Chapter 7
“So let me get this straight,” Kopaka said. “This Fierah person claims to be a Great Being. She says that she and her people made a living weapon to kill all the Toa, and it escaped. So she has a plan to stop it, but she won’t tell you what it is. Yet despite that, despite the fact that you have no idea what you’re doing, you’re just following Fierah.”
Orde nodded. “That about sums it up. She said something about tracking him using technology from the Star, but that’s about it.”
“Ah, Toa Kopaka, you are just as inquisitive and questioning as the day you were made,” Fierah said, staring intently at the Toa of Ice.
“Let me guess, you were there for that too,” Takanuva said.
“No, I was not,” Fierah said. “But I heard about your first day.”
“All right,” Kopaka said. “Well, we have a mission of our own: find and rescue Pohatu. Personally, I prefer not to follow a leader who refuses to share her plan, so if you wish to keep your secrets, then you can lead your team on your mission, and I shall lead my team on my mission.”
“The Star wasn’t just a way to bring people back to life,” Fierah explained. “It had another function. If something happened to Mata Nui, the Toa Mata would be summoned to save him. But if they failed, the Star was a backup plan. Six Matoran would be summoned to the surface and be zapped into special Toa, with the power needed to awaken the Great Spirit.”
“Toa Inika,” Kopaka realized. He’d always wondered why the Red Star had turned them into Toa. It seemed so random before.
“Yes,” Fierah said. “These Toa would have special masks so they could learn to use their powers quickly, and they would have lightning powers to use to give the Great Spirit a quick jolt. If they were needed, time was clearly running out.”
Kopaka’s mind flashed back to when he and the Nuva had attempted to awaken the Great Spirit. It was a painfully slow process, and Toa Ignika had had stepped in to speed things along. By that point, Mata Nui had already died, and Matoro had to revive him. Fierah was right – the Toa Mata/Toa Nuva had taken way too long to save the Great Spirit, mostly due to the interference of the Makuta.
Things hadn’t gone exactly as the Great Beings planned, though. The Inika hadn’t been the ones to awaken the Great Spirit, and they hadn’t been summoned – they had only gone to the surface by chance, in search of the Toa Nuva. Perhaps they had just gone at the right time, so there wasn’t a need to summon them?
“That device operates on a similar wavelength as Marendar’s Toa Power scanners,” Fierah said. “With it, we can find Marendar quickly, before he kills too many Toa – if we’re lucky, we might find him before he kills any Toa. That is the first part of the plan.”
“And the rest?” Orde said. He wasn’t sure why Kopaka’s presence made her decide to open up, but he was going to take full advantage of this opportunity. “Once we find Marendar, then what?”
“I shut him down,” Fierah said. “All I need to do is get close to him.” She turned back to Kopaka. “So there is our plan. Do you wish to aid us in saving all the Toa? Or do you wish to continue in saving only one, one who you might not even be able to save?”
Kopaka hesitated. Logic was telling him to aid Fierah; his heart was telling him to go find Pohatu. Which one was correct? Finding this Marendar sounded like it needed to be done as quickly as possible. On the other hand, Pohatu was a capable Toa Nuva. If he had survived, he could probably handle himself for a while.
Besides, Fierah seemed to know quite a bit about the Red Star. She would know how to get back to the Send-back room, where Pohatu had been last. In fact, if the Send-back room and the scanner Fierah spoke of were both part of the control center of the Star, there was a chance they were going to the same place.
“All right,” Kopaka relented. “We’ll follow you, for now.”
A few minutes earlier…
The Rock Agori known as Atakus stared up at the massive hunk of metal. He had expected the Star to be a massive pile of wreckage, but it had remained mostly intact during the crash. Unfortunately, that posed a problem: how was he going to get in?
As he was puzzling over that problem, he heard someone approaching. He quickly hid, watching the new arrival. He was a Toa, though not one Atakus recognized, clad in white and gold armor with highlights of bronze. Atakus followed him to see where he went.
The Toa soon met up with another group, one Atakus was all too familiar with. A group that last time he’d seen them, he’d left them trapped in an underground bunker. Yet clearly, they had escaped, and were about to enter the Red Star using an opening one of them had made.
The new arrival introduced himself as Takanuva, Toa of Light. Shortly afterward, the group was attacked by another Toa, though they managed to subdue him. Then, Takanuva began to talk to this group, and Atakus learned something very disturbing: they knew about his boss.
They didn’t know much, but they knew that he existed, and had a vague idea of his plans. This was terrible news, and Atakus was glad to have found out about it. He immediately relayed this information to his contact. Perhaps this would make up for his last failure.
Once the group finally quit chatting and entered the Star, Atakus trailed behind, unseen. The group quickly met up with another group, and launched into another conversation. Atakus didn’t stay to listen, slipping off through a side passage.
His mission was simple: he needed to find one of the Kestora, the little creatures who ran this place, and find out who had survived the crash. Once he had learned what he needed to know, kill the Kestora and leave before anyone knew he was here.
His glowing blades lighting the way, Atakus descended into the darkness of the Star.