iBrow – or Voltex – or Tex, it no longer mattered – remained kneeling right where the Mysterious Figure had left him. Sector 31 shimmered around him, morphing into a huge cavern filled with lava that boiled and lashed against the rock trapping it. After a moment, the Matoran realized that he wasn’t just enraged – his rage was radiating off of him in waves.
What was going on?
He opened his palm and a ball of fire lit itself in the middle; he hurled it at the wall and the flames spewed all over the ancient stones before vanishing.
So that was what was happening.
It was time to get his Staff back.
---
A cloaked figure stood atop the Coliseum in Metru-Nui, Staff held high. Bolts of lighting crackled away from the staff in arcs, striking bodies all over the destroyed city and awakening the dead. As the sole survivor raced to the surface to proclaim the good news, the figure atop the Coliseum allowed a brief smile to form – hope was a powerful weapon.
BANG.
The figure was blasted from behind and propelled forwards by the explosion, tumbling right to the edge of the Coliseum before coming to a stop. Down below, the revived Matoran all began to point – after all, it wasn’t everyday that a blazing inferno struck the tower.
“I think you have something that belongs to me,” the newcomer said.
The figure stood, glancing from the staff and then back to the new arrival. Before the newcomer could react, the figure pointed the staff and sent a sphere of solid shadow at him, striking him in the chest and sending him reeling.
“No!” the newcomer shouted. “I am Voltex, I am the Pyro! You will not defeat me!”
Lunging faster than the eye could track, Voltex tackled the figure and grabbed the Staff, attempting to rip the Staff from the thief’s grasp. However, the figure was just as strong, as the energy radiating from the Staff was absorbed by them both.
---
Down below, the Matoran scattered as a larger bolt of lightning flashed down towards them, slamming into the ground with so much force that the ground shattered underneath it, fracturing for a twenty foot radius.
“What is going on up there?” one of the Matoran wondered aloud.
---
Voltex was wondering the exact same thing as he dodged another shadow blast, slamming both fists onto the platform, an explosion of fire erupting upon impact and knocking the figure back, though an icy gale immediately swept through, preventing the attack from doing the damage intended. The figure sent another blast of lightning at him through the Staff but Voltex easily dodged, leaping forward and snatching the Staff for himself.
That was, ironically, his biggest mistake.
As soon as he began to teleport away, the Figure grabbed the Staff and counteracted the teleport; the Staff, its defenses already stripped thin by the two combatants, retaliated with a shockwave of pure energy that sliced through the Coliseum like butter before cleaving through the ground underneath. As both halves of the Coliseum began to collapse, the Mysterious Figure ripped the Staff away from Voltex’s hands and teleported away, leaving the would-be Host falling through the sky.
---
To those on the planet far below, the enormous robot bearing down on them didn’t exactly inspire confidence. When a blinding white wave of pure energy ripped the robot into two pieces, however, their curiosity was aroused. Three of the figures extended their wings and took off into the skies to search more closely.
---
Before Voltex could die from hitting the ground of Metru-Nui, the ground was no longer there. The colossal robot they had all been inhabiting was splitting down the middle, and the next instant Metru-Nui itself was separating; and then suddenly Voltex was no longer alone in the air.
Fire consumed Metru-Nui as everything that could explode did explode, as per what one would expect of a giant robot being destroyed. While the ruined halves of the robot’s giant head fell towards the desert planet below, the rest of the robot spiraled off elsewhere into space.
But we’re concerned with Voltex right now, and he was (unfortunately) also headed for the desert planet below.
Voltex sailed past the spiraling Portalfig and the flailing Lloyd; past the screaming Xaeraz (though Voltex was 99.9% certain the screaming was because the bloodthirsty Matoran was having fun with the impromptu skydiving). The X and Canis both tumbled across his path, battered by wreckage streaming from the ruined city below them. Taka Nuvia, who had just survived the recent invasion, was tucked into a ball to avoid the same misfortune.
---
The three figures – the Sentinels, watched as 25 figures spiraled towards the surface of the planet, smokes streaming from their bodies and marking the air behind them. The flaming wreckage of what had once been the head of a mighty robot was the first to land, crashing into the desert sand with such force that the surface visibly shifted, fire and metal and stone and smoke flying in all directions.
Then, one by one, the falling figures landed, tumbling through the sand and clouding the area with the microscopic grains, obscuring everything from view. The three Sentinels glanced at each other silently before diving one by one into the center of the wreckage, where the 25 figures had landed in various places.
---
Voltex lay upon the sand, his chest heaving in an attempt to breathe as the remnant powers left behind by the Staff of Unlimited Power repaired his body. He slowly stood to his feet, wavering as the action caused more power to radiate from him into the bodies of the other players, reviving them one by one as three figures descended from the obscured skies.
“Wh-who are you?” the Host asked, his voice hoarse from the harsh air.
“We are the Sentinels,” one answered, “and you are going to need us if you want to survive.”
“The skies are dark!” A Matoran (maybe Pulse) yelled.
“I’m looking for something,” Voltex said. “The Staff of Unlimited Power – it was stolen.”
The three Sentinels glanced to each other. “Then you are in trouble indeed… the darkest days are upon us. Let us hope that the darkened skies are not an omen for worse to come.”