"Lakes are lovely, but I do agree that there's something nice about... how much more open the ocean can be, and something different about the texture of the water that makes it feel pretty different, soemtimes." 

She smiles, and floats on by to watch it toss and turn. 

"I don't think there's much of a difference, in the end? I don't think it's free, at least with blue or green, but I have enough of a sense for how you'd be able to detect empathic meaning with the lights that I'm pretty sure you could set up a pretty good translation system, if you tried." 

Joan groans.

"Maybe it's a lot easier to see if you can make your own rings. The guardians can never seem to clarify how the rings actually do anything in a way anyone else can understand."

She shakes her head, sending her hair swirling around.

"That's not important right now though. The important thing is that you can kind of ... project peaceful intent, I guess? It's hard to describe, maybe because it is empathic. But if you do it right you can swim right up to the fish."

There's a translucent pulse of green from her, like a wordless reassurance, and then the fish aren't afraid of her anymore. Some swim in to hide in her hair and peek out.

"That might be the best part of swimming with rings," she confesses. "I've done a lot more swimming since getting it, and not just for exercise."

A little wry snort escapes her nose, bubbling up into the ocean. 

Aww...~

She tries it herself - it's sort of... a statement of Intent, on one level, in a way that reminds her of what she was doing, when she was training her? But on the other one, it's sort of... the opposite of a lot of green stuff - not that you're wound up tight in a particular result, but that you're... relaxed, loose and ready to accept what comes. 

She splashes out her hair and feels the fish poke and swarm at her, leaning into the little tickling touches. 

"I can see why you like it so much!" 

She beams.

"Yeah!"

She lets herself sink down to hover just above the coral, peering down at a giant oyster.

"So I know you like to swim, but what else? Tell me about yourself."

She floats back on her back a little, and smile sighs, before floating down to poke at the surface, and feel it all. What to say, what to say... 

"I like... experimenting, playing around and fiddling with intricate things, philosophizing, writing..." 

She shakes out her head a little. 

"I'm kind of shy, I think? I know how to be bold, and how to go out and see the world, but it's always been hard to get that to click, for me, at least before I got to trans my gender and upgrade my body, coming here. It's a lot easier when people know how to - stand tall as themselves, and when they - get what it's like, to think a little differently? I'm autistic enough that I didn't have much of a social childhood, but finding all these techy people has really helped, even if going down the programmer-y path has always just felt like the obvious thing, the sort of thing that any bright girl would reach for, if given half the chance. And I just... like hanging with and helping people who shine, you know? That's been my guiding light, lately, more than any particular ambition or goal I've had in mind." 

"Hmm."

She floats freely for a minute, thinking that over.

"For all that you feel shy — I think you have a lot of your own passion. That's the thing that I like most about you, in our short acquaintance. A lot of people just kind of ... accept how things are, and fit themselves to it. But you were displaced to another world and immediately started looking for ways to make it better. And when the answers turned out to be complicated and disappointing, as they always are, you stuck with it. I don't know if that's what you call shining, but I think I like hanging around people like that too."

She blushes, half-thankful that red doesn't travel well underwater and half-thankful that ring enhanced vision probably doesn't mind that nearly as much as physics would normally dictate. 

"Aww, Thank you...~" 

She smiles and nods. 

"The league has really been a breath of fresh air. You in particular were a standout by just how much you can - fill up a room and make things get running forward? Batman's a little like that too, but I think for him it's more something he has to project and lean into than something that's too natural to him - he seems like he likes being a bit of a grumpy statue, sometimes, but you... glow with your conviction even when you aren't trying to take control of things. It's been a little inspiring to see, honestly." 

Joan kicks over, floating on her back and smiling up at Topaz.

"I've learned in life that you aren't going to get things done if you don't get the ball rolling yourself," she admits. "Waiting is one thing, but hesitation never helps. My mother says I'm too headstrong for my own good, but ... I've made it work."

...She blushes warmly, and floats up close, looking into her eyes with a warm smile, a hand reaching out to hers. 

"I'm glad. There's... so many things to start, here, I think. But for now...." 

She shivers a little, straightens her back, and presses a soft kiss against her cheek. 

"Let's start with this~"

Oh, good. Joan is not the kind of woman to let her uncertainties drag her down, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have them.

She smiles, and gives Topaz her own gentle cheek-kiss.

"I like that. It's a good start."

She takes Topaz's hand and does half an aileron roll to end up floating next to her, hand in hand, looking down at the reef.

"So, programming, huh? I was good enough at math, but it never particularly called to me as a field. Did you enjoy it?"

She floats along, an irrepressible little silly smile on her face. 

"It's... kind of fun? I think there's a unique frustration to debugging that's hard to describe to someone that hasn't gone through it, and that drags it down, sometimes. But there's also... something really satisfying about knowing exactly how to do things, and then managing to write that down in a way that's undeniable to the world, even if you're just making a toy or a demo. I'm not sure I'll go back to it that much, but I don't regret spending my time on it at all, really." 

Joan nods thoughtfully.

"I don't know if it's exactly the same, but fighter pilots have to be trained in a lot of equipment diagnostics in case we have equipment failures in the air. I never had that happen during a test, thankfully, but running through the drills again and again on the simulated console was pretty frustrating. A sort of mental drudgery. Is that similar to your experience of debugging?"

"Sometimes! I think it's a little more personal and - exploratory than that, though? A lot of the time you just sort of - sit there staring at it, feeling like it should obviously be already right, 'cause you've combed through it again and again, or you try to expand your brain out to hold just a little more of the details of how it's working as it goes? Ultimately, everything is in your full control to go exactly how it says it should, so that should make it simpler to make everything just work, but a lot of the time it just makes you feel a little dumber for not catching a little snag in your reasoning or forgetting a stray semi-colon to make sure all the statements are properly separated, or something like that. Always count myself a little lucky when I manage to reduce things to a checklist or an articulable procedure, but it can take a lot of work to get there from where you start." 

"Oh, hmm."

Joan gently prevents a curious and fearless fish from trying to hide in her ear.

"Yeah, I don't think I've ever done something quite like that. The most frustrating thing in my job is probably dealing with the intersection of multiple conflicting alien legal systems, but it's not the same because I genuinely can't change any of the constraints or procedures involved, so at least I can tell myself it's other peoples' fault."

She shakes her head, and winces sympathetically. 

"That does sound like a pain."  

A hand reaches out and feels the fluttery surface of a fish's aft fin. 

Joan directs the conversation through various other getting-to-know-you questions as they explore the reef, peeking into crevasses, marveling at the fish, and enjoying the feel of the ocean. At one point they spot a big overhang of coral, and Joan lights up her ring to see better into the deep shadows under it.

... and sees sleek silver hull metal covered in alien writing.

"Argh. I'm sorry, Topaz, I have to call this in even if I'm off-duty."

She blinks, and takes a look herself, reaching out with the blue light to see if she can feel any emotional existences onboard. 

"No worries - the sudden interruptions I think are part of the fun of dating a superheroine...~"

She pauses for a moment. 

"- Should I go? I could find my way back on my own, I think, and I'm sure I'd be easy to find with a ring once you're done." 

There don't seem to be emotional existences onboard.

There's a tug on the charge in her ring.

Correction: there is one very deeply asleep existence, their hopes — to live, to escape — fainter than even those of the fishes that surround them. But growing stronger as it pulls on her hopes in turn.

"Fuck. Green Lantern to Watchtower — unknown alien vessel capable of feeding on emotional energy in the barrier reef,"

Her normal low-profile armor replaces her swimming costume, and she moves to put herself between Topaz and the ship.

Yikes! 

Okay um.

She stops the scan, obviously. 

She doesn't need her blue rings to work, right now? She can survive just fine with just her green shield, so... she tries to slip into their structure and not quite break it, but tie it off and defer the hopes, her hopes in the ring into a dormant state. Failing that... Does it help to sort of - try to disconnect herself from her ring, by say, taking them off or physically putting up an empathic barrier between her and the rings with blue in them? 

That does seem to be sufficient to prevent her from being drained further.

"Yeah, if you can make your own way, I think you should probably go," Joan agrees. "I'll stay here until backup arrives, but then I'm going to hang back too, since this seems like a bad matchup for us. I'm sorry our date had to end this way."

She nods a little. 

"...Yeah. There'll be other days and other dates, though, I hope?" 

She smiles a bit timidly.

...Okay, she's still curious enough to ditch the magical reserve power and see if the gift can give her a power that can ID and/or interpret what that writing says? 

Yes, actually! IDing the language is more complex, but it can do limited translation of unknown written languages.