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Who| Jason and the Beachwarmers
What| Going camping! Making friends! A mixed thing, just do whatever and have fun.
Where| On a private island owned by R.J. Brande.
When| Post Naltor and Mystery Plots, pre-next plot
Warnings/Notes| None yet

All in all, the beach itself is gorgeous. Clear waters, a perfect temperature, white sand, some nice, shady woods deeper in on the island... It all looks fantastic, like it came off of a postcard. There's not a hint of land off in the distance, but they can get a threshold gate if the need arises.

Jason honestly didn't plan much out. He's packed for different activities, like food (sadly lacking in hot dogs), sun lotion, drinks (though if you wanted something alcoholic, you'll be disappointed), a beach ball, a volleyball with a net setup, some tents, and some snorkeling gear, all pre-staged on the island. He tried to cover a bunch of activities, but he really didn't have much of an idea of how many people would be showing up or what they'd want to do, so he just prepped for the most possible.

If they day is crisp and beautiful, the night is something else entirely. Still perfectly warm, by the time the Legionnaires have worn themselves out, the stars are out in force. With no light pollution around, the night sky is full of colors and stars, with the visible portion of the Milky Way cutting a majestic arc across the sky. Night swimming is still available, the water's fine and the camp fire is visible for a long way.

[[Whoops, I'd meant to post this on Saturday, but time got away from me. I thought about setting up activities and such, but decided that it'd be best just to let people come up with whatever. If it involves gear of some kind, feel free to handwave that Jason took care of it. There's a few different activity headers put up, so feel free to tag around or post a separate starter if you have any further ideas or want to do something else!

If you didn't tag here, don't worry about it. We can handwave any of that in favor of the main action here.

and now posted in the correct community. Whoops again.]]

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Jason may not have planned for it, but Hal knows exactly what a camping trip requires that one can't leave to the teenagers to bring along.

So when everyone piles in by the campfire, there's a cooler off to the side of where he's sitting, and Hal's got a bottle in one hand and the other digging through the pocket of his bomber jacket. "I knew I forgot something." But no bottle opener, no problem, because making himself one is easy and if it's glowing bright green and made out of energy, who cares? It still gets the job done.

If any of his fellow token adults want a beer or three, he's happy to oblige; if any of the teenagers do, they're out of luck.

Edited (tense switching, ugh) 2016-05-12 02:03 (UTC)

"I think that qualifies as one of the silliest uses for a power I've seen so far," Hiccup said, sitting down next to him.

"Mind if I have one?"

"I'm sure I've done worse, even if examples aren't coming to mind right now." Big uses of the ring were only meant to be used in actual Lantern business, sure, but even as uptight as the Guardians were, they wouldn't begrudge him a few literal air quotes here and there, after all.

He pulled another beer out of the cooler, uncapped it, and passed it over to Hiccup, who he was guessing was borderline legal (for Hal's definition of legal, not the Legion's) but he was a goddamned Viking anyway, who even knew how young they started drinking.

Hiccup took a sip, and then furrowed his eyebrows in thought. "...that tastes a little stronger than I was expecting. This isn't small beer, is it?"

Hiccup was referring to the drink most commonly consumed in place of water. Small beer had extremely low alcohol content, to the point where it wasn't even remotely intoxicating. Stronger ales were mostly saved for when people actually wanted to get drunk.

"Eh," he said, deciding it didn't matter. It wasn't like he hadn't had those same stronger ales before. "It's fine. Not like I was planning on going flying tonight anyways."

Small beer didn't mean much to Hal, but he'd gotten the impression that nobody worried about three-two beer in the future.

"I'll cut you off if you look like you're about to do anything you'll regret in the morning. This many kids around, I figure we can at least be halfway responsible adults."

But only halfway.

"Don't worry about it." Hiccup said, waving Hal off, "I know when to cut myself off. Habit really. I've been in charge of the three craziest people on my island since I was 15. It doesn't go well when I let them talk me into things sober, I don't want to know what would happen if I was drunk."

Hiccup was fully willing to do crazy things on a whim, but it was usually tempered by common sense. Drunk him would very likely lose that sense.

"So you're the designated driver. But with no cars."

A sad way to live.

"Dragons are better than cars, anyways." Hiccup replied confidently. "And nothing you say will convince me otherwise."

"I don't really have an argument for that, anyway," Hal admitted.

Flying always beat driving, and how cool was a dragon?

"You're a saint, Hal," Grif declares upon seeing what he's up to. Grif has a good instinct for finding anything unhealthy and, given that the future's stance on animal welfare has denied him true hotdogs, he's not going to pass up the chance to mooch a beer.

"Are you sharing?"

"With anyone old enough to grow facial hair: yes." Hal fished a beer out of the cooler and tossed it to Grif.

"Yeesss. Yoink!"

He grabbed a beer for himself and popped the cap off with his robot arm. It was handy like that. Then he plopped into a chair and got all cozy. Just kicked off his boots and socks and wiggled in, pulling his jacket up a little more tightly around him and digging his toes into the sand.

"God, I can't even remember the last time I was at the beach. When was it --?" He looked genuinely perplexed as he tried to remember and took a sip of his beer. "Five -- no four -- no five. Five years ago. Went with the team. I remember the Toothpick's jaw nearly fell out of his face 'cause he found out Nita had even skimpier bathing suits in her ward-drobe than her everyday wear," he laughed. "Geez."

He dug his toes even more into the sand.

"Hell, one of the last times I was Earthbound I didn't even take off the suit the whole time I was there. Had to quarantine because I was carrying alien pathogens. Actually, to be honest, I didn't take the suit off that often in general. Always working, y'know? I was hardly ever in civvies."

From the outside, it looked little like someone learning to be human again. He looked at the ocean with something like wonder, like he'd forgotten what it looked like. The last of the sun was setting and the lunar debris field still reflected light to Earth like the moon had -- more of it even, because of the wide spead. That light rippled on the water. Legion World reflected light, too, a second, more complete moon in the sky.

"It even looks the same. I know the ocean's supposed to be like that, the same thing forever, but you'd think in the future it'd be, I don't know, purple or something. It looks just like it did back when I was kid, when we went to my aunt's summer house on the Point. Ain't that the damnedest thing? Different universe, 1000 years in the future, and it's the same damn ocean. Geez."

Edited 2016-05-14 00:35 (UTC)

"I think the last time I've done something like this was..." Hal frowned for a moment. "God, must've been before Barry died. Let's go with a long time and leave it at that."

Sometimes he had trouble remembering exactly how much time had passed from now to then. It hadn't meant much to Parallax or the Spectre.

"It was with Barry, though. And Alan and Jay. And somehow, every possible thing that could go wrong did, because Alan decided that was the best way to make a point to me when I was being too hardheaded to just listen to it." He sounded fond, not irritated.

He leaned back in his chair and took a long sip of his beer. "When you think of how many times we've almost lost it..." He didn't bother counting threats to the entire planet. There'd been too many to even start, and he figured it had to be the same for Rich. "But here it is."

"Here it is." He took a sip of his beer and raised both of his eyebrows. "It's nice actually having half a minute to enjoy it."

The Legion kept them awful busy, just like things in their own universes kept them busy. But their organization meant things were definitely different.

"Remember how I was saying I wanted to organize things with the heroes back home? I still wanna do that. Look how busy we are with the Legion, but we still have a minute to catch our breath, you know? Because if something goes wrong, they can just buzz us and we can threshold up to Legion World and ship out in minutes."

"I thought the Justice League had a pretty good set-up with the Watchtower, but the Legion really has this down to a science."

And they had so much more space to cover, besides. A better organized surveillance system, a staff in place to help with the duty of monitoring everything, and the ability to get around quickly via threshold gate...it was a formidable combination.

"How's it feel?" he asked. "I mean, this place -- it's your future. Or, well, like a possible one. There's no way of telling if you got grabbed from the past or just a similar past. But that means it all pans out to this or might pan out to be like this. Everything the heroes in your time do."

He smiled a little smile.

"I don't even wanna know what kind of future my world has one thousand years from the present. I'd be terrified to find out what happens a just a year from the present."

Edited 2016-06-05 06:07 (UTC)

Hal considered that for a moment, taking a sip of his beer to stall before he answered.

"It's...a little surreal," he said, finally. "It didn't really sink in until we checked out that museum, but seeing all of that here, a thousand years down the line...it's nothing I ever thought I'd see. But to be fair, I don't think about the future that much."

Too busy, usually. One thing after another.

(Or maybe he just wasn't ready to spend too much time looking to a future he had no idea what he wanted to do with, or whether he'd have anyone to share with.)

A little tendril of teke tried to sneak its way into the cooler, sneak sneak sneak. But that still required the cooler opening, which gave it away.

An oversized, glowing green hand appeared above the cooler and smacked the lid back shut.

"I think I'm more offended that you thought that would work."

Dipper walked over and poked at the cooler.

"I don't want to drink it," Dipper protested. "My Grunkle Stan says alcohol is what paves the nightmare road to the worst things in the world: thinking you're funnier than you are and marriage. I just want to see if alcohol is as flammable as it is on TV."

No lie, that was actually why he wanted one.

"It's for science." A pause. "And also possibly zombie defense. I want to know what I can use to create a reliable Molotov cocktail in a pinch. I have a list of different substances."

Edited 2016-05-14 01:08 (UTC)

Long pause.

But no, that...was exactly what he'd expect from a kid like Dipper. For some, that would've been a weak excuse to try and cover their butt, but this time, Hal could absolutely believe it.

"Your uncle sounds like he knows what's what." Marriage was absolutely the thing of Hal's nightmares.

"Grunkle Stan is a surprising and unlikely fount of old guy wisdom. But he's right about most things."

Definitely not all things, but most things.

"The only advice I tend to ignore is the advice about committing different types of fraud, but that's because of his other advice about how to break out of Columbian prison."

Dipper would prefer to not have a criminal record.

"Well, I can't speak for Columbian prison, but you're better off avoiding having to break out in the first place." Hal had Stories. Breakouts were not easy.

"Can I try to set it on fire, pleeease?" Dipper said, pointing to the beers. "I'll do it in the sand. So I don't set the island on fire."

He knew that was important. A lack of arson.

Hal pretended to consider that for a long moment.

"Well, if I'd known you wanted to light one up, I'd have picked up some Natty Ice or something. This stuff is actually pretty decent, you know..."

Whatever the thirty-first century equivalent of Natty Ice was, anyway. Something cheap and crappy.

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