Hi!

I really enjoyed writing this chapter! I hope everyone had a good new year and I wish you all the best for 2021!

I hope you enjoy!

"And then, we got stuck in the cave! But it wasn't a cave, it was made of octopi! So it was, a - erm, a-"

"An octocave?" Madeline asked, trying to sound unfazed by Ant's terribly random flow of words that had been spouting from his mouth for the past twenty minutes, although it was hard since almost all of his stories were somewhat funny.

"I - Yeah!" Ant declared, " that works, "

"What were you going to go with?"

"Erm, octave?" Ant suggested after pondering this for a while.

To both of their astonishment, they both found this funny, probably more funny than they ought to, given they were still trapped in the ocean's version of a giant boiling pot, and began laughing.

The young pirate had definitely calmed down and her breathing had slowed to a less panicked rate.

Ant was definitely happy that Madeline seemed less worried, her eyes still occasionally flicked nervously around the clam but usually stopped and settled on a single object after a few moments.

They had been sat for a while now but only Ant had been talking, Madeline just sat quietly, listening to his rambling.

Suddenly, a voice was heard over the radio, not directed at them but it could still be heard.

"Fontaine?" The voice echoed around the clam, " Fontaine, can you hear me? Are you with Finn? Where are you? "

Both pirate and Nekton looked at each other in confusion at this.

Kaiko had been waiting for Fontaine (who would most likely be accompanied by Finn) to arrive for a long time now.

Maybe Finn was slowing her down? This was certainly a possibility but even if it was the case, it was highly unlikely he slowed her down this much.

Finally deciding she had waited long enough, she looked up from examining the base of the clam - which was still firmly secured to the ocean floor - and she raised her communicator.

"Fontaine?" She called, and after hearing no response, she continued, " Fontaine, can you hear me? Are you with Finn? Where are you? "

There was an incredibly long and increasingly tense silence after this, only to be broken by an unexpected yet certainly welcomed voice.

"Mum? Are you okay? Where's Fontaine?" Ant's voice projected from her communicator.

"She went to go and get the laser cutter -" Kaiko was interrupted.

"Why did you need the laser cutter?" Ant cut in.

"The clam is stuck to the sea bed and-" Kaiko was interrupted again.

"AND YOU WANTED TO LASER IT OPEN?!" Ant yelled into his communicator, making Kaiko feel fairly deaf.

"What? No, Ant, we needed to cut the byssal threads so we can move the clam," Kaiko continued.

"Ohhh, you could have just said that!" Ant said, sounding much calmer now.

"So, Fontaine went to the Aronnax to get the rover but -" Kaiko was interrupted, yet again.

"Why did you need the rover?" Ant asked, "We have laser cutters on our knights,"

"Yes, I know, Ant, but these byssal threads are huge, the ones on our knights aren't big enough,"

"Ohhhh, that makes sense," Ant commented, mostly to himself.

"But Finn was following her-" Kaiko sighed as the inevitable interruption came.

"Finn! What's he doing following her? That is absolutely outrageous! I thought Dad said that he wasn't allowed near her! I just can't -" This time, Kaiko interrupted.

"Yes, I know Ant, but we haven't seen Fontaine - or Finn - since,"

To Kaiko's surprise there was a long silence in which she could practically head the cogs turning in Ant's head, then an idea struck her.

"Is Madeline there?" She asked.

"Ha, yeah, where else is she going to be? It's not like she can just wander in and out of this clam of her own free will," Ant replied.

"Can I speak to her?" Kaiko asked.

" Wait, just give my communicator to a pirate? What if she steals it? " Ant asked.

In the background, Kaiko heard Madeline's response.

"Yeah, Ant! I'm going to steal your comm and then what? It's not like I can just swim off with it, " she said, rather dryly.

Then there was a slight scuffling sound and the sound of annoyed voices and slightly hushed arguing before another voice came over the comms.

"Hi Kaiko, what's up?" Madeline asked, apparently having retrieved Ant's communicator as he could be heard complaining about it in the background.

"Your brother, do you have any way of contacting him? Fontaine isn't picking up and I'm assuming that they're together, wherever they are, " Kaiko asked.

"Our communicators struggle to work on our own sub, if Fontaine isn't responding with your fancy Nekton tech, I can safely say that Finn won't even get your message, let alone be able to reply, " the youngest pirate replied.

"Okay," Kaiko said, struggling to think of what to do next, "Thanks, Madeline, " and she lowered her comm.

What to do now?

She considered leaving the clam to go and look for her eldest, but someone needed to be monitoring the clam, since the two stuck inside it wouldn't be able to know what's going on otherwise.

Plus Will and Hammerhead were still gone, probably arguing about something or other.

She needed to stay here: she just had to hope that Fontaine could find her own way back to them, and hopefully soon.

Speaking of Fontaine, she and the pirate boy were yelling and waving from their position stuck within the rover.

For the past quarter of an hour, they had been trying to get the attention of Will and Hammerhead, since their communications had been wiped out and Finn and Fontaine were still just as stuck as they had been originally.

Will and Hammerhead weren't too far away, they were not too far from the volcano, discussing something, actually seeming surprisingly calm.

But they had paid no attention to the rover (although that wasn't surprising, it was half hidden by the seabed and covered in dirt) and Fontaine and Finn's voices were beginning to go hoarse.

"Give it up, Fontaine, they can't see us," Finn said, sitting down and slouching against one of the walls of the rover, which originally used to be the large, glass canopy.

With a loud sigh, Fontaine sat down and said, "I don't give up! In case you'd forgotten, my brother and your sister are stuck in a giant clam, probably on the verge of knocking each other out,"

" Fontaine, " Finn said.

"Let's face it, we're sat on an underwater volcano that's about to blow," Fontaine continued.

"Fontaine, " Finn repeated, a few decibels louder.

"We're all going to cook, we're going to get boiled and then -" Fontaine carried on.

"Fontaine!" Finn repeated, noticeably louder this time.

"What?" She near-snapped at him, turning to look Finn and then moving her head to follow his gaze.

Finn's eyes were focused on something not too far in the distance, slowly but surely approaching in their direction.

"What is that?" Fontaine asked, her only answer being a shrug from Finn.

I'm sorry that it took a while to publish this chapter, I've had a lot going on in my life lately and I've been writing an (incredibly long) future story these last couple of weeks and while it almost definitely won't be published any time soon, I've been working on it a lot lately because it's so incredibly long and I want to try and get it finished soon, by which I mean, sometime this year, maybe XD.

I hope you liked this chapter and thank you so much for reading!

Please review, I would love to know what you think!

Until next time,

Kiwi :)