fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

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!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

It might have been the start of the fall semester, but it was definitely still summer in Fandom. The sun was shining and the temperature was already starting to get high, even as the NPC crew set things up for the day.

Luckily, the school knew how to take care of folks on days like today. Beneath the blue and gold streamers and balloons, tables had been set up with cold drinks and food, and an entire section devoted to offering up different ~~moddable~~ ice cream flavors. As always, there was a stack of nametags set down next two signs: one listing the Big Sibling/Little Sibling pairings, and one listing rooms and roommates for the new students.

With everything set up and the crew out of the way, it was time for the picnic to begin!

[~~Please wait for OCD!~~ The OCD is up! This is part one of the picnic, specifically for meeting siblings, roommates, and teachers. The rest of the picnic is happening here and here, in an effort to keep browsers from breaking for as long as possible. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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Oh, Maladicta had totally just earned the world record for fastest puppyface ever earned from a Zack.

"What?" See? See those sad, sad eyes? "I hope not... It was supposed to just be a nice gesture."

Looking the cookies over more closely, Maladicta very carefully concealed the horror. "How much for all of them?"

...somewhere... a blond prince was wondering the same.

Zack blinked down at the cookies. And then up at the girl. And then back down at the cookies.

"Well, actually, they're all free."

They were trying to get people to voluntarily poison themselves! It would be great!

"You could consider it a donation to the cause."

That suggestion kind of caught Zack off-guard, yes.

"You want to pay for them?" After calling them poisonous? Zack was still kind of pouting over that. They'd been made with love. And fish paste. "I don't know... I guess... whatever it would cost to be able to get more cookies from town, so that people don't go without?"

Fish paste was not love, Zack. Fish paste burned at your very soul with it's hatred of all things sweet.

"As long as it helps the reserve, I believe it's well worth the effort."

Zack tilted his head at the girl slightly, and then sighed and shrugged it off a bit. He was already trying to separate the home-made cookies from the supplemental J,GoB ones that had been picked up earlier at Tara's behest.

"You have an interest in the reserves? I think I've seen you around, once or twice."

"As much as anyone here, I'd say," she replied, grabbing the cookies quickly before someone could make the mistake of eating them.

Zack was only pouting a little as the cookies disappeared from the table.

Sigh and woe and that was that.

"Well, not anyone, I don't think. There are still plenty of people who either don't know they exist, or who just don't feel comfortable with that sort of thing going on when it's made up almost entirely of students."

"They feel more comfortable with being over run with whatever decides to happen this next time?" Maladicta asked.

Zack grimaced a little, and then he shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I mean, it's not like we're kids, right? I've been in SOLDIER for a few years already, now. And there are lots of other students who are wired for this sort of thing. If nothing else, at least people had to see why we fighters don't want to just roll over and agree to be students exclusively, not after what happened the last time."

"Not everyone is made for it, I'll grant. But they ought to at least be glad some are," she replied dryly. "Soldier--" She totally missed the all caps there. "--is that your company?"

Well, in all fairness, it wasn't as though all-caps were easy to pronounce. Maybe if Zack started yelling the name?

"It's a branch of the company I work for, actually," Zack confided, looking more than a little proud of that fact, cookies all but forgotten. "SOLDIER is ShinRa's elite military. We take care of stuff that the infantry and the security department can't really handle."

"Which is how much of it?"

Hey, she was in the infantry, thank you.

"Oh, they do a good job," Zack replied, "don't get me wrong. But if it takes up too much of the company's resources to arm them and ship them off, it's probably going to fall back to me and a handful of infantrymen for cleanup. They probably get more work than I do."

... Especially lately. He was trying not to pout again.

"You must have a lot of wars then," Maladicta replied, trying to keep from getting the puppy sad face. It was... disturbing.

He'd spent years perfecting the sad face! It maybe lost a bit now, what with the scar and the funky hair, but that just meant that he'd have to try harder.

"There have been a few," he agreed. "And there are some pretty nasty monsters and things back home, too. Always plenty going on to keep the military busy, that way. What are things like where you're from?"

"The war we'd been in for quite some time just recently ended." Kinda. "Though, at that point, the only thing the soldiers were contributing to was the fertilizing of the battlefields."

Zack actually winced a little at that one. Nevermind that he'd done a good deal of fertilizing himself, when it came to his raid on Fort Tamblin in Wutai.

"I'm sorry to hear that it was that bad," he offered. "I mean... I'm made to fight, but there's no news that's quite as good to hear as that the war is over, too."

Even if it meant that he just sat around and stagnated and slowly lost his mind.

"Made to fight?" Of course she picked up on that.

Well, why not!

"Kind of built for it," Zack clarified. "I guess you could say. Everybody in SOLDIER is. That's why we're the go-to people for the bigger stuff, you know? One of us can take down an enemy that two dozen people from ShinRa's other organizations would take heavy casualties on."

Which... wasn't bragging. When Zack bragged, you knew.

That earned him an overly interested look. "You don't smell too off from being human."

Blink. Blink blink.

"You have a really good nose," Zack offered. "I'm... Not really normal, I guess."

Kind of. Sort of. Being doused in radiation and gene-spliced with an alien entity bent on interplanetary destruction had that effect on a guy.

"Aren't we all?"

That got Zack to relax a bit, yes.

"I guess we are," he agreed. That's what he'd been telling his new little sibling earlier, too, after all. "It keeps things from getting too boring, right?"

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