Chapter Text
If you had told Morro that he'd be stuck with a wannabe ninja for the foreseeable future he'd probably laugh in your face and tell you to go pedal your insults somewhere else, but of course-- nothing ever goes his way.
Does it?
"I can not be a 'Wannabe Ninja' if I was never a ninja in the first place, And I truly don't appreciate the insult"
Pixal's robotic voice chimed into the mindscape he'd made himself a home in for the time being. At first he hadn't known who she was, and initially he'd simply writing her off as another one of the ninja's weird allies, like a better but weirder version of Ronin or someone of that nature, but then he had to actually get to know her since it'd be unbearably awkward otherwise. Not like it wouldn't be awkward already but now it meant he actually had to put in a bit of effort instead of just tiptoeing around the elephant in the room like he usually would, and don't get him wrong, he absolutely lived to piss people off, the red ninja in particular.
However, he honestly wasn't in the mood to take over someone's body to do it, not after the whole Lloyd fiasco, and the fact that simply possessing someone took a stupid amount of energy, and controlling them? Fuck that, he'd rather sleep for eternity than do that shit again.
It was a bit of a strange adjustment at first when he first settled into Pixel's mindscape, her mind being littered and dotted with lots of different and seemingly random numbers and symbols creeping into the edges of the 'walls' that defined Pixal's mindscape. It wasn't exactly walls per-say, but rather just the background in the vast landscape of her mind. Almost like a faint overlay over top of the usual black that came with the normal mindscape of a human being, or whatever fucked up genetics his pseudo-cousin might have.
But nonetheless it was admittedly fascinating despite its horrid clashing against the 'room' he'd managed to manifest near the recesses of her mind, the dark walls and floors he had manifested tainted by the ones and zeros that crawled over them like spiders in one of those old abandoned houses he used to camp out in before Wu had taken him in.
Yeah, well you should've expected it when you volunteered to get possessed
He responded via the mindscape and causing his own voice to echo off the walls as he lounged across the bed he decided to conjure up in a pale purple color, decidedly avoiding anything green in nature and instead making his room a mixture of blacks, deep purples, and lavenders. And honestly? He was actually enjoying it. Not in the same way he'd been enjoying the departed realm, but it was still enjoyable. Pixal's mind was quiet and calm, unlike Lloyd's mindscape which was constantly shifting and changing between gold and green or black and purple, and Pixal didn't seem determined to drive him insane with constant yelling or demands for her freedom, funny how things weren't terrible when he wasn't being an absolute menace huh?
Although oddly enough he couldn't pry into her thoughts or memories like he could with Lloyd, and thankfully she couldn't do the same. The faint memory of Lloyd's shouts suddenly going quiet after seeing the memory of his first death still making his 'body' tense despite it only being a projection from his mind. However, despite the fact that Pixal couldn't actually pry into his memories, she could very well pull him from her mindscape into the front seat of her body, and she was stupidly good at it too.
"Fucking—"
Morro cursed via Pixal's mouth as he was suddenly thrown into the metaphorical 'driver's seat' of Pixal's body, his vision blurring for a second before he was met with the sight of the Ninja gathered around a table that he'd almost stumbled into in his disoriented state, but it didn't take long for his somehow still functional muscle memory to kick in and 'his' body to balance itself out before he cracked Pixal's skull on the hardwood floor.
Thankfully the ninja didn't comment on his fumbling, other than Kai's blatant snickering much to his annoyance, instead he was only met with expectant stares as various strings of information flashed across his vision. Sometimes random strings of observations or simply potential outcomes of what might happen next, most noticeably he found that he could see every little micro-movement, like Jay's subtle little hand twitches or the way Cole was trying to hide how he was picking out his nails, or even the way Lloyd was lightly tapping at the scroll he'd been reading.
"Morro— do you know anything about Anemos other than the legends?"
He could vaguely hear Lloyd asking him as he slowly waded through the messy and overwhelming items flooding his vision, it took maybe a minute or so before his senses weren't as overwhelmed and he could actually function properly, or function as well as he could when he couldn't exactly feel anything. His senses of touch feeling even fainter due to Pixal being a robot rather than a human, of course he couldn't feel much to begin with, but Lloyd's body at least gave the phantom feeling of touch, not this weird wispy feeling that gave him a strange sense of vertigo.
"I didn't even know my own parents— why the fuck would I know anything about my— maybe— great great grandfather?"
He scoffed in an almost insulted tone at the idea that Lloyd actually would've thought he knew something about his family, the kid had basically took a joy ride through his memories when they shared a mindscape and he'd still assumed that Morro actually knew anything about his family tree. Hell, he could be part serpentine and wouldn't even fucking know it, actually he'd better not jinx himself now that he thought about it.
"Alright..."
Lloyd coughed awkwardly as he cringed at the silence that had fallen over the room, which Morro had also finally noticed and promptly cringed at his own trauma drop without so much as a warning, so much for being private...
It is okay not to have a normal childhood, the others all have their demons too...
Pixel added quietly in the back of his mind, her voice much clearer and less professional than her usual tone would be, almost like she'd chosen to sound softer, less like a therapist and more like a mother comforting her child after they got upset because of a mistake they had made. Not that he needed comforting, not in the slightest, that was just how his life was. No point in crying over already spilled milk, was that how that saying went? He couldn't really remember anymore.
"I don't need your pity so why don't you shove it—"
He hissed quietly under his breath as if to scold Pixal for even considering that he might need any sort of sympathy for his past, his life had long already ended and now he was simply paying off his past dues so he could finally take that long rest he'd been waiting decades for at this point. And speaking of rest he'd had just about enough of the nausea inducing vertigo that came from Pixal's weird information highlighting bullshit, he barely even bothered to tell the ninja he was leaving before he was slipping back into the mindscape and leaving Pixal's body unmanned, er— unwomaned he supposed.
Just that by itself was supposedly enough of a warning since Pixal's body immediately slumped over once he'd left and leaving Pixal scrambling to take control again. Much to the ninja's rather obvious panic as their friend basically face planted into the floor, and despite Zane's lack of emotion he was still the first one at her side when Pixal inevitably regained control of her body.
"You could've warned me at the very least"
Pixal sighed disappointedly at Morro's petty response to her supportive words, her titanium body unharmed by her unceremonious tumble yet she was still clearly unamused by Morro's antics, especially after her efforts to reach out being met with a hard wall of petty defiance. Not that Morro could really care, even if he had to shove that growing inkling of guilt deep, deep down until he could hardly breathe despite his body only being a projection of his consciousness and not his actual physical form, not that he had much of physical form to begin with.
Warn you about what? The fact that I don't even wanna be here? The fact that you and your little colorful group of candy ninja dragged me out of the Departed Realm and now I have to rely on someone to even stay in Ninjago in the first place?!
Morro started sarcastic at first, then his voice started to spiral into something spiteful before eventually molding into something resentful as the venom in his voice spiked harshly against Pixal's mindscape in a way that made her actually flinch from the forcefulness of the poison in his words. It was then that Morro had realized he'd said too much, had let out too much of his emotions and now Pixal knew exactly how he truly felt about his current predicament.
And that was dangerous by itself, not to mention the sudden realization he could feel dawning on her psyche as he decidedly buried himself deeper into her mind, still running away from his problems like he'd done for nearly 4 decades even if he could faintly hear the soft calling of Pixal's voice the more he faded into her mindscape.
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It must've been another few days before Morro regained consciousness again, his vision still mostly black with that familiar overlay of binary 1's and 0's that made his head hurt and his vision warp in a way that made his stomach twist in his projected body. It wasn't until the vertigo eventually disappeared that he finally managed to figure out where he was and what exactly happened.
I must've slipped too deep into her mindscape...
He mumbled softly under his breath as he groggily tried to spin his form into something coherent, his projection was already fraying at the seams, making him seem blurred and unfocused despite nobody being able to see him this far back into Pixal's mind. Yet he'd still have to pull himself together unless he wanted to be shoved down into the deepest parts of Pixal's conscience, but that was easier said than done when he wasn't exactly sure how long he'd been out or how far he'd dragged himself into the mindscape.
Pixal?
He called out weakly as he forced himself upwards by sheer willpower, not that his projection was willing to listen to him of course since his lower half was completely dissolved, forcing him to use whatever mental energy he might've stored up to make himself float across the landscape than actually walk like he usually did. It didn't help that the only response he got was the faint silence that made your ears ring and your brain start to grow paranoid the longer you heard it, he was already insane enough and it didn't help that he was slowly driving himself crazy the longer he wandered aimlessly around Pixal's mindscape.
Hello...?
He tried again after some hesitancy, his energy was depleting more and more as he continued wandering, the occasional structured pulled from Pixal's memories allowing him to gauge where he might be in terms of her psyche. But honestly it seemed to do him more harm than good when he wasn't able to recall which direction he'd came from, his own mind starting to blur and smudge like oil across a glass window and making the resulting image fuzzy and unrecognizable. He'd nearly given up in his efforts to make his way back to the front of Pixal's psyche as his form began to destabilize until he suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder, or at least a projection of one.
Huh?
Blearily turning around he was met with the sight of Pixal's robotic projection staring at him as if she was confused, or at least he assumed it was her. It wasn't quite her the longer he seemed to look at her, the purple markings on her cheeks far more faded than they should seem, that along with her hair being shinier, almost as if it too was titanium rather than the silver strands he remembered her having. Not only that but her outfit was different too, her Samurai X uniform swapped out for a purple kimono that hung loosely enough off of her shoulder that it left her chest plate exposed, allowing him to see more of those strange purple markings that curled and crawled across her chest like rectangular snakes.
Pixal...?
He asked quietly as if not even sure of it himself, clearly he wasn't in the right state of mind at the moment, his wavering astral form proof of that and more, but even now he seemed almost sure that this was Pixal. Albeit, a different and maybe younger form of her present self.
Do you... know where I am?
She asked softly in a tone that seemed like a mixture of confusion, worry, and fear. Almost like she wasn't sure of herself or that she wasn't sure who she was, her own form glitching like static on a TV that he remembered seeing in Lloyd's memories, except with every glitch she seemed to fade more and more, almost like she was disappearing right in front of him.
Please— I need to find Zane, he needs me—!
She asked more urgently than before as her hands gripped his shoulder tighter, yet despite her grip her hands began to glitch and distort in a way that made Morro's heart stutter and alarm bells in his brain to start firing off, her body practically falling apart until eventually her hands fell through him like she was nothing but a ghost herself despite not having a soul that could manifest as a cursed soul. Her projection wavering and rippling as if she couldn't hold her form for longer than a few moments before she started to corrupt and break as if an infestation had invaded her body and taken over, her face being forcefully stretched and pulled until even her silvery skin took on a gray and corroded appearance as she shouted with pain and distress clouding her voice until her body was too distorted for her to even resemble anything human.
Ŵ̴̞̪̙̙H̸̦̐Ẹ̶̛͕̿̐̀̏Ŗ̴͖̤̖̺́E̸̢̳͉̺͛̿̋̾ ̷̢̡̜̻̋Ȋ̴̲͖̙̓͝S̴̲̱̈́ ̶̠̟̠̀́̍̕͝ͅZ̶̝̈́A̵̡̬̰̳̭͆̌̆N̷͔͍͚͌͌͘È̸̡͔̞͝!̶̛̂͒͜?̴̠̻̑͑̔
Her corrupted scream was the very last thing Morro could only just barely make out before he abrupt felt a sudden tug on his soul and he was painfully yanked back by what felt like a rope wrapped around his heart, Pixal's distorted figure growing indefinitely smaller until eventually he couldn't even see a glimpse of her as he was pulled and dragged until eventually he was shooting upright and slamming Pixal's titanium skull into Cole's unprotected face.
"FUCK—"
Cole shouted as his hands immediately jumped up to cradle his likely broken nose, much to everyone else's distress, mostly Kai's since the fire elemental was instantly by his side, as Morro heaved breaths he truly didn't need since neither him nor Pixal actually required oxygen, the heavy breathing more so a reflex rather than an actual way of calming himself down. Though it helped nonetheless, even if he was still a bit too frazzled to realized he'd basically just given Cole a run for his money.
"Pixal are you—?"
"Not Pixal"
Morro heaved hoarsely despite the fact that Pixal didn't exactly have vocal chords to strain, his hand immediately shooing away Lloyd's concern despite the blonde's efforts to help, not that Lloyd decided to help for long after realizing it was Morro and not Pixal like he'd first assumed. Instead allowing Kai to pivot everyone's attention to the elephant in the room which happened to be Morro's reappearance, and his latest and not the greatest escapades.
"What the hell—!? You disappear for a week and the first thing you do is take over Pixal's body and break Cole's nose!?"
...
"Yeah..."