Nya's immediate reaction was to get her trident out again - there was no leaving ancient creatures or artifacts to their own devices, they needed to find those beetles now. The employee (Robin, said her name tag) looked alarmed as Kai and Astra followed in Nya's suit.

"You put live beetles in a museum exhibition?" Kai exclaimed.

"Well, I didn't think they'd get out, did i?" Robin shot back, wringing her hands. "Please, I know some beetles may be beneath you, but I'd be in really big trouble if my boss discovered this mess. He was trained by Dr. Sander Saunders, and he was a real stickler. "

Kai and Nya winced in unison at the mention of Krux's alter ego. Dr Saunders, the curator, had been an odd fellow initially, and when Kai realised he was actually one of the Time Twins, everything had gone downhill from there. Instinctively, everyone looked to Lloyd for confirmation; he'd been their de facto leader for years, and sometimes Nya suspected the responsibility had been put on his shoulders far too early, but he'd grown into the position with help from everyone. The blond nodded just once, and began sorting out orders.

"Pixal, I'm going to need you running comms back at base. Jay, go with Pixal and keep an eye on the radio channels and online media. Zane, Cole, Nya, investigate the possibility that the beetles were stolen. Go through cam footage, check whatever you need to. We have clearance. Kai, Astra, and I will search more into the beetles moving, see if the museum has missed anything. Got it?"

"We're really putting this much effort into finding some beetles?" Kai asked. Nya kicked him in the leg subtly, to which he turned to her with an exaggerated wince of pain.

Lloyd answered Kai with more patience than Nya thought her brother deserved. "If citizens need our help, Kai, we'll give it to them. Don't forget that."

For a second, Lloyd faltered, glancing to Robin with more emotion one should have for a random museum employee. It wasn't too hard for Nya to figure out what Lloyd was thinking. She'd spent a lot of time with him on the run. She knew how his mind stopped working whenever the princess entered the equation. Robin was an unfortunate coincidence.

Then Kai grumbled something unintelligible, heading off with Lloyd and Astra in the search for clues. Personally, Nya felt that as much as the beetles being stolen was the more reasonable explanation, when it came to living in Ninjago, the possibility that the insects had somehow broken out on their own was entirely possible.

Taking charge, she spun towards Robin and asked, "Which way to the security office?"

"At the very end of this hallway, take a left, and some stairs will lead you to the office. Knock, and say Robin sent you. Be careful, Nya, Jeremy can be a bit...weird sometimes."

Nya thanked Robin, following her instructions with Cole and Zane on her tail. Stopping outside of the office door, Nya let Zane take point. He'd be able to scan through the footage at a faster rate and pick up details that were impossible for Cole and Nya thanks to his intricate software.

Zane rapped on the door politely, finding it unlocked when he poked his head in. "Excuse me, Mr Jeremy? Robin sent us."

"Eh?" a scruffy man yanked the door open, scanning the three ninja with a yawn. When he made eye contact with Nya, however, he seemed to take on a whole different attitude. Instead of just lazy, he was plain rude. "Oh. Ninja. What do you need, gentlemen?"

Nya bit down a retort that would have gotten them kicked out immediately. As soon as they had what they needed, they'd be out of here anyway. Cole and Zane both glanced apologetically to Nya before the former took the lead and requested access to that day's footage. With a suspicious look towards Nya, Jeremy let the three ninja into the security office, a dingy room cloaked in darkness. Usually, offices such as these were filled with bright lights to make every detail on the screens stand out. Jeremy seemed to work differently.

"Take whatever you need," Jeremy informed Zane, giving Nya another suspicious glare. "I didn't notice anything today. But you ninja are the real guys, real stuff. I trust you."

Of course you didn't, you unobservant bat, Nya thought silently, taking note of the scattered takeaway boxes and the video game loaded up on one of the monitors.

Zane subtly plugged in a connecting cable, most likely uploading the footage so they could examine it at headquarters if needed. Frowning, Nya leans over Zane's shoulder, noticing a strange movement near the beetle exhibition. Zane leant forward just as Nya pointed it out, nodding.

"Keep an eye on this guy. Body language is off." she noted, her observation proving correction, as seconds later, the ninja enter, and the hooded figure seems to notice this. Their body language is as tense as the grainy pixels can reveal, leading to the desperate smash they make with a concealed weapon. The glass shatters just as she remembered, but the camera captures what they did not see earlier. The attacker manages to snatch up two of the five beetles, but the other three startle to life and scuttle away. One crawls up to the vents, another crawls into a guy's backpack, and the third disappears through the open window.

"It appears we know what happened to the insects," Zane said, rewinding the footage to watch the escapes of the three beetles. "We should analyse this back at headquarters, and perhaps see if we can track down the man with the backpack."

"I don't want to stay here any longer than necessary," Nya added in a whisper, catching Jeremy's displeased gaze fixated on her back.

Zane nodded, disconnecting from the computer whilst Cole sent a message back to the others through his watch.

"Are you dudes done?" Jeremy approached, clapping his hands as he addressed Zane and Cole. "Guys, I just have to say, I'm a big fan of your work. You guys just have so much to do with saving the city, I know it's a real man's job, so I just wanted to say you are seen. You know?."

Cole and Zane both opened their mouths to protest, but Nya got there first. Jeremy had nothing more they needed from him.

"Jeremy. I don't know why, or who made you act like this, but it's clear you disregard me as a member of the ninja simply because I'm a girl. Do you want to explain that in a clear, precise manner, or are you lacking the brain cells to do so? Because I can see how much time you spend holed up in your man cave, and that tells me enough." Jeremy took a step back, mouth agape as he blundered each and every attempt to explain away his behaviour.

Nya raised an eyebrow as he said something along the lines of, well, I didn't mean it that way, you know? "What, now that I call you out, everything you said was a joke?"

"No, look, you're taking my words out of context, you can't do that." Jeremy stuttered, hands in the air. "I swear, I didn't mean it that way."

"We all know how you meant it." Cole crossed his arms, tilting his head slightly. "I think you should do the smart thing and listen to Nya."

All Zane did was give Jeremy a sharp nod. "As for your earlier statement, describing the work of a ninja as a 'real man's job' in reference to myself is incorrect. I am a nindroid. Choose your words carefully."

"You have two choices," Nya made sure the eye contact with Jeremy was stifling, to the point where he was looking to Cole and Zane for reassurance, even after they'd made their stances clear. "You either continue to act like this, or you get your shit together, and start doing the bare minimum. Got it?"

"I—"

"Do I need to get Samurai X, Reaper, or the Master of Amber in here?" Nya was perfectly fine with bringing in any of her friends to see what they'd say. Pixal would destroy any argument the waste of space could come up with, Astra would probably lean towards more violent tactics, and Skylor's witty but strong personality would have Jeremy questioning everything he'd said.

Jeremy finally spoke clearly. "No. I understand."

"Good. Let's go." Nya turned on her heel, and headed for the door. It was never easy dealing with people like Jeremy. But she'd gotten used to it over the years, even if she hated it.

— ⚔ —

Astra was never one for reading books. Sometimes Lloyd had really bad suggestions. She flipped through yet another page about absolutely nothing, scanning for the keywords that would trigger her attention and hopefully contain useful information. To her right, Kai lazily flipped through the pages of another ancient tome, to her left, Lloyd peered intensely at the tiny script of a scroll.

"Anything?"

Lloyd and Kai both looked up at her question, equal shrugs of indifference. Astra closed the book she'd been reading and picked a random scroll from the selection Robin had pulled for them. The museum's archives were stuffed floor to ceiling with boxes and books, so it was no surprise that Robin did have a large pile of reading material awaiting them. She'd apologised, saying that the museum's understaffing issues had set them back on beetle research. So, the three ninja had undertaken the museum's efforts and had been reading for hours with no success.

Astra pulled down on the red ribbon attached to the wax seal of the scroll, revealing lines of hastily scribbled text. The post-it note stuck on the scroll said it had been found in a chest near the beetles, increasing the chances of relevant information. Tapping on the wood of the desk, she scanned the information briskly, hope decaying with each second as the beetles remained unmentioned. That was, until she spotted a barely decipherable scrawl in one of the footnotes.

[17] Kalej beetles, otherwise known as kalej, are insects long associated with desert culture. The elytra of the kalej are marked with symbols that could potentially link to their powers. Refer to Armat's Scripture.

"Guys," Astra shot out a hand to shake Kai's shoulder fervently, "Guys, I think I found something."

"Will—you—stop—" The Fire Ninja attempted to pry Astra's hand of his shoulder, but she shoved the scroll into his face and waited for him to process her findings. "Oh, wow, you actually did something."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she swatted him over the head, gaining Lloyd's attention. Her twin craned his neck over to read the small remark at the bottom of the page.

Lloyd nodded, ignoring Astra's anger with practised expertise. "That's more than we had before. Take a photo and send a copy to Pixal, see if she might be able to find out more about this scripture."

Astra snapped a photo of the scroll, and of the footnote, forwarding both to the android with a request to dig deeper into Armat's Scripture.

"I think that's all we're going to get out of the museum," Lloyd sighed, rolling up the last scroll. The bin of potential information Robin had filled up for them was now completely empty, its contents stack haphazardly on the table next to it. "Back to headquarters?"

Kai grinned. "Last one there's a—"

"—rotten ninja!" Astra leapt over a dusty armchair and darted for the door, sprinting for the museum's back entrance whilst summoning her bike to her location. Kai and Lloyd's shouts of surprise echoed her quick retreat, lifting a corner of her mouth into a smirk. Her familiar purple bike screeched to a stop in the back alley, amongst bags of stinking rubbish and abandoned objects. Glancing back just once, Astra swung onto her bike and sped away, heading for Titanium Square.

She had passed by the square of garden where Zane's statue had been moved, moss and everything, to a new, less popular area, for months and months before she met the ninja himself. Having spent most of her childhood underground or in the dark, training or carrying out missions for the Sons of Garmadon, she'd rarely been upside to see the titanium statue. Now under private (ninja) ownership, Astra found herself slowing as she arrived. The square of land was hidden away in the darker, more abandoned parts of the city, bought when the ninja had decided the monastery was too far of a vantage point when dealing with threats in the city.

While they still maintained the monastery as a sort of outpost, when Astra had left the Sons of Garmadon and introduced them to the maze of catacombs and abandoned subway tunnels under the city, the decision to establish a base within the city had been unanimous. She wheeled her bike behind the titanium ninja, in the blind spot of the square, and waved her hand over the invisible laser that Pixal had installed. As she waited for it to recognise her, Kai and Lloyd joined her on the small rectangle of stone behind the statue.

"You guys are getting slower and slower every day." Astra grinned, patting her bike.

"You cheat more and more every day." Kai pointed out hotly, to which she could only offer him a shrug.

"I prefer to call it the element of surprise."

Just as she replied to Kai (along with Lloyd's sigh of disappointment), the ground beneath them shuddered, before slowly lowering deep into the earth. As soon as their heads were below ground level, stone slid over and sealed off the secret entrance. The walls lit up in a soft blue glow thanks to the lights Pixal had installed in the oversized elevator, highlighting Lloyd's anxious expression.

Kai seemed to sense Lloyd's anxiousness as well. "Worried, kid?"

"While we were in Shintaro, I felt like we left Ninjago defenseless. If we're not here, evil tends to brew. I'm pretty sure that's happening now. Or it did, and we're dealing with the consequences." his brow furrowed, pulling his green eyes together. A quintessentially worried-Lloyd expression. One she still didn't know how to deal with. Having spent so much time away from her true family, and growing up surrounded by criminals who'd rather talk about their next big operation over their feelings, it was often she felt useless when it came to these things.

If there was anything Astra hated, it was feeling useless. She'd been trained to be the best, rivalling the skills of Mr. E himself, and when she'd changed sides, she'd spent plenty of time battling her conflicting emotions. So it wasn't that she was unfamiliar with Lloyd's worries. She just didn't know how to deal with them.

At least Kai was there to step in with some semblance of advice. "Lloyd, evil is going to exist in Ninjago even if we're here. That's just the way things are."

"Didn't know you had such a pessimistic outlook on life." Lloyd cracked a tiny smile at Astra's words.

"It's the truth." Kai shrugged confidently, though the words weren't as comforting as the lighthearted mood suggested they were.

The lift pinged at the garage level, allowing the three to deposit their bikes and reenter the lift, exiting once again at the control floor. Awaiting them were the rest of the team, Pixal and Zane over by the computers on the left, and Nya and Cole examining security footage that had been blown up on the large screen.

"Finally, you guys are back. What took you so long?" Nya said suspiciously, eyeing their wind-blown hair. "Another race? Without me?"

"You snooze you lose." Astra winked at the Water Ninja, who simply rolled her eyes and turned back to the other screen with a frown.

"We found the security footage, all right. Our suspect is your usual black hoodie, shady attitude. The only identifying feature is this scar on their left hand and a logo we're trying to pinpoint on their hoodie."

"Hey..." Jay frowned, enlarging the blurry image of the hoodie. Pixal, at the keyboard, added some helpful sharpening to the logo and they ended up with something no one but Jay recognised. "That's from the museum gift store. It looks a bit different to the ones I saw, though."

"When did you have time to go to the gift store?" Nya spluttered. Jay shrugged nonchalantly.

On another screen, Zane pulled up the museum's online store, a basic website that showcased all of their products for sale. Jay hmm'd and haa'd until he jumped and jabbed a finger at one of several hoodies.

"That's it! That's the one. The only thing different, I think, is that bit on the bottom." the lightning elemental pointed to the blurriest element of the photo, under the image of a laughing Fangpyre. "We can't get a higher quality on it?"

Pixal shook her head. "Given the quality of the footage in the first place, I don't believe I can improve it anymore."

"Okay, so we've got to work with this. Everyone, grab something to draw with, let's try and figure it out." Lloyd suggested, sending everyone into a scurry to find the necessary utensils.

It only took a few minutes for the more impatient members of the team (Astra and Kai, unsurprisingly) to drop their crude sketches of the blurred image. The others continued working diligently, with Pixal and Zane making the real progress while everyone else's attention wavered in favour of throwing balled-up pieces of paper at each other.

"It appears to be a scroll, with the letters EOTM inscribed. That's a far as I can identify any worthy features; the rest is unfortunately too blurry to decipher." Zane apologised, shaking his head.

Lloyd clapped a hand on the nindroid's back reassuringly. "Don't worry, Zane. At least we have more to work off now. All we have to do is figure out what EOTM means."

Of course, it was Jay who volunteered a guess.

"Expecting orange trees monthly?"