[FIN] Sunshine, Sand, and Salty Water

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus shook his head and looked up at Tambery. "Nothing I can see, no. Good idea, let's take a closer look. It can't have been dead long." Aulus straightened up again and moved out of Ella's way, and in doing so he spotted Thanatos standing there twisting his hands. "Hey, c'mon," he splashed over to the distressed water type and put a hand on his shoulders. "You don't have to stay, you can go in the water if you want." His biggest concern right now was what had killed this Sharpeado but seen as nothing was currently actively trying to kill them - so far as he could tell - he had time to think about Thanatos too.

Thanatos shook his head and grabbed onto Aulus' organic arm for comfort. <> It didn't seem right.  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey watched as Ella gathered up the deceased shark pokémon and began lumbering toward the shore, then glanced back, slightly concerned, upon hearing Aulus say Thanatos could go back in the water; she suspected Asgard would probably be alright, whatever had happened, but Thanatos shared typing with the dead pokémon, and was decidedly not a legendary.

Without knowing what had happened to the Sharpedo, she wasn't sure just how safe the water really was.
She didn't want to spook Aulus though, /or/ Thanatos more than he already had been.
"Um. How about we get back onto the beach and I'll get Franklin away from her building project to hand out some snacks?"  

[TawnyAngel]

"Yeah, let's," Aulus agreed with a frown out at the water as if he could divine what the hell had happened by glaring at the scenery enough, and vaguely wondering where Asgard was. Shaking his head slightly Aulus followed Ella out of the water.

"Oh!" Aulus looked down at Tam abruptly and reached out towards her arm but stopped short of touching her. "Sorry, I didn't hurt you did I?" he asked, meeting her eyes with obvious concern. He obviously hadn't really damaged her but he hated the idea of hurting his partner at all even if he'd meant well.

Thanatos trailed along quietly, eyes fixed on Ella with the dead Sharpeado and still gripping Aulus' arm.  

[Gwennythe]

"Hm? Oh... Uh. No, no. I'm fine." Tambrey followed Aulus' reach toward her arm, and offered up what she hoped was a reassuring smile back, though it was somewhat strained in the light of the discovery of the dead Sharpedo.

On the beach, Franklin's eyes were saucers as Ella appeared with a clearly dead Sharpedo. She hadn't seen death before, even being fainted when KO appeared, but it didn't seem to affect her in quite the same way as Thanatos. Perhaps it was the fact that she had some knowledge that people, as well as pokémon, ate meat, and some of that meat was fish... Of course, she wasn't /sure/ that any of it was ever Sharpedo but still... it was a kind of a fish...
Had Ella gone in to fish?
The grim line in the Steel type's expression as she gently set the corpse down further along the beach didn't really suggest as such.

"Franklin? Can you see who wants snacks?" Tambrey called, passing by as she followed Ella. The question was a normal one, but something in Tam's tone, and the fact that a dead Sharpedo had just gone by, told the little legendary that things weren't normal right now.
<> She queried, out loud, but directed really at anyone, before she started to float toward the blanket, to look for the snacks.

Pygi wheeled overhead, taking an interest in the scene, but knowing that, if she was needed, she'd be called down, and things would be explained later anyway.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Good." Aulus nodded to Tambery and, given the situation, left it at that.

<> Juno said as she approached the little gathering around the dead Sharpeado. <>

Aulus gave Juno a sharp look and knelt down by the Sharpeado. After inspecting it thoroughly on one side he shoved it over onto its other side - with as much respect as possible in the circumstances - using his metal hand. He couldn't see anything weird on the skin but its unexplained death was weird to start with and, well, he was paranoid so there. "We spotted it and Thanatos brought it in. Nobody caught it Franklin," he murmured as he inspected the other side of the body.

Thanatos had let go of Aulus' arm when he knelt down and now stood clasping his arms around himself. <> he wondered aloud. <> And they'd never find it.

Tortie remained by the water, squinting suspiciously out over the wavelets for any other sign of movement. Something must have killed that Sharpeado and if it was out there she intended to make it stay out there, or kill it. Either way.  

[Gwennythe]

Ella stepped away, and looked toward Thanatos before shaking her head.
<< If it had a pod the pod members should eaten it upon its death, and they would already know either way.>> The Steel type reasoned softly despite her metallic typing. It was old information she remembered from being an Aron, when she was permitted out of her ball in rooms more often and could watch documentaries, but she recalled it as best she could now, perhaps hoping it might reassure the frog pokémon.

<< Oh!>> Franklin said in response, then furrowed her little brow. << I do not want to eat sushi.>> She admitted to Juno after considering the fighting type's comment, and held up some of the fruit she rummaged out. <>

"Anything odd?" Tambrey asked, wishing she had her lab coat, her gloves and... well, a lab, really. Biology could call for field studies, of course, and she'd trained, during the generalized phase of her courses at university, in such things, but lab work was so much cleaner and easier to do...
"I don't suppose you have, um, any chemical detectors or sensors in that arm?" She wished she'd thought to suggest, or ask, that before, specifically... But then, it was only the situation that made her think of it.  

[TawnyAngel]

<> Thanatos didn't seem especially comforted by this news. He crouched down beside the shark and gently brushed some sand off it. <>

Juno snorted at Franklin and shook her head, <> She then passed on Thanatos' words to Aulus.

Aulus looked up from his study of the Sharpeado and over at Thanatos. "We're not just going to leave it," he assured the amphibian gently. He wasn't going to tell him what he was starting to think they were going to do though. "I haven't," he said to Tambery with a shake of his head, "you think I could get one built in without too much bulk?... I don't see anything odd but I've only got eyes." As he spoke he pulled open the shark's mouth and peered inside. "Maybe it ate something bad?... I don't think we're going to find the answer here though." Was one mysteriously dead Sharpeado worth investigating back at base? An autopsy and a quick study of a tissue sample wouldn't take up much in the way of resources, right? Maybe he was making too much of this.  

[Gwennythe]

"Most are, um, handheld and work well enough to, uh, scan for immediate diffusion." Tambrey explained, thinking to a couple they had back at the labs.
Her mind was likely in the same kind of place that Aulus' was, but she was slightly concerned regarding transport and then having to explain bringing a whole Sharpedo back just because it was 'dead'...
"Um. How are its gills? It... might have, but, um, we'd probably have to cut it open to find that out." Of course... they could take some samples, if they had a good container to do so. But what if they got samples that didn't contain whatever had done this?

<> Franklin replied to Juno.

<< Probably, and perhaps it did not die long ago. It is not as eaten as it should be.>> Ella noted; even a relatively fresh corpse /should/ have attracted scavengers...  

[TawnyAngel]

"They look normal from the outside," Aulus replied with a frown. "If we did though unless there was something blatantly wrong with them, like growths, I wouldn't know normal from abnormal.... Could ask Asgard to carry it back for us, he could certainly manage." He might not like it but Aulus was pretty sure he'd do it if he was asked and possibly bribed slightly.

<> Thanatos didn't know what to say to that and so he fell silent, crouched by the dead shark with his arms wrapped around himself.

Juno meanwhile shrugged and nodded to Franklin. <>  

[Gwennythe]

"Um. Hm. Well, if he did bring it back, I could, uh, probably secure a little bit of lab space if I pass it off as a personal project and, uh, then share anything important that came of it... I, um, don't think the department would be all that happy about giving up time, or space, for a whole Sharpedo for long but..." She frowned; was it weird that she really wanted to know -why- it was dead? They could, of course, cut it open right then and there and have a look but... what if they missed something? Or mistook something from the beach for something from the Sharpedo?
Besides, there were more options for testing back at base...

"I /feel/ like we should, uh, investigate... Does that make sense?"

Franklin tossed an apple toward Juno, then tilted her head at Thanatos.
<< Would you like an apple?>>

Ella rumbled and moved toward where Tortie had stationed herself, deciding to keep watch for a moment alongside the dark type.  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus was still frowning thoughtfully as he turned to Tambery to nod his agreement. "Yes. I mean I know things just die but...." He shrugged, lacking the words to articulate his unease. "It could be something, it could be nothing, but I'd like to know," he said after a few moments of thought. A moment after that he added; "And then we can do... something with it. Cremate it." Probably put it in the waste disposal if he was honest with himself but he thought the little lie would make Thanatos feel better, and he hoped that the flick of his eyes to the water type would indicate his motives for saying that to Tambery.

Thanatos curled in on himself a bit more and shook his head. <>

Juno crunched her apple and resisted the urge to sigh heavily; so much for a nice day out hu?

As Ella approached Tortie glanced over her shoulder, gave an approving nod, and then looked back out to sea. <> she commented.  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey followed Aulus' eyes, then gave a nod.
"We can do that." After all, lab specimen disposal could often involve incineration due to the chemicals or various mutagenics that might have been involved in their creation or alteration. Only if the specimen hadn't survived, of course; live specimens were far too valuable for various reasons, even if they were 'failures'...

Ella grunted her approval, and parked herself with a thud from her tail on the sand.
<< I wonder what did it.>>

<< Okay!>> Franklin shrugged, and eyed the Sharpedo; for a moment it looked like she wanted to offer the corpse an apple too, but instead she just shrugged again <> and turned back toward her castle... which was being lapped at by the incoming tide...
<< Aaaah!>> She hurriedly hovered back toward it, to save her bucket and spade, and an initial, fruitless, attempt to dig a deeper moat. << Stop eating my castle, Ocean!>>

Tambrey glanced toward Franklin, alarmed at first, and then grimaced slightly.
"Uh. Right... We, um, haven't covered 'tides' yet..."  

[TawnyAngel]

Usually Franklin's antics would have got a grin out of Aulus but the discovery of the dead Sharpeado had put too much of a damper on his mood for him to more than twitch a smile. "Who was that king who shouted at the ocean? But, yeah, I think that'd be best."

<> Thanatos asked uncertainly, maybe that was burying?

Juno shrugged again and passed the message on.

Aulus sighed softly, closed his eyes for a moment and then looked up at Thanatos with a sad smile. "We'll cremate it with a steak, how about that?" Thanatos was a good kid and while he'd become pretty strong in battle it was clear that he had a long way to go before he toughened up to the realities of life, and death.

<> Thanatos agreed with a small nod.

<> Tortie replied with a suspicious growl. <>  

[Gwennythe]

"There was a king who shouted at an ocean?" The wasn't a story Tambrey's childhood had covered, nor one she'd come across before, but it sounded like something she probably should have, she thought; it /sounded/ like the topic of a nursery rhyme or story that most kids might know.

Then Aulus was getting a translation and answering...
Cremate it with steak? Was... Thanatos subscribing to some kind of ancient votive grave goods tradition? It was... sort of cute, but she couldn't help but think how that was going to smell and how many questions she would probably get on the 'steak and fish meal' that seemed to have been cooked with the incinerator...
"Uh. Sure. We can do that..." She said, again, though she did find the idea... Odd...

Franklin had given up trying to dig a moat and was now trying to pull, psychically and otherwise, whole sections of her creation out of the tide's reach, but, of course, the water kept seeming to want to come closer.
At one point she waggled her spade at the waves, with an angry frown, looking like she was threatening an enemy with a sword.

<< Mmhrm. He is large and powerful and at home in such water. He is probably safer than we are.>> Ella commented, bending to watch some water slide over her claws, but sounding unconcerned.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Didn't he.... Tell it not to come in or something?" Aulus hazarded, now vaguely wondering if he'd just gone mad. "And it drowned him or something, or maybe he just got wet and embarrassed?" Tambery seemed to find the steak idea odd, which was fair enough because it was but if it made Thanatos feel better about his first encounter with death then he was prepared to go with it.

Juno shook her head and headed over to Franklin. <>

<> Tortie conceded with some annoyance, she didn't like admitting that Asgard was now a match for her despite her type advantage. When she could mega evolve though.... Well, they'd see.