“Squirrels can fly?!” Zeb voiced her astonishment. “I didn’t know that!”

  “No, they can’t,” I corrected her. “It’s a language error. Flying squirrels just glide.”

  The border collie shaped person was bouncing in excitement. In other words, it was a day that ended in y. “They’re really cute, though.”

  I shrugged. “Most squirrels are. You’ll have to pick one though.”

  “What?!” Zeb sounded truly shocked. More than when she’d heard of the way the tiny Bunvorixians were betraying the others.

  “It’s not like you can bond with every kind of squirrel,” I pointed out.

  Zeb jumped up with her paws pushing against my belly. “What do you know that I don’t?! What secrets hide in your orcish brain that would make a universe so cruel?”

  I blinked. “Are you okay, Zeb?”

  “How could you tell me there’s more than one kind of squirrel and then say I can only make friends with one because magic itself hates me? I thought we were friends!”

  “Uh… I mean, it’s pretty expected isn’t it? You can’t bond with everything. Just like I can’t learn every spell.”

  Zeb once more had four paws on the ground, contemplating. “You can’t? Why?”

  “Not enough points. Or… time.” Assuming we were talking about mage spells, of course. Obviously there were just some things I’d never be able to learn to begin with.

  “How many spells are there?” Zeb asked.

  “Hundreds?” Less than a thousand… probably.

  “How long does it take to learn one?”

  “It varies. Maybe a few days?” It could be a lot faster than that but it could also be much slower if I had no demonstrations at all to go off of. Though I hadn’t spent that long trying to learn new things without points because… that wasn’t how it was done.

  “So… less than ten years? Even if we say there’s a thousand spells.” Zeb said.

  Maybe it would take longer to learn them… or maybe not. “I guess that’s possible. But it wouldn’t be great for me,” I pointed out. “I was thinking devoted study which is worth no experience for me. I wouldn’t get much practice with other things either since my mana would be tied up in experimentation.”

  “Find a friend to throw magic at,” Zeb said. “Do you know any squirrels immune to injury from magic?”

  “... no? I don’t think that’s a thing.” At least not that was well known in my world. And obviously not on Earth because everything here was mundane.

  “Too bad,” Zeb commented. “But there’s nothing stopping me either, right? Aside from points or time.”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Most classes have a limit of a single companion. Beastmaster might be higher but it’s probably not limitless.”

  It couldn’t be, right? Then again, if each one was its own skill, couldn’t it just work? My spells could empower multiple bonded companions, but there might be a limit. And maybe beastmaster stuff cost mana per companion… Zeb hadn’t really gone into much beyond simple having and communicating with her companions.

  Ceira wasn’t much help. She was a weird case that split her power between two companions even though she was only supposed to have one. But splitting power made sense, at least. If she had more, they’d be proportionately less magic and more just… animals. Then again, did Zeb care if her companions were magical?

  Zeb nodded her head seriously as she focused on an idea. “Making friends with squirrels might be hard since they run away. Maybe it would take ten days? So I could be done in a month or two. I just need a tree squirrel, a ground squirrel, and a flying squirrel, right? Surely there can’t be more than that.”

  “There’s a couple more broad categories,” I said. I’d only really learned that information because Zeb had been so interested in squirrels.

  “Okay, so five. Two months, maybe half a year. I totally have this,” Zeb nodded. “Wait- what do you mean by categories?”

  “... Subfamilies, I think?” As a non-biologist from not-Earth, their taxonomic structure wasn’t my strong suit.

  “Are there more dividing lines between them?”

  “Well, yeah. Obviously.” At that point, I had to look things up again. “There are more genera and species.”

  “How many species?” Zeb said insistently.

  “The internet says… two hundred and eighty-five?”

  Zeb’s eyes glossed over, then filled with determination. “I need to get started. We have tasks of equal magnitude. I’ll race you to completion.”

  I wasn’t actually planning to learn every spell. That would make my list a mess, among other things. Plus, I wanted to be good at things. It felt nice to be adept in certain areas. Like Gate.

  -----

  After returning the griffon Rocky to his home dimension- and the whole squirrel excitement with Zeb- we hung out in the park for a while. Ceira, myself, Midnight, Zeb, and the actual animals. I had some other things to get to later, but Midnight and I were recovering mana so rushing to the next thing wasn’t really relevant.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “So how are things for you?” I asked Ceira. “Work keeping you busy?”

  “I could lie and say it is, but most of my time is downtime since I use large bursts of mana healing,” Ceira shrugged. We were sitting on a bench with Midnight. Fluffy was snoozing across the way. The other four were playing around, the large bat being quite out of place. “And everyone has to come to me- or to one of a few designated locations, at least. Angelica is good at scheduling so I’m not just going to and from places all day.”

  I nodded. “Good to hear. It must be hard to do that from Celmoth, though.”

  “What? Oh. Well, it’s mostly e-mail… I assume.”

  “I wouldn’t want that job,” Midnight commented. “Sounds stressful.”

  “That's why I’m so glad to have her,” Ceira agreed. “I’m getting lots of practice. Do you think it’s unfair to not tell anyone I’m getting more efficient?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “If you don’t want to do it more, you shouldn’t have to. Out of curiosity, how much do you do?”

  “Five to ten per day, six days a week,” Ceira said. “If it’s just a small injury I can do ten, but if it’s worse… I have to use more mana and even then it takes multiple sessions. Like if I have to actually grow back a limb or an organ. Is your friend doing well, by the way?”

  “Yeah, the cloned organ is fully compatible so he doesn’t even need to take medication,” I said. “Who are your favorite people to heal?”

  “Kids,” Ceira said. “Or really, anyone young. Because I’m making their lives better for a long time, you know?”

  I nodded. “That’s great.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “But there are only so many that come along. Angelica’s having me balance individual healing and ultra rich people. Because the money goes to my foundation and it will eventually help more than a handful of people per day. You know some of those rich people who’ve been mysteriously looking healthier nowadays?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Of course you don’t,” Ceira laughed. “Well, without violating privacy agreements some of them are jerks. And the others at least know how to be polite to people who are going to provide unique opportunities.” She shook her head. “I actually refused to treat someone last week. I feel dumb because it was an absurd amount of money. I could have done so much with that. The contract lets me cancel like that but just a few words set me off and then I thought I was going to teach them a lesson, you know?”

  Midnight placed a paw on her knee. “Sometimes, you have to take a stand. People who think they can act however they want don’t deserve your help.”

  “Yeah, but the money… could do so much.”

  “That’s how they keep people down,” Midnight said. “How much was it anyway? A million dollars?”

  “... I don’t actually want to say,” Ceira admitted. “But you’re dreaming too small.”

  I pondered for a few moments. “Was it a life threatening issue?”

  “Not quite. Debilitating, yes, but they aren’t going to just die.”

  “Oh. I was going to say you should just charge them more for being a jerk.”

  “I was already doing that for them being absurdly rich!” Ceira protested. “And I kind of yelled at them.”

  “You’re the one with the power,” Midnight pointed out. “They think they are, but they aren’t. Have Angelica call them, force them to apologize, and pay ten times as much. If it really mattered to begin with they’ll do it. Or some other number.”

  “I don’t want to interact with them at all,” Ceira grumbled. “But… the money…”

  “Then contract that they can’t say anything,” I shrugged. “Definitely charge them more for whatever they said to insult you though.”

  Ceira sighed. “I just feel dumb for messing things up due to a few seconds of social interaction.”

  I could beat her on that. “I might have caused an interdimensional war with angels because I spoke the wrong language.”

  “... Sounds like they’re jerks,” Ceira replied.

  “Oh for sure,” I said. “But I could have tried to switch languages instead of whacking the guy in the face.”

  “I’ll admit I’ve wanted to smack people to disrupt awkward social encounters, but that’s a bit extreme.”

  Midnight spoke up, “Turlough left out the part where the guy tried to cut him in half.”

  “It was all part of the same exchange,” I explained.

  “Yeah, totally jerks,” Ceira said. “I’ll tell Angela to prioritize money over the apology… but maybe make it not seem that way. So that arrogance will cost them even more money. I shouldn’t let my pride be worth so much. Though it’s not like we can even spend all the money we have just yet. The foundation is still ramping up its various aspects, and Angelica can’t just force things to go faster.”

  “She’s running that as well?” Midnight asked. “You should be careful with such large amounts of money.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ceira said. “She’s Mad- she’s trustworthy.”

  Usually people who were called ‘Mad something’ weren’t trustworthy, in my opinion. I threw Mental Freedom at Ceira.

  “What was that for, huh?”

  “Just checking,” I said. No changes, so probably not mentally manipulated. Maybe regular manipulated but I wasn’t the best judge of social situations. And Angelica had seemed nice. Regular nice, despite whatever she was doing with her power.

  -----

  Cleanup after Halloween ended up being mostly not my problem. There were some more people I had to send back to their home dimensions, but most things had to be dealt with more directly. Some simply disappeared when the night was over if they hadn’t been taken out. Others were just frightening and didn’t have to be fought, though civilians weren’t always able to discern which were which so people had been busy all night.

  Calculator sighed when I told him my plans for training.

  “What? Is that not a good training regimen?” I wanted to keep up sparring, of course, but I also wanted to train utility spells with another portion of my mana. And then finally I planned to spend the last portion trying to learn new spells without points. Beyond that I would be spending time on Mana Manipulation to accelerate my recovery, which might be most of my time.

  “The training schedule seems fine for now,” Calculator said. “I was thinking about the aftermath of Halloween.”

  “What about it? There wasn’t a ton of collateral damage we’re responsible for was there?”

  “Aside from the image concerns involving Great Girl beating up angels…”

  “Bad angels,” I interjected.

  “Tossing about visibly angelic beings,” Calculator continued, “Rodentia failed to steal Halloween.”

  “Obviously,” I said. “Isn’t that good, though? Or at least expected. We left her alone because it wasn’t going to work.”

  “Well, some do-gooders still stopped her on principle.”

  I frowned. “Isn’t Halloween good for business?”

  “One day a year where the whole Brigade is risking their lives with everyone else?” Calculator shook his head. “Not worth it. If we could schedule lesser events throughout the year it would be preferable. I’d rather not have two of the biggest events in two months.”

  “At least Christmas isn’t inherently dangerous,” I shrugged. “Just a lot of people trying to steal it.”