Layne gives her the piercing look that means 'we'll talk about this later'. 

Laylie sighs and waits for the teenagers to sort themselves out. They're young. Accidentally leaking Chaos in incredibly awkward circumstances is pretty normal and expected, drawing attention to it will just embarrass them more. 

"Bruce? Listen to me. It's all right. We'll figure something out. Maybe that means somewhere out of the city, but I'm not jumping straight to that. Having to set things up to make it easier for certain people not to leak Chaos on the Surface is - well, it's not usually quite as high-stakes but it's something we have experience with." 

Everyone freaking out is very reasonable. Him in a gladiator pit would be the worst possible idea but they seem to understand that.

"I'm--very glad you want to help me. I was able to be part of society, at home, mostly. I hope I can eventually do the same here."

He remembers Tony Stark, in New York. It's good to meet you, Dr Banner. Your work on antielectron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage-monster. Remembers him showing off the suit. I can fly. Can you fly? And the unspoken real meaning, I can stop you if I have to. You're not the only line of defense.

"I'm sure you will." She ducks her head, not smiling but still radiating motherly reassurance. "Can you - go through a list of all the times this switch happened by accident? And what triggers you use for doing it on purpose?" 

He lists off incidents, softly, haltingly. The initial gamma irradiation. The argument that first made him realize anger could trigger it. The time he got shot in the head (he hopes they don't ask how). The two times in Brazil. "And I don't know why I would want to do it on purpose."

She listens, calmly and patiently. 

"I'm sorry. That all sounds like pretty much the worst circumstances imaginable for exploring Chaos. I can understand why you didn't want to do it on purpose! But - it's important, right. One of the best ways to reliably avoid triggering something by accident, is to have enough practice at doing it on purpose." 

A pause. 

"Anyway. I think you're low-risk to stay with Veth and her family, especially given that now we're all aware of the issue and can take measures to avoid tripping it for you. All right?" 

Veth nods. Doesn't seem concerned or scared. "We'll be polite and non-threatening and no one's going to pick a fight with you. - I mean, on the Surface in general no one's going to do that, but especially in our house, Mom would throw such a fit." 

She's heard all that and she still wants to let him stay at her house. "Really? Thank you. If it's okay with your parents I mean." He is not at all sure he would be that nice to a stranger, even a nonthreatening one, and it makes him feel like a parasite. "I'll try to get my feet under me soon."

"I'll call again and check, but yeah, I can't think why it wouldn't be." 

"You can borrow the phone in the room next door, if you want. Bruce, in the meantime, why don't we go through the basic census info for you? Educational background and medical history, at least, those are the top priority for now." 

Nolita is starting to fidget a bit. 

Layne can guess why. "Hey, listen, we've both got an exam tomorrow, so if you've got this covered, we'd better head out." A smile at Veth. "See you tomorrow?" 

"Sure, see you tomorrow." 

"I'll stick around. Perks of not being in school, no more exams ever again!" 

"Not to mention you practically live at my place anyway." 

Laylie ignores the banter, focuses on Bruce with that same intense aura of 'I have this under control' as before. 

"So, what was your field of study?" 

Bruce has degrees and publications in physics and chemistry and biology and medicine and nuclear science and climatology and computer science! None of the institutions he has credentials from or the journals he's published in are at all accessible from here, but he can list them all off if she wants to know anyway.

She writes it all down! She smiles encouragingly and asks a handful of followup questions, including if he’d like to be put in touch with some relevant local scientists and institutions in those fields. Surface-based ones, anyway. She informs him that quite a lot of scientific progress nowadays happens in the high Underworld, but for the obvious reasons she doesn’t have standard contact information for those people. He ought to be able to get it via word of mouth if he wants to. 

He would love contact information for Surface scientists! He should stay out of the Underground but if they have an internet and it has Underground journals on it and he's allowed to read them he will do that.

"They have a decentralized Web - the original one, actually, our Internet happened decades later - but for the most part it's not directly linked to the topside Internet. A lot of the best research should be in the archives, though, since so much Surface R&D references it these days. Hmm, for now I'll put some names and contacts in the shared-documentation file in your base profile, and you can check it out once we set you up with a personal computer of some kind. I'm not a techie but I'm guessing whatever you have won't be compatible with our systems." 

She gets out a flat tablet-screen thing from her shoulder bag and inputs some things. Apparently via some sort of OCR setup rather than a keyboard, because she scribbles it with a stylus pen on the screen and the words snap into printed text afterward. 

"All right. Medical history? Obviously the, uh, gamma ray incident - how long ago did that happen? Any other serious side effects? I'm also not a doctor, you should see one here as soon as possible but I'll put the basics in now." 

The gamma ray incident was six years ago and didn't do anything normal. Other than that he's nearsighted and has had his wisdom teeth out and he's vaccinated for all the common Earth diseases but he should get vaccinated for all the local ones pronto.

She'll schedule him to see someone at the nearest medical clinic to where he's staying. "Which is - hmm, I'd better go find out if Veth got her parents' approval. One sec." Laylie stands up, sticks her head out the door. 

Veth is standing in the hallway, leaning against the wall. 

"- Wha...? Oh, sorry. Parents are fine with having him as a guest. Uh, you can scan my profile and get the info?" She sticks out her ring. 

And that seems to be everything! Laylie fiddles with a couple more forms and spreadsheets on her tablet, asks if she can record his fingerprints and get a photo to cross-reference with his temporary database profile - her tablet can do both - and then asks if he has any questions before she sends him off with Veth. 

"Do you keep records of everyone's fingerprints, or just oddballs'?" He asks as he's inputting them. And then: "I think I can figure most stuff out from the internet. Is job-searching mostly done online or does it involve going places?"