"Zane!?" Pixal jolted awake to find herself chained and behind bars.
She gathered her surroundings and tried to find where she was.
"Who's Zane?" A voice replied from the next cell over.
Pixal could recognize the voice immediately even though he was out of her sight.
"Zane!" Pixal said, feeling relieved, "You're okay."
"I'm Zane? That sounds...familiar." Zane's distant voice replied.
"Zane, you need to remember who you are," Pixal said, struggling against the chains, "You have friends and family that are looking for you. They have come here in search of you."
"Friends? Family?" Zane replied, sounding unfamiliar to the concept.
"Yes, I heard that they are competing in the tournament here. They are competing to be able to find you." Pixal said, studying the chains intensely.
"Hey!" One of the guards that was standing outside her dusty cell barked, "Keep it down in there! You're interrupting our goldfish game!...Have any eights?"
"Zane," Pixal said a little quieter, "Your brothers are here to rescue you. You died protecting them and rebuilt yourself. You have to remember...for me."
"I think...I think I can remember, a little bit. I think I can picture my brother's faces. One of them is very old. How old am I?" Zane asked.
"No, he is your Sensei. And your brothers aren't biologically your brothers. But you are close enough to be ones." Pixal said.
"Did you hear that Cole and Jay are fighting?" Pixal caught one of the guards say.
"Ya, it sucks that we have to stay down here." Another voice sighed.
A face appeared between the bars of the cell, purple snakes drawn around his face.
"They can't get out of here. Nobody even knows where this place is. I think it is fine if we leave them for a few seconds to watch the fight." The guard said.
Pixal listened to the sound of footsteps recede and grow fainter ad the guards got further and further away. A couple seconds was all she needed. A panel in her arm moved out of the way and a tool, once used for fixing and repairing Zane, was now going to free her and Zane. She jabbed it into the keyhole that was on her chains around her wrists. After a few tries, she heard a click. The shackle on her left popped open and clattered noisily to the ground.
She waited for the guards to rush in here and attack her, but none came.
"What are you doing?" Zane asked.
"Getting you and me out of here, frosty." Pixal said, using Zane's old nickname, "We are going to find Cole, Jay, Kai, and Lloyd."
"Frosty?" Zane said slowly, "Cole? Jay. Kai! And Lloyd! I remember! I remember them."
Zane smiled happily as familiar words triggered thousands of memories to come flooding back. How could he have ever forgotten. How could he have ever forgotten them?
"Yes!" Pixal cheered happily, for Zane had remembered and she broke through the last handcuff.
She quickly ran to the door of the cell and quickly unlocked it.
"So, I didn't always use to look like this," Zane said, somewhat sadly.
"Yes, I know," Pixal said, running through to the next cell three cells down. Exactly where she calculated Zane's voice to be coming from, "But you have been upgraded now. It's okay. We'll get through this together."
She quickly cast a couple looks around before getting to work on picking the next lock. With a click, she burst through, only to be meet by glowing screen light.
"Zane?" Pixal asked, looking around.
"Zane, you're-" Pixal said, stunned.
"Yes, I'm scrapped," Zane said sadly.
Pixal walked gingerly over to the screen, stepping carefully over his scrapped parts. Limbs lay on the ground. His arms strewn, hands open, almost as if to grasp something he could never reach. There were plates of titanium laying all over the floor, gears, bent and broken, some even split in half, spilled over in heaps. One of his cyan eyes was left on the floor, now gray and unseeing.
She tried to hold back the tears as she walked over to a table where a small microchip containing Zane's blue glowing power source was compressed into, was plugged into a very primitive computer.
"They wanted me to tell them where I could find the ninja." Zane said bitterly, "I told them they wouldn't get the information even if they pulled me apart piece by piece. So they did. And they tried to wipe my memory."
Pixal lightly touched one of Zane's hands. She had never seen such carnage. Parts of him were lying here and everywhere. Grey and silver liquid leaked from some of the parts, spilling into puddles onto the floor.
"They said, if I didn't tell them, they would pull you apart too." Zane said, "So I told them. I told them that they could find the Ninja in New Ninjago city. And that that was all they were going to get from me. I couldn't let them do that to you too."
"You're scrapped." Pixal sobbed, putting her hands on her face.
"Yes. I am. There is nothing that you can do about this. In a little while, the power in my source will fade and the element of ice might be passed to someone else..one day. Sooner or later, hopefully." Zane said.
"We-we were supposed to be together forever." Pixal sobbed.
"I'm sorry." Zane said, trying not to cry, "But this is where my story ends. You need to find the ninja. You need to get back safely."
Pixal reached out and touched the screen, trying to touch him, be with him once more. Zane lifted his hand slowly and touched his side of the screen, and smiled slightly.
"I really sorry, that I wasn't strong enough." Zane said, his eyes dropping to the ground, "Forget me. Be happy, don't dwell on the lack of my existence. Instead, cherish yours because that will be me cherishing you. But you must go. We both know that the longer you stay here, the less chance of making it out uncaught. You need to go."
"We will always be together." Pixal smiled.
"Yes, in your heart," Zane said, quoting a phrase that is brothers told him often.
"No. We'll always be together," Pixal said, unplugging Zane's microchip and inserting it into her drive on the left side of her chest.
"Pixal...You plugged me in?" Zane said, blinking onto Pixal's screen, "How did you know that we were compatible?"
"Because we always will be." Pixal smiled turning towards the door.
Now all she had to do was make it back past the room of carnage and mangled pieces.
She started to step gingerly across the room, missing that Clouse had come in from a second door in the back.
"PIXAL! WATC-" Zane shouted suddenly, warning and blinking signs blaring around her vision.
Pixal turned quickly, but it was too late. Clouse had already pressed his taser gun to the back of her neck. The sudden excess amount of electricity shorted her systems, and she flopped to the ground, short-circuited.
"Next time," Clouse hissed, grabbing one of the guards that was accompanying him by the cuff of his shirt, "Make sure that you actually stay and do your job and lock the android up in chains and locks that she can't break through?"