An esper with metallic blue-grey hair is doing slow laps around the pool.

(They aren't the only ones present, of course, but the way her hair reflects kind of stands out, especially when it's wet.)

Well, she's tempted to do a cannonball, she wouldn't even need to worry about hitting the bottom on accident.  But it'd be rude to interrupt and/or startle Blue Girl.  And even if it weren't, she might be a combat esper and God knows you don't want to startle those.

(She's definitely not thinking of a specific incident.)

Instead, she'll sit down at the edge of the pool, kick her feet in the water to make some non-threatening noise, wait for Blue Girl to be in a position to notice her, and then start doing laps as well.

Blue Esper does seem to have noticed her; she pauses for a moment, glancing at her, before continuing.

(If she was a normal human Sinkhole might be able to infer she doesn't have combat esper amounts of muscle, but esper bodies can make that hard to assess at a glance in several different ways.)

Hmm.  Hmmmmmmm. She'll arrange to be at the edge of the pool at the same time as Blue Girl.  "Wanna race?"  Sinkhole's probably going to win, Blue Girl does not look any combination of either Athletic or Tall.  But power use is on the table, and for all she knows Blue Girl is going to turn out to be a hydrokinetic or a speedster or an ergokinetic.

They did call in a hydrosensor recently, according to reports, and sometimes specific sensors do have related powers, or they might have called a hydrokinetic about the results.

She isn't either (and her power very much does not work on water. It's kind of soothing, to not have to worry about it trying to connect to something it Really Shouldn't), but Anika considers this for a moment, treading water, and then smiles at blonde esper and nods.

She's probably going to lose but it sounds fun.

"Three...two...one...go!"

She pushes off for an easy breaststroke.  She's not going to go all-out unless it looks like she'd lose.

... yeah, no.  Blue Girl's definitely not athletic, and Carol is.  She'll aim to beat Blue Girl by a length or two, not by a mile.

She's trying pretty hard, but she just doesn't have the muscle mass or limb length to challenge blonde esper much. (She's reasonably fit -- sometimes you need to run away from something fast -- but swimming is a hobby, for her, not a focus.)

She knew that going in, though, and doesn't seem that bothered by it.

"Good race."  She - should introduce herself, but she doesn't want to be Sinkhole, and she can't introduce herself as Carol, either.  She smiles instead, letting the other woman set the pace.

"Call me Anika." She doesn't keep her first name secret, particularly; it's her family name she doesn't want on the public record. People might bother them. "You're a fast swimmer." And she noticed the blonde esper wasn't going all out. "Combat esper, or just an athlete?"

"Carol."  FUCK why do I have that social autocomplete, just because I had seventeen years of habit built up fuckfuckfuckfuck.  Twice in the last two days.  I'm losing it.  "Thanks.  I'm a combat esper, yeah.  You do support, I'm guessing?"  Normally she'd offer a handshake, but.  She doesn't want to be an esper today.

Hmmm... "I'm here for the earthquake, actually, my power's not great at anything that moves around on its own." And if she tries to sense dungeon structures she gets a lot of backlash and a horrible headache rather than anything useful. Which is fine, she doesn't really want to go in the kind of dungeon that would be an efficient use of her power in the first place. "But yeah, I'm mostly a sensor, I've been helping with search and rescue and making sure buildings getting used for basing are stable."

"So are you the reason I get to enjoy this delightful pool?"  She shows off her pearly whites.  "If so, I definitely owe you one.  I'm shocked this has been as comfy as it has, given, y'know, everything."

Anika laughs. "I did check this building, but I'm not the reason the solar was working." And then, more soberly." it's probably comfy because some people wouldn't show up if it wasn't." So they pay for that.

It's a problem she's seen, sometimes, in other disaster zones.

"Well, when I go to bed tonight, I'll sleep soundly in the knowledge that it's Anika-approved, anyway.  Even if you didn't personally wire up all those solar panels shading the parking lot."

"Yeah, even if there's another quake it should hold up fine. This place was built well."

"Well, most things held up pretty well.  It's funny, if it was just an earthquake, we wouldn't be here.  Well, I wouldn't, you might?"  Her left shoulder lifts in a shrug.

"Depends on what else was happening," Anika agrees. "This was a pretty bad one."

"Yeah.  Little bit."  She is not going to think about what might have happened if she had gone after the bus's axles instead of the spiderbot, like in the original plan.  Instead...she's going to...attempt to cultivate mental health?  How do you cultivate mental health...well, it's a pool, right?  "Wanna play some volleyball?"

"...technically that would be fine, I'm not currently backlashed, but I'd probably insctively try to stay away from the ball, which isn't good for volleyball. -- my backlash makes impacts a lot worse."

"O-oh.  I'm sorry.  Are you..?"  Hand?

Hand! Anika doesn't seem offended.

That is Definitely An Esper but barely compatible.

But not a backlashed esper, which is what she was concerned about.  For no reason, apparently.  Like she told me with her face, but I just haaaaaaaaaaaaad to check.  You'll dive under a bus at the word of a coworker but you won't trust a stranger to report backlash levels accurately.  Good job.  "Okay, good.  Not much here.  I shouldn't invite you to play a game that'd interfere with your survival instincts, huh.  What kinda things do you do for fun?"

"Not much," she agrees, of the compatibility, and, hmm, things she does for fun that this clearly very physically active esper would enjoy... "You can play tag in the water? Or I think they have things that you could use for diving games?"

Well, in that case...  She carefully pats Anika on the arm and surges away.  "You're it!"

Anika laughs, and chases her.

Some time later, Carol's out of breath and relatedly laughing.  "Okay, okay, you got me.  Uncle, I give."  God, I needed that.  No pressure, no esper bullshit, just tag.  "Whew."  After catching her breath for a moment, she puts her palms on the edge of the pool and lifts herself back up onto the edge, slouching forward.

Anika stays in the water, but she leans back, just floating and relaxing. "That was fun. Thank you."

"Thank you. I definitely needed that."  It might be November, but it's November in California.  She's happy to feel the warmth of the sun on her skin, to feel the tiredness in her muscles, to see the quiet smile on Anika's face.  "You've got great camouflage for a pool, you know."  A hand brushes Carol's flaxen strands by way of illustration.

Anika laughs. "I think it's a little too shiny for that."

Her swimsuit is a less blue (and less metallic) grey.

"Well, better than mine.  Mine stands out anywhere that isn't a..."  She pauses to think for a second.  "... desert?"

"Hmm. Or those fields of wheat in movies? -- I don't know if they're like that in real life."

"There we go.  You'd never find me in a movie wheatfield, and maybe not in a real-life wheatfield, either.  If you ignore the rest of me, at least."  She's lightly tanned which sort of works, but her black bikini would probably give the game away in a heartbeat.

"You'd have to wear camouflage," she agrees.

"Well, if you ever see me wearing a yellow rainjacket, you know why.  It's a rainy wheat field dungeon.  Monsters'll never see me coming."

She snorts, inhales some water, and starts coughing.

She slips into the water, not quite preparing to haul Anika out of the water, but getting ready if that's necessary.  "You good?"  She's not hovering like a worried mother duck, she's responding to a Potentially Injured Noncombatant.

She's fine! Her body is very effectively keeping water of out her lungs! ...okay the coughing isn't fun but she can nod at Carol and lean on the edge of the pool until she can speak.

She can get a sympathetic pat on the back, then.

"It's like we can't breathe water," she jokes, when she's recovered her breath.

"Right?  What a ripoff.  We have special powers, and we don't even get water-breathing."  She takes a deep breath and sighs theatrically.

"I'm sure someone has it."

"And their backlash is, I don't know, being afraid of getting dry."  It's a little bitter.

"I'm sure there's some way that would be cripplingly bad, but," Anika shrugs, and drops back into the pool up to her neck. "Would be fine for underwater work, which is where you'd want to use that power."

"Mmm."  Getting angry while fighting monsters is fine, they deserve it.  Until you get angry enough to use your power to kill them and you don't stop until you die of an aneurysm or the portal closes because you're too angry to do anything but kill.  "S'pose you have a point there.  You'd just have to figure out underwater guiding.  Get a partner who does scuba, maybe."

"...better than breaking your bones if you sneeze," she agrees, after a moment. Do you want to talk about it?

Emotional vulnerability?  In public?  In front of all* these people?  Perish the thought.  "Does it really get that bad?"  

*like six, but all of them have esper hearing.

"Only at hellweek levels." Which if she hits something has gone very wrong.

She can extrapolate.  She shudders.  "Backlash."  It's just a word, but it's spoken like a curse.

Shrug. "It's not fun, but it's a background risk. Lots of backlashes you're dealing with all the time."

“Yeah.  I s’pose.”  Okay you’re spiraling, let’s do something else.  Anything else. ”What do you do when you’re not playing Supernatural Health and Safety Inspector?”

"Swimming's one of my hobbies, actually! I do some hiking, too, when I'm somewhere with good trails. But mostly I read in my downtime and travel time."

"Makes sense.  Hardly anyone broke a bone reading a good book."  She nods solemnly, as though imparting a great secret.

"It works much better on a plane than swimming, too."

"It's true, I've never had a good swimming pool on a plane."  Fuck, why can't I just have the good vibes back, I need to wear a post-it on my forehead DO NOT ASK ME ABOUT ANYTHING TO DO WITH ESPERING.  Once the Confluence is over I'm taking a fucking year off, I swear to God.

"...want to see if they have anything good for diving games?"

"Yeah!  That sounds good to me."  Okay cool cool cool that should be fine, less talking, more playing.

Then they can do that!

Later on, Carol realizes, it's easier to successfully have a mental health day when she's not explicitly trying to have one.

Just like aiming her backlash, when you think about it.