Kanahka's Chronicle/Entry 8

Entry 8
I sit down once again to relate to you the events of the past week. As a brief preliminary summary, and to get my thoughts in order and supply myself with a guideline for this entry, I will give you the essence here. We had a misunderstanding, we had a fight, and we made some new friends.

As I continue in my journal, I would like to point out that this is indeed a journal. Vohk, I am addressing you now. As long as you persist in seeking out my journal and insist on reading it, I might was well give you some advice. I overheard those comments you made on my tendency to “run off-course” in my writing by “randomly getting off on a tangent like every other sentence.” I would have you know that this is indeed a journal, and it is mine. It is not written to be published to my teammates, and is only intended to serve as my personal chronicle of events here on our island. The only reader I am writing for it myself, and thus I include whatever interests me. If you think my comment about the willow trees was pointless, have at thinking that by all means, but don’t think you can hold it against me.

Now, if you continue reading, Vohk, keep the paragraph above in mind.

At any rate, we the Avenging Alliance are getting along quite comfortably in our new abode, as I imagined we would when I found it the other week, and have no shortage of nutrition or refreshment. Occasionally Matu and Rohko have reported seeing dark shapes like the ones I have been seeing in the shadows beyond the clearing, and we have yet to discover the identity or identities of the silhouettes. As long as they make no hostile moves, however, Matu is content to let them be. He figures that they must not be hostile if they have not already attacked. Rohko, on the other hand, insists that they must be, since what they are doing is exactly the way he would behave if he were examining some enemy’s weaknesses and strategizing on how to best defeat them. Personally, I think both have a bit of truth to their hypotheses, but I feel that Rohko’s conviction is too plausible for us to not take action. Thus I have been sending Rohko and myself out occasionally to search the jungle for other beings. So far our searches have been fruitless.

On one search, I did, however, stumble on something of interest. I saw a group of oddly geometric footprints in the dirt around me. To make my find more intriguing, the footprints continued down a makeshift pathway of flattened and manipulated shrubbery, as if a small group of beings had been shoving their way through them. I followed the path as far as I could, to a point where it diverged. Apparently there were two beings afoot, since the path split two ways. Oddly, though, I could have sworn that there were three sets of tracks before the diversion of trails. I soon found out the reason for this, though.

I continued following one of the paths, keeping a lookout for another being in the jungle as I moved. About a mile along the path, the tracks ended in a chaotic mess of several footprints and other markings, which seemed to me to be signs of a struggle. The area was scarred with burn marks and incinerated shrubbery, but there was no sign of any previous fire. In addition, the path stopped there. It just stopped. Apparently whoever the victor here was had not only cleaned up, but left without a trace.

Frustrated, I returned to the convergence of paths only to find something new. More plants had been knocked aside. The air was different, as well. I smelled something amiss. There was somebody here, and here I was, out in the open like a moron. Deciding to fix my predicament, I tried something sneaky. I held my breath and listened for any odd noises. Hearing something unusual above me, faint but noticeable, I whirled and aimed a spinner at the tree beside me. Instantly the tree seemed to vanish from existence.

Something plunged into and through the ground beside me. There was no trace of any impact at all, as if nothing had ever been there. Another something made a noise like the impact of armor on bark behind me. I turned toward the noise, only to see a bush in my way. Making my way around it, I saw something dart into the shrub, quickly followed by my feeling something metallic impact my back. Falling to the ground, I flipped over to see a blue-armored Crynok female standing over me, carrying a two-sided fighting staff that sparkled with power. She warned me not to move. I complied, not intending to do it indefinitely, but only aiming to show her I meant no harm.

Another Crynok, this one white in color and ghostly in appearance, floated up from the ground as if he were a phantom. Suddenly turning solid, he plunged his staff into the ground near me, which sent a stream of quartz crystals along the ground to encase my chest in crystalline rock.

To put it shortly, these two Crynok apparently thought I was in league with someone evil. They were out to find a renegade member of their organization, the Crynok Militia, and had already lost a partner during their time here. I assured them I had no idea what they were talking about and would gladly help them. The white Crynok seemed to consider it, then nodded to his partner. They brandished their staffs at me, informing me that they did not trust me in the least, but would accept my “assistance” (they put it that way) if I would stay in front of them the whole time.

I asked them who they were looking for, and they said it was another of them, this one in green armor. I suddenly remembered that green Crynok has powers relating to acid. I led them to the spot where I found the evidence of a struggle, all the while chafing as the blue Crynok, Buraka, kept her staff poking into my back. The white one, Panuko, glanced around, and asked me where I thought they had gone. I informed him that I wasn’t sure, but I imagined that the Makuta on the island might have had something to do with it and were stationed in a fortress built into the side of the island’s volcano.

The white Crynok raised an eyebrow at the mention of Makuta, and asked what possible purpose they could have for stationing themselves here.

I told him he could ask them himself.

Panuko didn’t seem to like that comment.

Buraka stepped in and tried to keep us from fighting, asking if I could perhaps lead the two Crynok to the Makuta fortress, since she now thought that the Makuta had not only captured her green-armored companion (I can’t remember what she called him), but also the object of their arrival on Crystal Island, the renegade Crynok I heard about earlier.

Now, I cautioned them that this was a genuine Makuta fortress, and was inhabited with two powerful members of the Brotherhood, the lesser of whom was still able to defeat me and all my friends on his own. The white Crynok asked me who my friends on the island were, and after hearing me list them off, he said, in effect, “Two Matoran. There’s your problem.”

Naturally I hit him.

I’m not sure what impulse seized me at the moment, but I had to defend my friends from ridicule. Panuko shook his head and did that vanishing-into-the-ground trick again to avoid me for the moment. Buraka made a good effort at taking me down from behind, but I managed to parry her initial blow. Immediately she proved herself worthy in close combat, as I could barely keep up with her swift strikes and staff swings. It was all I could do to keep her at bay. I quickly realized that I had lost track of Panuko and that he would be appearing behind me to strike a one-shot knockout blow any moment. I flipped away from Buraka, clipped my blades onto my back, and soared back to camp, making sure I did it in a way that made it easy for them to follow me. After all, I wanted to see them get pounded by Rohko, and that would never happen if they never ran into Rohko in the first place.

Well, suffice it to say that Panuko is brilliant. He anticipated my tactic and aimed at me with his staff, shooting a single crystal out of it at me as I took flight. Getting hit in the gut with a chunk of quartz is not fun, let me tell you. I fired off a spinner into the air, hoping my teammates would at least see it and come to my rescue. I landed on my feet, rolled to minimize the impact, and was met by Panuko standing in my way. He is more skilled than Buraka at close combat, I assure you. About twenty swift seconds and I was on the ground. Buraka was there, too. The two of them assured me that I would be taken into custody for the inhibition of the retrieval of AWOL Militia members and other Manas scat. I tried to tell them that hitting Panuko was a mistake under the circumstances and only meant to defend my friends. I also begged them to not try to invade the Makuta fortress by themselves, for they would never return. Panuko simply said that, if not for me and my comrades, his friends would never have been missing in the first place. He is a sharp one, to be sure.

Rohko chose that moment to make a dramatic entrance, landing on the ground behind me and aiming his shield’s business end toward the Crynok.

“Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll bake you alive.”

I got up and told Rohko to stand down and that these Crynok were not our enemies, despite all appearances. Panuko correctly deduced that Rohko was the leader of our little outfit and asked him what he knew of a pair of Crynok Militia members who had gone missing. Rohko, true to his nature, assured Panuko that he knew absolutely nothing except that the Crynok had better not mess with either him or me or any of the Alliance, lest they feel the burning consequences.

“Avenging Alliance?” Buraka asked. “What or who do you avenge?”

Rohko and I explained our mission statement to the Crynok. They both seemed intrigued, doubtful, but also impressed. Buraka wanted to ask us of our services, and she asked Panuko if it was possible we were making that up to throw them off the trail. Panuko assured her that it was most likely we were being truthful because he had met people like Rohko before, and he doubted that Rohko could have come up with all that on his own and pretended so well that it was true.

I surprised all of those present by offering for the Crynok to join our team. It only made sense, seeing as they would be unable to make headway against the Makuta any better than we could, and since us combining our forces could only improve the situation. Buraka seemed pretty keen with the idea, at least as a temporary alliance and permanent pact of peace between us, but Panuko decided against it. He reasoned that it was a big step to make, since the Crynok Militia didn’t make many true alliances (for homeland security reasons) and that he had no idea whether alliance with our team was the only option. He did, however, welcome us to join him and Buraka on their quest.

Rohko saw that as elitist, but I can see now that he was only being cautious. I bid them farewell, and urged them to call on us if they needed any assistance in their mission. We went our separate ways, the Crynok to scout the fortress, Rohko and I to our camp.

That’s about all that happened this week. We have not seen any further evidence of what happened in the jungle that day, but we have certainly been looking. And we have not yet seen the shadowy things in the forest up close.

I just remembered; a random side note: I mentioned that there were only two paths that diverged from the main one. Yet there were three Crynok in the group when they diverged. I said I later learned the reason for that. Panuko simply used his Mask of Intangibility to phase through the jungle so he didn’t have to hack away at the shrubbery. I just thought I’d clear that up.