The girl in question is located, when she is located, at the docks, setting fire (at a distance, via a burning string) to a horrible-smelling concoction, which produces sputters. It took some difficulty to recognize her from her picture, since she's wearing a welding mask made from the corpse of a steel washbin and leather armor of sewn-together squares for PPE.

"Who wants to know?"

(Casual glance left, casual glance right; where's her gang? Not here. Can she take him? Probably not.)

"I am a member of King Ben's royal guard and I have a message for your father, if you can take me to him."

... Her father? Nobody cares about her father!

"Like I know where he is."

He sighs. First Cangse Sanren was dead, then Tetley had no idea who her parents were at all, and now this. "--Well, then, I guess I have a message for you." He adjusts himself and attempts to sound regal. "By orders of King Ben, all people on the Isle of the Lost who have not themselves committed a crime will be set free and allowed to live in Auradon. We are beginning with a pilot program of four teenagers. You have been selected as one of the members of the pilot program."

And that is, perhaps, where Alida freezes.

When she was six Alida had decided not to die. They had decided she would suffer, they had condemned her - a powerless child, scrapping in the gutter for what would let her survive - she had sworn to live, to spite them, and she would be free, and one day she would have her revenge.

And now they were letting her go. Just... letting her go.

"Bullshit!" she says.

She's going to blast her way out of her - they're letting her go - what is Uma going to say -

He knows that teenagers on the Isle swear. It isn't, objectively speaking, any worse than the pickpocketing and the face-spitting he knew they were doing. It's just-- not the sort of thing you talk about in front of children, so it's not in books or on the television, so he didn't think-- but of course they swear.

He still can't stop himself from flinching. 

"If you and your father agree, you can meet at"-- he gives directions, much more confusedly than any Islander would give the directions, to a place squarely in Mal's territory-- tomorrow at 6pm. That's, uh, about the beginning of sunset."

... "And I should believe you, random fancy costume man, because..."

Is she going to need to find her father? Nah, if he doesn't believe in swearing, and he is this much of a rube, she can just tell him Gustav approved it, it's not like he wants to be here.

"I am a person you don't recognize when you certainly know everyone on the Isle by sight, in clothes that no one on the Isle wears, and no one can break through the magic barrier without King Ben's approval?"

"... Yes, and King Ben gives a shit because... look, 'organ shortage' is way more likely than conscience where I'm from, all right?"

(Actually, she's really just saying this for the chance to watch his facial expression; he is an amazingly bad liar for someone who survived to his age.)

Horrified: "We're not going to murder you! Only evil people do that!"

Holy shit how did Uma's mom not just conquer the world, they're like babies, seriously why.

"Riiiiight. Uh-huh. Sure."

"Do you have any pointers to where I might find your father?"

"Sure." She can give him a pointer, which will almost certainly be useless because it is directions to 'where people from regions vaguely near where her parents came from settled', but it's not like that will be relevant - she has no idea if her father is even alive, and that's the way she likes it.

And then she can go talk to the people who have the best of all possible reasons to want to keep her alive, self-interest, or at least who did yesterday.

Uma, Harry, and Gil, along with their lesser minions, are at Ursula's Restaurant as always. 

"Hey, boss!" Alida says, waving. "It turns out that we were never supposed to be on Garbage Island in the first place, and if four Islanders manage to get along with the assholes who sent us here to die everyone born here can go wherever the hell they please!"

"I heard it from Tetley," Uma said. 

"And she's totally mad that that little garbage-picker got picked instead of her," Gil adds, "even though it makes sense that they're going with someone weak and wimpy who isn't going to challenge them and not Uma. If she'd known this was going to happen then she wouldn't have founded a gang!"

Harry hits him in the head. 

"So, the two main questions are, one, is it a trap, and two, if it is not a trap, can Tetley, me, and whatever other two children of henchmen they choose play along for long enough to get them to release everyone else?" At which point they will have magic and books and be in a much better position to plan vengeance.

"Obviously it's a trap," Uma says. "The question is whether you can get the cheese without becoming dinner yourself."

"... The guy I talked to was really dumb," she says, which is both an observation relevant to the question of her odds and involves some suggestion that he might have trouble lying to her. "No idea about his boss, though."

"King Ben grew up in prissy rich-kid Auradon," Uma said, "how clever can he be?"

"Ben, I'm not worried about, but someone's got to be pulling the strings. We can't be the only people who want to be in charge." There's going to be intelligent opposition somewhere; someone in Auradon has to want power and be good enough at getting it not to be shipped to Garbage Island.

"But they're going to think we're stupid," Uma says, "because all the teenagers they interact with are stupid. --What I want to know is why they picked you. Tetley, I understand. No one is threatened by Tetley."

Good point. "I think they picked four henchkids, and didn't know or care who they were, because they think teenagers are too dumb to be a threat. Tetley's them getting lucky." And I'm not.

"That means that Uma is mad that you got picked and she didn't!" Gil added. "Ow!"

"I sent someone to get information about who else was picked," Uma said, "and we'll be able to figure out something from that."

"Even they can't be stupid enough to think you aren't a threat," Alida says, nodding in respectful acknowledgement of Uma's plan. "But we'll still all be off this rock soon enough, one way or the other."

Uma finds this an acceptable form of sucking up. 

Shortly, the messager returns with the information that the other two chosen were Wei Wuxian son of Cangse Sanren and Bern son of Egen.

"They're not children of name villains," Uma comments. 

Saying "called it" would be being rude to her boss. "No..." 

... "Bern makes sense." Wei Wuxian... does not.

Well. This is going to be fun. "So, first priority for the ten minutes I'm going to be out, magic shit that can blow a hole in the dome, second priority any nonmagic way to do it, third priority, better books on how to build shit so we can work out our own way?" Fourth priority would be better books on how to build and fix boats, most likely.

"Probably books first? It's harder to take away knowledge, even with magic."

She nods respectfully. "Sounds good to me, boss." It is also, unsurprisingly, exactly what she wants to do, for exactly that reason. But it rather suggests a slower solution, one that is very unlikely they'll have the time for with one of the local lunatics around to show whatever ivory-tower idiot made this decision (King Ben?) exactly who you can be on the Isle of the Lost if you really put your mind to it.

"Tetley is useless, but Bern might be a good gang member. --Do you think you'll be able to get Wei Wuxian under control?"

"Can't win a fight with him, can't call in backup - depends on Bern and on how crazy he is and if I can get any help from the blue-gold-bastards they don't want to give him. But I'm guessing no. Still going to try."

"Every lunatic has a lever you can use to control them," Uma says, glancing at Harry, "you just have to figure out what it is. --Jiang Yanli can control Wei Wuxian, at least sometimes. Maybe he wants soup?"

Jiang Yanli helped raise him and Jiang Cheng both. Whatever her advantage is will not be easy to replicate.

"Worth a try." She will attempt to use her posture to suggest that she also wants more ideas if they can be provided. She's not a gang leader, not in the Isle she's not.

Uma attempts to transfer all her knowledge of controlling lunatics.

The secret is to get them dependent on your approval. Once they're dependent, you can provide swift and certain punishment for misbehavior and intermittent reinforcement for good behavior, always leaving them craving more approval than you will give them. Also, if they have any little hobbies like rape or torture, make sure you give them adequate scope for their impulses in ways that don't hurt you. The "get them dependent on your approval" step is of course the most difficult; Uma is acutely aware of how much of her position is secured less by her own decisions and more by Harry's past whims.

Uma is also, clearly, achingly jealous. Her mother's name has done nothing for her, less than Gaston's for Gil, and she resents it. Her mother humiliates her in front of her gang. She waits tables as if she didn't earn as much through protection money as her mother did through the restaurant. Maleficent and Grimhilde trained their daughters to leave the Isle and take over the world, and everything Uma knows she taught herself. And now she's not going to leave the Isle because of her mother's name. She is helping Alida, but she hates her.

Uma daughter of Gustav wouldn't have a gang, any more than Alida daughter of Gustav does. Uma waits tables because she is far more frightening living with her mother than she would be if she didn't. This is not the sort of thing that would ever occur to Uma, when she's thinking about how mistreated she is. 

Alida knows that Uma is jealous, considers it completely reasonable for Uma to be jealous, and wants to cooperate peacefully with Uma, who she respects, anyway! She considers Uma to be a valuable team member and will get Uma off if she gets the chance, because clearly this is what you do for your gang members; she will get everyone off the island if she can if only so the blue-gold-bastards have more people to chase, but her gang is the people who matters. Uma has half of what Alida wanted; now the dice have rolled differently and Alida has half of what Uma wanted, and the important thing is to be able to work together however the dice roll.

(Alida's plan for 'how to work with lunatics', in the event she got her own gang, was 'don't; instead, pick people who are not lunatics and work with them.' But Uma was the one who gave her a chance to be something other than a flunky, and so however Uma feels about her, Alida owes her, and that is not the sort of thing that an Alida-shaped-thing will just forget. That Uma did not earn all her power is irrelevant, compared to the fact that, when she had power, she shared it with Alida.)

Silently and without discussion, Uma ensures that Alida gets the best food tonight. 

Alida will put that on the long list of things to be grateful for Uma for, which list she will eventually repay.

(Because this is how interacting with sane people works; you make helping you be in their self-interest and they do it, and that is the power that makes organizations not made of lunatics or 'heroes' work.)

The next afternoon--

Tetley is going to Auradon, which is really exciting! She hears that they have bright colors in Auradon, and music, and food just grows out of the ground. She has also heard that in Auradon people don't hit each other because that's evil, and she's very skeptical of this, but at the very least she's probably going to be hit less!

Everything is great for Tetley.  

Wei Wuxian is going to Auradon, which is also very exciting! Yanli told him to study hard and not murder anyone and make sure that they wanted to get all the other kids off the Isle, and Jiang Cheng told him to break the barrier and free everyone, and Wei Wuxian is pretty sure he is going to accomplish at least one of these. He is full of Yanli's soup and Jiang Cheng gave him his favorite knife and he's got all of his notes in his backpack. 

Bern is going to Auradon, which will be terrible. He does not know if it will be more terrible than the alternative, but it probably will, because that's how life goes. He has nobody he cares about and all the stories about Auradon are probably lies and maybe they're just going to stab him as soon as he gets there, he doesn't know, he doesn't care, whatever it is will be horrible. Probably WORSE than what he expects because MOST THINGS ARE WORSE THAN HE EXPECTS.

And Alida is here, ready to go to Auradon, full of advice and plans and calmly confident and with her armor packed in a backpack instead of worn, because openly wearing armor when you don't have a particular reason to start a fight would be a show of weakness. She's memorized what's in the books she can find and she's listened to Uma's advice and she is going to get her gang out and the only question is which way she's going to do it.

... There seem to be three kids here. Indeed, the other three summoned.

"Wei Wuxian. Bern. Tetley." A sharp nod. "If we screw this up we get shipped back to the island forever and nobody else gets out, ever."

She grins an evil grin. "No pressure."

Bern does not SEE any boats. How, exactly, are they going to leave the island?

"It's okay! I'm going to be happy however little time I spend in Auradon. It's cool to see somewhere that isn't the Isle," Tetley chirps, apparently unironically. 

"There's no one I'd rather go on an adventure with than you, I like my girls beautiful and competent and with the glint of murder in their eyes," Wei Wuxian says to Alina. 

... How are you supposed to react to something like that?

"My usual tastes are for reliable discipline, focused intent, and ruthless efficiency, myself. So, Wei Wuxian..."

Oh seriously no are they flirting why can't he get through ONE DAY without powerful people exchanging threats and/or flirtations insofar as you can TELL THE DIFFERENCE in his vicinity -

"I can get you focused intent! Sometimes! If the problem is interesting and not stupid."

And now a limo appears in the distance that seems to be flying through the air.

"So I just need to provide you with interesting problems?" Tone light and bantering. "Well, here's one: How do you think they're doing that?"

"Do you want the incomprehensible magical theory explanation or the word 'magic'?"

"The first," she says drily. 

And now he rambles about magical item enchantment and transportation devices. If Alina knows about magic, she knows he knows what he's talking about. If she doesn't, he does successfully predict the translucent rainbow bridge which extends a few feet ahead of and behind the vehicle.

She understands only the basics, thanks to her complete lack of preexisting magical knowledge! But she wants to learn more because she always wants to learn more so this is a way of passing the time.

And the prediction is useful.

(Bern is also listening with interest, albeit a more depressed interest; he's never going to have magic so this is never going to be useful for him, now is it?)

The limo goes through the barrier; it briefly becomes fully visible, shimmers, then disappears. The limo can still summon its bridge. 

"So it's only our magic their goddamned dome kills?" she says.

That would mean that if they can get ahold of Auradonian magic, it'd still work inside... or possibly even work on the dome itself...

"That's not actually how the anti-magic field works, the caster has to key in specific exceptions."

"Hmm." Which means that it's something on the list of exceptions that you'd need to track down, in order to get out.

"Don't suppose you have a list?"

"If I knew what exceptions Fairy Godmother had keyed in I wouldn't be here."

"Fair enough." Well, actually, no; the exception might be 'only full fairies' or 'only Auradonian royalty' or 'only someone with the Magic Power of True Love Bullshit', but, you know, mostly fair enough.

And the limo arrives on a strip of asphalt. 

Alida waits a second or two to see if anyone's going to get out, then strides confidently up to the door.

Anyone in it?

The limosine driver, who gets out. 

"Hello! Are you the four guests of King Ben?"

"Is that what he called us?" She shrugs. "I'd say that we're the people he invited to check if islanders can be human." She smiles an I-am-considering-eating-your-spine smile. "Alida Gustavsdotter."

"Where are... your parents?"

"No idea."

With the suggestion that this is a rather odd request to make.

"We were... sort of expecting them to see you off?"

"My parents are dead!"

"I'm not really sure who my parents are."

"Better things to do."

"Well... we did get permission from all of them..." he says uncertainly.

EIGHTEEN HOURS EARLIER:

The royal guard finally finds Gustav, almost passed out from drinking moonshine, on a pile of garbage.

"Uh," the guard says. "So... your daughter..."

Gustav makes a sound that might be a word but is probably just a groan. 

"King Ben wants her to go to Auradon but we need your permission."

Another groan.

The royal guard thinks about this. Was it an affirmative groan? It wasn't not an affirmative groan. And the guard wants to get the heck off this island. "Good enough for me."

"I'm Bern," Wei Wuxian announces.

(I can't just contradict him! He could beat me up! He's much stronger than I am and he's in a gang to boot!

Does... does this mean I need to claim I'm Wei Wuxian now?)

"Are we claiming we're people we're not now? I'm Mal daughter of Maleficent!"

Huh, that was actually useful. She'll give Tetley a smile of approval in the unlikely event that she gets a chance unobserved.

"Wei Wuxian, Tetley, Bern," she says in an I-just-want-to-get-this-business-done voice.

"I named myself after my favorite brand of tea! The flavors are really strong even after you pick them out of the garbage. I wanted to have a name that reminded me of what makes me happy."

"My dad named me after his throuple drama."

"It's a family name."

"Don't know, don't care. We ready to go?"

The limo driver decides that he doesn't really care what a throuple is.

"If you don't have any last errands to run, get in the back, kids."

Wei Wuxian casually steals the car's hood ornament when the limo driver isn't looking.

On the one hand, Alida would kind of like it if Wei Wuxian would avoid starting fights. On the other hand, "random limo driver" is a way better target than anyone who matters. She'll give him a "you will get the lecture as soon as we're alone" eyebrow-raise and leave it at that.

This is a "who died and made you gang leader" facial expression back. 

Right. Bern, you're twice as big as he is -

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

She expects she can get him on her side anyway, but if not, it'll have to be her, Wei Wuxian, and her good friend Nail-Studded Bat in some unpatrolled hallway when Wei Wuxian doesn't know what's up - assuming of course that gentle persuasion doesn't end up working.

Limo not big enough that the driver's out of earshot, right?

It is not, they're all crammed in the backseat. 

There is also a table that was unfolded from the back of the driver's seat on which is an enormous bounty of a brightly-colored, plastic-wrapped thing that they may recognize from television as candy. 

Tetley unwraps one, puts it in her mouth, and savors it. 

Wei Wuxian shoves twelve candies in his mouth at once. 

"Hey, what's the deal with this stuff?" Alida says, carefully taking and unwrapping one as a you-aren't-the-boss-of-me-I-can-eat-it-whatever-you-say signal as she does.

It is probably poisoned and Bern should not have any until Tetley has tasted it for him and not died.

"It's candy. They have it in all the limos. Eat as much as you want."

Wei Wuxian, his mouth full, mumbles something that might be "you've gotta eat this it's so good."

Tetley mentally portions out a fifth of the candy and looks to see if anyone would object to her taking her share.

Nope! Alida has no objections, and once she's tried her first will indeed toss another piece to her and one to Bern. 

Then she'll have some, tasting it slowly this time. It is pretty good.

(OK, no, it's really good, but Alida has PRIORITIES here.)

This is unexpectedly good, so something else will be unexpectedly bad, because that's how it works. Especially since his new gang leader (???) is giving him some, so, shinies!

If she's being tossed candy Tetley is going to take a carefully measured fourth of it. 

Saving candy for later???? But that would take valuable time away from eating candy NOW. 

"It's so sweet," he says. "It tastes like-- I've never had anything like it."

"Tastes like something I've never had in my life," she says, and the difference is that her phrasing puts a little emphasis on I and my, putting the quiet little thought into the heads of everyone listening that that's because someone else got the candy all the time they should have had candy, because they grew up on Garbage Island.

Get the point, Wei Wuxian? For exactly who you want revenge on?

No, wait, of course he doesn't.

"Common in Auradon?" she says.

"Very common," the driver says.

"I think you guys should throw it out more!" Tetley says cheerfully.

Tetley is actually really helpful!

... Can it really be a coincidence? Maybe it can't be. She's going to pay a lot more attention to Tetley than Uma did, that's for sure.

"Where are you going to drop us off?"

"...didn't they tell you?"

"'Auradon' was all they said."

"You're going to Auradon Prep, the finest school in Auradon. The children of all the greatest nobles and heroes in the land go there."

Alida can't help it: She just starts laughing, like all this is some insane sort of dream. The laughter is deep (for a teenage girl) and manic, and it keeps going on and on and on, uncontrollably, until it like she's going to run out of air. It's ridiculous, it's unbelievable, it's pointless and absurd - 

"Why?" she eventually manages, before achieving breath.

You and me both, crazy-girl-who-is-probably-my-new-boss, you and me both.

(What snaps her out of it Is the realization that, actually, it might be a dream. This is a pretty dreamlike thing to have happen. Is she sure she subjectively experienced all of the inter time? Has her set of companions changed in the last few minutes? Do numbers of things remain constant, such as candies - OK, no, you wouldn't expect that to remain constant - such as, uh, her fingers?)

She has a constant number of fingers and companions!

"King Ben thought that being around heroes would make it easier for you to learn how to be good."

Tetley is grateful that she's going to get a good education and have things that rich people have, like beds. And she can find out what celebrities are like in real life!

Wei Wuxian says something but his mouth is too full of candy to tell what it is.

Alida does not know what good is, not really, other than "the other side." She does not know what evil is, other than her side. She does, however, have a clearly established concept of "people who help you who you therefore owe favors to", and "people you destroy because they have wronged you," and the idea that King Ben might possibly think she would choose to cooperate with him instead of - did she have the choice - introducing him to Harry Hook, a flensing knife, and her very best wishes seems very strange to her.

But in retrospect surrounding her with heroes, who can presumably fight reasonably well and have at some point in their lives defeated villains, is actually a reasonable deal, since they will after all be much better at handling her than some nobody would be. You win this round, King Ben, you win this round.

At some point someone will surely notice that this entire situation is nonsense but maybe if he stays very quiet he can get a good lead on them first.

With no more questions to answer, the driver is going to Keep Driving. 

They land on Auradon soil. It is clean, and colorful, and full of green things, and enormously tall buildings, and people that none of them have ever met before. 

Wow.

This was their birthright, until it was stolen from them.

She will remember exactly what was taken from her, and she will have her revenge.

"So, mister limo driver, any advice on how to not act like aliens? Since we've never been here before, and all?"

"Well, I don't know what villain kids are like," he says. "Try not to shove so much candy in your face."

Wei Wuxian mutters something incomprehensible. 

"I'll consider it," Alida says drily, while she continues to eat candy at a much more dignified pace. "You can tell us about the kids at 'Auradon Prep', though, you know about them."

(Also: she's going to school. Seriously? School is for the villains who people think matter, so they can learn the skills they need to rule the world. What is King Ben thinking teaching her anything that would make her stronger?)

"They're good kids. They don't dirty up the car and they tip well."

... don't... Dirty the car? So, don't stand on the floor? Don't sit down, in the seats provided?

When someone makes an unreasonable request, it is an attempt to assert dominance over you, and under those circumstances you either submit to their authority or deliberately violate their command for the purpose of demonstrating your own freedom.

She sits back, stretches back, puts her boots up somewhere there isn't candy to worry about wrecking (you don't destroy your teammates food to make a point about someone else) and says "So, what's this tipping thing? I've never heard of it."

The driver rolls his eyes about Alida's behavior.

"Tipping is when you give people who work for you money for good service."

Right, like splitting the finds with your gang. "So King Ben tips you, got it. Anyone else you work for a student at Auradon?"

"Everyone who rides in the car is supposed to tip me five dollars or so," he says, clearly not expecting this to happen.

"Isle's broke, limo driver man. We've got zero dollars between us."

"You know, I did kind of expect that."

Alida will keep her feet up, keep eating candy, and try to learn everything she can about this fascinating world (that was her birthright until it was unjustly stolen from her) out the windows.

This is going to go horribly wrong, isn't it.

Well, until it does, Bern can eat candy.

Really pretty scenery, though.

When the limo arrives at its destination and they get out, they are greeted by a sixteen-year-old boy with a gold crown on his head and a huge smile. 

"Hello! I'm King Ben."

And now she knows who to kill.

"Ben," she says (because if she shows deference it will damage her prospects as gang leader, and because there is no way she can be diplomatic enough to make up for Wei Wuxian). "Alida Gustavsdotter." Does he have any bodyguards or is he just... that... dumb... "You're the one who picked us?" You're the one who screwed up picking so badly you got me and Wei Wuxian?

(And, at the same time, her scan of him:

- No armor, wearing a suit, adds bulk but not enough bulk for anything that can stop a spear

- Might have a knife against his shin or behind his shoulderblades but no weapons available

- Doesn't move like a fighter, no defensive stance at all

- Acts like a tiny baby who has never learned anything, or, like, he's with his gang and they're all people he really really trusts

- Sending off bizarre and confusing status signals; showing deference to everyone, thinks of himself as mildly oppressed / lower-status than some people, also clearly has the power to make decisions, clearly safe, ???)

- No missing teeth, no yellow teeth, smiling like there's not a care in the world

- Obvious target for the first blow is the throat, but frankly he's open everywhere, how is this man still alive

- Conclusion: Powerful magical protection from a source he owes deference to, possibly a parent, obvious possibility Fairy Godmother since she's the one who raised the ward. Find source of magic, eliminate or steal source of magic, then he's helpless.)

Huh, really? He's seen people talking about this guy on TVs in the background sometimes.

... Well. Hey. "King Ben," he says, with a brief duck of the head.

(Bern is actually huge, which does not come up much because of how he sort of hunches to make himself seem smaller, but even as underfed as he is he's really tall.)

"It's nice to meet you!" Tetley chirps. "I'm Tetley."

"Hello, Your Royal Fuckwittedness," Wei Wuxian says. 

(Despite having eaten a fourth of the candy, he has his own stock of candy, because he glared at Bern until Bern coughed up.)

He looks started at what Wei Wuxian said for a moment, and then laughs. "I wanted to personally welcome you guys to Auradon."

There is really not any appropriate answer to this. Either this is a suicide attempt, or he is warded or he is a unthinkable alien. She's betting on the second.

"... For what reason?" What actual sequence of thoughts went through this person's brain to make him think that this decision would not be immediate suicide? She is trying to construct a human being who would do this and failing.

"Well, it is my dad's fault you were there, which is wrong and it shouldn't have happened and I'm sorry."

WHAT THE FUCK WHY 

IS HE SHOWING DEFERENCE TO THEM

WHAT IS THIS THIS MAKES NO - 

- She has elaborate systems for reading people and these elaborate systems are all malfunctioning why would he say this why would he do this - 

- What the fuck does he want to cooperate with her how is he that insane - 

"You know," she says, very softly, in the voice of someone who is really considering murder as a solution to all of her problems, "'Sorry' is an interesting word. So is 'wrong', you hear them so little, on the Isle. Perhaps you could explain in a little more detail what you mean?"

(get back of the knife, when she goes for her dagger he's going to have to go for his - someone's going to start dancing any minute, he just knows it -)

Tetley edges away and tres to look nonthreatening.

Wei Wuxian is known as a lunatic, because a lunatic is a useful sort of reputation to have on the Isle; and it's true that he doesn't think much when someone insults Jiang Cheng or Yanli, he just goes for his knife.

He has no intention of attacking the fucking King of Auradon. That seems like the sort of decision that winds up with you being dead. 

He's close to Alida; he can disarm her before she attacks.

Apparently oblivious to all of this, King Ben says, "'Wrong' means that something hurts people and there isn't a good reason to do it, like it helping a lot of other people. And 'sorry' means that you realize that the thing you did was bad, and you're going to try to fix it as best you can, and you're not going to do it again."

"Oh, you know, that's fascinating. Those are excellent words that I really think I was missing for important concepts!"

"So, 'King Ben'. It's wrong to trap people who have never done anything to hurt you on an island full of garbage. It's wrong to take away their magic so that, when a plague comes, they die screaming, bloated, and rot in the streets until they burst, and then their families starve because the faeries and half-faeries who might have been able to do something - are powerless!" Her smile is still cold, cold and ruthless.

"It is, then, wrong to make someone live in a world where the richest prizes to claim were what you and yours discarded as rubbish. Wrong to trap them somewhere where the only children to survive are those who are the quickest to steal and eat garbage. Wrong to make others live in a world where men farmed rats to eat who were just as smart as men, isn't it, 'King Ben', wrong to the rats at least? And wrong to put three children together in a room with food for one - but when that one comes to greet you, 'King Ben', you say 'sorry' to her. But you don't say sorry to the dead, because those two just aren't there any more, no one here to apologize to, so you say sorry to me."

Her teeth are very sharp. "Yet here we are, 'King Ben', we are; four off the Isle of the Lost. Only four. Do you say sorry to Uma, 'King Ben', sorry to Jiang Yanli, who are still on the Isle? Isn't leaving them there wrong? Or am I perhaps misunderstanding the rules of goodness, of wrong and sorry? I do like to understand what I'm missing."

"Yes, it is wrong. I tried to get all of you and my dad wouldn't let me. If I were better at being a king, I might have been able to get more, and I'm going to try really hard to get as many of you as I can."

... There are levels of groveling where she cannot stab someone doing them unless she is convinced it is a trap.

"And here I thought you were king," she says drily. 

(But the tension has, at least partly, lifted. She doesn't think he can just lie to her face, however insane his signals are, and you don't just deliberately signal false powerlessness, seriously, what's the point.)

"Yeah, my dad still does most of the actual ruling, he just delegates to me everything he doesn't want to do."

Why is he being deferent to Alida, seriously, this is bizarre! Does she have secret magic powers or something?

Every sentence out of his mouth is just bizarrely alien! How does she respond to this??? The point of being a boss is that you don't do things you don't want to! Things a boss has to do are "maintain power" and "don't die" and you can't delegate those!

She needs to find someone she can milk for Auradonian Philosophy of Rulership or something so she can translate, this is bizarre.

Weird fucking dude.

"Anyway, you can come to me if you need help! --My friend Asher will show you around."

Asher was, apparently, in a tree!

Asher also has very coherent body language from the Isle's perspective. His body language says, very clearly, "I have more food than you, don't fuck with me."

He sure does, wow.

Decent stealth skills, too.

See, King Ben had a bodyguard hidden, she was right not to stab him.

She'll give him a polite nod, as one gives to people outside your chain of command who can take you in a fight.

Cool! They're meeting Prince Asher. He always seemed nice from the television. 

"I'll be showing you guys to your dorm rooms and helping you get set up, and I can answer any questions you have."

Having questions would require knowing anything. She can't ask about power structures or magic items or where to find books on explosives-making - "What are you teaching us?"

Fine question. "Do you have books?" Hey, things have been going well, might as well shoot for the moon!

"I can show you the library after I take you to your dorm rooms."

"I think library first."

"I want to go to the library too!"

"All right, library it is. This way."

Wait, that worked?

Time to follow Prince Asher, then.

Library? They just have libraries that people can go to?

... Do these libraries by chance have books on science and chemistry and engineering, to pick three random examples?

The library has more books than the villain kids previously knew existed in the entire world. The shelves reach up to the ceiling, and there are signs-- New Fiction, Romance, Folklore, Philosophy and Psychology, Arts and Recreation, Social sciences, and (yes) both Science and Technology.

Tetley makes a beeline to New Fiction.

Science!!!!

Science!!!!

... Whichever one somebody is least likely to steal from him?

Anything about how to make things? He's not bad at making things aside from his hands.

That would probably be in Technology.

"...all right, we can wait a bit for dorm rooms. It's nice to see the love of learning."

"I have never seen this many books in my whole life."

... "And we can just read them?"

"Not only can you read them, you can get a library card and then take them back to your dorm room, as long as you bring them back in three weeks."

... This is some kind of clever trick, isn't it. You can't fool him.

"Right," he says, not believing it AT ALL.

He's going to READ THE BOOKS and see if anything horrible happens.

"And how does getting a library card work?"

If it isn't too complicated Alida will go through the procedure. Then she can sneak books up to her room to read them. Books about how to make curses! And explosives!

"I should get a library card for all of you, I think," he says. 

Tetley will observe this process from a safe distance. Alida is scary.

What? He hasn't caught on to any of this happening. None of it is astrophysics. 

"So what you want to do is go up to this computer-- uh, do you know what a computer is."

"Let's say I don't, it's more true than not."

"--how do I explain what a computer is. Uh. I am not prepared for this part, sorry." He sounds quite sincere. "Anyway, you press the Start button, then press the button that says you're a student, then type in your name so it can find you in the system, then type in your ID number which you would know if we had done things in the proper order instead of skipping to the library." He has all of the villain kids' ID numbers on a piece of paper and types them in. "And then it will print a plastic card like this, and you can take it over here and scan it"-- he demonstrates scanning-- "and then scan this part of the book that has a bar code on it, this thing is called a bar code. And then the book is yours."

He hands Alida her library card. 

Alida views the library card with deep suspicion, then pockets it. She has no idea what scheme is taking place, here, or who supports which gang; her leading theory is that "King Ben" is a spoiled child indulged by his father in a petty favor, but anyone with his power is going to end up as a pawn if he isn't a player and so she suspects there's some gang behind this turning his whim into a power play, and she wishes she understood more of what was taking place, or just which side Prince Asher supported, but you play the hand you have, not the hand you want.

"Tetley?" 

She will attempt to phrase this in an I-am-inviting-you-to-get-a-shiny way rather than a threatening way.

Tetley will go get the shiny!

And Asher makes library cards for Wei Wuxian and Bern as well.

Do we think a person can read four books at once if they try really hard.

In a day? Yes.

At once? No.

(Bern is keeping an eye on Asher and Alida and Wei Wuxian at all times, so that if any one of them has any demands, he can meet them before he gets mugged - in particular, if Asher wants him to continue the tour instead of reading about architecture, he can do that.)

But they're all so GOOD he can't CONCENTRATE.

After half an hour or so Asher says, "you know you can check out the books and read them in your rooms?"

"How many?"

"Twenty."

... She thought he meant one, and then you'd have to return it visibly undamaged to get the next. That's the way a sensible person would do it! WHO LETS SOMEONE HAVE TWENTY OF THEIR BOOKS?!?

... Someone who can make books almost effortlessly and so replace any losses without worrying.

The stakes these people are playing for are much, much higher than twenty books. And she still doesn't know what the game is.

Tetley presents a single romance novel to be scanned. 

After some lobbying that he should be in fact allowed to have thirty books, Wei Wuxian grudgingly settles for twenty, all math and science and magical theory. 

Alida's stack resembles Wei Wuxian's, except that she's mixing in books on history and economics and political theory.

Bern considers taking twenty but doesn't think he can protect twenty, so he only takes four, talking about various practical skills he wants to pick up.

"It's great to see how interested you all are in learning," he says, apparently not sarcastic.

What response can you make to that???

"Is there some reason we shouldn't be?" she says, raising an eyebrow.

"Most students at Auradon Prep try to learn as little as possible and spend their time playing tourney."

What seriously no why. Are they all just children?

"It's very easy not to learn anything on the Isle," she says calmly. "It's much harder to survive it."

(She does think he got a more bookish than average selection, but that's really not the same thing as not wanting to learn as much as possible.)

"Well, you know, everyone survives at Auradon Prep, that's probably the difference."

And we will be Very Ticked Off if you break this record. Message received, Asher; she'll stick to nonlethal violence if violence is necessary.

"Probably."

Wait, nobody dies? At all? Even from disease or hunger or being unbelievably stupid?

Wow.

"And how many people die six feet away from the edge of Auradon Prep?"

"Also no one but good thought."

Message received, Wei Wuxian, getting way too inclined to just believe him. Appreciate the grounding.

If he wanted to mislead us, he could just lie both times. Most people don't prefer technical truths to just lying, even if she does.

"All right, I'm going to take you to your dorm rooms. You're going to each share a room with a person of the same gender who isn't a villain."

Broken up.

So they can't keep their gang together.

She should have talked about proper gang formation this morning before the limo arrived instead of just talking about magic however interesting magic is - 

"Understood," she says. It's a perfectly legitimate move on his part, she shouldn't be surprised or offended, all this will do is make her job a little bit harder -

What if that person wants to beat him up? Asher's not going to listen to a henchman's kid over an Auradon Prep student! Yes, Wei Wuxian would also beat him up, but if he did Alida might do something about it!

... Or she might not, it's not like he's valuable compared to Wei Wuxian.

Ugh.

Yay! She gets to meet new people!

He is really not sure that he wants to be in a gang with these people because Alida is a lunatic and Bern and Tetley are useless. Maybe whoever he's matched with will be a better person to be in a gang with.

Conversationally: "Alida, you're with Hellevi, the daughter of the Duke of Weselton, she's quite shy and quiet, you probably won't even notice her. She likes books. Wei Wuxian, you're with Wangji Li, he's one of the sons of the Chinese Emperor, he's... also very quiet and you probably won't even notice him. Tetley, you're with Lonnie daughter of Mulan, she's very cheerful and funny and she's good at every sport. Bern, you're with me."

"Lonnie sounds nice! I look forward to getting to know her."

Maybe he can beat this Li Wangji fellow up a bit and show him who's boss and then he can have a gang.

... Well, he's gonna get beaten up. Fun.

So she's got a spy. Understood.

"Understood."

"Your rooms are all right next to each other, you can look through them now. The other students aren't here yet so you can get a chance to settle in before you meet your roommates."

The rooms have two beds, two desks, two chairs, two chests of drawers, two computers, and one television; they're big enough that this isn't crowded.

What.

Seriously what.

What is UP WITH THIS???

Seriously what???

Do the chests even lock???

(Does her room's door even lock???)

It's so big!

... Two computers? What does Asher need two computers for?

The room's door locks; the chest of drawers doesn't lock. 

She's never had this much space in her life!

He flops on the bed. "Guys!" he yells. "Guys! You have to try the beds. They're SO soft."

She flops on the bed.

"The hell?!"

"... Wow."

He's gonna wake up soon, he just knows it.

Fun as enjoying absolutely ridiculous levels of comfort because the entire wealth of her society is negligible next to the wealth of the lords of Auradon is, Alida still has investigation priorities and twenty books to read.

(If she gets a moment apart from Asher, she is totally going to hide some of these books in the book-hiding spots obvious to someone who survived in the Isle. Also some of her knives, before anyone else searches her for them, though not all and not her best.)

Asher seems to want to move the rest of the tour along in a timely manner.

The most important places they go are the registrar's (where they get student IDs and student handbooks which contain all the rules); the cafeteria (where they can get as much food as they want at mealtimes, for free); the gym (where they can exercise); their lockers (which do lock, and where they can put their possessions); and the common rooms where they can socialize with others. But Asher is going to make sure they see the entire school. 

Bern reacts most strongly to the cafeteria; as much food as they want? Really? For free?

The lockers may lock but Bern is skeptical. (And he appreciates being warned about the common rooms, so he can avoid them... though if he can find an empty one that may be better than Asher. He'll see.)

Also, wow, the school is so huge and fancy. Bern is pretty amazed.

Alida had already guessed they'd have food free; not confidently, but it fit too well with the immense splendor of the building for her to expect they'd have only limited quantities. Food's cheap when you have a planet of land, and they're trying to overawe the Islanders anyway, this is a cheap way of doing it.

No, the bit she thinks is important is the rulebook. She feels VERY STRONGLY that the main problem with the Isle is that you cannot just learn the rules; you need to spend all this time managing people instead. If these Auradonians did in fact write down what you are supposed to do to Be A Good Student, then she can do that while she works on seizing absolute power.

Asher loops back to the dining room, says "I bet you guys still need to eat dinner," and disappears.

UNLIMITED FOOD!!!!

UNLIMITED FOOD!!!!!

UNLIMITED FOOD!

UNLIMITED FOOD!

Wei Wuxian takes as much food as he can carry to his own, separate table, where he's going to get started on his books. 

--and so will Tetley, although she is focusing on a single romance novel instead of reading six books at once. 

The handful of students eating dinner look up at the villain kids when they come in, notice their patched and torn and dirty clothes, and look variously scared, angry, and incredibly uncomfortable. 

Bern will sit down... at Tetley's table if she isn't giving off too many hostile signals, otherwise at an empty one of his own, and start eating like he has no intention of stopping.

Alida will take her food, walk calmly over to Wei Wuxian's table (assuming nobody can eavesdrop if she does), sit down, and say, "You know, I think we agree on absolutely all aspects of the situation, except for which of us is insane."

"I'm going to give you three minutes to be more interesting than Introduction to Organic Chemistry and then I'm going to ignore you."

"We have two missions, and we need to complete one of them. Either we get enough power to break the dome and get everyone out, or we talk them into letting our gangs back home go. Agreed?"

"With you so far."

"Since we have exactly the same objectives, we should try to work together and share information so we can work towards our objectives better. We've got no actual conflicts; any advantage one of us gains is advantage towards the other's goals."

"Unless you stab the fucking king. I'm supposed to stay alive, Yanli said."

"You'll observe that my encounter with the so-called king ended with him submitting and 'apologizing.'"

She flashes Wei Wuxian a brief smile. "I have no intention of dying. Nor of going back to the island. I expect he'll want to do me favors, now, to 'make up for the harm he's done.'"

She'll sip her (probably non-alcoholic, alas) fruit juice. "Almost like a child, really."

"I don't fucking buy that you read that situation that well that quickly off what little we know of King Ben. You were mad and you wanted to stab him. Which is fine, I'm gonna stab him if he insults Yanli whatever it does for the plan, but I'm not gonna work with you if I don't know what's gonna make you stab people. Which I don't, you never fucking stabbed people at home."

"I wouldn't stab the king without an escape plan, Wei Wuxian! I thought if I put pressure on him I could force him into a position where he'd give me important information about what the hell is going on here, you have to have noticed there's plots we aren't following, and they matter if we're going to get our gangs off the rock. Instead I got him feeling guilty. Did the plan work the way I expected it would? No! Did it result in the king feeling that he owes me? Yes!"

(In spite of the exclamation points, she's keeping her voice down enough not to be overheard by neighboring tables.)

"Well, if it keeps working out well for you maybe I'll help."

Yanli would be SO proud. 

"Keep watching," she'll say with a smile, and then go get more food and, when she does, sit down with Bern and Tetley.

Alida. Back. After talking to Wei Wuxian. Great.

... He is REALLY NOT SURE whether she can provide protection or not. The encounter with the king worked out well for her? He thinks? 

Honestly he mostly thinks she's a Person Who Makes Stuff Happen like Wei Wuxian and the thing to do with people like that is avoid them.

Tetley quietly reads her book and ignores all subtext.

The book is good.

"So. The king's decided he owes me. If anyone screws with either of you, let me know. I'll take care of it."

She looks at both of them. "We're going to get everyone off the island. That's all. Don't screw it up."

And then she'll get back to eating.

Screwing it up would involve getting involved in politics, which is something Tetley has strived very hard never to do.

Bern just wants to keep his head down.

"Right." And a nod.

Then Alida will cast her eyes over the remaining students eating on their own, conclude they probably don't want to talk to her (and that she doesn't want to talk to them), and get started reading the student handbook! Are these actual rules, or is this propaganda? She'll find out.

The first few pages are about the school's values. The school values Goodness and Nobility (the difference between these is not clear) and Academic Excellence and Well-Roundedness. 

Here are the various sorts of people Alida can contact for help with various problems. There are like two pages of them.

She will be taking five courses. She should expect a half-hour of homework per course per day in ninth and tenth grade and 45 minutes in eleventh and twelfth grade. She can change her schedule in the first week of classes. She will be tracked into appropriate classes depending on her past performance at school. Her grades (on a scale from A to F which inexplicably skips E) will be sent to her parents at the end of each semester. If her grades are poor, she will be put on academic probation, and if they don't improve after that she will be expelled. 

Alida must attend at least 20% of the classes for each course or she will fail the course. 

Breakfast is from 7:00 to 8:30am; lunch from 11:30am to 1pm; dinner from 5:30pm to 7:00pm. Classes run from 8am to 2:30pm, with a break for lunch and a study hall. Study hours are from 8:00 to 10:00pm every day which precedes a school day, and she is expected to be studying in her dorm room or in a common room during study hours. All students are required to be in their rooms by 10:30pm. Lights out is 11pm. There are no classes on weekends, but the meals schedule is the same. On Friday and Saturday night, you have to be in your dorm by 11:30pm and lights out is midnight. 

Meals are buffet-style. Good manners are required. Food, drink, and dishes may not be taken from the cafeteria. 

Students are encouraged to take advantage of any of the many sports offered by Auradon Prep! Here is a long list. They are also encouraged to take advantage of the drama and music programs. The school organizes many volunteer opportunities, such as visiting the elderly and tutoring students in local schools and a service vacation to Morgandammerung where they build schools. 

Students must wear clean, tasteful clothes which fully cover "body parts" (this is not elaborated upon) and are not see-through.

When using the Internet, students must not subvert network security, or distribute copyrighted material, or share confidential personal material about others, or access inappropriate content (the definition of "inappropriate" is also not elaborated upon), or send harassing, discriminatory, or offensive messages. All use during study hours and the school day must be academic. Students may only use smartphones for academic purposes during study hours and the school day, and smartphones are forbidden in the library or the dining hall. 

No student is allowed in another student's room unless that student is present. Students are not permitted to replace the furniture, or have pets, or use furnishings for unintended purposes, or make modifications to their dorm rooms that can't be fixed, or place school furnishings on balconies, or enclose the balconies with fabric, or keep anything with a heating element in their dorm room, or enter each other's rooms through the balconies. Students are not allowed to have the door closed when a member of the opposite sex is in the room. 

The school can search the room if there is reason to believe that there are illegal, dangerous, prohibited, or stolen items. 

Visitors must check in, and need special permission to stay overnight. 

If a student is concerned that someone else has a medical, mental health, or behavioral problem that they haven't told the school about, then they can tell the administration! They won't get in trouble for breaking the rules if they confess breaking the rules as part of telling the administration. The administration might talk to the student who's in trouble, tell their parents, ask the student to sign a behavioral contract agreeing to certain behavior, give the student medical or mental health care, or put the student on a medical leave of absence. Remember that the school is here to help you!

Students are NOT allowed to have any of this long list of medications in their room. They will have to get them from the school nurse. 

Parents have complete access to everything about their children's medical records. 

Here are various rules about the appropriate use of cars, motorcycles, bicycles, rollerskates, etc etc.

Here are various rules about getting permission to go off campus. 

Here are some rules about fire safety.

Here are some rules about what to do in the event of an emergency. (This, of course, covers magical attack.)

The usual consequence for minor breaking of a rule (late to class, not studying during study hours, out of room after curfew) is an hourlong detention. If you break a major rule (unexcused absence from class, being in someone else's dorm room without them present, driving violations), you'll have a two-hour work period and be confined to campus for one Saturday. Severe rule-breaking includes leaving campus without permission, possessing a weapon, using alcohol or drugs, stealing, plagiarizing, cheating in class, hazing, harassing, threatening of physical harm, or assaulting others. In general, the school will do a disciplinary hearing about this and decide on an appropriate remedy, which may include probation or expulsion. 

Hmm.

So. They value Goodness ("being on their side") and Nobility ("being rich and well-off"), fair enough. "Academic excellence" means "doing well in school," sure. "Well-roundedness"... she has no idea what that means. Being fat? Seems plausible, given some of the people in the cafeteria. Well, she's behind on that one; not like anyone but villains can be fat, on the isle.

There are two pages of people students can contact. Can she? Probably not.

She needs to take classes. Fine. 

They want her to do everything very precisely by the clock; presumably this is for coordination? Well, Alida's done enough trying to coordinate people to understand that impulse...

Meals are... blah blah blah... "good manners" you need to fucking define this stuff, book-writer, state your requirements - 

... Is this actual rules, or is this just a set of aspirations they want everyone to pretend to follow? 

Many sports... drama and music programs??? What are those? Do they try to teach people proper dance-off skills or something?

Students must wear clean, [undefined] clothes which cover parts of your body and are not see-through. (She looks at her shirt. Clean enough, she'll want to wash it in a couple days, she supposes.)

She doesn't understand the internet well enough to disobey these rules, let alone follow them!

Students are not allowed to mess up the school's rooms, it's the school's rooms and they're just letting you live there. Students aren't allowed in each other's rooms without the other present... no straight sex... (could just be no straight non-kinky sex but, really, Alida has some idea what these people are like)... school can search your rooms if they feel like it, no privacy... no visitors without permission... school wants people to narc on each other... students aren't allowed drugs... parents own you... no leaving... punishment for breaking rules is what? An hour-long beating, maybe? Huh, these people are pretty hardcore. And then two hours of hard labor for slightly more major ones and if you "possess a weapon" you might get expelled... well, she didn't bring her spear, and a knife is really basically for cutting meat, so she's fine.

... She's really not sure if she's supposed to follow these rules, these people are pretty alien. Eh, she'll do her best.

"Anything interesting?" Tetley asks.

"They want you to do everything exactly on time or they'll punish you with 'detention', whatever that is. And no weapons or moonshine allowed."

"I've never had to do things on time before."

Well, this is going to suck. "Great."

"Lucky for us they covered everything with clocks," she says, pointing to the nearest one.

"Yeah! We're so lucky. ...I hope they teach us how to read that."

"Hm." She's read enough to understand the theory; when the arrow points at the two it's two and that's when the things scheduled for two are for, and everything moves at a fixed speed, and it clearly ought to be easy to pick up -

- Yeah let's not take any chances. Bern, go talk to - no, that won't work -

"Right. Talking to Asher's my job." As gang leader, she's in charge of managing for her gang. He around?

He's eating his dinner with a bunch of very tall, very muscular men who are laughing very loudly.

... Well. She understands some of the tiers of power. She'll catch him the next time he's more alone.

"Bern, if I haven't caught him by then, tell him to talk to me when he shows up at your room."

GAH.

"I'll let him know."

Tetley is so happy that no one is ordering her to do things. Boring and well-fed, that's the right way to do things. 

Then the remaining priority is to eat a lot.

A lot.

Very much.

Eventually Asher is done with his meal and wanders off to somewhere. Hopefully not the room he shares with Bern. 

Hopefully not, since unless Bern spots a better hiding place on the way, he's going back there to read and digest.

Asher is in fact in the room, with a tray of delicious-smelling and mysterious-looking food.

"You can eat it if you want."

Oh no, now he has to decrypt a complicated social signal! Is this a trap or a warning or a demand???

(meanwhile his hand tries a tiny bit of the delicious-smelling and mysterious-looking food!)

"Uh. Alida wanted to talk to you about, uh, a problem."

"I'm here to serve."

(It is incredibly sweet and probably the best thing Bern has ever eaten.)

SO DELICIOUS

But he is also SO FULL

He can have a little more

"The rulebook says we have to go to classes on time or be punished. The island... doesn't do time? Alida says you use the clocks but we don't have clocks."

"Shit. Should have thought of that. --I can get you guys to placement tests and then I can buy you digital watches. --Do you know how numbers work."

"Yeah? One plus one is two, Two plus two is four, eight plus seven is fifteen, three times eight is twenty-four. Dunno how much Tetley knows but Alida knows more than me." Alida has done EXPERIMENTS with GUNPOWDER and has TEN FINGERS. Alida is to be feared.

"Okay, then you can read a digital watch. When the time on the watch matches the time on the schedule you're supposed to be at the place it says to be on the schedule."

"Sure..."

He's not sure he's not lost but he's sure he's less lost than he would have been?

Noticing Bern's confusion, Asher is going to quickly run through the basics of the time system, and finish up with "if you have any more questions, please ask them, it's what I'm here for."

No, you're here for Some Kind Of Scary Something. But he ought to ask questions anyway because Asher just told him to -

"Why is it two twelves?"

"Twelve is two sixes or three fours or four threes or six twos, so it's easy to do math with. As to why it's twelve instead of twenty-four, that I can't answer."

"Okay."

Then he will do a head-dip of submission and try to quietly read some of his new collection of BOOKS.

Asher will leave him to it, pressing people does not help. 

And once she's eaten as much as she can still fight after having, Alida will start scouting, keeping an eye on the clocks as she does so she can make it back to her room by 8:00 PM. If she's going to be fighting here, she needs to know the terrain. Where are the spots for ambushes, where are the places people might come from, where are the good sources for cover or improvised weapons...

There are a lot of places for cover and improvised weapons. Someone has just put a sword in the hand of this suit of armor for some reason?

What, seriously, why? She thought the book of rules said that weapons weren't allowed, why are they handing them out for free?

... Okay, probably if the sword hasn't been stolen yet, whoever wants it to be there is strong enough to stop everyone from running off with it. So probably she shouldn't go "hey, there's a weapon right there" when she next sees Asher.

(Also, what's with the consistent color scheme? It's really weirding her out. Things aren't covered in graffiti at all, it's really weird. is it just that the king is the only one allowed to use paint and he likes things blue and gold?)

And when Alida gets back there's a very short, very small girl reading a math textbook in her room. 

That would be her roommate. Well. She was warned she'd have to share.

"Hey." She nods. "Alida."

What's Hellevi doing other than reading the textbook? Has she crossed the invisible line down the room's middle?

Hellevi's eyes widen and she looks up from her book."

"I... promise I won't do anything you don't want me to do just please don't hurt me I didn't sign up for this."

... Wait, what? Her mom isn't a name villain.

... Sure, whatever, free minion. Probably.

"... Okay, so, on the Isle, mostly people hurt people when they have a reason. Sometimes this is 'I like hurting people!' But not usually. I don't like hurting people unless they screw with me or mine." She will totally enjoy the sound of King Beast being tortured for, like, the first hour, though. "So, you want to do me favors, fine; I'll owe you, and that's worth something. But all it takes for me to not screw with you is that you don't steal my stuff or stab me or any bullshit like that. Okay?"

"Oh! No! I would never."

"Great! No problem, then."

She'll sit down on her bed. "So, couple questions if you have the time?"

Which are, yes, favors she owes to her new minion; let's let the debt accumulate, then she can over-repay it, then they can get a nice cycle of rapidly growing mutual debt going and that'll be that.

Very miserable new minion. 

"Yes! Okay."

"Relax. Just something simple - 

"Is, in fact, the student handbook a list of the rules the school works on, or is that just super goddamn naive and it's a list of the rules people are supposed to pretend to follow, or not even that?"

"Of course you're supposed to follow the rules! They're the rules!"

"Huh. Good."

She'll start assembling her own library, stacking it on her desk and loading the more advanced books into the chest of drawers. (The amount of it that's just math, physics and chemistry might be surprising to someone who doesn't know Alida.)

"... So, uh... gotta say... what did you do to get stuck with me?"

"I don't know. I don't think I did anything evil? --Um. Not to say that it's bad to do things that are evil. I think that evil is a valid alternative lifestyle! Um. Maybe they want me to be a good influence...?" She sounds doubtful.

"You can relax," Alida says. Then she pauses, and tries to decrypt what Helledi said.

..."I think you're going to do a better job of talking to me if you assume I don't know what the word 'good' means, and probably that our words for 'evil' are, like, two separate things that just sound the same? On the island they basically just mean 'their side' and 'our side.', with, you know, some suggestion that their side is lame and our side is cool."

Hellevi has no idea how to relax! Her roommate wants to kill her more than any person Hellevi has ever talked to in her entire life wants to kill her!

"Evil is when you, like, build a theme park that turns children into donkeys, or skin puppies so you can have a fur coat, or try to kill the king so you can be king?"

Alida doesn't want to kill her! Where did Hellevi possibly get that idea???

"... I guess those are things people I have ever met have done?" she hazards. "I can't say I see the connection between them?"

"Well, they're bad? And you're not supposed to do them?"

"... So, you know how there are things like - you notice that the digits of 18 and 27 and 36 all add up to nine, and what do you know they're all products of nine, and as long as you need to remember them as individual numbers that's three facts you need to memorize, but if you can reduce it to the rule of 'the digits of products of nine always add up to nine' you only have to remember one rule and then you can generalize from there to other products of nine you didn't know about? Is there anything like that for good and evil, or are they just bins to fit The Side Of People Who Go To Auradon Prep and The Side Of People Who Get Sent To Garbage Island in, with lots of different items but no connection?"

"I think you're supposed to... not do things that hurt people a lot for no reason, or if the reason is bad like wanting a fur coat. And if someone is hurting people a lot for no reason you should stop them. And you should find your one true love."

"I follow the first part," she says slowly. "I can understand how people can do that." It's clearly missing a lot of stuff - like, there are ways to harm people other than by stabbing them, like taking their stuff or their respect, or turning them into donkeys though they've apparently got that included... which is a sign that she's misunderstanding something, but all this does match with the absolute ban on violence... She can... imagine someone trying to do it? And it makes sense of why they throw everyone they hate on Garbage Island instead of killing them the way a sensible person would? She thinks she's following... "I don't understand where not overthrowing kings or only caring about one person fit in."

"The child of the previous king is the rightful ruler of Auradon. If you let anyone murder the king and then become the new king, there wouldn't be stability and predictability in the government."

"What if the king hurts people? Aren't you supposed to stop him then, by the rules you gave?"

(She can tell she's missing something with the stability and predictability bit; "stable" means, like, a well-made table, and "predictable", sure, everyone being able to exploit the king sounds great for them, less so for the king... but that's not her first response.)

"That seems right. You can overthrow evil kings but not good ones."

So, Good's rules say she's allowed to overthrow King Beast, since he hurt people a lot without a good reason. Great! Good is admitting her justness ridiculously fast!

"... Still bet I'm missing some stuff," she says, "Like why the king being predictable is good, and how you handle harm that's not direct or hard to measure, and how much is enough you need to stop. But I think I understand where you're coming from."

"The king being predictable is good because-- okay, so there are two things you want in a government, right?" (Hellevi is very animated.) "You want them to have good policies that make people happy and rich and safe, but you also want them to have predictable policies, even if the policies are somewhat worse, because people change what they do based on what the government does. It's bad if I budgeted this much for taxes and then taxes are suddenly twice as high, or if I took apples from a tree because I thought gleaning was legal but suddenly it's theft, or if I trained as a printer because the guild protects my wages and suddenly the king abolishes the guild. People make long-term decisions around what the government does, and also are bad at tracking what the law is, so it should be the same as much as possible."

This is a speech built on premises unfamiliar to Alida! These strange and unfamiliar premises rush past her shockingly fast, until she eventually grasps at one once Hellevi has finished talking -

"- I think we have a failure in comprehension, here," says Alida slowly. "You seem to be assuming that the king will try to make people happy and rich and safe? Is this just because they'll overthrow him if he doesn't?" Because people can not work that well together, and they will not be that rational, people will basically not serve their own interests even if you spell them out for them slowly, they will punch you for taking their face instead.

"Good kings try to make their people happy and rich and safe! --And also rich, safe people pay more taxes."

She pauses, again, with the need to digest that argument.

Morally good kings try to do this. Okay, this isn't preventing people from suffering harm... well, safety is... she doesn't understand why they'd care about happiness or how that fits in and she understands how rich people (people who have more stuff; she's encountered the idea of money as a unit-that-can-be-traded-for-stuff-because-the-king-says-so in books and on TV) are good to have as subjects because if people have more stuff you can take more of their stuff, they want to - oh, this is just the thing where a gang leader wants to make it good to be in their gang so gangsters will be in their gang instead of a different gang and they want to make people want to pay them for protection instead of someone else. She knows about that. But there's an obvious alternate strategy that King Beast is following, if you can get a big enough gang you can beat up all the other gangs and take over the whole island, that is the world... which he did...

"I think you're saying that good kings do this, but you aren't saying kings are good?" she says. "Like, sure, rich people have more stuff so the king can ask for more taxes, and safe people are less likely to die and dead people don't pay taxes, but at some point a king's going to say 'so, this would require me to give up something I want so my people can be happier, I think I will not do that' and why does he do that?" You can't just say that a king's interests are always the same as his minions' interests, gang leaders have more stuff than gang members.

"I... think that's them being good? Good people give up things they want in order to take care of their people."

"Sure, but why do they do that when they could not do that, if nobody's going to stop them?"

"I think that might be one of those 'evil cannot comprehend good' things."

"Looks like it." She shrugs.

And, if Hellevi has nothing more to say, she'll start in on her vast collection of library books.

Hellevi is not going to talk when not asked to talk!

Reading. Reading is good. 

Alida does not particularly want to terrifying Hellevi, but she admits that she finds the instant respect kind of gratifying.

Getting an Actual Chemistry Book is kind of amazing. The three things sources she'd been relying on were a water-damaged Baby's First Chemistry Book from Andalasia, an alcoholic alchemist from Agrabah who'd been exiled over some poisonings he did, and a badly-translated book of popular history originally from France Two that had two precious paragraphs discussing gunpowder that casually mentioned the ten to three to two ratio, also water-damaged. Having explanations for everything can hold her attention for quite a while, though occasional mumbles of "a-ha!" will emerge from the bed she's sitting on.

Meanwhile--

"Hey, do you know where I can get some booze?"

"No."

"Come onnnnn," he wheedles, "just a little hint."

"It is illegal for people under the age of twenty to drink alcohol in Auradon City."

"What? That's bullshit! What do you do when you're sad?"

"Healthy coping mechanisms."

"What are those?"

John is silent because he is also confused about the subject.

"Hey! You're John Lan, but Chinese surnames come first, so really you should be Lan John. --Long John! Long John Silver!" He starts to sing. "Fifteen men on a dead men's chest, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum."

...

"Not a pirate fan?" He sings a different tune. His voice is deep and clear and quite good, if untrained. "Robin Hood and Looong John were walking in the forest, laughing back and forth at what the other one has to say'--"

"That doesn't scan."

"Iiiiiii have no idea what that means. --Hey, want me to suck your dick?"

"This place is boring and I can't get drunk and I'm horny and you're hot."

"I'm really good at it! I promise."

"Fine, okay, I can take a hint."

His ears are BRIGHT RED.

Wei Wuxian has never passed a Psychology check before and has no intention of starting now.

He is quiet for nearly a minute, reflecting on his rejection, before he pipes up with "hey, have you heard of my mom?"

She shaved John's uncle's beard but if John says that that sounds like talking. 

"Probably not. Probably everyone has totally erased my mom from the history books because she embarrassed the emperor. --Are you sure you don't know where I can get some booze?"

"Shameless."

"I'll take that as a 'no.' --I really do think you're more of a Little John than a Long John Silver but the resemblance to either of them isn't exactly, like, obvious--"

The next morning Asher collects them all at 8am, takes them to breakfast, and then drops them off at a room with dozens of computers in it. 

"We're going to get you guys to take placement tests so we know how much you know already."

(Bern is honestly kind of surprised that Asher didn't beat him up last night, like, at all, or even make him have sex with him. Probably he thinks Bern isn't that hot? Either way, good to stay out of his way... insofar as they can stay out of his way...)

First thing Bern doesn't know: How to use a computer! (Other than what Asher showed him last night, which he does, in fact, remember surprisingly well.)

"Sure," she says. "How's that work?"

(She's a little worried that Bern took care of telling Asher himself; she wants to be the interface with Authority, it's a source of power, and if Bern is taking that job over it weakens her. But she isn't actually afraid of Bern.)

(Also, that's a lot of computers. How rich are these people? Other than 'the kind of rich you get when you can extort the entire world for riches?')

He gives them each a pair of headphones, then turns on four computers that are maximally distant from each other, then says, "the program is going to ask you questions, and you want to click on the button that goes with the right answer. They'll read the questions to you-- the headphones mean that you'll only hear your own questions being read to you. The tests adjust in difficulty depending on how well you do, so don't worry if the questions are hard. --Also, cheating is totally pointless, it just means you'll be in a harder class than you can actually do the work for, you're only hurting yourself." 

She nods.

His claim is, of course, nonsense, because she's from the Isle of the Lost; she's always had the duty of surviving, of outperforming, of triumphing with less resources and more grit; they may know more, but she has real experience and so she can learn faster. These fools in Auradon won't know what hit them. She means to get the highest score she can, and the only reason not to cheat is because she doesn't know just how Asher's watching her.

... She attempts to poke a button on the screen and then remembers the mouse exists, and manages not to flush.

Okay, no cheating, got it. He's got no intention of crossing Asher, Asher eats more than he does.