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Lunchables Comic 1


Kaleidoscope Tekulo

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Lunchables Comic 1

Drip…Drop…Drip…The sound echoed in the eerie cavern. Everything was black with an aroma of green wafting through the darkness.Drip…Drop…Drip…The chronicler felt the drops of a cool, unknown liquid hit her closed eyes. She appeared to be having a nightmare as each drop was met withShake…Shudder…Jolt…Finally Hahli’s eyes opened. Cold; she was cold as she lay there on the solid rock floor.Where… Where am I? Hahli was groggy, as if she had awakened from a rough night’s sleep. Slowly, she started to slide her body up while she put a hand to the forehead of her mask, likely to nurse a headache.“…I see you’re awake…”A chill shot down Hahli’s spine. She froze completely, unable to make the slightest noise.And then they attacked.Eel-like creatures shot from the darkness and grabbed Hahli around her wrists and ankles. They squeezed tightly, spreading copious amounts of venom from their bodies. It took all Hahli could not to scream.“Who… who are you? Why are you… doing… this…?” Hahli wasn’t sure why she was speaking.Hahli was greeted with a malicious cackle.“I must apologize, my dear,” the voice was as deep and dark as an endless abyss, “but you see, it has been so long since I have been in the light of day. Not even I have the privilege of gazing upon my beauty, and so I have no identity outside of shadow.”Hahli could feel the venom spreading slowly across her body.“Others… others must have… seen you.” Hahli couldn’t explain it, but with each word she felt distracted from her doom. There was no other logical reason to partake in conversation.“Nothing that speaks has ever gazed upon my face and lived.” The voice had a distinct pride, yet somehow it felt lonely.Hahli let out a grunt as the slug creatures tightened their grip. She prayed that a toa might arrive and save her. Try as she might, there was little she could do to fight the creatures. They were too large to wrestle away from.“Do not worry… It will all be over soon.” The voice said softly.“Yes, it will.” Hahli didn’t recognize this voice, but it was feminine and boomed like thunder. Looking around the cavern, she saw a wall of what appeared to be a silvery liquid. From it emerged two beings; both toa!Thank Mata Nui- Hahli’s thoughts were cut off by the venom. She could feel it slowly climbing up her limbs and approaching her torso.“Makuta!” The voice was the same as the one from earlier. It belonged to a green and blue toa with silver wings and a claw with three piercing blades.***Hahli was nervous. If everything was a dream, it was indeed a strange one. She had just become a toa, in fact, she was certain she was a matoran moments before. She was in a canister headed for Voya Nui when she was greeted by a green and blue toa with silver wings. Hahli had been told that she was needed; that her entire existence depended on this one mission. It seemed simple enough; rescue a single matoran. Of course, that was her thought before she learned the identity of their enemy.Her orders were these; “Free the matoran and protect her. I’ll handle Makuta.”Hahli ran up to the matoran bound by the strange snake-like creatures. She recognized them as kraata, a vile breed of rahi.Even so, is it really right to take their lives?She knew from the start she had no choice. She was ordered that this mission was of upmost importance; that anything in the way was to be removed.The matoran let out a gasp, no doubt in pain.Hahli raised her harpoon with hesitation, unsure of what would happen. As she concentrated a small ray of water encased in lightning seared one of the kraata. Hahli shuddered as it let out a final scream. She continued to remove the others as her new friend was battling in the background.***Hahli was used to seeing in the dark. Her eyes had adjusted underwater in the depths of Mahri Nui. And while that adventure in the sea had ended, it still had left Hahli with a deep scar that was far darker than anything in this cavern.A deep cackling resonated from all over.“So, you decided to show up. How thoughtful.”“Save the pleasantries, monster. I’m not here for idle chit-chat.” Hahli closed her eyes and tried her best to pin-point the shadow’s location.I swear, Makuta. For my home, for my friends, for my life; for everything I have lost I will destroy you.“Come now. We have so much to catch up on.”There!Hahli spun and fired her cordak blaster without warning. The explosion lit up the cavern for a brief moment. She could see a small figure in the darkness, its face concealed.Hahli ran towards that direction and slashed with her claw. She missed.“Show yourself!” She barked deafeningly.After the booming echoes of Hahli’s voice died down, a strange noise was heard. It was like metal and skin rubbing against the floor’s surface.“Look out!” Hahli heard her blue and white companion call out.Hahli turned around, and came face-to-face with an enormous cobra.Hahli fired her cordak blaster. The missile hit its head and became dizzied. Without hesitation, Hahli followed her attack with a wave of water that hit with great force. The beast toppled over, flailing on the ground. The monster recovered, however, and did not wait to wrap its tail around the toa’s waist.Hahli jabbed her claw into the tail. The monster flailed the toa against the floor in response. Suddenly the creature was met with a blast of lightning. The cobra’s glowing red eyes faded. Its body followed suit and disappeared into the darkness.“Stay on alert, and don’t leave her side!” Hahli shouted to her blue and white companion. Though she was grateful for the help, she would have preferred to handle things herself. After all, she brought that toa along only to guard the matoran, not to fight the darkness.***Hahli felt sick. Her limbs throbbed and she still felt as if the venom was eating away at her body. She stood next to the blue and white toa, dazed and confused.Maybe this isn’t even real… Maybe it’s all just one big hallucination…She tried, but could not snap out of her haze. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to rest.A small roar, like distant thunder filled the room.“Where is he?” The toa next to Hahli inquired, raising her harpoon.“Shh!” The other toa chided.“…ring…” Hahli was mumbling something.“What was that?” The toa whispered.“Shh!” Again the toa chided.“Purring… like a Muaka… Purring…” Hahli mumbled. But why was she mumbling that?Just then a tiger pounced from the darkness and grabbed the matoran in its mouth.“No!” The silver winged toa shouted and raced in the tiger’s direction. She fired two shots from her cordak blaster. Both of them missed their target.The other toa managed to grab hold of the beast, and Hahli saw the toa pull herself to the top of its back. She charged her harpoon and fired directly on the back of the tiger’s neck. The beast ran askew and collapsed to the ground. Its body vanished into green smoke. Taking a breath, the toa helped Hahli to her feet and they moved back towards the toa with silver wings.“You were supposed to protect her!” The winged toa snapped.“I did protect her! She’s safe.” The toa said incredulously.“Getting snatched by that… thing isn’t something I’d call safe.” Her voice exploded. “Just stay out of the way and do your jo-“The searing cry of a hawk cut the toa off.The toa didn’t wait to fire her rocket at the ceiling in search of the enemy.“Stop!” The toa with the harpoon rushed to quell the other’s launcher before she fired again. She pulled down on the winged one’s arm and stopped her. “You’ll bring the entire cave down on top of us if you keep that up! Let me help you.”“Let go!”The hawk’s cry came again.“We’re out of time; trust me!”The winged toa was out of options.“… Alright, what did you have in mind?”It was at this point that Hahli realized that the two toa had the same voice. Well, they weren’t the same. One was far more rigid than the other. It sounded as if it had been hardened over time.“I’ll light the cave, you fire.”“… I only have one shot left.”“Then let’s make this count!”***Hahli concentrated on her hands. She had created lightning before, so if she could just get one blinding flash of light…Come on, come on… She was still new to her powers.The hawk’s cry grew louder.A sphere of water appeared and within it a spark. And then another.The hawk’s cry was piercing.And then the lightning came.“Got it!” Hahli cried, but just then the hawk swept down and seized her mask. Hahli’s concentration broke and her orb of lightning and water vanished. That made her curious as to why the cavern was flooded with light.The hawk faltered in the air, blinded by the light.The winged toa didn’t hesitate; she couldn’t ask for a better shot. The hawk took a direct blow of the cordak missile and it exploded to smoke in a magnificent flare.“We did it!” Hahli shouted as she put her kanohi back over her face. In turn, the cave returned to its dark state.Hahli extended a fist towards her toa companion. The winged toa was sheepish, but she returned the gesture with her own fist.“…You two are quite a handful. I was worried today would be dull” a dark voice mused.“Show yourself, Makuta! Show your true form!” The winged toa’s voice was still thunderous.A crash sounded and the entire cavern shook.“What was that?” Hahli had a very bad feeling.“…It’s here… It… is angry… It won’t… be… stopped…” the matoran mumbled again. She was shaking violently, perhaps in fear. But Hahli was determined. She would face this new danger just as she had faced the previous three.An enormous claw pressed itself into the ground. The beast was giant; the body of a tiger, the wings of a hawk and the tail of a serpent with the heads of all three.This is impossible! How do we defeat three monsters united into that giant beas- … United?Hahli shot a glance to her toa companion. She shot the same look back. It appeared they were thinking the same thing. They both gave a nod to the other and stepped forward.“Unity!” They both shouted in unison. Their forms began to glow and bend together. They emerged; a being with four arms, silver wings, a lightning canon and a claw harpoon.“This ends now,” The being spoke in a calm yet determined demeanor.***Hahli felt like she was going to die. The venom was spreading through her torso now and neared her heart light. Looking up, she saw a tremendous battle take place before her. The four-armed being was firing lightning at the giant beast. The cobra’s tail was dashing towards the being while its great front claws slashed and kicked. The being was very swift, however and was holding out fine.But Hahli couldn’t stay awake anymore. She collapsed and fell into a deep, deep sleep.***“It’s over…” The being was about to land its final blow; a direct hit onto the collapsed monster with its canon. Just then, something snapped the being apart with a tremendous Crack!Hahli gasped for air.What… just happened?“You’re too late, toa.” The vile villain venomously sneered. The giant monster vanished into smoke.“What… What’s happening?” Hahli’s blue and white companion was vanishing in little white particles. It looked as if she were turning into snow. It wasn’t long before she disappeared entirely.“No! … Hahli!” Hahli quickly rushed to the matoran’s side and lifted her into her arms. “Hahli, wake up!”The matoran did not respond.Tears streamed down Hahli’s face. She could feel herself fading from reality.“I… I failed… I’m so sorry…”Drip…Drop…And then silence…***Hahli’s eyes opened. Her mind was blank. She sat up and awaited orders.Makuta appeared before her. He did not have three heads. He was not a cobra, not a tiger nor a hawk. He was a matoran with an infected Hau.“Tell me, Hahli; am I a monster?”Hahli shook her head side to side, emotionless.“Tell me; do you hate me?”Hahli again shook her head. She had now seen Makuta and now she had lost her ability to speak.A thought then rang in Hahli’s head.“Nothing that speaks has ever gazed upon my face and lived.” Hahli dismissed the thought. Her mind was blank.***“Cecilia! Come on, dear, it’s time for lunch!”The young girl snapped out of her trance and dropped the lego set in her hand. She had been engrossed in her imaginary story. Her room was lined with old toys and comics that once belonged to her older brother.“Cecilia! I made noodles and schnitzel, your favorite!”“Coming!”***A note from the author: Okay, so this story is very different from normal short stories. I debated whether or not to post this in comedies, as I did have a very comedic ending to this originally. However, I did not wish to get this story moved to Comedies, so I shied away from my original ending and instead decided to make the cut-off a little more dramatic. I made this story for a few different reasons: -To further explore Hahli’s character (or at least how I picture her character)-To further practice jumping from character to character in a story-I actually have a serious message hereI’ve seen members get pretty engrossed in the canon story of Bionicle a lot. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not always a bad thing, and I love the canon story too, but sometimes I just get the feeling that people brush aside imagination and innovation with the story. Granted this one is very bizarre, but just because the events of this story are impossible, does that mean it’s terrible (if it is it's because of my poor writing skills. XD)? I used to just play with my Bionicle sets as a kid being goofy (and I still do that with them today. XD). I think it’s important to see things not just as “the canon is the only acceptable story” but also to be innovative, creative and to see through the eyes of a child making the impossible possible. Not to say I don’t enjoy stories that fit into the canon (I very much do enjoy a good read along those lines). Not everything in fanfiction has to have an explanation that fits into the canon, and I’ve seen writers make up excuses and convenient means to justify their story. I’ve seen this lead to having the authors have to explain or defend their stories, and sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. Still, just remember it’s a toy line for kids. Not everything is made to be taken so seriously.Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this! ^^Oh! And why did I decide to go with this title? Well, we were told in the contest to be smart about our titles and to not use this one. So, obviously, when someone told me "no" I wanted to find a way to make the impossible happen. ^^' Of course this wasn't my entry for SSC8, but I still wanted to write this story anyway. In other news, I've got three topics here now, so I'm going to cool down on submitting stories for now. Once my stories drift into the abyss of page 2 and beyond, I'll be back. XP

Edited by Tekulo: Toa of Gales

Executive Vice President of Tomato Throwing

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  • 1 month later...

Short Story Critic, Jedi Master J., here reporting for duty, sir. Alright, to start right off, I must say this was both an interesting and confusing read at the same time. The reason that I say it was confusing is because of whole character shifting in plot and the fact that they all had the same name. However that's not to say this was a bad thing though as your story did end up explaining why this was like that in the end. I merely mentioning it because it was initially confusing for me to understand exactly what was going on with the characters due to them all having same name. Although I will say it did make me more invested in read this to reach the end due to the questions that it gave me as I read it, so it did its job to keep the reader's attention. And well, before I seen the ending, I was very much so trying to rationalized a lot things to explain how this event could actually occur with such explanations as alternative universes and time travel coming to mind. And this is ironic considering your message at the end about members get too engrossed in canon story since mentally I was trying to make it fit when clearly it cannot. I find that fact kind of funny since I personally think that people have every right to make up their stories for BIONICLE that have little to nothing to do with the canon. Heck, I did it all the time as a kid when my brother and I play together with our LEGO sets, we would do cooperated imaginative stories about a universe in which of vary of LEGO theme sets, we had, coexisted. So yeah, I see where you are coming from and I personally support this message, not only due my own experience, but because that is what LEGO is about being creative and imaginative.Anyway, getting off that tangent and back to story itself, I thought this story was very well written and there was very little errors that I could spot during my read through it. That's not to say there were none though as I did find at least one error that I recall, which I show below in a quote.

Eel-like creatures shot from the darkness and grabbed Hahli around her wrists and ankles. They squeezed tightly, spreading copious amounts of venom from their bodies. It was all Hahli could do not to scream.

This sentence here just did not make much sense, but it sounds like you were trying to say this: "It took all Hahli could not to scream."So yeah, there was not a lot of errors that I noticed during my read of this, so I do not really have much more to add on that type of thing. Hm...Moving on from that, I did find it quite interesting that story being imagined by the little girl was so dark. I say this because I thought it was strange that someone so young, who probably been took many stories with happy endings, would imagined a story in which the big bad wins. Of course, then again, if this is meant to be taking place in the present and they do know of canon storyline in which Makuta wins in 2010, then I can see where they are coming from a little. Although I guess she was technically interrupt midway through the story, so one could imagine that this is not the end of the story and she likely would return to it much later to continue. Hm...I am probably just over-analyzing it. Plus, as you said, not everything needs to be taken seriously, so she could very well just be playing around.Well, that's really all I have to say about this work. I am kind of surprised that there are not that many reviewers of this story as it is not a bad story and I think it really should be getting more notice than it is getting. Although I guess I should not be surprised since the forums are slowly dying here. But anyway, I hope you like your review and I hope to see more of your work around forums in the future. 75234033wy5.png

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@ Jedi Master J: Thank you so much for the review! ^^I intended this to be a confusing read for the reader. The lack of all logic and events that are impossible really interest me in the Bionicle story (partially because most everything that's grand or fantastic seems to be given an explanation by the writers). I always hated the little inconsistencies like "cold energy" existing to separate Water and Ice as an element and things of the like (or insisting that Earth and Stone are separate when there is little to no clarification as to why -and giving toa of earth pourous soil to work with instead of something solid-). That's why I try to make my writing a little more fantastic and without the little inconsistencies dragging them down.I kinda did bait the reader a bit. I was hoping that the reader would try and find some shred of logic in all of this, and that's what drove me to add twist after twist, using a single character for a cast of three protagonists spaced out between time (time skips have never been my forte in short stories, so for this one I decided to forget the skip and just bring all of those versions of the same character into one setting. ^^')Really, the message in the end was driven from a lot of debates I've seen in Storyline and Theories (not that I disagree with the idea-in fact, I find a lot of theories interesting), but there have been times where people get so engrossed in technicalities that they don't seem to just relax and enjoy a story for what it is (even recently with Fractures there was a small discussion of whether or not it fit in with the canon. Well, while I am not the author of that story, I still thought the concept was fantastic and that it was genuinely good. The last thing on my mind was "Is this good because it fits with the canon?"). Though, there were stories that could have fit in with the canon that I also enjoyed (such as Ignition also from the past contest). (Sorry I'm rambling, I'll stop now... But I hope that paints a picture of where this story's theme came from. ^^').I just figured having a child playing with the sets would make for an interesting story. This can also be taken a few different ways. I pictured this as a girl simply playing with the sets (not even knowing everything about the characters) and then having the canon characters react to what they were experiencing in this impossible reality. I'm glad you picked up on how dark this was for a little girl to dream up, actually. Originally, I had the idea of Makuta proposing to Hahli for marriage. Matoro (matoran) would then barge into the scene with eyes set on saving Hahli (who has yet to answer Makuta's proposal).Makuta would then say "You are ten years too young to face me!" and Matoro's response would have been "If ten years is what it takes, then ten years it shall be!" He would then grow into an Inika and then into a Mahri to face Makuta as a single toa. And that was where I originally planned on ending this story (and that's the same story that this girl was dreaming up, I only ended it sooner than I had originally intended and that's why it looked so dark).Unfortunately, I felt that the ending was a little too over-the-top and I was also worried the story would not be taken as seriously (mainly because I was giggling to myself as I was writing that version. XD). So, no, you were not over-analyzing that bit. ^^ Also, the year when this girl is playing with these sets is also debatable. All we know is that it's at least 2007 and that her older sibling was a fan of Bionicle. I found it only natural that she would go for the female characters to play with (and Makuta, she saw as a misunderstood, lonely villain). Also, thanks for pointing that sentence out! My brain sometimes has a weird way with sentence structure. XD But, yes, that is what I meant. Thank you again for the review! I'm glad you enjoyed the story!

Executive Vice President of Tomato Throwing

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