The Monolith (Story Serial Continuation Project)

Ah very nice. I quite like your explanation for the Toa Inika.

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I just realized something upon rereading this:

These paragraphs seem to imply that Fierah already knew about the Toa Inika, but… would she? She’d obviously know about the system, and that it could be used to track Marendar, but how would she know that it was ever used? If anything, the fact that Kopaka is right there would suggest to her that the Toa Mata were completely fine, and that the system definitely wasn’t used.

Obviously this doesn’t really affect the plotline in any way, since she would still have her knowledge of the system, and that’s what’s important here, I just found her reply to seem a bit off.

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Right, I can see how that could be misread. You’re correct, Fierah doesn’t know that it was used. In fact, her next line is stated as a hypothetical – “these Toa would have special masks…” since she assumes it’s something that hasn’t happened.

However, Inika is the Matoran word for “energy of a Star” (from Power Play), so Fierah just thought Kopaka was saying “Toa with energy from a Star”. That’s what she was responding “Yes” to --“Yes, Toa with energy from a Star”.

(I’m going to edit Kopaka’s line to just “Toa Inika” to make that a bit clearer, thanks for pointing that out)

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I see, that makes sense.

This is so satisfying.

Also Fierah is betraying everyone, isn’t she

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Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Sometimes, everything works out perfectly. And sometimes, every time you think things can’t get any worse, they do.

Fierah led the group to the Red Star’s central command station, a location familiar to Kopaka and his crew. From here, they could easily find their way to the send-back room. But Fierah wanted to go to the scanner room, which was in the opposite direction.

In the end, a decision was reached: the groups would split ways again. Fierah would lead her group to the scanners, and Kopaka would lead his group to the send-back room. They would meet back in an hour, hopefully with both Pohatu and the machinery that Fierah needed.

Takanuva opted to travel with Kopaka, loaning a lightstone to Chiara so they could find their way through the dark. The Toa Nuva of Ice had told him of his recent adventures – the short version of the story, as was expected from him, though the Matoran added a few details – and Takanuva started telling him about his own journey to the Valley of the Maze. It quickly turned into the Matoran bombarding him with questions about Spherus Magna, though.

“So these Agori – they’re like us, but built different?” Quilha asked.

“Pretty much,” Takanuva said. “Maybe a little taller, but --”

“And the Glatorian are like Toa, but without the mask powers,” Ruhko said. “But they have elemental powers, like you do.”

“Well, some of them do,” Takanuva said. “Mata Nui used the Mask of Life to–”

“I still can’t get over Mata Nui looking like, well, a regular person,” Mavrah said. “And now he’s just… gone?”

“Dormant, yeah,” Takanuva said. “I guess you guys missed quite a bit.” He looked at Ivohku and Hydraxon. “How come you two haven’t asked anything?”

“We should be focused on the mission,” Hydraxon said. “There will be time enough for story-telling after we’re off this Star. And the only question I want answered is where this fake me is and who he really is.”

Takanuva frowned. “I don’t know much. He gave the Toa Mahri some trouble in the Pit, and then came to me asking if they were around to hunt down the Barraki, and --”

“Wait,” Hydraxon cut in. “Did you say ‘hunt down the Barraki’? Are they loose?”

Takanuva nodded. “Last I checked.”

“What’s a Barraki?” Quilha asked.

Before Takanuva could reply, he bumped into Kopaka, the Toa Nuva of Ice having stopped abruptly. Takanuva turned toward him, and then looked past him, into what he guessed was the Send-back room. And he saw what had made Kopaka stop so suddenly.

“Oh no…”


“Oh no,” Fierah groaned.

The group had arrived at the scanner room. Or rather, what was left of it. This part of the Star had bent inward when it hit the mountains, pushing the walls in. The machinery was a hopeless mess.

“Of course,” Orde said. “The one part of the Star we need is the one part that got completely wrecked.”

Gelu nodded. “It looks like it will be impossible to salvage anything from this wreck.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing we brought a Great Being, right?” Strakk said. “They specialize in impossible.”

From his arms, Delara suddenly groaned and started to move. Strakk quickly set the Toa of Sonics down. Zaria held his hand out, in case Delara woke up and was still crazy.

Delara sat up. “Wh-- where am I?” he whispered.

“Toa Delara?” Chiara said. The Sound Toa winced at her loud voice. “Sorry,” she said, a little quieter.

The Toa of Sonics sat silently for a few seconds before speaking again. Only Orde realized what he was doing – he was using his powers to dampen the sound around him. Like all Toa of Sound, his hearing was increased, to the point where a person speaking at a normal volume was painfully loud for him. Orde wondered if he should ask Fierah if the Great Beings had made a mistake when they made the Toa of Sound.

“Who’s there?” Delara asked. “Everything’s dark…”

“You’ve been blinded,” Chiara said. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure out how to fix it.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Delara asked.

“We’re the Toa…” Chiara paused. “Well, we’re a team of Toa who doesn’t have a name yet. And two Glatorian – oh wait, you wouldn’t know what a Glatorian is, would you? Well, they’re like Toa, but different. I’m Chiara, Toa of Lightning, and with me are Zaria, Toa of Iron, and Orde, Toa of Psionics.”

She realized her mistake as soon as she said it.

“Orde?” Delara said. "I remember that name. Are you here, Orde?

“Yeah, I am,” Orde said. “And… I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Delara said, confused.

Orde blinked, surprised. By force of habit, he looked into Delara’s mind, and saw only confusion. There were no memories of his death at all. Apparently, Orde had done his job too well
.
“Sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me,” he said quickly.

While the Toa spoke, Fierah had been inspecting the machinery. She seemed to be focused on one device in particular. Zaria turned away from Delara and walked up to her. “Well?” he said.

Fierah held up a broken piece of machinery. “This is it,” she said. “The reason the Star worked. The device that we made to constantly scan everyone in the Matoran Universe, so that they could be brought back. Now just a useless hunk of metal.” She gestured around her. “Without this, this whole place is a useless hunk of metal. A glorified giant repair station. It might be able to fix up wounds, even major ones – might also be able to teleport people, if it took Lesovikk – but this is what allowed it to bring back the dead.”

“Can you fix it?” Zaria asked.

“Maybe in a year or two,” Fierah said. “I’m not the one who designed this thing, and the one who did was – well, he isn’t around to ask.”

“What about the Toa Power Scanner?” Zaria said. “Isn’t that what we came here for?”

“I haven’t been able to find it yet,” Fierah said. “I’m afraid it might be just as --”

Before she could finish her sentence, a hole in space opened up behind her. An armored hand reached through, grabbing Fierah’s arm. For a split second, Zaria could swear he saw a grinning face.

Zaria reached out with his powers, but he was too slow. The hand pulled Fierah through the portal, and it closed abruptly behind her. The Great Being was gone.


Author’s notes: I usually try to avoid having too much recapping, but I quite liked the Matoran just bombarding Takanuva with questions.
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oooo very cool - great suspense!
$200000000 says that the person who grabbed Fierah was Vezon

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Haha that’s what I’m thinking as well…

Nice chapter!

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Pls be alive pohatu…

Good chapter :slight_smile:

Vezon breaks the universe…
Then he brings all the great beings from each one to fix the Red Star after he “dies”.

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Hey there. I feel I need to explain some stuff real quick.

Shortly after I started posting this story, some stuff has been going on IRL that has been really draining, hence why the chapters have been more inconsistent. This Chapter in particular required a rewrite – nothing major, but enough that I just didn’t have the mental capability to get it ready to post until now.

So yeah, I really didn’t mean to leave it on such a mean cliffhanger for so long. I’m going to try and push myself to post the rest in the next couple of days, because there is still some big stuff left to get to.

Chapter 8


Chapter 9

Kopaka stared down at Pohatu, lying crooked in the remains of one of the machines. If the metal rods sticking through his torso didn’t make it clear enough, the darkened heartlight sealed the deal – the Toa Nuva of Stone was dead.

Kopaka’s mind raced. Could the Star still save him, bring him back? Would he want that, after seeing what had happened to some of the other inhabitants?

Ivohku slammed his fist into the wall of the Red Star. He couldn’t help feeling responsible. Maybe if he’d been able to hold the six-armed monster, Pohatu wouldn’t have over-exerted his powers. Maybe if he’d been able to stop Delara, the Star wouldn’t have crashed. Maybe if he hadn’t led the Toa in a foolish revolution against the Kestora, none of this would have happened. Everything he’d done since he died had been a complete failure.

“This… this can’t be,” Takanuva said. “We can save him, right?” Kopaka didn’t respond.

“Well, we have to try!” Quilha’s voice cut in. “He wouldn’t give up on us. Come on, let’s at least get him out of there. Mavrah, Ruhko, help me here.”

The two other Matoran were staring shell-shocked at the sight of the dead Toa, but at Quilha’s demanding tone, they moved into action. Kopaka watched as the three Matoran managed to wrestle the Stone Toa free from the machinery, and lowered him to the floor.

“I guess we bring him to the revival rooms and… see what we can do?” Ruhko said.

“Quiet,” Hydraxon said. “Someone’s coming.”

The group fell into silence, listening. Indeed, footsteps were rapidly approaching, coming from the opposite direction the group had came – it wasn’t someone from Fierah’s group. Grimly, Kopaka prepared for another fight.

But the person who came around the corner was the last being he expected to see…


The minutes before the Star’s crash…

Sytem reboot. A mind that had been dormant for centuries came back online. The mind of the Star – but also the mind of the Fe-Matoran inside it.

Years ago, when the Star first broke, the Kestora had brought one of the recently deceased Nynrah ghosts to fix it. the Fe-Matoran Nynrah Ghost had figured out how to connect his mind to the “mind” of the Star, but before he could figure out what was wrong, the Kestora had become paranoid that he was trying to sabotage the Star. They’d shut him down, and after that they prevented anyone who wasn’t a Kestora from inspecting the machines that controlled the Star. Until Ruhko, ironically once one of the Fe-Matoran’s friends, rebooted the system in an effort to get it to work.

The Nynrah Ghost didn’t know about all that. For him, it felt like only moments ago that he’d been linked into the Star, when the one known as Makuta walked in and flipped the switch that shut him down. As soon as he awoke again, he was bombarded with information. Someone was messing with the send-back systems, trying to get them operational – that was nothing new.

Error signals started appearing, ringing in his “ears”. The scanners were trying to reconnect, but for some reason the Robot wasn’t responding. He boosted the signal – maybe the Robot was out of reach for some reason? He found a small signal from the surface of a nearby planet. Too small to be the Robot, but maybe – wait, through the signal, he picked up a group of Toa. If there were Toa there, maybe that meant the Robot was nearby? Moments after he picked up the Toa’s presence, he felt one of them die. Fortunately, he’d been just in time to get a scan; the Star would be able to bring him back.

Before he could do anything else, he “felt” the Star beginning to move. Someone had activated the engines manually, driving the Star down to the surface of the planet below. It was closer to the signal he’d detected, so maybe that would mean it was closer to the Robot? But then, suddenly, more alarms went off. Something had been wrecked, and now the Star had no engine controls.

No manual controls, anyway. Stuck in the computer, the Fe-Matoran worked frantically to shut off the engines… and succeeded! He felt a moment of triumph – before realizing the Star hadn’t stopped. It had been caught in the gravity of the planet, and was plunging towards the surface. Quickly, he tried to get the engines back on, but it was too late: there was a crash, and everything went dark…

No! Somehow, he held on to consciousness. Well, awareness, considering he was in the mind of a machine. He began scanning the damage. Lights – offline. Engines – offline. Scanners – offli-- online? It seemed to be flickering, like the machinery was dying but still clinging to a spark of life. An alert had been sent, but none of the Kestora seemed to be responding; probably stunned or killed by the crash.

Teleporters – operational. The Fe-Matoran forced them to skip the typical wait period and retrieve the Toa who’d died on-planet. The way things were going, the Star might not be operational much longer, and he wanted to save as many people as he could. There was some sort of safeguard that prevented the teleport from being immediate, but the wait period could be turned down. Half an hour. That would have to do

Send-back – still inoperational. Something had been jammed into the machines by the impact, a body. A quick check of the scanners told him it was a Toa of Stone, and that he was alive – but not for long. Then the scanner went offline, and this time it didn’t come back. Had it gotten enough to revive him? He had to hope… that it… was…

This time, when he went black, he didn’t awaken again.

The “mind” of the Red Star – offline.


When the Toa came around the corner, Kopaka thought for sure he must be losing it. Because the person running toward them looked exactly like the body behind him. “Pohatu?”

The Toa Nuva of Stone met his gaze. The look in his friend’s eyes sent chills through the Toa Nuva of Ice as he replied.

“What’s a Pohatu?”


Author’s notes: a quick point of clarification, because someone might remember from the last Chapter of Hunted that Chiara points out Lesovikk’s death after the Star’s crash. Lesovikk actually dies before the Star crash, but Chiara doesn’t notice it until after.

chapter 10

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nooooo!!

ooh, interesting.

WHAAAAAAAAAT??

this is very confusing. nice job though, I’ll be happy to see more chapters.

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I was about to sue you for killing Pohatu, but I’m glad he’s still around.
Now, the Star didn’t create new bodies, as I recall, that’s why it teleported the dead bodies to the Star.

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Two Hydraxons, now two Pohatus (kind of), and I’m still holding out hope that there’s a second Jaller out there as well. This is getting interesting.

I’m curious as to what this explanation will be as well.

A good question, one of those things I assume is clearer than it is.

In some cases, a new body needs to be made. Pohatu’s body wasn’t that badly damaged, but the Starbrain put it down as “new body” since he wasn’t sure if anyone would be there to bring the body to the revival machines.

I would have stated it more directly in the story, but I wanted it to be more of a reveal when New-Pohatu shows up.

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…eeenteresting.

I suppose that makes sense, especially with the reveal that the Red Star is sapient (or it least it was when it made that decision).

Although I was under the impression that the Red Star still had to teleport the body up to recover the mind to put in a new body; it doesn’t just scan the mind.

Either way, that suggests to me that Pohatu’s original body could still be brought back.

Maybe it does, and that’s why Pohatu isn’t fully back?

Chapter 9


Chapter 10

“Who are you?”

The Kestora known as Makuta retreated backwards, just staying out of reach of her attacker’s glowing blades. He wasn’t one of the ones meant to visit this place, that much she knew. He looked more like one of the ones who had made this place.

Whoever he was, he was obviously a threat, and Makuta had a way to deal with threats. She raised her staff, preparing to call upon her army of Toa…

The attacker moved impossibly fast, his sword slamming against her wrist; she yelped and dropped the staff. Then, the other blade came down toward her head, and the last thing she heard before she went black was the sound of her mask cracking.


Atakus stared down at the Kestora leader. Without a heartlight, it was hard to tell for sure, but Atakus doubted he’d killed her. Should he finish her off now?

Then he glanced down at the staff she’d dropped, with the strange crystal atop it. Hesitantly, he bent down and picked it up.

As soon as he did so, he felt power coming from it. The power to control an army. And it had one, an army of… Toa.

Atakus realized he was shaking, though not from the power he felt from the staff. No, he was shaking with excitement. This wouldn’t just make up for his last mistake. With this, there was nothing stopping him and his master from achieving–

Suddenly, there was a loud groan, and the floor beneath him shifted abruptly.


Orde stared intently at the Toa of Stone in front of him, focusing his powers. The Toa of Stone stared back curiously at first, then lost interest and turned to pay attention to the other conversation going on. He wasn’t skilled enough to feel Orde’s psionic investigation, so to him, it just felt like Orde was staring at him.

Finally, Orde stopped and shook his head. “He still… seems like the same person I met three days ago,” he said. “But he has no memories of… well, anything before waking up on the star.”

“Can you fix him?” Kopaka said. “Like you did with Delara?”

“You don’t understand,” Orde said. “His memories aren’t just suppressed, or jumbled. They’re gone. At best, maybe I could plant some memories in there, but…” Orde slumped his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

“What about his body?” Takanuva asked. “Maybe we could–”

That was when the floor began to shift


“So she just… disappeared?” Hydraxon said. Once the two groups had reunited, Kopaka had taken Orde aside to analyze the new Pohatu, while Zaria and Chiara explained what had happened to their Great Being ally.

“And now the only person who knew how to stop this Marendar thing is gone,” Zaria said.

“Does her buddy know where she went?” Hydraxon said, staring accusingly at Strakk.

The Ice Glatorian raised his hands. “Mind reader guy already asked that, and probed me to be sure. I’ve got nothing.”

“All right,” Hydraxon said. “Well, we need to get out of here, so we can–”

The rest of was cut off when the floor abruptly shifted, and everyone but Hydraxon stumbled.


Mountains are supposed to be immovable. But under the massive weight of the Red Star, even stone would give.

Ever since the Star had landed, the earth and rock holding it in its upright position had been shifting, breaking, crumbling. Until, finally, one of them gave way, and the Star began to tilt toward its final impact, where it would inevitably collapse under its own weight.

And then, suddenly, it stopped.


Kopaka scrambled to his feet.

Ivohku was standing in the center of the room, his arms raised, his eyes closed, face clenched in concentration. He was using his elemental power.

“Can’t… hold…” he groaned. “Get… out… now…”

It took Kopaka only a second to realize what was happening. “We need to go, now!” he barked. “The Star’s about to fall over!”

“No!” Hydraxon said. “We’re not leaving everyone else here again. This time, we’re getting everyone out!”

“There’s no way we can get everyone out of a place this big!” Chiara protested.

“Than we get as many as we can,” Orde said. “We’re Toa. We’ll be the last ones to leave if we have to.”

Kopaka’s mind raced. He had an idea, but it would require everyone to pull off. “Zaria, I need you to open us up a lot of exits in the same area. Delara, I need you to boost my voice, make it so everyone can hear me at once. Takanuva, go with Zaria. Use your power to make the brightest light you can. I’m talking as bright as Matoro with the Ignika.” Kopaka hadn’t seen that bright flash of light, but he’d heard of it from the Av-Matoran Solek.

He turned to Hydraxon. “Go with Zaria. Use your weapons, blast those walls open. Now!” Hydraxon nodded and took off, following Zaria and Takanuva.

Kopaka turned to Delara, and the Sound Toa nodded. “Attention, everyone! The Star is about to collapse. The Toa are here to guide you. Follow the light and get to safety.” With Delara’s power, Kopaka’s voice could be heard everywhere on the Star.

Kopaka turned to the Glatorian. “Gelu, Stra–” but Strakk had already took off, no doubt running for safety as soon as he realized what was happening. “Gelu, get the Matoran to safety.”

He turned to Pohatu. “Do you have your mask power back?”

Pohatu stared blankly at him. “What does my mask do again?”

His words were like an ice dagger to Kopaka’s heart, but one he’d have to think about later. “Never mind, go with Gelu and the Matoran. If you can figure it out, use your power to make sure the escapees can get to the ground. Orde, Chiara, you’re with me.” Then Kopaka shifted over to the Nuva Mask of Speed, and ran off to save as many people he could.


Left behind by the rest of the group, Ivohku stood, concentrating.

He’d gotten lucky, unleashing his power right as the Star began to tip over. It was just barely balanced, just enough for him to hold it up. But that wouldn’t last long. Bit by bit, he could feel it moving, growing heavier as it did so. In less than a minute, it would be too much for him to hold up.

Ivohku couldn’t move, couldn’t breath, couldn’t do anything except exert his power. It he let up, for even a fraction of a second, it would be over. The Star would tip past the point where he could hold it up. He had to hold on, long enough for Kopaka to get everyone out.

There was no way he could make it out. He was sure of it, and he didn’t care. He’d failed everything else since he’d died the first time. He wouldn’t fail here.


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ooo interesting!