Chapter Text
“There it is!” Ruby was all by leaning out of the airship’s bay, pointing down at the walled city below.
It was a lovely town, at least from here. Pixal spotted cable cars running and trees growing everywhere. Several public parks too, and the buildings were all low, compared to Ninjago City, but with lovely architecture in a style she was unfamiliar with and warm, pleasant colors. The ocean lapped at its border, and airships filled the sky above it.
“Argus,” Yang agreed.
“What are you planning to do when we get to the city?” Ruby pulled herself back into the airship and turned a smile on Pixal.
“Well, my mech is damaged, and I’ll need to repair it before I move on,” Pixal said, “And I’ll need to ask around to see if any of my teammates are around or have passed through.”
“You’re part of a team?” Blake asked politely.
“Yes,” Pixal responded.
They’d all been… odd, around her, since last night. Ruby the oddest, after the end of the battle, simultaneously desperate to learn everything about Pixal and her life and hyperaware of any boundaries she may or may not be crossing, and the other three had picked up on that.
Still, they were very nice, and there was nothing really wrong, just strange.
Shaking off her thoughts, Pixal continued, “Technically I’m something of an auxiliary member. The main team consists of Lloyd Garmadon, Kai and Nya Smith, Jay Walker, Cole Brookstone, and…” she sighed a bit, “My boyfriend, Zane Julien.”
“Boyfriend?” Yang grinned teasingly, “Give us the deets!”
That made Pixal chuckle slightly, “He is very sweet. The only other person in the world like me that we know of. He’s always been very considerate of me.”
“And what about the rest of your friends?” Ruby asked, slightly desperately, “You do have friends, right?”
“Well, yes,” Pixal blinked, “I’m friends with everyone on the team, Lloyd and Nya especially, and several of the other elemental masters.”
“Good,” Ruby relaxed slightly, “That’s good. I bet being… one of two people like you is pretty lonely, huh? It’s good you have friends.”
“Perhaps,” Pixal shrugged, “I never really noticed it at first, and by the time I did, I was already a part of the group.”
“Huh,” Ruby said, with yet another odd look on her face. “That’s… good. Anyway, you said your mech was damaged?”
“The thrusters, yes,” Pixal nodded as the airship came in for a landing, “And some of the safety gear and controls. I can’t fly without it, so I’ll have to find someone who can help me fix it.”
“Oh, hey!” Yang snapped her fingers a few times, “What about that new guy who’s been hanging out with Dr. Polendina?”
The look on Ruby’s face was an absolute picture for no readily apparent reason.
“He’s good,” Weiss agreed, “And he’s not from Remnant originally, so he may have a lead for you, Pixal.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Pixal smiled, “Can you give me directions?”
“Do you one better and take you there,” Yang smiled, “I’m due for my annual maintenance check.”
“Wonderful,” the mech was unloaded, landing in an ungraceful heap that made Pixal wince slightly to look at it. “Let’s go then.”
Yang had initially made a game attempt to make conversation as they walked, but the lurching of Pixal’s mech didn’t really make for a quiet atmosphere suited to pleasant conversation. Eventually, she gave up, pulling out her holographic collapsing phone (and oh, how Pixal burned to show her father one. He would love it) and flicking through it with her thumb. Pixal didn’t mind. Trying to wrestle with her mech with so many things damaged was plenty to keep her occupied.
Just outside a modestly sized building with a sign proclaiming “Polendina Prosthetics and Weapons: Repair and Design”, Yang paused. “Wait, what did you say your last name was?”
Before Pixal could answer, the door opened. A woman with a prosthetic leg came striding out, and behind her, waving in the doorway was…
“Father?” Pixal cried.
Cyrus Borg, in the flesh, looked up and lit up brightly enough to illuminate the whole street. “Pixal!”
She didn’t remember climbing out of her mech, but here she was falling on her father’s shoulders in a desperate hug.
“Have you been here this whole time?” Pixal asked, pulling back to look her father over. He looked healthy, his clothes and hair were clean, his wheelchair in good repair.
“Yes, well,” he straightened his glasses and beamed, “Luckily when I was displaced in the merge, the huntsmen found me before the grimm. Pixal, I am so happy to see you.”
“I’m happy to see you too,” Pixal smiled, “Is anyone else here with you?”
“No,” Cyrus adjusted his glasses again, more nervously, “Well, um, that is… You might not remember him…”
Pixal put a hand on her father’s shoulder. “Someone from the company?”
Absently, she noticed Yang had wandered off somewhere. Probably for the better. This was probably awkward to watch.
“No, ah,” Cyrus was achieving speeds never seen before with how hard he was wiggling his glasses, “I found the man who originally programmed you.”
Her mind went blank. “You… what?”
Cyrus grabbed her hand, “Come inside, I’ll explain.”
“Wait, I don’t understand,” Pixal protested, letting him pull her along, “Didn’t you originally program me?”
Cyrus gave her a startled look, “No! I thought I told you… right, losing your first body damaged some of your memories again .”
He sighed in frustration. “I… It will be easier to explain it to both of you at once.”
With that, he kept moving, Pixal pulled along helplessly in his wake. The shop he hurried her through was large and well lit, full of robotic parts and half-complete prosthetics. There were a few workbenches with basic tools, and Yang was at one, her arm and gauntlet on the table in front of her, apparently waiting patiently. A young man wearing a badge labeled “apprentice” was busy helping an older man with an amputated foot at another table, and a woman behind a receptionist's desk chatted with a man and his daughter at the front of the building.
It was a cheery, clean, and pleasant space, but Cyrus didn’t stop. He hurried straight through the “employees only” door at the back of the room, into a more dimly lit hallway. All the way down to the end, and into the only room with the lights on.
A hospital bed rested in the middle of the room, surrounded by mechanical arms and high tables. A workbench laid across the lap of the person resting in it, busily hard at work, the arms bringing him any tool he needed. He was well dressed, and shrunken in a way that indicated he had once weighed more than he did now, before grief and hardship had stolen that from him. Scattered around the room were various pictures, most prominent an image of that same man, younger and healthier, alongside a young girl in her teens, with red hair and a massive smile. She looked… strangely familiar, and so did he, for that record, but Pixal couldn’t place them.
“Pietro!” Cyrus went careening into the room, but Pixal stopped in the door, suddenly unsure, “Pietro!”
The man in the bed, Pietro, looked up with a worried furrow between his eyes, “Is something wrong Cyrus?”
“No, no,” Cyrus said breathlessly, “Something is very right.”
He turned back to the door, where Pixal lingered in the darkness of the hallway. “Pixal,” he extended his hand, “Come here.”
Still, for a moment she hesitated. She had no idea what her father was thinking, or why, and she didn’t like that uncertainty.
She hadn’t become Samurai X by being a coward, however, so she stepped forward, into the light, and met Pietro’s eyes squarely.
The awe that broke across his face lit the room. “Your daughter? Oh, she’s beautiful.”
“Yes,” Cyrus wheeled himself up to Pietro’s bedside, “And if I’m right, she may be yours too.”
Pietro coughed a bit, shocked, “What? Cyrus, don’t joke about that!”
“I would not joke about such a thing,” Cyrus insisted, “Here, both of you, take a look at this.”
He produced a tablet, one of the older models that had been made during the Overlord’s takeover, and pulled up a video.
“This was the only video I managed to save,” Cyrus told them, “The rest were destroyed by the Overlord. Now, Pietro, tell me if this sounds familiar.”
On the screen, a younger version of Pixal’s father was adjusting the camera.
“Hello, hello, testing,” he hummed, “Ah, excellent. I am Cyrus Borg, and this is my first test of…”
He was interrupted by a giggle from the background, and a pair of glowing green eyes appeared on the computer monitor behind him, poking up from the bottom of the screen as if peeking out.
“Peony!” The on-screen Cyrus smiled widely, turning to face her.
“Salutations, Mr. Cyrus!” A chirpy teenage girl’s voice tinnily rang from the speakers, “I have watched the video that your nephew sent me! Did you know that cats will sometimes simply knock things over for attention? And they become most unhappy when they cannot!”
“That is fascinating,” Cyrus sounded genuinely interested, even though Pixal knew for a fact he’d almost certainly seen the video himself, “Would you like to watch the test, my dear?”
She gasped. “Oh, I would like that very much!”
“Well, then, let's…”
The video cut out at that point, fuzzing apart into static.
Eyes welling up, Pietro gasped, “That was… that was Penny. But how…”
“The program I called Peony was not actually my creation,” Cyrus explained, “I found her, amnesiac and alone, in the digiverse. She didn’t know her name, or where she came from, but she was a bright, cheerful girl, and I enjoyed her company. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only being in the digiverse, and when the Overlord attempted to return, he took her as a hostage against me.”
“But what does that have to do with me?” Pixal demanded, looking back and forth between her father and the inventor wildly.
“The P.I.X.A.L. body already existed,” Cyrus said, “But it wasn’t a person, not like you are, just a machine. I had the idea to try and load Peony into it in a bid to escape the Overlord.”
“It didn’t work,” Pixal said certainly.
“No,” Cyrus fiddled with his glasses, “And you were left heavily damaged as a result. You managed to use the existing program to somehow repair yourself, in a way that shouldn’t have been possible, but you’d lost all of the memories you had created or managed to retain, and you were forced to rely on that programming until the ninja managed to free you from the Overlord and give you an independent power source. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to see you again, free of him.”
Pixal nodded quietly, turning over the implications of that in her head. She’d never liked remembering her time enslaved by the Overlord, but until now she’d been convinced she’d been “born” that way, only given autonomy for the first time in her life when Zane had taken pity on her. It was… rather gratifying to know that she hadn’t been born with that thing winding its slimy tendrils through her soul. But as for who had programmed her in the first place…
Her gaze fell on Pietro. “Do… do you own a wheelchair with legs instead of wheels?”
He nodded, tears starting to fall as he stared at her like a precious treasure. “I rode that thing for two straight years after building you. Still do, when I need to get around.”
“I knew that there was something familiar about my father in a legged wheelchair,” Pixal said, voice thick, “I was so sad that Father stopped riding his after the Overlord hijacked it. What… what did I call you?”
“Dad,” Pietro said, “But you don’t have to.”
“I want to,” Pixal interrupted him. She knelt by the side of his bed, only looking away briefly to hold her hand out to Cyrus, “So far as I’m concerned, you are both my fathers.”
“And we are both delighted to be reunited,” Cyrus reassured her, voice thick, and then there were two sets of arms around her shoulders.
Pixal allowed herself to enjoy the contact for a moment, looking over their shoulders to the picture again. Of course that girl had looked familiar. That was Pixal’s own younger self.
After that moment ended, however, she pulled back, “You have to tell me everything, please. Who were my friends? What did I like to do? What did we do together? How in the name of all that is holy did I get to Ninjago?”
Pietro laughed, “Well, daughter, I barely know where to begin. Maybe you two should be telling me what you’ve gotten up to since last time I saw you.”
“Neither of you get to know what I was up to,” Pixal instantly denied, giving Cyrus a teasing wink, “Your weak organic hearts would give out.”
Pietro started to laugh, periodically interrupted by hacking coughs. “Try me.”
Ruby glanced over her shoulder and jumped, nearly dropping her boba.
“Oh, hey, Pixal!” Yang waved cheerily, “I thought you’d have left town already.”
“Well, by some chance you managed to lead me right to my father,” Pixal pulled up a chair to sit with them.
Ruby choked on a boba pearl.
“Woah, you okay?” Yang asked, thumping her on the back.
Ruby took a deep breath and nodded. “I’m fine. Your dad?”
“Dr. Borg,” Pixal said, “He is working with Dr. Polendina.”
“Thought that might have been him, with the scene he made,” Yang laughed, “Well, good. Nice to know you got to be reunited with him.”
Right, that… made sense. For a minute, Ruby had hoped that maybe Pixal recognized Dr. Polendina the way she hadn’t recognized Ruby, but whatever… ascension or pseudo-ascension she’d gone through, her memories were gone.
Ruby sighed quietly into her boba. It was weird and conflicting, but… at least she was alive. Even if she wasn’t really the friend Ruby had missed anymore. She was happy.
Pixal smiled. It wasn’t much like the way Penny had smiled, sly and smug, an “I know something you don’t know” smile if Ruby had ever seen one, but the way her eyes lit up was exactly the same. She shot Ruby a mischievous side-eye, and Ruby tilted her head in confusion.
“That wasn’t the only reunion either,” Pixal said casually, idly examining the tips of her fingers, “As it turns out, Father built my body, but he wasn’t the one who coded me.”
“So who did then?” Yang asked casually.
“Oh, one of father’s new coworkers,” Pixal said, equally casual, “Apparently there was an incident involving the space between realities, which how I ended up in Ninjago in the first place.”
Ruby’s breath caught, and she looked up at Pixal.
In a lower tone, Pixal said, “I thought that might get your attention. You recognized me, didn’t you?”
Ruby nodded tearfully, and then, in a burst of rose petals, she was on the other side of the table giving her friend the massive hug she’d been itching for since Pixal’s aura had activated in the forest and been the same as Penny’s.
“I was never worried about having friends,” Pixal whispered, “Because I think I already knew I had you.”
Pixal looked around at her new Samurai Cave and nodded firmly. She was all set up for her new plans.
“Pixal? Are you down here?”
“At the bottom, Dad,” she called back.
Pietro came down the ramp she’d set up, ensconced in his legged chair and looking tired but happy. “What is all this?”
“Welcome to the new Samurai X cave,” Pixal smiled, looking around. It wasn’t as well set up as the one she’d lost in the merge yet , but that would be easily fixed, “My home base.”
“Home base?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm,” Pixal smiled, looking around. The first of her new swarm were already flying around doing inventory, “I need a dedicated space to build and maintain my equipment, after all, and I can’t take the licensing exam tomorrow if I don’t have correctly maintained equipment.”
“You… can’t mean the huntsman licensing exam, can you?” Pietro asked, breaking out in a coughing fit.
“I can,” Pixal announced, “And I do. So long as I’m still looking for the rest of my family, I might as well be looking for the grimm as well and pulling a paycheck.”
“So,” Pietro pulled his chair up beside her to watch the swarm work, “You’re… staying then?” She could tell he was trying so hard not to hope.
“For at least a while,” she smiled, “And coming back whenever I leave, I’m not losing either of my fathers again.”
He sniffled. “Good. I don’t want to lose you again either.”
Affection made the power source in her chest pulse slightly, and Pixal smiled. “At the very least, I’ll be staying for Ruby’s surprise party she’s throwing for me tomorrow.”
“Now, I may not be up on all the slang from Ninjago,” Pietro said, turning to follow her out of the cave, “Do the words ‘surprise party’ mean something different there?” he asked dryly.
“No,” Pixal chuckled, “Ruby is just really, really bad at throwing surprise parties.”
Together, the father and daughter left the cave and, for the first time in years, stepped out into the light.