It was a normal morning at the ninja household.

Unagami was trying out a new recipe with Cole, Kai and Jay teamed up to try and steal some of the cookies the first they were trying to make and Zane was on firefighting duty, trying to put out every fire the first two started while baking.

Lloyd was playing videogames in the livng room and the rest was nowhere to be see, probably still in their rooms, seeing as it was 4am.

Jay was just about to steal a few cookies from the not-so-burnt batch he was sneaking up to for past 5 minutes, when a doorbell rang across the temple.

"Can someone get it?" Lloyd's voice ran to the kitchenafter a few seconds of no one moving a muscle to get to the door.

"Why can't you get it?" Cole shouted across the hall in response. "We are busy here." Unagami nodded in agreement, hands in a bowl of dough.

"I won't do it. I'm busy too!" 'With what? Videogames?' Cole wanted to ask sarcastically, but stopped himself.

"Ugh, okay. Kai. You get it." Kai stopped in his tracks, a cookie halfway in his mouth. That was the first time his presence has been  adressed since he came in.

"Uhhh..." He didn't want to lose kitchen-entering privelegesso he quickly walked up to the door.

"Hey, you need someone in particular?'The redd ninja asked as soon as he saw the mailman, hoping he could just go get whoever's order just got delivered and go back to stealing cookies before Jay can eat everything.

"No. t's adressed to all of you. Have a good night." Mailman turned  and walked away.

Great! Now they had to wait six hours for breakfast to find out what it is with everyone present.

-

When the whole family finally gathered around the table (with Harumi fashionably late) and he managed to die of boredom at least three times, Kai finally stood up and announced there was mail.

"Well, you could've just told whoever bought a giant bouncy castle this time and end this shaming." Liv crossed her arms with a sour expression.

"Okay, first of all it's not my fault thet mailman didn't tell me who the package was for." It was a lie. Ka just didn't catch t and mailman was gone before he could ask. "And second, this ^letter^ is adressed to all of us." He opened the envelope and some kind of magical fanfare started playing, along with little fireworks exploding all around.

How this thing managed to not light anything on fire was a mystery.

"King Vangelis indly requests your presence as honored guests to celebrate the birthdayof princess Vania."Kai read out loud.

Who even is 'king Vangelis'? And where was the party taking place?

"Ohhh... It's from Shintaro." Sky said, not really clearing anything up.

"What's 'Shintaro'?" Jay asked what everyone has been wondering.

"A mythical city atop a mountain. t's said to be very beatiful and rich and it's people have wings." Okay, maybe not exactly everyone has been wonderng, as Zane provided an explanation.

"Mhm. That." Sky confirmed. "Hey, Liv are the shields on the Bounty working? I heard that there were Direbats living around Shintaro."

-

Fortunately yes, the shields were workingand when Jay pressed a button, a glowing force field surrounded the whole ship, protecting it from the bats, so it was a smooth sailing.

Upon their arrival, they saw a beatiful, breathtaking city. The white spires of towers tinted with gold rising up from buildings as astonishing as the most beautiful palace in the world.

A swarm of winged people welcomed them in front of what Liv assumed was the palace. Soon a man with short black hair, skin white as snow and thin, leaf-like wings gold as blood that has been replaced with golden glitter pen ink for whatever reason emerged from the palace.

Right next to him strolled out a girl looking very much like an angel and behaving like she was about to explode into a cloud of confetti and glitter.

"You are the ninja!" She ran up to Cole. "I've heard so much about you!"

-

"Is it true that-" Sky stopped listening. Normally she would be thrilled to answer questions about the ninja. Now, however, they were feeling a bit uneasy and uncomfortable for reasons unknown.

"Ekhm. Vania, darling, maybe you should show our guests to their chambers?" Vangelis coughed and gestured at the entrance, effectively poking Sky out of their near lethargic state.

The ninja all followed never-shutting-up princess. "We didn't really know how many rooms to have in the ready, so you have the whole hallway to yourselves."

'Entire hallway' had about 200 meters and 15 doors. Surprisingly it wasn't much too much, since no one got left back at the monastery. That made 12 people - along with Uncle Nix, Unagami and Raven.

"Okay! Settle in and meet me in the main hall in half an hour!" After that Vania walked away quickly, leaving the team to themselves.

"Sigh. I'm gonna close myself in my room." Sky mumbled. "Okay! I'll set a timer. In 20 minutes I will go knocking on every door to get you all downstairs." Mei added, not leaving any room for discussion.

"See ya." With these words Sky disappeared into their room with Mei followint suit.

-

The bed was king sized, settled in the center of the room with it's white sheets playing well with the overall whiteness of the room.

Sky completely ignored everything and jumped straight onto the bed, flopping onto it face-first. That was usually a sign of boredom or feeling uncomfortable.

She sighed and changed positions to instead sit on the left side of the bed and took out her phone.

They raise their hand, coiling their fingers around air like they wanted to press them into a fist. Instead, her fingers closed around a pair of headphones she withdrew from the pocket dimension linked to her choker.

She could just make them appear on her head, but preferred this way, because it 'felt more natural'.

They put the headphones on and likely put on some music, closing their eyes and sighing contently.

Mei sat right next to her, taking out her own phone.

20 minutes of scrolling instagram and puppy videos later the timer went off and Mei stood up to get everyone.

Sky immediatelly caught on to the shift, and so she quickly put her headphones away and pocketed her phone.

Walking out onto the hallway, the two saw Livinia and Jay already there, chatting away.

When the whole team finally gathered together, they all went downstairs to the main hall totally not losing their way three times on the way there.

-

"And here is the third guest room lounge." Vania pointed to yet another door on yet another hallway that half of the team probably won't remember anyway. But Raven making a mental map of this maze-like building, like the Ellie Grant mission a few months ago, and a list of any potential getaway and get in, just like one of their very first cases with Amanda Degler.

The rest looked like they were desperately trying to latch onto any last strenght they had to focus, except for Cole, who was actively talking with the princess about his favourite type of cake. He talked about this often, it wasn't anything strange.

What was strange, however, was that the princess seemed to be enjoying the conversation and was actively participatig in a debate about whether chocolate cake was better than strawberry cheesecake (her favourite flavour).

-

After the tour around this labyrinth, everyone went back to their respective rooms.

The darkness started creeping into the palace and so the ninja quickly went to sleep.

Mei opened her eyes and was immediately greeted by the dark.

Ugh. She must've woken up in the middle of the night again. "Uh, you're not Master of Earth." a tiny voice said from somewhere in the room.

Mei squinted her eyes. The moonlight falling in through the window revealed a tiny creature standing by the wall.

Wait... Was something like that supposed to happen...?

Oh, who was she kidding? She didn't have the enrgy for it now. "Master of earth should be i his bed. Three rooms down the corridor." She mumbled to the creature and went back to sleep.