The idea of the L-ementals was originally collectively created by AxelGripp, Khalalat, juribelit, Bry-Guy-1996, and Syfyman2xxx.
The cover image belongs to AxelGripp on DeviantArt and is used with permission.
This story is co-written with dubb1.
Chapter Three
With nowhere else to go, Lincoln and Ronnie Anne went back to the plateau and got some rest. Or rather they tried to, because when Lincoln slept he started to float away and when Ronnie Anne did she started to melt. This woke them up each time and made them feel more tired. The blue girl from before wasn't around anymore so they couldn't ask her for any help. After a while, due to sheer exhaustion they both had to just deal with it.
Hours later Lincoln woke up drifting in the sky and Ronnie Anne woke up soaked into the ground.
"This is weird, and I'm freaking starving." Lincoln muttered as he woke up. The other day he had barely been hungry but now he was ravenous enough to eat anything. Looking around he noticed he was surrounded by magenta cloud wisps that did not look or act alive.
"I know this is not normal, but… that looks good." He said to himself, his mouth watering a little. Or in his case, bits of steam coming out of the corners of his mouth. Cautious, he reached out and grabbed some of the wisps, which he somehow was able to grab like it was mere cotton candy. Then he sampled a taste, and felt invigorated.
"I don't believe it. It tasted like a birthday cake." He said, chowing down on the rest. Then he went for more.
"Amazing, it changes taste each time. One minute it's like a cake, the next it's like a taco, and then it's like pizza. I could live off this stuff and never get tired of it."
Once the wisps were depleted, Lincoln felt full and eager to share this with Ronnie Anne. So he flew back to the plateau, where the slime girl was waiting for him, having dug herself out of the dirt.
"You won't believe this Ronnie Anne, but I just ate some clouds and they tasted great."
"Doesn't that make you a cannibal?"
Lincoln couldn't help but chuckle. "Maybe that's my food here. Hey, we did see some not-water liquid on the way here that some of the animal elementals were consuming, maybe that's your food."
"I think we have more important things to worry about. We can't go home, and we have nowhere to go here, so what are we supposed to do? What can we do?" Ronnie Anne asked.
"Maybe we can see if that village will be friendly to us so we don't have to keep hiding? I mean, if that one girl could give us a chance maybe the others will too?" Lincoln suggested, sounding less confident about the odds than he intended to.
Lincoln and Ronnie Anne went to the edge of the plateau to look at the town. It didn't look any different, but for some reason people were gathering in the town center with lots of barrels. Lots of men were standing with swords and spears by the barrels while a couple went over by the waterfall and the little lake it poured into.
"Hey, it's that girl." Ronnie Anne noted, pointing to the crowd. Down among them, the blue girl from yesterday was looking up at the plateau as if she was trying to spot them. Her eyes locked onto theirs, so apparently she had, then she looked around and saw most adults were preoccupied so she broke from the crowd, but in doing so she disappeared from sight.
"Uh oh, I hope she's not planning on showing us off." Lincoln muttered.
"Should we let her? I mean, this could be our best chance to gain some allies here." Ronnie Anne asked.
"As long as they don't attack us like that big snake yesterday, I think we can handle this." Lincoln admitted, and so the two waited.
After some time the blue girl came back to the same place she found the two elementals before, and this time she had company. It was an adult man, one who looked Hispanic and was dressed sort of like a cowboy. He was on the old side, with shaggy white hair and wrinkles under his eyes, and he had glasses.
"See Doc?" The blue girl said to the old man.
"Are you really talking elementals?" The old man asked with a Texan accent.
"We're kids, like she is." Lincoln replied.
"Incredible, human elementals. This is so strange." The old man said, staring at them like they were exotic animals in a zoo. Or like Lisa when she was getting interested.
"We fell out of our universe and just want to go back home. Do you know how we can do that?" Ronnie Anne asked.
"So you used to be flesh and blood like us?" The old man asked.
"Yes." Both elementals said together.
"Interesting." He thought out loud, stroking his chin. "Okay, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Doctor Jared Pine, and this is my assistant Erin Chick."
"Your name is Chick?" Ronnie Anne asked the blue girl.
"Yeah, why?" She asked, oblivious.
"Nothing."
"Listen, we don't have much time, we've got trouble coming this way. How about the two of you go to my lab and I might have something that could be of use to you. Follow me, hopefully everyone will be too distracted to see you two, though stay close just to be safe."
Lincoln and Ronnie Anne nodded before they followed the two down the plateau and into the western town.
"What's your world like?" Erin asked while they had a chance.
"Not sure how to describe it to someone who's never seen it." Ronnie Anne said.
"Well, our world is called Earth, and we come from a part of it called Michigan." Lincoln started. "Our hometowns are… bigger with a lot more buildings. And there's a lot more people around."
"So you two have a lot of friends?" Erin asked.
"I'd say we both have a normal amount." Lincoln answered.
"Though we both have big families." Ronnie Anne added.
Lincoln nodded. "And we'd like to get back to them."
"That must be nice." Erin said, sounding envious. "I've only got one friend here. My dad's the reverend and my mom's the schoolmarm, so not a lot of kids want to play with me. I think they're afraid my parents will find some reason to judge them or lecture them or something."
"What's everyone so worked up about here today?" Lincoln asked when they got to the edge of town, seeing people looking like they were expecting company.
"Oh, our village has one of the only sources of fresh water here on the Frontier. We get attacked a lot for it, until Doc created a defense that keeps out the bandits and elementals. Um… the other kind of elementals, not you. How did you get in?"
"I flew in." Lincoln explained.
"Oh, he must have missed that. Anyway, there's a tribe of nomads that offer to 'protect' us in exchange for some water every month. Today's the day we give payment."
Ronnie Anne leaned closer to Lincoln. "That must be why we saw those other people kill that water snake the other day. These elementals must be the only resources they have here."
"Hush, don't draw attention." Dr Pine insisted to the kids in a whisper.
It didn't take long to get to the lab in question, though from the outside it looked like an ordinary blacksmith shop. On the inside though it looked like something Lisa might have put together if she lived a hundred years ago. There were old-fashioned machines and even an electric generator, few of which Lincoln and Ronnie Anne could accurately describe.
"Wow, it's like… steampunk Frankenstein here." Lincoln noted.
"I have no idea what either of those words mean." Dr Pine said while petting a dog that barked and looked happy to see them, though the dog was agitated by Ronnie Anne. "Okay, you two are new here, so let me know what you know about this place."
"Well, we know it's not our world and the animals seem to be elementals like us. Everything around here that isn't an animal seems to be made of weird pinkish minerals or something similar. And the moons in the sky are apparently universes, and we fell out of ours when a hole appeared. We went back to try and get back in, but the hole seems to have sealed up now." Lincoln explained.
"Okay, that's a good start. Universes have come and gone, with more people falling out, but if your universe still remains then perhaps your 'falling out' was not natural and that could be why you've changed into elementals. I'm still not sure exactly why though, but there must be some correlation."
"You know what Dad would say if he knew." Erin said.
Dr Pine sighed. "Yeah, sadly I do."
"What?" Lincoln and Ronnie Anne asked together.
"There's a myth here that this world is the workshop of the gods, and everything in it is the materials they use to create a universe. The pinkish stuff you see everywhere is something we call ether, and seems to be the material that universes are made out of. It comes in solid, liquid, and gas form like normal matter. The elementals are ether given a specific form and purpose, and for some reason alive. Our religion here says this world belongs to the gods, used as their testing ground before they create a new world, and when a world dies they save the best parts from that world to use in creating a new one. This town and the plateau are pieces of our old world, and everyone believes someday the gods will create a new home for us away from here."
Erin paused to sigh and roll her eyes. "Yet we've been here for over a hundred years. I'm pretty sure if the gods intended to give us a new home they would have done so by now."
Dr Pine nodded. "Yeah, I'm not a believer of the myth either. I prefer to look at this scientifically. I theorize that we are in a nexus point of the multiverse where several similar universes overlap and thus this space is affected by several universes. Ether is a baseline form of matter that exists in all forms and takes on elemental form as a sort of 'process' that later allows it to integrate in those universes to strengthen them while in turn pieces of those universes fall out and end up here. Sort of like how the human body has to discard dead cells and grow new ones, this world is the 'renewal' portion of several universes that keeps them alive."
The two elementals did not know what to say.
"So one theory says gods make the world and the people here are saved from destruction, while yours says no gods are involved and your universe basically threw you away in favor of new stuff?" Lincoln summarized once he could.
"Essentially."
"Who cares? Can we get home?" Ronnie Anne asked.
"I have an idea that could work, but I lack the ability to test it. Maybe, if you help me, I can get it to work."
Dr Pine went behind one of his boilers and came out with something that reminded Lincoln and Ronnie Anne of the spears that the hunters from yesterday had used to take down the water snake. Though this one was thicker and had prongs on the side, like it was meant to hold something.
"The local creatures here, the ones we call elementals, have been shown to devour each other and certain forms of ether scattered around the landscape. But elementals can be hurt, both by stronger elements or ether itself. Years ago I created a barrier around the village putting ether into the fences and connecting them with conductive wire. As a result the majority of elementals stay out of here. But years ago I began to notice something about the ground the fences were posted in. Instead of mineral ether, the ground had turned into genuine soil."
Dr Pine looked to Erin who nodded and went to a closet, opening the door and pulling out something that reminded Lincoln and Ronnie Anne of the proton packs in Ghostbusters. Judging by her grunts and efforts, the pack was a little heavy, so Dr Pine put down his fence pole and helped her bring it to a table. He set it up while Erin put a purple rock resembling amethyst on the table. The pack seemed to hum as the end began to glow, and Dr Pine pointed it at the stone. He flipped a switch and a jolt of lime green electricity came out and zapped the stone, lighting it up before he turned it off. The purple rock was now sterling silver.
"Whoa, what just happened?" Lincoln asked.
"I discovered that applying the correct electric stimulus to ether triggers a transformation into a proper element. So after some experimenting and a couple failed prototypes I was able to figure out how to control the transformation and now I have a working ether-to-element convertor. Thus rendering our resource scarcity moot."
"Can you use that to zap us and make us human again?" Lincoln asked.
"It's possible. I suspect that the two of you were merged with a significant amount of ether that took on elemental properties in the process. If so, then your bodies will probably still have qualities similar to ether and thus will behave like it."
"What if it doesn't work?" Ronnie Anne asked. "I mean, have you ever turned anything back into ether?"
Dr Pine took aim at the lump of silver and fired another jolt of green electricity. A second or two later, the lump became a purple stone again. Then he fired another bolt and the stone this time began a block of wood.
"Behold, one frequency to make ether into matter, and another to make matter into ether."
"Wow." Ronnie Anne said, unsure what else to say.
"How do you control what it becomes?" Lincoln asked.
"This device has settings programmed in to get specific results, though only for simple ones such as building materials or edible substances. Complex things like manufactured structures are possible but much harder to create."
"So you could turn us back to our normal selves, but there's a chance it might go wrong?" Lincoln asked.
"There's always a chance that something can go wrong." Dr Pine replied.
"Basically, Murphy's Law." Ronnie Anne remarked.
"I have no idea what that is. But are you two willing to give this a try?" Dr Pine asked.
"I am." Lincoln said, stepping forward.
"Are you sure Lincoln?" Ronnie Anne asked.
"Not really, but I've got to try sooner or later anyway."
Erin got Ronnie Anne to step away while Dr Pine led Lincoln behind a curtain.
"Why can't I watch?" The slime girl asked.
"Because in case you forgot, neither of you are wearing any clothes right now."
Ronnie Anne looked at herself, remembering how her clothes had dissolved the other day. Naturally she was embarrassed but glad Lincoln hadn't noticed either.
When ready, Dr Pine zapped the lone son of the Loud family with green energy, filling him with a sensation much like static electricity, only much stronger. The feeling faded quickly and he fell to his knees taking a few deep breaths, as if he had just been running a race with Lynn. When his mind could process it, he saw his hands were flesh and blood again.
"It worked?" He asked, checking the rest of him. Everything was where it was supposed to be and how it was supposed to be. "It worked!"
Just then Dr Pine zapped him using another setting, making the boy yelp and turn back into a living cloud.
"What did you do that for?"
"Excellent, it works both ways. Perhaps I can come up with a method for you to control the transformation." Dr Pine mused.
"Or make clothes that transform with us. That would be better."
"With more ether and some adjustments, that shouldn't be a problem." Dr Pine replied, aiming the zapper again. However, he soon lowered it and looked surprised. "Whoa."
"Whoa what?"
"Look at yourself."
Lincoln looked at his hand, seeing it human once more along with the rest of him. "What the…? How did that happen? You didn't zap me."
In the confusion, Lincoln's arms and legs turned to clouds while the rest of him remained. He then had them turn back to flesh while his head became a cloud too. It didn't last, his head returned to normal too.
"What's happening to me?"
"Remarkable." Dr Pine said. "It appears that my ether converter has given you the ability to control the transformation rather than rely on an outside stimulus."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you don't need to be zapped anymore. You can be normal or elemental at will my boy."
Lincoln's eyes widened, then he grinned. "Actually that does sound cool. Please make those clothes that change with me."
"I'll get right on it. Now get dressed so I can fix your companion."
Lincoln nodded and gathered some simple clothes that looked like they had belonged to the doctor when he was a kid himself. They looked like something Lincoln would wear to a rodeo, but he put them on anyway. Once dressed, he stepped around the corner so Ronnie Anne could see him.
"It worked."
Ronnie Anne smiled and shedded some slimy tears. "I'd high-five you, but I don't want to poison you."
Lincoln raised his hand, turning it into a cloud, surprising her. Nonetheless, she did high-five him and went behind the curtain.
"Great, now I'm hungry again." Lincoln commented.
"Here." Erin said, handing him what looked like an orange apple. He bit into it and enjoyed the taste.
Moments later, a clothed and human Ronnie Anne emerged, pulling the white-haired boy into a hug. Her attire was similar to Erin's, conservative and frilly, like if Lola went square-dancing.
"Now we need to work on getting back home."
"That might not be as easy as you hope it is." Erin told them.
Before more could be said, there was an explosion heard outside.
"What was that?" The two kids said, panicking a little.
"Oh crud, what's going on?" Dr Pine groaned before rushing outside with his converter. Erin followed him and so Lincoln and Ronnie Anne did too. Outside they saw some people run off and take shelter while an elephant made out of fire that was rampaging and destroying the buildings it could, the grass-covered ground charred underneath it.
"They brought an elemental?" Dr Pine asked, aghast.
A few men came out brandishing ether-tipped spears, trying to attack the fiery animal. Despite the western motif, Lincoln noticed an absolute absence of guns among them.
"Dad, what's going on?" Erin said, rushing over to a man dressed as a pastor.
"They took the water and said they didn't need us anymore! So they unleashed this beast to destroy the town and took several women with them!"
"What?" Ronnie Anne asked, not liking the sound of that.
The pastor ignored her and went to help the others take down the fire elephant.
Lincoln turned into a cloud again, discarding his new clothes, and flew over to the burning animal.
"Another one!" One of the townsfolk warned the others.
Lincoln ignored them and punched the fire elephant in the face, hoping to get some kind of result. The fire elephant noticed him and bellowed in frustration, but otherwise showed no harm save for some flickers coming off. Lincoln on the other hand had his fist catch fire and burn him.
"I can actually feel pain?!" He screamed, waving his arm to put out the fire that was spreading. The fire elephant tried to stomp on him so he inhaled and released a much more powerful gust of wind than he had anticipated, pushing the fire elephant back and diminishing some of its flames, but otherwise just bothering it.
Ronnie Anne came up to him in her slime form, her own new clothes discarded too without anyone noticing, and she used her slime to smother the flames on his arms.
"Oxygen and other gasses still burn Lame-o. All you're doing is feeding this thing."
"Well you can still put out a fire by blowing on it."
"You're going to need a lot of breath to blow out a birthday candle that big."
The townsfolk were watching this in wonder. "Talking elementals? What is this?"
"Could they be messengers of the gods? Here to bring us to a new world?"
"Or maybe they're demons here to kill us all off!"
Half the townsfolk resumed their attack against the fire elephant, who was getting much more annoyed, while the other half circled the two kids armed with spears.
"Hey whoa! We're not here to hurt anyone!" Ronnie Anne declared, putting her hands up.
At that moment the fire elephant expelled flames from its trunk like a flamethrower, making a few of the villagers catch on fire. Several people had brought out jugs of water and used it to try and help the burned, including a few who had been standing guard against Ronnie Anne and Lincoln.
"Can you fight that?" One of the men holding a spear asking, eyes darting between them and a fire elephant.
"You bet." Ronnie Anne stated.
She stepped up and threw some of her own slime at the pyro pachyderm. It hit and there was a sizzling sound, but the fire elephant clearly did not like this. It sounded unhappy as it tried to wipe the mucus off itself. Ronnie Anne kept up her attack, noticing that the fire elephant was in fact being driven back, but then she had to stop.
"I can't keep this up." She said, taking several breaths while kneeling and slowly melting, looking like she was having a hard time holding herself together.
"So we're not infinite. There's a limit to how much of our bodies we can actually use." Lincoln noted, then stood in front of her. "Leave this to me."
He then took another deep breath and unleashed another wind attack, this time deliberately as powerful as he could make it. It was like being in a wind tunnel, aimed directly at the fire elephant. The fire elephant was pushed back and lost some of its mass, reduced to about two-thirds of its original size now and looking worse for wear. This encouraged the townsfolk to get in close and attack it directly with ether-tipped spears. The fire elephant decided it had enough of this and ran off away from the village, making everyone cheer.
"You okay Lincoln?" Ronnie Anne asked, still feeling woozy. She saw him on the ground looking like he could pass out, or more accurately fizzle out like smoke. "Hold on, don't give up on me you hear?"
"I hear you. I'm just… really hungry."
"Someone get us some food!" Ronnie Anne called out, getting some attention. However, no one moved. "Seriously? How about a little gratitude for saving your lives?"
A few men pointed their spears at them again. Lincoln and Ronnie Anne tried to look ready to fight back if needed, but neither was in any shape to do so if pressed.
"Stand down!" Dr Pine said, standing between them and the townsfolk.
Erin ran up to the two elementals with a wooden bowl filled with reddish liquid. "Here, try this." She said, holding it for them.
Neither bothered to question what it was, they just took turns drinking it down. Almost immediately they felt rejuvenated and back to normal, at least normal by their elemental standards.
"Wow, that's got some kick to it. What is this stuff?" Ronnie Anne asked, licking her lips.
"Ether in liquid form. Elementals consume it all the time." Dr Pine explained.
"Tastes kind of like lemonade." Ronnie Anne noted.
"I think ether tastes like whatever we want it to taste like." Lincoln claimed.
The pastor came up to them, looking curious but cautious. "Elementals, I know this is much to ask, but if you are not a threat to us, could you please provide more assistance to us?"
"What do you need from us of all people?" Lincoln asked.
"Here on the Frontier, non-ether resources are scarce. This village that we call Nowhere-"
"Wait, this town is called Nowhere?" Ronnie Anne asked.
"Look around us. Where else are we?" Erin asked, spreading out her arms. The two elementals did not reply.
"As I was saying, Nowhere is home to one of the only sources of water around here. Other times you need to kill a water elemental to get water. So you can imagine that we have enemies outside our home who wish to take it from us. There is a tribe of nomads out there who we have an arrangement with. We give them some water once every forty days and in return they protect us from bandits and more dangerous elementals."
"So what happened? Did the deal fall through?" Lincoln asked.
The pastor paused to clear his throat. "The leader of the nomads said that they no longer needed our water. They had found a new source of their own, so if we wished to keep having their protection we had to deliver payment with something else. They… demanded ten of our livestock and two of our women."
"Naturally you told them no, right?" Ronnie Anne asked.
The pastor nodded. "We did, even asking why they'd want that. They said this wasn't up for discussion and had some of the nomads bring in the fire elemental with them, having it trapped. They threatened to unleash it if we refused."
"But what about my anti-elemental barrier? That should have kept it out." Dr Pine asked.
"They tore a hole in it with some kind of weapon I've never seen before." The pastor said, gesturing off to where the fire elephant had been. Now with the wild elemental gone, Lincoln and Ronnie Anne could see that the village was surrounded by a metal fence with ether spires and barbed wire built into it. There was a portion torn apart, like a bomb went off.
"That fence is all it takes to keep elementals out?" Lincoln asked.
"Yeah, it looks like a person could just climb over it." Ronnie Anne added.
"True, but it emits a frequency that elementals seem repelled by. If it was active right now, I'm sure the two of you would not want to get too close to it." Dr Pine explained.
"Please, can you go after the nomads and bring the women they've kidnapped home? As well as do something about their new weapons?" The pastor asked.
Lincoln stood up and tried to crack his knuckles, which did nothing since he had no bones at the moment. "I'll do it, but my friend and I will need some help with our own problem when this is over."
The pastor smiled. "Thank you, divine ones. Blessings upon you."
Lincoln and Ronnie Anne were confused by this, but said nothing. Lincoln turned into a cloud and Ronnie Anne climbed onto him again, with him flying out as the townsfolk watched them leave. A few cheered, but the majority were silent.
"Hey, are those tire tracks?" Ronnie Anne asked when they got into the valley, seeing treads in the ground.
"I think so. Do they have cars here?" Lincoln asked, following the tracks.
For the most part the tracks went in a straight line, eventually leading to a bunch of cars and tents ringing around a big sinkhole. Said cars were not normal, several looked like modified race cars but a few looked like monster trucks. People seemed to be out celebrating something, cheering and laughing while food and drink were passed around. Most of them were dressed like renegades from a Mad Max movie, some covered with paint and piercings. And oddly there were some elemental animals among them like pets, mostly a couple of metal dogs colored gold or silver or platinum, and they were chewing on some iron bars like they were bones. They could see some normal pigs and goats that looked agitated, while some people were chopping up and skinning several others and distributing the meat. Looks like the nomads wasted no time in putting the stolen livestock to use.
"What kind of world did these people come from?" Ronnie Anne asked.
With no one noticing them in the frolic, Lincoln floated around and above the party, soon finding a metal cage with two women inside wearing clothes more similar to Erin's own. Both looked afraid and close to Leni and Luna's age, and were trying to fend off the rowdy partiers who seemed to delight in taunting them from the other side of the bars.
"I think I could damage those bars if we could get everyone away, but even if we do get them out how are we going to get them back without everyone following?" Ronnie Anne asked.
Lincoln looked around. 'Hmm… we need to free the girls without endangering them, get them a ride that they can actually use, prevent these people from following us, and have something to fight them off with when they do come back for revenge. Okay Man With The Plan, time to do your thing.'
Some elevators were built into the sinkhole and began to move up. Lincoln and Ronnie Anne could see two people come into view, a man and a woman both about the same age as Lori and Bobby. The man had bright blue spiked hair and a muscled body, and he wore a red tank top with purple pants, multiple scars visible on his arms and chest. The woman had bright green long hair and a curvaceous endowed body, and she wore a black bikini top and bright yellow cargo shorts, clearly wanting people to look at her body.
"What's that?" Ronnie Anne asked, pointing to the thing the two newcomers were standing atop. It looked like a giant car battery except it had glass panels showing the inside, and inside there were multiple electric elementals that did not look happy.
People began to cheer and the two people on the big battery waved, soaking up the attention. At the same time a biker went up to them, carrying something.
"Ronnie Anne, look!" Lincoln called out.
"I see it, and I don't believe it."
The biker was holding an ether converter, much like the one Dr Pine had used on them earlier.
"Everyone, we have made the first step towards conquering the entire Frontier!" The blue-haired man announced triumphantly while the biker seemed to plug the converter into the battery. The electric elementals inside went wild with that. The crowd paid it no mind and just cheered.
"For years we have been forced to hide underground and scavenge for anything that keeps us alive, relying on that dirthole Nowhere to keep us supplied with water!"
'They live in the sinkhole? And they're calling the town a dirthole?' Lincoln asked himself.
"And that dirthole was working to screw us over! A man of science created a machine that can turn the ether of this world into whatever we need it to be! So not only would they have all the water they could ever want, but food and metal and anything else! They wished to toss us to the dust, no longer needing us to keep them safe as they built up their town and became a kingdom here in this world!"
This resulted in a lot of boos.
"But now we have one of our own, and a power source to keep it working for years to come! All the water, all the food, all the fuel, anything we could ever want! We will be the ones who reign over the Frontier here! We will be the rulers!"
The crowd cheered again.
"Alas though, there is one thing we cannot create with the machine. And that's flesh." The green-haired girl continued, making them go quiet. "We cannot convert ether to flesh and blood, so we cannot make animals or people with it. And I don't know about you, but I'm fed up with never getting to have meat while those farmers get to have some."
A lot of people in the crowd agreed to that, with a few holding up meat on a bone.
"So instead of killing those who would oppose us, we should capture them and put them to use. Make them make our food, or if they refuse, make them be our food."
There were a few complaints, but Lincoln was glad that no one here seemed to be cheering for potential cannibalism.
"Relax, we brought you two women to help convince you to not be so bloodthirsty. Let us have a game to see who gets to be the first to have a claim to them. Be it a warm bed or a full belly." The blue-haired man proclaimed, bringing enthusiasm back to the crowd.
"What a bunch of monsters." Ronnie Anne said, disgusted.
"Ronnie Anne, I think I have an idea here, but it's going to rely a lot on you." Lincoln said.
"I'm in." She replied, not needing to hear more.
The crowd moved to the flat land away from the sinkhole, leaving the giant battery and the cage with the captive women where they were. To Lincoln's relief, they didn't leave guards there, the nomads were probably a little overconfident now, which he was willing to take advantage of. He lowered to the ground and let his friend off him. Ronnie Anne went up to the cage while he went to the vehicles.
"Stay away!" One of the women said to Ronnie Anne.
"Relax, I'm here to bring you home. And yes, I'm a talking elemental." She told them, grabbing the bars and mentally willing her mucus to be acidic enough to burn through as fast as it could. She was pleased to see the metal sizzle and be eaten away at.
"Are you a god?" One of the other women asked.
"Uh… yes." Ronnie Anne replied, remembering some advice she got from a movie.
"Pastor Chick was right, the gods would come to bring us to a new world someday."
'Pastor Chick, that name's a joke waiting to happen.' The slime girl thought, amused.
Meanwhile, Lincoln had drained the vehicles of all fuel, cutting the lines with wind blades and letting it drain onto the ground. He thanked his father for making him learn the anatomy of a car. Once done he went to the giant battery, looking in and seeing the electric elementals inside.
'They must have the same machine as Dr Pine, but not the same power source or the same capabilities. If I destroy this, they may not be able to use it anymore. They'll be angry, but they'll lose their leverage over Nowhere and have to go back to working for them or leave this place entirely. Either way, it's better than letting them be able to get away with taking more women hostage.'
He unplugged the ether converter and hurled it down the sinkhole, grinning when he heard the faint sound of it breaking apart. Then he grabbed a rock and went back, throwing it at the glass window with wind-enhanced velocity. There was a crack but the glass didn't shatter. However the electric elementals within got agitated and banged against the weak spot until it did break, allowing them to escape.
This caught the attention of the nomads who dropped what they were doing and went back to the sinkhole. The electric elementals went for them and attacked, only a few people were carrying ether weapons at the time that could fight back.
"What is the meaning of this?!" The blue-haired man shouted.
Lincoln gestured for Ronnie Anne to bring the two women to the one vehicle he did not sabotage. They got into the seats, Ronnie Anne making herself much less acidic now, and Lincoln got into the driver seat.
"You know how to drive?" She asked.
"Dad showed me how to start Vanzilla and which pedal is which. We're just going to have to rely on luck for the rest." He said.
Unable to provide a better alternative, Ronnie Anne allowed him to start the car and get them out of here. Lincoln did struggle for a moment to get it going, but once he did his focus was on getting it to keep going in a straight line.
Behind them a lot of people yelled curses and profanities, struggling to get the other cars and chase after them. A few were able to start but not get far, due to not having much fuel to begin with. But one of the monster trucks managed to catch up to them. Lincoln could see the blue-haired man and the green-haired girl in the front seats, looking pissed. The girl took out what looked like a bottle with a rag stuffed in it, while the man had a torch. Ronnie Anne reacted by throwing some slime in front of the truck, getting them to drive into the puddle. Almost immediately the tire began to melt before bursting and making the truck lose control. The drivers yelled in a panic, dropping their weapon which did nothing as it wasn't lit, and the truck was forced to come to a stop before crashing.
Less than two hours later, Lincoln and Ronnie Anne made it back to Nowhere. The townsfolk were happy to see the kidnapped women back, who were hugged by their families.
"Thank you elementals." Pastor Chick said on behalf of them all. "But the nomads will come back."
"We made that difficult for them. They won't be any worse than they already were." Lincoln said.
"How can we ever repay you?"
"We just want to go back home."
"Can you take us with you? Give us the home we've been praying for?" One of the townsfolk asked.
"I can't carry all of you. You'd have to figure out a way to get to the moons for that."
"I believe I can do something about that." Dr Pine spoke up. "However, it will take time and I will need a lot of help to make it work."
"How much time?" Ronnie Anne asked.
"I don't know. But it shouldn't be too long."
"How optimistic." Ronnie Anne said sarcastically.
"Relax, how long could it possibly be?" Lincoln asked.
Despite the optimistic attitude Lincoln was trying to show, a part of him asked himself that same question, with way less optimism.
'How long could it possibly be?'