The next two days passed with the same routine and together the three of them hurried to dinner. He selected his fare and sat down at the table.

“Four adults,” Bir announced excitedly.

“Yes,” Tom answered. He had noticed them because it was unusual to have even one adult at the meal and four were so many he had stopped in surprise when he had spotted them.

“Who to target?” Bir had that mischievous look that he had started to recognize. “Ta you choose?” she insisted probably because she was subconsciously sensing that he had been slightly withdrawn all day.

Tom forced himself to look devious as he checked out the adults in the room. It was not at all subtle, but consistent with little Ta’s usual behaviour. His eyes alighted on Ralph. He was over six, so had chosen his own name and was a frequent target of Bir’s tricks. He assessed the relative fate levels between the two of them and was not at all surprised to find that the other boy’s fate pool was almost empty. Given the history of successful fate pranks, Ralph having low fate was expected. If Tom directed Bir’s attention that way, she would target him despite her annoyance at the white streak bully’s victorious defense against similar attacks over the last couple of days.

However, Tom didn’t want to do that. There was something about using fate, what was probably humanity’s most precious resource, on a boy that couldn’t be any older than eight that caused his stomach to roil in protest.

There were four adults in the room, and Tom focused on them. An instant to assess them told him they were in the same state as Ralph. They were ripe for targeting. He had seen none of them before, which made sense, given the restrictions that they all acted under. One of them looked like the man who had been the not dad of snotty. To stay in character, he needed to pick someone, no matter how distasteful it felt.

“Him,” Tom pointed, selecting the man for the crime of having a slight resemblance to snotty’s dad.

Bir grabbed his hand. “Don’t point. He’ll notice and, Pa, you don’t stare either.” She sounded scandalized at their lack of tact.

They returned to focusing on their food.

“Have you done it?” Pa asked after nearly a minute of eating.

The spoon that was most of the way to her lips paused as she concentrated.

In Tom’s advanced senses, there was another flood of fate as she emptied her entire pool. The dedication to the prank was impressive.

Tom looked over at the target before he could help himself. Bir grabbed his wrist. Her nails digging in. “Wait. No, look.”

It was too late.

He had noticed how the fate had split up and spread to impact many people.

The outcome was already in play. The man was near a table filled with twelve-year-olds. One of them got up, holding his plate and as he turned to presumably move to another seat, he was playfully shoved from behind. As he attempted to balance, an undefinable overboiled veggie went flying to splat on the floor almost three metres away from him. At the same time, the plate itself fell out of his fingers and hit the floor with a massive crash.

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There was a roar of laughter.

Their target was on his way to the coffee stand and barely paying attention to the commotion. It was, after all, just one of many similar ones that would likely occur over the meal.

His foot landed on the veggie, and slipped like he had stepped on a banana peel. He windmilled, yelled a curse, and, despite all the speed and balance he possessed, none of it helped. He crashed hard into the ground. For a moment, the floor had been perfectly frictionless and that had doomed him.

Bir giggled. “Ta stop looking, or they’ll think you are to blame.”

Tom forced his eyes away from the target and stared instead at his plate.

The entire situation puzzled him. How was an adult walking around with a lack of reserves and no defensive fate to protect him? It was almost incompetent. The string of events that caused him to tumble had not been overly elaborate. Ultimately, no one had pushed him. There had been no magic, only a single vegetable, and that should not have been enough to bring him down like that.

Fate, that was the answer and with the man’s lack of it, that outcome was entirely predictable and was most likely identical to what Bir had imagined. But why did the man have so little? Tom would have expected him to have either defensive fate already spent or dormant fate available to react to the threat and counter it.

Something about the whole situation stank.

He glanced back at the man and was surprised to see him getting to his feet with a slightly amused expression on his face. He must have guessed why he had fallen, but he didn’t seem at all angry.

Tom’s eyes narrowed.

The man had no fate in play to protect himself; nor had any of the other adults that he had seen, now that he thought about it. Plus, Bir’s comment earlier confirmed that lack was not a one-off for this celebration. The grownups were all functioning without a fate reserve or protection. Was this a symptom of something profound, or was it a bone they tossed to the kids to give them a chance to use their fate? Were they deliberately making themselves vulnerable as a training tool, or was it something else?

That was another point to add to his list.

“Did you see him fall?” Pa asked breathlessly.

“Yes, that windmill,” Bir grinned happily. “But Ta was staring. Naughty Ta.”

Tom laughed, protested his innocence, and continued his act. He was sure of his performance. Ever since he had thought to put a few points of fate to the task there hadn’t been a major mistake. His cover was intact, and he was confident when there were more adults around that his acting was good enough to sustain the pretense that nothing about little Ta had changed.

As he lay down to sleep, he assessed the last five days. His existence from the moment he had been reincarnated had been interesting, but nothing like he had expected. When the option was raised, he had imagined how unpleasant it would be to be reincarnated as a helpless baby and have to live through indignations such as potty training. He had also been concerned about being a young child in a band of desperate humans roaming over Existentia barely able to survive like the group his small team had left.

None of those outcomes had occurred. This existence…

He snuggled into his warm blankets. Bits of it were amazing. His bed, the cleaning loops and the dinner buffets were an unexpected luxury. Yes, there was a threat of assassins, but with his improved acting he was confident he could avoid them.

All in all, everything had worked out perfectly, and in less than seventy-two hours he would get two hours in an isolation room, where he would have a lot of his questions answered. Then, a few days later, four more in the trial.

Tom could barely wait for those restrictions to lift and for him to get into a regular routine that included isolation time for training. His only concern was his healing spell’s lack of measurable advancement. But there was a reason for his struggles. Manipulating raw magic had turned out to be far more difficult than he had imagined. Eventually he would crack the problem, hard work would let him close the technical skill gap, then with fate’s help he would earn his first skill - and then the floodgates would open up.