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Rory opened one squinted-shut eye. Than the other. He let out a long, relieved sigh. He had survived once again!

"Whew. There we go...no sweat...right?" And as if nothing had happened, Rory popped the martianmallow in his mouth. Crisis averted.....for now.

Gryff rolled his eyes at this display of cowardice and culinary inferiority. It was a good thing he'd decided to make an appearance or this pathetic group of bro-monsters would be stuck indoors, playing a HexBox, eating mildly warm martianmallows.

"Neither of you have any idea how this is done, it's like the blind leading the blinding," he sneered.

He put a fresh martianmallow on the end of Rory's stick and, gently but firmly, made Rory put the end squarely into the fire.

"You're never going to get a decent crisp on it if you keep cowering back here. The warmth of you budding bromance is NOT an acceptable cooking technique."

Rory's hand shook as the martianmallow began to blacken on one side.

"Aaaaahhhhhh.......areyousurethisisstrictlysafe IT'S ON LITERAL FIRE NOW."

Gryff nodded approvingly, "of course it is, that's the point. Pull it out."

Rory froze. It was as if his body were trying to pull away from the flames but his extended arm was trapped in place. The result was a tug of war with himself, what would win? His panic or his fear? Gryff, of course.

"Bend your elbow," he commanded.

Rory bent his elbow up, out of the flames. Gryff blew the mallow out, now a crisp brown and black, and from another pocket in his bag, pulled out a canister of cinnemoan. He briefly dusted mallow. From his bag came more ingredients: bars of single-source, scare-trade Madagascare dark chocolate and a boxes of grim crackers. He put chocolate on the crackers.

"I can't touch this, it was on fire, it's probably 1,000 °C!"

"It cools off fast, and you don't touch it. Sandwich the crackers around it and pull it off the stick."

"Like...like oven mitts?" Rory asked, perking up at the sudden inclusion of safety measures to the activity.

"Yes, exactly like oven mitts."

Rory stared at the concoction in his hands.

"Now what do I do with it?"

"Now eat it."

Gryff put a few martianmallows on his own stick and trust them into the flames.

"Of course I did. You can't always trust the food at gatherings such at this. Kai understands, but I can't eat poi all the time, and I'm not going to be stuck eating Chee-toes, Doomritos, and Freaktos. Most foods that end in 'oh' are nothing but heavily processed, chemically treated grain filler loaded with corn syrup and hydra-genated vegetable boils."

He pulled the mallows out of the fire and blew them out, reaching for the cinnemoan again.

"At least this way I get to eat, and maybe expand the culinary horizons of those around me. Pass me some grim crackers, would you?"

Felix coughed and cleared his throat before starting his story. And to try and clear the air.
"Alright, well, these kids, about, uh, 16-17? They heard about my buddy, Jeremy, and convinced everybody that they'd seen him and took one of his eyes. And everyone was sooo scared and belived every word!

Can you believe that? Them that gullible?

Anyway, so one day these two other kids call their bluff, and say if they've seen Jeremy, where's the proof? So these kids grab a fake eye ball out a ninety-nine cent box at a convince store and make it look as realistic as possible. These other kids were amazed but the two still didn't believe him so they go,"

Felix cleared his throat again, preparing to give his best normie voice, "'Yo homes! If that eye ball is so real why ain't it squishin, you know what I'm sayin?!' And these other kids try and make up a story saying Jeremy has a glass eye! Ha! And so the two original boos decided to try and take a peak at Jeremy and snatch an eye. Crazy, right? Well, they came out one night, like, 2 AM, and had their flashlights, trying to find him. Of course the flashlights woke me up so I followed them to see what was going on.

And one of them is complaining he's tired and he wants to go home, the other goes, 'Dude, if we get this, we'll be legends!' And went on to talk about some ghoul. Anyway, so I'm following and right as they're about to get to Jeremy's house, I step on a twig.

Felix put his face to his forehead in shame of the memory, Jeez, so stupid... Anyway, so I step on it and these guys stop dead cold in their tracks, 'Dude, what was that?' And I dash, trying to get away from the scene. So these kids are shivering like little does, and I go over to Jeremy's back entrance and wake him up. I tell him about the two kids and how they are looking for him, and Jeremy's so mad, like fuming. So he goes, 'Lets play a little trick on them so they won't bother the neighborhood again.' And I go, okay cool. So these two are shaking and walking around trying to look for something.

So Jeremy follows them and I step on a couple of more twigs trying to make them even more scared. Eventually we catch up to them and all they see is Jeremy's shadow hanging over them before he screams,"WHO DARES DISTURB ME?"And these kids are freaking out, they don't know what to do, so Jeremy grabs them by the coat collars as they're screaming and demands why they came to bother him. So they tell their story and are begging him not to 'grind their bones to make his bread', and I'm just sitting behind a bush, trying not to laugh. So Jeremy stares at them, all three eyes and says,"If you ever disturb me or this forest again, I WILL GRIND YOUR BONES TO MAKE MY BREAD!" And I'm just dying, laughing way too hard. And the kids don't even notice because they're screaming so much. They get the picture and leave, leaving their flashlights behind. I think one even peed his pants!"

Felix laughed because of the memory, "Ah man, it was amazing."

"Football?" Did he really LOOK like he was built for contact sports? He glanced at Rory, who's reaction would not doubt involve speculation of how dangerous sport in general was.

"I was not aware you played football Dashner." He tilted his head, there was actually, he realised, a lot about his dorm mate he didn't know.

"Don't they wear a massive amount of padding in Uhmerican football?"

He couldn't quite see such massively padded bodies being exposed to much danger, it wasn't like hurley or something, now THAT was vicious. Even ice hockey, a sport he'd watched a great deal of with his father, was more violent. You could understand why those guys wore so much padding, a puck to the face wasn't fun for anyone.

"normiearchy?" He looked bewildered yet again. He didn't find Felix's tale quite as hilarious as the others. Oh sure, the kids were in the wrong, but the way the other boos laughed over the "stupid normies" made him uncomfortable.

Rory had fallen silent as Gryff and Ronan struck up what he was sure was to be an incredibly brief camaraderie. Gryff hated normies and Ronan had a normie dad. Rory was savoring the s'moans Gryff had instructed him on making. Truly, food tasted best after experiencing danger like thrusting your hands practically into a fire!

It was then that Dashner had mentioned recruiting for the football team. Was the team in such bad shape that they needed to find new members before the big Tombcoming game?!

"Why do you need more team members?" Rory ventured to ask Dashner, rubbing his arm. "Is something happening to the team that's eliminating members?!"

Just how dangerous WAS this game?!

Gryff ate his cookie with as much outward delight as it was possible for him to display for a thing that wasn't: a hot coffin drink, a cold coffin drink, a newly pressed vinyl album, a vintage vinyl album, difficult to acquire tickets to a password protected concert no one had heard of or a new phone. On a scale of 1 to 10, he was displaying a 2.4; quite a lot for being in public.

"They do, and that should tell you just how violent and flamboyantly stupid participation in the sport is."

Gryff looked pointedly at Felix and raised an eyebrow.

"'Normies gonna be normies' is a way of refusing to hold them accountable for their actions. You taught them exactly the lesson they needed. Hey Kai, what've you got to drink around here?"