Hello!! At the risk of sounding quite whiny I’ve got the rona and am quarantine and I was wondering you any sneak peek Sunday/Tuesday itd bits you could share?
Not whiny at all, anon! I'm sorry to hear it and I hope for a speedy and complete recovery for you! Have a dash of Max and El friendship from former heroes.
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“You’re sure he’s not coming back here?”
El nods her head. Her bangs are sticking up over the top of the borrowed bandana she’s wearing as a blindfold. Even with her eyes covered, Max gets the eerie feeling that El’s looking right through her. Like Max isn’t even there. Or maybe like El isn’t. “He’s…stopped driving. There’s a sign. No…” She frowns, and the drop of blood under her nose threatens to drip onto Max’s carpet. Max hands her a tissue, and El presses it to her nose. “No Tree- Tress…”
“No Trespassing?” Max asks, and El nods. “Great. Then he’s out getting baked in the woods behind the lab with that loser Tommy. He won’t be back for a couple hours.” She grins, and leans over to turn off her boom box, which has been blaring static noise at them for the last five minutes. “Perfect.”
“What are we looking for?” El asks, pushing Max’s bandana up onto her forehead. It makes the ends of her bangs stand straight up.
Max shrugs. “Anything that looks Russian, I guess. Come on.”
She puts out an arm to stop El before pushing open the door to Billy’s room, ignoring the KEEP OUT sign on it just as surely as Billy’s ignoring the No Trespassing – Government Property sign at the lab right now. “Careful what you touch. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of Billy’s garbage is actually radioactive.”
El frowns the frown that Max has come to know as ‘storing a new word to look up later’.
“Radioactive,” Max repeats. “Hazardous to human health. Like nuclear waste. Or the contents of Billy’s trash can.” She thinks about that for a second, and adds, “Oh, and if you see a tissue or a sock crumpled up somewhere? Do not touch it.” She shudders. “Trust me.”
El looks at her with solemn horror in her eyes, and nods.
Unfortunately, there are no convenient letters written entirely in Cyrillic or mysterious envelopes full of cash or anything lying around. Billy’s room is a veritable buffet of nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Also, it reeks of cheap cologne, smoke, and teenage boy sweat.
“Ugh,” Max says, slamming the drawer of Billy’s bedside table on the stack of dirty magazines inside. She’d leafed through all of them, just in case Billy’d tucked secret Russian correspondence in between the pages thinking nobody’d look there. But all she’d gotten for her trouble was an eyeful of a whole bunch of tan, lean, half-dressed women who all seem to be contortionists, and (disgusting!) sticky fingers. And the information that Billy’s got a Playgirl stuffed way in the back of the drawer, hidden behind the Maxims and Penthouses. Max is storing that ammunition for future use, if necessary. Billy will probably kill her for snooping in his room if she ever has to use it, but. Mutually assured destruction. “This is getting us nowhere.”
She leans back against the bedside table, crossing her arms as she thinks. “If I thought Lucas could get anywhere near Billy without Billy trying to murder him, I’d say the best way to find out would be to just ask Billy and see if he lies, but…”
El looks up from the heavy metal cassette she’s been studying with all the apparent focus and concentration of an archaeologist examining a mystery object pulled from a grave site. “Billy tries to kill Lucas?”
Max huffs in the back of her throat. She almost chokes on it. “Has tried. When you left to close the Gate, last fall?” She hugs herself, and then remembers what must be on her fingers and winces, holding out both hands at arm’s length. “He’s a homicidal nutcase. You really won the stepsibling lottery.” She looks around the room again, at the total lack of incriminating evidence, and makes up her mind. “And I have to go wash my hands.”
El puts the tape down and follows Max into the bathroom in thoughtful silence. Max is just drying her hands off on a towel when El asks, apparently out of the blue, “How do you deal with Billy? When he…” She seems to struggle for the right words for a moment, before saying, “When he’s trouble?”
“It’s been a lot easier since I offered to nail his nuts to the floor,” Max says, and El’s eyebrows shoot up. “Sorry. That probably doesn’t help you. Sara’s probably fluent in languages other than violence.” She pushes open the bathroom door, leading El back out into the hall. “Why? Is something going on with her?”
It takes El until they’re all the way back in Max’s room to answer that.
“No,” she says, just when Max is starting to think she’s not going to answer at all. “I don’t know.”
El spins the silver bangle on her wrist around once, twice, three times, before she says, “It’s not – with Will and Jonathan. It wasn’t…” She waves a hand through the air, frowning in frustration, like she’s trying to brush away the cobwebs between her and the words she wants. “Like this.”
“Like it is with Sara?” Max asks, and El nods. “Okay, but that wasn’t the same situation, either, was it? I mean, yeah, you kind of live with Will sometimes, and his mom looks after you…but he and his brother don’t come stay with you.”
“Will stays over, sometimes,” El says. “When you all do.”
“Not the same. And Hopper hasn’t been looking after them, not the way Mrs. B does for you. Right?”
El frowns a little more, putting her head a bit to one side as she chews that over. “Right.”
“But Sara’s living with you. She came out of nowhere, you barely know her, but suddenly there she is, sharing your house. Sharing your dad. Sharing your life.” Max gives her head a shake, flopping onto the bed. “Of course it feels weird. It’d be weird if it didn’t feel weird.”
El lowers herself onto the end of Max’s bed, carefully folding first one leg, then the other, so her ankles are crossed and her knees stick out to either side. She grips her ankles with both hands and leans back a little, still frowning thoughtfully at nothing much in particular.
“But I do know Sara,” she says, after what looks like the most careful consideration she’s maybe ever given anything in her life.
“Yeah, now. And living with somebody’s always different from just knowing them. Trust me.” Max rolls her eyes. “You don’t really know anybody until you’ve run into them coming out of the bathroom in their underwear in the middle of the night.”
El gives that a dose of consideration, too, and then a solemn nod.
“Joyce helped me make Hop a robe. For Christmas,” she says, a slow smile blooming over her face as she leans toward Max like she’s going to share a secret. Max leans toward her, too, listening carefully. “He needed it.”
Max tries, and fails, not to conjure the mental image. She gives an exaggerated wince and a shudder, and El laughs.
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More of this Cursed Witch Ninjago Fic: Other Characters
Some of these were drawn using bases (I can’t draw people for the life of me), and some were using a character creator website/app.
FIRST UP THE RAVEN FAMILY:
Aris is a cursed witch, and has a mouse dragon familiar she named Rolo and a mouse dragon roomate/child named Squeakums. She’s wanted mostly due to the fact that she’s cursed and considered dangerous, despite not actually hurting anyone. She finds Lloyd on his own and offers him a place to stay until he can find the others, even enrolls him in one of the schools so she can at least know he’s safe during the day. She’s powerful in most types of magic, but not all.
Mars was adopted by Aris and then kidnapped by the emperor. He has a hawk familiar named Phoinex. He got the nickname Singe after nearly burning down the school he attended (the same one Aris sends Lloyd to). He’s a budding fire mage, but due to the amount of shit the emperor put him through, he’s a little wary of using his magic. Kai and Zane find him in a hidden cell and free him, growing even more sus of the emperor. He’s the only one to ever see the emperor, though they were wearing a griffin’s mask and pelt. He’s about 16 years old at the time of Kai and Zane finding him.
This is rough;y what Rolo looks like, plus little dragon wings.
This is Phoinex. Very protective and lover of shiny objects.
Here’s what Aris’s griffin form looks like. The scars are from the emperor’s guards trying to arrest her.
This is Squeakums, he’s a little shit. He will steal all of your left socks. His favorite spot to sleep is peoples heads and laps and if you try to wake him up and move he will scream about it for an hour. Aris found him in a pet shop and he followed her home because she smelled like fibsh.
NOW FOR THE OTHER STUDENTS THAT LLOYD GETS TO BEFRIEND: I’m going youngest to oldest
Pluto the feral enby. They use all pronouns, but have a preference for they/them. Down for stabbing a man, especially if that man is the emperor. They’re a budding ice mage, but also in illusion and beast wrangling classes at school. They have a pet ice dragon named Frostsnap. They’re also the youngest of the friend group at 14 years old and have a leopard familiar named Silver.
Terra’s very sweet, but she will beat someone to death if they say something rude about her friends. She’s a budding earth mage, which includes rocks, minerals, crystals, and plants. She has a buffalo familiar named Geode. She can often be found laying in the dirt or grass during her down time. She’s also fairly young at 15 years old.
Venus is a budding love mage, and is also in the potions class at school. She has a rabbit familiar named Persephone. She’s very particular when it comes to her potions and also her cooking and baking. She’s the same age as Terra and just as feral as Pluto.
Saturn is a budding air/wind mage and is also in bard and healing magic classes at school. Him and Mars were practically brothers before he got kidnapped. He can play a lot of instruments, including wind instruments. He has a hummingbird familiar named Droplet. He’s 16 years old.
Neptune is the oldest of the friend group and the mom friend. She’s a budding water mage, and in illusions and healing classes at school. She has a boar-croc familiar named Sobek. If she’s mad you should run, because she’s crazy powerful and not afraid to kick ass.
There’s two others, Headmaster Moon and Nova Brightthorn, but they’re more side characters that show up very little. Moon has a raven familiar named Eclipse, and Nova has a snake familiar named Abomination. Nova’s magic reminds Lloyd a little too much like his dads powers.
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