Author's Note: Hello! I'm Potato Lord! This is my chapter! …Yah!
We are so screwed, I thought as I clasped my hand around yet another vine and swung. We're all girls. I was getting really tired of supporting my weight on nothing but tendrils of plant life, and the job wasn't all that much easier when you saw people beneath you, not exhausted at all, being hoisted and moved by friendly greenery. What was this underground plant system place even called again? Ah, forget it! I won't even try picking apart my fuzzy memories of this book. It's not all that important right now. And I'm too lazy. What is important right now is coming up with a plan we can use once we reach the Blue… Forest? Or was it Woods? Gah!
What was Becca thinking when she put together our team? We're on a mission that primarily focuses on searching, yet we can only search the School for Girls and parts of the Blue Woods… Forest… whatever, without attracting unwanted attention. There's no way we can investigate the School for Boys without getting slaughtered. Even if the UnTrained are easy to spot here, we can't hope to confront them if they turn out to be boys! And wasn't this the book where Mr. Sader's sister becomes dean or something? She's dangerous! It's just flat out reckless to assemble an all-female team in this universe! Not to mention Sage is still recovering from the emotional trauma in her last mission! Why does everything have to be so difficult?!
While I was ranting to myself, I heard something that made my heart race up to my throat. The rustling of vines. A loud shrieking, sounding farther and farther away by the second. I paused in my swinging to risk a glance downward. A person with dirty blond hair. No. I froze. My mind burst into alarms. Immediately, I whirled around to where Rain was supposed to be. Gone. All that I saw was Melody, just a few vines away with her eyes wide and mouth hanging open, staring down at the bottomless pit beneath us. I followed her gaze and noticed something else that made my day even better. Hearing a sharp gasp ahead of me, I knew Sage just saw the same thing. Blue butterflies. Right below us. I suppressed a shriek. Blue butterflies! Blue butterflies! Not just anyone's blue butterflies, but Sader's blue butterflies! Crap! Crap! Crap!
The butterflies briefly glided around the spot Rain had plummeted moments before, as if they were contemplating something, then dove straight down. Within seconds, I couldn't see them anymore.
My brain felt numb as I processed what just happened. Rain gone, possibly dead. Sader already onto us. All in the span of a few seconds. This has to be one of the worst missions I've taken up in my five years of book jumping.
The next few hours of grabbing vine after vine felt like a millennium. The butterflies refused to make a reappearance, making me believe that they stuck around Rain. They must be following her. Or inspecting her corpse, a sick voice crept into my mind. I shook my head. She's not dead. She's safe. Doesn't something save students who accidentally fall off of the vines? But we're not students, the voice retorted. Rain's fine. She's been on three missions before. She has experience and probably found a way to catch herself.
Even as I tried to convince myself of it, the lump in my throat still remained.
Sage, Melody, and I didn't dare utter a whisper as we swung from vine to vine. Though the butterflies were gone, the dangers weren't. We could still see the faint outlines of people far below us being transported by the vegetation. After so much panic, we were a lot more alert and cautious. We weren't willing to take our chances.
We found numerous exits to the underground plant system along the way, including a few in a tiger lily, an oak tree, and a blueberry bush, but they all led out to places in the Blue-whatever we didn't recognize. Finally, at about sundown, we managed to get out into familiar territory, and by familiar territory, I mean directly in front of the gates to the two schools. Turns out the exit was in a tulip.
I examined our new surroundings the moment we resurfaced. Two large gates were ahead of us, one blocked off with what looked to be rocks and thorns. Beyond them towered a dark castle and a light castle, which I knew were the School for Boys and the School for Girls. Behind us was nothing but plants, all a varying shade of blue.
After taking in the sights, I looked over at my teammates. Melody was sprawled out on the ground, clutching bits of grass between her fingers and pulling them out. Sage was facing the two schools with her brows knit together in concentration.
After a few moments of staying silent, Sage turned to us and said, "We need to get into those schools somehow."
Oh, crap! I had forgotten about making a plan when Rain had fallen from the vine! I checked my head, waiting to see if some brilliant idea would pop up in my panic so that I wouldn't have to tell Sage bad news. Thankfully, Melody began talking, so I didn't have to say that I hadn't come up with a plan.
"What?" Melody looked completely taken aback. "Are we just going to forget about what happened to Rain? Guys, we gotta find her!"
I gave her a sad look and responded, "If we focus on the task at hand, we'll eventually run into Rain again." In whatever horrible condition she's in, I thought. "With no disguise, she'll stick out like a sore thumb. We'll hear about her pretty quickly if she's seen by anyone."
I wasn't all that confident in what I said, but it seemed to do the job of calming Melody down. She sighed and muttered, "Okay."
Sage didn't say anything. She just focused her gaze on the ground like she often did and grumbled something that sounded like, "If the Untrained…responsible… I'll kill them."
It didn't take too much imagination to guess that she probably blamed the UnTrained for what happened to Rain. After all, we're here because they were messing things up. Where many people could relate to how they wanted to change stories, Sage always felt resentment against them. Resentment had warped into blind hatred since the accident in her last mission. It's not like I could blame her, though. What the UnTrained did to her I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
And she'll have to suffer through the loss of yet another friend, if Rain is really dead. Which she's not. Melody and I would have to go through it with her, if that were to happen, so at least she'd have more people to help her than last time.
"Tate?" Sage asked.
I snapped out of my thoughts. Sage was staring at me with her usual creepily blank expression. Melody was now sitting up with a small, tired smile playing on her lips.
"What?" I dumbly asked.
Melody's smile grew slightly larger. Sage shook her head and said, "I asked if you had any sort of plan to get inside the School for Girls. I have no plan and Melody doesn't have one either."
Yep. I got some extra time to come up with a plan and I completely wasted it.
"Err… I got nothing." I admitted.
Sage let out a sigh. "Well, we have to do something."
"Maybe," I said, the gears in my head grinding as hard as they could, "The answer is simpler than we think. Chances are we can walk up there in what we have on," I gestured to our modern attire of T-shirts and jeans, "without raising suspicions. If I remember right, girls dressed crazily in this book."
Sage and Melody both gave me an are-you-crazy look, before Sage said, "That's a good way to get killed. It's too risky."
"And the girls in the school could ask us where we got the clothes. That's another thing," Melody said.
"We could say that they're a fashion trend from a far away world. We're technically not lying," I said.
Sage pulled an odd face, and then said, "That's a terrible excuse. It just leads to more questions."
True, true, I thought. But what other options did we have? All of our memories of the book were hazy at best and there was no Rain to remind us of what the characters will and won't believe. She had just read the book- she was our best chance. And she's gone. We would have to take risks. There's just no other way around this.
"You know," Melody said, standing up, "We could just give you guys a makeover."
Sage rolled her eyes at Melody's idea before saying, "We have no supplies. How would that be possible?"
Melody mimicked Sage and rolled her eyes, which Sage looked slightly bothered by. "This is the only thing we've got so far, right? Just give me a shot- I have something special in mind." She put on a large, mischievous smile.
I'm scared of this girl.
Author's Note: Umm… 'm sorry that I didn't post this chapter on time…
Ever/Sage/Redmark: It was due DAYS ago!
Shoutout to GeminiCraziqueen for reviewing!
Thank you!
