Chapter Text
Lloyd's nightmares were something he had gotten used to, but they still weren't pleasant for the Green Ninja to deal with.
Sometimes they were about his friends getting hurt, about losing the people he cared about over and over again in a horrible loop of his own fears But recently, they had been a little different. His Oni form was something he hated almost as much as he hated his father, and he kept it a deep secret.
Ever since he had changed into that form last month, when saving the city from the overlord for the third time, he had been getting horrible dreams about transforming into the wretched creature.
Lloyd knew they were just dreams, dreams of a bad memory, but he still found himself questioning whether he would one day take that form again. Lloyd could push those kinds of thoughts aside, for the most part, but even then, they lingered in the back of his mind, as if waiting for him to slip up and make some kind of huge mistake.
This night was the same as usual, with the dreams of glowing purple eyes and sharp golden horns, and as Lloyd awoke in a cold sweat once again, he couldn’t help but wonder if they would ever stop.
Lloyd sat up in bed, his heart still pounding as he glanced around the darkened room. He took a deep breath (Just like how Master Wu had taught him) and slumped back into the comfortable blankets in his bed.
Something jolted him back up, though; he felt something scrape against the wall behind him. His eyes widened slightly as he turned around to find that two little scratch marks had been left on the side of his bed.
“What the…” Lloyd muttered to himself, wondering if the marks were just a figment of his imagination. He must be sleep-deprived. Yeah, that’s it, he was just sleep-deprived.
Nothing more to it…
But just to make sure, Lloyd got up out of his bed (He groaned, not wanting to leave the comfortable warmth of his pillow) and quietly padded over to the light switch on the other end of his room and flicked it.
He grumbled slightly, the sudden bright light making him squint as he examined the scratches. They were certainly there, not in fact, a figment of his imagination. Lloyd sighed, wondering if it was even worth it to tell Master Wu in the morning, but then he froze.
Lloyd had caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror in his room, and the sight of what was on his head made him stop. He had to be dreaming… This had to be some kind of nightmare…
On his head sat a pair of small golden horns, almost identical to the ones in his dream, except smaller. Lloyd tentatively reached up to touch the horns, praying that they would just poof away when he tried to feel them.
Lloyd was wrong.
The horns were cold to the touch, hard and metallic, the points sharpened into something that could definitely be used as some kind of weapon. Lloyd stepped back from the mirror; this had to be some kind of trick. This couldn’t be happening. He was the Green Ninja; he wasn’t supposed to have horns, no matter how small they were.
Fear shot through him like a bullet, and he stumbled back onto his bed. Maybe they would just go away in the morning. Maybe it was nothing, heck, it could be normal for a half-Oni teenager (The thought of even being a little Oni always made Lloyd sick, which he was definitely feeling right now), but that didn’t stop Lloyd from freaking out.
He just had to hide this. Yeah, if he hid it, then it would go away. Perfect logic, right? Lloyd curled back into bed, shutting his eyes as he prayed that they would go away in the morning…
It was just another normal night… Right…?