[The birdbrained lifeguards had precisely one early run-in with Rahu, and since then, they’ve mostly given her a wide berth. Wildcard or not, they don’t seem very enthusiastic about messing with her after the first time she chased them off, minutes after they saddled her with a blue bikini and started circling. A cursory survey of the beach is enough to tell her that others are suffering where she was fortunate. She can witness only so many descending swarms of bullying birds before she’s forced to intervene.

It’s not a very high number.

Someone being menaced by the cruel flock might suddenly find their number of tormentors decreasing, very suddenly, by one—and then by all as the others scatter in the wake of a dark, darting shadow. Bystanders who aren’t currently being henpecked might find themselves equally caught up in the action when the missing lifeguard literally flies past them, hurled from several yards away toward the water.

Either way, Rahu follows shortly after, pinning her opponent in the shallow tide and smashing his face into the water. Her head is swimming. The air around her is a heavy, heat-spiked haze. She keeps holding, holding, holding, holding— the flailing limbs and a cloud of feathers doing little to deter her.

Onlookers and former pigeon victims alike are welcome to intervene, but she will eventually free the lifeguard, still relatively intact, and withdraw quickly from the water to approach a nearby person, be they bystanding or bullied. Her breath is so hot it seems like it might be steam in any other environment.]

Were you hurt?

[Just a menacingly tall, aggressively glaring woman who almost drowned a pigeon lifeguard asking after your wellbeing. No big deal!]

[How Rahu came to be in these paired beach loungers is a mystery to her. She doesn’t remember sitting down. She doesn’t remember sleeping. She doesn’t remember waking. Things feel as if they’re happening to someone who isn’t her.

In this dream beach, Rahu's immediate vicinity looks exactly the same. However it was before the napping, it’s that way now. The water on the horizon wasn’t so lucky. The shore may be relatively unscathed, but the deeper the ocean backdrop becomes, the darker and more debris-riddled the sky, the water an ugly, writhing bowl of red and black. Purple light shines from the torn sky, casting the crumpled remains of buildings in vague shadow.

A low, pulsing groan from that direction seems to be the thing that jostles Rahu back into consciousness and brings her fully into the dream, as though she’s stirring from one dream into another into another, a cascading disorientation.]

I was asleep? I don’t… For how long?

[The confusion hits her first, well before the rest of it settles in. Rahu gestures to sit up and feels something heavy and electric dig into the pit of her stomach. As she doubles forward, she doesn’t mean to lean across the table between the two pool chairs and wrap her fingers around her partner’s wrist, half-anchor and half-protective gesture. But she does.]

((My vision is to try out a couple of different suits for funsies while she’s a wildcard, but if you take this option and have something you do/don’t really want to play with please do let me know!))

[By the time she can’t ignore the overpowering smell of barbecue luring her to the skewer stand, Rahu still hasn’t sorted out the boundaries between those senses that can be trusted and those that can’t. It would be smarter not to accept any food until she has more information, but maybe it’s her sensitive nose that has other ideas. In the end, she can’t stay away from the barbecue hut. She leans forward, tapping her knuckle to her chin, as she tries to investigate what's on offer.]

… The meat on those is rabbit; I can tell. But I don’t get what the rest is. Some kind of aquatic fruit, I guess?

[Whether she’s found a fellow customer who’ll lead her down the correct path, one who’ll set her astray, or a fellow newcomer who doesn’t know the difference between all of this foreign fruits is simply up to fate.]

[The beach may be (a facsimile of) a wide-open space, but Rahu is as good as a dog crated in a too-small cage here. She’s tried to keep a clear head during the day and failed spectacularly; come evening, there’s a certain resignation is how she comes home to roost at the swim-up bar—a certain “this might as well happen, too.” At night, under this projected sky, the blur between dream and reality becomes easier to accept. The fuzziness becomes more pronounced. Was it still raining the last time she slept? It is summer, so everything sounds right. Has she attacked anyone or gotten lost in thoughts of the past?

Even before she’s ordered a drink, Rahu can be caught staring out at the deeper water in deep contemplation as if tempted by it, the knuckles of her right hand pressed hard to her temple. She has a headache. Anyone sitting nearby might notice that she seems in pain, her temples throbbing when she receives her order. The agitation spurs her to finish half the glass in one go and move with uncharacteristic speed to order another.

And you? She’ll wave the mer-tender down for a refill on yours, too. It’s sheer courtesy; there’s nothing flirtatious about how she does it, though Rahu might be blissfully unaware of how silken and assured her movements seem, how eager she seems to share a drink with another. She’ll be having whatever the other person ordered last (for stacking effects, hooray), so her drink is dealer’s choice, though ordering the mango star does run about a 75% chance of her violently lashing out at the person she thinks she sees.]

[New character, new player! Rahu’s permissions are here, and her still-in-progress kinklist is here. In short: late 20s government soldier who gave herself aggressive corrupting powers; 18+ for smut and ota, though women might have an easier time. I’m happy to explore other prompts if you’ve got ideas or chain one into another, like drinks into fireworks or skewer into parasol dreamscapes!]