The Shelling of Dagobah [Airin/Hiro/Sigrid]

Hiro found himself staring at the sand in an effort to fight off the light-headedness that was plaguing him, but as he tried to stay still he couldn't help but notice how ragged his breathing actually was. He'd only walked a couple steps, but his body felt like he might as well have just finished a marathon. Limbs that felt like they were full of lead, heavy breathing, muscle fatigue, dizziness... Hari had tried to explain it to him once, something about his body not being able to get enough oxygen? He didn't really get the science, he just knew that using his quirk too much made him feel like absolute crap.

When he looked up again, he was greeting by the sight of the fish girl looking at him with a... actually, he didn't quite know what kind of expression that was. This girl was an odd one, every interaction they'd had so far seemed to point that direction. He raised an eyebrow, but found any of the usual snark that he would have brought to the table dampened by the headache that was starting to take root. At the very least her friend was trying to be more helpful. He started to shake his head when she asked him if he was hurt again, but quickly regretted the gesture as it stirred up the headache more. Rubbing his temples with a silent curse, he responded to her next question with a sheepish grin and a shrug, preferring the motion since it moved his head around less. "Maybe a bit." He mouthed the words, though the rye humor was lost a bit without tone of voice to back it up.

When the odd girl brought his bag over, Hiro wasted no time in digging into the sack, tossing aside a few scraps of metal he'd collected earlier in the day before producing a water bottle and container of pills. There were plenty of drugs on the market specifically to combat quirk effects, especially since so many of things involved messing with the body's natural metabolism. In Hiro's case, that meant eating through his iron reserves at a greatly accelerated rate while he was using his abilities. Luckily, he'd managed to snag a bottle of extra-strength iron supplements from a pharmacy awhile back, and he proceeded to pop two of the pills into his mouth before washing them down with a swig of water. It wouldn't help right away, but his body also seemed to process iron just as fast as it went through it, so hopefully that damn headache would clear up before too long.

Until the pills started to kick in however, there wasn't much he could do besides sit still and try to get over it. With a silent sigh he tossed the bottle back into the bag and set it aside. There were only four left, that could be a problem later, but there was no use worrying about it now. Glancing back toward the fish girl, he nodded his head slightly and mouthed "Thanks" before shifting to lean back against the sand. After a few seconds of silence though, he found himself looking back at his metal sculptures. Realizing that there wasn't much use in trying to hide it any more, he gestured toward them and added a few more silent words. "It's not done yet, don't tell anyone." Whether or not they could actually read his lips well enough was still to be discovered, but it wasn't like he was going anywhere soon, might as well try talking to these two a bit.

He was not well, that much happened to be obvious. She observed him however, taking mental notes on his condition. Yet he took his medication from the bag, Airin considered asking him just what they contained. However, in the end she decided against doing such a thing. He did not know her well enough to confide such information in her, nor she he enough to inquire it of him. He seemed able to lie back and relax though after taking his medicine, yet Airin did not feel confident enough to leave him alone. Not because she felt like he might run off, more because in his condition she suspected anything might occur to him. 
Airin did not want him to suddenly turn for the worse and she be too far or otherwise ignorant of his need, especially when she might be able to help or get those who could help him if she were otherwise unable to. She followed his gesture to the sculptures, they were not finished and he wanted them to be kept secret. There was not much Airin could say to argue that point, of not telling anyone. It seemed fair and besides, at least he was helping to clear up the beach by doing so. "I won't." She promised. 

Airin glanced back at Sigga surprised. "But he is hurt." She protested, not because she had not desire to continue the difficult task of cleaning up, rather she feared if his condition changed and she was not present to provide aid. "We cannot leave him unsupervised." She added to her objection, though Sigga was correct in that fact they needed to do the job they came here for. 

The mute had noticed Sigga approaching them. She might not have been particularly proficient in lip reading, but she was otherwise quite good at making out someone’s expression and taking contextual clues to figure out exactly what they had on their mind. You didn’t necessarily need to have a mind reading Quirk to be able to tell what someone was thinking. The bald student responded to the artist’s amused expression with half an eye-roll and stolid shrug. No one was more aware of how futile a single garbage bag and trash-picker between two girls was in cleaning up this beach than her, and the girl’s gestures stated as much. It didn’t, however, mean she was about to shirk her duties.

Unfortunately, suggesting her classmate join her in getting back to work didn’t have the desired outcome. “Ah, he’ll be fine.” The teenager said, brandishing her trash-picker dismissively.

She had taken his wordless indication at the humor in the girl’s desire to stick to her pointless duty as a sign there wasn’t anything seriously wrong. He probably just needed to rest for a bit or something. Sigga gestured around them, trying to suppress a grin, “-besides, if he dies we can just bury him under one of these trash piles. It’s not like anybody would find him.” She turned away from her academy peer before the copper-haired girl could see the fish’s expression. Sigga was obviously joking, but it would be far more amusing if her classmate didn’t know for certain.

In any case, she’d give her cleaning partner some time to dote on the mute. The healer was clearly smitten by the mysterious young man. UA student or not, nobody was that concerned about a stranger without having something else on their mind surely.

The boy and girl were given a brief minute alone, Sigga moving just out of earshot of the duo. The trash picker was finally seeing some use as the fish began picking up small scraps of plastic, cigarette butts, and other bits of debris to fill her bag with. She might not have been smart enough to come up with a plan to clean the entire beach but by Poseidon she was going to at the very least do what little she was capable of. There was no shortage of targets for the biped piscine to claim. One of the plastic water bottle lids that she tried to acquire fought back, however. To her surprise a hermit crab appeared to have made the elongated cap its personal home, attempting to fight off the would-be thief with some tiny pincers. The fish-girl eyeballed the Crustacea curiously, thankful to have never encountered one of the creatures in her water bottle lids.

Sigga did not hold onto the hermit crab for long. Quite unexpectedly the girl gave out a sudden shriek, flinging the bottle-lid dweller which landed softly on the sand before skittering under a discarded waffle iron. You’d be forgiven for thinking some villain with a hermit-crab Quirk had suddenly come to take vengeance on the girl. The actually perpetrator was… the ocean, which had unexpectedly lapped at her ankles. How embarrassing.

In her preoccupation, Sigga had not noticed the tide coming in. Not really her fault as only several minutes earlier the shoreline was much, much further out than now. Embarrassed at her sudden outburst, the student glared at the incoming tide. Hopefully the other two were braiding each other’s hair or something, rather than looking her way.

The mystery of the sudden change in tide, though, was not to remain an enigma for long.

No sooner had Sigga started muttering curses at the ocean then her phone, and just about every other phone in the surrounding area, received a text. The girl practically jumped out of her skin as the side of her uniform began suddenly vibrating. First the ocean accosts her and now her own pocket!

Anyone with a phone nearby would have gotten a message from the country’s tsunami warning system. Apparently an earthquake had occurred minutes earlier, just off the coast. Sigga pulled out her salmon-colored smartphone, still muttering under her breath. The sight of the digital screen had her eyes light up. So that’s how the ocean managed to sneak up on the fish…

Turning back to face the others, she couldn’t help but notice the boy not fishing out a phone like she had. Sigga walked back to the duo, her socks and shoes soaked. One of her hands gripped the garbage bag and trash-picker, the other held her smartphone which she flipped around to face the silver-haired teen once she got close enough. She didn’t bother saying anything, hoping that if he had witnessed her outburst that the diversion in her hand displaying the estimated tsunami height and arrival time would prove a decent distraction. Worst trip to the beach, ever.

Despite the girl's insistence on giving him a full medical examination, Hiro more or less just started to ignore her, closing his eyes and just letting himself rest in the sand. And for a few glorious minutes his efforts seemed to be rewarded, the pounding in his head starting to recede as the ambiance of the waves took over. Although... was it just him or was that getting louder? Before he could come to a definitive answer though, a shrill shriek from the water's edge shattered his mental calm and kick started the pounding of his headache again. Annoyed, Hiro gave a silent grumble and then rolled onto his side to see the fish girl approaching again. She had her cell phone out, and so did the one with the orange hair... and neither of them were wearing a particularly amused expression on their faces. The boy raised an eyebrow, but soon enough one of them turned the screen so that he could see what they were so concerned about.

Oh.

Hiro sat up with a start, immediately regretting it and visibly flinching as his head protested the sudden movement. Could this medicine work any slower? Whatever, they didn't exactly have time to sit around. With a bit of exertion he pushed through the disorientation and staggered to his feet. Sometimes there were stories about how heroes would step in and use their quirks to lessen the impact of natural disasters, but that sort of intervention generally required advanced warning and it wasn't exactly something you could rely on. No, as the girl said their best bet was to just get the hell out of there.

Luckily, this wasn't actually his first experience with a tsunami and he had an idea of where to go, lessons from the boss that had actually managed to stick in his head over the years. The vagabond quickly scooped up his bag and started to move unsteadily away from the water's edge, only pausing briefly to wave for the two girls to follow him. Their first priority was just to get past the sea wall, and then to get as much elevation they could facing away from the shore. After that it was more or less just down to luck and not panicking... And of course while all of this was going through his head, on tiny voice in the back of his mind lingered on the fact that all the hard work he'd put into his sculptures on the beach was about to be ruined by a fluke of nature. Wasn't that just a hell of a thing...