[Sig – 13 years]

"Hello, everybody!" I wave to my orb once the stream is live. "You're gonna notice that today's stream is a liiiiitle bit different from normal! I'm outside! Well, yes, I do do that Wednesday afternoons with my friends, for the magic progress streams, but this isn't my back yard!"

I gesture to the area around me, a big field I picked out which should be large enough that I'll be able to find any rockets and rocket pieces which get scattered from my experiments. Mostly. There's about two inches of snow blanketing the ground, and occasional animal tracks.

With the snow being mostly pristine, however, I shouldn't have an issue as long as I look for dents in them which are obviously not tracks. Fortunately, I won't get blinded by the sun reflecting off of the snow thanks to my glasses.

"And you'll notice that I'm wearing my magitech glasses this time!" I point at them. "These are the same ones from the beta testing session – I just haven't needed them for an actual stream since then. But I don't have my computer here, so I'm using them for the orbs!"

I gesture to my body.

"And you'll notice that I'm in shorts and sneakers," I say. "Sort of like my normal Tuesday streams, but with sneakers. Not at all like what I do for my magic progress streams. Well… okay, so if you see a massive fluffy dog around the Dragon Falls area, like maaaaasive," I stretch my arms out. "And he's suuuuper fluffy? And he's got a box with a sign with prices for things like 'shake' and 'pat head' and 'belly rubs'? The 'warmth' option isn't a hug. I made that mistake, and he put a spell on me that'll keep me warm for hours. It actually feels like summer to me, despite all the snow.

"Next," I say. "You'll notice that chat is in emote-only and TTS is higher. I'm streaming earlier, so Aunt Rachel is working. Until my normal start time, TTS is $10 and chat's emote-only. That'll make it easier for Aunt Rachel to moderate. And if you do do something which needs moderating during this time, the punishment's gonna be extra-harsh because paying money doesn't mean you get to break the rules."

There are definitely people who think that paying means they can break the rules, but that's not how it works. Not in my channel.

"On to what the stream's about!" I say. "Some of you have probably picked up that some of the stuff I have on the table before me are used in making bottle rockets – but I'm missing things for propulsion! Normally, you'd use something like baking soda and vinegar or a bike pump, but I'm missing those.

"As you can see," I touch the bottles. "I have half-gallon soda bottles, empty and clean," I pick up the next thing. "Craft dowel rods," I put those down, then pick up the next thing. "Tape," I put that down, then pick up the next thing. "And stoppers. Stuff you might normally see when making bottle rockets."

I then pick up the pen and ink boxes.

"And I have these," I say. "Just bought them before coming out here. Brand new from XansonEnchants, which I didn't even know existed until I was at the store. It seems the enchanting pens Xander designed for us to use when making the magic lamps at the parties is now a product for sale!"

I put the packages down.

"Yes!" I say. "I'll be using enchanting for this! You're probably thinking, 'damn, that's gotta be expensive! Do you really think you can manage to enchant that many bottles for this?' Well, the plan's for more simple enchantments. Durability on the bottles, and a sort of sticking/fitting one on the stoppers."

I give a pause here, for what I think is dramatic effect. It's to give people time to wonder about how I'm going to propel them if I don't have something like a pump. A few viewers seem to catch on, as they're using emotes for air-related stuff. Some of my subs are using animated emotes of me conjuring air.

"If you haven't figured it out!" I say. "I'm going to use air magic! I can actually generate a decent amount of air for a small amount of mana. That's one of the things my magic mentor's been working on with me these past few months, and it's something I've been practicing a lot for a long time before that.

"So what the idea is," I say. "Is that I'll use a simple reinforcement enchantment," I touch the bottles. "To reinforce the bottles to withstand extra pressure. After that," I pick up a package of stoppers. "I'll use a simple enchantment on the stoppers so that they resist popping out. I did a brief look earlier and it seems there's a basic enchantment for that."

I open up the package and pull out a stopper, then pick up a bottle.

"Then once both are enchanted," I stick the stopper into the bottle. "I'll cork the bottle like this. I'll use dowel rods to make a stand, taping three to the bottle so I can stand it upside-down. With the rocket prepared, I'll then begin increasing the amount of air inside of it. As you've seen in my magic progress streams, I don't need to have an opening for that anymore, as long as it's not too thick of an object and I can see inside.

"This does the same thing as a bike pump," I say. "It increases the air pressure inside over and over until the stopper is forced out. This follows Newton's Three Laws of Motion. The rocket remains still until an unbalanced force is exerted upon it, propelling it upwards. That's the first one.

"This force is determined by the amount of air I put into it," I say. "If I add in a little bit of water, there's more mass which gets expelled. That deals with the second one.

"And finally," I say. "The air and water rushing out of the bottom of the rocket follows the third one, creating an equal and opposite reaction. That's how the rocket gets propelled upwards.

"Now," I set the bottle and stopper on the table. "If you're wondering why I don't have a weight on the top of this? Uh… it's not necessary. I do have tennis balls in my backpack, but don't ask why I have them in my play backpack when I don't have a racket."

Though I'm sure a lot of people can probably guess. They're fun to toss and bounce, especially against walls. Trying to catch them after a powerful wall bounce is fun challenge.

"I was looking up the enchantments," I say. "And the ones for this are fairly simple. They're easy to do and learn. Now, I do have some enchanting experience thanks to Xander's parties, but it's not extensive. I do remember his explanation for the different parts, so I'll be using that a little.

"However," I say. "His way of enchanting is different from how most of us do it. It's not something I can replicate, and the durability enchantments he taught us for the magic lamps is different from what I'll use on this.

"Why?" I ask. "Because Xander can directly see and sense mana and magical energies. He tailors each enchantment he makes to the specific objected based on its size, shape, material, density, and whatever else he needs to take into consideration.

"In other words," I say. "Every enchantment Xander makes is tailored to that specific object. That includes even durability enchantments. So what he used for the designs for the magic lamps won't work for a bottle rocket.

"That's why I have to use more general durability enchantments!" I say. "And while I've made bottle rockets before, it's never been like this! I've never used magic to do it, not even enchantments! What this is means is that you're all going to get to see me do some experimenting around!

"Before I look up and then sketch out the first enchantments," I say. "I'm going to do a rocket without! Technically speaking, that'd be the control rocket. But I don't think that's really necessary, I just want to make a bottle shoot up already. It'll let us see how high I can make the rocket go without increasing the stopper's resistance or the bottle's durability.

"First!" I say. "Let's get some dowel rods taped on. If you've never made a bottle rocket before, you want some sort of stand for it. The rocket needs to be able to stand, either with its own legs or fins, or on a stand meant for pumping air into it from. You also want to make sure it's aimed straight up.

"It'll shoot in the direction it's aimed," I say. "So if the stand isn't even, the rocket won't shoot straight up initially."

I open up the package of craft dowels, then tear off some tape.

"First," I say as I work. "I'm going to tape this dowel so that it's straight down, so that when the bottle's upside-down, the opening is about an inch and a half above the bottom of the rod. Then, I make sure it's as level as possible as I add a second dowel rod one-third of the way around. I need all three to be the same distance from the tip to ensure it's as level as I can make it. Of course, there are other factors at play for this as well, but I made sure to make the table as level as I can as well.

"A leveler would work great for this," I admit. "But I don't have one. This is good enough, though! And now that it's leveled, make sure the stopper is firmly in. It is, so let's set it down on the table! Uh… let's move the other bottles back into the wagon first."

After I do that, I check the rocket on the table.

"Okay!" I say. "So let's do our plain one! No enchantments!"

I hold my hand in front of the bottle, palm parallel to it. One of the orbs shifts to show this from the side, while the other moves back a lot. That one must be getting a better spot to show the full height of the rocket.

"Idea!" I say. "Hold on. That one," I gesture to the orb which distanced itself. "Probably moved so it can show the full height they get," I start adjusting some settings. "Let's have it display heights in numbers! That way, we can track how high the rockets go with the modifications!"

Once that's set up, I return to filling position.

"Adding in air in three… two… one!"

I begin conjuring air inside of the bottle. There's nothing to show that to my viewers, but I focus on filling the bottle with as much air as I can. After about fifteen seconds, there's a pop as the stopper shoots out and slams into the table. The sudden and loud sound startles me, causing me to jump back a couple of feet, but my gaze follows the bottle. The rocket shoots up into the air, and as it comes back down, the orb sends me a notice saying it went 31 feet, 3 inches.

"That was awesome!" I exclaim. "Can you guys see that? Yeah, looks like it's being displayed properly! It should do that for all of them, and list them as 'Rocket 1', 'Rocket 2', and so on. That's 'Control', as you can see. That's what it is without modifications."

I grab the sketchbook and a pencil.

"So I saw a few different versions of an enchantment to use for the stopper," I say as I flick the eraser of the pencil in the air a few times to pull up both of them on my stream. "There are two I want to try. We'll list them as Stopper A and Stopper B. Stopper A is the one I'm leaning more towards. What it does is it just makes it 'fit more snug'.

"Well, that's the summary," I say. "I don't really understand the specifics behind it. But the enchantment's basic purpose is to essentially enhance how well something fits, making it more snug. That increases how much force is needed to remove it. One of its more common uses is jars and bottles. Some farms which grow magic crops and make their own jams and jellies and stuff might order jars with this enchantment on the lid. It helps it stay on even better, even after it's been opened. Takes more effort to open, but their main clients are mages so they'll be a little bit stronger. Helps keep air out after the seal is broken.

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"Stopper B is different," I say. "In that it basically makes the stopper 'sticky'. Rather than fitting in more snug, it'll resist pulling out more. Or pushing out more. Sort of like if there's dried honey stuck to it, I guess? Or glue, but maybe not fully-solid glue. At least, that's my understanding from what the page said. Its more common use is when you want two things stuck together well, but temporarily.

"We're gonna do Stopper B first," I say. "Because I'm honestly not feeling that confident with it. I know this is magic, but let's use some scientific terms. My hypothesis is that the sticky stopper enchantment is going to do worse than the snug-fit one. The reason for that is because I don't think stickiness will really help it resist air pressure that well, while a more snug fit will. In my-in my… in my non-professional opinion."

I open up the sketchbook and begin sketching.

"So Stopper B looks like this, right?" I ask as I check the page, which I don't have shown on the stream but a link pops up after a couple of flicks of my pencil. That's enough for them, while I look at the actual page. "According to the site, it can be made small enough for the stoppers for the bottles. I want to practice drawing it before I put it onto a stopper, though.

"It says this part here is what determines the strength of the stickiness," I say as I work on one section. "I'm starting with the basic version, but I can increase or decrease the strength by how thick I make the lines for this."

I finish drawing that part, then move on to another.

"According to the site," I say. "This section, you do a little bit differently roughly based on the volume of the object."

I explain to my chat what the site says to do for the volume of the stopper as I draw it, as well as for each of the other parts. The enchantment formula isn't that complex and has only a handful of parts connected in a certain way. Once I finish sketching it, I draw it out three times to get a feel for it.

"An expert spends a lot of time practicing," I say. "To make their lines better and neater. That improves the enchantment's efficiency. They can spend tens of hours, maybe even hundreds, working on improving their enchantment drawing. Xander uses accelerated time to the point that he's probably spent hundreds of hours in it, though he does have it tailored in a way where he doesn't age at that rate rather than from the actual passage of time, so he is still only thirteen. I can't do that, though, so we've got just this practicing. Time to apply it to the stopper!"

I open up the package with the enchanting pen, then double-check that it has ink inside. It doesn't, so I fill it from one of the jars in the boxes of extra fluid. Mr. Ben probably felt it wasn't important to tell me that they don't come filled since I was buying some.

With the pen filled, I carefully draw the enchantment onto the top of the stopper. The fluid is silvery in color and remains visible, and it glows faintly as well. Once I make the finishing marks for it – there's a specific spot I'm supposed to do last – the glow increases slightly, then vanishes. The marks remain behind, however.

"Let's assemble the rocket!" I say.

That really just means putting in the stopper, since I can reuse the bottle. I set it down on the table, then begin the countdown to when I begin conjuring air within it. It takes a few seconds more than last time, then there's a loud pop as the stopper shoots out and a bang as it hits the table.

I jump back at the sudden sound, still startled despite expecting it, and watch as the bottle shoots up. As it begins to fall back down, a height indicator pops up. This one flew up 38 feet, 8 inches.

"That was awesome!" I say. "It did work better! But let's see about if I strengthen the sticky! But since I enchanted the stopper, I can't use that one again. I'll have to do a whole new stopper. That's why I have so many bottles and stoppers!"

Before that, I write on the stopper so that I can track which one has which enchantment and strength level.

I make the next stopper twice as strong, at least, as close to that as I can. I also write the indicators on it right after as well, so I don't need to later. This rocket travels a few feet higher than the last. Not as much as adding in the original enchantment did, but it's still an improvement. For the next stopper, I try to increase its strength by the same amount I did the first time.

Ten seconds of filling the bottle pass. Then fifteen. Then twenty. At roughly twenty-three seconds… the bottle explodes, shards of plastic shooting out everywhere. A shout of surprise escapes me, though none of the fragments hurt me. I'm too tough for that.

"Well!" I laugh. "Looks like we found where I need to apply durability enchantments at for the sticky stopper enchantment! Let's do the other stopper enchantment! As I said before, this one just makes the stopper fit more snugly, without actually pushing on the opening more. This one's the one I think will work better!"

I do the most basic one the site I found which lists it shows, including the standard version, no strength adjustments. Once it's ready, I mark it so I know which enchantment was on it and the strength level, then assemble a new rocket.

"Three… two… one!"

I begin filling the bottle with air.

"Fifteen… twenty… twenty-"

BOOM!

The bottle explodes and after I land from my jump, a hand a chest my chest, I look at the orb close by.

"Okay!" I say. "So that actually worked awesome! Its original strength is better than the sticky enchantment's original and double-strength! That means that I was right! No, Aunt Rachel, it doesn't hurt! I'm tough as golems!" I thump my stomach with a fist. "They're not flying that fast. Like, if I were a normal person, I'd probably have cuts. But as you can see," I have the orb zoom in. "No injuries!

"Anyway!" I say. "I'm gonna pick up the scraps, then eat lunch, then we'll take a look at the durability enchantment!"

Half an hour later, I'm showing my chat the durability enchantment I found that should work for this. The strength for this one is determined by the number of loops in a certain spot, with each loop strengthening it even more than the last did. It needs two full loops to actually strengthen the object.

"Combine this with the snug-fit stopper enchantment," I say as I stick the stopper in after setting up the rest of the rocket's design. "And we've got a rocket that should shoot pretty high! Let's do this!"

Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. It takes forty-three seconds before the stopper shoots out, the table jumping from the force. When the final height is displayed, I find that it shot-

"A hundred and fifty-three feet!" I exclaim. "That's awesome! So the minimum-strength enchantment for the stopper allows it to withstand… uh… however much force it'll take to shoot the bottle up a hundred and fifty-three feet! That means that the enhancement on the bottle is even stronger than that! Let's do a stronger stopper enchantment!"

Increasing the stopper enchantment by the minimum I'm able allows the bottle to shoot almost 230 feet. For the next increase to the stopper, it's able to withstand enough that the bottle explodes.

The strongest I'm able to manage before the durability enchantment reaches its loops limit allows the bottle to soar up almost 620 feet.

"That's absolutely ridiculous," I tell chat. "I mean, yeah, it'd be cooler if we got it to fly even higher, but I'm not good enough at enchanting to do better than that. This enchantment is a more basic one, so I'm surprised it even did that well in the first place. There's no gauge showing how much force there was, but I'm generating quite a lot of air in the bottles. With water adding mass to eject to increase the height, you're looking at stuff like ten, twenty, maybe thirty yards for an air pressure one. I managed over two hundred yards! So this is awesome! Aaand… there's a phoenix. With a shopping bag."

The phoenix sets the bag on the table, then floats to the side and… something forms. It looks similar to a perch Grandpa Blaze made, but this one seems to be made out of some sort of reddish-orange crystal with golden streaks.

Wait. Did she just make a perch out of crystallized fire mana? Phoenixes have high amounts of mana, but that's just insane.

"S.G.," it's the same phoenix as from the store a couple of weeks ago. "You have always been a very craft-loving kid, yet your bottle rockets are that plain? Why are you doing things halfway? That bag has decorations. Make it a proper rocket, will you?"

"I-what?" I ask, then look at the closer orb upon remembering that she's speaking telepathically, so my viewers won't be able to hear her. "She's scolding me for making plain bottle rockets instead of making them look like proper rockets," I look at her. "How would you know what I'm like?"

"I've lived in this area for hundreds of years," she says. "And you're outside quite often. It's easy to happen to be in the same spot as you during the warmer seasons. I'm well aware of your habits and hobbies, S.G. Now. Make that a proper bottle rocket, will you?"

"I-wh-how long were you watching me for?"

"In-person?" She asks. "About twenty minutes. I was waiting for your final one. As soon as I found out you were doing this, I checked the stream to see how what sort of silly decorations you did for the rockets, like you normally do. I remember that one you did back in March, with the streamers and confetti. And you were responsible enough to pick up every last one you could find."

She saw that? She must've been using her phoenix magic to conceal herself from others, like most phoenixes normally do. That was part of a class project, we all went to the park near the school to launch bottle rockets. The science and art teachers worked together for that – the science teachers for the actual project, while the art teacher for the decorations.

Since we were doing it at the park, and it was a bunch of kids, she might have gone there just to watch all of us.

"Well, it wasn't just me picking them up," I say. "Connor, Sam, Jake, and Ethan helped! That one was pretty fun, though! Even if I did get into a little bit of trouble for designing it to throw confetti out of the top!" I look at the orb. "She apparently watches school projects that happen at the park, and saw my class doing bottle rockets earlier this year."

"I brought confetti, in case you wanted to do that," she says. "And plenty of other things. Give it fins, will you?"

"Alright," I look at the orb. "She brought art supplies for me to decorate a rocket with. And has apparently been watching for twenty minutes! I do want to end stream soon so I can get to the meetup point with my friends in time for that, so we'll do this one last rocket! And it's gonna be awesome! The durability enchantment won't be affected by the decorations as long as I don't smear it, so I'll put it on, then decorate and make sure not to mess with that part!"

I enchant another bottle and use the latest stopper, then open up the bag of art supplies. Pipe cleaners, colorful construction paper, pompoms, corrugated boards, and more.

Within ten minutes, I have a bottle rocket that's wrapped in blue construction paper, decorated with snow leopard and turtle stickers. Corrugated board makes up the fins, and I gave it a nose-cone tip as well – though I hid that part of the craft from my viewers as I did that. If all goes well, it won't come off until after it reaches its peak and begins descending, unleashing confetti everywhere.

The phoenix brought it, she can clean it up.

"Okay, everyone!" I say. "Let's do this last one! Adding in air in three… two… one!"

Just as before, it takes a little more than forty seconds for the rocket to reach its maximum before the stopper shoots out. The table folds upwards with a crack as the rocket soars up.

I probably should have used a sturdier surface. Guess I'll need to replace that!

Before the rocket reaches its peak, the cone breaks off and confetti bursts out, flying everywhere. Then the rocket reaches its peak and begins its descent, very quickly crashing into the ground as confetti continues to flutter down.

"THAT WAS FRICKING AWESOME!!!" I pump my fists up into the air. "YEAAAAAH!"

I spend a solid minute or so just cheering. Even if the top came off sooner than I wanted, it still looked amazing!

"Alright!" I say. I've got to pick up the pieces, the phoenix has some confetti to incinerate, and then I'm gonna go meet up with my friends! Nine Springs is a bit of a trip, so I have to end earlier! But this was a super fun stream, so I might do more like it in the future! And that includes learning bits of enchanting! Thanks for watching, and I'll see you all tomorrow. Byyyyye!"

I wave until the stream ends, then look at the phoenix.

"You clearly wanted me to use the confetti," I say. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have brought it and mentioned it. Therefore, you clean it up!"

She lets out a cheerful chirping which I think is laughter.

"Of course," she gently flaps her wings, and flames form all over the area, quick flashes in different spots. "And I've cleaned up the other debris as well."

The perch dissolves as the craft supplies float back into the bag, which the phoenix then grabs with her talons.

"Enjoy the rest of your day, S.G.," she says. "May it be as fun as always."

She flies off, and I start packing my things up. The table really did break from the force, so I'll definitely need to replace that. Aunt Rachel's probably going to be mad at me, but I'll promise her a new table to make up for it. And that I'll look into buying an even sturdier one from a magic goods store for any future dangerous experiments.

As it is, she's probably a little freaked out over the exploding bottles, despite me having told her that will probably happen. Her having had a lot of time to adjust to it because of the stream will lighten it a bit. She's seen how it hasn't fazed me at all.

And having my friends with me when I arrive home will definitely make her not freak out as much as she wouldn't want to do that in front of them. I'm a tough kid, I don't need her babying over me. I was just fine for years before her, I know my limits. If I'd felt it would have an actual risk to me, I wouldn't have done it.

So it's better for me to get home with my friends, so that she'll force herself to be a little bit calmer in front of them. That will give her time to see that I just have some red marks and that's it. The phoenix might have healed me at the store a couple of weeks ago, but not today.

Probably because it was technically self-inflicted.

I don't mind, though, and I can't wait to tell my friends about it!

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

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