Chapter 19
"Why did I do that!?" Taylor all but wailed as she slammed her head against the wall of the cell that she'd teleported into and immediately locked by forcing the door shut and holding it there with magnetism, ignoring the banging on the door from a very confused PRT trooper asking her to please come out, the cell is meant for Master Strange confinement, not nervous breakdowns. "What the fuck is wrong with me!?"
"What!" THUD "Was!" THUD "I!" THUD "THINKING!?" CRACK
Taylor stopped and blinked as she suddenly found her face not resting against, but embedded in the thick, reinforced wall of the MS Cell, the dusty taste of concrete dust and paint settling in her nose and mouth as she pulled out, making her cough and gag as she spat the dust out and wiped her face. "Whoops."
"Are you done with your tantrum yet?" Gorast deadpanned in Taylor's mind, forcing the girl over to the sink and manually growing a new pair of arms to wash Taylor's face. "You've spent the last fifteen minutes screaming and the only reason why is because you finally stood up to the worthless sacks of flesh haunting your nightmares and then put them to sleep! You didn't even maim them, despite how close you were to losing your Spirit-damned mind before I intervened! I thought you'd be jumping for joy by now, not damaging government property in the middle of an unjustified freakout!"
"Yeah and I just left them there! I probably looked like a fucking villain doing that!" Taylor screamed into the mirror, punching the wall with both of her right hands and cracking it with a shower of chips and concrete dust as the image of Gorast flashed into existence, overlaying her own face with the Makuta's.
"Then simply explain your situation, you Akilini-head! Your slow-think these days is just about as terrible-bad as when we first merged! Except somehow even more bad-worse since this is panic rather than depression!"
"Hey! I'm not an Akilini-head!" Taylor protested, then paused and blinked as Gorast seemed to reel back in shock at the fact that she'd just used Le-Matoran Chutespeak. ".... Wait. What the hell was that just now? Those weren't Makuta terms you were using…. W-were you just…?"
"I spent some four hundred years as a Le-Matoran immigrant to Metru Nui as a vacation and picked up some of the dialect. Shut up." Gorast's illusory image grumbled quietly, turning away from Taylor and crossing her arms in a huff, her entire body visibly lighting up with embarrassment- veins of pink covering her the same as the veins of blue-ish purple confusion covering Taylor's body.
"Weren't you the ruler of the Tren Krom Peninsula, though?" Taylor muttered, stepping back from the sink and catching her breath, shaking her head as she sat down on the bed and rubbed her forehead. "How did you manage to spend four hundred years on Metru Nui with nobody wondering where you went?"
"I know you're trying to distract yourself from the actual issues plaguing your mind. But very well, I shall quick-tell you about my time disguised as a Matoran. And for your information, this was right before the Great Cataclysm. There was not much in the way of things to do during that time, and I preferred the hands off method of rule."
Gorast cleared her throat with a heavy sigh, groaning at having to recount that entire section of her memories- not really happy about having to tell about how she spent a whole four hundred years disguised as a male Le-Matoran since apparently Metru Nui's only female Matoran were Ga-Matoran and she wasn't about to pretend to be a water loving weirdo when she could be at ease with Matoran who liked being in the air as much as she did.
Taylor sat down as Gorast began talking, eagerly listening and feeling her worries and panic slip away under the sound of Gorast's narration filling her mind, echoing in her ears with a sonorous buzz that kept her from thinking about anything else.
>*<
"It started about… Hm. There aren't any good translations for how time was measured in Mata Nui's body, but I suppose that's what happens when everyone is but a small part of a giant robot. But there was a time about… oh… fourteen hundred years before my death when I wasn't doing much of anything. Oh, sure, that no good, slow-think, Akilini-head, roodaka piece of kane-ra shit Teridax was still around giving orders, but he was pretending to be Turaga around that time anyway. I didn't much give a shit. Life was slow, most of the matoran on my peninsula were used to me not doing anything except occasionally murdering Toa of Iron or Magnetism, I didn't have much of anything to do and I was between assignments anyway. Ah- wait no, Teridax impersonated the Turaga near the end of that vacation. Hm, old age makes for slow-think and ever-forgotten memories, it seems… even though this happened only a millennia ago...
"Anyway. I took a vacation and posed as a Le-Matoran named Gizi, a scrap trader looking to begin a new life far away from the Northern Continent. And there, I quick-sailed from the Tren Krom Peninsula and up through the Sea Gates to Metru Nui. Ah, even for me, the queen of the Tren Krom Peninsula, the first view of Metru Nui is a grand sight… the shining towers of Le "Metru gleaming from the light of the Silver Sea, the vast web of chutes and tubes stretching across the sky- for a moment, just that brief moment… I was the Le-Matoran Gizi, coming to the city for the first time… nevermind the fact that I'd been there a few times before, but never before then was it so grand!
"You should have seen it- even the docks, where recycled scrap from the other Metrus was thrown out and taken to the other continents for reuse- it was full of buzz-flying transports and quick-talking Matoran, so much to do and see… It was different and amazing to look upon the holy isle of the Matoran without any designs or plots, to simply immerse myself in what these seemingly lesser beings had managed to create.
"It was actually quite hard to acclimate at first- the Peninsula was not as hospitable, and of course, I was the Queen of the land, not some Matoran slave, working to keep the Great Spirit content. The Le-Matoran of Le-Metru were… strange to me. Friendly, honest. Nary a scowl or a smirk in sight. There was, despite the city's vast size and its massive structures, a sense of ease and simple zest for life in those towers and walkways. I loved it there. I could forget that I was a queen of a distant land, forget that I was going to take control of this pitiful world with my brothers, forget that I had killed Matoran for getting as close to me as these ones did. Instead, I could spend my days working in the scrap yards, touring the city, and just… existing.
"A small part of me was a bit confused, since I don't think I had ever simply just… let myself be. There was some fear-dread about that. Even we Makuta were driven by duty as much as Matoran sometimes, and not having anything really to do was… odd.
"Of course, my vacation was very nearly cut short when barely after some thirty odd days, I nearly died because some akilini-head, slow-think, loud-talk moron forgot to check the go-lights and safeties on the test track and nearly smash-bashed my spirit damned body in half when he decided to swerve out of the way of a mata nui-damned phase dragon and crash-wreck a test bike directly into my perfect green ass. Fortunately, I managed to actually come up with a good enough excuse as to how I'd survived that without losing my entire damned body and only had to pretend to take a week off of work at the docks to "repair" my damaged arm and back plating. Idiot. What kind of slow-think moron tries to swerve to avoid a phase dragon!? They phase through everything! Hmph. Oh well. I was pissed off enough that I was this near-close to killing him in his sleep during that week while I was stuck in my vacation lodgings, but I suppose it was only a huge-big amount of luck and destiny itself that stopped me. If I hadn't kept myself from giving him a swift hard-fall off the tallest tower in Le-Metru, then the little bastard- what was his name, Matau? Yes, that was it. Then that little bastard Matau never would have been a Toa and Mata Nui would have had to seek-find a new Toa candidate very rapid-quick.
"But the rest of my vacation was…. Passably normal, all things considered. Very boring by most standards, but for me it was the most relaxing four centuries I'd ever had…
"And then that bastard had to cause the Great Cataclysm and I had to quiet-sneak my ass out of Le-Metru and back to my fortress before the Vahki could stuff me into one of those spirit-forsaken orbs and stasis me for the next thousand years… although all things considered, if I'd ended up living in Le-Koro and forgetting that I was ever a Makuta, maybe I wouldn't have died…"
>*<
Taylor blinked as Gorast's narration faded off into a series of quiet grumbles in the back of her mind, staring up at the ceiling and wondering when she'd decided to lay down on the bed… and when she'd relaxed her hold on the door of her cell… and how long had Armsmaster been standing next ot her anyway (And why was he only wearing his chestplate, boots, and gauntlets)?
"Miss Hebert?" Armsmaster sighed quietly under his breath as he cleared his through awkwardly. "Are you… conscious?"
"... Uh… yeah? Sorry about the cell… I uh… kinda had a panic attack and… well…" Taylor managed to hide a blush through a quick illusion over her cheeks, but didn't quite manage to hide the pink lines tracing over her body in time. "... Sorry about that."
"... I'll assume it's linked to the incident at the Brockton West Mall approximately an hour ago?" Armsmaster almost deadpanned, his mouth contorted into what was almost a mix of a wry, knowing smile and a deep, deadpan frown.
"... Yeah."
"I see. Well, the three girls you put to sleep have been taken to the PRT headquarters for safety's sake. We'll get their stories later, but for now, why don't you tell your side of the story?" Armsmaster sat down slowly, having dragged over a folding chair along his way to the cell she imagined, and leaned forward. Idly, Taylor thought that he didn't quite look complete without all his armor on.
Taylor sighed and breathed in, gathering her wits as she sat up and faced Armsmaster, finally speaking her story to someone that wasn't the voice in her head. "Well… I guess it all started about two years ago now… back around the summer of 2009…"