Elementals

It was third block. Rosalie was working on a mosaic picture in art class. The students in that class were told to find a specific image online and copy it. The image she found was a noose hanging from a colorful rainbow. She thought it represented depression and how it looks like happiness from afar, but those who get closer see the painful truth lurking beneath. Of course, though, the three-dimensional blobs of color did not resemble the picture she had seen in the slightest.

Rosalie sighed and leaned back in her chair. May was just across the table from her, making a mosaic smiley face. “This is impossible,” Rosalie sighed. “Well, I’m doing alright,” May bragged. “Yeah, it’s easier with less detailed pictures. I should have just done a flower or something,” Rosalie replied as she rubbed her eyes, careful not to get the glue in them, seeing as her hands were covered in it from the project.

“When does the bell ring for lunch?” May asked. Rosalie looked at her phone for the time. “In around six minutes,” she answered. Rosalie then stood up and went over to the art teacher’s desk. “May I go ahead to wash the glue off my hands?” Rosalie asked. “How long is your lunch period?” asked Ms. Slate. “We get twenty four minutes.” “How many students are in each lunch?” “Around four hundred.” “How many lunch lines?” “Four.” “Yeah, you’ll need all the time you can get. Go ahead.”

As Rosalie scrubbed the dried flakes of glue off her hands, she heard the lunch bell ring. Dang it, she thought. I gotta get to the cafeteria before the lines get huge. Rosalie patted her hands onto her jeans to dry them as she went to run out of the bathroom. As she turned the corner to go leave the bathroom, she was shoved back in by another girl.

“Where do you think you’re going, runt?” asked Taylor, followed by Cayenne and Jashya. Those three had been a pain in Rosalie’s neck ever since she was eight and Cayenne bit her own arm, then went to the principal and said Rosalie had done it. That was when they started bullying her, and they never quit.

“What’s with the emo, bloody hair?” Cayenne teased. “Just let me by,” Rosalie replied, brushing off the taunts and trying to push past the girls. Jashya pulled hr back by her hair and shoved her back into the middle of the room. “Aw, look at that. She thinks she can just push us out of the way like a bulldozer!” Taylor laughed.

Rosalie squared her shoulder and balled her hands into fists. “Just let me by, now,” she commanded sternly. There was a small pause, then the three girls burst into laughter. “Look at her acting tough!” Cayenne shouted, “I’ll shut her up.”

Cayenne swung a fist at Rosalie. Her training kicked in. She moved her head slightly to the side, avoiding the hit, and grabbed Cayenne’s arm, throwing her into one of the stalls. She calmly looked back at the other two, waiting for one of them to move. She kept her head clear, emotionless and calculating. Jashya looked at Taylor, then ran out of the bathroom.

Taylor glared at Rosalie, then charged at her, trying to pin her to the wall. Rosalie ducked past Taylor’s arms, spinning, and elbowing her in the back of the head, thus smashing her face into the tiles of the wall. Taylor fell, but slowly got up, bleeding from the lip. She went to hit Rosalie, who threw her arms up in defense. Taylor’s punch landed Rosalie in the arm, and she used her other hand to pull her hair. Rosalie yelped in pain and stepped back, now up against the wall.

Taylor went to hit Rosalie again. Rosalie felt herself fill with rage. She grabbed Taylor’s arm and twisted her wrist. Taylor yelled, but Rosalie held her there by her arm and kicked her square in the chest, right in the soft spot near the top of the stomach. Rosalie released Taylor, who stumbled back and fell.

Cayenne then went at Rosalie, now back up and angry. She clawed at her, but Rosalie ducked her arms and advanced, grabbing Cayenne by the throat and holding her against the wall. Cayenne gasped for breath, a desperate and terrified look on her face. Something in Rosalie felt a sense of satisfaction from that sight, while another part of her thought it was hilarious how pathetic Cayenne looked.

Rosalie smirked a bit, then began to snicker, until she was laughing. Cayenne gasped and clawed at Rosalie arm, scratching her and drawing blood. Rosalie let go and jumped back in pain, while Cayenne collapsed to the floor, choking and gasping in as much air as she could. “What is going on here?!” asked the vice principal, Ms. Randolph, with Jashya standing behind her. Rosalie realized what had just happened, and started to panic.

“What do you think-” Ms. Randolph started, only you get cut off by Samuel. “Excuse me, I’ll handle this from here,” Samuel cut in, standing just outside the doorway so he wouldn’t enter the girls’ bathroom. Ms. Randolph nodded and left. Jashya stayed behind, a smug you’re in trouble look on her face that made Rosalie’s blood boil.

Rosalie looked up at Samuel, who had an urgent look on his face. He nodded towards the mirrors, and Rosalie looked towards them, realizing immediately that her pink eyes had gone a strawberry-like color, and her crimson hair looked closer to burgundy. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to stay calm, then opened them to see her hair and eyes looking normal again.

Rosalie sighed with relief, then turned to see Jashya taking Cayenne and Taylor to the nurse’s office. “Rosalie, please come with me,” Samuel instructed, leading the way to his office. “Yes, Sa-, er, Mr. Carter,” Rosalie replied, forgetting that she must speak to him formally during school.

Once in his office, Samuel closed the door and made sure the vice principal couldn’t hear their conversation. Rosalie sat in one of the chairs, just as nervous as every other time she had been in a principal’s office as a kid. Samuel sat down and sighed. “Listen, you need to control yourself during school,” he said calmly. “‘Control myself?!’ They attacked me!” Rosalie defended. “Yes, I realize that,” Samuel replied, “Yet, you used the skills you learned in training. I’m not angry about that, but you are going to need an excuse like karate lessons or something similar to explain how you learned to fight like a professional. Also, you do need to keep your temper under control. If your hair and eyes start changing color like that again, it wouldn’t exactly end well. People might see, and that would be chaos.”

“Why did they change in the first place?” Rosalie asked, confused. “It must be your element,” Samuel answered, rubbing his head, “You’re not only limited to light, but also darkness. It’s on a spectrum, and you can use either side. Your hair and eyes will change to show what side of the spectrum you are sitting on as a person. You must be careful. Darkness isn’t something to be messed with. Light is good, and is safe to use, but darkness it an uncontrollable evil, manifested as a form of power. Am I understood?”

Rosalie nodded. “Alright, then you may go to lunch. I’ll let you off with a warning, since it wasn’t your fault that they came after you,” Samuel responded, smiling. Rosalie smiled as well, finally having a principal who treated their students fairly, and headed to the cafeteria.

Once she had gotten her cold tray of meatloaf, Rosalie sat down next to May in a booth. On the other side of the table was Leo and Tyler, ecstatic to have the same lunch period. “Hey,” Leo said in between mouthfuls of mashed potatoes, “Did you hear that one of the middle schoolers disappeared? Her name was Alexandra. She was supposed to be a Freshman this year. Did any of you know her?”

Rosalie and May shrugged. “There was an Alexandra back in middle school who was in our grade, but I didn’t know her personally,” Tyler answered. “Alright, but know that Samuel wants us to keep an eye out. He says he’s got a bad feeling about her disappearance,” Leo sighed.

“Who’s disappeared?” asked a voice from behind Leo. He screamed and jumped onto the seat, holding a spoon like a weapon. He saw it was only a teenage girl, and slowly sat back down. Rosalie recognized her immediately. It was Lillian.

“Oh, hey,” Rosalie smiled, “What’s up?” “Nothing much, but I overheard an interesting conversation and was wondering what it was about,” Lillian pressed. “Oh, it was just about the student who disappeared over the summer, Alexandra,” Leo answered cooly.

Lillian jumped a bit, but maintained her calm composure. “Oh, is that it? I’ve heard a few people talking about her,” Lillian laughed awkwardly. Tyler nodded. He held his phone in his hand, staring at it instead of looking up. “It says here that she was last seen at the park on the West side of town,” he chimed.

Lillian gulped. I sure hope he hid the body, she thought. “Are you okay? You’re all sweaty,” May pointed out rudely. Lillian sighed. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just getting over a cold,” she lied, “Anyway, I heard there was a dance coming up in about two weeks. The seniors are talking about it. They say it’s the Homecoming dance. You all should go.

“Well, I’ll be off, now. I have someone I need to talk to. Bye.” With that, Lillian left. As soon as she was out of view, she wiped her forehead. Cold sweat, huh? she thought. I should calm down. The trap is set.

“That was… strange,” Leo shrugged. “Yeah, but she may just be shy or something. Who knows? Maybe talking about a classmate’s disappearance got to her,” Tyler replied. “That’s probably it. She’s always seemed pretty nice. I think she’s honestly a good person,” Rosalie chimed.

“Hey, we should go to the Homecoming dance! It sounds fun,” May interrupted. Rosalie shrugged. “Yeah, it could be alright. Does anyone else want to go?” Leo slowly nodded. “I’d rather not, but you all have fun,” Tyler said. May sighed loudly. “I just wish I had a dress to wear! Rosalie and I need to go shopping before the dance,” she complained.

“Actually, I have a few dresses that I could wear. I might just fix one up so it doesn’t look like my aunt’s hand-me-down anymore,” Rosalie laughed. “Cool! I didn’t know you could sew,” Tyler chimed. “Yeah, Jane taught me how. It’s actually really fun. It’s just the fabric that costs a lot,” she explained. “Well,” Tyler replied, “Good luck.”

Tyler sat at home, having locked himself down in the basement. His eyes were squinted shut and he was sweating from stress. The journal was hovering between his hands, small drops and pieces of metal falling from it every few minutes. Eventually, the journal fell to the floor.

Tyler huffed and panted, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He rubbed his eyes, stretched his sore arms and cracked his knuckles. He took a final deep breath and sighed as he picked up the journal.

His heart was pounding from his stomach to his throat. He flipped it open and began reading the pages.

August 12, 1902

Today, my team and I finished training. The Enlightener says he has nothing left to teach us. He told us that we would be excellent Elementals. However, he’s seen the future, and although he hasn’t said it, we know some of us will die in our next battle. So, I’ve decided to make this journal, so that the next Elemental of rock and metal can read what we did here. I’m going to make it where only another Elemental can open this, but just in case someone else figures it out, I won’t use any real names.

October 25, 1902

Things aren’t going well. We’re facing a witch coven and they’re very powerful. When one dies, their power is transferred down to their heir. So, if we need to beat them, we need to make sure to wipe them all out. They’re hardly even human anymore, but I still can’t feel right about killing anyone. However, it’s for the good of mankind.

December 12, 1902

We had no idea what we were up against. They made weapons that can kill us with one wound! There are four that we know of: a sword, a dagger, some special arrows, and some bullets. Cyclone is dead. He managed to use the wind to change the direction of the arrows, but he was taken off guard by someone with the dagger.

January 2, 1903

We screwed up. We managed to take out the coven, but they had a child, a newborn. We don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl, but that baby was the child of the leaders and now holds all the power of the entire coven. It’s too much for a person to hold, so they might be dead by the time anyone reads this, but they had a spell put on them. I’m not sure how it works, but either they’ll be frozen and hidden, or they were sent through time. It’ll be a century before they reappear. Sparks is dead too, and Winter has disappeared. The only good thing that’s come out of this is that we’ve managed to stop the coven from killing all they people they wanted to sacrifice to summon a demon that would devour the Earth.

March 13, 1903

We’ve managed to recover the weapons the coven made. They hid them very well, and it took over two months, but we managed to finally find them all. They are immune to any sort of magic, heat, or stress, so we can’t destroy them. Eco his hers, the bullets, inside of a tree. I can’t think of a nickname for him, but the Elemental of light hid the sword in an orb and placed it in a cave. Squirt hid the arrows in the Marianas Trench. All of these places are safe, and only other Elementals can get ahold of these weapons. However, they had me hide the dagger. Those weapons cancel out our magic, and I want to encase the dagger in a bolder, but what the others don’t know is that I was shot when we were fighting. It was a shoulder wound, so it wasn’t fatal, but it still makes it impossible to use my powers. I’m going to bury the dagger in the backyard of my house in a box with sealing spells on it, so it will be undetectable, and I hope that works. Meanwhile, I’m going to use the last bit of power I have to seal this journal away so no one can find it. So, if this is the next generation’s Elemental, please get the dagger and hide it better than I did, and the dagger has been found like I fear it will, I’m sorry.

There were many pages left in the journal that were blank. Tyler dropped the journal to the floor. Tears welled back up in his eyes. He read the signature on the inside of the front cover, and saw that it had belonged to his great-grandfather. The house he had had been passed down through generations, and was the one Tyler, Even, and their parents had lived in for so long.

That guy who killed them… He got the dagger, Tyler thought. That’s what he wanted! They were just in his way! Tyler stood up and punched the wall behind him hard as tears began to fall down his face. “Dang it!”

Tyler yelped in pain as he hit the concrete wall. He huffed and panted, sniffling and beginning to sob a bit from anger and pain. Evan heard the noise and ran downstairs. “Tyler! What happened?!” he yelled. Tyler quickly kicked the journal behind a box. “I’m fine,” he answered, choking out words.

Tyler looked down to see that his knuckles were bleeding. Evan noticed this too. “No, you’re not fine! Come on, let’s go to the hospital and make sure you didn’t break anything,” he insisted. Tyler felt a warm sensation on his hand and wrapped his other around the injury. He peeked under his hand to see the skin closing up over the gashes on his hand.

“No, it’s okay. It’s just a small scratch,” Tyler argued. Evan looked unamused, walking over and, to Tyler’s disapproval, grabbed his hand and looked at it. All he saw were the small scrapes that were left after the magic healing was over with. “See? It doesn’t even hurt,” Tyler said reassuringly. Evan smiled reluctantly. “Alright, but don’t punch things,” he said before heading back upstairs.

Tyler sighed and retrieved the journal. He hid it behind his back as he snuck past Evan and headed up to his room. Once in his room, he his and journal behind his dresser and plopped face-down onto his bed. He wanted to take a nap, feeling emotionally exhausted, but instead knew that he needed to let the others know that whoever killed his parents can now kill any of them.

Tyler photographed the pages and sent them to Leo. Leo told him not to worry and forwarded the photos to Samuel and the other Elementals. Within an hour, Tyler’s phone was going off, getting so many messages that the beeping began to sound like a bomb about to go off. So, he turned his phone off and took a nap.