I no longer have a lot of the drawings from the "olden days" of the Elemental Guardians (back when they were called the Super Pokefriends... *sigh* I was in middle school, I thought that name sounded awesome...) due to random tossing over the years - but I was kinda shocked at how little I still had 😅 It's basically all stuff from the brief period of 'overlap' with Ace starting off on his own.

The Castle of the Sunbird, September 2005

According to my notes on the back of this, I drew this 2 years after I wrote this story. Castle of the Sunbird marked a big shift in process and in storyline. 

• It was the last story to use the "Super Pokefriends" title (before switching to "The Elemental Guardians")
• It was the last I drew as a comic booklet (paper folded and stapled between a construction paper cover (before switching to typing)
• It marked where the ever-growing group of power-wielding teenagers split up. Part of it was for writer reasons - there were SO many characters because I couldn't stop adding more lol. The other part was plot related, it just flowed to a point where a lot of them wanted to be a leader and that was problematic for one big group.

Much of it was based on and inspired by a summer trip to Colorado where we visited cliff dwelings, learned about other native American stuff in the area, and an actual rock near Colorado Springs called Castle Rock (go figure).

But the basics (that I can remember) were the group goes to help this tribe of people whose brother and sister duo are kinda duking it out on who gets to lead their people, and some of the 'guardians' side with one and some with the other. Ultimately, the sister flippantly evokes their deity, the Sunbird, and then it actually shows up and brings the justice she was calling for - on her. In my memory, it feels like the first "grown-up" story I wrote and started me on more compelling/plot-driven pieces more than just "what fun thing someone else made can I throw in today" :D

Where the Fault Lies, Part II, 2006

I'm almost positive I had a drawing for Part I... I feel like I have to have another stash of drawings somewhere... But yes - you may recognize a few people here (namely one Gallagher). I honestly cannot remember much about this one other than it focuses mostly on the "Hylian" groups of Guardians who live/work in Hyrule. The "Triforce," made up of Link, Jill, and Jim (from Treasure Planet) teams up with a few loners (mostly my real life friends - one of whom becomes Cloud from Final Fantasty when he wears a special pendant lol) which include newly allied Ace, who has become BFFs with Henri. The Triforce takes in a young boy they believe is just a Hylian boy, but somehow or another they find out he's actually Link's ancestor who has travelled through time for some reason. I think it was me trying to link (HA) together the various Zelda timelines in my own way. Or something. I don't remember much more than that... I should try to re-read some of these, lol.

Ace is cute in his little random armor (and elbow pads still aparently). He never ends up with any sort of power, he just hangs out with everybody.

Mioko Del Mar, 2007?

Mioko had been around a while before he finally starred in his own story, Mioko del Mar! I think I mentioned bits of this story before, but he finds a wounded leviathan in Lake Hylia. The leviathan is kind and gentle and they both immediately trust each other. Mioko tells Link about the leviathan, but Link doesn't believe a dragon could be living in the lake unnoticed this long and doesn't believe him. Mioko's roommate, Clopin (from Hunchback of Notre Dame) is a potions master, and Mioko tries to convince him to help him help the leviathan, but Clopin also refuses with some other sort of excuse. So, Mioko tries to brew a very dangerous magical potion on his own... and it explodes and binds him to it/a crystal that forms from the explosion.

Somehow, while this is going on, the Zora discover the leviathan's presence and show up in force to capture/kill it. This inadvertently proves to Link (and Clopin) that the leviathan is indeed real, and there's some sort of battle that Mioko stops by using his newfound power (I don't remember those speciifics...). He then uses the crystal and his power to heal the leviathan, learning the give-and-take qualities in the process, but knowing he would rather bear the kind dragon's pain.

Anyway, this little breakout for him is what made me realize he needed to come hang out with Ace... haha.

Mioko, Sept 2002

Speaking of, here's Mioko from almost exactly 24 years ago! ........wow.

He began as a Zelda fan character (where his long ears REALLY came from...) and there was some sort of mini plot with him training for the Hylian army and he gets severely wounded and ends up unable to fight/stay in the army, so he goes through a bit of healing on multiple fronts. He does always kinda wish he could serve his country, through, and I think that's where this pseudo-angsty piece came from, heh.

Fire & Steel, 2005

A pretty cool drawing of Jill (you can see where both Athena AND Gemini come from lol) the fire guardian battling Kyle (a rare OC not based on an existing charaacter or friend) the steel guardian/villain. If you know anything about Pokemon, you know who has the advantage at this moment, haha. I always thougth the poses and style were cool for this one.

What's fun is I made this outfit once (not the slits up the thighs though; I'm not sure why I thought that was such a cool fashion choice then, lol). I wish I had kept that little black dress, haha.

The ATV roared beneath her. She tightened her grip around Colton’s waist as she eyed the large drip in the trail. Her butt left the seat as they soared into the air, and crashed down with laughs. They swerved, two of the wheels inching off the trail, as Garrett swerved towards them with a whoop before speeding off.

“Challenge,” Colton declared over the engine. “Hold on!”

She readjusted her grip, tightened it again, and braced to stop her head from snapping back as the ATV shot forward. The familiar woods whipped by; the oaks and ash trees blurring together in a brown-gray and green monotony. Penny’s eyes widened as they zoomed straight at a large, rotting tree.

“Col—!”

She shut her eyes before impact, peeking when the crash didn’t come. Her breath caught.

Ivy covered everything in the sunlit clearing. It was so thick and green that it was difficult at first to see the browned path that cut though. It looked like a valley of all ivy as it blanketed the large trees and tangled together to create walls.

Her hands loosened as she soaked the scene in. This place needed a picture. She needed to revisit it, make sure she remembered each detail of it.

A movement near the farthest curtain of ivy drew her attention. Something was there, something extraordinary, but the ATV crashed back into the dark, typical woods seconds later.

They landed with a couple rough bumps right in front of Garrett, and sped off.

Back at Colton’s house, Penny sipped a soda while Garrett challenged Levi to the next race. (Colton’s parents accepted that their boys would ATV, the rule was Garraett had to always be on hand during the trail rides. Never having to share his ATV suited him fine.) Colton plopped next to her, took a swig of Coke, and pulled out his phone.

“Gage says his girlfriend is keeping him,” he said, rolling his eyes. He waved his drink at the disappearing ATVs. “Want me to show you how to drive?”

“Yeah… when we aren’t racing,” Penny said. 

She pulled out her new, sleek white smartphone courtesy of her new caseworker. It fit in her pocket well enough, but didn’t have the compactness of her old phone. It felt more breakable, and with the screen exposed and tapable to activate, it felt almost too simple after being used to a phone that flipped into a full keyboard. The camera was miles better, and it could take some video, although the quality of those were much less than the still pictures. She smirked at the little, sepia camera tucked in the corner of her screen.

“What was that place we drove through,” Penny asked. “The one with all the ivy? I’d love a few pictures for my Instagram.”

“I don’t get Instagram,” Colton muttered.

“You aren’t really the photographer type,” Penny teased. “So… all that ivy?”

He shrugged. “Just a shortcut. I never really noticed it was full of ivy.”

“...How? It was everywhere.”

He gave another shrug. “It was just green to me.” He laughed at his phone. “Suddenly, Gage’s girlfriend is too busy to come. There’s no way she’s real. I ain’t buying this other school bs.”

“If she’s close enough they’re dating, then she’ll be in our class once we hit junior high,” Penny said. “He won’t be able to say she goes somewhere else. It won’t make sense.”

“Watch that they break up before summer ends, and he's too angry to point her out in the hall,” Colton said. “I'll bet you anything; when school starts up next week, he'll mysteriously be single.”

Colton’s mom pulled up in her small SUV. She climbed out with her purse and a plastic bag of groceries. She ordered Colton to help with the other bags on her way in, giving Penny a polite but warm smile as she passed.

Penny held her phone, staring beyond it, going back to that ivy covered glade. There was something there. She couldn’t explain it, but there was something pulling her back there. Something had moved, she was positive. The scene had been too quick to register anything beyond that it definitely moved.

She checked her Instagram account, smiling at the stream of comments on her newest bigfoot footprint picture. Most expressed doubt, a few believed, but the general consensus was that it was a great shot.

She needed to get back to that glade.

---

Garratt dropped her off downtown after ATVing. Penny had decided against him taking her all the way back to her bus stop in the next town. She had a few bucks for an after lunch snack, and decided to upload some pictures in peace before returning to sheltering in her room.

She munched on a pastrami and rye sandwich while looking through her newest pictures. None of them had anything fantastical about them, but there were a few in the forest that had great shadows. It was a matter of picking which one served best as appeasement until she found a fairy or something else more interesting.

The chime above the diner door sounded. Penny straightened when she recognized the woman in the set as the mage she had met a few months earlier. There was a severe, dark-skinned man with her that gave off a distinctly foreign air from the way he walked, looked around, and wore his clothes.

The pair took a seat in the booth behind hers with the mage sitting with her back to Penny. She thought of saying something, but the man’s deep, dark eyes bore into her a moment before continuing their surveying of the small diner. It was enough to get her back to her phone. It was highly likely that mage forgot about her anyway.

“Stop it,” the mage hissed. “You’ll make people nervous.”

He gave her a plain face that clearly indicated that he did not care, and continued looking around.

Penny didn’t bother looking up when the bell chimed again. She narrowed her choice down to two photos, and was having a tough time deciding if the fallen log or the shimmering stream was the better option.

She jumped at the sudden slamming of hands on the table behind her. The newcomers were a tall woman with brassy skin and dark hair, and a twitchy, petite woman that looked as if she decided to give herself a pixie cut. It was the tall woman who was bearing down at the mage and her companion, glaring daggers at them.

“You!”

“K-Keeper Yardley…,” her companion tried, her frail voice dying away.

“How dare you,” Yardley snarled, throwing off her companion’s touch before it fully landed on her elbow.

“Please, sit,” the mage said hastily. “We’ll explain—.”

“Explain? Explain!” Yardley laughed cruelly. “Why don’t you explain it outside. In private.”

The mage's colleague shrugged and started to stand.

“And give you a chance to attack us,” the mage said coolly. “I think not. Please, just… let me explain. And keep your voice low.”

The warning was unnecessary. Yardley had surprised several diners with her entrance, but she had been keeping her tone down, leaving them to quickly lose interest.

“You slaughtered a unicorn,” Yardley said in a low rumble. “Explain that.”

Penny froze, hardly daring to breathe. She couldn’t risk missing this explanation all while dealing with the excitement, and sadness, in learning that there had been a unicorn so close. Anger bubbled within her stomach. Yardley was justified in her fury.

“She wasn’t slaughtered,” the mage said. “We—.”

“Murdered her.”

“Alicorn,” the mage’s companion said thickly. “The alicorn.”

Yardley was visibly shaking. Her hands were so tight her bony knuckles were white, ready to cleave through the two sitting in increasing agitation in the booth.

“You harvested her,” Yardley seethed.

Penny was no longer pretending to be preoccupied with her phone. It sat on the table, the screen now black.

Alicorn had powerful healing properties. She learned that when she was young but it hadn’t occurred to her that getting alicorn was harmful to unicorns. She assumed the horns shedded the way antlers did.

“They must live during gather,” the mage’s companion said. “You know this.”

“She was on her last leg,” the mage said quickly. “We’d been observing her for months. She was so far gone that her colt hasn’t left her, and he must be nearing two judging by his color.”

“And so, you take it into your hands to end her life? Did you spare her colt, or force him to watch,” Yardley asked, her dark eyes slits.

“We had little choice,” the mage said. “That mare was too close to people. If we just waited for her to die, she could’ve been found. The Auctorita is protecting the Realm and the creature in it by humanely euthanizing—.”

“You play gods with creatures that walked the earth when we were still finger painting caves!”

“Should we have waited until she naturally died,” the mage asked, raising her voice. “The alicorn would be useless then!”

“Maybe we should all calm—,” Yardley’s companion tried.

“You boil down a life to a horn!”

“We need to calm down,” Yardley’s companion pleaded again. “Outside? Perhaps? Too many ears here."

Penny ducked her head towards her phone, turning slightly as the group passed. She left her crusts and cash on the table, grabbing her phone and hurrying after them.

They hadn’t walked far, just to the corner, only a building down. Their angry voices drifted among the buildings, still arguing over if it was right to harvest alicorn, and if it was, then was the Auctorita right in killing the unicorn rather than hovering until right before her last breath.

Yardley was immoveable. The mage plead the case the most, often hushing or clarifying her stern companion’s words. The second keeper simply appeared to want to evaporate on the spot.

Her ears caught the word “glade” and her mind shot back to ATVing with Colton. She saw the curtains of ivy, the shine of it in the dazzling sun.

The two members of the Auctorita and the keepers split in separate directions, neither party walking away relaxed or satisfied. Penny hesitated where she stood for too long as they both vanished from sight, forcing her to retreat to her bus stop. 

There were dozens, if not hundreds, of glades between her town, Colton’s, and the other more rural towns that neighbored them. But, Penny couldn’t shake that something was in that ivy glade. She knew it, and would prove it.

---------------------

This one is pretty short, but I didn't want to end with Hodge (spoiler...I guess, lol). It felt like too much to jumo from 'oh pretty ivy' to 'there's the unicorn' with Penny being as restricted in her movements as she is right now.

Penny's new phone is a Moto G, probably first gen for the cheaper option. And she hasn't bought a colored shell since her home would be like ...why waste the money (~$15).

Ms. Beauchamp strained a smile at her before once more dropping her eyes back to her papers. Her smile fell further and further until it completely vanished. She flipped her page to see the one beneath.

“Your grades were good this year too,” she said. “You look ready for seventh grade. How do you feel about that?” Her brow knitted as Penny shrugged. “I was worried when your placement with the Lamberts ended how it did, but you’re doing so well in the group home.”

“Not like I have another choice,” Penny grumbled. “I didn’t exactly get a line of placements after they put that aggression notice in my file.”

“I’m working on getting that removed,” Ms. Beauchamp said. “It’s only….”

“Only I am aggressive,” Penny said, eyes narrowed. She leaned back in her seat. “It says so in my file. I keep getting in fights with the others at the home. I got in a few at my school over the last two years.”

Ms. Beauchamp let out an exhausted sigh.

Penny had been removed from the Lamberts the week following Brooke’s hospitalization. She was put in a group home a town over. The home was in a different district, so the last few weeks of fifth grade were finished in a completely different place. It didn’t bother her as much as she expected it to; there was a weight off, a relief, at having none of the whispers and rumors from the Mr. McBride and Brooke fallout following her.

The downside was that the group home offered no friendships. The Lamberts had told–with great relish–how she clawed Mr. Lambert’s hand and threw a table at Mrs. Lambert. They constantly feared for their daughter’s safety, and their own, and that landed Penny among a much rougher, and older, crowd.

Every girl was Aaliyah but with hair pulling. Every boy was more than willing to use his height and weight against her, and at times had used fists on some of the other girls. Penny’s solace was her classes where she went ignored, the library that cherished silence, and the woods where quiet sometimes led to fairies, a bigfoot, and various more common animals like deer and birds.

“Penny,” Ms. Beauchamp said, lowering her tone, “I want to hand over your file on a good note. Will you please consider placements that could lead to adoption?”

“No.”

“I had to try,” she said, sighing heavily. She gave Penny a weak smile. “It was so nice getting to know you. Please, give your new social worker a little grace, okay? She’s fresh from college.”

There was bitterness as she waited for the bus back to the home. Ms. Beauchamp had tried helping her when she wasn’t fraying at the edges. She’d spoken to the Lamberts about allowing her to go to church, not that anything came of it. She had gotten her a cellphone. Penny did believe she tried to get the aggressive label off her file, but guessed she only asked once or twice before calling the battle lost.

Ms. Beauchamp had brought up considering opening up to adoption possibilities ever since the Lamberts evicted her. Each mention unsettled her. It made her wonder what had changed. It didn’t occur to her before Aaliyah started rubbing it in her face shortly after she joined the Lambert home that she was not an adoption candidate, and since then the thought of her mother returning flitted in and out of her mind.

It contradicted her mother surrendering her at birth, but so did having Aisling–her mother’s younger sister–positioned to watch over her when she was very small, before the state stepped in and declared the nuns incompatible with whatever it was.

“Penny?”

She startled, looking around. Her eyes widened slightly as a smile spread over her face.

Colton was taller and had thinned just enough that it was noticeable. His round, cheerful face lit up when he saw it was indeed her, and that she was smiling back. He quickly took the seat next to her on the bus stop bench.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” he half-joked. He looked around. “Are you alone?”

“Yeah; I was catching up with my case worker,” Penny said. “You?”

“Garrett’s supposed to be around here somewhere,” Colton said. “He’s got a license now. Just circles the block when any of us need to run into a place to grab something.” He scuffed his feet on the cement. “I heard Brooke got sent over to Virginia. They wanted her in some special home with therapists to watch her after she got out of the hospital.”

“Have you talked to her?”

Colton shook his head ruefully. “Her number got disconnected. My mom says it was to give her a clean slate.” He twisted his hands in his lap. “And… she said what you did took a lot of guts, and that it was the right thing to do.” He snorted. “I got in trouble for not noticing something was off.”

She swallowed roughly, nodding as words failed her. No one other than that old priest had told her what she did was right. It felt more real and sincere coming from someone her age than an adult who betrayed her trust.

“Oh, and, my dad said you were probably right about the bigfoot,” Colton said lightheartedly, “so, there’s that too. Guess he swears he’s found hair out bow hunting.”

She laughed as a wave of relief crashed over her.

They caught up a bit. Colton filled her in on their small group; Whitney and Destiny had gotten good enough at crochet that they had a booth during Spring Break. Levi had a growth spurt that somehow erased most of his fear of everything. Gage had a girlfriend, or said he did. No one saw her yet. Aaliyah, apparently, was now fostered by the Sizemores after a six month gap elsewhere. She was still mean, but left them well enough alone. Colton suspected she had started to like having Brooke as a flunky, and was giving them a break out of some twisted sense of respect.

Penny was not as forthcoming about what she’d been up to. Playing over her life after the Lamberts caused her to see how upsetting it would sound to someone else, between the bullying and neglect. Her highlights centered too much on studying what she could of the Realm and searching for creatures to get pictures of, both things were very off limits especially with how Colton and the others reacted when she tried to show them she wasn’t lying about the bigfoot.

A dark red car with a slightly dented hood abruptly stopped in the bus stop lane. The window slid down, and Garrett gave them a superior smirk.

“Jump in, teeny, tiny, baby bro!” He squinted at Penny. “Hey, ain’t you one of his friends from school? Want a ride? I can give you a ride.”

“She can see that,” Colton said dryly. He shrugged at Penny. “He could though.”

Reluctantly, she accepted the offer and climbed into the backseat with Colton. They continued talking about their group of friends, and made tentative plans to get together that weekend. Garrett readily agreed to act as chauffeur for the group.

She had them drop her off a block from the home, near the bus stop. It would’ve been too much of a headache if the administrators or the other kids saw her with friends. Outside connections were treated suspiciously, and Penny was not about to open herself up to ridicule or interrogation.

She walked with her nose in her phone, smiling as she scrolled her updated contact list. Her steps slowed, and smirk waned as she rounded the corner. The hairs on her neck stood, stopping her still. Her eyes darted but all she saw was a woman in her thirties looking at a paper map with an annoyed frown.

Penny carefully approached, the odd pressure building up on her chest as she did so. She stood quietly next to this woman, looking her over–especially her sleeve cuffs–before clearing her throat.

“Are you lost,” Penny asked.

“Oh. Yes.” She gave a small, embarrassed laugh as she looked at the map in her hands. “Obvious, isn’t it. You couldn’t point me in the direction of the nearest rental car place, could you? I thought my colleague said it was on Vineyard Avenue, but I can’t find it. …Or where I am.”

Penny warily moved closer, still feeling the pressure from the woman and finding an odd sense of comfort in it at the same time. She was able to show her where they were, and guessed the road was really called Vine and not Vineyard.

“Vine… That makes more sense. Looks like a tree slash plant naming theme for about half of them.” The woman gave another embarrassed laugh. “My colleague has a thick accent.”

“No smartphone,” Penny asked, watching her fold the map away.

“Oh… No…. I’m not a fan. I guess.” She tucked the map into her pocket with difficulty. “Thanks for the help.”

She stepped in front of the woman, startling her enough to cause her to take a couple of steps back.

“Are you a mage,” Penny asked. The word got a visible reaction, stiffening posture and widening eyes. “My aunt is a mage.”

“Oh.” She laughed, nervous and relieved. “I was about to say, I wasn’t sure where that was going.” She smiled proudly. “I am. So, you can sense magic? Well, I guess that makes sense if you have magic in the family.”

“Are you with the Holy Cor? I was looking for the embroidery.” She tilted her head. “I guess you’re not a nun though…. The Order of Ferblanc doesn’t accept mages, right? A keeper?”

“I don’t… You’re so informed. But, no, not any of that.” She puffed herself up again. “I’m with the Auctorita.”

“The what?”

“The… the Auctorita,” she said, deflating.

She shrugged, completely at a loss. Aisling never mentioned this group, assuming they were a group. She had been told the basics of the Realm, and about the Holy Cor; the Order of Ferblanc acted as knights for the Realm and protectors of the Holy Cor, including protecting mages from others and others from mages if need be. She knew the least about keepers as they were reclusive and dealt more with fantastical critters, arguably the more interesting part of the Realm as far as Penny was concerned. They at least made for more interesting photos than people.

“Is the Auctorita like the Order of Ferlanc?”

“No, no, we’re so much more than that,” she said, regaining some pep. “We’re all over the world now. In different companies, and governments, and just… everywhere!”

“Like spies?”

“No,” she said, horrified. “No, not at all. We’re more like…” she frowned as she searched for a more flattering word, “liasons. We bridge the Realm and the rest of the world. So, if, say, a bigfoot destroys a campsite, we’re more likely to have an agent nearby ready to help instead of waiting for news to get to keepers or a Knight. And, we can smooth it over faster and come up with some kind of cover story instead of just take the beast away and let rumors fly.”

“Then… you guys work directly with the king,” Penny asked.

The mage’s smile fell again. “No…. No, we have a different leader.” She stepped away. “I shouldn’t keep my colleague waiting. It was so nice to bump into someone who knows about my world.”

Penny gave a lackluster wave as the mage disappeared around a corner.

There were parts of this Auctorita that sounded good; having agents ready on hand and all over would be helpful for keeping the Realm secret and protecting who and what needed protection quicker. But, there was something off-putting about how the mage said they had a leader independent from the king. That, coupled with how the Auctorita was inside of big businesses and governments, came across more like the Auctorita was in competition with the Protector of the Realm.

Aisling and Mother Mary Clare had made zero mentions of the Autorita. Either it was a newer organization, or they had such negative views that they planned on telling her when she was older. If that was the case, the Auctorita might be more aligned with bad than good.

A thought popped into her head as she crossed the threshold into the group home. Her mother was sensitive to magic, like she was, but had no ties to the Holy Cor, keepers, or the Order of Ferblanc. There was a chance this Auctorita was never mentioned by Aisling because Keena joined up. Perhaps their brother had too, and his death was somehow the fault of the Auctorita, and that was the cause of the friction between them.

She was pulled from her thoughts upon entering the room she shared with a couple of older girls. They were holding up a smartphone and making facings, clicking away.

“What are you doing,” Penny asked.

“Making profile pics. You wouldn’t get it. You’re not online.”

“Oooh, this one looks good! Zoom in on me. I’ll use that for my Instagram.”

“Instagram? Is that like FaceBook,” Penny asked. She cringed when they laughed at her.

“It’s cooler. There’s too many old people getting on FaceBook now. What do I care about your daughter-in-law’s house rules?”

“Instagram is all pictures. Like it should be. Oooh, we should do food pictures next! Those seem popular.”

Penny jumped aside to avoid the girls bowling her over in their haste to find a plate of food. She pulled out her trusty, lime green phone and went into her photos. She had quite the collection of gnomes, haunts, fairies, and massive footprints. There were so many that she had started needing to choose which to keep. It would be nice to preserve as many as she could.

------------------------------

Twoish year jump, so Penny should be around 12. I'm getting really confused on if she was born in 2002 or 2003, and it's partly because I keep forgetting if she and Ira are the same age or she's a year older. I think they're the same age (she was described as younger in the Nellie story, but Ira's more mature/subdued so reads older, especially to a younger kid).

I keep plugging in questions about if Instagram was wide spread at ____ year, and then remember that yes, this is ~2014, lol. I didn't join until shortly before my move to Japan in 2019 (and hardly use it now), so I just completely forget it was a thing.