Session 137 - BEACH EPISODE

Previously, Across the Horizon…
What is it like, to go to space?
To learn one’s place in the universe? To see the stars that fill the night sky when all the sky is night, and all there is is sky? To look upon wonders that mankind has never known?
What is it like to go to space, when there are none that would believe you?
Is there a more poorly-equipped ship than the Starfall for this question? There are schemes to plot, tastes to test, canvases to contemplate, tests to taste, and reports to give. What does one gain from considering the mysteries of the infinite when there is “loot” to distribute? To have traveled so far off the map that the idea of there being anything beyond the edges of the map is a child’s fantasy, and to return with naught more than bitter quips and empty platitudes? What would that say about the wonder in one’s heart? The joy in one’s soul? The critical in one’s thinking?
It says a great deal. Including but in no way limited to the fact that to be traveling on a vessel led exclusively by such—
**
Celeste fumbled her pen, tried to catch it, and dropped it two more times before it fell, writing side blessedly up, into her lap. “I’m sorry, what was that?”
Shula looked down at her. “I was going to give you one of these, but I think you’ve had too many.” She held two fruity drinks with umbrellas in her hands.
“I haven’t had any.”
Shula raised an eyebrow. “You need to get your head out of the clouds for a change.”
“Just give me the drink!” Celeste ignored Shula’s eyeroll and took a sip of her distressingly orange drink. She brought her legs up in the beach chair to form a backrest for her map and resumed making notes on it with her free hand. She’d already seen the ocean in front of her, with its sparkling blue waters and calling seagulls. Still, she thought after another sip, there was no harm in returning to a lovely place every once in a while.
Yves has an umbrella of a rather different size: large enough to shade him, his beach chair, his lap desk, his writing materials, his little side table, and its fruity drinks which actually have their own smaller, more colorful umbrellas in turn. It's some sort of meta-umbrella situation going on over there. He's currently paging delicately through some sort of log book, and taking notes, with periodic suspicious looks out at the ocean.
It knows what it did.
Orrey is just past the breakers, floating in the waters on the surfboard that someone convinced him he'd love. He's been ignoring the waves and just hanging out there, laying down and watching the clouds drifting by overhead.
Bast, not seeming particularly fussed about what the ocean did, is ambling back from a trek down the shoreline with the waves occasionally rolling over his feet.
The Hive run by in a flurry of raucous laughter and colliding conversations. Six chairs sit in a row, but only five have towels, sunglasses, and other belongings.
Linnet has been busy experimenting with high dives out of thin air. Occasionally, you catch sight of a sylph shooting up into the air with a whoop, twirling, and plunging back down. The wave of water that scythes out from her braid at each turn is incredible.
Luca and Isara are sitting at the waterline, letting the surf break over their legs as they pass a bottle back and forth. Luca's beachwear is a gauzy tunic, sunglasses, and an enormous hat. Isara's defies description by a lesser narrator.
Abruptly, Yves closes the log book. "I have never liked other people's paperwork," he declares to no one in particular, and begins packing away the various books and writing implements. This process seems to involve a lot of pausing to have sips of fruity drinks.
"Shame," says a voice from behind Yves. Apoc slides into one of the unoccupied beach chairs. He wears a thin white shirt open and unbuttoned, burgundy shorts hung low on his hips, and an easy-going smile. The sun sparkles in his bright white hair. "There's little I enjoy more than reading words another would prefer I not." His own drink is two-thirds gone. "What has your attention, anyway?"
The accidental spatter of a semicircle of water droplets probably does nothing for Yves' notes. "Sorry!" calls Linnet from another midair corkscrew.
Bast detours deeper into the water to avoid stepping on Isara's feet, then stops mid-stride and turns to get a closer look, palm-printed beach shorts promptly getting soaked to the waist by a tall wave. "That...used to be a shell. Didn't it. How do you even cut it like that?"
Luca passes Bast the bottle as they wait for an answer.
Yves holds the logbook out to Apoc, with a crooked smile. "Banal records of terrible deeds from a long time ago. I was hoping to get--I don't even know what I was hoping to get out of it. I'm a chemist, not an archivist. I should just turn this over to Linnet and Principia later." He's in black swim shorts with little silver skulls embroidered on them, himself, and his Adventure Coat worn loosely over no shirt. It's beach casual! Sort of!
Isara swirls the contents of the bottle around in her mouth, then swallows. "Borrowed the forge," she says indifferently. "Worked pretty well."
Linnet finally lands on solid ground - well, sand - and conjures a brief gust to blow her braid dry. Strolling up the beach in a tiny yellow bikini and the offhand confidence of one with very little to fall out of it, she flops over onto an open towel next to Yves. "You brought paperwork to the beach? It can wait, Thunderbun."
Bast raises the bottle with one hand and takes a long pull while the fingers of the other move quickly through several shapes in the air, helping his brain work through the angles involved. Then the contents of the bottle catch up with the brain, and he raises both hands, one full, in mock surrender.
"You'll have to show me later."
He yields the bottle to Isara and settles down on the wet sand a couple of paces past Luca, watching the sand glittering in the waves.
"Hardly appropriate fare for as fine a day as this," Apoc says, casting a disapproving glance at the logbook. "Surely something lighter would better suit the weather. The recounting of a grisly murder, or perhaps a sorcerer grappling with nightmares from the depths. More appropriate than that, at any rate." He glances up at the sky, and then back over. "What do you enjoy reading, by the by? Both of you," he says, including Linnet in the conversation.
"It can wait, it can wait," Yves agrees to Linnet, packing his papers and inks away. "I was trying to be, I don't know, responsible? But I think I overshot straight into some sort of, uh, boring. Beach day for beaching. Ideally not in the whale sense. That ends badly for everyone, especially the whales." The logbook goes into the case with the rest, reasonably protected from wind, waves, and sylph splash. "I've always liked pulps. The ones with romance that aren't just romance. Lots of falling off things and being kidnapped and swordfights on airship railings, that kind of thing."
Linnet digs into her bag and produces yet another terrible romance novel, with a lurid sunset on the cover and not nearly enough shirts. "On the beach, nothing denser than this. For everything else, see, um, every flat surface in my cabin. Anyone seen any whales, by the way?"
"I mean, only the metaphorical ones, so far..." Yves says.
The gentle strumming of a ukulele enters Orrey's pleasant bubble of solitude. Keke drifts by on a surfboard powered by... the captain's hat, apparently, happily playing a jaunty tune. The bright flowery shirt and floppy straw hat make it stand out all the more.
Linnet props herself up on her elbows and scans the horizon for metaphorical whales.
There are no metaphorical whales. There is a literal whale, far in the distance, surfacing and then diving once more.
Orrey raises his head and waves hello. "Now, that is some nice ambience. Caught any good waves? Or have you been otherwise distracted like me?"
Bast looks up in the air at the mention of whales for some reason, then just exhales loudly and lies back on the hot sand, fur be damned, with his feet in the water.
The captain's hat swivels as Keke continues on. A small metal tube, curved at the top, rotates to observe Orrey. "Prefer not to surf," Chmurka's tinny voice emanates from within.
Orrey's eyes widen as he realizes the hat is not magical, at least not in the way he was thinking. "How...ok. Right. yeah, it's better to float. Or swim? Gorgeous day!" He lays back down and breathes out a deep sigh of release.
Isara watches the Hive run back the way they came. "Not a lot of vacation days on this crew, huh?"
A pair of sunglasses fully half the size of Linnet's face have materialized from somewhere. She raises them and calls back along the beach, "Shula! Saray! How's the barbecue looking?" To Isara, she replies, "Most of them are spent in rehearsal or restocking. Not a lot of pure cutting loose recently."
Luca takes a drink, passes the bottle along. "To hear them tell it, it's a life constantly on the move, no home but the open sky, no rest but in death... Probably exaggerating."
Yves finally has his books tidied enough to flop back in his beach chair--apparently his decision to return to frivolity does not extend to actually entering sunlight, possibly on account of the black fur and all that--and pick up his fruity drink again. "I'm trying to remember the book we were reading when we first met on the train. When Linnet and I met," he explains over his shoulder to Apoc, "and I think... huh. Bast and Orrey were there too. And. Well. Isa. We all ran into each other at the same time, more or less, on the same train. But I can't remember the book. Something fun and forgettable."
"Not exactly a regular schedule to the things we do", Bast replies at the clouds. "Though I like that last bit." The Captain is not grinning, no, surely wouldn't, but something in his expression suggests fertile ground for future dramatic complaints.
Isara takes another swig, tests how much is left, and then plops it in the sand next to Bast for when the captain wants to partake. "Vacation's're nice," she says. "Especially when you can travel for 'em."
"Individually, they're very negotiable. As an entire crew, a little harder to coordinate." Linnet sniffs the delicious aroma of roasted everything-at-once.
A wave starts to build behind Orrey, approaching the shore. A few enterprising members of the crew paddle out into the position to try to ride it. It is as yet unclear if Orrey has noticed it.
"There's a lot of world out there," Luca agrees. "And if the price of seeing more of it is a little peril, well, think of the stories you get to tell when you're old and decrepit."
Isara chuckles. "The stories they'll tell, all right."
Orrey sighs again as the splashing around him picks up. "I suppose I ought to actually try another wave." He flips over, eyes the position of the wave and everyone else out on the water, then starts paddling furiously, aiming to catch the wave in this time...
Bast looks like he's got some complaints stored up about time and decrepitude, but the only sound he makes is a faint hm as he eyes Orrey's attempts to line his board up for the wave.
"Will our brave adventurer find luck on his fourth attempt," Apoc says under his breath, watching Orrey paddling into the wave.
Luca grins. "The best stories at least start somewhere near the truth. I can only imagine what they'll spin out of what they've seen. I mean, I've been to space."
"I've been to space, and that's why I drink!" Yves says brightly.
"I haven't been to space, that's why I drink," Isara says. "Today's reason, at least."
"We'll take you with us next time that we manage to go there on purpose," Linnet says.
"I mean, that's a good reason too," Yves says.
Orrey times it perfectly, popping up and leaning just enough to smoothly shoot the wave, even riding his board all the way to the beach in front of everyone. He lightly hops off, shaking water out from his much darker purple hair. He wanders over to where he dropped all his stuff, adding a large, loose, light green button up shirt, left open, over his striped grey and white trunks.
Apoc applauds.
Yves gives a little "Woo!" and waves a cocktail umbrella encouragingly. "Nice work, Orrey," he calls out. "You got back!"
Luca cheers.
"We have a new captain." Orrey says ominously as he grabs a drink.
"Oh shit, did I miss a mutiny?" Luca asks.
Bast's head comes up from the sand briefly with a questioning look, then falls back down.
Mogali is the only other crew member to make it to shore upright. "I wonder if I can surf the next wave without taking my hands out of my pockets?" she wonders, and then she's paddling back out to go again. Mogali the Indefatigable, Mogratheo called her earlier.
"We all did. Chmurka wears The HAT." Orrey smiles and settles down on a lounging chair, looking over Linnet's shoulder to see what she's reading.
Linnet flips to one of the steamier bits and leaves the book open. (It's so creased and worn that it falls open by itself.) "Just don't tease Chmurka like that once we get back to the ship. You'll scare the poor dear."
"I for one welcome our benevolent new captain and her orders from the vents," Yves says.
"Oh good, I can retire now." Bast raises the bottle as if to toast a passing cloud and takes another swig.
"Thank you for your service," Luca says graciously.
Shula, wearing a long khaki linen pantsuit as a compromise between warm weather and sunburn, yells to the crew, "Assorted food on sticks is available! Don't set anything else on fire and no using the sticks for combat practice yes this means you. Help yourselves, I'm out." A barbecue spread fit for sixty covers many, many square feet of sand. "Sticks are the best way to consume food without utensils," Yves declares, and pops to his feet. "Okay. I'm going into the sunlight. If it takes me out, avenge me, unless it turns out the sun is sentient, in which case, I don't know, maybe ask it to reconsider its killing death rays next time."
Linnet doesn't move as Shula takes a lotus-position seat beside her. "Fire sylph duties discharged."
"Much appreciated, Shula," Orrey says, letting the initial rush for the food die down a bit before heading over.
"Thank you, dear. You missed a spot." Linnet pulls Shula's hat down a bit further to shade the end of her nose.
Isara gets to her feet, waits as the Hive scurry by for a third time, and then ambles over to see what goes well with alcoholic ethers.
"Does your inner fire not work to keep out the outer fire from the Sun?" Orrey asks, wondering how hot a full suit would be on the beach.
"Not like you'd hope," Shula replies. "Same way Linnet can still go over in a stiff breeze."
"I sort of assumed that was because she joins the winds unconsciously."
"I appreciate your gracious explanation." Linnet tips up her sunglasses and winks.
Celeste turns her map sideways and peers at it closer. "Owen, can you please--" She stops mid-sentence, and sighs. "Right." The map goes under Yves's book to protect it from the wind, and Celeste walks over to the spread by herself.
"A lot of us, our natural abilities interact with the environment like excited puppies - they feed on it and just get stronger. Which means Shula burns when she looks at the sun" ("pretty much") "and Jasper has a very, um, defined center of gravity."
"There's a reason he's not a principal dancer," adds Shula.
Luca has already polished off one skewer, and they are using it to demonstrate a particularly flashy riposte to Brandt.
Despite his sun concerns, Yves is taking his own sweet time acquiring a good load of Things On Sticks from the spread.
Shula twists her wrist and heats up the skewer in Luca's hand to the point of very brief pain.
Brandt's awe turns to delight when Apoc brandishes his skewer to join Luca in a display of ostentatious swordsmanship.
Soon, all three of them drop their skewers with a curse. Shula looks unmoved. "I said no sword practice."
"Less practice, more performance, really," Apoc counters.
"Give it up, Shula, you can't monitor them all." The lighting designer rolls her eyes and pulls her hat over her face to snooze.
"You were very specific about combat. This would be a terrible maneuver for a real fight. It's only appropriate for duels in front of someone you're trying to impress," Luca says.
Apoc winks in the general direction of at least a half-dozen people.
Linnet just snorts and turns away to ogle some of her crewmates behind her shades.
"They will always find a way around the rules." Orrey finally grabs a skewer of his own and quickly scarfs so he can, very ineptly, join in the sword dancing.
"Impress by bleeding on them like you're in one of Linnet's books?" Bast munches on the contents of a second skewer nonchalantly, the first stuck in the sand by his chair.
Luca tilts their head. "Well, no," they say. "It's still an effective riposte. It's just entirely too showy and takes a lot of energy, so if you're in a serious fight it's not worth the cost. But a duel of honor? Oh, capta...former captain, that's when you play to the crowd."
As always happens at a time like this, a chorus of "ooooooooooh" rises from the crowd. They liked the 'former' bit.
"And besides, if you do get hurt in a duel and end up bleeding heroically onto your inamorata, that's supposed to be one of the best ways to awaken their nurturing instincts and then have passionate sex later. Or something," Linnet says. "Or at least you get a heck of a dying aria out of it."
Luca doesn't even get a chance to look in Isara's direction before she says "Nooooope."
Yves finally returns to the shade, with a piled plate (of skewers) in one hand, two skewers in another, and a skewer in his mouth. "No bleeding to death," he mumbles around the last one. "Not on beach day."
Orrey glances over at Linnet. "I feel like I should be taking notes for this class on romance you're teaching."
"While I cannot deny its potency," Apoc says, "there are other ways to reach that same goal that do not involve quite that amount of bodily harm."
"Like flashy ripostes!" Luca suggests.
Jasper places his hands over Orrey's ears from behind him and gives Linnet a stern look over the artist's head. "Linnet, please, stop corrupting our innocent youth."
Linnet bats her eyes at Jasper. "We still have innocent youth aboard?"
"I was there during the dry run," Jasper says.
Turns out that a lap desk can be repurposed as a skewer-management platform, too. Yves is listening with interest to the folks around him, and eating too much to contribute in any intelligible manner. He has a small coughing fit at 'dry run'. Orrey is shaking with laughter at Jasper's pun.
Bast waves a dismissive hand at Luca's tutorial. "I shall have to read all about your dashing adventures on the Starfall, in my sunset years." He promptly steals the tiny umbrella from someone's unattended drink, breaks off its leg, drapes the canopy over his green pom, and does a half-assed impression of Dignified Repose in his chair.
Jasper ruffles Orrey's hair and then goes back for thirds.
Linnet's attention wanders to several more gorgeous and skimpily dressed crewmembers. Were they always this toned, or has shipboard life been really good for everyone?
Yves discovers, on returning to his drink, that the umbrella has been pilfered. He pauses between skewers long enough to complain, "Is nothing safe, even on vacation?" and steals the umbrella from a dead drink to replace it.
Briefly, she pictures Perilune in Juniper's skintight water suit or Eiri's, uh, artistically cut monokini, but there's a little too much on display for her imagination to hold up. ...is River actually wearing a swimsuit at all, or are they just shapeshifting enough to be confusing?
Brandt's continued problem with shirts is even more entertaining for onlookers when the shirts are soaked as well as a size too small. Celeste's penchant for clothing with unexpected gaps in enticing places continues with the bikini and sarong she's chosen today. Akil might have developed whatever comes after a six-pack, but he always seems to disappear from view. Runa's legs have caused two people to trip over themselves already. Clayton has taken Brandt's style of shirt, applied it to pants, and made a great many friends.
(Anyone who needs conscious thought out of Linnet will probably have to smack her. Thank goodness for huge sunglasses.)
Isara drops back down into the group, two vegetable skewers in one hand, another bottle in the other. She watches an entire swimsuit calendar run by again. "Compliments to the chef," she says once Holly and Ivy's giggling fades out.
Yves is possibly heading toward physical pain with his appreciation of barbecue. He nods fervently in agreement to Isara's comment.
"Stella and I took turns with the coals, but she and her boy toy disappeared among the rocks somewhere. And Saray was in charge of the seasonings, but she's..." Shula peeks grill-ward. "...busy. So I'll take those compliments." She nods regally.
Luca has relinquished their weapon for a new bottle of their own, and raises it to Linnet. "Compliments to the representative of the chefs!"
"To the council of chefs and chef assistants!" Yves raises his last fruity drink, and downs it. "...ow. Umbrella. Pointy."
The best wave yet washes up the shore. Mogali's surfboard cuts a line in the wet sand, Mogali perfectly balanced atop it, hands in the pockets of her shorts.
Linnet whoops in appreciation. Mogratheo looks up from his sand castle and abruptly drops his shovel.
A large (and familiar) pincushion of a figure wrapped in a long red cloak surfs to a stop about sixty yards up the beach. The boisterous cry of victory really carries.
Orrey salutes with his recently emptied skewer, checks to make sure Shula's not mad at him again, and then settles down with another drink.
"...really." Bast finishes off the contents of his second skewer and stabs it into the sand by the first, but several inches deeper.
Yves claps for the surfers, careful this time to not stab himself with anything. (Umbrellas, skewers, spare pens...)
Luca looks up the beach and mutters an "oh shit" not of fear or panic but of earnest surprise.
The figure shields their eyes and peers down the beach at the party, and then waves. They shoulder their surfboard and jog down to greet the group. "Hail and well met, chocobo criminal partners!" Liga Kine declares. "Your ranks have grown since last we met!"
"That," Yves says, in perfect honesty, "is not someone I was expecting to see today. On the beach. Surfing."
Luca mouths the words "chocobo criminal" and looks at Yves. "You know him? He knows you?"
Linnet snaps out of her reverie and removes her slightly fogged-up glasses. "Holy tornadoes. Long, long story, Luca." She tosses Liga a lazy wave from her towel.
"Hello again, Liga." Orrey waves with the drink in his hand.
"We are the fastest of friends!" Liga booms. "'Twas here, last we met!" He considers his words. "Not here here. Here nearby. Here in this general vicinity. Here-ish. There was not a beach. There was a beach -- the beach existed. But we were not at the beach. Generally, t'was here, last we met!"
"There was--I mean, the chocobo part was--there was this auction, and--actually the auction isn't where it started, but--" Yves gives up, and bites a charred bit of onion off a skewer. "Just roll with it."
"Just roll with it?" Out of all the unbelievable things they've seen since coming aboard, this is the one Luca seems to have trouble getting their brain around. "Just roll with it? That's the Kiran!"
"Oh, you know him?" Bast asks.
"Oh! You both like swords. That must be it." Orrey says.
"A fine thing to like," Liga agrees.
"I mean, of him, we've never met but how do you avoid hearing about a reputation like that?" Luca catches themselves and turns to Liga. "Ah, sorry, right. Just...didn't expect, ah... sorry. Luca Ficarra," they say, making the best leg one can in flip-flops. "Honored."
"One of the ten best swordspeople on the planet. I think. According to whoever ranks swordspeople. And an all-around straight-up fella."
Luca can't help themselves. "Eighth."
"You just know swordspersonship rankings off the top of your head, Luca?" Orrey asks.
"You don't?" Luca replies.
"More of a pen and paper person." Orrey explains.
"Ficarra!" Liga says heartily. "A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance! I have been following your career with great interest! Nakamura posed a mighty challenge to you, but they say you withstood the most fearsome of blows to emerge victorious!"
"Wow," Yves says. "You're really into swords." He says with a faint air of bemusement. Swords are such a strange thing for people to be that into, compared to, oh, gambling or Esper liberation or weird drugs or really specific parts of the periodic table.
Liga has never said no to an exclamation point.
Luca rubs the back of their neck. "Withstood is kind of exaggerating it. Mostly I just wasn't where they were putting those blows. But I heard they held off D'Avoine to keep hold of tenth."
"Anyway," Bast raises his voice to respond to Liga, "I have just been deposed by these ruffians, so you're looking at an honest moogle who has no knowledge of any of these chocobo crimes you speak of."
Orrey eyes Luca more intently. "There's sword competitions?"
"Orrey, you're one of the best pen and paper people in the world! Yves, you're one of the best experimental chemistry people in the world! Celeste, you're the best in the world at like seventeen different things! Chmurka's the best sneaker-arounder in the world! And I'm..." (she pauses to think) "somewhere in the list of top...people people? Yeah, that sounds right." Linnet is actually completely sober, just drunk on exhilaration and exhaustion and sun and social time. And probably hormones.
"A new challenger has arisen!" Liga says. "Loewe is making a name for himself, and demanding that I begin training him now, despite only just entering the top ten! Skill and finesse, but no heart."
"One of the top ten pastries I've ever had in my life," Luca says to Linnet, then to Orrey, "it's less formal than that. Past a certain point, you get to know the other names, and if you're not sure who's better, you put it to the test....wait. Loewe? Really?"
"A noble retirement for a noble captain!" Liga crows to Bast. "For such a momentous occasion, a gift!" He reaches into his cloak and digs around for a moment, until he brings out a silver watch and hands it to Bast.
"Is that Loewe surprise good or bad?" Yves asks, gaining some interest in this strange world of competitive non-lethal stabbing. "I mean I'm not sure I'm the best at experimental chemistry, I only have about a fourth-rate lab kludged together at this point, but it's pretty good for the sort of things that come up while we're out and about since it's not like I'm being asked to synthesize anything really dangerous lately. Hm. Though. I mean. If I replaced a few pieces of equipment and installed a better fan in the hood..." His gaze goes distant.
"Loewe!" Liga confirms.
(In the background, Linnet keeps naming superlative qualities for anyone who wanders by.)
"Huh." Luca still appears to be digesting this information.
"Too bad it's not more of an organized tournament. I bet tons of people would love to see that. And probably pay for it." Orrey muses.
"The noble art of swordplay is not a mere display of fireworks meant to draw slack-jawed mutterings from addle-brained children and their deep-pocketed absentee parents!" Liga replies hotly.
"It's not about the money, and besides, we're all really just shuffling around the bottom seven," Luca says.
Orrey leans over and pulls out his sketchbook from the satchel under his chair and starts work on a promotional poster of Luca and Liga slashing about.
"Why thank you!" Bast accepts the gift with a flourish, then takes a closer look at it and raises a perplexed frown...at Liga's back, already bounding to another part of the beach and conversation.
"...sometimes it is also about looking quite cool," Liga finishes.
"You don't look cool unless people see you looking cool." Orrey says as he draws.
"Alright, yes, that. Do you know I was demonstrating Tokotto's seventh riposte earlier and I got accused of combat training?" Luca looks affronted.
"By whom?!"
"Towhothe's what now? Honey, I work with actors; stage combat training is ingrained. As is attempting it with any swordlike object within reach." Linnet shrugs expressively.
"If the swording isn't combat, what is it?" asks Yves.
"Art." Orrey says.
"I think combat means you intend to do damage, as opposed to looking cool." Linnet tips Orrey a grateful nod.
"Oh," says Yves, in a tone of enlightenment, "stage swording, got it."
"We'll make an actor of you yet, kiddo."
Luca gives Liga a "see what I am putting up with?" look. "In combat, damage is the goal. To hurt your opponent enough to take them out of the picture. Maybe kill them, probably kill them if it's faster, but definitely give them a bad day. In a duel the goal is to demonstrate superior skill. Sometimes people get hurt; I've got a few scars that will make that argument unassailable. But it doesn't take skill to murder someone, just the will to do it."
Liga steps to the side, indicating that this is worth listening to.
Luca continues. "When Nakamura and I fought, we weren't fighting over anything even remotely worth killing for. Let alone dying for. And we left a few scratches on each other, but it never went further than that. If we met again, and they think they've gotten better, we'd revisit it. But if not - and I think I made my point fairly clear the last time we met - I'd be buying the first round of drinks."
Linnet says, "Plus, now you know how to look very cool if you do need to kill someone. Poison your blade, by the way, that's how it worked in the Tragedy of the Prince of Monologues." (The prince himself, Clayton, waves from a few seats over.)
"Well, it certainly seems like... a thing you all enjoy, which is very nice," Yves says earnestly. "And which requires a great deal of skill and control and so forth."
"Seems wasted if no one else sees it." Orrey says.
"Mm, if you play a symphony to an empty hall, is it less beautiful?"
Orrey holds up an image of Liga and Luca locked in an epic struggle in the surf, their swords sweeping arcs of water like Linnet's braids were launching earlier.
Luca blinks. "Wow. I mean, I'm flattered, but it wouldn't go anything like that. I'd be on my ass before I could even think about getting into a bind."
"If only I could see the real thing, I could draw it." Orrey grins.
"See it? See it?"
"Oh, no," Luca holds up their hands, "I'm not...that's...."
Linnet gives a Director Yell of "Eyes front! Epic performance about to commence!" (Heads turn as if on swivels.)
Yves has acquired a fresh drink, and leans forward with the glass propped on his knee. Waiting for the Event.
Bast looks on with head propped up on one arm, the poor umbrella's remains finally fluttering down to the sand.
Liga bounds over to Orrey. "One does not learn how to season a soup from behind glass! One does not hear the song of the spheres by merely reading the sheet music! Do you wish to merely recreate a facsimile of an event your eyes once observed through a hole in a door, or do you wish to draw the moment, to inhabit the truth?"
Orrey tilts his head a bit to the side, then realizes what he's being asked to do. "Shit. I was hoping to draw your moment. But you only live once."
"You may yet still, young Alyon," Liga says. "But first, you must understand what it is you hope."
Luca has their face in their hands and it's impossible to tell if it's concern for Orrey or embarrassment.
"Are you challenging me to a duel, Liga?" Orrey asks.
Liga crouches down to look Orrey square in the eye. "No."
"Oh, because I was going to pick the weapon if you were. That's a thing, right?" Orrey glances at Luca to confirm.
Luca shakes their head to Orrey. "Nope. It's swords. Always swords. I'm not the eighth greatest axe fighter in Ducorde. Probably not even the top hundred."
Liga stands and sweeps his arm out to the party at large. "You are challenging one of them. You, who consider yourselves actors! You, who call yourselves practitioners of the theatrical arts! You, who would chase the stars! Show me your wit and resolve! Show me your grace and your virtue! Show me the strength of your will!"
(By this time, at least twenty of the crew have begun to rise.)
"Wow he really gets on a roll. Maybe we should hire him as one of our actors?" Orrey says to Linnet.
"I think he's busy," Linnet whispers back.
"And if you inspire me!" Liga rests a hand on the hilt of one of his many swords.
His thumb brushes against the guard.
"I shall show you mine."