Fool's Journey

"Exactly... and the menagerie of animals doesn't hurt my supplies, either."

 

"It's hard to process bones when you live on campus though." Mischa points out, setting her finished teacup down. "I've got an ant farm that works pretty well for it though!"

 

"No worries. You'll have time to find a place to do it, in time, I'm sure... do you want more tea?" He sips his from his own cup. "Ant farm?"

 

"Please~." She slides her cup forward. "And yes. I have two ant farms, a cat, an aquarium with only plants, three bamboo, and seven pots of succulents."

 

Freddie tops her cup, nodding. "Have any pictures of the cat, or the plants?" He grins.

 

"Yeah!! Wanna see the ants eating away at a bunny skull!?" She pulls out her phone and starts tapping at it. "I got a lot of work-in-progress pics on my phone of stuff too!"

"Oh shit. My wallet's still in my locker at work. And my cell phone." Kainze blurts randomly.

"We'll get it tomorrow." Mischa handwaves, and pats his shoulder comfortingly.

"But... Judy..." He pouts.

"I'll text em for you and let em know your phone's left at work."

 

"...Mnngh. I can try something. If you have a picture of the locker, phone, anything like that?" Freddie says slowly.

 

"... I have a picture of Kainze taking a picture of an upside down crooked painting on the wall of his room." Mischa says. "It's also on my Instagram."

"It's art." Kainze nods.

 

"...well, if it's the same phone, I can give it a shot, though I can't guarantee it's going to work."

 

"Dude... can you teleport stuff!?" Kainze asks, excited.

"Yeah it's the same phone." Mischa opens up her Instagram and shows Freddie the picture in question.

 

"With enough study of space, you can too... but it can be dangerous. Magic that isn't subtle can cause big problems."

He closes his eyes after looking at the picture, hums. "...alright. I can see it...and the rest of the locker....okay..."

He breathes out, and the space around his hand warps.

The phone and wallet are dropped into the table, then Freddie rubs a trail of blood away from his nose. "...tadah. ow."

 

"Holy shit that's amazing!" Mischa grins, reaching forward to grab Kainze's stuff and hand it to him.

They both turn towards Freddie when he says 'ow', concern written on both faces, and it's here that it's easy to see that they are definetly siblings. "Did that hurt?" Kainze frowns a bit.

"You're bleeding...!" Mischa stands, scanning the kitchen for some paper towel or tissue to grab for Freddie.

 

"...yeah, a bit. Swallowed up the backlash." He points at a set of tea towels on the counter, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Paradox getting loose in my house is not happening. My girlfriend would be horrified to wake up and find I'd accidentally summoned a demon or something."

 

"Demons!?!" She gives him an alarmed look, then grabs one of the tea towels, dampening a corner of it, and brings it over to him.

"Swallowed the backlash?" Kainze tilts his head. "How is that a paradox? We're not like, altering time or anything, like they did in DragonBall Z."

 

"Are people normally able to just pull things out of the air, or get trees to form canes? Paradox. We do the impossible. Sometimes the Universe gets upset about it." He looks at Kainze and Mischa, pressing the towel to his nose. "And you two might, at some point."

 

"Well... to be honest, the cane from the trees is a lot more magically believable than pulling things out of space." Mischa admits.

"No way. It totally makes sense. You just like, reach in and grab stuff. That's not thin air. It's wrinkled space-time." Kainze says. "There's books on this stuff. I think I even have one in my audio-book collection." He hits the side button on his phone, holding it in one hand and swiping around on the screen that doesn't turn on.

"I wouldn't doubt it. But I mean like, talking to trees and asking them to move a certain way versus opening a portal from here to your locker..."

"Looked pretty damn cool to me." He grins in her direction.

"... you're such a nerd." She turns back to Freddie. "So doing magic is impossible, but we still do it, and the Universe doesn't like the paradoxes we make. But what about summoning demons??"

 

"The universe likes trying to kick people in the dick when they do things it doesn't like?" Freddie says thoughtfully. "...but yeah, all honesty, if you have a viable explanation for something, it can actually help circumvent the problem of paradox."

 

"So anime and fantasy novels are an asset here then?" Kainze grins wide, pulling some earbuds out of his pocket to fit into his phone to listen to his text messages with.

 

"I said a viable explanation, not a ridiculous one,," Freddie snorts.

 

"Kainze lives off ridiculous." Mischa rolls her eyes. "Anyways... so... now what??"