The elderly couple thanked them profusely as Shane slammed the hood of the car down, but they didn't have time to stand around and chat. She was already backing away, smiling and wishing them a good day, and Dustin was right behind her. Or in front of her, since they were backing up. Shane, for all his complaining, stayed long enough to shake their hands before he followed.

As they headed for the van, Dustin began listing wildly optimistic scenarios--those being any situation that didn't involve expulsion for all three of them by the end of the day. "Maybe," he suggested, "his alarm didn't go off, and he didn't even miss us!"

Tori rolled her eyes, not bothering to reply. They had all known what they were doing when they stopped. Sensei had told them what would happen if they were late again, and they had made a decision that they knew would make them late. They had made the right decision, there was no doubt in her mind. But they were going to have to live with the consequences.

"He's a ninja master, Dustin," Shane reminded him. "They don't oversleep."

As she climbed into the driver's seat, she saw Dustin pause by the passenger side. "Really?" He seemed to be contemplating Shane's words.

"Dustin, get in," Tori told him. The clock on the dashboard read 3:54. "Not showing up at all has got to be worse than showing up late. So let's go."

Shane slid over and Dustin squeezed in, pulling the door shut behind him. She didn't dare speed when she could, because at this point getting a ticket was the only thing that would make them later than they already were. She couldn't speed over the logging roads. When they abandoned the van and headed deeper into the mountains, though, all three of them moved as fast as they could on foot.

They were out of breath by the time they made it to the "waterfall." It was hard to say whether the fact that there was no one waiting for them there was a good sign or a bad one. No ambush... no test. On the other hand, they had already failed one test in spectacular fashion--they might not be given a second chance to prove themselves.

They glanced at each other out of habit, and she wondered if they were all thinking the same thing. They exchanged their street clothes for ninja uniforms without a word. Marching across the water, Tori couldn't help but wonder whether this was the last time they would do this. The waterfall might never flash open for them again.

As they stepped through holographic stone into thinning woods on the other side, it was clear that something was up. There was no welcoming committee, for one thing. No Sensei, no disapproving teachers... there was no one near the entrance at all, in fact, not even the occasional ninja traffic or departing students.

Tori glanced at Shane, who was frowning. She caught Dustin's eye next. He just shrugged. "Dude, maybe they do oversleep. Even the alarm doesn't always wake me up."

"Isn't that our class over there?" Tori asked warily. The entire group was standing at attention, waiting in rows as though still anticipating the arrival of their teacher. But if they were, they had been waiting a long time--class should have started twenty minutes ago.

"Let's not stand around waiting to find out," Shane told them. "Come on."

They hurried through the gate and bowed at the edge of the training area. It was a warm-up class, multi-disciplinary and open to everyone, and it should have been almost over by now. The students they usually trained with were shooting them covert glances as they slid into line at the back of the group. Word of their probation must have gotten around.

They really shouldn't do anything else to call attention to themselves. They should stand at attention and wait. Just like everyone else. Tori saw Dustin fidget out of the corner of her eye, and she sighed. They had never been able to do anything just like everyone else.

She glanced at the blonde-haired student on her other side. The girl got into at least as much trouble as Tori and her friends did, so she didn't feel guilty about leaning over to whisper, "What's going on?"

"Oh, you know." The girl tossed her braid over her shoulder with a shrug. "Something blew up, or fell apart, or whatever. The usual."

"Something blew up?" Tori hissed. She could feel Dustin crowding close beside her, trying to hear or maybe just flirting with Kapri's sister. The two of them were on the same wavelength, though she'd always thought her friend was too smart for the other girl. "Where? Here at the school?"

"Inside," Kapri said, tipping her chin toward the building. "The tech wing, we heard. There was a huge crash, and kind of a shaking."

"Now the teachers are having like an emergency conference or something," her sister added solemnly. "They might send us home."

"Dude, there was another explosion?" Dustin whispered.

Shane must have heard too. "Man, can't the Fire ninjas practice somewhere else?" he wanted to know. "Nothing ever blew up until they started working with the samurai students."

Tori had a bad feeling about this. "You guys, I don't think it was the Fire ninjas," she whispered. She was about to say something else when Dustin poked her sharply and the cry of a hawk made her snap to attention.

She bit her tongue and stood up a little straighter. She doubted that Sensei had missed their late arrival, no matter what had blown up or how distracted he was. They would just have to hope that he had something so important to say that he would let their behavior slide for another day... inadvertently giving them one more chance.

The hawk soared into an atypical ground landing, momentarily disappearing from Tori's sight. There was a flash of light, and a moment later the head of the Wind Ninja Academy stood at the front of the class. Sensei regarded them for a long moment before he spoke.

"Students of the Wind Ninja way," he said at last. "It is with the utmost regret that I must inform that your safety is no longer assured on school grounds. Events of the past week have led me to a decision that I have never before had to make: the decision to temporarily close this academy.

"Classes will be suspended for the next ten days while my staff and I determine the source of the problem. Residential students will have the rest of the afternoon to gather their belongings and obtain any assistance they may need in relocating. Financial support is available to those who choose not to take advantage of the academy network. All students may report to the dining hall for details on training at local academies in the interim."

He paused again, his gaze sweeping across them all. They were mostly first years in the intro class at this time of day. They had no way of judging what was normal and what wasn't, and Sensei wasn't exactly sounding the alarm. Maybe this was a standard kind of drill, something that happened every so often to test the way they handled it?

But no, he had said he'd never done this before. What were those explosions, then? They had to be behind the dismissal of students, but how? No one from outside the academy system could get onto the grounds without a ninja escort, so it couldn't be sabotage. Some ninja experiment gone awry, then? Something the teachers didn't want the students to know about?

That almost made sense. There was nowhere on Earth safer than a ninja academy. She could believe that the teachers were protecting their secrets before she could believe that they were protecting the students by sending them away. But what secret could they have that would rate this kind of response?

"I extend my apologies to all students of this school," Sensei was saying. "Be assured that we will do everything we can to re-open our doors as quickly as possible."

With a slight incline of his head, he added, "May the wind be at your backs, ninjas. Class dismissed."

They all bowed automatically, and he waited until they straightened up to turn away. He took three paces before his form vanished into thin air, a hawk winging away from the place where he had been. The class dissolved into excited chatter in his wake.

"There's something he's not telling us," Shane declared, as the three of them huddled together.

Tori rolled her eyes at him. "You think?"

From behind her, she heard Kapri saying, "We'll have to pack, I guess. I don't know how I'm going to fit everything I need--" Luckily, the rest of her complaint was drowned out by Dustin's question.

"Does this mean we're not, like, expelled?" he wanted to know.

"Dude, the chance to train at a totally different academy!" Shane exclaimed. "This is gonna be awesome!"

"It's going to be exactly like this one if you guys don't learn to tell time," Tori retorted. "I mean, really--would it kill you to start wearing watches?"

"Should we go find out where our classes are or something?" Dustin wondered.

"Yeah," Shane agreed. "Let's book, man."

"Come on, Tor." Dustin clapped her shoulder as they took off for the dining hall. She just sighed, staring after them for a moment. Something things never changed.

Sensei must have been making the rounds, because by the time they reached the dining hall it was crammed with ninja students. Not just students, either--she caught sight of several teachers' robes before Shane nudged her and pointed out one in particular. "Look, it's Sensei Cameron."

She had seen him too, but she tried to pretend she hadn't. "So?"

"So," Dustin said, giving her a shove. "Go ask him what's going on!"

"Why me?" she protested, pushing back. "Besides, we have to figure out where we're supposed to go."

"We'll do it," Shane promised. "Go pump Cam for information."

"Yeah, cause you know, he likes you," Dustin added tactlessly.

"He does not!" Tori exclaimed, laughing to cover her blush. The samurai teacher was awfully cute, not that she would have ever admitted it to her guy friends. But outside of the samurai class, she was the only one of the first years that he spoke to--and no matter how clueless her friends could be they noticed that.

"Yes he does." Shane put his hands on her shoulders and turned her toward Cam. "Your mission, whether you choose to accept it or not..."

"Is to make Cam talk," Dustin finished. "Go!"

She sighed loudly, but this time she let them push her in Cam's direction. The belt that showed his rank was slashed with green, unlike most of the others here, and he was one of the few teachers to wear glasses. Right now he also wore a pensive expression that was the norm for him; as always, it made her nervous about approaching him.

Actually, in all fairness, it wasn't the expression that made her nervous. It was his reputation for unstinting sarcasm and his willingness to inflict it upon anyone who didn't meet his standards. And the standards of a sensei's son, born and raised on site at a ninja academy, with a father of air and a mother trained as a samurai, were impossibly high. No one met Cameron's standards.

She took a deep breath. "Sensei Cameron?"

He barely glanced at her. "Hi, Tori."

"Hey," she offered tentatively. "Am I interrupting?"

"The chaos of an entire ninja academy trying to transfer its operations to disparate bases around the country in the space of a single afternoon?" He shook his head once. "No, of course not."

It was also impossible to tell when he was being serious. "I was just wondering what's going on," she said. "Why do all the students have to leave?"

He grimaced, scanning the room as though he was looking for someone. "It's not just the students. It's the teachers too. Dad's going to evacuate everyone until he figures out who's behind the attacks."

"Attacks?" Tori repeated, startled. "You mean someone's doing this on purpose?"

"If someone was doing it by accident, they'd probably have been expelled by now," Cam said dryly. "Will you be training at the Thunder Academy?"

"Um--" She was taken aback by the abrupt change of subject, not to mention the reminder of being threatened with expulsion. Finally, though, her brain caught up and she nodded. "Probably. It's the closest, right?"

"Good." He didn't bother to answer. "I'll see you there." He caught her eye briefly before turning away, and she thought he smiled, just a little.

***

The local students had all been sent home for the night. The residents had mostly finished their hasty packing effort and those who remained were trickling in for a final, informal meal in the dining hall. He couldn't blame them for wanting to eat before they left: the Thunder Academy was the only other school in the country on Pacific Standard Time, and the Wind students might very well arrive at their temporary homes to find dinner long past.

Cam sat at the head table, trying to work out a schedule that didn't disrupt instruction at the Thunder Academy while at the same time leaving him free to help with the investigation at home. It really depended on how many students the starter academy could absorb into its own curriculum. It would probably do the first years some good to get experience with a different teaching style... but the more advanced students would need specialized training in their own discipline, and those classes weren't interchangeable.

And then, of course, there were the samurai. It was hard enough to maintain a class here at the Wind Academy. They couldn't be split up; there just weren't that many teachers. So they would all end up at the nearby Thunder Academy--a school that had splintered from their own over the inclusion of the samurai years ago. He didn't know if they were inviting irony or disaster, but the samurai were on average a more local class than any other. They didn't deserve to be sent to the other side of the country just because the school of Thunder didn't like their style.

On the other hand, if the Thunder Academy was going to make their lives miserable, wouldn't it be worth it to go somewhere else? He frowned, debating mentally with himself. It was only for ten days. Surely the Thunder ninjas and the samurai could coexist for ten days?

"You look worried, Cam." A chair was pulled out from the table beside him and occupied, and the senior samurai teacher helped herself to rice and vegetables. "Are you going to eat?"

He pushed the schedules away with a sigh, giving her a distracted smile. "Thanks, Mom." He accepted the serving bowls as she passed them to him, setting them down in front of the empty place on his other side when his own plate was full. The teachers were just wandering through tonight, making no concerted attempt to follow meal ritual. Nonetheless, their missing family member was conspicuous by his absence.

"What are you working on?" Miko turned his cup over and poured tea into it before she poured her own. "Those looked like Thunder Academy plans."

"They are," he agreed, glancing over at them. "I was just wondering how wise it is to send the samurai there, given our history."

She bowed her head over her food for a moment and he was silent. When she reached for her chopsticks, though--a habit he had never been able to get into--she continued as though she hadn't paused. "I worry too," she admitted. "But Cale's family won't let him live on site, and Meisha can't take her daughter out of school to travel. If they want to continue their training, it will have to be at the Thunder Academy."

Parental consent. The "real" world. The practical conflicts that arose from studying at a place that officially didn't exist were things that he rarely had to worry about. Not only was he guaranteed a sympathetic workplace and residence, but his entire family knew what he did and what it involved. He forgot, sometimes, that it wasn't so easy for everyone else.

"I'm sure it will be fine," he said abruptly. "It's a temporary measure, and we're all adults. We'll just keep the samurai classes as separate as possible from ninja training."

"Do you think that keeping the samurai isolated is the best decision?" Miko asked, wielding her chopsticks with an easy expertise that still eluded him. "I wonder if it will cause resentment among the Thunder ninjas. It certainly won't do anything to convince them that the samurai are just students, like them."

He looked at her in surprise. "Are you saying that we shouldn't teach samurai classes while we're there?"

"No," she said easily. "I'm suggesting that we open the samurai classes to anyone who's interested. Beginners wouldn't be able to participate in the advanced classes, of course, but they could observe if they wanted to. It might help to de-mystify the samurai a little."

He didn't really want strangers watching him teach, ninjas or not. But on the other hand... "We only fear what we don't understand," Cam said with a sigh.

She nodded once. "Exactly."

He considered the schedules he had been working on again, putting food in his mouth without really noticing what it was. Finally he pushed the papers toward her and pointed at the one on top. "The Thunder Academy teaches basics in the evening, instead of the afternoon. What if we take the afternoon for samurai and specialized classes and leave the morning for work here?"

She gave the schedule a cursory glance. "I think it's a good idea," she agreed. "Especially if we alternate, one day for samurai and earth affinities, one day for water and air affinities... it's not the ideal training plan, but it will free up as many teachers as possible for covert investigation."

"Covert?" he repeated, pausing with his fork in the middle of his plate. There was only one thing that could mean. "Do you have someone in mind? Why are we sending all the students away if you're just going to be watching them the whole time?"

"No, Cam, I don't have any one in mind." She was quick to counter, and she caught his eye to emphasize her words. "And it's because we're sending them away that we're watching them in the first place. Can you imagine if something were to happen at one of the other schools? Not only would we have failed to protect our own students, we would have endangered others. We can't let that happen."

He searched her expression carefully. "You think it's one of the students," he guessed, and the remark was halfway between an observation and a question.

She frowned, looking over his shoulder for a moment before she spoke. "I don't know what to think. I'd like to think we know the teachers better than we know some of the students. But I'd also like to think that everyone who comes here comes to learn, not to intimidate."

Cam wasn't surprised to hear his father's voice reply. "The line between good and evil is not so clear as we would like to believe. If there is destructive intent behind these incidents, it would not be the first time in academy history that someone turned their energy toward darker goals."

"Dad, they blew up the tech wing." Cam barely looked at him as his father joined them at the head table. He was still angry about the loss of a program he'd been working on in his spare time. "I don't know how they could have meant to be anything other than destructive."

"We must not jump to conclusions," his father chided him. "A perceptive mind is open to all possibilities."

Cam let his fork clatter to his plate. "Well, maybe I'm just not perceptive enough," he said, trying not to sound as sarcastic as he felt. "Luckily, I'll have plenty of time to practice, now that everything I was working on has been destroyed by someone who may or may not have had 'destructive intent.'"

"Cam," Miko said quietly.

He paused, standing beside his chair with his plate in one hand and the stack of papers in the other. He'd had enough to eat, and he really didn't need a lecture on forgiveness right now. Maybe they could just tape record it for some other time.

"Be careful," she told him, holding his gaze. "I worry that the tech wing explosion was meant for you."

"That is unlikely," his father commented.

"Unlikely or not," she said firmly. "I worry. Just be careful."

Pushing his chair in with one foot, he gave her a reluctant nod. "I will, Mom."

He scraped his plate into the compost bucket inside the kitchen door and tossed his silverware into a tray on the counter. He put his plate into the rack waiting to run through the hobart, nodded to the staff on duty tonight, and escaped through the back door. It was faster than walking through the dining hall again, and he wasn't sure how many people he wanted to see right now anyway.

The evening was warm and still light as spring slowly penetrated the mountains. He stopped off in the teachers' wing to leave the schedules and plans where anyone headed for the Thunder Academy could find them. As he left, though, he found himself at something of a loss. There were no classes tonight. Most of his idle time had been spent in a wing that was now closed. And he had nothing else to do.

He was passing by one of the library courtyards when a familiar flash of red caught his eye. The unnatural hue of a fellow Fire student's hair was enough to make him hesitate, and he identified the person with him a moment later. The other samurai teacher was sitting with Chitzu in the courtyard, the latter leaning up against the fountain while she trailed her fingers in the water. Cam was about to walk on when Chitzu raised a hand in his direction.

"Hey, Cam!" he called, gesturing for him to join them. Nena looked up at the greeting, smiling when she saw Cam. She tossed a few water droplets in the air and they caught the setting sun with a bright sparkle that couldn't have been an accident.

Cam smiled back, amused by the flamboyant gesture. "Nice trick," he told her as he wandered into the courtyard. "Is that what they're teaching the water affinities now?"

She shook her head, dipping her fingers in the water again when Chitzu turned to watch. "One of the first years did it a few days ago. I thought it looked neat." She threw water drops into the air again, holding them there just long enough for them to catch the sunlight and magnify it. The little shower of sparkles fell to the ground and disappeared as the water soaked into the grass.

If one of the first year students was showing off a trick they hadn't been taught, they were either very confident or very daring. Possibly both. "Which one?" Cam wanted to know.

"The blonde girl who's always late," Nena answered. She braced her arm against the side of the fountain again and let her fingers dangle in the water. "Tori?"

Cam just shook his head, torn between a sigh and a smirk. "Of course," he muttered to himself. "It would be one of them."

"Let it go," Chitzu advised, putting his hands behind his head as he leaned back against the fountain again. "You did worse when you first started studying with us."

"That was different," Cam reminded him. He had gone to the Fire Academy for samurai training as a teenager, and he had ended up staying to earn his ninja element and the rank of teacher. "I knew what I was doing."

"Ah," Chitzu said with a dramatic sigh. "The refrain of students everywhere."

Cam opened his mouth, then decided he'd be better off not to respond at all. So he just settled on the ground next to a stone bench, putting his back against it when none of them seemed inclined to challenge the silence. He might live here, now, but the Fires and the samurai were still the people he knew best. It was a comfortable feeling to be with people who didn't need to talk to establish companionship.

His thoughts were drifting back to the program he'd left in the tech wing when Nena spoke again. "So we're all going to end up at the Thunder Academy for a while, I guess."

By "we" Cam understood her to mean the samurai. "It looks that way," he agreed. He wanted to add, and the Thunders will see what they've been missing, but he managed to keep it to himself.

Nena said it for him. "We'll make them sorry they ever left," she commented idly.

His lips twitched, and he saw her grin over at him. Before he could answer, Chitzu beat him to it. "Now, Nena," he said, with a mock-stern tone to his voice. "Would you put school pride before ninja solidarity?"

"Maybe not if I were a ninja," she retorted, with a smile that meant she was teasing. Nena wore green on her belt, too, to show that her samurai training superseded her elemental affinity.

"Touche," Chitzu admitted good-naturedly. His brightly dyed hair matched the air element he had earned at the Fire Academy, and although he had a good deal of samurai skill himself he had chosen not to pursue it.

"The Thunder Academy isn't inferior just because they don't accept alternative training styles," Cam pointed out, reminding himself as much as them. "I'm sure they'll all be perfectly respectful."

"In class, while they're being watched," Nena added.

Cam didn't agree out loud, but he didn't correct her either.

***

The day wasn't a total write-off... not yet, anyway, and whether the only good part of it could be salvaged remained to be seen. He could have used some help with that, actually. The problem was that Hunter was being unusually anti-social, even for him, and it would take some serious bargaining to get him anywhere near strangers today.

Luckily, Blake was very experienced with Hunter-bargaining.

"Come on, bro," he cajoled, still wading through the preliminary arguments. Convincing Hunter of anything he didn't want to be convinced of was a long and arduous process. "It's not like she's the only decent one in the entire bunch. Where there's a hot girl, there's bound to be hot girlfriends."

"So you'll have options," Hunter threw over his shoulder. He had yet to even look up from the bike he was working on. "So what?"

Hunter had been holed up in the bike shop since classes ended this morning. His attitude could probably be attributed to the mass invasion of their school by students from a neighboring ninja academy--at least one of whom, Blake couldn't help but notice, was serious eye candy. Unfortunately, Hunter saw strangers first and good looks second... and he really didn't like strangers.

Blake knew when not to press the issue. If his brother wasn't interested in a date, he wouldn't get any points for pushing. Hunter was rarely interested in dates, if it came to that, which was both annoying and lucky. Lucky, because Blake didn't have to compete with him for girls. Annoying, because at times like this it would have been easier if their interests coincided. Blake appreciated a good bike as much as the next person, but it didn't take precedence over a social life.

"So," he said, switching tracks with the ease of long practice, "we can probably get back on Sensei's good side by being friendly and welcoming." He resisted the urge to put the words in quotes, since Hunter's definition of "friendly" was anyone else's definition of "not actively hostile."

A grunt from the direction of the bike told him how important Hunter thought that was.

"He's still mad about the rain last week," Blake reminded him. "And I'm pretty sure he knows it was us."

"He thinks it was us," Hunter corrected, exchanging his wrench for a pair of pliers. "If he knew it was us, he would have busted us already. The Wind ninjas will probably distract him enough without us having to go play nice with them."

He would finish with the most convincing of his preliminary arguments. "On the plus side, we'd get dinner out of it. No one's been home to cook, and you know the food at school will be good tonight."

This did seem to give Hunter pause. "For once," he agreed at last. "Not as good as pizza from that place around the corner, though."

Man... that was a good counter-argument. He pondered that for a moment. Maybe he could take the hot girl out for pizza? It would be the best of both worlds.

Time to move on to the serious stuff: things he was pretty sure Hunter didn't know yet. Hunter was nothing if not curious, and Blake had learned to use the times when his brother was doing his People Avoidance Routine to gather as much potentially useful information as he could. It was rare that he knew more than Hunter about anything going on at the academy, and Blake took any advantage he could get.

"I heard they're going to have someone teaching a samurai class tomorrow afternoon," he said casually. "It's going to be open to everyone. Ninjas too."

Hunter stopped what he was doing. He sat staring at the bike he was working on for a moment, then turned around to regard Blake with an exasperated expression. "This girl must be really hot."

Blake grinned unrepentantly. "Yeah."

"What do you need me for?" Hunter demanded, tossing the pliers back in his toolbox and wiping some of the grease off of his fingers. Or just smearing it around, more likely. "Go ask her out already."

"I just want you looming in the background when I do it," Blake insisted. "What can I say, bro--you make me look good."

Hunter threw the rag at him.

"Come on," Blake coaxed, throwing it back at him with a laugh. "I know you're curious. You can come check out the crazy Winds without ever having to interact with them."

"What are Mom and Dad gonna say about you dating a Wind ninja?" Hunter wanted to know.

Blake shrugged, unconcerned. "At least she's not a samurai."

"You don't think," Hunter said darkly.

"They all wear green belts," Blake informed him. "Hers is blue. She's a water affinity." Like him. He had to admit the thought was appealing.

Hunter looked surprised. "She's a first year?"

"I don't know. Might be." Unless the Wind Academy's graduation policy was radically different from their own. "She doesn't wear an element badge, so she's not a teacher."

Hunter just shook his head. "She must be really..."

"She is," Blake interrupted. "Now can we go? They had some kind of orientation this afternoon, and I want to catch her before basics start."

Hunter was already closing his toolbox, although he wasn't doing it with any kind of speed. "Yeah, sure," he said over his shoulder. "If it's that important to you. But I reserve the right to pizza if the place is a zoo."

"You and me both, bro." He didn't tell Hunter that the place had been a zoo all day, and didn't show any signs of settling down in the near future. He wanted some backup on this mission, and his brother was the only one he trusted to respect his claim.

Hunter snorted in apparent disbelief, but a moment later he glanced back at Blake with a look of grudging interest. "Is the samurai class really open to everyone?"

Blake chuckled. There were days when he thought he knew his brother better than he knew himself. "Mom will flip if you join that class, bro."

"I'm just asking," Hunter pointed out. His equipment stowed, he turned his attention back to the bike. "Guess I'll just leave this here. I'll go wash up, tell Rick I'm leaving, and we're outta here."

Blake waited out front, and he managed to convince Hunter that they should take his truck. Hunter wouldn't have any trouble getting home if he wanted to go, and Blake would have transportation if his hot girl decided to screw basic training and go out with him instead. Stranger things had happened, he told himself.

Orientation was clearly over by the time they arrived. In fact, they made it onto the grounds just as the dinner bell was ringing, and this seemed to lighten Hunter's deliberately dark mood a little. He didn't look at all thrilled to enter the dining hall and see it crawling with nearly twice its usual number, however.

"Looks like a lot of people decided to come and see the new kids," Blake remarked, scanning the crowd for one face in particular. While the Wind ninjas did make up a sizeable percentage of the people gathered in the dining hall, there were just as many local Thunders who--like the two of them--had decided to eat on site for the sole purpose of socializing. Or rubbernecking. Maybe a little of both.

"Pizza to go is looking better and better," Hunter grumbled. "Where did all these people come from?"

"Hell?" Blake suggested, anticipating his brother's response.

Hunter allowed a reluctant smile, and Blake seized the opportunity. "There she is," he said, pointing across the room toward a table near the far wall. "Come on."

"I don't remember agreeing to eat dinner with this girl of yours," Hunter complained. He followed anyway, somehow managing to refrain from any comments about "the crazy Winds." Or worse, the samurai.

It might be a fleeting reprieve, Blake realized as they got closer to the table in question. Some of the Winds had spread out, venturing farther afield in a room dominated by Thunder uniforms. The samurai had not, and to be honest, he didn't blame them. They were all clustered at two tables in the back, tables whose only other occupants were Wind ninjas.

The hot girl was at one of those tables. She was chatting animatedly with the guy across from her. And she was sitting right next to someone wearing a belt slashed with green.

Conversation slowly quieted up and down the two tables as he and Hunter came to a halt in front of them. He didn't know if it was because Hunter looked that intimidating, or if it was because they were the first Thunders to approach the Samurai Tables. They might well be--but there were empty chairs, and last he knew, there weren't any assigned seats in the dining hall.

"Hi," he said, when the blonde girl finally realized something was up and looked around. "Are these seats taken?"

The blonde girl's surprise quickly melted into a smile that made it all worth it. "Now they are," she said, making a show of sliding her chair over to give him room. "Sit down. My name's Tori."

"I'm Blake," he said, taking the seat next to hers. "This is my brother, Hunter." He glanced over to make sure that Hunter was actually still there, and he got a neutral sort of nod in return. That was pretty good, for Hunter.

"Nice to meet you, Blake," she said sunnily. "And Hunter. These are my friends, Dustin and Shane." She indicated the two guys across from her, then leaned back in her chair so he could see the people on her other side. "This is Sensei Cameron, Sensei Nena, and Meisha on the end. On the other side is Kapri, Marah, and Sensei Chitzu from the Fire Academy."

"Nice to meet you," he echoed, giving all of them a single nod. He gave Hunter a pointed look, and his brother offered a half-hearted wave before reaching for the nearest serving dish without a word.

"Hunter says hello," Blake said confidently, turning back to Tori. "He's like this with everyone; you shouldn't take it personally."

"Oh, so he's like Shane right after he fails one of his ninja tests?" Tori asked innocently.

Instead of scowling, the ninja across the table from her gave a good-natured shrug. "Actually, I think he's more social than I am when something goes wrong."

"Yeah," the guy next to him agreed. "Shane doesn't wave."

Blake felt Hunter shift, but before he could distract them the guy who had mentioned waving exclaimed, "Oh, dude, do you moto?"

Neither of them had changed before returning to the academy, and Hunter was wearing an old AMA jersey. He hesitated, then offered the first words he'd spoken since they sat down. "Yeah. You?"

"Yeah, man! I've been riding with my dad ever since I was old enough to stay on the bike! You into racing, or freestyle?"

"Racing," Hunter said grudgingly.

"Hey, I'm really into freestyle, but I've been doing some racing lately. What are you on?"

He had found the one subject that Hunter might be willing to discuss, Blake thought with a smile. It would keep his brother out of trouble. Every eye was no longer on them, and low-level chatter had resumed at the next table over. He accepted a serving dish full of rice from Hunter and gave Tori a warm smile. "So, is this your first visit to the Thunder Academy?"

"It's my first visit to any academy," she answered, handing him a basket full of rolls from the middle of the table. "Other than the Wind Academy, I mean."

"Yeah, man, we hear about the other academies but we've never seen them," Shane agreed. "We know they exist because people like Sensei Chitzu come from them and teach us things..."

"Try to teach you things," the teacher corrected. He wore a red badge with a circled dot on it, which Blake guessed was the symbol of an air element at the Fire Academy. "Some of you are better students than others."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Shane declared, with apparent seriousness. "There aren't any better students at this end of the table."

"Because we're all equally bad," Tori said with a laugh. She didn't seem very upset about it--especially when she turned that amused gaze on him. "I don't suppose you have any remedial ninja classes?"

"Sure we do." Blake jumped at the chance. "There's one tomorrow, in fact. Dinnertime, in town... I'll give you directions. Better yet, I'll pick you up. Great pizza," he added.

"I'm guessing this isn't a group lesson," Shane said dryly.

"Sorry," Blake told him with a grin. "Private tutoring only."

***

The path up the mountain was as bright and noisy as ever, the animals that ran and hunted in this forest unconcerned by the sudden inactivity at the academy in their midst. Cam glanced around as he strode into the clearing by the lake, caught sight of the guard stationed nearby, and waved. The darker shadow among the undergrowth didn't move, and he smiled to himself. There were no hiding places out here that he didn't know.

The waterfall flashed open at the base of the holographic cliff, welcoming him home after a night spent away. Strictly speaking, the teachers were not subject to his father's suspension of academy operations. On the other hand, if the point was to make the school less of a target, it could only help to evacuate as many non-essential personnel as possible. Cam had reluctantly agreed to "set a good example" for his fellow ninjas by accepting temporary lodging at the Thunder Academy.

On the other side of the portal the grounds were quiet. The stillness was almost eerie. He wasn't used to seeing the place so deserted, without even the year-round presence of the residential teachers going about their daily lives. He made it halfway to the main building without seeing a single person, and by the time he reached the entrance to the teachers' wing he had changed his mind. He wasn't sure he felt like going inside after all... as quiet as it was out here, the halls inside would positively echo with emptiness.

Instead, he made a circuit around the outside of the building. It was no small time commitment, given its perimeter, but it gave him a little bit of perspective. Of course they couldn't guarantee the safety of everyone attending a school this size under these circumstances. This wasn't the Thunder Academy. This was the second largest ninja academy in the western hemisphere, and easily the least rigid in its discipline. Maybe this rare lack of security was the price they paid for that freedom.

It was easier to be philosophical when he wasn't passing the tech wing. The structural damage to the exterior was minimal, but he turned away from the darkened windows and locked doors. Funny that the target of this latest attack bothered him more than the attacks themselves. It was almost a personal affront, that someone would deliberately vandalize something he held so dear.

Finishing his tour of the inner grounds, he turned away from the building and headed for the one completely inviolable sanctuary they had. He almost didn't bother to make sure no one followed him, but the habit was too ingrained. Even with the academy nearly empty, he still found himself looking over his shoulder.

The doors opened for his palmprint, and the lights came up automatically. He hadn't realized how keyed up he was until he started to relax, familiar with the quiet of these surroundings in a way he wasn't outside. No one came down here. At least, no one outside of the family, and even his parents' visits were few and far between. This was his own refuge when the rest of the academy got too close.

It was also the most technologically advanced place on campus. He prowled the room while the mainframe powered up, checking to make sure that the camera was running and the door sensors were all active. Just because no one was supposed to be able to get in here didn't mean he would count on it.

The mainframe was programmed to access the ninja network as soon as it came online, and Cam paused behind the chair to regard the monitor. It logged in with his security clearance, which was as high as it got, and he noted that there were several messages in the queue. He had accessed the network from the Thunder Academy the night before, and it surprised him that there would have been so much activity in just a few hours.

He settled into the chair to investigate. Two were standard reports from his spyders, invisible programs that kept watch over network traffic and alerted him to important occurrences at the other academies. His own personal news service... not one that was completely legal, but they were ninjas, after all. A certain amount of covert surveillance could be forgiven in the spirit of the ninja code.

The third message was from a friend at the Fire Academy, someone who had heard about the temporary shutdown of the Wind Academy and wanted to know if he was all right. A strange question, Cam thought, since they had released the names of everyone injured in the explosions and his hadn't been on it. The timing, too, seemed odd, since the Academy had been evacuated two days ago now.

The fourth message made him pause. Cam, it said simply. How many of your students can you account for last night? There was another explosion at 2:30 this morning in the residential wing. No one was hurt. Love, Mom.

The residential wing. He just stared at the words, trying to make them less comprehensible than they were. At 2:30 am, there was only one thing that could mean. This wasn't just vandalism anymore--that blast had been meant to kill someone.

He shook his head abruptly. No, that was ridiculous. Of course that wasn't what it meant; most of the residential wing had been empty last night and anybody here would have known it. It was just another damaging blow, meant to accomplish something he still hadn't been able to figure out.

He called up the school logs, not surprised to see that campus activity had spiked sharply just after 2:30 that morning. The only ones not called in were the perimeter guards, whose shift didn't change until four am. There was, often, a few minutes of less than perfect perimeter awareness when that happened, and he didn't know whether it was a good sign or bad that whoever had snuck onto the grounds hadn't bothered to take advantage of it.

It was a good sign, if whoever was responsible for the attacks didn't know enough about the guards' rotation to use it. It was a bad sign if whoever was behind them knew and didn't need to use it... implying that he or she was someone the guards recognized and would allow through without challenge. He tried not to think about the worse case scenario: that the person responsible had already been on-site.

Cam traced the activity directly after the explosion, and was dismayed to see that it culminated in a mass gathering outside the masters' apartments. The masters hadn't evacuated--yet his mother had said no one was hurt. Had one of the empty apartments been targeted, then? Or perhaps the gathering was a preliminary one, an organization of forces before they attended to the real damage done somewhere else...

He watched the activity fluctuate over the course of the predawn hours, but never did it gather strength at any other location. He didn't like the way this looked. He pulled up the infrared scans from the minutes just before the explosion and overlaid them on a detailed layout of the main building. He let the readings flicker forward, jumping by the half-minute as the scanning sweep caught up with realtime.

At exactly 02:31:30, a burst of brilliant white blossomed in one of the masters' apartments. His stomach clenched, and he felt a cold prickling sensation crawl across his skin. At 02:32:00, the white had spread into an encompassing yellow glow that showed the temperature spike caused by superheated air. The apartment was completely engulfed, and thirty seconds later he could see the dull reds and oranges that indicated spot fires started by the blast.

His parents' apartment. There was no mistaking the overlay. He felt sick, detached, as though his body had frozen far away while his mind was overwhelmed by the heat images being displayed on the monitor. He didn't wait for the next few minutes, calling up Miko's message again and reading the words over and over. No one was hurt.

No one was hurt. She would have said, otherwise. The message had been stamped 05:12:04, almost three hours after the nightmare he was seeing now. His parents were all right. They hadn't been in the apartment at the time.

Why hadn't they been in their apartment, he wondered numbly. Where could they possibly have been at two in the morning if they weren't sleeping like everyone else? His father sometimes wandered at odd hours of the night. His mother... didn't. She rose and slept early, and she was a firm believer in routine. For her to have been anywhere other than in her bed last night was a stroke of almost incredible luck.

Teacher, student, stranger. There were three possible classifications for the person responsible, and every attack narrowed the list of suspects further. Cam already had a working list of every student and teacher unaccounted for at the time of the first two explosions, including the hours that preceded them--the time from which the location of the blast had certainly been clean and the time at which it was destroyed. Now he checked that list against the students he personally could account for last night, and the one list that had already been sent to his mother this morning.

Accessing the Thunder Academy's perimeter logs wasn't difficult, and he wondered briefly whether they wanted some tips on improving their data security. They probably wouldn't want to hear it from a samurai even if they did, he told himself. The faint twinge of conscience vanished.

This was the first attack for which it was easier to clear the residential students than the locals. Only four Wind residentials had been absent from the Thunder Academy last night, and of those, only two of them were still on his "bad list." The locals were harder, but he pulled up the perimeter logs for his own academy and started to watch. The logs themselves were concise, a traffic summary and nothing more, but thanks to him each of the portals had its own camera as well. It was that footage that he reviewed now, idly comparing the camera's record with that of the appropriate perimeter guard.

He didn't expect to find any discrepancies. It was only an exercise to keep his mind busy, to keep him from thinking about last night and how much his mother hadn't told him. Was she trying not to worry him? Because it hadn't worked. He was more worried by the thought that his parents might know they were in danger and not say a word to him.

He remembered suddenly her warning at dinner two nights ago. "I worry that the tech wing explosion was meant for you." Was that a mother's fear, or the voice of someone who had suspicions they couldn't substantiate?

"Unlikely," his father had said. He couldn't help looking at the conversation in a whole new light, now. Did they know something about what was happening? Were they the target? Was he? The first explosion had occurred in the samurai training area, and he knew it had been widely attributed to the influence of the Fire ninjas. But in retrospect...

The white static on one of the screens made him sit up in his chair. It was gone as soon as it had come, and he frowned at the monitor. His first thought, as far-fetched as it seemed, was that something was wrong with the mainframe. He discarded that idea immediately, and he threw out the possibility of visual feed interference right after. That left either a problem with the data storage, or the data itself.

The clocks were off. He checked again, gaze flicking from one part of the split screen to another. The camera feed on the right and the one in the middle were still in perfect sync, down to the tenth of a second. The camera on the left--the one that had staticked--was two minutes ahead.

Cam paused the playback and considered the time stamp at the bottom. 02:13:13. Eighteen minutes before the explosion that destroyed a ninja master's apartment, one of the cameras at the secret holographic entrance had malfunctioned. A glance at the perimeter log made his frown deepen. Someone had indeed passed through the entrance during that burst of static: a single person, whose transit had been duly noted by the perimeter guard.

It was his father. His father had been off-site early this morning, and had returned shortly before his own apartment was destroyed. There was no record of him having left, which wasn't all that unusual. His father occasionally flew out, choosing to bypass the perimeter altogether, as was his prerogative as a ninja master. That kind of unmonitored traffic did nothing for their security, but again, the spirit of the ninja code was not entirely bound up in law and order.

So where had he been? Why had he chosen that time to return? Why had he come in through the portal if he hadn't left by it? And why had the camera that should have recorded his presence spontaneously malfunctioned at that exact moment?

The obvious answer was that it hadn't been his father at all, but rather someone pretending to be his father. But then how had whoever it was fooled the perimeter guard? And where had his father been, fifteen minutes later, when an explosion tore through his place of residence? Where was his mother? And why hadn't she told Cam that it had been their home that was the target of the early morning attack?

He wanted some answers, and it didn't look like he was going to find them here. He had to see his parents anyway. He wasn't sure where they would be right now, not with the academy schedule so completely disrupted, but he had a few ideas about where to start looking. He spun his chair around and got up, intent on returning to the surface and figuring out what was going on around here.

A shadow in the doorway made him flinch. Even as he froze, he recognized the figure and his mind told him to relax. His body wasn't so quick to obey. He hadn't even heard someone come in.

"Mom," he said with a sigh of relief. "I didn't know you were here."

She smiled, not moving from the doorway. "The feeling's mutual. We didn't expect to see you this morning."

"I would have been here sooner if you'd told me about the attack," he informed her. "Are you and Dad okay? Where were you when it happened? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to worry you," she admitted. "We knew you had your hands full yesterday, and today you're supposed to be teaching--I thought it would be easier if you didn't have to think about it."

"It wasn't," he said bluntly. "It makes me think there's more you're not telling me, Mom. Who did this? You know, don't you. You know they're after our family. But why?"

She didn't answer right away.

He waited, watching her glance around the room as though looking for something. "Come walk with me," she said at last. "There are things that even this place can't protect us from."

***

He had expected the samurai teacher to be arrogant. Aloof, at the least... reserved, definitely, and maybe a little bit condescending. Maybe a lot condescending. The Thunder Academy didn't think much of samurai, and he had just assumed that the samurai would return the favor.

They didn't. Or at least, this one didn't. He was very sure of himself, Hunter noted. And he was reserved, in the sense that he had a stare that spoke for him in a lot of situations. But he was also... funny, in a sarcastic way. Oddly polite. And surprisingly patient, considering that the number of novices he was working with almost doubled the size of his class.

There had been several Thunder ninjas observing, but Hunter had been the only one to take the Winds up on their invitation to practice with the samurai. The rest of the class had consisted of five samurai students, two of whom still wore their school badge in lieu of an earned element, and three Wind ninjas who apparently had little to no samurai training. Just like him. It hadn't surprised him when the instructor divided the class.

Hunter was partnered with Shane, Tori's non-moto friend from the night before. The teacher worked with them first, which he ought to have expected. As the only Thunder actively participating, he was too important to leave to the advanced students and too threatening to leave with the beginners. Sensei Cameron wasn't stupid, Hunter decided, when he watched the rest of the class establish break-out groups that included the other two Wind ninjas. They had clearly planned for this in advance.

It had been an interesting class, all things considered. He and Shane had managed not to injure each other too badly with their practice lathes, which was probably more a testament to their instructor's skill than their own... but a good fight was any fight you walked away from. The observing Thunder ninjas didn't say a word while the samurai students ignored them, and Hunter suspected they were all thinking the same thing: it's only for a little while.

For himself, he was there to learn something. No one liked the samurai, but no one seemed to know anything about them either. It was very irritating. He couldn't work up a proper hatred for people he didn't know anything about. Not unless they attacked him or someone he cared about, and although his parents sometimes acted as though the samurai had done just that, neither of them could provide specifics.

So he was going to find some reasons for himself. He would either find out that everyone he knew had been right about the samurai all along, or--less likely--he would realize that everyone he knew was on crack and he had better stop drinking the water. He was going to stay in this class until he reached a conclusion or until it ended, whichever came first.

He told himself that the way a person acted in public wasn't the best standard for judging their behavior. He told himself that really, discrete surveillance was part of the ninja code, and it had always been part of his training to gather as much information as he could. The truth was, though, that he was late getting out of the equipment room and he had been too distracted to notice someone sneaking up on him.

Okay, maybe "sneaking" was an overstatement. Sensei Cameron hadn't exactly been quiet about his approach, and between the angry stamping of feet on the tiled floor and the way he was muttering to himself under his breath, Hunter didn't know how he could have missed it. But he had, and he'd barely had time to freeze and melt into the shadows before the samurai teacher burst through the door.

Stomping across the floor, he came to a halt in front of the lathe rack and began replacing the ones he had borrowed for his "guest" students. His regular class apparently had personal practice blades, even the two students--and that wasn't typical, at least not at the Thunder Academy. Was it different at the Winds' school, Hunter wondered, or did the samurai get special treatment?

"The only way to make them more nervous," the instructor was complaining under his breath. "Sure, help them feel at home, don't foster resentment... invite complete strangers to watch their every move. Great idea, Mom. That was really helpful."

Mom? Hunter's lips quirked. There was something just a little bit amusing about this apparently self-sufficient and highly skilled individual blaming his mother for a teaching decision. He wondered if his mother was a ninja too. Or maybe a samurai?

"Not to mention," the instructor was muttering, "the fact that I have strange ninjas pretending to be invisible in the equipment room for the sole purpose of making me even more jumpy than I already am."

This time, Hunter couldn't suppress a smile, albeit a rueful one. He hadn't done a single thing to give away his presence, but the samurai teacher clearly wasn't as distracted as he looked. Sensei Cameron hadn't even turned around.

"You surprised me," Hunter said, shaking off the shadows and folding his arms as he leaned back against the wall. "Habit."

The last practice lathe was lifted higher than was strictly necessary, dropped, and allowed to rattle into place with a series of clacks before its wielder turned around. The samurai instructor wore an exasperated expression that eased the moment he caught sight of Hunter. "You're the Thunder ninja from class," he observed, studying him.

He felt the statement deserved an equally obvious response. "And you're the Wind ninja samurai instructor."

This drew an uninterpretable look. "Fire ninja, actually. I trained in Japan."

Hunter raised an eyebrow. That was an honor few people could claim... and one that would almost make up for his samurai tendencies, if he were a little less subtle about one and more about the other. "Learn anything?"

"How to hide culture shock," the instructor said with a flash of humor. "Something you did rather well this afternoon, I thought. You're very brave."

He hadn't been the one teaching that class on a hostile campus. "So are you," Hunter said evenly. "Thanks for opening it up like that."

"I'll tell my mother you said so," the samurai teacher said with a sigh. "It's her latest plan to win friends and influence people."

"She a samurai too?" Hunter wanted to know.

"Yes." The response was curt. He had clearly gotten too personal, and the Wi--Fire ninja was letting him know. Before he could back off, though, the samurai teacher added, "I'm going to dinner. Thanks for trying the class."

"Mind if I come with?" Hunter asked, detaching himself from the wall. "I have a couple of questions about that kata."

The samurai looked surprised, but he didn't object. "I don't mind, if you're curious. Are you planning to come back?"

"Maybe." Depending on what and how much he learned in the next two days.

"Well, if you do, I'm Cameron." The other teacher held out his hand, and they shook perfunctorily. "Sensei Nena will also teach some of the samurai classes, and I know she plans to open at least her first one to everybody."

"Good to know," Hunter said neutrally. "I'm Hunter Bradley. We were introduced by my brother's latest crush last night."

"I thought you looked familiar," Cameron remarked, scrutinizing him again as they made their way toward the door. "I must have been distracted by the cloud of hormones and bad ninja jokes that settled around the two of them."

Hunter smiled involuntarily. "It is a little hard to take, isn't it. I don't remember ever being that young."

"It's an age not enough people skip," Cameron said dryly.

The dining hall was less crowded tonight, and even after a walk filled with kata talk Hunter managed to sneak in a few more questions while they wound their way among the tables. He knew people would inevitably overhear, but this was something he wanted to know about and he wasn't going to get the information anywhere else. Besides, he was already being watched for attending the class in the first place. He might as well give them something to see.

As they had done the night before, the samurai students and teachers occupied two tables near the kitchen exit. Again, they were surrounded only by Wind ninjas. Neither Tori nor Blake was anywhere to be seen, Hunter noted as he took a place toward the end of the table.

Cameron introduced him to everyone again, and this time several of them waved or nodded in return. He didn't remember any of the girls' faces, but he recognized Sensei Nena's name. Sensei Chitzu's hair was impossible to forget or miss. Tori's friends were absent as well, but across from him at the table were Meisha and Cale, two of the samurai students from the class he had just been in.

They were surprisingly friendly. It was as though he had proven himself, somehow, by participating in their class when none of the other Thunders would. He didn't plan to disillusion them--at least, not yet--but he wasn't going to accept them just because they accepted him. He still had a lot to learn about the samurai.

He didn't try to contribute to the conversation unless someone spoke directly to him. It was too much work. He was here to eat and to observe, not to socialize. But when Cale said something about moto, he couldn't help answering, and a few minutes later he realized he had been drawn into discussion without even noticing.

It wasn't entirely a bad feeling.

Cameron was barely eating. It wasn't obvious until Hunter poked him and asked for the bowl of rice and beans--his second serving, where the samurai teacher had barely touched his first. He was looking a little pale, actually. And he had gone quiet. He had been talking with Sensei Nena when they first sat down, but now he was staring at his plate and apparently ignoring the rest of the table.

Hunter had opened his mouth to ask if he was all right, when suddenly he looked up. Dark eyes met his with a pained expression, but his voice was perfectly composed when he asked for directions to the bathroom. Stomach bug, Hunter wondered? Wouldn't have guessed he was sick after the way he handled class that afternoon, but he hadn't eaten enough at dinner for it to be the food disagreeing with him.

He kept an idle eye on the empty seat beside him while Cale continued to chatter eagerly on about moto. When they passed the five-minute mark and there was still no sign of Cameron, Hunter began keeping closer track of the time. Six minutes... seven. Eight and a half minutes. Nine.

At ten minutes, he excused himself from the table and headed in the direction he'd sent Cameron. There were two bathrooms outside in the service hallway, and they were the closest to this side of the dining hall. He supposed it was possible that both had been occupied, earlier, but most people tended to use the larger facilities just inside the academy connector.

One door open, one door closed when he arrived, with no one else in sight. Maybe Cameron had stepped outside for a few minutes--there was a door at the end of the little hallway, and it was a nice night. Or maybe he had gone back into the dining hall and been distracted by friends at another table. Hunter hadn't bothered to look for him inside before he came out here.

He knocked on the closed door anyway, expecting to hear anyone's voice but Cameron's at this point. When had he turned into such a worrier? The guy was allowed to leave the dining hall any time he wanted.

There was no answer.

Hunter knocked again, louder this time. "Anyone in there?" he called, when there was still no response. The words didn't produce any reply either, and he frowned.

The door could simply have been left shut. Whoever was in there might not realize he was talking to them. They could be ignoring him for the fun of it, or maybe this was some kind of prank. A dozen possibilities flashed through his mind, but none of them made him feel any better. He decided to go with his gut instinct.

Putting one hand on the doorknob, he jiggled it briefly. Locked. Well, there was no one around to lecture him for busting it, so he wrapped his fingers around the knob and concentrated. One of the first tricks any self-respecting ninja kid learned: how to break simple locks in five seconds or less.

The doorknob turned, and he knocked again before pushing it open.

The door met resistance. He eased it open just far enough to see why, and he swore out loud as he shoved it the rest of the way. This was not what he'd had in mind when he was running through all the logical explanations for the samurai teacher's continued absence.

Cameron lay crumpled in front of the sink. His breathing was shallow and there was blood oozing from a head wound that was clearly several minutes old. Must have hit the sink on the way down, Hunter thought distantly. He dropped to his knees beside the samurai and felt for a pulse, an automatic reaction that really didn't do either of them any good. The man obviously needed medical attention.

He stood up again, reluctant to leave anyone lying unconscious on the floor no matter how good the reason. He did it anyway, glancing back just the once before he went for help. The only thing he could think of was a single word, repeating over and over in his mind:

***

Light. Morning. Time to get up. Probably late--not his room...

Confused, he jerked upright, and pain slammed into the side of his skull. He bit back a groan, lowering his head and lifting a hand to the side of his face instinctively. His skin was raw and hot to the touch, the ache in his head intensifying when he flinched. He hurt. And that couldn't be good.

"Welcome back," a familiar voice offered from somewhere nearby. He swung around, wincing as motion made the pain worse. Where was he? What was going on?

Chitzu sat in a chair by the room's only door, slouched against the back with a magazine propped up on his lap. He was regarding Cam calmly, bright red hair falling in his face while he made no effort to sit up straight. "How are you feeling?"

Questions like that were never easy when one was completely disoriented, Cam thought warily. "Like I'm waking up in a hospital room?" he guessed, careful not to move his head as he looked around slowly.

"Close." Chitzu let the magazine fall, but he made no move to get up. "The medical ward at the Thunder Academy.

Cam reached up to touch his face again. There were two plastic stitches taped across his temple, making his skin feel stretched and painful underneath. "What happened?" he asked, trying to remember and dreading the answer at the same time. "What time is it?"

"A little after eight," Chitzu said, not bothering to consult his watch.

"In the morning?"

Chitzu shook his head. "Still evening. You got kind of sick at dinner, I guess. One of your ninja students found you."

Dinner. He almost remembered dinner. Class came back to him first, reassuring him with his sudden ability to recall events. The samurai had put up with Thunder ninjas watching everything they did, in class as well as around campus, and they had been as welcoming as he could have asked to the ninjas who had joined them. Including the one Thunder ninja who had deigned to participate, and then accosted Cam afterward--

Hunter. He remembered talking with Hunter, sitting down to dinner, asking Nena about her cat. He had started to feel queasy within minutes of taking his seat. He had thought it must have been something he ate, but he'd drank more than he'd eaten and there was nothing unfamiliar at the table.

"What happened?" he asked at last, unable to remember much after that. He thought he'd gone to the bathroom, but there must have been more if someone had found him. He started to frown and just as quickly stopped when it made his skin pull.

"You passed out," Chitzu said matter-of-factly. "Good job finding the only thing around to hit your head on when you fell. You want some aspirin or something? I'm supposed to give you some when you wake up."

"Yeah, sure." Cam couldn't help sighing. "So how many people saw me faint?"

"No one," Chitzu said, setting the magazine aside and pushing himself to his feet. "You waited until you got to the bathroom. The Thunder ninja you brought to dinner went looking for you when you didn't come back."

Hunter, his brain reminded him. Why had Hunter come looking for him? And how had he found him if Cam was in the bathroom? He tried to think his way around it and failed. "What, did I not lock the door?"

"He broke the lock." Chitzu handed him a couple of aspirin and a glass of water. "You made some kind of friend in that samurai class."

Cam stared at him for a moment before accepting the aspirin. "Friend or stalker," he muttered, gulping the water and almost gagging for his effort. His throat burned at the first touch of water, and swallowing the aspirin brought tears to his eyes. "My throat hurts," he gasped, putting a hand over his throat as though it would help.

Chitzu was frowning. "You mean, like a sore throat, or like you swallowed something wrong?"

"Like it's been scraped raw." So he couldn't think, and now he couldn't swallow either... it even hurt to talk. This day just got better.

"I'm gonna go get the doctor," Chitzu was saying. "You be all right for a few minutes?"

It was an open question as to whether nodding or speaking would hurt more. He settled for nodding, once, very slowly. Chitzu looked concerned for the first time, but he didn't even make it to the door before it swung open.

"Cam?" His mother was in the doorway. She had something in her hand, and she didn't wait to be invited in. "Nena called us. How are you doing?"

One of the disadvantages of living at the Wind Academy again: everyone he knew also knew his parents. He managed a smile as she came over to stand by his bed. "Fine, Mom." He choked on the last word, and his throat totally closed up.

It didn't open again. He swallowed hard, couldn't clear his throat, couldn't breathe. Then his mother's hand was over his mouth and her other hand against the back of his head. "Breathe through your nose," she ordered. "Don't try to swallow. Chitzu, go get me some hot water for tea. Cam, are you listening?"

He managed to nod the slightest bit, even with her holding his head. "I want you to lean forward," she was telling him. "Don't bend your neck, just your back. Can you do that?"

He nodded again, and she let go of him carefully as he leaned forward. It didn't help his throat, but he was breathing and he wasn't going to question that. "Cam," his mother said gently. "Don't answer if it hurts, all right? Did you eat or drink anything before I came in?"

He nodded once. Lifting one hand, he pointed backwards in the general direction of the table where he thought Chitzu had left the water. He saw her pick it up, sniff it warily, and then drink some of it herself.

A moment later, she set the glass down and asked, "What about when you got sick? Nena said you passed out. Did you drink anything unusual before that?"

He shook his head carefully, pointing at the glass again.

"Just water?"

He nodded once, calmer now and a little more confident in his ability to continue breathing. He straightened incrementally, watching her out of the corner of his eye to see if she would object. She watched, but there was a sad look on her face that he couldn't quite understand. She didn't try to stop him.

He opened his mouth and drew in an experimental breath. Finally, his throat cooperated, and he wondered if he dared to try talking again. "Why--" He swallowed, but the pain in his throat actually seemed to be subsiding a little. "Why do you ask?"

She walked over to the door, and glanced out into the hallway before closing it quietly. "This is Lothor's work," she said fiercely. "There's no one else it could be."

Cam had to sigh. "Mom, I just got sick. It does happen."

"Not like this," she told him. "Not to you. Cam, you were the healthiest child I ever saw. You haven't been to a doctor in six years--and that was for a physical. If you've ever once passed out, you didn't tell me about it."

He shrugged, relieved when the motion didn't make his head hurt. The aspirin seemed to have kicked in quickly. "Maybe I was due. Maybe I ate something my stomach didn't like. Everyone gets sick sometime. There's no reason to think Dad's evil twin had anything to do with it."

To tell the truth, he was still a little bit skeptical about the evil twin story. His mother had taken him aside this morning and told him, apparently in all seriousness, that she and his father thought someone named Lothor was behind the attacks on the school. How Lothor was accomplishing them and why was something else entirely.

That his father had a brother he never talked about, Cam could accept. That his father's brother had made illegal use of "dark" ninja powers and been banished from the face of the planet for doing so was a little less believable. The idea that the banished ninja had returned from outer space to exact his revenge on the Wind Academy was beyond the realm of reason.

"Cam, I want you to be more careful," his mother was telling him. "Especially about what you eat and drink. Don't let other people get things for you. You didn't pour that water yourself, did you?"

Confused, he had to remind himself not to frown. "Chitzu got it for me."

"I meant the water in the dining hall," she said. "Before you got sick. Did someone else get it for you?"

"I don't remember." He gave her an odd look. "What are you saying? You think someone's trying to poison me? That's crazy. Why would anyone do that?"

"Lothor wants the academy to pay for banishing him," she answered. "Our family is a living symbol of everything the Wind Academy stands for. That's enough for him."

"No offense, Mom, but I'm pretty sure I would have noticed someone who looks just like Dad sneaking into the dining hall to put something in my water," Cam told her. "And really, even if this Lothor person is behind the attacks at the Wind Academy, why would he bother with poison? It's not consistent. He blows up a training facility, a computer lab, and an apartment, and suddenly he's going to resort to poisoning? Isn't that a little below him, dramatically speaking?"

"Cameron," his mother said sternly. "This is not a joke. We thought you'd be safer somewhere far away from the Wind Academy, but clearly you're still in danger. Think of it as part of your samurai training to be more careful: about where you are, who you're with, and what they're doing."

There was nothing he could do but agree with her. Luckily there was a knock on the door, and Chitzu's return put an end to her lecture on the evils of banished dark ninjas bent on retribution. "I found some water," he offered, his gaze flicking to Cam before he pushed the door all the way open and entered. "You feeling better?"

Cam nodded, watching him set the teapot and cup on the table by the bed. His mother stuffed the tea strainer she had brought with leaves she didn't identify, set it in the cup, and poured hot water over it. While it steeped, she reached up to touch the amulet she had worn for as long as Cam could remember.

She considered him for a moment, then pulled the necklace off over her head. "I want you to keep this for a few days," she told him.

"I know, I know," she said, forestalling his immediate objection. "You don't have to wear it. Carry it in your pocket if you want, just keep it with you. The amulet has healing properties--I've seen them work. You can give it back to me when you stop needing tape to hold your head together."

He uttered a token sigh, but he accepted the amulet without any other complaint. If that was all it took to keep his mom happy... well, it was better than having her hovering over him for the foreseeable future. He studied the amulet briefly before shifting to slide it into his pocket.

"So, can I go now?" he wanted to know, glancing around the room again. "The medical ward is nice, but I'd rather not live here."

"No," his mother said, removing the tea strainer and holding the cup out to him. "Drink your tea first. It should soothe your throat and settle your stomach a little."

"Yes, Mom," he muttered, exchanging glances with Chitzu. The other Fire ninja just grinned at him, no sympathy in his expression. The Wind Academy--and now the school of Thunder--was his vacation from family, just as the Fire Academy had been for Cam.

"I saw that," his mother informed them. "We only do it because we care."

"And I only put up with it because I know," Cam returned in kind. "Thanks, Mom."

She smiled at him. He finished the rest of his tea in one swallow and handed her the cup, giving her something to do while he made an attempt at standing up. It wasn't as hard as he'd thought it might be, worried that dizziness might strike the moment he got up. His head throbbed quietly as his heart started pumping faster, compensating for his change in position, but otherwise he was fine.

"Well, that wasn't so bad," he remarked lightly. "I could still get in a couple of rounds of sparring tonight."

"If you were crazy," Chitzu agreed. "Since we already know you are, I say, go to it."

"Don't encourage him," his mother scolded. "You air elements are all alike."

Cam started to smirk, but then she added, "Wipe that smug look off your face, Cameron Watanabe. Earth elements are even worse."

He started to protest, but Chitzu said drolly, "Well, you know what they say about water elements, Sensei Miko. All it takes is one to ruin a good party."

His mother was unfazed. "Don't you forget it," she told him.

***

There were days when he didn't think that life could get any better. This was one of them. He had no homework--at least, none that he could remember--no projects that still had to be finished before he clocked out, and no worries. Just a temporary reprieve from expulsion at his other school, another half hour to tinker with his own bike, and best of all, a visit from the girl he'd been trying to lure to Storm Chargers for weeks.

Dark-haired Marah Jennings leaned on the counter by his collection of alarm clocks, watching him play with the orbiter Kelly had left beside the cash register. "It's cool, right," Dustin was telling her, "because it's just this flimsy paper until you pull on it, and all of a sudden it's this awesome thing!"

"But why doesn't it break?" she wanted to know. "It looks so... fragile."

"Yeah, doesn't it?" He held it out to her, slipping the handles onto her outstretched fingers. "There, now just pull."

She gave the silver strands a doubtful look, but she pulled obediently on the plastic handles. The beads spun, making a humming noise as the holographic paper bowed out in the middle. The silver bubble sparkled while it twirled around the center string, slowing only when it had been stretched to its limit.

Marah's face lit up with a delighted smile. She let the string relax before tugging on the toy again, and this time she pulled hard enough that the bubble flattened out into a shimmering disc. "Wow," she exclaimed, still watching it intently. "It really doesn't break!"

"Nah," Dustin said easily. "It's supposed to work like that. Kinda boring, until you do something to it. And then it's like, presto!"

He watched Marah play with the toy a little longer. After a moment, though, she asked, "Do you think maybe people are like that?" She didn't look up from the orbiter, easing the tension in the string before pulling it again. "Just ordinary, until something comes along and it's like... I don't know. It puts pressure on them, you know what I mean?"

"Kinda like the Power Rangers?" he suggested. He had been educating her in his spare time. "Cause they're like, these totally normal people, until someone comes along and gives them morphers and says, 'go fight those evil dudes' and they're just like, 'okay.' But they always do, and they end up being really cool."

She didn't laugh. She actually looked sort of thoughtful, and then she nodded. "Yeah, maybe like the Power Rangers." She paused, then added, "But don't you think the Power Rangers were chosen because they were already cool, and people just didn't know it yet?"

"Sure, if you believe in fate and stuff," Dustin agreed. "I think everyone has it in them to be that cool, really. I mean, obviously, the Power Rangers... they're awesome. But they're awesome because they're Power Rangers, right, they're not Power Rangers because they're awesome."

"You think anyone could be a Power Ranger?" she asked dubiously.

"Yeah, totally!" he exclaimed. "Like, look at all the people who have been Power Rangers. They're the good kids and the bad kids. They're guardians and ancient warriors and techno geeks and aliens and reformed evil henchmen. They're everyone, you know? They're just whoever happened to be around when someone needed them."

She brightened. "Evil people did become Power Rangers! I forgot about that!"

"Yeah, and they were just as cool as the others," Dustin pointed out. "Some of them were cooler. See, everyone can be that good if they really want to be. Not just good, but awesome!"

She giggled a little at his enthusiasm, and he grinned. Tori didn't think Marah was very smart. But most people didn't think he was very smart either, and he thought about things they couldn't answer. He didn't feel dumb. So he had always figured maybe Marah was the same way. She sure was good conversation.

"How did the Power Rangers who were evil become good?" she was asking. "I mean, they must have had a lot of people telling them what to do, right?"

He reached out and poked the idle orbiter. "You mean a lot of bad people?"

She shrugged noncommittally, lifting the toy again and pulling on the ends. The silver paper spun a new bubble of humming light. "Bad people, and good people too. I mean, the good Rangers must have told them to stop being bad..."

"Yeah, that's true," he realized. "I guess they did get a lot of, you know, advice or whatever."

"How do you think they decided who to listen to?" Marah wanted to know.

"Well, they must have known what was right," he pointed out. "They just had to stop doing the stuff that wasn't right, and start doing what was."

She gave him a funny look. "Don't you ever do anything you're not sure is right? I mean... you're always late to class. Is that right?"

He shrugged sheepishly. "I guess not... but being late to class?" He shrugged again. "It doesn't seem that bad, really."

"How do you know how bad something is?" she pressed. "Do you ever... I don't know. Do you ever do something you wouldn't have done if someone else hadn't told you to do it?"

"Dude, yeah, all the time!" He started to list the things. "Math tests, math homework, math class... basically anything to do with math. I wouldn't do math if someone didn't make me."

"I mean bad things," she insisted, totally not getting the joke. "Do people ever tell you to do things you're not sure are right?"

"Umm..." Dustin thought about it for a moment. It hadn't been that bad a joke. So either she was really serious about this evil Power Ranger thing--or maybe someone was telling her to do something she didn't think was right. "I guess, sometimes. But that's what parents are for, right? To tell you if something's wrong, and to back you up if you don't want to do it."

She looked very sad then. "What if you can't ask your parents?" Marah asked quietly.

Oh. Was that why she lived on site? He'd thought she just came from a really long way away. Maybe she did, and she couldn't talk to her family that much? "Well," he said at last, "I guess if I couldn't talk to my parents, I'd talk to Sensei. I mean, he's a ninja master, so he's pretty smart. He knows a lot about right and wrong."

She seemed to like that idea. "Yeah," she agreed thoughtfully. "That's true. He's all wise and stuff." She smiled suddenly and added, "He'd make a good Power Ranger mentor, don't you think?"

"Yeah!" Dustin crowed. "Dude, he totally would! Can't you just see him being all like, 'Rangers, this monster has grown too powerful for you to defeat alone. You must call upon your inner ninja--"

"And your Wind ninja zords," Marah added. "Don't forget the zords!"

"Oh, and the supercool weapons!" Dustin agreed. "We can put them all together to make a mega giant weapon, and then we'll call the zords when that doesn't work!"

"What are you guys talking about?" an incredulous voice inquired.

"Hey, Tori." He barely paused. "We're just talking about how we're going to form the coolest megazord in history to defeat the huge, ugly, city-destroying monster!"

"With our supercool, color-coordinated weapons," Marah reminded him. "And don't forget the inner ninja."

"Right!" Dustin agreed. "Our inner ninja will help us defeat the monster!"

"Is this about Power Rangers again?" Tori said with a laugh. "Cause really, Dustin, you shouldn't keep spreading that stuff around. If you infect a whole new academy with Power Ranger wannabes, Sensei Omino is going to throw us out."

"They're role models," he defended himself. "Sensei should thank me for inspiring my fellow students!"

"Whatever," Tori said, rolling her eyes. "I'm going to get some more wax for my board. Is Kelly around?"

"Yeah, and she's gonna bust you for not wearing a shirt," Dustin warned her. His friend was wearing board shorts and a bikini top--she must have come straight from the beach. "You know how she feels about swimsuits in the shop."

"I'll risk it," Tori tossed over her shoulder, already heading for the water sports display. "Shane here yet?"

"Nah, he must still be at the park." He glanced at Marah and offered, "Hey, do you want a ride to class? We're gonna go as soon as Shane gets here."

She shook her head, setting the orbiter down on the counter. "I'd better leave now," she said regretfully. "I think I'm going to stop at our school on the way and see if Sensei's around. Thanks, though."

"Sure thing. Hey, good luck with Sensei, okay?"

"Yeah." She smiled at him. "Thanks, Dustin."

"See ya, Marah." He watched her go, wondering what could be so important that she needed to see Sensei today. She looked happier as she left, though.

"Tori, what have I told you about swimsuits," Kelly's voice called. It was the sound of someone who had said that same thing a dozen times before and didn't expect to be stopping any time soon.

"Sorry Kelly!" Tori's return shout was delivered in exactly the same tone, but she did skip out of the way and follow Marah out of the store. She passed off the jar of surfboard wax to Shane as he entered. "Get Dustin to ring this up for me?"

"Yeah, sure." Shane was still looking over his shoulder as he came up to the counter, and he grinned at Dustin as he tossed him the jar. "Hey, was that Marah I saw out there?"

"Yeah." Dustin tried to act casual, keeping his eyes on the cash register, but he couldn't stop smiling. "She, uh, she just stopped by to check the place out."

"Yeah, right she did!" Shane hooted. "Way to go, Dustin! She totally came to see you, man!"

Dustin shrugged, but his smile wouldn't go away. "Sure, maybe," he agreed. "I mean, I don't know. But, you know, she stayed and talked, so that was cool."

He applied his own employee discount to the purchase automatically while Shane chortled with glee. "Hey," Dustin said, trying to sigh and grin at the same time, "are you gonna pay for Tor's stuff, or what?" He was going to be hearing about this for days.

It was worth it, though.

"Come on, guys," Tori called from the doorway. "We have to leave spare time for freaky emergencies, remember? New carpool policy."

"Hey, I'm paying for you here!" Shane yelled back. "A little gratitude!"

"Thanks Shane!" she replied. "Now hurry up!"

Dustin handed Shane the receipt, caught Kelly's eye across the store and gestured toward the door. She just smiled, shaking her head as she waved in return. "Tomorrow afternoon, two-thirty!" she reminded him.

"I'll be here," he called over his shoulder. And they were free, bursting out of the shop and piling into the front of Tori's van. She had pulled on a tank top over her swimsuit, and she was starting the engine before Shane had even closed the door.

"Hey, slow down," Shane demanded, fumbling for his seatbelt. "Where's the fire?"

"I want to hear how Cam's doing," she answered.

Dustin thought about that for a moment, but no matter which angle he looked it from, it didn't make any sense. "Wait," he said, exchanging glances with Shane. "Did you just explain that and I totally, like, missed it?"

"Didn't Marah tell you?" Tori asked, not taking her eyes from the road. "Sensei Cameron got sick last night. Blake's brother thinks it wasn't an accident."

"Well, people don't really get sick on purpose," Dustin pointed out.

"You mean someone made him sick?" Shane was frowning. "The explosion in the tech wing... you think someone's after Cam? Who could get past every ninja at the academy?"

"I don't know what's going on," Tori told the windshield. "But Blake says the kitchen was closed and searched last night, and there are guards in the dining hall today.

"I don't think they're linking it to the explosions at our school," she added. "They're calling it a hate crime."

***

"How did this turn into a campus-wide witch hunt?"

Cam folded his arms, watching Nena's students assemble in the same place he had trained the day before. It was an unscheduled seminar class, being held at the invitation of Sensei Omino himself. The number of Thunder ninjas trickling in to observe was already twice that which he had dealt with, and there were two who seemed to be moving forward to join the samurai students. Hunter was not among them.

"I don't like it," Chitzu continued, when he didn't answer. "None of the Thunders did anything wrong, and now we've got half the Wind students glaring at them and the other half looking over their shoulders."

They also had a growing number of Thunder ninjas beginning to question the samurai ban, if today's class was any indication. For the first time since he'd arrived, one of the Thunder teachers had made small talk with him in the dining hall. Nena had been invited to join one of the advanced element classes--one taught by a Thunder ninja, not one of the classes being continued by their own Wind instructors.

It wasn't an unconditional welcome, but a few people did seem to be trying to make up for their school's perceived hostility. He couldn't help seeing it at least partly as a reaction to what had happened to him. Or what they believed had happened to him.

"Someone must have decided that this was the best way to keep people from panicking," Cam said at last, careful to keep his voice as low. The gathering students and teachers alike were glancing their way with varying degrees of subtlety.

"What, letting the Thunders think it was one of their own when we know full well they had nothing to do with it?" Chitzu sounded disgusted. "Maybe Sensei Watanabe thinks they're drawing their own conclusions, but I still think it's low."

It was low. Cam didn't like it any more than Chitzu did, but his father wouldn't intervene without an actual suspect and proof. In the meantime, keeping the attacks at their own school separate from the incident last night would keep the Thunder Academy open. The two of them might not like it, but the alternative wasn't particularly appealing either.

"Your Thunder ninja's back."

He shot Chitzu a sharp look, more surprised by the comment than anything else. It was at least the third time Chitzu had referred to Hunter that way, and he couldn't decide whether to be amused or annoyed. "He's not mine," Cam remarked neutrally, gaze scanning the class again. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Chitzu smile.

Hunter was bordering on late. He joined the other two Thunder ninjas in Nena's class, and Cam saw his gaze flick across the observers. It was a quick glance, no recognition when his eyes slid past Cam--until he took a second look. The double take was worth the attention Cam was drawing just by standing there, and he nodded slightly in Hunter's direction. The gesture was returned with no hint of hesitation.

He had planned to watch the entire class. Nena could probably use the moral support, and he didn't have anything better to do. Not while still under his mother's orders to take it easy and to, quite literally, "stay out of trouble." What was he, five? He wondered idly whether Hunter's parents were ninjas, too.

His observation was interrupted, however, by a voice that he shouldn't be hearing. He looked over his shoulder automatically, expecting to see his father standing there. It was several seconds before he realized that the words were--so to speak--for his ears only. His father's irritating mastery of ninja telepathy tended to intrude at the most unwelcome times.

Not that he could think of any times when it would be welcome, really.

Hi to you too, Dad, he thought with a sigh. If Kapri's not on site now, she'll be here for basics this evening. You want to talk to her?

Cam frowned, aware that Chitzu was keeping a careful but unobtrusive eye on him. Interesting, how? What could they have to confess?

Cam stared. He wasn't seeing the samurai class in front of him, the odd looks from people who were paying more attention to him than he wanted to realize, or the flash of concern on his friend's face. Mom was right? Then a more confusing question occurred to him. Why Kapri and Marah?

Marah's confession to me is, of course, confidential.

Cam couldn't help rolling his eyes. Not confidential enough to keep it from him altogether, obviously. Not confidential enough to prevent his father from telepathically interrupting to send him on what amounted to an errand. But? he prompted sarcastically.

But I would like to speak with Kapri, his father replied, with perfect equanimity. If you could locate her and escort her to me?

Cam sighed aloud. Sure, Dad.

"You all right?" Chitzu said quietly, sending him another covert look.

"My dad." It was all the explanation he needed. "He's looking for one of the Wind students. I'm going to go see if I can track her down."

"Want some help?" Chitzu offered.

"Help?" Cam said dryly. It was just a matter of checking the perimeter logs and then narrowing the search one way or the other. "No. Company, yes." It had been a boring morning, and he saw no guarantee that the afternoon would be an improvement. At least he wouldn't have to sacrifice intelligent conversation.

The search for Kapri Jennings took less time than Cam expected, for the simple reason that she had left campus a little more than three hours before. Basics started at seven, with introductory elemental training to follow. She might not be here now, but he could anticipate her return to the minute.

He relayed the information to his father. He got no further explanation of the alleged poisoning incident, nor any comment on whether Marah would be at basics this evening. If it weren't for this supposed confession, he would have taken the opportunity to argue the "poisoning" angle with his parents again. But it was, and he didn't.

Instead, he shook his head and remarked aloud, "I don't understand it."

"Understand what?" Chitzu was poking around the mostly empty computer lab, paying little attention to the other occupants and less to Cam's search for a single student. "Life, the universe, and everything?"

"People get sick," Cam insisted, more talking to himself than to his friend. "Why was poison the first thing she assumed?"

Chitzu scoffed, not looking up from the filing cabinet into which he was peering. "I don't think you've been sick a single time since I've known you, Cam. Food poisoning was the first thing I thought of, and deliberate poison isn't such a big leap considering recent events."

"But why?" Cam insisted. "Why would I be on anyone's 'to poison' list? Let alone Marah's? She's not the brightest sparkle on the water, but I've never done anything to her."

"Neither did your parents, but their apartment blew up. We're ninjas, Cam. Weird things happen."

He considered that for a moment, frowning. "The more I try to believe that whoever was behind the poison also tried to blow up significant parts of campus, the less plausible it seems. The approaches are totally different. Why start big and then become subtle?"

"You call poisoning your water in front of the entire dining hall subtle?" Chitzu retorted. He held up a hand when Cam opened his mouth, stopping him before he could start. "I know what you mean. And, okay, there's not a lot of logic there... but can you rule either of them out? I know you were making lists."

And the girls had still been on them. They were the only two Wind residentials he hadn't been able to clear, but he hadn't honestly believed they could have anything to do with the attacks. They just... weren't that clever.

The perfect disguise, he supposed.

"No," he admitted at last. "I couldn't rule them out."

"Well, there you go." Chitzu saw his expression, obviously knew he wasn't convinced. "Look, Cam, it doesn't mean they were out to get you. Maybe they were taking orders from someone else. Maybe they were being manipulated by some kind of dark magic. How much do we really know about the two of them, anyway? They just started training this year."

"Just because someone is new doesn't mean they're suspect," Cam muttered.

"Would you rather suspect someone you've known forever?" Chitzu countered.

"I'd rather suspect the person who's guilty."

Chitzu shrugged at that, dropping into the chair beside him. "Maybe your father knows who's guilty, now. At least it sounds like he's on to something."

Cam frowned down at the table, then lifted his gaze to stare through the screen without seeing it. "You know what I ask myself, though? Would he tell me if he did know? That's what I'm starting to wonder."

Chitzu leaned back in his chair, the slight frown looking out of place in his normally uncaring expression. He didn't answer, and Cam was left to line up the events of the last few days in his own mind. His parents' apartment was attacked, and not only had they not told him but their explanation for their absence at the time of the attack was the most ridiculous cover story he'd ever heard. A romantic stroll? At two in the morning? Yeah, that was likely.

Then his mother had told him about a relative he'd never heard of, who had supposedly been banished to outer space and had now returned to seek revenge on the academy that had cast him out. He was expected to believe that this revenge took the form of a personal vendetta against their family--and now, that two Wind Academy students had been in on it from the beginning? Were they supposed to be connected to "Lothor" somehow?

More importantly, if his parents were telling the truth, why did they seem so calm about it? And if they weren't, what could they possibly be trying to cover up? Something too dangerous to share? Something about which his ignorance had to be maintained in order to avoid alerting the real culprits? Or something even stranger than the story they had given him so far?

Finally, quietly, Chitzu inquired, "Is it just that you don't believe what your mom told you? Or do you not believe that they're trying to protect you?"

Cam shook his head. "Oh, I'm sure they're trying to protect me." He couldn't imagine malevolent intent from his parents, no matter how misguided their efforts to help him might sometimes be. "I just don't like the feeling of being protected from something I don't understand by something I can't see."

Chitzu's tone was noticeably lighter when he remarked, "At least you're on the right side of the firewall."

Cam smiled at the analogy, but he couldn't help asking, "Am I?" His parents had always supported him, often managing to be exactly what he needed when he needed it. But they had their secrets. He had always known that--and he had to wonder if he would ever be old enough to be trusted with those secrets himself.

Cam reached out and tapped the keyboard again, erasing his illegal path into the Thunder Academy's records and easing the computer back into standby. There could be no firewalls on these machines--it would defeat the entire purpose of the network. "The problem with a firewall," he said with a sigh, "is that all the information is on the other side."

"So is the danger," Chitzu said dryly. "You done here? Because I'm hungry, and the afternoon classes must be almost over."

"Yeah," Cam said, staring at the blank monitor a moment longer. Then, with a nod, he pushed himself away from the computer. "Yeah, I'm done."

They made their way back across campus together, toward the place where they had left Nena, and found her class in its final stages. The two of them watched while the class bowed out, the three Thunder ninjas as respectful as any of the samurai. Nena caught their eye with a smile of triumph as they headed her way.

Preoccupied by the effort to overhear the question she was answering, Cam almost didn't notice the approach of "his" Thunder ninja. Almost, because Chitzu's gaze flicked sideways when someone got to close, and Cam turned to see what had made him smile. Hunter was pacing them, the symbol of his air element flashing in the sunlight.

"Hi," he remarked, eyes flickering across them in acknowledgement. "Feeling better?"

Though Cam had assumed Hunter was greeting them both, the question was clearly directed at him. "If you discount the paranoia," he replied. "Yes."

"Hey." Hunter stopped, forcing Cam to stop with him or walk away. Chitzu chose the latter, Cam noted, but could probably be forgiven since Hunter didn't appear to have noticed his presence in the first place. "This isn't what we're about, you know."

Low. It really was, and he hated the way this had reflected on the Thunder Academy. "I know," he said simply. It was the truth, after all.

Hunter studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Okay. Just wanted to make sure you were all right."

He gave every appearance of being about to leave, so Cam added, "Thanks. By the way. I wanted to thank you for... you know. Finding me."

"Sure." Hunter shrugged it off. "Glad you're okay."

And he did seem to be, which surprised Cam a little. Meisha accosted him then, a local student who hadn't been aware of academy happenings until arriving for classes this afternoon. She, too, asked Cam how he was feeling.

Thinking back to his conversation with Chitzu, his first and most telling reply was "distrustful." But that wouldn't be fair to Hunter, who was still standing there and would interpret the answer very differently. So he just smiled, told her the same thing he had told Hunter--"better"--and thanked her for her concern.

It was the truth. But it wasn't the whole truth.

Cam was getting tired of half-truths.