Both you and Pohatu have to stoop in Onewa's hut. The Turaga of Stone addresses you.

"Pohatu. Her story checks out."

It's a statement, not a question. Pohatu nods. Onewa doesn't look pleased. What was he hoping for? If it hadn't and you were, you don't know, Makuta or something, his house would get trashed. It's a mess anyway; chisels, half-finished carvings, blueprints and dust cover almost every available surface. If you did trash his house, hypothetically, how much worse would it be?

"Well, what are you here for?"

---

What are you here for?

[ ] I'm looking for Kanohi. Do you know where any more are?

[ ] Can you take a look at this mask?

[ ] Why weren't you at the Kini-Nui?

[ ] Just happened to be heading this way.

>>32956437
>[X] Can you take a look at this mask?

File: image.jpg (95 KB, 700x384)

95 KB JPG

>>32956974

((Just had a nice long post typed up. My browser decided to shut down. Sorry for the wait.))

Well, you wanted him to check this mask out, actually-

Onewa cuts you off. "It's not rusty. Infected masks are obvious. Where'd you get this?"

You tell him the truth; you found it with Gali in the southern part of Po-Wahi nearest Naho Bay, trapped under a giant stone block. You can't possibly imagine how it got there.

Onewa gives you a flat stare. "The ways of Mata Nui are mysterious. Who are we to judge or explain. I told you what you wanted."

The second sentence is a statement. You get the feeling he does this question-to-statement thing a lot. He looks at you, and then at the door. You suppose you'll be leaving then, and you hope he has a wonderful day. You can feel his gaze burning as he watches you stoop and leave his hut. Pohatu follows.

Once the two of you have managed to not knock your masks off on the doorframe and successfully escaped, Pohatu speaks, just loudly enough for anybody within Onewa's house to hear. "He's stubborn, isn't he."

---
-Go shopping. You could use a metal shaft for your drillspear, and maybe what's-his-mask, Ahkmou, will give you a discount for the delivery you made earlier.

-Talk to Pohatu. He seems alright, and you know he went to Le-Koro with Lewa. How'd he get here so quickly, anyway?

-Write-in. You've got a Koro to explore. You could try to play Kolhii, train your Elemental or Kanohi powers, or find out why Huki ran off with that package.

>>32957518
>-Talk to Pohatu. He seems alright, and you know he went to Le-Koro with Lewa. How'd he get here so quickly, anyway?

Prtals? Tunnel system? Winged sneakers?
We must know.

File: 1310747129732.jpg (16 KB, 183x183)

16 KB JPG

I liek'd bionicles and all that but, is this going to be like where all the things are the robot parts with the very obviously ball joints and all that or is it like humans and just using the setting?

>>32958180
Robots. Humans would make certain plot points (one in particular) very weird.

File: 1373418809752.jpg (8 KB, 259x194)

8 KB JPG

>>32958239
Eh, I'd probably pick this up if it were like more human or realistic robots instead of the toys. Good luck, though.

>>32957833

He certainly is. You thought Pohatu had left for Le-Koro with Lewa. How'd he get here so quickly?

"It's my Kanohi power." He taps his mask. "Kanohi Kakama, Great Mask of Speed. I can speed my arms and legs up a bit, but it seems to work better if I move all at once. I set out this morning from Le-Koro."

That's half the island in less than a day!

"It's useful, yeah. I still get tired though, on top of the exhaustion that normally comes from pushing Kanohi too hard. How did you get here?"

[1/2]

>>32958490
You took a boat from Ga-Koro and traveled up. You found the mask along the way, trapped, somehow, under a giant stone pyramid. Pohatu looks curious. "Where, exactly, did you say this was?" You point in the general direction. If his Mask does what he says it does, you could get there from Po-Koro and back fast enough to have the whole afternoon left.

"I'd head there, but I don't have the energy- not that I'm tired, you know what I mean: to activate my mask."

He seems to be considering something. After five or so seconds, he asks you, "Do you mind swapping? You could carry me or something."

---

Do you mind swapping?

> Nope, you trust him. He sounds like he really wants to check out the pyramid, and you do too.

> Yes. You do mind. He'll just have to rest and get there himself eventually.

> Give him your Kaukau instead; if he runs off with your Calix, it'll be hard to fight him. Water-breathing isn't really much of a decisive combat advantage in the desert.

>>32958281
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QsyzA-AXVgI

This is the style I'm going for; people seem to prefer the mysterious tribal aura of the earlier years. I dislike super-humanized stuff because it takes away from that atmosphere.

Thanks for the luck. I will treasure it always.

>>32958776
Give him the KauKau. We don't need breathing

>>32958776
>I suppose...just don't do anything stupid.

>>32959026
>>32959045

>>32958776
No, it's fine. You don't mind at all. Your current mask is useful for combat, and you'd rather not risk it, so, if he'd be alright with using the Mask of Water-Breathing, you'd rather he use that, if he wants. Pohatu is fine. You stash your Calix in a hasty hole dug behind one of the giant stone heads at the Po-Koro gate and swap masks. Pohatu climbs onto your back and away you go to the remains of the pyramid.

You don't feel like your legs are moving any faster, but they seem to cover more ground somehow. The journey that took hours one way is reduced to minutes. On the way, you stop and preform a few experiments. The mask seems to also affect Pohatu as long as you're touching him. He doesn't seem eager to try this with the mask of Water-Breathing.

You arrive at the pyramid, and Pohatu begins to study the rock. He asks you to use sand to grind a surface away, but aside from that, he stays quiet.

Eventually he rises, holding a sliver of stone in his hand. "We were showing off at Kini-Nui, before you got there."

[1/2]

>>32958281
>Humans
thisbreaksthesetting.jpg

>>32959474
He pauses. "Toa seem to be able to create, control, and absorb their elements. Fire, for example, is easy to absorb, whereas controlling air or water takes less work due to their fluid natures. Creating and absorbing stone are both difficult, and stone isn't the easiest element to control, but I can sense certain things about it, like planes of fracture. This pyramid was almost perfectly broken from unhewn stone. There are marks here, and here," he pauses to point, " where some sort of edge was used to get it perfectly flat, but either this stone just grew out of the ground or fell out of the sky, or somebody else, somebody we don't know about, somebody on this island knows how to work stone at the level of a Toa."

"Makuta?"

<Quite possibly.>

[2/3]

You have no time to ponder the mysterious words in your mind. There's a storm coming, and something is shaking the ground beneath you. Pohatu senses it too. Looking out over the cliff, you can see a long dark shape, wider across than Ga-Koro, hurtling toward the cliff you stand on at a breakneck speed. Pohatu gestures.

"Well, that probably is."

---

-Run. The last time you dealt with something that hit a rock, you almost got a wall dropped on you. If this thing hits the cliff you and Pohatu are standing on... Whatever is shaking the cliff probably won't be good.

-Get to Gali. She's somewhere in the water, and that thing could kill her. You do have a mask of Water-Breathing, and it'll get you away from the increasingly ominous underground shaking.

((This is a semi-direct result of a divergence from canon that happened years ago. Anybody remember Mavrah?))

>>32960636
>Turn to Pohatu, with the biggest fuckin grin ever. "This day just got a lot more interesting." Then, leap into the water, the tip of our drill spear leading the way as we leap right down onto the thing. Time our impact and work the earth in the cliff face to make it unstable enough to collapse on the creature, with us riding the avalanche down.

>>32961093
We need to get water breathing first. Or else we'll just drown.

>>32961193
Pohatu's wearing ours. Ask to switch back.

>>32961093
(Wearing the biggest fuckin grin ever)

You ask Pohatu to trade masks. He complies, although not without reservations. You assure him you're just going to bring the cliff down on the Rahi and ask him to search for weak points in the rock below. As he turns away, you take a deep breath, Kanohi Kaukau fixed to your face, and jump.

You pole-vault out over the ocean.

Unfortunately, you left your Kanohi Calix, the Mask that would have made your ridiculous plan semi-feasible, buried behind a statue in Po-Koro.

You flail through the air. The sea Rahi hits the cliff at the same time an enormous serpent made of rock bursts through the spot where the pyramid stood. About half a second later, Pohatu slams into you.

It's hard to hear him through the rushing air, but his mask power allowed him to catch up with you. If Kanohi abilities can be spread through touch, you'll both be able to get away so long as you stay together.

The water looks relatively calm, aside from the V-shaped ripple and shockwaves caused by the sea Rahi. In the moment before impact, you swear you can see a shadowy mask laughing in the storm clouds between you and Ga-Koro.

>>32961686
Glad to see this back.

At impact, your entire body screams. Your components are built to last, but you were past terminal velocity, thanks to Pohatu's Kanohi Kakama. You plunge downward into the water.

After a few seconds, your presence of mind returns enough to grab the nearest bit of Pohatu (his foot) and activate your Kaukau. You swing him around, and point him upward.

He isn't moving. He'd better recover fast; the monstrous ocean Rahi is turning towards you. There's no mistaking the form of a rusted Kanohi mask over its gaping maw. It breathes out, and ice crystallizes in the water.

---

What do?

: Run. Switch Kanohi with Pohatu, drag him along to the surface, and hightail it out of there, either to Ga-Koro, back to the cliff, or the jungle.

: Fight. Swim down to the sea floor, where you have earth to work with. You're defenseless in open water.

>>32962038
Shit, I thought the Rahi would be out for longer.

Switch again and RUN BITCH RUUUN

>>32962038
>Fight.
This thing is a threat to the matoran.

>>32962038
Never run from a fight. Dive down

>>32962098
>>32962552
Pohatue can't swim.

>>32962875
He can not drown if we share our mask, and were just going to the sea floor.

Going against all your instincts, you plunge downward to the seafloor. If only you could use Pohatu's Kanohi... Kanohi need to be activated, and Pohatu isn't in a state of being able to activate anything.

Halfway down, and the Rahi is starting its turn. You swim faster.

Two-thirds of the way, and you can see a mouth full of teeth three times as long as you are tall, and thicker than your torso.

At five sixths of the way down, Pohatu stirs and you lose your single-minded focus for long enough to accidentally turn your head- and wish you hadn't.

You're about five feet from the bottom when the bottom half of a cavernous mouth (three jaws! Who knew that was possible) passes below you. The jaws snap shut-

A sudden current flings you out. The jaws pass an inch from your foot and cut a strap off your bag. Gali looks perfectly at home under the water. An air bladder floats loose from your bag. You grab it and stuff it back in.

---
Now what?

: Try to kill this thing with Gali's help. You don't think Gali kills things, but you're sure you can convince her to make an exception.

: You saw an infected Kanohi over its upper lip. You could go for that. However, the Rahi that attacked you were strangely coordinated, probably by Makuta. He will be aware of this weakness and plan accordingly.

: RUN. Gali and Pohatu combined can easily get you to Ga-Koro.

3 toa, 1 Rahi.

This sounds like a nasty porno in the works. Let's get dat mask, mang

>>32964107
Let's go for the mask. Between the three of us, we should be able to do it.

We can try to hold the Rahi down with earth and stone. Gali can grab the mask.

Pohatu isn't used to the water, but he swims along gamely. You know Gali saw the mask; hopefully you and Pohatu can buy her time to release the Rahi from Makuta's influence. You stand on the seafloor and raise a column of earth high enough to wrap around the monster, but it smashes through it. Pohatu gets the idea. A stone spike stabs the Rahi through the floor of its mouth. It thrashes. Now that you can see it more closely, the ice isn't just coming from its mouth, it covers its entire body. Overlapping plate-like scales protect its entire body from harm, including its head. Its head. Where the mask is. Covered by ice.

You scream. "Gali! Get Back!

It comes out as "Glubblub! Bublub!"

[1/2]

Gali is a Toa of Water, and Ice just frozen water. She can't control Ice, but she can melt it, if she tries. She pummels the Infected Mask with water, and it comes off.

Without the Mask, the Rahi is even more bloodthirsty, but at least it's contained.

She swims back. Pohatu is finally fully conscious, so he activates his Kakama and you break the surface shortly thereafter. Fresh air feels good in your lungs.

Gali seems perturbed. "It was necessary, but I don't have to like it."

"What?"

"The spike through the jaw. Look; that ice coating? It's a defense. That thing has predators, as hard as that is to imagine, and I can't just leave it there."

Pohatu is incredulous. "So the enormous ice-covered evil Rahi that tried to eat us has you feeling sorry for it? If that thing has predators, it gets attacked anyway. What's the difference?

"I'm not sorry, but it isn't fair. We disrupted the natural way of things."

You've got something important to say. "Didn't you find it strange that the infected mask came off so easily? We can't stay here, there's a storm coming from the south. We can't go back; there's a rock-snake-thing that Makuta set on us. Now what?"

---
Now what?

I say go with Gali on this one (first time posting in a quest thread so I hope I'm doing the right thing)

>>32967649
Makuta disrupted the natural order. We must simply do our best to restoring it.

For now, let's investigate that second Rahi if we can. It might go for Po-koro if we don't do something.

>>32967649
Lets chase down the snake. Maybe get our Calix back along the way

That's all for now. Quest resumes/begins a new thread tomorrow. Thank you for playing!