A young beauty with short, black hair stared up at the large screen in front of her with a frown. "Huh... well this sucks."

A group of five men walked into the room that they named the Bridge, which resided in a large and comfortable ship called the Bounty. All wore different colored combat suits; these were the ninja, the heroes of Ninjago.

The one in blue, Jay, was the first to speak. "What's wrong, Nya?"

"I got a message from the police department... they want us to check out the building that was burned last night: Ninjago Capitol."

Another in red raised an eyebrow, Kai. "Right. You mentioned that a little bit yesterday. How come they want us to see it now?"

"Maybe they tried an investigation already and found nothing," one in green suggested, the team leader Lloyd Garmadon.

"Mm... no. I guarantee they haven't even done one yet. They're just lazy," Jay disagreed.

Lloyd stared at him.

The robot suited in white, Zane, stepped up. "How soon do they need us, Nya?"

"Like, now," she replied in slight worry. "I hope it's nothing major... come back with good news."

The final one in black, Cole, was the first to lift his hood over his shaggy hair. "Let's get a move on."

She drove the Bounty toward the entrance of Ninjago City. There currently wasn't any danger, so there was no reason to sit so close.

The ninjas slid down the anchor she released. Once landing on the ground, they began walking straight.

Zane already had the coordinates in his system. The others followed him; it took just a few minutes to arrive at the building closed off with tape, burnt on the bottom floor with debris everywhere while the rest of it was still a cerulean color.

"Huh... it was that bad after all," Cole muttered upon seeing the wreck.

"Ninja."

The voice of the police commissioner called out a few feet away. He was found walking toward the team of five. "Thank goodness you've arrived."

"We came as soon as we heard the call. What happened?" Lloyd asked.

"Just last night, a fire erupted. Or came down, for the matter. It's so strange. We've conducted an investigation, but came to nothing. We hoped that you were able to have better luck."

The ninja in green looked toward Jay in annoyance. The latter nervously giggled.

"Let's check it out then," Zane stepped up. "Perhaps we may find something you have not."

The commissioner lifted the tapes to grant them easy access. The ninja spread out in different spots, hoping to discover any sort of evidence to help.

Kai walked toward the broken fountain. He found it odd that there was a bit of water at his feet, but nowhere else. Someone must have splashed some out.

"Hey," he called one of the cops over. "You figure anything about this here?"

When he came, he looked down at the splash. "A little bit. We're still in the middle of questioning the guests that came, so maybe our answer lies in one of their responses. Though we did get to that young entrepreneur. She said a girl fell right through the fire and into the water. Most likely where the splash came from. In case it was evidence, we avoided touching it. But, uh, well..."

"Oh, shit. My bad." Kai stepped away upon realizing he was lowkey tampering with possible police evidence. It was a little late anyway, though. "Fell through fire? Is she alright?"

"As alright as she could ever be. Said she didn't feel a thing. There weren't any burn marks on her body, either, to their surprise. We haven't had the chance to get to her yet."

"Huh... alright, thanks. Mind if we do some questioning of our own?"

"Go on ahead. The commissioner just wants you to keep him updated."

"Will do. Thanks!"

Kai bid the officer goodbye as he returned to Lloyd's side. "I think I got a small lead. What about you?"

The green ninja was busy squatting over an object in a plastic bag. It was closer to the entrance. "Yeah, actually..."

Inside the baggie was a green pocket knife. The blade was still out.

Kai glared down at it. "You think whoever started all this tried to kill someone? It could be that entrepreneur the cop was telling me about."

"Entrepreneur...?" Lloyd confusedly repeated. "Nah, I don't think this was used for a targeted attack. My guess is someone had it on them and dropped it. Makes them look kinda bad, especially with the open blade, but with a fire starting... wouldn't you want to escape as fast as you could, too?"

After a second of thinking, he found their leader was right. Nearly as always. "Yeah. So then what do you think this is?"

The latter rose to his feet, holding the baggie by the corner, to look at his teammate. "Based on this so far, this just seems like a warning attack. No specific targets. Just someone, or something, preparing the people for its arrival. Only thing is that I don't know who's coming."

"Hm. Well, if the others don't find anything, let's see how far we can get with this. Maybe the owner of this blade can give us a better lead on what's going on."

"Right."

The ninjas met back at the building's entrance. Cole, Zane, and Jay were a little disappointed to not have found much.

"I just found broken glass," Jay said as he excitedly picked up an uneven piece of the glass. It appeared to be from a window.

"Unfortunately, that only tells us what we already know," Zane bluntly broke the news. "We know the piece came from that large hole near the ceiling... as someone managed to throw a flame through it. We need something to give us a lead, Jay."

"Aw, man..."

"Kai and I got some stuff that could possibly lead us in the right direction," Lloyd told the others. "It might not be much, but it's something. Come scan it for me, Zane; we need to find the owner of this knife and the location of where they're at."

¤ ¤

Said owner fell onto the couch, a loud and bothered sigh escaping her throat. Her arm rested across her eyes. "The light. It hurts. I need to sleep."

Scarlett chuckled from the kitchen, looking over the counter at her friend. "Rough day today?"

"Like you wouldn't believe. They just kept on piling and piling papers on me... I'm sixteen years old and I work more than the full-timers," the redhead complained.

A strange sizzle in the air woke her up a bit and she whipped her head around. "Wait, Scarlett, what are you doing in the kitchen?"

The older teen looked a little freaked out now as she very much incorrectly lifted the pan; she grabbed it by the hilt, thank god, but started to tilt it.

"Well, I knew you would come home exhausted... I tried to make lunch?" she answered with a nervous smile.

"Oh, no," Mia muttered as she rose to her feet, hurrying over to her friend. "Scar, you didn't have to. I appreciate it, but really, you didn't have to. You know I do the cooking."

As she tried to grab the pan's hilt, whatever the hell was in there slid out. As the tips of the blue flames from the stove touched the supposed food, it started to sizzle louder and even crackle. Smoke slowly rose.

Then the smoke alarm started beeping loudly. "Fire. Fire. Fire."

"Ah, shit. I'm sorry, M," Scarlett apologized with a small frown.

"It's okay... let's just do the thing again."

The two girls each grabbed a towel hung around the hook of the oven, standing under the beeping smoke alarm and waving them under to give it air.

They were like this for a good thirty seconds. Most of the time, this would have worked by then.

At their door were the five hooded ninjas. Zane knocked on the door twice.

"Well, here goes nothing," Cole mumbled.

There was no response. Well, because, the two residents were busy trying to stop the beeping before they went insane.

Lloyd tried knocking this time. There was still no response.

Inside, the two were starting to yell.

"Why won't this thing shut the hell up!"

"I don't know, but my arm is starting to hurt! So are my ears. And my head."

The rooms weren't exactly soundproof, but were good enough noiseblockers. Despite that, the ninjas were finally able to hear the commotion. Jay put his ear to the door and heard the faint sound of the alarm.

"Huh. I think they're having a crisis in there."

Cole sighed. "Okay, I'm not gonna break down an innocent citizen's door... but this is an emergency." He lightly pushed Jay to the side and aggressively knocked three times.

Mia was the first to hear the faint bangs on the other side. "Of course someone has to be at the door now."

While she walked over, Scarlett continued to deliriously wave her towel under the alarm. This thing definitely needed new batteries or something.

The redhead opened the door, an already agitated expression on her face as the ringing was now echoing through the hallway. "What? We're in the middle of something, if you couldn't tell."

Zane blinked. "No, we couldn't tell, unfortunately."

While Mia was going to burst in anger at his assumed sarcasm—it wasn't sarcasm, of course. He genuinely couldn't tell—before the sound of something hitting another was heard.

"Shut the fuck up!" Scarlett had screamed, harshly throwing a bottle of hair product at the smoke detector. While it did hit it square in the center, it did nothing. She took a deep breath through her nose, grasping the sides of her head with her hands.

"Is she like, mentally okay?" Cole asked in slight concern, peeking into the apartment.

"Oh, yeah she is. Just except when this doesn't turn off. It drives her absolutely insane," Mia responded. She then turned her head to shout into the apartment, "Scar, relax for a second! People are watching you."

Jay stepped next to Cole and stared up at the object that seemed to make people mad. He lifted his finger and a streak of lightning flew and shocked the detector. In a second, the irritating beeping stopped.

"There we go. Uh, sorry for the super late notice, but we'd really appreciate it if you could let us in," Jay meekly told the younger teen. "We won't be long, promise."

Scarlett had the biggest smile on her face. "Whoever stopped that smoke alarm can absolutely come in. Oh wait, is that the ninja? Yeah, you guys can come in."

Mia rolled her eyes before opening the door a bit wider in order to give them better walking access. "Yup, sure... just right on in, I guess."

Lloyd was the last one to enter the room, genuinely smiling at Mia. Not like she could see it, though. "Thank you."

"Sure... whatever."

Scarlett walked behind the kitchen counter like she didn't just have a mini mental breakdown two seconds ago. "You guys want something to drink? I would offer you something to eat too, but, well, that's how we got into that alarm situation in the first place. I have snacks though. You guys like Doritos?"

"We appreciate it, but we're only here for a—"

Kai cut Zane off with a strange look. "Speak for yourself, buddy. I love Doritos."

The teen smiled as she opened a cabinet and pulled out three different sharing bags; one red, one a darker red, and a blue. "Regular, spicy, or cool ranch?"

"Ooh, spicy please."

Mia squinted in annoyance as her friend gave the ninja in red the bag of chips. "Did you all really show up here unannounced for chips?"

"No, no! Kai, can you please focus?" Lloyd heavily sighed. "I know you don't know us personally, so we're sorry for showing up out of the blue."

Kai pulled his hood down, letting his spiked hair loose. Jay leaned over, wanting to munch as well.

"Oh, you're cute," she softly muttered to the former.

He grinned up at her. "Thanks. So are you. Hey, you look kinda familiar..."

The ninja in green looked at the two teens. "We wanted to ask you a few questions about the fire that took place last night in Ninjago Capitol, is all. You two ladies were at the event, right?"

"That's what you're here about?" Mia sat on the hand rest of the couch, somewhat distanced from the group of boys. "We didn't do anything wrong."

"Well, ahem," Cole cleared his throat, leaning forward in his seat. "Not that we're accusing you of anything, but... Zane?"

Said ninja's eyes suddenly glowed bright blue as a hologram appeared from them. It displayed a picture of that green pocket knife in the bag; Mia's pocket knife.

She pressed her palms into her forehead in distress. "Oh, shit. No wonder I couldn't find it this morning..."

"Babe, you dropped your pocket knife?" Scarlett frowned as she looked toward her friend. "No wonder the ninjas are here, they think you were trying to kill somebody."

"What? I was not!"

"Okay, let's start in chronological order." Lloyd put his hands out in front of him to try and calm the two. "Without too much interruption. What were the two of you doing there last night? Some reason to host an event, right?"

"Yeah," the black-haired girl answered, hands folded in front of her stomach. "It was some fancy thing for the higher-up people. Something to celebrate donations? I'm not sure to be honest. But my agency wanted us all to go, so I went. And we could bring one other person if we wanted to, so I brought Mia with me."

Jay lifted his head like a lightbulb lit up in his brain. "Oh! That's why we recognized you. You're a model. You're like, all over the city." Kai nodded his head in agreement.

"So it was a party for rich people," Cole summed up.

"Yeah... but please don't group me with them. I'm gonna be wealthy, not rich. I know how to manage my money."

Mia slowly blinked. "No you don't. You bought a Louis Vuitton bag with a matching wallet and keychain literally two days ago."

"Everyone deserves a little special treatment every once in a while, my love."

Kai nodded his head in heavy agreement. "Amen to that."

Zane got rid of the hologram, revealing his casual blue eyes again. "Things must have been normal for a bit. What happened? What made you take out the knife, Miss Mia?"

The redhead sighed. "I get defensive in situations like that, okay? This fireball came out of nowhere through the window and hit the fountain square center of the room. The first thing I did was take out that knife; I had to protect Scarlett and I with something. But with the large crowd trying to leave out of fear, I got pushed outside. I had no idea what happened then."

"Well, I was stuck there for a little longer," Scarlett added as she recalled the events of the previous night. "I was accidentally pushed into the fountain. My back still kinda hurts from that. A pretty girl helped me out of there. Her name is Celestia. She's a super young entrepreneur, I think they said."

Kai froze at her words, remembering what the police officer had said to him earlier. "The young entrepreneur... she was the one who helped you out of the water? The one who said you fell through the fire?"

The teen nodded slowly. "Uh, yeah... apparently so. But the only thing I felt was that hard ass fountain breaking my back. Seriously, it hurt. Plus, my body is completely fine. No burns."

"Yeah, I thought that was weird..." her friend agreed. "We both did. She sounded super worried when she said all that, but... you came out perfectly fine."

Jay also had his mask off as he was eating the chips with Kai, now. Once he swallowed, he said, "Well, if you fell through the fire for possibly less than a second and into the water, wouldn't it make sense that you didn't feel it? Maybe you're looking too into it."

"How many seconds did it take for you to feel the water after you were pushed, Miss Scarlett?" Zane asked the older teen.

"Uh... maybe like two? I remember being pushed, I hit myself against the fountain crystal, and then I fell back and it was just water, everywhere."

"That's what I thought. That would be approximately 2.78 seconds for the flames to take effect on the average female. She would have felt them, Jay."

"Okay, we'll push that aside for now;" Lloyd spoke up in an attempt to return to the subject. "Did anything happen after that?"

Both Scarlett and Mia glanced at each other. Nothing very interesting or evidence-worthy really transpired after that.

"No," the former confirmed with a shake of her head. "I reunited with Mia. Celestia was with me. And then we went our separate ways. That was that."

The ninjas all looked at each other. This didn't give them much of a lead on figuring out who could have caused the slight disaster.

"Since you were the one who received the invitation, Scarlett, do you know exactly what the event was for?" Cole questioned.

"I'm gonna be honest... no," she responded. "Like I said before, it was something for donations of sorts? Maybe. I don't really keep up with stuff like that. It was my agency that received the invitation, really."

"Hmm..."

"Oh! I don't know if you've spoken to her already, but you can ask Celestia herself. She's one of the entrepreneurs that was going to speak last night. She's sure to know what the celebration was for."

Lloyd nodded. "We were going to speak to her next, actually. Before we go... was there something else important that we should know about? Well, anything in general; whatever you say could prove to be vital when you least expect it."

"No... I think I've said all I have."

Mia uncrossed her arms. "Yeah, I did too. It really wasn't much. We were just bystanders in the whole situation."

"I see. In that case," Lloyd stood up, "thank you for your time. Again, we're sorry for showing up at your door out of nowhere. I'm glad that knife had little to do with it all, though."

"Yeah, yeah..."

As all the ninjas began heading toward the door, Kai looked back at Scarlett with a smile. "Thanks for the chips." He was prepared to put it down, but she waved it off.

"Please, keep them. I have more than enough here already."

Jay snagged the bag from his hands. "Don't mind if I do."

The ninjas waved the two girls goodbye as one by one, they all walked out of the apartment. Lloyd was the only one left at the door.

"If you remember anything else that may seem important, or something related does happen... please reach out to us. We want to solve this case as quickly, but efficiently, as we can."

And just like that, he was gone. Mia shut and locked the door as soon as he was out of her line of sight.

"Well that was annoying," she commented. "Was my knife really that big of a deal that they had to show up?"

"It was in a police bag, M... I think it was," Scarlett replied with a gentle smile. "Regardless, I hope the ninjas find out who did this. Who knows if they'll attack anywhere else again?"

"Yeah... you're right. They are, unfortunately, our only hope in this city after all."