Ninjago: Tales of the Merge

The Idea

Marina POV

As soon as we entered the building, I showed Arin around. "Wow," He said. "This needs a lot of work."

"Yeah," I said. "I found this abandoned and thought that we could transform it into our nice home so that we could live." I then handed him a bucket full of soapy water and a sponge. 

"You can scrub the stains and dirt off the wall while I use cement to fix the cracks in the walls," I said. "Sora, you can climb on the ladder and start transforming the ceiling,"

"Yeah, sure," Sora agreed and picked up a ladder. "Wait. Why are you giving us orders?" "Because I founded this place and invited you guys here," I replied. 

"Oh," Arin said. "Fine by me."

The room was silent as we continued to transform the building. We transformed room by room, and finally, the whole floor was done. We decided that we would live on one floor of the building since it was just the three of us and doing the whole building will give us too much work. We were all exhausted.

"Finally," I said. "That took way too long to do." "Yeah," Sora said, yawning. "I think we spent many hours on this thing."

"That's a big relief," Arin said. "Now we can all go to sleep and get some furniture for this,"

"How?" I asked. "We don't have money."

"I have an idea," Sora said. "I'll tell you in the morning. It's getting late," So after eating leftover Snowberry Pie (Arin made it) from dinner for supper, we slept on the floor on blankets and pillows.

____________________________________________________________

On the next day during breakfast, Arin said, "So what's your idea?" While chewing food, Sora pulled out a poster and showed it to us. It was a poster about... "The Mech Master 5000?" I asked.

"We can enter the Mech Master 5000, win it, and earn lots of money," Sora explained. "Then we could use it to buy furniture for out home,"

"Good idea," Arin said. "But we don't have a mech,"

"I know a junkyard at the edge of Crossroads," I said. "We could pick up what we need to build our mech," "The race is in two weeks," Arin said, reading the poster. "I hope we coud build it in time.

"Let's leave for the junkyard after breakfast," Sora said. "We'll spend all morning getting what we need and all afternoon starting the mech,"

We quickly finished breakfast, grabbed three large bags, and left the building.

I lead Sora and Arin away from the building towards the edge of Crossroads. We reach the junkyard and start picking up things like metal. While we were doing it, a trio of stray dogs start to bark loudly at us. I thinks it's because we were taking something from the junkyard without permission.

"I can stop the dogs from barking," Arin suggested. "There could be owners of this junkyard and we don't want to alert them,"

"Sure," Sora replied, so he handed Sora his bag and walked to wards the dogs. While Arin talks to the dogs, Sora and I continue to pick up stuff we will need to build our mech.

My bags are almost full when Arin suddenly said, "Hey, uh, have you two found everything we need yet? I can only distract these dogs from making noise for so long. Uh, I don't have that many stories to tell."

"Give me a second." Sora said. I watch as she picked up an item and said, "Boom! And we didn't even set off the —" Her sentence was cut off when we hear an alarm.

"You spoke too soon," I said. Suddenly, some security robots rushed towards us. They held spears and said, "Halt! Halt! Halt!"

"We should be leaving now." I said.

"I always like how you think." Sora said. So we start to run away from the robots as they start to chase us.

"Oh, there's got to be an easier way to get mechanical parts!" Arin said.

"There is! It's called 'having money'." Sora replied.

"We don't have money," I said."What we have is three robots chasing us!"

"Halt! Halt! Halt!" The robots said, and they start to shoot lasers at us. Hey... Its just like those robots that were attacking Arin! Wait, I think I know how to stop them!

"Can you make a distraction, Arin?" I asked

"I don't think these bots want to hear my story about the Merge!" Arin said.

"Then do something else!" I yelled. "Sora, follow me! We'll shut these robots down!"

"Just like what I did to the robots when we met Arin!" Sora said. So we run around the robots and we each jump on one as Arin swings around with his grappling hook to distract the robots. 

"Up here! You! Garbage can!" I heard Arin shout at the robots.  Like earlier, we take out parts and hack the robots. Once we had hacked all three, we jump off them and the robots started to dance.

"Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance!" the robot said as they did.

"I will never get over how quickly you guys can hack stuff like that." Arin said,

"What can I say?" Sora asked. "I'm just naturally good at tech stuff. It's been like that since I was a kid." "Me too," I said. "Except that Sora was better than me. Luckily I still know a thing or two about technology."

"We might not have money, but I'm sure the owners of this place would love one of my delicious homemade pies, right?" Arin asked, pulling out one of his Snowberry Pies. "As payment for the gear we're borrowing."

"Who doesn't love pie?" Sora asked. Arin places the pie on a nearby rock and we leave the junkyard. We start to make our way through Crossroads towards our home.

"I still can't get over how amazing Imperium looks." Arin said. "It's perfect, isn't it?"

"Don't believe everything you hear about Imperium." Sora said. "Marina and I are from there, remember? Their idea of "perfect" isn't ours. The Merge slamming it up against Ninjago gave me the perfect chance to get out."

"Me too," I replied. "Trust us. Imperium is not what it seems like at all,"

"Its also the perfect chance to meet me!" Arin added. "I'd still like to go there someday. Or go anywhere. I've never been out of my old neighbourhood. The Crossroads just grew up around the area where my house used to be."

"You want to experience other places?" Sora asked. "Look around! Why go anywhere when the best of all the realms moved here to the Crossroads? For example, me."

"I'm glad you came here, Sora and Marina. You two are my BFFs, my family.. But some of us are only here because we had nowhere else to go."

"We understand, but you have to admit." I said. "Having our own floor is pretty cool. Race you to the top!" I quickly enter the building and start climbing up the stairs. I could see that Sora is using a ladder and Arin was using a grappling hook.

"Last one there's a rotten egg!" I heard Arin call out.

"Hey, that's cheating!" Sora yelled. 

"See ya! Wouldn't want to be ya!" Arin called out, laughing. I reach the top and see Arin crashes on the wall near a window to our home.

"Dang it!" He said. I groaned, open the window and help him inside. "Guess I won," I said. "Be careful next time," I help Sora inside as well, and we start working on our mech for the Mech Master 5000