look into what was happening inside.
Therefore, that's what he did, he peeked into the room and found Harumi and Cloud inside like expected.
He was glad that she was following the orders given by the resistance but he was honestly a little nervous that Harumi would be joining them during a mission. She was no ninja nor did she have an elemental power to protect herself with.
Lloyd shook off the thought when he saw her pick up the daggers hung from the wall. What was he thinking? Of course...he wasn't looking out to her, she was still a traitor.
Perhaps it was just an instinct of his to look out for his comrades, yes, to view her as a comrade of his and prevent fewer casualties. No, he wasn't worried nor looking for her in 'that way', he was way pass that. More and more thoughts filled his mind and Lloyd clenched his hands into fists, no, he didn't want to think about it. So, he whipped his head back and began heading back—towards his own room to get ready.
That is, until he found the oni lord right behind him, a pleased and amused smile on her lips. "Invading the princess' privacy, I see?" Garmadon remarked playfully. Ah, so it was exactly like what happened in the Jade palace months ago, he recalled that moment vividly. He had peeked into Princess Harumi's makeup room.
Except this time, no one told him off for it. So clearly, Garmadon saw the wild look of embarrassment on his face along the pink tints on his cheeks. There was a long pause between the father and son until Lloyd kept his head low, pushed him aside and stormed off back towards the deck.
Forget his original route, getting away from this situation was his priority.
"You saw nothing, Garmadon." He muttered, loud enough for the oni to hear him despite keeping his back turned away from him.
~~~~~~~~
Giving the team about about thirty minutes to get their weapons and add protection plates to their gis', Kai called over everyone and they all gathered by the Bounty's deck. Looking down from the railings, Jay noticed how small the skyscrapers were from all the way up here. He gave a nervous laugh and turned towards his team.
"We want a secret entrance to avoid as much attention, right?" He mentioned. The fire ninja including the green ninja have confused looks before walking over to where Jay was standing. They looked down and saw the problem for themselves. They didn't have parachutes nor did they thought that summoning dragons would be convenient.
Kai winced and looked over to Lloyd and Jay, "Yes, the landing will hurt rather badly." He voiced out. Well, that wouldn't be a problem for ninja like them. They've got elemental powers and several tricks up their sleeves. Taking a deep breath and a second to look at the skies, "Airjutzu, then?" The resistance leader suggested.
Most of the ninjas agreed to that, Zane had nodded and Nya smiled in agreement. Even Jay and Kai seemed fond of the idea.
That would have been the plan however a certain white haired girl strapped with a backpack walked up to the six ninjas. "Hang on a second, I don't have any elemental powers." Rumi voiced out her problem.
There were the other members in the resistance that had the same problem, but seemingly as they didn't voice out their concerns for this issue, Harumi believes that people like Ultra Violet, Mr. E and Killow has got their plans sorted out.
But, considering her complaint, the ninjas all tried to think of a solution. That's until the black ninja smiled over at Harumi.
"Lloyd can take Harumi's hand." Cole suggested only to receive rather unpleasant glares coming from both Harumi and Lloyd. No, that was just not possible in any way. "You said that intentionally!" snapped Lloyd from his corner. But Cole only shrugged, it didn't exactly reveal any emotion of sincere apology to the green ninja and princess either. No one knows if he was serious with his suggestion or not.
"On second thought, I'm alright. I can handle a jump this far down, I used to be the Quiet one, remember?" Harumi laughed it off and stood on the railings. She gave a quick glance down at the ground below her and taking a deep breath and knowing that Cloud was on her back, she took a leap down below.
The first one to react was Lloyd, rather surprisingly. He had reached a hand out to try and stop her but only gritted his teeth. He looked over to the rest of the ninjas and the five others had noticed the appalled look on his face. Getting ready to jump,
"What's wrong, Lloyd?" Garmadon snickered as he walked over towards the railings. It annoyed him, that's for sure, to see that smirk on his lips. He had noticed, hadn't he? How worried he felt when Harumi jumped down from the bounty considering she was a powerless human.
Clenching his fists, Lloyd turned need his head away and growled.
"You shut up this instant, Garmadon." It was more of a demand by the way he phrased it. The oni lord seemed to have obeyed his command temporarily, seeing as he wasn't angrily or teasingly protesting for his own rights. Taking another second to rethink his actions, Lloyd and the rest of the ninjas jumped off from the Bounty entirely.
"Ninjago!"
Six whirling tornados of all different colours deployed into the sky and twirled down to the grounds of Ninjago city.
~~~~~~~~~~
Landing on an empty crossroad, the ninjas immediately glanced around. It was best if they were on high alert if they were to be suddenly attacked. But surprisingly, Airjitzu didn't attract the attention of the citizens casually strolling around in the nearby park a few blocks away.
"Do you guys see any noodle trucks around?" asked Nya as she began to search. The streets were empty, no one was visiting any shops nor were there any citizen in sight. Sure, it made their job a little easier with no witnesses or fans around. However, how would they fulfill their job in the first place without the sight of noodle trucks?
Sadly to the resistance's luck, no one seemed to have spotted any of their target's vehicles. The city was as quiet and peaceful as ever, it would be a big surprise to someone ordinary if they would have been told that their city was in deep trouble. No, it was impossible. Intel had said that these noodle trucks would be around, they couldn't be hiding...
Ultra Violet kicked a nearby fire hydrant as she crossed the bare streets. "This is stupid, whoever gave Sensei Wu the information is a cheat!" She rudely snapped out in pure frustration. But no one would exactly blame her, it frustrated the rest of the resistance however no one voiced out their annoyance just like Ultra did.
Harumi stepped over to the rest of the team after landing, she was holding Cloud in her arms with a small smile addressed to no one in particular. "We may have a solution for that." She told the others before placing the puppy on the ground and taking out a handkerchief from her backpack. Cloud excitedly barked over at Ultra Violet and Lloyd. This was technically her first mission with the rest of the team, the puppy was certainly happy.
"According to Sensei Wu, this handkerchief has been found inside one of the trucks, having it scanned later on, turns out it belongs to the same noodle truck that we're after." She gave a little bit of context to why she was handing the cloth over to the Pomeranian. Cloud gladly sniffed it and barked, it was a sign that she recognized the scent and was ready.
This was a game that the two would play a lot, usually when Harumi was sorting out her clothes in her room back in Borg tower.
She would usually lose a pair of the other sock, for example. Therefore, that's where Cloud's help came in. Smiling at the puppy, Harumi pointed at the distance.
"Go on, Cloud! Go find them!" She encouraged the puppy. Barking in response, Cloud lowered her muzzle to the ground and began to sniff the path. She had the scent of the handkerchief—more like the noodle truck itself now, she began to walk forward and broke into a sprint.
"There we go, looks like little Cloud has found something. Let's follow." Killow chuckled quietly, he was rather impressed that a little puppy was able to do so much.
Agreeing, the rest of the resistance followed the white puppy quickly. It would be dangerous to leave the pup wandering around in a big city like Ninjago city anyways. Not like Harumi would allow it in the first place however, Cloud was their key at the moment to finding their target.
Lloyd focused on following Cloud, despite Harumi and his friends being in front of him. The puppy sure was small, there were times where Lloyd felt like he had lost her. He rubbed his eyes and glanced at the side for a second, his eyes peering into an alleyway. There was a figure climbing up the walls, it was a dark purple attire with a black mask over their light blue eyes.
'A thief, here?' The green ninja curiously thought in his mind as he kept running to catch up with the rest of the group. He didn't keep his eyes off the figure for a second though until the alleyway went entirely pass them. Who was that and what was their business? Their attire and the mask concerned the green ninja, maybe they meant trouble.
His thoughts however were put on hold when they found a rather clean noodle truck parked by a shady building.
The first one to make a remark was the redhead, she advanced forward and took a good inspection at the vehicle up ahead.
"They did a terrible job at replicating an official noodle truck from my restaurant." Skylor hummed In slight amusement.
It was a wild claim at first, considering the similarities to the other trucks from Chen's noodle house nearby, but who knew better than the owner herself. "Woah, how so, Skylor?" Jay questioned with mild interest.
That would be an easy answer for the lightning ninja. Skylor shifted a little before bringing her fingers to the top of the truck. "First of all, they've got the logo entirely wrong even it looks convincing. The beard on the mascot is supposed to be black, not orange." She pointed out the first difference.
"Second of all, the lights to decorate the truck itself are all sorts of different colours. They're not just white, purple, yellow and red." Now that she had pointed it out, it was true, it was good enough to pass by for an actual noodle truck in the eyes of other citizens but no, not for the ninjas. It all with the help of Skylor, thankfully.
"That's so lame on whoever's behind this." Kai admitted as a side comment, mainly to support Skylor's claim. It earned him a tiny smile coming from the master of Amber. Absolutely certain now that they've caught their villain, the resistance approached the truck a little more to try and investigate it a little and find clues to where the real operator of this entire crime was hiding.
Before one of them had the chance to open the driver's seat, the group stumbled back at the sight of three deadly creatures landing on atop of the truck.
They were oni, there was no doubt about it. With those menacing red eyes and ghastly aura they gave off, the resistance were trapped when they had noticed backup soldiers cornering them from higher buildings.
Then, the ambush had happened, a pile of oni hopped down from the buildings and charged towards the resistance. With their numbers, the team was easily broken into several pieces of a cake. "Everyone, weapon's out!" Lloyd tried to cry out to his other teammates before a bark from Cloud caught his attention. Next thing he knew, he couldn't see his family anymore, his friends. They were surrounded by oni.
"I told you, this is what we should be looking after." Garmadon came from behind the blonde, staring at the seven oni soldiers making their way towards them. So, this would be his comrades.
It was Garmadon, Lloyd, Cloud and Harumi against the seven onis. The green ninja bit his lips, there were two outcomes.
Either they get overwhelmed by these monsters or they all die. Lloyd preferred neither.
"Are we really gonna fight them?! They're too strong!" Lloyd freaked out a little, seeing who they're after. It cannot he helped though, it wasn't like the FSM would fall from the skies and with a single tap on the shoulder, the oni would vanish.
That's not how the world works. Harumi and Cloud whipped their heads to watch their fronts and spotted two onis coming in their direction. "Incoming!" She warned the two men.
Cloud rushed over to one of the onis and bit it in the leg. The injured oni howled in pain before snatching the puppy off the ground, like she was some kind of chewing gum left on the ground. The oni threw her to the side with force but luckily, Harumi caught the pomeranian. It did send the two of them stumbling back down to the ground.
With Lloyd being overwhelmed mentally and Harumi physically, Garmadon felt the need to rush in. Therefore, as a favour to the three of them, he charged towards the two onis and knocked them onto the noodle truck. That left the two blondes with the five other onis.
One raised their purple blade and swung it at Lloyd, though not having much time to react and move out of the way, Harumi screeched and flung herself forward to block out the attack. The green ninja was frozen in time, reconsidering his plans and thinking what he could do to help everyone, he didn't even notice Harumi jumping in to shield an attack for him until she heard her quietly whimper out in front of him.
The green ninja's eyes widened as he spotted a waterfall of blood leak from her arm. Not having time to take out her own weapons, Harumi blocked with her arm, leaving a long bleeding gash as a reminder of her action. In a panic, Lloyd grabbed his sword and covered the white haired girl. "What were you thinking?! That was reckless of you!" He scolded the girl loudly.
Grasping on her injury and trying to bring pieces of her teared up sleeve to cover the fresh wound, Rumi hissed In annoyance.
"Well maybe if you paid more attention, your father and I wouldn't have to cover for you!" She retorted. Lloyd groaned, not really in the mood to argue back with the Jade princess, he got off the ground and noticed a large oni watching from a building not too far away from here.
"Who's that guy supposed to be?" He questioned, squinting his eyes a little to see if he recognizes the mysterious oni.
Her daggers now out, Harumi approached behind of Lloyd and squinted her eyes as well. "Huh, that looks like Omega, you know, the king who attacked us a few days ago." She responded to his question.
Lloyd nodded in agreement before realizing who had answered his question. He immediately jolted back, unintentionally bumping into three onis behind him, he knocked them into a trash can. "I didn't ask you!" He screeched at the green-clad girl, who was trying to make out why the large was looking at their small group specifically. Did he have an interest in them?
But, she could multi-task, hearing that answer from Lloyd angered her gravely, at least she was nice enough to answer.
"Well who else did you expect to answer?!" She yelled back, geez, he should be grateful next time. It annoyed her even more, she stabbed the oni in the chest ten times more forcefully than she should've. Pouring a little and focusing on defeating the onis in whom he caught in the trash can, Lloyd whacked one of them with the metallic lid, it was an effect caused by Harumi's response.
"Uh, Garmadon perhaps!" He shrugged, whacking the other onis with the lid as well. They had tried to escape during the entire conversation but he didn't allow them too. Already knocking the two onis he had charged at wag before the argument happened, Garmadon was forced to listen around to something as trivial to this. "Oh dear.." he muttered, retreating back to where the two were.
It was out of earshot, however, Omega had participated in this whole operation. For what purpose exactly, Garmadon didn't find out until now. The king looked down on him and pronounced these words: "Capture Harumi Jade and bring her to me." The king had foolishly revealed his plan to the enemy...but why?
Garmadon gave the King an unimpressed look as he nodded and lazily made his way over to Harumi. He softly grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her towards the King of Onis. It was a real hassle for there were many onis pilling up one another. A bit shocked with the action though, Harumi was easily able to pull away from him. It was revealed that she and Lloyd had heard what Omega wanted from the resistance.
"I don't think so!" She proceeded to try and attack Garmadon, considering what he had just done was an act of betrayal however her attack fell short when she heard him giggling exaggeratingly. "You tried to betray us! Why are you laughing?!" She curled her hand into a fist instead and attempted to punch him before being stopped by his explanation:
"There's so many onis around here that the King really mistook me as one of his lackeys, can you believe it." He explained unimpressed.
Hearing that, Harumi instantly sulked, she had forgiven Garmadon for suddenly "betraying" them like that, but the real question was why Lloyd didn't make a big deal about it. He did it earlier when Omega had attacked the first time and clearly when Collin dropped around. Rumi pouted got herself and was about to attack more of the incoming enemies before she heard a yell from Lloyd.
"Yeah, perhaps we should give you to the oni because you're such a traitor." The green ninja jabbed at her as he kicked away the now filled with three onis trash can. He kicked it down to the street so any of his comrades can pick it back up and knock out the three enemies inside of the metallic can. Though, hearing that remark made Harumi boil with anger. She took out two daggers and threw them without paying attention to her sense of direction.
"Oh yeah? Maybe we should give you instead, you have oni blood in you, maybe you'll find someone new to boss around." She argued back, only realizing that the two daggers practically fell into the eye sockets of a nearby oni. The latter screamed in abject horror as the blades must have stabbed right through its eyeballs, it fell to the ground and attempted to pull the daggers out of its eyes.
As the argument went on and the number of onis' accumulated, Garmadon couldn't help but listen through the little "Lovers' Quarrel", was it even one? As far as he was concerned, Lloyd and Harumi aren't on friendly romantic terms with one another. Alright, he throws in the towel, not a Lovers' Quarrel. It was just a blatant old argument of theirs.
However, being so used to hearing them argue for a whole eight minutes now, the oni was proud of them when they put their temporary arguing on a halt to declare to everyone the next plan of action. "Everyone retreat!" They had both announced at the very same time as they began backing away from the cornering enemies. Garmadon had followed as well, smiling at the two.
He was about to make a little remark about how it was responsible on their part to stop fighting and instead focus on the battle, but his ears were occupied once more as more insults and nonsense from the two blondes came underway.
~~~~~~~
A/N: Heya, Lilla here and thank you for reading chapter 91, in all honesty, I'd say this was the "Comedy Chapter". I hope you enjoyed the mini "side quest" that is happening right now! But me and Jdizzle do assure you that this whole mission is somewhat connected to the onis! (I do like to mention that Garmadon was being such a troll in the beginning of the chapter, haha!) If anyone wants to sink Colrumi as quickly as possible, it's him!
Anyways, I have the intendancy to say too much but that's because I'm quite excited for us to show you all what we have in store for the book! If you think Collin and Harumi's love drama was intense, you have seen nothing yet!