Hidden in Plain Sight

Socks, Best Friends, and Breakups

After ruining my back by sleeping on Dareth's new but vastly uncomfortable couch, I drove Dareth and myself to Borg Tower. The morning did not make me feel much better about my night. I was dead tired, considering I was too busy crying to actually fall asleep.

Nonetheless, everyone else on my rouge team was ready to catch a Samurai. I sucked up my sad emotions and followed Dareth into Borg Tower. Zane and Pixal were waiting for us in the foyer. Pixal brought us to the Team Brutle headquarters, which was a board room repurposed for official Brutle investigating. Under normal circumstances, I would've freaked out over the cool gadgets and spinny chairs available to me. It wasn't every day someone got to use Cyrus Borg's assets. However, the lingering anxiety from my less-than-ideal talk with Nya made excitement an impossible emotion. Pixal showed us the footage of Samurai X's break-in on a giant monitor. Samurai X distracted the main defence systems, while someone dressed all in black, entered through the front door, snuck up to Borg's office, put a memory drive into his computer and stole a bunch of files. Then he snuck down again. He wore a ski mask so all we knew about this guy is that he does have eyes.

"A simple memory stick can hack Borg's databases?" I said, unimpressed.

"No," Pixal said, "This chip was encrypted with a virus that overrode our security systems. Our thief isn't the brains of the operation. Or else he would've hacked our systems himself. Someone else prepared him to do this mission."

"Someone else? Samurai X did," I said. Why are we using vague words when we know only someone as horrible as Samurai X could do this?

Pixal restarted the footage. I saw no point in watching it again. There was nothing there. I sat down in a spinny chair and turned in endless circles while everyone else huddled around the monitor.

"Who's the guy?" Dareth said, "We'd never seen Samurai X work with someone else before."

"He must be one of Samurai X's cronies," I said.

"It's entirely possible that Samurai X is not the mastermind in the thievery. Considering we know very little about his modus operandi, he could be a mercenary. Or perhaps, Samurai X is loyal to someone else. For example, Lord Garmadon," Zane said.

"Nah, Samurai X's, unfortunately, an evil genius," I said, "No way he'd take orders from anyone. I bet he gave this rando a stick and had him sneak by the security. This guy's not even taking the mission seriously. Did you see his socks? The dude's wearing Fritz Donnegan socks."

Everyone leaned forward and squinted at the screen.

"Jay, couldn't those socks just be socks?" Zane said, squinting at the blurry frame of the security footage.

"With that colour scheme and the Starfarer symbol? It's blatant. I have the same pair."

"Socks aside, Mr. Borg has viewed this footage many times. There's nothing to point to the identity of either of our assailants," Pixal said, "Whoever did this, they covered their tracks. This was well planned and executed."

"Whoever did this? You mean Samurai X?" I said.

"We all know it was Samurai X," Dareth said, "But who is Samurai X? It's not like he goes flying around often."

"Samurai X hacked your systems, so shouldn't you be able to trace it back to the source or something, right?" I said.

"You don't know much about hacking, do you?" Pixal said. I shrugged.

"I'm afraid there isn't much for us to do if this is all we have," Zane said.

"Rest in peace, Team Brutle," I said.