"The Time Window stopped working." Mina said in an effort not to panic. A good five minutes beforehand, she and Alice were sliding on the steel floor in their socks. It had been rather fun, except Mina accidentally ran into the machine operating the Time Window. The machine started to make a funny sound, then the earth started to shake- now Mina feared Cyrus coming into the room any minute now to ask what was going on to find her red handed.
"Alice, get away from the window and come help me!" Mina frantically said as she look at the machine's console with no clue where to begin.
"I think that the activities occurring outside would be more of interest to you." Alice said. Confused, Mina stopped looking at the console and went to the window to see what Alice was looking at.
"Son of a..." Mina started to say, but cut herself off. Outside, five undeniable young men in their distinctive colors interwoven in their street clothes were being chased by a hoard of angry kids.
"This plot is not very kind to you, is it?" Alice noted.
"And I have a feeling it's not going to get better." Mina said before turning on her heel. "Come on, we have to get them before they get hurt. Or worse- Cyrus finds out."
. . .
"What did they feed these kids?!" Cole demanded after taking a look back to see the unrelenting party kids still chasing them. "They're still after us!"
"Mass quantities of disaccharide sucrose?" Zane guessed.
"This isn't a normal sugar rush Zane!" Jay shouted. "If it was, we'd be home free by now!"
"I don't know, you haven't gone through a sugar rush the way I have." Lloyd told Jay. "The Skulkin couldn't keep up with me for a good six hours before I finally crashed."
"Can we concentrate on running before a hoard of twerps catch up with us?" Kai demanded.
"Right!" the other four agreed as they continued to run. That is, until they started to come to a fork in the road. With split second thought, Jay, Cole, Zane, and Kai went down the right path and Lloyd ended up going down the left path. The angry mob of kids did not notice Lloyd's choice in direction and instead went after the other four. Not noticing that Lloyd had been separated, the four ninja continued to run until they came to a dead end.
"Great." Jay said unhappily as the four turned around to face the hoard of children. "Now what?"
Quickly looking around, Zane saw a fire escape and gave a small smile at the solution.
"Up." the Nindroid told them, pointing to the fire escape.
"Perfect plan Zane!" Cole agreed as the ninja started to get up on the fire escape ladder, which was too high up for the kids to reach. Once the four of them were safely out of the angry kids' way, Jay turned around and gave them a raspberry before continuing to climb up to the roof with the rest of the ninja. From there, the ninja got a better view of the city- and it was when they realized that they certainly not in the Ninjago they knew anymore.
Fluttering through the air, a newspaper drifted around Cole's ankle. Out of curiosity, Cole picked the newspaper up and read the headline and the date.
"Hey guys..." Cole started to say, his face slowly draining of color, "Please tell me the date on the newspaper isn't what I think it is..."
. . .
Meanwhile, Mina and Alice were on foot in an attempt to catch up with the ninja.
"They split up." Alice informed Mina in a short tone.
"What?!" Mina said, almost so shocked that she stopped running. Alice nodded.
"Lloyd has taken another path than the others." Alice told Mina in a affirmative tone. "The others are now safe at the top of Mystake's Tea Oddities, but the path Lloyd chose..."
Mina groaned with an angered realization. In her disbelief she ended up running over someone and they both collapsed to the ground with a terrible thud.
"Sorry..." Mina mumbled as Alice helped her stand up again. "Next time watch were you're going."
"Of all the welcomes I expected, I did not think you would choose a fairly rude one." a familiar voice told her from the person she had bumped into. Mina looked up and instantly recognized who she had run into.
"Monty?" she said in surprise, but not at all remorseful.
"If it would kill you to say hello, I suppose I could start first; hello Minerva."
Sure enough, Mina had run into Montgomery. The older teen wore circular wire frame glasses that were fully visible between strands of his bowl cut black hair. Montgomery dressed like a cross between a business man and a high school chess nerd with an argyle sweater vest and ironed white dress pants. Montgomery was alone either, with him was an older woman with a crisp, short hair cut and dressed in a red dress with a black sash adorned with a blue holographic phoenix design.
"Miss Nya!" Alice exclaimed happily to the woman. "It is quite a surprise to see you here! Are you the reason why Montgomery has came back earlier from his mechanical refinery seminar?"
"Why yes, actually!" Nya agreed with a kind smile, showing the faint lines of crow's feet. "I don't know why Montgomery wanted to go to that class, he knew everything the teacher discussed!"
"I told you Mother," Montgomery said in a firm tone, "I enjoy the way he explained the process- you didn't need to pull me out so early."
"Alice," Mina spoke up, "We have somewhere to be, remember?"
"Where?" Nya inquired with curiosity. "Must be pretty important, I can't remember the last time you ran so quickly for something you couldn't see what was in front of you."
"We're following the five Legendary Ninjas!" Alice happily told Nya without a single thought- Mina slapped her forehead in disbelief. "Lloyd was separated from the rest of the group and is about to get mugged soon if we don't go help!"
"Lloyd...?" Nya asked, as if it was a made up name. "Are you sure?"
"Yep." Alice agreed. "He -along with Cole, Jay, Kai, and Zane- traveled from the past into the future, which is now our present because of a new machine Cyrus created that could open a hole in the space time continuum, but they interrupted a birthday party and were chased by a mob of very angry children and they were separated, now Cole, Kai, Jay, and Zane are safe on top of Mystake's Tea Oddities but Lloyd is going to be mugged by illegal Spinjitzu practitioners who will totally whip his butt to the point that he won't be able to go back to the past so that Mina would exist and the entire space time continuum would be destroyed in a blink of the eye!"
Nya stared at the android for a moment, then shook her head as if to erase the long speech out of her mind.
"You two get Lloyd and bring him to Borg Industries as unharmed as you can, Montgomery and I will get the others." Nya instructed Alice and Mina. With a nod, the two girls were off to rescue the Green Ninja.
. . .
Lloyd wasn't an idiot, he knew he was lost. Before, he did try to go back the way he came when he realized he wasn't with the rest of the group- but that seemed to only get him more lost than what he was.
"On the wrong side 'o the tracks, ain't we?" a voice said from behind him. Lloyd whirled around to see two thugs coming toward him with wide, smug smiles.
"I don't want to hurt anyone." Lloyd told them, holding his hands in the air to show innocence.
"Oh don' worry, we ain't the ones tha's gonna hurt." a thug told him. With that note, to Lloyd's surprise, the thugs then performed perfect Spinjitzu to maim Lloyd in every place imaginable on his body. One thug succeeded to pick Lloyd up and toss him across the alleyway and into a brick wall. Lloyd groaned in pain as he fell to the ground in a heap. Defenseless and stunned on the ground, Lloyd flinched as the thugs started to move closer toward him to finish him off. But something happened- a thug hit the ground in unison with the sound of a steel pipe being knocked against a head. The other thug turned to fight back, but was also struck hard with a steel pipe before he could defend himself. Lloyd barely managed to open his eyes to see someone peering over him. A young woman looked at Lloyd curiously as colors started to swim and blur in his mind from the force of being thrown against the wall at a high velocity.
"M... Mom...?" Lloyd mumbled as his vision started to fade into black. The young woman placed a shaking hand on his head carefully as Lloyd finally lost consciousness.
"Don't worry..." she softly said through the darkness, "You're safe now."
