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As Sunana looked at her invitation to the party, she couldn’t help but smile. Of course Gegeruju never failed to send her an invitation to his parties, he was far too terrified of her to insult her by leaving her out. Though, she had a feeling that he didn’t invite her just out of pure fear. He’d gotten the courage to mention once that he would be interested in seeing her dance, and she certainly had a smile on her face as she said that she simply did not feel like doing so, and there was no amount of gil he could use to incentivise her. However, she had nothing against him getting his kicks from watching her swim.
It was very useful that her swimsuit, the Summer Sunset Beach attire came with a cover-up, she was ever the tease so of course she didn’t want to show everything off the bat. She always asked him if she was allowed to swim, just to see that flash of hope in his eyes as he said that was definitely alright with him.
It was usually not long after the party started, as it was this day. She was slightly impatient today though, she practically interrupted him with a “Wonderful! In that case-”
She undid the knot of the belt holding her cover up closed, pretending not to notice the gasps of surprise. She had to tie the belt behind her so it wasn’t just floating around, and as she was doing so the cover-up actually slipped off her shoulders to her elbows.
“Oops,” she said with all the charm in her body, making others wonder if she had done that on purpose just to add to the growing blushes around her. It was always entertaining to see how many people blushed from this outfit because it was likely the most uncovered skin they would ever see on her. Though, it was pretty clear she was trying to show off when she posed, one hand on her hip and the other lifted casually as she winked.
Well, that was enough intentional showing off for her because she needed to find someone. She wasn’t the only one intending to swim today, she had planned to swim with a friend of hers. Lady Reresu wasn’t far away with her daughter Roseta, so Sunana strolled over and asked, “Would you like help with your swimsuits?”
“I’m wearing one yes but I don’t know how I feel about well…you might not have a problem changing clothes in front of others but I…” Her friend seemed very contemplative as she debated it, but Sunana had a plan. She just leaned in close and whispered, “Worry not, I am prepared!”
Reresu gave her a suspicious look, because everyone knew her propensity for trickery. But she rarely tricked her friends, so she cautiously gave her confident friend a nod. Then Sunana whipped out her handheld ball and tapped it, calling out, “Leilu and Dyede!”
Both promptly appeared, and Sunana pointed to both of them and said, “Curtain please!”
Dyede had the cloth for one, so with a shrug she retrieved it and handed the end to Leilu so they could pull it in front of all three of them. Then Sunana set to work!
Reresu’s Oasis outfit was slightly tricky to remove swiftly but she managed it, revealing a gorgeous yellow Summer’s Flame top matched with a similarly colored Endless Summer bottom. It perfectly matched her deep blue eyes and rich blonde hair, which was partially pulled up with a headband that simply gave her hair more volume. Roseta’s frilly lacy dress was much easier to remove, and beneath it was a perfectly modest rose red Southern Seas one-piece that looked adorable with her ruby eyes and short braided golden hair with the tiny tuft sticking up on top.
Since they were now in their swimsuits it was time to lift the curtain, and Sunana stood in front of Reresu to shield her a little from the crowd. To Roseta she gave the entire curtain to wrap around her because that poor baby was always an anxious wreck and the swimsuit probably made it a little worse. But she needed a swimsuit because what they had planned was for Isenaji to teach her how to swim. Speaking of…
“Ise! Quit stuffing your face and get ready to swim!”
“Hm?” He was startled by it but noticed the swimsuits and quickly finished chewing before shouting, “Coming!” as he shed the Maritime jacket she’d put on him, leaving him in the shorts as he ran over to his best friend and grabbed her hand. He didn’t even stop running he’d grabbed her hand to drag him with him down to the beach along with Sunana’s shout of, “Keep to shallow waters!”
Sunana did casually ask Leilu to keep the jacket that Isenaji had just left on the floor which she did with a humorous statement of, “Seems I’m always picking up after him,” before disappearing.
“Shall we?” Sunana said humorously to her friend, who nodded before they were stopped by a merchant that said, “Apologies but I was hoping to discuss things with you here-”
He cut off at the sight of Sunana’s icy glare, and she held her head high as she said harshly, “Anyone who would have dealings with me should know better than to interrupt me. Best wait for me to be in a better mood.”
And with that she left, strolling down to the beach so they could have fun in the water.
-
After spending some time splashing each other with water, a battle that Sunana inevitably won by completely knocking her over, they decided to swim out into the more open water to fall into the same kind of conversations they always had: discussing rumors.
“You know how unbelievable that sounds, Rere.”
“I know, yes, but if it were true it would be pretty int-”
The cause of Reresu’s immediate interruption was very close, and she nearly shrieked as she said, “It’s a shark!”
“Indeed it is,” Sunana replied as she quicked backed up a little, and she sent a grin her friend’s way as she asked, “Would you like to touch it?”
“Touch it? It would eat my hand!” Reresu said as she held her hand as if it had already been eaten. Sunana just shook her head, reasoning with her that- “I am certain it would be perfectly docile in the presence of something more powerful than it, and as long as you do not smell of blood you should be fine. And if it attacks, I shall kill it.”
Reresu didn’t seem very convinced, and Sunana grinned and said, “Oh come on Rere, live a little!”
She didn’t give her friend a chance to protest and simply grabbed her hand, warning her to hold her breath before she pulled her underwater. The shark was just about next to them and Sunana held out a hand to touch it the second it passed her. It was very smooth and Sunana seemed pleased so, seeing that it hadn’t attacked Sunana, Reresu decided to test fate and put a hand out. It went calmly past her and she was able to feel it, and the moment the tail was past them Sunana pushed to the surface so the both of them could get some air as she said humorously, “See? Nothing to worry about!”
“I’m glad I still have my hands,” Reresu replied as she tried to shake out her anxiety, and as she now seemed a little less inclined to stay in the water she dragged herself onto the nearest sandy spot and sat herself down on it. Sunana decided to follow and dragged herself over too, sitting with the water lapping around them. She allowed her friend a moment to calm herself before she started to giggle and kick her feet. Her friend wasn’t anxious enough to ignore that and gave her a pout as she asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Like mother, like daughter. You are both quite prone to anxiety,” Sunana laughed, and Reresu frowned before she said, “Speaking of, do you suppose they’re alright?”
“Pft you know I would never let anything happen to Rosy! Dyede is watching them, I would never leave them without the care of a babysitter. She is a fishwife with an excellent skill in swimming, they will be perfectly alright with her.”
Suddenly her linkpearl went off, which was thankfully waterproof so she felt comfortable with it in the water. And she could tell from the tone that it was not a regular call, it was an emergency warning. So she immediately knew something was wrong, and she jumped up as she said, “Or not, apparently. We need to go!”
Rather than swim she just called her Miw Miisv to get over as quickly as she could, and as it released her she could see Dyede standing in front of the children with a swordsman walking closer. He stopped when he heard Sunana shout through, and once she had his attention she searched for what weapon she wanted. With so many, and her starting to grow tired of only using her favorites, she mumbled, “Time to mix things up…” and switched to Dragoon.
She showed off her Pike of the Goddess for just a second before she suddenly jumped up, and the enemy didn’t even have time to find her before she totally nailed him with Dragonfire Dive and Elusive Jumped back to the children.
With danger passed she took her resting pose, holding her lance beside her with a hand on her hip and a toe in the sand behind her. Then she looked up, giving the crowd that had heard her yelling and witnessed her attack a very deliberate wink.
The guards had noticed the ruckus she caused and came to collect her victim, and with that done and over with she put away her lance and turned to the children behind her.
Reresu had swam over by now so she was running up just as Sunana extracted her extremely anxious daughter from the shallow water and gave her a few comforting back rubs before handing her over to her mother. Then she picked up Isenaji, feeling him tremble slightly as she wrapped her arm under his butt and brought him right into her shoulder as she said gently, “That is enough ocean for one day, okay?”
“Okay…” he mumbled, then even more quietly mumbled, “Shouldn’t’ve left my gun at home…”
She smiled. It was heartening that he wasn’t afraid to pull his weapon to defend himself, it was just a shame that he didn’t have one and so had to settle for defending with his body knowing it might not be enough. He was shaken and she hated when he felt like that, hopefully she could get him out of it a little…
“I suppose that would have been helpful, but we simply did not predict this. I should teach you to pull it out of nowhere like adventurers do.”
“You could teach me that!?” he gasped, and Sunana laughed as she said, “Yep. I will teach you when we return home.”
“Sweet!” He shouted, almost seeming to forget about the earlier anxiety. That was good enough for her, and she asked Dyede, “Could you grab Leilu to help dry us off?”
‘Us’ including Reresu and Roseta, but since both of their children were around 8 years old now Reresu didn’t have the strength to carry her daughter anymore. So Sunana did, wrapping her other arm around the little bean and throwing her over her shoulder. And with two kids on each shoulder she marched over to the stairs and set them on the lowest one as she told them to wash the sand off their feet.
“I hope you plan to do the same,” said a polite voice beside her, and Sunana would have been startled if this wasn’t a regular occurrence. Somehow Leilu had a habit of sneaking up on people, and she just sort of went with it by now.
Leilu was carrying four soft towels, and Sunana took one from her to start drying off her son (with as much tickling as possible) while she asked Leilu to give the other towel to Reresu so she could also dry off her daughter. They couldn’t quite get the hair dry with just towels though, Leilu had wind crystals for that. And once the children were dry it was her turn to get tickled while drying off, which was fair revenge in her opinion.
After they were all dry they handed most of the towels back to Leilu with the exception of Roseta’s because she seemed very fond of it and they were all content to let her keep anything that seemed to comfort her. They did have to get dressed again which took another curtain magic trick of swift redressing with the exception of Sunana, who just had to tie her cover-up shut again. And with swimming over, it was time to get around to socializing over those things people wanted to talk about that she made them wait for.
-
Well after one boring conversation she had someone new come up to her, but apparently he was one of the people that saw her fight. And apparently didn’t recognize the style so he had come up to ask what it was. And she answered, “The art of the Dragoon, I learned it in Coerthas. I rarely use it but I decided to spice things up. The unfortunate curse of having knowledge of twenty one fighting styles is inevitably a few get neglected.”
“Twelve’s Grace that many styles? Why?” the man asked with wide eyes, and her smile turned wistful as she said, “My greatest dream is to master every fighting style I have ever come into contact with. From each city state to Ishgard, Ala Mhigo, the Far East and the New World, even Garlemald, I have learned every style I could find.”
“What style could you have possibly found in Garlemald?” The man asked with a slight undertone of disgust, and her face was surprisingly neutral as she said, “The art of the Reaper, an assassination style that includes making a pact with a voidsent to borrow its power, in exchange for feeding it the aether of those that I killed.”
“What!?”
The shout came from Lord Lolorito, as it seemed he had overheard. And she knew why it shocked him so she hardly needed to hear his angry accusation of, “How could you make a pact with a voidsent when your father was murdered by one of them!?”
“It was not an easy decision. But which has more power, a vendetta or a dream? Which is more important, the past or the future?”
Her golden eyes were practically boring a hole through him, yet he did not back down and continued angrily, “How can you let it take the souls of others like your father!?”
She stretched her hand to the side, and in a second summoned her golden scythe. Her avatar immediately summoned over her shoulder, and her voice darkened as she said, “I have made many difficult decisions in my life. But my dream is what drives me, and I will make every decision and sacrifice that I must to fulfill it. Besides…”
She stretched out her other hand, and her avatar ducked to put its head in her hand like it was performing a trick. And as she held its chin she said, “This one is rather docile for the most part, I let it take aether from the victim’s bodies but only after the soul has disappeared. And my adventures in the World of Darkness helping voidsent has certainly given me a…different perspective.”
The voidsent was clearly scaring people, so she put her scythe away and dismissed it. But she kept her eyes on Lolorito, staring into his soul as she said, “It still is not easy for me to set aside a vendetta. But if I must do so for my dream, that is what I will do.”
“A dream that could never be fulfilled can’t possibly be worth sacrificing for.” He said with folded arms, and Sunana smiled as she said, “Revenge against all voidsent could never be fulfilled either. My dream may be impossible to fully accomplish, but that is the very point. The road of learning is neverending, it is an undying dream that may fuel me until the very day that I die. I have long since surpassed the very people who taught me each, when I could learn nothing from them I had no recourse but to grow my strength myself. There is no pinnacle of an art, and thus my dream will see me rise to a level beyond imagination. That is my dream, my drive, my ultimate goal, and no vow of revenge will hold me back from my desired future.”
He held his tongue this time in response to her gaze turning cold, but she saw his teeth grit slightly at her accusation of, “Live in the past if you must, Lord Lolorito. But I have made my peace with death and spoken with his soul, and my vendetta was laid to rest with his forgiveness.”
Her gaze finally warmed, and with a smile she said, “He never wished me to be drawn into conflict, but he always knew I would. I flourished in the fires of war, and I will walk the path of the warrior that he knew I would find. And when I walk a path, it simply is not in my nature to settle for less than the absolute best.”
In every aspect of life she had never settled for less than perfection, from sultry goods to her opinions to the image she created for others to view her as. The powerful and intimidating sorceress that was very difficult to please was exactly what she wanted to be seen as, and her dream had shaped her into the person she wanted to be.
Someone that was called a lady not because of her family’s status, but out of respect, absolute terror, or both. Someone powerful enough to strike fear into the hearts of others, whose mercy seemed almost random. Before her journey began she was nothing but the temperamental child of a merchant, only moderately noticeable because she was surrounded by famous friends. But now her reputation almost rose above theirs, and she felt that her feet were solidly planted next to theirs as she had always wanted them to be.
Before she left home, she knew she would remain below so long as her family was the only thing that defined her. Her untouchable confidence, her joy in response to fear, her strength and brilliance, she would never have had these if her father had not died. He had told her he felt his death was not pointless, for it had set her on her path, and for him and for herself, she would settle for no less than being the most versatile and powerful warrior of all time.