Man, sleeping in was great.

Kai hadn't slept in like this for months, things had been so crazy. They'd all agreed to sleep in today to give themselves a break and to encourage Lloyd to sleep in too. With Wu and Misako off researching the Oni Masks, there was no sensei to drag them out of bed.

Zane was up and cooking breakfast when Kai walked into the kitchen. "Hey," Kai greeted sleepily. "Anyone else up yet?" A.k.a., had he seen Lloyd yet?

"Nya passed through about five minutes ago," Zane answered, whisking some soon to be delicious mixture in a bowl. "I believe the others are still asleep."

"Lloyd's still asleep?" Kai double-checked hopefully.

"Neither I nor Nya have seen him elsewhere on the Bounty," Zane informed him. "And neither of us have seen him leave his room."

"Good," Kai sighed. Finally.

"Yes, Lloyd needs the rest," Zane agreed, placing a pan on the stovetop. "Lack of sleep is only exacerbating his distress."

"I cannot wait until the SGs are all behind bars," Kai declared, flopping into his chair. "Lloyd will really start getting better once those bastards are gone."

"It will help, at least," Zone nodded, robotic tone grim. "But I fear with the state his father is in…"

Kai huffed angrily. "The world has been shit to both of them." His old resentment towards Garmadon, the real Garmadon, had faded a long time ago, once he'd gotten to know the real man, no evil venom corruption. Kai didn't even consider this- thing- that came back to be Garmadon. There was nothing of Garmadon left. Emperor Oni Garmadon barely even seemed to remember Lloyd. It was bullshit, fucking unfair bullshit, and for all their searching, there was no cure. At this point, the merciful thing would be to send the evil back to the Departed Realm. It was what Garmadon would have wanted. Lloyd would not be the one to do it. Kai would make sure Lloyd wasn't even anywhere nearby when it happened.

"Yes," Zane agreed mournfully. "It has."

They broke off their conversation as Cole strode into the room. "Ooh, breakfast!" Cole grinned. "What's on the menu?"

The conversation turned to lighter topics. Jay walked in about twenty minutes later, Nya following behind. First Master, his sister was engaged. It still didn't feel totally real. He'd known it was going to happen eventually but…

Nya glanced around at the group and frowned. "Is Lloyd…?"

"We think he's still asleep," Cole told her, piling up his plate.

Unease crept up Kai's spine. He hadn't been worried at first, but everyone else was up now and no one had seen Lloyd yet. It could be now that Lloyd had finally crashed from sleep deprivation, he was just out like a rock. But would they really be that lucky?

"I'll go check on him," Kai volunteered slowly.

"I think it's fine if you wake him up at this point," Cole shrugged. "He's slept plenty, and he won't want to miss breakfast."

"Yeah," Kai nodded. It took barely a minute to reach Lloyd's room. Should he knock first or just go in? Nah, he'd just go in, Lloyd wouldn't mind.

The door didn't creak as he opened it. Lloyd was very particular about his door not creaking. Had tinkered with it until it was silent. It was some Darkley's thing they still didn't fully understand.

Kai's heart sunk and his annoyance spiked. Lloyd wasn't here. His bed looked like he'd maybe slept in it a little, but he'd probably been gone for a while. But where? No one had seen him. Was he hiding? Why? He was still on the Bounty, right?

The phone went straight to voicemail. Kai didn't attempt to muffle his groan. Sometimes, he wanted to strangle the kid. Well, not strangle, but the frustrated urge resembled the desire to strangle in many ways. Go to sleep, it wasn't a hard ask. Why did Lloyd struggle with the simplest things?

Instead of what he really wanted to say, he texted. "Breakfast is ready." Something non-aggressive, something Lloyd would answer, something that would get Lloyd to the kitchen with the others. Kai could occasionally be tactful.

He started to stomp back to the kitchen. Everyone's mood dipped when they saw Kai's stormy expression. "He wasn't in his room," Kai growled. He checked his phone. Still no reply from Lloyd. That was… even when Lloyd went off to be by himself, he answered their texts. The kid knew they worried. "He isn't answering his phone…"

The other ninja frowned, pulling out their own phones. "We can't all call him at once," Jay pointed out.

"Right," Nya nodded. "Zane, you call him." Good choice, Lloyd wouldn't expect a chewing out from Zane.

They were all checking their messages to see if Lloyd had sent them anything and sending texts. Zane frowned.

"Straight to voicemail," he told them, metallic eyebrows furrowing. "Which means either his phone is off or is in a place with no coverage."

"Okay, fine," Kai said through gritted teeth. "Manual search it is."

They split up, searching the Bounty and the area around it. Kai's anxiety was rising with every passing minute. His anger built up alongside it.

An hour later, everyone was panicking. Kai paced around the room like the walls were going to close in any second, his chest tight. He felt like he was going to burst any second.

"Can't you track his phone or something?" Cole suggested.

"Our phones aren't that easy to track, Cole," Jay shot down. "We're ninja. If our phones were easily tracked, we wouldn't use them."

"If he were to answer," Zane inserted. "We would have the ability to start a trace. But his phone seems to be shut off entirely."

"Does anyone remember him doing or saying anything odd?" Nya asked, nervously tapping her foot.

"He's been acting odd for weeks now," Jay moaned. "Nothing from yesterday really stands out."

"So you all noticed it too?" Kai asked, pausing his pacing.

"I mean, yeah," Cole shrugged. "Kind of hard not to."

"What exactly did you guys notice?" Kai questioned heatedly. This might not have anything to do with Lloyd's disappearance, but they didn't have much to go on at the moment.

"He was easily distracted," Zane noted.

"Yeah," Cole nodded, "he was zoning out a lot."

"It's weird because he wasn't like that at first," Nya recalled. "It started sometime after the oni invasion. I'm not sure what triggered it." Hm, she was right. For the first few-ish weeks Lloyd had been sad and struggling to some degree, but at some point, it had seemingly randomly gotten worse.

"You think something was bothering him?" Jay asked.

"There were loads of things bothering him," Kai snapped. What a dumb thing to say. "Lots of shit happened. None of us thought he was okay."

Jay looked offended and a bit annoyed. "I meant something specifically connected to this. Something that would help us figure out where he is now."

"I'll take a look at nearby camera systems," Zane volunteered.

"I'll help," Nya added. Kai couldn't help with that, so he spun around and marched towards Lloyd's room.

"Where are you going?" Cole asked, hurrying to keep pace with him.

"I'm going to look for clues," Kai told him shortly, slamming through Lloyd's bedroom door.

"That's invading Lloyd's privacy," Cole said hesitantly, but followed him into the room.

"Then he should have picked up his damn phone," Kai growled. Lloyd was moving back into Kai's room when he got back.

"You think there'll be any clues in here?" Jay asked, poking his head around the door.

"Maybe," Kai shrugged. "We can at least see if his phone is in here."

No phone. So Lloyd probably had it with him. Why wasn't he picking up then? It wasn't like the phone could be dead; Lloyd had mastered charging his phone with his powers. Had he lost it? Had someone taken it from- no, no, don't go there yet. They had no reason to think that yet.

Cole was examining something on Lloyd's desk.

"Found something?" Jay questioned, peering around Cole's broad shoulders.

"I'm not sure…" That was a maybe. Kai moved over to see what Cole was looking at. It was a map of Ninjago. Certain areas, areas they'd recently been to, were circled and had arrows pointing out of them. What did it mean?

"This was in one of his drawers," Cole explained. "It's recent at least, but I'm not sure what he was trying to do."

"The arrows are all pointing in the same general direction," Kai noticed, icy dread growing thicker. "Was he trying to narrow down Emperor Garmadon's location?"

"Lloyd wouldn't hide that," Cole protested. "Not after what happened the first time. And how would he know something we didn't? We interrogated the SGs together. And there's no way he found useful intel that narrowed things down at every spot we stopped. Some of these places didn't even have any SGs." All true. Cole was probably right. That was a relief. A huge relief.

"What was he tracking then?" Kai asked, frustrated.

"Guys!" They turned to see Nya beckoning them from the doorway. "We've found Lloyd on the cameras!"

"Really?!" Kai said eagerly. They all raced to the tech room, leaving the map behind.

Yeah, that was Lloyd all right. A store's security camera had caught him walking down the road. Kid was in his civvies, no visible weapons. At the end of the street, a fancy car with tinted windows pulled up. It was hard to see what exactly was happening. Lloyd and the car were only partially visible at this position. Lloyd seemed to talk to the driver for a few seconds then got into the car, which sped away a second later. That was the last footage they had of Lloyd. Kai wasn't sure if he was more or less worried now.

"That was the best angle we could get?" Cole checked.

"Yes," Zane nodded. He rewound and closely scrutinized the part where Lloyd got into the car. "It at least seems like Lloyd was not forced into the vehicle."

"Yeah," Jay nodded. "He walked up to it too. If the car weren't so expensive, I would have just assumed he was taking a taxi."

"Why would Lloyd take a taxi somewhere in his civvies in the middle of the night without telling us anything?" Kai asked, anxiety coming through as anger.

"I don't know," Jay worried. "I don't think it even is a taxi. Zane, can you track the car?"

Zane's eyes zeroed in on the car. He nodded. "I believe so, yes."

Lloyd was so grounded when they found him. Kai would chain him to his bed if he had to.