“The company in the sewers, my room…”

Isaac nods sagely. "I'll convey your compliments to the host. So, how are you two getting along?"

"We seem to be doing alright," Jesse says archly.

“Ayup.”

He tosses a little marble towards Isaac, which turns into a disk and gently attempts to shove him out of circle-of-people-at-a-party distance.

Isaac raises his hands and allows himself to be shooed.

"Well played," Jesse says. "Allowing Isaac into a conversation is like adding vermouth to a martini; he's sweet, but rapidly takes over."

Nodnod. “I've already had enough lunch with him.”

He looks around for ideas for things to talk about.

That old woman with horns is still here, chatting with what looks like a ten-year-old girl with a red solo cup in her hand.

“What's her thing?” he asks with his best discreet gestures, which aren’t very. “I keep seeing her around being noticeable.”

She winks at him.

Jesse takes out and looks into a compact mirror. "Oh, that's Reba. She's actually 18, she's just got this really weird GSD. She tries to be friends with everybody, but she gives me the creeps. She's either stalking you because you're new and interesting or it's a confirmation bias thing because she's particularly noticeable, either way it'll probably die down over the next week or so."

“Right, so as I was saying, on average…”

Jesse grins ruefully. "Yeah, not everybody's cool."

She searches for a topic, then her eyes light up. "Hey, here's a question: does your universe have Harry Potter?"

“Yeah? I read a couple of the books to see what everyone was talking about…”

Jesse nods. "Alright, so not a rich vein. How about..."

She continues triangulating until she lands on a topic both of them are actually interested in. (There's a possibly surprising amount of overlap between their respective worlds' pop cultures, given how much mutants have changed both the cultural and literal landscape. There are differences - the James Cameron movie with the blue people, for example, does not exist - but it's close enough for government work.)

After they've spent a little while discussing their topic, a commotion inevitably occurs. A girl yells something in Spanish at another girl with oddly shiny skin, who yells something back and punches her in the face. The first girl snarls, then turns into a giant spider and scuttles on top of her, biting and clawing with her implausibly sharp pedipalps while the other girl punches her repeatedly in the thorax.

Eep!

...is anyone already doing something about this within the next two seconds because it looks like someone's gonna get hurt.

It is indeed about two seconds until the combatants start glowing blue and float into the air, struggling furiously but denied any leverage. The extremely thin girl with four arms has a similar blue glow around her hands, and a disappointed look on her face. "Come on, you guys."

"She started it," the shiny girl whines.

The spider turns back into a girl, with a sour expression. "What is this, elementary school?"

"Are we going to have a problem, or are you two going to arrange a duel and get over yourselves?" the telekinetic interrupts.

The two girls reluctantly shake their heads. They are lowered to the ground, which has a large puddle of purple drink spreading over it from where the punch bowl was overturned during their fight. "Alright," the four-armed girl says, "we're gonna have to clean up in here and there's no more booze left, so y'all might as well finish what you've got and make your ways home."

There's a general murmur of disappointment, but people start tossing their cups back and throwing them in the large bin labeled CUPS, and filtering out of the room.

"Well, that was stupid," Jesse sighs.

"This square, for one, has not been won over to the side of ..."

"Mariana's the one with the glazed skin, Elena's the spidergirl. Elena's always starting something, but Mariana's usually chill... well, no, she's an asshole, but she doesn't usually get in fights. And I don't speak Spanish, so we don't even know what they were fighting about."

“I was thinking the side of,” airquotes, “drunken debauchery.”

"Ah. Yeah, drunken debauchery's kind of overrated. It's just also more fun than most things you can do on a Friday night at boarding school."

“A pretty low bar. Underground pub, even.”

"Heh, yeah. See you around."

Isaac collects Jonathan and they begin on the slightly circuitous route back to their dorm. Isaac is quiet, for once, as they walk along, and it's not long before they're at the window.

Isaac strips, stows his clothes under a bush, casts a quick spell to make them vanish, turns into a giant wolf and leaps up to clamber through the window.

Jonathan's method of reentering their room involves less nudity and less lycanthropy, but might or might not be less stealthy. Much as he would like to fly elegantly and quickly through the window, he's still slow at this and the window isn't that big.

And so the night ends, Jonathan Strand 1 to drunken debauchery's 0. (Drunken debauchery probably has more points than that, historically, but who's counting.)

He doesn't have a hangover in the morning, possibly because he didn't drink very much or possibly because he's an Exemplar. There is a weird ache in his chest - not the alarming kind of chest pain, more like if he did a lot of push-ups yesterday. It's reasonably ignorable.

(You'd have to squint to see it, but he's disappointed that drunken debauchery kind of failed to make an effort.)

Ow. Maybe it's all the sewer grates, or maybe it's a leftover of some sort from the powers testing incident. Feels like the sort of thing that goes away on its own, anyway. But never mind that, it is SATURDAY. He has NO PLANS. Scratch that, he has plans and NO SCHEDULE.

He gets up, minding the ouchies, and looks for Isaac and/or the showers.

Isaac is, as it happens, exiting the shower when Jonathan enters the bathroom. He nods to Jonathan as he towels off. 

Nodding: an uncomplicated social interaction! Nod!

“Morning.”

Then he gets on with the business of making himself fit to go places and meet people.