I Had Themarshmallow Idea And It Sorta Spiraled - Tumblr Posts
The Great Camping Incident, AKA Why To Never Take Smith Camping Again
@kittydemon9000 CLOCKING IN AT MORE THAN 500 WORDS MORE THAN THE PREVIOUS TWO FICS COMBINED, I PRESENT: The Gang Takes Smith Camping and it goes about as well as you’d expect.
Enjoy.
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Smith Forge was never allowed to go camping again, not after the great Camping Trip Incident.
Allow me to explain.
It all started with Lloyd oh so innocently asking Smith if he wanted to join him and the gang camping. There was a spot in the woods not too far from the city in case the Garm-Alarm sounded, private and bare of other campers.
Smith, of course, agreed, and Lloyd found himself with a pat on his head from his mom as she dropped him and Smith off at the campsite for the night. As usual, she and Smith exchanged some strange emotion in their look, though this time Koko seemed to nod ever so slightly at whatever she saw staring back.
The others arrived shortly after.
It all started with the tents. Specifically, the fact that Smith seemed mystified that they weren’t going to simply sleep on the ground next to a campfire on the sleeping mats Koko had lent them.
Apparently, all he knew from camping was an extreme version of ‘roughing it’. And he meant extreme.
“YOU’VE SLEPT IN A SNOWSTORM?!?”
Yep, that would be Kai.
“The probability of surviving that is…”
Zane, right on cue.
“How much of an adrenaline junkie are you?”
Nya, sounding a little bit awed as if she wanted to try it sometime on her own.
“Are you crazy?!?”
And that would be Jay to round them off, Cole just staring at Smith speechlessly.
Smith shrugged. “A snowstorm, the top of a mountain, near a stormy wasteland…”
“And no tent?”
“No tent.”
Lloyd didn’t know whether to be impressed, angry, or concerned. He settled for all three.
After that, and some help teaching Smith how to pitch a tent, came the gathering of supplies for camp. Cole gathered the stone circle for the pit, Nya set up their water filtration system by the river, and Kai and Smith both volunteered to gather sticks for the fire.
It was on this walk that Kai and Smith got to chatting.
Or, well, Kai did most of the chatting for the first bit, while Smith just nodded and stared into space a little.
“You okay?” Kai finally asked when they passed a bush of yellow flowers that Smith seemed to glower at with loathing.
Smith turned sharply, scar crinkling as his face twisted in surprise. “I-” He sighed. “Sorry, just… lost in thought.”
Kai silently prompted him to continue if he felt comfortable.
“I just… it’s been a while since I was last on a trip like this,” Smith started. “And the last time I slept in a forest like this… I… I made this stupid, impulsive mistake, and the people I care about paid for it. We managed to save them in the end, but… it could have ended up a lot worse. And it did lead to some pretty nasty consequences that might have been avoided if I had just stayed in camp instead of running off on my own.”
Kai nodded. “I get that. Nya and I went camping with our parents when we were younger, and… I wanted to go stargazing. I climbed up a tree to watch in the middle of the night and fell asleep. Boy, did I get an earful from those three when I woke up to their search party.”
Smith cracked a small grin. “Impulsive and instinct-driven to a fault, huh? That sounds familiar…”
“Yeah…”
Smith glanced over at Kai’s quieter tone. The latter quickly hid it with a bright smile. “But hey, that’s what life is! A series of adventures strung together by action.”
“...you’re worried you worry others too much.”
Kai blinked. “Huh…?”
Smith shook his head. “You’re impulsive and a little hot-headed sometimes. It’s protective, it’s loyal, but it’s also stubborn and puts you and the people you care about in harm's way. And you catch yourself wondering if you hadn’t done that action, what would be different. What would be better. And you start to beat yourself up over your impulses but at the same time you can’t get them to simply stop and think.”
Kai was silent.
“But…” Smith said, staring down at his hands. “Your instinct can also be something great. It reacts before anyone else. It warns you when something is wrong, that gut feeling that says don’t go there, don’t trust them, but also yes this is a safe place and that is a trustable person. It’s an invaluable tool. Don’t wish it away. Learn how to work with it and listen. That in turn will help you control your anger and impulses.”
Kai stared at Smith for a long minute. His eyes were wide as moons, his posture slack yet attentive.
Then he swore once, quietly and fiercely under his breath, before tipping his head back and laughing. “I can’t believe I got a Smith ChatTM. I bet Nya that Jay and Lloyd would both get one before me.”
Smith shrugged with a smile. “What can I say, I learned from a wise teacher.”
Kai suddenly pulled Smith into a hug, knocking their meagre gathering of twigs to the ground. The hug was tight, warm- extremely warm, actually, like hugging a hot water bottle, though Smith unknowingly gave off the same feeling- and honest.
“...Thanks,” Kai whispered.
Smith ruffled his hair. “Anytime.”
The two continued walking down the path after that, laughing and chatting. Smith grew a little brighter, as if he needed to hear his own words.
And if the pair trampled any yellow flower bushes for Smith’s sake, well, who’s the say?
---
The second-worst part of the evening was what was henceforth known as ‘The Great Marshmallow Incident’, and was only known as the second-worst after the evening because the top worst had yet to come.
It had started with the hardest event to get wrong; roasting marshmallows. Everyone was having a fantastic time trading jokes (and memes, in Zane’s case), laughing, and enjoying fluffy goodness.
Until one marshmallow, carefully roasted to perfection over countless much-focused minutes, decided that just as it got to that perfect golden brown that now would be a lovely time to take a vacation to the far-off lands of the campfire.
Now, normally such a tragedy would simply end with sadness and a couple laughs, but this was not normal company. And as such, Smith said “I got it!” and plunged his hand into the flames.
There was a moment of stunned silence.
And then the forest filled with yelling.
The first to react was Nya, sitting between Kai and Smith. The only reason she was faster than Lloyd was that she’d honed her reaction skills for these specific scenarios with her brother who did not understand the concept of ‘hot things are hot, do not touch’. Her hand shot out and yanked Smith’s arm up and out of the flames, Lloyd joining a moment later to almost throw Smith out of his seat.
Smith’s eyes were wide. “Whoa, what-”
Lloyd immediately started fussing over his hand (the hand that still clutched the gooey marshmallow that had started it all). “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT???”
Smith had the audacity to cock his head a smidge and look confused. “Do what?”
“THAT!” Lloyd gestured wildly at the fire. “FOR A MARSHMALLOW!”
Smith stared at the fire with a furrowed brow, slowly taking in the expressions of horror, panic, and worry staring back from around the campfire. The only one who matched his bewilderment was Kai.
“It does not appear he sustained a burn,” Zane spoke. “The sudden way you pulled him from the fire seems to have prevented an injury. I suppose you could say that was quite ‘lit’.”
It took a few moments for the first person to groan once the adrenaline spike from Smith’s actions wore off.
Lloyd let out a tired sigh. “Just don’t do… that, again!”
Cole nodded in agreement, and based on how Jay was rambling into his scarf and tugging at the frayed end, he agreed too. Zane helpfully pulled up a guide started to explain fire safety while Nya lightly whacked her brother in the back of the head before he could reach into the fire too.
After a while, the group returned to eating marshmallows and telling stories. Smith told a particularly riveting tale of a marsh where a type of snake apparently spit hallucination-causing venom.
It was when the sun began its slow march towards the horizon and each person retreated to their tent with varying degrees of hesitation and stubborn refusal (Koko had issued a bedtime, and even the most reluctant of the group were determined to follow it) that the worst incident of the entire camping trip came to be.
Though the effects of the lone person patrolling the camp boundaries out of habit would not be felt until morning.
Kai was the first victim of the incident, though he would be the last to figure it out. He’d wandered out of camp in one of his classic sleepwalking maneuvers, and his body had chosen that the best possible place to stand still was with one foot in the loop of rope perfectly hidden on the forest floor.
Somehow the rope trap catching him like a fly and swinging up upside down to dangle above the ground didn’t wake him up.
The sound did, however, wake up Cole, who poked his head out of camp and took just one small step too many in Kai’s direction, which was how he found himself at the bottom of a pit trap that had somehow been dug overnight. Normally holes like this never bothered him, though it was surprising to find himself suddenly sitting at the bottom with no idea who had dug the trap (especially with its perfect cylinder edges- had some kind of spinning drill dug it out?
Lloyd woke up a little later and started searching for Kai, Cole, Smith, and Nya, all of whom were missing from the camp. Nya he found not far from where Kai was asleep upside down, pounding at the bars of the stick cage that somehow was professionally built enough to keep her stuck. But when he ran over to help, his hand got caught in some invisible thread.
And then his foot did.
And suddenly Lloyd was trapped in a web trap, one much more expertly crafted than any of the pranks from school.
Well then. This was a thing that was happening.
When he looked around, he spotted Cole struggling to climb out of a pit trap with smooth, almost melted walls of dirt. A small spark of light turned his attention a little further off, where he saw Jay caught in a net and panicking from the height. Ironic, considering he flew a jet.
Based on the monotone ‘ouch’ behind him, Zane had also fallen victim to the traps. Lloyd craned his neck; a lump was caught under one of the tent tarps that had been reused as a net since the only true net was already in use.
“Oh no.”
Lloyd struggled to turn his head enough to face Smith’s voice. He hoped his friend hadn’t also gotten caught like the others.
A knife suddenly cut through the webs keeping Lloyd trapped and he tumbled to the ground with sticky strings trailing along his arms and stuck in his hair. He blinked, groaning, as a hand helped him up.
Lloyd shook his head. “Thanks, Smith. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Smith said. He glanced at the others with his face twisted with worry, concern, and some weird form of exasperation. “But the others-”
“We’ll get them down,” Lloyd assured him. A faint ‘please’ came from Jay’s direction. “And we’ll figure out who managed to set so many traps so fast.”
“Actually...” Smith scratched the back of his neck. “That would have been me. Sorry.”
Lloyd blinked. Then blinked again. “You…?”
“Yeah. Old, uh, habit. Couldn’t sleep and decided to, uh, fortify the area… sorry, I forgot to warn everyone.”
Lloyd glanced at his team of ninjas, all caught in traps laid by a normal student. “I’d consider them pretty warned now.”
Smith brandished his knife (where had he gotten a knife, Lloyd swore he hadn’t seen it packed). “I’ll… I’ll get them all down.”
And get them down he did, starting with freeing Zane from the tarp. Jay was caught by the robot fellow teen when Smith scaled the tree and cut the net holding him hostage in the air. Cole was helped out of the strangely shaped, literally unclimbable pit trap. Nya was released from the cage (the look on Smith’s face was priceless, a perfect mix of ‘I’m so tempted to tease her’ and ‘Oh First Master she’s gonna kill me’). Finally, the group managed to get Kai down, and only when he was on the ground laying in their arms did he finally wake up.
Smith promptly apologized to the group and everyone laughed it off, though the incident would forever go down in history.
The lesson? Never take Smith camping.
Ever.