[Greyson 10 years]

"Ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum! Da da da da da! Ba-dum ba-badum ba-dum! Da da da da da!"

"Greyson?" Professor Mitchell says, and I stop singing to look at him. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting until I'm released!" I swing my feet a little.

They don't quite reach the ground when I'm sitting on this bench. Cody and Finn are swinging their legs, too.

It's the first weekend after my one-month mark here, so I can finally leave and go home and visit Cal and Xander and my dads and Travis! And that means I can finally make Xander's birthday present, too, even though it's a couple of weeks late!

But it's taking sooo long for them to grant me permission. School let out eight minutes ago and I've been sitting on the bench for the past three! Cody and Finn are waiting with me even though they can't join me when I leave.

Their parents are considering granting permission for me to teleport them to my place for next weekend, though. It'll be my birthday and my dads are throwing a party. It'll also be my first real party that's not just Cal buying a cake and some ice cream. He didn't start working until October so he didn't have money of his own for my last birthday. The only sad part to it is that I have to share it with Henry.

That's next weekend, though. This weekend is only special because I can finally return home and see all the people I care about! But it really is taking forever for him to give me permission to leave.

It's not as if he has to wait for someone to pick me up, I can just teleport away.

"Just a little bit longer," Professor Mitchell tells me.

"Okay!" I look at Cody and Finn. "Let's sing together! Muffiiiins! Ready! It's time to march! It's time to march! It's time to march on into battle!"

Professor Mitchell only lets us get through the first two verses of the muffin cartoon's march-into-battle song before telling me I can go home.

"But make sure you're back by five PM on Sunday," he tells me. "Any later than that will result in permission for leaving to get revoked for awhile."

"Understood!" I hop off of the bench and pull on my backpack. "See you Sunday, Cody! Finn!"

"Have fun!" They tell me, then I teleport right to Cal, startling him and the other Cal.

They're almost to Cal's car in the parking lot at their school.

"Oof!" Cal exclaims as I hug him. "Greyson? Hugging?"

"I missed you so much!" I tell him. "And hi, Kale!"

"Hey, Grey Boy," Kale says.

"Cal," Cal rolls his eyes as he gives me an awkward pat on my back. "Don't encourage the nicknames. I'm fairly sure he'll just come up with more if you do."

"I don't mind," Kale chuckles.

Cal feels exasperated, and I just snicker at that as I release him.

"They released you fairly early."

"They didn't even let me finish the muffin march song!"

"How many times have they heard it?"

"Only three times today!"

Both Cals laugh at that.

"You coming home with us?" Cal asks.

"I'll ride with you!" I tell him. "But then I'm gonna head to the workshop so I can make Xander's birthday present! I wasn't able to make it while I was at school so I gotta do it before I see him again! And that's gotta be today so it's as close to his birthday as I can manage! I've learned so much that'll make it even better than before!"

"Alright," Cal chuckles. "Come on!"

They get into the front seat of his car while I buckle myself into the middle seat in the back, then tell them about my new friends and some of the classes at school. Cal takes a little bit longer of a route than normal, probably so that we can talk for longer before I head off to the workshop.

It's not as if we won't see each other again later, but I don't mind. This is fun!

"Oh!" I exclaim as we go through the area where I first faced-off against the bear. "Is the bear still in the area?"

"He is," Kale tells me. "But he's swapped to water-filled balloons now. People are thinking he's run out of honey."

"Really?" I asked. "Water-filled balloons?"

"Yeah," Cal answers. "And he cleans up the balloon bits now, too. Nobody knows what he's doing with them, they just vanish. There's speculation he's teleporting them somewhere, but he could just as easily be destroying them with magic. That's apparently a spell."

"Oh, yeah, I can do that one," I say. "But Grandfather Adrian gave me a very thick binder with rules on what I'm allowed to use it for and what I'm not allowed to use it for. And by 'very thick', I mean that it's a multi-binder set. I've got it on a shelf at the workshop."

Which isn't fair! There are so many things it's useful for cleaning up that I can't use it on anymore! Not that I used it very much to begin with as I only learned it because Xander taught it to me as a cleaning spell before realizing that it could be used in other ways.

That was my fault for mentioning it… so he called Grandfather Adrian, who then put the rules into place.

"So he ran out of honey?" I ask. "I still don't understand what he was doing. Maybe he stopped because he realized he was wasting it? But he's still a threat, so I'll try and take care of him again this weekend if I can get his location for the day."

The bear changes it every day, so people don't know where he'll be until reports are made on his location.

"That said," I say. "He could be teleporting them. He does teleport when I try to kill him, so that's definitely a possibility. Also manipulates time and is definitely a mind mage, too. But I want to take care of him instead of getting Grandfather Adrian involved. How much longer until we get home?" I start bouncing. "I wanna get to the workshop!"

"Alright," Cal chuckles. "You were telling me about the griffins before you got reminded about the bear."

"Yeah," I nod. "After I make Xander his present and deliver it to him, I'm gonna go deal with the griffins who were misbehaving, then visit Travis and our dads! But it was so cool that they're letting me take my friends on griffin rides when one comes and visit!"

"How come I've never gotten to go on one?" Kale asks.

"Oh!" I say. "I can see if they're okay with you going for a ride, too!"

We reach home after a few more minutes of Cal driving, then I tell them I'll see them later before teleporting to the workshop… and promptly find myself bounced into the ocean.

"Oof!" I exclaim as I teleport up into the sky and look around. "Ack! Giant sea serpent!"

And it's not hiding its mana like the bear does, so I can detect it with my magesight! It's a lot stronger than me! Run away! Run away!

I teleport to outside of my workshop, but get bounced right back to where I got bounced to before.

"Oh, come on!"

I teleport further away from the workshop and use magic to dry myself off, then walk up to it, but very cautiously.

Thankfully, the barrier doesn't bounce me away as I reach it. When I enter the workshop, I find Xander working at his station, wearing his magitech glasses rather than his regular ones. Other than that, he looks the same as usual – jeans, a plain green long-sleeved shirt, and sneakers. Also bracelets and… three necklaces.

Whoa. Xander's starting to get style.

"Xaaaaandeeeer!" I whine. "Why'd you change the barrier again? I got face-to-face with a giant sea serpent!"

"Sorry!" Xander exclaims. "I forgot to key you in again! Grandpa Adrian's challenged me to try and make it so that he can't teleport in and I keep upgrading it and I must've forgotten to key you back in! The leviathan didn't eat you, did it?"

Even if it wasn't an accident, it would be fine. I just wanted to complain but Xander's a god. He can do whatever he wants. But since it was an accident, I'm not upset any longer. Accidents happen.

"Uh… no?" I answer as I approach him. "Okay! I'll just teleport to outside of the barrier until you let me know it's fixed. Whatcha making?"

"A mana converter," he snaps a panel on and flips the converter around, then holds it out to me. "Here. Channel mana into this until it beeps."

"Okay!" I accept the converter and start channeling mana into it. "By the way, did you hear about the bear? It's gotten your friends with honey, hasn't it? Are they happy it's using water now instead of honey?"

"Yeah," Xander answers. "Did you try and fight him?"

"Yeah!" I nod. "But he made me burn up all my mana trying! Did Cal tell you?"

"No," Xander answers. "He just said he's only gotten one person to play with him, and I figured that since he was misunderstanding stuff like I do, maybe he'd misunderstood that. And since it was someone who could keep up with a bear with his magics… it was probably you."

The bear messed with Xander and lived? Whoa. He's so merciful.

"You talked with him?"

"A little bit," Xander pulls some more materials over and starts fiddling with them. "He tried throwing a balloon at me, but decided not to for some reason. I got annoyed with him and told him off a bit. And now he fills them with water. Oh, but he did give me a jar of his honey. I think it was a bribe? But I'm not sure what he was trying to bribe me about. It tastes good, though."

"That's cool!" I say. "So you come here after your afternoon streams?"

"Sometimes," he answers. "But usually after dinner, not the streams. Most school days, I go to Sig's. On Friday's, it's to whoever's hosting the sleepover. That would be Sig's place this week, but he's going on another hunting trip and has to leave early, while Isaac's visiting his mom's and got picked up right after school. So there's no sleepover tonight."

Now that I know what it's like to have friends, I don't ever want to not be able to hang out with them during the normal hangout times. This weekend is fine since I'm visiting family but if it's in one of our normal times after school and one of them got sick or something, I'd probably figure out how to heal them so that we could hang out.

"Aww," I say. "Not getting to hang out with friends isn't fun! How much mana can this thing take? The display is already at over 50,000."

"I want to see if it can take a quarter-million."

"Oh, okay!" I answer. "Wait. Hey! Also, what's a mana converter?"

"It converts mana of one type into mana of another type," he answers. "I can do that already, but I don't want to have to do it myself every time. It shouldn't need more than one percent extra to do the conversion, if I designed it correctly. And there shouldn't be a loss of more than ten percent. So if it works, you'll have to put in 252,500 mana and it'll create a mana crystal with 225,000. It should strip out all of the magical aspects from your mana's nature, creating a pure mana crystal, then convert it into a plant mana crystal."

I stare at the device as the counter continues to tick up and when it dings, I stop putting my mana in. It's easy to tell what little mana I continued after was wasted, and the counter's at exactly as much drawn out as Xander stated.

"Thanks!" Xander pulls the crystal out and examines it.

I can't judge mana crystals as well as he can, but he seems rather satisfied with the dark green crystal marked with some brown, vine-like patterns running through it.

"Here," a small piece of it breaks off of it and floats over to me. "For your garden. If you grind it up and sprinkle it into the soil, it should probably boost growth rate and the bounty by a little."

"Xander?"

"Yes?"

"Why did you want to make one of those?"

"For my greenhouse," he answers. "Dad let me get one built and it's mostly done now, I've just got to get the watering system set up. And no, you're not allowed in. I've put on some very strict wards to keep out people who aren't authorized to be in. But it has expanded space, areas for different climates and seasons, and magical crops. It's being overseen by a plant person, and magical creatures and another type of plant person are working it."

I have many questions. Where do I begin?

"What's the watering system?"

"Magitech sprinklers the shrubs can turn on as they feel necessary," he answers. "Including controls for each specific section. Water mana crystals will be its fuel, which is another thing the mana converters will do."

He gets a thoughtful look on his face, which is… actually concerning. It's not his usual slight expression, it's like what I'd see a normal person have when they get thoughtful.

"Maybe I could do that instead?" He mutters. "I'll check," he shakes his head. "Anyway, thanks for testing the converter for me!"

"You're welcome!" I tell him. "I'm gonna make your birthday present now! Will you still be here in an hour?"

"I just have to be home by dinnertime," he informs me. "Grandma and Grandpa Caldwell are gonna be there and Dad said I have to be there, too."

"Okay," I say. "I should be done by then!"

I walk over to my work station and set the plant mana crystal fragment down… and see a curious-looking cube sitting on my desk. Xander rarely puts something on my desk but I'm betting this is from him. What are these markings on it?

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Oh! It's a puzzle! But why does it need me to put mana into it to use?

By the time I finish solving it, half an hour's passed and I realize I got completely distracted. As I set it down, Xander mutters under his breath.

"Maybe I should've made it more difficult?"

He's doing something on one of his computers. Is he making another game? The last one had the right difficulty level! Though upping the difficulty on it could definitely be fun as well.

Well, it's time for me to work on his birthday present, too!

I get to work on it, making sure to use my temporal acceleration spell for it. By the time I'm done, it's perfect!

"Xander!" I say when I reach the edge of his workstation, though he's already staring at me. He started once he noticed me approaching. "Happy belated birthday! I would've gotten this to you sooner, but I wasn't able to come here and make it! And I didn't make it before I left for the academy because I wanted to use what I learned there to help! And that's made it even better than if I'd made it before!"

Xander reaches over his worktable and accepts the gift from me, then examines it for a few minutes while I await his reaction. His expression is unreadable and his emotions are completely hidden. That's definitely partially from him being a superior mind mage to me, but I can't feel them even if I try as hard as I can.

Which means that Grandfather Adrian must have taught him some mind-shielding spells. He must be deliberately allowing his mind to be felt, even if his emotions aren't.

"Thanks," Xander says. "I do like having a new extra phone… but why does it have a 'blow things up from a distance' functionality?"

"Because explosions are cool!" I tell him.

"…and if I accidentally blow something up with that?"

The feature lets him just aim his camera at something, tap an icon on the screen, and it'll use explosive magics on that item. There are zero fail-safes to prevent it from being triggered accidentally.

And a person might accidentally turn on the camera on their phone without realizing it. And bump an icon on the screen without realizing it.

Controlled explosions are fine. Accidentally ones are not.

"Oh."

"I'll remove that feature," he says. "But I do like the phone. And you made it so the password can be up to twenty-seven characters! That's much better than the sixteen maximum on the phone Dad gave me."

"It's three cubed!" I say. "And you really like the number three, so it makes sense to do that! Oh! Also, did Osburc break or something? He's not the one you're using for Xanson TV, is he?"

The computer hasn't spoken once since I arrived, which is definitely strange.

"He's not," Xander says. "And why do you think he's broken? You haven't touched the mega-computer since getting back."

"But he hasn't greeted me," I look at the computer. "He's greeted me every time I show up lately."

"Oh, that," Xander says. "I muted him after you left. He kept talking to me."

"You don't like him talking to you?"

"He's creepy!"

"I'll talk with him about that," I tell him. "It was nice seeing you again! I'm gonna go deal with some misbehaving griffins! Well, I gotta find out how long they were misbehaving for, then I'll deal with them. Unless you dealt with them? I told him to go to you if they really crossed a line."

"None did," Xander says. "And I didn't agree to that!"

"Oh," I say. "I guess I should've asked you first. Sorry! Anyway, I'm gonna go punish the bad griffins! See you!"

I try to teleport out, only to get reminded that Xander's upgraded the wards as I find myself in the ocean again.

Please key me back in today…

I head to the griffins from the ocean and dry myself off with magic again, then find out which griffins were the ones misbehaving and how many days it was, then deliver their punishment. By the time I finish, they're feeling extremely sorry and have stopped begging me to stop plucking their feathers and healing them back in.

"And next time, I'll shave you all bald, too!"

I return home, where the rest of my family is preparing for dinner. Plucking and healing four griffins over and over took more time than I expected.

"Ugh," Henry groans when I appear in the dining room. "You really are back."

"Back and smarter than before!" I say. "And Xander liked his birthday present, Cal! Kale! Let's wrestle while we wait!"

"Why do you like wrestling him so much?" Henry snaps. "You had an issue with me wrestling with someone his age! But you wrestle him all the time!"

What? Why is he bringing that up?

"But what that dude did wasn't wrestling," I say. "It was perverted grooming stuff. That's why I let Cal know about it and then fed him to a griffin. The pervert, not Cal. Obviously."

"It was wrestling!" Henry snaps. "And he loved me! You obviously don't! That's why you made him go away!"

"I didn't make him go away!" I snap. "I used him as a test subject for some stuff, then fed him to griffins! Alive! He was grooming you! Groo! Ming! You! Wait! Is this why you hate me? Because I got rid of that creep?"

When Cal started working at the Wolf's Dragon, one of his classmates who lived in the trailer park we did offered to help watch us. I ignored him and Travis just hang out with some of his classmates, but Henry got babysat a lot. And then I realized that the guy was not treating Henry appropriately.

Nobody messes with my family. So I used mind magic to figure out everything he'd done and while he hadn't crossed all of the lines Xander's old foster family had, he was definitely planning on it. And he's already crossed some lines. In fact, it turned out that he'd already been grooming Henry for a couple of months by that point.

So I let Cal know about it – that's what led to Cal's mental breakdown at work – and got rid of the freak.

Thankfully, we're in a better situation now where someone being in the position to do something like that is a lot less likely. I've also made sure some of my ninja are keeping an eye on Henry to make sure no one else takes advantage of him.

As much as I hate him, he's still my brother. No one is going to hurt him without my permission. Or Xander's or Grandpa Adrian's.

"You're clearly not paying attention in therapy!" I tell him. "You need to-"

"Boys!" Papa interrupts me. "Not tonight!"

"Yeah!" I look at Henry. "No ruining the mood! Come on, Kale! Let's wrestle! Oh, wait! Lemme put on the strength-dampener Xander gave me awhile back, that'll make it easier for me to not have to focus as much on not breaking you in half."

"I appreciate that," Kale snorts as Cal rolls his eyes. "No using magic to cheat, though!"

"No guarantees!"

[Xander – 13 years]

Dad grants me permission to make a stop so that I can potentially adjust the watering system plans before I come home. He doesn't ask me what those plans are, so I'm assuming that means I don't need to tell him. But this might be one of those times I should since it's me adjusting them really heavily.

But he didn't ask and it's not in the list of things I need to say when asking for permission, so that means it's fine.

Since I have permission, I finish keying Greyson into the wards (whoops), then teleport into the sky in the Autumn Realm. This time, I teleport high above the clouds, then touch my shirt and send it into a stasis bracelet.

A pair of wings sprout from my back, then I realize I should probably change into swim trunks, just in case, so I conjure an opaque barrier around me for privacy as I do that.

The air here is a little bit chilly due to the height and decreasing temperatures as autumn nears. With me now in swim trunks, I'm really feeling the cold. A temperature regulation spell wrapped around my body solves that, though.

Alright. Now I'm ready to do this.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, then soar downwards, remembering to open my eyes after a few moments. Then, I begin exploring the sky around here. The instigated rains have ceased but I'm sure he's still in the area. Not all of the water and storm elementals drawn by his actions have left yet.

It takes me about five minutes but I manage to locate the cloud beast who was instigating the frequent and heavy rains and storms.

He begins fleeing while throwing lightning, snow, icicles, and water at me. I just soar straight through them. This speed and height is already a lot for me, so I'm just going to brute-force things rather than try to focus on defending.

The faster this is over, the better.

"Gotcha!" I grab the cloud beast, making sure to use the spell which allows me to. "Stop struggling! I have a request to make! Stop already! I will bite you again! I just want to talk and make a request!"

He finally stops struggling.

"Thank you!" I say. "So I'm getting a greenhouse set up with spatial expansion magic so that I can have a variety of things growing in it, with different sections for different climates and seasons. Technically a small production, it's just so that my parents and I can have fresh produce all around the year, and magical ones that would normally be more expensive or difficult to source. I'm a temporal, spatial, and mind mage with some other aspects, and a lot of the foods that're going to be grown in it will be for the tastes of someone like me. In other words, with at least one of the magical aspects I have in my bloodline.

"It requires a watering system," I tell him. "I was going to make a magitech one which uses water magic crystals for it. But a little bit ago, I had the idea to ask you if you wanted to work for me. You're not allowed to cause any problems and are only allowed to water the way the shrubs and Berry say, but you'll get to let water out without bothering people. And you'll get to absorb the water which evaporates up into the air, too.

"What'll happen if you disobey?" I repeat his question. "Do I really need to answer that question?"

He decides not, which I'm grateful for as I don't know what I'd do. I still don't know what I would've done if he'd kept causing problems over here, I just know that he would not have liked it.

Why? Because if I couldn't come up with something for me to do to make it a severe enough punishment, I'd just ask Grandpa Adrian to deal with it. And I'm fairly certain he would make sure the cloud beast regretted ever causing issues.

"So?" I ask. "Do you wanna come work for me?"

The cloud beast agrees to it, so I conjure a barrier so I can change back to human and out of my swim trunks. He condenses himself down to a cloud barely twice the size of my head when I ask him to, then I teleport us home. I greet the guard at the gate and enter and when I enter the house, Dad, Mom, and Grandma and Grandpa Caldwell are talking in the living room.

"Hello, Xander!" Grandma Caldwell starts to rise, then her gaze fixes on the cloud beast. "Xander?"

"Hello, Grandma and Grandpa Caldwell," I greet them. "I'm back, Dad, Mom. Yes, Grandma Caldwell?"

"Why do you have a cloud following you?"

"This is -," I introduce him. "He's a cloud beast and I've hired him to work in the greenhouse as the watering system. It's a lot simpler to just hire one of them than to build an entire magitech watering system, as long as he listens to Berry and the shrubs."

"Berry?" She asks.

"Hello!" Berry greets her from the pot he's snuggled inside of, causing her to jump. "I'm Berry!"

"A talking plant?" Grandpa Caldwell asks.

"He's a person, too," I say. "Humans aren't the only people on Earth, and his people either live in their own communities or in Grandpa Adrian's farming facilities. And he's promised to behave. He doesn't know what will happen if he doesn't and I'm fairly certain he doesn't want to learn."

"Hi!" Berry pokes out an arm and waves. "Nice to meet you! I'm -!" He listens to the cloud beast for a few moments, then bursts into laughter. "You really thought shooting lightning at Xander would actually do anything? Dude! He could literally eat you!"

Berry starts laughing even harder.

"Xander?" Dad asks.

"Yes, Dad?"

"What's the cloud beast saying?"

"He just told Berry that I ate all of his mana the first time I chased after him as punishment for instigating the frequent and heavy rains and storms over in the Autumn Realm."

"I'm adding several things to the list," Dad mutters.

"Berry," I say. "Wanna take - over to the greenhouse and show him his new home?"

"Sure!" Berry emerges from the pot and waves to the cloud beast. "Come on! Let's go!"

Berry and the cloud beast leave and I look at Dad.

"Xander?" Grandma Caldwell finally speaks again. "When you said the cloud beast's name, and when Berry introduced himself, I couldn't hear anything."

"Oh," I say. "Yeah, that happens to normal people when things are said with magic. Their real names don't actually have sounds. That's why Berry picked a name for himself that humans can understand. I'll see if the cloud beast wants to go by a name that normal people can understand. You're staying the night tonight, right? Can we do a scavenger hunt again after dinner? I made up a list for you and Grandpa Caldwell to do so that it's not just me."

"Is that why you were wandering around the house with a clipboard yesterday?" Dad asks.

"Yeah."

Mom bursts out laughing for some reason, though she does feel really amused.

"I'd love to do that," Grandma Caldwell tells me.

"Okay," I look at Dad. "Can we? After dinner?"

"Sure," Dad answers.

"Okay!" I say. "Is it time to start cooking? We're grilling, right?"

"We are," Dad answers. "Are you helping me tonight?"

"You said I could, right?" I ask. "If that's still allowed, then yeah."

"It is," Dad chuckles. "Come on, let's go get set up."

As we start pulling ingredients and dishes out of the fridge and cabinets, my phone pings with a text from Greyson.

[Mega Dork Boy]: Found out why Henry hates me. He's such an idiot.

Oh, good. He's stopped changing his name in my contacts. Though maybe it's because I set a nickname for him this time?

Just as I finish reading that message, the next one from Greyson arrives and it's explaining the reason.

One which makes me freeze up.

"Xander?" Dad asks. "What's wrong?"

[Greyson – 10 years]

Dad and Papa attempted to say that I couldn't go swimming because it's chilly now. It's true, it's only 64 Fahrenheit here, but that's because it's the middle of September and Autumn is a week away. That's not cold enough to make me shiver.

Cal pointed out that if I really wanted to go swimming, I'd just go somewhere else and swim, like the woods. Unsupervised. At least they'd know what I'm really up to here. And Cal is seventeen and is only restricted to home when he's grounded, which is never. So he could just go swimming in the woods or something if he wanted to.

So Dad and Papa gave in, and now Cal, Kale, and I are playing in the pool. Travis left for a sleepover with friends once dinner ended so he's not here, and Henry wasn't invited to join us. Henry tried hitting me again after dinner so he's grounded again.

And Travis is going to a party first, but he didn't tell Dad and Papa about it. I thought about doing so, but it's not like I tell them everything I do. Some of my ninja have already assured me that they'll make sure nothing bad happens to him while he's there.

His friend group wouldn't do anything like alcohol without supervision and permission from their guardians, but peer pressure can be a tricky thing. And so is getting drugged by someone else. So the ninja are keeping an eye on him and his friends to make sure they're safe.

I've now changed into my swim trunks and am waiting for Cal and Kale to come out of Cal's room from changing into theirs. I think they're making out, so thank the gods they're using Cal's room rather than doing it on the couch. Kissing is super gross and I don't want to ever do that, not even when I grow up.

When I told that to the Cals last time I saw them making out, they just snorted and said to give it a few years. I'm just going to give them space.

So now I'm just waiting for them. As they finally come out of Cal's room, someone arrives at the house.

"Dad?" I look over to him. He and Papa are both on the deck. "Someone's here. His mind feels really calm and collected, and also collected and concerned."

"I'll go check," Papa gets up and heads inside.

I stare at the house for a few minutes. He talks with whoever the guest is, then gets Henry from his room. The man and Henry start talking with Papa off to the side. Is that children's services? Or maybe he's getting put in a psych hospital?

"Greyson?" Cal grabs my attention. "We're going to play, right?"

"Right!" I charge to the pool and jump in. "Come on! Come on!"

The Cals join me in the pool, then we start playing a game where they try launching me into the deeper water. Dad really doesn't like this and is worried about me hitting my head, but I remind him that I didn't even get brain damage when eating an explosive powerful enough to wipe out the town. Bonking my head on concrete because Kale threw me further than he thought he could won't even faze me if it happens.

That doesn't stop Dad's concern, though.

We play this for awhile, then chase each other around the pool before switching to a water gun fight. Well, they're using water guns and I'm using magic. Cal's learning how to use water magics for this but isn't good enough to join me in this yet, and Kale is kind of average when it comes to magic so he's a ways off from being able to keep up with me for this.

So they get water guns.

About an hour and a half after the guest arrives, he leaves and Henry and Papa come out. I stopped paying attention to them because of the playing, but Henry feels a lot different now. Subdued and… guilty? And apologetic?

All things he never feels.

"Greyson?" Henry asks when he nears the edge of the pool.

"What?"

"I'm sorry," he says. "I shouldn't have tried to hit you. Or insulted you. Or when I have hit you. Or bitten you. Or called you mean things. Or been mean to you. You were just trying to protect me."

What the heck? Where is this coming from? Did that man use mind magics on him? But the ninja surely would've done a background check once he was let into the house.

I quickly poke at my twin's mind and can't find any traces of someone having altered his mind at all. This isn't something I'm good at doing but I'm fairly certain I'd see traces of it if someone had.

Henry is actually genuinely apologetic. Just who was that man and what kind of magic did he work that it didn't even need magic?

"I don't forgive you."

"Grey-" Dad starts to reprimand me, but Papa shakes his head at him and he stops.

"I know," Henry says quietly. "I'm still sorry."

He turns around and goes back inside, and I stare at him until he's out of view.

"What was that about?" I ask Papa.

"Did you tell Xander about what happened?"

"Yeah," I nod. "I texted him earlier about it. Why? I doubt he could do something like that."

"He apparently knows a really good therapist," Papa says. "And asked him if he could come talk to Henry because of whatever you told him."

"I just told him about why Henry hates me and how he's dumb and a mega idiot," I say. "Xander sees a therapist?"

Didn't Xander hate therapists? When did that change?

"Landon isn't able to say," Papa says. "Doctor-patient confidentiality and all that. All he said was that he was asked by Xander to come and talk with Henry. I don't know what Landon and Henry talked about as he put up a sound barrier which only affects quieter noises, such as talking. Said that if Henry screamed, I'd still hear it, and he let me watch from a distance even if I couldn't hear. Whatever it was he talked about with Henry, your brother deflated within fifteen minutes. He asked me who Henry's regular therapist was, then said he should continue seeing him for awhile, but it seems like Henry's finally accepted things."

"Which is good," I say. "But it still doesn't excuse his actions."

"Greyson-" Dad begins.

"David," Papa looks at him. "Landon told both of us that Greyson might not forgive him, after all his brother's done to him. Repairing broken bonds doesn't happen with just an apology."

"Papa used Dad's real name," I say to Cal.

"You go back to playing," Papa tells me.

"Okay!" I look at Cal and Kale. "This time, both of you work together to throw me as high as you can!"

"Let's not!" Dad and Papa say in unison, causing the Cals to start laughing.

"And I'll use magic to triple the height for an even better splash!"

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