The scepter flashes once. The woman relaxes slightly, but keeps her guard up. "Are you a danger or a threat to my students?"

“Only if they’re a danger or a threat to me first.”

She appears to accept this. She stops glowing and descends to the floor. "Thank you. I'm sorry for my suspicion, but under the circumstances... Anyway. I apologize deeply for your being summoned here without your consent, and we will do whatever we can to return you to your world. If you do not wish to return to your world, we will also be willing to help you establish a life here. Do you have any pressing needs? Were you injured in any way by your journey?"

“Uh—no, I just kind of showed up here...”

“...you’d help me stay here? I can just—not go back?”

She hesitates. "You do seem to be a minor... but if you actively do not want to go home, we can discuss your specific case. The school does have the legal ability to take on wards in certain circumstances."

"...maybe there's something about here I don't know yet, but...I really, really...don't want to go back."

She nods. "Ordinarily we would need consent from your parents in order to enroll you. Am I correct in thinking that's not an option?"

He laughs.

"Yeah, no. It's not."

She nods again. "In that case, fuck them."

Morty startles. "Hey!"

"Listen, Morty, when I tell a mutant teenager who's just been kidnapped that I can send him home and he says 'actually how about we don't,' I begin to assume things about his parents."

"Didn't know you were allowed to swear, is all."

He laughs, surprised and delighted.

"Fuck them! And fuck wearing hats!"

"Personally I have nothing against hats," says Mrs. Carson. "Anyway. Given that you're from an alternate universe, and it would take a legally untenable amount of effort to conventionally investigate your family situation for signs of abuse or neglect, we're actually allowed to just take your word on it. So on the paperwork we'll put 'parental consent unavailable' and that'll be the end of it. Now, if we're going to enroll you we'll need to assign you a room, which means determining what Hall you'll be in. You said your powers aren't a threat to yourself or others, so you don't need Hawthorne. The horns would seem to imply Twain, unless you're gay, bisexual, trans, or similar, in which case-."

Morty raises his hand. "I feel like this entrance interview should be going on somewhere I'm not. It seems confidential."

Mrs. Carson nods. "Yes, actually, it should. Also, Mortimer, before I forget, you'll be taking Interdimensional Threat as a tutored course, detention in Hawthorne for a month, and I want you back with your therapist until you can work out some way to stop yourself from doing idiotic things when you're having an episode. If that means getting Mr. Conway to physically pin you to the ground every time you get near an Allen wrench unless you can explain what you're doing with it, then you do that. Are we clear?"

Morty grimaces. "Crystal."

She turns back to Z. "Shall we reconvene in my office?"

“...sure.”

What kind of school placement interview depends on whether he’s gay?

(He gives Morty a sympathetic glance.)

There's a flash of light, and they're both standing in a sparsely but elegantly furnished office. "As I was saying," she continues, "we need to determine your Hall. Ordinarily you'd be in Twain, since you have an obviously nonhuman appearance. However, if you do happen to identify as LGBT, Poe is the default. The reasoning being that we are dealing with teenagers here, and while we realistically can't completely eliminate bullying, we can at least create a safe space within the residence halls themselves. So: would you prefer Twain, or Poe?"

He’s been teleporting around a lot today. Two more times than he ever has in his life, in fact!

“Uh—yeah, I’m queer. Poe works for me.”

She marks this and a couple of other things down on an entrance form, then slides the form over to Z. "Just fill the rest of this out and we'll talk about our next steps."

The form contains standard questions (home address [which has been crossed out], name, date, signature), and less standard questions (tentative power ratings, GSD/BIT/MATD irregularities, age of manifestation). It's not very long.

...well, he can fill out the standard questions, at least.

Age of manifestation...he can put 'birth' here, right? It's not like he was taking any beatings as a baby but he's pretty sure he's had this his whole life.

He taps the other parts (the confusing abbreviations especially) with the pen.

"What's this stuff?"

She takes back the form and poses her pen over it. "Power rating... What actually is your power? And how potent is it, ballpark?"

"–oh. I can do slow shapeshifting if I concentrate on it, and I regenerate when I get hurt, and there's–stuff. Want me to show you?"

She raises her eyebrows. "Not the regeneration, I don't think. What are the limits on your shapeshifting? Do you have a fixed set of forms, or is it more general cosmetic freedom? And what do you mean by 'stuff'?"

"Uh, the second one. I haven't had a ton of time to test it because I have to hide it before my parents see it–it's way faster if you hurt me, though. And if I cut myself or get broken bones I get spikes or extra eyes or whatever when it heals up."

She blinks. "That is- unusual. Well, I'll... put that down as a very unusual case of MATD. That's 'manifestation-augmented tissue deformity' in human English. It doesn't quite fit the, ah, symptoms, but it's close enough. How quickly do you regenerate?"

"I can do decent cuts in a couple seconds right now? I've been getting better."

"Alright. We'll want to test a tissue sample to get a more accurate rating, but it sounds like regen 3-4, depending on your definition of 'decent'. As for the shifting: you can obviously grow horns; could you grow functional wings? Can you substantially alter your body weight?"

"...I've never tried wings before. It'd probably take me a while–same with changing my body weight a ton, I think..."

So many possibilities.

"Well, if you ever manage wings, that'd bump you up to SH-5, that's 'major cosmetic and functional shifting'. As it is I'll put you down at Re-3, Sh-4. And other than that you're baseline - no enhanced strength, speed, memory, et cetera?"