"He is walking past the van," Zane whispered.

They were lucky to have brought their window protectors with them so that the three sitting in the front didn't have to worry about being seen.

Once Zane gave a firm nod, Cole took a deep breath, put his hand on the door handle, and opened the door, stepping outside. His feet gently touched the sidewalk, creating no sounds. His eyes were fixated on the moving form of the unaware Mechanic, his breathing on hold to make no sounds whatsoever.

Cole quietly walked closer to the Mechanic as he kept walking down the walk, closer to the truck's back doors.

Just as he was about to pass by it, Cole rushed forward and placed one of his hands firmly on his mouth, preventing him from making noise, his other arm slinging around his torso and squishing his limbs to his body. The Mechanic's eyes widened when he realized what was happening. He instinctively brought his robo-arm up to shoot the enemy off, but that was deemed impossible when the arm was suddenly yanked off his body.

Kai grinned, holding his arm in front of his face, taunting the Mechanic.

"Let go of me!" the old man yelled, although to the ninja, it was nothing but gibberish.

Cole began to lead the Mechanic toward the doors of the truck, but he started to thrash around with his legs, which caused Cole to sigh. Kai grabbed the Mechanic's legs so that the two ninja carried the older guy inside the truck.

Once the door was closed and locked, Cole and Kai looked at each other before letting go, making the Mechanic land harshly on his bottom.

He hissed, rubbing his gluteus maximus. But then he came back to the situation at hand and sprung up, nearly knocking into Cole.

His fist (his only fist) hung high in the air, ready to strike the Red Ninja's face, but he was faster, sending a punch of his own and TKO-ing the other. The Mechanic dropped to the floor like a sack of old, expired potatoes, and none of the people made any effort to catch him or make sure he was unhurt.

"Ready?" Kai asked Lloyd, putting an encouraging hand on his shoulder.

Lloyd nodded, a determined look on his face. "Ready. See you in five?"

"Make that four," Cole told him. "Just in case."

Lloyd nodded again, taking a longer look of the Mechanic's unmoving body on the floor before getting out of the truck. His heartbeat sped up in his chest, he could feel it, but he knew it was not the time to let it show.

He was no longer Lloyd Garmadon but the Mechanic.

Rounding the corner, the brown contacts in his eyes locked on the flickering lights of the arcade's banner. Lloyd confidently marched over to it and pushed open the door, making it collide with the wall on the inside.

It was completely silent inside, not a single sound audible. A few cars drove down the street, but to Lloyd they didn't count.

He looked around. The machines in his general vicinity seemed broken down and unused for at least a decade, or at least long enough of a time for them to have cobwebs decorating every inch of them and some cockroaches climbing up their walls. Lloyd made a face and turned away.

Then he waited. That was all he could do.

And the worst part of it all was that Lloyd didn't even know what he was waiting for. The two spiders were still in the building somewhere, Pixal had told him and the others that earlier, before they had come there, but why the spiders were there or if they were waiting for the Mechanic in particular was still a mystery.

Stepping forward, Lloyd decided to look around, wanting to savor the fact that he was supposed to be disguised in a different man's skin. Maybe the Mechanic had some important and interesting documents lying around somewhere? Or maybe he was just a filthy man who had his dirty underwear strewn around, not bothering to pick it up and wash it.

Lloyd almost rolled his eyes at that thought. Not like he was a saint with the dirty pile of laundry waiting for him on his chair in the corner of his room back in the monastery.

A sudden sound coming from behind him made Lloyd whip around, his eyes wandering quickly in all directions. The sound was faint, almost undetectable to the naked ear, but Lloyd, being a ninja, managed to detect it with his expanded hearing abilities.

He slowly began to walk over to where the sound went to, which was behind an arcade cabinet that was lying on its side on the floor.

Just as he focused his all to look for what had escaped back there, another, clearer sound made him freeze.

"You are invited to join the Council of the Crystal King."

Lloyd knew that the person behind him was not talking to him personally. They were talking to the Mechanic. So he calmly turned around and flinched when the person turned out to be less... lively than he thought.

It was a hologram coming out of one of the spiders' back, the other spider being right next to it. The beam was either magenta or a hot pink, Lloyd couldn't tell. A mask was stuck to the hologram's face, and the rest of its body was hidden beneath a dark robe.

"And have your revenge upon those who wronged you," it went on, barely moving while doing so.

Lloyd tried to look for anything indicative as to who it was or if it was a live broadcast, a video chat for lack of better term, but he could not find anything.

"Do you accept?" Finally a move. A head tilt upwards. But that was it. Nothing else.

Lloyd, not knowing what else to say, brought out the most convincing and deepest voice he could muster and tried to play off the nervousness that was raking through his body.

"What took you so long?"

"Good." The hologram seemed pleased with his answer. "Follow the spider. It will bring you to me."

The hologram then suddenly disappeared back into the spider's back. The other spider rushed further into the back of the building but Lloyd's focus was glued to the more important one.

It tapped one of its eight legs twice on the floor before it also pitter-pattered away. Stopping in front of the closed door that led outside, it seemed to wait for Lloyd to open the door for him.

The ninja in disguise walked over to it and cautiously opened the door. The spider, now free, sprinted outside, and Lloyd had to swallow the shock and quickly tried to keep up with it as it led him to a place he had yet to see.

The Silent Man's Whisper [ninjago]Where stories live. Discover now