Two months.
Two months I had been living on the Destiny's Bounty before the pesky water girl that caused my entire situation in the first place finally decided to take matters into her own hands.
It was right after dinner when it happened. Jay, having run out of new ways to get me to take off my helmet, was once again trying to taunt me with my boyfriend's cooking. Kai had given up on trying to creatively dodge his way around the major question to get intel, and had instead been conversing his theories with Lloyd. The green ninja still didn't care who I was, but he'd started to take up an interest in why I was hiding my identity in the first place. Or, should I say, an annoyance— he was getting tired of the others' antics. Zane hadn't spoken on the subject unless he was spoken to first, in which case he would play along with the others, per my request. Cole… things had definitely changed between me and Cole. Whenever Jay and Kai's charades got out of hand, we'd exchange an are-you-kidding-me glance— often joined by Zane, who'd been updated on the fact that Cole was now also in the club.
Even Master Wu had joined forces with Jay and the others— although he was much more playful about it; he'd often suggest ridiculous theories just to watch the boys scramble for ways to make them possible. He might have still been on the oblivious side, but he certainly made the entire situation much more enjoyable. I personally theorized that he theorized that I wasn't even anybody they knew, and that I was just keeping my identity a secret to mess with them.
The only person who was acting out of character was Nya. She'd been unusually silent all dinner, and hadn't even tried to hide her long durations of studying my (her upgraded) suit. Usually she at least pretended to be interested in the others' conversations while she formulated her theories to herself. But instead, she ate quietly, ignoring her brother's constant remarks ("I still think there might've been a way Skylor pulled it off— Nya, what do you think—? Anyway, Lloyd, she has the power of smoke, remember? Think she could've used it to teleport between our dinner and the Samurai X cave?") and Master Wu's cheerful encouraging ("In order to conceal one's identity, one must know how to conceal one's face… I do believe we have the makeup girl from New Ninjago City onboard"). It was after dinner when I learned why.
I was heading back to my chambers for the night when the water ninja brushed past me and pressed a piece of paper into my hand, not unlike what I had done to Zane over a month ago. I slipped it in the suit's secret compartment and walked the rest of the way to my room, but once inside with the door shut and locked, I immediately pulled it back out to read the message.
"Meet me in the forest tonight after the others are asleep for a duel by the stream. Samurai vs. Samurai. No weapons, except water for me and the suit for you. Training Week rules apply— I don't want anyone to get hurt, I just want to find out which of us is stronger. Yours,
-The real Samurai X"
At first I figured that it must be a ploy to figure out my identity somehow, but the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Nya legitimately wanted to duel me. Well, either way, I was in. The battle terms seemed fair enough. Standard training rules included no blows to the head (the reason the terms had been changed with Cole was on account of my "wearing" a helmet), no blades of any kind, and no disrupting the environment or the wildlife inside it. In other words, jumping down from trees was acceptable, but breaking off their branches to use as weapons was not.
When nightfall came, I waited until I was certain everyone had gone to bed, then left a note in Zane's room alerting him of my whereabouts in case he woke up (he still dealt with the occasional nightmare and usually came to me for help) and headed into the forest. The spot Nya had chosen wasn't too far from where Cole and I sparred, so I was able to find my way without turning on any lights.
When I arrived, my rival was waiting for me rather impatiently by the stream, swirling it into the air in different patterns. She looked up and flinched when she saw me standing practically right next to her, then said—
"It took you long enough." She was trying to mimic my deadpan voice, and failing rather miserably at it.
Yeah, right, I thought. You aren't so good at playing cool. Especially when people sneak up on you.
"Are you ready to begin?" I asked, taking a fighting stance. I expected her to return the motion, or perhaps even jump right into the battle. Instead, an unnerving smile suddenly crept across her face. Something was wrong.
"Actually," she said, "it occurred to me that battling might be seen by some as rather brute. I was thinking maybe we could handle this emotionally— you know, the sophisticated way."
"What—" I started, but I had no time to think. I suddenly recoiled on the ground as a burning heat rose up from somewhere near my stomach. I dropped to my knees and barely had time to look at Nya's face before the pain hit and everything started coming together. Oh, no— oh, no, no, no, I understood what she was trying to do… what I had mistaken for malice on her face was actually an innocent look of triumph, but what she was trying to do was going to—
"AUUUUUGH!" I cried. Burning liquid had been misplaced from the suit, and was already flooding my visors, short-circuiting the screens. I caught a glimpse of Nya's face dropping into confusion before my vision started going black.
"Wow, uh, are you okay? This is WAY more emotional than I intended…"
"I CaN'T SeE!" I screamed as my voice started glitching out.
"Whoa, whoa, it's just tears, calm down—" I could hear her voice, but I couldn't see the girl in front of me. A wave of panic washed over me as I tried to retain the information I knew, should the liquid come near my chip. My name was P.I.X.A.L., I was in the forest with a girl named Nya, and right now, Nya was trying to make me cry. Perhaps she figured that I would remove my helmet to wipe away the tears, or that simply the act of getting my stoic persona to cry would be enough to break me, but either way she had made a horrible assumption.
Anxiety started creeping into her voice as she realized something was legitimately wrong. "What's happening? Why can't you see? It-it's okay, I'll stop making you cry, it was just—"
My screams cut her off. I couldn't even think well enough to form coherent sentences, and I was growing ever more certain that my pain sensors would soon overload. My entire body shook violently as burning, raging, searing, agonizing streams of hot oil started leaking out the cracks of my suit, triggering all the pain sensors I'd set up as a safeguard.
Now Nya was panicking as well. "What happened?! Oh my gosh, what's going on, talk to me— I'm so sorry, I don't know what I did wrong— I was just trying to— what do I do?!"
"mAkE IT-T ST-ToP," I tried to say, but the wretched liquid had hit the voice modifier. And given that that was the only voice I had, I would soon be rendered mute.
"How?!" she cried.
"T-ThE OIL," I howled, wishing desperately that I'd turned off the pain sensors before coming. "G-G-gET IT OUT!" I couldn't see her face, but I heard the water ninja's gasps of horror at the same time I felt a flood of hot oil escape from the visor's general area.
"Oil— oil— WHY IS THERE OIL?" she yelped, finally using her abilities to stream the liquid out and away from me.
"YOU WERE BENDING THE OIL FROM THE SUIT!" I screamed, but as I screamed it I felt the first small wave of relief.
"I'm so sorry—! I thought I was bending INSIDE your suit— I've practiced this on myself before to test my— I don't know how I could have possibly—" she stammered, unable to finish her sentences. I felt my voice grow stronger as more and more of the liquid torture was magically pulled out of my body.
"That's because there's NOTHING INSIDE TO BEND, GENIUS!" I yelled. My voice was still loud, but now it was of a different cause. As my pain subsided, I felt my anger slowly boiling up from my chest— and in a way, it hurt more than the oil had.
"What do you mean there's nothing inside? YOU'RE inside!" she cried, gathering the last of the oil into an airborne ball. At least, that's what I assumed she was doing; I hoped she wasn't simply polluting the stream with it.
"You IDIOT," I cried, feeling something in my logic centers go amiss. "I AM the suit!"
"My suit came to life?" Nya asked, her voice completely baffled. And then, although my vision was still blacked out, I swore I started seeing red.
"NO! Your suit did NOT come to life! I came to life! I AM alive! And you never even acknowledged it!"
"I— I don't understand—" she started.
"AND THAT'S YOUR PROBLEM! You SHOULD understand. You should know EXACTLY who I am. I've been living with you for practically two years now! Going on missions with you! If it weren't for me, you and all your friends would probably have died SEVERAL TIMES BY NOW!"
"H-hey, look, I know it feels like a long time, but you've only been with us for two months—" Normally, I might appreciate the self-control she was exerting to not yell back at me, but at the moment I was too overwhelmed to think.
"NO, I HAVEN'T. I'VE LITERALLY BEEN LIVING WITH YOU FOR ALMOST TWO YEARS. TWO! YEARS! AND DO YOU KNOW THAT IN THOSE TWO YEARS, YOU'VE NEVER EVEN SAID MY NAME?"
"Are— are you a ghost that's been living on the ship? I promise, if you are, we mean you no harm—"
Cole's words suddenly came back to me. My breathing grew ragged and heavy. "Yeah," I snapped, "I might as well be!" I thought Nya had gotten all the oil out of my system, but I felt a small amount flood my now-useless visor once again.
"But then— how can you be mad at me? If we've never even interacted—"
"Oh, we've interacted, all right," I said. For some illogical reason, I felt myself start to laugh— but the laughs were interrupted by hiccups and glitches. "We've interacted. When I saved your life and all of your friends', and you didn't even know it. When I gave you an important piece of information, and you ignored me! When I tried," I laughed, "to save my BOYFRIEND by redirecting the electricity in his system— a move that I MADE UP, mind you— and you gave HIM all the credit!"
As the visor started cooling down, some of the screen started coming back on, although I was pretty sure parts of it had been damaged permanently. I could barely make out Nya's face as she finally started putting two and two together.
"Oh, and speaking of my boyfriend," I added, not letting up, "when sentient tech starts talking in gibberish, there's a little something called RE-ALIGNING THEIR NEURAL INPUTS. NOT! GIVING THEM! A NEW! BINARY! POWER! CORD!"
The water ninja's voice became soft. "You're…"
"Do you even KNOW what replacing the binary power cord DOES? IT! CLEARS! THE! HOST'S! EXTENSIONS! INCLUDING any inserted hard-drives, USB cables, and, I don't know, SENTIENT ANDROID'S NEUROCHIPS that are still linked to the host!"
"…P.I.X.A.L."
I don't know why, but hearing someone other than Zane say my name felt like a wave of emotions suddenly poured out of my body. A lot of my burning anger washed out of the cracks of the stolen suit, leaving me feeling completely empty— figuratively and literally.
I'd worn out my yelling voice. Trembling, I switched the voice mod back to my original one— back to P.I.X.A.L.'s voice.
"You could've killed me," I said softly. "You could've killed me and you wouldn't have even known it before it was too late." My vision was still fairly blurry, but I saw the impact my statement had on Nya as the truth sank in. She was quiet for a minute, and I wouldn't have even known how to break the silence had I wanted to. Finally, she asked weakly—
"Then how did you survive?"
I stood up, facing her directly. "I knew what you were about to do, and I didn't have much time to think. So I briefly took over Zane's body and transferred my neurochip into the nearest relatively body-shaped thing I could find."
"The Samurai X suit?" she asked quietly. It was a rhetorical question, but I nodded and replied anyway.
"The Samurai X suit." Holding my arms out, I pressed a button and felt the visor slide up into the helmet. Of course, I couldn't see, but I could somehow feel the girl's horror as she stared, where a head should be, into an empty void. I pressed the button again and she came back into vision, remarkably less composed than she had been before. There was another moment of awkward silence. I noted that I seemed very adapt at producing those. Finally, I turned around.
"So that's it," I said. "Now you know who I am. And we should both probably be heading back to the Bounty. I personally need to go back down and get some fresh oil to replace—"
"P.I.X.A.L., wait." I felt a hand clasp my shoulder, and I shivered a little from the unexpected motion.
"I… I know anything I say can't possibly make up for my actions. But I— I'm really, really sorry."
"It's fine," I said, wondering when I'd started picking up more casual slang like "fine." I tried to turn away from her again.
"No, it's not. Nothing I've been doing is fine. I've been ignoring you, and forgetting you, and acting like you don't exist, when you're a really important part of our team. You're right, I don't know how many times you've saved our lives, or how many of those times one of us has contributed the victory to Zane. Or how many times I've done those things specifically. So, I'm really, truly sorry. But—" she hesitated. "Why didn't you ever say anything?"
I scoffed quietly. "I tried. You couldn't hear me."
"I meant through Zane. He loves you more than anything, you know. He would've said something to us if you asked him to." Her face showed genuine concern, which made me uncomfortable. It was bad enough dealing with my own emotions, which were still confusing and relatively new to me.
"What would I have said?" I replied. "He always told you when I had something to say. But nobody ever commented back to me. How was I supposed to respond to that? Demand that you all thank me whenever I do something good?" I shook my head and looked down. It was somewhat hard to shake the helmet given how I'd had to attach it to the rest of the suit. I felt a sudden, almost violent sense of being displaced. I missed my body— both forms of it. Even existing as a phantom on Zane's screen was better than being stuck in something so heavy and somehow so hollow at the same time. It was disorienting.
"P.I.X.A.L., I—" Nya's eyes suddenly flared like always they did when she got an idea. It was a trait she shared with her brother. "I think," she said, apparently catching herself from saying something she shouldn't, "we should go back." She then took my hand without warning and started heading toward home. I shivered again, but too tired to argue or really even think any more, I nodded stiffly and let her drag me through the forest as we neared the Destiny's Bounty. Whatever she'd been about to say, I was sure I'd find out soon enough.
(Author's notes: *nervous laughter* Well, here it is, the concept scene that started this entire fanfic :'D You get bonus points if you can figure 1] the mistake I made which deviates from the canon of Ninjago! and 2] how I SHOULD have fixed said mistake. I'll explain the answers in tomorrow's chapter, which will also be the end of this story, so stay tuned and junk!)