Just a quick bonus thingy I slapped together! An extra plot thread that never made it into FMW. It spans from one of the tunnel chapters (42-ish?) up through 51.

Still working on that final request! Coming up soon.

Keeping Junior occupied as they wandered through the tunnels wasn't easy. It didn't help that Lloyd's repertoire of suitable songs for children was virtually zero.

"'Brick Houses'?" suggested Jay.

"Mm, no, that one has some language."

"'You're Not Living'?"

"Nah, a little edgy. I don't want his parents asking me what kind of music I've been teaching their kid."

"Well, that cuts out almost everything," said Cole. "Can't you just sing him some normal kid songs?"

"I don't know any," said Lloyd, shrugging awkwardly. "Where was I supposed to learn those? At Darkley's we mostly just sang about decapitation and stuff."

"Oh for Pete's sake," said Kai.

"Yeah," said Lloyd. "And this one fancy song that started out, Regurgitate, regurgitate—"

"Throw up all the food you ate?" cut in Jay. "I know that one! We sang it at my school."

"Wait, what?" Lloyd blinked.

"You didn't have the monopoly on weird songs, you know," said Jay. "We also sang Oh when the ants, get in our food—"

"It puts us in an awful mood," finished Cole. "We find legs, in our egg salad—"

"When the ants get in our food," sang Jay, laughing. "Huh. Still fun after all these years."

"For you, maybe," said Cole, but he was grinning too. "Or how about the one about killing Barney the Dinosaur?"

"Oh, we didn't have that one," said Jay.

"We did!" said Kai. "Nya got in trouble for singing it at home when she was six. Once she figured out it was a bad song, she would go out whenever she was angry and sing it down the well as loud as she could."

"You guys know all these songs?" said Lloyd, who had been listening to all of this with wide eyes. "I thought they were Darkley's songs."

"Nope. Small children the world across sing the most gruesome songs they can get away with," said Jay.

"Woah," said Lloyd. "I feel normal."

"You still probably don't want to teach him those, though," said Kai.

"Geez." Lloyd sighed. "I'm out of options. You guys must know some normal kid songs too, can't you teach him a few?" He looked hopefully to Jay.

"Ohhhh no no," said Jay, waving him away. "My grip on sanity is weak enough right now without running around singing 'The Wheels on the Bus'."

"Fine then," said Lloyd, huffing. "I'll make up my own songs."

"Wait." Jay's eyes lit up. "You're onto something there!"

"Oh, you just had to put ideas in his head," grumbled Cole, glaring playfully at Lloyd.

It turned out the blue ninja's songwriting skills were locked as firmly into the key of J as his voice.

"I'm going to damage someone," said Cole darkly, although most likely no one heard him over the strains of Jay singing, and of Lloyd and Junior amusedly stumbling over the words they had only half-learned.

"I'm just a lonely joker

My heart is like a rat

Getting beaten by a poker

and crawled upon by cats.

Ooohhhhhh, them ninja blues

It sucks to not wear shoes

If you do something stupid

It ends up on the news..."

"I am honestly beginning to worry," said Zane, and he didn't sound like he was joking. Eventually Cole, no longer able to stand the discord, sacrificed his dignity and volunteered to teach Junior some "normal kid songs." He thought "Old Macdonald" would keep the kid busy for a long time, but it turned out Junior knew precious little about above-ground farm animals.

"'kay Junior, so next we're gonna do Wallobers. Wallobers go 'moooo,' okay?"

"What's a Wallober?" asked Junior, tilting his head from his perch on Lloyd's shoulders.

"Gosh." Lloyd looked up at him. "You've never even seen a picture of a Wallober?"

"I dunno." Junior shrugged.

"Well, they're really big animals that walk on four legs. And they have horns, and they're really hairy."

"Are they good to eat?"

"Um." Lloyd laughed, a little thrown. "Well, yeah, actually. But you can also ride them, and they give wool for clothes."

"So they're all different colors, like you guys?" asked Junior.

"Well no, they're kind of brown . . . "

"Then why aren't your cloves brown?"

"It's . . . complicated," sighed Lloyd. "Man. Once we get out of here, I'm gonna have to figure out some way to show you a Wallober."

A couple days later:

As the ninja flew their dragons back from the smoking ruins of the convenience store, heading for New Ninjago City, they passed over a good amount of rolling farmland. Mid-flight, Lloyd suddenly shouted, "Wait up guys, wait up! Can we stop here a minute?"

"What's going on?" Cole banked his dragon, wobbling slightly as a jet stream caught him sideways.

"There's Wallobers down there!" called Lloyd, pointing down into a field. "We can show them to Junior!"

"Well . . . " Cole looked to the others, most of whom shrugged. "Hey, why not. Few minutes can't hurt."

They landed their dragons a little distance away so as not to spook the Wallobers, then approached the paddock on foot.

"Those are them, Junior," said Lloyd, pointing beyond the fence. A dozen or so Wallobers of various sizes chomped grass, complacent in their wooliness.

"Ohhhhhh, they're fluffy!" gasped Junior. Without further warning he slipped his hand from Lloyd's and dove between the fence railings, scampering towards the large animals.

"Is that safe?" asked Jay.

"I think so. I'll get him if any trouble starts," said Lloyd, watching closely.

Junior slowed a little as he approached the small herd, but the animals' heads still shot up. Some flaring of nostrils, some tossing of horns, and abruptly the mass of woolly animals bolted with a thunder of hooves, scared by the predatory scent of Serpentine. Only one baby Wallober, fleeced with tan fuzz, stayed behind. With four feet rooted wide apart, the calf sized Junior up, evidently just as curious as the snakelet.

Junior crept closer, slung low on all fours as if hunting. He approached the calf fully and weighed his options, then carefully lifted his head till his nose almost touched the Wallober's. The calf's nostrils fluttered as it sniffed the curious new scent, and Junior's tongue flickered out cautiously. Both younglings tilted their heads back and forth in perfect synchrony, studying each others' faces.

"I can't even." Nya had sunk her head against the top rail of the fence, covering her eyes. She was visibly struggling to maintain at least a shred of her usual dignity—or at least not audibly squeal. "Oh my gosh. This is too adorable."

"Can't argue there," said Jay.

Only, he wasn't necessarily looking anywhere near the Wallober.