I know I’ve given up on being A Writer, but every now and then I get the urge to crank out a vignette. Please enjoy this slice out of my brain

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“Ease up there, kid. Relax, concentrate on the objective, don’t get carried away.”A new pupil’s natural tendency is toward overexertion when they’re trying something new, especially when that something involves creating explosions. My employers, an outfit not entirely unlike a finishing school for battle mages, set me the task of drilling some sense into a dozen youngsters, most of whom would rather have been practicing the “really cool” techniques such as levitation and invisibility.

What’s more fun than blowing things up? (That is, other than chasing someone naked around the bedroom, of course.) Kids these days, I tell you, have no appreciation for the truly enjoyable things in life. (That is, other than the aforementioned bedroom antics. They just all behave as if they invented that.)

Take the “Teleporting Trio,” if you will. (Please!) They acted as if translocation was the niftiest thing since thinly sliced ham. Nevermind the significant energy requirements, nevermind the momentary disorientation, it was the “in thing” those days to pop from class to class, and since those three spoiled brats came from families long predisposed to high power levels, they flaunted their ability shamelessly. Others tried to follow their lead, sometimes with embarrassing results. Well, finding oneself a half kilometer above the exercise pool will give a person considerable, even immediate, incentive to get the hang of levitation, wouldn’t you agree?

Young Devon, however, did indeed want to learn to blow things up better than anyone else. I can get behind that notion, though in his case I had to choose a safe distance behind or risk shrapnel-related injuries. Not that I can’t shield or heal, but one tries to avoid that sort of tediousness if one can. Devon was an enthusiast.

“Why?” He asked the time-honored question.

“Quite simply, young sir, if you expend every last erg in excess, you’ll find yourself vulnerable to counterattack. Know your limitations. Yes, you have them. Get over it.”

Devon brushed back a lock of stray hair and frowned intently at the immense demolitions practice field, perhaps better described as a debris field. “Isn’t that why we fight in teams, so that we always have someone to watch our back?”

“Sure,” I nodded. “And what happens when they’re busy watching their own back? Or someone else’s? Or they’ve failed to do so, and you’re the last man standing? Always prepare for the worst.”

“That’s a gloomy way to look at it.”

“If you think war is anything but a gloomy prospect, you have more growing up to do than I thought.”

He gave me a direct, questioning look. “You’re not like the other teachers.”

“That’s not true,” I replied. “I’m like at least one other teacher here.”

“Professor Armand. The one who claims to live on the far side of the moon,” Devon noted with considerable disdain.

“He does. Just, not on the far side of your moon. I’ve been to his house. Nice place, if you don’t mind not having a garden or lawn to gaze out upon.”

“That’s what I mean. You keep saying crazy things.”

“What, like ”˜war is possibly the worst way to convince somebody that your way is the right way’?”

“Uh,” he tried to reply, failed, then tried again, “no, not that. Just, you know, like asking what a world without magic would be like.”

“It’s a more profound question than you think. Imagine a world without mana founts and ley lines, without families who have magic in their very blood. Not only does such a world exist, but in fact most worlds are that way. This place? It’s the exception, not the rule.”

“You think there are other worlds?”

“Son, I was born on another world.”

“Yeah, right.” It’s amazing how jaded they become at such a young age. I admit that to someone who’s seen several millenia pass by, “young age” is a relative thing. Still, human teenagers are human teenagers no matter the world they grow up in, aren’t they?

I decided that a bit of inspired chicanery was in order.

“Say, Devon. What do you suppose that is?” I pointed far out into the practice field.

“I I don’t know. Suzy,” he called to one of his classmates, “what do you make of that thing out there?”

The pixie-faced redhead in question could be considered one of those “charity cases” you sometimes hear about in the upper-class school systems. What she lacked in family connections and power output, however, she made up for with a supremely keen array of enhanced senses in addition to a mind like a sponge. I actually thought of her as my star pupil, what with her unerring precision and finely-tuned use of explosive power. Of course, that could probably be a direct consequence of her being forced through the years to carefully meter her consumption. A life of challenges can bring out the best in a person, no?

“You’re not going to believe this, Dev.”

“Try me.”

“It’s a metal man. A very large metal man.”

Devon threw me a suspicious look, so I did my best to look bored, aloof and guiltless all at once. It’s possible that I failed, mind you.

Devon asked, “What is it doing?”

“Walking this way.”

“You’re not serious.”

“You’ll see for yourself in a minute. It should be coming around that large debris mound, there,” she pointed.

“Mind the autocannon,” I said. “Depleted transuranic slugs, at the rate of hundreds per second, will completely ruin your day if you’re caught unprepared.”

“The what? The what?” I realized at that moment that I might have overdone it a bit. Nothing for it but to see the ploy through, though, I decided.

“See that tube on its right arm?” They could, as the mecha rounded the debris mound right then. “Think of it as a sort of cannon, only it fires at a truly mindboggling rate.” By this time the entire class of a dozen students had gathered around. I turned my head toward the nearby Trio and said, “Oh, and it fires instantaneously. No setting up for a teleport if you’re its target.”

“But, cannon can’t fire that fast. Doesn’t someone have to, you know, place the, um, powder or”””

“Nope,” I cut Jane of the Teleporting Trio off. “This world you grew up in, it gave up on gunpowder in favor of your much-vaunted mystical arts. The world from which that weapon of war emerged had no such resource to choose, so they perfected the use of black powder and went on to find even more effective, thoroughly chemical and mechanical means of creating explosions and firing projectiles. And they became very, very good at it.”

The mecha turned, aimed at a line of target constructs far off to the right side of the field, and let loose a barrage with an ear-splitting sound much like that of a chainsaw amplified by a concert-level sound system. When the noise and the dust subsided, everyone could see the complete destruction that one large machine could accomplish. None of the youngsters had ever seen anything like it, I’m quite certain.

“So, Devon, how would you deal with such a machine if you faced it on the battlefield?”

“Blow it up!”

“Sure. How?”

“A really big explosion?” I’ll give him credit for realizing, albeit belatedly, that I was asking a trick question.

“Suzy!”

“Yes, Professor?”

“How would you take that thing down?”

Bless her crafty soul, the kid didn’t hesitate for a moment. Nine precise explosions later, the mech fell to pieces before our eyes.

“And that, my dear pupils, is why you always, always, carefully meter your power usage, why you always keep your wits about you, and why you remember that just because you couldn’t imagine it doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t. Got it?”

Devon rolled his eyes and said, “You’re really not from around here, are you sir?”

I smiled serenely and replied, “No. And you didn’t sense a thing when I conjured up that battlemech, did you?”

“Oh.”