He is, in fact! But not by a lot. They proceed out of their room soon enough, still dressed like magical girls.

"Do you just always dress like that?" Cam just always dresses in jeans and t-shirts, but at least there are black jeans in addition to multiple shades of blue jeans and four entire colors of shirt.

Cam shrugs and goes downstairs to get some cereal. "Do you know where the nearest worldgate hub is," he asks, "or are we just going to take a bunch of buses here and there till we find one?"

"I can find us one!" says Jellybean. "I'm really good at it."

"Cool." Renée has already left for work. Cam finishes his cereal. "Where to?"

Cam doesn't pay them any mind either. Jellybean's prerogative.

"Cool," says Cam, opening up Grace to sketch a quick drawing of the gate and a map to the locus. "But Jenny's not home, right? By the way, when I meet her, what do I call her?"

"You... call her Jenny?" says Matilda, trying and failing to imagine another option. "And no, she's at work. If we want to visit her we should do it on a weekend."

"Well, Renée's pretty laid back about my friends calling her Renée - although if I do it she doesn't like it, I have to address her to her face as Mom - but I have friends whose moms insist on being Mrs. Little or whatever," Cam explains. "All right. Now we know where a locus is for later, let's see what we can do about plants and medicines and stuff. We can keep experimenting on that till you guys are bored, and then you can go do whatever for a bit while I win a million dollars and then we can get really started."

"I am totally gonna watch you win a million dollars," says Jellybean.

"All right, we can keep doing that until you get bored and then we can go and I win a million dollars," says Cam. "I should probably submit an application thing first so they have time to process it, though. Should we take the bus back home or gate there, d'you think?"

"Oh, gate there," says Matilda. "You can set it up, for the practice, and we'll all power it because it's more efficient that way."

"Cute," says Cam, looking up from his vitamin and his wizard manual. "But dancing potatoes are not going to feed appreciably more starving people."

"So?" says Jellybean. The potato pirouettes.

Cam looks at him for a second, then says, "Okay," and relegates that particular potato to toy duty and gets himself another one to look at for when he's done with the vitamin.

Jellybean continues playing with his dancing potato.

Cam wishes to convince his vitamin to be better at being a vitamin. Ideally, it could supply perfect micronutrients for whoever took it with some sort of time-release so it wouldn't be necessary to have a new one every day for the vitamins that humans can't store effectively, but he'd settle for omitting side effects like niacin flush or some other measurable improvement in the performance. What does his manual have to say about that?

"If you take niacin, even the right amount of niacin, if it's more than you were getting before you get some side effects," says Cam, showing Jellybean the warning on the bottle.

"Huh," says Jellybean. He captures his dancing potato and starts talking to it again.

Cam starts asking his manual for general information about getting things to work in different ways in general.

"You want to trade?" Cam asks Jellybean.

"Nope," says Jellybean.

"...Okay." Cam goes back to narrowing down what he's looking for from the manual without getting too narrow, with Grace's help.

Jellybean talks to the potato and the vitamin. Matilda consults their manual and examines her pill.

Cam solicits information on outright genetic manipulation, in case someone's come up with a way to get around this reluctance. He's also listening with half an ear to what in the world Jellybean's doing with his potato.

What Jellybean's doing with his potato is, apparently, genetic modification! That colour change is heritable.

Cam blinks, and pays attention. He doesn't interrupt Jellybean; he does not yet know how to do that productively instead of distracting the other wizard into making the potato sing songs or write the Great American Novel or something instead.

Mostly he's just talking to it, in an entirely casual way. And he gently, casually suggests that the potato take on this or that quality... and it does, as easily as that.

Cam peers at Jellybean's potato, and at his own potato, and he attempts to mimic the style, just in case it'll work.

Nope.

Grace is helping, so Cam figures it out eventually. He doesn't interrupt. He does, however, give up on his potato - since Jellybean is making more progress and there's so much more to do - and get a grain of rice.

Rice, for whatever reason, is more receptive to his suggestions than potatoes.

Okay, that's interesting, if they just vary in cooperativeness. Cam tries other available plant-based foods, finds rice the most suggestible, and sets about convincing the rice to do useful things, taking notes as he goes on what he's trying and what works.

"So are we gonna find somewhere to plant these?" wonders Jellybean.

"Yeah. Arizona's not really great for it, but I guess if we can make them take root in the backyard here, that's a good test of how they'll do in, like, the Sahara, compared to if we went someplace cooler?" says Cam. "So there's here, it's not like the sand in the yard is doing anything that Renée'll be annoyed if we mess up."

"Cool," he says agreeably.

"How's the painkiller behaving?" Cam inquires of Matilda.

"I haven't tried anything yet," she says absently. "Still learning."

The rice sprouts obediently.

Jellybean is still improving his potato.

"Sure," she says cheerfully.

Off they go to the worldgate locus. "If we can't find one on the other end, we can just gate from anywhere and be dead tired after, right?" Cam confirms before setting up the gate.

"Yeah," says Jellybean, "but we've never had to emergency-gate from Earth."

Jellybean and Matilda both follow, likewise concealed.

(Jellybean giggles behind impromptu soundproofing.)

(Jellybean, mutually visible to both of the other wizards in the room, is now cackling silently.)

Jellybean claps his hands, also silently. Even Matilda is grinning.

Now it's Matilda's turn to soundproof her giggles.

Jellybean holds up a hand in an I-got-this gesture and heads for the computer in question. Matilda follows. They talk to it in a way audible to no one but themselves and the computer.

After about thirty more seconds, Matilda gives the thumbs-up.

Matilda beams proudly at the computer.

Jellybean and Matilda trail them like a very short row of ducklings.

The plants sprout. They do it fairly energetically, for plants.

Jellybean is still having snickerfits behind his soundproofing.

Matilda emits a silent giggle.

Which cracks both of them up all over again.

The plant rustles verdantly.

Jellybean takes the lead, since he's the worldgate-finding expert.

Cam follows merrily. "I'm gonna be a millionaire," he says cheerfully. "You guys have fun?"

"I am!" Cam agrees without a trace of self-consciousness.

"I kind of wanna make out with you," Jellybean declares.

"What, right now, invisibly on the middle of the sidewalk?" asks Cam.

"Yep," says Jellybean. "I mean, unless you really wanna go home first or something."

"See," says Jellybean, "if this is you letting me down gently, we can just go back to your place, but if this is not you letting me down gently, how would you like to make out on the Moon?"

"I think making out on the Moon sounds great," says Cam decisively.

"Awesome," says Jellybean, and he heads off in search of a worldgate locus.

Cam continues to follow. He glances at Matilda to see if she has any particular reaction to this exchange.

She just asks, "Can I wait for you guys at your house? It'll be easier to get back that way, Jellybean and I can gate to each other more easily than we can to arbitrary locations."

"Yeah, sure," says Cam.

"Okay," she says agreeably.

Ho hum looking for a worldgate.

"Moon," observes Cam, perhaps unnecessarily, turning on the spot to take in the moonscape. The stars are something else, the view of Earth really something else. "Damn." The part they're standing on is pretty much gray dirt as far as the eye can see, but the sky from here...

"I know," says Jellybean, "awesome, right?" He is grinning hugely. Only some of this is because they are on the Moon.

"Fantastic. D'you hang out on the moon a lot?"

Cam laughs and flops onto his back and makes a moon angel.

Jellybean giggles affectionately at this, and flops right next to him.

"So, um," says Cam. "I have not made out with anybody on any celestial body at all before. Is there an instruction manual?"

"Nah," he says, snuggling up a little. "But I can give you some tips if you want, I've made out with lots of people."

"Sure," says Cam, "do tell."

"I was thinking less tell," Jellybean says cheerfully, "more show."

Like so, is it?

Yes, yes exactly. Is Cam a quick learner? Because those are fun.

Cam is in fact a very quick learner!

Well, that might depend on how advanced.

For one thing, Jellybean definitely thinks these moon makeouts would be improved if the number of shirts involved was drastically reduced.

Cam is on board with this subtraction of shirts!

That's good, because there may be only one pair of pants between them but Cam thinks they should stay where they are for now.

Does he have any opinions about Jellybean's skirt? Because Jellybean is fine with keeping the skirt on, but might be a little disappointed if Cam is scrupulous about avoiding its entire area of coverage.

Well, not the entire area. Not necessarily.

Oh, awesome.

This was clearly an excellent idea.

It totally fucking was.

Delicious Jellybean kisses, om nom nom.

Cam makes a confused, intrigued noise, and carries on with exactly what he is doing.

Jellybean giggles into the latest of many kisses.

"Enough," he says cheerfully. "Tilly came up with an air-vacuum barrier that does gas exchange, we could be up here for days before it gave up on us."

"'S a long time," observes Cam.

"Yup!" says Jellybean.

Kiss kiss nibble?

Mmmmmmmmmmmm. Yes excellent.

Good, Cam's first attempt at outright improvisation is a success. This was a good idea that Jellybean had and going along was a good idea that Cam had.

Yeah, Cam's getting that impression. He's developing quite a bit of enthusiasm himself.

Awesome. Jellybean loves making out with enthusiastic people! It's such fun, isn't it?

Cam can see why it's so popular, yes!

"I do wonder how well it'll generalize to related situations," muses Cam. He pauses for effect. "I mean, I feel like I know almost nothing about skiing on the moon."

Kisses! Yay! Partial confirmation of Grace's guess! Yay!

Insofar as making out with Jellybean says anything about anyone's sexual orientation, yes indeed!

As far as Cam knows, it's at least a hint!

Anyways, kisses. Yes. Kisses on the Moon.

In quantity!

And quality!

Cam shakes the dust off his shirt, puts it on, and attempts to convince his outfit and skin to shoo dust away.

Jellybean just runs both hands through his hair and shakes himself out. His clothes become pristine; his skin remains covered in moondust.

"I wish you'd say more of your spells so I could pick them up. I can't read your mind," mutters Cam, and he tries a new wording to get cleaned up.

"Thanks," says Cam. "I don't suppose there's a locus on the moon."

Cam nods. "I made a moondust angel," he adds innocently.

Matilda giggles. "Is that what they're calling it these days."

Cam snorts. He goes to check on the seedlings in the yard and take notes on their progress.

They're all growing cheerfully enough, at ordinary rates for their respective species.

Dangit, they were supposed to go faster. Oh well. Speed isn't as important as yield.

And at least they're growing, which in this climate most of them ordinarily wouldn't be.

There is that! He pats them all encouragingly. He's going to be a millionaire and pull a Norman Borlaug. Awesome.