#like obviously I know the legacy characters dont die but im STRESSING

[sheriffspookypants]

Ok SNW we get it you can write scary high pressure tense episodes PLEASE give us a light hearted ‘the trouble with tribbles’ -esque episode I cant keep white knuckling my chair every week im gonna pass out

[antlorien]

More Mangai Rantings

Coming off of a whopping 26 note high on my secondary toa teams post, I have more rantings about the whole storyline of the Mangai.

So for starters, WHAT THE FUCK.

Lhikan, my heart and soul, my golden sweet sweet trauma boy, has the most fucked up life out of anyone in the entire lore like his entire life is spent losing the things he cares about and watching troves of people die around him. Like, boy probably had PTSD before he even GOT to Metru Nui from the Frostelus incident, like he had one job and he failed and ran away and everyone died horribly. Thats gonna leave some psychological scars. 

He then proceeds to fight A LITERAL GODDAMNED DRAGON and like, he was probably useless as fuck in that mission. Maybe running support at most, but homeboy is a specialist with fire, and this thing specifically went to a giant lava pit to gain more power. He aint gonna hurt it. They had to call in 4 ice toa, mess up the 6 toa different element comp and just cranked it up to 11. SO hes not having a great start. 

Then, after he kills the dragon, someone starts MURDERING THE CIVILIAN POPULATION LIKE WHAT THE FUCK. No other villain seemed to be as careless about Matoran life. Makuta? Brainwashed and boxed em up. Piraka? Brainwashed and enslaved. Not great, but it wasn’t just straight up elaborate murders! Tuyet, I love her. She is so full of personality and spite and I want to do so much with her character. Like next to Naho, I feel like before this, Lhikan would have trusted her the most. She is smart, skilled, and good at what she does. Easily a very useful friend, and so he had to really trust her and to find out she was doing this? My boy would have been devastated. He then has to watch as the one he doesn’t trust as much has to pick sides, which has gotta be stressful. Also yes, he definitely doesn’t trust Nidihki. Dude comes from the hell peninsula of hell island where life is hell and he gets out of there, dude aint gonna be a socialite. Hes the dark side of what toa are meant to be before he even gets there and golden boy has to just trust him to do what is right in this moment, and obviously, it isnt an easy decision, because we only know he sided with likhan in one universe, all the others might have been more in line with the Toa Empire or something like that.

So Nidhiki makes the right choice, they throw tuyet in jail to IMMEDIATELY have her stolen away to NAUGHTY HELL JAIL, so like, that must have been a conversation, like none of them knew it, and last they saw her, Tuyet was about to become possibly the most powerful toa ever, with the ability to become even more powerful as time went on. So shes just... GONE... and nobody knows shit. Thats gonna be stressful. 

AND THEN A WAR STARTS. Like all of this has gone down, things are going to shit, and shadow boy just decides fuck it im going downtown and invades the island. Thats gonna be a hard time on Lhikan, who now is essentially a war general. He has to run an island that does not seem particularly equipped for dealing with this kinda stuff. At this point also, we might just be getting the start of the Vakhi, so its not clone wars level, they cant just send out all these robocops to deal with the issue, at best they might still have kralhi??? but no idea. Nuparu might even still be working on the vahki when the hunters show up, just trying to crank em out. So Lhikan has now 10 toa vs dozens to hundreds of dark hunters, and thats gonna be a fight you lose. So in order to make this work, he has to arrange for Naho to sneak out, leaving them with even less defenders because also so. 

Water toa right? Easily some of the most powerful, if not the most powerful toa, especially in a small island like this. Just use the water around them to suck people to the ocean floor, and I feel like while Tuyet was more of a tactical and combat specialist, naho was really focused on her elemental powers, kinda like lhikan, with his precise fire powers. So she, possibly the strongest member of the team, just leaves, and has to go find some other army in the meantime. After this goes down and she comes back, its gotta be rough i mean they were holed up in the colliseum, thats gonne be crowded and hard to deal with morale, because that place cant be that secure, its got no roof sometimes. So any hunter that can fly is gona be up there trying to make a move, and those that can dig or climb have their own ways in. So after defending this for who knows how long with 9 toa, she brings in the cavalry and messes them up, but lots of them die. like just straight up in canon on both sides they were dying. By this point, its been a hard war already, righting back from within the colliseum, and trying to get control back of the city. 

Then we get the big slap in the face numero dos. Nidikhi, all ready for his glory, gets too overeager and betrays likhan and is so bad at doing so that he wins the war for the toa. He is so weak compared to what tuyet could have been like he had no sense of anything going on, no military knowledge, he was just edgy. Now he goes off and tries to sell them out and Lhikan already was able to suspect this right off the bat so he cant be too trusting at this point still, so he has probably had these doubts like what if he had been thinking about what might have happened if nidikhi had sided with tuyet this whole time. Like he probably set the bar so low that Nidihki just tripped over it not knowing it was there. So he gets that, and has a whole plan set up. 

THIS IS WHERE IT COULD HAVE GOTTEN GOOD FOR HIM. SO he talks to Hakann, makes the deal to RETURN THE ONE THING HE WAS SUPPOSED TO SAVE FROM HIS FIRST BIG TRAUMA so like huge personal victory for him and hes gotta be doing pretty okay, but the issue is, hes now gotta kick nidikhi out. I dont think hed be okay doing so either, like he had totaally been trying to give the edgelord a chance, and he just throws it back in lhikans face. So he kicks him out, never to be seen again, and the war ends. Nice and easy. 

AND THEN HIS BOSS GETS POSESSED. Like this boy cannot catch a break, he has fought a dragon, an impossible war, lost two teammates to betrayal, maybe more during the war, I have no idea, but they have gotta be on edge after the war at least, because they were likely split up. they were the toa with the most knowledge of the city, so they would likely all be generals, not to mention whoever was assigned to Dume’s guard, because that would also be so much stress and i feel like that was probably nahos thing after she saved the day the first time. so shes been stressed, lhikans been stressed, and then their boss starts sending all his teammates off on suicide missions. That’s just gotta destroy him. He also probably knows at this point that shit is going south, you are telling me a man who has seen this much betrayal would not instantly be on guard about this? I think if anything this might have been the hardest part for me to believe, that after being betrayed by two of his teammates who he was so willing to trust, to have dume start pulling weird shit and him not question it is hard to get. SO I think naho would have been last. Naho would have been his rock, ironically, because shes there to make sure hes still sane after the war, and shes been personally guarding dume this whole time so she trusts him more, and is persuading lhikan right up until its her turn. I have more personal head-canons about some of this but ill save that for later. 

so he is alone again. team all disintegrated, boss possessed, when guess who comes a-knocking, but the horribly mutated spider version of the only person he knows is left from his team. He has this last reminder of what he had show up, and it is so warped and distorted that he has gotta be just messed up so completely by that. So he decides to do what he can, make the stones, and then take on his old teammate, and then the movie happens, he gets captured, has to teach new toa how to do their stuff, which he has no experience in and so he is getting this chance to get to be a influential part of this toa team

AND THEN HE JUST DIES. And this is real hard, because Vakama and the rest were so ready to believe he was the Heart of Metru Nui like, this is someone who you can tell all the matoran respect and know and he just dies right in front of Vakama. This hero of the city, such an integral part that he was considered its heart, is just straight up killed by getting thrown aside by a shadow hand. That is the end of his life, is he gets this chance to try to prove his worth to these toa, and then he gets killed protecting them, even as a turaga. Beyond this, he was already a legacy. The metru, when they became turaga, told all these stories about him, about the adventures he did, like they know what he did for them, and so he does live on, in Jaller, in the metru, and in the minds of all the matoran, who may know now that this legend from their stories was actually real and actually did all this stuff. No other toa team did as much as the Mangai except the mata, and they werent even normal toa, they were specifically designed to be toa like they had to be the best designs, and also got upgraded several times. Lhikan and the Mangai didn’t. they got beat down time and time again and eventually all died protecting their city or turning against it.

I will tell this story in detail, and I think that it is one that needs to be told, because it isn’t one of the main stories that ends all happy, it is a tragedy, but it is the most important and untold tragedy of the entire canon.