"So fourth year of the Halloween Heist. Four years ago, Jay won, Zane won the year after and last year Cole won," Lloyd explains. "This year we are playing for this."

Lloyd holds up a silver necklace with two hearts linked together at the end of the chain. Seliel blinks from her place on Cole's lap.

"Is that-"

"Maria's necklace, and since she's refusing to play this year, she's in charge of hiding it."

Maria takes her necklace and goes out of the room.

"We're gonna start at ten and whoever has the necklace at midnight wins."

𝟭𝟬:𝟬𝟬𝗽𝗺
"The necklace is locked in this box," Maria holds up a small pink box. "And it can only be opened with this key." She holds up a small silver key with a small heart engraved in it. "As you know, whoever has the necklace at midnight wins."

Maria places the key she was holding on the top of the box.

"Maria loves puzzles right?" Skylor asks, dragging Pixal and Seliel into their room, so they can plan in private.

"Yes, she does," Pixal replies.

"Meaning, this won't be as simple as she's making it out to be," Seliel adds.

"I know where we can start looking."

Skylor drags Pixal to Maria's room. She walks over to the computer setup Maria has and rummages around in the drawers.

"She talked about having to record something earlier today and she's already done it, which makes me think there is a clue in here."

Pixal opens the other drawer and rummages around Maria's notebooks with Seliel's Skylor pulls out the small silver key.

They put everything back in the drawers and Skylor drags Pixal and Seliel out of the room.

The vent above that leads into Maria's room opens as Nya pokes her head out. She goes to the drawer and rummages to the place where the key was found. Nya grabs her walky-talky and turns it on.

"They fell for it."

There's some static before Lloyd replies. "That's great, now we need to get back to the box."

Nya climbs back into the vent and crawls back into the bathroom in the far left of the Bounty. Nya hops out of the vent and drops onto the floor. Lloyd is stood waiting for her. Lloyd holds up the key which he got from Maria's drawers.

"They have the key that was originally on the box, the fake one."

𝟭𝟬:𝟭𝟱𝗽𝗺
Jay smirks from outside of the bathroom. He quietly runs back to his and Cole's room. He walks in, shuts the door and turns to Cole.

"They swapped the keys out."

"Hmm...that's smart, but this fell out of her gi," Cole holds up another silver key.

Jay snatched it and examines it.

"This can't be the key."

"Maria's smart, she's probably made fake keys to throw us off," Cole says.

"Probably."

𝟭𝟬:𝟰𝟱𝗽𝗺
"Success!" Kai comes in holding the pink box. "No one saw me."

"You replaced the box right?"

"Yes, the fake box is in the living room.

Kai dumps the box on the desk and heats his hand up, placing it on the lock. Five minutes later, the lock melts and drops off. Zane coats it in ice so nothing gets set on fire.

"Kai the-"

Kai opens the box to see it empty.

"The lock melted too quickly."

"God damn it!"

"I tried to warn you."

Zane takes the box and examines it. After a minute, he puts his hand in and presses on part of the bottom of the box, revealing a hidden compartment. Inside the compartment is Maria's necklace. Zane pulls it out and shows Kai the necklace. Kai takes it, looks at it before handcuffing Zane to the desk.

"Kai, what are you doing?"

"It'll be explained when I win!" Kai runs out of their room.

Zane sighs and tugs on the handcuffs to no avail.

***
Lloyd and Nya walk into the living room and to the pink box. Nya pulls the key out and puts it into the lock. Nya tries to unlock the box, but the key doesn't click.

"What the?"

"Here, let me try."

Nya steps away and allows Lloyd to try unlocking the box.

Lloyd takes the key and jiggles it around in the lock. He forces the key to the left and there's a snapping sound. Nya jolts at the sound. Lloyd pulls half of the key out of the lock.

"What the hell?!"

𝟭𝟭:𝟬𝟬𝗽𝗺
Jay and Cole walk into the living room, closely followed by Skylor, Seliel and Pixal. Skylor pulls out the key she has and tries put it in the lock. The key barely fits into the lock.

"What the?"

Pixal scans the lock. "Someone tried to open it and the key snapped."

There's a bang from upstairs and a minute later Zane comes downstairs carrying the desk he is still handcuffed to.

"What happened to you?" Jay asks.

"Kai happened."

Cole walks over and breaks the handcuffs. Zane places the desk down on the floor in living room.

"Where is Kai?" Skylor asks.

"Speaking of people who have seemingly disappeared, has anyone seen Morro?" Cole asks.

The group all look at each other and shake their heads, not having seen Morro the entire night. Lloyd and Nya choose this time to walk into the living room.

"Have either of you seen Kai or Morro since ten thirty?"

"No," they reply simultaneously.

𝟭𝟭:𝟯𝟬𝗽𝗺
Everyone jumps as Nya's phone starts to ring. Nya picks it up and immediately answers it, putting it on speaker.

"Where are you?" Nya asks. "And why the hell did you handcuff Zane to a desk?!"

"Why don't you come to the monastery and find out?"

"That'll take us twenty-five minutes!" Jay yelps.

"Exactly."

Kai hangs up. The group share looks before heading to the control room.

𝟭𝟭:𝟱𝟱𝗽𝗺
When the group arrive at the monastery, Kai and Morro are sat on the front steps. Maria's necklace is dangling, almost dauntingly, from Kai's fingers.

"Alright, you two have some explaining to do!" Nya says as the group walks over to the other two.

"It was actually very simple. This afternoon, I went into town with Maria when she went to get the key cut out."

"Did she know you and Kai were gonna work together?" Skylor asks, deadpanned.

"When she came out of the shop, Kai was already in town and that's when we'd decided to team up. Maria had heard everything, suggested we should get more keys cut out but for a different lock. After we got them cut out, Maria gave me the real key and put fake ones in her drawers by her setup, knowing someone would check there, in her gi pocket, as she knew it was Cole's turn to wash the gi's and the third one on the top of the box."

"Wait, Maria was in on all of this?" Jay asks.

"Yes I was." Maria jumps down off the roof above the entrance of the monastery. She walks down to Kai and Morro, sitting between them. "Although it wasn't part of the original plan."

"After Lloyd and Nya took the fake key from the top of the box, Morro used the real key to unlock the lock enough so when I melted it, I wouldn't have wait half an hour for it to melt. Maria had told us about the small compartment underneath the bottom of the box, which was where she hid the necklace. When Zane found the compartment, I had to handcuff him to the desk."

"Once Kai got the box with the necklace in it, I put a fake box there with a different lock so it couldn't be opened with the fake keys. Then he flew here."

"And since it's now one second to midnight," the clock starts to chime, confirming Maria's statement. "That means I win."

"Wait what?!" Kai and Morro both turn to her.

"I have the necklace so I win."

Kai looks down at his hand and realises the necklace is no longer there, but around Maria's neck.

"Well, I guess Maria is this years Ultimate Ninja," Seliel says, making Maria smile at her.

Then they went home, had a movie night and they all fell asleep curled up together.

So...I took this from my Ninjago short stories book because this is the only thing I've had motivation for today.