"I am, but I don't know if it's related."

"I am too and I already manifested so I know it's not going to make me look unusual," she says.

"I'm very small and very smart and that's all. Not much of a mutation."

Eventually all of the kids are loaded up and they get a lecture on appropriate behavior in their seats and the ship takes off. Whee.

Oat sits upon his pillows. It would be annoying if he accidentally fell out of his seat and was injured.

The girl next to him does not sit still, but she stays - very precisely - within the boundaries of her seat. "Are you excited about Battle School?"

"No."

"...Oh."

"It seemed like it would reduce the risk of starving to death."

"They will definitely feed you."

"Yes."

"I'm going because regular school was boring," she volunteers.

"Was it?"

Nod.

"How?"

"What do you mean how?"

"How is it boring?"

"...Well," she says, although this does not really clear up the curiosity underlying her question at all, "the work was all really easy and not very important and the other kids weren't very smart or fun to talk to and while you're in school you aren't allowed to go do other things so if you do they get mad at you."

"Oh."

"But everyone at Battle School is supposed to be really smart and they take us so young so we can cram in lots of training and they won't waste our time with anything that isn't important and then we kill buggers."

"What do you mean by important?"

"I mean, like, accomplishing something that needs doing. Something big."

"...That doesn't make sense in context."

"Killing buggers is important, and getting good enough at stuff to do it is important because killing buggers is important. And there's like levels of important."

"There aren't currently any buggers to kill, anyway. If they don't come back, how important will it have been to go to Battle School and learn how to kill them?"