AN: Ok, I don't like author's notes usually but to clear up the whereabouts of Twink: he's at the Color Castle. See, they wanted to take all the color kids along and once that was done all the horses were totally jam-packed. I promise that he and Rainbow will be in it more soon! ^_^ And speaking of the horses... I spent like four months without writing this in the middle of chapter four, and in that time I completely forgot that Stormy and Rainbow were supposed to be riding horses. ^_^() You're just gonna have to forgive me on that one.
Erm, um, watch for raciness. These people start getting teenage mentalities. And keep in mind Prism's conversation with Violet earlier. *coughMoongloandRainbowcough*
Oh yea, and I made a reference to "fire-lizards" in an earlier chapter. Those are actually Anne McCaffrey material, which I didn't realize was not to be fanfictioned about. I'm not going to change that reference (far too lazy) but from now on they're called chibigons. (chibi - small, gons - like dragons)
~Lioness
Chapter Five: Liona
Canary was the one sitting watch when the pair of forest-green eyes finally opened. Despite all attempts, they hadn't managed to pry the axes out of her hands, so Liona was laying in the bed with them. As soon as she woke, she jumped up with an animalistic roar, brandishing the axes.
"SHADOW KING!!!!!!" Outside the Angel Palace, the whole of Black-and-White Island looked toward the source of sound. Liona stormed toward the door, and Canary throwing herself on the enraged girl's back, shouting protests, didn't hinder her one bit.
"Somebody help me!" Color Kids appeared all over, dragging at the tall girl. Prism arrived at a run.
"WHERE'S THE SHADOW KING!?!!! I'M GONNA THRASH HIM!!!!!"
"Liona..." Prism began in a low, warning voice.
"WHERE IS HE, PRISM?!?!?!"
"Liona! He's gone." The double axes fell to the ground.
"What did you say?"
"The Shadow King was defeated over five hundred years ago. You've been encased in Sun Crystal since we lost to him eight hundred some years previous."
"Who... who defeated him, Prism? Who had that power when we didn't?" Prism looked her identical sister over.
"The one on your left leg. Her name's Rainbow Brite." Liona looked down at the small girl.
"You?" Rainbow nodded, just a bit frightened of this rash warrior. "What's..."
"Rainbows. I use rainbows." The tall girl rolled her eyes.
"You know, I could have guessed that if I wanted to."
"I bet you could've, Liona. Come on, you need to see Blackie and I'll fill you in on what's happened since you... fell asleep." Liona walked along with Prism, and they disappeared around the corner. Rainbow stared after them, looking worried. Slowly, the color kids filtered away again, but Moonglo went up to her leader and placed a hand on the other girl's shoulder.
"You okay, Rainbow?" Rainbow nodded.
"Yea... sorry... I hadn't expected that she might not know any time had passed. That..." she sighed heavily. "It's just... those two, this place, dragons and Angel Warriors... it's all so bizarre." Her mood suddenly changed. "I just met my predecessors, who are alive and kicking... and they want to change everything I've ever known! They want to change my HOME!" Rainbow had sat on the edge of a large fountain, and Moonglo walked over and sat next to her.
"Rainbow... I realize this is all going to be hard for you. We all know it... the color kids, that is. Prism knows it too. She's just changing it back..." she looked up, searching for a word. "What I mean is... what would you feel like if you woke up one sunny day and you were a normal earth child in some gray little city, no powers, no nothing. And let's just say you can remember the blissful life you had enjoyed not a week before.
"Then you live on earth for thirteen hundred years, with no hope at all, and suddenly you're back here and everything's changed but YOU... you have a chance to make everything right." Moonglo looked sympathetically at her friend. "All us Color Kids... we had powers before the Shadow King came. Powers like you have. For five hundred years, all we've been good for is mining color crystal and minor touch-ups." There was a pause in her monologue. "It'll make life more... exciting, too." Rainbow perked at that.
"You think?" She asked through her eyelashes. Moonglo swallowed hard.
"Absolutely!"
Violet was in her old lab, standing on a chair, looking through a notebook which she had written references to interplanetary connections in. A small brown creature (maybe a foot tall) resembling a dragon was perched on her shoulder, peering at the book. It chirped a question, and across the room Krys looked up from his book.
"That thing keeps doing that. What's it saying?"
"It's asking questions about what I'm reading." She answered without turning.
"Okaay... so what are you reading?"
She dropped to sit in her chair. "One of my old notebooks. Did we used to have connections with other planets?" Krys shrugged.
"'Course we did. Spectra still does." Violet flipped through the worn pages of her book.
"So... what are the Konotoze like?" Krys stared. "One of them - referred to here as 'Tala' - apparently helped us in the early stages of the Shadow War."
"Eh... Violet, do you actually expect me to remember? I don't know every single planet by reference!" He paused, taking in her disappointed expression. "But I do know Konoto is in the same star system as Natall, whose people breed mages of our planet's status easily." Violet's expression broke into a huge grin and she jumped back up, disturbing the brown chibigon and causing it to squak in indignity. Krys watched her out of pure curiosity as she pulled several other leather-covered notebooks to her and ruffled through them, muttering to herself.
"The same star system as Natall... the girl named Melina on Natall... it was one of the systems inhabited by the Magi race..."
"Okay, what are you looking for?"
"Yike!" Violet exclaimed, and looked over at Krys, who had come up beside her while she was absorbed in her notes. "I'm looking for more information on the Magi race, Konoto, Natall, the Tonjee star system in general, or the girl Tala." Krys ran a hand through his curly red hair.
"Well, if you tell me where your other notebooks are..." he looked around as if he was unsure as to why he was offering, "I'll help you look." An absolute myriad of emotions passed across Violet's face, the most prevalent being surprise.
"They're right over there..." she pointed to a shelf on the opposite side of the room. "Thanks, Krys." He looked back at her.
"Sure, Violet. Anytime."
Buddy was moodily picking at a bowl of blue jello when Patty walked over to the table he was at and sat down next to him.
"Hey there, you okay?" she asked, sounding concerned. He looked over at her, detachedly pulling off his sweatband.
"Yea, just worried about Rainbow." She looked at him, sympathy in her green eyes.
"I know. It's going to be hardest for Rainbow, but-" a partially black, partially white sprite ran up to them and interrupted.
"The Ice-girl and the Fire-girl are summoning you." she said with urgency. "She says to go to the central courtyard." Buddy and Patty both stood up quickly.
"Thank you." Patty said to the sprite, who ran off, presumably to find the other Color Kids. They exchanged glances with each other, and began running toward the central courtyard. When they arrived there, they found a majority of the Color Kids clustered around Prism and Liona, who were in their old work clothes.
Prism wore primarily white - white tank top and jeans, and gloves like Krys's, but her white knee boots had red soles and laces, and her hooded cape was edged in red, which faded into white as it went inwards. Around her waist hung a peridot chain, each link covered in a thin layer of diamond, with a diamond heart in the center front, presumably as the clasp.
The enigmatic Liona wore an outfit almost identical to her twin's, but in different colors. Instead of white on her outfit there was black, and where there was red on Prism's, Liona had ice-blue. Her belt was also different, having a chain of diamond with the large heart-clasp being made of peridot with a thin coating of diamond.
Stormy was the last to arrive, and when she did, Prism motioned for all to be silent.
"Okay guys," she began, "Liona and I have been absolutely wracking our brains, trying to think os a way to grow you all up again, and we think" she put emphasis on 'think' "we've got it."
"First though, I've got something to say, so listen good cuz I'm only saying this once." Liona took up the speech, her voice an alto mirror of Prism's soprano. "I'm sorry that I went crazy this afternoon when I woke up, yelling about the Shadow King. The last thing I remembered was battling him with Prism here and then I woke up in a room with Levana." she paused. "'Course I didn't know it was Levana since all that's happened to you guys and to me she just looked like some weird little blonde kid and... anyway, I'm sorry." She blushed and flicked her hood up, feeling she had talked for too long.
"Alright." Prism started up again. "We were wondering if we could have a volunteer to try this on first?" All the Kids exchanged glances, and tentatively, to everyone's surprise, Lala stepped forward.
"I'll volunteer." She said in a voice she was forcing not to quaver.
"You sure?" Prism asked. "If it doesn't work, we don't know what will happen." Lala se her expression and nodded confidently. rainbow stood to the back of the group, just watching. "Alright." Prism reached down and Sunlight handed her a piece of crystal such an intense yellow-gold color the others all had a difficult time looking at it. Rainbow squinted at it, puzzled. "This is pure, freshly mined sun crystal. Liona?" She looked at her twin, who took a piece of painfully silver-white crystal from Moonlight. "And that's fresh moon crystal." she took a deep breath and grasped the hand of her sister. They stepped back from the group, and motioned for Lala to come toward them. She walked the few steps in a nervous march. Prism's hood flew up in an unfelt wind, shadowing her face as Liona's was. Simultaneously they held the crystals to their belts and hey came to life, glowing with the light of the moon and sun. They held the crystals together, and the light crept toward Lala.
The light reached her front first, so Rainbow, who could only see her back, was unable to see and changes taking place. The light engulfed her, and grew upwards. Rainbow could vaguely see the outline of a person inside the light, growing and shrinking all at once it seemed. Then, quite suddenly, the light disappeared and the girl within was revealed. Rainbow had to admit she looked very much like Lala. Just a bit shorter than Prism and Liona, short brown hair cut to earlobe length, brown eyes, slightly tan skin. She wore a red and gold tunic over a gold shirt and red hose, with orange boots and a long orange cape. She looked down at herself, and Rainbow noted somewhere in the back of her mind that the girl didn't have too bad a figure at all. She turned to face the Kids and Rainbow spotted around her waist a belt. The chain was thick like Prism and Liona's but made of opal, lightly encased in diamond so it would be hard to break. And in the front middle was a star made of orange topaz.
"Lala?" Rainbow whispered, stunned. Lala looked at Rainbow and smiled, an act that lit up her whole face, and lightly ran over to the leader of the Color Kids.
"It's me, Rainbow! It worked!" She dropped to her knees and sad on them to be face-to-face with the now seemingly tiny girl. And suddenly she threw her arms about the shoulders of the little girl and hugged her. And then Rainbow was happy, for she knew without a doubt that she was not losing her team - she was simply learning of a new side of it.
Rainbow Brite rode around on the shoulders of the red Color Kid- she chided herself and her faulty memory- the red Angel Warrior, waiting for her turn to be grown. After Lala, Prism and Liona had grown Red, Canary, Patty, and Buddy, then decided they needed to take a short break. Rainbow didn't really blame them. Making people of her race age suddenly would be hard work for anyone, much less someone who had been asleep for eight hundred years and someone else who hadn't had her powers for equally as long.
"Hey there Red, Rainbow." Buddy said as he passed them in the hall, his baritone rolling smoothly over the words. Rainbow turned her head to watch him as he retreated. Of the five Kids- er, Warriors already grown, Buddy was the biggest surprise. He came across as a sports-crazy Kid, but as a teenager he seemed almost like a knight, or some kind of hero from legends. His clothes - a purple tunic over a sea green shirt and white leggings along with blue boots and a blue cape that hung only off of his right shoulder - seconded that, but the thing that really set it off was his hair, which was long down his back in a thin blue ponytail. (or is it pigtail? maybe I watch too much Ranma) As he turned the corner at the opposite end of the hall, Rainbow noted somewhere in her mind that his chain-belt (as she had taken to calling them) was made of amethyst with a sapphire star.
"You're awful quiet up there, Rainbow." Red commented, his voice a startling bass.
"Oh, sorry Red. Just thinking." He flicked his brown eyes up in her direction.
"Oh? What about?"
"Buddy, actually. Was his hair always long before?" Red laughed in a deep amused chuckle, the infectious type of laugh that could get anyone in the vicinity grinning like a cheshire cat.
"That. Yes, actually. And the style does seem to suit him." Rainbow smiled.
"Yea." She glanced back at where he had disappeared around the corner. "He seems kind of like a knight." Red laughed outright.
"That he does, Rainbow. That he does." They entered a room where Canary was helping Violet reach books that would be too high up for her child's stature to reach.
"Hi Rainbow! Hi Red!" she called cheerfully, and Rainbow noted she had retained her soprano voice. Red set Rainbow down and went to talk to Canary. Rainbow looked around, again at a five-year-old's perspective. She saw with some curious interest Indigo sitting on a bookshelf ladder about level with Canary and watching her. Rainbow, rather intrigued, looked at Canary as well. She had turned out to be just the same size and stature as the twins, though she appeared to be an earth year older. Her sandy blonde hair was cut as short as Red's and her brown eyes had deepened to a soft chocolate color. She wore what Violet called a "gi", some type of japanese training clothes, in white with a pink shirt beneath, yellow boots, and a yellow cape that only reached to half her length. Her belt was a sardonyx chain with yellow topaz star.
"Rainbow?" Violet asked for her leader's attention. Rainbow turned to her after casting a final glance at the transfixed Indigo and mentally shrugging it off.
"Yea Violet?"
"I was wondering..." She faltered, and Rainbow nodded to prompt her on. "Have you, in your numerous flights over Rainbow Land, seen what appears to be a very large, very active volcano?" Rainbow blinked in surprise. For Violet, that was an oddly understandable question. She thought for a moment.
"I think so..." she finally said. "On the border between Red Range and Violet Valley. Why?"
"I... well, you know how Prism uses sun crystals for her light powers and you use star sprinkles for rainbow powers?" she asked. Rainbow nodded, finding that to be a somewhat odd question. "Well, that volcano I was describing is called Cinnamon Mountain. It contains the sources for both my and Red's powers." Rainbow took that in and then, with a shock, realized that she had absolutely no idea what powers the other Kids... or Warriors, had.
"Violet, what IS your power?" Violet turned a corner of her mouth up in a very lopsided grin.
"Acid." she stated shortly. Rainbow blinked in surprise.
"How? What? Acid!? What are you supposed to do with acid powers?"
"Help protect the universe from destroying itself or someone from destroying the universe."
"What... do you mean?"
"Hrm..." she sat down on the bench she had been standing on and motioned for Rainbow to join her. Then she grabbed a book from the middle of the pile Canary had retrieved for her. "Back when most races were relatively primitive, our race, the Magi, developed the powers we have today. At that point in time the universe was very unstable and constantly parts of it were imploding and exploding, planets, solar systems, galaxies being destroyed and made all the time." She opened to a page in the book with various maps of the universe, each dated separately, and each with something new and something lost from the one previous. "So the ancestors decided to form a small band, a league if you please, consisting of our race's strongest sorcerers in different fields of magic to stabilize the universe and keep it that way." She turned to a new page, which showed a photograph of fourteen young men and women of the magi race, each wearing belts similar to the ones Liona, Prism, and the first five color kids were now wearing. Violet pointed to a girl that would be considered asian-looking on earth with black hair that had an unmistakably purple sheen to it. "See her? That's my first known ancestor. She's my grandmother, about 5,500 greats back." Rainbow's eyes widened and she stared at Violet.
"You had an ancestor in the First Ones?" Violet grinned in reply. "That's... wow. That's tracing your family line back to the time the known universe began!" She looked back at the pages and her eyes fell on a girl in the middle of the picture, being held in the air by an older boy wearing light colors. Her outfit was mostly in shades of blue, skin the same olive color as Stormy's, brown eyed with black hair in a ponytail falling in tons of waves and loops down her back. Her eyes drifted to the belt she wore - a chain made of some deep red stone with a crystalline replica of the rainbow belt's rainbow in on the clasp. Her mouth opened slightly and a gasp escaped when she realized that she was looking at the first person in her position - the first Rainbow Brite.
"What?" Violet asked, looking over at her friend. Then she followed her gaze to... "Oh! Yes, that's Libra, the first Rainbow Angel and leader of the Angel Warriors." Rainbow swallowed the dryness in her mouth.
"Even though there's been around 5,500 others between me and her, it's still really strange to be looking at my predecessor." She looked at the girl again, and then at the boy holding her. "Who's he?"
"Him? Alexander, the first..." she paused and cast a glance at Rainbow in the manner of someone who is about to point out an obvious romantic interest between two people. "... the first Illusion Angel. Moonglo's job." Rainbow would have jumped and loudly protested such a thing if she didn't know it would draw an immense amount of attention to her and Moonglo. So instead she just tried to look surprised and said,
"Oh." She scrambled for a topic. "So why are they called Angel Warriors, anyway?" Violet smiled.
"Ah. The league was called that for what they stood to prevent and what they avenged." Rainbow blinked.
"The destruction of the universe?"
"Close. The people who died... actually, who simply ceased to exist, when their part of the universe would implode. The ancestors called them 'angels', and so the league was called Angel Warriors because they were warriors seeking to prevent the creation of any more angels."
"Wow." she sighed out, still looking at the picture of the fourteen original angels. "Why are they grouped like that?"
"Hm?"
"I mean, look." she moved her finger across the page. "The seven in the back are lined up in rainbow colors, Libra, Alexander, and those two are right in the front, and those three are in kind of a little huddle over near your ancestor." Violet blinked more than once and shook her head.
"I don't know. But I can look it up. Come back in a little while." And she got up and started flipping through books. Rainbow smiled and shrugged and walked into the hall whereupon turning the corner at the end of it she ran into Moonglo. Literally.
"Oh! Rainbow, I'm sorry!" She apologized as she picked herself up, and offered a hand to Rainbow. Rainbow's mind flashed back to the picture with Libra and Alexander. She blushed a brilliant red as she accepted the offered hand up.
"It's okay Moonglo. I wasn't watching where I was going."
"Well I wasn't either. You sure you're okay?" If Rainbow had been thinking straight at that moment, she might have noticed that her pink-haired friend was just as flustered as she herself was.
"I'm sure. I, uh, seeya then." And they parted their separate ways at nervous, brisk walks. From behind a nearby mostly-closed door a green eye and a blue eye watched, and pulled back when the two parted.
"You're right, Patty." Buddy's voice whispered. "I guess Rainbow does have Moonglo."
AN: So now one of the pairings has been revealed! (I mean besides the obvious and already-revealed Buddy/Patty, Lala/Red, and Violet/Krys) Moonglo/Rainbow! We've got six Color Kids/Angel Warriors left (two of which will not have pairings unless I introduce more new charries) so who's it gonna be? *grins* You ought to know, they've already been hinted at!
The budding romance between two very much opposites, more on the ancestors and Konotoze/Natallians, and possibly a plot! Next time, on The Color of Hope. G'night folks!
Erm, um, watch for raciness. These people start getting teenage mentalities. And keep in mind Prism's conversation with Violet earlier. *coughMoongloandRainbowcough*
Oh yea, and I made a reference to "fire-lizards" in an earlier chapter. Those are actually Anne McCaffrey material, which I didn't realize was not to be fanfictioned about. I'm not going to change that reference (far too lazy) but from now on they're called chibigons. (chibi - small, gons - like dragons)
~Lioness
Chapter Five: Liona
Canary was the one sitting watch when the pair of forest-green eyes finally opened. Despite all attempts, they hadn't managed to pry the axes out of her hands, so Liona was laying in the bed with them. As soon as she woke, she jumped up with an animalistic roar, brandishing the axes.
"SHADOW KING!!!!!!" Outside the Angel Palace, the whole of Black-and-White Island looked toward the source of sound. Liona stormed toward the door, and Canary throwing herself on the enraged girl's back, shouting protests, didn't hinder her one bit.
"Somebody help me!" Color Kids appeared all over, dragging at the tall girl. Prism arrived at a run.
"WHERE'S THE SHADOW KING!?!!! I'M GONNA THRASH HIM!!!!!"
"Liona..." Prism began in a low, warning voice.
"WHERE IS HE, PRISM?!?!?!"
"Liona! He's gone." The double axes fell to the ground.
"What did you say?"
"The Shadow King was defeated over five hundred years ago. You've been encased in Sun Crystal since we lost to him eight hundred some years previous."
"Who... who defeated him, Prism? Who had that power when we didn't?" Prism looked her identical sister over.
"The one on your left leg. Her name's Rainbow Brite." Liona looked down at the small girl.
"You?" Rainbow nodded, just a bit frightened of this rash warrior. "What's..."
"Rainbows. I use rainbows." The tall girl rolled her eyes.
"You know, I could have guessed that if I wanted to."
"I bet you could've, Liona. Come on, you need to see Blackie and I'll fill you in on what's happened since you... fell asleep." Liona walked along with Prism, and they disappeared around the corner. Rainbow stared after them, looking worried. Slowly, the color kids filtered away again, but Moonglo went up to her leader and placed a hand on the other girl's shoulder.
"You okay, Rainbow?" Rainbow nodded.
"Yea... sorry... I hadn't expected that she might not know any time had passed. That..." she sighed heavily. "It's just... those two, this place, dragons and Angel Warriors... it's all so bizarre." Her mood suddenly changed. "I just met my predecessors, who are alive and kicking... and they want to change everything I've ever known! They want to change my HOME!" Rainbow had sat on the edge of a large fountain, and Moonglo walked over and sat next to her.
"Rainbow... I realize this is all going to be hard for you. We all know it... the color kids, that is. Prism knows it too. She's just changing it back..." she looked up, searching for a word. "What I mean is... what would you feel like if you woke up one sunny day and you were a normal earth child in some gray little city, no powers, no nothing. And let's just say you can remember the blissful life you had enjoyed not a week before.
"Then you live on earth for thirteen hundred years, with no hope at all, and suddenly you're back here and everything's changed but YOU... you have a chance to make everything right." Moonglo looked sympathetically at her friend. "All us Color Kids... we had powers before the Shadow King came. Powers like you have. For five hundred years, all we've been good for is mining color crystal and minor touch-ups." There was a pause in her monologue. "It'll make life more... exciting, too." Rainbow perked at that.
"You think?" She asked through her eyelashes. Moonglo swallowed hard.
"Absolutely!"
Violet was in her old lab, standing on a chair, looking through a notebook which she had written references to interplanetary connections in. A small brown creature (maybe a foot tall) resembling a dragon was perched on her shoulder, peering at the book. It chirped a question, and across the room Krys looked up from his book.
"That thing keeps doing that. What's it saying?"
"It's asking questions about what I'm reading." She answered without turning.
"Okaay... so what are you reading?"
She dropped to sit in her chair. "One of my old notebooks. Did we used to have connections with other planets?" Krys shrugged.
"'Course we did. Spectra still does." Violet flipped through the worn pages of her book.
"So... what are the Konotoze like?" Krys stared. "One of them - referred to here as 'Tala' - apparently helped us in the early stages of the Shadow War."
"Eh... Violet, do you actually expect me to remember? I don't know every single planet by reference!" He paused, taking in her disappointed expression. "But I do know Konoto is in the same star system as Natall, whose people breed mages of our planet's status easily." Violet's expression broke into a huge grin and she jumped back up, disturbing the brown chibigon and causing it to squak in indignity. Krys watched her out of pure curiosity as she pulled several other leather-covered notebooks to her and ruffled through them, muttering to herself.
"The same star system as Natall... the girl named Melina on Natall... it was one of the systems inhabited by the Magi race..."
"Okay, what are you looking for?"
"Yike!" Violet exclaimed, and looked over at Krys, who had come up beside her while she was absorbed in her notes. "I'm looking for more information on the Magi race, Konoto, Natall, the Tonjee star system in general, or the girl Tala." Krys ran a hand through his curly red hair.
"Well, if you tell me where your other notebooks are..." he looked around as if he was unsure as to why he was offering, "I'll help you look." An absolute myriad of emotions passed across Violet's face, the most prevalent being surprise.
"They're right over there..." she pointed to a shelf on the opposite side of the room. "Thanks, Krys." He looked back at her.
"Sure, Violet. Anytime."
Buddy was moodily picking at a bowl of blue jello when Patty walked over to the table he was at and sat down next to him.
"Hey there, you okay?" she asked, sounding concerned. He looked over at her, detachedly pulling off his sweatband.
"Yea, just worried about Rainbow." She looked at him, sympathy in her green eyes.
"I know. It's going to be hardest for Rainbow, but-" a partially black, partially white sprite ran up to them and interrupted.
"The Ice-girl and the Fire-girl are summoning you." she said with urgency. "She says to go to the central courtyard." Buddy and Patty both stood up quickly.
"Thank you." Patty said to the sprite, who ran off, presumably to find the other Color Kids. They exchanged glances with each other, and began running toward the central courtyard. When they arrived there, they found a majority of the Color Kids clustered around Prism and Liona, who were in their old work clothes.
Prism wore primarily white - white tank top and jeans, and gloves like Krys's, but her white knee boots had red soles and laces, and her hooded cape was edged in red, which faded into white as it went inwards. Around her waist hung a peridot chain, each link covered in a thin layer of diamond, with a diamond heart in the center front, presumably as the clasp.
The enigmatic Liona wore an outfit almost identical to her twin's, but in different colors. Instead of white on her outfit there was black, and where there was red on Prism's, Liona had ice-blue. Her belt was also different, having a chain of diamond with the large heart-clasp being made of peridot with a thin coating of diamond.
Stormy was the last to arrive, and when she did, Prism motioned for all to be silent.
"Okay guys," she began, "Liona and I have been absolutely wracking our brains, trying to think os a way to grow you all up again, and we think" she put emphasis on 'think' "we've got it."
"First though, I've got something to say, so listen good cuz I'm only saying this once." Liona took up the speech, her voice an alto mirror of Prism's soprano. "I'm sorry that I went crazy this afternoon when I woke up, yelling about the Shadow King. The last thing I remembered was battling him with Prism here and then I woke up in a room with Levana." she paused. "'Course I didn't know it was Levana since all that's happened to you guys and to me she just looked like some weird little blonde kid and... anyway, I'm sorry." She blushed and flicked her hood up, feeling she had talked for too long.
"Alright." Prism started up again. "We were wondering if we could have a volunteer to try this on first?" All the Kids exchanged glances, and tentatively, to everyone's surprise, Lala stepped forward.
"I'll volunteer." She said in a voice she was forcing not to quaver.
"You sure?" Prism asked. "If it doesn't work, we don't know what will happen." Lala se her expression and nodded confidently. rainbow stood to the back of the group, just watching. "Alright." Prism reached down and Sunlight handed her a piece of crystal such an intense yellow-gold color the others all had a difficult time looking at it. Rainbow squinted at it, puzzled. "This is pure, freshly mined sun crystal. Liona?" She looked at her twin, who took a piece of painfully silver-white crystal from Moonlight. "And that's fresh moon crystal." she took a deep breath and grasped the hand of her sister. They stepped back from the group, and motioned for Lala to come toward them. She walked the few steps in a nervous march. Prism's hood flew up in an unfelt wind, shadowing her face as Liona's was. Simultaneously they held the crystals to their belts and hey came to life, glowing with the light of the moon and sun. They held the crystals together, and the light crept toward Lala.
The light reached her front first, so Rainbow, who could only see her back, was unable to see and changes taking place. The light engulfed her, and grew upwards. Rainbow could vaguely see the outline of a person inside the light, growing and shrinking all at once it seemed. Then, quite suddenly, the light disappeared and the girl within was revealed. Rainbow had to admit she looked very much like Lala. Just a bit shorter than Prism and Liona, short brown hair cut to earlobe length, brown eyes, slightly tan skin. She wore a red and gold tunic over a gold shirt and red hose, with orange boots and a long orange cape. She looked down at herself, and Rainbow noted somewhere in the back of her mind that the girl didn't have too bad a figure at all. She turned to face the Kids and Rainbow spotted around her waist a belt. The chain was thick like Prism and Liona's but made of opal, lightly encased in diamond so it would be hard to break. And in the front middle was a star made of orange topaz.
"Lala?" Rainbow whispered, stunned. Lala looked at Rainbow and smiled, an act that lit up her whole face, and lightly ran over to the leader of the Color Kids.
"It's me, Rainbow! It worked!" She dropped to her knees and sad on them to be face-to-face with the now seemingly tiny girl. And suddenly she threw her arms about the shoulders of the little girl and hugged her. And then Rainbow was happy, for she knew without a doubt that she was not losing her team - she was simply learning of a new side of it.
Rainbow Brite rode around on the shoulders of the red Color Kid- she chided herself and her faulty memory- the red Angel Warrior, waiting for her turn to be grown. After Lala, Prism and Liona had grown Red, Canary, Patty, and Buddy, then decided they needed to take a short break. Rainbow didn't really blame them. Making people of her race age suddenly would be hard work for anyone, much less someone who had been asleep for eight hundred years and someone else who hadn't had her powers for equally as long.
"Hey there Red, Rainbow." Buddy said as he passed them in the hall, his baritone rolling smoothly over the words. Rainbow turned her head to watch him as he retreated. Of the five Kids- er, Warriors already grown, Buddy was the biggest surprise. He came across as a sports-crazy Kid, but as a teenager he seemed almost like a knight, or some kind of hero from legends. His clothes - a purple tunic over a sea green shirt and white leggings along with blue boots and a blue cape that hung only off of his right shoulder - seconded that, but the thing that really set it off was his hair, which was long down his back in a thin blue ponytail. (or is it pigtail? maybe I watch too much Ranma) As he turned the corner at the opposite end of the hall, Rainbow noted somewhere in her mind that his chain-belt (as she had taken to calling them) was made of amethyst with a sapphire star.
"You're awful quiet up there, Rainbow." Red commented, his voice a startling bass.
"Oh, sorry Red. Just thinking." He flicked his brown eyes up in her direction.
"Oh? What about?"
"Buddy, actually. Was his hair always long before?" Red laughed in a deep amused chuckle, the infectious type of laugh that could get anyone in the vicinity grinning like a cheshire cat.
"That. Yes, actually. And the style does seem to suit him." Rainbow smiled.
"Yea." She glanced back at where he had disappeared around the corner. "He seems kind of like a knight." Red laughed outright.
"That he does, Rainbow. That he does." They entered a room where Canary was helping Violet reach books that would be too high up for her child's stature to reach.
"Hi Rainbow! Hi Red!" she called cheerfully, and Rainbow noted she had retained her soprano voice. Red set Rainbow down and went to talk to Canary. Rainbow looked around, again at a five-year-old's perspective. She saw with some curious interest Indigo sitting on a bookshelf ladder about level with Canary and watching her. Rainbow, rather intrigued, looked at Canary as well. She had turned out to be just the same size and stature as the twins, though she appeared to be an earth year older. Her sandy blonde hair was cut as short as Red's and her brown eyes had deepened to a soft chocolate color. She wore what Violet called a "gi", some type of japanese training clothes, in white with a pink shirt beneath, yellow boots, and a yellow cape that only reached to half her length. Her belt was a sardonyx chain with yellow topaz star.
"Rainbow?" Violet asked for her leader's attention. Rainbow turned to her after casting a final glance at the transfixed Indigo and mentally shrugging it off.
"Yea Violet?"
"I was wondering..." She faltered, and Rainbow nodded to prompt her on. "Have you, in your numerous flights over Rainbow Land, seen what appears to be a very large, very active volcano?" Rainbow blinked in surprise. For Violet, that was an oddly understandable question. She thought for a moment.
"I think so..." she finally said. "On the border between Red Range and Violet Valley. Why?"
"I... well, you know how Prism uses sun crystals for her light powers and you use star sprinkles for rainbow powers?" she asked. Rainbow nodded, finding that to be a somewhat odd question. "Well, that volcano I was describing is called Cinnamon Mountain. It contains the sources for both my and Red's powers." Rainbow took that in and then, with a shock, realized that she had absolutely no idea what powers the other Kids... or Warriors, had.
"Violet, what IS your power?" Violet turned a corner of her mouth up in a very lopsided grin.
"Acid." she stated shortly. Rainbow blinked in surprise.
"How? What? Acid!? What are you supposed to do with acid powers?"
"Help protect the universe from destroying itself or someone from destroying the universe."
"What... do you mean?"
"Hrm..." she sat down on the bench she had been standing on and motioned for Rainbow to join her. Then she grabbed a book from the middle of the pile Canary had retrieved for her. "Back when most races were relatively primitive, our race, the Magi, developed the powers we have today. At that point in time the universe was very unstable and constantly parts of it were imploding and exploding, planets, solar systems, galaxies being destroyed and made all the time." She opened to a page in the book with various maps of the universe, each dated separately, and each with something new and something lost from the one previous. "So the ancestors decided to form a small band, a league if you please, consisting of our race's strongest sorcerers in different fields of magic to stabilize the universe and keep it that way." She turned to a new page, which showed a photograph of fourteen young men and women of the magi race, each wearing belts similar to the ones Liona, Prism, and the first five color kids were now wearing. Violet pointed to a girl that would be considered asian-looking on earth with black hair that had an unmistakably purple sheen to it. "See her? That's my first known ancestor. She's my grandmother, about 5,500 greats back." Rainbow's eyes widened and she stared at Violet.
"You had an ancestor in the First Ones?" Violet grinned in reply. "That's... wow. That's tracing your family line back to the time the known universe began!" She looked back at the pages and her eyes fell on a girl in the middle of the picture, being held in the air by an older boy wearing light colors. Her outfit was mostly in shades of blue, skin the same olive color as Stormy's, brown eyed with black hair in a ponytail falling in tons of waves and loops down her back. Her eyes drifted to the belt she wore - a chain made of some deep red stone with a crystalline replica of the rainbow belt's rainbow in on the clasp. Her mouth opened slightly and a gasp escaped when she realized that she was looking at the first person in her position - the first Rainbow Brite.
"What?" Violet asked, looking over at her friend. Then she followed her gaze to... "Oh! Yes, that's Libra, the first Rainbow Angel and leader of the Angel Warriors." Rainbow swallowed the dryness in her mouth.
"Even though there's been around 5,500 others between me and her, it's still really strange to be looking at my predecessor." She looked at the girl again, and then at the boy holding her. "Who's he?"
"Him? Alexander, the first..." she paused and cast a glance at Rainbow in the manner of someone who is about to point out an obvious romantic interest between two people. "... the first Illusion Angel. Moonglo's job." Rainbow would have jumped and loudly protested such a thing if she didn't know it would draw an immense amount of attention to her and Moonglo. So instead she just tried to look surprised and said,
"Oh." She scrambled for a topic. "So why are they called Angel Warriors, anyway?" Violet smiled.
"Ah. The league was called that for what they stood to prevent and what they avenged." Rainbow blinked.
"The destruction of the universe?"
"Close. The people who died... actually, who simply ceased to exist, when their part of the universe would implode. The ancestors called them 'angels', and so the league was called Angel Warriors because they were warriors seeking to prevent the creation of any more angels."
"Wow." she sighed out, still looking at the picture of the fourteen original angels. "Why are they grouped like that?"
"Hm?"
"I mean, look." she moved her finger across the page. "The seven in the back are lined up in rainbow colors, Libra, Alexander, and those two are right in the front, and those three are in kind of a little huddle over near your ancestor." Violet blinked more than once and shook her head.
"I don't know. But I can look it up. Come back in a little while." And she got up and started flipping through books. Rainbow smiled and shrugged and walked into the hall whereupon turning the corner at the end of it she ran into Moonglo. Literally.
"Oh! Rainbow, I'm sorry!" She apologized as she picked herself up, and offered a hand to Rainbow. Rainbow's mind flashed back to the picture with Libra and Alexander. She blushed a brilliant red as she accepted the offered hand up.
"It's okay Moonglo. I wasn't watching where I was going."
"Well I wasn't either. You sure you're okay?" If Rainbow had been thinking straight at that moment, she might have noticed that her pink-haired friend was just as flustered as she herself was.
"I'm sure. I, uh, seeya then." And they parted their separate ways at nervous, brisk walks. From behind a nearby mostly-closed door a green eye and a blue eye watched, and pulled back when the two parted.
"You're right, Patty." Buddy's voice whispered. "I guess Rainbow does have Moonglo."
AN: So now one of the pairings has been revealed! (I mean besides the obvious and already-revealed Buddy/Patty, Lala/Red, and Violet/Krys) Moonglo/Rainbow! We've got six Color Kids/Angel Warriors left (two of which will not have pairings unless I introduce more new charries) so who's it gonna be? *grins* You ought to know, they've already been hinted at!
The budding romance between two very much opposites, more on the ancestors and Konotoze/Natallians, and possibly a plot! Next time, on The Color of Hope. G'night folks!
