fandomhighdorms | Main Campfire, Monday Evening

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Main Campfire, Monday Evening

Okay, so today had admittedly not been the most productive day that Zack had ever had. He'd skipped work today after having the meaning of Memorial Day explained to him by the gym teacher, and then he'd ~~handwavily~~ headed down to the graveyard. Angeal wasn't there, no, but it was about as close as he was going to get, and the time to just sit quietly and pay his respects had been good for him.

Now, to wrap the day up, he'd grabbed some marshmallows, bars of chocolate, and graham crackers, and he was working on getting a decently sized fire going.

Okay, so Zack's idea of a 'decently sized' fire was possibly not what most sane people considered to be one. He'd heaped the logs on kind of ridiculously high, and then he'd lit that sucker with a Fira spell. The result had singed his eyebrows a little at first, but hey, all the better for making s'mores, right?

... Once he blew out the marshmallow fire.

[Open!]

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"Oh, hey! If we're going to do that, then we should totally have campfires right on past the summertime, when we're back in the dorms! Even when it starts to get chilly out, a fire is good for making joy, right?"

He grinned for a moment, and then winced and extracted what was now a marshmallow torch from the flames.

"It has the added bonus of not being cold," he added, before blowing out the marshmallow. Mmm, ashy.

"Now, these would still be outside campfires?" she double-checked, selecting some chocolate.

"Well, yeah," Zack agreed. "I don't think they'd like us setting fire to the common rooms so much, right? Unless there are fireplaces that I haven't noticed yet. I guess we could just put the TV on to that weird channel that's nothing but a burning log all through the winter, but that doesn't come with s'mores."

"The one in the sixth floor has a fireplace!" she recalled. "I think! I just wanted to make sure we were setting fires outside. Which seems harder if there's snow on the ground, but I have faith we can all make it work. We just need to embrace teamwork."

Teamwork, and possibly gasoline and a mastered Fire materia, yes.

"We can totally make it work. Once you get enough stuff in the firepit that can actually burn, it should be easy enough. And if it doesn't work, that's what the fireplaces are for, right?"

He grinned. "We can just shovel the snow out before we try to light any fires."

"Make the telekinetic kids do it for us," she said, waving a hand lazily. "I'll bring matches. I don't do heavy lifting in winter."

"And I can do heavy lifting anytime," Zack replied, shrugging and smiling. "If we cant coerce any of the telekenetics into doing our dirty work for us."

A pause.

"But I'll totally take you up on that offer for matches. You're probably less likely to make a bonfire that can be seen clear across the island."

"Generally," she agreed thoughtfully. "You just get carried away on this one?"

"Kinda," Zack admitted. "I used a spell to get it started, and I probably should have used a slightly weaker one, thinking about it now. And less wood."

Far less wood, Zack.

"Oooh, you can do fire magic?" she asked, her eyes lighting up. "Awesome."

"If I have the right equipment," Zack agreed, perking up all over again. "Magic is pretty common, where I'm from. Anyone can do it, so long as they can get their hands on the stuff to do it with."

"...could someone from here do it?" she wondered. "I mean, not that I want to, but hypothetically speaking if I had the materials needed could I do magic?"

"Oh, sure! I gave Ino some of my armor and a Thunder materia, and she can use it almost better than I can," Zack replied with a grin. "It's easy stuff. It sort of does it for you, when you get right down to it. It's kind of tiring, maybe. But that's only if you use it too much all at once without pausing to recharge."

"That's amazing," she said admiringly. "Seriously. Wait, what's Thunder materia -- am I sayin' that right?"

"You're saying it fine," Zack replied, before rummaging through his pockets and pulling out a handful of shiny, colorful little marbles. "These are materia. They all let me do different things, when I slot them into a weapon or some armor."

They were handy like that.

"So, Thunder would let a person throw lightning. Fire is fireballs, Blizzard is shards of ice. And I have some that let me summon creatures to help me when I'm fighting, back home. There's a lot of variety, trust me."

"That's so cool. Somethin' for everything!" she said, bouncing a tiny bit. "I've got some lightning magic myself, but it's...not as useful, and it comes from my fingers, not from materia. Does the amount of materia you have actually affect the spells? Like, if you had a dozen Thunder ones, would that make a bigger lightning strike?"

Zack shook his head, no.

"No, not really. But they do get stronger the more you use them! They do kind of cap off at a certain point, but one of the things my work back home showed me how to do is to blend them together to make new ones that can grow even more."

Which, he wasn't going to admit aloud, was really expensive in the long run, but stupidly fun.

"...so you could make like, lightning-ice?" she asked, wide-eyed.

Zack kind of squinted a bit, and then shook his head, looking almost regretful about that.

"No, it doesn't quite work like that. If I mix Thunder and Fire, I'll end up with a Blizzard. And if I mix Blizzard and Thunder, I'll get Fire. Blizzard and Fire make Thunder, like that. And there are other things you can mix in, too, to make totally different things. It's hard to tell what will make what, sometimes. It all seems so random, what works and what doesn't."

[Way past bedtime, here! SP?]

"It's like chemistry," she said thoughtfully. "But the more you mix, the bigger the compound, and the bigger the power?"

[YAY SP! I LOVES IT SO.]

"In most cases," Zack agreed. "But you have to take a little to gain a little, too, if that makes any sense. I can toss items in while I'm doing it, too. Like... twenty potions when I merge to materia will sometimes give me a little more leeway when it comes to taking on damage in a fight. But... That's twenty potions I won't ever see again, you know?"

For the most part, it still didn't make sense to him. But hey, at least potions were easy enough to come by. If slightly expensive, once you started buying twenty at a time just to piddle them away on your materia.

"So it's really about balancing whether it's worth the amount of stuff versus the outcome?" she asked, kind of piecing things together in an abstract way. "That's interesting. It's weird to me how many people around here just have magic as something everyone in their world can do. Like, weird in an awesome way."

"Really awesome," Zack agreed. "I never dreamed I'd come to a place where there would be people who could cast spells without needing materia to do it with, either, you know?"

He poked through the little marbles in his hand before picking out a greenish-colored one and offering it her way.

"This one's Blizzard," he shared. "You can't use it for anything unless you slot it into a weapon or a piece of armor, but you're welcome to it, if you want. I have dozens. And it's kinda sparkly."

He collected them easily enough on the job. Like bubblegum cards.

"Really?" she squeaked, gratefully taking the wee little marble. "I don't care if I can't really use it. They're neat."

"They are!" Zack was totally going to wink, now. "And they make awesome marbles."

... Zack sometimes had odd priorities.

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Main Campfire, Monday Evening

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