"Monty I need your help." Mina declared as she came into the lab room. No one else was there but Monty and her… and the falcon perched on Mina's shoulder.
"Not now." he demanded, waving an absent-minded hand at her. "I'm going to test the Time Window again. Stand back… or not, see if I care if your molecules get thrown all over the space and time."
Taking note that he sounded as cranky as she was, Mina did as she was told before Monty started to type in a complicated sequence into the console. The machine started to hum to life but Monty continued to type in commands before looking over at Mina.
"Brace yourself." he warned. She nodded and backed up a bit more as the young genius flipped a switch. The Time Window responded to the new stimulate instantly, as the humming grew louder and started to emit a low glow (something that certainly didn't happen before, Mina realized). For a bit, it seemed as if it was going to work, but the Time Window made a noise that made Mina jump.
Monty responded quickly to this and started to type commands back into the console again. It wasn't working, and the Time Window started to shake dangerously. Monty let out a low growl before giving the poor machine a hard kick- the Time Window stopped shaking in return, then gave out a quick, bright beam of light before shutting off altogether.
"Well," Monty sighed as he pushed his glasses back up on his nose, "That just happened..."
"What happened?" Mina questioned, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the normal light again. The flash had been so quick and bright that she was now seeing spots. Monty was too, but he didn't care, and started to go fix a panel underneath the keyboard.
"Apparently, it was an influx of power from this present, aided by another influx of power from the past to create a stable time loop to affirm this current timeline."
"English, Mont?"
"You just saw what happened, yes?"
"Yeah…?"
"Well that just collided with the first one."
"The first…?" the girl started to question before spotting Monty's less than pleased expression that she wasn't catching on, "Oh! When the ninja first appeared, that time right?"
The genius nodded. "Exactly." he affirmed. "We have just secured the past so that we can come back to this conclusion. With that being said though, we are now back where we began."
"Wonderful. Now can you help me?"
Monty looked up at her underneath of his glasses. "With what?" he snapped.
"I was wondering if you could… fuse Crow with the Time Window. Maybe it could give him the extra ROM space or something to locate them, to get on their trail and not on… the other trail. Please?"
The young genius looked at the desperate girl in a contemplative expression. "The falcon would have existed in the same time that the ninja were from… and if connecting the time lines together for a brief moment in time was harmful, the falcon is a robot with replaceable parts- he's no stranger to being repaired after all..."
Mina watched nonchalantly as Monty walked over to her, and put a hand on the shoulder the falcon was sitting on; this led to the bird flying off and to the top of the Time Window. "Min, you're a freaking genius." Monty told her before pulling her into a surprise hug. The girl let out a surprise squeak as Monty held her close in a tight embrace- this was not normal for him. The last time Monty hugged her was when they were kids, and that was because he thought he had accidentally killed her, even then it wasn't as tight as he was hugging her now.
"Montgomery, you're scaring me." Mina warned, peeling herself off of him. He responded willingly and recomposed himself.
"The timelines are changing." he informed her sternly. "The sooner we get the ninja back, the better."
"What about my problems?" the girl questioned. Monty gave her a slow blink.
"We have spin-offs for a reason." he answered with a snide smirk.
. . .
Kai woke up the next morning with the sunlight streaming through the ninja's temporary bedroom and feeling way too tired. It was like he had been training all night, but that couldn't have been right. After Mina came in and he tried to go back to sleep, Kai had been dreaming about… something. There was a lot of arguing, he remembered that much. But with who? A part of him wanted to say that it was with himself- but that would have been stupid. Who argues with themselves in their sleep?
The red ninja staggered his way to the kitchen to find something to eat. It was apparently very late in the day, a little past noon at the most. He couldn't find anyone on his way over, not that he particularly cared in his current state. They were probably training or something.
Kai continued to stagger his way to the coffee machine and waited for it to fill the cup up. Taking it with a grunt, Kai sat down at the breakfast bar and slowly started to sip the very hot coffee black. It didn't help him wake up any faster, but at least he was getting some kind of nutrient into his body this late of day. Kai didn't even notice when Alice walked in, humming cheerfully to herself.
"Oh!" she marveled when she saw him. "Hello Kai!"
The tired red ninja gave her a nod to acknowledge her and mumbled a 'hey'. Alice took this as a sign to sit down next to him. She looked at him with her ever present grin as he continued to sip away at the coffee.
"There's something… different about you." she decided.
"Tired." Kai grumbled, giving her a dark look.
"No, no, not that silly!" Alice laughed. "I'm picking up strange energies around you- kinda like a brain wave signal I think. Mmmm..."
"What?" Kai questioned, feeling uneasy that she was giving him a pensive and thoughtful look while still giving off a Stepford smile.
"Have you been having strange thoughts lately?"
Kai nearly choked on his coffee, and ended up spitting some back into the cup. Alice watched on as if nothing were wrong and waited for him to recover.
"What thoughts have you been experiencing?" Alice inquired.
"Mina came into the bedroom last night," Kai told her, "And while she was in there it seemed like someone was trying to talk to me. The thing is, it wasn't just the normal voice at the back of you head, it was like..."
"Like what?"
"It was like I was talking myself. A version of myself that knew more than what I do now."
"A version of..." Alice contimplated, tilting her head side to side as she thought. "Oh!"
"Oh?"
"Come with me!" Alice suddenly declared, grabbing Kai by the wrist and forced him out of his seat as she rushed toward the door. "I know exactly what to do!"
Kai yanked his arm away from Alice and stopped immediately in his spot. "And what exactly do you plan on doing, besides yanking my arm off?"
"We're going on a road trip!" Alice cheered as she clapped her hands together. "But we have to sneak out, no one has to know where we're going or we'll get in big trouble!"
"Road… trip…?" Kai squeaked, already sure he was going to hate this plan.
. . .
"That's genius Minerva!" Cyrus reveled after Monty had explained the new plan to him, Nya, and Zane.
"That's what I told her." Monty agreed with a nod. "And I was thinking, perhaps we could have other objects that existed throughout the current timeline to create a more stable path to the past. Which means," he turned to Mina, "We'll have to take a trip to Midori Blaise to collect some things of Kai's to reconnect his timeline."
"I can get some of Jay and Cole's stuff too." Nya joined in. "I'll ask Cap to see if he can raid the bounty for something of Lloyd's."
"I can donate a few spare parts." Zane agreed.
"And I'll look for other pieces of Zane's history around the tower." Cyrus added.
"So what do you say Mina," Monty then said, giving her a small half smile, "Are you ready to go home?"
QUICK AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've been stuck writing this chapter for the longest time, and this was certainly not how I originally planned it would go out either. I could come up with a million and one excuses but it doesn't particularly matter. What does matter is that I'm considering rewriting Time Window- removing at least two characters, making better allusions to the ghosts and Djinn, removing Mina's side plot almost completely and skimming over that she's a pile of untapped destruction, replacing the Overlord with the Preeminent, and some other things. What would you like to see? What do you think I should improve during the rewrite? Please let me know as it could be a very large overhaul and I would like to improve this to the best it can be.
Thanks again for reading, and here's to more chapters!
