AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hello to all! Shoutouts to the following commenters on the previous chapter:

lovesgod12 - Hope your St. Patrick's Day was happy. My family member measuremesky and I are of Irish ancestry, but measuremesky suffered from some food poisoning last weekend. So much for luck of the Irish!

FirstFandomFangirl - You're right! Kai and Sam don't seem to catch a break, whether they are in the 1800s or the 2000s! Speaking of the 1800s, I hope to soon post the next chapter of The Fire Within a Ninjago Soldier.

StoryMaker7 - Thank you for your kind words! I'm glad you enjoy the story.

AveXCninja - I know, right? If I were Sam, I know I wouldn't be too happy about Kai going away right now!

Also, thanks to FirstFandomFangirl for commenting on the final chapter of my previous tale, The Fire Within: Trouble in Paradise.

Chapter 3 below (as well as the future Chapter 4) chronicles the day after Kai, Cole, and Zane have left for their mission...

Chapter 3 - Another Hot Summer Day

The sun had not quite yet risen the next morning when Sam suddenly woke up. She found that she had fallen asleep last night on the sofa in the Bounty's living room while watching TV.

RIIING!

It was the phone in the control room that had wakened her. From her vantage point on the sofa, she watched Jay sleepily shuffle into that room to answer it.

"Hi, Cole," she heard him say.

It's the guys! Sam jumped up from the sofa and headed into the control room. She caught Jay's eye and waved. He waved back as she settled into a swivel chair for one of the desks, hoping for a chance to speak with Kai once Cole was done talking. In a few minutes she got that chance.

"As a matter of fact, you can tell him his lady is waiting right here. Maybe that makes her a lady-in-waiting?" Jay joked into the phone. "OK, OK, I'll turn the phone over to her. You guys stay safe."

Jay handed the phone to Sam. He waved goodbye as he headed back to bed.

"Hello?" she said into the receiver.

"Hi, Sam!"

"Kai!" she exclaimed, happy to hear his voice. "Did you guys make it there all right?"

"Yeah, we just got in about half an hour ago. The trip was pretty uneventful. By the way, thanks for the snacks!"

"You're welcome," she replied, smiling into the phone. "So where are you calling from now?"

"Right now I'm using the phone in the sleeping quarters. Cole and Zane and I are gonna get a few hours of shuteye before we head out to our assigned areas. We've already met the wildfire combat chief and some of the other guys, and they gave us a briefing on what they'd like us to do. What are you doing up so early?"

"The phone woke me up."

"Oh. You're not too mad, are you?"

"Of course not, silly," Sam chuckled. "When will you be able to call again?"

"The next chance we get won't probably be until midnight, 'cause the three of us are going to be doing 16-hour shifts until these fires get under better control."

"Ugh!" Sam reacted. "You should get to bed now. It sounds like you'll need all the rest you can get!"

"Yeah, I guess I should. I can hear Cole's snores already."

"Well, be careful! Looking forward to your call tonight."

"OK. Love you, Sam!"

"Love you, too, Kai!"

The first rays of the morning sun shone through the window as Sam hung up the phone.

She was happy that Kai had called and that the journey to the mountains went smoothly. She felt a little uneasy about the guys working a 16-hour shift on minimal sleep, but then again, she supposed their endurance level was high due to all their training.

Though Sam normally would be sleeping for another hour, she realized she was now wide awake, so she decided to return to the room she shared with Nya to get ready for the day. Fortunately, Nya was not a light sleeper, so Sam did not worry about waking her up as she prepared, even when she turned on the radio. The radio announcer reported that today's weather would be hot and dry - again.

Sam rolled her eyes.

The top-of-the-hour news reports followed. Sam turned up the radio volume a little so as not to miss any mention of the forest fires.

Indeed, there was a news story about the fires. They had spread to a place called Oracle Mountain.

Maybe that's where the guys will be working today, she thought.

All the other news stories were also related to the weather conditions. Farmers were having trouble keeping crops watered, so food prices were expected to go up. The water level on Lake Ninjago had decreased by an inch in the last week. And water rationing in Ninjago City was being considered by the city leaders.

Sam turned off the radio. She was already rather depressed by Kai being gone, so she didn't want to hear additional negative news.

Sam decided that in order to keep Kai's absence off her mind today, she would concentrate on getting a lot of items on her to-do list completed. First thing was to finish addressing and mailing those wedding invitations. If she pushed herself, she could have them done by one o'clock.

The bride-to-be decided that after the invitations were mailed, she would then paint the bedroom walls of the cottage, which currently sported only a coat of white primer. A gallon of light tan paint, recently purchased by the couple, was waiting to be used. Light tan would go well with red decorative accents. Now would be a good time to paint the bedroom because the furniture, which the couple had ordered several weeks ago, was scheduled to be delivered in two weeks.

Sam fixed herself a light breakfast, then set up her paperwork area at one end of the dining room table so that the others could eat at the other end when they arrived to eat breakfast.

At around 12:30 in the afternoon, Sam addressed the final invitation. Relief washed over her as she affixed the last stamp.

To celebrate, she decided to make one of her favorite lunch items, a chicken salad sandwich.

Since she hadn't seen Nya around the kitchen since breakfast, she went to the control room to ask if Nya would be also interested in a sandwich for lunch.

"That sounds great, Sam. Thanks!" Nya responded when Sam offered. "Then we can talk about dinner - tonight was supposed to be Zane's turn to cook."

"Oh, you're right," Sam said. "I can check to see what we have in the freezer."

Sam returned to the dining room, only to find Jay and Lloyd standing at the table, looking over the bundle of wedding invitations, all addressed and stamped. They looked up as she came in.

"Wow! All these people are invited to the wedding?" Jay exclaimed, motioning toward the pile. "That's a lot of people who are gonna see Kai trip or do something stupid like that," he teased.

His comment earned a chuckle from Lloyd and a playful punch on the arm from Sam.

"What are you guys doing in here now, anyway?" she asked.

"Uncle ended training early, again," Lloyd explained.

"Well, would you guys like some lunch? I'm about to make chicken salad sandwiches."

Upon receiving two affirmative responses, Sam took a large sized bowl out of the cabinet and began to prepare lunch for everyone.

Refreshed after her lunch, Sam left the Bounty and walked the hundred yards to the cottage so that she could begin painting the bedroom. She unlocked the front door and walked inside. To her dismay, the temperature in the little house felt like it was 100 degrees.

I guess I'm going to have to come here every day and open up the cottage just to get the air circulating, she thought to herself, mentally putting "air conditioner" at the top of her list of home improvements.

She walked through the living room of the cottage, where the gifts from the bridal shower in her hometown were still stacked from two weeks ago, and made her way toward the back of the house into the bedroom. Immediately she opened up the bedroom windows.

Next, she went back to the stack of gifts and found the two electric fans given by Mrs. Jones, who had lived down the street from Sam's family for years. Since the thank-you notes for all the shower gifts had been written and sent by Sam last week, Sam felt free to take the fans out if their boxes and start using them, and so she set them up to start circulating the air.

Sam could already tell that the painting project was going to go a bit slower than she hoped. So she was grateful that two potential items on her to-do list were going to be taken care of by others. Lloyd had offered to take the invitations to the post office as he went into the city to do an errand for Sensei. And Nya had offered to take over Zane's dinner duties so that Sam could concentrate on painting.

Sam got out the roll of painter's tape in preparation for the first coat of tan paint. She hoped Kai would be surprised and pleased when he came home and found that this chore had already been done.