Sick of It by IAlwaysBringBackup
Summary: Because even the best of ninja get sick sometimes. Very fluffy sick!fic where Kai gets a cold and Lloyd decides to hang out with him. Kai and Lloyd friendship!fic. No slash.
Pairings: None.
Warnings: None.
Genre: Friendship
Characters: Kai and Lloyd.
Rated: K+
A/N: So, yeah. I've never written for this fandom before- in fact I don't even watch all the episodes on TV- I've only seen a couple that my sister made me watch. So, apologies in advance if this idea has been done before in this Fandom or if half the stuff in it goes against the cannon in the episodes.
But, don't let that put you off, brave readers. If you can survive this fic (which was actually just written for my sis in the first place, but I decided to post it anyway to increase the number of stories on my account, LOL.) then you can survive anything! :)
Good luck, brave souls!
Disclaimer: No freakin' way do I own Ninjago.
There were several disadvantages to being the Ninja of Fire.
The first was that red was not a very subtle colour for a gi- breaking into places in the middle of the night while wearing red made you rather easy to spot.
The second was that red was the colour of anger, and wearing red often caused people to think that the only negotiation skills you had were of the aggressive variety.
And the third was that everything had a tendency to get really, really hot.
Kai woke with a low groan, rubbing one eye tiredly. His head was burning painfully and he felt extremely thirsty. Either there was something really wrong with his element of fire that morning or the Bounty had taken a wrong turn somewhere and was currently orbiting the sun. Kai did have his doubts about the latter, although he felt so hot that it could be almost plausible.
"Kai, wake up!" Jay's face suddenly appeared in front of his. "Hello…firecracker!?" he asked, tapping the side of Kai's head, and flattening the Fire Ninja's normally spiky hair in the process.
Kai gave a small moan as Jay's face began to blur in and out of focus. He felt so dizzy. "Tell Nya to fly the ship straight, okay?"
Jay gave him a weird look. "Right. That's an interesting reply to my 'good morning'," he muttered sarcastically before continuing in a normal voice. "We're actually hovering, Kai. The ship isn't flying anywhere,"
"Haha, I knew that. Just...testing you," the Fire Ninja shot back weakly as he stood up unsteadily and looked around the empty bunkroom. "Where's everyone else?"
Jay rolled his eyes. "Don't tell me you didn't hear them get up! We're training today! Everyone's already on the deck doing warm-up stretches! Sensei sent me to come and get you!" he explained enthusiastically. Kai covered his ears with his hands, wincing at the level of decibels the lighting ninja was using to get his point across.
"Not...so…loud, yeah?"
"You really aren't a morning person, are you, Kai? I'll see you outside!" undeterred by Kai's wincing reaction to his enthusiasm, the blue ninja disappeared out the door- about as fast as the element he was the master of, Kai thought wryly. Giving a small cough, he headed out the door after his team mate and made his way onto the deck where Sensei Wu was busy instructing the rest of the ninja.
"And breathe in… now, a graceful tiger stretch, everyone," the Master declared.
Kai gave a yawn (why did he feel so tired?) and began to walk down the stairs. Unfortunately, he stumbled clumsily on one of the steps and ended up rolling the rest of the way down. He landed with a bit of a crash, and the other ninja all paused in their stretches to look at him curiously.
Muttering several curses under his breath, Kai attempted to stand up again, but tripped over his own feet and fell back to the floor of the ship. Groaning, he tried to stand again, this time with better results. Why was he so clumsy? This had never happened before.
"Good evening, Kai." Sensei Wu greeted sardonically, although it was actually only seven am. "Thank you for deciding to grace us with your presence. Now, do tell me, is there a reason why you're still wearing your pyjamas?"
Cole, Jay and Zane began to laugh as Kai looked down at his red striped clothing and fidgeted uncomfortably, trying to make up some answer on the spot. It was a little bit hard when he wasn't actually too sure of why he was in his pyjamas, either. "Uh…well, you know, us Ninja…we have to be prepared to fight anyplace, anytime. So, I thought that it would be interesting to see if I could fight as well in my pyjamas as I could in my gi,"
Jay grinned. "I think we've found the answer to that. You can't,"
Kai took a step forward and grimaced as his head began to throb again. "Shut up, Sparky, or I'll throw you overboard,"
"Yea, coz you're so terrifying in your current state. You can't even walk straight!"
Cole rolled his eyes at the two ninja as he stepped into the conversation. "Are you alright, Kai?"
Kai suddenly realised how cold it was on the deck and shivered. "No! I'm not. First my element goes crazy, and now Zane's is. How can you train like this?"
Zane looked at him curiously. "What do you mean? The element of Ice is fine today- as it is any other day,"
"No, because it's so hot one moment, and so freakin cold the next!" Kai snapped back at the nindroid.
Sensei Wu gave a sigh as he watched the Fire Ninja. "Kai, are you quite finished?"
"Don't tell me you can't feel it, Sensei! I bet that I'll probably get electrocuted by Sparky next, or something,"
Jay looked insulted. "I've got better control over my element than that. And don't call me 'Sparky',"
Kai narrowed his eyes angrily. "What, so I don't have control over my element?" he asked fiercely, giving another shiver. "Uh, why's it so freakin cold?"
"Enough!" Sensei Wu interrupted the two ninja. "Kai, go clean out the equipment room, please. You obviously aren't ready to train today,"
The Fire Ninja looked crestfallen and his temper died down as quickly as it has flared up. "What?"
"You heard me, Kai. Now, could everyone else please resume their positions? We have a lot to cover today." Sensei Wu ordered.
Kai gave a small sigh and headed back up the stairs towards the equipment room. He walked quite slowly, resolving to not fall over again. On his way to the equipment room, he paused at the kitchen to get a drink. Nya was in the kitchen with Lloyd.
"Hey, bro. What's up with the pyjamas? Some new training technique?" Nya asked as he entered the kitchen.
Kai scowled as he filled a cup with water. "That's what I said, and then Sensei Wu got quite grumpy and ordered me to go clean out the equipment room,"
Nya raised one eyebrow at her brother. "And what else did you do to contribute to this?"
Kai paused to take a gulp of his drink. "Hey! Don't just blame this on me! I was just feeling really hot and then really cold, so I said that the elements of fire and ice must be going really weird this morning. The Sensei told me not to train. I didn't do anything wrong,"
Lloyd, who was on kitchen duty that morning with Nya and was currently chopping carrots into sticks, looked up at him. "Nice pyjamas," he grinned.
"Why is everyone so interesting in my pyjamas?" Kai groaned.
"They suit you," Lloyd declared. "By the way, you look really pale this morning,"
Nya nodded her agreement. "He's right. You do look quite sick. Are you sure you haven't got a cold? That would explain why you keep feeling really hot and then really cold,"
Kai scowled. "Ninja don't just get sick. We're better than that,"
"Says the ninja who's so obviously got a cold," Nya pointed out with a grin. "You're not indestructible just because you're a ninja, you know. I'll go tell Sensei. You should just go back to bed,"
Kai was about to protest when Lloyd began to push him out of the kitchen and towards the bunkroom. "C'mon. We can hang out and stuff,"
"How did you get so strong, little guy? My teaching must be paying off,"
Lloyd gave him a little smack on the arm. "You're not the only teacher I've got, you know,"
Despite how sick he was feeling (not that he'd ever admit it) Kai grinned. "But I taught you the most, so I get all the credit. By the way, it's not very nice to push your teacher around,"
Lloyd sighed. "Yeah, whatever. You don't look very much like a teacher in those pyjamas,"
Instead of answering, Kai began to cough.
"Your argument is invalid," Lloyd replied once Kai had stopped coughing.
"That's because I was coughing- not arguing, 'kay?"
Lloyd gave a triumphant grin and Kai instantly knew he had said the wrong thing. "So, you admit that you're sick, now?"
"No. You can cough for lots of other reasons…like…when you try and get someone's attention,"
Lloyd gave the fire ninja an extra hard shove. "You already had my attention. Kai, you really need to learn how to improvise a good answer on the spot,"
"Why? If I'm in a situation where I need to improvise an answer, why can't I just improvise a weapon instead and knock the other person out?"
"Because that's not really very diplomatic, is it? What if you were talking to some official person? Knocking them out would not be a good move. Geez, here I am teaching the teacher," by now, they had arrived outside the bunkroom.
"I don't need to lie down, Lloyd," Kai gripped the doorframe as the younger ninja tried to push him into the room.
"Someone needs to cut down on the burgers," Lloyd gasped as he struggled against Kai.
"It's called muscle, Lloyd. I'm not fat, just stronger than you are,"
"Yeah, whatever. Could you let go of the door frame?"
Kai shook his head, before bending over to cough. Lloyd seized the opportunity and literally kicked a slightly dazed Kai into the room. The ninja of fire groaned.
"What's the bet that kick leaves a mark? I'm so gonna kill you after this, Lloyd,"
Lloyd stuck his tongue out at Kai. "You can't do that. I'm the green ninja. Without me, you guys won't save Ninjago," he pushed Kai onto his bed.
"I'll just have to save Ninjago myself, wont I?" Kai huffed. "I missed breakfast. I'm hungry," he began to stand up again, but Lloyd shoved him back down.
"Not so fast, muscle man. I'll get it for you. You stay here," the green ninja quickly whizzed out of the room and Kai began to cough again, smiling as he watched Lloyd disappear. That kid was cute.
The younger ninja was back pretty fast with bread, fruit and a cup of tea.
"Nya says that fruit is really good if you're sick," he explained.
"I'm not sick, Lloyd,"
"You look terrible, though. You're all pale, there are bags underneath your eyes and half of your hair is flat,"
Kai scowled and reached for the container of hair gel he kept under his bunk to fix that problem. Lloyd watched him spike his hair curiously. With a wicked grin, Kai reached over and rubbed a bit of gel through the younger ninja's hair and turned it into spikes.
"Hey!" the younger ninja whined in protest as he went over to the mirror which was down one end of the room to examine what Kai had done to him. "Wait… this actually looks pretty cool," he grinned as he looked at his reflection. "I look a bit like you, now,"
Kai chuckled as he began to eat his breakfast. "Now, there are one and a half good looking people on this ship,"
Lloyd looked at him and snorted. "You can be the half," he replied, stealing a piece of apple from Kai's plate.
"No, you are the half, shorty," he swatted Lloyd's hand away. "I'm so glad that I managed to pass my great hairstyling wisdom on. I feel that I have done my part for the green ninja's training. When you save Ninjago, you can say that it was all due to my efforts,"
With a roll of his eyes, Lloyd took another piece of fruit. "Should you really be talking so much if you're sick? Your throat will begin to hurt soon,"
Kai decided that it might not be a good idea to mention that it was already hurting. "Nah, I'm a ninja. We've got good stamina," he rasped out.
Grinning at the person who was his honorary brother, Lloyd stood up. "Your throat already hurts. I'll do all the talking from now on, okay?" he said and ran out of the room. Kai watched him leave curiously.
Lloyd returned a moment later with a pile of comic books. "See, whenever I'm sick, or sometimes when I'm going to bed, Sensei will read me a story,"
Kai gave a mental sigh, hoping than no one else walked into the room. They would never let him live this down. Kai didn't need anyone to read him bedtime stories. He was the ninja of fire, for goodness' sake!
And fire ninjas did not have bedtime stories. Case closed.
Of course, he really couldn't explain that to Lloyd. The kid looked so cute perched on the side of his bed and flipping through the pile of different comics and trying to select one that he thought Kai would like. The Fire Ninja knew that Lloyd would take rejection of the comic books almost as a rejection of him-even though it wouldn't be intended like that. Besides, he liked talking to the kid, even if it was only about comic books.
"Oh, this one's awesome! I bet you'll like it," Lloyd grinned, triumphantly waving a blue covered comic book in the air and interrupting Kai from his musing. "It has evil space invaders and stuff,"
Kai gave another cough and nodded, hiding a grin at Lloyd's enthusiasm. "Sounds awesome," he lied hoarsely. Space invaders really weren't his kind of thing…but what Lloyd didn't know wouldn't hurt him.
He pulled his blankets up and listened as Lloyd began to read out the speech bubbles of the comic books characters and occasionally stopped to show him pictures.
Several minutes into Lloyd's storytelling, Kai found his eyelids beginning to drop. It wasn't that the story wasn't interesting (well, it actually was a little bit boring to someone who wasn't into space invaders), but Kai felt so drowsy. He had been up late the previous night on a training exercise. Usually, he would have been able to handle the lack of sleep just fine, but the cold was really draining his energy levels. As he closed his eyes, Kai found that it was actually quite nice to fall asleep listening to Lloyd's voice.
Lloyd continued to read, not noticing that Kai was asleep until halfway through the book when he turned around to show the fire ninja a particularly interesting picture and noticed that his eyes were closed. The little green ninja sighed and gave a yawn. He too had stayed up quite late the previous night, and watching Kai sleep really wasn't helping him stay awake. He gave another yawn and grinned at the ninja who had practically become his older brother and proudly touched the spikes that Kai had gelled into his hair. Lloyd shuffled around on the bed, wrapping one arm around Kai in a hug before lying down on the bed beside his brother.
The green ninja gave a content sigh and closed his eyes.
About half an hour, Nya walked into the bunkroom to ask Lloyd to help her with a job. She paused in the doorway as she spotted him. The green ninja was lying next to her brother on Kai's bed with a half open comic book in his hands, gelled spikes in his hair and a peaceful smile on his face. He had one arm around Kai, who also had gelled spikes in his hair (no surprise) and was fast asleep as well. They looked so cute like that. Smiling, Nya turned around and silently shut the door.
Lloyd could help her another time.
Loved it? Weirded out by it? Want to hunt me down and shoot me for posting such a bad fic? (Please don't shoot me. That doesn't sound like a lot of fun, really). Thanks for reading. I'm guessing that if you managed to read all the way down to this author's note without fainting or having your eyes die halfway through, you survived! Congrats, brave reader! Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome!
