“Toa vs. Toa”

“Tahu! Look out!”

The Fire Toa turned just in time to raise his sword against the onslaught. The face of his attacker was hidden behind a blackened, pitted mask, and black smoke billowed from its sword.

Tahu held the stranger off as best he could. He channeled the power of his flame through his fire sword, pointing it toward the sandy ground beneath his attacker. It instantly crystallized into glass and broke under the stranger's weight. The attacker plummeted out of sight.

But Tahu barely had time enough to smile before the stranger leaped out of the pit. “Hate to shatter your illusions,” it said in a sizzling, crackling voice, “but it will take more than that to get rid of me.”

The words only drove Tahu to greater fury. He shot white-hot flames out of the sword, but his movements were too fast, careless, striking the walls and boulders of the cavern until sparks flew in all directions, showering over the other Toa.

“Take care, Tahu,” the attacker spoke again, “lest the fire of your anger blaze out of control.”

Tahu gritted his teeth. “We’ll see how you like my fire now,” he said.

He pointed his sword at the stony cavern floor. Fire poured from the end, melting the rock into steaming, glowing lava.

“Brother Tahu!” Onua’s voice sounded distant, almost lost in the bubbling sound of the boiling lava. “Watch what you’re doing — you’ll endanger us all!”

Tahu’s mysterious opponent leaped off its rock and surfed across the bubbling lava. Its smile broadened. “Come, give in to the flame,” it whispered. “Let it consume you and all you hold dear — I know you can feel it burning deep inside.”

Tahu gasped, startled out of his own anger. What sort of enemy was this? He looked around for help and saw that five more attackers had suddenly appeared, as if out of the shadows themselves, each moving in on a different Toa…

Nearby, Gali struggled against another mysterious attacker. The stranger’s form mirrored her own, but rather than the clean blue of the open sea, its body was the muted, sickly brownish-black of an oil slick.

“Who are you?” Gali gasped as she released a raging flood of water toward her attacker.

A chuckle poured out of the attacker, who seemed unaffected by the flood. “Who am I?” it said. “Is the wise, all-seeing Gali really so blind? I am — you!”

Pohatu jumped atop an enormous boulder just in time to avoid being swept away by Gali’s flood. “Hey!” he cried, his usual good nature overwhelmed by near panic. “Gali, take care not to fight your friends as well as your enemy!”

His opponent smirked. “So much for teamwork,” it said in its gravelly voice. “This is how your friends repay your loyalty. Makes one wonder why one should bother with friends at all, doesn’t it?”

“Not at all.” Pohatu leaped to the ground and immediately swung his weapon at the boulder. It shattered into hundreds of flying shards, ricocheting off the walls toward the mysterious attacker.

The stranger laughed as he dodged the rocks. “Too bad, Pohatu,” it taunted. “Good thing you expect nothing in return for your loyalty to your friends. Because now that the chips are down, it seems they’ve left you to fight me all alone.”

It was getting hard for Lewa to concentrate on his own battle. First he’d nearly backflipped into the pool of lava that had suddenly appeared to cover half the cave. Then a flood of water had washed through.

“AI-AI-AI-AI-AI!” he yodeled, flipping himself up and over his attacker’s weapons and out of the boulder’s path.

CRRRRAAAAAACK!

The cavern shuddered as the boulder struck the wall. Lewa glanced hopefully back toward it, wondering if his opponent might be trapped behind it.

“Looking for me, Toa of Air?”

What is this creature, this quickdodging dark-stranger? Lewa wondered as he leaped into the air to escape another blow. It looks like me — but not like me.

He took in the stranger’s pitted mask, blackened as if by a creeping forest mold. Its skin beneath was green — the washed-out green of a diseased leaf.

Tumbling out of range and lifting his arms, Lewa focused his energies on the air all around him. Soon a whirlwind roared through the cavern. It swept up Lewa’s enemy, and the Toa of Air laughed with delight.

But his opponent merely laughed in return as it glided easily through the currents and soon landed back beside the startled Toa.

It hadn’t taken Kopaka long to realize what was happening — Makuta had created these shadowy versions of the Toa to challenge them where the Manas and all his other creatures had failed.

And so far, the plan seemed to be working.

Kopaka fought on grimly. Neither he nor his enemy was wasting any energy on words. Kopaka found his frustration rising as each of his carefully executed moves was met and returned with equal precision.

This isn’t working, he thought. There has to be a better way…

“This should cool you off,” he muttered.

He touched his ice sword to the ground and focused his energy. Instantaneously, the cavern floor froze into a solid sheet of ice.

Even as he did it, Kopaka realized he’d miscalculated. His enemy smiled as it glided across the ice, its moves more graceful and controlled than ever.

“I see you’ve just recognized the cold, hard truth,” it whispered in a voice as sharp as an icicle.

Onua shook his head, willing himself to focus, to think through this problem. He had already tried overpowering his enemy with raw strength, but its might matched his own. He had attempted to trap it by tunneling through the cavern wall and then collapsing the tunnel atop it, but the creature had burrowed out easily.

We can’t go on this way, he thought desperately.

Right now the Toa were at an impasse, evenly matched with their enemy. But if even one of them went down, it could mean the end of all of them.

Feeling uncharacteristically desperate, the Earth Toa struck the ground before him with all his might. The earth rumbled at the blow, shaking the entire cavern and sending a hailstorm of rocks and earth raining down on all the fighters.

Onua felt despair grip him as he saw that while the other Toa had been knocked off their feet, his own opponent merely leaped over the torn earth and moved in to press the attack.