Yeah, I know that the Garnet/Tempest thing ended up being a bit short-lived. It’s not completely resolved yet! Although it will be in this chapter hahaha. I may have built up this chapter because at first I was all I BUILT IT UP TOO MUCH NOOO and then I thought it would be good actually AND THEN BACK TO BUILT UP TOO MUCH. Oh well.
Chapter 6: My Turn The snow in the icy regions of the north was falling heavily from the sky. There was a little igloo which was big enough to house someone comfortably. It didn’t seem very naturally made and looked very perfect.
The igloo had a little chimney and the smoke that was floating out of the chimney died down until it completely stopped. This signaled that the person was getting ready to leave their igloo because they didn’t want to waste a fire while not in the igloo. The person finally left their igloo.
He had on a white bandana covered in light blue icicle patterns and normal blue wave patterns. His attire included a light blue coat lined with white fur at the ends and a white wave print in the chest area. His sleeves were slightly too big for him and his coat completely covered the similar short-sleeved shirt under it. His coat also slightly covered his dark blue pants and these pants covered most of the brown boots he had on. Lastly, this person had dual pouches on his back filled with something, probably water.
This person was Shade.
Shade took a deep breath and shivered a little at the cold. He put his hands behind him and as he moved them forward, the snow below him was being controlled to push him along the frozen lands.
He eventually found himself in front of a large body of water, essentially the Atlantic Ocean. Shade looked over and saw his reflection. He let out a small sigh and lifted his arms slowly. The snow in the air stopped falling and stayed in suspension. With the control of the snow, Shade formed four large icicles.
Lifting his arms slowly, Shade squinted and looked into the water. After a little time, he quickly lowered his arms and the icicles pierced the water. Shade lifted his arms again and smiled at the sight of many fish being caught on his icicles.
“Good catch today,” he mumbled and made his way back to his igloo. Shade put the fish that he caught away and left his igloo again.
“Time to go looking again,” Shade looked towards the horizon, holding onto his arms for a moment before moving forward, using the snow to push him ahead.
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At New York, Florence and the others got notice that Elaine finally returned from her search for Shade.
“I wasn’t able to find him…” the pink-haired pirate explained with a sigh as she and the rest of the pirate crew left the ship. “I think I did the best that I could.”
“We’re sorry, Elaine,” Jake placed his hand on Elaine’s shoulder to comfort her. “Listen, we have a request to ask. We need to borrow your ship to get to this portal that leads to the villains’ lair.” Florence showed Elaine the map.
“Okay, we’ll leave as soon as we can,” Elaine allowed them to use her ship and nodded. “I’ll leave my pirate crew here so that they aren’t in danger.”
“That’s fine,” Florence said. “Everyone, you have three hours to prepare and then we’ll leave. This may be a long trip, so make sure that you’re prepared for the worst.” everyone disbanded to go get ready for the trip that was ahead for them.
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Everyone was prompt to arrive back at the ship within three hours.
“Does everyone have everything?” Elaine asked. “This is your last chance before we head off.” the group seemed to have everything that they needed, so Elaine nodded. As everyone started boarding the big pirate ship, Florence turned around to the city. Jim held back and noticed this.
“Do you think that New York will be fine without our protection?” Florence wondered, looking at all the tall buildings. Jim placed a hand on her shoulder.
“New York will be fine,” he assured her. “Elaine’s pirate crew is here and Raffi, Kevin, Ash, and the others assured us that they would make sure they would stop any large attacks on the city.”
“That’s true…” said Florence, turning to Jim with a nod. “Thank you.” Jim nodded back and the two completely got on the pirate ship.
“Anchors aweigh!” Elaine called out and the ship started its voyage towards the portal.
“Where’s Jake?” wondered Jim, looking around the ship. They had been going for a good while.
“He got sea sick, so he’s inside,” explained Florence. “I don’t think he usually gets sea sick, but there’s less people and no real distractions for him…”
“Oh, well hopefully he gets better!” Jim nodded, deciding to go inside to check on Jake.
Tempest was standing at the front of the ship, leaning on the railing. The speed of the boat was very fast, but it was easy for the crew to move around and the breeze wasn’t very strong. Garnet noticed Tempest’s location and walked next to him.
“Kinda takes you back, doesn’t it?” Tempest only noticed the princess when she spoke up. He smiled at her and laughed, nodding at her comment.
“It’s very nostalgic,” Tempest explained. “It feels like just yesterday we just met and were together on the airship that we practically always used as a boat.” Garnet laughed at the last comment.
“Well, they only really used it as a boat when we were on board,” she said. “I’m not sure that it was planned.” Tempest laughed and agreed. Garnet looked down at Tempest’s hands and wanted to hold them, but stalled and let out a very quiet sigh.
“Something wrong?” wondered Tempest, barely picking up on Garnet’s sigh.
“Huh?” Garnet said. “Oh! No, nothing. Just something in my throat.” she faked a cough and smiled. Garnet walked away and sighed again, making sure that no one was around to hear this sigh. Once she saw Bea, she called out her name.
“Ah!” Bea gasped. “Sorry, you scared me!”
“Sorry about that,” replied Garnet with a small smile. “Um, so I wanted to talk to you. I’m sorta having trouble with Tempest… in the sense that… I’m not really sure where we stand. I really like him, but I’m not sure if I should just go up and make that apparent yet.”
“I don’t think I’m the best person to be asking about this…” Bea said, crossing her eyes and glancing at Jim, who was on the other side of the ship practicing with his hammer. Garnet looked at Jim for a moment and then back at Bea with a small frown.
“I guess that’s true…” she realized.
“But what I would suggest to you,” Bea began, placing a hand on her chin, “is that you just excessively flirt with Tempest until he finally makes the first move! Hopefully he’s not as oblivious as other people and he’ll get the hint.”
“Good suggestion,” Garnet nodded. “Thank you.”
“Let’s go look for Florence though and see what she thinks,” decided Bea. Garnet nodded and they climbed up the ladder to get to the top part where Elaine was steering the ship and Florence was looking out from the back of the ship with her phone in her hand.
“Florence…” Garnet and Bea walked up to her, but the princess changed the subject of what she actually wanted to ask. “Why do you have your phone all the way out here?” Florence smiled.
“I get really good service,” she explained, looking at her smart phone. “All the applications and such are fun too when I get bored. There’s even a tracking application where you can see where other contacts are! Isn’t that creepy?”
“Uh…” Bea looked around a little awkwardly and started fake coughing and nudging Garnet to change the conversation.
“Oh,” Garnet turned to Bea and then back to Florence. “Yeah, I meant to ask for some advice actually!” she explained the situation between herself and Tempest.
“Hmm,” Florence took a little time to think about some advice and put her phone away. “Just be yourself! But be a little bit flirtier and make it clear that you’re interested.”
“I was hoping that after the whole “first date” thing then he would have been sorted on me needing to be flirty to get attention,” Garnet sighed. “Thanks, though.” she smiled.
“So go get your man!” Bea said, surprising Garnet. However, she laughed and nodded, going down the ladder and leaving the three ladies up at the top of the ship. Bea noticed that Florence was already looking out to the sea with a curious face. “You’re thinking of something…”
“You would be correct, Bea,” sighed Florence. She pulled her phone out again and seemed to go through her pictures until she pulled up a picture of Shade to show Bea.
“I see,” Bea said and Florence put her phone away.
“I can’t help it,” Florence said. “I don’t even know what to think of him at this point. With all that we’ve been through, I should be sad. His leaving, though… it’s just made me bitter.” her face seemed to show resentment and Florence buried her head in her arms that were rested on the railing of the ship.
“It’s alright to feel this way, Florence,” Bea comforted Florence and stood closer to her. “Especially since we don’t have anything to do while we wait to get to the portal but think about things.”
“Yeah… that really doesn’t help,” Florence admitted. Bea nodded.
“Why don’t we get everyone distracted from their problems, then?” suggested Bea. Florence looked confused, but Bea did a wind-powered back flip onto the lower deck of the ship.
“Hmm,” mumbled Florence, turning back to the back of the ship and out to the sea.
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Shade found himself surrounded by arctic wolves. He let out a sigh and looked around at his current enemies as he stayed in a battle pose, ready for their attack.
“This happens too much to me,” he groaned. The wolves were just glaring him down and waiting for an attack. Shade looked around and noted that the wolves were also waiting for his first attack. He smirked.
“Fine then,” Shade lifted both of his arms quickly and the snow beneath the circle of wolves shot into the air. The wolves were all flung around the area and Shade decided to run in the direction of his igloo.
Once the wolves got up, most of them started chasing Shade down. He looked back and noticed this, so he lifted his arms so that some snow rose up and turned into water.
“Take this!” Shade stopped and turned around, twisting his arms to make the stream of water flow into two wolves and turn into ice to freeze them. More wolves were running his way, so Shade ducked down and raised the snow a little to form solid ice and then shot it at the wolves. The ice shattered on two wolves.
“I keep beating these animals down, but they don’t seem to learn that I won’t lose to them,” Shade chuckled, raising his arms slowly to the right. As the remaining wolves drew closer to Shade, he moved his arms to the left and a large wave that appeared from liquefied snow washed all the wolves into a tree-filled part of the frozen area.
“Now stop bothering me!” he called out. Shade noticed that no more wolves were chasing him, so he let out a sigh of relief and kept walking back towards his igloo.
Once he made it into his igloo, Shade looked down at the snow and sighed.
“I think it’s time for me to return back to New York,” he said, under his breath. “I guess I’ve failed everyone.” Shade shook his head slowly and turned to look at what was left in his igloo.
“I really spent a lot of time tracking them down,” he noticed and chuckled. The majority of what was used to track down the villains was a bunch of papers. Some had notes scribbled onto maps about “spikes in power levels,” but none of them led to a specific area.
“I only found out that they were somewhere up in the north with all this snow,” Shade turned to the most recent map that had the whole snowy regions of the north circled. Other notes indicated that Shade had been in the snowy areas since the first time the villains attacked New York.
Shade then looked up. He changed into his dragon form and crouched down. Shade leapt up and blasted through his igloo, flying in the direction of New York.
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Bea’s idea to keep everyone occupied as they went in the general direction of the portal, as guided by the map, was for a big training brawl on the ship.
“Doesn’t this seem dangerous?” Jim asked.
“No, it’ll be fine!” Bea assured everyone. “If there are any aesthetic damages, then we can just easily repair it with the extra lumber that we’ve brought on board.”
“So… I shouldn’t use my summons?” Garnet asked. “Also, how am I even gonna get some rock to manipulate anyway?”
“There’s rocks at the bottom of the sea, Garnet, just control that!” explained Bea. “Also, you should start to get more dependent on your earth powers than your summoning. You’ve been getting better at earth, but you should try to master it.” Garnet nodded.
“Don’t you want to join us, Elaine?” Florence called out to the pink-haired pirate steering.
“I’m fine!” Elaine replied. “Someone needs to steer the ship. Plus, I was planning to stay behind with the ship once we got to the villains’ lair anyway, so I don’t really need to train.”
“Alright,” Tempest got his spell book ready. “Let’s get to it then!” everyone nodded and they all smirked or made some face that showed that they were ready to battle. Garnet looked at Tempest and lifted her right arm to make a trail of rocks fly from the bottom of the ocean to the wizard.
“Go!” she yelled. Tempest quickly ran out of the way and the rocks hit the floor of the ship and covered the floor with many pebbles.
“Water Laser!” Tempest touched the spell book and lifted his two arms to point at Garnet. She acted quickly and controlled a few pebbles that were on the boat to knock into Tempest’s wrists, making the aim of the laser fly into nothing and he stopped his spell.
“Ahhh!” Jim cried out, rushing towards Florence with his hammer. She pulled out her strong staff that resisted the swing of Jim’s hammer. Florence pushed him back and gave herself enough time to swing her staff at Jim’s legs and trip him. Florence ran towards him with her staff lifted to hit him, but she was blasted to the railing by a gust from Bea.
Bea turned back to Jim to shoot him with a similar gust of wind, but Jim was on his feet and his heavy hammer stopped him from being pushed back. Once she stopped, Jim turned to Tempest and horizontally swung at him in multiple spins. Tempest used Inferno to make himself be covered with flames, which made Jim back away so that he wouldn’t be burnt by the close contact.
The three females found themselves staring at each other for a moment. Garnet lifted both her arms and a big rock flew up from the ocean and she launched it towards Bea. She responded by raising up her arm and pushing wind from her palm to slow the rock down until it stopped and smashed into the floor of the ship.
Florence took this opportunity to run to Bea and swung at her with her staff. Bea noticed in time and moved out of the way a couple of times to dodge Florence’s attacks. However, after some dodging, Bea got hit in the side into the wall of the ship.
Garnet took control of the pebbles scattered around the ship and had them form a rocky version of her arm. She started swinging at Florence, who tried to hit Garnet back. However, Garnet was quick enough to block each attack of her staff with her armored arm. Finally, Garnet’s rocky arm was able to smack Florence’s staff out of her arms and to the other side of the boat.
Before Garnet got to attack Florence with her arm, the rocks disintegrated upon the attack of a Fireball spell from Tempest, who had found a way to push Jim back. Garnet rushed her summoning racquet off of her back to push Florence out of the way and run towards Tempest, who was already preparing another spell.
“Swordstorm!” Tempest called out, sending a flurry of green, wind-formed blades at Garnet. She responded by swinging her racquet from one side of the ship to the other to make a big wall of pebbles block the attack. Tempest didn’t have enough time to prepare another spell to block a couple incoming pebbles and he was knocked off his feet and stayed down.
Florence had already decided to give up with the fighting once her staff was far from her, so she ran and sat next to Tempest. Garnet drew her attention to Bea and as she turned to the hippie, she dropped her racquet and twisted her arms to shoot all of the pebbles previously forming a wall to Bea.
Bea reacted quickly and turned to Jim. As the pebbles started heading towards her, Bea used her air power to redirect the pebbles to shoot at Jim. The dwarf responded to the attack as he did to most attacks and lifted the head of his hammer to block the pebbles. As Garnet started losing pebbles, she kept the flow going from more pebbles that were at the bottom of the sea.
Jim watched Garnet while avoiding Bea’s defense mechanism and found a moment to move back a little and smash the pebbles that were going his way with his hammer so that they ran into Garnet.
“Ahh!” she called out as she fell to the ground and the pebbles stopped moving. However, because Jim had to move his hammer to do this, some rocks that Bea was controlling wound up hitting him and he fell over, too.
“Whoo!” Bea cheered at her victory in the training session. Everyone else stood up and looked around at the ship.
“Looks like we didn’t really do any damage… surprisingly,” Florence noted with a small laugh and scratching the back of her head.
“Just this,” Garnet pointed at the large rock on the ground and laughed as she stomped her foot to make the rock go up a little and then punched in the direction of the rock to fling it back into the ocean.
“I guess we can call it a day, then!” Jim said with a small smile. Everyone started packing in to the inside of the ship except for Florence who turned to the railing of the ship and took her phone out again.
“You really can’t get him off of your mind, can you?” Florence gasped and turned around to see Elaine smirking and her hands on her hips. She was taking longer to go inside because she had to dock the ship first.
“Elaine… you scared me,” Florence held her chest for a moment and then sighed. “Yes. I really can’t. I mean, I used the little location thing to look for him before, but it’s always just been at his house!”
“You haven’t even tried calling him, have you?” Elaine asked, sticking her tongue out slightly. Florence was silent for at least a minute and finally looked down at her phone.
“I… guess I haven’t,” Florence said. “I honestly never thought about it.”
“Just call him,” suggested Elaine, looking down at Florence’s phone. “It couldn’t hurt, I don’t think. Maybe you can get some closure or something.” Florence was silent again and bit her lip before finally nodding.
“Okay,” she said, lifting up her phone. “I’ll do it.” Florence looked up Shade’s number and hesitated before finally pressing the call button. She held the phone up to her ear and listened for the phone to ring for a while until it went to voicemail.
“Leave your message… now,” the machine told Florence before a different voice continued. “At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished, you may hang up, or press talk—” Florence pressed the hang up button and the sound of her doing so sounded a lot louder and sounded like it was ringing in both of their ears.
“No answer,” Florence told Elaine. With that, Florence left to go inside. Elaine stayed outside for a moment, turned to the view of the ocean, and then followed suit.
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The next day was a little cloudy. Elaine assured everyone that a storm wasn’t coming, but it sort of made the mood around the boat a little somber. Jake was feeling better, so he was out on the deck today.
“This is a great atmosphere to do some flirting…” Garnet sighed under her breath.
“Oh, come on,” Bea placed a hand on Garnet’s shoulder. “You’ve gotta have a positive attitude. Men are scared by women with bad attitudes. I think.” Garnet chuckled at Bea’s observation.
“Alright, alright, it’ll be good today,” she assured Bea. Bea nodded and smiled.
“Good,” with that, Bea walked away so that Garnet could woo her man. Tempest was at the front of the ship, as usual, with the others more in the back. They were all on the lower deck, including Elaine who was taking a little break.
“Hey there,” Garnet greeted Tempest with a smile and walked over.
“Hi!” Tempest greeted her back with a warm welcome. This made Garnet’s smile get bigger and she leaned on the railing right next to Tempest.
“So how are you feeling about everything?” Garnet wondered, turning to Tempest.
“That’s a pretty vague question!” he replied, raising an eyebrow. Garnet shrugged a little and chuckled, saying that it was pretty vague. “Well… I’m pretty good. I’m not feeling any sort of sadness or resentment about anything.” Tempest nodded.
“That’s great!” Garnet replied. Tempest leaned forward and closer to Garnet, leaning onto the railing the same motion that Garnet was. This made her blush a little and look off to the side.
“Jim!” Bea beamed to the dwarf, running up to him with a soft hug and a smile. “How are you today?” Jim didn’t really reply to the hug, but smiled a little.
“Pretty good,” he said, coolly. Jim had been eating something, so after he assumed that the conversation was over with Bea, he went back to eating. Bea glared at him a little and then let out a little sigh.
“Okay then,” she walked to the other side of the ship. Bea turned to see Garnet and Tempest standing pretty close and this made her smile.
Garnet turned back to Tempest and saw that his face was a little red, too. He was looking straight out to the ocean.
“You know…” Garnet decided to be a little bit blunt. “I don’t think we made it clear where the two of us stand.”
“Wha… what do you mean?” Tempest wondered, turning to Garnet and looking at little worried. She replied with a little laugh and took hold of his hands.
“I meant in THIS way,” Garnet held up their intertwined hands.
“Oh…” Tempest relaxed and let out a laugh. “To be honest, I’ve wanted to talk about this, too. It’s why I’ve just been out here staring out into the ocean for the past couple of days.”
“Oh really?” Garnet wondered curiously with a small smile. She leaned a little closer to him, letting go of his hands.
“Maybe this should be enough of an indicator of how we stand,” Tempest flashed a coy smile. He reached for Garnet’s waist and pulled her closer towards him. Garnet reached for the side of Tempest’s head and held it as the two went in for a kiss.
The others were side-eying what was going on or just looking straight on without bothering to be sly about it. Florence was crossing her arms and smiled at the two and their moment.
However, she heard a little noise from the top of the ship. This caused Florence to uncross her arms and turn around to see what caused the noise. Once she turned around and saw what was at the top of the ship, Florence’s eyes widened and she seemed like she wanted to gasp. Florence had to take a few steps back to get a better view of who was up there.
Shade.
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DUN DUN. Next chapter will be pretty short and… uneventful? So hopefully this chapter makes up for it. This chapter was the one that probably most followed the song. WHICH I THINK IS COOL!