Hey there again! I feel like I say that a lot…
Well, I'm not dead just yet! It takes more than thirteen tests to keep me down! So, how did I finally get time? I didn't have any homework. First of all, some words…
I cannot believe the support you all have given this story. Even with all the mistakes here and there, I scrolled through the reviews. As of the time I post this, there is not a single bad review. That is amazing. Thank you all...so much. You've given me confidence to continue this story, and maybe, just maybe, I'll publish one of my own someday. If that day is soon, I will definitely let everyone know.
Winner of the last challenge was dragonwritergirl112! Great job with shiny Umbreon! Don't get on my case about Saiba answering first though, one win (and shout out/special appearance) per person.
Point of view for this story is...Umber! Cause I've been neglecting to do his chapter for way too long!
I give up! Why do you still think I own this series? Or that I'm going to say I do? I have screamed, shouted, and sang that I don't, what else do you want?
"Ha!" Umber shouted, as he touched the edge of the pool, "I beat you again Turtle!"
Turtle came up behind him, just a second short.
"Good job Umber, I'm proud of you."
"Heh, thanks."
"So, if the time comes where we're stranded in the middle of a lake, now you know how to swim."
"Yeah, thanks for that, I appreciate it."
"No prob."
"So, it's a Saturday, and the sun's just risen, you know, being winter and all, what do you wanna do today?"
"Hmm," Turtle thought to himself, "What about we go find everyone else first?"
"Sure."
Umber and Turtle got up out of the pool, sopping wet from the swim. They both changed and dashed outside to see that Ash and Moon were walking side by side. Umber knew that they were like cousins, how they'd known each other for a long time, but for some reason, he felt like Ash had slight feelings for Moon. Meh, it was nothing.
Wait, it seemed like they were laughing, but he was sure they hadn't moved their mouths, did they see something? Umber dashed up to see, but it was just a tree. What?
Those two looked like they were having a full on conversation, with hand gestures here and there, but there weren't moving their mouths. Were they ventriloquists?
Wait, Moon said about a month ago that she could read minds...could Ash do that too? Or was it just a one way conversation?
He had to find out.
"Hey Moon! Ash! What's up?" he called to them.
They seemed startled for a moment, then they turned around, "Oh! Hey Umber, where are you going?" Moon called back.
Umber ran up to them, and said that he was just looking for them while thinking furiously, "Hey Ash, how are you?"
Ash seemed shocked for a moment. Then he said, "I'm, feeling okay, got something off my chest. Feeling less paranoid."
"That's good, sorry, it just looked weird when you were talking without speaking. That's insane by the way, what's it like to have an internal conversation?"
Moon and Ash shrugged, "Just like talking, but more like texting how no one else can hear you." Moon said,
"It's kind of weird, but Frostbite said that Winter, Qibli, and him were hanging out for the day." Ash said.
"Kinkajou said that she wanted an extra half hour of sleep, and Carnelian's doing homework for a bit."
"Well, we're up to date," Umber said, "Wanna go somewhere?"
Umber was trying desperately to hide how uncomfortable he was, with there being two people reading his mind.
"Sure," Ash said, "Why not."
Umber could tell that he and Moon had been 'talking,' why couldn't he be okay with this? He knew the answer plain and clear, though. He probably had the worst thoughts about anyone. Everyone must have been so much nicer.
"I'll drive." Turtle said.
They walked to his car, and eventually were headed off somewhere.
"So where are we going, Turtle?" Moon asked,
Turtle was silent for a bit, then Moon added the game changer.
"Uh…I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but neither of us can read your mind, Turtle."
"Wait? What?" Turtle said, dumbfounded.
"Yeah, I don't know why…"
Come on! What did Turtle do to make himself unreadable? Apparently he didn't know, because he was at a loss for words. Turtle started fidgeting with his armband, and eventually, he took it off to keep his attention on the road.
"What the…" Ash muttered, then Moon shouted,
"The armband! Turtle, what's that made of?"
"Oh, just some rocks fallen off an asteroid, why?"
"Well, thanks for taking us to the stratosphere (building in Vegas), that's really nice." Ash said, triggering Turtle,
"Wait, you can read my mind? You lied?" Turtle asked, shocked.
"No!" Moon cried, "That armband, it's like a shield or something!"
"Hold on," Umber said, grabbing Turtle's armband, and ripping out a stone, then putting it back, "Can you read me?"
"Nope." Moon and Ash said in unison.
"Well, maybe we should give one of these to everyone in our class, that way our close friends will still have their privacy?" Turtle said, putting the armband back on.
"That works, honestly, if everyone was given one, I wouldn't care, it's more of a nuisance than anything, it's always giving me a headache." Ash said, rubbing his head.
"Oh!" Moon exclaimed, "Ash, I have a trick for that…"
Moon started talking about raindrops, but Umber wasn't listening. There was a shield. He didn't have to let them know about his dead sister. He still dwelled on it a lot, but no one else needed to know how she died.
A while ago, maybe three years, his sister was still alive. She was great...strong, smart, and charismatic. Then she was murdered.
Not in her sleep, sadly, but luckily, it wasn't painful and drawn out. Someone broke into their middle school, and started to rampage. He didn't know who it was, as they were wearing all black, but they seemed mentally unstable.
The person broke into the classroom that he and Crane were in, and went to where he and Crane were hiding.
It was awful and terrifying. The intruder took Crane, held her by the neck, and slit it with a knife. She was motionless.
Umber, filled with adrenaline and anger, leaped up on the now killer, and pinned them to the ground.
They were too strong, they threw him off, and ran away...never to be seen again.
He was tearing up at the mere memory of it.
"Well, what do you wanna do when we're there?" Turtle asked, snapping Umber out of his thoughts.
"Isn't there that thing where you can jump off the top of the building?" Moon asked, "That would be interesting." Ash remarked.
"Yeah, sure, we could do that." Umber said.
"How much money do we have then?" Turtle asked, "It's about a hundred dollars per person."
"Um...people say I'm too young to get a job…" Ash mumbled.
"I have eighty from various things." said Moon.
"I have nothing,"Umber said, realizing something, "I forgot my wallet in our dorm."
"Yikes." Turtle said, "It's a good thing I've got about four hundred on me."
"Wait, seriously? You're paying for us?" Moon asked, mouth agape.
"Um...you don't have to do that." Ash said, getting quieter and quieter.
"Turtle, the main question...how the heck do you have that much?" Umber interrogated.
"How do I say mayor Coral is my mother lightly?" Turtle asked.
"Oh, well that makes sense." Moon said.
"Well, you still don't have to pay for me…" Ash said.
"Come on," Turtle insisted, "I've got enough."
"Well," Ash said, "I don't think I'm old enough yet."
"I believe the age limit's fourteen." Umber said, then grabbed his phone to double check.
They were just pulling into a parking lot when Umber concluded that the age limit was indeed fourteen.
"Crud," Ash said,
"What?" Turtle asked.
"I'm fourteen in November."
"And that's next week..." Moon said.
"Well, I know that we didn't drive you out here so you could watch, Ash." Umber said, getting mischievous, "You look fifteen at least, come on with us."
"Really?" Ash exclaimed, "Okay, I'll do it, thanks."
They all signed up for the jump, with no one questioning the underage jumper.
First up was Turtle, followed closely by Moon. Umber and Ash would take the next elevator up. They waited at the bottom to see how they did. Turtle had also ordered the video recording for each of them so that they could laugh at all of their reactions, just in case they screamed at the top but not at the bottom.
"Hey! There he is!" Umber shouted. Spotting the movement from above that he recognized as his friend.
There was a bit of waiting, and then Turtle jumped. He fell down pretty fast, and Umber could have sworn that he did a front flip during the slowed descent.
Eventually, after that, he reached the bottom.
"Woo! That was awesome!" Turtle shouted at the top of his lungs.
Moon came down a few minutes later, shaking.
"That was so scary, no one ever make me do that again." she said when she hit the bottom, sounding shell shocked.
The elevator came back down, and Umber and Ash headed up.
"You ready?" Umber asked.
"Nope." Ash said as the doors opened, "Let's go."
Umber was strapped into the machine that would let him down, and looked at the gorgeous and terrifying scene before him.
There he was, on a two meter by two meter platform, looking out at the city. He was dizzyingly high up, and knew that the first step would be the hardest.
"Ready?" the instructor asked, then without waiting, yelled, "Three two one GO!"
Scared out of his mind by the sudden outburst, Umber leaped off.
"AHH!" Umber shouted for the first second, which then quickly turned into, "OH YEAH! THIS IS AWESOME!"
He gazed around the quickly growing city, and tried to outdo Turtle's possible trick by doing a backflip in the descent.
He hit the ground harder than he thought he would, but light enough to not hurt.
He was then quickly greeted by Moon and Turtle, who had already changed out of their suits.
"That...was...AMAZING!" Umber shouted, nearly knocking Turtle off his feet.
"Worth it?" Turtle asked.
"Definitely." Umber concluded.
They went to the waiting area to watch Ash, and as he hit the ground, he collapsed.
"I'm still alive." Ash said from the ground, slightly muffled while waving his arm.
Afterwards, when everyone was back in their normal clothes, they received their videos, and links.
They got back to the car, and Umber loaded up Turtle's first.
He didn't do a flip like he thought he would, but he definitely tried.
Moon had a normal descent, but screamed the whole way down.
Umber nearly bursted their eardrums with his screaming.
Ash surprised all of them, shouting that he was thirteen as he was jumping, although it looked like the instructor didn't hear him.
They laughed and talked on the trip back.
The sky was darkening, and Umber was dozing off. Almost asleep, he noticed something...eerie outside the window.
On the top of a mountain, he thought he could see a figure, a dark red one.
It was moving, and looked like it was standing up.
Umber was too petrified to move, or talk, he just watched as the figure took out a flashlight and illuminated their face.
He was greeted to a face that had a nasty scar on one side, and looked all too familiar on the other.
He saw the maniacal grin, and the knife in her hand, though she didn't move.
They turned a bend, and she was gone.
He didn't know how to say it, but he had a burning fear in his chest.
He was almost certain that he had been looking into the face of their friends' nightmares.
That was Scarlet…
Okay, once in a while I need to end a chapter without a cliffhanger. So, Scarlet's back! Eek! What's gonna happen? Also, a side question, has anyone reading this story ever done the Stratosphere jump? I'm probably gonna do it when I turn fourteen, which will be AWESOME! Rate, review, and leave suggestions! See ya next chapter!
