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Post by angelofmusic1992 on Sept 18, 2023 23:40:58 GMT
Spike finally saw Zelda relax and drop her guard a bit. For once, she didn't feel like a total stick in the mud. He liked to think he was responsible for that, although Dorothea certainly helped.
"Hey, who wants to start a diving contest?" someone called, pointing towards the nearby pier that jutted out towards the water. There was a huge cheer as teenagers dashed over, ready to either pull off a really cool dive or pathetically belly-flop into embarassment.
"Spike, you gotta get in on this!" a boy encouraged.
"No way Jose, I'm not ruining this good outfit," Spike argued as he grabbed another beer. He wasn't about to jump into the water anytime soon.
"Just watch then," the boy replied. "The pier's practically a front row seat."
"Okay, okay," Spike replied. Standing on the pier was probably fine. What was the worst that could happen? "Want to watch these guys? It's sure to be hilarious," he said to Dorothea and Zelda.
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Post by zuyuri on Sept 20, 2023 21:47:05 GMT
“Just do long as they don’t try to turn this into a ‘wet T-shirt contest of all genders,” Dorothea scoffed. There was a reason she wore a swimsuit, and it wasn’t involving diving off of piers. The guys that were turning the pier into a diving board looked not exactly in the right mindset. Though, she had to admit, watching people dive off the pier with front row seats would be fun to watch.
Even though Zelda was beginning to loosen up, she hadn’t lost all logic. Jumping from piers was not something she planned on doing any time soon. Watching it, like Spike and Dorothea were doing, was better than shying away lest she wind up with the wrong crowd. She followed them quietly, looking at the view from the pier.
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Post by angelofmusic1992 on Sept 25, 2023 23:03:08 GMT
Dorothea and Zelda seemed to content to watch with Spike for a moment. One of the boys was already at the edge of the pier as his buddies cheered him on.
"Do a flip!" Spike called.
The boy certainly tried, but he ended up doing a belly flop instead, earning a resounding "Oooooo," from the crowd with lots of wincing.
"He's gonna feel that tomorrow," Spike laughed, chugging more of his drink.
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Post by zuyuri on Sept 26, 2023 18:14:12 GMT
Both younger women winced in tandem with the flippers’ buddies as the sound of body hitting water echoed. On the one hand, the flip was the impressive. On the other hand, the sound meant something more than pride would be stinging.
“How red will his stomach be?” Dorothea asked. “I’ve seen some really nasty skids from the theatre stunts people pull.”
“Do any of them involve water?” Zelda asked.
Dorothea cracked open another spiked water. The light scent of raspberry laced with a twinkle of alcohol met her nose. “I mean, unless you’re a pop star or a circus act, no.”
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Post by angelofmusic1992 on Sept 30, 2023 20:40:36 GMT
"You'll have to tell me about those sometime, sounds like a riot," Spike said to Dorothea. He wasn't the biggest fan of musical theater, but he knew a lot of special effects and stunts went into some of them, and that always meant something could go wrong. Lucky for the next diver though, a girl who seemed pretty confident about jumping in, executed a perfect dive, making everyone else cheer enthusiastically.
"Huh, what do you know? We actually have some talent here," Spike joked.
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Post by zuyuri on Oct 4, 2023 19:20:06 GMT
“If I recall correctly, several of your rock bands used similar stunts on stage,” Dorothea mulled thoughtfully. Rock stars always did a lot to make their shows stand the rest of time. Crowd surfing must have been one of those move sets. “At the end of the day, all performers borrow from each other.” She pointed to a second diver. The moveset was elegant and polished, toes pointed and arms out like a candlestick. The splash was big but not as impressive as the show offy ones earlier.
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Post by angelofmusic1992 on Oct 8, 2023 15:37:14 GMT
Spike couldn't argue with that. Rockstars pulled off some crazy stunts on stage sometimes, or did stuff that was just plain weird. Who could forget the time Ozzy Osbourne chomped on a live bat during a performance? However, the conversation was interrupted by two boys nearby who were getting a little rowdy.
"Hey, watch it man!" one of them snapped, looking angry, but also drunk.
"No, you watch it!" the other yelled, giving a shove.
Despite drinking a bit, Spike's powers still managed to kick in and he felt one of the boys falling towards him after he was shoved. He smoothly stepped out of the way as he fell to the ground. Unfortunately, with the boy splayed onto the boardwalk, there wasn't much room for Spike to plant his feet and he found himself teetering on the very edge. He fought to regain his balance, cursing all the while. But gravity won in the end and he fell into the ocean with a loud splash.
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Post by zuyuri on Oct 9, 2023 4:50:02 GMT
“Spike!”
The two women shouted in tandem, one with more concern than the other. One minute, he was sitting next to them. The next, he had been teetering in the edge of the dock. He had never disclosed any sort of information or what his powers were, and as Dorothea ran to where he had fallen, all she saw were ripples and churning waves.
“Zelda, do you have your phone on you?”
The blonde raised her eyebrow as she held it up. She was getting ready to ask about who to dial, when suddenly Dorothea handed Zelda her sarong, hat, and sandals.
“What are you doing?” Zelda asked in surprise.
“Trying to save a friend,” Dorothea murmured determinedly. “What he has on is too heavy, and I don’t know if…” she didn’t finish the thought. Spike had never told her his athletic abilities, and she kicked herself inwardly. “If he or I don’t resurface in about a minute, call 9-1-1.” After making that comment, she held her hands in a candlestick, and swan dove elegantly into the water after Spike.
Zelda just stood on the dock, cradling Dorothea’s belongings, one hand tightly clinging her phone. Call if there wasn’t a sign of life. She could do that. Envy bubbled in her stomach. Spike had been in danger, and she did nothing. Her father had said that everyone, even the worst enemies, deserved respect. She walked to the younger gentleman that had been rudely shoved down. A faint memory of tending to Link, who had gotten in similar feats of show offing, passed by, and Zelda had a path. The pungent smell of cheap beer wafted off of him. The least she could do was help on the dock. His chest was riding and falling, and while his pulse was fast, she could put in drinking as a variable. Good.
“Do you know what day it is?” Zelda asked the half conscious man.
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Post by angelofmusic1992 on Oct 12, 2023 0:27:31 GMT
The moment Spike hit the water, everything inside him seemed to freeze up. Absolute terror had him in a death grip and he couldn't move, couldn't think. His mind completely left the present and was stuck in the past, stuck on the incident that had made him this way in the first place. It overtook everything and all he could do was watch his worst memory play out.
"Get me out of here! Somebody! Help!" The water was coming in so fast and Spike desperately pried at the cave walls, the ceiling, anything that might help him escape. Panic made his breaths come in shallow and it only got worse as the water rose.
"Help!" he cried out again, pulling at the rocks around him until his fingers were raw. The water was up to his neck and he couldn't think. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't-
Spike's survival instincts kicked in and he was pulled back into the present. The tightness in his chest and the burning in his lungs finally unfroze him and brought him into full panic mode. He clawed his way upwards towards the surface, his mind only focused on getting out of this. But terror made his movements clumsy and he was barely aware of Dorothea swimming closer to him.
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Post by zuyuri on Oct 15, 2023 19:05:47 GMT
At first there was nothing but a screen of bubbles as Dorothea dove into the brackish water. After a while, they parted to reveal the brown green water, tinted with just the slightest hint of blue, of a section of ocean usually reserved for shallow swimming. Well, shallow by ocean standards. Dorothea had swim in many an ocean area on her touring days. But no time to reminiscence.
Spike’s form appeared seemingly out of nowhere from the sea fog. As she swam closer, the look in his eyes was distant. He wasn’t anywhere where she could reach him mentally. She curved her body elegantly and wrapped one arm under his sternum, kicking quickly to the surface.
She gasped gif breath as she pulled Spine with her, keeping his head above the water as she got closer to the edge of the pier.
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Post by angelofmusic1992 on Oct 19, 2023 0:03:04 GMT
Dorothea fully registered with Spike when she started pulling him towards the surface, a lot faster than he had been going before in his sheer panic. She got his head above the water, but his body was still operated on fight or flight mode, with everything cranked towards flight. His chest still felt like it was being crushed, the space for his lungs getting smaller and smaller. Finally, he spotted the ladder that lead up to the pier. Dorothea completely left his mind and he shot away from her, gripping the ladder and scrambling like a squirrel trying to escape a rabid dog. Once he was fully out of the water and back on solid ground, or wood in this case, his adrenaline finally started to die down and his breaths came in slower. The world around him came into focus and he realized that everyone was staring at him. They'd never seen Spike, who was always so calm, cool, and collected, react like that before. He could feel the judgement in their eyes and it made him defensive. "The fuck are you looking at?" he snapped.
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Post by zuyuri on Oct 19, 2023 14:36:17 GMT
The anxiety of losing someone to the depths was gone. The only thing Dorothea had left was concern. The minute she had gotten Spike to the pier, he had scampered up the ladder quickly. She waited a few seconds before ascending the ladder herself. It was slick with water from Spike’s max rush, and she went slower upon climbing up.
As she got onto the dock, Dorothea saw Zelda using her arms to keep several individuals behind her. The blonde was glaring at Spike, words unspoken.
“Easy,” Dorothea said firmly, walking over to where Zelda had dropped off her sarong and shoes and slipped them back on. “Look, what happened was an accident. Let’s move on. Give him space.”
Zelda stayed where she was. While Dorothea had gone to rescue Spike, she had stayed on the dock trying to keep others from jumping in and stressing the water. One of whom was the drunkard that had nearly slipped earlier. Just as she was getting sone answers, Spike had scrambled onto the dock, looking like he had just out swam the Devil. The words out of his mouth were a snap, and Zelda quickly took on the defensive approach, gesturing got people to get behind her in case verbal anger bad and physical. Sure, she couldn’t hit back, but better her than an innocent person.
Dorothea had appeared some time after Spike and tried to smooth it over. Zelda couldn’t decide which was worse. Dorothea trying to cover up people getting yelled at or the fact Spike looked ready to hurt someone and no one was doing anything about it. Or rather, “give him space” was being said. Zelda clenched a fist slowly and pivoted away. Some of the people behind her were walking away, others stood drunkenly.
“Someone get a towel,” Zelda said.
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Post by angelofmusic1992 on Oct 23, 2023 23:46:24 GMT
Dorothea and Zelda tried to clear the crowd, getting people back onto the show to avoid the situation escalating any further. Spike still felt like everyone's eyes were on him as they walked away. He was never going to hear the end of this. Now that all the excitement had died down and the boardwalk was mostly empty, the only thing Spike was left feeling was exhaustion. He couldn't remember the last time he'd panicked like that and the adrenaline rush had taken a lot out of him. Instinctively, he reached for a smoke, but his hand only found a soggy box of cigarettes. Frustrated, he chucked them onto the sand, just wishing this day would end.
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Post by zuyuri on Oct 24, 2023 0:47:25 GMT
Dorothea stood a few feet behind Spike. Both of them had shed the confident air. As a short lived breeze filled the air, the cold face a small reminder that she was human. Even now, her beauty was gone. Her hair was stringy and tangled, blowing in soggy clumps. Her make up was smeared, making her look like she had cried her eyes out as opposed to saving a friend from drowning. Maybe that had been a side of Herodom that she could live with, no matter how mi of it was, that a hero didn’t look glamorous after a rescue.
“Dorothea!”
Zelda rushed over with a towel handed over by a kind stranger. She cringed at the ruined pack of cigarettes, easily belonging to Spike, that were crunched into the sand. She never liked looking at a is j. Wet cigarettes looked even worse. She scooped the paper and ash into her hands and sauntered to the trash, keeping her disgust inside her head. Better in a landfill than killing an innocent sea creature.
“You’re a treasure, Zelle,” Dorothea told her neighbor. As Zelda walked away with Spike’s ruined cigarettes, she approached the exhausted young man with the towel. Part of her wanted to engage in breathing exercises, but Spike didn’t look ready for any consolation. Saying nothing, she set it gently by his side, her green eyes locked in the horizon.
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Post by angelofmusic1992 on Oct 27, 2023 0:15:50 GMT
Dorothea and Zelda were soon the only ones left, and Spike couldn't tell if he felt more exposed with just them or with the crowd. They were probably going to ask questions and no way was he going to delve into how his trauma came about. Zelda placed a towel next to him, but he didn't pick it up. "Don't look at me like that," he muttered. He could only imagine the pity they were feeling and he didn't want any of it.
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