What happens in BIONICLE 19: Enemies of Metru Nui?

The comic, titled "Surrender or Run," records the running pursuit in which the Vahki order-enforcement squads of Metru Nui scattered the Toa Metru across the city after their audience at the Coliseum was publicly discredited. The chase split the team into two cells of three, and both cells survived the engagement.

How did Vakama discover his Kanoka launcher could fly?

After a Staff of Loyalty blast turned Nokama against her team, she shoved Vakama off the edge of a tower. During the fall, Vakama discovered that his Kanoka launcher could be activated through his own thought and that a disk's downward thrust was enough to slow his fall and convert the descent into a controlled glide.

What did the Staff of Loyalty do to Nokama?

A blast from a Bordakh's Staff of Loyalty struck Nokama and temporarily converted her into a willing collaborator of order, causing her to turn on Vakama and shove him off the tower. The hold was broken by the shock of her own fall, and Vakama caught her in midair and brought her down safely.

How did Matau escape the Vorzakh in the chute?

Matau dove into a Le-Metru chute to evade the Vorzakh, who responded by using Staffs of Erasing to disintegrate a section of the chute ahead of him. Matau hooked his Toa tools into the chute's ceiling as the section came apart, while the pursuing Vorzakh fell through the gap into the open air below.

What was waiting for the Toa aboard the Vahki Transport at the end?

After regrouping, Vakama, Nokama, and Matau sheltered in the cargo hold of a Vahki Transport airship, which appeared empty when they boarded. A concealed squad of Nuurakh, the Ta-Metru Vahki model carrying the Staff of Command, was hidden on board, waiting to strike.

Surrender or Run: The Vahki Chase Across Metru Nui

The Vahki sweep that scattered the Toa Metru after their failed audience at the Coliseum, the Bordakh's use of the Staff of Loyalty on Nokama, and Vakama's discovery that a Kanoka launcher could double as a flight tool.

By Joe GarrattPublished 17 May 2026

The events covered in BIONICLE 19, titled "Surrender or Run," recorded the running pursuit by which the Vahki order-enforcement squads of Metru Nui scattered the Toa Metru across the city after the team's audience at the Coliseum had been publicly discredited. The chase split the Toa into two cells of three. Vakama, Nokama, and Matau ran from a Bordakh squad across the towers of Ga-Metru and into the chute system of Le-Metru. Whenua, Onewa, and Nuju ran from a Rorzakh escort through the tunnels of Onu-Metru. Both cells survived the engagement, but the second leg cost Nokama brief possession by a Staff of Loyalty, Whenua brief surveillance through a Staff of Presence, and the team as a whole the discovery that even the Vahki, whom Vakama had been brought up to think of as guardians of Matoran order, were now hunting them on standing instructions from the false Turaga Dume.

TL;DR

After the Toa Metru's audience at the Coliseum had been discredited and the false Turaga Dume had declared them imposters, the team broke into two cells and fled the Vahki squads dispatched to bring them in. Vakama, Nokama, and Matau were chased across a tower by a Bordakh squad armed with Staffs of Loyalty. A Staff of Loyalty blast struck Nokama and converted her temporarily into a willing collaborator who turned on her team and shoved Vakama off the tower's edge. In the fall, Vakama discovered that his Kanoka launcher could double as a flight tool when activated through his own thought, and used it to stabilise his fall, level out, and engage the Bordakh ground squad with two Shrink Kanoka that reduced them. Above him, Matau wrestled Nokama at the edge until she went over; he caught her by the foot, lost his grip, and the shock of the second fall broke the Staff of Loyalty's hold, with Vakama catching her on the way down. Matau himself dived into a chute to evade his pursuers. Vorzakh used Staffs of Erasing to destroy a section of the chute and trap him; he hooked the ceiling with his tools as the section disintegrated and the Vorzakh fell out below him. In parallel, Whenua, Onewa, and Nuju were marched through underground tunnels by a Rorzakh escort. They planned to break at a side passage. Whenua was struck by a Staff of Presence without realising it, giving the Rorzakh live audiovisual feed through his senses. The three Toa broke as planned, ran in circles for hours, and were cornered at a dead end, with Nuju beginning to doubt his own competence as a Toa. The two cells regrouped. Vakama, Nokama, and Matau sheltered in the cargo hold of a Vahki Transport airship and departed on it, with Vakama increasingly certain that a directing intelligence was running the events of the city against them. A squad of Nuurakh was hidden on board, waiting to strike.

After the Coliseum#

The events of this period followed directly on the failed audience at the Coliseum at which the Toa Metru had presented the six Great Disks and the six Matoran holders to Turaga Dume, expecting confirmation as the city's official Toa. Dume had instead descended from his arena box, expressed public surprise at the team's claim, reshaped the Akilini floor into a Sea of Protodermis challenge that exposed their inexperience with their own powers, and declared them imposters. The crowd that had cheered their entry watched them flee.

The Toa did not yet know that the Dume who had received them was Teridax wearing the form of the missing Turaga. Vakama suspected during the chase that the events of the audience had been arranged against them in advance, a suspicion he refined to the level of confident inference by the time the cell he ran with sheltered in the Vahki Transport. The instruction that put the Vahki into the field had carried the authority of the Turaga' office, and the Vahki followed Dume's orders without distinction. The chase therefore opened against an order-enforcement apparatus that had no internal mechanism for questioning its own deployment.

The team split as the Vahki closed. The first cell consisted of Vakama, Nokama, and Matau, nearest the Coliseum's Ga-Metru side; the second of Whenua, Onewa, and Nuju, driven downward toward the Onu-Metru tunnel network.

The Bordakh tower chase#

A squad of Bordakh, the Ga-Metru Vahki model, took the first cell on the roof of a tall structure near the metru border. The Bordakh carried the Staff of Loyalty, a weapon whose effect temporarily converted any Matoran-class target into a zealous adherent of order, willing to identify and help apprehend any lawbreakers known to them. The staff had been observed in earlier operations, including the pacification of a Ga-Matoran named Marka, but had never previously been turned on a Toa.

A blast from a Staff of Loyalty struck Nokama. The conversion was immediate. Nokama turned on Vakama, advanced on him before he could process what had happened to her, and shoved him bodily off the edge of the tower. Vakama went over backwards into the open air. The fall was long enough that he had time to assess his options. He saw more Bordakh on the ground waiting for him to land. He noticed that his Kanoka launcher was strapped within reach.

Vakama discovered, in the fall, that the launcher could be activated through his own thought rather than through a manual trigger, and that the disk's downward thrust was sufficient to slow his fall, level his trajectory, and convert the descent into a controlled glide. He did not have time to verify the principle on the way to the discovery. He used it on instinct, stabilised, and engaged the ground squad. He launched two Shrink Kanoka at the Bordakh waiting below him. Both disks struck. The squad was reduced to a fraction of its previous size, and the threat it had constituted was neutralised before Vakama reached the ground.

Above him on the tower, Matau had closed with Nokama. The two grappled along the edge. Matau shoved her clear of his own position to break her grip on him, and she went over the edge after Vakama had. He reached out and caught her by the foot as she slipped. The grip did not hold. Nokama fell. The shock of the fall, or the impact at the bottom of it, broke the Staff of Loyalty's hold on her and restored her to herself in the instant before she would have hit the ground. Vakama, still on his own controlled descent from the first fall, caught her in midair and brought her down safely with him.

The Vorzakh chute attack#

Matau himself was not finished with the chase. The Vahki squads now closing on his position were Vorzakh, the Le-Metru model, lazy in their preference for ending pursuits quickly and equipped with the Staff of Erasing, a weapon which could temporarily disable the higher mental functions of a Matoran-class target and leave only their motor functions intact. The Vorzakh had standing local use for the staff as a crowd-control device; the Le-Matoran had given the resulting victims the name "shamblers."

Matau declined the engagement and dove into the nearest chute. The chute network of Le-Metru was his home territory, and the chute carried him out of immediate Vorzakh range. The Vorzakh squad responded by deploying the staffs against the chute itself. A coordinated burst of Erasing energy was applied to the structural fabric of a section of the chute ahead of him, and the section disintegrated. The intent was to drop Matau into the open air where the Vorzakh could collect him.

Matau reached for the ceiling of the chute as the section came apart around him and hooked his Toa tools into the upper surface. The grip held. The Vorzakh themselves, advancing along the same chute in pursuit, did not have the same purchase. They fell through the disintegrated section and out into the open air below. Matau hung from the ceiling above the gap, recovered the rest of the chute's intact upper surface as handholds, and made his way clear of the engagement zone with the Vorzakh eliminated by their own attack.

The Rorzakh tunnel pursuit#

The second cell ran a different campaign. Whenua, Onewa, and Nuju had been taken in custody, rather than chased loose, by a Rorzakh squad. The Rorzakh were the Onu-Metru model, characterised in Vakama's later Turaga-era accounts as utterly relentless: a Rorzakh was the Vahki model said to have plunged into a mineshaft after a single lawbreaker rather than break off the pursuit. The squad was marching the three Toa through the underground tunnel network of the metru.

Whenua, Onewa, and Nuju made a plan to break from the escort at the next side passage. At the moment of the agreement, Whenua was struck by a blast from a Staff of Presence without realising it. The Staff of Presence, the Rorzakh' signature weapon, gave the operator live audiovisual access to whatever the target saw and heard, with no awareness on the target's part that the surveillance was active. Whenua therefore carried, throughout the escape attempt that followed, a Rorzakh-controlled feed reporting his location, his direction, his conversations, and his intentions back to the squad.

The break ran as planned. The three Toa bolted at the side passage. The Rorzakh followed without difficulty, the feed from Whenua's Staff of Presence telling them exactly where to turn next. The escape ran in circles for hours. The three Toa doubled back on their own trail, chose new directions at random, and watched the Rorzakh close on each new position with no apparent effort.

The pursuit ended at a dead end. The Rorzakh cornered the three of them against a wall the tunnel did not continue past. Nuju, in this position, began to express open doubt about his own competence as a Toa. The doubt was not idle: the chase had run the three of them through the underground network in circles for hours without producing a single escape route, and the dead end appeared to confirm that the chase had been planned with knowledge of their movements they could not account for. The cell survived the engagement, but the moment marked the first occasion on which a member of the Toa Metru had openly questioned the team's destiny under fire.

The Vahki Transport and the Nuurakh ambush#

The first cell, regrouped with Matau clear of the chutes, took shelter in the cargo hold of a Vahki Transport, one of the heavy disk-driven airships used to move Vahki squads and equipment between the metru. The hold was empty so far as Vakama, Nokama, and Matau could see when they boarded it. The departure proceeded normally and the airship lifted clear of the immediate engagement zone.

Vakama used the transit to consolidate the inference the chase had been pushing on him. The Vahki had not behaved as the city's protectors. They had deployed against the Toa of Metru Nui as if the Toa were the most dangerous lawbreakers the city had produced. The Staff of Loyalty had been turned on a Toa for the first time recorded. The Staff of Presence had been used as a tracking device against a Toa cell that included a Onu-Matoran-derived Toa who should have been able to identify the technique. The Staffs of Erasing had been used not on a target but on the structural fabric of the city itself to deny a Toa cover. None of this fit a simple misidentification of the team. Vakama concluded that something larger was directing the operation against them and that Turaga Dume's personal involvement was not coincidental.

The conclusion was correct. The cargo hold of the Vahki Transport the three Toa had taken shelter in contained a concealed squad of Nuurakh, the Ta-Metru Vahki model, fastest of the standard frames and the model that preferred to lie in wait of a target and surround it on signal. The Nuurakh carried the Staff of Command, a weapon which could fill a Matoran-class mind with a single overriding directive that would hold for hours after the strike. The squad had not moved during the boarding. The squad was waiting.

The events recorded under the title Enemies of Metru Nui closed on the Toa' apparent escape, with the trap set for the next encounter and the team unaware that the cell that had survived the Bordakh chase and the Vorzakh attack had carried its next ambush aboard the airship that had taken it clear of both.

Frequently asked questions

What happens in BIONICLE 19: Enemies of Metru Nui?: The comic, titled "Surrender or Run," records the running pursuit in which the Vahki order-enforcement squads of Metru Nui scattered the Toa Metru across the city after their audience at the Coliseum was publicly discredited. The chase split the team into two cells of three, and both cells survived the engagement.
How did Vakama discover his Kanoka launcher could fly?: After a Staff of Loyalty blast turned Nokama against her team, she shoved Vakama off the edge of a tower. During the fall, Vakama discovered that his Kanoka launcher could be activated through his own thought and that a disk's downward thrust was enough to slow his fall and convert the descent into a controlled glide.
What did the Staff of Loyalty do to Nokama?: A blast from a Bordakh's Staff of Loyalty struck Nokama and temporarily converted her into a willing collaborator of order, causing her to turn on Vakama and shove him off the tower. The hold was broken by the shock of her own fall, and Vakama caught her in midair and brought her down safely.
How did Matau escape the Vorzakh in the chute?: Matau dove into a Le-Metru chute to evade the Vorzakh, who responded by using Staffs of Erasing to disintegrate a section of the chute ahead of him. Matau hooked his Toa tools into the chute's ceiling as the section came apart, while the pursuing Vorzakh fell through the gap into the open air below.
What was waiting for the Toa aboard the Vahki Transport at the end?: After regrouping, Vakama, Nokama, and Matau sheltered in the cargo hold of a Vahki Transport airship, which appeared empty when they boarded. A concealed squad of Nuurakh, the Ta-Metru Vahki model carrying the Staff of Command, was hidden on board, waiting to strike.

Sources

ComicBIONICLE 19: Enemies of Metru Nui — DC Comics, July/August 2004 LEGO Magazine and BIONICLE.com, August 27 2004. Primary source for the chase and capture sequences.
BookBIONICLE Adventures 4: Legends of Metru Nui — Greg Farshtey, Scholastic, 2004. Novelisation of the Coliseum audience that precipitated the Vahki pursuit recorded in the comic.
VideoBIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui — Parallel screen depiction of the Coliseum audience and the subsequent flight of the Toa Metru into the metru.
WikiBordakh — BS01 entry on the Ga-Metru Vahki and the Staff of Loyalty used to turn Nokama against her team.
WikiVorzakh — BS01 entry on the Le-Metru Vahki and the Staff of Erasing used to destroy a chute section in pursuit of Matau.
WikiRorzakh — BS01 entry on the Onu-Metru Vahki and the Staff of Presence used on Whenua during the tunnel escape attempt.
WikiNuurakh — BS01 entry on the Ta-Metru Vahki ambush squad concealed aboard the Vahki Transport at the close of the events.

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