Chapter 22: The Heart of a Star

"His body is all but invincible; but his mind, we can destroy. Betrayal must not be countenanced. Kakamu must be educated. Instruct him in the matters of loss and pain. Make him suffer, make him wish he were dead. The cunning warrior attacks neither body nor mind. The heart, Mazkertis! First, we attack his heart!"

- The Green Goblin to Mazkertis

The Heart of a Star is the twenty-second chapter of The Mazkertis Paradox. In this chapter:
 * Mazkertis visits Urka-Nazkarath to update Eclipse on the status of his grand plan.
 * In a flashback set before the events of The Mazkertis Paradox, Kakamu explores the Red Star, discovering what became of many of the Matoran Universe's inhabitants after its destruction.

Plot
On Day 90 of The Mazkertis Paradox arc (two weeks after the Battle of the Second Heaven), Mazkertis emerges from a portal on Urka-Nazkarath, having previously requested to meet with Eclipse there. When Genetoes questions Mazkertis's reasoning for choosing Urka-Nazkarath as the meeting location, Mazkertis calls the visit a "trust-building exercise". Mazkertis informs Eclipse that his plan is proceeding well, save for the individuals who have proven difficult to kill, such as Quolas, Sefer Yetzirah, and Kakamu. Mazkertis fought Kakamu in the Battle of the Second Heaven and tried to kill him by absorbing his life force, but was unable to do so due to Kakamu's "overabundance of life". When Eclipse commands Mazkertis to find Kakamu's weakness and destroy him, Mazkertis recalls that the Green Goblin once told him that a cunning warrior attacks neither body nor mind: a cunning warrior attacks the heart.

A brief recap explains that, during the events of the BZPB RPG, Kakamu, Klak, Lalli Cain, and Toa Bob traveled to Lotcas to recruit Micros and Masaharu into the fight against Mazkertis. Micros and Masaharu agreed to join the Claws of the Phoenix, but only if they would first investigate a mysterious cave that had been troubling them. Inside the cave, the group discovered a Kestora laboratory that had been recently abandoned, though one journal left behind contained coordinates to the Red Star. Upon arriving at the Red Star, Lalli Cain's ship was hailed by Mocax, an old friend of Kakamu who had disappeared some time prior, who brought the ship inside the Red Star to reveal that it contained a station that the Kestora referred to as "The Torch". While exploring the Torch, the Claws encountered the Toa Nuva, a legendary team of Toa, before being attacked by a group of Baterra which used a sonic weapon to reduce Kakamu's biometal body to liquid. Lalli Cain, Klak, and Bob were forced to flee the station with the Toa Nuva, leaving Kakamu behind. Kakamu would later escape and reunite with the Claws, accompanied by several unfamiliar Toa: Ikhet, Arkhite, Nohex, and Vyrrh, but how he escaped has not been revealed - until now.

After being melted into liquid, the unconscious Kakamu is retrieved by a Kestora named Kaja, who has been ordered to transport him to an area of the station called the Arthus Laboratory. However, Kaja is attacked by an invisible Toa en route. The duel ends when a second Toa, Vyrrh, kills Kaja with a powerful bolt of lightning, but the force of the attack damages the container that was holding Kakamu and causes his liquid biometal body to fall through the floor to another part of the station, much to the chagrin of Ikhet, who had been using his Kanohi Huna to stay invisible. A Rau-wearing Toa named Arkhite, who accompanies Ikhet as his translator due to the fact that Ikhet seems to only be able to speak in an ancient Kestoran dialect, tells Vyrrh that Ikhet is certain that the container contained Kakamu.

Upon regaining consciousness, Kakamu reforms his body to find that he is standing in the basin of a colossal foundry. Dozens of Toa appear around the top of the basin to confront him, with six combining their elements to trap him in a Toa Seal. Kakamu is shocked by the fact that one of the Toa appears to be Perseus, a friend of Klak's, though Perseus is soon distracted when a hostile Baterra appears at the hole in the roof of the foundry that Kakamu fell out of, followed by many other Baterra. After the battle between the Toa and the Baterra results in a pyrrhic victory for the Toa, Perseus has Kakamu transported across the foundry, which Kakamu discovers has also become home to a variety of other species from the Matoran Universe, including Vortixx, Steltians, and former Dark Hunters. One such former Dark Hunter is Airwatcher, who attempts to attack the frozen Kakamu in revenge for the former's death at Kakamu's hands almost a hundred thousand years prior, but is pulled away by the Toa.

Inside a war room, Kakamu is freed from the Toa Seal by the combined elements of Perseus and five other Toa who introduce themselves as Gaaki, Paluka, Taldaka, Veriukii, and Voriki, who explain that Kakamu was frozen in the Toa Seal due to being mistaken for a Baterra. The Toa have been at war with the Kestora and Baterra ever since the Kestora decided that parts needed to be harvested from the station's inhabitants in order to keep its systems running. When Perseus insists that he does not know Kakamu or Klak, and has no knowledge of the Uterio War, Kakamu deduces that this Perseus must be the version of Perseus native to the Original Universe. Gaaki explains that she witnessed Kakamu's arrival on the Red Star in a vision from her Mask of Clairvoyance, and had sent Ikhet, Arkhite, and Vyrrh to rescue him. Hoping to gain Kakamu as an ally, Gaaki divulges that the station's purpose was to retrieve deceased inhabitants of the Matoran Universe and resurrect them before sending them back. However, around 90,000 years ago, an experiment of the Nynrah Ghosts named Gaardus broke the mechanism that was used to teleport the resurrected back to the Matoran Universe, leaving them trapped aboard the station. In return, Kakamu divulges that not only is Blackout still at large, but that an even greater threat has arisen in the form of Mazkertis, who wishes to alter history.

Moments later, Gaaki receives another distressing vision of the future from her Mask of Clairvoyance. Curious, Kakamu enters her mind to see a vision of the aftermath of a massive battle in the foundry. The corpses of hundreds of Toa, Matoran, and others alike are scattered around the area, including Airwatcher, Paluka, Voriki, and Yintral. The force responsible for their death is a green vortex in the air which has drawn the life force from the deceased and rerouted it into a figure standing beneath the vortex: Mazkertis, who smiles upon realizing his victory.

Characters

 * Airwatcher
 * Arkhite
 * Eclipse
 * Gaaki
 * Genetoes
 * Ikhet
 * Kaja
 * Kakamu
 * Mazkertis
 * Paluka
 * Perseus (OU)
 * Taldaka (OU)
 * Veriukii (OU)
 * Voriki
 * Vyrrh