"Come on, Lloyd, you've almost got it."

Kai watched as Lloyd again attempted to summon the fire within him. Sparks were coming off the kid's hands, so it wasn't like nothing was happening. Kai couldn't tell if the lack of full on fire was from the kid doing something wrong, or if he was holding back on purpose. He was worried the kid hadn't gotten over this morning's incident.

Really, it hadn't been that bad. Sure, the curtains were pretty much nothing but ash now. And the rug had been a bit singed. And the walls. And that plant in the corner had been half dead anyways. The important thing was no one had been hurt. Severely. Jay and Dareth had both ducked and rolled pretty much immediately. It had been more funny than anything.

They had decided to move Lloyd's fire training to a less flammable location though.

So he'd taken Lloyd here, to the outskirts of the city. A rocky area next to a medium sized pond that Zane had suggested they use. The others were nearby in case anything happened, but it was just Kai and Lloyd here. Less pressure on the kid.

Lloyd huffed, annoyance written all over his young face. After another minute of failed attempts, his arms flopped to his side in defeat. "Ergh, I don't understand what I'm doing wrong."

"You're doing ok, Lloyd," he tried to reassure him. "You just need to really feel the fire inside you. You technically are making fire, you just need the umph to turn your flickers into a blaze." Wistfully, Kai recalled the burning feeling that would pump through his veins. Crap, he missed his golden weapon.

"But how do I feel the fire?" Lloyd asked, looking down at his hands in frustration.

"That's easy," Kai replied, uncrossing his arms. He raised his right hand and curled it into a fist. He could almost see the fire coming off it. "Passion."

Lloyd looked at the fist skeptically. "What, so I should- get angry?"

"No," Kai said quickly, shaking his head. He didn't want to give the kid the wrong idea. "I mean, you could, but you don't have to. Passion can be a lot of things. Anger, love, excitement, drive, any of those strong feelings that get your blood thumping. Once you've got some experience under your belt, you won't have to rely on your emotions as much. Your body will have trained itself and it will be kinda like muscle memory. Now though, those emotions will help you stoke those flames."

"Oh," Lloyd said flatly. "I-" the kid looked out at the pond for a few seconds before turning back to Kai. "I'm not sure if I have any of those."

"What?" Clearly, he wasn't understanding something here. "Don't be silly. Everyone has them."

The tiny blonde halfway rolled his eyes. "Well, I mean, I have them. I'm not an emotionless freak. I just don't think any of them are particularly strong."

Kai blinked.

…

This was not a problem he'd been expecting to run into.

Kai studied the kid while trying to make it look like he wasn't studying the kid. The squirt had to be exaggerating.

He knew for a fact the kid got angry, even if the kid didn't want to admit it. Telling the kid to focus on his anger wasn't exactly a great plan though. That would really just be him screwing the kid over.

Drive was a good option. The desire to achieve something. He could tell Lloyd to focus on his desire to become the green ninja and- or no, that wouldn't work. The kid wasn't exactly enthusiastic about the whole thing. Kai couldn't blame him, having to fight your dad to save the world, and starting at such a young age too, wasn't something most kids dreamed of doing when they grew up. Just another reason Kai should have been the green ninja instead, but it was too late for that now. They were all stuck with this.

Hm, maybe the kid could use the desire to make fire to make fire? That might work. Not the best option though, he couldn't see flames from that being very strong.

Then there was love. As mushy as it sounded, it was a great fire fueler. Friendship, kid was way too young for romantic, even love for a certain place or thing. When Kai had first gotten the sword of fire, he'd been able to use his desire to save his sister and his love for her to stoke his flames. That and his natural talent of course.

Lloyd though? He wasn't sure Lloyd had anything like that. His childhood before coming to live with them had been, well, awful. Kai would like to think the kid was starting to view them as family, that he'd be able to at least semi-use that. They certainly already viewed him that way. He wasn't sure if Lloyd felt the same though. Kid could be hard to read sometimes, and it was a big shift.

Kai's lips quirked a little as he watched Lloyd make another attempt. If someone had told him when he first met Lloyd that the kid would one day be his little brother, he would have been on his ass he would've laughed so hard. A total brat who also happened to be the son of his sworn enemy as his little brother? He never would have believed it.

But life was full of surprises.

He hadn't even realized it was happening. When the kid had first come to live with them, Kai truly hadn't liked him. He wouldn't go so far as to say he'd hated him, but the kid had released hoards of evil snake people. And said snake people had attacked them and other innocent people, burned down the monastery, spread destruction wherever they went, and they'd done most of these crimes to try and resurrect a snake demon to destroy Ninjago. And then, after everything Lloyd had done, after they'd welcomed the kid into their home anyways, the kid had still been a brat. An absolute menace. Rude, obnoxious, always pulling pranks. Glitter bombs, covering the entire hallway with plastic cups full of water, raising the volume on Kai's phone when he wasn't looking so when he put his headphones back on his ears were practically destroyed, filling their bedroom with balloons, balloons filled with glitter (to this day Kai didn't know where Lloyd kept getting supplies for his pranks), adding weird spices to their food, shaking all the sodas so you couldn't even get a drink in peace, duct tapping airhorns to the wall behind the door so when you flung it open you had a mini heart attack. And those were only a few of the stunts the kid had pulled. All practically one after another. There was only so much a man could take. There'd been times he'd wanted to strangle the kid.

However, as time had gone on, Lloyd had mellowed out a bit. Probably because he wasn't surrounded by psychopaths anymore. He'd quit it with the silly 'evil plans' and his pranks had become less frequent, going from mean-spirited to legitimately funny when they weren't against Kai.

It had been Nya who had really gotten him to let go of a lot of his previous bad feelings for the kid. She'd been the one who'd spent the most time with the kid since she'd usually been the one watching him while they were away on their missions. They'd both been sitting on the couch one morning after one of Lloyd's pranks (the kid had put fake spiders in his bed during the night and it had just ever so slightly surprised him when he'd woken up. Any claims that he'd screamed like a girl were lies). He'd been fuming and he'd been floored when Nya had stood up for the kid.

A few weeks after Lloyd had moved in…

"Nya, you can't seriously be trying to defend the brat. After everything we've done for him and he still treats us like this? Maybe we should let him sleep outside for a few days and see if he's grateful then." Self-centered little pest.

His sister glared at him from the other side of the couch. "Really, Kai? That's harsh even for you. The poor kid already spent too long being homeless and you want to make him feel like that again?"

Kai scowled. "Again? What do you mean 'again'? And we'd let him back in once he apologizes. If he doesn't bolt that is." That was what was most likely to happen. The kid clearly hated being here, though hopefully he wouldn't be dumb enough to try his luck with the Serpentine again.

"Ugh," Nya groaned, rolling her eyes. "You've never talked to him have you? Obviously you haven't. None of you have. Did it ever cross your mind that maybe he would prank you less if he knew any other way to get your attention? You must have noticed he doesn't prank me as much."

Kai's face twisted in disbelief, his righteous fury still burning in the pit of his stomach. "Oh, please," he scoffed. "That isn't true. He just bugs you less because you're a girl."

Nya shook her head, having the gall to look exasperated. He wasn't the problem here!

"He went to a place called 'Darkley's School for Bad Boys' his whole life," she argued. "Of course he isn't going to have the best manners or social awareness. And he got expelled for good behavior, so even with them trying their hardest they didn't manage to screw him up completely."

Now that caught Kai off guard. His eyebrows furrowed. "Expelled?" Sure, he'd obviously known the kid wasn't going to school, but he'd always figured Lloyd had just run away so he could cause trouble without having to do schoolwork or something.

"Yes, Kai, expelled," she spoke slowly, as if speaking to a particularly dumb child. It ticked him off. "For not being evil."

"What did he do? And how do you know?" This all sounded very suspect.

"Well he told me about it for one," she replied. "They were playing dodgeball and one of the kids hit one of the other kids in the face. Broke his nose and probably some level of concussion. Lloyd gave the kid some paper towels to stem the bleeding without insulting him. Apparently, it wouldn't have been as bad if he'd insulted him first."

Kai rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, Nya. He was obviously lying. Not even an evil school would expel a kid just for that. He probably made that story up to try to make himself look better."

"They did," Nya insisted confidently. "I have third party collaboration. I've read his school records and they matched his story perfectly-"

"Wait-" Kai interrupted, holding up a hand. "When, where, and how did you get his school records? And why is this the first time I'm hearing about it?"

"I took them when Wu told me he wanted Lloyd to stay with us," she explained. "We were already at the school, and things were so chaotic I was able to grab them easily. I figured they'd be useful. Knowing what education he'd had, if he had any behavioral issues, his medical records."

"Hm," Kai hummed. "Pretty smart, sis." His little sister was so clever. Always thinking ahead.

"Thank you. But like I said, it confirmed Lloyd's story. That was just the straw that broke the camel's back though. Lloyd already had a history of good behavior. Good as in not evil, which Darkley's considers bad, not good as in they liked it. One of the teachers literally wrote a note saying if he wasn't Garmadon's son, he would have been expelled years ago."

Huh.

Kai stared at the floor as he mulled this new information. She was actually making a pretty good case here.

Now that he really thought about it, the kid was super, super annoying, but he hadn't really done anything he would classify as evil. You could argue releasing the Serpentine, but they hadn't really become a threat until after they'd left Lloyd. Hypnotizing a town to steal their candy wasn't good, but he wouldn't call it evil either. None of the people had been hurt. And they hadn't burnt down the monastery until after they'd left Lloyd. In his head, he'd always seen the kid as still being in charge, but now that he sat down and actually mapped out the timeline, that wasn't true. It had happened right after they'd kicked him out.

"Ok, so maybe the kid isn't pure evil or anything," Kai admitted, turning back towards his sister. "But he's still an ungrateful brat."

Nya shook her head, a thoughtful look on her face. Her eyebrows always did that little scrunch when she was thinking about something important.

"I don't think that he's ungrateful. He just doesn't know how to act. You haven't seen his old curricular, some of the classes they made him take are insane. He's coming to us thinking 'thank you' is a sign of weakness and 'please' is a form of begging. Believe me, he could be acting way worse. He just needs examples of good, normal people so he knows what that even is. I think he's actually a pretty sweet kid when you get down to it."

"'Sweet' is going a bit far," Kai said drily, an uncomfortable spring of guilt welling up inside him. Maybe he was being overly harsh on the kid. He couldn't even imagine that kind of upbringing. But what was he supposed to do? All the kid ever did was prank him. He'd toned it down some, but Kai was still on the receiving end of at least one prank a day.

"I know it's hard," Nya agreed, ever sympathetic, "but remember, he's just a kid. A kid who's had a really rough childhood. You have to be the more mature one. If you give him a little more attention, I'm sure he'll ease up on the pranks. He needs time to learn and adjust. And it's not like he's going to be leaving anytime soon, so you guys need to learn to get along with him."

Kai groaned, running a hand through his spiky hair. "Yeah, yeah, point taken. I'll try to expose the kid to my shining example more. Don't get your hopes too high though."

Nya smiled. "Just do your best."

And Kai had kept his word. He had tried. It had been hard at first, but things had slowly started getting better.

It had been little things mostly. Saying hi when he saw the kid. Asking what his plans for the day were. Getting the kid a candy bar when they went out. Asking him how he'd done so well at Doomsday Blasters. Play a level or two. Little interactions like those. Once he'd understood Lloyd legitimately didn't know how not to be rude, the rudeness had mostly stopped bothering him. He'd kinda gotten used to it. Soon, he'd been the one spending the most time with the kid besides Nya.

As his sister had predicted, the pranks had eased up, though they didn't stop completely. And he'd gotten to know the kid well enough to recognize that he wasn't a total brat.

Something else had been happening during that time too, building in the background. They'd been little things, subtle hints to a mystery he hadn't know existed. Acts of kindness that revealed the kid's true personality. A flip he'd land out of nowhere. The way he'd grip a sword correctly despite never having held a sword before. Things he'd say that were surprisingly clever. Pranks that took an absurd amount of cunning and tactical planning. A strange feeling that thrummed within him whenever Lloyd looked at one of their golden weapons for more than a few seconds. At the time, he'd mistaken it as nervousness that the kid might try to steal their weapons and hand them over to his dad. But it had turned out to be something entirely different. The exact opposite really.

Kai had hidden just how panicked he was when the kid was captured by the Serpentine, but it had hit him hard. It wasn't weird to be worried, but it had been beyond what seemed logical. He hadn't said anything though. A conversation like that would have led to talking about feelings. And he hated talking about feelings.

It wasn't like he would have been able to explain the deep-seated worry that had been squirming inside him over Lloyd's abduction. The best way he could describe it was that he had failed epically at something he was supposed to do. Like his instincts were screaming at him for messing up. Not even Nya's kidnapping had caused that kind of feeling. But he couldn't admit that, especially not to Nya. No way. He'd just chalked it up to feelings being stupid and weird.

But at the volcano, everything had fallen into place. He'd been so focused on getting the fang blade. When Lloyd had cried out to him, Kai's stomach had dropped because he'd thought everyone had already gotten out. And when he'd whipped around to see Lloyd, green eyes scared and pleading, on a rapidly shrinking island in the rising pool of lava, something in him just clicked. For a heartbeat, he'd been crushingly disappointed. It wasn't him. Then he'd shoved that feeling down and leapt to fulfill his destiny.

The others had asked him afterwards how he'd known before the whole golden weapons light show, but he didn't really have an explanation. If he had to guess (emphasis on the guess), he'd say it was a mix of spending the most time with the kid and a bound-by-the-threads-of-fate type thing. Maybe Lloyd being in immediate danger of dying had sent out a stronger signal or something. The how didn't really matter though. The important thing was Lloyd was the green ninja and Kai was supposed to protect him.

Things had gotten really crazy after that. But despite all that craziness, Lloyd's behavior had started rapidly improving. Maybe it was because the ninja saved his life. Maybe it was because they were all giving him the attention he needed now. Maybe it was because the kid took being the green ninja seriously. Personally, Kai thought it was a mix of all three. Without the super bratty behavior getting in the way, it turned out the kid actually had a pretty endearing personality. The bonding had just happened naturally.

Kai couldn't pin down the exact moment he'd started thinking of Lloyd as a little brother, but that was definitely where he was with the kid now.

Refocusing back on the scene in front of him, Lloyd was still struggling. There seemed to be a few more sparks flying from the kid's hands than there had been earlier, but still no real flames. Ugh, what other instructions could he give him? An idea popped into his head.

"What were you thinking of when you made those flames this morning?" he tried. Whatever it had been, it had stoked plenty of flames. If they could recreate that, now in a nonflammable area, Kai could teach him how to control it.

Lloyd's shoulders hunched defensively as he let out an aggravated sigh. "I don't remember, that was ages ago."

"Since when has 'ages' meant a few hours?"

"Since I said it did," Lloyd replied grouchily. "Forgive me for not remembering every minute detail, I was kind of distracted with the room being on fire."

Heh, minute. Kid had always had a somewhat expanded vocabulary, but Kai was pretty sure his time with Zane was making it worse. Or better. Depended on how you looked at it. Kai didn't see the point of using fancy, complicated words when you could use simpler ones that everyone understood. This wasn't a grammar lesson though.

"It wasn't that bad," Kai said, waving a hand flippantly. "And it clearly shows you are already capable of making fire." Better to focus on the positive.

"Just because it didn't burn the building down doesn't mean it wasn't bad," Lloyd grumbled, kicking a small stone into the pond. "I bet you never accidentally set a room on fire."

So Lloyd was still bothered about this morning. And while Kai totally got why, this was a serious roadblock. If Lloyd was scared of the fire, it meant he didn't fully want the fire, which meant it would be much harder to summon it. And if you took that and paired it with Lloyd's supposed lack of strong emotions, making fire was pretty much impossible.

"I did make the occasional misplaced fire when I was first starting out," Kai admitted. "Never a whole room, but your fire is rawer than mine was."

The sword of fire had always helped channel Kai's fire. It had been more controlled compared to Lloyd's, which came purely from himself. Sometimes, Kai could swear he felt little flickers of fire within him, but that was just wistful daydreaming. The sword of fire didn't even exist anymore now that Lord Garmadon had merged all the golden weapons to make his stupid mega weapon.

Lloyd was staring at the ground, so Kai didn't have the best view of his eyes, but the guilt in his voice was painfully obvious. "Well, I bet you never set any people on fire."

"Oh no, I set Jay on fire all the time." He chuckled. "I wouldn't exactly call it an accident but-" he trailed off, the miserable look on Lloyd's face stopping him short. Dang it, he wished Cole was here, or even Zane or Nya. They'd know what to say.

Perhaps a change of tactics was in order. "We've been at this for a while now, how 'bout we take a break. I saw an ice cream stand on the way here."

Lloyd's head perked up. "Ice cream?" Kid had such a sweet tooth.

"Yeah," Kai nodded. "It should only be about a five-minute walk from here. A short break will do us some good." Hopefully, an ice cream run would help the kid unwind a bit. And Kai was in an ice cream mood anyway.

Lloyd darted over to where Kai was standing at the edge of the rocks. "Well, you are the teacher," he agreed, because there was no way the kid was ever going to say no.

"That I am," Kai smirked, ruffling the kid's hair, earning him a surprised squeak.

"Why do you keep doing that?" Lloyd whined in a not that upset way.

Kai laughed. "C'mon, let's go get our ice cream."