Cole paced back and forth restlessly as the others watched him.
The only sound that could be heard was the tick-tick ticking of the clock; a steady beat amidst the thick silence.
Kai swallowed and said, "So, let's talk about the elephant in the room."
Everyone's head snapped towards him. The Fire Ninja wilted slightly under the stares, but he remained confident.
"So, Zane is...I don't know, some weird human-fox-bird-animal hybrid thing, and somehow, we did not know," Kai said slowly, choosing his words carefully.
"Yes, and?" Lloyd gestured for him to continue.
"For all we know, he could've been doing this for years without anyone knowing. And, uh, he's gone. Poof."
"Do you think he went to some other dimension?" Nya asked at last.
"I mean, it's definitely a possibility." Jay nodded in agreement, squeezing Nya's hand gently.
"But the question is, which dimension," Cole said gruffly, still pacing back and forth.
"Maybe there's something in his room that can lead us to it," Lloyd suggested.
"It doesn't feel right looking through his stuff, though." Nya frowned.
"What other choice do we have?" Jay argued gently.
And so they searched their comrade's room, not going over any nook or cranny.
Nothing was found.
"It's like he just walked off the face of the Earth!" Jay complained.
"Mmhmm," Kai said, still, stubbornly, looking.
A slip of paper fluttered out from behind Zane's headboard.
"Huh? What's this?" Lloyd bent down to pick it up.
A worn photo laid in his palm. It was hard to make out the people, but there appeared to be a white caracal, a penguin, and an arctic fox with an identical design from what Zane had looked like before he fled.
"Guys...?"
The old photo was passed around, like a game of hot-potato.
Carefully, each Ninja examined it, trying not to tear the fragile photo.
"What are these?" Cole asked, handing the paper back to Lloyd.
"They look like humanoid animals," Lloyd answered, replacing the photo in its spot behind the headboard. It was better to leave it there, where Zane would find it again.
"How much do you wanna bet that's where he is," Kai said, looking back in the direction of its hiding place.
"Okay, but how do we get there?" Cole demanded, to which the hot-headed ninja held up his hands in an 'I-don't-know' kind of gesture.
"What about Traveler's tea?"
"Where would we get it, Jay?"
"Steal it from Wu."
Lloyd whipped his head around. "No."
Jay backed up. "I was joking! I was joking!"
Nya, on the other hand, looked rather thoughtful. "What if we ask him for it instead of stealing it?"
". . . That could work," Cole said, the briefest of brief flashes of doubt on his face.
Nya seemed to have seen it. "You don't think it's a good idea?" She sort of smiled, but her eyes looked a bit hurt.
"Wh-No! I think it's a good idea, it's just that, who's going to watch Ninjago while we're gone?"
A beat of silence.
"What about Skylor?" Jay suggested. "Or the Elemental Masters, if they're free."
". . . That's. . . brilliant, actually," Kai said.
Lloyd gave them both a look. "What're we gonna do, barge in and say, 'Hey we're leaving Ninjago for a bit to find our resident Ice Ninja who's actually some weird fox thing from another dimension, would you watch Ninjago for us'?"
"I can't believe we're actually doing this," Lloyd huffed.
"Hey, you're the one who said it, we're just going through with it." Jay smiled mischievously.
"I didn't mean it literally! It was like, a-uh, a rhetorical question!"
"Do you even know what 'rhetorical' means?"
"Do you?"
"Touché."
Nya pretended to shove the pair apart. "Girls, girls, you're both pretty."
They walked in.
Skylor turned her head as they walked in. "Hey, guys!"
"Can you watch Ninjago for us?" Cole asked.
Skylor raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
Kai elbowed the Earth Ninja. "Something came up, and we need to leave for a while."
"Feel free to ask some of the Elemental Masters to help," Lloyd added.
Skylor hesitated a bit. "Yeah, okay sure. Just don't be too long. Who knows what'll happen."
"Yeah, we got that." Lloyd dragged the others out of the door. "'Kay, bye!"
They were gone.
"Never again," Lloyd said cheerfully.
"Yeah, wasn't planning to," Cole snarked.
They reached the door of the Monastery and walked inside.
"Now we get the tea," Kai said, rubbing his hands together.
"Oh, so I heard that-"
"Not that kind of tea, Jay!"
"Right, right. Sorry."
"I'll go ask," said Lloyd, before disappearing down the hall.
They waited in silence. Heavy, stuffy, thick silence that enveloped them and swallowed them up. No one talked. No one dared to start any kind of conversation. They felt as if it'd be more awkward than the silence.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Lloyd returned. He was holding a teabag in his hand.
"Is that it?" Kai pointed to it.
"Yeah."
Jay clicked his tongue. "So now we just have to brew it."
"And find out which dimension Zane went to," Cole added.
"You're a little ray of sunshine today, aren't you?" Nya sassed.
"Yeah, I guess I am."
"Wasn't there writing on the back of the photo?" Lloyd said, cutting both of them off. "Maybe there was an address there."
Kai leapt to his feet and left the room. Silence flooded the room once again.
"This is like a poorly written chapter of a fanfiction," Jay mumbled, receiving a smack to the back of his head by Cole.
After many, long, agonizing minutes, Kai reappeared. "'Kay, so he's in some place called the 'Octo-dimension'."
"So I guess that's where we're going," Lloyd said as he started preparing the tea. He'd have prepared it earlier, but Wu had always told him that he should never let his tea steep for too long. He figured his uncle would have flipped out if he did.
So they waited. And waited. And waited. Before long, the tea was finished. And now, they just needed to go.
Lloyd picked up one of the bags they had prepared earlier. They didn't know what kind of weather the Octo-dimension had, so it was better to be safe than sorry.
They walked out into the courtyard. Lloyd tipped the tea out of the pot, and a portal appeared where it made contact with the ground.
One by one, they went in. One by one, they left Ninjago to go into a whole new world.
When the last of them had gone through, the portal closed.
Wu watched them as they disappeared.
"Be safe, my pupils."
Okay, not some of my best work, but I tried okay