Swinging his feet in lazy kicks beneath the counter, Zane stayed sitting on the stool Cole had directed him to sit on. Zane watched curiously as Cole went all around the room and even occasionally out of the room, searching and searching.
"I could've sworn I left them in here," Cole muttered to himself, rummaging through a kitchen drawer. "Why aren't they…"
"What are you looking for now?" Zane asked. "We already have paper and a few pencils here, so if we are writing, that is all we need."
"If we were writing, yeah, that'd be all," Cole said, and he stuck his head into a cupboard to look more closely. His voice echoed slightly as he continued. "But we're not writing."
Zane thought about that for a moment. He had assumed they were writing when Cole pulled out paper, which had been strengthened as an assumption when the pencils had been added to the counter, but of course there had to be other things to do with paper and pencils. "Oh. Then what are we doing?"
"We're making art," Cole said, pulling back and out of the cupboard. "So we need art supplies. Colored pencils, some stickers, maybe a bit of paint…"
"We're making art?" Zane repeated. He wasn't sure he'd done something like that before. "How do we do that?"
"By being creative," Cole said, looking into a drawer he had already looked into and pulling a few pots out. "Ah-ha! Here are my colored pencils. I knew they were here somewhere. I bet Jay took them out to work on some schematics or something and forget where they were supposed to go."
"Colored pencils," Zane repeated thoughtfully, looking at the pencils already on the counter. Pencils had color already, though. They were usually a light orange or yellow, sometimes brown, with a pink eraser. So why would they need "colored pencils?"
Zane figured it out when Cole set a small box down on the counter and opened it.
"Oh, colored pencils!" Zane exclaimed in delight, looking at them inside the box. He picked several out of the box, looking at each one's colorful tip. "This one is green, and this one is deep purple, and this one is so very red! They must be good for art!"
Cole laughed. It was a nice sound. "Yeah, they are. When I was a kid, I did all kinds of art. Dancing and singing were the big important ones in my family, but other art forms were considered good too, painting and acting and things like that. I guess drawing is the main one of those other forms that I still do sometimes."
"You must be really good at it," Zane said decisively.
Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, Cole said, "I don't know if I'd say really good…"
"Show me! Please?" Zane said. "I want to see it."
"I'll show you," Cole said, still rubbing the back of his neck. "Just let me get us all the way set up first. Maybe I'll look for stickers next…"
"If we're drawing, do we need stickers?" Zane asked.
"Need? No. But want? Yes. Stickers are fun," Cole said, and he walked over to the other side of the kitchen and started looking through another cupboard.
"You have already looked in that cupboard," Zane said. "You have looked in all of the cupboards and all of the drawers, I believe, including the drawers in the refrigerator, which I did not think would be a common place to keep art supplies."
"Hey, Jay and Nya have both been known to 'put things back' where they don't at all belong, especially when they're deep in thought," Cole defended himself. He paused, then he turned back to Zane and frowned. "I really looked in every drawer and cupboard already?"
"Yes," Zane said. "Some of them you looked in two or three times. So may we draw now?"
Cole laughed again. "Yeah, sure, okay. We'll draw now."
Zane grinned and patted the stool next to his own. "Come, come!"
Cole sat on the stool and picked up a regular pencil. "Usually, I outline first, so what-"
A bright ringing sound cut him off mid-sentence.
Cole startled, dropped the pencil, then shoved one hand in his pants pocket, pulling out a cell phone. "Oh, it's Kai."
"Kai?" Zane asked.
Cole tapped the screen of the phone a few times. "Hey, Kai!"
"Cole, I thought you said this part we needed for Zane's memory reprocessing would be at the electronics store on 71st Street," Kai's voice said clearly through the phone, sounding rather annoyed.
"I did say that," Cole said.
"Well, I'm here, and I've looked everywhere, and I don't see a…" Kai's voice trailed off, like he was thinking, or maybe checking something. "I don't see a 'nonvolatile semiconductor intended for bios' anywhere."
"I mean, I don't see one either, but that's because I'm on the Destiny's Bounty and not at the electronics store," Cole said lightly.
"Cole!" Kai said in a kind of offended, upset tone.
"It is true!" Zane said defensively, not sure why Kai sounded mad at Cole for stating a fact. "He is here with me on the Destiny's Bounty, not at any kind of store."
Kai sighed. "It's not that, Zane. It's that he told me where to go get something and that something isn't here."
"I mean, Nya told me what to tell you, so if anything, get mad at her, not me," Cole offered.
"I will. Later. Once I actually find this thing," Kai said. "Any ideas where else it could be?"
"Are you sure you checked everywhere at the store?" Cole asked.
"I think so," Kai said.
"Did you look at any kind of store directory?" Cole asked.
"Yeah," Kai said. "They've got signs up in a bunch of places, and none of them have the word 'nonvolatile' on them."
"Did you ask for help?" Cole asked.
Silence filled the next few seconds.
"Kai," Cole said knowingly. "Did you ask for help?"
"No," Kai admitted. "But! I shouldn't need to! Stuff in a store should be where people expect the stuff to be in the store!"
"Kai, it's a special, fancy electronics store," Cole said. "They have stuff neither of us have really ever heard of, the nonvolatile thing included. Why would you expect to know where to find something when you don't even know what that something is?"
Kai sputtered for a few moments.
"Ask for help," Cole said firmly. "Then Zane and I can go back to drawing."
"Yes!" Zane said.
"I don't want to ask for help," Kai said. He sounded like he was pouting.
"Suck it up," Cole said.
Kai sputtered again. "What?!"
"Mister Cole said to 'suck it up,'" Zane repeated helpfully, not knowing what the phrase meant, but Cole had just smirked for several moments after Kai's question and hadn't given an answer.
Cole burst out laughing.
"Suck it up," Kai muttered. "How about you suck it up, Cole? How about you take a turn running all over Ninjago to find stuff you won't even know for certain if you've found it when you find it?"
"I can't. I'm watching Zane," Cole said.
"I have dibs on watching Zane next, then," Kai said.
"You can't. Jay has dibs next," Cole said.
"But Jay got to spend time with Zane in the factory," Kai complained. "I didn't even get to see him again until forever after that."
"Well, Jay called dibs first, so," Cole said, shrugging even though Kai obviously couldn't see that from the other side of the phone.
"Dibs after Jay, then!" Kai said crossly.
"Sure," Cole said. "If nobody else has called dibs already after him."
"I'm calling it now," Kai said.
"Sure," Cole said again. "Now go ask for help."
"Fine," Kai groaned, dragging out the word into a much longer sound than normal. "I'll do that. But I'm not doing it for you!"
"I never said you were," Cole said.
"I'm doing it for Zane," Kai continued as if Cole hadn't spoken.
"Thank you for doing that for me, Mister Kai!" Zane said happily.
Kai was silent for a moment. "You're welcome, little man. See you soon."
The phone beeped, and Cole slipped it back into his pocket, picking up his pencil again. "So. What do you want me to draw?"
Zane tapped his chin with one hand thoughtfully. "Oh! Draw me, draw me, please!"
"Draw you?" Cole asked.
Zane nodded. "Draw me like I normally am. Draw me as a ninja on an adventure. We go on adventures as ninja, right?"
"Oh boy, do we ever," Cole said, laughing a little. "Okay, sure, I'll give it a go. One picture of ninja Zane on an adventure, coming up!"