The Diamond Princess

CHAPTER 3: DIAMOND CLAD TITANIC

It had been a long week of giving autographs, having photos taken, eating lavish meals, and finding out that a certain boy (who suddenly had an extra fifty dollars in his piggy bank for no reason) had been playing chasey and... accidentally knocked the new main fuel tank pipe into the deepest part of the Antarctic Ocean.

"It'll take forever for the helicopter to be fixed if we find boys playing chasey in the no passenger zones every time we have a part delivered – what?! What do you mean, Harry? Oh no... Captain, Princess, it seems that the sabotager tried to smash the helicopters windshield with a hammer, but only succeeded after smashing the main navigation system! We're heading around Antarctica and don't know how to dodge the icebergs!" I marched off, clearly distressed, and silently slid into my room. "Aubur?" I whispered cautiosly, "You know how I said that I quite liked crashing on this ship?" He nodded gleefully, proud of himself for fulfilling all my commands.

"You know how I meant crashing on the ship, not... CRASHING INTO ANTARTICA!" From there a very frantic game of tag ensued, with one person always being it, and the other repeatedly being hit on the head with a pillow (nothing heavier was within arm's reach).

"Everything OK in there, Diamond Princess?" said a nosy deckhand.

"Never been BETTER!" I yelled. I heard him sidling away, unsure if he had the right room, while Aubur dived into the bathtub to get away from the atlas that I had passed by. Before I had gotten halfway over, he jumped out and was pelted with dozens of assorted soaps, since he hadn't realised Glaianna was taking a soak. Tag finally ended with Aubur diving out the window and getting tangled in a lifeboat.

"It would be much appreciated if you help Aubur get out of there when you've finished, Glaianna," I said, throwing the soaps back in the tub, "But please don't rush."

The next morning was quite eventful. It started with Jonathon declining entrance to the breakfast area to the camera crew, meaning we could be alone for once. Then one of the crew members got so curious, he got lowered down on a rope to the window. Thanks to my fox like hearing, I spun around, and he got so startled he dropped his camera. Then the rope snapped. Then he got stuck in a lifeboat. Then I suddenly remembered why Glaianna had been refusing to come out of the bath all night. Luckily, Aubur wasn't too frozen over. But the rescue crew got quite surprised when they saw him in there with the camera man, so they also had to rescue one of their members from an iceberg (the icebergs were only small just then, so The Diamond Princess could easily plough through them). Then it got extremely cold, and a bedraggled, one-eared deckhand announced "Titanic" and jumped overboard. Since his foot got tangled in a rope that a couple of kids where playing with on the way down, the rescue crew had to pull up a bunch of human grapes. Then the kids decided to pretend they were all ghosts, and one of them did such a good impersonation, several adults on the ship fainted. One of the kids fainted too, because Glaianna decided she could be a better zombie than they could be ghosts. Then all the kids decided to set up an undead party for that evening. One of the girls got seasick and decided to open the window to let in some fresh air, but they were on the bottom floor, so all that came in was water. So because of deckhands, grapes, ghosts, zombies and seasickness, the ship nearly sunk. Oh, and the deckhand tried to jump overboard a few more times, and Captain Jonathon got so annoyed at one point, he swerved the entire ship when the deckhand tried to jump again, and therefore missed a giant underwater iceberg that would have sunk the ship. And then hit a different iceberg...

"Abandon ship! Abandon ship!"

"Everyone in the lifeboats!"

"Unleash the Hydro Pump!"

"Get in! Fill the lifeboats to the brim!"

"Princess Dianne! All the lifeboats are full! What do we do?" Glaianna cried dramatically, limping about because she only had one shoe on. I rolled my eyes at all the chaos and stepped off the side of the ship onto the iceberg that was exactly level with the deck and was holding the ship in place.

"There's WI-FI here, Glaianna. Call home. If they're quick enough, my mechanics can fix the boat. And Aubur... I'm never talking to you again."

"Seriously? Not this again!"

"Glaianna, tell him that the last three times I spoke to him we crashed – crashed on an island, on a ship, and then ANTARCTICA!"

"She's phoning home, and I can hear you, you know!" I gave him an evil stare, then went to calm down some of the children. Well, the adults. The children were fine. They were already getting into trouble, trying to iceberg-hop. And making ice castles. And ice sleds. And everything else you could do in Antarctica. Including looking at the penguins...

It was growing dark, and the ship's population had moved to a bigger iceberg. My mechanics were here, and the icebergs were holding the ship above water. The sunset faded through the stars like the Northern Lights, and the nearby polar bear clan had decided to stop hindering us after we threw them a good round of meat. We set up camp. We slept. We were attacked by polar bears. We healed. We slept. We moved to a different iceberg because the polar bears were swimming over. We set up camp. We slept. And so it went on.

"What do you mean, they abandoned us?! They can't abandon us! They're not allowed to!!" I raced outside, dodged a few penguins and watched the last helicopter disappear over the horizon. I watched The Diamond Princess still stuck there. I watched the camera crew out of the corner of my eye.

"Would you guys stop filming everything?!" They backed away and pointed their pristine cameras towards a hungry bear cub that had started chewing on Aubur's leg.

"Oi! Will someone help – ow! – me?!! Get off my leg – owkk! – you beast!! Yea! Scamper back to your mommy! Where's the medic?"

I ignored him and turned back to Glaianna, "They'll be back, right?"

She shook her head woefully. "They said there was nothing they could do, and they wouldn't come back. They won't even bring someone with them." I slunk away. Our last chance was gone. I was doomed to spend the rest of my life on a freezing cold glacier... that had beautiful sunsets... watching penguins... and happy kids sliding down hills on ice sleds... and I was stuck with Captain Jonathon... I smiled. This was turning out to be a pretty good disaster. I beamed as a young couple paddled by in an ice canoe. I saw the architects finished work – an ice hospital. It was huge, protected from bears, and frozen solid... Wait. Rewind. Couple in ice canoe. Giant ice buildings. Giant ice canoes. Giant ice The Diamond Princess!

"That's it! I know how to get out of here! Anyone who can work with ice, giant sculptures or boats, come over here!"

"Titanic!" squealed the deckhand who had jumped overboard several times (his name was Harry. I call him Jumpy). He was right. Before us was a giant ice Titanic, glowing blue in the morning sun.

"All aboard!" yelled an energetic Jonathon from the glistening driver's cockpit, "All aboard the... Titanic!" The chant weaved through the awed crowds scrambling aboard.

I ran up the gangplank to Jonathon and whispered in his ear, "Rubies are red, Diamonds are blue... usually... I think..." He smiled and shouted down to the crowd, "All aboard the Diamond Clad Titanic!"