Disclaimer: Bionicle belongs to LEGO, not me.
Zala's hands shook with the vault's stone walls around her. "He's here," she said. her voice barely above a whisper.
Beside her, Maram nodded. "Young Rhem, are you ready?"
The Toa of Time breathed heavily, having used his strength to appear in the vaults a minute ago. "Give me a second, and I'll be good!"
Zala wished she had her fellow Toa's certainty, or any emotion other than anxiety she felt since taking the strange mask. It didn't help that Kivida City's "vaults," in which she, Rhem, and Maram stood in, were actually catacombs several miles below. Protector Torren insisted on the name because the Water Okotans kept and honored their fallen warriors here. Zala, standing in between two rows of solemn-looking statues–and a coffin behind each–thought differently.
Another shake brought Zala to reality. The electrical poles, which Torren placed on Maram's request to light the vaults, jittered slightly from either side. "This way," said the Toa of Light, who marched down the tunnel of statues with Rhem.
Zala followed behind, sparing a glance at any shadow. With another shake leading the three Toa, it wasn't long until they finally reached the gigantic stone slab for a door at the end. "I-is he alone?" Zala asked, though she already had a good guess.
Maram, his raised hand unleashing a ring of light on the door, answered, "No. Be ready for anything!"
The door, and the surrounding wall, cracked. The three Toa backed away before it all crumbled before a flood of water pooling at their feet. Zala's grip shook on her new scythe, enough for one hand to trail to the mask on her waist. Its empty eyes paled to the lit orbs glaring through the faint cloud, the Earth Guardian's the largest and brightest of them all.
"Is that…?" Rhem asked, and Zala nodded. "Yeesh, I didn't think the guy would be so big!"
"Remember the plan," Maram said and held his sword at the Okotan stepping out of the smoke.
"Hmm, I never expected three to be waiting," Uram said with the Earth Guardian trailing behind him. He looked at the figure beside him. "Take care of them."
Said figure, twice as tall and skinny as Uram, raised a frozen stalactite of an arm. The cold mist around its body struck at the Toa. Standing her ground with Rhem and Maram, Zala saw the large, white knuckle for a hand, once a Toa's mask and feared the worst. The Ice Guardian was as Torren said, the most silent and the deadliest, as it charged with faint splashes in its wake.
"I got it!" Rhem called. His chained sickle flew forward… and the Ice Guardian's bitter gusts blew it aside. "Ah, come on–!"
"Watch out!" Zala shouted, her scythe hitting the incoming knuckle and skewing its aim.
She didn't account for the frosty winds the knuckle let loose to fling her and Rhem to the nearby wall. The winds blocked her vision until a greatsword parted it and clanged atop the knuckle. "I shall handle this one! The other is yours!" said Maram, locked with the Ice Guardian.
When Zala sat up with Rhem, she staggered under the shaking floor. The Earth Guardian's arm rose from it, with Zala's relatively tiny form on top. "Zala, look out!" she heard Rhem, who stood below while the Guardian's arm tossed her upwards and she hit the vault's high ceiling.
Or rather, sink into the darkened overcast on it. The outlines of friends and enemies stood out in Zala's old realm of shadows, including the Earth Guardian's massive blob. This time, Zala took extra care to pass over it and not through. She already had a good trajectory, albeit slowed.
"Use me," Zala heard from the mask on her hip, its hiss only speeding her up.
Falling through her realm, Zala exited through a tiny corner of a shadow. She moved by the Earth Guardian, its back turned and muffling a loud crash on the other side of the wall where she had been. No doubt, Zala's scythes could pierce the thick skin if she–
"Don't!" Zala heard and whirled to the young Water Okotan standing where the water fragment once was. Didn't Zala see her before with Protector Torren's sons? What was she doing here? And where were–
Rhem appeared beside Zala. "–thought I'd never get out of ther-what the–!"
"Stay back!" The girl held the sparking tip of an electric rod at two familiar boys trapped in ice.
The chamber shook from the Earth Guardian turning to its prey. Zala spared a glance at it. "Zala, move!" Rhem said, tackling her to one side to avoid being crushed.
The further crunch of bedrock drowned Zala's yelp as she and Rhem fell safely away from the Earth Guardian. Getting back up, she stared at the hole–a hole filled by the flashes of Maram's sword in the adjacent hall–then at the huge body that widened and hid the Okotans. How could they fight such a thing? Its arms alone left shadows so huge, they inched towards Zala and–
Zala's eyes perked up. "Rhem, its arm!"
"Got ya!" Rhem blurred until he was atop the Guardian's left arm. He then threw his weapon's long chain. "Zala, here!"
Running along the shadow of the Guardian's right arm, Zala caught the chain on the top half of her raised scythe. She detached its bottom half to wrap the rest of the chain around it, too, timing her action with the Guardian's right arm moving to swat Rhem. Rhem, having disappeared, reappeared further up the left arm. "What now?" he shouted.
"Pull down!" Zala shouted back.
Rhem, leaping off, placed the line of his chain over the Guardian's arm to do so with gravity's aid. Zala pulled too, using the Earth Guardian's sudden jerk to carry the momentum of its left arm towards the shadow of its right. She then jumped onto the left arm…
… and entered the shadow with it!
Channeling to do so had been for a split-second, far shorter than what Zala had done for Keela. Zala gasped from the exertion before she pushed away. Her powers let her throw Rhem's chain off and back to the material plane. Without her and her powers, the giant bedrock that was Guardian's left arm could only fidget while Zala returned via a shadow at a safer distance.
Despite that, and Zala having a half-scythe in each hand, the room trembling surprised her. The Earth Guardian's attempts to free itself like a trapped animal, as she saw after stumbling in, were just as surprising. Less so was an exhausted Rhem appearing beside her, chain and sickle in his hands. "Well," he panted, "could've been worse."
No sooner did Rhem say it, a wave of water filled the floor and touched both Toa's feet. Then came Uram's voice. "Likki, if you would be so kind."
Zala barely saw the tiny Okotan crawl atop the Earth Guardian with her electrical pole. She also barely heard Rhem's curse before electricity crackled across the flooded floor. She certainly heard both their screams before falling first, with Rhem next to her. She also saw Uram walk through parting waters–with the elemental fragment in hand–towards the Earth Guardian. "Hmm, quite the predicament," he said. "Ice Guardian!"
Then, Maram skidded into the room. The Ice Guardian charged inside, its knuckle striking the Toa of Light's sword repeatedly. Every cold blow expanded across the room, and Zala's groans turned to cries when the water she and Rhem laid in froze over to entrap their limbs in a thin icy coat. Tired and almost burnt, they could only prevent the same from happening to their masks.
"Come on, focus!" Rhem told himself, but Zala doubted Rhem could, given their condition.
Another reason flashed from the side, with Maram's channeled power distracting his opponent and Rhem. The greatsword scarred the mask on the former's hand. The Ice Guardian recoiled, clearly in pain, but any sound died under the third distraction: Uram's hammer bashing at Earth Guardian's trapped, and now frozen, arm, as Zala saw it.
"Don't complain! It will be over soon enough!" Uram told the Earth Guardian.
Zala's attention drew to Maram, whose beam of light forced the Ice Guardian to its earthen counterpart. "Are… are you two alright?" Maram asked. To Zala's eyes, he swayed a little and even shivered from the frost on parts of his body.
"We'll be fine!" she said.
"Uh, yeah! We just need to break free–!" said Rhem, but a loud crack cut him off.
Zala's mind flashed to Korgot Caverns seeing everything shake and shudder violently. Through it, first came the Earth Guardian's stump of an arm and pained howls causing the quake. Then came Maram, having been tossed towards Rhem and Zala by an icy burst. "Maram!" Zala shouted, but she couldn't hear herself, or Rhem or anyone else.
A prone Maram slightly shifted. Zala knew he still had not fully recovered, or else he would have gotten up. Her heart thumped, telling her to help. How could she, in her state?
"Use me…" Zala heard and shook off the whispers. No, she couldn't use that mask! Not like this!
"There! That did it!" Rhem's voice rose through a second of silence in between the cacophony. Each of his freed arms reached over to grab Zala and Maram.
Remembering the blurred forms across the room, Zala said, "Wait, Rhem! We–"
Yet, she, and the other Toa, vanished.
AN: Boy, it's been a while since I even touched this story. Basically, a potential fight scene for my Bionicle G2 fanfic. Hopefully, it and the rest of the story turns out well (that is, whenever I start updating again). Until then, take care.
Raika out.