"Nya, I'd like to talk to you about something ..."

After another day of work on the broken engine, the water ninja had been about to recline on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate in her hands; but when Jay addressed her, she sat up and put the mug down with unnecessary force.

"If this is again about me forgetting my tools on the coffee table and making a mess in a room that isn't designed for this kind of repairs, I'd like to remind you that Kai already pointed it out to me in the morning. As you can see, I've cleaned everything, I've moved my stuff to the hangar because it's finally warm down there, and I don't know what else ..."

"No no no no no." Jay held up a hand. "It wasn't about that at all."

"Good." Nya took a deep breath and looked somewhat appeased. "What was it about, then?"

Jay had pondered all day whether he should mention his encounter of the previous night, and he still didn't quite know how to start.

"Have I been having dreams lately?" he asked hesitantly. "You know, like, weird stuff that scared me and that I couldn't remember afterwards?"

Nya frowned. "No, not to my knowledge. I mean, we all know you're easily startled sometimes, and there was that period some years ago when you had anxiety issues and started sleep-walking, but that was because you'd had a really rough time ... we both had, actually, when we were clearly remembering things that hadn't even happened ..." Her voice trailed off.

"No." Jay shook his head. "That's definitely not what I meant."

He didn't want to think of that time. Leaning against Nya, he put his arm around her shoulders. "Would you mind sharing your chocolate with me?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Too lazy to go to the kitchen and get your own mug?"

He nodded and gave her a puppy-eyed look.

She laughed. "Help yourself."

Jay kissed her on the cheek, took the mug from the table and sipped at it. "Thanks."

Nya gave him a sideways glance. "So, what was this about?"

He shrugged. "Guess I just wanted you to confirm that I'm not generally ... you know, seeing things."

"No, you're not." Nya grinned suddenly. "Except that one time when you asked for a glass of water in the middle of the night, and when I came back you stared at me in horror, called me queen Murtessa and thought I wanted to force feed you Munce food ..."

Jay groaned. "Don't remind me. I'm so sorry. You were wearing those new water green pajamas with the brown, furry bits around the cuffs." He sighed. "That was a really weird nightmare."

She giggled and snuggled up against him. With Nya by his side, the sizzling fire in front of them and hot chocolate in his stomach, Jay felt that the shadow from last night was very, very far away. If Nya forgot how this whole conversation had started, he wouldn't mind.

"You still haven't told me why you're worried about visions – or whatever it is."

Oh well, he wouldn't be able to drop it, then.

"Yeah, ok. You know, last night when I ..."

The door opened, and Kai and Cole entered, bringing a gust of cold air with them.

"Hmmm. Do I smell hot chocolate?" Cole asked immediately.

"In the kitchen," Nya replied. "Could you get some for Jay, too?" she added, winking at Jay who quickly put down her half-empty mug and tried to look innocent.

"Sure." Cole turned on his heel and was about to leave the room again when a little gray fur ball darted through the door, jumped onto an armchair and climbed up the curtain. Lloyd followed hard on its heels but was stopped when he bumped into Cole in the doorway.

"Hey." Cole reached out to catch Lloyd by his shoulder to prevent him from falling. "Easy, man. Your kitty makes enough trouble without you following her up the walls."

"Kitty?" Jay asked curiously and turned round to look for the gray fur ball. Sure enough, a kitten was sitting on top of the curtain rail and looked down at them with bright, golden eyes.

Kai screwed up his face. "Not. My. Idea. Lloyd insisted on taking her home."

"Her name is Mikka. She looks healthy and is very clean for a stray cat," Lloyd defended his new pet.

"And has already proven her excellent manners." Cole followed the gray fur ball with his eyes as she suddenly took a leap from the curtain rail to the coffee table, almost knocked over Nya's mug, shot through the room, and jumped onto the pool table. She landed amidst the pool balls, looking stunned for a second, and then began to chase after the 16 smooth, round toys she'd found. A kitten's paradise.

"Hey, stop it! Shhhhh," Kai tried to shoo the kitten away. "You're scratching the felt!"

"You can't imagine what it was like to drive a car with that little witch climbing everywhere," Cole sighed and left for the kitchen.

By the time he came back with a tray and mugs of hot chocolate for everyone, Lloyd had managed to catch his kitten and held her tightly in his arms.

"There's more milk in the fridge," Cole remarked and nodded at the kitten. "Perhaps you'd like to feed her?"

"Cow's milk is bad for kittens," Lloyd began, "I'd much rather give her ..."

"Whatever," Cole interrupted. "My point is that you may want to take her to the kitchen. And when she's not hungry anymore, she might like to take a nap. In your room."

"With the door closed," Kai muttered.

Seeing the stern look on the faces of his friends, Lloyd nodded meekly. "Ok."


"So what's the story of that cat?" Nya asked. Kai had sprawled on the sofa next to his sister, while Cole put his mug on the table and opened his laptop. "I thought you two just went to see that friend of Misako's, whose house was broken into last night?"

"Yeah, that was the plan," Kai replied with a grimace. "He's a weirdo. Turns out he's not only a mineral collector, but also feeds all the stray cats of the neighborhood. They're everywhere in his house. And one of them, well, took a liking to Lloyd. I thought she was cute, too, until I realized that Lloyd wanted to take her home, and we'd have to transport her in our car."

"Without a basket," Cole added without taking his eyes from the computer.

"Oh, I can imagine the ride you had," Jay snickered.

"I'm sure she'll calm down once she's settled in here," Nya interjected. "Or Wu's chicken will teach her manners. But tell us more about that burglary: you say the guy's a mineral collector? Was anything stolen from his house?"

"Well, yes, but nothing a common thief would consider valuable. It's strange. The collector owns a few gold nuggets and some particularly nice quartz steps and geo... Cole, what did he call those things?"

"Geodes?" Nya prompted.

"Exactly," Kai agreed. "Anyway, they didn't take those. In fact, they took nothing from the fancy display cabinets. They opened all drawers, and the guy was livid because they left a terrible mess – but in the end he admitted that he'd been lucky, because the only thing missing is one vintage gemstone. He showed us a picture, and it doesn't look special at all. He thinks the thieves may have been interrupted before they got to the more precious pieces."

"Wait, this doesn't make sense," Jay interrupted. "Why should they leave the stuff in the cabinets alone and instead search the drawers and take an item that isn't even of value?"

"That's exactly what we said, too!" Kai exclaimed. "So we asked a few more questions about that stone. Turns out it's a mineral only to be found in the mountains of Shintaro, and judging by its shape, it was probably once part of a larger gemstone. Cutting that gem apart must have diminished its worth considerably. But that's about everything the guy could tell us about it."

"A Shintaran gem again," Nya observed. "Isn't that an interesting coincidence?"

Cole looked up from his laptop for the first time since he had opened it. "Way too much of a coincidence." He pointed at the screen. "Look, there were pictures in the news of all those gemstones that have disappeared lately. The necklace in the imperial jewel collection originated from Shintaro, too, by the way."

He made a brief pause to give his next words more weight. "What if I tell you that the stone that was stolen last night looks exactly like the one on the dagger from the collection of the museum, and both look like the center stone of the necklace? Same color, almost the same shape."

"Well ..." Kai suggested tentatively. "It might just be a very common gemstone in Shintaro, so it would likely be present in any collection of Shintaran jewelry?"

"It's not." Cole shook his head. "I double-checked. You said yourself that it doesn't look special. It's not a typical gemstone. It looks rather like ..." He searched for words and shrugged. "A polished pebble, so to speak."

It was Jay who asked the obvious question. "So why would anyone steal those stones?"

Cole turned to him. "That's exactly it. I've been thinking about it on our way back – well, I tried to, when I didn't have Lloyds kitten on my shoulder." He pulled a face. "The whitish color of those stones, the fact that there are several of them, with virtually the same shape ... those things reminded me of something."

He gave the other ninja a cautious glance. "Don't make fun of me, because I'm afraid we're venturing into the territory of ancient tales and legends here. But if they're true ... I don't know what to make of this."

"Ahh, I love stories," Jay said, delighted. "Wait a sec and let me just get another cup of chocolate."

On his way to the kitchen, he met Lloyd, who stood in the hallway with a concerned look on his face.

"Mikka doesn't eat," the green ninja said sadly. "Whatever I try to give her, she just sniffs at it and turns away."

"She's probably not hungry," Jay tried to reassure him. "You'll see, the first time you let her go outside, she'll come back with a mouse. But now, let her snooze for a bit and come with me," he added cheerfully. "Cole's about to tell us a story!"

Lloyd glanced once more towards the door of his room, but then his curiosity took over, and he followed the blue ninja to the living room. Everyone looked expectantly at the Master of Earth.

"Well, the stolen stones," Cole cleared his throat, "reminded me of a story I first heard from my mother." He dropped his gaze. "I was very little," he said quietly. "We used to sit by the fireplace just like here."

Nobody broke the silence when the black ninja made a brief pause.

"It was a story about a young woman," Cole continued, "a gem cutter in a far away country. When I was little, I had no idea that this country was real. Only when I met Princess Vania and we talked about the lore and history of her people, I realized that my mother had told me a legend she'd heard from the sky folk in Shintaro."

Cole put the laptop on the table, stretched his legs and gazed into the crackling fire.

"Vania knew the tale about the gem cutter, too. A skilled craftswoman, but more than that; she was also an adventurer who'd climb mountains and explore caves to find precious stones to cut and polish. People said she had not only a special sense for stones, but could also talk to dragons.

One day she brought home a piece of rock that didn't look like much, but it felt different in her hands than other stones she knew. She went to her workshop at the king's court to remove the outer layer of dirt and brittle material and found a milky white, slightly translucent stone underneath. It had a dark vein running through it, which formed a ring within the stone. Encouraged by the king, who took great interest in the natural treasures of his country, she ground and sanded the stone."

Jay leaned back, rested his arm on the back of the sofa behind Nya and caressed her shoulder, slowly moving his hand towards the nape of her neck and back. She smiled and scooted closer towards him while she continued to follow the story attentively. Jay contentedly stretched his legs. Cuddling with his Yang while listening to the Master of Earth, far and away the best narrator among the ninja, was definitely better than fretting about a mysterious shadow that might or might not have visited the monastery the other day.

"To everyone's great surprise, the stone became more and more translucent with every polishing step," Cole continued. "When the gem cutter had finished her work, the dark vein inside suddenly turned golden and made the whole stone glow. The moment the stone started to glow in the young woman's hands, the king's pet dragon, a Shintaran Ridgeback, suddenly grew to his full size, lay down at her feet and protectively curled around her. With her powers and her craftsmanship, she had created a gem that allowed the user to summon dragons and take control of their magic!"

"Ouch!" Nya winced under Jay's hand. He must have accidentally zapped her.

"Sorry, water lily." He withdrew his hand and briefly nuzzled into her hair, while Kai shot the couple an angry glance. "This is just too exciting."

"The king, a wise and kind ruler, realized immediately how dangerous this gem could be in the hands of the wrong people." Cole kept on talking as if there had been no interruption at all. "But it was impossible to keep its powers a secret, seeing the effect it had on all the dragons around. The stone was stolen by a ruthless general, who assembled an army of Ridgebacks, brought the armed forces of the sky folk under his control and conducted a campaign into the neighboring regions of Ninjago. It took months for the king and those loyal to him to overthrow the evil general, bring the gem back, and establish peace with Ninjago again."

Jay's eyes widened. "And what happened to the gem?"

"The king and the gem cutter agreed that it must be destroyed. She cut it into four pieces, making sure that the magic vein inside was cut apart as well. The stone lost its translucency and golden glow; its power over the Ridgebacks was gone, and the king of the sky folk promised them that they should be free from the spell for ever. Dragons and humans in Shintaro continued to live peacefully together."

Cole fell silent, and Jay glanced up impatiently. This surely couldn't be the end of the story? At that moment, however, a loud clank resounded through the courtyard. Cole, sitting closest to the window, got up and glanced outside.

"First Master!"

He turned round to his friends. If his exclamation had not already startled them, the peculiar expression on his face definitely did.

"Would anyone care to come here and tell me that I'm not hallucinating?"


Zane knew exactly what had happened to him. In fact, he had given his explicit consent, because it had been made clear to him that he had no choice. It had been the only possibility to get out of there, the only option that gave him a slight chance to warn his friends, and the only way to protect Pixal from being caught and disabled – dismantled, perhaps.

Again. Like in Chen's dungeons.

He would never, ever have allowed it, he would have done anything to prevent it. And it had been promised to him that nothing bad would happen to her. They would not dare to touch her, right?

He had jumped at the opportunity he got, but he realized now that things were more difficult than he'd anticipated. He would have to proceed with utmost care.

No, he wasn't happy with his situation.