I threw it. It wasn’t as aerodynamic as a frisbee, but it did catch the air. It wobbled mid-flight and veered off course, crashing into a tree before disappearing into a patch of grass.

Tristan was already making something else. Twelve or more motes of light traced the shape. “Requires a bit of concentration, I can rush it or force it to come into being early, but you get weirdness like… this.”

It materialized. A hammer or a mace, long-handled. The weirdness was in how the shape finalized its form, drawing pretty creative curves and hooks. Spikes, horns, thorns, and other slightly curved growths stood out. It looked unbalanced.

“Are they permanent?” I asked.

“They can be. Depends if I keep the sparks alive or not. I can create a lot of sparks, but it requires more time, more concentration.”

“What’s the difference between keeping it alive or not?” I asked.

“Ah,” he said. He pushed himself to his feet, shifting his footing to make sure he wouldn’t slide down the hill. He held out the mace, and started to form the motes for another. He rushed this one even more than he had the last. The shape was more unwieldy, less balanced. “Byron, you want to help with demonstrations today, or do you want to be left alone?”

Tristan blurred, features distorting, his eyes flaring with the same light as the sparks had. The light turned blue, and then he was Byron, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans.

One of the two maces exploded into a spray of water. Sveta made a noise of surprise, and Chris, still mostly fixated on examining Kenzie’s cube, jumped back from the cube in surprise.

Byron turned his head so the backspray hit him in the side of the face, rather than right in the center of it. He dropped the still-intact mace he held with his other hand.

“Hi Byron,” Kenzie said.

“Hi,” I added my greeting to Kenzie’s. “We haven’t formally met.”

“We haven’t. I got the basics,” he said.

“So I gathered.”

“This is a terrible idea,” he said. “Tristan being involved, this team concept, the potential for disaster, and this thing with Tattletale?”

“I don’t see anyone changing their mind. Mrs. Yamada couldn’t convince them, I don’t think I can. If they’re going to do this or something like this, isn’t it better that they do it smart and informed?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But if you’re enabling them, you should know you own a share of what happens.”

“I don’t think that’s fair,” Sveta said.

“It might be fair,” I said.

“My voice doesn’t matter either. I tried, nobody listens. Maybe I own a bit of what happens for not trying harder to stop Tristan from going forward with this.”

“You sound pretty certain something bad is going to happen.”