Well, this is it. The final chapter. It's been fun, everyone. Hope you enjoyed. :)
Chapter 7
"Hey, you guys!" Lloyd jumped up to greet them, shedding several kittens who had been festooning his shoulders. Evidently he had wheedled his way into the kitten play enclosure while he was waiting. "You came ba—woah! What happened to Zane?!"
"It's a long story," said Kai glumly.
"And the same thing kinda happened to the puppy," said Cole, holding up the puppycat to demonstrate.
"Wowwwww," said Lloyd, tilting his head to study the unusual creature. "That's actually pretty cool."
"I hope the future owners think so," said Nya. "Or you might be stuck here for a while."
"Well, I guess it wouldn't be so bad," said Lloyd gamely. "They have kittens."
"We just finished dealing with one kitten, Lloyd," said Kai. "No more."
Drawn by the conversation, the pet shop owner poked his head out of the back room.
"Ah, you're here," he said. "You had better have that puppy with you. The folks who want to adopt him will be here any minute now."
"What?" said Jay. "I thought you said we had until Friday!"
"I guess they changed their minds, because they just called and said they were coming. So where's the puppy?"
"Weeeelll. . . about that . . . Cole? Give him the puppy, would you?"
Meanwhile, Pixane quietly sneaked off to join Lloyd with the kittens.
"Yeah, we had some issues," sighed Cole, holding the puppycat out. It yipped amiably and wriggled in his hands. The shop owner studied it.
"Is it injured?"
"Uhhh, no, it's not hurt," said Nya hesitantly.
"Did you let it eat something poisonous?"
"No? . . . "
The ninja gave each other puzzled looks. Lloyd shook a kitten from his foot and leaned over the fence of the play area.
"He's really nearsighted!" he stage-whispered. Cole raised his eyebrows slightly in acknowledgement.
"Well, uhhh, he was just a little lively, you know? But he's fine. I guess we'll just put the little guy back in the window, then? . . . " he said. He hastily plunked the puppycat down with the regular puppies in the window (it seemed unsure if it should be delighted or terrified at this development), then pulled the others aside to huddle in the corner.
"What do we do now? Maybe the pet shop guy's none the wiser, but what about the family who's coming to pick up the puppycat?"
"Unless anyone has any ideas to split the puppy and cat back up, and that wouldn't just put us back at square one, I don't think there's anything we can do," said Jay. "Like we've been saying all along, I think we're just going to have to hope for the best."
"Perhaps, if the original owners decide they do not want the creature, we could take it in, instead?" Again, it was PIXAL's voice that came out louder with the first sentence. Pixane continued to speak, however, immediately answering their own question, this time in Zane's voice. "No, Sensei would not allow us to keep an animal on the Bounty."
Jay raised an eyebrow. "Okay, that is going to get weird. . ."
"Jay," said Nya reproachfully, whapping his shoulder.
"What!? Tell me how that isn't weird!" Jay protested, rubbing at his shoulder. "And why does everyone keep hitting me today? You're all so cruel . . ."
"We might not be as cruel if you didn't keep saying jerkish stuff, Zaptrap," said Cole reproachfully. "But Pixane . . . well, I guess technically Zane . . . is right though," said Cole. "I don't think we could keep the puppycat ourselves."
"I reallllly hope the future owner likes having a chimera-thingy for a pet," sighed Nya.
"Is there something you need?" said the pet shop owner, eyeing the little huddle. He apparently assumed that they would want to be on their way, now that they'd returned the puppy.
"Oh, no, we're just, uh . . . We figured we'd stick around to see what the owner thinks of their new puppy," said Nya.
"I guess that's acceptable. Just don't loiter around too long. I am trying to run a business, here."
"Understood," replied Pixane, carefully prying a kitten out of Lloyd's hair.
"Say Jay, since everyone's being cruel to you, you can have a kitten," said Lloyd, handing him the kitten and groaning as another one promptly climbed into his hair.
Jay made a face at Cole before taking the proffered kitten. He held it to his chest and stroked it gently as it settled in and started to purr. "Okay, peace offering accepted."
Any further conversation was cut short as the door bell rang out and someone entered the store.
The presumed future owners of the puppycat came in through the door. There was a careworn-looking woman and her young—
—Several of the ninja stiffened. They recognized this kid. Several of them had gone through the travails of being his grade-school teacher.
"Brad is adopting a puppy?!" whispered Nya amazedly. "Now I've seen everything!"
A few curious gazes turned to Lloyd, as the others realized that he'd never met Brad in person since getting aged up with Tomorrow's Tea. Would they even recognize each other? Surely Brad must know about little Lloyd Garmadon now being the Green Ninja. Goodness knows he'd been in the news enough.
Lloyd, for his part, was still oblivious; he was squirming and giving little yelps of protest as Pixane continued the extraction of the kitten. It didn't help that the kitten seemed opposed to being extracted.
"C'mon Mom, you have to see this puppy, he's—" Brad froze halfway to the puppy window. ". . . Lloyd?"
Lloyd, with the kitten still partially Velcroed to his head, started and looked up.
"Oh gosh. Brad? Is that you?"
Pixane looked up, alerted by Lloyd's reaction. Zane recognized the boy from the incident with the remote back when he still taught at Wu's academy. He wasn't exactly terrified, but it wasn't a pleasant memory, just the same. PIXAL didn't really know what to make of the situation, and with the two so conflicted, they froze up, halfway through levering the kitten from Lloyd's head. The kitten took full advantage, squirming free to settle once more in Lloyd's hair.
"Yeah! But . . . is that really you, though? You're so . . . big. And . . . um, I think your robot broke."
"Huh?" Lloyd looked to Pixane, then nudged them lightly with his elbow to stir them back into the present. He gave Brad another sidelong glance. "It's, uh . . . been a while, huh?"
Pixane blinked and lowered their arms, still a little confused about what just happened. They shook it off quickly and went back to corralling kittens.
"Yeah." Brad leaned his arms on the fence of the kitten play area, looking ill at ease. "You're older."
"Come on. You knew about that, right?" said Lloyd, venturing a smile.
"Yeah," said Brad again. "But I'd never really seen you in person after that. I'd always kinda . . . I dunno, I guess I pretended that the Lloyd in the news and on TV wasn't the same Lloyd, you know? Someone else. It made it less . . . weird."
"It was sorta weird at first," admitted Lloyd. He wondered if it was different for Brad—it had already been strange enough for him and his teammates, suddenly being closer to equal ages, but maybe it was even weirder to have someone your own age suddenly become way older.
"You're not still mad or anything, right?" said Brad after a moment. Lloyd chuckled drily.
"Nah. Grew out of that."
"Phew," Brad muttered audibly.
Meanwhile Brad's mother had been watching the conversation with a degree of understanding. Lloyd gave her a nod and polite smile, and she nodded back and moved to shoo Brad towards the puppy window.
"I'm sorry, but we don't have much time right now. I have to get back to work right after this."
"Oh, sorry," said Lloyd. He finally disentangled the kitten from his hair and watched from the fence as Brad searched among the puppies. "Busy schedule, huh?"
"You could say that." Brad's mother sighed and lowered her voice. "Mostly we're getting the puppy to keep Brad company when he's home alone. I have to be at work a lot more since . . . well, his father didn't take his switching to good very well."
"Ohhhhh." Lloyd gulped.
The other ninja exchanged looks. None of them had really considered the fact that there could be consequences for turning good. Why would there be? Being good was, well, a good thing, right? None of them really knew what to say.
Meanwhile, Brad continued searching for his puppy, his expression becoming more and more confused. "What gives? My puppy isn't here . . ."
There was another round of awkward silence from the ninja. After a moment, Jay stepped forward. "Yeah, about that . . ." He walked over to the puppies and scooped up the puppycat, holding it out to the boy. "Er . . . sorry?" Jay grinned sheepishly.
"Wait . . . that's not my puppy." Brad squinted at the creature.
"Yeah, there were some . . . issues," said Cole.
Brad blinked. The puppycat whimpered and squirmed, pawing towards Brad with its stubby front legs. Finally it managed to wriggle its way to his shoulder, clinging clumsily to the front of his shirt with its back legs. Brad reflexively lifted his arms to keep the puppycat from falling, and it settled in, purring contentedly.
"This," said Brad, "is awesome."
"So you like it, then?" asked Jay. "Because I don't think we can fix it."
"And even if we could, it may end up dooming Ninjago," added Pixane.
Brad didn't really have a clue what they were talking about, but continued to pet the animal on his shoulder. "Nah, I think I'm good."
"I guess this is sorta the kind of thing he'd like," murmured Lloyd, leaning over the fence while a kitten clambered up his leg.
"Take good care of that puppycat, kiddo," said Cole. "It's the only one in the world."
Brad nodded solemnly, ruffling the puppycat's ears. He and his mother moved to the counter to pay the shop owner, the puppycat still wriggling in Brad's arms.
"Well," said Kai. "That crisis is over. That worked out unexpectedly well."
"All's well that ends well, right?" said Jay. He glanced over to Pixane, who was now prying one kitten off Lloyd's leg as yet another took to climbing the other. The kittens just didn't seem to want to leave the boy alone.
It took a moment for Pixane to notice the attention. Once they had, they straightened up, still holding the kitten, and cocked their head quizzically. "Is something the matter?"
"No, not really, I guess . . ."
"Can we just distract these critters with a laser pointer or something?" said Kai wearily. "We can't take Lloyd home with kittens attached to him."
"Especially not with my allergies," said Nya, who had been standing well away from the kittens all this time.
"One minute." Lloyd gingerly shook several kittens off his feet, then clambered quickly out of the kitten pen. Then he plucked the remaining few out of his hair, plopped them back with their littermates, and offered Pixane a hand out of the pen.
"We'll be on our way, sir," called Cole to the pet store owner.
As they headed for the door, Nya sneezed.
"Bless you," said Cole. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I think so." Nya sniffled. "Weird. Must be a delayed reaction from being in that pet store or something."
"Or maybe from standing close to Lloyd," said Cole.
"Sorry," said Lloyd, stepping aside. "I'll shower once we get . . . " He blinked as Pixane trotted by. For a second Lloyd glimpsed a tiny pair of ears twitching out of the oblivious Nindroids' back coat pocket.
". . . Oh boy."
The End!
