Terra - Ottawantreal

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A huge North American city, built in a mishmash of styles from many eras of architecture. the spaceport is bustling and filled with cruise ships, racing yachts, and transport craft. It's full of shops, clubs, gardens, and tourist attractions.

The weather is currently cool but sunny.

Shane laughed at that and shook his head "If you think only magic is cool, then you are missing out kid. There are magic-less miracles everyday." He said then looked around at everyone "Ellie can feel what plants feel, so she is against hurting plants, even for food." He explained then motioned to her hands "She has an innate ability to grow them like this."

Matt laughed. "Wanna see some magic you can learn?" He asked the kids. Yeah he had a whole load of skills that didn't involve actual magic. Though magic helped. He took a coin out of his pocket and showed them a few slight of hand tricks, not using his pocket space.
He was actually pretty good at this, he had nimble fingers and a lot of practice.

The kids stared at Ellie when Shane mentioned her. Whoa, plant magic. They prodded curiously at her small armful of plants, before looking to Matt and his magic tricks. Not quite as neat as real, actual magic, but they were happy to learn anything if they could impress their friends.

Ellie watched. "Man, I didn't know you knew all those magic tricks, that's so awesome."

Matt laughed. "I know a lot of stuff." He told her, palming the coin and 'extracting it' from a child's ear. "I can get outta most restraints too." He grinned at her. "Who wants to try?" He asked the kids, rummaging through his pockets for more coins and bottlecaps they could use.

Nearly all the kids raised their hands, wanting to try, except for a couple shy ones who hung back.

"How do you get out of restraints?" one asked.

"I wanna know where you learned all these tricks," Ellie said. She smiled watching Matt with the kids. Even if she didn't like Thalia much, she was glad Matt was going to be a dad. It was obvious he'd love it.

Matt snickered. "I spend a lot of time with terrible people." He told Ellie. Hey, all that jail time counted for something. "and there's not a lot else to do when you grow up in the middle of nowhere." He handed each child who wanted one a coin or bottle cap. "okay, everyone got one?"

"We all have one," one kid said.

The others all nodded in agreement. They looked excited, they obviously liked Matt.

Ellie watched, grinning. The parents looked disapproving that this guy hung out with awful people.

Matt was totally ignoring the parents, he didn't care about them. "okay, so first you wanna lay out your palm like this" He demonstrated, slowly talking the kids through the trick. It was fairly simple and just involved very quick and nimble fingers.

Shane stayed quiet as he watched Matt with the kids. He tilted his head and moved to the shy ones. "Do you want a coin to practice with?" He asked gently

The shy kids kind of hung back, but at Shane's urging they joined the others to follow Matt's instructions. Most of the kids seemed to be pretty terrible of course, after a few tries some of them showed a little improvement.

Matt cheered them all on. "Right so keep practicing and eventually you'll be able to do it." Matt told them all honestly. "like most things, you gotta practice. And then you can freak out your friends." He laughed, clearly enjoying himself.

Shane smiled and moved over to Ellie, giving the shy kids their space.

The kids nodded intently, and some of them tried to repeat the trick.

"Remember son, practicing anything and working hard is how to get through life successfully," one parent said.

The son in question stuck his tongue out, but tried the trick again, this time on Matt's ear. It was kind of successful, if you weren't watching too closely it might look like he had pulled the coin out of nowhere. Maybe.

Ellie giggled and leaned against Shane a bit. "Maybe Matt should be a schoolteacher when the kids are all back."

Matt grinned at the kid "you're gonna be great." he told him. He looked at all of them. "you can keep the coins and caps yeah?" they were pretty worthless denominations.

The kid looked proud. "Thank you!"

"Thank you," the others told Matt. They held onto their various coins and bottle caps. Well, a couple tried to trade their bottle caps for someone else's coins, because COINS.

Matt grinned. "You should probably learn some science while you're here though, or your parents are gonna get annoyed." Hah, parents, what'd they know? "So who wants to learn cool water facts?"

That didn't sound as cool as magic tricks, much less real magic, but the kids nodded hesitantly. Hey, Matt was pretty neat, it was worth a try right?

"Are you a science teacher?" one asked.

The minotaur guard snorted suspiciously, checking the room to make sure this wasn't a diversion. You never knew, someone might be trying to steal the... water displays... or something.

Shane chuckled softly and nodded "That would be interesting, and a good job to have." He agreed with Ellie, looking around when the guard did because that was a habit. If the guards were nervous, something could be up, though it was just them making the guards nervous this time.

"nah, i'm a janitor." Matt told them with a chuckle. "but I know a lot about water, it's kinda... you know, in my soul or whatever." He waved a hand.

The minotaur watched Shane suspiciously when he looked around. He seemed jumpy to her, even if he was probably just following her lead.

"I'm gonna petition for him to be a school teacher," Ellie told Shane sagely.

"I mean being connected to something doesn't mean you have to know about it," a kid said. "Like I know nothing about my kidneys or anything, and they're connected to be."

"We wanna hear about water!" Another kid said.

Shane looked back to Ellie after confirming that they were safe here and chuckled, nodding. "Well, he'd have my vote." He said happily then laughed at what the one kid said. "Different kind of connection, but you are right, kidneys are connected to your body."

"you should totally learn more about your kidneys" Matt told the kid. "Kidneys are important." He grinned and waved a hand. "but yeah, but different. Metaphysical. That's a big word that means uh... " He tried to come up with a definition. "Kinda like.. spiritual? " Did they know what that word meant either? eugh, words, hard. "I'm like.. a water elemental... kinda. " It was hard to explain the symbiote soul thing. "And because I like water, I learned a lot about it." He looked at the kids. "Like you" he pointed at the baseball kid "i'm sure know loads about baseball right? because you like it."

Baseball kid nodded. "Yeah! I know everything about baseball, because I like it." That analogy made sense to him, of course everyone would want to learn everything about something they liked!

"You don't look like a water elemental," one kid pointed out. "Water elementals don't have fangs, do they?"

"Shhh," her dad said. "Don't be rude."

Matt laughed. "I dunno, i've never really met one. Have you?"

The kid frowned. "I guess I haven't. I thought they'd look like... people made of water or something. Not like people with fangs."

Ellie giggled. "He's just so cool he has a water element AND fangs."

Matt chuckled and wheeled backwards a bit so he could turn around. "Come on kids, let's go find some fun experiments."

The kids followed along with varying levels of excitement. Some of them were really interested in anything the cool magic guy with the fangs said, others were a little skeptical that science could be interesting. But hey, it was worth a try.

Ellie tagged along with Shane. Meaning she grabbed him by the arm and tugged him. She was definitely glad to have Shane back.