Logs:Lake Monsters

Lake Monsters
Dramatis Personae Mina, Nessie, Rhiannon, Tian-shin
In Absentia	2019-03-26 "It's totally safe honest!"
Location XS - Lake
Bright, bright, bright; the lake glitters wide and expansive here, stretching off into the distance. Sunlight, moonlight, starlight, it catches them all. Lapping at the rocky shore, its deep waters are frigid in winter and cool even in summer. A stone pier stretches out a ways into the water, wide and smooth, though often icy in winter. The water teems with life nevertheless, home to myriad species of fish that provide for ample fishing or just lazy watching on a slow summer day, for those who want to take a boat from the boathouse out to the center of the lake, or perhaps lounge on the pier and try their luck. It's a gloriously bright and sunny afternoon, and classes have just recently let out; with the weather like this, the distant school building is dispersing a large stream of students and staff alike out to enjoy the warmth. The two students out on the pier, though, seem like they've been here a /while/ already, backpacks and snacks piled midway down the stones. Flat on her belly all the way on the edge of the pier, Mina is peeeeering out into the water. She has a length of rope in one hand and a cold empanada leftover from yesterday's cafeteria lunch in the other. In her thick green leggings, long purple skirt, yellow and green sweater, boots, she looks way overdressed for the mild weather, but if she is she seems unbothered. She rolls over onto her side, tucks her hair behind an ear (only slightly displacing the enormous yellow hibiscus flower that's pinned into her hair.) "I swear I saw it just yesterday! We could take a boat! We're allowed to take the boats, right?" Beside Mina, Nessie is much less colorful but in her own way far more eye-catching. The enormous scorpion-kid is sitting low on her many legs, fidgeting restlessly with a ceaseless clicking of her pointed feet against the stone. She's wearing only a plain blue button down shirt and Xavier's hoodie, unzipped. "The boat idea is a /little/ better," she still sounds VERY dubious, though, "but I still can't swim." Rhiannon ambled along the lakeshore, a book tucked under one arm, peering around her as she searched for a good place to sit and read. Her messy, platinum blonde hair hung loose about her shoulders. She usually wore it tied up, but she wanted to avoid getting a sunburn on the back of her neck. She was dressed in a simple white blouse and denim shorts over a pale blue swimsuit that she sincerely doubted she would make use of. Getting in the water would mean either taking her glasses off or running a high risk of losing or damaging them, and without them, her vision was too poor to keep her from walking into things. She noticed the two students on the pier, and was curious as to what in the world they were doing, but she was more curious about what would happen in the next chapter of her book. Tian-shin strolls down from the mansion, her pace unharried, enjoying the spring sunlight. She's dressed in loose-fitting black tang jacket and pants with scarlet piping, the former unbuttoned over a fitted t-shirt patterned all over like soft gray-white clouds save a heart-shaped gap on the the chest revealing the blue sky and brilliant sun beyond. She carries a long, bulky black gym bag across her back which she unslings when she reaches the flatter section of the pebbly beach. "Hello, girls," she calls cheerfully as she knees to unzip the bag. "Please don't mind me, just eager to have my workout in the sun for a change." She pauses in the middle of pulling out a sheathed Chinese longsword, cocking her head at the students on the pier. "Are you fishing over there?" "I can teach..." Mina /starts/ to say, but then gives Nessie's many legs a long look, her lips twisting to the side. "Mmm. Oh hey!" She jumps to her feet, waving one hand eagerly at Rhiannon as she comes down the beach vs calling out loudly from the pier. "/You/ have a swimsuit, can you swim? We need you to swim it's totally safe honest!" Her eyes widen when Tian-shin produces the sword. "WOAH. Do you know how to use that? Can /we/ use that? It's important." Nessie has begun backing slowly further from the water, but rests back down when Mina turns her attention to a new target. Her shoulders settle with a visible relief. "Wait, we need that?" The relief was short-lived. Her large barbed tail swishes over her head. "I definitely don't know how to use a sword. I definitely don't know how to use a sword /in/ a lake." Rhiannon gives an absentminded wave to Tian-shin at the woman’s greeting, recognizing her as the teacher of the History of Revolutions, but isn’t really paying attention until Mina calls out to her. She looks up, slightly startled, and rather reluctantly walks closer. “Um. Yes, I can swim,” she replies in a soft voice with a British accent. The hand not holding her book runs through her pale hair in a nervous habit of a gesture, then motions at her glasses. “But I’m pretty much blind without these, and I don’t want to lose them. Uh, what do you need?” Tian-shin hefts her sword and steps up onto the pier. "I do know how to use it," she replies, smiling, "but /you/ may not without proper training. What /do/ you need it for...in the lake?" She peers down into the dark water cautiously, then glances back at Rhiannon. "I wouldn't /recommend/ it, glasses aside. The air may be warm, but the water is almost certainly frigid." "That's fine," Mina waves a hand as if she could just wave away Rhiannon's concern, bouncing on her toes with excitement as the other girl nears. "We can tie the glasses on so they don't fall off." She looks back down into the water, scowling as Tian-shin shoots down the possibility of SWORD. "Well /yeah/ I'm sure it's cold as ss... as anything! That's why I needed someone else to go in everyone from --" She waves a hand generally AROUND herself. "All of you here have /weird/ ideas about what's warm I figured it'd be fine." She cocks her head, eying the sword again. "Can you give us proper training?" "Mina says there's a monster," Nessie answers Tian-shin promptly, her tail still flicking overhead. "We're trying to figure the best way to... see if it's real." Well, there goes Rhiannon’s last hope of being able to just peacefully read. She chews her lower lip for a moment. “I guess tying them on could work,” she finally concedes. The blonde gazes at Tian-shin with a pleading expression, clearly asking for her to help bail her out of this, then her eyebrows raise at Nessie’s words. “A monster? Rude, I’m right here and very real,” she jokes, although her voice makes it hard to tell whether or not she’s serious until a corner of her mouth lifts in a half-smile. "I can," Tian-shin assures Mina brightly, "but it will take practice and time. You're not going to be ready for underwater combat anytime soon." A small frown touches her delicate brows as she studies the teen. "Probably." Looking between Nessie and Rhiannon, eyes lingering on the scorpion girl's tail, she says hastily, "No one is calling anyone a monster here." Then, with a thoughtful glance at the lake. "/Probably./ I'm sure it's just a fish, or a turtle, or... submerged aquatic vegetation?" She goes to the edge of the pier, where Mina had been flopped before, and goes down on one knee. "What did it look like?" Mina's eyes snap immediately to Nessie, too, at Rhiannon's statement. "/What/, no, we meant... I just saw..." She looks away to the water, her cheeks flushing bright red. "I don't know, /monstery/. Like a big snake thing. Does our lake have monsters? This school is /really/ weird." Nessie just stares at Rhiannon blankly. Her most forward-facing set of eyes blinks slowly; her two other sets of eyes stay wide open and fixed, solid and black and unmoving. Her large barbed tail swishes again, faster and twitchier, as both her sets of arms cross against her chest, her shoulders curled a little inward. She scuttles back a couple steps, sharp feet making quiet taptaps against the stone. "...Right." The word drops and lands with all the inflection of a badly deflated basketball. “I’m sorry…” Rhiannon’s face reddens as she immediately apologizes. This is precisely why…well, it’s at least part of why she usually keeps her mouth shut. Because she says dumb things when she doesn’t. “That was a joke intended to be at my own expense and no one else’s. In hindsight, perhaps not the best one to make.” She runs her hand through her hair again, then looks at Nessie apologetically. Despite all evidence to the contrary, even among people with stranger mutations than her own, she still sees her own as being monstrous, even though she doesn’t see anyone else’s the same way. "No monsters that /I/ know about." Tian-shin sounds reasonably confident on this point, though perhaps having a weapon in hand makes her more cavalier. "But if you're concerned, I can let the administration know. Or some of the science teachers? Someone better versed in wildlife and lake ecology might know what you saw." She glances at Nessie, then at Rhiannon, her expression difficult to interpret. "Look...how about let's move a /bit/ away from potentially cryptid-infested waters and I can show you some moves? I have practice swords in the bag, too." "Okaaay," Mina draws this answer out somewhat skeptically, giving the boathouse a wistful look even as she nominally accedes to Tian-shin's suggestion. "But if one of the science nerds /made/ the monster, they might not admit it right out." The offer of sword lesson perks her right up, though. She crams the remainder of her empanada into her mouth, answering with mouth still full. "Oh I'm so ready! Lessgo!" Nessie's tail slowly ceases its twitching, and she looks away to the water. "S'okay," she mumbles. She starts to stand back up taller at the offer of sword lessons, but checks herself, lowers herself back into a semi-crouch. A small smile creeps its way onto her face. "Really? You'd teach us --" She mimes -- stabbing something, in the air in front of her. "I'd love that." Rhiannon’s eyebrows draw together as she looks between the three others, chewing her lower lip again before offering an awkward smile. “Oh. So…there’s no swimming needed, then?” She sounds a bit relieved about that. Her free hand moves to her face to push her glasses up her nose, as they’ve started slipping down. “You don’t need me?” "No swimming needed." Tian-shin nods firmly. "But yes! I'll teach you." She flips the sword--scabbard and all--deftly around to carry it reversed against the back of her arm. Unnecessary, perhaps, but it /looks/ cool. "No pressure, of course." This is to Rhiannon, with a sympathetic smile. Even so, the tilt of her head inland, toward where she'd left her bag, includes the junior. "C'mon."