before the sky split [ninjago next generation]

will and willing

Xiyin's black and red traditional dress stuck out once from the swarm of attorneys and businesspeople in tailored suits tight-fitted to their full bellies and again against the sleek interior of the top floor of Borg Tower. We all mourn in different ways, he supposed. They shuffled papers between neatly-stacked briefcases as Xiyin kicked his feet up on Cyrus Borg's work desk, leaning back in the wheelchair that had been left in the office as he admired the way his sandals had held up over the years. Granted, he didn't often attend funerals. Shareholders and the rest of the senior management of Borg Industries pounded at the door, demanding to be let in. One of the attorneys opened the door and a new flock of suits and pencil skirts marched in with a purpose.

"Would you like a larger table?" Xiyin called over a lull in the noise. He recovered his legs beneath them in the chair, just a little too large for him, and pushed himself to the flush control panel for the room where the press of a button expanded Borg's table like the unfurling of a moth's wings. The businessmen grumbled and scrambled to arrange themselves more properly for business proceedings. One woman with shrivelled lips peered over at the panel without parting from the colony of penguin suits. Xiyin called out to them nonchalantly: "My apologies. Cyrus didn't have a need for additional chairs."

"Do the windows have any... curtains or blinds of any sort, Mr. Xiyin?" asked the peering woman curtly. Her voice pitched on the honorific as if to highlight just how antiquated his name was in comparison to the task she asked of him.

"For privacy or the light?"

"Privacy." If her glare could pierce, Xiyin would have asked if she had ever considered becoming an ally of the ninja. He found the panel again and the proper button to activate the Tower windows' reflective coating without sacrificing the sunlight that poured in.

"That will be all, Mr. Xiyin. You're free to go." This man had been glowering at him the entire meeting. Mr. Bai, one prominent shareholder. His gold pocketwatch said he had an eye for displaying expensive relics. Xiyin's intuition told him that Borg Industries was one such thing.

"I'm afraid my friend named me as the sole executor of his last will and testament," Xiyin said. He swiped across the flush keypad and the wall illuminated itself with Cyrus Borg's personal will. Another command brought it up on the hovering projection in the centre of their table.

"Of Dr. Borg's personal assets," corrected Mr. Bai. "His company is much more complicated. No matter his judgement, it must be in the hands of a businessman. We can follow his instructions for assessing the future of this company."

"A legal will and testament is more powerful than a list of instructions found in the files on a personal computer," Xiyin said. He deftly enlarged the image on all the screens to the increased annoyance of the gaggle. "And I believe this name reads 'Xiyin of Old Ninjago' and not 'Mr. Bai from the New Ninjago City Department for Transport Technologies Improvements Division'. Where he's merely assistant to the manager, if I have it correct."

"You are not named to inherit this company." The man who spoke was someone Xiyin had seen around the factory floor several times, but from too high up to catch the name on his badge. His legal council nodded.

"New Ninjago City public law twelve twenty-hundred and eleven, my friend."

The attorneys grumbled amongst themselves as Xiyin wheeled himself to the table, not necessarily for necessity, but he liked the way it made those who had flocked to the room with standing room only shift and frown.

"I propose that the present company management be maintained until we can ask Dr. Borg himself how he intended these documents be interpreted," another shareholder said. "He pioneered the technology to create artificial intelligence clones of consciousness. He made several attempts to do it to himself, but never completed it. From my knowledge of this project, he may have enough data that my people can splice together and finish creating his AI."