Here's the second chapter, you know what to do.
Disclaimer: I only own the idea for this story.
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RIIIIIIIIIING! RIIIIIIIIIING! RIIIIIIIIIING!
I groaned, the alarm clock piercing my ears with its shrieking wail. My hand lazily reached over to the night stand and turned off the infernal contraption. Across the room I heard my comrade, Jay, make some comment about wishing for five more minutes. I slowly walked over to his bed and shook his shoulder, trying to wake him up. It did not work, he simply rolled over and buried himself under the covers.
"Jay, five minutes will not change anything, now get up," I said, hoping he would awake. No such luck, he would not budge.
Looking outside the window, I saw that it was snowing. It gave me an idea, but before I acted upon it, I flipped up the cover on my arm and turned on my humor switch. It can not hurt to have an alibi, correct?
Stealthily, I crept over to the window and opened it, allowing the frigid air to enter our warm room. I scooped up some snow on the window sill and formed a few snowballs. Once I had a small arsenal of the frozen spheres, I took one in my hand and turned to Jay, who began to snore very loudly.
"This should wake him up," I muttered as I began pelting him with the snowballs.
As soon as they hit him, Jay cried out in surprise and fell off of the bed, kicking and punching at his frozen enemy. Once he realized that he was not in danger he calmed down. I think. He wasn't kicking or punching, so I took that as a sign that he relaxed at least a little bit. He just laid there, panting heavily.
With my humor switch on, I could not help but laugh. The sudden sound immediately caught his attention. His head snapped to my direction and his eyes narrowed, his mind putting the pieces together as to what happened.
"What the brick man?" he shouted indignantly.
I simply flipped up my arm cover, turned off my humor switch, and replied, "You did not wake up when the alarm went off or when I used conventional methods, so I resorted to an unconventional method, which provided positive results."
He folded his arms and muttered something a long the lines of, "Yeah, well you didn't have to throw snowballs at me."
I chuckled and replied, "I heard that, now get dressed. The others are probably up by now."
And I was right, by the time Jay and I changed from our sleep wear to our uniforms, our comrades were already downstairs eating breakfast. The five of them were seated at one of the tables in the back of the inn, near the fire-place.
"Morning guys," Nya greeted cheerily.
"Good morning Nya," Jay responded dreamily, forcing his way past me so he could sit next to her.
"What took you two so long? We're almost finished eating breakfast," Cole asked, taking a bite of the delicious looking pancake that was on the plate before him.
"Yes, my young pupils, you two are rather late this morning," Sensei Wu commented, sipping from a cup of hot tea. He set the cup down on the table and continued with, "We have a long couple of days ahead of us. With the Serpentine no longer posing a threat, we must focus on young Lloyd's training in the art of Spinjitzu." The aforementioned youth looked up at the mention of his name, but quickly returned to his cereal when he realized he was not being spoken to.
"My apologies, but Jay would not wake up at the appropriate time, so I had to improvise."
"Dude! You threw snowballs at me!"
"Well, at least you cooled off for a little bit." Everyone began to laugh at my observation, but I did not see what was funny. He most certainly cooled down when the snowballs hit him. Oh well, sometimes my friend's sense of humor perplexes me.
Suddenly, we heard a new voice say, "Well, it seems like you are all in a more relaxed mood today. I trust you slept well?" We all turned to see the elderly inn keeper, Miss Lin, standing before our table with a plate of more of her appetizing pancakes in her hands. She set the plate in the middle of our table and Jay and I filled our own plates with them, devouring them hungrily.
"So you two are the heavy sleepers of the group," Miss Lin commented with a light chuckle, "Well, you're all lucky you got out of bed before I opened up this old place, or else you'd have another situation similar to yesterday."
Kai shuddered at the memory. "Yeah, definitely don't wanna do that again. Do you know that some lady cut off a piece of my hair yesterday?" I noticed that Nya snickered quietly at her brother's anecdote.
Lloyd simply scoffed at him. "Well, at least you didn't have a bunch of old ladies pinching your cheeks all day!"
Miss Lin cocked an eye brow at the young green ninja and gently scolded, "Now be nice, young man. Some of those old ladies are my friends."
Lloyd's face turned a light shade of pink, I did not know he was capable of changing color, and it caused our kind hostess to fill the air with her light laughter. "Don't worry, I was only joking with you, little one," she then turned to Sensei Wu, "And I would advise that you and your students vacate soon, Wu. My early patrons will be arriving shortly and are likely to cause a commotion if they see you all. The woods will be an excellent place for you to train during the day, and I'm sure my grandchildren will not mind being your guides whilst you're visiting."
Sensei Wu stood up and bowed to Miss Lin. "Thank you for your kindness, Lin. I am glad that not all of my old comrades have forgotten me."
She bowed back, messing up her bun slightly, and gave Sensei Wu a knowing smile. "Well, we wouldn't be where we are now with out your father. It should be I who is giving thanks." Something within my deeper programming told me that she had a double meaning to her words, but now was not the time to read into them. Right now was the time to finish breakfast so that we could begin to train Lloyd.
Once we, well Jay and I, finished breakfast we made our way to the kitchen where Miss Lin said the back door was. She told us that we should be able to find her grandchildren by the creek in the woods right behind the inn. As we exited the inn she called out, "If you don't find them right away, check the trees, they like to climb them."
It did not take long for us to get lost in the seclusion of the forest. Everything looked the same to me; just trees and snow. Birds could be heard chirping about in the branches above. Little forest critters were scurrying about, minding their own business.
As we traversed the quiet world of white, I heard Kai ask, "So whose bright idea was it to go into the woods to find the kids who are going to be our guides for the woods?"
Nya shook her head and replied, "Calm down Kai, we'll find them. The creek can't be far; just be patient."
Jay then got close to Kai and added dreamily, "Yeah Kai, Nya's right. You need to be patient."
Kai pushed him away from himself and muttered, "Whatever," ending the brief conversation there.
We came upon the creek shortly. It was a fair-sized body of water, cutting a steady path through the trees. It was not quite cold enough for the water to completely freeze, so chunks of ice floated sluggishly down the creek. A few reeds broke through the snow around the water's edge. Looking up and down the shore line we saw a few small animals indulging themselves with a drink, but no people could be seen anywhere.
"See? I told you this was a bad idea," Kai muttered impatiently.
"Oh, shut it Kai," Cole spat back, "Just because they aren't here the second we arrive doesn't mean they aren't close by. We just have to find them. Besides, Miss Lin said to check the trees if we didn't find them right away."
"Cole is correct," I reaffirmed, "She did indeed tell us to check the trees if we were to locate her grandchildren."
And so began the quest for Miss Lin's grandchildren, which was actually much more difficult than we initially thought. To start, my comrades and I did not know either of their names, so it was not like we could call out to them. The other issue was that we did not know our way around the forest, and none of us were very keen on splitting up to find these people. We spent a good amount of time debating on whether to divide into groups and go searching for them.
In the end, though we did not appreciate that the situation arose, all of us agreed to split up. Nya, Lloyd, and Sensei Wu chose to stay on the ground around the creek. My three brothers and I broke into two groups; Cole with Jay, leaving Kai and myself. My falcon was instructed to circle the woods and report if he saw anything. In an instant, I was leaping through the branches, my crimson ally as my only company.
For a while we did not see anything out of the ordinary, which made Kai more angry. Then suddenly, I saw a flash of light blue, only a few yards away. "Kai, stop. I think I saw something." I directed to where I saw the blue and we immediately crossed the distance.
At the new tree we could not see any hint of a human's presence, that is, until Kai spotted something. "Hey Zane, come check this out. Seems like one of our guides is messing with us."
I looked past him and saw an arrow lodged in the trunk of the tree. A piece of paper was attached to it. On the note in small, neat words were:
Catch me if you can.
From,
Your Guide
After pondering the short message, I said, "Hm, it seems as though our elusive comrade wishes to engage in a contest of some sorts."
In that instance, I felt a light breeze by my cheek followed by a low thunk. I looked towards the trunk and saw yet another arrow, with it another message.
What was your first clue, genius?
By the way, you better hurry up and finish reading this.
I'm probably long gone by now.
~Bye
"Great, just great, this kid is gonna send us on a wild goose chase through the woods," Kai groaned loudly before beginning a long and rather random monologue in a hushed and angered voice.
I chose to ignore his hot-headed rant and contacted my falcon. When he responded, I instructed for him to help us track down our mysterious archer. In a short amount of time he found us, gesturing to follow him through the trees. It felt like hours as we dashed from branch to branch, the trees blurring together in shades of brown, green, and white. There was no sign of the archer anywhere and I was beginning to grow worried that we would not find our way back to the others.
That concern, however, disappeared when I heard the sound of flowing water. My feathered friend had led us back to the creek, our comrades standing by its banks. They were surrounding two people whom I did not recognize. The one was a male wearing a navy blue jacket, his hood up and a scarf covering the lower half of his face. He did not seem to be holding a weapon, but that did not mean he was not hiding one. His stance suggested that he was irritated with his partner. She was in a light blue coat, her hood up and her face covered as well. And she was another story completely. In her hand was a long bow, a quiver of arrows on her back. She stood with such an air of confidence, she almost looked like a female version of Kai. Could she have been the archer Kai and I were chasing? I do not know, but I am sure I will find out in just a few short moments.
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Oooooh, cliffhanger. I just love making cliffhangers. Any who, ta ta for now!