Okay. Let me explain what's going on here. I've been thinking about putting together a collection like this for a while, but decided to finally get it together and started today.

These will all be random scenes, one shots, AUs that didn't get farther than a cursory glance, and first chapters that never went anywhere. A lot of these first chapters I'm hesitant to put out there, because I really would like to finish these stories. But, I have to be honest with myself, the likelihood of most of these ever being completed is slim.

I'll put a tidbit at the start of each chapter kind of explaining what it is. This one is the first chapter from my natural disaster story, "Popilikia". I really love this one, but just don't think I'm going to finish it. But I might. So if you see it pop up in the future sometime...

"Popilikia (Disaster)"

"I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate."

-John Steinbeck

Beach, Honolulu, Oahu

Sunday, 2:30 pm

A rift in the clouds had finally appeared, revealing the sun in a respite from the past few days of rain. The sand on the beach glowed and a few birds flocked out of the trees to the shore to revel in the warmth. The lull in the storm had even attracted quite a few people, most of them probably tourists trying to get a taste of Hawaiian sunshine.

Danny Williams had been goaded into venturing outside to walk along the shoreline with his lovely daughter Grace. Only she could get him so close to an ocean that just the day before had been a churning gray mass pelted by rain. Well, Charlie may have been able to had he been there with them but the little boy was with his mother. Danny just had Grace with him today, feeling that maybe she needed some one-on-one time with him.

"What're you looking for, monkey?" he asked after watching his teenaged daughter bend down several times as she walked ahead of him.

"I dunno," she said. "Maybe something cool. Uncle Steve said that storms wash a lot of cool stuff up."

As Danny looked around he had to agree, though maybe not on the cool part. Seaweed lay in brown clumps where the tide had pushed it out of the ocean, pieces of barnacle covered wood had come ashore as well, and some trash marred the otherwise pristine golden sand. Nothing really classified as 'cool'.

"Unless Steve thinks ugly brown sand gnat infested seaweed is something gawk at, I fail to see what could wash up that's all that interesting," Danny said, giving one of the brown clumps a wide berth as he followed Grace.

"Charlie found a seashell the other day when we were at the beach," Grace huffed. She pushed her hair back behind her ear and bent on one knee, trying to get a closer look at a speck in the sand. "Seashells are so hard to find, especially a whole one. Uncle Steve said it's because the surf smashes them."

"Along with everything else that it touches," he said. He kept an eye on the clouds, having learned fully that it would only take thirty seconds for another torrential downpour to sweep in and darken the skies again. For now, though, the only drenching was being done by the sun.

Grace yelped and fell back on her butt. Instantly Danny was crouching next to her, a hand on either arm ready to haul her away from whatever had caused her to yell. She put a hand to her mouth and giggled.

"It's okay, Danno," she sat forward on her knees again and pointed at the culprit. "I thought it was alive."

Half of a crab shell lay partially unburied where she had been digging. It was a pale ghostly white and had one claw stuck up like it was ready to fight despite its deceased status.

Danny smirked, not so happy to have been startled but glad to hear his daughter laugh and see her smile. "Well, it looks like it went out defiant against the shell smashing surf. Sadly the poor schmuck lost that battle."

Grace grinned at his recounting of the crab's last moments. She pinched the tip of its claw and moved it out of the way. As she continued to scrape away the sand in the general area another speck of white popped up. She glanced up at Danny.

"Maybe it's the other half of the crab," he suggested, moving a handful of sand out of the way for her.

"We could give him a burial at sea," she said. The rising tide would most likely take the other half out to sea by this evening anyway.

"A Viking funeral, huh? Sounds like something your uncle would want. It combines all of his favorite things: the ocean, fire, and annoying me because he'd make sure that I would be the one to have to shoot the flaming arrow," he teased.

Grace shook her head. "Not nice. Besides, you always say that you two will go down together, probably in a hail of bullets or a fiery explosion."

Danny made a face at her. "You're not supposed to be listening to me while I'm griping about work, monkey. You have to remember that I will always, always try to get home to you and Charlie."

"I know," she nodded. She furrowed her brows. "I don't think this is the other half of the crab."

She tugged the white object free of the damp sand, rubbing her thumb over it. It was more triangular than the crab and was more solid than it, too. It had some heft to it and was about the size of her palm.

"I dunno, monkey," he picked it up and took it down to the surf with Grace tailing him. A cool wave washed over his sandal clad feet, sandals because he knew better than to wear tennis shoes on a beach. He dipped the object into the water and held it up again. "But I'm thinking that maybe Shamu got socked in the jaw and lost a tooth."

"I don't think orcas come too close to the islands," Grace took it back, rolling it over in her hands and being careful of the slightly serrated edges.

"Maybe it's from a sea monster, you know, the kind that washes up on shore and everyone argues over whether it's a dolphin or a mermaid," Danny suggested. "Or it could be an arrowhead from an ancient Hawaiian boat that didn't quite make it into the open ocean, like Moana but without the Rock singing alongside her."

"Danno," she sighed and rolled her eyes. "It'd be cool to figure out what it is. You think Uncle Steve would know?"

Danny scrubbed a hand over his face and shot a glance up at the clouds. They were starting to close in again. Wouldn't be too long before the rain returned and chased everyone back into their houses and hotels and restaurants. Speaking of restaurants, he could use a cup of coffee and something sweet to eat. And there was an off chance that there would be someone at the café he was thinking of that would know what this thing was.

"How about we leave Steve alone for now and go grab something to drink?" he asked, putting an arm around her shoulders and guiding her back to the parking lot.

"Is it just because you don't want him to see you in shorts and sandals?" Grace, very perceptive girl that she was, knew him too well.

"No, of course not," he scoffed. "But the Neanderthal would give me grief for weeks on end if he caught me wearing flip flops."

Kekoa Beachside Bar and Grill, Honolulu, Oahu

Sunday, 2:37 pm

Kono Kalakaua-Noshimori fluffed up her still very damp hair as she walked into the beachside bar and grill. A bright grin lit up her face when she saw her two favorite boys sitting together companionably at a table sheltered under a thatched ceiling. Adam Noshimori was leaning back in his chair, a beer comfortably in one hand while the other wiped his eyes as his laughter died down. Chin Ho Kelly had a particularly smug look about him.

"Hey, cuz, you look kind of suspicious," she quirked a brow at him and gave Adam a quick kiss before sitting in the third chair where a sweating beer bottle awaited her.

Chin held up his hands in a peaceful gesture. "I don't know what you're talking about. I was only informing your husband about your childhood."

"Halloween, freshmen year," Adam waggled his brows at her.

"No! Chin, you traitor!" Kono slapped his upper arm. "That was between you and me!"

"Well, now it's just between us three," Adam smiled.

Kono shook her head and took a swig of her beer to hide her amused smirk. She was just so happy that finally her cousin and her husband got along. It did her heart good to know that the rest of her ohana, aka Five-0, had also accepted him into the fold.

"How're the waves?" Chin asked, tilting his head to the sunny beach where several tourists were getting the most out of the sudden cease in the storm.

She made an 'eh' motion with her hand. "Storm has 'em all chopped up. Kind of hard to get a good ride."

"Looks like some of the tourists are trying anyways," Adam said.

The trio all cringed as one of them epically wiped out on a high and fast wave, the colorful rented board shooting up over the crest only to be halted by the ankle leash attached to the amateur surfer.

"Nice," Kono commented.

East Honolulu, Oahu

Sunday, 2:45 pm

Steve McGarrett was thoroughly stuffed. He had offered to take Lou Grover to a local haunt where the fish was the freshest on the island and the steak was the juiciest without it being uncooked. Not to mention it had house brewed beers and a killer selection of desserts. Originally he was going to invite the whole team but before he could open his mouth he overheard their various plans for their day off and decided that he was a big boy that could eat by himself.

Of course, just when he had decided that, Lou told him that he had nothing planned and wondered what he was doing during the afternoon of his day off.

He was driving home now, trying to plan what he wanted to do with the rest of his day. Swimming this morning had been off limits with the storm cutting the sea into powerful waves. Despite what his partner thought, he did have common sense and did not have the urge to accidentally get pulled into an undertow or get smashed against something that was more solid than he was.

Making a grunt of irritation as he looked at the clouds swirling back around to resume their business he decided that swimming was most likely not on the list for his late afternoon activities. Besides, exercising on a full stomach was a recipe for disaster. Tasting food for a second time was most definitely not on the list for his late afternoon activities.

He could clean his multiple firearms, or work on the Marquis. Or he could sit around and watch TV.

Or he could bug Danny, see what he was up to.

Grover Household, Honolulu, Oahu

Sunday, 2:54 pm

Lou was utterly and completely ready for a nap. He was in full food coma mode. That place that McGarrett had taken him to was good, may have even rivalled some of the places in Chicago, though he would never admit that aloud to any of the others.

With a deeply relaxed sigh he stepped through his front door just as it started to lightly sprinkle again, despite the sun stubbornly hanging on for just a while longer. Liquid sunshine was right.

"Dad, you wanna watch this movie I got?" his son Will was crouched by the TV in the living room, already putting a disc in the DVD player.

"Son, is that thing really on a DVD? They don't got it on Netflix or somethin'?" Lou asked. He kicked off his shoes by the door and moseyed towards the couch, gratefully sinking into its soft cushions.

"My friend let me borrow it," he explained, jumping up from the floor and flopping into a nearby recliner. "Said it's not on Netflix yet."

"And just what kind of movie is this?" Lou asked, though there was a large chance that he would fall asleep before the first act was over. The call of the food coma was persistent.

"A monster disaster movie."

Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, Island of Hawaii

Sunday, 2:59 pm

Venus Kamaka was on her third cup of coffee. She was on a streak of trying as many brews and creamers as she could. Right now she had a really strong Kona roast with a mocha chili powder creamer that she was sure had no business being a coffee creamer. She could do with a little chili powder on a mango, but drew the line at combining it with chocolate and especially coffee.

Sticking her tongue out, she set the offending beverage aside and swiveled in her chair. Using her tiptoes she rocked back and forth, staring at the ceiling. How many of those dots were on those tiles again? She had counted them at one time, one really extremely boring time. Apparently monitoring four live volcanos wasn't as exciting as it had first sounded.

Of course, at least there was actually stuff to monitor. There was always lava flowing out of Kilauea. Sometimes interesting things happened. Well, when it involved glowing hot liquid rock interesting things always happened. Nothing so far as threatening any nearby communities recently. The sulfur dioxide emission rates around the lava lake in the Overlook Vent had been high for a while, so that was interesting. They had to keep an eye on Hualalai because even if she was a quiet one that hadn't spewed in the last couple of centuries, there were worries that an eruption from her was in the future. Off island the observatory watched the East Maui volcano of Haleakala. Another quiet one.

They had only really had a flurry of activity back in March of 2016 when there was a 4.2 magnitude earthquake 70 miles north of Hilo that even Oahu felt. That was when there had been a string of them off shore in an area typically declared to be non-active. So that, that was definitely interesting even if later investigations showed that the seamounts out there were no more threatening than a large bonfire.

Venus snorted. After that someone has asked if there was a chance that one of the volcanoes was going to erupt.

Well, yeah, duh. Kilauea and Mauna Loa were two of the most active volcanoes in the world. They were constantly erupting. It's not like earthquakes were a new thing around the island chain. With volcanic activity came seismic activity. One would think that the locals would know that.

Venus frowned. On second thought it may have been a tourist from Texas that asked her that. Now that she could understand.

Beep.

She glanced to her right at the computers that took up the majority of the desk. Seismographs must've picked up another tremblor. They could get upwards of thirty of them in a week. Volcanic activity equals seismic activity, aka tremblors. Usually hitting a magnitude between 1.2 and 2.7, they weren't all that noticeable. Occasionally there were some dust shakers, glass rattlers. There had been ground surface deformations appearing at the summit of Kilauea for a while now, lending to the quantity of tremblors. The magma pocket below them seemed to be heaving at the moment, a common occurrence. Yellowstone was the same way, the ground inside the caldera seeming to inhale and exhale with the massive magma chamber beneath it.

This alert, however, was a bit more intriguing.

Venus set her feet flat on the ground and faced the monitors fully.

"Where is this sucker coming from?" she braced her chin on her hand and accessed the data streaming in.

The three biggest earthquake causers were Kilauea and Mauna Loa, of course, but they had a less visible sister called Lo'ihi about 22 miles southeast of the Big Island. It was the youngest volcano in the chain, still in its deep submarine pre-shield development. Sitting a little over 3,000 feet below the ocean surface it wasn't much of a spectacle to behold above sea level even if it did cover an area of 160 square miles. However, they did not have very good equipment down there to watch that sister.

Her eyes widened. "What the hell?"

If this was right, the tremblor's coordinates matched up to Pele's Pit, a collapsed vent on Lo'ihi. It was an active crater and vented water no warmer than 400 degrees Fahrenheit on a normal day. It wasn't unusual for the tremblors to originate from any of the craters on the submerged volcano.

It wasn't unusual for the tremblors between 1.2 and 2.7 to originate from any of the craters on the submerged volcano.

This was not usual.

Venus bolted to her feet when the first wave hit.

A tremblor at a 6.3 magnitude was not usual, and from the information being collected by their various monitors around the zones of activity, Lo'ihi was just clearing her throat.

Thanks for reading, guys! I'm not sure of an update schedule for this collection. It'll probably be random.