Hi!

I hope everyone is doing well! I'm bored out of my tree but I've been getting a lot of writing done so hooray! Also, I'm feeling great and not displaying any symptoms so hopefully after the 15th, my life can return to normal!

I loved writing this chapter and I hope you like reading it.

I hope you enjoy!

"Ant?" Kaiko's voice came from Ant's communicator.

Both Ant and Madeline seemed to come to life. For the past few minutes, the pair had been sat in tense silence, refusing to even look at each other, let alone communicate. However, Kaiko's voice seemed like a spark of hope for the two of them and they sprang into action upon hearing it.

Ant shuffled forward into a larger section of the clam and Madeline shuffled forward to join him. They shared a tense stare for a moment before Kaiko's voice appeared again.

"Ant? Are you there, is everything okay?"

" Yeah mum, we're fine, what's going on? " Ant asked.

"The volcano's not doing too well," Kaiko began before she was interrupted .

"What does that mean? For us," Madeline asked, grabbing Ant by the communicator again, practically dragging him across the clam.

"It means we need to get out of here, now ideally," Kaiko replied after a momentary silence of confusion upon hearing the young pirate's voice.

In fact, if Hammerhead hadn't spent every spare second yelling at the Nektons about how it had been their fault, and Finn hadn't spent every second finding someway to irritate Fontaine, Kaiko might have forgotten Madeline was trapped with her son in the first place: the young pirate certainly hadn't been saying much for the past few minutes.

Silence ruled over the comms again, leaving the two parties - both the trapped and the rescue - in nervousness.

Eventually, after managing to reclaim his arm, Ant sat back up and said," So, what are we going to do, Mum?"

"We need to move the clam and we need to get you guys out of there so -" Kaiko was interrupted before she could finish explaining her plan.

"Get us out first," Madeline yelled, Ant letting out a huge frustrated sigh as his communicator was grabbed again and he temporarily lost his arm.

"Sorry Madeline, we can't do that just yet, we need to -" Kaiko's explanation was, once again, ignored and spoken over, this time by a slightly more dangerous-looking Hammerhead.

"What? Nektons, you get my daughter out of there now!" Hammerhead bellowed, finally snapping out of his argument with Will and reacting to what was going on.

"If. I. Could. Finish," Kaiko said, shooting daggers at Hammerhead.

"We need to move the clam and get you guys out of there so," at this point Hammerhead looked as though he was about to interrupt but Kaiko's glare and Will's urgent shake of a head stopped him, allowing Kaiko to continue her speech," it makes sense to move the clam to the Arronax, out of danger, first, and then once we're out of the danger zone and we're all safe, we can work out a way to get Ant and Madeline out, okay?" Kaiko's tone of voice was a perfectly, crystal clear indicator that she expected no contradiction but Hammerhead didn't seem to notice, or care, and he spoke up anyway.

" 'Ang on Nektons, me daughter comes over some musty, old clam, get 'er out first!" He yelled.

"We can't!" Will spoke up now," We have to help both the clam and the children, if we waste time trying to get them out now, we might not have time to get the clam out of danger and if we can't find a way to open the clam, we might not be able to get the clam or the children out of danger unless they're on the Arronax,"

Ant and Madeline were sat in the clam, listening to their families argue about how to get them out of there.

When they heard Will say that both they and the clam might not be able to be gotten out of danger, they shared a look.

For the first time since they had entered the clam, their gaze wasn't one of murder or petty squabbling, it was one of terror and worry.

"Mum?" Ant asked when their gaze was finally broken.

"Ant, are you okay?" Kaiko replied upon hearing her son's voice, quite glad for a distraction from Hammerhead's arguing.

"How long will it take to get us to the Arronax? It's getting pretty warm in here,"

Ant was right, the water inside the clam was getting hotter and hotter. At first, it was fairly unnoticeable, but the pair had been stuck in the clam for a lot longer than they would have liked and the increasing temperature was no longer quite so subtle.

Kaiko looked up from her communicator and then replied with, "I don't know, it's a pretty long stretch plus the volcano and the weight of the clam are going to slow us down, why?"

"If the volcano is going to erupt soon, you might want to hurry a little, it's not going to slow down when it sees you guys carrying a giant clam," Ant reminded his mother.

"You're right, Ant," there was a temporary pause over the comms where Kaiko could be heard yelling.

"HAMMERHEAD! WILL! Go and check on the volcano, delay it if you can,"

" An' how exac'ly do we delay a volcano?" Hammerhead asked.

"Just go!" Will could be heard.

Kaiko's voice returned to normal.

"Fontaine, Finn, help with the clam,"

"Er, Kaiko?" Finn began, slightly hesitant.

"Mum? We have a slight issue," Fontaine pointed out.

"What? Oh,"

Upon hearing this, Ant and Madeline shared yet another look, Ant looked more fed up and frustrated than scared but Madeline looked really quite terrified, Ant was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with her.

How long were they actually going to be stuck in here?

I hope you liked it!

The next chapter should be up soon, since I'm not doing anything else *internal sobbing* and I have lots of spare time.

Thank you so much for reading!

Please review, I love to know what people think of the story so far and what they think is going to happen,

Until next time!

Kiwi :)