An unfamiliar planet rises up to meet them.

They have a few seconds to get a lovely view of some scenic coastline before they are abruptly introduced to a pleasant sandy beach, on rather more intimate terms than they might like. The beach isn't too happy about it either.

The shields take a lot of the impact, but they're still somewhat jostled. Wrath gets thrown into the wall beside her, continuing to swear.

"Sitrep?!" she barks.

"We crashed. On...a beach? Damage report is going to take time."

"...Any settlements nearby?"

The beach itself is deserted; their ship sits at the end of a long glassy scar in what was once a nearly pristine expanse of white sand.

The nearest sign of civilization is a small fishing village about half a mile to the south.

"Small one, half a mile off," Envy reports.

"Alright, set the diagnostics to run. Let's go have some fun. Engines are inert enough I'm not going to be doing anything more than beating them with a wrench without any information."

Regardless of her irritation at that, there's a grin on her face when they start heading towards the village, even while the others grumble about the rough landing. (And Sloth grumbles about being woken up.)

"We need information as well," she says, almost reluctantly as they approach the village. "Try to get some before we finish everyone." (There's some groaning about that, but the others nod.)

The people of the fishing village have noticed the giant flaming something-or-other that crashed into a beach half a mile up the coast. A few of the braver ones are on their way over to investigate.

"Let me," Pride murmurs, striding past Wrath, flicking one whip out, before coiling it into her hand again. "Hi," she says brightly as she approaches the idiots, "we're a little bit lost," her smile is devious, "any chance of telling us where we are?"

There are three villagers: an old woman with a floppy blue hat, a younger woman in a faded green dress, and a boy whose age could fall anywhere in the range between a late-blooming fourteen and a tall and weathered twelve. They look similar enough that they could be three generations of the same family; they have the same black eyes, the same brown skin, the same curly black hair except where the old woman's is streaked with grey.

The old woman is giving them a suspicious look as she approaches; when Pride speaks, she responds in an unfamiliar language, her tone of voice courteous but wary. The young woman puts a hand on the boy's shoulder to discourage him from getting any closer to the strangers.

"Well that's a first," Pride comments, and looks over her shoulder to Wrath. "This is going to get old quickly if we can't understand them."

"Can't even tell the kid to run," Wrath sounds almost regretful. "Well. If we can't understand them, we're not getting any information. May as well start the fun."

Pride gives a bright smile, and pivots, her whip lashes, out, aimed directly at the old woman's throat.

The whip passes through her; in its wake, and in spreading ripples that rapidly overtake her body, her flesh turns to seawater. The resulting oddly shaped column of water collapses in on itself and flows down the beach toward the ocean, leaving behind only a pile of wet clothes under a hat.

The young woman freezes in shock; the kid, it turns out, does not have to be told to run.

That gets simultaneously blinking from the group.

"That is...also a first," Pride comments, half blandly, wrist twisting to pull the whip back to her.

"Keep an eye out for the tech responsible," Wrath orders, starting forward.

The young woman unfreezes and turns to flee.

And this woman lunges forward, catching the woman, a knife pressing close to her face. "You not understanding this takes so much fun out of it," she says, trailing the knife over the woman's skin. "But you look...delicious." Her words might be discernible from the tone, and the way she licks her lips, although it's definitely not lust that's on the woman's mind.

The others are moving past them, more intent on the village ahead of them.

The young woman shrieks.

—and a wave rolls up out of the ocean, a few hundred tons of water surging past the high-tide mark to smash down on the group and sweep them away from the village.

(The young woman curls into a ball and covers her head with her arms as the crashing water rips her out of Gluttony's hands.)

Wrath snarls, shifting herself to plant her feet into the sand. (It is not as effective as she would've liked, a few hundred tons of water could flatten and move most things.) And that actually hurts. (The snarl is cut off as the water forces breath from her lungs, and she'd laugh if she had any air for it.)

The group are certainly not as dead as a few hundred tons of water smashing into them should make them, although they certainly can't resist being swept away from the village. (They manage to keep enough breath not to end up breathing in any water.)

In defiance of all rational laws of hydrodynamics, the wave washes them sideways along the beach and up over a rise before finally depositing them next to their ship in a pile of mud, seaweed, and dying fish. Small disgruntled crabs scuttle away across the briny sand. An agitated eel flails at Gluttony's face.

Gluttony flinches a tiny bit from having something flail near her face, but is already in motion to grab it and bite its head off. "What?" she says through the mouthful. "I'm hungry. And that wave just ruined my hair. And what the fuck?!"

"I'm not picking up any tech readings," Avarice says to Wrath as he picks himself up, and helps Pride to her feet. "But last I checked, waves did not go sideways."

"Apparently they do," Wrath retorts. "I didn't pick anything up either."

She stares along the beach. "I for one, am not being put off. The harder the prize, the more worth it, it is."

She looks up the beach to see what the terrain is like there, if they could sneak around and come at it from a different angle.

A shallow rise blocks their view of the village, and the place where they met the old woman and her companions was a low point between that and a steeper ridge; there's no direct line of sight on the village from here without doing a significant amount of walking.

If they left the beach and went inland, they'd reach higher ground faster, and there are some trees that might provide visual cover. Also it would be harder for the next misbehaving tidal wave to reach them, if there is one.