No One's POV
The pair made their way through the sky in silence, Valt sitting comfortably in the metallic claws of the Samurai X suit. His sniffing only got worse as they went on, the Tears continuing to burn twin holes in his face; the wind didn't do much to help, though PIXAL attempted to help by arranging the claws so that his face was mostly covered.

Sniffing loudly, Valt finally decided to break the silence and yelled over the wind, "So what happens now?"

"When the Elemental Tears were first created," PIXAL began. Accidentally by a Master of Energy, who had lost their entire family in a battle, Valt's overstuffed memory babbled, though the pain of the Tears stopped him from recalling the Master's name. "It was discovered that, like all creations of Elemental Energy, it could not do much damage while in the presence of vengestone. With this thought in mind, a room below the Monastery was constructed, lined with vengestone. It is the only place in the Monastery with the stone, and its sole purpose is to contain Masters when they cried Tears."

"Contain?" Valt squeaked. His face clenched in pain as the glowing lines beneath his eyes grew larger and brighter.

"I'm sorry," PIXAL amended quickly. "Poor choice of words."

It's fitting, though, Valt thought but did not admit out loud. I'm a monster; a monster that deserves to be locked away. She may as well have just said "caged".

After that, neither of them felt comfortable about saying more. They continued the flight in heavy silence, PIXAL fixing her eyes on the sky ahead while Valt simply stared into space, willing himself not to cry before they got to the Monastery. Neither of them paid attention to nor noticed the third passenger hanging onto the mech's foot...

Soon enough, the mountainous Monastery came into view, its sloping red tile roof and white stone walls a sight for sore eyes. Yet they didn't land in the open courtyard, or even outside the large wooden doors. Instead, as the Monastery came into view, PIXAL started to veer slightly downward. By the time they had made it to the mountain, they were a considerable number of miles below the Monastery. At first the mountain face didn't yield anything interesting, then PIXAL pushed a button within her suit. Cracks appeared in the rock, which would appear natural were they not pin straight and parallel to each other. The cracks separated, revealing a doorway into the secret depths of the mountain.

PIXAL flew through the door, using the same button to close the mountain behind them. Fluorescent lighting automatically flicked on, illuminating the large space filled with vehicles and weapons of every shape and size. The labyrinth beneath the Monastery used to be limited to this very room, but as the Masters' family expanded, so did the space where most of the action happened. Now there were several hallways branching off from this main room, which all contained rooms that held items vital to the history of the Masters. One was the room that contained the Elemental Weapons, which Valt had already been to.

Another was the Room of Tears, the only place in the entire vicinity of the Monastery that held vengestone.

Which, after PIXAL had allowed Valt had climb out of her claws, she herself climbed out, and she had forgone wearing her helmet, was where they were heading to at the moment. Unbeknownst to them, their third passenger had also gotten off, and was looking at the room and its contents in a daze.

The light from Valt's glowing Tears lit up the hallway as they walked at a brisk pace. The blue haired blader took small steps, unsteady on his feet. His ragged breath filled the air as the duo travelled the length of the hallway, PIXAL holding onto his shoulders to keep him at least walking straight. His fingers held tight enough that she would have lost all feeling in her arms if she had flesh. She didn't even blink.

They came to a stone door at the very end of the hall. As soon as it came into view, the light from the Tears dimmed, though still glowed enough to be considered unnatural. It was enough to light up the amber veins in the stone door, them glittering menacingly against the dark surface of the smooth stone. An ill-informed geologist would confuse it for an exquisite quartz.

To any experienced Master, it was a sign of doom.

Vengestone. The only material in all 14 realms that could cancel Elemental Power.

Unlike the panel next to the door to the Elemental Weapons Room, which was a DNA scanner, the panel next to the vengestone door contained a keypad. PIXAL turned it on and punched in three separate passwords - all were necessary in opening the door. Valt couldn't help shuddering at it all. The room seemed too... safe-y. Like what went into that room never came out, and when it finally did, it was nothing more than a dull husk of its former self.

When PIXAL finished punching in the three passwords, the door separated and slid open - slowly, ominously, like it knew what laid within its room had no place in the rest of the building. A gust of stale air carried the curious scents of metal and greenery. And when Valt looked into the room, he had to gasp.

Vengestone had very few practical uses besides dampening Elemental Powers, but here, it had been twisted into a work of art. The room was vaulted, the highest height being a massive 30 meters above the ground floor, making way for the main centerpiece. A hulking mass of the veined stone had been carved into a stunning likeliness of a great oak tree, the artist having taken a great deal of care to make sure every branch and knothole looked natural. Leaves of the stone crowned every stiff twig, and even from far away, it could be seen that amazing detail had gone into them as well. Golden glass orbs had been hung from the lower hanging branches by strings that were thin enough to give off the impression that the orbs were floating. The trunk-like roots sank into a blanket of what looked like gray grass.

All in all, it was a little disconcerting.

"Wow..." Valt finally admitted, his bulging eyes wider than his gaping mouth. "This is... not what I was expecting for a containment unit."

"It was designed to be calming for the Masters in distress," PIXAL explained, slowly leading her ward into the room. "The Master who designed this room didn't like the idea that future generations would have to work through their problems in a stuffy room, surrounded in abundance by the very stone designed to suffocate their abilities. So she painstakingly carved each knothole and leaf in order to give this room an aura of natural calmness."

"It definitely looks natural," Valt relented, trying not to panic as the door slid shut behind them. "But 'calmness' is a different story."

"Yes, despite the illusion of tranquility, the purpose of this room is hard to look past," PIXAL sighed.

She lead him to the other side of the tree, where a bench of vengestone had been carved separately from the tree. There was nothing special about besides the material it was made of - a large, slightly thin rectangular slab connected to four smaller, stockier slabs. She motioned for Valt to sit down in the middle, then told him politely, "If you would like to be alone, I can leave." She made a move to leave, but Valt's gloved hands shot out and wrapped around her metallic wrist.

"WAIT!" He exclaimed, a bit too loudly for the space. He winced as his voice bounced along the vaulted ceiling, then started again, "Wait... I've felt alone this entire day. The company may help me."

PIXAL paused, a little touched that Valt would ask this of her. "Of course," She said, smiling.

Her blue haired student grinned gratefully and moved over on the bench for her to sit. He still seemed in need of comfort, so she decided to comfort him a little better. She wrapped one arm around his torso and rested one hand on his head, stroking his hair gently. Her metal head laid down on his crown, and he shifted his legs to lay on hers in response.

Is this what it's like to be a mother? PIXAL wondered, not for the first time. To hold a child in your arms and comfort them in their times of need? To provide warmth for them when they feel nothing but cold?

It was times like these that she desperately wanted a child of her own.

But alas, fate had other plans for her. And she had to accept that.

So she held onto this child and waited for the Tears to start flowing. For the sound of furious lightning to fill the small space when it realized that it could do no damage here. For the feeling of something liquid yet solid to slide down her armor.

Yet none of those happened. Valt's sniffling hadn't subsided in the least, but no Tears fell.

"Valt," She inquired after a minute or so had passed. "You are in a safe place now. You can cry freely here; you must, or the Tears will only cause you more physical pain. So why don't you?"

"I don't know," He said in a choked voice. "I want to cry, if it'll get this pain to stop. But I keep telling myself to cry, and I just can't." He laughed bitterly. "The one time I actually want to cry..."

He shook in her arms and PIXAL tried a different tactic. "Tell me what happened today."

So he did. He told her everything, from first stopping at the Beasts to taking a break in the desert. He told her about the friends he said goodbye to, sometimes making a side comment about one of their characteristics. He told her (in great detail) about the last battles he had with them. He even mentioned destroying Raijin; he had thought PIXAL would be mad, but she was actually proud of him for taking charge and getting rid of it - it truly sounded horrible.

At the end, he still hadn't shed a single Tear.

"I think I know why," Valt said suddenly, as if he was shocked it hadn't come to him sooner. "When I was with my friends, I sometimes got jealous that they were so much stronger than me. I always tried to appear strong before them, so they wouldn't think of me as less than them. Though I sometimes let a few tears slip out, I tried not to cry even in the most stressful of situations. I guess... I'm still trying to appear strong before them."

PIXAL considered the theory, then nodded slowly against his head. "You want to appear like you can give them more than what they see at first glance," She added. Valt nodded stiffly. "And where has that gotten you?"

Valt was quiet before answering, "It's gotten me friends and family, but it's also caused me pain - like right now." He absently ran a knuckle under his eye. "I love my friends like they're my own family. I've given them all of the strength I can muster, but I've played that game for too long." He sniffed. "I don't know what to do now."

He was close to releasing his pain, but he needed something to break the dam. So PIXAL brought her metallic lips close to his ear and sang softly, "~Ohhhh-o-oh-ohh... Ohhhh-o-oh-oh... All I know, all I know~" She paused, knowing that Valt knew the rest.

And she was right, for after a few seconds he finished, "~Loving you... is a losing game~"

Finally, the Tears started to flow. The blue glow overtook the entirety of Valt's eyes and light the room more than the glass light orbs as the Tears spilled down his cheeks. The flow was a perfect waterfall; each edge was ramrod straight - not a single Tear veered out of line. It eventually reached his and PIXAL's clothes, but the Tears did not soak in. It was not their business to soak into something as futile as clothing. Instead, they slid off of each article of clothing as if the fabric was glass, until they finally touched the ground. If Valt had been outside, that puddle would have stretched in all directions, finding the nearest electrical sources to announce the Master's sorrow amongst the storms. But the presence of vengestone took its toll, and the puddle did nothing more than growing as the boy continued to cry.

Valt's ragged sobs filled the air. He sounded as if he had been bottling his emotions up for the longest time, then someone came along and took out his stopper. He wailed with grief, remorse, and anger for his actions, and for the actions people had unknowingly done against him.

Knowing that she had broken the dam and she was responsible, PIXAL did nothing but hold him tight and stroke his hair in what she hoped was a comforting manner. This is good, She told herself. He is finally dealing with his pain. What would happen next, she wasn't sure. But she did know one thing:

He can't be alone forever, or he'll be crying Tears all the time.

He needs friends that understand - a centuries old Nindroid simply isn't going to make the cut.

This Monastery needs more than one Master.

She called for her falcon to bring her Valt's dinner and the remains of the Elemental Navigation System, then settled in for a long night.

It's time that this boy gets a new family.

Little did she know that two candidates of that new family were already there.

——————-
2327 words.

I told you guys that I'd update more often!