Nightfall

Nightfall is a story serial in the Gigas Magna Storyline set in the Matoran Universe. It details Nightwatcher's mission to hunt for the Nui Stone, the rise of Dark Talon, and Leviathos' manipulation into attacking Metru Nui.

Prologue
24,600 years before the Great Cataclysm… 

The rain fell in great clumps too large to be called raindrops. The skies above Destral were opened fully to the precipitation streaming down from the heavens, and a great massing of clouds had come together spontaneously in the sky, something that one would normally believe to be a freak of nature. As a matter of fact, it was the result of a major malfunction in one of the more important weather control systems inside the Mata Nui robot, which the Glatorian pilots stationed in the core processor were trying desperately to fix while Mata Nui made his way through interstellar space, preparing to study the planet of Rantax Magna, completely oblivious to the situation taking place inside his robot body. The Glatorian would have the problem fixed before the week was up, of course, but for now the inhabitants of most of the northern Matoran Universe would have to endure a week of freak torrential rainfall.

Makuta Antidax looked out the thick window of the fortress at the downpour, watching as one of the more cowardly guards turned and ran from his post into the Destral gates, leaving his staff behind to soak in the rain. Antidax watched as the guard raced inside, and with a frightened facial expression that one would normally have while you were being chased by a large Tahtorak herd across the Northern Continent, grabbed one of his superior officers by the shoulder and pointed upwards, shouting something that Antidax was unable to hear through the window. The superior officer was clearly greatly annoyed by this, and after shouting something that Antidax supposed was somewhere along the lines of “It’s just rain, you idiot,” he reached for his long staff and began beating the guard sharply with it on the back. Antidax chuckled to himself lightly and closed the blinds.

He turned around sharply, as if he almost expected someone to be there, and then sighed almost exasperatingly once he saw that there was not a soul present. He began pacing on the marble floor that covered the room, and at one point extended his arm to slowly lay his claws over the smooth surface of the long rectangular conference table that had so carefully been carved from the same marble as the floor. To an outside observer, the sight may have appeared strange. The table was unusually long, and there were only two wooden chairs, one on each end, facing one another.

As Antidax let go of the table with his left hand, he put his other hand to the stone wall, and stopped pacing to face it. He looked at the wall for a moment, fingering it delicately as though reaching for some hidden impression, but he found none; it was just as smooth as the table. He let go, turning around again, again looking as if he expected to see someone. He was waiting carefully, waiting for a being whom he had summoned here. He was a bounty hunter, but he was not affiliated with the Dark Hunters, as one may have thought. He had no need for a leader or comrades; he was a loner, a wanderer. Of course, Antidax found that of little importance; all he cared about was whether he was a good bounty hunter or not.

And, if even the first thing he had heard about this bounty hunter through his aides, sources, and friends (or at least that was what they thought themselves; Antidax had no friends) was true, this Nightwatcher was nothing short of being the best bounty hunter and mercenary in the known universe. He had heard that the bounty hunter was terrible and merciless, and, to top it off, he was terribly blunt, even to the point that he would sometimes deliberately warn his target that he was coming in order to allow them to prepare defenses, and then he would arrive to tear through them. There were stories that this bounty hunter was so cunning that when he was assigned to take down an organization left from the old Barraki Islands War, he tricked its members into turning against one another until there was not a single one left, without even taking out his sword. He was supposed to be terribly powerful, too; there were rumors that, despite the fact that he was only a Toa, he had access to all of the Kraata powers (and more), but he had greater control over them than any Makuta.

But of course, these were rumors and stories, and rumors and stories could easily be made up. Therefore, Antidax did not believe a word of them. But if they were true, then this bounty hunter could succeed in his mission without any cost to Antidax (except, of course, the fee the bounty hunter asked for his services). Of course, if the stories were a large number of terrible lies, then the bounty hunter would go down — and again, it would be at no cost to his employer.

So why was he so worried?

Antidax shook himself. He was brooding again, and when he was brooding—

He looked up for a moment, and only barely managed to contain his gasp of surprise. Across from him, sitting in the chair of the conference table opposite to his, was a large, muscular, heavily armored being that completely defied Antidax’s original expectations. This was clearly no ordinary Toa; indeed, he did not look remotely like any one he had ever seen before.

He stared for a moment at the bounty hunter, who had his elbow on the marble conference table and was leaning his head on it, looking so bored it appeared to Antidax as if he was going to yawn any second. With the hand that was not supporting his chin, he was tapping his fingers repeatedly on the tabletop. He inclined his head, laying down his arm, and looked squarely back at the Makuta with a pair of chilling green eyes that seemed to reach out from beneath his mask and grab Antidax by the throat...

“Please,” said the bounty hunter smoothly in a cold voice that made it sound as if Antidax were already in his claws, “sit down.”

Too startled and flustered to register annoyance at being told to sit down in his own conference room, Antidax pulled out the remaining chair and sat.

“How,” said Antidax, hoping his voice wasn’t quavering as much as the rest of his body was, “did you get past the security system?”

Nightwatcher yawned.

“I teleported in here.”

“That’s impossible. Nothing can get past Destral’s teleportation shield.”

“Are you insulting me?” said Nightwatcher, tilting his head again in an oddly bird-like manner. “I assure you that most bounty hunters don’t react very well to being called nothing. I most definitely can get past the teleportation shield, and unless my vision is faulty, I don’t look much like nothing, do I?”

“That’s not what I meant,” stammered Antidax, though why he wanted to apologize he was not entirely sure. The bounty hunter had awakened some part of his brain that he had not felt… ''ever. '' Not even Baterra Magnus, who was probably the most intimidating being other than himself that he knew, had not been able to manipulate him in such a way.

“Good,” said Nightwatcher. “And for your information, your ‘security system’ is so awful that I believe I could breach removed without the use of my arms and legs, and just possibly my head as well. Why no one’s breached this fortress already is beyond my comprehension, or at least as close to beyond my comprehension as is physically possible.”

Antidax remembered the foolish guard outside in the rain. “I have to agree,” he said.

“Now,” Nightwatcher said, all the mock tiredness and boredom leaving his voice, “why have you summoned me here?” He blinked pointedly, tilting his head and staring at him, and it suddenly occurred to Antidax that the bounty hunter had not yet blinked at all. The realization made Antidax blink himself a few times, and Nightwatcher looked oddly satisfied by this.

“Er, yes,” Antidax responded. “I would like to send you on a mission.”

“No, really?” Nightwatcher answered sarcastically. “I thought you were going to send me to the market to buy some fish from Ga-Metru. Please, get on with it before I become annoyed.”

“Well,” Antidax began, “I want you to steal the Nui Stone. It’s on a small fortress somewhere in the Southern Islands. Terribly risky to break into.”

“Ah,” said Nightwatcher. “You’re a traitor to the Brotherhood. I love traitors. Do you know how much fun it is to watch people betray one another? So,” he added, just as Antidax had opened his mouth to continue, “I suppose you want me to bring it to you when I’m done.”

“Precisely,” said Antidax. “But please bear in mind that this will be very risky. You’re going up against the Brotherhood of Makuta, not some lowlife that someone wants dead for no particular reason. I assure you, they have hundreds of guards, and there are dangers which I do not fully understand. Probably, there are a large number of traps, and—”

“Spare me the lecture, Great Being,” hissed the bounty hunter, and Antidax felt a sudden shock; no one, no one, could possibly have known his true identity. He was one of the creators of the Matoran Universe, and had fled to it after he betrayed his brothers. Luckily, he was able to pass off well enough as a Makuta to avoid attracting too much suspicion, because, after all, not many people there knew what a Great Being looked like. “I am completely prepared to handle anything that comes my way, and more.”

“All the same,” Antidax said, “there may even be Makuta guarding the island. I don’t want you to have to go against them…”

Nightwatcher, of course, didn’t fall for Antidax’s words for a second. “That’s what you want, I suppose. You’re a traitor for the Brotherhood, and you want me to kill as many of its members as possible while I retrieve a powerful artifact, the loss of which is something that could cripple them?”

“Precisely.” Antidax nodded soundly, glad that his point had been conveyed in such few words. “Take as long as you want; I suppose that this will be a very hard mission, and I want to give you some time to prepare.

Nightwatcher snorted.

“Listen, if you wanted me to, I could teleport in, grab the thing, kill a decent number of Makuta, and teleport out. There. Job done. But I’m not interested; I want to go after the Brotherhood with artistry. Do you mind if I take, say, a week?”

“Artistry?” said Antidax, wondering what Nightwatcher had in mind. “Very well. You have one week. No excuses if you fail.”

“Excuses?” hissed Nightwatcher in reply. “Who do you think I am? Some common assassin? I am no common assassin. I am Nightwatcher. Now, I would like to know how much you’re going to pay me.”

“Ten thousand for the advance,” said Antidax. “You get forty thousand more once the job’s done, but only if it’s done, understand?”

He was expecting Nightwatcher to respond angrily and demand that he be paid more, but instead, to Antidax’s mild surprise, the Toa nodded, fixing his green eyes on Antidax intently with an almost hungry look in his eye. “That is acceptable.”

“Good, then,” said Antidax, blinking as he raised himself from his chair. In that instant, Nightwatcher vanished into thin air. Antidax looked dumbly at the chair for a moment, confused, wondering why the bounty hunter had not remained to collect his widgets.

He stood, collecting himself. There had been something so strange about him, much more than simply intimidating. It bothered him; as a Great Being, he shouldn’t be intimidated by a Toa, and he most definitely should not have been so… moved…

His thoughts were interrupted by a pair of sharp raps on the door of the room. Antidax blearily shook his head, feeling as if he had just woken from a troublesome dream, and took a step toward the door. Before he could reach it, a gentle telekinetic push from the being on the other side opened it, and his two accomplices, Velnax and Baterra Magnus, entered.

“I just wanted to see how the meeting went,” hissed Baterra Magnus, the cold voice reminding him ever so slightly of that of the bounty hunter. Baterra Magnus was, so he claimed, a being from the future, come to aid Antidax in his takeover of the universe for reasons he refused to reveal; all he was willing to say to anyone was that one day, a terrible cataclysm would occur, and he had come back in time to prevent it. Antidax was not quite sure whether to believe him or not, but he did understand that the robot was in fact willing to help him, and his mysterious abilities made him a very helpful ally.

“Remind me,” said Velnax, “why couldn’t you send me or Baterra Magnus to do this instead? I’d love to kill a Makuta or two.”

Velnax was a Kodax, a Makuta prototype, a being that he himself had created, thousands of years ago on Spherus Magna. He was terribly loyal, and he made a useful servant. One day, when the time was right, Velnax would become the acting leader of the Order of Darkness, an organization designed to… replace… the Brotherhood of Makuta. For now, he was Antidax’s spy, and when the Brotherhood sent him on missions, Velnax secretly reported to him, only to Antidax he would reveal far more than to his Makuta superiors.

To Velnax’s question, Antidax already had an answer.

“I cannot risk the possibility of revealing our order’s existence yet, or at least not until the proper time. If you were to be captured, then I would have to kill you to keep the secret. And if Baterra Magnus here were to go, he would arouse suspicion. He is not supposed to exist. No, bounty hunters are better; if they die, it shall be of no loss to us, and they can be used to do jobs that the rest of us cannot be spared to do.”

Velnax nodded, satisfied, and clasped his hands together behind his back in order to show that he had no further inquiries. Baterra Magnus piped up again, speaking in his customary raspy, guttural tone: “And in case you were wondering how the bounty hunter is to get his advance, I would like to report that he took them from your personal vault.”

“What?” Antidax spluttered, taken completely off guard.

“Don’t worry,” said Baterra Magnus calmly. “From what I’ve heard, he seems to be honest, almost to the point of insanity. He’ll never break his word. If he wants to, he’ll find loopholes, but if he says he’ll do something, he will. I’m certain that he can be trusted, at least for now.”

“I’m not,” said Antidax, grimacing. “He’s so arrogant, so sure of himself, that I can’t help but believe that he was lying. You weren’t there. He talked about killing Makuta in the way one of us would talk of killing an ant. No one is that powerful.”

“I am that powerful,” said the Baterra, looking both amused and irritated.

Antidax ignored him. “I just can’t help but believe that either he’s trying to cheat us into thinking he’s that powerful when he actually isn’t, or he actually is that strong. I don’t know which would be worse.”

“You sound worried,” said the robot perceptively. “You should get some rest. And Antidax, you sound... uncertain… of this bounty hunter’s abilities. You have yet to see what he can do. You shall see soon how strong he is.”

Antidax opened the door, stepping past Velnax to pass through the doorway, departing for the larger Brotherhood fortress. He turned around for a moment, looking in between Velnax and Baterra Magnus.

“And that,” he said, “is what I am afraid of.”