Bro Can Someone Like Remind Lego This Is A Kids Show

Ninjago characters as things people in my online class say/do:

Lloyd

-trying their goshdarn best to do the work, always having major technical difficulties (theyre using Wu’s computer and it’s older than Wu himself)

-has no idea whats going on, usually doesnt know what class they’re in

-once fell asleep in lesson and didnt realise it ended, they were just there alone in the zoom call for about 20 mins without realising it

-theres like an 80% chance they’re having a mild breakdown over not being able to do the work, and theyre sat on the floor eating cool aid powder like its sherbert and video calling Nya for help.

-profile pic is a cute (but blurry) group photo of all the ninja

Kai

-rarely actually goes to the lessons, especially morning ones

- if he does, he doesnt try to do any of the work

- (its fine, hes the sort of person whos like secretly smart and he understands it well enough to get about average grades without doing much)

-he once kicked everyone out of the zoom call because the teacher accidentally set it up wrong and let everyone do admin things on the call, he also kicked the teacher out of the call before, it was absolute anarchy :)

-profile pic is a really bad picture of Nya doing a weird face, she hates it

Cole

-unmuted his mic to show everyone a remix of making my way downtown and that video thats like ‘just did a bad thing’, ya ko this one

-still thinks he needs permission to go to the bathroom or get a snack even though the teacher cant see or hear anyone usually so nobody can stop him from just going

-shows everyone cute photos of pets, we dont know if theyre his or not but they are very cute.

-profile pic is a selfie with a snapchat filter

Jay

-sucks up to the teacher so that he can trick them

-always joins the lesson with a message like ‘hiii miss/sir :) ☺️ how’s your day so far 💛✨’ then makes everyone pretend they cant find the work. and of course, because Jay was one of those pretending they cant find it, the teacher thinks it must not be there, because he wouldnt lie, of course not

-hes also the only student who ever ever ever turns their camera on, exept maybe Kai, but Kai doesn’t do it on purpose

-profile pic is a stock image of a sunset that he found on google images thats been oversaturated to death and still has a watermark

Nya

-once unmuted her mic in a lesson where Jay and Kai were messing arround, yelled that she didnt want to be in a lesson that was a waste of her time, and that the teacher was a failure who couldn’t control a class, then left

-tries to seem like less of a nerd by adding meme formats to her answers to questions sometimes, nobody’s falling for it

-if the teacher picks on someone who doesn’t know the answer, she sometimes dms them the answer so they dont get in trouble, unless its Kai, she dms him the wrong answer sometimes

-profile pic is a really bad picture of Kai doing a weird face, he hates it

Zane

-absolutely carrying the class work-wise. always the first to answer the questions, unless its Jay, but Jay always just asks google or Nya

-usually never actually talks other than to answer questions, reacts to everything the teacher says in the chat with a 👍

-when Nya unmuted her mic and talked about the teacher not being able to control the class, Zane Jay and Kai spammed the chat with ‘Yess Nya!!! 🤠🎉’. Zane didnt realise that he was the only one doing it unironically

-hasnt changed his profile pic so its just his initials, but secretly, he has changed it, to an identical picture of his initials but in a different colour. Zoom automatically made his profile pic red, and he made it grey-blue.

Ninja's art skills from canon:

Kai

Nya

Cole

Zane

Jay's paintings from Farewell the Sea(I couldn't find good pictures of them)

Arin

Sora

Now we only need Lloyd,Wu,Pixal and Wyldfyre

Good Times and Laughter

Quick note: the eggnog is non-alcoholic.

Zane takes one sip of the eggnog, and his eyes go wide.

“That expression better be because this is so delicious that you have no words,” says Cole, tone sharp.

Keep reading

let me just start out by saying i love ever single one of your stories!!! i’m pretty new to the show and your works just add so much more feeling to everything and it’s sooo good!!! i don’t know if you ever do requests or not, so don’t bother with this if you’re busy!! but if you ever get a chance could you write smthg abt Jay and Kai? their friendship is so underrated but so good and i live for the moments in the show when Kai’s big brother instinct(tm) kicks in for him as well as Nya and Lloyd

aH thank you so much!! i’m so glad to hear that :D and this isn’t...exactly what you asked for, but Kai and Jay have this fun of dynamic that reminds me a lot of me and my brother, and i’ve been tossing around little bits of interaction between them for a while now, so i tried to make something coherent out of those :’D

Jay likes to think he’s pretty good at the whole compartmentalizing thing, for the most part. Mainly because he actually knows what it means, and it is not, for instance, locking your team up in a literal compartment while rushing off to fight the other compartment that is your resurrected homicidal father into submission.

“That was one time,” Lloyd will grumble, as if he’s only almost-died once. And then Jay will flinch, because that’s where his compartments come into play.

(Nadakhan gets one, Unagami gets another, the whole fun-times adoption reveal another, and everything else can get stuffed into the metaphorical attic since they won’t pay rent.)

Unfortunately, the attic is where the bad stuff lives.

Metaphorically.

If Jay had a nickel for every time he almost lost all of his friends, he’d have two nickels, plus another nickel for Cole falling into the fog, and another for Lloyd getting crushed by a roof, and another for Zane blowing up, and another for Nya in that awful dress with paling skin as her breathing stutters and the light in her eyes draining and —

And Jay is way, way too familiar with how it looks when his family dies, and all the nickels in the world won’t help that.

So while Jay likes to think he’s pretty good at compartmentalizing, he also thinks he’s got a valid excuse for the way he reacts when Lloyd goes down in the fight that afternoon. Sure, some vague part of his mind remembers that they’ve got a plan they’re running, and Lloyd should easily be able to handle a tiny little stumble — but Jay’s mind is stuck in glaring oranges and health bars, the unsteady gasping noise Lloyd had made before he went down, dissolving into digitized cubes just like everyone else, and Jay—

Jay can’t handle that, compartments or not, so he clears the space between them in a heartbeat just in time to take the bullet that comes hurtling Lloyd’s way.

It’d probably be a very noble and touching scene, if one) Jay didn’t make a hideous squeaking noise when it hit because bullets hurt, and two) the bullet would have missed Lloyd by a good two feet anyways.

Ah well, he thinks, as everything devolves into panicked yelling. It’s the thought that counts.

Except thoughts do not count when Kai is involved, apparently. Or any of the rest of the team, for that matter.

“What is wrong with you?” Kai hisses right in his face, eyes wild and sparking. “I was covering Lloyd, what were you doing?”

“Filling in for you, obviously,” Jay retorts. He has an excellent followup to that, real snappy and all, except that’s the moment Kai’s hand clamps down on the bullet wound in his arm to stop the bleeding, and Jay ends up stifling a shriek instead.

Great, he thinks, fighting back stinging tears of pain as he tries not to take Kai’s apparent wrath too personally. At least Cole looks worried, along the the rest of the team, who are dutifully concerned for his wellbeing like proper teammates should be.

“He’s going to need the hospital,” Zane informs them, his voice a lot steadier and calmer than his words make Jay feel. Zane’s eyebrows furrow as he studies his arm. “Stitches, probably.”

Jay swallows, trying not to curse. There’s a sharp scream as Nya finishes taking out another attacker just beyond them, and Jay figures that’s good enough.

“Okay,” Lloyd says, squeezing Jay’s wrist briefly. Either in comfort about the stitches or thanks for trying to cover him, Jay’s not sure. It’s a nice gesture, nonetheless. “Kai, Cole, can you get him there while we finish up? Sooner the better.”

Cole gives a sharp nod, and offers to take Jay from where Kai’s got him in a death grip. Kai shakes his head, and Jay’s stomach sinks. Sure enough, as soon as they’re clear of the scene, Kai starts going off.

“What did you mean, ‘filling in for me’,” he grinds through his teeth, clearly not about to let this go.

Jay bristles in response at his tone. “I meant,” he bites out, through a hot flare of pain in his arm. Kai’s always merciless with the bandages, even when he’s not in a mood. “That you weren’t there. So I covered.”

He should leave it at that, but Jay’s in a foul enough mood to finish with a condescending, “You’re welcome.”

Kai’s expression grows thunderous. “You didn’t need to. I was right there, you shouldn’t have — you weren’t needed, you should’ve held back.”

Jay feels his chest go tight. His head is clouding with anger, and the pain in his arm isn’t helping, but — ‘you weren’t needed’? Kai really didn’t skimp on the jerk juice this morning, did he.

“Oh, like you could’ve done so much better,” Jay glares. “Lloyd would’ve been toast by the time you got to him.”

“I could’ve made it!”

“Yeah right—”

“I would have, and I wouldn’t have gotten hit!” Kai snarls back. Something in Jay snaps. Or maybe it’s just the steadily increasing blood loss, but of all the nerve—

“Well you didn’t, ‘cause you weren’t there!” he snaps back. “You were too slow, which is real funny since your brain is too!”

It’s not his best comeback, he’ll admit, but Kai looks as if he’s about to light him on fire, if he weren’t stuck carrying Jay like the cover of some awful romance novel, blood getting all over his uniform as they both scream at each other. Maybe Jay will get lucky, and Kai will combust, and they’ll both go up in flames before they can remember that Cole is right there watching them.

“Cut it out, now!”

Oops, too late. For all the incensed authority in Cole’s voice, there’s still a traitorous falter that lets them both know they’ve screwed up. They fall silent, the atmosphere heavy with the lingering tension and new sense of guilt.

And the disgusting sound of Jay’s blood leaking through the makeshift bandage and hitting the ground, truly revolting, he hates blood.

“Just…no more. Please, shut up until we’re at the hospital.” Cole marches forward, snatches Jay from Kai’s arms, and proceeds to beat the fastest route to the hospital at a militant pace.

Jay still looks like some helpless romance cover heroine, dangling from Cole’s arms like he is. It occurs to him that he doesn’t even need to be carried — it’s his arm that’s hurt, he can still walk—

But any protests die rapidly at the look on Cole’s face. And at least this way, Jay thinks sullenly, he can fixedly ignore Kai.

Then again, Kai’s got a killer glare, and Jay’s always been garbage at ignoring people when his feelings are hurt.

* * * * * * * *

Despite the fuss everyone makes, Jay’s arm really isn’t that bad. They hook him up with some pretty sweet meds so he remembers zero of the actual arm-fixing, and he wakes up just in time to complain about being held in the hospital for ‘observation’ or whatever.

“It’s to make sure there’s no infection, or that you don’t rip your stitches out,” Nya tells him pointedly. Jay cringes under the look she gives him at that last part. Geez. You get kicked in the stitches one time after sneaking out early and suddenly no one’s got any faith in you. Typical.

“Why couldn’t we have just gone to medbay,” Jay grumbles. “Pixal gives way better stitches than this, anyways.”

“Gun wounds get hospitals,” Nya reminds him. “And it’s not fair to put that kind of pressure on Pix when we can avoid it.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

Nya glares at him. “It most certainly was that bad.”

“Oh, so when you get your arm crushed by a car, it’s fine,” Jay glares back. “But when I get a tiny little bullet nick, it’s that bad.”

Nya rolls her eyes, ignoring him. “Just think of it this way,” she says. “Now you have a little more time before Lloyd starts weeping apologies all over you.”

“Aw, no,” Jay groans, leaning back in the hospital bed. “Tell me he’s not blaming himself, Nya.”

“I think we had a promise about not lying to each other, or something,” Nya says, sympathetically. She winces. “Pretty sure he made the connection, too.”

Jay frowns. “What connection?”

Nya shifts, her eyes darting from side to side. “The, uh, the whole…Prime Empire, thing.”

Jay stares at her for a beat, trying to reconcile his blatant shock with the roiling nausea at the mention in his stomach. Nya looking at him all kind and sympathetically isn’t helping, either, because she might have made it down to the final two, but she was never all alone, and the reminder that she’d have been fine if Jay hadn’t gotten her killed twice is—

Bad. Real bad, not good, zero out of ten stars. Maybe he can take a bullet for Nya, next, and that’ll — that’ll help things, maybe. Equivalent exchange? Restitution? Some kind of fancy word that means Jay swears he’s gonna make it up.

In the meantime, he smothers the rising sickness in his throat and sinks lower into the bed, sulking. “It’s too easy to recognize trauma in this team.”

“I hear you,” Nya sighs, wearily. She nudges his shoulder, rising from her seat near the bed. “Speaking of. Someone’s got something they want to say to you.”

It takes Jay a second, but his eyes widen as Nya heads for the door. “Wait, wait wait wait, don’t you dare—”

“Love you,” Nya says cheekily, before taking her merry leave of the room. There’s a brief scuffle from outside, and the sound of Kai yelping, before Nya shoves him through the door, slamming it shut behind him with a damning click.

For a second, Jay’s tempted to hit the ‘call nurse’ button as hard as he can, in some desperate attempt to escape. Then he gets a good look at Kai, who’s turned a pale, queasy color that frankly looks awful on him, which is saying a lot ‘cause there isn’t much that doesn’t look good on Kai, but the expression he has on now—

Aw, man, now Jay’s feeling guilty and it isn’t even his fault. Stupid moral conscience center, he curses himself.

“So, uh…” he begins, because far be it from him to let this kind of awkward silence stretch on any longer. “Nice, ah, weather we’re having?”

Kai doesn’t respond, staring fixedly at the floor, and Jay sizes up the ‘call nurse’ button again. Just for the both of their sakes, of course.

But then Kai takes a deep breath, blows it out, and rocks back on his heels, fiddling with his hands. “I, um. I’m sorry.”

Jay’s jaw drops open. Which is probably an overdramatic move, all things considered, but unless he’s suddenly lost the ability to understand words, Kai just apologized to him.

Kai apologized. To him.

It’s not that Kai apologizing is some great big deal — Kai might have his pride, but he’s also an intuitive and good-hearted person who knows when he’s messed up. But to him?

Jay knows how he and Kai work. Kai knows how he and Jay work, and he’s breaking the rules. Because Kai and Jay don’t apologize to each other. Unless it’s some awkward expression of sympathy, they’ve never needed to. They fight dirty, aim for each other’s kneecaps, swear eternal vengeance and hatred at each other before storming off, then an hour later Jay’s bounding into Kai’s room to show him dumb meme videos and neither of them even remember what they were fighting about.

Acknowledging said fight with something as gushy as apologizing is not only useless since they both forget what they’re apologizing for anyways, but also useless because it’ll take too much time, and counterproductive on top, because it’ll most likely end in another fight about who apologized better. So for Kai to walk in and say sorry—

“Oh no, who did you kill?” Jay says, paling.

Kai spears him with a look, but it’s so pathetically watered-down and miserable that Jay forgets to glare back.

“Sorry, sorry,” Jay mutters. “I just—”

“No, no, I’m the one who’s sorry,” Kai interrupts. He hesitates, then sighs. “But that’s fair. I — I was unfair. To you, back there. Like, really unfair, in a bad way, ‘cause you were shot and I know you meant well, but you—”

Kai gestures wildly with his hands, his stream of words cutting off. Jay is left to stare open-mouthed at him again. Babbling like this is Jay’s thing. Kai is breaking all the rules today, huh.

“I just…” Kai trails off, ducking his head. “I don’t like watching you guys get hurt. I don’t — I don’t like watching you get hurt. And I get scared, but it comes out angry, and then I make a mess of things so I’m — sorry. Really sorry, for biting your head off.”

He exhales, a little shaky, fingers balled up in tight fists as his head hangs low, refusing to meet Jay’s eyes. Something softens in Jay’s chest, like gooey melting butter or something else equally pathetic. But it’s rare that Kai vocalizes this stuff, despite the fact that Jay knows he cares, and it’s nice to hear it, so he figures he’s entitled to all the butter he wants.

Jay’s own gaze falters, and the something starts to twist. He bites his lip, tugging half-heartedly at the bandages around his arm.

“Well,” he pauses, thinking of the way his brain had shifted to autopilot when he’d watched Lloyd falter, the razor-sharp shard of terror that always splinters through him when any of their teammates come too close to the awful images of death left in his head. He swallows. “I guess I don’t really have any room to talk,” he murmurs. “Be pretty dumb if I blamed you for that.”

He’s preparing to sink back into his own well of self-pity and loathing, resigned to spending the next few hours until they check him out of the hospital replaying bad memories in his head, when Kai’s next to him all of the sudden, shoving him over on the hospital bed.

“Hey, hey, what’s the big idea—”

“Move, c’mon. You don’t need that much room, you’re a stick,” Kai grumbles, before grinning brightly in success as Jay makes him space. The contrast in expression is enough to startle Jay into silence, and Kai takes advantage. “I know that look. But you already got shot, so you gotta cheer up now.”

“So you’re forcing me into cheerfulness by stealing my hospital bed,” Jay scowls, but the sting is lost in the sudden surge of affection as Kai elbows his way on the bed with him, a steady warmth by his side.

“I’m gifting you my presence, you should be celebrating,” Kai huffs, as he pulls his phone out. “Now stop looking so sad and watch this video I got of a bunch’a geese chasing Zane at the park the other day.”

“You’re such a jerk,” Jay says, but he’s already snickering as he leans his head against Kai’s shoulder to get a better look.

He’s forgotten to tell Kai he forgives him, but like most things between them — Jay doesn’t really need to say it out loud.

Can we. Can we talk about. Ok consider. We all know about kids developing trust issues because of their parents. But I almost feel sometimes like Zane is the reverse? Like his dad raised him completely isolated in the middle of the woods and then erased his memory and left him completely vulnerable and alone. And we know from his behavior, especially in the first seasons, that Zane has a hard time adapting to people and grasping social boundaries, which already sucks for him but I feel like the implications of his upbringing go a lot deeper than that? I know I already made a post that was really similar to this but I'm on a slightly different track rn so hear me out

Like I feel like, intentionally or not, he made Zane COMPLETELY dependant on him in every conceivable aspect and then (by giving him straight up amnesia) he abandoned him without what little preparation he might have had to set him up for the outside world. And in doing that he simultaneously made it practically impossible for him to develop normal, constructive relationships with other people and also failed to give him to ability to discern when to trust people and when to be wary of their intentions.

So basically he put him in a position where he would be completely defenseless and wouldn't have the emotional or social maturity to protect himself from exploitation or abuse. It's super heavily implied (if not outright stated) that Zane was essentially homeless for however long he was wandering around before Wu found him, and it's like??? Can you imagine how traumatic that probably was all on its own? And if anything serious happened to him during this period there's a strong likelihood that he doesn't even realize it was wrong.

It'd be super interesting to have a clearer look into how he functioned pre-season one and the types of experiences he must have had. Plus I think it could serve to give some background to some of his behaviors and thought processes. Also I want to project my trauma on him as is my god-given right as an american

Works Cited:

My feelings which are always correct every time

Zane's detective LARPing in prime empire has the same vibe as crude generative ai, in that he's cramming in a ton of material to achieve a likeness to fictional detectives without taking into account how the specifics of the situation may render his emulation unwarranted and seemingly surface level.

Humans and more sophisticated ai models are a lot more shrewd when it comes to processing and selecting data for particular insights.

Do you think Zane learns like a human or like an ai?

To draw a human face, a human has to learn the proportions and proper usage of the drawing tools or materials, and even then it usually ends up somewhat stylised. An ai only has to look at many many images so it can produce a new image that most closely represents the references. A human cannot do that.

Maybe he has a mixture of both, maybe he can fluctuate between the two, I can't decide.

I do, however, like to imagine that if he did learn like an ai, he'd still go through the steps a human needs because they bring him comfort. Even though he can produce near-perfect results, he still makes himself go through the trial and error of human learning, he purposefully gets stuff wrong so he can feel improvement.

It can't be fun to be perfect, right?

this is how this scene went right

The universe gave me a sign today

Ninjago One-Shot: The Stranger and His Pendant

Prompt from @hereliestheempireofdeath :  zane and the original master of ice

(Okay so I LOVE this prompt!!! This is one of the biggest mysteries of the show, so I’m glad you gave me the chance to explore it! This is all theory, so this is how I think this transition went down! THANK YOU FOR THE PROMPT!!!!)

___________________________________________________________

Parts of the Birchwood Forest used to be green. Can you believe that? Snow-white birch trees and the greenest grass you could ever imagine. Snow covered the Birchwood Forest in the north, but in the south it was paradise. It was the southern part of the Birchwood Forest where Doctor Julien built his house. 

For decades he lived in his paradise with the son he built. He rarely left his house, and never got visitors. 

Until the old man with the white hair. 

Dr. Julien has no idea how the stranger found their home. However, his son, Zane, was curious enough to ask his father to let the man stay. Julien bended to his son’s will, and the tired old man spent a night in the tree home. 

During their dinner, the old man grew very curious of Zane after discovering he was not of the flesh and rather of the machine. He questioned Zane in many unusual ways, asking him what he thought of himself and what his purpose was. When the man heard Zane tell him that he was built to protect those who could not protect themselves, he nodded to himself, as if satisfied with that response. 

In the middle of the night, Zane awoke with the sound of the door above them opening and closing. The robot checked to see if his Father ha awoken, and he had not. Finally, he looked to where the stranger had his cot set up, but it was empty. The only thing that remained was the white and blue pendant that he had worn around his neck. 

Connecting the dots in his head, Zane unplugged the large and heavy cord that connected to the generator to his chest, launched to his feet, grabbed the necklace from the cot and dashed up the stairs after him. 

The night was chillier than usual, and Zane immediately stepped into the heavy dew on the grass. In the harsh moonlight from above, Zane saw the old man limping into the shadows in the distance.

“Sir!” Zane called out as he dashed after the man. His white pants got more and more damp with each step, but the pendant in his hand was far more important than his clothes. 

The old man did not seem to hear Zane when he called out first. It didn’t take long for Zane to catch up to the stranger, and the closer he got, the more he realized how weakened the man was. He was clutching trees as he moved forward with dear life, as if he was about to fall over. 

“Sir!” Zane called again, and this time the stranger heard him. He turned to the android before collapsing onto the ground. 

“No!” Zane yelled. He rushed forward and caught the elder just before he hit the ground. 

His breaths were heavy and his pale blue eyes were starting to lose its vibrant hue. “Z…Zane?” The man panted. 

“You are not safe out here!” Zane warned the man. “You are very ill and need medical attention-“ 

Zane was interrupted with hoarse laughter from the man he cradled. “No, my boy, my time has come.” 

His words didn’t process well in Zane’s head.  “Time…for what?” 

Their eyes connected, and the world seemed to slow to a crawl. “It is time for me to go on.” 

That made more sense. “Well, sir, if you are leaving, you forgot your pendant.” Zane lifted the necklace so the man could see. 

“Aaah,” the man groaned warmly. “That pendant is no longer mine. It belongs to someone else now.” 

Zane raised his eyebrows. “Who? I can bring it to them.”

The hoarse laughter started again, this time ending in coughing. “The pendant belongs to you, Zane. One day you will understand.” 

Zane furrowed his eyebrows. “But…where will you go?” 

With a deep sigh, the old man looked into the sky. “I do not know, young android. But I will find out soon.” 

Zane followed his gaze to the stars. The thousands of dots in the sky have always made Zane feel minuscule, and now even more so than ever. 

“I will miss you sir,” Zane looked down to the elder. The old man smiled, his many wrinkles crumping up with age. “And I with you. But first-“ 

The man took the metallic part of the pendant into his boney wrinkled hands. He shut his eyes, and took a deep breath. As he exhaled, the pendant began to glow a vivid ice blue hue, illuminating both the old man and Zane’s faces. The man opened his eyes, and Zane gasped a little when he saw that they were no longer blue, but light brown. 

“Take this, and promise- to always use your heart and to never forget who you are.” 

Zane’s eyes fixed on the glowing piece of metal. “I- I promise.” 

“Good.” The man relaxed, and Zane could feel his breaths turn into shudders. “I can finally rest….” 

The final breath was like a gust of cool wind as it left his mouth. Zane slowly slipped the pendant out of the stranger’s hands and into his. 

On cue, Zane flinched back when the body in him broke apart into a cold white substance. With a yelp, Zane scampered backwards before freezing, his eyes wide with shock.

The man had turned into snow. 

Still panting with shock, Zane began to make out huge flakes of snow as they fell from a cloudless sky. The temperature dropped within seconds, and it wasn’t even a minute before the gorgeous green grass was covered in a thin layer of fresh snow. 

“Impossible,” Zane breathed as before his eyes the world transformed from a gorgeous green forest to a winter wonderland. The snow that was once the old man vanished within the newly fallen snow.

It took about thirty minutes for Zane to return back to the tree home because he was walking slowly through the forest, taking in the majesty of the transformation. The grass was long gone now as the snow depth moved from inches to feet.

When Zane finally returned to the tree home, he found his Father still asleep, but shuddering in the new freezing temperatures. Zane woke his father and quickly told him the events that just transpired, including the glowing pendant Zane held in his hands. Doctor Julien, as curious as ever, ushered Zane to chop a tree down to make some firewood and to bring it to him quickly as Julien experimented on the blue metal.

Within a few minutes, a small fire kept the small working space of the tree home toasty warm as Doctor Julien toyed with the metal. Zane, with his power cord plugged back into his chest, watched from a far as the Tinkerer tinkered with the piece.

“It’s incredibly powerful, that’s for sure,” the middle-aged man muttered to himself. “My own devices can’t even register how powerful it is.”

Zane leaned forward, craning his neck. “What can it do?”

The doctor shook his head. “I…I do not know. It’s some sort of…power source.”

Suddenly, the tinkerer turned to Zane. “Zane, the old man – he said it was for you?” Zane nodded.

Father looked from the pendant to the robot, then back to the pendant. “Maybe…” he slipped the fabric free from the metal, leaving behind a metal circle. He approached Zane, his face glowing from the blue metal in his hands, and unplugged the robot, revealing the ‘outlet’ for where Zane plugs the cord into his chest. Julien moved to put the metal in, but froze when he realized that the  metal circle had to be in two pieces with a hole in the middle in order to fit the design of the outlet.  

“It won’t fit,” Zane’s father sighed. He extended the piece to Zane to examine. Taking it delicately, he looked it over before looking his chest over. Then, with a deep breath, he copied what the old man had done earlier and shut his eyes, taking in a deep breath.

The metal piece began to glow. Doctor Julien’s eyes widened as the piece grew blinding to look at. After a few seconds of a pure white light, the glow died down and two pieces fell back into Zane’s hands, the exact size for his outlet.

Zane opened his eyes and smiled at the metal. “Will that work, Father?”

Not comprehending what just occurred, Julien nodded slowly before slipping the metal into place. Pressing a button, the small teeth that kept the wire in place before now folded onto the metal, keeping it in place.

Zane gasped, as if he had been choking on air. “Zane! Are you okay?” Julien grabbed at the robot’s arms and stared into his son’s eyes. The gray metal acting as his pupils shimmered before turning a vibrant blue. Zane continued to take a few deep breaths before calming down and relaxing. Julien sat down next to his son. “Zane! What happened?”

The robot looked forward with his glimmering blue eyes, like the world was new to him again. “I…I don’t know. I feel different, but I can’t explain it.”

“You don’t have to, Zane.” Julien responded. They both flinched as the last piece of firewood collapsed into the flames with a thud, sending out sparks.

Julien closed Zane’s chest and hugged his son’s shoulder for a moment, admiring the weak sunlight as it shone through the open door above them. “One thing is for sure,” the middle aged man continued.

Zane looked over, curious. “And what would that be?”

Julien chuckled. “If this winter lasts for a while, we are going to need a lot of firewood.”

It does

Even the publishers can't resist emperor-posting