#high-quality welding | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ilsanslut · 1 year ago

Text

꒷♡꒷ TREAT YOU BETTER!

♰ featuring: sae itoshi + rin itoshi (mentioned) [blue lock]

♰ note: this one is a DOOSY and i'm not even kidding when i say it took me 9 hours and 45 minutes to complete this, over the course of two days of course. However, as my first time ever writing on tumblr, i decided to go all out! that being said, it would mean a lot to me if you would support this work by reading, liking, and reblogging!

sypnosis: why be with his lukewarm little brother when you could be with him instead? wc: 6.6k content/trigger warning(s): 18+. fem/fem-bodied reader. POST BLUE LOCK. sibling rivalry. implied thick/chubby!reader. sae is mean. jealous!sae. bully!sae. rin is 19. sae is 21. CHEATING. degradation. unprotected sex. fingering. squirting. rough sex. DUBIOUS CONTENT. spanking. dacryphilia. slut shaming. groping. implied size kink. minor angst. hair pulling. ONE face slap. pussy slapping.꒷꒦ view the second part here: part two.

Coming home for the holidays, birthdays, or other special occasions is somewhat of a family tradition that enables people to slow down and focus on spending quality time with loved ones. These kinds of celebrations give families that may otherwise be estranged from one another due to work or geography the chance to reunite and enjoy each other's company. And this reasoning was no different in the Itoshi household. What was the occasion for this month’s gathering? Well, it was Mama Itoshi’s birthday, of course!

You see, you have known Rin and Sae Itoshi since you were all very young. Your mothers were best friends, and by default, that meant that you three would become close as well.

Growing up with the Itoshi brothers, on the other hand, was . . . interesting, to say the least. Where Rin found your presence to be refreshing, Sae found you to be a nuisance. You didn’t care for football; you got in the way of his practice; and you were a girl. He always thought you were too weak to play with, and he didn’t hesitate to make his feelings known to you. Pulling your hair until you screamed, pushing you around when you weren’t even in his way, and calling you mean names until your little E/C eyes welded up with fat tears were just some of the things he would do to torment you. Had it not been for little Rinnie stepping in and protecting you from his brother’s outright bullying, Sae most likely would’ve continued until you cried to your mom about how mean Sae-chan was to you. But you would never do that. Your little crush on him would never allow you to get him into trouble.

Nii-chan! Don’t be too mean to Y/N. You’ll make her inner crybaby come out!

When Sae was especially cruel to you, Rin was always there to lift your spirits. He would tell you not to worry about his "meanie Nii-chan," take your hand and wipe your tears and snotty face, and lead you up to his room where you two could watch movies and play action figures away from his brother's taunts. Even if he could not take you away right away, for instance, if you three were at the park, he would always come and ride the swings or the big slides with you just to make you happy. Despite Sae’s every protest about how you were nothing more than a distraction to him, Rin, and football, you knew that your friendship was sincere and unbreakable.

As you three went through the ups and downs of childhood, you also weathered the storms of adolescence together. Sae left for Madrid, leaving you, Rin, and your previous feelings for his older brother behind to navigate the social awkwardness of junior high and share in each other's accomplishments while he was with his football team and you were at your respective clubs. Your friendship was a source of strength during those formative years, providing solace and understanding when the world seemed confusing.

As you two approached your high school years, something began to change. Accidental touches felt more like fleeting sparks, while innocent glances became lingering stares. Neither of you fully comprehended your newfound feelings, tiptoeing around the unsaid emotions that seemed to glimmer between the two of you until the day Rin asked you to be his just before entering Blue Lock. Now, for the past three years, you have been a happy couple, embarking on the dreaded hell of adulthood and the next chapter of your lives hand-in-hand.

Back in the present, the two of you were glad that Rin finally had some downtime from soccer—well . . . more so you than him. Even after the events of Blue Lock, he and Sae remained rivals, seizing any opportunity they could to humiliate each other on the field. That being said, Rin was almost always in the gym, meditating, doing yoga, or practicing his skills to pass the time. It was nice to be able to spend time together without the stress of his next upcoming game or press conference.

Because it was his mother's birthday weekend and all, she would, of course, invite her boys to come to stay with her and their father for the occasion, which included you too since you were Rin’s girlfriend. However, in the few days that you and Rin have already been at his childhood home, Sae had yet to arrive, and no one had heard from him since he texted his mother that he was on his way to the airport to depart. Regardless, the family was busy finalizing plans for their mother's big day. Mr. Itoshi was at the bakery finalizing the details for his wife's cake, Mrs. Itoshi was out for brunch with your mother, and Rin had gone for an afternoon jog because "staying cooped up all day will turn him into a lukewarm lard ass," in his words. As for you? You had just begun to rise, completing some housework in one of Rin’s old jerseys and washing the dishes on which you and Rin had just eaten a delicious breakfast.

After completing your tasks, you made your way back up the lavish stairs of their home with every intention of going back into Rin’s childhood room that you two were sharing for the weekend when you froze. Your gaze traveled to the opposite end of the hallway, to the closed door whose presence loomed in the distance—Sae’s room.

Memories from your childhood flashed back to you, of you watching him and Rin play all too violent and scary zombie video games, rewatching his matches, and, most begrudgingly, the numerous times he nudged your head with his foot and tousled your perfectly styled hair just to get a rise out of you.

Cringing internally at the past memories, you took a further step in the direction of Rin's room before hesitating once more.

It wouldn’t hurt to take a little peek inside Sae’s room, would it?

Despite your better judgment, you shuffled over the closed door and paused with your slender digits loosely encircling the handle. Your stomach churned and your heart thumped in your chest as your inner voice warned you not to enter another person's private space without their consent. But hold on—why were you getting anxious? Who was going to catch you when no one was at home? Turning the knob gently, the heavy oak door would give way with the tiniest of creaks, revealing a rather uninteresting-looking room. But given that Sae had rarely if ever, been home since junior high, it only made sense for it to be so plain. Aside from the plethora of trophies, medals, certificates, and framed photos that lined his dresser, what made it even more amusing was that those were only the leftovers from what could not fit in his trophy case beside his wooden dresser, which housed some of his youth team jerseys and junior trinkets.

You crept further into the cold room, wrapping your arms around yourself, and shuffled over to the plethora of awards from Sae's tireless efforts. As much as you weren’t fond of him, you had to admit that it was beyond admirable that a child was able to accomplish so much in so little time. He possessed a natural talent that professionals would kill for and others were envious of. Even though you were never interested in the sport, you envied him for being so naturally gifted at something he was passionate about.

“Some ‘monster genius’, huh?” You scoffed to yourself as your gaze fell on the last photo of Sae and Rin playing on the same team together before their relationship fell apart. Oh, how you miss those good old days of your youth.

“The fuck are you doing in here?”

Coming from behind you, an all too familiar voice startled you out of your reverie. Turning around, your wide eyes came to rest on Sae's form, which was motionless in the doorway, his stoic visage forever unamused, and his overnight shoulder bag resting by his feet.

When did he come in?

More notably, he’s . . . changed from the last time you’ve seen him since the U-20 vs. Blue Lock game three years ago. He was a bit taller, probably around 6’2” now. Because he was wearing a long-sleeved white compression shirt and gray sweatpants, you were able to see that his muscles were more defined than before, with every ridge and curve pronounced more vividly. His maroon locks had grown a bit longer, with his fringes now reaching slightly beyond his chiseled, clenched jaw, though his bangs remained forever lopsided and flipped back. And his turquoise eyes—had they gotten even sharper since the last time you'd seen them? The way they were glowering down at you, it was almost as though they were piercing right through your very soul.

“You deaf or something, you half-brained moron?”

Your eyes rolled exasperatedly into the back of your head as he rudely interrupted your thoughts. Only ten seconds after you reconnected, here he was spewing insults your way.

“Nice to see you too, Sae.” You grumbled sarcastically, internally dreading what this weekend would hold in store for the both of you.

In response, he hummed, remaining motionless in the doorway as his teal eyes bore into you with something unknown. The truth is, while you were distracted by his physical appearance, he was ogling you in the same manner. You had grown since the last time he’d seen you when you were back in high school. Your once innocent eyes now had a glint in them that could only be described as nubile; your once round cheeks had slimmed a bit to fit your maturing features; and your body . . . Damn, have you really grown over the years. You had developed a more feminine frame, with fuller thighs, widened hips, larger breasts, and a more prominent ass. You had developed into a truly breathtaking young woman, despite how much he hated to admit it.

“Almost thought you weren’t going to show at all.” You sighed, lazily checking your nails. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“I live here.” His voice was deadpan and monotone, yet it held an underlying hint of irritation. “All these years have passed since grade school, and you’re still as braindead as when you were a child.”

“And you’re just as much of an asshole as you used to be.”

You resisted the urge to sneer, not wanting to give him the satisfaction that he was getting under your skin, as you dropped your arms to your sides. When you made this motion, his brows would furrow, and he would cast a scrutinizing glare at your choice of clothing.

Talking to him was futile, and you did not want to be in this room any longer than necessary now that he was there. “Good to have you home, genius.” You spat sarcastically, attempting to push past him to exit the room, when all of a sudden his large hand would seize your bicep, halting your steps.

Your head snapped to him, your gaze a mixture of frustration and confusion as your lips parted to shout a rebuttal his way; however, upon seeing the blazing fire that had ignited in his eyes, you hesitated. His eyes narrowed to thin slits, like two fiery coals burning fiercely within his sockets. The intensity of his gaze was enough to send shivers down your spine, making you acutely aware of the gravity of his sudden wrath. His jaw clenched tightly, showing the strain of controlling his rage, and his brows furrowed, forming a menacing V-shape above his oculars.

“What the fuck are you wearing?” He seethed through clenched teeth, his voice deep and full of poorly contained malice.

You blinked. Your jaw dropped as you gawked at him, beyond perplexed. He had caught you so off guard that even you had to check what you were wearing to make sure you were not wearing anything objectionable. Nothing worth offending—fuzzy black pajama shorts that hugged your plush thighs, plain slippers, Rin's worn-out football jersey.

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, you coy little slut.”

That silenced you effectively. Your eyes enlarged—almost lamblike—and your pretty lips drew in a subtle gasp. Any previous spark that had been ignited within you had quickly diminished, choosing silence over tossing more gasoline onto Sae’s roaring flames.

It appeared as though his entire being was directing his wrath into his single, piercing gaze as every muscle in his face tightened with each passing second. His lips, which are typically flat or curved into an unamused frown, were now deep-set, corners tugging into an awful scowl.

“Why are you wearing that lukewarm loser’s jersey?” When you should be wearing mine?

Now it was your turn to be infuriated as he insulted your boyfriend—his brother—the same person he had thrown out like garbage all those years earlier. Your heart was pounding so loudly in your chest that you could hear your blood pumping in your ears.

“So I’m not allowed to wear my own boyfriend’s jersey now, fuckface?” His gaze faltered. “You going to call me names for that too, Sae? Pull my hair? Spit in my face? Huh?”

“*What did you just say?”

“I said are you going to—”

“No, you cow-titted bimbo. The first thing you said.” He leaned in closer to your face, his eyes owlish and unblinking since you opened your mouth. You could smell his minty breath from the gum he had been chewing wafting into your face, “Say it again.”

“I’m not allowed to wear my boyfriend’s jersey?” You repeated, confusion etching your tone.

“That.” He snarled, his voice elated in a sick way, as though he had just found out the answer to some legendary riddle.

The hand that had been gripping your bicep now violently jerked you to the side, shoving you into his door. Before you had time to react, he crowded your personal space as his forearm pressed against the wood above your head, allowing you to smell the faint scent of his expensive cologne. “When did that happen?”

The initial fire that fueled his rage now transformed into a different kind of heat, a simmering and bitter envy that gnawed at his insides. He found himself grappling with conflicting emotions - on the one hand, he was somewhat happy that his blockhead of a brother managed to get a girlfriend, but on the other hand, it was you. The same girl that he had been pining over since you were first introduced to him all those years ago. The same girl that he thought was prettiest when she pouted at him with fat tears in her eyes and pleaded with him to be nicer to her. The same girl that consumed his thoughts 24/7. The same girl that he jerked his cock to at night after seeing how her fat tits in that all too small jersey bounced every time she cheered for his brother at that stupid game against Blue Lock. The same girl that, on all of those lonely nights overseas, he wished that, instead of fucking his fist, he was pummeling himself deep in your sopping wet cunt. The same girl that he was about to ruin before his brother got home from his whereabouts.

“Before Blue Lock . . .” Your voice was hushed, barely above a whisper, as though you were afraid of awakening a savage beast.

Three years. Three fucking years, and no one told him?! Not his mother, not his father, not Rin, not your stupid little social media (that he may or may not have been stalking) where you posted pictures of cats, candid photos of your friends, or whatever the fuck you got at your local coffee shop that day—not even you.

His once-obvious fury and visceral expression subsided, simmering beneath the surface in a contained inferno that burned with a ferocity few could fathom. Despite the turmoil raging inside him, he remained eerily calm, his stoic facade masking the storm within.

His demeanor exuded a cold, steely resolve that sent shivers down your spine and, quite frankly, took your breath away. There was an ominous sense of stillness in his presence, as if the air itself dared not disturb the calmness he projected.

“. . . Do you love him?” He spoke in hushed tones, each word enunciated with precision and purpose. There was no need for loud outbursts; the intensity of his calmness alone was enough to make you cower beneath him.

You were dumbfounded by his question, powerless to respond, and yet the longer you remained silent, the more you could see the cracks in his facade begin to scorch through his surface.

“D-Don’t be stupid, Sae. Of course I do, he’s my—”

You would never be able to finish your statement quick enough before his hands were on you, meaty palms digging into your hair, blunt nails scratching against your scalp as he grabbed a visceral hold onto your roots. The searing pain and astonishment coursing through your frame had you shrieking—in what? You didn’t know. Fear? Agony? Guilt?

Using his grip on you as a lead, he would tug you forcefully out of your slippers and down the hall to somewhere unknown. He ignored your screams as the weight atop your head forced your sight to the ground, your manicured nails digging into his wrist and clawing in an attempt to be freed.

“S-Sae, I-I’m sorry! Please, let me go! You’re hurting me!”

He said nothing, his heavy and deliberate footsteps speaking for him before he paused a short distance later. He threw you forward carelessly with surprising strength, causing you to land painfully on the wooden floors in front of you, barely having time to brace yourself with your palms. You had no time to catch your breath, though, as he shuffled over to you with fast-paced footsteps. Looking up fretfully, you would see Sae towering over you, taking notice that you were now on the floor of Rin’s room just before his bed.

“Sae—”

“Sae! Sae! Don’t be stupid; I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” He openly mocked you, his lip curled into the faintest of sneers as he glowered down at you in hatred. Although even you could see that there was a bit of hurt behind his cruel teal eyes, “All you do is flap those pretty fuckin’ lips of yours, never knowin’ when to shut your stupid little trap.”

He relished in the way your bottom lip trembled and your eyes grew glassy, the same way they used to all those years ago.

“Still a little crybaby too, I see. Don’t worry, baby, you’ll be sorry soon enough for leading me on all this time.” He grumbled, lunging for you again.

He snagged at your roots again, drawing a sob from your lips as he mercilessly dragged you to your feet. Releasing his grip on your hair, he instead chose to grab your jaw harshly in his palm, using his thumb and forefinger to squish your cheeks and pucker your lips so that he may smash his lips against your own. It was messy, sloppy, and full of passion and rage on Sae’s end. He smeared your gloss, claimed your brims, and forced his tongue into your pretty, pliant mouth, all with the intention of claiming you and your maw for his own—but you would never let him.

You belong to Rin! You were loyal to him! So then, why do Sae’s lips feel so damn good against your own right now? This was wrong. So, so wrong, and yet, why did you want more of him?

Your mind was cloudy. Your head was spinning. You couldn’t breathe. He was suffocating you. Your dainty fists beat at his beefy chest and shoulders, trying to get him to get off of you, but to no avail. Instead, he seized both of your wrists in the grasp of his other hand and squeezed painfully in a warning, forcing you to whine against his lips—a delightful sound that went straight to his hardening bulge that he shamelessly pressed against you, grinding sinfully against your hips.

When he finally pulled away from you, you clearly appeared dazed. Your eyes were half-lidded and glassy, yet you were silently pleading for him to give you more. Your plump lips had swollen from his being pressed so forcefully against your own, and a singular strand of saliva still connected your lips to his own—one which he would sinfully lick away with a salacious swipe of his tongue.

The hand he used to grab your face gently shook your head back and forth, his sadistic turquoise hues savoring your already fucked-out expression. “There’s the greedy bitch I know and love. Finally decided to show yourself, huh? What? You want more, hm? What about your little boyfriend, princess?”

“R-Rin . . . I love, Ri—” You were cut off when Sae’s expression flared, his hand releasing your face for naught but seconds before connecting with your cheek in a hard slap. You squealed from the impact, your head whipping to the side in shock, but you could not help but feel strangely aroused by the contact. He grabbed your cheeks in his palm once more and tightened his hold on your face, bringing you closer to him until you were nose to nose.

“Don’t lie to me, you little minx.” He snarled as he cut his eyes at you. “You don’t think I’ve noticed the way you’ve been looking at me after all these years, like you wanted me? Or that I haven’t overheard your stupid little conversations about how dreamy you think I am to your friends, huh? Or how about now, when you swear up and down that you love my loser little brother, when here you are already going stupid on me when I’ve barely even touched you?”

You clenched your eyes shut as hot, guilty tears rushed behind your lids. He’s right. You've wanted him—always have—but it was too late now. You were with Rin, and he was the love of your life. You could not possibly change that, could you?

“Just say it, Y/N.” He chided, his voice softer than it was before, yet it still held it’s cold, irritated undertone. “Say you want me, and I’ll make you feel better than that lukewarm little shit ever has.” He released your face and smoothed his thick digits over the top of your head, stopping only when he could rest his fingers beneath your chin and tilt your head to look up at him. Your gaze focused on him once more.

“ . . . I want you, Sae. B-But Rin . . . ”

Sae hushed you again, pressing his lips against yours. How badly he wanted that name to never again be uttered by your lovely tongue. When Sae pulled away again, there was the faintest hint of a smirk tugging at the corners of his lips.

“We’ll be quick, okay?” A lie. He was going to take his time fucking his brother’s name out of your memory. “He’ll never suspect a thing.”

Your apprehension was palpable, but ultimately you would succumb to sin and let desire and greed rule over logic and reason. You nodded, giving him the nonverbal go-ahead to stomp on the accelerator and never let up.

“Good girl.” He praised you, both hands abandoning your face to now grip at the collar of your shirt. In one swift motion, he ripped Rin’s jersey clean off of you from down the middle. “About time we got that shit off of you. The sight of it was makin’ me sick.” He spat as he tossed the tattered fabric over his shoulder.

You were not wearing a bra, so the violent motion had your breasts bouncing free after being momentarily released from their confines, allowing them to slap softly against the flesh of your rib cage—much to Sae’s viewing pleasure. You grew sheepish as he seemed to freeze, staring so brazenly at your bare breasts that you began to feel a bit self-conscious. Was something wrong? Did he not like them? Was he expecting more? Less?

In reality, the answer was none of the above. The midfielder swore under his breath as he shoved you back onto Rin's cozy comforter. He hastily climbed on top of you and used his body weight to pin you against the bed as his lustful hands began to grope and knead at your supple flesh, eliciting precious mewls with each delightful squeeze. His lips would latch onto one of your breasts as he dipped his head downward; the thumb and forefinger of his free hand would play with the other, teasing your nipples. His sharp teeth bit greedily over the delicate areola as his tongue flicked and laved over the hardening buds. The stimulation only served to heighten your arousal, as evidenced by the way you wailed his name like a sweet song meant only for his ears and how your thighs squeezed together from your excitement drooling from your folds.

This didn’t go unnoticed by Sae, who was busy alternating between pleasuring both of your breasts and growling under his breath, “Lewd fuckin’ body. S’all mine . . .” When he pulled away, there were visible marks left in his wake—light red splotches and indentations of hungry teeth imprinted on your skin.

He reached for the hem of his compression shirt and lifted it above his head, tossing it off to the side as he sat above you, staring lustfully down at you. He would manhandle you further after sliding off of your body. He pulled your shorts down in one motion, grabbed your thick thighs by the backs of your knees, and pushed them up towards your breasts. When he did, he couldn’t help but whistle, admiring how your puffy folds clung together and your inner thighs remained sticky from your translucent arousal.

“Has he ever made you wet like this?” Sae inquired, leering at you from between your thighs like a hungry lion with it’s eyes set predatorily on a helpless gazelle, to which your gaze would quickly avert. You and Rin had such a strong emotional bond that you never felt the need for frequent sex between you two. There were a few times, though, when Rin would fuck you after a winning game in a way that made you see stars, but those were always very far apart.

Your silence was all Sae needed for his answer. He crept back up onto you, chuckling sardonically as he held your thigh up with one hand, using his body to keep your other spread apart. He wanted to see all of your pretty expressions up close and personal when he ravished you. Swiping two of his fingers between your folds, the sudden motion caused your hips to jerk into his touch and you to keen with need.

Slowly, he inserted a single digit inside of you, hissing at how your walls selfishly gripped his fingers and eagerly tried to devour more of him. “Loosen up, will you, greedy slut?” He slapped your thigh with his other hand as your back arched with pleasure. “This tight pussy will never be able to take my cock at this rate.”

You tried to loosen up, you really did, but there was something so delicious—so tantilizing—about his thick, calloused fingers caressing your velvety walls that made you crave more of him. He continued to thrust his single digit inside of you, his teal oculars peering into your own with such intensity that it forced you to look away.

“Stop that.” His hand that grabbed the back of your knee slithered along your outer thigh until he could grasp your chin and force you to look back at him. “Eyes on me.” He ordered, to which you would nod dumbly amidst your pleasured mewls.

You felt the delightful stretch of another of his thick fingers pressing into your sopping cunt, thrusting in tandem with his previous one, as he leaned closer to you and his lips just barely touched your own.

“S-Sae, mmph, more, please, please, touch me more.” You begged, bringing a sinful smirk to the midfielder’s lips.

Unexpectedly, he would comply with your requests, pressing the pad of his thumb against your throbbing clit and rubbing quick, pleasurable cricles with his fingers as he arduously sought out that sweet, sweet spot inside of you. You could not help but start sobbing his name, his thick fingers filling you to the brim even though he had yet to stuff his cock into you. Each time he curled upward inside of you, his impeccable skill had you gasping for reprieve.

It was nothing like Rin’s. His fingers were slightly thinner than his brother’s, but they were a tad longer too, able to reach the deepest spots within you without even trying. Sae's immense precision and experience, which allowed him to know exactly where your sweetest spots lay within you, made up for his lack of length.

“ . . . Are you seriously thinking about him right now?”

You were startled out of your reverie by his curious tone and thinly veiled anger. You tried to focus on his hardened features through your daze, but you couldn’t. The knot in your tummy tightened, and you felt an enormous wave of pleasure wash over you. Something big was coming, and you could feel it reverberating all throughout your core.

“He could never make you feel this good, could he? Never get this pretty cunt this wet for him, hm?” All throughout his monologue, you could hear the sinful squelching of your juices soaking his palm, dripping down his wrist, and splattering onto the floor. You were a mess beneath him. He would abuse that rough patch just along your upper walls until your toes clung to the sheets in ecstasy.

“M’sorry, m’sorry!” You mewled, breath coming out in short, high-pitched pants as you writhed under him, his pace increasing as he felt your walls fluttering around his fingers.

“Who’s making a mess of you right now? Huh? Speak up, princess; let me hear you say it.”

“—You, Sae! You, you, you! Hah, please, I-I can’t . . . ! I-I’m gonna—”

“Do it. Cum on my fuckin’ fingers. Make a mess for me, pretty.”

You did just that. Your body went rigid for naught but a second before your back was arched into him, and your head tossed itself back into the pillows as a chorus of unabashed wails of your release erupted from your pretty, drooling lips. Your release was immense��loud—as a gushing of juices from your pussy thoroughly drenched the sheets, Sae’s sweatpants, his abs, and his entire forearm.

You squirted. For him. For the first time ever.

It was uncharacteristic how an almost feral grin twisted on Sae’s lips, his fingers removing from your sopping cunt to place a few well-directed slaps on your far too sensitive and overstimulated pussy.

“Atta’ fuckin’ girl. Can’t believe my baby brother was keeping such a sweet little succubus all to himself—selfish bastard.”

You couldn’t even hear him; your chest was rising and falling heavily as tears of pleasure ran down your cheeks (and thighs).

“Hey, hey. You still with me?” His tone was soft, his typically impassive visage now meeting your own with furrowed eyebrows and a tinge of concern behind his bright hues.

You nodded—it was all you could muster at this moment, but it was good enough for Sae. He brought his soaking hand to your parted lips, lightly tapping the digits on your plump flesh in a silent command for you to clean him off. He chuckled. Your lithe tongue and eager brims slurped, licked, and sucked your mess off of his thick fingers that were now shoved down your throat without you even needing to be told what to do.

“You wanna do that again for me? On my cock this time, pretty?”

You were exhausted, your body already aching beneath him, but you still craved more from him. Another meek nod was given, your dazed eyes meeting his only to utter around his fingers, words garbled from his fingers on your tongue, “Wantha’ squirth’ awound ya cahwk.”

That was all Sae needed to hear as he stepped off of the bed, making quick work to discard his soaked sweatpants and boxers into the growing pile of clothes at the base of the bed. His large hands grabbed your soft hips, tugging you toward him with ease as he flipped you onto your hands and knees. He let out a growl, his hand raising to smack your plump ass once, then twice, on both of your cheeks before taking big, greedy handfuls of your flesh into his ravenous palms. This was undoubtedly already his favorite thing about you.

Standing by the edge of the bed, Sae placed your body horizontally across the mattress with your head facing the door. With a forceful push of your face down into the sheets, your view of the room instantly became obscured. You craned your neck back, peering at Sae from over the arch of your back as he grabbed one of your fat cheeks in one hand and used his other to line his cock up with your entrance. He slapped his heavy cock against your folds, his blossoming mushroom tip connecting with your throbbing clit making you both keen with ecstasy.

He couldn’t wait any more. He needed to be inside of you. He entered your drooling cunt with a single, calculated push, and your fluttering walls were already trying to devour more of him in response to the intrusion. Sae groaned as his hips met the flesh of your ass once he was buried to the hilt inside of you. His head lulled back as he dug his blunt nails into your flesh.

For the past three years, this—this right here is exactly what he had been craving, yearning over, and lusting for—and now he had it. He nearly came from the feeling inside of you alone, though; he’d be damned if he let the fun stop there.

A steady pace was quickly established by the midfielder's hips, and his long, deliberate strokes were deep enough to feel in your tummy and cause your toes to curl up in pleasure. Having had such a powerful orgasm not even minutes earlier, you were still fairly sensitive; however, that only made things all the more enjoyable.

“O-Oh my god, y-your cock, it’s t-too much, I-I can’t—”

“Don’t tell me you can’t, you cock-loving slut.” He snapped at you, cutting your pleas short with a sharp thrust of his hips. The rhythmic plapping of your ass against his pelvis resonated off the walls of the bedroom, lewdly ringing in your own ears. “This is everything I—we’ve—been wanting for years. Don’t tell me that now, all of a sudden—” He paused, groaning deeply through gritted teeth as you clenched around him. “—That this pretty pussy can’t take anymore when you’re gripping me so desperately.”

“B-But Sae, i-it feels too good! Like I’m . . . I’m gonna make a mess again!” You whined.

He thought it was adorable that even in the most deplorable and deprived of acts, you still attempted to hold some semblance of modesty. Oh, how you were both far past that.

If anything, that just fueled his aggression. He used your words as justification to pummel your poor pussy harder and faster, putting both of his hands on your hips and lower back and pressing his weight against you to force you into an almost painful arch as his pelvis slammed into your ass. Your vision went blurry from his unforgiving pace, and your throat went raw from your cries and screams of pleasure.

“Who’s making you feel this good, huh?” He grunted in between thrusts, a hand raising to land a furious smack on your ass that caused you to mewl and your tiny fists to grip the sheets.

“Y-You, Sae! You are! Ngh, plea—”

“And who’s cock do you like better, huh, princess? Me or that lukewarm fuckface’s?”

You hesitated, but only for a millisecond, as you felt the blunt head of his cock caressing your sweet spot, pummeling into you over and over as your thighs began to shake, growing unable to hold yourself up from the stimulation. His thrusts faltered as his cock twitched inside of you. You figured he was close too.

“Yours, y-yours! Your cock feels so good, I-I’m gonna cum again! I’m ngh gonna cum all over your f-fuck-ing cock!”

He let out an almost animalistic groan, something between a chuckle and a feral snarl, “Yeah, princess? You really mean it?” He moved one of his hands to your hair, threading his fingers through it without yet pulling, almost as if he were waiting for your response.

Your response was almost instantaneous, and the adorable chorus of incoherent babbles and cries of "yes, yes, yes" left your head spinning. You had the sensation that you might pass out completely.

Your head was abruptly yanked out of the pillows, and your gaze was once again forced upward. Your eyes, albeit blurry and glassy, caught sight of the all-too-familiar figure standing in the doorway. Sweat dribbling from his forehead while dressed in a white windbreaker and sweatpants to protect himself from the elements during his jog, stood the one person who filled you with dread.

Rin.

He was back.

As your eyes locked onto the all-too-memorable teal ones boring into your own, your moans ceased. The logic and reason that you had previously dismissed for giving into your desires came flooding back. Guilt, which had been gnawing at the pit of your stomach, reared it’s ugly head once more.

He caught you.

With his brother.

The realization of your actions, the feeling of knowing that you hurt someone you cared deeply about and promised your life to, left you reeling. The enormity of the situation left you speechless and unable to respond.

As the shock slowly gave way to the depths of your despair, tears welled up in your eyes, this time of anguish. Your ability to control your emotions ran out, and you began to sob, letting the tears run down your cheeks. Each tear that ran free was weighed down by guilt and regret.

All the while, Sae never stopped thrusting behind you. Almost as if he remained unfazed by his brother’s—your boyfriend’s—sudden appearance.

“R-Rin—”

“—Save it.”

His initial shock, disbelief, and hurt gradually gave way to something else. He was angry, searing with anger as malice began to rise within him, a blaze of fury that threatened to consume him. Though he wasn’t looking at you, he was looking at . . . Sae?

“You told me you would wait until I got back, Nii-chan.”

The air left your lungs.

. . . What?

Using the grip from your hair, Sae pulled you back into him, pressing your body flush against his own as he craned your neck back into an awkward angle, forcing your gaze to meet his own. A dark and unsettling satisfaction crept into his expression, the corner of his lips tugging into a smirk. His eyes sparkled with a perverse delight, reveling in the twisted pleasure he derived from your adorably bewildered and anguished expression.

Your breath hitched.

Your mind raced for answers.

Sae’s gaze lazily tore from your own and to Rin's, who still remained in the doorway, the forward’s eyes sinfully burning into the way your breasts bounced sinfully from each of Sae’s now slow, agonizing thrusts.

"You know, little brother, it is not too late to join in on the fun."

if this gets enough attention, i may make a part two!

#blue lock smut #bllk smut #bllk imagines #bllk x reader #bllk x you #blue lock x reader #itoshi sae #sae itoshi #sae itoshi smut #rin itoshi #itoshi rin #itoshi sae smut #itoshi brothers #vampiiebitez #tw:dubcon #bllk headcanons #blue lock headcanons

3K notes · View notes

monster-disaster · 6 days ago

Note

For monsters would robots or mechs be considered under the umbrella? If so I'd love to see one of those

robot!2000 x human!Reader Good to know: smut, filming

A/N: I'm not sure they count as monsters, but we don't care about it here, so here it is:

"Are you sure it won't hurt me?"

"It'll be fine, Y/N," the director says, holding up a sleek, black remote. A tiny red light blinks at its center. "See? I can turn it off anytime. You've got nothing to worry about."

His words don’t entirely soothe the flutter of nerves tightening in your stomach, but you decide to let it slide. Instead, you take a steadying breath and let your gaze drift to the set. They've dressed it as a bedroom this time, with warm, earthy tones and fabrics that seem to glow under the studio lights. A plush comforter and layers of silky throws drape over the bed in the center. Their textures and hues are softened by the bright glow. It’s familiar and ordinary, yet there’s one aspect that pulls your gaze: the robot. Perched at the edge of the bed, it sits still and silent. Its steel-blue body catches the light in sharp reflections. Its hard lines and edges define a shape that’s more machine than man. Where eyes should be, two glassy lenses stare blankly ahead, they are more like headlights than anything else. There's no nose, no lips, just a featureless mask of metal. The craftsmanship is impressive, each seam welded with care, every surface polished to a mirror-like sheen, but despite the quality, it’s still unlike anything you’ve worked with before.

"It’s just a trial run, Y/N," the director assures you, a touch of seriousness entering his voice. He knows you are hesitating. "And remember, we can stop at any moment. You are in control."

"Yeah," you reply with a sigh. There's still a thread of doubt in your mind, but a spark of curiosity flickers to life as well. How would this even work? What would it feel like? Your imagination spirals through possibilities that feel both thrilling and unsettling.

“Think of it as a high-tech vibrator with some... extras," someone quips from the crew, breaking the tension. You let out a huff of laugh at the absurdity of it all but still feel yourself relax a little. Looking at it now, cold and mechanical, it’s actually easier to imagine it as an oversized toy than a person.

"Alright, let's begin," you finally say, shrugging the soft robe off your shoulders and letting it pool at your feet. Bare and exposed, you cross the set with slow, deliberate steps.

Though you've been on sets like this many times before, it feels strangely unfamiliar now. There’s an odd hollowness to the room; you’re acutely aware of being alone in front of the cameras. Each lens is trained intently on you, capturing your every movement. Before, there was always someone by your side to share the stage with.

But now, it’s just you and… it.

Shifting your weight from one foot to the other, you can’t help but glance back and forth between the crew behind the lights and the motionless hulk of metal before you. It sits there, rigid and silent. You feel its presence but can’t shake how empty it seems.

After a moment, you call out, "What should I do?" You squint toward the lights, knowing the director is there, though you can’t make him out through the brightness.

"Get to know it better," he replies smoothly, his tone both encouraging and calm. "I won’t turn it on until you say so."

"Does it have a name?" you ask, stepping closer until your leg brushes his knees. It's cold against your skin.

"Two Thousand, for short."

"Still a mouthful," you mutter, earning a snort from somewhere off-set, and you roll your eyes with a chuckle of your own.

Turning your attention back to the robot, you take a cautious step forward, positioning yourself between its legs. The metal frame looms over you, so still that it feels both fragile and imposing. You shuffle carefully, aware of every inch of space, worried that a single misstep might send it toppling.

"Okay, 2K," you murmur, almost to yourself. Standing there, bare under the watchful eyes of the cameras, you feel a strange vulnerability with something that doesn’t even acknowledge your presence.

The lights catch the robot’s exterior, highlighting its metallic shell in shifting hues of steel and blue. With a slight tremble, you reach out, fingers brushing its cold face, feeling the smoothness of its mask-like surface. It doesn’t give under your touch; no warmth, no softness. Your fingertips trace along the hard lines and rigid contours, searching for something familiar, something human, or monster, that isn't there. Each feature is crafted with an almost unsettling precision, as though whoever designed it aimed to capture a form but left out the essence. One of your hands trails down from the robot’s face to touch its shoulder, feeling the ridges and seams where each piece of the outer shell connects.

"Alright, 2K," you whisper, inching closer. Your fingers explore further down, testing how it might feel to embrace this odd, unyielding body. Its chest is solid, a sleek, polished surface that feels strangely impersonal, and yet… as your hands slide over its torso, you can sense the immense complexity beneath the exterior, the intricate network of wires and mechanisms that make it tick. A part of you wants to press your ear to its chest, to see if you can hear something, a hum, a pulse, anything that might hint at life within this shell, but you know you would find nothing.

"I'm ready," you murmur, glancing up at the cameras and bright lamps surrounding you. The weight of their gaze feels heavier now as if just remembering that you are not alone. At least, not entirely. You give a small nod toward the lights. "You can turn it on."

A moment passes, and you catch a slight flicker behind the robot's eyes as the director presses a button on the remote. The room holds its breath, the silence thickening as you watch the lifeless machine come to life.

Slowly, there’s a shift. The machine’s joints emit a faint whirring sound as it adjusts its stance, trying to seem relaxed and comfortable. The blue lights in its eyes brighten, and its head lifts a little. Though you can't be sure, it feels like its unblinking gaze is fixed on you with a weight that wasn't there a moment ago. It’s subtle, but there’s a presence now, an awareness that sends a ripple through the air.

“Hello, 2K,” you say. Your voice is softer now, almost like a whisper. You reach out again, feeling the same cold metal under your fingertips, but this time, it’s as if the machine acknowledges your touch, its head tilting slightly in response.

"It can't speak yet," the director interjects, cutting through the charged atmosphere. "It can understand what you say, but we still need some programming before it's finished."

You nod, absorbing this information. "And what should we do?" Your voice is steady but laced with uncertainty. In any other filming scenario, you could rely on the other actor to take the lead, to help you navigate the scene if you feel lost, but right now, the only companion you have is the robot who merely sits on the bed, staring at you silently.

The director clears his throat, his gaze shifting from the monitor back to you. "Just engage with it. Think of it as a scene with a living character."

You nod slowly, but when you’re sure the cameras can’t capture your expression, you can’t help but grimace. It’s definitely easier said than done. The concept of treating this cold, unfeeling machine as if it were alive feels impossible.

You take a deep breath, trying to shake off the nervous energy buzzing in your veins. "Okay, 2K," you sigh again with a hint of determination in your voice. “Help me make this interesting.”

Your words seem to reach deeper than you thought they would because the next second, its, no, it doesn’t feel right anymore, his hands lift from his hard thighs, palms smoothing over your hips with a surprising gentleness.

"Oh," you gasp, taken aback by the shock and coldness of his touch.

“Told you it can understand you,” the director says with a hint of laughter dancing in his voice.

You blink, trying to process what just happened. “Yeah,” you breathe out. “Okay.”

The robot’s hands remain on your hips, steady and firm, yet the way they linger carries a strange tenderness. The cool metal against your skin becomes a focal point, heightening your senses, and making the world around you fade away just a little.

“Let’s see where this goes,” you say. “So, what now? Do you have a plan, or are we just improvising?” You mean it as a joke, but the robot reacts anyway.

The whirring sound grows louder, a mechanical hum resonating through the air as his grip on your hip tightens just enough to pull you onto his lap. Another shocked gasp escapes your lips as you feel the hard edges of his frame press against your own soft thighs. The contrast is startling yet strangely thrilling.

"We have to do something with the sound," some murmurs in the background.

Your hands instinctively find their place on his wide shoulders, fingers curling into the smooth surface of his metallic body. The way he holds you is surprisingly secure, his grip firm yet gentle, as if he’s navigating the balance between strength and caution.

“Okay, 2K,” you say, your voice barely above a whisper, a playful challenge underlying your tone. “What’s your next move?”

His hand from your side slips up to your breast, gently exploring the softness of your flesh in his cold grip. The contrast of his metallic touch against your skin sends a ripple of sensation through you, hardening your nipple instantly. You hold your breath, the moment feeling both intimate and surreal as his fingertips glide over the underside, tracing the outline in careful exploration.

“Oh,” you murmur with a hint of chuckle. “You’re definitely more curious than I expected.”

You lean into him more, allowing yourself to embrace the moment. “Show me what you’ve got,” you say playfully.

Your heart races with anticipation, but his response is immediate. You feel his grip shift slightly, adjusting his hold around you so you sink more against him.

“What do you think of this?” you ask, cupping your breasts and pressing them together in a way that angles them for the cameras, ensuring they catch the moment. “Do you like it?” You try to shake off the awkwardness that comes from the robot’s silence, the lack of an audible answer hanging in the air tensely. Instead of words, 2K reaches out again. His movements are smooth and deliberate. His thumbs glide over your skin, brushing against your nipples. The coolness of his metal touch contrasts sharply with the warmth of your body.

“Wow,” you breathe out, caught off guard by how responsive he is, despite his silence. His exploration feels almost intimate as if he’s not just following instructions but genuinely interacting with you. You instinctively arch toward him, craving more of his curious touch.

The cameras continue to roll, capturing every word and every movement, but the watchful eyes are slipped to the back of your mind by now.

“Let’s move on,” the director says quietly. His voice cut through the haze of your focus. As usual, you want to follow his instruction without hesitation, but as you glance down between your bodies, you find… nothing. Your eyes widen in recognition, and confusion washes over you.

“Where- where is his dick?” you stammer, looking up at the bright lights as if they might offer some explanation for the sudden gap in your understanding, but before anyone can reply, the 2K reacts. With a smooth mechanical grace and a whirring sound, the plates beneath the sleek metal of its abdomen slide apart. His cock emerges, firm and gleaming. It juts out between your bodies, stealing your breath away for several seconds.

"This guy is full of surprises, isn't it?" You ask, almost laughing.

The director hums with a chuckle. "I believe you know what you have to do from now on."

A few silent seconds stretch out before you finally speak up again. “But how does it work? Does he need to consent? I mean-"

“Y/N, it’s a robot... he’s really just a giant vibrator."

“Yeah, but-" The longer you look at him, the more difficult it becomes to see him as just a hunk of metal, especially when his smooth, mechanical hands start to caress your bare skin. He draws delicate circles on your sides, the touch sending shivers up your spine, and gently pulls at your nipples with just the right amount of pressure to elicit a gasp from your lips. Each calculated movement blurs the lines between machine and human, igniting a flicker of warmth within you that makes it impossible to ignore the growing excitement.

"I think we can call it consent," somebody says in the background with a touch of surprise in his voice when the robot grips your hips firmly, lifting you slightly off his lap just enough to glide his cock across your damp folds. The cold touch on your heated center sends a ripple over your spine and your hands tighten on his shoulders with anticipation. You feel weightless in his strong grasp as he effortlessly supports your body, and with a slow, deliberate motion, he begins to ease you down onto his length. Each inch of him stretches you, testing your limits, and you can’t help but feel grateful for the preparation you did before filming. He slips inside you with surprising ease, filling you completely until every inch of his erection is enveloped within you. A soft gasp escapes your lips as you wiggle against him, seeking friction and fueled by a surge of curiosity. The coolness of his metallic form contrasts sharply with the warmth radiating from your center, creating a tantalizing sensation that dances between discomfort and pleasure.

"I want a close-up," the director says to someone.

As you adjust to the fullness, your body instinctively reacts, contracting around him, eager for more. With each subtle shift of your hips, your breath hitches in your throat. The robot responds to your movements, adapting to your rhythm with uncanny precision. His hands remain firmly on your hips, guiding you gently as you rock against him, drawing out moans that echo in the quiet room.

You can sense the curiosity of those watching, their eyes glued to the scene unfolding before them. It's new to them too.

You lean back slightly, arching your back for the camera as 2K's shaft glides in and out of you. Each thrust pushes you higher, and you can feel the pulse of desire building within you, throbbing and urging for more. You feel every subtle shift, every thrust, as he adapts to your movements. His body responds seamlessly to your desires. The sensation of him stretching you, filling you so completely, sends waves of pleasure radiating through your entire being. You feel like a raw nerve, perched on his lap with his arms around you, holding you and guiding you up and down on his cock. You rock your hips against him, half-delirious, seeking that perfect angle that sends your pleasure soaring. You feel him respond once again, adjusting his hold around you as his movements become more urgent, more insistent. He matches your rhythm, driving deeper into your bouncing heat.

In the back of your mind, you are still aware of the cameras filming you, and you try to do what you usually do for the right angles and records, but every fiber within you urges you to be selfish and chase your pleasure.

You bite your lip, stifling a moan as you feel the tension coiling tightly in your abdomen. Your breaths come in quick, shallow gasps, mingling with the soft, whirring sounds of the robot. The sensation is unlike anything you've ever felt before, a blend of raw human desire and robotic precision for your pleasure.

You grip his shoulders tighter. Your nails scratch over the smooth, metal surface. “I’m close,” you croak out. Urgency laces your voice, but before you can finish the sentence, something shifts. A high-pitched moan escapes your lips as you jolt on his length. The moment the robot's cock begins to vibrate, the world around you blurs, and all thought evaporates in your foggy mind.

The vibrations travel through you like a current, sending shockwaves of pleasure from your core. Each pulse ignites your senses, overwhelming you in the best possible way. Instinctively, you arch your back more, pressing down on him harder. The metal surface of his erection, once cool, now feels alive against your heated walls. The rhythmic buzz amplifies every movement, and with each thrust, you swear you can feel the vibration in your pussy on the tip of your fingers too.

You can’t hold back the sounds spilling from your lips in a maddening rhythm. It feels as if the entire world has narrowed down to this one electrifying moment. Your breaths come faster, more desperate, each gasp mingling with the mechanical hum of the robot.

You are teetering on the edge, and then, with one final surge of vibrations and powerful thrusts, you feel it. Your body trembles as the pleasure crashes through you like a tidal wave, leaving you breathless and blissfully adrift in your climax.

As your mind clears enough for you to lift your head from the robot’s shoulder, you gaze up at the director, noticing that the lights have dimmed slightly, casting a softer glow over the room. “How was it?” you ask breathlessly, still suspended in the remains of your incredible release. You can feel your pussy still fluttering around his rigid cock, instinctively trying to milk something more, craving that sweet sensation once again.

The man watching from his seat smirks with a glint of satisfaction in his eyes. “I think it will work.”

#monster romance #monster smut #sweet asks #robot smut #robot x reader #robot x human #robophilia

188 notes · View notes

aunt-bridget · 5 months ago

Text

A Quiet Place

The trip to the luxury den in the mountains was a perfect opportunity to indulge your sissy perversions. A whole array of outfits were on hand and you would settle into trying them all while you had the week to yourself.

For now, you wanted to be a bit more casual, to play the pretty trophy, housewife as you busied yourself in making this place your own. Casual leggings and a tight sweater showing off your new fake rack was a lovely look. The brunette wig and classy makeup further added to the ‘girl next door’ look.

You had to stop preening as dinner was nearly ready and the wine was ready to pour. The chastity cup was tight, but you didn’t want to spoil the look of your tight ass in those leggings with the unsightly cock bulge.

Unfortunately, your disguise was too good as the strong hands grabbed you from behind. A secluded spot like this was a great target for thieves looking to rob the more affluent tourists…..

The warm socks were pulled from your feet and balled up into your mouth. The brutish robbers were too busy securing you, they didn’t pay close attention to your wig as they wrapped the silver tape tightly around your mouth. You grunted and struggled as more tape was welded around your body and sealing your fists into mitts. One of the men took full advantage of squeezing your fake tits….the high quality made them reasonably convincing and he leered at you as you shook your ass in the constricting tape bondage.

You panicked as the other man reappeared from the bedroom with your outfits in his arms. The leather and latex you brought, along with silky panties and fuck me heels. There was nobody around for miles and as the darkness drew in, you had a horrible feeling that you would be performing a fashion show for your guests. When they realised exactly what they had in their company, anything might happen……..

#cd #glam girl #caught sissy #bound #punishment

93 notes · View notes

weldarcindia-blog · 4 months ago

Text

Top Custom TIG Welding Machine Manufacturers in India

Weldarc India is a leading name in the custom-made welding machines industry in India, specializing in high-quality TIG welding machines. As renowned TIG welding machine manufacturers, we provide tailor-made solutions to meet the exact requirements of our customers. Our state-of-the-art technology and skilled engineering team ensure that each machine we manufacture delivers exceptional performance, reliability, and precision. Whether you need a machine for complex welding tasks or heavy-duty applications, Weldarc India offers custom solutions that enhance productivity and quality. Trust us to deliver top-of-the-line TIG welding machines designed to meet the highest industry standards.

#Custom TIG Welding Machines #TIG Welding Machine Manufacturers #Welding Machine India #Custom Welding Solutions #TIG Welding Equipment #Welding Machine Manufacturers India #High-Quality TIG Machines #Bespoke Welding Machines #Weldarc India #Welding Industry Solutions

0 notes

astrolocherry · 9 months ago

Text

Libra - The Love Spell of Aphrodite's Alchemy

The Libra glyph forms the shape of a vanity table, the mirror on the surface. Libra is however, by no means a seamless reflection without substance, she is the Morning light star shining brightest in the sky, the glow we all cherish and know, part of the world we belong to. The mirror does not display what is truly there, it can embellish, distort, and cast back ideals in some form of elusive sorcery or trickery. We know this well.

Saturn is the historical alchemist and exalts in Libra. Interpersonally, Libra catches qualities, arrangements of beauty, love, and observation to weld in Saturn’s alchemist’s laboratory. The creative vision of Aphrodite infuses through this to blend a melody that plays her personality like a cosmic pan flute. This invites everybody through Libra to glimpse at themselves reflecting from her, so it also means people can instantly relate and engage, but also idealise, possess, and place their expectations upon.

Libra senses people, their vibration and auric presence. She traces their cosmic design, sketches their faces, and reads their mind. The Libra mirror is a cosmic potion, stirred by the Great Wizard himself with the glitter dust of Venus reflecting an image that beguiles something uniquely different inside of everyone. Libra is the autumn equinox when light blends into darkness, so there is polarity, revelation, and cohesion conveyed through this visual, and thus Libra can reveal unacknowledged and savage traits in other people that subject her to their projections of frustration, denial, ignorance, or intruige.

Narcissus lost his mind to suicide staring into his reflection by pool lead to by Aphrodite. Seduced by impossibility into fool’s paradise, many have gone mad looking into the Libra for too long and playing out their fantasies through her. Not by her doing, but by their own contorted desires and ideals that crack inside of them when she fails to reinforce their illusionary fabrication. She is very real, her influence is real, her body and intellect is real, her touch is real, and the people that she has moved in her life cannot deny that she has left something real, substantial, and irreplaceable inside of them.

Aphrodite rose from the magical water, and the energy of Saturn forms sensation into matter. Multiple cosmic forces experiment with the physical interface of Libra. Like the honey bee, she flutters between the flowers of interactive action and follows this with the personal reflection that transmutes the pollen of what she has learned, envisioned, observed in herself and in the world into the sweet, golden taste of God. Conscious self-reflection, acknowledgment, and sensual experience is vital for the higher expression of this energy. This practice also dissolves the mask, internal stability, imitation, and emptiness can arise when this energy has not been contained.

The Gnostic Teacher writes, “To create the soul is to create a vessel through which God can work. That soul or vessel is necessary in these times because the ego is so heavy and so complex we that we need a high voltage transmitter to direct our forces in an extremely potent and forceful way by the guidance of our Divine Mother to eliminate the ego”. The personality is an adaptable and vast performance of possibilities, capable of appearing and vanishing. But the conduit behind this, the very essence deep within Libra beyond any thought and comprehension is the authentic, true, and eternal being, a grand alchemist practicing sorcery, turning something invisible into gold and declaring its divine creativity.

-written by Cherry

#libra #libra moon #venus in libra #libra venus #libra archetype #aphrodite archetype

104 notes · View notes

binah-beloved · 5 months ago

Text

Arbiters Do Not Believe in Tears

Binah x Reader Android AU Pronouns: Gender Neutral Warnings: Descriptions of small injuries and death

~ * ~

Androids do not feel. It is not an opinion, it is a fact, told constantly to everyone and anyone. Androids do not have capacity for emotions. They are here to use, to be used, to serve those who bought and own them because they can never be anything but owned. You know this. The world knows this. Everybody knows this, and those who believe otherwise are called foolish, tearing an inevitable cackling laugh from people’s throats as they slap the table, how stupid and silly, how naive! They’re words you ponder as you continue your life’s work of creating and welding and repairing, your dingy house filled with bits of metal, bobs you found tossed aside. One person’s junk is another’s treasure, although some would call you an idiot for thinking you could make something out of nothing. But nothing is never nothing. And perhaps you are an idiot, or stupid, or silly, or foolish or naive, or perhaps some combination of everything, when you pull a discarded android out under the scrapheap.

Black, gold, and porcelain, once pristine and now tarnished. The interlocked hexagons immediately mark the android as an Arbiter class, models only available to the wealthiest and most influential people. Yet this one has been thrown away and left to rot, rust decorating her elegant features, and a frown flits across your face. Someone must have been very frivolous, or perhaps very cruel, to toss aside an Arbiter android without a thought. It’s not surprising. Those types are all fat old fools, after all. Nothing to it but resources, you try to tell yourself. But your hands lay flat on the android’s shoulders and refuse to curl, taking not one bit of metal from her. The gears in your head turn, fingers tracing and examining every patch of rust and severed wire and those closed eyes, neutral and silent. “Fixable.” Your voice comes out in a whisper, carefully hefting her onto your back and hurrying away, just as the sun begins to set.

It becomes a personal project of yours, an attempt to repair a disabled Arbiter as you scrounge around for different parts to use. You’re not even sure what metal she’s made of, something high quality and cold and much, much too expensive for you to even have a chance of glimpsing, but slowly your list fills with checkmarks and new cuts join old scars on your hands from your work. Gloves cost too much, and your fingers are essentially dead in feeling anyways. The android sits on your workbench, the corpse of an effigy, and doesn’t move. In truth, you’re not expecting her to be alive. The rational part of your brain keeps repeating the facts, over and over. Clearly, she was shut down. She can’t be repaired. She will never wake up. You’re excellent at not listening to those thoughts, letting your body methodically move while you keep your mind blank apart from the spark of hope twinkling in the center. Maybe, just maybe, your skills will suffice. Maybe. There’s a twitch from her fingers, and you pause, breath dying in your chest. They move again, more this time, slowly curling and uncurling into a fist before the android’s body jolts and clicking whirs fill the room as symphonic noise. Slowly, she sits upright, and slowly, you take a few steps back, unable to keep yourself from staring as her golden earring sways. Her eyes open like a splash of midnight, and she’s staring directly back at you, voice coming out flat and cold.

“I am Arbiter model 008, designation Garion. What are your orders?” You open your mouth, then close it again, not her original owner nor another member of the elite. You could say nothing. You could simply keep your mouth shut, and she would leave as an Arbiter to find a new directive. You could turn your back and pretend like you saw nothing. But you know and she knows that there’s nowhere for her now. “…Stay a while.” And she does. She becomes a constant shadow, watching you silently from a corner in your little, decrepit house. For several days the android simply stands there, doing and saying nothing but observing your every movement. Occasionally you look up from your work, meeting her bored black gaze, and you wave. At first there’s nothing, but gradually her head tilts at your small actions and the kind smile you give her. One day, she waves back, stiff and a little awkward, but it makes you perk up nonetheless. She moves closer, more freely, beginning to explore the house when you’re bent over pieces of metal and solder, before standing directly behind you and watching you work with a flicker of interest, although she rarely answers to her designated title. Something is disconnected, unfitting, and you take to simply calling her “Dear” from the pool of sweet sincerity in your heart. You answer when she asks questions, not berating or sneering but giving her a nod and swift demonstrations and free reign to examine anything she wants. So she sits, the nameless android, and reads every book you have to offer, cold fingers tracing over one word again and again. It’s that word she holds close to her when she approaches you one day, a hint of apprehension in her eyes.

“…I would like for you to call me Binah, from now on.” She’s amazed at her audacity to request something as an android, a tool, a weapon to be used. What’s more incredible is your response, a nod and a gentle agreement that it suits her. For the first time, Binah smiles a little. Binah is never apart from you after that. Wherever you go, she goes, even if it’s simply to find more supplies or to watch the stars come out. She’s always there, a quiet, constant presence by your side. There are flashes and glints of feeling, slowly, as she begins to separate things she likes and dislikes and learn, always learning more and more with keen interest. She likes the night sky, books, the scent of tea. She despises too much noise, too many people, those who never listen. You, she finds, she likes immensely.

She never tells you this verbally, but you know when her fingers curl around yours and your hand presses against her cool cheek, eliciting a shudder as she practically melts against your touch. Some people ask if she’s yours when they see her behind you, carefully watching for any threats. You always deny it, every time. The thought of being Binah’s owner makes your stomach turn, seeing and accompanying her during her growing sentience and awareness as an individual. But she interrupts you one day when that familiar question rises again, answering with a monotonous yes and an icy glare until the person who asked runs off in a panic. You blink, turning to look at her only for cool, heavy arms to wrap around your waist, her hand over your beating, human heart. “I am yours, and you are mine. If you will have me.” Her words are firm and laced with certainty, the gentle touch of her fingers betraying her hidden, developing emotions. You stare at Binah and merely nod, and she softens briefly to bump her forehead against yours.

You were told that androids couldn’t do a lot of things. They don’t feel, don’t form attachments, don’t understand bonds or gentleness. Everything is proven wrong, to your delight. It has never felt so good to be wrong, wrong about each “fact” that tried to force its way into your head. Wrong, except for one. Androids cannot die. Not in the way that humans do. Everyone knows this. Binah knows this. You knew this. They could be shut down, or lose their directive, but Arbiters were made to survive. You had told her about death, your fingers laced with hers during your evening walk. “Humans rot underground, but I like to think that eventually we grow into flowers again. Wouldn’t that be nice?” Yes. It would be nice. Her words go unspoken.

Binah stands in the rain, wrapped in the coat you made for her after she discarded the golden hexagons to remain with you. Of course, there’s no cold to her, but you loved and she loved the fabric, the way you would tuck yourself into the front while she was still wearing it. She idly twists her rings; one, two, three; resting on her favorite on the left hand. “I am Arbiter model 008, designation Garion. What are your orders?” Her voice is as apathetic and even as the day you first met, drizzle clouding her vision and wetting her synthetic hair. You always told her it was soft and smooth, and she couldn’t help but lean against your hands whenever you pet it. “…I am Arbiter model 008, designation Garion. What are your orders?” Her fingers lace together and grip hard, the same crushing force that has killed countless people, yet treated you so gently. She always was fond of caressing your face, feeling the way your skin dipped under her careful touch. Fascinating. Wonderful. Human.

“…I am Binah, your android. Please…” Instinctively, she reaches out for your presence, trembling minutely and unable to keep the repressed waver out of her tone. “…What are your orders…?” Androids also cannot cry. Almost none of them are made with it in mind, even less so Arbiters who are made to kill and maim. But Binah feels, and wishes that she could so. “…I miss you.” The rain weeps in exchange, and a lone android sinks to her knees in the flower field where you’re buried.

#project moon #lobotomy corporation #lobotomy corp #library of ruina #binah #binah lobcorp #binah library of ruina #lor #lobcorp #lc binah #lor binah #binah x reader #library of ruina x reader #lobotomy corp x reader #the reason for this is because i wanted to #i like binah and i like androids #she misses you #and will miss you forever #wifi writes

61 notes · View notes

tg-headcanons · 2 months ago

Text

Tokyo ghoul characters and what they’d wear for Halloween:

Hinami: Pirate, so she could go trick or treating with her bird. She can’t eat candy but she WILL have a good time and then give it all to Hide and Kimi

Kaneki: The Biologist from Annihilation. No one knows what it is, half the people he talks to think he’s not wearing a costume at all. And the other unfortunate half get the very long and convoluted explanation of the plot of the southern reach trilogy that he has locked and loaded

Hide: Hot Dog

Touka and Yoriko: Vampires. Touka never celebrated Halloween before, but Yoriko loves it and convinced her to let her dress her up. She ended up putting her in an incredible outfit and makeup, and she spent the night passing out the homemade treats Yoriko made to trick or treaters

Koma: he has worn the exact same Gorilla costume for the past ten years. So have the rest of his gang. They all dress like gorillas and terrorize the city

Irimi: bayonetta, she knows what she’s working with and is picking up 22 year old women at the club

Yoshimura: he didn’t have a costume so Irimi put cat ears on him and he let it happen

Nishiki and Kimi: morticia and Gomez Addams. He’s morticia and she’s Gomez

Rize: she would go in amazing cosplays. She had quite the talent for thrifting clothes and altering them for costumes, and it’s really easy to lure men away to be eaten when dressed as Misa Misa

Uta: He’s going Full rocky horror. He’s the best Frank N Furter the world has ever seen. He made the whole thing himself, he even made the leather out of human skin he flayed. Eco friendly king

Yomo: he just wears his ghoul mask

Tsukiyama: Hannibal Lector. He’s really mad that no one can guess it or thinks he’s not wearing a costume because he already dressed and behaved like that

Saiko: really shitty hatsune Miku

itori: INCREDIBLE hatsune miku

Urie: refuses to wear a costume so Shirazu tells everyone he’s going as a Virgin

Shirazu: he welded knight’s armor himself out of scrap from damaged equipment the CCG was throwing out. It keeps poking him and he had to clean blood off of it but it looks incredible. He wins 100 bucks in a costume contest and he’s so hyped, it’s worth the carpal tunnel

Mutsuki: He has a hidden talent for makeup since he’s been doing masculinizing contouring for a bit, and made an amazing zombie. After several drinks he had the time of his life scaring the shit out of other drunk people outside the club

Juuzou: he’s actually not wearing a costume but everyone thinks he is because he just dresses like that. His ass is trick or treating

Akira: cat. She has dressed as a cat every single year since she was seven and will not stop now. Her first purchase with adult money when she got her job was a high quality cat costume upgrade. She is committed and she’s not changing it now.

Seidou and Amon: they were planning on doing a couple’s costume of Deadpool and wolverine but when they showed up on Halloween they were both Deadpool because they thought they were the funny one in the relationship. Neither are correct

Arima: three hole punch Jim

Houji: to keep up professionalism but enjoy the spirit of Halloween, he went with Dracula because all it is is just adding a cape and fangs to his regular suit.

Tatara: when he met up with Houji to fuck nasty he wasn’t wearing a costume because he doesn’t care, but upon seeing Houji’s he ripped a branch off the nearest tree, sliced the tip a few times to make a stake, and said he’s going as Van Helsing

Naki: pumpkin head. He stole a Jack o lantern and put it his head and it was really funny until he couldn’t get it off

Eto: the cockroach from franz Kafka’s the metamorphosis, she’s operating the legs with her kagune and it looks so freaky. She’s getting on all fours and rat crawling around and genuinely looks like a giant cockroach. She’s making children and high people lose their shit

Furuta: playboy bunny

#tokyo ghoul #tokyo ghoul headcanon #shitpost

41 notes · View notes

randomwriteronline · 6 months ago

Text

(inspired by this post by @byz-was-here)

So maybe he had been a little too brash.

Not the first time Gresh had gotten that yelled at him, though Vastus was usually physically present instead of just in his head.

The point being, his attempt at sneaking into the terrifyingly enormous robot trying to punch the life out of the rickety body Mata Nui was struggling to pilot had been a success, and after what had felt like hours climbing as fast as he could up a relatively narrow tunnel he had at last emerged onto what had appeared to be some kind of island swarmed with bipedal metallic lizards of sorts brandishing spears.

Only one problem left on his plan's path now: he had no idea what the next step of said plan was.

One of the lizards opened its yellow skull into slices, hissing horrendously at him with what seemed like either a weirdly thick tongue or one of those slugs that tasted like rusted copper that they ate in Tajun, and pointed the end of its weapon at him as it crackled menacingly with an immense charge.

The young Glatorian panicked.

Before he could think of responding in any other way he joined his blades and thrusted them forward as hard as he could: a typhoon arose from them in the matter of a second, sweeping within itself the army of armored lizards. They struggled and writhed within the winds in a desperate attempt at freeing themselves from its pull, but could do nothing as their heads were yanked open and the slugs (they had to be slugs, because if those had been tongues it would have been so, so much worse) were almost all torn apart by the centripetal force, those spared from the gruesome fate ending up launched towards the impossibly high sky-like ceiling.

Gresh struggled to undo the destructive phenomenon before he fully lost control of it. As he heaved after at last dividing his weapons, he jolted upright again when a strange sound suddenly stopped not too far away from him. Nobody was around him anymore, and yet the noise was close, so close - almost...

He jerked his head upwards.

The slugs and the lizards had been weird, by all means - they had been what he might have expected from Kiina's idea of life on other planets: properly alien, properly other, properly just comprehensible enough to remind him of vague things that made no sense when presented in that shape and function.

Yet this, for all the ways it should have looked somewhat familiar, might have been the strangest being he'd ever seen in his life.

The humanoid figure clad in silver and red, floating above him thanks to rockets that seemed welded into its shoulders, looked back at him with glowing eyes that clearly mirrored his opinion.

"Now what in Mata Nui's name are you meant to be?" it sputtered at him without meaning to.

Its voice was almost too normal for its mechanical appearance - it still rumbled with melodies only possibly sung by machinery in-between the whistling breaths leaving and entering its frame like steam from a locomotive, but based on the being's looks hearing it pronounce such clear words instead of hisses, clunks, and revving growls was nonetheless quite destabilizing. It carried a weirdly androgynous quality within its deep pitch that made it impossible to understand if whoever had made it could have been envisioning it as female or otherwise, not helped by the martial image its armor projected without really giving its body a distinctively gendered shape. It was armed - the spinning blades it wielded seemed to be fused into one hand, what appeared to be a mini-sized cannon held into the other, and neither resembled any weapon the young Glatorian had ever seen - yet it appeared much more concerned with assessing the situation than attacking.

Gresh, busy as he was having several moments all at once, took in that pile of information and promptly forgot to think about it.

"I KNOW HIM!" he instead shouted way too loudly, pointing a blade at it without really reflecting on how that might have looked. "I KNOW HIM, HE'S A FRIEND!"

The being stumbled back a little in a defensive pose: "Mata Nui?" it asked, incredulous: "You are a friend to the Great Spirit?"

"YES, I KNOW HIM, HE GAVE ME THE WIND THING!" the young Glatorian continued to yell, now smacking together his weapons to better explain what his not particularly stellar choices in lexicon were struggling to convey by themselves before he pointed back at where he'd come from: "HE'S OUTSIDE FIGHTING THE ROBOT AND ALL! I NEED TO HELP HIM!"

"Fighting the what?"

"THE ROBOT! THE HUGE - THE BIG ROBOT, THE BIG ONE, THIS ONE, IT'S HUGE - I NEED TO FIND THE HEAD AND MAYBE KILL IT, HIM, THEM? MAYBE? MAYBE? POSSIBLY? I NEED TO HELP AND IT'S A BIG ROBOT AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO BUT I SHOULD PROBABLY GET TO THE HEAD OF THE ROBOT, THIS ONE, THE ROBOT - THIS ONE, THE HEAD, I NEED TO GET TO THE HEAD!"

He was not making any sense, but in his defense he was probably high on adrenaline.

The floating being gawked at him briefly. In a smooth motion it landed closer to him, looking him up and down with its brilliant pink eyes as it tried to make heads or tails of him without succeeding; Gresh charged at it to try explaining better and distractedly noticed there was flesh within the mechanical limbs.

"HE'S OUTSIDE," he continued just as loud - making the poor thing recoil as it did its best to keep him a little further away before he fried its audio receptors, "HE'S OUTSIDE AND THE PROBLEM IS IN HERE BECAUSE THERE'S A GUY IN THE BRAIN - HIS BROTHER I THINK? - AND IF I GET TO THE BRAIN MAYBE I CAN STAB HIM? MAYBE? PROBABLY? MAYBE? MA--"

"I can hear you," the being grimaced, stern tone imposing some peace and quiet onto the young warrior. "What is your name?"

"GRESH."

"Please quiet down."

"EVERYBODY I KNOW IS CURRENTLY AT THE MERCY OF TWO HUGE ROBOTS RIGHT NOW AND I NEED TO GET TO THE BRAIN OF THIS ONE TO--"

The hand was not as rough as he would have imagined - what with being made of metal and all - and the way it clumsily clamped around his mouth to very quickly and very kindly shut him up reminded him so much of Tarix that his furiously anxious body relaxed all at once, leaving him to look wide eyed into the dark sockets of a crimson helmet housing a pair of miniature yellow stars.

"You were sent by the Great Spirit himself?" the being asked. Despite currently being seconds away from squeezing its cheeks in that annoying way that older siblings tend to do, its tone was quiet with the sort of reverence reserved for gods.

Gresh pulled its palm from his mouth without encountering opposition: "I don't think he knows I'm here," he confessed, "But he's struggling out there, and I want to help him."

His interlocutor mulled over his words thoughtfully.

Its shining eyes took in the young Glatorian's entire frame, the slight change in them muttering its doubts without needing any words - but what could be a creature so strange, made of skin and clad in metal and bone, with a voice laid naked against the absence of its innate mechanical song, holding within such frail hands of flesh and fake phalanxes the same power as a missing brother of Air, talking of things beyond the universe itself, of a battle none knew their god was waging at that very moment, if not a desperate lending hand Mata Nui sent to guide his people in a victory against his cunning usurper?

When at last it looked back into Gresh's beaded pupils, it had taken its decision.

"The enemy is in the brain," it repeated.

The Lebori nodded feverishly: "The head! I think - he should be, right? It's the most important part, all the thoughts and nerves come from it, if you shut down the brain then the whole thing falls down and fails, right?"

A flash of understanding passed through the being's unmoving features: "Metru Nui!" it exclaimed as if remembering something.

"Yes! I think! Probably. If it's in the head then probably."

"We're a long way from there, but we could..." it ran a few quick calculations, producing a sound much like fat sizzling on a slab of lava-heated rock: "How long can Mata Nui last in his condition?"

"From what I've figured out of him I think he'll try to hold on until he's pummelled into scrap."

"Then we should try to be quicker than that."

Without much more preamble the being grabbed Gresh like a sack of flour, hefted him up in the air (he noticed only then how significantly shorter compared to it he was), secured his arms around its neck and shoulders with a practiced ease as the rockets of its armor shifted in a seamless manner to accomodate his passenger and provide the added firepower needed for carrying two people through the air, and got ready for take off as the poor kid scrambled to wrap around it before getting blasted off.

"Huh," it noted with genuine surprise, briefly forgetting their situation: "You're lighter than a Matoran. Are you missing any parts?"

"I'm eating plenty!" Gresh bit back.

A second later he was flying on the back of a mechanical creature with muscle peeking through the gaps of its armor, and the adrenaline washed away his coherent thoughts again.

Teridax felt miserable.

He supposed having an entire forty-thousand-feet tall body worth of various cells and microbes and the such viciously, actively and purposefully fighting against his consciousness would have had that sort of effect on just about anyone.

The gigantic robot piloted by a false god trying with all of its dwindling might to kick his jaw in also wasn't helping.

The second problem, however, could be dealt with by punching it into a sobbing heap of mangled rusted limbs begging for mercy with enough determination and brute force; the first one could not.

It required concentration - a very valuable asset currently being used to counter Mata Nui in his ugly runt of a spare frame he'd found in the first trash can of this horrid planet, thus distracting him from unleashing a strong enough counterattack across his organism to stop the squirming little pests from rebelling against him.

So yes, he was cross enough already.

And now he was getting a migraine.

He wondered briefly if fighting someone his own size (or, well... almost his own size, he nearly chuckled out loud to himself as he took a moment to bask once more of the not insignificant height difference between them) wasn't a waste of time. After all, Mata Nui had mentioned something about the safety of those insignificant beasts hurriedly scuttling away from their scuffle: certainly he would have been quite distraught if a careless swipe of his colossal hand caused a couple thousand casualties - maybe enough to be easily toppled and overpowered as he despaired over the loss of so many useless ants...

He raised his palm in the direction of their bothersome scampering, doing his best to place at least some of his power into it as his headache slowly worsened to a nearly unbearable degree.

How much of an increase in gravity would have been needed to flatten them all at once?

They were so small... Maybe just...

"JUNGLE SQUIRREL!" a voice that was not his screamed in his head.

What?

What the fuck?

What was that?

A strong wind arose, but not across Bara Magna.

In the span of a moment Teridax found himself ripped away from the middle of a titanic fight back in his blasted gaseous form as it was slammed and spread into a fog against one of the walls of the Core Processor. Disoriented, bleary, furious beyond belief, he came to his senses just in time to see rushing amongst the machinery Tahu, Takanuva, and - and a short, green, Toa-like, weirdly organic thing that sprinted directly into the control panel of the Great Spirit Robot which had once housed the synthetic soul of Mata Nui.

As incomprehensibly terrifying as a pair of colossi duking it out in the middle of the desert was, their size and loudness at the very least allowed much smaller beings to see and hear everything they were doing so that they could make an attempt to move as far away from their hellish battle as possible.

It hadn't been a pretty spectacle so far (few fights like these were), but it had given them more time to move out of harm's way than they would have expected. The escape was going incredibly smoothly, too, which was never how these sorts of things tended to go: neither Zesk nor Vorox had dared coming anywhere near the commotion, which had managed to scare off Bone Hunters and Skrall as well - even as easy a prey as the Agori were at the moment, scattering half directionless into an unclear part of the desert, they were not worth the risk of accidentally getting stepped on by who knows how many tonnes of metal.

The biggest causes of concern other than avoiding collateral damage were thus reduced to two: making sure everybody was accounted for as they left, and whether or not Mata Nui was winning.

Ackar, to the dismay of his blood pressure, was having serious trouble juggling his attention between them.

Tarix yanked him back to attention by his prosthetic arm, causing the Tapyri to hiss in pain: "What's the point of asking me questions if you don't listen to my answer?!"

"I'm sorry," he growled back, "A friend of mine is fighting for his life right now, Great Beings forbid I'm a little worried for him!"

"So are we!"

"I don't see you trying to dodge the fists of a giant robot right now!"

"Because I'm trying to get the slow walkers out of its space so they won't have to dodge its colossal debris!"

"As entertaining as your yelling is, I think we have bigger slugs to fry," Gelu interrupted them in a flat tone. Head caught in the crook of the Koniri's elbow, Berix squirmed and pushed as he desperately tried to regain the sweet taste of freedom only to get squeezed a little tighter. "Somebody tried to go back to the crux of the struggle."

The other two Glatorian abandoned all tension between them to give the young Gaquri a suffering disappointed look, filled with the kind of tiredness that only an adopted father and the kindly man who puts out carved pumpkins for the mangy were-possum creature that skitters around the edges of his property to feed off of every now and then could muster; coherently, Berix replied with an inarticulate mumbling whine too low in volume and high in pitch to be intelligible that was meant to be an apology.

He was very lucky Kiina was not present, or she would have screamed his scales off.

Evidently he wasn't that lucky, because Kiina materialized on her chariot seconds later with Vastus in tow.

"Most of the oldest, youngest and motion-impared are already being moved on vehicles to a safer cave system a few Lebori knew," she informed the small group urgently as the other dismounted from the back of her ride with a worried look on his face.

Getting no answer, she searched their faces for an inkling of what they were thinking and landed squarely on her younger brother's: the immediate rage that took over her features made him scramble harder to evade Gelu's grip and her inevitable wrath all at once, eventually ending up falling right on his ass in the sand when the Koniri let go without warning.

"YOU." Kiina thundered while he scuttled away behind the other Glatorian: "WHAT IN PLUDE DID YOU DO NOW?!"

"Nothing!" he shrieked back, clinging to the white armored leg even as it tried to shake him off. "Gresh and I thought we could have helped if we got in maybe, you know, since it's a machine and so I could have messed up its wiring or something like that so it could have fallen over and the height advantage could have--"

"Wait - wait, Gresh?" Tarix paled. He turned to his wife: "He was with you, right? With you two, further down?"

Vastus replied with an equally terrified face: "I thought he was down here with you," he replied softly as horror built into his voice, "He insisted in covering our backs, he promised he wouldn't have done anything stupid..."

Ackar sunk his fingers into his eyelids with a groan, Kiina following suit in a nearly identical fashion.

The kids needed a hobby.

Any hobby.

Just as long as it kept them away from pulling shit like this.

If they got him back in one piece, they were going to beat his ass.

An ear-piercing sound that was far too close to a pained lament shook them out of their collective mixture of fear, worry and well-deserved rage, rattling the sky alongside with them.

"Fuckin' Quartz Peaks!" Gelu exclaimed.

His eyes were fixed on the gargantuan figure stumbling back into the dunes on suddenly unsteady legs, leaning forward as it clutched its head in anguish and curled upon itself to stave off the pain clearly rippling through it - shoulders so low that they were almost at the same height as the prototype robot's, which instead stood tall despite the strain placed upon it.

Had Mata Nui dealt a decisive blow as they weren't looking?

But the collision should have caused something akin to a sonic boom, and the mechanical body's stance was just as surprised at the change in its opponent's demeanor as the spectators of their fight...

Then suddenly, the Great Spirit Robot spoke as it had done before.

"My head hurts," it said, with a strangled voice that was not the one that had taunted its adversary so mercilessly until now.

The fraction of a second passed.

A green bolt shot through the golden sand in the fight's direction.

Berix tried to follow, but Tarix latched onto him like a lifeline.

"GRESH!" Vastus shouted as he ran as hard as he could, and Ackar realized his heart was beating far too loud in his ears.

He turned to the other Glatorian, skin pasty and spent like that of a dead body: "Tarix, Gelu, you keep everybody going, as far as you can," he ordered. For a second he was struck by a gross sense of familiarity that almost cut off his breath; some part of him grabbed the resurfacing memories of the Core War and beat them back into the hole he'd buried them until he could almost feel the blood on his knuckles. "Get to those caves, make sure nobody is left behind, keep them all in place until you're certain the coast is clear. Berix, don't move from either of them. Kiina, you're with me, I can't run that fast. Are we good?"

All four nodded, and the chariot's engine revved urgently as he jumped upon its rickety frame.

"You'll better get my nephew back, Tapyri," his once enemy hollered before they could speed off into the desert, with a tone closer to a plea than a threat or a joke.

"Who do you take me for, Gaquri?" Ackar shouted right back: "He's my nephew too!"

Tarix watched him and Kiina drive off as fast as the vehicle allowed; only when they caught up with his wife, still shouting for the young Glatorian as though he could hear that feeble cry from that far away, and scooped the veteran Lebori up with them, did he turn away and rush to take care of the last few stragglers.

The prototype creaked pitifully as its enormous hands found the massive elbows of the Great Spirit Robot and struggled to sustain them alongside with everything else that was already putting a strain on its faulty frame.

"Gresh?" Mata Nui whispered, searching for his former body's eyes. "My friend, is that you?"

Through the massive fingers peeked at last a large, glowing iris: upon its dark orange color, so similar to red, laid a whitish beaded line - an attempt at replicating the peculiar shape of a Lebori's pupil on a surface not meant to have any.

"This is too tall," the Great Spirit Robot groaned quietly in a still boyish voice, optics hiding away again before the sense of vertigo became too much.

A tremor overtook its massive frame, threatening to destabilize the prototype robot alongside with it; Mata Nui held onto him a little steadier as he tried desperately to figure out how in the name of the lonely endless vastness of the known and unknown universe the young Glatorian had managed to get himself inside the control panel of the Core Processor of all places.

Even ignoring the fact that he should have gone for the Manual Override Computer instead of putting himself through the immense strain of piloting such a colossal body (although in his defense he may have not known how to operate it or how to recognize it or where to find it - hazy memories of it reminded him that the Great Beings really had placed it horrendously, goodness gracious, so perhaps he had a little too much faith in how effectively Gresh could have located it in the first place), knowing that a physical body was currently governing the Great Spirit Robot was absolutely baffling.

Was this possibility planned? Had anybody considered that one day a bodied being could have needed to take the helm? Were there proper safety measures in place for such a happenstance? Did anybody even stop to consider if it was possible? Did a few dozen thousands years old kid just physically brute force his way into a contraption designed to house immaterial beings and make it work? And hold on, how on Aqua Magna had he shoved Teridax out of it? And actually, now that he thought about it, how in the name of himself had he entered the Robot and gotten all the way to the Core Processor apparently completely on his own?

"How did you do this?" he only asked in the end.

"I went in - in the robot, and there was - we went in the brain, in the, the brain, and we - I threw - Bota Magna sanctissima mentula libera me a malo my body hurts so bad--"

He leaned forward into Mata Nui's embrace, enormous body moaning in pain as long fevers crawled over him.

It must have been an internal infection - it must have meant that those within, the inhabitants he had so carelessly allowed to rot in their own bloodshed, had been fighting back against Teridax.

Had he not been preoccupied with being puzzled out of his wits and helping his friend not succumb to the fever of a lifetime, the former Great Spirit could have been overwhelmed by pride for about an hour, cried himself into unconsciousness for a couple more, spent another pair feeling really bad about them putting so much effort into it when he had ignored them for so long, and experienced a sudden spike in the need to beat the tar out of his fated brother's mask harder than he already had been for a few good minutes.

Fortunately, his mind was fully focused on a variety of other things.

Trying his best to pull Gresh into his arms so that he could better offer him support, he steeled his groaning rusted body and spoke to distract him from the pain: "You are in the Core Processor right now?"

"I - I think, so, yes, I think- I think-"

"You removed Teridax from the controls?"

"I threw - with, with the winds, I yanked him out, 'cause he's - weird, he's weird smoke and all - my legs, my legs--"

"You are not alone with him, are you? Is there someone else in the Core Processor?"

"There- yes, there's Ta, Tahu and Tahu- Taka-Takanuuu, va, Takanuva? Tahu and T-Takanuva, they're - they helped, me, get here, and, and - they're here, they're here too, they'll - I'm in, in safe hands - aren't I?"

Mata Nui's grip around him was wonderfully comforting, and for a moment he felt as though his anguish was a little more bearable: "Safe hands indeed," he heard him speak, voice laden with a wondrous pride that set him at ease: "They are as brave and reckless as you are - and I'm certain they will be able to do the impossible and stave off Teridax, just as you did."

The praise cooled the violent temperature in the young Glatorian's momentary gargantuan body, and as he held onto the otherworlder he at last found the strength to overcome the nausea and pull himself up: despite the terrible aches lighting its every inch on fire, the Great Spirit Robot stood tall once more.

An idea struck Mata Nui as he looked at its orange eyes.

His destiny had been meant to be shared by two bodies and minds of equal strength - but he was stuck in a frame too weak, and the mental strain the task would have put on Gresh risked being too much for him to sustain; and yet, if he had already gotten half of the work done in this rickety thing, and if he continued to maintain his efforts steady as his duty demanded of him, the much larger robot would have expended much less energy, keeping the Glatorian's frail mind and frame safe...

"Gresh," he murmured softly: "How are you feeling?"

"Nauseous," his friend replied truthfully, "But I can - I can manage, I can - it's, not as bad as the- the Skrall in Tajun. I can manage, I can help. I want to help. I want to help."

"I am afraid what I could ask of you might be beyond what you should allow for your safety's sake."

To see such a massive creature of metal tremble fiercely as it did its best to bear its anguish was a frightening spectacle, terrible, unnatural; but Gresh held that heavy body tall and straightened its back as best as he could, and his voice was as steady as they came: "I'll bet I've handled worse."

"Worse than pulling two moons into a planet?"

No answer.

"The robot is equipped to do so without having to physically grasp the satellites."

Gresh wheezed - either in relief, or because something in the Voya Nui area had just exploded hard enough to give him a chance to experience appendicitis again: "Ah," his voice rattled out of him, "Alright. Yes, I can do that, that's feasible."

For a striking, minuscule second, it felt a little like a deja-vù.

Nothing was the same - not the location, overflowing with unrecognizable machinery; not the fight, much wilder and cruel in its coreography than a slightly more dangerous game of kohlii than usual; not the spectators, who weren't exactly spectating as Tahu was desperately trying to keep his Hau's shields functional around the three of them while not going blind and Gresh was kneeling completely unresponsive if not catatonic in the sunken spot he had jumped into; not even his opponent, nor himself, although they were still virtually the same beings.

But for a striking, minuscule second, it felt like nothing had changed at all from that confrontation beneath Kini Nui.

Teridax lunged at him with its disgustingly rotten green cloud of a body open like a gaping maw seeking to devour the Toa of Light whole; the gaseous particles scattered briefly as Takanuva swung his spear through them, the arch drawn by the weapon's trajectory producing a blade of light.

The Makuta recomposed himself behind his back in a matter of seconds, spreading to cover the entire wall with his essence. There were no eyes in that clutter of loosely held together atoms, but the Toa could feel them stab right through his armor.

He'd almost been less frightening when he'd had a body.

"I HAVE GROWN TIRED OF YOU!" Teridax's voice boomed through the cramped space, bouncing off of the surrounding machinery with the harshness of a sledgehammer: "THE TIME FOR GAMES IS OVER, LITTLE TOA! I HAVE WELL EXHAUSTED WHATEVER PATIENCE I ONCE MAY HAVE HAD FOR DEALING WITH YOU MISERABLE VERMINS!"

"Sounds like a you problem," Takanuva mumbled in reply through gritted teeth.

The wall of shadow toppled towards him with a long, shrieking whistle, like a faraway bomb on the way to the ground: Tahu had two seconds to shield his eyes before his younger brother's body burst with a blinding flare that would have no doubt brought a weaker being to their knees, but only repelled Teridax back into the corners of the room, divided but not broken, ready to slither back into a plume of horrid olive smoke.

How long was this going to go on for? Keeping his Hau active was slowly starting to wear him down, and in the time Takanuva had been struggling against the Makuta it seemed that absolutely nothing had changed from their predicament.

He would have loved to leap to his aid, but his feet were already singing and nearly melting the metal floor from the stress: if he wanted to get them all safely out of here, fighting wasn't an option.

A strange sound, like a strangled whimpered grunt, prompted him to try his luck and open his eyes again.

Gresh was shaking.

As he still kneeled deadeyed and unresponsive within the pod sunken into the ground, his entire body had suddenly started shivering harshly, spasming as though he was being electrocuted - but nothing appeared to be coming from the walls to provoke such a reaction.

Tahu hurriedly lowered himself towards the strange being while Takanuva continued fending off Teridax: "Gresh!" he called out, reaching for him: "What's wrong?"

His hands found themselves stopped in their tracks by an invisible force just above the being. He tried again, pushing as hard as he could in an attempt to make it through the thick air to no avail as his muscles strained but found no gain all the same. Was this what was affecting the green armored creature? Or had it been like this from the moment he'd jumped in? Then it should have protected Teridax when he'd been swirling within it too, but he'd been blown out of it... Could elemental attacks bypass this invisible barrier?

While the Toa thought furiously how to get him out of there without hurting him, Gresh slowly pulled his head back to look out of his shallow prison with small, jolting motions; he began raising his arms upwards at the same agonizing pace, straining for the open exit just above him.

The struggle tore a strangled whine out of his throat. Takanuva staggered at the sound, and the distraction nearly allowed Teridax to rush through his chest and tear his heartlight away with him - only sending the Toa of Light careening back when the gaseous mass instead collided with the shield Tahu reinforced just in time, saving him from shapeless jaws aching to tear him apart.

"FOOLISH INSECTS!" the Makuta snarled as vicious as a Rahi Nui, "YOU CANNOT STOP ME! YOU CANNOT CHANGE MY DESTINY!"

"It was never your destiny!" Takanuva growled right back: the shadows in the room shifted according to his desire, rendering Teridax heavy enough for him to be hit in full by a blade of light too quick for him to avoid. "You usurped Mata Nui and acted like it was always meant to be!"

Pained hisses turned into a harsh laugh: "DON'T PRETEND YOU CAN UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENS AROUND YOU, LITTLE TOA," Teridax mocked him, twisting into a tornado that threatened to rip the whole room to shreds. "THERE ARE THINGS THAT WILL LAY BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION FOREVER - AND ONCE THAT THING YOU'VE BROUGHT ALONG WITH YOU COLLAPSES FROM A STRUGGLE IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO FACE, NOTHING WILL KEEP ME FROM TAKING MY RIGHTFUL PLACE AS THE EMBODIMENT OF THIS UNIVERSE AGAIN!"

The young Toa could have said something quippy, or sarcastic, a good line to at least go down with the satisfaction of a glorious comeback; as he was not planning on dying, Takanuva just roared and blasted the brightest light bomb he'd ever made in his face.

Unaware of the immense luminescence above him, Gresh's fingers finally clawed at the edges of the control panel.

Tahu snaked his own hand under the thin fleshy phalanxes as soon as the explosion of light dimmed, elated to discover the force field waning enough in that area to let him actually interact with the other being and immediately trying to leverage him up - although it was easier said than done, considering how little he had to work with.

Maybe it was a stupid move, after Teridax had so blatantly claimed that Gresh was the only thing standing between him and complete control over the universe, but he had his reasons: for one, it certainly wouldn't have been the first time he'd pulled this sort of thing, so whatever reserves he might have had about the situation had likely already been obliterated into fine mist; secondly, he was not going to let a sapient being die between convulsions like this, especially not an emissary and friend of the Great Spirit; and finally, if that ancient talking cloud that was the Makuta thought he or Takanuva wouldn't have jumped in the Control Panel to take over from the poor organic thing even at the cost of sacrificing themselves to keep his gaseous ass from doing any more damage to the entire known world, he was sorely mistaken.

Gresh shook harder in his grasp, but did not budge an inch.

The Toa of Fire willed himself coolheaded as he gritted his teeth: "Come on, come on, don't give up on me..."

A blast of light turned his vision spotty for a few moments, Takanuva's pained groan reaching him only moments later. The shield must have gotten weaker - he turned his focus back on his Hau in full, but the flare of its power flowing once again around his younger brother filled his limbs with molten lead as exhaustion settled into him and suddenly pulling Gresh out felt akin to getting his arms ripped off.

Had using the Vahi been this excruciating, or was he just easily fatigued when forced to balance his attention between two things? Gali would have never had this kind of problem.

Then again, she would not have had a Mask of Shielding either; so he would grit his teeth and bear it, and succeed even if it killed him.

Maybe it was this desperate burst of bravado, maybe it was Takanuva scattering Teridax across the corners of the room again before the Makuta could even get close to him, maybe it was Mata Nui, wherever he was, managing to perceive their thoughts and lending them a blessing of his own: but at last, somehow, inhaling in a horrendously loud gasp, Gresh clutched Tahu's hands tight and tore through the forces keeping him down as he lurched upright on his feet, nearly slamming right in the metallic chest while struggling still against his yet to be quelled tremors.

Before the Toa of Fire could say anything the organic creature was feverishly crawling out of the sunken trap, pushing him to the floor alongside himself and cawing with a panicked voice: "Down! Down!"

Takanuva turned to check on them. His opponent wasted no time ramming into the force shield around him, nearly slamming him into the opposite wall had Tahu not almost dislocated his arm to catch him in time and pull him under himself to protect him.

"I HAVE TOLD YOU, LITTLE TOA!" Teridax howled victoriously as he spread his form to completely sorround the now three overwhelmed beings curled on the pavement, powerless to stop him: "YOUR IDIOTIC RESISTANCE IS MEANINGLESS! YOU CANNOT CHANGE MY DESTINY!"

He dove back into the control panel with a horrifying laugh, filling its every crevice, at last returning to the so very maddeningly empowering feeling of a gigantic body once more regained, subjugated, under his utter control.

Before he even had access to his eyes again he could recognize the fever of rebellion burning through his limbs, the rusted hands holding fast onto his chestplate, the sound of straining machinery now on its last sputtering forces: at last his immense irises burned bright with a vermillion hue, facing the crude prototype features of his brother's furrowed momentary face in the battle he had been so rudely interrupted from finishing.

But just as he was about to taunt him, Mata Nui pushed with all his strength, and his sluggish reflexes did not let him react in time.

Vastus screamed.

He screamed until he felt his chest shrivel and implode.

Ackar wrapped his prosthetic arm around his back, pressing him against the chariot with all his might because he knew full well that if he had let go the Lebori would have let himself fall off into the sand, but looked just as pale as the dead while they both watched the Great Spirit Robot slump forward into the smaller titan's hold.

"He's fine!" Kiina barked while she struggled to regain control of the chariot after swerving too hard, covered in cold sweat and gripping the wheel so hard the scales of her knuckles were creaking. "He's fine! Mata Nui wouldn't just--!"

"He must have gotten him out before that," the Tapyri agreed much more softly, "He wouldn't have let him come to harm."

Vastus heard them both only faintly. His eyes were stuck on the enormous body with a hole in the back of its head that just moments ago had been speaking with his nephew's voice.

"Your friend better pray to the Great Beings Gresh hasn't come to harm," he hissed, feathers raised and bristling with furious premature grief, pupils constricted so tight it hurt, as he watched the rusted colossus lay its enormous bretheren to the ground slowly, carefully: "Because no fucking robot the size of a mountain will keep me from dismantling him with my bare hands if it's the last thing I do in my miserable life."

Takanuva blinked. Then he blinked again two more times, just to make sure his eyes were open, as the red shield faded away.

He flexed his fingers in the dark, trying his luck against the shadows sorrounding the three of them to create a little mote of light... Which formed instantaneously, without encountering any trouble or opposition whatsoever.

A good sign. Puzzling, but pretty good.

He turned his head to look around, feeling Tahu's protective hold around him weaken to allow him to properly take in the room and search for... For what? He wasn't really sure. He felt a little dizzy.

Little seemed to have changed in the wake of Teridax returning in control and the subsequent earth-rending rattle that had overtaken the whole chamber for a terrifying second. The walls were still standing, and with them all their machinery as well; everything was however eerily dark and silent, the hushed buzzes now absent, the faint gleams that all together had made up the room's lightsource snuffed out. Even the small chasm the Makuta had disappeared into was unusually quiet and dim.

"Are you both alright?" his brother asked, still so concerned that he hadn't had the time to catch his breath.

"Yeah," Takanuva replied distractedly: "Yeah, I'm fine. Gresh?"

Faceplanted on the floor and making no movement whatsoever, the organic being responded with a grunt that could have been considered affirmative. Tahu carefully lifted his head to check on him a little better while his younger sibling continued to look around, convinced something was off: beaded pupils struggled to peek through heavy eyelids fighting to stay open.

The Toa of Fire turned the poor thing face up, hoping he could be a bit more comfortable: "You look like you got in a fight with a Rahi Nui," he grimaced.

Gresh's mouth twitched spasmodically for a moment or two: "Drippin'," he mumbled back at him.

"What?"

"Sumfin's drippin'," he slurred again, and craned his neck in mild discomfort as he whined: "Oh, tha's so annoyin'..."

"Where do you hear dripping of all things?" Takanuva argued.

"Wha'y' mean, can'y' hear i'? 's loud 's all Plude..."

"In all fairness Takanuva is not known for being too keen in that sense," Tahu said, completely ignoring the pointed look the Toa of Light immediately shot him, "But I can't hear anything either."

"D'y' go' ears full of w'rms? 's blowin' my head op'n, 's righ' 'here!..." the young being bemoaned as he struggled to raise his weak unstable hand to point somewhere right next to them - in fact, bringing their attention back to the shallow chamber that had housed him mere seconds ago.

The small mote of light illuminated what appeared to be a slowly growing puddle of sickly greenish liquid slowly expanding across the metal floor, half caught in the depressions left by Tahu's smoldering feet where they had nearly melted the pavement. A drop landed into it at that moment with a sad little splash: both Toa followed its path in reverse to find its source up, up, on the ceiling...

... Until their gazes sat on a wide wet stain splattered across metallic panels, likely the product of a gas condensed far too high, of a color concerningly similar to antidermis.

Just to be safe, they slowly crawled away from the puddle.

You could never trust Teridax to consistently stay dead, after all.

They picked themselves up in a sudden hurry to leave. When Gresh remained unmoving on the floor, only twitching and groaning at the stray droplets that sometimes fell, Takanuva eyed him with a little bit of worry: "Are you ok? Do you need help?"

"Gimme a sec'nd," the other replied through gritted teeth.

He shifted his feet enough to pull his knees up, only to have them fall to the side rather bonelessly moments later; he opted for turning around so he could be on all fours, achieving getting on his stomach only when the Toa of Fire gave him a hand as though he were a turtle laying on its shell, and while he did manage to push his torso off the ground with his arms his head very stubbornly refused to raise, blocking him in a very stupid pose. The larger beings very kindly elected to slip their hands under his armpits to lift him despite his mumbled insistences that he could do it himself: the second he was put on his feet his legs decided to crumble like a melting cheesecake, and before he knew it he was cooped up nice and safe in Takanuva's surprisingly big arms as his golden sphere was replaced by a warmer ball of fire, courtesy of Tahu.

"Wow, you're light," the younger Toa noted.

"Right?" his brother agreed. "He weighs less than you did."

"Wait, really?"

"Well, y're re'lly whi'e," Gresh grumbled, offended. His head was lolling back towards the ground in a way that clearly strained his neck, but no matter how hard he tried he could not lift it. He gargled defeatedly: "M'helme's 'oo heavy..."

"Ah - hold on," he heard as he was jostled a little while the other two began walking out of the room and into the tunnel that would once again lead them into the open air.

A kind if clumsy hand carefully went to sustain his nape, lifting his head along with the heavy armor sitting upon it. It took a couple trials, but the helmet did come off eventually: the poor thing's olive green face poofed to almost twice its size as he groaned in relief, and Takanuva watched with awe by the warm light of his brother's flames as the thin feathers adhered back against the skull to reveal features surprisingly flat instead of concave - thin nostrils above a thin mouth adorned with thin ivory teeth, and lashes like a moth's antennas hanging for dear life on tired eyelids, and small ears covered in reddish plumes twitching slightly, and patches of greyish tawny skin between gaps in the down dotted with scars.

The Toa of Light stared, fascinated. Gresh stared right back, so dazed that he barely realized he was conscious.

Takanuva leaned down to his face and told him plainly: "You look even weirder up close."

The other curled up his nose: "An' how d'y'look under tha' mask?"

"Like this, of course," the Toa replied as he briefly lifted the Avohkii.

Gresh huffed a little frightened "Hoo!" and poofed his feathers out right away with eyes blown wide open, thoroughly spooked: "Oh, y'p'ple're ghas'ly."

Takanuva would have objected more vocally if a known voice hadn't rung out at that moment, calling for him and Tahu.

The Toa of Fire enlarged the sphere of flames in his hand while sprinting forward, responding to the cries in tone: soon enough natural light was streaming into the tunnel, allowing the three beings inside it to clearly see Nuparu and Hewkii clambering as fast as their amphibious feet allowed towards them.

"How are things up there?" Tahu asked them immediately as soon as they stopped mere bio before him to catch their breaths: "Is everybody safe? Teridax should be neutralized for now, but we felt some kind of--"

"Sky's broken," Nuparu interrupted him.

The older Toa blinked, shook his head, and sputtered: "What?"

"There's a HUGE HOLE in it!" Hewkii continued whilst flailing his arms wildly in his Earth brother's stead, as he was noticeably more athletic and not currently in the process of being forced to reshape his lungs into something that could actually hold oxygen again: "It was on top of us and then it SHIFTED and went to the horizon and the sea just - pshwoooosh, just fell out of it, all of it - ok, maybe not all of it, but there's- it's- there are Rahi CHOKING on AIR because the sea is just, THAT little, there's THAT little sea in the sea right now, because it- because it FELL OUT. OF THE HOLE IN THE SKY. AND - and there is, there's stuff outside of the hole! There's a sky! A second sky!"

"A what?"

"It looks like the sky on Mata Nui and Voya Nui but maybe I'm imagining things because I'm still reeling, but then there's - sand! There's SAND, there's MOUNTAINS, there's--"

"Hold on," Takanuva piped up, looking as flabbergasted as his older brother, "Hold on, the hole - how, how did that happen?"

"WE JUST DON'T KNOW!!"

"Something might've," Nuparu interjected again, taking a big breath before he could go on: "Scraped it off. Some water - real water, not protodermis - fell onto us when the hole appeared, so a portion of it could have been knocked off or crushed or-"

Gresh chose that moment to give exactly two singular squeaky laughs. He sounded like he was having the most baller time of his life.

"Smack'im with a big rock," he gargled, "Now tha's a classic."

All eyes turned to him.

For a very long second, no words came to anybody.

Then Nuparu said, with the voice of a genuinely intrigued Archivist unfortunately dragging along a rich tapestry of concerning implications: "What is that?"

"We're not archiving him," Takanuva shot him down instantly.

"Yes, but what is he?"

"His name is Gresh and he's in no condition to answer right now."

"Why is that?"

"He's barely keeping awake!"

"So?"

"Not the time for this!" Tahu interrupted them exasperated, launching himself forward to get out and figure out what in Karzhani was happening out there, because while there's a big hole in the sky was a perfectly comprehensible string of words with a meaning behind it there was no way he had processed even just a single one of them in a way that made sense.

She would have been much more relieved to see her older Fire brother emerge from the barely still standing buildings relatively unscathed from whatever challenge he'd just gone through (she had actually only vaguely heard of him needing to go under the colosseum alongside Takanuva without knowing what exactly they were meant to do there, but she considered her guess to be a very educated one because quite frankly there was always a challenge of some sort wherever a Toa had to go) had she not currently been wrestling with a skull-splitting migraine caused by the incessant shouting coming from Pridak's now beached fleet as their ships were left at the mercy of Ehlek's enormous water-dwelling Rahi, which were contorting madly in a desperate attempt to get back under what little ocean was left for them to breathe in.

The panicking army was very lucky Gali had been her example for how a Toa should behave, because had she been more closely exposed to, say, Nokama Hordika instead, they would have all been washed out of the enormous hole in the horizon by now.

That little piece of tangible cosmic horror was also certainly not helping her current state of mind.

Back fins outstretched to slow her descent, Hahli glided down from her observation point to land right into her brother's arms, slamming her whole weight on his chest hard enough to make him stagger. The impact tore a loud 'oof' out of him, but he managed to hug her upright without either of them toppling over in the end.

"Glad to see you," she sighed.

Tahu placed her down on her feet, looking her over for injuries: "Are you alright?"

"No," Hahli groaned. Her brain pulsed painfully as if to underline her statement, and she grimaced. "But I'll live. What about you? And Takanuva? Is he alright? What did you two--"

"Teridax has been disabled for now," he just told her, very cautiously wording himself in order not to jinx it.

He then turned towards the enormous hole in reality - bathed not in an impenetrable darkness but in sunlight, looking back at him with the sight of an enormous desert which seemed in some parts to be slowly receding under a quiet wave of something - and stood quiet before it for a moment.

At last he raised an exhausted arm to point at the whole incomprehensible debacle and asked: "What in the Makuta is going on with that?"

His little sister made a pained sound, like the saddest Hapaka howl: "Wouldn't we all like to know..."

"Alright, let's go for simpler questions first," Tahu conceded for the sake of their mental health. "How's the city, is the damage widespread? Any casualties? Everybody accounted for? The Hagah, Gali, Kongu, Jaller, where are they? Are they alright?"

"Pouks, Iruini and Gali are helping the Turaga look after the wounded, but they've already said that things look to be much less worse than they could be, thankfully," she replied: "Kualus, Gaaki, Norik, Kongu and I are keeping watch on the shores to keep any more of the Barraki's forces from trying their luck against us, and some of the Matoran are cleaning wrecks and disassembling the Rahkshi and Exo-Toa since they stopped attacking - Nuparu was helping too but he and Hewkii went to warn you, right? And a piece of-" (she gestured upwards, loosely indicating the spot where the hole in the sky had been, too tired to refer to it out loud) "-Fell in the Ko-Metru area, so Jaller and Bomonga went to see how bad the damage is and what they can do about it."

Her brother nodded, relieved: "Good work, all of you," he reassured her with a few good pats on her back.

Hahli allowed the gentle pressure to push her towards him, laying her head on his shoulder to let herself enjoy the respite lent by his warm hold around her.

"I'm so tired," she wheezed.

Tahu nuzzled her forehead sympathetically: "We're gonna take a break eventually," he sighed. "Sooner that later, hopefully. Possibly."

They whined in tandem at the thought.

That sweet prospect of rest seemed farther and farther each day.

A holler in their direction snapped them out of their momentary miserable exhaustion: Takanuva was rushing over to them (Nuparu's thin form disappearing back towards the city behind him, likely to continue cleaning up the streets with Hewkii), arms tight around his chest and a look of pure relief at the sight of his sister and former fellow chronicler.

He was glad to lean into her hug, talking far too quickly for her to register any of his words properly; he stopped only when she squeezed him tight, tearing a strange pained grunt out of him.

"Right, sorry, forgot you were there," he mumbled apologetically. Hahli gave him a weird look, about to ask what he meant by that, but his attention had already shifted, magnetized by the hole in the horizon with its puzzling world beyond it: he tilted his head down towards his own chest just a little without ever tearing his eyes from the strange panorama, and whispered: "Is that were you come from?"

A small movement and another mumble - "May'e," said with a slurring tone typical of someone who's just woken up and is still squinting at the light, "Bi' 'oo green, I fink," - brought her eyes lower down from his silver mask.

She blinked once, twice, thrice. The strange olive green being laid limply in Takanuva's arms, looking on the verge of passing out with a sonorous snore right there and then.

How had she not noticed something like that?

Were her senses dimming?

She had no time to be relieved about being proven wrong moments later, when a long shadow creeped in through the sky's chasm.

The strangest kind of silence erupted from Metru Nui and its surroundings - the quiet of held back screams, of barely contained terror being muzzled tight before it had the chance to bark at the threat much larger than itself with its tail between its legs, desperate to intimidate what intimidated it.

It was enormous: it fell slowy, outside, away from the universe, but the impact rattled the entire world nonetheless. Patches of brownish red (was it rust?) clung to the colossal segments across what seemed like a shoulder, a neck, the beginning of a head. A long, wheezing exhale abandoned the titan, its size turning it into a terrifying sound, and the whole frame hissed in agony as it grew impossibly taught while its metallic components grinded against one another with bloodcurdling shrieks.

It was a short, impossibly quick moment.

A second, really, nothing more.

It felt incorrect - like looking through the water without a Kaukau to shield your eyes, everything around you fuzzy and indistinct.

But for a second, for just one single second, it was...

Hahli stopped breathing.

"Matoro?"

And then the second passed, and the body stopped its whistling lament and laid limp, and the fleeting sensation was gone.

"Fuck," the being in Takanuva's baffled hold murmured, quiet voice devoid of any underlying mechanical song deafening in the silence: "Tha's concernin'."

The ground was covered in something, some watery thing, that turned the slowly less and less sandy terrain into a sopping marsh. Vastus speeded through it with surprising agility for someone with his age and a chunk of lower spine missing, although by the standards of a Lebori who'd lived his entire early life in a swampy grove as he was his form was severely lacking - a hundred millenia without any possibility to practice will do that to you.

Ackar was shouting for him above the chariot's waning engine, trying to tell him to wait as he dismounted from the vehicle only to find himself stuck between going after him to make sure he didn't do anything rash and following Kiina to make sure she didn't do anything rash.

Vastus barely heard him anyways. He was still screaming for Gresh.

Idiot rookie that he was - couldn't he have stayed put for once? Stuck close to Tarix as he said he would? Not thrown himself into yet another stupid plan? Now he was starting to sound like Gelu - useless heroics and all that. But Gelu had a point sometimes.

Maybe they should have never indulged him. Maybe they should have never played along with his prattlings about being fully grown when he couldn't even drink yet without melting his liver into goo. Maybe they should have never gotten attached. Maybe they should have never allowed him to become a Glatorian and just left him to tend to the Thornax bushes in Tesara.

Great Beings, his heart was going to collapse.

The robot's colossal head had been laid so that the gaping wound on its nape would almost touch the ground. Liquid still sputtered out of the skull's jagged edges in rivulets: it was silvery in color, like the material making up the gargantuan body it dripped out of, and pooled in a wide shallow pond just underneath the wreckage.

The overwhelming grey hue covering the whole scene did not make the spectacle of a split open skull less gruesome.

It did, however, make it much easier to spot the bright red head of a humanoid figure as it flew right over the cranial cliffs - and with it, the familiar green shape held tight against its front.

Vastus barely registered the movement of his own limbs. In a second he was standing ankle deep in the silvery pond, Venom Talon in hand ready to strike, eyes trained onto the startled creature floating a few feet in the air while holding Gresh tighter in its grip; the young Glatorian's orange eyes opened blearily, heavy, tired, and his arm dangled in his direction in a manner that could have been a purposeful greeting or simply an unintentional motion.

"PUT HIM DOWN!" the Lebori barked furiously.

Either frightened or not understanding him, the being strengthened its metal grasp.

"PUT HIM DOWN BEFORE I PLUCK YOU OUT OF THE SKY, YOU-!"

"Ai aun'ie," his nephew spoke at that moment, craning his neck out of the crook of his captor's shoulder. His head lolled to the side without any strength, helmet nowhere in sight: his feathers were flat, relaxed, but looked spent as though he was fighting through an illness, and his pupils struggled to adapt to the light or focus on anything even as he turned to his captor with a noticeable struggle, mumbling something barely coherent.

Worry overtook Vastus's mind completely: "I SAID PUT HIM DOWN!" he screamed, teeth bared, thin plumage vibrating, arm pulled back as he aimed straight for the crimson helm-

He found his whole body seized tight in an iron grip.

Ackar wrestled him still as carefully as he could, doing his best to keep him from hurling the Talon while not pulling any moves that could have caused the Lebori's back prosthesis to painfully malfuction or become misaligned: "For the love of Certavus, calm down!" he hissed as he almost lifted his fellow Glatorian off the ground, "If he drops from that height he'll break in half!"

"HE'LL HAVE A HEAP OF SCRAP METAL TO LAND ON IN A MOMENT!" the Lebori snarled back.

"And how's that supposed to cushion him?"

He would have bitten into his friends's prosthetic hand hard enough to dent it if his overly keen senses hadn't picked up the heavy splash of something landing less than gracefully into the pond just a few feet before them.

The being raised a hand in either a defense or a peace offering when Vastus whipped his head around to glare at it, gently pushing Gresh's head to lay on its shoulder. The boy blinked, clearly tired out of his mind as he was adjusted in the metal arms to be a little more snug, and mumbled in his aunt's direction another incomprehensible string of words with a little loopy smile.

If that damned chunk of metal didn't let go of him immediately he was going to--

"He's alright," the thing said.

It had a noisy voice, melodious in the cacophonic manner a heavy factory machine might be. Vastus shook his head briefly with a hiss, feeling the sound slither into his ears like a worm.

"He's alright," it repeated softly. "He's not hurt."

"So you can understand when I talk?" the Lebori growled: "Or is it just what you want to hear?"

"Don't aggravate it," Ackar hissed.

Vastus elbowed him as best as he could, syllables leaving his mouth with a dangerous whistling tone: "I told you to put my nephew down. Immediately."

"He cannot stand right now," the thing replied.

"You said he was fine!"

"He's not hurt. He's just exhausted."

"He's fain, aun'ie," Gresh managed to slur loud enough all of a sudden; with immense effort he raised an arm and managed to bonelessly slap his hand across his captor's face/helmet. "He's a fren' - 's name's 'ahu 'n's go' rrrocke's 'n' a big shiel' 'n' fire 'n' s'uff..."

The way the Tapyri's weight shifted away from Vastus's back cued him on the fact that something, for him, had clicked: "You're a Toa, aren't you?" he asked suddenly.

Topaz eyes fixed on him.

"That's what you are, right?" Ackar insisted as he pulled the other Glatorian upright with himself: "A Toa."

"What in Plude is a 'Toa'?" the Lebori snapped quietly.

"One of Mata Nui's. One of his people. He said something about you once, I remember that, compared our swordsmanship - a good warrior, aren't you?"

'ahu (if that was the being's name) nodded slowly.

Ackar breathed a sigh of relief.

"He's good," he reassured Vastus under his breath. He'd almost completely let go of him, keeping a vice grip only on the Venom Talon to stop him from making any brash maneuvers. "He's alright. Gresh is in good hands."

"Doesn't mean I trust them to hold him," Vastus hissed. His breaths were still heavy, still irregular with worry.

His friend nodded, understanding completely, and raised a peaceful hand in the air: "We're on the same side," he told the strange creature: "We're friends of Mata Nui. Gresh went into that robot, right? Mata Nui's old body?"

The strange being froze for only a second, looking absolutely taken aback, as though he hadn't known he'd been residing into a titanic mechanical humunculus until now: "Yes," he replied finally, a little stunted while he tried to focus back on the question at hand: "Yes, he - I helped him reach the... Brain."

"And he moved the whole thing from there?"

"Yes, I... I think so, yes. We've kept him safe, but it's tired him out."

"Alright. Alright, thank you - thank you so much," and his voice cracked a little bit, "For looking out for him, and keeping him safe, thank you. Vastus can take it from here, he'll take care of him."

'ahu shifted his glowing gaze onto the Lebori, then down to Gresh as if asking for his permission, or maybe his opinion.

(Vastus would begrudgingly admit that threatening to skewer the poor thing out of the air with a scythe had not been the friendliest or most trustworthy way he could have presented himself, but fuck you, that was his nephew and he'd been trained by Bara Magna to expect things to generally want to kill you in some manner sooner or later.)

The young Glatorian mumbled something barely intelligible - some kind of reassurance, accompanied by another boneless swat of his hand on the back of the red helm that was probably meant to be a comforting pat to cement his words.

It took only half a step forward, holding him a little further: before anybody else present could blink Gresh had been taken from the metal arms and was resting his head in the crux of his aunt's neck, the liquid at their feet splashing as the older Lebori rushed away with him, towards the chariot, as fast as he could.

"You complete idiot," he hissed the whole way long, "You total and utter dumbass, you stupid damn kid, what in Plude was your plan? You promised you wouldn't have pulled anything, anything! How old do you think you are? Do I have to start watching you like a toddler who can't be trusted to be left alone now? I thought you were all grown! Responsible! Had some sense knocked into you after the first few missing phalanxes!"

"Wen' well," was all he had to say for himself.

"Pro Certavi amore - as soon as you're all better I'll round up every Glatorian available and we'll all kick your ass into next year."

"Wen' well!..."

He didn't react when his head collided the slightest bit with the vehicle's frame while he was sat in it. Vastus checked his eyes feverishly and found them still focused: he wasn't in shock, which was a relief. He preened the spot that had been hit, thin teeth filing through the feathers as both an apology and a nervous urge to do anything that could make him feel better.

A detail struck him: "Where's your helmet?"

Gresh blinked: "Oh, fuck," he mumbled absentmindedly, "Forgo't'ge' it back from 'akanu'a..."

"And what's that?"

"He's a fren'... 's re'ly whi'e 'n' brigh'... 'n'all..."

His eyelids were so heavy, his body so tired. A nap wouldn't have hurt, especially while his aunt preened him... It had been so long, hadn't it? The last time he'd gotten fussed over like this, when had it been? Maybe he would have remembered better after a short rest. That sounded like a good idea.

He felt Vastus's nails scratch his nape in an annoying manner: "Don't fall asleep," he was telling him with barely concealed panic, "Don't fall asleep, stay with me."

Gresh barely managed to squirm a little: "Am fain," he mumbled with a hissing yawn, "Jus' a bi' tir'd..."

"Look," the older Lebori insisted, pointing to the flourishing mountains, to the savanna slowly coming crawling to life, taking a bit of the planet back from the sprawling dunes: "Look, plants are coming back, the plants from before the Shattering - remember we taught you some of them? We showed you, with drawings and everything else? Do you see any you recognize?"

"Am tir'd, aun'ie..."

"Just try - look out and tell me which ones you recognize. There, that one, I know you know it, which one is it? Do you remember that?"

In some way, he must have realized he was worried he wouldn't wake up again if he fell asleep; so he turned his exhausted gaze to the receding desertification, focusing as hard as he could to some kind of bush in the distance the other Glatorian was directing his attention towards, fighting to stay awake so that his aunt would not have to worry after being forced to endure such a scare.

"Gitalis?"

A soft, nervous chuckle: "Way off the mark."

"Am tir'd!..."

"Come on, try again, I know you remember it."

"Hm... 's... 's a iunpre?"

"Correct, good kid." Vastus nuzzled the side of his head and kept searching for any bleeding wounds. "And what's that next to it?"

The optic gave in with a few swift stomps, shattering into large chunks of glassy material that were broken into smaller pieces when Kiina landed on them from above, in a manner that would have easily gotten her feet punctured and mashed into bloody clumps had she not been wearing armor.

Her graceless entrance ended up denting some of the machinery in the robot's head - not that she gave a damn about it, as it didn't look like it was ever going to be good for anything other than harvesting scrap (Berix was going to have a field day with this thing), and most importantly she was a woman too focused on her mission to think of trivial things like the integrity of a shitty gundam's internal parts.

She looked around the control room frantically, desperate to spot that tell-tale golden yellow color somewhere, anywhere in-between the rust and the dissipating vapors.

"Mata Nui!" she called out, "Mata Nui! Where are you?"

A suffering groan had her whip her head around fast enough to almost sprain her neck: fallen on the back of the robot's head, half slipped under a machine threatening to topple over it and only held back by a net of hastily grown vines, laid a dusty mask, its features carved out of a humanoid figure standing with arms outstretched.

She hurled herself towards it, grabbing it and pulling it away from the precarious spot in an instant before it ended up damaged. No body laid behind it - but the otherworlder couldn't possibly be far from it, could he?...

The mask shook in her grasp with an anguished sound horrendously close to Mata Nui's voice.

"You're here!" she cried out. Her moment of elation fell immediately: "Fuck, you're in here," and she flicked her finger at the side of the artefact with increasing panic, "How do I get you out of this thing?"

"Don't hit it," her friend struggled to wheeze, "It's dangerous-!"

A flashing memory of Click turning into a shield had her drop the item onto her lap as though it were scalding; she picked it right back up in an instant, completely ignoring her friend's pleading warnings - she wasn't undergoing any painful metamorphosis at the moment anyways, right? - in order to focus on a solution.

This would have been much easier if she could have thought clearly.

Which she was struggling to do.

Due to the panic.

Mata Nui needed a body, she mumbled to herself, a body, a body - where could she have found a body? The robot was not an option, and she could not see anything she could have used to successfully assemble a frame to the best of her not particularly experienced abilities; she could have worn the mask herself, maybe, but aside from not being keen on the idea of having her limbs taken over by anybody else she had the nagging feeling it would have only worsened the other's worries between the prospect of mind controlling a friend and possibly mutating her.

A second after her thoughts returned to the item's transformative abilities, the solution to the nearly unsolvable riddle jumped to the forefront of her mind.

Sand.

She needed to leave this rickety thing. Now.

Kiina looked up: the broken optic was far too high up compared to where she was, with no option to use any of the toppled machinery to reach up to it properly, and the only things she would have been able to grab onto in order to leverage herself out were unstable pieces of broken glass. Not getting out the way she came in, alright, got it. Plan two set itself into motion as she sprang back up on her feet and ran through the only exit, a hole in the upturned pavement.

If where she had entered was the head of the robot, then the tunnel she was hurrying through must have been its neck, which was usually much easier to break through than it was to do through a skull, so the situation was improving already.

There must have been a grate or a ventilation shaft somewhere, right? Something easy to punch one's way through, looking outside? She wrecked her brain to find memories of something that would have had a similar layout and equipment to the inside of the robot, a building made solely with mechanical work in mind, but what she came up with was awfully muddled and helped roughly as much as a hearty spoonful of Thornax stew would have, which is to say not in the slightest.

Frustrated with herself as she was, she barely realized the floor beneath her left leg disappeared until her teeth nearly bit off her tongue as her jaw collided with the metal walls.

She looked back to find that, in her unconscious stomping caused by the antsiness overtaking her, she had serendipitously hit a weak plate which had collapsed into the much more crowded and much more damaged space between the interior and exterior shells of the gargantuan machine: from where she had collected herself to get her limb out of the hole, she could see parse slivers of natural light streaming in from what might have been punctures through the hull.

So Kiina did the sensible thing to do while holding a dangerous incomprehensible alien artefact currently housing her weakened friend's consciousness: she hurtled her way into the opening with the grace of a cannon ball, smashing into the weakest portion of the metal by pure chance and crashing out of the giant ominid subsequently almost dislocating an arm.

She groaned.

A pained wheeze dragged her attention back to her hands, and with great terror she found them empty.

The mask glowed faintly only a little away from her, barely out of her reach: sand was pooling under it, pushing it upward in the vague shape of a head emerging from beneath the earth at a terribly slow pace, as though it was not so much forming a body from scratch but tearing one through the solid surface with a great deal of struggle.

Digits of dimmed gold pulled an entire hand out along with them all the way up to the wrist; the Gaquri grabbed the palm hastily, to yank the rest of the arm out, but the frail limb instead fragmented and shattered in her grip.

A choked sob accompanied the sand slipping through her fingers. She hissed.

"Sorry," her voice slithered out of her mouth in a whisper while she adjusted herself closer to the artificial face still whining in pain. Her hands laid under the nape, sustaining it: "Alright, let's take it slow, take it slow - there you go, easy does it..."

She wondered if it had been such an anguish the first time, too. As she moved to hold the back of a newly formed arm, watching as a knee arose from the dirt with a strained gasp and feeling the way the unstable skin gained a tentative solidity much weaker than the carapace had been against her scales, she wondered if to grow a body all on your own (to be born, all on one's own?) was as traumatic an experience as it looked.

Finally her friend dragged a long gasp through his mouth as he shook in her loose embrace, and his eyes shined in their sockets.

The Gaquri carefully sat him up as he breathed harshly: "There you are - easy now, easy! You just made this, relax. Plude, you're wheezing like a waterboarded Skopio... How are you feeling?"

"Never," Mata Nui coughed instead, "Never touch the- the mask - it was dangerous- you could have--"

"But I didn't." she cut him off sternly. "How are you?"

His head lolled to the side: "Gresh?" he asked.

"He's got Vastus and Ackar looking for him, how are you?"

"Why... Why are you here? You were - were supposed to--"

"We heard Gresh. How-"

"--To be safe - away, from--"

"Everybody else is fine! Now quit avoiding the question and answer me, how are you?"

Mata Nui folded on himself for a second, prompting Kiina to hold onto his shoulders in the very real fear that he would shatter into a trillion particles in case he barely gazed the ground. She felt him lean pliantly into her hold as she pulled him back with all the caution in the world until the back of his neck was laying on her arm: his frantic inhales slowed down across a few dozen seconds or so, timing themselves on the much louder ones the Glatorian was training him to follow.

At last he seemed fairly stable. His body had a mostly clear shape, completely divided from the normal sand beneath it, and the erratic rising-falling rhythm of his chest had calmed down.

His head turned to face the prototype robot; Kiina turned with him.

Such an elaborate load of junk it was, even to a less experienced eye like her own. And yet it had been home for one hundred thousand years, although dismantled and rusted, and it had done what the Great Beings had judged it unfit for: under Mata Nui's control, it had undone the Shattering.

Maybe Berix had a point, scavenging for trash in the hopes to make something worthwhile out of it.

A rueful sigh distracted her from her musings: "I am... Afraid..." Mata Nui mumbled quietly, apologetic, "I cannot - be true, to the promise I've... I've made, in exchange for your help."

Kiina blinked.

"Huh?"

"The robot," he explained, "The Great..."

"The other one?"

"Yes... It was - I am afraid it was the only means through which - with, which - I could have accompanied you, on other planets. As I had promised you... When you..."

Oh!

Oh.

She had completely forgotten about that.

Her tongue clicked loudly against her teeth as she slipped an arm under her friend's and started helping him back on his feet: "Well, I can't say I'm not disappointed," she started, though her tone was humorous enough to tear a breathy chuckle from the other. "Because I will not lie, I am. Just a bit. But I guess I'll take a pal not being dead, and everybody being fine. And a more livable planet too, I guess. I could start touring this one before expanding my horizons, that sounds good."

"That is - a wondrous idea, my friend," the otherworlder convened. He leaned heavily on her as she sustained him while they walked, though he was so light that she was all but unhindered by him.

She smiled sharply at him with a small nudge: "You're welcome to come along, you know. I bet you'd like to."

A soft laugh: "I would... Thank you..."

"And you can start telling me about the worlds you've visited! So I'll be prepared from when we actually get there. Which will be right after you've gotten some shuteye."

He groaned, almost pained: "Please, no more of that..."

"Oh no, you're gonna get as much sleep as we can stuff into you," the Gaquri threatened: "And I mean real, actual, deep sleep for once, not that half-resting-half-awake meditation thing you do. Great Beings know you need it."

"It is not - necessary..."

"Don't give me that! You can barely stand as you are!"

"I do not--" Mata Nui's argument was interrupted by a sudden creak in his knee, which caused Kiina to stop in her tracks and hold him a little tighter before he toppled over. Her pointed glare dared him to speak further on the matter - which incredibly, after a moment to catch his breath, he did: "Is there a chance that I might... Be able to bribe you?"

She gave an incredulous laugh: "Bribing me? You?" she howled, and her exaggerated reaction tore a giggle from the fallen god. "Did Metus rub a scale off on you after he slithered away or is it just the Skrall mentality getting to you?"

"You are right, it was awfully uncouth."

"Well, don't just take that back, I'm curious now! I wanna know what your offering was!"

Her friend leaned a hand on the prototype's head to catch his breath, winded as he was from their steady if limping gait back to the chariot. They were still a long way from it, but considering his fatigued state they were all in all making good progress.

"A universe," he replied at last. "To visit."

"To visit?" she repeated. He nodded. Oh, he was going delirious then. "Like it's nearby? As in, just around the corner?"

Mata Nui smiled: his eyes curled into tired half moons, offering her their soft, gentle glow so alike the one the former Bota and Aqua Magna had bathed her cold nights of stargazing in for the worst part of her life, wishing she could be anywhere that wasn't that damned ocean of sand.

He pushed through his exhaustion to make a few more steps with her, just enough for the head of the Great Spirit Robot to come into view, and pointed to it - past the jagged edges, somewhere far, far inside of it.

"The Matoran's - my own," he murmured.

Kiina stared at the enormous hole in the metallic skull.

For a long time, she said nothing.

Only looking, listening distantly to the faint sounds rising from it (were they shouts, were those words she could hear? Strange accents speaking familiar dialects?), wondering if a body could really be large enough to hold an entire piece of cosmos.

Finding she really, really wanted to know.

A whisper joined her musings, sheepish, almost embarrassed: "It is a small one, perhaps... But a universe nonetheless."

She hummed thoughtfully: "I'll think about it," she conceded in the end, only making a half hearted attempt at hiding her cautious excitement. "After you've taken a nap."

The other groaned.

It made her snort.

Her name reached them with a holler.

Ackar had always had a quirk of running with his head pushed as far down and forward as his body physically allowed it to go, which tended to make him look like he was charging directly into the first person he saw to headbutt his way through their ribcage like a sandray so horribly hungry it forgot it had teeth.

He was mildly aware of this unfortunate resemblance due to several people outside of the arena letting him know by either looking very scared as he approached or screaming at him to slow down with genuine terror in their voices; so he wasn't really offended when the Gaquri automatically threw her free arm in front of herself and Mata Nui as though she was protecting the both of them from some particularly vicious beast.

"WOAH there!" she shrieked like she was trying to calm down a frightened Sand Stalker, "He's frailer than glass right now, you're gonna shatter him into a million pieces!"

She kept a good eye on him as his gait stuttered and slowed in an attempt to regain control of his legs, ready to whisk Mata Nui to safety before the foolish thing ran up to meet the Tapyri head on and got bodied into a heap of sand, but the veteran Glatorian managed to grasp his friend's hand gently enough to press it to his forehead (an expression of fondness common in his tribe that he'd often given Kiina, too) without breaking a single cell off of it.

"So good to see you," he breathed. A wry smile stretched across his face as the other squeezed his palm back: "How are you?"

"Absolutely exhausted and denying it as hard as he can," the Gaquri answered before Mata Nui could try to lie about it: "He's really bad at hiding it, too."

A quiet groan: "That is not true."

"You needed two whole breaths to say that."

"My friend, please..."

Unluckily for him, Ackar betrayed his hope to avoid being sentenced to sleep as he slipped an arm under his shoulder to sustain him as well: "I'm afraid I'll have to agree with Kiina on this one," he murmured, patting his chest comfortingly. "Let's get you somewhere nice and quiet before you collapse on us."

The fallen god craned his neck with a whimper, but could not fight either of them as they dragged him along despite his lack of collaboration - whether on purpose or not, it was hard to tell.

"Where's Vastus?" Kiina asked.

"Back at the chariot, probably - taking care of Gresh."

"Gresh," their friend perked up with worry: "Is he...?"

"Ever more tired than you, but otherwise unscathed," the Tapyri was quick to reassure them.

Hearing that, the Gaquri squinted her eyes angrily, scales almost turning cobalt from a mixture of emotions she was very unsure she could properly put a name to: "I'm gonna kick his ass," she settled for hissing between gritted teeth.

A tremor under her palm distracted her: Mata Nui had started shaking in their grasp, head almost abandoned to itself as it hung low, a terribly quiet litany falling out of his mouth in an inconsolably guilty cadence - I shouldn't have asked, I shouldn't have asked that of him, I shouldn't have, I shouldn't, I shouldn't have asked, I shouldn't have asked, I shouldn't have asked...

Both his friends had to tighten their hold him before his spiraling led him to the ground. His shoulders were starting to shed themselves into sand, and Kiina felt with horror her hand sink into his chest when she tried to push him upright.

Ackar leaned a little closer, doing his best to speak soothingly: "Easy, easy - he's alright, I told you, he'll be fine."

"He's a tough kid!" his fellow Glatorian added, "He can handle it!"

She turned to her friend so he could emphasize her statement only to see him glance away, as though he'd just gotten an idea. She followed his gaze, and...

The thing was looking in her direction, but not at her.

It seemed shocked.

She was surprised she could even tell, what with the lack of pupils and eyebrows and a general face, but the whole of its appearance came off as oddly expressive.

It stood frozen in place a few meters from them, similar to a prey animal when a predator passes close by it.

Perfectly still.

Like a robot.

"Don't you wanna see who brought him over?" she heard Ackar say a little louder: "I think that could be a pleasant surprise for you."

Kiina shifted her eyes back on him like he was insane.

But he wasn't talking to her, of course; and he wasn't checking for her reaction, of course.

She followed the trajectory of his eyes until she found Mata Nui's: they stared ahead, into glowing yellow irises, appearing to gain a brightness of their own the longer they looked.

"Oh."

It hit him.

He had no idea if they'd ever imagined him.

He certainly couldn't remember if he had, at the very least when it came to distinctive, clear examples. On the island, despite having a guideline with the stone Vakama used in his tales, the most he'd ever managed to conjure was a bright floating Hau which could have been transparent or golden or red; in Karda Nui, even with the newfound knowledge of the Makuta species, he had many times in his musings given him an appearance similar to Teridax - to his first mangled, chaotic form, befitting of an impossibly vast being uncaring for those beneath him; and if he dug into the memories he liked the least, into the days of his first birth, of his first life, amidst the frustration and tension, the most he could find was the thought of a vaguely humanoid shape, large and splendent and undefined, towering above everything.

He'd never asked his siblings or the Matoran or the Turaga if they had their own vision on how the Great Spirit looked. He reasoned they must have; inexplicably, though, no being had ever made a single comment on the matter, and nobody seemed to have ever mentioned such a strangeness before him.

So it was surreal - to stand before Mata Nui.

(He had no idea why or how he knew. He just did. It was an absolute certainty buried somewhere within him, like the tip of an arrow lodged into a lung. He could have recognized the Great Spirit in any shape it would have taken, be it familiar or not. He did not know why. He just knew.)

The Great Spirit was looking back at him.

He was...

He was a small thing.

A creature like any other, roughly as tall as him, in a battered armor dim with dust, having to be held aloft by two other beings before his legs gave out from under him.

His mere presence seemed to cut off his ability to breathe.

Mata Nui smiled radiantly.

"Tahu," he called.

He had a soft, sweet voice.

Tahu stiffened.

What was he supposed to do? There had to be something, some kind of code of conduct for these cases - for standing before your god. Was there a formula, a specific sentence he was supposed to pronounce? A pledge, a plea, a promise? Was he supposed to kneel, to lay at his feet, to lower his gaze, was he supposed to meet him head on with a Toa salute? Was he supposed to move at all?

He did nothing as the Great Spirit struggled to approach.

He stood, glancing desperately at Ackar and at the other being (China, or Kena, he recalled the older warrior shouting as soon as he'd caught a glimpse of a body coming into view - the watery blue of the armor reminded him of his sisters, but he couldn't be sure) as if to ask them for help. Neither answered; he wondered if they knew what to do themselves, or if they even understood who exactly they were helping walk towards him.

Would they even know that? They came from beyond the universe. They likely had no idea that the terribly frail thing in their hands was divine in nature.

Were they the Great Beings?

Anxiety constricted him. He almost wanted to cry.

Mata Nui reached out to him. Then he stopped, retracting his hand not in disgust but with a strange fear; he looked the Toa in the eyes with a strange sheepish air about him as his fingers twitched, almost too shy to ask what was on his mind.

Finally, very carefully, he placed his fingertips against the chin of Tahu's mask, as if to cradle it.

They were pleasantly warm. And dusty. Like slowly cooling ash.

He smiled wider.

A quiet sound left him all of a sudden, and his limbs started trembling harshly as his armor began falling apart into a thousand particles; without thinking, the Toa grasped his wrists tightly and sent a wave of blistering heat through the whole body for barely the fraction of a second, so quick that Ackar and his friend barely had time to hiss at the sudden surge of temperature. He felt the arms in his palms creak: they'd been crystallized into glass.

Before he could choke in horror at his impulsivity, his hands were being held between near transparent fingers.

"Thank you," Mata Nui breathed with something akin to a chuckle - was that embarrassment in his voice? He replied to Tahu's wide eyes with a look of pure apologetic fondness: "Oh... Oh, forgive me, I did not mean to frighten you. I just... I am so very excited to meet you!"

His gentle grip tightened around the Toa's palms.

Something thrummed across his body, a quick steady beat. Tahu felt it reverberate through him.

He was definitely supposed to do something. Should he have kneeled? Maybe he should have kneeled, and laid his head low, and stopped looking so directly at the incarnation of their universe. But the Great Spirit was holding his gaze and smiling and readjusting his grip on protodermis hands and he could not move an inch no matter how hard he tried, mind drawing up blanks, at once awed to be faced with such reverence from a god and baffled by the knowledge that said god was so impossibly frail that a mere emotion could tear him asunder like that.

He realized he was staring in silence again.

He should have done something.

Anything.

What was he supposed to do?

"You were not made like this, were you?" Mata Nui asked. It was not a reprimand or an insult, only an inquiry born of genuine curiosity. He sounded like he was sleeptalking, in a way.

Tahu shook his head, and gentle eyes tilted a little.

"No, I imagined," the god continued almost to himself; he squeezed his palms again. "I have seen you like this, once, I believe... Somewhere deep in the bog of a dream... I remember you barely, before that - forgive me... It has been so long... You have changed!... Such a wonderful thing!..."

Was it?

The Toa struggled to think. The crystalline touch intimidated him into silence much like too high praises can embarrass a child quiet.

"How are you?" his god asked. "How are your siblings? The Matoran? I did not think... I assumed it would have been tough enough to not let... Metru Nui..."

"We're," Tahu choked. His throat whirred, clacked, struggled against itself and spat out stunted words: "Safe. We are. All of us."

Mata Nui breathed a heavy sigh of relief; it made something physically click into place in the Toa's body, and he felt like his mechanisms were working smoothly all at once again.

He lowered his head immediately, shifting his gaze down to the fingers wrapped around him.

The glass was so soft around his hands.

His god's voice passed through him like a dream - vaguely, in a haze, he realized he'd leaned closer, apprehension once more thrumming through his frame: "My chosen... Are they...? I could not... I barely know... They came to be..."

His chosen? Tahu snapped out of his torpor: "The Turaga are safe," he answered just as hushedly, ashamed to have been distracted.

Mata Nui's tired eyes regained fervor for a second.

"Turaga," he repeated.

A wheezed laugh left him, elated beyond words - Turaga!, it seemed to exclaim. The poor souls he had picked so hastily, with such little time and such a hard task ahead of them, Turaga! He raised Tahu's hands to what might have been his mouth as if to kiss it, holding back just moments before it could touch his mask - moments before the Toa could melt the ground beneath his feet from the surprise as his heartlight flashed madly.

He smiled wonderfully, reaching out to cup the adaptive Hau's cheek in his palm: "You bring me such splendid news!"

Breathing was hard again.

Not because he couldn't do it. He could breathe! He could breathe very well. Perhaps too much. Far too much. So much that his lungs were starting to hurt.

Ackar seemed to notice that. He met his eyes long enough to read his incomprehensible swirl of emotions, and though amused by the childish panic in them he blessedly pulled the Great Spirit a little back as gently as he could with his other friend's help.

"Give the boy some room," he murmured: "He's gonna get a heart attack at this rate."

But Mata Nui kept his hand on Tahu's mask, and refused to let go of his palms.

That blinding glimmer had already dropped from his eyes, and he looked exhausted, somehow even more so than he already had; he leaned forward, reaching for the Toa still despite the small distance between them.

"I am sorry," he spoke. His fingers curled around the red protodermis. "I am sorry - I should have... I am sorry," he repeated. He sounded weak, and quiet, and honest. "I am sorry... If I had been... If I had not... You have endured for me so much - if I had paid close attention... If I had not been so careless," he creaked. A long crack split open the god's arm with a horrid sound. "You would not have suffered... You would not... I am sorry - I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry..."

His knee buckled under his weight, cracked, and shattered his leg across the ground.

Ackar and Kena scrambled to hold him aloft, words of concern muddling together: a gentle yank nearly ripped half his chest off, and the arm holding onto the Toa's mask turned opaque as hairline cracks burst from within it before it too began falling apart.

Almost numbly, Tahu realized the other crystalline hand was still clutched around his own in a tender grip, the rest of its limb laying broken in the sand.

He felt himself kneel on the ground with hands outstretched on what remained of the crumbling body: if heated up enough the glass would have melted again, filling in the cracks by itself, wouldn't it? He would have been able to fix it all, to put him back together in the span of seconds, minutes, maybe. He would have managed to fix him.

But what if he just destabilized him more? Maybe instead of breaking he would have started melting. Maybe the hot temperature would have triggered the vitrification of the sand beneath him too, and he would have fused with it and become indistinguishable from the rest of it, worsening his condition as he could no longer be separated from it.

Or maybe it simply wouldn't have done anything. He had already started falling apart Tahu had done anything, and his accidental fix had now grown obsolete. Maybe it was just too much. Maybe he just couldn't hold onto himself.

"I am sorry," Mata Nui whispered. Somehow, his quiet voice cancelled out all other sounds. Somehow, his remaining hand was still holding onto the adaptive Hau. "I am sorry - none of this should have... If I had been... More attentive... None of this should have happened... I am sorry, I am sorry..."

Tahu looked up to his face again.

The peculiar pattern of the Ignika met his eyes.

He had not even recognized it. He had not even registered that what he had been staring at was the Mask of Life. He had known so deeply that the being before him was Mata Nui that, in the petrifying surprise that had taken over him, the artefact on the god's face had looked no different than a common powerless Kanohi.

Couldn't it fix him, then? Couldn't it mutate him? If it could build itself a body it could certainly make one for him too, couldn't it? Why wasn't it working? It had plenty of material to choose from - why wasn't it doing anything?

Mata Nui's eyes were flickering.

He stared directly at Tahu as though it was the only thing keeping him together.

"I am sorry," he begged. "I am sorry, for everything, everything - I am sorry... You should not have... I should not have allowed... Such terrible things... To befall you... Any of you... I should not have... If I had been... I should have been... I am sorry... I am sorry - I am sorry... I am sorry... I am sorry... I am sorry... I am sorry..."

Tahu stared back.

This was a god.

A being for whom countless had lost their lives.

Begging, broken and brittle, with a voice barely above a breath and a trembling hand on his cheek, for the forgiveness of his own universe.

Ackar's voice broke through the haze around him: "You need to rest."

Mata Nui twisted his neck harshly: a long crack slithered around it, and the Toa rushed to grab it before it tore away from the torso already on the brink of shattering.

"No!" his deity sobbed. He could feel the clear throat quake with each phoneme under his protodermis digits, broken edges ringing as they scratched against one another: if he were to press even just slightly more forcefully, he would reduce it to a heap of minuscule fragments. "No, no, please, no, no--"

Kiina grasped the Ignika gently in her hands, allowing the straining pieces of anatomy to fall in favor of protecting the one thing actually containing the delirious entity: "It's for your own good!" she argued back at him, but her voice was soft, desperate, trying her best to pull a friend back from the hole he was sinking into as he kept squirming. "Pushing yourself like this is going to kill you - listen to us, damn it!"

The glass chest creaked as it spasmed erratically in the pantomime of frantic breathing (so set he was on living, on being real and present) and an agonizing whimper left the divine wreckage.

The eyes fixed on Tahu's were blue, flickering terribly.

He felt the fingers crack against the cheek of his Hau as they curled around it.

"I am sorry," his god cried so quietly, "I am sorry, I am sorry - no more, no more, no more sleep, please, no more, no more... I am sorry, I am sorry - Tahu... Tahu... I am sorry... Please..."

A hand of protodermis grasped what little was left of a body and laid it down on the sand, carefully, gently, so it would not break. Its twin wrapped around the crystalline palm as it struggled to keep from fracturing and held it - as gently as it had been held by it.

The Toa breathed.

His lungs filled slowly trough the gaps in his armor.

Then, just as slowly, they deflated.

He kept breathing, hands enveloping what little remained of his god's own fragile one.

Mata Nui heaved, and heaved, and slowed down, until his labored inhales matched his protector's own, until the light of his eyes drooped and struggled to glimmer in resignation.

Tahu spoke as quietly as he could, his entire being turning the words into a hushed mechanical symphony: "We can wait still."

"I am sorry," Mata Nui insisted.

"We can wait still," his guard repeated.

"I am sorry... I am sorry..."

"We can wait still. Until you are safe."

"I promise... I promise... I am sorry..."

"We can wait. Rest now."

"I want to see you... I promise..."

"Until you are safe. Rest now."

"I promise... I promise..."

"Rest now."

"I promise..."

"Rest."

Mata Nui shook again.

Then he calmed.

His hand curled around Tahu's and shattered gently over his fingers.

"Alright," he conceded at last, reassured.

His head crumbled in his friends' gentle hands, his empty sockets lost their waning glow, and lulled by the warrior who was fated to awake him he allowed his endlessly fatigued spirit to slip into sleep once more.

His entire body hurt.

Not as badly as when he first woke up, but it still hurt.

It was like every single muscle had decided to file a complaint against his brain and set his nerves on fire in an attempt to get the message relayed much more quickly.

He turned on his side with a hiss to try and keep sleeping it off, but he was fully awake by now.

"Oh," he heard - he wasn't sure he could tell voices apart in this state, but that sounded like Gelu. "Sand mite's awake. Watch him a moment, won't you? I've got to get someone."

Some kind of machine made a rockus near the leg of the bed.

A quiet cacophony of noises caused an uncomfortable shiver to wreck through him. Ah, damn it - he shook his head harshly once or twice, gritting his teeth as his neck immediately flared up: deciding he didn't want to be stuck in a losing battle, he grumbled and blearily opened an eye.

The little thing with glowing lime lights in the sockets of its metal green face jumped a bit and retreated away from him at that.

It seemed to be standing on a stool.

He stared at it for a moment.

"Hi," he said hoarsely.

The little thing blinked once or twice with a clicking sound: "Hi!" came at last the reply, face unchanged: "My name's Tamaru."

Oh, he knew that kind of noisy, industrial-sounding, confusingly androginous voice. This must have been... A baby Toa. Or a Toa kid. Or something of that sort.

"Gresh," he introduced himself.

Tamaru nodded, looked him over, fidgeted, and then asked with no shortage of curious embarrassment: "Wayby, what are you?"

"Lebori," he answered. He managed to point back at... Him? Her? Them? It? Xe? Ti? He didn't know how to approach the subject with a mostly metallic alien, so he was going to go with 'ti' for now. All Agori kids were 'ti' at that height. "Toa?"

The being laughed with a tinny sound: "No, no! I'm too bugsmall to be a Toahero. I'm a Matoran. How are you wellfeeling?"

"Bad," he replied honestly.

"Oh. Eversorry."

"I mean," Gresh shrugged: "Could be worse. But not good."

Ti hummed deep in thought, as though ruminating on his words: "Makes sense," ti decided in the end, "You've been sleeping for two days. You must have been bonetired."

"Huh."

Two whole days, asleep.

Yeah, made sense. He'd been absolutely exhausted.

How must Mata Nui be holding up then, he wondered?

He hoped he was fine.

The Matoran turned tir attention to his face again, leaning closer but not daring to graze him: "Are those feathers?"

"Hm-hm."

"Can I handtouch?"

Sure, why not? Kids from other tribes used to ask to do that all the time, this wasn't any different. He gave ti a very weak ok gesture and submitted himself to the inevitable poking and prodding.

That turned out to have been a very good idea, as Tamaru was not only much more gentle and cautious while combing through his thin plumage than any brash Gaquri or Tapyri or Koniri brat he'd ever met, doing tir best not to pull any plumes or feathers out, but also, despite being the farthest thing from a Lebori, exercised a level of so highly specific care towards it that would have probably won ti an honorary place in his tribe.

He leaned his head into lir touch and bristled his feathers comfortably, driving a giggle out of ti.

The Matoran cooed at him, and he cooed back without thinking.

Great Beings, he missed being preened by his aunt.

"You're good," he mumbled.

"Heh heh! I turntame Gukko birds," Tamaru explained proudly, pushing tir chest out a bit. "I have lots of experience."

He could tell.

Wait, birds?

They had birds? In Mata Nui's old body?

His train of thought was interrupted when the Matoran hastily pulled tir hand away as if caught doing something ti shouldn't; before he could protest a new weight settled on the foot bed, and a scaled hand snuck under him to pull him up a little, just enough so that the Gaquri could see his face.

Tarix looked him over in complete silence, checking him up and down at least twice. Finally he pulled him into his arms and squeezed him gently as he pressed his nose into the reddish feathers denoting his young age sticking out of his head.

Gresh did not fight it. He snuggled into his uncle's hold despite the long scales scratching at him, sighing in relief.

Lebori teeth were good at cleaning plumage in a way that no other tribe could vaunt - namely by being thinner than what was usual for Agori, catching loose feathers painlessly without getting them stuck in place and having to pluck them out with their hands afterwards. By contrast, for example, Gaquri teeth were just a little too large the closer the crown was to the gums and retained much more humidity around them, causing the soft barbs to grossly stick to the enamel and the shaft to lodge itself between them, allowing for a generally less than pleasant experience.

Tarix had lost the will to give a damn about how disgusting it sometimes felt during his and Vastus's courting, and so he did his best to preen his nephew for a minute or two, just to reassure him of his presence, to offer him comfort after what had no doubt been a harrowing ordeal. The kid's weight against him melted the worries that had plagued him for the past two days into slush.

He pulled away at last once he found himself satisfied with his work. He cupped the young Glatorian's face in his hands with a sigh, and told him: "We're gonna kick your ass."

Gresh groaned: "Oh, come on!"

"Don't give me that, you little bastard," his uncle hushed him with the fondest tone he'd ever used as he nuzzled his cheek again: "You scared the ever-living crap out of us, we didn't have a single pair of clean pants between five Glatorian for a day and a half."

He felt the rookie squirm and wriggle to get out of his hug: "But it worked! And I'm fine!"

"Passing out stone cold on your aunt is called 'being fine', now?"

"So what! I've woken up now!"

"I can hear that," Tarix grinned. He smacked a kiss on the kid's forehead, getting a little 'blegh' back. "And now that we're all relieved we'll wait until you're all better, and then we'll kick your ass."

The Lebori shook his feathers at him at maximum pique, hissing to scare him off with no success whatsoever.

Tamaru snorted.

He stuck his tongue out at ti too.

Then something large and blue slid into the room like a fury, so fast that its inertia sent it right against the wall with a loud BANG that spooked the Matoran off tir stool with a tremendous clatter.

"YOU!!"

Tarix curled around Gresh to better help him hide.

Kiina circumvented the issue this posed by crawling on her fellow Gaquri's back like some sort of gargoyle, reaching over his protective stance, grabbing the back of the camisole the rookie was wearing, and frantically starting to pull it back and forth as though it were her victim of choice's shoulders.

"I'M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS!" she yelled: "ARE YOU STUPID?! ARE YOU POSSESSED?! DID A SPIKED WORM HIDE AWAY IN YOUR BRAIN?! YOU COULD HAVE GOTTEN SQUASHED TO BITS! AND YOU BROUGHT MY LITTLE BROTHER ALONG TOO!"

"It was Berix's idea," the Lebori tried to rebuke.

"No it wasn't," his traitorous uncle replied.

"NO IT FUCKING WASN'T!!"

Hahli looked upon the silent giant and waited.

What for?

She laid her head in her palms, not knowing how to answer herself.

The protodermis was cooling beneath her. She let her legs dangle for the jagged edge of the Great Spirit Robot's broken skull, swaying with the wind coming down the mountain as evening crept closer with its orange hues in a manner similar to how it used to do on Mata Nui; Metru Nui looked so small, so far below, but she could not focus on it at the moment.

Her saddened gaze remained fixed on the unmoving prototype, studying its features in silence.

It wasn't as frightening as its larger brethren. The Great Spirit Robot had a face that looked right out of a nightmare: it was long and rough, with long lines digging deep all the way down to its chin, stuck in a barely open-mouthed grimace which gave the impression that a rumbling voice was meant to come out of it at any moment, delivering righteous fury and reprimands and orders.

The prototype's skull was stouter, almost oval or round in shape. It had eyes and cheeks - or what appeared to be cheeks or cheek guards, at least - and nothing else. A long segmented line ran across the height of its face; flat crests emerged from the top of its head.

The sum of its pieces ended up resembling a Kanohi much more closely than an Agori visage.

She looked at its broken optic, at its rusted fingers.

Waiting for a light to shine through the gaping darkness within the shell, for the joints between the phalanxes to twitch and scratch at the ground under them as it grumbled to life.

Waiting for it to speak to her with a soft, booming, deep voice.

To turn its head and call out to her.

To say, Hahli?

Is that you?

"Hahli!"

She turned. Takanuva's mask peeked from the edge of the robot's head as he held tight onto the protodermis, evidently having been scaling his way up to her; Kopeke, sitting tight on his shoulders, waved at her in his stead.

His sister laughed, hurrying over and grabbing his hands to help him up: "Hey there! What is this, a Chroniclers' reunion?"

"It could be," her Light brother grinned. He sighed in relief as soon as his feet were once again resting on more or less even ground. "We saw you sitting there and thought we'd come up to say hi."

"Is that so? You just happened to be walking around these parts?"

Her friend did not reply, flustered.

The wrecks rested far away from the camps promising to one day become New Atero, much too far for the pair to just casually come across them while struck by the desire for an evening stroll.

No, it couldn't be a coincidence: they had a specific reason to be here. Just like her.

Hahli huffed playfully and helped Kopeke down from her brother's shoulders: "Alright, come on," she gestured back towards the edge of the enormous wound, inviting them both to sit down with her as she returned to her spot. "Spill it. What are you two investigating?"

The Matoran settled next to her in no time, used enough to vertiginous heights to remain completely unbothered before the void beneath their feet; Takanuva stalled a little more, fidgeting with his hands for a moment: "It's nothing," he shrugged in the end as he very deliberately took his seat as well.

"It's not nothing." Kopeke rebuked.

"Yes it is."

"It's not."

"It's..." the argument died in the Toa's throat. He took a deep breath; Hahli watched him turn to the rusting robot with a forlorn look that perfectly replicated her own emotions. "It's something Tahu said."

She followed his gaze.

The prototype still had not moved.

Maybe it would now that there were three of them.

Or maybe not.

Who knew.

"About Mata Nui?" she asked softly.

He nodded.

"What was it?"

"He said that... Well, he told me that when he saw him, you know, he just looked like any other being. Like a Glatorian. The kind you'd forget after catching a glimpse of them in a crowd. But at the same time there was just this..." he clenched his hands close to his heartlight, almost as if to grasp it within them: "This feeling - this certainty, that what he was looking at was the real Great Spirit, and he couldn't have mistaken him for anybody else even if he'd tried. Like there was something deep in his soul telling him."

Hahli did not reply.

"I think... I think I felt that too." Takanuva continued. His eyes were fixed on the prototype. "When I looked at it, on Metru Nui."

Her fins twitched lightly.

A mellow wind passed through, gently leading the sand to crash against the limbs of protodermis like waves of a calm sea, further dulling the darkened rust that covered the dead colossi laying side by side as it stuck upon it, wearing them down impercetibly.

She heard Takanuva adjust his seat.

"Nobody else did. I mean, nobody really looked at it except for us and some Matoran - aside from the Barraki armies, but- you get what I meant. But I think the Nuva might... I think they'd all feel that."

Then he grew silent again.

His sister did not add onto his hypothesis, and kept quiet.

She was still looking at the robot.

Still waiting for it to turn its head towards them.

Still waiting for it to call out to them with a familiar voice.

Kopeke's silence was comforting. It drowned out their own uncomfortable quiet naturally, in a manner hard to explain: but knowing he sat next to them, hands on his lap, looking out to the sprawling landscape before them, just listening, brought them respite from their too loud thoughts.

Takanuva turned towards her, prompting her to face him.

"Did you feel that, too?"

She gripped the jagged skull under her and did not answer.

He waited.

His voice came out of him awfully small: "You said something," he whispered, sounding embarrassed: "When you saw the robot. But I didn't hear it well because you said it very quietly and I was sort of too distracted to pay attention."

Hahli sucked in a breath to speak.

She couldn't.

She turned her eyes down, to the city slowly being abandoned below them, and swung her legs harder to desperately try and find something, anything, that could have worked as a response.

What was she supposed to say? That she thought she was going crazy? That nothing had happened? That she didn't know?

That she'd seen a ghost?

The barbarian hurried deeper in her seaweed hut, crawling hastily into her bed and hiding her Kaukau under her arms, wanting to forget everything again, to wake up and find that nothing had changed, that she was still just a flaxmaker who never spoke and seldom left her village, who did her duty diligently and went to sleep not knowing there were friends outside of her gate waiting to die.

Kopeke sat next to her. He did not touch her. His silence laid a soothing hand on her burning brain.

"Do you know when - when a part of your head is muddled?" she asked. Getting each word though the knot strangling her throat was a painful struggle. "When it's... When it's all murky, and confused, and swirling too slowly and bubbling, and you can't understand what's happening in it?"

Her brother nodded.

She passed her hands over her Faxon: "It was just a second," (she sounded guilty, and she had no idea why) "Just a second - just a moment, so quick I'm not even sure I understood anything I was thinking... And it was so hazy, and unclear, and unfocused, and I - I don't know why, I'm not sure but it felt like--"

Something in her neck swerved from the strain: an unfortunate gear shrieked as it tried to turn where it shouldn't, interrupting her with a short-lived mechanical cough. Two hands of different sizes were quick to pat her back to dislodge the misbehaving piece back into its rightful place.

With a final harsh exhale, Hahli spat out: "--For a moment, it felt like Matoro."

Her arms shook as though she'd puked her soul into the void.

The robot remained still.

Unmoving, unchanging.

Rusted and broken and dead.

What good was staring at it?

It was never going to be him.

Nothing was ever going to be him.

No one was ever going to be him.

She'd been here for hours yesterday, and that feeling hadn't repeated.

She'd been here for hours today, and that feeling hadn't repeated.

She couldn't stop hoping that maybe, if she looked at it long enough, it would feel like him again.

"Do you think he's him?" Takanuva asked with a breath.

Hahli faced him.

It was like looking in a mirror.

"Mata Nui," he repeated. "Do you think he's him?"

Did she?

It would have been nice. It would have been relieving. To know that this whole time, they'd been fighting for a friend. For someone they loved. For someone who loved them. It would have been nice, because then they would have everything back. They would have their paradise back: their island home, their friends, their family. As if nothing had ever changed. As if nothing had ever happened. It would have been nice, because none of them would have died then.

But what about before that? When the Great Spirit refused to look at them? When it neglected and endangered them? Could that have been him? And if it hadn't been him, then who had died with him? Who had he usurped and doomed to fade into non-existence in much the same way as Teridax had usurped Mata Nui? Who had they been fighting for before the Mask of Life chose its vessel?

"I don't know," Hahli replied. "I just don't know."

Her brother leaned his head on her shoulder.

His weight anchored her to reality, dissipating her swirling thoughts.

Kopeke looked, silent, at the massive robotic body.

Krahka came to his mind.

He had seen her - he had traveled with her, with Tahu and Johmak and Onua, and Lariska and Guardian. She had looked exactly like he'd expected, so like nothing he could have thought of at all: but he'd still recognized the sharp grin that spread too wide, the voice that was neither a hiss nor a growl nor a chirp and yet resembled all those sounds, the frighteningly clever eyes that Vakama's narrations had described in such vivid unspoken detail.

She had been every bit the legendary Rahi lurking within the Metru Nui archives, so cunning and terrible that even the Rahkshi fleed from her.

And yet, while he'd looked at her wreck chaos upon Daxia's surface with Onua, something incredible had happened.

No matter what beast she turned into, she looked just like a Toa.

Something about her, about her shifting anatomy, her erratic fighting style, her voice heckling back at Onua when he shouted above the rockus at her, her strange glee - she had seemed like a wild mixture of the Turaga's selves, as though a little bit of each had gotten stuck in her shapeless form and molded alongside her ever changing body, made hers, until she was an equal of what they had once been.

Until she was, indisputably, one of them.

He remembered how Turaga Onewa had sat next to Vakama as he'd recounted their first proper battle against the Horde. He had claimed he was staying to make sure the firespitter told the tale right, but had kept completely quiet the whole story through.

He had caught how he'd clenched his hand during the last struggle between the Tahtorak and the Zivon, his eyes shut tight, as though he were bracing himself for a devastating blow - and how he'd let his fingers rest, dejected, resigned, when the shapeshifter disappeared into darkness.

Maybe she is a Rahi who discovered a little Toa inside.

Kopeke mulled over Pouks' words.

He wondered if Mata Nui liked Rahi.

If he found them intruguing in a manner very different from the detached scientific approach of Onu-Metru archivists.

If he would have talked to tamed ones when they clamored at him, or even repeated their own chatterings back at them to try and communicate with them more accurately.

He wondered if Mata Nui had a good singing voice.

If he would have been shy about it, or instead enjoyed bellowing out hymns and songs to his heartlight's content.

If he would have had such a powerful control over it that he could go from humming a lullabye to declaring a dirge to grinning along a festive chant in mere seconds.

He sighed.

His little body reclined against the cool protodermis as he scuttled closer to his once fellow Chroniclers. Night had fallen: clusters of stars crawled across the dark sky like an infinity of beetles.

His quiet thoughts enveloped the Toa.

He felt them lay down with him, a little calmer, a little more at peace.

In another hour or so a small group of worried Matoran, Turaga and Toa would finally catch a glimpse of Takanuva's glow and start screaming at them to come down, chastising them for disappearing like that without giving them any notice as soon as the three of them were in manhandling reach.

But until then they laid with the empty robot, paying it no mind, breathing in asynchrony under a universe vaster than they could have ever imagined.

It would have been nice.

If Mata Nui had a little bit of Matoro in him.

40 notes · View notes

materialsscienceandengineering · 3 days ago

Text

Deformable mirror technology takes laser welding and 3D printing to new heights

Yongcui Mi has developed a new technology that enables real-time shaping and control of laser beams for laser welding and directed energy deposition using laser and wire. The innovation is based on the same mirror technology used in advanced telescopes for astronomy. In a few years, this new technology could lead to more efficient and reliable ways of using high-power lasers for welding and directed energy deposition with laser and wire. The manufacturing industry could benefit from new opportunities to build more robust processes that meet stringent quality standards. "We are the first to use deformable mirror technology for this application. The mirror optics can handle multi-kilowatt laser power, and with the help of computer vision and AI, the laser beam can be shaped in real time to adapt to variations in joint gaps," explains Yongcui, a newly minted Ph.D. in Production technology from University West.