pencilitin | Open Post: Beach O'Clock

Open Post: Beach O'Clock

It's a beach day! Whatever serious dramatic shit you've got going on, set it aside and let's have fun in the sun.

HOWEVER! This is in the Zeiha region, in the country of Peifou, on planet Waba. So, while the region is famous for its beaches, you might find some things a little different here! For the interplanetary tourists among us, here's what you might expect:

Sand Fights: Due to slightly different physical makeup, the sand on Waba clumps a bit better on humid days. In fact, it clumps just well enough to hold together in a ball for a few seconds! In other words, you can have sandball fights. It's like snowball fights, but not cold!
Skymelon Toss: They don't literally fly, but they're a popular local melon, named for their light weight and their sky-green coloration. What you do is this: Grab one, close your eyes, spin it around like it's Bowser in Mario 64, and let it fly. The goal is to get it as far into the ocean as you can (they float, so recovery is easy), but half the fun is letting go at the wrong time and beaning your friend in the head instead. Because they're so light, they don't do any real damage. If you get hit in the face, you get the first piece when it gets cut up.
Sand Towns: Rather than castles, people in Peifou build little villages. It's more of a group activity, with people lining up houses together and making streets and stuff. There are pro contests where people create elaborate landscapes spanning the entire beach, but for normal people, usually it's just making houses and doing some ad-hoc city planning as you go.
Beach Dash: At the beach, you gotta have some sports! The focus here, though, is on any game that forces you to run, from races to tag variants. The gimmick is that running on sand is extremely awkward, and shoes/sandals aren't allowed, so everyone is always falling over like idiots. That's the appeal! Accidentally crash into your crush!
White Crab Grill: Not crab, technically, but this planet happened to develop crablike life independently, too. They used to be a serious invasive species, so centuries ago, they started holding contests to catch and cook as many white crabs as you can, and it caught on. Look for them around the tide pools - where you find one, you'll usually find a dozen, and they're slow enough and not very pinchy that you can just grab 'em with your bare hands. Once you've got a bucket full of crabs, you grill 'em until they're delicious and eat them together.
Beach Shack: Every beach has a beach shack! They're full of chairs and inflatables and other such beach supplies. The rule is that you're supposed to leave something behind at the shack for each thing you take, but it's run on the honor system, and as a result, the beach shack tends to get emptier and emptier over time until someone leaves a really passive-aggressive note on it and someone else shoves a dozen beach towels and balls in there at once. Having a robust beach shack is supposedly the sign of a healthy community.
Gear Shells: There's a common beach denizen called a Gear Snail - not literally snails, more akin to a conch. They're small and come in huge numbers, so in the summer you tend to find whole bunches of beautiful seven-notched shells buried in the sand. A rare mutation occasionally yields a six-notch gear shell, and finding one of these is considered good luck! Among younger people, it's said that giving one as a gift to the object of your affections will bring you together, but it's a little cringe by the time you hit your late teens.
Night Beach: The beach is a very popular, almost cliche'd romantic spot, but specifically the beach at night. A chance encounter on the sand, beneath the glittering stars, to the music of the waves... It's what young people who want to fall in love dream of.
Burying people in the sand is a universal constant.

That's not a list of prompts! Just a list of ideas for you to play with in your various beach hangout prompts. If you're not from Waba, or have never heard of Waba, or have nothing to do with this OC setting at all, don't fear! Show up anyway. We won't ask how you got here, but you'll fit in just fine as long as you have fun.

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[ For the sake of this setting, we can say that Hekla is a visiting imperial noblewoman, but is from a world with extensive genetic engineering of it's inhabitants to splice in traits from xenofauna. Which on her own, lower gravity planet, mean she can fly with her wings, but here hey are just for show. She herself is also a trained swimmer and has thus come to the beach, but...]

So...this is an ocean? It is rather a lot of water. But I am prepared-bring forth the forms to fill out! I would wish to attempt to swim in it.

What forms? It's the ocean, you can just go swim in it.

[ Once the novelty of humans from outer space wears off, you start to notice that some of them are some real weirdos. ]

-1: Sand "towns"-

Leonides was making an honest effort to get into the spirit of things. The activity of the day was to craft a model of a miniature city. He didn't quit understand why they were doing this, but perhaps in doing he would reach an understanding.

His contribution to the city was, of course, elaborate siegeworks. Sloping walls guarding the city's borders designed to deflect incoming artillery fire, parks that commanded excellent sight-lines down major boulevards and could be converted into a defensive position in the event of attack, and even, his favorite creation, a reasonably accurate recreation of the Drakkar high command fortress on a hill overlooking the entire urban sprawl.

At the moment, the hulking space marine was hunched over a parapet on which one could mount an anti-air defense emplacement with a look of intense concentration.

-2: Grill-

Have you ever watched a space marine eat? It is not a sight for the faint of heart. Leonides had been told to take "as many crabs as you think you can eat." He had then been told, after the third bucket, to "leave some for the rest of us!" But it turns out then when you aren't powered by literal magic, all those calories have to come from somewhere.

It wasn't until he'd devoured his third crab that someone pointed out he hadn't put any seasoning on it, which prompted a blank look.

"...Seasoning? What's that?"

-3: Sunset-

Not one of the prompts from above!

Last week, a powerful demon had corrupted a man who was frustrated by his job taking over his life and turned him into some kind of...businessman demon. Leonides had been ready to terminate the poor bastard before he could hurt anyone else, but Nanjiao had talked him out of it and, somehow, pulled the man from the depths of chaos back to a regular human being. This wasn't the first time this had happened since arriving on this planet, but at the end of it, Nanjiao and her friends had taken a moment to agree that making sure to spend time doing things other than working was vital to one's mental health.

Leonides had not spent time doing things other than training for war or fighting in war since...basically as long as he could remember. There were vague memories of him trying to throw a ball through a hoop made out of a dismantled skimmer drive while a young boy tried to block him, which did not seem like work no matter how you looked at it, but it felt like something out of a dream.

But here, on this forgotten backwater world, people spent entire days wasting time, and their civilization had not yet collapsed. If you thought about it logically...did that mean the entire Empire was tormenting itself for no reason?

Leonides sat on the beach and watched the sun sink, so lost in thought that it was actually physically possible to approach him without getting immediately noticed.

No, I am certain there must be procedures for such things. If only to protect such a precious resource, or to prove that one will not die upon attempting it. I had to obtain four swimming certificates to be allowed to not use the 'water wings'. Do you not practice this?

[ There are a lot of weirdos, but there are also a lot of Imperials who just expect everywhere to be like where they are from. ]

It's not a precious resource at all, actually. Over half the surface of the planet is ocean. Just go jump in there and have some fun.

Are you not concerned that visitors may steal your water? Or...

[ She struggles to think of another downside. Clearly, there must be some reason for an oppressive carpet of unquestioned rules.]

Well, if you're not going to punish me, I may as well take advantage. But I shall warn you, as swimmers go, I am quite the expert! Prepare to be astonished and amazed!

After a while, Nanjiao sat down next to Leonides. She'd watched him building siege walls around a sand town, eat entire buckets of white crab, and just in general he seemed lost. From what she knew about his history, that made sense. His homeworld probably didn't have white crab, or sand towns, or beach shacks. It probably didn't even have beaches. Of course he wouldn't know how to relax at one.

After watching the sun set in silence for a bit, she spoke up.

"What's the sky look like on your planet?"

Sure, go for it! I'm kinda swimmed out at this point, so I'll be here on dry land when you get back.

I may simply swim out to sea and never be seen again, for your information!

[ Hekla has a...unique swimming style, with the wings and everything. They make a lot of drag, but she really can use them to paddle through the water, throwing up a lot of spray when she does a breast-stroke/freestyle. But unfortunately, her hair-product turns out to be a powerful attractant... ]

Why are there crabs in my hair?!?

Leonides flinched when he realized how close Nanjiao had gotten to him without him noticing, but was able to hold back the instinct to resort to violence. Control was more important than ferocity. He forced himself to relax again.

"The planet I was born on, or reborn on?"

That wasn't an answer she was expecting.

"I'm not sure I get the difference. How about both?"

[ Jiao applauds lightly. ]

Good job! Those are white crabs, they're delicious. We can eat 'em later.

He looked over at her for a moment, then back towards the horizon.

"I was born on the planet Tetchys. It's an urban hive world, with a population of twenty billion. Most people live underground because there was no room left on the surface. I don't remember much of it, but I don't think I ever actually saw the sky of that world. I understand it is blue, though you can't see it most of the time due to the layer of endless smog. But after I was recruit by the Drakkar, I was taken to Guad, THEIR homeworld, where I was reforged and reborn as a space marine."

His description of Tetchys was dispassionate, uninterested. When he continued, a bit of pride slipped into his voice. The pride of someone talking about their home town.

"The skies of Guad are pink. There are only a few fortress cities there, dedicated to training initiates. The rest of the world is raw, untamed wilderness full of terrifying beasts that will kill the unwary. But...it has a certain primal beauty to it."

THEY ARE TRYING TO EAT MY HAIR! GET THEM OOFFFF!

[ Man, they really like the taste of her conditioner. ]

The smoke off the grill, the bright sun overhead, the salty tang of sea breeze mixing with the scent of cooked crab... it's like nothing can ruin this day.

THAT KIND OF THOUGHT IS FOR THE WEAK! LET'S TRY ANYWAY!

"Nyahahaha! The off-duty heroes think they can simply grill and chill away their days?" Up there, on top of the beach shack! Is that...

Chaos Greed, Bikini Ver.!? It sure is! Along with gaudy bright pink flip-flops! And, for some reason, a tiny pool floatie around her tail.

She poses dramatically, the sun giving her an ominous look somehow despite just being a demon girl in a swimsuit standing on top of a beach shack. "Chaos rules, even here on the beach! Crabs, after all, are notoriously greedy! Did you think that only humans could be corrupted!?! Show them the true meaning of a crab bucket, Sinistral!"

Chaos Greed throws out a palm, and a red, malevolent energy seeps into one of Leonidas's buckets! The bucket rumbles, tips over, and a single crab emerges, drawing in the energy!

Then, with a pop, the crab doubles in size! To... about the size of an Earth crab.

That's it.

Edited 2023-11-06 23:16 (UTC)

Chaos Greed observes the crab.

It scuttles back and forth, waving its pincers menacingly! It snaps them, and nothing else happens besides a tiny little tick tick sound.

"Oh wow, that's completely useless!"

THAT'S YOUR MONSTER(?) GREED

[ BEACH SHACK ]

The beach shack is a fixture of the community. The phrase "This place must have empty beach shacks" is used to imply that it's a bad neighborhood, or that the residents are particularly large jerks.

This place doesn't have an empty beach shack. Yet.

But it's easy to find somebody with greed in their heart, held back only by societal norms.

"SIN'STRAL!!!" the giant, 20-foot tall inflatable white crab with giant cartoon eyes and surprisingly dexterous claws shouts. In one pincer, it's holding a giant beach towel like a bag, and it's shoveling the entirely of the beach shack's belongings into it. It used to be some random teenager who wanted to bring a boatload of free stuff home they didn't need, and as a Sinistral, it could now do just that!

On its shoulder, Chaos Greed laughs! She's clad in an red bikini swimsuit and gaudy pink flip-flops, as well as a pink inflatable around her tail and shades over her eyes.

"You fools thought you were safe on the beach! But anywhere with things to take is ripe for Greed to come out and play!"

[ SAND BURIAL ]

Okay, so you vanquished her evil monster! That's fine.

Chaos Greed has other ways to cause chaos.

Such as dumping copious amounts of sand onto random beach-goers! Nyahahahaha!! Take that!

She's sure to leave their heads out, though. She's not out to murder people, only inconvenience them.

Feel free to be the victim of her prank, or else going around trying to stop this evil fiend. If she has a vested interest in you, she might even stick around to sculpt your sand tomb into something fitting.

[ SAND FIGHTS ]

And to end it, all, Chaos Greed has joined the fray of an ongoing sand fight! This is, uh, not really an issue? She's actually playing by the rules.

The only problem is that she's really good at it, being stronger and faster and supernaturally more skilled than any normal human by a large measure.

And also that she uses her tail as an extra throwing arm and/or deflector, which might be cheating? Nobody else has a tail, though, so it's probably not against the rules as written. Just in spirit.

Confront her and stop her evil deeds!!!

Edited 2023-11-07 00:28 (UTC)

Nanjiao watched Des with her arms wresting on her knees, as he talked. The man's emotions were often hard to read, but she could at least tell which world he liked more.

"Did you ever get, like... vacation days? Shore leave? I don't know what marines call it. Days when you just got to relax and not fight anything."

Agh! Slow down, stop flailing!

[ Nanjiao does her best to pry the crabs off of the imperial haircut, but it's gonna take a minute. They're really into this. ]

A ball of sand flies towards Chaos Greed's head.

"Listen, can't you just take a day off or something? We're trying to enjoy the beach! Stop terrorizing and eat some crab or something!"

Chaos Greed evades the thrown sandball with all the grace of a Chaos General who is using her skills needlessly.

"Haha! Little do you know, but I'm actually on vacation right now! But what can I say, I'm Greed-y, and I can't resist just an obvious opportunity for audacious outlawry and opposing order!"

The inflatable pool crab underneath her grumbles out a "SIN?" as it pauses loading its giant beach towel with regular-sized beach towels.

"Hey, buddy, keep workin'!" Chaos Greed stamps on its head a little with her flip-flopped foot.

"It can take weeks to travel between stars. We spent most of that time training and preparing for the next upcoming conflict but there were times when it got a little slower. We had time to share stories of past battles, or to meditate on the importance of our task."

In the distance, something seagull-like cawed as it swooped on a breeze. Leonides watched it, trying to imagine what it would be to just...not do anything important.

"...Nothing like this, though."

The look in Leonides' eye as he stares at Chaos Greed is pure venom. Hatred and disgust and fury distilled down to its essence. Without breaking eye contact, he reaches down and grabs the miniature demon and begins to squeeze.

"The only reason I don't kill you this second is that I promised I wouldn't do any fighting today, and that my rifle is not in arms' reach." He said, in a very measured and even voice. The crab demon flailed helplessly. "But make no mistake, hellspawn. Your reckoning is coming."

With a crack, the demon's shell gave in, drenching Leonides' hand in crab guts.

The look in Chaos Greed's face is one of amusement, mostly. "Aww, you're such a big, tough man! You tell 'em! Even if it's me."

She points towards his hand, though. "But seriously, not even gonna try to purify it? I mean, I guess it's just a crab. Kind of a waste not to grill it, though. Bet it tastes.... chaos-y."

"I get it. It's probably really hard for you to figure out what to do with yourself, right? It seems like second nature for us, but you don't really have any experience with goofing off."

Nanjiao yawned. They'd been out here for a while, and she was starting to get tired.

"I'll give you a challenge to keep you occupied, then. Tell me a story from your past that isn't about fighting. Doesn't have to be important... in fact, better if it isn't important. Something you did that was stupid or pointless."

"Okay, I'll give you the fight you're after, but if we're doing this, let's do it Zeiha style, okay?"

Dramatic point. "Take those flip flops off! We're gonna slip around like crazy on the sand like a real beach race!"

"...What? That's stupid!" Greed slips off her flip-flops before handing them to her Sinistral. In an aside, she says, "Hold onto these for me, 'kay?"

The giant inflatable crab monster looks at her in confusion, then gestures futilely to its beach-towel-bag with the flip-flops, as if to say, how am I gonna load this up with all my sweet loot if both of my claws are full?

Jumping off the Sinistral and landing on the beach proper, Chaos Greed adds, "I already have my monster! What possible reason is there for me to accept?"

How are there this many crabs on this beach!

[ Having made it back to the sand, Hekla is...still pursued by crabs, dang! Whatever they like in the hair, it's attracting them by the bucketful, no need to scoop them up from tide pools. But they're still trying to shove hair into their mouthparts. ]

I am not flailing-I am not! I was attempting to shake them off.

(sorry about the icon I will get bespoke stuff when I can)

As Diane Aggripa understood it, visiting the beach was a tradition for psychological maintenance cycles - a concept she was beginning to understand that her fellow Einharjar were not clear on. An entire two days spent on maintenance would normally seem lavish to her, but she could not deny that after the intensity of their personal campaign against Chaos, some additional maintenance was warranted.

Besides, they did things differently on Waba, and Waba was, somehow, a bastion and safe harbor nonetheless.

When on Throne, the accepted wisdom was to do as the Throneites did. On Waba, she would learn proper Wabite procedure.

So, ready to deploy a legion of questions, she walked to the beach, a drone following behind with a parasol to shield her delicate skin, and participated in:

(1) Sand Architecture, an interesting technical challenge given the fragility of the material (she was attempting to make a sand observatory and use her ring laser to give it a real telescope lens);

(2) Skymelon Hurling, a sport where her twin servo-arms were an unfair advantage on offense and defense that she relished pressing;

(3) Grilling Crabs. Converting her sidearm to a small thermal induction oven was a trivial task - all she needed to do was set it to a lower-than-stun setting and keep the trigger pressed and they were in business, able to broil the crabs from the inside out with microwaves and have them retain the delicate flavor.

Thankfully, the stable genelines of House Dopledrachen had bestowed upon it's heiress an extra pair of arms of her own-though those were modified into wings, and were actually rather useless for fine manipulation. So Diane wasn't the only one with an advantage given to her by advanced technology. This was merely ancient genotech instead of cybernetics.

"Do your eyes even shut, or will you have to switch them off to play this game?"

“‘Goofing off’ is part of what makes you such a powerful warrior, is it? Very well, then. A trivial tale.”

Leonides lapsed into silence for a moment as he considered the challenge. A story not related to battle…

“The first time I met the Drakkar high command. I had just been promoted to corporal, and had been instructed to go and introduce myself to the commander while delivering a report.”

He smiled, very slightly, at the memory. “You must understand she is a very intimidating figure. Taller than me by almost a full foot, her face is a mess of scars and augments, and they say she has an augment-arm because she lost her original while wrestling a demon prince and still managed to pull its head off with her remaining arm. She is the stuff of legends and I had been an initiate not too long ago at this point.”

“When I went into the commander’s suite, I had no idea what to expect. I had this idea that she would be sitting on a throne and I would be expected to go to my knees before her. But when the door opened it was just…a meeting room. A big long table with a bunch of officers around it discussing some deployment or other. There was a pitcher of water on the table. She was using her cybernetic arm, which apparently has a plasma rifle built into it, to pour herself a glass of water and chuckling at a joke someone had just told.”

“I guess that was the moment I realized legends and heroes are also people. No one strides across battlefields crushing their enemies ALL the time.”

“I’m concerned, Aggripa.”

Leonides was peering over her shoulder at the observatory.

“This is well constructed, but the way you’ve placed these walls here, an attacker could easily find cover in a blind spot that cannot be attacked from the walls. What will your astronomers do if an army of tiny sand demons assaults this beach?”

“Thank the sagacious Emperor you’re our tactician instead of me?” Diane suggested, a voxbox calibrated to a feminine voice adding autotuned emphasis and amused lilts to her statement.

“I welcome any improvement you can suggest to the overall design, Captain. This, ah, does seem to be a team activity.”

“My (metaphorical) batteries run out just as my (literal) ones do, milady,” she says. “And I close my eyes to recharge because light emphatically does not help me rest. I can run blind.”

She’s more amused than offended by the question, if the auto-tuned lilting in her statement is any indication.

"Oh, so you do have some sort of mechanism to accomplish that. Then by all means, Technologian, run blind and throw your melon! Though I doubt your success, for mine shall fly farther without question!"

Nanjiao spends most of the story trying to imagine someone a foot taller than Leonides. Is he actually short? Is Waba a planet of tiny fairy people?

"You know, I met a guy like that, once. He was huge, had all kinds of terrifying weapons, and acted like he was ready to kill someone at any moment, but once I got to know him, I sort of got the feeling that we weren't really all that different."

"That's it where's my gauss rifle."

He barely tried to resist it at all. She's RIGHT HERE. Maybe he can get a lucky shot on her!

The Wabans are pretty short it's true. And the high commander is...pretty goddamn tall. Even for a space marine.

"I am still ready to kill someone at any moment." Space marine humor is...easy to miss sometimes. Mostly because it isn't very funny.

"But, I think I'm starting to understand your planet a little more, too."

"I think if we built out this wall here." he pointed. "We could greatly reinforce the whole structure, and also deny an incoming enemy shelter from small arms fire from this rooftop."

Somehow, the brutal business of war becomes almost funny when it's reduced to 1/100th scale.

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Open Post: Beach O'Clock

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Captain Leonides

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Sunset

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Chaos Greed

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Beach Shack

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Technologian Diane Aggrippa | this universe | OC

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