"-Uh. No, not taken." He makes a few expressions very fast then says a bit lamely, "...It's yours if you want it."

"Thank you," she says, and sits. "I'm Sadde. I'm new. Hi."

"Hi. I'm Terry. You transfer in from some other school or something?"

"No, I actually didn't come because of some family trouble, but it got resolved recently."

"Good to hear it's resolved, then. You a mage or psion? I'm a psion."

"Mage."

"Nice. My first - thing - isn't flashy and impressive at all, mages are much better at that."

"We are," she agrees, "but honestly psion stuff is so much cooler. What's yours?"

"I can, uh, think fast. Slow down the rest of world according to my own perspective. Not a huge amount of speed-up and not forever, yet."

"—wow. That's incredible. I'm officially envious," she says, looking up at him through her eyelashes with obviously a lot of respect.

He does the rapid-expressions thing again. "Yeah, it's been surprisingly useful. Everyone else has more traditional starter stuff like mind-phone, or eidetic memory, or lucid dreaming. So. Thanks for saying mine is cool too. You have shapeshifting?"

"Specifically sexshifting," she corrects, "because that was pretty important to me when I was small. But I've been working on more generalised biokinesis, both personal and on other people."

"Huh. It puzzled me as a kid how an eclipsed could do this specific thing but not a bunch of other similar things. Until I became one, it makes sense now. I'm working on eidetic memory, then lucid dreaming, probably. The trifecta of brain-bootstrapping."

She beams. "Yeah, see, that's sort of why it'd be amazing to be a psion. If it weren't for the gender thing I'd definitely prefer to be one, but on the other hand it's pretty great to do biological stuff."

"I think mage-psion jealousy is probably about as normal as everyone else wishing they were eclipsed. Biokinesis is a good thing to aim for - more general than healing, though if you learn medicine you could certainly do that too."

"Yeah, healing should be a strict subset—and the final aim is no-upkeep mass-scale immortality. And then maybe pair up with a psion with postcognition and roll out resurrections."

Terry's eyes light up. "Woo, that'd be something else alright. 'No upkeep' and 'mass scale' are probably the challenges there. Not sure what I can go for in the medium term, maybe precog, that's very employable, but long-term I want to fix virtuality."

"'Fix' it?"

"Like... You know how tons of eclipsed just get their powers shut down, because virtuality kind of really sucks? Make it suck less. Make it so more people can put up with it. Improving the tech around it - either just better ways to keep up with freinds and family, robot that goes to school for you or something, or maybe get it down to augmented reality instead of virtual reality. Either way, if it's less unpleasant to be stuck in virtuality, even more people learn to control their magic than now."

"That's very ambitious," she says, once again giving him that look.

"-Says the mage who wants to do global immortality and eventually resurrections."

He's really not sure what to do with that look! Or the slightly warm fuzzy feeling it gives him.

"What can I say, a sub dreams."

"And it's a good goal, a good dream. You should- Yeah."

Isn't the teacher going to show up soon? Where's a distraction from being flustered when you need one?

Who knows!

"So what classes are you taking this semiquarter?"

"Ah, yeah uh. Pre-calc and stats, bio, English Lit, and this 'alternative materials art' thing. I'd be taking more but that would get in the way of finishing eidetic memory."

"Cool. I'm doing history and scientific literacy this quarter to get rid of them ASAP, plus math because it's fun and econ because I don't know anything about it."

"I should probably take econ at some point. Scientific literacy class is a bit of a joke if you're already a nerd, fair warning. Well, not entirely."

"Yeah I figured, but mandatory, so I'm doing it now."

"I get why there are mandatory classes, well rounded individuals and so on and so on, but it's still kind of annoying, isn't it?"

Apparently the cute dom's nervousness mostly evaporates when flirting is not going on.

So it seems.

"It's much, much better than regular high school."

"Heh. No doubt about that. You would not believe how petulant my brother was when I Eclipsed. Well, maybe you would, siblings are siblings."

"My siblings mostly did not care. They think it's weird. What's your brother like?"

"He's going to law school. So, guess. Lawyer jokes aside, he's got high expectations for everyone and everything, which is kind of both good and bad?"

"Older brother, then," she guesses. "Yeah that makes sense. Both my siblings are much younger."

"I hear the younger sibling experience is entirely different than the older sibling experience."

"I think so. I didn't live with my siblings until I left bootcamp, though, I lived with my mom before and they're my father's."

Terry shrugs. "So, tell me, miss 'math is fun', do you like science fiction?"

"Yeah! I particularly like stuff that explores how eclipses would work on other planets but it's so hard for it to be done right."

"Give me a good recommendation? Personally, I really like realistic-ish space colonization stuff. There's this one series about colonizing the moons of Jupiter-" He names it. "They just dodged the question and said eclipses don't happen off of Earth."

"Oh I have one about colonization and about an eclipse happening in a completely unexpected way, it's," she names it, "it's just one book but it's really clever. I can't tell you what happens because it's a really good twist—unless you don't mind?"

"I think I'd better read it myself, with that description. I'll be sure to check it out, thanks."

"I also really like books that involve meeting other species with other kinds of eclipses and how they've influenced their societies and all that."

"Who says other sentient species necessarily get magic, anyway? It's a good way to handwave FTL, I admit."

"Well we don't know but given that that's the most salient difference between us and chimps it sounds reasonable. But there's a thought, maybe other moons don't care about sapience. The weirdest thing though is the birthday thing."

"I've heard it suggested it's a developmental thing. But then there would be some variance."

"It's probably some deistic creator with person-centric views," she says half-jokingly.

"I'm not all that into philosophy per se. There's a joke - Physics, is stuff made of stuff? Philosophy, is stuff, stuff? Engineering, cool stuff: How can we make it cooler? I like engineering, given the choices."

She giggles and flutters her eyelashes at him. "I can see what you mean."

"A- ah, heh, yeah." And here comes that awkwardness again. Terry is not a very good dom, apparently.

Terry is an adorable dom.

...but Sadde isn't that mean. "I like the philosophy conversations but in practice I won't let them stop me from really using the resources I'm given. The only one I feel really iffy about is precognition but if I frame it as making sure people end up with the right set of memories..."

"Precognition is troubling, yeah. It's like, given the amount of precognition going on, we might be in a precog's head? And also there is absolutely zero point worrying about it because that will just make me miserable."

She shrugs. "Yeah, in the long run it doesn't really matter."

"I might go for precog eventually, but it's not on the priorities list. I'm studying up on virtualities first."

"What made you decide on this?"

"Honestly, mostly because going into virtuality myself was not particularly fun. I mean, I'm sure it's better than starving in the wilderness, but..."

"It must be. At least the part where no one's set on fire."

"I was not a fan of the 'waste away to skin and bones' bit. Not that I'm super athletic, but it felt, uh. Pathetic."

"As far as I know that's because current psionic tech can't really handle, like, a really dedicated and full-power recently eclipsed so they have to keep us on the low carb ensure diet."

"Exactly. And buffing that up - cheaply - would help too."

She nods. "Do you have any more classes today?"

"Yeah, uh, Stats after lunch. And you?"

"I'll only start having any classes when the next semiquarter starts in a few days, so for now I'm just meeting people and getting to know the place. And working on magic."

Nod. "Both pretty solid uses of time. I was wondering why you were here."

"It's like half the reason this school exists at all, right? Networking." For a certain value of networking that involves a lot of fluttering eyelashes at the cute dom.

"Uh, yeah, well. Networking. Sounds like something stuck-up lawyers and CEOs do."

"Well, you could also phrase it as making friends and getting to know people who will understand what you're going through and who can nerd about magic with you?"

"Yeah, that's a much better way to put it. Less suave dom con-man vibes, at least for me."

"I don't distinguish them much in my head. Meeting people is fun, regardless of the goal and the way I phrase it."

"Well, the word doesn't- My fancy lawyer brother says 'networking' a lot. And I'm not too terribly fond."

"Fair enough. I'll refrain."

"Uh, I mean, you don't- Have to. Uh. But thanks."

And it's, finally, time for class. "I've got to go to class. See you later? Uh, if you want."

"Absolutely see you later," she says, grinning up at him. "It was nice meeting you."

"Likewise."

And off Terry goes, out of the cafeteria and to class, still not sure how to deal with flirting except 'ignore it'.

And a couple of days later Sadde gets a job in the library and will be found there a lot of the time.

That cute dom from a few days ago happens to return the sci-fi book Sadde recommended, looking absentminded and a bit twitchy.

"Hello again."

"Hellowho-" Headshake. "Oh, right, shapeshifting. Hi, Sadde."

"How're you doing? I see you picked up that book."

"I did. Not done with it yet, so no spoilers, yeah? Say, why work at the library of all things?"

"Why not? Peace and quiet and a lot of time to think about magic and read things when I get bored of that."

"Fair enough. I think about magic while pretending to study most of the time."

"Eh, I don't see the appeal in pretending to study."

"It stops people from interrupting me. If I lose a train of thought I can lose a solid fifteen minutes of progress."

"Fair enough. Library is deserted enough that it accomplishes pretty much the same thing for me."

"And sometimes I slip from pretending to study to actually studying. Since my books and things are already laid out."

"Engineering?" he guesses.

"Some, yeah, some English and History and the rest too."

"English as in English Lit?"

"Oh, yeah, that. Wherefore art thou, six different Shakespeare plays we have to read? I get that he's 'the father of modern English' or whatever, but six?"

"Well, at least we only have to take two semiquarters of that so it's not too bad. I picked other stuff, though, wanna spread the tedium so I'm only taking one boring per semiquarter."

"I could have tried something like that but I couldn't really predict how tedious any given class would be in advance, alas. I was never good at predicting that."

"Mostly the humanities, in my opinion. History, literature, et cetera. Oh and languages, I'm terrible at those. I got econ next semiquarter, though, it sounds like lots of fun."

"Languages are interesting enough, except I find they're consistently taught in a way that is boring."

"Yeah. But also I just don't really have any aptitude. Like, I can do accents in English pretty well but for some reason languages just don't... click as much for me." He shrugs. "Do you speak any others well?"

"Not really, honestly. Some Spanish. Like I said, the way they're taught is usually boring and I have more interesting classes to spend mental energy on."

"Makes sense. And what do you like to do when not studying or focusing on magic?" Is that a flutter of eyelashes and a dipping of his head? Surely not.

"Screwing around with electronics and programming. Plus, uh, reading and sometimes video games." Could you not do that - he most definitely does not say out loud.

...yeah okay he'll stop.

"Ooh, video games? I've never actually played any."

"They're pretty fun! That's most of the point after all. Not all of it - some tell cool stories or have meaning through the game rules and stuff... But that's me getting defensive. Uh. They can be hard to get used to if you've literally never played one before though."

"My father doesn't like them, thinks they're silly, and when I lived with my mum we never had the money to buy one. I always wanted to play, though."

"...I could probably show you some games later. PC games, I don't have a console here, so they're mostly single-player."

"Uh, if you want, that is."

"I'd love that! And I could probably just watch you play for a bit, to learn the basics—I'm a quick learner."

"Sounds like fun! Except games are a very interactive thing, it's really better to play them yourself than to watch people play them I think... Hmm, what's a good first game... Portal? It involves lots of clever puzzles and an insane switch-or-nondynamic AI. "

"...well that sounds like loads of fun. Is the AI presented in a specifically roleless way or is it just ambiguous?"

"It's pretty ambiguous. Her actions are kind of dom-ish but there are narrative things that hint at being subby and nothing definitive. The player character is left vague too, so you can pretend she's whichever role you are. Or aren't."

"That sounds really cool. I wouldn't expect a first game recommendation to already have such good representation."

"I say it's a good first game because the controls aren't complicated and they don't expect you to already recognize as much stuff... Like, a green bar above a character's head that's slowly turning red, what does it mean? The game assumes you know it's how much you can get hit until you die and doesn't explain it. Because a green bar turning red is almost always health. Portal doesn't do things like that as much, I think."

"Huh. I think the green red thing would be—obvious enough after a bit? But maybe not fast enough that I wouldn't die once before it was obvious. Still, yeah, puzzle game with ambiguously-roled AI sounds like just my thing."

"Cool. So I'll bring my laptop next time I show up here and let you use it? Or what?"

"I think the librarian will actually murder us if we make too much noise here. We could just go to the garden behind the school, if you get WiFi there, or one of our rooms."

"They have WiFi out there? I'll have to try that."

"...Uh. My room is probably safer from rain though."

"They have WiFi pretty much everywhere, perks of an Eclipsed school, didn't you read the brochures?" he says, grinning. "Sure, your room sounds fine. I'm not off for a couple hours more though."

Shrug. "I have studying to pretend to do. See you then." He gives a room number before heading back out, having returned his book.

And there's a knock on his door a couple hours later.

He goes and opens it, carrying his laptop. "Hello again. The game I wanted to show you is but one click away."

"I wait with bated breath for the wondrous world you're about to show me."

"Alright then? Well, you said you wanted to see me do the basics, but I think it really is better to do the intro scene yourself. I'll show you the most important tricks after that."

"Okay, can do. May I come in?"

"Of course. Close the door, please. The lounge TV is annoying."

He walks in and closes the door.

And here's the computer! "It does occur to me that a single-player game is not necessarily the best to socialize around. You might be too busy playing to chat."

"I can narrate my thought processes while playing, that could be fun."

"Yeah. And if it's dreadful I'll find something multiplayer."

He grins and boots up the game.

And here's how to start a new game and...

There is the opening scene.

"That's cute music. Where am I? How do I move?"

"Use these keys - w, a, s, d. You can jump with the spacebar. They're giving you time to figure it out. This is a 'relaxation vault'."

He follows the instructions then starts jumping and walking around randomly. "Can I do anything with there? Oh I can," he says, when he manages to hold a clipboard. "Weird symbols. What's the timer?—ooh robot voice, hi robot."

"Yep, that's GLADoS. The AI."

"An actual AI or just a, you know, bunch of interactive reco—ooh portal! I can see myself! What's that on my legs?"

"Just recordings, alas. Or fortunately, depending on your perspective. They're your long fall boots! A way for the game to explain away why you don't break your legs running and jumping around with portals,"

"...that makes no sense," he says, but goes through the portal and starts exploring.

"So, the idea of the first few puzzles is just to get you used to things - and used to the atmosphere." Here is a room with a cube and a pressure plate and a door with a string of lights going from the plate to the door.

"Cube and button based testing is an important part of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center Testing Process." 

"...Like that."

—that startles a giggle out of him. "Cubes and buttons, alright, I think I can manage that."

Cube and button!

The creepy narration continues. Something about 'a rare side effect of the material emancipation grid may accidentally emancipate your teeth and/or skull'.

The next room has him traverse portals that change on a timer to get a cube to a button and then out the door, even past glass walls. "Notice how they made sure the first thing you see in this room is the door - and the second thing is the fact that the portals are changing? It's leading you without actually saying 'use the portal'. That's good tutorial design right there."

"Is it? What's bad tutorial design?" he says, following the cues.

"The example that comes to mind is giving the player a wall of text they have to read, and explaining all the controls one after another, and then expecting them to know what to do and never explaining it again and suddenly your character starves and you don't remember that it mentioned in one sentence in the page of text you skimmed that you need to eat and you get frustrated and never touch the stupid game again."

It sounds like something that happened to him.

"Bad experience?" he guesses. Success at chamber! "This is pretty intuitive," he adds.

"Yep. And yeah, Portal is very, very good at it!"

The next chamber gives him the portal gun! He can aim the orange side of the portal, the blue side is stuck to a wall.

The cube is on the floor in a small pit.

"Do I ever get to control both portals?" he wonders, taking to the controls like a natural.

"Yeah, but later. They're getting you used to things by stages - the puzzles get harder and harder. It's good. I shouldn't tell you the big twist. There's supposed to be a sequel out soonish, Portal 2, I'm pretty excited for it."

"Oh, there's a plot? I thought the atmosphere was just decoration." Next chamber!

"Yes, there is a plot."

"...Please continue testing at your own pace. There will be celebratory cake at the end of the test."

Terry snorts and mutters too far under his breath to be understood, "The cake is a lie."

"What was that?" he asks as he proceeds.

"Something that would spoil the story if I said it louder. Sorry."

He giggles and proceeds. "This is slightly ominous in a somewhat funny way. I like this game."

Terry is only slightly tempted to tell Sadde the solutions to the puzzles. The first really frustrating one - involving leapfrogging from place to place by moving both portals - he lets on a subtle hint though.

Sadde takes the hint but normally doesn't need them. His spatial awareness seems really good, even in-game, and he gets the hang of it pretty quickly. He is also very amused by the "recordings" and provides commentary.

"Did she just say I was going to be baked?" he asks, giggling horrifiedly.

"That is what she said, yes."

"Oh my gosh this is so creepy," he says, giggling more.

He will continue delightedly playing for a while if Terry doesn't stop him.

The warning signs start to have pictures of cake on them.

At the end of the final test chamber he rounds a corner to see - a room full of fire. The platform moves slowly toward it.

"Congratulations! The test is now over. All Aperture Science testing equipment remains safely operational at temperatures up to 4,000 degrees Kelvin. There is no danger of equipment malfunction before the completion of your victory candesence. Thank you for participating in this Aperture Science computer aided enrichment activity."

"...Yuuup, there it is. Think fast, Sadde!"

"Not that fast," he says, grinning, and—" Portal on the wall, portal on the far wall, jump through..."

"And now you have seen the true face of Aperture Science. Whatever shall you do now?"

"Maybe I could assume the 'party escort submission position'," he says dryly. "Or I could go to that hidden portalable place over there—this game is a lot of fun—" He pauses, then grins at Terry. "And I've been here for a rather long time," he adds sheepishly.

"-You have! Uh, is that a problem? Go if- You can go if you wish to, of course?"

"It's not a problem to me," he says quickly. "But I am in your room using your computer and having fun while preventing you from it, so..."

"Oh! Don't mind me. I'm making good progress on my memory in between being amused at you reacting to GLADoS."

"Not minding, then," he says, grinning, and onwards.

The game does not last for too much longer. The dramatic confrontation with GLADoS's main body is a very tense scene and Terry actually stops working on magic in his head to watch Sadde's expressions.

(He doesn't really realize he's doing this but...)

Sadde's expressions are mostly frustrated amusement mixed with unalloyed glee whenever he lands a hit and GLaDOS has a new quip. He finds the bit where the closed captions say her voice turns "sexier" particularly hilarious.

"This is not how AI works at all, of course. But it's a game."

"So it is," he agrees.

And then he beats GLaDOS and literally whoops out loud.

"That was loads of fun," he says, grinning. "Thanks for inviting me."

"You're welcome! It was fun, showing off the wonder of video games! I can try to find something less single-player later."

"It would be lots of fun playing with you." And surprisingly enough there is absolutely zero innuendo.

"I bet it will! I'm a fan of board games too. Those take a while and are more like a four or five player thing. I'm gonna try to find or start a group for it."

"I'll try to find people for that, too. But uh now it is pretty late and I probably should go."

Oh look the return of the awkward.

"...Yeah. Have, uh, a nice day."

"Night, more like," he says brightly. "I'll probably grab something to eat in the cafeteria first."

"-Oh, right, they're still serving dinner probably." He should probably eat too but he just spent hours alone with a sub so, uh, no.

"Yeah. I'll get out of your hair," he says, noticing the hesitation and lowering his head a fraction. "See you later."

He almost says 'Have a good night' but changes it to "Yeah, see you later."

Off he goes.

A couple of days later he goes looking for Terry again.

Terry is attacking math homework in the library. Holding stock still for a couple of seconds then angrily scribbling an answer, and repeat.

That's adorable. He waits for the next time he looks interruptible.

He finishes the page and sighs and rubs his temples.

And he sits.

"Hello again."

"Hi. You're not annoying, don't worry about my mood."

"Okay, won't worry," he nods. "And I found people to play board games."

"Oh, so quickly? Uh, so do any of them have games of their own, I only have a few..."

"I think one of them might have Catan? But otherwise no, they're newbies too."

"Well, I have enough board games to be going on with. Power Grid. Ticket to Ride. Axis and Allies, but that's a complicated and two-player one. Catan's a nice introductory sort of game."

"Awesome, then we can all be introduced. When do you wanna play?"

"Tomorrow after 5? In that dorm common area? I kind of want to meet these people you managed to round up so quickly but that can happen then."

"Sounds good."

"I shall arrange for snacks and clear space. Talk to everyone else in the dorms, make sure nobody else has plans for the common area then."

"Will do!"

At the appointed time: there's Sadde plus two other doms Terry might recognise as Andrew and Dominic (appropriately enough).

"Hello, hello, sirs and madam. Let me introduce a friend of mine who turned out to be interested in this - Wendy."

"Hi. Should we all introduce ourselves...?"

"I'm Sadde. I'm new here, my father didn't want me to come before around now, but I didn't get locked up or anything."

    "I'm Dominic and I won't tell any of you to call me Dom," he says, with a smirk.

    "Andrew," nods the other dom. "I don't—have anything smart or interesting to say."

"I'm Terry. I have a bunch of board games."

"My name is Wendy. I keep not knowing how things work, so I hope you can be patient with me if I do something strange." With a longer sentence, a southern accent is apparent from her.

"Cool! So, shall we start?"

"Yes! Oh, I got snacks for everyone." He gestures at bags of chips and bottles of soda. "Take 'em. We should do Settlers of Catan first, it does five players just fine, it's a good intro sort of game."

"I've played that, can I set it up for everyone?"

"Do that," says Dominic.

With a smile, she points her eyes down to the table. The game box's lid floats off and the pieces start to arrange themselves of their own accord.

"Oh, right, Wendy's a mage. A pretty fast-learning one I'd say."

    "Awesome, teekay," he comments. "I'm doing elements." Fire on tip of finger.

    "I'm a psion. Doing sleep now," murmurs Andrew.

"Mage, gendershifting and biokinesis."

"Psion, working on memory. I call blue. Wendy, you be red, of course. Let's roll dice for player order."

"Why of course?" wonders Sadde.

    "White," calls Dominic.

    "Orange, I guess."

"Uh, green, why not."

Wendy telekinetically distributes player pieces. "We're friends so he knows my favorite color, which happens to match my hair. You're doing biokinesis, seems complicated, can I ask why?"

"I wanna do healing and deaging, eventually generalized biological immortality and, if I find a likeminded psion, resurrection. Possibly with a detour through 'bootstrapped calories' land."

"Huh. I just thought about what would be useful around where I came from. Healing would be, too, but..." Glance around. Shrug.

"Generalized biological immortality would be pretty great. I was thinking about trying to improve virtuality, somehow, but now I'm wondering about what it'd take to help do a resurrection..."

"Post-cognition, telepathy, probably some form of information projection. The mage grows the body, the psion imprints the mind."

    "That's all fine and dandy but let's start the game," Dominic sighs in a somewhat bored tone.

They roll for first player - Sadde.

Terry goes over the rules with everyone. It's not super complicated. Build things in strategic places to get more resources to build more things, try to win victory points in a variety of ways, trade with each other. Conversation turns to game banter, with Wendy mostly quietly smiling and Terry anxiously peering between the board and his cards making 'hmm' noises a lot.

"All I need is one brick. One brick, anyone? I have wood, I have sheep, I have iron. One brick."

Sadde learns to play pretty quickly and is doing moderately well by then. Dominic seems to mostly be enjoying the chat and banter and not paying much attention to the game itself, while Andrew makes thoughtful moves and doesn't express much beyond a furrow of concentration on his brow.

"Telling everyone how much you need the one brick is certainly a way to drive up the price," she says. "One of each."

"It'd be nice to have, certainly. That's barely better than trading with the bank though. Four of anything for one of anything. It's only a good deal for me if you can beat the special trade routes, I'm going to get a three-for-one port in a minute and do that on my own. One of two of the three things."

"But are you going to get to the three-for-one port without the brick?"

"You'll just have to wait and see. No trade then, fine. Dominic's turn."

Dominic builds a road that advances apparently no strategic objectives whatsoever, and shrugs at Sadde's raised eyebrow.

Sadde's turn, she rolls, bites her lips while she waits, and whoops quietly when the result comes out. She grabs a couple of resources, trades a few with the bank...

She eyes Dominic. "I'll trade you two ores for one lumber."

    "I don't know, that's a bit cheap of you."

"I'll blow you in the locker room later if you do."

    "Deal."

She builds two roads, and grins at a suddenly rather annoyed Andrew. "Looks like I have the longest road now," she singsongs while she takes the "longest road" card from him. It also happens that these two roads are going in the direction of Terry's port.

"...I'm not entirely sure that qualifies as sportsmanlike behavior. Just sayin'."

Wendy rolls a seven and gets to move the Thief. She teekays it next to Sadde's settlement with a sort of reproachful look. (But also a bit of a smirk/wink sort of expression.)

"Can I take a card?"

"I would've been able to convince him to trade me even without the blowjob offer. Wouldn't I, Dominic?"

    "...I'd normally say no but I only met you a week ago and I already know you would've found a way," he says, mostly agreeably.

"And I suppose you can take a card, since that's how this game works," Sadde tells Wendy with an exaggerated sigh.

"Thank you~," she singsongs, and snatches up - a wheat, turns out. She buys a development card! It gives her one victory point. "This is good fun."

Terry mutters something under his breath while waiting for Andrew to roll the die for resources.

Andrew rolls and doesn't get anything. The concentrated furrow of his eyebrows deepens, but he just passes his turn.

"Can I go off for a sec and be right back..."

"Oh? Yes, go." Something unspoken between them.

Terry rolls, muttering, "Come oooon, nine." (Six.) "Dam- Darn. I guess I'll upgrade this settlement." Sigh.

She looks curiously at Wendy but then smirks at Terry. "Still confident you can get to the port?"

"I am evaluating strategic priorities and comparing potential risks and expenditures."

Wendy slips away, still holding herself small.

"I'm sure you are. Should we wait for Wendy to come back before Dominic does his thing?"

He rolls anyway.

"Uh, no, shouldn't matter unless he wants to trade with her?"

"She'll at least get a couple of resources," says Sadde, handing them to her.

Dominic buys a development card and passes his turn.

"You'll see what she's on about in a moment, I'm sure. She does this sometimes." Terry doesn't want to outright say what she sometimes does, though.

Shrug. Her turn, she makes another road to keep her title as longest road, then passes.

And then Wendy comes back, hair in a completely different braid, tied up closer to her head, shirt arranged differently almost like a suit vest, standing tall and head high. "Alright, someone tell me what I missed."

...wow that's actually pretty damn hot.

"Not much, you got some resources, I built a road, he got a thing." She points at the thing.

"Good stuff. At last, my plan is complete..."

She rolls and resources get distributed. She lays down a segment of road, and then a settlement on a port. "My overabundance of wool will serve my interests better now."

"And here I thought you had just planned poorly. Nice."

Hot.

Game continues. Sadde might be batting her eyelashes at Wendy a tad.

She smirks, deliberately tilting her head to look 'down' at Sadde when everyone is mostly distracted.

(Terry continues his strategy of development cards, but doesn't get the port he wanted. Wendy starts rapidly catching up in score with a lot of resources coming in.)

Dominic ends up last and laughing about it. Andrew has mostly given up and spent the rest of the game scowling. Sadde's final score is just shy of second place.

Wendy wins mostly thanks to a dynamo of production and several lucky rolls. She stretches, arms above head. "Catan does kind of suffer from rich-get-richer syndrome. You usually can't tell unless the game goes on for a while. I'm glad I made a comeback though."

"I have 'Ticket to Ride' if everyone's up for another game? We're all train companies. Harder to get ahead and stay ahead. And it's easy to learn."

    "I'm tired of games," says Andrew, and stalks off without another word.

    "Guess someone's a sore loser," Dominic says, grinning. "Sure, I'm up for another game."

"I'd love to."

"Hey, maybe he's got homework, you never know. Have some snacks if you want em! No? Alright then."

Settlers of Catan starts cleaning itself up.

"So in Ticket to Ride each turn you can do one of three things..." And Terry starts explaining the rules.

Board game!

Board game!

Wendy continues to act just as much like a dom as she was subby at first. She flirts at Sadde, only mostly being subtle about it.

Sadde wins this time.

(Terry seems to think this is a good close to the casual board game meetup and starts packing everything up, claiming homework.)

Sadde is pretty happy about this! Dominic notices and seems to find the flirting between Wendy and Sadde hot.

Well, Wendy doesn't mind that.

"...Being a sub working in a warehouse must be a bit odd, everyone will be at your feet whenever you get something off a high shelf! So hey maybe I shouldn't have gotten telekinesis, so I could have an excuse to use ladders..."

Both of them sporfle.

    "That was awful I'm gonna have to use it sometime," Dominic says, still giggling.

"I'm sure you don't need the ladders to have people at your feet," Sadde adds.

    "Hey, nice execution." He high-fives her.

"So what you're saying is I need to learn to fly."

She giggles some more. "That's a way to do it."

"Bet there's no other feeling like looking down at the world and telling it 'make me float'."

Terry flickers between amused and embarrassed/anxious(?), listening to the flirting. The games: Are now packed. "Well, I think I'm about done for the day. Have... Fun, you three."

"This was fun, thanks for the games, Terry."

    "Us three, though, there's a thought," says Dominic.

"We'll have to do it again some time! Next week maybe. Bye." Off he goes, escaping the flirting.

"Three? Well, maybe. Not entirely my thing. It's an exciting idea, though, isn't it?"

"And I've never been with two switches. Sounds exciting."

"W-ell you would be wise to consider me a dom for today. I switch on a longer timescale than most switches, or so I think, you see. Then again, you never know, the mood could strike me... But if you don't mind that, we could all have some fun together. For example, I think Sadde owes you a blowjob. I wouldn't mind watching a cute switch and a hot dom at all."

    He eyes Sadde speculatively. "I don't think I'd mind watching a cute switch and a hot dom, either."

(Eeeeeee.)

"Well then," Wendy almost purrs and deliberately licks her lips. "Let's all go to someone's room."

    "I think Sadde suggested a locker room..."

"I'm not sure we can have fun the three of us in a locker room."

    "Good point. My room." He gets up.

Wendy neatens up the remains of their snacks as she stands up. "If only more people were so willing and eager and straightforward, the world'd be a more relaxed place."

"Tell me about it," Dominic snorts. He starts leading the way to his room.

Wendy follows. "Come on, Sadde. And tell us if you're not okay with anything that comes up."

"Yes, ma'am." Follow follow.

"Hmm, I wonder if I ought to fetch a couple of exciting little trinkets from my room..."

"I have some but if you think they might be different or better together go ahead."

"I'm sure you have plenty of good stuff, I'll leave it."

"I do," he says, with a smirk.

It transpires that he does.

A good time is had between the three of them. Telekinesis can be... Helpful.

Wendy remains a dom for the duration, no matter how hot it might be to suddenly switch again.

"I am tired and full of endorphins. Good job, you two, but it's time to get back to work for me."

    "I don't have anything to do now."

"I don't, either," says Sadde.

    "Let's snuggle."

"Yes, sir."

"Have fun lying around while I get stuff done!" The tone marks this casual sarcasm, not actual criticism.

Out she goes.

A couple of days later Sadde walks into the cafeteria, get her food, and looks for somewhere to sit.

Terry has blocked all possible spots next to him (more the floor than the actual seats) with: A bookbag, a stack of books, and some kind of art project(?).

"Are all of these taken?" she asks with a raised eyebrow.

"-Ah. No. It's more of a, uh, preventative measure."

Eyebrow raises higher.

"Not at you! At... Someone. It was awkward."

"Someone whose name starts with a J and who would probably take the fact that there is any floor space at all as an invitation to kneel, perhaps?"

"...I didn't actually know his name but that sounds like the guy. Yes."

"Gimme some space to sit with you, maybe I can deal with him if he does decide to show up."

"Sure..." Terry moves objects. "I don't- I don't want him to be miserable or anything, it's just..."

She sits. "Oh, I know, that's straight-up sexual harassment. I kind of—am trying to work on it. With him. But gods is it a headache sometimes."

"And it's like, how can a sub be harassing a dom. I may be a dom but I don't want- I don't actually want to... I don't know. I'll shut up."

That eyebrow raise again. "You don't need to shut up. And subs harassing doms: totally a thing, as evidenced by our mutual acquaintance."

"Role stereotypes are bugging me again, that's all. Doms are confident and commanding at all times and always like submission. Never mind that I don't usually want to act like an alpha dom. I'd rather confidently read, or self-assuredly think about magic."

"Oh. Well I definitely read you as much closer to the other dom stereotype, to the extent people are close to stereotypes."

"Thanks, I guess? I just... Don't get it. I can vaguely get the appeal of being super dominant, but I have no idea what subs are thinking. So to speak."

"Well do you want to know?"

"...I would have thought I would say no, but now I'm curious."

"Well—people vary, I can't speak for everyone, but—there's a comfort in just... letting go. In trusting someone else so completely that you feel safe in giving yourself to them, you know it's gonna be okay because they're there and they're gonna make sure of it. Sometimes thinking is exhausting, and being able to just—not—is very, very restful.

"And there's also something that's just intrinsically appealing about being in someone else's power, in a way. That one's a bit harder to explain to someone who doesn't have it, but it just feels nice. It's sort of like—being in a warm safe place, but more."

"...Well that's. Thinking about that and about Jackson just makes me kind of sad."

"...yeah. It's why I wanna—help him, somehow. I know what it feels like, and he must be particularly sensitive and. Well. That's how he gets what he wants because he doesn't really see any other way to do it."

"And on the other hand, I can't stand it. I can't even tell him to go away, because then I told him to. I have sympathy and all but - but - I'm failing to come up with an analogy."

"Yeah, I know, it is in fact straight-up harassment, there's no way he doesn't get what he wants. Have you tried talking to someone in an official capacity?"

"I was basically laughed out of the office. That is when I devised my 'stuff occupies space' plan."

"Ugh," she groans in sympathy. "I—for what it's worth he at least varies his targets?" she says, gesturing at a table where Dominic and a few of his friends are sitting and studiously ignoring Jackson kneeling by. "And, you know, you've met Dominic, he's not exactly a noncentral example of dom and even he finds Jackson creepy. Maybe if lots of people complained..."

"What, a petition? 'Punish this one particular person, please'? I guess it could work, but it feels off."

"More like, if a big enough number of doms mentions it... but that might just duck him over."

"Making him stop somehow will make him miserable any which way, though. Is the awkwardness and revulsion he's causing worth his own not-very-deep satisfaction?" Sigh. "I don't want to keep talking about this."

She nods. "We can talk about something else."

"I read up a bunch of stuff about formal logic and it's surprisingly helpful with magic! I closed a bunch of, like, loopholes that were confusing the hell out of me."

"Formal logic, really? That's not at all like the way magic feels to me."

"Yep, formal logic. It's really hard to explain this stuff... Magic is sort of like this crazy bundle of loops and wires and latches and portals and, uh, parentheses, and to be able to do something I tug or tap on the mess in a certain way so the tug goes through it all just right... And there are rules, it's just... There's so much to look at, I can't possibly hold it all in my mind at once. Yet. And the formal logic helps me sort of chunk it into bigger pieces so I can think about more at once? I was already doing that, but now I can say, oh, if and only if three wire loop over to that two wire, the latch will open. Three wire has to be off loop so two wire will always be off so therefore that portal will also be off and thus this happens... Any of that make sense? At all?"

"In the abstract, sorta, but it's not how mine works at all. Mine works like—doing the splits. There's a resistance and I can feel this resistance but there isn't a clever solution anywhere other than just doing it enough times that I eventually can get it. And, I don't know, maybe sometimes I'm sitting wrong or doing the wrong thing—actually maybe the best analogy is yoga in full generality—the thing it is is something physical that I can feel when I do magic, you know?"

"Magic is weird. Physics studies have made no progress on it recently, I think, which just makes it weirder."

"I usually say that I'm an atheist, but, twelfth birthday. I'm at best deistic, to be honest."

"Agnostic." He leaves it at that.

"Yeah my point is, magic is majorly weird."

"I do think we'll nick it some day. Martin Luther - the guy who nailed 99 theses to a church door, not the civil rights guy - supposedly thought that babies were proof of God because no science could possibly explain such a wonderful and complex thing."

She giggles. "I mean, magic is in fact different in character from—other things. It treats minds as ontologically basic, for one thing."

"There's maybe something to that line of inquiry. Hmm. I'm normally in a much better mood for philosophizing, but today is kind of just... Bleh."

"Yeah. Anything you do wanna talk about to take your mind off things?"

Sadde and Wendy, how'd that go down...? Nope. Don't ask that.

"Oh, I read the book you recommended. Very good twist."

"That was great, right? I wish more people would think of stuff like that."

"It's surprisingly hard to be genuinely novel. Writers have to combine things that have been written by someone somewhere in a new way most of the time."

"Oh yeah definitely, if it were easy to come up with interesting twists they wouldn't be surprising and wouldn't be interesting anymore."

"Executing well on a previously-used idea is still fun to read or watch or whatever, of course."

"Yeah. I think I have a few more recommendation of books in a same vein to that one, if you want."

"Sure, though I may well skip 'em for now. I'm so close to getting memory to snap together."

"Ooh that's awesome! Tell me when you have it. Is it gonna be retroactive?"

"Not retroactive. Yet, possibly... That smells precoggy, though, retroactive anything. Haven't tried anything in a precoggy direction yet. It'd only be on while I'm paying attention to it, at first. Sometimes I need to figure out, like, concepts and architecture. But sometimes, like now, I know it's right there, it's about to work and it's just a matter of executing the plan, sewing up all the little holes, so to speak. Making it totally automatic as opposed to needing to concentrate is going to be tedious but straightforward, too. And even then I'll be able to turn it off and, uh, purge things... If I ever want to for some reason."

"Why would you want to forget anything?"

"Privacy? Spoilers? Trauma? I didn't really try for that feature, it sort of fell out of how I was doing the rest of it."

"Huh. Cool. It would be pretty awesome to reread something without remembering the first time."

"I don't think I'll use it too often, but that's an option. Like if I find a book I remember I really liked the first time but I can still remember some of the details..."

"Or if you want to go see a movie you've already seen with someone and want to not spoil them accidentally, or just experience it for the first time multiple times..."

"Yeah, could be handy I suppose. I don't want to go forgetting things all the time though, that's the whole point."

"Can't you do it temporarily? Forget it and then restore the memory?"

"Not the way it's shaping up. The memory is still out there, somewhere, but I can't get the... Pointer to it back after letting it go. Maybe... Hmm... If it's like a pointer, I could just save the pointers... Except it's not just a code I can look things up with... I mean, that seems possible to do, but it's not a priority, y'know?"

She nods. "Yeah, fair enough."

"You know, I've almost forgotten what I was so upset about five minutes ago. Thank you for some pleasant conversation. Now I want to go find my laptop and program something instead of wanting to not tell anyone to do anything ever again."

"Just don't forget that some people enjoy being told what to do very much. Have fun with your programming."

"Count on it. Maybe if I can find an artist I'll make a game, that'd be fun... Anyway, bye!"

He gathers up the pile of stuff and off he goes, well cheered up. Good job, Sadde.

And she still has some food to finish but after that she can try to work some more on Jackson. Or maybe even run into Wendy, that would be more fun.

Wendy isn't in the dining hall, but she is sitting on one of the benches in the campus square, doing something like hands-free juggling with marbles floating in the air.

(...Marbles about the size of those little vibrator beads from that time with Dominic)

Well that stirs up a memory or two. She walks over to Wendy. "Hello, there."

"Hello. Uh, I wanted to ask you something actually, is that alright...?"

"Yeah sure."

"Being plain about things, I get a lot of strongly worded advice from my family about what to learn and what to do when I graduate. Thing is, I haven't heard from anyone except them and the internet what kinds of things I should try to do with my magic. I love them, but they aren't the most creative people in the world, and the internet is... The internet. Anyway. Can you talk to me about it? Maybe help me think of other options besides plain old teekay and elementalism?"

"Yeah, of course. Also a good moment for me to make my pitch for age-reversal."

"Well, I sure want that for myself. I'm slightly nervous about- Healing seems like a good way to burn out, you know? I read about it happening to nurses and doctors."

"Yeah, I understand that. I think it might actually be easier on eclipsed, we mostly don't have to worry about being unable to save a patient after a certain point, the magic can in fact take care of anything. I read about this one mage who saved a guy whose heart stopped by supplying oxygen to his brain using magic while she fixed everything else."

Sigh. "But, like- If I know how to de-age people, when I'm not doing that I'm condemning someone to suffer infirmity and die. People aren't selfless, nobody expects them to be selfless, but I read this book where the main character had some fatal disease and coincidentally made friends with a mage and the mage said sorry, I only work from my waiting list and that was just... Heart-wrenching. I think I'd always feel vaguely guilty watching a movie or flirting with someone or sleeping when I could be - at a hospital."

"I don't think I'd see it that way because—well, for one, the only way I'll be able to actually save a maximum number of people in the long term is if I maintain my sanity. If I save a bunch of people in a one-year burst then get burnt out, that's much worse than spacing it out and spreading it throughout several years—centuries even, since I myself would be immortal. Lives saved today trade off with lives saved tomorrow, the trade isn't 'if you don't save Annie she will die when you could have saved her,' the trade is 'I will forgo saving a specific person today so that I can save ten more people next year.'"

"Mm. And like I said, I know that when I think about it. But I don't feel that way... God, I always go into a subby mood for days when I start thinking about this kind of thing."

"Yeah, if you don't think it'd be sustainable at all then you'll probably do more good to the world doing something else."