Past lives and the Pentoculus
So like, everyone remember the pentoculus plotline that never went anywhere and how The Hand weren't good villains despite their immense power?
So, the Pentoculous is set up as this strange device that is talked abt in scrolls and stuff and is called this 'Key to the Truth of Monsuno', it's a whole treasure hunt with clues and puzzles and riddles they have to solve to even get a possible location, five pieces, five treasure hunts with their own risks.
They have no idea the wild ride they're setting themselves up for to find the pieces.
Team Coretech goes incognito to a museum bc they have a clue that an exhibition is related to Monsunos and the Pentoculus that might help them, one of the objects is suspiciously shaped like Jinja's piece. (The purple piramid)
Among the objects exhibited there's a spear with complex carved symbols, jewelry and a monolith with an ancient forgotten alphabet.
They're trying to figure out a way to inspect them without getting caught, Beyal is geeking out random info on the objects exhibited to Chase, Bren is trying to analize them with his core tablet and Dax is plotting Museum Heist 101.
Jinja throughout the whole thing is getting weird flashes and is increasingly being pulled by an invisible force towards the objects of the exhibition while at the same time Beyal tries to translate a bit of the carvings on the monolith from afar, saying that a vague warning and a riddle is writen, until, dazed, Jinja breaks into the exhibition and touches a triangular symbol on the monolith.
A bright green flash engulfes her and she apparently gets swapped by an ancient huntress version of herself drapped in animal hides, tattoos and archaic but complex jewelry, her hair is darker and thickly braided, the piece of the Pentoculus having been dislodged from the monolith and on her grip.
To say that all hell breaks loose is an understatement. Freaked out and with no idea where she is, the huntress grabs the spear while she's at it and goes full caveman on the Museum guards while running for her life, the rest of the team trying to go after her as she goes on a full parkour montage through the streets, jumping over moving cars and climbing brickwalls like is a sport with people recording and photographing her.
Eventually she runs into a dead end and, getting increasingly overwhelmed by the flashes and the noise of the crowd, with the help of the Pentoculus piece, her spear lights up bright green, charged with Monsuno essence and she blasts the wall blocking her way, escaping into the nearby forest at the very edge of the city.
Team Coretech follows after her tracking the energy of the spear and the piece but she's absurdly good at hiding from them, well into night and no trace of her, she stalks them as well from the shadows but remains hidden, apparently fearful of their Monsunos.
Dax, profficient on tracking and wilderness, is the one that keeps her on her toes the most but is Beyal who gets ambushed by her and separated from the group.
She holds him hostage as she interrogates him in an ancient forgotten language but the more she talks the more familiar her words are to him. He attempts to communicate with her Kida and Milo style, he has studied a lot of forgotten languages but talking them for the first time to a fluent speaker is a whole other matter. Eventually her words start to make sense and they manage to have a proper conversation.
Among the things she does and says one of them is that she invades his personal space to grab at his hair and goes 'You are one from the frozen lands, those with snow on their hair' hinting at the ancient heritage of his tribe and also describes the rest of the team as 'Those who control the Ancient Beasts' (As casual wordbuilding here and there).
Beyal finally manages to ask her who she is and what the Pentoculus piece is for, she says her name is 'Huntress' (Literal translation) and goes on a long tangent abt how she was trusted to guard the Piece and heavily trained in the arts of combat since she was little, never allowed to live the normal life of the farmers, the hunters and the gatherers and strictly prohibited to be courted in any way, shape or form, never allowed to love or run around with other children, feared and respected, prisioner in the walls of the temple she lived in while also never given the full context of her 'Mission', that she was to guard the Piece with her life and eventually train her replacement when she grew too old for it. She explained how the Piece apparently bonded with her soul and aided her when she was in real trouble and she felt her life on the line, also helped her see things beyond mortal eyes (The Monsuno Sight and The Dreaming) she also felt how, the stronger her bond grew, the more she felt someone watching her, someone stalking her dreams and visions but her concerns went to deaf ears.
'They are neither Men or Monsuno, their skin is as pale as milk and their eyes dark and hard like gemstones; They talk, walk and dress like men but they aren't alive, They don't breathe, eat or sleep, they don't bleed nor grow old, but they hunger'
'They feed on the blood of Monsuno, on the souls of those connected to the Beasts and The Dreaming, they are insatiable, they are cruel, their hunger is a bottomless pit of greed and violence, They...'
Eventually they are found by the others along with their Monsunos, The Huntress is terrified of Boost and Nightstone and gets on defence mode, convinced she's gonna get torn to shreds by them but Beyal manages to calm her down enough to convince her to touch Nightstone's snout and get the idea home that they don't want to harm her and everyone sits down to keep talking and figure out what the hell happened to Jinja.
They immediately reach the conclusion that Jinja got swapped via time travel and begin to panic.
-''You mean Princess got sent to Caveman Land!?''.
But Beyal shuts that idea down, saying that he can sense the soul is exactly the same and quotes the riddle written on the monolith at the museum, deducing that the Jinja they are seeing right now is actually a memory and not another person swapped in her place.
(No time travel here, idk how the hell to write it and I think the soul projection is more canon compliant)
The Huntress is actually Jinja's past life brought to the present day, triggered by coming into contact with the Pentoculus piece, but why?
Hearing this, something seems to click for the Huntress:
-''Does this mean... I died?''.
Beyal is at a loss as to how to sensibly answer this, and when he is about to try The Huntress suddenly grabs her head as if having a massive headache, she sees memories of two completely different times, two different people, Jinja and her, flash through her eyes at full speed, then opens her eyes and exclaims in perfect english:
'That's right! I remember now!''.
She then explains (Now in english) how one night, her village was invaded by a man with dead pale skin and haunting green eyes, he was looking for the Pentoculus piece and killed anyone that stood in his way with a mere touch, she tried to fight him but she got mortaly injured in the process, she remembered he talked about how he needed her soul to complete 'The Ritual' and how troublesome it was that the Piece favored her so much and rejected him.
In her last moments, she ran towards the main temple and, chanting ancient magic, she sealed the Piece on the monolith and 'Sent the Piece away', leaving a final warning in the shape of the riddle they were trying to solve earlier before...
''Then he grabbed me... And... Everything was so cold...''
The Huntress rests a hand on her neck with a haunted expression that shocks everyone into silence at the horrifying realization.
-''That was what I wanted, send one last message, warn someone, anyone, about the Monsters''.-She said gripping her spear.-''Now that you know this, Now that you have this piece, they will come after you too''.
-''I hope you succeed where I failed... Thank you, and Goodbye''.
She closes her eyes as a green light engulfs her, The Huntress gone and Jinja having recovered control of her body, much to everyone's shock and relief.
After everything is said and done, Jinja wistfully traces the patterns carved over the Spear and the Piece, feeling memories and emotions that aren't exactly hers and yet so familiar, mourning the lonely and tragic life The Huntress lived and how her memories are getting blurry, hesitating to give the Spear up bc she feels connected to it and 'Is tecnically hers anyway' Chase adds.
The quiet moment is interrupted by Bren showing her the Core Tablet saying.-''Yeah, about that... You're viral now, Miss Cavewoman''. And a video of her crazy stunts at the Museum and the street earlier that day, much to her horror.
And that would be it, in canon The Hand is just fully dropped onscreen with no warning and they're literally just 'Hur hur, Evil Magic Scientists That Want To Dominate the World but are defeated by Plot Armor' and in my rewrite I wanted to make them an actual mystery hinted through the chapters until The Huntress situation that describes them as this sort of all powerful Vampire-Esque beings that predate humanity and Team Coretech is left very much spooked and with more questions than answers, kind of a 'Final Boss' villains with Droog as the last plot point to close, (Reincarnation and Past lives are Canon with Chase's past life as the chief of a Tribe being dropped in a flashback by Beyal and I wanted to actually incorporate that into the story), Also The Hand having a generational (Reincarnational?) beef with Team Coretech is such juicy drama X3 I've been inspired by Dandadan's style of plotscaling (Can I call it that?) where the story gets consistenly more crazy and the villains more dificult as the story advances while at the same time the main cast gets progressively stronger to defeat them. (I cannot recommend Dandadan enough, if you can excuse, ehem, the nudity, it's VERY good and will hit you in the gut when you least expect it)
Also been working on a proper powersystem regardind The Hand (Nothing too crazy tho, just an attempt to make Canon points make sense plus an explanation on how their powers and inmortality works plus their weaknesses) Bye!