basic_powers | Seattle Summer Showoff

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Seattle Summer Showoff

As they exist from the narrow door of the linen closet for his apartment, Dinah will see two doors down the hallway to her left. One has a biohazard sign hanging from it, and the other is part-way open, enough that one can see the window and bed inside. There's a couple of photos hanging from the wall, one of Beauford and a blonde young woman laughing with the lights of a carnival in the twilight background, and one with Beauford and a reddish-brown haired man in a repurposed tan flightsuit, grinning in front of a college graduation ceremony.

To her right, she'll see that Beauford was infact not exaggerating at all about the shoebox size of his apartment's kitchen, as there is only a tiny island seperating it from the small living room. There's a well-used black futon and coffee table with a little black laptop on top of magazines and comic books. Against the wall there's a shelf with a flatscreen tv, several videogame consoles and a dvd/bluray player. Light filters through the curtain outside and Dinah can likely see the door out of the apartment with three bicycles hanging from hooks beside it on the wall, and pannier bags for the bikes hung with coats and hats from the coat rack.

It doesn't take much guessing to figure out that the blue and gunmetal bike is Beauford's from the homemade welds and adjustments given to it.

"Welcome to my humble bachelor pad...I'd give you the tour but this is pretty much it."

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"Pffft, speaking as a guy, they probably DO, just their uniforms cover it up more easily."

Ofcourse, Green Lantern's is a light construct, and The Flash's sweat probably just evaporates.

"I find it hard to believe that they don't work up a sweat." He's jogging with her now...and the sweatshirt is coming off as Beauford douses himself down for good measure as well...

"Well, they do," Dinah says. "But they all have metapowers that help with what they do.

"If I spent all my time screaming, I'd smell as fresh as them."

"And part of the next day drinking honey and lemon." They're coming up to the front parking lot of the aquarium and he's managed to finish off most of his gallon of water, debating if he should save it and refill it at a drinking fountain or just recycle it.

There's the sounds of happy sea lions and seals barking and hooting it up inside of the walls, and lots of delighted children shrieking, if in the distance.

In through the front doors of the lobby and the cool relief of the AC system, he's decided to toss his jug and tuck the snack bars into his sweatshirt's pockets, before approaching the desk.

"Two adults please."

"I practically live on that anyway," Dinah says between gulps.

She follows him in tossing her jug and pauses at the first gust of the A/C, wiping her hair again before catching up.

There's a huge smile on her face again, probably prompted by the sounds of kids, and her eys are on everywhere in the lobby except for Beauford.

There's posters of the animals swimming happily in their enclosures and a huge tank at the entrance where a huge shoal of silvery fish keep swimming in a tight formation in their tank... Off one hallway, skeletons of zoological specimens of the aquatic biosphere.

According to one of the posters there's even a tidal touching pool open to the public today.

And her distraction is probably why Beauford is getting away with ghosting up behind her.

"Boo."

Dinah doesn't move from her position at the fishtank, except to nudge him lightly in the shoulder

"Got the tickets?"

"Yes, and if we hurry we can get a good spot at the otter tank to watch them get fed." Beauford grins, holding up the tickets, and chuckling at getting nudged. He nods down a particular hallway, starting that direction.

"Come on..."

There's already a little crowd starting up around the tank by the time they get there, mostly parents with some semi-obnoxious boys going at the 'sasquatch no touching' game as they wait. The entire enclosure has two huge walls of glass for people to look inside...and a stairwell leading outside to observe the otters from above if people feel like it.

Dinah stops to assess both viewpoints for advantage, and ends up hurrying down to the glass walls.

"I see a spot where we'll be able to see," she says hurriedly.

...Beauford's going to follow her lead, because the otters are starting to get excited...they know what time it nearly is! By the time he and Dinah have found that wonderful spot, the trainers and keepers have come out with buckets of clams and mussels dolling them out to the excited animals.

...and who're we kidding, Beauford isn't so jaded that he isn't grinning at the sight of the otters scrambling and grabbing their treats...diving down to the bottom for rocks..and floating back up to bang out their treasures.

Dinah doesn't really care what Beauford's doing. She's leaning forward against the glass, right alongside a twelve year old boy who's nearly her own height, with a similar look of thrilled wonder. on her face.

When an otter dives down right in from of her, grabs a clam then swims up against the glass, she laughs out loud, and follows it with her hand.

There's more than her laughter present as the crowd laughs at the otters, who now have mostly found their clams and their fish and their rocks and have begun to do that one action they're known for...

Cracking clams on their chests.

And Dinah's otter is proving to be a real showman, leaning up on the glass of the aquarium as he cracks away at his clam with the rock.

There's a push of the crowd, now, to see this showman otter: the kid next to Dinah has forced himself up onto the cement foundtion of the glass wall and is standing on tiptoe, as more kids behind them complain loudly that they can't see.

Dinah, therefore, pushes back, letting shorter children stand where she was, and forced back by the crowd until she's lost her viewpoint.

"So much for my coveted spot."

"It was good while it lasted." He grins, as someone's daughter shrieks 'FUZZIES!' with absolute joy from the vacated spots of both him and Dinah. "And I think it was worth it."

"Definitely," Dinah agrees, taking one last distant perspective at her friend the otter as he dives again.

"OK, so what's next?"

"Well, we can bomb around inside of here for a little while longer, there's a sea lion exhibit..." Beauford drawls, wandering down the corridor. "Or...well, I think there's a bike rental company, part of a chain in Seattle, that we could rent bikes from, and then head to that pizza place I told you about."

"Sea lions," Dinah says. "I'm not done here yet. We can do pizza when we're hungry?"

Hungrier, knowing Dinah.

"Pizza when we're hungry." Beauford nods, heading towards the sea lion exhibit where some of the inhabitants are taking the time to lounge in the summer sun. Two boisterous pups are barking and chasing after each other on the beach for now, before they too, succumb to the siren song of summer sunlight siesta.

Dinah grins, leaning on the railing and pushing up until her feet aren't even on the ground anymore as she watches the pups play.

"You think they have enough space there?"

"Yeah, there's more space that the public doesn't get to see, so that the animals can get privacy if they want it." Beauford says, giving the enclosure a look around and noting the places the seals can go hide. "There's another enclosure attached on the far side, another pool."

"Ready to look at the other things here? The tidal pool's closed I think," He's checking a pamphlet for a schedule. "Yup, closed, but there's still other stuff here to look at."

"Yeah, I see it," Dinah says, acknowledging the other enclosure, or what she thinks might lead to it.

It's reluctantly she turns away from the sea lions and looks over his shoulder at the pamphlet.

"Do they have sharks?"

"There's a couple of shark tanks...mostly sand angels, leopard sharks, and a couple of thresher sharks.. One hammerhead tank."

Sure enough the pamphlet does detail the two shark tanks the aquarium has...there's also a marine biosphere exhibit as well.

"That one's closer," Dinah says, pointing it out with a finger, "and these marine biosphere thing might be cool. Does it say what it is?"

"It says the exhibit is 'a collection of small aquariums and displays showing the many habitats found in earth's oceans, from the very deepest regions, to the shallow tropical reefs..." Beauford reads aloud from the pamphlet leaning on the railing.

"...now that sounds interesting."

"Yeah," Dinah agrees. "Lets do sharks and habitats, then."

"Sounds good..." He's tucking the pamphlet in, and looking about once more before jogging for map sign...and then it's a brisk walk to a tank where a few sharks slip and disappear in the water behind the glass and kelp.

"...huh."

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