Part Three

The Kraawa bucked in its restraints and let loose a mighty bellow. By now the Vahki that had been silently stalking the Toa had observed the challenge that their quarry were kindly preparing for their entertainment. Now they moved in.

Whenua, who had unsealed the stasis tube joined Onewa in shattering open the chains binding the Rahi in place. They had to be careful, for even as the Kraawa strained in place, the chains risked flying out with enough force to shatter Toa armor.

The last restraint cracked in half, and Onewa threw himself to the side. The Kraawa tore out the gate, running headlong into the two squads of Rorzakh and Zadakh that had arrived to stop their break-out. Immediately it began growing in size.

“That will buy us some time,” Onewa said. He turned to run, only to slam headfirst into a large metal machine blocking his way.

As he stepped back, he looked up. And he immediately knew why the Vahki had taken their time.

“Whenua…” he said, “Nuju… They brought a Kraahu.”

✴        ✴        ✴

“Why we ever decided to give these things Rahi-like sound effects, I’ll never know,” Onewa muttered to himself.

The machine in front of him, Nuju, and Whenua let out another high-pitched fluttering screech as it stalked toward them. Six insectoid legs carried its swaying reptilian design. The number of joints and links down its spine and side supports allowed its body more fluid motion than the Vahki, truly giving its mechanical form an organic appearance, though it was nothing of the sort.

The Kraahu had one major advantage over the standard Vahki model. Unlike the Vahki, which had a centralized intelligence mechanism, a Kraahu’s clockwork knowledge centers were scattered through its body. This allowed the Kraahu to split apart, and its pieces to function independently. When intact, the Kraahu could emit clouds of stun gas, fire stun blasts from its pointed legs, and fire Kanoka disks. Split apart, each Kraahu piece carried an electrical charge that was triggered on contact. Kraahu were normally dispatched to deal with large numbers of Rahi on the loose.

Thankfully, most of the standard Vahki had their hands full with the Rahi Kraawa. That only left the mechanical Kraahu for the Toa.

The machine loaded and charged a Kanoka disk, shooting at Nuju. Onewa pushed him out of the way just in time. Drawing on his deep well of strength, he pushed it back with his tools before jumping straight at the Kraahu, bringing his proto pitons down hard.

The powerful attack hit it, breaking its leg loose. Onewa’s triumph was cut short, though. The tip of the Kraahu’s broken leg suddenly branched out into three smaller spikes, each, which pulled the broken leg back toward its owner who swiftly reattached it. Then the Kraahu righted itself and stalked back toward the Toa.

“That’s a problem,” Whenua commented at the sight.

“We’ve got twelve more,” Onewa answered. Several Rorzakh and Zadakh had broken off from their fight with the Kraawa and quickly adapted into their flight mode, spinning back toward the Toa. Now six of each kind raced back to apprehend the heroes.

Nuju frowned. “Onewa, can you think of any weaknesses to the Kraahu?”

The Toa of Stone slung his proto pitons toward two Vahki, taking them out of the air. “High-power electricity, magnetism, and maybe superheated substances,” he called back. “Nothing we have here!”

Nuju wasn’t even going to look around. Here, in this damp, dark prison cave beyond known civilization, there were no magnetic devices, superheated weapons, or electric Kanoka lying around. The only option he saw was that the Kraahu, as an elite enforcer, was not designed to chase as effectively as the regular Vahki. It could pursue, defend, and protect, but not trace with the same versatility and speed, due to its size.

“Whenua, Onewa, if we can defeat the Vahki, we might have a chance!” Nuju called.

That assessment, they quickly realized, would prove far easier said than done. The Kraahu wasn’t just impressive mechanics and strong servos. It hunched down, bending its legs to lower it as it moved toward the Toa. From underneath its Kanoka disk launching “mouth”, a pressurized yellow gas hissed out in the direction of the Toa. The Vahki kept closing in, passing harmlessly through the cloud. It wouldn’t affect them, after all—they didn’t need to breathe. The Toa, on the other hand, now had to choose between not breathing and either winding up a prisoner again or a new exhibit in the Archives.

Nuju tapped the Toa of Stone’s shoulder. “Onewa?”

Onewa thought fast. “Whenua! See if you can blow that stun gas away!” he ordered, quickly turning around the grapple with a Rorzakh.

“Too bad Matau’s not here,” Whenua muttered, dropping his guard to activate his earthshock drills. They didn’t work as effectively as a controlled windstorm would, but when he swung their rotating shafts at the gas cloud, it still momentarily dispersed.

Nuju aimed his crystal spikes at Vahki after Vahki, slashing at them as if his life depended on it. Onewa was next to him, slinging his weapons at the enforcers, too, driving them back. When he glanced over his shoulder and saw that Whenua’s drills had pushed the Kraahu’s stun gas back, he moved to distract the elite order enforcer. Nuju would have to continue holding off the Rorzakh and Zadakh on his own, but the Kraahu was more deserving of two Toa than even a dozen ordinary Vahki.

The fight went their way for a while. Nuju and Onewa were able to cover each others’ backs against the Vahki, slowly dropping the numbers of the stone and earth enforcers’ squads. Whenua was able to penetrate the stone floor and tunnel into the earth with his drills. Diving into the ground, he surprised and distracted the Kraahu from below.

Then the plan met with simultaneous success and failure. Nuju and Onewa managed to defeat all but one Vahki Zadakh. It slipped through their final team attack, narrowly missing Onewa with its Staff of Suggestion. Nuju quickly corrected his aim and swung his spikes at the machine, crippling it.

Meanwhile, the Kraahu had landed a devastating blow on Whenua when he emerged from the ground and now towered over his prone form. The Toa of Earth lay under its center body and in the center of its six legs. “Uh, guys?” Whenua asked. He rolled back and forth, desperately trying to evade capture from the middle two legs, while it balanced on the other four. It shrieked again as it attempted to pin, barely missing.

Nuju came running at the machine, causing it to whirl and point its front right leg at Nuju which shot off in his direction. The extremity nailed into him, knocking him off his feet and onto his back. He cried in surprise as the leg continued to attack him even on the ground, its three joints allowing it to take the form of a spearheaded, snake-like enemy. It wasn’t long, though, before it managed to slither between his arms and torso and release a high-power electric shock. The attack jolted Nuju into a spastic state before he finally succumbed to unconsciousness.

The Kraahu called back its remote-acting leg from the defeated Toa of Ice. Its body shook as the leg flew back into place, only for all its joints to separate and attack right after.

Onewa put up a good fight, trying to raise stone barriers to protect himself by jabbing his tools into the ground. But before long, he, too, fell before the electric onslaught of three “leg-snakes” attacking from three different directions at once.

Last was Whenua, who managed to avoid, evade, and run away from the appendages. The large body of the Kraahu, now hovering without any legs to support it, tracked him with its Kanoka launcher. It fired a level 6 weakness disk at the Toa of Earth, and when it hit, he was the final Toa to go down.