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Lloyd opens the door into another room of the monastery. Sora, Frak and Wyldfyre follow shortly behind.
Wyldfyre lets out a loud groan. “Remind me why we’re doing this again?”
Lloyd sits down on a chair by a table with a bunch of different scrolls on it, the other students follow suit and sit down on the chairs across from him.
“Being a ninja isn’t only about fighting, it’s also important to have knowledge of the things in your surroundings. And that includes history.” Lloyd says while gesturing towards the scrolls.
Wyldfyre gestures dismissively as Lloyd finishes speaking. “I’ve already heard enough about history from my caregiverbot and I know it’s boooring.”
Lloyd only smiles in response. “Either way it’s still important to know as a ninja. Plus this is Ninjago history so it’s gonna be vastly different from the ones in the wyldness.”
Wyldfyre does still not seem very impressed.
Lloyd has a realization and lets out a sheepish grin. “We don’t have that many scrolls about different realms' history apart from how some of them were created.”
Sora realizes that what Lloyd said was more directed to her than towards Wyldfyre. She picks up one of the scrolls. “Don’t worry about that, Imperium's history was full of a bunch of propaganda. It ended the same every time, us being the best. It gets kinda boring when you know not all of it is true.” Sora says in response.
Frak takes his opportunity to chime in. “I actually find Ninjago history really interesting! My dad was an explorer and told me a lot about it. Oh man it’s so sick everything that has happened-”
Frak continues talking as Sora rolls her eyes in annoyance.
As Frak is busy speaking they hear footsteps coming from outside the room and in the corridor. The footsteps come closer until two familiar faces enter the room.
Kai lets out a laugh “there you guys are!” Cole continues the sentence “we were out on the courtyard waiting.”
Lloyd gives an apologetic look. “Yeah sorry, I forgot to mention that we’re learning about history today.”
The two older ninja seem intrigued. They walk towards the rest and glance down at the many different scrolls, Cole picks up one of them.
“Oh man I remember this, this is when we fought the time twins.” Kai looks over onto the scroll. It is a drawn depiction of the second battle between Krux and Acronix after they had returned. Kai even notices himself in the depiction and lights up. “That’s me! And Nya and everyone else!”
Sora looks up from the scroll she was reading. “You guys must’ve done a lot for Ninjago, maybe even more than what Arin has told me.”
Lloyd nods with a smile. “That we have.”
Cole and Kai leave the scroll on the table and walk over to sit next to Lloyd.
Frak looks over on Soras scroll and sees something that catches his eyes. “This is about the serpentine!”
Sora raises one of her eyebrows and glances over at him. “Aren’t you a serpentine?”
Frak exclaims proudly. “yup! I was taught a lot about our history growing up from my parents and the other serpentine.”
He seems excited to continue talking about the serpentine, and, for once, Sora seems very interested.
“Originally there was a big war against the serpentine and the humans, when it ended we were sealed in different tombs underground.”
Sora grows even more curious. “Well how did the serpentine get out?”
Frak continues his excited rambling. “My dad told me that apparently some time before I was born there was this mysterious hooded figure dressed in all black that came and freed all the tribes. He managed to hypnotize the serpentine and the. released the great devour.”
Frak notices Soras confused expression and clarifies. “The great devour is basically this gigantic evil snake that consumes everything in its path.”
The mention of a gigantic evil snake seems to have made Wyldfyre intrigued, no longer half dazed off as she didn’t care much for the history.
“You had me at gigantic evil snake!” Wyldfyre exclaims while gesturing in the air.
Sora continues with her questions. “Who defeated the great devour?”
Frak moves his hands slightly dismissively. “I think it was some guy named Skales”
To say that Lloyd was shocked would be an understatement, he had heard some of the serpentine stories but wow. This was just plain up wrong. His mouth was slightly agape and he wasn’t sure how to respond to all that.
The two other older ninja next to him were desperately trying to hold back their laughter. They share a knowing glance and return their gaze back to the kids with occasional glances at Lloyd. Kai crossed his arms and Cole tried to keep his grin from showing.
Oh this will be good, both the older ninja thought to themselves.
Clearly, their not-so-well-hidden grins, smirks and agape mouth did indeed catch the kids attention.
“Everything alright, master Lloyd?” Frak says with concern.
Lloyd didn’t really know how to respond, but he had to say something! He finally responds with a cautious voice. “That’s a nice story Frak but that’s not really what happened.”
Frak raises one of his eyebrows. “Then what did happen?”
Sora moves her gaze towards the three older ninja, she notices Cole’s and Kai’s grin and gets a bit suspicious but decides to keep listening.
Lloyd tries to find a good way to phrase it all. “That mysterious figure released three of the five tombs, they got betrayed by each tribe and then left. It was the serpentine that released the great devour, not the mysterious figure.” Against Lloyd’s best wishes, this only made the kids have more questions about it all.
“Who was that mysterious figure??” Frak asks.
“And how do you know all this?” Sora shoots back.
“Did the snake cause mass destruction?” Wyldfyre exclaims, clearly haven’t listened to anything else they’ve said that doesn’t contain the word “snake”.
All these questions were what broke the camel's back, Kai couldn’t hold his laughter in and with his laugh it triggered Cole to do the same.
The abrupt laughter made the kids stunned, they weren’t expecting that reaction to their questions. Lloyd stays silent, rolling his eyes as he crosses his arms. Of course his brothers couldn’t hold their amusement in.
“What’s so funny?” Frak asks as his ever-confused self.
Kai practically has to wipe tears out of his eyes. He composes himself and then manages to speak. “The fact that that “mysterious figure” you’re talking about is Lloyd.”
Kai’s side got elbowed by Lloyd in response, not that he seemed to care.
The students take a second to process and then exclaim in unison. “WHAT?!”
Lloyd tries to clear his name, not that it goes well. “I was 9!”
Sora quickly shot back “YOU RELEASED AN ANCIENT CIVILIZATION AT THE AGE OF 9??”
Ohhhh this is only getting better
Kai takes his opportunity and jolts forward to speak. “Yeah and all because he wanted some candy.”
Lloyd could practically hear Kai’s grin with how big it was.
The kids kept on looking flabbergasted, this time it was their turn to look stunned.
“No- I mean- yes- yes I did and I did release them- but-” He honestly doesn’t know how to respond to that, he regrets opening them because it resulted in a lot of bad things happening but he can’t just straight up say that in front of a serpentine!
He sighs. “It’s a long story”
“Yeah and I’m interested.” Sora says while leaning forward.
“So you’re like the whole reason Frak is here?” Wyldfyre asks. Guess she did pay a tiny bit of attention.
Lloyd rubs the back of his neck, he feels like he’s being interrogated. The fact that the ninja next to him seem to find this really funny isn’t helping his situation. He finds the situation so absurd that even he can’t fully deny how funny it is.
“I guess? At the time I really wanted to be evil like my dad so I thought releasing the serpentine would be a good idea.”
The amount of times Sora has raised her eyebrow just today could honestly make her face hurt, but she still continues doing so. “You, of all people, wanted to be evil?”
Lloyd opened his mouth, about to answer her question but Cole quickly chimes in and puts his arm over Lloyd’s shoulder in a brotherly manner.
“Yup he did, but he was so bad at it that he even got kicked out of the evil boarding school he used to attend.” Cole ruffles Lloyd's hair up with his other hand that isn’t over his shoulder, much to Lloyd’s dismay.
“YOU USED TO BE IN BOARDING SCHOOL??” Both Sora and Frak exclaim in surprise, even as a super-hardcore-ninja-fan, Frak didn’t even know about these things. Wyldfyre didn’t join in on their confused yell, she probably doesn’t even know what a boarding school is.
Before Cole continues for Lloyd, he interrupts him.
“If anybody is gonna tell my life story maybe it should be me?” Lloyd turns to look at Cole with a grin.
Cole laughs in response and moves his arm away from his shoulder.
He looks at his students with a warm smile. “Seems like you guys are interested in what us ninja did before the merge, I guess I can shift the history lesson to be about that. It’s still history after all” Cole and Kai nod approvingly.
The kids light up, Wyldfyre is trying to hide her intriguiness but Kai can sense it easily. Out of all of them, Frak is the most excited. He always wanted to learn more, stuff he didn’t know about when it came to the ninja.
He didn’t know how to ask about it, but now his heroes themselves offered to tell him all about it! It was like a dream came true.
“Yes!”
“That would be fun!”
“I guess”
The students' voices roar out. Cole and Kai got excited too, not that they would ever miss an opportunity to speak about their adventures.
“So let’s start at the kingdom of Shintaro” Cole began moving his hands to gesture what happened. “No, let’s begin at Chen’s island!-” Kai jolted back.
The voices fade as he looks at his students confused looks as he giggles quietly to himself.
Nothing brings as much joy to him as teaching his students and making his family happy in the same process.