Today’s chapter was written entirely while listening to the musical works of Aimee Mann and 'til Tuesday… What do you mean that, after 46 chapters, I’m out of things to put up here?
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Chapter 46
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I’m not sure how long I sat there, to be honest… being near-catatonic for a while tends to do that to one’s perception of time. Through Kopaka’s memories, I felt like I’d gotten to know Pohatu as a friend, and while seeing the death of Onua and that time that Kopaka’d thought Pohatu dead had both hit me hard, actually being present at the death of a Toa and friend was something else entirely, especially in how it had transpired. It still didn’t feel right to me. Pohatu’s condition only made it more tragic; it added an edge of anger to the grief, anger at world that had abandoned him, allowed him to drive himself to such depths over hundreds of years. Really, Hewkii was the only person who’d visited him over that time, so far as I knew. Through it all, Pohatu’d been hurting, physically and emotionally… like Gali, like Onua, and probably like Lewa, increasingly lonely in his downward spiral, drowning it all in liquor bottle after liquor bottle until death seemed more a merciful release than anything else. No one deserved to go like that, least of all this Toa… and yet this alleged paradise had let it happen.
Eventually, Kopaka stepped out of the room, stopping right outside the doorway. “Lis,” he began in a quiet, but controlled voice, “get up.” Looking up, I noticed he was holding himself in that tall, stoic manner that I’d become so used to, but as he looked down on me it was obvious from his face that he’d shed a lot of tears, too. No doubt he was making an effort not to show too much of the pain still inside. I stood up and wiped some of the tears out of my eyes. “We need to get going,” Kopaka added.
“What? Already?” I wondered.
“We are running out of time,” he explained as he walked around me towards the front door.
“Hang on,” I said, to keep my voice down as well for some reason, “you said you had an explanation… for that.” I gestured towards the bedroom.
“I do,” he replied, “and I will tell you, but not now. Later.” I sighed, then followed. Passing by the open doorway, I looked into the bedroom. Kopaka’d laid Pohatu down face-up and straightened out the sheets; it looked like the Toa of Stone was merely sleeping comfortably. I stopped for a moment, not wanting to leave, not wanting him to be gone, as though he wouldn’t be truly gone until we left his place behind. Lying peacefully in that bed, with everything in the room cleaned and arranged… it was as though Kopaka’d tried to symbolically set everything straight, even though the friend he’d come back to was irreparably broken. Tears were welling up in my eyes again. “Lis, we need to go,” Kopaka reminded me as he waited by the front door. He’d put on the cloak that he’d left there when he’d returned from… whatever he’d been doing earlier.
“Right,” I nodded, then then took one last glance into the bedroom. “Rest in peace…” I whispered sadly, then slowly turned and headed for the door. Kopaka followed me out, closed the door behind him, then looked up at the sky. The night was clear, but colder now.
“A new star has joined them tonight,” he said, sounding unusually philosophical. I glanced over at him, wondering if he was going to point out which one, but he didn’t follow up on it. Looking up, I saw a sky full of stars… then again, if he had been doing lots of astronomy, I suppose Kopaka would’ve been the one to know which one was the new one. Apparently satisfied at the condition of the sky, he started heading back in the direction from which we’d come, back to the city center. The streets were utterly quiet, which wasn’t surprising given that sunrise was probably still hours away. Still, he pretty quickly turned left into one of the side alleys, making his way through the narrow, maze-like streets at a fairly quick pace. At first, I just thought he was worried about being spotted in spite of the hour, but after a while I started to realize that he was heading in a very different direction; north-west as opposed to north-east. I didn’t really bother to question it at first, but after a good fifteen minutes or so of wondering where we were heading, I couldn’t wait any longer.
“So, where are we going now?” I asked just as we’d reached what appeared to be the side of a larger street. Kopaka didn’t reply in voice; he just turned and pointed out a well-lit signpost not fifty feet away from us.
Station East
“The underground line?” I thought out loud. Next to the sign, a set of stairs offered a path down. Kopaka took it, I followed, and soon we found ourselves standing in front of the ticket window of the underground station, which was being manned by a Po-Matoran who’d fallen asleep on the job. Kopaka tapped the glass, quietly at first, then louder the second time, which woke up the Matoran.
“Huh?” he mumbled drowsily, but when his eyes fell upon the Toa and cloaked stranger in front of him, he quickly reasserted himself. “G-good evening,” he greeted. “What can I help you with today?”
“Seaside Station, two tickets,” Kopaka said in his raspy voice.
“One-way or return?” Po-Matoran inquired as he turned to the rack of ticket rolls on his left.
“One-way,” Kopaka answered as he pulled out some widgets and laid them on the counter.
“Right,” the Po-Matoran ripped two tickets off of one of the rolls, “that’ll be four widgets…” his voice trailed off as, turning back to us, he noticed Kopaka’d put exactly that number down on the counter already. “Okay, seems we’re good then,” the Matoran confirmed as he offered the tickets to Kopaka, who took them without ceremony and headed into the station proper.
“Thank you,” I said to the Matoran before following. Station West was no cleaner than when last we’d been here; puddles of water or possibly other liquids dotted the floor, the lights flickered, and the trash cans were overflowing. There wasn’t a train present, but a clock and schedule posted informed us that there would be one arriving within five minutes. Kopaka elected to wait standing up, while I took a moment to admire the painting of the Glatorian on the wall; it was clearly street art of some kind, probably illegal, but whoever’d done it had done a good job on the detail. In fact, perhaps a little too good… the Glatorian in question was Kiina, a female from the water tribe who wielded a trident and whose armor, at least in this display, didn’t leave much to the imagination. If anything, being drawn from behind and looking slyly over her shoulder, she looked more like one of those ‘dolls’ that Kopaka’d compared Hahli to than a fighter, and with ineffective armor like that I could see to some extent where the insult came from; this was the kind of thing that Kirall was shooting for with her ‘enhancements.’ Painted in large, black letters beside the painting were the words “Real Glatorian Hero,” accompanied by a more crudely written “Agori Rule!” in red. I suppose that, from what little I knew of her, the hero part was an accurate description of Kiina, though I couldn’t help but wonder what the notoriously short-tempered Glatorian thought of this display.
Turning around, I noticed Kopaka was standing with his arms crossed and that his mind was sending out ‘anger’ signals so loudly that I was detecting them without even trying. Then I noticed why: painted on the tunnel wall on the other side of the train track, in just as much detail, was a picture of a grotesquely obese Gali in the same pose and similar attire as Kiina in hers. The look on Gali’s face, however, was one of ‘caught red-handed’ embarrassment as opposed to Kiina’s confident, challenging expression, and instead of wielding her axes her hands were occupied by a very large and already half-eaten sandwich. The original artist had labeled the picture “Real Toa Hero,” while whoever’d shown up with the red paint had practically surrounded the work with words and phrases like “Matoran suck!”, “Activate Kraawa Power!”, and “Toa of Blubber.”
“By Mata Nui…” I thought out loud. “Poor Gali.”
“■■■■■■ Agori,” Kopaka seethed.
“At least you can’t see it when the train arrives…” I muttered, somewhat worried about how mad Kopaka clearly was. He really did care in matters concerning Gali… but this clearly wasn’t a good time to go pointing that out. He was probably right, though; given the… let’s say unfavorable way the Toa was depicted, it was probably some cheeky Agori who’d put these pictures up, and with it Gali’s condition was clearly public knowledge. I wondered whether the same was true of Pohatu… was there a picture comparing the crippled Toa of Stone to a Rock Tribe Skrall somewhere? Thankfully, the awkward moment and sight were cut off by the arrival of the train. No one got off, and once again we were the only ones on board besides the driver. Kopaka took one of the seats in the far back, I guess more by force of habit than anything else, and I took the one across from him. Shortly thereafter, we rolled out of the station, the picture of Gali passing behind Kopaka’s back. After we were out of sight of the station, I spoke up:
“So, why did you?” I asked.
“Duty,” he answered.
“Okay, go on…” I was really looking forward to this explanation. How did killing another Toa fall under his duty?
“In Onu-Koro-Nuva there a giant statue of Onua,” he began. “He is all but worshipped by the Onu-Matoran.”
“I know,” I informed him. “I’ve seen it. They’ve got lots of signs by it explaining what he did.”
“Do any of them mention how he died?” Kopaka wondered.
“They mention he died with his boots on, so to speak,” I remembered.
“Do they tell how he died?” Kopaka reiterated himself.
“Well, they don’t mention the crystals…” I figured that that was what he was getting at.
“Indeed they do not,” Kopaka confirmed, “and why do you think that is?”
“Uhm… well, Nuparu told me that, you know… it would sour his memory,” I recalled. “We talked about that, remember? You told me Nuparu left the crystals out of the official history because it would taint the image of Onua as someone for the Matoran to admire and live up to.”
“Exactly,” Kopaka nodded. “He was doing his duty by providing for the Matoran the best image of Onua that they could have. My brother went from being the living champion of the Onu-Matoran to their patron legend. They try to live their lives as he did; even in death, he still provides them with a moral standard to strive for, to be the best they can be. That is how he still serves the Matoran, as a legend, and Nuparu could not risk that legend being tarnished.”
“Oh, okay. Is that what you’re trying to do for Pohatu now?” I was catching on.
“Exactly,” Kopaka nodded again. “So long as Pohatu lived, there would never be a remembrance ceremony on the scale that Onua had, no statue to cement him in the consciousness of the Matoran forever. In his condition, he had nothing left to give them in life… but in death, he could become a standard on par with Onua for the Onu-Matoran, or Lewa for the Le-Matoran.”
“…or you for the Ko-Matoran,” I added. “I mean, you’ve got a statue too, right?”
“I do.” Kopaka looked down for a moment, sighed, then looked up at me again. “Remember when we first met?”
“The train trip from Ko-Koro-Nuva?” I remembered that night. It was only a week or so ago, but with everything I’d seen, it felt like a lot longer than that.
“You asked me why I did not want to announce to the Ko-Matoran that I am back,” Kopaka continued. “This is why; they benefit more from my memory than they would from my presence.”
“Oh, right…” I nodded. In some ways, what he said made sense, though I still felt his habitual drive for isolation contributed a lot more to that decision than he was willing to admit. There was also something else about his decision concerning Pohatu: it flew in the face of the Toa Code. “I guess that all works,” I spoke up again, “but you still broke the Toa Code.”
“That is correct,” Kopaka admitted, his voice noticeably dropping off. “I… I am no longer a Toa.” He sighed as his eyes drifted down to the floor. It didn’t take an empath to recognize that, to him, it was a profound loss.
“Well, physically…” I gestured at him ‘head-to-toe’ in a rather misguided attempt to make light of the situation, but I’d barely gotten those two words out before his eyes were suddenly glaring back up at me.
“Physically, your friends are Toa,” he sneered. “Do you believe they really live up to the title?”
“No, no they don’t…” I realized. “Well, Jahlpu maybe… but not Lerome and Kirall.”
“They live off of the pockets of well-meaning Matoran and Agori without, as you put it, having done anything to deserve it,” Kopaka continued. “Yes, your Toa of Earth does better, but then he has a good role model, does he not?”
“Onua, right…” everything circled around again; if Jahlpu ever learned how Onua really died, I suspected he’d be heartbroken. The same with Lerome and Lewa, for that matter. Kopaka sighed again.
“It came down to a choice between Duty and the Toa Code. Duty because Pohatu would serve the Matoran better dead, while the Toa Code required keeping him alive.” When he put it like that, I could see the conundrum… small wonder he’d been going back and forth with himself and refusing to answer my questions on the trip back; he’d been trying to decide between the two leading guiding principles of his life. “I chose Duty,” Kopaka concluded.
“Unity, Duty, Destiny…” I mumbled, more thinking out loud than actually trying to carry on the conversation. Nevertheless, Kopaka responded.
“They are the overarching principles,” he said fatefully, “the ones which guide us all, first and foremost. The Toa Code only applies to Toa, and as you have seen, that title carries little meaning now.” There was a genuine sadness to his voice when he described the state of the title ‘Toa.’
“Wow… it’s like two Toa died,” I observed. “One… well, one physically, and one spiritually.”
“You could put it like that,” Kopaka said mournfully.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized; that remark had perhaps been just a little insensitive. “Really, I am… Honestly, you’re still a Toa as far as I’m concerned.” He nodded, a small gesture that he appreciated the sentiment.
“By your definition, perhaps,” he noted, “but not officially. Officially, there are no Toa Nuva left.”
“Well, officially my teammates are Toa,” I reminded him. “Screw the official definition.”
By this point, we were closing in on the first of two stations along our way to Seaside Station, which I figured was why Kopaka didn’t take the conversation any further, though to be honest he didn’t seem to have much appetite for it either way. The title of Toa, arbitrary as it seemed to be treated now, had clearly still meant a lot to him, symbolic of what he’d always strived to be. It was exactly as Nuparu had told me; Kopaka, like all the other Toa Nuva, had this vision of the ideal hero in his head, the person who he wanted to be, and the Toa Code had always been a core part of that, right below the three virtues themselves… and even if that independent, righteous, lone warrior vision was at least in part spurred on by the most unsavory parts of his personality and would probably end up being the death of him, he’d lasted longer on it than any of the other Toa Nuva; Tahu had broken the code early on, effectively making the same choice Kopaka’d made if in vastly different circumstances and for far worse reasons, and as those enterprising subterranean Agori satirists had been keen to point out, Gali was in no condition to protect and serve the Matoran in any capacity. In reality, Kopaka’d left a sizeable piece of himself behind in that wretched hut in southwest New Atero, regardless of how little it meant to others.
The station came and went; the train stopped, but no one boarded, and so we were on our way again. Kopaka had, by now, reasserted control over himself to the point where, if he’d wanted to, I didn’t doubt that he could act as though nothing of significance had happened. Beneath the surface, though, that definitely wasn’t true; his apparent calm was more a reflection of millennia of training and appearance management than what he was really feeling. Granted, that wasn’t exactly news to me of all people. For my part, I was still having difficulties dealing with it as well, of course. Talking had helped some; tragic as it was, Pohatu’s death did have rhyme and reason behind it, now that Kopaka had explained it. Still, even a darn good explanation didn’t change the fact that the whole thing was a terrible business; it was clearer than ever that, in this world, all the Toa Nuva had eventually met with disappointment or outright disaster; peacetime really had no place for war heroes, and this world not much for Toa in general. That wasn’t an encouraging message for a new Toa like me, though Nuparu had offered a solid alternative and I now had something lined up to pursue in Hahli and Jaller’s planned expedition. Still, at this point none of that was really what I was thinking of. No, I still had the moment of Pohatu’s death vividly front-and-center in my mind, and I found myself tearing up again at several points in the trip with both sadness for his loss and anger at the world that had led him to it. Eventually, though, another concern regarding Pohatu’s impending ‘legend’ came to my mind, and I decided to voice it to Kopaka:
“So, what’s Pohatu’s legend going to be?” I asked. Kopaka looked up at me, then opened his hands momentarily as a signal that I should elaborate. So I did: “I mean, what’ll he be remembered for? Like, the principles he lived by; Onua’s was to be to work hard at your chosen job, while Lewa would tell people to have fun with it…”
“Diplomacy,” Kopaka cut me off, “and a voice of reason. Pohatu mediated and he made sure he got along with others so they respected him when he offered his opinion.”
“Like the opposite of my way or the highway,” I interpreted.
“Exactly,” Kopaka agreed. “He would work with what others wanted to do, to ensure everyone succeeded together and stayed together. He never aggressively took sides, not like Tahu or Gali.”
“Or stay out of it all together like you,” I added.
“Right…” Kopaka nodded, though he couldn’t disguise that he wasn’t too fond of me bringing in his behavior.
“Well, if anything the Matoran could use a figure like him right now,” I brought the conversation back to positive ground. “I mean, tensions between the Matoran and Agori have kind of always been there; some mutual understanding could go a long way to resolving that.”
“A fitting legacy for my brother,” Kopaka concluded.
“Right, just… aren’t you worried about his reputation being tainted?” I wondered. “Like, what we saw back in Station West…” Kopaka’s expression soured instantly when I mentioned that, but I continued: “Look, I hate it too, but Gali’s a laughing stock, has been for years, while Onua only used those crystals for like three months and deep down in the mines, so it was easy to hide. Pohatu’s been on the way down for centuries; don’t people know?”
“They do not,” Kopaka said with a, to me, unsubstantiated degree of confidence.
“How can you be sure?” I wondered.
“When you were watching over Pohatu,” Kopaka explained, “I found a phone to call Nuparu.”
“At two in the morning?”
“Yes,” Kopaka said matter-of-factly, as though the hour hadn’t at all factored into his calculations. Granted, with as patchy a schedule as we’d been running over the last few days, and the fact that this was Kopaka, that wasn’t really surprising. “I asked him how many people knew of Pohatu’s condition.”
“Really, how many?” I really was curious about that.
“He said not many, beyond a few other Toa,” Kopaka continued. “After he broke his back, he spend a few years coaching. Then, he formally announced his retirement and intent to get out of public life altogether. They had a going-away party, after which all communications with Pohatu had to go through Hewkii, who started to filter things out when his condition got worse.”
“So he just gradually fell out of public consciousness?” I interpreted again.
“Indeed,” Kopaka confirmed. “They knew he had broken his back, but his drinking and deterioration were never public knowledge, unlike Gali’s problems. The only people who know have the same interests at heart that I do.”
“Okay…” that made sense enough, though I still found it impressive that Pohatu’s condition had been hidden so well for so many years. Then again, if a bunch of Toa put their mind to it, I suppose orchestrating the misleading of so many for the good was possible… And again, Kopaka had completely pre-empted my concerns before he’d even gone through with the act. “So that’s what you were doing?” and I’d been so concerned about him not coming back. “You really do think of everything, don’t you?”
“I think ahead,” Kopaka corrected.
“And what would you’ve done if everyone had known?” I asked. “What if everyone knew Pohatu as the mad drunk?”
“Then, as you argued with Onua, he would have become a warning,” Kopaka answered. “I find the current situation preferable.”
“Awful as it is…” I nodded.
“Awful as it is.”
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#####author’s notes: trains, heartfelt conversation between Kopaka and Lis, fat Gali pictures… this chapter felt like a bit of a throwback to write. I even finished in one go, something that happened most of the time with the earlier chapters but slowed down when the average chapter length increased by half, and felt great about it afterwards. Writing is fun! I toyed with the idea for a while of giving each chapter an official title, and this is definitely one of those where a title would be easy to pick: “Chapter 46 - Awful as it is”
I’ll post more chapters as I finish them. As always, post any questions, comments, and/or observations below. Enjoy!