Morning at the Port (open)

It was early morning. The port had a few workers making the daily rounds of moving crates on and off ships. Every ship was either tied down or casually floating in the distance. Aside from the noises the workers were making, it was peacefully quiet. One of the workers spotted a ship just coming in to dock up and pointed the others to get ready. The ship was an old, worn out ship decades ago. Everyone who lived or had a job here knew it as Captain Packy Pike ship, an annoying old sailor who brags about how his ship is the best despite how worn out it has become. When he usually docks he would yell out that ship was here, however it was not the case. Today, not a single shout emitted from the deck. It was odd for Captain Pike to skip his arrival shout. The next odd thing is the ship was the fact the ship wasn’t slowing down. The workers noticed this and began to slowly back away. Eventually, the ship collided with the stone port making a rather loud crash. Wood and metal clashed together as a part of the ship moved up on to stone and sluggishly forward. Everyone ran away from the wreckage as the ship finally slowed to a stop.

"Sorry!" a little voice yelled out from the nearly ruined ship. Moments passed when a little girl fell off and landed face first on to the stone. She lifted her head and looked around; discovering the damage.  "Uh, whoops." Kaeru whispered as she slowly got up.

A swift gust of wind could be felt sweeping along the port. Along the currents of the wind appeared to be a cloud of sand being blown toward the shoreline threatening to make a bad circumstance even worse. Though once it reached the stone docks it began to pile up until all the sand that was caught in the wind was stacked into a nice neat mound of sand. The small hill began to shift and take form into a feminine shape which had no distinguishable features until its outer appearance changed from its beige colouring into ones more befitting for the human body. The chest of Tem changed into a navy blue as a metallic badge took form on her chest.

Her morning began as many others, the island being relatively quiet, but she happened to take notice of the crashing ship from quite a ways away. She had a disgruntled look on her face as she wasn’t impressed by what happened (though she had little knowledge of that) and the panicking citizens didn’t help her mood. Then again she did want some kind of excitement this morning, but she hated having to do anything with water and she seemed to be the only one around to take charge of the situation. She starred into the water and saw the seafloor taking note of the sand at the bottom. It was wet so it would take some time for her to lift it from the top of the dock, but it was better than nothing. “Calm down, I have this all under control!” she ordered everyone in the area as she tried to focus on lifting the sand.

‘It would be quite the waste to lose this boat this close to shore’ she thought to herself giving little regard for the beings on the ship. She looked down at the child laid on the dock “Stand back and don’t interfere with police business” she commanded with a hint of bitterness in her voice

Kaeru took a good look at the people panicking around her. Even though there wasn’t a lot, a bunch of people were running away from the wreckage. ‘Alright, I might be able to sneak away before anyone could see me.’ Kaeru thought. Even though she was new here, Kaeru was pretty sure smashing a ship would get her into a bad situation with the local law enforcement. Just before she got on to her feet, Kaeru felt a gust of wind blowing unnaturally behind her. It wasn’t long before Kaeru noticed it was carrying sand and was starting to make a small pile in front of her. Not that it was strange to her, no; it was what happened right after. What started out as a moving pile of sand turned into a tall woman with very long hair.

It took a moment for Kaeru to realize that she was told to stand back, which she did. She spotted some crates nearby and sat on one that was labeled “Umbrellas” as she watched the long hair woman from a mid-distance. She really didn't know what the woman was doing, but from her outfit Kaeru guessed that she was the law around here. 'First day here and already wrecked a port. Oh not good not good not good. Wait! They might think I had nothing to do with it! They would never guess a little girl like me would- wait, am I sitting on umbrellas?'

Tem hated it when civilians panicked because when their panicking they tend to not follow orders as well. Luckily some just decided to run away, which made the operation much easier for her. She continued to raise the sand that lied under the surface of the water as she watched the little girl she told to stay back and she seemed much too calm about it. It was fairly strange because everyone else in the area was absolutely hectic while the girl sat on a crate seemingly unfazed. Tem didn’t like it.

The port didn’t have that deep of water especially when compared to the largeness of the ship she was attempting to save, which meant she didn’t have to raise the sand by that much. As she was busy, a handful of the crew members began to jump off the ship and onto the stone dock in a panic. As long as they found their way off the boat it didn’t matter to her.

Tem shifted half of her focus on the girl as she slowly wandered her way over to her continuing to lift the seafloor. Her eyes glared at the twelve year old as she approached her. “You seem to be the calmest around here, what actually happened to this boat?” she interrogated refusing to ease up on her tone for a child.

Believe it or not, Kaeru was just thinking about how an umbrella that shoots needles would be awesome when a voice however awoke Kaeru from her thoughts. It was that tall woman who was now quite close to Kaeru, in fact, she was looking directly at Kaeru. ‘I’m not going to get away easily am I?’ Kaeru thought. She really didn’t hear her question but from the situation in front of her, she guessed that the woman was asking how the ship became to be. Kaeru lifted her head and had a flashback of what exactly happened.

“This ship is now mine!” Kaeru exclaimed as she step in front of the crew. “From now on, this ship will be under the order of your new captain! Me! I don’t wanna hear any complaints from anybody or you’ll end up like that evil captain I tied up on this mast!” On the very top of the mast was the tied up captain with a barrel lodged in where the upper half of his body was. The crew was glad the captain wasn’t under the command of the ship now, but they are worried about their new captain who staring down upon them. “Now get below decks! I’ll take us to our destination!”

After trying to steer the ship, Kaeru was doing alright until she didn’t knew how to stop. She made a mental note that handling a ship is not like swimming at all. The flashback ended and Kaeru looked back at the officer; she quickly thought something up. “It was awful!” Kaeru dramatically said with fake tears beginning to run down her cheeks. “The captain was badly drunk and tried to attack me with his peg leg. Oh, how terrible that was!” Kaeru placed the back her hand on her forehead, looking like a damsel that was about to faint. “Then, a huge sea monster came up and saved me from him! You should have seen him! He threw a barrel at him and stuff and tied him up on the mast!” Kaeru was starting to get excited as she spoke more and more. “The sea monster left and the rest of the crew was picking on who was going to be the next captain when a… ghost! Yes, a pirate ghost appeared on board! It took the wheel and said ‘I’ll crash this ship into this island!’ and it did!” Kaeru pointed at the ship. “It went away when we hit so it’s on board anymore!”

Kaeru mentally repeated ‘pleasepleaseplease’ inside her head as she waited for a response.

Tem released a quick comedic snort as the little girl finished her story. It wasn’t nearly the most preposterous story she’s ever heard from a witness, but it was definitely one of the weakest. The fact that the captain would have a peg leg was probably one of the most absurd things about her story since there was proof of sea monsters near the island. Though the sea monsters that lurked around the port would have destroyed the ship entirely instead of picking on the captain. Ghosts were also a possibility as there were official records of them, but for this to be the first incident with one that was of pirate decent seemed also highly unlikely. She was unsure as of now if the child was responsible or telling a tale in order to get attention.

As much as lifting the sea floor was putting strain on herself, Tem still decided to continue the interrogation. “Uh-huh, so if I were to question the crew later they would tell me roughly the same story?” she asked enforcing her skepticism into her tone of speech. Children were sometimes the easiest and hardest to interrogate, but they were usually more difficult when they were the ones responsible. “So, why were you on the ship to begin with then? You don’t seem to be old enough to work in any sort of job tasked to crewmates of a shipping boat.” she continued with her skeptical tone. She was predicting a high and mighty tale about the same caliber as the last one the little girl made, but she had all the time in the world to pester this child until the truth came out. Well, until the boat was safe at least.

The look on Tem’s face seemed not at all fazed by the way the child acted and her stare was quite vacant.

Kaeru’s confidence faltered a little bit when she never thought about the sailors in the first place. Of course, the crew members are going to be asked a bunch of questions on how the ship crashed and might just mention a green, little girl who happened to ram the ship into the port. Kaeru made it her prime objective to get away from this spot as fast as possible and the only thing that is blocking her is that officer.

‘Just play along Kaeru, just play along.’ The question Kaeru was asked was at least a simple one, but Kaeru took a moment to think about her answer in case she might say something that might blow her chances of escaping. “If you must know, I came here to enroll into an academy on this island. I took that ship over there, yeah, that one, and got here.” Kaeru explained. Now thinking about it, Kaeru wondered if she was on the right island. It really never occurred to her that maybe she got the wrong place. An island in the Atlantic isn’t really much to go by. She just flew to a ship that looked out of place in this day of age. Kaeru looked back at the officer. “Um… This is the island that has an academy, right?” Kaeru asked nervously.

As soon as the little girl mentioned the school, Tem rolled her eyes. Of course it had to be a student that was wrapped around in all the commotion, it always was. It didn’t excuse her from being interrogated, but it did mean she would have to pull back some punches. She wasn’t supposed to scare or intimidate students to the point they wanted to leave, which meant she had to be friendlier with the girl and not treat her like a criminal unless proven otherwise.

“Yes, this is the right island. You wouldn’t be seeing people made of sand on the police force anywhere else.” she answered hiding her harsh tone a bit. Finally, she could feel the sea floor touching the base of the boat. She only had to raise it just a bit higher in order to have it in a safe position for evacuation and export all the items off the boat. Now that she also had to lift the heavy ship there was going to be a whole lot more strain on herself. “So you were a stowaway on a ship that you had no clue on where it was going?” she questioned as she had memories of the few times she did that a long time ago. It only seemed like a few hundred years ago, which it probably was.

“So, even if you’re not guilty of crashing this ship, the people who own this boat can still charge you for that if they wanted to, in fact you could probably do some jail time for it, though considering your age probably not.”

Kaeru made a mental image of herself cheering in a jovial manner. Yes, there was still the issue of being locked up if the crewmates were willing to report her, but she didn’t care. All it matters is that Kaeru landed on the right island and wasn’t terribly lost. She began to lose her devious intents and started to relax a little (Or in our terms, she getting jumpy). She walked up to the officer and gave an honest, tight hug.

“Oh thank you for telling me! You can’t believe how very, very worried I was! I didn’t know if I was actually heading the wrong direction, falling off the edge of the world, sinking toward Atlantis again, or whatever sea-related incident that’s out there. Whatever! Thank you again!” Kaeru squeezed her hug, oblivious that she was hugging someone who was solid to begin with. She looked up and said, “Is the ship going to be okay?”

Tem looked off into the distance awkwardly as the little girl hugged her more tightly than she would want. In fact the girl’s arms sunk into her sides a little bit and luckily her structure was still able to hold her upper body enough so that she didn’t split in half. “Uh, you’re welcome” she spoke with her tone sounding a bit unsure. It was fairly strange since most people didn’t hug her after she mentioned that they had a possibly of being arrested. Her gaze focused to the ship behind her as the child questioned if it was going to be alright. “Its nothing a quick patch-up won’t fix. If I can raise it to a high enough level before the lower decks flood it will be back out to sea in a couple weeks at worst.”

Out from a distance crowd emerged a curious teacher by the name of Cade Lemaire. He peered at the damaged vessel that seemed to be rising out of the water instead of sinking into it. It was definitely a strange sight to see. He quickly paced his way over to Tem in no particular hurry as he questioned “What seems to be the problem here officer?” The small girl hugging her while her attention was on the boat seemed quite odd.

“Good, Mr. Lemaire. You can look after this student while I attend to more pressing matters” she said eager to detach the child from her waist before the she cuts her in two. “Just make sure she doesn’t run away, believe it or not she’s a suspect as well as a stowaway.”

Cade glanced at the so called suspect clung to the officer. “Wait, how do you know my name?”

“I try to learn all the teachers’ faces.”

Cade figured that the student probably snuck onto the ship because she had no other way to get to the island, which was the case for many students. Most hadn’t been caught for it and he felt it wasn’t entirely fair that she had to. He assumed that since she had no other means that it meant that she was probably homeless or poor and had nowhere else to go, so he didn’t want her to be punished for that. He had to come up with something fast. “Actually, the school board will nullify any accusations against a student if they have no other means of transportation to Foresta. To charge a student for acts of illegal transportation would be a slap in the face to the school board. Considering that this island is mostly based around the academy you really wouldn’t want to upset them in such a way would you?” Cade fibbed to the officer.

Tem’s countenance seemed unchanged from how she looked before Cade went on his rant. “Just look after the child” she ordered as she fixed her attention back onto the boat doing her best to continue lifting it.

Kaeru removed her arms from the officer after noticing she was going split her in half. She didn’t paid close attention to the conversation with the officer and the newcomer, but from what she could grasp was that she was safe. Kaeru felt relief, then happy, then curious, then happy again. She realized running away was now just an option and it was all thanks to… that guy. He looked odd to Kaeru. She thought it must be the orange-ness with his face that reminds her of a jack-o-lantern, just without the glowing. Kaeru took a guess that he might be involved with the academy in some way or another, maybe to be a Halloween decoration when the time comes.

Kaeru giggled at the thought as she stood next to the guy. ‘I wonder if there’s more silly people around here to, I bet there is someone who might look like a banana.’ Kaeru thought. ‘Maybe this guy could turn into a pumpkin. Nah, I doubt it, would be funny though. What about that police lady? She was regular sand just a few moments ago. I bet she is from a desert from somewhere. Yeah, that’ll make sense. Oh I just can’t wait to explore this-‘ Kaeru stopped her thoughts as a small tune struck her ears. She recognized the tune. It was the tune that conquered summers and hot days with children the cream of sweet chills and delights. It was the tune that Kaeru stopped every single motion, thought, and electrodes. She slowly regained her body functions as a very noticeable look of pure pleasure and joy formed on her face as she knew what it was.

It was the tune of someone selling ice cream.

Tem felt that luck was on her side now. If it wasn’t for that teacher showing up she wouldn’t have been able to focus all her attention back on raising the seafloor below the ship. With the girl not hugging her hips she was able to regrow her chiselled sides and regain her stability. She could see the sand nearing the surface of the water, but the question was what was going to keep the boat on the surface while it waited for repairs. Tem wasn’t going to stand for hours on end until the ship was fixed, but that seemed to be the only option unless she took the sand from somewhere else and build a hill for the time being. She supposed that would be the better way.

She put all her strength into shoveling all the surrounding sand at the dock underneath the area of the ship for added stability. It was an overwhelming amount of strain for her to move so much wet sand at once, which was a testament to the reason she hated water so much. She began to notice the sand she was pulling up looked to have something burrowing in it. It appeared to be rather large and fairly long, but she couldn’t see its physical form. She sighed in absolute anger, she must’ve awoken something.

Cade watched as the little girl paced her way over to him. She was giggling for some odd reason and seemed to be delightfully amused by the scene, which was a huge contrast from everyone else around them. He stroked his stubble as he thought he probably should’ve shaved at some point in time today. He heard the jingle of some sort that he guessed belonged to an ice cream vendor. Considering what was going on he was disgusted that an ice cream man thought this moment to be an opportunity to sell his frozen treats. He didn’t really search for the vendor though.

As quickly as the joyful tunes appeared, so did the creature that Tem noticed burrowing through the sea floor earlier. It rose from the water, almost right in front of Tem displaying its large and pink serpent like body. It looked to be a huge worm. Tem was quick to confusion wondering if the large being was hostile or not, since it preferred to stare at her with its non-existent eyes. She knew that regular worms were relatively meek creatures, but this large one she wasn’t sure. “Somebody get this worm out of my way” she spoke plain and loudly.

Kaeru’s attention snapped back to the real world when she noticed a giant worm coming out from the water. It was a bright shade of pink. ‘I can’t put my finger on it, but I think I heard something about this…’ Kaeru attempted to remember anything about a giant worm from the sea. ‘No Kaeru! Ice cream comes first! But the giant worm! No! Ice cream! Worry about the worm later! But it’s not every day you see a giant worm!’ Conflicted between icy goodness and pink awesomeness, Kaeru decided to identify the worm first. That’s when she remembered one of the stories a sailor told her while on the ship.

“There’s a great worm lying about around in these waters. Saw it with my own two eyes. It was pink as a fat man’s lip. They say the worm was a king who loved ice cream. He had ice cream for every meal he had. Every breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Others say it came from the mountain of the far north and seeks ice cream as a reminder of its home. The strangest tale was it’s a little girl that loved ice cream but turned into a worm by a hamster. They didn’t say why. But beware the worm, especially if you have anything that is or looks like ice cream!” “Dude, you just broke my mojo. Get back out to the deck!”

Pink? Check. Big? Check. A worm? Check. From the clues Kaeru has gathered, that worm wants some ice cream. ‘Ha! Too bad there isn’t… Wait.’ Kaeru turned her head toward the ice cream vendor, and then back toward the worm, then back to the vendor, then finally back to the worm. It was eyeing the freaking ice cream. Kaeru put one and one together as she knew if she doesn't act now, the ice cream will be gone. "Nope! You’re not having my ice cream!” shouted Kaeru as she took off toward the tune of the ice creams. The worm began to move.

Much to Tem’s confusion, the worm didn’t seem interested in her or the ship it was adjacent to. Whatever it was interested in, it straight up ignored her and slithered onto the docks. She eyed where it was headed and noticed that the little girl was running in the same direction. Was it after the girl? Whatever it was after Tem couldn’t divide her time into investigating if she had to trust anyone it would be Cade and given that he was neither an officer or had a gift that allowed him to excel in fighting she didn’t have high hopes.

When the girl ran off, he began to wonder if he should run after her. It was strange to him that the girl was the largest thing on his mind given the appearance of such an odd creature. His goal was to make sure that the new student wouldn’t be charged or arrested, so as long as she didn’t get into trouble before she got to the school he’d be fine. Of course the worm had to make a b-line straight for her. With the rest of the civilians fleeing in panic, he was really the only person who could deal with the situation.

He wasn’t really scared of the beast even as it slithered out of the water and onto the docks. It was a worm after all, no bones and no real means f defending itself besides its own mass. It would probably look bad on his resume though if he let a titanic worm crush a student on arrival. However, without any form of weapon he questioned himself how does one fight a worm? He charged at the slimy beast and began to stomp his foot into the hide of the being and due to vulnerability of its skin his entire leg entered the body of it. It seemed as though the worm didn’t feel the puncture and continued to move unfazed, dragging Cade along with it. The worm was not moving too fast, so Cade wasn’t exactly being dragged against the ground just yet, but his leg was in such an awkward position that he had to hop along with the worm so that he didn’t fall over.

Kaeru looked back to see Pumpkin head’s leg stuck in the worm, hopping as the worm draws closer and closer. “Good work Pumpkin head! Keep her distracted while I’ll save all the ice cream!” Kaeru yelled back. She slid to a stop at the ice cream vendor and slammed her hands down fiercely. “Quick! Hand over all the ice cream you have before the worm gets here!” Kaeru demanded. The vendor just said, “Uh huh,” while reading a newspaper while ignoring Kaeru. After some moments, Kaeru realized the vendor wasn’t going to move anytime soon. “Hurry! The worm is going to be here at any moment!” “Uh huh.” Replied the ice cream vendor.

With the worm slowly moving towards the cart, Kaeru decided to take this on her own hands and began to push the cart away. It was fairly easy to move and Kaeru steered it without any effort. The worm began to pick up the pace as the cart got further and further away. Soon after, Kaeru sped up as well with the worm following the same pattern. Both Kaeru and the worm are basically playing cat and mouse and show no signs of stopping anytime soon.

“Get back you worm thingy!” Kaeru threw mint favored ice cream at the worm.