Re: Zania & Shane
Zania hugged him back, giggling at the complement. She knew she barely knew him, but he was one of those people that felt right in her circle, like he was meant to be there, dragged by some unknown force. Or by Reza, willingly or not. They both just clicked, two more missing puzzle pieces snapping into place. “I know it was a gamble, but I’m glad he did too. I would hate to miss out on this,” she grinned, watching the fire before her gaze rose to his. “You should ask Nic to show you what he can do. He’s not like me; he won’t put on a show for fun.” Fire was flashy by nature and it suited her fine, but she recognized it wasn’t her brother’s style.
Zania's brother wasn't nearly as approachable as Zania was which wasn't something that really stopped Shane from talking to him but he was enjoying her company right now and heat felt far more tempting than cold. "We'll bully him into putting on a show," he drawled, reaching up to play with some of Zania's dreadlocks, fascinated by the way his fire didn't affect her hair at all. This was what he wanted with Reza and he couldn't help but think about how sexy it would be to fuck right in the center of a raging fire. "You can inhale smoke too?" he asked, so curious about all the ways they were the same or different. "Do you get burned by boiling water? Or scalded, whatever."
Zania sometimes forgot how cold her brother seemed to others, especially someone like Shane. He could be standoffish, reluctant to insert himself where he might not be wanted, but she thought he’d get a kick out of Nic’s magic once he realized it wasn’t all ice. “Do it,” she told him. “Tell him you want to see Neil.” She snickered just thinking about it. There was no love lost between them, that was for sure. Her eyes ticked to watch his fingers out of the corner of her eye as he played with one of her locks. It was always cool to interact with another fire elemental, and this was especially nice because they didn’t seem to be butting heads right off the bat. “I can inhale smoke, it won’t burn my lungs or anything, but boiling water would totally scald me. I think it has to do with the heat being applied by the opposing element. I’m not invincible to heat itself. Just fire. So, like, I could still burn myself with an iron or a frying pan. Does that make sense? What about you?”
"I can touch hot things as long as they're not wet," Shane said with a smile and while he didn't feel competitive toward Zania, it seemed interesting to him that he had that ability and she didn't. "Soon as there's any water involved-" he trailed off and shook his head, not really wanting to think about the unpleasantness of that. "Being inside a burning building, people don't realize how much else is going on. I can handle smoke when it's clean, just wood or something, but then the sprinklers go on or something toxic catches fire and I'll get hurt. I'm never gonna be a firefighter without a suit like some people might think." He'd found that out the hard way, not through his own mistakes but through AIR's experiments and the thought still made him cringe so it wasn't a topic he wanted to dwell on, he was just curious about how alike they might be. "Can you control fire from underwater?"
The differences were definitely interesting and Zania assumed they were due to their makeup—Shane’s was more of a psychic ability and hers was magic. The results were sometimes the same, but what made them was different. “There’s a lot going on in a burning building. Too many things could go wrong. I wouldn’t want to be there,” she agreed. She might not have to worry about the flames, but she couldn’t exactly stop a falling floor from crushing her. “I can burn fire underwater, but it takes a lot more work. But then, I can also make water boil. I can make blood boil. Not that I’ve ever done that.” She’d definitely made someone sweat before, but that was easy. The key was not killing them in the process.