I own nothing but the story.

Kai didn't know how long Cole had been home before he and Jay noticed him, but it was only when a loud crash shook the floorboards did Kai pause the video game they'd been glaring at for the past hour.

"Oh come on," Jay whined, "I was about to win—"

"Shh!" Kai held up his hand and listened. The floor vibrated in time with the thundering stamping coming from the temple's kitchen, and further crashes and several mutters were heard over the sounds of items slamming against the counter. He shared a bewildered look with Jay before the two of them each dropped their controllers and wandered into the kitchen.

Inside Cole was ripping various foods out of two large brown paper bags, his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth stuck in a painful twist. He muttered indistinguishable speech to himself and outright refused to look up when his teammates entered the room.

Any greeting they tried was met with a scowl and an obvious, if not said, "Go away and let me work, you imbeciles."

But try they did:

"Hello," said Kai.

Cole not too carefully pulled the carton of eggs from the second bag and threw open the refrigerator door, making sure that his face was hidden behind it. Kai looked again to Jay, finding a mirrored expression of wonder.

"Uh...how was grocery shopping, buddy?" Jay said with a slight giggle, "Must have been real bad to get you all worked up."

Indeed it must have, Cole was perhaps the most laid back person on the team. Getting him truly angry was a challenge in and of itself, but getting him this furious was a different feat altogether.

"Do you want to talk about it?" said Jay with a smile, not too concerned, yet.

The door to the refrigerator closed with a slam, swung so hard the walls vibrated. Jay's smile disappeared in and instant and both boys stepped backwards upon meeting Cole's angry stare.

Shoulders heaving up and down, Cole spoke for the first time, "How come neither of you ever eat the food I cook?"

Kai stole a quick glance in Jay's direction, unable to answer. Cole's eyes darted between them, before he held up his hands in an angry shrug, "Huh? How come? Why don't you ever eat the stuff I cook you? I know I've made my mistakes in the past, but you could at least try the stuff I make now. I work hard on what I make, you know?" He turned away with a furious huff, reaching for the bag of apples he pulled out earlier.

The two brothers exchanged further looks of confusion before Jay tried to speak again.

"Uhhhh..."

The obnoxious and sudden chime of Cole's ringtone interrupted any other discussion as his phone buzzed against the counter. Kai waited for Cole to answer the phone, to ease the tension that had appeared in the room, but Cole continued working as though he couldn't hear a thing at all.

On the fifth ring, Jay reached for the phone and said, in a smaller voice, "Don't you want to answer it?"

"I'm not home!" was Cole's reply.

Kai opened his mouth to speak, but Jay pressed 'talk' and answered the phone for himself.

"Hello?" said he. His eyes lit up, and he said to Kai, in a much louder voice, "Hello, Cole's Dad! How are you on this fine afternoon?"

Ahhh...thought Kai, noticing how Cole's shoulders had risen and stiffened. The pieces were coming together now. He must have run into his father at the grocery store, and the meeting went south. Kai put a hand to his chin.

"Uh, no, he can't get the phone right now," continued Jay, pulling a banana free from a bunch, "He's outside...mopping the ceiling."

To say the relationship between Cole and his father was rocky would certainly be tasteless, but it was accurate. While the fight to win the Blade Cup and the Fangblade had been a good experience in that it got the father and son speaking again, any meeting between the two usually ended in high tensions and anger due to unresolved issues only they knew about. Kai noticed how whenever Cole made a visit to his father's place, he always tried to bring one of them with him, perhaps to give him someone to serve as support, or even a mediator, whenever he got upset. He used to wonder what would happen if Cole went alone and just talked things out.

"Certainly!" called Jay in a voice far too cheery. He turned around and gave a pointed look towards Cole, who was now leaning with his back against the fridge with his arms folded, "I'll gladly tell him that he needs to call you back as soon as possible."

Cole's glare turned deadly.

"Uh-huh! Sure thing!" Jay continued. An unheard statement made his eyes widen, but the smile remained on his face, "Okay! Goodbye, Cole's dad!" he ended the call and returned the phone to its previous position. Placing his hands on his hips, he said, "Okay Cole, you're going to have to call him back this time; I'm tired of lying for you."

Cole's shoulders rose and fell in a steady rhythm as he seethed, "There is no way in hell," said he, "that I am going to try negotiating with that no-good, deadbeat, caterpillar faced—!"

"Cole, he's just asking for a call back!" Kai interjected, demeanor swinging from concerned to alarmed, "What happened at the store today?"

"Yeah, dude, what's wrong?"

Both boys looked at their friend, but he shrank away, raking his fingers through his hair before grabbing at the groceries with a more somber attitude. Finally, Kai ran a hand across the back of his head, where he could pick up less gel, and offered Jay a nod.

"Cole, you need to talk to your father," he announced.

And upon that utterance, the tension in the room rose with a renewed force.

"No way!"

"He's right," Jay stepped forward and took a bite out of his banana, "You've been having problems with your father ever since we met him, and unless you want to keep coming home all riled up and unlikable, you're going to have to suck it up and talk to him about what's bothering you!"

"You'll feel better," added Kai, voice filled with assurance.

To both boys' surprise, Cole didn't respond with a harsh glare and angry retort, but rather an averted gaze and much more dragged tone.

"He doesn't understand," he said, "You don't understand." At last, he stopped moving around altogether and leaned up against the counter in an exhausted slump, looking as though the world was crashing down on top of him. More than anything, Kai wanted to know why his friend looked that way, so that he could return him to his normal self.

Jay bent around the counter to comfort his friend, casually discarding his banana peel into Kai's hoodie along the way.

"Look, man," he said, patting his brother on the back, "I know that there is no possible way your father could understand you, and the way you feel, but—" he dodged a now airborne banana peel, "if you just sit down, and have a nice, quiet conversation where you and your dad gut each other—metaphorically speaking, of course—then I promise you'll end up in a better place than when you started."

Cole scoffed, but didn't protest. This served as the cue Kai needed to offer his own sentiments.

"Yeah," he concurred, moving to Jay's other side so that he could rest a hand on Cole's shoulder, "Whatever you two fought about today could surely be resolved with a little heart to heart discussion. If you want, we could even be there for you to offer moral support!"

Jay jerked his head up and down, eyes lighting up, "Yeah! Just call your dad and ask to meet with him! We'll be with you every step of the way. I can even stage an accident in case we need to get you out of the meeting early!"

"That won't happen," said Kai, "but everything else is true. We'll help you, man. We promise you'll feel better."

Cole was silent for a moment. Then, to each ninja's dismay, he began to shake is head.

"No, no..." he murmured, "You don't understand. Talking with him would just make it worse, trust me," his voice hardened, "I'm not going to talk to him. And you're not going to make me."

He stood up, shaking away their hands and curling his shoulders forward. Grabbing his phone from the counter, he pulled off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of the underlying tee.

"I'm going to run for a couple of hours," he said before jogging out the door.

All was quiet for several minutes after he exited, the tension falling but not quite leaving as worry ate at the ninjas' thoughts. Eventually, Jay turned with a determined frown.

"He needs to talk to his dad."

Kai nodded.

"Today," said Jay.

Kai nodded again, tapping a finger against his chin in thought. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Cole this upset. "This can't go on," he muttered to himself. A solitary run wouldn't fix Cole's problems. Unless Cole did something, unless they did something, it would eat his friend alive.

A silence.

"Whach'ya thinkin'?"

As Kai's eyes scanned over the walls, an idea struck him, one that made a smirk snake its way across his face.

"Call his dad," he announced, standing straight with a grin, "Tell him that he and Cole are going to have a little chit chat by the time this day is done."

Jay grinned and pulled his own phone out from the pocket of his britches. Kai grabbed the empty and torn grocery bags from the counter and began stuffing them into the garbage.

Cole is going to have a nice relationship with his father whether he likes it or not, he thought, and that's a promise.

Word of warning, the point of view of this story will jump around with no rhyme or reason.

Thank you for reading!