5:30 PM: started writing
0:30 AM: started proofreading
2:30 AM: posting chapter.
… thank goodness it’s the weekend. 
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Chapter 41
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Hours I had to give, and hours I had to spend; spend them waiting, mostly. For a while, I almost wished my teammates were on board, just to know that something was happening on the train. Having made my way through the newspapers and most of the material I felt worth watching on the telescreen, I found myself spending the hours watching scenery go by, with intermittent glances in Kopaka’s direction, wondering what exactly the meaning behind his questions had been. At first, the fact that he’d asked me about why exactly I followed him had been perplexing, but increasingly, I started to think that maybe he actually cared just a little about what I thought of him. Granted, I still didn’t think much of him… or did I? Thinking back over the last few days, the first things that always came to mind where the shocking moments, the way in which he’d berated Gali, Tahu, and myself. Those were the moments when he boiled over, when he simply couldn’t keep it all inside anymore, the moments that I hated. Still, even when he wasn’t that angry, he still alienated people on purpose. At the same time, given what I’d seen of the inside of his mind, it all made a kind of twisted sense; his anger and his self-imposed isolation were understandable, they just weren’t always… justifiable. Again, though, nothing I’d seen actually accounted for him actually asking for something from my point of view, which meant I’d either missed something or something had changed significantly between our arrival in Onu-Koro-Nuva and now.
Of course, that self-imposed isolation meant that the mind that orchestrated it remained largely off-limits, though I had to admit I was tempted to try and read more closely into whatever was going through Kopaka’s head in those hours. Just like that morning, even the surface signals seemed far more… tumultuous than normal, with intermittent flare-ups of emotion that the Toa of Ice would never have permitted himself to show on the outside. In spite of that, some of it did show; his calm façade wasn’t perfect on this day, which showed most obviously in how much he shifted position. He alternated between leaning back in the seat, sitting hunched over and resting his chin in his hands, and all manner of positions in between, quite unusual for a Toa who I’d watched sit completely still in contemplation for hours on end. At last, with about two hours to go until we reached New Atero, I decided to be more proactive about getting to know what was bothering him. Realizing that he’d probably shut down a direct line of questioning, though, I knew I had to try and… ease my way into it. Discussing what we’d seen most recently seemed like a good place to start.
“So, what’d you think?” I asked.
“Hm?” he looked up.
“About, you know… what happened with Onua,” I elaborated. “What I showed you, and what Nuparu told us.”
“Tragic,” he answered.
“No kidding…” I agreed. “Do you think Nuparu was right?”
“About what?”
“About not telling anyone. It’s kinda been bothering me,” I went on, “’cause what happens if someone else accidentally breaks one of those crystals and… you know, breathes it? It’s unlikely, but just in case, shouldn’t Onua’s end be like a warning to them?”
“Should it?” he asked, though that question turned out to be rhetorical, as an explanation came right behind: “how many of those crystals are dug up each year?”
“Not many,” I admitted.
“…and do the Matoran not know that they are fragile and should therefore be handled carefully?”
“I imagine they do.”
“Then what are the risks that such an accidental exposure could happen again?”
“Low,” I concluded. “Very low. But not zero.”
“Low but not zero,” he agreed. “Now, what would happen in Onu-Koro-Nuva if the Matoran and Agori found out that the Toa for whom they erected a three-hundred foot statue in the middle of their city died by drug-fueled suicide?”
“I imagine they wouldn’t be very happy if you put it like that,” I hypothesized. “Their flawless hero would be tainted, but… the truth would be out.”
“Would the Matoran be better off for that truth?” he asked.
“Probably not, no…” I realized we’d come back to an argument we’d had before already. “But why couldn’t you say that, like… the drugs took him down, that it wasn’t his decision in the end? That’d make him look less responsible for it, and they’d still have the warning.”
“Would that be the truth?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes it does, and no, it would not be,” he answered both questions. “You are basing your argument on the idea that the truth has inherent value, even when its ramifications could be highly detrimental. In this case, the truth is that Onua did kill himself. Everything about that tunnel collapse was premeditated. The crystals did not help, but they alone were not responsible for his demise. By saying so, you would merely be substituting one lie for another.”
“There’d still be the benefit of a warning, though,” I argued.
“And some Matoran and Agori would start to ask questions,” he extrapolated, “after which the full truth eventually would come to light. Would that risk be worth the benefit? No, it would not be, or at least Nuparu did not believe it to be when he made his decision on what to tell the Onu-Matoran. He weighed his options and decided it was best to leave out parts of the story for the good of the Matoran, as is his duty.” As is his duty… yup, back to duty again.
“So… is that what you’re doing now?” I wondered. “Weighing the options in front of you?”
“I have already made my decisions,” he pointed out.
“Not all of them,” I countered. “You had a plan, yes, but if you’d followed the plan completely you’d be in the mountains right now. This trip wasn’t part of the plan, and I know it wasn’t ‘cause you’re having a difficult time deciding on how to proceed.”
“I know what I am going to do,” he argued. “I have weighed my options. No, it was not part of the original plan, and no, I will not tell you.” I noticed that, since I mentioned what he had been thinking about, a hint of melancholy’d crept into his voice…
“Okay, so… what changed your mind, then?” I kept trying. “Why did the plan change?” Kopaka stayed quiet for a moment before answering.
“You will see,” he simply said, making it quite clear that he considered the matter closed. Still, that slight change at the end piqued my interest. Something about his demeanor changed when I tried to ■■■■■ the conversation from what others’d done to what he was about to do, and I was pretty sure that it wasn’t just his reluctance in sharing the latter subject that prompted the change. No, his mood became slightly more downcast, which reflected both in his voice and in what little signature I was reading from him. I couldn’t really pinpoint the cause, but with time to spare I did indulge, once again, in mental speculation. Anger, fear, and anxiety were all possible causes, but the latter two didn’t really seem to affect Kopaka very often, and the former just… didn’t fit right. The only way in which Kopaka would be on this train because he was angry at something would be if he had scores to settle, which as far as I knew he didn’t. Plenty of others had scores to settle with him, sure, but since when did he care about that? I couldn’t imagine that he was heading back just to apologize to people for said scores either… though that was a possibility, I suppose.
Thinking about that, and a belated dinner, kept me occupied until the train’s eventual arrival in New Atero, a little past seven in the evening. Unlike our last arrival in the city, the platform wasn’t particularly busy. Nonetheless, Kopaka still resorted to his cloak-and-cane disguise, and even seemed to exaggerate his retained limp slightly, making the whole scene feel very déjà vu, and just like last time no one recognized him in spite of the stares he was getting. Matoran and Agori alike showed the same reverence to me as they had last time, and in spite of my talk with Nuparu, I had to admit I still wasn’t fully comfortable with it. No one wanted signatures, thankfully, but even the reverent tone of voice that everyone automatically seemed to adopt on greeting me still didn’t sit right. I was feeling tired, too; it’s quite amazing how a long day of basically nothing happening can leave one feeling exhausted all the same. Couple that with the fact that I had no idea where within the city Kopaka’s destination lay, and you get why I was getting very impatient about finding out what his amended plan was.
Arriving on the central square from the station, I noticed many of the billboards were advertising the fight between Tahu and the Porcupine, coming in two days. Kopaka stopped at the top of the stairs leading down onto the square, a moment or two of hesitation before he turned and headed west. I, however, spotted a couple of payphones at the edge of the square, and realizing the opportunity to try and tell my teammates that I was okay, I asked him to stop.
“Hey, could you wait for just a minute?” I asked. He stopped and turned but didn’t immediately reply. “I’ve got to tell my friends that I’m, you know… okay,” I explained, pointing at the payphones.
“Go ahead,” he nodded.
“Thanks,” I quickly made my way over to the phones and produced a widget to stick in the slot. Putting the receiver to my ear, I pressed a button labeled “OP” on the device, putting an operator on the line.
“Good evening,” the operator greeted. “Where would you like to be connected to?”
“Do you have the hotel in Onu-Koro-Nuva?” I asked.
“Which one?”
“The one right by the train station,” I replied. Honestly, I’d never paid much attention to what the place was called.
“I do, just a moment…” I heard a couple of beeping sounds, followed by a ring or two, after which the phone on the other end was picked up.
“Onu-Koro-Nuva Travelers’ Lodge,” a clearly Matoran voice answered.
“Hi,” I greeted, “Do you know if the people who had rooms… 209 and 210 last time are still there?”
“I can check…”
“They were Toa, if that helps,” I added.
“The Toa? Yes, in fact one of them is here right now. Do you need to speak with them?”
“Yes…” I answered, but I was cut off almost immediately by the very enthusiastic sounding voice of Lerome.
“Yo Lis!” he called loud enough for me to put some distance between my ear and the receiver, “Where’ve you been!?”
“Lerome, sheesh,” I replied, “could you not shout, please?”
“Aw sorry sis,” he apologized, “but Jahlpu’s been looking all over for ya. He was getting real pissed about it, too. I mean, I thought he got angry when I threw a party in his room that one time while he was gone, but turns out I hadn’t seen nothin’…”
“Okay, okay!” I interrupted him. “Could you put him on, maybe?”
“Sure, sure…” he replied, sounding a little disappointed. “Yo twinkle!” he called, his voice muffled because he’d probably covered the mouthpiece but still loud enough to be heard and understood on the other end, “go find the grumpy black guy!”
“Twinkle? Have you been drinking?” I wondered.
“No worries, sis,” he assured me, “Twinkle here’s a Vo-Matoran who can do this crazy lighting-spark-crackling thing with her fingers. It’s a neat trick for a Matoran! Say hi, Twinkle!”
“Uhm, hi…” a somewhat shaky Matoran voice answered.
“Hi…” I greeted back unenthusiastically. ““Twinkle” isn’t your actual name, is it?” Suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad about leaving in the middle of the night.
“No, it’s not…” she began, but Lerome jumped in again.
“Anyways, go find that guy…” he dismissed, “…oh wait, here he comes!”
“Give me that!” I heard Jahlpu yell, after which some assorted crackling noises indicated the rough transfer of the phone. “Lis, is that you?” the Toa of Earth demanded.
“Yes, yes it’s me,” I answered, already holding the phone at a slight distance in preparation of what was to come.
“What the hell were you thinking!?” Jahlpu yelled into his end of the line. “We’ve been looking high and low for you!”
“I know, I know…” I attempted to pacify him.
“Where are you?”
“I’m… I’m in New Atero,” I answered. “Really, if I was going anywhere else, I would’ve called sooner…”
“Sure, sure…” he said sarcastically. “Did you follow your mysterious friend?”
“Yes,” I admitted, “but he’s not dangerous or anything… he’s leaving soon altogether, but he had one last stop to make in this city, so I went with him.”
“Right…” Jahlpu sighed. “That’s all?”
“Yes, it is. I can come back after we’re done,” I offered.
“Yeah, we’ll be here for a while,” Jahlpu admitted. “I might have a place lined up, and Kirall is going under the knife for like a week…”
“Look, I’d love to chat, really,” I interrupted, “but I’m kind of in a hurry here. I’ll call you back whenever we’re done, okay?”
“Okay,” Jahlpu agreed, “just… be careful out there. And next time, if you have to leave, please tell me.”
“Will do,” I promised. “Bye.”
“Good night.”
That was the end of it, and good thing too, since I was just about out of time on one widget. Satisfied that my teammates wouldn’t be worried about my whereabouts, I turned and found Kopaka standing in front of the statue in the center of the square. There was barely anyone around now; the train’s passengers had largely dispersed, and with the sun rapidly setting on the horizon and a cold breeze setting in, most Matoran and Agori preferred the comfort of their homes at this hour. I made my way over to the center, too: the statue of the Great Spirit Robot rose to about sixty feet tall from a circular pool. It stood, illuminated from below and looking upwards, but with its feet offset and its knees still slightly bent, as though it was in the process of getting up out of the water while gazing at the stars above. Turning to face the statue, the Toa of Ice stood still, looking upwards at the gleaming, dark granite construct. I stood beside him for a minute, remembering how much larger the real thing had been from the memory of the Battle for Bara Magna… in light of what I’d seen, this was a very faithful interpretation, though.
“So, what does this represent?” I asked. “The moment, I mean.”
“Hm?” Kopaka turned to me, apparently coming out of deeper thoughts than I’d realized.
“It looks like it’s standing up,” I elaborated. “Like, getting up, you know?”
“This,” Kopaka said as he looked back up to the statue, “this was the moment in which I fulfilled my destiny, in which all the Toa Nuva fulfilled theirs. We awakened Mata Nui. Here, he rises from the ocean of Aqua Magna.”
“Really?” I asked. “I mean, I thought the Battle for Bara Magna…”
“That was not part of the plan,” Kopaka interrupted. “Makuta Teridax intervened and took over the body. That began the reign of shadows.”
“The Matoran’s darkest hour,” I remembered the description from when I was taught history years before.
“That it was,” Kopaka agreed. We stood still for a bit, still looking up at the statue. I tried to imagine what it was like, living inside of that titanic contraption and finding out that one day, your greatest enemy had turned it all against you. Failing that, I looked over to Kopaka again and noticed that he seemed to have a sense of… trepidation, of unease about him, like he wasn’t sure of exactly what he was doing, which reinforced the notion that he was acting ‘off-plan’ here.
“So, what are we doing here?” I tried again. Kopaka didn’t answer, so I waited again for a minute or so, looking at the statue and around the square in general. The chilly breeze animated the flags of Matoran and Agori tribes all around; it took me a minute to figure out which one belonged to the Ce-Matoran.
“Lis?” Kopaka suddenly asked.
“Yeah?” I turned back to him, but found that he hadn’t taken his eyes off of the statue.
“When we first met, what did I tell you about the Toa?” Now that was a surprising question.
“Uhm…” I thought back to that first train ride from Ko-Koro-Nuva. What had he said? “You… you told me that the world didn’t need Toa anymore,” I recalled, “and that I’d have a hard time finding a purpose.”
“And, over this last week, between all the Toa you have met, do you think I was right?” he continued. For some reason, I felt like this was a test of some kind, and a cumulative one at that.
“Most of them would agree, I think…” I remembered. “I mean, Tahu said the same thing, so did Nuparu, Hahli, and even Lewa, in that letter. Yeah… the Toa don’t really have a purpose here, do they? Not as Toa, that is.”
“Not as Toa…” Kopaka nodded slightly. “What else did Lewa say in that letter?”
“He wrote it to explain himself,” I recalled, “to explain why he flew into Mt. Valmai’s eruption. Suicide by natural disaster.”
“Why did he?” Kopaka questioned.
“Because… he wanted to leave the Le-Matoran with a legend,” I continued. “He said that he couldn’t grow old and bitter among them, and he didn’t want to push himself to breaking point like Pohatu, so he wanted to end it at the top, you know? I guess it worked, I mean, from what I heard from Lerome, the Le-Matoran still see him as a hero.”
“Like the Onu-Matoran with Onua…” Kopaka mused, uncharacteristically. From that, for the first time, I got the impression that I was having a real conversation with him, without the elements of the seemingly pre-planned verbal duels that usually made up his verbal interaction.
“Actually,” I remembered, “Lewa warned Onua about that… about not getting too caught up in what he did. He said that Onua would be able to offer the Matoran more than just a legend; he could provide wisdom for centuries to come.”
“He warned Onua of that?” Kopaka turned to me, clearly a bit surprised.
“Yes,” I confirmed, “though in the end, it didn’t save Onua… Lewa reckoned without those crystals, I suppose. Now they’re both revered as heroes… kind of like you to the Ko-Matoran.”
“Lewa,” Kopaka said in a sudden, darker tone, “was a noisy and reckless fool.” He looked back up at the statue for a minute. “But, for once, he was right…”
“About what?” I wondered.
“In the end,” Kopaka answered, now with a sense of foreboding to his voice, “all we are, or will be to the Matoran… are legends.” With that, he suddenly turned around and took off with a renewed vigor to his pace. It wasn’t joyful by any means; it was a fast, determined walk, a walk with purpose. I hurried to catch up and follow, noting that the unease, that sense of trepidation on his mind had vanished. He’d made his decision and had formulated a plan, whatever it was. He headed straight south, then turned west and entered a section of narrow roads, alleyways, and corridors, which he deftly navigated as usual, but which for a while left me pretty confused as to what exactly our destination was.
“So, where are we going?” I asked Kopaka as we were walking by a small neighborhood Kolhii field. He gave no answer, so I tried figuring it out myself by counting off the places where we’d been before in my head: Macku, Gali, and the Toa Mahri in New Atero lived on the east side, close to the waterfront, while Tahu’s place was on the north end of the city, so we definitely weren’t heading to either of those places. This route obviously wouldn’t take us near the Arena Magna, nor the city center in general… which I suddenly realized left only one possible place: Pohatu’s house.
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#####author’s note: This chapter turned out to be surprisingly difficult to put together, not because of a shortage of material but more because I had never given much thought to what transpired between the last ‘major checkpoint’: Lis’ long conversation with Nuparu, and the next one, which we’ll see within the next chapter or two. So, mostly filler here, but I had a lot of fun with it in the end, particularly the phone conversation. Poor, beleaguered Twinkle…
I’ll post more chapters as I finish them. As always, post any questions, comments, and/or observations below. Enjoy!
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