AN: First off, sorry I didn't update yesterday, I didn't have time to finish this and my one-shot about the Pevensies yesterday. This is yet another plot building chapter and yes, there's a cliff hanger at the end. Sorry. LOL.
Susan, Cleo, Rikki, and Emma sat at one of the booths at the Juice Net across from Lewis who had his open laptop in front of him.
"So what's the plan for tonight?" Emma asked as Lewis took a noisy slurp from the soft drink on the table.
"What we need is a way to keep everyone together." Lewis decided, setting the drink down beside him.
"Thanks that was really helpful." Rikki snapped sarcastically.
"I wasn't finished yet." Lewis defended himself. "I was thinking that if it's alright with Susan, we should all stay at her house tonight."
"It's fine with me but I don't know if everyone will fit." Susan said doubtfully. It was an extremely small house after all.
"Well what if we all hang out at Cleo's?" Lewis suggested.
Cleo shook her head. "My dad will be there and Kim too."
"Em?" He looked over at Emma hopefully.
"Parents and Elliot, both going to be at home." Emma sighed, making it clear that they couldn't stay there either.
"What about your house, Lewis?" Cleo asked.
"My parents will be there." Lewis shrugged.
"Maybe we could all stay at Zane's place until this full moon thing blows over." Rikki suggested.
"Rikki, are you insane?" Emma demanded, looking at her as though she'd lost her mind. "We can't be at Harrison Bennett's house on a full moon. I don't even want to think about what could go wrong."
"I have an idea." Susan told them, pulling out her cell phone and calling Peter.
"Su?" His voice came in through the speaker phone.
"Peter, do you think we could stay over at Max's house tonight?" Susan asked him.
"Hold on, he's right here, I'll ask him." Peter put his hand over the mouth piece of the phone and asked Max it that was alright. "He says it's alright with him."
"Great." Susan breathed a sigh of relief. At least that was settled. "'Tell him thanks from all of us."
"I will." Peter assured her.
"Love you, Bye." Susan said.
"Love you too." Peter said. "bye."
"You still there?" Susan could still hear his breathing on the other end of the line. "I thought you'd hung up."
"I'd thought this was your turn to hang up first." Peter answered.
"You hang up first." Susan told him.
"No, you."
"No, you."
"Alright on the count of three." Peter said.
"Three!" Rikki rolled her eyes, grabbed the phone out of Susan's hand, and hung up.
"Rikki!" Susan protested, shooting her friend a pleading look.
"Come on, you and lover boy can make up later." Rikki tried to get her focused on the situation at hand still at hand. "We still need to think of an excuse for going over to Max's house tonight."
"Bugs?" Lewis randomly came up with.
"Bugs?" Rikki wrinkled her nose. "What kind of stupid excuse is that?"
'"It was the first thing that came to mind." Lewis grumped.
"Alright, well I don't like to encourage telling lies but..." Susan sighed, shaking her head at the thought she was about to share with the group. "Maybe you should tell them that you're all sleeping over each other's houses."
"Yeah, I could tell my dad I'm sleeping over at Emma's." Rikki said, warming up to the idea. "He never calls in to check."
"I could tell my dad I'm at Emma's and she could tell her parents she's at my house." Cleo suggested.
"But my parents will call to check up." Emma reminded her. "They always do."
"Tell them to call you on your cell." Rikki told her. "That way, even though you'll be at Max's not Cleo's they won't know the difference."
"I hate lying to them." Emma moaned.
"I know, I hated lying to my parents too." Susan said, remembering the days of cover ups and pretending like she suddenly hated swimming. "But I couldn't bring myself to tell them that I was a mermaid."
"Alright, so it's all worked out." Lewis said, moving the laptop to show the girls the screen. "The moon rises at exactly seven tonight and sets at six in the morning."
"So if we're all at Max's by six thirty we should be fine." Cleo said trying to calm her nerves. "I can't stop thinking about all the weird things that could happen to us if anything goes wrong."
"Nothing will go wrong." Rikki tried to reassure her friend. "This time we're completely out numbered we can't go crazy with that many people to help us."
"That's what I'm worried about." Susan said softly. "What if we do something to them, after we get hit by the full moon?"
"Look, there's no point in stressing like this now." Rikki said firmly. "The moon is going to rise and there's nothing we can do about it."
"Rikki's right, guys." Emma said, nodding at her friend. "We just have to take tonight as it comes."
Charlotte Watsford was sitting at home out by the pool, doing her homework on one of the lounge chairs with her notebooks propped against her legs when her phone rang. She reached over and picked it up, wondering who it could be.
Deep down she hoped it was Lewis but she knew that was impossible. After all, he'd dumped her for Cleo and had made it perfectly clear that he no longer wanted anything to do with her. She'd thought but getting a new crush she might be able to get over him but her new crush, whom she had been told was Miss Chatham's nephew also had chosen one of the mermaids over her. And not one of the original three either. Some old woman who'd miraculously turned young and had all three powers over water. Too bad Dr. Denman had failed to keep her locked up. No, not even a top scientist like Linda Denman could keep those girls at bay. And Charlotte was left the loser once again. She wanted to be a super mermaid. She wanted to be like her grandmother, only better. She wanted to be special but her plans never succeeded.
The caller ID said, 'Harrison Bennett'.
"What does he want?" Charlotte wondered aloud. She barely knew the man. As far as she knew he was some rich guy who's son happened to be dating Rikki. And as she tended to steer clear of anyone close to Rikki or the others, she certainly didn't want to talk to him right now. But curiosity won her over and she hit 'accept incoming call'.
"Ms. Watsford?" Mr. Harrison asked.
"Speaking." Charlotte told him.
"Hello, this is Harrison Bennett." Mr. Harrison said by way of greeting.
"Yes, I know." Charlotte said in a testy voice. "What do you want?"
"I heard a rumor that you helped Dr. Denman catch a mermaid, before that unfortunate accident...memory loss, terrible." He paused for a moment and then went on. "Well anyway, as you may or may not know, I've gone and purchased Mako Island. I plan to open it as a resort for tourists."
"I've heard." Charlotte tapped her fingers on the outdoor table that stood close to the lounge chair.
"Good, well I know that Mako has this strange effect on mermaids and I was wondering if you could explain it to me so I could fully understand it." Mr. Bennett told her.
"Why should I?" Charlotte wanted to know what was in it for her. Why should she help some rich man get richer? He probably wasn't even going to give her a cut.
"I'll pay you." He offered. "Good money."
She wasn't sure yet. "Why do you want to know about the mermaids anyway?"
"Zoos that show ordinary run of the mill animals make very rich men out of some people. Can you imagine how wealthy a man who could show tourists real mythical creatures would become?" He let that sink in.
"So you want to keep them locked up, tested on, all that?" Charlotte asked him.
"Is that a problem?" He sounded very disappointed. "You seemed so willing to let Dr. Denman have a mermaid last time, why not me?"
Could this finally be the revenge she'd been longing for? She could get rid of Susan once and for all, and maybe the other three too. A life without Susan, Cleo, or those other twits may have been tempting, but these plans had backfired twice before.
She hesitated for a moment, thinking about how every day she had to see Lewis and Cleo walking hand in hand in the school hallways. And how in the evenings when she walked home from tutoring unbelievably dumb students, she always had to see Susan and Peter together at the pier. And all four were still mermaids, with powers. Awful. She'd wanted to be a mermaid, like her grandmother. They'd just stumbled upon it. And yet she'd lost everything and they always won. It was like someone had decided that she was the loser and would always be the loser. No, she wouldn't let this last chance to get back them get away.
"No problem at all." Charlotte told Mr. Harrison. "I was just checking to make sure we understood each other. Let's talk about Mako."
At 6:29 PM, Everyone arrived at Max's house.
"It's going to be a bit of a tight fit." Max told them, letting them in.
"It's alright, I've brought some sleeping bags." Emma lifted up a large orange duffle bag she was struggling to get through the door.
"That's our Emma." Cleo said supportively. "Always prepared."
"I brought a torch." Rikki put in rather pathetically, to get a little bit of credit for herself. She lifted up the black plastic flashlight as she spoke.
Peter was suppressing a laugh, looking over at Susan.
"What's so funny?" She asked, touching her face self-consciously.
"Do you remember your first full moon when you kicked me in the face?" Peter grinned at her.
"That was awful." Susan recalled, knowing it wasn't something to smile about but smiling anyway. "That was some black eye you had."
"If it makes you feel any better, they once flung me from one end of Mako to the other after being moonstruck." Lewis fake-glared at Rikki, Cleo, and Emma.
"Well I think what happened during the full moon after that one more than made up for it." Peter raised an eyebrow at Susan causing her to blush.
"Oh yeah, she told us about that." Emma said, as she struggled with the zipper of one of the sleeping bags.
"Took you long enough to tell me what happened though." Susan teased, flirting with him a little bit.
"Well you know now." He flirted back.
"Alright, enough you two!" Rikki rolled her eyes. "You make me sick."
"We're in love, we can't help it." Peter sighed still gazing at her.
"God, you're worse than..." Rikki motioned to Cleo who had just kissed Lewis on the cheek while he fiddled with the locket around her neck.
"If we ever get that bad, smack me." Zane whispered to Rikki.
"Done." Rikki told him.
"Oh come on, it's not like you two don't flirt with each other." Cleo laughed, as Lewis pulled away from her and went to help Max make sure the room was completely moon-proof.
"Not in front of everyone." Rikki pointed out.
"She has a point." Julia said, she had the same feelings about public displays of affection as Rikki. Not that she had anyone to share such things with anyway, not since she'd never gone back to the one boy she'd truly cared about.
"I saw you and Ed acting pretty lovey-dovey once." Peter reminded her.
"We didn't know you were there." Even though it had taken place so many years ago, the thought of it still made Julia turn a little red. Though so much time had gone by, she still remembered it as if it had happened only a day ago. She could still see Edmund perfectly in her mind's eye. She still remembered how they'd met at the department store and how she'd walked away with strange feeling that something was happening though she hadn't been sure what.
"Alright everyone," Lewis announced. "The moon is going to rise in..." He looked at his watch. "Ten minutes. If anyone has anything they need to do outside, do it now or commit yourselves to staying in here all night."
"I'm all set." Emma told him.
Rikki nodded and took out her iPod and a small pair of headphones.
"I'm really worried." Cleo said, eyeing the tightly closed shutters and curtains. What if some moonlight got through?
"Don't worry, Cleo." Lewis told her. "We duck taped all the cracks. No moonlight is going to get in here."
"So what do we do now?" Ash asked.
"We sit and wait for the moon to pass." Max took a seat on the couch and started flipping through a magazine about fishing.
"Why don't we watch a movie or something while we wait?" Ash suggested opening his backpack and looking for the DVDs he'd brought with him.
"I'm too nervous for a movie." Cleo's hands were shaking. "Something's going to go wrong. One of us always gets hit by the full moon and does weird things."
"It'll be alright." Julia tried to reassure her. "Every once in a while, I managed to avoid the full moon."
"I avoided it for years." Susan pointed out.
"Alright, maybe I am over-reacting." Cleo took in a deep breath and let it out. "No need to worry."
The watch on Lewis's arm beeped. He glanced down at it. "Moon's up."
"Great." Rikki muttered.
"Let's watch the news." Zane suggested, looking rather annoyed. "My dad's going to be on it, live talking about his plans to ruin...I'm sorry, 'improve' Mako Island." He did angry air quotes on the word 'improve'.
Max handed him the remote.
"It's not turning on." Zane said, clicking power button the remote. "Is it the batteries?"
"No, that button's broken, you have to turn it on from the TV set then use the remote..." Max got up and showed him how the old set worked.
"Okay, got it." Zane flipped through the channels until he reached the one with the nightly news.
A tall twenty-nine year old blond woman with way too much skin showing and with a frilly pink scarf around her neck, walked along the decks of the local harbor talking into a microphone.
"I'm Kendra with the seven 'o clock news, and we're here with Harrison Bennett who plans to turn the previously untouched Mako Island into a resort." The camera panned over to Zane's father who was standing right beside her.
"Tell us, Mr. Bennett, do you think people will be upset because of the possibly of endangered animals being harmed?" She put the microphone to his lips.
"No. In fact, I believe that we may discover more creatures during building meaning my plans would help not only the economy but also, science." He smiled into the camera. "What we're doing is going to make the world a better place."
"Powerful words from a powerful man." Kendra practically gigged into her microphone.
"Get me a waste basket, he makes me want to puke." Rikki muttered, glaring at the TV screen.
"Tell me about it." Zane groaned.
The reporter didn't seem to feel the same way after giggling for a good three minutes, She added, "This reporter personally feels that this is going to be new turn in the way business around here works and feel honored to..."
"Oh, for god's sake." Zane barked at the screen. "Just ask him to take you to dinner already, so you can get your scrawny chicken-bone hands on his money."
"I can't believe my parents are friends with him." Emma growled.
Suddenly the camera on screen turned up at the sky. The man working the live feed must have tripped and/or fallen down. It focused on the bright full moon.
All four mermaids saw it's light come through the TV, into the room. Their eyes went wide and the gazed at the screen more intensely now.
It was Julia who realized what was happening first.
She jumped up and turned the TV off.
"Why'd you do that?" Zane asked, looking behind him to see the four mermaids looking very unwell.
"Oh no." Peter rushed over to Susan's side. "Su?"
She blinked, there was no more moonlight in the room. "What happened?"
"I thought you were moonstruck for a moment there." Peter told her, looking very worried. "Are you sure you're alright?"
"I'm fine." She said, her voice sounded a little distant.
"Emma?" Ash asked.
"I'm alright." Emma's voice seemed distant too.
Cleo stood up and started looking around the room for something.
"She's looking for moonlight." Max said, keeping his eye on her to make sure she didn't head for the door. "They are moonstruck. All of them."
"Oh, great..." Ash moaned.
AN: I would love it if you would review! Please? Pretty please?