#i love taking the more robot aspects of zane and turning them human

[stfu-im-thinking-abt-blorbo]

What if I gave Zane's robot appearance a screen instead of a human-like face? His default face is still o_o but let him emote through symbols and emoticons like ? !! UwU >:O ;-; <3 and >///<. He and Jay could add more and even add kaomojis over time to give him more expressions.

[spinchip]

Cut The Act

Wordcount: 1900 Ship: Gen A/N: This is a fic set in the movie!Verse :] I wrote this ages ago, after i first watched the movie, and only recently cleaned it up enough to feel comfortable posting lol. This takes place a few years after the movie, and Zane has grown a lot during that time so he's a bit uhh OOC, sorry lol Warnings: Mentions of an off-screen injury that's already healed.

Summary: After Zane get a bad scrape in a fight, he decides to acknowledge the elephant in the room and come clean about his nindroid nature. It'll be anxiety free- All of his friends have connected the dots and figured it out by now anyway... Right?

In his defense, he was pretty sure they already knew.

It’s not as if he thought he was dropping some huge life changing bombshell on them, because they had been dropping pretty un-subtle hints that hey! We know you’re a robot, and we love and support you anyway! Which is why, when he walks into the hangar on that Saturday afternoon, he didn’t think to like, brace them or anything. It just that he wanted to share this part of himself with them more intimately, and also in one of their last fights he’d been damaged- he’d walked it off, fine enough to make it home so Father could see to it, but now he couldn’t quite stop thinking about what would happen if something were to go really wrong, and he needed emergency maintenance on the field.

Of course he trusted Jay and Nya more than anything, and would gladly lay his life in their hands if it came down to it- they were nearly as capable as his father, and should honestly meet him, but that's a story for another day. The duo had worked together to build their mechs, and if anyone could put his intricate wiring back together in a worse-case-scenario type of event, it would be them. So really, this was all very practical, and the obviously logical choice, made totally easier by the fact that he honestly thought they already knew.

So the reason he was at least 95 percent sure they’d caught on was that, during the early years when he was still learning, he was very much not so great at blending in. Turns out, being a normal teen did not involve dropping the words ‘normal teen’ into every other sentence, or casually downloading yourself into most electronics, or perfectly vocalized dial tones. With upgrades and time, he’d picked up on some of the intricacies of human emotion and nowadays people would rarely look at him twice (This isn't exactly true- even as much as he'd grown and learned, he's pretty sure he'll always be on a different page than everyone else, but that stopped bothering him a long time ago. He was weird, and his friends liked him that way.) if not for his friendship with Lloyd Garmadon and his status as the white ninja, he would totally blend in. To people who knew him from the start, though, there was definitely a clear… learning curve, so to speak.

When Father had been repairing him after that particular fight and Zane had brought up the idea, Dr. Julien had been all for it.

“Being honest with your friends is good,” His father had said, pulling back his goggles to smile kindly at Zane, “If you trust them, you should tell them.”

Though his father had probably not intended for Zane to make a very forbidden copy of his own blueprints to give to his friends, but what dad doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

And, well, it’s not like they ever acted like they hadn’t caught on. Most other kids in their grade would look at him like he’d grown a second head, voice turning stilted and judgemental whenever he let slip his more mechanical aspects- but never his friends. They accepted it, and loved him anyways.

For example, last year during English class after a particularly comprehensive personal software update, Zane had sighed. As in, for real, actually sighed, instead of just saying the word out loud. Cole, who had English with Zane each year, had smiled at him with this playful sort of look and said, “Hey, your voice modulator got an update!” And he’d winked as if in on a joke, “Sounds good on you!”

As endearing as it was after the fact, that Cole not only noticed but complimented his fathers work, in the moment he’d felt his processor drop into his feet, sensors flooding with adrenaline. They’d never outright stated they knew like that, and it’d never been so obvious. Sure, sometimes they asked him to run statistics or look up something really specific, but never before had they directly referenced his voice modulator or anything of the type.

He’d ducked his head, anxiety and nerves ramping up, hesitating for a fraction of a second before what Cole had said sunk in. Sounds good on you. He brightens a little at the support, “Thank you,” He says honestly, smiling, “Father installed it over the weekend.” he offers timidly, still dancing around fully admitting he’s a robot, though coming closer than he ever figured he would.

Things like this happened more and more frequently over the years, where they would super obviously hint they had connected the dots. It would be something everybody knows but no one acknowledges sort of situation. He was comfortable with that.

Until he very much wasn’t.

So here he was, one saturday afternoon, very seriously walking into his friends hang-out session with a fancy document tube containing xeroxed copies of his own blueprints, all ready to lay out his innermost mechanisms to his friends in the ultimate show of trust, and to finally acknowledge the elephant in the room. Plus, over time, it started feeling weird and wrong to keep such a serious secret from them. He wanted to be completely open and honest… And now he was finally ready to make that leap.

“My friends.” he announces, stepping in front of the old TV Kai and Nya had brought in sometime sophomore year so they could play video games and watch movies together, “I have something serious to discuss.”

“Wait- I’m almost done with this lap!” Jay stretches his neck to try and see around Zane, mashing blindly at the buttons on his controller.

Nya reaches over and smacks him playfully on the back of the head, “He said this was serious, Jay. Just pause it.” He blinks a little and nods bashfully, tossing the controller aside.

“So whats up?” Lloyd prods, as the rest of his friends all sit up a little straighter to offer their attention, Cole going so far as to take his headphones off his neck completely.

Zane feels a surge of nerves rush through his head and he fiddles with the cap of the document tube for a moment to gather his courage, “My friends, as I believe you already know… I am an android.” he says the last part without pause, pushing through it so he doesn’t stumble or second guess himself.

All of them, who had been getting increasingly tense as Zane stood there, seemed to exhale collectively, “Is that all? You had me scared there for a second!” Kai jokes.

Cole smiles, “Yeah man, we know about the robot thing. It doesn’t change anything.” he picks up on Zane's anxiety, smiling reassuringly at him.

Feeling emboldened by their response, Zane finally twists the cap off of the document tube, “You have no idea how much this means to me. I feel it is important, now that our fights are getting more dangerous, that I give you all these.” He clears a spot of the coffee table before dumping out the papers across its surface, kneeling down to smooth out the stack and organize them, “My blueprints.”

He glances up and sees them all smile easily at him, Jay and Nya leaning forward curiously, “You have to keep these a secret. My Father built me, these are his notes, and he doesn’t know I took my own copies.” he notes his friends expression pinch, like they don’t quite compute what he’s saying, and he assumes they must not like that he took these without permission, “It’s the logical course of action to share these with you all, in the event that I am damaged and need emergency repair, you will be unable to help without studying my build.”

He spreads the pictures out, sliding a few closer to his friends so they can look themselves, and Nya carefully picks up a page. She laughs awkwardly, analyzing the information in front of her with wide eyes, “These are… awfully detailed, Zane.”

“Yeah, I mean, how long did these take to make?” Jay peeks over Nya's shoulder, the others looking at the different pages themselves with wide eyes, “These mechanics look actually legit!”

“My father has been working on my mechanics for his entire life.” Frowning, Zane looks back down at the papers, “Of course they are legitimate, they’re mine. Here, look-” He strips his sweater vest off, folding it and setting it aside and starting in on unbuttoning his shirt.

“Woah!” Lloyd holds up his hands to shield Zane, “Lets keep your clothes on, Zane!”

Zane’s confused, his button up pooling in his lap, leaving him kneeling on the floor in only his shoes, khakis, and undershirt, “My construction is completely unique to anything in Ninjago, I do not mind showing you.”

Cole tilts his head, the crease between his brows growing more pronounced, “You’re… not making this up, are you?”

“Making this up?” His frown deepens.

“You mean you’re actually…” Kai trails off, eyes widening.

“But… a fully recognized AI is years off…”

“I already told you I am like nothing in Ninjago.” Zane explains, “You thought I was… lying?” The word rankles, and he feels his emotions plummet.

“Not lying!” Lloyd is looking at Zane like he’s seeing him for the first time, “We just thought you were… playing. Y’know, like, pretend.” He finishes with a wince.

Zane lets that process before a laugh bubbles up out of his chest, and he covers his mouth to stifle it, looking back at all his memories with a new filter. All the playful smirks, the joking comments! They must have thought he was so strange- and still, they had embraced him and even joined in! “I do not mean to laugh, just- thank you. For playing along, I suppose.”

The smile fades as the reality sinks in, he has no idea how they’ll truly react to his robotic nature, “But… I am telling the truth. I am an android, my father built me to protect those who cannot protect themselves.” At this, he tugs his undershirt off over his head, revealing the seam where his synthetic skin stops, metal casing continuing and taking up most of the expanse of his chest. He slides his hand along the panel embedded where his ribs would be, popping open his front compartment and revealing neatly routed wires and the glow of his power source, “This is not pretend. I hope you can still see me as your friend.”

He looks up earnestly, hoping their playful enthusiasm from before will come back, and each of his friends have varying reactions. Nya and Jay look intensely curious, Cole looks calm as usual, and kai and Lloyd…

“I support you one hundred percent, bro,” Kai points out before Zane can assume the worst as he cringes away from the imagery, “But from a strictly human perspective, I am looking at your guts, and that’s a little…”

“Morbid.” Lloyd agrees, looking bashfully green around the gills.

“This is so totally cool!” Jay announces, grinning, “You’re like a- a nindroid!”

“A what?”

“Ninja Android. Nindroid.” Jay explains before he calms down, smiling sincerely at Zane, “This doesn’t change anything. You’re still one of my best friends.”

“Same for me.” Nya nods, “We support you through thick and thin!”

“We’re your family.” Cole confirms, “Nothing could change that. You’re still our Zane, just more… gears.”

Zane closes the panel, smiling brightly, and Kai perks up, “No matter what you’re made of, you’re still our brother.”

“Thank you all.” He says sincerely, feeling lighter.

“Yeah!” Jay grins, “Yeah, and how cool is it that I can honestly say "My brother is a Nindroid?"”