To Chase's disappointment, the maple tree was fairly strong. With a trunk nearly two feet in diameter and hardy branches, the probs of the tree spontaneously falling at the specific angle required for his purposes were an abysmally low .002%. Chase focused on the probability, gritting his teeth as he silently ordered the number to go up, but the effect was the same as the many times he had attempted telepathy as a child: a lot of internal screaming that never quite managed to leave his own head.

He'd seen other Order members do this so many times before- heck, Adrian had done it while flying through the air twenty stories above the Academy! They made it look so easy.

Chase racked his brain for those phrases from his Power textbook that he had dutifully memorized.

Concentrate on the target probability, eliminating all distractions.

Consciously calm your body and mind, even if in a stressful situation. The Power is most difficult to access when the body's fight-or-flight response is activated.

Raise or lower the target probability, not by sheer force (no human being has the raw brain power it would take to do so) but by intelligent channeling of the great Power housed within the Alpha Box).

The first two instructions were fairly straightforward, but the last one had always left Chase dumbfounded. Not by sheer force. Considering that the space between his eyes was beginning to hurt from staring so intensely at that stupid tree, sheer force was clearly what he was trying to use. But how could he channel the "great Power" of the Alpha Box? Despite being an Heir, he was still at the rank of Agent. He didn't even have clearance to know the Box's exact location, let alone use it. He didn't even know what it looked like.

His eyes flitted back to Juliana, who was, from his current position, clearly visible even without the spyglass. As she paced impatiently across the roof, her right leg moved through the long slit in her red gown, revealing a very familiar black boot. She was wearing her Crimson Angel suit under her dress!

If Chase had suspected it before, now he was sure. She was expecting some kind of danger, and he was still too far away to be of any help.

Exasperated and running out of time, he closed his eyes in an attempt to envision the Alpha Box. This was no easy task, considering the fact that he had no idea what the Box actually looked like. The first "box" to come to mind was a scruffy brown shoebox, but that didn't exactly fit the Ancient Mystical Weapon vibe that he was sure the Alpha Box exuded. He would make it black. Yes, a black shoebox would be much better. And then, before he knew it, the cheap black cardboard thickened into a mellow dark wood, covered in tiny glass windows through which you could glimpse the complex machinery that whirred and turned inside. Silver knobs jutted out of the Box's exterior, each turned to a very specific setting on a dial marked in a language that Chase didn't recognize. Soon, the image inside Chase's head reached a level of detail that forced him to come to terms with an impossible fact.

Despite the fact that he had never seen it before, never so much as had its appearance described to him... he knew exactly what the Alpha Box looked like. 

He zoomed in on one of the silver knobs, but somehow, his mental image didn't blur out. In fact, the closer he got to the Alpha Box's surface, the more the resolution of the image increased, revealing dozens of tiny details that he hadn't noticed before. Now, he could make out that the markings on the dial weren't in a foreign language- they were numbers, so finely engraved into the wood that they were barely visible.

1, 2, 3...

Chase continued to zoom in, astonished to see that there were even tinier numbers engraved in the spaces between those.

0.1, 0.2, 0.3...

0.001, 0.002...

There it was, the number he was looking for. The knob's tiny silver protrusion pointed directly at the dot in the middle of 0.002.

Could it really be? Was the ancient science of probability manipulation was as simple as turning a knob. Apparently, it was. Chase reached out with an invisible hand and slowly but surely, the knob began to turn to the right. Its movement was smoother than he would expect from a mechanism that was older than time itself- so smooth that Chase began to gain confidence, zooming out so that he could move it faster.

0.002, 0.003, 0.004...1, 2, 3...

Thunder began to rumble and clouds appeared in the once-clear sky, but of course, Chase noticed none of this. In the plane of existence that Chase currently occupied, there was nothing but him and the Alpha Box. The Alpha Box and him, engaged in the ancient, perfect balance of warrior and weapon, child and toy, writer and pen. Chase was an artist, and reality was his canvas.

20, 21, 22...

Flashes of lightning danced behind the clouds, threatening to tear through them. The partygoers who remained on the rooftop debated whether or not this unexpected burst of severe weather warranted an early end to their celebrations. Most agreed that as long as there was no rain to make the snacks soggy, they were perfectly clear to continue.

93, 94, 95...

Now, this was where Chase hit an impasse. As fluidly as it had turned until that point, the knob refused to move past 95%. Perhaps it was just stuck. Would an ancient mystical device suffer from a mechanical issue as mundane as a sticky knob? 

Fortunately, he wasn't forced to ponder this question. A great blast of lightning struck the roof of the fine arts building, shaking the ground under Chase's feet and pulling him out of his mental adventure with the Alpha Box. When he opened his eyes, the upper branches of the maple tree that had once stood proudly on the adjacent rooftop lay at his feet. By the time he became aware of the tree that now lay horizontally between the two rooftops, the storm had cleared, so quickly that he scarcely realized that it had been there.

"I did that," Chase whispered as he looked from the fallen tree to its smoking stump. But he had no time to ponder his success. Placing one foot on the tree's wide trunk to test its stability, he slowly began to make his way across his makeshift bridge, holding his arms out at his sides for balance. He walked faster than he otherwise would have, confident that he could lower the probability of him falling to near zero. Using the Power, he had learned, was a lot like swimming. It seemed impossible when you were a beginner, but once you discovered the trick to it, it became like second nature.

As he reached the end of the fallen tree, jumping down onto the rooftop, he was met by an incredulous Juliana.

"What... why did you do that? That was a perfectly good tree!" she complained, approaching him from behind. A simple silver circlet held back her dark curls, some of which had been blown out of place by Chase's artificial storm.

"Whatever you're about to do, please don't do it alone. Remember what happened the last time you took on the Eagle by yourself? If we want to stand a chance, we have to do this as a team," Chase blabbered, not wanting to waste a second.

"Whatever I'm about to do? I'm not about to do anything- I have no idea what you're talking about!" Juliana exclaimed, flabbergasted. "You and Hayley were the ones watching me through a spyglass!"

"Then why haven't you talked to any of us all night? Why are you here all by yourself- and in your suit, too?"

"Shh!" Juliana pressed her palm to Chase's face, her eyes wide. Taking a few seconds to process his words, she slowly lowered her hand. "Well... I suppose it must look like I've been up to something suspicious. And the truth is, I have. It's just not what you think it is."

There was a moment of silence as Chase waited for her to go on, soon realizing that she wasn't planning to.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" Chase asked. He knew he had no right to inquire, but Hayley was probably already on her way back from the lab, and if he didn't ask, she certainly would. He was fairly certain which one of them was more likely to spread the news.

"It's really quite petty, actually," Juliana smiled shyly down at the concrete roof below her. "When my wings failed, Commander Dev had so many ideas to improve the design. We built a couple of prototypes and I asked my grandfather for permission to test them, but he refused. So naturally, the best course of action was to bring them out here, where everyone's distracted by the party and there's plenty of tall buildings to work with."

"So I just walked in on an illegal weapons test?" Chase smirked.

"Technically, yes... I know that your legal and moral obligation is to tell my grandfather about this, so I suppose I'll just-" 

"If you think I have the guts to stand in front of the King of Arcana, let alone complain to him about his granddaughter, you don't know me very well at all," Chase chuckled. "Please, proceed."