It was almost midnight when Zane entered Lloyd's room at the Plaza, their headquarters for the evening. He had made sure that the brown ninja got home safely from the police station, and upon hearing from Lloyd that everyone was on their way back to the hotel, he had returned as well.
Nya had asked the staff to send up a few drinks and the remainder of the desserts, and Zane smilingly accepted the plate Cole offered him.
"You still haven't cut into your birthday cake, Lloyd?" Zane asked with a glance at the table.
"Nah, I thought we're gonna wait for Jay and Kai. They'll be here shortly."
"Any luck with your investigations?" Zane inquired.
Pixal shook her head. "I guess it was stupid to think they'd drop an envelope with their names and address on it," she said sarcastically. "I should have known better than to think we were really reenacting one of those classic detective stories."
"Oh, come on." Zane took a seat next to her and gave her a brief hug. "We did the ninja job, let the police do theirs. They're right now interrogating the gang members we captured."
She was about to reply when the door opened with a bang, and Kai and Jay burst in.
"You almost electrocuted me, Zaptrap!" Kai scolded.
"Nonsense. You wanted to get an electric shock from that dart board, and I prevented it. A dart board, can you imagine? And Mister Hothead almost fries it and gets zapped in the process ..."
"Well yeah, after you froze your fingers in that box of crushed ice. You'd suffer from frostbite if I hadn't warmed your hands up."
The other ninja looked at each other.
"The discussion was rudely interrupted by our two friends making a rather noisy entrance," Zane declaimed theatrically.
"Their task had been to keep their ears open at Laughy's club and search for clues that would help our team see through the game of that mysterious Dartfrog gang. What they had done in reality was not entirely clear from their conversation. It appeared that they had acted about as inconspicuously as a pink rabbit dancing quickstep on the salad buffet."
Jay and Kai looked bewildered for a moment. Then they began to grin widely. Nya giggled and almost spilled her drink. "You're hilarious, Zane!"
"... the Master of Water said. She was so familiar with the antics of her brother and her boyfriend that she saw no reason to be concerned. Quite the contrary, she seemed greatly entertained by the situation. The same was true for the Master of Earth, who miserably failed to hide the fact that his amusement almost made him choke on his popcorn," Zane continued with a quick glance at Cole, who was indeed trying hard to suppress his coughs and chuckles. Suffice to say, it didn't get easier with Zane's dry remark.
"Only our dutiful young team leader did not join in the boisterous merriment. Stern-faced and composed, he waited impatiently for his friends to come to their senses and provide a useful report so that he could devise a plan for their next steps."
All eyes were on Lloyd immediately, who had not even been aware of his own scowl; but it was true, he had been a little bit annoyed by the silly behavior of the other ninja ...
"Zane, stop it!" Pixal whispered, half irritated and half amused.
"Uh, the lady always had a soft spot for the green ninja," Zane teased with a glint in his eyes. "And her inbuilt sense of responsibility prevented her from openly approving of such a display of silliness. But her heart revealed ... Ouch!"
Pixal had poked him in the ribs rather hard, but at the sight of Lloyd bursting out laughing and the other ninja all literally wiping the tears from their eyes, she couldn't contain her mirth any longer.
"What?" Zane said innocently when the laughter subsided at last. "I was only making observations. As any good detective would."
"Yeah …" said Lloyd, still chuckling. "The Master of Sass in his Element. But talking of sleuthing … I hardly dare ask, but did you make any useful observations?" He looked at Kai and Jay.
"Hey, yes, we were going to tell you about it when Zane somehow went off on a tangent," Jay grinned. "We made small talk with the barman, and he mentioned that there had been a bit of a commotion earlier this evening. Nothing serious, he tried to play it down, I think he didn't even inform Dareth. But enough for him to call one of the bouncers and send him to the pool room. So of course we offered the bouncer a drink next."
"Yeah, and he said the whole situation had been a bit weird," Kai continued. "The pool room had been booked by that Dartfrog Club tonight, and suddenly a couple complained that the balls on their table were useless and they needed replacements. So they started to search through the cupboards with the spare billiard balls – only the staff is supposed to open them, you know – until the bouncer arrived and talked to them. He says he knew them by sight, they should have known who to ask if they wanted other balls; he also said that they tried to make him think they were drunk and therefore behaving oddly, but he knew better. They were just acting plain weird. In any case, he ended up politely throwing them out. But he couldn't really make sense of it."
The ninja exchanged surprised glances. The incident seemed strange, but given the type of people frequenting Laughy's bar, it was perhaps not too much out of the ordinary. Yet the bouncer had thought the matter worth talking about, and Dareth having been ambushed on the same evening by a gang wearing masks in the colors of the Dartfrog Club was just a little bit too much of a coincidence.
"So what did you do next?" Lloyd asked.
"Well, we decided to have a look round," Jay admitted. "That was when Kai tried to take the dart board apart ..."
"I didn't, I was just checking the wall behind it!" Kai hissed.
"… and I, accidentally, caught my finger in the lid of a box with crushed ice. I may also have spilled some of its contents. No worries," Jay added quickly, "the bouncer was with us all the time and approved of what we were doing."
"More or less, yeah," said Kai with a smirk. "At any rate, he didn't throw us out, and he promised to keep his eyes open for those guys in the future."
Lloyd hummed, and the ninja pondered what they had just learned.
"A lead …" muttered Zane. "Or is it a red herring?"
After a brief discussion of the events, the ninja concluded that they had not enough information to plan further steps right now. Instead, they finally lighted the candles on Lloyd's cake, sang a very much out of tune version of Happy Birthday, and their birthday hugs quickly developed into a veritable dogpile on Lloyd's bed. Lloyd, with tears in his eyes – whether from almost being crushed under the others or from emotion was not entirely clear – proclaimed that he'd never had a better party in his life.
It turned out that Nya, Jay, Cole and Kai had a surprise in store for the nindroids as well. With a little smile, Nya produced an envelope with the Plaza's letterhead and handed it to Pixal and Zane.
"You know, we very much appreciate you having planned and prepared this evening – it was great fun. As a thank you, we'd like to offer you a voucher for a new, special facility here at the Plaza. Since there are more and more humanoid artificial intelligences active in Ninjago, the Plaza decided to offer a so-called droid spa." Nya glanced at the envelope in her hands and read. "A place to pamper yourselves and recharge your batteries in a more than figurative sense."
She beamed at the nindroids. "We thought you might like to be the first ones to try this, and booked a couple of hours in the private spa suite for you. Tomorrow morning, which ..." she glanced at the clock, "... actually means today." She grinned. "When I ordered it, we had no idea how much you might need it."
Pixal smiled back at her, looking positively delighted. "That's really nice of you!" she exclaimed. "I read about the Plaza's new facility in a brochure and wondered what it might be like, but I would never have thought of treating myself to it. We didn't expect anything like this from you at all, it wouldn't have been necessary!"
"Why, yes, Pixal," Jay interjected, "you deserve it, both of you! Who knows what would have happened to Dareth and Gayle if you hadn't been there. It's a good moment to spoil ourselves."
Cole gave him a quizzical glance and nudged him in the ribs. "'Fess up, you booked a treatment for Nya and you as well? Ah, I knew it!" he smirked when Jay blushed slightly, well aware of the stern look Kai gave him.
Zane had been quiet so far, only nodding in agreement when Pixal thanked the ninja for their gift. He couldn't help but feel slightly alarmed. "But ... how is that spa treatment supposed to work?" he asked. "Doesn't such an arrangement usually include a hot tub or bubble bath? Should I have brought my wet suit?"
Pixal looked at him with a curious expression, and the corners of her mouth began to twitch.
"The one you wear in the hot tub at the monastery? Oh, no," she said with an amused glint in her eyes. "Don't you dare come to the spa with me in that thing. I'd pull it off you with my own hands."
How embarrassing. Cole snorted, Kai and Jay exploded with laughter, and even Lloyd and Nya couldn't help chuckling. It was painfully obvious that Zane, unlike Pixal, had no idea what to wear at a spa. He dropped his glance and felt his face becoming rather hot. But it wasn't over yet.
Pixal put her arm around him. "No need to blush," she said with a gentle smile. "It's a private suite, and it's not like I've never seen you in your boxers before."
"Whoo-hoo! Did you hear that?" Kai cheered.
Jay whistled through his teeth, and the other ninja laughed.
Zane felt as if he was going to overheat there and then. Pixal, however, looked in the round with a perfectly straight face.
"What? I am the one who does most of the repairs on his hardware. Does anyone really think I can do that through his gi? Laparoscopically, perhaps?"
Lloyd frowned. "What, exactly, does lacaro... lapasco... anyway, what did you mean?"
"She means that she doesn't insert tiny tools through the buttonholes of his clothes and check his hardware with the help of a camera," Nya explained, hardly able to suppress her giggles. "It's perfectly normal that Zane has to undress for repairs."
"Oh ok, sure," Lloyd agreed. He was visibly struggling to memorize the new word he had learned.
Zane desperately tried to find a way to steer the conversation into a different direction. "So, what exactly does that spa look like?" he asked Pixal bashfully.
"Well, it's a special arrangement for droids," she replied. The other ninja had, thankfully, abandoned the topic, so she could explain to him in quiet: "I think there may be a steam bath, but no water, because many droids are less waterproof than we are. They know what they're doing here at the Plaza. Trust me, it will be very nice."
There was no time to go into details, because all of a sudden, Lloyd's mobile phone rang. He took it, rather surprised, and looked immediately alert when he recognized the voice of the caller.
"No problem. It would have been switched off if I was already asleep." He sat up straight. "Really?! Now that's interesting … The police commissioner!" Lloyd whispered to the other ninja. "May I put you on loudspeaker? The whole team happens to be with me right now."
And so the ninja learned that Gayle Gossip had indeed brought her report of the attack on Dareth and herself into the late-night news – but with an unexpected twist: when she had called the police, she had asked for an officer to accompany her to the studio and be available for a short interview. She seemed to be on such good terms with the police that they did not deny her request; of course, any statements at this point in time could be speculative at best, and the officer had contented himself with a few commonplace phrases. But the important part of the story was that while waiting for Gayle after the show, the officer had noticed a suspicious person outside the building. He had the presence of mind to request backup and inform Gayle, and since she was not one to shy away from a risky move if it promised to result in a good story, she had agreed to leave the studio seemingly alone. Sure enough, she had hardly stepped a hundred yards into a badly lit alleyway when a dark figure lunged herself onto her and snatched her bag from her; but the attacker was overwhelmed by the policemen who came to Gayle's aid.
"This newswoman would do a lot for a first-hand report," the commissioner stated with a dry laugh, "and when our team realized that she really was up for this, they acted in a very professional manner. It took two people to get hold of the assailant; she's a smart, agile fighter, but we put her into custody."
Zane looked up at the description. It was not too hard to put two and two together and conclude that this must be the very attacker who had escaped him earlier that evening.
"The reason for me calling you and letting you in on this," the commissioner continued, "is that I would like you to let me know of any further information you may have gathered. In the light of these recent developments, we cannot consider the earlier attack as an isolated event any more. We are, however, completely in the dark as to what the goal of both attacks would have been. Ms. Gossip did not carry any valuables with her, just a small purse; in fact, the biggest thing she had in her bag was a set of billiard balls."
Cole put down his cake and Kai almost set his napkin on fire as they listened up together with everyone else. Another coincidence?
With a quick glance at the others, Lloyd gave a summary of the events at Laughy's club; but if the commissioner drew any conclusions, he did not reveal them. The ninja, however, could hardly sit still any longer. When the commissioner mentioned that Gayle was still at the police station, Lloyd reacted quickly.
"She will certainly want someone to escort her home," he remarked. "One of us could pick her up!" He listened for another moment as his suggestion was apparently met with agreement. "Yes," he nodded, "that would work."
The moment he hung up the phone, everyone started talking excitedly.
"Did you hear that? Billiard balls again? Two assaults in the streets and that incident at Laughy's on the same evening?!"
"We need to talk to Gayle," Pixal stated.
"Exactly," Lloyd agreed. "That's why I said I could pick her up." He glanced at the clock. "1:15 in the morning ... But we didn't come here to sleep, did we? I guess I'm on my way, then."
"No, birthday boy." Cole got up, swallowed the last bite of his second piece of cake and put his hand on Lloyd's shoulder. "I'll go. I haven't done much yet tonight. It won't take me too long to drive to the police station with my bike, take Gayle home and come back here."
"Really? Thanks, Cole!" Lloyd nodded gratefully. "I'll stay awake, in case you find out anything interesting."