zane
Home, according to a basic definition, was 'A place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.'
Zane was still figuring what, or who home was to him.
However, there were two facts that were very clear to him.
One. His father had lied to him. For him.
Two. He couldn't change himself being an android.
And with that information, he was slowly changing his definition of home to 'Evan, Father, and Pixal'. The three people who he could trust with everything, the three people who had been through everything, the two people who had lied, who had tricked him, and he was taking that leap to trust two of them.
Having a younger brother was a new experience. Zane had analysed Kai, Nya and Lloyd's sibling relationship and found it consisted mostly of roughhousing, yelling, or searching for Ryu. But Evan was a quiet kid. He liked to hang out in the tiny library, one of two wonders in the Julien household, reading books or helping Zane with cooking dinner. When Zane had arrived home, he'd been tackled into one of the tightest hugs he'd ever lived through.
"I thought you'd left me." Evan had mumbled.
Zane's core panged with guilt. "I would never leave you. You're family. I required adequate time to think things out. To recuperate."
From then on, it was like he'd never left. Chess competitions were held once every other day, Zane made dinner with Evan, and they fixed up the old TV to watch late night specials. He was working on filling out Evan's application to Ninjago High exactly one week since they'd left the monastery on a Sunday night, filling in all the details with a documentary playing in the background.
Evan was certainly bright, he'd passed the basic entrance test into a grade a year below Zane's and was due to start Ninjago High on Tuesday once the application was filed through. Whatever house he got didn't matter to Zane, though it might to the student body. The Dragons had won the athletics carnival, a narrow win over the Serpents since Kai hadn't been around to rake extra points in.
Evan had had Mr Spirdon - or Vance, as the teacher insisted everyone call him, first period on his first day, and Zane was glad to know he was in good hands. Mr Spirdon was an excellent teacher with new ways to the school and a likeable personality, and rumours of a fanclub dedicated to him.
Zane resisted the urge to mother hen Evan to all of his classes, but Pixal assured him his little brother would be okay. His friends met up after school in the locker room to meditate as they had been for the past week or so, sometimes working on the arcade game, meditating, drinking copious amounts of tea or simply resting from the continuous onslaught of tests.
Master Wu had been absent from the school as he'd said, with Pixal taking control of their training. Unfortunately, it was hard to organise them around Kai and Cole's sports practices, Cole's dance afternoons, Jay's travel team, Nya trying out and training for the Ninjago Swim Team, and Skylor away with Liam and her friends.
Zane set the tray of simple peanut butter cookies on the stovetop and turned admonishing eyes on his father, who had been trying to sneak a cookie.
"They are fresh from the oven, which also means they are very hot, father. I would recommend letting them cool for ten minutes before allowing yourself a serving."
Dr Julien's blue eyes sparkled with boyish mischief. "Oh well. How has Evan been at school?"
"His teachers are very pleased with him, so he says. He's very mature for his age of course, so he tends to hang out with Astra Harlow and her friends. I am a little worried that he's not spending adequate time with his age group, and that might socially distance him from the others." Zane considered all the points and moved the cookies onto a cooling rack. "Aside from that, I am very proud of him."
Father beamed. "As you should be Zane. I know I have not exactly been the...best of a father I could be, and it's right about time I start trying. I just wanted to say that I am sorry—so, incredibly sorry that I lied to you for so long. And in no way at all is it your fault. It is entirely mine for keeping what you should rightfully have known from the beginning. I do not know how to regain your trust, Zane, but I am willing to do whatever it takes, my... my boy."
And Zane did not flinch like the last time Christopher Julien had said those words.
"Time." he said, handing his father a warm cookie. "Time heals all wounds."
A tentative smile crossed Dr Julien's face as he tapped his cookie to Zane's in cheers. "I will beat you at chess, someday."
"Oh to be a dreamer," Zane said dryly as his father barked out in laughter, wiping a tear from his crinkled eyes.
"Perhaps I should have let you choose your humour settings a long time ago."
Zane merely chuckled and bid his father goodnight before clearing up the kitchen and heading to bed with a spreading smile of trust, and joy.
o o o
"Evan! We're going to be late for the bus, you must hurry otherwise—" A blur sped past Zane and through the door, barrelling for the yellow bus outside. "Right." He locked up and boarded after Evan, noting where his brother sat with Annabella Han, Zander Loughty and Kade Gorski.
Pixal joined a stop later as she only took the bus on Fridays, sliding into the saved spot next to the window beside Zane as she liked. She was precariously balancing the skeleton of a paper mache volcano on her lap with materials sticking out of her backpack.
Zane's brain raced to figure out why she needed a volcano and his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when he realised he'd forgotten they had the dual class science fair in two days, and he and Pixal were working cross class and he was supposed to bring a hot glue gun.
"Pixal, I'm so sorry I forgot the hot glue gun—"
His girlfriend grinned and dipped her hand into her backpack, surfacing with a hot glue gun which she passed over to him. He sighed in relief and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek.
"Thank you. I am sorry, I have been very busy with Evan and my father lately, the project slipped my mind."
"No worries." Pixal smiled as they passed another stop. "But after school you can come with me to Borg Tower to make up for it. We have received a new shipment of filaments for BorgPhones, and my father wanted your insight on design for a BorgPad, if measurements allow."
His jaw hung open. "Cyrus Borg...wants me to help him with his products? Of course!"
"It's not like you haven't met him before."
"Well, yes, I have met your father before but he sends out millions of Borg products every week or day, and he's Ninjago's largest technology company. To say I have worked with him would work wonders for future resumes. Thank you, thank you, thank you Pixal."
She simply smiled, her eyes flashing several times in pattern.
He decoded the message almost instinctively.
"How?" he gasped, reaching up to brush under his own eyes.
"I'll teach you after school." Pixal offered. "For now, we need to figure out how to make a volcano from nothing."
astra
"Astraaaaa!"
"Bells!" she grinned, and tossed her friend a whole avocado. "You're welcome."
Annabella rolled her eyes, stuffing the avocado into her bag. "No questions asked."
Nodding, Astra repeated, "No questions asked."
"What's this about an illegal black market avocado trade?"
An arm was slung around her shoulder and Astra punched Zander lightly in the side.
He oofed, winded and sent her a sharp glare. "That hurt."
"Yes, it was meant to."
"When did you get so violent?" Zander moaned dramatically, dropping his wounded act.
She glanced down to her balled up fists and shrugged. "If I had a rolling pin that would hurt a lot more. Where's Evan?"
"Evan's right here." piped up the younger boy. Astra grinned and patted him affectionately on the head. "Where's Kade?"
"Probably at before school football practice." Bells guessed as they walked to homeroom.
"Football? Since when does Kade do football? We're talking about the same guy here, right?"
"Yep."
She turned to tell the eavesdropper off. "Hey, Mr Deep-Voice, get out of our conversation—what the fuck—" Her mouth fell open as Kade cocked his head.
"What?"
"Why is your voice like that?" She spluttered. "And football? Since when?"
"Since my dad said so." He shrugged, joining her left side while they walked. "And my voice couldn't stay chipmunky forever, you know."
"But..." she shook her head. "Why didn't you tell me?" How had she not noticed for the three days before this?
"I mean, you kinda disappeared for three weeks, Astra." butted in Zander.
"Yeah, but..." Faltering, her lips thinned as she turned to Kade. "You still could've told me."
His mouth turned down into a frown. "Pretty hypocritical for someone who didn't answer my texts or my calls for nearly a month."
Astra opened her mouth defiantly to rebut his point, but he chuckled and slung his arm around her shoulder. Then she noticed how tall he'd grown. Before she'd been mugged in an alleyway, Kade had been the same height as her. And now...he was unfairly tall. At a loss for words, she hit his arm and balked at the taut muscle there.
"And now you have muscles? This is so not fair."
"Everyone has muscles. Mine are just better than yours." He offered with a smirk. A smirk. Kade never smirked. And why was his face...like that?
He must have noticed her expression. "Hey. You have your secrets, and I have mine. I guess I'll just wait until you want to tell me why you were gone for so long." There he paused. "We noticed, you know. Your parents, uh, came around my place to ask if you were there."
"Right."
"If they're still—"
"They're not." she snapped back quickly. "I haven't seen them in a while and I can keep myself safe. I have a few tricks up my sleeve, Gorski. Have some faith."
Kade laughed again, his tone dropping. "At some point we all run out of cards to hide, Astra. You can talk to us. We're friends."
"Yeah."
"I'll see you at lunch in the gym?"
A puzzled look took over her face.
"We have to do that extra credit assignment you roped me into since you missed sports?"
"Right. Lunch. Gotcha. See you later Kade."
And so began Thursday morning.
There was absolutely no explanation as to why this Thursday had turned melancholy so quickly. Thursday was before Friday, and Friday was the day before the weekend. Thursday was epic day number two. Yet Astra's brain was muddled with confusion as the day passed with slug pace, excruciatingly long classes and pounding headaches, like something was telling her Thursday, today Thursday, was not epic day number two, but a wrong day.
Then came the problem of how much Kade had changed. The confidence did him good, of course, but she missed her old friend who cared a little less about sports and more about helping her with taste testing. For one, she was incredibly annoyed that she was shorter than him now. And then the disgustingly long train of girls that just now noticed his presence at Ninjago High after bullying him for the last year or more made her want to throw up.
For no reason at all.
Zander was ranting to her about his boyfriend, gushing about their picnic date when a weird pang of jealousy decided to do the macarena in her stomach. Ignoring it, she smiled and listened attentively as she helped Zander plan out his turn for date organisation, a movie night, then under the stars. Zander and Simon were so cute together, it was a shame they went to different schools. The conversation moved onto dramatic complaints of their chemistry test coming up and Zander passionately argued against the teacher's ideals of planning the tests so the students would fail.
She suffered the wrath of Miss Kelly in English, sending a dry look to her classmate Jay Walker when he was slightly blamed for her unprecedented absence. Then she produced three weeks worth of English Shakespeare work that Magis, who had taught her school at HQ, had made her do and Kelly shut up real quick.
Astra found it strange leading a double life. Well, not really a double life. If no one asked her questions, then she didn't have to answer them. Though at times, she wanted to blurt out random truths she'd learnt about first hand whenever the Sons of Garmadon were brought up in conversation. Which, weirdly, was a lot. Apparently crime rates had been climbing since she'd been holed up at HQ.
Rumours of the Serpentine and SOG clashing, as well as whispers from smaller gangs such as the Skulkins or the Ghosts, had been worming through Ninjago High. No one shut the rumours down though, leaving student's imaginations to run wild. Her friends were planning to hang out at Mega Monster Amusement Park after school if all went planned — if Cassie or Riptide let Astra have the afternoon off training.
Her feet slowly trudged to the gym as she sorted through makeshift flashcards for her chemistry test. Head down, her feet lead her on autopilot straight to the doors of the gym...and into Kade. Swearing, she shoved the palm cards into a pile and stuffed them into her backpack while Kade apologised.
"Let's just get this over with." Astra sighed, dropping her backpack to the ground and tightening her left braid.
They walked over to the basketball hoop at the end of the gym where they would film her doing different types of shots, Kade chattering on about the new History teacher Mr Spirdon, who she actually hadn't seen properly since she didn't take that subject. From what she could tell though, in the short first week he'd been here, he was put up for the favourite teacher of Ninjago High, relaxed and chill with fun lessons, sticking up for kids and shutting down bullies.
He also was assistant coach for the football team, which of course, Kade knew since he was on it. She spat internally at Mr Gorski, a man she'd never really liked since he always thought of Kade poorly just because he'd been chubby. He was always pushing Kade to do stuff he Kade didn't like, but Mr Gorski did, trying to live vicariously through him.
So that was why it was a surprise when she'd heard Kade was doing football.
"And he says he can get us a real life, working cannon in class. How sick is that?"
She chuckled at Kade's eagerness. "I don't want to know how he has access to that. Hey, what is that?"
Astra pointed to the long lump covered with black cloth hastily shoved behind gymnastics mats, and changed their course over to it. Crouching, before Kade could open his mouth to protest, she flung the cloth off and froze at the sight before her.
A pair of glassy eyes stared back.
"Riptide?"
"Mr Spirdon?"
o o o
Dead bodies were not fun, full stop.
Kade ran for Vice Principal Dareth while she stayed hovered over Riptide's prone body.
Riptide, AKA, Vance Spirdon, the sub teacher for History. Riptide, as in her mentor and honorary pain-in-the-ass older brother.
He looked so strange, lying there like he was sleeping, but with his eyes open. She lowered herself down to the ground and almost threw up inside as she touched his cold body, trying to feel for a pulse when she knew there was nothing. His neck was covered in a choker of bruises, his hand clasped around a small dagger. All SOG member's last resort, except he hadn't had the time to use it.
Whoever had fought him was good. Riptide was one of the best fighters the Sons of Garmadon had and it was brain boggling that he was, well, dead. It just didn't seem real, and although acceptance was knocking at the door, Astra kept it closed.
There was no way he was dead, right?
"Wake up,." she whispered shakily. "You still have to t-teach me how to spin my sword li-like a lightsaber. You promised."
"Hey! Kid, what are you doing?"
"Riptide?" she choked out, whirling around. There was nothing from where his voice had been, and her gaze crossed suspiciously back to the body.
"Rea? Can you hear me?"
"Riptide? What...yeah, I can hear you." Exhaling slowly, she rubbed at her temples. Riptide's dead body was right in front of her, but his voice was floating around.
"Jeez. That was not fun, kid, lemme tell you that."
"What the hell happened here? Why are you dead?" Her last words came out strangled with disbelief.
"I can't really tell you why I'm dead Rea. Just to give you a quick run down, someone strangled me, but it's okay, because I let them?"
"That is not a proper excuse. How am I talking to you? Wait, am I dead too? Oh my fucking—"
"Chill! My god, I forgot how worked up kids get. No, you're not dead. Before I got sent out to scout Ninjago High for very top secret reasons you are not allowed to know, Big G let me know about your elemental stuff. Apparently you can talk to the dead. Ergo, which is why I'm here. Boom. Explanation finished."
"That is...not. The fuck?"
She could almost see him shrug nonchalantly in front of her. "The truth hurts kid. Also, Kade looks very different from what the report describes him as."
"Report? What report?" Astra spluttered indignantly. "Why do you have a file on Kade?"
"We have files on everyone, kiddo." came his ghostly voice again, almost teasingly.
"You need to stop changing the subject and start telling me what the hell happened here. I am going to kill Garmadon if —"
"Kid. Chill. I can't tell you about why I am, ahem, dead, but don't question it, okay. The folks up there write everything the way it's meant to be."
"Well. You can't be dead."
"Why not? My body's right there in front of you."
"Because...well, you can't."
"Now you're giving poor excuses."
"No. It just doesn't make sense, because, you can't. You're not allowed to die." she scoffed to herself, pushing her back against the wall to stare at the body with confused eyes.
"At some point everyone has to die, Rea. My time just came quicker than others. Besides, it's pretty chill up here as a ghost."
Her brain was moving at a sluggish pace, trying and failing to comprehend all of this. Death, being able to talk to ghosts, Kade, and school and....
"I'm sorry." she finally said, staring randomly into space where she thought he would be hovering. "I think it's my fault you died. You wouldn't have been posted here to look out for me." After a beat of staring at his covered up body, she swallowed. "I think I'm hallucinating or something. I need water."
She ran into VP Dareth, Kade and Miss Kelly outside and waved them in wordlessly. Astra collapsed in a toilet cubicle pressing her head into her hands as her body numbed up. He was dead, right? His body was lying less than fifty metres away, and then he was talking to her, but that was her imagination playing tricks on her. Her breaths came out shaky and ragged. No, she wasn't losing someone else. Cassie had come back, right?
Right?
She swore loudly, bashing her fist into the cubicle wall, sliding down the other on her back as her body wrecked itself with sobs and accusations.
She'd lost someone else today.
Shame my parents didn't die instead of Riptide.
She laughed hoarsely as her eyes stung, her nose dribbling ugly and her cheeks flushed pink.
See? You really are a blight on this world.
Sandy Harlow's voice was so taunting, dripping evil and sickness, that everything around her was practically begging for it.
Vance had been a better family than her parents.
A shock wave of darkness fled from her body and ripped through the toilet stalls and the sinks, tearing at the materials hungrily, her sobs growing more desperate with each breath, purple mass cocooning her into a safe place where she would be a lone, a place where no one else was so she couldn't hurt them.
She let out a mad bout of laughter, curling into herself amongst the broken ruins of the bathroom.
There is no reason to be afraid of Death when you have the ability to wield it.
Then why did it hurt so much?
-
A/N: wow wilbur soot music really came in clutch here (special thanks to saline solution and jubline line).
Yes i did that. And you would do it too if you had the chance So. hi. Wow, uh, we're pretty deep into the book. First murder, yaaaay! I actually don't have a lot to say. Weird. Huh. i mean if you know me i really like writing deaths and then the reactions because the first reactions are different for everyone. Plus, astra now thinks she's hallucinating that Riptide is talking to her from the Passage Realm.
A little explanation for that, we all know the departed realm is where all spirits/ghosts go. For mos, that's the same, but it's like a final resting place for truly departed souls. The Passage is sort of, as the name says, an in between realm. Like for example the spirits wander around ninjago, but there's this thin film separating thmn from the real world. Only astra can speak with dead souls (for now) which is why it's such an anomaly.
Right. Peace out folks!
-dommie out