Chapter XXXIII: The Mechanic is Back

"I hate this, I hate this. I don't want to do this," Kai sang. He was in the middle of an ocean trying to get to literally anywhere that might help him find Wu. He had been on the boat he rented for about five hours, and he was getting no where. "I wonder what Zane's doing?" Kai asked himself as he attempted to pull the sail in some way that he thought felt right. "He'd know how to do this. Ooh! What's that?" Kai asked as he saw a shiny object in the water. Kai ran over to the middle of the boat and opened the trunk to see a fishing rod. He took the rod and tried to catch the item with it. He kept trying and trying until he heard a scream in the distance. The weird thing was that it sounded too near.

Kai took his sword out of its holster and started rowing. It was a good thing he was better at that than sailing.

Soon enough, he made it to shore.

"Stixx?" Kai asked.

He rowed as fast as he could to get all the way to shore to see an old shack. Kai walked up to the door and heard nothing, absolute silence. He opened the door slowly and saw nothing but cobwebs and dust and...spare parts?

"Why do these look so familiar?" Kai asked as he picked up a metal arm out of one of the crates.

"Kai?" a weak, mechanical voice asked.

Kai looked where the voice came from to see Zane crawling out of a corner. He only had one arm, and his chest was sparking.

"Wh-what happened to you?" Kai asked as he put the arm he was holding back on Zane.

"The Mechanic is more powerful than we realize. He took a bunch of my wires and gears. I lost feeling in my right leg, and I can no longer scan things," Zane explained.

Kai put his arm around Zane's shoulder and helped him walk to some crates of parts.

"Will any of these help you?" Kai asked his friend.

Zane picked up a few different gears and threw a select few into a pile on the floor.

"Open up the bottom of my foot and put those three where they fit," Zane explained as he picked up three of the gears and handed them to Kai.

Kai set Zane down and did as he said. Granted, it took a bunch of tries, but he finally managed to do it.

Once he finished, Zane was able to stand on his own, but his chest was still sparking, and his eyes started to flash a little.

Zane opened up his chest compartment to reveal that more of his heart was gone!

"Zane, wh-?" Kai started to ask, but Zane interrupted him.

"Put the last gear here," he said as he pointed to an empty spot near the remains of his heart piece.

Kai did so, but he was worried about Zane. When he gave Pixal half his heart it took a toll on him. Now he only had about a fifth of his heart left, and it didn't look like it was treating Zane right, now either. Once Kai was done he saw that the sparking stopped, but his eyes still flashed.

"Do you remember the man we encountered earlier today?" Zane asked his friend.

"Yeah," Kai answered.

"He's the Mechanic," Zane told him.

"Well, where did he go?" Kai asked.

"I didn't see him leave. He knocked me out before he left."

Kai groaned as he looked around the room. The room was dark so he summoned his elemental power to see even more cobwebs and a few spiders, but there was also a perfectly clean hat rack. No signs of dust nor cobwebs, which was seen every where else.

"That is odd," Zane mentioned as he walked over to the rack.

"What is?" Kai asked.

"This is the only clean thing in the room," Zane mentioned.

"He probably has some weird obsession. You know, like every other bad guy we've ever faced," Kai said.

Zane examined the rack more closely while Kai took the only hat on the rack off and put it on his head.

"Huh?" Kai asked as he showed Zane how good he looked in the hat, only to have Zane sigh in annoyance at the sight.

Kai took the hat off of him and put it back on the rack, but when he did so, he heard a clicking sound.

"What was that?" Zane asked.

Kai shrugged before the floor underneath of them gave out, and they fell into the basement.

"Ow!" Kai groaned as he started to stand up.

Before the two ninja could see anything, Zane had to brighten his eyes. This room was a lot cleaner than the first one. Sure there were papers laying everywhere, but there wasn't a speck of dust or cobweb that could be seen.

Zane picked up one of the papers, and said, "These seem to be different pieces to a blueprint."

Kai picked up another paper that had a small model of a robot arm in the corner.

The two gathered up all the pieces they could, and soon enough, they had most of the blueprint. They were only missing a few pieces. One was right in the middle which Zane thought to show the power source of the arm, and the other was a meaningless corner . The strange thing about the arm was that it looked more like a torch than an arm.

"Perhaps we should call the police. We've never met him before, and they have," Zane suggested.

"You expect me to hand over this man that nearly killed you to the cops? Yeah, do thanks. I want to get him myself," Kai replied as he punched one of his hands.

"Are you sure? The people of Stixx still hate us," Zane replied.

Kai then remembered what he told the sailor at the docks.

"Right," he said. "Well, what do you wanna do?"

"I just said."

"Well, what do you wanna do that involves me kicking his butt?"

Suddenly, the lights turned on. The Mechanic started laughing as Zane and Kai turned around. He stopped laughing when he saw Zane.

"Ow! My eyes!" he yelled.

"Oh, sorry about that," Zane said before dimming his eyes again.

The Mechanic slowly opened his eyes. He looked dazed. Finally, he stood up straighter, and said, "I don't think I'd appreciate going back to Kryptarium."

"Too bad," Kai replied before he took his katana out and charged at the Mechanic.

The Mechanic responded by taking out a bow and arrow and shooting at Kai. Kai managed to duck out of the way, causing the arrow to bounce off of Zane's metal skin.

"Hmm," Zane thought after picking up the arrow.

Kai jumped at the Mechanic and tackled him to the ground. The bow fell out of his hand, which Zane quickly grabbed. He then ducked behind one of the crates to try to get the jist of the weapon. He managed to put the arrow from earlier on it correctly and aimed it at the Mechanic. Unfortunately, Kai was thrown at Zane before he managed to actually shoot.

"Gotta split! You know, with world domination and everything. See ya suckers!" the MEchanic announced before running to another room.

"We gotta go after him!" Kai called as he started to leave, but stopped when he realized that Zane wasn't following. He was instead trying to open a crate. "What are you doing?"

"There may be more quivers in here," Zane replied as the crate popped open.

"That's a lot of arrows," Kai remarked at what was in there.

There were so many black holsters that you couldn't even count them all. All of them were filled with arrows.

"This will do just fine," Zane smiled as he picked up one of the holsters with light blue and white highlights.

"Glad you think so. How do we get out of here?" Kai asked as he gestured to the room they were in.

"Go the way the Mechanic did," Zane suggested as he walked into the room their enemy did.

Kai followed to see that the room wasn't actually a room at all. It was merely a hallway leading to a bunch of steps. The two ninja went up the steps, opened the hatch above them, and saw that Stixx wa sin chaos! Smoke could be seen in the village, people were screaming, and the Mechanic was now standing on the highest point of the village.

"People of Stixx, I come to you with a message! I am the Mechanic, and you will regret destroying the Cursed Realm, and my master with it!" the Mechanic yelled. He then took a remote control out of his pocket and pressed a button so his drones would attack the people.

"Come on! I just old this weird sailor that this wouldn't happen!" Kai complained.

I hope that chapter was enjoyable to everyone. PLease leave a review telling me what you thought about it, and I'll try to post again next week.