Chapter Two:

"Where's Kai?" Jay didn't bother to raise his voice, knowing how light of a sleeper Zane was.

To his surprise, it was Cole that answered him. "He...fell out of bed. You ok there dude?"

Jay leaned over the edge of his bed, to see that Cole was telling the truth. His red clad roommate was lying flat on his back on the floor between the two bunkbeds. Kai lifted a hand up, shoving his fingers through his rather spiky hairdo. "Fine... I just had a nightmare is all."

Jay sighed with relief, before he began to babble nonsensically. "Oh good! For a minute there I thought that you like, had something in crawling on you or something. But nightmares are totally normal and not at all creepy! Why, I just had one myself! You see, there I was standing on this cliff in the middle of nowhere..."

"Hey! I think I'm going to go get a glass of milk! Anyone want to come with me?" Kai lunged for the closed door, his eyes betraying the fact that he was desperate to escape from Jay's babbling.

Zane chuckled as he stood up, humor dancing in his eyes. "I will come with you. Cole?"

Cole shook his head, pulling a pair of noise-cancelling headphones out from beneath his pillow. "Nah... I think I'll go back to sleep." Slipping the headphones on, he passed out within seconds, a loud snore escaping him.

"Someone's tired... night Jay." Kai left the room, Zane right behind him.

Zane watched quietly as Kai poured them two glasses of milk, his expression tense. "Was it a nightmare, or was it how you ended up in the small Orphanage in that fishing town."

Kai jerked, nearly dropping the pitcher of milk. "How did you know about that orphanage?"

"I did research back when you first joined us. Apparently when I was downloading my memories to save them, I thought it prudent to keep that memory." Zane watched Kai for a minute, before picking up his glass of milk, calmly sipping at it. "Odd really since your reaction clearly means that I hadn't revealed this to you in the past. My deepest apologies." Zane lowered his glass, nervously running a finger along the rim. "Kai...I've been meaning to ask... how did you and Nya end up in the middle of the ocean on nothing more than a tiny raft that should have been dashed to pieces out there in the first place."

Kai took a shaky breath, staring intently at his reflection in the kitchen window for several long seconds. "That's... a long story Z. Maybe another day."

"Does Nya remember?" Zane lifted his glass to his lips again, figuring that he might has well finish the drink off.

Kai sat his empty cup down, flexing his fingers ever so slightly. "No... she doesn't know. She was too little to remember what was going. We were both so little..."

Zane finally finished off his drink, and sat his cup in the sink next to Kai's, wishing that his best friend would open up and tell people what had happened that day...or days. No one knew for sure how long they had been drifting before the fisherman pulled them out of the ocean. "We best get back to bed."

Kai nearly fell out of bed when he heard an extremely loud banging noise in the doorway to his room. A quick glance around revealed that his mentor was waking them up for training exactly thirty minutes too early. And with the night that they just had... "Sensei, we're not supposed to get up yet. Can you please let us sleep?" Kai fell backwards unto his bed, pulling his pillow over his head to try and keep the ringing gong from hurting his sensitive ears even further than they already were.

Sensei responded pretty well to that outspoken protest, none of the others had said anything, they just rolled over. "Up. Now." Sensei yanked Kai's blanket off, forcing the teen to get up.

Cole groaned as he rolled over again, yanking his noise cancelling headphones off of his head as he looked bleary eyed at Sensei Wu. "What's the emergency?"

Jay opened his mouth, ready to point out that Sensei didn't need an emergency to wake them up early, when Sensei cut him off, his voice tinged with worry. "Werewolves have attacked a small village near the coastline."

Kai jerked suddenly, crashing loudly into the bedpost. "Sorry...just did you say werewolves!?"

"Not good! Not good! One bit or scratch from those guys and we'll be werewolves... and I don't want to turn into a wolf whenever there's a full moon!" Jay yelped as he scrambled to get his gi out.

"Stereotypes."

Cole snagged his gi up, for some reason it was in his bed with him, a frown crossing his features. "It's not even the full moon. That's next week."

"Again. Stereotypes."

Zane strode towards the door, already fully clothed. "Let's get going now. The sooner we can get the witnesses reports, the better."

"Yeah...and we don't want to be taking their reports when they go wolf on us during the full moon." Cole nodded in agreement.

"Seriously? Again with the stereotypes."

"Think you can handle this report for me Kai? I need to get this fellow that was scratched into solitary." Lloyd helped an officer that was pressing a damp, slightly bloody, rag onto his left upper-arm.

"Stereotypes." Kai muttered once again under his breath, annoyance edging his voice. Nodding to the officer's wife and children, he responded to Lloyd. "Yeah... I can handle that."

Lloyd nodded his thanks, before leaving Kai alone with the sobbing woman that was bouncing a little girl on her hip as if she were a bouncy house or something. "Will Daddy be ok?" A small boy, no older than three at most, tugged at Kai's sleeve, forcing the teen ninja to bend down.

"He'll be fine. They just want to make sure that he is at his one hundred percent." Kai assured the child, ruffling his blonde hair playfully.

The boy looked relieved at that, turning to run over to his older brother that was standing nervously behind their mother. "You heard that Kal? Daddy's going to be ok!"

"No he ain't Ace, Daddy was scratched by a werewolf so that means he's one of them now." The boy stomped his foot, worry creasing his brow.

Kai bit back, and failed miserably, a low, angry growl. "Stereotypes!"

"Uh?" The boys turned to stare at him.

Kai cleared his throat nervously, "I was just saying... we actually have no records of anyone meeting werewolves before. So, everything we know is technically rumors...and we shouldn't presume stuff about them before we do some more digging that does not involve horror stories or movies." Kai rolled his eyes skyward, before turning around to see if he couldn't find himself some help.

Easier said than done. Jay was assigned to help Cole and they had their hands full with a rather large family, and he couldn't see Zane and his sister anywhere, though he figured that they were probably interviewing the candy store owner that had reported the sighting originally. A low growl tore from Kai as he clenched his fist, claws digging into his flesh. He really didn't like the idea of werewolves attacking Ninjago...