- aren't cryptids supposed to be helpful? Rebecca was expecting this one to dive off the boat as soon as it appeared and go engage the sea monster.
Instead it eats her, and she's somewhere else.
- aren't cryptids supposed to be helpful? Rebecca was expecting this one to dive off the boat as soon as it appeared and go engage the sea monster.
Instead it eats her, and she's somewhere else.
"Well, boats need us because of the sea monsters. Sometimes there are land monsters but I think usually you don't have a dedicated job of that."
"Ah. Our world does not have sea monsters, is I think the key difference here. Before we go further into what you could do to pay your return ticket, I'd like to make it clear that, as a young woman from another world who is stuck here and who is visibly not a baseline human, we at Whateley Academy are prepared to offer you lodging, board, and education for four years, as part of our 'fish out of water' scholarship."
"We do! We also provide a more general education in literature, mathematics and science, along with classes to help you control and refine any powers that you possess."
"...if you have to refine your powers through some particularly arcane means, then we might not, but most powers in my experience respond to practice and experimentation? Is that not the case for yours?"
Mrs. Carson raises her eyebrows. "That's a new one on me. We don't have specific classes based around beauty enhancement, but we do have a series of Costume Design classes and they do cover principles of fashion and aesthetics, so you might end up taking that instead of Powers Lab. What powers do you have?"
"Voluntary shapeshifting is a comparatively rare power among mutants. Much more common is the Exemplar trait, which causes them to transform into an idealized version of themselves but doesn't admit of further changes."
"This is mostly what I really look like, I'd want my family to know me if I ever did go back. I put on the wings and fixed my teeth and such."
"Reasonable. At any rate, would you like to get signed up as a student? I can handle the scholarship details while you fill out the form - that is, if you're literate. Are you?"
"Congratulations!" Mrs. Carson says with a relieved smile. "That's very important these days, I'm glad we won't need to teach you."
She pulls out a form; lightning-quick, she scribbles in a few of the more confusing boxes, crosses out a few more, and then passes it over to Rebecca. The form contains some relatively standard questions (home address [which has been crossed out], blood type, age, and gender [with a wide variety of options]), and less standard questions (tentative power ratings [Carson has put "Sh-5, Man-2a (ice)"], GSD/BIT/MATD irregularities ["wings"], age of manifestation, sexuality). It's not very long, but it is a bit dense.
"Sorry about that, I still don't know what year it was in your home world, you can leave blood type blank if your scientists haven't discovered it yet, we'll find out at your medical checkup. Sexuality is whether you are attracted to men, women, both, neither, et cetera."
"Well, uh, you kn- you don't know. Uh. People say we don't make very good wives unless you like to be left alone and... don't mind your wife being very close with some other magical girls."
"Alright, you can just circle 'other,' that doesn't sound like it'll come up since we don't actually have magical girls."