Thank you, guys!
I originally planned to have this in Chapter 2, Part 1, but I figured the part was getting a little longer than I liked it, and it’s pretty important to make you guys wait for it:
[details=“Interlude - “THE WHIRLWIND””]
Ono was flying. Not just taking a wind chute. He was flying. The metal cylinders fastened to his arms - Spigot referred to them as “rockets” - hummed as they spewed heat and flame. The triangular wings extending from these so-called “rockets” sliced through the air, allowing Ono a clean and stable flight. It was amazing, this feeling. He wasn’t pushed by the wind or pulled by gravity, but he was simply… free.
“How’s it holdin’ up, Big O?” Rench asked through the tele-ear.
Ono fumbled, his stability shaking. He quickly straightened out his arms, and the metallic wings caught him just before he crashed into Habero’s Heat House. He had forgotten that he was still tethered to Moda Nui through the extremely long cord winding from his earpiece down to the roof of Spigot and Rench’s penthouse apartment. Ono carefully leaned to his left, the rockets pushing him closer to homebase.
“I-it’s working fine,” he said, his vocal speakers making their characteristic stutter. “The r-rockets feel very smooth. I think-k these are the b-best iteration yet.”
“Great, ‘cause we took out the parachutes to make room for the mufflers,” Rench said in his gravelly voice.
Ono almost lost control again. “W-what?”
He heard Rench and Spigot cackle on the other side, followed by a slap. A high-five.
It took all of Ono’s willpower not to bury his face in his hands. The brothers, commonly referred to as the “Twinventors,” were both geniuses with amazing creativity, ingenuity, and adventure in their cores, but they also were just bullies sometimes.
“Why don’t you take another lap and then come back to us?” asked Spigot.
“Yeah!” said Rench. “Remember, don’t get the tele-ear line caught on any starscrapers!”
“I’ll r-remember,” groaned Ono. He missed the days before Rench and Spigot were rich and popular. In those days, his friendship with them was a courtesy, not an obligation. Now, it just felt like he was a test subject for all of their gear. At least you’re helping, he told himself. Still, his father always told him he needed to stick up for himself whenever he was being taken advantage of. Was now one of those times?
A low roaring sound caught Ono’s receptors, not the one with the earpiece magnetized to it. Up ahead, he saw boards and parchments and all sorts of trash funneling into a spiraling cluster of trash that was rapidly approaching.
“H-hey? G-guys?” Ono said to the tele-ear. “You r-remember how y-you p-p-promised there wouldn’t b-b-be any w-whirlwinds?”
“I don’t remember promising that,” said Rench. Ono was fairly certain that was a lie.
“There definitely should not be,” Spigot said. “There was one reported three days ago!”
“W-well, I’m l-l-looking straight at one!”
“They’ve been following such a strict schedule! One a week, always midday…” Spigot paused before adding, “Rench did the calculations.”
“Did not!” Rench protested. “He knows I can’t do no math!” His “th” sound in “math” was closer to the “f” sound.
“That’s because you’re a null-brain!” said Spigot.
“Well, you’re a dim-spark!” spat Rench.
“Grime-box!”
“Treason-face!”
“G-guys!” Ono said, beginning to panic. The whirlwind was beginning to take hold of him.
“Yeah, fly away!” Spigot said. “But don’t over-exert the rockets! They might explode!”
“Nice one,” said Rench, laughing.
“It’s not a joke!” said Spigot.
Ono frantically threw his arms forwards, attempting to blast back out of the wind tunnel. He pushed further and further, squeezing the trigger little-by-little until…
The rockets’ humming raised into a shrill whine, and the metal began to glow and warp the air around it as they began to spike in heat.
“Ah!” cried Ono, releasing the triggers. The rockets ceased their expulsion, only to release their owner into the violent wind. The earpiece yanked loose, cutting Ono off from the Twinventors as he screamed, dragged in a mighty circle through the gridded buildings of Aero City.
The rockets were still cooling down, but at this point Ono wasn’t sure they would even help him. He flew entirely out of control, sent upside-down and around by the rushing gusts. This was certainly it. This was the end of Ono’s short time in the wonders of life. His mother and father would never see their son again, at least not with light in his eyes and life in his core. He would be claimed by the whirlwind, carried across Moda Nui and dumped in some tree in Fauna Jungle. This would be the end of Ono the Matoran.
As he lamented, the wind finally released its grip on him, sending him plummeting towards the city below. He lifted his arms to cover his eyes. He didn’t want to watch it happen. As he did, however, he accidentally pressed down on the rocket triggers and launched himself outwards, flailing through the air and crashing onto a chute monitor station, a heavy ring around the glass tubes that circulated the city like a web of air-powered transport. Something broke beneath him.
He groaned as he pulled himself up. “Uh… G-guys?” he said, forgetting that he had lost the tele-ear. Next to him, the chute vibrated a low-sounding tune to go along with the muffled howl beneath. Besides that, the air was eerily silent.
Ono’s head throbbed with pain. He rubbed in a soothing manner as he turned around to assess his damage. The dark metal of the structure was scratched, some of the paint chipping off. Ono assumed some of his paint, too, was now scarred. There was a broken crate on which he must have landed. Its pieces were scattered like wood chips over the station, but it didn’t seem to be holding anything. Ono breathed a sigh of relief. At least no one was hurt. Of course, the paint was going to cost a fortune, and squeezing a coin out of the Twinventors was about as difficult as navigating through a whirlwind with a parachute, but he hadn’t compromised the wind chute. That could lead to some problems.
He slowed his breath back to normal speeds and began to pick up the pieces of the crate. As he combed through them, his hand hit something metal. Ono halted. Had he broken something important, after all?
He uncovered the unknown item to find a strange, rounded metal shape, silver in the gray skies of Aero City. It had two holes cut into its symmetrically designed shape, with runes lining its edges. As he stared into it, Ono felt as if… as if he was hearing someone say…
Toa Orano…
[/details]
I also have been publishing some bio’s for the other Toa that I will post here as soon as I finish the last one!
Let me know if you guys like the whole interlude idea, I may do more!
Thanks, and have yourselves a good one!