[center][color=f66600][h3]Niles[/h3][/color][/center]
Camping.

He's always hated the concept. At the end of the day, he felt like camping trips mostly boiled down to a number of self-imposed inconveniences. He's never been the type to stop and smell the roses, a fact he is both perfectly cognizant of and completely comfortable with. As such, the idea of spending days on end doing just that, almost literally, didn't exactly fill him with excitement. As tempting as it might have been to dig in his heels and aim to become the world's biggest stick in the mud, he'd be lying to himself if he were to pretend he wasn't looking forward to spending more time with his friends. Unfortunately, there was a good chance that this would be their last opportunity to do so, and while growing apart over time was an inevitability he saw coming miles - [i]years[/i] away, he can't help but clutch desperately at his friends, as if holding onto them tightly enough would keep them from leaving and forgetting all about him.

Metaphorically of course. The touchy-feely stuff is Conner's schtick...

...

Honestly, if anyone's to blame, it's him. None of the colleges in the state come close to meeting his parents' exacting standards, and it's not like they didn't give him a decision when it came to inheriting deRo tech. His friends had all known he was getting sent off to some exclusive rich kid college well before they began picking out a college for themselves, so if they gave up on trying to stick together then it's obviously because he set the precedent. This was probably his only opportunity to try making up for that, not that setting up a campsite could ever make up for single-handedly destroying their friend group. He didn't even get the chance to set everything up by himself. As much as he's gotten proficient in just about every aspect of camping that matters thanks to numerous YouTube tutorials he's watched years ago, before their first camping trip, there was just too much work to be done for him to keep his friends out of it without making a big deal over it. Can't even do that for them.

He took another swig of his breakfast, a 16 oz. can of Red Bull he cracked open on the drive over. He brought an entire cooler of the stuff, plus a few cans of other brands like monster and bang for variety, but he'd still have to hide and ration it all to make it last him the entire trip. Doing so might have been easy if everyone didn't ignore him when he tells them to bring their own tent. It's become a bit of a tradition for everyone to just share his tent. It's hilariously large, so there's plenty of room for all six of them, and he enjoys the company, but it is kind of [s]heart-warming[/s] annoying when he occasionally catches sight of tents they didn't even bother to unpack from their car. 'I forgot' indeed.

He can't let them know that he knows. It's... a nice tradition.

When the tent is standing tall and his cooler full of energy drinks has been hidden somewhere Kieran will never find it, Conner asks if anyone knows how to start a bonfire. It was admittedly pretty paranoid for him to go so far as to learn how to start a fire with just some rocks or sticks, but hey, it's not like he forgot to bring a firestarter, and he wasn't the only one who could get it started. Besides, a proper bonfire needed more than just the ignition. [color=f66600]"I'll go gather some tinder."[/color]

If there was one thing he liked about camping, it was tossing things into a bonfire and watching them burn.