My Best Friend's A Ghost

Lloyd(2)

*sings* Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Sopherloafer HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!! XD

A THOUSAND APOLOGIES FOR BEING LATE! Lloyd decided to hijack this chapter and make it SUPER long. I'm still not happy with how I ended it, but at this point if I post it any later I'll forgive myself. 

(if there's something wrong or this chapter is really bad, please let me know and I'll go back and edit it)

Anyways, enough outta me. Enjoy!

~~~~~

Proving himself worthy of being the Green Ninja was hard.

Lloyd felt as if he was in a constant state of soreness. For the past week and a half, it felt as if all the little ninja had done was train, train, train. He pushed himself hard too—doing more pushups, sit-ups, and chin-ups than he had ever done before. He practiced his kicks, somersaults, swordsmanship(he still sucked at that, though, so he put a lot of extra effort into practicing), and had even guilt-tripped Zane into teaching him how to throw shurikens—though the edges were blunt, since Zane refused to let Lloyd use actual shurikens on the premise that he might accidentally hurt himself.

Dawn to dusk, stopping only when he felt that he was about to collapse, Lloyd trained.

And he watched.

During his training sessions, when Lloyd actually took some time to concentrate on anything other than getting better, he would catch glimpses of Morro. Sometimes he was near Cole, bickering and messing around with him. Other times he was hanging on the outskirts, usually looking bored.

During these times, Lloyd would often make eye contact with the ghost, silently hoping that he might get an encouraging thumbs-up or a nod of the head or heck, maybe even the slightest impressed look....

But everytime, Morro would scowl and promptly vanish--either phasing through the wall he was leaning against or flying up to and through the ceiling.

This was pretty discouraging to the young ninja, but Lloyd quickly shook it off. He just wasn't trying hard enough, is all. He would prove himself soon, just you wait!

The others noticed Lloyd's change. Kai, Jay, and Zane seemed to think that it was a pretty good thing—Kai was especially ecstatic that Lloyd was taking his lessons very seriously. His uncle seemed a little suspicious, but he kept his thoughts to himself and just asked that Lloyd not work himself too hard and to remember to take a little bit of time to act his age.

(Uncle Wu looked really sad when he said that, like he was thinking about someone else as he was talking to Lloyd. He wondered who it was and why thinking about that person made his uncle so sad...)

The only one who seemed worried about Lloyd's sudden change was Cole. The little ninja tried to reassure the black ninja that he was fine and he just wanted to get in some extra practice. Cole looked skeptical and kept warning Lloyd to take it easy, but he hadn't done anything drastic yet, so Lloyd felt that he was in the clear.

That is, until he made himself sick trying to perfect Spinjitzu at Dareth's dojo.

"Lloyd," Cole sighed, stepping over to the downed ninja, who was currently lying on his back on the floor after his sixth failed attempt at Spinjitzu--in a row. "You've been training all morning. Maybe you should take a break."

"Nooooo," Lloyd moaned, slowly sitting up and rubbing his head. "Just a few more times...I can do it..."

Cole frowned and knelt down next to Lloyd. "How many fingers am I holding up?" he asked, holding up two fingers.