"You can't move there."

"Yes I can. I'm a diver."

"No, I mean, you can't go to the temple to get the chalice yet. You don't have enough chalice cards."

"Yes I do! I have four, look!"

"Those are ocean chalice cards! That's the fire chalice temple! Maker of plastic bricks, were you even listening to the rules?!"

I sighed as the inevitable argument in front of me unfolded while "Garmadon the diver" and "Morro the explorer" (which I'd honestly had to bite my tongue to not make a joke about) fought over the various but really fairly simple rules to Escape From Dark Island. I'd tried to be the mediator earlier, but at this point I'd given up. Both boys simply had too much of a warrior spirit to admit that they might be wrong, even when it was very clear that such was the case.

"Hey, doc," Morro said, turning to me, "do you or do you not need the specific cards of a chalice's element in order to claim it?"

"Sorry, but leave me out of this," I said hastily, throwing my hands back in defense. "The rulebook is right there if you want to check."

Confidently, Morro snatched the glossy magazine-like sheets of paper and flipped through them until he found the section he was looking for. "Aha!" he cried, and triumphantly read the section out loud to his teammate-slash-opponent. "Claiming the chalices: In order to claim an elemental chalice, a player must stand on one of the chalice's temples and discard four elemental chalice cards in his hand matching the chalice he wants to claim."

"Let me see that," Garmadon snapped, and grabbed the rules from Morro. After finding the quote the teenager was reading and ascertaining that he had not, in fact, been lying, he set the rules back down and announced gruffly, "Fine. Then I end my turn."

"Finally," Morro said, flopping onto his back. Garmadon muttered something under his breath, but thankfully it was quiet enough so Morro didn't notice and I couldn't tell what he said.

"I believe it's my turn, then…?" I asked tentatively. Garmadon nodded and I reached out to move my piece. I was an "engineer," a role that grew more powerful as the game went on.

"I'm going to move one space upward," I declared, moving my small blue token to the next tile over, "and sandbag the tiles to my left and right."

"It's technically called 'shoring up,'" Morro said from the floor, "not sandbagging."

"Well, you use a sandbag to do it, so I don't see what the issue is," Garmadon retorted, jumping at either the chance to defend me or argue with Morro (probably the latter).

"He's an engineer. He's not using his sandbags, he's using his power," Morro said back, sitting up and narrowing his eyebrows. "I was just correcting his words."

"Why do you care?" Garmadon asked, and I sighed and braced myself for another oncoming debate. "You use the word ain't."

"So?" Morro asked.

"So clearly you aren't one for proper terminology." The gray-haired man crossed his arms like a disapproving grandparent, although I'd never dare make that connection out loud.

"Who says ain't ain't proper terminology?" Morro asked, now purposefully using the word to annoy his elder. "Now if the doc is done with his turn…"

"I am," I said with a single nod.

"Then I'll use my helicopter card to land on the fire chalice temple and take the chalice." Morro started to move his piece as Garmadon huffed indignantly.

"What? You just didn't want me to get the chalice so you could have it, is that it?" he accused. Normally I would've attributed such an outburst to unfounded anger, but Morro's smirk made me think otherwise.

"It really doesn't matter who has what chalice," I interjected quickly, "as long as we get all four of them and get off the island before it floods with pure evil."

Bad move.

"We're lucky we aren't stuck on Dark Island for real," Garmadon grumbled, "or we'd never get off. He'd probably steal all the chalices for himself and leave us to die."

"Hey!" Morro exclaimed angrily, "I've changed! Besides, if I wanted you all to die, I wouldn't even need the chalices. I could just fly off the island myself."

"Hah!" Garmadon retorted, pointing a finger at the teen. "The fact that that's the first thing to come to your mind just proves that you were thinking about doing it!" I opened my mouth to try to calm the storm, but the forces of nature had already started and no mere mortal was going to be able to stop them.

"I was evil for over fifty years!" Morro cried, throwing his hands in the air. "Of course my mind's gonna go there! It's not like I can just change my entire pattern of thinking with the press of a button!"

"Apparently not," the sensei huffed. "But you could at least try to be a little more respectful. What's with butchering my name all the time?"

"It's easy to butcher," Morro replied, sticking his nose in the air. It would have probably been okay if he'd just left it at that, but then he added, "What kind of a name is Garmadon, anyway? It sounds evil. Was your father trying to cause your destiny or what?"

Garmadon let out a barking laugh. "My father created all of Ninjago, and you have the nerve to try and insult him?"

"Well he sure doesn't seem like he loved his kids very much," Morro huffed. "What happened to him, anyway? Shouldn't he be here? Like, I don't know, visiting his dead son?!"

"Sometimes unconscious souls get stuck in transaction," I tried to add quickly. "It's possible that he's in a resting state, and will spawn properly when he awakens—"

"My father could go anywhere he darn well pleases," Garmadon argued, ignoring my meek attempt at explaining away Morro's argument. "He probably isn't even really dead, he could've just created another realm and disappeared from Ninjago."

"And abandoned his kids? Still doesn't sound like a very good father to me," Morro retorted.

"What would you know of abandonment?" Garmadon shot back. "Sometimes things are far more complicated than they appear on the surface! I had to leave Lloyd in the care of his mother because I knew my destiny was to be an evil warlord, and I didn't want him to grow up to be like me. That was heartbreaking. You can't know how it feels to be forced into abandoning your own child!"

My eyes grew wide as I caught the older man's mistake.

"Well, I know how it feels to BE abandoned!" Morro cried, and a gust of wind blew through the room, flipping over several purple tiles. I hastily tried to shore them back up before Garmadon could comment, but he was too intent on arguing with Morro to notice.

"My brother took you in out of the goodness of his heart at a young age," he said in an angry voice, "and you may not have had the best parenting, but you can hardly say you were abandoned! You had a parental figure for most of your life. That's more than most kids can say. Even Lloyd went a long time with nobody to guide him and he still turned out better than you!"

To my alarm, Morro's hand tightened into a fist. "First of all," he said cooly, "your son did try to turn evil, he just wasn't any good at it. And second of all, he still knew that his dad was alive and loved him. His memories of you kept him going through all his worst days and his darkest nights— I should know, I've been inside his mind."

That insight would've been heartwarming under a different context, I thought sadly.

"And Wu's care for you meant nothing?" Garmadon snapped.

"That isn't the point!" Morro cried, and while I was trying to be impartial I found myself agreeing with him. "Lloyd got to remember his dad, not even mentioning that he got to spend time with you after the final battle. He had all these sweet memories of you taking care of him, reading him stories to help him sleep, teaching him how catch a ball, even just telling him that he was loved! Even if he didn't always get to be with you, he still had the knowledge that he was valued. But me…" His hands clenched tighter and I noticed a trace of legitimate pain on his face. Suffice to say, crying is a much more painful experience for ghosts than for the living. "My father thought I was worthless. He didn't even want me."

Garmadon blinked in surprise, but unfortunately, he wasn't taken aback enough to render him silent. "I thought you were abandoned before you even knew your parents."

"What? No," Morro said, sounding slightly confused. "I wouldn't have survived as an infant left on my own. My parents didn't throw me into the orphanage until I was almost three. Well, my dad didn't, anyway, my mom died during childbirth so legally he had to take care of me until I was put up for adoption and he was always talking about the cops being on his back… it was complicated. But long story short, I do know how it feels to be abandoned, and—" he growled— "I think that makes me more of an expert on the subject than you, Mr. Know-it-all." Seeming emotionally strained and clearly determined to have the last word, the master of wind stood up and stamped out of the room, admittedly still in a much calmer manner than I'd been expecting. Garmadon looked like he wanted to retaliate but didn't know what to say. Finally, he settled for muttering something about youth and arrogance under his breath and cleaning up the tiles from the unfinished game. I helped silently, wishing I could think of exactly how to put what I wanted to say.

There is a time and place for everything, Wu had once told me. He'd also said… well, I couldn't remember exactly how he'd phrased it, but it was something about letting emotions get the better of you, and how it only led to worsening the problem. He was spot on about that.

"I'm going to go out back to meditate," Garmadon suddenly said, breaking the silence in the room. I wasn't sure if he was asking my permission or simply stating the facts, so I nodded awkwardly and watched as he walked through the sliding glass door to the backyard, slamming it shut with perhaps a bit more force than was necessary. As he walked out, I saw a strong breeze mess up the sensei's hair and robes, and I realized Morro was probably out flying laps to cool off steam.

Sighing, I finished cleaning up the game and walked over to put it in the closet, resolving to get it out again at some point. There was a time and place for everything.

And soon, I decided, I'd need to find the time to talk to Garmadon and try to end the feud between him and Morro for good.

(Hello! Okay, so, first of all, the most recent episode of Ninjago [Snake Jaguar] was AMAAAAAZING! No spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. But unfortunately, it did shatter one of my headcanons that I'd already written into this story. You can probably figure out which one, or at least the vague area of conflict. Anyway, I plan on fixing it eventually, and I'll let you guys know if/when I do, but for now don't worry too much because those aspects of backstory weren't going to come into play again anyhow. Tl;dr, SDLPC's future is still intact.) (Second of all, I actually wrote a very different version of this chapter several days ago and disliked it so much that I trashed it and completely started over. I'm MUCH happier with this rewrite so I hope you guys enjoy and that it was worth the wait!) (Third of all [sorry for the long A/N, wow], the game they're playing is a legit game called Forbidden Island and it's super fun and y'all should play it. Finally, remember to like, comment, and sub— uhhh I mean, fav, follow, and review! XD)