#bionicle one-shot

[siren-darkocean]

Headcanon One-shot

The Aftermath of a Fall [Kiina Past Headcanon]

Warnings: Graphic details of dead bodies, child trauma, aftermath of village fall descriptions, swearing (bc some people get triggered by it), injury descriptions, Out of Character, Headcanons Galore Used, Human terms of ages used(bc Bionicle ages for Glatorian and Agori are so confusing)

Quiet whimpers left Kiina's lips as she was curled up in a ball under the rubble that covered her, her hands clutching her necklace tightly scared if she let it go it would mean the end of her.

She could hear the dwindling embers of the fires that happened, the smoke was still strong though.

She didn't know where her mother was, but she just wanted her to be okay after she rushed her daughter to hide from the attack.

The sound of rubble moving as small pebbles fell made Kiina try to hold in her whimpers as her tail managed to curl tightly around her waist and the young Glatorian shut her eyes tightly.

Soon the boulders on top of Kiina were moved aside allowing both light and smoke to reach Kiina making the child cough up a storm.

"Easy little Dew Drop," The Lord of Water reassured her making Kiina's eyes snap open as she looked while coughing seeing the Lord of Water standing over her as he pushed a boulder that threatened to fall again aside from the two.

"M'lord!" In an instant Kiina had launched herself at the Lord of Water in a tight hug making the elemental lord hold her with such gentle care it was like he was holding a small porcelain doll he didn't want to break.

The Lord of Water formed his hands to have fingers and gently combed them through Kiina's raven locks of hair with the natural bright blue highlights effectively pulling off any dirt, dust and ash as he did so to comfort the child Glatorian while shushing her as Kiina sobbed into his shoulder. "Easy there my little Dew Drop, you're safe now." The Lord of Water cooed as Kiina continued to sob into his shoulder.

"I-I don't know w-what happened to m-mommy! S-She told me t-to hide when i-it started! I-I s-s-saw D-Daddy g-g-got-" Kiina couldn't finish her explaining as she broke down more, burying her face even more into the Elemental Lord's shoulder.

The Lord of Water felt his heart heavy as he watched Kiina sob against him while trying to comfort the small child. She was only seven for crying out loud and had to witness this!

If the Lord of Water could turn back time from this moment he would turn to the time he decided to join this stupid war, too many lives had been lost, families destroyed, and his favorite young Glatorian and friend had lost her parents at a young age. All because he decided to join since the other lords were.

All the Lord of Water could do was fall to his knees as he continued to hold Kiina, comforting her the best he could with words while stroking her hair as the young Glatorian sobbed into his shoulder.

After some time Kiina had finally managed to calm down enough to where she was just a sniffling and hiccuping mess. The Lord of Water carefully brushed away her stray tears.

"There we go my little Dew Drop, everything is going to be just fine. We just got to get you to the other village the others set up in the split." The Lord of Water told her.

The split was long before Kiina's parents had even been born, where two halves of the Lord of Water's village split to go to a different village to build. The Lord of Water had entrusted an Agori named Eze to rule the second village and the young woman had done a wonderful job at it. He knew she would be taking in survivors who had managed to flee the massacre alive.

Kiina looked around at the carnage around her, the Lord of Water wanted to shield her eyes from the massacre of familiar faces to the young Glatorian before she could be more traumatized if that was possible but he refrained from so hearing the gears turn in her head. "C-Can we at least b-bury everyone before w-we leave?" Kiina asked the Lord of Water softly as she looked up at his face after taking in the sight of the carnage around them.

The Lord of Water was surprised by the request. "Are you sure Kiina?" He asked her, "I don't wish for you to have to carry such a burden." He told her. Kiina looked at the Lord of Water with a determined look on her tear stained, puffy and ash covered face. "Someone has to put them to rest because others aren't coming back." She told him, "It's the least we could do for them."

The Lord of Water sighed, knowing how true the little girl's words were. "You're so wise for your age you know that my little Dew Drop?" He told her, he then carefully set Kiina down on her feet.

"Alright then my dear, I shall help you. Go ahead and make some head markers for them, I will find some shovels." The Lord of Water told her as Kiina stood on her feet and her tail tucked between her legs a bit. Kiina nodded at the Lord of Water, "Of course m'lord."

💙🌊🫧💙

After several hours the two had finished burying the last two but certainly not least bodies of the many fallen in the carnage; Kiina's parents.

Her father had horrible wounds, Kiina watched before she went to hide as her father was impaled on a spear, the Lord of Water had to help Kiina pull the weapon out of him and a stab wound through the skull between the eyes as if someone went overkill on him.

Her mother was just as bad, several shallow cuts on her mother's body inflicted the maximum amount of pain without killing her (pretty much torturing her for fun), the final killing wounds were a deep throat slash that left her head almost barely hanging by managing to cut through half of her spine and a deep slash over her heart.

The Lord of Water looked over the two graves with flowers planted at their head markers as he had Kiina go and grab what she could carry with her for their departure.

The Lord of Water sighed as his eyes closed. "I promise you, Ekix, Veinta, that if anything else bad happens to Kiina, the karma and justice to the guilty party would be the most suffering and longest they just suffer through." He spoke to the graves, his hands shaking as they balled up to fists. "I just wish I could turn back time to never join this stupid war in the first place so my little Dew Drop never had to lose you so early."

Hearing something the Lord of Water shot his eyes open and looked seeing Kiina approaching him, a large for her perspective satchel on her shoulders and clutching a doll in her arms. Her grandmother of her father's side had made that for her long ago before their deaths.

The Lord of Water knelt down to her level in front of her. "Are you ready to go now my little Dew Drop?" He asked her, pushing his own grief and guilt aside to comfort the young Glatorian.

Kiina nodded at that, her already glossy eyes glancing over to the graves of her parents. The Lord of Water moved aside so the young girl could say her goodbyes to her parents.

Kiina took a few more steps to the graves, tears started to stream down her face as she hiccuped. "B-Bye bye m-mommy. B-Bye bye d-daddy." Kiina hiccupped out, more tears fell down her face.

The Lord of Water held a hand out to Kiina making Kiina hug him again. The Elemental Lord gave a thin smile at that as he carefully picked Kiina up and held her close to his chest. The Lord of Water gave the many graves one last look before he turned and made his way through the gates of the now fallen village, a still crying young Glatorian Kiina in his arms.

💙🌊🫧💙

Eze rushed to the gates of Tajun with at least three Glatorian behind her. The Agori leader had just been helping tending to new rescues from the original village when she was told the Lord of Water was at the gates wanting her.

The first village of water had fallen, and many lives had been lost in the massacre with barely any survivors who had escaped the fray.

Eze made it to the front gates of Tajun, the immediate sight of the Lord of Water standing there while holding something in his arms close to his chest made Eze grip her staff tighter.

"What is it you want?" She demanded the Lord of Water. The said Elemental Lord gave a thin smile, he didn't blame her aggression to her.

"I knew you all too well Eze, you're already taking refuges in." He said, a fond note in his voice.

Eze huffed at that. "Well their my people obviously, and if you think I'm taking you in, then-" "No no, I myself I do not wish for you to take in." The Lord of Water cut off Eze.

"I was hoping for her." With that the Lord of Water moved his hands to reveal Kiina who held her doll tighter in her arms, her tail curled around her leg in a comforting manner.

Eze gasped at the sight. "Kiina..." The Agori leader dropped her staff as she ran over with another younger Glatorian, a young adult male, behind her heels with ease. The Lord of Water easily recognized him as Tarix, a wonderful warrior indeed. He still remembered the day he blessed the new born Glatorian Tarix at the time after his birth to the rest of the village.

The Lord of Water carefully set Kiina down to the ground as he knelt down allowing Kiina to stand on her own feet just in time for Eze to skit to a stop on her knees and look over the young girl.

"Oh my dear, I thought you were lost like the many others." Eze cried out in joy seeing the young Glatorian and child of her best friend Veinta alive and mostly unharmed. Her only injuries were a few rock scratches and some bruises but other than that she was perfectly safe.

Eze carefully held Kiina's face in her palms, "Where are your mother and father?" She asked the young girl. Kiina's eyes turned glossy again making Eze's heart break as tears threatened to leave her eyes realizing what it meant. "Oh my dear." The Agori pulled the young Glatorian into a warm hug before she could cry.

The Lord of Water watched with a sad smile. "Me and the Lord took care of the bodies." Kiina finally spoke making Eze pull away from the hug as her hands rested on the sides of Kiina's shoulders.

"What how?" She asked the little girl. "We buried them. It was the least we could do since I knew no one was coming back." Kiina explained, holding her doll tighter.

"It's impossible to say no to my little Dew Drop with how precious she is." The Lord of Water quietly mused but Tarix, Eze and Kiina heard it.

Eze gave the Lord of Water a glance before focusing back on Kiina. "How about we get you washed up, patched up and fed my dear? You must be exhausted after all that happened." She told Kiina who nodded. "Yes please." She spoke quietly.

Eze stood back up and looked at the Lord of Water. "Was that all you wanted?" She asked him, taking Kiina's hand in hers. "For her sake yes, I just wish that I could turn back time to the day the war started. So I never joined this stupid war, for Kiina's sake and many others." The admission of that deep regret stunned many by standers who spoke in a quiet whisper with another.

The Lord of Water gave a deep bow before turning to leave. Eze sighed and went to take Kiina to a medical hut.

"M'lord!" The Lord of Water turned back to look just as Kiina (who had let go of Eze's hand and ran to him) tackle his legs in a hug. The Lord of Water gave a sad smile as he knelt down and hugged Kiina back, his head resting on the top of her raven locks of hair with bright blue highlights.

"Will I ever see you again?" Kiina asked the Lord of Water sadly. The Elemental Lord sighed at that, "I am not sure my dear, but I hope the universe and fate will allow it." He told her honestly.

The two then parted their hug. Kiina gave a small courtesy to The Lord of Water. "See you next time, m'lord."

The Lord of Water gave a sad smile as he gave a gentle kiss to Kiina's head. "See you next time, my little Dew Drop."

The Lord of Water stood back and on his feet again as Tarix came over and Kiina let him pick her up in his arms and carry her back to the village of Tajun.

Kiina gave a small wave over Tarix's shoulder, the Lord of Water gave a small wave as well back before turning to leave. Kiina buried her face in Tarix's shoulder as she wrapped her arms around his neck so she didn't have to watch her friend leave.

[downtofragglerock]

Alright I'm doing a bit of a special one this time.

So back when I did the Kulta post I talked about how I didn't just want to have the full brotherhood roster to be the 14 canon Makuta and an army of completely original ocs, but extraneous sources for potential Makuta weren't exactly plentiful.

One source that did have merit were set prototypes. It's not uncommon in pieces of media to reuse concept art or early designs of a character for a new one, just look at star wars, and for 2008, there were a number of unused designs and models for the Makuta sets. Some have been identified as the early designs for specific characters, but curiously there are some were that's not the case.

On a German program called "Galileo" in 2008 there was a little tv spot about bionicle that featured brief glimpses of several prototype models, three in particular are Makuta that don't seem to have become any one final set. Screenshots can be found on the bs01 prototype gallery page. They are nigh-perfect for this kind of project.

A Makuta who ruled a rain shadow area. Their greatest claim to fame was the creation of an intelligent eusocial species of termite rahi that inhabited this land, dotting the landscape with impressive and gravity defying mound structures to rival even the greatest cities of the MU in artistry. This Makuta was harvested by GSR Teridax, like many others. Following the reformation of Spherus Magna, the termites have begun dispersing into the remaining deserts, continuing their work. (Based on the "orange-faced" Makuta model)

The Makuta of Airwatcher's homeland, a place which, due to a technical glitch in the GSR's gravity generators, had great floating mountains and was home to the aforementioned Dark Hunter's avian kin as well as a tribe of nimble and acrobatic Le-Matoran. They excelled in making fast flying rahi species, even modifying their own body with multiple sets of insectoid wings to zip through the air faster than anything else. Occasionally served as a courier for the Brotherhood, and was killed during the Brotherhood-Dark Hunter war by a lucky shot during one of these missions. (Based on the "multi winged blue" Makuta model)

A makuta who served as on of the more middling warriors of the Brotherhood, though despite that were quite boastful about their skills and prowess. Was also killed by GSR Teridax. (Based on the "back facing" Makuta model)

[downtofragglerock]

#a new generation without any continuity from the previous generation#and a thousand years to establish a society#only the ruins of the previous people#next gen matoran: hey we can create a religion out of this!

Which is even more crazy when the Mata Nui matoran come back, like imagine you live in a society that worships these ancient precursors who vanished one day long long ago and you don't know why or what happened to them or where they went but they left behind this high tech mega city that you live in now and then one day they just come back, but not in the "great prophecy of their return" sense or anything. No, they randomly show up one day with some demigods on some rinky boats and it turns out they've just been on a random island banging rocks and sticks together for the past millennium and basically none of them can answer any questions your scholars have about the city and society they left behind because they all forgot somehow.

Last rambling post for now about the millennium spent on Mata Nui, I promise, but it's just as well the system for triggering new Matoran to be built was (presumably) manual. Otherwise there's a not-zero chance the Matoran would have returned to Metru Nui to discover they'd been replaced by a new generation of workers

[boxturret]

George's 1/10th scale Mata Nui Tour

This is a follow up to my previous post about a piece of concept art that depicts the island of Mata Nui as being 1/10th size it is officially listed as in most later maps.

I must first say that I was blown away with the positive reception that post received! I did see some concern that it was now too small, but I believe that's mainly down to how absolutely MASSIVE the final size is. A 90% reduction in size by no means makes Mata Nui small.

But I know not everyone has spent as much time obsessing over the size of Mata Nui as I have, so I decided to enlist everyone's favourite Ta-Koronan George to help illustrate how large this "small" Mata Nui really is.

I scaled the image of Mata Nui so that it matches the measurements on the side, so it is roughly 35km long and 17km wide. I also made a simple height map to get the Mangai volcano the appropriate 2km high.

I started out with just some simple pegs at the locations of the villages to first illustrate the basic distances.

George here starts out at the location of the iconic beach from MNOG and the end of QFTT

The beach is actually shockingly equidistant from most of the villages, Ta-Koro is closest at 2km, Ga-Koro is second closest at 6km, but the other 4 are all between 11 and 13km from the beach!

Here's a little animation to show the size of the pins, they're by no means small.

They had to be this big to be visible at all, which just goes to show how large the island still is even at 1/10th scale.

I did several shots of George standing on the edge of the Mangai's caldera. I extracted the villages from Bionicle the Legend of Mata Nui and scaled them accordingly, placing each of them where the village should be. See if you can spot them!

From the top of Mangai its 20km to the tiny islands at the very tip of Po-Wahi.

And 13km to the end of the chain of islands in southern Le-Wahi

The view of the Mangai volcano is quite impressive from the villages too. Even at this 2km height its still around 2/3rds the height of Mt Fuji or half the height of Mt Kilimanjaro.

My heightmap could use more work, the Ihu mountain range isn't really apparent, I was mainly focused on getting the Mangai at the right height.

Here's what it would look like if Onu-Koro wasn't underground.

I hope these visuals helped to show the size of the 1/10th scale Mata Nui. I really do feel it is more in line with what we see from most media and fits well with the story.

Even with this size there's one thing to remember: Raw size isn't everything. Terrain matters a lot. Its easy enough for someone now to walk a kilometre or two over straight paved roads, but considering that Mata Nui is a lush volcanic island, half the place is covered in a jungle full of massive trees and swamps, much of it is very hilly and steep, this isn't an easy place to get around in.

I'll leave you with two things: first is an old animation I made of a zoom out from Tahu on top of the full final scale Mata Nui:

This is the most I can really do with an island that scale, blender doesn't appreciate having a view distance in the hundreds of kilometres while also rendering something human scaled.

Second is a comparison between the island I've just shown you overlaid on top of the full scale.

The whole island itself has a footprint roughly the same as the full scale Mangai volcano!

Hope you all enjoyed George's vacation photos. Good night and/or happy May :^)

Slight addendum: A while ago I made this little sketch of what a view from the top of Ihu might look like, looking at all the regions. Just wanted to include it. good night

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

End of month update - April

Hello, all! This is the end-of-month update, where I post Tumblr’s current top four films that have received the highest percentage of “yes,” “no,” and “haven’t even heard of this movie” votes.

As of today, the top four films with the highest percentage of “yes” votes are:

Finding Nemo (2003) | Shrek (2001) | Monsters, Inc. (2001) | The Lion King (1994)

Next, the top four films with the highest percentage of “no” votes are:

Sausage Party (2016) | Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014) | All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) | Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Finally, the top four films with the highest percentage of “haven’t even heard of this movie” votes are:

Monica and Friends: Bonds (2019) | Monsturd (2003) | Heroic Losers (2019) | Death Trance (2005)

There were no changes in the top fours between this month and last month’s updates.

Currently, The Incredibles (2004) is the still the only film to receive absolutely zero “haven’t heard of this” votes.

That’s it for April’s end-of-month update! Remember that you can view last month’s update by clicking here. Additionally, you can view the full ranked Letterboxd lists of movies that have come up on this blog by clicking the following links:

This list is ranked from highest-to-lowest percentage of “yes” votes.

This list is ranked from highest-to-lowest percentage of “no” votes.

This list is ranked from highest-to-lowest percentage of “haven’t even heard of this movie” votes.

Remember to vote on the polls that are currently running: Seven Beauties (1975) | Starfish (2018) | The Changeling (1980) | Cronos (1992) | Notting Hill (1999) | Mulholland Drive (2001) | The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) | Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010) | Bionicle: Mask of Light (2003) | Don’t Look Now… We’re Being Shot At! (1966) | The Adventures of Buratino (1959) | The Rescuers (1977) | Memories of Matsuko (2006) | Hellraiser (1987) | Spaceballs (1987) | A Fish Called Wanda (1988) | Summer Days with Coo (2007) | Her (2013) | Barton Fink (1991) | Hot Rod (2007) | The King of Comedy (1982) | Maurice (1987) | Planet of the Apes (1968) | The Beach (2000) | Frankenstein (1910) | Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) | George of the Jungle (1997) | Bride of Frankenstein (1935) | Dracula (1931) | The Mummy (1932) | Paris, Texas (1984) | Ghost World (2001) | The Long Goodbye (1973) | Casablanca (1942) | Ponyo (2008)

[rahiwatching]

Here's a thought I think you're more qualified to handle than me - We know that Aqua Magna had it's own mini-moon (or moon-moon) during the time of the Matoran living on Mata Nui (rather than in him, but tangent). If we assume it remained in orbit after the Reformation, would it be large enough to cause discernible tides on Spherus Magna, assuming a super-ocean like Panthalassa?

(Source for moon-moon: BIONICLE 15: Secrets and Shadows - the "You Are Not The First Toa" scene)

Oh this moon. THIS MOON... it has genuinely kept me up nights.

Long post incoming, so I've put it under the cut

The only evidence of its existence that we get is this shot from the comic you mentioned - it doesn't appear in any other BIONICLE media, so this is quite literally all we have to go on.

I've covered this before both on Tumblr and as a Tower of Thought over on YouTube, but this is actually a shot of our own Moon, the western hemisphere of it to be precise (likely done so it wouldn't be instantly recognisable as our Moon, as that is a hemisphere we can't see from the Earth's surface due to the tidally locked nature of the Moon).

But given that this is the only data we have, all we can really say about this moon is that it is round and that it is cratered. But in terms of its orbit or its size (both of which we would need to know in order to figure out what kind of tidal effect it would have) we just don't have enough to go on.

I suppose we do have this shot from the Legend Reborn that shows various asteroids next to Aqua Magna - one of these could possibly be the moon, but none of them appear to have its spherical shape, so in my view they are just asteroids / other smaller fragments left over from the Shattering.

Now, I say that we don't have anything else to go on, but that round shape can give us at least a rough estimate of the minimum size it could be. If something is massive enough to pull itself into a spherical shape under its own gravity, it is said to be in a state of "hydrostatic equilibrium". Depending on what this moon is made of, we can use that concept to estimate the minimum size it could be whilst still achieving that spherical shape.

Given that the image is a edit of our own Moon and given that this would exist close enough to Solis Magna that an icy composition is unlikely, we can say that the moon is probably rocky in composition. That puts a rough limit of 600km in diameter for hydostatic equilibrium according to my research (for comparison, our Moon is 3,474.8 km). But that is just the lower limit, without knowing more about the planet(s) it orbits, we can't really set an upper limit on its size or really work out what kind of orbit it would be in.

I've not properly posted about the sizes of Aqua/Bota/Bara Magna fully (not in a way that I'm still happy with anyway), but some rough estimates based on the canon height of the GSR and the Mata Nui Saga images put Spherus Magna at the size of a Gas Giant like Jupiter (which has a whole host of other problems given its supposed to be a terrestrial planet, but that's a story for another time), and something that size could have some truly gigantic moons. Jupiter's moon Ganymede for example comes in with a diameter of 5,262 km, that's bigger than the planet Mercury!

Even its status as a sub-moon can be called into question. Its listed as a moon specifically of Aqua Magna on BS01, but really given we only have this one shot of it we can't say for sure if that's actually the case or if it really just orbited Bara Magna and simply could be seen in the sky from the island of Mata Nui in certain parts of its orbit.

If it is a sub-moon then that puts a constraint on its orbit, as it needs to orbit close enough to Aqua Magna that it is dominated by its gravity rather than that of Bara Magna, but also not so close that Aqua Magna's gravity would tear it apart and form a ring system. But again, without knowing more about its composition and the mass etc. of Aqua Magna, we can't know for sure where those constraints lie. Plus your question was about post reformation, and honestly figuring out what new orbit it would settle in after that mess is a whole other issue entirely.

But screw it, I want to try to answer your tide question anyway. Lets say it is at that minimum of 600km, it has the same average density as our Moon and we put it in the same orbit as our Moon (replacing our own Moon with it) - would it still be big enough to cause tides on the Earth?

The equation for tidal height based solely on lunar gravity is as below:

With a diameter of 600km, that would give this moon a volume of 9.047786842x10^17 m^3. If we say is has the same density as our Moon (3344 kg/m^3) then that gives it a mass of 3.02556992x10^21 kg.

The mass of the planet in this case is Earth (5.9722×10^24 kg).

The radius of the planet is the radius of Earth (6378137 m).

The orbital distance of we are setting is the same as our Moon (3.84399×10^8 m)

Working all that out, that gives a tidal height of only 0.02214151228 m, or roughly 2cm. Barely noticeable.

Not sure how useful that was, but I will probably come back to this once I have figures I'm happy with for the sizes/masses etc. of Aqua/Bota/Bara Magna though, so watch this space.

[lynns-bonkle-blog]

Comparing the Bionicle Heroes (PC/Console version) weapons to their set counterparts.

My favourite is the badass-looking Aero Slicer super-shotgun/gunblade, although Hewkii's severed Pohatu hand "Po-Koro" is a pretty interesting design considering the fact it's not even based on a weapon (although it is strange that it looks like it should be a double-shot rapid-fire weapon rather than a single-shot rocket-launcher).

And no, I have no idea why all the renders are pointing away from the viewer.

One of my Big Art Modelling Dreams™ is to design (and possibly even model) Heroes-style versions of the Nuva, Hordika and Mahri weapons (and some miscellaneous and/or custom ones, as well as more aesthetically-fitting versions of the Piraka's weapons, which just kinda look like low-poly versions of their set counterparts).

[cyanbugremix]

Reductive Audio #7 Spoilers

Uhh this is just a list of my favorite facts from the reductive audio

All d(a)emons are ambidextrous, and Ivan is left-handed, but the cool part is that Ivan became ambidextrous when Vega was controlling him (idk is that cool?? It's interesting for sure)

Brachium has only ever experienced vanilla extract through the memories of the dead.

Caelum on the other hand has made a "Vanilla Extract Tumblr Cake" (one of those polls where people "bake a cake" and it has too much vanilla extract voted for, i think) and it turned out horrible!

In Mario games, Elliot was forced to play as Luigi by Aaron, because of his at home nickname being "Ell/L" and Luigi starts with an L (you get the gist. It sounds the same)(Elliot wanted to be toad tho)(Aaron would play as Mario)

Gavin technically can and has pretended to read a book, he just has never actually committed to doing so

Lasko is scared of heights even though he knows that he could catch himself if he were to fall, so he thinks the fear is annoying

Damien peut parle français (Where did Damien learn french?? At home? School? As a hobby?)

Ash was taller than David, until David hit puberty and shot up (thus the big guy nickname came to be)(Seriously tho. So many boys would shoot up in like 3 months during summer break and be wayy tall when we'd get back to school and I was always amazed that someone could grow that tall that quick)

Oof T-T Sam was close with his Grandma Adeline (Adelene?), and when she passed he went back home to Mont Blanc to say goodbye to her grave (he snuck into the cemetery at night because he was a vampire by then)

Kody was gonna originally be involved with Closeknit, but then his character was taken in a different direction (makes lots of sense. He would be a closeknit guy)

Huxley was the fastest kid in his grade because he was obsessed with Bionicles (specifically pohatu with the mask of speed) (omg i forgot about bionicles until I looked them up again. I never did anything with them but I remember them)

Milo doesn't drink alcohol because he doesn't want to find out if he can get addicted to things as easily as his dad

Avior has HEARD of Gavin but never met him before

Oldest 3 d(a)emons in order: Polaris (Dead), Vega (dead for a bit but alive again), Ursa (elation daemon)

Camelopardalis has been in therapy for 2 years to work through the the bad memories that he had to keep of the whole Vega and Ivan problem (and he hasn't wiped his therapists memories yayy!!)

Arden took out the second most shades (David is the winner in taking out the most) during the Inversion, and Christian and her defended the VIP box through the whole night, even when Christian couldn't stay in wolf form

Kelsey started the Chrissy nickname! (Arden and Asher use it the most)

Aaron, when Elliot's powers first manifested, would imagine what it was like to be magical (He wanted to be a "Warder" and do force field stuff)

BLAKE WAS GOING TO ORIGINALLY BE CALLED CARVER OMG

Zeke (Member of Closeknit) drinks "Cactus Cooler" (orange and pineapple soda)

Xavier (contra-elemental) was originally supposed to survive the inversion

Bailey's mother is beta of the Keaton pack

DJ Anxiety (Hudson) still makes mixes, he just hasn't done live DJ-ing since the Inversion

Gregory Keaton doesn't exist in the Fooliverse (his parents never met in that AU)

Anton doesn't like gore, and bcuz of that he prefers black and white horror movies (modern ones often have too much gore in them) (Such a vibe for him)

Brachium was the last serenity daemon created by Min'Ara's own hands

E'Laetum has a grudge against Vega because Vega was specifically built to be the opposite of Polaris (even tho the dude didn't have a say in his creation)

Quinn sounded like he was interested in turning Darlin' (but they never could figure out if he was serious or not)

Hush was supposed to originally be apart of one of Echo's "deals"

Porter's maker was a dude named Felix, who got executed because Felix seemed to really like creating progeny (as well as being horrible to them)

Alexis resents Porter for becoming William's favorite when he wants someone to go out and do whatever, because Alexis does more "collateral damage" than Porter

(And there's cool Vampire lore from The Summit vampires from 26:18-27:36)

[jurakan]

I am well acquainted with BIONICLE Cthulhu, but please enlighten your other followers on his grotesqueness grandeur

Alright, both you and @edgar-allan-possum asked for this so here we go! Ladies, Gentlemen, Tohunga, and other random people (I stole this joke from a BZPer), Today You Learned about Tren Krom, BIONICLE's very own Cthulhu!

[]

...No picture? Okay, yeah, it makes sense that we don't have a picture.

So starting in 2007, BIONICLE starting having web serials, which gave out stories in a serialized format to fans who wanted more of the characters they loved, and introduce new ones. See, because LEGO had to keep putting out new sets, the main storyline for each year had to focus on the characters depicted in the sets, and often people would get left behind. Lead writer Greg Farshtey did these serials to help fix this problem.

In the serial "Federation of Fear" (which I want to emphasize was definitely a BIONICLE take on the Suicide Squad; I only realized this a couple of years ago), the team goes to an island to pick up some weapons from a cache and run into...Tren Krom, an insanely powerful, hideous, and insane thing bound to the island. He disintegrates one of the team members, and reads the others' minds.

Basically, what we're told is that when the Great Beings (basically, the gods of the BIONICLE world) started working on "the universe"*, they created Tren Krom to stabilize and run the system while it was being built. When they finished, they declared they didn't need him anymore, and put Mata Nuin in charge of the universe to keep it running. Tren Krom was bound to an island and stuck there.

This, as you can imagine, did not make him very happy.

When he reads the mind of the crooks in Federation of Fear, he realizes that the evil plan of the main villain is in effect, and decides that's far worse than any evil plan he'd come up with as revenge on the world that scorned him. So he lets them go.

Except for then later Tren Krom very clearly does care about getting out of there. In another web serial, after the main villain took over the universe (spoiler alert), the heroes send one of their own to Tren Krom to see if he'll help. He switches bodies with said hero, and actually helps out in the fight against evil! Until he gets beaten by the main villain, and the good brother of the BIONICLE Devil makes him switch bodies back.

There is one more serial that's important, I guess? There's one where one of the villains goes to check on him, and the knowledge he gets from Tren Krom inspires him to go talk to his boss and tell him how to take over the universe. Which, uh, is Plot relevant, but you would think Tren Krom would know better than to just hand out that info.

And then another web serial, written after the main line was canceled, kills him off for a cheap murder mystery.

LAME.

Alright, so what to make of this character? GregF admitted that Tren Krom was created as a shoutout to H.P. Lovecraft's work, so the Cthulhu comparisons were intentional (this also might have been how I was introduced to Cthulhu as a character). There are no official illustrations, as he was never a set, and unlike most BIONICLE characters, he had a horrifying appearance with no bionic elements (his face was a giant gooey skull or something that drove people insane). That hasn't stopped many fan artists from giving it a shot.

Also, one of the BZPower comedies, "Day in the Life of GregF", had a hilarious version of Tren Krom that spoke in ALL CAPS.

Tren Krom was wild, man. In some ways, it was a fantastic addition to the mythos, because it developed the world in a completely new way that fans hadn't seen before. I feel like he was ultimately wasted, though, because there was so much to do with this character, and it really didn't get very far. But that's the case with a lot of the serial characters, I think.

Yeah, so, we've got a BIONICLE Cthulhu.

*It's worth noting that in BIONICLE, "the universe" tends to refer to the Matoran known world, and there was plenty outside of that.

[siren-darkocean]

idk if you're still up for answering Bionicle/Hero factory questions, but I got back into both atm and I found your blog. I've uh ... Been lurking a lot and have enjoyed all your posts. So I have a question.

What would happen if Stormer and Ackar met? And likewise with Mata Nui and Furno.

Plus, I've been debating on writing a short fic about it, but do you have any ideas on if Mata Nui saw Ackar heavily injured? Their relationship (canon or otherwise) is by far my favorite dynamic.

*bursts into the room covered in blood as if I haven't spent hours in my bed playing the new Cult of the Lamb Unholy Alliance update for hours of the day even at almost 1 am*

*fixes hair and glasses* I'M GLAD YOU FUCKING ASKED MY FRIEND!

Okay Ackar and Stormer (my fatha(don't judge I see him and Furno as parents to replace my crappy ones ehhh)), Ackar would be mixed ground souly because he's somewhat used to biomechanical beings existed from the GSR Inhabitants and even MATA NUI HIMSELF, but with the heroes being powered by Quaza from Quatros that's a new for him

Stormer I would imagine Hero Factory is somewhat aware of the Spherus Magna inhabitants or any alien species (there's this theory of Hero Factory taking place centuries or eons after the events of G1 Bionicle in tying Hero Factory origins to Spherus Magna (I think it was mainly because Mr.Makuro looks similar to Matau as a Turaga so there's that, plus other stuff I'm not sure rn) but he would be a bit curious to learn of the Glatorian

The two would definitely get along due to their stressed leader energy and bad habit of over working themselves to the bone (or Core for Stormer's case)

Mata and my momma Furno on the other hand-

Mata: why do you remind me of Gresh?

Furno: Who?

Jokes aside of that, Furno would be SO confused (like the Bara Magna inhabitants aka Agori and Glatorian) as Mata explains to him details of his old body and universe like he would nearly short circuit at all of this information (Furno: There was little guys managing your body? Mata: Yes, and no-) processing into his data banks

I think they would get along fine however because Mata just got that lovable personality who no one hates (ignoring the Brotherhood, Tuma, Skrall, Bone Hunters and Metus)

And of that one shot-

I HAVE HAD THAT IDEA SEVERAL DOZENS OF FUCKING TIMES IN VARIOUS WAYS YOU HAVE NO IDEA!

Okay of ideas wise: While Ackar is somewhat used to getting injuries as a Glatorian, the issues of survival on Bara Magna and ofc the double fights in the arena

MATA ON THE OTHER HAND IS TERRIFIED WHEN ANY OF HIS FRIENDS GETS HURT BECAUSE THE AMOUNT OF HIS PEOPLE WHO HAVE DIED OR SACRIFICED THEMSELVES FOR HIM HE IS NOT RISKING ANYMORE LIVES

He is so overbearing to tending to his friends wounds and Ackar and even Berix and Click aren't fucking spared from it

I would imagine something from the Mata Nui's Challenge readers level book link here after the whole thing of Mata Nui defeating the Rock Steed Ackar is injured (it's not as bad as Mata Nui's panic is making it out to be) so its just Ackar sitting through the fallen God nursing his wounds in a panic trying not to laugh because he some reason finds this hilarious to him having someone worry for him like this

Maybe potential venting of the people who died and or sacrificed themselves for Mata Nui in the GSR (because let's be fr man needs to NOT bottle that shit up it ain't mentally healthy) *coughs* even Matoro *coughs* and the whole thing Mata Nui has a mental breakdown (mainly crying because yes) with Ackar comforting him

Also I love seeing people noticing how amazing Ackar and Mata Nui's relationship (both platonic and romantic) is, like it's so fucking good

I'm always down for content especially fics and oneshots of those two

[eboni-napalm]

He shot up to his full height then, taking me with him- and for a split second, that glint of venomous green shone in his eyes again, and I had to fight with every urge in my body to not inhale sharply in anticipation and shock as I felt his warm breath against my face, his mouth just shy of the corner of my lips. “Do you really want this?”

I was in too much of a state of heightened sense to nod, let alone function properly, even though my brain wanted to scream out, “Yes, you absolutely handsome yet idiotic Toa, I want this so badly, I’ve wanted this since we stopped Makuta together and I had to force myself not to do it first, I don’t give a shit that we’re Hordika and that this is probably the so-called “inner beast” taking over our better judgement, I don’t care, kiss me already, please,” and despite me not answering him immediately, he continued.

“If I do this,” he muttered lowly, the hand that was over my heart slowly, agonizingly slowly, trailed up my chest, to my shoulder, my neck, then back down to graze his fingers over the glowing stone again. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to control myself.” He looked up at me properly again, pupils dilated, gaze so intense and heavy that I could feel it in my bones. His face was an inch away from mine and he raised his other hand up to cup my cheek, fingers pressing into my skin. “I won’t be able to stop.”

My forehead rested against his own. Less than an inch, now, and with one final push, I grazed my fingers against his shoulder, eyes lidded, and lips parted in waiting.

“...Then don’t.”

And with that, my back was slammed harshly against the wall and Vakama crushed his mouth to mine in a passionate, searing kiss, metallic lips stealing away the remaining air that left my lungs as he dug his fingers into my waist and cast aside any last fears or cares he had- he wanted all of me, and I was his to claim, willingly and whole. The grip I had on his shoulders tightened until my knuckles practically turned white and I kissed him back with such ferocity and hunger that I could feel the air around us, heavy and thick with carnal urges and desires, and it threatened to completely consume me and swallow me whole.

But I didn’t give a single damn in the world. -- I may not be a solely/mainly self-ship blog anymore but that doesn't mean for one second that I won't gush nonstop about Bionicle (and by extension Vakama who is still one of the loves of my fucking life). This comic-style page I got commissioned of one of the pivotal moments from Chapter Two of my fanfic, A Distant Spark, is probably one of my favorite things ever- I absolutely screamed when I got the finished thing back. <3 (Art is by @MadProjectArt on Twitter/X!)

[boxturret]

The Adverse Affects of Pre-Release Materials

I usually post big rambling posts about bionicles, but today I'm going to do a big rambling post about one of my favourite movies, Steamboy.

And like...themes and stuff.

Have you heard of themes? Things can have them, they're pretty cool.

I know no one will read this but this is for me okay.

In 2005 I was watching the Space channel, now rebranded CTV Scifi, and they had an awards show called the Spaceys where they ranked and awarded media from that year. I recall when Stargate SG1 won one they had a clip of the Thor puppet being controlled by Richard Dean Anderson thanking everyone who supported the show, and that their voices sounded like "tiny farts". I wonder if that's available anywhere or if its lost media now lol.

In any case, they had an animation category and they mentioned several films that released that year, the winner was Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, but one of the nominees was a film called Steamboy, it was just named and they had a tiny clip from the trailer. It was literally just this part:

Really stuck in my mind and I went and looked it up and found the English website, which has been partially archived:

Unfortunately not documented is the previews and clips page, which had several short videos from the movie, notably, I recall, with incorrect character names. It called the main two characters Jay and Miss, instead of Ray and Scarlet lol.

One of the scenes on this page was from around half way through the movie, when the fighting breaks out in the Great Exhibition grounds, and Scarlet decided to stroll across the battle field to talk to the queen.

(I love all the shots where you can actually see the artillery shells flying through the air)

These men in armour come out and engage the British Tanks and one gets thrown by an explosion.

She goes to look at him and sees that he's dead, but she's surprised there was a man in there.

This being my first introduction to the "Steam Troopers" as the dub calls them, would prove a bit problematic for me and my understanding of the film for years to come.

This was 2005, it was harder to find things like this, by some luck after weeks of searching I did find the movie on DVD in a store and could finally watch it.

So now I could see the introduction of the Steam Trooper, which is quite ominous. The London Constabulary comes to break in to the O'Hara Manufacturing Company's pavilion in the exhibition grounds but the doors open and you see one standing there, menacingly.

And as a kid I thought "imagine being the guy told to just stand there all dramatic as the police storm in", thinking it was kinda funny really.

But something always bugged me about the Steam Troopers. They didn't really make sense, mechanically.

Steamboy is a steampunk movie, featuring all sorts of incredible machines with copious amounts of gears and belts and rivets and pistons and they all look very cool, but also there is a lot of thought put un to their designs.

In fact the British steam powered tank is actually based on a real world vehicle, the Hornsby Tractor.

Just stick a little gun turret on the front and you've got it lol.

You can see their power source, how they're propelled, their mechanisms make sense, they're crazy complicated and not really feasible or practical, but they're fun and make sense In the world established in the film.

But Steam Troopers don't!

Now from my point of view, from seeing the preview and seeing it was a guy in a suit, I just looked at it as a suit, so therefore, in my mind, the linkages and wheels and tiny boiler on the back must all be some sort of Victorian power armour, enhancing the wearer's strength in some way.

But it just doesn't make sense, nothing's connected to anything properly for that.

When you see the dead guy some of the wheels are still spinning and all they're doing is making some of the linkages, which aren't positioned to do anything, move around.

It really bothered me for years, everything else in the movie makes sense to me, but not them.

Then a year or two ago I did a little experiment. I watched this movie, which I've seen dozens of times at this point, but really tried to empty my mind of all my prior thoughts and knowledge. Just come at it fresh. And it was really fun! I highly recommend it. You'll never be able to really experience a movie for the first time again, but looking at it through this lens can make you notice things you may have missed.

Watching Steamboy in this way, when I got to the Steam Trooper scenes, it finally clicked. They don't make sense, because they're not supposed to make sense. They're fake. Its all fake.

They're supposed to be automatons.

The scene where Scarlet sees the dead man is supposed to be a big reveal that no, these are just men in suits.

This whole battle is a weapons demonstration orchestrated by Simon, the person in charge of this branch of the O'Hara Manufacturing Company. There are representatives from all over the world here and he spends the entire latter have of the movie trying to sell them stuff even when things start to go horribly wrong.

The whole ominous scene with the Steam Trooper standing there menacingly was for their benefit.

The O'Hara Manufacturing Company has so many amazing machines, they've got submersibles, blimps, actually functional airplanes, all in the 1860s, but its not enough.

They're so driven by greed they're not content to simply sell the amazing machines they have, they have to try and scam even more out of everyone.

It leads to them strapping some tiny engines that just wiggle around a bit and shoot out steam on the backs of some guys in full armour and have them march in to battle pretending to be clockwork soldiers.

This realisation also gave new context to this scene, which is one of the more humorous scenes in the film.

*bonk*

You can actually see these suits much earlier in the film, off in the background in a maintenance area. The Steam Castle, the true form of the O'Hara Pavilion, is massive and much of it was constructed in secret, under water, so they'd require many things like the submarine seen in the same scene and these diving suits with manipulator arms. But in their greed they're trying to sell these clumsy maintenance suits as amphibious battle suits, yet in reality they can't even climb stairs.

The O'Hara pavilion itself is a very clear example of this, its trying to look like a fancy stone building but really its all painted metal, and the shell breaks off to reveal the dark and dirty weapon of war it really is.

The Steam Castle started out as an idea of a mobile funfair and greed perverted it in to become this. This part was plainly laid out in the movie, but its fun to see how the theme was repeated in different ways throughout the movie.

So in conclusion, one of the major thematic elements of the movie was hidden to me for years because of the pre-release media that gave a away a twist before the set up, ruining the impact of it.

Its a tricky thing, seeing those preview materials were what made me excited to watch the movie, yet seeing them directly harmed my understanding of the movie for years to come. I've always loved the movie, its gorgeous, has an amazing sound track and sound design, it taps directly in to the gear obsessed part of my brain, and there's other themes and messages in the movie that even as a kid I noticed, but now I feel I have a much more clear understanding of the movie that I lacked before.

I've had my enjoyment of a few other things be tempered by overdoing it with pre-release materials, so in general once I've decided something is interesting to me I basically block out everything until I've finished it. I don't even read the blurb on the back of books anymore lol.

I highly recommend trying to go at something fresh, with an open mind, even if you can quote the movie from memory and every frame is etched in to your brain, you can learn something!

Some other quick notes:

Compressed gasses being released making things cold is an actual thing, if you've ever sprayed a can of compressed air for a bit too long and felt the can get colder, that's what's going on.

The two main henchmen in the movie are named Freddy and Jason, get it?

Canada is represented in the movie even though that flag didn't exist yet! :)

The PS2 game has an ending where you fight a pair of giant Punch and Judy robots.

The trailer and DVD menu for Steamboy is a song called Full Force, which is a cool song. The first half at least. I edited it a few years ago to remove the end bit which gets weird, and then found that several people also did that, independently. So that's neat.

I like my edit more, but its secret. Its mine.

I can't promise this won't happen again.

[bioshippingweek]

The Plushie Duo (999 words) by bluerosekatie Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Bionicle - All Media Types, Bionicle (Generation 1) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Hewkii/Macku (Bionicle) Characters: Macku (Bionicle), Hewkii (Bionicle), Hahli (Bionicle), Onewa (Bionicle) Additional Tags: Stuffed Toys, Worldbuilding, Gift Giving, Surprises, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Friendship/Love, Love is Canon (Bionicle), Location: Mata Nui Island (Bionicle), Bioshippingweek, Bionicle Shipping Week 2025, One Shot, no beta we die like Jaller, Series: Bionicle Generation 1 Series: Part 27 of Biological Chronicles, Part 6 of BioShipWeek 2025 Summary: Bionicle Shipping Week 2025 Day 6: Surprises Macku makes a surprise gift for Hewkii -- who's also made her something!

[sailorsenshishitposter]

Battle of the femboys

In which Raiden battles Monsoon. Highly cursed.

Raiden (or I should say Jack) had just woken up and was disappointed that there were no beyblades that "he could let rip". He had just listened to some bionicle looking ass mother fucker go on about the importance of memes. "To hell with this!" he thought. "I'll be damned before I let Jack jr. have a tiktok account and start watching skibidi toilet videos!" Then the next thing he knew, an officer had plunged a weapon into his chest. He let out a small moan. CupcakkeI'mHorny.mp4 starts playing.

"Doktor. Turn off my pain inhibitors." Soon a codec window popped up showing a very confused, elderly german man. He begged Raiden not to go through with the decision but in the end relented. If he disobeys the cyborg than he can kiss those left hands goodbye and that just wouldn't be acceptable. He had already moved once and had reconstructive surgery due to his peculiar "interests". If he turned off the pain inhibitors then he could still live a quiet life.

Jack began to moan ahego girl style like in one of his good friend Hal's japanese animes. Since the patriots had taken away most of his body, the doktor thought that it would be best to use the lack of a crotch area to his advantage. No one knew how the cyborg became aroused without a dick but soon he had a soda stream bottle protruding from his nether regions.

He unscrewed the lid and slid in some mentos and diet coke. After tightening the lid back on, he jerked himself like he was using a shake weight and aimed himself at the remaining officers. Within seconds the cap lifted and shot one of them right in the forehead. "Bullseye!" Jack cried. Then the coke began to drown the rest of them like some sort of bizarre bukkake that Pepsiman would be jealous of. Monsoon could only stare in horror. "You've lost your mind."

They had forgotten Sam was there when they heard "Yeah, I'm sitting this one out sorry." He then double jumped to god knows where. Probably to go get more injections for his gluteus maximus. Jack had forgotten that he still had a sword plunged in his chest. He took it out and licked off some blood. "Mmm. Cherry flavoured."

"I've misjudged you. You are like us after all." said Monsoon. Like Raiden, he also had no dick. He then opened up his crotch plate but instead of a soda streamer it was just a juice pitcher. To be more specific, it was the kool aid man. It then came running into Jack and began to wash him away in the warm and soothing sugary liquid. "OH YEAH!" screamed Monsoon. "AND IT WILL CUM LIKE A FLOOD OF PAIN!"

Raiden managed to grab onto a chunk of a building and fling himself back to World Marshal headquarters. "Man, I haven't seen that much red since the time I forgot to go get Rose her tampons." He sighed. A perfectly good couch had been ruined. Oh well. It's not like he hadn't come home before drenched in blood. They would just tell their son that they were replacing their couch again because of his father's work injuries. At the very least it was better than having to deal with his wife's awful cooking.

Monsoon waited for his return only to stab him with his sais. "Does it hurt?" Perhaps he should have thought about the consequentions of his actions. "HARDER!" Jack cried in ecstasy. The cyborg did a double take (which was an achievement of modern medical science since the man had no eyes) and jumped into the air and did the naruto run until there was a good distance between them.

"Look" he said, "I somehow survived during the reign of the Khamer Rouge and then decided that it would be a good idea to join the mafia, and even I think you need therapy!" Jack glared at him with his one eye. "DON'T KINK SHAME ME! AT LEAST I'M NOT A GIANT, WALKING REFRIGERATOR MAGNET!"

Suddenly Sundowner walked outside of the building. "What in tarnation? Christ, what's takin' yeh so long?" Jack was now walking towards his direction. "Well look if it isn't foghorn leghorn. Stop stealing my trench coat look by the way, you can't pull it off." He then began to rub the cyborgs bald head for good luck. "The fuck!?"

Jack then threw an EMP grenade in Monsoon's direction and began to slash at him while Sundowner watched with morbid curiosity. He then pieced all of him together in the wrong places like some sort of child when you ask them to solve a rubix cube. "HEY! STOP IT! SUNDOWNER WHY ARE YOU JUST STANDING THERE!?" His partner let out a chuckle. "Now what was that thing yer always sayin'? Something about exquisite memes? I think I'll go get my camera!"

Sundowner then came back and gave a smartphone to Jack. "Now be sure to get it just right!" The man had positioned himself so that Moonsoon's body was now a human chair that he was sitting in while he held his comrades head out like he was reenacting Shakespeare. Jack couldn't believe he was doing this. He groaned and then tapped what he thought was the picture button but unbeknownst to him, it was the record option.

"Are we done yet!?" asked an irritated Monsoon. Jack then threw the phone at his head, causing the man to fall out of Sundowner's grip. The Alabama war criminal began to holler. "Damn, I think you could be a good pitcher. You know what? I'm so impressed that I think I'll let you keep em damn brains." Wow. That had been easier than he had expected.

"Thanks baldy!" Raiden then used his ninja run to make it to the top floor. Now it was just the other two cyborgs left alone together. "What did he mean by bald?" Sundowner eyed his parter like he was blind. In fact, he was blind. "Are you telling me yeh can't see my head?" Monsoon rolled his eyes (if he could have). Am I supposed to? Most of my body is artificial you idiot!

Sundowner scratched his head as a realization came upon him. "Wait. Are you telling me... that yer not in fact a girl!?" Now Monsoon was the one that was confused. "What? No! Why would you think that?" His partners jaw was left wide open. "But what about that dainty hair and slim build!" Monsoon cringed. "So a man can't take care of his looks?" He would have been offended had the situation not been so bizarre.

"No, it's just... uhhh... excuse me, I gotta delete some pictures off my desktop..." Monsoon began to scream at the man. "SUNDOWNER! HEY, YOU GET BACK OVER HERE!"

[lynns-bonkle-blog]

The intense agony of playing the Bionicle "Free The Band" campaign's godawful games.

Hi! I'm Lynn and I am very sleep deprived. Anyway here's an extremely long-winded explanation for why I can't make a proper archival post about the Bionicle "Free The Band" games, Voya Nui Adventure and Island Investigation. These games are - in my opinion - the very worst Bionicle games, and they are bad and terrible and shitty and aaaaaaaa and here's why.

Part 1: Voya Nui Adventure should be tried in the Hague

Starting off with the one that I consider Irredeemably Bad™. So this is like a twin-stick shooter and I hate it. You start out only being able to play as Matoro, and you shoot fast. That green crystal thingy is a turret, which shoots at a slightly slower pace than Matoro's weapon, and doesn't deal much damage per shot, plus it can be cheesed by hiding next to that rock on the top left. So that's fine. If you go up to that glowing tablet at the top, you unlock the ability to go to a presumably defunct website and download "So Far We Are" by French Kicks, whoever that is.

So then you go to room 2 and oh fuck it's Thok he is there. This is only the second room. Thankfully there's a health pickup, but unthankfully Thok does at least twice the damage of the turrets, and he can move. But that's fine. You kill him and take his coin, which opens the door to room 3.

Fuck room 3. The second you enter it, the turret on the right starts shooting you. Not only that, but you can probably notice that it seems to be glowing.

That's because it's buffed.

This is my health when I took the above screenshot:

And this is it after being hit by a single projectile from the buffed turret:

But UwU, wat dis?

Hell yeah, it's Jaller! Surely he's better, right? So I press space to switch to him, and his stats claim he has "very powerful blasts":

So I try him out and oh his firerate is shit. I still destroy the turret though, and unlock "Just Another Girl" by From Satellite (who?).

I'm missing a bit of health, but that's fine right? So I go up to the next level, which is ice-themed!

The second I enter the room, Zaktan is immediately charging towards me. And worse, your Toa's health-bars are persistent between levels and don't refill when you die, meaning that I basically only have one life. However, you don't have to kill the enemies to progress, so I go south

This room has another buffed turret, but also a health thing and Hahli! However, Zaktan is about to come into this room, so I make a beeline for Hahli, and I manage to defeat Zaktan... only for the turret to immediately kill me, meaning I have to repeat the process again.

Except this time it doesn't work, because of Hahli's mechanics.

See, both the Toa I have had unlocked before this have had infinite ammunition, but Hahli is different. She fires harpoons, which have to be picked up after firing, and she can only hold four at a time. They also have a fairly long travel-time. This makes this section painful. And then it turns out that pressing the change character button immediately after dying (which I did by accident) breaks the game and prevents you from respawning. I am done.

Part 2: Yo Yo please end me

Island Investigation isn't that bad. It is, however, very broken.

Some context; for some ungodly reason, in 2006 there was a crossover between Bionicle and rock-band The All American Rejects. This is a point-and-click adventure game with FPS elements about saving AAR from the fucking Piraka.

Also Kongu mindjacks a Matoran which is Fine™.

I wrote a whole thing explaining this game and included a screenshot but it didn't save so uh. It looks like MNOG but with shitty prerendered Pirakas and weird gradienty item icons, you have a gun, and there are Piraka Jumpscares™. Also Avak is bigger than a house I guess. Play this one, it's completely broken but kinda so bad it's funny.

[randomwriteronline]

part of @cantankerouscanuck's Bionicle/LU AU

The silver bell sang wildly as it swung, its pendulum crying out from within its metallic petal walls as they crashed down upon the disgusting arachnid creatures, causing them to hiss and retreat with dents in their carapace - when they were not left stunned and shuddering from the strength of the sonorous blows.

One of them clamped its mandibles tight around one of arms as the momentum caused it to rear back far too much: Legend hissed as his armor crunched.

If the Visorak had even had the time to gloat to itself thinking it had gotten the drop on the stubborn Ce-Matoran, the hit that smashed it into a pile of scrap and the subsequent exponential worsening in the raw fury of the attacks against the rest of its kindred would have probably had it admitting that perhaps that might have not really been its smartest idea yet.

Legend swung harder, harder, twirling in place until he turned dizzy and stumbled on his own feet. The pain had fueled a short-lived scorn-based frenzy, but now it was pulsing through him, his movements turning more and more sluggish...

He shut his eyes hard; when he opened them, a shield was knocking a Visorak away from him as it tried to jump on his mask.

"What in--!?" he cried out despite his short breath.

"Are you alright?" his sudden ally interrupted him, smacking another spider into the ground. A Rhotuka was fired at them, but he raised his tool just in time: Legend watched as the spinner melted into the metal and shot right back out of it, slamming into a spider that was sent sprawling paralyzed upon the ground.

Well, that was useful.

"I've been better!"

"Not covered in spiders, for one?"

"Yeah, that'd be nice."

"Gotcha!"

Faster than he could blink, the sound of Rhotuka spinners whipped past him; the Visorak fell one by one, most overturned, completely and utterly petrified. Before any of them could try hissing angrily at the two Matoran who'd dared challenge them, they were each thrown off into the waters sorrounding the thin strand of rock struggling to hold on against the waves with their own loud ringing clang as the bell launched them on their jolly way to drown.

Take that, you disgusting little bastards.

He shook out his pained arm with a hiss as he turned back to his sudden ally: "Nice shield," he noted, nodding towards the tool. "And who are you? How'd you get here?"

The other gave it a jostle: "Nice bell! Really loud, and I've got sharp hearing. I'm Hyrule."

"Legend."

"Also nice mask."

"Thanks. How'd you get here?"

"The sound-"

"No, I meant here. On this nowhere place. Is there a tunnel?"

Hyrule tilted his head, confused: "Tunnel?"

"I mean, you're an-" he hissed again, hand hovering near his arm as he muttered a curse.

Without a word, the black armored Matoran rushed closer to him, gently scooting his injured limb on his shielded palm and carefully passing his fingers over it to assess the damage. He fetched something out of his satchel, and with very careful motions he began to mend the damage as best as he could with what appeared to be a makeshift medical tool of some kind - a bit too patchworked to be immediately recognizable.

Evidently Legend had been a little too dumbfounded by the sudden act of kindness, as he was jolted back to reality when the other egged him on: "Because I'm...?"

"Uh, uh... Well, you're - you're an Onu-Matoran. I'd imagine you'd know about... Tunnels."

"Oh - yeah, I guess they would," Hyrule nodded, still perfectly focused on his handywork: "I wouldn't really know that, being a De-Matoran and all."

"Sonics?" Legend murmured, volume of voice dropping in an instant.

"And you're Psionics," the other hummed. His dark pinkish eyes looked up to him, picking out the golden accents on his form, and treated him to a smile: "All about waves, aren't the two of us? Maybe that's why we met here."

"I... I guess. You still didn't answer me."

A shrug: "I walked. I do that a lot."

"So there's a continent back there? Over that cliff?"

"There's an island for certain, but it's not much. Barely anything all over it, I'd say the Visorak horde got here a long while ago and ate anything of value they could find."

"Uh-huh, and how'd you get to such a place?"

Another shrug: "I walked."

Legend shifted, giving him a look: "Alone?"

The other tensed.

Then he tilted his head: "You don't seem to be in company."

"I am." the Ce-Matoran replied. His healthy hand reached up, grazing the red Faxon with a finger. "I am."

He yanked his arm away, finding it not hurting anymore. He looked to find his limb in pristine condition - maybe a little stained, maybe a few dents not too smoothed, but healed remarkably well.

Hyrule watched him move it around with an awed expression on his mask and felt a little better.

"Where did you learn to do that?" Legend asked.

"Oh... An old acquaintance. Wasn't that good, but, eh, I managed to reverse engineer the things he couldn't really do well. Like, you know..." he waved his shield - showing how the wrist joint was jammed into it clumsily, making it impossible to remove it without hurting horrendously. "But I've gotten used to it," he added, casually.

The Ce-Matoran wisely decided not to pry: "Well, you do a damn good job if I may say so myself."

Hyrule smiled: "Glad you think so."

Legend past him, looking over to his mess of a raft: still anchored. Nice.

"Say," he hummed, "If you're all alone on this piece of rock forgotten by the Great Spirit himself, how about I give you a lift somewhere a little livelier?"

"Oh! Oh, that'd be nice, by all means, but I... Well," and the other fidgeted for a moment or so, struggling before deciding to be honest: "Do you think there could be space on there for another Matoran? A... Comatose one, maybe?"

There was no immediate response.

The look on Legend's face was unreadable, and yet spoke louder than any words he might have hurled at him.

Not uttering a breath, the De-Matoran motioned with his hand and brought him to a small cave nearby, just far away enough that the Visorak wouldn't have even spotted it in case the two small warriors hadn't emerged victorious from their scuffle with the horrid Rahi. There, carefully laid in as comfortable a position as the harsh terrain allowed, a snowy armored being remained perfectly still like a carefully spun statue of glass.

Aurora breathed, but could not stir.

There was no sound to reach her anyhow, for the other two Matoran did not speak: they simply collected her immoble body carefully, gently removing her from the uncomfortable bed of rock and dirt, placing her down in the little cramped raft, and setting sail away from that dead sterile island.

-

"Time," she called.

The Turaga did not reply, deep in meditation.

Epona snuck her long snout under Lullaby's arm, looking for pets. She gurgled happily when the much shorter being indulged her.

"Time," the Turaga repeated, "I know you can hear me just fine."

"Maybe so," her brother mumbled.

"Get out."

"As you can see, I am busy."

"You are not."

"A Turaga of Psionics shunning meditation? Unprecedented. Unthinkable."

"You are not meditating."

"And who are you to decide?"

"A former Ce-Toa who can see through your nonsense and lack of sociability."

"So?"

Lullaby huffed louder: "I am your sister."

"So?"

"And leader."

"So?"

That got him a whack on the head.

"Time!" she snarled, completely out of patience: "A ship filled with Fe- and Po-Matoran escaping their homeland has just washed upon Hyrule's shores seeking refuge, the least you could do as Turaga is be there to greet them!"

He gave her a nasty side-eye as he rubbed the top of his mask where she'd hit him: "I believe our Toa are already overseeing their welcome."

"And so should we."

"I don't see a reason for that. Do you not trust Sky, Fable, Groose and Sun to take good care of them?"

His sister rolled her eyes with a long suffering sigh: "Of course I do," she groaned, "The one I don't trust to take good care of someone is you, concerning yourself."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he scoffed.

"All I'm saying is that some company would do you good every once in a while!"

"I have plenty of it."

"Some different company. Not just your siblings, or the Matoran of Hyrule, or Epona - or the maddened Lost Toa."

"Mata Nui protect you, sister."

"What for?"

"Your memory. You should see someone about it as soon as you can - it deeply worries me how despite my reminders you still continue to forget Skally's name."

"Do not change the topic now."

"I only expressed my concern for you."

"Time."

"Lullaby?"

"Get out of this hut and go greet the refugees."

"No."

Typical Ko-behavior.

"It's a good thing I came prepared," she sighed.

Epona wiggled out of the way as she exited the hut again, mood sour but a dangerous heaviness in her step. Time watched her carefully as she raised her head up to the sky and brough her hand to her mouth - and scrambled further into his handmade cave in terror when her yell echoed through the skies.

But it was already too late. In a flurry of feathers and flaps, Sky's crimson red Kahu hawk landed right in front of the door: dismounting from it with a grin that in every other context would have been the most affable sight in the universe, a hulking silhouette of pure Stone marched into the humble abode, grasped his desperately fleeing brother in a hug that would have shattered a small Rahi into several pieces, bellowed a confused greeting right in his audio receptors stunning him completely, and hauled him on his borrowed ride with nary a worry nor a single sign of fatigue.

When the Ko-Turaga came to, he was already flying too far towards the coast to attempt an escape back home.

As such, he resorted to sulking.

Darunia laughed again, genuinely amused: "Oh, cheer up now, brother! You can't wear that frown in front of those poor fellows, they'll think things are worse here than where they came from!"

"Then I'll do all of my frowning on the way there," Time muttered.

Lullaby shoved him playfully: "Better get to that quickly, then. You know how fast Loftwing is."

Her brother just groaned: "Unfortunately..."

The amount of Po- and Fe-Matoran was in all fairness a little excessive for just three Toa to handle, Time had to admit once they got to the port, and made a mental note of sending out word to the Toa Vah as well so they could come help handle the refugees. Swarms of grey, brown, orange and tan were slowly piling out of the ship as though it was bottomless, though a fair amount of them seemed to be injured and were being helped by locals as well.

The crowd seemed a little directionless as it piled onto the dock. Where were the Toa? Ah - there, to one side, he noticed Fable caught up in a conversation with a somewhat antsy and clearly novice Po-Toa while Sky, Sun and Groose discussed something with a pair of Turaga, Stone and Iron respectively. Probably getting some more information on the situation they'd left.

And a little further from them, a blur of black armor was slinking away from the commotion.

Hm.

Unnoticed by his already busy brother and sister, the Ko-Turaga slipped after the stray through the streets of the port.

His target was too absorbed in his own unknown quest to realize he was being followed, scampering off various alleys before eventually deciding he was done staying on the ground and beginning to climb up the walls on makeshift staircases of crates and whatnot to reach the roof of a fisher's store. Time watched intently, amused even, as the Matoran sighed in relief while he sunbathed with his arms outstretched towards the sky as though that could have helped him gather more light onto himself.

After a moment or two, the Turaga kindly hollered up at him: "How's the view?"

The little one jumped, stumbled, fell, and barely managed to hold onto the roof before rolling off the hut and smacking his entire body inches away from Time's feet.

"Uh - it's good, Turaga!" he replied sheepishly, feet dangling in the air.

Time hummed in an interested tone as he moved to stand under him: "Must be good to be back outside after such a long journey," he noted, gently grabbing the black legs and steadying himself so that he wouldn't keel over when the other let go and came to stand on his shoulders: "It's a solid ship, but not many windows... The galley must have been awfully dark."

A groan preceeded the inevitable agreement: "It was," the Matoran replied, muttering his thanks as he jumped off from him back onto the ground. "I could barely see anything! I think I stepped on more feet and bumped into more shoulders in these past weeks than I have my entire life."

"Truly pitch black darkness, if even an Onu-Matoran couldn't navigate through it."

The black shoulders jumped, turning blue, then red, then white.

The Turaga only smiled.

"Uh-" the poor thing fumbled, "Uhm, I- I, it's, er, ah-"

"Calm down," Time waved at him gently, dispelling his worries, "I've believed myself a Bo-Matoran before, I'm in no place to judge."

"A... A Bo-Matoran? But... But you're..."

"Many mysteries elude us already - I could have been a rare color," he just shrugged. "But I've got the feeling you aren't as naive as I used to be, are you now? What is your name?"

"Ah - uhm, it's, it's Four, Turaga."

"Very well. How about we go back to the rest of your brothers now? Certainly your own Turaga and Toa will be worried if they cannot find you even amongst the crowd."

Dot, Daltus and Sumit were a little more than surprised when they turned to see a familiar-looking if much more colorful than usual Matoran sheepishly following after the local Ko-Turaga, as were the now very curious Toa Skyward and Darunia; Lullaby forgot all about the little guest trudging after her brother in the midst of her displeasure towards him.

"I believe you were supposed to greet the Matoran," she reminded him, more than a little piqued: "Not avoid them at the first possible chance you got."

"But I wasn't avoiding them, sister," Time replied innocently: "I was merely helping their Av-brother after he'd gotten lost."

Four shrank a little more into himself when the unknown gazes focused on him intensified their staring, now utterly gobsmacked. Oh Mata Nui, he thought to himself as he treated his unlookers to an apologetic smile and a little awkward laugh: explaining was going to take a while, wasn't it.

-

His first thought as he started to regain consciousness was: I don't remember the ground being this comfortable.

His second one was that he also didn't remember having passed out while laying on his back, swearing he had done so on his stomach instead, nor having been so close to the sea that he could hear the waves lapping almost against his audio receptors.

He opened his eyes. A wooden ceiling greeted his tired gaze.

So did a little gasp at his side.

"Hello!" a tiny voice reached him. He turned his head a little to see a blue mask leaning towards him: "How are you?"

"Hello, little sister," Warriors replied politely. "I'm a little sore, but I'm alright. Did you fix me up?"

She shook her head, but smiled: "I helped."

"Thank you very much, then."

She giggled quietly as he nodded gratefully at her, proud of herself.

"Tell me, little sister-" the Toa winced for a moment as a pang of pain shot through him when he tried to sit up "-How far are we from the coast, more or less?"

The Matoran hummed, forehead all wrinkled up in concentration behind her mask and a thoughtful hand to her mouth: "I don't know... You should ask Mako, he knows everything. But I think it's been about two hours since we picked you up from the island."

Mako? He didn't know any Mako. Then again, there were plenty of beings that he didn't know by name.

He settled for just groaning softly.

Those were two hours lost from their escape. And who knows how long it had taken for them to come back? If they had been far away enough, then they'd destroyed all of that advantage he'd gotten beaten senseless for just to come get him. He'd told her he'd be fine on his own... Ugh!

"Do you want me to call him?" the little one distracted him from his annoyed musings: "So he can tell you how far we are?"

"No, no, little sister, you already helped with that. But if you could get Artemis to visit me here, if she's not too busy, I'd very much like that - I have much to talk about with her."

"Artemis?" another voice arose from the door: "She was there, too?"

Warriors lifted his gaze: standing proudly before him, hands on her hips, was a Ga-Matoran with a furrowed worried look about her. Hands on her hips and head held high, a swagger in her step as she approached his bed, she was by all accounts the image of cockiness - yet a certain young anstiness shined still in her hardened eyes, as though her experience could only do so much against the troubles she had yet to encounter.

And that red vest she bore...

The Toa squinted at her: "Tetra?"

On reflex, she straightened her posture and called out, in the tone of a soldier's salute: "In the flesh and protodermis!"

Despite the pain and exhaustion, he laughed heartily at her display. His fist met hers, and they clenched hands together in a brotherly shake: "Been a while, captain."

"It has, hasn't it, captain?" she grinned back. "How's it feel being on the rescued side for once?"

"Eh - not very comfortable, truth be told."

"What! I save you, welcome you onto my ship, give you our best nurse," (her little sister giggled proudly again at that) "Don't even make you pay the rescue fee in honor of the time you saved me, and this is how you thank me? By complaining?"

"On the contrary, I'm deeply grateful for your magnamity--"

"You better!"

"--It's just that I would have rather not gotten beaten within an inch of my life first, you know?"

She humpf'd, crossing her arms and trying to seem too offended to let his words sink in. Her hands however clenched tight around her armor from the discomfort, and her shoulders tensed with fearful questions she was no doubt wondering how to word properly.

A hushed whisper cut through her indecision: "Who's Artemis?" asked the smaller blue being.

Ah... He had mentioned her, hadn't he? "She's my sister," he replied gently, leaning a little closer to the curious Matoran - realizing only then from the lack of golden accents that she was a Ga- and not a Ce-, as he'd first assumed. "The two of us protected our little siblings on the island you found me on. She wasn't caught in the same fight as me, don't worry - they should be off sailing somewhere much safer by now."

"So she left you?"

"No, of course not! I decided to keep the enemy distracted so he wouldn't follow them." and he winked at her playfully, adding: "I'm handsome enough for that, after all."

Her flustered cackle had Tetra rolling her eyes: "Don't exaggerate with your charm now, captain."

"Why so, captain? Are you jealous?"

"As if! But don't whine too hard when Wind finds out you've been flustering his sister and decides to throw you overboard."

"His sister?" Warriors repeated. He looked back at the little one with a new glimmer in his eyes, something akin to childlike excitement: "You are Aryll? She who sees far into the horizon? Friend of the albatrosses and seagulls?"

Taken by surprise, she nodded shyly.

His smile caused her cheeks to warm a little: "I've heard so much about you, little sister," the Toa said almost reverently. "It's an honor to meet you in person. I've had the chance to hear so much of you from your brother, when I first met him alongside the captain."

"Wind told you about me?" Aryll murmured.

"Of course. He hardly ever shut up about you, truth be told - he is so terribly fond of you. I take it then you've also been rescued, like me? Very daringly, too, as these ruffian pirates are wont to do?"

She seemed to blush beneath her mask.

Her answer didn't have the time to come, though, as a much more shrill voice echoed through the entire ship calling hurriedly for Tetra.

The captain turned sharply and stomped out of the room: "MAKO!" she roared back at her crewmate, "WHAT'S WITH ALL THIS YAPPING?! WE'VE GOT AN INJURED TOA HERE!"

"ZUKO SAW A SHIP! A PRISON SHIP ON FIRE!"

Aryll perked up: "A ship?"

"Fire?" Warriors breathed, already trying to pull himself off the bed.

"IT'S ABOUT FIFTY KIO WEST OF HERE!"

"WHAT'S THE WIND LIKE?"

"STRONG, BLOWING FROM THE EAST!"

"THEN WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, YOU BUNCH OF LAZY LOUTS? FOR THE CINDERS TO SETTLE?! CHANGE COURSE, IMMEDIATELY!" Tetra shouted louder as she hurried back above, barking orders loud enough for them to echo on even as she disappeared into the light of day.

Warriors stumbled to his feet, ready to follow right after her.

A pressure on his knee made him fall back down on the bunk: Aryll pushed him down again for good measure, as though to pin him better to the blankets.

"You're not fixed up yet!" she protested: "You need to rest until your dents are all gone! Gonzo said so!"

"Above deck they could use some help," he replied. His voice was hoarse, his body stiff in order not to start shaking. When he blinked, the image of charred golden armor clinging uselessly to the burning remains of a vessel dragged its teeth down on his brain with the sound of nails on a chalkboard.

"But you're hurt!"

"But I can help. That is what a Toa does."

"Not now!"

"Aryll..." he struggled to breathe for a moment; she noticed it, attentive as she was, and she let him put his hand on her shoulder as he spoke slowly, more for his own sake than hers: "Aryll... My sister... My Matoran... They escaped on the sea. They... If it was... If it is... I need to... Just to... Make sure... That they're... That it's not..."

Aryll squeezed his hand.

She looked to the floor for a moment, thinking deeply.

At last she pulled him up gently, very gently, placing his palm on her head so that he could shift some of his weight onto herself, as though she were a living breathing cane.

"But you need to walk slowly," she admonished him. "Because I'm not fast enough, and you need to rest."

Making their way out upon the deck seemed to take days, and to be quite honest Warriors was very glad the Ga-Matoran had such an unwavering iron will that forced him to adapt to her outstandingly slow pace: his legs shook hard enough to make his knees buckle when he tried to go even just slightly faster, the little one being the only thing between his face and the floor as he almost careened into the latter.

The sun burned his eyes briefly, the many voices shouting all together pierced his audio receptors. The Toa flinched at the assault against his senses and faltered for only a second.

The roar of fire snapped him out of his sensory overload.

In another situation, the pyre would have almost looked beautiful - blooming with such a rich, vibrant red, reaching for the sky with flames so hot they fused with the white of the clouds above them, dancing wildly upon the element that should have extinguished it, coloring the melting metal in glowing tints as though it had been carved from bioluminescent mushrooms. But amongst the flippant beauty of his element he could catch glimpses of carbonized remains, of floating debris that looked too much like pieces of limbs, of charred armor the color of which was completely unrecognizable.

His stomach hit the railing, the impact making him wince in pain: he gripped the wood until the joints in his fingers creaked and sunk deep black lines into it, eyes scanning the waters feverishly. Please, please, please, please...

"Captain!" he heard someone call, and some recess of his mind faintly recognized Wind's voice: "What are you doing here? Get back under deck! You're too hurt! Aryll, you were supposed to watch him!"

"I did! I did watch him!"

"Then why's he out here?"

"He's worried!"

"I'll be worried when he falls over! You know Ta-Toa can't swim! Captain, come on, get back here--"

Little hands wrapped around him and pulled, trying to tear him away.

In that moment, he saw a spot of red in the water.

"BROTHER OVERBOARD!" he shouted as loud as he could. His trembling hand pointed at the large crimson head struggling to remain above the waves.

Tetra's voice yelled something else, but he didn't hear it over his relief as he sank to the floor. It was a Skakdi. A Skakdi. Artemis had no Skakdi amongst the ranks of her ship. It couldn't have been them. They were still out there. They were still safe. He exhaled loudly in the grip of the Le-Matoran and his little sister, and almost passed out from the strain of letting the tension of his worries go.

Another shout kept him conscious - this time from Nudge.

The Bruiser held fast onto the rope they'd managed to toss to what appeared to be the only survivor, one foot planted firmly onto the railing as Gonzo and Senza pulled along with him to get their fellow brute on board; by their side Niko was carelessly hurling ammo with his slingshot in as rapid a succession as he could muster, apparently aiming right at the Skakdi in the midst of being rescued.

"GET OFF! GET OFF!" he was shrieking more afraid than angry, hands trembling wildly, wasting pebbles and marbles and whatever it was he had on hand at that moment.

His captain shoved him off, already having exhausted her patience for his mindlessness, and looked down. Before the gasp in her throat could even finish coming into being, she had already cocked her gun and pointed it into the sea, hand steady, eyes hard.

Warriors peeked through the gaps in the railing, Wind and Aryll following suit.

The Skakdi's hulking form latched the rope tight in his graceless hands as though immune to the burn of the fibers always about to slip through his fingers to horribly singe his palms. The black mass on his back, shiny with sea water, shifted a little like an antsy Rahi caught in a bag -- then its eyes opened, pale green and o so exhausted, as its claws sank further into the shoulders of its host.

It was hard to determine its shape from the awkward angle he was forced into, but as the Toa narrowed his eyes he could swear it seemed awfully close to...

"HORDIKA!" Tetra bellowed. "IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU, YOU'LL JUMP RIGHT BACK INTO THE SEA!"

"Hordika?" Aryll repeated.

Her brother leaned a little closer to her: "Half-Rahi," he explained in a hushed tone, as though the concept itself was too ghastly to be spoken of normally, "Mutated by the Visorak poison."

The Ga-Matoran's eyes took a strange shine. She appeared far from frightened - in truth, she seemed intrigued.

It quickly turned into a grimace of dismay as her captain steadied her stance and righted her aim: "YOU HAVE UNTIL THE COUNT OF THREE BEFORE I FORCE YOU TO TAKE YOUR LEAVE WITH A BULLET IN YOUR FOREHEAD!"

Her warning was answered by a quiet growl.

"WATCH IT! ONE--"

"NO!" the red Skakdi screamed back. The ship seemed to rock briefly from the strength of his shout. "I DIDN'T BLOW UP THAT FLOATING JAIL TO GET MY BROTHER KILLED BY SOME GA-MATORAN!"

Plumes of smoke were starting to leave his hands, drying the humidity from them at an alarming speed.

Warriors thought quickly: he trained his gaze onto the Hordika, watching carefully how its limbs scrambled tighter around the brute, how it grew more and more panicked, how it began muttering with its croaking voice to try and calm the crimson powerhouse.

"And I don't think he'd agreed on your plan to see you blow yourself up to ensure his survival, did he?" he hollered down at them.

The odd pair turned to him. The sizzling palms quieted down.

Good. One crisis averted.

The Toa glanced at Tetra: "I say we pull them both up, captain," he proposed loud enough for the other two to hear: "So long as they both promise to behave in a civilized manner. Like the rest of us."

He heard the angry gnashing of huge, powerful teeth just beneath him; the response however did not come from the Skakdi's crackling voice, but from a slightly deeper one, more tired, leaving the hordika's maw: "We promise."

"Swear on the Great Spirit," Tetra growled.

The pale eyes within the black head shot her a glare, but the beastly thing complied: "We swear upon the Great Spirit. Upon Akamai and Wairuha and Irnakk too, if that helps you pull us aboard faster."

The ship's captain narrowed her eyes.

At a stern wave of her hand, Gonzo, Senza and Nudge went right back to reeling the rope in, pulling further and further until the drenched beings finally managed to crawl, exhausted and panting heavily one atop the other, upon the deck's floorboards.

The bigger of the two hastily checked on his ebony-armored with one hand, making sure he was all in one piece, gently pressing his chest to make sure no salt water was lodged in his lungs. Under his breath he still managed to chuckle weakly as he muttered something about getting a 'true Zakaz welcome'.

Gonzo eyed the Skakdi suspiciously. He sized him up as if looking for something particular on his person, a scar or a broken tooth or a particular shape to the spikes on his spine.

"Say," he finally spoke, leaning closer to Senza: "Don't this guy remind you of the jackass who blew our camp back by Irnakk's Maw?"

The reminder of that humiliating episode had his friend focus on the face still dripping saltwater a little harder: "Now that you mention it," he nodded, "It sure does look like a familiar mug, this one. You ever been to Irnakk's Maw, kid?"

"I have," the other replied without even a hint of fear.

"And did you do something fun there?"

He grinned: "Blew up a camp."

Gonzo cawed out a loud laugh: "An honest Skakdi! Aren't you an oxymoron! No wonder they had you behind bars!"

"But since you've pleaded guilty, let's find a sentence for you."

"Right, Senza, Right! Ah, let's see - we've gone through the trouble of saving you, so we can't undo all that by throwing you overboard again... I say a couple punches to the gut should do it, eh?"

A Kavinika-like growl had them back off as the Hordika stiffened on all four of its paws, fangs glinting through the half open maw.

Tetra grabbed her cutlass; her gaze locked onto the half-Rahi's and they stared one another down, poised in the same manner, perfectly still much like statues yet ready to lash out and strike in the mere blink of an eye.

"Don't threaten my sailors," she hissed.

"Don't threaten my brother," he replied in tone.

Ignoring their stand-off, Aryll evaded her brother's and Warriors' protective grips and approached the mutated being with not even the slightest hint of fear.

She placed herself almost right between the two of them with the widest of grins and eyes shimmering in the sun with excitement: "Welcome on the Tetra!" she just said like there wasn't a blade inches away from her shoulder, "My name's Aryll and I got rescued from a Makuta fortress! What's your names? What did you do to get caught in a prison ship?"

Her spunk evidently charmed the Skakdi enough for him to respond: "I'm Wild. I blew up one too many things - Twilight here didn't do anything, but he happened to stand a bit too close to me."

"So they thought he was in on the explosions?"

"Right on the widgets, sister."

"I got caught trying to keep you out of trouble, little brother," Twilight rumbled, making Wild sputter an indignated sound of nebulous meaning at the patronizing designation assigned to him.

The Ga-Matoran smiled wider: "Neat!"

-

Her head hurt.

Her body hurt.

Her soul hurt.

The ground beneath her was scorched.

She could feel the heat still radiating from it.

Her powers reached out before she could hold them back.

They scowered the wasteland for a thought, any thought, even the incomplete mess of jargon of a confused Rahi.

They came back to her bearing nothing but silence.

This must have been it, then.

Karzhani.

Where unruly, unworthy Matoran are sent.

Could she be anywhere else, after all?

She'd failed.

She'd failed in all the ways she'd been told she might have failed, in all the ways she'd been afraid she might have failed. In all the ways Turaga Rhoam had told her she was not allowed to fail. She'd failed at everything, every single thing: she'd failed her destiny, her duty, her...

Ha.

Ha ah.

Unity.

She'd never been allowed unity to begin with. She'd never been given the chance of working with a team, with sisters or brothers, of shouldering her responsabilities alongside someone who knelt beneath the same weight as hers.

She'd been stripped of it by the Toa Stone, for she had been chosen to be apart from her peers because of it; and perhaps that was, most of all, why she had failed.

She curled into her battered too long form, alone in the wake of her own apocalyptic destruction (had it mattered at all? Had it even been enough? Had it even so much as hurt Vamprah, or had it merely left a bad taste between the Makuta's teeth, soaked in Matoran blood, still tearing into the flesh and metal of her people?) and cried.

And cried.

And cried.

And cried.

Her sobs echoed through the quiet of death.

They echoed, and echoed, further and further away across the scorched land.

Her spiraling thoughts dragged her slowly into their whirlpool, beckoning her like kelpies with their gargling neighs of algae and polished bones on which she was pulled to ride a slow funeral march, deeper and deeper into murky waters no longer blue nor green, only maroon with dense mud streaked by the golden sap left of her people's molten bodies in a cruel parody of their once brilliant color.

A small grip tightened around her armored shoulder, breaking through the watery tension; it tugged and shoved gently, with increasing insistence.

Through the feeling of drowning she thought she heard words.

She opened an eye: a red mask pulled back slightly.

"Hey," the Matoran asked, "Hey, can you hear me?"

Yes, she could have told him, but her mouth refused to speak, and her mind refused to think.

A second Matoran leaned over her to assess the damage on her: "She looks like she escaped the table just before the operation could get in depth," she heard him say, and in a recess of her paralyzed consciosness she found the comparison curiously oxymoronic. Weren't surgeries meant to fix, heal? She felt him gently shift her arm with something that wasn't a hand. "Can you move your head?"

She tried. She nodded.

"What happened to you, Toa sister?"

Pain radiated from her like heat from a campfire.

She watched the two tending to her wince back; the red-masked Matoran, she noticed only then, bore a blue and gold body.

Little brother?

He stilled: his eyes fixed on hers intently.

Survive?

His confusion washed over her. Ah, no - a stranger. Of course. Of course. Nobody could have survived. Of course. But a little brother nonetheless.

He nodded.

"Yes, sister," he said, "Yes, sister."

A sob tore through the torpor trapping her throat.

"Yes, sister. Yes, sister. What happened to you? What happened here? Where are our sisters? And the Turaga?"

Anguish, in long wails.

"No, sister," he hushed her, cradling her head in his hands like the Turaga had stopped doing long ago, fingers trembling as he hissed through her pain: "No, sister. Let's put that off for now, then. Let's fix you up first. How is she?"

The other Matoran had barely flinched at the burst of agony, she realized - as though he had experienced something akin to it before: "She could be much worse," he replied, "But I can fix the least dire things here, and if she can make it to the raft then I should have the tools to handle the worst of it there."

Why?

"Because you're hurt," he answered. His voice cut off suddenly, stunned perhaps by his own answer to the quiet question he shouldn't have known: she heard him shake his head. "Ah - Ce-Toa. Yes, of course."

And they were going to help her just for that?

After she'd failed so terribly?

After all this?

"Sister," her little brother called, tearing her focus back into the present but away from the careful instrument taking care of the wounds on her protodermis flesh: "Sister. Breathe. It will be alright. We didn't even tell you our names. I am Legend. That's Hyrule, taking care of you. What is yours?"

She struggled through her haze, reaching out towards the gentle welcoming warmth the Faxon emanated like a welcoming hand, and answered to him in thought: Flora.