BIONICLE RETOLD

CHAPTER 1

Light.

I see light. I blink. Still light. And there’s a high-pitched, ringing sound in my ears.

I blink again, squinting to let my eyes adjust. It’s been dark for so long… now I can see better. The sound is starting to fade, thank goodness. So… where am I? I’m in a… a thing. A metal cylinder with an open top, through which I can see… sand. Where is the sand? I don’t know. I guess I could check it out, but… should I be able to move? I look down at myself; I feel like there’s something missing. Legs. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to have two, somehow. And another arm. I have one arm right now; that’s it. Where’d the rest of me go? And how do I know there’s more of me? What am I? And, for that matter, who am I?

I look out again; there’s something lying on the beach, something that looks to be about the same silver color as me. Maybe that’s it? I grab the edge of my… pod, I guess, and pull, trying to haul myself out. It’s difficult; I don’t feel very good. Kind of weak, in fact. It takes quite a lot of effort, but eventually I manage to pull myself onto the sand. Lying before me is a limb; specifically, a leg. I grab hold of it, then roll over to see if I can fit it into the open socket on my hip… *click.* It fits. I now have an arm and a leg; scratch that, there’s another arm lying right next to the pod. Now that I have a leg to work with, pushing and pulling myself over there is easier, though I still feel really weak. The other arm connects smoothly onto my hollow shoulder. Two arms seems right… also, there’s something lying right by where the arm’s hand was. It’s… a curved thing with a handle at the end? It looks sharp; maybe it’ll be useful. I’ll have to keep it on me.

I’m still missing a leg, and looking around, I don’t see it lying anywhere. There is a large, metal bowl lying on the beach, though; looks like it fit onto the top of my pod, like a lid. If it’s over there, a couple bio away, and my pod is over here… that means something must have blown the lid off. Maybe that’s why I was in pieces? Maybe my other leg landed over there, then. Struggling to get much strength out of my arms, I drag myself over to where the lid is, and… lo and behold: my other leg. And, inside the lid, another one of the sharp, curved things. One for each hand, I guess. And there’s another thing lying in the lid; a slightly concave, grey object that is almost transparent, particularly in a flat band that runs over the middle of it. I check myself again; is this supposed to fit on me… somewhere? It doesn’t look like it does, and I don’t have any open spots left on my body to stick it on, I’m pretty sure. There’s a triangular hole slightly below the transparent band, and a pattern of ridges and notches around it; that’s what it attaches with, so I need to find somewhere on my body that matches the pattern… My face! There’s similar ridges around my face! I don’t know why this thing would go on my face, but hey, why not try it on?

The moment my face and the thing make contact, there’s a bright flash that forces me to close my eyes, along with a sound that I can only describe as some kind of pressure wave. For a moment, I’m dazed, but suddenly it’s like the mist is lifted. I open my eyes again, to find that I am now blue, and somehow that feels normal. Good, even. I feel stronger, too; strong enough to get up, in fact. So I do, and I look around, but my now higher viewpoint doesn’t reveal a whole lot more about wherever I am that I didn’t already know. There is something else on my mind, though; one word, and I think it refers to me. A name.

Apparently, I am Gali.