Against the Storm/Volume VI

Against the Storm: Volume VI is the sixth and final volume of Against the Storm. It was written by CaptainLandr0ver and released on August 12, 2018.

This volume documents the birth of Hysterix and the final confrontation between the Toa Powai and the remaining members of the Wraith Syndicate.

Hysteria
“Alchemist”’s head emerged from behind the thick pine tree to observe his surroundings. Without needing to face where he was looking, he saw only the same vegetation that surrounded him. The sun shined through the trees, illuminating the area in a way that made it warm and welcoming. A number of small birds were flying around, chasing each other as a part of what he assumed was a ritual for choosing partners.

In spite of the inviting scenery, “Alchemist” cocked his weapon and felt for the easy-to-reach Incendiary potion attached neatly to the underside of his upper torso. He knew from the sounds that had brought him to the scene that what he was about to come across would not be so amiable.

This suspicion was strengthened by a distant roar which caught his attention. He looked in its direction, an ultimately futile move, as the foliage was too thick to see even a sliver of whatever had caused it.

He didn’t need to know it’s owner, anyway. He could take it on. It was only a matter of finding it before it found him. Not a matter of survival, but a matter of efficiency: he would likely sustain less damage if he found it first and not the other way around.

This called for something a lot less conspicuous than a tidy bundle of chemicals that violently combusted upon contacting metal. He slipped his hand down and grabbed another potion, making the least amount of noise possible. He connected the nozzle on the top of it to a valve on his left cheek and twisted. The chemicals noiselessly flowed into his body, quickly rendering him invisible.

He creeped out from behind the tree and carefully took a step in the noise’s direction. After a moment of silence, he took a few more, and then stopped. This went on for some time until he had covered a several dozen meters. When he heard the noise again, this time much closer, he hid behind another tree and observed his surroundings, zooming in on unusual things in the trees.

The noise repeated itself several times and grew closer. “Alchemist” stopped zooming in.

A black hand latched onto the tree he was hiding behind, just close enough for its claws to put a trio of deep cuts in his shoulder armor. It was a massive hand, dotted with a series of holes.

Just as the Dark Hunter was about to move to the left, the hand violently grabbed his upper arm and squeezed it tight. A grunt came from the other side of the tree.

“It’s just you,” sighed Pretadix.

“Indeed,” “Alchemist” replied. “What happened here?”

“Nothing,”

“Impossible. I heard unusual sounds.”

Pretadix dragged “Alchemist” to his side of the tree. He grabbed at his hunched back with his free hand and eventually groped his way to his head, which he turned to face his own.

“You’re not going to leave me,” he said between his teeth.

“Over what?”

“What happened. What I’m about to tell you.”

“Which is?”

“Tetradon is dead.”

There was a flash of bright green light between the two of them. Pretadix growled and stumbled back as he put his hand over the smoldering, blackened mark now on his slim abdomen. A puff of smoke drifted from the space in front of him, vaguely outlining the shape of the Dark Hunter’s weapon.

“You didn’t give me time to explain!” the Makuta yelled as he extended his other arm and grabbed “Alchemist”. “He was an obstacle to us.”

“To us?” the Dark Hunter replied. “He was my hirer. If you’ve done anything for us, you’ve helped yourself and damaged my career. Possibly ended my life considering how The Shadowed One may react to this. You remember what he did to ‘Sunder’.”

“Oh, you still don’t care about the money, do you?” Pretadix said as he pulled “Alchemist” to him. He tightened his grip such that one could hear the metal beginning to bend. “There has to be more in there.” A strange feeling came across “Alchemist” as the Makuta stared at what he believed was his face. “You aren’t worthless, apparently. I see you’ve finally figured out how to use that Staff… or whatever is left of it, the jumble of metal you’ve uprooted from it.”

Pretadix gently ran his finger down the spine of the book he had pulled out of Tetradon’s wooden chest. There were no words on the front or back covers, at least not that were not covered by the metal brace binding it shut. He set his finger under the part that overlapped the ends of the pages, which had some sort of contraption keeping it together, and tugged lightly. Grunting, he then lifted the book above his head, focused his eyes on the part of the binding on the front cover, and shot at it a pair of hot beams. The book was only mildly burned, however, the binding had melted apart. Part of it, now red hot and very malleable, dripped down and harmlessly sizzled on the Makuta’s face and shoulders. Pretadix pulled the book out of its remains and flipped through it backward until there was text.

“112 years after beginning. He is still trying to resist. He doesn’t think I know, and I’d like to keep it that way. As long as I can get off of this island and make him trust me completely.”

Pretadix shut the book and slammed it into the dirt before stomping on it. He yelled, after which “Alchemist” appeared from the nearby trees.

“What is wrong?”

“Nothing. Go away.”

He picked up the book again and traveled to the last page. He stared at it for some time with a perplexed look before gagging and opening it to the very first page.

“It seems that Tetradon’s death is having an ill effect on your mental health.”

Pretadix slowly turned his head to look at the Dark Hunter. “What a revelation.”

“You have been displaying side-effects for the past hour. Spontaneous screaming, outbursts of anger, delusions, things I did not think Makuta could suffer from.”

“You have just said that Makuta don’t normally suffer from delusions. And didn’t I tell you to go away?”

“What is so private about what you’re doing?”

“I did tell you to go away, yes I did.”

“Alchemist” finally turned and walked away. He stopped at some point, before looking confused and continuing on his way. Pretadix, who now seemed to have relieved himself of some sort of intense act of focus, looked back to the book.

“Complete log of the Wraith Syndicate Control tests”

He flipped through several dozen pages and arrived on one with a peculiar inkblot. Unable to decipher the text hidden underneath it, he looked to the following page.

“He found the book and blotted out last week’s recording. I had to use my mask to wipe the action from his memory, along with any knowledge of this book. He’s acted like he normally does after I work on him.”

He flipped to another page.

“The serum has been successfully created. I just need to test it on him.”

He looked at the following page.

“It failed.”

The first time Pretadix had been given a serum by Tetradon to improve his failing mental abilities, it resulted in a series of alarming hallucinations.

He flipped to the next page.

“I changed the serum a bit. Same result.”

He looked at the next page.

“Fail. No hallucinations, rather instant unconsciousness and convulsions. Made me consider if it was related to my own condition.”

This went on for some time, with each page retelling numerous failures of Tetradon’s serum and the various unpleasant effects on his host. Pretadix grunted to himself that he scarcely remembered these moments.

“The effects are getting worse. I will have to start using my mask to wipe some of them from his mind or he will begin to distrust me even more. This will take a while.”

Finally, something changed:

“After minor convulsions, he was able to use his powers. I told him to make a Matoran walk off of a cliff, and he did it. I’ll edit out his memory of the convulsions.”

Pretadix threw the book again before picking it up and finding where he left off. He flipped through the next couple of pages and stopped on one.

“They still cause hallucinations from time to time. I will try to either edit these out or say my mask was misfiring.”

Pretadix recalled multiple times where Tetradon’s mask had apparently misfired.

“I found out something interesting about him. In the past, other Makuta have commented on his name having a secret meaning, but I never thought much of it until now. His name has a striking resemblance to the Archaic Matoran phrase ‘Prita Daks’, a profane and derogatory phrase which approximately translates to ‘Mad fool’. Considering that several Makuta have been renamed by their brethren in the past, often with names that have hidden and mean-spirited meanings such as this one, it is unlikely that this is a coincidence.”

Pretadix began to feel the effects of an oncoming hallucination. He hadn’t known what that felt like in years, and he had never had it be as severe as it was now. It wasn’t simply discomfort, it was pain, sorrow, dread. It was as emotional as it was physical. For the first time in a very long time, rather than feeling annoyed by the knowledge of what was about to transpire, he was scared.

A white light illuminated everything, which slowly turned orange. It stung his eyes as if they were able to feel again, stabbed at his nerves like they were there. The pain he was feeling was physical, something a hallucination had never accomplished before, and that it shouldn’t have been able to accomplish.

Screaming could be heard some distance away. It was authentically feminine and maniacal-sounding, and was accompanied by the sounds of burning wood and metal being hammered out. All of these noises were loud enough to hurt Pretadix's ears, something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

The screaming began to descend in pitch. Further and further it descended, but never seeming to actually descend, as the orange glow began to slowly dissipate, flashing periodically and without rhythm. Unintelligible whispering could be heard, echoing around, taunting him.

“Mad fool! Mad fool! Prita Daks! Prita Daks!”

Confused, he lashed out at the whispering. The glow surrounding him vanished, allowing to see the forest again, which was now morphed into so absurd that seemed like something beyond one’s own imagination. The trees and grass were blue, the sky was red, and there was a rhythmic flash emanating from somewhere. He backed into one of the trees as his sense of balance began to fail him. He felt like he wanted to vomit. The tree’s limbs began to point toward the sky like the hands of a population raised to honor their leader.

By now, the colors of the world around him had been completely changed, all either bright and painful to look at or dark to the point of being near pure blackness. Dirt lying within the grass flew upward as Pretadix himself began to feel weightless. He scrambled to dig his claws into the trees as the screaming in the whispering in the background merged with the screaming, which was still descending despite still being within his hearing range. Together, the two grew louder and more distorted. A heartbeat-like noise rose up beneath it, pounding incessantly. Every beat shook the world around him and caused his claws to come slightly closer to removing themselves from the tree trunk.

As he dug his other claw into the tree, allowing the experiment log to rocket up toward the sky along with everything else not anchored to the ground, his hands began to feel funny. They felt as if they were being warped and stretched like molten lead. It wasn’t long before this feeling spread throughout his body.

The screaming and the beat began to form unintelligible, high-pitched babbling. It seemed to be trying to say something to him. It wanted to tell him that something was wrong with him. Maybe it was his name. Perhaps his actions. Was it him? Was he the problem?

Finally, it said something comprehensible.

“You are hysterical, aren’t you?”

The tree’s trunk liquefied, causing Pretadix to plummet into the blood-red sky as it dripped up onto him. He landed painfully onto the branches of another tree, snapping many of them but giving him enough time two grope for those still attached with his hand and foot. He could feel the force pulling him up grow stronger with every second. The word “Hysteric!” was being screamed over and over and over again by a voice which didn’t sound like it belonged to anything from this dimension.

The branches he was holding onto were beginning to warp as well. There was an aggressive sheen on them which emulated the metallic texture the trunk had taken one when it melted. Pretadix tightened his grip, causing it to squeeze between his fingers and drip onto his face. He made a mighty yell, one of desperation, of agony, of regret and pain. Dark red shards flew past him, propelled by a fierce gust of wind which did all but quiet down the screeching. One emerged from the ground directly beneath him, only stopping to shatter. Its remains were blown into Pretadix, ripping through his armor and his body without stopping. His drawn-out yell was now nearly indistinguishable from the horrendous shriek that assaulted his ears. They were speaking the same message, now.

“What’s going on?”

Pretadix was back on the ground. The world around him had returned to normal, as had his body. The wretched a bit before looking up at “Alchemist”.

“Nothing of your concern.”

“You can’t lie to me, Pretadix.”

“Do not call me that.”

“Why not? What else am I supposed to call you?”

Pretadix thought on this question as he stood up and checked his body for any signs that his hallucination was not over.

“Also, you’ve avoided the question,” the Dark Hunter added. “What were you doing? You were having some sort of convulsion on the ground. You were acting hysterical.”

“Then that’s just what I’ll be.”

“What am I required to call you?”

“A hysteric, apparently. You will call me Hysterix from now as, as will everyone else.”

Necropsy
“Are you sure this was their base of operation?” Maroona said as she looked around at the tormented forest around her. Corduk, Detras, Wreshi, and Salvina followed closely behind her, while Lewok, Navahko, and Tesudin stood behind with an uneasy look until they were prompted to follow.

“I was not too sure of that either when I came across it,” said Detras. “But I became very sure when I looked around at it for long enough.”

The Toa began to notice strings of wires in some of the trees among other things that gave evidence that it was where the Wraith Syndicate had been. As Navahko asked why the organization’s members weren’t present, Lewok discovered a mangled book lying open and face-down in the grass. He picked it up and flipped it over to read its contents.

“What does it say?” Corduk asked him.

“Something about hallucinations,” the Toa of Air answered. “It’s talking about someone like they’re a kidnap victim.”

“What does it say on the front?” Navahko asked. Lewok looked at both covers and commented that there was nothing but burn marks on them, after which the Toa of Ice added, “Maybe the front page?”

Lewok turned to the first page and read it’s text:

“‘This is the beginning of a log recording the development of telepathic enhancement serums and their experimentation on Pretadix. This is not to be read by anyone.’”

As several of the Toa comment on how eerie and strange the text was, Corduk asked who wrote it. Lewok flipped through the next couple of pages and responded, saying that there was no indication as to who it’s author was.

“Guys, I’ve found something,” Salvina spoke up.

“What is it?” Maroona said as she looked over to the Toa of Water. She gagged when she saw what she was referring to.

“Is that Tetradon?” Detras asked.

“Indeed it is,” Tesudin concluded as he stared at the dead Falqãta. From the tone of his voice, one could tell that he was doing his best not to gag. “Impaled on his own mask.” “Who would do something like that?” Wreshi said as he used his able arm to catch Navahko, who had begun to teeter backward.

Those of the Toa who could tolerate looking at the body (namely Lewok, Wreshi, and Salvina) studied it for some time. Detras had discovered a white staff tipped with a silver hilt of sorts, which he found to be warm to the touch. Lewok still had the book hanging in his hand, his thumb dividing it to keep his place in it.

After politely Lewok asking for it, Tesudin read several pages of it while occasionally glancing back at Tetradon’s body. “I have a feeling this was Pretadix's doing.”

“How can you be sure?” Corduk argued as he inched closer to the Toa of Sonics and peered over at the book.

“I said I have a feeling,” Tesudin repeated. “I don’t think there’s much of a way for us to be sure. Brutality of this nature could have been the doing of Ruthos, for all we know.”

“There is a way to know,” Maroona said to the two before turning to Detras. “That belonged to Tetradon, right?”

“Possibly,” answered the Toa of Fire. “It resembles it a bit.”

“I remember that his weapons were able to transform,” Tesudin said.

“Precisely. Can you hand me that please?”

Detras tossed the staff to her. She looked at it closely and sighed.

“What’s the matter?” Corduk asked.

“You should know,” the Toa of Lightning replied.

“Tetradon is dead, now,” said Corduk with slight agitation.

“Pretadix isn’t,” Lewok quietly refuted, gesturing toward the book, “and from what we’ve learned, he is the one who’s been invading our minds, not Tetradon.”

“He’s right,” Maroona said. “The second that I use this thing, he’s going to find me.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Corduk argued.

“Why not?”

“If anything goes wrong, we’ll just remove your mask and let you recover.”

“And let that mad Makuta track us down?” Detras countered. “We have to find out another way.”

“This way will be the quickest,” the Toa of Earth replied. “We need to know what happened to Tetradon and who did it.”

“Why?”

Corduk turned and faced Navahko, who had spoken up.

“For the time being, it’s none of our concern, Corduk,” the Toa of Ice added.

“Anything that happens to the Wraith Syndicate is our concern because we are the ones trying to herd them off of this island!”

Maroona loudly called Corduk’s attention as she tossed the staff back to Detras. Gently, she explained, “We’ll only be worse off the second I use my mask. Nothing will be lost if we find out after we do what we need to do now.”

“And what is that? What do we need to do now?”

“We need to, as you said, herd the Syndicate off of this island.”

Corduk didn’t reply, instead, he maintained his irritated stare at Maroona. He glanced back at Navahko, who didn’t seem willing to get on his side. With a sigh, he looked back to Maroona, and confidently said, “Then let’s go.”

An abrasive noise followed after this comment, alerting all of the Toa. They looked to Detras, the source of the noise, to see that he had somehow activated Tetradon’s staff. A slim jet of fire was protruding from the hilt, ending a meter later such that it formed a rough blade. “What’d you do?” Wreshi blurted. “It’s, like, alive, or something.”

“I’d be careful with that,” Maroona added.

“I don’t think I've activated it, really,” said the Toa of Fire as he moved the weapon around, his eyes locked onto the blade. “I’m channeling my power into it.”

“Like a Toa tool?”

“I wouldn’t know. I assume it works through the same system that allowed Tetradon to use his own Elemental abilities with these things.”

“How well can you control it?” Maroona asked. To demonstrate, Detras shut off the blade and reformed it.

“Pretty well,” he answered with a grin.

“Well, that’s interesting. Leave it here and we’ll let the KCO deal with it.”

“Not so fast,” Detras contested with a slight chuckle. “This thing is going to prove useful if we’re going to be going up against the Syndicate again.”

“Useful for who?” Maroona asked.

“For him, most likely,” Corduk answered after a brief pause. “All he’s got is a shield, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I feel he could make more use of his abilities with an offensive weapon of some sort.”

“All we have are offensive weapons, Corduk,” Maroona argued.

“But he can do more to actively defend us if he has something more to push forward,” Corduk countered. “It’s a basic part of common sense with weapons, especially in a team.”

“You’re right, actually,” Detras said with a surprised expression as he turned his head to face the Toa of Earth. “Where did you learn so much about weapons?”

“I was the head guard of the KCO. Working with weapons was a daily obligation. Introduced me to my love of them, too.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I would’ve said something back at your place, but I was worried Maroona might get angry if we—“

Without warning, a yellow beam shot out of the nearby trees, passing through Detras’ blade of fire and extinguishing it instantly. The Toa of Fire dropped the weapon and ducked behind his shield as the other Toa faced where the beam had come from and took defensive positions. Their eyes scoured the trees but didn’t find it’s sender.

“Show yourself!” Maroona shouted.

“And don’t shoot,” Tesudin added, "or you will be swiftly taken down.”

Slowly, a hunchbacked figure covered from head to toe in black cloaks emerged from being one of the trees. His hands were up in the air, the right of which was near engulfed in a billow of smoke which quickly dissipated. Under the pitch black shadow which covered his face was a single red glowing dot.

“Who are you?” Maroona demanded.

The figure did not speak.

“That’s the person I chased in Le-Powai!” Navahko remarked. With anger, he added, “The one who was responsible for my injured ankle.”

“Ruthos,” Corduk confidently clarified, “an ally of the Syndicate. He was also responsible for stealing the staff.”

“What brings you here?” Maroona demanded.

Slowly and steadily, Ruthos lifted his left, unarmed hand to his head and pulled the cloak off of it, revealing his crimson, ellipsoid head, which was scarred and dented.

“Answer me!”

“I don’t think he can,” Tesudin suggested. Ruthos looked at him and gently nodded.

“Well, what do you want?” Corduk grumbled. Ruthos closed his right hand, leaving only his thumb protruding out to the side. At this, the Toa eased into more comfortable positions while still keeping their weapons in front of them.

“How does he know that gesture?” Navahko queried.

“He’s probably observed it from the Matoran,” Corduk answered. “And if he wants peace with us, he’s going to need to give us a good reason why.”

Ruthos scanned the Toa and their surroundings, eventually settling his gaze on the white staff below Detras. He pointed at it and looked to Maroona.

“You want that?” she asked confusedly.

Ruthos shook his head and pointed at it again, this time holding up two fingers.

“He might be referring to Tetradon,” Lewok said, and Ruthos point to him and nodded.

“He’s dead,” Tesudin reported. “Somebody killed him. Was it you?”

He shook his head.

“And how can we be sure about that?” Corduk insisted.

He pointed to Maroona’s mask.

“We can’t,” the Toa of Lightning stated. “Pretadix will get into my head.”

Ruthos retracted his hand and let it fall to his side. He looked at the other Toa, his eye focusing in and out on each of them. The result was a long period of silence as the Toa looked among each other, all with clueless and/or irritated looks.

This period was broken when Lewok suddenly collapsed onto the forest floor, as limp as a long string of hair, with almost no movement. As the other Toa began to panic, Corduk looked to Ruthos with a livid scowl and roared something incomprehensibly loud before chucking his battle axe at him. The former War General ducked, barely dodging the axe as it struck a tree behind him and deprived it of some of its bark. Corduk continued to berate him before Navahko forcefully tugged on his shoulder and turned him around to see that Lewok was awake and had sat up. He seemed to be suffering from nothing except mild dizziness.

“I’ve received a thought from Ruthos,” the Toa of Air claimed after he had recovered enough to speak clearly.

“You what?” Wreshi asked confusedly.

Lewok pointed to his mask and explained, “My Vehere. I used it to obtain a thought from Ruthos—with his consent—which informed me that it was Pretadix who has killed him.”

“I thought it could only send them?” Salvina wondered.

“It can receive them, too,” Tesudin confirmed. “And so it was Pretadix. I had thought there weren’t many on this island who could overpower Tetradon in combat.”

“So from what we know now,” Maroona said as she held out her hand to help Lewok onto his feet, “Only Pretadix and ‘Alchemist’ are left to herd off this island.”

Navahko then signaled for her to look at Ruthos, who was shaking his head. “Are there more?” she then asked.

Ruthos kept shaking his head and then pointed to himself.

“He wants to leave the island too,” Lewok reported to her.

“Is this before, during, or after we make the other two Syndicate members leave?” Corduk inquired.

Ruthos looked to him, adjusted his eye, looked to the other members, looked back at him, and shrugged.

“You don’t know?”

“How is he supposed to answer that question, Corduk?” Navahko stressed.

“It doesn’t matter,” Maroona interrupted. “He should help us drive the others off the island before he gets to leave.”

“As a penalty for what he’s done to this island,” Corduk added.

“Sure,” Maroona affirmed. “Then we’ll let him leave this island.”

Ruthos looked at her and tilted his head as if he were irritated before shrugging and looking away. He then reached to his back and grabbed a pitch black arrow, which he tossed to Tesudin. The Toa of Sonics stared at the arrow and then up at Ruthos with a confident look before storing it in the quiver on his hip.

Resolution
Churned by a wind which steadily increasing in intensity, the dense greatgrass clinging to the vertical dirt hillsides swayed back and forth. The leaves on the giant trees moved accordingly, attempting to pull the branches they were anchored to along with them. The clouds above danced arduously above it all, untouched by the scene below but at the same time unable to contact it themselves.

In this scene, there sat the Toa, behind a bank. Not very far away were Pretadix and “Alchemist”, up to something the Toa knew wasn’t worth trying to find out about until later. They knew everything they needed to know for now.

“We don’t know what he’s capable of,” Corduk argued. “There are literally thousands of rumors on this island about what exactly Makuta can do, most of them equating them to gods in terms of power and capability.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Tesudin muttered assuringly as he kept his head protruding slightly, just enough for him to use his Great Zinn to spy on the two fiends. “For whatever reason, his powers have decayed over the years, leaving some completely unable to be used.” “How do you know that?” Detras asked.

“He’s just mentioned it while talking with ‘Alchemist’.”

“I thought your hearing was too damaged for you to use it in that way?” Navahko questioned.

“Pretadix happens to talk loudly about things about himself that annoy him, apparently, so it isn’t too hard. And also, he appears to have changed his name to Hysterix just recently.”

“Hysterix?” Salvina repeated with a slight distaste, and then added with a chuckle, “Like, he renamed himself after hysteria?”

“Yeah, a real subtle name, for sure,” Wreshi remarked.

“It indeed is on-the-nose,” Detras agreed, “but right now we have other things to worry about.”

“Detras is right,” Maroona said. “We need to figure out how we’re going to defeat him.”

“Defeat him?” said Corduk and Detras simultaneously, looking back at the Toa of Lightning.

Maroona looked at them as if combat were an obvious decision. “What, are we going to give him a slap on the wrist and politely tell him to leave?”

“Maybe?” Detras replied.

“There are various reasons we could give him for him to just leave the island,” Corduk suggested.

“He won’t choose any of them over what he’s decided now,” Tesudin observed as he deactivated his mask and turned around. “As he’s just mentioned, he seems pretty intent on stealing the Mask Maker’s Tool—whatever that is—and using it to partake in a hostile takeover of the island’s inhabitants, using them as a personal army of brainwashed minions.”

“That’s rather disturbing,” Navahko remarked.

“Not only that, but it reinforces my point that we need to get up close and personal with him,” Maroona added.

“That is a good reinforcement,” replied Corduk somewhat falteringly.

“In that case,” continued Maroona, “since he can enter our heads at any time, that means that we’re going to have to find some sort of advantage over him before he or ‘Alchemist’ are able to see us.”

“What advantages would we have over him?” asked Corduk. “Or at least that we can access right now?”

“Distance,” said Lewok. “Or, that’s what Ruthos told me to receive from his mind. He apparently knows the extent of the powers of Pretadix… or Hysterix, if that’s what he wants to be called.”

“As in, every single one he has?” Maroona said, joining the other Toa in looking wide-eyed at the Toa of Air.

“Magnetism, Plasma, Quick Healing, Elasticity, Density Control, Heat Vision, and Fire Resistance,” Lewok recited after using his mask (without blacking out) to grab the thought from Ruthos again. “And Density Control and Magnetism have apparently been on a rapid descent in usability lately, wherein the former scarcely works and the later is restricted to a close range.”

“That’s it?” Tesudin wondered.

“All that Ruthos has witnessed,” Lewok answered, “and he claims he’s seen all of them from Hysterix testing them out in his spare time. Judging from those, only Elasticity and possibly Heat Vision can be used to get at anyone far enough away, and even then to only some extent.”

“And that shouldn’t be a problem,” Navahko remarked, gesturing toward Tesudin.

“But what may be a problem is his armor,” Detras reminded them. “His kind wears armor of Protosteel, as I’ve heard from nearly all of the rumors about them.”

“That is true,” the Toa of Sonics said before pulling his lone arrow halfway out of his quiver, “but this should take care of that. Protosteel is among the few materials that can damage itself, and that it what this arrow is made completely out of.”

“But that’s just an arrow,” Corduk argued. “It will slow him down, but we’ve seen him heal Tetradon from a puncture wound with one of those, and who knows how much more apt he is at healing himself.”

“That’s why I’m going to charge it with Elemental energy. It’ll give it much more of a kick.”

“Okay, so we’ve got range as an advantage,” Maroona reiterated. “What else might we have?”

“Speed?” Wreshi suggested. “Or agility, maybe. He seems kinda top heavy and easy to knock over.”

“Numbers, as well,” Detras said, “a rather obvious advantage.”

“And this,” Corduk said as he pulled Phi’s Great Mask of Disguise, hooked on a jury-rigged belt of sorts, from his back and showed it to the other Toa. “Thought it could be put to good use back when we dropped Phi into the hands of APNWT.”

“I don’t believe that will be of much use,” Navahko advised. “Hysterix is going to figure out we know all of this the second he notices one of us. If he’s smart enough to use his mental abilities right away, that is.”

“If he does find out,” Tesudin replied, “I can use my powers to hinder and distract him.”

“Excellent,” Maroona commented. “From the looks of it, we might have a plan on our hands.”

“Do,” Corduk corrected.

“Might,” the Toa of Lightning repeated. “Whatever we plan, we’re ultimately going to have to abandon it at some point. Even if we can prohibit Hysterix from reading our minds, that won’t stop him from predicting our actions using his natural intelligence.”

“I suggest we divide and conquer, then,” Corduk replied. “And also, we’ve neglected to talk about ‘Alchemist’ and his capabilities, which are mostly centered around causing damage or disability to multiple targets in a certain range. By spreading out, we’ll make it harder for both of them to choose targets.”

“So we have range, numbers—” Maroona began, before she had trailed off. She, along with the rest of the Toa, had noticed a strange whirring noise emanating from where the two opponents were.

“But we don't have time,” uttered Tesudin, who was once again looking at the two with his Kanohi. “One of them chanted something along the lines of ‘avulu’ and some sort of device they have has opened a portal.”

“The Staff of Vortices!” exclaimed Maroona.

“That is no staff. It’s circular, almost, with a series of red lights around the rim.”

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Corduk interrupted, “we all know where they intend to go with it.”

“Well, are you going to go?”

“It depends on whether you want you or me to go first.”

“You, of course! That was an order, not a question!”

“Alchemist” stared into the swirling red vortex. The edges of it emitted otherworldly, lightning-esque arcs of crimson energy which continually zapped the ground around it. The longer he looked into its center, the more it became apparent that he could almost see the rectangular stone characteristic of his destination in it.

“You told me that this thing’s portal function will break if it’s activated for too long,” Hysterix grumbled. “Now jump in.”

“It might not be entirely safe, Hys—”

The Makuta grabbed the Dark Hunter from behind and pushed him, letting him topple over into the portal. His body, likely by the cause of the device, slimmed down almost comically in order to fit itself into the thin gyre of red.

“That’s why I wanted you to first, you dolt,” grumbled the Makuta. He then grunted “ziēno” several times, each louder and more aggressive than the last, before the portal shut itself. “Now to see what you see,” he muttered to himself as he sat down and closed his trembling eyes.

A gravelly voice roared his new name behind him from some distance away. He grimaced, opened his serpentine eyes crankily, and turned around to see a black and red Toa standing up on the slope of a hill.

“This is your last chance!” the Toa continued to yell, with an unfaltering tone of defiance. “Retract ‘Alchemist’ from there and screw off to another island!” “Corduk!” Hysterix greeted with a twisted smile. His ability to recite his target’s name made the Toa of Earth rather uneasy. “My, you’ve gotten better from the last time I saw you. And now, after all of this time apart, you not only tell me to leave, but with such impolite language. In response, I say, what if I refuse to do so?”

“Then we wouldn’t have much left to do than fight,” Corduk boomed as he lifted his hefty battle axe off of his shoulder and let it swing down to his side.

“You think that you can defeat me? Are you not aware that I have slaughtered he who defeated all of you single-handedly? What you’re trying to do is impossible.”

“Then we will do the impossible. As Toa, it is what we were built to do.”

“In that case, you have grown insane like all other Toa.”

“That sounds a bit funny coming from you,” said another voice from behind, this one wizened and easily recognizable.

“Bother, not you again,” Hysterix grunted as he turned in the opposite direction to face the Toa of Lightning he so despised. He was only able to see her for a glimpse, as almost immediately his body was met with a streak of black. Without a noise, it pierced his armor and shot right through his dense body. It flawlessly emerged out of the other side of him covered almost completely in a layer of sizzling green fluid, the same kind which began spraying out of the Makuta’s entry and exit wounds. The moment it contacted the ground behind him, a deafening shockwave of sound erupted from the arrow’s other end. The blast hurled him into an unsteady spiral in the sun-drenched air. Green fluid shot out in all directions, splattering the sand at random. The intense light of the sun reflected off of it, showering the landscape in a series of incomplete caustic lighting tinted a sickening shade of green.

Finally, Hysterix's body impacted the ground. He groaned, pushed himself up almost immediately, and began to close the wound in his abdomen and replace the armor on his back that had been either bent or torn by the sonic blast.

Maroona and Corduk both ran down to the portal-opening device. It was mostly brown and was star-like in shape. It’s six arms protruding from the center each ended with a leg that suspended it off of the ground. Each leg was topped with a light emitting a now-dimming maroon glow.

“Now’s our chance!” yelled Maroona as she inspected the device. Lewok, Wreshi, and Navahko ran from behind a bush as the Toa of Lightning chanted “avulu” at the device.

It’s dying lights continued to shut off.

Confused, Maroona repeated herself several more times, all to no avail, as the three Toa, accompanied by Corduk, ran up to the machine. The more she repeated the word, the more nervous the Toa became, the faster the lights seemed to dim, and the louder the aggravated growls coming from Hysterix became in her head.

Then, she stopped repeating herself, and simply stared at the device with a confused look. The Toa grew more and more alarmed, looking to each other, to Maroona, and to Hysterix (who was now on his feet and staring them down menacingly) with wide eyes and shaking bodies.

Finally, Maroona shouted “afulu,” an Archaic Matoran word meaning “breach.” The machine’s lights lit up, and a speck of red energy manifested just above its center. It sent out six strands of energy, each corresponding to one of the device’s arms and ending where they did, before swirling them together to create the familiar red whirlpool.

As the booming footsteps of Hysterix grew closer and louder, Maroona rushed the four Toa into the portal. As soon as she was sure they had gone completely through, she turned around to see nothing but the deranged Makuta’s scarred mask. His eyes, which were shaking more rapidly than ever, were like a pair of red suns which she could feel the heat radiating off of. Underneath them was a crooked grin which was dripping with the same virescent liquid that drenched the sand behind him and dotted his own body. The crazed energy in his eyes began to dissipate, his grin faded, and he took a wobbly step back. He put his hands on the sides of his head and yelled something about an awful noise. Tesudin, who was walking down the hill with Detras and Salvina, had his hand out in the Makuta’s direction. “We gave you a warning,” declared Maroona as she stood up straight and pulled her weapon, Fulgurite, off of her back to charge it with electricity, “several, in fact.”

“You act like you have authority over any of this,” Hysterix murmured as he composed himself, only to continue to be annoyed by the noise only he could hear.

“And you say that like I care,” she retorted, prompting him to snarl and swing his clawed hand in her direction.

Devolution
The second that Navahko, Corduk, Wreshi, and Lewok had stepped through the portal, their eyes were met with nothing except the red glow which the portal behind them emitted. The second it closed, only absolute darkness was left. The ominous sound of its closure, which resembled the sound of air rushing into space where there originally was none, resonated throughout the placid stone tunnel.

“Why aren’t the lights on?” asked Wreshi. His words faltered, likely due to the sudden absence of warmth his body had been thrust into.

“Keep your voice low,” Corduk warned.

“This appears to be one of the unused storage areas,” Navahko explained under his breath. “One we only use in times of crisis.”

“So I guess this isn’t a time of crisis?” Wreshi questioned with a shiver. “My body’s in a time of crisis from the sheer cold.”

“Not a big enough one to need all of the unused areas to be used,” Corduk replied as he took a step forward. “Why ‘Alchemist’ would want to enter the tunnel here is a mystery.”

Navahko would have commented after him were it not for the loud thud. The Toa made as little noise as possible following this; the only noises that could be heard were breathing and quiet footsteps. Then, there was a mystical, sparkly noise, which coincided with a faint silver glow in the midst of the Toa. After inspecting it for some time, they all found that it was Corduk’s Kanohi.

The glow began to move away, bobbing up and down with each soft step the Toa of Earth took. He stopped moving, a series of metallic bangs were heard, and then a loud electrical whir began to emanate from behind the walls. The bright floodlights lining the upper corner of the tunnel blasted on one by one. Corduk, who had his hands on a breaker box’s array of switches, looked to his allies with a confident expression. It was short-lived, as it soon faded in favor of a face of shock.

“What is it?” Navahko asked, before deciding to look over his own shoulder. He was met with “Alchemist”, as still as a statue, his weapon raised, his eyes and sight locked onto his head like a deadbolt. “Bother,” Wreshi mumbled.

This was the last thing anyone did for some time. The Dark Hunter remained with his sight on Navahko. Corduk kept his hands in the breaker box. Wreshi froze in the midst of turning around, apparently able to forgo the effects the extreme cold had on his body. Lewok hadn’t moved a hair since before the lights were turned on. Navahko was in the middle of recoiling from the sight of the wrong end of “Alchemist”’s firearm. He was the first to begin moving, as a slight shiver of dread crept through his body.

“Alchemist” was the next to move, as his head moved slightly in several directions before it settled its sights on Lewok, who had his eyes shut and his Kanohi on.

“In five seconds, make a move,” said a voice in Navahko’s head. He was quick to recognize it as Lewok’s. Assuming that this was a part of some sort of plan, he began the countdown.

Five.

One of the lights flickered briefly.

Four.

Lewok’s breathing began to grow louder and heavier.

Three.

The Toa of Air tipped over slightly, letting his right shoulder rest on the nearby tunnel wall.

Two.

“Alchemist”’s eyes zoomed in and out of focus, and his head twitched slightly.

One.

“Alchemist” scooted his foot back.

Navahko lunged at “Alchemist” as the Dark Hunter fired his weapon. The green bolt of light narrowly missed his head and struck the stone floor a dozen feet behind him, from which sparks and shrapnel exploded. He dove for the Dark Hunter’s legs but missed them. His Frost Spear, however, struck them, causing it to dislodge from his hand. When he landed behind his opponent, he scrambled onto his feet and put his hands in front of his face defensively.

As “Alchemist” turned around, Corduk sprinted in his direction, wailing a battle-cry of sorts, jumped, and planted his closed fist into the side of his head. Something sprung loose from it, and a bolt or two were torn off entirely, causing a blast of thin smoke to blow out. After landing back on the ground, the Toa of Earth somersaulted such that he ended up crouching and facing “Alchemist”.

He stood up valiantly and looked at his opponent, who, although he certainly looked like the punch had done significant damage, did not act as such. Instead, he slowly turned his head to face him before launching his arm out and clamping his hand around his neck. Corduk slammed his fists into his arm before opting to grasp his wrist in an attempt to wrench himself out of his iron grasp. Without any difficulty, “Alchemist” threw him to his right and set his sights on Navahko, who had ducked underneath to dodge the Toa of Earth. Corduk crashed painfully into a container, breaking one of its corners and letting some of its contents spill out. As he pushed himself off of the ground with a groan, he eyed, amidst several canisters of Divurgo that had spilled out, a handheld firearm designed for use by the more experienced of the KCO guards.

The Makuta brought his massive hand down with great force, blowing sand out in all directions upon impacting the bottom of the parched river. Maroona, who narrowly dodged the attack, had to hold her forearm in front of her mask to protect her eyes from the flying sand. By the time she had decided the time was right to let it fall away, Hysterix had already stood up straight and was facing her.

“I don’t remember you being this quick,” he taunted, his teeth bared. “I thought you were the one who stood and talked your enemy into submission.”

“That’s not all I do, really,” she replied as she took a step back and engaged a combat-ready stance.

“Other than sit around and talk back?”

“I only do that when I want to avoid a confrontation.”

“Then show me what you can do in one you’ve so foolishly instigated.”

With a series of ear-splitting crackles, Maroona fired a bolt of lightning straight from her weapon to Hysterix's head in the blink of an eye. Stray arcs of electricity shot out like shrapnel and formed streaks of grimy glass when they zig-zagged across the sand. The resulting force applied against the Makuta pushed him and toppled him over onto his back. The sand that flew up onto his own body was also turned into glass by his armor, which had heated up significantly as a result of the current that had run through it. Through the tiny cracks in his armor which he had yet to close up, green, smelly steam seeped out.

“So you can summon lightning as well?” he asked with fake surprise as he sat up. “How could I have known?”

“Certainly not by look—” Maroona’s snarky response was cut off by a burst of magnetic force from her opponent’s giant, open hand. It launched her back; upon landing she tumbled several times over, spitting more sand into the air. By the time she had finally come to a stop, had righted herself, and could see through the flying sand, Hysterix was already storming toward her, full speed ahead, with two fistfuls of Elemental shadow energy. She prepared to send another shock or two through his body before she realized that she had lost ahold of her weapon during her crash. As she looked down to find it, she saw something red begin to trickle down from her mask.

Surely, the Toa of Lightning would have been as good as dead, were it not for the deafening boom which sent Hysterix rocketing to her left. He kicked up sand every time his flailing limbs scraped the ground until he finally was able to big his claws into it hard enough to bring him to a complete stop, leaving four deep gashes in the sand which quickly began to fill themselves back in.

Almost immediately, Hysterix was met with a thick spray of fire from his right. As he backed away from it on all fours after dislodging his claws from the ground, he detected more attacking from behind him, this time in the form of a volley of powerful jets of water. When he was able to withstand the force of each attack long enough to stand up without much trouble, he thrust his hands out to his left and right. A Toa of Fire and a Toa of Water, who had been attacking him, were pushed back by, as indicated by the mystical hum, strong surges of magnetic force.

With an aggressive glare in his eyes, he whipped his head to look at the Toa of Fire, who was on his knees and trying to reorient himself. The moment that he saw who was looking at him, he scrambled to his stolen blade of Qama Radúla and grasped it firmly as soon as he could reach it. Before moving on to find his shield, he glanced up to check on his apparent hunter.

“Ah, Detras,” Hysterix crooned with a devilish grin, “brave beyond his abilities… and, as it has become apparent now, beyond his smarts.”

Detras was now on his feet, his now-ignited blade held firmly in front of him like a broadsword made of pure flame. He gave Hysterix a defiant scowl, causing his virulent smile to grow. Upon noticing this, the Toa of Fire soon converted into a cocky smirk, which seemed to make the Makuta angrier and dissolved his smile. During this time he spent playing with his enemy, unfortunately, he had failed to notice that his eyes had grown considerably brighter and redder. Panicking, Detras ducked behind his blade as two beams of pure heat energy were thrust out of his enemy’s eyes en route to his chest. However, when the beams struck his blade, very little of either of them managed to survive through it, coming out the other side only as a rather irritating radiance of heat. The rest of the beam’s energy was seemingly siphoned away into the blade’s silver hilt, as evidenced by the fact that it was becoming warmer.

When Hysterix decided to stop, he looked to his enemy at first with bloodlust, and then with distaste. “It still hasn’t grown beyond your inconceivable luck, however,” he mumbled. With a wave of his hand, he magnetically seized the Toa of Fire, who had begun charging toward him, and suspended him in midair only a few meters above the ground. When he noticed that jets of water were once again harmlessly hailing onto his back, he grumbled and elastically extended his other arm back. With as much sardonic apathy as he could muster, he swung it around for some time until he heard a feminine “oof!”, at which point he retracted it and focused himself entirely on the Toa of Fire floating in front of him.

“Dear Toa, I know you to be a very complex individual,” he began as he lifted his newly freed arm to join the other. “It’s such a shame that we can’t really truly explore you without having to remove some of your… layers.”

As the humming of powerful magnetic force increased in volume, loose parts, tips of armor, and other various pieces of shrapnel flew off in all possible directions. Mere seconds into it, metal began to grate and squeak, and Detras was audibly groaning in pain between his teeth. The groaning turned into growling, the growling into suppressed yelling, and the suppressed yelling into an outright livid roar which was only interrupted by the continuous, thunderous noise and flashing of light which suddenly invaded the area. Alongside Detras, Hysterix was now hollering; even with the added volume, the yelling was still not loud enough to not be drowned out by whatever painful sound was being made.

When the source of the noise ended its terror, the sound continued to echo throughout the hills, scattering flocks of bird Rahi that were barely even visible from such a far distance away. Detras had been thrust back and was nothing short of embedded in the dirt hillside, and was no longer groaning. Hysterix was on his knees and elbows, looking rancorously through his brow’s dribble of green fluid at Maroona. After lowering her smoking weapon, which was almost red-hot in some areas, the Toa of Lightning wiped her free hand across the side of her head and gazed at the fresh smear of her own blood on it.

The Toa of Earth looked over at “Alchemist”. The Dark Hunter had picked up Navahko and thrown him into Wreshi. He now had his weapon aimed at the head of Lewok, who instinctively moved his Repeller Blade in front of him. “Alchemist” aimed at his chest, Lewok moved his weapon to block that, and so on, so forth until the Toa of Air gave up.

Corduk threw one hand on the ground to pick up the firearm and unscrewed one of the canisters with his other. He jammed the Divurgo crystal inside of the canister into the notch on the back of the weapon, all with a level of expertise he gained from centuries of guarding the tunnels. He cocked it, checked it for strays particles of Divurgo, and aimed it at “Alchemist” with his finger on the trigger, only for him to hesitate.

Although “Alchemist”’s head was in his sights, he refused to shoot. He aimed the weapon at his back but kept stalling. “Alchemist” was now speaking to the Toa, but his words became jumbled and indecipherable in Corduk’s head. Unsure of where to fire, he felt himself begin to panic. An alarm going off in an adjacent hallway could be heard. The scene before him seemingly turned a shade of bright red; whether or not it actually did was not something he currently had the capacity to find out. His finger slid off of the trigger as the whole weapon began to shake.

However, something snapped inside of him. Even though his body was still slipping faster and faster into the symptoms of anxiety, mentally, he had found a cure. Closing his eyes, he focused all of the tension in his mind onto the thought of activating his mask. Before long, it was glowing, and even humming slightly.

With a smirk, he opened his eyes and focused on his opponent’s upper half. Almost immediately, he was assaulted by an awful smell which nearly made him gag. He recognized it as the same odor as the one from the last time the tunnels had been invaded. The memories of his vision blurring and his mind spiraling out of his control came back such that he had to push them aside.

The smell seemed to be at its strongest somewhere in the Dark Hunter’s abdomen. As he looked to it, he eyed a gleaming piece of round glass. He placed his finger back on the trigger and fired, shattering the glass and releasing a buoyant, colorless gas that almost instantly began to evaporate. “Alchemist” turned around and looked at Corduk with, much to his own dismay, an undazed look. Corduk noticed that while he was turning around, however, he had taken the aim of his weapon off of the Toa. Not wanting to miss such an opportunity, he flung his own firearm at his head and charged toward him again. In his peripheral vision, he saw a green bolt fly past him, which took with it the Mask Maker’s Tool. As “Alchemist” stepped back and prepared to throw his fist forward, Corduk ducked and grappled his arms around the Dark Hunter’s waist. Despite the unexpected loss in his momentum not resulting in his opponent toppling over, he didn’t hesitate to plant his feet firmly on the stone floor and push with all of his might. “Alchemist” almost immediately began to teeter back but managed to keep his balance with careful footing. He looked past Corduk and saw Lewok, crouching like a scared animal, panting and holding the Mask Maker’s Tool to his abdomen.

Without taking his eyes away, the Dark Hunter kicked Corduk off of him, grabbed a potion from his back, and tossed it behind him. Upon striking the ground, there was a deafening bang which accompanied an eruption of flaming fluid. It rapidly spilled out and reached both sides of the tunnel. The fire rising from the resulting mess grew upward at lightning speeds, reaching far above the height of a Toa in the blink of an eye. The Dark Hunter grabbed Corduk off of the ground by the neck and began dragging him as he steadily approached Lewok. The Toa of Air bolted, narrowly dodging a shot from “Alchemist”’s weapon. As Navahko lifted himself onto his feet, he looked at the wall of fire and saw the Dark Hunter behind it, dragging the Toa of Earth. Then, the sirens blasted, and the lights lining the hallway turned blood-red, adding to the aggressive lighting the flames drenched the area in.

Dissolution
Hysterix's hand was now engulfed in a pitch-black, misty energy. He held it out toward Maroona and grumbled, “You’re quite a resilient one, aren’t you?” The substance around his hand began to warp and morph, causing stray particles to fly off and blacken the sand. “That’s good. It’s what I used to kill Tetradon, and it’s what I’ll use to kill you too.” One after one, a dozen shadowy bolts blasted out of his outstretched hand. At first, they flew out in varying directions, but soon after they got themselves back on track and roared toward the Toa of Lightning. Maroona dove to her left and the projectiles slammed into the sand behind her, each creating a resounding hiss upon impact. That was, all except for one, which struck her in the shoulder. There was a similar hiss, and the substance seeped in between the cracks in her armor. She clutched her shoulder and yelled in pain as flakes of pearl white and dark blue metal sloughed off of her new wound.

As the shadow faded away from his hand, Hysterix stood up, staggered for a bit, and began to lumber forward with a limp in one of his legs. Another blast of water whizzed past him, embedding itself in the hillside and dampening the dirt. He turned his head to look at Salvina and shot another pair of fiery beams out of his eyes. One missed, but the other was somewhat successful, grazing the side of her abdomen and burning the armor covering it. She winced and gripped the damaged area with her free hand, but continued to hold her staff, which was dripping water, up and aimed at the Makuta.

“Is that all you can do?” she taunted as she launched another jet. Hysterix focused his eyes on her, and their rapid shaking seemed to die down as she suddenly stumbled and dropped her weapon. She fell onto her knees, her handlocked onto her forehead before she collapsed into the sand with a prone position and limp arms and legs.

Hysterix grinned and turned back to face the portal-opening device. Maroona was still laying down in the dried riverbed, clutching her shoulder and aggressively clenching her teeth to stop any screams from exiting her mouth. She stood up and dragged her foot forward to walk in Hysterix's direction, only to fall down again.

Seeming to be pleased by this, he continued walking toward the device. Now able to regain his posture completely, as his limp was gone, he seemed to strut over to it. He would have looked more proud of himself if his hunched back didn’t make such confident walking look uncanny. The pride he carried with him faded even more when a familiar scathing noise, which apparently was tormenting only him, returned to assault his hearing. With a snarl, his manic eyes darted around again before they locked onto the raven-colored figure of Tesudin.

An army of snarled, wooden tendrils burst forth from the ground and ensnared the Toa of Sonics. The noise whimpered, but still persisted, even as he was dragged in Hysterix's direction, desperately flailing his limbs. When he was a meter away from the Makuta, the tendrils placed him upright and planted his feet into the sand. With his teeth bared, Hysterix leaned forward, grabbed his head, and wedged the claw of his thumb into his mask. Without much difficulty, part of it tore off, as shavings of black and silver metal fluttered to the ground. “You’re quite the bothersome one, aren’t you?”

He lifted his hand, which was connected to the mess of tendrils, up, and several wood spikes appeared, all aimed at Tesudin’s head. Grinning, he snapped his hand shut, and all of them careened toward the Toa of Sonics. However, almost as soon as they had been summoned, they were blasted into smithereens by wave after wave of sonically compressed air. They struck him with the same force, pushing him back and leaving him only barely on his two feet.

Almost immediately, Wreshi crouched down and looked into the wall of fire with a headstrong gaze. He smirked, lunged with one foot, and threw the other forward to take a stride before something caught on his shoulder. He tumbled to the red-ground, as did his Recoiling Pickaxe, as did Navahko’s weapon, and as did Navahko himself.

The Toa of Ice clutched one hand with another before getting himself up and off of the floor. He looked down at Wreshi, who was giving him a baffled stare, and offered his hand to help him up. Over the alarms, he yelled to him, “You can’t jump that, Wreshi!”

“Well, why not?” Wreshi insisted.

“Whatever chemicals started that fire will likely cling on you and burn you down with them.”

“Key word: might.”

As Navahko stared at him, he gave him a puzzled look, while the Toa of Stone himself turned rather cross.

“That’s not a chance you can take!”

“What else’re we gonna do?”

The Toa of Ice frantically looked over his shoulder and was dismayed to see that the room ended in with a wall. There were no exits, no emergency supplies, nothing. Only maroon-tinted stone.

“Your mask can, like, make you fly, right?” Wreshi asked urgently.

“This isn’t the best time to use it.”

“Well, unless you can suddenly use your Elemental powers, then it’s probably our only option.”

“There has to be another way out. Corduk and Lewok need our help.”

“Well, our only option aside from me just jumping through the darn thing, which would be a lot simpler!”

“Wreshi, you are ‘’not’’ jumping through that!”

“Then why can’t you use your mask?”

Navahko didn’t respond. He simply looked away from Wreshi and into the wall of fire.

“Why not?”

“I can’t use it after what happened the last time I used it.”

Wreshi threw his head back, put his hand on his face, and moaned impatiently.

“My, what great respect you have for other people’s problems,” the Toa of Ice snarked.

“Navahko, you have to! It’s our only option!”

“Fine,” he grumbled, picking up his spear and taking a step forward. The distance between the top of the fire and the ceiling oscillated rapidly, only briefly giving enough room for a Toa to fit through on their stomach. He would have commented that he couldn’t fit through, but he told himself not to. He couldn’t squander any more time. Reluctantly, he thought about his mask activating. Immediately, his thoughts came back to the pain he felt in his ankle after falling the first time he had used the mask. In an attempt to push the thought out of his head, he took his attention off of his mask and stared into the fire for some time. Wreshi urged him to get on with activating his mask, but he didn’t heed anything he said. He needed time to activate it, to come to terms with what he associated with it.

Then, his train of thought came across the acoustic jetah he had found in Vo-Powai. Something about playing the instrument had relieved him of something, and while that something may have come back, he was sure that he could rid himself of it for good. Perhaps it was the guilt of having failed his first task as a Toa that it had pushed away. Or, possibly, the subsequent fear of his mask he had developed. Whatever it was, the memory of the jetah gave him an incentive to try and push it back again for the sake of his friends, his people, and his island.

Before he could focus back on his mask, it had already activated on its own. He floated up to the stone ceiling, where, in a panic, he scrambled to grab onto it. Some sort of force, like a reverse gravity, pushed his hands and feet onto it, securing him to it. As he reached out and placed his hand further forward, the same force kept it there.

“And I thought I’d seen everything,” said a baffled Wreshi from below. Navahko looked down at him and smirked before crawling across the ceiling toward the fire. As he approached it, he felt the heat radiating from it, rising and falling in intensity as the flames themselves did. Pictures of his mask failing and dropping him into the red inferno entered his mind. As frightening as they were, they were not as realistic as the thought of having poor timing and trying to pass over the flames just as they touched the ceiling. Setting the image to the side, however real it may become, he decided that the best way to avoid such a situation was not to worry about it. He observed the flames and the intervals at which they rose and receded.

Up.

Down.

Up.

Down.

Up.

Down.

Up the tree.

Down the tree.

Now your ankle is broken.

Good job.

He inched closer and closer to the flames until he found the point at which the pain of being so close to it was too almost much for him. He felt the glow of his mask intensify, and his legs began to tingle. Once again, it was doing what it wanted to do.

Before he could put forth any effort to resist its autonomous actions, the flames receded to their lowest point. He suddenly shot forward, independent of his intentions, and flew right over the wall of fire. His landing was hard and disorienting, but not painful. When he could see clearly, he saw that the stone floor underneath him had cracked, confirming that his landing had been as hard as it had seemed. Still, he felt to pain. His limbs were all attached and unbroken, his armor was unscathed, and his head felt fine, aside from the subsiding vertigo the sudden deceleration had given him.

“Are you alive?” yelled Wreshi from across the wall of fire.

“I think so,” Navahko replied. By now, although the red security lights were still on, the had alarms ceased. After they were finished echoing through the tunnel, the Toa of Ice could hear the sound of hand-to-hand combat emanating from some ways down.

“You stay there,” he ordered Wreshi. “I believe that that’s where the portal will open up if it opens again.”

“Sounds good. Don’t get yourself killed.”

As Hysterix expected, the continuous, harsh noise returned before he had even finished a single step toward the Toa of Sonics. It grew louder, sharper, and more diverse in the types of auditory horrors that composed it; each increase in any of these caused his trembling eyes to shudder aggressively for a brief moment. Still, he continued striding forward, seeming to be irritated by the noise only on the inside, as told by the twitches of his hands. However, the twitching intensified, his eyes stopped recovering, and his steps became slower and more unbalanced. At some point, it became too much for him to handle, as he stopped advancing entirely in order to keep himself from falling over.

“So, you like to think that you’re useful, as well, don’t you?” he taunted. In his peripheral vision he could see, off in the distance, Maroona charging Fulgurite to hurl another bolt of lightning at him. However, a horde of tree limbs suddenly sprang up from the ground beneath her, grabbing her arm and pulling the weapon away. The discharged the blast, successfully reducing the wooden tendrils on her arm into flickering embers, but was not quick enough to react to the others that had seized her legs. She tripped and fell to the ground as a tree-like structure, which was the source of the tendrils, grew up from behind her and flung her into the hillside.

All this time, Tesudin’s noise had done all but die down. It was unrecognizable, both from the multitude of sounds composing it and the distortion caused by its incredible volume. As Hysterix looked back to the Toa of Sonics, he was met with several powerful sound waves which struck him in the chest. Much to their sender’s dismay, they did next to nothing to stop him. Before Tesudin could send another volley, Hysterix had already charged his Heat Vision and was ready to discharge it into his head. He rolled to the side as they were released, causing the noise to falter and become choppy. Almost immediately, the Makuta reached out, elastically extending his hand, and grabbed him by the upper arm.

“Don’t fret,” the Makuta murmured. “You’ve already proven yourself quite useful to me and Tetradon.”

Unshaken by this remark, Tesudin but his free hand on his opponent’s thick arm and sent a powerful vibration up it. It only barely managed to loosen Hysterix's grip, and even then it wasn’t enough to free himself from his grasp.

“The mind makes an incredible weapon, doesn’t it? Even if it isn’t yours, you can always find a way to use a mind to get what you want.” Hysterix retracted his arm, bringing the Toa before him. “That was the most valuable Tetradon taught me.”

“You speak like you are mad,” Tesudin replied, “which you undoubtedly are. If you’re going to try and manipulate me with talk about Ringa, it won’t work.”

Hysterix forced his victim onto the ground and replied, with a laugh, “How stupid must you be to deny that something has worked when it clearly already has?”

Tesudin’s eyes widened and darted around. Then, he reclaimed his serious glare and assertively said, “And how stupid must you be to try and manipulate me if I have clearly stated that such an act will not work?”

“Did you not listen?” Hysterix yelled as he pinned him down with his other arm. “We’ve already managed to get you to do what we want. It’s how you got here in the first place.”

“That is nonsense.”

“Stubborn, you are. I’ll just have to show you.”

Suddenly, Tesudin’s mind was invaded with spastic imagery. They all depicted him doing things he would never do: risking being spotted so he could leave an island, entering the Southern Island chain, taking a boat ride from a Vortixx he didn’t see as trustworthy.

“Why do you think you made these decisions?” Hysterix inquired. “They were all in the name of your beloved Ringa, weren’t they? Even the most absurd ones?”

By now, Tesudin had unwillingly begun to take the Makuta’s words into consideration. He was only resisting him to stop himself from being crushed and was no longer trying to escape his grasp.

“Yes, you’ve found out,” Hysterix continued. “I’m sure you can determine who was responsible for all of that. A little leverage on one’s emotions, and you can make them do whatever you want.”

“You are speaking nonsense!”

“In fact, it wasn’t just Ringa’s loss that Tetradon and used to get under her skin.”

“Nonsense!” Tesudin had now resumed his aggressive attempts to escape.

“Even before the moment she met you, we had our crosshairs set on you… and she was our weapon.”

Tesudin amplified the noise tenfold, agitating Hysterix. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful in breaking his concentration.

“The Brotherhood knew that the Ghosts were trying to create Toa. So, we were tasked with hiring someone who would prevent such a thing. However, during our search, Tetradon came across a particular being, a shapeshifter, and he decided that there was more that could be done to dig our nails into the Ghosts’ project. We hired her and told her to sign up for the Toa project, and lo and behold, she had soon managed to convince everyone on the island that she was a Toa of Water named Ringa.”

The Toa of Sonic’s actions grew more frantic and panic-stricken. By the time Maroona had removed herself from the mess of branches that ensnared her, the noise that was meant to torture Hysterix had been unleashed for everyone to hear. She dropped her weapon and then yelled as she smashed her hands onto the sides of her head in self-defense.

“We had her distract you in any way we could,” Hysterix continued with a wicked grin, “and when we discovered that little glitch in your system, we reckoned we had found the jackpot. The island practically became defenseless the moment she confessed her ‘love’ to you.”

Stricken with grief and pain, Tesudin clenched his teeth before releasing a shock wave from his body. It lifted Hysterix off of him, causing him to land on his back a couple of meters away. The time it took him to get back on his feet was barely enough time for Tesudin to grab his bow from his back. Soon, the Makuta was charging toward him again, and he had not the time to dodge. He held his bow up in front of him and, at the moment Hysterix touched it, shot out a continuous wave of sound. Hysterix was able to keep his ground, but the added force made him unable to push his opponent down as he had before.

“After we killed her,” Hysterix groaned through the resulting wind, “we used all of the pain you felt to guide you wherever we wanted, something which was quite easy when Tetradon invented that blasted serum. And from there, it was like leading a Rahi; we could make you go wherever, do whatever, essentially by our command.”

By now, tears were trickled down from Tesudin’s eyes. He amplified the wave of sound again and again until he was able to push the Makuta back, dragging his feet through the sand.

“And so, when we found out about that dreadful Toa of Lightning, we knew exactly who we could torment her with.”

Hysterix tightened his grip on Tesudin’s bow and, with little resistance, snapped in right in half. The waves of sound stopped, only persisting in their ghastly echoes. Tesudin froze, looking into his enemy’s blazing eyes with not even a semblance of hope. “It was almost too easy, to be honest,” the Makuta murmured before lifting his clawed hand off of one half of the bow and slashing into the Toa’s chest with it.

Tesudin winced and fell backward, clutching the trio of wounds. A viscous, bright green ooze seeped from each of them, the same ooze that was now on the tips of Hysterix’s terrible claws.

“It was as if you were her poison,” he teased, before succumbing to the fit of vile laughter that had been trying to push through his words. After finishing, he closed his eyes and used his mental powers to send a message to “Alchemist”: “If you’re done playing around with the Toa down there, grab the tool and get back over here!”

He then stumbled over to the portal-opening device and commanded it to open. As it opened, he could sense that Maroona had recovered from the electrical hum he heard behind him. Soon, several green lasers and a jet black pickaxe shot out of the portal, after which “Alchemist” himself leaped out of it, firmly landing on the river bed. As soon as he saw Maroona, he took aim at her with his weapon. Having lifted her own weapon up to fire at Hysterix, she froze, knowing that proceeding with her planned attack would now be her doom.

“Good,” Hysterix said to the Dark Hunter, “she’s been bothering me. Now, to finally get my hands on that…” he trailed off when he saw that “Alchemist”’s free hand was empty. Lividly, he roared, “Where is that cursed tool?”

“The Toa have ahold of it.”

“In the KCO?”

‘Yes.”

“Of course. I would grow angrier at you, but it may have been my mistake to put so much faith in you in the first place.” He turned back to the red portal and extended his right arm into it. On the other side of the portal, it emerged facing down, and the growing weight of his extended arm began pulling him downward. After adjusting to this imbalance, he carried on, snaking his arm over the cold stone floor of the tunnel. It passed over a blackened, smoldering gunk, some areas of which were steaming.

It stopped when it ran into a slim, white foot, which it then latched onto. Navahko, the foot’s owner, yelped and tried to stumble away. The hand swiftly lifted him off of his feet and threw him against a wall. Corduk, who was nearby, panicked, and fired several Divurgo rounds from his firearm into the arm. Unfortunately, all did little to no damage. Lewok, who had just run up to the scene, alerted by the noises, was clutching the Mask Maker’s Tool to his chest.

Unfortunately, he was not fast enough to outrun the hand, which effortlessly grabbed his ankle and pulled him back. He let go of the tool, and Corduk grabbed ahold of it before bolting. The hand grabbed him first, and then went for the tool, which he still maintained his grip on. Thus, he was dragged through the tunnel, the red alarm lights still flashing, his armor sparking as its edges struck the rock beneath him. When Lewok observed this, he got onto his knees, closed his eyes, and activated his mask. Toa Maroona, from across the island, he said, “Maroona, Hysterix has grabbed the tool. We’re running out of time. Stop him please.”

When Maroona received this message, the stress she was already feeling from being held at gunpoint by “Alchemist” increased tenfold. Her eyes darted frantically, looking to Salvina’s unconscious body, to Tesudin, who was writhing in pain, to her own captor, and to Hysterix, who also had his burning eyes on her. If she did anything to stop the Makuta, she was certain that a hole would be blasted in her head before she even had the time to accomplish anything worthy of sacrifice. On top of that, anything she did would be ultimately useless; even though her bolts of lightning were effective against Hysterix, he was was far from defeated, thanks to his Quick Healing ability.

In the tunnels, Hysterix was dangerously close to pulling the tool through the portal. Lewok and Wreshi were now trying to help Corduk in keeping the device in the tunnel, as all three were now grasping it. Unfortunately, they were ultimately doing little to hinder the Makuta’s brute strength.

Back in the plains, Maroona lowered her weapon. Her best hope was that when Hysterix finally retrieved the tool it would distract him enough that she could fire at “Alchemist”. Even then, she couldn’t predict what Hysterix would be capable of with the tool.

Out of nowhere, however, a blast of fire emerged and struck “Alchemist” in the back. His weapon flew out of his hand, and several blasts of colorful chemicals shot out from his torso. One of these turned the sand it struck invisible, another lit it on fire. In the distance, Detras, covered from head to toe in sand, dripping blood, and with his armor badly damaged, was holding his staff of Qama Radúla in the Dark Hunter’s direction. The tip of it was smoking profusely.

As Hysterix charged up a ball of shadow in his free hand, shocked by what had just happened, Maroona lifted Fulgurite up again. However, instead of aiming it at the Makuta himself, she took the opportunity to aim it at the portal-opening device and the red vortex it had manifested. As Hysterix yelled in denial, she discharged all of the electric energy she could muster through her weapon and into the device. The resulting shock wave blew sand into the air, snapped several tree branches, and threw both “Alchemist” and Detras back. It was only brief, as soon the outward push on everything in the area turned into an inward pull. Sand was drawn into the singularity now composing the end of Hysterix’s upper arm, as were several rocks and flakes of rotten wood.

When the strange occurrences ended, Hysterix staggered, his right arm perfectly cut off at the elbow. Rather than the oozing, swirling mass of green that one would expect to be in his arm, there was instead a pool of red energy similar to that which the portal created. Beginning the regrowth of his arm, he took several steps toward the Toa of Lightning. He snarled, “You are a fool to think you can stop me, even with smarts such as those which you have just displayed.”

Maroona, intimidated, took several steps back. She was not fast enough, as Hysterix stormed faster and faster in her direction.

“I’ve kept you alive to see if I could get something out of you to put everyone here at a bigger disadvantage, but it seems your resilience has been getting in the way of that.”

The Toa of Lightning lifted up Fulgurite and charged it with electricity, but Hysterix swiped his growing arm to the right and it flew out of her hand.

“That’s all you have going for yourself, I’ve found out. Resilience. The nemesis to someone like Tetradon… someone like me, as well, now… yet something that shouldn’t be so complicated to dig your nails under. As I have stated before, however, it will be your downfall, just as it was to my mad friend.”

Hysterix swung his arm to strike her, but it was stopped almost immediately. Something, an invisible force, seemed to be pulling it back. He looked behind his shoulder and saw that nothing had changed except the portal-opening device. In its center was a singularity of scarlet energy.

“What trickery is this?” he grumbled as he looked back to Maroona.

His attention was again taken off of her when he heard something heavy land in the sand. He slowly looked down and saw that his own right arm had fallen off at the same spot that the portal had cut it. Now, the wound on his upper arm was glowing bright crimson. The light moved up, seeming to dissolve whatever it moved over entirely. He looked back and saw that a string of energy was connecting the moving light to the singularity the device had created.

His waist, too, became tethered by energy and a burning hole in the center of it opened up.

“What are you doing to me?” he barked to the Toa of Lightning, who was just as surprised as he was.

Mustering up her confidence, she boldly looked down at him as his upper and lower waist were separated completely, dropping him onto the parched riverbed. She said to him, “It seems as if the consequences of what you’ve done have finally caught up with you.”

Upon saying this, her own body began to shimmer. A peculiar sparkling noise soon accompanied it. Hysterix stared at her with awe as her body began to morph and her armor began to warp. The shimmering soon overcame any hopes of seeing what was happening to her. When it was over, she had decreased significantly in height. She kept few traces of her original form, as only her colors, shoulder armor, and mask were spared from being changed entirely. Even then, the sides of her mask looked different now, and her shoulder armor had been reoriented.

By now, Hysterix himself was being dragged back to the device. His disembodied legs flew through the sand, absorbing into the singularity upon getting close enough to it. Wiping the awe from Maroona’s transformation off of his face, he scowled at her. She scowled back, albeit more confidently and much less maliciously. The Makuta then grumbled, “I never thought I’d meet someone who I hated more than Teridax. That was proven wrong first by Tetradon, and now it’s been proven by you.” After he said that, the pull on his body only increased. It outmatched his great strength, as his attempts to crawl away from the device with one arm only tilled the sand the passed over. He bellowed as the last remainders of his body were rapidly disintegrated and sucked into the device.

There was a moment of quiet. The raucous noises echoed into nothingness. A flock of birds returned to a nearby tree. The sand that remained in the air settled back down. The only thing that interrupted the scene was the quiet sound of Detras getting up and hiking over to Maroona.

“He’s gone,” he muttered, looking to the device. The red that it’s lights produced slowly shifted into a purer white which was much more heartening to look at. “And you’ve changed,” he added, looking to her. “You’ve turned into something, I can’t remember the name...

“A Turaga,” she said as she looked at Fulgurite. It, too, had transformed, and now took the form of a white staff with a silver, two-pronged fork at the top. The gold chain she had once decorated it with had luckily survived. “But I don’t understand.” “Why not?” Detras asked. “You’ve used up your Toa power. Doesn’t that mean you turn into a Turaga later?”

“No,” she said as she looked up at him rather solemnly. “Sacrificing Toa power is only one prerequisite. The other is to fulfill one’s destiny.”

“Your… destiny? I don’t remember that being a part of it. I thought a Toa’s destiny was unrelated to becoming a Turaga?”

“It is. You may have been taught wrong.”

“I must’ve.”

“However, this all seems wrong.”

“Why?”

“What was my destiny? What did I do to deserve this? I assumed that you and all of the other Toa were my destiny. To train you.”

Detras looked at the device once more and seemed to be thinking about it intently. “Hysterix.”

“Him?”

“He was your destiny. To destroy him, the biggest threat to this island after Tetradon.”

“Why, though? If I was destined to accomplish that—which makes no sense from a moral standpoint—why did the Kupurero want me to—”

“Guys,” said an unsteady voice which caught their attention. They looked over and saw Salvina near the edge of the riverbed. She had Tesudin’s arm over the top of her back, supporting him. From the three bloody gashes on the wounded Toa’s chest dripped a sickening, dark green ooze.

“We’ll discuss this later,” Maroona said.

Obelus
Maroona sat down, completing the circle of Toa that she had brought together. As the snow from Ko-Powai's weather fell onto Vo-Powai's greatgrass in the Interlands between the two regions, she looked to each of the Toa. She looked to Navahko, who was brushing soot off of his left leg; to Corduk, who was studying a piece of heat-warped glass; to Wreshi, who was painlessly articulating his elbow; to Salvina, who was still holding her hand to her forehead; to Detras, who was observing a broken-off fragment of his own armor; and to Lewok, who was digging a bit of gravel out of his Vehere.

“I’m sure you all have a lot of questions, yes?” she asked them, quickly catching their attention.

“Indeed we do,” Corduk replied.

“About my stature, I presume?”

“Not about that. We already know about that.”

“But do you know why it works?” Detras spoke up.

“What do you mean?”

“One must complete their destiny in order to become a Turaga.”

“And one of the questions that plagues me, in particular, is what exactly my destiny was,” Maroona said. “That’s something I can figure out on my own, and on my own time, however. Otherwise, there are more important questions to answer.

"First off, both Ruthos and 'Alchemist' were able to desert the recent battle against the Syndicate. Although Ruthos doesn't bother enough to cause any more trouble and is most likely off of our island already, I'm not sure about 'Alchemist'."

"You mean he got away?" Corduk blurted. "That wretched Dark Hunter?"

"Not for long. In time, either he will find us, or we will find him."

"And what of Tesudin?" Navahko asked. "I heard he was injured."

"Indeed he was," Maroona answered. She sighed. "Hysterix managed to poison him—or infect him, possibly—through a scratch of some sort. He's been taken to Le-Powai to heal, but the last I heard, his future is uncertain."

Navahko looked rather dejected following this.

"Although, he did say something about wanting to tell you something... at least I think so.

“Moving on, there are some other problems that apply more directly to us as a group. Things are obviously going to change here from now on. As a Turaga, I can no longer fight for my island, at least not in combat. I can't train any of you in the ways I wanted to, with easily available, first-hand experience. Instead, the issue—or, rather, the matter—of your training is going to need a new approach to it. Fortunately, it seems that some of you are at the point where you can provide combat training to the others," she looked to Corduk, "but as far as Elemental powers and Kanohi go, I will need to teach most of you more vicariously.

"In light of this, I've decided that the leadership of our team is going to require a similar approach. Just because I have all of the skills a leader needs doesn't mean that I will always make the best decisions. Additionally, if our last two battles as a whole team are any indication, things tend to work out better when we all play a part in the decision-making process. Because of this, I've decided to, in a way, break the custom of Toa team leadership being appointed to one or two members. Instead, I've decided to try out something the Coalition likes to call devolution: each and every one of you will have a voice in all that we do."

There seemed to be drastically mixed reactions to this. On one end of the spectrum, Detras was smiling and Lewok maintained his relaxation; on the other end, Corduk had produced an odd noise of surprise while Navahko was raising an eyebrow.

"You mean you won't be our leader anymore?" Navahko said.

"That would be absurd!" Corduk said to him.

"Well, it sounds like that's what might be happening."

"No, no," Maroona answered with a slight laugh which calmed the commotion, "in terms of decision-making and planning, I will still be the leader. However, I will no longer make any decisions without ensuring that all of you are on board with it. It is now your duty to make vocal whatever suspicion or doubt you may have about our actions."

Corduk seemed to be much happier about this. He then asked, "Although, if you are unable to fight, who will lead us in missions?"

"I'm glad you asked. For his determination and courage, I've chosen Detras to be the deputy of the team and our leader when in action. And you, Corduk, will be his own second-in-command for the same reasons, taking his place if he is ever to be absent."

“Me?” said Detras. “A deputy?”

Maroona nodded. She was about to reply to him, but she stopped, looking rather distressed. When asked what was bothering her, she answered, “Oh, I’ve just remembered that I need to go to a meeting with the Coalition soon. Sorry to cut this short. We’ll continue this later. In the meantime, I need… Corduk to go with me for protection.”

“Why, that’s quite the honor,” he responded. “Who exactly will we be meeting with?”

“I told you,” Corduk argued, “that he wouldn’t bother coming here himself to talk to us.”

“That’s what he said, Corduk,” Maroona replied as she planted her new, pristine staff as firmly as she could into the uneven maroon rocks. “Although I’m still bothered as to why he would have us meet here if two of us are Turaga.”

“He never does what he says,” Corduk mumbled.

“I thought I taught you to only exaggerate when appropriate?”

“Is this not appropriate?”

“In a formal meeting with the High Chief of the island, nothing is appropriate except formality. And I expect that from someone who held jurisdiction in a government organization.”

“What I meant to say is that he—”

“Shush, he’s here.”

“Oh, good.”

A frail tan-and-brown Turaga had emerged from behind the tall grass surrounding the Citadel of the Avesians. With each step he took, he shifted his ornate staff forward to compensate for the bumpy terrain. As soon as he got onto the outer stone ring of the ruins, he sighed with relief and seemed to have much less trouble hobbling across the makeshift wooden bridge leading to the central, rock-filled basin. He looked up at Maroona and Corduk and smiled briefly and mechanically at them before focusing on the opposite end of the bridge. His mask began to glow, after which he spontaneously disappeared and then reappeared at that end of the bridge.

As he continued approaching the two, Maroona tried her hand at a compliment, saying, “I see you’ve reshaped your mask again, Qedua.”

“Indeed I have,” he said. “And I see that you still refuse to recognize me as the High Chief?”

“Oh, no, I just forgot to call you by your title,” Maroona replied as Qedua carefully walked through the rocks. “Why aren’t your bodyguards with you?” “Well, they are with me. I told them to wait a while back, as I don’t expect either of you to attempt to assassinate me. Additionally, there is already a Toa here for protection… even if he is a rather rebellious one.” He stopped at the Grand Augur and stared at it. “So this was where it all began for the Toa?”

“This is just where they were transformed,” Maroona answered. “I’d say the team began the second Lewok gave me that Kupurero recording to read.”

“Well, then, we’ll have to put restrictions on it,” he said. “This entire ruin, in fact.”

“What?” Corduk grunted.

“For a second, it sounded like you trusted us Toa,” Maroona said with irritation.

“We do,” Qedua replied robotically, “but not entirely.”

“How can you not entirely trust someone?” Corduk argued. Maroona would have told him to keep quiet, but Qedua gestured for her not to.

“My friend, you can never trust someone entirely. I once trusted an organization called the Foundry— you may not have heard of them.”

“I have.”

“Yes, well, I had hope that they would finally talk the rest of our blasted Symposium into setting laws in place to hinder Elemental discrimination... but nonetheless, just as the message started to get through, they turned down protest in favor of warfare. From there, it was downhill for them. As such, it was downhill for any hopes of convincing the Symposium.”

“We aren’t the Foundry, High Chief,” Corduk pleaded. “We’re not like them.”

“And I know that very well,” he said, looking up him with an awkward smile. “Unfortunately, the rest of the Symposium doesn’t.”

“What are you talking about?” Maroona asked.

“The reason why the PNGC doesn’t seem to always do what it says it will do,” Corduk informed her. “There’s a lot of diverse opinions in the Symposium, which is excellent… unfortunately, one is more popular than all of the others.”

“It’s those Vo-Matoran,” Qedua said before nervously coughing and then whispering, “If anyone asks, I didn’t say that.”

Corduk and Maroona slowly nodded, looking first to each other and then back to the High Chief.

“I’m getting off-topic, aren’t I?” Qedua said with a chuckle.

“It’s fine,” Maroona reassured, “we’re not in any sort of hurry.”

“You aren’t, at least,” he replied. “Being High Chief is hard work, especially in a frail body such as this one. I can’t imagine you’re excited to be a Turaga as well, now.

“Not in the slightest.”

“Well, I have something I can tell you that I think would help you adjust to it.”

“You do?” said Maroona. She noticed that Corduk had been trying his best to shuffle away from the scene. As soon as she looked at him with a scowl, he quickly scooted back to his original position.

“Well, the moment I became a Turaga, the absolute first thing I felt was anger.” This comment regained the Turaga of Lightning’s attention. “I had been stripped of my power, my ability to protect the Matoran, all just for forming the government I had been destined to create. Next, I became rather anxious. I worried that in my diminished state I would lose authority and the Matoran I had brought into power would replace me. But, as time went on, I found that I still had the same memories I’d had as a Toa. The same mind. The same spirit. It didn’t matter how powerful my abilities were. By the time they’d diminished, I didn’t need them anymore.

“That’s the beauty of a Toa’s destiny, Maroona. Of Toa themselves, in fact. Even if the odds are stacked against us, we still find a way. Whether we fight against our conquerors or fight against ignorance, it matters not. All that matters is that you have the spirit.”

Navahko craned his neck upwards so that he could see Tesudin clearly. There he was, sitting on an elevated branch of the massive pine tree, looking down at him. His chest was bandaged from what Hysterix had done to him, and his halved bow was hanging on a smaller branch by its string.

“How did you get up there?” the Toa of Ice asked as he shielded his eyes from the sun.

“What I told you,” Tesudin answered. “Using powers creatively.”

“And how am I supposed to get up there?”

“Well, if you want to, then you know what you have to do.”

Navahko sighed and closed his eyes. He remembered, vividly, flying over the wall of fire. Again, he felt the heat on his body, the sudden acceleration, the desperation to help his allies. Before he knew it, his feet left the soft grass beneath them. He felt the same funny feeling he felt every time his mask activated.

He willed the mask to propel him up, and it did so. His trajectory was tilted just enough for him to twist around in mid-air and land on the tree branch sitting down, facing the same was Tesudin was. He scooted closer to the Toa of Sonics and looked to him. “Good,” Tesudin said, looking into the distance. “You’ve learned.”

“Why did you have me come here?” Navahko asked. “And why from afar, using your abilities?”

“Because of what you just did. I wanted to see that you had come to accept your past.”

“Yes, I did that in the KCO when I had to pass over a wall of fire.”

“You— you what?”

“Yep. Right over it.”

“Why in the world was there a wall of fire down there?”

“Blame ‘Alchemist’.”

Tesudin chuckled with Navahko a bit but stopped abruptly. He clutched his chest and winced.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m alright,” he said after settling down and leaning back a bit. “Anyway, I’m sure you’re wondering why I really brought you up here.”

“I thought this was just to get me to use my mask?”

“More than that.”

“And you sound like you’re rushing to say this to me.”

“Well, that is because this is the last training lesson I’m going to give you. I’m sure you can tell why.”

“You don’t have that long, don’t you?”

Tesudin slowly shook his head. He then said, “I want you to tell Detras about what you’ve learned.”

“Wh— what do you mean?”

“I know that there is a part of his past that he regrets. I want you to tell him that he doesn’t need to worry about it anymore. He just needs to learn from it, accept it, and move on.

“It must be a miracle that I was able to teach someone about what I have learned before I inevitably got myself killed.”

“About coming to terms with one’s past?”

Tesudin nodded. “Or, not as much teach, just tell somebody not to make the same mistakes as I had.

“I want you to keep this.” Tesudin picked up one end of his bow, letting the other dangle from the string. “It means very much to me, so much that I named it at one point.” He handed the dangling end over to Navahko.

“What did you name it?” the Toa of Ice asked as he carefully grasped it.

“Oh, I forget… I thought it was artistic and nuanced to name it something back when I did. Melisma, that’s what I named it, I think.”

“Melisma?” Navahko repeated as he took the other end of the bow and held it out. “The action of singing multiple notes in one syllable? That seems like an interesting name.”

“How do you know what that is?”

“I used to be big into music,” Navahko said as he arranged the halves of the bow so that they resembled it’s firm before it was broken. “I tried to do more than playing the jetah, such as singing. Ko-Matoran don’t like to hear singing, surprisingly.”

“Well, when you get the chance… if you get the chance perhaps… you can fix it. You don’t have to. You can just keep as a way to remember me. Just like I kept this backup blade to remember Ringa by. It was hers originally. I’ll have myself buried with it.”

“Ringa?” Navahko asked confusedly. “As in whoever Tetradon referred to back in Obodosara?”

“Yes,” Tesudin said before a painful series of coughs. “Back on Nynrah, I…” as he was looking down, he noticed that a tear was already running down one of his cheeks. “Oh, I don’t have the time to go into her right now. I’ll have to have Maroona tell you about her. She’ll remember what I told her about her.”

Tesudin coughed some more and leaned back on the branch he had originally hung Melisma around.

The blazing sun beat down on “Alchemist” harder than it ever had during his time on the island. Even his over-analytical mind couldn’t keep track of how long he had traveled over the past four days. Somehow, he was still in Vo-Powai. It seemed that he had been going in circles.

“Oh, this hurts…”

The Dark Hunter perked up and scanned the environment upon hearing this. He eyed a large bird Rahi sitting in a tree, and for a second considered if it had said it somehow.

“I’m in your head,” said the voice. It was undeniably Hysterix. “Alchemist” wondered if he was beginning to go insane. Antharahk had never seemed like a very competent scientist, anyway.

“And no, you’re not going crazy. Not yet, at least.”

“How are you alive?” “Alchemist” thought, deciding to see if he could communicate with the Makuta’s disembodied voice.

“You see,” he replied, “I’m not. Not in the flesh. My spirit, however, lives on.”

“How, though?”

“There are more pressing matters at hand, now.”

“Then why are you in my head?”

“That is a question I’m wondering about myself. I believe I’ve stumbled in here by accident if that makes sense… and I don’t plan on exiting lest I get lost in the strange plane of existence.”

“You should leave, anyway.”

Suddenly, against his will, “Alchemist” dropped his weapon in the dirt. He went to pick it up with great caution, watching it closely.

“It seems my powers still work. Excellent. We have work to do.”

“What kind of work? I won’t do it.”

“Yes, you will. In fact, now that I search through your memories…”

“Alchemist” froze suddenly. He was still conscious—in a way, at least—but was trapped in his body. He could feel his mind being invaded like he invaded. It felt like a rake was being dragged through his head, scraping and tilling his thoughts. A series of memories came to him of Antharahk’s domain: the testing room he woke up in, meeting Drakah for the first time, a conversation with Phi he otherwise scarcely remembered.

“So, you feel empty, don’t you? Without a soul?”

“I’d rather you not access those memories.”

“Well, a soulless being and a bodiless soul should go together perfectly, shouldn’t they? I can be your soul, per say. I can have you do whatever I say. Like a normal relationship between spirit and body.”

“What do you need?”

“Oh, finally, you’re compliant. I’ll need you to take out a certain Matoran.”

“As in kill?”

“No, as in serenade her with a poem and buy her a nice lunch.”

“What?”

“Yes, kill her. Shoot her. Throw a potion and make her convulse to death. I don’t care.”

“And where is this Matoran?”

“Right in front of you.”

“Alchemist” noticed the Vo-Matoran in front of him. Due to his stillness, she hadn’t been able to detect him at all. Reluctantly, he lifted up his firearm and tried to line up a shot on her head. “Hard without that sight, isn’t it? What did you get yourself into in the past four days to lose it?”

The Dark Hunter pulled the trigger. A green bolt of light flew out and embedded itself in the side of the Vo-Matoran’s head. She toppled over immediately, her body fluids already dripping out.

“Oh, good, you’re actually compliant. I suppose I’ll give you a little information on how I got here. I see that that question is convoluting your mind, something that doesn’t sit right with me.”

“How did you survive, exactly?”

“Well, as I mentioned, this isn’t just my mind that’s communicating with you, it’s my spirit. My mask, which I desperately used the moment I knew that that dreaded device you jury-rigged was going to kill me, separated it from my body.

“Now, I am here, a ghost, a phantom of me that lives on. I’m invincible, practically. They didn’t hurt me. Nothing can hurt me. Nothing can stop me, now.”

Characters

 * “Alchemist”


 * Pretadix/Hysterix


 * The Shadowed One - Mentioned


 * “Sunder” - Mentioned


 * Maroona


 * Corduk


 * Detras


 * Wreshi


 * Salvina


 * Lewok


 * Navahko


 * Tesudin


 * Tetradon - Deceased


 * Ruthos


 * Phi - Mentioned


 * Ringa - Mentioned


 * Teridax - Mentioned


 * Qedua


 * Drakah - Mentioned

Trivia

 * Cap spent his 2000th edit on releasing all of this volume, except for the pictures, which he uploaded directly afterward due to the fact that uploading a picture counted as an edit.
 * Volume VI was originally supposed to be released along with Renascence to connect the two, as it makes refernce to happenings in the short story. However, due to unforeseen complications, the volume had to be released before Renascence was complete so that Cap could both celebrate his 2000th edit and deal with said complications.
 * At over 5000 words, Dissolution is currently the longest chapter Cap has written. It beat the previous volume's Folie á Deux Part II, which had 3299 words. He found it both funny and saddening that the record was broken so soon.
 * With 22 in total, this volume currently has the most pictures out of any volume of a story Cap has written. There were even going to be 3 others, which were cut for various reasons:
 * Detras absorbing Hysterix's heat vision with Qama Radúla, which was cut due to the horrid way its special effects turned out.
 * Hysterix using his powers to render Salvina unconscious, which was removed because it was too close in proximity to another picture.
 * Ruthos flanking Hysterix and confronting him, which was cut when a scene where he fought the Makuta was cut to shorten Dissolution.
 * Chapter 6 was named after obelus, which today refers to the well-known cross symbol (†) standardly used to indicate that someone has passed away. In ancient texts, the word also referred to two other symbols (- or ÷), which indicated that a passage was corrupted or false. Thus, the chapter was named as such to reference the fact that the Toa Powai falsely believed Hysterix to be dead.
 * At the beginning of Obelus, the Toa Powai are listed in the order that they are summoned from the Shrine of Salvation in The Feral Plains as a reference to the story.