Part 9 - "THE MATORAN"
Crau’s rigged lips were creased in a vicious sneer. “Warrior of the Waves,” he said in his false tone, “welcome to the Scarlet Misery. I hope you enjoy your short time here.”
“Give her back,” Kido said with a growl. Neida’s yellow eyes glinted with both fear and hope when she looked at her brother.
“Maybe,” Crau said. “Or maybe I’ll make you win her back.” He lifted his claw up to his mouth to help project his voice and shouted, “Lieutenants!”
From the sides of the ship, the rigging, and secret doors leading from below deck, five hidden fighters emerged.
Kido drew drops of water from his armor and formed his accustomed spear point at the end of his staff, holding it by its center beam defensively behind him. "Whatever happened to ‘this fight is between you and me?’’ " He dropped his voice to imitate the gruff sound of Crau’s speaking.
“I’m a pirate,” the Captain said with a shrug. “I’ve made a living out of lying!”
One of the lieutenants, a woman whose violet skin riddled with spikes, made the first attack, charging at Kido with her pointed lance.
He jumped to the side and swiped his tool down against hers, wedging the lance’s point into the planked floor. He thrust the butt of his spear at her, clanging against her helmet.
Lieutenant Anglir, who must have swam to the flagship to join his allies, performed an overhead strike with the axe, though his lanky form made his attack slow and awkward. Kido easily managed to avoid it.
The hero jumped and flipped above him, reshaping his spear tip into a cord. The watery cord tightened around Anglir’s waist, which Kido capitalized upon by yanking it towards him as he landed. As the fishy pirate neared him, Kido thrust a kick onto his back, which sent him tumbling back over the gunnel and into the ocean.
“Not again!” he heard Anglir cry as the pirate fell.
Another lieutenant, one with strange plant-like extensions of his skin and an elongated snout, swung a mace at Kido. When he missed, he swung again, and again, roaring as Kido backed towards the edge of the boat. As soon as the water was in sight, Kido summoned a jet of water, which he directed to spray into the lieutenant’s peculiar face. As the pirate gurgled, the spiky-skinned woman returned, once again running at him with her lance. Kido lured her towards the leafy lieutenant and simply watched as she passed by and tackled the other lieutenant, sending him over the edge.
“You were so shrimpy before!” she said with a snarl, looking down at her two allies treading over the waves.
“I guess Toa grow up fast!” said Kido. He didn’t notice Crau’s beady eyes narrow as he said this.
A sharp pain shot up Kido’s leg. His knees buckled, and he fell to the ground as an electrifying energy shot through him, making his limbs go rigid.
“Don’t turn your back on all six of your opponents, dear!” the spiky Lieutenant said, jeering.
Behind Kido were the two remaining pirates, one a flat-faced woman wielding twin whips, each with fizzling electricity running down the strings. Her stout form stood over Kido, striking him again with one of the whips. Kido flinched as pain seared through him, paralyzing him.
The fifth lieutenant, a scrawny foe with two swords, cackled, his mandibles clicking together. “Remember me?” he asked in his scratchy voice. “We fought on the beach! Just last night!”
Kido groaned in pain. “Yeah… Yeah… I remember you.”
“Exceptional performance, Lieutenant Sting,” Crau said, approaching his fallen victim. He threw Neida over to the mandibled Lieutenant, who locked her in his scrawny arms with his swords.
She looked down at her brother, dismayed. Get up, she silently urged him.
"All that work, for nothing." Crau grinned as he lifted Kido up by the head. His eyes were shut closed. The spiky lieutenant and Sting snapped to the hero’s sides, holding his arms in place. Sting wrapped one of her whips around him, locking him into place, prepared to deliver another electric shock if provoked. “You really thought you could do it, didn’t you? You thought you would be the one to take back the ocean.” He leaned in, his antennae prying Kido’s eyes open so that they could stare into his. “Don’t feel too bad. You’re not the first to try. You didn’t get quite as close as others, but you definitely made it further than many.”
“Y-you haven’t won y-yet,” Kido said, straining to form words.
“You’re right, as much as it perturbs me,” said Crau. “Tell the crew they may ready the cannons.” He was eyeing the ship the Mako fighters were dueling on. They were working in surprising unison, battling less like soldiers and more like… like a village. They were winning. Wow, were they winning.
“On our own ship, sir?” the mandibled lieutenant questioned.
“Yes, on our own ship,” said the Captain. “We can rebuild. They, on the other hand…” A vicious glint of evil flashed in his eyes. “They will be helpless. They will beg us to be their rulers. They will need us.”
Kido lashed out in rage, trying to attack Crau, but Sting sent another pulse of lightning through her whip and stunned him. His staff clattered to the ground.
“Well, well,” the Captain said, picking the staff up to study it. “I am a fair and merciful captain. If you relinquish your mask and command your forces to cease their pitiful resistance, I will spare them as I have spared those below deck.” He took the staff by the middle, and crushed it into halves.
“No!” Kido’s anger bubbled forth again, but he kept it restrained, barely. He looked at the neighboring vessel, longing for some other option. He watched Jiina, the old chef, bravely fending of a four-armed scoundrel with nothing but kitchen utensils. He saw Hoffa, the old man, sprung from his lazy days of fishing to show the soul of a defender as he stared down a foe of his own, overpowering him with a measly fishing rod and walking cane. And Kaidi… She had tied up several opponents with a net and chain, and was relentlessly snagging more into her makeshift prison. They were warriors. Each of them.
But… he had a duty, didn’t he? To protect the Kanohi from villains like Crau? Isn’t that what a Toa would do?
He caught sight of Saane, standing in the midst of the battle, staring back at him. The Elder gave a gentle shake of his head. How… Did he know what was happening? Did he understand what Kido was questioning?
He looked once again at the villagers. No.
No, he had a duty, and it wasn’t to the mask. It was to his people. It was to the Matoran. The mask doesn’t make a hero. The core does. And Kido’s core belonged to Mako Village.
“Okay,” he said in defeated submission. “You can have it.”
“No…” said Neida softly. The mandible lieutenant closed his swords closer to her throat.
Crau grinned. “Excellent. Now, how do I remove it?”
Kido paused. “Um… you take it off.”
“Really? There is no… magic… lock or anything?” the Captain wondered aloud.
“You know, I thought the same thing at first,” he said. “But nah. You just take it off.”
Crau grabbed the mask with his great claw, obscuring Kido’s vision for a moment, and pulled the Kanohi free.
With a sea blue flare of light, Kido’s shape reformed back into his native Matoran state. At this size, Crau, Sting, and the other two lieutenants towered over him. They each glared at him with jeering menace in their eyes.
Now, with the mask in his hand, Crau looked at the Matoran, as if piecing something together. “I wasn’t able to believe it at first, but now, I understand…” He started to laugh. “You aren’t some great warrior or hero defending these Matoran! You are just another one of them! You’re a pretender!”
Kido bowed his head. Crau was right. He wasn’t anything special. Saane had said that, too.
“And, when it came down between courage and cowardice,” Crau continued, “you chose cowardice. You gave up your mask because you were afraid of what I might do. You quit fighting, because you aren’t a fighter.”
“I’m a fisherman,” Kido said gloomily. “I’m just proof that anyone can wear the mask.” At this height, he wasn’t able to see over the lieutenants’ shoulders to the ship his people were fighting on. “Mako Village!” Kido shouted, hoping his voice would carry. The shouting seemed to die down a little, so that was a good sign. “It’s over! Crau has the mask! He said he’d spare you! You can go home! I’m… I’m sorry!” He felt tears begin to well up in his eyes, and had to shut them to keep himself from crying.
The sounds of fighting slowed.
“Urcha, go down and let the crew know they may fire the cannons when ready,” said Crau.
“Aye, boss,” said Urcha, the spiked-lieutenant, and darted below deck, leaving Sting alone to hold the Matoran.
“What? You said-” Kido stammered.
“When will you understand?” asked Crau. “I’m a liar!”
“No!” The shout was from Neida. “No! You must keep fighting! All of you! We will not let this thug take our home away from us!” She looked down at her brother. “You too, Kido. You are a hero. You showed that today.”
“I’m not,” said Kido. “And it’s okay. I’m not a warrior, I’m not a fighter. I never knew what it was like to have strength or power until I held that mask.”
“Indeed, boy,” said Crau, his free claw grabbing the top of Kido’s head and wrestling it around. “You aren’t so much as an inconvenience to one such as I. Now, watch the image of your biggest failure! Sting, have him face both me and their ship!”
The lieutenant twisted Kido around, setting him behind Crau. As she did, Kido noticed the whip wasn’t as tight around his Matoran form as it was around his Kanohi one. It slacked a little around his arms. If he just wriggled himself around…
“What do you want me to do with her?” wondered the lieutenant with Neida in his clutches.
“I don’t care, Pinchy,” said the victorious Captain. “She doesn’t matter. What matters is this, my crowning moment!” He lifted up the mask, preparing to don it. The star’s final light illuminated the silver of the mask, a deep red glare against it. Kido could feel the coming darkness, and knew he was powerless to stop it. As powerless as the broken staff by his feet, its two halves sitting sadly against the deck.
But he didn’t feel powerless. No, he felt something else. It wafted from his core, filling his senses with fire and his mind with energy. It was some indescribable amount of stupidity, or some unbelievable recklessness that he had heard described before as “courage.”
“Crau!” he called. “You can’t put on that mask!” He prepared to run, placing one foot forwards and bending his knees.
The Captain whirled around, partially annoyed, partially eager to prove someone wrong. “You said it yourself, little Matoran. Anyone can wear the mask.”
“Yeah, but not everyone should!” He launched himself at the Captain, knowing he was charging towards his doom but letting that fear be all the more adrenaline behind his sprint. Please, let this work.
It was starting to make sense now. The mask didn’t choose Kido because he was special, it was because he wasn’t. He was a nobody. He wasn’t some knight or savior. He was a guy on the beach who stumbled by a power he was only fit to wield because he couldn’t believe he was. Rely on your own strength, follow your own will, run on your own might, and you will be swallowed by the ocean. But to accept weakness, to take mistakes as lessons, and to always get up, those are teachings no one is born understanding. Those lessons are learned from failures, failures that everybody has. It takes a nobody to become an anybody. An example, a story to follow. Someone to look up to, because you don’t have to look too high to see them. And isn’t that all a hero is? Someone who stands up, so that others will stand up with them? And if that was true, then nobody - and anybody - can be a hero. A Toa.
Kidoma…
The whip started to unravel around Kido, its loose length slipping behind him as Sting reactively triggered another line of shock through it. Rather than freeing himself, Kido grabbed onto the string, pulling it with him. He scanned Crau’s form, looking for a weak spot. There were areas where his crustacean carapace was exposed, but Kido didn’t imagine that would be very effective. His cloak, also, provided some protection, but what caught Kido’s eye were the pair of shining Havorian steel boots the Captain was so proud of.
Kido, now the perfect height to grapple the shape of the boots, used the hand free of the cord to grab onto the metal just as the electricity caught up to him, zapping through his metallic Matoran body, and connecting with the boots and their bearer.
Crau’s leg seemed to go limp entirely with shock, his organic matter beneath his boot especially weak to the lightning. He fell immediately, feeling the same effects of paralysis Kido did. They both slumped to the floor, the Kanohi mask spinning free of anyone’s grasp.
“Cap’n!” Pinchy yelled.
Kido could hear Sting’s steps as she began to run for either her boss or the mask.
No… Come on, Kido… He felt the electricity still stunning his arm, but he tried to push through it. He pushed with all his determination, all his willpower, and it still felt like it wasn’t enough. Come on…
The ship suddenly lurched as it was struck by a large wave, and the mask dropped right into his grasp. He yanked it towards him, wrapping his Matoran self around it.
“Give it here, kid!” he heard someone - probably Sting - tell him, but he would not let the Kanohi go. He pushed it up and laid his face into it, reshaping into his Toa self.
Pulling himself up to his feet, he looked down upon the remaining two lieutenants.
“Why don’t we call a truce?” asked Pinchy. He sheathed his blades and released Neida. “Here, you can have your sister back, but why don’t you… not hurt us?”
“Run down below deck,” said the Toa. “Go, let your friends back on board. I want to have some words with your captain.”
Sting and Pinchy hurriedly dashed down the ladder. As the latter passed by Neida, the Matoran stuck out her leg to trip him, which sent him tumbling down below. She grinned playfully.
“No…” he heard Crau growl from the deck. The crustacean pirate was awkwardly rising onto his knees. “No… Not possible… I am the King of the Nine Oceans… The fearsome Captain Crau! There isn’t an ear in the universe that doesn’t hear my name and plead for mercy!”
“Matoran don’t have ears,” Kidoma said, picking him up by the collar of his cloak. “We have sensors. And we don’t do well with pirates.”
“Don’t think yourself unique, boy,” said Crau. “I have faced my fair share of insurrections before. I always see my victory, eventually.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” said Kidoma with a raised brow, clearly doubting it. He started dragging Crau by his cloak to the gunnel.
“Wait, no!” The pirate began sprawling and protesting. “No, what are you doing? This cape is wool! Boy! I will see justice!”
Kidoma smirked. “This is justice, Captain.” He threw the pirate outwards, watching the foe plummet down to the waves below. Before he reached them, Kidoma drew up a stream of water with a fist. Slamming into the captain, the geyser rocketed up, carrying the screaming villain towards the sky, and out to the horizon, chasing after the setting star, until his fading form was no longer visible, swallowed up by the ocean. Kidoma spent a moment just to admire the beauty of the moment. The sky was red, as scarlet as the sails of the ship he stood upon, but the light was fading, replaced with the silvery array of stellar beams that drafted the scene with light.
Next to the flagship, the battling had ceased. With their captain gone, who was going to feed the pirates? There wasn’t really a reason to fight.
“You did it, huh, Kido?” Neida said, coming beside her brother. She didn’t like having to look up at him, but she would get used to it.
Kidoma dropped to a seat. There. Now he was shorter. “Looks like it.”
“Why didn’t you get scared, like last time?” she asked.
“Oh, I was terrified. Every second, I was terrified.” He raised his shoulders. “But I didn’t let that stop me from doing what I did.”
Neida smiled. “I don’t really understand what’s going on right now, but I think it’s bigger than just a brother and sister.”
“Definitely bigger. Some things are going to change.” The Toa beamed, and laid an arm around his sister. “But other things won’t.”
“You finally did it, Kido,” Neida said, putting her arm around him. “You finally lived your dream. You had an adventure.”
Kidoma nodded. “Yeah… Yeah, I really did.”
The two stared up at the skies and watched the stars dance and glimmer in unison of the surfing waves below, sitting upon the deck of the Scarlet Misery. They were, once again, together, and for the moment, that was all they needed to be.