"Practice makes perfect," Nya said as a reminder.
Kai's responding groan was so long and so loud that Nya pulled her phone away from her ear for a moment. In lieu of being able to glare at Kai himself, she glared at her phone, then put it back up against her ear just in time to hear him speak through it again.
"Who said we wanted to be perfect?" Kai asked.
"I did," Nya said primly.
Kai huffed, then he admitted, "Well, I did ask who. I guess that's on me."
"It is," Nya agreed, turning at the next street corner. "So I'll see you in five minutes?"
"More like ten minutes or fifteen minutes," Kai said. "My dorm is not that close to the ice rink, y'know. And I should probably finish the next paragraph on this essay. Probably."
"Make it ten minutes," Nya said. Before Kai could protest, she said quickly, "Okay, great, we'll see you then!"
"So did he forget?" Lloyd asked knowingly from beside her as Nya hung up.
Nya laughed. "Of course he did."
"Should we check if Jay forgot too?" Lloyd asked.
Nya shrugged thoughtfully, turning the final street corner. "I mean, probably? But his ADHD meds seem to have been doing better for him since he switched prescriptions, so let's see if he shows up on time."
"Speaking of showing up on time," Lloyd said, pointing toward the ice rink as it appeared in their view.
"Of course Pix is already here," Nya said with a grin, waving.
Pix waved back, and as Nya and Lloyd walked up to her, she gave a small bow and said in a fake-formal tone, "Lloyd Montgomery Garmadon. Nya Maya Ferrer. What a surprise and an honor to be meeting you here."
"The surprise and the honor are all ours, Patricia Dell Borg," Nya said in an equally-fake, equally-formal tone, giving a curtsy back. Granted, given she wasn't wearing a skirt, the effect wasn't fully there, but she thought it looked okay.
Lloyd tried to bow in turn, but he was already laughing and started to topple over when his bow went lopsided.
Pix cracked a small smirk as she steadied him, but she continued on in the same tone, saying, "Lloyd Montgomery Garmadon, whatever has taken over you?"
"The giggles," Lloyd said honestly, coming back up into standing. "The giggles have taken over me."
Nya laughed then. "Yeah, that's fair."
"Are we ready to practice?" Pix asked, dropping her fake-formal voice.
"We will be as soon as everyone gets here," Lloyd said.
"Which should be in the next ten minutes," Nya said, before double-checking her phone clock. "The next nine minutes, really."
"And you believe everyone will be here on time?" Pix asked.
"Do I believe it? Not really. Do I hope for it? Yes, definitely," Nya said.
Pix nodded. "Shall we go in?
"We shall," Lloyd said happily, heading into the ice rink.
Pix followed a step behind him.
Nya hung back, staring at the sign over the doors for a few moments. She read it aloud. "'Due to budget cuts and lack of campus interest, the NNCU Ice Rink will close at the end of this school year.' Not if we have anything to say about it."
"And we always have something to say," a loud, energetic voice yelled from behind her and to the left.
Nya smiled a little, tearing her eyes from the sign and turning to face the voice. "You mean you specifically always have something to say, Jay."
Jay gave a one-shoulder shrug. "Eh, you've got a point."
"Hey, good job getting here on time," Nya said, changing the subject. She didn't want to think too much about the situation of the ice rink at the moment.
"Go me!" Jay cheered. "Sometimes-functioning executive functions for the win!"
Nya smiled wider and turned back toward the ice rink, pushing in through the doors. "Let's get practicing."
"Or not," Jay said a few moments later, having followed her in and stopped just behind her.
Nya squinted at the ice rink, wanting to be frustrated that someone was already using it, but really, their scheduled time didn't start for several more minutes, so she probably shouldn't get too upset about it. Besides, it wasn't like it was another intramural hockey team infringing on their rink practice time. Only one person was skating.
And oh, how they skated!
The person soared across the ice, twirling and jumping and whirling and gliding. Nya didn't know too much about figure-skating, just what she'd picked up over semi-osmosis from Cole over the years. That wasn't a significant amount, given Cole was involved in a lot of dance-like activities, figure-skating being only one of them, so he had many topics to choose from when telling her and the others about what he was up to. Still, despite Nya's lack of knowledge about figure-skating, she could tell this person was good.
Really good.
And really good-looking.
And really, actually, definitely the strange guy from both times before!
Nya swallowed back her emotions, some unusual combination of embarrassment and interest and dismay and delight. She walked further forward, Jay by her side, and joined Pix and Lloyd in the stands as they watched the guy figure-skate.
"This is so cool," Lloyd declared quietly. "I didn't realize how beautiful figure-skating could be. He's really flying across there, isn't he?"
"His skill is quite impressive," Pix said.
"He is," Nya said softly, then backtracked quickly when Jay, Lloyd, and Pix turned to side-eye her as one. "I mean, he is skilled. And his skills are impressive. And stuff."
A crooked grin spread over Jay's face. "He is impressive? Is that what you were saying?"
"No, he is skilled, and his skills are impressive," Nya insisted.
"Mmm, right," Jay said, putting on a wounded face. "And yet you said that you'd always come tell me about anybody you were interested in, that you would keep being honest with me, that us breaking up wouldn't damage our friendship, that-"
"Jay, we dated for like a month in ninth grade, that's all," Nya reminded him tiredly.
"The most special and most stressful month of my life," Jay sighed with nostalgia.
Nya shoved him.
Jay rocked a step backward with the shove but cackled all the same.
"What's going on? Is Jay hitting on you?" Kai asked suspiciously as he stepped up to join the group.
From a step behind him, Skylor laughed. "It looked more like Nya was hitting on Jay. Or rather, just plain hitting him."
"Jay isn't hitting on her," Lloyd said. "I mean, I don't think."
"I'm not, I'm not," Jay said, waving his hands in front of himself. "I'm just teasing her about her new guy."
Kai's eyebrows shot up. "Her new guy?!"
"That I don't have," Nya said quickly. "There is no new guy."
Kai looked at Jay, then at Nya, then at Lloyd.
Lloyd pointed at the figure-skater.
Kai's eyebrows went further up, then his whole face crinkled in amusement. "Ooooh. Oh ho ho. So that's what's going on."
"Nothing is going on!" Nya insisted. "We're waiting to practice. That's it."
"That's it, huh?" Kai asked, a strange tone to his voice that Nya didn't like one bit. "So if I went and asked that guy what he thought was going on, he would say… What, exactly?"
"That he's figure-skating, and that we're waiting, and that he doesn't even know who we are, probably," Nya said firmly.
Kai gave her a long look before smirking. "Okay. I can respect that."
"There's nothing to respect," Nya muttered. "Because nothing's going on."
"How long is that guy gonna skate for?" Kai wondered. "I thought we had the rink scheduled. I mean, that's what you said, Nya."
"We do have it scheduled," Pix agreed. "He must be finishing up."
"Oh, hey!" A voice called from behind them, and after a moment, Cole hurried up to the group. "Sorry I was almost late. I had to stay after and talk with a professor for a bit."
"Everything good?" Jay asked.
"Yeah, everything's good," Cole agreed. "Just some thoughts about an exam question I didn't really get. Are we ready?"
"We will be, just as soon as Mystery Man over there is done," Jay said, waving a hand toward the rink.
Cole turned toward the ice rink. His face lit up. "Oh, nice!"
"Nice that we have to wait?" Lloyd wondered.
"Nah, nice that he's here," Cole said, gesturing toward the guy, who was skating toward the opposite end of the rink. "I haven't gotten much time to talk to him yet. Be right back!"
Nya exchanged interested glances with her other friends as Cole took off in a jog toward the other side of the ice. As one, they turned and watched.
From that distance, Nya couldn't hear what Cole was saying as he approached the guy, but she could see the guy complete smaller and smaller circles before skating to a stop by the edge of the ice in front of Cole. Then Cole gestured a little, but nothing clear. The mystery guy stayed pretty still, but he seemed to be listening, or at least not leaving.
After a few minutes, Cole gave an indistinct cheer and nodded to the mystery guy, then jogged back toward Nya and the rest of the group.
"What was that about?" Jay asked.
Cole blinked at him. "Uh, just doing what I was supposed to do?"
"And what were you supposed to do?" Skylor wondered.
Cole smiled, a little confusion evident in his face. "Uh, follow the mission and ask Zane about saving the ice rink?"
That's when it clicked for Nya. She turned and watched the mystery guy leave the ice, emotions warring within her.
"So that's Zane," Jay said as Nya turned back to the group, shoving her emotions down. "Oh, that makes sense."
"Yeah," Cole said. "And it went really well. He said he's 'quite interested' and that he'll come to our next mission meeting if I tell him when it is."
"That did go really well, then," Lloyd said, bouncing a little on his toes and looking over his shoulder at the empty ice. "Cool. So can we practice now? He's gone, we can practice now, right?"
"Yeah, we can practice now," Cole agreed.
"Yeah," Nya repeated. "Let's practice."
But as they went to gear up, and even as they got started practicing, she had a hard time keeping her mind on the practice.
Instead, her mind was on all that had already happened and on the upcoming mission meeting.