Lightning Strikes Twice – Chapter 11
"In the time before time, before the Cataclysm occurred and the Brotherhood of Makuta showed their true colors . . . in the great city of Metru Nui . . ."
Stara smiled as Baird began to speak the famous words that opened the legend of the Toa Metru, and shifted her weight ever so slightly on the bench she was sitting on. Further down, Kronus and Eos looked like they were holding hands, eyes gleaming as the sunset's light shone through the western window of the great hall. All twenty of the Toa Rohaya were gathered in the hall. Nineteen of them were sitting together on benches while the Toa of Sonics and their main storyteller began to weave his tale.
The Toa of Lightning closed her eyes as her own mental images of the famous Toa filled her mind. She liked them all, but the Toa of Ice Nuju held a certain draw for her, something that sent thrills through her when she heard his name leave Baird's mouth. She knew what set him apart in her mind from all the other Toa of Ice she knew, even from her teammates Crevan and Calhoun – and it wasn't because he was legendary and they weren't. Rather, it was like he was someone who – in her mind – would listen to her story and know she was telling the truth. He would aid her in regaining her honor . . .
While the scene in the commons was a cheery one, one of relaxation between friends, beneath the bright surface was a near-tangible tension that all of the Toa in the room could feel subconsciously. While none of them drew attention to the fact, they knew in their hearts that something was going to happen tonight – what, none of the four knew for sure, and they tried to wait it out by acting as normally as possible.
Aeolus was on one side of the large square table that was bolted down to the floor with Stiaye and Amphitrite on either side of him, with Japoro across from him. He felt the tension like air currents – bigger, stronger ones represented stronger tension between those it connected.
And the current that was so small it was practically nonexistent was the one that worried him the most – for his own reasons.
" . . . So anyway," Stiaye continued the story she had been telling them before Aeolus had briefly zoned out. "Me and Stara went to Notus, like Stara had said we should, to see if Taynai's stories had been true or they were just tall tales that had been passed down. Mind you, we hadn't taken the atmosphere that place has into account – it gave us both the creeps – but it was either stand it or go back, and we weren't about to run back like cowards before we had gone farther to explore a place even we hadn't explored yet."
"So you hadn't gone there yet at the time?" asked Amphitrite with an interest that told Aeolus that she hadn't heard this story before. The tension currents rolled off of her in all directions at all the Toa in the room, though less so towards Japoro and him for some reason. He was pretty sure that it was because she was infatuated with the Toa of Ice that she wasn't as tense around him, though why she was less so around him was something he didn't get. True, he had saved her life during that game of Vine Snag three years ago, but he wasn't aware that she knew it was him – for all he knew, she hadn't even known his name when that had happened.
"No," Stiaye said after swallowing the fruit she had popped in her mouth after finishing her previous sentence. "We didn't have the guts to do it until Stara persuaded me to take Steena's dare with her."
"So what happened then?" Aeolus finally said, speaking up for the first time in a while.
"We landed, and started going inland up this path on the cliffs. Eventually, we got to this strange rock formation in the center, but we stopped there because we felt really nervous. Then this weird voice started talking to us, telling us to leave, which didn't help our resolve at all."
"Then what?" Japoro asked.
Stiaye shrugged. "The rocks started glowing."
"What?" the other Toa said, startled both by her statement and her simple nonchalance about something that obviously had sent waves of fear through the Toa of Lightning years back.
"Yeah, that's what happened. Lemme see . . . that's about the same time we decided we couldn't take it anymore, and ran back to the boat. When we turned around again, we saw all these glowing Toa . . . things chasing us down the cliffs. By that time we were at the boat, and we barely got offshore before those things were at the place we had moored, but they weren't chasing us after that.
"We got back . . . Steena chewed us out because we didn't the requirements of the dare, but she forgot about it in a few days. That experience still haunts me today, even though we haven't gone back since," the Toa of Lightning finished. Calmly, like she told that story every day, she picked up her glass and sipped some water after the last word left her lips.
"It was probably just a trick of your eyes, Stiaye," Japoro said, like he was trying to convince her (and himself) of that.
"Maybe. Japoro, did you make any progress on those tablets today?" asked the Toa of Lightning in response, steering the conversation away from the story.
"Yeah, those masks Aeolus brought came in handy with fixing that problem," said the Toa of Ice, with a nod towards the Toa of Air.
"Anything new learned from them?"
Before the white and grey Toa could reply, Amphitrite cut him off and addressed Aeolus. The emotion that spiked from her wasn't annoyance, though – it was more like curious embarrassment – which, quite frankly, confused him.
"Aeolus . . ." she began, then broke off and averted her gaze, piquing his interest even more. "What is it, Amph?"
"Did . . . did you ever visit Shi-Nui at some point?" she finally asked, face flushed behind her mask as she said it.
Well, that was an odd question to get all worked up about, in the Toa of Air's opinion. "Um, yes, about three years ago." He was about to add the fact that he had met her then, but she beat him to it.
"I . . . I guess that . . . you met me then?" she asked, her voice slightly higher as she said it, and the stress that he felt jumped her tension levels to a new high. But now he knew what was triggering it: she was remembering the game of Vine Snag that they had played, and how he had saved her life – and the way she had been treating him lately was not what common courtesy call for in return for that. Stiaye and Japoro were watching with interest, which told the Toa of Air they had known something about this beforehand.
"Yes," he said truthfully after a slight pause to get his bearings about the atmosphere change. "I played Vine Snag with you during that time."
Amphitrite let out a long breath, suddenly looking a bit sheepish. "I'm . . . I'm sorry how I've been treating you lately, Aeolus. That's not the right way to show thanks for saving my life."
Aeolus smiled slightly at her. "No need to quick-do that. I heart-knew, even if you didn't."
Amphitrite looked relieved, and he realized that she had been nervous about doing this, because of the fact she hadn't known what he would say in response. Behind her, Japoro and Stiaye leaned back in their chairs and bumped fists. The sight of that put an edge in his mind.
"So anyway," the Toa of Lightning said, settling back into her chair like nothing had happened, "You were saying, Japoro?"
The Toa of Ice pulled out an assortment of tablets, which Aeolus realized held the translations for the original tablets, judging from the modern Matoran letters scratched into their surfaces. He spread them out in front of him. "One of these tablets went deeper into the history of halfling creating. According to it, the first halfling was created about ten thousand years ago from the efforts of a Makuta, name unknown – it was scratched off, and I couldn't decipher its meaning from under it – and a lot of captured Toa and Turaga that the Dark Hunters had kidnapped. According to his lab descriptions, only one out of five of his attempts produced a successful halfling, and anyway there was a good chance the progenitors would break out and destroy their halflings, which was probably how the Makuta experimenting with them found out that the Toa could destroy them."
"What did it say about Turaga halflings?" asked Aeolus, his tone serious, his spike of emotion put aside briefly.
Japoro suddenly got much grimmer, his enthusiasm about sharing new information dampened. "There was a smaller section about them near the bottom. It said that Turaga halflings elementally aren't as powerful as Toa halflings, but they are still very strong. It also said that they are even harder to destroy then Toa halflings."
"How is that possible?" Amphitrite questioned. "The stories said that the only reason that the Rohayan Halflings were destroyed was because their progenitors broke out after Nuju and Stara sabotaged the rack they were being held in."
"The records say that the Turaga in question got weaker as time went by, eventually becoming so weak they can't wake up even if they were released from the holding racks. Only when the Makuta divided the halfling back into two beings – it doesn't specify how that was done (pity, because that could save us a bit of trouble if we knew) – and their shadow returned to them would they revive. We've got our work cut out for us when we face this halfling."
"If that's the case, how are we going to take him out?" mused Stiaye, a look of thoughtfulness in her eyes.
For the next hour or so, the group put their heads together and discussed ways to take out the halfling that threatened the Amari Islands. About four dozen ideas were tossed about, ranging from the plausible to the ridiculous. (The ones that belonged in the latter group got some laughs from the group as a whole.) But the whole time, Aeolus caught more than a few moves from the Toa of Lightning and Ice that suggested something – other between them. A few shared looks, a reassuring touch of the hands when Stiaye seemed to despair of the seemingly hopeless situation before them – all of it made his fists clench beneath the table. There was hardly any tension between them, a current that practically didn't exist. And he decided he would have to do something about this – soon.
XxX
Before he had become a Toa, Japoro had been a scholar on another island. He had been a very highly esteemed one as well, even being called an "Icy Scholar" by some of his friends for his crystal-clear view of things. One reason he had been called that had been because he had been able to analyze things even under pressure. It was a trait that had made him a difficult opponent, since it was nearly impossible to fool him with the same move twice in a battle, and had also made him able to predict a person's motives when they spoke about something.
That trait was alive and alert as he and Aeolus stared at each other from a distance of about three bio, their eyes glinting in the moonlight.
Japoro had gone above to set the course for the next day and throw the anchor over the side for the night while Staiye and Amphitrite got ready to catch some sleep. His was a one-person job, so he hadn't expected Aeolus following him up on deck. Something about how the Toa of Air was carrying himself set off alarm bells in his head, letting him know something was up with the Toa from Metru Nui.
The first few things they said were pieces of meaningless small talk, which did not give Japoro any insight on Aeolus' mood, and he finally cut to the chase. "Aeolus, what did you really want to talk about?" he asked.
Aeolus didn't say anything at first, instead using his mask to fly up to his usual post in the crow's nest, settling into his normal stance in the high place. Then he looked down at the Toa of Ice and said a rather confusing statement. "You and Staiye seem to be pretty tight-close," he said, though it sounded more like an accusation then an observation.
"Yeah. What about that, though?" Japoro asked warily. "We're just friends."
"Amph doesn't seem to quick-think so."
Japoro frowned at that statement. It had always been known between him and the Toa of Lightning that Amphitrite suspected that there was more going on between the two of them, though he hadn't known that Aeolus had known about this. As far as he had known, the Toa of Air only knew that Amphitrite liked him and he returned the interest, but not as strongly as she did.
Trying to stall for time, he returned with, "How do you know anything about that? Did Amph put you up to this?" Even as he said that words, he knew how unlikely they were to be true. Amphitrite might be a bit suspicious and possessive, but she made a point of being straight-up to a person when something was bugging her. If there were dirty work to be done that involved her personally, she'd do it herself, not have someone else do it in her stead. Even so, there might be a possibility that she had gotten Aeolus to do this for her, now that they were on better terms.
"No. But she did speak-tell me something about this, first day off from Rohaya." Aeolus met Japoro's eyes again, suspicion in their jasper depths. "Something about you putting your hand on Stiaye."
If Aeolus could see past his mask, he would have seen a pink blush appearing on the Toa of Ice's face. So much for keeping that a secret. "What does that have to do with you?" he muttered defensively, turning around and making the anchor drop over the side with his Matatu.
"Quite a bit."
That made him turn around, eyes widened as he sought out Aeolus. The green Toa had dropped from the crow's nest onto the rigging, walking on the top of it like he did this every day. Aeolus didn't say anything else, but something about his body language told him that something was weighing on his mind – something urgent.
Japoro thought back. He had noted when Aeolus' face had drawn when he and the Toa of Lightning had bumped fists after the tension between him and the Toa of Water had eased with her apology to the Toa of Air, and that when he had been reassuring the Toa of the Amari Islands that they would figure something out to save her home, something similar had happened each time. Even with those observations, he still couldn't figure out what this had to do with Amphitrite.
Then he saw, and berated himself for not seeing it at the start. This wasn't about Amph at all. Rather, it was about Stiaye. Aeolus wasn't asking him why he was so close to her for the Toa of Water's motives, but for his own.
That was when it really dawned for him. Aeolus was attracted to her! The Toa of Air had feelings for the Toa of Lightning, most likely spawned on Rohaya when she had stopped the Water Toa from attacking him, and was feeling threatened by Japoro's own friendship with her.
"Idiot," he muttered to himself. Aeolus swung his head towards the Toa of Ice again, eyes flashing in the reflected light of the moon and stars, and he knew that the Toa of Air knew that he had come to the realization.
"What do you want me to do about this?" he asked softly. "It's not like I can avoid her – we're on a ship; I can't exactly leave."
"Just let me have a luck-chance," Aeolus said back, dropping easily off the rigging in front of Japoro. "I can't really get a speak-word in edgewise with you hanging around her all the time."
Japoro thought about that for a minute. He didn't want to have Aeolus' annoyance with him, but he didn't want to risk losing Stiaye's friendship either. He just hoped that she would forgive him once everything was said and done.
Trying not to grimace at what he was going to be doing in the next few days, Japoro nodded and said, "All right. I'll try."
XxX
Stiaye was quick to notice things, even if she didn't know the exact reasons behind them. Such was that when she came up on deck the next morning, and she frowned in confusion as she took in the scene before her: Japoro on the bridge with Amphitrite, standing very close to her, keeping up a running conversation when he normally would have backed up at the closeness between them.
Odd. I don't think I've ever seen him like this around Amph before. Normally he would've talked me into bailing him out by now.
Nonetheless, she approached them, but couldn't help but notice Japoro back away from her slightly, even though they were in no danger of colliding from the angle she had entered from.
And that was the story all day: Japoro would avoid her, not talking to her as much as possible, and sticking to short answers when he absolutely had to respond to her questions – all in all, not acting a bit like his normal self, which confused and, truth be told, hurt her a bit. She didn't have any romantic notions towards him, but she appreciated his friendship, so getting the cold shoulder from the first Ice Toa she'd known who had broken the mold was puzzling, to say the least.
Finally, she took matters into her own hands. "We need to talk," she said, gripping his shoulder tightly when he had been walking away, her tone one that brooked no argument.
"About what?" he said, not turning around to face her. Her eyes widened, because now she knew something was up: his voice was colder, like he had finally embraced his element and let it chill him to the core.
"What's with you?" she demanded, dropping her pretense and letting her annoyance with the Ice Toa show in her voice. "Yesterday you were normal – now you're more like an irritated Frost Beetle than anything else."
"I can't tell you that."
"Oh really?" she shot back sarcastically at him, trying to slip by him so she could look him in the eyes, but he kept moving so he kept avoiding looking directly at her. "Last night you were willing to chat about anything, but now you can't even bring yourself to even look at me?"
Had she been able to see his eyes, she would have seen him looking pained, like he was hurting within at lashing out with these painful words to his friend. But he had to keep her away so Aeolus would have no excuse to think there was something more going on between them, and this was the only way he knew how without telling her the full truth, which would probably make things worse for the Air Toa.
Finally, he knew that he would have to drive a wedge between them – temporarily, at least – so she wouldn't want to talk to him for a while. So, he sealed the deal with a few choice words.
"Look, just leave me alone, alright?!" he finally shouted at her, finally making eye contact with her to make it clear, then took off back for the bridge.
Stiaye stood there for a few minutes, shocked at these foreign words coming from the mouth of one of her closest friends. Though they weren't that foreign – he had said them before when he had been working on some new invention – the tone he delivered them with was. She suddenly realized something had broken between them, and she wasn't sure how to make it better.
A blur of green appeared in her peripheral vision, but she didn't turn around to acknowledge it. "Stiaye? Are you okay-fine?" Aeolus' hand fell gently on her shoulder, but she didn't feel very comforted at the moment.
"No," she muttered, pushing his hand away. Doing so, the Toa of Air caught a glimpse of her eyes, and was startled to see the hurt in them.
"I . . .I just need some time to myself, okay?" she added. Without waiting for an answer, she pushed by Aeolus and vanished below deck. Aeolus would've sworn that he heard a few muffled noises down there, but didn't go to investigate.
He glanced towards the bridge, where Japoro had repositioned himself beside an obviously pleased Amphitrite . The two male Toa made eye contact for a minute, and Aeolus rose an eyebrow. Japoro shook his head in response.
Aeolus turned again towards the door that led below, but knew better than to follow Stiaye.
This was going to take a while.
XxX
Mood Music: "Decode" by Paramore; "Too Little, Too Late" by Jojo; "Spotlight (Twilight Mix)" by Mutemath (aka Stiaye's theme song)
