Six didn't mean to fall asleep. Surfing with Emile early in the morning had left his legs like jelly, so he stumbled away to find some shade under a more–or-less secluded palm tree and rest his eyes. It was only supposed to be a few minutes' respite before Noble broke out the lunch baskets and they got back to playing on the sandy beach.

So when he woke up and found the sun hanging low in the sky, the shade he had stretched out in nowhere to be seen, the man was understandably confused. It took him several minutes to blink the sleep from his eyes and determine which century he was in before he even attempted rising to his feet and making his legs carry him anywhere.

Eventually, though, he made his way back to where Noble had set up camp on the beach. At the campsite he found Jorge starting a fire, a package of hot dogs laid out beside him.

"The prodigal son returns!" the large man called out jovially when he saw Six stumbling toward him.

"Where . . . others?" Six mumbled, blinking some more to try to clear the spinning sensation from his head. His back and shoulders ached rather inexplicably, but

Jorge shrugged, focused on catching a spark on the dry grass that rested within a small teepee with twigs in the center of the firepit. "Jun and Emile got a football out and were tossing it around down by the water. Kat dragged Carter off somewhere to see the sights, as she put it."

He let out a cheer when the fire finally took, then set about constructing a second teepee of larger wood around the first. "I myself was planning to come look for you as soon as I got this fire burning well enough. You've been gone a long time."

Jorge sat back on his haunches and looked up at Six for the first time. Then he winced.

"What's wrong?" Six asked quickly, the last of the sleep fog shaking from his mind with his sudden sense of alarm. "Did you see something?"

Jorge sighed tiredly, gesturing to a bag lying in the dirt amongst the others. "Get in my bag, and look for a clear bottle filled with green goo," he ordered.

Six, nervous now, scrambled for the bag and collected the bottle. When he brought it back to Jorge and presented him with it, the big man told him to turn around and sit on the ground. He did as he was asked, feeling the nervousness mount continually as he waited in suspenseful silence.

Suddenly, something ice-cold dropped onto his shoulders. In spite of all of his training, Six let out a yelp and practically jumped out of his skin.

"Sit still," Jorge grumbled. "Rub that into your shoulder."

"What is it?" Six hissed as more of the freezing mixture was dropped onto his other shoulder.

He heard Jorge take a breath and prepare to answer, but whatever he was going to say was cut off by the arrival of Emile and Jun.

"Six!" Emile yelled out from behind Jorge where Six could not see him, "We thought you got eaten by a shark or something. Where did you . . ." he trailed off as his attention was seemingly caught by something else. "Jorge, you didn't tell me we were having lobster for dinner," he finally said, a smirk clearly on his face if his tone of voice were anything to go by.

Lobster? There are no lobsters here, Six thought to himself. Before he had time to explore the thought any further, he saw Kat and Carter wander back in from the inland side of the beach. They were walking hand-in-hand and smiling until Kat gave him a once over and winced.

"Ouch," she said loudly. "You should put some aloe vera on that."

"Already on it," Jorge answered gruffly, and another glop of ice burned into Six's skin.

"What are you doing back there?" he asked through gritted teeth.

Jorge just chuckled as he spread the stuff over Six's shoulders. "You didn't happen to fall asleep in the sun, did you?" he asked.

"No," Six answered defensively. "I was in the shade when I fell asleep. It's just that the shade had moved on by the time I woke up."

Jun chuckled loudly from somewhere behind him. "You broke a cardinal rule of the beach, Six. Keep getting sunburnt like that and you're bound for skin cancer."

Six dropped his head, embarrassed. Suddenly Emile's comment about the lobster made horrible sense.

"How bad is it?" he asked quietly.

Jorge laughed, slapping more aloe vera onto his back. "I'll put it this way - you're not going to want to sleep on your back tonight."

As the night dragged on and he had to endure endless chortles and jokes about his burn, Six came to two conclusions. The first was that despite the pain and discomfort at both the burn and being the butt of everyone's joke for an evening, it was worth it to see his whole team smiling and happy.

The second was that, as long as the sunburn was going to keep him from getting any sleep tonight anyway, he was definitely going to collapse all of their tents in the middle of the night.