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Unlike his parents, Lloyd’s natural hair is a strange shade of brown that is so dark that it appears black in most lighting. Not that anyone else had to know this as he's been dying it blond for as long as he can remember.
Back when he had been still attending Darkly’s, Lloyd had to steal the hair dye from a store in a town not far from the boarding school. The teachers hadn’t punished him for doing that but had rewarded him for stealing as it was considered an “evil” act.
After meeting the ninja, the hair dyeing continues, even if it’s a bit harder for him to get the dye.
Fast forward a few years and all of the ninjas end up finding out that Lloyd dyes his hair. Then the whole mess with Morro’s possession happens. After that, Lloyd had made sure that his hair never grew out enough for his natural almost-black to be seen.
He keeps that up for a few weeks until the weeks turn into a month, but then back-to-back missions keep him busy for a while. A very long while.
Long enough for his natural hair to grow out.
A lot.
One day, when almost all the Ninja are gathered in the Bounty for the first time in what is many many weeks.
Lloyd’s been in the bathroom for the last fifteen minutes. He’s been hogging it, Jay had made that clear (even though the Lightning Master wasn’t the next one to use it). And Kai’s starting to get worried.
“Lloyd? You good? You’ve been in there for a while now,” the Fire Master asks, after knocking on the bathroom door.
A moment passes without a reply.
“Yeah. J-just give me a second?” Lloyd answers eventually.
Something isn’t right, Kai picks up on that immediately when the Green Ninja answered. Lloyd’s voice sounds off, like how it sounds when he’s really stressed.
With that in mind, he has to be very careful about his next choice of words, he could risk scaring Lloyd off if he isn't careful. So Kai doesn’t say anything more, nor does he leave, he just waits outside the bathroom.
A handful of minutes later, the bathroom door opens and Lloyd (who has his hood pulled up over his hair, Kai notes) sticks his head out. He’d clearly intended to see if his brother had actually left.
When his eyes land on the brunet, Lloyd looks relieved to see him? What was going on?
“Can you help me with something?” he asks. Kai’s beckoned into the bathroom.
“Sure, what with?” the Master of Fire asks.
Now that the bathroom door has been shut again, Lloyd looks a little less tense but still not relaxed.
The Green Ninja reaches up and pulls down his hood and Kai’s graced with a full, unobstructed view of his two-toned hair. Which would have been fine, except that was the whole problem: it wasn’t supposed to be two-toned.
Once it’s clear that he’s realised what’s wrong, the words start tumbling out of Lloyd’s mouth. “I-I — my hair has grown out a lot and it’s reminding me of Morro and it’s windy which doesn’t help and I’m out of dye and-”
Kai puts both his hands up in a slow-down gesture. “Woah. Slow down, it’s okay, Lloyd,” he tells the younger teen. “I’m going out to get groceries later, I can pick up a box of your usual hair dye,” he tells him.
“Wait— you knew about the dye?” the Green Ninja exclaims. “How long?” he adds.
“Since Morro — his — possession,” Kai answers.
“Oh,”
Neither of them knows what to say after that.
“Do you want to come with me to the shops? I was just about to leave,”
That’s a lie, he was planning to go later in the day most likely well into the afternoon so that he could put it off for as long as he possibly could, but Lloyd needed that hair dye ASAP.
“Yeah,”
It’s then that they seem to remember that they were still standing in the bathroom. The brothers leave, not before Lloyd has pulled up his hood to cover his two-toned hair.
“Anyone want anything that isn’t already on the list?” Kai calls over his shoulder to the others who are in the tv room, to check if there are any last-minute things that they wanted.
He gets a chorus of “No”, “Nope”, and a “No, thank you” from Zane.
With the last check done, both he and Lloyd headed out of the Monastery and descended the stairs to the garage where they store their vehicles. The two took Kai’s car into Ninjago City.
Soon enough, they were walking down an aisle of a grocery store within the city. This particular aisle was the one for hair products and dye.
Even though Kai had known that his brother dyed his hair, the fire master didn’t know what brand of dye he used. That was mostly due to the wide range of brands available.
With the box secured, Lloyd returned to Kai’s side and the two finished the rest of the grocery shopping.
When they returned to the monastery an hour later, the groceries were dumped carefully in the kitchen before moving to the bathroom to re-dye Lloyd’s hair.
The green Ninja discovered that Kai was surprisingly good at dying hair. “I helped dye Nya’s when she was trying out different colours a few years ago,” he explained.
By the time dinner-time had rolled arround, Lloyd’s hair was dyed, dry and not even a spot of almost-black brown could be seen anywhere.