The RGB Siblings

Chapter 12. Progress

Lloyd awoke at the crack of dawn to the sound of his uncle performing the duties of an alarm clock. Each morning, Wu paced around the monastery, banging a mallet against his very notorious chau gong. The noise was so loud it could wake up the dead.

But unlike most others, Lloyd did not mind waking up so early. He did feel a little drowsy and—for some reason—his eyesight felt blurrier than normal, but that didn't stop him from throwing his blanket aside, getting out of his bed and starting the day with Jay's loud complaining in the background. 

First things first, Lloyd went to grab a green marker and crossed off yet another day on his nature-themed calendar. He liked to keep track of days for reasons he didn't know. It wasn't like he'd used to do it when living with Rita. There, every single day had been the same for him. But now, he had picked up the habit, and it actually helped him notice it was the first day of the month. That meant two things: 1. He was a month closer to his birthday, which he had been thinking about a lot. 2. He and his siblings had already spent two weeks living at the monastery.

Maybe for Kai it felt like they had really spent two weeks there (or two months), but Lloyd felt like it had been two days. Time had never gone this fast for him, except when he was asleep. Everytime he put his head down, it felt like he closed his eyes for two seconds before Rita came banging on the door—or now, before Wu came banging on the gong.

"Morro, Kai, Jay, Cole and Zane! In the courtyard! We have the sunrise exercise to do!"

Lloyd grinned a little as neither his nor Nya's name was mentioned. Kai must've felt pretty jealous.

As he apparently had nothing special to do in the morning before breakfast, Lloyd figured he could just as well go into the library to read his eyes sore again. Maybe he could even—

"Lloyd!" Sounded Nya's voice behind the door. Then, there was a series of rather loud knocks. "Don't start making any fun plans. You're going to help me with breakfast!"

—maybe he could even help Nya with breakfast.

"Okay," Lloyd called out, unable to hide the disappointment. It was not that he didn't like cooking (he loved it), but the books in the library were already calling his name. If he had to choose between cooking and reading, he'd choose reading every day of the week. But, he couldn't just ditch Nya and have her do everything alone. So, off he went to get dressed a bit gloomily.

But as Lloyd was pulling his sky blue sweater over his head, an idea pushed itself into his mind. A solution that solved everything. He wanted to help Nya cook, but he also wanted to read. So, why not combine those?

And before Lloyd knew it, he was already dressed and was half-bolting, half-wobbling towards the library to grab a thick book he'd discovered the previous day after training: Way of the Ninja. He then followed the very confused Nya into the kitchen, set the book down on the countertop, propped it up against a few jugs, and started to read while beginning to prepare the fried dough sticks.

"Lloyd, that's not gonna end well," Nya commented while getting started on the sticky rice.

Lloyd meant to answer, but his mind kind of prioritized the particularly intriguing paragraph in the book, one that explained some tragic story of a former ninja. On his journey across a dangerous jungle, the ninja ran into a Grundle. He fought courageously, but was thrown off a cliff by the beast and— the rest was pretty graphic.

"Lloyd, what in the First Spinjitzu Master's name are you reading?" Nya exclaimed. Apparently she had read a few sentences over her brother's shoulder.

"Er… nursery rhymes," Lloyd lied.