"Colly."

Kara rolled over on her bed, half asleep, and looked towards the doorway of
her little burrow with bleary eyes.

"[blink][blink] Chit? Chit!"

"Gah! Get off me!"

"[giggle] I haven't seen you in so long! [flickflick] Where have you been!"

"Shh!" Chit chittered slightly. "Can you look around and see if anyone's
watching?"

Kara tilted her head at him, but bounced out into the corridor for a few
seconds.

"Nobody here, Chit," she said, a bit more seriously, "Except a few of the
others, but they're all asleep. What is it?"

"Ninjas."

"No such thing. They don't exist."

Chit nodded. "So they're some sort of secret scout sub-society, then."

"Who told you! [pout]"

"I've been researching our little problem."

"Me too. [flick] But none of the other scouts knew anything about a followup
mission to missouri."

"The computer records proved equally useless," Chit said, "But I must have
attracted attention, because tonight a ninja came up and offered to tell me
the truth."

"Of course! [flick] I should have known they'd have seen it. They see
everything. [nod] So who was it?"

"I sort of panicked and played dumb. He made my fur crawl."

Kara frowned. "Well, I hope he contacts you again. [chitter] There's no way to
find them if they don't want to be found, you know. [blink] Oh yeah, *that's*
why I didn't ask them."

"Do you have any idea where they'd be based?"

"Oh yeah, everyone knows that. [flick] Right here. They're all scouts, you know.
[proudflick] Only with weird martial-arts stuff and costumes."

"Oh. [chitter] I think I'll be going now." Chit backed out of the room, and
looked up and down the corridor, lined with the dark holes of the scouts'
private rooms. "Be careful, Colly."

"I'll try to contact them..." she said to his back as he scurried away. 
"[yawn] In the morning."