"There will be dessert, too, right?"
Cole wiped his mouth with a napkin, took another sip of his drink and contentedly leaned back in his chair. The dinner had been as delicious as expected.
"You're not saying that you could continue eating right now?" Nya asked with wide eyes.
"Nah, I'm ok with a break." Cole winked at her. "Just a little one."
"That is convenient," Zane remarked and rose from his chair. "If you would all follow me? Lloyd, we have prepared a little interlude for you and the others before the last course will be served. A game to challenge your detective abilities."
"Wow." Lloyd beamed at him and jumped up. "I'm in!"
They all descended to the ground floor. A glance out of the window told Zane that he had been right in expecting a thunderstorm: flashes of lightning appeared, and the first drops of rain were falling already. Nevertheless, Sensei Wu and Misako insisted on taking their leave; the Sensei planned to head back to the monastery, and Misako wanted to spend the night at the place of a friend in the city.
"Where's Pixal?" Kai asked when the ninja gathered in front of an inconspicuous door down another hallway.
"You'll see," Zane replied. He felt at ease again. "My squad of budding detectives appears to be as eager as a pack of hounds picking up the scent," he smiled when he noticed Jay and Cole whispering excitedly and Lloyd bouncing on his feet. "That's good. Your task will not be easy, and I will leave you to your own devices as soon as the lady who called for your assistance has explained the situation."
Zane pointed at the door. "She will welcome you inside!"
Led by the green ninja, who beamed with anticipation, the group pushed into the room. They were met by Pixal, and to their utter amazement, she gave a compelling portrayal of a damsel in distress: wringing her hands and apparently on the verge of tears, she explained how her apartment had been ransacked and she herself had been lucky to escape unscathed.
A lamp had been knocked over, chairs stood in the way, and while the ninja began to survey the open drawers and strewn papers, nobody noticed Pixal silently approaching the door. Zane was the only one not to be startled when she suddenly let out a mad cackle.
"You really fell for my story, eh?" The fake helplessness and despair had completely vanished from Pixal's attitude. She eyed the ninja with a sneer. "You're doing me a great favor coming here to stay in this room. Excuse me, but I have business to attend to, since all detectives will be out of the way for the next hour!"
With these words, she turned on her heel and swiftly left the room. The door fell shut, and they heard an unmistakable click as it was locked. The ninja were trapped!
Jay, who stood closest to the entrance, took a step to tentatively turn the doorknob, but in vain. Cole and Kai looked as if they could not believe their eyes. Pixal's performance had indeed been very convincing, and Zane bit back a laugh when he watched the uneasy faces of his friends. Despite their knowing that something like this would happen, she had managed to take them by surprise!
He cleared his throat, which made Lloyd jump and spin around. All eyes were on Zane now.
"Well," he stated, "you know what this means: find the key that is hidden somewhere in this room and get out as quickly as possible, because in exactly one hour, the evil lady will be back at the door, and no one knows what will happen to you then. She seems to be determined to rid herself of nosy sleuths, because she's obviously up to no good ..."
He made a dramatic pause.
"Bonus points and an extra treat on the dessert buffet if you discover the clues that tell you what happened in this room and what crime she is about to commit!"
Zane gestured at the messy scene in front of them.
"Oh, and two more things: no powers! We've agreed on that before. Second, there's a water clock on the table, and it's started to count down the minutes the moment the door was locked. You've got 58 minutes and 32 seconds left!"
Zane's words spurred the ninja into action. They began to busy themselves with various items in the room while he stepped behind a curtain concealing the back room reserved for the game masters. Pixal was already there, having entered through another door that led into the same hallway as the front door. Peeking out from behind the curtain, the nindroids watched with amusement as the ninja excitedly, but in a rather uncoordinated manner searched the room and secured everything they considered to be evidence.
The thunder outside was growing louder, and bolts of lightning flashed. Zane looked at Pixal. She nodded, and he flipped a switch on the wall. The lights went out.
"Aaahhhh!" someone screamed. After a second, the desk lamp produced a sizzling and crackling noise and started to flicker again.
"Jay!" Zane exclaimed sharply. He had anticipated this, it was one of those moments when he was allowed to interfere. "No powers! This is part of the game."
"Oh, ok," Jay muttered apologetically.
The flickering stopped and the room fell dark again.
Dark? No, not quite.
"Kai!" That was Nya's voice. "Didn't you hear what Zane said? No powers!"
"I am not ..."
"So why do your fingertips look like five candles? He said it was supposed to be dark!"
"Ok, but I wasn't hardly using any Fire, just a tiny flame ..." Kai pouted.
Zane and Pixal looked at each other and slightly shook their heads.
"But what are we supposed to do in the dark?" Lloyd whined.
"You wouldn't believe they're ninja," Pixal whispered into Zane's ear.
"Oh, they are like that on real missions, too," Zane stated. "But they will eventually ..."
"Hey, I remember now, there was a set of torch lights on the counter," Cole exclaimed.
"... you see?" said Zane calmly and leaned against the wall.
"What?"
"Torch lights?"
"Why didn't you mention that earlier?"
"Where are they?"
The ninja shouted all at the same time. A commotion was heard, the clatter of something falling from a table, and Kai's complaint: "Ouch! You stomped on my foot!"
"Stop punching me with your elbow, then," Cole retorted. "I was about to grab those torches, but now ..."
Another loud bang was followed by Jay exclaiming "Hey! Don't knock the table over!"
Pixal flinched and facepalmed. "I remember now why it was you I fell in love with," she muttered.
"Yes, it wasn't like you had much of a choice," Zane replied mechanically while he listened to the sounds in the other room, wondering whether he would have to intervene again.
"Wait, what?" He turned round. "Did you just say you're in love with me?"
"Something like that, yes," she replied, giving him an amused glance.
He looked into her softly glowing green eyes and felt a couple of solder joints in his power source practically melting. Something seemed to have happened to his voice box, too, but another outcry from the adjacent room relieved him of a reply.
"Found it!" Lloyd rejoiced.
"But what kind of torch is that? I can't see a thing!"
"Way too small. Or, hang on, is the battery dead? Give that thing to me …"
More clattering and the sound of people bumping into each other.
"No, Lloyd, you can't. Not with your Energy. No powers, dude!"
"Ok, ok, but how the heck …?"
"Guys!" Nya made herself heard. "Guys, can you stop bustling about for a moment? This is a UV lamp. Whatever we are supposed to use it for, it's not …"
"Blood stains, huh?" Kai exclaimed.
"No, Kai," Jay corrected him. "To detect blood stains, you use luminol to produce a luminescent chemical reaction. UV is …"
"But they did use it in …" Kai tried to argue.
"You're watching too many bad CSI shows!" Jay cut him short.
"Guys!" Nya said again, her voice now slightly impatient. "Stop bickering, we only have one hour. Jay's right. Zane gave us an evidence-collection kit, and luminol is included, I already checked that. The UV torch must be for something else. But in case you haven't noticed, we're still literally in the dark here and won't find a single clue if nobody can produce the large white-light torch that was on the table when the lights went out. Who's got it?"
"Finally!" Pixal murmured. "Someone with common sense taking matters into her hand."
It took another few moments until the ninja managed to retrieve the right torch and lightened the room to proceed with their quest.
Zane straightened himself. "Seems like they're starting properly now," he observed, and Pixal nodded.
Exactly 52 minutes and 13 seconds later, the ninja had followed a trail of fake bloodstains, discovered a bundle of mysterious letters, deciphered encoded messages, found a hidden safe in the wall, cracked a combination lock and sat now around the table with a small casket in front of them. They were rather happy with how they had combined the various hints and clues to answer Zane's bonus questions, but the main problem was still not solved: they had not yet managed to find the key to escape the room.
The water clock next to them relentlessly counted down the remaining minutes, and the atmosphere grew tense as the casket did not do them the favor to open on its own.
"Come on!" Jay tapped his fingers on the table impatiently. "Any ideas, anyone? This is the last puzzle. The key to the front door must be in there!"
"Of course it is," Lloyd agreed. He took the casket and shook it violently. The clattering sound that followed seemed to confirm their hypothesis.
"Oh well!" Cole smacked his hands together, and an orange glow spread across his arms. "Just give it to me and I'll …"
"You won't!" Lloyd interrupted. "No powers."
"… says the one who keeps 'accidentally' throwing green energy balls around," Kai smirked.
"Nya, say something!" Jay implored. "Do something! With Pixal giving the baddie and Zane hiding behind the curtain, gleefully watching us fail, you're our last hope!"
The water ninja had been strangely silent for the last minute or so. At Jay's words, she gave a jump. "What?"
"Nya?" Jay's incredulous glance went back and forth between her and the water clock. "You didn't?!"
"Uhm …"
"Cheat! My little sis is cheating!" Kai shouted. Nya's focus wavered, and the last drops in the water clock, no longer under her control, suddenly fell down much faster. "Argh, watch this, time's running out!"
Jay, meanwhile, had turned his attention back to the casket in front of him. His brows furrowed in concentration as his long, subtle fingers felt around the wooden frame of the box, searching for cracks and ridges that might reveal something about the opening mechanism. All of a sudden, he felt something move under his index finger. With a slight jolt, one side of the box slid open.
"Got it!" he exclaimed. The key fell on the table.
Kai spun around.
"Quick! Let's get out of here!" He snatched the key up and darted towards the door. Everyone watched with increasing nervousness as he fumbled around for a couple of seconds. In his excitement, he almost set the key tag on fire, until he was finally able to insert the key into the keyhole. Just when he pushed it inside, it slipped from his fingers.
Kay looked at the lock in bewilderment.
As if by magic, the key slowly turned on its own. With a distinct clicking sound, the door swung open.
"Aaaahh!" Kai yelled. He quickly jumped back to avoid the door hitting his forehead. "Too late! We lost!"
"What?" In the now open door appeared, no less surprised than the group in the room …
… not Pixal.
The ninja gasped as they stood face to face with Ninjago's most dedicated TV journalist.
Gayle Gossip blinked. "Oh. The ninja?! Kai, you gave me quite a fright!"
Kai only stared at her, and Gayle laughed. Despite her brief shock, she seemed to be in a particularly good mood. "I'm sorry to disturb you. I was surprised to find the passageway to the bathrooms locked and thought someone had played a little joke, because I could easily unlock it and turn the handle from the outside. But I must …"
She took a step back from the door and glanced around.
"Oh, no! I really went down the wrong hallway. This place is so large, I can never find my way around it."
"No problem." Nya was the first to recover from her surprise. "We were just about to finish a game and everyone got a bit tense, that's why Kai screamed like a madman when you caught him unawares," she said with a telling look at her brother.
Pixal had made her way from the back room to the hallway and appeared behind Gayle.
"Pixal, what do you say, did we make it?" Jay asked excitedly. "Or doesn't it count, because the door was opened by Gayle?"
"No, that would be unfair!" Lloyd whined.
Gayle looked back and forth between them.
"This seems to have been an exciting game indeed!" she observed. "I'm very sorry if I messed up your finish."
Pixal smiled. "I think we'll stretch a point here," she said generously. "Great team work, everyone. A few attempts at using your powers, which may have gained you a couple of minutes or so", she gave Nya a sharp glance, making the latter blush, "but overall, you've passed your detective test with flying colors!"
Gayle clapped her hands. "Congrats to you! I'll let you celebrate, then. And I should be off, too," she winked, "there's someone waiting for me!"
"Have a nice evening, then," Pixal said amiably, and Gayle left them with a girlish giggle.