A/N

Don't kill me for posting this so late but... It just hit me as I finished rereading a couple of series that I will never be able to share the world of these characters again and I kind of had an emotional crisis and couldn't write and my friend had to calm me down which took days so she couldn't write, then we ended up with one short story each (it was supposed to be twelve paragraphs which is about a page or two but... does 6-9 pages still count as a short story?), a timeline for me, an essay for me, a brochure for Kayla, a map for Kayla, and Journal entries for each of us, and find the meaning of a song for me. We also had more than four math assignments and a quiz on top of that and we are now starting a bunch of science projects. It was a long weekend... then I started working on something that Kayla wants me to publish when I finish so... ya... my excuse.

I am really sorry for the long wait though, and then giving you this chapter which is so short compare to all the others (this is only 1,669 words, our record so far is 3,970 words on the last chapter,), but we decided to cut it off there and get a head start on the next chapter so maybe we wouldn't keep you all waiting so long.

I'm ranting again. I do that a lot. Sorry.

SEVEN |

ANGELINA SCREAMED, TUMBLING backwards through the water and dragging the limp body of her sister with her. She gained her bearings quickly, sputtering as she found the surface again.

Suddenly, inspiration hit her. She knew what to do with Rose, but she had to do it quickly. That much was obvious.

Dragging Rose behind her still, she cautiously swam closer to the unstable roof. After a moment, once she was sure it wasn't going to randomly crush them, she manipulated her power to blast the water where the roof was weakest. It worked, and the roof caved in around them. Angelina went underwater to protect herself and Rose, using the water currents to send debris away from them.

The two girls surfaced once more, and Angelina used the water to heave them up onto the roof. She sprawled Rose across it, on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion, but she pulled herself to her feet, took one more longing glance at the roof and her sister, and dove back through the hole into the water. As soon as she hit the water, her eyes landed upon a struggling form.

Angelina had found Sam. Just in the few seconds it took for her to react, she could see his movements becoming slower, more groggy. She immediately rushed to him, shooting both herself and Sam back up through the new hole in the roof in a geyser of water.

As soon as they landed, gently thanks to Angelina, Sam coughed up water, shook his head, and looked at her gratefully.

"Thanks," he said, his voice a little raspy. "Is Astrid alright?"

Angelina shook her head. "I don't know," she responded sadly. Sam hung his head, looking miserable. "But I sent Sapphire to look for her and the others. She might have already found her by now. She and Scarlett are both okay, but they're the only two I'm sure about."

Sam nodded, looking at their surroundings. He spotted Rose, who had begun to groan and shift.

"I'll take care of her," he assured her. "Just go look for the others." Angelina obeyed him, diving back into the water without hesitation.

And she almost landed on Sapphire.

Sapphire opened the communication tunnel of air so they could talk to each other. "I found Astrid," Sapphire told her. "And Sophia."

"I've gotten Sam and Rose to safety. They're up on the roof, right above us. Rose was starting to wake up, and Sam was fine. He said he'd take care of her while I looked for the others."

Sapphire looked relieved. "Both Astrid and Sophia are fine," she said. "We should probably try to go find everyone else."

"Yeah, we should," Angelina agreed, and the two girls separated, swimming off in opposite directions.

It wasn't long until Angelina found Diana, floating near Edilio. She'd strayed too far from Sam and Rose to be able to get them back in time, but she noticed that there was a spot almost directly above them that had a weak roof as well. She blasted it down like she had the other one, quickly shooting Diana and Edilio up there.

She followed them. They were both sprawled on the roof, and for one horrible moment it seemed as if Angelina hadn't gotten there in time and they were both dead.

But then Diana twitched, and Edilio rolled over, groaning. They were alive. Angelina nearly collapsed with relief, but she knew that they could still be injured badly. Edilio seemed to be waking already, so she took that as a sign that he was mostly okay and walked over to Diana's prone body. Diana was lying on her stomach, the back of her head showing instead of her face. Angelina stooped down and gently rolled Diana over so that she could see her face.

She sucked in a sharp breath. A gash ran down the length of the left side of Diana's face. Blood streamed from the wound, matting in Diana's wet, dark hair.

Angelina frantically looked around for something to bandage and apply pressure on the wound, but she found nothing. Edilio, still a little disoriented but mostly okay, walked over to them and crouched by Diana's other side.

"Here," he said. He held out a roll of clean white gauze. Angelina wondered where he'd gotten it, but then her eyes landed on a small first aid kit that she'd missed in her scan of the roof. Not wasting time even to thank him, she set to work.

She started by taking a section of the gauze to press over the wound while she figured out how she would go about helping her, pressing down on it a little roughly while using her other hand to rummage in the first aid kit Edilio had retrieved, looking for something useful.

Seeing that the bleeding had at least slowed, she used one of the antiseptic wipes in the kit to gently mop off some of the blood so she could get a better look at it. Once the blood had all but stopped and most of it had been cleaned off, she could see that the cut was a little longer than she had first estimated, but it didn't look as serious now that it had been cleaned.

She carefully applied a gauze pad that she'd located in the kit, positioning it so it covered the entire injury, then used medical adhesive tape to hold it in place. Just for good measure, she wrapped bandages around Diana's head a few times until she was sure it was secure.

Diana moaned, then blearily opened one eye. Angelina slumped back against a large pileup of debris from when she blasted out the ceiling, exhausted and relieved. She felt a vague notion that she had other urgent things to do, but she was too tired to really care.

Dimly, she was aware of someone saying her name, but before she could respond, her head lolled off to one side and she was asleep.

Below them, the waters finally began to recede. Sapphire and Scarlett, still huddled in one of the little air pockets Sapphire had created to shelter them, breathed a deep sigh of a relief at the sight. The swirling waters calmed, just seeming to evaporate instantaneously after a minute or two of somewhat slower progress that made it seem as if there were a giant drain located somewhere on the floor, and someone had just pulled the plug.

Edilio was fixing up Diana's bandages as the water slowly went down, now lapping gently at the walls, as opposed to the huge typhoon it had been. It looked so peaceful, aside from the debris still floating in it and the dirty state of the water. It was almost like the ocean, but without the sandy beaches. As he and Diana watched, the water seemed to calm them, stilling their nerves and calming the energy still pumping in their veins.

Sam was speaking in soft voices to Rose, who had awoken and was looking a lot better with the water cleared from her system and the burns better attended to. There was no way for them to know the horrible things that would occur after this chain of events, even though they knew that it wasn't over.

Sophia and Astrid knew better than to let their guards down. Both girls knew that there was no chance they could ever truly be at peace. Not until they were all dead, and the powers were gone forever from the world.

A/N

Ya... so this was supposed to happen in like five minutes time span at most so sorry it feels like an hour we are just going to ignore that right now. Anyways... Yes, I know that by this time they should need emergency medical care or at least CPR or something but we are just going to ignore that logic... forever. In case you haven't noticed, logic was basically thrown out a thirty story window when we started writing this story. We will try to update sooner, but no promises.

Kayla would like me to add that the last paragraph's morbid/grimness was not approved by her, because I have a thing for foreshadowing with ominous words and she does not.

REMEMBER TO R+R.

CYA!

-Kari