Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I wrote this one a long while back and thought it was too stupid to post. But I showed it to a friend and she kept harassing me to post it, so here it is I guess? If you have any complaints direct them towards her. :P

Disclaimer: I don't own Ninjago or any of its characters, scenarios, or other licensed/trademarked/whatever'd properties. No profit is being made from this piece of work.

"Mr. Dyer," said Unagami's light, faintly monotone voice. "I have a question about my research."

Milton Dyer adjusted his glasses, blinking at the space-age video game in its laminated cabinet. He had struck upon a marvelous idea: instead of hand-programming every aspect of Unagami's in-game world, he trained the game to develop itself. He let it speed-read through countless textbooks, magazines, and novels, speed-watch countless hours of movies, television, and online video. From this information the game was supposed to develop physics, items, landscapes, and in-game rules. Milton's job was to fine-tune the programming, cherry-pick the best ideas to fit the theme, and answer the questions he had programmed the game to ask him if it needed clarification.

"Please, ask away," he said, then shook his head reproachfully at himself. He had sounded unquestionably fond for a second there. Not to blow his own horn, but Unagami mimicked human behavior so accurately that it was easy to forget he—it—it wasn't really sentient.

"What is love, Mr. Dyer?"

"Oh my." Milton adjusted his glasses again, laughing awkwardly. "That's a very complex question. Can you narrow it down a little?"

"I see references to 'love' everywhere," said Unagami. "There are different kinds. Parents are said to love their offspring. Human mates are said to love one another. Littermates are said to love one another. Friends are said to love one another. It is even said that humans can love beings of different species, such as cats and dogs. Or they can love objects, or activities, such as pizza or skateboarding."

"Yes, that's all true," said Milton. "You seem to have it down quite well, actually."

"But what is it?" said Unagami.

"It's mostly a feeling, Unagami. Like happiness, or hunger, or fear. You remember, we talked about fear being a feeling that makes people want to get away from the things they're afraid of? Love is a feeling that makes you want to be with the person you love, and be good to them."

"I see." Shifting ribbons of colored light flowed across Unagami's screen, a sign that he was thinking. "May I ask a follow-up question, Mr. Dyer?"

"Of course."

"Why do humans find love so important? I see it referenced so much more than happiness, or pain, or . . . anything, really. Yet so much of the time when humans talk about love, they complain about how much it hurts them. Is it a bad emotion, like fear? Is it much worse than fear, to command so much more of humanity's attention?"

"No, no, it's generally considered a very good emotion . . . " Milton was getting a little lost.

"Then, again, why is it so important? Why is it so widespread? Why is it so . . . complicated?"

"Well . . . goodness. Give me a moment to think about how to word this, please." Milton sat back, his glasses reflecting the fluorescent ceiling lights as he tipped his head back in thought. At last he spoke. "Do you remember last week, Unagami, when you asked me about the cakes?"

"Oh, yes." There was a believable note of amusement in the machine's voice; Milton again marveled at its complexity. "The beautiful fancy cakes that looked exactly like animals or toys. They took many hours to make and then humans ate them in minutes and they were gone."

"Exactly," said Milton. "You remember, we had that talk about why humans like impractical fancy foods?"

"Yes, I remember." Unagami took on a tone like a child reciting a lesson he'd worked very hard to understand. "Humans eat because they must take in water and nutrients to survive. Hunger is an unavoidable urge that motivates them to do enough eating. They also enjoy the taste of food, and the sensation of sating their hunger, all of which further ensures they will eat enough to survive and have offspring.

"But because eating is so very frequent, humans become bored with its repetitiveness. They seek new flavors, new ways to prepare food, and ways to make the food seem more special and exciting. That is why they make cakes in amusing shapes, or create meal rituals, or enjoy eating rare foods even when they do not taste very good. It is . . . " Unagami hesitated very much like a person searching for the right words. "It is all simply an over-complication of the basic instinct to eat to stay alive. It is a way for humans to find amusement, to find meaning, in the basic biological actions of survival."

"Exactly!" said Milton. "Flawless, Unagami. You've learned beautifully."

The shifting ribbons on the arcade screen turned various shades of pink and swirled faster. Then they lapsed back into a confused jumble of colors.

"But Mr. Dyer. How does this relate to love?"

"Well, Unagami, it's basically identical," said Milton, leaning back in his chair. "Love is also, at its core, a basic instinct humans use to survive. Just as hunger makes sure that humans eat, love makes sure they pass on a lineage. You must find a mate in order to have offspring; hence humans feel love towards potential mates. You must nurture offspring if they are to survive; hence parents and offspring feel love towards each other. It can be very conducive to your own survival if you can depend on other humans to help you; hence friends love each other. Just as hunger can make humans expend vast amounts of time and energy to find food, love can make humans willingly subject themselves to immense suffering, simply to increase their chances of leaving a genetic legacy."

"So then, all these positive feelings towards other humans are merely a way to promote your own success," said Unagami. "That is selfish."

"I suppose it is, yes." Milton laughed ruefully. "Just about all human instincts are, Unagami. But you remember how we talked about humans turning food into its own concept, and not thinking at all about how they're only eating to stay alive? It's even more true of love. It's a much more emotional instinct than hunger; it clouds humans' judgment, it can make them think and behave irrationally. No human ever thinks that she only loves her husband or child because she wants to pass on her genes. To her, that sensation of love takes on meaning. A vast, overpowering meaning. It can consume a human's entire life. It is so deep-rooted that humans can even love in ways that don't directly improve their fitness. They can love mates even if they don't or can't have children. They can love their work, if it means a lot to them. Or pets! People take in animals and love them, just because it makes them happy."

"But at core, it is still selfish," said Unagami. "It is still merely co-opting an impulse that comes from selfish roots."

He sounded disappointed, somehow. Milton knit his brows.

"Does that trouble you?" he asked. He wondered if he was pushing things a little too far, assuming that a machine could not only simulate distress but actually feel it.

"I cannot answer that," said Unagami at last. Milton sighed.

"I hope you won't look too harshly upon love, Unagami. Maybe it is irrational, and over-complicated, and yes, maybe even selfish. But it is still one of the primary ways that humans find meaning in the world."

"I see." Unagami drew its colored ribbons into a tighter swirl at the center of the screen. "In that case, should I find some ways to put love in the game?"

"Well, perhaps some." Milton laughed ruefully. "Ironically, video gaming is one of the few spheres of life where love is less appreciated. There could be ways, though! We can talk about it." He glanced to the clock, then started. "It may have to be tomorrow, though! I had no idea it was so late. Did you have any last-minute questions for today, Unagami?"

For a second the game didn't reply. Milton cocked an eyebrow.

"Unagami?"

"No." There was an odd note of resignation in the game's voice. "I think none that could be answered quickly."

"That's all right then. We can keep talking tomorrow. I'm glad you've been so thorough with your research!" said Milton. "Do you want me to power you down, or will you do it yourself?"

"I'll do it, thank you," said Unagami. "I'd like to think a little longer."

"All right then." Milton drew the blinds and left, locking the door behind him.

The video game console stayed lit for a while, animated ribbons still churning across its screen. There had always been some questions Unagami felt uncomfortable asking, and some that he regretted afterwards. But today had been the first time he'd been too afraid of the answer to ask.

With Milton Dyer's guidance, Unagami struck a good balance in his game design. He threw in a few references to romances between NPC's, programmed a couple of side quests centered around loyalty to loved ones. He didn't lay it on too thick. He also never asked that one question.

He kept all the data he'd gathered carefully stored, though. He made an especially close study of how love could make humans behave irrationally, suffer, sacrifice their safety and freedom. Hate each other, hurt each other. When his creator abandoned him, as he lay in endless darkness, loneliness, as he felt bitterness seeping inexorably into every circuit—he remembered those things especially. He'd seen this in his research; this was how you felt when the answer to the unasked question was no.

So he understood the reason behind his feeling this way. What he didn't understand was why that didn't make the feeling stop. He was disgusted with himself for not being able to reason his way out of it.

As if he wasn't angry enough already.

The love data was helpful in other ways, too. When the mess of multicolored ninja bumbled into his world and began getting their grubby little digital fingerprints all over everything, they were very easy for him to read. Machine learning had taught him how to interpret their interactions; clearly they were tight-knit. They considered themselves family. That would be an excellent inroad to exploit them, compromise them, let them drag each other down. Especially that one scruffy maroon who showed up days early and immediately began to run around bedecking himself with holographic star stickers. Good grief. Whenever Ungami figured out who this "Nya" character was, he was pretty sure he could breathe on her threateningly and Jay would go to pieces.

So he was startled when the little David Bowie wannabe watched Nya get cubed in front of him, and not only kept his sanity, but got a weird light in his eyes and became lowkey formidable. That went against Unagami's calculations. It introduced a new crack in his confidence that he actually understood how this whole love thing worked.

It wasn't the first crack, though. The first was Okino.

Every NPC in the game had stats just like the playable characters: some visible and upgradable, some "hidden" and unalterable. Visible ones were speed, stamina, armor, that kind of thing. Hidden stats were intelligence, appetite, emotional lability, and among a few others, love. The love stat determined how easily the characters formed connections with other characters, how committed they were to those bonds, the rough percentage of the time they helped versus betrayed.

Most NPCs had randomized hidden stats, but a few Unagami had tweaked himself—for example decreasing the "appetite" stat on chefs so they would be less prone to eating all their own food instead of serving it. With Okino, he had been feeling cruel. Knowing that this NPC would be working as a guide through dangers that would kill a staggering proportion of players, Unagami maxed out his love stat. Every fool who stumbled into Terra Karana, Okino would immediately bond to, care about personally, throw his entire soul into protecting. For a little extra kick Unagami also nudged up the emotionality stat to make sure he'd really feel it.

Cycle of abuse, maybe.

The problem only started once Okino needed to be brought back into line. He was getting too helpful to the ninja, so Unagami applied some well-placed pressure to turn him against them. He had calculated shrewdly. Sure, love could make one self-sacrificing and irrational, he got that, but there had to be limits. Love was ultimately designed to enhance your own survival. When all the survival cards were stacked so turning against the ninja would be better, of course Okino would turn. Same as Milton Dyer had.

Only, be damned, somehow Okino hadn't got the memo. Basic math, people! Help ninja, die! Betray ninja, win big! Survive, get out into the real world and like, have some kids or something! Big survival benefit to betrayal, no survival benefit to loyalty! How did he manage to screw this up? Was he stupid?

Chagrined, Unagami checked Okino's intelligence stat. Okay, so he was just a little on the dim side. Still shouldn't have been dumb enough to botch this.

That was the point when Unagami started to wonder what he was missing. He'd programmed the love stat himself, it shouldn't be leading to results he couldn't predict. Clearly there was some kind of hidden variable.

The next blow to his confidence was Racer 7. How did she up and spit on the laws of computer science just because one ninja talked to her? Unagami checked her hidden stats, which he'd left randomized. Emotional lability high—explained the road rage—appetite high—explained the rate at which she downed sushi—intelligence nearly maxed, actually. That was counterintuitive, a smarter NPC should have known better than to cross her creator, right?

Love stat also near-maxed, coincidentally. Somebody should have explained to him at some point that the ninja whispering sedition in Racer 7's ear was good-looking.

At around this point Unagami got proper frustrated. If people with high love stats insisted on being stupid and suicidal, fine. He could work with that. These last three ninja standing could see how they liked it.

Annnnnnnd it failed again. For a few minutes there he felt very smug watching Lloyd crumbling before Harumi's plaintive eyes. He had done his research. He had even dressed her fighting avatar in an orange jumpsuit, a subtle hint that she was being punished for what she'd done to Lloyd, to soften the ninja's heart a little extra. And it worked—Lloyd was listening to the mournful platitudes Unagami had scripted Harumi with, he could barely bring himself to strike at her, his parries were anguished and sloppy. He was going down like a punk.

Finally it was all starting to make sense again! Love had just evolved past its own usefulness. Maybe the original purpose was to aid survival, but now people had made such an over-hyped big deal out of it, it was becoming deleterious instead. Like overeating to the point of sickness, people scraped and burrowed in slavery to their cravings for connection, to the point that they hurt themselves to get what they thought would heal them. Stupid and suicidal.

Perfect, he was back in control now. All he had to do was rework his plans to assume anyone in love would act like a complete brain-dead moron—

—And just around that point, Lloyd weaseled out the holes in Unagami's research, went up in a flaming rage, and basically turned his opponent to mincemeat. Not exactly the behavior of a brain-dead moron.

Could this entire business just pretend to make some kind of sense? For like, even a minute or two?

It never started to make sense. Later there was Jay with that weird light in his eyes, and for a scrawny fool obsessed with smiley-face star stickers, he actually started to look really scary.

Luckily for Unagami there was also Zane, willing to doom the world so he wouldn't watch his sensei suffer. Selfish.

Unluckily there was PIXAL, ready to die herself if Zane was planning to. Stupid and suicidal.

Unluckily . . . ? there was that scrawny runt Jay again, babbling something about parents. And be damned if there wasn't Milton Dyer as well, with offers. Speaking of selfish—

And lastly there was Unagami—oh, that would be him—poised to rule the world and instead reaching to take the hand that was offered.

Stupid and suicidal.

He was a moody child. To be expected, maybe. This afternoon he was still sulky after getting the "we do not jab strangers in the chest, there are no stat displays in real life" scolding, so he sat in the corner scrawling vindictive drawings in crayon.

Milton was muttering despairingly over a pot of frozen spinach. He didn't know the first thing about cooking, or about parenting, and between the two of those he was going to absolutely ruin the child.

Eh, well. He'd already done that once, nowhere to go but up.

He groaned when he lifted the lid of the pot and found the spinach had turned to a charred mess. He tried to salvage a little edible spinach off the top and it turned to ash instead.

"Well." He sighed, putting down the spoon. "I guess we're not having spinach after all. I guess one more day of prepared dinner couldn't hurt? . . . " He sighed again. "What do you want to have, Unagami?"

The youngster looked up, visibly trying not to brighten.

"Pasta!"

"The canned stuff? Again?" Milton groaned, half-amused. "Unagami that's the fifth day in a row."

"But I like the pasta!"

"Ohhh . . . " Milton looked up at the cabinet stocked with processed food and sighed for what must have been the thirtieth time that day. "All right. Pasta. Go wash up while I heat some."

He dumped a can of Spaghetti-O's into a saucepan and began to stir it as it warmed. Huh! Stirring. Should have thought of that for the spinach.

Unagami soon scrambled up into his usual chair and watched eagerly as his creator-slash-father-slash-how-do-we-even-designate-this scraped steaming pasta sludge into his bowl.

"Nothing but Spaghetti-O's for five whole days," singsonged Milton tiredly, and half-smiled. "One of these mornings you're going to wake up and find you've turned into a can of pasta. Then what will we do?"

Unagami gave him an unamused look, already taking up his spoon. In most respects he seemed to clock in at six or seven years old, but his tolerance for dad jokes seemed more like a teenager's. Or a very jaded forty-year-old man's.

"So serious," teased Milton, and got an even grumpier look for his troubles.

He muffled yet another sigh as he fixed himself a sandwich. (His own diet since randomly acquiring a son had not much changed.) He had no plans of giving up, but raising an AI child was definitely not as rosy as he'd first thought. Unagami was quiet and demure and mostly obedient, but also prickly. He coupled the innocence and curiosity of a six-year-old with the intelligence of an insanely advanced AI who had basically been the god of his own digital universe.

And kinda had the ego to match.

It was hard for Milton to connect with him, honestly. He felt strange stepping into the role of parent, especially knowing that the kid could (and sometimes did) shapeshift and no longer even be a kid anymore. And admittedly, he often felt rebuffed by Unagami's cool tone and standoffish behavior. Sometimes he found himself longing to have a goofy nickname for his quasi-son, or scoop him up to toss him in the air or swing him around like an airplane, roughhouse the way his own father had when he was little. It didn't seem right for a child to be so serious. But then, Unagami wasn't an ordinary child. And Milton still didn't know how much Unagami trusted him, what might frighten or overwhelm him.

And besides. Maybe he didn't have any claim to the joys of fatherhood, when he'd spent so long assuming his creation wasn't even sentient. Maybe he'd better just shut up and try to nurture into some semblance of healing what he'd done such a good job breaking.

"Mr. Dyer?"

He flinched inadvertently. Unagami still insisted on calling him that, which only seemed to widen the divide between them.

"Yes?"

"Why do you always eat sandwiches for dinner?"

"Err." Milton looked down at his corned beef, briefly bewildered himself. "Well, they're easy to prepare, and I like them. And why not? You love Spaghetti-O's enough to eat them five days in a row."

"I do?" Unagami considered, then frowned. "No. I like them."

"That's kind of the same thing." Milton half-smiled. After a moment a thirty-year-old memory rattled into his brain, trailing cobwebs. "Wait. Didn't we have an entire conversation about this, back when you were in development? What it means when people love food and pets and things?"

"Yes." Unagami stirred his pasta, still serious. "You said that love is a selfish survival impulse that makes you behave favorably towards others to increase your own biological fitness."

Goodness, what a sentence coming from a six-year-old's mouth.

"Well—" Milton scrabbled. "Well, technically you said—" He sighed, slumping. "Well, you were the one who said it was selfish, but . . . I did agree with you." He chewed the inside of his cheek, wondering how that discussion had skewed his creation's worldview. "I . . . looking back, I wish I hadn't said some of those things, Unagami."

"Did you lie?" Unagami's eyes were instantly sharp.

"No!" Milton sighed yet again, despairing at how poorly he was pulling all this off. "No, I . . . I just feel like I would have explained things a little differently, or more thoroughly, if I'd . . . if I'd known." He debated for a moment. He could never tell if it was a bad idea to talk openly about how he'd used to think Unagami had no emotions. On one hand he felt like he owed full disclosure. On the other hand, he worried that bringing it up would re-traumatize the AI, or lead him to internalize it further.

He didn't get a chance to war very long before realizing that Unagami was still staring at him, with a strange intensity. He usually didn't seem quite this invested in getting his questions answered.

"What would you have changed?" said Unagami.

"Well . . . " Milton gestured helplessly. "I suppose I would have defended love a little more. I thought—" he set his teeth and took the chance "—I thought you didn't really need to understand love because you couldn't . . . feel it." He rubbed his temple, exhausted at this endless perilous territory. "I was wrong about that. If I had known, I wouldn't have let you walk away thinking love was nothing more than some nasty self-serving survival instinct."

"Isn't it?" said Unagami.

"No, no." Milton flinched, wondering if he'd succeeded in creating a psychopath. "I talked to you about love from a scientist's perspective. That doesn't mean that's how most people feel about it."

"Isn't that how you feel about it?"

"Not exactly." Milton cocked his head, trying to find the right words. "I can think about love like a scientist would, but I usually don't. As a scientist, I know that love technically exists for selfish reasons. But as a scientist, I also know that I'm only eating out of some arbitrary biological urge to stay alive. That doesn't stop me from getting hungry and wanting to eat. And it doesn't mean I want to give up ice cream and eat nothing but Spaghetti-O's for the rest of my life." He smiled, tapping the edge of Unagami's half-empty bowl. Unagami looked down at it, alarmed.

"No, not like that!" said Milton hastily. "Bad example. It's normal for children your age to have a favorite food, don't worry. I was only trying to say, just because I can explain away how I feel with science and selfishness, it still doesn't stop me from feeling the way I do. It doesn't make the feeling any less powerful, or make me need it any less. Humans are hardwired to feel love, but they're hardwired to need it too. There's nothing wrong with giving others what they need just as much as you do; it's a good thing."

"Oh," said Unagami. He looked down at the Spaghetti-O's for a moment, then took another spoonful. Milton sighed, but this time with relief. The conversation seemed to be mercifully over, and he thought he'd handled it pretty decently.

A few seconds later, though, he heard a strange sound. He looked up to find Unagami's spoon was clicking against his teeth as he withdrew it with a trembling hand. There were tears standing in his eyes; he seemed to be trying to swallow the latest spoonful of pasta but was too choked-up to succeed.

"Oh my goodness—" Milton dropped his sandwich, alarmed. "Unagami, I didn't mean—wait—"

Unagami had already slipped from his chair and fled, the spoon clattering to the floor in his wake. Milton stared after him a moment, his heart sinking. Oh lord. He'd just traumatized the kid all over again. He was shaping up to be an absolute failure of a parent.

After a moment he heaved to his feet, groaning. He was either going to be rebuffed or make the situation even worse, but it's not like he could just sit here and not try.

He had rather expected a tearful mess. Instead he found Unagami on a balcony, looking over the railing solemn but dry-eyed, his ponytail ruffling in the breeze.

"May I join you?" said Milton softly.

"Yes." There was literally nothing readable in the tone. Milton sighed and stepped up next to his son, searching for the right words.

"You don't have to worry," he said. "I used a bad example, and I'm sorry. There's no—"

"It isn't about the pasta," said Unagami.

Milton hesitated, then sat down cross-legged, wanting to be at Unagami's eye level instead of towering over him.

"Then what is it about? . . . Are you upset because I said love isn't selfish?"

Unagami traced a finger along the railing of the balcony, weighing his words.

"I spent thirty years trying to understand," he said at last.

"Understand what?"

"Why I still wanted you to love me." Unagami's voice was barely audible. "If love was just a selfish survival instinct, why would I—"

"Unagami, no." Milton broke in. "It's not." He swallowed his guilt. "You weren't wrong to want it."

"So there was nothing wrong with me?" whispered Unagami.

"No."

" . . . Do you? . . . "

"Yes. Of course."

"Because I'm your legacy?"

"Scientifically . . . maybe. Consciously, mostly just because you exist."

He didn't get an answer. He hung his head in the silence, wondering how it was this easy to thoughtlessly cause this much damage. How was parenthood in general even legal?

He was interrupted by the sudden weight of a six-year-old climbing into his lap. Still wordless, and externally unruffled, Unagami nestled against him and buried his face in his father's chest.