The Palace of A’dmyn shone in the light of a new sun, tall, white, and perfectly smooth. A few Gukko birds meandered through the sky, calling songs of praise to the morning, and crashing into the palace because they were blinded by its sheer whiteness.

In the highest room of the palace, Hapori Tohu, the Great Protector, was getting ready for his traditional breakfast of protodermic toast and marmalade. However, just as he was about to tuck in his napkin, one of his guards came running in, quite out of breath.
“Your Haporiness, there is terrible trouble afoot!” he yelled at the top of his voice, causing several fat, particularly dazed Gukko birds to fall out of the sky in alarm. Nobody cared what happened to them, which was a great shame, because they were actually found by a passing Matoran, who discovered their rare ability to recite the entire works of Charles Dickens whilst simultaneously gargling water to the tune of Gravity Hurts. The Matoran went on to exhibit the birds at Toa Helryx’s Travelling Circus, and became so rich that he bought a solid gold pencil sharpener and most of Spain.

“Alas,” said Hapori Tohu, staring with considerable distress at the empty marmalade jar. “Forsooth! Gadzooks! Etcetera! There is no more marmalade!”
“Yes, your Haporiness,” said the guard. “Yet, there is other terrible trouble afoot!”
“Is there indeed,” replied Tohu, turning the jar upside down and peering hopefully inside. A globule of marmalade residue fell into his eye. Blinking constantly, and trying to ignore the unbearable burning sensation in his eye, he waved an impatient hand at the guard, who took it as a sign to continue.
“Word has reached the city that The Shadowed One wants to overthrow you, and turn the Metru a land of evil!” the guard shouted, waving his arms energetically, as though he was trying to dislodge a particularly stubborn fly.

“Well,” said Tohu, eating his dry toast and wishing he had ordered bacon and eggs instead, “will a land of evil have large supplies of marmalade?”
“No, your Haporiness!” bawled the guard. “It shall be a land of evil! There will be fire, death, and destruction! Metru will crumble as ruins to the shadows! Skies shall be scorched deepest magenta! Oceans shall boil, and the fish will…get all hot.”
Tohu stroked his chin thoughtfully, smearing toast crumbs all over it. “It all sounds rather…unnecessary…to me,” he said. “I mean, what is in it for him?”
“I don’t know,” replied the guard, a puzzled expression oozing its way onto his mask. “Maybe he was subjected to cruel and unusual circumstances in his early years, and now he wants to wreak revenge on the world?”
“Maybe,” said Tohu. “What was the fellow’s name again?”
“The Shadowed One.”
“How fitting.”
“He had it legally changed last Naming Day.”
“What was he called originally?”
“Colin.”

Tohu picked up an enormous mug of protodermic tea, and began to stir it with a little spoon. “What do you suggest we do?” he asked.
“I don’t know, your Haporiness,” yelled the guard. Tohu promptly dropped the spoon into the mug, where it sank profusely into the dark brown depths.
“You could ask one of your Toa to help, your Haporiness,” suggested the guard.
“Which one?” asked Tohu, trying to fish the spoon out with his paper napkin.
“Well,” pondered the guard, “you need somebody with ridiculous amounts of courage.”
“I would prefer somebody with ridiculous amounts of marmalade,” Tohu muttered, turning his mug upside down to drain out the tea; it glooped across the whole table, and the spoon fell onto the floor. He reached down to pick it up, but it slid between his fingers like a buttered eel and stuck itself firmly inside a narrow crack in the stone floor.
“What about Toa Connor, your Haporiness?” asked the guard, loudly.
“What about him?”
“What about sending him to battle The Shadowed One?”
Tohu selected a roll from a platter and started munching on it. “Do we have to settle this with a battle?” he wondered aloud, between chews. He was a simple being; thinking and eating were far too difficult when combined. “We seem to settle everything with battles. Why, only yesterday an old Matoran duelled to the death with an Ussal crab.”
“Whatever for?” the guard shouted in amazement.
“Oh, no reason,” Tohu said airily. “She was just bored, I believe.”
“It’s settled, then?” asked the guard. “We’ll send Toa Connor to battle The Shadowed One?”
“Hmm…” said Tohu. “I do not like the sound of this The Shadowed One bloke too much. We had better send someone to spy on him for a while first.”
“An excellent idea, your Haporiness. To discover his weaknesses?”
“Oh no,” said Tohu, idly eating a slice of lemon he had found on the floor. “To fill out the plot a little bit.”


Hapori Tohu collapsed on his nice golden throne and winced in pain. The throne’s designer had thoughtfully sculpted a few gears onto the back, which worked very well artistically, but not to so well practically. Indeed, they had to be replaced very often, as the designer had been short on materials and thus had made the gears from crocodile teeth, stuck onto a circular saw and painted yellow. Tohu rubbed his shoulders and turned his thoughts to the more pressing matter of the Metru’s distinct and worrying lack of marmalade. He wanted some marmalade, and he wanted it very soon. This Colin fellow would have to wait.

Tohu stood up very suddenly, and tripped on his cape. He stumbled forwards and crashed onto the floor, just as the door to his throne room flung itself open and a Matoran dashed inside.
“Your Haporiness, there’s a message for you…” the Matoran said vaguely, before falling over quite unexpectedly and sending his Hau spinning across the floor. Tohu scrambled to his feet and hurried forwards, thinking that, as the Great Protector, he should probably do something.

“I say, are you alright?” he asked, prodding the lifeless Matoran with his staff. It was a nice staff, with a good sharp bit on the end that was particularly good for prodding things. When the Matoran failed to respond, Tohu decided that he must be dead; the arrow sticking out of his back was a pretty good clue as well.
“I didn’t give you permission to die!” Tohu said angrily. He didn’t like his loyal subjects dying in front of him – they tended to make a mess on the floor. And the Po-Matoran smelled a bit funny after they’d been dead for a few hours as well.

Hapori Tohu suddenly noticed a note attached to the arrow. Ignoring the basic rules of the universe stating that there was no real paper in the Bionicle world, merely carvings and the like, he unrolled the note and began to read. If Tohu had eyebrows, they would have contracted in annoyance at this point. He often felt that people misunderstood his facial expressions, due to his head unfortunately having a permanently angry look.

He threw the note onto the floor and hurried to the window. Sure enough, just as the note had foretold in the previous three seconds, the Metru was under attack. Thousands of spidery Rahi things were running everywhere, drooling acidic drool and spinning spinney sort of teeth. Enormous suits of black and red armour were crashing through walls and Matoran alike, shooting technologically inaccurate electro-blaster whatsits and slashing at everything in sight with big extending claws.

Tohu climbed onto the windowsill, readied his staff, and leapt into the chaos. As he fell, his cape billowing out behind him like a spasmodic Infernavika, the non-pointy end of his staff opened into a jet engine, and the staff levelled out. Tohu clambered on, looking like some strange red and white witch on a rocket-propelled broomstick, albeit one with a pointy end. He soared downwards, performing a few twists and a loop-the-loop just in case anyone important was watching, then skidded to a halt in front of a Visorak.

“Would you mind not destroying this Metru,” Tohu asked in a decent semblance of politeness. “We only redecorated it last week, and you’re getting rather a lot of drool everywhere.” Tohu looked around, and noted the large webs now glistening in the morning light, strung between towers and filled with strangely Toa-shaped shapes. This wasn’t looking so good.

Neither was the Visorak; it lunged forwards, and Tohu smacked on the nose with the pointed bit of his staff.
“Bad Rahi-beast!” He said, quite forcefully, in his own inflated opinion. “No lunging! I’m trying-”
A large chunk of Metru and several Matoran went sailing over him, narrowly missing his head.
“-I’m trying to conduct a civilised conversation here!” he continued, his non-existant eyebrows contracting in frustration. “Really, you come in here all slimy and horrid, break things apart, then expect…”

Tohu trailed off, staring at the giant tower descending on his head. This really was not a good day.



Kopakalaka wiped the dirt from his mask and pushed himself into a seated position, coughing on the thick cloud of dust that filled the air. He stared around in horror, taking in the terrible sight of the ruined city. Visorak and Exo Toa (he wondered briefly if the latter should be hyphenated) swarmed across every surface. Well, almost every surface. And the Exo Toa weren’t so much swarming as walking around very, very slowly, but still, they looked quite evil anyway. It’s amazing what a lick of red paint will do, Kopakalaka thought.

He grabbed a piece of rock that was conveniently jutting out level with his hands, and pulled himself to his feet. He stepped forwards uncertainly, trying to work out exactly where he was. He appeared to be standing in a corridor, crudely decorated with bits of jagged metal and strangely shiny globules of green stuff. He noted the roughness of the walls, and the lack of any sense in the architecture, and concluded that he was, in fact, standing in the middle of an enormous pile of rubble. Not the best place to be standing on a Tuesday evening, or indeed, any evening. He began walking towards one of the shinier pieces of metal, and picked it up. The entire structure of loose stone wobbled for the longest second he had ever known, then gave up and crashed down around him.

“Mmmf,” he said, struggling against the torrent of rock and annoyingly sharp metal. Suddenly, a hand, a strong, heroic-seeming hand, seized his flailing arm and pulled him out of the rubble.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGH!” he yelled, as the metal fragments tore past his armour and slashed at places that shouldn’t be slashed at.
“I say, do be quiet,” said Hapori Tohu, dumping Kopakalaka unceremoniously on the ground and clasping a hand over his mouth. “The Vissiewhatsits haven’t found us yet.”

At that precise moment, a particularly angry Visorak poked its ugly head over the edge of the surrounding ruins and spat at them.
“Oh,” said Hapori Tohu. He reached into nowhere behind him and pulled out a small package wrapped in parchment stuff and a handful of lime green balloons. “Here, take these and run,” he commanded, thrusting them at Kopakalaka. The Matoran hesitated for a fraction of a second, but Tohu’s permanently angry, eyebrowless face put the fear of The Makuta into his soul. Or something like that. He turned and ran in the direction Tohu pointed, looking back only once in case Tohu changed his mind. He hoped it wasn’t a dead end.

In another, equally destroyed, part of the city, Distorted was standing on a rock. He raised a hand to his eyes and peered through the mist. Through the light of a thousand fires and an air filled with screams, he made out a vaguely white, caped shape falling over as it attempted to prod a Visorak on the nose with a pointed staff.
“He’s not doing too well, Seran.” Distorted turned to the Matoran standing on the ground next to him. “And he’s supposed to be our Great Protector.”
Seranikai clambered up onto the rock, and tried brushing the dirt and Visorak drool from his gunmetal armour. “I’ve got dirt and Visorak drool all over my armour,” he complained, “and I’ve hurt my foot as well.”
“Oh dear,” Distorted said vaguely, turning his gaze back to Tohu. He watched as their Protector jumped at the spider and missed, falling into a fire and then running around in pain.

“We should do something, this is embarrassing to watch.” Distorted chanced a glance sideways.
“What?” Seranikai shook his head. “No way. I’ve hurt my foot.”
“Who cares about your foot?!”
“I do.”
“We ought to do something to help.”
“Yes, we ought to.” Seranikai nodded seriously. “We certainly ought to, but we won’t. That Exo Toa is making its way straight for us, you know. And I have a bad relationship with those things. I suggest we run away.”
Distorted shrugged. Tohu picked up a piece of rock and threw it at the Visorak; it bounced of its leg and rebounded straight back at him, hitting him cleanly on the nose. “He really is useless,” Distorted winced.
“Oh, fine,” Seranikai muttered. He leapt down from the rock and began striding in Tohu’s general direction, taking care to limp on his bad foot. Distorted grinned and ran after him.

They passed yet more piles of rock and small fires, and even some dripping webs filled with strangely contorted shapes. Luckily for them, and for this story, the Visorak were all converging on the other side of the city, and the evil Exo Toa were taking a break. It was quite something to see a group of Exo Toa sitting down and eating tuna sandwiches. Eventually, the two Matoran found Tohu, who was jabbing repeatedly at the Visorak with his staff, which was emitting sparks and making worrying popping noises.

“Get back, foul creature!” Tohu shouted. “One more step, and I’ll…oh.” He watched as Seranikai gave the Visorak a good sharp kick; it gave a loud screechy sort of sound and ran away.
“Now my foot really hurts,” Seranikai announced to the world in general, limping over to Tohu and looking him up and down. “That red really doesn’t go with that blue, you know,” he critiqued. “And that staff needs more custom.”