[Fanfic, 100% OJ] The Fanservice Episode, Frankly

Series: Suguri
Genre: Slice of life/Comedy
Length: 3855 words
B/D: I wanted to do something longer, and explore more characters, and explore more about the characters I'm getting to know already. I lifted the title from a Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid episode.

Suguri was not, particularly, a fan of the ocean. The raw power of her body was enough to dissuade concerns about breathing, and even the thousands of atmospheres worth of pressure to a certain extent, but she was all too aware that in the Great War, humanity had been rather more focused on how to litter the sea with mines than with how to get them back out again. Even with her abilities, clean up had been a long, dangerous process, and more still might be lurking in the dark, unknown pockets of the deep. There was no way to know.

As a result, she wasn't quite as enthused by the idea of a summer beach trip as Hime had been. There were upsides, of course. The sea breeze was one of Suguri's favourite things; part of her believed that she had been a seagull in her past life. She was also partial to the building and subsequent destruction of elaborate sandcastles, to symbolise the artifices of man returning to the bosom of the ocean.

There was, however, an additional factor in Suguri's decision to attend the beach day, although she had every intention of denying it when it inevitably came up. A week prior she had spotted Hime sneaking into the house in the earlier hours, armed with a two-piece bikini that was a shade below scandalous but still firmly in the daring category. She hadn't been able to get a good look at it, but she was fairly sure it was frilly, and a Hime with frills was relevant to her interests to say the least. Also relevant to Suguri's interests, in no particular order, were: Hime running barefoot along the sands and giggling; Hime standing waist-deep in the ocean with sunlit golden hair and her beautiful wings reflected against the rolling waves; and hitting watermelons with sticks. (Some pleasures were too simple to be denied).

Upon reaching the beach, the pair had retired to the changing rooms, and Suguri had shrugged on her own swimsuit. It wasn't too flattering, although it wasn't as though she had much to flatter; Suguri was built for speed, with lean, defined muscles in her shoulders and her back. Her long hair did, however, mean she could get away with a halter top without anybody staring too much, and all she needed after that was a pair of shorts. Shorts, mercifully, were easy to shop for; usually, shopping for swimwear ranked at number six in the top ten list of Suguri's Biggest Waking Nightmares. She just had very defined tastes, and nobody seemed to appreciate grey swimsuits with a single stripe on them as much as she did.

Having changed much faster than Hime (as usual), Suguri looked out at the fine, pale sands and resolved that before the day was over, she would achieve her life's ambition of making a sand castle that she could fit inside. But the day was long, and she was fast; there would be time for castle-building later. Now was the time of garishly striped towels and beach umbrellas that consistently threatened to fall over, and she wasted no time in installing hers in the middle of the beach. By the time the others arrived, Suguri had already acquired flip flops, novelty sunglasses and the beginnings of a tan, and was busy lying face down on her beach towel like a fried egg with a grey, fluffy yolk.

“Hey, shortie. You didn't bring your luggage with you?”

Suguri tilted her head upwards and saw Nanako, who was hefting a beach bag almost as big as she was. As always, she seemed a touch bitter; Suguri sometimes had problems getting along with her, although Hime was of the opinion that Nana just enjoyed grousing as a way to vent stress,

“Ah, you've arrived. If by 'luggage' you meant Hime, she's still changing,” Suguri replied peacefully, looking Nana up and down. The diminutive soldier had gone for a violet one-piece that was more cute than it was dignified, although Suguri guessed that there weren't that many alluring outfits available for somebody of Nanako's size. Some impish part of her decided to push that button a little. “...I was sure you'd be wearing a school swimsuit, though.”

“I don't care what you idiots say. I'm not in ninth grade! I am a professional soldier with a number of completed campaigns –”

“And a record of losing to me in sword fights.”

“– and a record of losing to you in sword fights because you cheat by having such long arms –”

“I can't control how long my arms are.”

“I can't control how tall I am! I looked everywhere for a nice, mature-looking swimsuit but I got landed with this frilly, cutesy mess while Kae, Kae looks like she's trying to dam the Victoria Falls with a picket fence, just spilling out everywhere and argh!”

Nanako threw herself on the sand in frustration, before rolling over and affixing Suguri with a dangerous, steely glare.

“You and me, we should form an alliance. Did you know that being short used to make you a sex symbol? It's true! I dug out some old music from before that stupid war you guys had, and all they ever sing about is shorties. 'Shortie, you so hot! Shortie, get low! Shortie got me spending the benjamins!' All stuff like that. We could rule together.”

Suguri arranged her face into a peaceful, innocent smile. “I'll form an alliance with you. But you have to accept me as the leader.”

“...What would your first order be?” Nanako asked, eyes narrowing.

“To go and explain to Kae why, in detail, you've been staring at her chest for long enough to construct similes about it.”

“Tch. No dice,” the girl said, and rolled over to face the other way. “I hate arguing with you. It always makes me so tired. I just wanna sit down and relax afterwards.”

Suguri sighed, and very gently patted Nanako on the head, expecting her to jerk her head away at any moment. Her hair was surprisingly soft and healthy; evidently she took good care of it.

“...Your swimsuit doesn't look awful. Tell me where you got it next time,” Nana said after a while.

“Yes, yes.”

Perhaps, in an alternative world, the moment would have continued. The sounds of the waves against the shores, of seagulls chattering overhead, would have lulled Nanako into an easy sleep. She would have awoken hours later, sunburnt on the side of her that was peeking out from Suguri's lopsided beach umbrella, and her absolute incandescent rage would have been mollified by memories of Suguri gently fussing with her hair.

Alas, this would have had to been an alternative world where Kae did not exist and was not the greatest source of noise on the beach. She charged along, a beach umbrella under one arm, kicking up a stream of flying sand with her footsteps, yelling at the top of her voice – and the top of her voice was taller than some mountains. Suguri took a glance in her direction and immediately regretted it; Nanako had not been joking when she talked about spillage. She looked just long enough to feel vaguely jealous before turning away, which was just as well, because the next thing Kae did was launch herself through the air in a beautiful parabolic arc toward their location. She hit with the force of a small explosive, planting her beach umbrella into the ground like a sword and distributing a fine layer of sand over the face and body of every person in a 100 metre radius.

“Safe!” the redhead yelled, flashing a peace signal to her two friends.

Suguri, drawing on over 10,000 years of life experience, had wisely made the decision to close her eyes and mouth. Nanako had not, and was in the delicate process of trying to make death threats while excavating roughly a tenth of the beach from her lungs. She was having little success with either, but this made no difference to Kae, who had already thrown herself at Suguri for a full-body hug. After a relatively minor but confusing scuffle, they came to a rest with Kae's warm cheek pressed gently against Suguri's navel.

“Ahahahaha! It's been so long since I saw you, Sugi! What are you doing lying around? You should be playing volleyball! Summer is all about friendly competition!”

Suguri had come to two conclusions, neither of which was about volleyball. The first was that Kae was part puppy, and had to express that by nuzzling people to death. The second was that Kae's swimsuit had more in common with a coat of paint on a car than with an actual piece of fabric designed for human beings.

Bravely extricating herself from Kae's embrace, Suguri put on her responsible adult voice. “Ah... I think if we played volleyball, one of us would have a malfunction.”

Kae gave a thumbs up. She often gestured as she spoke, with enough ferocity to put any angry waiter to shame. “Don't worry, don't worry! This body was built to last!”

“I'll play volleyball with you, Kae,” Nanako seethed, her eyes flashing pure murderous intent. “But I get to use my bits as well, since you're so tall, and, and, buxom. And if I win, you have to be quiet for one hour for every point I won by.”

“Uuuu... That doesn't seem fair. But I don't ever see Nana this fired up. What to do...? Aha! I know! If I win, I get to dress Nana up however I want for the rest of the day!”

Both girls looked at Suguri, who sighed and nodded. “Alright. I've witnessed the conditions of the bet. Play fair, you two. Or mostly fair, anyway.”

Almost before she had finished speaking the two were away, trading verbal jabs and actual lasers with impunity. Suguri watched them become dots in the sky, and wondered how exactly they intended to play volleyball without a net. It didn't matter, she supposed; Nanako was spoiling for a fight more than anything, and Kae would be more than willing to give her one.

“Oh, my. Are those two at it already? I don't know if they get along badly or a bit too well,” a voice remarked from behind Suguri's shoulder. It was warm, cheerful, as clear as song. Hime. “I'm also disappointed in you, Suguri. I look away for mere moments and another woman has captured your belly-button for herself.”

Suguri tilted her head back to take a long, upside-down look at Hime and her swimsuit. There were ruffles. There was a black and gold high neck bikini top and a black sarong cut just low enough to show the delicate lines leading down from the hips. There was a dry smile on Hime's face which probably meant Suguri was being a little too obvious. “Aha. Well, you were changing for quite a while,” she said, clearing her throat.

“True enough. No matter. I shall just have to win back your heart with delicious ice cream,” Hime replied, leaning down to hand Suguri a scoop. Had she been carrying ice cream cones, Suguri wondered? Her eyes had definitely been elsewhere. “It's a shame that Saki, Iru and Kyoko couldn't make it.”

“Mm,” Suguri nodded. Especially since those three were generally much less erratic than Nanako and Kae were.

“Well, I was more worried about Nana and Kae in the first place. The others have spread out a little and started to explore, but I don't think those two have found what they really want from this planet yet...”

Suguri frowned. This was one of those moments that seemed to demand a sensitive, emotional response, and she didn't have one ready. The words always seemed to elude her, as surely as she eluded bullets and lasers. “We can take care of them for a while longer,” she replied. It wasn't quite the response she had wanted to give, but it was the one she had to settle for.

“I suppose I should stop being a mother hen. Speaking of, are you wearing sunscreen?”

“Was that why you took so long changing? You were putting on sunscreen?”

“Very good! Gold star for Suguri,” Hime said with a grin, and sat down beside her on the sand. “My skin is so pale from being in the spaceship all those years that I have to be careful with it. You didn't answer my question, though.”

“I don't really need it. My skin never tans or burns. And I have no intention of leaving this umbrella, anyway.”

“Oh, that's ridiculous. I'm sure you'll want to play in the sun at some point. Here, roll over and I'll do your back for you,” Hime said, with an expression of perfect innocence that guaranteed she was up to something.

“Don't worry. I can do it myself.”

“Oh my, how impressive. How flexible and dexterous you must be!” Hime replied, with a gleam in her eye. “Incidentally, how good are you at rope escape?”

Suguri sighed. The answer, of course, was 'not good enough to get out of Binding Chains'. She grunted and rolled over in deference to Hime's passionate advocacy of responsible skincare. With a satisfied giggle, Hime scooted across and sat on her.

“Hime? You're sitting on my butt.”

“Yes, I'm quite aware.”

“Is there any reason?”

“You sit on it all the time. It seemed the obvious place.”

The logic was flawless, and Suguri couldn't refute it. Instead, she just closed her eyes and appreciated the breeze rolling in from the sea. Hime, meanwhile, busied herself with scooping up armfuls of long, silver hair and moving it away from Suguri's back.

“Ooh. Nice definition,” Hime murmured as she began to work damp fingertips around the muscles of Suguri's shoulders. Suguri said nothing, and was trying very hard to think nothing as well; for all her efforts to approximate a plank of wood, she wasn't having much luck. She tried closing her eyes and allowing the sound of the waves to fill her mind.

“Hey.” Suguri was surprised to hear her own voice. She hadn't particularly planned to say anything.

“Mm?”

“Why is this so important to you?”

Hime tilted her head a little in thought, but her hands continued to insinuate themselves against Suguri's muscles like the ocean licking at the sands. “Oh, well. A few reasons. It's part of the beach experience, I suppose, to rub sunscreen on somebody's back. Spaceships, in general, are not equipped with beach facilities, and water is a precious resource. We never got sun tans. We never wore swimsuits. Hm... How do I put it? For you, Suguri, this might not be a special occasion, but for me, and for Kae and Nanako as well, it has the taste of a kind of life we were never allowed by circumstance to lead.”

“I see.” The sound of the waves seemed to blend with the words and give them a strange, mystical texture. Hime's hands crept down the plains of her back and then returned to her shoulders, in a long, sinuous pattern.

“Another reason is that you've been so patient with us, Suguri, and with me in particular. To have had you here to welcome us to this strange, wide-open world has meant more than I can say. Sometimes I just want to spoil you a little in return. This doesn't feel bad, right?”

The only response Suguri could conjure was a non-committal but vaguely embarrassed little sound from the back of her throat; Hime met it with a sparkling laugh.

“Of course, that's a third reason. You're quite fun to tease, Suguri. You're so very serious all the time, and you always try not to react but do anyway.”

“And is that why you tease me so much?”

Hime took a moment to to coat her hands with a little more lotion. “Would you prefer a short and fun answer, or a long and serious one?”

“Well,” Suguri replied dryly, “Since I'm such a serious person, I'll take the serious answer.”

“I thought as much.” Hime's hands had drifted as low as Suguri's waist; her movements were slower, lingering, and her words matched. “I've lived for ten thousand years, Suguri. You know how long that is. But for the vast majority of that time, I've lived in the same, tiny place. The same days, the same faces, endlessly repeating. Oh, Suguri. I used to look at those travellers who we brought to Earth, and I could take apart their faces and say what belonged to their great, great grandfathers, where the family trees had crossed, that kind of thing. In a restricted pool like that, there are only so many genes you can have, you know? Only so many faces, so many combinations.”

Suguri said nothing. If there was one thing she was good at, it was that.

“Well, at any rate, if you live for too long like that, time starts to... blend together, just a touch. More than a touch. For a long, long while, it felt like I was living the same day over and over. Like time had stopped, for me. Just for me. But then we saw Earth on our horizons, with that horrible man at the helm. The only reason I didn't stop him earlier was because I assumed he would die of old age before he got the chance to do any real damage, but... Anyway. Things started moving again. Now every day is different. There are so many people to meet, with so many faces I've never seen or dreamt of before. This world, this Earth of yours, is constantly spinning. In motion. I feel like that's so important.”

“It's your Earth, too. Mm. That feels nice.” Hime was tracing circles with her thumbs across the edges of Suguri's hips; she gave a satisfied little sigh and applied herself to the task with more gusto.

“I suppose it is, at that. But, Suguri. Sometimes when I look at you, I feel... I feel like your time stopped somewhere on the way, too. Some days you wake up, and you wear the same face all day. It's... Well, I don't think it's good to do that. And anyway, I'm childish and selfish. I want to see all the different faces you can make, Suguri, not just the one you use all the time. That's why I tease you from time to time. To stop the moments from blending. I'm hoping that one day, I won't even have to tease you; you'll just wake up and smile, and blush, and laugh by yourself instead of keeping that same face.”

“And what will you do then?” Suguri asked. Her voice was sleepy. Her body was sleepy. She felt like she was talking in a dream.

“Well... I'll probably keep teasing you. But perhaps I won't be joking about it. Your back is done, by the way,” Hime replied, and stood up. “Of course, I could always do your front for you, if you'd like.”

Suguri didn't need to look to know that Hime was wearing a devious grin. But she stood up and looked anyway. After all the talk of keeping the same face, she realised that perhaps she hadn't been paying enough attention to Hime's. “If I said yes, would you do it?”

Hime blinked, and for a moment a flash of colour spread into her pale cheeks; but it was just for a moment. “You could always take your chances and find out.”

“I'll pass.”

“Oh, boo. It's rude to raise a lady's hopes and then dash them.”

Suguri found, as she had always found, that there were moments in life when it was necessary to trust one's body over one's brain. Decisions could not always be taken with a full set of information on which to base rationale, and anyway, there were sometimes sensations that the brain filtered out of conscious experience but still registered on a smaller level, and those could be as indicative of oncoming danger as any larger portents. She couldn't quite tell what prompted her to move as she did, but in that moment she was absolutely sure that the correct course of action was to launch herself towards Hime, scoop up her friend in her arms, and clear the next six feet of ground as soon as possible. She had cleared the first three feet when Kae and Nanako barrelled out of an empty sky at a speed that beggared belief and crashed into the beach, sending a plume of sand skyward.

“One, two, three, four, I win the THUUUMB WAAAAAR!” Kae howled, lifting Nanako into the air by one arm like a referee lifting a boxer's arm in victory. “Hey, hey, Big Sis Hime! Do you think Nana would look better as a punk rocker, or with cat ears?”

“Go with whatever your heart tells you, Kae,” Hime said indulgently. “But remember: when it comes to cat ears, proper etiquette demands a tail as well.”

Nana, although her eyes were more inclined to look in different directions to one another in that moment in time, still had the wherewithal to look at Hime lounging in Suguri's arms and ask, in a very groggy voice, “Am we... Was I... Is we... Inter'pting somethink?”

“Oh, nothing that we can't continue later,” Hime said with a wink, climbing down.

“She means 'no, nothing',” Suguri deadpanned. “I don't suppose you two would like to put the beach back where it belongs?”

“Nope!” Kae said proudly, conspicuously not looking at giant crater she had left.

Suguri sighed. “I suppose we'll pick a different beach next year. It's about time to split the watermelon. Would you go and fetch it?”

Kae had vanished before the sentence was finished. Hitting things with sticks was very much a Kae thing, and she dragged Nanako along in her wake. Suguri didn't expect her to come back with one watermelon; rather, she expected to see her juggling three. As the two departed, Hime gave Suguri a nudge.

“Next year, hm? I don't recall discussing a second trip.”

“Well, it hasn't been a bad day. I want to make a sandcastle next time.”

“Oh, yes. There's still things the beach has to offer us. I was planning to bury you up to your neck in the sand and then poke your cheeks.”

“...Don't make me change my mind.”

A year, Suguri thought, had always been such a short time. That was the problem. Time didn't freeze, as Hime said; it just went faster and faster while you weren't looking, and for all her speed Suguri had never been able to catch up with it. You blinked, and the Earth had come to the same spot again, and all that had changed was the year. But here, today, she blinked: the Earth remained where it was, and the year was the same, but her friends were wearing different expressions. It hadn't been a bad day, here at the beach.

It hadn't been a bad day at all.