As soon as he steps out of the Crusader barracks, though, Zei walks up to him and presses two dark red spheres made of the same nonmaterial the temperature spells and the laundry spell (which he did eventually grab) were made of.

"Power Spheres," Zei explains. "They can enhance your strength and defense and healing factor."

Tōkan blinks as he accepts the spheres. "Uh. Thanks? Also, what."

"You'll figure it out." Then Zei rummages inside a bag and grabs a light-blue sphere. "Shower sphere. Place it above your head and activate it and it lasts about ten to fifteen minutes."

"Oh, so that's how you guys deal with no indoor plumbing."

"Some places have indoor plumbing! And they also use shower spheres! But yes it does make the situation in tiny villages on the whole less bothersome."

"Let me try these first, I only have two hands..."

They feel different from the spell ones from earlier. Not physically, but—metaphysically? It's weird that he has this sense that just never sensed anything until he started interacting with this magic.

The mental motion to use a Power Sphere is also not identical to the one attached to the other spheres. It feels more... malleable? He can redirect the magic. And he also has a weird intuition for directions he can do that towards but they don't feel like three discrete categories like Zei said; more like a continuum, kind of.

But he doesn't want to try new things on his own so after some thought he thinks he found the motion he needs to perform to enhance his "defence". It's more like making his body hardier and more resistant to damage, but he supposes defence is as good a word for that as any.

Both spheres are consumed, and he nods to himself. "Strange."

Zei has been watching Tōkan's face while he worked on that, and once the spheres are consumed he says, "You really haven't done this before, have you. You weren't actually pulling my leg. You just—somehow learned how to breathe underwater without any of this?"

"I wasn't pulling your leg," he nods. "I don't know how you do it but the way we learn it in—uh, back where I come from—is by working on our ability to hold our breath and then once we're good enough at it we start inhaling small quantities of water and then holding our breath—it's very uncomfortable but straightforward, teach your lungs how to get the air out of the water."

"That makes absolutely no sense. Are you sure you're human? No guado ancestry?"

"Brother I am not sure of anything."

"...fair, I suppose." He offers Tōkan the shower sphere. "We'll be leaving for the beach in half an hour."

Tōkan accepts it. "My thanks," he says, and then he goes to the shared loo to use it and to... uh... wait there's an area in line of sight of the public toilet place where it seems like the dirt is wet even though no water source is immediately visible? That might be a location where people typically shower.

Upon getting there, he notices Crusader Gatta taking his own shower.

"Say, don't suppose you want to demonstrate how to use one of these to me?" Tōkan asks when he's close enough.

    Gatta doesn't quite jump, but he does tense up at the unexpected noise (Tōkan thinks Zei was definitely bullshitting him when Zei called him loud) before relaxing when he sees who it is. "You... don't remember? Sin's toxin?" the boy guesses.

"Something like that. Zei mentioned I have to just, uh, lift the sphere above my head and turn it on...?"

    "The sphere has single-use versions of a combination of spells!" Gatta says in his explanation voice. "It will stay still in the air and generate magic water that is better than normal water at cleaning! You still need to scrub."

"...sounds straightforward enough," Tōkan nods, undressing and placing his clothes on the same square stone where Gatta left his, then lifting the sphere above his head and—yeah, it sure does have a mental motion he can do there to activate it. When he does, it starts emitting a steady shower of warm water onto him, and the sphere feels like it's literally locked in place—he can't budge it. "Interesting."

Gatta steals glances at him when he thinks Tōkan isn't looking, but he's very very firmly in the Too Young category in Tōkan's opinion so he studiously ignores it. After Gatta's shower sphere runs out and disappears (as does all of the conjured water, which leaves him completely dry), he gets dressed and goes off to join Luzzu in guarding the gates to the village while waiting for everyone else. Tōkan finishes a few minutes after that, and joins the main contingent: the blitzball team, the summoner, and his guardians.

"Slowpoke," says Zei as soon as he arrives.

"You can't have such great skin and hair as I do if you rush through your showers," he replies primly.

    Jassu, one of the blitzball players, walks in front of Tōkan with his arms folded and peers. "Your skin is not that great," he declares after a few bemusing seconds, and Tōkan laughs.

"You just don't have the eye for it."

    "I think you're just making stuff up."

"Maybe you just need to look at my skin from closer up than that."

Wakka pushes a stammering Jassu away from Tōkan. "No flirting within the team! It's the rules."

"I'm not officially on the team!"

"Wait 'til later!" Wakka declares. "For now we focus on the game!"

    Luzzu comes over from the gates, does a headcount, and nods. "We're all here. Let's go." He and Gatta go ahead of everyone to clear the road of most fiends, but with this many people going in the same direction it'd be easy to deal with them anyway.

"Are fiends that much of a problem here?" Tōkan asks no one in particular.

"They're not," says Lulu quietly, "but Luzzu is using them as field training for Gatta."

Oh she speaks! In his presence even! He feels like he's been Accepted.

"Besaid is far enough away from the rest of—well, everything—that most fiends that form here are pretty weak."

...why would stronger fiends exist more in some places than others—actually this is probably a dumb question that he'll ask later, when he's expositing on his backstory.

The party spreads along the path, with the blitzball players in the vanguard and the summoner and his guardians lagging behind by a bit. At some point Kimahri shows up out of nowhere, and just quietly stalks them as they walk.