Chief Engineer Miriri enjoyed the slow afternoon, her legs propped up on her desk at the head of the mana grid control centre, overlooking the technician fairies operating the various terminals and monitoring numbers and status indicators.

  They had finished a major maintenance on the grid as a whole a few months prior, and, at least for the near future, slow, quiet days like this should be the norm. A pleasant respite after a hectic year of overtime and last-minute miracles.

  She sipped from her steaming cup of fruit juice, letting her sight gloss over the large wall-mounted monitors that displayed real-time information about the grid.

  Something caught her trained eyes; numbers that were spiking when they shouldn't be. She squinted, taking her feet off her desk and getting up, walking closer to the displays. An alarm started blaring.

  “Chief! Grid sector five reports mana saturation above the safety threshold!”

  Miriri turned to the technician, about to give an order when-

  Another alarm rang up. “Chief! Grid sector nineteen is also repor-”

  And another. “Chief! Grid sector twenty-two is-”

  “Chief! Secto-”

  “Chie-!”

  “EVERYBODY SHUT UP!” Miriri yelled over the wailing sirens. She spun to the wall display, her face dropping as all the nodes were turning yellow, into red, into flashing red, in rapid sequence.

  She pointed at screens, looking at the assembled technicians who were staring at the nightmare scenario. “Someone tell me what is going on! Did we schedule a drill?!”

  No one answered, enthralled by the catastrophe unfolding before their eyes.

  “FAIRIES! DO YOUR JOBS!” She bellowed, jolting the technicians back to alertness. They dove for their workstations and furiously scanned the reports.

  Miriri asked again. “Well?! Was there a scheduled drill?!”

  “N-not that I can see, chief!” One of the technicians replied.

  Biting her finger, her brain running through a hundred scenarios, Miriri pointed at another technician. “You! The mana condensing towers! Reverse the flow! We need to vent mana out of the system, or everything is going to crash!”

  The technician blinked. “Ch-chief! That's going to severely damage the condensing towers! It's a desperate measure for a crisis!”

  Chief Miriri blinked, then threw a hand, rolling her eyes. “Oooh! Well, deary me, I didn't know-WHAT IN THE SUGAR RUSH WOULD YOU CALL WHAT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?” She yelled at the technician.

  The berated fairy jerked back before slamming her hand on a bright fuchsia button.

  Several icons on the wall display turned yellow as the flow of mana began reversing, drained by the towers now expelling mana back into the atmosphere, instead of pulling it in.

  Overloading alerts began disappearing, replaced by overheat alerts from the towers, but Miriri knew the specs on those machines. They could operate like this for a little while, time enough to figure out what was wrong and find a solution.

  She bit her lip, then started barking orders.

  David blinked, eyes opening wide, testing his grasp on the handles.

  Totori noticed. “Is something wrong?”

  He glanced at her before returning his sight to the handles. “Hmm, I'm not sure. There's suddenly less resistance to pushing the mana into the system...”

  Totori put a finger against her chin. “I'm not certain, but I think that happens when there is a heavy load on the grid. Like, there's less mana, so the pressure is lessening.”

  David nodded. “Then, let's fill it back up.”

  He unleashed a second tsunami.

  Chief Miriri was scrolling through the main logs for the past few minutes when the alarms all began blaring once more, alert messages blotting the main display, while the tower's overheating indicators shot up to dangerous levels.

  “BUMBLING BEE! AGAIN?!” She rushed to the closest phone.

  They had to limit the amount of mana present in the grid. If relays began failing, with the amount of pressure present in the system, they were looking at a systemic collapse of the entire grid.

  She called up the hungriest mana industry she could think of.

  A clerk burst into Chief Purser Sasara's office, phone in hand. “Chief, it's the mana grid bureau. They want to talk to you. Say it's urgent.”

  Sasara quirked an eyebrow, hand frozen mid-signature on a form. She sighed and put down the pen, getting up from her chair and walking over to the clerk, handing out her hand. The clerk handed her the phone, which she brought up to her ear.

  “Chief purser Sasara spea-”

  “TURN ON THE MINTERS!” A voice yelled, hurting her hearing, as she jerked her head away from the handset.

  “...I'm sorry, who are you?” She asked in a thin voice.

  “CHIEF ENGINEER MIRIRI. IT'S AN EMERGENCY, THE GRID IS OVERLOADING, WE NEED TO LOWER THE MANA PRESSURE. TURN. ON. THE. MINTERS!”

  “It's... what kind of emerg-”

  “YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS BEFORE THE ENTIRE CITY'S GRID BLOWS UP, AND THEN NO MORE MANA, DO YOU UNDERSTAND? MINTERS! NOW!”

  She was about to ask for more details when she heard a fizzle coming from her office window. Turning her head to find out what was happening, her eyes flung open when she saw blue bolts of mana spearing skyward in rapid succession, sending nearby pedestrian fairies running and screaming.

  She turned around, eyes wild. “Turn on the minters!”

  The clerk tilted her head. “The... minters? Which ones?”

  “All of them! Now!” Sasara began running before she had finished speaking, out into the corridor and to the minting hall. She began shouting orders as she crossed the doorway.

  Soon, the six large, two-story high metal machines hummed to life, heavy dies slamming together before releasing newly minted manamints, depositing them on conveyors that brought them over to waiting carts.

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  Regaining her breath, Sasara returned the phone to her ear. “They're all activated. Is it helping?”

  “More!” The voice shouted back.

  “What do you mean, More!?”

  “I mean, more! Make them go faster! It's not enough!”

  “But.. I...”

  “MORE!” The scream made her flinch away from the handset.

  “SUGAR RUSH! FINE!” She yelled back into the receiver, before turning towards the mintery employees who were looking at their boss, questions in their eyes.

  “Everyone! Maximum output!”

  A few faces blanched. One of them spoke up. “Huh, ma'am, maximum output basically lets the minters go as fast as the mana flows in. It's not a recommended setting. At all.”

  The Chief purser ran a hand down her face. “I know, but do it anyway.” She said with a grimace, glaring at the handset and the fairy on the other side.

  Her orders relayed, the minters picked up speed, the conveyor belt speeding up, the stream of manamints turning into a waterfall of clinking coins.

  And the minters sped up.

  The dies were blurs, the conveyor belts raced around, the manamints began flying off them and skittering around on the floor.

  And they sped up.

  And they sped up more.

  The heavy stamping became one, continuous, indistinct thunder. The manamints began impacting on the far wall like bullets, chipping at the concrete wall, ricocheting every which way.

  The fairy operators ran for cover from the valuable projectiles, screaming and yelping in pain as stray manamints pelted them.

  One of them crumpled forward, blood appearing on the back of her head.

  “FAIRY DOWN!” Someone shouted. A group of them came out from behind a desk, drawers held as a sort of shield, advancing to the unconscious fairy, grasping her arms and dragging her back to relative safety.

  Sasara stood by the door, mouth agape. The handset slipped from her hands, the voice on the other side screaming, “More!”

  Lead meteorologist Yinmi tapped at the storm radar as it appeared to freak out, its display showing a solid mass of clouds coalescing over the city of Fairlilly, about a kilometre away.

  She looked up from the malfunctioning hardware and over at her coworker, who was squinting at her own screen. “Hey, Juyu, come look at this.”

  The other fairy shook her head. “Wait, something strange's going on with the mana density sensors.”

  Yinmi frowned, looking back at the radar. Was it... not malfunctioning?

  As she pondered the possibility, someone knocked on the door of their shared office. A fairy's head poked out. “Yinmi, Juyu, come see this.”

  “Not now, there's something strange going on with the instruments...”

  The fairy shook her head, eyes serious. “No, come see.” She said, departing in a hurry.

  Both meteorologists glanced at each other before getting up and out, into the courtyard of their station.

  A few other fairies were assembled, looking at the sky over the city of Fairlilly, one of them pointing.

  Yinmi's eyes snapped wide open as she caught a glimpse of what was being pointed at: Huge, ominous blue clouds, roiling, pulsing like a beating heart, growing larger with every pump.

  Ethereal blue lighting could be seen raging inside the monstrous mana cloud.

  Her pulse spiking up to a staccato, she ran back inside, fumbled with her keys and reached for a panel labelled “Emergencies.”

  She poked at the keyhole a few times before managing to slide her key in, wrenching the door open, and slamming her hand on all the weather warning buttons she could see.

  She hoped the people would react quickly enough and seek shelter indoors. This was a once-in-a-thousand-years storm building up over their head.

  In the distance, sirens began wailing.

  Chief engineer Miriri chewed through her fingernails like she was starving.

  They had turned off all mana-generating stations, they were pumping as much as they could into the inter-grid connections, they had turned on all city lights, given full, unrestricted power to every single scrap of mana-using machinery.

  And it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough.

  Already, a few substations had gone black, shutting down before they exploded, each one increasing the load on the surviving locations. A full failure cascade was just one more trip away.

  In a corner, a group of fairies were trying to sacrifice the snack machine to appease whichever terrible god they had offended.

  In another, fairies were huddled in a circle, kneeling, crying, and praying for salvation.

  The city cameras showed the population running left and right, seeking shelter against whatever terrible calamity the air raid sirens were announcing.

  The skies were quickly darkening, the massive mass of angry mana slowly descending ever closer to the city. Soon, its mana bolts would start hitting buildings, sending chunks of them plummeting down to the streets, which would more likely than not be plunged into darkness as the grid failed. The emergency services would be overwhelmed. Food would spoil, and water would run out.

  The city was going to die.

  It was the apocalypse.

  And then, the numbers began to plateau.

  Slowly, they started going down.

  Flashing reds became solid reds, then oranges, yellows...

  And stayed there, the damage on the grid apparent, but it had held on, whatever Lie-forsaken disaster had passed through it, the grid had held on.

  Miriri ordered the mana condensers back to full power.

  The mana storm began dissipating, as its energy was reabsorbed by the grid.

  She slumped into the nearest chair and let herself pass out.

  Chief Purser Sasara, hearing the minters shut down and relative silence returning to the hall, clambered up the slope of manamints butting into the doorway.

  She was a few feet up from the floor, itself entirely buried beneath trillions worth of manamints.

  She stumbled up to the gaping breach that the manamints had dug through the concrete wall, the day's light filtering through, reflecting on the mound of coins.

  Her staff began assembling around her, relief evident on their face at still being alive.

  Sasara looked at the dragon's hoard and sighed.

  This was going to crash the economy...

  Meteorologist Yinmi stared at the numbers, cold sweat rolling down her brow.

  The storm had stopped growing, but the long-term impacts...

  That much wild mana, concentrated in such a limited region, was going to upset the natural mana streams for years, if not decades.

  Knowing the full ramifications was impossible. The weather would be disrupted, and mana-sensitive ecosystems would either disappear or transform into something unrecognizable.

  The environment was going to suffer terribly...

  David looked at what used to be charging handles, now nothing more than thin, badly corroded strips of metal which wouldn't accept any more mana.

  He looked at Totori and Niala.

  He pointed at the machine. “I think it's broken.”

  Totori pursed her lips, observing the corroded handles. “Strange, I never heard of these doing that...” She straightened back up. “Welp! No worries, we can use one of the other ones, if you still have mana to give?”

  David observed the other stations arrayed along the wall before shaking his head. “I think I gave enough. Can we check at the front desk?”

  The fairy blinked. “Well, huh, sure, but that was only a half hour... I'd be surprised if you gave more than a hundred thousand manawatts... Which is quite impressive, by the way!”

  Niala tilted her head. “It is? You said people usually had a few tens of thousands of, huh, manawatts?”

  “Well, yes, but few people can use it all up. You get dizzy and can pass out when your mana pool reaches about 20%. Still, David gave it away like a champ, and he looks solid on his feet!” Totori said, glancing at David, who was walking alongside her.

  He shrugged.

  They reached the front counter and asked about David's contribution. When he pressed his hand on the pad, an error popped up, before disappearing just as fast.

  They waited for several minutes, but no results came out. The attendant apologized, explaining that the system had been throwing fits for a short while. Totori gave her an address to forward the results to, telling David and Niala that she'd let them know how many manawatts they still had to reimburse.

  Stepping out, they gazed at the heavy clouds hanging in the sky and wondered why there were so many sirens blaring all over the city, but made their way back to the Weldgate without any real issue, apart from a bit of traffic. They gave Totori their goodbyes and stepped back to the Mundaneworld.

  What an adventure!

  Now, if they could never see a lawyer ever again...