[Greyson – 10 years]

Naturally, the blueberry cinnamon rolls I baked have come out perfect. Unfortunately, that means that it has also drawn out of bed both of my foster fathers and all three of my brothers.

I ignore them as I dump the icing I made on top, then levitate the glass casserole dish which I baked them in, the plate of sausage links and scrambled eggs, the bottle of maple syrup, the glass of orange juice, and the pitcher of orange juice as I walk to my room. If they want breakfast, they can do something for themselves. I am a hungry boy and I will eat all of the food I made.

Once in my room, I give the sausages and eggs a heavy coating of syrup, then dig into my breakfast as I turn on my computer. Designed by me, it loads immediately and logs in instantly upon recognizing me.

"Greyson," Cal, my sixteen-year-old brother, knocks on my door. "That was twelve cinnamon rolls. And an entire carton of eggs. And I'm pretty sure three packages of breakfast sausage. And you took the syrup."

These cinnamon rolls would have tasted better if I added bananas to them. At least I remembered to use the magic butter, cinnamon, and sugar. Those give it a superior flavor, even if the rest lacks it.

"Greyson!" Cal knocks again after trying the knob and finding it locked. "Come on, Greyson! You need to share with the rest of us!"

"PAPA!" Henry, my twin brother, yells. "GREYSON'S BEING GREEDY WITH FOOD AGAIN!"

"Leave it," Dad says.

"But it's a lot of food!" Henry whines. "And it smells good!"

"How come Greyson always gets to do stuff like that?" Travis, my thirteen-year-old brother, asks. "We never get to splurge."

He doesn't sound too good. Is he coming down with something?

"Greyson will actually eat all of that," Dad says. "Go on out to the living room, your papa's making something for the rest of us."

"But Greyson-" Travis starts.

"Greyson's in his weird eat-a-lot phase," Dad says. "Just go. Papa's making something for us."

Henry and Travis complain, but they leave the hall.

"You know he's going to get worse once puberty hits, don't you?" Cal asks.

"According to my calculations," I say. "I began the first stages of puberty one year, two months, sixteen days, nine hours, fourteen minutes, and eighteen seconds ago. Give or take eight minutes and three seconds."

I began puberty quite early for a boy, at only nine years of age.

"Okay, Greyson, we've told you before about magically projecting your voice into the hall to talk with us," Dad says.

"I installed a speaker on my door and am using that."

"Okay, remove the speaker," Dad says. "The whole purpose of that was so that you'd actually talk to us face-to-face. Stop looking for loopholes."

Seeking out loopholes is essential to the function of society, as it allows you to know what you can do and allows those in charge to know what to fix.

"How would you even calculate when you began puberty?" Cal asks, absolute confusion in his voice and mind.

"I did so via monitoring various mental and physiological changes," I answer. "Among other things. The rate of growth compared to the norm, shifts in my thought processes, shifts in how I observe things, shifts in what I observe, shifts in how I draw conclusions, any changes which my body began to undergo, the chemical shifts in my brain compared to those of an ordinary boy and those undergoing puberty, alterations to-"

"We get it, Greyson," Dad says. "You're making stuff up. It's Saturday, so Cal and I need to head out soon to get more ingredients for the restaurant. Make sure to bring the dishes out once you've finished."

"Will do."

Dad and Cal leave, and I finish eating breakfast while surfing the net. Once I finish, I turn off my computer and stack my dishes, then head to my closet to pick out an outfit for today. As I do that, however, I realize that my pajamas are fitting me a little bit tighter than I remember, and the sleeves don't reach as close to my elbows as they used to. Nor do the pants reach all the way down to my ankles.

Hm…

I begin trying on various outfits and find that they've all lost fit for me. It appears I hit another growth spurt without realizing it, and put on an extra layer of muscle to boot. Well, that's only natural. I am undergoing puberty and also maintain physical training to ensure that I am able to keep in shape and skilled with martial arts, just in case.

The fact that having a six-pack at only ten makes my classmates jealous is only a perk, and one which is irrelevant during the summer. None of them are around to see.

I did push myself a little extra hard today by accident, so my body's feeling extra-sore and I don't want to wear something too tight. There's a pair of black shorts and a light tan sleeveless that are loose enough to be comfortable, so I slip those on before slipping on my black, no-show socks and my brown-and-grey sneakers with griffin patterns on their sides.

At least my shoes still fit fine.

Dressed, I use the mirror on the back of my closet door to style my sandy-blond hair. The outfit also looks nice with my blue-green eyes, so there's no clashing there. Making sure it works with my eyes is important because there's some sort of clash, then the outfit looks awful. I must always look good to impress the gods.

My hair fixed and outfit examined, I double-snap and point at the mirror, making finger guns. I look cool.

Dressed and mostly ready for the day, I grab my brown backpack and pull it on, then my wallet, phone, keys, gum, peppermints, and marbles and slip them into my pockets. After a few moments of consideration, I also add some paperclips.

One never knows what they might need a paperclip for.

I leave my room and after putting the dishes in the dishwasher, I walk over to the entrance of the house, where there's a wooden stand set up. Several ceramic plates sit on it, each with various items on it, like wallets and keys. Their sizes are all the same, but they have differing patterns on them. Travis made them in art class last year and he's turned out to be quite decent at stuff like that.

On the dish with a griffin pattern is a plain leather wallet. I open it up and find fifty twenty-dollar bills inside. Those are removed and slipped into my wallet while the ugly leather one is dropped back onto the griffin plate. That should be sufficient for me to buy more clothes.

I exit the house and slip out of the perception of others while also adjusting my personal time. The way this spell works allows me to move around faster than others without them noticing a blur as I move past them. Because my own personal time has shifted, nothing is a blur to me as I move and I am fully able to view my surroundings.

This allows me to reach the clothing store without issue and though it technically took me awhile to reach, it also took me only a few minutes. Even to me, it only felt as if a few minutes passed.

Let my brothers cast spells like this and then complain about how much I eat.

Upon arrival at the clothing store, I cancel my walking spell, then grab a shopping cart and walk to the boys' section to begin my selections.

"That's quite a lot there," the employee at the changing room says when I approach.

"I am in need of new clothes," I tell her as I pull off my backpack and set it on one of the chairs here. "And the wallet fairy left me a lot of money. I have already sectioned things out into groups of eight to try on."

They have an eight-item maximum for the changing rooms.

"Please avoid touching my backpack," I tell her. "It has been enchanted to shock anyone who touches it who is not either me or a god."

I flick my left wrist and a paper appears in it, and I set the paper down. That, too, contains a notice about not touching the backpack and it having a shock enchantment on it.

Dad's lawyer said it was necessary to do that if I wasn't going to take the enchantment off. It's not my fault some idiot tried to steal a backpack. I was even wearing it at the time.

Well, the enchantment is actually specifically targeted towards shocking those who attempt to take or move the backpack rather than just anyone who touches it, but that bit isn't important.

With the sign placed, I grab the first stack of clothes and enter the changing room. Over the course of the next hour, I try on every piece of clothing I selected, immediately eliminating any which I do not like the look of and attempting several combinations of those I do. It takes time, but I settle on the outfits I wish to buy, including two new pairs of shoes and a few more packs of socks just in case. My growth also necessitated purchasing more underwear, so I ensure a few packs of those are added to the cart before I head to the registers to pay.

"And… how did you get this money?" The cashier asks when I hand it to her.

"The wallet fairy gave it to me."

"The… what?"

"The wallet fairy," I tell her. "I've never seen them, but whenever I need money for things like clothes, they fill a wallet with twenties. I discovered that I needed new clothes this morning and when I checked the wallet, bam! Money. I have considered putting up a camera to see if I can find out what they look like, but I've been warned that fairies don't like people trying to spy on them. According to my research, the majority of fairies are not fully in this plane, preventing ordinary eyes and devices from seeing them. I would need to construct an entirely new-"

"Is it that time already?" An older woman approaches. "Hello, Greyson."

"Hello," I greet her. "The time is currently nine thirty-seven in the morning."

"Your dad isn't with you today?" She asks.

"He is likely currently attempting to wrangle my other brothers," I tell her. "Apart from Cal, who is at work already. I do have other business to attend to today, would you mind telling the cashier to finish checking me out? There are some griffins which need speaking to, a mob to rob, some power cores to purchase, and all before lunch. I am a very busy boy today."

"You always are," she chuckles, then looks at the cashier. "Greyson comes from a richer family, just check him out."

The cashier uses a forgery-checker pen (the kind that's clear and so doesn't mark legit bills) on every bill I gave her, then finishes the transaction.

"How are you getting the clothes out of here?" The cashier asks. "That's a bit much for your arms and it won't fit into your backpack. You're going to need to purchase some bags."

I pull off my backpack and open it up, then set it into the cart and begin sticking clothes into it. The manager watches in amusement as the cashier's expression turns from annoyance to confusion as more and more clothes go into the bag, yet the bag never looks full.

"W-"

"It's a magic backpack," I tell her. "There's an enchantment on it to act as a pocket dimension, therefore eliminating both the normal space restriction of the backpack as well as preventing me from feeling the weight. Mine is specially-designed to even allow me to access its contents as I please, therefore preventing any need to look around inside for the specific item I want. That's why I can do something such as this."

I reach into the backpack and pull out a sucker with a spherical head that's yellow with brown spots, which I promptly place into my mouth.

"It's pineapple-pecan," I pull out another. "Want it?"

"Uh… no."

"What about you?" I ask the manager.

"Sure," she accepts it. "Thank you, Greyson."

"You're welcome," I respond as I zip up the backpack. "I must be going now, or I might not be able to finish everything before lunch."

"Have a good day," the manager says as I pull on my backpack.

"He's like, ten!" The cashier says. "Why does he have a backpack like that?"

"Don't question it," the manager tells her as I leave. "We've learned not to."

I exit the shop and make my way a spot without cameras viewing it, then teleport to my next destination. Though I didn't notice any signs of the Faction and haven't received any alerts to them having accessed any of the systems in the area, it is still better to not reveal I can teleport where it can be viewed.

Just in case the Faction accesses the logs.

Now, I'm standing on a mountain, close to a cliff. There are plenty of trees around, but not where I'm standing. Caves dot the sides of the mountain and staring at me, startled by my sudden appearance, are a trio of griffins. I can spot a quartet of the majestic beasts watching from afar and even sense the amusement of those ones.

With the bodies of lions but the heads and wings of eagles, griffins are quite the interesting creatures. I enjoy their presences a lot, but most wild ones are dangerous beasts which pose a threat to anyone and everyone I care about. In order to make things safer for the area, I have tamed all of the griffins within five hundred miles of home.

The most the average griffin travels from their nest is approximately two hundred miles, so I went a little extra to be safe. The three I'm standing in front of moved in to this area recently and as it seems to be genuinely moved in rather than simply visiting, it is time for them to learn the rules.

"Hello," I pull the sucker out of my mouth. "My name is Greyson Henry King, and I am in charge of the griffins of this region. If you wish to live here, you will need to abide by my rules."

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The bigger of the three griffins screeches at me, then charges forward.

"Rule Number One," I point the sucker at it and the griffin finds itself slamming into an invisible barrier. "Do not attack people without my permission."

The griffin begins attack the barrier while the other two charge around to my sides.

"Rule Number Two," I say as the other two slam into invisible barriers. "Never cause problems for people without my permission."

The lead griffin takes a few steps back and opens its mouth, an orb of light forming and sparkles of light appearing around it, sucking in to the orb.

"Rule Number Three," I say as a laser shoots out of the orb and into the barrier. "Always do as I command."

The other two griffins begin summoning their own beams of concentrated light.

"Rule Number Four," I say. "Never, ever, look for or use loopholes. Do as I say, not as I do."

I stick the sucker back into my mouth, and all three griffins find themselves floating up into the sky. They begin furiously flapping their wings in an attempt to escape, but the attempts are pointless. They use flight magics for their flight. I'm manipulating gravity itself.

"If you follow these simple rules," I raise my right hand up into the air. "We'll get along just fine."

I slash down with my hand and the moment I do, the griffins slam down into the ground. Bones crunch as they land on their wings and legs in awkward positions.

"This is my territory," I say as a golden-white light radiates out of me, seeping into the wounded beasts. "And you will obey these rules without resistance."

As the trio of griffins realize their injuries have been healed, I delve into the minds of all three and blast my way through them, grabbing their deepest fears and pulling them to the surface. Immediately, all three begin screaming and flailing.

"Failure to do so," I now look like the most terrifying being in the world to them. "Will result in suffering you could only imagine hell to deliver."

I walk up to the leader of the trio and kneel down.

"So!" I extend my right hand as I release their minds from my grip. "Friends?"

The griffin lets out a pitiful mew, then slowly extends a paw to let me shake it.

"Excellent!" I say as we shake. "Please remember to follow all rules assigned and we'll get along great! Now! I need some griffin feathers for an experiment. Would you be so kind as to donate them?"

The griffin suddenly looks horrified, but ten minutes later, I've healed the spots where it was bleeding. I do the same for the other two after I collect their feathers as well.

"You'll regrow your feathers soon," I tell them. "Don't worry! Oh, and you can ask those ones there about more of what it's like to live in this area. As long as you follow my rules, things are pretty good."

I pull out my phone and check the time.

"I really must be going," I tell him. "I wish to finish other business before lunch."

I hum a little to myself as I teleport into a stone-and-steel room with shelves covered in stacks of cash, boxes of jewels, books of information, and containers of magical plants and animal parts.

Not all griffins need such a rough treatment to be put into their place, but these ones attacked me first. Some griffins are quite friendly, such as the arctic griffin I met at the North Pole on Tuesday. She even let me go for a ride on her after I escaped Santa. It was pretty fun, and I might return after lunch to ask her if she'd let me go for another ride.

For now, I need to focus on the task I'm currently performing. There are quite a few things in this room. Some of it is illegal, some of it was obtained illegally, and none of that matters to me. What matters is the cash.

Oh! Is that what I think it is?

I hurry over to one of the shelves and examine the items on it. Comic books! They're the First editions of a series I like! Tracking these down has proven difficult, especially since I would prefer to obtain them legally.

Into the backpack they go. If I can take them from a mob instead of having to save up money earned legitimately to purchase them from a collector, then I will.

Why a mob has them in a vault, I don't really know. It matters none to me, so I also don't care.

Those jewels look nice and I spend a few minutes examining them before I have to remind myself of what I came here for: the cash. They have a lot of stacks of tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds in here. A single stack of one-hundred dollar bills is ten grand, and a power core of the type I need costs $400,000, or forty stacks.

My expectation is a need of three before my next purchase, so I want to buy an extra just in case. That's $1,600,000, but my gut tells me I should acquire at least three more, just in case.

Which is strange. I would only need another three if Xander were going to return to regularly hanging out at my secret base and as far as I'm aware, he's still not able to due to his foster-father wanting to know where he is at all times. Hm… except stronger members of the family have psychic instincts, and I fit squarely into that category as the third-most powerful member.

Well. If the god's not returning to the secret base, then this gut feeling means I might not be able to purchase more power cores for a little while. An investigation will be needed into the cause of that.

"Hm…"

It would be better to buy the extras, just in case. If I'm going to need six, then I should buy more than one extra and eight is a nice number. Not for Xander, though. Even if it's an all-curve number, that doesn't change the fact that it's even. Since he's not around, I want to do something for him in my own stuff so I grab enough cash to buy nine.

The mob doesn't have $3,600,000 in hundreds, so I have to switch to fifties and even twenties. It clears out most of their cash so they'll need to liquidate some of their other expensive assets. That's not really my problem, though.

This particular mob is quite nasty. Not hurt-little-boys nasty, so I haven't sicced my griffins on them, but they could do with the financial hit.

"Oh!"

Those are raw mana crystals, aren't they? They're so shiny. And they have so much mana in them! How'd they get these? I want them. They're good for enchantments and making magic alloys, but they can also be ground up and put into normal recipes to turn the food magic. I like doing that with plain ingredients when making food. There was crushed mana crystal in the filling for the cinnamon rolls I made this morning.

I slip the mana crystals into my backpack.

As I start to cast the teleport spell, something else catches my attention so I cancel the spell and walk over to the shelf.

Oh! It is! A jar of lightweaver crickets! They're all dead, but that's how I need them. I was going to catch some this afternoon, but taking this will save me some time so I slip the jar into my backpack.

Catching them is fun, so I might still do so anyway.

This vault really gave me a lot, so I want to give them a thanks. From within my backpack, I pull out a ceramic griffin I made and set it on the shelf where the jar was. It was made with ordinary clay and glaze and wasn't enchanted, so it's not really worth much. But I'm proud of it and feel it's a good trade.

"Hm…"

Is there anything else in here I could use?

Thirty minutes after placing down the ceramic griffin, I'm teleporting out of the vault and into another storage room.

This one is smaller than the vault and could be mistaken as a closet from the size. The protective enchantments on it are much superior, though. So is the alarm system in it, which is why I'm floating in the air rather than standing on the ground. In addition to the increased protective and warding enchantments, there are normal cameras, alarm sensors on the floor, infrared cameras, magic-detection cameras, sound detection systems, and various other gizmos. My spells are shielding me from the detectors at the moment, though I'll need to deal with them in a moment so that I can properly acquire my desired items.

Lining the three walls without the door are metal shelves that slant downward. They're designed with slots to fit canisters nine inches in length and three in diameter, their bodies made of magical glass and their ends made of metal and notched for socketing into things, runes covering the caps. Those canisters fill the shelves here, all of which have a sort of yellow, glowing light in them. One shelf has ones that also have sparks dancing around inside of them: the more expensive ones I want, made from Lucas Gates's own mana.

I hold out my right hand and a laptop appears on it, summoned from my backpack. Opening up my laptop, I begin the processes of tapping into the security system and setting everything on it for this room into a loop. Said loop will end once this laptop is no longer in the room and my laptop will inform me if someone has noticed or is fighting it.

With the room's security system disabled (how long will it be before they find the wireless access point I created a few years ago?), I land on the ground and pull off my backpack, then open it up. In place of each canister I take, I set down the appropriate amount of cash that I looted from the mob.

"I'm surprised it's taken you this long to come for those canisters," Melody Gates comments as the door behind me opens. "Considering how much power you seem to need with how often you're taking inferior ones."

"You have an increased supply of them at the moment," I say. "I checked the market value for them. You'll find the appropriate payments in place."

"Have you thought about properly buying them?" She asks.

"I am exchanging them for cash," I state as I place the last one into the bag. "And one of the owners of the companies is allowing me. That is purchasing."

Not that they have the power to actually stop me. They're all significantly inferior than I am in terms of magical ability, and they have no access to anything powerful enough to contain me.

"Really?" She asks. "Where's the receipt?"

"I have never asked for one."

"You've also never spoken with me when I caught you before," she says. "You can turn off whatever you're doing to mess with the alarms on here, I've already turned them off."

That seems to be the truth, so I teleport my laptop back into my backpack.

"I heard that you stole three ice cores," she says. "And that you're very likely using the power cores you're acquiring for some sort of supercomputer?"

I narrow my gaze on her.

"You work for the Faction, don't you?" I could have sworn she came up clean in her connections to them when I looked.

"I don't know who or what the Faction is," Melody says. "But no. Xander told Trey, who told my husband, who told me."

That is an absolute truth. Hm. Well, if Xander is the one who shared it, I'm okay with that. I never did tell him to keep the mega computer a secret and he may have gotten my texts on Tuesday while he was with his new dad. The topic probably came up then.

Besides, it's Xander. If a powerful deity like he decides to tell people, who am I to argue? It just means it's probably time for people to know that I am attempting to change the world.

Even if that weren't the case, I can't do anything about it. He's keeping his soul attached to his body through the sheer force of will, has conjured a magic brain to take over the duties of his real one, animates his body through some complex spell I've yet to figure out (but really want to because it would make simulacrums easy), a growth spell to ensure his body is able to continue to grow and heal as it should, self-enhancement spells to toughen his body and make himself stronger, and more.

At all times.

All of those spells were done quite sloppily, but I'm sure that it was done intentionally. Their sloppy nature does increase the difficulties he faces, but also minimizes his ability to use other magics. I'm not sure what he's doing, but Xander must have his reasons.

The very fact that he's able to cast four high-tier spells, a multipurpose body-enhancement spell, and several other spellsall at once, and smaller spells on occasion – such as his use of telekinesis every time he unties his shoes to ensure they untie on the first try – proves his absolute mastery of magic. It's the equivalent of around thirty smaller-scale spells. At a minimum.

I aspire to be that talented, even if I know I could never reach the level of a god. But a boy can dream, so I do.

Getting mad at him would be like attempting to put out a fire elemental with a water balloon. A very small one meant for a baby to throw. A god like Xander could probably blink me out of existence if he decided I was annoying enough.

"I see," I say. "Well, if you were just wishing to let me know that you're aware of my project, I'll be going now. Today is a busy day for me."

"Hold on," she says. "You're talkative today. Before you go… you seem to be a magitech genius, a little bit like my own son. I can't imagine you would have a magitech computer that heats up considering that magitech doesn't heat up. Mana doesn't obey the laws of science, after all, and so doesn't generate heat as it works unless it's designed to. Yet yours apparently heats up enough to warrant ice cores?"

"There is a flaw in the magic system of it," I tell her. "I am aware that it is there, but eliminating it proves difficult without causing other problems. Acquiring a few ice cores from Santa's workshop every year is the easiest solution I came up with until such a time as I can convince Xander to take a long enough look at the system."

"Xander?" She raises an eyebrow.

"Yes," I nod. "Xander. His mage-sight is fundamentally different from mine and allows him to pick up nuances even I cannot."

By refusing to work on my computer, I think Xander's attempting to challenge me to figure it out on my own. The solution has proven quite elusive and my current estimates indicate that it will take 6 years, 9 months, 14 days, 23 hours, 7 minutes, and 39.4 seconds more of work on the computer itself – in actual time spent working on it – to figure it out. Give or take 18 hours, 9 minutes, and 53.1 seconds.

"Hm…" I realize something. "You are correct. I do appear to be more talkative today. Well. No matter. I've not shared anything too classified."

"Have you ever tried being a ten-year-old boy?" She asks. "Fully, I mean. Not just partially?"

"I have not the faintest idea what you mean by that," I tell her. "I am ten years old. Nearly eleven. I will not say more than that, as I lack any desire to let you know how to find my identity."

"I already know who you are, Greyson," she says. "Tristan and I simply haven't told anyone we've identified you."

Hm… I sense no hostility from her. She may still be an agent of the Faction despite that.

"Your great-grandfather called us soon after you started 'acquiring' the cores," she tells me. "Informed us to let him know if you ever didn't pay."

Adrian King already knows? This is dangerous, and it sounds like he's known for years. I must take extra precautions, just in case. I must not let him interfere with my goals. While he is not the Faction… he'll certainly put a stop to things!

Though it sounds like he's aware of some things. At least I've warded the secret base to prevent him from noticing it.

"The power cores made using Luke's mana should be sufficient for awhile," I tell her. "They are quite potent, after all."

I teleport one from my backpack into my hand and examine it.

"Hm…" I think. "Next time I see Xander, I might ask him to examine it. I need to figure out a proper power source for the computer so that I do not need to rely on power cores. I tried solar and hydroelectric and they didn't prove nearly enough energy, and Xander asked me nicely not to try and tap into the world's mana veins, so I'm not sure what to do. Ah!"

"You sound like you realized something," Melody says.

"I just realized why I'm more talkative!" I tell her. "It's this room! You put a spell on it to make me talk! That is illegal, ma'am!"

Though quite impressive. I should have noticed it sooner. It even managed to slip through my mental barrier.

Now that I know it's there, though, I can sort of ignore the effects. There's a flaw in my mental shield I didn't know about before and that spell happened to slip through because of that. I don't even think it was intentionally designed to bypass the barrier, either, it just does because of it how affects the mind.

"And how did the son of the owner of a restaurant and a realtor manage to acquire three-point-six million dollars?" Melody raises an eyebrow.

I glance at the cash on the shelf, then back to her.

"You say nothing, I say nothing."

"One day," she says. "We're going to figure out how to lock you out and you'll need to go through Adrian King to acquire those."

As if she could ever manage that. I'm a hundred times as powerful as her son and acquiring the materials needed to lock him out of something is difficult enough.

"Unlikely," I say. "How did you even know I was here? You arrived pretty fast and I could have sworn I evaded all of your detection systems."

"You evaded most of them," she says. "Except for two things. First, we installed new alarms in this room, and ones your little hack isn't able to access. We're still looking for that vulnerability, by the way.

"Second," she says. "And more importantly, mana readers are expensive and cost a lot to run. Mana sensors, on the other hand, simply sense the presence of mana, rather than reading the energy itself. Those are set up all over the building as a standard security measure. Their main purpose is mainly to let us know if there's a significant leak, and we have multiple in this area because of the power storage here. Your teleport spell leaks more mana than my son can hold."

Oh. I didn't even know they had such sensors set up. Are they new?

"I will admit that my spell is flawed," I state. "However, I am insufficiently experienced with dimensional magics to correct said flaws. Though I'm quite impressed that I leak that little from the spell. I used to leak more than thrice that."

I'll try work on reducing the leak more. Or figuring out a way to mask it to avoid setting off the detectors. That's something which I should do out of this place… it's messing with my head too much.

"I'll be going now," I tell her. "Until we meet again."

I dip my head to Melody, then teleport home, arriving a little outside of the range of the security cameras set up to watch the front yard. Walking up to the house, I enter and close the door, then pull out my wallet and put the receipt and change from my shopping trip into the wallet on the griffin plate.

"PAPA!" Henry yells. "GREYSON'S HOME!"

And much relieved to no longer be dealing with that mind-loosening spell on the power core storage room. Melody and the Gatewood Energy company don't usually delve into illegal activities, which means she probably set up that up as a trap for me. If I stayed under it too much longer, she might have gotten me to slip up about some other information that I didn't want known.

Like what my mega computer is for.

"Hey, Greyson," Papa looks at me from the kitchen. "If you take the tags and stickers off your clothes, I'll put them in the wash for you. I've already removed your old outfits from your closet and dresser, though I did put a few new sets in there. They should fit you, and I washed them alone, so you can be sure they're clean."

Hm. Papa must have anticipated I would be in need of new clothes and arranged for some temporary outfits for me. I must have left before he could let me know.

I nod to him, then head to my room.

"How come he gets to go shopping by himself?" Henry whines. "I wanted to go clothes shopping, too!"

"Trying to stop Greyson is like trying to stop a freight train with your willpower alone," Papa says as I close my door.

I bet Xander would find that… oh! Papa got me a shirt with a griffin on it! He's left it out on my bed! It's a grey shirt with a big griffin on the front, along with grey shorts with gold and brown stripes down the sides! There's also a pair of underwear and a pair of socks on there as well. And they're in my new size!

I hurriedly change into them, then open up my bag and dump out the new clothes I bought. The sooner I can get these ready for Papa to put in the washer, the sooner I can get to work on finishing my newest remote controlled car.

It's going to have lasers!