Chapter 3: Jade Forgets
It took a mere matter of minutes for the Toa Omni to arrive at the scene of the explosion- an old energy factory. Jorvell, a Toa of Iron, lead the team towards it, the others behind him in no particular order.
Jorvell stopped as he reached the wall factory and stood with hands on hips, judging up a plan. His face quickly brightened up. The Toa of Iron made two hand gestures towards the wall and it tore open, his elemental power coming into effect, making a hole big enough for them to fit through if they went two at a time. They were met with thick, black smoke and chemical fumes from the huge, storing batteries burning, and, of course, a roaring blaze.
The Toa were there to deal with any casualties, then to try and find Shadow Tahu and whoever he had with him. This was the part Jorvell disliked: casualties first. It always meant the crook got away. He pushed a few buttons on his datapad, calling a squad of police enforcers to track down Shadow Tahu. They should stall him, but, from experience, he knew how to deal with police. Good thing they were only androids.
It was quickly decided after a short scout by the rest of Jorvell's team that there were no people in the factory, and probably hadn't been for a while, but there were signs of commotion by one wall near a clearing around the central pillar, one of the few things not currently on fire. One of the most obvious signs that somebody had been there was the gaping hole in the wall.
"Scout the area, it could give some signs as to where our little criminal's off to. Go!" He barked, sending Kringe and Hikata, a Toa of Water, back into the fire. Hikata went to work like a machine, using the moisture from the air outside to create huge spouts of water, murky black from the polluted air, to put out the blaze. It left a nasty smell that stung the eyes and throat, but otherwise put out the fires fine. However, it took far longer than expected and seemed to yield no clues whatsoever. The factory was too far gone into the depths of despair for it to be worth trying to use Kringe as a detective like they usually did, yet the idea of waiting until the next time Shadow Tahu showed up seemed like a bad idea to Jorvell.
"Kringe, you just did a mission concerning Shadow Tahu, anything we can gather from the two occurrences? A carriage hijacking with a hole in a chute and then a factory blown almost entirely off the map? This isn't like him. This factory hasn't been used for months. Two mindless acts of vandalism isn't at all like anything he's done before. No dead criminals here... Unless they were incinerated. But my Tryna would be able to sense them if they were," Jorvell said, asking Kringe a question yet doing all the detective work himself.
"Sir! You'll want to see this!" Hikata shouted, as she bounded towards him, out of breath.
"You've finished putting out the fires?"
"Better. We've found bodies."
"What does this have to do with the explosion?"
"Well, I was putting out some minor fragment fires around this alleyway, and saw these. Dead thugs. Singe marks, brother."
"Could've been lightning, from the storm." Kringe suggested.
"Sure, it's an idea, but isn't it odd for Shady's main murder victims to be dead after two times in which he popped up in the same sector after blowing a factory-shaped hole off the industrial estate? And also, look at ugly there's face. That's a bruise. You don't get bruised from lightning," Zyalho, Toa of Air, chirped in his adolescent-sounding voice.
"The point still stands," Jorvell said, "there was lightning involved. The singe marks are evidence enough. They're spiderweb singes- haywire trails of charredness, whereas fire leaves horrible, black, burnt patches. It couldn't have been a lightning strike; the roofs of these houses have lighningrods. Shadow Tahu must be with someone, someone adept with their lightning element."
"That still doesn't explain the explosion..." Kringe muttered, mainly to himself.
"That was really something, wasn't it!" Rintak laughed. Tahu and Erith shot him a pair of glares sharp enough to make daggers jealous.
"It's too coincidental," Tahu grumbled. Rintak nodded. The golden-clad elder pulled a serious face.
"Those lightning rods would've diverted it, that's the point of them. Somebody set that up, tried to kill us dead with lightning. And there's only one person here who can do that," she said. Erith looked at Rintak and growled.
"He tried to kill us!"
Shadow Tahu pushed Rintak to the side and stood in front of him, in the way of Erith, who was wrestling a tentacle out of her wrist.
"He doesn't use normal lightning. I know it sounds stupid, but his is... Green."
"Green lightning! Don't know how I make it, but it's useful."
"Shut up."
"Whatever you say, Hotshot."
"And how did you know he uses lightning, anyway?" Tahu interrogated, standing high above Erith. He looked out of place, taller than both of them by far. Erith took a step back and held up her hands.
"Ok, ok, it wasn't him, I get it, geez."
"How did you know he uses lightning?"
"I just-"
Tahu's state intensified. His eyes burst with eerie darkness.
"ANSWER ME."
Two tentacles shot from his wrists. The spikes covering his body grew out, cutting through his cloak, which was in bad condition anyway, leaving it as almost a pile of rags. Flames burst out of his hands, shoulders and back, destroying the cloak further, and brightening up the pitch night sky. Rain evaporated before it even touched the orangey tips of the fires. It sure was an image that wouldn't leave their minds for some time, etched into it unremovably like it was put there by a hammer and chisel. Or a drill.
Erith was on the floor now, with Even-Shadowier Tahu's huge arms bearing down on her like he weighed 10 tonnes.
"Call off your mask!" Rintak begged her, but she wasn't using it. She wrangled and grappled to not be crushed by Shadow Tahu, but it seemed dire. The scene was interrupted by the droning, robotic voice of a police android.
"Stop in the name of the-"
If this was a comic book, you would be expecting a page entirely filled with the word 'kapow'.
What was left of the android's head rolled off it's spasming frame, landing with a thunk. However, androids cannot make moral choices. They don't know when to back down. An entire squad of police androids ran at the group. Shadow Tahu didn't even use his Golden Kanohi Hau, he just batted them away like yesterday's lunch with his huge arms. The majority were crushed, many were set on fire, and some even got impaled on his spikes. He let out a victory roar, then started to return to 'normal', if you'd call his form normal. His spikes shrunk considerably, the fires were out, the flame-grilled cloak hung loosely around his neck, pieces falling off it constantly.
"A sorry would be nice," Rintak pouted. Tahu growled at him.
"I wasn't even trying to kill you, you have no right to complain."
"Does that mean I do?"
"No, because I saved you earlier. Now you just don't owe me anything."
"I'll take it."
The three left Omni Nui silently, avoiding more police patrols, with Rintak leading them down the safer, less checked-upon routes that he knew from his old job. They couldn't complain about much, other than the company: two psychotic mutants and an even more psychotic, irritating, old, ex-drug dealer. Tahu still pondered over how Erith could have known what she did about Rintak, but it was predominantly in the back of his mind.
It took a few days of a silent, full on hike for them to reach their next location. Tahu wasn't just making it up as he went along, no, he had a strict and precise plan to find out how to cure his infection. Since he didn't find any help for a cure in the factory, his next place to check out was a mythical cave in the Jade Mountains, that he hoped would hold a very important clue. The cave wasn't actually mythical at all, fortunately, and the clue it held was massive. They just didn't know it at the time.
In the early days of Lunas Magna, a sickness was around in some of the villages. The specifications of the sickness are lost in time, but Tahu saw it as a clue. He studied into this sickness and discovered that it's supposed origin lay in a legendary moving chamber in the Jade Mountains, in a powerful artefact. What was this artefact? Well, that's the problem. The Lunas Magna chroniclers weren't very good at their job.
The cave had earned the name 'The Cave of Infections', because the first person that went in there, a tunneller, began to suffer from the sickness, which soon spread. An entire village was wiped out by the authorities, who sent in androids to cull them. Suppose some escaped? The sickness would have lived on. This is what Tahu hoped of.
"Ugh, these mountains are so damned steep. Remind me why we didn't choose to get to the summit by the path?" Rintak moaned. Erith sighed, it seemed the jade-green slopes were exhausting her too. A few pebbles the colour of malachite slipped from beneath one of her feet. The 'ting ting ting' of them skipping down the scarcely vegetated, almost dangerously sheer mountainside sounded like a high pitched laugher. The mountains were teasing her. Shadow Tahu, who was higher up than they were, on a vertical outcropping covered in moss, resting, looked down to them, watching their bodies move closer, bathed in moonlight.
"Bone Hunters could ambush us if we stuck there. We're going this way. Safer. Stop complaining."
Erith's hand slipped on a loose stone and she began to slip downwards, until she quickly took hold of the nearest sturdy point- Rintak's leg. The two were about to turn into a pile of armour and splattered mechabio-mass at the foot of the mountain, but Tahu shot out a tentacle, which wrapped itself around Rintak's arm. Rolling his eyes over-dramatically, he slowly retracted the tentacle, dragging the two up to his position.
"You two are so heavy."
"Not my fault, I said to take the path. Nobody falls off the path. You said to go this way, so YOU can stop complaining," Rintak said. Tahu growled.
"No, you're right, nobody falls off the path," Erith pointed out, "people are pushed off the path. If anyone falls here, it's their own fault."
"Well, aren't you two cheery?"
"No. What reason have we to be cheery? Any cheer I once had has gone off on a game of hide-and-seek that I am just not playing," Tahu responded. Erith nodded, rubbing the blade of one of her daggers in boredom.
"This is gonna be a long night," the old man sighed as he slouched back a bit and stared up into the moon.
"Have you got the, y'know, the stuff?"
Some time ago, Rintak would have taken to his heels as soon as he saw someone like Tahu standing at the end of that alleyway. Instead, on that day, he just accepted it.
"Sure do, have you got the ice?"
A female Agori handed over an open box, full of crystal-clear diamonds. Rintak smirked and nodded his head, passing her a pouch of 'stimulants'. This was his job, but it came with the price of never really being liked by the law. Not that it bothered him. Not at all.
The Agori pointed her gun at Rintak and said, "now, how about a little change? As in, the whole thing?"
"Aww, I don't even get a tip? Extortionate! Heh,"
"Don't make jokes, just hand me the diamonds."
"Sorry, kiddo, but these are mine now, unless you fancy becoming Bone Hunter food. And have you seen the Bone Hunters here on Lunas Magna? Horrible guys. Horrible. Watched them disembowel a guy before, I was lucky enough to escape, you see. Used my special ability."
"And what ability would that be?"
"Well, kiddo, this Glatorian can use Kanohi, and I got me a Kakama."
Rintak was an odd case. He was entirely his own species, the only one. He could control an element and had the mental discipline needed to use a Kanohi mask, but looked like a Glatorian. The perfect disguise, for a job like his.
