As a rule, Rosie preferred to avoid water altogether. 

Bathing was one thing. Glamour or no, there was no way in hell she was sitting through the entirety of second period geometry with Billy Huevas and [i]not[/i] smelling like Strawberries and Champagne and red dye #42. 

And most of the time, LA helped her out with that. The stagnant sludge sitting in the canals that criss-crossed Venice hardly counted as "running water" even in the Southern California rainy season -- or those two weeks in mid-January that amounted to it. Even down in Inglewood, where she'd moved with her mother and ten-year-old sister three years ago after [i]Eso Lío[/i], her mother called it, capital letters and all, things were pretty much dry as a bone. And the beaches were so pretty at night. 

Besides, Rosie had at least another hour before her mother left for her nightly 7-11 extra large coffee. She swore by the stuff, even though the one down the street from the hospital almost always burned it to a thick, tasteless mud. Called it her saving grace, her [i]oro del cielo[/i]. And if it made her happy and helped her survived the night shift down at Inglewood Mercy Clinic, then Rosie wasn't complaining. The only thing that did bother her was the idea of her mother walking six blocks by herself through what was still too close to South-Central LA for Rosie to just chill. 

After all: the sixteen-year-old knew better than most the city held much darker secrets than a late-night mugging. 

Which was perhaps why she started jogging, then running, when the bonfire that had been going half a mile down her quiet stretch of beach went entirely too still. The fire still roared and crackled under a none-too-comforting sliver of crescent moon. But the surrounding idiots were gone. 

That, and Rosie was bored. Maybe not midnight beach party bored. But bored. 

Even so, she stopped running a good fifteen yards from the thing that had emerged from the water. It was nothing she'd ever seen before, which, after thirteen years in Central LA, was saying a lot. She blinked, sighed, then slipped out of her knock-off Sketchers. They'd cost her three nights' overtime at the movie theater. She wasn't about to get them all gross with monster...ooze. 

"[i]Oye, puta![/i]" she called, waving her hands over her head. She checked quickly for signs of any other movement and saw none. Save the half-corpse the thing dragged with it. Yeah, she was well within her ass-kicking rights. 

The creature turned yellow eyes to her, dropped the body, and began a slow, squelching shuffle in her direction. Rosie cringed. 

"Eugh," she grunted to herself. "If that thing touches me, I'm going to shower for the rest of my life."

She moved up from the beach, putting herself further from the water, closer to the tentacle-thing, and between it and the main road in a few short strides. The slimy path left behind it told her it came from the sea. She smiled. 

"At least you're making it easy for me," she called, as the thing rolled more quickly in her direction. She waited until its back was to the fire...or at least until its eyes were on the opposite side of its body from the flame, before calling a gout of red-orange heat to her outstretched hand with an easy flick of the wrist. 

She scorched the ground in front of her with the super-heated flames, turning the first inch of sand to molten glass, carving an unwalkable path for the creature, forcing it backwards until the fire hit it full in the face. 

Rosie canted her head to one side, calling the fire back to her as the creature roared in pain and anger. 

"That is your face, right? Hello? [i]Hola[/i], earth to [i]la puta del mar. ¿Puedes oírme?[/i] Or...do you just only speak stupid?"