NAKED MEME

[killsfengshui.livejournal.com]

Suddenly.

You are naked.

All of you. Even you, over there, the already naked guy.

Except for one thing.

You all have fig leaves over your privates. They cannot be removed or destroyed. They are large enough to cover everything. (They might itch a little)

Oh, and even already naked people with no visible privates will have the leaves, either over their naughty bits' actual locations, or just where they should be.

Comments

[kaya-waterwave.livejournal.com]

Good! It's a great attribute so we won;t sit hear feeling awkward.

She laughs. "Of all the people who;s butts I might kick, yours is least likely."

It was good to laugh at this. Better than freaking out.

[morphitudinous]

True. There are more productive things to do with our time, but I'm having trouble thinking of them at the moment.

Meditation, maybe? [Haha, that would be a distraction.]

[kaya-waterwave.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine why. *wry grin*

You wouldn't be distracted by all the nakedness Billy?

[morphitudinous]

[Shaking his head]

I'm only concerned about my own nudity, since I'm unable to see anyone else's. And even that's starting to feel less uncomfortable. I shouldn't worry about something that can't be changed, right?

[Thank goodness it's fairly warm here. Looks like they're getting all-over tans, but it's likely to become sunburn in his case.]

[kaya-waterwave.livejournal.com]

No, not really. I wasn't happy about my own nudity either, but what are supposed to do, not look at each other and be ashamed? It's only sensible we should try and deal.

::notices Billy's reddening complexion:: You don't look like you tan well, Billy. I can hit you with some suntan lotion if you want, I wouldn't want you to burn. I hear its pretty painful.

[morphitudinous]

[Nod. He's clearly not entirely in that 'yeah this is no big deal' place yet, but he's trying to get there.]

Right. And there's no telling how long it will last.

[Blushing, though that may be hard to distinguish from the starting burn.] On my former planet I only began to spend significant amounts of time in the sun in the last two years. I've never weathered its effects well---and it is painful. There are treatments to ease the burn, but only time can heal it completely.

Can you bend the lotion? [Once again, he's selected something random to be curious about.]

[kaya-waterwave.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And suffering isn't exactly my cup of tea right now.

I guess that has to do with people's complexion, right? I mean, I'm from the South Pole, but we still get sun there, and my comlexion makes it really hard to burn anyway.

Can I bend the lotion? If it has water in it. ::Checks, then grins and opens the bottle top, and starts streaming the lotion inside, slowly coating Billy with it.::

Neat!

[morphitudinous]

Right! We've done more than enough of that. It should fill our quota for quite a while.

[Nod] The sun's light contains a type of light wave called ultraviolet radiation. If humans are exposed to too much of it, it damages their bodies and can cause illness. Eventually, that illness kills.

That's why the skin has a pigment called melanin to absorb the UV rays and protect the body. People with darker skin have more melanin, so they don't burn or tan as easily as paler people. That's a good thing---the color change is a sign of damage taking place.

[He laughs as the lotion wraps around him.]

I...sorry, that tickles! [Still laughing as he rubs it in. He can reach everywhere but mid-back.]

[kaya-waterwave.livejournal.com]

"Really?!" Katara made a face. "That's crazy! I didn't know the sun could kill you! Does that mean I could have the illness now, since my skin is fairly dark?"

She nodded, not using the lotion as if it were tentacles, but with delicate precision: after all, she wasn't one for being lazy about something like that, and even though she was still a little red doing it since it was still a boy (and a fairly good looking one, if you cared about things like that).

But now that it was tickling...well. She'd already done this with Renne, and despite awkwardness, who could resist going very slowly up his back in a tickling fashion.

"You're at my mercy Billy!"

[morphitudinous]

"No, don't worry! The more melanin a person has naturally, the less likely they are to fall ill. It's only a concern if the color changes drastically in a short amount of time from what they were born with. You're very well protected and unlikely to develop the illness."

Too late, he remembered that Katara had been bonding with Renne recently. That was bound to spell trouble. And sure enough, she was following a certain imp's example and tickling without even touching him. He clutched at his stomach and laughed some more, wishing there was something on his back to swat away.

"Oh no, say it isn't so!"
"

[kaya-waterwave.livejournal.com]

"Oh, good. I was worried for a moment: we actually spent a LOT of time in the sun when we gt lost in a desert once. It was a pretty grueling time for all of us.

"It is! Suffer!"

Though she wouldn't do it for long, that was just mean, and she liked Billy enough to not tickle him in the nude. There was NO way of protection there.

[morphitudinous]

"Have mercy!"

Even though she was gentle, it was definitely one of the most intense ticklings he'd ever been subjected to. Nakedness heightened his sensitivity to everything, it seemed.

But he's not angry. The lingering smile should say that much. "You're as bad as Renne, do you know that?"

[kaya-waterwave.livejournal.com]

"Never!"

Well, she would eventually. But this was fun, and having someone at her mercy in this way was pretty cool.

"I learned it from him!" Katara said, giggling. "He's way worse at this than I am...or should I say better?"

[morphitudinous]

"Believe me, I know," he gasped between laughs. "He's been training me in the art of tickling. And as soon as our clothes are back on, you're next!"

As he doesn't want to make her uncomfortable by touching her, he lacks any sort of power to manipulate without his hands, and he can't see well enough to safely tickle with a long blade of grass, he's truly helpless to stop her at the moment.

Not that that's the worst thing in the world. He'll just get odd looks if anyone else is watching.

[kaya-waterwave.livejournal.com]

"We'll see!" Katara exclaimed, sticking her tongue. "You'll have to catch me first Billy!"

But she'll stop here since she has the uppe hand and Bily is too much of a gentleman to counterattack. That would just be mean.

"This would definitely be less awkward if we had a choice in the matter."

[morphitudinous]

"Just you wait!" Billy didn't see her do the same, but he felt compelled to stick out his tongue as well.

Here he took a seat on the grass, finally catching his breath from all that tickling. Smoothing his hands over his skin to make sure the lotion had still been applied in all that chaos, he said: "True, but I can't imagine us choosing this."

Tilting his head, he briefly glanced in her general direction. "Speaking of Renne, he told me something interesting today. His people's clothing changed its opacity based on whether a person was honest. If you couldn't see through their clothes at all, they were lying to you. His people had to see each other as they really were. I just thought it was interesting."

[kaya-waterwave.livejournal.com]

"I will!" Katara said defiantly, grinning.

She shrugged. "Probably not. I mean, I can understand how some people are more comfortable doing something like this, or even flirting, but it still makes me feel weird. My world isn't as relaxed as some others."

She smiled. "There'sd still so much about Renne that I don't know. But he's awfully sweet,and I can sense something about him that makes him different from the people on the ship. It is interesting though. But as a Bene Gesserit, I'm told to look a the way people look and act, their body language. Only really good liars don't give off anything like that."

[morphitudinous]

"Neither is mine," he admitted. "Some of my friends would have been happy to show their stuff to girls they liked, but I've never felt comfortable without plenty of clothing. I wouldn't even swim without a shirt on until I woke up on Stacy."

Billy folded his arms over his chest and nodded. "I'll never master the art of deception, but I'm sure you already knew that. I can't lie to Renne either---in a bonded relationship like ours, there's no room for untruths."

[kaya-waterwave.livejournal.com]

"It's strange, the kinds of things you find out about people when you're in this kind of situation. I was never that extreme about clothing, only because when we were traveling with the Avatar, we never knew when we'd be able bathe, you know. It was pretty much you take what you can get."

She smiled. "That doesn't surprise me. I'm curious though: how did you meet Renne, and from the kind of bond you two have in the first place?"

[morphitudinous]

"It's interesting to note the contrasts. Living the way I did, constantly put down by others without a positive experience for me to latch onto and work toward, I thought that I could never measure up to everyone else's standards. I don't think I've shed that part of myself completely, but I'm striving for that."

Peeking up through his hair, he tried to smile at her. He hadn't thought 'baring all' would go this far.

"We met in the hallways. He was playing pirate with himself, and I was in enough of a whimsical mood to join him. As soon as he realized I was human, though, he backed away in fear. He told me that humans hurt him again and again, almost without exception. I knew I wanted to prove him wrong, so I tried to reach out to him."

"It took a few tries, but eventually he started to see that we weren't all bad. We both knew pain, and we shared that with each other. Soon, we shared joy as well. After a few meetings, he'd sensed that I wasn't about to turn my back on him. That's when he pledged his loyalty to me and we bonded."

Smiling by now, he continued. "We visited each other's soulscapes on that first day, and we retreat there whenever we need to talk in peace with each other. There, he taught me how to transmit emotion back and forth and communicate without speaking."

What would she think of all that? Somehow, his words had kept rolling and rolling until he'd revealed so much.

[kaya-waterwave.livejournal.com]

"I hope you do shed that Billy. I can understand why you would undervalue what you do when you compare it to other people, but the truth is you're pretty special too. You have a good heart, you're kind and you're someone I deeply respect. As far as I'm concerned, the only standards you need to set are the ones that will make you stronger in spirit. The rest will follow, I'm sure of it."

She had not heard this part about Renne, and without warning, she started to tear up. She'd never known Renne had been hurt by humans, that they would ever harm someone like him (not a thing, no way she would ever think of him as a thing again). Her hands clenched, and as Billy got further into the story, she felt her heart start to open a little. This is what she'd been saying about Billy all along. The talk of soulscapes made her remember a friend of hers, but there was no name and face, which meant another Stacy taken memory.

Oh that. Was that what Renne had been trying to teach her before? It might have been.

After the story, there was no stopping Katara from giving Billy a big hug, nakedness be damned.

[morphitudinous]

"One of my best friends used to say that. I believe this means he was correct." It was finally starting to sink in that he was legitimately liked and worth keeping around. Nothing can take his smile away.

During the story, he felt himself starting to slip into the memories of emotion too. How he'd felt his old loneliness come roaring back when he met Renne. The way he'd tried to save another soul from that shadow. The results he never expected. So although Katara usually had a cool grip on her emotions, the response he heard didn't entirely surprise him.

What did surprise him was when he saw her move and felt her press against him. Without a thought he reciprocated the hug tightly enough to be secure but not squeezing and suffocating, resting his broad hands on Katars's upper back. He was made very aware of their nakedness, but being there for a friend mattered much more.

"Ka---Katara, he's okay now. So am I."

Sure didn't stop his cheeks from flaming, though.

[kaya-waterwave.livejournal.com]

She smiled through her tears, making sure to wipe them fairly well. She should have realized being so impromptu was going to make Billy feel more awkward, but right now it didn't really matter that much to her. Truthfully, she had seen a lot of cruelty in her world, and even some here from all of the monsters they'd fought: it was good to know there were people like Billy who could still try to change the face of the world, opening their arms and letting someone in that needed them.

"I know you are, and I know now that Renne is too. It just...it really means a lot to me when I see someone like you trying to do what others should do, what I've tried to do whenever I could. I never got to know Renne as intimately as you had months earlier, but I can't imagine not having met him now. The idea of him suffering alone makes me sad, but knowing you were there just capitalizes what I've been saying about you to begin with. I just hope you never forget that."

She smiled, and released the hug. "Uh, sorry about doing that. I know that must have been pretty startling!"

[morphitudinous]

Honestly, it became less awkward as the seconds passed. She was one of Billy's dear friends, and he'd never be repulsed by her. Actually, he felt so warm and happy that something started to rise up inside him---no not that, but a demonstration of one of Renne's powers that he now shared.

"There's still time to get to know him better, and he already likes you. I'm not the only proof he has that humans aren't all enemies. You're one of the people I trust most to show him that---heck, sometimes you still show me that."

When they broke apart, she'd notice that despite the blush he finally seemed comfortable in his own skin. The tension had finally broken, and the warmth inside was overflowing so much that he needed to draw some out. She would notice his hands cup.

"It definitely was, but you don't need to apologize. I think I needed it too." Just then, light started to flow from his body and into his cupped hands, where it twisted into a ball. Soon, it was strong enough for him to extend his hands and offer it to her.

"This is solidified joy. I can use it to comfort people or heal minor injuries, but I'm still new at healing.."

[kaya-waterwave.livejournal.com]

She would have gladly told Billy that he was becoming someone that starting to bring her the exact same kind of feelings. She not only respected his intelligence and good nature, she was always willing to him a self confidence boost when he needed it. Katara was never one to shy from her friends, especially if they were feeling particularly bad about a situation. With Billy, it just came naturally.

"I like him too: he might be hard to understand, but I think it had more to do with how he looks at things and less about how he speaks. But I would never try to hurt him, how could anyone?"

As for showing Billy the better parts of himself, she just smiled. "You already have all of those great qualities I love in a person Billy, you just need to be reminded. It makes sense that someone like Renne would see it first, and that you'd form that bond with him."

Now, solidified joy? That was something very unexpected. One would think, with all of the magic that Katara had been exposed to by other people on the ship that it would not have surprised her, but it did. She gazed at it in wonder.

"I'm kind of a pro at healing, but never like this. It's beautiful."