Saving the school would have been easier as a cafeteria worker

Cal wafted a hand in front of him in an attempt to force away the floating dust. The last time he'd been in this classroom, the grime had been content to keep to itself, resting on aged desks, chairs, and various pieces of defunct equipment. Now it was agitated, swirling through the room and thickening the already suffocating atmosphere.

The root cause was the man center stage, Professor Wyatt. In a repeat of their previous encounter, the man had ambushed him with an unrelenting torrent of dialogue. It spilled out of his mouth indiscriminately, confounding everyone in range.

Well, maybe not everyone, but certainly Cal.

Perhaps he'd been too optimistic in thinking that a few hours of study—using incoherent notes and surrounded by hostiles—would be enough to discuss a subject people spent decades researching.

It wasn't all bad news, as Wyatt was so preoccupied with hearing himself talk that he seemed to forget this was meant to be a back-and-forth. The alleged teacher had surrounded himself with chalkboards, each containing a different set of scribbles. He moved animatedly between them, his hand sloppily erasing portions and making revisions as new thoughts emerged. A couple of times, he would flip the entire board, only to find the opposite side was already filled with mad drawings.

Cal did not think highly of Wyatt. From day one, the man had made it clear he didn't want to be here. He accomplished less than the bare minimum, and his failure as a teacher was such that no one besides Cal had been dumb enough to enroll in his class.

What moved before him now was a different Wyatt. He was as slovenly as the last, but a fire had been kindled behind those frantic eyes.

No, not frantic.

Desperate.

It had gone unnoticed last time, but there was no mistaking that look. Begrudgingly, Cal could admit it was an improvement to his usual lifelessness.

Still, there was plenty left to criticize.

"Are you sure he slept?" Cal leaned lower, whispering to the girl beside him.

Mia occupied the desk adjacent to his, but while he had perched himself on the desk itself, she sat neatly in a chair.

"Yes," she responded softly, leafing through the book he'd handed her.

Cal hadn't exactly planned on her taking it out of the library, but book theft was on the lower end of his priorities. Unsure she would agree with him, he kept those thoughts to himself.

"Can you give me a confidence score on that?" he asked skeptically.

Fire or not, Wyatt's steps remained unsteady. Cal had lost count of the number of times the man had almost kissed the dirty floorboards.

Mia lifted her gaze briefly, meeting Cal's eyes.

"Okay, sheesh," Cal said in a theatrical, if low, tone. "No need to glare at me."

It was a joke about her lack of expression, but rather than acknowledging it as such, she nodded and went back to reading.

"What about showers?" He continued, surprised Wyatt hadn't commented on their side conversation yet. "Did he get any of those?"

Judging from his body odor, the answer was no. Wasn't basic hygiene part of being a noble?

"Waste of time," Mia said without glancing at him.

That was more verbose than her average response, but he still found it lacking.

"Him? Or convincing him?"

Normal eyes turned back to him, and this time, the glare was unmistakable. A dainty hand reached up, tapping her silver hair clip.

The air shimmered, and the girl was no more.

Huh. Was it too late to pivot into light manifestations? Disappearing whenever someone annoyed you would be a pretty neat trick.

Wyatt was still talking, and Cal tried to remember what it was he had been doing. Right, avoiding the problem.

Cal found it slightly ironic that his current state of mind was equivalent to that of a kid who forgot about their end-of-period exam, spent the weekend desperately cramming for it, and then sat staring at question one for half of his allotted time.

Fortunately for him, the Cal of ten minutes ago hadn't waltzed in here with only blind optimism to rely on. He hunched forward, his elbow digging into his thigh as he rested his head on a cupped palm.

Any attempt at a back-and-forth verbal discussion would see him outed as a fraud. This was clear from the way Wyatt was currently speaking. Cal could understand the words, but by the time his mind figured out a response, the topic had shifted. He'd never be able to keep up.

That was fine. Prodigy didn't explain herself. Neither would he.

His eyes focused on the boards, carefully scanning each one. The notes Cal had studied in the Waste had been specific to converters, and so that's what he recognized best. Wyatt had drawn several, seeming to play with different configurations.

Interesting, Cal would have thought the schematic he ripped off from Millie would have been the superior model. Though, hadn't the one he'd seen in the cabin been different? He had thought it was due to its location in the Waste, but it was also likely that Millie had changed the designs several times since her school days.

"Have you tested any of those?" Cal said, extending a finger from his cupped palm to one of the boards. "The lower left one specifically."

Wyatt stopped in the middle of his hybrid of a question and proposal. He took a quick look at the schematic Cal had signaled out before bringing a fist to his face and clearing his throat.

"It's theoretical," he said with a hint of embarrassment, looking off to the side. "Funds these days are in short supply, and I can't be as overzealous as I once was."

Prodigy didn't have those concerns. She essentially got a blank check for anything she wanted, albeit she actually produced results.

"Elevation differential?" Cal asked.

He kept the question short, trusting Wyatt understood he was referring to the vertical space between circuits. While the standard design of converters called for circuits to be laid out flat in parallel, Millie's notes did play around with the idea of layering them, just as Wyatt was proposing now.

"Accounting for the additional concentration of magic, seven millimeters."

Spacing was important. Magic could leak through circuits and influence its neighbors, creating catastrophic failure. The simplest solution to that was distance, with the lines pulling more power needing to be kept further apart. Unfortunately, this safeguard came at the cost of limiting the number of connections available to the core. Stacking the lines was a method of bypassing this, but it came with its own difficulties.

"You're underestimating the resonance effect," Cal responded, smoother than he could have reasonably expected. "The corruption will rise exponentially and negate any benefits made from deviating from a purely horizontal model."

He'd paid special attention to that after Wyatt's question about his spacing last time. Millie's scratched-out designs implied that it was a dead end, and he was willing to take that at face value.

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Wyatt's face turned red, and his mouth opened when someone interrupted him.

"Again?" Mia commented to the side.

Cal glanced at the girl, but she was gone in the next instant, and he turned back to Wyatt, who visibly swallowed. The man paced around the boards, hiding behind them for a few awkward seconds before standing back in front of them.

"Disagree," Wyatt stated his position in a way that, while meant to be neutral, conveyed a strong leaning toward frustration. "The differential is adequate when accounting for the ten percent increase in saturation levels for the circuits in question. It is a departure from conventions, but so is the rest of the model. "

And that was why Cal really shouldn't have been attempting any kind of debate. He knew circuits were created out of a special alloy receptive to magic, but that was the limit of his knowledge. His notes and books made passing references to it, but metallurgy was a different subject.

"Let's try it then," Cal said with feigned confidence.

Wyatt opened his mouth to argue, only to glance to Cal's side and take a breath.

"I just told you," he explained testily. "I'm low on materials."

His desk said otherwise.

"What about all of that?" Cal asked, gesturing to the clutter. "Bet we can throw something together right now."

Cal hopped off the desk, strolling toward the mess. He stopped in front of it, frowning at what he observed. Some of the units looked rough, like they'd been tossed around.

"Don't touch—"

Wyatt's voice cut short as Cal picked up one of the boards. Loose pieces clattered to the floor, and Cal pretended that it was intentional as he swept a hand across the board.

"This should work," he said, placing it back on the desk. He bent down, retrieving a strip of metal that was meant to be a circuit. It wobbled in his hand, showing its elasticity. "It won't be an exact experiment, but we don't need it to be to test the principle."

Cal positioned himself in a way that he could subtly reference the board containing the design they were testing. A quick visual check of the desk had him identify scrubbers, regulators, and exhaust ports scattered around. He collected them quickly, setting them beside his work area. His fingers fiddled with the first pieces, the parts feeling clumsy and unfamiliar in his hands. He tossed them up and down to project an air of casualness before getting to work.

It was not as straightforward as snapping parts onto the board, and he got the sense he should have been using specialized equipment for this. However, he'd already started, and he wasn't going to stop now. Heat entered his finger pads, and he massaged the bits of metal into place. Having other half-completed boards near him helped, and he felt like he was making progress when he felt someone breathing over his shoulder.

"You're contaminating the components!" Wyatt exclaimed in a hiss. "The magic you're using will invalidate the results!"

He may have had a point there, but Cal didn't allow doubt to fester within him.

"I'm being careful. The impact will be within acceptable margins."

Wyatt crouched near the desk, getting eye level with the board. He squinted at it, focusing intently.

"That is better control than most," the man grumbled before shaking his head. "No, that's an understatement." Cal's smirk was short-lived as Wyatt swiftly followed up. "That doesn't mean the experiment would be allowed in an official study."

If there was one thing Cal could confidently say he'd never do, it was complete an academic study.

"I'm from the sticks; I don't know how you research people do things," Cal responded honestly. "All I'm trying to do is slap together a proof of concept, or the opposite of one, to rule out the vertical avenue."

Cal's fingers fell into a rhythm, and his tempo gradually increased. It was oddly satisfying to see it slowly assembled, and for a split second, he wished Millie was here to share in the moment. It passed quickly once he realized it would be similar to a child showing a finger-painted drawing to a world-renowned artist.

And a particularly judgmental artist at that.

"Y—" Wyatt's voice sounded pained, and he cleared his throat. "You're skipping all proper assembly procedures. That's further tainting potential findings."

That managed to break Cal's stride, and his hands hovered above his incomplete creation. His intentions here were far from pure. Taking inspiration from his colleagues, he'd planned to sabotage the experiment and show that his declaration of the vertical design being a dead end was true. That would give his genius label more credibility. He'd rather not have the title at all, but it was better than them questioning where he got his information from.

The problem was Wyatt kept raising issues that Cal knew were valid. It was very inconvenient.

"I'm trying," Cal said in lieu of a better answer. "What are you doing?"

Cal's hands resumed the task they'd been in the middle of, and after he secured the scrubber, his eyes went back to the board.

A horrifying sight met him.

The model had been erased, and in its place were two columns headed by Wyatt and Cal's names. If he was reading it right, it was a scoreboard and Wyatt was leading him two to one. Strangely, his singular point had been drawn thicker than both of Wyatt's combined.

None of that was as important as losing his reference material.

"This isn't a sporting event," Cal addressed the girl sitting in her seat and pretending she had nothing to do with the board. "At least feign some shame."

That pulled her away from the book, and she was in the midst of tilting her head at him when Wyatt spoke.

"Who are—," Wyatt paused, blinking once. "That's enough, Mia. I know what you're trying to say."

Wyatt sighed deeply, bringing his twitching fingers to the partially assembled converter. They hesitated, and at the sound of a flipping page, he dove into the materials.

For his part, Cal let out a breath of relief. He remembered about half of what was left, and having Wyatt finish it himself was much easier. Taking a step back, Cal cautiously slinked away until he was next to Mia.

"You like meddling, don't you?"

The meddler stared at him quizzically. She seemed to ponder the question before responding.

"No?"

It wasn't a definitive answer, and he could tell she was still thinking about it. That was odd considering what she'd put him through.

Cal shot her a flat, unimpressed look.

"That would be more believable if I didn't remember all the choice words you used to describe our relationship with Alice."

Mia quite suddenly found the book very interesting.

With Wyatt's sounds of frustration forming a backdrop, Cal counted the passing seconds. At roughly three minutes, he confronted her.

"I know how long you take to read a page," he said pointedly. "You should be long done with that one."

Her finger moved to the edge of the page, peeling back the paper. Before the page could be fully turned, her finger became rigid. A conflicted expression washed over her, and the bibliophile gave up on faking her progress.

"Unintentional," she murmured hesitantly.

Cal wanted to call bullshit on that, and he would have if she hadn't looked like a kicked puppy. Any latent frustration within him withered, and he was left leaning against the desk.

"Just try not to have too much fun at my expense," Cal said after seeing her mood not improving. "There are plenty of other targets around."

He thought about offering suggestions, but then he'd be on the hook if she did anything.

"Fun?" Mia asked, questioning herself. A frown marred her features. "I see."

Mia set down the book and reached into her jacket. The reluctance on her face was evident, but she overcame it and retrieved a tear-shaped pendant. It was silver, with dashes of bronze. Her fingers traced over the ridges in what appeared to be a practiced motion.

"Unintentional," she repeated. "I'm… not normally afforded such opportunities."

The girl gained his full attention. A part of him wanted to tally the words on his fingers, but it felt mean-spirited. He settled for knowing she'd spoken six words—seven if he counted the contraction as two.

"I get where you're coming from," Cal said after a time, recalling the past few months. "It's easy to get carried away sometimes."

A small smile tugged at his lips, and he barely caught her next word.

"Dangerous."

The smile bloomed, and he couldn't help but laugh a little.

"You have no idea."

Wyatt's antics reached a point of criticality, and he loudly slapped the desk, jostling the items resting on it.

"There," the man said, turning around and holding out the completed board. "But like I tried to tell you, I'm lacking the—"

Cal wordlessly held up a core he brought back from the Waste. He carried with him several, but the majority were stashed in his bedroom.

"That's too large for this configuration," Wyatt informed clinically. Cal reached into his breast pocket, pulling out a smaller one. "Yes, that would do. Bring it here."

Wyatt placed the converter down and then began stowing away the other boards and components into the desk drawers.

"Let me do it," Cal said, knowing he'd have to be ready to interfere with the results.

Any protest from Wyatt died when he glanced over Cal's shoulder.

"Fine, proceed with care."

Cal didn't have to be told twice, and he slotted the core in. The unit immediately activated, and he could feel the power begin to be drained. There was no explosion, melted components, or other obvious signs of failure.

"It's working," Wyatt observed with bated breath. "A multi-circuit converter."

True enough, it was. However, that didn't mean Cal had been wrong. With his senses trained on it, Cal could roughly guess when things would go south.

"Sure, but at its current rate of decay, I give it half a day before it falls apart."

And that was without any interference from his end. Which meant, rather predictably, Millie had been right. Despite his success at failure, he couldn't help but be a little disappointed. It was like pulling out a tray of cookies you'd intentionally over-baked. The mission might have been accomplished, but you were still left with blackened pucks of sadness.

"It could be the contamination you caused or an abnormality in the core," Wyatt defended. There was little heat in his voice, and his focus was clearly on the functioning converter. "The rate of draw alone is worth further development."

Maybe, but Cal felt it was a good time to shut the hells up. He'd maintained his cover and handed Wyatt a new toy to tinker with. Speaking more would accomplish nothing, and so he plastered what he hoped was a knowing smile on his face while remaining silent.

It felt like a wasted performance, as Wyatt had eyes only for the converter.

"It works," the professor uttered the words like a mantra. "It's actually working…"

Deciding that was a bit too creepy for his taste, Cal retreated to Mia, whose gaze was fixed on him.

"Do you?" she asked sternly.

Cal had no idea what she was on about.