dualislogs | they show you how to swim

they show you how to swim

WHO: All Dualizens, old and new
WHAT: Your regularly scheduled NAPs event for the month
WHERE: Dualis Oasis
WHEN: Nov. 7-10
WARNINGS: Please use these if applicable!

Look at all of these bright, shining new faces! There’s even a few less bright, less shining faces - maybe even a few folks without faces - but hey, this city welcomes all types. Chances are, if you’ve just arrived, you're seeing some pretty crazy things, unless you're used to an eye-blinding amount of neon, robots, weird-ass technology, magic, and an omnipresent police force...and hey, if you are, congrats, you're gonna settle in juuuuust fine. But for the rest of you, the Head knows this has gotta be pretty overwhelming, right?

Well, since your quaint individual processing units are probably having a hard time, why not link up with another one? By which the Head means...

Hello, new citizens of Dualis,
and welcome to your monthly Network Adjacency Protocol~!

NAPs are a monthly community networking event similar to the Earth concept of speed dating! Two citizens (new arrivals and old hands alike) are placed at a table together with a handy cue card of queries to help break the proverbial ice. Ask queries and receive results, or ignore the card and yeet yourself straight into a brand new friendship! But don't be too shy, you've only got ten minutes together, and if you just sit in silence for the whole ten, the Network Admins are likely to come supervise and try to repair the uplink through a mild shock to the ol' central nervous system. You might find yourself saying all sorts of unintended facts about yourself if that happens...probably better to just make friends, right? Who doesn’t like friends?!

The weather outside may be taking a turn toward chilly, but you can still get your swim on during this month’s NAPs, held at the Dualis Oasis, an indoor temperature-controlled aquatic amusement park with giant slides, swimming pools, and lazy winding float rivers. Appropriate swimming gear is required for entry to this part of the park, but there are a number of shops just outside that will gladly sell you swimwear and accessories.

For those of you who wish to avoid a humid environment or just hate fun, a dehumidified lounge and restaurant offer quieter, dryer spaces for chatting and snacking. The actual speed-friending itself is in progress here, but you’re welcome to stick around and continue conversations with your new friends.

So c’mon, what are you waiting for? Just dive right in for fun and friendship - the water’s fine, fine, fine, just like everything else in this fair city. But hey, remember to play safe. No running!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Is that a challenge?" Yuna had never been the type to enjoy challenges but times had changed and she'd changed along with them. She liked pushing herself but also making a game out of it.

She laughed.

"That would be cheating you know."

Yuna splashed him again and then dove to tackle him beneath the water and tickle him before letting him go. Zack will win in a contest of strength but beneath the water Yuna has the agility of a practiced Blitzball player.

[ooc: I will prioritize this thread today if you need it <3]

"They say all's fair in love and war," Zack laughs, and then he's blocking his face because of the splash. What a lovely splash. It's enough to distract him into covering his face, and it means he's not paying enough attention to catch sight of Yuna going for the tackle.

He laughs as he goes down because yeah, that's a good tackle. It takes him down with a good bit of a splash. She doesn't, though, get a reaction with the tickling. He does splash along a bit, because he can't stay up in the water supporting someone else, not when he's taken down like that. Because no way he'll ever have the skill for this compared to her.

Yuna released him after a few seconds and swam around him to pop up behind him. She laughed and flicked her hair to get the water from her eyes. She wasn't used to the chlorine and it stung her eyes when she opened them beneath the water.

"So nothing is fair in love and war?"

She swam over to a place where she could stand and while she currently had no plans to splash Zack again, she had her guard up. This wasn't a game that had an end.

"I just said that all is fair, how is nothing fair?"

All and nothing are, like, opposites, right? Zack frowns as he turns to regard her. She swims so well, and he is definitely jealous.

"Damn, how do you swim so fast?"

"Well," Her head tilted to the side. "If all is fair, then you can cheat which isn't really fair, is it?"

It was an odd way to think of things but Yuna found that there were few who stood on even ground. There was always something...

"I practiced and I am a Bliztball player."

"Yeah, that's pretty much what the whole point of the saying is," Zack laughs, shaking her head. "Wars are to be won, see? No matter the cost."

Still, now he's wondering about what in the world Blitzball is. He tilts his head, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Okay, what's that Blitzball thing? It's a water sport?"

"Yes. It's played in a large sphere of water." Yuna circled her palms together in order to show him what a sphere was despite the fact that it was a common shape.

"There are six players on each team and two goals. Do you not have it where you're from? It's a lot of fun. I played on the Besaid Aurochs."

"Uh, sphere of water? How do they keep that together? You swim around the outside? Wouldn't that be, like, mentally jarring?"

Oh yeah, he's got tons of questions and is grinning now, definitely wanting to find out more of this strange sport then. And it's really cool that she's a player too. Who would have thought it? Well, not him because he didn't know the whole sport so he couldn't have predicted it at all.

"We use machina to fill the sphere and hold it together." She didn't know how it worked exactly. Yuna had only recently started learning about machines and a lot of the things she knew was based heavily on luck.

"We swim inside the sphere of water. It's like a large playing field."

It's surprisingly difficult to explain.

"How would that be mentally jarring?" She'd grown up with Bliztball and the sphere pool, so she wasn't sure what he was asking. It all felt normal to her.

Machina? Inside the sphere? Large playing? What!?

"How do you not, like, drown if you're inside it!?"

Oh god, he's very concerned here. Worried beyond all worry.

Yuna laughed. "You hold your breath."

It felt obvious to her.

"The game has tow halves and each last five minutes. I think there are some spells for those who can't hold their breaths that long but most of the players in Spira can. Everyone trains for years to be able to do it. It took me two years to it myself." Yuna had trained a lot.

Hold your breath? For FIVE MINUTES!? Zack is staring at her, in complete shock. Even years of training didn't seem that likely to him.

"Miss, I... I'm an enhanced soldier. I can't hold my breath that long. What sort of training could even help you learn to do that while doing heavy work like that?"

And he's going to be sick with nerves at the very thought.

Yuna blinked. "What do you mean? I just practiced holding my breath each day." She paused feeling a little uncertain. It felt like such a simple concept that she didn't really know how to explain it.

"Do you want me to show you?"

"But you've got to get oxygen to your brain," Zack answers in concern, and he's definitely sounding worried. "Okay, go ahead and show me."

But he's probably going to freak out after some point.

"It's not forever." Yuna smiled and then nodded her head. "Okay."

Her confidence and expression said, just watch and trust me.

Yuna dropped below the water and began to count. Five minutes was a long time and as she waited she swam around in circles near the top of the pool, keeping her form in view as she counted. If Zack didn't pull her up, she'd come up around five minutes, several seconds before her lungs begin to burn for air.

At least the movement reassured him that she wasn't drowning. But by the time she comes back up, Zack's chewing nervously at his lip. This is a mess, and he's been worried for a while.

"That was impressive. And terrifying. Don't do it again? I'll worry."

Wanda placed her palm over her mouth to try and hide her smile. "Alright. I won't. I don't think I can play Bliztball here anyway." There wasn't a Sphere pool and from what Yuna had seen there wasn't the technology for it.

"Sorry if I worried you." She hadn't wanted too.

"Do you not have games where you're from? For so long Bliztball was really the only form of entertainment Spira had. I think that's why it had lasted for thousands of years."

"Oh, we have a few games, but mostly no, not really. Hard to get involved in serious sports when there's monsters around," Zack shrugs. "But we've got things. Like baseball."

And he wasn't really a fan of that. Seemed boring.

"And soccer."

"We have monsters too. We call them fiends but I think it's because of the difficulties that Blitzball has lasted as long as it has. It's really the only form of entertainment we had." Until Sin was defeated and Coin Break was introduced by Rin.

"What's baseball and soccer like?"

She hasn't heard of any other sport before.

Baseball is nice, and Zack has to think about how to explain that.

"Well, Soccer is this thing played with these balls that you kick around. Only one person on each team can touch them with their hands, and they are the goal keepers. Baseball is played on this square-like thing called a diamond, and it's played with a thrown ball and a bat to hit it with. They're both team sports."

"It sounds like fun." She didn't have a firm grasp of either game but the brief description was enough for her to decide that they were fun activities. They had to be enjoyable or they wouldn't have existed.

"Do you play?"

He looked like he was fit enough for a sport.

Well, yeah, soccer was kinda fun, or so he'd thought as a kid. He was an adult now, though, and he hadn't played in years. But he does smile when she asks. Seems like she assumes he could. Should he take this as a compliment? Maybe.

"Nope. I'm a warrior. I was pretty high up in the elite forces of a military. So I never really had time for it."

"I see. It was the same for me." She tilted her head to the side. "Sort of. I was a Summoner."

She didn't expect him to know what that was. Part of coming to this world meant that she wasn't the famous High Summoner who had brought the Eternal Calm to Spira. It was strange but Yuna found herself rather comfortable with it too. It was nice, not being so well known.

"I was ready to lay down my life, to protect the people of Spira."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

they show you how to swim

<3

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