Island of Power/Chapter 3

No Turning Back
"So, what's the plan?"

"I don't know. Who needs plans?"

"Don't we?"

"Of course not! Plans stink! A plan got us here!"

"Good point."

"Of course. After all, it wouldn't be appropriate if we disagreed, would it?"

"No, it wouldn't." "We only make VERY SIMPLE plans, like 'beat our enemies up until they die.'"

"You're right, that is a good plan, but who are our enemies?"

"Just follow my lead, straight arrow, and everything will make sense." Now, these words were all spoken by Zartok because he had developed a Multiple Personality Disorder, and it was tearing his mind apart...literally.

Rayzok was content. He was days away from ruling Crystal Island in the Brotherhood's name. He had his Accelerator, he had his master plan, he had his army, he had his loyal lackeys, he had everything he needed except weak morons to blast to powder. For a tiny moment he wondered if this was the right way to defeat his enemies, through schemes and overwhelming force. Perhaps he should try to do it the old-fashioned way, through one-on-one battle. That impulse lasted about sever one-thousandths of a second. Still, it made him stop to think about his actions. Was he sure that deception and use of overwhelming force was the right way to go? Maybe he should take a cue from Master Lieutenant Antroz, and fight his enemies honorably. That was what the Makuta used to be, after all, honorable benefactors and protectors of the universe. Rayzok smiled in amusement that he was even thinking such things at all. He would of course fight with schemes and overwhelming power. That was how he rolled. And it didn’t matter what the Makuta used to be, it mattered what they were now. They used to be servants, not they were on their way to becoming ultimate masters. There was no turning back for them.

Voran was beside himself. He wasn't a Toa, Rayzok told him, he was fulfilling a duty not his. He had lost what he had believed was hid destined mission. He still helped out his friends, but no longer even tried to act as a leader of anyone. It wasn't his place, he thought. It was the place of a Toa, one more honorable and valiant than he. He was unfit to lead them. And the fact that a Makuta had let him know about this was slightly disturbing as well. As he thought these thoughts, Voran began to not believe them. True, a Toa might be a more effective leader, but they were prone to individual flaws just like any other race. And besides, if Voran didn’t consider himself fit to lead simply because he was a Runask, why did he want to dump all the responsibility on his kinsman Suntrah? No, Voran would still have to lead this team. He had been elected co-leader with Suntrah, and he intended to honor that office. There was no turning back from a responsibility like that. "Voran, is something the matter?"

The electric Runask turned around and saw Yurdil standing there, eyes compassionate and kind, as always.

"Nothing that matters, Yurdil," he replied. "I'm touched you care about my feelings." “Of course,” she said, as if she couldn’t imagine not caring for his feelings. “Now, what’s troubling you?”

“Nothing,” Voran said hollowly, looking away from her eyes.

Yurdil looked at him for a moment. Then she said, “We still need you to be our leader. To be honest, many of us, including myself, suspected that you were either not a Toa or a very strange Toa, because you were a male Toa of Lightning. None of us suspected malicious intent, however. We trust you with our lives.”

Voran looked at her, surprised. Yurdil had once been a Toa of Psionics, somehow having her elemental power switched to Water when she and her bothers had been depowered to their current states. She used to be able to read minds, but now? No, now she just knows us inside and out, Voran said to himself.

Yurdil continued. “We need you Voran. Suntrah isn’t ready to take all that responsibility by himself yet. He needs you, too.”

Voran nodded. “I know. Thank you for your confidence, Yurdil. I’m sure it will not be misplaced, not on my life.”

"This is very cool," Levuku said to Suntrah in their new base on an islet near Crystal Island.

The two of them were standing over a piece of mechanical artwork. It was a metallic, axeblade-shaped jet glider, which was intended to be stood on and piloted by one of the member of the Avenging Alliance. It was based on the technology that Suntrah’s original glider implemented, the glider he used to ride on when he worked for the Makuta way back when.

"Now the question remains: Who should ride it?" Buraka asked.

Suntah said in reply, "I think Levuku should. He can't fly, unlike most of us, so that thing will allow him to keep up with us and avoid being dropped and splattered everywhere."

Levuku grinned and looked at Suntrah wryly. “Thanks, Suntrah. I feel so much better about myself now. You should consider a career in mental therapy.”

Suntrah chuckled. “Nah. I much prefer to deal with whackos with my gun, not my words.”

“Anyhoo, thanks for the glider,” Levuku said, stepping onto the inactive device.

“Yup,” Suntrah said. “No problem. Just let me ride it from time to time, though.”

“Who’s gonna make me?” Levuku asked playfully.

Suntrah began cracking his knuckles.

“Never mind,” Levuku laughed.

Suntrah laughed, too. It felt good to relax after a stressful week.

Rayzok had a problem. Its name started with a "Z" and ended with an "artok". The Zelnian had schizophrenia and was going doubly crazy, so naturally he was becoming a big pain. ''His constant arguing with himself is keeping me from concocting a way to bug those rebellious pests some more. I really need to kick him out, and I would, if he weren't so useful.''

Still, Rayok had cause for pleasure. He looked at his new toy. ''Beautiful. It’s so simple, so elegant, to amazingly useful in concocting creative ways to kill things.'' He held it up and opened a portal in front of the wall. Time to cook up some char-broiled renegade vermin, he thought as he stepped through the dark portal.

The gateway led to open air, over the northern side of Crystal Island. Rayxok had an amazing view from here, one he made good use of. Off to the northwest, he spotted a small cove of smoke rising off an islet a short distance offshore. ''I remember that outpost. It was used by the Alliance back when they had the Nurtox on the team,'' Rayzok though to himself. As he glided over the islad to the outposts’ location, Rayzok realized that he was getting deja vu. He had done almost exactly what he was about to, to the sanme outpost, some months ago. Just like old times.

He soared over the island and unleashed a storm at the islet where the rebels were. The wind and rain hammered down on the wooden shelter, hail pounding dents in the exterior of the structure. The Avenging Alliance, sitting inside, started at the sudden commotion, and rushed to the door to see what was happening.

Barth poked his head out the entryway, just long enough to get a look around, then pulled his head back in once he received an inch-wide hailstone to the mask. "Well, I guess Rayzok knows where we are," Bartha announced to his team.

“Karzahni!” Suntrah shouted. “He won’t let us rest for even a few days!”

“And I never got to test-drive the glider!" Levuku groaned.

“You’ll get to in a moment,” Suntrah assured him. “Because here’s the plan...”

Rayzok continued to pour his power into the storm, assaulting the enemy outpost with rain, wind, and hail. After a few moments, Rayzok thought he saw a mask poke out of the door, but he wasn’t sure. At any rate, he needed to get the team out of that shelter in order to enact his plan. Time to stop holding back, Rayzok thought. Time for a light show.

With that, Rayzok began causing the storm to unleash lightning bolts at the structure. The first charred the roof. The second splintered the outer layer of wood, the third hit the door, attracted to its hinges. These hinges exploded, causing the door to fall inward. Now the Alliance had to come out soon, or be covered in wood as the structure was destroyed.

As Rayzok had hoped, Suntrah had to cut off preparations early and get his team into action. He had explained the plan to them all, but they had to leave some pieces of equipment in the shelter. With any luck, the structure, when it collapsed, would shield the somewhat durable goods from the fury of the storm.

The Alliance poured out of the now permanently open door into the storm. Each used some sort of power to destroy the hailstones as the approached, with voran keeping the lightning at bay as best he could. He couldn’t have done this if Rayzok were directing the bolts, but he wasn’t anymore. He was, however, keeping with the weather theme of his attack and conjuring a cyclone.

Suntrah gestured to Levuku. The Crynok, carrying the new glider, placed it on the ground and hopped onto it. Flipping a switch, he caused it to hover into the air. Then, looking past Rayzok at a point on the island, Levuku activated his mask.

He rematerialized a good distance behind Rayzok and began fiddling with the glider, trying to steer it. It was tricky at first, but eventually Levuku got it aimed at his Makuta enemy. Upping the throttle with a mental command, as such the glider was designed to accept, he began flying toward his adversary. As he neared top speed, Levuku shouted Turbo! mentally to the glider, and jumped off a split second later. The vehicle shot through the air like a trained falcon, streaking toward its master’s target. The device then plowed into Rayzok with the force of a charging bull, then continued through the air in an arc back toward Levuku.

Rayzok was pitched through the air by the glider, into the heart of his own storm. Hailstones assaulted him as he shot through the air and smashed into the soggy islet, not far from the rest of the Alliance. Now Rayzok was mad. "Clutter, clutter. So much clutter," he muttered. "They really should clean up once in a while." He then shot a fragmentation bolt at the outpost, blowing the whole front wall to smithereens.

"Listen here...!" Voran began, but then Rayzok took one step and disappeared.

“Was that a portal?” Lohrua asked, his curiosity piqued.

“Yes,” came a reply from behind. Lohrua whirled in time to see Rayzok send a semicircular band of sonics out from his hands, the impact shoving the Alliance though another, much larger portal.

Rayzok laughed, overjoyed at the thrill of using his new tool to play with his enemies. As he laughed, he opened a portal for himself, stepping through it and ending up in his fortress. When he finally stopped laughing hysterically, Rayzok looked around. He had appeared out of nowhere inside the dormitory, where Vaturi and Zartok were staring at him like he was mad. After regaining his dignity, Rayzok exited the dormitory and made his way to a chamber. A chamber where amazing things were happening.

The Makuta entered the chamber, the door leading to an observation platform. As he looked out over the observation platform at his work, Rayzok just stood and pondered. He was simply getting a moment’s respite before heading into his fortress to do his enemies in. There was at least a few minutes to spend massaging his ego, he was sure.

After a few minutes, Rayzok paused at the sound of knocking. No, not knocking. More like pounding...on the wall. Suddenly the whole wall behind him exploded.

"You can't run any further, Rayzok!" shouted Suntrah. "We've got you in your home turf."

"Who needs to run except you?" the Makuta replied as he shot a blast of plasma from his hand. The group scattered, dodging the blast.

Suntrah, Voran, and Buraka returned with blasts of their own, but Rayzok rendered himself intangible, thus preventing himself from sustaining any injury.

Suntrah ordered everyone to stand down, but looked at Panuko in a unique way. That was the veteran Crynok’s cue to charge. Rayzok chuckled, seeing the Crynok apparently disobeying orders, and began formulating some killer taunt for the Alliance to get an earful of. And instant later, he received an image from Panuko’s mind which suggested that the Crynok wasn’t disobeying orders after all.

This distracting line of thought gave Panuko enough time to launch a flying kick and phase out of tangibility in midair, allowing him to match Rayzok’s density and land the kick with full force on Rayzok’s chest.

Gasping, Rayzok stumbled backward and disappeared once more.

"Now what?" Levuku asked, flying his glider in through a window behind the Alliance, in the room they just smashed though to get to Rayzok.

"It's as if he just wants to lead us all over the place," Runik thought aloud.

"It's working," Buraka commented.

With a swish, another gateway opened, and Vaturi, Thranatuka, and Zartok charged through. Thranatuka tossed a stasis field in Buraka’s direction, immediately removing her as a threat. Vaturi twirled her blades at high speed, plowing into her former teammates with a shrill battle cry. Lohrua tossed bits of rubble in the path of Vaturi’s blades to defend himself, while Levuku shifted his position to hover his glider’s heavily armored underside between himself and Vaturi.

Suntrah fired an explosive charge at the airborne Zartok, who was not holding back with the disintegration bolts in the slightest. Zartok dodged, barely, and immediately returned fire. Suntrah dove and rolled as the floor where he had been standing crumbled to nothing behind him, revealing a hallway below.

The depowered Toa were losing to Thranatuka, who kept shooting them as they tried to get within a reasonable distance of him and without the range of Zartok’s “Rain of Death,” as he was calling it now in his maniacal rantings up above. Voran tried to pull an electromagnetism on Zartok and stick him to the metallic ceiling, but Zartok’s bolts kept ruining his concentration.

Zartok noticed his efforts, though, and rained more bolts down on Voran while saying, “Feel it, old man! Feel it! "Hahahahahahaha! Hahahaha-" BAM! Suntrah’s rifle did its job well, landing a metal slug to Zartok’s skull casing. It didn’t do any real penetration, but the force knocked him out instantly.

Now that Zartok was out for the count, Vaturi and Thranatuka were out numbered by two more. Thranatuka feigned distraction and emotional distress at Zartok’s defeat, long enough for the diminutive Toa to rush in. With a smile, Thranatuka took the the sky just before they reached him, and they almost collided with each other. As he rose, Thranatuka hurled a stasis field straight down, capturing all of his little enemies in it.

He then turned his flight into a huge leap, flipping over and landing in front of Voran and Suntrah. By reflex, the two of them fired their powers at him, Voran launching lighting, Suntrah firing Black Lightning. Thranatuka had no choice but to try to capture their powers in a stasis field, since he was in a bad position to dodge. This was a terrible mistake and a genius tactic at the same time, since the two energy surges were forced to try to mix inside the field.

Black lightning and regular lightning do not mix. Ever. The two streams reacted, transforming instantly into pure energy and blasting Thranatuka backward and into unconsciousness. At the same time, the move was a stroke of genius, or at least dumb luck, since the immense energy surge also downed Voran and Suntrah.

Now only Vaturi remained. She had been facing the explosion, with Lohrua, Levuku, and Panuko having their backs to it. When it happened, Vaturi shielded her eyes, since she saw it coming.

Now things happened very quickly. Levuku, Lohrua, and Panuko all whirled in shock to see what had happened. Vaturi used this opportunity to knock Lohrua out immediately, then Levuku a split second later. Panuko heard Lohrua fall and correctly guess what had happened. Just before Vaturi knocked him out as well, he phased out of solidity and let Vaturi’s blow carry her forward. Then, with a lunge, Panuko’s staff was thrust forward into Vaturi’s back armor.

“That’s what you get for being a backstabbing weasel,” Panuko said as his friend turned foe began to ice over.

Panuko, the last one standing, turned to look things over. The Toa and Buraka were already standing, getting their bearings. Their stasis fields had gone out along with Thranatuka’s consciousness. Voran and Suntrah needed to be roused, then Voran was available to give Levuku and Lohrua a jump-start with some electricity.

Suntrah wasted no time in rallying the troops. “Well, lets get out of here. It appears that Rayzok is trying to lead us somewhere, or he is just playing with us. At any rate, we need to take him out. If we simply try to leave, he’ll appear in our path and block us.”

The team nodded in agreement. Suntrah continued, “Let’s head for the central block of the fortress. That way we’ll have the best chance of running into him.”

As the team turned to go, Bartha spotted something. “Hey, guys,” he announced. “Looks like Rayzok left the door open.”

Everyone turned to look. Bartha was right. Rayzok had left the door to the observation balcony open. The Alliance filed through the door, one at a time, and gazed at what was occurring.

“He’s still at it, I see,” Suntrah said grimly. “Still harvesting Lightning Crystals.”

“Huh?” Lohrua asked.

“What?” Voran asked, genuinely confused.

Suntrah’s brow rose. “What? You didn’t know that?”

“No.” Voran replied.

“I always assumed that you did,” Suntrah confessed. “I suppose I should have made sure. Anyway, yes. Rayzok has been using the Scorpio-Spiders to collect what he and Burtok had Thranatuka and the Vahki Ultima do for months, it seems. The glowing crystal on the beaches here is a viable power source for weapons and circuitry, and the Makuta want it for a resource.” Looking out at the collection going on, Suntrah’s eyes narrowed. “Seems like he’s building something new, though. And it must not be far.”

“Let’s find it, then,” Voran said. “As long as we’re here, why not do some reconnaissance?”

Suntrah smiled. This was the Voran he knew, coming back from his period of self-doubting. It was good to have him back.

“Let’s do this, then,” Lohrua agreed.

“Yes, let’s,” Yurdil said.

With that, the team set out, but almost immediately after walking past their unconscious enemies, there was a problem.

“Zartok’s gone.” Levuku announced.

“Don’t worry,” Voran assured him. “If anyone sees him, attack on sight, and take him out quick. We can’t waste time on taking out Rayok’s minions. He’s the real threat.”

As the team searched, it became obvious to them more and more how twisted the Makuta really were. The halls of the fortress were made of blackened metal, with occasional bits of rock sticking out of gaps in the metal tiles, giving a wicked appearance to the interior. Also, the dim, gray lighting from what few windows and lightstones the fortress did contain did not help the place seem any more homely.

"This is creepy. Really, really creepy," Yurdil murmured the Alliance walked through the place. “I mean, why on earth must this place really look like what you think it ought to look like on the inside? Are Makuta really that shadowy?”

Suntrah looked over his shoulder at her. “Once Rayzok told me that if he and Burtok were the only ones in the place, it would have had no light in it at all.”

Yurdil paused to ponder that. “For once, I am glad that Rayzok has his minions.”

“Hey, people,” Levuku said from up front, just beyond Voran. “Here’s something interesting.”

The team gathered around the door Voran and Levuku found in a few short moments. Once they had gathered, Voran pulsed electricity through the knob of the door, heating it up, then smashed it with his tool. Levuku, glider strapped to his back, pushed the door open with his staff. His comrades followed him, with Buraka, Voran, and Runik usign their powers to light up the dark chamber.

What they saw was impressive. In the center of the chamber was a giant device of some kind, one that looked remarkably like...

“A cannon,” Lohrua breathed.

“Energy?” Panuko asked, intrigued.

Lohrua ran a scan of the device with his mask, then shook his head. “No, its designed to fire a solid projectile. But not very hard, remarkably, for the projected volume of it ammo slot.”

“Is it a weapon, or a transport device?” Suntrah asked.

Lohrua turned around. “Sort of. It fires capsules, hollow ones, which can be filled with various chemicals or other materials and cargo. Exactly what this cannon was built for is unclear.”

“Does it matter?” Bartha asked.

Suntrah shook his head. “No. If we can’t determine what it’s supposed to do, we must assume that it is maliciously designed. It probably would turn out to be anyway, but still.”

“Then may I pulse it out of its misery?” Buraka asked, grasping her staff tightly.

“Go right ahead,” Voran agreed.

Buraka charged, getting ready to stab the machine with her staff. She hit something solid, but invisible and flew back, landing hard on the floor. She got up almost immediately, unharmed.

Suntrah fired several rounds at it, only to see them bounce off harmlessly several feet from the device. "It's shielded," he concluded. "Rayzok doesn't want it wrecked."

"Obviously," Bartha muttered.

Jahvoka had been looking at the device for some time, and now he thought he had noticed something. “It looks like it’s building itself,” he said.

Everyone else looked as well. Lohrua caught a glimpse of something moving inside the cannon’s relatively air-filled support structure, but that was enough for his mask to lock on and scan it. “It is, Jahvoka,” Lohrua answered. “There are little robotic appendages inside its base constructing it from the inside.”

"How crummy," Levuku grumbled.

"How do we get past that shield?" Runik asked.

"Obviously we could shut it down, but we don't even know where its power supply is coming from,” Lohrua said with a shrug.

"I might," Suntrah suggested. "Remember, I used to work for Rayzok, and I know my way around.” With a beckon, Suntrah added, “Follow me.”

After a short walk, Suntrah stopped at a particularly twisted-looking part of the hallway’s wall, and began glancing across its surface. Then, with a flick of his wrist, Suntrah blasted a metal panel off the wall with Black Lightning. This revealed an electric junction box inside the wall.

“Which power cable goes where?” Suntrah muttered aloud.

"Does it matter?" Panuko asked.

Suntrah grinned, and pulled out every cable in the junction box.

Zartok, in his personal dorm room, was irritated at the power outage, and he knew who was responsible. ''This is distracting me from my hourly argument with myself. Time to break out the glowing disks.''

As Zartok reached for one of his custom-made glow-in-the-dark throwing disks, a blade suddenly was across his throat. He yelped, only to have the blade tightened on his neck. “What was that all about?” a voice whispered to Zartok. “Who did that?”

“Did what?” Zartok asked, playing dumb. He immediately regretted it, as the blade was again tightened.

“When I ask a question, smart-mouth, I want it answered,” the voice hissed.

“All right,” Zartok choked. “Some people. That’s all I know right now.”

“Right now?” the voice repeated.

“See I used to know, but now I don’t. Wait, now I do – oops, gone again,” Zartok babbled. “Some things just leave and come back. I really wish they’d stay for a while, but they’re always so busy!” A pause. “Hold on, what were we just talking about? I’m so confused! My head is spinning!”

“You got that right,” the voice commented. “Now listen, lunatic, and listen well.”

Back in the hallway, the Alliance rushed through the darkness to survey their handiwork. They returned to the cannon to find it, shockingly, unaffected. From the light of Runik’s flame, it was possible to see the little robotic limbs working away. A few shots from Suntrah’s gun confirmed that the repulsion field was still in place. Voran cursed under his breath.

“Well, what now?” Yurdil asked.

No one knew. They had failed in destroying the weapon, and also given the Makuta a massive advantage by darkening an entire wing of the fortress’s interior. The situation was bad. It was about to be terrifying.

Lohrua glanced across the chamber. He managed to see a glint of something reflective in the corner of the room. Taking a few strides forward, Lohrua could make out a stack of spheroid objects. Training his mask on them, he scanned them, taking in basic info about their nature and purpose.

They were cannon ammunition. That much he had suspected. They were filled with a virus that consumed organic matter. That was unexpected.

“Guys!” he called. “Here! Quick!”

The Alliance rushed over to examine Lohrua’s find. “What are they?” Suntrah asked.

“They are hollow, crystalline containers, kind of like massive Zamor spheres,” Lohrua answered. “They are the cannon’s ammunition. They are also filled with a virus that consumes organic Protodermis.”

Stunned silence.

“So, this is intended to...consume us?” Runik asked, disturbed.

“Right,” Lohrua replied grimly.

“Well, let’s destroy them, then,” Levuku said, leveling his staff at the spheres.

“No, don’t!” Lohrua shouted, waving his arms. “Your acid won’t consume them fast enough! The virus will escape and devour us!”

“Whoops,” Levuku said, lowering his staff immediately.

“So, what will these do, exactly?” Yurdil asked.

“Suntrah took over for Lohrua. “An organics-destroying virus would spread like a plague across this oasis of an island very quickly. It would consume every living thing on the island, but be stopped by the sea and rock, then die off. It will even destroy Rayzok’s minions.”

“So, Rayzok’s willing to level the island, even kill himself, just to wipe us out?” Bartha asked.

“When did I ever say Rayzok would perish?” Suntrah asked. “The virus would ignore him, since he lacks any organic matter. It would also leave his precious Lightning Crystals alone. Basically, Rayzok is removing all variables from his plan.”

There was a long pause. Panuko spoke up at one point and said, “That doesn’t sound like Rayzok, but it does sound like Burtok. Rayzok would have enjoyed taking us out, not left his work to a virus.”

“Rayzok was Burtok’s apprentice for centuries, Panuko,” Voran chimed in. “The old master must have rubbed off on the student.”

Another pause.

“So, what do we do now?” Levuku asked.

No one could answer.

Finally, Suntrah’s mask lit up, saving the day in the process. “I see him,” Suntrah said.

“Who?” Voran asked, a bit confused.

“The one who can help us,” Suntrah murmured, reporting what his mask told him. “He is the key, but we must find him first.”

“Well, let’s get to it, then,” Lohrua said enthusiastically as Suntrah’s mask faded.

“And immediately,” Voran nodded. “Split up, all. If you see someone new, convince him to help us.”

“But what if he’s not on our side?” Buraka asked nervously. But Voran had already gone.

Suntrah stalled a bit to put his hand on Buraka’s shoulder. “He will be,” he said. “Trust me.”

"Rayzok, someone wants to see you," Zartok reported, standing in the doorway to Rayzok’s sanctum. "He said immediately, if possible."

Rayzok had been just chilling out, killing time while his enemies searched in vain for him, but now it appeared that Zartok had led one of them right to him. Not only that, he had lured the only one who had not been plaguing him for a year, and the only one who would actually be truly dangerous.

Rayzok got out of his chair and strode across the room to meet his lackey. "Thank you, Zartok," he said, backhanding Zartok into a wall.

He exited the sanctum and entered the hallway. He saw no one, and even scanning the area with his mind yielded nothing, but all that did was assure Rayzok that his adversary was in fact whom Rayzok thought he was.

At once Yarik appeared. Yarik was a little, squat creature about two feet tall, with a reptilian head. Rayzok used the diminutive being as a messenger, as his master Burtok had before him. The messenger bowed in his master’s presence. “Hello, Makuta,” he said. “I did not expect to find you here. Can I help you in any way?”

Rayzok nodded. “Yes, you can,” he said. “You can seek out my enemies and keep tabs on them for me.”

Yarik nodded and headed off. Rayzok immediately got back down to business. "Come out, Bultrox," he called softly. "You know what will happen when you confront me, so why do you prolong the agony?"

Rayzok wandered forward, determined not to be taken by surprise. He entered the darkened wing of the fortress. Immediately after that, there was a blur of motion, which tackled the Makuta and pinned him to the floor of the central plaza of the fortress. Rayzok looked up to see an all-too-familiar black and green Runask staring down at him

"Because that part never ceases to be fun," Bultrox replied.

Rayzok kicked Bultrox off him and readied for possibly the last fight of his career. Why was the Makuta wary of dying in combat with Bultrox, of all people? Because Bultrox's sword could disrupt energy fields, magnetic, electric, and Makuta. He could attack Rayzok’s antidermis essence, as well as deflect his lightning and sever magnetic ties. Bultrox's sword was MADE for killing Makuta. Rayzok had defeated Bultrox several times before, each time resulting in Bultrox being mortally wounded.

The trouble was, Bultrox had been mortally wounded many times before. It wasn’t a big deal for him. Why? Bultrox could regenerate his physical form, even to the point of regenerating his body from his decapitated head.

This time, however, Rayzok had added a new wrinkle to the conflict, one he called the Time Dilation Accelerator, which was a portable warp portal generator.

Not that it helped him much at first. Bultrox was so quick with his blows and dodges that Rayzok didn't have time to throw up a portal. Finally, when Bultrox made a thrust, Rayzok managed to grab onto his arm, rear back, and toss the Runask at a wall. He opened a portal right in front of the wall and let Bultrox go through it. Rayzok smiled, reacting to how he apparently had locked Bultrox away for eternity in a dimensional void, which the Accelerator used for a junction between portals.

That was where Rayzok miscalculated. As he opened another to escape, a clawed hand shot through it and started strangling him. "Nice try, bonehead,” Bultrox said, poking his torso out of the hole. “You apparently can’t warp you mind around the fact that it you lock someone in you main venue of travel, you’ll be seeing a lot of them.” Bultrox had correctly guessed Rayzok’s device’ main purpose, demonstrating the clever mind that Rayzok had made his archenemy. Bultrox prepared to demonstrate the highly dangerous enemy Rayzok had also made as he charged up his sword and prepared to strike. "Let’s see if we can make this our final meeting," he growled.

Before Bultrox could respond, Rayzok reared back and shoved them both into the portal. With another application of the Accelerator’s power, the duo reappeared in one of the halls of the darkened wing of the fortress. The darkness was not a hindrance to either to any significant degree, at least at the moment. Bultrox ended up on top of Rayzok once again.

"Give me that piece of crud!" Bultrox demanded, snatching at the Accelerator. "Something like that shouldn't be in the hands of a Makuta! Give it to someone who can use it wisely."

“I will,” Rayzok replied. “Just as soon as I find him.” Rayzok shoved Bultrox off him and unleashed his shadow energies in the form of a huge blast.

Bultrox smiled and reflected the shadow back at him with his sword. It struck the Makuta, but had no effect.

Rayzok laughed hysterically. "Look how well that worked out, idiot!" he shouted. "You might as well have thrown a match into the Great Furnace!"

As Rayzok continued to laugh, Bultrox lunged at Rayzok and slammed his sword into Rayzok's chest. Rayzok went into spasms, his entire body convulsing as the sword began to disrupt his internal energies. To one who was made of living energy, at was an almost unbearable sensation. This was exactly why Bultrox had managed to survive all these years fighting Rayzok. “You’re losing your tough after all these years, Rayzok,” Bultrox taunted. “You used to be all over the place when you fought me. Maybe you’ve been overusing that warp machine and can’t do crud without it anymore.”

”That’s quite enough, slimeball,” Rayzok said, hurling Bultrox away from him with a sonic force wave. Rayzok was in a lot of pain, and was trying his best to stay on his feet. Bultrox used that as an opportunity and charged, but bounced off a quickly generated sonic force field made by Rayzok. Bultrox hit the ground, slid, then hit the wall with his head and did not rise. Rayzok began walking over to his enemy, preparing to strike him down once and for all.

"Hahahahahaha! If we -- I ever saw a ginormous opening, it's now!" Zartok yelled. He ran at top speed and slammed into Rayzok in a flying shoulder tackle before the Makuta had a chance to react. The Makuta flipped over on the ground, so as to be on his back, but that just meant Zartok landed a blow from the pommel of his sword to Rayzok’s mask. Bultrox wasn’t sure why Rayzok’s minion was betraying him, but didn’t care much either. He saw an opportunity and took it. Stepping out of his false unconsciousness, which had been a ruse from the beginning, he kicked Zartok away from Rayzok and started hacking at Rayzok's armor. He tore through, hacking off huge chunks of Rayzok's chest armor, allowing his energies to leak out of his frame. The Makuta tried to raise his sword, but every time Bultrox swatted it away. Finally Bultrox snatched Rayzok's Acelerator and threw it at Zartok, who was on the floor in pain. "Now that you're in excruciating pain, I'm sure, I can kill you as I have dreamed to do for years!" With that, Bultrox charged his sword up, pointing it down at the fallen Makuta.

Bultrox never got to live out his dream of taking out Rayzok, since Zartok was not one to stay down for long. The raving lunatic got to his feet, and before Bultrox could strike, gave the Runask some of his own medicine, kicking him to the floor. Bultrox didn’t stay down long either, but that short time he spent on the floor was all Zartok really needed.

"Hahahahahahaaa!" Zartok cackled. “Now you're totally doomed! Hahahahahahahaha!” Zartok abruptly stopped laughing and gasped for breath. He then reached down and grabbed the Accelerator. "MINE!!" he shouted.

Bultrox rushed over to Zartok, now realizing his mistake in first ignoring Zartok, but also tossing the Accelerator over to him as well. He lunged, aiming to rip it out of Zartok’s hands, but Zartok disappeared through a portal.

Before Bultrox could do anything else about the situation, a bolt of shadow nailed him in the back and launched him across the chamber. As the Runask got up and collected his blade, he smiled. “I see you learned how to fight cheap since we last met,” he said. “This just got interesting.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Rayzok sneered, unleashing a cyclone.

Bultrox dodged this, with his blade glowing brighter as he charged it up for a strike. He evaded bolts of plasma, fragmentation, and sonics even as he reflected any energy field-based attacks and countered with his own strikes.

Rayzok blocked and countered as best he could in close quarters, but Bultrox outclassed the Makuta in every way possible when it came to swordplay. Rayzok tried getting in close and grabbing some part of Bultrox’s anatomy with intent to damage it somehow, but Bultrox kept knocking Rayzok’s arm aside with his own. Rayzok aimed a kick, which Bultrox blocked with his knee. It was a close call. The battle had shifted to some of the darker hallways, and flashes of movement were harder to see and react to now.

At least for the Runask. The Makuta was unaffected, which was an advantage he tried to press. He aimed blow after blow, rotating himself around and pushing forward, so as to drive them deeper and deeper into the shadows. When they had reached a particularly gloomy passage, Rayzok turned intangible, phased through Bultrox, and then fired chain lightning at his back.

This time the Runask was ready. He whirled and parried the energy, the flash revealing where his opponent was. Bultrox then swung his sword, with full charge, at the ground, unleashing a burst of rock dust.

Rayzok fired off rapid bolts of fragmentation, aiming to hit Bultrox as the Runask ambushed him, but no ambush came. This disturbed Rayzok greatly. What disturbed him more was the hum, the noise Bultrox’s sword made while charging, that came from behind him.

Rayzok turned, trying to put his blade in the way, but the Runask was already attacking. The Disruptor Sword slashed through the air with a glowing trail, chopping through the side of Rayzok’s Shadow Reaver, ruining it. The blade then continued through the air and buried itself in Rayzok’s shoulder armor. This didn’t last long, though, as the energy surrounding the sword unleashed itself in a blast, blowing Rayzok backward.

Bultrox began to approach his fallen enemy and finish the job, but he turned at the arrival of a diminutive yellow-and-red figure.

"Uhhh...hi," the figure said quietly. "I think we need your help."

Bultrox gestured for the little figure to wait. He began to walk toward Rayzok, but then a figure stepped in his way. The figure was a Runask like himself, but clad in black and silver armor and carrying a pneumatic rifle.

“Greetings,” the Runask said. “We need your help, as soon as possible.”

“All right,” Bultrox said shortly. “I need to take care of something first.”

The other Runask shook his head and said, “He’s gone already. You knocked him backward into a teleport, it seems.”

Bultrox started at this being’s knowledge of the situation. “Oh, and how do you know all this?”

Suntrah tapped his mask. “We need your help,” he repeated.

Bultrox scowled. “Another opportunity ruined.” A pause. “Fine. What is it you need from me?”

A little later the Alliance and Bultrox were gathered around the cannon they had found earlier, ready for Bultrox to use his Disruptor Sword to pierce the force field surrounding the cannon. This he wasted no time in doing, and soon the Alliance had shown him to the other twenty-three cannons and watched as he opened those up as well.

As each cannon was opened, the alliance members went to work filling up the cannons with a bit of a surprise for Rayzok, which Lohrua and Suntrah wired into the c nnons’ trigger mechanism. Also, they rigged the ammunition-feeding mechanism to simply bring all the ammunition for each cannon closer to the weapon, nothing else.

With that done, Bultrox made himself scarce, saying that Rayzok would be after him any second. The Makuta did not disappoint, showing up a few moments later by blowing a hole an a wall, allowing light to spill into the fortress from another wing. Rayzok was standing in the light, highlighted as a silhouette against the well-lit corridor behind him.

“You still owe me a dance, Bultrox,” he said. He was battered, almost limping, but still alive. And he was very, very angry, determined to not let Bultrox off the premises without the fight of his life.

Bultrox charged. Rayzok didn’t bother engaging in swordplay. In their first confrontation, he had been rationing his power usage, making sure that he would have enough to deal with the Alliance. Now he let his power flow forth with ill abandon, blasting Bultrox with shadows, electricity, gravitic waves, plasma surges, and various weather-based powers. The onslaught was almost too much for even the highly resilient Bultrox to stand against, and even then was constantly regenerating bits of armor that the assault was shaving off him.

The Voran and Suntrah didn’t feel great about leaving Bultrox alone, but they knew that none of their number could withstand an assault like that, and, despite protests from some of their teammates, called a tactical retreat. The only reason they did this, though, was because Suntrah’s mask, once more proving its invaluable nature, saw that a monkey wrench was about to get thrown in Rayzok’s machine of revenge.

That monkey wrench was named Zartok, and showed up almost precisely as the Alliance cleared out, via a black portal, which opened up behind Rayzok. Zartok then quickly opened up a portal in front of Rayzok’s power surge, which traveled back through the previous portal, smashing into its master, who plunged into the portal in front of him. He then flew out of the portal behind Zartok, who got out of the way in time to avoid being tackled.

Zartok then opened several portals in a circle around Rayzok, and one above him. Zartok then opened a portal of his own, and stepped into it, and hovered in the dimensional void. In front of him were all the portals he surrounded Rayzok with, and through each he could see the Makuta turning around constantly, unsure of what to do. Zartok began pouring disintegration bolts through the various portals, the projectiles all whizzing by the Makuta. Rayzok didn’t stay still. He leaped and dodged as best he could, then dove through one of the portals.

Just as he expected to, he ended up right in front of Zartok. As the Makuta approached through the void, power crackling around his hands, Zartok retreated through his own portal.

Bultrox had been watching this unfold, and expected that this would all happen, so he was ready and waiting when Zartok reappeared out of his portal, to which Bultrox responded with a slash of his sword, downing the lunatic with one blow.

Rayzok barely made it through the rapidly closing portal. As he landed, he shoved Bultrox to the side with a quickly conjured magnetism, before Bultrox could react. He then strode toward Zartok, preparing to do in is ambitious lackey.

Zartok realized how great of trouble he was in at this point. Rayzok had him cornered and was just about to kill him. That didn't stop him. He jumped up and laughed."You really think you can beat me?" he sneered. "Not when I have this little gadget, you won't!" he shouted, pointing at the Accelerator.

Rayzok charged at the madly laughing Zartok. "I'll show you how wrong you are, and shut you up at the same time." He smashed Zartok in the head with the side of his fist, smacked the Accelerator off Zartok's arm, then unleashed a blast of shadow out of his palms beyond all that he had shot before. The blast hit Zartok square in the head, knocking him out instantly.

Bultrox, thinking Rayzok had forgotten about him, charged up his sword. A second shadow blast sent him flying into a wall. “Now that you won’t be a problem, I’ll go deal with my other problems, all ten of them,” Rayzok said, taking off down the way the Alliance had disappeared.

The Alliance came around the opposite bend shortly after, finishing their circle around the fortress, which had been done with the intended purpose of avoiding Rayzok and retrieving Bultrox. He was already coming to as they arrived.

"Come on! We're not leaving you here," Voran said. "This place won't be intact for long."

That statement turned out to be true. The Alliance rushed down a hallway, blasted through a wall with several of their powers combined, and leaped out of the fortress. They then slid down the mountain and took a dive into the lake surrounding the mountain, surfacing shortly after to see what would happen.

The surprise the Alliance had rigged for Rayzok had been several pounds of explosives pillaged from a nearby supply room to the cannons, which had been placed in the weapons and set to explode when the firing mechanism was triggered. The result was a detonation that was nothing short of spectacular. Two dozen explosions went off at the same time as Rayzok, impatient, set off the master switch in his sanctum. The virus was completely and instantly incinerated by the explosion, and the explosions themselves tore through large chunks of surrounding rock, caving in large sections of Rayzok’s volcano-embedded fortress. The Avenging and Universal Alliances both saw the climactic event, and both sighed a sigh of relief.

After the detonation, the Alliances got together for a party, which included fireworks, good food (Rupiku’s favorite part) and congratulations and reassurances all around.

As they sat side by side, watching the spectacular show Lohrua and Suntrah prepared, Voran and Bultrox looked at each other and smashed their fists together. Even though they were not Toa, the meaning of the salute was the same. They were allies, bothers in arms. There was no turning back.