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Warning: This fictional work contains descriptions of violent acts. If you are really sensitive to this, it's advised not to read this.

Chapter 6. Travel Plans

Banserko stood in front of M’azzal, between her and the matoran in the distance. “Stay back, I’m going to negotiate with these people once the cloud of sand and dust has settled down.”
He crouched low, his eyes focused on the sillhouettes of the matoran, while he searched the sand with his mechanical hand. “There you are!” He pulled out a rusty sword from underneath the sand. “I can’t believe you got yourself killed like that,” he muttered to himself, shaking off remaining specks of sand from the blade.
“How did you know that blade was burried here?” M’azzal said at him angrily. He had interfered with her plan, and now he was mumbling things and telling her to back off.
“Shut up and stay where you are. I don’t want to risk any casualties, or else Banser won’t allow me to use his body anymore,” he replied.
M’azzal stayed silent.

Without any warning, she dashed to the right, out of the other Toa’s sight.
“M’azzal, get back here!,” she heard him shout after her, followed by a frustrated shout. She kept her eyes on the ground in front of her and made a turn to her left, a few feet after Banserko had disappeared from her view, up the dune towards the matoran. The sand had mostly settled down now, and she could recognise Banserko in the distance looking at her, and the row of hostile matoran in front of her.

Ten, eleven... no twelve matoran. I’ll go no further than the leader.

She charged at the matoran closest to her, snuck up from behind and made short work of him. The others noticed her immediately thereafter and quickly loaded their weapons with glowing beams.

Damn it, do these matoran have super-hearing or something?

One beam of white light shot right past M’azzal, leaving a burned mark in the ground behind her. Several other matoran aimed for her. Banserko was still shouting at her, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. All she could think about was how she could possibly escape that many beams at once.
She had no time to think-- new shots were fired and bright lights charged at her. But she had one last trick up her sleeve. She had little experience with it aside from her escape from the dungeon, but there was no other choice right now. As the shots were about to hit M’azzal, her shape became distorted, and her body collapsed into a pile of sand.
Just like the previous time she had used her newfound power on herself, she felt her presence scattered around everywhere, aware of her surroundings but not able to see anything.

“What the-- where did she go?!”
“Keep an eye on the spot where she disappeared.”
“What about the red Toa?”
“We’ll take care of him. You three, guard that spot. The rest of us will try to get close to the other Toa. If things turn ugly, we’ll have to reactivate the mines.”
M’azzal felt three matoran made a circle just next to her, misremembering where she had dissolved. The nine remaining matoran moved out of her field of perception, suggesting they went on toward Banserko. Just as she was about to return back to her normal state, one of the nine matoran skidded back into range, unarmed and unconscious.

“Hold on, now don’t make me get onto the same level as that female Toa.”
The voice of Banserko sounded tense and angry as he came closer. He held two other unconscious matoran and she could only guess that he had convinced the enemy not to kill him.
Great, he’s getting all the attention to himself.
Quickly, M’azzal turned back to her normal form and readied her weapon to assault the three matoran in a circle.
As she swung her scythe, she could hear Banserko’s voice screaming, “No, don’t!”
At the same time, the blade cut through all three of the matorans’ necks, ending their lives instantly. She turned around to help out Banserko, but when she did, she saw him drop the two matoran and put his hands on the sides of his head as if in pain.
“No, Banser, not now. Trust me,” he muttered. Then he looked at M’azzal. “You.”
Before she knew what happened, Banserko had wrapped his arm around her, and the rusty blade was pressed against her throat.

“Why in the damn world did you do that?!” His voice was low and quiet, but anger and horror smoldered in the undertones.
M’azzal didn’t answer. She pried her left arm loose from his grip, and punched him solidly in the face. He didn’t budge an inch, and he quickly grabbed her arm again.
“I said why!”
“Just let me go.”
But he didn’t.
“You are a Toa, aren’t you? The Toa code clearly states you shouldn’t kill.” He tightened his grip. “In my twenty-four thousand years I’ve never met a killing Toa before. There’s no way I’d let you accompany Banserko.”
“Like I care,” M’azzal spat at him bitterly.
“You should care. In this desert, you don’t want to--” he suddenly stopped talking. With his head close to M’azzal’s, she could hear the high tone of gears spinning inside his head, as a machine that was about to explode, but then it stopped and his eyes went dark.

With all her power she tried to get away, but the humongous and now lifeless body collapsed onto her, and there was no way she could get out without help.
Then, for the third time that day, she used her power. Her arm stretched out and formed into a heap of sand that fell in front of Banserko’s seemingly dead body, and the rest of her particles all sifted toward that one heap, quickly building up her entire body once again.

Once her body had been fully restored, she stood back and looked at his corpse for a full minute, before noticing that the hostile matoran had disappeared during the struggle. She looked at the sky, which was slowly getting darker and made the hovering mines slowly turn invisible to the naked eye. A soft moan made her turn to Banserko’s body again. He was still alive, but asleep.
She took a moment to decide what the next step would be.

Normally, she would have moved on and left Banserko to his fate. But this time it was different. She was stranded in the middle of a desert, probably in another reality, and it was turning night. A traveling companion would definitely be helpful, even if it was a schyzofrenic Toa with amnesia.
Although Banserko seemed to be an odd one, he did have the mask of shielding, as well as great strength.
She had made her decision.

The sky grew dark and the climate in the desert shifted to a harsh chill. The sand underneath her was nothing but a dark grey mass. As she sat there, she stared at the star-filled horizon of the night, thinking about her plans for the future. She had started to doubt the possibility of ever returning to her homeworld, let alone stop Kaine and Maurak’s plan. Before she could finish the thought, she heard something.
Coming closer behind her was the sound of heavy, slow footsteps. She didn’t have to look around to know who it was.

“So you’ve finally woken up,” she spoke softly, tired of staying up so long and sitting in the same position for hours in a row.
The person behind her didn’t answer at first, but instead knelt down next to her, and suddenly a flame appeared in his crimson hand, emitting a pleasant orange light. “It must’ve been cold for you. Do you want me to keep this fire burning?”
M’azzal nodded, not caring to speak, since the warmth of the fire made her relax. Slowly, her eyelids closed, and just before sleep took her over, she felt him carefully put his arm around her.

The next day M’azzal woke up because of the dawning light and intense heat of the morning sun. As she slowly stood up from her lying position, she looked around her. She saw Banserko sitting at her left side, looking the same way as she had done that night. She coughed intentionally, making the Toa look at her. He had a sad, distant expression on his face. M’azzal hesitated for a moment, her mind still somewhat dwelled off into that somewhat comfortable moment before she fell asleep.
“Tell me what the matter is with you,” she eventually said, standing up and taking a few steps back to keep him in her sight.

The other Toa’s expression didn’t change as he spoke up. “First of all, my name is not Saato. I, Banserko, am the one in control of my body, and Saato can only use it under my permission, and even then I can take back control whenever I want. Or so he told me. Second...” he looked down for a moment, not sure if he’d say whatever he had in mind.

“Second of all,” he continued. “You killed three matoran. I... I don’t understand why you did that. You seemed like a nice person.”
M’azzal let out a deep sigh, then walked up to Banserko, though she decided not to sit down next to him. “I did what needed to be done.”
Banserko looked up to her with a look that said he didn’t understand. It annoyed her.
“Oh please, if not for me, both of us would have been dead. You can at least show a little gratitude.”
He looked down. “I was going to talk to them after--”
“You can’t talk with those kind of people,” she said sharply.
Banserko pulled up his shoulders, just like a scolded child would do, still looking down, hiding his face from her. When he whispered, M’azzal could barely make out what he said.

“I thought... I could talk them over it.”
“Believe me, you can’t. I’ve met enough of those kind of people in my life.”
Banserko finally looked up to her again. “Just what kind of life have you been living?”
M’azzal looked at her weapon, which she had picked up on her way to the other Toa, then answered. “I guess I can’t ask you that same question, so there’s no real reason for me to tell you.”

She shook her head and then held the weapon at her side. “The sun is rising, we’re moving.”
With that, she looked at sky, which was still filled with the hovering mines. A mounted flying rahi slowly soared through the cloudless air with a mine clutched in its claws, on its way to a spot where one such terrifying weapon was missing. She didn’t like the thought of staying at the same place for a long time at all, let alone in an alien desert.

Hours later, she and her tall companion reached the end of the seemingly infinite field of explosives hovering above their heads. As they also got closer to the end of the desert, more and more dark grey boulders jutted out of the sand. When M’azzal leaned on one of those rocks to rest for a moment, she almost immediately pulled back her hand, overwhelmed by the burning heat of the rock.
“It’s hot!” she screamed. Embarrassed of her outburst, she tried to regain her composure.
“Well, this is a desert, so of course it would be hot,” Banserko said in a serious tone, only resulting in M’azzal giving him an angry look.
“Shut up. Why do you know stuff like that anyways, while you only know very specific things about yourself?”

Before he could answer, she already started speaking again. “Besides, this rock... I think it’s made out of metal.”
“Hold on, let me feel that.” Banserko walked past M’azzal towards the shiny rock. Then, with a loud metallic crash, he punched a hole in it, making it rip as if made out of sheets of paper. With a guilty look on his face, Banserko pulled his hand back.

“What did you do that for?!” M’azzal shouted at him, looking at the metal remains of what had just been a proud rock moments ago, sailing the seas of sand.
Banserko shook his head, as if confused. “I-I was just going to knock on it to hear if it was hollow, I swear.” He kneeled down next to the scrap metal, and quickly went on to inspect it, while M’azzal put her hand on her forehead in disbelief, accidentally dropping her scythe. This caught Banserko’s attention, and he turned around to look at the weapon.
“Do you want me to carry that for you?” he asked politely.
M’azzal quickly picked up her scythe and took a few steps back. “Like I would give you that after what you just did!”

Banserko shrugged and went back to his investigation. He found that within the hollow ‘rock’ there were a few bundles of thick wires, all leading through a deep underground pipe that went the same direction as the duo was walking. M’azzal figured that this indicated the existence of nearby civilisation, so they continued in that direction, eventually noticing that every now and then other black rocks appeared on the same line as the one Banserko had accidentally destroyed, and on both their sides similar lines could be seen, also going in the same direction.

Neither of them talked again. M’azzal just wanted to continue her journey on her own as soon as possible, and Banserko seemed to be lost in deep thoughts, sometimes murmuring things as if he was speaking to someone.
As they came closer to what was supposedly advanced civilisation, M’azzal noticed that dark clouds had started to appear in the blue sky above her. She also noticed Banserko was still talking to himself and looking at the ground, and she didn’t bother to tell him about the clouds.

When she focused back on what was in front of her, she was greeted by the sudden appearance of tall rocks, which rose out of the hot ground at a sharp angle, and continued their way in the form of huge walls that transitioned into what looked like the entrance of a city.
M’azzal sighed in relief. She hadn’t expected this to be so easy. She poked Banserko with her elbow, distracting him from his mumbling. As he looked up, she could swear his eyes grew bigger.

“It’s.. it’s a city,” he whispered, almost as if he couldn’t believe it. To M’azzal it also sounded as if he was talking to someone else, but she didn’t care enough.

She shrugged. “Well, finally, our journey ends here.”
She stuck out her fist, and Banserko gave her a careful fist-bump in return. When he pulled back his hand, he looked around with excitement showing on his face. M’azzal considered entering the cityground through the open gate in front of her, but she decided to wait until the other Toa had disappeared, just to make sure she would be alone.

“Well, I don’t really know where to go next, so...” he laid a finger on his chin, and then finally decided. “I guess I’ll just go that way. Good luck on your journey, M’azzal.”
He made his way to grounds that were obscured by the walls surrounding them, his movements as he walked out of M’azzal’s view were lively, contrary to the exhaustion M’azzal felt after walking through the hot desert for so long. The first thing she wanted to do when she got into the city was find a place to rest.

When she walked closer to the gate, she could see more of the city through it. It seemed deserted at first, but when she inspected the buildings a bit better, she could make out orange and grey matoran wearing goggles with green glasses in them.

The buildings themselves were an odd sight. First of all they seemed like they were framework only, walls only placed at the bottom to prevent anyone from just walking in. Odd spheres the size of small houses were always moving from one place to another, hanging onto lines that connected each building, and stopping at intervals to let matoran get out and have new matoran enter the sphere. They were protected by frames, which M’azzal assumed were there to keep the spheres in place in case the lines were to snap, and so that the matoran could get out of them and walk over the frame to a nearby building.

The buildings varied from ones that had big generators that were pumping smoke in them and looking like a cluster of beams and wires, to simple multi-story ones that were carefully divided in sections, in each of which goggled matoran were repairing transportation spheres or other strange instruments.

Because trying to make sense of the weird constructions only gave her a headache, she eventually gave up.

Since dark clouds were ruling the sky, she could see sparks flying everywhere from far away, but she could never really make out what caused them, or where they exactly came from.
When she stood right underneath the arch of the gate, she could see a small sign placed in the solid support beam of the gate.
It read, in familiar matoran letters:
Welcome to Vo-Koro. Enter at your own risk. And underneath that, another sign saying:
We do not condone any kind of warfare. Even though Vo-Koro’s power supply is meant for every Koro/ Clan/ City, every single one of these parties will just as easily be cut off from Vo-Koro’s powerline if said party breaks either the Vo-Koro ammendment of peace, or uses their supplies gained from Vo-Koro’s powerstations for warfare.

“Sounds like a nice place to live,” M’azzal said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

She set foot on the cityground, which felt surprisingly cold, considering there was a desert right next to this place. Even the atmosphere was pleasantly cool. She noticed that miniscule tubes were running along the wal land into the floor. Sometimes, white vapour would shoot out of grids in the floor, and she could feel the cold coming from it. It seemed like the city had numerous ways to keep the temperature to a low, probably to protect the machinery from overheating.

Further inspecting her environment, she noticed several tall pipes that reminded her of the sophisticated public chimneys that were lowered down through some of the holes in Cen-Traju during winter seasons. Here, they were evenly placed on top of every megastructure, spouting black smoke that obscured the atmosphere from the hot sun.
Although she wasn’t an expert, she at least figured that this had to be the source of the dark clouds she had seen forming in the skies long before she and Banserko had found the city.

As she proceeded into the city, the atmosphere gradually started smelling more of oil and smoke, mixed with the scent of metal, something she had gotten used to from her home at the farriery.
Just thinking back to it made her stomach turn. She wanted to go back to Staro Masko, and kill Kaine and Maurak. She wanted to end the latter’s life in particular, as he had set her up as an unfair murderer by her own standards. As for Kaine, she wanted to kill him for burning down her home with her mother in it. In some ways she hated him more than Maurak, as Kaine had never showed his true appearance and had the tools needed to artificially give a matoran the body of a Toa.

Actually, she didn’t even know if she would be able to find Maurak when she got back to Staro Masko. Maybe he had traveled to another reality, never to be heard from again.
She snapped out of her thought process, and decided to ask for directions.

She walked up to a relatively low platform that she was sure Banserko could get onto with a decent leap. Several green-goggled matoran were working with strange tools, causing sparks to fly up when they touched the cables of the structure. As one turned around to grab a different tool from a burnt orange chest, he saw M’azzal standing under the platform. He pulled up his goggles, revealing a pair of yellow eyes that were squinting at her.

“Uhm, hello!” M’azzal yelled at the matoran, trying to be heard above the sound of his coworker’s strange tool.
The matoran with his goggles pulled up waved at her. “Hello there, are you new here?”
M’azzal nodded. “Yes! I’m looking for a place to stay.”
The matoran chuckled, something she could clearly hear now that the other matoran on the platform had stopped what they were doing to look at her.
“Well, it’s quite obvious. I’m sorry, lady, but if you’ve read the sign at the entrance, you might’ve figured already that this place is solely focused on providing energy for settlements all across the South, and to provide just enough for us fe-matoran to stay here and keep doing our work.”

“Well, do you at least know a place where I can stay?”
He shook his head. M’azzal sighed in frustration.

Just my kind of luck. I escape dangerous matoran, only to find useless matoran.

“Wait, hold on, I think I might know someone who can give you directions,” the matoran’s colleague said, a woman judging from her voice, as she too pulled up her ridiculously large goggles.
“Go on,” M’azzal prompted.

“If you keep traveling North, which is in the same direction you were going, you should find the Toa of this Koro. In contrary to us who’ve been living here our entire lives, our Toa once lived up in the far North. He can most certainly point out several places for you to stay that you can reach by the end of the day."

Then, with a more serious tone, the matoran added, “It’s a good thing you are carrying that weapon with you, even though it is...” she paused to politely clear her throat, “...impractical for combat use. Since most Skakdi clans have broken our rules, we don’t serve them any more power, which has resulted in them stealing crates of power containers everywhere. But they also don’t mind picking a fight with anyone who isn’t employed here.”
M’azzal nodded, and thanked her for her help. Then she proceeded North.

After walking for half an hour, she still hadn’t seen a single rumored Skakdi, and she had barely seen any matoran working on the outside of the structures. She sat down next to a support beam to rest a little, her scythe laid by her side.
A raspy voice sounded from behind her.

“Making it easy for us, are we?”
She quickly jumped up and turned around, looking at several figures with glowing orange eyes and grins made out of sharp, white teeth.
One of the Skakdi said in a taunting voice,

“What do we have here?”
“A Toa, it is a Toa,” a smaller one replied.
“Yes, Karnahk, a Toa. And what do we do to Toa?” the previous one said.
“We kill them,” a bigger one answered.
“Yes, yes, as straightforward as always, Uhrnik,” the first one said, who was apparently their leader. “But,” he continued. “This one looks kind of innocent, doesn’t she? I bet she would make a great slave.”
His comment was followed by the laughter of his comrades. The laughter immediately stopped when M’azzal’s kick threw the grinning Skakdi down, causing the rocky ground to crack.

The leader quickly stood up, feeling his jaw. He glared furiously into her eyes. “What did you--”
M’azzal didn’t give him the time to finish his sentence, as she dealt him another kick, and the force of his impact caused the cracks in the ground to widen.

“So much for being innocent,” she said, pulling back her leg to kick him again as he was lying on the ground, aiming for his permanently grinning face. But before her foot could connect with his teeth, the leader quickly snatched her heel and pulled toward him, making her lose her balance and fall on her back.

“Uhrnik, Galak, grab her by the arms and pull her up for me,” he barked at two of his people as he stood up, still feeling his jaw with his right hand.
Before M’azzal could stand up herself, one Skakdi on either side of her had grabbed her by an arm. She tried to fend off her foes by dealing out some painful kicks, but her captors had proven to be much tougher than the one she had just smacked to the ground.

“That’s it, now hold her like that,” the first Skakdi said. His orange glowing eyes now started to glow even brighter. “I’m going to blow a nice round hole in your chest, little Toa,” he said with a menacing voice, his eyes glowing so bright that M’azzal couldn’t look at them anymore. She tried to struggle free, but the two Skakdi holding her didn’t budge.

“Goodbye, Toa. And make sure to scream a lot while I enjoy watching your chest melt away.”
There was a bright orange flash, and M’azzal quickly flinched, turning her head to one side in preparation for pain. Nothing happened. As she realised that her chest wasn’t burning or melting off, she looked back at the Skakdi who would shoot beams of heat from his eyes.

A large, statuesque figure had grabbed the creature by his head, shielding off the heat vision with his bare hand. The Skakdi leader bored his claws in the large hand, but to no effect, aside from leaving shallow scratch marks in the crimson armour.
“You can stop your futile attempts at trying to melt my hand off, Nadalak,” said the deep and familiar voice of Banserko. The leader, who was apparently named Nadalak, immediately stopped trying to free himself when he heard the voice.

“Are... are you Banserko or Saato?” he asked, every little bit of boldness had vanished from his voice. It took M’azzal a moment to realise what he meant by that, but then she recognised the deep voice and those two names.
Suddenly the two Skakdi who were holding her let go, and her head knocked against to rocky ground.

“Hold it right there!” Banserko yelled at the two captors, whose eyes had started glowing. He tightened his grip around Nadalak’s face, making him scream in agony.

“Well, my friend, it’s Saato for you. And if you want to be able to use your fancy eyes ever again, you will have to let the female go. She is with me.”

Nadalak cried something in response, but his voice was muffled.
“I can’t hear you.”
“I will leave you to her! You can have her, please let me go!”
“Very well.”
With that, he let go of Nadalak’s head, and kicked him in the back so that he had to stumble his way forward in order not to fall. While he was still trying to regain his balance, the crimson figure stepped out of the shadows.
“Banserko!” she exclaimed, and she quickly got to her feet and ran up to him.
He put up his hand in a halting motion.

“No, I’m Saato now. And you seem to be pretty enthusiastic for someone who wanted to travel alone.”
He ignored her for the moment, focusing his green eyes on Nadalak, who was now standing on both feet.
Nadalak looked back at him, still panting from the scuffle. “Why, Saato? Why are you traveling with a little brat like her?”
Saato didn’t need to think about his response. “I don’t travel with her; Banserko does. He insisted on following her when they split up. I didn’t have much of a choice, considering this is his body.”

Nadalak started to guffaw, something M’azzal didn’t expect the Skakdi leader had enough guts left for. Something was really off-putting about his laughter.

“You—hahaha!—you know where Banserko’s sympathy has lead him to, right?”
He was still laughing like a maniac, pointing at Saato’s mechanical right arm. M’azzal, who was standing next to him, noticed Saato was balling up his left fist.
Meanwhile, Nadalak rambled on.

“You and I have both seen him die several times in this place because of his selflessness, and now you are giving him a pet to keep an eye on too! Haha, I can’t even--”

The Skakdi leader didn’t get the chance to say another word. Right before it happened, M’azzal could hear Saato whispering something she couldn’t understand. Then, he swung his left arm, and with an orange explosion coming from his palm, bright red flames shot forward, engulfing the space in front of him faster than M’azzal could say her own name. The roaring flames were so overpowering that the screaming of the Skakdi could barely be heard.

M’azzal stared in awe as she saw the big Toa acting completely different from the impression she had gotten of him in the barely two days since they had met. Her glad feeling slowly melted away at the sight of his fierce pose, the shadows strongly accentuated by the bright light of the flames, and fear slowly started to creep over her.

Would she really be safe if she decided to let this person accompany her? Would the Toa even allow her to have a say in it? He was without a doubt more than capable of forcing his will upon others if he wanted to.

As if Saato could read her mind, the burst of flames stopped just as suddenly as it had begun. Without paying any more attention to the heavily injured Nadalak and his men, who had all fled in terror, he turned around and knelt down in front of M’azzal.

“I’m sorry you had to see that. Kids shouldn’t see such cruel things, even when those kids are borderline psychopaths,” he said, with no emotion in his voice nor his face. He then stood and patted M’azzal on her head.
M’azzal pushed away his hand, trying to regain her composure after the terrifying sight. “Hold on, I’m not a kid, okay?”
“Is that the only problem you have with my comment?”
“Yes. Wait, no. I’m also not a borderline psychopath!”
“Hmm, then I wonder why you felt like I meant you when I said borderline psychopath. Say, how old are you?”
“I’m nineteen, why?”
“Then you are still a child to me. You can expect me to treat you like an adult when you’ve reached the age of hundred. Then we will talk.”

Saato walked in the same direction M’azzal was going before, picking up her scythe from the ground on his way. “I’m not going to argue with you all day. Come, we are going to pay the Toa of this place a little visit.”
His comment didn’t appeal to M’azzal, who felt insulted for being compared to a child. She grabbed a small rock from the surface, squeezing her fingers around it tightly. “Why, you--!” she yelled, and threw the rock at Saato, who had turned his back to her. With a loud tak the rock bounced off his thick armor and he stopped walking.

“Hey, don’t think you can scold me the way you scold others.” His loud voice echoed through the seemingly deserted facility. “I’ve lived for almost twenty-five thousand years. Show some respect to me, will you? And a little ‘thank you’ would also be appreciated.”
For a moment M’azzal hesitated, still considering the option to run away from this dangerous Toa. Suddenly, her scythe clattered on the ground in front of her feet. She looked up at Saato, who had now turned to face her directly.

“Pick it up,” he said.
“How about no?” her fear towards him started to grow.

“I’m afraid you have no choice, M’azzal.”
No choice?. What was he talking about? Would he really do something to her if she didn’t do what he said?
Saato sighed.

“Look, there are Skakdi around here that are watching us right now. They have me to fear, but they have a bone to pick with you, as Nadalak was their favourite… puppet to use. You can come with me and live to see the next day, or you can keep playing stubborn and fight off dozens of Skakdi. Although in that case Banserko will probably jump in and die with you.”

M’azzal hesitated. Was he really speaking the truth? Saato had mentioned that he had been here before, so he probably knew the ways of this city better than her. She also hadn’t noticed Nadalak and his henchmen until they had snuck up right behind her, showing the Skakdi's skills to blend in with the environment of Vo-Koro.

“Alright, fine,” she replied with reluctance in her voice, picking up her weapon.
When she looked up Saato was still staring at her.

“Uhm, thank you,” she said, hoping that it would satisfy him and he would turn around.

“Don’t you dare thanking me, kid! Thank Banserko . For me it would be all the same whether you were to live or die. It was solely Banser’s decision to help you out.”

Even though his words were hars hand she had no reason not to believe him, something made her doubt his words. She took one last glance behind her, and she could swear she saw several pairs of glowing eyes pulling back in the shadows. She turned around, and caught up to Saato.

Description
Warning: This fictional work contains descriptions of violent acts. If you are really sensitive to this, it's advised not to read this.

Chapter 6. Travel Plans

Banserko stood in front of M’azzal, between her and the matoran in the distance. “Stay back, I’m going to negotiate with these people once the cloud of sand and dust has settled down.”
He crouched low, his eyes focused on the sillhouettes of the matoran, while he searched the sand with his mechanical hand. “There you are!” He pulled out a rusty sword from underneath the sand. “I can’t believe you got yourself killed like that,” he muttered to himself, shaking off remaining specks of sand from the blade.
“How did you know that blade was burried here?” M’azzal said at him angrily. He had interfered with her plan, and now he was mumbling things and telling her to back off.
“Shut up and stay where you are. I don’t want to risk any casualties, or else Banser won’t allow me to use his body anymore,” he replied.
M’azzal stayed silent.

Without any warning, she dashed to the right, out of the other Toa’s sight.
“M’azzal, get back here!,” she heard him shout after her, followed by a frustrated shout. She kept her eyes on the ground in front of her and made a turn to her left, a few feet after Banserko had disappeared from her view, up the dune towards the matoran. The sand had mostly settled down now, and she could recognise Banserko in the distance looking at her, and the row of hostile matoran in front of her.

Ten, eleven... no twelve matoran. I’ll go no further than the leader.

She charged at the matoran closest to her, snuck up from behind and made short work of him. The others noticed her immediately thereafter and quickly loaded their weapons with glowing beams.

Damn it, do these matoran have super-hearing or something?

One beam of white light shot right past M’azzal, leaving a burned mark in the ground behind her. Several other matoran aimed for her. Banserko was still shouting at her, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. All she could think about was how she could possibly escape that many beams at once.
She had no time to think-- new shots were fired and bright lights charged at her. But she had one last trick up her sleeve. She had little experience with it aside from her escape from the dungeon, but there was no other choice right now. As the shots were about to hit M’azzal, her shape became distorted, and her body collapsed into a pile of sand.
Just like the previous time she had used her newfound power on herself, she felt her presence scattered around everywhere, aware of her surroundings but not able to see anything.

“What the-- where did she go?!”
“Keep an eye on the spot where she disappeared.”
“What about the red Toa?”
“We’ll take care of him. You three, guard that spot. The rest of us will try to get close to the other Toa. If things turn ugly, we’ll have to reactivate the mines.”
M’azzal felt three matoran made a circle just next to her, misremembering where she had dissolved. The nine remaining matoran moved out of her field of perception, suggesting they went on toward Banserko. Just as she was about to return back to her normal state, one of the nine matoran skidded back into range, unarmed and unconscious.

“Hold on, now don’t make me get onto the same level as that female Toa.”
The voice of Banserko sounded tense and angry as he came closer. He held two other unconscious matoran and she could only guess that he had convinced the enemy not to kill him.
Great, he’s getting all the attention to himself.
Quickly, M’azzal turned back to her normal form and readied her weapon to assault the three matoran in a circle.
As she swung her scythe, she could hear Banserko’s voice screaming, “No, don’t!”
At the same time, the blade cut through all three of the matorans’ necks, ending their lives instantly. She turned around to help out Banserko, but when she did, she saw him drop the two matoran and put his hands on the sides of his head as if in pain.
“No, Banser, not now. Trust me,” he muttered. Then he looked at M’azzal. “You.”
Before she knew what happened, Banserko had wrapped his arm around her, and the rusty blade was pressed against her throat.

“Why in the damn world did you do that?!” His voice was low and quiet, but anger and horror smoldered in the undertones.
M’azzal didn’t answer. She pried her left arm loose from his grip, and punched him solidly in the face. He didn’t budge an inch, and he quickly grabbed her arm again.
“I said why!”
“Just let me go.”
But he didn’t.
“You are a Toa, aren’t you? The Toa code clearly states you shouldn’t kill.” He tightened his grip. “In my twenty-four thousand years I’ve never met a killing Toa before. There’s no way I’d let you accompany Banserko.”
“Like I care,” M’azzal spat at him bitterly.
“You should care. In this desert, you don’t want to--” he suddenly stopped talking. With his head close to M’azzal’s, she could hear the high tone of gears spinning inside his head, as a machine that was about to explode, but then it stopped and his eyes went dark.

With all her power she tried to get away, but the humongous and now lifeless body collapsed onto her, and there was no way she could get out without help.
Then, for the third time that day, she used her power. Her arm stretched out and formed into a heap of sand that fell in front of Banserko’s seemingly dead body, and the rest of her particles all sifted toward that one heap, quickly building up her entire body once again.

Once her body had been fully restored, she stood back and looked at his corpse for a full minute, before noticing that the hostile matoran had disappeared during the struggle. She looked at the sky, which was slowly getting darker and made the hovering mines slowly turn invisible to the naked eye. A soft moan made her turn to Banserko’s body again. He was still alive, but asleep.
She took a moment to decide what the next step would be.

Normally, she would have moved on and left Banserko to his fate. But this time it was different. She was stranded in the middle of a desert, probably in another reality, and it was turning night. A traveling companion would definitely be helpful, even if it was a schyzofrenic Toa with amnesia.
Although Banserko seemed to be an odd one, he did have the mask of shielding, as well as great strength.
She had made her decision.

The sky grew dark and the climate in the desert shifted to a harsh chill. The sand underneath her was nothing but a dark grey mass. As she sat there, she stared at the star-filled horizon of the night, thinking about her plans for the future. She had started to doubt the possibility of ever returning to her homeworld, let alone stop Kaine and Maurak’s plan. Before she could finish the thought, she heard something.
Coming closer behind her was the sound of heavy, slow footsteps. She didn’t have to look around to know who it was.

“So you’ve finally woken up,” she spoke softly, tired of staying up so long and sitting in the same position for hours in a row.
The person behind her didn’t answer at first, but instead knelt down next to her, and suddenly a flame appeared in his crimson hand, emitting a pleasant orange light. “It must’ve been cold for you. Do you want me to keep this fire burning?”
M’azzal nodded, not caring to speak, since the warmth of the fire made her relax. Slowly, her eyelids closed, and just before sleep took her over, she felt him carefully put his arm around her.

The next day M’azzal woke up because of the dawning light and intense heat of the morning sun. As she slowly stood up from her lying position, she looked around her. She saw Banserko sitting at her left side, looking the same way as she had done that night. She coughed intentionally, making the Toa look at her. He had a sad, distant expression on his face. M’azzal hesitated for a moment, her mind still somewhat dwelled off into that somewhat comfortable moment before she fell asleep.
“Tell me what the matter is with you,” she eventually said, standing up and taking a few steps back to keep him in her sight.

The other Toa’s expression didn’t change as he spoke up. “First of all, my name is not Saato. I, Banserko, am the one in control of my body, and Saato can only use it under my permission, and even then I can take back control whenever I want. Or so he told me. Second...” he looked down for a moment, not sure if he’d say whatever he had in mind.

“Second of all,” he continued. “You killed three matoran. I... I don’t understand why you did that. You seemed like a nice person.”
M’azzal let out a deep sigh, then walked up to Banserko, though she decided not to sit down next to him. “I did what needed to be done.”
Banserko looked up to her with a look that said he didn’t understand. It annoyed her.
“Oh please, if not for me, both of us would have been dead. You can at least show a little gratitude.”
He looked down. “I was going to talk to them after--”
“You can’t talk with those kind of people,” she said sharply.
Banserko pulled up his shoulders, just like a scolded child would do, still looking down, hiding his face from her. When he whispered, M’azzal could barely make out what he said.

“I thought... I could talk them over it.”
“Believe me, you can’t. I’ve met enough of those kind of people in my life.”
Banserko finally looked up to her again. “Just what kind of life have you been living?”
M’azzal looked at her weapon, which she had picked up on her way to the other Toa, then answered. “I guess I can’t ask you that same question, so there’s no real reason for me to tell you.”

She shook her head and then held the weapon at her side. “The sun is rising, we’re moving.”
With that, she looked at sky, which was still filled with the hovering mines. A mounted flying rahi slowly soared through the cloudless air with a mine clutched in its claws, on its way to a spot where one such terrifying weapon was missing. She didn’t like the thought of staying at the same place for a long time at all, let alone in an alien desert.

Hours later, she and her tall companion reached the end of the seemingly infinite field of explosives hovering above their heads. As they also got closer to the end of the desert, more and more dark grey boulders jutted out of the sand. When M’azzal leaned on one of those rocks to rest for a moment, she almost immediately pulled back her hand, overwhelmed by the burning heat of the rock.
“It’s hot!” she screamed. Embarrassed of her outburst, she tried to regain her composure.
“Well, this is a desert, so of course it would be hot,” Banserko said in a serious tone, only resulting in M’azzal giving him an angry look.
“Shut up. Why do you know stuff like that anyways, while you only know very specific things about yourself?”

Before he could answer, she already started speaking again. “Besides, this rock... I think it’s made out of metal.”
“Hold on, let me feel that.” Banserko walked past M’azzal towards the shiny rock. Then, with a loud metallic crash, he punched a hole in it, making it rip as if made out of sheets of paper. With a guilty look on his face, Banserko pulled his hand back.

“What did you do that for?!” M’azzal shouted at him, looking at the metal remains of what had just been a proud rock moments ago, sailing the seas of sand.
Banserko shook his head, as if confused. “I-I was just going to knock on it to hear if it was hollow, I swear.” He kneeled down next to the scrap metal, and quickly went on to inspect it, while M’azzal put her hand on her forehead in disbelief, accidentally dropping her scythe. This caught Banserko’s attention, and he turned around to look at the weapon.
“Do you want me to carry that for you?” he asked politely.
M’azzal quickly picked up her scythe and took a few steps back. “Like I would give you that after what you just did!”

Banserko shrugged and went back to his investigation. He found that within the hollow ‘rock’ there were a few bundles of thick wires, all leading through a deep underground pipe that went the same direction as the duo was walking. M’azzal figured that this indicated the existence of nearby civilisation, so they continued in that direction, eventually noticing that every now and then other black rocks appeared on the same line as the one Banserko had accidentally destroyed, and on both their sides similar lines could be seen, also going in the same direction.

Neither of them talked again. M’azzal just wanted to continue her journey on her own as soon as possible, and Banserko seemed to be lost in deep thoughts, sometimes murmuring things as if he was speaking to someone.
As they came closer to what was supposedly advanced civilisation, M’azzal noticed that dark clouds had started to appear in the blue sky above her. She also noticed Banserko was still talking to himself and looking at the ground, and she didn’t bother to tell him about the clouds.

When she focused back on what was in front of her, she was greeted by the sudden appearance of tall rocks, which rose out of the hot ground at a sharp angle, and continued their way in the form of huge walls that transitioned into what looked like the entrance of a city.
M’azzal sighed in relief. She hadn’t expected this to be so easy. She poked Banserko with her elbow, distracting him from his mumbling. As he looked up, she could swear his eyes grew bigger.

“It’s.. it’s a city,” he whispered, almost as if he couldn’t believe it. To M’azzal it also sounded as if he was talking to someone else, but she didn’t care enough.

She shrugged. “Well, finally, our journey ends here.”
She stuck out her fist, and Banserko gave her a careful fist-bump in return. When he pulled back his hand, he looked around with excitement showing on his face. M’azzal considered entering the cityground through the open gate in front of her, but she decided to wait until the other Toa had disappeared, just to make sure she would be alone.

“Well, I don’t really know where to go next, so...” he laid a finger on his chin, and then finally decided. “I guess I’ll just go that way. Good luck on your journey, M’azzal.”
He made his way to grounds that were obscured by the walls surrounding them, his movements as he walked out of M’azzal’s view were lively, contrary to the exhaustion M’azzal felt after walking through the hot desert for so long. The first thing she wanted to do when she got into the city was find a place to rest.

When she walked closer to the gate, she could see more of the city through it. It seemed deserted at first, but when she inspected the buildings a bit better, she could make out orange and grey matoran wearing goggles with green glasses in them.

The buildings themselves were an odd sight. First of all they seemed like they were framework only, walls only placed at the bottom to prevent anyone from just walking in. Odd spheres the size of small houses were always moving from one place to another, hanging onto lines that connected each building, and stopping at intervals to let matoran get out and have new matoran enter the sphere. They were protected by frames, which M’azzal assumed were there to keep the spheres in place in case the lines were to snap, and so that the matoran could get out of them and walk over the frame to a nearby building.

The buildings varied from ones that had big generators that were pumping smoke in them and looking like a cluster of beams and wires, to simple multi-story ones that were carefully divided in sections, in each of which goggled matoran were repairing transportation spheres or other strange instruments.

Because trying to make sense of the weird constructions only gave her a headache, she eventually gave up.

Since dark clouds were ruling the sky, she could see sparks flying everywhere from far away, but she could never really make out what caused them, or where they exactly came from.
When she stood right underneath the arch of the gate, she could see a small sign placed in the solid support beam of the gate.
It read, in familiar matoran letters:
Welcome to Vo-Koro. Enter at your own risk. And underneath that, another sign saying:
We do not condone any kind of warfare. Even though Vo-Koro’s power supply is meant for every Koro/ Clan/ City, every single one of these parties will just as easily be cut off from Vo-Koro’s powerline if said party breaks either the Vo-Koro ammendment of peace, or uses their supplies gained from Vo-Koro’s powerstations for warfare.

“Sounds like a nice place to live,” M’azzal said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

She set foot on the cityground, which felt surprisingly cold, considering there was a desert right next to this place. Even the atmosphere was pleasantly cool. She noticed that miniscule tubes were running along the wal land into the floor. Sometimes, white vapour would shoot out of grids in the floor, and she could feel the cold coming from it. It seemed like the city had numerous ways to keep the temperature to a low, probably to protect the machinery from overheating.

Further inspecting her environment, she noticed several tall pipes that reminded her of the sophisticated public chimneys that were lowered down through some of the holes in Cen-Traju during winter seasons. Here, they were evenly placed on top of every megastructure, spouting black smoke that obscured the atmosphere from the hot sun.
Although she wasn’t an expert, she at least figured that this had to be the source of the dark clouds she had seen forming in the skies long before she and Banserko had found the city.

As she proceeded into the city, the atmosphere gradually started smelling more of oil and smoke, mixed with the scent of metal, something she had gotten used to from her home at the farriery.
Just thinking back to it made her stomach turn. She wanted to go back to Staro Masko, and kill Kaine and Maurak. She wanted to end the latter’s life in particular, as he had set her up as an unfair murderer by her own standards. As for Kaine, she wanted to kill him for burning down her home with her mother in it. In some ways she hated him more than Maurak, as Kaine had never showed his true appearance and had the tools needed to artificially give a matoran the body of a Toa.

Actually, she didn’t even know if she would be able to find Maurak when she got back to Staro Masko. Maybe he had traveled to another reality, never to be heard from again.
She snapped out of her thought process, and decided to ask for directions.

She walked up to a relatively low platform that she was sure Banserko could get onto with a decent leap. Several green-goggled matoran were working with strange tools, causing sparks to fly up when they touched the cables of the structure. As one turned around to grab a different tool from a burnt orange chest, he saw M’azzal standing under the platform. He pulled up his goggles, revealing a pair of yellow eyes that were squinting at her.

“Uhm, hello!” M’azzal yelled at the matoran, trying to be heard above the sound of his coworker’s strange tool.
The matoran with his goggles pulled up waved at her. “Hello there, are you new here?”
M’azzal nodded. “Yes! I’m looking for a place to stay.”
The matoran chuckled, something she could clearly hear now that the other matoran on the platform had stopped what they were doing to look at her.
“Well, it’s quite obvious. I’m sorry, lady, but if you’ve read the sign at the entrance, you might’ve figured already that this place is solely focused on providing energy for settlements all across the South, and to provide just enough for us fe-matoran to stay here and keep doing our work.”

“Well, do you at least know a place where I can stay?”
He shook his head. M’azzal sighed in frustration.

Just my kind of luck. I escape dangerous matoran, only to find useless matoran.

“Wait, hold on, I think I might know someone who can give you directions,” the matoran’s colleague said, a woman judging from her voice, as she too pulled up her ridiculously large goggles.
“Go on,” M’azzal prompted.

“If you keep traveling North, which is in the same direction you were going, you should find the Toa of this Koro. In contrary to us who’ve been living here our entire lives, our Toa once lived up in the far North. He can most certainly point out several places for you to stay that you can reach by the end of the day."

Then, with a more serious tone, the matoran added, “It’s a good thing you are carrying that weapon with you, even though it is...” she paused to politely clear her throat, “...impractical for combat use. Since most Skakdi clans have broken our rules, we don’t serve them any more power, which has resulted in them stealing crates of power containers everywhere. But they also don’t mind picking a fight with anyone who isn’t employed here.”
M’azzal nodded, and thanked her for her help. Then she proceeded North.

After walking for half an hour, she still hadn’t seen a single rumored Skakdi, and she had barely seen any matoran working on the outside of the structures. She sat down next to a support beam to rest a little, her scythe laid by her side.
A raspy voice sounded from behind her.

“Making it easy for us, are we?”
She quickly jumped up and turned around, looking at several figures with glowing orange eyes and grins made out of sharp, white teeth.
One of the Skakdi said in a taunting voice,

“What do we have here?”
“A Toa, it is a Toa,” a smaller one replied.
“Yes, Karnahk, a Toa. And what do we do to Toa?” the previous one said.
“We kill them,” a bigger one answered.
“Yes, yes, as straightforward as always, Uhrnik,” the first one said, who was apparently their leader. “But,” he continued. “This one looks kind of innocent, doesn’t she? I bet she would make a great slave.”
His comment was followed by the laughter of his comrades. The laughter immediately stopped when M’azzal’s kick threw the grinning Skakdi down, causing the rocky ground to crack.

The leader quickly stood up, feeling his jaw. He glared furiously into her eyes. “What did you--”
M’azzal didn’t give him the time to finish his sentence, as she dealt him another kick, and the force of his impact caused the cracks in the ground to widen.

“So much for being innocent,” she said, pulling back her leg to kick him again as he was lying on the ground, aiming for his permanently grinning face. But before her foot could connect with his teeth, the leader quickly snatched her heel and pulled toward him, making her lose her balance and fall on her back.

“Uhrnik, Galak, grab her by the arms and pull her up for me,” he barked at two of his people as he stood up, still feeling his jaw with his right hand.
Before M’azzal could stand up herself, one Skakdi on either side of her had grabbed her by an arm. She tried to fend off her foes by dealing out some painful kicks, but her captors had proven to be much tougher than the one she had just smacked to the ground.

“That’s it, now hold her like that,” the first Skakdi said. His orange glowing eyes now started to glow even brighter. “I’m going to blow a nice round hole in your chest, little Toa,” he said with a menacing voice, his eyes glowing so bright that M’azzal couldn’t look at them anymore. She tried to struggle free, but the two Skakdi holding her didn’t budge.

“Goodbye, Toa. And make sure to scream a lot while I enjoy watching your chest melt away.”
There was a bright orange flash, and M’azzal quickly flinched, turning her head to one side in preparation for pain. Nothing happened. As she realised that her chest wasn’t burning or melting off, she looked back at the Skakdi who would shoot beams of heat from his eyes.

A large, statuesque figure had grabbed the creature by his head, shielding off the heat vision with his bare hand. The Skakdi leader bored his claws in the large hand, but to no effect, aside from leaving shallow scratch marks in the crimson armour.
“You can stop your futile attempts at trying to melt my hand off, Nadalak,” said the deep and familiar voice of Banserko. The leader, who was apparently named Nadalak, immediately stopped trying to free himself when he heard the voice.

“Are... are you Banserko or Saato?” he asked, every little bit of boldness had vanished from his voice. It took M’azzal a moment to realise what he meant by that, but then she recognised the deep voice and those two names.
Suddenly the two Skakdi who were holding her let go, and her head knocked against to rocky ground.

“Hold it right there!” Banserko yelled at the two captors, whose eyes had started glowing. He tightened his grip around Nadalak’s face, making him scream in agony.

“Well, my friend, it’s Saato for you. And if you want to be able to use your fancy eyes ever again, you will have to let the female go. She is with me.”

Nadalak cried something in response, but his voice was muffled.
“I can’t hear you.”
“I will leave you to her! You can have her, please let me go!”
“Very well.”
With that, he let go of Nadalak’s head, and kicked him in the back so that he had to stumble his way forward in order not to fall. While he was still trying to regain his balance, the crimson figure stepped out of the shadows.
“Banserko!” she exclaimed, and she quickly got to her feet and ran up to him.
He put up his hand in a halting motion.

“No, I’m Saato now. And you seem to be pretty enthusiastic for someone who wanted to travel alone.”
He ignored her for the moment, focusing his green eyes on Nadalak, who was now standing on both feet.
Nadalak looked back at him, still panting from the scuffle. “Why, Saato? Why are you traveling with a little brat like her?”
Saato didn’t need to think about his response. “I don’t travel with her; Banserko does. He insisted on following her when they split up. I didn’t have much of a choice, considering this is his body.”

Nadalak started to guffaw, something M’azzal didn’t expect the Skakdi leader had enough guts left for. Something was really off-putting about his laughter.

“You—hahaha!—you know where Banserko’s sympathy has lead him to, right?”
He was still laughing like a maniac, pointing at Saato’s mechanical right arm. M’azzal, who was standing next to him, noticed Saato was balling up his left fist.
Meanwhile, Nadalak rambled on.

“You and I have both seen him die several times in this place because of his selflessness, and now you are giving him a pet to keep an eye on too! Haha, I can’t even--”

The Skakdi leader didn’t get the chance to say another word. Right before it happened, M’azzal could hear Saato whispering something she couldn’t understand. Then, he swung his left arm, and with an orange explosion coming from his palm, bright red flames shot forward, engulfing the space in front of him faster than M’azzal could say her own name. The roaring flames were so overpowering that the screaming of the Skakdi could barely be heard.

M’azzal stared in awe as she saw the big Toa acting completely different from the impression she had gotten of him in the barely two days since they had met. Her glad feeling slowly melted away at the sight of his fierce pose, the shadows strongly accentuated by the bright light of the flames, and fear slowly started to creep over her.

Would she really be safe if she decided to let this person accompany her? Would the Toa even allow her to have a say in it? He was without a doubt more than capable of forcing his will upon others if he wanted to.

As if Saato could read her mind, the burst of flames stopped just as suddenly as it had begun. Without paying any more attention to the heavily injured Nadalak and his men, who had all fled in terror, he turned around and knelt down in front of M’azzal.

“I’m sorry you had to see that. Kids shouldn’t see such cruel things, even when those kids are borderline psychopaths,” he said, with no emotion in his voice nor his face. He then stood and patted M’azzal on her head.
M’azzal pushed away his hand, trying to regain her composure after the terrifying sight. “Hold on, I’m not a kid, okay?”
“Is that the only problem you have with my comment?”
“Yes. Wait, no. I’m also not a borderline psychopath!”
“Hmm, then I wonder why you felt like I meant you when I said borderline psychopath. Say, how old are you?”
“I’m nineteen, why?”
“Then you are still a child to me. You can expect me to treat you like an adult when you’ve reached the age of hundred. Then we will talk.”

Saato walked in the same direction M’azzal was going before, picking up her scythe from the ground on his way. “I’m not going to argue with you all day. Come, we are going to pay the Toa of this place a little visit.”
His comment didn’t appeal to M’azzal, who felt insulted for being compared to a child. She grabbed a small rock from the surface, squeezing her fingers around it tightly. “Why, you--!” she yelled, and threw the rock at Saato, who had turned his back to her. With a loud tak the rock bounced off his thick armor and he stopped walking.

“Hey, don’t think you can scold me the way you scold others.” His loud voice echoed through the seemingly deserted facility. “I’ve lived for almost twenty-five thousand years. Show some respect to me, will you? And a little ‘thank you’ would also be appreciated.”
For a moment M’azzal hesitated, still considering the option to run away from this dangerous Toa. Suddenly, her scythe clattered on the ground in front of her feet. She looked up at Saato, who had now turned to face her directly.

“Pick it up,” he said.
“How about no?” her fear towards him started to grow.

“I’m afraid you have no choice, M’azzal.”
No choice?. What was he talking about? Would he really do something to her if she didn’t do what he said?
Saato sighed.

“Look, there are Skakdi around here that are watching us right now. They have me to fear, but they have a bone to pick with you, as Nadalak was their favourite… puppet to use. You can come with me and live to see the next day, or you can keep playing stubborn and fight off dozens of Skakdi. Although in that case Banserko will probably jump in and die with you.”

M’azzal hesitated. Was he really speaking the truth? Saato had mentioned that he had been here before, so he probably knew the ways of this city better than her. She also hadn’t noticed Nadalak and his henchmen until they had snuck up right behind her, showing the Skakdi's skills to blend in with the environment of Vo-Koro.

“Alright, fine,” she replied with reluctance in her voice, picking up her weapon.
When she looked up Saato was still staring at her.

“Uhm, thank you,” she said, hoping that it would satisfy him and he would turn around.

“Don’t you dare thanking me, kid! Thank Banserko . For me it would be all the same whether you were to live or die. It was solely Banser’s decision to help you out.”

Even though his words were hars hand she had no reason not to believe him, something made her doubt his words. She took one last glance behind her, and she could swear she saw several pairs of glowing eyes pulling back in the shadows. She turned around, and caught up to Saato.