Her legs were currently trapped under a large piece of rubble from the Coliseum. While that didn't bode well for her, it was certainly better than her legs being broken beyond repair. She looked around for one of her hydro blades, and luckily found one still within her reach. She grabbed onto it and shoved the blade underneath the rubble, grunting as she tried to lever it up and off of her legs, without much success. After a few minutes, she gave up, and instead called out for help. "Vakama! Matau! Whenua! Onewa! Nuju! Takanuva! Gresh!" She received no reply. "Hello? Anyone?" Still no reply.
"Mata Nui," said Nokama to herself. Had they all died? Had everyone but her been crushed by the Coliseum? This possibility only led her to call out more frantically. Minutes passed, but she still received no answer, until finally…
"Nokama! Is that you?" It was Vakama's voice, and she had never been more grateful to hear it.
"Yes, it's me, Vakama! Over here!" she called, hoping that he could hear her. Her hopes were confirmed when she saw Vakama's figure come stumbling out of the dust, clutching at a hurt arm and limping badly. "Vakama! Thank Mata Nui you're alive!" she cried.
"It's nice to see you as well, Nokama. Have you seen any of the others?" She shook her head in a negative response. "Can you get up?"
She shook her head again. "There's a boulder on top of my legs, and I can't get it off."
Vakama raised his disk launcher, pointing it straight at said boulder. "This may burn a little bit." Understanding what he was doing, Nokama coated her legs in a protective sheet of water.
Vakama aimed down the sights of the disk launcher, making sure not to hit Nokama. Vakama channeled his elemental energy into his disk launcher, shooting a beam of pure fire energy at the stone rubble. Within moments, it began to turn red, and soon, white from the heat. Then the stone began to melt, turning into lava. Steam erupted as it met Nokama's water barrier, but thanks to the massive amount of energy Vakama was pouring into the stone, it didn't cool enough to solidify. Vakama continued to pour on the energy as the size of the boulder began to greatly diminish as the lava ran off to the sides, eventually being cooled by Nokama via water spouts.
Eventually, Nokama was able to grasp what little was left of the piece of rubble and toss it easily to one side. She stood up, a bit shaky, and thankful that her armor had protected her legs from any serious or lasting damage. She made her way over to Vakama, who was now a bit exhausted from the energy he had had to use. She put one of his arms around her neck to help support him. "Did you see any of the others?" she asked.
Vakama shook his head. "No. I was wondering around after I regained consciousness, and I couldn't see anyone. I was lucky I managed to barely hear your voice. This cursed dust just seems to muffle any and all sound. I began to think that I was the only one alive, until I heard your voice. Now that I know there are two of us alive, I'm hopeful that the others are as well. Let's go." He started to move, removing his arm from Nokama's neck. Nokama heard a groan come from him, one of pain, and she immediately rushed to catch him before he fell. "I'm fine, Nokama."
"Oh no, you're not. Look at the shape you're in. I can't just sit back and let you try and push yourself in this condition. You're our leader, Vakama; we need you in good shape." Against his protests, Nokama laid him on the ground and began to heal him as best she could. "I'm going to heal you, and then, and only then, are we going to go search for the others." Vakama shut up, knowing that once Nokama's mind was set on something with this much resolve, nothing he could say or do would change her mind. So Vakama lay there while Nokama healed him as much as she was able.
After being healed, he stood up, and upon doing so, heard a voice in the distance. "Hello? Hello? Is anyone there? Matau? Onewa? Anyone?" It was Takanuva's voice.
"Takanuva!" called Nokama, "We're over here, me and Vakama!" Soon, Takanuva appeared through the dust, followed by the remaining members of the Toa Metru and Gresh in the following minutes.
Vakama managed to wheeze out a question. "Did… did anyone see where Teridax went?" They all shook their heads. All of them except Whenua.
"I saw him heading towards Ta-Metru. I don't know if he's still there; he may have moved on. But it's better than nothing." Everyone else nodded in agreement. Vakama, now having regained enough strength to move around without support, stood resolute.
"Then let's deal with him." Vakama shouldered his disk launcher, channeling his elemental energy to turn it into a jetpack. He took off, with Matau right next to him, and the rest of the Toa Metru, Takanuva, and Gresh sliding along an ice bridge made by Nuju on the ground.
Vakama and Matau flew above the massive clouds of dust, and what they saw horrified them. Ahead of them was nothing but destruction. Not a single building was left standing in the southern half of Ta-Metru, and a large dust cloud, accompanied by loud crashes and explosions, was moving northward. That was undoubtedly Teridax. Leaving Matau to carry on, Vakama dropped down into the dust again, flying directly over Nuju. "Teridax is just ahead and heading north!" He called over the rush of wind. Nuju gave a nod to show that he heard, and adjusted his course accordingly. Vakama ascended back up.
"What's our strategy?" called Matau.
"Given his size, he'll be tough to take down! You and I will circle him and distract him. When we get close enough, we'll go back down, pick up Gresh and Takanuva, and carry them with us. They'll run across the tops of the buildings around him. Our goal is to stop him and keep him in one place. With any luck, Nokama and Nuju will make the ground around him slippery enough so that he'll fall. Then Nuju, Whenua, and Onewa will try and encase him in as much stone, earth, and ice as they can to try and immobilize him. Do you understand?" Matau nodded; it was a good plan, one of Vakama's best.
Vakama once again descended into the dust to explain his plans to them, and they agreed to it. He then ascended once again, settling in for the journey to Ta-Metru.
It was approximately an hour before they were close enough to see Teridax's form through the massive cloud of dust and smoke he was creating. Matau and Vakama descended one last time to pick up Gresh and Takanuva, Gresh on Matau's back and Takanuva on Vakama's.
"You ever battle-fought a Makuta while wind-flying?" Matau asked Gresh, trying to lighten the mood.
"No, I can't say I have. I've never even fought a Makuta before. The only Makuta I ever saw was when Teridax was controlling Mata Nui's old robot body. What are they like in battle?"
Takanuva heard him, and replied. "Teridax is incredibly dangerous in any form. I once fought him one on one, and only managed to make it out alive due to sheer luck. However, this form is many times more fearsome than the one I clashed with. You can't relax, even for a second. The moment you do, Teridax wins." Gresh gulped. Takanuva's words didn't fill him with confidence.
"We're approaching Teridax!" yelled Vakama. "Are you two ready?" They nodded. "On my mark!" There was a short pause as they passed through the wall of dust and smoke surrounding Teridax, but he soon came into view, stomping through a patch of buildings, half of which had been utterly destroyed. "Now!"
Gresh and Takanuva jumped.
They hit the roofs rolling, and were soon on their feet, moving in opposite directions to circle Teridax. Meanwhile, Matau moved over next to Vakama. "It's a bright-wonderful day for a fight, isn't it, fire-spitter?"
Vakama nodded in response. "That it is, Matau. That it is." Their lovely conversation was prematurely interrupted by a large, protodermic fist being launched at them. They each rolled to one side, Vakama's disk launcher and Matau's wings scraping against the fist. However, both were unscathed. Vakama flew up Teridax's arm, just a few inches away from his certain demise, attempting to stay hidden. However, Teridax flung his arm towards Vakama, causing him to go out of control and crash into the side of a building. Vakama opened his eyes to see Teridax turning towards him, reeling a fist back to finish him off.
"Over here!" yelled Matau, blasting the back of Teridax with a massive ball of compressed air. It hit Teridax squarely in the back of the head, causing him to stumble forwards slightly, before slowly turning around to where Matau was. However, due to his massive size, Teridax couldn't move quickly, and by the time he'd turned around, Matau had already zipped away.
"Here! Look over here!" Now behind Teridax, Takanuva unleashed a blast of light, aiming at his left arm. The concentrated light seared through Teridax, melting a chunk out of his arm and leaving severe burn marks, causing Teridax to rear and roar as his arm regenerated. By this time, Vakama had managed to free himself from the side of the building, and resumed flying around Teridax.
"Buzzing around like little flies! What do you think that will solve?" asked Teridax. "Your attacks do nothing to me! What do you hope to achieve?" Quite naturally, he got no response from any of the Toa or Glatorian.
However, down on the ground, his question was being answered. Nokama, Nuju, Whenua, and Onewa moved cautiously amongst the destroyed buildings and rubble, inching their way towards Teridax. The danger was palpable, especially when one of Teridax's massive feet landed a few yards in front of them, making them all freeze in fear, wondering if they'd been discovered. Luckily, however, the foot soon raised and landed much farther away from them, allowing them all to breathe a sigh of relief and continue onward.
They eventually reached the ring of buildings surrounding Teridax, the center flat from Teridax's incessant stomping. "Nokama and I will head over to the other side," said Whenua, huddling in close to the others so that he could be heard. "Wait until we're in position before making your move. I'll give the signal. Stay hidden until then." Nuju and Onewa nodded, before heading off to the nearest building on their right. Nokama and Whenua swung around the other way, pausing when Teridax's feet got too close for comfort. Once, his right foot completely crushed the building just ahead of them. If it had been ten seconds later, the two of them would have surely died. But nevertheless, they pressed on.
Vakama turned over in midair as Teridas's hands cam towards him, fingers spread to ensnare him between them. He turned around to stop his forward speed, before quickly turning upwards and blasting upwards with a burst of energy, and not a moment too soon; he heard Teridax's hands clap together with a loud boom. The shockwave generated by the hit quickly caught up with him, pushing him up even higher, against his will. But, upon looking down, he saw that the shockwave had pushed him far out of Teridax's reach. This gave him an idea, going against all common sense.
Vakama removed his jetpack from his back, making it, once again, just a disk launcher. Quickly, he looked for a shrink disk, only to find, to his horror, that he had none. Thinking quickly, he instead pulled out a weaken disk and fired it downwards. Teridax was too large and too slow to dodge it. Vakama continued to fire weakness disks in as quick succession as possible. More likely than not, these weaken disks would only chip away a tiny chink of Teridax's power. But, when dealing with Teridax, any advantage, no matter how tiny, was worth getting.
As Vakama began nearing Teridax's range, he began to build elemental energy in his disk launcher, launching a massive fireball directly at Teridax's face, which was looking up at him, his arm outstretched, reaching for him. As the fireball hit, his arms went out to the sides to steady himself as he stumbled backwards, crushing a few more buildings as he did so.
Vakama quickly re-donned his jetpack, zooming off again. Matau came up next to him. "Careful fire-spitter!" he called. "We want to keep him where he is, not let him move-stray him at all! We can't let him stomp-beat any more buildings!" And with that, he flew off.
Vakama sighed. Matau was right, and he'd gotten a little overzealous in the moment. But he didn't have any more time to dwell on it as Teridax began moving towards him again, and he had to dart out of the way.
Meanwhile, on the roof of a nearby building stood Gresh, facing Teridax's back. "Come and get it, Teridax!" he yelled, before using his twin blades to blast Teridax with a massive cyclone of air, drawing his attention away from Vakama.
"Ah, a Glatorian. I remember when my brother told me of your kind. What pathetic creatures you are. You pale in comparison to the Toa; even now, you wield the element of air only through the mistaken charity of my brother. You do not deserve such power."
"You're wrong!" yelled Gresh. "Mata Nui gave us these powers because he knew of our potential, and that we would be responsible with them! How dare you judge Mata Nui!"
Teridax only laughed. "I have been a god. I have lived for a hundred millennia. I was Mata Nui's brother! I know exactly what he thought, and I know how wrong he was! And I also know that you will die!" He brought his hands together and smashed them down onto the building. Luckily, Gresh managed to escape by virtue of a small cyclone he had conjured. He began running again, as Teridax turned to try and catch up with him. Luckily, Vakama was able to distract Teridax from him, and Takanuva slowed down until Gresh caught up to him.
Takanuva ran alongside him. "Don't talk to him! You'll just egg him on! Besides, it'll just distract you from what we have to do. I know you've never fought a Makuta before, but remember what Vakama said earlier; you have you stay focused!" Gresh nodded as Takanuva sped up, gaining some distance as he shot another beam of light at Teridax, searing a large section of his back.
Nokama and Whenua finally reached the opposite side of the circle of buildings. Looking across the trampled ground, between Teridax's legs, they could see Nuju and Onewa lying in wait. "Ready?" Whenua turned to Nokama, who simply nodded in response. Between a gap in Teridax's movements, Whenua waved, before giving the two a thumbs up. That was the signal.
Nokama and Nuju moved into position, and waited until Teridax had been led to one side of the clearing. Then Nuju blasted the area behind Teridax with a thick coating of ice, and continued pouring it on, more ice than he'd ever used on one opponent before. He coated an area of many hundreds of square feet with a coating of ice over five feet thick. After doing so, he collapsed, his elemental energy totally spent.
Nokama added to this by spraying blasts of water over the top of the ice, making it even slicker. She even got brave and began spraying water up around Teridax's feet, spray even hitting his ankles.
This caught the notice of Teridax, and he stopped in his tracks, looking down. This, in turn, caught the notice of the four distracting him. "Push him back, now!" yelled Vakama as he unshouldered his jetpack. He built up elemental energy in it, as much as he could. "Aim for the face!" He unleashed a blast of fire as big as he could muster. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Matau doing the same with his elemental powers as he unleashed a large concussive ball of air, and a lancing beam of light and cyclone went by him as well, telling him that Gresh and Takanuva were doing the same as well. They all hit Teridax square in the face, hitting him with enough force to make him take a step backwards. His foot came down on the ice, cracking it under his immense weight. The cracks spread out in a spiderweb, and Nokama poured on water, hoping that the ice would hold Teridax's weight.
And it did. Teridax's foot went out from under him, and his body began to fall down. It was like watching a giant tree fall in slow motion. Teridax's body plummeted, before colliding with the ground with a massive "whump", completely demolishing the buildings underneath it, and the shockwave from the crash pushed down the buildings around him, flattening all of them, including the ones that the Toa Metru were in and on. Vakama and Matau quickly swooped down and picked up Gresh and Takanuva as the buildings they were standing on began to collapse beneath them. They were able to grab their arms and pull them out before they went down with the buildings, but they could do nothing for the others, trapped in the buildings near ground level. They could only hope that they were okay, not only because they were their friends, but also because they, especially Whenua and Onewa, were crucial to their plan.
Onewa coughed as he waved his arm to try and clear the dust from in front of him. He flt a grip on his arm, and he looked down to find Nuju lying on the ground, buried under rubble and out for the count. "Teridax is down! Do it now!" Onewa nodded, putting his hands against the ground to make the stone foundation rise underneath him. He rose into the air, a stone pillar beneath him, carrying him above the dust cloud. And there he saw it.
Teridax lay on the ground, stunned, but quickly regaining his senses. Looking around, Onewa saw Whenua nearby, his hands on the ground. He could see large barriers of earth springing up to cover Teridax's legs, and they continued to move upwards, wrapping around his torso and arms. Deciding that it was his time to add to Teridax's elemental prison, Onewa pulled out his proto-pitons, and as he approached the ground, he whipped them at the ground, the chains extending, allowing the heads to dig into the ground. He channeled his elemental energy through the chains. Large stone pillars erupted from the ground, bending down to wrap Teridax in large stone bars. As he reached the ground, he'd completely covered Teridax, leaving only his head exposed. Whenua had begun to pile on another earthen barrier, and Onewa followed him with another stone barrier. Deeming that to be enough, they waved to Vakama and Matau, signaling them to land.
Soon, they did, depositing Takanuva and Gresh on the ground. "Excellent work, but where are Nokama and Nuju?" Whenua and Onewa explained that they were both trapped under rubble, incapacitated, but largely unharmed. "Teridax isn't getting out of there any time soon. Let's get them out."
They dug through the rubble, Whenua and Onewa being especially helpful. Once they were free, they began to head towards Teridax's exposed head. As they approached, he spoke. "Ah, the Toa and Glatorian appear at last!"
"You've lost, Teridax!" Vakama cried triumphantly.
"And what do you expect me to do? Surrender? You and I both know that's not going to happen."
"Oh, I know that." He extended his fist. "We've been here once before." Nokama, Nuju, Whenua, Onewa, and Matau extended their fists as well.
"Unity!" they cried, a light appearing in the midst of their fists, blasting directly at Teridax, creating a protodermis cage to trap him once again. The light blinded them, rendering them unable to see temporarily. When they had finished and their eyes had adjusted, they found, to their shock, that the protodermis cage was empty, and on top of it stood Teridax, who had shrunk himself down to the size of his usual form, the size of the form he had taken when he last fought the Toa Metru, as well as when he fought Takanuva in Mangaia.
He said nothing, and neither did they, merely drawing their weapons and waiting for him to make a move.
Teridax rushed at them, but Nuju was able to throw up a wall of ice to defend them. Teridax smashed through it as if it weren't there, scattering the eight heroes as they dashed in different directions to get away from him.
The battle that followed was short, but intense. Elemental blasts flew everywhere; fire and ice collided, and earth and stone smashed together. And at the end of it, Teridax stood in the center of a circle comprised of the Toa Metru, Takanuva, and Gresh, bending down on one knee and panting. "I must hand it to you, Vakama. You and your friends have not lost their touch, even after all these years. But, it is time to put an end to this nonsense."
"What nonsense? You've lost, Teridax!"
"Have I?" Teridax's silver form began to shift and change shape, until a minute later, Kopeke stood there. "This entire time, you thought you were traveling with Kopeke. But he died when he was hit by that wave of energized protodermis. It turned out that he was not destined to change. So, I took the opportunity to take his form, and I made sure to bring you all down here, so that once I found the perfect moment, I could finally rid myself of all of you." Maniacal laughter began to erupt from Kopeke's form as it became silver again, coalescing into Teridax's form once again. "Your friend is dead. I was afraid that I might never get to utilize his death. I had to kill some of the matoran each night to satisfy my lust. It was just to tide me over until I killed you. But alas, the matoran of Metru Nui took care of that for me. Or, at least, they nearly did.
"It was quite hilarious when you thought that the other Teridax was me, although I can't say I blame you." He laughed, hearing the clank of protosteel hit the ground. Now was the time. They had dropped their weapons in pure shock.
Teridax lashed out his arms, the liquid protodermis stretching. One arm grabbed Vakama, the other, Onewa. Six more arms sprouted out of his chest and back, grabbing onto the other six. They pushed out, each of the eight heroes being pushed through wall after wall, piece of rubble after piece of rubble.
Teridax let them go, only to spin his arms in a slow circle, knocking the taller remaining pieces of building down onto them. Lastly, he brought his fists down on top of them with as much force as he could muster, attempting to grind them into a pulp.
Satisfied, Teridax retracted his arms, resuming his normal appearance and laughing maniacally. That was, until he heard rubble moving and shifting. He looked around in surprise as two of the eight piles of rubble began to move, Whenua and Gresh appearing, hurt and limping, but conscious and with enough strength to stand, but hopefully not enough to fight.
Gresh grabbed and raised his air blades, and Whenua his earthshock drills. They were going to fight. Teridax frowned, but created his familiar kolhii staff of darkness, and readied himself as the Toa and Glatorian rushed at him.
