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All the ninja huddled around the chair where Kai sat. He was hunched over at the kitchen table, with a cloth over his right eye, trying to stop the bleeding.
Master Wu arrived with the first aid kit. “Make some room,” he told them, his creaky voice calm. He had Kai remove the cloth so he could get a good look at the wound.
“Is he gonna be alright?” Lloyd asked.
“He will be fine,” Wu replied. “The blade barely nicked his eyelid. It will scar, but his vision is unharmed.” He finished bandaging Kai’s face and stepped away.
All the ninja let out a sigh of relief. Nya stopped squeezing Jay’s hand and went to her brother.
“Did you hear that Kai?” She asked. “How are you feeling?”
“Never better,” he grunted.
“Excellent news,” said Zane.
“He was being sarcastic, Tinhead,” Cole said.
Jay tried to stifle a cough and it turned into a coughing fit.
Wu cleared his throat significantly, so Cole said “Hope you get feeling better, buddy, but we gotta go.”
“Yes,” Lloyd agreed. “There’s been another distress signal in a small town out by Stiix.”
“I can still fight,” Kai insisted.
“Your vision is limited right now,” Zane informed him gently. “You may very well be able to fight, but it would be unwise.”
“Don’t worry about it bro,” Nya patted Kai’s shoulder. “It’s not that big a deal. You stay home with Jay and the both of you get some rest. Me, Cole, Lloyd, and Zane are plenty strong enough to take down the bad guys this time.”
Kai grumbled and Jay sniffled a bit.
“Go on then,” Wu told the four going on the mission. “I will take care of these ailing two.”
A few hours later, Lloyd, Nya, Cole, and Zane were still out on their mission. They’d run out of energy to support all their dragons, so Wu was steering the Bounty to go pick them up. Jay had gone to take a nap an hour ago, and having made the boys some toast and tea, there was little more to do to take care of them for the next little bit, so Wu left them to their own devices.
Kai had tried reading a comic for a bit, but the bandage was starting to itch and, being Kai, he felt impatient and irritated.
He went to the bathroom and took it off. Kai stared at his face in the mirror.
His wound had stopped bleeding, but it was still raw and red and painful. It started just above his right eyebrow, nicked his eyelid, and then scratched out to the right on his cheekbone. The slice from the burglar's knife was deepest above his eyebrow, and that area started to well with blood a bit again. He shouldn't have taken the bandage off so soon.
“Crap,” Kai said, and began to scrabble through the bathroom cupboards for a bandaid.
“Dude,” Jay croaked, having come in through the open bathroom door. “Why did you take it off?”
“It was itchy, okay?” Kai said defensively, still looking for a bandaid.
Jay had just woken up from his nap. He yawned and stumbled sleepily to the right drawer and pointed to where the bandaids were kept.
”Sensei said it would scar, right?” Jay asked. His throat itched as he spoke and he coughed.
“Ugh don’t do that near me,” Kai said.
Jay rolled his eyes and went to go cough in the hallway. He came back in.
“But yeah, it’s gonna scar.” Kai grimaced. He unpeeled a bandaid and started lining it up with his eyebrow. “Ugh how do I do this without sticking it to my eyebrow hair?”
Jay wordlessly took the bandaid from Kai, turned it from horizontal to vertical, and handed it back to Kai.
Kai grinned crookedly and put it on at an angle to avoid his eyebrow and the other scratches. “Oh yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
Kai looked in the mirror and sighed. “I dunno about this Jay,” he said dramatically. “Now I look too much like you.”
Jay rolled his eyes again and shoved Kai’s shoulder. His throat was too scratchy to snark back.
Kai laughed and started fiddling with his hair. “I don’t like the way this all looks together. This scar doesn’t go with my hair.”
Jay looked closely. Both of these boys carefully did their hair each day, carefully looking after their appearance. Kai gelled his hair into spikes, Jay combed his and shaved the slit in his eyebrow. The slit made him look cool, he said. Cole made fun of him for it.
“Maybe,” Jay tried whispering to see if it didn’t itch so much. “Maybe you need a whole look upgrade. Really lean into the scar, change the hair, full on tough guy aesthetic or something.”
Kai turned his face this way and that. “Hmmm.”
“Your scar is honestly placed perfect,” Jay whispered.
Kai scoffed.
“No for real! You should thank that burglar to be honest—they did you a favor. The ladies love a good eyebrow slit.” Jay wiggled his own eyebrows then went to go cough in the hallway because he’d stopped whispering again.
“‘The ladies love a good eyebrow slit?’” Kai mocked through the door.
“Hey,” Jay shot back. “Out of the two of us, who has a girlfriend?”
“Nya isn’t dating you for your eyebrow slit you idiot,” Kai said wearily.
Jay came in and sat on the counter, turned to watch Kai fidget with his hair in the mirror.
Kai began brushing his hair out of its spikes and mumbled, “Not entirely sure why she is though, so I guess you never know.”
Jay heard that, glared at Kai, and coughed pointedly in his direction.
“Hey!”
“Hmph.”
Kai started shaping his hair into very tall and fluffy upward points. Jay looked at it judgmentally but Kai ignored him.
“It’s even the same eye,” Jay whispered.
“Crap,” Kai said. “Maybe I’ll just wear the bandaid forever so we don’t match.”
“It’s not like I want to match you either,” Jay snarked.
“Hey, just know that I’m the one with the actual scar, so if people saw us together they’d think you were copying me.”
“As if! My eyebrow slit is iconic. People will think you were copying me but just did a bad job with the razor!” Jay coughed again.
Kai stopped messing with his hair and sighed, staring at his reflection. “I dunno man. There’s something about scars that makes this whole life feel more real. More… dangerous.”
Jay watched Kai’s face. He was being serious now.
”It’s like, if that knife had gone just a centimeter further, I wouldn’t be able to see out of this eye anymore. I’d have to wear a stupid eyepatch like a freaking pirate.”
“Hey now,” Jay said, genuinely offended. Kai didn’t have the memories of the time they had fought Nadakhan, but that was not the only time period that Jay had made his love of eyepatches clear.
Kai now threw away the bandaid wrapper he had left sitting on the counter. “It wasn’t even like a high-level bad guy, ya know? Can’t say I got this scar from fighting the Anacondrai or the Preeminent… nope. It’s from some low level burglar who caught me off guard.”
“Yeah that’s pretty embarrassing,” Jay said.
Kai snorted but didn’t say anything sarcastic back.
Jay felt kind of bad. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll stop shaving my eyebrow slit. You can have my iconic look. As a gift. From your future brother-in-law.”
“Shut up, Jay,” Kai said, but he was smiling now.
“I’m serious!” Jay laughed. “About the eyebrow thing anyway.”
He used a cough to disguise, “And-about-your-sister-too-but-let’s-not-get-into-that.”
“What was that?”
Speaking normally, Jay continued, “We can both change our looks! You can have the eyebrow slit and scar and… interesting new hairstyle. I can have… well, what should I have?”
“You should change your hair. Stop slicking it down. Let it breathe a little. Get some volume. And also stop wearing so much concealer dude. Your freckles don’t look that bad.” Kai told him immediately.
“Heh, wow, you just had all that ready?” Jay laughed uncomfortably.
“I’ve been thinking it for a while,” Kai said bluntly.
Jay got off the counter and studied his own face in the mirror. “You know what, Kai? Let’s do this. Can you help me with my hair? I don’t want it as tall as yours though. And don’t you dare use as much gel as you do on your hair.”
Kai laughed and got out his comb and hair gel. “Fiyahhhh,” he said quietly, and got to work.
An hour or so later, Wu stopped the Destiny’s Bounty and let down the rope ladder. Cole, Zane, Lloyd, and Nya climbed up, tired but unhurt. Zane went straight to go make everyone dinner, Nya and Lloyd slumped onto a couch and Cole went to go hit the showers.
Cole found Kai and Jay in the bathroom, both with much taller hair than last time he’d seen them. Jay’s hair was a shade darker brown than before. His freckles were exposed. Kai had put a second bandaid on above his left eyebrow to match the one on his scar.
Cole made a face like, “what on earth guys,” but decided to ignore them. He was too tired, and he needed a shower before he took a nap.
“Get out,” Cole said, and ignored their protests as he pushed them out of the bathroom and locked the door.
“Well,” Kai said. He and Jay looked at each other. “Seems like Nya’s home.”
“Crap,” Jay said, suddenly hyper aware of the drastic changes he’d made. “Crap, Kai, what if she did only love me for my eyebrow slit?”
Jay and Kai stared at each other and then burst into laughter and walked into the living area where Nya and Lloyd were.
Nya shot up from the couch. “Kai! Jay?!” She exclaimed incredulously.
“Heh… heh… Hi, Nya,” Jay said sheepishly.
Kai did a spin and struck a pose. “What do you think, sis? I’m the one who’s gonna be rocking the eyebrow slit from now on. Think the ladies will like it?”
Nya made a disgusted face and turned back to her boyfriend. She took his face in her hands.
“Oh, Jay,” she said, trying to hold back a giggle at how nervous he looked. “Your freckles are so cute.”
Jay grinned, and Nya grinned, and Lloyd woke up from a half-nap to Kai’s extremely tall hair and wondered if he was having a strange dream.
“Dinner’s ready!” Zane called.
Cole poked his head out of the bathroom, letting a cloud of steam into the hallway. “Wait for me!” He yelled.
Lloyd jolted more fully awake at the sound and saw Jay’s hair next. “What…?” He mumbled, disoriented.
Kai ruffled Lloyd’s hair. “Come on, bud. Food’s ready.”
They all started walking to the dining room, Lloyd blearily admiring Kai’s hair, Jay and Nya hand in hand.
“Honestly it’s kinda fun,” Nya was telling Jay. “Makes me want to join in too! What should I do? Dye my hair blonde?”
“Uhmmm,” Jay coughed a bit. “What if you tried growing your hair out? Makes it easier to mix up your hairstyle when you’ve got more hair to work with.”
“That’s true…” Nya said thoughtfully.
Everyone sat down, Wu emerged from the bridge, and Zane set the food on the table. He’d made butter chicken and naan.
“Cole, hurry up!” Kai called.
“In a minute,” Cole yelled back. He burst out of the bathroom, pulling his shirt on and rushed to sit down with everyone.
“Wow,” Lloyd said. “That was a quick shower.”
“One of my many gifts, now pass the naan.”
They all dug into the food and talked as they ate, some making fun of the new hairstyles, some deciding they wanted to join in. But everyone was laughing, and they all slept well that night.
The End