After a good night’s sleep, I wake up with a plan, as well as a familiar weight on top of me. Well, on top of my legs, and judging by this numb feeling I will get crazy pins and needles when I free them. Wait, how is she even lying? Her head is resting on one one my feet, with her upper body on my legs, with one leg off the bed and one (almost) reaching my face.

That looks uncomfortable. I form a mind bond, brute forcing through the natural resistance of someone who’s neither fighting back nor assisting. She seems to naturally ‘trust’ my mana, if not by much, otherwise I don’t think I’d be able to force the bond. Good thing, I suppose, that you need to either be vastly more powerful, or have the target be willing.

With control over her body I move her off of me, instead splaying her out in a much more comfortable position after I get out of bed. All right, now that I’m freed from the horrible clutches of my furry companion, I can- Aaaaagh, the pins’n’needles!

I draw a sharp breath and power my way over to my chair and the clothes on top of it, plopping down on the floor to help my blood getting to my legs. Ow-ow… Right, the plan. Well, plans. For one I’ve started tracking sightings of the sky whales (there appear to be a couple solitary ones and a few ‘pods’(groups)). That way I know where they are, and might be able to infer where they are going.

I also want to get an aspect for experimenting with puppets. The animal in question should be small and have relatively short life-cycles, but should still somewhat resemble humans. In other words, a mammal, which means the obvious target is lab mice, for the same reason they are used as such. Now that I have a couple contact who do science, I should be able to get close enough to some to learn the aspect.

Other than that there’s Leda’s egg, and I have some ideas for it, which is why I want something to test on beforehand. I’m still looking into mana physique, and I want to train up how much mana I can use and control, so I’ll have Leda help me with that.

Oh, and I want to improve my mana sense so that I can, at the very least, get a sense of what material something is made of. Well, I want to be able to sense inside my body and detect where bones and organs are, so that I can use that for studying mana physique, as well as find out a bit more on how shapeshifting actually works.

Anything else, anything else… Well, I’m probably going to be pulled into something or another, more research, the government seems to be doing stuff (I mean, when even I get the news…), and so forth. But before any of that: Breakfast. And business. In that order, though I can multitask well enough to think about what to do while eating.

Six small ‘faerie’ puppets and an androgynous ‘angel’ form (with optional gray-feathered wings out of the back) for the dramatic flair. Well, that and some flashy magic. Masking is nice to set up without drawing attention, but after that I’d want the opposite. Masking is kinda like the misdirection (old) magicians use to hide their tricks, or rather to pull attention to other places. Why can’t I do that with the same magic?

So that’s why I’m out on the streets practicing the ability, which has now been renamed to [Mind Magic: Misdirection]. I hide myself, and after some effort, manage to draw people’s attention to other things, which includes a puppet of a pigeon, ‘cus those are everywhere and you don’t notice them unless they try to steal your food or something.

It’s interesting, the thing with abilities getting new names or ‘mutating’. Sometimes, like now, abilities are renamed as you think up a new name, or perhaps realize it can do more than you knew. But they can also do that without getting a new name. A few people online have reported that a couple abilities merged into one, though almost always they were already pretty close and other people people already had the resulting ability.

Well, there’s still more to learn on that front. More interestingly is the fact that if you name an ability, people get some understanding of what you mean and what it does, even if they’ve never heard about the ability, or even if they know it by another name.

The effect is strongest face-to-face, but it works almost as well over some voice or video chat software, with distance seemingly not making a difference. The medium, does, however. Text is rather poor, though you can still get a general idea of what it is or does. Well, usually the names alone do that. I mean, ‘[Fire Magic]’?

There, list of stuff to sell: done! They’re added to the website, though I made sure to give each category its own tab with instant switching. User experience is king! I also made some wooden tablets with a slimmed down version of the offers (minus fluff and legalese), and printed out the full price lists for reference.

With that, the faeries and my angel form I think I can make a real impression. I also wanna bring the counter-gravity field device I made, though I’ll have to test it first. Too bad Silje’s team didn’t want to test it. I’d go out and do that, but it’s started raining. Ahh, woop de doo. I’m waterproof, and as long as I put it safely in a bag, my phone is too.

“Hi Lars!”

“Hi Leda, you’re fired up today.”

“But it’s raining, and water extinguishes fire.”

“Water extinguishes most fire, yeah. Ehm, but ‘fired up’ is an expression.”

“Yeah!” yells her playmate. “It means you’re really like woooo!”

“In other words, it means you’re really excited. So, what are you doing?”

“She’s teaching me how to become a wyvern!”

Oh. “Uh, are your parents okay with that?”

“Uh-huh. When I asked mom she said yes.”

I have a sneaking suspicion they thought he was talking about a game or something… “Are you sure they understood-” I hold up my hand and pause to collect my thought. I think he’s too young to understand me no matter how I phrase that… “Have your parents seen Leda’s main body?”

“No?”

I hit the doorbell, but the kid just walks right in and shouts for his mother.

“What is it, hun?” She says, rounding the corner. “Oh.” She looks from Leda to me. “Are you her…?” Parent or brother, I hear in the implication.

“No, I am not genetically related to Leda. Uhm, how to put this. I’m here because you and your son seems to have some… misunderstandings.” As I finish she looks worried, so I quickly continue to not worry her. “Ah, I stopped him before something… ehm, unwanted happened.

Oops, more worried. “Ah, don’t worry. Uh, really. I just want to ensure there is no misunderstanding. First off, I want you to meet Leda.”

She looks at Leda, now also confused. I furrow my brows, how to put this. Okay, at this point I think it’s best to just be blunt. “Leda is a wyvern, which is kinda like a smaller dragon. The little girl you see is just her human form, because, y’know, not causing panic.”

“Huh?” She looks at her son. “Hun, what did you say you were gonna do with Leda?”

“I’m gonna become a wyvern!”

She looks at me with a mixed expression I can’t quite place, and I shrug with a forced smile. “Yeah.”

“Could she actually turn him into a dragon?”

“Ehm, how about we go to your garden.”

At my insistence, we do so, and having told Leda to bring her main body, I then have her reveal herself. I walk over to her lowered head and put my head on her side. “As you can see, wyvern. And because physiology, she can’t talk in talk form, though she can use telepathy.”

While she’s trying to pick up her jaw from the floor I continue. “That’s not how your son would look. Leda, raptor mode. Teaching him how to change his body like that -or this-” I take on my own raptor mode. “Is probably what she’d do to your son.”

I turn to raptor-Leda. “Is that correct?”

She nods, clearly noticing the mood and expecting some complaints. I sigh. “So what would happen is that she’d teach him how to shapeshift. Which brings us to why I’m here: He said he got permission to ‘have her teach him to become a wyvern’.”

Realisation dawns, and she looks a lot less confused, but still a bit worried. Okay Leda, consequence time.

A bit later I have told her to get permission before teaching anyone magic or shapeshifting them. The mother was surprisingly willing to let them continue playing with each other, something about ‘at least he gets away from the screen’, but did not want him to learn magic. I offered to be a mentor and ensure he learned it in a safe manner, but she aptly pointed out that he would still be able to use magic when I was not around.

I also gave her my phone number so she can reach me if Leda causes more problems, and I am fully expecting her to do so sooner rather than later. Sigh. At least Leda will slowly learn what is and is not okay. Also, while we were talking I was interrupted by a call from the Magic Mic. I told them to call me back in fifteen minutes.

Which is now. I accept the call. “Y’hello, Lars here.”

“Hey, it’s the Magic Mic again, you free now?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good. Your interview was well received, but because of, you know, it was a bit short, and we didn’t exactly get to plan it out.”

She pauses. Still not saying anything? Should I say something? “Uh-huh.” Eh, close enough.

“Anyway we were wondering if we could do another, a bit more structured interview, this time with some viewer questions?

“Viewer questions? Have people given you questions already?”

“Well, no. There was some discussion, but if you agree we’ll announce the interview in our next video and ask for viewer questions.

“Oh, that makes sense. Hmm.” I don’t really have any reason to decline. Nor do I have a reason to accept, aside from being nice, I guess. Actually, I could use it for some advertising. “So if I say yes, you make a video asking for questions… So the actual interview would be a week or two later?”

“Something like that, we’ll do it some time you’re free.”

“All right then. I have no problems with that. But!” I lift my finger and do a dramatic pause, not that he can see me. “I would like do some advertising for my business. Nothing big, I just want to say a bit about what I do and sell. ‘I sell magical goods and services, they include yadda yadda.’ Get the word out, you know?”

“Hmm, that’s fair - we get viewers, you get to use our channel’s popularity to get word out. But if you go full TV shop or something, that’d be waay uncool, man!”

I groan at the meme, cringing just to think about it. “Ugh. Yeah that’s fine. I wanted your cooperation anyway, it’d be better if you just naturally asked me about it. So do you just call me back after you’ve talked with the others?”

“Yeah. Uhh, Monica’s gonna want to talk with you before agreeing, she likes to have full control.”

“Eh, either way you’re gonna discuss after we hang up and then one of you will call me later. Doesn’t really change things on my side.”

“Hehe, I guess you’re right. You’ll hear from us.”

I make an exaggerated mocking voice. “Yeeeah, yeeeah! I thought we’d agreed on that already? Now we gonna hang up or talk until Mon-ahh? Ehh, Monica.” My mocking tone disappears with the wind as I stumble on a name I heard less than a minute ago. “Until she, uhh, I was gonna say something witty, but forgot. But I’ll see ya later, I guess?”

“Haha, see ya.”

‘Luck is when opportunity meets preparedness.’ huh? Well, an opportunity came, I saw it, and I seized the day. Quotes by Benjamin Einstein Freud.

…sigh, not even I laugh at my poor jokes, sometimes. Moving on.