It's a luau! It's sponsored by some hotel or other, or maybe a few, but it's not //at// a hotel, but in an open area on the beach, partly on the sand and partly on a sort of grassy, field-ish part above the sand. Hopefully that's a thing that exists in Hawaii. There are hula dancers, a pig roasting, and all manner of exciting, touristy-themed things. And drinks. So that's good.
The sun is about to go down behind the horizon, and it's the perfect combination of warm with a very slight breeze. Excellent weather for being out, and probably a big reason why people come to Hawaii in the first place.
Grace had taken some time to go out and enjoy the weather of Oahu. Contrary to the opinion of some, she actually exists outside of the dojo. Might even own something other than the uniform she's usually seen in. In fact, today she had on a simple, light beige bikini that tied off with little wooden toggles on the end of its strings. It might look decidedly bohemian, but she seemed comfortable enough in it. So comfortable that she'd stepped into the water for a little bit and stood to let waves rush over her, facing the sunshine with her eyes closed, like it was the height of her day.
When she came back in from the water, Grace left her skin and bikini to just dry off naturally and walked, still wet, up toward the Luau on the beach. Her dark, almost black-brown eyes took in the area and she gave a pleasant, polite smile to people as they passed, their plates laden with food or their hands filled with drinks. When she got to the bar, she leaned against it slightly, not sitting on a stool or chair as it would have gotten wet, and asked for a frothy, fruity drink complete with an umbrella. Something that decidedly fell under the lines of a pina colada with a dash of something extra for the color. Once she got her drink, she started eating the chunk of pineapple from the side of the glass and watched people moving around, her attention avid and interested, even if she wasn't particularly tracking any one person.
Good food is always a good reason to be anywhere, but Noemi looks a little annoyed, leaning against a table with a drink in one hand and her phone in the other. She's pretty adept at holding it and typing with the same thumb on the same hand -- she's a nurse so she's good at doing things one handed. Get your minds out of the gutters, people. Eventually she sighs, clearly put out by whoever conned her into going to this thing and then had the audacity to stand her up.
"Jinetera,' she says with a shake of her head, shoving the phone in her shorts. She takes a long pull from the straw of her fruity looking drink then, because she's off duty and she's mad, and that's not a good combination.
Poor Noemi! Now she has to be at a gathering with delicious food and drinks, as well as entertainment. Alas.
Just kidding. But the pig is being carved right now, and a line starts to form as the cooks begin to serve it. There's a buffet table as well, with all sorts of side dishes, and there are also waiters and waitresses in grass skirts and very 'authentic' dress who are walking around bringing plates to the people. One of them comes by and offers a plate to Grade with a smile.
Grace set her glass down onto the bar without taking a sip, turning to glance behind her as she heard the angry edge of Noemi's voice. Looking at the woman for a moment, she canted her head to the side and actually seemed to be paying her some curious attention. Her gaze was taken away, though, when the woman in the grass skirt came by to offer her a plate of food. Looking between the plate and the woman bedecked in Hawaii's classic garb, she bowed her head gently and spoke a quiet "Mahalo, it looks delicious." And of course, she accepted the food to set it down next to her drink on the bar. Peering at the food on the plate, she plucked up some yummy looking hunk of roasted vegetable and popped it into her mouth, glancing back over toward Noemi as if curious whether she was still there, or still going to provide some sort of show as she beat someone with a phone if they arrived late...
"Sorry," says Noemi, when she sees Grace glance at her. Maybe she thinks the woman knows what the word means. "The person who was supposed to meet me here bailed on me, and I only came as a favor to her. You know how it is. Apparently the idiot she was supposed to be trying to get over showed up at her place and she just now thought it'd be a good idea to tell me." She sighs, taking another sip of her drink, and looking around, as if to decide if it's worth staying or not.
The waitress grins, giving Grace a nod as she takes the plate. "Enjoy," she says, and the turns away, heading back toward the pit where the pig is being carved.
Suddenly, she stumbles, and nearly falls as she tries not to dump the rest of the plates she has on her tray on an unsuspecting tourist group near where she is. She manages not to, though, and plays it off pretty well, but it may be noted that she takes the tray with both hands instead of the one hand she'd had before. There's a little confused look on her face, too.
Grace nodded and made a soft "Hmmm." sound, giving Noemi a slightly more turned up smile than she'd given the waitress. "You have no need to apologize to me. I was the one staring. There are worse places to have been stood up. Even the waiters here are lovely to look at, if you prefer men. And the waitresses if you prefer women." Her voice was decidedly not as far to the Asian lilt as one might expect, almost more European, with a faint trace of Mandarin on the edge of her vowels. "Maybe you should defy her and have an extraordinary time, enjoy it all, and have a lovely story to tell her the next time you see her. When she comes to you lamenting the fact that she stayed home to have her heart used as a sleeping bag, you can tell her all of the wonderful things you experienced. It may even make her stronger against the temptation of falling back into his arms in the future." Grace lifted her drink then, as if giving Noemi a 'cheers' and took a sip of it from the straw, managing to avoid shoving the tiny umbrella into one of her own dark eyes.
When she saw the waitress stumble, Grace set her drink down and moved a bit closer, ready to offer aid if necessary, but simply nodded to the poor woman with that small smile when she gathered herself up and moved away. Grace watched her for a moment longer, then shook her head, taking the few steps back to her drink and plate of food.
Looking around as Grace speaks makes Noemi a pretty good eyewitness to the near disaster. She nods, frowning a little as she lets her gaze fall to the ground in that particular area, her brows drawing together. Still, she manages to laugh at Grace's advice. "That sounds like a great idea, but she's not nearly that likely to remember a lesson the next time around. She'll forget everything that went wrong again, but that's her problem, I guess, and not mine, yeah?" Noemi's words give her away as definitely non-local as well, heralding from what sounds like New York or New Jersey or something similar.
"Are you okay?" she asks the waitress, getting up and moving a little closer, so she can study the ground, stepping on it a little cautiously, like it might roll under her own feet.
"Thanks," the waitress says, and she nods, going to refill the tray. "I think so. Just a little clumsy." She laughs, possibly at herself, before she moves on to wait on the other people instead. Away from where she just nearly fell on her ass. Away is better.
The ground looks solid -- that is, until it's not anymore. There's a sudden little shaking under Noemi's feet, and she's knocked off-balance as a few jagged rocks jut up suddenly from the earth to get right under her as she falls, so she'll fall hard.
Grace luckily didn't have anything she'd have to set down in her hands, so she was able to move over to Noemi without having to drop anything or break any dishes. "Are you alright?" She was clearly surprised, if the fact that her voice was raised a bit in amplitude was an indication. Crouching down a bit, she reached out her hand to Noemi to offer her help up. "Those rocks, they just came up from under the ground. It looked just like grass, earlier." Concern furrowed Grace's brows. "And now, I feel as though your friend might have made a better choice staying home and playing a spare wheel to her dreadful choices. Maybe you'll have a fine fireman come through to take you home?" Grace smiled lopsidedly down at Noemi, obviously attempting to help her feel better.
The falling draws a string of colorful Spanish phrases from Noemi as she drops her drink and her phone when she falls, the glass spilling out her drink and probably breaking on one of the rocks. The phone is at least in a thick case and manages not to shatter. She accepts the hand that Grace gives her, her brow knitting as she stares at the ground. "They definitely weren't there a second ago," she says, getting to her feet after she grabs her phone, then brushing off any grass or sand. She glances around, looking for signs anyone else was affected. "Who knew earthquakes could be so centralized? I guess that's what happens when you live so close to volcanoes," she muses, her voice sort of faux-cheery, but there's a lack of some surprise that hints she's not so naive as to believe her own words.
No one else seems to have noticed anything else at all, except a few people around Noemi. They just seem to think that she's fallen, though. "Are you okay?" one of them asks, but the other one looks quite skeptically at Grace. Come on, Grace. Rocks just coming up from under the ground? That's crazy talk.
The hula dancers finish, and people clap enthusiastically, because they were really quite good. Maybe not Aolani good, but they were good. They head off stage, and a man comes on instead, with a stick that he lights at both ends. The flames burst to life, and he starts to dance, spinning and throwing the stick in the air.
It's really quite impressive -- that is, until he loses his balance. He goes down hard, and the stick flies out of his hand, heading toward a blanket where some tourists are sitting. There's a chorus of screams as they attempt to get out of the way before they get singed.
Grace nodded thoughtfully, not seeming to notice the looks in her direction that questioned her sanity. "It happened again." She motioned over to the fire-dancer that fell over, and the people scrambling away. "If this IS just Oahu doing something like this, someone must have really pissed off Pele. I mean.. why else would she shove rocks up onto the grass like that?" Grace moved with careful footsteps, stopping at the bar and looking to the bartender. "Do you have a couple of bottles of water, please?" Her tone was it's strangely even one, that she seemed to use for classes. Maybe it was just her 'Keep Calm and Don't Freak the Fuck Out' tone. Who could tell? She waited for the water, eyeing the blanket that the fire-stick had landed on. "Oahu's pretty damn, I don't think we'd really get a grass fire, but better not to risk it."
<The Sight> Noemi has turned on The Sight.
Noemi nods to what Grace says, but somewhere along the way, she seems to phase out a bit, looking around herself a little wide-eyed. A hand comes up to scrub over her face, and her dark eyes dart from one person to the next. "Shit, no wonder he's crazy," she murmurs to herself, not too far off that description for her own personality at the moment. Eventually her eyes fall upon a man who's watching the fire dancer, and looks a bit less worried than everyone else. If anything, he looks smug.
She narrows her eyes and begins moving that way. She isn't particularly tall, but her stride is long and purposeful.
Luckily, it seems like no one has caught fire -- though one guy who was sitting there does seem to have some minor burns on his arm -- but still, there is a fire stick on a blanket. Perhaps because of Grace's quick thinking and no-nonsense tone, bottles of water are procured for her quite quickly, and while the blanket has been lit by the flames, luckily it's on the sand, so it will probably be relatively easy to put out.
The guy who Noemi comes at is //definitely// looking smug -- that is, until he sees her coming toward him. When he does, his eyebrows raise, and he turns on his heel quickly and starts to weave through the crowd, away from her, and consequently everyone else.
Grace nodded to the bartender and offered a very brief smile, cordial at best. "Mahalo." Was her response before she turned and undid the top of one of the bottles while she was walking toward the blanket. She only used one of them, if it was enough to put the fire out, but continued on to the next one if she needed more water. When Grace caught sight of Noemi moving in a decidedly dedicated manner, she looked over to see where the other woman was heading, and spotted the man starting to move his way through the crowd. "Wait... Are you going after him?" Grace's voice elevated itself to be heard, though it managed to maintain it's odd cadence without falling further into any specific accent. "Don't go alone, give me a moment and I'll come with!" And she proceeded to attempt to get the fire the rest of the way out.
The sight of the injured man does make Noemi pause, long enough to listen to Grace as well. She looks torn, between helping the man who's hurt and following the man who's hurting others. Still, he doesn't look too hurt, and there are others around who can administer basic first aid, right? "Hurry," she tells Grace, turning to keep an eye on the man and where he goes, starting to move slowly in that direction so she keeps him in her sight line.
<The Sight> Noemi has turned off The Sight.
The fire gets put out quite hastily, which is good, and the guy does seem to be getting some help, so Noemi can rest easy. Hopefully. The guy, however, is going pretty quickly away, and there's plenty of people to lose himself in, so she may have difficulty. Or maybe not!
Rick dropped Kaliko.
Grace nodded to Noemi, acknowledging the need for expediency. "I agree. Hurry." She made sure the fire was out, then dropped the bottles and took off at a full out sprint toward the dude that was making his exit with as much stealth as an Elephant in a music store. As she came up alongside him, he might be slightly confused as she dropped down to the earth, since she left his line of sight for a moment. But then, when the line along the back of her ankle came into contact with the back of the running man's knee, he'd be more likely confused by the fact that his face was suddenly in the grass, and he could likely feel the rub of the individual blades leaving their green hue against his clothing as he skidded to a stop, supine, when he'd previously been vertical. Grace stood back up and looked down at the man, giving him a stony, cold expression. "You seem to have tripped, are you alright, sir?" Was all she said in her calm, almost too quiet to hear voice.
"Damn," Noemi says when the other woman goes sprinting after the man that she had been pursuing, leaving Noemi in her wake. She jogs to catch up to the two, one on the ground and the other facing him down. She stands a little behind Grace, since Grace is clearly capable of handling trouble. "I saw you, Green Thumb," she says, giving the man a quick nickname. "Why are you screwing with people? Someone could get seriously hurt. None of us did anything to you," she says, angrily -- the waitress, herself, the fire dancer -- since she certainly doesn't know the man, she can't imagine there being a reason, and that's probably the case for the other two. "Explain."
The man can't even try to dodge, it seems. Maybe it's because he's not looking at them for the moment -- or maybe he's just really bad at dodging. Whatever it is, he goes down //hard//, slamming his face into the dirt. He lets out a cry of pain and frustration, turning around with a wince as he grabs his knee, comforting it. "What the hell?!" he exclaims, before he looks up at Noemi too, and with a wide-eyed expression. "What are you talking about?" he asks, in a sullen tone. "I didn't do anything."
Grace just watched the guy on the ground, staring daggers at him for a moment more with the sheen of utter boredom in her eyes than with any other parts of her facial expression. When he mentioned he didn't do anything, Grace looked over her shoulder to Noemi and raised her brows. "This is the guy, right? The one you were going after, and you saw him do this?" She wasn't quite defying the whole idea, more she was possibly verifying that she took down the right target on someone else's orders.
"Yeah, that's him," Noemi says, narrowing her own eyes as she studies him. "Nice try. Your micro-expressions give you away. That and the fact you had tendrils coming out of your hands. Yeah, I can see them, and what you are. Why are you hurting people?" She glances at Grace through the corner of her eyes, to see if the stranger who is suddenly her partner in chasing down bad guys thinks she's crazy or not. She doesn't seem to care about the man, since obviously he's not quite all human. "You just get off on hurting people? Starting fires? I can find someone to help you, if you need to talk about your problems with someone who understands," she says, tone turning from accusatory to actually considerate -- like that's her default, and it's hard to stay anything else.
Speaking of staring daggers, the guy couldn't be looking any more sharply at either of them if he tried. "I'm not," he says, shaking his head, even though Noemi clearly saw through his previous lie. It's his story and he's sticking to it. "I didn't start a fire. Can I help it if people trip? Maybe they shouldn't be putting on shows for //tourists// in the first place." He spits out that word like it's something very foul. As for her offer, well, he just snorts. He rubs his knee some more, wincing again. "//You're// the one who hurt someone," he adds, this time toward Grace.
Grace took a moment, looking at Noemi, searching her face, before turning her gaze back to the man that was obviously spouting some lies, enough that the other woman strongly believed in what she'd seen. A muscle clenched in Grace's jaw for a moment before she knelt down, seemingly not bothered about the fact that she was in nothing but a bikini, this is Oahu after all, and stared deeply into the fallen man's eyes. "If you believed that hurt, you should know I could put you entirely out of your misery with only two fingers, applied to only one place on your body. The pain would be intense, and it would likely last for the rest of your life, but that would end within moments of the touch. How about you instead just answer the question without lying, and you don't have to test me to see what else I know how to do?" Grace lifted her hand up, holding it flat, palm to the sky, then bent her forefinger and thumb together so that they touched. Finally, she turned her hand toward the man, narrowing her eyes at him. "What do you say?"
"I didn't trip and I saw you do it," says Noemi quite calmly. She glances at Grace when she speaks, her eyes widening just a little, before looking back at the man and lifting a brow. As if to say 'You really want to mess with her? I wouldn't!' She tips her head and studies him for a moment. "Because of the tourists?" she asks, prompting him to answer the question already on the table. That little bit of hatred didn't go unnoticed. "You think some sprained ankles or minor burns will do what?"
The man still looks angry, but when Grace speaks to him like that, there's a healthy amount of fear that comes to his expression, too. He believes her, obviously. Some of the color drains from his face, and though he doesn't quite crap his pants -- thankfully -- he doesn't look like he's far away. His hand is still rubbing his knee, but this time he turns to Noemi, perhaps so that he doesn't have to look at Grace longer than that. "If the luaus get ruined," he says, "people will stop coming. And then if enough people stop coming, maybe the tourism blight on the island will stop."
Grace blinked once, then rested her arm on her bent leg, allowing her hand to relax, palm down. "You realize how asinine that is, right? The entire economic structure of Hawaii is based on the tourism it draws. Without the money there's only enough food on the islands to maintain its current local settlements for less than a year. They don't grow enough here or farm enough here to last longer than that. If the tourism was gone, people would have to leave this island entirely, even the native people that have been here since before written history. Tourism isn't a blight here, it's a boon. It's how the entire grouping of small island nations are able to maintain their homes, and maintain their islands." Grace glanced up at Noemi, then back to the fallen man. "Not only that, but harming people isn't the way. Why not join the reef brigades in helping clean up the age old damage? Why not take part in research on new materials that cause less damage to the surrounding sea bed?"
The man's explanation makes Noemi shake her head. "You think a few luaus going awry is going to keep millions of people away? That's a bit simplistic," she says simply, letting Grace do most of the talking. When Grace leaves him with those other solutions, Noemi glances at her. "So he's pretty much admitted it. I didn't really think this through when I chased him. What do we do with him now we have him?" she asks, glancing back to the man on the ground. "Don't think police'll buy that he made the ground split by using tendril fingers, but we could try, I guess."
"Better that than what the island's become," the man says simply. "If the people leave, then nature will take it back. Like it should be." He does, however, smirk at what Noemi's said. The last part, that is. Since yes, it would be a little bit difficult to sell the story to the mortal authorities. "You just said that harming people isn't the way," he points out, glancing to Grace again. "So I think you're bluffing about what you said before. No one got really hurt. They're all fine." Basically. "So why don't you just go?"
"No, you're right. The police won't do anything with him." Grace looked up at Noemi and nodded, then turned her gaze back to the man they'd managed to trip up on his way out. "I'll take you to the white council of wizards, however, and have them try you for your inappropriate use of magic. They'll look into your soul, see your intent to cause millions of people to be taken from their homes, and your intent to obviously kill some via malnutrition, and will remove your head. They'll also find out who your accomplices are." Grace stood and looked over at Noemi, nodding her head. "You're welcome to come with me, if you'd like to be there when I drop him off to assure yourself I haven't killed him myself?"
"Accomplices?" Noemi says, looking nervously over her shoulder, because if he has accomplices, they might be in danger. "How do we know he has accomplices?" She glances back to the rest of the party. "There were a few other people, quite a few, that weren't, you know. A hundred percent normal, but I don't know who else was helping." She pulls out her phone and looks at it for a moment, then shakes her head. "I don't..." she says, a little uncertainly when Grace talks about him getting beheaded. "That might be a little overkill, no?"
What Grace says has the guy going a little bit white. His eyes widen, and now he really does look afraid, even more so than when she'd spoken to him before. "I didn't kill anyone," he says, again a little stubbornly, but he doesn't sound at all sure of himself, despite his attempt at bluster. "No one's going to behead me for something that didn't happen. You said so yourself, there's no way I could do it." It's a quick turnaround from before -- remarkable how the threat of becoming about 10 inches shorter does that to a man. And again...he does not sound sure. And he's certainly scared. He looks at Noemi then, and he nods a little more vigorously.
Grace shook her head once. "It's a matter for them to decide, and I imagine if he's fully committed to destroying the lives of millions of people, without care for the fallout, all with the use of magic? They're really going to want to talk to him even if they can't kill him for murdering someone with it yet." She shrugged a little and then motioned up, up, up, with her hand, encouraging the fallen Eco-terrorist to stand. "Come on, let's go for a walk. You can tell them all about your plans and how innocent you are despite your plans of ruining everyone's life on this island. Let's go." Grace looked at Noemi and shrugged, the motion almost imperceptible. "I don't believe letting him go is the best plan, and I don't feel like beating him until he can no longer remember his plans is any better. He's obviously going at this without a conscience, and holds the lives of plant matter over those of human beings."
Noemi glances from the man to the woman, a little uncertainly, because she still isn't one hundred percent on board with beheadings. "All right," she says to Grace, at least seeming to agree with her final two comments -- letting him go and beating him senseless are both bad options. "I think they'll be fair," she says to the man reaching for his hand to help him up, trusting, it seems, that he won't try to kill her when she does so. "Councils have a lot of rules, but that's to make it fair," she adds.
The threats -- real, imagined, both -- have the man pretty much cowed, it seems. At least, when they both get him up, he goes. He does need the help, as the knee hurts, and his lips are pressed into a thin line, but he cuts a look at Grace, and crosses his arms hard over his chest as he says, "Fine. At least they'll hear about the plight of Hawaii, even if they kill the only chance they have of saving it." And with that bit of totally ridiculous and totally fake bravado, he shuts his mouth and limps along, apparently not going to say anything more without...well, he doesn't have a lawyer, but maybe he'll get one.
Grace nodded to his excellence the savior of the Island and motioned the direction they had to walk to get to the location for the drop off of dangerous magic users. "I'm sure they'll be quite happy to hear all of it. I'm also sure that when you realize who you're telling that you'd be happy to evict from the island, you'll understand even more why it's a bad idea." She looked over at Noemi and gave her a soft smile, and a bow. "I appreciate you being there, I might have let him go to continue to destroy the hard work of everyone that puts on these Luaus. And you're right, he might not have accomplices, but I've never known a real trouble maker that didn't have friends at his back, not really. Usually it's a group of people that think something's true despite all evidence to the contrary." She took a slow breath, then Grace blinked and seemed surprised. "Oh, forgive my lack of manners, I'm Grace, by the way. And I'm actually quite sorry you didn't find yourself something worth writing home about at the party. On the plus side, you didn't have to stay all that long?"
Noemi smirks a little at the epithet given by Grace to the man as she walks, pulling out her phone to text someone something. It's probably not her friend that stood her up though. "Noemi," she says, when Grace gives her name. "Nice to meet you. I'll try to keep on your good side, because you sort of scare me a little," she says with a bright smile.
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