Hey, you know those two Glatorian in Mata Nui’s head that were supposed to pilot him if things went wrong? Well, I wrote a story for them.
A sudden shudder… the feeling of being slammed against a solid wall… then crashing through that wall, the jagged edges scraping against her aromr and cutting against her skin… flying through the air and slamming into another wall, shards of the previous one pushed into her by the impact… falling to the floor, and then another jolt threw her into the air again, only to fall back down painfully against the shard-covered floor.
Not the best awakening Yalora had ever had.
She lay on the floor for a long moment, waiting for the world to stop spinning. She could hear someone else groaning nearby – her partner and co-pilot, Ronor. At least that meant he was still alive.
Yalora was the first one to get to her feet, and she started surveying the damage. The stasis tubes they had been asleep in were shattered, shards of them laying all over the floor – the ones that weren’t stuck into Yalora, that is. She wasn’t sure she and Ronor would be able to re-enter stasis now.
But at the moment, they had bigger problems. For starters, figuring out what had caused them to be flung out of the tubes so suddenly. Yalora rushed to the nearest console and got to work trying to figure out what was going on.
It took only moments to figure out that something was very wrong. Many of the systems were down, or unresponsive. The mind that was supposed to be controlling the robot was unresponsive. She was able to determine that the robot had crashed into a planet. The camouflage systems had gone active, but she couldn’t determine if they were underwater or not.
Ronor abruptly joined her at the consoles. He began flipping a series of switches that would allow them to pilot the ship, but it didn’t move at his command. “Manual piloting isn’t responding,” he said.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Last time the two of them had been brought out of stasis, the systems of the Mata Nui robot had been failing, but they hadn’t been completely unresponsive like this. Ronor and Yalora had piloted for a while to make sure that the robot didn’t accidentally crash into a planet, until the systems had gotten a boost of power and gone back to normal, allowing the two Glatorian pilots to go back into stasis.
Yalora had an idea. She couldn’t pull up the scanners, but she could pull up one of the exterior cameras. When she did, she saw nothing but water. So at least the robot was underwater, hidden, safe. For now.
“We need a jump-start, badly,” Ronor said. “Looks like the Ignika code hasn’t been sent out yet. I’ll see if I can input it manually.” The Ignika code would tell the inhabitants of the world within the massive robot to retrieve the Kanohi Ignika, a mask that would give the Robot the power boost needed to reboot.
“We need more than just a power boost,” Yalora said. “Mata Nui is down, and we need to bring him back online.” She checked to see if the Toa Mata protocol had been activated. It had, but something was blocking the signal. She began trying to figure out a way to send out the signal manually. The use of the Ignika could jump-start the Robot’s systems, but without Mata Nui to control them, the robot would be useless. Even if Ronor and Yalora had been able to pilot the robot, they couldn’t maintain all the systems by themselves. It would take hundreds of Glatorian, maybe thousands, to monitor all the things Mata Nui had been programmed to do. Ronor and Yalora were only there to steer.
“Yalora, look at this,” Ronor called. She glanced at the readings Ronor had brought up; the Fire Glatorian had managed to bring up the sensors of the Red Star, and was using them to remotely scan the exterior of the Robot. The results were pretty grim – energy was leaking out of the robot and into the water around it. Worse, the Robot had a hole in its chest, and water was leaking in.
"We need to get off-planet, asap, Yalora said. “As long as you’re connected to the Red Star, see if you can get it to pull us up into space.”
Ronor shook his head. “The star wasn’t designed to connect to the Robot while it’s underwater. It has to be standing for the Red Star to attach.”
And for that, we need Mata Nui, Yalora thought. She began trying to summon the Toa Mata again. According to what the Great Beings had said, if anything ever happened to Mata Nui, it would be up to the Toa Mata to revive him.
She had seen the Toa Mata once, from a distance. The Great Beings had made many intelligent beings, but the Toa Mata hadn’t been built by them directly – they had been made by one of the Great Beings’ oldest creations, a being named “Artakha”. Artakha was very wise, almost as smart as the Great Beings. Perhaps he would know how to fix the mess that had been created.
Success! She had managed to send out the signal that would summon the Mata. It would be up to them to find out what had happened to Mata Nui and bring him back online. She hoped they worked fast. Now to contact Artakha.
She was about to send out a message to Artahka’s island when she heard a loud groan of machinery. Then, a massive surge of electricity flew through the consoles, hitting her and Ronor and knocking them back against the wall. She looked up and saw the console screens go dark.
Darn it, she thought. And then she fell to the dark herself.
She didn’t wake up again.