mamuzzy | [Brainjuice] In Ordo's shadow --

Mereel learned so early that no matter what he does, no matter how hard he works and studies, he will never steps out of Ordo's shadow. And Ordo is not particularly talented in anything, or specialized, and not particularly ambitious.

What makes Ordo special that he is viciously protective and brave and those are the traits that he shares with Kal himself. It's during the war when he actually utilizes the psychological warfare the best that he learned from Kal. Because Ordo keeps learning directly from Kal on the field.

(Addition: We have seen Ordo slicing a lot but those are immediate ones like reprogramming a droid, or already knowing door codes. But for serious slicing, you had Jaing. And damn if Jaing actually used his skills to do bad things, the whole galaxy would have been fucked.)

Now what has Mereel? Literally everything else. Even the other Nulls have more specializations than Ordo.

Kal can't do shit with science, and mathematics, and chemistry and all those stuff Mereel is especially talented at. Kal is uneducated. Every skill he learned is literally practical skill on the field, not helping that he is a bit technophobic. So it doesn't matter that Mereel can easely outshine Ordo in these fields (even by Null-standards), Kal can't appreciate the hard work because… he can't comprehend it even by regular natborn education standards. He tells them all the time he is proud of them, but also he is constantly tells them that practical skills much more important than the ones they learn from books/flash training... it tells them different message. It's contradicting. Kal maybe hurt Mereel without him realizing.

So Mereel while he never stopped being hard working, he became adrenaline junky. And with it, he is one of the few Nulls who directly disobeys Kal'buirs orders when the situation rewards fits (see the short story: ODDS). Mereel undertakes risky shit to shine, just to gets Kal's attention because he think he will never get it otherwise. He will risk his life, because he thinks he will never get love otherwise. He feel he needs to bring tribute and needs to be useful to get this love.

He knows that not even saving the whole clone-kind will be enough to get him from Ordo's shadow.

Mereel is completely aware that Ordo doesn't get attention because he is better at anything he does. It's because Ordo LACKS. It gives Mereel freedom but also such heartbreak and jealously it tears him apart. It's a contradiction.