Chapter 2: Pan-banging, Yelling, and Other Loud Noises
Hello once again! Here's a bit longer chapter with the actual ninja in it. XD There's no reviews to respond to (cue sad violin music) so, let's just get to it! ;P
Zane and Kai woke up to the annoying sound of a mix of their alarm clock and someone banging a frying pan.
Zane climbed down the bunk bed to turn off the alarm clock and then opened the bedroom door. Outside he saw Tia standing there, banging a large metal frying pan with a wooden spoon. When she saw him, Tia stopped banging the pan, almost reluctantly.
"What brings you?" Zane asked Tia cautiously.
"Sensei asked me to wake y- wait, is Kai still sleeping?" Tia's hazel eyes flashed with annoyance as she looked over to where the fire ninja still lay in the bottom bunk.
"Five more minutes, y'all," Kai mumbled, rolling over.
"I sense you should get up," the logical nindroid said. He made his way over to the small bedroom window and pulled the curtains open. Faint light streamed into the room. "If Sensei asked Tia to come and awake us at this early hour, this must be important."
Kai grumbled at the sudden brightness and slowly sat up. "This better not be that we ran out of tea. We just got some and I ain't goin' back to that dump also known as the local grocery store, y'all!" the southern ninja complained. "It's worse than this house!"
"Nope. It's sausages." Tia said matter-a-factly, crossing her arms.
"Ugh, sausages, y'all?" Kai complained, throwing himself under the covers. "I'm goin' back to bed!"
Thunck!
Tia had grabbed one of Zane's many history books off the wooden shelf and threw it viciously at Kai's head. A muffed curse came from his bunk.
"You're wasting TIME, dude!" she said with great emphasis, flipping her braid over her shoulder. She turned back to Zane. "Sorry to leave you with that," she said, pointing at Kai, "but I've gots more peeps to wake!" And with that, she whirled around and marched out of their bedroom, resuming to whack the pan with her large spoon.
Carol walked up the stairs to Jay and Cole's room first, knowing that Tia had a frying pan and wouldn't be afraid to use its iron-hard authority to put Jay in his place. When she began to close in on the door, she quickly covered her nose with her shirt's sleeve. A strong smell of unwashed socks radiated off the bedroom door. Something seriously must be done about this reek, Carol thought, but I'm not in the mood to deal with it now.
Reaching into her back pocket, she pulled out an air horn she had swiped from the kitchen table earlier and pushed down on the button.
The horn's howling noise immediately rang through the entire hall, even making Carol herself jump at the fierce volume. Hearing muffled yells and scuffling from inside, she put the air horn back in her pocket, covered her nose and mouth with her thin pink scarf, took a deep breath, and pushed the door open.
Her eyes scanned the room in a few, quick seconds—old clothes thrown haphazardly over the floor, a half-eaten pizza with its crumpled box set on top of a computer, and rock band posters along with numerous blueprints hung on the walls. Then she looked over to the commotion on the other side of the room.
"NNNOOOO!" Cole had sat up instantly in a panic. "NOT THE CAKE! ANYTHING BUT THE CAKE!"
Jay, who was lying on the floor rubbing his head after taking a tumble out of the top bunk, glared at Cole. "What's wrong now?" he asked in an annoyed voice. "Did you have another nightmare about Lloyd stealing your cake?"
"No." Cole replied calmly, "This time he threw it out a twelve-story high window."
"You had to wake me up for that?! It's the middle of the night!"
"Actually, it's morning. And you're the one who woke me up."
"What are you talking about? I didn't do anything!"
"I wasn't the one to do experiments with air horns early in the morning!"
"I didn't—"
"Ahem."
Cole and Jay quickly turned, seeing Carol standing there for the first time.
"Sensei requires that everyone comes down to the dining room immediately," she said, voice muffled by the scarf.
"But, we just woke up and I haven't had my morning cake!" said Cole indignantly. "And it's barely morning! Can't it wait?"
"Sensei wants you now!" replied Carol.
"Why? And why is your scarf like that?" asked Jay.
"Sensei's calling an emergency meeting. And, your room smells." Carol held her scarf tightly to her nose and hurried out of the room.
After she had left, Jay looked over at Cole, who had taken a slice of cake out of what was supposed to be a clothes drawer.
"Why do you have cake?"
"Because…because, it's cake."
Lloyd groaned aloud as his alarm clock went off furiously, filling the whole room with its ruckus. It banged relentlessly almost as if-wait a second...that wasn't an alarm clock! He jumped out of bed and opened the door to find Tia over-enthusiastically banging a frying pan.
He was the odd one out, having his own room, unless that other elemental master, Mac, came to visit. It was probably good that Mac wasn't here at the same time as Carol, otherwise Lloyd might lose it. He still didn't know whether to believe the whole "just friends" thing.
"SAUSAGE EMERGENCY!" Tia yelled in his ear. "Everyone's to be downstairs in exactly three minutes, fifteen seconds, and forty-two milliseconds, counting down!"
Lloyd winced, rubbing his ears. "Okay, I get it! You don't need to yell!"
"YOU'RE YELLING!" Tia shouted even louder. She continued down the hall, banging on her now slightly dented frying pan violently with her spoon, saying "EMERGENCY! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! EVERYONE TO THE DINING ROOM!"
She liked that pan way too much.
As Carol walked over to Nya and Skylor's room, she could hear from the conversation inside that they were already awake. She knocked lightly on the door. It opened a few seconds later, and Skylor stood in the doorway, already dressed in jeans and an autumn orange sweater.
"Oh, hey Carol," Skylor said. "I didn't think you'd be up already."
"Tia and I were given breakfast duty today," Carol explained. "And Tia wanted to get up thirty minutes earlier to add extra time into her schedule, something like that. Anyways, Sensei needs you both. Apparently, there's some sort of sausage emergency."
"Yeah, uh, we'll be there as soon as Nya can get off her phone." Skylor said.
"Wait, what?"
Skylor nodded, giving an exasperated sigh. "She just got an Instagram account, and is now obsessed. She told me I should get one, that I'm falling behind the times." She rolled her eyes. "She wants a Snapchat account next."
"Oh, well good luck with that." Carol said, thinking she saw some camera flashes behind Skylor. She gave Skylor a quick wave and then went back to the dining room.
The rest of the ninja where gathered around the table, expressions ranging from annoyed to completely confused. Sensei sat silently at the head of the table, staring solemnly into the distance.
After Skylor and Nya came into the room, Skylor dragging Nya by the arm while Nya tried to type with one hand, Sensei Wu began to make his announcement.
"My little sausages," he began dramatically, "I have bad news: the sausages have escaped!" Then he threw the empty pack of sausages on the table.
Jay threw his hands in the air saying, "Yes! No sausages for breakfast!"
Sensei Wu glared at him and Jay slowly put his hands back down. "We need to find these sausages, young sausages, before the great evil does." Sensei Wu's eyes scanned the nine ninja before him. "I fear the worst."
"This does not compute," said the Master of Ice. "How would the sausages escape? They are meat."
"I fear that the dark sorcerer, Caudeth, Clouse's brother, may be behind this." Sensei explained. "It has been rumored that he was spotted recently in the area. He thrists for revenge after Clouse was banished to the Cursed Realm, and if that means stealing our stock of precious sausages, then he will! And I believe he has something sinister up his sleeve."
"No!" exclaimed Cole, "he can't use food to attack us! I love food too much!"
"Since when did Clouse have a brother?" asked Lloyd, eyebrow raised.
"Very good question, my little sausage," replied Sensei Wu. "Very, very good question."
"So?" Tia butted in impatiently. "What can this Clondike guy do with one pack of sausages?"
"Not just one," Nya said, looking down at her phone. Everyone at the table stared at her. She cleared her throat and continued. "According to recent police reports, all the grocery and meat stores in Ninjago have had their sausages robbed. At first police thought it was some kind of trickster, but when it kept happening, it's obvious that something suspicious was going on."
"And when did this start happening?" Skylor inquired.
"Late last week. The attack on our own store of sausages was the final steal."
"My young sausages," Wu began, "you must go to New Ninjago City and investigate these tragic thefts. Spilt yourselves into three groups of three and find out what you can. I'll be here in the control room, while mourning the loss of our blessed sausages."
"We're on it, Sensei," replied Cole. "But what about breakfast?"
"Skip breakfast! I already lost my appetite!" Tia said, standing up. "We got work to do!"
"Let's do this!" Lloyd exclaimed.
Whew! One more chapter done! You may be thinking "What in the world is up with this southern Kai?" Well, it's a long story, but we mostly did it for our own amusement. XD Anyways, don't be shy; leave a review! We both would love to hear what you think of our crazy story so far! ;)