Chainmail Bikini [Keke]

A KNIGHT'S HONOR

For any geek in the area, it was eye catching - but not in the usual way. As far as bikinis went, it was actually relatively modest. It was, however, a pun. The grey bikini she'd ordered off ThinkGeek had a chain pattern on it - in other words, a chainmail bikini. It admittedly wasn't the most crowded day imaginable at the school pool - a bit of a cold front had come in, but it was still warm enough to consider swimming, but cool enough that many were using the day to do something else.

For Sophie, it was a day to get some pool time when it wasn't so crowded, something she'd found slightly annoying on hotter days. Sophie placed a small beach back by her pool chair, having already applied sunscreen to herself - and having had to ask a random girl to use the spray sun screen she had on her back. She considered just laying back and enjoying the sun a bit - then she figured it was better using the pool for what it was actually meant for, and jumped right in.

... And was a bit surprised to find how cool the water was, not that it was going to keep her out. They must have changed out the water for some reason or another recently.

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For being one big massive island, there was a significant lack of opportunities to hang out at the beach and get a swim in. Back home, the beach was always nearby and it was a place she'd spent a lot of time. A beach didn't cost money, it didn't require much supervision, and there were other adults to do even that. Those factors all added up to Kekepania's mother dumping her there while she went off to do her less savory activities. Whatever the reason had been, Kekepania had grown up with water and missed it terribly. So, one day, the call was too much to resist and she decided it was time to go to the school pool.

It was cold out, technically only chilly but cold for somebody used to warm beaches and a sun to kiss her skin and give her that flashy outdoors look. Of course, she couldn't really afford a flashy swimsuit just yet, so one of her older ones would have to do. She chose a red and white flowered tankini to wear, the top was kind of tight which was annoying but also a little gratifying. She was growing up and out, that had been a worry for her since she wasn't urge what genes would end up coming out on to. To help out a little for the walk to the pool, she put on an oversized brown t-shirt over the top.

The walk to the pool wasn't too bad either. It was still chilly but not so bad that it would be awful outside of the pool. The water would warm her up, which is to say, she'd adapt to the water. You had to, sink or swim was an apt metaphor, though not very funny. She arrived at the pool and looked around for a place to set her things. She found an empty chair and laid her towel down. She'd put sunscreen on before heading out, you never knew if you'd need it somewhere embarrassing and it was better to do it yourself than to ask for help. Her little area all staked out, she turned to look at the pool and saw a familiar face. "Hey, Sophie." She called out in English and waved. "Hi."

A KNIGHT'S HONOR

While she might have been a bit too distracted by the temperature of water, even if just slightly so, to notice the Kekepania when she came in, she was more than able to recognize when she was being called. It only went doubly so when she was being hailed in her native tongue - English nowadays was just about the easiest way to grab Sophie's attention.

Having heard the Hawaiian call her name, Sophie raised her hand, and called back, "Hey!" before swimming up to the side of the pool, casually supporting herself on the side of it: getting out about now would mean she'd only chill herself further.

Sophie looked up towards Kekepania, and started a conversation, "How are you doing, your highness? Is your new world coming along well?" the 'Knight' of Louisiana greeted her.

Honestly though, come to think of it, she didn't know much about Kekepania other than her questionable royal heritage, her interest in  and her interest in world building. She seemed pretty fun to be around, to be honest though.

"Also, you're into world building, right? I mean, are any game genres that you really like playing?" Sophie figured the literal answer was yes, of course. She pegged her for adventure games, as well as the occasional game that let you run a virtual kingdom. If she wasn't playing some Travian clone, she... well, she wouldn't be surprised either way.

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Quickly, Kekepania pulled her shirt off and folded it up in a few quick twists before laying it over the back of the chair. That should keep it mostly dry and away from the danger of a splash zone. She slipped her feet out of her sandals and carefully walked to the side of the pool to say hello to Sophie. She hunched down, staying up on the balls of her feet and resting her arms on her knees. It wasn't quite at the same level as Sophie, but they could look each other in the eye without too much craning of their necks.

"I'm doing well, thank you for asking. My kingdom is having some trouble with crops right now. I can't seem to make the trees grow and spread organically in a way that makes sense but I don't want to rely on the player for all plants in the world. How are you and your acting prospects going?" She asked.

Kekepania nodded a few times and stood up. She took a few steps to one side of the pool and raised her hands a over her head. She leaned forward and kicked out, diving into the water with a small splash. The cold hit her in three flinches. First was the first immersion, tearing it's way down her body from her fingertips all the way to her toes. The second was the the wave of her nerves streaming the message of cold like a shiver that also ran through her body her body. The third was the desperate need to gasp at the sudden change, but this was tamped down with the practice of many years.

She came back up a few feet away and half swam, half bounced her way back to Sophia. She breathed out slowly, goosebumps were raised all over her body. "Oh wow, that's chilly." She said. "I like puzzle games a lot. Figuring out stuff is kind of fun, and games about exploring can be fun but mostly they just make me want to work on my stuff more so I stop." She replied. "Do you play anything?"

A KNIGHT'S HONOR

Though it was unnecessary with the edge of the pool supporting her weight, Sophie continued to kick softly out of second nature. She listened to her a bit. The virtual princess was apparently having issues with helping plants spread. Having trees spawn implied it wouldn't be in real time, or at least used magic or otherwise broke with reality.

She smiled when she was asked about her acting, "Great, actually. I've been learning a style of swordsmanship called 'Flynning'. It may not be as useful in a fight, but it's meant to help on stage. Oh, I've done fairly well learning Jeanne's lines for the play too. Did I tell you Jeanne is basically a personal heroine of mine?"

The 'knight' watched the princess enter the pool, with a small amount splashing onto her face. It wasn't enough to make her flinch, but it was enough to remind her the pool wasn't the warmest. She'd probably wrap herself in a blanket once she got back to her dorm.

Sophie readjusted herself after a few moments, keeping one arm on the 'shore', while the other stayed in the water so she could talk to Kekepania, "RPGs more than anything. They usually have some of the more compelling plots." Sophie did like a good fantasy, especially a knightly one.

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"Cool." Swordfighting was really cool, not that she'd had any real practice with it in real life. Her experience came from games and, if she wanted to pretend it counted, virtual reality games. Flynning, however, was not a term she was familiar with, so her mind directly conjured images of fencing in films. So, in a way, she had the right idea if still wrong.

She took a deep breath and relaxed her shoulders, and slowly the water pushed her up so she was lying on her back and staring at the sky. "Well you must be really pleased to be a part of the show then." She slowly spread her arms out and brought them in under her head to try and avoid breaking the surface tension she was trying to lie on.

"RPG plots are super difficult though. Maybe you have one laid out but some players are going to lash out because the choices the character makes aren't the ones they'd make. Or you cater to everybody and people complain that they get to do too many things that don't make sense." She sighed. "The best stories are the ones you make yourself, then you can share them with a friend. No two experiences are exactly alike in an exploration game. That's kind of what I'm going for." That and a world that a person could disappear into basically forever.

A KNIGHT'S HONOR

True, although it the faux-princess's comments seemed to fall under the category of 'you can't please everyone'. Kekepania seemed to have an interesting perspective on it though. From what Sophie could tell, the princess was saying that the best stories were the ones that were made for just a couple of people, ideally with the storyteller being more than just a narrator, perhaps.

She nodded, "Pacing an RPG is the tricky thing. You have to balance when to tell story, and when to let them just play." And then there was balancing sidequests, and you potentially had more plot hooks and storylines to play with, even if there was mostly just one main plot.

Sophie let go of the ledge, and gently kicked off it, causing her to drift just far enough to give her a little distance, simply swimming in place by kicking. She'd never been able to figure out how to just float like her friend was doing, to be honest. Every time she'd tried, she just ended up sinking a bit before she uprighted herself.

She smiled, "So, you play any tabletop games? I mean, it sounds, with the whole 'make and play through stories of your own', something like Dungeons and Dragons sounds right up your alley."

Tabletop games were decidedly less tangible than a virtual world in VR, but they still seemed like something Keke would be interested in.

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"I know, and the people who just want to break everything or the weirdos who, for some broken brain insane reason, decide they want to collect every candlestick in the game and dump it in some guy's bathroom. Like, that's not real life, you can't plan for that. But you also can't tell them to take the candlestick and shove it up their butt because you want them to buy the game." She sighed as she stared up at the sky. The problem, as it was with so many things, was other people. Making a game for yourself alone was nice, but not a long term business strategy.

Tabletop games, the one that immediately came to her mind was monopoly. But Dungeons and Dragons, she'd sort of heard of it before, mostly online but she didn't know about it. "Isn't that something for nerdy dudes to do?" She said, which was a bit rich considering how nerdy her own hobbies could be. The trouble with a lot of tabletop games that she knew about was that they required you to have at least one other person to play with.

"Do you play any board games?" She turned her head towards Sophie and slightly adjusted her arms so she didn't end up capsizing herself. "I admit, I never really got the chance to play a lot of those kinds of games growing up. It was mostly just me and my mom and we kind of moved around a lot." They had played some games, she wasn't completely alien to the concept, but they'd been cheap things, bought secondhand. They had been classics in every sense of the term.

A KNIGHT'S HONOR

Sophie giggled as she imagined someone tossing hundred of unlit candlesticks into a bathroom, until it they had to carefully stack them, just to make sure it didn't all spill out like a busted bucket of water.

She shook her head on the topic, when asked if she did it, "Nah, I mean, some of those sword and sorcery type games look pretty fun, and making my own custom from-scatch knight in shining armor to play sounds like fun, but... well, all those games have a tendency to favor the wizards." Paladins were supposedly somewhat more viable, and fit the archetype for a chivalrous knight, with a particularly strong emphasis on shining. But still, it palled in comparison to the wizard, who probably has a 'shining armor to rust' or just 'turn to frog' spell that they didn't get one of those 'saving throws' or whatever against.

She smiled, "Hey, maybe we should give it a try. It'd probably help sharpen your world building skills." Quest making too, and whatnot.

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Kekepania took a deep breath and did an awkward little twist. There was a bit of splashing as she forced her body to rebalance itself to a vertical position. As good at she was at swimming, treading, and even floating on her back, the movement between was still a far from graceful affair. In the end, and after a few awkward kicks, she righted herself and let out the air. "I don't know, like, magic powers are cool and all but, like, it's the same kind of thing as shooting stuff. The bullets are flashy and junk but they're way over there and you're way over here." Making stuff explode or catch fire at a distance looked cool but it was all spectacle. She'd seen some other VR projects and sword fighting in VR always looked impressively difficult, and the swordfighting you got in movies, well, there was a reason wizard duels in movies had a bunch of slashing wands and parrying beams of light.

But she was still thinking video games. Sophie was obviously talking about the board game things and that was a whole different ball game. There weren't any graphics or anything, and being able to drop people from far away was probably a good strategy. Kekepania tapped her chin, "I guess it could be fun. But I don't know how to do any of them." It sounded like Sophie was also similarly inexperienced. "We'd have to find somebody at the school who knows how to play the games and has all the stuff." But, she was not the most sociable person. Wait,, that was the wrong view of it, nobody else had proven themselves worthy of her attention, except for Sophie. It was the fault of the other students, not hers.

A KNIGHT'S HONOR

"Or Youtube videos. I've seen a Let's Play or two, so I figure there's probably a few of them on campaigns." Sophie pointed out, "But hey, maybe there's some sort of group here. We'd probably have to do a bit of looking around to find one though." Honestly, Sophie didn't know how popular tabletop games were in Japan, though she figured they probably were popular here too. Relatively speaking, of course.

"And spells can do more practical things to, you know." She couldn't point out anything in particular as an example, but there were probably some. Some kind of alchemy, probably.

She smiled, "So, you want to give it a look?"

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"Yeah, that's a good point." Kekepania clapped her hands together. Of course, she should have thought of the internet. You could find anything on there and learn anything too. The internet always had the answers and could be a lot more convenient than bothering with a real person who might look down on you or talk down to you for not knowing stuff because other people had asked before and you could piggyback off of them.

"For a club on campus, I think they have to register with the student council." she said as she tread water. "Unless they're unofficial I guess but we want official people." Official meant quality in Kekepania's mind. Being official meant something like getting an accreditation or license, it made you trustworthy. "Yeah, let's check it out later. I don't know anyone on the student council but they're there to help us out so they've got to help us."

It all sounded infallible to Kekepania. But right now was the time for swimming and water fun. "But I came here to swim right now, so swim with me." She leaned back and started kicking, swimming away from Sophie with just her legs before bringing her arms into it for a backstroke.

A KNIGHT'S HONOR

Sophie nodded, "It's a plan then!" Watch some Youtube videos to get a better grip on campaign, or at least looking like it, and see if there was any group registered for tabletop games - if necessary, of course, she'd just make her own, official or not.

She giggled just a bit, "As you wish, your highness." Sophie might not have been able to float. In all likelihood, the results of her trying would be capsizing near instantly. Unsurprisingly, the Hawaiian was better swimmer than she was was. Sophie had never managed to master the backstroke though, so she quickly transitioned to what could be called a breaststroke - sort of. It was more like a less efficient knockoff of a breaststroke. It worked, and it was better than just dog paddling or kicking her way across the pool, but still, Sophie was only a so-so swimmer, managing to keep up with her friend regardless.

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Well then, that was the future sorted and life was always better when you had the future established, even if it was just in a generalized way. You couldn't plan for everything but that was alright so long as you had a plan at all. And she liked that your highness bit at the end. Maybe it wasn't entirely serious but Kekepania could err on the side of what made her feel more important. Besides, she'd basically organized this, it was like a committee. You workshopped ideas, you got a plan, all that was left was the follow-through.

Swimming was a little distracting, there was water splashing in your face all the time and you couldn't always keep your eyes open unless you had goggles on. But the more sedate pace still let her notice a few things about her swimming partner. The most notable one was that her form was pretty poor. What the heck was that stroke supposed to be?

Kekepania twisted slowed down as she came to the edge of the other side of the pool and grabbed the edge. "Where were you from again, Sophie?" She couldn't remember if that had come up when they first met but it had to be somewhere landlocked. "Cause I think we might have to drag you in the pool more often to get you some practice." she said with a giggle.

A KNIGHT'S HONOR

Sophie, of course, was hardly aware of the flaws in her own method, being the person using them. So her attention was grabbed and she blushed slightly, uprighting herself when her flaws were brought to her attention, "Louisiana. But... well, just not somewhere with a beach." she giggled back, blushing slightly, "As you can probably tell."

Sophie in turn grabbed the edge of the pool, starting to feel slightly chilly. Beach-goer or not, she was used to a warmer climate than Fukui, "You might have to give me swim lessons some time." For her part, it wasn't such a big deal, admittedly. It worked fine for her, but she had to admit, it'd be nice to be a bit better at this.

"What about you? Were you much of a swimmer?" At a glance, the whole old geek-jock dichotomy meant that she assumed that while Kekepania was a decent swimmer, she still spent most of her time in her (air conditioned) house. But you never know - most geeks didn't presume themselves to be royalty. She could have insisted on keeping 'royal physical conditioning'.

How long had she been doing this, anyways?

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"Louisiana." Kekepania said, putting on a drawl that she imagined they had out there. "Never been there so I can't imagine the city will ring any bells." Just another one of those things, the US was a big place, many people didn't realize how big and, frankly, Kekepania wasn't much of one either having spent her life on the islands. "I don't think I'd mind teaching you, any excuse to spend some more time in the water is great."

She took a breath and bobbed her head under the water a few times, as the outside air got chillier, it wicked away the heat, the water of the pool acted like sweat, stealing the heat away as it evaporated. The best method to avoid getting cold, in Kekepania's opinion, was to keep the water layer as fresh as possible. "I'm ok. Not going to win any medals or anything, but growing up, the beach was every field trip and vacation I took."

It was an innocuous statement at first glance. Perhaps an over-exaggeration used as emphasis. But for Kekepania, it was entirely true. She and her mother couldn't afford the real trips, and beaches were free, always open, and could form the setting of playing, shell collecting, treasure hunting, or whatever diversion her mother had planned. And the ones with life guards meant that she could go off for her own needs while Kekepania could do whatever she liked.