I'm really sorry for the delay, dear readers, but this chapter required a lot of editing, and I've had some trouble writing Part Two at the same time.
Anyways, it's time for another action-packed chapter! Enjoy, and please PLEASE R&R
Shadow Team, in full strength, was standing on an impossible asteroid made of diamond with an alien ship inside it, floating in space. The asteroid's gravity held the elite soldiers on its surface, while their own technologies kept them alive amid the dark vacuum.
High Councillor Tisias had sent a report back the rest of the Council, and evacuation ships were already en route to their destination from Promethia. In a few hours, everyone would be evacuated from the husk of the Titan's Fist, and taken for debriefing and a short holiday on the planet of Nezarra.
But the rest and relaxation would have to come after Shadow Team had completed their mission.
"So," Ahra said, clearly unenthusiastic, "how do we break through this billion-Jet shield? Because this part of the dream is kind of fuzzy for me."
"Well," suggested Tarvaa, "can you melt through it, Ahra? Tahnok were originally designed to burn down forests and melt mountains."
Ahra shrugged. "Fire doesn't burn in space, and things tend to cool off pretty fast up here, too."
"Kislee, can Plasma burn through this?" The Toa turned to Kislee. The Sarashii was the scientist of Shadow Team.
"Eventually, it might," was Kislee's answer, "But it would take some time, and it has a low margin of success for what we need to do. We have to break through this diamond and get inside the corvette. The corvette is already badly damaged, so we can't use explosives, not that that would do any good, anyways. Plasma might also damage the corvette, and we don't want to kill our alien contact, now do we?"
Kislee's response made sense to Tarvaa. No, she thought, we don't.
"Commander, I see only one method of breaking through this barrier with the resources we have," Kislee slowly said, "I can get us through in a few seconds."
Tarvaa didn't like letting the Sarashii use her power. Shadow. The Makuta had tried to use that power to destroy the Matoran Universe – and almost succeeded. But Kislee had proven herself loyal to the UGC time and time again, and they were running out of time, and options…
Tarvaa sighed. "Do it," she said. She stepped back a little bit. Ahra and Forge did the same.
Kislee unsheathed the small rod attached to her armour, and it almost instantly extended into a large Rahkshi staff with circular blades attached to each tip. Kislee's black and red armour became cloaked with thin wisps of smoke. She took a deep breath, lifted the staff above her neurosuit's head, and plunged one blade off the staff right into the diamond block. Black cracks appeared around the staff, and then the cracks spread. Kislee was weaving a web of Shadow deep into the diamond. After a few seconds, the diamond around Kislee's staff began to come away, turning to dust. Shadow was truly a powerful element. When the diamond around the circular blade attachment was gone, a black beam of pulsing energy shot from the staff, and struck the cracked diamond below the hole that Kislee had made.
More diamond eroded to dust. A tunnel to the corvette was forming. Kislee began to groan, as if the force of doing what she was doing was causing her pain. Tarvaa didn't know this, and Kislee kept it to herself, but using her power like this hurt like hell. It was killing her.
Finally, after a roar of energy and dust erupted from the deep crater in the diamond asteroid, Kislee lifted her staff out of the pit, and lowered it to her side. She was panting.
"Good job, Kislee." Tarvaa said, a hint of concern in her voice. "All right Shadow Team, let's move into the belly of the beast."
"Is this a bad time to say that I'm afraid of going into starships encased in giant asteroids?" Ahra's sense of humour could usually lighten a mood. Not this one.
"Eyes." Forge sounded scared. "Cold, hateful eyes."
The four special operatives lightly jumped down the tunnel. In the low gravity, they fell slowly, and the diamond was very thick.
About fifteen seconds passed according to Tarvaa's HUD. To her, it felt like fifty years.
Finally, the team's feet hit the metal hull of the corvette. Luckily, they had tunnelled to what seemed like an airlock. No one was counting on the alien inside to open the door for them.
"Ahra, cut us inside this thing." Tarvaa knew he would enjoy defiling this monster ship.
"Alright, stand back ladies," Ahra powered up his Tahnok shields. "This is gonna get hot!"
The intense heat of the Bohrok's flame powers melted deep gashes through the airlock doors. After mere seconds, a gateway was carved out for them. They jumped through, entered the corvette's artificial gravity field, and Ahra welded the airlock door back on. He didn't make it look pretty.
"This alien had better be a neat freak," he said, "because I really feel like pissing him off!"
Forge hacked the second door of the airlock open, and the corvette's artificial atmosphere filled the airlock.
"Oxygen." Kislee was reading statistics on her neurosuit's HUD. "Temperature is at twenty-five degrees Celsius. Commander, it should be safe for you to breath here."
Ahra chuckled. Bohrok were purely mechanical life forms. They didn't need to breath.
Tarvaa's Kanohi changed shape again, and morphed into the angular ribcage form of her regular Kanohi mask. The Hadigma, Kanohi mask of pocket dimensions.
"Shadow Team, weapons ready," she declared. "You have permission to engage alien life forms, but only if engaged first, am I clear?"
There was a yes, ma'am from the group, and the team headed into the curving halls of the corvette.
The interior of the alien dart was much like the exterior. Dark, metallic surfaces, smooth, designed for fast travel between the passages. The ceilings were quite high, at least eleven feet at the lowest points. There was nothing out of the ordinary, except that there were strange glowing runes on nearly every surface visible. The runes changed colour in a flowing method, so subtle that it was easy to miss a distinct colour change.
"Nice place," Ahra said, "but I think that it could use some creepy faces sticking out of the walls."
Tarvaa didn't get the joke. Sometimes, Ahra had logic that made no sense to anyone else.
"Commander, I've built a schematic for the corvette's interior layout," Kislee reported, "It's surprisingly similar to some plans for later-era Great Being ships."
Tarvaa pondered this for a moment. This alien was the most technologically advanced race since the Great Beings. "Can you map us around this thing?"
"Yes, Commander."
"Take us to the bridge."
They moved to the front of the ship. The halls were simple, easily traversable, and quite linear. The halls and rooms they passed through were all empty. No vehicles, no food, no equipment, and no aliens.
When they reached the bridge, the found that the door was unlocked.
"Strange," said Ahra, "wouldn't they want to prevent us from taking control of the ship?"
Forge and Kislee soon found out why the bridge was open: the controls were impossible to make sense of, and even if they could, how would they get the ship out of the diamond asteroid?
Tarvaa was starting to suspect that whatever was in this ship was setting a trap. But they still had to find the alien, whatever it was. "Alright Kislee, think. Where would an alien that we have no clue about with advanced technology and Psionic powers hide in a ship like this?"
Kislee pondered this for a while. She paced around the room in circles, and examined every possibility. Every piece of the puzzle was critical. Every variable could change the outcome of the equation. Sometimes, Tarvaa thought that Kislee should have been an engineer. The UGC might have ships as advanced as this corvette then.
"Wait," Kislee was coming to a conclusion. "The ship encased itself in diamond when we disabled all its offensive and defensive systems. It only sealed itself in the asteroid when it had no other option. That means that the diamond is some kind of defensive failsafe. My guess is that it's to prevent capture or similar events. But to seal itself inside the ship, the alien must have planned to be in here for a long time…" Kislee examined the schematics for the ship.
"Sarashii are always looking at everything." Ahra commented. "Can't they just learn to relax and take the most direct method? That's what I always do, and I do pretty good for myself."
"Got it, there's what looks like a long-term survival deck on the bottom level of the ship." Kislee clearly sounded excited. "There's some sort of galley, a lot of empty rooms, and… some kind of suspended animation pods. That's where our alien is!"
"Take us there." Tarvaa locked her brain into action mode.
The ship had no elevators, for some reason, so every level of the ship was connected by staircases and ramps. Shadow Team's destination was two levels down and on the opposite end of the ship. The run was linear, short, but tiring, nonetheless.
Ahra paused for a moment, analyzing the architecture of the halls again. "Did you guys notice how narrow the halls are? Clearly designed for close quarters combat. But in the larger rooms, there's more space, and I saw a few observation decks and catwalks. Almost like sniping posts. It's almost like they were built for defensive purposes: pick off the bulk of a boarding party with sniping, then finish off the stragglers face-to-face."
Ahra's statement sounded accurate to Tarvaa, but if it was true, then why had they not been targeted by any snipers? The suspended animation hall seemed to be the only answer: the aliens were waiting for the danger to pass, and then they would re-emerge to reclaim control of the ship.
"Lots of empty halls," Ahra continued, "This ship is kinda small, but it must take a lot of personnel to operate this thing."
The corvette suddenly seemed more and more like a trap to Tarvaa. But she did not let on her suspicions to the team. Why would she? Why fill their minds with more panic, after what they had just been through?
"We're here." Kislee seemed tense. "The survival hall is just down this corridor."
A few feet down, they encountered a locked door. The only locked door they had seen around the whole ship. That meant that whatever was behind it was important, and wanted to stay hidden.
"Forge, open this door." Tarvaa felt no remorse at disregarding the alien's wishes.
It took some time, but John eventually cracked the lock, and the alien door slid open. Behind it was a small room not unlike the others the team had come across. It had a smooth surface, simple, organized features, and colour-shifting runes on what appeared to be mechanical devices. This room seemed to be the galley. There was only one other, narrow door leading out of it, and it was unlocked. Shadow Team advanced.
The next room was completely empty, but was otherwise identical to the previous room. One other door.
The next room was exactly identical to the last, if only a tad darker. There was less light here, and there was a single object that looked like a chair near one of the walls. There was one last door, and it was locked.
"This is it. That door leads to the suspended animation hall." Kislee was quivering with anticipation.
"Hold on," Tarvaa was starting to show her suspicion. "Can you scan for life signs before we break through?"
"Yes, Commander." Kislee thumbed a few buttons on the arm of her neurosuit, and then gazed at the door. She was seeing if there was anything alive on the other side. "No signs of organic life," she reported, "scanning for bionic." More time passed. "Nothing bionic or bio-mechanical. Strange. Let me see if it's mechanical life."
Tarvaa's suspicions of a trap were turning into a gnawing cancer, and her instincts were telling her to run, to get out of there. She pressed those thoughts down, and tried to keep her mind focused. She wasn't doing a very good job.
"This can't be right," Kislee declared with confusion in her voice. "There are no life signs behind that door. Not even an Artificial Intelligence. There's just an empty hall."
"There's got to be something on this ship, it's too complicated to run on an auto-pilot alone!" Ahra was keeping his usual, battle ready tone, but there was a touch of fear in his voice.
Tarvaa was feeling like a cornered Muaka. "Shadow Team, weapons ready. Anything moves, shoot to stun. But be ready for attack."
The group arranged themselves in a circular formation. Tarvaa's Plasma Sword was drawn, and her Plasma Shield was held in front of her. Forge's Lightning powers were charging up, and he was keeping his body in a flexible position. Ahra had his Fire Shields primed, and he was in a Bohrok military battle-stance. Kislee's staff was held in front of her, ready to block any attack that came at her.
The door that the team had come through suddenly shut, and locked itself.
"It's here," Ahra said. "This thing is clever. That was quite a trap."
"Eyes in the dark." Forge was shaking ever so slightly, but his voice was filled with anger, not fear.
Shadow Team tensed. They waited.
"An invisible assailant," Tarvaa commented, "could Psionic powers achieve that, Kislee?"
Kislee's answer was blood-curdling.
When a Sarashii screams through a neurosuit, it's as if the sound penetrates one's soul. Tarvaa, Ahra, and Forge turned to see that Kislee was being held in midair by an invisible force. There were strange, glowing red symbols floating around her neurosuit's head, but none of the group could make out what they were. The face of Kislee's suit was contorted into a look of pure horror, unlike anything even Forge had ever seen. The neurosuit began to convulse, and Kislee's screams were cut off by a malfunctioning vocal amplifier. Finally, the suit fell limp, and Kislee's Rahkshi staff fell to the ground.
Tarvaa had fought against elemental users before. Renegade Toa, Skakdi pirates, Olympian bounty hunters, and Tarvaa knew that Kislee had been the victim of a Psionic mental assault. The assailant had severed the connection between the Sarashii and her neurosuit, and Kislee was probably unconscious inside.
The limp suit moved slightly to the side, and behind it, there was a white flash. A mind barrier had been lifted, and Shadow Team could see their Psionic attacker.
XXXXXX
Alien doesn't even begin to describe the being that revealed itself from under a Psionic veil. The thing was bionic, and looked like a mix between a Toa and a dragon, with a roughly humanoid body and limbs, talons on its feet and hands, a reptilian head, and a long tail with a blade-like stinger at the tip. Its body was covered by lightweight black and dark red armour. Its slender head was bare, displaying a pair of horns protruding from behind its eyes and curving along the back of its head, enhancing the dragonlike appearance. Each talonlike hand consisted of three fingers and two thumbs. Comparing them to Human hands, it was like the pinkie finger had been replaced by a second thumb. But the creature's eyes were what horrified the conscious members of Shadow Team the most: ice-cold, white eyes that were filled with rage. Rage and hatred that seemed to seep into the soul and burn the mind.
The being was holding up Kislee's neurosuit using Psionic powers, and after its appearance, it unceremoniously tossed the limp figure aside, slamming it against a wall. The other three members of Shadow Team were ready for battle, when a voice spoke, but didn't speak, in their minds. Like someone had just told them the meaning of what someone else had said.
Why did you come? Why can't you leave me alone? LEAVE ME IN PEACE!
Before Shadow Team could react, the dragonlike thing charged them, swatting Forge and Tarvaa aside and tackling Ahra head-on. It pinned him against a wall, and white fire seemed to erupt from the alien's eyes. The being half roared, half screamed at Ahra's face, and the Tahnok could make out organic, fleshy tissue and canine fangs underneath the red exoskeleton.
Tarvaa struck the alien in the head with her shield. With the superheated Plasma combined with the Gravity Core, the blow sent the being flying, and it skidded across the smooth floor. Ahra hastily stood up and readied himself for battle.
The creature tried to get to its feet, but before it had the chance, Forge extended his hand and began electrocuting the thing. For a moment, it seemed stunned, and shrieked in pain. As quickly as it had charged before, it sent up a Psionic barrier, blocking Forge's Lightning attack.
Before the alien could attempt a counterattack, Tarvaa joined in on Forge's assault with a beam of Plasma, and Ahra followed up with two streams of fire. The alien was being cooked for sure. Shadow Team would stop the monster.
But it was not to be.
A Psionic scream was called into existence. The alien was shrieking like a banshee in pain and rage. The psychic sound seared itself through the minds of the UGC operatives, making them lose their focus. The onslaught of power they had been hurling at the single being weakened.
A concussive wave of telekinetic energy hit the three soldiers with the force of a meteor, and they were hurled against the walls of the alien room. A second blast hit them, and they were crushed, the breath knocked out of them. Ahra was unable to move, being held down by an invisible Psionic force. Tarvaa was gasping for air, doubled over in pain, and Forge was at the mercy of the seven-and-a-half-foot-tall alien.
Forge heard the terrible not-voice in his head again: You think you have seen horrible things? I WILL SHOW YOU TRUE HORROR!
The being's white eyes erupted with the glowing fire once more, and the inferno seemed to flow towards Forge, and into his eyes. More red, incomprehensive symbols appeared around Forge's head. Some familiar, like enormous fleets of Kh'nid ships and an infected Kanohi Hau. Others were not as familiar. Giant metal hands, planets burning in a biblical inferno, black holes… Forge couldn't take the horror of the mental assault as he fell under a black shadow, unconscious.
The Psionic demon turned its horrifying eyes on Ahra, still pinned by a Psionic force. The alien advanced…
And was thrown across the room by an invisible hammer.
Ahra smiled. Tarvaa's mask of pocket dimensions was useful for any situation.
Through Tarvaa's eyes, the world was very dark, with purple lights marking the surface and outlines of the room. She could almost see through the walls. But the walls no longer had substance. She could have moved through them if she wanted. But she had a quarrel with this foe.
Ahra, shining red as he was pinned against the floor by a flood of blazing white Psionic energy, was saying something. Tarvaa couldn't quite make out what it was while she was in this fringe dimension.
She looked to the demonic alien. So dark, yet so bright in this world. His body barely showed up as a dim shadow flecked with red. But his eyes, his mind… They were like gazing into the universe in all its infinity and beauty…
Beauty and terror that made her want to look away.
She ran at an impossible speed at the creature, shield first. When she met the demon, she thrust at him with her shield, sending him stumbling backwards. Tarvaa followed up with an overhead slash from her sword – and the creature sent a wave of psychic energy at her, stunning her and sending her tumbling backwards.
How can he know where I am? I'm intangible in this plane.
An answer revealed itself to her. The creature's telepathy appeared as blood red letters floating in front of her. Time and space are meaningless. The mind is something you cannot hide, and your weakest aspect!
Another mental assault was launched at her, and its horrors were very real in this plane. Impossible shapes, images, and figures swarmed around her – dark warriors with rusted armour and monstrosities that broke through the fragile barriers of the room. Tarvaa had to escape from it all before she was suffocated.
She made a seamless teleport, and Tarvaa was back in reality, standing behind the demon creature. Without a second thought, she swung her sword and attempted to cut the thing's head off. A flash, a movement out of the corner of her eye, and Tarvaa's blow met an immovable barrier.
The creature was blocking her Plasma sword with its black-armoured gauntlet. Even the superheat of the Plasma had no effect on the alien's armour. Quick as lightning, the demon's long tail swiped at Tarvaa's arm, the stinger-like blade tip grazing her right hand.
Her arm seared with a pain like it had just been thrown into below-freezing water.
Tarvaa screamed in pain and clutched her hand. Other than a tiny scratch, there was no damage, but it was the most painful thing she had experienced. Pain that severe couldn't exist, she knew it couldn't. Then how did she feel it?
Her arm was pulled out of the burning cold water and plunged into the core of a blazing star.
The pain worsened a trillion times. It was impossible and excruciating. Tarvaa collapsed on the ground, releasing her hand. It hurt to touch it. It hurt anyways.
The alien watched her writhe in pain, smiled in absolute glee, and turned its attention back on Ahra.
The creature bent down, put it's bizarre hand on Ahra's large forehead, and the force holding Ahra down disappeared. Ahra jabbed his glowing hot Tahnok shields into the alien's sides. The being released Ahra, doubled over, holding its talon-hands to the burn marks next to its belly. Ahra got up, and prepared himself to finish the monster, but it shot up to the ceiling, lifted by telekinetic powers, and attempted to tackle Ahra from above.
Ahra already had a counterattack.
Just as the alien pushed itself off the ceiling towards Ahra, the Bohrok extended his long mechanical neck, and his heavy, armoured head struck the creature in the chest, sending it hurtling into a wall.
Ahra kept his eyes on the creature, but helped the squirming Tarvaa to her feet.
The creature stood up, and the hatred in its eyes multiplied a thousand times. Even Ahra, who lived for the heat of battle, was frightened by the rage this alien displayed.
Tarvaa used yet another power of her Kanohi mask, and summoned a throwing knife from a storage dimension. Ahra extended his Bohrok shields, and they flared with heat.
The alien smiled, amused. It crossed its arms over its chest, clenched its twisted hands into firsts, and a glowing white foot-long blade extended from the back of its right hand. The alien made a satisfied growl, and poised itself in a low attack stance.
Tarvaa did not hesitate, and threw her knife at the creature. Time seemed to slow down for the thing as the dagger flew at its face. It raised its arm behind its head, and made a downwards backhand strike, its strange blade cutting Tarvaa's knife in two perfectly even halves. The pieces hit the wall behind the alien, and fell harmlessly to the ground. The cut was perfectly clean, with no jagged edges, no radiating heat, and no broken-off fragments. Just two pieces of solid metal that had once been a knife.
The alien snarled with glee, and charged at the two remaining members of Shadow Team. Tarvaa vanished into a fringe dimension, and Ahra held his shields in front of him, releasing two jets of fire at the alien. The force of the Bohrok attack stopped the alien in its tracks, but it didn't seem to be badly hurt.
In the brief time Tarvaa spent in the fringe dimension, she got a look at the alien's wrist-blade from another plane. Green mist that filled the air of the dimension was moving away from it, keeping a healthy distance, as if it was afraid of getting too close to the shimmering blade. When Tarvaa tried to look at the weapon directly, her vision seemed obscured and distorted, like she was looking through warped glass. The Toa didn't have time to process this information, besides the thought that she did not want to be cut by that thing. Ahra couldn't hold back the demon for long.
Tarvaa materialized behind the alien, with an array of shurikens and daggers in her hand. She quickly threw them all at once at the surrounded alien, which proceeded to create another Psionic barrier around itself, stopping both Ahra's fire and Tarvaa's blades. Within the blink of an eye, Ahra stopped generating the streams of intense heat, and instead charged at the alien. The thing jumped over Ahra's head, picked him up with Psionic powers, and threw him right at Tarvaa. The Toa instinctively threw her shield above her head, and Ahra slammed right into the plasma barrier, his fall slowed by the Gravity Core, and crushed Tarvaa against the floor. Tarvaa's shield deactivated, strained too much for its power source to handle.
The alien stepped on top of Ahra's struggling form, and pressed him ever so slightly further into Tarvaa's chest. The weight was suffocating her. The alien launched a devastating mental attack at the stunned Bohrok, and when it was done, threw him right in the middle of the room.
Tarvaa was exhausted, her elemental energies were spent, her team was unconscious, her right arm was killing her, and there was a sadistic alien monster standing above her that was about to fry her brain.
You came to understand me, the telepathic not-voice told her, and I wanted to be left alone. But if you want to know what I am, then I will show you. Gaze into infinity… EMBRACE THE VOID!
The alien's white, burning eyes filled Tarvaa's vision, and a series of images flashed before her eyes. Hundreds of thousands of scenes, events, sounds from wars and battles that Tarvaa had no knowledge of. She was glad she didn't. The brief but overpowering onslaught of psychic messages blazed across her mind – scenes of civilizations being slaughtered, shadowy warriors butchering innocent people, warped and twisted starships more devastating than the dart-corvette, screaming souls, dying minds, crumbling cities, burning planets, stars being devoured by monstrous shapes and black holes.
The last two images stayed in Tarvaa's vision longer than the others had. The first of the two was a three-dimensional image of horror that Tarvaa knew was impossible – but it was all too real for her. She didn't want to look, but she couldn't turn away, couldn't close her eyes. She was forced to see into the infinite void between the galaxies, gaze across what she knew as her own galaxy. She had to hear the screaming, pleading, begging of a hundred billion voices echoing across space, and she had to feel the heat of the universe – every galaxy in sight – burn in a hellish red inferno.
The final image that she saw was brief, distorted, and unclear, but there was an unmistakable shape that dominated her vision. A planet, black with soot, still burning, bearing the scarred image of a Kanohi Hau.
Then Tarvaa fell into blackness.
XXXXXX
Tarvaa's senses returned to her eventually. She knew that she had been unconscious for quite some time, but not exactly how long. Twenty minutes? she thought, an hour, ten hours? Maybe fifty lifetimes?
The Toa's vision was blurry, and there was a strange sound around her. She felt like her head was submerged underwater. Only, she wasn't drowning. She could breathe.
She groggily tried to push herself off the ground. She fell back down, grunting in pain. Her arm was on fire again.
She noticed the alien sitting in the chair across the room from her. It was casually examining something bright in its hand, and it hurt Tarvaa's tired eyes. The beast turned to her, and it looked like its mouth said something, but Tarvaa could only hear the swishing of the water. Her arm hurt a lot. The alien's eyes were terrifyingly bright and clear.
The creature looked impatient, then scoffed at Tarvaa, waved its alien hand, and Tarvaa's senses instantly returned to her. She could feel the pain in her arm more clearly, and she wanted to slip back under the black sheet that had silenced the angry Rahi devouring her arm.
"Ahem," said the alien, sounding annoyed, "I said I'm glad you're awake. You are, as expected, the first member of Shadow Team to recover from our first meeting. Although I must admit, Commander Tarvaa, that you are a few minutes ahead of schedule."
What was this thing talking about? Tarvaa didn't care. She just wondered how the alien knew her name, her team's name, and if the agony roaring in her right arm would ever stop.
"I'm sorry for the bad dreams, both earlier today and just now," the demon continued. "I also apologize for the bad headache you're going to get, but learning the many languages of the UGC, not to mention some personal information, requires an occupied subject, and takes a lot of effort. You're surprisingly strong-willed, Commander."
Tarvaa hated the alien. She was afraid of his eyes. What she had seen in his mind scared the hell out of her. And her arm was killing her.
"Now that you're awake, there are some things I must tell you. I expect you to tell them to Forge, Ahra and Kislee as well. My name is Derreth. I am a Drath Inquisitor, and my ship is called the Hydra's Comet. As you already know, I possess powerful Psionic abilities. I have used these abilities to extract almost all the information that you are in possession of regarding the current state of the galaxy. Oh, and I am taking Shadow Team as hostages and using you to bargain with the High Council of the UGC. Are we clear?"
Tarvaa was clear. The pain in her arm was a solid blade of fire taking its sweet time as it carved its way across her mind.
"Now Tarvaa, before the others wake up, I suggest you let that horror out now. After all, we wouldn't want to demoralize the team too much, now would we?"
Tarvaa hated this alien, this Derreth. He was absolutely sadistic, and he knew her every thought and fear. And he knew that her arm was tearing her apart.
Tarvaa did the only thing she was capable of doing then. She doubled over on the floor, hugged her knees, and began to cry.
And Derreth watched and smiled.
A/N
Due to a lack of reviews, serious writer's block in writing Part Two of Beyond the End, and several other reasons, I am cancelling this story arc. I apologize to my few readers who were enjoying this story, but I find that despite how original this work is (by which I mean how much it breaks off from Bionicle canon), I find this FanFic to be self-limiting. I want to broaden my horizons. So, I will begin work on what Beyond the End was really all about to me: a start to what I hope to be an original work.
As of now, I am beginning plans for an original story based on Beyond the End, which in itself was my own work. I will begin with some simple experiments. I might do a few short crossovers between my developing sci-fi world and others such as Firefly/Serenity and Doctor Who. I may or may not publish such experiments on this website. But no matter what, my own original work will be my main writing project, and this Bionicle Fan Fiction trilogy is now dead in my eyes.
Please keep an eye open for my future works on this site. While Beyond the End is dead in the water, I have my original experimentation to look forward to, as well as a possible Fan Fic based on the film 9 that I've been playing with in my head.
To those of you who read and enjoyed my work, please keep an eye on my list of published stories, because I really want feedback on my work when I start playing with my original ideas. Until then, this is Locust Boy saying: I'll see you under the Ether Star.