CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

"So if the stones were here the whole time, how could we not have known it before?" Tapeworm lightly ran his fingertips over the glass casing of one of the stones, studying it closely. He turned to Zack, who had his hands on his knees and was peering into another case, his eyes moving over it steadily. "Does the one that you have look like these?"

Zack nodded. "Exactly like them, we definitely have one of the element stones." He stood up straight, scratching the back of his neck, suddenly looking very weary. "And that can be a good or a bad thing."

"We had found the Element Stones and transported them here," Diamond said from where he was standing in the corner, his arms crossed over his chest, a disapproving frown on his face. "We had planned on using them to lure you guys in a different way, but things didn't go the way we planned. But, it's like you already heard, we needed your help because of what we figured out was coming soon."

"That Mother Nature was going to try and take over the world or whatever it is that these people always want," Bailey agreed. "She even tried to take over Tapeworm at some points, because she can directly tap into his element."

"Really?" Rhuben looked interested. "What happened?"

"She used Ursa at the beginning to take him over and actually did a good job with it, but then Max went into his dreams and took him to the Element world to show him what was going on over there, " Bailey explained. "And apparently it's getting really bad. Mother Nature has started to attack the people that were getting in their way of coming here, even if they were completely innocent."

"I wouldn't put it past her," Sydney remarked. "People like this are very…set in what they want to do, and that's just putting it lightly. Remember Zhane?"

"Yeah, but that was when he was under the influence of Gattaca, so you really can't blame him for that one," Riley said. She shrugged. "Well, you can blame Gattaca, but you can't blame Zhane."

"Wanna bet?" Patrick quipped. "If you try hard enough you can expel the power that darkness is trying to put on you. I mean, that's what Rhu has to do every time she uses too much of her power and she does it fine." He let out a loud sigh, turning to look at another display case of stones. "But, who knows what would have happened if he used one of these."

All of a sudden there was a loud explosion and the room rocked around them. The lights flickered and dimmed, but didn't' go out. Dust started to fall into the room. There was another explosion and cracking could be heard from above. The guys moved quickly and covered the girls' heads, crouching low to the floor, just in case it started to cave in.

Once the explosions died down, everyone ran outside of the State House and was met with the most horrifying sight they had ever seen.

The sky had opened up in a large portal and something was falling out of the sky towards them. They started to attack anything that would get in their way, cars, buildings, trees, even innocent people. The things that were attacking had a light green hue and had vines coming out of their hands whenever they attacked something.

"Oh boy," Julius breathed.

"My thought's exactly" Maddie agreed.

"That's what Mother Nature used to attack the people in the Element world," Tapeworm explained, licking his lips. "They're called arboris, and as you can see they resemble humans, but they're completely made out of earth, grass, and vines." He clenched his hands into fists as he looked around.

The destruction that they were creating was just as bad as seeing all of them in the first place. They were doing everything they could to instill fear in those that were around them. Before they could move a bunch of arboris leapt towards them and started to attack. The group of teenagers quickly spread out for more space and started to attack back. But as soon as they were able to get one or two of the arboris off of them, more and more would come at them in waves, easily over powering them.

"Cascade Crush!" Cody blasted a jet stream of water towards a couple of arboris and watched as it blasted them back away from him. He twisted to the side and punched another one in the stomach then grabbed onto his wrist, flipping it onto the ground. He let out a cry of pain and a red slash appeared on his arm, and arbori had used a vine to cut him. "This is going to be harder than I thought."

"Especially since they keep coming," Reihu agreed. He jumped high into the air, did a flip, and transformed into his lion form. When he landed on the ground, he roared loudly and charged forward, slashing at an arbori that had snuck up on Rhuben's blind side.

Zack let out a grunt of pain as he was hit across the face, the force of the hit spinning him to the ground. He groaned, trying to get back to his fee. They were a lot stronger than he originally thought, but that didn't mean that he was going to sit back and watch as his home was completely taken over. And if that meant that they had to reveal their powers to the rest of the world and be experimented on for the rest of life, then so be it. Zack painfully pushed himself back to his feet and looked around, trying to figure out a plan. He thought quickly before starting to dish out orders.

"Ok, what we need to do is see if we can keep these things from coming in," he said quickly, pointing towards the sky where more and more arboris continued to pour onto Earth. "The more that we can keep from reaching Boston, the better things will be for us. So whoever can go up to the sky should do that, everyone else should stay down here and try to fight off as many of these as we can." He wiped sweat off of his forehead, turning to Maddie. "Maddie, we need you to be around to make sure that we can get healed whenever we need it, so try to stay out of the fight as much as you can." She nodded. "Patrick, Noah, Cody, and Sydney you try to stop those up there. Rhuben, Bailey, and Reihu, you three go see if you can find Mother Nature. Crys, Tapeworm, Riles, and I will stay here and fight those on the ground."

"What do you want me to do?"

Zack turned around to see Diamond standing behind him an arsenal of weapons hanging off of his body. Zack gave him a grim smile. "Whatever you can do to help."

Diamond smiled and pulled a silver pistol out from one of his pockets and started to load it with a plethora of colorful bullets. He clicked the chamber into place and grabbed onto another pistol and started to do the same thing. "But I've got something that might help you guys." He pulled a drawstring bag out of his pocket and opened it. A bright light radiated from inside.

"It's the Element stones," Aaron said.

As they watched, the stones continued to glow a bright color as they lifted out of the bag and into the air, forming a small circle. There was an open spot. Zack took the red element stone out of his pocket and held it up. The stone shone a bright red and completed the circle.

"With the element stones, we'll be able to gain more power to use against Mother Nature," Aaron continued. "I heard dad talking about it once, they enhance the power of whoever has it, but…I also heard that they're able to unleash a new sense of power if used the right way."

"That's helpful," Tapeworm said. He looked around, suddenly noticing that they weren't being attacked. It looked like the arboris were backing away from them, as if terrified of the Element Stones. "Looks like it's something that we can really use, though."

"Might as well try," Bailey encouraged. "You never know what could happen." She closed her eyes and a moment later, Geneva and Gattaca appeared at her sides. "These two can help try to close the portal, I'm sure that they can do it if their mother was able to open it."

"We can't guarantee anything, but we'll do our best," Geneva said.

Gattaca nodded.

Zack raised a finger to his mouth and started to chew on the nail. There were so many things to decide; they had the current reprieve of being attacked, they were going to be showing their real identities to the whole world, and then there was the possibility of not being able to control the powers of the element stones as they took it into their possession.

"You have to try it," Noah insisted. "If not we'll probably get beaten too easily, we're outnumbered."

Zack closed his eyes. "Ok, ok!" He ran a hand through his hair.

"There seems to be a stone for fire, water, darkness, thunder, light, and nature…which I would assume that the stones come for the most common elements," Cody said as he moved towards the light blue stone. He waited as Zack, Rhuben, Patrick, and Tapeworm stepped forward behind the stones that represented their element. "Ready?"

They nodded.

Each of them reached out and took the stone in their hand, letting the light element stone remain. It stopped shinning and started to drop to the ground, but Aaron grabbed onto it and gently cradled it in his hands, his sightless eyes trained on the spectacle in front of him.

The stones glowed even brighter than before, the color reflecting in everyone's eyes. Zack was used to the rush of power, as he had held onto the stone before, but the sense of strength still overwhelmed him. The stones continued to react in a weird way, as Zack's and Cody's stones started to diminish in brightness, the other stones continued to glow brighter and brighter. Tapeworm, Rhuben, and Patrick extended their arms and the stones brightness turned into a beam of energy that combined into a wave of purple, green, and yellow. That beam then dispersed into Zack's and Cody's stones, causing the fire and water stones to shine so brightly that everyone had to cover their eyes.

There was a distinct cracking sound as the red and blue light completely engulfed them.

When the light faded, everyone could see that the darkness, nature, and thunder stones were broken, resting in pieces in their respective owners' hands. They had transferred the power from those stones into Zack's and Cody's, giving them as much power as possible.

"Whoa," Cody said, feeling the energy wash over him. His eyes were glowing a bright blue. He looked over at Zack and saw that his eyes were glowing a red color. He took a deep breath and dropped the stone into his pocket, turning to his brother. "You ready?"

Zack gave a determined smile. "Try and stop me."

A/N: Alright, so, just so you all know, the rest of the story is going to focus more on Zack, Cody, and Bailey, though there will still be stuff with the other characters as well. I hope that you guys liked what I ended up doing with the element stones; Rhu, Crys, and I talked it over and we said that what happened (with them breaking and everything) would make a lot of sense. Plus it brings up a better idea of what to do with the two of them in the sequel.

Uh, if you want to get an idea of the portal that Mother Nature uses, think of the portal that Loki opened for the Chitauri army to come through in Avengers. Which, coincidentally, I watched last night and got inspiration to update.

Sorry for the wait, I hope you enjoyed it.

Cheers,

-Riles