interstellar5555 | [closed]

Who: Steven and Pinkie!
What: Steven jumps into the ocean.
When: Backdated to like...the 8th? I have failed.
Where: The water surrounding Virgo HQ.
Warnings: Nothing immediately comes to mind.

He tries to hold on for as long as he can, but in the end the fear is too much for her to stand. He wishes his dad would come back - he wishes he could tell him, or explain some of this before he goes. But he can't risk letting this happen, for both of their sakes.

Not if what that person told him was true.

He hides out in the Defying Atmosphere, shooting off texts to Pinkie, until he hears someone approaching. He sneaks out to the balcony, then, waiting to see what he can hear. He catches sight of a group of three guards rifling through the interior of the penthouse, obviously looking for something.

He swallows, his head swimming with dread and terror. They're going to take him back. They're going to wreck him again. He can't take it.

He practiced the bubble earlier - doing it feels so natural now. Trying to forget his fear of heights, he makes a dash for the ledge, just as a guard hears him moving and starts to pursue. He leaps.

The light of his gems envelopes him in a protective pink bubble. Then, all he can hear is the sound of air whizzing by, and eventually, the shocking slap of the water as the bubble strikes it. He sinks beneath the waves, the impact not having harmed him at all.

He tries to text Pinkie before he gets too deep for the text to go through. He's stolen Greg's phone.

i jumped im in the water and sinking
im ok

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Pinkie, meanwhile, couldn't find Trucy after all. She set out alone. It was hard to shake her usual security detail, but she did it, ducking into a bathroom in a store and then squeezing her way out a back door. She's not too sure if they'd be mad at her for getting Tiger back, but they'd never let her go that close to Virgo. Besides, they don't need to see whatever's about to happen. There's probably gonna be magic stuff.

She ends up just renting a little rowboat. It's all she can handle; she can't remember ever spending time out on the water, and she doesn't know how to drive a real boat. Her fingers are shaky and weak as she unties it from the dock, but curling them around the oars feels safer.

She rows.

Generally, she knows the direction of Virgo HQ. So she just goes that way as best she can. She's a little afraid to draw too close, but it's not like they guard the ocean, right? When her phone buzzes, she fumbles a little before she can respond.

I mean that doesn't really sound okay but okay?
Where are you

near the tower
i'm sinking rly slow

The bubble seems to have an amount of buoyancy from the air in it - just slightly overpowered by his weight. He wants it to move forward, but he isn't really sure how. He tries to walk, but it feels like he's basically just hamster balling underwater and the confusing momentum causes him to slip.

At least it feels sturdy. He hadn't had much time to practice with it, but right now he actually manages to feel not completely terrified.

ru in a boat

He doesn't know how much time he'll have to text.

yeah

She's floating still now, or at least as still as the current will let her be, typing rather than rowing. How's she even supposed to know where to go? Is she going to have to swim down and get him? She wore clothes she could swim in just in case, but it all reminds Pinkie too harshly of the time Tiger nearly drowned in that amusement park.

He doesn't seem to be thinking that way. She's just not going to say anything to upset him.

I'm near Virgo, where are you? Can you come up?

idk

The water hasn't even touched him yet, which makes it sort of surreal. The falling was scary in itself, but so far the water has just seemed like a cushioning barrier - it's sort of hard to process what it even is, through the soft pink light of the bubble.

Will the bubble be more buoyant if he makes it bigger? He's not totally sure how it works, but he remembers being able to do that. He presses his hands to the wall of the bubble, and concentrates, trying to inflate its size to be larger so that it will float better.

Instead, too abruptly to stop himself, it pops. Cold water floods in around him as fast as an explosion, the air from the bubble rapidly slipping upwards and bursting through the water's surface in a large eruption.

Steven is still beneath the waves, and even if it hadn't been reminiscent of his carnival experience before, it is now.

He panics, immediately, and there's nothing he can do to stop himself. He thrashes around wildly, wanting to get to the surface with a unfocused desperation. He's going to die, he thinks, his heart pounding in his chest.

But he doesn't. His body his buoyant enough that even his wild kicking draws him towards the surface, and he emerges several seconds after his bubbles pops. Staying afloat, however, is another matter.

Well, a sudden water explosion is one way to answer that question.

Pinkie shrieks a little and ducks down into her boat. It wasn't all that close, though, and she only gets a little bit wet from it. When no more explosions are imminent, she ventures to sit up again and lean over to see what that was all about. For a few moments, nothing is really obvious. Then, kicking and splashing, Tiger surfaces.

"Tiger!" Luckily, Pinkie planned on more or less this scenario. She's expected a lot worse, honestly; at least he doesn't look hurt except for the drowning thing. She scoops up one of the extra life preservers she got from the dock and throws it. "Tiger, catch!" Part of her wants to jump in after him, but swimming with a flailing person must be pretty hard even when you have a good handle on how your body works. She doesn't entirely trust her grip that far.

Steven latches onto the life preserver without question, the desperation with which he does so making his terror obvious. He whimpers for a moment, clinging to it tightly, the water around him still freezing enough to be shocking. His bubble breaking was the first he really felt of it.

"Pinkie!" he sobs, trying to get his hair out of his eyes long enough to actually see what's going on. If he could just calm down for a second, this really wouldn't be that hard.

"Tiger!"

Pinkie wraps the rope around her hands and pulls. You don't have to grip if it's just like that. It's easier to drag him through the water than she suspected, though the water stings where the rope is rubbing her skin. "Hold on!" As soon as he's close enough, or possibly a little before, she drops the rope in a coil on the floor and leans over the side to reach for him.

He holds on tight, and soon he feels the bump of the preserver hitting the boat. He scrambles to get over the edge without flipping the whole thing over, and vary quickly finds himself entangling with her arms as he wildly reaches for support.

He flops into the boat, wet and startled. He's succeeded in his plan, at least for now. He takes in shaking, gasping breaths for a few moments, before managing.

"We gotta go, okay? They...I don't know if they'll follow us..."

"Okie-dokie!" Pinkie was already fumbling with the oars, thinking along the same lines. She wishes she'd gotten a motorboat, but she was also afraid to make noise like that as she approached. It would be so much worse now. She curls her quivering fingers around them until it feels almost natural and starts paddling as quickly as she can in the opposite direction.

"What - " She isn't used to this much arm exercise, and she's a little out of breath. "Are you hurt?" He looks WAY better than he did, but that doesn't mean he isn't.

He wraps his arms around himself, trying to catch his breath. He has to think about that - it all happened so fast. One moment he was hiding, the next he was taking the plunge.

"...N-No. I jumped before they could grab me. I...I heard them come in and I just...I ran to the balcony and jumped."

"Good." That's all she can really say to that. Pinkie would obviously rather it never came to him having to jump off a balcony into the ocean, but that's their lives right now.

She'd like to check him over herself, but she's a little busy with the rowing. Instead, she nods to her bag sitting in the bottom of the boat. "I brought you some clean clothes, you should put them on. I dunno if we can really get you back in the penthouse without anybody seeing, but maybe if we go quick?" If she'd had time she might have been able to plan something. They did, after all, break into Lesedi's office; that's a lot harder than their own penthouse. But as it is, she's just going to wing it and hope for the best.

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