With the transition from July to August bringing with it a heat wave like no other, it wasn't surprising that lot of people, both human and Animalian, were temporarily moving to places with either cooler temperatures or easy access to large bodies of water. Fortunately, San Francisco, where Bennie and Marina had been staying, had an unprecedented amount of foresight and had prepared for this rush. They had torn down a few old (pre-1990s, mainly 1960s) beachfront condos and built new, Animalian-focused condos on the land. Part of what had necessitated the tearing down was the discovery of deadly asbestos in the buildings. While the cost of the new condos was high, income from the temporary Animalian residents were expected to compensate, even though it wasn't enough to label it as an Animalian Colony.
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Others were heading out to other colonies for different reasons.
"You're not the only ones heading out to New Zerzura." said a Horizon agent as Nicole and Joanne were packing their bags for their honeymoon.
"Who else is going?" asked Nicole.
"Sylvia, Andy, and little Tommy." answered the agent.
"So did Andy take the plunge yet?" asked Joanne.
"Not yet" replied the agent, "But Tommy's more focused on a different part of New Zerzura than the history."
"I can see that." said Nicole, smiling as she imagining Tommy viewing New Zerzura as the ultimate "sandbox city".
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However, the heatwave caused a few inconveniences that required some compromises. The best case of this was when the air conditioning at Claw Coliseum broke, which was always miserable no matter where it happened. Fortunately, since Lyre/Animalia was on the relative border of the Mojave Desert, an easy solution was agreed on: the reptile Animalians would use the gym while the amphibian Animalians would use the pool during the day, while the other Animalians would use the gym and pool during the night, when it was sufficiently cooler. However, this caused some other things to happen that weren't necessarily problems, depending on how you looked at them.
Dennis was doing some lessons on working out when his new sense of smell alerted him to someone coming up to him. Turning, he saw a female Burmese Python slithering up to him in a really odd way: she was both slithering and using her powerfully muscular arms to crawl, after a fashion, up to him. Part of what made him nervous was the simple fact that she was way larger than many male bodybuilders he had seen, as well as the beachball-sized rack she was sporting. However, it was the predatory gleam in her eye and similar grin on her mouth was giving him a lot of creeps.
"Uh..." said Dennis, his senses sending him all kinds of confusing signals. "I'll... get out of your way, ma'am..."
"No worries," said the python woman still grinning at him. Fortunately, another snake noticed this and came to his aid.
"That's enough, Diega." said Prisma, coming over to him. Diega, somewhat disappointed, winked suggestively at Dennis and went over to the power cage. "Sorry about her," she apologized, "From what I've heard, she was the oldest Burmese Python at Lyre Zoo when the outbreak there happened. Also, there aren't many people who were interested in becoming Burmese Pythons."
"... thanks for the warning." said Dennis, beginning to double down on his training, since he has heard that snakes have extremely long mating rituals, and he was going to need a lot of strength and stamina to match her.
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While Lyre/Animalia might have had the heat wave bad, Dino City seemingly had it worse, mainly due to being relatively closer to the equator than Lyre/Animalia. Because of this, the rules for decency/indecency were relaxed a bit, as long as the important "bits" were covered. Of course, the only people who were really upset about this were the 'Karens' (hey, what else are we supposed to call them?), but these were ignored.
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Sometimes heat waves can cause other kinds of 'waves'. The best case of this was the Ice-Haus. Because of the recent heat wave, business was booming, big time. This caused the Ice-Haus to begin plans for an expansion, as well as another visit from the IRS who were investigating the sudden jump in income again. Of course, it wasn't just customers who were frequenting the Ice-Haus.
"So, Mr. 'Leaper'. You're here on behalf of Miss Fabina?" asked the cashier. Lorenzo grunted in confirmation. "Okay then, here's the key you'll need to get into the 'reservation'." replied the cashier, sliding a blank envelope to Lorenzo. "Just a word of advice: your 'date' isn't a delicate flower, so you can be a lot rougher with her if you want." Lorenzo grunted, not too thrilled about being the 'predator' in one of Miss Fabina's porn shoots, especially since the 'prey' was a macaroni penguin Animalian. "Just one thing: let us know when you all are done so we can clean up afterwards." finished the cashier, glad that the pandemic was good for one thing: extra-strength cleaner/sanitizer.
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So, while summer was drawing to its later days, it was becoming hotter instead of cooler this time, so while this was good in some ways, it wasn't so good in others.