CHAPTER THREE

"Hey," Zack poked his head into the room that Riley, Rhuben, Crystal, and Tapeworm were in before. His eyes shot around the room as he spotted Tapeworm on top of a suitcase, as Patrick and Noah were trying to get it closed. "Where'd everybody go?"

"Riley, Rhuben, and Crystal went to take Aaron and Sydney to the playground before they went to the airport," Tapeworm replied, starting to bounce up and down on the suitcase.

"What's wrong?" Noah asked, looking at him closely. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Yeah, you look beat," Patrick added, showing a slight trace of concern. "Have you been getting enough sleep lately?"

Zack shook his head, trying to get back on track. "This is important," he said, lowering his voice. "You know that feeling that you guys get when you know that your guardians would be near? Like, if they had gone off, but that feeling that you got when they came back?" The others nodded, giving him a strange look. "Well, I just got that feeling again." He said slowly.

"Zack," Noah gave him a pointed stare. "All of us miss our friends; maybe the stress of adjusting to life without them is starting to get to you." He suggested gently. "I mean, we're not elementals anymore. How could we suddenly get our powers back?"

"I don't know," Zack shrugged. "Does anything with our powers every really make sense?"

"He's got a point." Patrick pointed out.

"Then why now?" Tapeworm jumped to the floor. "If what you said is true, why would our powers suddenly come back now?" He tilted his head down and lightly cupped his chin as he thought about it. "Unless it's just you." He added, speaking out loud. "Because the rest of us haven't felt something or we would have said something by now." He looked over at Patrick and Noah for confirmation and they nodded in agreement. "What happened when you had that feeling?"

"Ok, so I was going to splash some water on my face, and like I usually felt when Blazen was around, I felt steam hitting my face and like, wings across my arm." Zack explained quickly. "And when I looked down at the sink, Blazen was sitting in the bottom, looking at me. I had to blink a few times to make sure that he was there, and then when I reached out to touch him, to make sure that he was really there, but then he disappeared."

Patrick moved his jaw to the side as he stayed silent, Noah tilted his head back to look at the ceiling, and Tapeworm continued to look at the floor, his hand on his chin.

Zack let out an impatient sigh as he crossed his arms over his chest. "You don't believe me." He accused.

"It's not that," Noah said slowly. "'Cause there is a good possibility that it did happen, but I'm not sure that-"He stopped and tilted his head to the side as he listened intently. "Cody and Bailey are coming." He said after a second, righting his head. About two minutes later, the two appeared in the doorway.

"How do you do that?" Tapeworm asked, causing Noah to smile and shrug.

"Where is everyone?" Cody asked, his eyes darting around.

"Riley, Rhuben, and Crystal took Sydney and Aaron to the playground," Tapeworm repeated himself from earlier. "And Core and Christian are still in the basement." His eyes narrowed when he noticed that they were breathing heavily. "Are you ok? Did you run all the way back here?"

"We can't say anything until everyone is back here." Bailey said, her eyes shifting away from her friends that were standing in front of here.

"Something big must have happened then," Reihu suddenly appeared behind everyone, dropping a backpack to the ground. "What'd I miss?"

"Not much." Patrick replied.

"Seriously guys," Bailey got their attention again. "This is really important."

"Aaron, come on!" Sydney grabbed onto his cousin's hand before he tore across the playground towards the swings.

"Ugh, I feel old," Riley commented as she sat down on a bench beside the playground. She crossed her legs at the knee. "I only thought that I would be sitting here watching kids play when I was at least 28." She cracked a small smile as she watched Sydney help Aaron onto a swing and give him a push before climbing on one himself.

"If it wasn't this experience that made you feel old, years of fighting that results in our powers being taken away should make you feel dead." Crystal commented as she slouched down on the bench, stretching her legs out in front of her. "But I guess that's what your trip home would help, so you can get some rest."

"Ha," Rhuben snorted. "How can you rest when you have to go to school?" She shook her head. "You're lucky that you just get to help your Dad all the time."

"Eh, not really," Crystal shrugged. "'I probably work as hard as I would be doing if I went to school. I'm sure that Dad's doing that on purpose." She looked at her watch for a moment. "Your guys' flight leaves at 8:30 right?"

"Yep, and because it's a 22 hour flight, I'd rather have Sydney be completely worn out than fighting with Patrick the whole way there." Rhuben said, tilting her head back, allowing the setting sun to fall onto her face as she closed her eyes. Her eyebrows lowered a bit. "How come you haven't gone back home to Canada yet?"

"It's not me," Crystal said, keeping her eyes on her younger brother and cousin. "It's Dad. He keeps saying that we don't have time, but I know it's just hard for him to go back home. Especially since his mom and dad think that it was his fault that mom died. He doesn't want to deal with the pressure."

"But going to face it would just ease the pressure," Riley pointed out. "I mean, it's better to get closure than to continue to push it away. At least in my opinion." She added the last part quickly when Crystal didn't answer quickly.

"Yeah, well," she sighed. "It's Dad's choice, and I'm going to back him up with whatever he decides."

"But you know the only good thing about this is that you get to sit around all day long, listening to Cody go on and on about who knows what when he's not talking about Bailey." Riley's lips curled as she and Rhuben started to laugh to themselves.

"Funny." Crystal deadpanned.

"It kind of is," Riley said as she shrugged, crossing her own arms across her chest. "I mean, you two break up for reasons that no one knows," she ignored Crystal's defensive remark that it wasn't anyone's business. "Every time you talk there's nothing but cold tension, when Bailey's around it seems like all you want to do is rip her head off, and when the two of them are around you, you just leave the room. It has to be awkward."

"I'm glad you're getting a sense of amusement out of this," Crystal looked at her twin cousins out of the corner of her eye. "But like I said, it's no one's business why we broke up."

"You kissed the guy for god's sake, when he started things out with Bailey, and basically alluded to the fact that you still have feelings for him when he was trying to talk to you." Rhuben said, sitting up straight. "To make sure that things were ok between you two. Sorry if I think that's a little weird."

Crystal sighed and shook her head. "Can we talk about something else, please?"

"What else is there to talk about?" Riley asked with a shrug. "We're either doing school work or helping Christian and Core work on their simulation thing or sleeping. Our lives aren't that interesting."

"We could talk about Za-"

"Don't even!" Riley interrupted sharply. Her scowl deepened when Rhuben and Crystal took the time to laugh at her expense.

"The guy's been in love with you since you met him, you've treated him like dirt for who knows how long, and then you say that you love him, and then immediately take it back, acting like it didn't happen." Rhuben scratched her forehead. "Sorry if I don't really get your reasoning on all of this."

"Coming from the person that's dating someone that's half lion." Riley shot back. "And I told you before, I thought that I was dying after I got into that fight with Hayden. So I was trapped in the heat of the moment." She shrugged. "If I had thought of it first, I probably would have told him to tell Cody that I was the one that accidentally destroyed his science project back when we were in eighth grade."

"But you didn't." Rhuben and Crystal chorused.

"Shut up." Riley reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone as it rang loudly. "Hey Tape, what's up?" She asked as she answered the phone. Her eyebrows furrowed together. "Right now?" She looked at her watch. "Is it really that important? Of course it is, we'll be there in a few minutes." She hung up her phone and turned to her cousin and sister. "Apparently Bailey has some important news that she needs to share and we need to get back to the house. It's important." She stood up and stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled shrilly. Aaron's head whipped towards her. "Guys, we have to go!"

"Aww," Sydney pouted as he jumped off a swing. "Already? We just got here!"

"It's important," Crystal added as she got to her feet. "C'mon boys."

"Ok."

Sydney waited until Aaron got off of his swing and the two walked back over to the girls. "I'm guessing this has to do with elementals?" He said, lowering her voice so no one could hear their conversation.

Aaron's sightless blue eyes moved towards Crystal. "Do you think that Dad ended up finding out something else about it?"

"No," Crystal shook her head as she placed her hand on his shoulder as they all turned and started to walk back to the Manning's house. "Apparently Bailey has something to tell us." She explained.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Bailey bit her lower lip in worry before taking a deep breath and turning back to face Zack, Cody, Crystal, Aaron, Riley, Rhuben, Patrick, Noah, Sydney, Reihu, Tapeworm, Christian, and Core; who were sitting across from her, patiently waiting for her to announce her news.

"Ok," she let out a sigh. "Before you guys get angry-"

"Conversations that start like that really don't mean that it's going to be a good thing." Reihu commented. He sank back in his seat as Christian shushed him and motioned for Bailey to continue with her announcement.

"A couple of weeks ago, Geneva came to me a in a dream," Bailey said. "Things were good at first, I was happy to see her," a wistful smile slid onto her face. "It was like I could really feel her there, even though I knew that she wasn't." She shook her head. "And then Gattaca came by, I was scared at first, because I wasn't sure if we actually did purify him, and he was nice as well. He apologized for everything that he had done."

"Can you really believe that though?" Zack asked slowly. "I mean, this was a dream, how do we know that we actually helped him?" He ran a hand through his hair. "The 'door' to the elemental world closed when he went back, so we can't tell if it worked."

"I'm getting to that," Bailey replied. "After a bit of sitting with them, Geneva and Gattaca told me that we've only temporarily fixed the barrier between both worlds and that there's a good possibility that it would open again."

"So you're saying that there's a chance that we could be elementals again?" Tapeworm asked, looking skeptical.

Bailey shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not." She paused. "They've only come to me in a dream, directly, once. But since then, I've been having dreams that seemed like they're premonitions, I remember a few pictures, but I don't remember anything that was said."

"That's helpful." Riley remarked.

Bailey sighed, turning her foot in the carpet. "I'm doing the best I can."

"How long ago did you have this dream?" Sydney asked curiously, tilting his head to the side. "The way that you say it, it seems like you've had it a while ago and have been taking the time to figure things out instead of talking to us about it." He said gently.

Bailey gave a sheepish smile. "About a month ago?"

"A month!" Zack repeated, his eyes widening in shock. "You had this dream a month ago and you didn't say anything?"

"Zack, leave her alone, she was just trying to figure out what she should say before she got our hopes up." Cody defended her quickly. "Besides, it's not like we didn't keep things from her when she first figured out what was going on.

"That's because she wasn't and still isn't an elemental." Zack said as patiently as possible. "No disrespect Bailey," he held a hand out to her. "But if it's a human learning about this, then I'd be more hesitant, but someone that wasn't an elemental in the first place not telling us something that had been going on when we should know, I think is ridiculous."

No one said anything after that for a few moments.

As Zack was the 'unofficial-official' leader of all of them, they had a habit of waiting to see what his reaction to something would be before they reacted themselves. And in this case, they could see how both Zack and Bailey were right. But that's also what showed how even though she had gone through a big adventure with them; Bailey still wasn't completely part of the group.

"Is there anything from your recent dreams that you can tell us that you think might possibly be helpful?" Christian asked. Beside him, Nathan had leaned forward and rested his arms on his legs, his hands clasped together. He then leaned forward and rested his head against his hands.

"Dark clouds, singing, rain, crying." Bailey shrugged. "That's about it."

"Not much that we can go off of, really." Rhuben said as she rubbed her chin. She turned her attention to Zack, who seemed to be thinking about it.

"Just let us know if there's anything else that you can remember that can help us." Zack said finally. "Maybe something won't happen, maybe something will, but it's better to be prepared just in case."

A/N: Sorry for the wait. As usual, more questions are brought up, and at least two of them are answered. I hope you guys liked it.

Cheers,

-Riles