Knocking on Heaven's Door

Knocking on Heaven's Door is a short story by ToaAuserv for the Character Swap Writing Contest 2015, featuring ThatDevilGuy's character Eclipse.

Story
Something in the air galvanized my blood, made it shiver and dance in my veins, the second I set foot in the City of Legends. It was an ill omen. The question was whether it bade ill for me or for the wretches I was here to destroy.

There were certainly a lot of them. A diverse body of Matoran scurried about the port. I caught more than one stealing second and third glances at me. It wasn't that I didn't look like them, not in this port where every race of the world mingled, but more that I didn't look like anyone. Today, in my gnarled obsidian armor under a hempen cloak with the hood up, few among them would believe that I had been one of them two lifetimes ago. It was hard not to admire their innocence.

I strolled further inland, looking at but not seeing the concrete skyline. Metru Nui didn't have streets, not like other cities. Instead it had footpaths between buildings, glorified alleyways. It was common to hear returning tourists complain of having to shuffle sideways to squeeze past other pedestrians when traveling off the beaten path in Metru Nui. Here, though, the path leading away from the port was comfortably wide, at least until it was choked off just ahead by a security checkpoint.

A customs officer waved me up to the kiosk as I drew close. Like most Matoran, she stood at half my height. I gave a facetious bow. Unflapped, she fingered a switch at her side and the platform she stood upon elevated until our eyes were level.

“Identification, sir.”

“Really?” I sounded as incredulous as I could about something that did not surprise me.

“If you don't have identification, I'm afraid you can't go any further into the city.” She continued speaking, rattling off a rehearsed speech about recent changes in Metru Nui's customs policy, but I had stopped listening. I knew more about the new laws than she did, if only insofar as I knew why they had been passed: to keep me out.

Unfortunately for the city, there was a loophole, one which I had been created to exploit.

“I'm a Toa,” I said. I brushed back my hood and let her see that I wore a Great Kanohi. She looked me up and down, frowning.

“You don't look like a Toa.”

“If you would be so kind as to give me the opportunity, I can prove it.”

A line had formed behind me as we'd been speaking. Someone groaned. Someone grumbled that they had their identification.

“Come with me,” she said. The platform she stood on sunk back down to ground level. The officer stepped out of the booth through a door in the back, not before flicking another switch. Machinery whirred and a metal barrier a bio high rolled up from underground, preventing any of the four or five people behind me from getting through.

The officer, frowning, waved for me to follow her. We walked beyond the checkpoint, but to the left of it, towards a small brick building. She swiped a card and the glass door slid open. The building's interior was dimly lit; I couldn't see inside.

“Eclipse!” she called, standing at the doorway. “We got a 'Toa.'” She didn't wait for a response, instead immediately turning on her heels and storming back to the kiosk.

The name Eclipse was familiar to me, like I'd heard it in a dream. It stirred a foggy memory, but when the Toa inside came to the door, his gunmetal armor glinting in the morning sun, it was clear right away.

This was what the omen had warned me of.

I tugged at the fabric of my cloak, wanting the security of my hood again. Eclipse looked bemused.

“Boy, you look like you've seen a ghost,” he said.

My voice hid in my throat. He would recognize my voice. Did he recognize me already? My shoulders ached from clenching my arms to my sides.

Eclipse shrugged and kept talking. “I understand you're trying to get into the city under the Defender Clause.”

I nodded. My vocal cords quivered as I tried to find a pitch that would sound most unlike myself.

“We don't mean to profile, but you understand.” He smiled at me, and my stomach clenched into a fist. “There are many Toa in this world with... non-standard looks, shall we say, but you're a quarter-bio taller than any Toa I've ever seen. And the armor color—it's not quite Toa of Earth, almost bluish. Are you a Toa of... Gravity?”

I shook my head. Cleared my throat. Cringed, and hoped for the best. “Magnetism.”

Eclipse's expression darkened, but he chuckled. “Friend, I'm a Toa of Magnetism. And I've known Toa of Magnetism, was born in a village of Fa-Matoran. I know we're not the most numerous, but if you're going to lie, get your—”

I raised my hand. The sensation of elemental energy draining from my body was almost unfamiliar. It had been a long time since I'd needed these powers. A brick jiggled. I closed my eyes and focused. Invisibly, magnetic energy left my palm and hit the brick. It flew from the building and clanked against my armored glove as irresistible forces attracted it to me. I turned my palm over. The brick did not fall.

“Well done,” said Eclipse. “But magnetism isn't just a Toa's ability.”

I caught his drift. “Do you take me for a Makuta?” I spoke in my normal voice, feeling more confident now. If he hadn't recognized me by now, he wasn't likely to recognize me at all.

“Makuta can take many forms.” A cold shiver worried at my spine. We both knew that well.

“Exactly,” I said. “Do you take me for a blind fool? If I was a Makuta trying to pass as a Toa, don't you think I could make myself a more convincing fake? Couldn't I use an illusion, or just teleport into the city? Why bother with this charade?”

He frowned and looked me up and down. Finally, he seemed to acquiesce, but then his eyes narrowed. “Isn't it strange for a Toa to know as much as you do about the abilities of a Makuta?”

“Not for a Toa Hagah. I was one in my time.” I regretted the words even as they were leaving my mouth. They were true. And Eclipse had more than enough information to recognize me now. I said a silent prayer that his memory had gone as bad as mine.

But it was not to be. His eyes lit up. My ruse was over.

“What's your name?” he said to me.

I debated whether to use the fake identity I had prepared. At this point, though, that would only be digging myself deeper.

I told him my real name, the one he knew me by, and forced myself to smile.

He tried to speak, but couldn't, choked on the words with his mouth agape. His eyes flooded and glistened. He shook his head, adjusted his mask. All the while I stood, arms tight against my sides, legs straight like metal columns, smile giving way to a wince. Eclipse opened his arms and embraced me.

“They told me you were dead. I never, never believed it for a second.”

“Sometimes I believe it.”

“What?” He let go of me, and we pulled apart.

“That I'm dead.”

***

A Lifetime Ago

One burst of magnetic energy from me. Another from Eclipse. The Makuta crumpled like a tin can. Hot antidermis erupted from the ruins of her armor, spraying me. She rose off of my body and the ground, hanging in a green haze. A screaming haze.

One burst of fire, then another, and the Makuta was no more. I looked over my shoulder. My ally sheathed his combustion sword. A bead of sweat ran down my face beneath my mask.

It would be hours before anyone noticed the Makuta was missing, and most likely hours more before her remains—a heap of scrap metal and a shattered Great Kanohi—would be discovered in her laboratory. They would find no signs of a struggle. We'd been deadly careful. Not a flask had shattered.

“It's over,” said Eclipse. A month of planning, of secret meetings with the Order, of eavesdropping, of grinning and bearing, over in ten seconds. I breathed a sigh of relief, but it turned to laughter halfway through. We all laughed. What else could we do?

But something was wrong.

There were three of us in the room. But there were four voices laughing.

We heard the thin whoosh of a Kanohi deactivating. Another Makuta, wearing a Volitak, appeared in the corner of the laboratory. His armor was crimson and barbed, each hook the size of my finger. I felt myself overwhelmed with a nameless fear unlike anything I'd felt.

The Makuta took a step forward, still grinning. “That was easy.”

Just as before, Eclipse and I threw bolts of magnetism at the enemy. But he was ready for them, countering with his own magnetic pulses. Our other partner, the Toa of Fire, drew his sword, already glowing like a hot coal. He slashed at the Makuta, who waved his hand and bowled the Toa over with a ball of violaceous shadow. He was dead instantly. Tendrils of the dark energy rose from the hole in his chest. When I looked up from my fallen comrade, the Makuta was gone.

Six Rahkshi, red and gold, appeared from thin air, three standing along either wall. Chameleon types. They rushed in at Eclipse and me. I pinned two to the wall with magnetism, but the third staggered me with a blow from its staff. I fell backwards over a counter, shoving lab equipment onto the floor with a crash. I dropped my sword and the momentum of my fall sent it sliding across the floor.

The Rahkshi was on top of me before I could stand. I kicked at it, but it raised its staff above my throat, poised to finish me. Then it was pulled away from me—magnetically glued to the ceiling. It smashed into a lightstone. Sparks and shards rained down on me. It hissed, and a wave of gravity crushed it so hard that its kraata oozed out as a liquid.

“Come on!” Eclipse stood in the doorway, his axe still humming from his attacks. The other three Rahkshi had been dispatched. I forced myself to my feet and followed him. We ran down a bare stone hall that we'd walked a thousand times in our time as allies of the Brotherhood. Now every familiar shadow seemed to conceal death.

We were outside. The stars lit the craggy skyline. Our rendezvous point with our contact in the Order was three kio away, a cave tucked into the cliffside. I could see the mouth of it from here, but the path up was treacherous in the best of conditions; at night with a Makuta on our trail we weren't likely to make it, and even if we did, there was no guarantee that the three of us would be able to defeat the Makuta. Eclipse seemed to realize this too, and we stopped running.

“Use your mask to get to the rendezvous point,” said Eclipse. “I'll lead the Makuta away.”

I wore the Kanohi Kualsi. Teleportation to any spot within my field of vision.

“You'll die,” I said.

“If I do, I'll go down fighting.” He hefted his gravity axe over his shoulder. “You'll survive, that's the important thing.”

“I don't want to leave you.”

“Just go. If I survive, we'll meet again soon. Otherwise, it's been an honor to know you.” His tone invited no further disagreement.

I shook my head and opened my mouth, but words failed me. I made a fist, and he did too, and we bumped them together.

“Goodbye,” I said.

“Goodbye,” and he said my name.

I took a last look at him. There was no time to regret the decision. I looked back to the cave, and activated my mask.

The ground shifted below me. I was standing at the mouth of the cave. Inside it was completely dark. I looked over my shoulder to where I'd been a moment ago. I could barely make out a shimmer that was Eclipse, running for his life. I wished him luck.

A faint crimson glow flashed in my peripheral vision. I whipped around to see eyes, burning in the dark. The Makuta stepped out into the starlight, the one with the hooks on his armor. He was still grinning. But he was different now—much larger, with new components to his body, some black and some the putrid green of antidermis. My heart seized up when I recognized the chest plate of our contact in the Order, grafted upside-down onto the Makuta. All at once it became clear: the Makuta's body was woven together with bits and pieces of the Order agent. I felt sick.

“He was a nice snack,” said the Makuta.

I said nothing. What was there to say? Plead for mercy or defy him? I waited for death.

But it didn't come, at least not in the way I expected.

***

Eclipse took me to a small fountain in Ga-Metru. It was no Fountain of Wisdom—the walls of the small stone structure were green with algae—but no one else was there, and that was what he'd wanted.

A jet embedded in the stone basin of the fountain was shooting water two bio into the air. It cascaded down, rainbows shining through the foam. The low hum of industry was inescapable in Metru Nui, but that aside, the rush of the water was all there was to hear.

It was cloudy and humid. It smelled like rain.

Eclipse finished telling me his life story. How he had made it to the beach that day, how he had been picked up by a teleporting courier from the Order and inducted into their membership, then drafted into a war against the Brotherhood. How he had come to Metru Nui under the Order's orders to defend it against a suspected Brotherhood plot to attack the Great Spirit himself.

I almost told him it wasn't the Brotherhood he had to be worried about.

“I'm just so relieved that you survived,” I said instead. The emotion in my voice surprised me with how genuine it was.

“But I don't feel like I've told you even half the story,” said Eclipse.

“What parts did you leave out?”

“The parts where I searched for you. The parts where I wept, and railed against anyone who told me to move on. The parts where I begged Mata Nui to take me to where you were. Even if it was the grave.”

“Trust me, brother. You would rather be in the grave than where I was.” The worst part about being with Eclipse was that I was beginning to mean the things I said and say the things I meant, like I hadn't in years.

“What happened? Where were you?”

I shook my head. There was no way to answer that question. “It doesn't bear thinking about. All that matters is I'm here with you, right now.”

The silence was tense, but brief. Eclipse didn't press me further.

“Do you remember the village we used to live in?” he said.

“That was a long time ago.”

“I thought you might have returned there, so I made the trip out to it once. The village was gone.”

“What happened to it?”

“I don't know. Time, I guess.”

***

Two Lifetimes Ago

It was a dull little village, too small to even have a name, but it was home. There were exactly thirty-six of us, all Fa-Matoran, living in huts tucked into a mountain alongside a stream. We knew all of them by name, and they knew us. We knew the six council members (we had helped elect them), we knew the craftsman who sold tools and made avant-garde stone sculptures in his spare time, we knew the miners who harvested the iron-rich earth, we knew the smith who forged what the miners sold him into all sorts of trinkets, we knew the rotating cast of navigators who went down to the ports on the coast to offer their services to explorers and traders from the world over but who still came back to this dull little village because it was home. Our village contributed nothing to the universe, and took nothing either. Ours was a meaningless and comfortable existence.

The world was small and simple then, and I hated it almost from birth. Later someone would tell me that sort of attitude was common among Matoran who were destined to become Toa, as if some part of them knew what kind of life awaited them and was eager to get to it. I doubted this, because if any part of me had suspected what kind of life really awaited me, I would have relished every tedious second in that village and begged for more.

Eclipse never shared my distaste for the village. Unlike me, he fit in with the others. But it was no secret that he dreamed of leaving the village and fighting for justice, to save the world. He was utterly convinced that both of us were destined to become Toa. In his head, some weary, battle-worn Toa was going to come to our village looking to retire and select us to inherit his power. I was too myopically realistic to imagine that either of us would ever leave, but I admired his optimism.

He was more or less right about everything, but it didn't happen quite that way.

The council hall was the biggest building in our village, but any Matoran of Metru Nui had most likely slept in a larger bedroom. Three rows of ten iron chairs in front of a stage half a bio off the ground. On the stage, a wooden podium and a wooden desk in front of five more iron chairs. An impressionistic sculpture supposedly representing the virtue of Unity occupied one of the back corners of the room, but aside from that the hall was bare and utilitarian.

The council had called a meeting and hadn't said why. A pair of navigators had just returned to the village from an expedition to the eastern chain of southern islands, and there were tall tales going around in the mines that they'd brought back some sort of cursed artifact from a savage tribe.

What they had actually brought back, the council leader standing at the podium informed us, was a Toa stone. He held it up. It looked like any ordinary rock to me.

At the conclusion of the expedition, the council leader explained, the Toa they'd brought as a bodyguard made six Toa stones and entrusted them to various Matoran she had grown fond of during the voyage. The navigator from our village had not tried to use the stone. Instead, he had donated it to the village for us to decide who should use it.

Even as he spoke, eyes throughout the hall turned on Eclipse and me. It was a surreal display. The council leader finished by saying that he would take nominations, then we would all vote on which of the nominees should become a Toa.

Eclispe raised his hand and said my name.

I raised my hand and said his name, more out of a sense of obligation than anything.

There were no further nominations. The vote was done, simply enough, by a show of hands. Eclipse raised his hand for me. I raised my hand for Eclipse. He edged me out, taking the stone with a lead of just two votes. I pretended to be happy for him. I made celebratory noises, bumped fists with him, the whole song and dance.

We took the stone back to his hut. Had this been two lifetimes later, I wouldn't have been surprised at what he said as soon as we were alone, but until then, I hadn't realized what kind of person he was.

He said, “You use the stone.” He thrust it into my hand.

“What? It's yours.”

“You want it more than I do.” He smiled. “Come on, it's obvious.”

He was right. “But you were the one the village decided on.”

“And you were their second choice. I forfeit the stone.”

“I don't deserve this.”

“We're friends, aren't we?”

“Of course, but I don't—”

“I know you. You'd act like it wasn't a big deal, but if I used the stone and left to go out in the world, you'd come to hate me. I don't want that.”

“And you won't come to hate me if I use it?”

“I'm making a choice not to use it. If I regret it later, I only have myself to blame.”

I acquiesced, held up the stone, then hesitated.

“It might not even work,” I said. “This might not be my destiny.”

“It is,” he said. “Just do it.”

“Promise me one thing, then.”

“Sure.”

“If it works, you have to travel with me. I'll keep you safe, and we'll find you your own Toa stone. And then we'll be partners, like we dreamed of. Okay?”

Eclipse smiled again, and nodded. “Okay.”

I raised the stone, not totally sure what to do with it, and touched it to my mask. There was no time to regret the decision. The room flooded with light, and my first life was over.

***

Eclipse graciously offered for me to stay with him while I was in Metru Nui, and I accepted. But I left his bedroom in the middle of the night, tiptoeing past his sleeping silhouette. He was my brother, and my best friend. Our destinies had always seemed intertwined. But I had a mission, and no one came before that mission. Not even him.

Eclipse lived in an apartment complex in Ga-Metru. There was plenty of time to think on the long stairway down to ground level, on the walk through narrow alleys and foggy plazas on the way to the Coliseum. But I didn't think, couldn't think. Any thought would be too painful.

My mask guided me to my goal. The Kualsi was long gone, of course; now I wore an Elda. Normally, the Kanohi Elda directed its user towards the Mask of Life, an artifact stored in a chamber deep underground that could be used to save Mata Nui's life in the event that he became weakened by an abundance of strife in the world. But mine was modified to direct me towards a different underground chamber, for the exact opposite purpose.

I was going to kill Mata Nui, and with him, the world that was his body.

My master had in earlier days made it almost all the way to the core processor, Mata Nui's brain. He was stopped by the Order and imprisoned far away from here, but he had many servants, including the Makuta I had met on Destral so long ago, who had warped my body and groomed me for this purpose.

I had never met my master personally. I didn't even know his name. Though I couldn't fathom his reasons for wanting to destroy the world, I had my own. That was why I had been chosen.

The Order had done a shoddy job repairing the damage my master had done. A metal plate lay at the base of the Coliseum, covered over with a thick layer of concrete. I magnetized the plate to the wall of the Coliseum, and the concrete shattered as the plate rose from beneath the ground. Beneath where it had been was a tunnel, a steep slope leading down below Metru Nui's foundations. It was pitch dark inside, but I didn't need to see. The Elda guided my way.

A turret, no doubt placed there by the Order millennia ago, whirred to life at my approach. It fired one round at me, which I dodged, and the recoil knocked it over. It kept firing like mad at the ceiling, each shot lighting the tunnel orange-red for a split second. I folded it in half with a wave of magnetism.

Further in, the earthen tunnel created by my master ended and gave way to a wider metal tunnel created by the Great Beings, lit by lighting fixtures embedded in the ceiling. Mata Nui's sinus cavity. More traps waited, though half of them had already been destroyed by my master and the rest were trivial to disable or evade myself.

Finally I came to the last obstacle between me and the throne of Mata Nui's soul. It was a massive door made of solid protosteel, a bio thick. There didn't seem to be any way to open it.

One bolt of magnetism, then another. The door did not crumple like a tin can, but it budged. Another bolt of magnetism, and another. The door screeched and lurched and pulled off its hinges. There was almost enough room for me to squeeze through walking sideways.

Another bolt of magnetism, then another... and another, pinning me to the door face-first. I wrenched my head around.

It was Eclipse.

He had been trailing me the entire time. He released the magnetic hold on me. I fell to the ground and scrambled to face him on my feet. I drew my sword.

“How could you?” he said, tears in his eyes. I wasn't sure how much he had already put together, but the look on his face wasn't of confusion, but of hurt. He had known someone was going to attack the Great Spirit, and he had hoped I would fight by his side to put them down. Instead, I was the one he needed to put down.

The speech I had rehearsed fell to pieces in my mind. Everything that I had felt, everything I had believed up until this point now seemed laughable. I could kill a Makuta, a Matoran, a god, but kill Eclipse? How was I supposed to do that?

“I have no excuse for myself,” I said instead.

“Why? Why would you do this?”

Options flashed through my mind. I could tell him it wasn't my idea, that I was being controlled. I could make him hate me, make him spit on our friendship so the fight wouldn't hurt as much for either of us. I could tell him to attack me if he felt he must, and otherwise leave.

The one thing I couldn't do was turn back now, apologize and return to a normal life with him. That was just a fantasy, and even if I reached for it, it would evaporate in my hands. The Makuta, the one in the crimson armor, would come along quietly to take my life within two weeks.

“Because I want to die,” was what I finally said.

“And you want everyone else to die with you?”

“If that's how it has to go.”

Eclipse shook his head, cradled his brow in one hand. “How did things go so wrong?”

“Time, I guess.”

We settled into a tense silence. The ancient light in the ceiling flickered. The entire passageway creaked, the weight of Metru Nui settling on top of it. The door, which I had done quite a number on, finally bellowed in resignation and fell down with a rumble that shook the earth. I glanced over my shoulder. Down a short, narrow passageway was the core processor. I could do it right now, and Eclipse couldn't stop me. Even one pulse of magnetism would irreparably damage the machinery that was Mata Nui's brain, perhaps not killing him but rendering him an invalid, and my mission would be complete.

“Do it,” said Eclipse. “Do it if that's what you want. I don't have it in me to stop you.”

That was when I made up my mind.

“For once, be selfish,” I said, turning back to face him and taking a few strides forward. “Kill me and save the world. That's what I want.”

“If that's how you feel, then you can be saved. I don't care if the Brotherhood or whoever sent you has a problem with it. I'll protect you. All the world will protect you. Things can go back to normal—I know it might be hard, but I can save you.”

“I don't deserve to be saved. I'm sorry. I've been a burden to you from the day we met. And I don't intend to be one a single second longer. So kill me.”

“You do it,” said Eclipse. “Kill us both. A Nova Blast of Magnetism in a metal tunnel like this would do the job, and finish your mission.”

“I don't want you to die.”

“I don't want to live without you again.”

I sighed. This was going nowhere. It was an absurd display, two Toa who should be fighting to the death to determine the fate of the universe, instead sniveling and negotiating the terms of a suicide pact.

I raised a hand. Eclipse jumped to attention and held out his axe, but exerted no power. Slowly, I pried a heavy metal panel from the ceiling, using magnetic fields to hold it suspended in the air above my head. It was nearly as thick as the door I'd destroyed. If it dropped, I'd be dead instantly.

“Are you going to make me do it myself?” I said. “Are you going to deny me the dignity of being killed at the hands of someone I love?”

Something changed in his face then, and I smiled, because I knew he had understood. Just for a flash, perhaps, and no doubt these memories would still torture him for the rest of his life. But in that moment, he understood all my pain. To be understood was a wonderful thing to feel at the end of your life.

He raised his axe, poised to finish me.

“Goodbye,” and he said my name, for the last time anyone would say my name.

“Goodbye.”

In the end, I wasn't as cruel as I thought I was. I dropped the panel. There was no time to regret the decision.

Characters

 * Eclipse
 * The unnamed narrator
 * Other Matoran, Toa, and Makuta

Trivia

 * Though this story is an entry for the Character Swap Writing Contest 2015, the author chose to write it with a first-person narrator other than the character he was assigned for the contest. The rationale for this decision was that, just as no one can truly know the mind of another person, the author could not know the mind of another person's character, and therefore portrayed him through the eyes of an original character.
 * This story is based on ThatDevilGuy's storyline, but should be considered an extremely loose adaptation more focused on the emotional content than staying true to the exact details of the story. Therefore, it is not canon to ThatDevilGuy's storyline, nor is it canon to any of the author's other stories.
 * The title of this story, as well as some inspiration for its premise and themes, are taken from episode 24 of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.