The Spark That Started It All

“All right, team. There’s going to be no funny business for this trip. This mission is actually serious.”

Zol groaned as Zanor paced back and forth in front of the ranks of Omega Team.

“Zanor is right,” said Vid, chief officer of the Order of Phantoka from over the intercom. “The situation is very delicate, and the Order and Criminal Control Center don’t exactly agree already. If anything goes wrong, I only have one thing to say: we’ll all be in very big trouble.”

“Correction: we’ll all be in very big trouble after headquarters gets out of panic mode,” interjected Raycon. All six members laughed except for Zanor.

“Julan. What’s our course?”

“Fifteen minutes until we reach Malaneros,” Julan responded from the pilot’s seat.

“Okay, so down to business,” said Spade, clapping his hands together. “How’s the landing going to go, and how are we going to do this?”

“Is there a plan, sir?” Exo piped up. Julan rolled her eyes. They wouldn’t have been selected for this particular mission if they didn’t have a plan. But Julan knew there was a really good reason Zanor hadn’t briefed them all on the battle strategy yet. Their team leader had his reasons…

“Omega Team seniors will accompany me down to the power plant,” said Zanor shortly. “Everyone else will remain in the ship as reinforcements.”

“Your armor should all be fitted specifically for space travel,” Vid piped up anxiously, his mask appearing on the intercom screen. “But of course, it’s the first time it’s being tested in the field. Just make sure you don’t take it off or anything, or your organic tissue might explode.”

“Ouch. Totally got it,” said Zol, examining his space-adapted armor.

“Wait. We’re reinforcements?!” Exo practically shouted, disbelief coursing through his voice.

And there’s the reason, Julan thought, shaking her head as she kept her eyes trained on their flight route, keeping to the task of steering the craft to Malaneros. She figured Zanor had known Exo would protest.

“Nothing personal, kid,” Zanor said as he turned away, strapping on his ice blaster. “But this job’s too dangerous for a rookie.”

“So does that mean I get to go down there, too?” Zol joked. “I’m kidding!” he laughed.

“Malaneros is in sight,” Julan reported. “And there’s the moon Aliyena.”

The planet Malaneros was indeed in sight, an orb of blue, green, and glowing lights against a backdrop of black space. And just in front of the planet in their path of travel was Malaneros’s fifth moon Aliyena, its power plant connected to the planet’s capital, B.I.O. City, by a long, fifteen foot thick cord of wrapped vushunium wire. The power plant supposedly was an important supply for the majority of Malaneros’ electricity through nuclear power. The power was transferred back from the moon to the planet’s central electrical tower. Unfortunately, the enormous importance of the power plant only made the mission more risky.

“There’s definitely something happening there, or else there wouldn’t be that many fire blasts,” Raycon observed, reaching up to the side of his helmet and turning on his intercom camera to record the mission for headquarters.

“Okay, team. Remember the plan?” said Spade cheerfully.

The plan was that the Omega team's seniors Zanor, Spade, and Raycon would descend down on Malanero's fifth moon Aliyena to deactivate a power plant under attack by mysterious criminals. If left alone, the risk of the power plant exploding was much higher. The remaining rookie elementalists: Julan, Zol, and Exo, would remain in the shuttle to act as air cover and provide a quick escape if need be. Julan decided not to mention to Exo that she had been briefed on the plan ahead of time. He was already pretty annoyed that their team leader wasn't letting him be a more active part of the mission.

"We are approaching Aliyena," she announced, piloting the ship directly over the moon, about half a kio away from the power plant.

"Don't get too close to the power plant," Zanor warned her, getting ready to open the shuttle's hatch. Now that Julan looked closer, she could see several firing hover bots flitting around over and around the power plant. If the assistant bots were still there, then that meant the criminals were still inside.

"Don't take it to heart, Exo," said Spade to the young red-armored elementalist sympathetically. "We'll call you down if we need any help."

Or not, thought Julan as Zanor, Raycon, and Spade putting on their breathing masks and leaped out of the shuttle while detaching their metal connector cables.

"Or not," said Zol snidely, echoing Julan's thoughts. He grinned. “Maybe if this mission goes well, do you think I’d get a chance to apply for the elite Toa teams?”

“You have to do something extremely heroic to be considered a Toa,” Julan reminded him.

“Oh, I shall,” said Zol confidently. “Maybe I’ll send a huge lightning bolt and vaporize all the hover bots over there, and maybe Toa Ikra will consider it when we get back.”

“We’re supposed to stay out of the action,” Julan continued, rolling her eyes.

"I never get in on the action," Exo whined.

“Hey, hey, that’s not true. Of course you do! You have the highest record of rookie-captured criminals! Although some of those were milked from Zanor.”

“I don’t think Zanor trusts me around power plants ever since my trial mission,” said Exo, depressed.

“Oh, that thing? So you made one teeny, tiny little mistake…”

Twenty-four, actually, thought Julan, but she didn’t say it out loud. But granted, this mission was considerably more risky than anything else the rookies had ever done. For starters, they were in the Malanerian Belt, which was the corner of the galaxy under the control of the Criminal Control Center. The relationship between the Order of Phantoka and the Criminal Control Center had never been steady or cooperative to start with. If anything went wrong with the moon Aliyena, or Malaneros itself, where the Criminal Control Center was stationed, the old rivalries could resurface.

“I still think we should go down there,” Exo protested. “The whole thing seems very suspicious. I mean, why couldn’t the Criminal Control Center send their own elementalists to take care of the problem?”

“Uh, because the Criminal Catchers are lazy?” Zol tried. He and Julan looked at each other and shrugged. She didn’t know either.

A sudden flash of light startled her, which was followed by an explosion hard enough to shake the ship. Zol and Exo were knocked off their feet, and if Julan hadn’t been wearing her safety belt, she probably would have been too.

“What in the world was that?!” she yelled, jolting the control stick furiously as she tried to regain control of the shuttle.

“An explosion from one of the stacks of explosives below,” Zol shouted back as he picked himself off of the floor of the shuttle. “If another one goes off, it could hit one of the power plant’s quadrants.”

Another flash rocked the shuttle as another explosive crate went off below them. Looking out the window caked with moon dust, Julan saw the hoverbots beginning to gather in front of the shuttle. Through the haze, she saw two figures on the moon’s surface near the power plant, clad in bright red and yellow armor and heavily armed. They were both pointing their weapons right at the shuttle.

“Uh-oh,” said Julan. She recognized those two particular bio-mechanicals.

“What?” said Zol, popping up behind her in the copilot’s seat. “Uh-oh,” he said after he saw the two warriors. “This is so not good.”

“What?” Exo shouted, trying to get a good look out the window.

“We’ve run into some old friends,” Zol muttered.

“Or enemies, more like it,” Julan said grimly, turning to face Exo. “It’s your old archenemies Evisar and Oxal.”



“So, we meet again, old friend,” laughed Evisar, though there was no humor in his voice. Not that Zanor could tell, anyways. Of all the luck in the universe, he thought grimly.

“I don’t recall being your ‘friend,’” he responded coldly, readying his ice blaster. The air around them suddenly dropped by several degrees.

“Uh, Zanor? You’re dropping the temperature again,” Raycon murmured.

“Should we continue with the plan?” asked Spade.

“Deactivate the first and second quadrants of the power plant,” said Zanor. “I’ll take the third and fourth.” Raycon and Spade looked as if they wanted to protest, but they both nodded and ran off.

Zanor turned back to face Evisar and Oxal, who were both grinning maliciously.

Evisar turned to Oxal, casually twirling his cannon. “Make sure that his teammates don’t escape.”

Oxal nodded and flew off, his rotor jet pack carrying him across the scarred surface of the moon. Evisar pulled out his machete.

“As for you,” he drawled, “only one of us is walking away.”

Zanor grabbed a hilt from his belt. As he pulled it out, a frost blue blade extended from it, forming an ice sword. Evisar’s face broke into a grin, though it was masked by his vulture-like helmet.

“So, Zanor, how many criminals have you caught for the Order since we last met?” Evisar said conversationally while brandishing his machete. They paced around the clearing, facing eachother. Years of experience had taught Zanor to look for danger in the place he least expected it would come from. Sure enough, Evisar suddenly leaped backwards and shot a fire blast from his cannon, which Zanor’s ice blade absorbed. He responded by sending out blasts of pure ice, which were deflected by fireballs.

“Haven’t I caught plenty of your friends in whatever black market business you’re in right now?” snapped Zanor.

“Oh, this isn’t black market business,” Evisar smiled. “This is something else, something quite special. If I tell you, it will blow the Order of Phantoka’s mind.”

“If it’s so mind blowing, why don’t you go ahead and tell me,” suggested Zanor, never stopping to take a breath as he parried Evisar’s blasts of fire.

“Ha! I’m not falling for that trick again!” Evisar suddenly lashed out with the hilt of his cannon, intending to catch Zanor in an uppercut. The ice elementalist whirled around and shot a spike of ice directly downwards to propel himself up over Evisar’s head. He twisted his body around in midair, and, taking careful aim, released a jet of icy energy from his hand and froze Evisar from the waste up. He landed and sent the villain flying backwards with a kick, shattering the ice.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go,” he snapped. “But,” he added, pausing briefly. “I’m not going to let you get away with it.”

Before Evisar could ask what that meant, Zanor pressed his intercom and ordered, “Julan! Zol! Cover fire!” before shooting another blast of ice to propel himself over the villain’s head. Evisar barely had any time to duck behind a nearby mining tank as the shuttle descended, firing pulse blasts at their location.

Knew I could count on her, Zanor thought as he dashed to the control panel of the third quadrant tower of the power plant and started yanking out the wires. He knew Julan and Zol could hold Evisar and Oxal long enough for them to deactivate the power plant’s four quadrants, and if they were lucky, long enough to capture the two criminals as well. He pulled out the last wire and yanked the lever down. Several lights on the tower stopped flashing. The third quadrant was deactivated.

“I’ve got the first quadrant deactivated,” Raycon yelled through the intercom.

“Good. Check in with Spade,” Zanor replied before heading to the fourth and final quadrant of the power plant. Glancing over, he saw that the second quadrant’s lights go out. That meant Spade had also succeeded in deactivating his quadrant. Just one more to go…

“GET HIM!!” he heard Evisar scream. That was when Zanor made the mistake of turning around.

A cluster of at least twenty hover bots descended and started swarming around him so he couldn’t see. Zanor immediately fired a radial blast of ice and froze their blasters, but it didn’t stop them from congregating around him.

“Keep him busy!” Oxal shouted in the distance.

“Commander!” Exo’s voice came crackling through the intercom on his visor. “Do you need help? I’m comin down!”

“Zanor needs help!” Raycon shouted. Zanor raised his head to see Raycon and Spade running towards him as the hover bots forced him to his knees.

“No!” he yelled. “Get. Back. To the ship!”

Raycon and Spade looked at each other briefly, hesitating.

“But the fourth quadrant...” Raycon began.

“I can send off a sonic blast,” shouted Spade, starting to create sonic charge in his hands.

“GO!” Zanor ordered. His teammates glanced at each other again, but he knew they would trust him. The scheme had been too quickly executed. Evisar and Oxal would most likely get away with tons of explosives generated from the moon’s power plant. But the least Zanor could do was to prevent the whole power plant from exploding and sending Aliyena out of orbit.

Summoning his energy, he forme a razor-sharp icicle and loaded it into his ice blaster. Struggling against the hoverbots forcing him down,he fired the icicle right at the control panel of the fourth quadrant. The icicle struck the lever straight on, pushing it down it down and starting the countdown to deactivate the entire power plant in five minutes.

Now he just had to get Evisar and Oxal and try to prevent them from taking any more explosives. He tried to get up, but the hoverbots weren’t letting that happen, and Evisar clearly wasn’t going to either.

In the distance, Zanor saw him pointing a blaster straight at him. He glanced back at the countdown. Four minutes until the power plant deactivated.

You won’t get away with this, Evisar, Zanor thought, freezing half of the hoverbots around him.

But then their ship descended over where Evisar and Oxal were standing, Zanor could see Raycon and Spade in midair, in the act of jumping into the shuttle. But between his struggles to get rid of the hoverbots, he also saw a figure preparing to jump out of the other side of the shuttle. A figure clad in red armor.

“No!” Zanor yelled desperately into his intercom, but of course he got no response. If anyone else landed on the moon now that would make one more being to get off, and could compromise the entire mission. Zanor glanced back at the countdown.

Three minutes until deactivation.



“Zanor needs help!” Exo yelled, clipping a cable to his belt. “I’m going down!”

“No, Exo, don’t!” Julan yelled back. It was a bad idea for so many many reasons. “Don’t disobey his orders!” she shouted. “He knows what he’s doing!

“Does he?” Exo shouted back.

“If you jump down there, we’ll have to get you out too!” Julan shouted, trying to explain. “The plant will deactivate in two minutes!”

“But Evisar and Oxal will escape!” Exo argued.

“You have to put your feelings aside for this mission!” snapped Julan. Exo’s long-held grudge against Oxal was proving to be problematic.

“I’ve got Raycon and Spade on board!” Zol shouted, sending the cables down to pull the two senior members of Omega team up from the other side of the shuttle. Exo stared down at the moon for a long moment. Just when Julan was sure he wouldn’t jump, he stood up straight and turned back to her.

“I’m not going to sit here and do nothing!”

“EXO!!” Julan yelled as she leaped out of the shuttle after him, Zol on her heels. She reached out in a desperate attempt to grab his legs as time seemed to slow. She almost had it…

Julan felt a sudden jerk as Zol grabbed the edge of the craft, and Exo continued falling until he landed on the moon and began running towards the power plant.

“By all the moons!” she shouted angrily as she dangled over the moon. She had been this close to grabbing him. Zol hurriedly pulled her aboard the craft again.

“Julan, we’re off course,” said Raycon urgently from the copilot’s seat.

Julan leaped into the cockpit and shut off the autopilot, taking control of the ship again.

“Where are they?” she asked, turning the ship around.

“Near the southern end of the power plant, outside of quadrant tower four,” reported Spade.

“We have a big problem,” said Zol, who was looking through a pair of ocu-scanners. “Exo’s confronting Evisar and Oxal.”

By the Great Beings, this is turning out to be a very bad day. “We have to get to him before they blow up anything,” said Julan.

“Watch out! Those hoverbots are shooting at us!” Zol pointed out the window at a cloud of robots zipping back and forth around the ship.

“We’ll have to shoot our way out of this and get down there to pick them up,” said Raycon grimly, manning one of the ship’s pulse cannons.

“We don’t have time for this,” Julan shot back, glancing at the readings on the fourth quadrant.

One minute until deactivation.



Exo landed on the moon’s surface, unclipped the cable from his belt, and took off running. He could see Zanor fighting off the drones in the distance. but he was only focused on one thing: capturing Evisar and Oxal. He leaped up onto a stack of crates, knowing Evisar and Oxal were behind it. This time, this time for sure, he thought determinedly as he leaped onto the largest crate.

“Freeze, in the name of the Order!” Exo shouted, charging his blaster with elemental fire and pointing it at the two surprised villains. “Don’t move!”

Both Evisar and Oxal jumped, but neither dropped the crates they were carrying. They first looked at Exo, then at each other, and finally burst out laughing.

“Oh look,” Evisar snorted. “A scrawny little rookie elementalist trying to take us all by himself.”

“The Order must be running out of operatives,” Oxal responded between chuckles. Both villains set down the crates they were carrying.

“Put your hands above your heads,” Exo snapped. “Or else!”

“Or else what?” Evisar taunted, futilely trying not to appear mocking. “You’ll spank us?”

“One more move, and you’ll both be incinerated,” warned Exo. The blaster in his hands was starting to increase in temperature as he channeled more fire energy into it.

Evisar glanced at the fireball, unimpressed. “Is that the best you can do?” he snorted, lifting his palm as a fireball materialized out of thin air as well.

“Maybe we should put our old grudge aside and start anew,” Oxal suggested as he paced around the crate Exo was standing on top of.

“Like I’m going to believe that,” Exo sneered. “You’ve already committed way too many major crimes, including attacking this power plant to steal explosives. For what purpose?”

“You don’t know what this is?” said Evisar, reaching into one of the crates and pulling out a glowing green sphere. Exo’s blaster followed his movements.

“No funny business!” he warned.

“EXO! DO NOT TOUCH THAT!” Julan, Zol, Spade, and Raycon’s voices blazed over the intercom in his helmet.

Keep your heads on, I’ve got them pinned! thought Exo as he shut off his intercom.

“Explain to me until my ship gets here to take you two into custody,” he growled.

“This is one of the most dangerous substances in the universe,” said Evisar, clearly enjoying himself. “If it touches you, you’ll die within an hour due to overexposure to the radiation.”

“Oh, good,” Exo snapped. “Then it means I won’t have to ever see your ugly face again.”

“Ah, ah,” said Evisar, lifting his hand. “You didn’t let me finish. The only way to protect yourself from it is vushunium armor plating.”

“So you’re guilty of stealing, plundering, and illegally supplying a black market for criminals, blah blah blah,” said Exo, annoyed. “What in the moons was the whole point of telling me all that?”

“So he could keep you talking long enough for me to prepare a trap for you,” piped up Oxal. He popped next to Evisar again, tossing aside the empty barrel he had been holding, sending it rolling into the fourth quadrant tower. Trap? Exo looked down around the crate he was standing, but to his surprise, he didn’t see any trap of any sort. Instead, he saw… a spiral pattern of silver liquid traced out around the crate. It must have come from the barrel. He followed the path of the liquid, and saw it led to… the fourth quadrant tower of the power plant.

“What’s that?” he asked suspiciously.

“Never heard of protodermis before?” smirked Evisar, kneeling down by the track of silver liquid. “Well, you’re in for a big surprise.”

He leaned down and snapped his fingers, emitting a spark. The protodermis immediately caught aflame and started blazing a trail of fire around the crate.

“And don’t touch it,” Evisar chuckled. “It'll stick to your armor, and it won’t stop burning for a few hours.”

The two elementalists walked off, laughing. Exo turned around. The trail of protodermis completely surrounded the crate; there was no way he could step off. His eyes followed the trail of burning fire to… the fourth quadrant.

Oh, no.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Zanor had succeeded in throwing the last of the hoverbots off himself and finally looked up.

“KID!” he yelled.

Thirty seconds until deactivation.



“This is SO NOT GOOD!” Zol yelled, stumbling to the front cockpit of the craft and grabbing Julan’s seat to steady himself.

“Get all these bots off of us!” she yelled.

“Easier said than done!” Zol shot back, balanced precariously over the craft’s open door and shooting lightning bolts at any hoverbots that drifted close.

“Raycon, use your powers to repel them!” Spade shouted.

“There’s a reason they don’t make robots out of iron anymore, and it’s to make life difficult for iron elementalists like ME!” yelled Raycon. “Why don’t you use your sonic blast?!” “I would, but we’re in space, metal-for-brains! Sound doesn’t travel!”

“Who are you callin’ metal-for-brains?!” “You!”

“Hey, guys!” interrupted Julan. “A little too much chatter back there! Zol, grab the cable and throw it down to Zanor!”

“But Evisar and Oxal are escaping!” Raycon protested, pointing. A black-hulled ship was disappearing into the distance through the cloud of hoverbots.

“We’ll catch them later,” Julan lied. She knew they probably wouldn’t ever get another chance to capture the two criminals.

"Oh, boy," muttered Raycon. "If Vid doesn't kill us, Ikra sure will."

"I thought we're supposed to call her Toa Ikra," commented Zol as he sent more lightning at any hoverbots that got too close.

"That title is only reserved for the highest of elementalists. So yes, call her that, or she'll shoot you," said Raycon. “Or drown you. That’s probably more likely.”

"I said, cut the chatter!" Julan yelled.

Her eyes were trained on the moon’s surface below. She could see Zanor running across the moon, leaping over the spiral of flaming liquid that surrounded the crate Exo was dancing frantically on top of. If she could just pilot the craft low enough so they could catch them, but not too low that it would slam into the rapidly approaching power plant…

“Now!” she yelled as Zanor tackled Exo. In that moment, Zol threw the cable out the door.

“Do we have them?” asked Julan, turning around in her seat.

Zanor’s voice suddenly came through the communicator. “Pull us up,” he commanded.

Julan glanced back at the reading on the power plant. Ten seconds until deactivation. The trail of protodermis was still burning below.

“Get us out of here,” said Zanor the moment he got into the craft. He pushed back Spade and Raycon, who promptly shut the craft’s door. Julan steered their ship a decent distance from the power plant. The inside of the shuttle was heavy with silence as they watched the countdown to the power plant’s deactivation. They could only hope it would deactivate in time before Evisar and Oxal’s trail of fire would reach the reactor.

Five…

Four…

Three…

Two…

One.

“Did it work?” asked Zol, leaning forward, his helmet pressed up against the window.

The top of the fourth quadrant tower suddenly exploded, followed by the other three towers. None of them could do anything except stare at the power plant in shock and silence. The full reality of the situation dawned on them. For the first time, Omega team had completely failed a mission. The Order’s top team of elementalists had failed a mission.

“Well, it probably can’t get any worse than that,” said Zol diplomatically. Then the entire moon Aliyena exploded.