A second later, they're standing before a tastefully grand complex in the middle of the town. It resembles a university campus more than anything else.

"How do you make it not feel like anything?"

"I drain the kinetic energy produced by you colliding with the air." 

"Oh. That's cool. What's kinetic energy?"

"Hmm, it's energy that's produced by movement. More or less. Or the energy that makes things move, depending on how you look at it."

"Oh that's really cool!"

"Thank you, shall we go find Jeanette?"

"Yeah!"

She takes his hand and leads him inside. Apparently superspeed would be uncouth at the moment. The Association for Baseline-Transhuman Cooperation is obviously rather busy, and nobody seems to pay Zaneta and her guest much mind.

He looks around interestedly at all the everything.

"If you hadn't guessed yet, this is where I work."

"I had guessed."

"We study Miracles-among other things."

"What other things?"

"Well, we run peacekeeping operations around the world, train and administer what you might call superheroes, run schools like the one you turned up in..."

"Oh. So really like the Protectorate—except there aren't schools but there's the Wards program..."

"The Wards?"

"It's for junior heroes. If I went to the Protectorate I would become one."

"What about children who don't plan on becoming heroes?"

"I dunno. I think the Protectorate likes encouraging people to not be heroes or villains."

"Surely there's some educational scheme in place for powered children?"

"I don't think so. Children with powers are really rare, I don't think I've heard of any younger than, like, twelve."

"Hah! That's actually the older end of the scale here."

"I think most people trigger when they're older but I dunno."

Eventually, Zaneta and Sadde reach the office of a tall, vaguely Middle Eastern woman. "Ah, Zaneta, is this the girl?" she says in a light French accent.