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Who: Kate Bishop and YOU
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: Planetside
When: This morning

[ kate is down on the planet, hair tied back with a light-coloured bandanna. she's holding the device selfie-style -- a shooting aesthetic born of the snapchat and periscope generation. ]

Do any of you know the story of the one red paperclip? Some guy up in Canada started with a paperclip, which he traded for a pen, and then traded that pen for a hand-made doorknob, and then that for a camping stove (plus fuel). And he kept going until fourteen trades after the red paperclip... he got a house. A whole futzing house.

Well, my one red paperclip was a piece of foil-wrapped gum I was holding onto since the day I arrived. Two votive candles, one fishtail braid, some dice, a repaired rope bridge, wooden shoes, and a barrel of mead later? [ her free hand reaches for something off-screen, which turns out to be a simple wooden bow. ] This is my whole futzing house. Suck it, whatever intergalactic bank handles our fleet credits. Suck it.

[ later, she can be found celebrating her minor economic victory down at the BEACH -- sunbathing, or swimming, or just diverting herself by building odd shapes in the sand. find her there, or cooling off in the evening at one of the taverns -- a little sunburned, but looking thoroughly satisfied. ]

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This was given due consideration. He wasn't particularly adept with a sword, he could barely read, his ability to feed himself was very limited, and his singing voice had once driven a fairy to attempted murder. In this list of things he could consider himself to be good at, it was all rather limited to anything involving a hammer. The only other thing he'd ever been good at was his ability to wear armor and look intimidating.

He shook his head. "No. That covers all of it."

-- So, that was a little sad. Not that Kate believed it to be the true extent of his skills (she was generous and hopeful, like that) but that he believed it? But then again, it wasn't as though she'd had much opportunity to imagine a world where leisure was a thing that barely existed for a good ninety percent of the population.

"Can you swim? Like, for real?"

So she made up her mind to figure at least a piece of him out. And she had to start somewhere.

If Gendry was supposed to feel sad about the fact his skillset was limited, well, he did. But he also felt very good that of his skillset, he was damned amazing at it. So good that his answer didn't even bother him.

"No. Ain't ever had a reason to."

His time on boats had been rather limited, in fact. He'd sailed only once and he had decidedly not enjoyed that at all.

Well, the next question was pretty damned predictable. With a jaunty energy in her voice, Kate asked, "Wanna learn?"

He was not by nature someone who professed a great interest in learning things that he did not see an immediate use for. For instance, he didn't mind being out here in the ocean and in the water. This was fine. It required no swimming at all to be enjoyable.

"I'll be fine," he answered easily. "I ain't drowned yet."

"Yet, he says. A yet is just waiting to be turned into an eventually, you know."

"I've two options," he declared. "One is I'll be out there on land, making lots of metal bits 'til I'm too old to stand. Or I'll be about in those ships up in space. The only place I'm like to drown is in the bath."

Which naturally was a rare occurrence anyway for him to bathe with anything more than a bucket of water and a rag.

"--Three options," she corrected him. And held up three fingers, waggling them in the air with enough energy to send little sea-water droplets flying. "The third is to learn how to swim and -- and then you know how, in case it comes up. Those ships up in space might land on, like, Waterworld next.

Ever hear of the Boy Scouts, Gendry?"

He shook his head. "What are they? Sailors?"

She had a point about Waterworld, but he hadn't abandoned the idea of remaining on this planet forever. If he had to leave, then maybe he would think about learning to swim after that.

"Hardly. They're exactly what they sound like -- boys, who are scouts. But they're taught from a pretty tender age to be prepared. Y'know, for any circumstance."

Kate was still treading water. And then, all at once, she seemed to stop. "Like this one," she continued, and pushed her arms just under the surface in order to make a little cresting wave -- splashing Gendry.

"Be prepared!" Was her war cry as she disappeared in the wake of the splash, dipping beneath the water and back-stroking away. Just out of reach.

Just like that, he was all wet. But that was fine, because he was already wet from having dipped underwater. She was quick in the water, though. He watched her with muted amusement, but if he was expected to give chase, he didn't actually bother. It afforded him the honor of being perhaps the most boring person to go swimming with.

When she came up he had only this to say: "Well. I didn't drown."

Lunatic that she occasionally was, Kate had hoped he might get angry. Perhaps it wasn't all that clever to try and anger a guy built the way Gendry was built -- but she couldn't help it. Kate saw a hornets' nest, and she wanted to poke it.

"You didn't swim, either," she answered. Wry. "C'mon -- don't you at least want a little bit of revenge?"

The sum total of her plan was this: try to provoke the dude into at least TRYING to swim a little deeper.

"For what? I was already wet."

He produced a splash for her that picked up an impressive spray that failed to reach her at all. That was probably more frustrating than actually being splashed, actually.

"See? Just water." He was going to make his point anyway, dammit.

Despite how the spray didn't reach her, Kate nevertheless raised an arm to shield herself -- like instinct, or hope. Hope that it might reach her regardless. But, hey...didn't the fact that he'd tried to splash her in the first place earn her at least a FEW brownie points?

Kate sighed. It was a long, large, dramatic sort of sigh. "Just water. Sure. So show it who's boss," she countered. By cupping her hands and scalloping them through the water just below her back, she managed to stay both horizontal and afloat.

Gendry stared down at the water, affecting the kind of condescending glare that might come from the nobility.

"Stay," he commanded it. But then the water kept swirling about just as it had been before. He shrugged and looked back up at her. "Didn't work."

"Ha, ha," she drawled. "Very funny."

Not. Kate -- with an energetic flutter of her feet -- eased her way back towards the slightly-more-shallow waters where Gendry was still standing. As the planet and its particular qualities slipped her mind, she offered him a damp hand just above the water line.

"C'mon. At least try and go a little deeper." Then, cheekily: "I promise I'll save you if you start to flounder. Scout's honor."

Pfft.

For centuries, men has struggled against the weather, wild beasts, cold winters and drought-ridden summers, wars against their fellow men, and the ravages of disease. These countless generations of survival provided Gendry with absolutely no help at all to the struggle of trying to decline being persuaded deeper into the water with a pretty woman in a purple bikini.

"Fine," he uttered reluctantly as though he was being asked to go inside of a burning building. He stuck his hand in hers to be led precisely as deep into the ocean as he was prepared to go.

"That's the spirit," she cajoled. And she smiled. And she parlayed one held hand into two -- she didn't wait for permission to grab his opposite hand in hers. Sliding backwards, she drew him with her into the deeper waters. In a voice that was suddenly leagues more supportive than it had been up until that point, she advised him to tread water.

For all her talk of swimming, she wasn't about to throw him into the literal deep-end. All this sun and all this salt and all this sand put her in mind of her own deep-end: of California, and wood-smoke bonfires on the beach with her temporary neighbours while she'd been out on that coast. Of hard work rewarded with friendship -- and only the occasional cold sliver of a golden mask framed in dark hair, a villain whose presence is mostly obscured by the peacefulness of a west coast waterview.

It was rare to catch Gendry in this fine of a mood, so for once the planet was able to draw upon the happier side of his memories and among those, that less twinged by sadness and regret. It pictured him younger and quicker to laugh, standing outside of an abandoned forge with a girl half his size. Her acorn dress was ridiculous enough to make him laugh at her. By the time she was done making him pay for his laughter, they were both covered in mud and didn't look nearly so nice as before.

He followed though, the overlapping sensation of the actual ocean and seeing the ocean from a distance making the experience more distant than something he was actually doing for himself. It was only when he was having to push himself on top of the crashing waves that he stopped letting himself be led. Any further and he'd be struggling to stay on top.

So, that was surreal.

To laugh -- to remember laughing -- someone else's laugh, and feel someone else's good spirits. She felt his laughter like hard thunder barreling around in a chest far larger than her own. It caused her to laugh, aloud, now. To crow and guffaw with a kind of strength that overcame sly, ironic humour. In the end, she decided she liked his laugh. And as she realized what had happened, she realized she liked it better on him.

"Hah, I see," she allowed him to slow them like an anchor. The slow-growing waves lapped at their chins. "You're not as mirthless as what you're playing at, are you?"

At first, her hand loosened a little on his. But then she thought of how far out into the current they'd wandered -- and she grips his palm again. For safety, y'know?

"Can I ask -- who was the kid?"

He hadn't entirely got used to people asking him questions about his shared memories, especially because he generally had no idea what it was they were asking about. All of his thoughts were on what she had shared that he had to parse what she was asking. The laughing did no favors at all, because he was very clearly not laughing along with her.

"Kid? What kid?"

-- And, in equal measure, she wasn't thinking about what she might of shared. In her mind, the wood-smoke and the gentle murmur of her neighbour's stories hadn't come up at all. They'd been (at best) subconscious thoughts, whereas her conscious had been overrun by his memories.

"The one with the dark hair and the dress you definitely ended up trashing. I hope she sent you the dry-cleaning bill."

To further explain the phenomenon that she'd already sussed out, Kate leaned forward and tapped the side of his head. Memories.

"Oh.." He'd grimaced when she decided to tap his head, if only because he didn't know her nearly well enough to know how he should take that. This entire beach encounter was confusing.

"Her name is Arya. A highborn lady who doesn't want to be one." A girl who didn't even remember him, as it turned out. "She was always trying to pick fights. That wasn't my fault she decided to go wrestle in that new dress."

Oh, that old trope. The silver spoon who wanted to flirt with being a rusty old butter-knife. Kate could empathize, even if she didn't much go in for that kind of thing. While they bobbed together in the water, she considered his description. And in the background of her thoughts, there whirled her own fair share of beautiful dresses. Of fantastic parties. Of modern, highborn living. The feel of the best silk on her skin.

"You're, like, ten times her size. Maybe it was her decision -- but we...you let it happen." Kate laughed. "I'm not throwing shade. It felt fun."

She hadn't got the chance to see it, but he'd been made to feel like a proper heel for it afterward when the rest of the Brotherhood came out to see the scene and throw some accusations his way, none worse than Tom's song that he'd insisted on singing that stupid song which he couldn't remember the words to, but he remembered enough of the tune that it became an earworm transferred to the both of them.

"Well," he said feeling just a bit flustered, "what was all that with the fires on the beach? Who were those people?"

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