#''vakama is baby''-posting taken to unnecessary extremes

[chronological-barnacle]

Vakama is baby, but he's done it before

ok so these posts by @crystaltoa and @goattypegirl have been orbiting each other in my brain for the last 36ish hours and finally coalesced into something hopefully coherent

if we run with the idea of the Vahi as a big "TIMELINE RESET" button which ensures both its own creation and un-creation, suppose it could also ensure the creation and un-creation of its own creator as an additional safeguard? suppose that, at the moment of its use, the Vahi reaches backward in its own timeline to trigger the birth/manufacturing of a Matoran imbued with the necessary metatemporal intelligence and potential for Toa-hood just in time for them to fully master the art of maskmaking before crafting the Mask of Time -- and simultaneously, resetting the new timeline to a point just before its maker would have been made. you can't have a metatemporal intelligence just operating freely, after all -- who knows what else a being of that nature might make when left to its own devices?

so: of course Vakama is only like 500-1000 years old when the Great Cataclysm strikes -- that was all the time he needed to master his craft before it was Vahi-o'clock. that's how it goes every time.

but this still leaves some issues unaddressed

canon shows no signs of the Vahi having capabilities like this. BUT we've only ever seen it wielded by Toa, who were not terribly good at it. if it takes higher levels of focus and control to unlock the timeline-resetting capabilities, perhaps it was meant for a bearer with more skill and power, experienced in the use of Legendary Kanohi...perhaps, in the event of a universe-threatening catastrophe, the Vahi was meant for Artakha to use?

but if that's the case, why would Vakama have respawned in Metru Nui instead of Artakha? maybe Metru Nui has better Maskmaking 101, maybe that's where the Great Disks usually manifest whenever the timeline resets, maybe he has showed up on Artakha's island some of the other times.....maybe he lands in whatever region the Disks have ended up by then.

so if it's not necessarily set in stone where in the MU Vakama might appear, master maskmaking, become a Toa, collect & combine the Great Disks, and forge the Vahi, then we'd need a way to ensure that the mask gets to Artakha as soon as possible upon completion no matter where it shows up. and THAT is where Voporak comes into play

inevitably, once a fresh timeline is stable, someone[s] will eventually be like "imagine if there was a Mask of Time, would that be fucked up or what" and imbue somebody else with the power to sense temporal anomalies (there'd probably also need to be a new Voporak after every reset - the Vahi would undo the previous one since someone with time-sensing abilities would likely sense that the timeline has been altered, and you can't risk that knowledge getting out if you want affairs to stay stable. gotta keep things tidy, no loose ends! so who knows how many different beings have been Voporak before our current timeline? there's no reason to assume it was a highborn Steltian every time). for an optimally stable time loop, Voporak would set out directly from Artakha, swipe the Vahi, and hightail it home

so now we can identify where the current timeline started to go askew: the Brotherhood sent our Voporak to Odina instead of Artakha, which leaves us with a Vahi-retriever loyal to TSO. at this point it still would've been possible to course-correct and undo the Cataclysm entirely, but then Vakama wielded the Vahi himself, which -- despite needing to be a Toa in order to successfully forge the mask -- he technically wasn't meant to do

(on another note, this all could inform Teridax's motivations for wanting the Vahi. perhaps he thought he could alter the timeline further in his favor somehow, in addition to speeding up the brainwashing of the Matoran)

as goattypegirl's writing on the subject already states, whatever Vakama achieved with the Mask of Time did successfully prevent the Cataclysm from destroying the GSR or wiping out all life inside, and the fact that Mata Nui's mission was a success and that Spherus Magna was restored in what should have been a doomed timeline -- essentially a time loop that never got closed -- is frankly a miracle

and the remaining Great Beings are definitely in for a shock when they learn that not only does the Vahi still physically exist, but so do Vakama and Voporak