Romancing the Ambergris

Full Summary: When Paige runs out on her favourite perfume Andy tries to recreate it but he's lacking one crucial ingredient, ambergris. Determined to earn Paige's affection, Andy brings Paige and her friends with him on an underwater journey to find the ambergris but soon discovers he's not the only one seeking it. Meanwhile, Ty and Naomi sets LabRat up on a date with a mysterious girl and Abby goes on a non-date with Chester.

A Valentine Special with multible shippings!

Prologue:

Ringworm's Mega-Mall, the day before Valentine's Day.

It was rare to see all five field Grossologists together outside of missions. Not that they weren't friends but due to their varied interests they all tended to move in their own circles. This day however, Andy, Chester, Naomi and the Archer siblings all shared a table in the mall café.

The mall itself was on full Valentine's mode with papier-maché hearts hanging from the ceiling, fluffy bunny mascots offering chocolate samples and a romantic melody was playing over the speakers.

"It's like the Care Bears threw-up over the entire place." Abby groaned in annoyance before taking a sip of her latte.

Her brother cupped his ear. "Is that the song of the rare Green-Eyed Single I hear?" Ty sarcastically jived.

"No, I just happen to dislike anatomically incorrect hearts is all." Abby shot back.

"Well, I like it. Everything's so… heartfelt." Naomi said with an innocent smile.

Abby blinked before turning to her brother. "See what you've done, Ty. Your dumb humour has rubbed off on your girlfriend. If you've ruined a sweetheart like Naomi, female kind will never be able to forgive you."

"Speaking of female kind, look at that perfect specimen." Andy dreamily exclaimed, resting his head in his palms. The specimen he was referring to was Paige, swaying her hips as she walked past by the cafe. "That ass just gets more bootilicious every time I look at it."

Abby leaned closed to Chester and whispered, "With 'Ass' does he mean her posterior or just Paige in general?"

Chester chuckled a little at his crush's jab at their common tormentor.

"Andy, how can you still be interested in Paige?" Naomi asked concerned. "She's such a, such a…" The nice girl tried to word herself in a way that wouldn't be too harsh but couldn't find the words. Luckily, the others did.

"A wicked witch of the pink." Abby said.

"A bloodsucking parasite in human form." Ty added.

"A bully." Chester said and everyone gave him a weird look. "What? It might not be creative but it's true." The blonde boy argued with a shrugged.

"She's just misunderstood. Paige, can be nice when she wants to. Like, remember when she gave you that cupcake?" Andy stated, turning to Naomi.

The bespectacled girl scowled and rolled her eyes as she remember that day.

Flashback!

Naomi stood in the schoolyard when Paige and her friends approached her. "Collins, do you want some samples from my dad's new muffin shop." The alpha blonde exclaimed and offered up an open package of cupcakes.

"Um, I'm not sure." Naomi said hesitantly.

"They're chocolate flavoured." Paige chirped tantalizingly.

"Chocolate. Sorry, I'm allergic." Naomi exclaimed distressed.

"Oh, did I say chocolate? I meant eh…"

One of Paige's friends whispered something to her.

"Fudge." Paige finally said.

"Fudge? Alright then." Naomi exclaimed, took one cupcake and bit down on it. It wasn't until she'd swallowed that her throat started feeling thick, her face became red and swollen and she fell to the ground. "It. Was. Chocolate." She hissed thru her stuffed windpipes.

Paige was covering her mouth with one hand, trying not to laugh. "Sorry, must have mistaken."

Naomi's skin got ever more flushed as she started convulsing and crying.

"Oh my God, you look like you should be the mascot for ketchup or something." Paige said before taking out her smartphone and started taking photos.

End of Flashback!

"Yeah, I remember." Naomi grumbled while Ty comfortingly stroked her back.

"And Ty, remember how she helped you when you volunteered to be a crossing guard last week?" Andy pointed out.

Ty's eyes dilated in shock.

Flashback!

Ty, wearing an orange west and holding a STOP sign, stood in front of a crosswalk. Or more accurately, he was stomping in one place as he tried to keep himself from going number one in his pants.

Paige stood next to him but she was too busy looking at her phone to notice him.

"Excuse me, do you think you can hold this sign for me for two minutes while I go to the bathroom?" Ty asked desperately.

"Yeah, sure, whatever. Just don't bother." Paige replied, not taking her eyes off her phone.

Ty handed her his STOP sign and ran off. Paige unceremoniously dropped the sign the moment she needed to use more than one hand for typing on her smartphone.

Soon enough, two little boys came to the crosswalk. "Excuse me miss, is it okay for us to walk over here?" One of them asked.

"Sure, whatever." Paige said, again without taking her eyes off the phone.

The two boys started crossing the street but were suddenly hit by a speeding truck.

"Oh my God!" Paige gasped. "Granit McChin is signing autographs this weekend. I'm so there."

End Flashback!

"The two kids ended up in the hospital and I lost my position." Ty groaned with a scowl as he remembered that day.

"Not her fault. She wasn't a crossing guard so how would she know what to do?" Andy defended.

"Andy, not to be mean or anything but do you really think a girl like her would go for guys like us?" Chester asked, carefully.

"Paige should consider herself lucky if she end up with a guy like you, Chester." Abby muttered to herself before taking another sip of her latte.

"Believe it or not, Chester, Andy is actually pretty popular at our school." Ty stated.

"He is?" Chester sounded surprised.

The Kid Rot hallucination appeared next to him. "Nice, Chester. Now the nerd must hate you for thinking he's a social outcast."

"That's true, you've heard of the Zit-Ray, right?" Abby asked.

Chester choose to ignore the parasite's taunts and focused on his friend's inquiry. "The little device that cures acne? Of course. Everyone has one."

"Well, Andy here is the one who invented it." Abby said, gesturing to the aforementioned science geek.

"He did!" Chester gasped, baffled.

"Yeah, so not only is he rich and popular, he's somewhat of a local celebrity." Ty explained.

"How do you not know that? You've been back in town for a few months at least." Abby asked.

"I've been very busy. I've had to do extra schoolwork to catch up to everyone, I've had martial arts training with my grandpa's old cop buddy, I've had to plant new crops in my garden. I just can't keep up everything." Chester nervously argued.

"Anyway, Andy's Zit-Ray was such a ground-breaking invention that even Lance Boil tried to recruit him as his evil sidekick but Andy told him no and proceeded with kicking his butt." Abby explained.

"Oh gosh, stop it you guys." Andy waved their compliments off while blushing profusely.

"Man, that's really impressive, Andy." Chester complimented sincerely before a realization struck him. "Wait, are you telling me that Andy created something that helped humanity in order to be popular and managed to reject a tempting, evil power?"

"Yep." Andy said.

Chester dropped his head to the table and sighed in despair.

"Chester, is something wrong?" Abby asked.

"I just realized Andy did nearly the exact same thing I did except he actually succeeded." Chester mumbled depressed, still face planted to the table.

"That's not true Chester." Abby immediately insisted. "You're much cuter than Andy and while you're not successful yet, I am certain you will be eventually. After all, you've already overcome so many obstacles."

"You're just saying that to be nice." Chester mumbled but he could feel a welcoming warmth filling his chest upon hearing Abby's words of encouragement.

Abby was about to say more when she noticed Ty looking at her with a mischievous smirk while Naomi giggled a little. The redhead blushed and huffed in annoyance before turning her gaze away.

Naomi leaned closer to her boyfriend and whispered, "I think they should just admit that they like each other already."

Ty nodded to that.

"Well, here I go to make my move." Andy proclaimed and literally leaped off his chair. He gave his friends a thumb up and a confident grin. "I'll make Paige my Valentine this year for sure." Then he hesitated, breathed onto his hand and smelled it. "Um, Ty? Is my breath okay?"

He exhaled in Ty's direction and the spikey haired teen sniffed the air. "Old French fries and chilli sauce. Prefect!" He proclaimed with a broad smile and a thumb up.

"Alright, wish me luck." Andy said and walked off to find Paige.

Then Ty stood up. "I should go with him. Someone needs to be there to catch him when the blonde harpy shoots him down." She gave Naomi a kiss on the cheek before calling out to his best friend. "Hey, Andy! Wait a minute, your wingman's coming with you!"

The two boys quickly caught up with the rich blonde as she entered a beauty store for cosmetic products. "Hey, there beautiful." Andy called out to get her attention.

Paige turned to see them. "Oh, hey Andy and um…you." She gave the Archer brother a puzzled look, clearly not remembering his name.

"That's okay, I'm not important to this scene anyway." Ty commented with a dismissive hand wave and a humorous smile.

"So Paige, what are you doing here? If it's for make-up you can save your money cause your face is already perfect." Andy flirtatiously said.

"Oh, thank you." Paige said as she and Andy ventured further into the shop, leaving Ty behind.

Ty decided to stay back and observe the "couple" at a respective distance. Even before Ty started going steady with Naomi, this was how the two usually would pick up girls, or try to anyway. One would stay back to give emotional support while the other one would go in for the kill so-to-speak. A few time they even got Jasmine to butter the girls up first but that never worked.

Suddenly, someone much taller bumped into him from behind. Ty spun around to looked up at the aforementioned person and was somewhat startled by their appearance.

She was a tall, fat woman with green skin, red lipstick and wore a messy vermilion wig. She also wore glasses that only a grandmother would wear and her dress looked like it was patched together by several shredded, mismatching garbs.

"Excuse me, young man." She apologized with a voice that was anything but feminine, flashing a grin full of yellow teeth.

As he saw the plump woman strut away, Ty clutched his chin in contemplation. "Hmm, there's something familiar about her."

Back to Andy trying to ask out the popular girl. "So Paige, do you want to be my Valentine?" The bespectacled boy asked, blushing and nervously tapping his fingers together.

In response, Paige pouted and crossed her arm over her chest. "Do you have any chocolate to give me or at least a Valentine's card signed by one of the Jonas Brothers?"

"Um, no but I can probably come up with one of those till Valentine's Day." Andy replied.

"Then that's a hard no I'm afraid." Paige stated firmly.

Andy pouted but wouldn't give up yet. "Has anyone else asked you? Has Greg?" He asked, trying to pander to the desperate single within her.

Paige huffed. "I would never give that backstabber another chance. He sold me out to that bird freak, remember?"

"Right, sorry." The young inventor apologized after being reminded of the time Mr. Fowler kidnapped his crush.

"Forget it. once the boys gets a whiff of my favourite perfume, I'll have to chase them off with a stick."

"Oceania Gold." Andy proclaimed.

Paige blinked. "Yes. How did you know?"

"You post all your favourite things on Slimebook and I memorize everything you write." Andy replied.

"Wow, that's kind of impressive." Paige said, genuinely flattered that this boy had made the effort to learn so much about her. 'He would never forget a birthday or anniversary, that's for sure. If only he was more handsome…'

She then made her way to the shelf where her perfume usually were. However, the moment she got close enough she saw that the yellow bottles that used to be there had been replaced with some sort of purple perfume.

"What is this?" She gasped exasperated, grabbed one of the perfume bottles and read the label. "Lilac Delight. This isn't even by the same manufacturer." She placed the bottle back on the shelf and angrily marched up to the counter, shoving the fat, green skinned woman out of the way in the process. "Out of my way, this is an emergency."

"Something I can help you with?" The female cashier asked in a bored, deadpanned tone.

Paige slammed her palms onto the counter like she was demanding attention. "Where's the Oceania Gold? I always come to this store to buy it and you've never run out of it before!"

"Oceania Gold was discontinued and taken off the shelves weeks ago. The company that made it went bankrupt." The cashier explained.

"What!" Both Paige and the green skinned woman gasped simultaneously. 'Dang it. Without the ambergris from that perfume my scheme will never work.' The green skinned woman thought to herself while gritting her yellow teeth.

As for Paige, her mind appeared to have broken. Her eyes dilated as if she'd seen a ghost, her mouth hung open and her head slanted.

Andy carefully approached her and placed a comforting hand on her arm. "Um, Paige? Are you okay?"

Suddenly some of the most horrifying images Paige could think of flashed before her mind. The bombing of Hiroshima, the sinking of the Titanic, a mother eagle eating her own young alive, starving African children, her wedding with Ty Archer. None of that even compared to losing her favourite perfume.

She fell onto her knees and screamed, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Author's Note:

As you may have noticed, this is a rewrite of a fic I made a while back. I re-read that story and realized I didn't like it so now I'm making a new version and once I'm done with this one I'll also rewrite More Legs, More Trouble as I didn't think that one was up to my standards either. Now the rewrites for the A-plot won't be too different. Only a few changes that will be vital for later. The biggest difference will be the Ty/Naomi story as I've pretty much replaced it with a story revolving around LabRat. I think that will provide LabRat with some needed character development and the introduction of a new character. Nothing was rewritten for the prologue chapter thou (except for the summary).

I hope no Ty/Paige shippers took offence at my little ship-bashing joke in this chapter. I usually try to avoid character/shipping bashing in my fanfics cause I don't think it adds much and might alienate certain readers. This time thou I couldn't help myself and wrote that stupid little joke. But come on, I actually wrote a few Ty/Paige shipping moments in the last two episodes so this is just fair.

A few call-backs in this chapter. I wanted to bring up the events of the episode Pussed Off as it proves that even thou Andy might not be traditionally attractive he is still popular enough to have a chance with Paige. I also wanted to bring up the sort of funny similarity between Andy & Chester because they did literally the same thing but not only did Andy's invention actually work but he also resisted the dark temptation of becoming a villain. Yet the fandom still gives him no respect...

I also made a call-back to S3E5 where Greg betrayed and broke up with Paige so that pairing will never happen (as if anyone was pulling for that to happen).

As always, any feedback you can give me is appreciated. Please, review, follow and favourite this story.

This time, I'll do better.