Cleo POV
The moment Rikki had spoken, multicolored lights had shot out of the sticks that many of the students seemed to be carrying. On instinct, Emma had held out her hand as if to stop them. She had probably thought something along the lines of 'freeze', or 'stop', because the spell bounced harmlessly off the invisible force field that she had recently gained in her list of powers. Rikki, in her panic, had let out columns of flame from her palm after she had turned into said element. The spells seemed to disappear once they came into contact with the fire, as if it was hot enough to incinerate them.
I on the other hand, had done nothing but stumble back in shock. I soon noticed that Emma had frozen the jets of lights that were being produced from the sticks. I could see students stumbling forward as the weight of an extra few meters attached to their sticks weighed them down. Emma herself had turned into ice on instinct. One thing that we had learned, was that apart from being in water, we always felt safest when we were in our 'elemental forms', as Emma had dubbed it.
On of the jets flew at me and I threw my hand out. It bent around me. I stopped for a moment. One of my new powers was telekinesis, maybe these jets of light were literally jets of light... but...light didn't bend. I had never actually tried to manipulate light before. I assumed it wasn't possible, but here it was. Another jet flew towards Rikki and I threw my hand out once more, willing the jet of blue light to bend and succumb to my will. It did. The light bent around Rikki, but I could feel it going out of control. Hmm. Interesting. Light was a lot harder to control then other objects. Carefully, I bent it in the direction of the ceiling and experimented with it above peoples heads. The light danced around freely for a while before I let it crash into one of the plates of chicken near a student. The student stepped into the chicken just as the blue jet hit it, and the chicken froze, along with his shoe. I giggled as he cried out in alarm.
If Emma could freeze the lights, Rikki could incinerate them, maybe I could turn them to water. It was going to be a bit too tiring if I had to keep track of controlling a dozen energized jets of light at once. Water, I thought. I had to dodge the splash that came at me and I ran around to the outside of the doors. Emma stepped back into the puddle and it froze. I noticed the wood of the doors creaking ever so slightly under the temperature of the ice. Then came an idea.
"Emma!" I cried, "I have an idea."
"What?" She yelled back. "I'm kind of busy here!"
"I know! But it needs you to do it. I'm going to fill up the whole doorway with water. A thick wall of water. Then, you two are going to walk through it." I crouched down into a squatting position in order to dodge the barrage of lights.
"What! Are you crazy?" She cried, as another jet of light hit her arm and froze.
"No! After you guys walk, you're gonna freeze it! You know how cold your ice is! It'll definitely give us time to escape, then we can get to Bella and figure out what's going on."
"But the full moon!" She cried.
"Doesn't matter! All we need to do is get to the lake! Don't you remember how dark it was? Even with our fish sight we could barely see our hands."
"But how do we know where to go?" Asked Rikki, who had jumped in between me and an on coming jet of light. I honestly didn't know yet.
"We'll...just swim around for a bit i guess." I mumbled, half serious, half joking.
"And what are are we going to do about that giant squid out there, huh?" demanded Rikki. "In case you forgot, that thing tried to eat us!"
"Look, the most important thing right now, is to get out of here. I am so confused and frustrated. We have no idea what is going on, these people are shooting lights out of sticks for God's sake! Some have fires coming out of them and we don't even know where the hell we are, so can we please just concentrate on getting to the Moon Pool and staying there until we can figure something out?" I nearly yelled, tears starting to form. I was so confused and I was sure they were too, but we couldn't deal with that now.
"Ok. We get it. I feel like that too. We'll just... do what we have to do for now and think of what comes next later." Replied Emma soothingly.
"Yeah, and if we look at the full moon, we won't remember anything. It'll save us a whole night's worth of worrying over Bella and what we're going to do." Rikki joked.
I paused and smiled, before shoving Emma out of the way of another explosion of lights. I crouched down on my knees, right at the entrance to the Hall. "Remember, don't cross the water until the whole door is filled up, or else they'll follow you before you can freeze it. While I'm just sitting here, I'm defenseless, because I want to fill up this doorway as fast as possible, so I'm relying in you two." I reminded them. They flashed me smiles before they turned back to the show of fireworks.
I turned my hands into water and concentrated on the water flowing out of my palms. Soon, it spread to my fingers, and as I stabilized a steady stream, I allowed it to creep up my fore arms and up to my elbows. Soon, the doorway was half way full, when I let the water fall spread from my forearms to my shoulders. I opened my mouth and added that to the cascade. Before I knew it, I was done. Emma and Rikki soon emerged from the barrier. I wasn't sure if it was just because of the barrier, but it was suddenly dead silent on the other side. Then I heard a shout. Using the wind, I shut the door for extra measure before nodding at Emma. In an instant, the door froze, and hopefully, the water wall too. I could've sworn that I heard a few muffled thuds against the wall.
Not wanting to be there any longer, we turned and fled back the way we came. It was a miracle that we even remembered the way. All the halls and corridors looked the same, but somehow, we made it out. In the back of my mind, I noted that the pull of the full moon must have something to do with how we were able to get outside. The pull of the moon was torturous, but a months of resisting it came in handy. Once we got to the edge of the lake, we came to a screeching halt.
"Just..." I began, not sure what to do from here on. I was fairly sure that the ice wall would keep them for a while, but I honestly didn't know what the extent of their 'powers' were, so I couldn't be sure.
"Swim slowly, and don't let go of each me." Said Rikki, taking the lead for once. "I'll try and activate the energy in the moon pool rock that was at the entrance, but I'll only do it once, because that's practically a huge, neon sign, saying, 'The mermaids are back in your territory Mr. Squid!'. Besides, we don't know what else could be living down there."
Emma nodded, then asked, "But how will we know when we're there. Cleo might take out a completely different rock if we only swim in the general direction." That was true.
"Once we touch the wall in the general direction, I'll activate it another time and only if we really need it, a third time." It made sense.
"Who knew you could be so smart," I tried to joke, taking Rikki's usual position.
"I know, I feel like I could graduate from uni with a PhD now." She smirked. We looked at Emma who took the initiative.
"On the count of three." She began. "One," We joined hands and began wading into the water. "Two," The water was up to my chest and we all stopped with three seconds left until we morphed. "Three!" We dived as best as we could into the water. I took a second to relish in the sensation of the change into a mermaid, before I felt the grip of the moon grab into me in full force. I suppose it wasn't as bad as it would be if we were actually in the sea, but it was still torturous. Looking at the full moon was like an addicting drug, even though we never remembered what it felt like. It was hard to explain, it was like a drug that you just knew would feel amazing. The best feeling in the world, and it was pulling at you, whispering seductively with the promise of something you just know will be amazing.
All we could do now, was swim as far down as possible, and hope the lake was deep enough to block out the light of the moon, or who knew what havoc we would wreak. I was on Rikki's left, and I felt her tail brush mine as she jerked towards me when Emma grabbed into her waist, fingers brushing against my side. She had probably raised her right hand in the general direction of the tunnel.
From deep down below, I saw just the faintest of blue, flickering light. I could feel it as well, the call of the moon pool. Seems that when we were in the water on a full moon, the moon pool could still have an effect.
I felt Rikki move in the genera direction of the light and I gripped her hand tighter, before swimming slowly after her, staying slightly behind her. It made me feel better that Rikki, who was the most head strong one of us to be at the front.
The lake was eerily silent, unlike the ocean, where I could feel the soothing current and life thrumming around me. There was life in this lake alright. I could sense a few creatures that meant no harm, but the deeper down we went, the more I could feel the presence of something darker. It somehow felt similar to Rikki, Bella or Emma's presence, but there was something that was darkening it. It was scary and I drew myself closer to Rikki in a mini panic attack. I had never felt so out of my element in water before. Or at least since I became a Mermaid.
The deeper down we went, the weaker the pull of the moon became. It felt like an eternity, and I was sure that we had passed the entrance by now, but we hadn't hit a wall yet. Then I became aware of something. I could now see Rikki's hair. At first I was ecstatic and simply brushed it off, but the deeper down we went, the clearer it became. Was it our eyes? Or was it our surroundings?
Then we hit seaweed. There was a football fields worth of seaweed. Rikki pulled us to a halt. Through the gaps, I could make out a sandy bottom. We looked at each other in confusion. Then we heard bits of a song. It was eery and haunting, yet beautiful at the same time. It sounded a bit similar to the first song I had sung with my 'siren voice', as Rikki had dubbed it, but it was more...haunting...more, evil.
Rikki tugged at us to go investigate, but Emma and I held her back. Emma and I looked at each other fearfully, then at Rikki, who gave an impatient jerk of her head. "Wimps" She mouthed at us. I saw Emma's tail fight between the dull colors of black, brown and red, stressfuly, before she followed. I unwillingly followed, but tugged them higher over the seaweed. I was getting too paranoid that something was going to jump out and attack us.
Something loomed ahead. I could see what looked like a giant statue and were those mermaids? No, it couldn't be. Mermaids couldn't actually breathe underwater, as much as we wanted to, we wouldn't be able to actually live under water. Besides, these mermaids were like sticks and their tails were so long. They looked to be about two and a half meters in length. Their tail scales were silvery blue, but their skin, as far as I could see, was a sickening grayish color. Then, one turned to us and snarled. It was holding a crudely made pointed spear and was barring it's pointed sharks teeth at us. What got me the most, though, were it's eyes. It's eyes were a terrifying yellow and had slits for pupils.
I resisted the urge to scream as it hurled its spear at us at a terrifying speed for something under water. I swam to the left and was ripped away from Rikki and Emma, who had swum the other way. I locked my gaze with Emma and pointed behind me. She shook her head at me, but I ignored her. The creature screeched at them, nearly deafening me with the high pitched tone. Spying the spear a few meters away, I used my telekinesis to hurl it back at the creature.
Unfortunately, my aim wasn't very good and it did nothing but scratch the side of it's arm. It turned and grabbed the spear out of the water, snarling at me again. I turned and hightailed the other way.
I looked behind me and it was obvious that it wasn't a quarter of my fish speed. I could swim circles around it at the speed it was going. It was a good distance away from me and Rikki and Emma, so I was planning on using the water to force it to fly up and out of the water, when it hurled it's spear once more at me. 'Damn, this thing has a good aim' I dodged it, but I heard a pained roar from behind me. I turned and screamed, letting out some of my precious air supply. There, was the giant squid, and it was terrifying. I nearly fainted on the spot. Instead, I turned and sped as fast as my tail would let me, back the way I came.
The mer-creature attempted to grab me as i swam passed it, but it had no chance. I morphed into water in an effort to conceal myself from the terrifying squid, and the mer-creature's arm slipped right through me. Rikki and Emma had just arrived and would've swam through me had I not returned to normal a split second before. Their eye's bulged and I covered their mouths and noses to prevent them from loosing part of their air supply like myself.
They assessed the situation and Rikki started to burn one of the squid's tentacles. Even though I was terrified of the thing, I knew it didn't mean us any harm after being in such close proximity with in for a while. When my back was to it, it hadn't taken advantage and tried to swallow me whole, so I stopped her and shook my head, but the damage was done. I winced at the second roar of pain that followed.
A screech followed and I turned around and noticed that the mer-creature was hurtling at top speed towards the surface. The squid was still flailing around and I realized that one of it's tentacles must've sent the thing flying. Then it started towards us. I could see burns littering its tentacles as well as various sticks of ice shaped like cones, each a few meters long.
Looking around wildly, I realized that Emma must've not gotten the message. I really didn't want to hurt the thing that much, but we would never get to the moon pool at this rate. I waved my arms wildly at Emma, and gestured for Rikki to do the same. Our wild flailing seemed to finally catch her attention and she stopped, tilting her head to the side in question.
I motioned for her to stop and get out of the way with my arms. I was gonna blow this thing out of the water. It would eventually slide back in, besides, if those freaky powered people didn't bother with this, they were probably on good terms with it and would more than likely help heal the poor creature.
She quickly retreated, swimming as far back as she could while remaining eye contact with me. I nodded once she was out of the danger zone. Mustering as much will power as possible, I forced a giant current underneath the squid, propelling it upwards. It roared in surprise and somewhere along the way, it toppled upside down. I closed my eyes and concentrated. 'I am the water'. I was the water, and finally, I felt the current break the surface, blowing the squid, tentacles first onto the surface. I sighed in relief then frowned. The water was quickly warming up. I turned and found Rikki wrestling with a scary looking horned creature. It was a foul green color and had long, skinny fingers that looked brittle, but from the grip it had on Rikki's tail, where quite strong. It had pointy horns on its head and was screeching at Rikki, snapping at her fingers like a rabid dog.
Something cold and hard fell on my head, followed by the green demon's head. I glanced up and noticed Emma trying her hardest not to breathe in as she fought the instinct to pant after a fight. It was obvious she had just wrestled with a similar creature and had frozen the unlucky thing.
The demon grabbing onto Rikki's tail became slightly disoriented. Taking advantage of the situation, she used her tail and flicked it violently away from her. Not waiting another second, she hit it with another blow upwards, following the path of the squid. I heard a screech and felt something grip my tail. There were dozens more of the little sea creatures and they were swimming one after another towards us. I tried using my telekinesis to pry it's fingers from my tail, but that resulted in a sickening snap and it wailed out in anguish. I winced at the disfigured hand before swatting it with my tail in the direction of the one that Rikki had hit.
We quickly learned that as long as they didn't get a grip on you, they were pretty weak and a simple tail-swat would do the job. Demon after demon were blown towards the surface and there was still an everlasting amount. Getting sick of this, I drew Emma and Rikki closer towards me and created a sphere of quickly running water consisting of 5 layers. The first layer spun in one direction , the second another and so on. I nudged Rikki and she nodded in understanding. She raised both her arms and heated what I hoped, the area around the sphere, which would force the demons to flee somewhere else due to the temperature. Through the spinning, I could vaguely see the creatures fleeing and hesitantly stopped the currents.
From then on, Rikki maintained a 3 meter thick sphere of hot water around us. We swam even slower than before to prevent us crashing into the thing. Once we neared the wall, Rikki lowered the sphere and fisted her hand.
An electric blue light cackled somewhere above us. I resisted the urge to sigh. Luckily, we were directly beneath it and just had to swim a few hundred meters up to get there. Since no other sea creatures had bothered us since we dealt the fearsome sea creatures, Rikki decided to keep an ongoing series of flashes from the rock until we got there.
The rest of the journey passed without any more mishaps and I felt a lot safer once I was in the tunnel with the entrance sealed behind me. I noticed something that I hadn't noticed before when we had exited the tunnel. The water here seemed warmer for some reason. It felt more...homey.
Finally we exited the tunnel and the first thing I saw was Bella with a child like look on her face as she swam towards a falling object. Spotting us after she grabbed the circular object, she shoved it in Rikki's face who backed up and hit her head against the entrance the tunnel.
Bubbled exploded from Rikki's mouth and I heard a faint cry before bubbles erupted from Bella's mouth who screamed through the water, "MOOO-OO-OOO-OO-OO-OOO-OOOO-OON!" With an impish look on her face, eyes wide with childish glee.
She turned to Emma and repeated the action. Emma chortled and sped for the surface before she became the world's first fish to drown underwater. Faintly I noticed Rikki following suit, but as Bella turned towards me with a pout, my eyes caught her head, which already had the smallest of scars. Even as I watched, I could see the scar disappearing and I realized that I had discovered another effect of the full moon. It seemed to heal us. I wasn't sure if it would affect us in human form, but I assumed it wouldn't make a difference. Under the moon we sooner or later became fish. Usually.
I grinned to myself and noted to myself to tell the girls. I swam upwards, looking down at Bella and motioning for her to follow. Her eyes lit up and she grinned before racing upwards towards me.
As my head broke the surface, I forgot momentarily about the full moon and didn't notice I was staring at it until Rikki giggled and pulled the fire she had shaped as a dragon the size of Emma, who was sculpting a mini Christmas tree and Santa Clause sleigh complete with reindeer and a mini city with snow falling down over the place, away from my face which had been blocking my view of the moon. The dragon happily snorted fire out of it's mouth and the last thing I registered was a, "Moon belly Santa Clause!" from Bella and a serious grunt of acknowledgement from Emma.
A/N: This longer and faster update chapter is to make up for not updating for so long on the previous chapter. My last chapter was a bit longer than most of my chapters, but this is an extra thousand words for you! I know there's not much Bella, but I kept my promise as best as I could.
Thanks for the support and reviews, really appreciate it!