This chapter has not been proofread. I will come back to it and do it once I'm able to.

"It is an interesting crystal," Pixal remarked as she let it run through her databases. The small item was put on a table that was surrounded by the four remaining family members that were currently living in the monastery.

After telling Wu, Misako and Pixal what she had been up to, Nya was met with both praise and shame.

Wu thought it was foolish of her to go to the crime scene on her own and without telling anyone, whereas Pixal and Misako were happier that she was up and slowly going back to her roots.

"Do we know what type of a crystal it is?" Nya asked, glancing down at it.

Wu, who immediately went to the large monitor in the underground base and sat down on the wheely chair, shook his head.

"I have never seen such a color on a crystal before," he answered. "Or I at least think so. I might've seen it and not thought much of it prior."

He turned around and began to type something into the computer while the other three women began a discussion of their own.

"So, you just went there and only found this?" Misako asked Nya, who nodded.

"Yeah. It was right in front of a mirror, too."

"Mirror?" Wu asked, turning back around to glance at his student.

Nya nodded. "The last time I saw it was at the Explorer's Club. No idea how, why or when it got to the museum, though. It's the mirror that shows you your biggest fear."

Wu hummed. Without saying anything else, he turned back around.

"And Aspheera just disappeared?" Misako asked.

Nya nodded.

"I have hacked into the museum's security log," Pixal announced. The three turned to her.

"Show us," Nya told her.

Pixal nodded and walked over to the monitor. Wu pushed himself back on his chair to give her more space.

In no time, Pixal got the large screen to show the room in which Nya had been not even an hour ago. It was showing the moments prior to Aspheera being spotted in there.

Everyone looked at the scene intently, waiting for something to happen.

A few seconds passed before something began to move. The door slowly opened, and a familiar head peeked inside the room.

Aspheera stepped inside and looked around, supposedly looking for something. She had a cloth in her hand, and it was quite obvious as to what she was up to.

"Ah," she beamed when her slit eyes landed on the security camera. She slithered her way over to it.

Her face was close to the camera's lens as her scaly fingers wrapped the cloth around the security camera.

And then there was nothing but darkness left.

Only sounds were audible, which the smaller team had no choice but to listen to.

Sounds of snake rattling were the only things that could be heard for a while. It was almost deafening to listen to Aspheera's snake noises.

But then they heard a gasp.

And then the camera glitched out.

Nya and Misako looked at Pixal questioningly as she immediately began to press some buttons whilst trying to get the footage to work again.

"Something seems to have distorted the footage," she concluded, her fingers slowly giving up. "I cannot get it back to working."

"Interesting," Wu hummed.

"Whatever happened there must have had the power to distort the camera," Nya guessed. "Something or someone."

"Do you think someone helped Aspheera?" Pixal asked Nya, who shrugged.

"I don't know. I'm just spitting out assumptions here."

"When was this?" Wu asked.

Pixal looked at the date and time. "This afternoon, at one forty-six."

"In board daylight, too," Misako mumbled to herself.

"Can you see where she came from? Maybe we can find the place she's been hiding in up until today," Nya said.

"That's a great idea, Nya!" Misako beamed. The older woman grew almost excited as she realized that Nya was slowly becoming a ninja again.

Or at least something that resembled it.

Pixal nodded and turned back to the monitor. She began to type on the keyboard aggressively, tuning out the new conversation that was now following.

"Nya," Misako said, glancing at the young warrior. "Have you considered what I told you?"

Nya nibbled on the dried skin on her bottom lip. It was a bad habit of hers.

"I don't know," she admitted, looking down at the crystal.

If she were to pursue the source of the crystal and possibly catch Aspheera, she would prove to the people — but mostly to herself — that she was able to work all on her own, without the guys' help.

But that was the thing; she didn't want that.

She wanted to be a part of the team, not a lone person saving the day.

Nya had spent a good portion of her life trying to prove to other people that she was independent and powerful on her own, which had never been a doubt to anyone who knew her personally. But the media? They all thought of her just trying to leech off of the others' success.

Those were the people who caused Nya to think that lowly of herself in the first place.

Now that her friends were gone, though, Nya had the time to really think about her choices and decisions.

"What do you not know?" Wu asked her, once again stroking his long beard.

"If I want to continue on my own," Nya stated bluntly, ignoring the halt her master had whilst touching his beard.

It was ironic, really.

Nya had started off as Samurai X. The Samurai X.

The Samurai X who was known to be a force of a single person. Granted, times had been easier for Nya when she was still that anonymous person behind the clunky metal thing. And no matter how much Nya loved being a ninja, being Samurai X would always have a special place in her heart.

Yet those times were long over.

Pixal was now Samurai X, and Nya was a part of a team that no longer existed. Legally, at least.

And on top of that, Nya had no powers anymore. If she even tried to go back to crime fighting, she would be at a massive disadvantage. She had also not trained regularly as well.

"Guys."

Pixal's voice brought the others out of their own thoughts. They walked closer to her and stopped on either sides of her.

"What did you find?" Nya asked her. She rested her hands on the flat surface of the desk and leaned her weight on them.

"Look," her robotic friend told her, pointing at the screen. "I could not find anything about Aspheera and her whereabouts, but I did find something peculiar."

"What does it say?" Wu asked Pixal, also looking at the screen.

It was a small report paper that had the police department's symbol on the top right corner.

"It says that motions have been detected at an underground railway that has been blocked for over a decade."

"Which means that..." Misako dragged out, waiting for Pixal to finish her train of thought.

"That a train that was not supposed to drive down a certain way has been detected driving down a certain way."

Nya furrowed her eyebrows and looked down at her fists. "And you're telling us this because...?"

Pixal shrugged. "It might lead to something. It might not. But if it does-"

"Then we will know more than we do now," Nya concluded, finishing her sentence.

"Bingo."

"So what do we do now?" Pixal asked no one in particular. She turned her chair around to look at the small group.

Wu looked between Pixal and Nya for a second before a small smile arose on his lips.

"Samurai X and the Water Ninja are going on a new mission."

— — — —

"Samurai X and the Water Ninja are going on a new mission," Nya copied Wu's last line with a mocking voice. "Water Ninja my butt."

"Nya," Pixal said warningly.

"Who is he to call me a Water Ninja? Has he seen me after I came back? Where the hell does he see water? 'Cause if he knows how to get it back, then he can be my fu-"

"Okay," her friend sighed out, letting out a huge breath right after. "Let us focus."

"Focus on what? My non-existent powers?"

Pixal looked at Nya with an unamused expression on her face. The two were currently walking along the underground train tracks in their respective mechs. Even though they had only been walking for about ten minutes, they quickly got bored of finding nothing.

So Nya chose to use that time to complain.

"Think about it!" Nya urged her friend on. "What I'm doing right now is something I was peer pressured into doing."

"That is not true," Pixal replied, looking back ahead.

"It is!"

When Nya's light began to flicker, the two looked at the flashlight in the large mech's hand. Nya moved the other big hand and tapped on the flashlight with the metallic, flat palm to get it back to working properly.

"Useless thing," Nya mumbled after she got it back to normal.

But then she heard very faint and very small footsteps from behind the two. She stopped and whipped her body around to flash her light in that direction. Pixal stopped as well.

"Did you hear that?" she whispered to Pixal. She kept flicking the flashlight from one side to the other, trying to identify what had just made the noise.

"Hear what?" Pixal asked back, also whispering.

Nya didn't answer. Her suspicions had been piqued and she could've sworn that they weren't the only people who were down at the abandoned train tracks.

After a few completely silent moments, Nya snapped out of it and turned back around with a weary gut feeling.

"Nothing," she said. "I must've been hearing things."

They kept on walking.

"What happens if we actually find something?" Pixal wondered out loud.

Nya shrugged with one shoulder although it was hidden by the mech she was in. "I don't know. I guess we'd investigate further."

Even though her answer seemed to be definitive, Nya herself was unsure. Would they really investigate further on their own? Or would they get the police to do it?

Nya heard a faint sound coming from behind them again.

She whipped back around and shone her flashlight around like a madwoman.

"What is it, Nya?" Pixal asked, shining her own flashlight down the path they had come from.

"There is something there," Nya answered. She was sure of it.

Pixal's face softened as she looked at her friend. Her worries grew the more they were spending more time together. She herself couldn't hear anything other than their own footsteps and their talking, and if one of the two could hear what was going on behind them the best, it was her and her super-hearing, being a nindroid and all.

"Nya, I don't think there is something there," Pixal voiced. "Are you sure you are okay?"

"Yes, Pixal, I am," Nya emphasized, turning her head to look at the nindroid. "I'm not going crazy."

The stern expression she wore and her tone being final only left Pixal sighing in defeat.

Though her powers weren't back, Nya's traits were.

And that was a good thing, sure, but it also meant that Nya's stubbornness was back almost tenfold.

"Let's keep going," Pixal finally said, turning around. She began to leave.

"No," Nya argued. "There is something. I know there is."

The clear desperation in her voice didn't go unnoticed by her friend but was blatantly ignored.

Nya had no choice but to accept defeat. She turned around and followed her friend.

What if she was going crazy? Could it have been the side effects of being a human made of flesh and organs again? Maybe she needed to rest a bit more, and possibly even seek therapeutic counseling.

It didn't take long for them to come to the end of the tracks. What was quite weird was the fact that the very end was being lit up by a force that wasn't their flashlights'. And a train was there as well.

The two had to be even more careful now that they came across something that wasn't a part of their plan.

They moved slower and more calculatedly. Their flashlights were pointed at all directions and none of them let themselves get unfocused from what was in front of them.

After she was sure that no threat was apparent, Nya took the risk of jumping down from her mech. Pixal looked at his partner before doing the same and jumping out of her own mech.

Nya walked closer to the train and checked for a chauffeur. There was none. The keys of the vehicle were missing as well.

A white sheet was covering most of the train's wagon. It wasn't indicative as to what was underneath that sheet, so both Nya and Pixal surrounded the wagon and pulled out their weapons.

Nya looked at Pixal, and once they nodded simultaneously, Nya gripped the corner of the sheet that was the closest to her and ripped the entire thing off.

The two immediately got into their fighting stances and prepared themselves for the worst, yet that was not necessary since there was not any danger.

Not direct danger at least.

"What the..." Nya murmured as she looked at what was in there.

Dozens of seemingly not ending rows of black rocks were lined up inside the wagon.

To any normal human it was just rocks, at least.

But to an Elemental Master?

Nya grabbed one of the rectangular bricks and held it up in her hand. It was pretty heavy, but that was no new news to her. "Vengestone."

"What does this mean?" Pixal asked, equally confused. "These are one-way tracks."

Nya let go of the harmful brick and turned to the brick wall. It had been bricked up a long while ago, as it seemed, and was covered in graffiti.

Those colorful paintings and words meant nothing, Nya assumed.

It was still weird though.

Her clothes finger lightly grazed the unevenly put up wall as she tried to get the gears in her head working again.

But she stopped in her tracks when the sound of an explosion interrupted her. The vibrations of that bang also caused her to almost lose her balance.

Highly alerted, she turned around and slid her spear from out of its holster that was strapped to her back and was ready to attack.

Pixal was just as ready as the two women looked at a small fire that was lighting up in the distance.

"Mech," Nya said quickly as she herself ran over to her mech. Her friend did the same.

Just as she was about to jump back into her safe haven, Nya threw herself out of the way of a fire shot that only caused her to be further away from the mech.

Pixal, however, managed to get into hers and turned to the cause of the blasts.

It was a metal spider.

A spider that was on its way over to Nya, who was lying on the ground and still recovering from almost being blasted.

"Get away from her!" Pixal shouted and brought her mech's hand forward. Then she pressed a button in her control center and let a blast of her own blow away the unwanted creature.

Nya quickly sprang up and watched as the spider hit the wall and fell to the ground. It twitched a few times before managing to stand back up on its metallic stick legs. Then it quickly limped away from the two with one of its legs dragging behind its body, unmoving.

"What the hell?" Nya asked slowly as she glanced at Pixal.

They had once encountered a robot spider in their lives. When they had been protecting Princess Harumi without knowing she was the real threat, back a years ago. It had been brought on board hiding in Zane's battered body.

While that spider used to be all black, this was had some purple highlights.

Then it all happened too fast.

At least ten more spiders identical to the other one came out of the shadows and began to attack the two women relentlessly. Pixal fought back with powerful blasts of her own.

Nya was still a few feet away from her mech, and it became too difficult to dodge the explosive fire balls that were aimed at her and try to get to her mech at the same time.

Since she had no water powers, she could only defend herself with hand combat and her spear.

And while that was at least a little effective against another human being, fighting against fire-blasting robot spiders wasn't anything she wanted to be close to.

So she used Pixal's mech to hide behind it until she could find an opportunity to make a run for her own mech.

Most of the blasts hit the walls around the warriors which sent fatal shock waves through the metal and bricks.

They needed to get out of that underground place before it would collapse in on itself.

Nya's brown eyes followed each and every one of the fast creatures as they skillfully surrounded them. She needed to find one good moment to strike, but there was none.

So she risked it and made a run for her mech as Pixal had just blasted another spider.

The former Water Ninja slid across the ground, ducking just in time as a fire ball nearly hit her head, and then made a flip, escaping yet another shot.

There was a spider standing in front of her mech, guarding it, yet Nya tightened her grip on her spear, and just as the spider opened its mouth to fire a blast in her way, Nya impaled it, killing it.

She shook the remains of the thing off her spear and jumped up into her mech.

"Let's go!" Nya yelled at Pixal and didn't wait for her before she turned around and started to blast the spiders that were in her way away.

Pixal followed his partner close behind, handling the spiders that were behind them and trying to follow them.

"This place is getting too destabilized," Pixal said through her communicator to speak to Nya. "We need to leave immediately."

"On it," Nya answered. She sped up her mech's footsteps, causing it to run, and sprinted her way back to the way they had entered the underground system from. She was the first one to fly out.

Just as Pixal was about to escape, a spider managed to send a blast at her mech's foot, which caused it to fall off the rest of the metallic body. But that didn't stop the nindroid from delivering a shot back, effectively killing the spider.

Then she concentrated on following her friend out of the mess they both escaped from with nothing but a worse gut feeling than they had before.