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Unseen -- Chapter 1 -- Monster Mystery Results


bonesiii

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Today the Bones Blog brings you Chapter One of this Bionicle Paracosmos blog-exclusive "Adventure Mystery" short epic, which serves as a slow-reveal of the winner of the Monster Mystery Art contest. No need to read previous stories to understand it; if you want to though, see here (this story does contain Mindfire spoilers -- my Epics-Contest-winning murder mystery; that would be a good single story to read before starting this).

Bionicle Paracosmos
Bonus Episode #4
unseen


Chapter 1



This is the account of the Unseen incident in Metru Nui, by Hujo the Jahurungi -- the Unraveler of Secrets.

These events occured one week after the "Mindfire" incident on Destral, on the island of Metru Nui. Portions not witnessed directly by myself were either observed by a member of the secretive shapeshifting Unknown species, or were told to me by the Freers involved in the investigation. Any comments by myself are in bold and italic. This account is logged in the annals of the Unknown city.


Deep in a forested portion of Le-Metru...

"It definately took out at least one building," a Po-Matoran named Kuhauha said.

He and a Le-Matoran were standing where a giant portion of rock had slammed down upon part of the city. The Po-Matoran wore a dark brown Matoran Fiuwa Mask of Ductility.

The huge rock had once been part of the Makuta's teleporting island of Destral, but recently a different villain had caused a chaotic series of events that led to Destral being teleported into the air over Metru Nui. To make a long story short, this tip was broken off and slammed into the city while the rest of Destral was teleported away, sparing the vast majority of Metru Nui from harm. Another tip had crashed in Po-Metru, where these two had already checked and found no evidence of Matoran deaths.

The Po-Matoran checked the identity numbers etched in the surviving buildings. "According to the accounts of the evacuation, the only building missing here was emptied before it happened."

"Happybright," the Le-Matoran said. His name was Tamaru, and he wore a lime Matoran Mask of Translation. He checked the tablets he was carrying. "Danksad, there were many Rahi that tree-lived here, though."

The two Matoran looked sadly at the flattened trees sticking out from under the edge of the giant rock for a moment.

They were about to head home, when they were suddenly confronted by a monstrous beast of some kind.

Nearby, an Unknown was watching these Matoran...

Surkahi saw these events from a ways away. The good shapeshifter normally looked like a bulky, tan-colored version of a Matoran, but today he was shaped like a single leaf atop a tree. He'd long been assigned by the Unknown leader to watch over the Metru Nui Matoran -- his very name meant Watcher, in fact. Yesterday he had been a small rock, watching these two records-keepers check on the northern Destral tip.

Today, the leaf watched them finish their check of the southern tip. If you looked closely, you'd see that the tip of the leaf had an eye on a stalk that bent whichever way it wanted, to Watch. And the center of the leaf had a strange circular shape -- an advanced ear.

"Let's go," Kuhauha was saying. Surkahi watched the two start to walk east towards the nearest working chute... then suddenly stop.

"What is THAT?!" Tamaru said, pointing ahead of him. Surkahi couldn't see -- there were too many trees in the way.

Whatever it was, the two looked terrified, and they started running west. What is it? A Dark Hunter? A wild Rahi?

He watched for it to cross into the small clearing where they had been, but it didn't. Instead, it ducked behind several trees behind that clearing from Surkahi's angle. He caught a faint darkening of the ground and the sense of something rushing by through the thick foliage there, but nothing clearer.

The Matoran were still running -- his ear could hear them though they were now out of sight behind other trees.

Surkahi had a terrible feeling. Why would some predator take care not to be seen by Surkahi, though Surkahi was so well hidden? He knew of only one concept that could explain it, but that didn't speak at all to the identify of the monster.

It was an Unseen.

The leaf turned into a bird. In this form, Surkahi flew over the forest towards the rock.

He could see the two Matoran clearly now -- they were running and leaping over the felled trees right alongside the chunk of Destral, staying right against the rock. There, the monster had the least cover.

It was smart, Surkahi thought. They didn't know the Unknown legends of Unseen monsters, which took care not to be seen by anyone other than their victims, but they were obviously tactical thinkers. In fact, both had previously been guards when this island's population had been on the island of Mata Nui.

Surkahi caught more glimpses of some shape running alongside them in the trees that still stood about forty feet away from the Destral rock. But nothing clear enough to give him a sense of what kind of beast it was.

It could be anything -- Unknown had encountered Unseen monsters that turned out to be insane Rahi, semi-intelligent mutants, and even intelligent murderous villains. All of them shared two things in common, though. They all tried to keep their specific identities a secret... and they all ended up having something to do with the Third Faction in the Paracosmos -- the sworn enemies of the Unknown. It was the only explanation for how the beasts could avoid the sight of even the best Unknown spy.

So what was this Monster? What was the reason it was sent?

This was definately the sort of thing the Jahurungi would be needed for. But Surkahi's first priority was making sure these two Matoran survived.

On and on this chase went, with the Matoran running and leaping over the downed trees, and the monster running right next to them, and Surkahi flying above them. After a while Surkahi knew any pretense was over, and he turned into his bulky Matoranlike form, except with two big wings. The Unknown were already well on their way to becoming Known, and in the Destral incident Surkahi had been seen by the whole city in this form anyways.

Tamaru spotted him first, and waved. "Help us!" he shouted. The Matoran were tiring fast -- obviously the strategy of the monster.

Surkahi hesitated. Unseen monsters had been known to carry secret weapons that activated when Unknown got too close. Many Unknown had died this way in the past.

If he had to, he'd risk it. But by now he'd thought of another way.

The tip of Destral came to a point on one end. Here, the rock was so low to the ground, the Matoran should be able to leap onto it, then easily run up the widening rock to the highest part of the rock. Here Surkahi could carry them to safety. And they could tell him -- and the Jahurungi and all the other inhabitants -- what this monster looked like.

He called back down, "Tamaru, climb onto Destral at the low--"

His shout was drowned out by a scream.

Kuhauha was gone. Surkahi had taken his focus off of him to talk to Tamaru, who was a little bit ahead. Both he and Tamaru came to a stop, staring in terror at the spot Kuhauha had last been.

There was nothing but what looked like a black hole underneath the trees.

"The cave!" Tamaru shouted, running towards it. "We jumped over it many times!" he shouted up at Surkahi. "I should have known! What do I do?"

Surkahi answered instantly, "STOP!" Tamaru did, thankfully. The monster must have gotten into the cave and grabbed Kuhauha as he ran over it -- it might grab Tamaru too. "If you want to live, keep running to the low part of Destral's tip and run up as high as you can!"

Tamaru did that. Surkahi hovered in place for a moment longer, watching the hole. He saw nothing. Was Kuhauha dead? Unseen often killed their prey, but not always.

This isn't the time to think about it, he reminded himself. Tamaru had seen the monster too, and it knew it.

Surkahi considered diving down now and plucking Tamaru from the ground like a Rahi hawk. If the monster was still in the cave, the weapon wouldn't be an option. But he could have sworn he'd seen a glimpse of The Shape in the trees just before Kuhauha was taken... so it must move incredibly fast.

No, he couldn't risk it.

He was flying towards Tamaru to stay above him, when he felt a sudden impact, and instantly was knocked unconscious.

Meanwhile, being watched by the invisible Unknown named Volitaos, two Matoran formed an organization that would soon become entangled in these events...

Eternal shadow.

That was what the Ko-Matoran Taureko had once been trapped in -- the Field of Shadows, the Realm of the Zivon monster. Before that, he'd been trapped in it metaphorically as a slave of the Brotherhood of Makuta. After the Mindfire incident, when he'd been framed for murder of several Makuta, he'd found himself facing it again in a different way.

He simply felt... unfulfilled. He was helping people. He had uncovered astounding secrets recently. He was involved in the three-way struggle between the good side, the Brotherhood, and the Third Faction -- he wasn't just doing nothing.

But he felt like it.

Trapped.

That was how he felt -- trapped not because of a lack of freedom, but because he knew so many other beings were out there, trapped. He felt for them. He wished he could free them. When he was a slave, he had become known as Taureko the Freer and helped many other slaves escape Destral. He missed that goal for his life.

So that was why he was just now arriving by boat to the jungle island of Nhoakrus. He had a friend from his days as the Freer he wanted to talk to.

Taureko stepped onto the tan wooden dock, and turned back to wave goodbye to his friends on a metal boat, which hailed from Metru Nui. He planned to see them again some day, but who knew what the future could bring? The large motorboat pulled away.

He turned back to face the island.

Calling Nhoakrus a jungle was redundant -- not to mention a slap in the face to the mystery it represented. The island was relatively small in terms of landmass, a circle no bigger than all of Ko-Metru. But the trees had massive trunks, and reached up to dizzying heights -- at least four times the width of the island. And standing right next to the island as he was now, that width didn't seem so small. Smaller trees and a ton of seaweed and green reeds extended out into the water several miles, punctuated only by the few long wooden docks reaching out to open waters like the one he stood on now.

Thick foliage filled many areas, running like a network around various gaps. Through the gaps he could see two things that were signature Nhoakrus. The first was Matoran-made blimps, of a beige colored cloth, with hanging wooden baskets carrying pilots, passengers, and cargo beneath the cloth balloons.

The second was the fire tendrils. From random places in the bark, strange fingers of fire erupted, and curled around, branching and forming beautiful, almost fractal shapes, then quickly faded away. The bark from where they started did not bear a single clue afterwards that fire had come from it -- in fact all Nhoakrus plants were inexplicably fireproof.

As Taureko walked closer, and came amongst the green reeds and small trees in the water, he heard the Songs, and it chilled him to the bone.

This was one of Nhoakrus's many mysteries, and the main reason Taureko objected to the word "jungle" alone being used to describe it. Music and strange, tribal voices faintly floated through the air of the island. Yet nobody had ever seen a single being singing the songs, or had any other idea of why the songs occured. Taureko couldn't help but fear the voices.

He even recognized the language -- the language of the Unknown, which he'd "learned" due to a Brotherhood experiment back in his slave days.

And yet the words made no sense. Right now the voices sang, "green our yonder angle candle vector pathway cry tears tied-to dry eight red round fork flip ship letter tied-to organics." Sheer nonsense.

Yet as those same lines were repeated as a chorus and he focused on the sound of the Unknown words themselves, he couldn't help but feel the deeply passionate way it was sung, as if it was a song of true love or deep meaning. "Leketa onuiteo kiangori kiaratu uha hrikut hrungor, trali tralnui whaketi ti-gakua-teh, kwa whaihror, tarak ubu nahehi TEHWHAKEI omganura, wakulrao whaketi kignin'nui."

Even which words they emphasized made no sense. Why our, vector, trail, flip, and the final nonsense phrase of letter tied to organics? As a translator, it just plain bugged him. If he had some clue as to who the unseen singers were, he could form theories, but he had none.

But it was a mystery, and mysteries were for the Jahurungi, so Taureko shrugged it off.

Over the next few minutes, Taureko followed the wooden walkway that began as the dock up, curving around a tree, branching off into many elevated walkways at various points, past blimps and hanging wooden huts, past many Matoran of all kinds, and finally to a particular hut.

This hut was made of the same tan wood as the walkways, looking something like a multi-facted crystal in shape. If you looked closely, you saw that the edges of the polyhedral faces were all of one piece, a big network of wood made from a giant sphere of wood hollowed out and then with holes drilled in it. Planks filled most of the holes in the faces, with tiny gaps for ventilation, and some holes held windows and doors. The whole thing was about as wide in diameter as two Muaka giant tigers.

Anchored with ropes like a boat to the walkway in front of this hanging hut was a small cargo blimp. An Onu-Matoran was busy checking the blimp over.

"Hi, Mohrok!" Taureko said.

The Onu-Matoran turned his black Mask of Vision and smiled wide. "Taureko! What brings you here, my old friend? Come to try to translate the Songs again?"

Taureko grinned. "I wish. But no, I... I had a... proposition. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about old times and... Well, I have a prepared pitch to make. Can we go inside?"

Mohrok faced him directly. "As in, a job?"

"Yes. Sort of. A... mission. A life-goal."

Mohrook turned back. "Well, let me finish this quick checkup first. These blimps lose levitation vapor slowly, and---"

"Drag the whole walkway down with them?"

"Right. How'd you know?"

Taureko shrugged. "Something I'd always wondered about this place. That's one mystery solved, about twenty to go."

Mohrook laughed. "Indeed, my friend." He was silent for a moment as he continued his check, pumping more vapor from time to time into internal cells of the balloon from a special tank he carried. "I've been doing some thinking of my own," he added after a moment.

"About old times?"

Mohrook just nodded. "Sounds like I already have some idea of where this is headed."

He finished his check, and they went inside. Taureko gave his speech, about the shadow of the Field and of slavery, and ended with a line he thought would come in handy as a by-phrase, a slogan of sorts. Something the oppressed could pass along.

Mohrok nodded slowly. "So we would be starting an organization of Freers. I have had the same idea myself, Taureko. As much as I love this cargo blimp job, I can't help but wonder if it's really my... destiny."

"So are you in?"

Mohrok nodded, and repeated the by-phrase. "If you're enslaved, trapped, oppressed, we're you're hope -- we're the Freers."

Back in Le-Metru...

Surkahi awoke with a yelp of surprise, and shifted form randomly in his shock. He was asleep?!

The shapeshifter turned back to his winged Matoranlike form, and stood up. He was atop the Destral rock in Le-Metru. There was no sign of Tamaru.

The suns had gone far across the sky. He'd been out for several hours.

Already fearing the worst, he flew around the rock, trying to keep an eye out for anything that might suddenly shoot at him again, while looking frantically for any sign of Tamaru.

He saw nothing.

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Feel free to review, theorize, ask questions, etc. by adding a comment to this chapter blog entry, and stay tuned for the next chapter as a new blog entry.

Next Chapter: 2

--------------------------THIS STORY BROUGHT TO YOU BY:--------------------------

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4 Comments


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I realize this one is being written chapter-by-chapter. So, I enjoyed this one, and hope that wiritng them chapter-by-chapter and then posting them without the next ones written won't cause any disjointment in the narrative.

 

Also, how do I bribe you to send me the rest of Twisted Island? I want to know how it ends like, right now. :(

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I'm going to assume that you'll revise spelling and grammar heavily before posting it in Epics, so I'll just make brief story-related comments this time... :)

 

Cool chase, I really like the theme of Un-something and how they can be mutually exclusive - one might assume that an Unseen is just part of an Unknown, but here they're quite separate.

 

Great to see Nhoakrus again. I like this land because it's so ridiculously exaggerated. While that shouldn't be the case for every island if one wants variety, it seems like a staple to have an environment of incredibly tall structures: trees in this case. :P There's also that other island with the dome-tall mountain from Mindfire... now I wonder if they're related.

 

Looking forward to more!

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I realize this one is being written chapter-by-chapter. So, I enjoyed this one, and hope that wiritng them chapter-by-chapter and then posting them without the next ones written won't cause any disjointment in the narrative.

 

Also, how do I bribe you to send me the rest of Twisted Island? I want to know how it ends like, right now. :(

I don't think it'll be a problem for the most part, since I've gotten experience at doing this, heh. But we'll see. The only real problem is that I can't guarantee I'll have time each week to do chapters justice, so might have to skip some weeks.

 

And you can't have it. :P In all seriousness, Ojh and I are still heavily proofreading and revising the last few chapters of TI. :P

 

I'm going to assume that you'll revise spelling and grammar heavily before posting it in Epics, so I'll just make brief story-related comments this time... :)

 

Cool chase, I really like the theme of Un-something and how they can be mutually exclusive - one might assume that an Unseen is just part of an Unknown, but here they're quite separate.

 

Great to see Nhoakrus again. I like this land because it's so ridiculously exaggerated. While that shouldn't be the case for every island if one wants variety, it seems like a staple to have an environment of incredibly tall structures: trees in this case. :P There's also that other island with the dome-tall mountain from Mindfire... now I wonder if they're related.

 

Looking forward to more!

'Graph by graph: Yes, but if you find an error, do point it out. :P

 

Glad you like the Unseen/Unknown idea.

 

That's an interesting theory. :ziplip:

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Nice to see another tale of the Paracosmos currently out. So I assume the Unseen work for either Rathoe's master or the chronosum its self. Either way, the plot seems very dark and forbodding, I can't help but wonder what will happen next.

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