"Jesse, can you talk 'em down?"

Jesse just shrugged at her twin brother. "Um, I can try. There's a big chance it's not going to work."

"That's... fine..." Cassie managed, through puffs and gasps for air. Her face was bright red at this point from how hard she'd been running. Jesse glanced over her shoulder at the girl, who looked as if she might run herself right into the ground.

"Um, are you okay, Cassie?"

The redhead readjusted her glasses, which slid down her nose quickly back to where it had been before. "I'm... fine..."

"You are redder than your hair right now!" Jace scolded, slowing down a little so that he wasn't practically bounding a hundred feet in front of the girl. "It's okay to ask for a break when you need it."

"Not... when we're... running from... cave spiders..." Cassie puffed, reaching up and nudging her glasses up. With how hard she was running, though, she nearly smacked her glasses right off of her face.

Jesse glanced over her shoulder, this time over past Cassie, and opened her mouth, eyes slowly starting to glow red. What came out were not words- not in the typical English language, anyway- but a series of strange hissing sounds.

Several of the spiders actually came to a slow stop, clicking and hissing uncertainly at the spider hybrid. The rest, alas, did not.

"Er... well, at least some of them... stopped," Jesse said, somewhat feebly.

"Sorry..."

"Well, it's not your fault. 'Sides, if we weren't hybrids, we'd be fighting through this whole mob anyway, so it's not that bad," Jesse said cheerfully, calling over her shoulder and slowing down a little.

Reuben was watching the whole situation from Jesse's back, watching the way Cassie was slowing down, watching the way she was starting to turn so red it was concerning that she might've actually started blowing a coronary, before he swivelled back to face Petra, who was hovering along so fast that she'd nearly jet-blasted herself to the end of the tunnel and then had forced herself to slow down. (She was hardly about to leave the whole group behind.) "Petra! Can you use the lava to-"

He wasn't even finished lifting his finger to point at the lava when Petra's already glowing eyes lit up even more. "Oh- oh yeah! Jesse, you don't mind if I kill the spiders?"

"As long as you don't kill me I'm cool with anything at the moment," Jesse replied, skittering several paces forward and checking over her shoulder.

Petra curled her hands into tight fists, her gold eyes flaring slightly as she narrowed her eyes. Her hands trembled momentarily.

A single bubble on the surface of the lava popped.

Petra's hand flashed up, her golden arm searing brightly, and spread her fingers out wide rapidly in a single, sharp flicking motion. Instantly, the lava around them rippled unnaturally, almost like it was water and not molten rock, before rising from the ground and forming into the vague shape of Petra's hand, dripping searing hot lava on the ground, before she slapped her hand downwards.

The giant lava-hand slammed into the ground, instantly incinerating several of the cave spiders and releasing a sickly sweet stench in the air. Incidentally, the hand barely missed Cassie by a foot.

"F-" Cassie made a frustrated growl, cutting off the expletive before Reuben could catch it. "Could you be more careful, you nearly hit me right there!"

"Who said that I wasn't trying to?" Petra said innocently.

Cassie growled softly, narrowing her eyes at Petra. They flickered red momentarily, but then she gritted her teeth and just kept running- she couldn't waste any air on yelling at Petra right now.

Jesse's head swivelled back forward, and she leapt over a small break in the ground over a bubbling pool of lava, Reuben giving a little surprised squeal of laughter as she did so. Catching up to Petra, she could hear the displeased complaints of the cave spiders behind her as Cassie hopped over and Jace did as well, Petra still hovering in midair and making little waves of heat ripple through the air as she pointed ahead, some of the Blaze Rods rotating more quickly for a moment. "There! It went into that cave!" the redhead shouted, a little shadow darting through the cave opening at the end of the tunnel.

"On it!" Jace called back, still bounding along. Cassie's pace was starting to slow drastically, her very much human lungs and muscles and... really everything finally starting to give up on catching up to the hybrids, but she kept pounding along.

Jesse made a mental note to get her some water once they'd slowed down.

Petra's golden eyes flicked to them, before she grinned and soared straight through a curtain of lava, sending little sizzling drops of lava everywhere in a tremendous splash. Reuben squeaked and ducked as Jesse swerved to avoid getting caught on fire, Cassie barely managing to avoid a droplet of lava and in fact getting a tiny splot of it on her shoulder, which she frantically attempted to swat out, and Jace did a tuck-and-roll in the nick of time to avoid getting a faceful of the stuff.

"Aaaaand Petra's in the home stretch!" the Blaze hybrid announced with a huge grin from where she was soaring through the air, gliding towards the cavern opening and dodging a few cave spiders that were attempting to leap on her in midair, although they seemed a little hesitant to do so because... let's face it, Petra's half Blaze. A creature that is pretty much composed of literal fire.

Spiders plus fire equals lots of dead spiders.

However, they didn't seem to have any of same qualms about jumping on Cassie, and the brighter redhead gave a shallow little gasp and was barely able to duck under a spider as it attempted to jump on her, stumbling a few steps before straightening back up and continuing her sprint. Her face was... okay, actually, it was starting to worry Jesse how she was able to get to that color of red. She looked like a cooked lobster.

"Sis, pay attention! I don't think you wanna get cooked!" Jace barked at her, making her blink rapidly at him with green and red eyes before swiveling back to face the front- just in time to see that their path was cutting off into a cliff, dropping off dramatically and leaving only a few pillars of stone, dirt, and who-knows-what else to reach the cavern entrance.

"Oh, f-" Cassie cut herself off in favor of not falling to her death, while Jace bolted forward farther to avoid tripping Cassie or Jesse up. Jesse simply tensed her limbs and launching herself through the air, Reuben letting out an alarmed squeak and burying his face into her shoulderblades. There was a moment of Jesse feeling weightless as she quickly shifted her limbs, joints flipping back to normal human for a moment, come on, come on, come on-!

The webbing that she shot out attached to the wall of the tunnel and kind of on the part where that met the ceiling of the cave opening.

"Hang on, Reuben!" she hissed at him, feeling the pig hybrid's arms tighten on her- and then she tensed into a smaller form, retracting the string as she went soaring down into a sort of swing motion, avoiding slamming full-force into the floor and in fact swinging into the little cavern, the floor dropping away to reveal a lower area where Petra was already touching down.

A moment longer, just one second-

Jesse snapped the webbing back into her hand, doing a sort of tight roll in midair before unfurling her limbs from the ball she'd formed herself into, Reuben practically strangling her from where his arms were clinging to her, switching the limbs around again (she almost gave a little relieved sigh as her knees and elbows cracked; that felt kind of nice) before her legs touched into the ground, knees bending unnaturally.

Well, unnaturally if she was a full human.

Her third set of arms were occupied keeping Reuben on her back, but her second set and then her first touched down as well, joints bending as far as they could, before Jesse reversed momentum and launched her back legs into a sort of flip, landing normally with her arms pressing Reuben firmly into her back, lungs scrabbling to gather themselves because holy crap that was the coolest thing Jesse had done in a few years.

Petra apparently thought so too, because as Jesse spun around and set a rather tense Reuben onto the floor, Petra's still-steaming fist clunked solidly into her armor, the Blaze hybrid giving her a grin that rivaled the one she'd had on her face when she'd won just now. "Holy crap, that was awesome, Jesse! Good to see you still can be acrobatic." And she delivered another friendly punch to the shoulder.

"I've got to be acrobatic, that's my whole thing," Jesse teased, as Jace landed on the ground a moment later, doing a little happy dance. His hair was totally messed up, but his green eyes were sparkling with joy, and his tail was whipping back and forth so fast it could probably have been used as some sort of weapon.

Cassie slammed into the ground a second later as well, face so red that it looked like she'd burst a blood vessel. Or several. All in the facial region. Her glasses were almost about to drop right off of her face, her hair was just as disheveled as Jace's, and her chest was heaving dramatically as she tried to drag air back into her lungs.

Jesse's smile faded instantly, and she went over to the redhead, running her fingers carefully along Cassie's shoulders, absentmindedly noting the way sweat was pouring down Cassie's face and her cardigan felt unnaturally warm. "Notch, Cassie, if you'd needed to stop you could've stopped."

"Yeah," and Jace wasn't grinning so much anymore either as he straightened back up, clapping a hand to her back and accidentally forcing Cassie to cough. "You look beat."

Cassie gave an incoherent wheeze and gesticulated vaguely with one hand, still redder than her own hair and looking a bit like she wanted to pass out.

Petra's smile had also disappeared. You could practically see gears clicking away in her head as she stared at the other redhead for a few moments.

And then that moment passed.

"Crud, Cassie, you look like you decided to go sit in a sauna for an hour or something." Petra trotted over, resting a hand on Cassie's shoulder rather awkwardly and letting her gold eyes meet Cassie's tired green ones. "Next time we go for a run, bring like... I dunno, a horse or a bike or something."

Cassie gave a snort, a strange smile quirking over her lips. "Yes, Petra, the next time you randomly ask us to go on an adventure in a probably very narrow cave or cliff structure, I will happily bring a big horse that is taller than both Jace and Jesse combined. That sounds like a lovely idea."

"We're not that short!" Jace and Jesse chorused, Jesse crossing all of her arms while Jace simply pouted at the two redheads.

"Of course you're not," Petra said, in a rather kind tone that immediately made warning bells pop up the siblings' heads.

Cassie finished the statement, still sounding out of breath but giving them a lopsided grin. "You're shorter."

Jace stuck his tongue out Cassie, before drawing it back in as he regarded Petra almost loftily. "You know Petra, you're so hot you'd make the devil sweat."

Petra crossed her arms, tilting her head back as a smirk snuck over her face. "Oh, really? Well, you're looking rather... fetching yourself." She reached out and patted him on the back, voice lowering into a nearly seductive purr. "Are your paws tired? You've been running through my mind all day."

Jace let his eyelids droop as a flirtatious smile snuck over his face. "Hm, I think I must be being flirted with by the devil..." He turned his head and stood on his tiptoes a bit to whisper in her ear, "'cause you're hot as hell."

"Cut it ouutttt, you two are so weird," Reuben huffed, rolling his eyes at his aunt and uncle. (He called them that. Jace had once teasingly asked Petra if that meant that the two of them were married. She had promptly smacked him.)

Jesse gave a light laugh at the way Jace and Petra had automatically popped apart at that, gently rubbing Cassie on the back with one of her lower arms absentmindedly. "What's new? Anyway, you should try riding on my back next time, Cassie- Reuben's starting to get fast enough that he doesn't have to ride me, and I'd really rather you not make your heart pop before you're even thirty."

Cassie rubbed her chest absentmindedly, adjusting her glasses as her face finally started to look less like she'd just been cooked alive. "Hm. I'll keep that in mind."

A friendly clap on the back from the spider hybrid, and Jesse was twisting to give Petra a cheery grin. "Welp, looks like we're here. I hope all the mystery lives up to the hype." And with that, she started strolling down the makeshift hallway, pulling out her sword defensively.

As if that was some sort of supernatural cue, there was the strange bleating... grumbling... whatever-it-was sound, the acoustics of the cavern sending it bouncing off the walls and magnifying it to a strange roar, seeming to originate from this offshaft.

"Alright, here we come, mystery monster," Jesse said cheerfully, Cassie gathering herself- although she still looked rather hot and probably needed some water when they were no longer in this weird cavern.

"We should probably sound less happy," Jace pointed out, still grinning with his tail wagging back and forth cheerily. Reuben seemed rather unconcerned himself, although he was tensed slightly, as if in some sort of preparation.

"Oh, yeah." Jesse promptly adopted the facial expression of someone who was at a funeral. "How's this?"

Petra closed her eyes, a huge grin forming over her face as if she was either repressing laughter or resisting a facepalm. Actually, scratch the either. She was probably just trying not to laugh and facepalm at the same time. "I think I prefer you being cheerful."

"Alright." And there was Jesse, back to looking very chirpy as her lovely spider-hybrid self.

Despite the cheery attitude, though, the group was taking this seriously, as was probably evidenced as they moved into battle formations. Petra allowed herself to hover to the back, Jace dropping so that he was behind her, while Cassie dominated the center and kind of sandwiched Reuben between her and Jesse, who was leading the way with her sword out and at the ready. Easing their way in- and trying not to make more noise than an elephant in a glass factory- Jesse edged through the tunnel before cautiously peeping over the edge of the bluff they'd arrived at.

At the bottom of the pit they'd just come to, making soft grumbling noises, was a cream-colored llama with a blue-and-magenta colored scarf wrapped around its neck.


A/N: Yes, I am alive, but no, I'm not going to be super super active for a while, if at all.

So as you all might know from one (or more) of my other stories, I'm in my senior year of high school, and planning to apply to art school. And to do so, I have to get my portfolio ready. As of right now... I have little to nothing I'd be comfortable with showing colleges when I apply; not to mention that these art schools are REALLY high level. (Except for one but I still want to take that one really seriously.) I'm also working on Fata Morgana (formerly known as Phantasmagoria) and a few other projects.

I'm... not ready at all, so from now until sometime around early December, I will probably rarely surface on here. (Not that I've been doing that recently, sorry! I've been busy.) When I DO come on, updates will be very sporadic. Please don't be surprised if I don't reappear on here until after that early December deadline- I am going to be snowed under with portfolio preparation, not to mention my last year of high school.

I would, however, like to thank you for following these stories- you guys are really wonderful, and I wish I could update more often (even though my writing is sort of cruddy lol).

Responses to reviews!

LunartheMooncake: Indeed xD / Sorryyy xD / oh whoop xD / Character interaction is great xD

EllieRose27: I am very sorry that I don't remember what we were talking about, but yes. xD

Darkbeast Dend: Thank you! And I'm glad that it made you laugh. / (thumbs up)

chcinatwon: Very sorry about that. Fanfiction technically does not allow A/N chapters (though this does not stop some authors from doing it anyway) and I'd really just rather not risk it. / I started dating him February of this year. Movie Mode just hit its 2nd year anniversary and has been 'alive' for three years. I'm sorry that it seems like a carbon copy, but we just see characters very similarly and the reactions are generally going to be very similar. And I do agree that there is probably a way you could've phrased that more kindly.

Emily the Avenger: I do, but only because it was used in a comic and I had to look it up and went "OH" promptly afterwards.

TheAmberShadow: Barely, but yes, the armor-wrecking llama is here xD / Yeees, some of them I went "hm?" and looked up the meaning of... and regretted afterwards xD / Probably, but there's also blood, slight swearing, lots of topics that children probably would not enjoy xD / I don't want a spider on me, but if there's one nearby and it's not going to bother me, I'm fine with them. / Well... Jace is okay, Reuben's not half bad, Cassie is... Cassie, but yes, Jesse's pretty good with animals. xD / It's... well, if you go find it, it has a better synopsis on there xD

AquaK13: Yep! / Yeah, I really love how it goes. Character development is wonderful. / I don't hate on ships; unless they're ships that are really inappropriate and aren't just joke ships. (I've seen Ivor x Jesse and like... they're... they're like at LEAST twenty years apart in age? Like wtf?) But gay ships or whatever, I'm good. / Okay. (starts looking at the worst spots to stick in pick up lines) / The game's accessible at the link (or just go to my game site on itchio); and it is available for free since it's a fangame x3 / Nope. / Ye :3

EmLee: Heh, yeah, I love that. / Pfft, I might just use that in the future. / I love puns :3

Guest: Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Welp, that seems to be it for now! See ya, so long, and g'bye! I'll try to be back soon :3

x.X. A.L. X.x