Hey guys, sorry that this one was so late. There isn't too much action in this, but a few nice scenes of Maui crushing on Hina and poor little Ahonui trying to save everyone. There is also snippets of legends and demons and even spells, curses and things like that. not all of them will be accurate because I'm not actually part of the culture. if any of my readers are by any means offended i will go back and edit them if you message me.
but apart from that, i hope you guys enjoy.


Ahonui didn't know who to thank, so he just kept saying his gratitude over and over in his mind as he made his way up. The ceiling had taken minimal effort to crack away, and Ahonui started scrambling up as fast as he could, the stick in his mouth and Heihei painfully gripping his shoulder with his claws. It wasn't always easy to find footholds or hand holds, but Ahonui managed enough to keep going. He could smell fresh air above, and even hear the waves crashing nearby.

It took a few more minutes, but soon his head popped up out of the opening, and the sight of the sky and waves was a blessing, both in their rightful place. It wasn't natural for someone like himself to not only be trapped underground, but under the ocean as well, when he was meant to be sailing atop it.
And so was Moana. She was meant to be out here too, with him. Even those two blasted demi-gods.

Ahonui clambered the rest of the way out, and placed Heihei on the ground. He straightened up, and almost gasped at the sight around him.
Instead of tropical forest and plants and beaches, the whole island was the harsh grey rock his chamber had been made of. It stretched for miles, and the peaks themselves showed no sign of life. It was a sad sight. Ahonui liked the lushness of all the other islands he'd come across, and this was disappointing.
Ahonui walked around, trying to find…

It only took a few steps up a small incline to see it. A huge dip in the middle of the island, only twenty metres from where he'd appeared. It looked like a humungous bowl, filled with moving creatures. It was fed by several gaps in the surrounding rocks that were low enough for the crashing waves to flow over them and splash into it, to keep the water oxygenated and probably an even temperature.

"They're in there?" Ahonui asked. The ocean reared up in its usual style, and sharpened its end somehow and pointed down. Ahonui climbed down to the edge of the bowl, and looked to where it seemed to be pointing. The bowl wasn't as deep as he thought it would be. Thirty, maybe forty metres. At the bottom, there was several large holes, like caverns, and around on of them was a cluster of eels.

"Moana's in that one?" he asked. Ocean nodded, then pointed again. In the side of the wall, a few bigger eels flowed lazily back and forth from a couple of openings in the side.

"Maui and Hina. Okay." Ahonui stood, and paced at the rim. "I should probably get Hina and Maui first. They're bigger, they're stronger." Ahonui stopped in his pacing, and cursed, "dammit. I bet you Maui doesn't have his hook, right?" he looked at ocean, who drooped and shook its head.

That meant he would have to find Maui's hook first, or the overgrown muscle man would just suggest they'd need it anyway. Ahonui sighed.

"You wouldn't happen to know where it is?" he asked the ocean, who again shook its head sadly. Ahonui's mouth twitched, as he started to think.

If I were a creepy god stealing someone else's weapon, where would I put it
?

And of course the answer was more obvious than Te Tamaroa would have liked.

"His own chambers! Te Tamaroa has to be hiding Maui's hook in a place that he thinks is safest, and that's where he thinks he would be safest." Ahonui realised that he was talking to a body of water and a chicken.

I'll have to brag about this later to Maui though.

It was how he was going to get Te Tamaroa to lead him to his chambers that was the tricky part. It took a few long minutes of planning, and of course the plan was really risky, but it was the best he could come up with in the time he thought he had.
So he made his way down to the edges of the island to look for seaweed.


Moana had been bashing at the walls, looking for gaps or holes, had even tried diving once more into the water, but the eels had heard her coming straight away and thrown her back into the chambers.

She stood in anger, grabbing at her now messed up hair.

"Don't you guys know how to treat a lady!?" She screeched at the water, her words only powered by frustration. She groaned, then started pacing. She'd tried getting out in every way she thought possible. She simply needed something to fight her way out, or even trick them. But as soon as she got into the water it was like they sensed her.

And the water itself. It seemed to get fouler. Before it had simply felt weird, but a few hours later and now it smelled funny and almost stung against her skin.
Her knuckles were scratched and bleeding, her eyes were burning from being so tired and her muscles were begging for relief. But she couldn't sleep. She was terrified of the grotesque eel god and what he might do, to her or her friends, if she went to sleep.

Besides, she wanted to be awake if an opportunity arose for her to get out.

But the longer she was in, the less likely it was for her to have that opportunity. For the first time in a long time, she didn't know how she was going to work around the problem.

Moana kicked at the sand below her, scraping her foot painfully on the rock below. She screeched and fell onto her back, gripping at her foot.

"Oh great." She hissed, touching around the gash tenderly. She blinked at where the sand had been scraped away.

It was a real long shot of an idea, but it was the last one she had. Tying her hair up again, she started scraping away the sand of the floor.

The entrance to Lalotai often was covered in sand, so maybe something was magically hidden beneath in this sand in some weird miracle.


Te Tamaroa stood above a wrecked Hina, clicking his tongue.

"What do you want?" she growled, clearly trying to look as imposing as she could from a sitting position. Gods didn't usually bleed, unless hit by another god. In this case, a demi-god being hit by a pair of a god's sons? She bled a lot. Not enough to kill her, there's very little that could kill her, but this, along with the sigil in the floor,

weakened her considerably.

"Believe it or not, I'm here to heal your leg." He said. The sight of it turned his stomach.

"Nothing else?" she asked, looking up with weak eyes, trying to be as much of a smart ass as usual.

"Unfortunately for you." Te Tamaroa stepped forward, then grabbed a flat shark's tooth in his hand that had a symbol on it.

"Don't you dare you little sh-,"

Before Hina could say the rest, Te Tamaroa had smacked the flat side of the sharks tooth to the side of her head, and she was instantly knocked out from the glowing symbol.

"You really shouldn't swear. It's unbecoming of someone with your power and influence." He said, obviously having no reply. He sighed, kneeled down, and was just about to start on her leg when he heard a deep angry voice yell out.

"What are you doing you slimy creep!?"

"Calm your tattoos Maui, I'm only healing her leg. I need her relatively in one piece, and the sight of it is disgusting."

"Oh so out of the goodness of your heart."

"You sound pretty close, Maui," Te Tamaroa gripped Hina's leg softly with both large hands. This would take two seconds. "How far have you crushed in that wall?"

"More than you could. Haven't even broken a nail."

There was a sound of cracking as Hina's bone realigned and snapped back into place, then the line of the small breakage started closing over.

Just as the flesh around it started forming back together, the only sign that the severed flesh had been there was a few pale scars, and the wall behind Te Tamaroa crashed apart.

Maui didn't have bloody knuckles or ragged clothes, but he was dusty and he was mad. Te Tamaroa stood quickly.

"I'm impressed you actually managed it."

"What the hell do you 'need her for?'"

"I need both of you, and the girl too, maybe the boy, if I find out why he's so special to travel with you."

"To be honest with you, not much."

"Well, if you let me pass without causing a fuss, I won't kill anyone and you can escape another bloody nose. And that would have been a weird feeling, wouldn't it? Feeling blood on you once more."

"Get out." Maui demanded.

"It's my own home, Maui."

"Get out!" He said again, louder.

Te Tamaroa smiled.

"She'll be awake soon," he moved around Maui carefully. The chamber was small for two large men like themselves, and Te Tamaroa still had things to do without trouble from the pissed demi-god. Two, if he wasn't out of here soon. He'd beat one, but two was not a laughing matter.
Maui clearly didn't want to risk getting them killed either, maybe even thought they'd be able to escape.
And it was a sad thought.


When the slimy big-headed creep finally left, Maui sighed, and turned around.

She looked battered, and beaten, but he knew that once she woke up you wouldn't know. She'd swear and yell and kick at walls. She'd hated Te Tamaroa for thousands of years and now he did this to her. To them.

She was laying uncomfortably against the wall, and Maui wasn't sure if he should move her or not.

No matter what he felt. No matter what he was feeling. No, especially because of what he was feeling, he didn't want to touch her without her allowing him to. Then again, she would wake up pissed anyway, so she might as well wake up without cramped muscles to make it worse.

He bent down and picked her up, not liking how he felt about holding her. It felt good.

He put her down quickly, placing her as comfortably as he thought, and took a few steps back. He ignored the tingle that lingered on his chest and fingers from where his skin had been in contact with hers. He wiped it away as desperately as he could. He'd seen her unconscious before, but last time he'd been shocked and she wasn't beaten to a pulp.

Maui looked away, taking a deep breath in, and looked at the hole he'd bashed into the wall. It had hurt doing that so quickly, but he wasn't sure what Te Tamaroa had been doing. It was the only way he'd managed to get through in time to at least scare him away.

Maui leaned against the wall, then slid to the floor, waiting for her to wake up. Then they would have to find a way out of there.

It took a few long minutes, but she woke up with a yell and a few kicks of her legs.

"Calm down shiny," Maui said, coming over and sitting down next to her, "He healed you."

"Maui? How the hell…" She spotted the hole in the wall and laughed. "You did it."

"What? You think a little wall like that is going to stop the guy who slowed down the sun?"

"It would be ironic if it caved in on you now."

"Pffft, don't tempt it."

Hina looked at her leg, and she sighed loudly. "I guess this means we should try and escape or something."

"You can try get more sleep if you want."

"Screw sleep, I want to get out. I can sleep when I'm out. And safe. Away from here. You went through all that trouble to get through here anyway." She immediately went to stand.

Maui watched with a cocked eyebrow. "Maybe you shouldn't do that."

She got halfway up when she toppled, and Maui leaned forward quick enough to catch the bulk of her in his big arms. While she was there, she placed a hand over her eyes, and muttered,

"Damn my head hurt just then. Thanks for the catch."

"It doesn't take a genius to tell you to take it slow."

"And it doesn't take too many of your limited brain cells to know I'm not going to listen." She snapped. She tried again, made it further, but had to lean against the wall.

Maui stood and watched with the same expression.

"Alright," she said, "How good are our chances of fighting out?"

"Not good, especially while you're like this. And the water is still weird."

"So we dig our way out. Up." She said, almost as if it were final.

"How are we going to reach an extra metre up? We don't exactly have a ladder."

"No, but we have something that might be even better." Hina was staring at something behind Maui, and he turned, spotting the mounds and wrecks of rubble and broken rock, some of the piece as large as his own arms.
He blinked. "Huh."


Ahonui had never realised how much he hated the scent of seaweed until it was all over him. He had wrapped it around and around, tied long strands in his hair, to his arms, legs, around his torso. He had struggled doing it all on his own, but by the end, his reflection in the Ocean looked pretty good. He just looked like a great big ball of seaweed, and that was the look he was going for. He wondered what he was going to do with Heihei. It was not like he could take him underwater. So instead he found a smaller dip in the rocks around him and placed the rooster there, letting it wander back and forth, being stopped by the walls in the dip.

Then he approached the edge of the water next to the bowl, taking deep breaths. This was going to be tough, and probably wasn't even going to work. He might be killed. Really, he should just try to build a canoe out of the drift wood he's found and make it back to Hoku, the island where the rest of their voyagers were. He should just explain that their leader and friends were probably dead.

Ahonui sighed, took a deep breath, and with a large rock in his two strong arms, he jumped into the water. The initial splash attracted a little attention from the eels, but his disguise must have worked better than he thought, because none came close for investigation. And, Ahonui realised that eels might not be very smart anyway.
The pressure around him tensed a little as he sunk with the rock, seaweed blocking his view as it trailed behind and around him. Ahonui bounced off the rock wall he'd jumped in next to a few times, which hurt his arms and side, but eventually his rock settled at the bottom, where very little fish and eels travelled.

His lungs were fine for the moments, but he knew it wouldn't last as long as he'd hope. His heart was bashing in his chest with fear and he knew that reduced your air time. He had to find a pocket and fast.

So he swam.
He swam to one of the openings in the floor, one unguarded by eels, and swam inside. It took only a few long moments to swim through the strange bends until his head came up into an air pocket. He took a few deep breaths, clearing his head, then swam out again.

He repeated this several times, calming his lungs and heart with the constant supply of air. But nothing could stop his wary fear. If even a shadow moved to closely, he reached out and grabbed onto something, whether it be coral, rock wall or seaweed, he didn't care. He'd stay as still as he possibly could, trying not to take breaths out of panic, and look around slowly to make sure the he wasn't going to ripped apart by double-jaws from one or more eels.

The worst fear though, was when he was doubting he'd find Te Tamaroa. He hadn't seen a sign of the ugly god yet, and there was no strange activity happening in the bowl apart from what he'd already seen and established.

He grew frustrated and terrified at the same time, as his muscles started to ache as well as his heart. What if he couldn't find him? What would he do? Search every chamber, fight of the eels, leave the island?

He decided he only had one choice that he was going to go with. He was going to keep looking until he came across Maui's hook.

There were many holes and chambers, big and small, that Ahonui entered when he went in for air, but none of them were occupied and none of them had anything useful within. Chamber after chamber was sandy, empty and dark. Some were very cold, too, if they were within the shadows the wall of the bowl created.

He entered one more, and decided he needed to have a break. His lungs hurt. His head hurt. His muscles hurt. His heart hurt. Without Maui's hook, all the other plans would have to be taken into account, and none of them were half as good, purely because they'd have a major power disadvantage. Hina herself might be weak from the attack. Ahonui remembered how savage the eels had been with her compared to how he himself had been treated. They had barely put a scratch on him, but the memory of giant jaws ripping and gripping into Hina's shoulder and leg made Ahonui tremble and goose-bumps raise all over.

In the cavern he'd chosen was again nothing. No weapons, no bits of wood or rock, no gold, not even bits of coral. The light swirled across the walls and ceiling like they had in his own chamber. Ahonui watched them as he sat and caught his breath. Occasionally the light made patterns or images, similar to what clouds do in the sky. He spotted dolphins, there and then gone, much like the real thing. There was occasionally the shape of a bird, fluttering and speeding across until the shape changed to something else.

But the most common image Ahonui's mind conjured up were eels. The long lines of light created the shape of them, and even moved like them sometimes. Once he realised this, he looked away, gritting his teeth with hatred. Never again would he be able to look at an eel without wanting to spear it on the spot.
he shook his head and stood, diving into the water once again.

He continued his process of ducking into the air pockets, coming up, then going down again. Ducking behind weed, stilling his body for a few moments. The whole time his heart in his throat.

I really hope I don't black out. I can't let that happen. Maui needs his hook and Maui needs Moana. They're the only chance of us all really getting out of here.

Ahonui felt something tug on the seaweed around his middle, and whipped his head around with his eyes wide. The sight was blurry, and he let out a mouthful of air as he panicked at the sight of a dark shape at the end of some of the strands. He kicked and fought and tried to get away from it, but the seaweed was too strong, too good. Next he tried reaching down to untie it, knowing that it would be the loss of some of his disguise.

Before he did however, he paused.

The dark shape below hadn't moved since he'd spotted it. He waited a few moments, hands at the ready to untie the weed from around him. When he noticed it still wasn't moving, he frowned, and swum down carefully.

It was a log. A bloody log.

Some of the weed had caught on a shard of the wood sticking out and had snagged him. Ahonui scrunched up his face in annoyance at himself, then pried the weed away from the log, and swam on, noticing how much air he had lost in his panic.

He was about to search for another chamber entrance, when something in the water changed. Ahonui looked around carefully, not sure if it was the feeling of eyes watching him, or something else that wasn't entirely generated by him.

It seemed to be the latter, because it got stronger. It was like a buzz, a charge of something, like the air is while there's a lightning storm when you're Way-Finding on the open ocean.

Ahonui pushed his body towards a large clump of coral and his inside, gripping to the rough plants.

A few moments later, the water started to vibrate, and across from where Ahonui was hiding, the wall started to shift.
Bubbles burst in while a section of the wall started to move away, creating a door into what looked like a tunnel, lit very similarly like the chambers Ahonui had gone into.

But the things that moved in the tunnel were the things that made Ahonui almost create a warm patch of water around him.

There was Te Tamaroa of course, in his eel form. He wasn't as huge as he was the night he'd attacked them, but longer than three chief Fale's at least. And following him was an all manner of the most terrifying creatures Ahonui had ever seen.

Ahonui's shock wore off and he gazed at the creatures, noticing that a lot of them must have been Kupua, tricksters just like Maui, but ones that did not serve humans. They in fact were feared and hated. There were Ka-poe-kina-mano, which were possibly the most terrifying Kupua of all because they took the forms of great, dark, scarred and monstrously toothed sharks. Most were different shades of grey, but there were the occasional deep blues or greens, and a singular red one who swam at the front of the pack. His face and mouth had the most scars.

There were Ka-poe-kina-ia, in the forms of Barracuda or Octopus, and the final of the Kupua was three huge Ka-poe-kino-manu, in the form of terns who beat their lithe wings in the water in order to stay moving forward, their angry beaks covered in scratches and chips while their eyes determinedly mad and red.

The Kupua weren't even the worst of them.

What followed were specific demons that even Ahonui recognized from legends that Gramma Tala had told them as children.

The biggest and most recognizable one was a coconut crab who had to be careful getting through the doorway and not scrape any of the mounds of gold and jewels on his shell. He was talking to another creature, a masked thing with four arms that almost reached Tamatoa's shell.

"I haven't always been this glam you know. I'll tell you how I got my first piece of gold when I was just a small drab little thing."

The masked creature put one of its palms to the mask around its face and shook its head. Tamatoa scowled.

"Fine, you don't want to hear it? Then I won't tell you. But you're missing out you know." Tamatoa continued to strut along with his head held high and his two clawed arms crossed. Ahonui blinked at the fact that he'd heard the crab loud and clear even thought they were underwater.

He watched the last of the demons pass by, heading to Ahonui's left, and he kicked off to follow. He had to stop a few more times within chambers to re-fill his lungs, but he was fast enough that it didn't take him long at all to catch up with them again. He followed carefully for obvious reasons. He had no idea what their senses were like underwater, or even out of the water, so he was extra careful not to kick too hard.

They went around the edge of the bowl for a while, then the buzzing and vibrating sensation came again as Te Tamaroa opened another entrance, this time into a tunnel that led upwards. Ahonui only just managed to power himself through the opening before it started to rumble shut.

Once it did though, the water in the tunnel started to recede, to lower, and lowered Ahonui with it until his feet gracefully slid onto the slippery tunnel floor. It went down to his chest, then his torso, then his thighs, and eventually puddled slightly once it reached the soles of his feet.

Suddenly the seaweed felt very heavy on him, and the smell returned, but he didn't dare take his disguise off.
he kept his body low and crept forward, keeping his hands flat and his knees bent, in case the slippery floor decided to give him a hard time.
On he went, hearing a drip, drip nearby, timing down to whatever was ahead. The air was cold here, and was made worse by the water which chilled his back and the seaweed which rested cold and wet against his bare skin. His footsteps made tiny slip, slap sounds as he made his way along, the tunnel leading up at a gradual rise, and he realised there was a glowing light ahead. The light at the end of the tunnel. Typical.
Ahonui pressed himself against a wall as he got closer, then he topped the crest and saw the exit. And what was beyond.


Moana hastily brushed away the last of the sand, panting as she did so, but her eyes were wide with excitement. As soon as she had started brushing away the sand, there had been curves and rivets scratched into the hard rock beneath. The more she scraped, the more she found, twirling and twisting around her, a never endless bond that surrounded her like the ocean itself normally did. There weren't words, but symbols and patterns, images depicting magic of the dark kind.
Moana gazed at it, stepping over the lines as she walked around, trying to depict the full image and understand what it meant, and possibly, if it had any power, and more importantly, if it was holding any power over her.

There was the images of magic, wrapping around creatures and people, then those people growing, smaller, and even fading, their lines shallower in the rock beneath. Moana frowned the more she saw, flicking away more sand every now and then to see an image more clearly.
There was no doubt about it. The carving was some type of curse, or spell, binding her and possibly being the thing which was sapping her strength unnaturally. Moana thought of a way she could test it, and clicked her fingers triumphantly.

She walked up to a wall and, while watching the floor carving carefully, took a deep breath and pulled her fist back. She punched the wall and cried out, bringing her fist into her chest immediately, cradling it. She hadn't broken anything by the feel of it, but it had left bad cuts and it stung. She turned to the floor, hissing to try dull the pain.

Which apparently was useless.

The carvings in the floor shimmered for a second, subtly, like fish scales in the sunlight. It rushed across the floor like a wave, then disappeared, but left behind was another burst of pain in Moana's fist, and tears sprang to her eyes. The dull throb turned to a sharp and far more irritable pain. Not enough to be unrealistic, but enough to make her head hurt.

She realised the same had happened when she had skimmed the bottom of her foot. It shouldn't have hurt as much as it did, and had stung far clearer for longer than usual.

Maybe it was taking her wakefulness. She knew she needed sleep because of everything that had happened over the day or two, but this was a different kind of need.
Just not a pull to sleep, but a push, rough and angry.

Moana let out a hmph, scowling angrily at the ground.

"Well, unluckily for you, stupid floor, Maui isn't just all muscles." She then tried to remember what Maui had said to her about curses. Her Gramma Tala (I'll always love you Gramma,) had taught her a little of the legends of magic and power, but Maui had clarified and taught her a little. Hina had added to this knowledge, telling Moana about the kind of power she'd had as a goddess.

"Jinxes and spells are easy, but they're just as easy to break if the other person knows what they're doing. A curse is a little more difficult both ways, and you never know where those consequences are going to land. They might even bite the curser in the butt as well as cursed." Hina had said
.
"And there's only a few little words you need to get rid of a basic spell." Maui had replied with a little smile, cocky and charming as always.
Of course Moana had asked, "What are they?"
Together the demi's looked at each other, and Moana was jealous of how synced they were sometimes.
They replied together. "Go spell. Haere takikupu."

Moana gasped in excitement at the memory, then immediately said, (probably louder than necessary), "Haere takikupu!"

There was a sudden pain behind her eyes which made her stumble and cry out, her back crashing against the rough wall, but it soon receded like a slow wave on a calm day, and did not return. There was the sound of shifting sand, as around her the sand she'd gathered to the sides of the walls moved and warped and started to swirl in a miniature sand storm. Moana closed her eyes and turned her head away, shrinking down to her knees and tucking everything into a tiny ball as grains of sand dug into her skin in their speed.

They stung at her skin, but the pain didn't last long, and neither did the storm inside a chamber. Moana waited until all the sand had presumably settled around her, and she looked up.

The markings, the carvings, the images, even the sand, were all gone.

Moana looked down at her hand, seeing that the cuts had turned to normal grazes and a few bruises. The bruises from bashing at the walls earlier had also slightly receded. Even her tired mind seemed less bothersome than it had a minute ago.

And the smell.

There wasn't one.

Moana stumbled over to the water, put her face right over it, and took a deep whiff in.

There wasn't a smell.

"YES! Yes, yes, yes! Wahoo!" Moana yelled, punching the air. Then, for good measure of testing everything around her, she took a deep breath in, and dived.