The Split Element- Book 2 (Ninjago Dragons Rising: Zane X Oc)

A Mallet and The Moon...

6 months later...

Zane's POV:

It has been six months since we saved the Merged World from MergeQuakes, and life has been surprisingly calm. I however am not complaining about that; I have quite enjoyed the peace and... somewhat quiet since then. Though, I do not believe things will be truly quiet for a long while. There are a lot of us now living in the Monastery, with most of the people here being young, so noise is to be expected. And especially with Riyu having gotten bigger, it was difficult to manage, but Lloyd tried his best to keep his students behaved.

Occasionally, we would receive news of people causing trouble in the Crossroads, and we would do our duty and help the people. Unfortunately, the Mechanic had found his way back to us, and I was quick to put him in his place. It did feel good to beat him for once. But, other than that, not much has happened.

Owen and Robin are growing up, a lot faster than Aly and I had anticipated. They seem to be able to learn extraordinarily quickly, and seem to pick up new tasks and perform them well. We have mostly seen this in Owen given that he is eight now, but it does not change the fact that his sister shows that same talent. I believe it may have something to do with them being half Nindroid, but we cannot say for certain, we still have so much to learn about our children, and we are loving every second that they are in our lives.

However, not everything in the Monastery has been perfect; Lloyd was having nightmares it seemed. It started off being every other week, but that turned into every other day, and up until recently, every night. I tried to speak with him on the matter, but he insisted he was okay, despite how he was acting. Myself and the others were keeping an eye on him, and his condition seemed to worsen.

It was late, almost 11pm, and Kai had convinced me to stay up and play one more round of Lava-Zombies with him. Everyone else had already gone to bed, and we swore we would finish after one more game, however... this was our third round.

"A-ha! Eat that, Nindroid." Kai exclaimed, attacking me in the game. "Not if you eat it first." I shot back, smirking as I completed a combo. "Ohh, you got some sass on you now, huh?" Kai grinned, starting to mash the buttons on his controller, meanwhile I was hitting each button perfectly.

We quickly found ourselves left with one heart each, and were about to finish off cour match when Lloyd came in the room, aimlessly wandering in front of the TV. Kai sighed, pausing the game as our friend slep-walked in front of us, bumping into the coffee table which woke him up. He looked down, his expression softening. "Oh, tea." He mumbled, seeing a teapot on the table. "I could really use some." Lloyd picked up the teapot, and instead of pouring the tea into the nearby cup, he started pouring it into a plant pot.

"Hey, Lloyd, you, erm... trying a new way to drink tea?" Kai gently asked him, which quickly made Lloyd realise what he was doing. "Oh, man!" He gasped, putting the teapot down. "Huh? What am I doing?" He asked himself as I scanned him, finding the problem. "Hmm, it appears your body's vital operations are under fatigue." I said to him, but he didn't seem to understand. "Huh?" "You are overtired." I told him simply. "Have you been getting enough sleep lately?" "What? Me? No." Lloyd brushed it off. "I've been sleeping like a baby." He added, trying to reassure me, but I know he was lying.

"Well, maybe you ought to crawl into your crib for the night, buddy." Kai spoke up. "Yeah... maybe you're right." Lloyd sighed, turning back towards the door to leave the room. I looked over at Kai who shrugged, but then we heard a thump. I turned back to Lloyd, finding he'd collapsed in front of the door out of exhaustion. I let out a sigh. "Perhaps we should intervene." I said, walking over to Lloyd and gently held his arm. "Yeah, maybe you're right." Kai responded, too walking over and helping me lift Lloyd.