A/N: I'm fairly sure that Gardenia's supposed to be in Italy, but I've never been to Italy (the only Mediterranean country I've been to is Turkey), so, if you haven't guessed yet, here, Gardenia's in the US. Because I can. *flashes Artistic License*
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Bloom stared at the platter of food, starving, but not really feeling like she deserved it. She'd eat later, after the test was over. It wasn't that she was nauseous or anything similar – she'd never really been one to feel ill from psychological things like impending exams, but with what she was about to face, food wasn't something she wanted to consider. Plus, she wasn't really hungry for eggs or bacon. Stella, who'd been watching her for the last few minutes, made an angry expression and stood up, making a breaststroke-type motion and floating over the table to where Bloom sat, then, stabbing one of the bigger pieces of scrambled egg and dipping it in her ketchup (narrowing her eyes as she did so - Stella didn't like the stuff; apparently, it wasn't 'classy enough' for her) and brought it up to Bloom's face, bumping it against her mouth until the red-head swatted her away.
"You can't just not eat!" Stella fumed, eyebrows drawing together and hands being placed on hips, "I promised your boyfriend I'd take care of you while he wasn't here!"
"Well," sighed Bloom, "He's living not twenty-minute's bus ride from here, so there's really no need to keep mothering me. Besides," Bloom looked at Stella's tray's vacant place on the tabletop, "You're not eating, either."
"I woke up early and snacked during a morning study session," the girl shrugged, "I'm pretty full."
Musa nodded, a look of dread similar to Bloom's on her face, "Yeah, I saw you taking out the trash this morning."
Flora jumped like she'd been shocked, "What's the spell for making things disappear?"
"Aw, shit," Bloom groaned, "I didn't even think about that! What if the Magical Reality Chamber picks a planet I can't go on?"
"You're not eating, so I don't think there'll be any need for you to take a dump," Musa said, un-impressed by Bloom's frantic digging for notes.
"Can you, for one moment, not be crude?" Stella said, "Please?"
"Oh, she's not that bad," Bloom said absent-mindedly, leafing through her flashcards, "Remember elementary school?"
"Uh, no," the princess replied.
Bloom sighed and proceeded to ignore the conversation, which was becoming a tad bit difficult to do, as the volume of the two royals was escalating. The argument was probably due to nerves, or lack of sleep, but she didn't feel like stepping in to anyone's rescue at the moment. She forced herself to take a deep breath and began looking through the cards again, sure that the spell would come up. No such luck; it refused to be found. What's worse, her water-purifying charms seemed to be gone, too.
Flora breathed out in relief and handed a slip of paper to the Earthling girl, who scanned it and chanted the words a few times, causing some oatmeal in Tecna's bowl to vanish. The programmer gave an exasperated glare and re-summoned the lost fruit-and-grain, finishing her breakfast at a slow and calm pace. Bloom took a moment to marvel at the tech expert's unruffled exterior, then continued to page through combat's textbook's index until she found where survival spells were listed. A few bread-crumb-and-water solutions and repeated dispelling hand motions later, they'd finished with breakfast and separated to go to the chamber they'd been assigned to.
The Magical Reality Chamber had a large observatory room for those not in the process of taking the test and the class gathered there with butterflies in their stomachs, waiting to be called. To Bloom's right, Stella and Tecna looked over supplies and notes, and Bloom sent out a small prayer to whatever deity might help her on this. Lord knew, she'd need divine intervention to get through this with a passing score. Professor Palladium paced in front of them, explaining safety procedures and reminding about cheating policies. When the last emphasized point had been made, he sat down onto the swivel chair at the controls and brought up a list of names.
Tecna was the first to go. A bit anxious over their own depleted study time, but still wanting to cheer their friend on, Bloom and Stella hovered between the screen, where Tecna worked through a hot and water-less desert planet, trying to find a plant or animal of some sort she could use as an indicator of a water source, and the rest of the group, who were cramming with armloads of textbooks on the floor, a few feet away.
Eventually, the strategist found a water source after painstakingly following a beetle to a small tunnel it had dug to stay out of the sun. The girl had transformed and blasted mountains of sand out of her way until she reached some damp earth, and then blasted some more to get to the water. Within moments, she'd set up a camp within the crater she'd created and had a pot of boil-and-eat rations cooking in the feet-burning sand. She hadn't been sitting waiting for it for two minutes when her surroundings disappeared and Tecna was sitting in the Magical Reality Chamber, her supplies scattered around her.
"Good job, Tecna," Palladium said encouragingly into the microphone, "That's an A. You may re-join the rest of the class."
Looking surprised at the simplicity of what she'd just aced, the girl wiped the sweat off her forehead and gathered her things, trudging back to Bloom and Stella who congratulated her and sat her down to help them review.
"That looked easy," Bloom said, pausing in her examination of her potions kit to check Tecna for disagreement.
"I thought so, too," said the pinkette, "The only thing that made it difficult is my sensitivity to UV rays."
"Sunburn, huh?" The Earthling said with sympathy while Stella tsk-ed at them, spreading lotion over her sun-tolerant skin.
"D'you think the test picks things specific to our weaknesses?" Stella asked, lifting a copy of Mastering the Specifics: Learning Control and glancing through the table of content.
"I don't think so," Tecna said, nodding her head at the screen, where a water-type fairy grinned at her luck on a hydrogen-only planet, "I'm pretty sure it's random."
"Well, that makes it doubly worse," said Stella disdainfully, "They could at least make it fair."
"I think this is fair," Bloom said, "Those who studied will pass no matter what. Those who didn't - "
"There is no-one who hasn't studied, Bloom," The blonde rolled her eyes and continued reading, while Tecna quizzed the redhead by summoning various substances like dirt or water and challenging the girl to get rid of them somehow.
Too soon, it was Bloom's turn in the Chamber. She breathed slowly and steadily, trying to recall how easy Tecna's had looked. 'Well, she's studied, hasn't she?' But she'd studied as well, Bloom reminded herself, even if all she could remember right now were what certain textbook pages looked like and not what was actually on them. 'This'll be fine,' she thought, 'I'll ace it, cheer on Stella, and then call Baltor and tell him how I totally pwned,' she thought, a smile creeping onto her face at the thought of his irritation when she used slang. Immortal wizards tended to get a little behind the times.
"Alright, Bloom," said the professor, "I'm about to activate the Chamber. Please inform me if you've left any belongings in the control room that you need right now."
"No," she replied, feeling more than a little shaky, "I'm good."
"Alright. All systems go." The elf smiled encouragingly and nodded at her as the screen that displayed the control room disappeared from view, replaced by mossy, vine-laden trees and damp ground. She appeared to be surrounded by swampy terrain, and the strange plants told her that she shouldn't get too comfortable in the semi-familiar surroundings. When she lifted her feet, they came out of the slimy earth with an unpleasant sucking noise.
Moving slowly in her sandals, she made her way over to a boulder sticking out of the muck and climbed on, disposing of the mud on her shoes and in-between her toes with a hissed chant and trying to recall the spells Flora used to alter clothing. It was more of a song than a stated invoke-ment, but it was the best chance Bloom had at keeping her feet safe from fungus. Waving her hands over the shoes, she hummed,
"Change and shift,
"Alter drift.
"Protect from dirt,
"Muck and hurt."
Like she'd thought, her muddled and hoarse verses weren't enough to change the heels into proper boots, but the end result wasn't bad – in fact, it was better than what she'd hoped for originally: her shoes had formed sock-like coverings around her feet, melding with her jeans and forming something like the bottoms of footie pajamas. An idea forming, she focused her winx into changing the fabric of her pants as well, into a rubbery material that worked well to keep her skin from the wetness that permeated what seemed to be everything on this planet.
With that done with, she pulled a stick out of the ground beside her and, after drying it with a spell, lit it with some of her fire (which didn't burn her hand anymore, thanks to her first transformation) and began to make her way through the mist. A few seconds later, the torch sputtered and died. Bloom frowned. She couldn't sense anyone else around, and she knew the stick hadn't been damp enough to cause her flame to go out. A dim memory of a page from a science textbook inspired a panic: what if there was gas in the air? She lit the torch again and watched it intently. When it flickered and died, she breathed out as much of the muggy air as she could and recalled what she and Tecna had practiced: "Oxygen-us Layer-us," she said, raising her hands above her head and forming a dome that blocked all air flow, "Fume-us Remove-us."
With some satisfaction, she once again lit the end of the wood and trudged onward, pulling her dome of clean air around with her, looking for a spot with soil instead of mud. Eventually, she made it away from the mucky area to where the trees were and, after drying the ground with some more fire-summons, Bloom planted a few seeds and sped their growth with magic. Not two minutes after she'd managed an edible plant, her surroundings disappeared and she was left staring in slight disappointment at the plant that she would have eaten, had she really been trapped wherever she'd been.
"B+!" Congratulated Palladium with a sheepish smile, "Though I think those points were only for botching the spell with your shoes. Nonetheless, if I had been the one grading, that would have been an A." Bloom nodded, a bit miffed, but happy that she'd managed a high score and moved back to her friends (but only after reversing the spells on her clothing and getting rid of any muck that had remained).
When she entered, Stella and Tecna both jumped her with hugs and compliments about remembering the incantation for air-purifying, Stella chattering about how proud Baltor would be. Bloom managed a sneaky grin and said that maybe Sky wouldn't mind having a try-hard for a girlfriend, either, and Tecna blushed modestly when her perfect GPA was weighed against Timmy's. Now, the Earthling and computer whiz were left with helping Stella, who didn't make it easy for them by requesting a convergent spell from the two (they had that much practice at joining their powers together).
Stella, as it was, went last. The princess ended up on a dark, cold planet with gooey surroundings that she, upon contact, burned into oblivion and turned into soil for the seeds she'd brought with her. She'd had to transform to access her sunlight, using its vitamin-rich self as well as her winx' nurturing properties to grow the same plant Bloom had, during her test. The whole thing lasted a grand total of five minutes, much to the relief of the rest of the class, who were antsy to get out of the room. Stella came away with a B-, for accidentally destroying her water source (the moss she'd thought was too gross to endure) but creating an exceptionally healthy Eco Totalus tree added extra credit to her total and gave her a score the Solarian deemed acceptable.
The group grinned at their victory and high-fived, rushing back to the dining hall for lunch to share the good news with Flora and Musa, just now realizing how hungry they were.
[-M-]
"…So that's how it went," Bloom supplied, feeling a smile come on for managing her near-faultless score.
"That sounds excellent," he said with what she could tell was mustered enthusiasm.
"What's wrong?" She asked, "Were you hoping for an A? Palladium said the messed-up boot spell cost me points."
"No," he replied, sounding weary now that she'd drawn attention to it, "It's just that I may have done something with larger consequences than I anticipated."
"Oh?"
There was a pause. Baltor inhaled, "Last night, one of the protection spells I have around you alerted me to an intruder in Alfea castle."
"Huh?" Bloom said, not surprised by the admittance of protection spells (it was actually rather nice to know she was being looked after), "But I didn't even wake up last night."
"I know. The intruder turned out to be one of those witches that you encountered earlier in the year," Baltor said with a sigh. She heard the sound of hot water pouring into a mug.
"We haven't seen them in months, though. What were they planning to do?" Bloom queried.
"I snuck in as well and found her hovering over Stella's midterm file; I counter-hexed it, and asked what she and the other two were trying to do by sabotaging you…" Another sigh, "They're after the Dragon Fire."
"Okay, so, I get why they'd want a power source like that, but why are they after Stella?" The red-head asked, abandoning the textbook she'd been browsing though and kicking her feet up against her headboard.
"I don't think they are," replied the wizard, "They were probably misinformed; I'm betting they just thought Stella's ring contained the Dragon Fire, and the idea didn't hold any real truth."
"So what now? Why are there 'larger consequences'?"
"I...She needed to be distracted from you and your friends, so I summoned the Dragon Fire and allowed her to check whether it was the real thing or not before sending her out of the school," Baltor admitted.
"So now they're after you?" Bloom deadpanned, irritation creeping up. She'd just passed a midterm – wasn't she allowed a break?
"I'm afraid so. And they already know I have a connection to you, so…"
"So you think we should keep separate for a while and pretend we have nothing to do with each other to make them think that you don't care about us as much as it seems and that I have nothing to do with this 'Dragon Fire'."
"Um, no, actually. Why think that? They've seen me defend you twice, now – three times, if they know it was me that beat the ogre back on Earth," Baltor said, sounding genuinely confused, "If anything, it should confirm their suspicions that we have something to do with each other."
"Chivalry."
"Ah." And then a long silence.
"Can I ask you something?"
"It depends."
"When you stop during our…stuff…is it…?"
"I'm not doing it because I don't want to keep going," he assured her, sounding relieved she hadn't probed for answers that he wasn't ready to give, "I just don't want to do anything until I tell you."
"Do you have AIDS or something? 'Cause while that may cause complications - "
" – I have no sexually transmitted diseases. At all. Ever. Stop."
"Okay," Bloom said, snickering, "You just act like such a girl when this stuff comes up."
"Ahh. Nothing like the support and understanding of one's partner."
"Yeah," Bloom giggled, "'Partner.' You're straight as a rainbow."
"If I may, I remember you begging me to buy you a tuxedo at some point."
"I wanted to look like you did in that one suit you have! With the burgundy jacket?"
"That thing…" His tone had grown melancholy again, "I still have it, somewhere."
Bloom exhaled, growing tired of his depression, "I'll call you about where I'm going to meet you later, 'kay?"
"You're sneaking out?"
"Duh! I passed an exam, remember? I think that earns me some campus-leaving privileges."
He chuckled, "And what will you be doing off-campus?"
"Make me stir-fry," she commanded, nodding to Flora, who'd run in to grab a book for her next class, "I have to go. My free period's over."
"I'll see you soon."
"See ya."
[-M-]
"How could you let yourself be blasted out of there like a toddler!" screeched the glacial witch, hands fisted, unwittingly summoning cold with her rage.
"There was nothing I could do," Darcy replied as monotonously as she dared, flinching at her sister's shouting. "He's just as powerful as you, maybe more. If I'd tried to stay and fight, the entire school would've been on us in half a second."
"But why didn't he rat you out?" Stormy asked, "If he's working for them, why not call Faragonda and get us expelled?"
Darcy paused, working over the options in her head, "I doubt Alfea would hire someone like him. I was close enough to sense his aura in there – it's as dark as yours," she said, turning to Icy, "They're very ethical," she sneered, "A dark wizard isn't someone they'd want on their staff."
Icy didn't say anything, looking out their only window at the gloom that constantly surrounded their school. "If he didn't want to get any attention, chances are he snuck in just like Darcy," a smirk appeared on her face, mirrored by her sisters' expressions. "And if he doesn't want to get found out by that preppy school's headmistress, then it's our job to make sure he's found out." She let out a cackle, Stormy copying. Darcy smirked in anticipation.
Manipulation games were her forte.
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A/N: I've changed the category, too, since this seems to be getting more and more dramatic… This chapter is shorter than the last one, but I figured I'd dumped enough info on you last time.
"I thought Stella needed, like, extra sleep." Yes, that's how I'm writing her; the first symptoms of her eating disorder have made their appearance. These are actually a bit too obvious, but I wanted people to be able to catch it.
"Bloom's supposed to have Sparx as her planet during the test." I didn't want her to; Sparx was covered in snow at one time during the series and only very cold when the witches messed up her midterm. This would be too confusing for me to explain later, so I went with Sparx not-being on the list of planets for students to try to survive on.
Review! (I'll answer questions of yours.)