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“She fought to protect her home. But too much power, fueled by too much anger, made her a menace,” Vakama said quietly. “Perhaps I saw a reflection of ourselves in her … or what we could become, if we are not very careful.” - Toa Metru Vakama, The Darkness Below
—
The words of the Toa hounded her, even through the fog of her exhausted dreams. Relentlessly, they swirled around her as she fled back to the echo of her homeland. Sleep had once been merciful, and it had been in its anesthetizing embrace she’d first been able to lock away the piercing, burning memories of the last days of her home and her people, felled by the merciless conquest of the stealers of life.
The Selfless Ones, is what their name meant, in their own fluid tongue. The Krahkani people - Krahka. A wordplay on their shape-changing abilities, yes, but more. Her people had once lived in close-knit covens across the entire island, where the boundary between the good of oneself and the good of another was indistinct. Curiosity, the thrill and novelty of learning together, growing together. But, no longer.
“You will be alone for eternity, Krahka.” The much fresher memory of the Toa’s prediction in their battle, mere hours ago, bludgeoned away the long-buried reminiscence of home and belonging that wanted so badly to be resurrected.
“They fear you,” another one of the little heroes had spat at her.
But what did any of the top-dwellers know of fear? Real fear. The kind of fear that blazes fiercely enough to strip you of yourself? Leave you adrift? With not even a pinprick of bitter hope to turn away from? It was the kind of primal fear that any sentient being could conceive of, but was so far, terrible, incomprehensible that it became a ridiculous, foreign concept that was sublimated into story time around a night fire. No, these top-dwellers were safe from even the concept of the scourge, the horde, and the decay and desolation always, always left in its wake. And she couldn’t even find it within herself to begin to wish it upon them.
“They know you for a deceiver.” Sharp words from the hero with the power of the tides flowing through her veins, held back by only her willpower and naivety, and who had unwittingly earned Krahka’s respect.
Deceiver.
Deceit. Fear. The two walked closer than brothers in the minds of the top-dwellers. Perhaps that was the price exacted by such grand self-assurance that drove the Toa so boldly down into her solitude.
“Even in the suns’ light, monster, you will always be in night-dark!”
The night-dark. She remembered how it had swallowed her up when she’d first fled into it, in a blind panic, fleeing from the ashes of the only life she’d every known. It had taken her in, she clung to it, drawing comfort from the anonymity it provided. Ironic, that anonymity should be something that one with no shape to call her own would seek. In the night-dark, her consternation had aged into melancholy contemplation.
Endling.
She was no longer a self. And for what must have been ages, in the numbing night-dark of her cold corridors and caverns, there was no need to be. Because the crushing, constricting weight of what had befallen her home and her people - and worse, that she had somehow survived - was too heavy for a lone self to bear.
“She fought to protect her home…” These words, the last she'd heard from the top-dwellers, cut the deepest.
The Krahka stirred awake, shaking off the crust of dried lava from her escape from the Toa Metru along with the fragmented shards of dreams from an era past. Never before had she expended so much energy to create and maintain a transformation. The overwhelming ferocity of what could have only been elemental power flowing through the frame of Toa was like a sweet hum through every fiber and sinew running beneath the armor. Bursting, singing, begging to be used. That kind of power could be addicting.
But the thrill of raw elemental power was just the crest of the Kikanalo. These Toa - yes, their names drifted back into her working memory as her consciousness dragged itself back from fatigued respite - they’d given her more than one invaluable gift. She’d observed them far longer and far more thoroughly than they could ever be comfortable with. Apart from the stray cataloguer or maintenance worker - both new terms for her - these Toa were the only top-dwellers she’d had the chance to observe. Unwelcome, of course. But Krahka understood a sound defeat, and was no fool. A fool was one who refused to learn from their failures. And long had she been a fool.
She now had enough of the top-dweller’s language at her command to communicate. That much was clear. That was one gift from the Toa. As close to literally as possible, it opened a whole new world of possibility to her. But possibility was not something she sought, and the first gift of language would have rotted away unused without the second.
The second gift was gleaned from her observation of the Toa, and proven in the way they battled and bickered together. It was precisely that - together. Brothers. Sisters. And, she realized, that’s what had begun to wrench the key stabbed into the lock around her ihio - her people’s word for that inmost seat of self that didn’t change with one’s shape, but was nonetheless shaped by it and that which was around it, whether it be friend or foe, culture or catastrophe. The longing for belonging innate in most sentient beings, at least in her experience and imitation of them. That longing was growling awake after a lonely hibernation, and the part of her that they called animal, other, Rahi, couldn’t help but be stirred to action by it.
One thing Krahka decided she had taken for granted about her current lava eel shape was that, when exhausted as she was, at least there were no legs for her to stagger up on to.
She took her time slithering toward the surface.
—
One thing the Toa Metru had assured her was that the other top-dwellers would never accept her. She was classified clearly as not us, and based on what she saw in the Archives, that black-and-white designation sentenced her to a life in stasis. In retrospect, her timidity in taking on this new world at long last was largely due to spending so much time under the suspended, sorrowful stares of the Rahi lining every corridor. True, the amount of information and plethora of species she added to her terohki grew exponentially, but she wondered if the knowledge was worth the seed of repulsion and fear for Matoran-kind that was planted.
Terohki. It wasn’t a term that translated directly for top-dwellers, but it was close to cache, repository, or arsenal, if her people had been of a more belligerent bent. The terohki consisted of the forms held within a Krahka’s working memory that they could take and manipulate at will. The keterohki included forms once taken, but since forgotten. Nonetheless, those forms were considered an integral part of the Krahka who carried them, as they’d shaped the ihio. The keterohki, thus, also became a respectful euphemism to refer to those of the coven who had passed on. Krahka had the last and the largest keterohki, and it was a burden that became much heavier once she ventured out of the shadows. With each exhibit plaque she read and trapped form she ingested into her terohki, she felt the weight of her keterohki grow.
Your time will come, again, she promised a lovely Proto-Drake in the Amphibians Hall, one day. The part of her they called Rahi was repulsed by the Archives. But that same part instinctively understood that she was in the top-dweller’s territory - acutely, consciously, constantly aware of the fact. Swaggering in and throwing things around like a Brakas gone batty was not the way to get what you wanted, which was a lesson she still dreamed of teaching the so called Toa Metru. The fear that they would or already had sent more top-dwellers down into her home still gnawed at her. But, honestly, the Matoran who toiled here in the museum looked to her almost idyllic. Self-satisfied in their work, and perhaps quietly dreaming of something more, but too modest to ever say so. This was the life the Toa would fight so hard to protect and preserve? She now knew she couldn’t best the Toa, united as they were, in a direct confrontation. But she’d proven over and over that she could outwit
“Are you lost?” An inquisitive blue mask poked into her field of vision and started her out of her contemplation.
“No,” she took a step back from the minor worms exhibit. “Not lost.” She turned her head and looked at the speaker. “Are you lost?”
He seemed to think that was some witty joke on her part, because a wide grin broke over his concerned expression. “Not officially, but if the Vahki ask, I got hit with a Staff of Confusion and I’m still recovering!” He feigned a confused stumble, almost knocking into the display case of seabed worms.
Too aware that she was stuck in observation mode, she forced a smile onto whichever mask she was wearing today. “Stupid Vahki,” she agreed. It seemed like a safe thing to say. Indeed, the enforcers unnerved her. She’d never encountered a being who she couldn’t ingest into her terohki. It had taken her a few days to realize they were fully mechanical.
Still grinning, the Matoran shook off the disoriented act, and became intensely interested in the specific specimen she’d been standing in front of.
“Are you here for a research project? Are you a biology student?”
He was a fast talker. His red armor told her he wasn’t one who wasn’t one of those Le-Matoran, who she’d learned to avoid at all cost. Thankfully, not many of them had wandered into the exhibit halls. It was all she could do to shrug and lessen the width of her smile. It was all she could do to keep the stress of sustained interaction from crumpling her carefully maintained expression of stand-offish disinterest.
“It’s just, most Ga-Matoran students are in the middle of their exams. I didn’t expect to see any of you out and about for a few weeks yet.”
“I don’t need exams,” she tried, and shifted so she mirrored his inquisitive, focused stance.
The Matoran’s jaw dropped ever so slightly, and understanding gleamed in his eyes. He leaned in and asked quietly in disbelief, “You’re skipping exams??”
Again, she mimicked his body language, leaning in and dropping her voice to match his, and letting the syllables slip out quietly and quickly. “I’m skipping exams.” Whatever an ‘exam’ was.
“Ha!” the Matoran straightened up with a startling exclamation. “Such a Ga-Matoran!” His voice returned to a normal, less attention-attracting volume. She made sure to note the relationship between volume and the attention it garnered. All the rules were different up here, and she didn’t necessarily like them. “Skipping exams to pour over bio-worm exhibits!”
She laughed her best laugh - soft, repetitive syllables to the rhythm of acceptable speech patterns, and thankfully, the Matoran joined in.
“Never a dull moment!” he said, eyes still alight in genuine amusement. It was unnerving. “Come on. I’ll show you how a pro shirks work!” He began to trot away, obviously expecting her to follow.
“No,” she shook her head, once, firmly when he turned and looked at her expectantly. “I … have exams.”
The Matoran tilted his head slightly, confused and she also thought she read a note of disappointment. She shook her head again, and he seemed to understand she meant it. “Okay,” he deflated a bit, but piped up again almost immediately, “Well if any Rorzakh come around asking for ‘Takua’, I was never here!” and he sauntered off.
Watching him go, Krahka knew she had a long, long way to go if ever she were to successfully infiltrate Matoran society.
Fool, she decided. No amount of well-meaning and happy-go-lucky joviality could hide that. But the sheer infectiousness of the Matoran’s wide-eyed enthusiasm for what wonders he somehow found in even harbor worms and insignificant strangers - something about that tugged at her attention. No. When you were on your own, there was no leeway that afforded joviality. And therein lay the essence of the virtue of Unity which the Toa and Matoran cherished and - it dawned on her, fought for.
She was surprised by the sadness that welled up around her ihio as her talkative acquaintance turned a corner and disappeared. But she knew why it was so.
The Matoran would never be her ihikani - heart’s brethren.
A short static burst, followed by music pouring out of the Archives’ PA system caused her to flinch. The few other Matoran in the exhibit hall, murmuring among themselves, began to make their way out to the main exhibit hall. She followed cautiously, careful to stay close enough it looked like she was simply one of the crowd, but far enough away that it would be easy to slip into the shadows and disappear. Atelescreen that normally displayed a labeled map of the exhibits available to the public now broadcasted the face of the elder, Turaga Dume.
“Matoran of Metru Nui,” the Turaga’s amplified voice instructed them. “You are required to gather at the Coliseum.”
No, she was as foolish as that Ta-Matoran she’d met earlier, if she thought she was ready to gather with the entire city in an enclosed arena. But she couldn’t deny the slight pull of curiosity. It occurred to her, as the broadcast began to repeat itself, that it could be a chance to face the Toa again. But, of course, what could she do, with the whole city there?
The Matoran who weren’t still watching the Turaga’s announcement began to trickle away toward the exit.
She shimmered smoothly into the guise of an insignificant lava rat and wriggled down through a grate into her night-dark.
Perhaps one day she’d make it to the Coliseum. But not today.