Continuation of the previous Kailor oneshot, requested by LeNinjagoFangirl! This, one more, and then this collection is complete.

Guest 1: Thanks for the review! Sorry the reply's been so long coming; I guess you've seen Season 5 by now? If you haven't, though, I thought it was pretty good. The plot and pacing were great, the writing was decent, and there were some adorable Season-1-style character interactions. Morro was pretty cool; Ronin was AWESOME. The finale did choke a little bit, though, and some . . . developments they introduced were kinda the opposite of cool. Overall, wouldn't rank it up there with Seasons 1 and 4, but it definitely was a close follow-up. :)

Guest 2: Aw, thanks very much for the kind words! Glad you're enjoying. ^_^


Skylor might have known things would go downhill once Kai showed up. It's not that he didn't try to behave himself, or that he consciously tried to distract her; he just happened to be naturally distracting. First he asked a lot of questions about what she was doing and why, then when he found the answers were invariably boring he started examining all the stuff on her desk. Which wouldn't have been a problem in and of itself, but somehow he managed to always be fiddling with the exact item she needed at that moment. And then one of them would always make some kind of casual comment, not meant to go beyond two lines, and it would somehow spawn a whole conversation much more interesting than paperwork.

"I would never eat pufferfish," she found herself saying earnestly. "What's the point? You get to chew on something that tastes nice—if it even does—and for all you know you're getting dosed with deadly poison in the process."

"But that's part of the fun of it," retorted Kai. "You get to say you've eaten it and lived."

"If you live."

"I'd live." Kai settled back, shrugging. "I've led a charmed life so far."

Skylor opened her mouth to argue further, then realized that they'd been having this particular conversation for more than fifteen minutes now, and there was still a half-read document under her elbow. Sighing, she shook her head and buckled down to work again. Kai tipped back in his chair and began idly mutilating a pad of sticky notes with his dagger.

Skylor tried to concentrate, but she felt Kai's glance constantly flickering to her, and she couldn't resist looking up every few seconds to see if he really was looking at her. Often enough he was, and whenever their eyes met he was always wearing a kind of knowing smirk. As if he knew a secret and was just waiting for her to nag him to spill it. 'Course, he probably didn't have any particular secrets; possibly he just liked what he saw. Skylor, normally not shy, felt her ears burning.

At last she put down her pen and gave him a resigned look.

"Hotshot." She tried to sound accusatory.

"Hmmm?" Kai looked up innocently, letting go of the sticky notes as if by accident. Instead of a mess of shredded paper, a chain of tiny cutout people unfurled from his hand. Skylor stared for a moment, then laughed and smacked her forehead.

"You're making it pretty hard to concentrate," she said reproachfully.

"I have that effect," said Kai, unrepentent.

"Well, concentrating would be kind of useful just now." She bit back an ironic grin. "Think you could tone down your dazzling brilliance for a while?"

"Oh, pardon me." Kai pulled his mask up over his mouth, his eyes laughing. "Is this any better?"

"Getting there. Mayyyyyybe more like—" Skylor reached over to pull the mask all the way up to his forehead. "Perfect."

Kai chuckled, pulling the fabric down far enough so he could just see over it.

"Cozy," he remarked. "Very warm."

Skylor shook her head, smiling as well.

"By the way, I've been wondering," she said. "Why do you guys wear those masks, anyway?"

"So people can't tell who we are," said Kai, raising one eyebrow as if that should be obvious. Skylor snorted.

"You guys are known all over Ninjago, and conveniently color-coded."

That actually seemed to throw him quite a bit.

"Not only that," she continued. "you're easy to tell apart by your hair or even your eyebrows. And you've been seen without masks in public often enough that—"

"Okay, okay!" Kai held up his hands defensively. "Don't knock the masks, geez! They're important to the ninja trade."

"I'm not knocking them," said Skylor, subsiding a bit. "I just wanted to know why you wear them. There must be some reason, right?"

"Oh, definitely," said Kai. "I, uh . . . just might have . . . forgotten it . . . "

He was somewhat distracted for the rest of the evening, clearly trying to pin down the reason. Skylor at least managed to get some work done.

The next day, Kai asked Sensei Wu about the masks.

"Why do you think you wear them?" replied Sensei Wu, which was more or less the kind of answer Kai had expected.

He thought about it for quite a while. There was undeniably something special about slipping on those hoods or tugging up those bandanas; the simple act always gave him a shot of adrenaline, sharpening his senses and heightening his alertness. That seemed more like a side effect than an actual reason, though. He didn't think Sensei Wu had started them off wearing masks just so they could be conditioned into associating them with serious action.

But then, what was the original reason? Skylor was right, they couldn't be disguises. They couldn't be just there because it was traditional for ninja to wear masks; Sensei Wu was more practical than that. They did provide a little protection from dust and cold, but not enough to justify their existence.

Somehow his thoughts kept coming back to that one other thing that always happened when he put on his mask: anonymity. It wasn't a disguise, sure—everyone still knew exactly who he was when he had his mask on, maybe even more than when he had it off. But that didn't change the feeling of being hidden. His face was shielded, his expression hard to read. Acts that he would normally shy away from became simple when he watched from behind the security of the fabric. Wearing the mask, it was easier to be ruthless.

Something about that unsettled him. He hoped Skylor wouldn't follow up on the question, but she did.

"Because they help us know when it's game time," he told her. She seemed satisfied with that.

He kept wearing the mask like usual, of course, but he thought a little more carefully about how he acted when it was on.


A/N: Meh; not much action or drama here, but it's a question that's been bugging me for a while now. Why do they wear the masks? They make a big point of putting them on when it's ninja-time and taking them off when the action ends, but it's not like the masks physically help them or protect them.

So of course there had to be a quasi-sinister reason behind it. This is Aftermaths. :P