AN: Hello, my fans, and welcome to the next chapter! I am on my mom's computer as I'm writing this, because my other computer is broken and SHOULD (I'm not sure if it will) be fixed. So, I'm resorting to write on here. However, I might be back on my old computer by the time I finish writing this. Anyway, on with the chapter!

© - I do not own Wizard101, Monsters Inc., Merle Ambrose, Crab Alley or its monsters, Dalia Falmea, Susie GryphonBane, and the physical features described from Crab Alley and Triton Avenue from the Wizard101 gaming.

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CHAPTER TWO

Crab Alley

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I could barely process the moment.

Just after I had run away from it all; right when I had escaped the orphanage successfully; right when I got away from Sophia, Carly and Vanessa, and Jack and Geneviève and all of her boyfriends; a girl was drowning in the ocean.

I watched with a horrified face. She turned to look at me. Her face went under the water, and then came up to the surface again.

"Help me!" I could hear her say from a distance. Her dark hair was sopping wet. Her blue eyes pleaded for the help she demanded.

I remembered something Felix had told me, something about people who are drowning. He said that his parents—before they gave him up for adoption—had told him that if you're head is to go underwater three times, you're dead. I didn't know how many times this girl had gone underwater.

She splashed around frantically, and I sighed. I didn't know how to do CPR if she ended up lacking air by the time I had gotten her. What was I to do? I wasn't a lifeguard. Why were her parents not with her anyway? But when I looked more closely, I realized she looked about my age…fourteen. Her parents had probably allowed her to go to the beach alone.

But I couldn't just let her die. That would be considered murder, wouldn't it? I had to do something.

And so, naturally, I jumped into the water, and little did I know, this one simple action would change my life forever.

As my face became submerged underwater, I tried to make out my surroundings in the green murk. It was kind of hard. I could really only see seaweed and sand. But eventually, as I swam further away from the shore, I could see the girl's body—her kicking feet underwater. As I came closer, she suddenly went underwater once more.

But then, something weird happened.

She waved her hand, and a burst of light exploded from her fingertips. I felt a wave of heat, and the girl was gone.

Okay, I thought. This must be a dream. I fell asleep on the sand and none of this is happening.

But then the girl appeared in the water again. I started to lose air underwater. I forced myself to the surface, but it seemed so far up. Just as I was about to reach the surface again, I opened my mouth and breathed through my noise just a nanosecond before I reached the surface and I could breathe again.

As soon as I was above water, I could feel the cold wind ripping at my wet shirt. I probably should've left my clothing at shore, so I could have something warm to change into, but for all I knew, they could've been stolen by rebellious teenagers.

But those thoughts were at the back of my mind. In the nanosecond that I had started breathing again, while still underwater, I felt able to…well, breathe; but normally. As if the water was simply just liquid air.

Looking down below me, I noticed the girl's body once again, and sighed. I swam underwater once more.

I was having difficulty locating the girl's figure at first. But I began to think about the whole, breathing underwater thing again. I looked up. I hadn't been too far from the surface. If I just tried to breathe for a little bit…and if I began sucking in water, I could go to the surface and spit it all out.

So, with that in mind, I began to breathe as if above water.

And I breathed averagely. It felt normal, as if I was breathing on land, except, I was in water. Despite my state of shock at being able to breathe underwater, I wondered about the girl. Did it have anything to do with the explosion of light she projected?

But then I remembered the girl, and I began to look for her.

Something grabbed my arm. I screamed. The scream sounded bubbly, like you'd hear underwater if someone were being attacked by sharks or piranhas or an octopus, but despite that, no water entered my mouth.

I looked around, jerking my head and neck fiercely. What had grabbed my arm wasn't any of the three sea creatures I had listed. It was the girl.

But then she did something that surprised me most. She began swimming downward. I began to scream and tried yanking away from her grasp, but she was pretty strong. She continued swimming down, and I looked up to see the surface getting further and further away from me.

Was that the last time I was ever going to see land? I wondered.

I was curious why neither of us was dead after the long amount of distance we had traveled underwater, and I was surprised how she was able to pull me down with her along with the fact that the pressure of the sea should have crushed us way by then. We didn't see any sea creatures. There didn't seem to be any ocean floor. It felt like we were swimming down and down forever.

But then a school of fish swam by. I got a little bit excited for a second—a shred of hope opened in my heart.

But things just kept getting weirder. Suddenly, I saw something. It was…it was…a building?

How could there be a building underwater? It was huge. Was this Atlantis?

No, Seth, I thought to myself. Atlantis doesn't exist.

And yet somehow, more underground houses started to appear in view. They all had stormy purple colored roofs, and had a smooth, marble texture for walls. I looked at the underground palace again.

How could this be here? I have to be dreaming.

And yet for some reason, I didn't know why I was letting the girl drag me here, underwater, in the first place. For some reason, the girl just didn't seem like someone you wanted as an enemy. Her black hair floated around her shoulders.

I continued to look at my surroundings. The ground looked a purplish color, but had a cobblestone texture. The sidewalks were separating the houses from the streets, and had lightning bolt designs on the curbs of them.

And then, looking at my surroundings; was when I noticed the giant monster things.

They looked like giant crabs. Well, some of them did. Others were colored yellow and looked like types of creatures you'd see in the movie Monsters Inc (and the only reason the orphans and I had watched it was, one day, Geneviève came home drunk and rented the movie for us). I began to scream. The girl held her finger to her mouth in a Shhh! manner.

Then I began to notice other people. They were dressed in weird robes. Some of them had capes. They all were wearing hats of different shapes and sizes. Some of them seemed to be standing on giant circles which somehow magically appeared on the ground when they came into contact with the monster type-things.

Each of the people, whether they were standing on the sidewalk or in one of those giant circles, were holding some type of rod, and they all had different ones of every shape, size and color. They were like wizard wands.

I paid attention to the people standing on the giant circles. There were four miniature circles on either of the two opposite sides of it. The monsters seemed to go to one side while the people went to the opposite side.

Something weird happened. As I paid attention to one person, they waved their wand, and with a light that their rod type-thing created, they drew a symbol in the air. They then tapped the symbol, and some weird creature appeared in the middle of the circle that separated the monsters from the people. The symbols created in the air seemed to vary. The creatures the people had summoned would attack the monsters. But the monsters seemed to have the same abilities as the people did. And sometimes, the monsters were sucked into the ground, the giant circle would fade, and even some material—coins, robes, et cetera—were left behind. But sometimes, the people's heads began to turn slowly around, and they'd fade into nothing, and the giant circle faded.

I wondered why I was watching this so calmly, with the giant monsters running around, the creatures people were summoning and the overall weirdness taking place, but considering I had grown up doing weird things, and was breathing underwater after light had exploded from the fingers of a girl who was pretending to drown, I expected nothing could get much weirder. Of course, I was wrong.

I couldn't help but think about the fact that some of these creatures looked familiar. Somebody summoned a cat that seemed to be on fire. One time, when I was mad at Carly, a creature that looked similar had been summoned. It was all very confusing. Besides, how could a cat be on fire underwater?

But then the girl left my side, and began floating upwards. I began to sink down onto the sidewalk. One of the giant crab creatures began walking towards me. He roared. I screamed, and probably like a little girl. I began swimming for the surface, trailing behind the girl who had brought me here.

XxXxX

Pffft! was the noise I heard my head exploded over the surface. I was surrounded by more water. I looked above to see a cliff like thing with beautiful green grass. Nearby, there was a tiny island where yet another one of the giant circles was formed. There seemed to be a giant purple thing. Above me, there was a bridge.

"Taylor?" a girl shouted from above from over the edge of the cliff. I looked at the girl who had brought me here; who I assumed was named Taylor.

"Yeah," Taylor said. "It's me. Could you lend a hand?"

The girl who was overlooking the cliff smiled and began waving her hands, when suddenly; a strange, fluttery feeling surged inside of me. I began floating, slowly and slowly out of the water.

Finally, I reached the top of the cliff and landed on my feet next to Taylor, and the girl who had somehow floated us up here. People began to crowd around Taylor and I.

"Taylor? Why are you so wet?" asked one of them.

A woman with a reddish-orange dress formed a path through the crowd. Her hair stuck up and swiveled around like an oddly shaped candle flame.

"My student! I'm so sorry Ambrose sent you out into the ocean on such a dangerous journey! I'm not sure why he would send a student of Fire! That should've been a Storm student's job!"

"Its fine, Mrs. Falmea," Taylor said. "Really, it is."

The lady whose last name seemed to be Falmea nodded slowly, and slightly sympathetically. I had never heard of a last name such as Falmea, but considering I grew up in an orphanage, I hadn't had much exposure to surnames. She put her arm around Taylor and took her away from the crowd who didn't bother to leave their standing positions. It was kind of awkward being stared at by people I didn't know.

"Um, can someone please tell me what's going on?" I begged.

"Luke, what are you talking about?" asked one of them. I looked at them.

"Okay, first off, my name isn't Luke. It's Seth. Second—"

The crowd began to halfheartedly laugh as if I had caused some brief entertainment.

"Okay, stopped kidding around," one of the guys said. "It's really not that funny. And what types of clothes are those? Why are you wearing them?"

I turned down to look at my ratty old orphanage clothes. "Maybe if I hadn't been living in an orphanage all of this time—"

Some of them began to laugh again.

"What?" I demanded. "It's really not that funny."

"Luke," one of the girls said. "It's not that funny anymore. Just stop."

"My name," I said through my gritted teeth, "is not Luke! It's Seth! I've told you this already!"

"Alrighty, Seth," said one of them sarcastically while rolling their eyes. I ignored them, and pushed my way through the crowd.

"Where are you going?" asked two girls in unison. They appeared to be twins.

"To figure this out on my own," I told them. "You've been no help at all."

I walked away, feeling proud.

I heard a voice coming from another girl. She was calling off to my right. When I turned to look at her, the first thing I noticed was her hair. It was purple, so I wondered if it was a wig. It looked pretty natural. It was tied into a ponytail. She was wearing purple and yellow colored clothing.

"I haven't heard back from my brother, Artur, in a while. Could you help me?"

I felt a little bad. "I'm sorry about your brother, but I just appeared here randomly after this girl seemed to be drowning in the ocean. Then we saw this underwater Atlantis type-place. We swam to the surface, and here I am. I need to figure out what's going on."

"Ah," she said. "So you're a newcomer. My name is Susie. Susie GryphonBane. What's your name?"

"It's Seth," I told her, "but I don't have a last name."

"I'll contact Headmaster Ambrose right away," she told me. I didn't know who this Ambrose guy was, but he seemed to be pretty important. I almost smiled. Someone seemed to understand that I was in need of help.

I stood there starting to admire my surroundings, but it was kind of hard when Susie began to chant something I couldn't understand. From her hands, mist started swirling from her fingertips. Eventually, the mist began to form into a collection of grey fog—a storm cloud.

Suddenly, in the middle of the storm cloud, the face of an old man began to appear.

"Headmaster," Susie said. "I have urgent news to discuss."

"Is this about Artur, sweetie? I'm sorry, I'm doing everything I can, but I have different matters—"

"It's not about that, sir. There's this guy standing next to me—his name is Seth. He says that someone brought him here through Crab Alley."

Through the image of the storm cloud, the Headmaster grinned. "Taylor did excellent", I could hear him whisper.

Susie asked, "What?"

A boy no older than seven years old walked into the image next to the Headmaster and began to tug on Ambrose's robe. "I will be there in a minute," said Ambrose.

And then the stormcloud dissipated, the image obliterated into wisps of what was previously a thick stormcloud, and was blown away by the wind.

Susie and I stood there in silence as we waited. Then, there was a blinding flash of light, and a figure stepped out of the light he came from.

He looked like the man whose image was on the storm cloud. He had snowy white hair, and very thick eyebrows, which were the same color as his hair. He had a long thick beard which was colorless white. He wore a glass monocle and had turquoise colored eyes and wrinkly pale skin. He wore purple colored robes with yellow stars scattered around on them. He had a tall hat which had a similar design to his robes. His robes were tied together by a silk wrapping around his waist that was colored red and gold. He held a long staff-like object that curved like a crescent moon at the top and had a glowing, blue ball of light floating in the space that the crescent moon shape provided.

Finally, the man stepped forward. He grinned, obviously delighted. He grabbed my cheeks and slightly moved my face back and forth, as if a parent obsessing over their growing child.

"What am I doing here?" I demanded. "I don't mean to be rude, but—"

Ambrose placed his index finger to my lips, motioning me to stop speaking. "I will explain everything. I am Merle Ambrose, headmaster of Ravenwood School of Magical Arts. Welcome to Wizard City."

AN: Did you enjoy it? And yes, I am still on my mom's computer. This took me only two days to write. Well, anyways, I hope you enjoyed it! This story is moving on still rather quickly. Well, at least he's in Wizard City and some of the action will begin to start happening.

Questions:

Do you think Seth's traveling to Wizard City was creative?

What do you think will happen next? What will Seth discover?

Why do you think people were calling Seth by the name of Luke?

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~PJATOSROCKS09~