Torra [19]

"A moment."

The white Toa excuses himself and reenters his canister. For a second alone? You have no idea.

>I was missing equipment when I woke up, others may be as well. Search the area for dropped or lost equipment.

A pragmatic attitude. You redouble the search for valuables - it seems obvious that your best bet is to band together, so you'd rather salvage what is left from everyone's scattered gear than make your own exit.

What? There, being picked at slowly by a jewel-encrusted crab. The outline of a mask, a hump half-buried in the sand. You rush toward it and excavate it before it can be carried away by another rogue wave. Apart from the crash-landing, it seems today is your lucky day. The mask is a deep black, appearing almost to drink in the limited firelight - you recognize its ritual form, something for binding Rahi beasts.

You get the impression that it belongs to the dark-armored figure from near the canister you extinguished, so you double back. Catching the group of Toa that have congregated there - red, black, tan - off-guard, you thrust the object into his hands.

"Missing something?"

He nods gratefully and lifts it to the blurring mechanical flux of his empty face, where it clicks into place.

TOA


Celus [-]

"A moment." You put the words out through a mouth that feels gummed with poison.

> Head in and retrieve my mask and sword.

You politely turn your back on the blue Toa and walk back into the twisted confines of the wrecked canister, sweeping a hand to pull back the mass of dangling umbilicals and frost-coated hoses. Your prized artifacts, mask and sword, are found exactly where they should be, protected in their special cases.

The mask you cradle in your hands for a moment - ugly, angular, a warrior's face. Then you click it on and feel, for one moment, unnatural weight bearing down in the center of your form. You bend for a moment, touching the ground. Absolute groundedness... pure gravity. A point singularity flickers in and out of existence twice, a few inches in front of your forehead, hovering invisibly but with detectable force.

The sword is long, intended for two-handed use by a giant. It is weighted at the base with a skull-crushing pommel, the width of its gleaming blade almost seeming to amorphously droop down toward the core of its handle in a glassy flow - a thin metallic spike surrounded by ice stabilized in a razor-sharp matrix of almost-invisible fibers. It is the deep blue of an ancient glacier, and the air currents around it are a blustery, freezing cold. You find it comforting to be re-armed.

Sliding the blade into its case, which you clip to a socket on your frame, you re-emerge from the canister only to find that the blue interloper has already made her way further down the beach. Forms gather in the firelight there.

TOA


Hyrri [15]

>Find some higher ground, see if I can get the lay of the land, maybe figure out what to do next.

Your bow and mask secure, you begin to start crossing the dune break to a higher outcrop from which you can survey the rest of the shore, from the black sands to the sharper stones that are their progenitors. In the blackness, it's difficult to make out much. There are the occasional phosphorescent flashes at the edge where the jagged stones re-break into marsh. It's nothing you wouldn't expect on a wild island - the typical communication and visual chirps of nocturnal Rahi.

Attaining your bearings better, with the aid of your mask's target-plotting software you highlight landmarks with curves of imprint light and build a crude map. To the east along the shore - you know it's the east since you are also tracking the angular movement of the blue moon which goes along that trajectory - is an increasingly thick, dark tide of wastes and smoldering material from the carrier wreck. Clearly the waters have become a no-go zone without some kind of armor. The land there is barren, but begins a sharp transition uphill, over heavy and disordered fallen stones to the first glimpses of some kind of mouth in the earth. A deep void opens there.

Inward along the shore, the jagged volcanic rock begins to break under grasses that get thicker and thicker and taller and taller, until you realize that each stalk must be three times your height. Swarms of insects flicker between them. You conjecture that it is extremely damp when your probe light glints on an exposed pool of water. Visiblility is terminated by the flora.

To the west, the shore bends around and not much is distinguishable except another small bay. Except for one thing out of place. Is that a lamp?

Yes, a lamp, the severed head of a Rahi photovore. Trapped behind a lens, flickering its beam across the dark waters from the bow of a double-hulled canoe. The glow of the light obscures the pilot. If there is a pilot. It drifts to and fro within the small, enclosed body of water, occasional splashes coming up from nearby.

You note a major slick of fire erupting on the beach behind you. Four bodies are now gathered by it.

TOA


Oumu [19]

>Put on the mask. Help the dark Toa with their mask however possible.

You take a deep breath and affix the Calix to your nerve net. Instantly you are struck by a spine-chilling sense, of infinite enemies around you, awareness of the forking roads of existence and their tragically sub-optimal ends. Destiny's weight on your shoulders. Be careful - megalomania is the curse of Calix wielders, as rare as they are. It's... not clear how this mask is consciously activated, or even if it can be. Does it have power of its own? Anecdotally, yes. You had heard once that it makes you a heavy force in the spirit world, gives you ten times the gravity of soul.

"Feeling better? Now let's go find my mask."

Visibility is key under the circumstances, particularly in identifying lost equipment. Twisting your hand to conjure flame from within, you fling a clinging, burning film onto the sand, where it first highlights metallic trash but nothing else of major value. However, it does clearly mark your position now to the same blue Toa that took care of your canister fire earlier. She strides back from the darkness, thrusting a shining mask into the hands of the black-armored Toa.

But what's that? The flames are pointing subtly toward a mound of scrap in the sand, like their tips are bending. You approach and thrust your hand into the rubble, convinced by this display of elemental affinity.

Withdrawing your trusty forge hammer from the mess, you are gratified by your instincts and good fortune. It's as good as you remember it. Well-balanced, perpetually red-hot at its massive flat head, perfect for dealing resounding impacts that shock the entire body. A fierce tool, now repurposed to a fighting implement - you're actually not even sure which purpose you would be better at using it for, even considering the Toa programming, your latent warrior instincts. The smithy taught you many material lessons.

TOA


Koa'a [-]

"Feeling better? Now let's go find my mask."

>Set off with my new friend to finally find my own mask.

You are about to do just that, when a blue figure presents herself and makes all that unnecessary. She gifts you with your own mask - a little stunned, all you can do is accept the offering. You quench the open wound of your face with the Ekat's protection, and a minor cacophony of Rahi languages (chirps, groans and high-frequency pulses) break out in your head before calming down. Further, you feel an upwelling in psychic power that rapidly establishes a comfortable equilibrium together with the rest of your mind. Yes, with this Kanohi in hand, you can exercise mastery over many.

TOA


Avvlaa [14]

>Approach.

"Do any of you know... what happened?"

They are apparently too busy re-activating themselves and donning their masks to respond... one of them flings down a glob of shapeshifting fire for illumination, now that the canister conflagration has been put down. You close to within an arm's length of the black-armored one.

Something unspools in your head like a film reel, a sequence you can't put into context, almost like you were watching through a camera while half asleep...


By the time you snap out of your reverie, a blue Toa has made herself present at the scene and both the red and black warriors are now masked.

TOA

Mutual acknowledgements of one another's existences are exchanged. You make the not unreasonable assumption that everyone present is a Toa - fine, you are all heavily armed with hyper-powered Kanohi. But what are you doing here?

And where will you go?

Hyrri notices that the canoe is drifting closer, its light starting to flick dangerously near. Koa'a calls out, unleashing a biomechanical howl ( [7] ) to the moon that causes the tall grasses near the shore to shake and start throwing up clouds of rotor-driven hovering birds. With that, the lamp beam falls squarely on the party. You now can make out a figure standing on its deck, which waves in the night.

The figure acknowledges your signal and, as if to respond, intensifies their pace! A long oar flips into their hands and they start to cut through the waves, around into the bay. They steadily approach you, curving until they are bobbing offshore within recognition distance.

You see now that she's small and very obviously female, light blue with stripes of violet paint on her weaker, rounded mask. A water Matoran... as long as one of these spirit-blessed villagers is around, nothing can be so bad, right? They are innocent, made to work and play in harmony.

She has a wicked, serrated spear in one hand and a machete in the other. The spear she spins and cocks in your general direction, glowing eyes wide with fear when she realizes that you're all carrying enough weaponry to level one of their little towns.

"I-I don't know who you are, but it's not safe to be here! The fires, from the monster that died at sea, they crawl along the water, they're upsetting the Rahi! What are you doing here, drawing attention to yourselves? You'll be attacked!"

"Transport? You mean to tell me that the burst dragon-body that's been coming up in pieces to the village was your ship?

That's insane. No one has seen or heard from a Toa warrior in...

In generations. Not in this country, not in Ga-wahi, not on the whole continent. Our last set were executed."

Something red blinks once in the deep waters beside her canoe. She stabilizes her position with one hand on the rudder, eyeing you warily.