#chissmass

Thrawn does not care all that much where they go, so the ocean world of Komisos looked ideal - one large floating city with fleshly pleasures, and the great outdoors for those who wanted to get natural. The Chiss have always been indifferent to where they spend leave, and now that they know to steer clear of frozen fruity drinks with little plasfilm umbrellas in them, this should go well. Grand Admiral Faro is legendary for using such to hammer opponents to their knees with hangovers, and the Chiss have learned not to drink them to excess.

Ought to go fine.

Which it did.

Until the Chiss actually saw the ocean.

And the humans running right into it.

And jumping off cliffs into it.

And speeding around on it in water vehicles that made huge amounts of 'come and get it' noises.

The Chiss storm in and pulled the crazy humans out and thus develop a new understanding of being human.

Being human means having absolute faith that there is nothing in the galaxy that can eat you.

The humans also gain an understanding that being Chiss means having certain knowledge that almost everything in your environment will try to eat you.

Not many things can crack Chiss imperturbability, but when their human sim'kori'nur flings themselves off a cliff into the water - that does it.

"Why would you do that?" Pras'mac'kas bellows in Basic as he carries his human out of the water.

"Because it's fun!" Comes a higher pitched bellow in Cheunh from Dira Lithali - currently thrown over her common-law mate's shoulder.

Smack takes one of those long, deep breaths that Chiss do when dealing with human insanity in all of its degrees and classification.

The Chiss often find themselves cast in the role of the calm allies. This time the humans get a taste of what it's like to calm an agitated Chiss. They allow the Chiss to show them the fearsome predators of their homeworld oceans, then they assure the Chiss that there is nothing like that here. The Chiss are not so sure - they stopped exploring the deep oceans of Csilla, Rentor, and other worlds when all their marine surveyors and equipment got eaten.

It's a theme.

A few days later, Ar'alani notes that human insanity is contagious.

The humans are coaxing the Chiss into the water. The Chiss go in armed and in some cases armored. By common agreement, there is no flinging oneself off of cliffs after Thrawn and Ivant have one of their murmured arguments. Pyrondi and Woot go out on a large boat with the stated intent of catching one of the local-things-that-can-eat-you in order to eat it. It turns out to be delicious, and there is a lot of 'I told you so!' on the part of the Chiss - who all insist on having holos taken of themselves standing inside the thing's mouth and under its multiple rows of teeth - some of them twenty centis long.

Finally they return to the ships, hungover, sunburned, in many cases divested of pay, and tired out enough to not cause trouble. However, it is agreed that the next leave will be taken on whatever iceball that Thrawn and Ar'alani can find. Revenge, as the humans say, is a dish best served cold.