The ninja are still fighting the Serpentine, and Garmadon has his Mega Weapon still, but this doesn't take place in between or after any episodes... (Oh, and Lloyd is older.)

1. Sensei's Secret

When Kai, Jay, Cole, and Zane came back from their latest mission, Wu was devastated to find that the end result of chasing off a few Serpentine turned out to be much more catastrophic. The argument that the four of them- well, Kai, Cole, and Jay being the ones doing the fighting, and Zane being the bystander who found it more interesting to stare at the floor- got into was one that the old man had heard many times before that, but this time, the altercation had become so explosive that Cole, the normally passive-aggressive team leader, was knee-deep in passionate anger. Wu thought he'd trained his students to be more tolerant of each other's misdemeanors, but he was very wrong.

~Kai

"Do you honestly think I tried to make it so those Serpentine could steal the Violet Goblet from the museum?" I snapped, trying to make them understand my point. Sensei had sent us out when there were Serpentine sightings happening inside the museum again, which had made my red flags stand up immediately. I didn't want to be turned into a pipsqueak for the third time in my life. We thought maybe the Serpentine were with Garmadon again, trying to remake the Grundal by some stupid thought that would make him the second biggest idiot I'd ever made him in my entire life, but this time it was just a gang of three two headed snakes (so I guess there were actually six snakes?) trying to rob the museum of it's Violet Goblet. The Violet Goblet was some old relic the Ninjago history department found buried under the ground of an old cemetary, and the purple tin cup was apparently some kind of important thing when it came to the time that time didn't have a name. I was no history buff.

But those Serpentine had stolen it, and now, I was the one to blame, all 'cause I stepped out of Cole's invisible 'plan' chalk lines.

"Kai," said Cole dangerously, forcing himself to be patient with me. I'd never seen him so angry before, but the whole way back home, he'd yelled at me and nagged me about being impulsive. He sounded worse than Nya did when she was telling me to be patient with forging weapons. Not only did it make me feel like crap because I was victimized into Cole's first tantrum, but it also made me feel like crap towards the idea that I lost one of Ninjago's precious artifacts to a bunch of snakes.

I shook my head. "Do you really think that it was my master plan to make them steal it?" I snapped.

Jay threw up his hands. I was being yelled at by him, too. "We had a master plan, and you ruined it!"

I clenched my jaw. "Sorry," I grumbled, but it was an angry moment that made it hard to feel sorry. When you're in the middle of being scolded like a four year old you feel less and less like the adult you are and more like the little twerp you were yesterday. Er, I was yesterday. (I seriously doubt that you were a tiny tot yesterday, and if you were, tell me how you're coping with the dramatic change.)

"Sorry doesn't get back the goblet, Kai," Cole yelled, eyes flashing. I clenched my fists.

My temper flared. "What do you want me to do? Go to the Serpentine's base and politely beg them to give it back, tell them that I screwed up and this was all just a huge misunderstanding? Yelling at me isn't going to change anything. It's still gone."

"Your fault," Jay added.

I grabbed my hair in my hands, pulling on it. My whole body felt on fire. "I KNOW that!" I yelled, and whirled around, kicking the first chair I saw. The Bounty's little amount of decoration had recently become my means of destructive expression. The wooden chair crashed against the wall and lost itself a leg. Sensei, standing nearby, gasped.

"Calm," he warned me, but I shook my head.

"Just tell them to stop frickin' nagging me and I'll calm down."

"We'd stop nagging you if this was the first time you'd ruined a plan!" Cole yelled. Zane inched away, more towards the door so he could make an escape. Zane was never one to hear his brothers fight, and this time it just had to be music to his ears. "But it isn't! This is probably the millionth time you've screwed up!"

I clenched my fists so tight that my nails dug into my palms, drawing blood. "I hate listening to you tell us what to do all the time. Sorry I don't act like your little bitch," I snapped. Cole's eyes widened, and I turned towards the door. I pushed past Zane into the hallway so that I could stomp away from them all out of the kitchen where they'd all followed me into, Cole the devil on my shoulder and Jay the devil's cousin on the other. The sky was angry and black with a storm brewing just for us. Maybe Mother Nature and I shared a common trait: We both had anger issues. The lightning storm that was starting to crackle across the sky was not anywhere near prim and proper, telling me that we'd be in for a real treat when it started to rain. The overflow just might overcrowd the deck with too much water; Nya had to be relocating us to someplace where we weren't going to drown in our sleep.

Lloyd was on the deck training himself, since everyone else was busier yelling at me. He was throwing punches at a potato-sack dummy full of sand that I threw together for him one day, and stopped when I plowed past him, wiping sweat-stuck hair out of his eyes. "Hey," he called to me over the rising wind. The kid was dumb enough to wear sweatpants and a tank top in this freezing weather, his hands wrapped up in white tape. I ignored him and went downstairs.

They didn't understand how hard it is to follow a plan you don't agree with, when you're me. It's always like this. I just hate it.

Being Kai, I can't find inner peace. I don't think I have any.

I stepped into the shower to let cold water singe my inner fire. Maybe that would help me, running my hands over my dark hair and letting the spikes flatten to my head. Out of agitation that wouldn't fade, I squirted half of Cole's bottle of body wash into the drain. Take that, I thought, but that isn't enough to stop me.

He thinks he can just yell at me. Only me, not Jay or Zane or Lloyd. He's never really yelled at any of us before. Not even Jay, and they're the two that don't get along the most.

I walked into the bedroom with nothing but a towel on. The bedroom light was on. If Cole was in here, maybe I could smother him with it.

I stared in the mirror across from the shower, where the sink was. I looked pretty angry. I stomped into the bedroom, still quite pissed, and found the light was on because of someone else other than Cole. (Disappointingly.)

"What do you want," I snapped at Lloyd. The kid was standing in the middle of the room, unwrapping his hands with the white tape, and looked up in surprise when I appeared. His jaw went slack.

"Um."

"Are you going to keep staring at me, or are you going to turn around so I can get dressed?"

"Uh. Like, um, sure." Lloyd turned his back on me. I changed into my pajamas behind him, then flicked him on the back of the head when I was done. Lloyd groaned.

"Are you really going to stay mad?" He asked while I climbed into my bunk, searching for the edge of my blanket so I could pull it over me and fall asleep, forgetting this whole mess until I had to face it in the morning.

"Yes."

Lloyd pouted. "You know it's not necessary to-"

"I don't care. Just leave me alone."

~Lloyd

I walked upstairs, feeling a little sad for Kai. All I'd known was that the guys had come home angrier than I'd ever seen them, especially Cole, and when I'd asked Zane what the big deal was, he said it was because everyone had different opinions and now they were clashing because of it. It made sense, but it didn't make sense.

I found that Cole was beating out his anger on the dummy I had been training with. He looked avenging, so I decided I'd go find Jay for entertainment. That didn't turn out well when I saw him and Nya in the TV/gaming room, on the couch discussing something in hushed tones that probably circulated around Kai and his big screw up this evening. It was one of those "No Kids Allowed" things that Jay pulled on me all the time, making me have to turn right around to find Zane. The nindroid was on the upper deck, channeling peace in a lotus position, his eyes shut gently together. I debated over sitting down next to him when I decided that maybe he wasn't in the mood to be bothered, and sighed my way to Sensei's room.

Although I did knock first.

"Come in," said the craggly voice of my uncle. I opened the door.

He was sitting on his mattress, fingering a wrinkled piece of paper into a roll as I stepped inside. He gently blinked at me. "Hello, Lloyd," he softly mused.

"Why is everyone so worked up?" I asked, sitting on my knees in front of him. "We can always just go steal the cup-thing back, since we've done that before. Kai might've screwed up a little, but it isn't like he tries to."

"What bothers my students is not that he does not try to evade plans. It is that he doesn't try to change that problem. That is what makes them so irritated." Sensei set the scroll on the mattress beside him. "Fights happen between brothers. I should know. But it will not set the ninja apart from each other."

I nodded. "Yeah, okay." I pointed to the scroll. "What's that?"

Sensei reached down and absentmindedly fingered the parchment. "It is just a legend," he said.

"What KIND of legend?" I asked.

My uncle looked uncomfortable at that question. "Just a legend," he said, sounding worried.

"I can keep a secret," I pressed. "You'll never hear me say a word to anyone!"

He shook his head. "Nosiness is not a good trait to have," he said.

"Neither is cagey-ness." I smirked when he was cornered at his own game. "What legend is it, Sensei?"

Uncle stood, dusting off his kimono, and picked up the paper. He walked towards his dresser and produced a key from under his shirt, then pushed it into a lock on one of the drawers. He slipped the paper inside and locked it after himself. The key disappeared back in the folds of his kimono.

I pursed my lips. He obviously didn't want me to know what kind of legend that was, otherwise he wouldn't be locking his drawer... Sensei turned to me, noting my thoughtful expression, and blew out the candle sitting on his dresser. "You must rest," he said. "Big day tomorrow."

"Ugh, TRAINING?" I groaned, getting to my feet. He definitely wasn't taking me to the amusement park for my 'big day.' I glanced quickly at the dresser where he'd hidden the legend. I wondered why he was so adamant about letting me see it?

"You must become your best to defeat your father," he said, and shooed me out of the room. I was left in the dark hallway with an idea brewing behind my eyebrows. The childish part of me was beginning to show itself a little again, and this time, with a brilliant plan. I ran down the hall for our bedroom. If Sensei didn't want me to see that legend, then obviously I was going to get it, one way or another, with four henchmen at my disposal. The real trouble would be convincing them to help me steal the paper from him.