CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nathan paced back and forth in front of the dorm building. He looked at his watch before he started to pace again. Everyone that passed him looked at him funny. At that point he was used to it. He already got weird looks, because he was a loner of some sort of his class, but now with the rumors about him, Trethaway, Christian, and Reed were flying around, he was getting more attention than he wanted.
Nathan turned back to the dorm as the door opened and Reed and Christian walked out. "Finally," Nathan said in exasperation. "What took you so long?"
"Do you know how long it took for my roommate to fall asleep?" Reed asked as he rolled his eyes. He reached out and pulled up the hood on his sweatshirt. "It was all I could do not to knock him out myself." He held up a fist to added emphasis.
"What about you?" Nathan turned to Christian.
Christian shrugged. "I was just doing a bit more research before I left…lost track of time."
"Was there anything that you found out?" Nathan asked as the three walked off of the porch and started across campus. The starlight twinkled overhead, their footsteps echoing across the quad. "Anything else we didn't already know?"
"I was looking more at the theories of there being a different world out there," Christian replied. "You know, the idea of there being a Heaven and a Hell, I broadened the idea of there being another world that goes with the Elementals." He licked his lips. "I found some websites that had the same ideas. That Elementals come from a specific world that we can't see."
"Then how would that explain Trethaway and all of those others that we found?" Reed asked.
"Probably…that there are more Elementals than we know of," Nathan said, thinking out loud. "We already determined that the government has been following it for a while, so they know something. They had the picture of that one person, maybe they've tracked him down. I propose that we figure out the identity of that person, track him down, and ask questions."
"What if he doesn't take us seriously?" Reed pointed out. "If we do find him, the person could easily hide that he is an Elemental."
"And Elemental has a mark, we know that," Nathan concluded. "We just look for that on him. If it's not visible, then we have to trick him into showing us his powers."
"And how do you propose we do that?" Christian asked.
"I can't think of everything," Nathan said with a shrug. "I mean, sure, basically this is all my fault, if I hadn't been goofing around in the first place, we wouldn't have found this out. But maybe we were meant to."
"Meant to do what?" Reed scoffed. "Save the world?"
'How can we do that without powers?" Christian agreed.
"I didn't say we had to save the world, I just said that maybe it was a good thing that we found out about this," Nathan said. He walked up the steps of a newer looking dorm building and knocked on the window of the door.
He tilted his head back and looked at the sky. Was there really another world up there? Were they meant to find out everything about the Elementals that they had so far? If it was as big as they originally thought, and the government was keeping it a secret, does that mean that it was something that they should fear? Then there was the fight that they had gotten into with Trethaway. They couldn't explain their bruises to Health Services, and now there were the rumors. Even if they tried to dispel of the rumors, they wouldn't be able to keep it out of their minds.
Not if there was the chance that he could attack someone else.
"Yes?" Ruriko poked her head out of the door. "Oh, hi." She pushed the door open further and held it open for the boys to walk through. "We were starting to think that you weren't coming by."
"Roommate problems," Christian replied as the three boys followed her through the girl's dorm building. They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and then entered the first room on the right. Kristin was sitting on her bed, looking through a notebook.
"Hey," she greeted when the boys walked into the room. "Make yourselves comfortable, sit down anywhere." She said, not moving from her spot. She placed her hands in her lap and watched as the boys shuffled nervously, not sure where it was safe for them to sit down. She looked over at Ruriko and rolled her eyes as they chose to sit on the floor.
"Alright, let's cut to the chase here," Ruriko said, sitting down on her own bed, placing a pillow in her lap. "We know that you guys know about Elementals," She said and then turned to Reed and Christian. "We confronted Nathan about what happened between you guys and Trethaway and he admitted the whole thing."
"It's not for the reason that you would think," Kristin continued when she noticed the glares that Christian and Reed sent Nathan. "We know more about Elementals than you would think."
"How much better?" Christian asked, crossing his legs.
"A lot, considering our grandfather is one," Kristin gave a half smile. "He was always open about it, and he told our father things about it, just in case he had to deal with and Elemental. So whenever we would visit him, he would tell us about it too."
"So if there are any questions that you have, feel free to ask." Ruriko nodded. "We believe that you guys found out about it for a reason, and we hope that we can help you figure out what that reason is."
"Why do you want to help us so badly?" Reed asked. He was a bit suspicious. With a topic that not many people knew about, you never knew who you could trust with this sort of thing.
"Because our grandfather warned us that a lot was going to happen as we got older," Ruriko explained. "I don't know what to explain it exactly, but being an Elemental, you're directly connected to the Elemental world through your guardian as well as through your dreams." Her eyes narrowed. "And our grandfather and father would talk about his dreams a lot and what it meant."
"Just to warn us for the future, as being an Elemental usually runs in the family," Kristin concluded. "Though it can skip generations."
"So there are a lot more Elementals out there than we originally though?" Nathan asked, his eyebrows rising.
"A lot," Kristin agreed. "1 in every 5 people is an Elemental, if they awaken at least." Kristin added. "But that's not why we called you over," She closed her notebook and held it up. "This is our notebook that we have filled with everything that we already knew about Elementals." She held it out. "We want you guys to fill in what you've learned, so we can get a composite idea of what's going on."
"What's the other thing?" Reed asked as he took the notebook and stared to flip through it.
"Our grandfather, he lives in Japan, and we believe that he can help us get more insight on what's going on," Ruriko said."And we have a break coming up soon; we were thinking that you guys would like to come with us when we ask him about his recent dreams and experiences."
All of a sudden, the room started to darken. The lights went out and it went pitch black. Nathan's eyes darted around the room. He could hear Ruriko quickly get off of her bed and move over towards the closet. He heard the door open and things start to move around as she frantically searched for something. Nathan started to shiver as the room's temperature started to drop. He could hear Reed and Christian starting to shiver as well.
"If you leave I will find you. If you die I will follow you. You're not going to get rid of me."
Nathan's head swam and he could feel himself starting to lose consciousness.
He fell over onto the floor, gasping for air, feeling as if his body was being slowly crushed between two large hands.
All of a sudden, there was a bright flash of light, the crushing feeling went away, the words stopped repeating themselves, and he regained consciousness. Nathan slowly pushed himself off of the floor, holding a hand to his forehead. It was pounding with a slight headache, but other than that, he was fine. Reed and Christian still lay on the floor, breathing heavily.
Nathan shielded his face as the lights came back on and he looked over at Kristin, who was still sitting on the bed, looking at the boys with concern.
"Are you ok?" she asked.
"Yeah," Christian managed to reply, taking in a deep breath. "What was that?"
"Trethaway," Kristin explained. "He's been doing that for a while now, we think he's trying to keep us from plotting against him. He used his darkness powers to try and take you guys over."
Darkness powers? Take us over? Nathan shook his head, willing the headache to go away. They didn't know what they were up against. He had knocked them out so easily back then, and that was just up close. If Trethaway was able to do that and not be in the room at the time, who knew how strong he really was.
"The only way that we've managed to keep him at bay for a while is because of this," Ruriko closed the closet door and held up a jar. Inside was a stone hanging off of a string attached to the top of the jar. She handed the jar to Reed so the boys could look at it. Upon closer inspection they saw every color of the rainbow in the stone, though it mostly showed white. "It's an Element Stone." She explained.
"An Element Stone?" Christian repeated. "As in…more than one?"
"Yes, there's one for the main Elements, that we're aware of so far," Kristin explained. "But our grandfather thinks that there are more of them out there that haven't been discovered yet.
"That's the Element Stone that represents Light," Ruriko said as she took the jar out. "It's the only thing that's been able to help us every time Trethaway tries something." She turned back to the boys. "That's the reason that we're going to Japan, to see if we can find any more and to get more answers. For all we know, Trethaway has one in his possession, and that's not good."
"So, are you in?" Kristin asked. "To going to Japan?"
"Yes," Reed said with a nod, speaking up for the other boys. "We'll go with you."
"But there's something that we have to do first," Nathan said. "We have to check out Trethaway's office to see if he has a Stone."
A/N: Just so you know, the recent 'look to the past chapters' are done short on purpose (compared to the other chapter of the fic). I want them to be little scenes that don't show the whole picture of what's happening/answers some questions until it gets further along in the story. So the first ones are short, but they get longer as the story goes on, because it answers more questions.
Cheers,
-Riles