#but ofc vakama is in another situation

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wonder if Roodaka managed to string Vakama along because, amongst other things (hordika brain fog, variegated promises, feminine wiles and whatnot), she posed herself as a mentor to him

Vakama has had like three mentor-like figures before her between Nuhriii, Lhikan and Norik, and the only one that at this moment in time he could have considered successful was Nuhrii on account of the fact that he was the one to teach him mask making and was eventually bested by him, though that drove him to jealousy; Lhikan was a very distant figure mostly for no fault of his own, had no real time to teach him anything, and by the time he's hordika Vakama has grown to resent the fact that he turned him into a Toa apparently ruining his life; Norik tries to offer him comfort and guidance by nudging him into the right direction, but by this point Vakama feels so lost and disoriented and useless that he feels those nudges like jabs and refuses to cooperate

Roodaka instead railroads him sort of like he was a matoran again. she gives him tasks and a certain etiquette to follow and leads him to what she claims is greatness through a series of steps that assure him he doesnt have to think about any of it, that someone else has it under control for him. and he falls for it hook line and sinker because hes just so tired of fucking up and finally someone is telling him as clearly as possible how to succeed for once in his stupid life and he cant let go of the possibility that finally hell achieve something

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I'd like to ask your thoughts on your Foster Parent AU, please!

(scuttling towards you at the speed of sound) WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR ABOUT PARENTAL LOVE AND THE HORRORS

OK so. i. do not remember how this came to me BUT i am half certain it was due to my "the turaga are the mata's parental figures whom they love dearly and are loved by and artakha has lost the custody battle So Severely that he can see them once every two months" view of their relationship (which i have exaggerated in that description for comical effect) and then bloodborne got involved in it bc im watching a blindrun of it

this resulted in what was at first a Superpowered Teens AU becoming a Parenthood And Other Horrors AU. sort of. my thoughts about it are still unfortunately vague and the more i write it down the more incomprehensible it becomes BUT take this mess

Very simply put: six parentless teens, separated from birth but vaguely aware of having five siblings somewhere out there, are serendipitously handed over to six very loving foster parents who all happen to be friends and like to hang out.

except its not a coincidence, their instinctual knowledge of one another's existence is not just a gut feeling, their guardians are very aware of everything thats actually going on but wont say anything, a weird man claiming paternity of them keeps showing up and very aggressively demanding they be handed over to him, and they are not human.

So anyways!

the relationships between the turaga and the mata are the Big Focus for the chunk of story thats like Normal bc. i love them. ofc

Whenua and Onua hit it off immediately despite Whenua being the one whos the most tense abt this whole situation of Taking A Teen In His House - this is partially thanks to the fact that he has a business handling and selling bugs and especially worms and Onua loves being in the fucking dirt as much as possible, so they go on nice hikes collecting crawlies of all sorts and having a fun time bonding over their shared love for beasts that live in the ground. Onua used to get yelled at for being always dirty so hes having a blast with his foster dad who starts shaking and hooting in excitement when his incredibly autistic teen son pulls an entire mole out of the ground and proudly shows it to him so he can identify it properly. Onua has a small pocket that is always SQUIRMING with worms and he hands one over to each of his siblings when he meets them for the first time to... varying reactions (mostly baffled polite disgust, tho Lewa falls in love and decides thats his new pet)

on the completely opposite end of the spectrum, Tahu fucking HATES Vakama at first. he has a reputation for running away to "find his siblings" (nobody believed him) and this old man is NOT going to stop him. as in he literally isnt. Tahu glares daggers at him on the drive home and tells him hell disappear as soon as he can and Vakama deadpan goes alright, can i at least get you a tent first. can i get you a sleeping bag first. can i get you a portable stove first. can i teach you valuable working and cooking skills so you can find a way to keep yourself alive and indipendent first. and he manages to keep Tahu around by legit just preparing him for living alone when he inevitably runs off - which he ends up not doing bc of All That and also Vakama has a FORGE in his HOUSE and Tahu loves fire so much and also hes actually a very cool dad but hes embarrassed to tell him bc he was so mean to him at first. Vakama gets him into glass blowing (so he doesnt try to put his whole hand in the furnace) and he is so so proud of his lil crafts. Tahu gives him a necklace with beads he made and you bet your ass that old man is keeping it on 24/7

Gali has been on her best behaviour for all 15 years of her life and she has so much Insane Wrath in her that shes desperate to keep inside. ofc Nokama (a very mellow linguist who likes to lay on the beach for five hours in her time off) decides its time to teach her the most insane martial arts combination possible and let her go to town on a training dummy until shes about to rip the stuffing out of it until she feels better. then they can do a bit of meditation and go down for her surfing lessons :) Gali was. deeply confused the first time around but Nokama was just like "sweetheart you need that. trust me i do it every saturday its a good way to get the pent up rage down. but do actually talk to me abt whats upsetting you also so i can lend you a hand if i can. that helps too" and wouldnt you know it She Was Right! and Nokama is like so smart and also so stupid and its SO GOOD to be able to tell her "thats a dumb idea" and not immediately get told to shut up. in the course of two weeks and a half Gali's shoulders and jaw finally unclench and shes bitching about school and whatnot and theyre telling each other stupid crass jokes and shes just so happy. thank you mom :) (not pictured is Nokama trying her hardest not to burst into tears bc oH MY GOD IM MOM NOW...... IW ILL PROTECT HER W MY LIFE)

Onewa got handed over this incredibly anxious people pleasing kid who crosses his legs weird to keep them from bouncing and hes like ah..... this one is NOT a sculptor. so he puts off the mallet for a while and tries to see which ball sport he likes the most before letting him loose doing soccer trickshots in the yard for about four hours while hes filing down some rocks into shape. Pohatu then runs twelve laps around the house, passes out, wakes up, runs twenty more laps, eats like a horse, passes out on the couch. thus begins Onewa's quest to get him enough enrichment everyday, which is actually pretty fun and also good for his posture now that he has to Stand Up and Go Places. it takes longer to get Pohatu to act completely genuinely around him bc hes used to some of his snarkier jokes getting him left alone or reprimanded so hes always walking on eggshells, but luckily for him Onewa has No Such Problems and will tell anybody to fuck off and snark back at him playfully and generally just make him feel a lil easier abt being mean. its also very fun to get yelled at by him when racing him bc he gets winded after five meters. Pohatu is still polite but by god if Onewa's influence isnt turning him into a lil bit of a bastard. and we love him for it

Kopaka and Nuju's first interaction was not talking for an entire day and then, at breakfast, Kopaka asking him "are you deaf?" and Nuju replying "are you?" and those were the first words they ever said to each other. and they continued to keep this pattern of minimal conversation for like three months. possibly longer. Nuju is trying very, very hard to remain detached for Reasons and i can tell you already that he is failing. he is respecting Kopaka's space n interests n introducing him as his "flatmate" instead of foster son bc Kopaka is refusing to call him dad at first, but he is NOT saving himself from getting deathly attached to this edgelord. He Is Not. he got Kopaka into photography by handing him a professional digital camera and telling him to do some nice shots so he can print them later if he wants, and Kopaka did just that and turned out to be VERY good at it. now if you look at the walls theyre covered in his photos. Nuju the unflinching astronomer never comments on them but prints them out all fancy and gets them in frames and all. he has set them up as his wallpaper on All Digital Devices. they Do Not talk about this. Kopaka is very flustered about it actually. not that hell say it of course, theyre the same in that regard lmao

Lewa on the other hand starts calling Matau dad after roughly two hours. he has Imprinted On Him and dad has Wholly Accepted That. it helps that the kid is as chaotic as him and loves to listen to him tell him abt his old days as a stuntman while hes custom modding motors and bikes. he very quickly realizes, however, that Lewa needs to be in his natural habitat aka At The Skatepark or he will start peeling the paint off the walls with his bare fucking nails so he puts a pair of rollerskates on that beast (plus protective gear) and unleashes him upon some unsuspecting ramps. he treats his practice like its the olympics. im talking full commentary, arbitrarily pitting him against random kids, and screamed cheering that scares off several smaller children and gets him ugly looks from the other parents. Lewa is soaking in that attention like its a hot bath, hes having the time of his life. Matau is also... surprisingly? good? at making him feel safe? Lewa has vivid night terrors and Matau knows how to ease him back down from the fear and panic without being silly or dismissive about it either. like hell lay down with him if it can help even tho Lewa is techically too old for that by now and just not. make a fuss of it

so anyways things settle into normality, the kids meet each other via their foster parents bein very close pals and become friends, theyre hanging out, weird elemental stuff happens sometimes but its so minimal they dont even notice it really (the turaga do, and theyre monitoring that closely)

and then Artakha shows up.

and Artakha's mere existence ANYWHERE in the kids' sorroundings is enough to make the turaga incredibly on edge and territorial. which in turn, together with Artakha claiming ownership over them, clues the mata in that something is going on and that it is not normal at all.

Artakha is. oh boy. he is certainly A Guy. he is incredibly cold, unfeeling, relentless in his insistence that the kids come with him. his skin is excessively smooth and his movements feel calculated in a way that is hard to describe. his hands are always cold. he seems to be a scientist of sorts, or at least he dresses in a way that reminds of a stereotypical scientist. he does not refer to the mata as his children or as people in general, but he claims to have made them and as such demands custody. he never touches them, but being near him stirs something confusing in them. he instigates a visceral reaction from the turaga that makes them almost literally bark at him by simply being in their line of sight. its so bad that their worry and discomfort is literally physical and they will sometimes puke or get a fever during or after an interaction with him. its like he activates some kind of lizard brain response from them.

he puts so much pressure on the kids that the previously dismissable element-related strangeness ramps up in intensity together with weird dissociative episodes to the point its genuinely getting scary.

Tahu steps into the spent furnace and immediately ignites a flame. Onua tries to bury himself and almost digs through a sewage tube. Gali falls off her surboard and does not resurface for half an hour. Pohatu clips through a block of marble and has to be carved out of it. Lewa leaps off during a grind and he just disappears into thin air.

Kopaka becomes snow.

One night Nuju feels a sudden cold wind coming from inside the house and runs straight into Kopaka's bedroom praying it hasnt happened and find only a small tornado of snow violently tearing the place apart. hes despairing over losing his boy when he notices something that looks like a hand trying to reach out to him - so he grabs it and pulls as hard as he can, and the hand slowly grows an arm and an elbow and a forearm and hes yanking as hard as he can until he finally rips Kopaka out of the snow and falls to the ground with him. he hugs him as tight as he can and tells him how wonderful hes been, fighting back like that. then he notices, to his horror, that Kopaka has gone into cardiac arrest.

in five different households the mata instantly know something has happened. they dont know what, but they know its bad.

minutes after Gali tells her this, Nokama gets a call from Nuju. she drives herself and her daughter to the hospital to find her friend bawling his eyes out about his boy, his little boy, trying to tell her how it happened and how he almost killed him and while Nokama is trying to calm him and call the other turaga Gali sneaks off to see Kopaka, who is stable but catatonic. as the turaga arrive with the mata in tow, the latter all gather around their brother: touching him seems to let him live through them (or is it the other way around?) and he begins getting out of his vegetative state while they move him around and speak his thoughts as though they were him

which is. you know. Not Normal

so this extremely unnatural situation (and Nuju holding Kopaka and kissing his face like his life depends on it and let me fucking tell you It Just Might) is the perfect time to talk about WHAT in the FUCK any of this is about. you know. just in case all this happens again.

as it turns out, Artakha IS a scientist and he DID make the mata. the reason behind this is still unknown to the turaga, who know him as they were previous test subjects of his for the same project who managed to escape after essentially being sequestered - the main difference being that they were humans who underwent the side-effects of what he claimed to be a "vaccine" of sorts, whereas the mata were physically created in a laboratory and are something else. their bets were on very advanced robots, since the facility they were in did have some robot-making stuff. going back to the turaga, whatever the vaccine was had meant to elevate them in some sense or other; what it did was, effectively, giving them the ability to undergo a very painful transformation when encountering specific triggers. this also led to more or less useful sidepowers, like the ability to understand a "star language" and in Vakama's case getting The Visions! You Know The Ones. these two combined clued them in on the creation of the mata, and they decided that they would NOT have allowed Artakha and his buddy* to pull some shit on what the stars essentially described as newborn children. their plan was to break into their facility again and steal the babies and maybe raise them?? try to???? that seemed to be the plan in the stars?????? but effectively they. uh. Dont Know What Happened. they just collectively woke up with the knowledge that the kids were dropped off to the fostering/adoption system. between them making a plan to go get them and After there is a giant black hole and they have been desperately trying to find them again for fifteen years to try and give them a normal life away from everything as like. an apology for being born in such terrible circumstances

*wait Artakha has a buddy? yes! apparently! its hard to explain. there was certainly a second person, but the turaga never saw them properly. its possible they were one of the triggers that caused the transformation, as their memories get muddled if not just ripped away from their minds while transformed

from here to the next part of the story there is a gap of plot that i Do not exactly have in mind. the mata definitely experience the same thing as Kopaka, becoming their element and needing to be physically taken out of it before they are lost completely in it. Artakha might actively trigger this a few times, for example with Lewa (who kicks his ass as a result) and generally becomes much more aggressive in his pursuit of the kids while the turaga do their best to keep him at bay

AND THEN ITS FACILITY TIME. i do NOT know how they get there i just know they DO and the HORRORS are coming

first of all: the place is effectively some kind of very powerful observatory around which some insane sci fi bullshit was built. here the mata and turaga find themselves pursued by Artakha as well as his buddy - an enigmatic woman named Velika who observes them through the cameras and eventually corners them in a specific area of the facility

before that, the power briefly goes out due to the kids trying to make Artakha lose their tracks. during this time, Gali finds a locked door filled with medical equipment meant to keep someone alive through a coma. the room is covered in dust, very quiet, and there is a bed in the middle of it. someone is clearly on it. when the lights come back up the machines restart and she is able to see the state of the body on the bed just as a monitor loudly announces a flatlining. it is not shown, but baby you can bet that it is Not Pretty.

This, as they will find out later, is Karzhani.

who is a researcher who once partnered with Velika and was then replaced by Artakha.

Velika and Karzhani had different fields of expertise, essentially having an equal split between studies of the mind (Velika) and the body (Karzhani). while running completely different tests they had by complete chance made tentative contact with some kind of ineffable thing which they dubbed "the great spirit": this mostly unilateral relationship (as the great spirit showed very little responsiveness at their probing, providing them what they asked in an incomplete way and rather distractedly) very quickly consumed them, and from curiosity they slowly developed completely different obsessions. Velika remained focused on the strange creature and her studies, growing an unhealthy desire to bring the great spirit down to dissect its brain as she slowly stopped viewing living beings as sapient and began seeing them more as a series of increasingly more complex puzzles for her to crack; Karzhani, who instead had been heartbroken by his inability to have children, began obsessing over the concept of fatherhood and the possibility of creating his own offspring from scratch through the energy and materials they were picking up from the contact with the great spirit. These obsessions coincide in a singular project when it turns out that, in order to bring the great spirit to them, they need a number of sentient minds made with the aformentioned materials to "open the sky" beforehand - hence the idea to create the mata

Velika and Karzhani were on amiable if somewhat apathetic terms before getting their brains boggled by Knowledge Beyond Human Comprehension, but afterwards Karzhanis obsession with parenthood got so bad that he sort of deluded himself into believing Velika was going along with his fantasy of becoming parents and started talking about her like she was his wife who was 100% into his goal, which gave Velika INCREDIBLY BAD VIBES so she decided to replace him. by essentially putting him in a coma, extracting his consciousness, altering it to fit HER goals, placing it in a robot body which shed convinced him to make (bc she cant make bodies, thats his deal) and just leaving the real Karzhani to rot in a vegetative state as like a side experiment. bc as mentioned. she wasnt exactly sane either.

the result of All That is Artakha! who is incredibly despondent to and barely tolerates Velika since she regards him as another side experiment instead of a properly sentient if artificial being. he is essentially a refined version of Karzhani, though Velika was unable to eliminate his possessiveness towards the mata - which was useful to find them but becomes a problem when he refuses to let her use them for her alien contact attempt

so she brutally kills him by disabling his bodily autonomy and throwing him in a shredder as he screams in morse code for help

Livestreamed for the kids and turaga to see!

Because She Is Totally Normal

and speaking of unnecessary cruelty she decides that shes too lazy to trap the mata and go get them herself, so she triggers the turagas transformation to use them as guard dogs fetching her the kids <3

slight problem in her plan being that the turaga get so stressed about this that they manage to slow down the process enough to throw their children to safety aka as far away from them as possible and give them at least some instructions on how to deal with them from their own experience and what little memories dont get blotted out by the transformation. once theyre fully gone tho they are Terrifying As Hell Beasts and start hounding the children like starving bears while the poor things scuttle away into the ventilation and Velika watches the whole thing with great interest

during this escape Lewa ends up finding their seventh "sibling" - that being Tren Krom, made entirely from cosmic material and technically not yet born as he is a failed first attempt by Karzhani to make a child. hes the one whos been pestering Lewa with all those fucking night terrors like a git in the attempt of getting him to find him and let him just stop existing in peace bc hes tired of this not-life not-death situation hes in

hes the most aware of everything thats going on due to being such a simple organism that the cosmic knowledge doesnt faze him. he reveals to him Velikas plan of getting the great spirit in this realm, as well as the fact that the great spirit itself does Not have a body and will have to inhabit one, possibly that of one of the mata (Lewa Will Remember That). before Lewa shuts his containment down and lets him drift to sleep Tren Krom also tells him that Karzhani would have been a terrible father for them, and it was for the best that the turaga got them out of there and still tried to give them a normal life despite everything going to shit so quickly even years after theyd last seen them as itty bitty beasties

speaking of the turaga, they DO each corner their respective mata eventually, bc theyre big terrifying monsters and those are highly stressed teens panicking as they try to scramble away, and they DO NOT HURT THEM nor bring them back to Velika bc that idiot did not account for THE MOM/DAD INSTICT. YES THE HORRORS ARE INEFFABLE BUT SO IS PARENTAL LOVE BITCH.

Velika, loading a gun: ah dangit, they were such a fun experiment

SHE DOES NOT KILL THEM DONT WORRY but she does knock them out and wound them enough to incapacitate them so she can actually get her hands on the kids and drag them into her Fucked Up God-Calling Contraption

she fires it up, the kids almost get atomized by it for a moment as their elemental part gets almost torn out of them...

aand then. it.

doesnt do anything.

the whole process goes through successfully and then everything stops, and the kids are catching their breath but still alive, and nothing happens. to say Velika is anything less than fucking pissed would be an understatement.

her up until now eerily cheerful demeanor drops. she starts checking her machinery and data trying to understand what went wrong, and all she gets back is that, technically, everything went perfectly fine. she turns to the kids who are still horrendously weak, shaking them and yanking them and demanding an explanation because it HAS to be something THEY did that caused this (she is only partially right*). shes pacing angrily everywhere. what the HELL did you do. WHERE is the god i wanted to dissect. im going to kill you. you damn kids. and why am i cold all of a sudden. (puts hands on her neck) wait wheres my pulse. (checks properly) holy shit i have no pulse.

she then spends about. i dont know. ten minutes? slowly going insane as she loses control of her body piece by piece. she reverts to a giddy scientist except now shes very audibly panicked about the situation, and loudly dictates the description of her demise to her computer as if it was another experiment. she ends up almost completely paralyzed on the floor snarling orders at the mata to come pick her back up until she finally stops breathing and hushes completely

and then her voice rises again. but its not her

*because in the brief moment while the mata were closest to getting Fucking Spaghettified, their supernatural bond shared the info Lewa had learned from Tren Krom and managed to contact the great spirit as he started looking for a body to inhabit in order to come visit, directing him to Velika instead of any of them :)

they didnt fuckin know that would have KILLED HER bc the great spirit DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO USE A BODY and Velika was VERY MUCH UNAWARE IT WAS THERE so to stop her from hogging the controls it just SLOWLY SHUT DOWN ALL ORGANS

so this cosmic entity is just There, On The Ground, calling for them through Velikas mouth without moving it bc as mentioned it does NOT know how to use a body. it knows theyre there bc they called it but it doesnt know how to move its eyes so he has no clue where they are but he wants to see em :( its been a while since its seen those six stars and it was so happy to hear their voices again so it was really looking forward to seeing them :(

except the second it sees them (when they manage to get up bc theyre. struggling) the cosmic horror experiences the Cosmic Horror right back! because it Does Not Have a body, and it hasnt seen any body, ever, and all this skin and flesh and bones and hair and stuff is SO absolutely nightmarish that not only does it not recognize the kids, as they are humans, but it also just leaves back for whatever recess of space it came from in no time. all this fucking unethical as hell work and descents into madness and then those two/three idiot scientists didnt even realize their alien mightve had this bad of a culture shock and felt compelled to get out in less than two minutes. fuckin hell.

the kids sort of let everything sink in very quickly. because goddamn that was a lot. and then they remember OH NO OUR PARENTS and hurl themselves back to the turaga to make sure theyre alright bc theyve had enough trauma already for today theyd rather their guardians be alive and possibly not big terrifying monsters anymore

theyre alright :) they get to hug their kiddos tight

and then i guess they all go to the Fucking HOSPITAL and as soon as theyre all safe and sound and fine they can take a fucking break

and that is. an absolute clusterfuck of an au dhgjsgdgkf

it sounded better in my head. damn

anyways take this hellish thing hope you find SOMETHING of value in it bc im slowly clipping through the wall thinking about it