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Forget every other villain they’d faced. Pollen was Lloyd’s new nemesis, he thought, twiddling the stem of a flower between his fingers. Cherry blossom season always sent his sinuses into overdrive, turning him into a dripping, drowsy mess. This year, though, the rolling fields of pink trees which blanketed Central Park had it out for him.
He snagged a fruit sandwich from one of Zane’s meticulously curated picnic boxes and settled back on the sunny yellow gingham blanket. Though he had plenty of practice ignoring headaches, this one was particularly nasty. An overwhelming pressure was building up behind his forehead, and his entire upper body felt like it was being crushed by enough pressure to rival the deep sea. He took a rebellious bite of his sandwich. Something as trivial as his skull being put in a trash compactor wasn’t about to stop him from enjoying such a beautiful day.
“Come on, Wu. It’s not that bad. Just try it,” Morro said, waggling a canned green tea at his adoptive father.
“That concoction is not tea.”
“You haven’t even tasted it, old man. Would it kill you to try something new?” Morro cracked it open, drinking some himself and holding it back out to Wu. “ Mmm , now you try.”
“He’s never gonna do it, man. We’ve tried,” Kai took a massive bite of his chicken skewer.
“Hey, the only reason he’s so reluctant is because Cole gave him Megablaster Soda once and called it tea. I don’t think he trusts cans anymore,” Nya shrugged.
“Soda isn’t tea?” Cole asked around a bite of cake.
Wu’s face pulled up into a rare display of unrestrained disgust, “I’ve failed as your teacher.”
“It really is good, uncle,” Lloyd said, rubbing the itch from his eyes. “Even Dad liked canned tea just fine.”
Wu grimaced, “My brother’s taste buds are not to be trusted,” he said, before adding quietly, “Too much time in oni form almost certainly warped his sense of flavor.”
The airy, carefree spirit of their picnic screeched to a halt. Lloyd’s mouth froze around his sandwich. This was the first time Wu had willingly brought up oni on his own. He certainly never expected his uncle would name-drop them so casually after remaining silent for so many months. His family was taking it much the same way, pausing to stare at their master.
Nya broke the silence first, “Do oni have a weird sense of taste?”
“Well, if that’s a defining feature, maybe we should get Cole checked,” Jay laughed, glancing nervously around the picnic blanket.
Cole punched him in the arm and turned to their teacher, “Aren’t you an oni too, sensei? Doesn’t that mean you’re insulting your own taste?”
“It’s not quite that simple,” Wu said with an air of finality.
The stuffy, pounding sensation in Lloyd’s head was picking up its pace. His tongue sank like lead behind his teeth. He’d been sure to take allergy medicine before they came to the park. Usually, that was enough.
He leaned forward, fixating on the sandwich he held between his fingers, suddenly lost in thought. There were so many questions he needed to ask, so much he wanted to know about his heritage, his species . Would Wu finally give him the answers he needed? What were oni? Why were they some big secret? Why hadn’t his father mentioned them either? The individual questions he’d repressed for nearly half a year tore their way around his brain, aggravating the throbbing congestion in his skull.
He could ask anything. He should ask… but instead, he blurted out a defeated: “I’m going to the bathroom,” set down his half-finished fruit sandwich and stood up, not sparing a glance at his family.
He hustled through the park. A colorful minefield of people and picnics peppered beneath the dappled, pink-tinted light of spring. Half-aware, he twisted around a giggling child who threatened to plow into him in their blind pursuit of a frisbee and hopped over a snoring dog. The public restroom lay at the cusp of the park, tucked between a thick, lumpy old plum tree and a parking lot. He made his way to the men’s entrance and slipped inside.
Finally alone, the bathroom blissfully quiet and empty, he could fully assess the pain he was in. He groaned, and the noise echoed around the blue-tiled walls. A throbbing ache pulsed across his forehead, distinct enough from one of his usual headaches or migraines to concern him. The feeling didn’t stem from his brain, but the skin and bone itself, as if his marrow had decided to revolt against him in an attempt to escape its prison.
He brought a hand up, rubbing hard against the flesh in an attempt to soothe the worst of the pain when his fingers stilled. Were those… lumps? He brought his fingers back along the crest of his head. As they dragged across what should have been a smooth track of skin, their path was obstructed by a pair of aching, symmetrical bumps. Lloyd swallowed. His throat stung. His tongue dried as cold dread crept down his spine.
This wasn’t a case of seasonal allergies.
He stumbled toward the closest empty stall and locked himself in, slumping against the door.
What were the chances? Here he was, worrying over how inhuman he was in the middle of a picnic, and his body decided to grow horns. His luck couldn’t get any worse, could it? Given how things normally went for him, he’d end up with the same wickedly sharp, obsidian horns that his father had.
On cue, the splitting pain along his forehead pounded harder. He killed the resulting cry before it could escape his throat, wheezing instead. The throbbing eased away as quickly as it came, fading back into dull pressure.
Fighting to keep his hands steady, he reached up to assess the damage. His fingers found the base of the growths and traced them upwards. His heart plummeted deeper into his chest with every passing second as they trailed higher and higher. The horns wouldn’t stop! Where did they end? Finally, he brushed the tips but yanked his hand back with a hiss. A little drop of blood oozed from his fingertip. He sucked at it before he could fixate on the droplet’s purple tinge. The horns were just as sharp as he’d feared.
Was this his life now? Sure, he’d never looked entirely human, but most people could overlook strange eyes and sharp canines. This was too inhuman, too eye-catching. Would he have to sand them down? Could he even do that without hurting himself?
He couldn’t choose to ignore this like he did his other features.
He wasn’t human .
The implications sunk their barbed tips deep into his chest, piercing his lungs and forcing him to clutch at the stall door for support. Sweat bloomed across his face and back. His breathing picked up.
He wasn’t human. He couldn’t hide it. How would he hide it? He—
What was happening to him? Why now? What if it got even worse? He didn’t want all his teeth to be as sharp as his canines. He didn’t want claws . The creepy eyes were bad enough.
He swallowed around a hard lump in his throat. He really didn’t want four arms either.
His head snapped up as the restroom door creaked open, sunlight flooding the ceiling and casting the stall in deeper shadow.
“Did you fall in or something, kid?” Morro’s voice echoed through the empty room. “Cause if you did, I’m not fishing you out.”
“I’m fine ,” Lloyd snapped. “Leave me alone.”
There was a long pause. Heavy-booted footsteps reverberated through the room, stopping just outside his stall, “You don’t sound fine, twerp. You need me to get someone?”
“No!” Lloyd shouted, wincing at how bratty the word came out.
“...I’m getting Kai.”
“No! Don’t! He’d freak out,” Lloyd said, cringing as he dared to touch the horns again. At least they’d stopped growing.
Morro hissed, “Freak out about what ? Did you cough up blood in there? Shit, I can call an ambulance–”
“I don’t think they could help with this. It’s–” Lloyd yelped and clutched his hands together. Pins and needles traveled from the tips of his fingers and down the length of his arms. The sensation reminded him of skinning his hands against gravel in the freezing cold. It bit and burned.
“Lloyd if you don’t open that door, I swear I’ll–”
Lloyd pushed through the pain in his hand and undid the lock, the cold metal sending another wave of needles down his fingers. The last thing he needed right now was a panicked Morro breaking the door down. That sounded like something he’d do.
The door flung open and slammed against the adjacent stall. Morro’s eyes blew wide. He stood there for a moment, completely still, scanning Lloyd’s entire body as if looking for any other mutations.
“Oh… shit. Okay,” His cousin said. “That’s new.”
“I can’t make it stop,” Lloyd whined and slumped onto the bathroom wall. He couldn’t care less about the cleanliness. He held up his hands, biting down on the inside of his cheek as his nails shifted into something… sharper. “I need it to stop.”
“Hey, uh, you’re going to be okay?” Morro was obviously trying to sound reassuring, but his tone came out uncertain and questioning. “Shit. I’ll get Wu. He’s a shapeshifter, he’d know–”
“Not Wu! You know how he feels about…” Lloyd’s mouth clamped down on itself. He couldn’t say it. It would be real if he said it. “Them.”
Morro winced and side-eyed the door. Lloyd could tell he didn’t want to be there but didn’t want to abandon him either. That guilty conscience was not helping .
“You can leave if you want to. Just tell them I fell in some mud and I’m cleaning up.”
“What, and abandon you?” Morro grimaced. “Sorry, but I’m sticking right here, brat,” he pulled out his cell phone — an old brick of a thing with a slide-out keyboard— and tapped away, paper crane charm swaying. “There. Excuse made. What now?”
“I don’t know. Sit here and turn into a monster?” Lloyd forced a sardonic laugh but bit his tongue as his fingers twisted into another bout of pain.
“How many times do I have to tell you not to call yourself that? Huh?” Morro stepped back over to the restroom’s entrance and slid the deadlock into place.
“I’m not human,” Lloyd barely managed to choke out.
“Wu’s less human than you, and I don’t see you calling him a monster.”
He winced as the icy sting of pins intensified around his newly-clawed fingertips. Onyx skin, like the glassy sand of a volcanic beach, fizzled to life and spread from the end of his hands, toward his elbows.
He wished his dad were here.
He sucked down a hiss as his teeth reshaped themselves around the cheek he’d been biting, sharpened molars cutting deeper than he’d anticipated.
He swallowed his tears. There was no way he was about to cry in front of Morro, of all people.
“Look, Oni are shapeshifters, right?” Morro squatted down beside him, the excessive chains on his torn jeans clinking far louder than they had any right to. “Even if you’re going through some kind of weird oni puberty—”
Lloyd groaned, clutching his eyes, “It’s not puberty! I don’t know what it is, but it’s not that!”
“Whatever. What I’m saying is, you can probably learn to shapeshift. Wu does it, your dad did it.”
“I don’t think I can learn that in time to hide all th—” Lloyd choked. His sharpened teeth clenched together as something beat against his ribcage. Two symmetrical points of pure agony, burgeoned from either side of his torso. He fell to the dirty bathroom floor, curling in on himself.
He had a horrible suspicion about what came next.
He held his hands against the spots as hard as he could. Maybe, if he pressed hard enough, they wouldn’t have room to grow, and nothing would happen. His torso buzzed with white-hot agony. His chest burned. He was hyperventilating, he realized, distantly. Someone had a hand on his shoulder. Morro. Right, Morro was in the room with him.
He looked up at his cousin. He had his phone in one hand, furiously typing. Lloyd retracted one arm from his aching side and smacked the phone out of his grip. It skittered across the tile floor and smashed into the wall with an audible crack . The screen flickered off.
“What the fuck, Greenie? Do you know how long that’s gonna take to fix?!” Morro yelled, but made no move to retrieve the device.
Lloyd couldn’t form a coherent retort, let alone a coherent thought. Instead, he brought his hand back to his side and pressed down hard enough that his bicep burnt from the strain. It wasn’t working. Two lumps were growing on his sides, and the process only seemed to be accelerating. Stars danced in his vision. He lay his cheek down on the blessedly cold floor but flinched as a horn tip clinked against the tile.
Morro was cursing up a storm, his rough voice bouncing around the restroom. He shrugged off his jacket and pillowed it beneath Lloyd’s head.
“Come on, Greenie, you’ve always got those anti-inflammatories on you, right?” Morro said, jabbing his hands into Lloyd’s pockets.
“Left side,” He managed to mumble through the pain.
Morro reached under him and grabbed a small bottle from his pocket. Lloyd snatched it from his hand and popped off the lid. He wanted to down the whole bottle right there. The dosages were for humans, after all. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to take a few extras…
“Two,” Morro said as if reading his mind. “Let me get some water…”
Lloyd grumbled and tossed back two pills, wincing as they scratched their way down his dry throat.
“Fuck, kid. You’ve got to stop doing that.”
Lloyd threw a trembling middle finger up and forced what little saliva he had left into his burning esophagus.
“If you’re going to dry-swallow then you at least need to sit up and let gravity help you out, dumbass,” Morro grabbed him by the shoulders and heaved him to sit upright against the stall’s wall.
He bit back a yelp. The white spots in his vision doubled and his head grew concerningly light at the sudden shift in position. He nearly bit his cheek again to ground himself, before remembering why that would be a terrible idea. Something brushed up against the inside of his sweater.
“Fuck. Lloyd. What is that?”
“Nothing.”
“Kid, I’m dumb, but I’m not that dumb. Let me see.”
“No!” He cried out as another bout of pain flared at his sides. The fabric of his sweater stretched out, pinning half-formed appendages to his torso.
“You know, if you don’t roll up your sweater, all that knitting Red did’ll get ruined,” Morro tried.
Lloyd gritted his teeth and pulled the sweater up over the alien things attached to his body. Nausea overtook him as blistering skin touched the cool air. He had to force them back in . He had to stop them. He couldn’t walk back over to their family picnic, four-armed and horned and shark-toothed and—
The shapeshifting matched the pace of his racing thoughts. Before he knew it, through a haze of agony and blurred, shapeless color, he felt new, untouched knuckles graze the icy tile floor.
The next moment, he was shivering over the toilet, mouth bitter and burning. Four hands gripped the porcelain as Morro rubbed his back.
“You think Kai can knit some extra sleeves onto this?” Morro mumbled. “I’m not sure how knitting works…”
“Not—“ Lloyd gasped, the sound reverberating in the toilet bowl, “not helping, asshole.”
Lloyd fell away from the toilet, lower arms propping him up. He shuddered and retracted them, settling them into his lap, limp. He stared down at the bizarre image. If he didn’t move them and tried not to feel them, he could almost imagine they weren’t attached to his body.
The overwhelming pains and aches ebbed away, leaving him hollow and lost. What the fuck was he supposed to do now?
Morro leaned over him and peeked into the toilet, cringing and flushing it. “You can take more pills if you want. Those things were not digested.”
Morro held out a small flask from his back pocket, the one Lloyd knew he kept on him in case Echo’s pressure gauge ran too low. He snatched it from him and took a deep swig.
“How long has it been, anyways?” He asked.
“You know, I’d love to tell you, but someone broke my phone.”
“Sorry,” Lloyd winced.
“It’s fine, kid,” Morro huffed.
Lloyd’s new hands twitched in his lap, black claws biting into his palms. They looked so much like his father’s hands. But he was dead. He was dead and he’d never see his dad again. Cast away to some untouchable place when the Preeminent sunk into the Endless Sea, and it was all his fault.
Lloyd’s throat closed in on itself. The tremor of tears rippled behind his eyes, his nose filling with watery snot.
It was so wrong. Everything was wrong .
“Hey, hey,” Morro said, “It could be worse. You didn’t grow any dragon parts, at least.”
“Not. Helping,” Lloyd bit out.
Morro was right, though. He’d only been considering his oni side, the way his father used to look. He was part dragon too. This could have been way, way worse. He could have grown scales, or—
He gasped as an unbearable itch stretched across the skin of his cheeks and down the length of his back and shoulders.
“Oh. Oh shit. Okay,” Morro stood up, tripping over himself as he paced backward, “We’re gonna need more water.”
Afraid that his claws would draw blood, Lloyd scrubbed at his cheek with the heel of his palm, teeth grinding together. It itched .
Morro slid around the corner and hunched down in front of him, flask in hand. Their eyes met, and Morro’s face shifted into a look of contemplation.
“Kid, when I mentioned dragons, what was the first thing you thought of?”
“Why would that matter?!” Lloyd snapped, rubbing his cheeks raw.
Morro grabbed his hand and held it away from his face, “Humor me.”
“Scales,” Lloyd snatched his hand back and continued the assault on his skin. “I thought of scales, okay?!”
Morro sighed and chuckled, all urgency melting away from his features.
Rage bubbled up deep in his gut. He was shapeshifting uncontrollably into some kind of monster, and Morro was laughing at him. It stung, even if he should never have expected better of his cousin’s bedside manner. He should have told him to call Cole instead. Or Zane. Why hadn’t he asked for one of them?
“If you’re just going to laugh at me, you can get the fuck out!” Lloyd snarled, his shoulder slamming against the stall’s metal wall as he tried to stand too quickly.
“It’s not like that. It’s…” Morro rubbed a hand down his face and sighed. “Look, when you came in here, what were you thinking about?”
“I was thinking about how much my skull hurt.”
“Other than that.”
“How glad I was that I didn’t have horns,” Lloyd’s face contorted, “just my luck.”
“It’s not luck. Come on, kid. You’re smarter than this. What was the first thing you grew?” Morro raised a questioning eyebrow, and for a moment, he looked aggravatingly similar to Wu whenever he handed them a new unsolvable riddle.
“... Horns.”
“And what were you thinking about after that?”
Lloyd flashed back through the sickening ordeal, wracking his mind for what sparse memories he could recall between the onslaught of pain and discomfort. He thought of horns, and they grew. He thought of claws, and they grew. He thought of arms and scales and…
“You think I did this.”
“Not on purpose, but yeah. It makes sense. Your body’s…” Morro’s mouth snapped shut and he turned away, tugging at a loose thread on his shirt.
“What?”
“It’s nothing.”
“No. Morro, what were you about to say?”
His cousin winced, “Back when I uh, possessed you…” he paused as if giving time for Lloyd to stop him there. When it was clear he wasn’t about to do that, he sighed. “I knew about the whole Dragon-Oni thing when I possessed you. I knew about the shapeshifting.”
“Then why didn’t you use it at all when you were… you know.”
Morro raised an eyebrow, “I did.”
“Huh?!”
“What, you think ghosts magically dye your hair? You saw me impersonate your scruffy thief friend. That’s not how it works. Your hair kept getting in my— your eyes, and I kept thinking about how wrong the color looked. Before I knew it…” Morro gestured loosely to his head.
“You didn’t think to bring that up earlier?” Lloyd shouted, righting himself against the wall so he could fully face his cousin.
Morro shot him an incredulous look and scoffed, “Sure. Because that’s a time we both love talking about.”
Lloyd flinched. A long silence fell between them. His cousin continued to pull at the loose thread on the hem of his shirt, refusing to make eye contact.
“How did you do it?” Lloyd asked slowly. “How do I change back?”
Morro shrugged, “Just relax, probably. Your body’s natural form will come back if you stop panicking over it.”
Lloyd nodded and released a held breath. He could do this. If he could conquer his fear well enough to summon a dragon from pure energy, he could do this.
He closed his eyes and forced the tension to ease from his shoulders, shoving down bile and ignoring the exact number of shoulders he currently had . Back to normal. If he cleared his mind, detached from his body, maybe he could fix this.
He took deep, calming breaths, focusing only on the stretch of his lungs and the weight of his feet on the ground. The world didn’t exist. Fear didn’t exist. All that remained was him, and his body.
Something ripped. Every ache melted away, seeping outward to his muscles and skin from along the joints of his spine. He felt better than he had in years . Fuck, this was the most relaxed his body had ever been, as though he’d taken a hot bath for the first time in his life, or finally sat down after eons of standing. He gave a sigh of relief and rolled his head back. How had he ever lived without this?
Morro sputtered and cackled manically.
Lloyd jolted from his heavenly daze and snapped his eyes open, frantically inspecting his body. The extra limbs were still there, and so were the claws, and the obsidian skin that trailed up to mid-bicep. Little green scales glittered across the back of his arm like emeralds in an impenetrably dark cave. Nothing had changed. Why was Morro…
A shock, sensory input from beneath him. Skin brushed the cold floor tiles. A chill ran up his spine and anchored him to the floor. If the feeling hadn’t come from his feet… or his arms… then…
He forced his head to turn and gazed over his shoulder.
It was a tail. A tail . It was green-scaled but faded to black at the tip, where a tuft of fluffy near-white fur sprouted. He stared at the limb in disbelief. It hung limply behind him, twitching occasionally.
Morro entered his panic-induced tunnel vision, squatting down beside it.
“So, what, were you thinking about tails?” Morro asked, poking at it. The thing thrashed wildly in response, smacking Morro in the face and knocking him on his back with a grunt. Were it not for the horrible circumstances, Lloyd would have laughed at the sight.
“No! I just relaxed ! I thought about going back to normal! I didn’t do this!”
“Back to normal, or back to human?” Morro asked, picking himself off the floor.
“Is there a difference?” Lloyd groaned. His cousin’s lack of urgency was seriously starting to grate on him. Why wasn’t he taking this seriously ?
“Yeah. There is,” Morro mumbled, rubbing his jaw, a calculating glint in his eye. “You’re not human, but you thought you were until recently.”
“S-so?” Lloyd snapped.
“Your perception changed.”
Lloyd forced a gulp around the lump in his throat. His perception. He was right, wasn’t he? Before all this had happened, Lloyd could pretend he was human. He could go through his daily life ignoring the reality of his situation. He’d been a human his whole life, after all. Why would that need to change now?
But now… he’d grown horns, and the other inhuman features followed shortly after. A chain reaction deep within his subconscious had begun, and he’d been powerless. It couldn’t be undone.
Looking human… would be a disguise. It was no longer the default. It was no longer normal .
Unless he found a memory switch like Zane’s in his chest the next day, he couldn’t forget. He could learn to shapeshift, to look human again. But he could never be human.
A sob caught in his throat. He wrestled it and held it there for a matter of seconds before he couldn’t any longer. It burst from his mouth, filling the restroom with a sorrowful howl. With no mind to his surroundings, he allowed himself to mourn. Gasping cries bounced around the echoing stalls, a mocking choir of his own misery.
He rubbed at his overflowing tears with both hands, scrubbing his palms across his eyes. He wiped away dribbling snot with the back of his hand. Disgusting and cold and hot and wet. He cried, bit his tongue with too-sharp incisors, and cried harder.
Why couldn’t he be normal? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair! He wanted a childhood, wanted a normal, peaceful life. He wanted his dad, and he wanted his body back . He choked down mucus and coughed and wept, his throat still blistering and acidic. He wanted… he wanted…
Arms wrapped around him, the pressure feather-soft, and pulled him into a cautious hug. His face buried itself into the crook of a bony shoulder, warm snot and tears smearing into the fabric. He grasped at the figure in front of him, gripping onto their shirt and pulling them closer.
Why was he so weak ? He couldn’t be weak, he wasn’t allowed to be weak. It got people killed.
He gripped tighter, all four arms trembling under the force of it. He sniveled into their shirt. Fabric tore beneath his fingers and he flinched away from the hug. Morro pulled him back in.
“It’s just a shirt. It’s okay. It’s a hologram, remember? No flesh to cut under here.”
Another sob tore its way through his throat. He clamped down his jaw and smothered the cries that threatened to embarrass him further. What kind of ninja was he, sniveling and clinging to Morro of all people?
“I’m gonna ask you again, kid. Do you want me to go get someone else?”
“No. They can’t see me like this. I’m…” He snorted in a dribbling glob of snot, “I’m supposed to be a leader.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. You’re a zygote. You shouldn’t need to be a leader.”
“I’m not a kid ,” Lloyd growled from deep within his chest and rubbed the sting from his eyes.
Morro grabbed his shoulders and pulled him out, so he could look him directly in the eye. “You can be a kid, Greenie. That’s not a bad thing. You are a kid. Even if you weren’t, it’s okay to cry. Especially over something like this.”
Lloyd scoffed, “Says you. If someone saw you cry you’d die on the spot.”
Morro grumbled but didn’t deny it.
Lloyd winced as the tail attached to him brushed against the floor. His hands clenched — all four of them — as a wave of nausea washed through his head. His brain was caught in a whirlpool of sickening, churning wrongness , and for a brief moment, he wondered if he could cut it off—
He clamped down on the idea with a shudder. What was he thinking?!
“You just look a little more like uncle—“ Morro stopped himself, “...like your dad. I don’t see a problem with that.”
Lloyd wanted to feel that way. He really did. He loved his dad, four-armed or two… but…
“Uncle Wu says oni are evil. He never wanted me to find out. He… do you think he knew this would happen if I did?”
“Well, if he did , then he should have said something,” Morro grimaced. “You already knew. If this was bound to happen, it was his responsibility to warn you.”
“What if–”
“Wu will love you. They all will. If they can stomach my presence, they can deal with this too,” Morro said.
Lloyd squeezed his mouth shut and glared at the floor tiles. “You’re right. I know that, but it doesn’t make it any less…”
He couldn’t admit how scary it was. For a moment, he considered stepping out of the stall and taking his chances with the row of mirrors he knew sat over the sinks, but he couldn’t force his feet to move. He didn’t want to see that. It would make everything more real than it already was, and cement this horrible reality. Maybe he was thinking about this wrong. He couldn’t focus on being normal . He needed to focus on looking human .
He centered himself, concentrating on the touch of Morro’s hands on his upper arms. He closed his eyes again. Anxiety shot down his spine and roiled in his fingertips as he imagined what could happen if he messed this up again. What if he became more of a monster?
Lloyd shook the thought from his head and pictured his human body, his real body . He imagined the bright-eyed boy in the picture on his desk, arm wrapped around his father, both of them soft and joyful and human . For that little, blessed time, everything had been right with the world. He could have been happy. He could have stayed happy. He couldn’t handle any more change. He needed that Lloyd back. The one who could have been at peace.
A heavy weight pressed down on every inch of flesh, a sensation akin to being shrink-wrapped under a layer of malleable lead. He stumbled forward, his balance thrown off by a sudden shift in weight. His eyes flew open as Morro pushed back against his arms to prevent a fall. His arms! His normal, clawless arms! There were only two!
“Ha!” He breathed, pushing himself upright and dashing over to the smudged restroom mirrors. A manic ball of energy bubbled its way up his chest. “Hahahaha!” He laughed and pointed at the face in the mirror, uncaring of how unhinged he must sound. “I’m me again!”
“And you’ve got a massive hole in your pants,” Morro added.
Lloyd yelped, hands flying to his rear as blood rushed to his face. Morro cackled and broke into a fit of bellowing laughter. The image of his cousin in the mirror hunched over, hands gripping his knees as his shoulders shook.
“It’s not funny!” Lloyd cringed as his voice cracked. “Stop laughing!”
Morro snorted, his chuckles dying out. Lloyd met his eyes in the mirror, and his cackling started all over again.
“Here, here,” Morro reached down for the jacket he’d left pillowed on the floor, clearly fighting to contain his laughter enough to speak. “Tie this around your waist. No one’ll notice.”
“Yes, they will!” Lloyd protested, yanking the jacket out of Morro’s hand and tying it around his waist anyways.
“Wanna borrow my pants? Not like it matters. Can make the hologram cover it up anyways.”
“Ew, Morro! No! That’s weird! You’re weird!” Lloyd said, finishing off the tight knot around his hips and ensuring that nothing would stick out.
He was back to normal. As relieving as that was, he couldn’t help the gnawing sense of dread in the pit of his stomach. Something was wrong. When he’d shapeshifted into a… whatever it was… earlier, it was as if a lifelong discomfort had been lifted from his aching body. Beyond the anxious sweat and the rapid stuttering of his heart, something deeper had unfurled. A painfully contracted knot had been wound up within every single one of his atoms, an oppressive weight he’d never noticed was there, hidden among the background radiation of all his other tactile senses. Had his body always been so tense? Had his skin always felt so constricting ?
He gripped the edge of the sink and glared into his reflection. Though framed in a human face, his eyes were just as inhuman as they’d always been. His radioactive green irises extended far out to the edges of his eyelids, the whites hidden out of sight. His slit pupils were almost human-like. They’d widened and rounded in order to let more light in from the dim room. He checked his teeth, and let out a heavy breath as he found them only subtly sharper than a normal human’s.
He looked normal. But why did looking human feel so horrible?
“If you’re done, you know, growing body parts, I’m gonna take my busted phone and go. Everyone’s probably worried,” Morro jerked his head towards the door. “Need me to wait for you?”
“I’m fine. I think I’ve got a handle on–”
The heavy restroom door rattled against its frame, and someone knocked frantically.
“Lloyd?” Kai’s muffled voice called from outside, “You in there? Why’s the door locked? Open up!”
Morro let out a long-suffering sigh and turned the deadbolt, jerking his arm out of the way as the door flung open and banged against the adjacent wall. Kai stumbled through the entrance, a flurry of pink petals at his heel. He righted himself into a tense, battle-ready stance, eyes scanning for potential danger.
“We’re fine! Everything’s fine!” Lloyd said, hands out to calm his brother.
“Morro stopped answering my texts,” Kai hissed, rounding on him and jabbing a finger at his cousin’s ribcage. “You can’t just go radio-silent like that! Who knows what could have happened.”
“I dropped my phone, Red! Fuck, it’s not that big of a deal!”
“What if there had been an attack? What if you’d both been kidnapped?” Kai stepped further into Morro’s personal space. “What then?”
“I have a phone too,” Lloyd said. “I wasn’t answering either. Sorry. I guess it slipped my mind.”
That seemed to placate his rage, if only slightly. Kai took a step away from his cousin, and held a deep breath, closing his eyes before releasing a sigh and looking back at Lloyd, “You’re right. Sorry.”
“Why don’t we head back to the picnic? I hardly got to try anything,” Morro said, already pushing past Kai to leave the restroom when Lloyd got a good look at his back.
Shit. The holographic disguise Morro wore must have been configured to display his clothes as they were, rather than a static image, because the back of his tank top was riddled with obvious, gaping claw marks. He should have noticed earlier when Morro removed his jacket.
Kai stiffened, eyes locked on Morro’s retreating form. “I knew you were hiding something!” He lunged forward and pulled him back into the restroom by his shoulder, gesturing wildly at the torn remains of his shirt. “What’s all this? Were you attacked by werewolves or something?!”
Lloyd kept his mouth shut, his eyes meeting Morro’s distressed sidelong glance.
“What? Not up-to-date on fashion lately? They’re supposed to be there. Obviously,” Morro scoffed.
“You own, like, four shirts, windbag. This one wasn’t torn up this morning,” Kai glared into Morro’s back, and his eyes glanced over toward Lloyd briefly, before doing a double-take. “Why’re you wearing his jacket?”
“The, uh, mud? Stained my pants?” Lloyd forced his face into a smile but could feel the corners of his mouth tremble.
Kai dropped Morro and looked between them both, the rage on his face edging into open concern. “Why are you both lying?”
Morro twisted his way out of Kai’s grip, leaning his tattered back against the open door and shoving his hands into his pockets.
Lloyd made himself take a step toward his brother, but couldn’t force himself to move any further, “I didn’t want to worry everyone,” He whispered. “It’s nothing. I’m fine now.”
“So you weren’t fine before.”
“Kai—”
“No, I don’t wanna hear it! What’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong.”
He sucked in a breath, the claustrophobic tightness of his skin making the action that much more unbearable. The shell of his body was mere plastic wrap, straining against the burgeoning weight of… what? Himself?
“You know how I’m not… human?” He started.
Kai’s eyebrows furrowed, but he nodded along.
“Well, I…” Lloyd wracked his brain for a positive way to describe this, “I think I have shapeshifting powers? They were kind of… out of control.”
Morro snorted, “Somehow that feels like an understatement.”
Lloyd shot him a glare.
“Well... it looks like you’ve got those new powers back under control, at least,” Kai’s shoulders slumped, his expression losing its edge. Good. He was on the right track. He didn’t need anyone worrying about him more than they needed to. “But, what, you went and clawed up Morro? What’s that about?”
Oh shit.
“That was an accident! I, uh, tripped.”
Morro huffed a single chuckle but otherwise kept quiet.
“And the jacket?” Kai asked.
Lloyd’s face flushed with warmth, “I ripped my pants,” He murmured.
“What?”
“I ripped my pants, okay!” Lloyd repeated, covering his face in shame, “I grew a tail.”
Right on queue, because the universe hated him in particular, the tail sprung back into reality in a cloud of glittering purple smoke. Lloyd yelped and stumbled back from the appendage as if he could somehow escape it. No! He’d gotten rid of this thing! It wasn’t supposed to come back! He needed to keep it clamped down. Damn thing! Go away!
“Woa-holy shit ! You weren’t kidding!” Kai dashed forward and grabbed hold of Lloyd’s hand, stabilizing him enough that he didn’t wind up face-down on the bathroom tile.
“Why would I joke about this?” Lloyd snapped, blinking away hot tears as they returned with a vengeance. “I thought I had it! I can’t go out like this!”
Morro stood up from his lean against the door, his face pinched in a way that screamed pity , “I’m getting Wu.”
“Don’t!”
“Sorry kid, but he’s the only one who could help you here.”
“I said, don’t!”
Morro stalled outside the restroom, looking back over his shoulder. His eyes glinted, a flash of ambiguous emotion too quick for Lloyd to interpret properly. He didn’t reenter the room, but lingered, hovering just outside. He hummed and shook his head, eyes focusing somewhere in the distance.
“Why don’t you want Wu’s help?” Kai asked, looking up from the tail. “If anyone knew how to use these powers, it’d be him, right?”
It was true. His father was dead, and the only person in the world who shared his uniquely inhuman blood was his uncle and his uncle alone. Besides the Master of Form, no one else could possibly have any experience with shapeshifting. No one except…
His eyes were drawn up to the lone figure of his cousin, idling outside, silhouetted by the dappled afternoon sun under the cover of cherry blossoms. He’d shapeshifted before, hadn’t he? No, he couldn’t ask about that with Kai around. The two shared a mutual terse and begrudging acknowledgment of each other at best, and razor-wire antagonism at worst. They’d been more civil in recent months, but bringing up the possession at all would be pushing it .
“Morro,” He started, “say Wu wasn’t an option. What would you tell me?”
Morro scoffed and shook his head, “You wouldn’t like it.”
“Try me.”
Kai glanced warily at Morro, “Lloyd, I don’t think–”
“I think you need to let it go.”
“Huh?” Lloyd said.
“Make peace with it,” Morro shrugged. “Stop trying so hard. Do what feels better. For you .”
A growl bubbled in his chest. What felt better ?! What felt better was being human! What felt better was being able to pass through a crowd of people without anyone staring at him or, even worse, fearing him! He was supposed to be a hero. How could he do that if the public thought he was a razor-clawed demon? How was he supposed to be everything they wanted from him if he was like that ?
Without warning, the image of the photograph on his desk came to mind. His dad. Morro once told him that his father only shapeshifted to appear human, and that Wu did the same. Was his uncle always this sore? Did his father constantly feel as though his skin was pulled on so tight it made his head throb?
Was that what shapeshifting felt like?
Had he been… doing it his entire life?
Without a break?
He knew he had a tendency to mask his emotions for the sake of those around him. He’d repressed his childish inclinations for the greater good a long time ago. He tucked his troubles away from prying eyes. He needed to be alert and confident. He needed to be ready for anything. Always what they wanted from him. Always strong.
Always Green .
Would he have found any issue with that appearance without the weight of other’s burdens, their expectations, their heavy gazes? He doubted it.
Fuck, his younger self, vivacious and wild, so enthralled by the idea he could be more like his beloved father, would have been ecstatic at this development. He’d have run up to his siblings and loudly showed off his cool new body. When had that changed? When he took up the gi? When his childhood had been stripped away from him in the most literal sense imaginable? He couldn’t pinpoint a single moment.
When had he lost that confidence?
“I’m going home. I need to think.”
Kai and Morro spared a brief look at each other, faces plastered with a matching pair of grimaces. Morro stepped back towards the restroom and leaned against the doorframe, shaking his head.
“Really think you can summon a dragon right now, Greenie?” Morro asked.
No. He couldn’t.
“I’ll be fine,” He lied.
“I can come with you,” Kai said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t need to go through this on your own.”
“I’ll be fine . I need to be alone,” Lloyd insisted.
From the corner of his eye, Morro flinched and clenched his jaw. His back straightened.
Kai huffed and pulled out his phone. “I’m flying you home. I’ll text the others and we’ll head back.”
“Tell them I’m coming with you,” Morro added, his tone firm.
“What? Why?” Kai’s nose wrinkled, “You don’t want to stay here and keep making goo-goo eyes at your boyfriend?”
“He’ll understand.”
“What, are you bored of him already—“
“Fuck. Off,” Morro snarled, standing up fully. His voice dripped with more venom than his arguments with Kai usually elicited. “This is serious. I’m coming with you.”
Kai opened his mouth to say something but clamped it shut with a click . His jaw was locked, and his breathing was carefully measured.
Lloyd could easily imagine all the jabs that Kai must have had primed on his tongue, all the biting comments about how Morro wasn’t allowed to pretend he cared. Lloyd had to hand it to him, the restraint he was showing was very appreciated.
“ Fine . Both of you can come,” Lloyd said, feeling very much like he was breaking up two feral cats caught in a standoff.
“Tch, like I needed your permission.” “You couldn’t stop me if you wanted to, bro,” Morro and Kai whipped another pointed glare at each other.
Lloyd gripped his temples, rubbing calming circles into them. First Master, why him?
Kai jabbed at his touchscreen with wild abandon. He huffed a sigh and nodded. “Alright, let’s go.”
The flight back to Yang’s floating temple was tense. Morro had never been allowed to ride Kai’s dragon before, and the trepidation in his eyes was plain to see. The dragon itself had growled warningly as Morro mounted it, and kept glancing back over its shoulder the entire way home. Its fiery eyes resembled two glowing coals, burning with suspicion.
Lloyd kept a steadying hand on Kai’s dragon, petting circles into its blistering-hot scales. With his dragon acting like this , Lloyd was surprised his brother had been able to summon it at all.
When they finally reached the courtyard, his cousin was the first to leap from the saddle, rolling across the garden before they’d even landed. The dragon’s chest reverberated with a low, rumbling growl, its wire-thin pupils fixed on him.
“It’s not gonna bite,” Kai rolled his eyes and dismissed the summoned elemental construct.
“It was sure acting like it!” Morro said.
Lloyd trudged past them, throwing open the temple doors. “I’m going to my room. Please don’t kill each other while I’m gone.”
“I haven’t killed him yet!” Kai called.
At the same time, Morro shouted, “No promises!”
Lloyd gave a long-suffering sigh as he made his way up the old wooden stairs and to his bedroom. As his feet snaked around the creakiest floorboards in an automatic dance, his clumsy, useless tail thumped against every single stair. How was he supposed to be a ninja with this… thing attached to him?
He shoved his way into his bedroom and shut the door behind him, stilling for the briefest of moments before collapsing to his hands and knees. Unbidden, the tail curled around him, and he shoved it away with a frustrated growl. The thing, disobedient annoyance as it was, bounced right back into a comforting coil.
Would he ever be okay, like this?
It was wrong, he knew it was. It should be wrong, but he felt himself… wanting to keep it. He never knew how cramped his vertebrae had felt until the tail had finally been allowed to breathe .
He threw his face into his knees and shook his head, fingers tangled through his hair. No! What was he thinking? That thing wasn’t supposed to be a part of his body. It didn’t belong to him.
And yet… deep down, he couldn’t seem to convince himself. On some instinctual, animal level, he couldn’t truly bear the thought of losing the tail he’d learned about less than an hour ago.
His head snapped up, landing on his desk. The picture! He’d used it to center himself before. Surely it could help him regain a more human body a second time. Maybe, with the real thing in his hands, he could regain his sense of mind and quell whatever temporary insanity was convincing him that he wanted to look so monstrous.
He ambled over to the picture and cradled it, thumbs tracing the familiar knots in the frame, worn and smoothed from all the previous times he’d held it the same way.
A nearly human boy stared back at him, arm-in-arm with his father, their smiling faces sharing the same lopsided dimple.
He traced every inch of the photograph, just as he’d done a thousand times before. If he’d restrained the true shape of his body for so many years, surely he could do it again. If he could hold tight to the image of the boy in the photograph, it would all be okay.
He closed his eyes and held his breath, envisioning the image of his human form, concentrating on pulling the tail back into hiding.
Nothing happened.
He released his breath and set down the photo with trembling fingers. Maybe it wasn’t enough. That was fine. He had more.
He fell to the floor beside his bed and frantically dug around beneath it, pulling aside stacks of boxed comics until his fingers touched warm leather.
He dragged the heavy album out and cradled it gently as he settled down on his bed, his tail falling to rest beside him. His hands ghosted over the cover, before cracking open the tome. He flipped through the pages one by one, looking for something that would give him the right motivation. There was the birthday when Cole had gifted him a shaving kit he still hadn’t found reason to need, but his pupils glinted too brightly in the photos, like a cat’s. They wouldn't do. He skipped ahead to the opening of his father’s dojo, felt the tears coming back, and skipped ahead even further. He landed on pictures from the New Year’s party just a few months ago. All the pages were graced with images of a perfectly human Lloyd.
He envisioned those memories, still so clear, and tried to transform again.
Nothing.
He flipped through more pictures, hunching further over the book as he scanned the pages with increasing intensity. What would unlock the right feeling? Surely something here, anything , would give him the push he needed to fix all of this. It should be enough. It had to be enough.
In his growing panic, laminated pages of photographs flying between his fingers, a single square flipped out of the book and fluttered to the ground, landing face-down on his rug.
He picked it up, and huffed out a surprised, weak chuckle.
It was a small instant-print photo. The little thing was bent at the edges and warped from water damage. A young, tiny Lloyd smiled up at him like a baby shark, eyes curled in glee as he hung from one of his oni father’s lower arms. His dad wasn’t looking at the camera. Instead, he focused on his son, red eyes smiling gently down at him. He’d even been wearing that stupid ribcage hoodie.
A droplet of water fell across the little boy’s frozen grin. Lloyd brought a hand to his eyes and found them to be wet.
Oh. He was crying.
He set the album down on the bed beside him and pulled his legs to his chest, staring at the little picture as he sniveled into the peak of his knees.
No matter what his father looked like, no matter what horrible poison infected his mind, one thing had always remained constant. His dad loved him. He loved his dad.
Lloyd blinked away the tears that had gathered in his eyes, warping his vision into a blurry, watery mess. Why had he never told him about their oni blood? Why had his father never explained shapeshifting to him, or told him that his human form was an illusion? Why hadn’t he been worthy of knowing that just below the façade of a human sensei, he looked the same as he had before?
Maybe he was more comfortable in that form or used it to assure others that the venom was truly gone. Is that what it was? Did he think they wouldn’t accept him, otherwise? His uncle had been overjoyed, all those years ago, to see his brother return to a human form.
But why lie?
Lloyd sniffed in another blob of snot and scrutinized his father’s gently smiling face. His jagged fangs peeked out between his lips, and his wickedly sharp claws were angled carefully away from little Lloyd’s skin.
There wasn’t a day that went by, that he didn’t miss his dad.
He stood abruptly, rubbing the tears from his eyes as he set down the little damaged instant-print on his desk to rest beside his precious framed photo. He stalked out into the hallway, towards the bathroom.
“We shouldn’t bother him. He’s smart. He’ll figure it out,” Morro’s voice echoed up the stairwell.
“What if he needs me?” Kai asked. “What if… what if something’s wrong?”
“Then he’ll come and get you. Right now what he needs is privacy.”
“What would you know about respecting Lloyd’s privacy?” Kai spat.
Lloyd hurried into the bathroom, nearly shutting the door on the tufted end of his tail. He didn’t need to hear any more of that .
He locked the door with a click and stayed there for a moment, hand still clasped around the latch. He took a heavy breath and turned towards the sink. Gripping the edge of the countertop, he counted down from ten and snapped his head up to look at his reflection. It seemed like the tail was the only thing unusual about him at the moment. Although… huh. Had his ears always been so pointy?
He shook his head and pulled his sweater off. Two arms and a normal chest, void of scales. Morro had suggested just… letting go, but how was he supposed to do that?
He closed his eyes and breathed in slowly. Wu’s endless meditation sessions had prepared him for this. He carefully drained his mind of any notions that time and space existed at all. Floating in a calm void, ebbing and flowing with the tide of a sea of stars. Nothing began, and nothing ever ended. All that remained was him, and the essence of self. There was no one he was withholden to, no grand destinies to fulfill, or legends to live up to. It was just him. Alone.
He breathed out. He opened his eyes.
Lloyd choked down his shock when he saw glittering emerald scales creeping across the bridge of his cheeks. He fought to keep his breathing even, willing his heart to stop pounding so audibly in his chest.
As the scales worked their way down his neck and across his shoulders, he faintly realized that they didn’t itch as they had before. The only notable sensation he could pick out was a soft, airy touch, as though a thick, suffocating clay mask had been peeled away from his bare skin.
Two points on his forehead blackened and sprouted into tall onyx horns. Unlike the first time, it was eerily painless. He exhaled deeply as a lifelong pressure that weighed in the front of his skull was suddenly released. He could swear it was easier to breathe than before.
His ears poked further out from beneath his hair, fading to ashy black at their pointed tips. The sound of his own breathing grew ever-so clearer, as though his ears had depressurized for the first time.
His teeth were sharper now, and so were the obsidian tips of his nails, though he wasn’t sure when exactly that had happened.
The skin along his fingers shifted to an inky black that spread up his arm, slowing just below his shoulder, cold but not unpleasant. Only one feature still remained notably absent. He took a deep breath.
Dual points, like the slow twisting and depressurizing of a shaken soda bottle’s cap, erupted from his sides. He swallowed thickly, squeezing his eyes shut and bracing himself for pain.
It never came.
Tentatively, he opened his eyes. There they were, in the reflection. An extra pair of arms — just like his father’s — hung at his sides. He raised one, and plucked a bar of soap from the sink, rolling it over in his new hand. It felt so… right. It was nothing like the alien feeling of a foreign limb he’d dreaded.
He dropped the soap back into its dish and turned around to get a good view of the deep green scales that covered the length of his back. Patterns of brighter, golden scales formed symmetrical swirls across his four shoulder blades. With a start, he realized how closely they resembled the swirling patterns that had once decorated his father’s oni form.
When he turned back around, he noticed some sort of… discoloration across his chest. There were patches of skin, subtly lighter than the skin around it… forming some sort of long, branching shape.
His eyes widened, and he laughed, a wide, genuine smile pulling at his cheeks. Ribs. They looked like ribs. He traced them with his new fingers, growing lost in a distant memory. A younger version of himself, stolen black hoodie and fabric paint, dipping his fingers into the jar and smearing stark white lines across the front. He’d thrown it on without a care, his fingers still sticky with wet paint. He’d even gotten some in his hair…
His ear twitched, new muscles angling it to better hear the footsteps approaching from downstairs. He sighed. Kai’s anxiety must have reached its limit.
“Hands off! I’m just checking on him.”
“He doesn’t need someone breathing down his neck right now, Red.”
“What do you know, airhead?!”
“More than you! Fuckin’ flames-for-brains!”
“Corpseface!”
“Pinecone hair!”
A scuffle, a flurry of uneven footfalls, and the sound of something slamming against the banister. Lloyd threw the bathroom door open and stomped over to the mezzanine.
“Could you two knock it off… for five minutes ?!”
The two froze in place on the stairwell, their eyes landing on Lloyd. Limbs tangled together, Kai had clutched a tangled fistful of Morro’s hair and pressed him against the banister as the other latched onto his arm with his teeth like a wild animal.
Morro slowly released his jaw’s iron grip on Kai’s arm, at least having the decency to look embarrassed about it, “You doing okay—“
“Lloyd!” Kai shouted, dropping Morro’s hair and pushing away from him, nearly sending his cousin tumbling down the stairs. “Did it get worse?! Are you hurt?”
“No, actually. I’m…” Lloyd paused, looking down at his hands, “I’m good. I get it now.”
“Really? Because it looks like your shapeshifting is really out of control. It got worse, didn’t it?”
Lloyd tried to ignore the sting of insecurity those words shot through his chest and gathered all the courage he could muster.
“I… Kai, I think I’ve always looked like this… I just learned how to turn the shapeshifting… off … for the first time,” He started, pushing through his thoughts despite the tremor in his voice. “I feel better now, I really do. I feel good . I didn’t know I could feel this good, I didn’t even know I felt so wrong in the first place and…”
“And?” Morro asked.
“And I might… like being like this?” He tried, gesturing to his appearance. “I know it’s weird and scary and—“
“Lloyd,” Kai said.
“And I know I look like a monster, and I know my dad looked kinda like this when he was evil, but he’s gone and it feels like there’s this connection I can share with him, even when he’s dead and—“
“Kid!” Morro said.
“And I feel so light now. Before, there was always this feeling that my body was being shoved into a plastic bag and crushed . But now I can breathe and hear and—“
“Greenbean!” Kai called over his rambling. “It’s okay. No one’s gonna ask you to change if you don’t want to.”
“But sensei keeps himself disguised all the time. What if there's a reason? What if he tells me I have to…”
“Then tell him no,” Morro stated from lower on the stairs. “Who cares what he thinks?”
“You do! We all do! Stop pretending you don’t !” Lloyd cried, tears pricking at his eyes and wood peeling away under his claws as he gripped the banister.
Morro’s mouth clamped shut. He averted eye contact.
Kai ascended the rest of the stairs, blanketing the space between them with one of his warm, comforting hugs.
“It’ll be okay.”
Lloyd allowed himself to relax and melted into the embrace. It had been far too long since he’d been on the receiving end of one of Kai’s hugs. The heat he radiated seeped into his bones, and his heart swelled with warmth. They had a way of making you forget every care you’d ever had. Were you worried about something? That didn’t matter. Kai was hugging you. Everything would be okay.
What had he done to deserve such a great brother?
When he finally looked up from the soothing pressure of Kai’s shoulder on his eyes, Morro had turned off his holographic disguise. He was leaning back against the railing, glowing eye sockets pointedly fixed away from the hug, his bony fingers tapping against his humerus.
Lloyd’s eyebrows scrunched up. Morro rarely turned off his disguise if he could help it. Unless his image inducer was busy charging, Zane was running maintenance on it, or Nya told him off for using it in the workshop again, the hologram stayed on .
“What’re you doing?” Lloyd found himself asking.
Morro shrugged, “Stays off until Wu gets over himself.”
Lloyd snorted and rolled his eyes. Of course he’d do that. Why did he expect anything else? Morro had a hard time showing affection at the best of times, and when he did, it tended to be things like this. Little acts and services he’d perform without ever mentioning it. They’d find a messy room had been cleaned in the dead of night, or that someone had fixed a leaky faucet without anyone noticing for several days. If someone had a bad day, he’d quietly sit in the corner of the room. Not quite there, but not distant either. Their tea cups never emptied while he was around.
It had been more than odd, to see their once-horrifying enemy become such a shy people-pleaser. Even stranger, though, was becoming the target of that awkward affection himself.
A misplaced act of “monster” solidarity was right up Morro’s alley.
“You don’t need to do that,” Lloyd said, pulling out of Kai’s hug, but not leaving his arms entirely. “I know you don’t like turning it off.”
“Wu likes looking at my skull face even less than I do. I can deal with it if that means he fucks off about the whole oni thing.”
Kai rolled his eyes and groaned, “Morro, why don’t you save the rebellious child act for when we actually know his reaction sucks? You didn’t even give Wu a chance!”
Morro shrugged, pulled his gloves on, and strolled down the stairs, turning the corner and disappearing into the kitchen. Kai rolled a growling hum under his breath, squinting down the stairs.
“He’s trying to be nice,” Lloyd said.
“I know . But he sucks at it, “ Kai huffed and turned his attention back towards Lloyd, all signs of his frustration dissipating instantly. “You’re okay like this? Nothing’s hurting you?”
Lloyd shook his head, “If anything, staying in my human form was hurting me more…”
Kai frowned, “You… you’re serious about that.”
Lloyd sniffed up a glob of snot and nodded, fighting the tears that threatened to spill out.
“Shit. Lloyd, you don’t have to look human for us, or anyone . You know that, right? If anyone tries to start shit, I’ll kick their ass. The media’s gonna have a field day with this but…” Kai took a moment to brush a stray lock of hair from Lloyd’s eyes, “we can handle it. We always have.”
“Not like it can be any worse than what Nya deals with,” Lloyd snorted.
“Ugh, I hate that you’re right. They’ll probably make less of a deal over you growing a tail than us adding a ‘girl ninja’ to the team, huh?” Kai eased him down so they were sitting on the stairs, side by side.
Lloyd cautiously leaned against his brother’s shoulder, making sure his horns weren’t in any position to gouge his eye out. He sighed and closed his eyes, breathed, and took a moment to appreciate the soothing heat against his temple. He didn’t bother to stop himself as he felt his tail loop around them and settle in his lap. If Kai was bothered by it, he didn’t give any indication he was.
There was a sudden, soft clink on the stair in front of them. Lloyd opened his eyes to two steaming hot mugs of hot chocolate, topped with whipped cream, sitting innocently against the floorboard. Morro settled down at the base of the stairs, facing away from them and radiating an air of well-practiced nonchalance.
He leaned down to grab the cup that was clearly meant for him: an old, chipped mug, the faded Starfarer logo printed on it half scratched off over time. Heat radiated from it and settled into the joints of his new fingers. Steam curled through a little gap in the whipped cream before trailing up and dissipating into the air around his clogged sinuses, offering some much-needed relief. He passed the mug into his upper hands and took a long sip, before leaning back into his brother’s side.
As he lay there, his muscles finally relaxed and his head blissfully clear, drinking hot chocolate and cradled in his big brother’s warmth, his cousin sitting quietly in the foyer, he thought:
Maybe everything will be okay.