Heaven on Earth with an onion slice

“So what now?” Dawn asked, her tail whipping behind her. She’d just finished off her hamburger and was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. It certainly wasn’t going to win any prizes, but it had tasted nice and refreshing after a long day of toiling over the grill- even if she hadn’t even been cooking for more than twenty minutes.

“I mean, we can just head back, right?” Morgana mumbled. She’d cringed a little while eating her burger, which informed Dawn of just how bad it must have tasted, unlike Ella’s burger, which had been delicious.

“Ah! But that’s such a waste!” Rose groaned, shaking her head. “No, no, no! We’re on the beach you guys! Why would we go back so soon, when we could go for a swim instead?”

Mary frowned. “I can’t go swimming, remember?” She pointed out, gesturing to her body. “I can’t wear anything other than this, so bathing suits are out of the question.”

“Well… not necessarily,” Vivian said with an amused smirk. “Keep in mind… you can always just swim naked.”

Mary turned scarlet. “Wh-what!?” She practically screamed. “You mean… sk-sk-skinny d-dipping?!” She shook her head frantically at the idea. “But that’s just… no! It’s so indecent!”

Dawn couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Mary… we’ve all seen you naked already,” she pointed out. “It’s not really a big deal.”

She glanced at Ella, who looked flustered and confused, and then at Vivian and Octavia. “Well… most of us have, anyway.”

Her point though was that for Mary to care about her modesty and sense of propriety at this point was a little ridiculous.

Still, the farmgirl was adamant.

“It was just a suggestion, anyway,” Rose said, sensing the awkwardness building from her idea. No point in forcing the issue. “I thought it would be fun, that’s all. Sorry guys.”

Dawn’s ears drooped. Now she was the one feeling bad. Rose seemed to have her mind set on going swimming…

…But even if Mary wasn’t nixing the idea, Dawn would have to step in and do it, unfortunately.

“It’s alright,” the cat girl said gently. “It’s not like we’d be able to go swimming right now anyway. After all, we just ate. You have to wait 30 minutes before you go swimming or you’ll start to cramp up, and you wouldn’t want that.”

Rose didn’t appreciate her explanation. She crinkled her nose into a scowl and then sighed.

“Well, what if we do it tomorrow, then?” Vivian suggested. “It would be a lot of fun! A beach party, what do you girls think?”

“I… I still think it’s an issue,” Mary said weakly. She shook her head. “As fun as grilling the burgers was, I can’t go swimming… and spending the whole day out on the beach, while everybody else is having fun playing in the surf… I just don’t know.”

Mary hadn’t had to consider that actually. Until this point, it had completely slipped her mind that she wouldn’t ever be able to wear a swimsuit again, but now that she’d realized it, there were a lot of issues still facing her. And…

“Ah, don’t worry about that!” Vivian clapped her on the shoulder. “I can solve a little issue like that one, not a problem!”

Mary stared at her with wide eyes. “Wait, what?!”

“Didya forget about my transformation already?” She laughed. “New Style! I can let you wear anything you want tomorrow!”

• New Style: Vivian is an excellent designer with an eye for all the chic styles. Each day, she can either copy someone else’s clothing transformation for herself, or temporarily negate someone else’s clothing transformation, allowing them to wear whatever outfit she picks out, instead. She may use both effects on the same person in the same round once each, but she may not use the same effect on the same person twice in one round. [NOTE: Both these effects last for 24 hours.] (Fashionista)

Dawn’s eyes widened and her tail started to dance behind her. “Oh, that’s right! With that, Mary, you could even wear a swimsuit!”

Mary’s eyes widened with delight. “You mean it?” She gasped, looking up at Vivian with excitement in her eyes.

Rose shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other and bit her lip. She wasn’t thrilled with the direction this was going.

“Um… I-I’m not sure about this,” she stammered, trying to interject herself into the conversation. I sucked to see someone she admired like Vivian sucking up and praising Mary like this, even if Mary was a great girl. But she didn’t want to be jealous!

“Oh?” Vivian blinked. “Why? Isn’t that what you wanted? A beach party?”

“I-I…” Rose backed off, frankly not sure WHAT she actually wanted at this point.

Mary looked tensely in her direction, and Dawn just rolled her eyes.

This whole thing was spiraling from a decent idea into a real mess.

And… there were other things to consider.

“Morgana? What do you think?” Dawn asked, turning to the goth girl. “Do you want to do a beach party tomorrow?”

The girls were getting caught up in Vivian’s flow, and she wanted to speak up for her fellow introverts in case their wishes got lost in the maelstrom.

But contrary to Dawn’s expectations, Morgana almost seemed excited.

“I-I actually… I think it could be a lot of fun!” Morgana mumbled, her eyes twinkling. Oh, she definitely looked nervous to Dawn’s eyes, but she could tell that the nervousness was only part of it.

Dawn shrugged. “Well… if that’s what you want, then… okay, I guess?” She relented. Where had the shy, easily-embarrassed goth girl she remembered gone? Not to say that she wasn’t happy Morgana was coming out of her shell and learning to be more open to things like that, she was thrilled!

There was someone else to consider, though.

“I… a swimsuit, and… a beach party, that’s…” Ella swallowed and snapped the rubber-band on her wrist with a loud “THWAP!” that echoed across the beach. Her caramel skin looked like it was taking on a greenish hue. “I’d… I’d have to wear a swimsuit, right? In… in front of other people? And in front of Nick…”

“THWAP! THWAP!”

Dawn winced sympathetically for the other girl. This was clearly not something she was okay with. Putting Ella in a spot like that, where emotions would be high, that was risky. It was practically screaming for Cinder to make a surprise appearance. Heck- the poor girl was already burning her wrist red from all the snapping!

No… this was a nonstarter as far as Ella was concerned, and she’d have to step in now.

“Vivian, I don’t think-”

But before Dawn could voice her objections, Vivian strolled through the sand and draped her arm around Ella’s shoulder, causing the poor girl to freeze.

“Come on now,” she chortled, hugging Ella close to her side. “It’s not gonna be so bad! You’ll get to dress up in a cute swimsuit, cook some burgers with your friends, it’ll be great! Trust me. And when we get outta here, you’ll love the private beach at my family villa!”

“Err… I…” Ella’s brain swirled with uncertainty. She wasn’t used to people getting this close to her, and certainly not t-touching her like this!

She clasped her wrist and snapped her rubber-band again with a “THWAP!”

“Vivian, leave her alone,” Dawn said seriously, approaching the other girl. She wasn’t about to let Vivian mess with Ella and freak her out. “She doesn’t need this right now.”

Vivian blinked and looked over at the cat girl in confusion. “I’m just getting to know her better,” the heiress said. “She doesn’t need to be coddled. We’re buddies, right, Elly?”

Ella swallowed. She really didn’t like to be called nicknames. But she didn’t want to cause a scene and push Vivian away, either. What to do? What to do!?

Her heart was pounding in turmoil, and even when she snapped her rubber-band, she could still feel Cinder rising and pushing against the corners of her mind, trying to take over and drive the overly-affectionate girl off.

But before that could happen, almost as if Vivian could sense her reticence, the heiress let her go and took a step back, holding up her hands in surrender.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, looking sincerely into Ella’s eyes. “I didn’t mean to get into your personal space like that. No one’s going to make you come to a beach cookout if you don’t want to. We can do something else instead.”

“Uhum…” Ella’s heart slowed down to its normal pace, and she felt Cinder retreat. She sighed in relief, and then looked anxiously at Vivian. “I-I don’t want to mess things up for everybody else,” she admitted. “But I… I don’t…”

She felt utterly humiliated admitting this to everyone else, but…

“…I don’t know how to swim.”

A hushed silence fell over the beach.

“Ah, that’s okay!” Rose said, shaking her head. “Dawn doesn’t know how to swim, either. You know, because she’s a cat.”

Dawn’s ears twitched. “What was that?” She growled, glaring at the actress.

Rose cast a smirk her way.

“It’s okay, Ella,” Mary said, coming over to comfort the other girl. She had been fully indoctrinated into Team Beach Party by this point due to Vivian’s sweet words. “No one’s saying you have to swim! You could just stay on the beach!”

Dawn stared at her incredulously. “…Weren’t you just complaining about not being able to wear a swimsuit, though?”

“Well…”

“…I-I guess that would be fine-!” Ella gasped out, interrupting everybody. She shifted awkwardly and kicked up a bit of sand, looking from one girl to the next. “You know… just hanging around the beach and whatever?”

That’s what people said, right? Hanging? People did hanging, she was sure of it!

“And that won’t be too much for you?” Dawn asked, still worried about an appearance from Cinder.

Ella turned to her, and the look of hurt in her eyes told Dawn that maybe she’d made a huge mistake with that.

“I… I can do things,” she said quietly. “Please… don’t treat me like I’m so weak I can’t even be around people…”

Dawn realized that maybe she’d been hurting Ella most of all, with her overprotectiveness. She swallowed and took a step back from the situation.

“…You’re right,” she admitted, shaking her head. “That was wrong of me. I’m sorry, Ella, I didn’t mean to coddle you like that.”

Ella’s eyes widened. She quickly shook her head. “No, no, it’s fine!” She swore. “I don’t feel coddled! I just… it feels like everyone’s always walking on eggshells around me… you don’t have to! If I think I’m… I’m going to change, then… I’ve got a plan.”

“A plan?” Rose perked up. “What kind of plan?”

Ella’s shy face shifted into a determined expression. “…I’ll run away.”

Dawn’s ears flattened on her skull and her tail dropped down between her legs. That’s a plan?

“Then it’s settled!” Vivian clapped her hands together joyfully. “Shall we all have a nice beach party tomorrow, all us girls? …Ooh, or maybe we can even invite Nick and the others and turn this into a lovely affair! What do you think?”

“I don’t know if that’s quite fair to everybody,” Holly mumbled. She’d been off to the sidelines fantasizing about the idea of the girls in skimpy bikinis showing off for Nick, so she hadn’t engaged in the conversation at this point, but when the discussion shifted in that direction, she had to take the reasonable point of view… unfortunately.

“What do you mean?” Vivian asked, turning to the pervert in confusion. “Why wouldn’t it be fair?”

“Well for one thing, tomorrow is Carly’s day with Nick,” Dawn remembered. “And Carly’s in a bit of a unique spot. Because of her new transformation, she’ll be sharing her night with him, so she won’t be able to have him alone tomorrow.”

“Not that she ever does anyway,” Rose pointed out. “Since she’s always tag teaming with her sister for this stuff.”

Dawn nodded. Another valid point.

“Yeah, if Carly wants to spend some time with Nick alone during the day, she does deserve the priority to do that,” Mary agreed with a nod. “So we’d have to see if she’s cool with it.”

Vivian just laughed. “Oh, is that all? Not a problem! Carly’s a chill gal, I’m sure she’d be fine with whatever! Let’s go ask her!”

The girls all looked at each other. That seemed fine enough.

After packing up all the cooking equipment and bringing it into the hotel (although, as Vivian pointed out, they could have just asked the faeries to do it for them) the group headed up to the rooms to try and track down Carly and Marley.

“She said she was going to spend today in her room, playing some arcade games,” Dawn mentioned as they approached the Arcade Suite. “So I’d bet she’s still there.”

What she didn’t expect, though, was for the door to swing open and a very not-Carly figure to emerge from the room.

“Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin?!” Rose gasped in surprise. That was the last person she expected to see hanging around in her bedroom.

The assassin looked bright and shiny, with a content smile plastered across her face and glassy eyes. She practically seemed to glow and her skin had a glossy sheen, whether from sweat or something else, it was hard to tell.

But she looked like a girl who had just felt satisfaction for the first time in her life.

“Good… good morning!” Morgana said loudly, making introductions. The assassin’s ears twitched, and she turned to the goth girl and tilted her head curiously.

She looked at everyone in turn, and tapped her chin.

“Hey, so, um, is Carly in there?” Rose asked. Honestly, it was a little awkward for her, talking to Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin. After all… the girl was an assassin!

Anybody would be a little nervous around her.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin blinked.

“You know, Carly?” Rose repeated herself, holding her hands out about a foot in front of her chest. “Bubbly personality, kind of an airhead but really considerate? Tits out to here?”

The other woman blinked again, and then nodded cheerfully in confirmation.

“Oh, good, at least we didn’t come here for nothing, then,” Mary sighed in relief.

But while the other girls saw a chance to resolve this beach party issue, Vivian saw an opportunity.

“Hey there, Ashy!” She greeted the assassin with a wave and a smile, as though the slender girl’s profession of **** wasn’t an issue to her at all. “You doing anything tomorrow?”

Instantly the atmosphere around Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin turned oppressive and vicious. She locked her eyes in a glare at the heiress and curled her fingers up into fists.

Clearly, she wasn’t a fan of that nickname.

Say what you would about Vivian, but she was perceptive enough to pick up on when she was screwing up. She held up her hands and took a step back. “Sorry about that,” she apologized. “I’m a nicknamer, it’s kinda my thing. But I’ll call you Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin, if that’s what you want. Sound good?”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin brightened up immediately and her cheerful smile returned. She nodded happily and then listened patiently for what Vivian wanted to ask.

“…Now, where was I… oh, that’s right! Me and the girls here, we were planning a beach party for tomorrow,” she explained. “What do you think? Does that sound like fun?”

The assassin cocked her head to the side, and looked at the girls with a confused expression on her face. She crossed her arms over her chest.

“You know, a party on the beach?” Vivian repeated herself. “Building sandcastles, playing in the ocean, grilling burgers by the sea? Doesn’t that sound like a blast? And you’ll get to wear a nice swimsuit! Instead of… that.”

She looked at Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s jumpsuit, and shuddered. “…Sorry. I didn’t know you were hired to **** fashion.”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin shot her a dirty look. But the hostility she’d been oozing before wasn’t present, so the other girls wondered just how mad she really was. Maybe… it was just a bit of coy play-anger, and she wasn’t actually that upset?

They really, really hoped so.

“Well? Are you in?” Vivian didn’t look like she was going to take “no” for an answer here. “Just nod you’re head if you want to, ‘kay?”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin did just that, and gave the heiress a cheerful smile.

“We-we have to check in with Nick and the others first, though,” Dawn interjected before the assassin could get too caught up in this idea. “We don’t know if it’s going to happen yet.”

The look of disappointment she got was what she’d been trying to avoid in the first place. But it was important that-

“Ah, don’t worry your silly head off, of course they’re going to say yes!” Vivian countermanded Dawn immediately.

That earned her a glare from the cat girl. She really didn’t enjoy getting undercut like that. She felt like the responsible parent in a relationship who was constantly getting overruled by the “fun mom” who let the kids eat candy for dinner and watch scary movies past their bedtime!

“We gotta ask Carly first, okay?” Vivian said. Then she smiled. “Oh… hey, wait! I just thought of something, you don’t have a swimsuit, do you?”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin shook her head.

Vivian clicked her tongue. “No, no, that just won’t do… and Mary, you don’t have one either, is that right?”

“Err… no, no I don’t,” Mary replied, shaking her head. She remembered the swimsuit she’d been **** into for the very first challenge. But that skimpy thing had barely fit her before, when all she’d gotten was a modest size increase to her proportions… now that her chest had filled up with milk, the chance of her squeezing into that thing was almost zero!

Not that she had any intention of wearing that horrid swimsuit.

“In that case, come with us,” Vivian declared. “After we check in with Carly if it’s okay, we’ll all go to the boutique and buy some new swimsuits that’ll really make Nick’s eyes pop!”

While everyone was mulling over that idea, Vivian turned to the door and knocked on it without hesitation.

“Anybody in there?” She called.

The door opened up a crack, and a very frustrated Marley poked her head out.

“What do you guys want?” She grumbled, looking at them all in confusion.

“We wanted to talk to your sister,” Dawn explained. “About her day with Nick tomorrow, we were wondering…”

“She’s, uh… busy.”

Marley looked back inside the room and sighed. The others could hear giggles and the sound of tickling and rustling sheets coming from further back in the room.

“…Dani’s here, too, by the way,” Marley added, just to provide some context as to what Carly was “busy” doing right now.

A wave of understanding nods rolled through the girls.

“Well… we’ll, uh… leave you to that, then,” Dawn said, clearing her throat. “No sense in bothering Carly if she’s busy right now. We can just go buy the swimsuits.”

“Wait! Wait, wait, take me with you!?” Marley begged, her eyes frantic with desperation. “Please!? You can’t leave me here with them!”

It was definitely a problem. In some parts of the world, abandoning Marley in this situation could be seen as a human rights violation.