Chapter Text
Garmadon dashed down the hall, carrying a large tarp between his four hands. Over the blaring alarms of the tunnel, he could still hear the padding of Lloyd’s new pet behind him. Meowthra looked incredibly calm for being in a base under a volcano moments from eruption. She calmly followed him to the game room where his son, his son’s friends and his adopted nephew were. Wu’s son, Morro, had traveled back to the city for the end of the college semester and was currently watching the rest of the kids while he got some work done. Unfortunately, work had to be put on hold due to the upcoming eruption. And the temporary sitter hadn’t been told what to do in a situation like this. To be fair, Garmadon didn’t know either; this was an entirely different situation than he was used to. Koko and Wu would probably know what to do. Too bad they were out of town for the week. Which left him to take care of this emergency. He threw open the door to the game room, finding the group huddled around Jay, likely calming him down from the beginning of an anxiety attack. I’m totally cool. He thought to himself, throwing the tarp over the gang as he ran. I’m doing fine. I’ve got this. Yeah, I’ve got this!
He did not, in fact, have this.
“Dad,” Lloyd chuckled, pushing the tarp off his head. “We’re alright. We can handle things here. Jay just slipped like a second before you came in here and we’re giving him a second to get his bearings.”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” assured a new lump in the tarp, who pushed up to reveal a sheepish Jay. “Nothing bruised but my pride.”
The rest of the team succeeded in pushing the tarp from over their heads, wearing various amounts of amusement. Garmadon considered this and decided that it was time to pull the rug out from under them. Literally. The majority of the group yelped as they were unceremoniously dumped into a pile on top of the tarp they had just escaped. Not wasting anymore time, the ex-warlord dashed around the stunned pile of limbs to grasp and tie the corners. The voices within went from annoyed to nervous. The hand that carefully pressed to the side of the bundle would have toppled it if he had not been holding the top. “Dad? Let’s calm down now, step back and take a minute. Don’t do anything without thinking really hard on it, okay? I know Mom’s not here and she’s, like, ninety-nine percent if not all of your impulse control but that doesn’t mean that you can act on a whim.”
Garmadon pointedly ignored his son’s speech, eyeing the giant cat that had followed him into the room. As calmly as he could, he gestured her closer, struggling to keep the makeshift sack of teenagers upright with just his bottom hands. When the cat was close enough he offered up the knot in his hands. “Alright cat. I don’t like you and you don’t like me but we both like Luh-Loyd and want to keep him safe, right?”
When Meowthra answered by not eating him, he continued. “I want you to take this tarp and run Luh-Loyd and his friends somewhere safe. At the very least have it outside of the blast range.”
“Dad?”
“Not now Luh-Loyd. I’m saving you and your friends.”
With those words the group began to struggle more, not entirely sure ‘saving’ Garmadon’s version of it would do. All movements stopped, however, when Meowthra grabbed just below the knot. Now the yelling was back and more desperate than ever. “Dad? Dad! Let’s talk this through, alright?”
“Kai! Don’t you dare try to burn your way out of this!”
“Your sister’s right, bud. You’re gonna light one of us on fire.”
“See? Listen to the one backed by the college kid!”
“I don’t like this. I don’t even want to know how high up we are-”
“Using Lloyd as a reference, should he be five foot nine like he says-”
“Hey!”
“-And Meowthra being about six Lloyds tall from the ground to her mouth, I would hazard a guess that we are about thirty-four point five feet in the air.”
The bundle fell silent for a moment. “I said I didn’t want to know,” Jay whined.
Meowthra chose that moment to start moving, startling the group into a huddle. She sped up as she made her way to the door leading outside. Garmadon smirked, watching her go confident that he just saved his son and his friends’ lives...
Until the cat vanished into thin air. He ran over to where the cat was moments ago, waving his hands around to see if this was just a trick of the light. It quickly became clear that that was not the case. He had just let a giant cat run off to who-knows-where with his son and his friends. While there were many variables in this situation, one thing was certain. “Kokes is gonna kill me.”