The Bad Idea Factory

Elemental Opposites

I guess it's kinda like soulmates, except platonic, maybe? Is that a stretch?

Basically, some people are born with the ability to control an element. There are the physical ones: water and fire, earth and air, light and darkness; and then there are the metaphysical ones: chaos and order, unity and division, knowledge and ignorance, freedom and slavery, war and peace; stuff like that. Each element has a pair, or an opposite. 

As a child, you would study your element and get to know everything you can about it. When you get older, you get an opposite: a partner whose element is the opposite of your element. Usually, it's clear from birth who your opposite is.

The metaphysical elements used to be considered extremely powerful and influential, while the physical ones were considered simple battering rams. Over time, this progressed to the metaphysical elements being so common that it was expected and elemental child would be able to manipulate a metaphysical element. The metaphysical elements were still held in higher esteem than the physical elements, however. But the masters of the physical elements, who were present at the creation of the universe, select four gifted physical elementalists - one of each type - to change the way they're seen by perhaps saving the world.

It's never happened that someone's been born with control of both an element and its opposite, but Beck was born with both light and darkness abilities.

Make a story. Go.