"Yeah, agreed, but long-term– I guess we should probably check out the summoning circles again, actually, since I seem to be operating as though they'll never work again."

"Sure."

He stands up, twirls around his feet and opens his arms—

—magic circle, show of lights, bird thing.

And Theo replicates most of the circle in two separate pieces on the ground.

"– We probably shouldn't use this one, though, last time it got me unbound."

Kaede dismisses Valefor.

"Erm. Do you know how to make this bind? And why didn't anyone appear all the other times I summoned Valefor, anyway?"

"I have no idea – really I'd probably have expected them to, since it's there long enough for someone to take it, but then the other circles didn't work when I tried them with Tidus so I'm not sure." Shrug. "As for binding… I don't recognize this design for a circle, but I should be able to write one around the edge?"

"Well, it probably won't work but you can try anyway."

He shrugs, combines the halves, adds some text, and then says, "And now it should work if you fill it in? Except it probably won't, because I seem to be some weird fluke."

He fills it in!

And after ten seconds, nothing has appeared.

"So it seems like this circle is also a no."

He sighs. "What was different about that one? Time of day, geographical position, my emotional state, surrounding people..."

"Or maybe there was a ten second window in which summoning circles worked and will never work again," he shrugs. "But that's kinda defeatist so yeah – I'm not sure it'll be easy to recreate the other circumstances."

He sighs. "Well, we can try doing it again there in case it's something about geographical circumstances, and do it tomorrow morning in case it's time of day, but yeah."

Nod. "Might also be specific to you, so we can't just test with other people in the same position."

"Yeah, I guess. There are so many possible things it could've been..."

"Unfortunately, yeah." Shrug. "It'd be nice if there were more examples of it happening, sort of, except for the fact it got me unbound."

"Mm." He stretches and sits back down on the grass.

And Tidus exits the agency and walks over to them. "Hey."

"Hey," says Theo. He decides to take a seat.

"Whatcha up to?"

"We tried summoning a Changer here, but didn't work, and now we're just complaining at each other about how terrible that is."

"We didn't try the usual circles, though, so we should maybe try those in a moment too."

"D'you think it'd work now?"

"Probably not but we might as well try in case they do."

"I guess."