"Are you sure no one can see us Tecna?" Flora asked.
"Just hurry Flora, I'm not sure how long this will work." Tecna said.
"Exactly how not sure are you, on a scale from one to ten?" Musa asked.
The five of them were currently sneaking through the corridors of Alfea, making their way to the gate. Tecna made them see through with a spell she heard of from some second years.
"Just hurry…" Tecna hissed.
Suddenly someone came around the corner.
"Griselda!" Musa whispered.
"Everyone against the wall and stay still!" Samara whispered.
Griselda came walking by and they all held their breath. Luckily she didn't notice anything and soon turned around the corner at the end of the corridor.
"Quickly!" Tecna said.
They managed to sneak out of the school and ran across the open field through the gate. As they passed through the gate, the spell wore out and they were all visible again.
"That was close." Bloom said.
"A bit too close if you ask me." Samara said. "If someone watched through their window they might have seen us."
"Nah everyone's asleep at this hour." Musa said. "Let's go find Stella."
Tecna took the map from her pocket. "It's just a little outside Magix."
"So we take the night bus?" Flora asked reluctantly.
"No I already thought about our transportation." Tecna said. "Come on."
She walked a bit further away from the school with the others just behind her.
"I hate being outside during the night…" Flora said.
Samara looked up to the sky to see the stars and moon shine bright. She smiled.
They climbed through some thick bushes to find Timmy standing next to a Red Fountain ship.
"Hey there." He said. "Who's up for a midnight drive?"
"Thanks Timmy." Tecna said.
"No problem, but we have to hurry, this ship needs to be back at Red Fountain by morning." Timmy said.
All the girls and Timmy stepped inside.
Samara took the seat furthest away from the window and made sure she was strapped in as tight as possible.
Okay no big deal, you're strapped in….still got solid floor underneath your feet…
She tapped the floor with her foot repeatedly while the ship began to rumble. Soon they were flying above the forest. Samara decided to keep her eyes closed and try to think about something else.
She tried her best to focus on something else but couldn't faze out the noise of the engine. After a while she noticed that the ship was slowly going down.
"Sorry girls that is as far as I can go." Timmy said.
"That's okay, at least we don't have to walk through the forest in the middle of the night." Bloom said.
Samara slowly opened her eyes just in time to feel a thud as they landed. Everyone got out of their seat. Tecna gave Timmy a quick kiss on his cheek and they stepped out of the ship. Samara quickly held on to a thick tree as she felt her legs tremble.
"I'll wait here for you." Timmy said as he closed the door.
"So where do we go now?" Musa asked.
Tecna took the map out of her pocket. A small dot appeared as she smoothened it out.
"This way, we have to cross that small bridge and a bit further is where Stella should be."
The five of them quickly walked on, feeling a cold breeze. After they crossed the bridge, they saw a small house appear out of the dark.
"This should be it…" Tecna said.
"So do we knock?" Samara asked.
"We don't know what's on the other side of that door…" Flora said.
"Let's find out." Musa said as she tried to open it.
Suddenly they heard muffeled voices through the door.
"The three evil witches!" Bloom said.
"Out of the way." Samara said.
She transformed into her silver fairy form and blasted the door open with a ray of moonlight. The others quickly turned into their fairy form as well and ran into the house.
The three witches turned around in surprise but quickly went for the attack. Musa dodged a ray of lightning.
Boom attack!
Two purple boomboxes appeared and created sound waves that confused the lightning witch.
"Stormy get yourself together!" One of the other witches screamed.
"Why don't you do it yourself Darcy!" The witch named Stormy yelled back.
The second witch clapped her hands together and suddenly there were five of her surrounding the fairies. They all raised her hands and small rays of purple vibrated through the room. Samara, Musa and Flora fell to the ground, completely disorientated. Tecna and Bloom managed to avoid the attack by flying up into the sky.
Tecno blast!
Rain of fire!
Tecna's tecno blast hit Stormy, wrapping her in a green net with numbers. Bloom's rain of fire made the fake Darcy's disappear and the real one screaming while tiny flames danced over her clothes and hair.
"Come on girls we're stronger in the air." Bloom said.
Musa and Flora joined them but Samara stayed on the ground. She watched as her friends went in for another attack.
Come on, you can do this….they need you up there…
She saw how Stormy and Darcy cornered Musa while the others were occupied by the third witch.
"Just give up already, give us the ring of Solaria!" The third witch said as she sent shards of ice towards Flora.
Moonlight shower!
Samara aimed her attack towards Darcy and Stormy. They were caught off guard by the white light, thinking that all opponents were up in the air. As they held their hands in front of their eyes, completely blinded by the moonlight, Musa took her chance and hit them with her own magic.
"Icy we need help!" Darcy screamed as she and Stormy fell to the ground.
Samara looked at the other side of the room where the other fairies had cornered Icy.
"ENOUGH!" The ice witch screamed. A wave of ice followed and the fairies all fell to the ground.
Samara was just about to attack when the witch snapped her fingers. Suddenly Stella appeared next to her, trapped by rings of energy.
"One more step and the princess gets crushed." Icy said.
"Oh no Stella!" Bloom cried out.
"Give us the ring of Solaria." Icy said.
"No, we won't listen to you horrible witches!" Musa said.
Icy moved her hand and the energy rings wrapped themselves tighter around Stella, who groaned.
"If you hurt her, we'll hurt them." Samara said while pointing to the other two witches on the ground.
Icy laughed coldly and snapped her fingers. The two witches vanished from the ground and appeared next to her.
"Tick tock, what's it gonna be?" Icy asked.
The rings of energy once again wrapped a little tighter.
"I say we fight!" Musa said.
"No." Bloom said. "We'll give you the ring if you free Stella."
"What, we can totally beat them." Samara whispered.
"We can't take the risk." Bloom said.
She took the ring out of her pocket. "Here it is, now let her go."
Darcy moved her wrist and the ring levitated out of Bloom's hand and floated into the witches hand.
"Good, now let's not waste any more time." Icy said.
With a flash the three witches were gone and so were the energy rings around Stella. She started to fall towards the ground but Flora managed to catch her.
"Stella, are you okay?" She asked.
"Yeah…I think so." Stella said.
She stood up. "I can't believe those witches got away with my ring!"
"Lets get out of here." Tecna said. "This place is giving me the creeps."
The girls transformed back to their normal form and walked towards the small bridge.
"What a night huh." Musa sighed as she threw a pebble into the river beneath the bridge.
"You can say that again, we broke at least three school rules." Flora said.
"It's the worst." Stella muttered.
Samara avoided Stella's eyes.
"What did they want with your ring Stella?" Bloom asked.
"No idea…" The princess said.
"What happened, you were gone on your date and you got kidnapped by those witches?" Tecna asked.
"Yes that is exactly what happened." Stella said. "I left the restaurant, saw Sky…saw him follow me and when I turned around it turned out to be one of those witches pretending to be…him." Stella said while looking into the water. "Next thing I know I was transported to this cabin." "When they found out I didn't have the ring on me, the same witch turned into me and transformed herself to Alfea."
"Well I'm glad you're not hurt." Bloom said while hugging her friend.
"I can't believe they defeated us…" Samara whispered.
"We should have fought them." Musa said. "Three against five, we would have beaten them."
"I didn't want to take the risk." Bloom said.
"And who put you in charge, we can think for ourselves you know." Tecna said.
"Let's all calm down, first we need to get back to Alfea before anything else happens." Flora said.
"This night cannot get any worse…" Stella said as she started to walk away.
The others followed in silence. The silence continued until Timmy delivered them back to Alfea.
"See you later Tecna." He said
"Yeah, talk to you later Timmy." She replied.
The six of them slowly made their way to the gate but stopped when a figure appeared.
"I thought I was dreaming when I saw a group of students leave the grounds in the middle of the night…" Griselda started. "Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine such behavior."
The six girls sighed and stared at the ground.
"Well what do you have to say for yourself?" Griselda asked.
"We didn't have a choice, we had to go after the three witches from Cloud Tower!" Musa said.
"Is that so?" Griselda asked. "I believe you had a choice to alarm one of the professors and choose to ignore that."
Musa gulped and stared back at the ground.
"Whatever reason you had to disregard the schoolrules, it does not change the fact that you girls left school grounds in the middle of the night." "Therefore you will get detention and your parents will be informed."
Samara looked up in shock. She knew they would be punished as soon as she saw Griselda waiting for them, but a note to their parents was something she did not see coming.
"Now get back to bed and report to me in the morning for your detention." Griselda said.
"But that is Sunday!" Flora said.
"Yes it is miss Flora, a full day for you all to think about your disregard of the rules."
Griselda turned towards the gate and motioned the girls to start moving. They made their way to the dorm quietly.
"I was wrong, it could get worse." Stella said.
"It's all worth it now you're back with us." Bloom said. "Now our group is complete again."
"We made a pretty good team." Musa said.
"You're defense was spot on Flora." Tecna said.
"And Musa's sound blasts were really throwing those witches off their game." Samara said.
"And how clever was it that you stayed on the ground, they totally didn't see that coming." Bloom said looking at Samara.
"But they still bested us in the end." Stella sighed.
"Because we were not prepared." Tecna said. "Next time we'll have the upper hand."
"Yeah nobody can beat the Winx!" Bloom said.
"The what now?" Samara asked.
Bloom's cheeks turned a bit red. "I've been thinking about a name for our group for a few days…"
"What does Winx mean?" Flora asked.
"It's nothing…just us…the Winx." Bloom said.
"I like it." Musa said. "It has a nice sound to it."
"Although there is no logic behind the name, I have to agree with Musa." Tecna said.
"Alright then, from now on we are the Winx!" Bloom said.
"Well this Winx is off to her bed, goodnight." Stella said.
The others all agreed and went to their room. Samara lingered and with a heavy feeling knocked on Stella's door.
Stella's eyes narrowed. "I don't want to talk right now."
The door closed again. Samara sighed and retreated back to her room. Without taking the effort to change her clothes, she fell onto the bed and stared at the ceiling.
Stella was mad, probably because she knew that Samara knew about the identity switch, Griselds was going to report everything to her parents…she might as well pack her stuff right away. She would get an official letter from the King and Queen of Eraklion to let her know she had to come back home. Tears filled her eyes and rolled over her cheeks. Leaving Alfea meant leaving her friends…and so much more…