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Description

Previous: Chapter 8: Blacktron Legacy

Next: Chapter 10: Love and War

----

Fitting music:

The Hydra Canyon - The Res-Q Headquarters

Surface Tension 2 - The LEGOLAND military camp

Perfect Chaos Revival! - Chaos

The Scream Extractor - Inside the Villains Headquarters

----

It's time for one of the most memorable parts of the Kotua Crisis... when Kotua unleashes Chaos upon LEGO City! Bit of a funny story here. Back in 2005, Kotua In Space spent many posts referring to Chaos as simply a "water creature" and did not reveal that it was Chaos until he started searching for Chaos Emeralds, at which point Chronicler of Ko-Koro said something to the effect of, "Oh, it's Chaos? Why didn't you say so earlier?" and Kotua In Space replied, "I didn't? Must've slipped my mind." Meanwhile, since I hadn't played any Sonic games past the Genesis era, I had no idea that this was a reference to Sonic Adventure until late-2007 or early-2008, when I happened to see a cousin browsing a Sonic wiki and reading Chaos's article, so the whole time I had no idea what Chaos was supposed to be and what we were really up against.

Meanwhile, Databoard and his teammates spend the entire chapter in BIONICLE settings and meeting BIONICLE characters, which of course couldn't abide by the rules of the Director's Cut. But this time, with them fighting Rahkshi and eventually Makuta himself, I needed to come up with something a little bit more creative than simply replacing them with generic Mutant Dinos as I had done before. Now, it's a bizarre mishmash of its BIONICLE roots, Pirates replacement, and Dino Attack setting: Atukam and his Sons. I remember the BIONICLE Gen 2 concept art for the Skull Villains really leaned heavily into the tribal aspect, and that's what inspired my depiction of Atukam as basically an evil counterpart of King Kahuka. I was tempted to use the Darkitect instead to heavily foreshadow At War's End, but decided against it since it would be way too early to introduce him... still, there's some subtle foreshadowing in Atukam's discussion of "dark powers of chaos and destruction", as well as every time Chaos pulses purple.

Then there's the Kanoka disks. At first, while they were still on Mata Nui/Enchanted Island, I heavily downplayed them by replacing Databoard's Kanoka launcher with a simple bow and arrow, which would fit the tribal setting. But once they moved on to Metru Nui/Astor City and started relying heavily upon Kanoka and their powers, I decided to use the LEGO stud launcher, which was first introduced in 2014 with the Ultra Agents toyline. Studs are basically disks, right? By saying it was an experimental prototype weapon retrieved from the lab, I could get away with the studs replicating the Kanoka powers even though that's not shown anywhere in Ultra Agents canon.

Finally, there's Zero and Phantom wearing prototype suits of high-tech powered armor, although they first appeared a few chapters ago in the Director's Cut. In the original RPG, this is where Zero's Toa of Earth transformation was first explicitly revealed after tons of buildup, and Phantom was also transformed into a Toa of Fire. BZP Noob #30000 also tried to get Rex to transform into a Toa as well (in a scene that was lost in the hacking incident), though since I was determined not to undermine my Rex-is-really-a-Mutant-Dino subplot (not yet, anyways), I weaseled my way out of that one by having Rex suddenly performing parlor magician tricks to play a prank on Zero. But anyways, Toa Zero and Toa Phantom are now normal minifigs wearing powered armor. I'm sure that won't come back to haunt Zero... right, Andrewnuva199 ?

The original RPG had the first mention of a T-Rex named "Maw" in this chapter. Whether it was the same T-Rex that Rex had tamed or if it was just a common name among T-Rexes, I never bothered to clarify. Here, I've changed that mention to "Sharptooth" instead, and this won't be the last time you hear that name...

As you can see here, Vladek has a... rather unfortunate speech pattern that admittedly made him rather annoying to write. See, I was trying to make him speak Old English since he was from medieval times, but my 2005 self only knew Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe . It was only later that I realized my mistakes, but decided to keep Vladek speaking this way as a running joke... which nobody seemed to notice (except for Jacks, who was too polite to correct me). In the Director's Cut, I had the opportunity to correct this for once and for all, and I was indeed tempted to do so. In the end, I only decided to keep (and, in some places, exacerbate) Vladek's butchered Old English in the Director's Cut because, in my personal opinion, the running joke's punchline in Chapter 32 is just too funny to justify removing it.

The Mutant Vinscale Octomus encounter was sadly lost in the hacking incident, which is why it is merely summarized here. The escape, however, is more or less BZP Noob's genuine reaction to the entire swarm appearing. I was tempted to add "SO MUCH NOPE!" to Zero's dialogue, but decided against it since I thought having the JonTron reference would be too distracting, considering how the Nostalgia Critic references have aged.

And speaking of NOPE'ing out of a dangerous situation, that's why Villains Headquarters swooped in and rescued Rex from Chaos. At that point, I realized that Chaos was way too overpowered if it could so easily destroy the indestructible Silver Scorpion and be completely undamaged from a Mutant T-Rex attack, so I basically flipped the table and walked away from the encounter. A bit childish of me, in hindsight, but it's not like Kotua In Space was leaving me with any options once Rex was nearly drowned without any means of rescue.

Yes, the Truth Receiver is a blatant ripoff of the Scream Extractor from Monsters, Inc., and the original scene in the RPG even ripped off the dialogue. In a manner more similar to the "Meet the Spy" tribute from At War's End, I rewrote the dialogue here to be almost entirely original. It does help make Hooks a much more intimidating villain this time around, I hope.

And lastly, replacing some of the summarized material from the downloadable archive, we have an excerpt from Love & War! This, as you can see, is continuing the trend of directly integrating the Expanded Universe into the Director's Cut where feasible. Since it's now part of the ongoing story and not a separate short story, sections of this excerpt were rearranged and large chunks of exposition were cut out to avoid redundancy. So don't worry, BrikmanMcStudz ... when I get around to the post-final battle of At War's End, I'll be sure to integrate the prelude/interlude(s) of The Storm in much the same manner.

LEGO Dino Attack belongs to The LEGO Group.

EDIT 7/3/2022: Updated to version 1.2. Louis's death has been restored, and some additional dialogue has been added.

Description

Previous: Chapter 8: Blacktron Legacy

Next: Chapter 10: Love and War

----

Fitting music:

The Hydra Canyon - The Res-Q Headquarters

Surface Tension 2 - The LEGOLAND military camp

Perfect Chaos Revival! - Chaos

The Scream Extractor - Inside the Villains Headquarters

----

It's time for one of the most memorable parts of the Kotua Crisis... when Kotua unleashes Chaos upon LEGO City! Bit of a funny story here. Back in 2005, Kotua In Space spent many posts referring to Chaos as simply a "water creature" and did not reveal that it was Chaos until he started searching for Chaos Emeralds, at which point Chronicler of Ko-Koro said something to the effect of, "Oh, it's Chaos? Why didn't you say so earlier?" and Kotua In Space replied, "I didn't? Must've slipped my mind." Meanwhile, since I hadn't played any Sonic games past the Genesis era, I had no idea that this was a reference to Sonic Adventure until late-2007 or early-2008, when I happened to see a cousin browsing a Sonic wiki and reading Chaos's article, so the whole time I had no idea what Chaos was supposed to be and what we were really up against.

Meanwhile, Databoard and his teammates spend the entire chapter in BIONICLE settings and meeting BIONICLE characters, which of course couldn't abide by the rules of the Director's Cut. But this time, with them fighting Rahkshi and eventually Makuta himself, I needed to come up with something a little bit more creative than simply replacing them with generic Mutant Dinos as I had done before. Now, it's a bizarre mishmash of its BIONICLE roots, Pirates replacement, and Dino Attack setting: Atukam and his Sons. I remember the BIONICLE Gen 2 concept art for the Skull Villains really leaned heavily into the tribal aspect, and that's what inspired my depiction of Atukam as basically an evil counterpart of King Kahuka. I was tempted to use the Darkitect instead to heavily foreshadow At War's End, but decided against it since it would be way too early to introduce him... still, there's some subtle foreshadowing in Atukam's discussion of "dark powers of chaos and destruction", as well as every time Chaos pulses purple.

Then there's the Kanoka disks. At first, while they were still on Mata Nui/Enchanted Island, I heavily downplayed them by replacing Databoard's Kanoka launcher with a simple bow and arrow, which would fit the tribal setting. But once they moved on to Metru Nui/Astor City and started relying heavily upon Kanoka and their powers, I decided to use the LEGO stud launcher, which was first introduced in 2014 with the Ultra Agents toyline. Studs are basically disks, right? By saying it was an experimental prototype weapon retrieved from the lab, I could get away with the studs replicating the Kanoka powers even though that's not shown anywhere in Ultra Agents canon.

Finally, there's Zero and Phantom wearing prototype suits of high-tech powered armor, although they first appeared a few chapters ago in the Director's Cut. In the original RPG, this is where Zero's Toa of Earth transformation was first explicitly revealed after tons of buildup, and Phantom was also transformed into a Toa of Fire. BZP Noob #30000 also tried to get Rex to transform into a Toa as well (in a scene that was lost in the hacking incident), though since I was determined not to undermine my Rex-is-really-a-Mutant-Dino subplot (not yet, anyways), I weaseled my way out of that one by having Rex suddenly performing parlor magician tricks to play a prank on Zero. But anyways, Toa Zero and Toa Phantom are now normal minifigs wearing powered armor. I'm sure that won't come back to haunt Zero... right, Andrewnuva199 ?

The original RPG had the first mention of a T-Rex named "Maw" in this chapter. Whether it was the same T-Rex that Rex had tamed or if it was just a common name among T-Rexes, I never bothered to clarify. Here, I've changed that mention to "Sharptooth" instead, and this won't be the last time you hear that name...

As you can see here, Vladek has a... rather unfortunate speech pattern that admittedly made him rather annoying to write. See, I was trying to make him speak Old English since he was from medieval times, but my 2005 self only knew Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe . It was only later that I realized my mistakes, but decided to keep Vladek speaking this way as a running joke... which nobody seemed to notice (except for Jacks, who was too polite to correct me). In the Director's Cut, I had the opportunity to correct this for once and for all, and I was indeed tempted to do so. In the end, I only decided to keep (and, in some places, exacerbate) Vladek's butchered Old English in the Director's Cut because, in my personal opinion, the running joke's punchline in Chapter 32 is just too funny to justify removing it.

The Mutant Vinscale Octomus encounter was sadly lost in the hacking incident, which is why it is merely summarized here. The escape, however, is more or less BZP Noob's genuine reaction to the entire swarm appearing. I was tempted to add "SO MUCH NOPE!" to Zero's dialogue, but decided against it since I thought having the JonTron reference would be too distracting, considering how the Nostalgia Critic references have aged.

And speaking of NOPE'ing out of a dangerous situation, that's why Villains Headquarters swooped in and rescued Rex from Chaos. At that point, I realized that Chaos was way too overpowered if it could so easily destroy the indestructible Silver Scorpion and be completely undamaged from a Mutant T-Rex attack, so I basically flipped the table and walked away from the encounter. A bit childish of me, in hindsight, but it's not like Kotua In Space was leaving me with any options once Rex was nearly drowned without any means of rescue.

Yes, the Truth Receiver is a blatant ripoff of the Scream Extractor from Monsters, Inc., and the original scene in the RPG even ripped off the dialogue. In a manner more similar to the "Meet the Spy" tribute from At War's End, I rewrote the dialogue here to be almost entirely original. It does help make Hooks a much more intimidating villain this time around, I hope.

And lastly, replacing some of the summarized material from the downloadable archive, we have an excerpt from Love & War! This, as you can see, is continuing the trend of directly integrating the Expanded Universe into the Director's Cut where feasible. Since it's now part of the ongoing story and not a separate short story, sections of this excerpt were rearranged and large chunks of exposition were cut out to avoid redundancy. So don't worry, BrikmanMcStudz ... when I get around to the post-final battle of At War's End, I'll be sure to integrate the prelude/interlude(s) of The Storm in much the same manner.

LEGO Dino Attack belongs to The LEGO Group.

EDIT 7/3/2022: Updated to version 1.2. Louis's death has been restored, and some additional dialogue has been added.