Most of the pens have black casing. Does he select a fountain pen, a ballpoint pen, a technical pen, a felt-tip pen, or is he looking for something else?

Also, regardless of what pen he chooses from the display selection, he will actually receive an identical model in the exam room.

Technical pen because it's the easiest to control.

Wow! Very cool. Where is the exam room? Is it marked? Will the doll lead him to it? Does he have anywhere to sit or does he have to make his own table and chair. Back on Mars he did that!

The doll will lead him to it, another doll can take over the desk. The room is labeled, but not in English. There is an adjustable chair, which the doll starts folding into a bench so as to better fit him, and a table. Once he and the doll enter and the doll closes the door (it has controls at servant-doll height), a pen and a set of papers will appear in the room.

He will thank the doll.

The bench is still a little cramped but he can deal.

What type of things will be on the exam?

Well, for the first page he's going to be signing a temporary academic honesty commitment in purple ink.

After that, if he proceeds, there's going to be questions from a range of academic fields, usually no more than a few questions for each difficulty level. In the case of, say, Latin, he can simply mark that he has no prior knowledge of the field.

There's another exam with questions about CoNRAD. What he thinks best motivates him, whether he likes loud music, how he feels about pain, whether he sleeps, how ambitious he is, how he feels about intoxicants, some questions about sex he doesn't have the information to answer. Normal things to ask.

He doesn't actually know about signatures, so he just puts his name on it – his whole name: Combination Null-Red Alphazon Destroyer. Probably he should come up with a different name for himself. Or say that CoNRAD, or Conrad, is his real name now. Maybe. Now's not the time to contemplate this.

Yep! He knows nothing about Latin.

He's fine at English but his vocabulary is lacking. He's good at astronomy, physics, and math. Chemistry somewhat. He knows little about everything else.

Previously he just had people tell him what to do and he did it. Now he can decide what he wants to do, and he thinks he likes that, at least, for the very short time he now has this luxury. He thinks he just likes doing things in general? He likes feeling strong and capable and training to enhance his capabilities, but in a general sense, not in the sense of being able to achieve any specific goal in particular. He doesn't want to be shaped that way – he wants to be a 'wide' kind of person that's capable of doing many different things. He likes the idea of being such a person.

He likes music. He has heard music very rarely in his life and doesn't know whether he likes loud music in general.

CoNRAD does not sleep.

CoNRAD doesn't mind pain very much. It's still of negative valence, but he can very much push through it, as well as discomfort.

CoNRAD doesn't know what intoxicants are, so probably no?

Yes, he knows basically nothing about sex and will write so.

How does he signal that he's done? Does the test vanish when he finishes?

Well, he could tell the servant doll, which is right there.

Ah. He wasn't sure whether that counted as outside help. He supposes it must not, because otherwise how would the test be taken away.

"I am done now, Madam," he'll say.

The doll takes the test from him. After a few moments, a small rift appears and the doll passes the test through it, then opens the door.

"Hawthorne appreciates your participation. Your results will be considered valid for the next decade, so if you wish to enroll without re-testing, you are advised to return before then."

Wonderful! He will thank the doll again and leave. He has four hours now before the proctor arrives. He should check Arcadia next. He wonders whether it will also be nighttime there.

He's not sure where the portal to Arcadia is in the town around Hawthorne, so instead, he'll walk (or fly via Windkeeping) back to Lunabella via the same portal he came in here with, and then walk to the Arcadia portal there, ensconced in Lunabella's zone of safe legibility.

Yup, there sure is a lot of signage and a portal to Arcadia he can find with his map. …it's really more like an entire bubble of Arcadia on Lunabella, actually.

Ooh! In that case, into the portal he will go! He will sprint towards it because he doesn't need to do street navigation and the way is Bright and Open unlike in Hawthorne.

The population here looks a bit younger than the population of Lunabella and a bit more male than the population of Hawthorne. Most people are in robes, but the color and style vary more, and some people are even wearing various novel styles of shirts and pants. Someone has shoes with wheels on them for some reason.

The gardens are styled in a very different fashion from Chasmapolis, and are rather sparser. There's an open-air café, where people are sitting around, chatting and looking at books and poking at phones and laptop computers and drinking beverages from mugs and eating snacks. There's a woman growing leaves prepping and serving food and beverages behind a counter.

The only real building within the bubble, as opposed to in Arcadia proper, is the astronomy and aethernautics department building. It's built in a style big on plate glass, bold colors, geometry, and nicely stained wood, and extremely low on detailed ornament. There's some weirdly winding trails into Arcadia proper with English-language signage, and grass that shows evidence people are ignoring the paved trails to take more efficient routes.

Shoes with wheels!!!! What a great idea. He is immediately going to put wheels on his boots.

It transpires that it is very difficult to balance on shoes with wheels, and he has to use a lot of Metallurgy and Windkeeping to prop himself up.

Food! And drinks! He wants to try some but that is not the main point of this visit.

He will obey the paved roads and not go on the grass, and just go really fast. He'll try to use his elementalism only to balance himself, and use only leg power to push himself forward. This is less of a disaster than it reads, because he can use the selfsame elementalism to course-correct long before there is any risk of crashing or going onto the grass.

He thinks he likes the fact that the Arcadians can wear whatever they want, unlike the Hawthorne people. It's not a particularly strong opinion, though. Opinions! CoNRAD likes having opinions now.

Will he reach the main building soon? If it takes more than fifteen minutes to get their via elementally assisted rollerskate, then he will fly a straight line path to it instead.

Some people are definitely going to dodge out of his way, even if he's trying to avoid crashes. A witch on a lightweight almost-2D (aside from handles and foot-cranks sticking out) two-wheeled vehicle mainly based around a pair of triangular shapes goes past him in the opposite direction, and for some unclear reason she rings an attached bell.

It does not take more than 15 minutes to get to what's at least plausibly the main building.

He almost wants to stop to look at it, but that would break his momentum. He'll review the footage from his Observer later and maybe try replicating it, though. It seems much more complex than "add tiny wheels on boots". He has no idea what the bell means!!

Does the main building have signage? Can he just walk in? Is there someone there that will attend to him?

Well. The main building might have some of those things, but one thing it definitely has is a portal between Combination Null-Red Alphazon Destroyer and it.

And a rapidly dropping temperature in the surrounding area. And something sending his tech shutdown commands.

Also, he now can't feel most of his left arm, has a truly agonizing headache, is being hit with a lot of nonmetal darts, and attacked by two remarkably large spiders.

None of this makes any noise, of course.

Oh no.

He is going to start running in the opposite direction, back from where he came. It's difficult to control multiple elementalisms at once, so he tries to multitask: he's going to use Windkeeping to propel himself towards Lunabella, not really bothering with keeping his legs on the ground anymore, and using it, alongside his energetic aura, to zap the spiders trying to bite him. He'll place another whirlwind around him to deflect the darts.

He wants to use his nanite swarm but it's not working, and he doesn't have the time to look through his Observer logs and try to override the shutdown.

That was really supposed supposed to outright down the destroyer. What gives?

The spiders are not significantly deterred by electric shocks, but it does make them have trouble grabbing at him.

His legs aren't responsive.

And there's more of those darts. Fun fact about the darts – they seem to be being fired by people. People with a distinctive pattern of metal at their brainstems and in some cases their eyes or limbs.

Fortunately, his elementalism is entirely separate from his technology!

It is very sad that the electricity is not doing anything! His control for Windkeeping isn't his best – he has much better control with Metallurgy – but it's pretty good. He'll make tiny razors of wind and try to cut the spiders apart.

It appears that learning how to control his metal body with Windkeeping rather than moving his muscles was much more useful than he was anticipating. Not being able to move his legs...it makes him want to have a panic attack over not being able to move but he is able to move, still, but it feels Very Weird because he's controlling his body but also simultaneously not controlling his body.

Hm. Okay. He really should have done more practice doing simultaneous elementalism. He will have to think about gracefully managing the transition from moving and fighting with Windkeeping to Metallurgy or his body will end up sprawling across the grass.

The spiders are taking some damage, but are extremely persistent.

Also, if he stops having control of his body, it will not be sprawled across the grass, it will be shoved through a portal. Just so we're on the same page here.

No!! No portals!! CoNRAD very much does not want to be shoved through any portals please and thank you. Unless it's a portal going to Lunabella.

After several seconds, he'll transition to using Metallurgy. It's doesn't make him go faster, but he's much better at using it. He'll take out the implants from everyone shooting darts at him and shape them into shards, shooting them into the spiders.

The guns aren't metal or such, he doesn't have a good feel for them, and visibility isn't great.

Is he suuuure he's only targeting people who are shooting at him? This person with weird curly strands of metal all over their head has some within a few inches of her brainstem, isn't she suspicious? What about this one with a metal skeleton, including the skull?

Also, this one has a bit of metal in her finger, and a bunch of people have metal in their earlobes, and this one has a partially metal leg, and a lot of people are holding metal rectangles, and there's of course all this metal around. Bicycles, zippers, buildings, et cetera. Just saying.

Mostly sure. Metal hair woman has some of her hair be ripped out. Metal skeleton person has nothing happen to them. Bit-of-metal-in-finger person has the metal bit ripped out. Two of the metal rectangle people have their rectangles fly out.

He does have the attention and the metal-sense necessary not to pull on the bicycles or clothes or buildings, though.

It turns out that having metal removed from the brainstem at speed is pretty lethal. The darts stop. One of the spiders outright vanishes. The other pauses, momentarily, and then stops attacking CoNRAD and starts throwing corpses through the portal.