(A/N): Hi guys! I wanted to post something sooner than a month, but alas, even in summer I am fickle. :') Ah well.
Hope everyone's doing well! Thanks again to all of you who read and to my beta, Park, so much! I'm so glad I have a new chapter up. We've made it to ten! W oohoo!
... I know, it's a pathetic number. But you know what else is pathetic, my work ethic, so I shall congratulate myself because a milestone is a milestone!
Also hey, check out the new cover art! Click on it. I beg you. It's so cool.
That was done by StoneByrd on dA! Please check out their art it's AWESOME, and so is the artist behind it all!
Lloyd groggily rubbed the last bits of sleep from his eyes as he came to, and faintly registered someone saying, "Oh hey, he's up!"
For a brief moment he was confused — where was this place, because it certainly wasn't the Bounty or the Temple — and then it hit him again.
Ah. Right.
"Hey," he mumbled back, blinking back sleep and pushing himself into a sitting position before clambering off the bed.
Cole shot him a smile from where he stood nearby. "How're you feeling? Is the rest helping any?"
"Yeah, a little." Gingerly, Lloyd stretched his arms and back. They were still pretty sore, as were the several tiny injuries he'd sustained, but he definitely felt better than before. He could handle this. "What now?"
"Man, eyes right on the goal." Cole chuckled. "Classic Lloyd. Glad to see you're not too thrown by everything that's happening right now."
"Yeah, I'm fine. I've had plenty of time to rest; let's focus on making up for lost time."
"Whoa, easy, buster." Cole put a hand on his shoulder and fixed him with a serious look. "I'm with you on that one, trust me. I want to find them as much as you do. Imagining them walking around out there while that spirit's still roaming around …" He grimaced. "Not great. But don't go rushing out into anything without taking care of yourself first, okay, green bean? Nothing gets solved that way."
Lloyd sighed. "Alright, alright. But I swear I'm good. Seriously. So what now?"
"Glad you asked," Cole said grimly. "Because we were just about to discuss it."
"Yep!" Jay piped up, announcing his presence. "Heya. You nice and rested now?" Lloyd nodded, smiling thinly back at him.
"Great! Then come, gather 'round ye olde campfire as we share tales."
Lloyd blinked at the fireplace.
"... That's not a campfire."
"Right," Cole said. "Not to mention —" he swept his hand in an arc around the fireplace sardonically, "— we can't really gather round it."
"Oh, shut up and lemme have my fun for once, would you?"
"Hmm." Cole pretended to consider it, before he and Lloyd chimed in unison. "Nahhhh."
"Hmph. Fine," Jay huffed over Lloyd and Cole's laughter, turning and marching towards the fire. "Be that way."
"Okayy," Cole chuckled. "Why don't we go see what's up with Zane?"
Zane, as it turned out, was running yet another check on Skylor, sitting up on the other bed. Even out-of-it as she was, she seemed to be less oblivious than Zane to the fact that the two of them were monopolizing the room's increasingly-amused attention.
"How is your eyesight?"
"Eh, a little blurry, but not terrible …"
It took her a few seconds to answer. From the expression on his face, Zane had made a note of this.
"Any lingering nausea?"
"It's there. Not as bad as before, though."
"Dizziness?"
"Some. I dunno." She squirmed a little under Zane's scrutiny. "It'd probably be worse if I was standing."
"Headache?"
"Still bad. But thank you for the Tylenol."
"Of course. Are my voice or the light from the fireplace particularly overwhelming for you?"
"A little, but again, not terrible. I can deal, it's fine."
"It's not a question of 'dealing'," Zane countered, frowning. "I am trying to assess the severity of your concussion, based on how well you have recuperated since the time of impact with rest."
"Alright, alright," Skylor said, with an embarrassed chuckle.
"Anyway. Do you recall what we discussed earlier about this mansion?"
Skylor hesitated, biting her lip. "... Wish I could say with certainty that I could," she finally responded ruefully.
"It's understandable, under your current condition. The rest of us can always review our present circumstances later on."
A sigh. "That would be nice, thanks."
"How tired do you feel?"
Skylor didn't even bother answering with anything but a long-suffering sigh.
"Do I ever feel," Jay butt in, evidently unable to resist any longer. Both she and Zane looked over with a start. "Man, I'm pretty sure that ain't just the concussion."
"H-hello, Jay."
"Wow," Cole whistled behind him, audibly amused. Lloyd let loose quiet snickers. "There's always a need for a ninja, but on the off chance there wasn't, you would make a killer doctor."
"We can't see a medical professional," Zane replied. "Therefore, it is important to be thorough."
"What, aren't you the medical professional?" Jay asked.
"No? I merely have extensive knowledge on basic medical care and first-aid in my databases —"
"Eh, close enough."
"So."
They were all "gathered 'round the campfire", as Jay had joked earlier. Skylor was seated a little ways further from it with her head nested on one of her palms, concussion-sensitized eyes not taking well to the stark light the hungry flames spit out. The heat settled softly on their chill-nipped skin, reminding them all too clearly of a certain master of fire they had yet to find.
"What do we do from here?"
"We … find Kai and Karlof?" Jay suggested flippantly. "Duh?"
"No, really, Sherlock."
"Of course that's priority number one," Lloyd stepped in quickly, keeping his voice low. "Question is how. We already searched the first floor … and Karlof went missing while we were doing that."
"Uh, question," Jay started, raising his hand like a school student and not bothering to wait for acknowledgement before plowing on, "how does a guy that size just go missing? That's like losing your car in your garage."
"That's what I said," Skylor muttered under her breath.
"In all fairness, the mansion is slightly bigger than a garage …"
"Heh. Not the point, Zane."
"Look, who knows how? I don't get it, either." Lloyd pinched the bridge of his nose. "One way or another, he isn't here, and neither is Kai, and we need to find them."
"Exactly. Because the sooner we find them, the sooner we can look for a way out of here," Cole reminded. "You think they could've bumped into each other?"
"That would depend on when they disappeared, would it not? We know Kai went missing sometime in the night." Zane said. "But if it's true that temporal energy is also being disrupted here, then it might be difficult to gauge how long ago Karlof went missing, or how close he is to when you last saw him."
"Well, it looked like it was getting dark," Lloyd said, "but if it's true that time's all messed up, then I'm not sure."
"Ya know, I buy it," Jay grumbled. "You were right earlier; this does feels like jet lag."
Oh, so it wasn't just him that was feeling all over the place. He'd felt much better waking up, but now he felt a bit scrambled. Nothing he couldn't handle, but still …
"So that's not a concrete possibility, then."
"I see no need for us to rule it out," Zane said. "We don't know anything for certain, after all."
"Okay, but maybe if we tried to narrow down where they'd have gone?" Jay tried. "I mean, I dunno about Karlof or anything. But Kai knows about the spirit; he'd want to avoid it, right?"
"Well, gee, maybe if he wanted to avoid it … he shoulda, I dunno, stuck with us!" Cole huffed.
"On that topic, we still don't know why he left …" Zane thought. "Cole, are you alright?"
"Huh, me? Yeah, peachy," Cole said, but he did sound more nervous than he had a second ago. "Just … we are assuming he left, instead of being snatched away by that thing while we were all asleep, right?"
Lloyd's stomach dropped at the thought. He remembered again the spirit, huge and absolutely unnatural. Then he thought of it having the joy of picking Kai off while it was dark and no one was awake to help.
He tried not to shudder.
"I don't think we need to worry about that, Cole. The door was locked, and there was no sign of a fight or even its presence when we woke. Also, had it struck, I'm certain that you and Jay, at least, would have taken notice."
"Yeah, exactly!" Jay didn't sound very confident. "The key to the door was missing, too; that's gotta mean he left on his own!"
Cole must have caught something in the tremor of the words that Lloyd didn't; after hesitantly letting his hand hover for a moment, he brought it down on Jay's shoulder and squeezed. Jay turned, trying to read his face with something like surprise, but by then the black ninja had already directed his attention back towards the conversation with a question of his own.
"Why would he, though? Karlof went missing, that's one thing. Why would Kai purposefully put himself in more danger?"
"Well. When you word it that way …" Lloyd chimed back in, unable to resist an opportunity to take a dig at his brother even through his concern.
"Hush, you scamp."
Lloyd grinned, even though the movement made the scratches on his face sting.
"... Even if you have a point."
He grinned wider.
"Anyway!" Jay quickly tried to backtrack the subject. "If we try to look around based on where Kai might be, then where would we be looking?"
"Considering how little we know about why Kai disappeared, that is a difficult question," Zane said. "But if we assume his motive is to hide from the spirit, I can think of two spots where he would be likely to be, based on yesterday's events, that strange alcove formed by tilting the painting in that art gallery, and the bedroom we deemed unusable." Lloyd opened his mouth, confused, then shut it and made a note to ask what Zane was even talking about later.
"But we already checked both of those out …"
"Then maybe he's trying to put as much distance between him and it as possible," Lloyd said. "If it showed up around here, there wouldn't be any point in sticking around. So he could be somewhere we haven't looked yet, or overlooked. … And that's not even considering Karlof … "
"So he could be in one of the places we've already checked, or he could be literally anywhere else. And we've got the elemental version of a Transformer mech probably roaming around missing too, with absolutely no leads to where he could've ended up. Great!" Cole threw his hands up. "We'll never find 'em."
"Uh, not with that attitude, we won't," Jay said. "Come on, throwing up your hands and calling yourself done now is like getting past the first cutscene of a video game and tossing the controller away."
"Only you could make a video game reference now, Jay. Only you."
"What's that supposed to mean? I'm not the only one who plays 'em."
"Yeah, but you're the only one who's enough of a dork to do it."
"Oh, I'm the dork? Alright, that's it, I am done tolerating this hypocrisy —"
"Wha —"
And with that, Jay launched into what was probably the most dramatic telling of all the reasons Cole did not have the right to call him a dork, ever. Initially they'd tried to rein the conversation back from Jay and an increasingly flustered Cole, they really had. But by the time Jay had rattled down the list to Cole trying to bake in his sleep and nearly blowing up the oven and Cole riposted by bringing up that Jay hugged things in his sleep and he'd know because Jay had just been hugging him, thank you very much, Lloyd was near tears of laughter, and Zane's chuckle sounded equal parts amused and perplexed, and it was a generally useless endeavor.
Right when it seemed they'd finally calmed down, they realized Skylor had fallen asleep during the discussion and they lost it all over again. Unfortunately, trying to keep quiet so as not to wake her just sent them into an absolute tizzy, and for a good while trying to steer back on track was nothing short of impossible.
Eventually, they managed to sober up enough to come up with a plan, but as soon as the cold air, charged with their anxieties and tension, settled back down on their shoulders like weights, they sorely missed the levity of the last few minutes. Considering that Kai had been in the mansion for a day or so already, it seemed unlikely that he would have gotten too lost to find his way back to them.
Meaning there was an ugly prospect that they could no longer ignore now hanging on their shoulders — that Kai could have been too incapacitated to return.
And this was ignoring the fact that they had little to no idea on how Karlof would be faring or how to look for him. For all they knew, he could be hurt, too.
In the end, they ended up deciding to look in the places where Kai had already been after all, and then branch out from there. Some of the others had already searched most of the second floor, but Cole conceded that there was a chance they'd missed him and it was worth looking again. Complicating matters was the fact that time itself had become an obstacle obstructing their way, if the time it took for the other ninja to find Lloyd and Skylor despite them arriving was any indication, and the longer they waited, the more their chances of success were slim.
They couldn't all go, of course. Skylor was concussed, and if she was unfortunate enough to bump into it again calling the result "disastrous" would be putting it mildly. On top of that, Kai had presumably taken the key to the room they were in, so someone had to stay behind to keep watch and let them in.
Cole had looked so uncomfortable at the thought of going back out that Zane asked him if he was certain he wanted to go, but he'd just steeled his expression and nodded. He came off jittery, even when he acted otherwise calm, and Lloyd wondered if he wasn't letting on about something. Cole only acted that way if something got to him bad, like when he'd been a ghost …
They tried to ask Lloyd if he wouldn't rather stay back and get some extra rest, since he'd fought so hard against the spirit, but just the thought of sitting around and doing nothing a second longer made something in him flare up with distress. After all, Karlof had gone missing on his watch, and the other person who'd vanished was Kai.
When he said he was coming, Jay nervously pointed out that he was pretty scratched up and was he sure he was safe to be walking around so soon —
Lloyd interrupted him, perhaps a tad too sharply, and insisted that he was coming, and that was final.
No one argued. They knew better than to, when his mind was that made up about anything.
Jay tentatively volunteered to stay behind with the still-asleep Skylor, so that made their search team. As they threw first aid kits and anything else they'd need into their bags, Jay wished them luck and told them to let him know if they found anything. And with that, Lloyd warily unlocked the door and turned the knob.