“Yeah.

“Thanks.”

Awkward hand gestures that might have been a notion of hug but now he's holding one out for a handshake. Oops, no, you use the right hand for that, right, there we go.

She shakes his hand with some relief, then heads out the door.

Shortly after, the door opens again. A boy attempts to walk inside, but trips on the doorframe and staggers in instead, catching himself on the desk.

He pretends that didn't happen and turns to Jonathan. "Hi! Are you the kid I was sent to show around?"

He quickly reaches forward but stops when help doesn't seem to be needed.

“Probably! Hi, I'm your extradimensional guest for the day, Jonathan.”

"Extradimensional guest! I always thought if we had one of those it'd be my fault somehow. Come on, first stop on the tour is in this building."

He leads Jonathan to a small gallery in the basement. It contains several exhibits: several super-uniforms, a handful of futuristic-looking guns, a pile of gold bullion, and a portrait of a handsome, aristocratic-looking man posing before a bust of Vlad the Impaler.

"This man," Morty says, pointing at the painting, "is Lord Paramount. He's the current ruler of the sovereign nation of Wallachia, which he conquered with his bare hands. He's also an alumnus and a substantial donor, and one of the terms of his support is that we show incoming freshmen this portrait. So." He spreads his hands wide. "Behoooold."

“Do I need to behold it with appropriate reverence?”

"Nah, just behold. And be informed that Lord Paramount is very powerful and so can you."

He pastes an overawed look on his face, bends his knees, and stretches his arms towards the portrait.

Then stands up again.

Morty snickers. Then he points to the pile of gold. "This is the other particularly notable exhibit; a precognitive named Gabriella Guzman, also alumna, made a truly absurd amount of money through real estate and stockbrokerage, and decided to donate exactly a metric ton of gold, to be displayed by the portrait. You don't strictly speaking need to behold this one, she just wants you to know how rich she is."

“As someone who just got told that getting home is very expensive, can I ask if this pile is weighed regularly?”

"This room physically could not have more cameras in it, my friend."

“Aww.”

Next?

Next is the rest of the tour! Morty shows him around the classroom buildings and the cottages. "The cottages are sort of split by whether or not they have GSD cases - there's Twain and Whitman and Poe that do, and Emerson and Dickinson and Melville that don't - and by gender - Twain and Emerson for boys, Whitman and Dickinson for girls, Poe and Melville coed - and then there's Hawthorne, which is for kids whose powers or GSD make them a danger to themselves or others. Um, GSD is 'gross structural dystrophy', it's what makes some mutants look... different. Technically it's not all GSD, there's BIT weirdness and MATD weirdness and Avatar weirdness, but if it's inconvenient or weird you mostly call it GSD. Unless it's wings, for some reason, everybody likes wings."

“But not everybody gets wings.” His tone makes it clear that this is a mild disappointment.

“She said they'd put me in Twain.”

"Yeah, I'm in Twain too, there's still morphotypical folks in all the cottages regardless. There's more people who look normal than anything else, but the edge cases kind of stand out."

“Guess I'll get used to it. OK, what's next? Finding my room? Powers testing? Maybe food?”

"We can do food next!" Morty starts back the way they came. "Powers testing is gonna wait on the lab techs, but they shouldn't be too busy, you'll probably get a note arranging for that tomorrow. The only other thing on the tour per se is the flag system: today is 'green flag,' which means you can use your powers as much as you want, but there's also 'yellow flag' and 'red flag' days. Yellow flag means, basically, 'don't push it' - there's somebody visiting who knows there's mutants around, but not the full extent of our nonsense. Red flag, no powers whatsoever, and GSD folks take the underground tunnels to class. There's a screen in the cottage that'll tell you the day's flag code. -also there's an underground tunnel system. It is fully mapped, and there are no secret chambers where budding supervillains hatch their illicit schemes. This is known."

“I'm not sure whether to be suspicious of that claim or not, but I'm definitely going to check out the tunnels either way.”

"No, yeah, there's a ton of secret and sort-of-secret rooms. It's cool."

Still heading towards the Crystal Hall, he thinks for a moment. "This is kind of the end of the tour. Is there anything I'm missing? Do you have, like, burning questions about the dorm environment in Twain, or something? -the dorm environment in Twain is kinda bro-y but overall they're good people, in case you did have that as a burning question."

“What do I do if I have a question later — or, do I get a student handbook or something?”

"Yeah, there'll be a student handbook in your room or you can get a copy from the office in Schuster. Questions you have later, you can find me and ask if you want, we're gonna be in the same dorm."

They arrive at the Crystal Hall. The Hall, once entered, reveals itself to have three levels, the upper level containing a fountain with waterfalls down to the ground floor. There are several different food lines, each delineated with a unique legend. "And here we have the school cafeteria! Home to many delicious foods. The carrot sign is for vegans, the cheese is for vegetarians. The steak is for meat-eaters, not to be confused with the cow, which is for obligate carnivores. The geode is for people who eat rocks and minerals, the baguette with a line through it is gluten free, the banana is various fruits, and the cake is for desserts. You should definitely try the desserts. Also, there's the specialty kiosk, which is for people with specific dietary needs, like blood, insects, or live prey. You are probably not one of those people, but if you want I can get you some fried crickets, they're actually pretty good."

He is a little distracted by the architecture.

“Is that, like, each line can make a complete meal for one diet, or do you normally visit several?”

"You can go to five or six lines or you can stop at just one! I tend to at least check out the carrot and cheese lines even though I'm usually a meat-eater, they sometimes have really good stuff. This applies less to the geode and the baguette with a line through it, because gluten-free food is usually weird and rocks are rocks."

Okay, he will obtain a small amount of many things.

— And okay, try the fried crickets.

Morty ends up with pasta salad and a dessert plate of various fried shellfish. Also a dessert plate of dessert, in this case flan.

The food is well-prepared! The crickets are crunchy and lightly salted! They're like chips, but with little legs.