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[Dylan's physical changes aren't as lovely and dramatic as some. When he disembarks he gets just a basic set of gills and some blueish webbing to help him swim, nothing more. His Force Lance is all but useless under water, so his first order of business is to find a spear or harpoon which with to defend himself and his crewmates if necessary (although he hopes it won't become so).

Once that's accomplished, his goal is primarily to talk to the locals and to keep an eye on everyone who has disembarked from the Barge and make sure they stay safe. But he also sneaks a bit of time away to play at throwing a roundish piece of wood he found into a "goal" between two wooden stakes, like a variation on solitary water polo.]

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[Rhade did end up with some of the dramatic changes. He's striped vibrantly, and he's... spinier than usual. They line webbed ears, they're coming out of his back in two rows down either side, and where his boneblades were much longer ones jab out into the water. He has webbed fingers and feet, and while this isn't the most helpful for quick swimming, he's certainly well protected at short range.

He drifts down to catch the slow moving ball when it comes at him.]

At least you were already made for the pressure. [Odd to be able to talk. He had given up on the top half of his wetsuit at this point for obvious reasons- only the bottom half remained.]

Although when I'm not swimming I sink like a rock. I think it's the extra denseness.

[His eyebrows go up a little at Rhade's colorful and spiny self.]

You're looking awfully pointy, Gaheris. Better be careful with those things or you might stick someone.

I have practice. [Just not with this much. He raises a brow (which he fortunately still has) and throws the "ball" back. It rolls lazily toward Dylan and Rhade follows after it.

Rhade is unfortunately a poisonous friend, at the moment, in the most literal sense.]

Yeah, well your endowments are a bit bigger than usual right now.

[He picks up the ball and tosses it between his hands. It moves sluggishly through the water.]

[Dylan has gone there first, so Gaheris follows merrily after.] It's not often enough that I get to hear that. [Though despite the joke, he knows he's not especially quick with these and just sort of circles Dylan. Closer up, while he still has the whites of his eyes, the irises now have an iridescent, reflective quality.

He holds up webbed fingers for the ball to be thrown to him at short range.]

[Dylan throws the ball to Rhade and grins.]

I've just got to be careful or I'll end up with a case of spine envy.

[He looks at the iridescence, entranced by the detail of the change.]

Oh, we can't all be this impressive. [There's a flicker as his eyes catch light, and then are dark again. He tosses the ball back, and passes his fingerwebbing under it, pushing himself back and causing the ball to rise slightly.]

Or this slow. [He can admit it. But he's not going to lie, he likes being spiny.]

[Dylan chuckles at the bobbing ball and at Rhade's satisfaction with his oceanic form.]

So modest. Just don't get too attached. I'm pretty sure that you could selective breed for more and bigger spines, but I think they wouldn't work so well on dry land.

I would never put anyone through these growing in. I'm not that cruel. [He gets close enough to shove the ball at Dylan.]

[Dylan raises his hands at the last second to catch the ball. Everything is slowed underwater and the ball doesn't hit his hands with very much force.]

I can think of some young enlisted men who would disagree. [Rhade's reputation as a stern task master was well known on the Andromeda.]

But I know you'd never put a child through that kind of itchy torture.

It would be difficult to hold, too. [And then he adds cockily.] Those soldiers needed to be able to take care of themselves.

[And they did. He doesn't know if Dylan ever realized what he was doing in retrospect, but for a relatively peaceful society that only had to worry about hit and miss battles with the Magog (traumatic ones) Rhade was relentless.]

Your training probably saved some of their lives later. [He wonders if that was Rhade's purpose. And then concludes that it must have been. He knows Nietzscheans, and one thing about Nietzscheans is that they plan. They often have multiple contingency plans in case some of their plans fail, but rarely do they let anything happen by mere accident if they can help it.

He smiles.]

I bet Tarazed wouldn't have been nearly as populated if you hadn't been such a hardass on them.

Survival was the point. [He confirms, giving Dylan a shove and- yes, heavy as a rock. In fact, it pushes Rhade more than Dylan. Fortunately, he seems more amused by his driftyness than anything, even as his eyes catch another glint of green.]

So, do you want to help me explore so I don't become trapped in anything?

[Dylan rocks back only very slightly and laughs at Rhade's failed attempt to push him. Bubbles stream from his mouth.]

I'd better. Someone's going to have to make sure all those spines of yours don't get caught in things.

[The sunken ships are getting a pretty thorough search by other members of the Barge, and so far no one seems to have run into any major trouble there. No warnings or calls for help over the network. So Dylan thinks that scoping out the perimeter would be the most useful exploration they could do. There's something about the black wall beyond the circle of the Barge's light that puts him on edge. The word "abyss" springs to mind as he looks into the lightless deep.]

What do you think's out there? [He said to Rhade, speaking quietly.]

Edited (adding lots of words) 2013-03-22 02:04 (UTC)

Dark.

[It's a snarky answer, but he's also thinking of the spirit of the abyss. The god of the Magog. At the same time, he's a Nietzschean, and no things are gained through fear.]

Probably some of the wrecks that have been pushed down by the current. [He grabs Dylan's shoulder carefully, using him as an anchor.]

[Dylan lightly backhanded Rhade's shoulder at the snarky answer. Although under the pretended annoyance he was grateful because it pulled his mind away from thoughts of Magog and the shadowy figure that was their god.]

It reminds me of space, in the places on the edges of the galaxies where there aren't many stars.

[That's a more pleasant association than abysses and the things that come out of them.]

I remember those. Where the stars tended to be cold.

[And he continues to use Dylan as a weight, though he has the spines on his back completely flared out in case something gets closer. He doesn't even know he's doing it.]

We might just want to watch out for aggressive cephalopods.

[Dylan eyes Rhade's impressively large flared spines.]

From the look of things, if anything attacked us I could just throw you at them and problem solved.

You try to throw me and I'll poke you. [He threatens, which is more considerable a threat at the moment. But still not one he's likely to follow through with.

But he safely leans over his shoulder. What do you think is down there?

[Dylan stares into the darkness again at Rhade's question.]

I don't know. I guess that's the wonder of it. There could be a great civilization in an underwater, opaque-domed city out there and we'd never know it.

[Dylan found his optimism again pretty quickly.]

We haven't even explored the ruins that are- you know, go ahead. I would rather you go down there with back-up. [And he knows Dylan would go adventuring on his own.]

Thanks, Gaheris. [He puts his hand on Rhade's shoulder.] There's no one I'd rather have backing me up on a crazy exploration mission.

Do you mean that?

[He's surprised that he's asking it, and astounded if it's true. If he's actually won back that much of Dylan's confidence.

He may finally be at peace with being a Nietzschean again, but sometimes he's still worried Dylan still has difficulty seeing more that that.]

I mean it.

[He knows that, with their history, this isn't just words.]

I trust you with my life.

[He feels his chest tighten a little, because he believes he can, now. He can save Dylan, he can protect him, whether it's from the universe or himself. There's just that damnable void of "the one" separating them, 300 years they're parted.

Even if technically, he knows Dylan is beside of him the whole time.]

Then we should see what's down there. [His hair drifts as he pulls back a little, very literally getting Dylan's back and providing a spiny defense.]

[Dylan takes point, confident that Rhade will deal with anything that tries to sneak up behind them, and slowly approaches the darkness. His brain thinks that it should be colder there, just because there's less light, but it isn't. The line where the circle of light fades away isn't as much of a boundary as it seems. Easy to cross over.]

How are your altered eyes at seeing in the dark?

[For once he empathized with Riddick. He wasn't quite as deep hunter, but he did have dark-vision, and his eyes flicked a brighter green as he looked around.] Watch your step. Or at least be ready to start swimming. There are places here that drop off like cliffs.

I'll consider myself warned.

And if something happens to me and I fall unconscious, I'm expecting you to haul my heavy worlder ass back to safety.

[After talking to some of the newcomers, Kal is a little less worried about what the oxygen-breathers might be up to. Most of them were friendly! Which only made him all the more worried about what might happen to them.

They have the weirdest habits though, like this person... what's the point of throwing things between two stakes?]

There is actually nothing there to hunt, you know that right?

[Dylan smiles at merKal. Sharing cultures is one of his favorite things about exploration.]

I'm not hunting. It's a game. I'm throwing it between the stakes just to see if I can, and how accurately I can.

Edited (word repeat) 2013-03-20 07:40 (UTC)

[Kal laughs a bit, waggling his tail in amusement. These creatures really are weird, aren't they? He will never get tired of watching them.]

Can I try?

Sure! [Dylan held the wooden makeshift ball out to Kal.]

The currents of the water make it a bit tricky. This sort of thing is easier on dry land. My people play a lot of games like this, often with one person trying to get a ball to go somewhere and another person trying to keep the ball from going there, playing against each other.

Merman!Superman doesn't have any of his usual powers that would come in hand to actually score, but at least he has a greater understanding of the currents of the water than most human have. When he throws it doesn't get in, but at least he gets close.

"More difficult than it looks, you made it look so easy. My name is Kal-El, by the way."

"Thanks. I've been practicing it for a while; my first attempts were very off target. My name's Dylan Hunt."

He doesn't know if there's an appropriate greeting for Merpeople. Handshake? Salute? Bow? So he just follows Kal-El's lead and hopes he doesn't accidentally do something rude.

Kal simply gives him a nod, touching his forehead with the tip of his fingers as he does so. Mermen were never complicated in their socializing, and the physical contact was also less usual than among humans.

"It's nice to meet you Dylan. You are one of the newcomers, are you not?"

Dylan takes the cue and nods and touches his fingers to his forehead back.

"That's right. From the good ship Redemption." He doesn't know if it's really called that, but in Dylan's mind a ship ought to have a name, and so he's given the Barge one. "We're here for just a few days to explore peacefully, then we'll be off again."

Kal smiles when he returns the salute, not all the land dwellers were so quick to accept their costumes and habits.

"Redemption. So it does have a name, up until now I have just been calling it 'the newcomer's ship'." If Kal's face darkens ever so slightly at the mention of 'being off again', he does his best to mask it.

"And what is this... sport you were playing called?"

Dylan notices a slight shadow falling over Kal's expression. He wonders why, but since Kal was also clearly trying to keep it unnoticed, he's not going to pry just yet. It might be something sensitive.

"The game doesn't really have a name. I guess it's a little bit like modified water polo. Really modified. In the original version there would be two teams, and the goal you try to put the ball in is above water."

Kal looks up, pondering. Said 'water polo' seems like a fun game and he would like to play it by the original rules but seeing as how he's unable to breath air staying above water for that long is kind of impossible.

"Well... we can still have to teams, right? I'll be one, you'll be the other one. As long as you don't mind always winning... it is the first time I have played this game."

"I'm sure you'll pick it up quickly and will start winning in no time. I may have more experience, but you're a much better swimmer than I am."

He hands the make-shift ball to Kal.

"Probably the best way to start off is to trade off throwing and defending. I'll be in the defense position, so you try to make the goal and I'll try to stop you. Then after you do ten throws, we'll switch."

"We can do that!" He answers as he catches the ball, swimming away to get some head-start.

"I might swim fast but I'm sure you've got better aim."

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And that terrible Nickelback song starts up as I'm typing this comment

lol!

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