A/N: Please know that Katarina will be using they/them pronouns when she uses her power of Form in this chapter, as she goes by she/they pronouns. Please respect that. Thank you, and enjoy the chapter.

After Zane, Nya, Katarina and Lloyd learned that Wu was the Treachorous Deciever, they were surprised. Cole explained the whole thing to them, and told them to look for Clutch Powers and ask him for the second Scroll of Forbidden Spinjitzu. It turned out he was in the hospital, recovering from his encounter with Aspheera, and told the group it was at the Explorer's Club.

The entire ride to the hospital and to the Explorer's Club, Katarina was silent. Nya assumed she was angry at Wu, and just didn't want to show it, and Lloyd knew she was right. Katarina had been stewing in anger from the moment Cole told them the news. Lloyd knew just how to get her mind off it.

He clears his throat as they were nearing their destination. "So...new daggers, huh?"

Katarina perks up and turns her attention to him. She nods slightly. "Yeah, Keres gifted them to me. Long story short, we trust each other now."

"That's nice of her. And that's nice of you to trust her, even after what she did."

"Yeah." She summons one of her daggers. He takes a look at the golden blade.

"No offense, but your new daggers look so much better than your old ones. I love the way the blades look." He says, admiring the look of the golden blade. "It's so...cool, I'm envious."

She examines the blade. "The handle looks pretty nice, too. At least now my weapons are up to speed with yours. I have been thinking about getting some new ones for a while, so my old ones wouldn't look so out of place with yours, but I didn't go through with it."

"Sis, you know I don't care whether or not you're keeping up with us, in terms of weapons and stuff. Why didn't you go through with it before?"

She sighs. "Sucker for sentimentality, I guess," She summons her dagger away. "Why do you think the scroll didn't work for me? Is it true that I can't harness its power because of what I am?"

"What do you mean?"

"Back at the museum, the scroll didn't work for like the way it worked for you and Aspheera. It made you guys powerful...and for me, it turned me into the worst version of myself."

"When I saw you hold that scroll, it turned you into some...demon. It looked similar to Keres' demon form when she attacked our father. But the scroll responded to you, just not the way you expected. At least it made you powerful, in a way."

"But that power...it didn't...feel right. When I held the scroll, it hurt for a moment. But after that...it was gone. It...It felt like I was connecting myself fully to Keres, like I was harnessing her power along with mine. Maybe the reason it hurt was because I was taking Keres' power momentarily and...it hurt her, too."

He puts a hand on Katarina's shoulder. "You know you didn't mean to hurt her, sis."

She sighs. "Yeah, I know. I just wish it didn't have to be so painful for the both of us."

A few minutes later, she, Lloyd, Katarina and Zane arrived at the Explorer's Club in both the Land Bounty and the ShuriCopter. They run towards its doors, and kick down the doors. Zane had his shurikens held out threateningly, as he, along with his friends, got into their fighting stances. They were prepared to attack anyone who got in their way.

They quickly got out of their fighting stances when they see no one in the lobby to greet them. Someone clears their throat. They look to their left to see it was an old man wearing glasses and a light brown vest. He had a dark brown bow tie and a white button up shirt, along with a small beard and mustache. He was carrying a cup of tea in one hand as he stood behind a desk.

"This is an emergency! We need one of the items in your collection!" Lloyd says to the man urgently.

"The second Scroll of Forbidden Spinjitzu!" Zane adds.

"The one Clutch Powers gave you!" Nya chimes in to clarify.

The man looks at the group and sighs. He gets out a book from the shelf behind his desk and dusts off the cover. He opens the book and flips through the pages. "Let us see. Scroll of Confusion, Scroll of Dancing Monkeys," Finally, he finds what he is looking for. "Ah here. Scroll of Forbidden Spinjitzu. Yes, that particular artifact has indeed been deposited in our archive."

Lloyd smiles. "Great, we need it, fast."

The man sets his book down and nods. "Of course, sir. I just need to see your membership card."

Katarina raises an eyebrow. "No, we're not members, we just—"

The man picks up his book again and glances at its pages. "It pains me deeply to inform you that access to the club archives is for members only." He closes the book shut while keeping his eye on the group.

Zane scoffs. "This is an emergency! The fate of all of Ninjago is at stake!"

"Oh, is it? Oh dear." The man says in false sympathy, as he puts the book back in it proper place.

"So, we can have the scroll?" Nya asks hopefully.

The man chuckles and walks up to the group. "Oh my, no! Rules are rules, after all! Where would society be without them? Hmm? We can't have anarchy, can we?" He says while slowly walking them out of the club.

"Well, um... Can we join the club then?" Lloyd asks as they reach the door and went outside.

"Hm. Of course. Once you reach 10,000 hours of certified exploration, notify us, and we shall begin the multi-year process of examining your applications."

Katarina scoffs. "You pencil pushing bi-!" The man slams the doors in their faces, keeping them out of the club for good.

Another man, who was walking through the hallways upstairs, looks down at his colleage, who had slammed the doors in order to keep the Ninja out of the club and accessing their archive. "Keeping out the riff raff, eh, Cecil?"

Cecils nods with a sigh. "No one has a sense of decorum these days, major."

Nya, Lloyd, Katarina and Zane were still standing outside the Explorer's Club, baffled, confused and angry about what Cecil just did to them. "Did that just happen?"

Nya was boiling mad, and Katarina slowly backs away to steer clear of Nya's growing anger. " Oh, that makes me mad! I'm going right back in there and giving that little pencil pusher a piece of my mind!" As she storms right back to the doors, Zane stands in her war path.

"We do not have time for this. May I suggest another tactic?"

She raises an eyebrow. "What tactic?"

Katarina uses her Elemental Power of Form to shapeshift into Clutch Powers while wearing a smirk on her face. "Deception." She says in her normal voice.

"Hey, that's pretty good. You look just like Clutch." Lloyd says in admiration. Then he frowns. "Erm, your voice, sis."

Clutch raises their eyebrows. "Oh, right." She clears her throat for a few seconds before saying in Clutch's voice, "How's this?"

"Much better." Zane nods.

Clutch walks towards the club's doors and goes through them. They walk towards the front desk where Cecil was, and puts on a confident smile as they prop up an elbow on the front desk. "Hello. It is I, Clutch Powers. As you can see, I am here again, as I have been before."

'You're a terrible liar, Katarina.' Katarina heard Keres say.

'Shut your fuck.'

Cecil sighs and rolls his eyes. "Hello, Doctor Powers."

"Since there is nothing suspicious about me being here, I will enter." Before Clutch was able to proceed past the front desk, Cecil goes up in front of them and stops them.

"I'm afraid, Doctor, that there is the minor matter of your membership having been suspended." Cecil says with a cruel smile. Clutch widens their eyes.

"Suspended?" They say. Clutch did not mention that when we spoke to him.

"Yes, well, rules are rules, I'm afraid!"

They sadly walks out of the clubs doors, where Lloyd, Nya and Zane were waiting for any good news. Lloyd, Nya, and Zane go up to them and quickly notice the sorrowful look in their eyes. "What happened?"

Katarina lets go of her disguises and frowns. She smooths her hair back along with her bangs, before her bangs fall back down on the sides of her face. "Apparently, Clutch Powers' membership has been suspended."

Nya growls, her anger clearly getting the best of her. Lloyd takes a few nervous steps back. "That's it! I'm done with that pencil pusher! You know what time it is? It's Ninja o'clock!" She runs to the side of the building and starts to jump and climb on it. Zane, Katarina and Lloyd follow along.

Once they got up to the roof of the building, they come up to a large fan spinning in the center of the roof. Lloyd gets out his sword, and spins it around to and fro, then he jumps up in the air and jams the blade between the fan's blades. Zane secures the dao with ice.

Lloyd puts his hands on his hips, as he smiles proudly. "Okay, that looks safe..." The fan creaks and the dao moves slightly. "...enough."

Nya gets out a rope and grappling hook. She throws it at the smokestacks, and tugs at it twice to make sure it was secure. "We go stealth here. No weapons." Lloyd says. Katarina takes both Nya and Zane's weapons, and summons them away with her magic, knowing to give it back to them when they retrieved the scroll.

One by one, they slowly go down the rope. Nya shushes them, hearing voices down below. As Lloyd goes down the rope, he feels something drip on his head. He looks up and sees the ice melting off his dao's blade. It won't be long before the fan starts moving again. "Guys, problem."

Before Katarina, Zane and Nya had the chance to look up, the ice completely metls off. The fan starts moving again, and the rope snaps. They fall down the large vent, and the dao quickly follows.

"Reminds me of the fall months I spent—" Suddenly, the Ninja crash onto the table after they fall through the vent, startling the people in the room. In the process, they end up knocking into one of the club members.

"What is the meaning of this?" One of the members ask the Ninja.

"Uh, sorry, we're, umm..." Nya's voice trails off as she tries to think of a lie.

"Working on the air conditioning?" Lloyd says. Nya nods, but she shakes her head as the dao was heard crashing through the vent. It lands into Lloyd's open hand seconds later. He laughs sheepishly, and steals a quick glance from his dao.

"SECURITY!"

Men in fancy suits and tall hats quickly run into the room, with Cecil accompanying them. He looks around for the source of the distress, until his eyes meet the Ninjas'. He gasps. "You again!"

Zane, Nya, Katarina and Lloyd quickly get up. "RUN!" They run towards a nearby door and go into the dark room. Nya slams the door in the security guards' faces before they had the chance to go in with them. They try to open the door again, but Zane manages to buy them enough time by freezing the doorknob with his ice.

The Ninja look around the darkened room. "What a mess." Zane hums.

"This must be where they store all the ancient relics!" Lloyd says.

"Which means the Scroll of Forbidden Spinjitzu must be in here! Come on, spread out, let's find it." Katarina says. The Ninja quickly get to work, gently but quickly turning over objects and opening wooden crates to find the scroll.

As Lloyd looks through some dusty book, he sees something encased in a cube. It was a chicken, probably stuffed or a fake, but it was still enough to startle him. He stumbles back and bumps in a metal object, which crashes in the center of the room. It looked like a copper chest with some kind of rectangular open.

"Lloyd, careful! That could have been dangerous." Nya scolds him.

He waves a dismissing hand. "It's just some weird chest with a mouth-" Suddnely, the copper object had a bright white glow emitting from it and began sucking nearby objects into it. Lloyd, Zane, Katarina and Nya hold onto something to prevent themselves from getting sucked into the chest.

"What is that thing? It's horrible!" Nya says, as she holds onto the crate tighter.

"It appears to be a chest vortex of the ancient Sybex Tribe!" Zane explains to her.

"You say that like it's not weird!" Lloyd grunts. He catches the cube with the fake chicken in it. The vortex manages to suck the chicken into it. The chicken makes a weird, squeaky sound as it goes into the chest.

"It's Ninjago, Lloyd! What did you expect?!" Katarina says.

"Anything but a weird chest sucking stuff into its weird mouth!" He says. He slowly slides towards the chest and puts the cube over it, preventing it from sucking anything else into the chest. He breathes a sigh of relief. They all stand up. Nya dusts herself off.

"Yes, I'll be more careful. But don't pretend you had any idea what that thing could do, either." They nod and begin to look around the room again. As Lloyd looks around, he comes up to a mirror, and he startles, instinctively grabbing his dao.

The reflection starting right back at him was Lord Garmadon, who was glaring just as menacingly as Lloyd was. He lets out a sharp exhale, and moves his hand away from his weapon. The reflection does the same. He raises an eyebrow. "A mirror?" To see if that was the case, he moves his hands and arms around, and the reflection quickly follows.

Nya walks up to him. "What?" She sees Lord Garmadon in the reflection. "What is this?"

"It's some kind of weird mirror." Lloyd answers. Nya walks up to him to take a closer look. When she does, she gasps. In her reflection, she was wearing her casual clothes, and holding a small paper cup.

"But why?"

Something crawls in the distance. "How do you know?"

"Because when I look at it, I see myself becoming my father." He says, glaring at his reflection.

Nya looks at her reflection in the mirror. "I see myself normal, like I never achieved my true potential." Zane turns around to see what was going on, only to see his greatest fear in the mirror's reflection. He gasps.

"No!" He comes closer to the mirror to get a better look. "I see— I see myself, but without any humanity. Only a machine." He backs away from the mirror, not wanting to look at it anymore.

Katarina walks up to the group. "What's all this talk about this weird mirror? Let me have a look, I wanna see this."

"Katarina, I don't think that's such a good idea." Nya warns her. Katarina waves it off.

"Relax, Water Lily, it's just a weird mirror. Can't be that..." When Katarina turns around, she sees herself in the mirror's reflection. The reflection showed her in a demon form, complete with the black skin, glowing purple eyes, tail and pointy horns with small purple intricate swirls on them. Her hair was even in purple flames. "Bad."

Zane comes up to her to take a closer look at her reflection. "What is this?" She moves from side to side to examine herself.

"I think it's my greatest fear," She touches the mirror with one hand. Her reflection does the same. She looks at the reflection's hands, there appeared to be blood covering both of her hands and wrists. There was even blood of her right cheek, and some on her body. "I'm afraid of becoming the worst version of myself.

"It looks like Keres' demon form, all right. Looks just like what I saw back at the museum." Lloyd says. He winces at the sight of the blood on her reflection's body. "This may be a sensitive subject, but...do you remember what happened during that incident?"

Katarina shakes her head. "No, I don't. I tried remembering it, but it's like...my mind blocked it out."

"Maybe it's for the best." Nya says. "I wouldn't want to remember something like that, either."

Katarina nods. "Yeah, good point." She sees something resembling a hand crawl on Nya's head. Her eyes widen in fear. "Nya, there's something on your head! Here, let me just-"

Just before she had the chance to take the appendage off, Nya screams when she directs her eyes up to see what had crawled on her head. She takes the hand off and throws it at Lloyd, who also screams and grabs the appendage. He takes it off his face and chucks it at Zane, who startled when it had landed on his shoulder. He throws it at Katarina, who screams when it lands on her head.

"AH! Why'd you throw it at me?! Gross!" She tears the appendage off her head and throws it somewhere in the room. She runs after her friends. As Lloyd was about to open the door to the next room, the door on the other side of the room opens. Cecil and the security guards run after them.

"There they are! Stop, thieves!" Lloyd, Katarina, Nya and Zane quickly get into the next room and slam the door shut. Zane freezes the doorknob on their side. Cecil sighs. "This is getting tiresome."

They turn around and take a quick glance around the room. "We must be in the entomology room." Zane surmises.

Lloyd raises an eyebrow. "The what?"

"Insects, from all over Ninjago." Zane clarifies.

"Come on, we don't have much time," Nya says urgently. "And Lloyd, don't knock anything—" Before she could finish that sentence, Katarina accidentally bumps into a nearby crate and knocks the jar of bugs off it.

"Ah, shit." She says under her breath, seeing that the jar was broken and now bugs were buzzing all over the room now. She backs up from the crate and turns her head around sheepishly. Nya puts a hand on her hip while shaking her head. "Okay, I did that. Sorry, my bad. I'll be more careful."

"Interesting. Venomasicus Tigrus, tiger wasps," A tiger wasp lands on Zane's hand, trying to sting his titanium skin with no success. "Their sting's the second most painful."

Another wasp stings Lloyd's hand. Lloyd screams in pain and waves the wasp away from him. "Run!" Katarina puts a protective magic shield over herself and her friends as they run away from the wasps, but they suddenly run into Cecil and his security.

"Subdue these malefactors!" Suddenly, the tiger wasps come over to them, and instantly began stinging them. Katarina summons her magic shield away. As they wince at the sight of the club members getting stung, Cecil rolls out of the wasps' way and appeared to be carrying a blowpipe.

"I will place a proper kibosh on this charade! For the empire!"

"What empire?" Before Katarina could get her question answer, Cecil puts the blowpipe to his mouth and shoots a dart at the group, which bonks off Zane's head and begins to ricohet around the room. Everyone in the room take cover so they wouldn't get hit by the dart.

Suddenly, the dart comes back to them. The Ninja move out of the way, letting the dart hit a nearby tank. "Oh, fie!"

Small black spiders crawl out of the tank. "What are those?" Lloyd asks.

"Vastodectrus Venemous, the number one most painful sting in the world." Zane explains.

"Ugh, I always hated spiders." Katarina mutters. Nya runs across the room and opens another door.

"In here! We need to regroup!" Zane, Lloyd and Katarina nod and run over to the other side of the room, ocassionally jumping and flipping over tanks so they wouldn't release any more poisonus bugs.

As they close the door and head into the other room, Lloyd calls out to the club members, "Sorry, guys!" He closes the door and Zane freezes the door knob once again. The four Ninja take a moment to regain their breath, before looking around the room.

Nya smiles when she finds what was standing in the center of the room. "Hey, look!" The rest of the Ninja smile.

"That's it!" Lloyd runs up to the scroll, about to grab it, when Zane grabs onto his shoulder and stops him.

"No! It's too dangerous for someone to touch with their bare hands!"

Nya nods. She finds a tapestry of Serpentine and grabs it off the wall. She wraps it around the scroll and carries it. They exit out of the archives and down the lobby. Lloyd kicks down the front doors as they rush towards the Land Bounty and the ShuriCopter.

"Come on, let's get back to the Monastery!"