Work Text:
“Lloyd, I have a question." Zane approaches the green ninja with a paper in his hands. The ninja gather in the monastery's common area during one of the rare times they find themselves at leisure. Cole, Lloyd, Jay, and Kai play video games on the television. Nya reads a book. Pixal types on a laptop.
“What’s up, Zane?” Lloyd does not take his eyes off the screen.
“Could you check something for me? For grammatical errors?”
“Sure. Just after this round…” After a few minutes of gameplay, the round finally ends and Lloyd turns to Zane. “Got it. What do you want me to look at?”
Zane hands him a sheet of paper. Lloyd’s eyes roam over it. He squints.
“Uh, what exactly am I supposed to be looking at?”
“It’s a letter to Pixal,” Zane whispers to him, glancing at the droid sitting on the other side of the room.
“Okay, um…what does it say?” Zane frowns.
“Didn’t you read it?”
“Uh…” Lloyd looks at the paper again. It says:
01000100 01100101 01100001 01110010 00100000 01010000 00101110 01001001 00101110 01011000 00101110 01000001 00101110 01001100 00101110 00101100 00100000 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100111 01110010 01100101 01100101 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 01110011 00100001 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100001 01110011 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101001 01100110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100001 01100011 01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01100001 01101110 01111001 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01101110 01100011 01101000 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001110 01101001 01101110 01101010 01100001 01100111 01101111 00100000 01000011 01101001 01110100 01111001 00100000 01100111 01100001 01110010 01100100 01100101 01101110 01110011 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01000011 01110010 01100101 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01000100 01100001 01111001 00111111 00100000 01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101100 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100001 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110100 00101110 00100000 01000110 01110010 01101111 01101101 00101100 00100000 01011010 01100001 01101110 01100101 00101110
“Zane, this is just a bunch of numbers.”
“Oh!” Zane takes the paper from him and looks it over. “My mistake! It is in binary code! I forgot most humans cannot decipher this. Oh, well.”
“Wait, Zane, why wouldn’t you just write Pix a letter in…you know Ninjargon like a normal person?”
“Well, this is Pixal’s native tongue.” He glances at the droid with a soft smile. “I thought she would be touched by the gesture.”
“That’s great and all, buddy, but I’m sure Pixal could just read a Ninjargon letter and still be touched,” Cole adds, eavesdropping.
“What did you say?” Pixal’s glowing green eyes look up from her computer screen at the sound of her name. Cole gives a sheepish grin and mouths “sorry dude” to Zane.
“Zane wrote you a letter,” Kai says, stuffing his mouth full of chips.
“Kai!” Lloyd groans.
“Forgive me for encouraging the shyest boyfriend in the history of Ninjago to hurry up with his lovebombing already.”
“Oh, Zane, that is so sweet.” Pixal smiles. Zane returns the smile and hands it to her. She runs her finger along the page, tracing the 1s and 0s. “It is even in binary! I thought you didn’t—”
“I thought I would learn it since that is how you think and operate.”
“Zane, I cannot believe…” She pulls him into a fierce hug and he lets out a stream of surprised giggles.
“So what? Zane wrote in a bunch of numbers, big whoop,” Kai rolls his eyes.
“Kai, it probably took him a long time to write that,” Nya hisses.
“Wait a second!” Jay turns around in his seat, peering at Pixal. “Zane said that Pixal thinks and operates in binary. Does that mean she cannot read Ninjargon?”
The room falls silent.
One by one, everyone turns to Pixal.
“That’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” Cole breaks the silence. “Of course Pix of all people can read.” Jay rises from his chair, snatches a notebook and a pen from a nearby table and writes on it in Ninjargon:
P.I.X.A.L., can you read this?
“Pix, would you mind reading this out loud for me?”
Pixal takes the paper from him and looks it over.
“P……..period..........I…...period...........X….period...…....A….period.......…L…period…......comma………c…...a…………”
“Wait, hold up!” Kai rises, holding out his hands. “Pix, you’re just saying the letters out loud…that’s not reading.”
“Isn’t that reading?” Pixal frowns.
“No!” Jay yells. “It’s really not!”
“Even I can read better than that,” Cole says.
“No,” Nya groans. “You really can’t.
“Why are we yelling at Pixal? It’s not her fault,” Kai says.
“You’re right!” Jay says.
“Then whose fault is it?” Lloyd says.
“No one’s?” Zane offers.
“No, you dummy. It’s Cyrus Borg! He’s her dad. He should have taught her!” Nya’s eyes bulge and she waves her hands for emphasis. “It is literally in his rights as a parental figure to educate his child how to read.” Pixal’s eyes widen.
“No, no. Please, leave him out of this. He is my creator…he does not see me as a daughter, therefore did not need to teach me…” The ninja frown at each other. Kai raises his hand.
“All in favor of yelling at Borg for being a bad dad?”
The ninja—except for Zane and Pixal—cheer in agreement and race for the elevator.
“Wait, please! It’s not his fault!” Pixal charges after them and barely makes it to the Bounty before it takes off towards Borg Tower.
***
“Ninja! Pixal! Uh, what is the meaning of this?” Cyrus Borg is startled to see the ninja leap out of the elevator as soon as the doors open and charge towards his desk. Nya gets to him first. She slams her palms down on the table and glares at Cyrus.
“Pixal can’t read.” Cyrus blinks.
“What?”
“Pixal is illiterate. Why,” Nya seethes. “...is she illiterate?”
“Oh! I see what you mean. Pixal can’t read Ninjargon…but she does read code. She is quite exceptional at that. Her processor is incredibly quick!”
“So, are you telling me,” Jay says. “...that you built Pixal to be your assistant and didn’t teach her—or at least program her—to read?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Cyrus frowns, confused. “Why are you asking me about this? Does she need to read?”
“Everyone needs to read!” Jay yells. “You aren’t a competent person if you can’t! Just look at Kai!”
“Hey!” Kai yells. “I can read.”
“Not well,” Cole mumbles.
“Look who’s talking, blockhead! I might not be a good reader but at least I can read better than you.”
“Well, Pixal does not need to read,” Cyrus explains, ignoring the bickering ninja. “She can download information directly from the internet to her processor. She is above reading, you could say.”
“Did you even think about teaching her to read?” Nya asks. “What if someone in your office handed her a document and asked her to summarize it for you?”
“Well, that’s not a problem at all! No one in my office brings those kinds of documents to me. They send text files.”
“Text files?” Lloyd says. “What language is that in?”
“Computer language, of course!” Cyrus frowns at them as if a disgruntled parent wondering how much information he has to explain to a child. “Everyone knows that.”
“But computers in Ninjago don’t really have language…” Jay says. “It’s just code.”
“Well, well…code is language…in a way.” Dr. Borg swipes at his forehead as sweat begins to bead there.
“Dr. Borg, can you read?” Lloyd asks quietly. The ninja are stunned into silence.
“Well, well…of course I can read!” Cyrus glares at them.
“Here,” Lloyd slides the piece of paper that they used to test Pixal’s reading ability across Cyrus’s desk. Cyrus picks it up.
“Um.” Cyrus raises the piece of paper close to his face, squinting at it. “What is this?”
“It’s writing, Dr. Borg. Can you read it?”
“Well, um…the first letter is a ‘P’. The second is…‘I’. The third…” He continues to translate, pausing for a few seconds at each word. “Finally, ‘L’. There! That’s P…I…X…A…L. And that means…Pix…Pix…oh, that’s Pixal! See.” He straightens his turtleneck. “I can read.” The ninja gape at him in silence.
Jay slaps his face with his hand and groans.