dualislogs | 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

"Ten minutes, with half time in the middle!" comes the answer to that question. No biggy, right Connor?

The more important thing here is the agreement to experiments, and could Tidus's expression light up more? "Alright!" Apparently so, and he ushers for Connor to follow him to grab one of the volleyballs lazily bobbing around forgotten in the swimming pool's water. From there, Tidus takes them to find a good spot to prepare, while people nearby obliviously enjoy themselves.

And once Tidus is satisfied they have some decent space: "Gimme a moment. You'll wanna keep back."

Foreboding words. Except what Tidus does doesn't seem that bad. He's bouncing the ball in both hands, testing the weight and spring, moving the test over to just one hand and then putting more effort into the motions. Then, he changes flat palms for a fist, getting it to go higher, appearing neither pleased nor too disappointed by the results. It's not a blitzball at all (they're lighter, with a far more easier spring; lets the ball fly and move easier underwater), but it'll do.

Tidus is confident anyway when he catches the ball after a particularly high throw above his head. He regards Connor briefly, the wall farthest from them and the absence of people lingering and swims a little back...

He throws the ball up and meets it with a fist as it comes back down, sending it higher than it would by a simple chuck alone. Tidus wastes no time, half-diving into the water so as to spin his body, bringing out a leg to round-kick the incoming ball with his foot before it breaks the surface of the pool. It shoots off, smacking the lower portion of the opposing wall, and then rebounds back towards the pool in an arch upwards, the unknowing nearby swimmers shrieking as it lands abruptly in the waters near them, fortunately missing any actual victims.

Tidus sinks into the waters to his eyes like a guilty man anyway, until he comes back up with an uncontrollable laugh that shakes at his shoulders, kicking a foot up at the water cheerily.

That didn't go quite as planned, but heck was it fun!

That’s… Actually, he’s not sure if that’s not possible for humans as he knows them. No, it can’t be, not with all of the physical activity as well. Surely. His eyebrows go up and he’s about to ask if that’s a normal time to be able to hold your breath for, but the young man’s already excitedly beckoning him over to some abandoned balls and taking one of them.

“OK, moving back...” It occurs to him that the people swimming there might need a warning. Maybe. No, it’s probably fine, right? This is an athlete, he knows how not to endanger anybody. Right.

Sort of right, but mostly by luck. Connor follows the ball with his whole head, not just his eyes, as the guy punches it high into the air, dives and twists rapidly so that he can sort of scissor kick the ball with one leg protruding from the water - the ball hits the far wall hard, ricochets, and Connor's so focused on what exactly was happening that he doesn't look for a moment at the projected destination of the--

"Oh, shit--" But luckily, other people are much faster than he just was, so all Connor has to do is flail a little in place in the water and then just gape from where the ball has returned to the surface to bob innocently, to the blonde kid, who looks so comically guilty there that Connor laughs in sudden surprise, then again softly in genuine pleasure as his companion breaks the surface again proper.

"That's not what I expected to see," he says, the understatement of the day. "And you do all of that underwater?"

He sounds so very intrigued about this. Connor's gotten greedy for new experiences; everything he wasn't allowed to have, wasn't programmed to have back home in Detroit, he grabs for every time he gets the chance here in Dualis, even if it's not really the ideal setting for it. It's the only setting he has, after all.

'And you do all of that underwater?'

Tidus eases his laughter to be able to respond, but it continues to dance in his voice, the smile that presses into his cheeks.

"Yup! And it's way better than that." He waves a dismissive hand at the ball now floating there. "It's amazing! You use your hands, your feet, everything you've got, and there's no limits--you can get thrown out of the sphere and if you go up," and up goes a hand, "as long as you come back down conscious, you can swim right back into the game!"

Which really didn't happen too much (who would thrown their opponent up instead of out into the benches? The audience loved to see that), but why hold back at all? Tidus eyes Connor however, his look inquisitive.

"You really have nothing like it? Not even close?"

He sounds ready to be disappointed, but he doesn't want to be!

The sheer enthusiasm seems to radiate from Tidus like the sun, warming everything around it, Connor included. As a detective, he never got to meet anybody like this, and even now, a lot of the people he likes are much more lowkey. He's already spent his time in Dualis trying to figure himself out and what he likes and what he wants to do with his life if they ever get out of here - encounters like this make him realise he wants something to be truly passionate about, too.

When he speaks, he even notices himself being more animated than usual, smiling, gesturing with one hand, making tiny splashes over the water's surface.

"Nothing I've ever heard of - but maybe," although he doubts it; some of the things Tidus is describing sound just a little far out of the bounds of possibility - he's sure regular humans can't hold their breath that long where he's from, come to think about it. "I didn't know anything about sports back home. I only started trying to pick things up here."

Unless you count the time he downloaded everything there was to know about basketball so he'd have something to talk about with his partner. He doesn't count that. But in any case, there's one thing he didn't understand here:

"So, what's the sphere?" he asks. "Is that the pool you play in?"

“Uh, yeah, but it’s a sphere.” As if the guy needs a visual demonstration of what a sphere is, Tidus cups his hands together, then enlarges the shape by bringing them out. “It’s a giant pool of water you play in, and then the stadium seats go all around.” He breaks the sphere here to wave a forefinger around where it’d been. "It's science stuff that keeps it floating like that. Watching it fill is a show itself!"

Really, Tidus obviously just likes talking with his hands, but he lets them settle into the water again.

“It’s the only sports we had back home, but it’s all you needed.” But apparently, a sports they didn’t think they needed here. Nevertheless, Tidus has been interested in asking something himself, interest already lifting his eyes a little. “What've you been picking up here? You do anything that moves you around a lot?”

Because swimming was fun, and that fit that bill, but he wasn't going to pass down learning more activities while he was here. Maybe there was something half as fun as blitzball out there. Maybe.

they show you how to swim

no subject

and the award for slowest tagger goes to......

what's even a tag

haven't a clue tbh

must tag for sports (also i'd love to do more with them!)