Harry POV

It was quite literally raining Grindylows. The air was pierced with high pitched screeches and Ron yelled in alarm and frantically pried at the creature which looked to be unconscious but was still grabbing onto his hair. Wasting no time, Hermione dragged the swearing Ron towards Harry and out of the line of fire. A few moments later, the hail of sea demons stopped and a few could be seen feebly trying to make their way back into the lake.

"Whoa, what the bloody hell happened here?" Came a voice behind them. He recognized it immediately as Ginny.

"Ginevra Weasley! Mind your language." Hermione immediately reprimanded. Ginny huffed and muttered something along the lines of "yes mum," punctuated with an eye roll.

"Forget the language, 'Mione," grumbled Ron, "I still feel like there's something on my head. What was it anyway?"

"Harry? Just what landed on Ron's head?" Asked Ginny, looking half concerned half amused, "Should I be worried about him gaining more brain damage?"

He grinned. "It was a grindylow." Neville and Seamus chortled and Ginny snickered. Ron grumbled and it was silent for a moment afterwards.

"So...Why exactly did a grindylow land on my unfortunate brother's head?" Asked Ginny.

It was Hermione who answered. "I think we just found our mystery girls." Was Hermione's reply. "Did you lot find anything?"

"Nope."

"Zip."

"Zilch."

"I didn't expect you to after we discovered this." She waved her hand towards the lake. Multiple grindylows were still crawling their way back to the lake at a snail's pace, the squid was as still as ever and he could hear an angry screech from somewhere behind the squid.

"Oh yeah, does any one here speak mer?" He asked hopefully. The recently arrived trio looked at him curiously.

"Great idea Harry," Commented Hermione, "I wonder if Professor McGonagall can." She muttered. Ginny cocked her head to the side.

"Just how much did I miss?"

"Not much, just the world's first shower of magical sea creatures." Answered Ron.

"Ha ha very funny."

"We better head back, we're going to be the last one's back at this rate." said Hermione, already walking back to the castle. "We also need to get help for them and ask for a translator."

"Hey Harry," said Ginny from beside him as they turned to follow Hermione.

"Hmm?'

"I wonder how they figured out how to get back outside in such a short amount of time. Do you really think they're muggles?"

"Honestly, I have no idea, but I don't think they're a threat to us." She looked at him questioningly.

"How so?"

"Well, did you ever notice them actually attacking anyone? They honestly seemed rather confused if you ask me." He said, quite deep in thought. They were purely on the defensive side of the battle. Ginny gestured to the squid and other inhabitants of the Black Lake.

"Not a threat?"

"Well, when you first came to Hogwarts, what was your reaction to the squid?" She paused.

"I was terrified." She admitted.

"You're were raised in a wizarding family that's used to magical creatures. Even if they weren't muggles, they were at least raised in a muggle environment, so you can imagine their shock." He was more thinking out loud at this point rather than explaining.

"I see." The rest of the trip was silent and he used the opportunity to ponder the strange girls.

Once they returned to the Great Hall, they were delighted to see that the ice had been melted of the ancient wood with no harm done. The doors were wide open and McGonagall was at the entrance.

"About time, what in heavens name took you so long?"

"Sorry professor," Hermione apologized, "But we found where the three girls went and some...issues were presented. Say, do you know any one who knows how to speak mer?"

"Excuse me?"

"Well, a whole lot of sea creatures were thrown up to shore and one was a mermaid. If we can speak with it, we can find out perhaps what happened."

"I see, unfortunately, I have no knowledge of anyone who can speak the language of the mer."

"What about professor Dumbledore? His portrait, we could bring it down." Ron looked immensely proud of himself, having thought of something before Hermione, who sighed in exasperation before answering.

"The portraits of the Headmaster are kept there through a binding magical contract. I'll bet anything, that Snape doesn't have a portrait of himself hung up in the Headmistress's office, because he was not officially appointed by Dumbledore when he was living. Although the portraits are to some degree a living entity, they are not the person themselves. They're more like a copy of the person, as is the same with other portraits." Hermione answered, sounding like a text book.

"Nicely said Miss Granger. 10 points to Gryffindor." Praised Professor McGonagall. "We can, however, put a simple, animal translating spell on the mermaid." He heard Hermione huff indigently at this, (probably at mermaids being classified under the word, 'animal') before he heard Malfoy's drawl from behind him.

"Granger, we found something of the muggle's, you are the obvious expert here, so why don't you tell us what it is?" He sneered as he said the word expert, but his tone was not nearly as bad as it used to be, he noticed. He guessed the war brought out the better in some people.

Hermione grumbled, but perked up when she saw the jacket he was holding. The black leather garment was dangling off a pale finger, whose owner of said finger didn't look as disgusted as he once would've. She rushed over, followed by the rest of the staff and students.

"What is that?" Asked Lavender.

"It looks like leather." Said Neville. Malfoy handed the jacket to Hermione who promptly held it out in front of her and announced that it was a jacket.

"That is...a unique piece of clothing." He heard McGonagall murmur to Slughorn, who nodded.

"I do remember seeing similar items of clothing when in other muggle homes." He muttered back to her. Hermione was digging around that jacket, which had long sleaves and was more of an extremely dark brown rather than a black. She was checking the pockets, when she cried out a triumphant, "Ah ha!"

"Blimey, what is that?" Asked Ron, snatching the device away from her. Everyone crowded around as Ron fiddled with the device before he finally pressed a button at the top, which Harry recognized as the 'on' button for the iPhone 4. "Ah!" Ron cried in alarm as the screen lit up. The crowd shouted in alarm, following Ron's example as the screen lit up, before 'Oooh's and 'Ahhh's filled the Hall. Even McGonagall looked impressed, though she was trying to hide it.

"Settle down, settle down. Mr Weasley, please hand that...instrument back to Miss Granger." Ron grudgingly obeyed and she continued. "Miss Granger, please continue."

With a muttered, "Honestly Ron, it's just a phone," Hermione spoke. "It's one of the girl's jacket and a phone. This proves that they're muggles!" When McGonagall raised an eyebrow, which was followed by many, 'What's a phone Hermione?' and a certain, 'Yes please do tell to those of us who aren't from mud-ggle back grounds.' The word muggle from the latter phrase was mispronounced. Malfoy had very nearly said the insult which caused Hermione to glare at him for a second before clearing her voice and saying, "A phone is a communicating device that muggles use to communicate. They can text, which is a written message, to another phone, which is identified by a unique number that each phone has once a sim card has been placed into the phone, allowing these transmissions to take place. They can also call each other, which is where they dial a certain number with the keypad and enter it, which connects them to the phone that possesses that number."

"What's a keypad?" Asked Ginny. "I don't see any keys on that thing."

"It's a...sort of grid with numbers and sometimes letters on it."

"But, where's the keypad?" Asked Ron, who was staring at the black screen. "It just looks like a glowing piece of...whatever that thing is made out of and silver."

"This is plastic and metal, Ron." She told him and before he could ask what plastic was, she held unlocked the phone, which fortunately had no password protection activated. "This is a keypad." She had gone onto the call app and had held it up for everyone to see. "Now these communication devices won't work here, because Hogwarts has too much magical interference interfering with the signals the phone has to send up to a satellite in order to communicate with another device, not to mention there isn't a cell tower anywhere close." She received many black stares at this, before simplifying it down. "You won't be able to use this to communicate with anyone while in Hogwarts or anywhere in the magical community."

"Why didn't you say so?" grumbled Ron.

"Well if that is all, the rest of the staff and I will be heading down to the Black Lake to consult with the mermaid." Began McGonagall, "The rest of you, if you would kindly follow my patronus to your newly assigned dorm. The password is dimidiam piscis." With a quick expecto patronum, she left with the rest of the professors on her heels. The silvery cat she left behind began stalking in the other direction, down the hall, towards a staircase which was moving towards them. The group of eighth years hurried after it.

They were lead up to the sixth floor where they promptly stopped in front of a giant, crystalline statue where the patronus promptly disappeared. The statue was on her stomach and her elbows were resting on her upraised pedestal, that looked like it was carved specifically to look like a rock. The rock was also made of crystal, but was a dark, black color. Her hair was red and long, some of it framing her face, trailing down her elbows and resting on the rock beneath her. She also had a tail, which was ironically, a sea green color. He was reminded somewhat of 'The Little Mermaid', as he observed the figurine. The only thing that stopped it from becoming an exact copy of Ariel, was the fact that she had nothing covering her top half except her hair and the rock that was pressed against her chest.

The crystal she was made of was not bumpy, rather, there were very few ridges and the smoothness of it amazed him. It also took him a while to realize that she was moving. And giggling. And talking.

She had raised her tail and it was swaying slightly back and forth, the tips of the fins curling at the edges almost lazily. She was giggling and smiled flirtatiously at the group, flashing her clear teeth underneath her blood red lips as they approached. It was a bit like watching that ice girl, Emma, move. It was disorienting to say the least. How something so hard and obviously not malleable, could move as fluidly as if it was a human with full functioning muscles.

"Password?" Her musical voice seemed to ring slightly as she looked at them from under her lashes. No really, whoever had made her was extremely detailed. He could literally see long, fine, delicately curved black lines on the edges of her eye lids; eyelashes. He noted that her eyes were a pretty green color and her skin was the color of, well, skin.

"Dimidiam piscis." Hermione told her.

"Welcome to the eighth year's common room. Have a nice stay." She stretched her arm out, revealing pretty, pink nails and lowered her tail down to the floor. As they walked around her, she followed them and winked at him before turning back around.

Behind her, her tail had lowered and had pushed down a section of the floor, pushing up another part of the floor which consisted of three steps and allowing a circular section around fifteen feet in wide, to be revealed. The circular section of the wall was resting at the top of the mini staircase and the part of the wall that had been covering the entrance had slid up into the top of the entrance door.

They filed in and Harry took a look around before smiling. He was home. It wasn't too different from the Gryffindor tower. While Ravenclaw and Slytherin had doors leading to the separate dorms and Hufflepuff had tunnels, it had a grand staircase, with there being a wide staircase going up, before it leveled out into a wide platform, and splitting into two on either side of the platform.

The common room itself, was decorated with a few sofas and large arm chairs, accompanied by round and square tables alike. There was a fire roaring heartily, keeping the room warm and causing some of the furniture to have a slightly greenish hue. The color scheme seemed to be light blue and white. The fire and lamps spread around the common room added a pleasant green and golden hue to the furniture. He noticed that some of the tables were made of crystal and had intricate patterns on their legs. He briefly wondered why everything on the sixth floor had some form of crystal tied into it. He had seen the frames of various portraits made in crystal as they had passed through the hall, as well as chandeliers and candle holders. He decided that he would ask Hermione later on.

The floor underneath him was a soft, white carpet that seemed to be enchanted to constantly scourgify itself every 5 seconds. He noticed that students trudging towards their allocated dorms were leaving ugly, black shoe prints on the pristine, surface, which would vanish every few seconds. There were other rectangular carpets placed under arm chairs and tables around the room which were thicker and a light blue that seemed to have the same enchantment on them.

He stared in amazement at the room in front of him before he was snapped out of his stupor by Ron, who had thrown his arm around him and was currently grinning like the Cheshire Cat. "I kinda like it. Whaddya think Harry?" He asked.

"Yeah, it's amazing." He agreed. "Let's go find our dorms." He and Ron climbed up the flight of stairs before they stopped, where a small crowd was standing in front of a piece of parchment that had been hung up on the wall right before the doors to various dorms began. He and Ron pushed his way to the front and read down the list.

Dormitory Number 1

Boot, Trevor

Finnigan, Seamus

Hopkins, Wayne

Thomas, Dean

Dormitory Number 2

Malfoy, Draco

Potter, Harry

Weasley, Ronald

Zabini, Blaise

Dormitory Number 3

Corner, Michael

Goyle, Gregory

Longbottom, Neville

Macmillan, Ernie

Dormitory Number 4

Finch-Fletchley, Justin

Goldstein, Anthony

Nott, Theodore

Smith, Zacharias

(AN: I missed out two male students because I wanted four to a dorm equally, but you barely see them in the book. They were: Kevin Entwhistle and Stephen Cornfoot of Ravenclaw)

He heard Ron groan from behind him and realised that he had done the same. The professors just had to put them with Malfoy and his best bud.

"Great. Just bloody, great." Ron muttered. This was gonna be a long year.

Cleo POV

The odd, yet soothing sensation of waking up with a tail and half my body in water greeted me. The amount of time it took me to remember why I was like this was a lot shorter this time and I noticed Bella awake and looking around, confused. I giggled internally. She had practically been blacked out for almost a whole day.

"What's going on?" She whispered. I gestured to the water and swam out slowly, easing my tense muscles out. Sleeping on sand with no pillow was not the most comfortable of positions. Bella followed suit, and we moved out into the shaded half of the moon pool. It was more like a half cave, the black rock curving over halfway over the moon pool like a giant wave. The back wall was about five meters high with a small, relaxing water fall coming out of the top of the rock and disappearing into the moon pool. It was just like the wall at the back of the moon pool on Mako, when the water tentacle was still a problem, but only when it was dormant. There was small pockets of rock that had over filled and water had tipped out the side. It was beautiful. It was even prettier since the sun was still setting or rising (she guessed the latter) and the golden light was pouring into the opening, shining onto the wall, making the water sparkle prettily.

I leaned my head back, trying to work out the knots and noticed Bella doing the same. "My neck is killing me." She grumbled. "And my head." She added as an after thought.

"Yeah," I answered, "Long story short, we got moonstruck and Rikki tried to teleport us back to Emma's room, but she got moon struck at the last minute and accidentally sent us here I guess." I shrugged. "We still haven't worked everything out."

"We didn't do anything...bad right?" She asked.

"Well...You didn't. You were making," I paused a snickered, "Jelly moons." She raised an eyebrow in response.

"What the hell are jelly moons?"

"Exactly what they sound like," I answered, "Moons. Made of jelly." It was silent for a moment.

"...So I made moons out of jelly. How fascinating." We stayed in a comfortable silence for a few moments. I lifted my tail up so that I was floating on my back. "What were you guys doing."

"We were trashing Mako." I groaned, having hoped that she wouldn't ask. She giggled in response. "Hey, better than jelly moons." I grumbled.

She was silent for a moment, trying to suppress her laughter. "I'm going to wake them up. We need to find away out of here and get some Panadol for my head." She grunted. I grabbed her wrist, stopping her. I shook my head.

"Don't. They've been through a lot. They need the sleep and so do I, but just lying here like this is fine. I'll explain everything to you." She paused, before acquiescing. "Get comfy." I warned. She nodded and lay back beside me.

"So what happened?"

"Well, you've been knocked out or moonstruck for the past..." I paused and counted in my head. "I'd say twenty hours or so?" She gaped. "Yeah, we think that you hit your head when we landed. Right now, we think that we're either in the USA or UK. Emma recons UK, and if that things accent had anything to go by, it's UK."

"What thing?" She asked, confused.

"Well, this place is weird. We swam out of here through this tunnel at the bottom of the pool. There, instead of the sea, we were met by this really dark lake. As in, can't even see your hand dark. Then there was this massive squid, we thought it was trying to eat us at first. On the way back, there was this...mermaid. But it wasn't a mermaid. It had green hair and a silver tail and she could breathe underwater. She was about two and a half meters long and the only bit about her that looked remotely humane, was the fact that her eyes and head were the right way on. There was also this...water demon thing. It had these really strong hands and there were hundreds of them."

"Wait," She interrupted. "You're missing out the part where you got out. What happened then? Where were you?"

"I was getting there. When we were out, dry and safe on land, there was this castle."

"Castle?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, it looked ancient, but it wasn't in ruins. When we went in, we were attacked by this ghost thing that was half transparent, half not. It could grab things and stuff, but we went through it if it wanted us to. I think we scared it off pretty good though." I smirked at the look that had been painted on the devil's face. Then I remembered what had transpired after that and it slid off my face.

"What's wrong?" Bella asked, concerned. "You ok?"

"Yeah fine. There are people living in that castle Bella. Weird people. Rikki and Em got in a fight, you see. And when we saw these people, they looked like students and there were hundreds of them, all eating and chatting, but they all attacked us. We might've gotten in, but there was no security or anything. We didn't even know there were people in there! But the weird thing is, they were attacking with sticks." Bella turned her had towards me dubiously.

"Sticks. What's so scary about that. Yeah, it's a bit weird, but not something you should be-"

"No!" I cut her off. She looked startled, but I ploughed on. "They were shooting these...lights out of them and when I controlled one and forced to land somewhere else, it froze the thing. The sticks were also emitting things like fire and when they hit Rikki, they just disappeared! When they hit Em, they froze! I could turn the light into water! Light doesn't do that!" I cried on the verge of hysteria. I was already upright, ignoring the protests of my stiff muscles. Bella was also swishing her tail gently back and forth in the water.

"It's ok, I get it, I believe you. You haven't had much sleep, you need to calm down." She said softly, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. I vaguely registered her hardening some of the water in the center of the moon pool into a large circle, capable of fitting the two of us, lying down side by side on it, probably with half our tails hanging off the side. A bit less than one half of the edge of it had an extra meter attached to it. The extra meter was sloping gently up, efficiently keeping the water off one side of the circle.

There was a larger stem that extended down to the bottom of the moon pool, forcing it to stand still and not drift off. She molded two smaller spheres in the water of that unique substance and shaped them into rough rectangles about the size of sleeping pillows, only thinner. She then lifted them to the edge of of the moon pool and placed them on the mini shore line. She then lifted a large glob of softer jelly from the water and lead me slowly to the blocks at the edge of the moon pool, the jelly following her.

This was what I loved about Bella, she was the best at calming us down in times like these. Every time Rikki and Emma argued, she would either turn it into a joke or leave them to dish it out while comforting we spent time together, only jumping in when necessary.

She placed my hand on one of the blocks and told me to hold on. I started paying more attention now, having calmed down slightly. Bella just had that calming aura around her. I gripped the block tightly as it floated up and farther away from the moon pool, efficiently dragging us out and away from the pool.

We were now lying on the pleasantly soft grass. She brought the softer glob of jelly towards the two blocks and split it. She carefully shaped the two blobs around the rectangles so that it resembled a soft, gooey block. Pillows, she realised. Bella was making pillows. She grinned when she noticed Cleo's look of understanding flash across her face.

"Let's relax more comfortably shall we? Could you help dry me off?" She asked, gesturing to her tail.

"No problem." I lifted the water off both of us and we were human once more. Before we had gained more powers, I hadn't been able to lift the water off of us so easily. The amount of small droplets were hard to control and most of the time, my control was lacking and I only ended up causing more water to spill from the small beads.

Bella's pajamas were similar to mine but were a bit more...modest. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't some girl who liked revealing clothing, the nightie I was wearing was just my most comfortable. I hated the feeling of being restricted while I was sleeping. Bella wholly agreed with me, but she had taken a liking to over sized shirts. According to her, they made her feel safer and she preferred the warm.

I looked up at the sun and estimated that it was about ten o'clock, give or take. "Well what are you waiting for?" asked Bella. I turned around and noticed she had taken off her pale yellow shirt and had placed the jelly-pillow inside it, wrapping it around like a pillow case and tying it off on both sides. Thankfully, her back was to me and she had wrapped her arms around her front. She stepped onto small circles leading to the center of the moon pool, her make shift pillow hovering above her. She reached the platform and turned around, hugging her pillow to her chest, blocking it, thankfully, from view.

Over the past few months, we had been working on not relying on our hands too much. We had tried focusing more on our mental will and it was paying off. Big tasks, of course, required more concentration, and the familiar use of arm movements helped with that. They seemed to add more physical energy into what they wanted which seemed to make it more effective. It was easier to manipulate their elements using their bodies.

I gaped at her. She smirked back at me, knowing my prudishness. The one time I had let Nate talk me into wearing something 'short and tight', I had been in a state of panic and hadn't even noticed what I was wearing. I had gone home, taken a look in the mirror and nearly passed out. I still couldn't believe I had worn something like that in front of so many people. Pajamas were different. They gave me a feeling of home. For some reason, it felt completely natural to wear the pajamas that I wore.

Bella smirked and turned around. I grumbled, but consented. I turned around so my back was to her for extra measure. Facing the trees, I gulped. What if there was someone out there? I stood stone still for a few moments, listening, but there was nothing. I slowly took my nightie off and held it against my chest, listening for anything. Hearing and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, I kneeled down and started wrapping the garment around the squishy block, cursing the fact that I never wore bras to sleep. They were just so uncomfortable. Finally tying down the last end, I stood and admired my work, holding the floral patterned pillow out. It was surprisingly soft and she realised the need for a hard center-it would've been too floppy had it not had one.

"I'm done, don't look." I called out, just loud enough for her to hear and I could've sworn I heard a muttered, "prude", which was promptly ignored. I hugged the surprisingly soft pillow to my chest and realised the need for a hard center-it would've been too floppy without one. I stepped cautiously on one of the stepping stones, testing to see if it would hold my weight. It stayed glued firmly to the water's surface. I stepped onto the next one and the one behind me disappeared. I whipped my head up to glare accusingly at Bella.

"That thing covers more of your front than your bikini, Cleo." She sighed. I huffed but continued forward more confidently this time. When I reached the platform, I stepped down on something squishy and nearly fell in the water. I looked down to see that Bella had coated the top of the platform in soft, half a meter thick layer of jelly. When I fully stepped down and pulled one hand from my pillow to really get a feel of it, I realised why the need for casings on our pillows were necessary. If I were to press my face into the stuff, it would feel suffocating. The cases provided a firmer cover and helped with the needed stiffness of the jelly. On the body it was ok, and I placed my pillow down with one hand, the other covering my sensitive areas. I leaned forward and placed my fore arms on the pillow, finally relaxing as the jelly bubbled up around my chest. I heard Bella snicker as she pointedly used two hands to plant her pillow beside mine.

I rolled my eyes despite my blush and turned to look at her once she was settled. "What are we going to do about food?" I asked her. She opened her mouth to answer I heard something. Bella and I snapped our heads behind us in the direction of Rikki and Emma. We stayed still for a few seconds, listening, when we heard it. The sound of hooves beating against the ground coming closer and closer. Rikki and Emma had woken by now and were looking at us in confusion. I put a finger to my lips in a shushing motion and I crept backwards, imitating Bella.

The sound was getting louder and louder, sounding like a crescendo of drums. Bella and I had slipped into the water now and she gestured for Rikki and Emma to do the same. Obeying Bella's silent command, they swam towards us and I noticed Bella molding a hard dome over the platform. Rikki raised an eyebrow at this and I whispered, "Later."

"How do we cover this up?" Asked Bella, panicking slightly as the rumbling drew nearer. I could tell they were still quite far off, but the mere thought of being discovered was terrifying.

"Vines!" Emma hissed, thinking quick and switching on her 'bossy mode'. Despite Rikki having dubbed it in such a negative way, I was eternally grateful for Emma being able to think under pressure. "We need leaves and the longest strands of grass you can find, but any will do. Cleo, you stay here at the edge of the moon pool. Make a pile of each separately. Don't worry about the leaves, Cleo, use one of your abilities to grab them from the trees. We need enough to go over the back of the cave and over the entrance. Bella and I will collect the grass, Rikki will meld them together, make one big long rope. Don't stop, just keep melding. Since collecting leaves with Cleo's abilities will be a lot faster than any of the others, as soon as your done Cleo, start helping Rikki by melding the leaves into the vine. After, we'll lay it over and cut it off when it reaches the water." Emma commanded, looking each of us squarely in the eye before saying, "Ok, get to it!" The interesting thing that we had discovered, was that as long as we kept the shape of whatever we had turned into our element, we could force it together and make them one. Some of the results were rather interesting, like when I was curious and turned my book and pencil into water and stuck the former through the middle of the latter. When I allowed them to return to normal, I hadn't been able to open the book much-the pages had melded with the wood of the pencil. I had tried to pull it back apart, but that only resulted in a splash of water when I had let go. Of course, this only worked for Rikki and I. Emma couldn't force ice and ice together and Bella's soft jelly would loose it's form as soon as you put something through it.

Rikki and I swam to the edge of the moon pool after Emma and Bella. The two pulled themselves out of the water, using their tails to give them an extra boost. Bella swung her tail over the side and onto the sand and Emma followed suite. Rikki quickly steam dried them and they were up and running. Emma raised an eyebrow at Bella's state of dress, who shrugged, not bothered at all that she was running in nothing but her underwear. Rikki turned to me as well. I shook my head before calling out to Emma before she disappeared after Bella.

"Em, how should I put them together?" She looked around and snatched a small bunch of leaves from the grass behind her before running back to me, dumping grass in front of Rikki. She placed on leave on the slightest angle tilting towards the left, and the next one above it, covering the stem with part of the leaf and tilting it the other way. She did this with a few other leaves before running off. I studied it for a minute before looking back up at the trees. I just needed a good branch. There.

Holding out my hand, I scrunched it up in the familiar claw shape and made a slicing motion with my hand, focusing on the base of a branch high up in the sky. The cut limb started falling and about a dozen meters from the ground, I use telekinesis to stop its fall and bring it slowly towards me. I looked at Rikki, who had made it up to about three meters by now. I noticed that her hands had morphed into fire and the pile of leaves in front of her were fire. Every now and again, an ice or jelly bowl would float over and tip it's contents over the pile of fire-leaves. Rikki's eyes would flicker up and the falling leaves would turn to fire a they descended towards the pile on the floor. She would reach out and grab a leaf before connecting it to the rope in her hand and pinching the two together and turning back to normal. I shook my head, her control was amazing. I noticed that the hand holding the rope of grass was not fire and noted that Rikki couldn't be affected by her own fire. I wasn't sure about other fire, but it was amazing any way.

Getting back to the task at hand, I pushed the giant branch back onto the grass. Resting my eyes on the top section, I focused there, before twitching one of my fingers and snapping the stems of roughly a hundred leaves. I brought the pile of green to my right, placing it slightly to the left. I didn't want it hindering my work. I repeated this process another fifty more times before there were only a few stray leaves left. I decided to take a leaf out of Rikki's book, no pun intended, and turn all the leaves into water. I smiled, pleased at my control when I could lift one up with a water phased hand.

Grabbing the end of Rikki's now twenty meter long rope, I quickly got to work. I turned about a meter of the rope on my end into water and lifted it up, keeping some of it flat and still on the surface of the water, otherwise it would be pulled away from the rest of the vine. I grabbed a leaf and placed it on the rope on a slight angle like Emma had demonstrated. An improved idea popped into my head and turned about a meter worth of rope into water, lifting half of it up into the air and lining them up on either side of the water rope. Then I pushed them into the rope and the slight current in the leaves that always came with my water, started flowing in sync with the current in the rope. I looked to see a bowl of ice about half the size of the moon pool back at Mako float over. Rikki's eyes flickered over to it, then to me. She appraised my current system and seemed to decide it was a better method. She began lifting small piles of the fire onto her rope and straightening it out before repeating.

I smirked, but now wasn't the time. Then another bowl zoomed passed me. How were those two working so fast? I turned the rope back to grass before turning and dragging it to the edge of the rocky opening. I placed the few meters that I had accomplished so far down onto the sandy shore, hoping that the two girls would be able to access it easier later on. Out of curiosity, I peered around the edge of the rocky wall and my eyes popped. Emma and Bella were a few meters behind the tree line and I could see Emma freezing a large area of grass while Bella use a hardened blade of jelly the length my arm to swipe on the ground, effectively breaking the mini icicles. As the blades if ice jumped over the Bella's blade, Emma lifted them over to the giant bowl. She had another behind her while the one that had just visited Rikki floated over my head and sped back to her. Out of all of us, no one could fault Emma's control over her element. She was a pro.

I turned back to see Rikki had made it over the hundred meter mark, I looked over at my measly five meters and cursed. I needed to get a move on. The next minute passed in a blur. I swear we had a kilometer of rope and going. I had no idea I could work so fast. I had quickly caught up to Rikki and we each had a third of the rope caught in the clutches of our element. It was a whirlwind of water leaves on my side and a storm of fire grass on hers. By now, I was sure there was enough grass. The grass pile was half the size of my leaf pile. That meant we had about the same amount left. We probably had enough to make another five hundred meters of rope and as the bowl flew back, I turned around and lifted some water out of the moon pool. I made the sentence: "NO MORE GRASS NEEDED. COME BACK NOW. START CUTTING ROPE." with the water and sent it after the bowl to the two in the trees.

I looked at the tangle of leaves and barely visibly grass on the shoreline and turned it to water. Careful to keep it's form, I straightened it out as much as I could before getting back to work. Rikki's eyes flickered up to the pile of leaves that were quickly lessening and began working even more vigorously. We were almost done. Sort of. I raised both hands and began pulling the leaves towards the rope faster and faster. It was quite amusing to see fire and water working so well together. My heart was racing and I barely noticed Bella and Emma pulling at the rope and soon our piles had lessened by half the amount.

Emma was in the pool behind me now and was turning the bits of the rope that touched the water into ice, before snapping it and turning it back to normal. Rikki and I moved closer as the rope making drew to an end. I bit my lip so hard I was surprised it didn't bleed. Then we were ten centimeters apart. Five centimeters. Rikki finished and flopped onto her back.

I placed the last leaf right at the end of the rope and nearly cried for joy. Then I noticed the giant tree branch sitting outside the moon pool. "Shit!" I swore, though I could barely hear it over the thundering of the hooves. I was panicking now and I quickly sent it up into the branches of one of the trees.

"Cleo!" shouted Bella over the edge of the rocky cave mouth. "You need to stick these vines into the ground! Now!" I barely heard her over the shouts and thundering hooves.

I pushed myself out of the water, hurriedly pulling the water away from myself, completely forgetting about my state of dress. I ran over to the back of the moon pool and turned the first centimeter of the rope into water as well as the ground lining the back of the moon pool. "Go!" I hissed at Bella, who had finished her job. She nodded before letting out a quick, "Hurry Cleo!" and jumping over the edge, trying to make the splash as soft as possible. I ran along the edge, making sure each rope was in and connected to a bit of ground and grass before letting the power turning the solid matter into water go. I ran around and dived into the moon pool, turning into water, not allowing any splash to be heard as my half naked form morphed into a mermaid, just as I saw a hoof appear out of the tree line, shouting accompanying it. I swam underneath the thick curtain of leaf and grass before I resurfaced as a normal skin and bones. I pointed to the back of the pool and we silently swam to the back before lowering ourselves into the water. We left everything above the bottom of our noses out of the water in order to listen for anything. I was holding all the water still. Even when we moved, not a single ripple lived to see more than a few centimeters.

I listened as the thundering hooves came to a halt. We had made the curtain of leaves thick enough to block out everything but a few stray gaps. I heard the soft padding of a horse on grass coming towards the pool. I saw a face through the few small gaps, trying to peer through the foliage. I stifled a gasp and pulled Bella who pulled Rikki who pulled Bella, behind the platform, which had been moved by Bella while she was creating the protective dome around it and under water. It took all my will power to not let go of the water that was keeping our movements hidden.

I resurfaced silently and my three friends followed. Then a deep voice commanded.

"I know you're here, fish. Come out before I make you."

AN: Wow, 7,229 words. That's 11 pages by the way, size 10 font.

And I know some of you might think the half naked thing is a bit much, but there will be no lemon in this fanfic. I just wanted to add to the 'living in the forest/wild' atmosphere. Hope you didn't mind ^^

Think of it as a special since it might take me a while to update again. As well as how early this update is ^^

Love you all for reading!