Zane

Upon returning to the camp, Zane and Cole found no one there.

No basket with Lloyd inside, no Kai and no Jay.

"Please don't tell me Kai's at it again," Cole groaned. "Not now. Not with Lloyd around."

Zane tilted his head as he watched the tree where the basket was mere minutes ago. "I understand that Kai may get a little violent at times. But if this was him, then there would've been more of a struggle and he would've taken Lloyd out of the basket instead of taking it with him."

Cole sighed. "I know, I know."

"Someone else must've come here and…"

Cole turned to stare at Zane. "It's weird that we know the difference between Kai and some random kidnapper, right?"

Zane nodded. "It is."

"If they have Kai, then things won't end too well," Cole mused.

Sit Chairsalot twitched from where it was sitting.

At first, Zane thought it might be because of something underneath the chair that was crawling out, but when nothing came out and the chair started shaking, he realised that it may have something to do with Jay, who used the chair to focus his telekinetic powers on ever since the suppressor for that broke. They got kicked out of their home before the youngest (until Lloyd came along) member of their group could fix it.

"Should we…" Cole looked at the shaky chair. "Should we follow the chair?"

Zane poked the chair, causing it to fall over. It stopped shaking.

"Okay, so we don't follow the chair," Cole said, looking at it with disappointment.

Zane picked it up and got a surprised look from Cole. "You know that Jay's going to be heartbroken if we don't bring it with us. And without his suppressor, things WILL get thrown."

Cole turned his tail back into legs. "If Jay focusses his telekinetic abilities into the chair, then maybe we can use it to find him. And if Kai and Lloyd are with him, then three birds with one stone, right?"

Zane's falcon squawked in response.

"Sorry," Cole apologised. "Bad choice of words."

Zane agreed with Cole. About the bad choice of words, and the chair.

Cole turned his legs into a tail again and made himself as tall as possible before letting go of it.

His tail turned into legs again and the chair started hovering a few feet in the air.

"And now, we…" Cole started to say, but the chair started floating away. "Wait!"

Now the two of them had to run after the chair, which was making a lot of twists and turns, and flew into several trees along the way.

"Come back!"

"Cole, it's a chair!"

"We have to catch it!"

The two of them chased the chair for another half-hour or so, when they arrived at the foot of a very steep, very tall mountain. When Zane looked up, he could see a red object flying overhead and landing at the top. He could see the basket he and Cole wove for Lloyd hanging from the red object.

He told Cole that.

The chair floated a little longer, then it dropped in front of some stairs.

Zane! I thought Kai's sister killed you!

Cole apparently also heard Jay's voice in his head, because he replied out loud.

"Kai has a sister?"

Her name is Nya, her favourite colour is blue, and while she did kidnap me, she thought that you two were holding us hostage and that she was saving us.

"What prompted this bizarre concept?" Zane asked, running up the stairs. "She's not like Kai, is she?"

If you're trying to ask if she's messed up like him, then not really, no. She's the girl Kai thought might be related to someone he touched by accident, remember? And then I found out that she's actually related to HIM, but he can't remember all that well because he touched like a million people before he realised that something was up? Kai thought that Samukai killed her? I showed her to you guys, just in case one of you ran into her? Come on, guys. You know what I'm talking about.

Cole turned into a twelve-year-old girl with black hair and brown eyes, and his clothes changed into a faded red dress that went down right by his ankles as he dragged the chair after him. "You mean this girl?"

Yeah, that's her. Just… a little older and not wearing that dress. Like this.

Zane suddenly got a mental image of the same girl Cole had turned into, but a little older and wearing a different dress. Still a red one, but this one was much nicer and not as long. It was also of a bigger size.

According to the image Jay sent to him and Cole, the girl was hugging someone under a blue sheet.

It's Kai. She wanted to hug him, but there are holes in his clothes and he doesn't want her to know about his powers until he can remember her more clearly, and he wanted to hug her back, because he really missed her, but he didn't want to accidently absorb her into his mind, coz that would just be plain wrong.

Cole suddenly turned back into his natural form. Zane suspected that Jay asked him to, because it would not end well for anyone if that happened.

Nya would freak. Then all of the ninjas here would freak. And then, Kai would freak. And we all know how that usually… OMG! You guys brought Sir Chairsalot?!

Cole looked at the chair he was holding behind him, then up at the peak of the building. There was some kind of building there. "You need it to focus your powers, right?"

I do, but I didn't…

"You guys are so adorable together," Jay could be heard saying from beyond the gates that were now in front of them.

Zane opened the wooden gate in front of them.

Suddenly, a little blond ball of energy tackled him and Cole in a hug. "Cole! Zane! You're alive!"

Cole told Jay how they followed his chair up the mountain (Jay seemed very amused about it), then he looked around.

"Hey! You're alive!"

When Zane found that Cole was talking to the Blue Ninja, who Kai stabbed in the throat and threw into the White Ninja as hard as he could, he was, just like the rest of their group (except for Lloyd, who nobody told about the incident), pleasantly surprised.

The four of them thought that the ninja had been killed.

When Kai was on his way back to their part of the tomb, Zane had to quickly put Lloyd to bed, because Kai had blood all over him.

Jay was quiet for a few minutes after that, mumbling every few seconds before he went back to acting as if nothing happened.

It wasn't strange, considering the fact that he had been kidnapped by two cults, the first one which had several people killed and didn't even bother trying to explain themselves, the second one which also had several people killed, but they explained themselves, telling Jay that they were doing it for the greater good, and the fact that he escaped both cults when the next person to get their hands on him killed everybody they could get their hands on.

It also wasn't strange when Jay started hugging his chair, because for the past three months, that chair was the only thing in his environment that he could control.

Fine, I have issues. But at least I don't hoard plants.

Cole was now talking to Lloyd.

"Look, I know we were great for these past few months, and it's been fun hanging out with you, but it's not good for a growing boy to live in the woods, on the run, with a bunch of weirdoes like us. I think it would be best for you if we left you here with your uncle and Kai's sister."

Tears started forming in the little boy's eyes, when the old man standing on the side spoke up.

"You should stay here until you can find yourselves a new home," the old man said. "We have plenty of room, and I believe that we have beds far more comfortable than my garden."

Jay turned pink when Zane tried to telepathically ask what the old man meant.

"Thank you very much," Cole told the old man. "But we don't want to impose."

The old man said that it was no problem and had Griffin Turner, the White Ninja, show the five of them to a spare bedroom.

Griffin was very chatty, but he seemed nice.

He is. The other ninjas think that he's a very nice guy, and the old man seems to think that he's one of the best choices he made for a ninja so far, because he doesn't get overconfident and make bad decisions.

"So, this is your room," Griffin told them, showing them into a room with two neatly made beds with another bed over it on the inside, each bed with a set of clean clothes on top. "We don't have enough rooms for each of you to have your own…"

"I… I need my own room," Kai told Griffin. "And where does Lloyd go? I don't…"

"I'm sorry, but we don't actually have enough rooms for everybody to have their own, and it would be unfair for Sensei to make an exception just for…"

"No, he needs his own room," Cole told Griffin.

"He snores," Zane added.

"Very loudly," Jay agreed.

"So does Karloff, and he doesn't have his own room," Griffin explained.

"Sometimes he screams in his sleep," Lloyd added.

Griffin shook his head. "I'm sorry, but there's just not enough room."

"Where does Lloyd go?" Kai asked again. "I don't think that he'll enjoy… bunking with you guys."

Griffin seemed to be thinking. "Okay, so one of you'll have to bunk with us then."

I can't bunk with the ninjas. I have weird dreams.

Cole couldn't do it either.

And there was the obvious problem with Kai.

"I'll bunk with you guys," Zane told Griffin. "I am very quiet and I do not walk, scream or talk in my sleep."

He was, after all, the most normal one of their group.

Somehow.


When Jay has weird dreams, things tend to float around and weird thoughts get broadcasted around the room.

Cole shapeshifts in his sleep, and often wakes up confused.

Kai might have a problem sleeping in the same room as the person he stabbed, even if Ash doesn't know it was him, and while the guys made up the whole story about the snoring and the screaming in his sleep, Kai still needs his own room.

Zane is the only one who doesn't use his powers in his sleep or gets confused by his powers.

No, Jay doesn't have chair fetish. Sir Chairsalot is his security object (it makes him feel safe).

Italics: Jay Telepathicly speaking.