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The ninja sat in Sensei Garmadon’s monastery, quiet as mice. Misako poured them tea, which Wu took, gratefully, and the others merely fingered, staring down into the steaming mugs with blank eyes.
“I haven’t seen you all this quiet since you entered this monastery for the very first time” Sensei Garmadon entered the room with a weak smile. None of the ninja acknowledge him. He sighed and sat beside Lloyd, rubbing his shoulders. His son wordlessly grabbed his father’s hand and squeezed it.
“What is there to say?” Jay asked. This prompted another several minutes of silence.
Kai clenched and unclenched his fists. He had never been good with these kinds of things. He grit his teeth.
“I need to use the restroom,” He mumbled. He didn’t know why he even bothered. It’s not like anyone was listening to him. He turned the corner and walked down the hall. Then turned another corner and slammed open the door.
And then, he saw her. She was sitting right beneath a sink, her eyes tracing a line of tiles to a drain. Her silver hair was matted upon her head, several strands fighting to escape her messy ponytail. Her green eyes were dull as if they had lost several lumens. She was still sitting in that same purple Borg Industries uniform she always wore. Only it was no longer spotless. It was still coated in dust and grime that was cast her way during Zane’s battle with the Overlord. She hadn’t bothered to clean it.
She did not look up as he entered the room. His first thought was this was the wrong bathroom. He looked at the backside of the door. No, this was definitely the men’s room.
“Hey. Hey!” She looked up, blinking as if to clear her eyes.
“Kai. Yes?”
“What are you doing here? This is the men’s room!”
“It is…” Her tongue shifted in her mouth. She gazed into the room’s far corner. Do nindroids get drunk? She sure seems off. “Oh. I must have forgotten.”
“That’s a pretty weird thing to forget.”
“I do not require use of these facilities. So,” she blinks. “It is not ‘weird.’”
“Well, it is quite rude!” Kai suddenly spit. “This is the men’s room. For men.”
She blinked at him.
“I…am sorry.”
“Well, you should be!” Words leapt to the front of his brain that he did not know where there. And they all came tumbling from his lips in a torrent. “If it wasn’t for you, none of this would’ve happened!” The words leaped from his throat before he could stop them. The nindroid blinked.
“I do not understand—"
“You built the nindroid army! You helped them find us! And then,” he heaved, inhaling to spit out his final insult. “You took his heart from him! You’re the reason he is gone—” His yells succumbed to sobs and he shoved his hands onto his face, heaving into them. “All your fault—” He choked between tears. “I wish we never met you. I wish you didn’t exist.”
Sobs overtook his voice and he cried quietly into his hands.
It could have been minutes, or hours until his cries stilled and he had enough energy to swipe his tears from his eyes and push himself off the ground.
She was gone. Like she was never there.
For a few seconds, Kai looked around the room, as if expecting her to be cowering in a corner. But, she was gone. She was a pale ghost—had always been since he had first met her. Still. Quiet. There one moment and gone the next. Observing everything with her large, green, owl-like eyes.
I can’t believe I ever felt sorry for her, Kai thought bitterly. After he had suggested the ninja scrap her when she ambushed Zane in the woods, Kai felt a twinge of guilt towards her. She was under the Overlord’s control afterall. Just like Nya was… And he had suggested she be taken apart—
Now Kai wished he really did act on his words. Even if he couldn’t have prevented her from creating the nindroid army, he still could have stopped her from hurting Zane…
But that wasn’t her fault, a small voice inside Kai whispered. He gave his heart to her…it was his choice.
Kai growled and shook his hair, swiping at his eyes again.
No, he seethed. It’s all her fault. And he buried the sticky, sucking guilt beneath a fountain of all too familiar rage.
When he returned to the common room, it was just as silent as he had left it.
No one questioned where Pixal went.
She wasn’t part of their family. And, even if she was, she was not Zane.
And he was all they were thinking about.