the butterfly effect | l. garmadon

forty-two

  I sent an unamused look up at him.

  "Is this how you train all your students, Master Lloyd?" I asked dryly.

  "Just the pretty ones." Lloyd smirked at my rolling eyes. "You're my only student. Let my dad know if I'm doing a shitty job, 'cause it'd be his fault if I am."

  I smiled with sincerity. "You're doing great. You're a good teacher."

  "You're a good student." Lloyd's expression down at me was soft with pride. "You pick up on things fast."

  I couldn't handle it when he looked at me like that. I took another sip from my drink bottle in an excuse to hide my face.

  A knock on the dojo door preluded it to being slid open. A man I'd never seen before poked his head in with a wide-eyed look, and then it widened more when he spotted Lloyd and I.

  "Lloyd!" The brown-haired, middle-aged man stepped inside, followed by the beige-furred bomb that was the adolescent dog. "When did you get a dog?"

  "Dareth?" Lloyd stood up from the beam he leant upon in confusion. I yelped when the yapping dog launched himself at me and began covering my face with licks. "What are you doing here?"

  "I asked Wu to help me make an updated class plan," he answered, before lowering his voice into a whisper that wasn't as quiet as he thought it was. "Who's the sweaty kid?"

  Lloyd picked up the dog playfully attacking me with one arm and pulled me to my feet with the other. The unnamed puppy squirmed in his grasp for freedom with the determination of kings but, unfortunately for him, the Green Ninja was unyielding.

  "This is Y/n, my girlfriend. Y/n, this is Dareth. He's, uh..." Lloyd's face scrunched as he tried to find an appropriate word, "helped us out a few times."

  Dareth puffed his chest as if Lloyd's hesitant introduction had labelled him as the sole saviour of the entire world. "That's right. The Brown Ninja; I'm sure you've heard of me."

  What? No, I hadn't. Never. "Uh, actually-" At Lloyd's unsubtle cough, I changed my tune. "Yeah! Yes, of course! The Brown Ninja! Gosh, you're so..." I eyed him up and down. He looked kind of like a washed-up Elvis Presley. "Daring! You're so daring."

  That must've been the right thing to say, because Dareth the Brown Ninja who might've also been closet cosplaying as Elvis lit up like Ninjago City after dark.

  "Daring... daring..." he tried it out. His voice droned like a hum with little inflection. "Dareth the Daring... yeah, I can make that work." He turned his attention back to me. "I like your style, Y/n. You clearly have a good eye."

  I smiled awkwardly. "Thanks."

  "So, you're the Green Ninja's girlfriend, huh?" Dareth sauntered inside and surveyed the dojo with his hands on his hips as if he were inspecting it. "You a ninja, too?"

  This new guy was so bewildering that I didn't even have a chance to feel shy. At least his appearance was extending my break. The dog in Lloyd's arms had spotted some monks outside and begun yipping for release, so he was placed back on the ground and took off like a rocket out to the garden.

  "No," I answered. "I mean... not yet?" I wasn't entirely sure what my future within the team held.

  "Uh-huh, uh-huh." Dareth nodded to himself and turned back toward us with his hands on his hips. "If you need an instructor, you know who to call."