She sighs. "We don't exactly encourage it, but it's a problem that pops up when you have mages and devisors around. The punishments are very severe, but shockingly, students who can bend reality to their will with cardboard and duct tape are difficult to dissuade from whatever course of action they want to take. Especially given the predominance of Diedrick's Syndrome among- oh, sorry, different universe. It causes delusions of grandeur and disregard for others, especially in periodic fits, and it crops up most frequently among devisors and mages. Which makes it harder than it should be to impress upon them that there are certain things that are banned for a reason, such as playing around with other dimensions. Again, we do apologize."

"If you have irresponsible people who can and will kidnap people with duct tape and cardboard then they should not have duct tape and cardboard! This doesn't even become a quandary until it drops below the level of campus epidemic or they learn to do it with tater tots! I'm lucky I can still talk to my sister; if he'd gotten a non-twin they'd have vanished totally without explanation."

Bella sighs. "Right. How do you go about trying to send me home?"

"Get more mages and more devisors on the case. Competent ones. Ideally, they figure out a way to return you within the week, probably giving you a gift basket of advanced medical tech or something as compensation for the inconvenience. If it turns out that Mr. Halliman has done something complicated to you, then we contact people of increasing power and expertise. The last specialist on that list has been able to successfully return every complicated case so far, but his rates are in the millions, so we'd rather exhaust our other options before spending a substantial percentage of our yearly budget; I mention him so that you know that our last resort is a good last resort. If, somehow, Mr. Halliman has tied you indelibly to our world with his latest cardboard box, then we will do everything in our power to help you acclimate to our world and allow you to start a comfortable and productive life here. The likelihood of that occurring is astronomically unlikely, and I mention it only for completeness, because you seem like the type to appreciate that."

"I am exactly the type to appreciate that. Thank you. Right. Well, in the interests of explaining what you have on your hands: in my world, starting in the fifties, twins - and triplets and chimaeras - started turning up with superpowers. When we turn sixteen we attain effortless Olympic-quality physical abilities, the ability to talk to our twins at any distance - apparently including the interdimensional - and to sympathetically heal same, at touch range only. Plus bonuses, mine being teleportation within a gravity well to stationary targets relative to that gravity well, specified by my being able to see it, or a latitude and longitude, or an intersection - but not an address."

"Hmm. Interesting. We're fairly similar, but instead of twins we just get mutants, who have powers like your 'bonuses'. Sometimes more than one; I have heightened physical abilities, various magical powers, and the ability to host spirits within myself and use their powers, for instance. Due to an unfortunate first few decades of existence, mutants are not well-liked by the baselines. This school exists to educate mutants about how to use their powers and how to survive in a world full of potential pitchfork-wielding mobs. Mutophobia no longer being popular in polite society, but I'm sure I don't have to tell you how much that's worth." She sighs. "Absent your twin, your powers actually fit fairly well into our classification system; if you end up having to integrate into our society, you can get an MID card and fit right in. And you don't have any particular tells, like eye color or supernatural beauty or, say, a tail, so you could blend in well enough with the baselines if you needed to. Or you could become a superhero. Or a supervillain, as I feel obligated to mention in keeping with Whateley's neutrality policy."

"You have a neutrality policy about supervillains?"

"Yes. The Academy was founded by a coalition of super-personages of all backgrounds, so that we would not be perceived as a 'superhero school' and immediately firebombed by villains with strong opinions on such. We offer education to young mutants regardless of their career intentions or parentage. I personally would rather teach in a morally neutral school that is able to serve as a safe haven for teenagers being chased by angry mutophobes than have taught in a pure superhero school that stood for two and a half months before Lord Paramount flew in and smashed it into gravel."

"...Practical, I guess. I gather you have more of a ratio problem than the gemini do."

"Rather. There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue with anti-mutant sentiment and the supervillain population. The number of villains whose first crime was threshing their way through an angry mob assuming they must be a supervillain would be beautifully ironic if it weren't a horrible self-perpetuating tragedy."

"Ah-huh. Whereas in my case nothing happens until high school and then I attend the surprisingly non-dystopic local Gemini school so that I can have non-farcical gym class after my sweet sixteen and the authorities know who I am and what I'm up to. My sister is not here to patch me up if somebody stabs me with a pitchfork in my sleep when I can't teleport away. What kind of risk am I in fact looking at here?"

"While you're on our campus, you have my personal guarantee that you will not be pitchforked. Other students may attempt to bully you, but I can offer you my personal protection; anyone who looks at you sideways with that as public knowledge should be reported to the nurse as acutely suicidal. Also, as you mentioned, you can teleport."

"Okay. What kind of range of bonus-equivalents am I looking at here?"

"Yeah. We don't have a neat classification system for gemini, partially because powers are fairly idiosyncratic - there are other teleporters, but none who work exactly like me - and partly because twin sets get complementary powers, more or less, so there's a combinatorial explosion. I guess you'd rate me as an exemplar-warper and I'm not sure how you'd class twining; it's not really telepathy since we do have to talk out loud - that's my ability to talk to my sister and vice-versa. I have no idea how you'd classify her; her bonus is to duplicate herself temporarily. Uh - about the telepathy. That is not a thing that gemini turn up with, at least not that works outside their twinsets. How concerned for my mental privacy and integrity do I need to be right now?"

"I'd probably go with Esper on twining, for the ability to hear it. We actually have had students who can duplicate themselves; we classify them as manifestors, since they conjure the bodies out of nothing in particular. Telepathy does, obviously, function on other people, but the canon of telepathic ethics is not one of the things we have a problem beating into our students' heads. No one except Fubar is going to be reading or affecting your mind without consent without facing detention, suspension, and numerous other penalties. And Louis both cannot help reading minds and is very, very practiced at doing absolutely nothing with that information. But if you're still concerned about him, I can tell him to try to avoid your mental signature as much as he can, and I can tell you not to go within fifty feet of Hawthorne Cottage. Which won't keep him from hearing occasional passing thoughts, but it will keep you from broadcasting directly at him."

"I will not go within fifty feet of this cottage. How far would I have to get to skip the occasional passing thoughts thing? I have no apocalyptic secrets, just - hangups about mindreading."

"Fubar's casual range encompasses everything from his tank to the nearest town over. If your hangups are that bad I can get one of the Mystic Arts instructors to ward you against telepathy, which will make your thoughts much less likely to get through. It's not usually very useful, because a determined telepath can get through a ward with a read or an attack, but in this case it'll make it much easier for Louis to notice that your thoughts don't want to be read and ignore them. I'd like to stress that it's more like being in a crowded room and hearing snatches of conversation for him than anything else, but I do understand that phobias are phobias."

"I do not consider my fear irrational. I would like this ward at the earliest convenience of whichever Mystic Arts instructor and then I will just try to avoid attracting the attention of any less polite telepaths."

"Any less polite telepaths should be reported to me for enormous amounts of discipline. I'll have Elyzia on it as soon as her Intro to Mystic Arts lecture is over, which should be in half an hour or so. Oh- and Louis would like you to know that he has been informed of your preferences and is currently putting his 'most Herculean efforts' into ignoring your thoughts. And that he would manifest astrally to tell you in person, but he wouldn't want to alarm you. Or accidentally focus on you in any way. And that he is now going to return to merrily trouncing Peter at chess."

"I appreciate that very much and if it is possible to inform him of this without drawing his attention to me in any way, shape, or form, that would be nice," shivers Bella.

"He has been doing this for forty years," Mrs. Carson sighs. "He's not going to slip because I relay your compliments. He has rather a lot of practice at controlling his powers, it's just a constant effort to do so and he can't maintain it for what may end up being up to a year."

Nod, nod.