(3 years ago)

The journey up the side of a mountain can be quite strenuous, especially when there is no clear path to get there. However, this didn't stop one tough fire elemental who dared to climb the towering peak with her bare hands. Each time she gripped the rocky surface, her flames scorched the material black, leaving evidence of a clear path she'd taken to get up there to anyone who followed in her footsteps.

Upon finally succeeding in reaching the very crown of the mountain, Pyris was already out of breath. She sat down on the peak, taking a moment to absorb some oxygen, which was becoming less abundant at the current altitude. After restoring the fiery energy she'd lost, the girl smiled and patted the rock beneath her.

"Thanks for the awesome climb, Mountain Man."

The peak shook as a chuckle rang out all over the landscape.

"Hoho, you're certainly welcome. I'm glad to have some company every now and then."

The colossal rock being frowned.

"It's been sad ever since those marauders moved away."

Pyris gazed down at the ruins of the village, abandoned and trashed. She sighed.

"I understand, MM, I don't have anyone either."

Mountain Man smiled a bit.

"Company is good for both of us."

The fire elemental patted him again.

"You bet. See you next time!"

The peak furrowed his brow.

"Wait, what are you doing?"

Pyris stepped over to the mountain's back, eyeing the elegant stream pouring down his backside.

"I like to go down quickly."

Mountain Man was shocked.

"But, you're made of fire! The waters will put you out!"

The girl laughed.

"Chill, dude. I do this kind of thing all the time."

With that, the fire elemental leapt off the top, plummeting down towards the stream while letting out a joyful whoop. Getting close to the hazardous liquid, she unleashed a constant stream of flames that instantly caused a great deal of mist to erupt from the water. In fact, there was so much that she was able to float upon it, riding the cloud-like slide all the way down the mountain, cheering the whole time.

Once the river began to end, she hopped and performed a few flips, landing firmly on the ground with a smirk.

"That's how it's done."

The mountain lady stationed behind her male counterpart clapped with her massive stone hands. Pyris gave a wave and was off, shifting into a flame trial and jetting across the land to her next destination. Her instincts took her past several forests, which she tried her best not to catch on fire. Sometimes she wished her powers weren't so dangerous, to at least be able to high-five a friend without burning them.

The girl had never had a permanent friend, no one lasting more than a few months or so. Even rock elementals, whom she grew up with, had a hard time getting along with her. Pyris's fragile form was incapable of handling certain activities the stone beings performed, setting her aside from the group.

And so she travelled, adventuring, learning, and trying to stay out of trouble. The fire elemental lived a difficult life in terms of companions, which offset the joy in her quests and dungeon crawls.

After half an hour or so, Pyris came upon a fairly run down area, composed of trash and ancient buildings, buried up to their roofs in debris. The fiery girl shifted back into her humanoid form and gazed at the pre-Mushroom War architecture barely visible from their resting places. She always had a thing for old relics, or anything from before her time in general.

Scanning the landscape, Pyris noticed one building that appeared to be occupied. It had a large tower, which expanded above its nearly invisible roof. The fire elemental stepped over the long since deposited dirt covering the structures and made it to what seemed to be the front door of the of the place. Upon a sign next to it read 'library'.

Pyris frowned. She was never much of a reader, but, seeing as there seemed to be a storm on its way, she figured taking a seat and cracking open a book wouldn't kill her. The fiery girl turned the doorknob and stepped inside, instantly smelling the scent of paper and old stuff; exactly the odor expected from a library.

A staircase right at the front appeared to lead down into the core of the building, acting as a way to get to the bottom floor even though it was now underground. Pyris carefully went down the winding steps, hoping not to burn anything. Once at the first level of the expansive hall of knowledge, she curiously looked around.

There were dozens of sections, with massive shelves comprising of every subject a person could ever ask for. Pyris was in awe, staring nearly straight up as she aimlessly strolled through the corridors. That is, until she was met with a stern affirmation.

"Ahem. What do you think you're doing?"

The fire elemental retrained her eyes on the path ahead, instantly noticing a turtle being with a crown on her head. She was stamping her foot and had her hands on her hips. Pyris awkwardly rubbed her arm.

"Um…checking out the books?"

She said it in an 'obviously' type of way, which didn't seem to bode well for Turtle Princess. The library's caretaker pointed to her right.

"Follow me to the counter, please."

Not wanting to get in trouble, as her people already had an edgy reputation, Pyris did as told and walked after the princess to the counter, where the shelled girl reached behind and rummaged from something as the elemental patiently waited. Eventually, TP returned to her, holding a thick roll of slivery material.

"Here, wrap this around your hands."

She handed the fiery girl the tinfoil, which she carefully tore off and gave her mitts a protective covering, clearly being told that her powers might reduce the novels around her to ash. It may have been a precaution, but honestly, it was still rude. Regardless, Pyris chose not to argue and gave the roll back to Turtle Princess once her element was safely isolated.

"Thank you," the royal said softly.

As she strolled off to take care of other business, Pyris found herself feeling bad. The girl had turned out to be fairly reasonable, just a bit overzealous about her precious library's condition. Shrugging, she wandered back into the labyrinth of books, now hearing thunder booming outside.

For the first hour or so, she strolled through countless sections, occasionally picking out something to read, but quickly losing interest after the first few pages. No subject held her attention for long, astonishingly even the ones about dungeons, battles, and history. Sighing, Pyris turned another corner, preparing to be bored out of her mind until the rain outside decided to be merciful.

However, instead of bumping into meaningless texts of Ooo's various inhabitants and locations, she was surprised to see a very worn out and quite dusty section of the library. Curious, Pyris gazed up at the sign explaining the length's topic.

Colliding Elements.

The fire elemental took a moment to think of what that meant. Even though a concrete idea wasn't I her mind, the basic was the same. Maybe this place had the answer, a way to stabilize her volatile abilities enough to finally give someone a decent handshake. Growing excited for the first time since entering the place, Pyris rushed into the section, immediately starting at the end and scanning the spines of the books.

There were extensive works on how differing elements could cooperate, combine, and even each other's weaknesses, but nothing for the moment on granting one harmonious balance with their opposite. Her anticipation fading, Pyris settled down a bit as she continued down the row, studying the spines as she went.

Suddenly, her, sight was met with an odd symbol on one of the leather-bound books. It was a circle, but seemed to be two identical shapes combined to form it. It was black and white, with each shape appearing as a comma with a dot of the opposite color in both. Curious as to the subject of the strange symbol, Pyris reached out to grab the book.

As soon as she set her hand on it, another hand joined it.

Surprised, the fire elemental looked over to the owner of the other hand, meeting eyes with a water elemental about the same age as her. The two stared at each other for a moment, just giving a blank look. Eventually though, they both tried tugging on the book in their grasps. Their faces progressively developed into scowls as the struggle to get the book became more aggressive.

"Let go, jerk," Pyris warned.

The aqueous being narrowed his eyes.

"How about you do that instead."

The two butted heads, growling at one another. However, the opposing contact of elements quickly forced them to draw back and shriek from the burning on their foreheads. Recovering, the two walked back up and took hold of the book, growling again and bringing up an elemental infused fist to fight for it.

Suddenly, both teenagers were hit in the head by a ruler. Rubbing the hurt area on their noggins, the pair turned to see Turtle Princess, glaring at them with a clearly visible vein in her forehead.

"Tell me you weren't planning to soak and burn my library."

Despite the fairly docile appearance of the reptilian royal, Pyris and her unyielding companion were quite intimidated by how angry she looked.

"Um…no?" the fire elemental squeaked.

TP nodded firmly.

"That's what I thought. Now if you're both want the book you're going to have to share. Otherwise, you're both getting the boot. Got it?"

The two teens nodded quickly.

"Good."

The princess walked off, leaving the elementals feeling edgy. They looked back at each other, not quite glaring but something similar.

"Ok, maybe we got off on the wrong foot," Pyris began.

The water being nodded.

"Yeah."

He held out his hand.

"I'm Aqua Prince."

The fiery girl shook with her tinfoiled appendage.

"Pyris. Wait, what's a prince doing out here?"

AP frowned and turned away.

"Personal biz."

The fire elemental raised and eyebrow then glanced at the book still tucked in its shelf.

"Well, I guess we can both take care of our 'personal biz'."

The aqueous royal nodded.

"Alright."

The pair retrieved the book from its place and walked over to a table to begin examining its interior. The same strange symbol was present on its cover, drawing more attention from the duo. Pyris opened the work to its first page, where it displayed the subject of the book in bold letters.

"The Equinox Scale."

Aqua Prince leaned in more to reread what she'd said.

"Whoa, sounds fancy."

Pyris flipped to the next page, beginning the dive into the text. For the most part, they both skimmed through the words, not quite having the attention span to read every single detail. After about an hour, the last page was turned and they closed the back cover, sending a bit of dust into the air.

"Well, you think you found what you were looking for?" Pyris asked the prince.

AP smirked at the dusty text.

"An artifact that can balance out the nature of things? That's exactly what I was looking for."

The boy's fiery companion nodded.

"Me too."

She suddenly had an idea.

"Hey, how about we both go on a quest to find this thing?"

AP gazed thoughtfully at the girl.

"Like, an adventure?"

Pyris nodded again.

"Yeah, it'll be awesome. The two of us, climbing mountains, fighting monsters, traversing hazardous terrains. We'll have a blast on the journey and then enjoy the reward at the end. What do you say?"

She held out her hand, which Aqua Prince looked at with slight concern. Eventually though, he shrugged, shook, and gave an enthusiastic grin.

"Sure. Sounds great."

The two smiled at one another for quite some time, oblivious to what was happening around them. It wasn't until Turtle Princess's shout of rage echoed into their ears that they broke out of the lock between their eyes.

"LOOK AT WHAT YOU'RE DOING!"

The elementals notice that, one, part of the table and book were on fire, and two, the other half was soaking wet. The princess angrily stepped closer to the pair.

"Just look at what your lovey-dovey emotions have caused. All that water and fire is ruining the book!"

AP and Pyris blushed heavily and scooted away from each other.

"I do not like him/her!" they yelled in unison.

TP ignored the response and rushed to her property, attempting to pat out the flames as they ate away at the book. Unfortunately, the damage had been done. The ancient text was a crisp by now, useless and completely unreadable. Turtle Princess just stood there for a moment, hanging her head in a way that the two nervous teens couldn't see her face.

"Um…are you alright, miss?" Pyris asked carefully.


Aqua Prince painfully landed on his spine, groaning as he attempted to get up. Sadly, the impact of his fire elemental companion forced him back down. Several feet away from the two, Turtle Princess stood at the doors to her library.

"You're both banned!"

With that, she walked back inside and slammed the doors shut, leaving the teens by themselves. Reorienting, the pair finally noticed their positioning: on top of each other. They blushed again. Luckily, it was cut off by their opposing bodily compositions, causing Pyris to quickly get off of the prince and run around as her flames fought off the watery contact.

Once she calmed down, the two companions came together to make a game plan.

"So did you catch where the scale is supposed to be hidden?" AP asked.

Pyris nodded and pointed to a distant snowy mountain range.

"The book said it would be held in a temple that borders opposites. The only places I know of that can create those settings are the Fire and Ice Kingdoms. So let's go."

Aqua Prince acknowledged the instructions and followed the fire elemental, making their way towards the frosty peaks in the distance. By the time they'd made it to a nearby forest however, night was already setting in, forcing them to camp for the time being. Pyris quickly set up a fire for them, and the two elementals gathered around the controlled blaze.

The fiery girl was curious as she watched AP stare into the glowing flames.

"Doesn't it, you know, hurt you?"

The prince chuckled.

"Yeah, a little. I haven't been around much fire in my life, but I think it's pretty cool."

Pyris tilted her head.

"Really?"

Aqua Prince smiled wider at the campfire.

"Totally. The power it wields, the creation it can form, and its beautiful shapes. I just can't understand how something so amazing can be deadly."

He gazed over at Pyris.

"Sometimes I wish I was a fire elemental, just to have the ability to make all these awesome wonders."

The fiery girl had definitely never met someone such as the prince. Most people in general didn't like fire elementals, due to the rumors that they were all evil heartless beings who enjoyed burning everything to the ground. But here sat a water elemental, who should've hated her more than any other race, admiring the results her power could unleash. AP cautiously reached out his hand towards the flames, beginning to feel his skin evaporate off. Still, he continued to come closer. Pyris watched with growing concern as her companion began steaming.

"Uh, AP, maybe you shouldn't do that."

The water elemental kept on bringing his hand towards the fire.

"Seriously, it'll just hurt you."

Seeing that he wasn't stopping, Pyris did the only thing she could and cancelled out the flames, surrounding the two in darkness.

"Aw man, I was just trying it. You didn't have to be all protective."

The fire girl pouted.

"Well I'm sorry but I think you'd prefer to keep your hand."

Aqua Prince sighed.

"Whatever. Could you bring back the light?"

Pyris pointed a finger to where she thought the rock circle was, shooting out a blast of combustion that instantly returned the comforting fire. She reached over to pick up the stick they used to kindle the wood, unaware that she still had the tinfoil on it. When her fingers gripped the object, she noticed another hand had gripped hers.

Aqua Prince apparently had the same idea in mind, but was a few seconds slow of his companion. The two were now frozen for a moment, swinging their heads down to look at their joined hands. Looking back at each other, both had a prominent blush. Reestablishing their ability to actually move their own bodies, they retracted their appendages and turned away, still flushed in the face.

Silence proceeded for a while, interrupted only by the crackling flames in front of them. Soon enough, AP took the initiative to break the awkward moment.

"So, um, what do you want the scale for, if it's ok to ask."

Pyris glanced back at the water elemental, who was doing the same out of the corner of his eye. The fiery girl relaxed a bit and turned to stare into the fire.

"Well, I guess you could say I don't fully like being a fire elemental."

AP was shocked.

"What? That's nuts! You're powers look cool, keep things warm, and might even cook pretty stuff pretty well."

He started chuckling a bit on the last part, as did Pyris. She couldn't remember the last time she'd shared a laugh with someone.

"Thanks, but, I hate how I can't touch anything without burning it up. No handshakes, no feeling the texture of plants or other parts of nature…"

She frowned.

"…no…hugs."

Pyris looked at her hand.

"The last time I ever got a hug it was from my parents, and that was many years ago."

Aqua Prince gazed in solace at the downed fire elemental, feeling quite bad for her, And frankly, also a bit of a jerk. He'd only been looking at the good parts of having flame powers, and not the downsides. As Pyris sat moping on the charred log acting as her seat, she failed to sense AP scoot closer to her.

It was only when her fiery body felt a very close source of water that her instincts returned, darting her eyes around to see where it was coming from. It took but a second to see Aqua Prince's arms hovering just above her skin, avoiding direct contact but still close enough to seem like her was embracing her.

The fire elemental stared at him until he decided to pull away, scooting back to his spot and staring into the fire like she had been doing.

"Sorry."

Pyris kept looking at him, deep in thought. AP didn't dare look back, thinking it awkward to be staring at each other again.

"Thank you."

The prince nearly fell off the log, but managed to keep his cool and remain seated.

"Uh, sure. No problem."

The fire elemental joined his gaze into the flames.

"So what about you, why do you want it?"

Aqua Prince sighed.

"My elemental matrix has, 'issues', of the very destructive kind."

Pyris looked over at the prince, who did as well. The awkwardness had faded now that a new subject had been raised.

"If I get too mad, it causes the oceans around Ooo to rise. Not calming down results in an all-consuming flood that sweeps away everything."

His fiery companion was stunned.

"Wow, that's heavy. Has it ever happened?"

AP shook his head.

"Not completely. The worst that's happened is a rainstorm."

Pyris furrowed her brow, causing the prince to smirk.

"Yeah, that was me earlier. I got frustrated while trying to find the library."

The two sat there for a moment, then burst out laughing.

"Well, I guess I'll try not to upset you."

As they settled down, AP continued.

"So I'm hoping this thing can stabilize my matrix, so that I won't be a danger to anyone I care about."

He shifted in his seat.

"I promised my sister I'd find a way to stop it. Then, I can finally go out and have friends without the threat of washing away the continent."

Pyris scooted a touch closer to the water elemental and patted his knee with her tinfoiled hand. She smiled.

"Well, you've got me for now. How about starting there?"

Aqua Prince grinned back.

"That sounds great."

As the fire began to fade, the two elementals said goodnight. While AP just slumped to the ground. Pyris climbed onto a nearby boulder, so as to not burn the forest down while she slept.

Soon, the new friends slipped into hopeful dreams.


I had to edit this one on my phone, then switched screens and all the corrections got deleted. Just so you guys know.

TheMentalAdventurer: My time is pretty much school, work, girlfriend, and computer. My free time is basically zero. But I don't mind.

Riset36: You'll find out.

nrbuer: Same for me, so badly.

I am The7: Well that answers that.

Hope you enjoyed and thanks for any comments/reviews!