Gosh, fame already.

“What about advice for experimenting with unusual power types in general? Or will Powers Lab cover all that?”

"Powers Lab should cover it. All I can say is, try any fool idea that comes into your head as long as it won't get you hurt. And if it will get you hurt, you can always have a healer on standby and try it anyway."

"Okay! Thanks!"

"All of the ideas that have worked so far work just as well at a distance. Maybe I can avoid actually needing the healer with armor, or, like, experiment — shielding —" vague handwaves "boxes."

The instructor nods. "The Devisor/Gadgeteer workshop has some saferooms for high-energy experiments. You'd have to apply in advance, but I'm sure they'd let you have one for a few hours."

"I'll try that. Thanks." He makes a note to find the application once he is not running between classes.

In Basic Martial Arts, he learns a few simple strikes. Jab, cross punch, snap kick. He is instructed in no uncertain terms to keep his thumb outside his fist.

Lunch follows.

Mutants and World History continues to cover WWII, including the activities of supervillains such as Weißfrau and The Necromancer on behalf of the Axis.

In Costume Shop, Mrs. Ryan covers capes. Surprisingly, she's for them, as long they detach easily and you can fly at a clip such that they actually flutter appropriately. She also covers several other articles of costume flair, such as miniskirts, but those weren't featured in The Incredibles.

In Sculpture, bowl-making continues.

Then, freedom!

And now it's properly Friday! Well, let's get some things out of the way first.

OK, so what does applying for workshop time look like? It might be useful in general, actually, to meet people doing ... making things ... rather than just taking physics classes and fiddling with stuff on his own. Are there more casual sorts of access than "hi I would like to explode something today"?

Has the sewer maintenance team gotten back to him?

Applying for workshop time is a function of the Academy's well-maintained intranet! He has to report his powers and the purpose of the test, and give some indication of the facilities he needs (fabrication? custom assembly-line? Intellibeam Laserstation?) and the raw materials, if any.

The sewer maintenance team says he can meet them at 4:00 and they'll take him on a test run.

He will not attempt to get such an application done within that hour. Instead he will GO FLYING.

And also experimenting with plausibly sewer-related power applications. It turns out that if he has something dirty but in a material he can reshape entirely, then he can make its outside flow around so that any dirt accumulates on one spot and mostly falls off. Which means he hopefully does not ever have to touch any of the ick. He practices wearing a suit made of material he's shaping to follow him, but it turns out to be hard to keep track of exactly what needs to bend. Practice will be required.

When he gets to the arranged meeting spot, he's greeted by a tall woman and a short man. "You're Jonathan?"

"Yep!" He waves with a floating glass hand (he's getting better at shapes!), because showing off demonstrating your power is relevant here.

"Neat," the man says.

The woman, who is carrying a rifle connected to a pack on her back, nods. "Telekinesis can be very handy in our line of work. No pun intended. I'm Jean and this is Sean. Anyway, let's get you into a suit and into the sewers for your test drive."

There is a rack of bulky hazmat suits behind her.

He heads for the suits and does not make any Ghostbusters references. "Your training program can allow for that I literally fell into this universe this Tuesday, right?"

She nods. "No experience required, just willingness to wade through the muck and occasionally fend off alligators. And slimes. And-" She cuts herself off. "That kind of thing. But don't worry - you don't need to fight them yourself unless you wanna. That's what the gun's for."

“Alright.”

He attempts to don the hazard suit.

It goes on without much trouble. That's what it's supposed to do.

"Ready to go below?" Jean asks.

He makes sure that his material supplies are in outside pockets.

“It's possible that I'm wrong, but yes.”

Jean snorts. "Good instincts."

They pull up a trapdoor in the floor and descend an iron ladder into the murky depths. Jean and Sean both turn on flashlights attached to their suits, illuminating the murk. "Now, in this season," Jean lectures, "the main job is to unclog the storm drains. They fill up with leaves, then the storm sewer doesn't work. With telekinesis it should be a pretty easy job - just open the drain, get the leaves cleared out and dump them in the water. You can open the grate with that broom-hook," she gestures to a broom on the wall with a hook on the end, "and then use the broom itself to clean the slime off the walls. Because when the walls are slimy all the way up, the snakes can climb the walls and come out of the drains, and we don't want that."

This seems straightforward enough. He will take the broom and … well, it's wood, and he doesn't want to accidentally break it apart, so he's gonna be staring at it for a minute using it by hand at first. After the first drain he switches to no hands.

The job goes by pretty quickly. He can't smell much of anything through the thick rubber of the suit, which is definitely good.

A long white log floats down the stream towards him, then reveals itself to be a giant albino alligator. Jean immediately blasts it with her rifle, launching it six feet in the other direction and causing it to run away yelping in pain. "Fucking gators," Sean says, muffled by his suit.

Eep!

…he'll start seeing if he can reinforce the suit he's wearing. That seems like a worthwhile thing to practice.

They're done with the sewers in a couple of hours, with no further gator incidents. "Thanks for the help, kid," Jean says earnestly. "Earned yourself a paycheck for today, I'll tell you that much. Think you'll come back?"

“I've got the feeling that sometimes there's a lot more trouble than this — but yes.”

"Oh, hell yeah. But if there's enough trouble we get hazard pay."

“Any of this trouble I can practice being ready for?”