//------------------------------//
// Prologue 
// Story: The Chronicle of The Hidden Key 
// by Blazewing Inferno 
//------------------------------//

The sound of weapons fire and blades clashing echoed throughout the ancient City of the Mask Makers; a place that slept for a thousand years and within the past month, it had gone from a city lost to the ages to the heart of Okoto, the Toa had been called and the Prophecy of Light was fulfilled and darkness was defeated restoring peace and harmony to the island.  A young child, wearing a badly damaged mask of fire was running from a platoon of 80 identical skeletal warriors, armed with spears and bows, which had a six barrel automatic blaster at its center. The Skull Warrior class of a notorious band of pirates called the Skull Raiders.  

The child’s name was Tunua (Scorch), named for his likeness to Tahu and he was running for his life as they were trying to capture anyone that would be a valuable hostage and who better than the nephew of Narmoto, the Protector of Fire.  Tunua rounded a corner, directly into a dead-end alley; with nowhere to run he braced for the worst.  As the lead Warrior reached out to grab him, a thunderbolt came out of nowhere and hit the whole platoon, stunning them.  Tunua looked up to see a flash of gold and red before being taken by his uncle, Narmoto, to The Forge where all the other Protectors’ families were gathered as it was a safe place and was the ultimate high ground of the city.

           “Are you well?” asked Narmoto, worried for his nephew.  

“I’m fine, uncle; thank you for saving me back there.” said Tunua, hugging his uncle.  

“Your mask!  What happened?”  Said Narmoto, seeing the barely intact mask that had fallen off of Tunua.  Tunua explained that while he was playing in the arena with his friends when the attack started and in the panic, was separated from them and ran into the platoon of Skull Raiders and while being pursued had been hit by the shockwave of one of their bombs and was launched into a wall, damaging his mask.

           “Uncle?” Tunua asked Narmoto, “Who was that being that stunned the Raiders?” 

“Follow me; I’ll tell you as we walk.” said Narmoto, heading to Ekimu’s workshop to get Tunua’s mask fixed.

       	Blaze hails from the city of Metru Nui, where he worked as a mask maker in the district of Ta-Metru.  He was a head taller than most other Matoran and was easily identified by his unique yellow mask.  In his spare time he experimented with combining energized protodermis and antidermis.  One night, a star went hyper nova and a ray of light hit Blaze, rendering him unconscious.  After awaking, he found an unusual weapon resting by his forge: it was approximately ¾ of a bio (1.0275 meters, a bio is 1.37 meters) in length and was shaped like a key.  The bit was shaped like a crown and on the opposing end, the hilt’s grip had black leather and the hilt guard was pure red, hexagonal and had twelve spikes coming off of it and appeared to be made of some sort of steel.  He picked it up and he saw the same thing as the previous night but, at a closer view of the star’s core.  Upon the moment of collapse, the only thing remaining was a fiery weapon identical to the one Blaze held in his hand.  His mind returned to the forge and one name echoed in his mind: 

“Hypernova Keyblade”.  

Over the course of time, Blaze mastered his new weapon and used it to construct a ring-shaped device he called a Hypergate.  After revealing it to the seven Turaga of the city, Hypernova began to glow and from it, a beam of light shot at the center of the Hypergate and activated it.  But, the gate was imperfect and released a gravity wave that sucked Blaze into it.  The device broke into 9 fragments and they fell at the Turaga’s feet.  After feeling like a Le-Matoran just hit him with a level 9 teleport disk, Blaze looked around and saw he was on a very different island to his home; instead of the buildings, transport chutes and aircraft he was so used to, Blaze saw vast jungles and great mountains and before him was a huge city of stone that seemed to be floating on the clouds below it, and the only way in or out was a wide bridge with an observation deck at its center.

       	Wanting to learn where in Mata Nui he was, Blaze asked a blue and gold being who stood about one bio (1.37 meters) tall who had a golden crown-like mask with strange runes on it about this place.  The being said his name was Ekimu and that he was a mask maker; he told Blaze that the island he was on was called Okoto and when Blaze asked Ekimu if he know which way Metru Nui was, the Okotan-as he said was the term for his people-said that he never heard of it.  Blaze was in shock, how could someone not have heard of Metru Nui?  Seeing the new arrival’s confusion, Ekimu took Blaze to the observatory and showed him the charts of the night sky.  It was then that Blaze had learned that not only was he not near Metru Nui, he was actually in another dimension entirely.  After the shock of this revelation had passed, Blaze asked if there was a place to stay.  Ekimu said that he would allow Blaze to reside in his forge at the cost of being allowed to study Hypernova.  Blaze agreed and they soon arrived at the forge which was the large anvil-shaped building that he saw earlier.  Blaze handed Ekimu the Keyblade and shortly thereafter, the weapon vanished with a flash of light from Ekimu’s hand and returned likewise to Blaze’s.  The old mask maker concluded that this weapon chooses its wielder and couldn’t be handled by anyone other than its chosen bearer.  The two studied the blade over the course of the next morning and during this time Blaze learned how to use his weapon to control the elements like the Toa could.  Once finished studying Hypernova, Ekimu moved to a collection of crates and pulled out a red crystal that was the size of one’s fist that glowed with a strange light.  Curious, Blaze watched as Ekimu took the crystal and melted it in a roaring furnace, poured the liquid into a mold and removed a shape that was all too familiar to Blaze: a Mask of Power.  Ekimu then gave the mask to a small red Okotan who sat outside the forge.  After this, Blaze went and took some kanoka disks he always had on him for use of self-defense.  He picked out a pair of level seven disks; one had a grow ability and the other had the regeneration ability, and used a tool called a firestaff to fuse the disks and then carve out a helmet-like shape; a Kanohi Hau Nuva or Great Mask of Shielding.  When Blaze went to put it on to see if he was successful, Ekimu asked what the mask was.  Blaze was startled and instinctively activated the mask’s power, causing it to glow crimson and create a dome of energy around himself that would deflect all anticipated attacks while turning towards the sound’s source.  Seeing that it was Ekimu and that the mask was successfully crafted, Blaze removed the Hau and switched back to his normal mask and explained the mask and how he made it.  Ekimu, seeing that Blaze was an excellent mask maker, offered to teach the Okotan method of mask making in exchange of learning how to make masks like the one Blaze just made.

       	Blaze agreed and both mask makers taught each other all they knew about their art.   Blaze learned that masks here were made from crystals of pure elemental energy and that only one crystal type is to be used in a mask’s creating otherwise its power would go out of control.  Upon seeing how quickly Ekimu made a successful Kakama Nuva-Mask of Speed-on the first attempt, Blaze asked Ekimu how this was accomplished.  Ekimu’s response was that his mask was the Mask of Creation and Blaze nodded and continued his teaching.  After a few weeks, Blaze had successfully forged his first Okotan mask which contained the element of Fire and went to give it to the young villager who requested it.  The villager took the mask and left without a word.

       	After a few weeks, Ekimu took Blaze to a vault that contained a singular box.  And within was an ancient mold that was identical to the mask that Blaze wore and upon touching it, he saw Makuta taking all six elemental forces and pouring the molten combination into the mold and removing a mask identical to the one Blaze wore, calling it The Mask of Ultimate Power; the scene jumped to a great city and Makuta putting the mask on his face.  The mask was veiled in shadow and Ekimu knocked it off Makuta but the mask shattered and triggered an explosion of catastrophic size.  Ekimu explained what Blaze saw and asked how his student acquired his mask.  Blaze said that it was given to him by a being called Artahka, who made it out of protosteel, a combination of steel and protodermis, which didn’t have any powers whatsoever.  Ekimu said that was why he showed him the mold, to make sure that it wasn’t the same mask that Makuta made many millennia ago.

       	Between the various commissions for the villagers, Ekimu helped Blaze perfect his Hypergate design and in doing so, they found that the gate had 9 chevrons that were designated 1-9 going clockwise from the bottom-left and that it was actually supposed to work as a means of travel between dimensions that otherwise couldn’t be reached even with a Kanohi Olmak, the Mask of Dimensional Gates.  A dimension’s address goes as follows: light, 3 elemental forces/unique traits, a ‘home symbol’, 3 other elemental forces/unique traits and darkness.  Using symbols from the target dimension, they appear in a pattern similar to a closing Venus flytrap, ending at the home symbol at the top; then all 9 chevrons engage simultaneously.  Once that completes, the Hypernova Keyblade must unlock it in order for the gate to fully activate; this is its main defense-the Hypernova Keyblade is the only thing that can activate the gate otherwise it just shuts down after the address is dialed.