trans_9 | Reunion

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Reunion

Why hadn't they done this before?

Last poddrop would have been much more tolerable parading around pretending to be pirates than just waiting for people to appear and guide them around the ship. Besides, there was a pretty good crew now, of course they wouldn't need a Wunderkind or and Overlord's help to do that all the time! They could introduce themselves in the coms later if they felt like it and leave all this free time that barely anyone used for the sensoriums. It wasn't like anyone they knew would wake up anyway...

As they had planned, they had spent the last hour with Pram outside to keep guard, not knowing what she'd been doing, engaged in a pirate battle. There was a huge ocean spanning as far as the eye could see, with two large pirate boats stuck in the middle, swaying around with each large wave. Both ships had taken damage, and Lash's deck had a few holes on it, but were still standing. Each one had sails with the colors of their occupant's; Lash's was a dark purple, her flag sporting Black Hole's symbol, with a metal figurehead of Flak as her bow. Zetta's sails were in dark red and black, a live buzzsaw as his figurehead, his pirate symbol (pirate and crossbones with flaming hair on top) flew as the highest flag on the ship . Rows of cannons waited below for her word as the Netherworld's hell-penguins struggled to keep up with her crazy demands of firing every few minutes. Sometimes she would violently take a Prinny and shove it into a new cannonball hole that had appeared to stop the water.

Dressed in what could never pass for proper pirate attire, Lash raised her cutlass, as she held on to the nearby rope, pointing her sword at the other ship before lowering it.

"Fire!"

Another row of cannonballs flew into the sky, accompanied with a prinny or two into the water to attack the ship below. Most of it was falling short of her target's ship, but causing large splashes of water to get sent to the other side. Lash was taunting him, really. The Wunderkind had never done a traditional ship battle, but her crew of Prinnies we getting ordered around like no one's business as she probably abused fake pirate words that would make Drake get angry with her.

"Arrr! Don't want t' give up yet? Next time I won't miss and you're ship will sinking into t' ocean! I'll be releasing my secret weapon!"

Terrible abuse.

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She gave the ship a weird look before sighing. Rubbing the back of her neck, she looked around before answering. "I dunno," she admitted. "I mean wait, no don't get me wrong. I'm really happy to know someone else from my world is still alive and it's Hawke of all people. I just uhhh...."

Plopping down next to him on the beach, she took a couple of rocks in her hands and she idly tossed the smoothest and flat one, as it bounced off twice the water.

"It feels really weird to have him show up just exactly the time I decided to skip over the whole thing and made my peace with the fact everyone from my world might be gone, you know? He hasn't changed a bit either. Same old Hawke..." She tossed another rock again. "So I wouldn't say happy more than...confused." And that was being remarkably honest, as far as Lash was involved.

"Well, the cosmos has a sick sense of humor, Lash. You can trust the talking book stuck on a ship of meat on that one."

He snapped his wrist. The rock he flung nearly intercepted hers, shattering it into powder, then skipped on for the horizon.

"Kinda surprised you ever made it back in here," he said. Really quietly. Maybe he didn't say it. Shut up. You never heard it.

"Hey!" she protested as the dust of her rock settled over the ocean, slowly floating away. She threw another stone to stop his, but Zetta's was already out of the horizon and hers simply landed in the water with an unceremonious sound of PLOP and sank like...well...a rock.

She appeared to be surprised at his last comment, regardless.

"Why wouldn't I?" she replied, scratching the back of her head. "I said I'd come back, right?" Remarkably, Lash was also a woman of her world. The type that challenged her foes and said she'd leave if they'd won. The type that got angry when people invaded her base just to lower her armies and then leave before she could attack.

The next stone fared much better in the water and managed to make it skip twice before sinking.

"...this is pretty boring," she added. She couldn't imagine doing it more for a few minutes without the urge to pull out her hair.

"Of course it's boring! What the hell did you think would happen when you took off, that I'd just keep pirating around without you?!"

Hell, there weren't even any Prinnies left in this little simulation. Just the two ships, debris on the water, and the two of them.

"Well admittedly, I didn't think you'd stick around here for that long," she replied, throwing another stone. "I thought you might just go off in the castle and do something more exciting..."

The entire day was just completely confusing, she kept repeating to herself.

"But I guess pirating along would be pretty boring..."

Zetta threw another stone as well, watching it zip out of sight in silence.

"You said you'd come back," he finally muttered, long after it had vanished over the horizon.

~~"And you actually believed me?"~~

"Y-yeah but I didn't think you'd wait..that long..." Would Lash have waited that long? It is a mystery (the answer was yes and complained loudly about it) "Well I'm here now?..." Man how did she even answer that one without feeling a tiny bits of guilt. What else could she have done?

Another stone landed in the water, just sinking. Her face morphed from confusion into anger. Finally, an outlet. "NRRRGHARG! Okay that's enough!" She threw the rest of the stones in the water. "I've had it with these stupid stones in this stupid beach! Let's do something else instead of just just...sitting here and throwing rocks! Like...anything BUT throwing rocks!" She had been winning a battle a few hours ago too.

She had not! He had been winning!

And imagine how much complaining Zetta had been doing for a while after Lash had left. Those Prinnies had wished he'd just beat them up instead of ranting at them for so long. (Of course, in the end, both had happened.)

"Well the pirate thing is kind of out. The mood's shot." Lash, if you accused him of trying to get out of an inevitable defeat...

"Yeah I guess that's out. The boats won't be able to float properly anyway." The anger disappeared again and she just pouted, not even realizing they could just make the boats okay again. Man, after feeling all sorts of strange from being around Hawke, she was at a loss of what to do here. Heck she felt she had been on automatic half of the time with him, and even then, she hadn't told him everything.

"Videogames?" At least if they were going to sit, they might as well sit in front of a giant screen TV and punch buttons.

Although...something did ring in her mind and despite being unsure what would happen, she asked it anyway.

"What did you think of Hawke anyway?"

Zetta tried to contain himself and be tactful and diplomatic. This didn't last long at all, unsurprisingly.

"I don't GET it!" he said. "The way you've talked about him, he's some amazing great guy, but the way he was acting it looked like he'd probably hurt himself before he managed to crack a smile! And for some crazy reason I always kind of thought you didn't like hanging around people who weren't FUN!"

She was silent for a few seconds, letting this sink in and then...smiled a little?

"Hawke's always been like that," Lash replied. "And you're right! I don't like to hang around people who aren't fun. Hawke is his...own sort of fun." She shrugged. "I guess in his own way he was fun." In other words, boring to everyone but her. "I think that's why he was feared so much across Wars World. You know, the unsmiling, quiet types that you barely give them credit for being there and then suddenly they've taken over your hometown?"I'm pretty sure I can count the times he's smiled with one hand. I guess that's why it was easy to get along with him."

THAT MADE NO SENSE AT ALL.

"That makes no sense at all!" Zetta turned to look at her with a look of confusion that was almost comical. "I mean -- look at ME, for Magog's sake! He's like the complete OPPOSITE of me!"

Maybe that got a little closer to the issue than Zetta really intended.

"Well yeah! You two are complete opposites!" she repeated, even more confused that he was confused and it was double confusion that it got that reaction out of him. Unless...nah he could be jealous. That would be silly.

"...Why does that confuse you?"

"If I'm awesome and badass, he would be the OPPOSITE of those things!" Not perhaps the best thing to call Lash's boss... "I mean, he wouldn't launch Prinnies at flying creatures! Or engage you in a pirate battle! Or -- anything fun!"

Because Lash and Zetta did a couple of other things together that the Overlord did not want to even HINT at the possibility of Lash doing with Hawke.

"Hey hey he just does things differently," she pouted, not too happy at the implications that Hawke might suck according to Zetta. "Maybe not anything too fun but uh..he did save my life once," she offered. "And after Jake talked to him, he did come back to the celebratory party. Then again Jake's the type of guy who can get anyone to join a party so..." wow, talk about being off tangent. And thankfully nothing of the sort even passed in her mind. Apart from...

"I've worked with him since I was a kid. You don't think we..." That, of course, let her back to her sneaking suspicion of, "You weren't jealous of Hawke, were you?"

What a way to learn about all the emotional spectrum. No wonder Black Hole hated them.

"Why the hell would I be jealous?!" Zetta demanded. "I'm Zetta! The most badass freaking Overlord in the cosmos! And MORE importantly, as far as you're concerned, I approve of self-destruct mechanisms on my machinery! And none of those things are things HE can say!"

So, yes.

Lash just stared at him like she finally understood part of a universal equation that she had never even realized was there before. Frankly it almost scared her.

Not to mention the fact she could see past Zetta's talk like an open boo--okay too literal in this case.

"Well exactly. Which is why I don't get why you'd be jealous of him."

"Which is why I'm NOT!" Zetta said. "I'm -- I'm pissed off that he interrupted! That's all!"

Zetta, as usual, couldn't let himself acknowledge anything remotely emotional, so now it was his turn not to make any sense.

She recalled that time they had fought during the videogame stuff for some reason. And then the flaring up when he met Hawke... She had a feeling bringing those up would be more like teasing at this point so...

Of course she did.

"Okay then, Overlord. Why'd you suddenly flare up when I presented Hawke to you? You wanted to make sure he knew you had hair on fire and had good posture, right?"

To be fair, however, ALL Lash was seeing in this was Zetta being jealous of Hawke and not the rest of the emotions attached to it involving her. She knew Hawke was pretty good, but as far as making an Overlord jealous? That took the cake.

"I can't see why you'd be anyway. You said it yourself, right? The most badass freaking Overlord in the cosmos!"

"Exactly! You know that and I know that but HE didn't know that, right? I had to put my game face on!" But for whose benefit? Hawke's, or Lash's? "He -- he sounds like the kind of guy who always thinks he's the top of the heap, even if he doesn't make a big deal out of it. Well, now he knows he's not!"

Well, he'd gotten part of Hawke's character right, in any case. But this was still too funny to her.

"If you think flaming hair is going to intimidate him, you've got another thing coming, tee hee! You may have to up your game a little!" Okay now she was just teasing him.

"I'll kick his ass if I have to!" Zetta said a little too loudly, slamming one fist into the opposite palm. The teasing wasn't exactly what was getting him worked up, of course. Damn it, Lash, stop thinking of Hawke as anything awesome now that you had ZETTA in your life!

"A match between the both of you would be reaaally interesting," Lash said. "He fights quite differently than me. But well, can't just get him in a battle the day he comes back, right? Even if we're both from War's World, Birdy's got a lot of things to learn first. Not that I expect that it will take much time anyway."

Okay enough teasing him, she fell into the beach and stared at the sky. Didn't take too long for her to get bored at that too, but she was quiet for a few minutes.

"I think we can both agree that today was pretty weird. Or whatever counts as a day anyway."

"Really interesting if you like seeing him lose!" You better like seeing him lose, Lash. You better like seeing Zetta win!

He stood up, then, taking a couple of steps into the surf. The power swirling around his legs churned up currents that rippled outwards, cutting odd swaths through the curling waves.

"Yeah. Weird day. Damn shame, too. That pirate thing was fun."

Keep thinking that to yourself Zetta.

She didn't move from her position but grinned.

"Yeah! Especially since I was winning too." Yeah she had totally gone there. Totally. "Well it's not like we can't do that another day anyway. Maybe next time we'd better do it on a day that isn't pod openings, right? After all, who knows who might appear next. For all we know, Micky could have appeared, tee hee hee!"

Reunion

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