After they had jumped down to the surface Jessica immediately ran and dived into the water fully clothed while Rachel and Holly calmly walked up to it, looking around at their surroundings.
Dawn and Stephan, however, walked along the bank more interested in surveying the landscape. A short distance from the others they found an area of stone that appeared to be sturdy and stable enough that Stephan felt satisfied using his ability to build them a shelter. He started to draw the nearby sand in and used it to build a basic shelter similar to a tent but Dawn stopped him and pressured him to build a bigger and more permanent building. He reluctantly started to make it into a small house big enough for the 5 of them but only completed a couple of rooms before he proclaimed that his energy level had gotten too low to complete another room.
Wanting to complete the building, Dawn tested her ability to see if there were any nearby sources of energy they could draw from. She found there was a faint amount of energy she could draw from the sunlight and a slight bit more from the waves of water in the ocean so she tried to reach further and further. When she had reached almost as far as she felt capable of reaching she discovered that she could reach the spacecraft's engine. After drawing from it and finding out that she could maintain the draw, she then reached out, grabbed his arm, and told Stephan, "I'm connected to the engine so draw the energy from me."
After then reminding him that he also possessed the ability and then trying to teach him how to draw the energy from her, Stephan drew enough energy to continue and stopped drawing the energy from Dawn thinking that he would only be able to use one ability at a time. Dawn then pushed the connection back on him as she explained that he would still be able to draw the energy while using his builder ability. Timidly Stephan then proceeded to finish the house.
As he started to build the outside walls of his initial design, Dawn ordered him again to expand it until he finally had built what looked like a multistory mansion. When the other girls saw it, they congratulated him and took a break from swimming to tour the building. As they all walked through the mansion and kept pointing out things it needed, Stephan found he had to maintain his energy connection to Dawn so he could continue to modify the rooms to satisfy their critiques.
When he had finally modified the mansion to their satisfaction he then released his connection to Dawn and heavily sat down in one of the chairs that the girls had made him add. When he received a concerned look from everyone except Dawn, Stephan wearily supplied, "I'm fine. Dawn was loaning me energy from the engine. I'm not physically wore out, just mentally after all of this changing and creating stuff to make y'all happy."
Holly chuckled and teased, "Welcome to shopping with women. We know what we want and don't like to settle for less."
Rachel added, "And you might as well get used to it because each of us will eventually want our own mansion on this beach."
Jessica chipped in, "And if we go for the colonizing gig it's gonna end up being your full time job. So you might as well get the practice in ahead of time."
Stephan sighed and replied, "Well then sis, if I'm going to be working so hard could you jump us some supper down here? I'm hungry and I'm all for crashing in one of these huge and fancy comfy beds you all have had me make."
A short while later, after they had all eaten and were lounging in the living room area that they had gotten Stephan to make earlier, he wearily asked, "OK Ladies, since each of you has proposed building a colony here, how big of a colony are you all thinking of setting up? And how would we feed them when we got them here?"
Jessica answered, "A couple hundred neighbors would make a nice little town."
Rachel contributed, "If we did a couple thousand then over time we could end up populating the entire world!"
Holly countered, "I say go full scale and bring all of the starving people back home here!"
Stephan asked, "What about the professionals we would need to set up the farming, the electricity system, safe fresh water, and all of the other basic systems they would need?"
Dawn proposed, "If we brought the folks that have talents like we do then we wouldn't have to worry so much about the professionals. And I'm pretty sure they would come willingly instead of wanting a large salary or some other big reward like some of the more greedy professionals like to demand."
Stephan smiled and replied, "the only salary would be food. And the big reward would be the adventure."
Dawn cautioned, "I think it might be better overall if we didn't advertise the colony or particularly the ability to jump so far either. It might also be better if we did some type of proposed, quote unquote, top secret test. That way people wouldn't go searching for them or declare them missing and all, while we would still be able to avoid the government guys shaking us down trying to make us turn over the engine and abuse our abilities to benefit them alone."
Stephan responded, "I agree. And, speaking of the government guys, any ideas on how to explain to them our surprising disappearance and eventually showing back up?"
Rachel said, "As far as the disappearance we could just tell them that the engine started misfiring and it shut down so we had to coast back home until we could get it to start back up."
He considered the proposal then answered, "Let's make that our official story then. It should cover us from any questions they might have and it will keep us from getting hounded for a repeat speed performance."
Holly, still grimacing from the idea of the government wanting to repeat their torturous testing for her abilities, added, "I think the best approach for the colony deal, and to maybe help keep the government guys more focused on the engine instead of us, would be to put it out there that we are thinking about setting up a colony in a couple of years after we know we have fixed the problems the engine was giving us. And, to help attract everyday people instead of just the space nuts or the greedy professionals just looking for attention and money, I think if we put it out there that we're not looking to start off fancy and are more focused on building a steady food source to boost Earth's supply going to the other startup colonies and the space station until it's established enough and has enough people to flourish before we look at doing more."
Stephan considered the idea and responded, "I think that might make it more appealing to the masses but I don't know if it would provide enough attraction to get them to start applying. So I think we might want to also throw in there some type of financial reward for those selected that's big enough to attract Joe Blow but not big enough to draw those that consider themselves part of the elite."
"Yes. That would only draw the ones that truly want to help and don't care about the attention or money." Dawn then suggested, "And as for the government types looking too hard at us, me and Jessica could also use our listener ability to help us keep things quiet by diverting any eyes looking our way as we're building our next ship. And maybe even get them to forget any future launches as we're shipping people and supplies here."
Holly commented, "That sounds like a pretty nice approach but let's make sure it works as well in practice before we get reckless thinking that'll cover our tracks."
Stephan agreed, "I definitely want to make sure they don't think anything of us for a while because they're already gonna be hounding me for plans for the engine and wanting me to build them some for just about every project they've got funding for and I don't want to put up with them being so interested that they end up assigning some mysterious 'observers' or some other type of watchdog to spy on us every day."
Rachel, chuckling, told Stephan, "Whoah there! I thought Holly and me were wary of the government guys, but let's tone down the paranoia a little bit there! Yes NASA has been trying to pry into your brain every chance they get, but that doesn't mean the rest of the government guys care enough about us to even look our way. They only care about us when we have something that they can use to their advantage, so as long as we keep our abilities out of the public eye and all they see is the engine, we should be able to keep their watchdog on it's leash."
"I say we even ask them for a watchdog." Dawn suggested, "But we tell them we want Greg and Angie due to their experience. That way they'll think they have some secret eyes in our camp but they'll be more loyal to us and only tell the big guys what we want them to know."
"Why them though?" Stephan asked.
"Because," Dawn said with a smile, "Greg also has a builder ability along with a combo ability that he used to make that device and, once we let him know about it and show him how much more he can do if he joins us, they'll both be sold and will willingly join the team."
Their conversations then drifted to other topics until each individual grew tired, left the others, and retired to a bed for the night.