green boy flower boy

chapter two

"Alright," Nya said, pulling up a map on the Bounty's screen. Several dots were on the map, in varying sizes and colors. "Zane helped me come up with a system to decide where Lloyd could be. The bigger the dot, the more likely he's there purely statistically due to travel time. The color of the dot indicates various reasons he would actually go there."

"Hm." Kai said.

Nya waited for him to say more before continuing. "Blue is access to water and food, red is secrecy, green is places he's shown to be partial to in the past. Obviously as you can see, there are more colors, but those are the three that we care the most about."

"I've run an analytics and contrasted the likelyness of him being in each place." Zane added.

"And I threw in my common sense." Nya added after that. Five sheets of paper printed out, and she handed one to each of them. "These are lists of areas to search, from most to least likely. I'm not expecting you to get through it all today, but one or two would be nice."

"Wait, why is Ninjago city at the bottom of the list?" Cole asked.

Jay squinted then looked up. "Yah, it's the biggest dot on the map."

"Because we're right above it, and Lloyd's not stupid enough to hide in a city we're right above." Kai snapped.

"And where his face is on every billboard." Nya agreed. "Besides, it's our rendezvous point."

"Okay, got it." Cole saluted her and ran off. The others departed.

Nya looked at her own list. Darkly's School For Bad Boys, or whatever they renamed it. She sighed. This was going to be a long day.

---

Lloyd spent most of the morning following and failing to catch lizards. When he'd spotted the first one, he'd held out his hand to it and it had run away. Then he did some more searching, and had found five already. Not that he'd caught any of them.

But he was close to catching this one. He could do it.

With a fierce battle cry, he reached out and grabbed the lizard before it could get away. "Caught it!" He yelled proudly, holding the little green lizard on his hand.

"Wow, I come back and you're hunting reptiles." Micah laughed, walking up. Lloyd turned to face him, grinning. "What are you, a cat?" Micah snorted.

"Nyah." Lloyd said.

"I'm leaving."

"No, wait, Micah don't goooo." Lloyd put the lizard down and watched it run away. "What's that?" Lloyd asked, pointing to the drink in Micah's hand.

"Caramel mocha frappe." Micah shrugged. "About half is left, you want some?"

Lloyd shrugged. "Why not?"

Micah handed him the frappe and set down his backpack. "I brought a ham and cheese sandwich, because it didn't look like you had much in the way of actual food."

"Is this part of your plan?"

"You've uncovered my nefarious plot to keep you from dying of malnutrition." Micah said dryly, with a smile on his face. "Want it now or later?"

"Later. Thanks though. I'm getting tired of apples."

"Please don't tell me you only brought apples to your hermit tree house."

"I brought water too! And I'm not a hermit!"

"All you need is the scraggly beard, and you're a hermit." Micah laughed, stroking his chin thoughtfully like he had a beard. Lloyd rolled his eyes. "You're a dork."

"Also, so, like, I told my mom about you some, just that you're nice and a hermit in the woods-"

"I'm not a hermit." Lloyd continued to argue.

"Anyways, you're officially invited over for dinner." Micah rubbed the back of his neck, face red. "I mean, if you want. And sorry, I have a habit of calling lunch dinner because my mom does it and-"

"Wait, what, back up?"

"You've been invited to dinner slash lunch with my family? They're chill, I promise?"

Lloyd smiled. "They won't mind my lizard hunting ways?"

"Nope, they don't mind that you're a lizard hunting hermit."

"Just one question- do you have a hoodie I can borrow that isn't green?"

"Why, you have a personal vendetta against the color?" Micah laughed.

Lloyd smiled. "Yah, something like that." If I wear a color other than green maybe my chances of being spotted go down.

"Here, take mine." Micah pulled his hoodie over his head, leaving him in a grey T-shirt that was just barely too small for him and read "Let's Get One Thing Straight- I'm Not".

Lloyd choked on the frappe. Micah tossed him the hoodie. "What?"

"Sorry, I laughed and I choked." Lloyd cleared his throat. "I like your shirt. Relatable content."

Micah grinned.

---

Lloyd had one question about Micah Reols.

"Is your hair dyed or natural?" Lloyd asked as they walked up to the door of his family's house. Micah lived on the very edge of Ninjago city, so Lloyd wasn't exactly too worried about being seen, but he kept his hood up just in case.

"Mm, wouldn't you like to know." Micah replied with a smirk, ringing the doorbell.

"Well, I'm about to meet your family, so-"

A woman opened the door with a smile. "Micah! You brought your friend I see."

"Hey mom. Mom, meet Lloyd, my hermit friend."

"Still not a hermit." Lloyd mumbled and shook her hand. "Hi, seems your son already told you about me."

"Come in, you must be hungry." She ushered the boys inside.