7696/Dive of the Nereides

Dive of the Nereides
Date of Scene:	05 September 2021
Location:	Sandy Beaches
Synopsis:	Cassie takes Toni to partake in one of the many small rites that make up the more actively religious lives of the Amazons: diving off the cliffs of Poseidon to beseech the sea gods for favor. It provokes discussion about religion itself, and about both of their strange family heritages. Also, fear of megasharks.
Cast of Characters:	Cassie Sandsmark, Toni Monetti

---

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Recent events have seen many of the Titans welcomed to the island of Themyscira, a handful even in defiance of one of its most famous laws. But they are not the first, nor will they be the last to visit.

As they vacation on the island, the necessities of life in Man's World require the occasional bit of back and forth. Often enough, now that she is able, Cassie plays the role of taxi driver and flies the Invisible Jet. There is a certain logic to sparing her more important boss and mentor this menial task, but also... well, she's a young person and it's a hypersonic alien aerospace vehicle. The fact that she can fly under her own power diminishes her glee in piloting it no more than it does the thrill she gets in driving the sports car Diana got her last Christmas (an upgrade from her previous gift of a 1996 Toyota Corolla, less Cassie be thought TOO spoiled.) It's not surprising she'd use these to grab a friend to drag along, particularly one who counts herself among that very first batch of Titans to step upon the island and meet the Amazons.

Sisterhood is not soon forgotten. Toni has feasted and trained and hunted with them, and she is greeted with great friendliness when they set down on the plateau once more, and immediately swept up in the fact that many of her teamates are now here with her. There's lots to do, to explore and see, whether down in the city or all across the island. While Cassie has duties when she's on the island like any Amazon, she proves handy tourguide when she is able, particularly given that she shares the outsider perspective while also having spent more time on the island than anyone who wasn't raised on it.

Such occasion arises early one morning, another of many. For the more... lackadaisical character of many of the Titans, this is one of the greater hardships of paradise, and Cassie is often dispatched as the one to drag her fellows out to whatever early practice or drill, when they occur. Amazon vacations are never wholly relaxing!

However, there is something a little different this particular time that Cassie comes poking in to Toni's room in the first hours of light. "Heeeeeey, you up?" The greatest giveaway is that while she is dressed in the local style, she clearly has something on underneath that is decidedly un-Amazon, a few bright splotches of contrasting neons peeking out from here and there where the garment might otherwise seem a little scandalously basic.

Also? She has big black sunglasses up on her forehead, and a basket on one arm. "I promise, no sword drills this time, you'll love this! You remembered to bring a suit, right?"

And that is how it starts.

From there, giving Toni enough time to change as Cassie explains her intentions, they're soon off on a meandering journey down out of the city, following not the most obvious path they have often taken to the beach (as the Titans have quickly discovered how awesome the beaches are), but one that bends off to the side, winding up, over and around to what is eventually a pretty amazing view off a set of high cliffs overlooking the sea.

"Tada!"

Toni Monetti has posed:
SO WHAT HAS TONI BEEN DOING?

Well, here's the thing with Toni Monetti. Her costumed life as the superheroine Argent is a little bit ambiguous and frankly, while she has heart, her competence is a little narrow. She needs to work on that. But she is a person who does not work super duper well. Probably the hardest she has ever worked on herself in ways that didn't involve becoming more glamorous and appealing socially, was on Themyscria.

Toni's mother and father are also having a Moment lately, which meant that she was being asked to go with said father on some of his work stuff. Said father, of course, is a UNITED STATES SENATOR - and you know how it is, with a relatively new president. Past history, the friendship between the State of New Jersey and a bunch of random Arabic-speaking countries, and the fact that Toni herself learned enough of it from Saudi satellite cartoons to be conversant, means SHE GETS TO BE A DIPLOMATIC PLUS ONE.

It's not that weird. You'll regret it when the Monetti Presidency comes about and declares war on Connecticut.

When the junket ended, Toni was glad to be back in America. On the jet over, she said: 'I'll take you to Egypt some time if you want,' which just goes to show where she's at in her life.

But...

Here she is. There was a strange feeling to greet people; to hear some of her Jersey-ass slang said back to her by people who remembered her. Embraces. Acceptance. She stands out a little, but not THAT much, and one day she didn't put on any of the usual makeup stuff that makes her look like a very pale regular person instead of --

What she looks out when she looks at Cassie, hair a little bedraggled. "Kinda," she answers Cassie.

A moment passes.
"Yeah," she says. "Absolutely."

Toni eats a piece of bread, a piece of fruit, and a piece of dried fish for breakfast while putting her hair in slight order and pulling on her black-and-white swimsuit. She skips the face entirely in order to walk outwards, wearing the (honestly super comfortable, given everything, she's surprised herself at liking them so much) sandals as they go upwards.

"Shit!" Toni says. "This is AMAZING. I wish I had my phone cuz SHIT, wow, damn. I'm sorry, I'm swearing because I'm overwrought."

"Is this like your chill out space?" Toni asks Cassie. She steps towards the cliff's edge - not TO it, but nearer - to crouch down. "-- is that a WHALE?"

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
There is a certain balancing factor to it, and maybe it is one of those things that makes the friendship work. Cassie has a lot of 'conventional' plusses: Cheerleaderish looks, at least when she cares to go that way. She's Wonder Woman's friend and sidekick, an adopted Amazon. And as the Titans go, that whole heroing side to things, she's no slouch. But? For all of that, she has a lot of the usual wants and obsessions of her age and peer group. Celebrities, influencers, fashion and style. The effervescent notion of the fast life. And yeah, technically she's some kind of back-up Themysciran representative and wonderspokesperon, but doing anything in Diana's company is, by its nature, very much in her shadow.

So.... she kind of idolizes Toni's crazy life! She would definitely like to go to Egypt and do crazy international globe-hopping style stuff. The kind where they know people and can get in places, as opposed to the kind where she just flies over and sits on the Sphinx's head. Again, there's something about being able to fly anywhere that makes flying anywhere weirdly less exciting on its own.

--

All of this means that, of course, they basically get to take turns impressing each other with cool things about their lives, and this time, atop the cliffs, it's now back to Cassie.

After setting down the basket, she stands much closer to the edge, hands on her hips, staring out over the sea, which glistens and sparkles in the morning sun.

"Well... I wouldn't exactly say they're my personal spot, though I picked someplace I thought wouldn't be crowded. The cliffs of Poseidon," yeah, everything on Themyscira is the 'X of Y' where Y is some deity or creature of what was once myth, "stretch out for a couple miles along the coast here. The Amazons come in the mornings, to do this certain ritual."

She pauses in the explanation to seek out whatever Toni has spotted, a hand visored over her eyes. "Mm, yeah I think so. The megalodon don't usually come this close." This could easily be a joke, except that Cassie is one hundred percent serious, and it's possible that Donna has already warned them about the fact that the island's fantastical residents are not bound purely to the ancient forests and high mountains. And given that it is an island, its oceanic protectors are perhaps the most important... and thus some of the most terrifying.

But, as much as Cassie sounds serious, she also doesn't sound worried.

"Anyway, I thought I'd show you. The rite's basically- well it's easy. You come to the cliffs, say a prayer to the ocean gods - Poseidon, Nereus and his daughters - and then you dive in."

Since this part might be a little worrisome, she has turned back to offer an accompanying grin. "Kind of a leap of faith thing. You ask their protection and show you're willing to trust yourself to it. It's not a specific festival or anything, but the Amazons do it frequently, because, well, we live on an island so having the grace and protection of the sea is especially important."

Toni Monetti has posed:
Is this the meaning of friendship??

Or...

Either way, Toni had several times considered seeing if she could ask Cassie to COME GET HERE because listening to old men talk in Arabic is basically the same as hearing them talk in English, and every sorta interesting joke or story is interspersed with like thirty boring-ass ones. People are the same all over, whether they say Jesus or Allah (or so Toni thinks.)

"That makes sense," Toni says in echo as she stays crouched down, as she learns the name of these cliffs. Her eyes turn upwards, for a moment, as Cassie explains that first, there's a certain ritual, and second, that that might be a - megalodon?

"Is that that big shark that's just got like a big sucker mouth?" Toni asks, with a sort of wary hope.

Cassie explains the ritual, then.

"... Huh," she says.

Toni leans forwards, a little plasma sort of appearing around her arm like liquid metal sliding out of nothing in particular as if she's preparing to catch herself if she falls. She peeks over the edge of the cliff. "Huh," she says again. "... So like... It's not... I don't think I see rocks, but..."

Toni's plasma disappears, and she pushes herself upwards. "Alright, I got a couple of questions," she says, with a clap of her hands. "First, like, this is not a hazing thing at all, right? I'm just making sure since, Cassie, I trust you, but I also know I'm like maybe ten percent tougher ever since I discovered I was a sexy alien, and I don't want to break my leg unless I have to."

A pause. Her clasped hands come up to her chin for a moment, eyes downcast. The eyes come back up to Cassie. "Second."

"I'll do it but I wanna know if I'm like converting if I do it. Cuz this sounds like, a personal kind of prayer and I'm a little worried I'm gonna get my dad up my ass." A pause, as she says, in a quieter voice, "But would he know?" Her hands unfold, a finger resting on her lower lip.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"Nah, that's a whale shark." Whales, sharks, and now one that combines them both! "Megalodons are... like giant prehistoric great whites. You ever been to the Natural History Museum? They've got a display, like the big whale, but its uh a set of megalodon jaws. I think the jaws are fake but the teeth in it are the real fossils."

While the smiling may have helped, this level of detail on the subject might well do the opposite! However, as a child raised in museums, Cassie is full of such factoids.

"Nah, no rocks. Its a straight shot down to the water and its deep here, not like the beaches. So it's pretty safe." While generally optimistic, she does leave that qualifier intact out of pure honesty. Diving can have some danger if you do it wrong, hitting the water badly, and her statement reflects this fact!

The fact that Toni returns from her investigation with questions, almost a negotiation, keeps her friend grinning. It is a very Toni approach to such a zany thing. And at the first of the questions, Cassie holds up her hands. "No, no! I mean, not any more than... it's the same as the hunting trip, I guess? Well, not nearly as dangerous as that, just the same principle. Like sure, everything out here is a little more, well, intense? But we offer because we want to share it. You don't have to if you don't want to, and no one would think worse of you."

Bullying and peer pressure is definitely not the Amazon way. Unless you're Mala, maybe.

"But this isn't really too bad. There are jumps like this normal people do, off waterfalls for instagram photos. While supposedly the gods give style points for good dives, you mostly just wanna make sure you either go in head or feet first, not belly-flop it."

The second question, compared to the first, makes her laugh.

"I was pretty much an atheist before all this stuff, you know? So I get that it's kind of weird." She seems to mull over it all, a bit, churning over her own thoughts and rehashing how she's grappled with a system of faith that also would insist on her being part of their divine family tree.

"I don't think- religion back then, or Amazon religion now... it's a bit different? The beings they worship are..." About to say 'real,' she diverts instead to: "Present? So its not about faith in the 'give yourself over to an unknowable, ommipotent divine' sense of the big three. It's a little more direct. You show respect, make offerings, and you also ask for things in a given deity's power. There's some jealousy and infighting but mostly, it's not exclusive faith. When you go to battle, you pray to Athena," or her /other/ patron that the Amazons are a little less fond of, "but when you're gonna jump off a cliff? Athena's not gonna be mad if you take that elsewhere."

Toni Monetti has posed:
"OH," Toni says. In smaller letters, "oh."

She takes a deep breath and lets it out.

She folds her hands behind her head as Cassie answers her, looking towards her several times throughout with a solemn expression.

"Style points from the gods, huh," Toni says.

She takes a deep breath and lets it out. She rocks side to side a little. "Yeah like I just wonder about this stuff because I know you guys are here and I'm guessing like secondhand that like, Poseidon and Zeus and everyone are real, like there is actually a Hera and stuff like that. And there's those guys on the Avengers or whatever."

"But it's like troubling, you know? And I just... I dunno, I guess I'm just torn sometimes and I worry I'm gonna kind of end up committing to something because I just don't know what the hell I even really am? I'm sorry, I'm ramblin', I just can't talk about this shit with a lot of people. Like there's that other super-pale girl at the tower, right, Rachel? She was with us the first time? I think I found her eyeliner but it was actually MINE and I tried to talk to her and she was just like,'

Toni makes a completely neutral face.

"Like that? Ahhhhh, tell me if I'm doing it right."

Her hands unfold and clap in front of her. "Hey, Poseidon, Nereus, everybody with Nereus. I'm Toni. I think like my mom's side of the family would've known you guys but it was gonna be a way back, so..." Her arms spread. "Check this out," she says, before running the two yards or so and throwing herself forwards!

And...

It's taking her a while to get down there.

If Cassie peeks, she can see why. Toni did the plasma thing again, but this time she wrapped it round her upper arms, like a shawl -- it's an aerofoil. She's doing sideways tumbling. She's probably done at least two. She is corkscrewing towards the ocean

with the shark in it

Toni forgot about the shark already.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"Yeah..." How mind-blow-y does Cassie want to get with this, exactly? "I mean, I've, well... When my dad decided I should have my powers he uh, well. We got to visit Olympus and meet the extended family." She holds her hands apart, all, 'what are you gonna do?'

Beyond this, the battle the Titans just fought that has earned them a more general stay on Themyscira, boys included, involved them fighting their way free of Tartarus. Cerberus made an appearance. There's really no end to it.

"Which doesn't exactly prove that they're, well- maybe 'divine' just means 'really powerful,' y'know? Superman doesn't have a church," though knowing the world they live in, he probably has some unofficial cults, "but does that make him any less godlike? Heck, I might be immortal." And saying these things, she clearly treats them as very much /pretty damn crazy/, with the difference only really being that she's accepted the crazy to a certain degree.

Bringing it back to their current position, she turns back to the cliff and peers down. "I've heard some Amazons have met Nereids after a particularly brave dive. That's uh those daughters I was talking about. Sea nymphs and minor ocean deities."

Always explainin'.

In the end, she has no solid statement to put any of this stuff to rest, to answer the strangeness or reconcile diverging faiths. She can grin and she can shrug, and she can break out in first snickers and then increasing laughter at the Raven impression. What she doesn't do is interrupt the prayer in progress with any critique or instruction. Probably not really the point, or so her lack of interference suggests. From the heart or just off the cuff, whatever comes naturally...

And then Toni goes!

Cassie gives a hoot, although as there's no subsequent SPLASH, she sways forward to look over the edge, and does an actual facepalm. But hey. She did say style points, right? Who is she to judge?

Also, this situation offers the opportunity for a RACE.

Thus, hastily, as she tosses away her sunglasses, backs up and then makes a short hop-hop run to the edge, Cassie speaks her own: "Lord Poseidon, ancient Nereus, and all the goddesses of the sea accept me into your embrace!"

As might be expected, her dive is athletic, although efficiently and pragmatically so, perhaps not the sort of performance to earn the awe of the gods its magnificence. Swimming or diving were never her sports in school, so what she's learned, she's learned because the Amazons value it. But they're good teachers, and she plummets toward the water at full speed and then hits the surface like a knife, with just a small splash in her wake.

Toni Monetti has posed:
If it was a race to the SEA, Toni loses. If it was a race for distance? She gets nearly thirty feet past where Cassie lands, and may have been able to do more if she hadn't turned to watch her and thus sort of committed to a descent and

            sploosh

She crashes like an Italian fighter plane shot down by a stout member of our British Allies in War War 2, appropriately enough. But with less fire. She hits the water and she sinks in deep; she bobbles back up, laughing, cackling even, and THEN: If Cassie is looking, she can spot exactly when Toni remembers the megalodon.

But it should be fine.

Plasma forms a sort of disk that expands outwards, like an old marine float. It is a marine float. Toni pulls herself partway on it, perhaps so she can rest after the impact. She waits, breathlessly, for Cassie to surface.

"Hahahaha... hah! Oh, wow! That's wild! That was amazing!!"

"If you're like literally immortal though, shouldn't you be taking way fewer risks?" Toni asks, a moment later. "Like cuz you've got way more to lose. Like I don't know how long I'm gonna live exactly but I figure I'm gonna find out?"

A beat passes. "Are your family cool? Like, on a personal level."

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Given how she's spoken of the ritual, Cassie has presumably done this many times, and so the graceful dive is somewhat to be expected, that she will put on a good show. Its accuracy, the minimal profile of her entrance gives the dive depth as well, far moreso than Toni's angled approach. She hits the water, and then darts deep below, and out of sight. Yet these depths are not murky, in fact the opposite, the water nearly crystal clear. From her plasma raft, Toni can probably spend some time admiring the world beneath the waves, where the submerged cliff face and deeper rocks are host to a great diversity of colorful sea life, both growing directly on and darting all about.

But there is no Cassie. Has she been spirited away by a nymph? Eaten by a megashark?

The answer is... well, a little predictable, if we're being totally honest: a sudden sneak attack from below, bumping the float and even tugging on an exposed limb to simulate a sudden shark attack.

It's not really much of a simulation.

Shortly after, the missing blonde head pops up from the water, showing off bright teeth in a too-wide grin as if they were the more murderous kind. But she promptly gives up the charade, and reaches to hang off the edge of the odd floatation device. "Right? Though next time, no powers! I could beat the best Olympic divers by a hundred times over if I flew to do tricks, but that's not really gonna fool the divine judges. They're like the Russians, you know? Tough crowd to please."

"Risk-taking kinda comes with the hero job, and what, I'm gonna sit around being an immortal cat lady instead?" Cassie shrugs this off as a non-consideration. "Might be they'd take away my powers then, too. It's not like there's a rulebook, but, well... you know what Greek myth is right, in the story versions we got in school? There's a reason they make that stuff into big budget movies: its pretty damn epic. And I think, I don't know, that's part of the whole... vibe of the pantheon, its ethos. Maybe not all about heroism, since there's badguys too, but big deeds, either way." Fortunately the headstrong young woman seems a good match. Or maybe it goes the other way and Zeus' kids just don't come out timid or boring.

"The family... they're like a family," she answers the last, in an utmost act of cautious diplomacy, being that she's speaking of deities. But the code is pretty clear: dramaaaaa~

Toni Monetti has posed:
This gets an astounded yelp from Toni, and afterwards, a little breathless, she says, "Don't DO that, I'm gonna get a HEART attack," while looking at Cassie. It lasts a moment longer than is strictly neccessary.

"Uh - I mean, sure, I just... like, I dunno, I don't wanna have the Mutant League conversation right now or anything." A moment later, she nods slightly, once. "Yeah - uh, yeah. Don't piss 'em off for no reason."

Save it for a good reason.

Then she learns: It's a family.

The plasma-float drifts.

"Did it feel good to find that out? Or bad," Toni asks, after long enough that she obviously did put a lot of thought into that.

("Also, if we're drifting out to sea can you push or something? I can swim I just didn't want to right away. I hate to hurry to get out of the water, it's so nice around here.")

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"I can drag us down the way, toward where the normal beach is. Dunno if anyone's down there yet, but that way we don't even have to fly back up. We can just beach ourselves like whales." A truly effort-neutral solution. Well, other than the fact that it does seem to involve Cassie taxi'ing them along, which she accomplishes flipped onto her back, so she can hang on with one arm, backstroke with the other (or just kick her feetsies), while more importantly keeping her face upward from the water, for any chit-chat.

The more thoughtful answers to more thoughtful questions come leisurely, with moments taken to consider (and swim).

"There's been plenty of good and bad about the whole thing," she summarizes, firstly. A baseline: this is not a fairy tale. "I had to grow up with a single mom. Who, well you know her." Their relationship is often quite visibly strained, Helena overly controlling, critical, meddlesome, and perhaps worst among all those sins, difficult to please.

"So, you know, 'woo' I've got a cool sky daddy and a bunch of zany and sometimes terrifying aunts and uncles, and an even bigger truckload of half-siblings, like a wiki page worth. I watch one of those dumb Hollywood movies and realize, 'oh, that's my sister... there's a cousin...' Take the mytho-historical accounts literally," Helena dialect slips in, despite any friction, daughter-like-mother, "and I'm like some kind of great-great grand-aunt to a whole region of the world, to whole races of people." She lifts her swimming hand in a gesture and lets it flop to the water dramatically, to demonstrate the whole thing falling flat. Propulsion is foot-based in the meanwhile.

"But like, so what? It's probably like people who discover they're adopted after a while, and go and meet their 'real' parents. What kind of relationship do you get, instantaneously?"

Toni Monetti has posed:
"That sounds good," says Toni. "I kind of want to just lay on the beach. Sun feels good." Especially since she doesn't tan! ha, ha.

And she is quite content to let Cassie steer. The float develops spaces for easier grip and slightly changes shape to wallow on more easily. Toni folds her hands on the top and listens as Cassie explains. Her toes drift in the surf.

"Huh," she says. "I never thought of that part. Like I guess it just usually doesn't come up, right? Like maybe you get an old guy with a young wife, after his first wife died, but that's pretty rare and it's not like a big gap. But you're in like..."

Toni trails off. She doesn't need to tell her, Toni realizes. She knows.

"No, I get you. I think that's what, uh, when I was younger and had the whole, incident?" (alien abduction as infiltrator vanguard, there's files) "I think they were sort of expecting we'd be like, well gosh, I guess you're our real dads, we should listen to you, maybe a little light brainwashing or something, but that's absolutely not what we got."

Of course, who would ever expect their children to change their hearts in a moment? It's unrealistic!

"Families kind of suck," Toni concludes. "They seem like they have a better time here."

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"It definitely doesn't usually come up with multi-millenium long gaps," Cassie concurs. It is a head-trippy kind of subject, and while she knows it... there's not a lot of clarity in the knowledge, as the vagueness of her tone suggests. She seems to drift as much as they do on the water.

On the other hand, the idea that Toni's alien progenitors would consider this whole elaborate scheme a 'good plan' is definitely worthy of a chuckle, even if too much in the way of laughter risks a mouthful of water. "That one really does seem pretty far fetched. Like, almost the backward version of what you'd want to do. You want some loyal infiltrators, you, I don't know, steal the Earth kids, raise them lovingly, and then send them here to be spies or something?" It's not clear that even this is an AMAZING plan, but alien conquerors have a poor track record on Earth. Maybe there are no good plans. "I guess that'd be a lot of work, though."

Which brings it all back.

Cassie had offered a seeming tautology to begin the conversation, albeit with loaded subtext. By the end? Toni has drawn it out and made it unambiguous. Whether out of fear of divine wrath or simple lack of necessity to further beat a dysfunctional horse, Cassie doesn't echo the sentiment. But there is a agreement in her silence, given where it all started.

There is some silence afterward, or rather a space where the monotonous background splish-splash comes to the foreground. It lasts a little while, until there is a convenient cause for break:

"Look, there's the beach."

Toni Monetti has posed:
"Yeah, right? Exactly. I thought, gee, maybe there must be an angle I don't see," Toni answers Cassie, and then she lets out a sigh: "Then I heard more about the CIA, and I was like, oh, okay, it's the same all over."

Except, maybe, on Themyscria.




(or is it?)