Jason got up and walked around the table to give both of them a hug. “Look, I know you’re worried I will lose all my money, but I truly am being very careful about what I am doing, and I don’t really feel like a gambler. I’m certainly not playing like some of the people I’ve met. Really. I look at it more like trading on the stock market. I put up money based on my judgment of the situation, and yes, sometimes I lose, but I win more often than I lose, and so far, I’ve rarely come home behind. It has happened once or twice, and it will happen again, no doubt, but I am confident I can continue to win more than I lose, and already, I am a long way up. Believe me. I am being very careful!” In fact, he hadn’t actually lost in a single session of play, but that would sound way too suspicious!
They still weren’t happy, but he was paying his rent, buying groceries and stuff, as well as paying for the new high-speed internet connection and the Netflix subscription, seemingly without any problem. On top of which, he hadn’t asked for spending money for months, despite overseas travel, Vegas, and so forth. Faced with the clear signs of his, well, not affluence so much as being comfortably in funds, they couldn’t really argue that he wasn’t paying his way! He was sure they were both waiting for him to crash and burn, so they do the whole “told you so” thing, but well, he guessed that sort of worry wort attitude was in the parental job description. He did continue to think of other ways he could make money in case the casinos banned him.
Because he did his magic out in the ravine he had found, and then only on days when both his parents were at work, he had managed to keep it secret from them. And everyone else, as far as he could tell! It had been hard keeping it to himself, but so far, he had managed to maintain an iron clamp of any desire to show off or otherwise let anything show. It would be so easy to show off, particularly to the girls! But he couldn’t. The government would want him; other governments would want him. They would threaten his family and or friends to get him, and he couldn’t have that. Not yet, at least, at any rate. Maybe not ever. At least on this Earth. Hmmm. Now there’s an interesting thought. He had kept on thinking about going to a different Earth but was scared of getting marooned or worse, lost somewhere in the multiverse and not able to find his way home. He remembered that crap TV show he’d seen as a kid about a group of people lost in an endless series of alternate dimensions. It had been pretty ordinary, even to his eight-year-old science fiction mad self, in large part because the show lacked the budget to do it properly. Yet, for all that, it was a valid example of what could happen to him. Possibly. He had no experience with traversing the multiverse at all and was not sure he was ready to risk getting lost. And he wasn’t game to go to Urasmian’s earth, that was for sure! Not yet, at least. He had no idea how his skills ranked against the sorcerers there and was not game to find out any time soon!
Sigh. He practiced wearing the bullet defense shield around himself all the time. If his secret ever came out, long-range sniper fire would be the obvious method to take him down. Or gas! Shit. Okay. So how do I stop gas? He studied more articles online over the next few weeks and struggled to come up with anything. He had to be able to breathe after all. Trying to come up with a magical air supply was near impossible. Finally, he had a brainwave when reading a book that described how to stop a bio-attack. That was even worse than gas, but the book gave him an idea, and he worked on it steadily over the next few weeks as he practiced improving his other skills. Holding the bullet shield was tiring, and at first, he could barely manage a few minutes, but the time lengthened as he got more practiced, and the same applied with the physical shield, which he also began to curve around the front half of himself. It was almost as if his magic was like a muscle, and the more he exercised, the stronger it got!
