nya

The name 'Chen' was one familiar to her, she just couldn't place it.

"Chen, as in Master Chen's Noodle House?" asked Cole gleefully.

Skylor nodded cautiously, pulling out her other earbud and dropping the wired headphones into her bag. At her confirmation, the muscular boy ran over to the girl and gave her a big bear hug. Skylor's sharp intake of breath and surprise was slightly amusing. The girl obviously hadn't heard of Cole's legendary bear hugs. For someone who spent so much time eating, then working out, making mixtapes and sleeping in a constant cycle, Cole gave the best hugs in the group.

"Air," wheezed the red head. Cole dropped her to the ground, placing both hands on her shoulders with the most serious expression Nya thought he'd ever made.

"How long is the all-you-can-eat deal going on for? It's supposed to be a secret but..." he raised an eyebrow hopefully, and Chen chuckled.

"This Saturday. Whoever's the last to eat while the deal's on gets a week's worth of lunches free." Skylor tucked a strand of wine-red hair behind her ear and shook Cole's hand teasingly. "Pleasure doing business with you. I'd need something in exchange though, as well as your word that you won't tell my dad."

"You can eat lunch with us tomorrow!" offered Kai, popping up behind Cole like a Jack-In-A-Box except with ridiculously spiky hair.

Nya scoffed and crossed her arms. "Oh so tomorrow you deign it upon yourself to come sit with us at lunch."

At Skylor's confused face, she explained simply "My brother can't decide for the life of him whether he would rather hang out with the popular kids or us. So he decided to split his time and that means he doesn't eat lunch with us. Normally."

Kai rolled his eyes and stuck out his hand with a devilish smile. "Kai Smith. And the grumpy lady over there would be my sister, Nya."

"Cole Brookstone."

Jay wound his scarf around his neck with a welcoming smile, "Jay Walker."

"Zane Julien."

"Pixal Borg."

"Lloyd Garmadon." Skylor's eyebrows raised in recognition of the name, but Chen kept her mouth shut.

"Can you kids quit jabbering and just leave?" said Mrs Jatezski, already packing up her bags.

Nya laughed, hooked her arms with Pixal's and Skylor's, dragging the two girls out of the classroom.

"Did you not have a student guide to show you around the first week?" asked Pixal, brows furrowed.

Skylor snickered, pocketing her phone. "Yeah. Some girl named Harumi. She dropped me off at my first class with a Grammy-worthy smile and skipped off. Never saw her again."

Nya laughed, rolling her eyes. "I'm surprised Harumi even volunteered."

"She said something about student points?" mentioned the red head.

Pixal gasped softly in recognition of the prestigious award. "Every year, the student with a certain amount of points gets a fancy award and with that a three day trip for up to ten people to anywhere in the world. But you need a crazy amount of points to get the award, and you need perfect grades, good attendance and so many other conditions some students don't bother trying."

Nya led the two other girls out of the school, stopping by the big glass front doors. "I'll see you tomorrow Pix for the project before school, yeah?" At the girl's nod, Nya smiled. "And we'll see you at break tomorrow Skylor."

After exchanging numbers, the three went their separate ways. Skylor claimed someone from her dad's work was coming to pick her up, Pixal was already dashing for the train and Nya just had to walk around the block. Kai hadn't made it home yet, he was probably hanging around outside school before heading for practice. She unlocked the door and sighed, kicking one of her brother's many football shoes out of the way. Nya and Kai's parents worked away from home a lot and she couldn't blame them, their jobs were time-consuming but they always tried to be home for birthdays and Christmas.

It was more than she could ask for, anyway.

She kicked her shoes off and padded to the wooden-floor kitchen in only her socks. Nya dumped her school bag on a barstool and made her way to the fridge, welcoming the cold air as she pulled out a soda can and shut the door with her foot. She cast a wary eye at the dirty breakfast dishes in the sink, scribbled on a sticky note and stuck the cheery yellow memo to the faucet. She and Kai (well, mostly her) tried to keep the house tidy in case their mum or dad came in and it was useful that once a week a maid cleaned the house from top to bottom.

It was no secret their parents were well off, and by extension, it meant them too, so it made sense for the siblings to live in a three-story house with a backyard and pool and access to a private beach down the road. Nya, unlike Kai, liked to keep their wealth on the down-low and to their little friendship group but her brother had parties almost every weekend after games. He played almost every type of sport, so there were a lot of parties and a lot of cleaning up. Luckily, her parents had purchased the house nearby school, which happened to be not far off from a stretch of beach which they owned. No more than a ten-minute walk to school, the Smith siblings rarely drove there at all.

She sat down at the kitchen table with a sigh and pulled out her huge stack of homework, opening up her laptop to connect her headphones and start on the massive pile of homework looming ahead of her. Jazzy tunes playing and two hours later, the door banged open, something even her music couldn't drown out. Just finished with her homework, she neatly filed away the completed sheets and test notes.

"Who's there?" she yelled from the kitchen.

"I'm here to kill you." growled a deep voice.

Her hand immediately went to the wooden chopping block that held all their knives and grasped the handle of the biggest. She heard footsteps clumping towards her, and gripping the knife tightly in her hands she prepared to throw it when a familiar head of spiky gelled hair appeared around the corner.

"You actually fell for that?" laughed her brother, shucking off his shoes.

"Why are you all wet?" she chose to ignore his words and wrinkle her nose at his drenched attire.

"It's been raining for the last hour." he frowned, peeling off his shirt to drop it on the floor.

Nya looked outside to find rain pouring down onto their front lawn relentlessly, leaving a grey haze of blurry water. "I didn't notice," she stated the obvious. "I'll cook tonight. Looks like the storm will last a couple of hours. And god, please put on a shirt."

Kai patted his abs with a proud grin. "I'm gonna take a shower." Then he turned on his heel and marched up the stairs, leaving a trail of wet footsteps behind him.

Nya turned to fill a pot up with water on their electric stovetop and sprinkled some salt in and set it to boil. She knew how to make three things exactly without burning them: pasta with tomato sauce, toast, and bacon and eggs. The sauce was store-bought of course, so she rifled through the pantry to find one of many random bottles of marinara sauce, and spiral-shaped pasta (Kai insisted they eat those). While waiting for the pasta to cook, she scrolled through Instagram mindlessly, liking her friend's posts, Cole pre-workout, Pixal and Zane at the former's house, Jay with his latest inventions and Lloyd at some comic book store.

The storm roared outside, the rain gushing down harder than ever, she couldn't even see across the street. When the pasta was finally cooked, she tossed it in a new pot with the warmed up marinara sauce and yelled for Kai to come down. The two of them ate dinner in amiable silence, passing the big bowl of pasta and frozen, oven made garlic bread. With plans to make microwave popcorn and watch a movie, she stood up to wash up, and the power went out.

cole

Cole was midway through his third match with Harry247_Zebra when all the lights in his house died out. Then, his TV followed, the heater and the churning of the washing machine stopped. He stood up and walked to the window, peering through the curtains and the rain. The street lights were out too. Immediately, his hand went to his phone which was thankfully on fifty percent. Most of the time it was dead. First, he typed out a message to his dad, who was out performing at some concert way out of town. With no response, he moved to his friend's group chat. Name courtesy of one Jay Walker after too many hours on TikTok.

(from the very generous author, here's a quick guide for contact names, and to make it easier everyone will have the same contacts on everyone's phones unless it changes :).

Kai: kai the fry

Nya: punchy girl

Cole: music man

Zane: brains of the operation

Pixal: cool, calm and collected

Jay: i put da muffins in da freezer

Lloyd: lil green bean

Skylor: noodle lady

- who in the hell put da muffins in da freezer -

You are typing...

Me: yo anyone elses power just go out?

punchy girl: yeah all power in our house is down

kai the fry: I DIDNT GET TO EAT POPCORN

brains of the operation : pixal's house is out too. It's a city wide power outage. In cases such as these we have been advised to wait at home until power comes back on. And don't open the fridge.

Me: I. HAD. CAKE. IN. THERE.

punchy girl added an: unknown number

punchy girl: this is skylor's number. Welcome to the crackheads, chen

i put da muffins in da freezer: uh, i thought we agreed we'd be called the super-badass-flaming-ninja?

noodle lady: my house is out too. My father is going ballistic.

lil green bean: none of my calls are going through to my mother

cool, calm and collected: yes sometimes in power outages that can happen. I'll see you guys at school tomorrow if power comes back on.

It turns out, that exactly an hour before cancelled school was supposed to start, power came back on.