01.10 - Looks Good to Me

Uriah straightened, brushing imaginary dust off his robe. “Right. Hannah did mention fireworks. What are you up to?”

Luc gestured toward the holographic display. “Designing a fireworks display using Fire Elemental Cores and my training projectiles. The basics are simple enough: acceleration, keeping the payload aloft, and lights or explosions for the final effect.”

Uriah tilted his head in thought. “Luc, you should ditch the iron ball payload.”

Luc froze mid-keystroke, turning to Uriah with a skeptical look. “Why?”

Uriah sat forward, his usual playful demeanor replaced by a rare seriousness. “This isn’t training in the middle of nowhere. You’re talking about launching something into the air where people are going to be watching. Imagine one of those iron balls falling back down; someone could get seriously hurt.”

Luc frowned, leaning back and crossing his arms.

Mary glanced between the two. “What’s your alternative?” Mary asked.

“Pellet balls,” Uriah said. “Wooden ones. We use a spell to make them burn up completely before they hit the ground. No debris, no accidents.”

“He’s right,” Mary said. “It’s safer, and we can still get the effects you’re aiming for with the right spells.”

Luc sighed. “Fine. How do you propose we do it?”

“You handle the basics: acceleration, keeping them floating in the air, and some light emission, if you can manage that. I’ll write a delayed transmutation program to change the pellets from solid to powder, and I’ll tweak their reactivity with air so they burn up like proper fireworks.”

Mary leaned closer to the console. “Great, the two of you program the remaining Fire Elemental Cores with the Matter Transmutation spells. I’ll take a look once you are done.”

Luc and Uriah sat down and started coding.

A few hours later, Mary returned.

“Let me see what you’ve got,” she said.

She scrolled through the code.

After what felt like an eternity, Mary leaned back in her chair. “Looks good to me.”

“Should we test it?” asked Luc.

“Absolutely,” Mary said. “But first, we need the pellets.”

“I’ll grab them,” Uriah said, already on his feet. “We’ve got some at home. Let’s meet at the training grounds; won’t take me long.”

They selected a remote edge of the training grounds as their test zone, removing anything flammable beforehand. With only some metal crates remaining in place and gravel on the ground, they placed a couple of hollow metal rods as a makeshift launcher.

Luc loaded some of the pellets Uriah had brought into the launcher, double-checking the alignment.

“Ready?” Mary asked, stepping back to a safe distance.

Luc nodded.

Then both of them sent Aura into their respective programmed Cores to trigger the spells.

The launcher fired. But just a fraction of a second later, it exploded violently, a bright flash of light and a plume of smoke erupting in the air just above them.

They all ducked instinctively.

“That… was not supposed to happen,” Luc said, brushing soot off his sleeve.

Uriah hurried to inspect the launcher, his expression shifting from shock to frustration. “The code was perfect! What went wrong?”

“Let’s double-check,” Mary said.

Back at a nearby console near the shooting station, the three of them pored over the program, line by line. Nothing seemed amiss. No syntax errors, no conflicting commands.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Luc. “Everything looks fine.”

Mary tapped her finger against the edge of the console. Then her expression brightened. “Hold on. What’s the unit for the timing variable in the API?”

Uriah took a moment to look it up in the documentation. “Milliseconds. Why?”

Mary pointed at a line of code. “Because you’ve got it set in seconds. The delay is a thousand times shorter than you intended.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Luc said. ”Something that basic?”

“It happens to the best of us,” Mary said. “Fix it, and we’ll try again.”

With the correction made and the programs recompiled, they returned to the launcher.

Luc pushed another round of pellets into the launcher. “Second time’s the charm?”

“We’ll see,” Uriah said.

They activated their Cores again, and this time, the pellets soared into the air. At the peak, it began to shimmer, breaking apart into a cloud of glittering powder that ignited in a burst of vibrant light.

“Still needs a lot of tweaking,” Mary said. “But it’s a start.”

“At least it didn’t blow up in our faces this time,” said Luc.

By the time they had walked back home, night had fallen and stars twinkled faintly overhead.

The front door creaked open, and Hannah was waiting for them in the entryway.

“You’re late,” she said. “You promised it wouldn’t take all day, and it’s way past nightfall already.”

“Sorry,” Luc said, scratching the back of his neck. “But the first attempt blew up in our faces. Literally.”

Hannah sighed as she turned around and went inside. “Figures. Come on inside. I need to show you something.”

The group followed her.

Hannah made her way to the living room. “Rem and Rogue agreed to help me,” she said over her shoulder. “But look what they have done.”

Luc tried to see past her as she stepped into the room. In the dim light, something seemed... off. His eyes slowly adjusted to the glow of the fireplace. And then he saw it.

Hannah’s face was quite the sight. Smudges of uneven rouge streaked across her cheeks, her lips were painted in a shade of crimson that wandered well beyond the lines, and her eyebrows darkened unevenly.

Luc froze. Then laughed uncontrollably. “What happened to your face?”

Hannah stomped her foot. “It’s not funny! Rem said she’d help me look more ‘mature.’ And Rogue…” She threw her hands up in frustration. “He said he knew what he was doing!”

Before she could continue, Uriah stepped into the room. He stopped in his tracks the moment he laid eyes on her, his fiery hair swaying as he tilted his head for a better look. His lips twitched with barely concealed laughter.

“Looks good to me.”