Pretty much as Rosco expected, his attempts to settle his new acquaintance down resulted in the opposite outcome. The various arguments he'd had over the course of his life, whether with his mother, his sister, or a girlfriend, gave him firsthand experience that telling an angry woman to calm down worked about as well as water on a grease fire. This particular girl launched into a tirade about epithets, letting slip in the process that her powers extended beyond merely shifting position. One thing she said, though, tickled him. “Well, people get upset at misuse of arms all the time,” he pointed out. “It's called assault?”

Of course, she then went and turned things around all him, slapping him in the face with a pretty laughable question. Rosco laughed at it. “Heheh, that's my secret, little missy. Like I said: a private matter,” he said, jokingly. Now that he sensed the situation had deescalated from dangerous, and Aurora's mood from pissed to ornery, he felt pretty good about taking his leave. He grew serious to make an assurance. “I'll be more careful, 'kay?” He gave a polite nod before turning to go. “See ya.”

As he went, headed in the direction of the surf he'd just been deposited in and withdrawn from like an offshore bank account, Rosco couldn't help but glance to the left. It looked like he wasn't the only one making a scene, and the accident paled in comparison to this. Two blonde teenagers up by the dune railing, beyond the spot where the garrulous Texans and friends played volleyball and behind where the rows of beach chairs ran, were engaged in some sort of argument. Rosco shook his head and ignored it, making for the waves. A few onlookers, however, weren't so quick to avert their gaze. They watched with interest and raised eyebrows as the fluffy-haired one with glasses pulled an opulent-ass sword from the mucky sand and abruptly transformed from ordinary to royalty. 

One in particular, the young pink-haired girl in green whose own royal abode had been reduced to ruins, stared at Penny with sparkling eyes. She gasped in awe as the teenager summoned forth a handful of adorable gnomes and then commanded them to begin rebuilding the castle. Squealing in delight, little Magnolia (Maggy to her friends, which was everyone except Jessica) raced over and slid to a stop on her knees by the construction sight. She started helping out the workers, who did not mind the extra pair of hands, by pulling up extra sand and packing it tight. Jessica remained nearby, but Maggy didn't seem to notice her getting chewed out by Penny at all. Only when a new castle stood, larger and more magnificent than the last, did Maggy get to her feet, wearing a lot of sand and a wide smile. She ran over to Penny and hugged her leg, saying, “That was so awesome! Thankyouthankyouthankyou! Who are you? You're so cool and pretty!”

Another onlooker approached. A teenager himself, lanky and lean, with short but spiky gray hair, a smattering of dark brown freckles, yellow eyes, and a lopsided grin, he looked like he stepped straight out of a high school detention room in Siberia. Sauntering up with his hands in the pockets of his black cargo shorts, he looked the new sandcastle over before his eyes landed on Penny. “Yeah, pretty...” He flashed Jessica a sly glance before smirking. “Pretty stupid! Who builds a sand castle out of spite? That's, like, a total dork move.”

Despite how he looked, he sounded like a surfer dude, and he rounded on Jessica with a conspiratorial look—the look that close friends might give one another. “C'mon, sis. Let's ditch these lame-o's.” He nodded his head pointedly over his shoulder. A few hundred feet away, one of the resort's security guards, all in white save for his black aviators and thick black beard, was watching. Whether drawn by the whisper of a bully terrorizing sand castles and disrupting the peace, or the flagrant use of an epithet or two, he observed the beachfront in menacing stillness and silence. A number of hotel visitors were also watching, either annoyed, concerned, or both.

The guy took a step in the direction of the southern end of the beach, where waves lapped against a rocky spit that extended a ways into the sea. Signs discouraged climbing on the rocks, but neither the dude nor Jessica were the type to take such warnings seriously. More importantly, there weren't a lot of people there, which would allow Jessica to escape the less-than-desirable attention now fixed on her. Even if she was dying for attention, after all, getting thrown out of the place where she wanted to take a load off would do her no good. All this, the yellow-eyed stranger seemed to understand.