~38~

"BEHIND YOU!!" I couldn't help but scream.

My words vibrated the very water around us and seemed to change the tentacles' direction and slowed it down long enough for me to push Leo out of the way.

"What the-" Dion's words get cut off as I tumbled back and hit him in the chest from the momentum of pushing Leo out of the way.

I'd shoved him so hard I ended up moving myself in the opposite direction!

Leo recovers from my shove and regains his balance while holding his head and looks in our direction.

The colour drains from his body to a light pale yellow when he fully looks at us.

"SHIT! BEHIND YOU!!" He yells.

Before I could fully even turn my head to look back, Dion envelops me in a tight hug and tumbles through the water.

I then feel myself being thrown like a rag doll and I soar through the colourful waves till I collide with Leo's chest.

"I gotchu! You're safe!!" He tries to comfort me.

"What about D-" I was way too stressed and panicked to allow myself the momentary solitude.

I push at Leo's chest and crane my neck back to see what was happening.

My eyes barely make out 3 pus-filled oozing tentacles swing down murderously at Dion like a violent whip.

"LOOK OUT!!" I couldn't help but scream at the top of my lungs as the words tore out of my throat.

But my words seemed to change the colour of the water. Jagged wave textures poured out of me and slammed into the tentacles, stunning them long enough to easily allow Dion to maneuver out of their incoming death path.

Dion directly swam towards us at lightning speeds. Weaving through the stunned inky black tentacles like an underwater ballerina twirling through deadly jungle vines.

His eyes seemed to bare the same realization I'd also come to.

The monster, while sensitive to sound, was also weak to it.

"How loudly can you scream at it!?" He hastily asks me.

"Cover your ears!!" Was all I said to the boys as I shoved them away from me, turn to face the sudden ominous black void that, like black magic, had appeared before us. Snaking through the black water towards us with the speed of Hermes.

Taking a deep breath that I knew was at least 20 minutes worth of oxygen, I belted out my heart in the most rage-induced scream I've ever let out in my life.

I scream from the fear, anger, uncertainty, and denial that's been plaguing me deep down in the very pit of my soul for days.

Screamed till I felt suddenly lightheaded, and tipped backwards as everything began to violently spin around my field of vision.

"Easy girl. You did so good." Leo was the first to grab me, his arm coming around me to cup and hold me up from the bottom of my own arms, and give me a proper surface to lean on so the world could have a little more stability.

"That bought us a good 2 minutes." Dion scaned the monster with his wrist device, and crunched the numbers mercilessly into his device, demanding instant results to his calculations.

"Should we go back!?" Leo asked cautiously the next instant.

"Might be our best-" Dion began to say but I caught my breath enough to interrupt him.

"N-no!" I challenge, still gasping for air to stop my vision from doing the macarena. "How far away from your place are we!?"

Dion thought for only a moment.

"About 2 more hours."

"And how much time would it take to go back??"

It was Leo who spoke up. "About 5. I counted."

"Our options are egregiously clear." I point out to them both.

Dion bits his lips uncertainly and looks down at his watch and the timer he put on the monster. It reads we have about a minute left to get our shit together.

I look at them both as the anxiety of the situation was taking hold of us like a vice grip.

"I'll just scream the rest of the way there to hold back the monster. It'll be FINE." I desperately tried to argue sense into them.

"But Mel. Screaming will DEPLETE your oxygen tank at an exponential rate!!" Dion grabbed onto my shoulder, trying to speak reason to me. "We have a fighting chance of going BACK if you stay in silence."

"SHIT." Leo began shaking from fear at the choices presented to us.

Timer: 30 seconds left.

"Then I'll just hold my breath to stretch out the intervals!!" I frantically desperately tried to reason.

"But-" Dion tried to speak.

"No buts!! I said I'll be a part of your world AND I MEANT IT!!" I grabbed onto his hand and defiantly swam down towards the black goopy monster that stood in the way of me and encountering a brand new life of possibility.

I pulled Dion behind me, willing him to believe at drag all three of us down to their place MYSELF if necessary. Literally kicking and screaming the entire way if need be!

"You forget I have a crazy high win ratio of surviving unserviceable odds!!" I confidently boast back to the boys. Frantic in my tempts to inject some much needed levity in such a direly hopeless situation.

I hated beyond describable words seeing the anguished and distressed looks on Leo and Dion's faces at the thought of my peril.

It was unbelievably sweet and heart warming. But who did they think I was?

A woman capable of dying? Please!

This situation barely cracks top 10 (okay maybe 3 to 5) of "The Most Deadly Shit Mel Has Gotten Herself Into!".

But the way they regarded the gravity of my safety was sending my mind into another tailspin I truly cannot afford to go through at this very moment.

Leo frantically swims behind us to catch up, confusion overtaking his entire features.

"Are you actually letting her do this!?" He decried to Dion. As if expecting him to simply go along without much of a fight was the most out of character thing he's ever seen from him. Which, judging from my brief time of knowing him, just as well might be!

Dion's grip grew stronger in my own, as if my words had given him the confidence to believe everything will be okay.

"She is surprisingly convincing." I feel both my hands get lifted up, as Dion had reached for my other hand as well and cupped both in his grasp, and I falter and stop when I feel the back of my hands meet his lips.

"Hey, hey, hey!! I thought you say we didn't have time for adorable goofy rizzing shit!?" Leo complains when he finally swims forth and catches up to us.

Dion thoroughly ignores him with an eye roll.

Timer: 15 seconds.

He, Dion, then all of a sudden smoothly slides his hands around my waist and effortlessly pulls me in close. Knocking the little breath I'd managed to get into my lungs out again.

And expertly did the same with his other hand without missing a beat around his golden boyfriend's slutty waist to counter Leo's brewing protests.

"We shall follow your lead, Mel." His silver eyes shun down at me with an emotion I couldn't quite place.

Confidence? No. It was more than that.

Faith.

Dion truly had faith in me in this moment. And trusted me more than his own better judgment.

And that meant more than he'd ever truly know.

Timer: 0 seconds.

The tentacled beast recovered from its previous stun lock, flinching and spazzing from being invisibly restraints for so long and zips towards us with the intensity of a viper.

I twisted around in Dion's arms and scream dead to the center of its mass, causing it to wither in brute shock and sink slowly into the water in recoiled defence.

"Plus," Dion decides to add in a chuckle as we swim further down, avoiding deadly appendages and swirling through obstacles. "You cannot argue with Mel's absolutely cracked win rate odds!"

"That's why I have never and will never bet against her!!" Leo agrees, squeezing me close over Dion's shoulder with a triumphantly confident laugh.