Te Kirika Makariri

[Kopaka]

The cloaked figure staggered slowly across the blasted landscape, clouds of stinging ash swirling around him with every step. His slow, plodding footsteps were not symptomatic of any particular ailment. Neither was the fact that his normally shimmering sword was being listlessly dragged behind him. No...Kopaka had simply chosen a direction to walk and had kept walking until he found himself trudging across a nameless mare of magma within the Ashen Steppes. He was vaguely cognizant of the fact that his previous ally, Dawn, had stormed off in the direction of this restless land...but he didn't care. Space. That was all that he needed.

At the moment, Kopaka was trying to assess what, exactly, had drawn him to this particular verse instead of the much more comfortable climes of the Frozen Fields. The Toa had always considered himself to be an extremely self-assured sort of person, well-versed in the bylaws and tenants of his personal ethos. It was this darkness, this inexpungeable taint that had wrapped itself around his mind and soul. With a pop-hiss, Kopaka wrenched the Kanohi away from the sore, metal laced flesh of his face. The Great Mask had become deeply, irrevocably pitted and rusty since his time in the Omniverse. Kopaka's memories of his homeworld were hazy, at best, but he knew clearly enough what the corrosion meant.

Darkness.

What a limited word for a complex concept. This was no vulgar unlight that had destroyed his identity. Darkness was a much more profound thing. It was an oppressive feeling of restlessness borne of self-hatred. The constant compulsion to excel all comers and be the very best, because if that was achieved, maybe the pain of personal scorn would be dampened. At the same time, Kopaka did not think that he clung to the vainglorious hopes of one-day reaching a level of balmy acclaim. Whatever.

The Toa tossed his beloved mask of power into the rusty dust underfoot and glowered down at it for a few moments. He sighed softly, knelt down, and replaced the mask back on his face.

He knew he had become a monster. The exact sort of bloodthirsty beast that a Toa was designed to kill. But this Darkness was not a disease that was caught externally. The bolus of tenebrous hatred had been growing within his armored breast for almost...what was it...a year now? Who could say, within this damned Omniverse. It had started with his shameful display at the Camelot Colosseum, and after becoming desperate to prove himself to his imperial masters he had been desperate to hunt down and slay the Prime known as Mickey Mouse. He had failed there as well. Failure, it seemed, was endemic to his identity here. Having only vague memories of his home universe made the situation all the more worse, and while he certainly got the occasional throb of satisfaction from killing any one of his pesky fellow Primes, it was a high that passed all too quickly.

What then was he to do? This had been the primary question that had been plaguing his mind for the past few hours as he trudged along the shredded, black earth. The incessant plodding of metallic feet in the obsidian grit and rattling grind of the Ice Sword came to a halt as he mounted the crest of a small ridge. A sudden blast of volcanic wind tore the weathered hood away from his Kanohi, and the dull red light of the Steppes midday highlighted every pock and dent on the muddy patina. An immense caldera stretched before him, encompassing what had to be at least ten miles of churning, active basin. Unlike the rest of the Ashen Steppes, this igneous depression was...colorful. Pools of acidic water cast scintillations of indigo and turquoise at their centers, which faded to lime green and yellow where the sulfur and bacteria has grown at the edges.

Small monoliths of white, calcified stone rose a meter here, ten meters there, into the foggy air. Intermittent splashes of boiling water scattered up against these pale stands, sending small flights of birds scattering each time. Clouds of brine flies hovered just inches above the lethal surface of the water, and enormous, lazy lizards lapped at them with sticky tongues over a yard in length. There, not more than a thousand yards to the northeast, an encroaching morass sticky, shiny lava advanced in wrinkled sheets of orange and silver. Father still, barely visible through the haze and ash, was a fountain of lava, boiling out of a rift in the caldera's wall and spilling out into the expanse. The vaulted sky overhead was a mix of tangerine and scarlet hues, with dark thunderheads gathering in the far west. Arcs of purple lightning illuminated the bruised clouds, briefly hinting at the truly massive scale of the entire geometeorlogical display.

Kopaka dropped his sword, his shield, his mask, and allowed the cloak to flutter away in the heated wind. There, effectively naked, he sat down on the embankment and took the scene in through uncovered optics. Mucus and ichor created a filmy sheen across the interwoven mechanics and biology of the Toa's true face, serving as a proper indicator that it was not the corrupted Kanohi that was the source of darkness. Still, in spite of it all, the utter turmoil of this vista, Kopaka felt...comfortable. Slowly, his eyes shifted back to their normal, blue coloration.

Clarity.

Was that the only thing he had to gain from isolation? Was it only here, completely removed from the workings and machinations of other minds, that he could return to his proper senses? Kopaka uttered a self-deprecating scoff, the closest noise he ever made to laughing, and rolled a jagged rock around on the ground with one hand.

The biomech began to ponder for a long, long time.

[Kopaka]

It had been a long time in hermitage. The Spirit had always had a murky reckoning for time, here in this splintered reality, especially considering his predisposition for long stretches of introspective torpor. This time had, especially, been one of unmarked days in study and reflection.

Kopaka had come to appreciate his bestial cohabitants within this blasted caldera. He had watched with patience and great interest as the lava flow on the eastern wall had slowly encroached further towards the center. The wildlife, ever adapting, had simply shifted their lazy daily rituals to avoid the growing torrent of igneous death. It had been weeks since he had last worn his kanohi, or even his sword and shield. Life in the caldera was patient, and hallowed...barring the occasional pyroclastic flow that threatened to reduce all of them to instant fossilization. Kopaka had barely been tempted to kill anything for a long time, and when he did, it was usually just to satiate the curiosity of foreign biology.

But what had really gripped the Toa's mind for the duration of his stay here had been culture. Spending long hours delving the depths of all available writings and teaching on the Dataverse, Kopaka had found a deep appreciation for poetry and writing. Homer, Shakespeare, Baudelaire, Keats, Alighieri...all of them were on a same level of reverence that the warrior of ice had reserved only for the radiance of Mata Nui. Now, however, his horizons had been broadened. None of them, of course, were able to act as a panacea for the darkness that still clung to his soul like a waxen weight, but they had taught him how to own it. Rather that resist the perfidious infection, Kopaka now took it within himself. He would not be diminished by the sneering purity of self-proclaimed paladins any more. His Unity was within himself, his Duty to his own will, and his Destiny of his own choosing.

The only problem, however, was that he still did not know what he wanted. Granted, Kopaka had always been a firm believer in knowing what he didn't want, but to actively choose what was desirable had never been placed in front of him. The Darkness hungered for blood and suffering. It's needs were animal, and by dint of that, could be tamed if left unprovoked. But as a composite creature, the Toa was aware that he wanted something more out of this indefinite existence, but he could not define that.

In time, however, Kopaka became aware of the fact that the yearly festival of charnel voyeurism was once again under way. Primes had flocked in obeisance to the siren call of Karl Jak, and now mutilated each other in earnest, motivated by vanity, greed, or any other number of vices.

The Toa found it succulent. But...it would be better for him not to partake. His last attempt at participating in such a public forum of blood had resulted in a stain on his character which had proven most indelible. It wasn't as if Kopaka was scared of failing in such a capacity again...no, not at all...it was moreso a tactical decision. Let the frothing beasts smite their ruin upon one another; the biomech would be there to catch the abundant scraps.

This was not so much a goal as it was a simple intention, but, it was at least enough to see the icy warrior delivered to the threshold of one of Syntech's ubiquitous transport stations. Having wrapped himself in a heavy, hooded cloak, and having stowed sword, shield and mask beneath it, the master of cold made his way to a new land of opportunity...