This oneshot is set some time after Skybound but before Hands of Time (and not canon with that season).

Disclaimer: I do not own Ninjago.

Not Today

"Good afternoon, Zane." Cyrus Borg welcomed the Titanium Ninja at the main entrance to Borg Industries. "I am so glad you could make it. Please follow me."

"Good afternoon, Mr Borg, and thank you for inviting me." Zane replied politely. "I am looking forward to seeing your special surprise."

He followed the wheelchair-bound inventor into the lift. When they reached the top floor, Cyrus led the Master of Ice past countless (well, not for a Nindroid) doors and around multiple turns, until they reached a small but highly secured door at the end of a long corridor.

"This is Mr Borg's personal lab." P.I.X.A.L.'s voice informed him. "His latest creation must be of special importance."

"Ooh, it is." Mr Borg excitedly confirmed, his hands shaking so much in anticipation that he dropped his access card.

"Please allow me." Zane picked up the card from the floor and ran it through the reader.

"Good afternoon, Mr Borg." And electronic voice greeted them. "Please confirm your identity."

"Good afternoon. This is Cyrus Borg." The inventor replied.

"Voice recognition confirmed." The door to the lab was unlocked. "Access granted."

"After you, Zane." Cyrus offered, and the Nindroid entered the small, dark, and surprisingly untidy room. Although he was used to the organised chaos (as Jay called it) of his blue clad brother's workshop, Zane was still astonished that a famous inventor and businessman would apply a similar system to his personal laboratory.

But all these thoughts immediately disappeared as soon as Zane's optical sensors fell onto the table in the centre of the room, or rather onto the silver and purple object on it.

As far as his ad hoc analysis could tell, it was a perfect copy of the body of Cyrus' former personal assistant.

It was a new body for his P.I.X.A.L.

Zane turned around to face the widely smiling man behind him.

"It took a while to find her old blueprints." Cyrus said. "And I didn't want to use the standard factory line. Her new body has the same internal upgrades as you, but your teammates insisted that she would keep her original appearance."

"My teammates?"

"Yes. Your friends Nya and Jay called me a few weeks ago. First, they told me about some strange adventures which at some point had led to P.I.X.A.L.'s files getting erased from your system and making you very upset - although luckily, the data were fully restored afterwards. Anyway, they wanted to surprise you and asked me if I could help them create a new body for P.I.X.A.L. So..." He proudly looked at his favourite invention. "What do you say?"

"It is not so much about what I say..."

Ever since they had entered the laboratory, P.I.X.A.L. hadn't said a single word or used any other means of communicating with him.

"P.I.X.A.L.?" Zane asked in his head. "Are you alright?"

"I am... confused." She replied only to him. "I appreciate our friends' efforts, and there are numerous benefits of having my own separate body again. Not having to share one main processor, we will both work more efficiently. And I will again be able to perform the tasks I was created for, as Primary Interactive X-ternal Assistant Life-Form. But... I will miss sharing a body and mind with you. Of course, this is very selfish of me..."

"What do you mean?" Zane was slightly worried.

"Even your upgraded hardware was not designed to support two systems. For the past few weeks, my programs have been putting an additional demand of 63% on your power source and wiring. But for a while, I had no option but to live at your expenses. You have been a wonderful host, and I should not overstay my welcome."

"P.I.X.A.L., I did not add your system because I had to. I did it because I did not want to lose you. You have never been a parasite to me. Our relationship was symbiotic, I have benefited from your presence just as much as you did." He assured her. "And it will be very lonely in my head without you."

"You do not want me to leave?"

"I will miss you, but you having your own body again will not mean goodbye, will it?"

"No, we will always be compatible." She confirmed.

"And we may be more technologically advanced than them, but our friends have taught us that there are other ways to be connected. I would like to be able to hug you. Or hold your hand." Zane admitted.

"That would indeed be a desirable experience." The voice in his head agreed.

Zane blinked at Cyrus, who had been patiently waiting for the Nindroids to finish their conversation – which had taken no more than 2.85 seconds anyway.

"We would like to accept your offer."

"Excellent." Mr Borg beamed at them. "I will first need to remove P.I.X.A.L.'s module from your system, and download all files onto my machine. Don't worry, this one is not connected to any network, we don't want to risk introducing any virus to her system. Then, we also need to copy all the shared data from your memory, merge the folders, run a system check, and make a backup, before we can transfer everything to her new home." He explained.

"Is there any way we will still be able to exchange data?" Zane asked, his mind suddenly feeling very empty, after Borg had removed the cartridge containing P.I.X.A.L.'s main files.

"If you want, I can set up a cloud drive for you, so you can share the most important bits of information with each other, or use the capacity of both system for urgent analyses." Borg suggested. "But we might not be able to do all this today. First, we need to get her system set up. I have pre-installed the basic OS, this will take a while to start up. I can connect you to the computer in the meantime."

Zane watched as Borg opened the female Nindroid's chest panel and flipped a few switches.

It felt like an eternity, until her operating system controlling the body's main functions was up and running. But finally, her silver eyelids fluttered open, revealing those perfect (0,255,0) coloured eyes, and Zane was sure that his CPU skipped a cycle, even though this was technically not possible.

"My name is P.I.X.A.L., the Primary Interactive X-ternal Assistant Life-Form. How can I be at your service?"

"Oh no, my dear. Today, we are at your service." Cyrus replied. "You are so much more than an assistant." He stated proudly. "We will just have to remind you of it."

He wheeled back to the big server in the corner and pressed some buttons on the keyboard. "Looks like we're ready to go."

He disconnected the data cable from Zane's titanium skull and connected it to the other Nindroid's data interface at the side of her head.

"Initialising data transfer." He stated.

"Receiving data." P.I.X.A.L. confirmed.

"I sure hope so." Borg remarked. "This is going to take a while, and the updates will require a couple of system reboots." He told Zane. "Maybe you want to go home and come back tomorrow?" He suggested. "There is nothing to do here right now than to wait."

"That is a reasonable suggestion." The male Nindroid replied. Yes, it was the most logical thing to do in this situation. However, he still felt sad to leave his companion on her own.

When he reached the exit, he turned around to take another glimpse at the perfect mix of white, silver, and purple on the table. "I will see you tomorrow."

"Zane?" She suddenly asked, as their eyes locked.

"You remember me?"

"I do." She smiled. "The most important pieces of information are always transferred first. And I also remember what Sensei Wu always tells his students."

"Butts are for sitting?" He suggested the first random bit of wisdom from his teacher that came into his mind.

"Never put off until tomorrow what can be done today." Was her answer - which did make a lot more sense. "Will you please stay with me?"

"Of course, I will." Zane pulled the chair next to the table and sat down, taking her small white hand into his titanium one.

Holding her hand felt good. It felt even better than a proper hug from his brothers or from Nya - which was an unexpected discovery considering the fact that the contact area was so much much smaller.

It did not compute. But it didn't matter either.

All that mattered to Zane at this moment was being reunited with P.I.X.A.L. And he knew that he would never want to let go off her again.

Not next week. Not tomorrow. And definitely not today.

Another little oneshot I did for Jay-Lightning's Writing Challenge on Wattpad...