Serenity Sidestory: Seasons in the Sun (Part 1) (Patreon)

Hey folks!

First of a two parter this week. The Serenity Seasons are going to the beach! What fun they shall have, in a place where nothing sinister could ever possibly happen. Enjoy!

“I’m just saying, one of us should have stayed at home, just in case…”

“Nope! You heard the old lady.” Rosa Haywood was not having any of it, leaning over the steering wheel with a grin. “We get one day off this month. One day where we don’t have to sit through stupid tactical exams or battle exercises. Only one! And we’re going to spend it doing something fun.”

Lexi Locks flashed a gentler smile back over her shoulder from the front passenger seat of the rental car. “Morgan will call us if something happens, and we can teleport back in a flash. We don’t need to spend all of our time in Sapphire, you know? Sometimes it’s nice to get out of the city!”

In the back of the car, Sophia Vale glowered at her teammates, the dark bags under her eyes really adding to her malicious intent. She couldn’t actually argue with them though. It was summer, it was hot, and they had been given the day off from training. Ashley Morgan, their mentor and supervisor, had surprised them with that the day before, declaring that taking time off every now and then was necessary to living healthy, happy lives, even for magical girls. Sophia had agreed at the time, noting to the others that taking time to rest was just as important as taking time to train…

But then she’d learned exactly what her friends wanted to do with their vacation.

Honestly, Rosa had been expecting Lexi to be the difficult one. The blonde was a notorious shut-in, and doubtless she had a ton of games she could be playing through right now. But even she had decided it was too nice outside to stay cooped up indoors all day, and she’d signed on without a hitch.

Sophia had been way more work. The girl may not have had any classes or training to do, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be training her mind instead! She had books on leadership to read, tactical scenarios to plan, and preparations to make. If the others wanted to go and have fun, that was great, but she just had far too many responsibilities to-

That was as far as she got on her prepared speech before Rosa had physically picked her up and carried her to the car over her shoulder, with some assistance from Kat, Sophia’s sister, who fully agreed with the brunette’s mission to force the leader of the Serenity Seasons to relax for once. She and the other Seasons all agreed that the blunette needed to be forced to chill out every now and then.

Tying up her hands like that had probably been going a bit too far, but Kat insisted it was necessary, and she knew her sister best…

“Come ooon,” the brunette caught her friend’s eye in the rearview mirror. “This is team building! You love this stuff!”

Sophia’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t need to kidnap people for team building!” She lifted her still-bound wrists to show off the rope in the mirror.

Rosa glanced to Lexi. “I dunno, Soph. I remember that time you took us to that art gallery.”

“Or that book club,” the blonde nodded.

“Hey!” There was a protest from the back. “The book club was not my fault.”

“Oh I don’t mean the Desire stuff. I mean the books. And the club.” Lexi shivered. “So many people.”

She was never going to refute the shut-in allegations, was she?

“Annnyway,” the brunette tried to steer the conversation down a different path, sensing that this particular argument wasn’t a winner. “Now we’re repaying the favour! You say we need to get out more, so here we are! Together and out!”

The blunette grumbled, but she still couldn’t muster up more of a complaint than, “I didn’t mean this far out.”

“It’s only a few hours drive,” Rosa rolled her eyes. “And you’ll enjoy it once we get there. And speaking of…” Her eyes lit up as she saw a sign welcoming them to their destination. “The beach!”

Yes, the beach! The destination of every proper one day vacation, right? And the sands of Opal coast were a prime example of the dream. They were like something you’d see in a movie. Soft golden dunes stretching all the way down to the shore, lapped by blue, sparkling waves. Of course, in a movie there wouldn’t have been other people around, but since it was a weekday there wasn’t that big of a crowd. Everyone else was perfectly ignorable, and if you did that, then the three of them had the beach to themselves!

Finally parking up, the brunette hopped out of the car and peered out over the blue and gold vista. She couldn’t help but whistle. “Wow, you really can’t see the other side of the water, can you?”

“Oh?” Lexi hopped out beside her. “Is this your first time seeing the ocean?”

“Yeah.” Rosa shrugged. “I used to live over in Amber Hollow, waaaaay inland. Could have driven out here, maybe, but my mom hated driving, so we never did.”

“Oh.” The blonde blinked. She looked surprised. Probably because Rosa had actually mentioned her family. The brunette tended not to do that so much these days. “Yeah, it’s kinda cool to see on your first time!”

The taller girl chuckled. “I guess you’ve seen it a lot though.”

“Well. Kinda. A bit.” Lexi blushed, looking away. “Mom and Auntie love long vacations. They used to drag me along all over the place back when I was a kid.”

“Oh right.” Yeah, speaking of families, she’d actually forgotten what Lexi’s was like. “Your parents are super rich, right? You must have seen some cool places.”

The blonde blushed, looking away. “I don’t know about super…”

Mm. That was something that Lexi didn’t like talking about. Honestly, she might have never admitted who her family was if it hadn’t been in her file at the Foundation. That was something Rosa didn’t really understand. She knew why she didn’t like talking about her family, but Lexi’s were fine, right? Was there something wrong with them she hadn’t heard about? She wanted to ask, but that’d just invite questions coming the other way, so, uh, maybe not.

Instead, she tried a different subject. “How about you, Soph? Vacation here often?” She asked, turning around-

- Only to find a very annoyed blunette glaring out at her through the backseat window. “Plenty. Now untie me and let me out of this stupid car.”

Oh right. Better get on that.

“Okay, okay, but you’d better behave,” she said, pulling open the door and tending to her friend’s wrists. “This is going to be a nice day and you are going to have fun, not- Hey!”

The instant that Sophia’s arms were free, the team leader’s hand shot for her necklace.

“Serenity Sync-!”

“Nope!” Rosa had been ready for this. Faster than anyone else could react, the brunette yanked her friend’s hand away. Her other arm flashed around behind Sophia’s neck, unclipping the latch hanging around it, and whipped the necklace off of her, blue transformation gem and all. “No teleporting.”

“H-hey!” The blunette gasped, hand pressed against her neck slack jawed for a moment, before bounding to her feet. “Give it back!”

“No way. You’re on time out. Benched. I’m placing you on injured reserve before you hurt yourself.” The necklace vanished into one of Rosa’s many pockets. “You’ve been working way too hard lately – worse than usual! And usual’s already pretty bad.”

“’S true,” Lexi nodded sagely from the sidelines. “You were the one who said we needed to make time for ourselves, right?”

She had, in fact. The brunette remembered it clearly. She just hadn’t expected that time to be spent so far away from Sapphire. But sometimes you needed to really take time off! “I’ve seen this dozens of times back when I was in Strikeshot. People push too hard, work too long, and burn themselves out. It’s a classic story, and I’m not going to let it happen to you.”

“I’m fine! I’m not pushing myself at all.” Sophia was staring at her as if she was trying to work out if she could take her in a fight for long enough to get her transformation gem back. She couldn’t, and they both knew it. “If anything, I should be pushing myself harder, the entire city relies on-!”

“On all of us.” Nope, she was cutting that one off right now. “You have a responsibility to your city, I get it. So do we.” She nodded to Lexi, just as she nodded in return. “And part of our responsibility is making sure our leader can still do her job, okay?”

The blunette slumped, giving up on the idea of getting her necklace back (for now). “I mean, sure, but…”

“But nothing.” Rosa wrapped an arm around her friend’s shoulders and gave her a half-hug, while slamming the car door shut behind them with her hip. “If you’re so stressed out that you’d try to pull off a teleport despite there being no Desire to warrant it, then you need some time to relax. End of.”

Sophia looked up at her. Then over to Lexi. That was her real mistake.

“Pllleeeeeaaase?” No one did puppy dog eyes like Lexi Locks.

“… Ugh. Fiiiine.” Eventually, even someone as stubborn as Sophia Vale had to give in. “We can have one day at the beach.” She held up a reluctant finger. “One day.”

“Yes!” The two kidnappers gave each other a high five.

“Now give me back my-”

“Nope, still don’t trust you.” Rosa patted her pocket. It wasn’t the pocket with the necklace in it, juuust in case Sophie had a relapse and took another attempt at grabbing it. “You get this back tonight, after you have some fun, okay? If I don’t see a proper smile on your face, maybe I’ll keep it a few days longer.”

The blunette folded her arms, rolling her eyes, but didn’t complain – sensing, perhaps, that she wasn’t going to get anywhere. Great! She’d absolutely take that win. Now they could get on with the fun stuff!

Circling around to the back of the car, Rosa pulled the trunk open and took out the bags they’d prepared within, throwing one to Lexi and one to Sophia before taking her own out. “Here we go – one for each of us. You should have your swimsuit, your shades, your towel, everything you need for the beach!”

Lexi took hers happily – having prepare her own that morning – but Sophia was rooting through hers suspiciously. “I haven’t been to the beach in years. I don’t think I even have a swimsuit. How did you…?”

“Kat picked something up for you.”

The blunette winced… and then turned bright red as her searching fingers found the outfit that her sister had chosen for her. “I’m going to kill her. How’s anyone supposed to go swimming in this?” She pulled out what might have been the top of a blue two-piece bikini, if it had a little more fabric to it… Probably not made for swimming in, that thing, no.

“Uh. Well, at least it’ll be great for sunbathing?” Rosa hedged. “Barely any tan lines!”

Sophia’s eyes narrowed – and then she blinked. Looking down at her bag again, she started digging around inside it once more. “Where’s the sunscreen?”

Rosa paused, mid-stride towards the beach. “Huh?”

“Sunscreen!” Sophia turned her bag over and emptied it out on the floor. Her towel and the rest of her bikini fell out, but there was no sign of anything else. “We can’t go sunbathing without sunscreen, we’ll get burnt to a crisp!”

“Oh. Oops. Knew I forgot something.”

“Rosa!”

“It’s fine. It’ll be fine!” The brunette raised her hands to help calm her friend. “There’s plenty of beach shops all around here. Someone’ll sell sunscreen. You two head down to the beach and get changed, and I’ll have it for you by the time you’re done.”

“No, that’s okay, I can…”

“Nope!” Rosa cut her off instantly. “You’re here to have fun. No responsibility from you today.”

“But-!”

“So help me, I will throw this necklace into the ocean.” The brunette lifted an eyebrow. “You wanna see how far a former Strikeshot player can throw something?”

Sophia groaned, but relented. “Fine. Fine.” She packed her stuff back into her bag. “I’ll go have… fun or whatever. But don’t take too long with the sunscreen!”

And with that, she marched off towards the stairs down to the sands, heading for the closest changing room. Rosa watched her go for a moment, before looking to her co-conspirator.

“Lexi?”

“Yeah?”

“Make sure she doesn’t try to run again before I get back?”

The blonde nodded firmly. “On it.” She saluted, before scampering off after their friend. Atta girl.

Right, okay. Sunscreen. That couldn’t be too hard to find, right? Rosa wasn’t a rich woman – a high-school-to-college career in sports paid atrociously little (pretty much nothing, in fact) and now that she’d fallen out of that entire business, she was entirely dependant on the stipend the Foundation paid her to manage her rent and food situation. Being a magical girl also paid atrociously, it turned out.

But hey, she didn’t have much to spend money on these days anyway, so she could cover things like this. She just had to find the stupid stuff. So which of these stores was most likely to carry it…?

The brunette looked around, chewing her lip. Despite what she’d told Sophia, mostly to get her to chill out, there weren’t that many shops around the car park. She’d have to head right the way down the boardwalk to find a store.

Or she would have had to, if there weren’t a stall right there, just past the last parking space. Huh, she hadn’t seen it around some of the cars, but it looked like it was pretty well stocked for beach goers. Kinda weird to see something like that in the middle of a quiet day, but maybe that was just how business like this worked.

It was a rickety looking thing, mainly just a table with a blue sheet over it, laden with beach supplies. Sunhats, sunglasses, sunscreen (Bingo!) along with towels, beachballs, and skimpy swimsuits, all up for purchase. Overhead, a banner proclaimed that this was the ‘Sea, Sun & Fun’ shop. Sounded right to Rosa!

“What can I get for you?” The woman behind the stall asked - a tall lady in a bright orange bikini, deliberately designed to show off her figure, and hot damn did she have a lot of figure to show off. Rosa couldn’t quite see her face beneath her wide-brimmed sun hat – its edges were a little too droopy, and kind of curled around the lady’s head like a hood – but she got the sense that they were smiling.

“Sunscreen.” The brunette nodded, pulling out her purse. “And quick. If I don’t get it to a friend of mine soon, she might actually explode from stress.”

“Oooh, can’t have that. Here.” The stall keeper picked up a bottle of pink bottle with a happy sun on the front, flipping it over in the air before handing it to the customer. “This stuff’ll help anyone relax.”

“Perfect.” Rosa gave her a grateful nod, before turning to dash after her friends. “You’re a life saver!”

“Happy to help!” The woman called after her, giving a happy wave. Then she turned to the reader, a flicker of light that might have been a wink flashing around the brim of her hat. “It’s important those girls enjoy a good HoliDay every now and then, don’t you think?”

Then, with a chuckle, she and her stall shimmered and disappeared, like a desert mirage…

-

Rosa’s friends were already out of sight by the time she descended the steps to the beach. But the cool thing about sand was that she could easily see where they’d gone. Sophia’s footprints were a solid, deliberate march towards the wooden changing rooms just a little ways ahead, with Lexi’s being a furtive scramble to keep up. Normally the team leader would have slowed her pace for her, but she must have still been annoyed at how they’d dragged her out here.

“She’ll calm down eventually,” the brunette assured herself, nodding sagely. Sophia was the kind of person who struggled to hold a grudge. And besides, this whole trip was about getting her to loosen up! There was no way she’d still be mad tomorrow.

Anyway, Rosa had a different plan. She was going to take advantage of her friends being busy getting changed to pick their spot! After all, if she left it to the others, they’d pick some quiet, out of the way corner to hide in – there was no way Lexi would stop Sophia from doing that. But if they wanted some real sunshine, they were going to need to be out in the open, and the only person who could make that happen was her.

So, let’s see. She didn’t want to get too close to the water, moving around when the tide shifted was annoying – but she didn’t want to be too far, either. Somewhere with a lot of sand, and not a lot of people, plenty of space to spread out in, with a little shade if they wanted it… Aha!

The brunette grinned as she climbed to the top of a small dune, and found a perfectly smooth spread of sand on the other side, with the perfect view of the ocean, and giving them a little privacy from the road. Here. This was the perfect spot!

Time to set about staking her claim quickly, not wanting to risk losing her find waiting for the others. She rolled out her towel, setting her bag down on one end to anchor it, then kicked off her shoes and use them to hold down the rest. There. It was theirs for the day.

Now she could go and get changed. And give Sophia her precious sunscreen.

Sighing, the brunette turned to walk back, pulling the pink bottle out again to look it over. She hadn’t seen this brand before, but what, was she supposed to be an expert on sunscreen? The little sun guy on the front looked happy enough. Curious, she turned the bottle over and squirted a sample out into her palm. May as well get her own- Her- Her… Hm…

Rosa paused, her foot sliding in the sand a little, squeezing the bottle again. A bigger dollop of cream – slightly pink, now that she could see it – landed in her hand. It was funny. As soon as the stuff touched her skin, she completely forgot what she’d been doing. The shock of cool cream had just completely shattered her concentration.

Eh, she hadn’t been thinking too hard about it. It’d come back to her. For the moment, if she was getting this stuff out, then she might as well start putting it on, right? She could at least get her face and neck properly covered.

The brunette slid to a stop, swimsuit slung over her left arm, right hand sliding the bottle away, back into her pocket before clapping her palms together, rubbing the cream on to both. It felt cool against her skin, but not as slimy as she expected. Suncream usually left you feeling pretty oily in her experience, but this stuff was pretty nice to the touch. Hopefully it still worked – if she’d been suckered into buying some fake knock-off stuff, Sophia would never let her hear the end of it.

Her hands tingled a little as she reached up to start work on her neck, that chill seeping into her. It soon turned into warmth, though, her body heat setting back the difference. Nothing she needed to pay any mind to, especially as she balanced moving her hair out of the way with the back of one hand to get the back of her neck with the other. Didn’t want to miss that area, it burned easy…

So while she was a little surprised at how soft her hands felt as she started to massage to pinkish goop in, it wasn’t that much of a shock. Years of intense training for a sport she could no longer go near had left more than one mark on her body, and tough, calloused fingers and worn palms were some of the smallest. But cream like this always softened up your skin, didn’t it? And wow, it felt soft now, they should sell this stuff in beauty shops!

Her fingernails kept nicking at her though, that was annoying. She usually kept them short – again, something left over from her life in sports – but she’d clearly been neglecting them. Oh well, no biggie. And besides, once she knew to be careful, all those nicks were quickly soothed away, the cool cream helping her sent a nice warm massage through her upper shoulders. Mmn, that felt good.

But alas, she had other things to do, didn’t she? Didn’t she? Uh… Yeah! Yeah, she did. Hoo, her memory got a bit foggy there. She had to be careful not to relax too much today~

“There,” she breathed a sigh of contentment as she rolled her shoulders. “That’s the stuff. Okay, now, like, where did- Uh…?”

Rosa stopped, staring at her hands as they came out from behind her head, blinking dizzily. She felt kind of hazy for a second there, but something was wrong with them, right? She was… She was pretty sure.

Slick with suncream? That she’d expected. She hadn’t expected the tan, though. Yeah, her hands were looking like they’d been out in the sun all day, maybe for several days, with the colour ending just below her wrists. And if that had been all, maybe she would have been fine with that – this suncream might have some fake tan stuff in it or something. Not ideal but not dangerous.

The long, red fingernails that had grown on the end of her fingers, however, were definitely a bad sign. She definitely hadn’t had those before, and no normal sunscreen was going to do something like that. In fact, there was only one thing that could.

“Aw man, this is Desire crap, isn’t it?”

Ordinarily, she might have reacted a bit more strongly to the realisation, but two things stopped her. One, she was still feeling kind of spacy – something with bad implications, given the state of her hands. And two, well, she hadn’t seen any other signs of Desire activity today, nor was she detecting any now. Which meant this probably wasn’t an attack – it was more likely to be something left over from an old outbreak. A Desire’s tools usually disappeared when they were defeated, but that didn’t always happen, and sometimes you found semi-magical items lying around…

Gah! Who cared where it came from? Right now she had to focus on getting it off of her! She could go and have words with that’s sales lady in a minute – first, she needed to find some water and wash this cream off. At least it was only on her hands…

That thought lasted just long enough for one of said hands to reach over and slap itself down over her wrist. Specifically, over the part of her wrist where the bracelet holding her transformation gem was.

“Hey!” Rosa’s eyes widened in panic, and she tried to wrench her hand back, pulling on her arm, but her own grip was surprisingly (okay, not that surprisingly) strong, her red-nailed fingers firmly squeezing tight, relaxing, and then squeezing again. When she finally yanked herself free, the tan had spread half way down her forearm – and her bracelet had vanished.

“Ah crap.” Rosa was a proud woman, who definitely didn’t want her friends seeing her like this – but she wasn’t that proud. If this stuff had just removed her transformation gem, then it was too serious to ignore, and she needed help. Lexi and Sophia weren’t far away, they’d be here in a flash if they knew she was in trouble. The brunette took a deep breath, opening her mouth-

Only for her hand fly up and cover her mouth, blocking her attempt at a yell and muffling her down to a mumble. “MHMN!”

The tingling set into her immediately, a rich pleasure soaking in. She could feel the lower half of her face growing warmer, the surface area of her lips feeling better and better as they expanded, plumping up into thick wet kissers under her palm…

Her thumb brushed along her lower lip and she almost moaned, her eyelids fluttering as she gasped through her nose. N-no, no, she couldn’t give in to this – it felt so so so awesomely good, but she had to resist, had to fight back, had to warn her friends-

W-wait, what was her other hand doing?

Rosa’s eyes widened as her right hand rose, holding the sunscreen bottle. She’d lost track of it in the struggle, and that had been a fatal mistake. The nozzle of the bottle swung around towards her, and she felt her hand squeeze.

A line of sunscreen sliced across her from thigh to chest, cutting straight through her clothes and splattering straight against her skin. Instantly, a wave of heat shot through her, her body straightening as another eye-rolling gasp of pleasure tried to get around her palm. Her toned belly tightened and smoothed, her muscles fading even as her now tanned waist sinched in, and what was left of her t-shirt bulged outwards, suddenly filled with boobies! Nnn, no- Her chest! What was happening to her super amazing titties! They were getting, like, totally huge and- Ngh, her head…!

She tried to focus, to force her pink-fog-filled head to work and find a way out of this, but her leg – the leg now dripping with pink - gave out under her, deliberately toppling her to the side. She landed against the sand and found herself rolling, spinning sideways around and around, until stopping at the bottom of a dune, groaning on her back.

But there was no time for laying around. She had to… She had to… Uh…

Head still spinning, she looked up and found herself staring down the business end of a bottle of sunscreen. A glistening droplet of pink dripped from the tip, tumbling down and splattering against her nose, sending another wave of warm fog through her brain…

One last thought popped into her head.

‘Oh man, Sophie’s totally never gunna let me hear the end of this…’

Splat!

Then everything went quiet – save for thoughtless airheaded giggle that echoed across the sands…