"Where am I?" she demands. "What did you do?"

"I- I made a machine. It was supposed to, to produce clean energy, it was supposed to get energy from another dimension and, I have schematics and stuff, but it- exploded. And then you. Happened."

Bella sighs. "Okay," she says. "Well. Lucky you summoned somebody who can teleport home without further ado. Where are we and what is your name?"

"We're at Whateley Academy. Um, it's in New England- Massachusetts- we're an hour outside Boston, in a town called Dunwich. You're a Warper? That's, uh, that's really lucky. I'm, I'm Morty, Morty Halliman. Codename, uh, Smokescreen. Because my stuff has a tendency to... that." He gestures weakly at the clouds of smoke.

"I'm Flicker." She looks at the smoke. "Cute. What do you mean, warper? Some kind of classification they have in this neck of the woods?"

"Uh... I don't think it's really, uh, this neck of the woods. Everybody uses the Corbin system. Like, I know Lord Paramount and Gizmatic go by their Exemplar and Devisor ratings, and, uh, well, I guess China might not, nobody really, uh, nobody knows how they handle mutants there. But the Corbin's pretty universal."

"Okay. I - hang on." She taps the back of her hand to her chin. "Alli. Alli please be there."

Morty doesn't hear a thing.

"Oh thank fuck. Alli, some - mad scientist from another dimension has summoned me and I can't - I tried to - it doesn't work. But twining works, I can still talk to you, okay, this isn't as bad as it could be. Yeah. Of course I will."

"I have a schizophrenic Warper from another dimension in my dorm room," Morty says dully. "I am going to be expelled and there's a schizophrenic Warper from another dimension in my dorm room. At least there'll be a spare they can put her in. No, wait, she'll have to go to Dickinson. Or Poe, actually, considering that she's schizophrenic. I'm so glad we worked that out."

"I'm not schizophrenic, you idiot. I'm talking to my twin. What part of 'another dimension' is not yet clear to the inventor of the interdimensional kidnapping machine?"

"Your twin is invisible. Everything makes perfect sense now, thank you."

"She's not invisible, she's at home, in the dimension where twins have superpowers including talking to each other at arbitrary distances. Is there someone less intensely slow on the uptake I can talk to?"

"Please do."

Flicker teleports over to the window and opens it.

A middle-aged woman trailing blue sparkles swoops in. "Hello. I imagine you're our... visitor?"

"Yes. My name's Bella, and apparently you still do codenames here; mine's Flicker. Your mad scientist here has taken me out of my usual gravity well and I can't teleport home."

"Yes. As a representative of Whateley Academy, I extend my sincerest apologies, and assure you that we will do our level best to send you home and to attend to your needs while you're here. This is not, um, unheard of, so we actually have a fairly substantial portion of our budget set aside for 'fish-out-of-water' cases. As I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear. Relatively speaking."

"I'm actually not pleased to hear that your students kidnap people from other dimensions on a regular basis. That is a problem."

She sighs. "We don't exactly encourage it, but it's a problem that pops up when you have mages and devisors around. The punishments are very severe, but shockingly, students who can bend reality to their will with cardboard and duct tape are difficult to dissuade from whatever course of action they want to take. Especially given the predominance of Diedrick's Syndrome among- oh, sorry, different universe. It causes delusions of grandeur and disregard for others, especially in periodic fits, and it crops up most frequently among devisors and mages. Which makes it harder than it should be to impress upon them that there are certain things that are banned for a reason, such as playing around with other dimensions. Again, we do apologize."

"If you have irresponsible people who can and will kidnap people with duct tape and cardboard then they should not have duct tape and cardboard! This doesn't even become a quandary until it drops below the level of campus epidemic or they learn to do it with tater tots! I'm lucky I can still talk to my sister; if he'd gotten a non-twin they'd have vanished totally without explanation."

Bella sighs. "Right. How do you go about trying to send me home?"

"Get more mages and more devisors on the case. Competent ones. Ideally, they figure out a way to return you within the week, probably giving you a gift basket of advanced medical tech or something as compensation for the inconvenience. If it turns out that Mr. Halliman has done something complicated to you, then we contact people of increasing power and expertise. The last specialist on that list has been able to successfully return every complicated case so far, but his rates are in the millions, so we'd rather exhaust our other options before spending a substantial percentage of our yearly budget; I mention him so that you know that our last resort is a good last resort. If, somehow, Mr. Halliman has tied you indelibly to our world with his latest cardboard box, then we will do everything in our power to help you acclimate to our world and allow you to start a comfortable and productive life here. The likelihood of that occurring is astronomically unlikely, and I mention it only for completeness, because you seem like the type to appreciate that."

"I am exactly the type to appreciate that. Thank you. Right. Well, in the interests of explaining what you have on your hands: in my world, starting in the fifties, twins - and triplets and chimaeras - started turning up with superpowers. When we turn sixteen we attain effortless Olympic-quality physical abilities, the ability to talk to our twins at any distance - apparently including the interdimensional - and to sympathetically heal same, at touch range only. Plus bonuses, mine being teleportation within a gravity well to stationary targets relative to that gravity well, specified by my being able to see it, or a latitude and longitude, or an intersection - but not an address."

"Hmm. Interesting. We're fairly similar, but instead of twins we just get mutants, who have powers like your 'bonuses'. Sometimes more than one; I have heightened physical abilities, various magical powers, and the ability to host spirits within myself and use their powers, for instance. Due to an unfortunate first few decades of existence, mutants are not well-liked by the baselines. This school exists to educate mutants about how to use their powers and how to survive in a world full of potential pitchfork-wielding mobs. Mutophobia no longer being popular in polite society, but I'm sure I don't have to tell you how much that's worth." She sighs. "Absent your twin, your powers actually fit fairly well into our classification system; if you end up having to integrate into our society, you can get an MID card and fit right in. And you don't have any particular tells, like eye color or supernatural beauty or, say, a tail, so you could blend in well enough with the baselines if you needed to. Or you could become a superhero. Or a supervillain, as I feel obligated to mention in keeping with Whateley's neutrality policy."

"You have a neutrality policy about supervillains?"

"Yes. The Academy was founded by a coalition of super-personages of all backgrounds, so that we would not be perceived as a 'superhero school' and immediately firebombed by villains with strong opinions on such. We offer education to young mutants regardless of their career intentions or parentage. I personally would rather teach in a morally neutral school that is able to serve as a safe haven for teenagers being chased by angry mutophobes than have taught in a pure superhero school that stood for two and a half months before Lord Paramount flew in and smashed it into gravel."

"...Practical, I guess. I gather you have more of a ratio problem than the gemini do."

"Rather. There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue with anti-mutant sentiment and the supervillain population. The number of villains whose first crime was threshing their way through an angry mob assuming they must be a supervillain would be beautifully ironic if it weren't a horrible self-perpetuating tragedy."

"Ah-huh. Whereas in my case nothing happens until high school and then I attend the surprisingly non-dystopic local Gemini school so that I can have non-farcical gym class after my sweet sixteen and the authorities know who I am and what I'm up to. My sister is not here to patch me up if somebody stabs me with a pitchfork in my sleep when I can't teleport away. What kind of risk am I in fact looking at here?"

"While you're on our campus, you have my personal guarantee that you will not be pitchforked. Other students may attempt to bully you, but I can offer you my personal protection; anyone who looks at you sideways with that as public knowledge should be reported to the nurse as acutely suicidal. Also, as you mentioned, you can teleport."

"Okay. What kind of range of bonus-equivalents am I looking at here?"

"Yeah. We don't have a neat classification system for gemini, partially because powers are fairly idiosyncratic - there are other teleporters, but none who work exactly like me - and partly because twin sets get complementary powers, more or less, so there's a combinatorial explosion. I guess you'd rate me as an exemplar-warper and I'm not sure how you'd class twining; it's not really telepathy since we do have to talk out loud - that's my ability to talk to my sister and vice-versa. I have no idea how you'd classify her; her bonus is to duplicate herself temporarily. Uh - about the telepathy. That is not a thing that gemini turn up with, at least not that works outside their twinsets. How concerned for my mental privacy and integrity do I need to be right now?"

"I'd probably go with Esper on twining, for the ability to hear it. We actually have had students who can duplicate themselves; we classify them as manifestors, since they conjure the bodies out of nothing in particular. Telepathy does, obviously, function on other people, but the canon of telepathic ethics is not one of the things we have a problem beating into our students' heads. No one except Fubar is going to be reading or affecting your mind without consent without facing detention, suspension, and numerous other penalties. And Louis both cannot help reading minds and is very, very practiced at doing absolutely nothing with that information. But if you're still concerned about him, I can tell him to try to avoid your mental signature as much as he can, and I can tell you not to go within fifty feet of Hawthorne Cottage. Which won't keep him from hearing occasional passing thoughts, but it will keep you from broadcasting directly at him."

"I will not go within fifty feet of this cottage. How far would I have to get to skip the occasional passing thoughts thing? I have no apocalyptic secrets, just - hangups about mindreading."

"Fubar's casual range encompasses everything from his tank to the nearest town over. If your hangups are that bad I can get one of the Mystic Arts instructors to ward you against telepathy, which will make your thoughts much less likely to get through. It's not usually very useful, because a determined telepath can get through a ward with a read or an attack, but in this case it'll make it much easier for Louis to notice that your thoughts don't want to be read and ignore them. I'd like to stress that it's more like being in a crowded room and hearing snatches of conversation for him than anything else, but I do understand that phobias are phobias."

"I do not consider my fear irrational. I would like this ward at the earliest convenience of whichever Mystic Arts instructor and then I will just try to avoid attracting the attention of any less polite telepaths."

"Any less polite telepaths should be reported to me for enormous amounts of discipline. I'll have Elyzia on it as soon as her Intro to Mystic Arts lecture is over, which should be in half an hour or so. Oh- and Louis would like you to know that he has been informed of your preferences and is currently putting his 'most Herculean efforts' into ignoring your thoughts. And that he would manifest astrally to tell you in person, but he wouldn't want to alarm you. Or accidentally focus on you in any way. And that he is now going to return to merrily trouncing Peter at chess."

"I appreciate that very much and if it is possible to inform him of this without drawing his attention to me in any way, shape, or form, that would be nice," shivers Bella.

"He has been doing this for forty years," Mrs. Carson sighs. "He's not going to slip because I relay your compliments. He has rather a lot of practice at controlling his powers, it's just a constant effort to do so and he can't maintain it for what may end up being up to a year."

Nod, nod.

"I'm gay but have not historically felt the need to seek much support from my surrounding environment for the condition; are matters particularly adverse here?"

"No more so than any other boarding school full of teenagers. Which is to say, unfortunately yes. As I mentioned, you have my personal protection, and absolutely no one will trouble you if they know what's good for them; if you would rather take that out of the equation entirely, you might prefer Poe."

"Which is apparently misconceived to be for crazy people, and your mad scientist here has already attempted to diagnose me with schizophrenia for twining my sister."

"Yes. You may notice that I have not placed you in a box and summarily deposited you there. This is because there are material downsides to any given option."

"I don't anticipate trying to date while temporarily stuck in an alternate universe, so let's go ahead and put me in Dickinson and I will be as stealth as the situation demands."

"Stealth is as necessary as you make it. Benefits of stealth include likely making some of your dorm-mates slightly more comfortable with you; benefits of not stealth include being able to glare conspicuously at casual homophobia and make the perpetrators feel guilty and slightly threatened. It's your choice. Anyway, shall we? Dickinson is half a mile east of here, if you'd like to teleport."

"I can take one passenger at a time when none of the passengers are my sister, do you want me to bring you?"

"Sure."

Bella takes her and Mrs. Carson half a mile east, a quarter-mile up so she can scope out the place, then puts them on the ground in front of the building under them.

"I should probably return to the parts of my job that don't involve disaster management, I can have a resident show you around the cottage. Are you going to want to attend classes while you're here? We are a very highly rated private school, and you are apparently at the appropriate age."

"I'm sixteen. I'd be happy to audit some classes if you get me a catalog or I find somebody I want to shadow. I might also just want to spend lots of time in your library reading up on your advanced medical tech and deciding what I want in my gift basket, though. Can I get the location of your office in case somebody needs to be dropped off there for apocalyptic disciplinary action?"

"Sounds like a plan. You can also get individual tutoring if you have any concerns about falling behind in your classes back home." She rattles off the latitude and longitude of her office. "If that's all, shall I get a guide for you and return to work?"

"Sounds like a plan."

She pokes her head into the building and looks around. "Ah, Miss Martin. May I have a moment?"

"Sure!" A girl soars out at high speeds and comes to a halt by Bella. "New kid?"

"Not quite. Mortimer Halliman accidentally summoned her, and she's going to be staying here until we can put her back in her home universe. I'd like you to show her around."

She shakes her head. "Ah, Christ, Morty. Yeah, sure, I can show you the wonders of Dickinson. What's your name?"

"Bella. Yours?"

"I'm Ariel, codename Stormhammer. Current holder of the Blizzard Force, not that you know what that means considering you're from another universe. Basically, I'm a big-league powerhouse. Feel free to bask in my glory if you so choose. If you so don't choose, I can show you around."

(Mrs. Carson sparkles off back to her office for glorious, glorious paperwork.)

"My codename's Flicker, if those are customary to introduce oneself with. What is the Blizzard Force?"

"Carson gave you the whole Powers Theory spiel, right? It's this thing where a really powerful Avatar takes a whole bunch of spirits and mashes 'em all up into one big thing with more power, and they can keep doing that for their whole career. It's frowned on these days because, y'know, kinda inhumane to the spirits, but my mom was a supervillain and she wasn't real big on the whole morality thing, so she did it anyway. When she died I got the Force. It gives me a TK-7 supergirl thing, EN-6 ice blasts, and Wiz-3 magic. Plus I've got Ex-5 and Warp-3 gravity powers naturally. Basically, I break shit really hard."

"What is the deal with spirits? They are not a thing back home."

"Spirits are, like... there's a lot of different kinds. There's ghosts, there's, like, tree spirits, dryads and stuff, water nymphs... They don't usually interact with humans, but Avatars can talk to 'em and convince them to do stuff like join their powers with us. Or just grab them and stuff 'em into a Force, but, again, not very nice. You probably won't have to worry about the kind we're talking about. There's also, like, demons and shit, who would like to eat you, but they're not very common and if you keep me around I can beat them up and eat them myself, so that's a win/win."

"And you can't just let out the non-demon spirits you have despite considering it inhumane that they were collected to begin with?"

She sighs. "Nope. They're, like... it'd be like trying to hatch an omelette. Those spirits are gone. I mentioned that Mom was not a nice lady, right?"

"You mentioned. Anyway, in local terms I'm an exemplar/warper with an oddball esper extra but I don't have numbers on any of those."

"Niiice. Warper pride, hey? I wonder if the testing devise they've got would work on you. Probably not, but you never know. What do you do with the warper thing? Or the esper thing either, those are always kinda cool. I know a guy who sees ghosts."

"I teleport, with the warper thing. To nonmoving targets relative to whatever gravity well I'm in. Mrs. Carson classified twining as an esper power - where I'm from it's not mutants, it's twins, and one of the things we can do is talk to our twins at any distance. We have to speak aloud to do it, but she said being able to hear that makes it count as an esper thing."

"Twins? Huh. That is a super weird system. But cool! Can you talk to your twin from here? Jeez, I hope you can, it'd- can you do that from here?"

"Yeah, I can, I checked. She can hear me just fine and vice-versa and when I have settled in I'm going to be relaying a summary of the whole business through her to our parents."

"That's good! So, d'you want that tour now? Dickinson's really nice, I used to live in Hawthorne but it's way better here."

"Yes please."

Bella follows, pedestrian-fashion. "What did they do to be jerks instead of cool?"

"Jerks is a general term for any large group of people. Most of them are pretty cool. A couple of them are kind of assholes, but they don't do all that much, they're just Regina George impersonators." She floats up the stairs. "First floor is freshmen, second sophomores, etcetera etcetera. I'm a soph, so I'm on floor 2; you probably get your pick." Her voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper. "We've got the cool kids, though. Join us."

"I'm in tenth grade, back home, although school isn't back in session yet because -" Pause. "Uh, what year is it here?"

Ariel checks her bare wrist. "It is currently the Year of Our Lord two thousand and fifteen. January sixth. We just got back from break."

"Okay. It's 2004 back home and Yellowstone recently exploded. Did Yellowstone explode here?"

"...Fuck. No, it didn't- I mean, there's been a ton of supervillains who plotted to blow it up or something, but they've all been thwarted. Shit, that sucks."

"It did it all by itself, as far as anybody knows, no supervillains were involved. There was a little warning; I did evac work with the Junebugs. Anyway, school's going to be out for a while longer and I will be going to a different one because Phoenix is buried under ash."

"Sure. Who've we got?"

"Hey jerks! Come meet the newbie! If you want!"

Some doors open and people trickle out of them. Ariel makes with introductions. Everyone who's trickled out seems to be on good terms with her. This may be a statistical aberration.

Good for Ariel getting along so well with her neighbors. Bella introduces herself with name and codename and explanation of what she's doing here.

"Where am I going to be staying and where do I see about things like sheets and food and shampoo?"

"There's a couple of spare rooms on any given floor for mid-year arrivals. You obviously count, so you'll get one of those. You won't have a roommate unless somebody shows up while you're here and you volunteer to get paired with her. You can get toiletries and furnishings and all that at the campus store. Other things you can get at the C-store include... weird shit. If you really need an arc welder at 3:00 AM, you're in luck. And you can get food at the cafeteria or in town, since you can teleport. The cafeteria food's actually really fucking good, it has no business being cafeteria food. Highly recommended."

"I did not get madly scienced here with any cash on me except for three euro fifty in change from when I last got lunch in Italy."

"You'll have to talk to administration about that, but fish out of water regulations say they have to give you a massive stipend and a debit card hooked up to it. And before you ask, I know this because after the second time I got sentenced to sewer maintenance detention, I read the Whateley handbook cover-to-cover. It's handy."

"Okay, cool, massive stipend. Where do I go to collect my debit card? Actually, is there somewhere I can just get a map of the campus?"

"There's a basket of 'em in the common room, I can fly down and get one for you. You can get the card in the Admin annex of Schuester Hall. Just ask for Miss Hartford. Don't look her directly in the eye, she might take it as a challenge and start barking at you."

"...What, why?"

"She's a bitch. Known to hold completely inexplicable grudges against people and do everything in her power to ruin their lives. I once had to physically threaten her to stop her from screwing with Sally's schedule. At which point Carson appeared to rein her back in and give me three weeks' worth of detention. I'm still asking around for someone willing to make a model for the woman in the combat sims so I can drop a house on her."

"Ooookay. And this woman has institutional power because...?"

"She's one of the top ten technopaths in the world- that's computer mages. She keeps the devisors from crashing the Whateley interwebs every other day. And nobody seems quite sure why she's not just the sysadmin under the bed, but I have a feeling she demands power in compensation for staying here. There's ways to get around her, and if she doesn't actually hate you she's just apathetic and unpleasant, but she hates easy."

"Noted. I would like the map, and a room, and in the course of acquiring my debit card and things to put in my room I may acquire more questions for you if you're still around to answer them then."

"I can totally still be around! I can totally accompany you on any given mission, though it might be best if I wasn't around when you visited Hartford for blood feud reasons. But, like, shopping? All for it. And- oh, okay. Fubar just pinged me, he says Carson says you can pick whichever room you like in Dickinson but it'd work best if you were with the sophomores. And that Mrs. Grimes is out of her lecture and... 'she's been informed of the issue and can take care of it whenever'. And 'hi'."

"Oh, good, visiting Mrs. Grimes is in fact first on the priority list - how are you being pinged, here?"

"Telepathic nudgery. Fuub and I are bros, he has standing permission to read my mind and I can call him up on the brainaphone to chat whenever. He's chill."

"Right. Mrs. Grimes is going to ward me against that. Where would I find her and do you want to come?"

"Aw, but he's cool. Not gonna push you, though. Grimesy's in Kirby Hall. I'll have to let you in, the Mystic Arts department is warded against nonmages being able to see it for whatever stupid reason. She'd notice you and get the door eventually, but it's kind of a hassle. Shall we?" She zooms out of bed and holds out her arm with the utmost politeness.

"How exactly does it work when you take passengers?"

"I don't need skin contact, but I do need something more absolute than the name of the building. Distance and direction, or latitude and longitude, or an intersection."

She turns her field back on gratefully. "Oh, I thought we were going to stop in downstairs and get a map. That'd have intersections, nobody actually uses the 'street' names because it's easier to just memorize where all the buildings are. I could memorize the latitude and longitude of the front entrance to every building, if you want."

"Same place we came in?" Bella pops them downstairs.

"Yep!" She goes up to the front desk, this time actually using her legs for novelty's sake, and procures a map. She then zips back to Bella. "Here you go, madam."

"Thanks!" Bella peers at the map. Street names! Yay! Now she can take them to just outside Kirby Hall.

"Trippy." Bella follows Ariel in.

Bella pleases. "Hello, I hear you can help me with my inadequate mental privacy?"

Ms. Grimes looks Gothy and bored. More bored than Gothy at the moment, though the competition is fierce. "Yes. It's a fairly trivial working, and not one that most would bother with, but as you are our guest at Whateley I will not argue with you about your use of my time unless you impose on it on a more regular basis. Although... Miss Martin, you could have performed this yourself; why did you take this to me?"

"Nobody asked and you're better at magic than me?"

She sighs in disgust. "Very well. This will take only a moment."

She takes a pinch of blue powder and traces a sigil on her desk. She chants, in the same distracted monotone she has used for the rest of the meeting, then blows it towards Bella. Before the cloud hits her face, it flares with violet light and vanishes. "There. Don't let me detain you."

"Thank you," says Bella, and she peers at her map. "Next stop, debit card - Ariel, should I leave you here or someplace else?"

"Back in my room, maybe? Not that Grimesy isn't great company, but she looks a bit busy."

"Please leave now."

"Very busy."

Schuester Hall is full of helpful directions to whatever office the querent may need. In the General Administration office, there is a large mahoganyish desk, behind which sits a beautiful blonde woman chewing gum and glaring at a computer. She notices Bella and gives her a smile full of Sucralose and veiled threat. "How can I help you, miss?"

"Hello. I'm a fish out of water and I was told I should come here to collect a debit card to tide me over until I can be sent home."

"Ah, that mess. Yes, yes. The card should be printed... here we go." A slot spits out a black card with a bit of heraldry on the front. "This has an allowance of $1000 per week; any extraordinary expenditure should be cleared with Mrs. Carson or myself. For your first week you have a starting fund of $10,000. Does all of that sound reasonable?"

"Unless inflation has been very different from projected trends at home, more than, yes, thank you."

She smiles thinly. "It's intended to be more than enough, yes. We aim to please our, ahem, visitors. Will there be anything else?"

"You return! In one piece, even! How was the harpy queen of the seven hundredth hell?""

"Didn't fold, spindle or mutilate me even a bit. You coming shopping?"

"Absolutely. I want to view the marvels of the C-store. Last time I went in they had a pallet of seaweed. Not even, like, those bagged sheets of dried seaweed that people eat, just... bales of seaweed. Fucking bales. It is a house of wonder."

"...Why did they have seaweed? Why did they anticipate demand for seaweed?"

"I have no idea. But I saw some senior looking at them contemplatively, and by the time I came back it was all gone. So they weren't wrong."

"Huh. Okay. Let's see what wonders there are." Bella consults her map and puts them at the C-store.

"How what's done? The sales? It is pretty weird, yeah. We can ask at the counter or something, I guess. Shopping before or after?"

"...Before, may as well." Bella requires toiletries, bedding, a few changes of clothes, pens, and any interesting-looking reading material.

"Heaven forfend that you never forgive me or that I pass up the chance to own bulletproof clothes."

"Also it's all flawlessly tailored and it takes her half an hour to make you an entire wardrobe. Cecilia rocks. Trust me in but this."

"I do not have such strong opinions about my wardrobe that I will not take your recommendation here." Bella picks up some non-fictionalized history focusing on mutants.

"Eeeeexcellent. Ready for checkout?"

The cashier is a student employee who appears to made of granite. His brow furrows at the question. "Listen, I, uh, I've only been working here a couple weeks. I know that it's weird, but I've got no idea how it actually works. There's some kind of computer in the back does the ordering. I'm pretty sure it's a devise, but that's all I could tell you. I guess I could get the manager for you if you're really curious?"

"I'm really curious!"

"...Fish out of water. What happened to Detroit?"

"Oof. Okay. Detroit is a mini-Yellowstone."

"Supervillains are a thing at home, too, but not quite city-wrecking bad so far."

Ariel nods. "So, you wanna get us back to Dickinson and set you up someplace or other?"

"If you pick a room we can start getting you set up. If you really want to speed it up we can get Zip in here, she's a speedster, but she's... kind of a handful? So... room, whether or not to involve Zip, and letting me finally end my stunning Carmen Miranda impersonation."

"I do not require a handful of speedster. Carmen Miranda?"

"South American singer-dancer-actress from the 40s. Known for, ah, elaborate headdresses. Hers usually involved more fruit than this."

"Ah. Well, it's a dorm, one room's probably much like another, show me what you've got?"

"I'm leaning towards the east-facing one, actually, I've noticed that I've changed time zones as well as dimensions."

"Well, it would be a very strange world if we were all alike." Ariel tosses the bedding etc in the middle of the room and begins flitting about setting things up.

Bella helps. "I really appreciate the tour guide thing, by the way."

"Oh yeah, because I totally had stuff to do this afternoon. It's a Tuesday, I can't even go beat people up in the combat sims 'cause they're only open weekends and during classes. I was gonna beg a video game off some programming Devisor or something and think unkind thoughts at Sally for abandoning me to boredom. Not that you're not ultra cool and all, but like... no great sacrifice, you know?"

"Combat sims?"

"They're this big devisor computer system, you sit in a chair and hook up electrodes to your nethers and it projects you into a virtual reality where you can punch people. It's a flawless simulation of reality and there's a full sensory hookup and all, it's like beating the shit out of people for real except there's no pesky laws. Or getting the shit beaten out of you, that happens too. Not usually to me, but it's been known to occur. It is my favorite thing in this world, bar nothing. Sex has nothing on the sims."

"...I'm so glad you have access to your favorite thing, then."

"Well, there's access to my other favorite things too, this school is a few square miles of hormonal teenage mutants who look like Playperson centerfolds for bullshit magic reasons. And I am the most beautiful toad in all this pond, as you may have noted already." She twirls in midair, not that she wasn't already doing that on a fairly regular basis.

"Twins do not get that particular advantage except a little on the left of the bellcurve when turning sixteen fixes any health problems we may have and our siblings can patch up any we acquire afterwards."

Ariel turns to look at her in shock. "Are you telling me that you're supposed to be a baseline and you look like that? That's unfair, that is. I'm filing a complaint."

Bella giggles. "My sister's prettier, so I don't hear that a lot, but thanks. But yeah, there's gemini who look any which way except for 'with chickenpox scars and scoliosis' type values of any which way."

"Never let me gaze upon your sister then, I'd probably combust. I'd hate to go the way of Semele before I even get to thwart any supervillains who aren't my mom."

"Unless there's some way to purposefully visit between dimensions I doubt you will ever get a look at Alli. And in the interest of evenhandedness, my opinion on our relative prettiness isn't universal when she's not wearing makeup or I've let her put some on me. Semele?"

"Makeup, ech. I don't know how anybody without magic has the patience to deal with that shit. If you're here long enough to learn magic and ignite your Essence I can teach you how to use cosmetic workings, they're way quicker and they work really well. Semele, mother of Dionysus, who ignited upon beholding the divine splendor of Zeus after he'd impregnated her in his usual idiom. Though the murder wasn't technically his fault, that was all on Hera. That fucker."

"...I can learn magic?" Bella asks. "You don't have to be mutated a specific way to do that?"

"The mutation makes it way, way easier. Much in the same way that Olympic athletes spend their whole lives training to be slightly better at one thing than an Exemplar-2. But you can totally use magic! I was wrong about the 'quicker' thing, actually, spells for baselines take like half an hour of chanting. But it's an option, and magic is super cool." She produces demonstrative sparkles.

"...How sure are you that fish out of water can use magic? Because unless the requirements are insanely specific, if people where I'm from can normally do spells with chanting for half an hour, I'd have expected someone to stumble on it, and no one has."

"Oh, it's not just the chanting. You have to use some magic to 'ignite your Essence', and that'll leave you as a magicky person forevermore. But you guys don't have spirits and all that, so... not so much Essence lying around to ignite."

"Are there side effects besides being able to do magic?"

"Wrong kind of magic can attract demons, but y'all don't have demons anyway, so I don't see that causing much trouble. And if you fuck it up it can have unfortunate effects, but if you're here long enough to ignite then you'll be here long enough for us to teach you how not to fuck it up. You're smart, you can swing it."

"And you're sure we don't have demons because they'd make themselves known in ways unrelated to whether anybody around is magic?"

"That and you don't have any other spirits or evidence of magic, yeah. Demons: not subtle."

"Okay. How much trouble am I going to have picking this up? Are there classes for magic-ified baselines around here that I can enter at this time of year?"

"You're allowed tutoring at whatever pace you want, and we've got a whole department for this shit, so we could totally get you an accelerated track. Maybe we can get Circe to take you on, she's got shit else to do and she's scary good. The amount of trouble you'll have varies, but the classic indicators of magic talent sound like friggin' astrology, so I've never held with that much."

"Okay. ...Is there a way to non-disastrously dimension-hop or do I need to pick up all my tutoring and, I don't know, spellbooks and talismans, in one trip?"

"I'm pretty sure if we can get you back home within the week we can get you back here without much trouble. You'd have to pay for the lessons, though. And for the transit, unless it turns out I can do it or something."

"Do relevant parties take 2004 extradimensional US dollars?"

"...Might want it in silver or something. Actually, silver'd be a really convenient currency for this, Sally can tun it into mithril and sell it at a fucking massive markup. Or just use it for whatever project most recently flitted into her head and sell like three ounces at a fucking massive markup. Or I can get Leo to pay for the whole thing if you'd run some courier missions for his mom or something."

"Is his mom a supervillain or something too? Because in general I have no objection to courier missions, but you seem to have a surfeit of people whose specific courier missions might be objectionable."

"Oh, yeah, she's totally a supervillain. But not a particularly bad one. She doesn't, like, nuke stuff, just makes ominous deals with demons and accumulates dark power for her own vague purposes. Used to sacrifice people, but she hardly even does that nowadays. Her courier shit would probably be, like, 'get me this black moonsilver athame from Saudi Arabia so I don't have to wait for it to ship' or something. Or 'smuggle this magical recording crystal into the Vatican'. She's good at giving appropriate tasks to folks with objective morality."

"...And how expensive, in silver, is tutoring, because - Alli, please look up how much silver costs, ballpark, reasons - because I might just want to bounce people around at home for non-villainous purposes and pay for my lessons that way."

"Full tuition is like 40k. You could probably knock that down to 30 since you wouldn't be living on campus. Pretty much everybody's here on full scholarships or nearly, which you don't qualify for on account of you're not a mutant and you're not homeless or fleeing from anything. This is discounting the possibility that Circe will do that thing where she takes one look at you and says 'I must tutor this girl immediately, the idea of charging for my services is insulting and absurd'. Which is possible."

"I'm not quite homeless, but the house I grew up in was recently destroyed in a massive natural disaster and I personally saved an estimated one and a half million people while helping evacuate from same, maybe that sneaks me in somewhere scholarshippy. I'm also unjustifiably optimistic that she will look at me and say that thing. Would commuting home every day - given interdimensional transit costs - be less expensive than staying on campus most of the time? Alli says silver is currently six dollars sixty-seven cents per, quote, 'OZT, whatever that means', back home. Thanks, Alli."

"Nice work on the saving people! But most of the scholarships are pretty airtight on the mutant thing. Your optimism seems pretty justified to me, you're interesting. Circe likes people who're going to do interesting things with her tutelage. Granted, that usually means 'people who're gonna die horribly preventing the apocalypse', but in this case you might slip under on the basis of introducing magic to a new word. Daily commute would get pretty expensive, yeah. Standard dimensional summoning is a pretty big working, and there's like an ounce of powdered mithril involved. It'd be kind of like a daily commute from Australia."

"So I might wind up blowing the extra few thou on room and board here, although my family will be slightly inconvenienced by my absence and inability to do the grocery shopping in less ashy parts of the world. But I bet that via some combination of arbitrage and ferrying your fancy technology back home I can come out of this in the black and a wizard and make it home for Christmas."

"...Now that you mention the ash, this may be a good time to ponder getting a high-ranked wizard or two into your world and having them do some stuff in the name of fixing up supervolcanic fallout. Because, like, magic. Super helpful. They probably couldn't fix it all, but they could stop the crater from smoking and they might be able to alter some weather patterns. Maybe they could truck some air elementals in or something to start herding the ash clouds into one place? But, like, that sort of thing."

"...I am tentatively interested. I think I would like to be very responsible about inviting extradimensional visitors over, because extradimensional visitors are not a typical occurrence and we do not have any systems set up to handle them, their return home, their immigration status, etcetera."

"Reasonable. We don't really have official systems that way either, it's mostly handled independently by Whateley and the school's variously shady government contacts. Like just about everything else the school does."

"Well, if there's going to be an semi-official system on our end, I want to be working closely with it. I'll let the Junebugs help, they know what they're doing mostly."

"Junebugs your superhero organization? I can't think of any explanations for the name, but whatever it is it's probably cute."

"It's kind of cute! Gemini is the 'twins' astrological symbol, right? And most of the dates that you can be born on to be a Gemini, astrologically, are in June. And then the 'bugs' part just got tacked on. The real name is the Gemini Guard."

"As predicted: cute!"

"There are also Gemini Schools but those don't have a cute name. Is this the only mutant school on the planet?"

"There's a couple of others. There's a Japanese school for super-ninjas, in particular, they're apparently our rivals, they try to steal the busts out of our cottages and we beat the crap out of their teams and take the leaders' signet rings. Because we're better than them. But yeah, we're definitely the biggest. Mutants are not a large portion of the population, and most other parts of the world tend not to, uh, retain them very well. Because they're too busy murdering them. Europe's got a couple of schools, I think there's somewhere in Australia, the Chinese may or may not have something or other."

"I don't know a lot about how other countries handle their twins. Gemini Schools are it in the United States and I think Canada has something similar. Some places might not do anything in particular. But everybody's very firmly agreed on controlling the hell out of fertility drugs."

"Oh man, yeah, that sounds like- something that could go super nasty. Did you guys get that Octomom lady? She had the one set of twins and the octuplets, so that'd be, like, a whole little mercenary enclave. Wonder how she's doing. Apparently she had some kind of sex tape thing, so that's good."

"I have not heard of anyone going by this charming epithet in my world. The school I went to in Phoenix had several sets of triplets, one set of quads, and one batch of probably-illegal six who used to be octuplets but infant mortality - and the survivors are looking very much forward to their birthday, because the results of overcrowding aren't very pretty."

"Eeesh. Our lady had good luck on that, her children were all successfully alive and grew up into an apparently healthy little herd of younglings." She tosses Bella her phone, featuring a picture of the lady in question surrounded by apparently healthy younglings. (Ariel herself is reclining on the ceiling, the room being well and arranged.)

Bella catches it easily. "Good for her. And they don't have superpowers?"

"They wouldn't've manifested yet, typical age is 12-15. Early manifestors tend to be way more powerful, but the earliest case that didn't just burn out instantly was seven years old. She was a pyrokinetic energizer and exemplar, totally heinous power on the fire, but her body image template turned her into a horrible demon thing 'cause she came from a religious family. That... did not go well for anybody."

"...Body image template?"

"It's what the Exemplar transformy thing goes off of. Usually it's your idea of the perfect insert-gender-here, but some people's get fucked up for some reason. Friend of mine got turned into this- thing, he looks like the monster from some extremely Japanese horror cartoon. Four arms, way too many teeth, massive bone spikes coming off his joints, the works."

"That sounds very uncomfortable."

"It wouldn't be, usually. He's got other problems- GSD, Gross Structural Dystrophy, it's an entirely different horrible mutant problem and that one makes his everything hurt constantly. He's not thrilled, but he's good at rolling with whatever. Plus he's bulletproof now, so, y'know. Pretty sweet"

"...And there aren't any other mutants with powers that can help him?"

"Oh, believe me, there has been massive amounts of research into how to potentially fix that shit. Problem is, there's problems. There's apparently an energy barrier that's, like, incomprehensibly greater then the lightspeed barrier, and the procedure would be so complex that you'd need a couple dozen supercomputers to take the first step. And magical attempts have led to... profound failure. The kind of failure that demolishes Buenos Aires."

"...Under what circumstances does magically failing at things lead to demolishing Buenos Aires, because we still have one of those and I'd like to keep it all else being equal."

"Don't fuck with any BITs. Leads to blood-crazed skyscraper-sized snake monster made of fire where you used to have a half-snake pyro dude with some emotional issues. There really aren't any other situations on that level until you get up to the upper levels of the Wiz mutation. So don't invite any Wiz-5 or above mutants who haven't been vetted by a trustworthy source."

Bella opens one of her new notebooks and pulls out one of her new pens and starts sketching out notes. Then she pauses. "If I take notes in a fairly basic cipher and the wrong mutant picks it up and peers at it what are the odds they instantly crack it?"

"If they're trying? Very, very high. Accidentally not so much. But yeah, mutants in general are kinda cheaty. Sorry."

"And is there anybody who can do the same thing if I destroy the paper first, and is there anybody who sufficiently motivated could do this with notebooks that I leave back home?"

"The second, not without a serious investment. The first... there's a difference between 'there are people who could do that' and 'people are going to do that,' of course. But if you want to be totally sure, you'll want to do it exclusively in my room, which is magically Weird As Shit because of Sally's crazy aura and can't be clairvoyanced at or scried pretty much at all, and either use pencils that you immediately burn, or use one writing implement that you never let out of your sight, to keep psychometrists from getting at them. And you wouldn't have to destroy them if you didn't want, just store them in our room or back home. Burning's your best option if you want them gone, it cleanses an object magically so nobody could, like, make the shreds of paper grow into the full sheet. Or something."

"I'm not totally unwilling to take it on faith that my notebooks won't get read by a shortlist of people. I didn't always do it in cipher at all, not until I caught Alli reading one. I'm... not currently a very interesting target as far as I know, but I am now apparently a dimension-hopping future wizard-gemini hybrid, and if that attracted attention, I would want to have an expectation of privacy anyway, and since I'm anticipating that now, I want to make sure it will be operative even if people can see the past or look at things I wrote last year which are in my closet in my world."

"Sure. My room is always available for notebooking purposes if you would like to satisfy your thirst for privacy."

"That's very kind of you. I can probably live with doing most of it in plaintext; the only reason I use cipher for most of it is to keep in practice."

"I mean, I'd recommend using the cipher anyway. It's not impossible that I'll accidentally glimpse a page or something, and then I'd have it stamped in my mind forever. Not so much of a problem if I had to actively try to work out the code, bit of a problem if it was plaintext. Sorry."

"I will write in cipher anyway! I'm just remarking that a decent chunk of what I write is not top secret."

"Okay, just checking."

"...Perfect recall, huh? Is that something I can magic on?"

"Not so much. High-level exemplar thing. Being an exemplar kinda rocks, case you hadn't noticed. I mean, it's possible you could graft on some extra mental space with the right spells, but it'd be preeeeetty complicated. I'll see about getting you a Circlet of Intellect +2 for Christmas, how about that."

"Awesome."

"I'm not 100% sure those exist, that was a D&D joke. But I'll ask Circe and Sally if it's feasible."

"Speaking of Circe, is this a good time to go meet her and see what if anything she will charge?"

"Ooh, yeah, good idea. She'll probably be in her office. Because she's always in her office."

"And where's that?" asks Bella, peering at her map.

"It's near Grimesey's office, but it's in the advanced section, you can only get in if you're ready for the advanced classes. Fortunately, I'm good enough I can trick it into letting in whoever the hell I want. So yeah, just drop us off at Kirby and I'll get us to her domain."

Pop.

Flicker comes in. "How do you know my codename?"

"Okay. Cool. Do you also know why we're here?"

"Yes. Congratulations. I will meet with you on Sunday of each week, apart from the week of Christmas in your world, which you will be spending away. There will be no excuses unless you have died or are otherwise physically prevented from coming to my office. If you have contracted the Mongolian Death Flu, I will provide you with a wastebasket into which you may vomit while I instruct you. This is a part of your education, and has been the case for every student I have educated since the ninth century BC. Is this understood?"

"The Mongolian Death Flu is a term that I have unfortunately picked up from your companion for any highly unpleasant but nonfatal disease. Fatal diseases should be treated by a healer. Healing nonfatal diseases by our methods will weaken your immune system, healing them by yours would cost exorbitant amounts of money, and working through them is a learning opportunity."

"I am much more interested in learning magic than in learning about the unfortunate throes of the Mongolian Death Flu. Can I get a loose ballpark on how exorbitant these amounts of money would be?"

"By 'a learning opportunity' I mean that if you can concentrate while you are going through physical discomfort you will become much better at concentration in general, and concentration is paramount to all magic. A single round-trip summoning and banishment spell today would consume $8,000 worth of powdered mithril. Depending on how the selected date aligns with various astrological events, that cost might be lessened by up to $5,000 or raised by up to $15,000. One of your first assignments will likely be to work out a calendar of when the best and worst dates would be and why."

"If it is legitimately worthwhile for me to practice magic while physically uncomfortable I will do it while hanging upside down. I suspect that arbitrage alone will enable me to treat five to fifteen thousand dollars as a very reasonable price to see my sister and incidentally cease to suffer the Mongolian Death Flu."

Circe rolls her eyes. "I was not going to go into this until somewhat later in the meeting, but your logic is solid and you are unusually persistent, so very well. An important part of this arrangement is going to be moderating the implicit Sorcerer's Contract inherent to an apprenticehood-style relationship. Essentially, the fact that I will be personally educating you means that mystically speaking, you will owe me a substantial debt. This can be dealt with by various means, including a term of servitude or a simple payment in Essence, but if I concede too much to making you comfortable then the terms of the agreement must become accordingly steeper. I do not intend to be deliberately unpleasant to you, but there are certain clauses of my arrangement that I am loath to alter because they have a practical purpose, they helped me to become the sorceress I am today, and they keep my rates down. And before you ask, no, you will not be able to pay in coin. Magic stubbornly refuses to acknowledge fiat currency, and base metals and gemstones, while valid, are valued at an irritatingly low rate of exchange. You would need multiple tons of pure gold to satisfy the debt of the current arrangement, let alone a softened one."

"That is very interesting. Certainly it removes any objection I might have had to turning up to lessons with a broken leg and a concussion. I retain my problem with contagious illnesses and propose that you give me simply astronomical amounts of homework or something to compensate. I also want to know what you're planning to charge if it is not in fact multiple tons of pure gold."

"What is the content of 'could not refuse', exactly? I do not wish to rip you off, I just wish to be - circumspect."

"I would not be able to discuss the tasks with you beforehand, as that would put you in a position of power, but I can get the parameters of what you would find acceptable, such as 'nothing that could put me in substantial physical danger'. If you refused me, any Essence you had collected or would ever collect again would curdle, and you would have horrible luck for the rest of your life. Of course, that's the effect of intentionally breaking the contract in any event, or any oath of a similar level. I have three thousand years' practice at predicting tasks an apprentice would find acceptable, but I understand if you would rather choose a lower-risk option."

"That's not quite what I was asking. Suppose for some perhaps wildly improbable reason we wind up with a task on the table that is not acceptable. Do I carry it out against my will like a marionette? Do I write around in unspeakable agony until I do it? Does trying to refuse instantly kill me? Do I spend the period of time in which tasks are issued unable to perform cognitive tasks as complex as 'evaluate acceptability of things'?"

"You would be allowed to refuse, which would result in your Essence curdling. Which is an unpleasant but usually nonfatal experience. I meant 'unable to refuse' in the sense of 'without breaking the contract'; I apologize for any confusion."

"And at this time, hopefully without giving offense, I would like to know how hard it is to self-teach this kind of thing."

"Genuinely offending me is difficult verging on impossible, as is self-teaching magic. You could also simply enroll in the Mystic Arts program, which would teach you how to be profoundly mediocre at magic, whereas my tutelage would allow you to eventually rival my own considerable power and become immortal. I would like to add that the Essence-payment option can also be paid in smaller installments, or simply saved up bit by bit over an extensive magical career. I will be around for a very long time; I am in no hurry."

"So that definitely sounds like the most - predictable - method of repayment. I am also curious - principally on a conceptual rather than a system-gaming level - why exactly tutoring forms a debt that needs to be handled or else the magic 'curdles' at all. Learning other things does not have this property."

"Magic has a certain- sense of what is appropriate. Giving something away without receiving something from the recipient in return offends it. However, it does not involve itself in every child's arithmetic lessons, because it has not been invited there. Tutoring you in magic is, obviously, a magic-intensive process. Thus, it establishes a certain expectation of the magic that is left behind, the magic that you now possess. If it is not appeased with an appropriate payment, the magical assistance I have given you becomes a gift, and magic abhors a gift. The same applies if someone saves your life. As a mage, you must genuinely intend to return the favor in one form or another, or your luck will sour for the rest of your days. Fortunately, in that case you have the advantage that intent is all that matters; as long as you resolve that you would save their life given the opportunity, and make good on it if that occurs, you're in the clear."

"Why does magic abhor a gift, and is this going to interfere with my ability to perform unreciprocated good deeds?"

"Alas. I'll have to save up for ingredients and curry favor with your roommate. How does essence work overall, is it like - mana in a video game, or what?"

"Yes. As long as you do not attach too much weight to your thoughts, you may think what you like. I thought you might enjoy this part. You seem the type to enjoy absolute control over yourself."

"Immensely. I'm good at it, too, although admittedly not the kind of good at it that I imagine I'll be able to finagle when there's concrete results other than my personal satisfaction attached."

"Practice never hurts. I was not so good at controlling my feelings when my education began, and while I overcame it, I'm sure you'll have a better time all around. And the more quickly you can hold on to Essence, the sooner you can accrue enough to ignite properly. Then, your education begins in truth."

"And you see no reason why my being from another world should interfere at all with accumulating, igniting, and using Essence in a locally conventional fashion."

"If that were the case, I would have taken one look at you and shaken my head and expressed my deepest apologies. I have not done that."

"Good, good. I do not currently know what day of the week it is here...?"

"Tuesday. However, if you wish, we may as well have our first meditative exercise today. I have nothing scheduled for a few hours."

"I... will take you up on that after fifteen minutes to deliver a more complete explanation to my sister of my plans so that she can explain to our parents, because apparently they're freaking out and I still haven't told her why I even wanted the price of silver."

"Naturally." Circe sits on a large leather couch, looking exactly as comfortable as always.

Circe guides her through a basic box-breathing meditation exercise. (Ariel participates as well, because "you can never have too much magic, right?")

Breathing. Fun. It's nice of Ariel to keep her company.

While they breathe, Circe speaks quietly and melodiously about the flow of energy through each cell of their bodies. It kind of sounds like hippie bullshit, but on the other hand, magic demonstrably exists, so she might get the benefit of the doubt on that.

Benefit of the doubt is present. It's not precisely like any previous hippie bullshit Bella has been exposed to in the particulars, anyway.

Half an hour or so in, Circe murmurs to Bella, "Try to lose yourself in the meditation. Too much conscious thought keeps the exercise from working as well as it should."

Bella likes this homework. "What time should I be back Sunday?"

"Before dawn. At the moment, that means 7:00; it will grow earlier and earlier, obviously. Some days I will require you to be here an hour early. Also, I will want to see you on certain dates even if they are not Sundays, but I will provide advance warning in those cases."

"Do you have any recommendations for other classes I should take, as long as I am conveniently free of the obligation to turn up to school back home?"

"Well, I'm sold." Bella hops to her feet and stretches. "All right, Ariel, let's get out of her hair. Where do I get a catalog and sign up for things?"

"Lovely. Thank you for your time, Circe, see you Sunday." Bella has already noted where Carson normally loiters. Pop.

"I should... probably not go in with you. Given my Thing with Hartford."

"Right. Tips on procedure, protocol, etcetera?"

"Be generally polite and stuff? I dunno, you're bargaining from a position of strength. We've easily got the room, and Circe wants you. Asking is basically a formality. Don't spit in her face and you're probably good."

"Right then." In Bella goes, heading in the direction of Carson's office.

Ms. Hartford continues to sit behind her desk and continues to glare at her computer. "Circe called and said you'd be coming in to register. Congratulations. Mrs. Carson is ready with paperwork in her office."

"That works for me. I might need copies of some of this so I can have my sister draft a petition to excuse me from regular school when it starts back up - it's currently looking like they're not going to pick it up until fall, which gives me a while, but Gemini schooling requirements are strict under most circumstances."

"Certainly. But if you're planning to send those over, we might as well send a representative to explain things in person. It seems as though that might smooth things over a bit, and the energy barrier is roughly the same."

"I don't mean I'll send them the physical paperwork - that would bring up a lot of questions I don't particularly want them asking. I'm planning to tell them that I've gotten a generous scholarship for superpowered teenagers in a distant locale and that I have the commute handled. It will just probably sound more convincing if I have selected facts about the school to relay to Alli when she writes the letter."

"Ah. Reasonable. We'll be happy to help you with that."

"Thanks! Can I get a catalog to check out what all I want to take in the coming term?"

"...So, I know in local terms I rate an Exemplar number, but gemini basics do not include a mental boost and I don't even know what numerical rating my physical basics net me. Does this add up to 'I definitely positively don't have mental abilities that can keep up with an Exemplar-3', or 'I should take a standardized test'? I'm expecting the former, but just to be sure."

"Your memory and processing speed almost certainly don't match, but the guideline is there for casual students; if you believe that you can keep up with five full classes, it's entirely possible that you can. I'd still recommend only taking four so that you have some semblance of free time, but I won't stop you."

"It's not so much that I want to overload on classes as that I wonder how many other general guidelines are going to refer to that sort of thing and wish to know where I stand." Bella marks Circe's recommendation, a mutant history overview, an econ survey, and a theoretical seminar on magic-in-general.

"We do have tests, if you'd like to take them."

"How long do they take and what does the relevant proctor schedule look like?"

"The relevant proctors are devisors who spend most if not all of their time prodding students' powers to see if they do interesting things. They can fit you in tomorrow. Just the Exemplar mental tests would take an hour or so; a full powers diagnostic would be three to five."

"When do classes start?" asks Bella, pulling a notebook and starting to sketch out her schedule.

"Classes start next week."

"Okay, I can block out a few hours to get evaluated tomorrow."

"Good. I'll let the techs know."

"When should I go where, for that?"

"The lab is in Kane Hall. You can go in around 2:00, if that would be good for you."

"Works fine." Bella writes this down, and the timings of the classes she picked out in a sort of a chart for the following week, including her session with Circe. "Oh, rats, forgot to tell my sister - Alli, I'm out of my lesson now, I'm enrolling in some other stuff, everything is still fine. Well, do your best. At least I won't keep you up, huh? Yeah."

Mrs. Carson waits patiently.

"Sorry about that. Anything else to take care of here before I go take Ariel up on her offer to bring me clothes shopping?"

"No trouble. And I don't think there's anything else until your testing. Unless you'd like a specially issued student ID without powers classification, for whatever reason."

"Hell yes!" She rattles off the address of Cecilia Rogers' shop and bounces excitedly in midair.

And there they flicker.

"Uh... There's a Wikipedia article of 'cities destroyed in mutant conflicts' if you want to check it out. Never read through it myself, but all the anti-mutant assholes like Humanity First! cite it in all their bullshit. Where to dine depends on if you want free and really good or expensive and really good. Except most of the places nicer than the Crystal Hall caf take reservations, so that's probably for another day. So: Crystal Hall, probably. That place has no business being a high school cafeteria."

"Ooh, Wikipedia persisteth. You know what else I need to spend my windfall on, I need a laptop. After dinner though." She peers at her map to get a bead on Crystal Hall, flickers to her room to drop off the shopping, and comes back for Ariel and puts them at the cafeteria.

"Until I have been here for longer I'm going to have a persistent trouble with knowing when you're joking," Bella remarks. "I'm not a vegetarian or a dinosaur."

"Sorry. Humanoid line has Stuff That People Eat. Casseroles, pasta, diverse meats, etc. Cow line has massive quantities of meat, eggs, breadstuff, et cetera, for those who need absolutely insane calorie counts to maintain their powers. Vegetarian line has veg, pie has desserts, you must visit dessert it is fantastic, that one over there is supposed to be a geode, it's for the people who eat minerals, and then there's the little line for people who have to have stuff like live prey or gasoline. Tidy little system."

Her companion clears her throat and points to her own plate, which bears an entirely reasonable human amount of food. (Vegetarian food.)

"Your food is salted with cobalt, you don't count. This is Sally! She's my roommate. This is Bella! I have been gossiping about her nonstop to you."

"Flattering gossip?" asks Bella, sitting.

"Excruciatingly, I assure you. I'm Sally! It's good to meet you."

"Likewise. What's the cobalt for?"

"...Okay, is there anything I should know it's rude to say?"

"I'm very difficult to offend. You're not likely to meet any real golems, either, so you're probably in the clear. But before you ask, I'm not Jewish."

"That was not actually my first question, I was going to inquire after the free will bit, what are the usual and special-case parameters there?"