Inktober 04 Underwater

a/n: Lin and 3 OCs go to the beach.

All the good stuff belongs to Monolith Soft, and I'm so grateful they let me watch Roo touch every spot on the map.


Lin sat on the beach, staring at the waves, her head resting on her knees. She didn't look away when Neesae flopped next to her, stretching out her long brown legs.

"One hour," Lin said. "They should be coming up soon."

"Good, because I'm bored. No point having a second Interceptor here after we cleared the beach." The older woman examined her boots. "If I had known how dull this would be, I'd have brought my sim suit." She swiveled her head to look along North Point beach. "Where's your alien pal?" She sat up straighter, scanning the scrubby area beyond the sand. "I don't see him."

"He's in my skell, napping." Lin uncoiled herself enough to check the comm device lying next to her. "I filled him full of waffles before the mission. Ew, he's drooling."

"Fattening him up for Thanksgiving?"

Lin blushed and shrunk back into her knees. "No, carb-loading for safety. I knew he'd conk out once I parked the skell." She sighed. "Besides, I'm not making that joke anymore. Elma chewed me out pretty good last time. I was getting tired of it anyway." She doodled a few bespectacled turnips in the sand, mashing each one with her fist before starting the next.

"Ugh, I'm so bored," repeated Neesae.

"You could have gone with Roo to explore the underwater ruins."

"Girl, you think I'd let my braids get wet just to see some old pillars?"

"Wow, that sounded really vain."

Neesae winked at her. "Rosalee's better at close combat. I prefer me a skell."

The two were comparing skell stats, weighing the value of potential versus binding duration, when two figures broke the water's surface. Lin and Neesae had been waiting near a sandstone pillar, but the new pair were further away, almost at the cliff edging the sand. Lin jumped to her feet and ran. She reached them before Roo had finished snorting ocean water out of his nose.

"Waste of time!" shouted Rosalee, flinging her rebreather up the beach and hopping around to remove her flippers. "Waste! Of! Time!"

"What happened? What did you see?" Lin waded into the water to reach Roo. He was still fumbling with his mask, but his normal half-smile was unchanged.

"It was interesting."

"You always say that. What did you find?"

"A barrier!" shouted Rosalee. "There's a freaking green hex barrier that kept us from going more than 100m out. All along the beach. We could see another pillar, just barely, but we couldn't get near it!"

"Like I said, interesting. It extends from surface to floor."

"Typical Pathfinder. Everything's interesting." Rosalee was still spitting and hopping in the sand.

"Are you sure you can't get around it?" asked Neesae, gathering up Rosalee's gear.

"We checked. All of it. Up and down the beach, even to the No-neck. Waste of time!"

Lin left the water to rejoin the other women. "Shoot. Meredith Industries was really hoping to get something useful out of this mission."

Roo was still standing knee-deep in water, staring at the horizon. "I don't know. I'm kind of okay with not learning anything about whatever weapon made the Oblivia gap."


a/n: Well, that got done. Can we go back to NLA now? I'm still glad, because I got a little more feel for Neesae. Roo (my Cross) remains a dorky enigma of a Pathfinder. (Neesae and Rosalee team with Irina in my XCX, and showed up in "The Great Skell Robbery." And Gwin, him too.)

Next up: #5 Long. No clue on this one. Wait, I have a very self indulgent one ... we'll see.