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Two weeks before their first day as teachers, the gang went to the mall to do some clothes shopping. Something about t-shirts and hoodies not being acceptable attire for instructors, or whatever.
Jay stepped out of the changing room with a dramatic flourish, seemingly posing for some unseen audience of fashion model scouts that only he knew about. Nya wasn’t sure if the poses really accomplished anything, but it did certainly make his generic blue sweater look slightly more glamorous.
“Well? What do we think?” He asked, preening in anticipation for all the compliments he was convinced he'd receive. He rotated through a few more poses, each one more ridiculous than the last.
“You look like Discount Mr. Rogers,” Kai deadpanned. He had already finished all his own clothes shopping an hour ago, and was rapidly growing impatient with everyone else’s indecisiveness. At this point the only thing keeping him from straying off to the arcade without them was Nya’s periodic threats of tying him down and dyeing his hair blue.
“Don’t listen to him,” she insisted, jabbing her brother in the ribs. He jabbed her back with a scowl, but there was no real heat to it. “You look fine, Jay.”
He faltered. “Just 'fine'?”
A voice piped up from the next changing room over. “She means you look like a teacher, zaptrap. Which is, y’know, kinda the whole goal here.”
“Oh, please.” Jay shot a dirty look at the changing room in question — or rather, the guy currently inside it. “I don’t want to be a teacher, I want to be the teacher. But you wouldn’t know fashion if it smacked you in the face, boulder-brain.”
A snort. “Yeah, well, your students probably don’t care about fashion either, so all your efforts to impress them are gonna be wasted on a gaggle of toddlers.”
“Not toddlers,” said Zane. He'd just strode in from the checkout line, and still had a few large paper bags hanging from his elbow. “Grade-schoolers, all ranging between ages seven to thirteen.” He sat down on the chair next to Kai, looking rather prim in the new clothes he'd just bought. “Although Cole is right, while it is important to look presentable I highly doubt children that young would appreciate efforts to look 'fashionable'."
A childish pout. “How in the First Master’s name did I get saddled with a bunch of boring cardboard cutout people?”
“Hey!” Kai yipped. “I’m not boring!”
Jay ignored him. “C’mon guys, this is a new chapter in our lives! I want this to feel fresh and exciting, not like I’m getting shipped off to a retirement home.”
Cole pulled back the curtain and stepped out under the display lights. Grey button-up, black tie, black slacks. Nya had to say, he cleaned up nicely — but if his overall demeanor meant anything, then it seemed he was currently more invested in bickering with Jay than actually displaying the clothes. “I don’t know if any retirement homes will take you, Jay. They’d have to call in pest control every time you stepped out of your room.”
Jay smacked his shoulder. “You -”
“Ughhh,” Kai groaned, tossing his head back. “Can you two stop goofing off and just pick out some clothes already? I’m starting to grow mold here.”
Gasping, Zane turned to him with wide eyes. “You’re growing mold? That’s a very serious concern, Kai, perhaps we should -”
“A figure of speech, Zane. It was a figure of speech.” Ordinarily Kai had a lot more patience for Zane’s social ineptitudes, but evidently Cole and Jay had left him feeling rather short. Frustration and impatience were normal for Kai, sure, but maybe right now it was getting worse than Nya realized.
The vindictive younger-sibling voice in her head said to let him wallow in his misery as payback for using up all her shampoo last week. The more rational soon-to-be-a-computer-science-teacher voice argued that if anything, Kai fussing like this would only cause Cole and Jay to take even longer.
But before Nya could open her mouth and suggest some other way for him to spend his time, Zane piped up in her stead. “If you’d like something to do, Kai, perhaps you could head to the food court and order everyone’s lunches in advance? I sense Cole and Jay will be done shortly, but -”
There wasn’t even a spark of hesitation in the way Kai jumped to his feet. “Say no more!” And within the span of about ten seconds, he was already rushing out of the store.
Zane blinked, stunned, as he watched Kai hurry away. “A-alright then.” A small, private smile then crept upon his face, something gentle and fond casted at Kai’s retreating form.
Cole and Jay took the hint and sheepishly ducked back into their respective changing rooms, new armfuls of clothes in tow.
“So I guess that means Shitty-Hair’s done with his shopping for today,” Nya said with a casual point towards the seat her brother had just occupied. “And you just finished buying all of your stuff, so once Cole and Jay are done that should be everyone, right?”
Zane’s expression turned quizzical as he twisted to face her. “What about you?"
“Eh, don't worry about it. I’ve got all the clothes I need right here.” She smoothed down the front of her red qipao for emphasis.
But instead of dropping the issue like she'd hoped he would, Zane simply cast a judgmental look at the qipao in question.
Though he hadn’t said anything outright, she could make an educated guess as to what he was thinking. Her qipao, though serviceable, had certainly seen better days. The circular phoenix patterns had begun to discolor with age, and the silk fabric itself was covered in snags and motor oil stains. She’d worn it almost every day of her life since she was twelve, and it was definitely starting to look the part.
It also didn’t help that all her recent adventures had started to run her — and her dress — more than a little ragged as of late. The hem of her right sleeve, for example, still had singes and scorch marks caused by an electrical accident when creating her SamX suit. And fighting her friends under the influence of Dark Matter had dented one of the dress's frog clasps, and she’d had to replace it with one of a completely different style and design. And that’s not even to speak of all the runs in the fabric trailing down the sides like stretchmarks, from all the branches and weapons and other assorted combative mishaps that had snagged her dress over the past year.
But if the dress had gotten her this far, she saw no reason it couldn’t get her through a cushy teacher job as well.
She shrugged. “What? It’s presentable.”
“Forgive me for speaking out of line, but I highly doubt frayed clothing counts as 'presentable'.”
He was right and she knew it. The dress was practically in tatters by now, held together only by sheer determination and several patch jobs she’d imposed on it over the years. If it had been any other piece of clothing, she'd have gotten rid of it ages ago.
But...she couldn’t imagine wearing anything else, honestly. It felt safe in a way no other shirt or dress ever had, and the thought of getting rid of it created a powerful ache in her chest.
A cold hand found its place on top of hers. And there was Zane, staring down at her with fondness and understanding welling up in his intense blue eyes.
It was weird to imagine that someone who had ice powers and a metal body would be anything less than frostbite-inducing to the touch, but it was true. Even on the harshest winter night, a hug from Zane felt less like sticking your hand in the freezer and more like laying your face down on the cold side of the pillow. Or someone placing a cold, damp cloth on your forehead during a fever. Or the icy sweetness of a tall glass of lemonade after a long day in the sun.
Zane’s coldness wasn’t really cold , in that way. It was refreshing. Comforting. Soothing. Just like the rest of him.
“If it troubles you," he murmured. "We don’t have to get rid of it completely, and you don’t even have to stop wearing it altogether. But I have noticed that your qipao doesn’t fit you as well as it used to, and perhaps it might be time to add something new to your daily attire.”
She balled up the weathered silk between her fingers, trying not to think about all the ways he was right. It didn’t fit like it used to. She’d grown taller, and all her fighting and training had caused her to bulk up in such a way that some parts of the dress now felt tighter than they were supposed to be.
It was the elephant in the room. Nya’s days with her beloved qipao were numbered.
“It used to belong to my mom,” she whispered before she could think to stop herself. “I…I never met her. I don’t even know what she looks like outside of a few photos. But I know she used to wear it.”
Zane said nothing, just kept one hand over hers and the other placed delicately on her shoulder.
“Kai and I could barely afford to put food on the table most days,” she continued. Why was she saying all this? Why was he letting her? But despite all the voices screaming at her to stop being so weak and vulnerable in front of her teammate, she couldn’t bring herself to stop. “So clothes were kind of an afterthought, financially. We usually just stuck to whatever we could find in our parents’ closets. Most of it didn’t fit, of course, but this qipao did . It felt like it was…I dunno, like I was meant to have it. Like my mom wanted me to have it.”
She let out a stuttering, shaky breath, then continued. “It’s all I have of her. Kai has a few memories, at least. But I don’t have anything at all — I mean, I guess I have some of her old stuff, but…”
“It isn’t the same,” Zane finished. He swallowed hard, seeming to deliberate over something heavy in his mind. Then, after a few long beats of silence, he stuck out his wrist to display the chevron white-and-blue bracelet twirled around it. “A few years after I was first built, I found a guidebook to making friendship bracelets in our library. I found the idea fascinating, so I asked my father to make some with me. We spent an entire afternoon just trying out all the different styles within the book, and gifting our favorites to each other. This is one of the ones he made.”
Zane didn’t speak about his father often — at least, not since his death three weeks ago. It was as if Zane had just clammed up about the subject completely after the funeral, and not even Wu could pry him open again.
“When I lost my memories,” he continued. Slowly, carefully, like each word was its own separate chore. And yet he still spoke them into existence anyway. “I did not know anything about my past, or my father, or…anything, really. All I had was this bracelet. I did not know its meaning or value, nor did I remember all the fond memories that went into making it. But for the longest time, it was the only proof I had of my family's existence. Proof that…that I was loved, once.”
His eyes were wet as he looked up to meet her gaze. Dark brown eyes met icy blue ones as he said, “It is painful to miss someone you cannot remember, isn’t it?”
One of Nya’s earliest memories was of Kai teaching her how to light a lantern, placing it in the windowsill and explaining to her that just like moths drawn to a flame, lanterns were good at guiding people who were lost in the dark. And maybe, if they lit enough lanterns, Mom and Dad would become un-lost as well. Her memories of them were already becoming hazy within her child mind, but she still dreamt every night that the lanterns would somehow help them find their way home.
Every morning, her chest would constrict with the pangs of disappointment upon finding that the lanterns hadn’t worked. She didn’t really know who she was trying to guide, or who she was hoping to find in her home. not their faces or their voices, or anything besides the fact that they were Mom and Dad. All she knew was that they weren’t there.
Yeah. It really was painful.
“How about this,” Zane proposed, snapping her out of her reverie. “You and I can go find a new dress for you. You do not have to wear it every day, maybe just once or twice a week. And on the days that you do, I will remove my bracelet in solidarity.”
She balked at him. “Zane, no, you don’t — you don’t have to take off your bracelet just to make me feel better.”
He smiled. “It’s alright. I can make a new bracelet. One that has all the colors of my friends woven into it.”
And so began their arrangement. Zane helped her pick out a red shirt with a pretty heart neckline, similar in color and feel to her old qipao, and a matching black-trimmed duster vest. It looked nice, a decent blend of professional and stylish that had Jay blushing bright red every time she wore it. And in return Nya helped him weave a new friendship bracelet to wear on the off-days with her, one with all his friends’ colors just as he’d requested.
The first few days, the absence of their comfort items left both of them as twin nervous wrecks (with the affordance that they could put their comfort items back on if the anxiety became too much, of course). But…over time, the anxiousness faded. The separation grew easier. And soon, one day a week turned into three. And then three became five, until eventually the qipao was hardly ever worn at all.
When she pointed this out to him, Zane bought a specialty display box to keep it stored and safe.
A few years later, Garmadon’s Colossus would end up destroying the Bounty and everything inside it. But for some reason, Nya was less upset about the loss of her old qipao and more about the box it was stored in.