Lloyd's POV

Kai and I squat in a bush about twenty feet away from the gaping hole in the side of a mountain where two men are standing. Both of their swords are sheathed, but both are diligently searching the area, their eyes constantly sweeping across the land in front of them.

With the momentum that the unnatural elementals have been gaining, they have been able to recruit a lot of people into their forces, even those who are not elementals, and these guys appear to be completely mundane.

Kai and I could easily take them down silently, but that's not what we're here to do. We're here to suck every ounce of attention out of the air and direct it all towards us, and if that means doing a bit of extra work, then so be it. In order for any of this to work, we need to appear like we are ready to tear the entire place down.

A warm hand on my arm draws me out of my thoughts, and I look over at Kai. His eyebrows are slightly pinched together as he whispers, "Are you sure you can do this? Back in the mountains, when you tried to use your powers..."

"I freezed up, but I've been working on it, and I know that I can do it. I won't lose control," I verbalize the mental affirmations I have been giving myself ever since that day on the mountains.

I have killed far too many people in my lifetime, people who were simply following their orders, and it has haunted me ever since their blood fell on my hands. I was young and scared and wanted to protect the woman I love, so I let my power out in its most raw form, and it was lethal. I didn't really know how to control my powers even when I wasn't panicking, so that state only made the problem worse. Honestly, I was just a boy looking for a place to call home again, and I was terrified of dying over something I didn't do. I just wanted to survive, and my powers were the way to make that a reality.

Ever since I froze up on the mountain when I came face to face with the unnatural elementals, I've had to dive back into that dark period of my life and really think about it in order to clear up my mental blockade. With Rumi's help, I've seen that the people who died weren't the only victims on the field that day.

Although we were on the run for a long time, the brunt of the intensity was when I was still younger than twenty years old and gripling with my powers. None of the guys had complete control over their powers by that time in their own lives, and they received proper instruction in an emotionally stable environment. There was no way that I would have been able to gain a good enough grip on my powers at that point in time to use them in the same way I can today. I had any chance of even partial mastery taken away when I was chased out of the capital and had to fight for my own life.

The mental strain of our entire situation was enough to make anyone buckle. Even being back with the guys, we can fall back into our old patterns, but things are very different. Being on the run, hated and hunted, for so long has impacted each of us even if we try to conceal it. The light in our eyes is a bit dimmer, and we're always on alert, even if we know we're in the safety of the Destiny's Bounty. That's not even considering how due to all of this, the other three guys in my company were ripped from their soulmates which in itself is enough to break a person beyond repair.

We're victims of the cruel twist of fate that came our way. I am, Harumi is, Kai is, Skylor is, Zane is, Pixal is, Cole (wherever he is) is, Jay is, and hell, even Nya is. I will mourn for those who fell trying to capture us for the rest of my life, but I can't regret my actions anymore because it's what I had to do. I had to use my powers to keep Harumi and I going. I shouldn't feel guilty about protecting us.

My powers are and always have been a gift, and I have to use them to fight for what I believe in.

"Alright then, you ready to make our grand entrance?" Kai asks with a mischievous glint in his eyes. A smirk falls onto his lips, the left corner of his lip tugging upwards and revealing the sole dimple he has on his left cheek.

"Oh, you know I am."

The two of us rise from the bush, making the branches rustle and leaves fall to the ground.

"Halt!" the guards both jump into a fighting stance, pointing their swords in our direction.

I glance over at Kai, an amused smile playing on my lips. I've never fought beside him before, and from all of the stories that I've heard, this is going to be fun.

Kai lets out a large yawn, making a show of stretching his arms above his head. "Do you want to go first or should I?" he lazily glances over at me.

I gesture to the guards in front of us and back up, "They're all yours."

After shifting his head from side to side in an attempt to stretch his neck, Kai stalks forward, drawing his sword from the hilt on his back. A confident smirk is set on his lips, and I can't help but let a chuckle escape as he lights his sword on fire, making the two guards jump back and cower deeper into the cave. I never understood why his soulmate tattoo had a lion, but seeing his prey back away in fear, it all makes sense.

"Oh, come on, what are guards for if they're just going to flee?" he taunts them, lunging forward slightly and making them both flinch. "You two are no fun, really." He draws his left hand away from his sword and lazily flicks it, making a fierce wall of fire fly up behind the guards. One of them lets out a sharp scream, and I draw my sword in preparation for when their allies come running to their aid.

"Nigel, we must fight him," the guard who didn't scream looks over to his companion with a firm voice, gripping his sword tightly, and I have to admit that his newfound tenacity is admirable. "We must delay them for as long as possible."

"Oh please, like you two could slow me down," within a second, Kai is right in front of them, thrusting his flaming sword towards them. Unprepared, one of their swords flies out of their hand at Kai's initial attack, leaving him defenseless. The other swings his sword at Kai, but he parries it easily, twisting his own in a way that applies the proper amount of pressure at the right angle to send it flying from his holder's grip and clattering onto the cave floor.

Ripping one of his hands from his sword, Kai sets his fist ablaze. He strikes one guard squarely in the jaw, not only slightly searing him but also dropping him straight to the floor. Before the other guard can respond, Kai sets his foot alight and lands a kick right below the other man's rib cage. He slams into the cave wall with a flaming shirt, gasping for air as he falls limp to the ground.

Once both guards are clearly out of commission, Kai extinguishes all of the flames and tucks his sword back into its hilt. I jog to catch up with him, and when I finally reach him, he looks into my eyes, and I spot a glow in them that I haven't seen since we were separated all those years ago.

"Nothing gets the blood pumping like a nice warm up," he pulls his arms across his chest in a stretch, looking at his handiwork as he does so. "Not too shabby for someone who hasn't properly fought in centuries. You have the next bunch. I want to see the master of energy in action."

Clattering can be heard from deeper within the cave, and Kai and I meet eyes once again. "Race you to them?" I challenge him.

He raises an eyebrow. "Do you really want to be shown up that badly?"

"You're just scared that you'll lose to someone 137 years your junior," I poke his side, and the competitive fire rises in his eyes.

"You're on."

---

Jay's POV

I'm angry. I'm angry, I'm confused, I'm shocked, but most of all, I'm scared.

Being one of the elemental masters of creation and already having gone through more trauma than any person should have to go through, I thought there was nothing left to fear. I was so incredibly wrong. I hadn't been afraid that Aria would come back because why should I have been? It seemed so impossible that it never even crossed my mind.

The thought of seeing her again makes my stomach lurch. She'll stare at me with those hungry eyes that she could never take off of me, and I'll be forced to hear the deceptively delicate cadence of her voice that tortured me for years. I can still hear her words against the inside of my skull, replaying all of her whines and fake tears and assertions that I was hers, that I am hers.

If I see her again, I think I might break.

"...Jay," Nya hisses quietly, and I jerk up, my attention coming back to the girl crouching down beside me. "I asked you if the bandage was too tight."

I look down at Nya's quick handiwork on my shoulder. Although Cole's attacks on me were by no means deadly, when he did manage to make a hit, he left a gash on my right shoulder –right on my tattoo, may I add– that we decided to bandage up before we went in to save the unnatural elementals. While it isn't anything too serious, it's still better to have it covered up so that it can't get infected.

I muster up a small smile. "Sorry. It's perfect. Thank you."

When I look back up at her, her lips are pursed, and her eyes are hyper focused on my face, scanning it up and down. "I wasn't lying about what I said earlier. If you don't want to do it yourself, I am going to kill Aria with my own two hands for everything that she's done."

The fire that appears in her eyes warms up the pit deep inside of my chest that has gone cold ever since I heard the news. Even if it's only by a little bit, that heat sparks my fighting spirit.

"What we're about to do will be the first blow. Are you ready?" I ask, desperately needing a distraction while also knowing that once we leave here, things between Nya and I will be permanently altered.

Shade

He's inside of that very structure as we speak, waiting for a rescue, and in a short amount of time, he'll be out here with us, with Nya. I know that they're on a break, but with their track record, he definitely assumes that he and Nya are going to get back together. It's only a matter of time until he tries to initiate anything.

I thought that I felt sick a few seconds earlier, but after picturing Nya smiling up at Shade while in his arms, I feel like I could throw up here and now. I can see his hands grabbing onto her waist and pulling her closer to him as he takes in all of her. The look of her eyes in that moment, the gentle twinkle against the chocolate abyss, rips apart my insides little by little because that's how I want her to look at me, yet I can only see the little amused smile she would give him in that very moment.

"I am, but are you?" Nya's eyes grow wide. She reaches out and gently cups my cheek with her rough palm. "You look awful."

I can't help but shut my eyes in response. That's exactly the type of thing that a guy wants to hear before the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with reunites with a potential lover.

I let out a sigh before my eyes flutter back open, and I'm met with Nya's intense gaze. Her eyebrows are drawn together as her thumb brushes over the skin of my cheek.

"I just...I need..." my tongue feels weird in my mouth, and I struggle to articulate any coherent thought. "Yes."

"I'd find that amusing if you weren't so disoriented," she sighs, drawing her hand back and gesturing her head over to the guards who are blocking their entrance. While the news of Lloyd and Kai's attack clearly hasn't gotten to them, it honestly probably won't for a long period of time. It's not as if they can draw in everyone. We'll still need to fight people on our way over, and these two will be our first opponents. "Can you use your powers to quickly knock them unconscious so we can sneak in?"

I draw electricity to my fingers, the thrilling buzz taking over my hands, before I focus myself and let out a shock with a current of about 70 milliamps, enough to drop someone but highly unlikely to kill them. The two men freeze, their muscles involuntarily contracting before they drop to the ground.

I stand up from behind the tree where we've been hiding, and Nya follows as we approach the two of them. I kneel down beside their limp, twitching forms, drawing two fingers to each of their necks below the right side of their jaw. When I feel the thrumming of their hearts, I let out a sigh and stand back up.

"Have I told you that I think your powers are pretty damn cool?" Nya asks from beside me, her slightly wide eyes and smile sending a tingle through my body.

"I don't know, last time you were all 'Jay stop' when I was using my powers," I tease her, trying to grasp onto this relaxed moment for as long as possible.

She rolls her eyes, but from the upwards tilt of her lips, I can tell she's not actually annoyed. "Hey, I had –and have– every right to be worried about you, but that doesn't mean that I can't find your powers cool," she says. Soon afterwards, her head turns to the side so that she can look down the hallway. "Looks like we only have one way from here."

---

"Oh shoot, we've already passed here, haven't we?" Nya rubs her temples as we spot a man passed out on the floor, his muscles twitching.

Without any sense of where the elemental army is being held, Nya and I have been running around in circles trying to find any hint to their whereabouts. They could be on the opposite side of the tunnels for all that we know.

The only thing that is keeping me from spiraling is that our watches haven't lit up with any of the other signals yet. When Zane and PIXAL succeed in grabbing Skylor, they're going to send a white flash of light across all of our watches, and when Kai and Lloyd can no longer hold the unnatural elementals off, they're going to send a red light. Nya and I are supposed to send a blue light once we're done as well.

"I don't think we're close," Nya groans. "Wouldn't we be able to feel the vengestone dampening our powers?"

I shake my head, putting my hands on my hips as I let my powers recharge. I've been dropping every person that we see, and the precision and power needed to restrain myself is draining. "When I was in Shintaro, the guys and I went down into a vengestone mine without realizing it. Vengestone is a lot like the strong nuclear force in the sense that it's immensely powerful, but you need to be in very close proximity to feel its effects. Unless the cave itself was constructed out of vengestone, which it clearly isn't, we wouldn't be able to feel it unless there was a lot of it and we were a lot closer," I lean against the cave wall, feeling the cold stone on my back. It sends a chill radiating through my rather warm body. When I expend electricity, some of the energy comes off as heat, so I easily overheat if I don't take breaks. While I'm not super close to that point, it's always nice to reduce the risks of reaching it.

"How much do you know about vengestone?" she quirks her head to the side as she starts to walk back and forth across the tunnel, the sconces on the wall gently highlighting her skin. A bead of sweat drips down the side of her head briefly before she flicks her finger, and it disappears.

"A decent amount. I was locked up in it for quite some time during the war, or at least surrounded by it, and I did some research on it once I established my own city. Why?" I watch her pace back and forth, and while it fuels my anxious need to do the same thing, I know that I need to conserve my energy.

"Are there any unique properties that you could use to find it from far away? Is there anything that it does to our powers that could be of help?"

I tap my fingers together anxiously, trying to quickly wrack my brain for any and all knowledge that could help us. "Vengestone is like poison to our powers. It not only prevents us from generating more energy for our powers, but it also stops any preexisting energy from coming too close to it."

"So, if someone were to release a giant wave of power in all directions, assuming it didn't break the cave down, they'd be able to sense where their powers randomly give out," she pauses and looks down at her hands. "My powers would be too restricted by the walls."

I give the wall behind me a tiny zap, and I feel my powers spread throughout it. "The walls are great conductors. I can try. It'll take a lot to spread my powers through so much cave and pay attention to it all, so I might be a bit tapped out, but ...."

"I'll fight everyone that comes our way from this point on," Nya states, and I give her a nod followed by a grateful smile before pressing my palms against the wall.

"Unless I pass out, please don't touch me while I'm doing this because my skin is going to be hypercharged, and the energy will immediately try to balance out with yours, and you'll be fried to a crisp," I quickly warn her before I do anything. The last thing I need is to be on the verge of collapse and have her try to pull me away. She'd die, and at that point I couldn't live with myself.

"I won't."

I let out a sigh and tug at the heart of my power. I lull some more energy out from deep within my chest and draw it up to the surface. My hairs stand on edge as the current travels through my nerves and down to my hands where the crackles and zaps fill me with a warmth in my chest.

With my energy primed, I shoot it out in front of me. The electricity soars from my flesh and ripples out in every direction faster than I can perceive. My body shakes as I keep sending out my power to the depths of the cave, and I feel my power give out to my northeast, vanishing into nothingness.

I tremble as I focus on that specific current and trace its way back to us in the cave. Once I mentally lock the directions into my brain, I cut off my power, leaving the wall to disperse everything it has left.

I let out a gasp as I slump against the wall. I close my eyes as I rest against it, my entire body fatigued. The sheer amount of energy I had to send out in order to make sure that the current was consistently sensible everywhere was far more than I thought I could expend. Even back in the cave, I didn't give up that much energy in an hour of trying to get us out.

When I open my eyes, Nya is staring at me with her mouth slightly agape. Her eyes are kind of wide with concern, but there's something else, something more intense that I can't pinpoint. Fear maybe? Her chest is rising and falling quicker than usual.

"I'm alright, just give me a minute," I try to calm her down, but the words are hard to get out. I'm panting to try to cool myself down as much as possible. Sweat clings to my skin. I can feel the strands of hair sticking to my forehead. I muster up enough energy to run my hand through my hair and pull it out of my face.

That unreadable expression stays on Nya's face, making me let out a sigh, "I know that I look absolutely, and when I say absolutely, I mean absolutely, awful right now, but I'm fine."

These words seem to break Nya out of her trance when she slightly flinches then refocuses on me. "No, no, you don't look awful Jay. Don't worry," it comes out in a rush, and I can't help but let out a little laugh.

"You don't need to lie. It's alright," with my limbs feeling only slightly on the verge of collapse, I push myself up and roll my shoulders back.

"I'm not lying. You look..." she trails off, her eyes drifting from mine and landing on my mouth. "...really freaking hot."

Her words steal the strength from my limbs, nearly making me collapse. As if I couldn't get any warmer, my entire body heats up, my cheeks turning pink as my head goes straight into the gutter.

I know that my mind should be on the mission, but I can only think about her. I can only think about the feeling of her lips on mine, of my lips on her skin, of the way her body fits perfectly with mine in every single way possible. Even looking at her now – seeing the tapper of her waist, the musculature of her thighs slightly straining against the fabric of her gi, her strong and defined arms, and our tattoo on those perfectly sculpted shoulders – makes my head spin in the best way possible. Everything else in the world is clouded over with only Nya in focus.

I stare at her lips. Even in the dim light of the sconces, I can see their stunning curvature. There's nothing I want more than to claim them as mine at this very moment.

"We need to go," Nya awkwardly coughs and breaks me out of my trance. Our eyes briefly meet before she turns the other direction, but I catch the searing intensity in them, the same intensity that they had back on that night at the bar.

I stand up completely and push myself off of the wall. "They're this way," I break into a jog, and Nya follows, finding a place beside me and matching my pace perfectly.

Even as we run towards Shade on this day that's ultimately sucked way worse than I could have ever imagined (minus seeing Cole), I can't help but have a small smile on my face.

I still have a fighting chance with Nya.

A/N: Hi everyone! I hope everyone has had a great start to the New Year! I know mine has been really rejuvenating

Shade is back next chapter! Let's see how this turns out

Any questions or comments? I love hearing from you guys!

Thank you all so much for the continued support!