Kids
I was on holiday with a family and looking after their 3 young daughters. They were nice kids, ranging from about 8 to about 12 in age, and we had adventures :)
The first one was when I walked into a grain storage depot to find them sitting on top of a massive pile of wheat which had just been delivered and was going to get pumped into silos via an underground system. There was a guy in a control box on the wall and he was checking that they were all fine before starting the augers beneath the ground to begin pumping the grain. I was worried as this was inherently a dangerous thing, but the kids were fine and enjoyed the ride down, and had been expertly positioned as they landed on one of the bars that were over the augers and were safe.
The next was in a high altitude town. This was an interesting place, run by an evil bastard as his own little dictatorship. Naturally we didn't like this, so we broke into his house and had a look around. It was a very nice place, panelled wood on the walls and so on. We found what we needed and got out, making it look like nobody had been there. We found their parents in what looked to be an abandoned church, all the seating was pews. But we'd been able to fit their land yacht (literally a big old wooden boat, on wheels) in there, which I had copied and parked on top of, phased into their yacht but offset slightly so both entrances were available. The evil dictator got home and realised that something was amiss, but he couldn't find what so he set up a scrying device and went looking. Naturally I'd suspected that he'd try something like that and had set up our device to counter his. A scrying device is basically a 3 dimensional cross suspended somehow. His was a lovely polished metal thing hung on fine wire over a shimmering pool of liquid metal. Ours was made out of whatever we had been able to find: a broken plank of wood, an offcut of drilled aluminium bar, and a pencil, all suspended by a ratty piece of string. But it worked. I was teaching the kids that magic didn't need shiny kit to work, anything would do really. It was more about what skill you had. Of course, having a shiny kit did help, and the evil dictator was pretty good and he managed to unravel our device, the pencil slowly slid out and without that holding everything together it fell apart and the spell was broken. Surprisingly, the youngest kid just got up and put it back together again. Differently, but she got the right shape to make it work, and the magic started up again. I rewound time a little to cover the gap and we were fine :) The discussion then turned to where they'd sleep the night and they wanted to sleep in my land yacht which their parents weren't that keen on, but their parents had previously been having a discussion with some of their friends about proper separation of (something) and the kids used that in their argument and the parents had to concede :)
Then we were at the beach and it was a lovely day :) Sun, sand and ocean and the kids were having fun. There were jellyfish in the water however and the youngest two had just found one. The youngest was actually reaching for the long tentacles when I came to get them, cautioning them not to touch, and dangerous. They were happy just watching after that, but the eldest, in an impressive display of skill, actually picked one of them up safely! She was getting good :) There was a young couple swimming near us and we warned them about the jellyfish, then the kids were distracted by a bearded man walked up. He was built kind of like a bear and the kids were very happy to see him and ran up to him hugging him etc. I was kinda disappointed. I wasn't the shiny new thing any more :( The guy must have noticed my crestfallen face as he came over to me and threw me over his shoulder before walking off! It was very strange, I was actually sitting on his shoulder, one left either side, and facing away from him. I really wasn't sure about this so I flipped him over and got off. I had to use magic to do that as there was nothing I could grab on to to flip him like that, and he was confused as to how I'd managed to flip him for the same reasons. He quickly got over that and took me around a small hillock in the dunes and showed me a helicopter. It was a strange thing, a white bulbous body sat on spindly legs beneath 2 fragile looking rotors. It looked very 50's, and like something NASA had created. The rotors were strange, each had 3 blades but only 1 of those was long, the other 2 were counterweighted and short. The guy took me around to the front where there were 3 people in the cockpit, a pilot, a suit and some guy in a lab coat. They showed off their shiny new helicopter prototype and was sure that it would fly. I started to question some of their design decisions, like the rotors, and the massive body, and they really were new at this sort of thing. But, we learn from making mistakes so why not :) One of the things they showed off worried me however. They actually had a tethered ROV on it. Some white squat manta shape on a thick tendril of power and control. I really couldn't see the point and they explained that it was so the pilot could check the landing in dangerous situations. I was really skeptical and wondered why the pilot couldn't just look through the windows in the floor by his feet. They insisted that theirs was better. I chatted to the pilot and wondered just how much time he'd had in helicopters, and he'd had a bit. I then asked him if he'd flown to great heights or other situations where the helicopter was as the limit of what it could do and he had, not liking where this discussion was going. I then asked him how he'd feel about having to take his eyes and hands off the controls in one of those situations to handle this little ROV, and he agreed that doing so would mean his death and the death of everybody aboard, as in those situations you're so busy just controlling the helicopter you don't have time for anything else. The suit and the lab coat agreed to maybe reconsider the ROV.
And then we were flying home. It was a big airplane and there were 5 seats by the window in this row. Some guy had the actual window seat, then bearded bear man had the next seat and the 3 kids all sat next to him, meaning I had to go sit next to their parents. The kids didn't mind as this meant that I was in front of them and could spend the entire flight craned around in my seat chatting with them.
The first one was when I walked into a grain storage depot to find them sitting on top of a massive pile of wheat which had just been delivered and was going to get pumped into silos via an underground system. There was a guy in a control box on the wall and he was checking that they were all fine before starting the augers beneath the ground to begin pumping the grain. I was worried as this was inherently a dangerous thing, but the kids were fine and enjoyed the ride down, and had been expertly positioned as they landed on one of the bars that were over the augers and were safe.
The next was in a high altitude town. This was an interesting place, run by an evil bastard as his own little dictatorship. Naturally we didn't like this, so we broke into his house and had a look around. It was a very nice place, panelled wood on the walls and so on. We found what we needed and got out, making it look like nobody had been there. We found their parents in what looked to be an abandoned church, all the seating was pews. But we'd been able to fit their land yacht (literally a big old wooden boat, on wheels) in there, which I had copied and parked on top of, phased into their yacht but offset slightly so both entrances were available. The evil dictator got home and realised that something was amiss, but he couldn't find what so he set up a scrying device and went looking. Naturally I'd suspected that he'd try something like that and had set up our device to counter his. A scrying device is basically a 3 dimensional cross suspended somehow. His was a lovely polished metal thing hung on fine wire over a shimmering pool of liquid metal. Ours was made out of whatever we had been able to find: a broken plank of wood, an offcut of drilled aluminium bar, and a pencil, all suspended by a ratty piece of string. But it worked. I was teaching the kids that magic didn't need shiny kit to work, anything would do really. It was more about what skill you had. Of course, having a shiny kit did help, and the evil dictator was pretty good and he managed to unravel our device, the pencil slowly slid out and without that holding everything together it fell apart and the spell was broken. Surprisingly, the youngest kid just got up and put it back together again. Differently, but she got the right shape to make it work, and the magic started up again. I rewound time a little to cover the gap and we were fine :) The discussion then turned to where they'd sleep the night and they wanted to sleep in my land yacht which their parents weren't that keen on, but their parents had previously been having a discussion with some of their friends about proper separation of (something) and the kids used that in their argument and the parents had to concede :)
Then we were at the beach and it was a lovely day :) Sun, sand and ocean and the kids were having fun. There were jellyfish in the water however and the youngest two had just found one. The youngest was actually reaching for the long tentacles when I came to get them, cautioning them not to touch, and dangerous. They were happy just watching after that, but the eldest, in an impressive display of skill, actually picked one of them up safely! She was getting good :) There was a young couple swimming near us and we warned them about the jellyfish, then the kids were distracted by a bearded man walked up. He was built kind of like a bear and the kids were very happy to see him and ran up to him hugging him etc. I was kinda disappointed. I wasn't the shiny new thing any more :( The guy must have noticed my crestfallen face as he came over to me and threw me over his shoulder before walking off! It was very strange, I was actually sitting on his shoulder, one left either side, and facing away from him. I really wasn't sure about this so I flipped him over and got off. I had to use magic to do that as there was nothing I could grab on to to flip him like that, and he was confused as to how I'd managed to flip him for the same reasons. He quickly got over that and took me around a small hillock in the dunes and showed me a helicopter. It was a strange thing, a white bulbous body sat on spindly legs beneath 2 fragile looking rotors. It looked very 50's, and like something NASA had created. The rotors were strange, each had 3 blades but only 1 of those was long, the other 2 were counterweighted and short. The guy took me around to the front where there were 3 people in the cockpit, a pilot, a suit and some guy in a lab coat. They showed off their shiny new helicopter prototype and was sure that it would fly. I started to question some of their design decisions, like the rotors, and the massive body, and they really were new at this sort of thing. But, we learn from making mistakes so why not :) One of the things they showed off worried me however. They actually had a tethered ROV on it. Some white squat manta shape on a thick tendril of power and control. I really couldn't see the point and they explained that it was so the pilot could check the landing in dangerous situations. I was really skeptical and wondered why the pilot couldn't just look through the windows in the floor by his feet. They insisted that theirs was better. I chatted to the pilot and wondered just how much time he'd had in helicopters, and he'd had a bit. I then asked him if he'd flown to great heights or other situations where the helicopter was as the limit of what it could do and he had, not liking where this discussion was going. I then asked him how he'd feel about having to take his eyes and hands off the controls in one of those situations to handle this little ROV, and he agreed that doing so would mean his death and the death of everybody aboard, as in those situations you're so busy just controlling the helicopter you don't have time for anything else. The suit and the lab coat agreed to maybe reconsider the ROV.
And then we were flying home. It was a big airplane and there were 5 seats by the window in this row. Some guy had the actual window seat, then bearded bear man had the next seat and the 3 kids all sat next to him, meaning I had to go sit next to their parents. The kids didn't mind as this meant that I was in front of them and could spend the entire flight craned around in my seat chatting with them.