Well, I've been away for a long time, no doubt about that. And maybe I've been forgotten. Which is fine, because I wasn't especially well-known anyway. And this particular story is one that may well be better off if its predecessor is unknown to the reader. Because this, ladies and gentlemen, is the beginning of a giant leap for me, and one tiny footnote for everyone else. Because this is, essentially, a reboot. A retcon. That dreaded word. Or at least it is when sprinkled with melodrama. I think I've accomplished that. But that is irrelevant. I'm back, and so is Lumen, Toa of Shadows, for another crack at success. To tell a story that I failed to tell before, and this time from start to finish. For better or for worse, we will see this thing through. I am the Rahkshi Writer. And I am back.

...

With another disclaimer! If I owned Bionicle, I'd have been fired for dropping a storyline halfway through, my OCs salvaged by LEGO from the wreck of my career to be passed on to whoever took my place, and I've have been thrown into the Pit by the fans. Luckily, I don't (never thought I'd say that!), so all my OCs are mine, bar a tribute appearance by a character I borrowed on the basis I'd write a good story with her. Sorry about that one...

TRW

Chapter 1: A story you've heard before

The perfect prison. That was what its jailor, Hydraxon, had called it. Rather more advanced than the Pit and not needing to be beneath an ocean of water that mutated its inhabitants to trap them more effectively than even the Pit to contain them. Although Hydraxon had said this at a press conference, and there had been a degree of sarcasm, it was still a formidable construction. Its strength lay in the fact that every cell had been custom made for its eventual occupant. A list of the most dangerous beings had been carefully compiled and their prisons constructed, just in case they needed to be brought in. In the event that someone had ever been missed from the register, their prison could be constructed quickly enough. Such was the case for their latest prisoner, acquired several months ago. Held in hard-light chains suspended from a sphere ten metres in diameter and embedded with bright floodlights, leaving not a single shadow for the being to hide in. It didn't move, but hung motionless in the searing light. Its wrists and legs had been seared beyond feeling by the hard-light chains, and its head hung lifeless, its eyes dark. It had fought longer than most, cocooning itself in a cocoon of shadow for almost a week. But it couldn't have lasted. Eventually, he had run out of energy, and broke like all the rest. Now he waited. Most of the jailors reckoned he was simply waiting for death, like all the rest, but some, who had heard stories of what he'd done, and seen him as he came in, thought he might be waiting for something else. An opportunity... but for what no-one knew, or dared to guess.

"Lumen?" the voice pierced Lumen's stupor, causing him to stir. Not actually stir, of course, since he couldn't move, but his mind roused itself from its slumber to examine this intrusion. "Can you hear me?" He paused. He wasn't interested in engaging the voice just yet; still trying to figure out who was talking to him without admitting he was actually listening. He was tempted to simply ignore the interrogator and go back to sleep, but then he realised that, whatever it was, it wasn't really there. It was... inside his head? No, not exactly... just not quite... in this reality? In spite of himself, he opened his eyes and raised his head. And what he saw made him stare. A silver and ebony apparition stood in front of him, stood on thin air, and was watching him. She, at least she thought it was a she, looked like a Toa, but there was something else, not something he could see as much as something he could sense, that she was far more than that. A part of him shrank away from this thing, in possession of far more power than was natural, but the rest was intrigued. What did this thing want with him? "Oh, so you are listening. I did wonder if I'd come all this way for nothing. As yet, you're still failing to impress, I have to admit."

"You broke in to tell me you were unimpressed? That sounds like something I'd do." Lumen croaked.

"It's a little easier for me than you, I should think. But that's why I'm here. I have a job for you to do."

"Right, well I'm a little tied up at the moment, but if you leave the details with me, I'll get right on it if they ever let me out."

"Well there we have a problem. I'm not going to tell just any Toa my plans. I need you to prove you're the right Toa."

"Uh huh. And I am supposed to do that by doing what, exactly?" Lumen asked, feigning disinterest.

"Oh, simple enough. Just talk to me face to face." The strange Toa said airily, turning and walking away (as this was still in midair, the nonchalance was ruined ever so slightly). "I'm waiting outside the front gate." Then she faded into the light and was gone.

"Cute." Lumen said to no-one in particular. "Yep, just go and have a chat at the front gate of the high-security prison that was designed to keep people like me inside at all costs. That'll work out just fine." Still, he couldn't say he was surprised by the request. Or particularly daunted. He had, after all, been planning to escape anyway, when he'd first arrived... but he'd exhausted himself preserving himself in shadow for the precious few days it had taken him to think things over. Then he'd just slipped into a daze, he supposed. Waiting for something to come up, he remembered thinking blearily, as if there was a queue of people wanting to talk to him. Maybe he hadn't been quite as delirious as he thought... yeah, right. He had lost it. But now he'd be damned if he wasn't going to find out exactly what this mysterious stranger wanted with him. It didn't even matter if he turned it down, really. He just wanted to prove he could do it. He guessed he just wanted to please.

The guards had, obviously, not noticed the apparition that had appeared in the Shadow Toa's cell, but they had noticed him twitching and moving his head a fair bit. Now the pair who had the dubious honour of guarding the immobilised Toa were waiting to see what he did next. But they never could have guessed what he was about to do, not after so long in his cell. There was no way he could still be harbouring any power now. He'd exhausted it all in his first week. It was simply impossible. They'd broken him, they had been sure. Crushed his spirit and wasted his strength away. Tamed the shadows incarnate. But now it was clear they had been wrong, so terribly wrong... as they scrambled to raise the alarm, Toa Lumen disappeared behind an impenetrable wall of darkness that churned and boiled, and tendrils of energy coursed along the chains of hard light like electricity through wires, shattering them in their embrace. The Toa's wings cracked their shell and spread wide, but Toa Lumen was hovering under the power of his Crast now, pushing away at the walls of the room. The mask glowed brighter and brighter as the walls began to groan and, with a flare of indigo light from the mask, the floodlights shattered, crushed between the repulsion field and the wall. The walls of his former prison buckled and tore themselves apart, the cell's door exploding off its hinges, a weak point in his cage, and Lumen flew towards it, bouncing off corridor wall outside. The two unfortunate guards who had been assigned to his guard detail raised their weapons slowly, sights trained on him more out of reflex than any particular hope of stopping him. Lumen rushed straight past them, triggering his Crast as he passed and pasting them against the wall without even looking round.

Beyond this corridor, Lumen skidded into a hallway filled with a braver guard detail, which opened fire right away. Lumen threw bolts of shadow and ran in amongst them, drawing a blade of darkness from thin air and cleaving through the survivors while they reached for rusted melee weapons. He was gone before they hit the ground. He sprung from the shadows behind a group sprinting for his cell, black blades slicing through their armour. They dropped like flies. But more guards poured into the corridor, blocking his passage, and brought rifles to bear. Elemental energies of all varieties flew at him and he snatched at shadows to erect a hasty barrier. It flew along the corridor towards the guards, and shattered under the barrage. But it allowed Lumen to close the gap, and that was all he needed. His Crast threw the guards back end over end, and he snatched one of the rifles knocked flying through the air as he passed, turning and firing over his shoulder at those who rose to their feet. Then he looked at the rifle. "Neat, I always wanted one of these."

It wasn't long before he found a way out. He wrenched open a door and stepped out into the night. Perfect. Lumen thought. Then he realised his error. The perimeter was a good 500m away, and between him and his goal was a massive black-armoured being, armed to the teeth and pointing a Cordak Launcher at his head. It was Hydraxon himself, jailor of Lumen's prison for the last year or so. "Evening, runner. Surrender and I'll let you walk back to your cell with your head down. Fight and it'll be held high... on a pike."

"Oh, well who could refuse an offer like that?" Lumen drawled. "I'll be out of here long before reinforcements arrive. In fact I'm surprised that-hey!" Lumen triggered his Crast and sent the Cordak Rocket tumbling away through the air, before exploding high above their heads. "Now that's just antisocial. I approve." Lumen said. "But..." he said dryly as he deflected another Cordak Rocket, "I really have to go, so if you'll just move aside... or do I have to throw you?" Hydraxon responded with the remaining four rockets, fiery trails roaring towards Lumen. He fired a bolt of shadow which Hydraxon easily sidestepped and leapt back into the darkened doorway he had just come from. Hydraxon hurled an exploding boomerang into the darkness, destroying the doorway, but instead heard something hit the ground behind him.

He spun round to face Lumen as the Toa came at him from behind, a conjured blade in his hands. Hydraxon parried the blow with his wrist blades and punched Lumen in the gut. He doubled over and Hydraxon fired his back blades at the Toa, flipping them over his head, but it was a ruse. Lumen rolled under the jailers' outstretched arms and triggered his Crast, threw himself up from the ground. He hit Hydraxon with an uppercut as he flew into the air, and opened his wings. Shadows rained down on Hydraxon, forcing him down to his knees. Lumen plunged after his prey, landing feet first on his enemy's exposed back. The jailer's neck arched and he bucked, throwing Lumen off. He tumbled and bounced back up, his Crast flaring. Hydraxon was back up too and charged at Lumen, wrist blades up. Lumen conjured his sword again and the two met with a crack. Metal and shadow met in eerie silence as the two tried to force the other's defences aside to strike at their target, but neither refused to give. But slowly, ever so slowly, Lumen's sword was being forced down by Hydraxon's superior strength. Inch by painful inch, it crept down, further and further, until Lumen found the bladed claws of his opponent inches from his chest. Then his world exploded.

Three wrist blades dug into his chest armour, launched from their mounts, and he staggered back and looked down in disbelief at the blades that had impaled him. He tried to speak, but he merely croaked. Blood dribbled down from his mouth. Then he finally found his voice again. "I... I expected it would hurt more... in the end." He said, looking up slowly at Hydraxon. "I guess it's a relief to know the truth..." Hydraxon simply stared, panting slightly from the exertions of the fight. In death the Toa seemed so small. For all the precautions, he had fallen with relative ease. A single lucky opportunity. Something he couldn't predict. It had decided many battles before this one, bur even so, it seemed... irrelevant, he reminded himself sternly. The runner had been neutralised. With extreme prejudice. That was all that mattered. He stayed back. He had no intention of allowing Lumen to get lucky with some suicidal attack. The last trick of the desperate and defiant. Even now the Toa was still trying to speak."Yeah, it was pretty painless, actually." Hydraxon raised an eyebrow. Something was up here. The Toa's voice seemed to be getting stronger. In fact, he sounded practically cocky. "But, I digress." Lumen said, standing up. "Thanks for the blades, but now it's my turn."

Wrenching the blades out of his armour, he triggered his Crast and threw Hydraxon into the perimeter wall, consumed by an avalanche of masonry. Then he ran towards his new escape route, a hole in the wall. But Hydraxon lurched up out of the rubble, obstructing his path. Lumen didn't even falter, leaping up and throwing an arc of shadows into his one-time captor. Hydraxon stumbled and it gave Lumen the edge he needed. His Crast flared brightly, he flew at Hydraxon, and he impaled him with his own wrist blades, using the blades like a pole-vault, leaping over Hydraxon. Compared to the rest of his wounds, he barely noticed a slight pain on his shoulder. But he recognized it for what it was the moment something whizzed past him back into the prison's boundaries. Hydraxon tracked the whirling blade across the sky, knowing what was about to happen but unable to stop it. "If it's any conciliation..." Lumen called over his shoulder, "if you're lucky, there might be enough of your head left for a pike." Then the boomerang sailed back through the air to its master, and Hydraxon suffered no longer.

Lumen didn't bother looking round as the explosion lit up the desert night and charred armour and... other things... landed around him. His eyes were fixed on the silver and ebony Toa that was standing ahead of him, staring past him at the debris left in his wake. "That proof enough for you?" he asked, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

"Hmm." The stranger said, attempting to look unimpressed, but Lumen noticed her eyes never left him. "I don't know. I only saw you kill the big guy, and blowing him up with his own boomerang is hardly favourable when you're trying to prove you can fight."

"Uh huh." Lumen said sceptically. Then he rose to the bait. "Really? I just took out Hydraxon, the weapons master himself, and you're unimpressed?"

"Oh, he was just a Matoran." The Toa dismissed his claim with a wave of her hand.

"Right. Is that what Turaga become after they give up their 'Turaga Power'? If so, I'll skip the bit where I'm supervising headless chickens."

"No, he was... never mind. You don't exactly have much respect for the Matoran, do you?"

"You know a Toa who does? Really, actually respects them? Who doesn't believe they're helpless without the Toa? You find me one, and I'll give to a Rhode, because they're lying. Now can we hurry this up? Because either you tell me what you want or I go back and blow up the rest of the prison, because the rest of the guards are going to be coming soon, and they get so irritable if you ignore them."

"What about the prisoners?" the Toa asked.

"What about them?" Lumen asked, shrugging.

"If you kill all the guards, they'll be free. Murders and monsters, every one."

"Not my problem." Lumen replied. "If they start on me, I'll make them regret it, but other than that I couldn't care less." His silvery companion shook her head.

"You really aren't who I was looking for. It was stupid, stupid! A message from someone who doesn't exist till thousands of years after it was written, and a Toa who makes a mockery of all they stand for. I just wish I understood how..." then she smiled, and it was Lumen's turn to stare at her warily. "Oh, that could work. Yes, I think what you need is a re-education in the ways of the Toa. Maybe showing you what you really are will change your outlook." Lumen took a step back and adopted a fighting stance. "Don't do anything stupid." She warned him. "Or I'll make you regret-!" Lumen's Crast threw her end over end to land face-down in the dirt. She jumped up and was immediately jolted by blasts of shadow.

"It'll be you who regrets today at this rate. Now who are you, really?" Lumen snarled. His opponent actually laughed.

"I, mortal, am a power higher than your puny, arrogant little mind can contemplate. So..." she cancelled out gravity and Lumen was stopped in his tracks, flailing in the air. "Give up." She pulled him towards her by increasing her personal gravity, but as he approached she met resistance. Lumen's Crast was lighting up the night with indigo light, all his energies focused on pushing her away from him. She was impressed by the sheer force of will that he was able to put into the effort, but then she remembered he was an ass and slammed him into the ground, increasing gravity to the point he was forced to lie immobile on the floor.

"Ne-ne-never..." Lumen croaked, forcing his head up, vibrating with raw fury and exertion. The act of lifting his head was as difficult as climbing a mountain. "...and...Why?"

"Oh, sorry, can't tell." The entity told him, crouching down to his level and grabbing his mask in her hands. "Because that would be..." Energy leapt like lightning from her to him, and he bucked and thrashed until they winked out of existence, leaving behind a single word on the wind; "spoilers..."