[Xander – 12 years]

"Do you go to the gate or the front door?" Mr. Trey asks as we all get out of the truck.

That question confuses me a little, but I think he's asking which one I was told to go to after arriving.

"Um… the gate," I say. "Connor said to message in the chat when I'm here. But are we giving the extra backpacks to Mr. Quinn first?"

Mr. Quinn pulled up behind us after Mr. Trey parked and giving him my new backpacks is the only reason I can think of for him to do that. I am happy to know that he's actually nearby, too since there are going to be a lot of people here and I might want to leave sooner rather than later and him being nearby means it'll be easier to do that.

Unless he's going to leave, too.

"We are," Mr. Trey says. "But you can keep your normal one."

"Okay," I pull on my backpack, then put the three new ones into Mr. Quinn SUV. "Okay, I'm ready."

"I'll be nearby," Mr. Quinn tells me. "There might be other houses throwing barbecues soon and they'll need parking for their guests as well, so I'll have to find somewhere else to park. Just send me a text or call me if you want to leave, okay?"

"Okay."

I send a message into the group chat, then Mr. Trey, Grandpa and Grandma Caldwell, and I walk over to the gate. There's a lot of noise coming from the other side of it, but I can't see too well because Connor and his dad have a privacy fence for their back yard. Just as we reach it, the gate opens.

Connor's the one who opened it, and he's wearing just swim trunks but isn't wet, so I guess he's not gotten in the pool yet.

"Hi, Xander!" Connor exclaims. "You've got glasses!"

"Yeah," I nod. "We just got them a little bit ago. It turns out that my vision isn't good."

"Oh!" He says. "They look cool!"

"Thanks."

"Hi, Mr. Caldwell!" He looks at Mr. Trey, then at Grandpa and Grandma Caldwell. "And…"

"These are Mr. Trey's parents," I say. "Um… I don't know their first names, they just told me to call them Grandpa and Grandma Caldwell. Mr. Trey wanted to meet Ms. Rachel and we didn't want to leave his parents in the car."

"Oh!" Connor says. "Nice to meet you!"

"Are we too early?" I ask.

While he said it would start around ten or ten-thirty and it's right before ten, I might have been wrong about the start time. Or showing up even a minute earlier than ten is too early.

"Nope!" He answers. "Come on!"

We go into the back, where S.G., Sam, Isaac, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Michaels, and Mr. Richardson are all already doing stuff, along with Ms. Rachel, who I recognize because of pictures S.G. has posted in the group chat. That's everyone else who was coming to the party, though only the boys are wearing swim trunks. The adults are all fully dressed, so I guess they aren't swimming.

No one's in the pool – the other boys were hanging out on the deck.

"Hello," I greet the adults as we approach them, the other boys waving to me. "Hi!"

"You've got glasses!" S.G. exclaims.

"When did you get them?" Isaac asks.

"Today," I answer. "It turns out that my real eyesight isn't that good so I'm supposed to wear glasses for now."

"They look cool!" S.G. tells me.

"Yeah!" Isaac nods.

Sam's nodding as well. All of them are saying my glasses look cool and none of them lied when they said it. Do they really look good? That makes me happy, that I picked out glasses which look cool.

"Come on, Xander," Connor tells me. "I'll show you my room so you can put your stuff in there. That's where we put all our stuff. You can change there or in the bathroom."

I look at Mr. Trey, who nods to me, so I follow Connor into the house. In his room, there are clothes and shoes and backpacks strewn about, but they're relatively grouped together. The other boys just dropped their stuff on the ground as they changed into their trunks. Even without that, it's a little bit messy. Connor doesn't seem too organized but I really shouldn't say that or he'll get mad at me.

"And the bathroom's the one on the other side of the hall, first on the right when going back to the living room," Connor tells me. "If you wanna join us in swimming and stuff, go ahead and change. I'll see you outside!"

He hurries outside, then I change into my new swim trunks, the pair I got for swimming in pools when not doing a lesson. Unlike the others, I stick my clothes into my backpack, though I do put my shoes beside it and tuck my socks into those. Just in case, I put the package of waterproof earplugs into one of the pockets with the hook-and-loop closes rather than the normal side pockets, then put my phone in the upper-right front pocket.

Ready to join the others, I leave the bedroom and return to the back yard. The others are still on the deck, crowded around a table. Their phones are all on the table. Should I put mine there? I don't think any of them would steal it, but maybe they would?

"Xander?" Mr. Trey says when I step onto the deck. "Remember what I said, okay?"

"To text you or Mr. Quinn or Ms. Katie or someone when I'm ready to go. Preferably Mr. Quinn, because he has my other stuff."

"Right," he says. "And if things get too noisy?"

"I brought the earplugs," I pull them out of my pocket. "See? So I can put them in if things get too noisy."

"Alright," he says. "Remember everything I told you, alright?"

"I'll try," I tell him.

"Have a good day, Xander."

"Bye, Mr. Trey, bye Grandpa and Grandma Caldwell."

They leave, then the other boys start bouncing.

"Can we do it now?" Connor asks.

"Please?" Sam asks.

"Xander's here now!" Isaac says.

"We've been waiting all morning!" S.G. says.

They all spent the night here last night, and I'm willing to bet they were told they had to wait for me to show up for whatever it is they're excited for, since I'd messaged and said I was coming. There's a watermelon on the table, along with a pitcher of lemonade and a large, crystal-like plastic bowl with a ladle, some large bottles of lemon-lime soda, some fruit, two cutting boards, two chef's knives, a bread knife, and a jug of dark red fruit juice.

"Hold on," Mr. Richardson says. "There's still a little more."

"What's going on?" I whisper to S.G.

"We're making punch and getting lemonade!"

They're making punch? Who are they punching and why? It's not me, is it? I don't want to be punched! Unless they're punching the watermelon?

No, that's probably just a Greyson thing. I need to ask what's going on.

"Punch?"

"Yeah!"

"What's that?"

"Never had punch before?" Mr. Michaels asks.

"I don't think so?" I answer. "I don't remember it, at least."

"The kind we're doing now," he tells me. "Is a mixture of lemon-lime soda, fruit juice, fruit slices, and sherbet. Some variants use alcohol, but we're not going to do that."

"Okay."

Mr. Thompson goes back inside and comes out with a trey and a tub of sherbet, which are set on the table, and Ms. Rachel brings out some cups. While Mr. Thompson starts cutting oranges, Mr. Michaels works on cutting the watermelon. Us boys are all given clear, hard-sided cups, with names written in permanent marker on the others' cups.

"Oh!" Connor exclaims. "Hold on, Xander!"

He starts to run inside.

"Connor!" His dad calls out. "We've already got it out here."

"We do?" Connor looks around, then spots something and grabs it. "Here, Xander!"

It's a permanent marker.

"Go ahead and write your name on the cup," Mr. Thompson tells me.

"But it doesn't wash off."

Is not wanting to bad?

"We can get it off if we really wanted to," Mr. Thompson tells me. "This helps avoid mixing up people's cups."

"See?" Connor shows me his. "We've all got names on cups!"

"Even Aunt Rachel's done it," S.G. points at a cup on another table. "See? And this is her first time hanging out with the dads and boys."

"Um… okay."

I carefully write my name on the cup I was given, then cap the marker and set it down.

"Hey, Xander?" Isaac says.

"Yes, Isaac?"

"So you're a bad speller, right? And-"

"I'm trying not to be," I tell him. "I'm getting lessons to help me."

"No, no, not that," he says. "But that shouldn't really show through in texts."

"What do you mean?"

"Autocorrect should fix it, shouldn't it?"

"It should?"

"Yeah," he nods.

Um… now I feel really awkward. But I need to ask.

"What, um… what is autocorrect supposed to do?"

"It helps words get spelled right in texts and stuff," S.G. tells me. "We've all kind of been wondering about that, since your spells aren't that bad that it shouldn't be able to figure out what it does."

"But how does it know?"

"It looks at what was spelled," Mr. Thompson tells me. "And if it's not a word in the autocorrect's dictionary, compares it to words with similar spellings, but also looks at the context, so it might fix words that are spelled right but used wrong, like 'you're' for 'you are' instead of 'your' as in 'your stuff'."

"That's… what it does?"

"Yeah!" Sam nods.

"Oh… I thought it was some sort of… I dunno," I say. "For people who are always right. But I'm not always right. I'm wrong all the time."

The other boys snicker and I feel my face heat up.

"Xander," Mr. Thompson says. "The word 'autocorrect' is short for 'automatically correct', as in, 'automatically correcting wrong spellings'."

"Oh."

I pull out my phone and turn that setting back on.

"You turned it off, didn't you?" S.G. asks.

"I was turning it back on."

The other boys snicker again. What did I do wrong?

I decide to watch the punch get made. Slices of oranges and lemons, and chunks of pineapples, are put into the bowl. By the time that's done, enough of the watermelon is finished being sliced and put onto the big plate that we can eat some, so the other boys grab slices and start munching.

"You can have some," Mr. Thompson tells me.

"I don't like watermelon," I tell him.

"Want a piece of pineapple?" He offers me a chunk.

While he cut the entire pineapple into chunks, he didn't put all of them into the bowl, just some. The rest were put in another bowl.

"I don't like pineapple, either," I tell him. "It's okay."

"If you're sure," he says, then starts scooping sherbet into the bigger bowl.

Once that's done, he starts pouring in the fruit juice while Sam and Isaac pour in the soda. It fizzles and bubbles sort of like root beer floats do, and they use up nearly all of the juice and soda to fill the bowl. Mr. Thompson then uses the ladle to stir it around, then offers to fill our cups up.

"Is it okay to say 'no'?" I ask when he offers to fill mine after filling the other boys' cups.

"Don't like punch?

"I don't like fizzy drinks."

"Oh," he says. "We do have lemonade."

I offer my cup for that and he fills it, then I drink some. The other boys are told to clean their hands and mouths of the watermelon juice and once they do, they all charge to the pool and jump in.

"Come on, Xander!" Isaac exclaims. "The water's great!"

I shake my head. I don't really feel comfortable swimming right now. The other boys don't seem happy about that, but don't say anything and start swimming. I sip on my lemonade while watching the adults talk and start preparing lunch. They're going to grill burgers and brats, and that's going to get served with coleslaw, chips, fruits, and veggies.

The other boys are super noisy, and they keep getting out of the pool and jumping back in. That looks both scary and fun and I want to join them but I'm scared. I don't know why I'm scared, I just am.

They also roughhouse a lot in the pool. Maybe that's why it's scaring me? I want to join them really bad, but I don't know. I'm not sure.

After a few minutes of trying to figure out what to do, I put down the cup and take off my glasses and set them into their case, which I had in one of my pockets. I put that and my phone and earplugs case on the table beside the cup for me, then run down the yard to the other side of the pool. Then, I take a deep breath and run to the pool.

Terror fills me, but I push through it as I jump, pulling my legs up to my chest and holding them tight as I drop into the pool. Panic seizes me for a moment, but I do my best to push through and let go of my legs, then push up with my legs against the pool's floor. As soon as I reach the surface, I start gasping for breath.

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That. Was. Awesome!

I look at the other boys to see their reactions, in case that was the wrong move. S.G., Connor, and Isaac are busting up laughing while Sam, who was super closer to where I landed, is looking pretty shocked, though he's got a big smile on his face and seems to have a little bit of silent laughter coming through his surprise.

"W-was that wrong?" I ask.

"No!" Connor explodes into louder laughter.

"Did you target Sam on purpose?" Isaac asks.

Oh, no! I fucked up! They're gonna hate me!

"M-maybe."

That makes all of them start laughing even more before I can get out an apology, and Sam starts actually laughing now. He splashes water at me and I flinch back, but then shake my head and splash water back at him. That starts everyone splashing at each other, and they stop doing their dunking roughhousing.

Eventually, Mr. Thompson calls for us to get out for lunch, so we do and head up to the deck. No one else dries off for this, which I feel wrong for not doing but I still dry off anyway. We eat lunch, then play cards for a little bit while the adults talk near the hose spigot. They're doing something, and it involves totes that they move into the yard, setting them up in different spots. The totes seem heavy and requires them to move in pairs.

"Boys!" Mr. Thompson calls once they're done setting up whatever that is. "Water balloons are ready!"

"Water balloons?" I ask.

"Yeah!" Connor says. "Water balloons! Want to join us? We're gonna throw them at each other!"

"Maybe I can give it a try."

"You don't have to if you don't want to," Isaac tells me.

"Some ground rules," Mr. Michaels says to us. "No aiming at each other's faces! And once you're all done, remember to pick up the balloon pieces."

"Yes, sir!" The other boys salute to him.

"Yes, sir," I say.

"Okay!" He says. "Everyone, go to a tote!"

I let the other boys pick their totes first, there are five totes with water balloons so we each get one. For some reason, there are five other totes as well, those ones without water balloons but completely filled with water.

Mr. Thompson quickly tells me that we can throw balloons from any of the totes, we're just each starting at a different one. Because this will probably be really noisy, I put in the earplugs that reduce some sound levels but still lets me hear what others are saying.

"Ready?" Mr. Thompson asks, and we all confirm that we are. "Go!"

I pick up a balloon from my tote and try throwing it at Sam, but my aim isn't good and it misses, breaking on the ground past him and sending water everywhere. A balloon hits me in the left arm and explodes, and I look over to see S.G. giving me a big grin as he starts to throw another balloon.

We start running around, throwing balloons and pulling them from the different totes. I don't feel too comfortable doing this even if I'm having fun, and they are following the rule of not throwing them at people's heads. Anytime a balloon hits me in the back, though, it startles me a bit.

Back at the boys' home, whenever we had water balloon games, they only did a couple of layers of water balloons in coolers, totes, and buckets. The balloons broke the ones underneath if we put too many in them. Here, though, the totes – which are kind of big – are filled all the way up to the top and the balloons aren't popping.

I think it's because of the water in the totes. Rather than just balloons, the adults filled the totes with water balloons and water.

"That's right," Mr. Richardson tells me when I take a break from playing and ask. "The water helps cushion them and also alleviates the pressure of the weight."

"Okay," I say.

"Can you come over here real quick?" He asks.

"O-over where?"

"Just to the spigot," he tells me.

The spigot's on the side of the house and following him there makes me really scared since it might not be visible to the others. I don't want to get into trouble for disobeying an adult, though, so I follow him.

Rather than actually taking me around the corner, he has me stop once we reach it, then picks up something from a tote sitting by the spigot and hands it to me. It's a water gun, and a big one. I peek over and see more in the tote.

"Pull the trigger for a short burst of water," Mr. Richardson tells me. "Or pull the pump, this bit here, to do a steady stream. A slower pull will do a longer but weaker stream while a quicker pull will do a shorter burst that travels further. If you need to refill, open this bit right here and dunk it into some water. Try a tote that doesn't have any balloons in it. Make sure to close it up again after, and it shouldn't take more than about ten seconds to fully refill."

"Oh!" I say. "Is that why there were five totes with just water?"

"It is," he says. "The others will get water guns soon, but you didn't seem to be having fun throwing the balloons."

"I kept missing."

"You did manage to hit some of them," he says. "They're all missing a fair bit as well. Remember, Xander, that this is just for fun and you're not being scored or graded. The goal here is just to have fun, alright?"

"Okay."

"Go have fun."

I nod, then rejoin the other boys. It doesn't take long after that for them to all grab water guns, but they also keep using the water balloons until those are used up. We all wear out a bit and sit on the deck once we're done playing, the adults giving us time to catch our breaths before we have to clean up the water balloon fragments. There are some stuck to us as well, and we help each other get them off of our backs.

"Alright, boys," Mr. Michaels comes out from the house carrying a tray. "Here are some ice pops. Enjoy!"

The ice pops come in a few different flavors, and there are more of them than there are people here, so we can all have two if we want. I'm not really a fan of ice pops, so I decline them and just sit and listen to the other boys talk.

They do try to include me in the conversations, but I don't know anything about the games or shows they're talking about.

"It's time for us to get going for the fair," Mr. Thompson says after they finish the ice pops. "Why don't you all go get cleaned up?"

"Xander!" S.G. says. "Are you coming with us?"

"I'm not," I shake my head. "I need to take a break from noisy and busy stuff to calm down. So I'm going to go somewhere else, okay?"

"Okay!" He says. "Are you gonna come to our sleepover tonight?"

"Um… maybe," I say. "If I feel okay tonight."

"Okay!"

"Xander," Mr. Thompson says, and I look at him. "Just let one of us know, and we can pick you up from wherever you are if needed. Rachel already gave your dad her address, so he can take you there as well if you want."

"Okay."

----------------------------------------

[Xander – 13 years]

When I enter Greyson's workshop, there's someone I don't know inside. He's dressed in a suit and has platinum-blond hair and blue-green eyes, and looks both in his forties or fifties and in his late teens to early twenties. It's really confusing me, and I'm sure he has reason to look as surprised as I do considering that I doubt Greyson gave him permission to enter, whoever he is.

Especially since Greyson is very strict about not letting anyone but me touch his stuff and the man's holding a toy Greyson was working on.

The strange man recovers first.

"You must be Xander," he sets down the toy he was examining and approaches me.

There's something else about him. Something… frightening.

"Who are you?" I ask. "Why are you here? And why do you look both old and young at the same time?"

"Both old and-" he stops walking, eyes widening for a moment before he sighs. "I have zero doubt that Greyson knew you have perspicacity, so he probably left that out on purpose."

"Perspicacity?"

"In mundane terms," he says. "It means 'clear-sighted'. In magical terms, it allows one to see through illusions and to know one's true form if they've altered in. Most people only see a man in his late forties or early fifties when they look at me because I used a spell to alter my body to look that age," as he says that, the older-man look vanishes and he now looks only to be in his late teens or early twenties. "But I haven't aged in a very long time, so this is what I really look like. My true self."

A really long time? Wait. Greyson did tell me that he was forced to let people into the workshop on Sunday… including our great-grandpa. A man who's extremely old and extremely powerful. Being able to change his body is probably something someone that powerful can do.

"You're Grandpa Adrian, aren't you?" I ask.

"I am," he says. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Xander. And to answer your question, Greyson had requested some materials and I was dropping them off while he was busy at fairs."

I was looking in his eyes, so I know he's being honest about being my great-grandpa. My ability to detect lies didn't trigger and Santa said that only Grandpa Adrian could fool it. Even Santa couldn't, which was weird.

So if this man was lying and didn't trigger it, then that means he's my Grandpa Adrian, which means he wasn't lying.

"Dropping them off?" I ask. "On a holiday? I know it's wrong to question adults, but that doesn't make sense. Aren't holidays supposed to be off days?"

"What brings you here on a holiday?"

"I'm feeling too much and it was either take a nap or try and play with magitech again," I tell him. "Though I'll probably end up napping, anyway."

Grandpa Adrian snorts.

"I don't much celebrate many holidays," Grandpa Adrian tells me. "I was going to come visit you and your foster dad on Friday, after doing a little looking into your situation. Greyson filled me in."

"That means he told you about my brain and why I'm alive and that it got fixed, right?" I ask.

"It does," he says. "Though you have fewer spells active than he told me about."

"I figured out how to sense some of them and turn them off," I tell him. "The one for animating my body, and the one for making me have a second pair of vision eyes over my first, and the one for letting me age properly. I turned those off. I can feel the magic brain and memory packets, but I'm not sure about turning those off."

"It's safe to turn off the magic brain," he tells me. "For the memory packets, it would be a better idea if you absorbed the information which is contained in them."

He gestures with a hand and a book appears in it.

"This contains everything you could ever possibly want to learn about the memory packet spell," he tells me. "If you're interested in learning about it on your own, that is."

Grandpa Adrian offers me the book, and it doesn't seem to come with any conditions. He just… lets me take it. That's suspicious. Why would he give it to me for free?

"Regarding your soul," he says. "It looks like it's 'stapled' to your body, as Greyson calls it. However, it does seem as if it's reattaching itself properly, though the beginning of that was recent. I could reattach it the rest of the way, but it wouldn't be a perfect job as it needs to resynchronize with your body."

"Resynchronize?"

"Match back up, essentially," he says. "That takes time and isn't something I can make happen. It would take about as much time as it would for your soul to finish attaching itself back."

I'm sure I'll understand that one day.

"So it doesn't matter which one happens?" I ask. "Except if you do it, I'll stop burning through so much mana?"

"Correct."

"Is it painful?"

"I'll need to touch your back," he tells me. "Your bare back, right between your shoulder blades. Greyson said you don't like being touched, however."

"I don't," I say. "But… that means I won't need to eat as much, too, right? After I finish recovering my mana?"

"Yes and no," he says. "That depends on how much magic you use. Why?"

"Mr. Trey has to spend a lot of money on feeding me," I say. "He says it's fine, but at the same time, is it really?"

"Considering his finances, it probably is," Grandpa Adrian tells me.

"I'm not sure," I say. "But I did earn a lot of-oh! Um. I helped out Gatewood Energy."

"You did?"

"Yeah," I nod. "It wasn't… um… I don't know how… um… so they and you are rival companies and-I don't-"

"Hold on," Grandpa Adrian interrupts me. "You're worried about helping out an energy company rival to mine?"

"Yeah."

"I don't care."

"You… don't care?"

"I don't care," he confirms. "We only have some small overlap in our markets, and I don't mind if other companies overtake mine as long as those behind them are good people. The Gatewood Gates are."

"So it's okay that I helped?"

"It is," he says. "Mind sharing what you did?"

"Um…" I look over to where Greyson's mega computer is, except he's put up a wall of mana around it for some reason; he's burning through a lot of his saved-up mana crystals to fuel that. I look back to Grandpa Adrian. "I used my magesight to look at a generator Luke was working on. It wasn't on purpose, I've just been using it a lot lately and forgot to not while he was showing me his workshop. And I helped him learn why it kept failing to work properly. I apparently hold knowledge that's not easy to come by because of my own experiences here in Greyson's workshop. So since I helped him out as a specialist, I got paid for it. A lot of money. Oh! That's why I have these backpacks."

I'd set them down to accept the book from Grandpa Adrian, so I put that on my work table and then grab the backpacks.

"I want to try enchanting them," I say. "I bought them and some other stuff with some of the money."

"Greyson wanted some of the materials put in your zone," Grandpa Adrian tells me. "And again, I don't mind if you help out Gatewood Energy. You're your own person. Don't leak secrets or cause problems and you're fine."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Um…" I turn around and pull my shirt up. "You can fix my soul."

I really don't want to do this but at the same time, I really want my soul fixed. There's nothing I could do to stop him if he wanted to do something to me so I'm going to try and hope that he's just a nice person.

Grandpa Adrian approaches, and my heart starts pounding really hard. I try to ignore that, though, but still flinch a little when he touches my back. Then I remember to breathe deeply so I focus on that as I feel mana entering me from Grandpa Adrian's hand. It feels a lot different from my mana and has a strange feeling to it.

His mana spreads through my body, and I can feel it working on my soul. So that's what a soul feels like. It's so… big. Wow. Those really do resemble staples. Grandpa Adrian starts doing something, and I start to notice threads between my soul and my body. Most of them are broken and frayed with some that are whole, and Grandpa Adrian starts connecting the broken ones.

It takes almost twenty minutes but by the time he's done, all of the little threads are whole again.

"You can stop the stapling once you're comfortable," Grandpa Adrian pulls his hand away from my back, and I lower my shirt and turn around to face him. "And once you… I wasn't even done and they're gone."

"Whoa, they burned up really fast."

Grandpa Adrian laughs.

"It was nice to meet you, Xander," he says. "I'll see you on Friday, when I stop by your house to talk with Trey."

That sounds like he's leaving.

"Um," I say. "Before you go… are you really a dragon hidden in human form?"

"What does your perspicacity say?"

"My magesight says that your mana has some weird stuff in it," I say. "And… I dunno. I guess it just gives me an impression of a dragon hugging a phoenix and a unicorn? It's weird. Or maybe they're all the same thing? It's… hard to describe. But that bit I could only sense while you were doing your thing to my soul. When I'm looking at you now, it's just… giving me the impression of a dragon. A big and golden and sun-like one. So are you really a dragon in human form? Am I half-no… quarter? No, an eighth dragon?"

If he's really a dragon, then he'd probably be able to fool my perspicacity. I don't really understand what that is, but I'm sure dragons can trick it.

"You can… see mana states?"

"Huh?"

"The various states that mana are in," he says. "It lets you know if mana has some sort of magical aspect as well. I do have a rather unique aspect to my mana, but I'm fully human."

"Santa says you can fool my lie-detection ability."

"I'm not able to do that," he snorts.

"Says the one who can fool the ability."

"Greyson told me you made his puzzle sphere," he changes the subject. "Would you be okay showing me your process?"

In other words, he can fool my ability to detect lies. I knew it!

"I don't really remember how I made it," I tell him. "Plus, the actual, um… I think the word is algorithm? Yeah, algorithm. That's not really feasible. It uses the presence of dragons as part of its factor, and celestial bodies, and… well, that was my intention. But I'm too stupid to do something like that so I have no idea what determines the locations of the pieces.

"That's fine," he says. "It can be an inferior version. I'm curious about your process."

"Um… okay," I put the backpacks aside and grab some materials. "Um… I don't have any extra stools."

Grandpa Adrian summons a stool on his own, then sits on it to watch me work. It sounded like he was leaving, but then he changed to wanting to see me make this after I mentioned the weird aspect to his mana.

"Hey, Xander?" He asks after I finish preparing a mana battery.

"Yes, Grandpa Adrian?"

"What did you just do?"

"I made a mana battery," I tell him. "Greyson taught me how. See on the screen? You do that and then that, and then you adjust it like that."

"That's not the process you used, though," he says. "You altered the mana crystal after cutting it down."

"Yeah," I nod. "Greyson encourages me to try my own thing. So I altered the mana in the crystal so that it's more like a person's mana container thingy. That way, it can put out its stored mana at a steady rate as needed."

"Is that what you did for the puzzle sphere you gave to Greyson?"

"I don't remember."

"Xander," Grandpa Adrian holds up the mana battery. "You didn't alter the crystal to release its mana. You altered all of the mana in the crystal to match the mana body in a person."

"I don't know what that means."

"Mana," he says. "In a certain state, creates mana. That's what our mana body does. You've turned this mana crystal into the same sort of thing."

"I don't understand."

"Xander," he says. "You've made the mana crystal make mana."

"I did?"

"Yes," he holds out the mana battery.

"Huh," I take the mana battery and examine it. "Is that bad?"

Grandpa Adrian looks over at the mana veil, a contemplative look on his face. After a few moments, he looks at me.

"Greyson's mega computer," he says. "Does it need magitech energy or just mana to run?"

"It can operate off of either," I say. "But it's easier for Greyson to acquire the power cores… well, was. I didn't realize he wasn't really obtaining them legally. He'd rather it run directly off of mana itself since he can set it up to convert that into magitech energy for the bits where using that is better and more efficient than off of raw mana."

"Do you know how much mana it needs to operate?"

"Sort of?" I get up from my seat. "Please hold on for a moment."

I go into Greyson's zone and look for something. Greyson's given me permission to mess with and/or use anything from his zone and I'm starting to learn it's really allowed. After a few minutes, I find what I'm looking for.

"Okay," I return to Grandpa Adrian and look at what's on the tablet. "Once it's been optimized, Greyson thinks it will need around 230,000 units of mana your scale per day. Um. For the expanded capabilities, though, several thousand extra."

"Expanded capabilities?"

"I'm assuming it has something to do with what it's going to be used for," I say. "But he hasn't told me. I think he's afraid I'll tell him to stop if I know what it is."

"I see," Grandpa Adrian says. "I could have invented that technique you use for your mana battery if I wanted to and thought about it, but never bothered with it as I never felt a need for it. But Xander?"

"Yes, Grandpa Adrian?"

"That's a solution to Greyson's power supply problem," he tells me. "He told me before that he wants it to run on mana which both fuels it and which is converted into magitech energy."

Then why ask me if you already know? Adults are so confusing.

He holds out his right hand, and a mana crystal begins to form. A massive mana crystal. It's as tall as up to my chest when I'm standing and is a perfect sphere. Then, he gestures over it and I watch as the mana crystal sphere's mana state changes to match the mana body in a person and the state I changed the mana battery's crystal into.

"This will be able to produce around half a million units of mana per day," Grandpa Adrian tells me.

"You can just… do that?" I ask.

"I can," he says. "Though I'd never even thought about such a thing before."

"Really?"

"I'm extremely powerful," he says. "Not all-knowing. There are things even I don't think about or know how to do. Did you teach yourself how to alter the mana's state?"

"Yeah," I answer. "What are mana states? People have mentioned them before."

"You know how water can be liquid, solid, or a gas?" He asks, and I nod. "Those are different 'states' of water, and they do different things. Mana is the same way – it has many different states, and each one does something different. It seems that your magesight allows you to perceive even the ones that are more difficult to perceive or to create devices to detect."

"Oh," I say. "Um… I guess I did teach myself how to do that? I don't remember being taught how. I just… felt like that would make it work the way I wanted it to? I thought I was just enchanting the mana crystal."

"Well, it was a form of enchantment," Grandpa Adrian tells me, then taps on the sphere, which starts to roll until he gestures with a hand, stopping it with his magic. "Greyson can use this to power his mega computer."

"Okay," I say. "Um… that will probably massively speed up his progress on building it."

"Probably," he says. "If it turns out to be a problem, could you let me know what its real purpose is? But only if it's a problem – it's fine if the mega computer isn't going to be used for something evil."

"Okay," I say. "I can… maybe do that. I don't know."

"Alright," he chuckles. "Now. The puzzle sphere you're making. How much more do you have left for it?"

"Um…" I look at it. "Okay, now that the mana battery is created, I want to try and make it have hexagonal pieces to cover it. That means I need the Greysonian orca. Once I get some of that and use some tools to cut it down, I can start creating the attachments and putting in the enchantments to allow the changes to happen. I'm going to go grab some now."