Room 504, Saturday Evening

[intraspective]

Ino had woken up at her normal ridiculous hour, freezing, and taken a long look outside before deciding that her clinic shift could go screw itself because Ino? Ino was not going outside in a blizzard. Even if, she'd realized as she'd hauled more blankets on to her bed and crawled back under the covers, the clinic probably had power and was warm. Clinics had things like back up generators and stuff, right? Eh, not worth the odds of getting lost and dying, no.

When she woke up a few hours later—warmer, but then enough blankets to drown in helped with that—Ino peeked out and swore when she realized what she really should have realized before. Her poor plants! It was funny how that got her out of her nest of blankets faster than anything else had as she went to work tacking up blankets over the window and wishing like anything that she had some way to keep her plants warm.

Poking her nose out the hall said that it was even worse out there and she shut her door tight and the shoved blankets at the bottom of it to keep any cold air from getting in. Then she went digging through her kit that she dragged around on missions and came up with a few glow sticks—snapping them got her some light, and if it was green light, well, it was better than nothing. Even if it was an absolute bitch to read by.

So, Ino spent her nibbling on chocolate and granola bars (she had ration bars but Ino was saving those for if this went on for longer than a day or two) alternately reading by glow stick and exercising because that got the blood moving and she could pretend she wasn't cold for a bit and fussing over her plants.

And hiding. But seriously, she was from the Fire Country. Snow and cold were not her friends. Ino curled up in about twelve blankets with another granola bar, another glow stick, and the play she'd picked up in Gaia.

Today sucked.

[Closed door but open post, yes.]

Comments

[puppy_fair]

Zack blinked, and then rubbed the back of his neck.

"It's not that far from here, is it? I mean, I pass right by it on my way to work every Sunday."

It was right across Loon Drive! A quick jaunt around the Salle, and... He might get stuck in a snow bank. Hm. That would be problematic.

"I could tie some string to the door and follow it back?"

Right, Zack.

[intraspective]

Ino set the plant down and put her hands on her hips.

Well, where her hips were, through the sweaters.

"I would rather have every single plant in my room die than have you get stuck in a snowbank and go missing for days on end."

He was an idiot.

"How 'bout we start with seeing what we've got in here?"

[puppy_fair]

Zack gave her his most sheepish smile, and then shrugged his shoulders. It had totally been worth a shot.

"That works, too. Maybe we can funnel the smoke out the windows with blankets or something, if it comes to that. What's your wastepaper basket made of? Think we could start a safe little fire in that?"

Ifrit was starting to sound like a better and better idea, actually.

[intraspective]

"It's metal," she chirped now that he wasn't going to go out and be stupid.

"That ought to be safe enough, yeah? As long as we only got it on while we're awake and everything?"

Ifrit wasn't that bad an idea, really, right?

[puppy_fair]

A deity of fire with flaming horns and a banana hammock. There was no way that could possibly go wrong!

"I think the metal should totally be safe enough! Maybe we can put it on top of something else, so that it doesn't get too hot for the floor, but that's easy enough to fix. I can run down to my room and grab mine, and then we can turn one upside down, if nothing else."

[intraspective]

It wasn't like the building they were in was flammable! Wait.

"Might be one in the common room that we can kidnap," Ino said, grinning at him as she grabbed her trash can and eyed the contents. All paper stuff. Kleenex. All burnable stuff. "We'll need more fuel, too."

[puppy_fair]

"Paper," Zack replied, nodding sagely. "Burn the homework! It's all for a good cause!"

No, Zack, that probably wasn't a good idea.

"I bet I have some old copies of the school paper or something, sitting around. Those would burn."

[intraspective]

"I bet there's old magazines and stuff in the common room," she said, glad for a plan and moving her plants out of the way so that they could make this fire in the center of her room. "And, worse comes to worse, I got some notebooks and stuff that I don't really need."

Ino had a bit of a notebook obsession, really, with all the notes she took.

[puppy_fair]

Zack grinned and nodded.

"And I bet if we get into really dire straits for fuel, we could find out what other stuff burns, too. But at the moment, there's not really any shortage of paper, right?"

Right!

"And Mr. Winkles has wood shavings, back in my room! That... we don't really use, because he lives in my pocket, and all."

Yep. There was an aggravated squeak as Zack patted his pocket, right there.

[intraspective]

Ino's eyes dropped to stare at the pocket.

"...I suppose he'd probably better off than I am," she sighed, lips twitching as she fought the urge to laugh at that. Poor Mr. Winkles! "But right--heat! Fire! You need to get your trashcan and stuff."

She grinned at him. "And then we can be waaarm."

Okay, she could be warm. He didn't mind this as much as she did.

[puppy_fair]

Zack? Grinning? Good.

"Warm's good! I'll be right back!"

And off he went, taking the stairs about three at a time with the blanket billowing out behind him like some sort of budget superhero costume. The actual process of going to grab his wastebasket was probably about... Oh, one minute. He'd had to stop somewhere in there to find the key to his door. And to grab some sunflower seeds for the gerbil.

"Knock knock," he announced, upon his return.

[intraspective]

Ino had used that one minute to clear a space for the fire and to dart over and into the common room to grab every magazine and newspaper she could get her hands on.

Those, she'd placed in a pile and was cheerfully ripping some of it into shreds to use to start off the fire when he came back.

She grinned a the picture he made: trash can, blanket-cape; he was totally her hero.

(Dorkiest hero ever.)

"You may enter," she said grandly. "And--I was going to say close the door, but I guess we need it open a bit? So don't."

[puppy_fair]

Zack was about three seconds away from wearing the basket like a helmet and striking a pose.

Don't make him do it.

"Open door it is, then," he agreed, making his way in and squatting down by the paper that she was shredding. "Do you want me to put this right here, then?"

[intraspective]

But he'd look so cute!

"Over with the other one," she said, tilting her head at her clear space. She had floor! This was amazing! Okay, she normally had floor. It just usually had some paper or a plant or something on it. Shush. "And I think we're 'bout ready to start lighting it up?"

Fiiire.

[puppy_fair]

Mmm, fire! Zack, complete with blankie cape, was now putting the pail upside-down on the floor, and then carefully balancing the other one atop it.

"Looks to me like we're about ready," he agreed. "Do you have anything to light it with?"

[intraspective]

Ino lightly lobbed a match book in his directions. "Old fashioned," she noted, "and yet still useful."

Lucky them!

[puppy_fair]

Zack, of course, caught it! And then struck it! And then chucked it in.

It was so very 'back alleys of Midgar' of them, to be doing this. Wasn't it? Zack grinned at the papers as they caught fire inside the can, and then smiled up at Ino and took a seat on some more conveniently bare floor.

"So, how have you been, aside from cold?"

[intraspective]

Ino was just going to shift her stack of extra paper over so she could sit close by Zack (but not too close because that was too obvious, really, geez) and wrinkled her nose slightly.

"Got lectured by Centurion for insubordination," she admitted, making a face at that. "Which was great good fun and all of that."

[puppy_fair]

"Insubordination?" Zack's own nose wrinkled a little. "Was that before or after you took the header into the ocean?"

So that he could get his timeline straight, here! These things were important when you were as easily-confused as Zack was.

[intraspective]

"Um," Ino tugged at her hair, feeding a bit of paper to their flame and holding her hands out. "The insubordination happened on Tuesday? In class. And then the lecture happened the day after the dunking."

[puppy_fair]

Zack offered her a quirk of a grin, at that.

"Misbehaving in class? Now you have me curious what was going on, there, you know."

Zack Fair, wiggling his nose into anything that looked shiny around the edges!

[intraspective]

She was just going to leaaan over and grab her box of granola bars (strawberry flavoured, hush) and offer him one before kidnapping one for herself.

"I refused to do his class exercise," Ino said, tugging at the wrapper. "He wanted us to pair up and spill our deepest darkest secrets to the other person to build a bond of trust."

Trust. Right. Built on blackmail.

[puppy_fair]

Zack's eyebrows raised a little as he reached for the granola bar. Mmmm, granola.

"Can he even do that? There's a reason that they're secrets in the first place. Teachers around here ought to be able to respect that!"

[intraspective]

"Yeah," she said, handing the other bar over. "And he said it weren't optional or nothing and that we weren't supposed to lie--and he knows be well enough that if I'd lied he'd have known so--"

Ino gave that a bit of a shrug.

"I pretty much told him he weren't the boss of me and I weren't going to participate and he told me to get out of the class room."

[puppy_fair]

"Way to go," Zack decided, wide-eyed. "I wouldn't have been able to do it, you know? I'm glad I didn't take that class."

A pause.

"Whatever class it is."

He was going to wiggle a little closer toward her, now. Because it was cold in here and he wasn't actually moving around much. Body heat, he'd heard, could be an awesome thing.