Do me a favor, guys. Don't read this chapter. Or the next one.

I'm not even joking. These two chapters are entirely unnecessary to the plot, one of the main reasons this thing is T-rated, and will do things to certain characters that I'm pretty sure people won't be too happy about. Entirely gratuitously. I'm not exactly proud of 'em.

But somehow I couldn't let 'em go, so here they are. Do yourself a favor too, wait around for Chapter 9.

. . .

What, you're still here? Wellllllll, okay then! I tried to warn ya. :P

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. -Abraham Lincoln

It took all of ten minutes for Kai (and a similarly antsy Lloyd) to be chivvied out into the nearby woods with instructions to fill two gunnysacks with unripe, unopened pinecones.

"Don't know why they need to be unripe ones," grumbled Kai. "It makes a difference if they're still on the tree or something?"

"Hey, at least we won't have to go far!" said Lloyd, squinting up at the distant top of a whispering pine. "Pinecones are easy. Come on!"

He slung a gunnysack over his shoulder and whisked up the rough treetrunk. The branches didn't start until pretty high up, and even then they were broadly-spaced, but he didn't mind. Trees felt like home to him; he'd always loved climbing things. Kai was no slouch himself, of course (in terms of raw agility he was the best out of the entire team), but he couldn't quite match the squirrel-like manner in which Lloyd hopped and scrabbled his way upwards.

Reaching as close to the apex as he could, Lloyd settled comfortably on a branch and looked around at the blanket of tossing green extending in every direction. Then he looked down at Kai, who was slightly breathless and just catching up to him. He almost grinned and made a teasing comment, but something held him back, and in the end he just settled for a faint smirk and raise of his eyebrows. Kai snorted in reply and straddled a lower branch, untangling his own gunnysack from his arm.

For a while they worked in silence, finding tightly-closed green pinecones and tugging them loose from their stems. The first hint of conversation was a "Hey, do you think this one's good? It's opened a little." "Nah, better safe than sorry. There's plenty more."

It felt so peaceful. The air was sharp and sweet, more lively than the soft stillness at ground level but still laced with a woodsy pine scent. The breeze shooshing and the sturdy snap of pinecones being harvested mingled into a soothing melody. It would have been the most companionable feeling in the world if not for the unacknowledged awkwardness between the two of them. It had been like that since they got back from Chen's Island, a sort of hesitation whenever they spoke to each other, as if they were both worried the other would bring up that one particular topic. That moment when Kai, eyes red, had gritted out, "I should have been the Green Ninja!" Some issues had come to light that they really didn't want to drag any further into the open.

Hmh. Then again, maybe it would solve the situation if one of them did.

"So, Kai," began Lloyd.

"No," said Kai bluntly at once. He leveled a warning look up at Lloyd with one eye.

"You didn't even hear the question . . . "

"I know that tone. Just don't go there, all right?"

"And what, just keep on stewing about it for the rest of our lives?"

"It'll blow over," growled Kai. Lloyd snorted.

"You, pushing something under the rug and hoping it goes away? Really?"

"Well, it's not like there's anything else to do about it," muttered Kai, yanking a pinecone loose with much more force than was necessary. "I don't like deep talks, kid."

Lloyd raised an eyebrow. Sure sign Kai was feeling threatened if he was going back to treating Lloyd like a ten-year-old. Dealing with Kai was like trying to befriend a suspicious tiger: get it feeling cornered and it'll bite your head off.

"Look, it's not that big a deal," he said soothingly. "But it's bugging both of us, isn't it?"

"Don't look at me. What's eating you?"

Man, he was evasive. Sighing, Lloyd dropped down to straddle the same branch that Kai was working on.

"I don't hold it against you. The whole . . . thing with the staff. Honest. It wasn't your fault. But . . . well, I've been wondering ever since. How much of that was the staff talking, and how much . . . " He shook his head. "How mad are you, exactly?"

"Just now?" asked Kai with a meaningful glower. Lloyd waved his hands uneasily.

Kai went back to plucking pinecones, still scowling. At length he looked at the latest one he'd picked, realized it was much too overripe for their purposes, and hurled it off into the woods.

"Pretty mad," he said, eyeing Lloyd grudgingly. "So yeah, no. It was not the staff talking. Not so much. And yeah, I'm a petty jerk who's been jealous of you all this time. So there, you've got your answer. You happy?"

He was boring through Lloyd with a hot, defiant glare now. The younger ninja winced and avoided eye contact, momentarily lost for an answer.

"Well?" Kai's voice was a bitter challenge. Go on, say something patronizing. I dare you.

"Look." Lloyd drew in his breath. "I'm not going to apologize, Kai. I'm sorry things didn't work out the way you wanted, yeah. But I didn't choose to become the Green Ninja; I'm not gonna say I'm sorry for something I had no control over."

"I don't want your apologies," said Kai coolly.

"Then what do you want?"

"Nothing. Nothing that I can actually get. Wanting can't change the fact that I wasn't the chosen one, but that doesn't stop me from wishing I was. I'm going to keep wishing that for the rest of my life. That's not about to go away."

Lloyd swung his legs and studied the branch below him, heart aching. How did you reply to something like that? How did you make it fair when your very identity made you lucky, and it cost you your best friend? There was no way to fix it.

"Well?" said Kai again, plucking the scales off a pinecone moodily.

"Well, nothing," sighed Lloyd. "I mean, I guess you're right. If I really wanted something, and worked really hard for it, and then some little brat stumbled in and got it without even trying, I'd be mad too. I just . . . " He sighed. "So then . . . I guess I can't ask if we could still be friends."

Kai gave an irritated groan.

"That would kind of be having your cake and eating it too, yeah."

Nodding, Lloyd managed a shrug, keeping his eyes down and picking at the corner of his gunnysack. Kai sighed.

"Be realistic here, all right?" he continued. "We have Cole. You're lucky if you even see the cake."

Startled, Lloyd looked up to find the fire ninja smiling wearily. He waved a hand in resignation.

"Listen, I never said it was personal, all right? I'm ticked that you got lucky, not ticked at you. If that makes any sense. Anyway. We're still cool, I guess."

Lloyd couldn't resist a relieved smile.

"Thanks," he said softly. Kai rolled his eyes and scoffed, grinning.

"It's more than you deserve," he needled.

"Hey, you tried to kill me back there." The tension wasn't quite gone, but it had subsided enough that they could joke again, and they were both eager to push away from the difficult part of the conversation. Hopefully the situation was settled now. "Say, hold on, that part was the staff's idea, right? The whole 'let's scrag the Green Ninja' part?"

"Want to bet?" smirked Kai.

"I don't know, there was the whole 'switching to Chen's side' act just before it," Lloyd deadpanned.

"Huh." Kai tilted his head, looking smug. "I mean, I know I'm a good actor and all, but I didn't know I had you that convinced."

"Well, for a while, anyway. I started to think something fishy might be up when you tried that evil laugh. Honestly, that was kind of pathetic."

Kai gave an amused snort.

"Yeah? Who do you think I learned it from?"

Lloyd blinked at him for a moment. Then he glared.

"I did not sound like that."

"True enough. You were a lot worse." Kai dodged a pinecone and rolled his eyes. "No, really, you were a little monster back then. Honestly I'm surprised. Even between the four of us and Sensei Wu, I would not have expected that we'd be able to whip you into any kind of shape at all." He blocked another pinecone. "What, you deny it?"

"I'm not about to agree with it," retorted Lloyd, grinning, but relented slightly when Kai raised an eyebrow. "Well . . . okay, but seriously. Fair enough; you guys did pretty much teach me everything I know about this ninja stuff. And yeah, I do owe all of you. Majorly."

"Ohhh, you don't say." Kai leaned back, just the faintest touch of bitterness possibly working into his voice. His tone overall was still jovial, though. "So you actually admit you had some help getting where you are today?"

"What, do I usually not?"

"I dunno. Prophecy and all that. The way people carry on, you'd think you'd have become the Green Ninja no matter what, with or without us."

Lloyd snorted.

"With the kind of company I was keeping? Ambitions to be the next force of evil to hit Ninjago?"

"Ambitions to start a worldwide sugar shortage . . . " added Kai drily, eyeing the sky. Lloyd shoved him.

"Seriously. It wouldn't have stopped at candy. Green Ninja, nothing; if it wasn't for all of you guys, I'd have wound up as some kind of mohawk-wearing punk getting high on Venomari spit in the back alleys of Ninjago City."

Kai gave him a startled look.

"What?" asked Lloyd.

"Nothing, nothing," said Kai, shaking it off and finally turning back to search for more pinecones. "I just . . . didn't know you knew about that kind of stuff."

"Hello? You were babbling nonsense and crashing into things for a whole day, that one time?" scoffed Lloyd, clambering back up to resume his work too.

"I mean, I know you knew what Venomari spit did, but I didn't think you knew about . . . "

"The recreational uses? 'Scale juice'? 'Slobber'? The illegal labs trying to create a synthetic version? The black market and cartels and dealers?" Lloyd shrugged. "Sure, I know all that. Was I not supposed to?"

"I thought you didn't." Kai shook his head. "I mean, I was . . . before Chen's Island, you found me in an underground fighting ring. The toughest, dirtiest characters in all of Ninjago. Pretty much every kind of illegal activity you could think of going on behind the scenes. And you were nagging me about the sugar in juice. Juice! You just seemed . . . " He trailed off.

"Like a naive idiot?" said Lloyd, grinning faintly.

"Like a ten-year-old," amended Kai. "Just . . . it was kind of annoying, actually. For some reason."

"I didn't think to bring it up," said Lloyd. "Yeah, I figured they probably had some kind of trafficking ring going on down there, but you've experienced what that stuff can do to you. I was pretty sure you wouldn't be taking it."

He got no reply. Puzzled, he glanced down.

"You weren't taking it, were you?"

"Naw, come on," said Kai, but Lloyd saw that his shoulders were tense. He bit his lip and turned back to hunting pinecones so Kai wouldn't feel like his eyes were searching him.

"You're kind of jumpy," he remarked.

"Never took it," said Kai tightly.

"Got pressured to, a lot?" asked Lloyd gently.

A long silence.

"Trafficked it," whispered Kai. Lloyd's head snapped around.

"Kai!" For a second he thought it must be some kind of dark joke and Kai would laugh at him for jumping, but the fire ninja's head was down, his eyes hard. Lloyd sat down slowly, his stomach flip-flopping. All the progress they seemed to have made came crashing down again. Kai. The ninja he'd always looked up to the most when he was little. The one who'd saved his life, taught him so many skills, inspired him with his devil-may-care, hotheaded attitude. Sure, he knew Kai'd gotten a little edgier over the years, but . . . a trafficker. His brother sold hallucinogens in greasy back rooms.

"Why?" he finally whispered.

"The slither pit wasn't steady pay," gritted Kai. "They paid by the fight, and once I got a reputation, fewer people started coming to challenge me. I had to live on something! Nya and I both did."

"You think Nya would want money you got by ruining others' lives?" growled Lloyd.

"They ruined their own lives!" Kai barked back. "It wasn't my fault they chose to take that stuff, they'd have been taking it with or without me—what does it matter who they buy it from?"

"It's the principle of the thing!" said Lloyd hotly.

"Principle!" Kai spat. "Don't give me principle when you weren't the one wondering where your next meal was coming from! That was always you, judging everyone when you never understood what it was like. You're a great one for judging, considering the stuff you've tried to pull!"

Lloyd set his teeth. Snatching up the nearly-full sack of pinecones, he slung it over his shoulder and started to climb down the tree. Kai flinched, evidently regretting the outburst.

"And besides, I was only a middleman. I didn't actually sell the stuff, just held onto it for the main dealers sometimes," he added, his voice an odd mixture of sullenness and shame.

Lloyd merely dropped down another branch, expression set.

"And it was only once or twice!" Kai snapped after him. "I don't plan to do it again, either!"

Still no answer. All at once Kai leaped down till he was level with Lloyd and grabbed his wrist.

"Don't tell the others. Especially not Nya. Don't tell her." He swallowed. "Please."

Lloyd winced; he'd never have believed Kai capable of pleading. But then, the Kai he'd once known never had any reason to plead.

Letting out a sharp breath, he yanked his wrist away.

"Maybe she'd like to know," he said coldly, and leaped down a dangerous distance to the next branch. Kai blinked after him for a moment, then abruptly slithered down to his level, landed atop another branch, and hurled a stream of fire across at the green ninja. Lloyd threw himself out of the way and nearly fell headlong; at the last second he snatched at twigs, his sack of pinecones plummeting down to the forest floor as his body swung hard. For a moment he scrabbled—Kai's eyes grew wide in shock and he reached out to catch him—then the twigs snapped and Lloyd crashed a good forty feet to the ground. He landed hard and didn't move.

"Lloyd!" Kai hurled himself down from the tree hardly any slower than his friend had fallen. Pine needles flew from around his feet as he landed and skidded to Lloyd's side. The green ninja was already slowly sitting up, his eyes closed in pain.

"Are you all right?"

Lloyd said nothing, slowly rolling first one shoulder, then the other. He felt at his neck, his head, flexed his spine, and found no notable damage, but still he didn't look up. Kai wavered.

"Look," he sighed at last. "I'm sorry, okay? I—didn't realize we were still that high up, and I just . . . Nya wouldn't . . . " He shook his head. "I wasn't aiming at you, if that's what you're thinking."

"Good to know," said Lloyd softly, finally meeting his eyes. Kai shrugged and stopped talking.

A few minutes of silence. There was nothing left to say. At last Kai sighed, laid a hand on Lloyd's shoulder for the briefest instant, and walked away. Lloyd stayed put, head down. He didn't know what to think anymore.

At last he got up and began to climb the tree again. Kai's sack of pinecones was still up there.

A/N: Well dang. So it is possible to have a heavy conversation without Cole inadvertently overhearing it!

. . . You never know. He might have been tied up in a tree somewhere around or something.

At any rate. If you're still hanging around, one more chapter of this nonsense! And then we will return you to your regularly scheduled dragon.