A/N: The hiatus is over! And without a reboot! Huzzah!
Without further delay, let's see the next chapter!
Shayne was not happy.
"I can't believe you!" He yelled, continuing his rant at Levi, "I could've finished everyone off if you'd have let me! You said we'd kill all of them if they wouldn't join us!" Levi rolled his eyes.
"Oh, Shayne. You don't see the big picture here."
"Oh, so there's a big picture now! Great, thanks for-" His words were cut off as Levi blasted him with water.
"Now," Levi said, walking over to where Shayne now sat, sputtering, in a mud puddle, "Are you ready to shut up and listen, or do I have to take drastic action?" Shayne didn't say anything.
"Thank you," Levi said, satisfied, "Now as I was saying..." He held up his stub, and water began to form above it. When it reached what was apparently the size he was going for, he touched the Waddle Doo's eye with it. The Waddle Doo began glowing, and within a few seconds, he had turned into a Star Warrior, black in color, with light-blue feet, and the Beam ability.
"What the-?!" Shayne exclaimed when he could speak again.
"That's the big picture, Shayne: Power. You're now more powerful than you could possibly imagine. You're a Star Warrior, not some weak Waddle Doo. And when all the Elementals gather, there will be so much power..." His voice trailed off. He didn't need to finish that. Shayne got the point. He also understood something else.
He's just using me to get that power.
It's hard to recall exactly what was said after my question. All three of us started talking at once. Markus was trying to rationalize it, Kody was coming up with some kind of wild theory, and I was just saying how weird it was. I also noticed something weird about the way Markus was talking, but I couldn't figure out what it was.
"Oh, shut up!" a new voice yelled from above us. We all looked up. A Birdon sat on the branches above us, although I could only see its silhouette from the ground. From the voice, I determined that it was female. She hopped off her branch and fluttered down to where we stood in the village square. She looked quite annoyed. And the strange thing was, her feathers were pure white.
"You guys are the noisiest bunch of morons I've ever heard!" she said. I raised an eyebrow. Not very nice, are you?
There was an awkward silence.
"Well?" the Birdon finally said.
"Well what?" I replied.
"You're not gonna insult my feather colors or something?"
"...Why would we?" Kody asked.
"Everyone does. Nobody stops to appreciate why they're different."
"I believe we know why they're different." said Markus. That's when I noticed that his haiku was gone. Oh, so that's what was different!
"Oh?" the Birdon said, "And why's that?" She looked so confident that we wouldn't know.
"It's because you're an Elemental." Markus stated simply. The Birdon looked shocked, and her beak dropped open.
"How... how'd you know that?!" she asked, eyes wide. Markus held up his stub, which started crackling with electricity. Kody did the same, and it froze over. I just decided to burst completely into flames. The Birdon squawked in fear at what I did, which made me grin, because this girl was a jerk. After regaining her 'I'm better than you' attitude, she asked,
"So does this mean all the Elementals are needed to come together?"
"It does." Markus said, "Will you join us?"
"Depends." She replied, "This means I get to be a Star Warrior, right?"
"Eventually, yes." Markus said.
"Then I'm in. I can't wait to get rid of these dumb feathers."
"So, I assume you're the Elemental of Light?" Kody said, "What's your name?"
"Yes I am. And my name's Roll." We all introduced ourselves.
"So..." I started, "Roll, was it you who made the flash of light that brought Markus back to life?" She looked confused.
"Huh? Was he dead?"
"For a few hours." Kody said, "I just assumed it was you..." She shook her head.
Hmm, now that's weird...
We stayed in an abandoned hut for what remained of the night. I vaguely wondered what happened to the residents of this village. Thankfully, I didn't have any dreams that night.
When we were all awake and ready to go in the morning, we stepped outside the hut. The village was as empty as ever. None of us knew what was going on there, but we decided to keep moving. We had two more Elementals to find. Wind and Stone. And we had no leads at all.
"So, does anybody know where the other four Elementals are?" Roll asked. "And which ones they are?
"Well," Markus started, "we know who two of them are; Water and Shadow. They're unfortunately not on our side. As for Wind and Stone, we actually don't have any leads yet."
"Well, that's just spectacular!" Roll exclaimed, throwing her wings up in the air in an exasperated gesture.
"How are we going to find the last two?" I asked.
There was silence, only broken by our footsteps.
That's not very reassuring.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed this chapter!
Fun fact, in the original (horrible) version of this chapter, Roll was still a Birdon, but a male one named Thomas. And he was a lot nicer. Then I noticed that Ember was the only girl in this story. So then Roll happened.