It's been two years, give or take, since Chapter Two. So yeah. My writing style has changed a lot since then, although I've tried to keep as close to my original writing style and my original plans for the plot as possible and I'm not sure that the transition from my style of writing in 2008 to my style of writing now and the way I carry off ideas has gone very smoothly.
For those who read Quid Pro Quo rather than my Bionicle stuff, don't worry, the next chapter IS in the works.
In other news, Rhymaki is a bit kinder in this chapter. I think actually knowing what's going on does quite a bit on improving her temper.
Disclaimer: The Toa Rhetora belong to me, nothing else does.
Later that night, Rhymaki woke again to find not only Nawt, but her entire team, minus Saharem, standing in the empty office space an obliging Matoran had dragged a bed, a side-table, and chair into.
"What is this?" she inquired tiredly, sitting up. "Is watching me flounder now a spectator sport?"
Nawt frowned. "You're dragging this out." He accused, frowning at her. She scowled back. "I didn't volunteer to do this, so I have every right to be mutinous." Rhymaki replied, stretching. Nawt said nothing- he knew Rhymaki had a valid reason to be obstructive. Well, at the moment she did.
"Besides," she added, "you didn't dump me here so I could settle down with some nice local Toa. You don't want to get rid of me THAT much- I suspect at least one of you likes having me around. So what's the real reason you put me here?"
Lihept sighed. "The original author appears to have lost control over the plotline. There are botched figures of speech, stray plot bunnies, grammatical error, and Mary Sues running about everywhere. You see, this is why fanfiction should never have been invented. It causes us all this trouble sorting all the problems it causes out." He complained, pulling out a long, curved blade and polishing it absently.
"And this concerns me how? If there's a problem here, can't we all sort it out instead of just me?" Rhymaki queried, getting off her bed and straightening her mask.
Mihaka pushed her leader out of the way and scowled at Rhymaki, stomping one shocking-pink foot on the floor. "Well, Rhymaki, the fact is..."
"CLIFFHANGER!"
"Shut up, Jathis, it's not time to end the chapter yet. This rogue plotline has been causing trouble everywhere, and the rest of us are in fact in the rest of the Archipelago, sorting all the problems out. We're all only here because Nawt is narrating that we are- if he stops for a second, we're going to stop projecting and go back to the islands we're cleaning up." She nodded at Nawt, who was busy talking quietly to himself, presumably narrating.
Mihaka sighed. "So far Mata Nui is the only one with an operational Toa team that has this business going on, and it also seems to be, for lack of a better word, the centre of all this. You're Toa of the Fourth Wall; you can go places we can't, not without you at any rate, so if anyone's the best for the job it's you. Get the locals to help you, I don't trust you not to get hurt by yourself."
"I am thankful for that touching demonstration of faith in my combat abilities, Mihaka." Rhymaki commented dryly, pulling a long, wooden staff out from underneath the bed and tapping the bottom end against the ground. It was a fairly average weapon, pale brown wood with the bottom tip painted purple and the upper tip painted white and sharpened to a point.
Mihaka gave her a confused look, elbowing Jathis. "Translate from Rhymaki to Common, please." She hissed.
A wide grin with far too many teeth in it spread across Jathis's face. "She's got out the pointy stick, Mihaka." He pointed out.
Nawt looked up from his muttering and raised an eyebrow. "The pointy stick." He said flatly. "The fanficverse has gone completely ballistic and you get out the pointy stick. Can't you get a chainsaw or something?"
"Don't knock the pointy stick, brother; I'm quite attached to it." Rhymaki replied, heading out the door.
"Besides," she added ruefully, scuffing her foot against the ground outside, "chainsaws are too heavy for me to lift."
She shut the door behind her and her team-mates disappeared one by one, leaving only Nawt, floating a few feet off the ground.
"Frank as always. Too heavy, indeed." He sighed, drifting back towards the ground.
Then the room was empty, except for a hairline crack on the window.
"Rhymaki, what are you doing in Turaga Vakama's hut?"
Rhymaki didn't pause in running the purple end of her stick over every surface she could find, jabbing it into corners, standing on tiptoe or getting up on crates to get to places that she couldn't reach.
"Searching for breaks or cracks in the wall." She replied, eschewing looking at Takanuva in favour of running her staff along the windowsill.
"There won't be any cracks; it's the strongest structure in Ta-koro." Takanuva said doubtfully. "And even then, why would you of all people be checking for them?"
The white-and-purple Toa shook her head. "Cracks in the fourth wall. I'm Toa of the fourth wall, see. And according to my team-mates, there's something dodgy going on with all the narrative devices around here. Seen any strange, inexplicably strong, beautiful, and clever people lately?"
Takanuva blinked. "No, can't say I have. So how to you search for cracks in the fourth wall, anyway?"
"See this stick here? It's got a thin tube running through it made of a metallic substance found in Rhetora Nui that reacts to cracks in the fourth wall by vibrating. The bigger the gap, the faster it vibrates. This purple end is made of that metallic substance." Rhymaki informed, tapping the metal with one finger. "The white pointy end is made of another substance that can go through breaks in the fourth wall. I used to just have the white end, but once when I was on a mission I fell through a crack that was bigger than I thought and got stuck on the other side of the wall until my team realised I was missing and fished me out."
"I take it you get into bad situations like that fairly often?" he asked, watching her clamber up on a chair to run the staff across the juncture between the wall and the roof.
"Yes. It pisses off my team-mates no end. Sometimes I can get out of them by myself, though. I've been working on my powers to figure out new uses for them, since at the moment there isn't much I can do." Rhymaki explained, sticking her staff under a chair and sweeping it around.
She paused. "Did you hear that?"
"No?"
Rhymaki folded her arms, moved her chair to another corner of the room, climbed up on it, leaned her staff against the wall and yelled "HELP ME! I'M IN TROUBLE DAMSEL IN DISTRESS ACT AAAAAAAAIIIEEEEEEE!"
Takanuva stood in the centre of the room, feeling rather like he had been dropped into one of those stories Le-matoran have where nothing makes sense at all, until a Toa he had never seen before flung the door open.
"I'll save you with my magical power, Rhymaki-chan and Takanuva-kun!" A voice yelled. Standing in the doorway was the most beautiful, elegant Toa he had ever seen. She was like a vision of perfection, her mask of Invincibility gleaming in the sunlight...
Rhymaki jumped off her chair and tackled the new arrival, wrestling her to the floor and whacking her on the head with her staff until the Toa went limp.
Takanuva frowned. The body of the pretty Toa seemed to be...warping strangely, as if we was looking at it through a sheet of water. He squinted, wondering if Rhymaki had accidentally clonked him on the head with her stick.
"We should probably dispose of this creature before its disguise melts completely. Mary Sues basically interfere with your head to make you think they're perfect, pretty, intelligent, kind, the whole package. They can get away with things no-one else can, which makes them dangerous." Rhymaki paused, getting back up on the chair and poking around in the corner. Her staff vibrated, causing her to nearly drop it out of surprise.
"And also incredibly annoying to all the normal girls and boys who try their best but can't measure up to a Mary Sue or a Marty Stu. They just have everything they want in the end, no matter what the feelings of everyone else are." She said, an angry twist to her mouth suggesting that this was a particular pet peeve of hers. "I fell under the influence of one once. My relationship with my teammates...well, it's still not so good."
"Need help getting that thing through the gap in the wall?" Takanuva asked, correctly guessing what Rhymaki intended to do next. She gave him a surprised look but nodded and together they heaved the prone form of the Mary Sue through the gap.
"So how come your island has all this business with the Fourth Wall?"
"Uh, well, my island used to be called "Rheka Nui", see, but there was this...thing, I guess, that happened about five generations back that made all the inhabitants Genre Savvy. Dangerously Genre Savvy, even. We could suddenly see plot holes, Mary Sues, et cetera. Then we found out about the fourth wall. The fourth wall is the veil between our dimension and this other dimension that is basically the go-between for hundreds upon thousands of other universe. This universe and a bunch of others are controlled by these beings called Authors, and they in turn have to obey a set of rules- they have to keep characters behaving in a way that's reasonable, for instance."
Takenuva laughed. "So in these universes Tahu can't be behaving like a giggly Ga-Matoran or Lewa being sad all the time?"
"They have to have reasons that would suit their character." Rhymaki corrected.
"So why are you poking around looking for breaks in the fourth wall again?"
"Well..."
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a dull green Toa jumped into the room and yelled "CLIFFHANGER!"
Rhymaki stood up and glared at the new arrival. "Shut up, Jathis!" she hissed. "It's not the end of the chapter yet!"
Jathis just looked at her.
"Oh." She mumbled, visibly flustered. "Right. It is. Sorry."
PLOT DEVELOPMENT AND FORESHADOWING AND PLOT DEVELOPMENT IN THAT ORDER. And also, backup (because no team is complete without a random guy shouting random stuff)
Originally the person who finds Rhymaki in Toa Vakama's hut was Tahu, but I found the scene difficult to write as I can just imagine the conversation devolving into a fight to the death or something. Which would then result in a dead protagonist. Whoops. The only reason she beat that Mary Sue was sheer surprise, and because Mary Sues are very easy to take down if you don't believe in them.
Also, a shout out to Toa Rheka: Vhalyn Virus and a shout out to Quid Pro Quo are both in here somewhere.