Lewa looked down on himself, feeling his muscles writhe in his body as if they'd just been transferred to a different casing of armor. Mist formulated around his chest-plate, which was now broader and lined with furrows, where slits of thin, gauzy leaf-like processes came out. His feet were dangling in mid-air – not that that was a surprise, but when Lewa looked down, he saw that there was no bottom to this sky, wherever he was, only clouds and more clouds. The feeling made him slightly sick and questioning, given he hadn't even called upon the Mask of Levitation. His Air Katana were gone, replaced by a spiked double-blade, and hooks of protodermis cuffed his shoulders.
"Why? When? Where? What?"
"That's four more questions that need to be answered," Kopaka Nuva, Toa of Ice, said from in front of the Toa of Air. "But the real question is 'How'. Like, how are we floating, not falling?"
"Pohatu." Lewa grumbled. "He must've call-summoned the Mask of Levitation on us all."
"Not that that's a bad thing…" Kopaka muttered. The Toa of Ice and Air turned to their Brother of Stone and reeled at what they saw. "Ah!" Lewa yelled, swiping his spiked Saber out and almost clipping Kopaka's mask. Standing – or rather, floating – in front of them was the Toa of Stone, yes, but he'd changed in a way they couldn't even imagine.
First of all, the Pohatu Nuva they knew did not have strange spinners - much like the Mizuni Rotors they could only assume Gali still had, only at a much larger scale, about the size of two Kanoka disks – that he held up above him to make him fly. This Pohatu all too obviously did. In fact, the Toa of Ice and Air didn't even know what they were seeing. His forearms were garbed in these strange, thin gauntlets, each of which didn't have an opening at the end for the hand to come out of, but instead a bar on the inside to grip around. Each one gauntlet had these strange protodermis straps coming out of its back ends that connected to a harness worn on Pohatu's torso. And out of the front end of each one was about a half-a-foot-long shaft holding a propeller each spinning faster than even a Gukko could flap its wings.
Second of all, his torso-plate was changed. Instead of the smooth, nicely carved, silver Nuva armor he'd had before, he had a rough, patterned, orange plate there covered in the same processes Lewa had spotted on his armor.
Third of all, his limbs were also done up with the processes, though not as much, and his feet were done with sharp spikes on each front end. Also, what looked like some kind of crossbow was attached to his shoulder.
"What?" Pohatu said. "Hey, stop eyeballing me! You guys look like freaks, too!"
"Do not!" Lewa retorted, before tapping Kopaka lightly on the shoulder and whispering, "Do I?"
Kopaka ignored him, instead turning around and saying, "Okay, let's stop fooling around. First, we have to find Tahu and the oth— whoa."
"Apparently," Tahu said, melting himself out of a tangle of vines on a ledge of black stone just nearby, "Artakha didn't have much control over his teleportation when he sent us here."
The Toa of Fire had changed, too. Wings sprouted out from his shoulder blades, processes trimmed his arms and torso, and his limbs were adorned in silver armor. His weapons were two thin, scythe-like Blaze Swords in one hand and the same type of crossbow Pohatu had in the other.
Gali and Onua Nuva, who were, surprisingly, floating by Lewa, Pohatu and Kopaka all the while, looked at each other. Neither had said a word yet, and maybe that was why they hadn't been noticed. Tahu's eyes glazed over, though, and went to them. Curious, Kopaka, Lewa, and Pohatu all swung to follow his stare, that's when they saw the others.
"Sister." Kopaka acknowledged almost coldly. A long moment passed before he said to Onua, "Brother."
Gali looked down at herself. She was hovering in the air on the power of two wings that had appeared on her armor, and the processes that lined her body billowed with the breeze. They're like feathers, she realized. She had the same type of crossbow Tahu and Pohatu had, and a Kanoka Scythe – a scythe just about the diameter of a Kanoka Disk, with long, curved blades making it a circle. Looking to Onua, she saw the Toa of Earth had undergone a similar change. Two rockets and a pair of miniature silver wings were on his shoulder blades, allowing him to hover in the air, and the "feather" processes were attached to his black torso and limbs. He held a crossbow in one hand and on the other a long, shield-like claw extended from his hand. It's the armor, she thought. The armor Artakha gave us allows us to fly.
Lewa and Kopaka too had found their own ways to fly. Out of his back, Kopaka had sprouted long, layered silver wings, and Lewa what looked like six Gukko wings on each side coming from his back, merged together to suit his larger-than-a-Gukko-bird anatomy. They each had identical crossbows, except Kopaka's was mounted on his shoulder like Pohatu's, in order for him to wield his blade and shield, which didn't look like they had changed much.
"So," said Tahu, gliding forward to join the group. "Here we are."
"Yeah," Lewa said, "Only: where is here?"
Before anyone could answer, or try to, a ledge of stone from the cliff behind Tahu exploded and the chunks tumbled through the air. Tahu swung around, just in time averting his head to dodge a spear of what looked like shadow energy that shot by. The other Toa had evaded the blast unscathed. Kopaka's mask flared in use, and the Toa of Ice peered right through the cliff. Before anyone could ask, he jolted back and said, "No time for answers. We have business – now."
Veering in the air, he began to go around the cliff until it finally curved into a loop and kept going. Pohatu stuttered in question but Kopaka immediately answered, "It's a stalactite."
Once they got to the other side, they saw what the blast had come from. A large group of Matoran gathered in the sky nearby, hovering on strange flight-packs strapped to their backs and wielding strange weapons. Even stranger were the masks they wore. But there was no time to ponder that. They were trying to get away, and the other group gave the Toa the answer why.
Across the other side of the region were three large, barely Toa-sized beings that more than resembled a hybrid of a Toa and a Rahi bat, each wearing the colors of Fire, Water, and Earth adorned by a shadowy trim and crests of silver here and there. And flanking them: a group of Matoran smaller than the first, only they were different than the others. They flew on wings – dark, unnatural wings. Long talons sprouted from their feet and their claws were elongated and as deadly as they looked. Trails of thick shadow surrounded and followed these dark Matoran and the three bat-like beings.
"As strange as this may be," Pohatu said, narrowing his eyes, "who wants to bet that the Matoran on that side are the good guys, and the shadowy strangers on the other side are the bad ones?"
Kopaka opened his mouth to speak in protest to what Pohatu was about to do, but the Toa of Stone had angled his body and had already shot into the battle.