A/N: Will the person who requested this: "Might sound weird but, maybe oni! Cole x kai x IE! Zane?" please elaborate on what you meant? I've been stumped ever since I read it XD.

Last Time on AU Oneshots: Cole falls ill with Hanahaki.

Request: Modern Nya x Lloyd

Requested By: Anonymouse

Warnings: N/A

Pairings: Nya/Lloyd

AU: Modern

A/N: Yes, this story takes place in Japan, but when characters speak Japanese, they won't actually be speaking Japanese, as I don't know Japanese.

Lily Pond

Lloyd was late.

Very late.

Very, very, late.

And to an important lesson at Ninjago University. Even worse, the university, located downtown from Tokyo, Japan, was a ten-minute train ride away, and Lloyd was already five minutes late.

Scrambling down the escalator, his black backpack bouncing against his back, he scrambled for the last available train, narrowly dodging an old lady (who yelled at him in Japanese) and a group of kids on their way to elementary school in the opposite direction.

He leapt for the train but missed it as the doors slid shut and the train began to pull out of the station. With a groan, Lloyd trudged across the platform and grumpily sat down on one of the benches provided for railway users. He sighed, placing an elbow on his knee and his face in his hands.

His father, Garmadon, had paid for him to attend N.U. overseas in their biology program, and yet here he was, late for his first lecture of the day. Guilt dripped through his midsection, and Lloyd sighed, covering his eyes and slumping even farther over. This was getting ridiculous.

"Hey, can I sit here?" A female voice in fluent Japanese asked him.

Lloyd started, then looked up at the person standing beside him. He nodded. "Yes."

The girl beside him was taller than he was, with bronze skin, dark hair, and flashy brown eyes. She was wearing a light tank top and was carrying a small, light bag, in contrast to Lloyd's heavy black suit and briefcase-like backpack.

"You headed to NU?" She asked, adjusting her black hair in its ponytail.

Lloyd blushed, looking away, but he nodded.

She switched to English, the verbs and pronouns sounding harsh and random against the normally fluid Japanese language. "You speak English too, right?"

"Yeah," Lloyd sighed, smiling. Yes, he was fluent in Japanese, but conversing in English always felt more natural to him. "It's my native language."

"Neat, me too," The girl answered, raising her eyebrow at the old lady Lloyd had slammed into earlier. "I'm Nya. You?"

"I'm Lloyd," Lloyd answered, as a new train sped into the station, this one heading into Tokyo. "Are you from overseas… or?"

Nya laughed slightly. "Yeah, I'm an Expat. My brother and I moved here so he could open a restaurant with his long-distance girlfriend, and I ended up going to school at NU. What about you?"

"My dad sent me here to study Biology," Lloyd answered. "He's a big CEO from California." For once, Lloyd's mention of that felt less like pride and more like… bragging.

Nya didn't seem to care. "So you hung out with movie stars all the time?" She teased. "I'm just kidding. That's pretty nice of him to send you to school here, though."

"Yeah," Lloyd sighed. "I guess it is. I'm Majoring in Fish and Wildlife Management. You?"

"Marine biology," Nya answered. "Are you going to work at Yellowstone?"

Lloyd nodded. "Yeah. Yellowstone or Yosemite. There's a demand for Fish and Wildlife Specialists."

Nya sighed. "Sounds cool. I'm probably going to go work on the Chesapeake Bay, near my parent's house in Maryland. What class do you have first?"

Lloyd bit his lip. "Actually, I'm late for my first lecture… it's with Professor Sorla."

Nya laughed. "We have the same Professor. I have the 10:30 lecture. Microbiology in Nuclear Affected Zones, right?"

Lloyd chuckled. "That's the one. Although… I hope we never have to use it."

Nya sighed, but smiled. A train began to pull into the station as the other one pulled out, and Nya looked up. "Oh, that's my train. Hang on-" She ripped a piece of paper off her bookmark and scribbled an address on it in Japanese. "Here's the address of my Brother's restaurant. Meet me there at 15:00?"

"Uh, sure," Lloyd looked up as Nya stumbled towards the station. "Should I-"

"Casual dress, meet me outside," Nya answered, almost reading Lloyd's mind as he stumbled backwards. "See you then!"

Lloyd nodded, grinning as Nya entered the train and the doors slid shut. As the train pulled out of the station, she waved to him, and he waved back. Glancing up at the station schedule hanging from the roof, he smiled. The next train was his. Sitting back down, he grinned. Today may have been bad, but it had just gotten a whole lot better.

That afternoon, after his last class, Lloyd stood in front of the mirror in his apartment, agonizing over what Nya had meant as 'casual dress'. Did she mean American casual dress? Jeans and a Tee-Shirt? But it was kind of cold, and Lloyd had just gotten a new hoodie from his mom for his birthday, and he had a very nice blue casual dress shirt. Maybe those?

He tried them on, but the blue just didn't go with his green hoodie (not to mention he'd already sweated through the dress shirt with anxiety. With a sigh, he pulled it off, then reached into his closet and closed his eyes, grabbing the first thing he could.

Oh. A dark green tennis sweater. This looked okay, and it matched with any of his white shirts. Getting dressed, he added his fanciest pair of jeans, and a leather belt, both gifts from some friend or family member who was good at fashion.

Looking over himself in the mirror, Lloyd bit his lip, then took a deep breath and swallowed. "It's going to be okay." He told himself, but nerves began to eat at him again. With a sigh, Lloyd grabbed his phone and left the apartment before they could bother him anymore.

Hurrying down the street, Lloyd finally arrived at the address just before 15:00. He moved to the side of the wall, nervously shifting from foot to foot, looking around for Nya.

Just as his watch switched from 14:59 to 15:00. Then, he spotted Nya across the crowded sidewalk. She waved him over, and Lloyd walked across the tight street towards her.

"Um… hey?" Lloyd asked, nervous beyond belief.

"Hey," Nya grinned at him as a grumpy passerby gave them the side-eye for speaking English. Nya raised an eyebrow at her, then switched to Japanese. "My brother's restaurant is right through here. You want to come."

"Uh, sure," Lloyd answered in Japanese, then he glanced around. "As long as you won't murder me."

Nya rolled her eyes but laughed. "Of course I won't do that. This isn't 'Merica."

"Hah," Lloyd relaxed, remembering the violent bloody news of the US. But he really laughed because Nya had randomly switched from Japanese to English when she said 'Merica, and a passerby had started so hard he nearly dropped the box he was carrying.

Walking down the street, Lloyd noticed a large, neon sign. On it was a man with a small moustache and goatee eating a massive bowl of rainbow noodles. Directly below that, in Japanese, was written "Master Chen's Noodle House'. Below that was the same phrase in English. Lloyd noted the place as tourist-friendly.

As they entered, Nya waved and called out to a woman a bit older than her who was tending the bar. The woman waved back.

Lloyd started slightly. The woman was older than them, with a traditional native complexion, but her hair was… red? What? How? Was this even possible? Then Lloyd realized it was dyed and he was an idiot.

Nya approached the bar and motioned for Lloyd to sit next to her. "Lloyd, this is my brother's girlfriend, Skylor Chen." She was still speaking Japanese. "Skylor, this is my new… um… friend, Lloyd. Lloyd Garmadon."

Skylor smiled. "Pleased to meet you, Lloyd Garmadon. Are you by any chance the son of-"

Lloyd slumped. "Yeah. He's my dad. You heard of him?"

"He's a family friend of my dad," Skylor answered, grabbing a paper pad and mechanical pencil from under the bar. "Can I get you guys anything?"

Nya scooted a menu over to Lloyd, and he glanced at the items. Most were semi-normal, but a lot of them also incorporated a bunch of other cuisines into Japanese dishes (such as deep-fried sushi, or pico de gallo soba).

"Can I just have some chips?" Nya asked, and Skylor nodded, grabbing some from under the table and pouring a bowl, sliding it across the table. The chips were white, large, and flat, and Lloyd noted that they bared certain similarities to clams.

"Can I share with you?" Lloyd asked through his clenched teeth, nervous around Skylor.

Nya nodded, then winked, before turning to Skylor. "Oh, wait, do we still have any of that Wasabi-Guacamole?'

Skylor rolled her eyes. "I'm not supposed to sell it yet. We're not finished experimenting. But, yes, you two can have some as long as you don't charge anyone for it and don't share it with anyone else."

She pulled a small, chilled tupperware from a private fridge, and handed it to Nya, who opened it and set it between the two of them.

"What are you majoring in, Lloyd?" Skylor asked, switching to English rather jarringly.

"Er-" He swallowed a piece of chip suddenly, surprised by Skylor's sudden switch. At least Nya was gradual when she did that. "Fish and Wildlife Management?"

"Neat," Skylor nodded, waving to a pair of customers leaving the store. The store was all but empty at this point besides the three of them. Skylor glanced at the kitchen. "Okay, I think lunch rush is pretty much over except for, you know," She nodded, and Nya smiled knowingly. "So if you want to talk to Kai, now would be an ideal time."

"What-" Lloyd started to ask, but Nya took his hand and pulled him towards the kitchen.

"I'll explain later," She hissed. Later, it turns out, was as soon as they entered the two kitchen doors. "Chen's Noodle house has a regular customer every afternoon who's… kind of a stereotype. Just- if you see a guy in brown bragging about kung-fu and animals, just ignore him."

"Oh," Lloyd answered. "That's weird."

Nya shrugged, leading him towards the back of the restaurant, towards one of the cooks. "Yo, Kai!" She shouted, waving. He waved back.

"Put on a hairnet," Kai shouted back, adding some wine to a wok he was holding. "If the health inspector saw you in here- NYA!"

Nya grabbed a couple hair nets and handed one to Lloyd. "Put this on. Kai's paranoid about hair in food. Health inspectors are two, though."

Lloyd struggled to shove his fuzzy blonde mop of hair into a proper hairnet, and as soon as he could, Kai let them over to where he was currently cooking with literal flaming alcohol, stir-frying carnitas.

"Kai, this is Lloyd," Nya introduced him, and Kai killed the heat, sliding the meat out of the pan onto a pan and setting down the wok. "Lloyd, this is my brother Kai."

Kai nodded to Lloyd. "Pleased to meet you, Lloyd." His voice was pleasant, but his eyes told a different story. They calmly stated: "if you hurt my sister, you won't be breathing anymore".

Lloyd shuddered. "It's uh, um, nice to meet you too. Are you a chef, or..?"

Kai nodded. "Yup. Chef and co-owner of Chen's Noodle house."

"Skylor's the other co-owner," Nya whispered to Lloyd, and he had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. "You wanna go outside?"

"You guys going somewhere?" Kai asked, folding his arms and raising his eyebrows at Nya.

"We're going out," Nya answered. "I'll be back by the dinner rush, don't worry."

Kai was about to protest to his sister leaving with a foreign boy he barely knew, but before he could get a word in edgewise, Nya had already pulled Lloyd out of the back door and into a back alleyway.

"You doing okay?" She asked. "Was Kai making you uncomfortable?"

"Yeah," Lloyd sighed. "He's… intimidating?"

Nya snorted as an effort to conceal laughter. "Yeah, he can be intimidating sometimes. Sorry about that. What do you want to do?"

"Actually, there's this really nice bakery with cinnamon rolls that's on a pond," Lloyd answered, desperately hoping Nya didn't think he was babyish for liking to watch the swans on the pond. Once, he'd even seen some Cygnets.

"Neat," Nya looked excited. "Should we head over there for our… um… get together?"

Lloyd laughed, which caused Nya to laugh, which filled Lloyd with such a warm bubbly feeling, he couldn't help but agree. "Of course. I can't wait."

And he really couldn't.

A/N: *Bonks head on desk* Why *bonk* did *bonk* this *bonk* oneshot *bonk* have *bonk* to *bonk* take *bonk* so *bonk* long!? *Final Bonk*

Sorry about that. Anyway, all's well that ends well, after all, and this is finally finished.

Next time on AU Oneshots: Elbert The Cookie's Futuristic request!