"I am irrationally proud of my hubris-inducing universe."

"That reminds me, someone needs to demonstrate that rigorous experimentation is safe here."

"Ooh. What kind of experiment do you want to do? I bet I can sweet-talk us into the chemistry labs."

"Pick something fun!"

"Chemistry is fun! How do you feel about explosions?"

"Enjoyable in moderation."

"I cannot condone use of school property to cause gratuitous explosions," Atennesi says dryly, "so if you're going to plot that sort of thing you had better leave." He opens a drawer on his desk and draws out a small colorful piece of paper. "Here is your auditing pass. Your room is number two hundred and three in building seven. Odette knows where it is."

"Thanks!" he says cheerfully.

"At some point I'll find a stipend for you to accommodate for the fact that you arrived with literally nothing but the clothes on your back. In the meanwhile your room is outfitted with the basic necessities and your auditing pass will get you into the dining hall. Now shoo," he says, "your arrival has caused me significant amounts of paperwork and there's only so much magic can help with that."

"I apologize for complicating your life," he says.

Off to do science!

Science! Odette sweet-talks their way into a chemistry lab, explains the basic idea behind chemical reactions, and gets out the pure sodium. "So, since a little bit of sodium will fizz a little in water, more sodium will cause it to react more violently! Nothing actually dangerous, as long as we use the safety equipment and/or heal ourselves afterwards if things go very wrong."

"How reassuring."

"Well, we are deliberately inducing explosions! Something could get in your eye if you don't wear safety goggles."

Milan laughs.

She pops on a pair of safety goggles and a lab gown. "The point is to keep anything from getting on you that could be unpleasant. Magicking it off would be trivial, but rules are there for a reason and flouting them just because the reasons don't apply to you can get you and the person who said you could use the lab in trouble."

"Perfectly logical, I'm just amused that healing ourselves if something goes horribly wrong is explicitly on the contingencies list."

"Healing yourself if something goes wrong is always on the contingencies list. Just not usually explicitly."

"Well, not for those of us who don't know how to do that yet."

"I think I may have gotten so caught up on how obvious it is that you're going to be a Great Mage that I forgot you're not a mage at all yet. Well, I can heal you."

"That works."

And increasing amounts of pure elemental sodium are dropped in water. They sure do make some increasingly intense reactions.

Milan is disproportionately entertained by this spectacle.

Excellent. "Want to try anything else?" Odette asks once they've reached the levels of vigor she's interested in risking in this reaction.

"Yes, definitely. I mean, explosions are fun but I don't think they're actually very informative."

"Okay...what's a good experiment to do without a lot of background science knowledge..."