| BBQ Angel Beaches | ||
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Summary: Iridescence invites Shizuko for a BBQ at Giga Beach, but then some kind of angelic music and light appears?   |
Glistening sand, beautiful crashing waves, and sparkling clear water make up Center City's beach. The coast stretches out in both directions with an occasional rocky outcrop spreading from shore to sea. Seagulls, penguins, ducks, and dolphins play in the water, more than happy to accept any food a kind soul has to offer them. A small dock where boats can launch or people can fish sits in the ocean, and larger ships and boats are anchored further out. A path from the beach leads to under the bridge that crosses over the Raging. It's another day at Giga Beach in Senta! This means there's people hanging out at the beach, or fishing off of the dock, or playing in the waves with some of the more intelligent sea creatures, or getting some sun while the sun getting is good! Iridesence is here, currently sitting in a beach reclining chair. Or rather, something akin to one. There are multiple cushions, drink holders, and side tables to it. On the top right is a large metal coil that occasionally sparks and POPS with electricity, that's emanating from the girl herself. Even though she's goth, she still enjoys the beach sometimes! Don't reject her goth culture! A massive tome is in her lap that she's paging through. It's not just the mage herself and a fancy chair, there's a huge BBQ near her, at least ten feet wide. Multiple pale skinned dudeoz wearing chef aprons over their normal Matrix style suits are cooking hot dogs and burgers, although a few of them -are- keeping an eye out for trouble. A hover limo hangs out about twenty yards away where a few more dudeoz stand and watch with actual vigilance. And down the beach walks one rather nervous looking Shizuko. Invite to a beach barbeque. Right. From someone ultra-rich. She never knows what to expect when a suggested activity comes from Iridescence. That said, she's still very much keeping an eye out side to side. She has enemies. Well, one enemy in particular, though she'd be fine with simply never seeing the guy again, he has poked his heavily scarred (okay, that part is kinda her fault. Okay, *entirely* her fault, but it was self defense) face into her life at random more than once. Shizuko didn't really know what to expect. Was this going to be some massive party? Was it going to be some exclusive, high class soirée that happened to be on a beach? Was it literally going to just be Iridescence there and - Oh, it was the last one. Well, there was the perpetual bodyguard presence, something that both lets Shizuko breath out a sigh of relief and tense up at the same time. No worrying about her own stalker when those guys are around, but now she's worried about making a mis-step herself. She's dressed for the scene, at least. Mostly. Yes, Shizuko is in a bikini, but there's nothing about it that's particularly eye-catching about its cut compared to every other bikini out there, in fact it's a simple solid white color. It's a beach, she should wear a bathing suit. She's also wearing a very light looking jacket over the top, kept open in the front of course, as well as a sarong over the lower part. Yeah, that whole 'not being sure what kind of barbeque this was going to be' part made her want to be somehow both conservative and not at the same time. "Uhhh, hi," Shizuko says nervously as she... admittedly cautiously approaches the defensive perimeter. Iridescence, herself, is still wearing her normal skirt corset sleeve combo goth thing, even at the beach. It's not that she doesn't HAVE other outfits, it's just this one looks wicked kewlz. Gothic beauty ya know. She doesn't have her stupid ear piece in, so she doesn't get the message from her dudeoz that Shizuko has arrived on the beach. Which is fine, who doesn't want to be surprised by their friend showing up invited? The mage slams her tome closed with a soft thunder clap! "Shizuko!" She actually jumps out of her chair, landing her goth boots into the sand. Then she see's the bikin and her mouth opens :O "Fwuh?! Oh. Wow. Yeah girl." She finger guns her "Looking goodz! Okioz, I've changed my mind." She points at one of the dudeoz at the grill, "Bring the changing room!" The pale skinned man nods and takes off at a run, speaking into his sleeve. The mage looks back to Shizuko and smiles! "I'm so glad you came!" Internally, Shizuko has a thought about how everyone here is going to stay so pale while out in the sun for so much today. "Yeah!" she says with a noticeable nervous air. "I was able to make it... um, thanks." That's Shizuko, all right, always having difficulty taking a compliment to her appearance. "Bring?" she asks with a blink, then watches the man run off. She's never going to get used to having friends in Richside. Shizuko says, "Yeah, I, well, I guess I wasn't doing anything else for today, so how could I refuse?" Loaded way of saying it there. There's a part of Shizuko that feels like she *has* to go along with things that Iridescence wants her to do. Probably part of it being she still somehow feels in debt about that dress Iridescence bought for her, never mind that that was also in apology for the injuries that one time." Iridescence gets a massive grin about Shizuko asking how she could refuse. "Who can pass up a beach bbq! Fwuh, I even made it rain yesterday to try and make it sunny today." She snaps her fingers, a fizzle of lightning going between them. "Totes worked! I'm working on broadening my magic skillset, but it's really difficult to get your magical abilities aligned with something new after the first three, ya know?" She gestures towards the massively long grill. "Hot dog? Burger? Vegetable substance that tastes like either or none of thoz?" Shizuko looked at you! There's a bit of wariness at the spark between Iridescence's fingers. "Oh. Yeah, that... caught me off guard on my way home yesterday." The girl who spent most of her life in Synthatec tilts her head at the mention of testing magic skillset and the whole 'after the first three' part. "...Not really, no," she admits to the 'you know?' "Um, I'll take just a hot dog for now, I guess..." She looks over the grill. No vegetable kebabs? By now Shizuko has definitely caught on to Iridescence's goth style tendencies, so she can't help but observe, "You must be using a major sun block to keep yourself that pale out here." She looks up into the sky, blocking the sun with a hand. Iridescence tilts her head to the side, raising an eyebrow. "Fwuh? But you're a..." Her brain manages to stop her mouth from spouting Magical Girl out in public. Sure there's not a lot of people right around this area due to the dudeoz, but it's a beach with wind, voices can carry. "...ya know?" She taps her fingers together and then spins them around, lightning dancing around them. Without being asked further, one of the dudeoz at the grill takes hold of a hot dog with his bare hands and tosses it to another dudeoz who catches it smoothly in a bun. And yet a third dudeoz holds up condiments at Shuzko for her to choose from, mayo, ketchup, mustard, relish, pickles, some kind of blue sludge substance, and walnuts among them. Iridescence laughs! "I actually keep casting healing on myself every half hour!" That doesn't explain the dudeoz though, who are as pale as vampires. Shizuko's head tilts more at the whole dancing around saying something. There are a lot of things that Shizuko is, and which one Iridescence is talking about... well, *not* talking about, is drawing a blank from her at first. Then there's a blink as she finally gets it. "Oh! Uh... it's kind of... not really a *magical* magical girl thing." It also doesn't do a good job of hiding her identity, so she's not the most secretive about it. Really, she relies more on no one noticing her normal self. When the condiments are offered, Shizuko simply points at the ketchup, but she's more wondering who puts on walnuts. "Healing spells keep you from getting tanned?" Iridescence ohz. "Well." She says, shrugging with her palms up. "For my magic wayz, it's a totes difficult thing." She wonders if she should explain it further. "Hummmm. It's like you grow an extra arm but you don't know how to make it do anything except kind of wobble up and down at first while your body learns how to control it, but it's already busy controlling your normal ones, yah?" She nods with a raised eyebrow, wondering if she is making sense! She herself points at a hot dog and the blue sludge. The dudeoz nods and with deft hands takes the ketchup, sliding a perfect line across the dog and sets it on a plate, offering it to Shizuko. The process is then repeated by them all, substituting the ketchup for the blue sludge, which visibly quivers once its in place on the hot dog as if it were alive. Three dudeoz come back carrying a ten foot wide circle made of fabric and poles. They jam it into the sand nearby. One of them hangs a sign on the entrance into it that's just a hanging cloth. The sign reads "Private Changing Room". Iridescence adds, "And yah! Of course healing spells keep you from getting tanned. It's your skin burning!" Shizuko says, "Oh! Yeah, it was like that with my drones. I also had to get used to actually seeing through them, too. Their automation is kinda minimal?" Okay, that comparison was a bit more literal for Shizuko, apparently. "It's not even a new arm, it's a totally new appendage you need to figure out... like... wings or a tail or something. Kinda like that?" Hot dog aquired! The setting up of the tent seems... almost dissapointing to Shizuko. It's something that's actually sensical instead of, say, bringing over an entirely prebuilt building. You never know with some of these Richside folks. "Oh, huh. I guess I never really equated having a tan with... being scarred?" Iridescence nods with a giant open mouthed smile. "Right? Totes is though!" At least for her and how her healing magic works! She takes a bite of the hot dog with blue sludge on it and then sets the plate down on one of her large chairs side tables. "Be right back, I'm gonna change!" She heads to the newly setup changing room, pausing to glance over her shoulder at Shizuko has her multi-colored ponytails spill everywhere. "You can peep if you want." She winks and heads in. The dudeoz continue their grilling! NPCs continue playing about the beach, although about thirty yards away there is some kind of small light disruption happening on the ground. Just some intermittent flashes now and then, the sand being pulled into a slow circle. Nobody takes much notice of it though. Regardless, Shizuko isn't making the request for constant healing. She used sunblock. She takes a bite and looks out over the beach. The crowds are giving them a wide berth, but then again, there's all these... mooks around. It definitely alters the feeling that 'going to the beach with friends' should give. "All right," she says slightly distractedly at first at Iridescence's announcement of going to change, but the follow-up gets a double take and a "Wait-what?" from her. And a bit of face going red. She does not, in fact, take up Iridescence on the latest offer. Nope, not thinking about that now, looking out at the beach again and taking another bite of the hot dog. She watches the odd flashing on the beach, concerned at first, but no one else seems to care, so... why should she, she supposes. It's only a few minutes before Iridescence comes back out of the changing room. Her outfit looks like someone took a black kimono and chopped it in half, then hemmed up the middle so her midriff would show, and pulled up the leg hem to above her knees. Red lightning style lines run through it, that if someone didn't know how lightning based the girl was would mistake it for blood veins. Needless to say, it's been tailor made to her proportions. "Heyaz all changed." She says, and once Shizuko has eyes on her she'll do a little spin, the kimono sleeves billowing about. She finishes the spin with a wink and a peace sign, holds the pose long enough for some random dude walking buy to take pictures of both her and Shizuko with their camera (creeper) and then reclaims her blue sludge hot dog, tipping it into the air as some of the blue sludge as tried to ooze its way off of the meat tube. Meanwhile the light continues to flicker, parts of it coming faster each time. The sand has actually formed into the shape of a large perfect circle. Shizuko looks over as Iridescence declares herself changed, and blinks. To be honest, she was expecting something a lot less... flowy than this. Okay, she was expecting a more tradition swimsuit, be it one or two piece. Shizuko doesn't know why she actually expected that, in retrospect. Very few things Iridescence does match her expectations. "Looking good!" she declares, about to give a thumb's up, but that mindset drops when she hears the camera go off. Her own shoulders slump a bit at that and she takes a bit of a sullen chomp out of her hot dog. "Some people," she declares at a monotone. She watches as the blue sludge... has moved. Yeah, she's glad she just went ketchup. Shizuko looks back out to the odd swirling sand. "Does it normally do that out here?" she asks. "I admittedly don't come out to the beach very often." Iridescence might be a bit self-centered and terrible at reading other people, but she's not completely friend-blind, and when she notices Shizuko slump some her eyes narrow. She snaps her fingers, which sounds like a peel of thunder, though thankfully a small one, and points in the direction of the camera guy. The dudeoz that brought the changing room bolt towards him. The sand near the grill peels away as a dudeoz rises it up underneath it all, having been hiding there out of sight. A massive tackle happens and one of the dudeoz shoves the camera into the mans face. "Unlock it." He says, voice deep. The man yells, "Get off m-" But gets cut short as one of the dudeoz breaks two of his fingers. He screams and quickly unlocks his phone. Iridescence ignores that whole thing, including the screaming, to stand closer to Shizuko as she takes another bite of her sludge dog. "Fwuh?" She eyes the swirling sand and light. "Nahp! Let's check it out!" She'll attempt to link her arm with Shizuko's to walk towards it, holding her food in the other hand. There's a grimace and a wince at the, well, overreaction to the picture getting taken. Everything in extremes. These are the kinds of reactions that have Shizuko always nervous around Iridescence, around anyone from Richside. She... tries to ignore the screaming, but there's a few nervous glances that way. Right. This is the other reason she often feels like she *has* to go along with a lot of Iridescence's whims. There's more than a little fear, and it's not just from pure difference in social standing. On the topic of going along with Iridescence's whims, Shizuko makes no attempt to stop the interlinked arms. "Oh. It's not? then why is no one else... oh, nevermind." Of all the crazed things Shizuko has seen, is this really that odd? Away she gets almost dragged to the scene of the... something. Not that the two girls are watching anymore, but the dudeoz go about accessing the man's phone, inputting a pre-programmed virus which goes through and erases every single digital item connected to him, pull out a small EMP and activate on the phone, and then lift them man up and 'escort' him away into an armored vehicle that comes in. The NPC's all start giving Iridescence and Shizuko a much MUCH wider birth. They must have got some instructions after the last news posting, or maybe this is just a standard way of them handling things. Well, that's life in Senta. Go live in Synthatek if you want to avoid this kind of thing, or maybe don't take pictures of people with tons of security around them. Iridescence hmmmm's at Shizuko's speculations! "Fwuh, yahz..." She looks around, no one is paying a lot of attention to it. Another flicker of light and twirling of sand. The mage stops them a good distance from it, for safety. And once the two are seen looking at it, a very wide birth is given from everyone at the beach who don't want to end up safely escorted elsewhere. The light flickers faster and faster, and the light sound of bells? Church bells? And ethereal almost angelic singing? The light starts dipping into the sand, creating a vast network of smaller circles, runes, and the like. Senta, where the rich and powerful make all the rules. And somehow, against all odds, Shizuko has made some very rich and powerful friends. She's just terrified that she'll make one wrong move. Shizuko says, "Any idea what it is? It feels more... like it's magical or something. I don't think it's nanobots." Shizuko waits a few more moments. She feels like the sounds... *should* make her feel at ease, but somehow, none of it is. "Oh. Yeah, definitely magical," she says once the runes start showing up. To be continued... | |