Nexo Knights/Ninjago (DR) Crossover - Ideas/Headcanons/Summery Plot - Jay and Nya are Clay's Parents
Okay, weird title, but this was a recent fever dream that I wanted to share so....Here we go with this utter mess...
To start! Instead of Ruina being slowly corrupted by the Forbidden Power Bracelet after the fact, she was killed during the Battle of Monstrox's defeat, along with the rest of the Wizards council, leaving Merlock as the only magic user left in Knighton. Key word being the last magic user in Knighton. Shortly after, there had been strange, but sparse, reports of a sorcerer, one with hair white as snow and a very wide round hat, wandering around the outskirts of the kingdom. It was rumored that he used some sort of tornado based magic, but vanished as suddenly as he appeared. Merlock investigated the rumors and in sensing the left over magical residue concluded its origin was not of Knighton, but of elseware. A place where Magic still flowed free in the blood of the people. Other realms. It took years of study, desperate, mind breaking study, but eventually Merlock was able to break through the barrier between the realms, and pulled through a young dark-haired girl who had the remains of magic running through her veins. A girl who looked like his sister. Merlock didn't expect the baby boy in her arms, to be pulled through the portal with her.
Let's flip perspectives for a moment.
Ninjago was recovering from the attack of the Crystal King (Crystalized), when Jay and Nya decide to start their family. After being separated when Nya joined the sea they don't want to risk waiting anymore. There's a period of peace after the Overlord is finally destroyed and they take advantage of that. Three months later Nya announces she's pregnant. Everyone, their fellow ninja, friends, and extended family, is ecstatic. When it came to naming their son, Nya and Jay thought long and hard about the meaning of it. They wanted to honor the past, but also look forward to the future with something unique. Eventually settling on combining their birth father's names (Cliff + Ray = Clay) and giving Ed's full name for the middle place. Clay Edward Walker is born into a loving home (monastery) filled to the brim with Uncles and Aunts ready to spoil him.
But the happiness doesn't last.
Late one night, Nya and Baby Clay are pulled into a portal of unknown origin. Jay watched as his love and child was ripped away, left sobbing at the broken cradle when he was unable to grab Nya's outstretched hand in time. The search for Nya and Clay afterwards is near desperate. Zane and Pixal doing in house detective work to figure out the origins of the portal. Lloyd and Cole reaching out to their Allies across Ninjago and the neighboring kingdoms to expand the search. While Jay and Kai work closely with Master Wu. At one point even using Travelers' Tea to locate Nya, but it seemed as if where-ever she was taken was further then even that of the Never-Realm.
Three years of searching passes, Then the Merge hits.
On Nya's end, she and her baby are being held captive by Merlock. Now Nya doesn't think the wizards evil, Merlock explained multiple times that he just wanted her help in restoring magic back to his realm. However, that's not something she can help with, not in the way he believes she can. Elemental powers only can have one mortal host at a time, and she passed on hers to Clay when he was born. Any remains of magic he was sensing on her, was either her spinjiztu or traces that her elemental water abilities have. She tries to explain but Merlock doesn't get it, at this point his mind is so far gone that he keeps mistaking her for some one named Wanda. Worried for her safety and the safety of her baby, trapped both in a strange realm and by a possibly unstable magic user, it leaves her open to rather cruel manipulation at the hands of this strange talking book in Merlock's library.
Using his wits and the last of his available magic, Monstrox is able to convince Nya that the Bracelet of Forbidden Powers has the ability to send her home and he'll teach her how to use it. Nya's not foolish enough to just try it instantly, and ask he'd help her. Monstrox says he's just as a trapped as she is, and plays up how dangerous Merlock actually is. Claiming that Merlock trapped his soul in the book after he tried to stop Merlock's frantic search for a way to revive his lost sister. SO desperate to save his blood line that he'd destroy the only remaining magic other then himself. Now properly scared for her and Clay - sure as a baby his elemental powers wouldn't awaken for years, but if Merlock even sensed any sort of power on him Nya doubted the wizard would be willing to let them go - she puts on the bracelet, and is slowly consumed.
Merlock catches on to what's happening before Monstrox fully convinces Nya to take him with her. However, it's too late, Nya's mind is fracturing underneath the weight of foreign dark magic. The wizard is left with no other choice but to petrify her, locking her body in a stone skin. The incident provided clarity to Merlock, and he is wrecked with guilt for what he has done. In his attempt to save the magic of his realm, and his own family, he had destroyed someone else's. He abandons all his research regarding other realms, locks Monstrox deeper in his library and as for the boy...Merlock leaves Clay with nothing more then a note and his name on the steps of the Kingdom's best orphanage. He doesn't know the surname that Nya carried so he gives the boy his own, a pitiful attempt to repay the lad after he cost the child his mother. Merlock keeps a distant eye on Clay, always watching but just out of sight of the lad.
The wizard pulls strings when needed, getting Clay into the Knight academy, paying for his school underneath the guise of a scholarship. As the lad grew, Merlock suspected he looked more and more like his unknown father. Only retaining his mother's deep blue eyes. Strangely though, while he senses magic on the boy, Clay never exhibits any traditional signs of being a wizard. Given his origins from another realm, Merlock guesses that Clay's magic might not function like that of his nexo powers, and it painfully obvious to the wizard now. Not to mention dangerous, if it did ever physically manifest, not even Merlock would know how to properly train Clay or what the boy was even capable of. He swears to tell the boy the truth of his origins after the graduation ceremony, with the kingdom at peace and Clay's studies completed there would be enough time for the young man to properly process the shock, but Jestro finds the book of monsters first.
Clay graduates, and the events of the series happens. Merlock 2.0 carries the guilt of his original self but isn't aware of the weight of it just yet. So he's rather blunt when he reveals that he basically kidnapped Clay and his mother from another realm in order to try and bring magic back to Knighton. By then Clay is under the effect of the stone curse and doesn't taken it well. Though now he understands what the strange bubble force that has been frothing underneath his rock skin is, unknown magic, and it just adds to his reason for being imprisoned. He's is a bomb of mysterious power and dark rage, and he doesn't want to hurt his team.
In truth the stone curse, has been slowly activating his elemental abilities, a sludgy true potential if you will. They sensed an invading dark force in their host's body and slowly worked on repelling it. Eventually breaking the spell right at the climax of season 4. However, what were once latent abilities are now at the tipping point of discovery and Clay trying to hold them back fearful of making the battle against the Colossus worse as he works with Robin and Ava. Merlock 2.0 agrees, not sure how foreign magic would react against Knighton Magic.
However, nothing his fellow knights are able to do is enough to take the monster down. Not even Mechlock is making a difference. looking down at his hand alit with an unfamiliar blue glow, Clay takes risk. If nothing from Knighton could destroy the Colossus of Destruction, maybe something from elseware would.
The moats surrounding the capital had been empty for years, but the springs underneath them still flowed with wet life. Clay didn't know this about the moats, not until he raised his hands and let whatever power that was writhing with him loose. A great flood is summoned at his will, washing away the ground troops stone monsters and knocking the flyers down before dragging them to the bed of the moat burying them all alive in a watery grave. Even better the ribbons of water alive and thrashing are able to puncture through the smallest cracks in the granite of the Colossus. Weakening the stone flesh and with the help of the other knights causing it to crumble. using the water trapped inside of colossus Clay rips apart the monster until it's nothing but muddy rubble. He then passes out where he stands, running off the high of his true potential awakening.
Nya was watching all this from above. Her memories are fractured and mind corrupted, but something about the fight, a flood against a giant beast it feels familiar. In the same way the lightning of her staff felt familiar. Some part of her longs to go after her son, but retreat wins over her will.
Clay nurses a migraine all through out the after party, while his friends just pepper on question about how it felt to use magic. Too which he doesn't really have much of an answer too, it was like a crazy adrenaline rush plus as if he had been swimming for hours on end. Even now everything feels weird, the water in the pipes is whispering to him, and he can feel the rumbling of the underground spring. Robin asks if this means Merlock will train Clay now, and the wizard now turned mech is forced to explain for a second time that the nature of Clay's magic is unknown to him so...he regretfully can't. The only person left alive who might know something about Clay's new found powers is his mother. Ruina vanished after the battle, and Clay claims he wants to go after her. Get answers and maybe try to save her. Merlock warns that her corruption is deep and who ever she once was might be lost forever. Clay says its worth the risks.
The sky outside suddenly fractures as the coalesces finally reaches the realm of Knighton, pulling the realm into the patchwork of the others already collected at the hands of the Merge.
Let's jump back to Jay for a bit.
When the Merge hit, there had been a sense of hope for Jay believe it or not. Now that the realms were together he had a better chance at finding Nya and Clay. After escaping from a bunch of weird dudes in suits, he went off searching for his family (Ninja included). Eventually meeting up with Kai in the Kingdom of Madness with the Kraglings, and getting picked up by Lloyd and the new ninja. Maybe it's his parental instincts finally having something to hold onto, but he takes to being an uncle to Arin and Sora all too quickly.
After freeing the dragons from imperium, Jay ends up bonding with the only lightning dragon of the bunch. Jiro lost a lot too, and Jay finds companionship in that.
His and Kai's relationship actually becomes strained temporarily, Jay hasn't stopped searching for Nya, and Kai was similar, but when Wyldfyre enters the picture Kai's attention is split and Jay sees that as Kai forgetting his sister. Replacing her with his new daughter. They talk it out and make up, but not before Kai is lost to Never Space.
At the tournament of the sources Jay keeps and eye out for Nya, sure her powers would've passed on their son by now, but its a slim hope he holds on too.
It hurts him all the time to watch as his brothers move on and build new families with their own children while his son is still missing. It's too the point that he can only really be near Zane and not feel pain, at least until the ice ninja finally finds Pixal. He's happy for Zane don't get him wrong, but Jay can't help but feel jealousy that Zane found his love while Nya is still gone.
Lloyd sympathizes a little bit when Arin runs away, but it isn't the same. Arin came back home.
By the time that weapon of desolation is seized and Empress Beatrix is stopped for the second time. It had been 9 nearly 10 years since Nya and Clay were taken. Rumors of another realm joining up with the merge lands eventually reach the crossroads and the Ninja by association, and with it comes the story of how a water wizard defeated a giant stone monster with a flood. Its thin chance, but its a chance and Jay is taking it, loading up Jiro with supplies and flying towards the new realm.
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I might make a part 2 if people are interested in this idea.
