trans_9 | Cascade [Open party time!]

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Cascade [Open party time!]

Billy had just launched another portal in that maze of mazes, exhaustion setting in. Surely this time he would land on another moving platform of death?

Nope, just the exterior of the finished bathhouses. All polished, systems running, and just about ready to open! Given how sore and exhausted he was, that sounded like an excellent idea at the moment.

With a quick message to the rest of the crew, he set out the 'Open' sign for the first time and took advantage of his owner status---the prime waterfall spot could be his!

((ooc: The bathhouses are now open! Feel free to mingle around, relax, and have a party. Or cause trouble, but that might invite more trouble. Just start a subthread with your character's location and have fun. For reference there are individual showers in front, followed by hot tubs centrally located, saunas further back, and private baths along the side. The showers, tubs, and saunas have smaller sex-segregated units along with a central group unit that's larger.))

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"Is it possible not to notice?" Hiccup asked incredulously. "Isn't that one of the fundamental qualities of girl-ness?"

He sat up a little in the water.

"To be fair, back home, it was always looked at as an advantage. Women are crazy. So, female warriors? Extra crazy. Where do they direct all that crazy? At the enemy. When you see a female Viking warrior take down a full-grown dragon with one hand--while using the other hand to take down a full-grown dragon, it means the craziness is a very, very good thing. Mostly, Viking guys just admire their total lack of sanity...whiiile trying not to get in the way of it. Admire from a distance."

Edited 2011-01-13 07:44 (UTC)

"Only all the time."

A rag-on-girls fest started out sounding like a good idea, and normally Hiccup's pretty funny, but once he gets past "crazy" as a generality . . . once he starts expound on the virtues of crazy women, how admirable and attractive they are . . . all Zuko can think of is the two sides of his sister - collected, calm, plotting murder - writhing and howling like an animal, fire streaming uncontrolled from her screaming mouth -

Now he just feels a little bit sick.

"Shut up, Hiccup. You don't know what you're talking about."

Zuko hasn't moved from his half-submerged recline, but there is absolutely iron behind his very quiet words.

Okay, maybe this is a bad thing to ask, but Sokka needs bro-advice. And Zuko is the only other guy he knows with a sister. Admittedly, his relationship with said sister isn't exactly like the one he has with Katara.

"How do you deal with crazy girls? Especially related to you? Katara's just, like, gone nuts since we got here." He pauses, staring at the surface of the water.

"She's going out with that Matt guy and. Yeah. I dunno." Another pause.

"Girls are just crazy. I don't know. I wish Suki was here, because she's not crazy."

Hiccup just snorted in response to Zuko. Like hell he didn't know from crazy women. There wasn't a Viking female that wasn't at least a little nuts.

"That one I can't really help you with. I don't have any siblings."

And it was probably better that way. With his luck, they would've turned out muscular and competent and thought he was lame, and it would have taken his lame-ness to whole new levels, just in comparison.

Propping his automail leg up on the ledge where he was sitting, he started to rub what was left of his calf. That was why he was in here after all.

"What's wrong with dating some guy? And if it's a bad choice, wouldn't that be less crazy and more...stupid?"

At that, Zuko did look up.

"She's dating someone other than Aang?"

Hiccup, if Zuko is engaging in relationship gossip, it's probably kind of a big deal.

"Yeah. Yeah. I don't get it either. She was all 'I just wanna be happy' and of course that I 'wouldn't understand.' I don't need to understand much of anything, but she's freakin' ditching Aang for this guy and I don't know why. It's not like dead. Ugh." He rubs at his face then glances over at Hiccup.

"Okay. Aang is basically my surrogate little bro. We've been traveling with him for years. Last time I checked, they were pretty much head over heels for each other and we know--we know--he's in the pods. So. I don't get why she's not just waiting for him..."

A pause.

"Oh, yeah. He's also the Avatar responsible for maintaining elemental balance on our world."

Hiccup thought about it, remembering a face he'd seen associated with the rest of these guys.

"Bald kid in the robes?" he asked. "Really, really--and I mean, like, really--nice and polite?"

A pause.

"Didn't he do some weird thing before I showed up with something bad that was on the ship and help everybody somehow?"

He'd just heard talk and things. He needed deets.

"Aang's job is to be the ambassador between the spirit world and the real world of the Four Nations, handling mystical and political imbalances between the elements. If you want to know about weird stuff he's done, you're going to have to be more specific."

Yeah, it's like that.

"I don't get it. Politically, that's a good match." Girls care about that stuff, right?

. . . he was raised to think this way. Okay? Okay. He's just lucky his very favorite person in the whole world who is the best girlfriend ever was born to nobility.

"They were a good match, like, in every way. I thought. And she was so broken up about him being put back in the pods..." Girls are crazy, crazy, crazy.

"And he was holding back the Nightmare King for spirits know how long while everyone else was running around the ship with their heads cut off. I was there when we broke him out and sealed up that bastard for good." He shivered, despite the warm water as a chill ran through him and an ache ran down his limbs, just the thought of that incident causing the aches and pains of that injury that ran down into his very soul to flare up.

"It's a long story."

"So, okay, let me get this straight. There is this guy you've known for years now, really nice guy, that your sister was dating. They seemed to be crazy about each other. Good political match (not that it really matters, but hey, perk). The guy had to do some crazy, crazy spirit imbalance stuff to help save the crew--which, let's face it, probably messed him up so that's why he may have had to go back to sleep. He goes to back to sleep, which might not be forever given that hey, you're back, right? Apparently repodded people get unpodded again after enough time. And...how long did it take your sister to snag another guy?"

Zuko guesses that does pretty much sum it up. Good on the uptake, student.

"I don't know. I just woke up and found out about it. But we've been gone a few months, so who knows...?" He slumps lower in the water, shrugging.

"...Maybe she just never really liked him?" Hiccup suggested. "If he liked her a whole lot, maybe she just went along with it? Now that he's out of the picture..."

A pause, as he looked like he was going to say something, but didn't.

"It's not necessarily crazy. Sometimes girls...don't seem to know what they want. Maybe she figured it out."

"She once threatened to kill me if I so much as looked at him wrong."

This is only the slightest of exaggerations.

"And she cried pretty hard when my sister almost killed him. And nearly drowned a whole bunch of soldiers."

"Yeah. She's pretty into him, so I'm really confused now." He sighs and rubs at his face again.

"Girls. Are. Crazy."

"Can't argue that," Hiccup said, still rubbing his leg. "Then again, the only girls I know that are my age in the village are Astrid and Ruffnut. But they do fit the bill."

A pause, and then he shot at Zuko, "...AndIstillthinkcrazygirlsaregreat."

Srsly, he does know what he's talking about.

"Although it depends on the type of crazy. Berk girls are--it's less completely irrational and fickle--like your sister sounds like--" He directed at Sokka "--and more like incredibly impulsive with a twist of physically-violent-but-it's-a-sign-of-affection-really. They know what they want, they just like to string you along and confuse you until you figure it out. It sounds more like your sister just...can't make up her mind. Fickle crazy isn't fun crazy."

A pause. "But there's nothing you can really do about it. She has to make her own choices--and deal with her own mistakes."

Is this going to become a thing? Because if so Zuko wants to nip it in the bud right now.

"None of your women are crazy. You've never met a person who was actually insane. You think what you're saying is special or cool or something, but it's not. There's nothing about insanity that's fun. Whatever it is your women are, pick a new word for it."

"What your women are is skilled. Like Suki. Ah, Suki..." Sokka gets a bit dreamy eyed and leans forward, chin in hand for a moment before he returns to the subject at hand.

"That's the thing, Katara isn't usually like this. It's just since...since we came here. Maybe being here is having a bigger effect on her than I thought?"

"Let's see, in my case, I came here, found out my world was gone, nearly got killed by space-bug-monstrosities, had my dad show up and not remember the thing that made him proud of me, nearly got killed by other space-bug-monstrosities, had my dad get repodded again, and got duped into thinking I was some really sad guy whose idea of a good time was sitting all day in his room painting miniature dragons rather than talking to actual people, among other things."

That wasn't even all of it, either. "I think there isn't a person on this ship that can say they haven't been changed by it. Maybe it's getting to her."

After a pause, a thought suddenly came to him and he turned to Zuko, snapping his fingers.

"Berk girls are--they're...deranged? Does that work?"

The huge irony here was that the words he was choosing and the words Zuko were hearing were totally different words in two different languages, thanks to the translation. (Hey, did you ever think of that, Zuko? Maybe the Norse equivalent of "crazy" has a broader meaning in Norse, ever think of that?)

Edited 2011-01-17 07:12 (UTC)

Yeah, linguistic consideration is nice, but all Zuko keeps seeing is the sister he thought would never break, turning into a weeping, screaming mess that he never expected to see, because of him. And it makes him feel pity he never expected - or wanted - to feel for her.

None of this puts him in a very reasonable mood.

"Look, just - drop it." He slides down into the water, sighing angrily, but wearily this time. He does not want to be thinking about this. Out of all the things he doesn't want to be thinking about, Azula is at the top of the list. "You don't want to go down this road with me. Trust me. You don't."

Deep down, he knows he doesn't want to punch his student in the face, but at the moment, it's becoming a compelling image.

"Katara's got every right to change as a person, but just giving up on Aang that quickly -"

She'd threatened to kill him! Seriously!

"You know her better than I do. If she HAS gone crazy, at least she's not -"

Not crazy like my sister. He doesn't finish the thought.

"Yeah. I mean. I dunno. She needs to do what's good for her, but the thing is I dunno if it will be good for her." He rubs the back of his neck, sighing.

"I wish I'd been around. Maybe I could have done...something."

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