OPEN RP POST

[sparklemagpie.livejournal.com]

The sun in shining!

The waves are crashing!
The seagulls are taking your hotdogs like the cocky b*tches they are!



IT'S BEACH PARTY TIME!

There's volleyball, fire pits, surfing and sandcastles!

GO HAVE FUN ON YOUR SHORE LEAVE MEATSHIP DENZIENS! STACY LOVES YOU EXTRA TODAY!

Comments

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

There was no polite response to that, so Motoko just gave her a sardonic look, "It's all the same to me. I don't generally need to drink, if I don't want to."

Of course, Motoko's hair is still wet, and quickly drying. She turns away to watch the light on the water some more, "Diving is just a hobby...half the time I think I only keep it up because it drives Batou insane."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"Lucky." Then she remembers the one person in recent history who didn't need to drink and regrets the word.

"There is an appeal to the depths. Diving, one finds the hidden parts of oneself too."

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

That warrants a more sidelong look at Sheeana, and a soft "Mh." in response. Too close to the truth of why Motoko dives, Fremen, and she's as wary of such insight as you probably are of swimming.

"When you don't have as many tissues to support, you need less materials to support them," She chose to target the other topic, instead.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"But they must be supported in time." That carried with it the implication: You are still bound by the same limitations as the rest of us. Your limits are looser but they are there.

The cyborg could undoubtedly survive blows and blasts that would kill her...but Sheeana wondered if she feared to go to the depths a Reverend Mother plumbed as a matter of course.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

"It's a fact of life that someone like me is always going to need regular, high-level maintenance or risk a fatal breakdown," she quipped, with the air of someone quoting a manual pamphlet, or repeating some bit of advice oft-delivered, "But that's the price of a prosthetic body. You have to give up a lot, just to stay alive."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"I pay a price for my abilities too. Spice does not come cheaply." A beat. She read Motoko's face for...something. She was unsure of what she was looking for. "We are not that different."

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

If poker is a game, then Motoko has raised the 'poker face' to an art form.

"Maybe not," she replied, finally, after a long and terrifyingly still examination. One thing about Motoko's red-eyed scrutiny is that it does not involve blinking, nor breathing, nor anything else but a long, silent stare and a terrible awareness of how soft the human skull can be under titanium fists.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana is not intimidated by you, Major. She was merely annoyed by the difficulty in reading her face. It was an almost BG level of placid. She had an urge to narrow her eyes and stand on her tiptoes to peer up at her.

But she merely matches the look. She can do this all day.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

And Motoko could literally do this all her life, if she felt like it. It takes no effort for her to simply switch off the small servos that control her facial expression, and let it 'get stuck that way,' as mothers always caution. So, she does so, mostly to be a shit about it, than for any real reason.

It's downtime, and she's not obligated to be polite.

But then, this isn't really her poker face, anymore. This is usually how she feels; immobile, robotic, detatched...not human. The windows are the eyes to the soul, but the Major's are plastic and glass. Her lips move, but it doesn't touch her eyes as she speaks, "Spice?"

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Oh no fair! Sheeana is majorly (har!) annoyed at that little trick and she lets it show. "It's almost simpler to describe what Spice can't do than what it can...but to put it simply, it is a substance found only on my homeworld that is the source of many of a Reverend Mother's abilities."

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

"And just what abilities are those?" with a startling efficiency, the little movements that denote life are back. Slight shifts in expression and eye focus, blinking, noticeable breathing, and posture— the staring match is over, isn't it? It's subtle, but unmistakable.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Oh, they're back. Sheeana is unsettlingly reminded of a Face Dancer. She could send a Sister an entirely false message if she wanted.

"Control of all bodily processes down to the cellular chemistry and all muscles, the Weirding Way fighting method, the Voice of Command, sexual imprinting, simulflow and most important of all Other Memory. Then there is the prescience available to one of my Atreides bloodline, but I dare not explore that too closely..." There are places she wishes to keep locked away within herself as well, and with good reason.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

"You realize, I don't know what half of that means," Motoko pointed out with dry sarcasm. Oh, Sheeana, if only you knew how easily the Major jumped from body to body.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana's jumped plenty of bodies herself. Ahem.

"No? Sometimes this Thinking Machine leaves incomplete translations, or unhelpfully literal ones. Other Memory means...Well, I have the complete memory-lives of my female ancestry and every previous Reverend Mother. Each human survives as a fragment of the memory of the species. I can dip that well." Which in the Fremen language denoted something very valuable. One who dipped a well had a sacred job.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

Good for her XD

That brought a little surprise into Motoko's expression, just thinking of the amount of storage space that'd take. The wonders of the human neuron and fractal computing, one supposed. To be able to draw on that experience...

"Must be useful," the murmured accolade as the expression faded.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

She supposed that was the closest she'd get to a compliment from the dry humored cyborg. "Useful? I suppose so. It is a kind of gnosis, but it can be a disturbing one. Our ancestors did terrible things to survive, else they would not have survived long enough to become our ancestors. It can be unnerving to know such savagery is in your blood."

She looked out at the water and gave up on trying to calculate how many sietches that could sustain. She would immerse herself in Babylon's gold just for the experience. "Alright, Motoko. I will dive with you."

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

"Savage impulses are the basis for the human experience," she replied, calmly, though she didn't believe it, and quoted, "We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival, isn't that right?"

And who'd invited her? No one, and it was in the Major to deny her without hesitation. It was a solitary experience. But what was more intimately revealing, to allow the dive, or to deny it? A test, then. This would be a test, neither the first, nor the last, among many. Motoko nodded.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Savage impulses? I suppose that was one of the Tyrant's gifts to us. He brought the uncomfortable parts of ourselves to the fore. Some of us took his lessons to heart. Sheeana nodded. "The Tyrant Leto the Second, certainly did..."

"I won't be able to stay down as long as you and I am more buoyant. You will have to...hold me down." She was already walking towards the water.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

Motoko snorted, and after hefting her equipment, followed. A tank of compressed air— just air, not oxygen, and a life vest that could be inflated by said tank. She wasn't sure why they'd been there, but they functioned alright, and that's what mattered.

Teenagers and sex, why was it always the teenager who ended up bringing it up first? Not that she wouldn't, but even worse was the inevitability of the thing. Get over it, Kusanagi.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

It was more than just hormones. Sheeana enjoyed watching the way it shorted out the brains of even the most intellectually buffed.

The water felt as if she were riding a particularly willful worm with no maker hooks. The swaying was sickening and she stumbled until...She let Darwi-within take over.

What did I tell you, little desert mouse? There's no secret to balance. You just have to find the waves. The older woman smirked inside her head.

And I suppose you're happy for the chance to be seachild once again.

...That would not be impossible, no.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

Motoko saw Sheeana's natural posture suddenly straighten and strike out in time with the water's movement. It raised her hackles, like watching someone being hacked...But Sheeana was completely natural, not even a cyberbrain, or visual implants. Was this the 'Other Memory'?

Stepping into the waves was easy, ignoring their push or moving with it, and the water came over her head without much effort. It wasn't the same as proper diving, but it was....similar. Close your eyes and let lungfuls of air buoy you just enough that you didn't feel the weight. Water cut off all sensation but it's own lapping and the rushing sound of your own insides...

...and the whisper of her ghost...

Sheeana's swimming motions above her fanned cool water across Motoko's face, so she reached up and seized the girl's ankle at the extreme of her reach. Hesitating only long enough to give warning, she pulled the girl under without effort. Motoko weighed many times more than what Sheeana could provide in lift, after all.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana had only a moment to slip into the neccesary trance state. Blood flow shut off to the extremities and skin. Heart rate and metabolism suddenly slowed. Only her mind remained fully aware.

Her eyes were level with Motoko but not entirely there or focused on her. She felt the immersion, entering not just the physical depths but the places in herself she had neglected. She was suddenly reminded of when she took the Water of Life...