[Open] Beat The Heat

[doubled_speed]

WHO: Tommy Shepherd, You
WHERE: Temba Fountain, Beach
WHAT: Tommy's Gone Nocturnal Creature
WHEN: Mid July
WARNINGS: None (Unless you count Tommy replicating a Super Soaker)

I. Don't Play In The Fountain | Temba Fountain
Midday. The hottest part of a stupidly hot summer. Sometimes it was just important to cool off. And given Tommy's been working hard all day in the greenhouse and diner, he needed a method to cool off so desperately.

Maybe there was somewhere else he could go, something else he could do. But damn, that fountain had been looking good each time he walked between the greenhouse and the diner. Until finally Tommy couldn't help it.

Which was why he was currently floating in the fountain, eyes closed, trying to keep his stupid body's accelerated metabolism and thus body temperature a bit lower in the hottest part of the day.

II. Stars Over Sands | The Beach
Night. The coolest time of the day, and probably the quietest. Which of course meant it was a time that Tommy absolutely got into his own damn head. There was problems that came from being a guy who only needed four hours of sleep on a world with a thirty hour day. So he had to take up some new hobby to handle the nights when he really wasn't able to sleep.

And there was something that was making going 'home' harder to do. So here he was, stretched out on a towel on the beach, just beyond the high tide line. His eyes were raised toward the stars, watching them. He doesn't even move when he hears the slide of sand that might mean someone approaching.

"Can't sleep?" he asks, his voice soft. Maybe he accidentally asks it of a lobster. But if he does, who could ever know?

III. Water Ambush! | Around Temba
Usually replicator rations should be used rationally in Tommy's opinion. Usually he used his own for getting food products for the diner. But for right now Tommy needed something for fun. Which was why people might come around corners and find themselves suddenly getting sprayed from an orange and green super soaker. And there was Tommy too, grinning and laughing.

The good news was that Tommy's speed meant that he could read things easily when someone came around a corner. In what would be a second or two for another person he had hours to experience, which meant he could come around a corner, make sure the person wasn't carrying something that would be ruined with the spray of cold water, and so his targets weren't going to have that to complain about.

Complain in general, though, that's possible. He even grins and winks after squirting someone.

"You're welcome for cooling you down."

IV. Frustration | Pink 10
The best way to deal with frustration, in Tommy's opinion, was toying with powers he doesn't trot out as often. Running was supposed to be freeing, comforting. But fuck it was too hot, especially at night, to be dealing with that too much. So instead, in the hotter parts of the day when he's got nothing better to do, he sits back under an umbrella he's rigged up from some massive cup leaves and toys with explosions. Given no one lived near this area or passed through as much, Tommy didn't see the danger.

So here he was, every now and then rushing into the mess of the ruins of this area, piling up bits of rocks and other things into structures, and then he would return to his shade. From there, well, he raised a hand lazily toward the construction, focused, and soon there was a loud noise as things blew apart in small scale explosions or crumbled apart, depending on the material.

Until, of course, he heard someone approaching.

"I can't really keep it down," he says without looking for whoever's arriving, "if that's what you're after. Explosions are noisy."

Comments

[fatedsacrifice]

"If you say so." Noctis replied. "But if you say you're okay then I'll take you at your word."

He heard that sigh and he wasn't going to ask because it wasn't his business. So he just looked back up at the sky.

[doubled_speed]

Tommy knows that he's not okay. But how do you explain that you're still broken up over the repeated encounters with losing people?

"Hey... Do you regret being here?"

[fatedsacrifice]

His dark blue eyes stared heavenward for a few minutes, attempting to find patterns of familiar constellations or something along those lines.

But he looked at Tommy when that question was asked. And it was an interesting one so he answered as best he could.

"No. That answer might've been different if it hadn't been for the friends I've made here and Gladio showing up definitely changed things."

The arrival of the Shield had changed a lot of things along with Noct's mindset on long term things. He just had no idea if Gladio would say yes eventually.

Trying to get his mind off of that particular conundrum, the king looked back at the other. "Do you regret being here?"

[doubled_speed]

Actually, just a little bit. Enough that in this moment...

"Not asking for me," he says after a long moment. "I have some friends who... They can't go back. And I just wondered if people regret this place? What it makes of us."

[fatedsacrifice]

"Of course." Noctis replied almost reflexively. But he still listened and shook his head. "What it makes of us is up to us, or at least that's my theory. This place can be a second chance for people to fix wrongs, or at least contemplate them. Maybe they'll never have a way to go back and redo something."

He shrugged after sighing. "I don't know if we'll remember this place or not when we leave it but I'd really like to think so."

[doubled_speed]

To fix wrongs, huh? That was what Tommy wanted to help that Hargrove guy with. But the dude was stubborn as fuck, as his face testified to already.

"I didn't. When I was home for a few years. But it was also only a few days."

So what do you do with that?"

[fatedsacrifice]

That information confused Noct. "So you're talking about leaving here and coming back? And the time to you was years but it was days here?"

He wanted to make sure that he was understanding this correctly. If that was the case, this place was even more weird than he thought it was.

[doubled_speed]

"Yep," Tommy confirms with a nod. He sits up fully and tucks his legs under himself. "It was like this place didn't exist. And then I was back and I remembered all of it. Maybe going home was a dream. maybe being here is."

It's hard to tell. And he wouldn't admit it to many people. Noctipus was one of the few.

[fatedsacrifice]

Noct shook his head. "That's almost dizzying to think about." And really he could loop that in his mind and just get stuck there for hours.

So he was quiet for a minute but had to ask.

"You still wanna go home, right?"

[doubled_speed]

"Stupidly dizzying," Tommy says. "Which leads to wondering if we're real. If this place is real. If home is real."

He doesn't even know at this point. Though he just lets himself sigh as he pulls his legs up against his chest.

"I think I do. But not while other people are trapped here."

[fatedsacrifice]

Noct shook his head. "That almost sounds like philosophical questions. To decide if something or someone is real or not's prolly been questioned forever." And it reminded him of his high school days which thinking of them now made them feel and seem so damn distant.

The last part had him look over at Tommy, who seemed to be curling up against himself and he smiled. "That's a pretty noble cause, I like it."

[doubled_speed]

"I hate philosophy," Tommy says with a sigh. So that's not really going to help very much. Not in his books.

"Hardly noble. It's my job."

[fatedsacrifice]

Noct turned to Tommy briefly when he heard the declaration about hating philosophy and smiled. But then he heard the last part and just shook his head, and the smile that had been on his face before was fading as he turned away.

"That's one way to look at it."

[doubled_speed]

"I think the reason no one bothered to send me to juvie again was because I was actually doing heroic work."

[fatedsacrifice]

That comment had the king smiled. "Sounds like you started on that path long before you got here then."

He then nodded slightly thinking about that. "It's not a bad gig, saving or helping people."

[doubled_speed]

Yeah, long before. Hard to think of just how long. But he didn't regret what he did at home.

"You familiar with it, Fisherboy?"

[fatedsacrifice]

Noctis laughed at the fisherboy name although he wondered what happened to Noctipus. "We used to help people all the time, from gardening to hunts for creatures to finding frogs to all sorts of things."

[doubled_speed]

Listen, sometimes you have to trade things out to keep them fresh.

"Gardening? Really? You didn't seem the sort I guess."

[fatedsacrifice]

Noctis had to laugh and he blushed a little. "Not cut out for it long term or anything. We did favours for people all the time and gardening just happened to be one of them."

[doubled_speed]

Tommy's grinning.

"What other sorts of favors did you guys do?"

[fatedsacrifice]

The king shook his head. "Well we did this one favour that never seemed to end. Hunters in our world were killed and we tried to retrieve their tags to turn into their family. But we also took pictures for people, we did hunts for monsters, but we turned those in for money."

[doubled_speed]

Huh. That's a whole thing to do.

"Sounds like a really fucked up world, man."

[fatedsacrifice]

He tried a smile. "That's the way it is there. I'm sure things aren't all rainbows in your world, right?"

[doubled_speed]

"Only Pride Parades," Tommy laughs, though he's a bit torn up there. "I haven' tbeen to one in a while.

[fatedsacrifice]

Noctis half smiled. "I highly doubt they'd have those here. But if they did, I'd go."