"So, we're basically spying on him, right?" Kai asked.

"No," Nya said carefully. "We're keeping an eye out for ways to help him."

"While spying on him," Kai said.

"It does kind of sound like spying on him," Jay offered, taking another few quick steps along the brick paver wall he'd been balancing on while Kai and Nya walked the path below it.

Nya sighed. "Call it what you want, just tell me what you found out."

"Zane was in the library when Kai and I were searching for-" Jay said.

"Looking for reference books," Kai said quickly.

Jay stopped for a moment. "I mean, I guess you could call it that? But not really reference books, more like-"

"Reference books!" Kai said loudly. "For a project! And nothing else!"

Nya gave him a sideways glance. Then she looked up at Jay, who had started walking along the wall again. "If there was something else you were looking for, what would it be?"

Kai groaned.

"Uh, I don't remember the title entirely, something about mastering elements, but it's a book about teamwork, it's blue and a little green, it's all swirly, it's got a bunch of people in a huddle on the front," Jay listed off.

Nya snorted, a bit startled as she recognized the description. "Kai, were you actually looking for 'The Elements of Mastering Teamwork' like I told you to do last year during intramurals?"

"Shut up," Kai muttered, kicking at a pile of leaves on the ground.

"That's sweet of you," Nya said.

"No, it's not, it's cool," Kai said. "Actually, it's hard-core cool, and we're moving on!"

Nya let him bluster for a moment, then she gave him an out. Well, kind of. "So you were in the library, being a good brother-"

Kai slapped his own forehead with a hand.

"And you saw Zane there," Nya said. "What happened then?"

"Well, he was paging through the stacks, didn't look like he was looking for anything in particular, and so Kai and me started sliding books over to him as suggestions," Jay said.

Nya wrinkled her nose in confusion. That didn't seem very characteristic of them. "I mean, that's thoughtful of you? It's nice to be helpful, I guess."

"Except we weren't really being helpful," Jay admitted.

"We were finding the stupidest titles we could," Kai said.

"Yeah, I found one that really sounded like a bad pun, and the picture on the front didn't help it, so-" Jay said.

It was Nya's turn to groan. "So you weren't being thoughtful. You were goofing off."

Kai and Jay looked at each other for a moment, then said in unison, "Yeah."

"Whatever," Nya said. "What happened next?"

"After a minute or two, well, we realized he wasn't playing along," Jay said. "He actually seemed more confused than anything. And he was pretty focused on looking through the books, like really focused, so eventually we just let him keep looking and left."

Nya hummed thoughtfully. So maybe Zane was really busy with classwork, and that was why he seemed like he was avoiding them?

That didn't seem like the full picture, though.

"Nya, Nya, Nya," Lloyd said in a sing-song voice from behind her. "Nya, Nya, Nya. Nya, Nya, Nya-"

"What," Nya ground out, hitting "save" on her computer document. "What in the world possessed you to interrupt me right now, Lloyd?"

As she turned, she noticed it wasn't just Lloyd. Skylor was there too, standing by Lloyd, and Pix was right behind them.

"Oookay," Nya said, recalculating. Maybe Lloyd wasn't just here to bug her when she specifically asked him not to bug her so she could work on her portion of a group project. "What's so important, guys?"

"We were in the cafeteria, eating supper, when guess who shows up?" Lloyd said.

Nya blinked at him, racking her brain. Who would interest Lloyd this much? For a moment, she was about to guess Wu had visited. Then she reconsidered. "Wait, was it Zane?"

Lloyd nodded. "Bingo."

"He sat down just two tables over, so we went and joined him," Skylor said. "He didn't seem like he was having supper, though, more of a snack, I think. Not a lot on his plate."

"I put forward that perhaps he's the kind of person who eats many small meals rather than three regular ones," Pix added.

"So I thought that if he was doing that, maybe that explains why we don't often see him in the cafeteria," Skylor said. "But we did see him then, so we joined him."

"Did he seem like he cared that you joined him?" Nya asked.

"No," Skylor said. "He didn't seem like he cared, not in a 'I wish this didn't happen' way, but also not in a 'I'm glad this happened' way. He might've been totally neutral about the whole thing. Or I was just reading him wrong."

"I think he seemed a little happy and a little unhappy at the same time for us to join him," Pix said.

"Maybe," Skylor said. "That's a thought."

"Did you get him to talk to you?" Nya asked.

Lloyd held out one hand and wiggled it side-to-side in an "eh" motion. "I mean, kind of? He let us talk to him, and he nodded and made some agreeing noises. But he didn't really talk to us. And within about ten, maybe fifteen minutes, he was out of there."

"Hmm," Nya said. "So he ate a little, listened to you talk, acted mostly approving of you talking to him, but left quickly?"

"Really quickly," Lloyd said.

"He really scarfed that food down. It wasn't a lot of food, but still, it disappeared fast," Skylor said.

Nya tapped her chin, sinking deeper into thought. "So he didn't eat a lot, ate fast, and booked it out of there."

"I mean, it really does seem like he's busy with something," Lloyd said.

"But what?" Pix said.

"College?" Skylor said. "Family? Work? You know, life in general?"

"He does work a bunch," Nya recalled. "He's at Chen's a lot, and he's at Dimensional Devices sometimes, Cole said. And I'm pretty sure he works at some coffee shop part-time too."

Skylor whistled. "Oof, three part-time jobs? And he's going to school full-time, right? And he's figure-skating too?"

"That does sound like a lot to handle," Nya mused. "But does it cover everything?"

Nya checked her watch again. She sighed and let her head tilt back to rest against the wall. "Nine minutes ago, Cole. You were supposed to be here nine minutes ago."

"Really?" Kai asked, flipping a page in his textbook. "He's that late?"

"I know, right?" Nya asked back. "Normally he's a bit better than this at being punctual. Do you know what he was doing right before our meeting?"

Kai clicked his tongue thoughtfully. "Um… It's one of his practices, I think. Not sure if it was break-dancing or figure-skating."

"How do you get break-dancing and figure-skating mixed up?" Nya asked.

Kai gave a full-body shrug. "I dunno. Pretty easily, I guess."

"They're so different, though," Nya said.

"Are they?" Kai asked, waggling his eyebrows to emphasize the joke.

Nya stared at him. "Yes. Yes, they are."

Kai shrugged again, putting his whole body into it once more. "Eh. Fair enough. Pretty sure it was break-dancing practice, though."

Pounding footsteps sounded outside the dorm room then, getting louder by the moment.

Kai and Nya shared an amused, knowing look.

"Hey, hey," Cole said, sliding through the doorway and tossing a duffel bag across the room. It hit his bed, bounced, and fell to the floor.

"Decent effort, six out of ten, try again later," Nya said.

"I'd give it an eight," Kai said slowly, adding a polite bit of applause. "I mean, the throw had plenty of force behind it, didn't it?"

"Too much force," Nya said.

"Ha ha," Cole said, rolling his eyes, but he was smiling.

"How was… Practice?" Kai asked, clearly intentionally avoiding naming the type of practice in Nya's opinion.

"Decent, up until the end, then it got interesting," Cole said. "Oh, actually, Nya! I had something to tell you about it."

"You had something to tell me about break-dancing practice?" Nya asked in confusion.

"Figure-skating practice, actually," Cole said.

Nya swatted at Kai's head but, since he ducked, only got a hand swinging through his fluffy mop hair. Nya scolded, "You said break-dancing!"

"At first I said it was break-dancing or figure-skating, though," Kai defended himself.

"So you had a fifty-fifty shot and got it wrong," Nya said in a deadpan tone.

Kai stuck out his tongue in response.

"Wow. Mature. I'm impressed," Cole said.

"But what did you have to tell me about figure-skating?" Nya asked.

Cole lit up. "Oh! Yeah! Zane was at practice! I got to talk with him some during and after!"

"Talk with him, not talk at him?" Nya asked.

"Exactly," Cole said.

"That's pretty good," Nya said.

"Yeah, the guy's like an ice wall sometimes," Kai said.

"I think it's a stone wall," Nya said.

"What?" Kai asked.

"The idiom," Nya said. "Like a stone wall, or like a brick wall. Not like an ice wall."

"But he's a figure-skater!" Kai said in protest. "It was a pun and so then it was valid."

Nya considered it. "I'll give you that."

"The point is, I actually talked with him," Cole said. "And it was going all right, he was relatively responsive, and so I pressed my luck when we were getting changed and I asked him to hang out."

Nya and Kai both made encouraging noises at that.

"But he said he was busy," Cole said. "I offered a couple of different times, and he said he was busy during all of them. I tried to sympathize with that, because scheduling stuff outside of classes and homework and tests and stuff is hard enough, not counting jobs and sports, so I said that college and work and figure-skating definitely kept me busy."

"That's kind of true, but you still have time for friends and family and intramural hockey and things," Kai pointed out.

"But I wasn't going to approach him like that," Cole dismissed. "Anyway, I tried to sympathize, tried to say that maybe outside of college and work and figure-skating we could find some availability at another time. And you know what he said?"

"What?" Kai asked readily.

"He said," Cole paused then, and he spread his hands with emphasis. "'At all other times, Echo needs me.'"

Kai frowned. "What?"

"An echo needs him?" Nya asked.

"Not an echo. Echo. He said it like a name, like a person," Cole said.

"Huh. And what did you say then?" Nya asked.

"Well, then I leaned down to untie my skates, and I thought for a bit before I asked who Echo was, and I gave him time to answer," Cole said. He raised his eyebrows. "But when I straightened back up? Zane was already out of there."

Kai blew out a long breath. "Wow."

Nya frowned. "And so the mystery deepens, and so the mission extends."

"I'd say," Cole agreed. "Who is this Echo?"

Author's Note: The plot thickens! :D