This is the Lore for Neutra-- my upgraded take on Neutral Guy. Build can be found here: Neutra: Walker Of The Middle Path
Well, being Chronicler just got a whole lot more complicated-- instead of an island or a city, I’m now chronicling a planet. Takanuva and Hahli both suggested I start by just talking to a few people, getting some perspectives on Spherus Magna. First up is someone I’m… more than a little intiminated by.
–
Kopeke readied his scribing tools, his eyes straying to the expression of total indifference across from him. ‘Let’s start with your name.’
‘Neutra. Just Neutra.’
Neutra was the size of a Toa, with glowing green eyes and a slender, grey-and-black body, adorned with the bare minimum of armour. Resting against the mossy wall of the cave Kopeke’s host called home was a hook larger than Kopeke himself.
‘And how did you end up in your present…’ His words failing, Kopeke gestured to Neutra vaguely.
‘For lack of a better term, The Shadowed One called it Kal Mutagen,’ Neutra explained. ‘The same stuff that created the Bohrok-Kal. He wanted to experiment with it, I’m told, and I was a Le-Matoran in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
Kopeke nodded. ‘Let’s circle back a little. The Shadowed One?’
‘I used to be a Dark Hunter,’ Neutra said, his expression unchanging. 'I used to be a lot of things.
‘It took me a while to piece everything together, but there was this other recruit, Kraata-Kal. Big, mean guy-- never worked with him, but he had a reputation. He’d started out as a Kraata before exposure to the mutagen, so between that and the Bohrok Kal… well, The Shadowed One wanted to see if it was a shortcut to raising an army of Dark Hunters on the same level as Kraata-Kal.’
Somewhere at the back of his mind, Kopeke registered that someday he’d probably have to interview Kraata-Kal-- and likely a few other actual Dark Hunters, too. ‘And you were a Le-Matoran?’
'Formerly from Voya Nui, prior to that Karzanhi, before that… who knows?
‘The mutagen changed me. Whoever I was is… gone.’ A flicker of emotion at last, Kopeke noted: a slight tightness of the mouth, a faint dimming of the eyes. ‘who I am now is all I am. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing-- it’s taken me a while, but I like who I am.’
‘And how would you describe yourself now?’
‘Neutral,’ Neutra said. ‘I’ve worked for the Shadow Hunters, the Order of Mata Nui, with Toa, with Makuta, with Vortixx and Skakdi and, these days, Glatorian, Agori, Skrall… you name it. When they need someone impartial, they turn to me.’
He stood up: the cave was easily large enough for a full-grown Vortixx to stand upright, so there was plenty enough space. Neutra grabbed his hook, twirled it, and slashed at the air between himself and his guest. Kopeke found himself thrown forward, his tablet flying from his hand: Neutra, hook discarded once more, caught the tablet in one hand and the Matoran in the other.
‘Are you familiar with the concept of a vacuum? A space with utterly nothing in it. Aside from my new body, the mutagen gave me the power to create them.’ He set Kopeke back down and returned his tablet. ‘The moment it’s created, everything around it rushes to fill it.’ The faintest of smiles. ‘There’s no Toa of Vacuum to try it against, but I seem to be more or less as powerful as a Toa.’
Kopeke nodded. ‘But you don’t consider yourself one?’
‘No. No destiny; no code; no team. I’m something else entirely. If you pressed me on what exactly I am, I guess I’d have to say I’m a Matoran Kal.’
Kopeke nodded. ‘So, circling back again, you mentioned The Order of Mata Nui?’
'After I abandoned the Dark Hunters, they took me in. I never met Helryx herself, but I knew who she was-- what she was. After a few missions with them, I realised something.
‘They don’t have all the answers either. Nobody does. So why follow anyone? Why not choose my own path-- the one in the middle?’
‘Why not align yourself with the Toa, then?’ Kopeke asked, the words coming out with more barbs than he’d intended.
‘Because they don’t always do the right thing, either. They’re good at protecting your kind-- some would say they could’ve done a better job in some cases, here and there-- but… The Code. I could never follow it-- not when the right thing is sometimes leaving your opponent unable to hurt anyone else.’
‘So you’re willing to kill?’
‘It’s still a last resort,’ Neutra said. ‘Killing people doesn’t make me a bad guy, any more than protecting people makes me a good guy. If I’m anything, I’m a… neutral guy.’
Kopeke considered this for a few long moments. Mata Nui, he thought, to be an ice carver again, or even a Snowball Sling champion: ever since he’d joined the Chronicler’s Company his life had been nothing but chaos. ‘You mentioned working with Makuta?’
‘Not yours,’ Neutra smiled. ‘Makuta Bitil wanted me to keep his island in order while he dealt with business elsewhere. He never came back, so…’ He shrugged. ‘This was right around the time the Great Spirit Robot awakened, so I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if his disappearance had something to do with that.’
‘And Toa?’
‘Godesgai,’ Neutra said. ‘Toa of Fire cut off from his element-- styles himself as Toa of The People. We were in the same area when the evacuation started, so we worked together on search-and-rescue.’
Kopeke nodded in understanding: he’d played his part in the evacuation, too.
‘So what else do you need to know?’
‘Vacuum,’ Kopeke decided. ‘Why do you think you ended up with…?’
‘Vacuum is… adjacent to air,’ Neutra said. ‘A corruption of it, almost-- rather than manipulating it, I remove it entirely.’ He raised a hand and Kopeke turned to see a small stone ornament fly off a shelf on the far wall: Neutra caught it and set it down between them. 'It took me a while to really control my powers. A Vortixx weaponsmith named Bult helped me-- I keep meaning to see where he’s ended up these days.
Kopeke was about to ask more about Bult, but Neutra raised a hand. ‘Do you hear that?’
‘No?’ Kopeke asked, setting down his scribing tools and reaching for the kanoka disc he always travelled with.
‘Someone’s outside,’ Neutra murmured, creating a vacuum pocket to hurl his hook into his waiting hand. A quick swipe and he was already half way to the cave exit: two more and he was out of Kopeke’s sight entirely.
He hurried outside to see his host staring down half a dozen skrall.
‘The mutagen,’ the largest of the group growled. ‘Tell us.’
‘I don’t know where it is,’ Neutra said bluntly. ‘Or if it’s still around-- not sure if you’ve seen the giant body on the horizon, but things have changed since I was made.’
‘Tell us!’ Another Skrall snapped: this one was larger than the others, and had a large club resting on his broad, flat shoulder armour.
‘Stronius,’ Neutra said. ‘I might have known. Leave now and your forces will suffer no losses.’
With a nod from Stronius, the other five Skrall levelled what Kopeke recognised as thornax launchers at Neutra.
‘You’re sure you want to do this?’ Neutra sighed. ‘Fine.’
Another nod from Stronius and the other five Skrall fired: all five shots were perfectly on target-- right up until Neutra swept his hook at them, and suddenly all five thornax were flung wildly off course to thud into the rocky ground around them.
Stronius charged, and Neutra used another vacuum pocket to hurl himself forwards. His shoulder slammed into his foe’s chest, but the Skrall shrugged off the blow like it was nothing and brought his club down on Neutra’s exposed back.
Kopeke realised that this had been a calculated move on Neutra’s part moments before Stronius did: a gesture from Neutra and both of them shot upwards with incredible force.
‘What about the little one?’ One of the other Skrall asked, after a few moments.
‘Hostage?’ Another suggested, turning both his attention and his reloaded thornax launcher towards Kopeke.
‘I don’t think so,’ Kopeke said.
The ground around them was, after all, littered with rocks: rocks the size of snowballs.
His first shot hit the nearest Skrall in the chest, and before the group could figure out what was happening the second had skimmed over his shoulder and the third had struck him directly in the eye. The quickest of them retaliated, firing a thornax at the chronicler, but Kopeke countered, deflecting it with his disc like a Kohlii goalkeeper deflecting a shot with his shield. Several more rocks hit home, striking Kopeke’s assailants in their faces, their hands, and anywhere that looked vulnerable, but they were slowly closing in, and he knew full well he couldn’t hold them off forever–
And then Stronius fell from the sky, landing on top of three Skrall. His club hit the ground a few seconds later, catching a fourth Skrall with a glancing blow across the shoulder, and Neutra joined it, hurling himself upwards with a vacuum pocket at the last second to counter his momentum and landing deftly on his feet. He reached out and caught his hook before using it to sweep the legs of the final Skrall out from under him.
‘Now,’ he said. glaring down at the prone form of Stronius, ‘if you’ve a problem with me, I’ll gladly face you in the arena.’
Silence.
‘Yeah, I thought not.’ Turning to the Skrall he’d tripped, he said, ‘see that Stronius is returned to his tribe-- and that none of you get any more ideas about trying to beat information out of me. You’re gonna need a whole lot more than this lot to bring me down.’
With that, he turned and started back towards his cave: Kopeke followed, not quite sure what he’d just seen.
‘The Skrall are in trouble, and they know it,’ Neutra said, by way of explanation. ‘With Tuma gone, they’ve no more leader class left and they’re not sure where to turn. So a few of them got the idea to create their own leader class-- the toughest of them plus whatever Kal Mutagen they can find. Thing is, they don’t know where to find any, and they’ve got it into their heads that seeing as it created me, I still have some… I don’t know, connection to it. I don’t, of course, but try telling them that.’ He jabbed his hook back over his shoulder. ‘Just for the sake of maintaining peace, I’m hoping there’s none of that stuff left. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not deal with a Skrall-Kal any time soon…’