[Xander – 12 years]

  "No, no no no no!" I cry out upon realizing something very important. "Noooo!"

  I teleport my phone to my hand as I curl up and completely cover myself with my blanket. It's the afternoon so it's not too early please pick up. The time it takes him to feels like forever, even though he answers on the first ring.

  "Hello, Xander," Grandpa Adrian says. "How are you?"

  "I didn't mean to and I don't know how to undo it and I'm sorry I promise I didn't mean to I somehow did it while I was taking a nap and-"

  "Xander," Grandpa Adrian's voice is very calm. "Take a deep breath. What did you do?"

  "I didn't mean to I'm sorry! I don't even know how I know the spell and since it's over I don't know how to undo it, I'm sorry!"

  Grandpa Adrian sighs.

  "Give me a minute and I'll be there," he says.

  "I'm sorry!" I cry.

  "I know," he says. "If you really did do it in your sleep, then you're not in trouble for whatever you did, Xander. Accidents can happens, especially with mages."

  "It really was an accident," I sniffle.

  "Yes, I'm here to see Xander," Grandpa Adrian says. "He's on the phone with me now and needs my assistance with something."

  "Give me just a moment to verify," the guard at the gate says. Grandpa Adrian must've teleported there. "Frank, Mr. King has shown up to see Xander… understood, I'll let him in."

  "Thank you," Grandpa Adrian says. "Xander, they're letting me in now, I'll be there soon. Take some deep breaths and try to calm down. It'll be easier for you to talk if you aren't still crying when I get there. Where are you at?"

  "I'm still on my bed," I tell him. "I'm hiding under my blanket because it's really bad and I don't want anyone to see me and I'm really sorry I didn't mean to do it I was sleeping!"

  Grandpa Adrian keeps talking with me until he reaches the front door.

  "Hello, Trey," Grandpa Adrian says. "I'm on the phone with Xander right now, he called me in a panic after waking from his nap. It seems he did some spell in his sleep and it has him hysterical."

  "A spell?" Trey asks.

  "I don't know what," Grandpa Adrian says. "He's panicking too much to tell me. Xander, keep trying to do deep breaths."

  "Okay…"

  About a minute or so later, there's a knock on my door.

  "Xander?" Trey calls through the door. "Your grandfather is here."

  "I'm sorry!"

  "Xander, we're coming in," Grandpa Adrian says, then I hear the door open. "Xander… you did that in your sleep?"

  Of course he can tell, even with me being completely covered by my blanket and there being dozens of stuffed animals around me. I could probably tell something like this through all of that, too. Since I inherited my senses from him and his are definitely going to be better than mine, he can see me for sure.

  I don't want to be seen! This is horrible!

  "I'm sorry!"

  "You're not in trouble," Grandpa Adrian says as he ends the call. "But can you come out from under there?"

  "I don't have any pants or underwear that will work with this…"

  "I can undo it," Grandpa Adrian tells me. "But it's a pretty complex thing to undo, so I can't do it from a distance."

  "Pants or underwear?" Trey asks. "Why does that matter?"

  Grandpa Adrian clears his throat and there's silence for a moment.

  "Oh," Trey says. "Xander, let me get you a towel."

  I listen as he goes to my shower room, then he comes back. Something is then dropped by my head.

  "There," Trey says. "That's a towel, Xander. Wrap up and come out, okay? I'm not sure what's going on, but it's going to be okay."

  I'm not so sure. I reach out from under the blanket and grab the towel, then pull it in and wrap it around my waist as best I can before getting out from under my blanket. My ears are pressed flat against my head, and my tail is curled between my legs a little.

  "That's, uh…" Trey says. "Are those wolf ears?"

  "He's got a wolf's tail, too," Grandpa Adrian says. "That's what the massive thing pushing the towel out is: his tail. It's curled up. You really did this in your sleep?"

  "Yeah," I sniffle. "Yesterday, I was hanging out at Youth Group, and some of the other kids were talking about anime. They were telling me about something called beastkin in it. Mostly catkin. But I guess it made me dream about wolfkin and what it'd be like to be one and now I'm one and I'm so sorry I don't know how I did it and I don't have any pants and underwear with holes for the tails and I'm sorry! It was dreaming-me that did it, I promise! It wasn't on purpose! At least I didn't grow fur… I don't wanna be furry! I'm sorry!"

  Trey snorts when I say that.

  "You seem more upset by not having pants and underwear that accommodate a tail than you are the actual transformation," he says.

  "I didn't mean to transform, I'm sorry!" I tell him. "I've tried to be a good boy! I didn't mean to be bad!"

  "Xander," he snorts. "Of all the 'bad' things you could've done, this isn't on the list at all. Are those fangs?"

  "Are they?" I open my mouth and try to touch my canines with my tongue. "Oh. I got fangs, too."

  "And your eyes are golden, like a wolf's," Grandpa Adrian says. "If you're ready for me to turn you back to your normal self, sit facing away from me. I'll be touching your back to undo your transformation."

  "I still don't know how I did it…"

  "Can you sit how I asked?"

  "Yeah."

  I move over to the edge of the bed and sit with my back to Grandpa Adrian. Finding a comfortable sitting position with a towel around my waist is hard, especially with needing to keep my tail between my legs. It can't sit behind me because of the towel, and sitting on it feels weird. Though keeping it between my legs is easy, it's staying there on its own.

  "I'm going to touch your back now," Grandpa Adrian says. "I'll do the magic to switch you back to human now, and I'll do it slowly. Feel how the magic works. That way, if this happens again, you can turn yourself back on your own."

  "Okay."

  Grandpa Adrian puts his hands on my back and it takes every ounce of will I have to not pull away. My breathing quickens as my heart starts pounding in my chest. I don't want to be touched, but I have to in order for him to undo the transformation.

  Please let it be fast. Please let it be really fast. It's already taking too long!

  "Focus on the feel of my magic," Grandpa Adrian tells me.

  I do my best to do that instead of panic. The spell feels weird, like it's not a real spell. As it spreads through my body, I feel myself shifting back to being just a boy. The shift back causes me to sink down onto my bed a little bit more, since I'm no longer sitting on a tail. It was really thick and fluffy.

  My tail actually felt nice and I want to feel it again. So fluffy.

  "There you go," Grandpa Adrian ruffles my hair, and I flinch a little. "Sorry, I know you're already tense, I'd just forgotten. What did the magic feel like to you?"

  "Like… it's not a spell."

  "Because it wasn't," he says. "We'll step out of the room. Get dressed, then we'll talk about what happened."

  "I'm sorry…"

  "You're not in trouble," he tells me. "Get dressed, then come down to the dining room and we'll talk."

  "Okay…"

  Trey and Grandpa Adrian leave, then I get dressed before heading down to the dining room with Trenton clutched against my chest. Katie's putting snacks on the table as I arrive, then returns to the kitchen where she'll probably listen in.

  Trey is sitting in his usual spot, and Grandpa Adrian is sitting opposite him. That puts him right to the right of where I normally sit and makes me want to sit somewhere else. But I can't, that's my seat, so I sit down.

  Should I try to shift over a little? But if I do that, I'll be in the wrong spot.

  Rather than starting the scolding, Trey tells me to get something to eat. I get some water and put some pieces of honeydew, cantaloupe, and some strawberries, blueberries, and grapes on the plate in front of me, then a big scoop of fruit dip. Rather than eating, I'm only able to nibble a little.

  "The magic I used to transform you back into a human boy," Grandpa Adrian tells me. "Wasn't a spell in the common meaning. It's a type of magic you've used before, where you're less weaving magic together and more altering reality. Since I doubt you'd have any access to even a slight clue to a spell which can transform your body into another species, you probably simply altered reality itself to do that."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Did I say you're in trouble?"

  "No, but I still messed up."

  "And how did you mess up?"

  "By transforming myself and being something I'm not."

  "Xander," Grandpa Adrian says. "I am a mage who has lived for millions of years. I look like I'm in my late teens when I'm in my real form. That isn't even my original appearance. I performed a fundamental change to my body to match the local dominant species when I came to Earth."

  "Sorry," Trey says. "You said when you came to Earth?"

  "Yes," Grandpa Adrian says. "I was born a human, but a human on another world. The species has developed on multiple worlds – and there are worlds with other species, such as elves and even beastkin. Before I came to Earth, I'd altered my body to be a foxkin to match that world's dominant species. I've changed my body's 'true' self more than three dozen times in my life.

  "So Xander," Grandpa Adrian says. "If anyone is going to be upset that you did it… I'm not even allowed to be on that list. It would be hypocritical of me. What confused you?"

  He could tell I was confused? Oh, right, he probably has empathy, too. I had to have inherited it from somewhere and I did inherit an affinity for mind magics from him.

  "Probably 'hypocritical'," Trey tells him. "That's what made him make his confused face. Xander, hypocritical isn't being critical of hippos, it's where your current actions and words contradict each other."

  "Oh, right," my face heats up; I'm so fucking stupid. "I think you've explained it before."

  "And I'll explain it as many times as you need me to," he tells me, then looks at Grandpa Adrian. "Though you having done it in the distant past doesn't mean you'd be a hypocrite for saying 'no' to it now."

  "Maybe not," Grandpa Adrian says. "But I don't have an issue with it, as long as it's not taken to extreme levels. We could still tell it was Xander when he was shifted, as all he did was shift himself to be a wolfkin, rather than change his identity."

  "I still mostly looked like me?"

  "You did," Grandpa Adrian tells me. "Altering reality itself isn't an easy task and takes a lot of mana. I'm assuming you've noticed you've lost a decent amount?"

  "Um… yeah," I nod. "About ten percent of my maximum. But isn't magic already just messing with reality? Since it ignores science?"

  "To a degree," he says. "Yes. Magic ignores the laws of science to do its own thing, or to influence the laws of science, and many other things. That's how spells work. But what you did is different, you ignored spells and subconsciously changed reality itself. Instead of ignoring its laws, you went straight for altering it. You're almost thirteen, so I'm not going to expect you to understand the difference too well, so don't worry about understanding it. As I said, you've done it before so I'm not too surprised by this."

  "I have?" I ask. "When?"

  "Your baking streams," he answers. "Greyson's device for figuring out recipes for scaled-up batches doesn't quite work when it comes to the size of it. What you do is you subconsciously alter reality in the baked goods to make them rise the amount you think they should. You also do it to keep dog hair from sticking to you."

  "That's not a spell?"

  "It's not a spell," he confirms. "Back to the magic you used in your sleep. Do you remember the feel of how I shifted you back to your human self?"

  "Yeah."

  "If you ever transform again," he says. "You can use that to return to your human self. You're good enough at understanding magic that I'm sure you can figure out how to shift back the way you did before. That said…"

  He looks at Trey for a moment before looking back at me.

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  "As your dad said," he says. "You didn't seem upset by the change itself, but over the idea that you were in trouble for it and that you didn't have pants and underwear that worked with a tail. Does that mean that if your dad is okay with it, you might transform into a wolfkin again sometime?"

  That's a hard question to answer because I actually liked having the tail. It felt really soft and fluffy. The ears were weird and I could hear things even better than normal with them. I didn't even have my phone at my ear when I called Grandpa Adrian and I heard him fine. It was weird, but I did like it. But Trey probably won't let me since I'd need new pants and underwear for when I'm in that form. Plus, it's not me being me, it's me being a wolfkin, which I'm not.

  I have to be honest, though, or I'll get punished.

  "Y-yeah."

  "Trey," Grandpa Adrian looks at him. "Would you have an issue if Xander sometimes transformed, like he did in his sleep earlier."

  "I can't say it makes me comfortable," Trey says. "But as long as it's something like that and not him completely changing himself, I don't have an issue with it. I'm not so sure about his caseworker, though."

  "It doesn't make you comfortable?" I ask.

  That's bad.

  "I don't understand most of the stuff you do with magic," Trey tells me. "I can't even use magic. Most of your magic makes me uncomfortable."

  "But you didn't say anything… I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable," I tell him. "I didn't mean to, I promise! I'm trying to be good! I'm sorry!"

  "Xander," Trey says. "It makes me uncomfortable, yes, but you're not using it to harm people, to cause problems, to break the law, or anything like that. Not only that, but you enjoy it. So while it makes me uncomfortable, I'm not going to restrict you from doing it. That would be the same as telling you that you can't do art, or baking. It's like a hobby to you. If you ever feel like being a wolfkin around the house, you can be."

  "O-okay…"

  "In that case," Grandpa Adrian holds out a hand, and a book appears. "This book contains the information on how to cast the spell to do it. It's cheaper than simply bending reality to your will, and you can revert it more easily as you aren't truly changing your body."

  "What's the difference?" Trey and I ask at the same time.

  "Truly changing your body," he says. "Like you did earlier, changes it on a fundamental level. That is, you can't just 'undo' it. I had to tap into the World Memory to turn you back. By using a spell to simply shift you, your body is only temporarily changed. The change only stays as long as the spell is active. It's cheaper and can be undone simply by canceling the spell. The version in this book will only cost mana to change, so you won't need to constantly feed it more to maintain the shift."

  Grandpa Adrian holds the book out to me until I accept it, then I stare at it.

  "If you learn the proper spell for it," he tells me. "You're less likely to cast it by accident, as well as less likely to use reality-altering magic by accident."

  "O-okay," I say. "Thanks, Grandpa."

  "You're welcome," he smiles at me. "Now, that's all for now, so I'll be going. Have a good rest of your day, Xander."

  "Y-you, too."

  Grandpa Adrian gets up and leaves, and I stare at the book.

  "Xander?" Trey says after a few minutes.

  "Y-yes, Trey?"

  "If you'd like," he says. "I can get some clothes altered for you to account for a tail."

  "B-but why?"

  Questioning adults is bad but that came out before I realized it was going to.

  "So that you have pants and underwear your can wear when you shift," he tells me. "I can even get you swim trunks altered, so you can go swimming in that form."

  "Y-you're really okay with it?"

  "I don't see the harm in it," Trey tells me. "Are you okay with me doing that? So that you can and be comfortable?"

  "Um… y-yeah."

  Please don't be mad.

  "Alright," he says. "I'll contact someone I know to get it done. Depending on their schedule, the new clothes should be ready sometime next week. They might need to do some measurements so they know where to put the tail holes, but we'll figure something out so you can stay comfortable."

  That's full honesty there. Even if me doing magic makes him uncomfortable, he's willing to let me keep doing it and is willing to make sure I stay comfortable in situations that might make me not. He doesn't care that it makes him uncomfortable as long as I'm happy.

  How did I get so lucky with my placement?

  "O-okay," I say. "Thanks."

  "You're welcome," he says. "Was there something you wanted to do this afternoon? Or are going to go back to relaxing?"

  "Um… I wanted to do a stream in Nine Springs," I tell him. "I meant to ask you earlier if I could do it after my nap, but forgot. But maybe now's a bad time to ask."

  Since I just caused a big problem and everything.

  "What kind of stream?" He asks.

  "I want to explore the ruins and see if I can find anything interesting," I answer. "Like, maybe a weird flower or something. Greyson sent me a picture of him and some butterflies he caught yesterday, and it made me want to do this. Well, I didn't see it until after I woke up this morning, but then I had the athletics session this morning, and then I watched the documentary, and then it was lunch, and then my nap."

  "You can do it," he tells me. "I'll moderate chat for you. Do you want me to come with you, or do you want to explore on your own?"

  Does that mean he wants to come with me? Or does he really want to know what I'd prefer? It's hard to figure out. That makes it hard to make sure I word things fine.

  "I-is on my own fine?"

  "It is," he tells me. "Will you teleport or ride your hoverboard there?"

  "Teleport," I answer. "It'll be a lot faster, and that'll give me more time to do it. What time do I need to be back by?"

  "Dinner's at six," he tells me. "So make sure you're back in time to be ready for it."

  "Okay," I say. "Um… thanks for not being mad at my accident."

  "There was nothing wrong with it," he tells me. "It was just an accident, and it didn't cause any harm or problems. Go have fun with your stream, just make sure to give me five minutes' notice before starting so I can moderate."

  "Okay," I say. "Can I hug you?"

  My body really wants me to right now.

  "You can," he holds out an arm.

  I give him a hug, and he wraps an arm around me and pats me on the back.

  "Have fun with your stream, Xander," he tells me.

  "I'll try," I say. "And I'll try to be back before dinner."

  "See you later, Xander."

  "Bye, Dad."

  [Xander – 12 years]

  Okay, I'm at the edge of the furthest I've been into Nine Springs before, I've changed my outfit, my streaming glasses are on, am I forgetting anything? Oh, right, I need to let Dad know that I'm getting ready to stream. He said to tell him five minutes before I start.

  I pull out my phone and text Dad to let him know I'm ready to stream and he texts back "OK". Does that mean it's okay to stream, or do I still need to wait five minutes? It's confusing, so I decide to wait five minutes just to be safe. Almost four minutes after he tells me "OK", he texts me to let me know he's ready for me to start streaming.

  "Okay," I take a deep breath, then remember something else.

  It's better to have a camera focused on me first, so that it's not just me talking to nothing and my viewers just seeing the same thing over and over. Talking to a camera means I have something I can focus on while I'm talking. Being seen on the stream at the start also means my viewers have something other than just the landscape to look at.

  As far as I'm aware, both of those are good things when streaming.

  I open up my backpack and pull out my streaming orb, then set it up. The orb begins to float in front of me and when I begin the stream, its blue iris turns green to signal that it's streaming/recording. Designing the iris to change colors wasn't necessary since I can see via my glasses a stream preview (viewers can't see it), but I did it anyway. What if I'm not using my streaming glasses? And this will probably help others as well, since I do intend on putting the orb on the market once I finish working on it.

  Giving it an AI gave it a little bit of an odd personality, I've found. Fortunately, the AI is run through the magical mind spell, which means it can be altered and adjusted somewhat easily. I'll probably ask Greyson for help if I can't fix the problems with it within a week. He's better at the AI version of it than I am.

  "Hello, everyone," I greet chat. "Xan-Xander here. Let's do the usual talking bit first before I explain what I'm doing. Are these the ruins of Nine Springs? Yeah, but I'll get to why I'm here later. Is it the camera orb that's streaming me? Yeah! I fixed some of its issues, so it shouldn't randomly zoom in on my hair anymore. No, that wasn't something it was doing during the stream with Sig and Carter last week, it was doing it while I was testing some stuff. The AI in it has a personality of its own, but I need to erase that before it can be ready for the market. Otherwise, it can cause issues when someone's streaming or recording and will have inconsistent results for people. It needs to be consistent. Fortunately, we can customize the AI, so I just need to deal with that stuff and we should be fine.

  "How was my day?" I read another message. "Um… confusing and a little scary for a bit, but otherwise, I've had an okay day. My fitness session was good, though. Fitness session? Yeah, I have a fitness session scheduled five times a week right now. It doesn't happen every day they're scheduled as I sometimes skip them for one reason or another, but it's helping me get into shape. At the start of summer, I was really skinny and underweight. At my checkup at the end of the school year, I was only 63 pounds. I have a scale in my bathroom and I weigh myself every day. Right now, I'm 92 pounds, which is both a lot of progress and in the healthy range for my age. I've gained a decent amount of meat, mostly muscle with a little bit of fat. So I've gained 29 pounds during the summer so far. I've grown a few inches, too, though I'm still short. I probably won't be at normal height by the time I turn thirteen, but that's okay. As long as I'm healthy, I'm good, right? And I'm sort-of there. No, it's complicated and I don't want to talk about it.

  "What was the fitness session?" I read another message. "Today was athletics, and Adam had me – Adam's my new fitness instructor – he had me dribbling a basketball and trying to shoot hoops. There was also some jump roping. Yeah, I've got a jump rope in my backpack, I've got a lot of stuff for playing in there. Um… I won't jump rope just for one person."

  Someone asked if I'd show them me jump roping. I don't really feel comfortable doing that, especially since it was just one person. Now a few others are asking. Should I jump rope? I don't know why I feel uncomfortable doing it and one of the reasons I'm doing the streams is for bravery. To do stuff that makes me a little uncomfortable.

  But what if they make fun of my technique? Adam said my form looks good, and I know he was honest, but that doesn't mean everyone will agree. I also don't even really know what he means by "form" when it comes to jump roping.

  "Let's do this," I set up a poll on if I should or not. "You have thirty seconds to vote on if I should jump rope or not."

  The vote ends up being 83.7% of voters saying "yes", so I pull off my backpack and pull out a jump rope, then begin jumping. Small hops. Small hops. Small hops. I use the jump rope for a minute before stopping. When I do, I put my jump rope away and pull my backpack back on.

  "Why was I jumping rope?" I read a message. "You must've just joined. Chat voted on it after I mentioned that I jump rope in some of my fitness sessions. I used to be really bad at it. At the start of summer, I kept tripping and falling. You trip yourself, too? Yeah, it's tricky. I still sometimes do and I'm amazed I didn't this time."

  I continue chatting with my chat until fifteen minutes have passed.

  "Okay," I say. "It's time for the stream stuff now. So as some of you noticed, I'm in Nine Springs again, but I'm alone this time. I've not really been out here except the two streams from before so I don't know the area like a lot of the local kids do. What I want to do today is explore the area and see if I can find anything interesting. I got the idea from Greyson, one of my second-cousins and the Senior Magitech Engineer for Xanson Technologies. He loves collecting insects and herbs and stuff he finds. Well, he usually uses them in alchemy or alloys or enchantments, but still. It made me want to see what I can find out here. To anyone from the area who knows about some interesting things out here, please don't try and tell me where to go or look unless I ask, okay? I want to try and find stuff on my own. And now, I'll begin!"

  I switch the camera to my glasses, though I set the streaming orb to follow me just in case I want to switch over to that for something.

  Ready to go, I set off and start exploring the ruins, looking closely in a lot of spots for things. It takes me about sixteen minutes to find the first thing that interests me. A small cluster of flowers grows out of the side of some rubble. The tips of their yellow petals have green, powder-looking orbs hanging off of them.

  "Is it edible?" I mutter. "It looks edible. Chat, why are you freaking out?"

  They suddenly started going "NO" for some reason.

  "What?" I ask. "No, I'm not going to eat it. I was going to see if Greyson's database has it. I think I set it up to access it like this?"

  I navigate the menus in my HUD until I access the "search database" feature, then I draw a box around the flower in my vision and tap on the box. The program scans the database and… success! This is something Greyson has in it!

  "So it looks like it is edible," I say. "And is loved by certain breeds of foxes. It growing doesn't mean one of those breeds lives nearby, but it does mean that if they do live nearby, you can use the flower as bait. You've just got to hope the foxes don't try to kill you, because they're magical breeds that can throw spells. Okay! Let's look for something else that's interesting."

  For the next hour, I continue looking to see if I can find interesting things. After about an hour, I sense a very interesting mana shift. There's quite a lot of mana appearing somewhere really close by and it's heavily attuned to spatial magic.

  "I can feel a surge of mana over this way," I tell chat. "Let's go see what it is. But sneakily, in case it's monsters fighting."

  If monsters are fighting using dimensional magics, they might be tearing space itself. Whatever that feels like, I do not want to learn firsthand.

  I sneak over to where I can feel the mana surge and peek out from behind the ruins of a building. What I'm seeing probably isn't visible to the normal eye, but I can see it clear as day. Rather than monsters fighting, it's just a surge all on its own.

  "So you probably can't see it," I say. "But there's a massive gathering of mana right there for some reason. It's a big swirl and it's coming from… elsewhere. Not here. Oh. That's dimensional magic energies that's in it, too. I noticed that when I started feeling it, but I'm not sure if I said it yet or not. So there's spatial magic involved in whatever that is."

  The mana surges and a wave of magic ripples out. As it does, a split in space forms, almost perfectly spherical. It's completely black except right at the very edges, where there's a thin layer of white light. The light itself can only be seen around the edges of what I can see rather than everywhere, even when I move around.

  What a strange effect.

  "That's a lot of mana," I say. "Not as much as I have, or as much as I released when I accidentally caused that panic the other week. But what is that? Let's look at it in the database. Scanning… oh. That's what Rifts look like? I thought they'd look more… like cracks in the air. Not big spheres of nothing. They lead to other worlds, right? Should I peek in and see what it's like there? Hm? Chat, why are you freaking out? Oh, I said that out loud, didn't I? Oh, right, this says that monsters come through them. None have yet, but maybe there's a little delay? No wonder you're freaking out. Well, can't be having that. Here we go."

  I gesture with my hands as I weave together a spell. For the spell, I base it on what I saw as the Rift formed as well as what I know of spatial magics. Black and purple energy flows out of my hands and to the Rift, seeping into it and swirling around it. After about thirty seconds, the entire Rift fades away.

  "There we go!" I say. "Threat neutralized. That was actually really interesting. So you guys couldn't see it, but the way the mana moved to form the Rift, and the magics that made it up, were really neat. There's even a sort of… filter, I want to say? That prevents each side from affecting the other. I mean, stuff can still pass through and affect things that way, but like, if one side is scorching hot and the other isn't, the scorching hot side won't heat up the not-scorching hot side. And if I read the magics right, I think it even prevents diseases from crossing over, which is really neat. Means no alien diseases will come here, and we can't put any there. And I think it also protects those crossing through from the diseases on the other side. Anyway, let's get back to looking for interesting things."

  Less than an hour after I close the Rift and return to looking for stuff, military folks show up. Some of them are the same ones from when I accidentally set off the alarm before, so I'm guessing they're here because of the Rift that opened up.

  "You'll need to vacate the area, kid," a soldier I don't recognize from last time says. "We've detected a Rift in the area, which means that monsters may be pouring out. We're currently working on locating the Rift and securing the zone."

  "That's not the proper order," the other soldier says. "Kid, this area is a danger zone due to the presence of a Rift. You'll need to vacate. Before that, have you spotted any signs of a Rift? We're currently working on locating it, but any help would be appreciated. They're masses of darkness, and the edges of what you can see have a thin film of light. The air around them may be distorted as well."

  "The Rift was down that road," I point. "Take a right at the next intersection and it was right in the middle of the street. But I closed it up because I didn't want monsters to come out. Now, you're interrupting my stream, so go away."

  Oops. I just told soldiers to go away.

  "A Rift isn't something you can just close," the first soldier says. "They're a level of dimensional magic not yet understood by even our best mages."

  "Clearly, the best mages you know don't know me," I say. "I closed it. Now seriously, you can check my stream. The timestamp is at approximately one hour and nineteen minutes. Lemme just teleport you to where the Rift was."

  "You can't-"

  I teleport both of them to where the Rift was. Clearly, I can.

  "Jeez," I say. "So rude. Okay, chat, let's get back to it."

  Some of the other soldiers talk with me as I continue looking for interesting things, but no one makes me go away. That seems to only be something the first pair wanted to do.

  "We received orders from higher up," one of the soldiers tells me when I ask about that. "Seems your story about closing the Rift is being accepted, but we're still checking the area, just in case."

  So someone does have brains.

  "Okay," I say. "Well, you all keep interrupting my stream by approaching me, so can you stop? It's really annoying."

  "I'll… see what we can do."

  "Thank you."

  They stop bothering me after that. I really hope that means someone higher up is keeping an eye on my stream, saw me get annoyed, and sent in another order. That would mean there's someone with a real brain among them.

  By the time I need to get ready to head home, I've found more than a dozen interesting plants and insects. The thirteenth and final one is a beetle that's hanging out on the wall of a building, with an iridescent body that reminds me of bubbles. According to Greyson's database… its shell is useful in making bubble bath liquid.

  "He's got some weird notes in here," I mutter, which causes chat to type in the things they do when they're amused.

  At least, I think that's what the various messages mean.

  "It's true," I say as I close the info box about the beetle. "I mean, I know he loves bubble baths and prefers to make his own stuff for it, but I didn't realize he used beetle shells when making the liquid for it.

  "Anyway," I move away from the wall and shift the streaming orb in front of me before switching to its camera. "It's time for me to head home and get ready for dinner. Thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoyed. Have a good time, everyone, and bye."

  I wave to the camera, then end the stream and let out a big breath.

  "Whew," I say. "That was exhausting. But also fun. Okay. Time to head home."

  I hope dinner's delicious.