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ME
Lil' Cassandra/Seth fanfic for you, since the last one was so popular.
2ndStR2darite: I'm sorry, but there's no way I'd be able to worm Navarog/Gavin into my story without throwing all plot rules away. I can't say what I'll do when this series is over, but for now, I'm going to have to say no.
PopPopPopcorn: I can't write Mother Knows Best immediately, because the idea is still simmering. Nobody likes raw chicken. Unless you're a dog. …You should really get that checked out.
Guest: Wow, I don't know if I can do a one-shot with Firefly and Chaos, but I'll do my best!
Wazup: What kind of fanfiction would it be if I just took over with OCs? Trust me, Kendra and Seth will be the prominent characters in Mother Knows Best. Mother Knows Best may or may not start with Kendra fitting in at the Fairy Kingdom (cough cough wink wink) so I'm not sure about that subject. One New Post was set vaguely a year after Jumping at Shadows. The fourth wall is the wall separating the characters from reality. Meaning that both Alec and Chaos know they're in a fanfiction.
AmandaSkittles: Hey, thanks for the reviews! They're neither too dulcet nor too harsh! I hope you lend an eye to this one as well!
If I forgot anyone's questions, you know the deal. I'll be posting another sneak peak soon.
Of the Fiercest Kind
This "vay-cay" is going perfectly.
Slurping the last creamy drops of his soft-serve ice cream as it oozes over his fingers, rapidly melting in the beating sun, Seth scans the ragtag water park. Along the South Carolina coastline, you can't spit without hitting a resort of one kind or another. It's a tourist death trap; however, it is the best place to treat an entire battalion of highly trained shadow charmers. He licks up his fingers, chasing after a drop of his melted desert.
Since the BBM had been training so efficiently, Seth had decided to take them on an outing. Immediately enthusiastic, the band of shadow charmers had selected a desolate water park, one renowned for its high quality dive tanks and swim-with-the-sea-dragons pool. But the park's too far from the water to aid tourists; no, as Seth had been shocked to learn, Slippy-Slide Water Park is independently owned by a leviathan. Even though there's human lifeguards and such, it's a great place to chill, relax all those stressed muscles.
Of course, not everyone in the organization had been so pleased. Crimson had flat-out refused, not asking a question. Maybe the stoic dragon's got some sort of hydrophobia. Or maybe he's just too self-conscious in boxers. Either way, the dragon's holding down the fort back at home in the humid rainforest. A lot of the wolves had decided not to actually join them at the park – apparently, fur clogs up the drains (who knew?) and makes it unpleasant for everyone. So, a big pack of them had split off from the group to hang over by the nature reserve's beach. A couple pups still splash around in the baby pools, under constant watch from the hawklike eyes of their vigilant mothers.
Slippy-Slide is actually a great place. Younger shadow charmers launch themselves off towering slides with crows of joy, whereas older members recline in strategically placed hot tubs, thankfully wearing surf shirts. The few brave female shadow charmers relax in revealing bathing suits they'll probably only use this once, meeting the gazes of all the teenage boys hanging around awkwardly and trying to look cool with their vampire skin.
Seth grins from ear to ear. He may be hanging around like the rest of his age group, but he's smugly aware that he's superior to any of them.
With all his rigorous training, Seth had developed muscle mass he's extremely proud of – however, the shadowy cloak usually denies him any claims to a tan to complete the sex god appearance. Not that he'd ever lost that much of a tan; Seth loves warmth too much to just give up the sun, even if he's king of whatnot. Now, however, that cloak is pinned beneath a poolside table, flapping angrily at anyone who passes. He can feel the gazes sweeping to him as he laps up the last of his melted ice cream, and he knows that they're females with interest in their eyes.
Seth eyes lazily follow the stream of people, trailing the crowd. He doesn't exactly want to rise from his throne of beach chairs, but the empty ice cream cup screams and the stand halfway across the park, roof decorated with minty stripes, beckons him forward. With a heaving sigh, Seth settles on the balls of his bare feet, pushing off the slick concrete on his journey. He tosses the cardboard cup into a nearby bin, satisfaction plaguing his heart at the metallic thung it makes.
The Lazy River that winds through the park cuts between the ice cream stand and Seth; a rickety bridge with slick tiles is all that joins the two, and even the sight of it is sketchy enough to have Seth edging in the other direction. However, as BBM shadow charmers have their fingers at him from tubes in the gently swirling river, he's aware that he can't chicken out.
Eyeing the bridge reproachfully, Seth steps forward, his toes hanging over the edge. A lifeguard glares at him threaeningly. Leaning forward, Seth lunges forward, preparing to set his foot in the nook between two tiles.
Wham!
Seth's world dissolves into a vortex of spinning white bubbles, the smack of the water raw on his side. Cool water bombards his sunbaked skin. A short cry of surprise had left his mouth, allowing the filthy pool water to fill his nose and wash out his teeth. When his eyelids instinctively fly open, water stings his pupils. Seth flails beneath the water, skinning a knee on the coarse bottom of the shallow Lazy River. Gasping, he surfaces, wet hair slopped in front of his eyes.
A high, pealing laugh greets his ears, alighting a warm glow in his heart.
Seth shakes his head vigorously, spraying water over the nearest person chilling in a tube, interrupting their leisurely bobbing down the River. His disheveled hair allows him a clear view of the beautiful Cassandra, where she stands, fully dressed, at the side of the pool, leaning over the water, white wings fanned out on either side of her. The light glances off of her albbino skin. White ringlets highlighted with a slight golden tint fall in her face. Two dark eyes twinkle with mischief.
"Hey, Shadow-Boy," she greets, her laugh resembling a little bell and her voice a children's choir. "Someone stood too close to the edge."
She's just begging for a battle, a battle of the fiercest kind.
"Is that what happened?" chuckles Seth. A grin spreads broadly over his face, revealing all his intentions. "It seems like you're standing pretty close to the edge too!"
He lunges, but Cassandra dances back, safe from his grasp. Seth's fist smashes into the damp concrete. Laughing tauntingly, tossing an evil glance over her shoulder, Cassandra takes off through the park, worming between the bustling crowds, enraging pedestrians, and giving the life guards hell.
Seth roars with laughter, vaulting over the side of pool. Water smacks noisily against the pavement, dripping off his skin in cascades. Narrowing his eyes and straightening his hands into blades, Seth bolts after Cassandra's hurriedly retreating form.
The pavement is brutal to his bare feet, but Seth can nurse them in his victory. Male instincts are unearthed by Cassandra's challenge. He's going to find a way to sling her into that pool if it's the last thing he does. Afterwards, of course, Seth's expecting an intense underwater make-out session and cuddle-time lounging together on a pool chair, but she isn't exactly making that easy.
Seth slams into the stocky body of one of the larger shadow charmers, taking half a second to return the glare. When he turns back to Cassandra, he curses colorfully in a demonic language. The owl girl already has scaled up half the stairs to a twisting water slide, spiralling up and up, and she's still padding onwards. There's water running out the bottom of the slide, falling freely into the derelict wave pool, but no workers operating the top; it's abandoned, and marked off by toppled caution signs.
Seth rockets over the concrete, ducking between people. A few shout things like, "Good luck, boss!" Or: "What – oh! Go get her!" Females throw out legs to trip Seth as he dashes past, somehow managing to hinder him every time. One dude swears vividly but then starts crowing about young love.
The stairs beneath Seth's bare feet hurt; instead of whole steps, like full metal or something, metal bars like a grate or something make up the bottom. His wet feet not only slide over the surface, but they also throb painfully. Up and up, his muscles protesting the sudden and trying exercise. However, his hormones suggest otherwise. The clang of her footsteps high above him houses Seth onward.
At least, up here, Cassandra has no way to escape without drenching herself by going down a slide.
Grinning from ear to ear, Seth smashes into the railing at the top of the slide. His chest heaves. The ground is far, far below them, and the people are ants. Cassandra whirls around, her dark eyes wide. She backs up against the slide, the water spritzing from jets along the top splashing over her jeans.
"Got ya!" cajoles Seth, laughing breathily. He edges forward. "You should know better than to try and outmatch me, Cas…"
"Oh, please," she snorts, rolling her eyes. Her sneakers rest on the edge of the plastic tube. "We both remember how badly I beat you at Skyrim, your 'Master Game.' Let's not have a repeat, eh?"
Ignoring her, Seth leans over the edge, head craned. His eyebrows prop up. "Lookie there. This slide plummets straight down to the wave pool." He whistles under his breath. "That's a lot of inflatable tubes."
"Seth…," Cassandra warns.
That only goads Seth forward. Planning to grip her by the waist and spin her around, Seth braces himself against the stairway, arm muscles tensing. Cassandra tenses as well, eyes wide, face filled with warning. Lowering his body like a bull charging, Seth runs towards Cassandra.
Two white wings slam out at the last possible second, carrying her high in the air.
Seth tumbles ungracefully down the mouth of the slide, head first, cussing like a drugged Southerner the whole way. The brutal plastic siding evidently has something against innocent teenage boys. He gargles much more dirty water than he'd ever really wanted to.
Seth's eyes squint, and suddenly, cool water assaults him once more. Lungs constricting, Seth slams beneath the surface of the wave pool, flailing like an idiot. Swimming in bubbles more than water, he cups his hands and shoves his body through the water, moving upwards.
The slightest hint of irritation gnaws at his heart. He's supposed to be the tricky one. Cassandra stealing his game is – well, a norm. But Cassandra stealing his game in front of the BBM? Not cool. Not cool at all.
And so Seth takes only one huge gulp of air when he breaches the surface of the water before plummeting back under. His eyes flicker open, the vivid blue of the water flashing with quivering beams of light dancing over the cemented bottom. Behind him and in the general direction of the slide, still jets sit, unused and quiet. The water here is nearly ten feet deep, so the waves, when the jets are turned on, can accumulate until they're smashing into the concrete shore.
Along the top of the water, white inner tubes bob, the summer light casting strange shadows around their circular shapes. Squinting up at the sky, Seth sets down gently on the bottom, his toes brushing the coarse concrete. Eyes roaming back and forth, he waits, lungs bursting for air, until he sees it.
A shadow passing overhead, a single tube sinking a slight bit, the outline of a figure above the water, trying to peer through tubes.
Seth grins and springs from the bottom of the pool, the water peeling at his face and pocketing beneath his eyelids. However, even that mild discomfort cannot do anything but buoy the superiority he feels raging in his chest as Seth's hand lunges from the water, closing around a pale ankle, and dragging a damsel in distress beneath the waves.
Chuckling so hard his lungs may burst as Cassandra's dry form goes down in a torrent of bubbles, Seth reaches up with his other hand to grip the inner tube. Gasping for air between guffaws, he gropes over the slimy tarp, yanking at the handles.
Triumph bloats Seth's pride. He grins, letting his gaze wander over the small crowd that'd gathered. Shaking the water from his hair, Seth eases his butt onto the tube, letting his ankles hang in the cool water. The sun is blissful over his wet skin, warming the chill struck up by the bumpy ride down the slide.
However, Seth's triumph is short lived. His grin crumbles from his face as he registers one little, unimportant detail.
Cassandra hadn't yet emerged from the water.
A hand closes around his ankle and yanks him beneath the surface of the pool.
Mmkay hope you enjoyed I enjoyed writing it! Like I've said before, I'm trying to get around to writing some of this stuff that you guys have been advising. I'm not willing to do anything more than a one-shot, but please, if you have an idea, feel free to share.
Fun Fact: Chaos named his son Seth after a famous time-traveler he'd read about as a kid himself in one of his favorite childhood storybooks.
POLL: For all those first time readers, this wasn't exactly the best interpretation of Cassandra – but how did you like her?
Ciao,
~wolfluvermh