Diet Time?

Gift-fic for Sunny Lighter, based in the Grass is Greener universe, post-Polish, no spoilers. Enjoy!

~~ ! Go Ninja Go ! ~~

It was just homework for health class, their science credit for this year. They were supposed to make charts of their height, weight, body type, and calculate their BMI. No one would see it but their teacher, and she assured them she was only going to grade them based on the accuracy of their math, and not to be embarrassed as they would be discussing the fallacies of using such measurements as standards in the next chapter.

Lloyd failed.

Old habits die hard. He didn't ask the teacher about it, just tried to hide the red F and it's accompanying note saying she didn't appreciate pranks and that she'd expect a correct one tomorrow morning, tucking it into his backpack as quickly and discreetly as he could.

He hadn't had to deal with this sort of thing for over a year now, and Mrs. Black was known to be tough but fair. All his other scores for this class were excellent. Maybe he really had screwed up his math somewhere.

Naturally, his friends (well, Nya), dug it out after school to figure out what he was so sad about.

She started laughing right off the bat, and passed the supposedly confidential paper around.

Lloyd groaned and hid his face behind his hands.

Kai joined her laughter. Cole shook his head and smirked. Jay's eyes bulged at the numbers before he giggled nervously. Even Zane looked confused and smiled, his eyes scanning to the bottom instead of just reading the top numbers like everyone else.

"The rest of your math is fine, Lloyd, so the only issue must be your obviously incorrect weight."

"No wonder Mrs. Black thought you were playing a joke, Lloyd!" exclaimed Nya.

"What were you thinking, little bro?" chuckled Kai. "Did you swap the digits?"

Lloyd took his paper back from Zane, blushing and checking the number. The blush faded as he frowned in confusion.

"No, that's my weight. I used my mom's bathroom scale. It's digital and she just changed the batteries last week."

"And nothing seemed off to you?" asked Jay, bewildered. "'Cause there's no way you've got over a hundred pounds on me."

Lloyd's eyes widened at that. He'd never paid attention to weight before, just assuming he and all his friends were in the same healthy/athletic teenager zone. Over a hundred pound difference! No way!

"The scale must be wrong, Lloyd," concluded Zane. "Not even I weigh that much, for all I'm made of metal!"

Lloyd was looking very confused now.

Cole was frowning thoughtfully. Out of the blue, he snagged Jay around the waist and hefted him up with one arm, then tried to do the same with Lloyd, who wasn't that different in size and build. Maybe a bit shorter and stockier, but the difference should be negligible. Plus or minus maybe ten pounds, you'd think.

It took him two tries, which was surprising for Cole. He frowned as he hefted the two.

"I think he is that weight," Cole concluded, setting Jay down and lifting Zane instead, for comparison's sake. He nodded at their surprised expressions. Lloyd was much closer to Zane's weight, and even slightly heavier. He'd lifted them all before, but had never noticed simply because he'd never thought to compare them.

Lloyd was slowly turning pale, his green eyes growing wider at the implications of all this.

"Maybe lay off the sweets?" Jay tried to joke, but it fell flat. They knew there was no way that much weight could be attributed to fat. Not when they trained alongside Lloyd daily and knew their friend was rock solid.

It had to be a Garmadon thing. And Lloyd was looking distinctly like he might faint, with that same sick expression as the last time Kai had innocently brought up something... inhuman... about him.

"It... probably doesn't matter if Mrs. Black, uh, knows, right?" asked Kai awkwardly. "I mean, that, you know. Everyone loves you now, so it should be fine if, if they find out..."

"Bad idea," countered Nya. "We've seen how quickly opinion shifts. In literally less than five minutes we went from losers to heroes."

"It could go either way," commented Zane. "I do not have enough data to conclude the likely reaction of the populace."

Lloyd was visibly curling in on himself, as if ashamed of his own biology, which was ridiculous. But... understandable. Considering the insults that had been hurled at him before their reveal. 'Monster' had been a favorite slur.

"Just use Jay's weight," suddenly blurted out Nya. "Add like 5 pounds to it so it's not obvious, but that should work."

Everyone froze. Thankfully, the suggestion even yanked Lloyd back to the present.

"Lie?" asked Lloyd and Zane together, both looking suitably horrified.

"And apologize to Mrs. Black. Say you made a mistake, that you weren't paying attention and copied the number from the scale wrong, and it won't happen again."

"But, but that would be-"

Nya folded her arms. "So, what, you want to explain to her that you really do weigh that much more than you should? And what if someone like Chad sees that paper or overhears your explanation?"

Lloyd paled again, but at least this time he didn't look faint. Just sick to his stomach.

"Yeah," he agreed reluctantly. "No one... no one has to know. It's not like it actually means anything, right?"

The other Ninja all nodded in agreement. It's not like they were new to secrets.

~~ ! Go Ninja Go ! ~~

The next time they met their counterparts, Luh-Loyd took Lil'Loyd to the side and whispered something in his ear. The younger blond's eyes grew wide, and he exclaimed, "We're WHAT?!"'

Whisper whisper.

"That's why you were so hard to haul around!"

~~ ! Go Ninja Go ! ~~

Author's Notes: And thus another headcanon is born! This was an idea of mine and Sunny Lighter's when talking about the possible biological differences in the Lloyds versus a normal human that possibly no one would ever notice. If you don't get that last joke, go check out chapter 28 of In Need of Polish, because it's too great a chapter to give any spoilers for!

My not giving any specific weights was deliberate, as everyone's idea of normal weight is different and can vary enormously depending where you're from. As a rough reference, Sunny and I picture Lloyd as the shortest but solid, Jay as next shortest but slimmer, Kai roughly average, Zane as the tallest, but Cole as the largest and most imposing. Of course, any of this is subject to change, depending on our moods and the context of the story.

If you're curious how Cole didn't notice before, it's as simple as superstrength. Plus or minus even a hundred pounds isn't a big deal when you can heft a few tons. Just like we might not notice a difference of two or three pounds when lifting a child.

Also, the reason no one noticed before with Lil'Loyd is because their only comparison for a little kid's weight is Tiny Echo... who is made of metal. They probably figured all little kids are around that weight.