The Katissa Chronicles Part 5: Awkward Explanations [closed]

"Yup!" Melissa said cheerfully, "Except without the aiming to brush against someone down below! Just jump off the cliff for fun! It's really fun... But... I'm not sure if I should show you, even if I want to... It uses a lot of dust and I've been running low lately." Melissa said, trying to think of a solution to her dust problem.

"Maybe I could just show you once! And you can hold onto me and join in! There's at least a 60% chance nothing bad will happen, don't worry!" She added cheerfully.

Katy looked worried, but shrugged it off. "Alright," she said, wondering how they weren't going to seriously injure themselves. "Y'know, I should have another weapon stipend from my parents in the next few days," she said. "I could use it to buy you a bunch of Dust. I haven't used any of the ammo I bought with the last one, so I don't really need it for anything."

"Um," she added after a moment of thought. "Can your thruster even support the weight of two people?"

"Nonono, I couldn't use your money, you might need it and I wouldn't be able to pay you back! I should probably get a job or something... The money my parents send me is barely enough for me to buy food and a little bit of dust!" She said, just as the two arrived at the edge of the cliff. She peered over the edge, looking at the steep drop with a grin.

"Hmm, I'm not sure! Maybe? It did support the both of us the time you fell off the branch in the forest, but that wasn't as far of a drop. Oh well, only one way to find out!" Melissa said, checking to make sure her dust canister was full.

"You should probably hold onto me, I'll be using my aura to take the brunt of the force on landing!"

Katy looked over the edge of the cliff as well, gulping. This suddenly seemed like a very bad idea. Debating with herself over whether or not to back out, she finally shook her head angrily. 'Screw it,' she thought, and threw her arms tightly around Melissa.

"I hope you know what you're doing," she said, stubbornly forcing herself to keep her eyes open. If she was gonna do something this reckless she might as well actually see it.

"Let's do this!" Melissa cheered, jumping off the cliff with Katy hanging onto her. She started by using Soothing Mayhem's thruster to [b]increase[/i] their speed, making them descend faster. 10m/s isn't fast enough for it to be fun after all, more speed! And there was plenty of space to accelerate after all.

About halfway down to the ground, Melissa began humming cheerfully as she skillfully twisted her weapon around to begin slowing their descent, but she started by decelerating slowly, but noticeably.

As they started really nearing the ground, still going at high speeds for how close they were to the ground, Melissa called out to Katy, "Uh oh, out of dust! We're going to have to hit the ground at this speed I guess!" She joked, grinning, stopping her thruster for a few moments, before turning it back on at full power, slowing them down enough for her feet to land somewhat safely on the ground. It almost shattered through her aura and turned her into a splat on the ground, but there was no need to tell Katy that.

"Wasn't that fun!" She said, laughing.

Katy managed to pry her arms from around the other girl and sank down to her knees, practically gasping for air. "That.. was.. intense," she managed to squeak out, desperately trying to get her heart rate back down to reasonable levels.

"I'm not saying that wasn't fun," she said, toppling over to lie flat on the sweet, solid ground. "But I think I need to build a thruster into my rifle before we do that again."

In truth, Katy felt giddy from the huge surge of adrenaline. Looking around, it suddenly occurred to her that they had, in fact, lived through that stunt, and she started laughing. "I can't believe we didn't die," she gasped out, unable to stop laughing.

Melissa laughed at the girls reaction, replacing the dust canister in her weapon. Judging by the girls condition when they had seemingly survived without a problem, perhaps it wouldn't be a good idea to tell her the thruster had just ran out of dust - an extra second and they probably would be smears on the ground.

"I could help you add one if you want! If designed right it could be used for slowing falls and controlling recoil! You won't be able to fly or anything though, personally I use mine on combat for boosting my jumps!" Melissa suggested already thinking of a good place for placing a thruster on a rifle.

Katy smiled at the offer, quite content to stay on the safe, safe ground for the moment. "Well, we could mock up some designs, but it'll be a lot of work," she said, waving her hand in the air in some sort of unreadable gesture. "If the weight is off even an ounce I'll miss every shot with it. I learned that lesson pretty quickly. I gotta be very careful when I rebuild it. I tried something clever on one of the old models and the gun exploded, and almost took me with it!"

Katy finally sat up, brushing off her hoodie. "So whaddya wanna do now? Any other ideas?"

"Okay well if you want to take me up on your offer just ask and we can start designing things! It'll take work but I think it would be too hard! I've been told I'm pretty good at designing!" Melissa said thoughtfully, dropping to lie down on the ground to relax as well.

Melissa hummed thoughtfully, a dozen ideas going through her head about what they could do next. Dive again, maybe? Nah, she didn't have enough dust to jump again and still have enough in case she needed to fight. Lying here? Nah, boring and Katy probably wanted to do something distracting to get her mind off things.

'And I need to get my mind off what they did as well...' Melissa thought, not even bothering to rationalize it anymore.

"Ooh! How about we go swimming?" She suggested, grinning.

"Hmmm," she said thoughtfully. "I haven't been swimming in ages," she said, sounding quite keen on the idea. "Usually the best swimming places always have people around, so I don't really get much of a chance to go swimming."

Katy looked around, seeming slightly bewildered. "I have absolutely no idea where we are," she stated. "Where is the best place to go swimming, and how do we get there?"

Swimming seemed like a perfect idea. Fun, but not too dangerous, and actually doing it required enough effort that it was difficult to think about anything else. It was exactly what Katy wanted.

Melissa blinked in confusion, pointing to the beach beginning several meters away from their current position, "Um. There's a beach over there? And it's usually empty, with everyone preferring to run around in the forest, or in class, or studying. Perfect place." She said.

In fact Melissa was meant to be in class right now, but she had sort of ended up sleeping through most of it. And helping Katy forget her problems was proving to be more fun and rewarding anyways.

Katy eyed the beach, frowning thoughtfully. "I was hoping for somewhere less, um.. open. I figured there would be people at a beach," she explained, then shrugged. "If you say it's empty though, we could at least check it out, right?"

Katy stood up, brushed herself off and offered her hand to Melissa to help pull the girl back to her feet. "I've got my fingers crossed that you're right about it being deserted," she said seriously.

Indeed, as the two walked onto the beach it was deserted of people. Whether this was because of classes, lack of interest in coming to the beach at this specific time or luck, was unknown, but it was nice and peaceful regardless, with the peaceful ocean breeze and pleasant sound of the waves washing softly against the shore. The tide was fairly low and the waves weak - a great time for swimming.

"See! I told you there was no need to worry, there's no one here!" Melissa said cheerfully, stripping down to her underwear and jumping into the water, giggling.

Katy stopped short, staring at the girl before quickly averting her eyes and blushing. This was the problem with spur of the moment decisions! She hadn't brought any kind of bathing suit. Actually, she wasn't entirely sure she even owned one.

With a very careful look around the beach to make absolutely sure there was nobody even remotely around, she quickly followed the other girl's lead, stripping down to her underwear and charging into the water. Moving out far enough to dive, she quickly dove under the water to quickly get used to the temperature, before coming back up and looking around for Melissa, her fox ears twitching from the sudden soaking.

Now this," she said with a grin. "This was a great idea."

Melissa, however, was nowhere to be seen as Katy surfaced. In fact she was nowhere to seen for several long seconds after. Finally though, she burst out of the water behind Katy, growling as if she was a shark (Tiger shark, OK? Those growl right?), attempted to latch onto Katy and drag her into the water.

((OOC: sorry for bad post))

Katy let out a yelp and began splashing around wildly, attempting to stay above the water. Managing to take a quick breath before she went under, Katy reached back and attempted to tickle the other girl to earn her freedom, while her waterlogged tail began thrashing lazily in the water.

After a moment or two of pressing her tickle-attack she'd try and break for the surface again to get a proper breath of air before paddling water, trying to look everywhere to try and catch the next sneak attack in progress.

Melissa lost her grip, and most of her oxygen as she broke out in giggles under water as she was tickled, and as Katy surfaced she surfaced a distance away to breathe in big gulps of air, having expede most of it giggling. Moments after surfacing, she dived back down. Diving deep, she moved so she was directly below Katy, approaching deep enough that she hopefully wouldn't have been seen.

Quickly rushing up, she grabbed onto Katy's legs from below, aiming to pull the girl underwater.

Katy swam in a circle, peering around for any sign of another sneak attack. 'Hunting in the water isn't nearly as easy as in the forest,' she thought to herself with a frown, though her tail continued to thrash in the water, betraying how much Katy was enjoying herself. Looking around again, she suddenly got pulled underwater and let out a startled partial bit of breath, catching herself before letting it all escape.

Twisting around, she'd attempt to grab the girl around the waist with one arm and pull them both back to the surface with the other, though without her legs to kick it wouldn't work very well.

As Melissa was grabbed, instead of trying to fight back and continue trying to drag the girl down, she decided to take advantage of the fact that she had both hands occupied for a little 'fun'. Using one hand to tickle Katy's side, and the other to scratch her ears, Melissa only barely kept herself from giggling, which would be a horrible waste of oxygen. The more oxygen she saved, the more she could abuse this situation.

Katy tried to hold back her laughter and squirm away from the tickling, but the underwater ear scratches were making it very difficult and all she was really able to do was to twist uselessly in the water, before finally failing to keep her composure and involuntarily laughing, expelling all her air before clamping her mouth shut again.

The small pang of panic from the loss of her breath managed to register enough, and after twisting around to reorient herself she launched herself to the surface. Taking in a deep breath, Katy pouted. Even underwater Melissa managed to give the best ear scratches, and that hadn't been nearly enough time.

Melissa surfaced as well, no longer able to control herself from breaking out into a giggling fit. As she laughed uncontrollably, she bobbed in and out of the water, barely able to keep herself afloat. Managing to float back to shore, she lay on the sand, rolling with laughter, "Y-You should've seen yourself in the water!!" She manage to get out as she rolled around, not caring about the sand sticking to her as she did.

Katy swam her way out of the water as well, carefully wringing the water out of her tail while still pouting. "That wasn't fair," she protested, letting her slightly less waterlogged tail resume wagging as she crossed her arms. "I think that counts as cheating," she said, stepping lightly over to Melissa, "And that means we need to have a rematch!" Katy quickly pounced at the other girl, determined to pin her and tickle her mercilessly as payback.

"That wasn't cheating, it was perfectly fair! You were just bad at-" Melissa's defense of her self was interrupted by Katy's tickle attack, not having seen it coming. Her giggles resumed, but this time, lying defenseless on the ground, she had no way to fight back. She couldn't even yield, such was the overwhelming power of the girl's tickling.

Struggling vainly as she laughed, Melissa's mind was a blank - too occupied with attempting to defend against the tickling.

Katy eventually ceased her tickle attack, releasing her prey and flopping down onto the sand to sit cross-legged next to the girl. "I think I won that round," she said proudly, her tail still wagging happily. Pushing her damp hair back over her shoulder, she grinned at Melissa.

"Wanna go for a tie breaker, or call it a draw?" she asked, looking ready to pounce again at any moment.

"Tiebreaker of course! I'm not surrendering that easily... But you'll have to catch me first!" Melissa said, now that her giggling fit had ended, "But you'll have to catch me first!" She said as she quickly leaped up and dived back underwater, waiting for the girl to follow.

Melissa herself was having a huge amount of fun - more than she had had in a while, despite getting into silly, fun situations on a daily basis.

Katy scrambled to her feet and charged back into the water, diving as soon as it was deep enough. She wasn't going to let Melissa win the tiebreaker! Katy very slowly continued to swim around under the surface, trying to spot Melissa. It was difficult to see anything underwater, but she hadn't seen her from above either, so she figured this was worth a shot.

Of course, with all her hair floating around it was even more difficult to see. Stupid hair! Katy wondered how mermaids in some of the stories she'd read ever managed to get anything done with all their hair in the way.

The moment she noticed Katy jumping into the water, Melissa was already swimming back to shore, and there she sat, giggling at the hair monster searching for her underwater. She laughed for a few seconds, before moving back, sprinting towards the water and using an aura enhanced leap to land on top of the girl, piggybacking onto her shoulder, and beginning to scratch her ears with a smile. Round 3 was hers!