CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

"You're completely crazy if you're thinking about ruining our cover just to go to the mall." Zack stated as he stared at me, his eyebrows raised. "I mean, that's probably the worst way that we could ever get caught and get killed." He grabbed a towel off of the side of the weight lifting machine that he was working at and wiped sweat off of his neck as he stood up and went to another machine.

"But we need clothes," Rhuben reasoned with him as she sat on the edge of the table, her arms crossed over her chest. "I mean, we can't just wear the stuff that WingzCorp gave us for the rest of our life. Besides," she brushed her head behind her ears and ran a hand over her face wearily. "We also need to get better food, and you're forgetting that Sydney is only nine and he needs to get out and act like a normal kid every now and then."

"Which reminds me that you guys still haven't really told us what you have been doing for the past couple of years, besides tracking down Halo Syndicate and everything." Zack replied as he stood walking and put the towel around his shoulders, giving Rhuben a pointed look.

I stood behind Rhuben like I usually did, slightly apart from the group and feeling left out. I know that they were just trying to make sure that I wouldn't get hurt since apparently I was a target, but I would at least like to think that I was their friend.

Not a charity case.

"And you probably won't know." Rhuben replied simply.

Case closed.

"Look, Zack," I spoke up again and Zack turned my way, his eyebrows still raised in question, not sure if it was good idea or not. I tried not to get distracted by the fact that he was shirtless, but I had to admit that it was hard. I wasn't made of stone and growing up in Kettlecorn had made me notice boys that much faster. I could feel my face heating up and I quickly busied myself with brushing my hair behind my ears before forcing myself to look into his eyes. "We've all been on edge for a while, and I know that you're not even close to even becoming friends with WingzCorp but we just need a day to ourselves and I think that the mall is the best place to go." I continued to speak when Zack looked like he was going to disagree with me. "And I don't think that they would attack with so many innocent people around."

"Do you not remember when you were almost kidnapped?" Zack snorted in reply as he crossed his arms over his chest. "They surely didn't want to spare their lives then." He rolled his eyes and then looked serious again. "Why are you asking me for my permission? I'm not going to be the only one that stops you."

"Yes, but you're the one that's somewhat the leader of this thing that we have going on," Rhuben spoke up again. "So we're always going to go to you whenever it's something that we need to figure out."

"Great," Zack smiled a little. "More responsibility." It was a joke, but all it did was seem to cause the seriousness of their situation to be realized that much more. "I think you're both crazy, but you've brought up some good points as well." He sighed again. "Alright, I don't think this is a good idea, but you won't know unless we take a risk." He shrugged. "What could go wrong?"

"A lot." I replied with a nod.

"You got that right." Rhuben agreed.

Nathan Reeves yawned loudly as he rubbed his eyes, getting his stuff together for class that morning. It was tedious, he knew everything that was happening in each of his classes and it bored him. But there weren't any more classes that held his attention or challenged him a little so he was stuck. But he was thankful that his classes that day were mostly science ones as science has always interested him. His mother had always said that if he didn't end up being a scientist later in life that it was the sign of the apocalypse.

Nathan sighed as he looked at his watch, he still had time before his class started, he could get a head start on his next project.

Grabbing his laptop, he moved and sat back on his bed, waiting as the computer powered up. It was times like these, in the early morning and late at night that he wished he had decided to get a double room with a roommate instead of s ingle. But in the end, he liked his privacy, so he could deal with the loneliness after away. Just the same, he made a mental note to call his parents later.

As he pulled up the internet, instead of using a simple Google search like normal people did, Nathan decided to go a different way through the internet. He was an excellent hacker, and new a lot of how computers worked and how people would use different codes and storage files to keep their documents a secret. With the project he was doing for science, he would have to get a lot of information from the government, and instead of trying to sweet-talk his way into it, he decided to just get the information himself. As he was scrolling through the files, he noticed an odd one that had a lot of data in it, due to the size of the document.

As he pulled it open, his heart started to beat faster. Nathan knew ways that computers could hack into other computers without being detected, but this was the government that he was dealing with and they had scientists and computer experts that were trained to deal with this sort of thing. As he pulled open the document numerous news reports; images of newspaper clippings, news station videos, charts, graphs filled up the screen and they all had the same topic. 'Super humans' that were in Japan. Nathan's eyes widened as he continued to read.

The 'super humans', from what people had reported, were able to control elements like fire, water and were being witnessed. Some of them were using the power to help other innocent people who were in trouble, and others were using it to rob banks and wreak havoc. Each document that Nathan looked at had to do with the super humans and more and more appeared as Nathan continued to look through it.

By the time he had finished looking through them, Nathan had missed his first class and he had a name for them.

Elementals.

"Dricer, stop messing with your clothes!" Crystal hissed as she slapped her guardian's hand away from his shirt. "People are starting to stare!" She rubbed her neck as they stood in the front of the mall, lots of people of all ages walking by them. Adults, teenagers, kids, even families, it seemed to be a day where everybody was out at the mall.

"But these clothes feel funny," Dricer replied, pouting a little. "I mean, it's not like the ones that I usually wear." He dropped his arms to the side as he brushed his brown hair out of his face. "Why do humans wear weird clothes anyway? We'd be much better off being naked."

"Yeah, I'm sure that wouldn't go over well," I replied, laughing a little as I brushed my hair behind my ears. I breathed in deeply, taking in the smells of the mall, before turning around to look at everything. "I haven't been to a mall this big before."

"Wow," Max spoke up, raising her eyebrows, Canis standing beside her, looking uncomfortable as well. "You haven't really gotten out of Popcorn have you?"

"Kettlecorn." I corrected patiently.

"Whatever." She shrugged.

Tapeworm grabbed her arm and turned her around and the two talked quietly for a seconds in hushed tones. Max frowned and then sighed, rolling her eyes as she nodded, and Tapeworm smiled and kissed her forehead. I didn't know what they were talking about, but I had a guess. We had been getting along lately, and I'm sure that they all trust me, but I felt that Riley, Rhuben, Max, and Crystal were still waiting for me to screw up. That pressure was really hard and I felt that I was walking on egg-shells when I was around them, but I knew that I would be able to prove to them that I was on their side and that I wasn't going to betray them.

Easier said than done.

'Thanks voice' I replied sarcastically. The voice was staring to annoy me, it never responded when I wanted it to, and all it did was make things that much more confusing and annoying.

"What's up with you?" Patrick asked as he turned to Zack and Cody, who looked confused about something. "You don't have to freak out; Reihu, Kuroko, Tori, and Tora are all keeping guard outside of the mall." He reminded them.

Earlier, before we left, Zack and Cody had gotten everyone, us and Wingz Corp, together to say that we would have a truce. As long as Halo Syndicate was out there, we wouldn't attack each other. Surprisingly Kagenui, who seemed to be the leader of all of WingzCorp at the time, had agreed and now we're in a truce. No matter where we go, some of WingzCorp was going to come along to be our bodyguards of some sort. That caused us to become a little less paranoid, but it didn't seem to put their guardians at ease.

For extra protection, everyone had their guardians to come out and they disguised them the best they could, but from what I could tell, the guardians weren't very happy to have to wear all of the clothes to make them look more human. They were constantly fidgeting and pulling at their clothes.

"Can we hurry this up so we can get out of here, please?" Blaze grumbled as he rubbed his arms. "There are too many people around here, its making me nervous."

"Yeah, well, I can feel that and it's making my nerves get even more nervous." Zack snapped back. Blaze glared at him out of the corner of his eyes.

"Well your nervousness from my nervousness is making me-"

"Don't start." Cody and Phantom interjected in unison.

I giggled at the exchange, the guardians were their own people, yet they acted like their masters and mistresses as well. It was funny to watch. "What are you so nervous about?" I asked Cody as we started to walk through the mall. Sydney ran ahead to get to a candy store and I smiled as I watched him. "You and Zack are freaking out."

"I don't know, really," Cody replied, looking confused as he felt. "I just have a feeling that I've been to this mall before, it seems so familiar, but I don't think I have."

"That's odd." I remarked.

"Not really," Crystal stated from Cody's other side. I looked over at her and felt a surge of jealousy when I noticed how close they were walking to each other; their arms were almost brushing with each swing they took. "It's possible that you've been here before as malls and stores change their layout all the time." She paused and looked over her shoulder for a minute, frowning, before turning back to us. "But then again, we don't know where WingzCorp is right now and this mall has such a generic name we could be anywhere in the US."

"What's wrong, Crys?" Cody asked, grabbing her arm and stopping her as she looked over her shoulder again.

"What's up, Crystie-Chan?" Noah added, his eyes narrowing a fraction of an inch. "You seem to be on edge."

"I don't know. I just have the feeling that we're being followed." Crystal replied and turned to Dricer and DeathLiger. "I think I heard someone breathing behind us, do you guys?" DeathLiger and Dricer listened carefully as I watched the two of them.

When I had first seen them I noticed that they and DalFang looked the similar and Sydney explained to me that the three of them were brothers, Dricer was the youngest, DeathLiger was the oldest, and DalFang was the middle. But when I asked how it was that they didn't turn into the same animal, he couldn't give an answer and that was really surprising. I wasn't sure if he didn't know if he was just keeping it from me, but Sydney was really smart, probably even smarter than Cody, and I figured if anyone would know about it, it would be him.

"Yeah, I hear it too." DeathLiger replied after a moment. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Riley tighten her hands into fists as she slowly started to look around. "But I'm sure its noth-"

"Look out!" Dricer grabbed Crystal's arm and pulled her back, knocking Cody to the ground at the same time.

Before I could even move an inch, I felt the wind get knocked out of me as something hit my stomach. Then I was hit across the face before I felt a hand get twisted into my hair and I was dragged backwards a few feet before getting hit in the stomach again. I rolled onto my stomach as soon as I had stopped being dragged and got to my knees, coughing hard as I tried to get my breath back. I reached up and felt my eye and could tell that I already had a black eye.

"Bailey!"

I turned and looked at my friends and noticed that they seemed to be banging on something, but I couldn't see anything at all. Cody looked extremely panic stricken and seemed to be slamming his fists on some sort of a barrier. I got to my feet and hurried over to my friends, they were shouting at me and were frantically talking to each other as well as hitting the barrier. Their voices were muffled but I could still hear them. I reached out to try and touch them but let out a scream as I jerked my hand back. I looked down at my hand and my eyes widened when I saw that it was blistered, as if it had been burned.

"There's a barrier, she can't get through." I heard Sydney say as Crystal quickly whipped out a small laptop and started to type on it.

I looked around and watched as many people stopped and looked at us, I knew that they were seeing the same thing that I was thinking. It looked like we were talking to each other, but there was an invisible barrier that no one could cross. We were attracting too much attention.

"Don't pay attention to them, pay attention to me!" I whirled around and gasped when I saw a boy with dark black hair standing in front of me, his green eyes wild with anticipation. "Because you're going to die today."

A/N: Oooh, the plot thickens. I hope that you guys enjoyed this chapter. I'll update again soon.

Cheers,

-Riley