He gestures to the dog ears. "I'm an Avatar, but my power's uncontrolled, so I keep absorbing dog ghosts, and it's affecting my physical form. I get more powerful the more spirits I have under my control, but, uh, it turns out dogs have a lot of anatomical features that I don't want. So I'm trying to learn to control my power and see if I can reverse the changes that already happened. Also the dog ghosts made me psychic somehow - don't ask, I have no idea - so I'm learning how to manage that."

“That sucks and I'm sure you don't want to hear any dog puns.”

"I don't!" he says cheerfully. "Thank you for not making any! Anyway, it's not so bad - I've got pretty good powers, and I'm not a serious GSD case like some folks, I'm just comfortable with the number of nipples I already have, you know?"

Isaac clears his throat. "Speaking as the person at this table who literally turns into a dog, I still say you're overreacting."

"You turn back, it doesn't count."

Jonathan is totally not thinking about quantities of nipples. No, sir, honest.

Neither of his tablemates seems to notice the thoughts definitely not running through his head.  "All I'm saying," Isaac says, "is that it's better to rip off the band-aid. You're not going to be able to avoid walking over a dog's grave forever, and you are right now at Whateley Academy, where they teach you to handle your powers. I say take a week off, take a tour of every pet cemetery in New England, come back when you stop looking doggier every time, and enjoy your massive power-up."

Frederick looks torn. "But... the knot."

Isaac puts a hand on Frederick's shoulder. "Dude. There are literally so many people who have a thing for that."

"Why do you know these things," Frederick groans.

He does not know what a knot is and is not sure he wants to start. Especially not by asking.

Isaac seems to finally notice his discomfort and take pity on him. "Just think about it. Anyway, how are you liking Professor Wolfgang's lit class?"

Frederick shrugs. "She's cool. I like how she kind of uses ectoplasm to illustrate stuff?"

"Did you know she used to be a supervillain?"

Frederick raises his eyebrows. "No shit?"

"Yeah," Isaac says. "Professor Faustus. She terrorized the Midwest for like thirty years, then suddenly stopped. Apparently because she came here to teach lit."

“Obvious joke about terrorizing students.”

"She's really nice actually," Isaac comments. "I think she got all the terror out of her system. Admittedly I always did the reading, she could get pretty mean with slackers."

Frederick's looking something up on his phone. "Jesus. Professor Faustus: powers unknown, thought to be a high-level Wizard and Devisor. The Devisor bit can't be right, she'd be in Workshop. And she doesn't do Mystic Arts. Are you sure you've got the right old lady?"

"She does Manifestor labs," Isaac says. "That's how I know, Zabcik told me she made some really unsubtle references to her checkered past. And she doesn't teach Mystic Arts, but I can tell she's got a familiar. A powerful one, too."

"So how does it work that someone who is plausibly known to have done some things doesn't get arrested? Is the neutrality policy incorporated in federal law?"

"No, but, I mean, what's somebody gonna do, call the Feds and say 'I think my English teacher's a retired supervillain'? Standard of proof's a little higher than 'she said some weird shit'. Besides, she's never said anything she couldn't deny."

"Seems like there'd be an incentive to snoop around here in general, at least. I suppose there's plenty of means and motive to discourage snooping."

"Yeah, the government and Whateley have had... incidents. But Whateley's located on Native American land, so there's not really anything the government can do about it. Officially, at least."

“...and how do the Native Americans feel about that?”

Isaac shrugs. "Can't build on their land if they're not cool with it. Certainly can't shelter criminals on their land if they're not cool with it. I don't know the specific arrangement the school has with them, but they've never complained that I know of."

“The foundation of civilization: nobody complaining at least for the moment.”

After dinner he gets on his laptop and starts looking at student job listings. He'd really like a phone that works here and more materials, and that means spending money.

There is, as Isaac mentioned, always space on the sewer maintenance team. It pays $40 per hour.

Regular campus maintenance pays $20 per hour.

There's an opening in the forestry services department, at $15 per hour.

There's tutoring, once he's passed a class here with a B+ or higher.

The campus store could use clerks, at $12 per hour.

So what are the prerequisites or training for sewer maintenance?

Prerequisites seem to be "willing to work in the sewers". Training is provided on the job.

He will give it a chance. He puts in an application and adds "cleaning", "remote manipulation of slippery non-claimed stuff" and “breathing tank??” to his list of things to try or practice doing with his power.

Then: homework, putting up with Isaac, sleep.

Homework is noticeably easier than it used to be, with his Exemplar enhancements. Isaac makes himself pretty easy to put up with by keeping his headphones in and not interacting with Jonathan at all. Sleep is restful.

The next day begins with breakfast, then pre-calc and physics. Then it's time for Powers Theory. Today's topic is telekinesis.

Gosh, what a tiresome and irrelevant topic.

The lecturer explains the basic principles of telekinesis as they are understood - "TK-A" distance telekinesis versus the "TK-B" power shell, and how even if you can perform both techniques you can't maintain them at the same time, leading to the following typical strategies for handling "TK-C" versatile telekinetics. He mentions that the differences between telekinesis and psychokinesis will be covered on Monday. He explains that TK-B consumes a significant amount of calories while TK-A does not, and solicits hypotheses about why that might be.

He does not mention anything relevant to Jonathan's power. This may be because Jonathan's power is just weird.

He asks if there are other known variants. (It's not psychokinesis because the powers testing people would know the difference, right?) When this doesn't get a useful answer, he pauses after class to ask where he might find information for unusual cases.

There have been cases of people whose "telekinesis" manifests itself as an invisible body which can pick things up, but that's more accurately classed as a Manifestor power.

The instructor blinks. "Unusual cases of telekinesis? -ah, you must be Jonathan! I'm afraid you're not going to find much that's relevant to your specific case; the variant you've shown is quite unheard of. There's actually some debate in the scientific community surrounding whether to classify it as a new form, a hypothetical TK-D, but until and unless someone else manifests with a similar variant, that's not likely to occur. Quite fascinating, really. Weißfrau is an abominable creature, but she certainly pushes new and exciting boundaries."