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So the Garmadon brat is kind of a crybaby.
Kai groans a low, long groan, glaring up at the ceiling. His fingers drum against the couch back; his heel bounces on the floor.
For all of his efforts, they do nothing to truly distract him from the child curled up in the corner by the door.
With another sigh, Kai twists his glare towards him. “Can you please cut that out?”
“I’m not doing anything!” Lloyd snaps back.
That snap might be more forceful, were it not for the weird hiccuping whines punctuating his every word – like the cries of the wild dogs that skulked around his village, Kai thinks, squeezing his eyes shut, except worse.
It’s really just his luck, that the first day he gets off from training in weeks ends up like this. He tilts his head back again. He could be in freaking Ninjago City right now, checking out the lights and food and action. But no, little Garmadon is still wanted by the Serpentine, Kai, and he needs to stay out of the public eye!
Another whistling whine comes from Lloyd’s corner, and Kai’s eyes fly open.
“Okay –” he starts, sitting abruptly and spinning around. The rest of his words are choked off as he freezes.
Lloyd’s face is red. Tears track down his cheeks. His frame shakes and his mouth is pressed into a firm line like he’s trying to strangle his sounds, but it’s a losing battle. He aims a glare at Kai that’s ruined by everything else going on with him.
And look. Kai’s not the biggest fan of kids, okay? He’s got more than enough on his plate already without having to deal with the little runts running around.
That doesn’t mean that he’s the type of jerk to want to see one cry, though.
Kai sighs. Time to change tracks. “Hey,” he says. “Hey, look at me.”
Lloyd does so, mistrustfully. He scowls when Kai snaps his fingers at him, making another of those sad whining noises a moment later. “What?”
“If you’re not gonna let either one of us relax, we may as well be productive.” Kai stands, stretching and groaning. “There’s all tons of crap in these closets that Nya’s been on my ass–isting that we help her with.”
Lloyd snorts. “Smooth.” But there’s a spark of interest in his eyes, and his face is dry as he lifts it a little higher. “What kinda crap?”
Kai shrugs. “I dunno. Crap. Point is, if you’re staying with us, you’ve got to pull your weight.”
“I am!” Lloyd yelps. “Staying, I mean. I wanna stay.”
Kai cocks an eyebrow. “Yeah? Then you better get a move on, kid.” He slaps his own hip like he’s calling a dog and walks away, not bothering to look back. There’s the sound of someone tripping off of the sofa, and then Lloyd’s at his heels, chattering about what kind of pirate relics he thinks could be hidden in storage.
It’s a little grating, and a lot mindless. But he’s not making those awful cries anymore, and Kai will take that tradeoff.
Rumbling like a car engine in the dead of night draws Zane out of his room.
Slipping into the hallway, he closes his cabin door quietly behind him. At first he thinks it must be the Bounty’s engine – and isn’t that a horrifying thought, one that has him taking a step instinctually towards Jay’s room. But the rumbling is easier to hear out here, and as he listens to it, it’s not coming from the engine room at all.
In fact, it sounds rather close to him.
Zane’s eyes drift down the hallway, down to the cabin door near the end. On cue, another rumble rolls from behind the door.
Oh. It’s Lloyd.
Zane lets himself softly into the room. In the moonlight, Lloyd is a shifting mass on his bed. As Zane approaches, his right leg kicks, shifting down the blanket. His flushed face comes into view. That rumble is building in his chest again, and when it spills from his throat it temporarily smoothes his pinched features. Then they tighten again, until the next rumble knocks them loose.
Zane lays his hand against Lloyd’s forehead. Even as part of him worries about his flush, the other part can’t help but feel relief that there’s color in his skin once again. Lloyd had been so pale after Stiix - still is paler than Zane would honestly like - but at last he doesn’t look like a walking corpse anymore.
At his touch, Lloyd quiets a little. He shifts unconsciously, pressing into the cool metal of Zane’s palm. Zane runs the pad of his thumb in slow circles over his forehead. His throat feels tight. How easily could Morro have ripped Lloyd away from them?
Slowly, Lloyd quiets. His rumbling falls into a steadier rhythm and his face slackens. Zane keeps his hand there, letting those vibrations travel down his arm until it feels like he can move again.
When there’s so many young adults under one roof, it’s only a matter of time before video games get brought into the mix.
They’ve each got their own tastes. Zane likes visual novels. Cole prefers platformers. Kai’s been getting into roguelikes recently, while Nya will lose hours into creating the perfect sim world.
When it comes to shooters, though, Jay will humbly take that crown. First person, third – it doesn’t matter. Give him a weapon and a target and he’ll happily clean out any arena, and your clock to boot. He’s fallen out of practice for a bit, what with the whole realm hopping and subsequent Oni invasion, but as the Monastery cautiously settles into this new era of peace his PC enjoys its new era of playtime.
Settled at the desk in his room, salty snacks on one hand and gamer fuel near the other, he crunches idly on a chip as he waits for the game to assign him a party. When his door opens suddenly and lets light into the room, he has to resist the urge to hiss like a vampire.
“Hey, Jay, have you seen my –” Lloyd cuts himself off suddenly. “Wait, are you gaming?”
Jay looks down at his orange fingers and shrimp posture and back at Lloyd. “No. I’m filing my taxes.”
Lloyd snorts. “Nice try. Tax day was last week.” He bounces over to Jay, previous request forgotten. “What are you playing? Oh, is that Tenacity?”
“Yep,” says Jay, who definitely remembered that tax day was last week and is not mentally arranging his schedule to allow for time for him dodge an arrest warrant. “It sure is.”
“Can I play?”
“Yeah. Go get your laptop, squirt.”
Lloyd makes it to his room and back in record time. He has his laptop tucked under his arm, and Jay leaves the lobby he was in while Lloyd sets up and logs in. They find a match together and wait for the game to start.
And here’s the thing about Lloyd. You’d think that Kai would be the most competitive in games, right? The spike-head’s whole thing is being angry. But Kai holds his position as the team grandpa even and especially when it comes to video games, all too ready to throw in the towel and declare something stupid if he starts losing.
No. When Lloyd’s got a game at his fingertips, he gets aggressive.
“A! A! They’re all at A!”
“What kind of a wall was that?”
“What the heck? He just wasted his ult!”
Jay cackles as Lloyd slams his forehead against his screen. “The Vesper got killed trying to disarm the spike,” he offers unhelpfully, and Lloyd makes a sound low in his throat.
“Of course he did! What kind of idiot doesn’t take out the other team before getting the spike?”
When Lloyd starts actually growling at his screen, an angry, wordless noise buzzing in the back of his throat, Jay decides they’ve reached their cutoff point. He reaches over and flicks Lloyd’s laptop shut, purposefully suppressing his flinch when that growl gets turned his way, and stretches in a way that pops all the joints in his back. “Okay,” he wheezes. “It’s time to go touch grass.”
Lloyd turns on his phone light and scowls up at Jay. “Zane would let me keep playing.”
Jay pats his head unsympathetically. “Zane forgets how much time a human can spend sitting on their butt. Kai doesn’t.”
Lloyd groans. “Fine.” He perks up. “Can we play more later, though?”
Jay raises an eyebrow. “If you can keep from complaining loud enough for the whole mountain to hear.”
“I’m not that bad!” A sly grin crosses Lloyd’s face. “At least I don’t call my girlfriend to come beat a level for me.”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Jay protests. “I don’t call my girlfriend.” His expression turns dreamy. “I call my fiancée.”
“Gross, gross!”
“One day you’ll understand!”
“All right!” says Cole, clapping his hands together. “This time, I think we’ve finally got it.”
Their ingredients are spread out on the counter in front of them, tapioca flour and brown sugar and tea bags laid out and ready to go into the kettle. Pots wait on the stovetop, and a tray is already dusted with more flour and ready to be used for separating dough into boba balls.
At his side, Lloyd echoes his clap. “Yeah, we’ve got this!” He sets his hands on his hips, grinning over at Cole. “Fourth time’s the charm, right?”
Cole groans. “Don’t remind me.”
“I’m still impressed we managed to make non-newtonian liquid that one time.”
It was a little impressive, Cole has to admit. Even Pixal had stopped what she was doing to come poke at their sad excuse for boba balls, face a hilarious cross between disgusted and fascinated by the clumpy, runny batter.
“I’m still impressed you ate it.”
“Hey, it wasn’t that bad!” Lloyd licks his lips. “I don’t know why the others don’t like your cooking, Cole. You’re not that bad.”
Cole throws his hands up. “That’s what I’m saying! No one appreciates a peanut butter and broccoli sandwich around here, I swear.”
Lloyd bobbles his head. “I like the crunch.”
“That’s because Lloyd’s a human raccoon,” says Nya, popping into the kitchen doorway. She leans against the frame and takes a long sip of her bribery soda. “Also, you’ve only got forty-three minutes left before I let Kai know you’re in here again.”
With twin cries of panic, Cole and Lloyd jump for the stove.
Despite their rough start, it’s easy to fall into the actual boba-making routine. Maybe it’s because they’ve done this so many times before, but Lloyd gets started on measuring out sugar and water into a pot while Cole does the same for the syrup.
It’s actually going… good? The tapioca flour goes into the mixture smoothly, and the dough that comes out actually holds its shape. Cole and Lloyd ooh as it plops onto the tray, and Lloyd even gives it a tentative poke. They both cheer when it doesn’t ooze sadly into a puddle.
“We’ve so got this,” Cole says. “Ha! Just imagine the look on their faces when they see!”
“It’ll be great,” Lloyd agrees, beaming.
He busies himself with rolling the dough into long strips for dividing, hums happily to himself as he does. Well, humming might not be the right way to describe the low noises he makes in the back of his throat, almost like grunting, but lilting and meandering to some tune.
“You make the weirdest noises, kid,” Cole says, shaking his head with a laugh. The sound tickles at something deep in his memories, though, and he frowns idly to himself as he tries to figure out why.
It’s a crazy reaction. But for a moment, he’s seized by the impulse to run outside to stables that are no longer there.
Cole’s pot on the stovetop explodes.
Viscous, hot liquid shoots into the air and rains down on their heads. Cole and Lloyd scream, diving out of the way of the syrup that splats against the walls, floors, and countertops.
“Cut it off, cut it off!”
Cole lunges for the stovetop and spins the knob to kill the flame.
Cowering behind chair and upended boba tray respectively, they exist speechlessly in the disaster zone that the kitchen has abruptly become.
Lloyd snorts. “Cole, why are you white?”
Cole shakes the tapioca flour from his hair and only succeeds in scattering it more onto his clothes. “Well,” he says ruefully, “looks like fourth time was not the charm.”
Lloyd snakes out and hand and sneaks the log of boba dough off the floor. He rubs the end into a splotch of syrup and gnaws a bite off. “Hm. It’s chewy, but it’s still good!”
Cole stares at him like he’s grown a second head.
“Where did we go wrong in raising you.”
“Hey!”
(They get the kitchen cleaned up. Eventually. But it’s not before half of the team comes in to yell at them and then laugh at their expense.)
One time, when Nya had still been the Sea, she’d presided over a massive feeding frenzy.
Sharks, seals, birds, and a hundred other creatures swarmed a massive school of sardines, churning up the waters and throwing foam and fish high into the air. Predators took turns filling their bellies, all working around each other in a display both chaotic and yet incredibly coordinated. It had been beautiful. It had been deadly.
Navigating the monastery kitchen now as she tries to track down syrup feels near exactly like that.
“Who has the salt?” cries Kai, holding his plate of potatoes over his head. “Does anyone have the salt?”
“Catch!”
“Jay Walker, don’t you dare —“
Something shatters against the floor.
Nya rolls her eyes hard enough to hurt. “I’m not cleaning that!” she hollers, squeezing past Zane for the fridge.
Pulling the door open, she squints into the wild ecosystem that are the shelves, shifting around stacks of takeout until she spots the syrup near the back. Bumping the door closed with her hip, she takes both bottle and pancake plate back to the table, where her seat has gained a neighbor in the half-minute she’s been gone.
“Scoot, Lloyd.” Nya pushes at him with her elbow, trying to make room for her plate on the table. Lloyd’s still wrapped in a blanket from bed, and his messy blond hair spills across the tabletop as he seems intent on making it his new bed. She pokes at his face until he makes an indignant noise. “Your giant noggin’s in the way.”
One of Lloyd’s eyes slits open in a glare. Then, like a magnet, it zeroes in on her plate of pancakes.
The noise that comes out of his mouth this time is decidedly one of interest.
Oh, no. “These are my pancakes,” Nya warns, pulling them closer to herself.
Lloyd’s other eye opens. He pouts, and his voice turns upward in a whine.
Nya glares back, unimpressed. “Go get your own, you baby.”
She glances away to find her knife. Quick as a snake, Lloyd lunges forward. Nya spins on him, and the hiss that bursts from her throat comes as automatic to her as breathing.
Lloyd freezes, hand halfway to his mouth, and the pancake he stole flops pathetically from his fingers to the floor below.
The only sound in the kitchen is the popping of oil.
“Uh, what was that?”
“What was what?” asks Cole, stepping into the kitchen, hair still wet from his shower. “Wait, why is there glass on the floor?”
“Never mind that,” Jay dismisses immediately. He vaults over the kitchen island, ignoring Zane’s pained exclamation, and seizes Cole by the hands. “Nya just hissed at Lloyd! Like a cat!”
“What?” Nya feels color rising to her cheeks. “No! I did not.”
“You so did!” Jay crows.
“No, I didn’t!”
“Then why does Lloyd look like someone just kicked his favorite plushie?”
“He always looks like that,” Nya dismisses. “Comes with the genes.”
Jay concedes the point. “Okay, but Kai and Zane heard it, too!” He spins on the other two, which has the unfortunate side effect of dragging Cole with him. “Right?”
“You definitely hissed,” Kai says, grinning ear to ear. Nya glares at him, too.
“Biased. Lies and slander.”
“I heard you, too,” Zane confirms. “It sounded like –”
The noise that comes from his speakers screeches nails-across-a-chalkboard down her spine. Nya rockets to her feet, chair crashing to the floor, matching hiss snapping from behind her teeth. Abruptly, the noise cuts out. Zane stares at her, surprise first and then amusement coloring his expression.
“Exactly like that,” he says.
Nya realizes suddenly that she’s grabbed onto Lloyd’s chair. Dropping her hand, she steps away from where she’s stepped in front of him and looks down. Lloyd’s shrunk back at Zane’s hiss, but he looks back up at Nya with wide eyes.
“Woah,” says Cole. “So you’re telling me that’s not just a Lloyd thing?”
Nya’s head snaps up indignantly. “I mean, I think it very much is still a Lloyd thing.”
“No,” Jay says, “don’t you see? It’s a dragon thing!”
“Dragon –” Kai’s eyes widen. “Wait, yeah. Lloyd’s part dragon, too!”
“Did you forget about that?”
“No! I just didn’t remember!”
“That he’s a literal wings-horns-fire-breathing lizard descendant?”
“Look, everyone here’s some flavor of weird, Mr. Snake Fangs.”
“Touché, touché.”
Cole barks out a laugh. Zane smiles and wipes his metal hands on his apron front. Nya rolls her eyes, exasperated, but fighting back a disbelieving grin of her own.
“Fine,” she says, with an exaggerated sigh. “Well, when you put it that way, I guess I can deal with speaking dragon to my literal wings-horns-fire-breathing lizard brother.”
“Hey, I don’t breathe fire!”
Nya levels a look at him. Lloyd’s embarrassed pout turns into a sheepish one. “I only had wings twice,” he mutters.
He deserves every mocking laugh that he gets.
Nya drags him up into a proper sitting position so he’s no longer trying to disappear into the table. “It’s always something weird with us,” she echoes. “What’s one more thing thrown into the mix?”
Lloyd smiles slowly back. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Nya says firmly. She braces her hand against the tabletop edge to face him better.
Her palm squishes down into something warm and sticky.
Nya looks down to find her remaining pancakes halfway off her plate, a trail of gooey syrup residue leading her eyes straight to Lloyd’s thieving fingers.
“Seriously?”
Lloyd gulps. “Uh, did I say that I think you’re the coolest wings-antlers-water-breathing lizard sister, too?”
Cringing at her sticky hand, Nya flings syrup at him with a snap of her teeth. Shrieking, Lloyd ducks away and snaps his back. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
“Go get me a washcloth, you animal!”
“Hey, mean!”
There’s further shouting and shrieking. But there’s also laughter and familiarity, too, and for the six of them in the kitchen on a sleepy Sunday morning, it’s hard to imagine a moment better than this.
Weird dragon cries and all.