Metru Nui Comics
2005 - BIONICLE Comic 23: Vengeance of the Visorak
Adapted by Michael Larson. Edited by Jeff Douglas.
A small herd of Kikanalo paused to graze on the sparse vegetation of a canyon in Po-Metru. The region had changed a fair amount in recent times. Rockslides blocked some canyons and passes, while other previously hidden tunnels had been unearthed.
The Rahi, though, had found a way to adapt and go with the flow of change. Now they paused, as they so often did, to graze on the sparse vegetation of the canyon.
It was a peaceful moment. One that couldn’t last.
Along one of the canyon faces, Visorak faded into view, canceling their camouflage ability. Their Rhotuka powers roared to life, and they launched the energy projectiles at the peaceful herd. The disrupter powers of their Rhotuka weakened the Rahi, bringing the heavy beasts crashing down with a loud wail. With the efficiency of born hunters, the Visorak Roporak moved in to finish their task, webbing the Kikanalo up. Some would be imprisoned in cocoons, others mutated, without even so much as a chance to ask…
“Why!?” cried Vakama, looking on helplessly from above. “Why harm Rahi that are no threat to them?” He, Onewa, and Norik had arrived only in time to see the spiders finish their work. They were crouching low behind a rock formation.
“It is the Visorak’s way,” Norik answered. “Anything that moves, anything that lives must be made silent and still. I have seen this repeated dozens of times. The Visorak hordes come, conquer, and leave a dead land behind.”
Vakama stood up. “Not this time,” he snarled, charging his own Rhotuka on his back. “Not in my city.”
Norik inhaled. “Vakama! This was just meant to be a scouting mission!”
“He’s not listening, Rahaga,” Onewa snorted. “Then again, when does he ever?”
Vakama released the spinner but caught it between his tools. “You are the one who showed me how to charge this Rhotuka spinner with my new tools, Norik,” Vakama spat. “Now shut up and let me do my job!”
With that, the Toa Hordika of Fire let loose the supercharged Rhotuka. It struck the ground between the Visorak and the Kikanalo, creating a blazing firestorm around the spiders, even in the dry desert. The Roporak reared back, looking up at who would dare to purposefully attack a group of Visorak.
Vakama turned back. “See, Norik? I may look monstrous now, but I am still a Toa… a hero.”
“A Toa, it’s true…” Norik answered dryly. “Also a fool. Look!”
He gestured to the canyon where the Roporak using their spinners on the surrounding blaze. “Roporak spinners disrupt all forms of energy, even fire,” Norik continued. “They will be free in moments. You would have known that if you had been listening on the way.”
“That’s the advantage of being a Toa,” Vakama replied, jumping off the cliff and igniting his tools. “You have the raw power to correct your mistakes!”
Norik and Onewa looked on helplessly as the Toa Hordika of Fire stampeded down the cliffside, into the valley and the awaiting spiders.
“The fire-spitter seems to have gotten used to being a Hordika—half-Toa, half-Rahi,” Onewa commented, readying his claw clubs.
“It’s worse than that,” Norik grumbled. “I think he’s starting to like it.”
✴ ✴ ✴
“I do not like it, Roodaka!” Sidorak erupted. He smashed a sculpture of Toa Metru Vakama’s Kanohi Huna to pieces. “Not at all!”
The pair were standing in Dume’s chambers of the Coliseum. Roodaka bowed her head respectfully. “What troubles you, my king?”
“Toa. Rahaga,” Sidorak spat, as if the words were venom. “I should have crushed them all when I had the chance, instead of allowing you your… experiments. Now, they are a plague upon us!”
Roodaka’s mouth curled. “My ‘experiments’ in the effects of Visorak venom serve the shadows, as you well know… and plagues can be eliminated.”
And once the Rahaga are dust, she thought to herself, and the Toa at my mercy… your usefulness will be over, my “king.”
✴ ✴ ✴
Toa Hordika Nokama dolphin-dove in and out of the protodermis surface of Ga-Metru. “This is… glorious!” she exclaimed.
Rahaga Gaaki, with just her head bobbing above the surface of the water, turned around to face her. “Nokama, are you mad? You will draw the attention of every Visorak for kios around!”
Nokama shot forward like a riptide. “I don’t care! Being a Hordika is… amazing! For the first time, I am truly one with the sea. I can sense its currents, its eddies, the movement of fish far below…”
“Can you sense how much trouble we’re in? This mission was supposed to be done in secret!” The Rahaga pointed to the coast where fifty Boggarak were charging their Rhotuka. “It looks like the secret is out…”
A volley went up and rained down around the pair. Nokama and Gaaki could both move fast in the water, but even they could only move so quickly. One of the spinner’s hit Gaaki just as she was trying to dive, causing energy to course through her body and make her rise helplessly back to the surface. “Unngghh!” she grunted, now floating uselessly in the water.
“Gaaki!” Nokama roared. She launched a Rhotuka and caught it between her weapons, super-charging it. “Don’t worry, Rahaga. I will make them pay just the way you showed me!”
Gaaki gasped. “Nokama! No!”
Too late. As the energies of her Rhotuka peaked, Nokama released, sending it shooting for the sky above the Visorak. When it disappeared into the dark clouds overhead, a blue flash could be seen through them, the power unleashed a huge thunderstorm. Rains poured down as hard as stones and lightning bolts struck up and down the beach. Visorak scrambled for cover as lightning battered the coastline, but many bolts also hit the buildings along the coastline, further wrecking them.
Nokama’s eyes widened. “No… I never meant…”
Another bolt, larger than the others, struck the waters and jolting Nokama and Gaaki with electricity. Struggling through her weakness, Nokama looked around for her companion and spotted Gaaki floating, unmoving. The Toa raced over and scooped up the Rahaga in her arms.
“How could I?” Nokama asked herself.
Gaaki lifted her head weakly to look at the Toa.
“As a Toa, you always held back your power, even if you didn’t know it,” Gaaki said, “so as not to harm others or bring destruction.”
The Rahaga’s head leaned back into the water. She looked toward the coastline. “But as a Hordika… there is little to keep your power in check. Given enough time, that side of you will take over… and you will become that which you have fought against.”
“Then… then I will just have to find some way to stay in control… to stay a Toa,” Nokama decided, still shaken. “Are you well, Gaaki?”
The blue-armored Rahaga gently pushed herself out of the Toa’s grip to tread water next to Nokama. She nodded. “I am all right, Nokama.” As they swam off toward their destination once again, she added, “But I am not so certain about you, Hordika.”
✴ ✴ ✴
“Click-click… wheet… click… wheet-whoot,” chirped Kualus.
“What in Mata Nui’s name are you doing?” asked Nuju, his impatience growing by the moment. They were supposed to be moving quickly through Ko-Metru, but Kualus’ delay meant they were bound to get an earful from Vakama once they returned to the base.
Kualus pointed toward some broken chutes. “Talking to those Rahi up there. You might want to try it sometime.”
“I have nothing to learn from birds.”
Kualus smiled. “They are flying free up there,” he said, trotting after Nuju. “You are down here, mutated into a Toa Hordika and on the run from the Visorak horde. Maybe it is them who have nothing to learn from you, Nuju.”
✴ ✴ ✴
High above the Rahaga and Toa Hordika of Ice, two Visorak watched them pass, peering out from behind one of the chute support towers. The irritation of the travelers was palpable, and one of the spiders trembled eagerly. Turning to the other spider, it tapped one of the webs lining the chute twice.
It was a clear message, and one the other spider understood well. Their tone is angry, it was saying. Now is the time to strike.
The other spider shook its head. Too simple.
It crawled over the edge of the chute, screeching and clicking softly in the Visorak language. “Nothing in this city is worth hunting. Sidorak promised us good sport, remember?”
The other followed quickly after. “I remember. I remember what Roodaka did to the last one who complained, too.”
✴ ✴ ✴
“You sound like Ehrye,” Nuju grumbled, peering around a corner. All he could see were more ruins and a broken-down Vahki Transport. That won’t do us much good, he thought.
“Who?” Kualus asked.
Nuju pulled back behind cover. “A Matoran I used to know. He always insisted that scholars were not as wise as we claimed to be.”
“Nuju…”
Nuju froze.
“Help me… Nuju…”
The muted voice was coming from around the side of the building.
“That is Ehrye’s voice!” Nuju hurried into the open. “How could he be free?” He stopped at a small cave created by a fallen Knowledge Tower. Two slants of a broken crystal window joined together to make a small alcove, which quickly deepened into darkness.
Nuju pointed. “It came from in there. He must have escaped the Coliseum and been hiding in here all along.”
The Rahaga stomped ground. “Nuju, you aren’t thinking like a Toa… you are feeling, like a Hordika. The Visorak will use that against you.”
The Toa wheeled on Kualus. “I am sick of hearing about the Visorak!” he yelled in the Rahaga’s face. He turned back and marched into the cave. “Saving all of the Matoran begins with saving one, and to blazes with the Visorak!”
“But—”
“I see him moving in there,” Nuju squinted hard, looking for Ehrye’s white form against the darkness. “Ehrye? It’s Nuju, come out.”
Two shapes flew at Nuju, but neither was the Ko-Matoran he was expecting. They were two black Visorak, the kind called Oohnorak. They bit at the Toa’s leg, but he scurried back. “Nuju…” said the voice, coming from their mouths. “Help me… Nuju…”
“Oohnorak can imitate the voices of those you trust, stolen from your very thoughts,” Kualus snapped. “I tried to warn you!”
“Next time, try harder!” Nuju shot back. One of the Oohnorak jumped at him again, pinning him to the ground. He dodged his head left and right as its jaws snapped at him. “I endured your venom creature… and your webs…” the Toa grunted. “But one thing I will not endure—”
The Toa brought his feet up and managed to kick the Visorak off of him, into the other, stunning it.
“—is your breath!” Nuju finished. He looked at the Rahaga. “Get behind me!”
“What are you doing?” Kualus asked.
Nuju’s Rhotuka powers roared to life. “Buying us time!”
Spinners shot in every direction, as ice barriers formed between them and the spiders. The Oohnorak tried to circle it, but the ice spinners made quick work as the ice wall grew, encircling Nuju and Kualus and rising high above them. The spiders tried to mount the wall, but ice formed a ceiling, encasing the pair in a tall dome of Nuju’s making.
The Toa stepped back. “That ice dome will delay them, but we have to get out of here. And we can’t go forward, backward, or up…” On accident, he stepped backward onto a metal grate. Nuju looked at it, looked at it again, then looked at Kualus.
“So we go down,” the Rahaga finished for him.
✴ ✴ ✴
Nuju and Kualus landed with a thud below, finding themselves in the protodermis and water waste removal system. Gutter water dripped down all around them.
The Metru Nui sewers.
“Not the nicest of refuges, but it will do,” Nuju frowned. Some water splattered on his head.
Kualus shrugged, “I don’t mind. We Rahaga lived down here for years, and none of you ever knew.” He chuckled at the thought. “You really need to be more observant.”
More waste water fell on Nuju, and he brushed it away. “Why were you hiding here?”
“Norik said he was sure the Visorak would come to Metru Nui, eventually. This would be our last chance to stop Sidorak, Roodaka, and the hordes,” Kualus answered. “Our plan is to beat them here, then try to retake the other lands they have overrun.”
Another drop fell on Nuju’s shoulder…
Nuju froze. The drop burned at the touch.
Venom!
Kualus had seen it too. Horrified, their eyes met, then rose to the ceiling as a giant, twelve-foot-tall shadow fell over them… crawled toward them.
Kahgarak.
“I don’t suppose you have a Plan B, do you?” Nuju whispered.
“Defeat. Mutation. The end of all life in Metru Nui.”
“I was afraid it would be something like that.”