Jonathan has precisely zero life experience preparing him for this type of situation! He yanks at the restraints, more in surprise at what is attached to his body than in an escape attempt, and looks around.

"Subject has regained consciousness. Commencing."

The speaker is... apparently a woman. She's easily twice Jonathan's height, with gleaming paper-white... skin, for want of a better word, and pure black eyes, and six long, double-elbowed arms evenly spaced along her thorax. Each of these arms has a clawed hand which manipulates a lever or a button on a machine about the size of a refrigerator, entirely covered in input mechanisms with no user interface.

— what is it's straight out of the movies but this is real but that's impossible but it's there but what, do you think you've been kidnapped by criminal improv science fiction theater enthusiasts? But anyway they know he's awake what to do what to do

This thought process manifests as him saying "Uh…"

The one-woman horrorshow doesn't feel the need to dignify this with a response.

"Initializing metagenetic insertion treatment. This may sting a bit."

It does not "sting" so much as "burn". It burns a lot. It might be the worst pain Jonathan's ever felt, depending on how unfortunate Jonathan has been up to this point.

No comparisons only screaming.

She rolls her eyes, not that he can tell. “Subject displays human-typical pain tolerance.”

The burning is over in a few minutes. “Congratulations,” she says. “You are now a metahuman. But you are not yet complete.”

She throws another switch. The feeling this time is not burning; indeed, there is no English word for the sensation he feels. It could be called “soul-stretching.”

It is less painful than the burning. It is still excruciating. 

He is definitely not going to be inventing new vocabulary right now.

She grins wider and wider as the pain grows more intense. It reaches a peak, then abruptly stops; she nods firmly, then pulls a pair of goggles over her eyes. She peers at him and frowns. “Again?”

She shakes her head. “The peculiar commonalities of the BIT are irrelevant. You are now more than you were. How do you feel?”

This question deserves a withering look, but the available biological resources mean that his reply is more along the lines of a hoarse "aaaaaaaagh."

She shakes her head disapprovingly. “No scientific spirit in these abductees. Let’s get-”

An alarm sounds. One of her hands pulls at her hair in frustration. “How am I supposed to work with these distractions! I need to conduct additional tests, decant a targeted amnestic, and dump you in a back alley, and some Scheißkerl has just invaded my laboratory?!”

She presses a button, and Jonathan’s restraints pop free. She then picks him up bodily and carries him over to what looks like a supply closet. “Do not do anything stupid, please, I have more tests to run after I kill this idiot.” Then she tosses him in the closet and locks the door.

Weirdly, the impact with the concrete floor doesn’t hurt very much. It feels like hitting a gym mat, or something. 

Ow.

Now that he's had a moment free of people kidnapping, complaining about, and hurting him —

Secret mutant mad scientists??? This would be so cool except for the part where he's the test subject victim. And there aren't any superheroes to defeat them unless they're secret too.

Well, time to look around this closet for any convenient escape supplies. Whether or not the emergency is just a fake scenario.

He gets up, noting the odd new feeling of his body. No claws or glowing, though.

The supply closet contains: supplies! There's a box of lightbulbs, notably, and a box of staples, and an old-fashioned mop and bucket, and a broom, and a couple of reams of paper. It's not clear what kind of building this was.

Paper cuts and broken glass! Nope, terrible plan. There are many terrible ideas available here. For lack of a suspiciously convenient weapon he doesn't know how to use, he will investigate these funny feelings he doesn't know how to use either. Concrete floors are weirdly gentle. His vision seemed to be working better looking around the room. He's in general feeling in really good shape, not even taking into account the recent suffering.

He picks up the mop and hefts it and swings it around, noting the ease with which he can control where it goes; not a single shelf has been whacked yet.

— after a minute there's something else. This funny feeling is in his grip on the mop handle; it's feeling less like something he's hanging on to and more a part of himself, and not just in the way holding a familiar tool is like that. He lets go and there's still something; it's like he feels the mop coming to rest against a shelf even though he's not touching it. And there's something about his hand…

Actually feeling silly for once, he makes like a Jedi and tries to pull the mop to his hand. It doesn't work, but it feels like it could have, like there was a twitch, that he hasn't got enough strength to do it. And his hand catches his attention again — he can feel the inside of it, not in the usual way but the structure of skin and muscle and fat and bone and blood —

There's a lot of stuff here. He takes the mop again, sits down on the floor, and sets to exploring it all, because it seems like the best chance of having any control of his situation. And being a superhero, that too.

After a few minutes, there are muffled sounds of battle from outside the closet. Sounds of battle include: breaking glass, splintering wood, generic laser noises, and the distinctive sound of large amounts of fire.

That sounds like it's time to do something.

He touches the doorknob and after a few seconds of — whatever you call this thing he's doing — the bolt retracts in exactly the way it's not supposed to from this side. He opens the door and walks out carrying a mop and a ream of paper.

In that case, he will see the horrorshow scientist fighting a woman wearing what looks like red and white spandex, who is floating in the air and has fire swirling around her. Scientist-woman has a revolver in one of her hands, a retrofuturistic laser pistol in another, and various strange devices in the rest.

When she sees Jonathan emerge from the closet, she groans. "I locked that door specifically so that this would not happen! Please go back in there, I will deal with you momentarily."

Her opponent fires a beam of white-hot flame at her, which she absorbs into one of her devices. "Stop doing that!" the heroine whines. In response, the scientist shoots at her with the laser pistol, which she dodges handily.

Perhaps it would help if her hand weapons were interfered with by slightly clumsy telekinetic grappling paper? It's stronger than paper ought to be, too.

She observes Jonathan's newfound telekinetic powers, notes her lack of prepared counters for a telekine, and makes a snap decision.

"Fuck this for a lark," she says decisively. Then she crushes the object in her third right hand and vanishes in a flash of light.

The fire woman remains hovering. "Damn it! Uh, thanks for the help, kid. You did that thing with the paper, right?"

"—uh, yeah. Hi."

He may be bouncing on his toes a bit. (He DEFEATED A SUPERVILLAIN. Er, helped.)

"Are you, uh... new? To having powers? I'm just guessing based on the whole 'rescued from an evil Devisor's lair' thing, and also I haven't seen you around before. And also because you're a teenager."

"Yep. I've got ten minutes of idea what I'm doing."

She grins. "Cool! Welcome to being a superhero, then, it's neat. And important. After all, who'd stop Deathlist if we didn't have any superheroes? ...probably the army. But that'd suck."

There's something off about this, but sadly he's no supergenius to figure it out entirely from available clues.

“Gonna want the primer, maybe starting with who's Deathlist and what's a deviser and what I ought to do or not do.”

Being also not a supergenius, Fire Lady blinks and latches on to the most notable thing in that sentence.

"You don't know who Deathlist is? Are you, like, Amish or something - no, you haven't freaked out about having powers - but Deathlist is like, everybody knows about him. He's like Justin Bieber or Kim Jong-Un or somebody."

“— I figured you were all secret for some reason. Never heard of a super-whicheversideofthelaw outside of the movies. And comics.”

She floats slowly to the ground. "Shit. This just got weirder fast. Metahumans have been on the scene since... well, since forever technically if you count pagan gods and the Fae and stuff, but mutants proper started showing up in the thirties. There's no way you wouldn't have heard of us if you're from this world."

"Okay but that's a thing that can happen?"

"You being from another world? I'm not Magus or anything, I don't know the details, but I've heard stories about people from other worlds coming to ours or vice versa. And with Weißfrau involved, anything's possible. She's a Devisor and a mage, and pretty high-tier for both."

"Soooo...can I get home?

"Wait, do I want to? Being The World's Only Superhero sounds like it could go horribly wrong several ways. Ergh. Anyway. Help?"

"Uh. Hopefully we can get you home, you're like fifteen. Being the only mutant in the world would kinda suck, though. And they won't have the systems in place for superhero work. But, again, you're like fifteen and you presumably have parents." She scratches her head. "I'm not the hero for this kind of shit, man, I'm twenty-three and I run around in tights punching people because my ADD makes it too hard for me to hold down a real job. I guess I could call somebody more competent. Who's competent that I know... Diana maybe?"

Outside the doorway, a man in a tactical vest with a mask over his face peers into the room. Making eye contact with Jonathan, he freezes, then waves awkwardly.

“Aw, sucks, sorry I had to complicate your punchin—”

Jonathan freezes too, but his second reaction is to summon the now-rather-crumpled paper that was so helpful before.

The superhero turns to see what made Jonathan freeze. The man in the tactical vest swears loudly and points a gun at her. She responds by setting him on fire. He stops, drops, and rolls, dropping the gun in the process.

She picks it up and examines it critically. "You could really hurt somebody with this. Not me personally, but the kid isn't wearing an armored costume and he doesn't have a PK field. I could get you for attempted murder if you'd actually fired. As it is, we have two counts of aggravated assault by pointing a deadly weapon. Whereas if you'd surrendered, we'd probably have nothing on you except circumstantial evidence that you aided and abetted a supervillain."

"I kinda panicked there," the criminal admits, still smoking slightly.

"Apparently."

Okay, if they're talking law, he definitely does not know about how to not add any further complications to this situation. And she has this under control. But he can keep an eye out for further trouble maybe? Or also —

“So how does this situation get wrapped up?”

Nothing seems to be approaching over the horizon!

She zipties the criminal's hands and feet together. "I take this guy to the cops and we figure out what to do with you, pretty much? I mean, I can also take you to the cops if you want the system to handle it, but the system kinda sucks. Especially for mutants. - hey, wait a minute, this is a mutant kid issue, what if I made Whateley deal with it? Uh- there's this big school in New England called Whateley Academy where they teach mutant kids to handle their powers and stuff, and they have this big scholarship fund for kids without parents available. They can put you up, and I bet they'd have some idea of how to get you back to where you came from if you want!"

“Uh, can't say I like the first option but I've never been scholarship material. Suppose I'm an interdimensional exchange student now though.”

(He may have made a little face at the general idea of school, but it passed.)

"Yeah, Whateley doesn't need you to be the best and brightest, you just gotta have powers and need help. Also you might be smarter than you were before manifesting, depending on what powers you got; Exemplars have increased processing speed and better memory."

“— Right, superpowers. Okay!”

“Do you need to collect all the minions or disable all the machines or —?”

She shakes her head. "The minions have probably all gone to ground, and Interpol's probably gonna get somebody smart in here to check out the devises, so we shouldn't mess with them."

The guy raises his eyebrows. "Interpol? I know she was German, but seriously?"

"You know you were working for a Nazi, right?" she asks with some distaste. "Like, an actual fought-the-Allies-in-1941 Nazi."

"Oh, gross," he says. "She didn't seem racist, though? More 'everyone is beneath me', less 'especially Jews'."

She shrugs. "Still."

"Still, yeah, gross. Interpol, sure."

...ooookay. He'll just, like, wait for a cue, then.

Superhero lady claps her hands together. "Alright! So, let's get this guy to the cops who are currently waiting outside. And then I guess we get on a bus to Massachusetts, unless you can fly."

“I can push stuff and when I do it pushes back on me but I don't seem to be able to just defy gravity. And I think I need to charge up somehow to do more. So, no flying.

“Yet.”

She shrugs, then hefts the minion over her shoulder and starts out the door.

She talks with the cops when she deposits the minion into their custody. In the process she is forced to reveal her superhero name, which as it turns out is "Flambe". Apparently it's kind of hard to get a good fire-based nom de guerre that isn't taken. The cops take a statement from Jonathan; it's not a very memorable process.

Flambe then ducks into a closet and emerges maskless and with normal human clothes on, including a backpack with various band names written on it in White-Out. ("You can call me Jessica when I'm out of costume," she says.) She hails a cab to get them to the Port Authority (Weißfrau's secret base was apparently an abandoned Montessori school in Queens), where she gets a bus ticket to Boston and stops at Subway.

"It's gonna be four hours to Boston and one hour from Boston to Whateley," she explains. "I have energy bars in my bag, but they're pretty gross for anybody who doesn't have superhuman dietary requirements. So even if you're not hungry now, you should get a sandwich."

If he should get a sandwich, then he will get a sandwich. Especially if she's paying. He'll have a cold sub with two kinds of meat, cheese, lettuce, olives, peppers, pickles, and a non-messy amount of sauce, wrapped up in two separate portions to go, please. And some water and chips which he will open right now.

He acquires a sandwich!

Jessica also acquires a sandwich. Hers is something teriyaki-chicken-y with onions, plus a root beer. She consumes it immediately, presumably because she was just in a literal firefight.

Soon enough there's a bus to catch. It's 10am, so there's not a ton of people on it. Jessica picks a seat near the back, with nobody in the surrounding few rows. Once the drive is underway, she turns to Jonathan. "So, I've got a phone and can spend this entire bus ride listening to alt-pop if you'd rather not talk, but do you have any questions about, you know." She gestures vaguely. "Our universe?"

“Sure but where do I even start? Uh, how do powers work, maybe that'll give me some clues to, ha, meditate on while we're on the road. You said something about Exemplars?”

"Okay, Powers Theory time. Nobody knows exactly how powers work, per se, but they tend to fall into a handful of natural categories. There's Exemplars, the most common mutation by a significant margin; Exemplars gradually shift into an 'idealized' form, becoming more attractive, stronger, smarter, et cetera. I'm an Exemplar, obviously-" (she is very pretty) "-as well as having psychokinesis, which allows me to fly and control flames. Other powers- let me just go down the list, actually."

She closes her eyes and starts rattling off terms. "Avatars channel the power of a spirit. They typically have other powers besides that, based on what spirit they have. Devisors make weird machines that don't function on the same laws of physics the rest of us use. Espers have various forms of extrasensory perception, like empathy or psychometry. Energizers absorb some form of energy from some source or other and can release it in some specific form, often either physical speed or energy blasts. Gadgeteers have an instinctual understanding of technology, and can create things far beyond the current cutting edge; technically they're a kind of Esper, because they're easily capable of understanding and improving on devices they've never seen before. Manifestors can create some form of temporary material, like a suit of armor or physical shadows. Mimics can mimic other powers, regenerators can, well, regenerate, shifters can change their shape. Telekinetics have telekinesis, which can be at range or to enhance their own strength, or both. Warpers affect the laws of reality directly in some way, such as by altering probability or teleporting. Aaaand mages have an easier time using magic, and psychics have telepathic abilities, often along with telekinesis."

He nods along, almost interrupting a few times.

“Okay, so I'm obviously telekinetic, and maybe harder to hurt at least from like being hit with things like concrete floors, that's —?”

"Hmm, might be Exemplar, might be a personal TK field."

She pokes him in the forehead. "No shell. You're an Exemplar, then. Welcome to the club!"

“Yeah well what if I —”

He stops.

“Okay, I was tempted to do a thing, but how, uh, public are things? Like you showed me your, uh, other identity or is it even a secret and how do people feel about the whole thing and is it actually okay to do something while we're sitting in the bus?”

She nods. "My secret identity is in fact secret, but 'not-very-renowned superheroine Flambe is actually some lady named Jessica' is not particularly valuable information. And it'd be best to keep it subtle until we're off the bus, yeah. The Whateley science team will want to run through your powers with a fine-tooth comb, anyway."

“Okay.”

He'll ask a few more questions about how stuff works but also spend some time just watching the scenery pass by.

Jessica can answer questions. She can also pass the time when Jonathan is not asking questions. She eats an appropriately awful-looking energy bar a few hours in.

Eventually the bus arrives in Boston. There's a surprisingly convenient train to the sleepy town of Dunwich, which lies below the Academy itself. It's a short trip, after the four-hour bus ride. Once they reach Dunwich, there's a tiny little shuttlebus that drops them off at the school.

Whateley looks pretty much like a typical private school, except for the giant geodesic dome in the middle of campus. Jessica makes a beeline for it.

Jessica is being very helpful and decent company. "Thanks for sticking with me. I'm sure ‘hours of road trip’ isn't what you were planning to do with your Tuesday.”

What would superheroes do without grandiose architecture? Though this is pretty low-key; perhaps they're trying to blend in with the surroundings.

Jessica shrugs, but smiles. “I didn’t really have plans per se. And I did become a superhero to help people.”

Someone on a skateboard passes by who looks like something out of a heavy metal album cover: leathery wings, black scales, goat legs, the works. They nod amicably to Jonathan as they ride by. 

Eep.

No the monsters are not always the bad guys that's racist. Or mutationist or whatever.

He unfreezes and nods back somewhat late.

Walking along amicably, right, they were doing that.

The demon snorts a curl of grey smoke and flicks out their snakelike tongue for a second, then passes on.

Jessica seems not to have noticed. "Man, this place brings back memories. Of, like, five years ago."

“You went to school here? What's school years like for, uh, people with powers?”

"You can just say 'mutants'," Jessica notes. "It was really cool, honestly, there was some amount of bullshit teen drama and I was never great at the school part of things even with the Exemplar boost, but it was a really fun experience. And you get mandatory martial arts training! Which is cooler than it sounds."

“Do people go to, like, college? Or superhero job training?”

"I mean, I personally didn't, but some people do go to college. Technically if you're smart enough you can get most of a Bachelor's at Whateley while you're here, there's college-level courses you can test into, but it gets pretty intense. As far as super-training, that's definitely a Whateley thing. There's martial arts, there's VR combat simulators, there's sparring arenas, you name it. Also classes where you learn how to be an effective superhero and not a massive liability to the taxpaying public, that's a big thing."

They reach a small building adjoining the geodesic dome, with a sign declaring it to be Schuster Hall. Jessica opens the door and leads him inside. A secretary peers at them over remarkably stereotypical horn-rimmed glasses. "Business?"

"Enrolling a new student," Jessica says.

“Massive liability is not my idea of fun,” he agrees.

He gives the secretary an awkward it's-me-she's-talking-about wave.

The secretary smiles at him. "Welcome to Whateley, dear." She turns to Jessica. "You would be his..."

Jessica shakes her head vigorously. "I would not be anything, no, I'm just a superhero who happened to be nearby when he manifested. And, uh, landed in this universe. -he's from another world."

The secretary blinks once. "Well then."

"I've had a weird day. And a very long bus trip."

"I can see that," the secretary says. "Well, we can reimburse you for travel expenses-" (Jessica is dignified enough not to whoop out loud, but the urge is visible) "-and as for, ah, what's your name, dear?" she asks Jonathan.

“Jonathan. Strand,” he adds as an oh-this-is-for-the-records afterthought.

"As for you, Jonathan, we'll get you enrolled as quickly as possible. And by 'as quickly as possible,' I mean 'the second you fill out these forms'."

She passes him a thin packet of forms. Some of the questions on the forms are normal (name, age, blood type, sexuality, a broad selection of genders), while some are less normal (date of manifestation, list of powers [tentative], GSD/BIT/MATD alterations).

Jonathan Strand is a sixteen and a half year old cis male teenager who does not know his blood type. (He put 'Teenager' in the sexuality field.) He manifested today, is telekinetic and probably an Exemplar, and does not know what all of those acronyms are but hasn't noticed anything that probably counts as a bodily alteration.

The secretary accepts the forms back. She squints for a second at "teenager", before shrugging and moving on.

"We'll put you in Twain," she decides when she's done. "There's a vacancy with that Isaac boy, Mooncast."

(Jessica looks slightly bemused, but does not venture a comment.)

Joy, roommates.

“Jessica said that you could look into prospects for getting me home? And do I need to read the orientation I missed or anything? Figuring out what my power actually is?”

The secretary sighs. "Getting you home... is likely possible, but from what I know of magic, very difficult and very expensive. We do have magic and Devisortech experts on staff who would be able to paint a better picture of the situation for you, and should you acquire the resources to pursue returning on your own we wouldn't be a bad place to start, but we cannot commit the funds necessary to return you ourselves. As to orientation and powers testing, that will be taken care of shortly."

That's not good news.

Well, ‘figure out how to turn superpowers into money’ doesn't seem like a bad life plan, and useful even if he ends up sticking around here instead.

“Okay.”

The secretary smiles apologetically. "Anyway, what else... We're admitting you as a freshman despite your age - standard policy, don't worry, there are plenty of other 15- and 16-year-old freshmen. You'll be able to test into suitable classes."

Yeah, like remedial This World History.

"I'll get someone in to give you that orientation tour, then."

She picks up her phone and dials someone. "Can I get a student ambassador? I have a new student who needs to be shown around. -good God, why? ...really? The only one? And how is he- yes, alright. Thank you, Amos."

She sets the phone down and turns a sunny smile on Jonathan. "You'll be given the tour by Mortimer Halliwell. He's... easily excitable, but very nice. He'll be here in a few minutes."

“I've been called names like that myself.”

The secretary smiles again, more awkwardly.

Jessica steps out of an office which she stepped into a few minutes ago, holding a plane ticket and a check. She stops in front of Jonathan and thinks for a moment about what to say.

"Nice to meet you," she eventually decides. "Do good things, okay?"

“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.

Not bad, not going to be a routine item.

“So what's your thing, power set, course of study, whatever?” he asks as he picks up his water glass.

"Oh, I'm a Devisor! My, uh, 'thing,' more specifically is that I use cardboard in a wide variety of ways that mortal science cannot explain. It's a very versatile material. By all accounts I'd be a really powerful Devisor if it wasn't for the fact that all the shit I invent blows up in my face. And my course of study is mostly Devisor stuff, advanced physics and the like, plus various general education subjects sprinkled in like the carrots snuck into this pasta salad, unpleasant and effortful and destined to be mostly more or less ignored." (He is indeed eating around the carrots.)

“I don't like tomatoes or history.”

His attention is caught by the water glass, though, and he — opens his hand, and it doesn't fall down. Then he sets it down, sticks a finger in and pulls it out with a blob of water, which wobbles a bit and then, oops, dribbles down and wets the table and his shirt.

"Cool! Is that telekinesis?"

“Yeah, I touch stuff and then I can feel it and move it. But water is harder to hang on to, apparently.”

He pulls out some neatly folded ex-mad-scientist-lair paper from a pocket. “I, uh, inconvenienced the supervillain that got me here this way.”

He attempts to make some origami. It doesn't work very well, partly because of lack of control and partly because he has never tried origami.

"Inconveniencing a supervillain, nice. Let me help with that, here-"

He takes a sheet of paper out of his backpack and folds it into a passable crane, then unfolds it again and demonstrates the intended folding pattern.

He attempts to imitate the pattern and makes some more crumpled mess.

Then he pulls over the paper Morty used, puts his finger on the middle of it, and stares intently at it.

"Having fun there?" Morty asks after a bit.

“Oh, it takes me a bit to — take things. Paper is slower.”

The paper folds up along its original lines. The result is flatter than the original version, like the paper's been glued together rather than just folded.

"Congratulations! It definitely took me more tries than that, for what it's worth."

“I just refolded it like you did.”

He hands the extra-flat crane to Morty. “Maybe there's something scientifically interesting about how it's holding together, or are you strictly cardboard and not paper?”

"I'm mostly cardboard," Morty hedges. "But if the edges are - fused somehow - that could be pretty big for me personally, it'd make it possible for my power source to be practically lossless... Everything else blows up, but what if that's why, because I haven't been making it flat enough!" His words are speeding up, with no room for Jonathan to get a word in edgewise. "I could make something for this - or you could just help me, you're my friend, that's perfect!" He giggles weirdly. "This could be it, Jonathan! This might finally take me from the bottom of the totem pole to the fucking stratosphere! I need to- I need to experiment, let me-"

He practically rips open his backpack to get at the cardboard within. Then he frantically starts folding sheets of cardboard into arcane shapes.

“Uh, should this maybe go to a lab or something?”

"No time!" he hisses. "I don't need a lab, I just need cardboard - can't make bricks without clay - where's the fucking there it is, okay."

People are beginning to stare. A girl at a neighboring table mutters something under her breath about "fucking Diedrick's" and takes her tray elsewhere.

Aaaaaaaah.

He could — he could run away. He could yank the paper back, but who knows whether that's a good idea or a bad one. And maybe this is just uncool and not actively dangerous. (He scoots his chair back enough to be able to get up in a hurry.)

Is there anyone around who looks like they might have some competence at dealing with this?

There's someone at another neighboring table who looks like an old woman with horns coming out of her head. She looks quietly amused, rather than concerned or annoyed. She's sitting next to a classically beautiful blonde with a cow tail, who mostly looks bored.

Aaaaah that isn't obviously better either!

Looks like he's just sitting here.

He finishes folding. He's ended up with a piece of cardboard that twists in on itself and bristles with strange protrusions and kind of hurts to look at.

It starts glowing with a faint bluish light, then immediately explodes.

Morty is flung from his chair into the water feature. The blast doesn't hit Jonathan with the same kind of force, but it's still substantial.

There's scattered applause from the observers, then the cafeteria chatter resumes.

— he'll — help Morty up? And be a little concerned that he's now definitely been seen with The Loser look you can't give into that kind of thing okay

Morty's already struggling out of the water. He's shaking violently and breathing hard. "I- uh. S-sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Uh. Um? Sorry."

“Hey, I'm okay. Should I have done something?”

"N. No, not really, it just... happens and there's not really anything anybody can do except keep me away from the cardboard, which makes me try to bite them. It's a mess. Fucking Diedrick's."

“I, uh, could probably do that without anything getting bitten or otherwise destroyed. Eventually. After some practice. Is that better or worse?”

"Better. Fewer explosions that way. Crazy Morty is not good at inventions. Worse than Sane Morty."

“OK, I'll keep that in mind. Also — nevermind. Dorm? Cottage, whatever.”

"Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I'll just- get my tray to the return."

His tray's still on the table, but his plate cracked in the shockwave. Carrots are everywhere. Morty inhales deeply, picks up the tray, and heads toward the place where trays go.

Jonthan picks up some cardboard and food crumbs off the table, adds them to his tray, and follows.

Trays duly stowed, Morty leads the way back to Twain. He's shaking a bit less now, even though he's soaking wet and outside in the New England autumn weather. The shaking decreases until it's probably only shivering.

At Twain, they're greeted by a floppy-haired blonde boy who looks like some off-brand Youtuber.

"Hey Isaac," Morty says.

"So this one's going to be sharing my room?" the boy asks breezily, in a plausibly-not-affected British accent. He extends a hand. "Put 'er there," he says, in a definitely affected American accent.

Handshake number two of the day!

“Hi, I'm Jonathan. You may like that I have literally no stuff to move in.”

"Good start," Isaac acknowledges. "Even I had a backpack full of junk food and weed when I ran away to Whateley. You left in a hurry?"

"He's from another world," Morty explains. "A supervillain summoned him here, and- actually, how did you find Whateley?"

“While I was there, having lots of no fun at all, a hero named Flare — no that's not right but the name was definitely about fire and started with F but wasn't, yknow, Fire — anyway she attacked the base and the villain locked me in a supply closet to get me out of the way, and I figured out my shiny new power and got out just in time to help out and F-whatshername very helpfully escorted me over here. On a bus.”

"There's an origin story," Isaac says admiringly. "People underestimate the importance of a good origin story. Morty, take notes."

Morty rolls his eyes. "Pass. I'm not a superhero. I'm barely super. I do not need an origin story. I only even have a codename because it's so inconvenient not to." He turns to Jonathan. "Oh, forgot to mention, you're going to need a codename. It's a pain in the ass, but there's a lot of hassle if you don't have one by the time of Combat Finals."

Combat Finals?

“Thank you, I try,” to Isaac, and “Is there a list of which names are taken?”

Isaac nods. "It's all online. There's the MID Database, there's also superwikis if you really want to know that the current holder of the Magus Force is a Gemini or something. Oh, you also have to check the name isn't copyrighted, superhero comics exist."

“And speaking of online, and consumer goods,” — he pulls out his phone — “yep no data, I'm gonna need a new everything. Can I get a look at the room and then someone can point me towards sources for dire necessities?”

"Oh, sure. I'll show you the room."

Morty waves goodbye as Isaac leads Jonathan upstairs to their room.

The room is lived-in on the left side, though there's not a stark dividing line between the halves; it's more that there's only so much living you can do in the other half of a two-man dorm room. There are posters on the left wall of various scantily clad men and women. The right side is austere; the only furniture, symmetrical to the other half, is a loft bed with a desk under it. On the desk lie two items: a small, thick book labeled WHATELEY ACADEMY STUDENT HANDBOOK, and a boxy black laptop.

Okay so they have provided some kind of computer and he will need to acquire sheets in addition to the contents of a typical suitcase and he is definitely not staring at the posters and hmm wait "money!"

Hopefully Morty didn't leave already and if he did he'll inquire with his new roommate but he doesn't want to impose on Isaac first thing.

Morty is not in the room. Isaac does his best to parse this abrupt statement. "Money, yes. As a scholarship kid, you have an account at the campus store, which starts with a fund of a few hundred dollars to get you on your feet. After you burn through that - which if you're anything like me you will very quickly - you'll want to get an on-campus job. I can take you to the C-Store if you want, it's not far."

"Okay, I was wondering if I needed to pick up a card or something. Let's do that."

"Oh, I think the card's in your handbook."

He will check the handbook for non-page contents and also see if anything leaps out at him from the table of contents or whatever introductory verbiage it has.

There's a card in there! Two, actually. One has a picture of his face on it, which is weird considering that he never posed for any such picture, and a serial number. It also has a few blank fields, including "Codename" and "Team Affiliation". The other is black with some heraldry on the front and a silver stripe on the back.

The table of contents includes RULES & REGULATIONS, STUDENT LIFE, COURSE CATALOGUE, and MISC.

...

At least it isn't a picture of him beholding Lord Paramount.

He will pocket the cards and leave the handbook for later.

Isaac leads him to the Campus Store.

The store is really big for a place that's supposed to be a school bookstore. Bedding is readily available, as are standard toiletries, with a few brands and levels of fanciness to choose between. Art supplies are available, including dry-pigment watercolor sets. There's also room necessities, such as ottomans, bean bag chairs, and Febreze. Also snacks. Also... tactical body armor, throwing knives, and handgun ammunition? A section labeled GADGETS contains micro-communicators, stun batons, and something called a "linear induction pistol" which promises non-lethality. There's a display of what looks like bricks of dried seaweed that a student is eyeing speculatively.

There's a big sale on what the sign terms "material components" - blocks of various metals and plastics, glass spheres, and small samples of more exotic materials including hypersteel, adamantium, and mithril.

Gosh, that's a lot of stuff.

He will take one of everything obtain necessities.

And stop by the display of "material components" and prod them thoughtfully, calculate a bunch of possible order totals on his phone, and spend half his starting budget on a bunch of different materials in whatever the cheapest-per-mass shape is, including ten pounds of marbles, a roll of webbing, and some of the exotic samples.

This is doable! The guy at the checkout counter scans his card and bags all the various stuff. (The bag containing the one-inch marble of hypersteel is the heaviest. Second-heaviest is the other marbles.)

Isaac notes the tone of his shopping and raises an eyebrow. "Gadgeteer?" he guesses.

"I'm supposed to go for testing tomorrow, so I don't really know, but I'm telekinetic but I can, like, reach inside and bend stuff instead of just moving it. Look —"

He pulls out three marbles, stares at them, and they flow together into a bigger, lumpier marble.

(He is showing off his SUPERPOWER. Whee.)

"Ooh!" Isaac looks suitably impressed. "Never heard of that before. So you're trying to see how you do with other materials?"

"Yeah, and I want to try putting together different materials and I think I can make, like, things, that aren't just blobs, if I practice. So, stuff to practice on."

"Cool." They start back toward Twain. "Glad you didn't spend all your money on that, though. Powers are fun, but you do also need a toothbrush."

"Might be able to make a toothbrush eventually. But yes, which is why I bought a toothbrush."

"So about those campus jobs..."

"Yeah, there's a bunch of them. A lot of them have probably filled up, so you're probably not going to get a cushy job at the library or anything, but somebody's always hiring. Especially the sewer maintenance team, they're good if you've got a high tolerance for danger."

"That requires some explanation."

Isaac laughs. "So, Whateley, right? School full of mutants. Mutants are crazy sometimes. Like, really crazy. Like, 'literally breed alligators in the sewers' crazy. And then there's the magic department. Which, you can have all the safety precautions in the world, but some asshole is still going to pour their test potion down the sink. Same goes for devisors and mysterious chemicals. So, the sewers? Full of alligators. Some of which have magical powers. It's quite a fucking thing."

"...that sounds really cool but the voice of caution in the back of my head says I need to at least start a course in threat identification first."

"Fair enough. I can't do sewer maintenance because of my sense of smell; even with those filter masks they have, I'd never make it through a day. I'm with groundskeeping instead."

They've made it back to Twain, and at some point night fell. Isaac heads up towards their room.

Jonathan will read the RULES AND REGULATIONS while practicing making shapes more precisely and trying to figure out more of the things his power does.

Rules and regulations are pretty simple: no fighting, no stealing, no power use on red flag days, et cetera. There's a uniform, but oddly enough, it's not mandatory, just available at the school store. The dress code itself restricts itself to the prohibition of offensive language on clothing and instituting a basically sensible minimum length on pants and skirts. (There is a rule that states that "certain extreme cases of GSD may at an administrator's discretion allow parts of this dress code to be waived," presumably to avert predictable discourse on the wearing of pants by centaurs.) There's also a specific rule against "shoulder angels," whatever those are.

Isaac fucks around on his laptop while Jonathan reads and practices. He gets fidgety around 8, and goes to bed at 9:00 on the dot.

That's pretty early. Huh.

How about that laptop?

The laptop works fine. It's firewalled against porn, but not against video games, if he's inclined to poke in that direction. It doesn't have anything more advanced than Minesweeper pre-loaded, though, so he can't exactly stress-test its gaming capacity.

He'll see what Whateley has for an intranet, skim the course catalog online or on paper depending on readability and currency, and go to bed at 10 and, well, try to sleep. It's all very weird and exciting and weird.

The school's website (apparently accessible only through Whateley laptops) is the homepage. It's remarkably well laid-out, with very little of the self-congratulatory nonsense typical of school websites. The course catalogue is readily available, as are academic advising appointment scheduling and the various other services required by a student making their way through the murky waters of the school system. The course catalogue has many normal classes, ranging from basic high-school level math and English to graduate-level physics and literature courses redeemable for college credit. It also has many abnormal classes, like "Costume Shop I (STRONGLY RECOMMENDED)," "Introduction to Basic Mystic Concepts", and "Special Topics - Flight".

A few hours after Jonathan goes to sleep, he may be woken up by a strange noise, like a hundred joints cracking loudly over the course of a few seconds.

Three seconds later he's sitting up, holding still, and looking and listening for what may have made the noise.

Well, there's a large snow-white wolf sitting in Isaac's bed now, shaking itself vigorously.

It gives Jonathan a somewhat challenging look.

Dog! Don't stare at it do regard it calmly.

…since there doesn't seem to have been any violence, probably this is either a really terrible prank or werewolves are a thing.

The wolf slips out of Isaac's bed and falls to the floor, landing with a muffled thump. Apparently unharmed, it noses the window open and bounds out into the night.

…right, time to try to go back to sleep and also expect the wolf might be coming back.

Right.

The wolf comes back at about 5am. This is notable because, their room being on the second floor, he has to physically leap up ten feet, catch himself on the windowframe with his forelegs, and scramble his way up into the room.

He shakes himself a few more times, then with that same moderately horrible noise he turns back into a (naked) Isaac and climbs back into bed.

He will have a peeking-out-from-under-the-covers roommate. Except for the naked part, then he can have a head-under-the-covers roommate.

(He's not scared. It's just less impolite than other alternatives. Honest.)

Isaac sighs and sits up in bed. "So I'm guessing nobody told you I'm a werewolf."

“Sorry. Uh, other than I vaguely remember a moon-related codename, no. Sorry.”

"You've got nothing to apologize for. What's got you scared?"

“Well, first it was the unknown and then it was offending you.”

"Alright then. Not offended, sorry for the shock, I'm gonna get the second half of my sleep, alright?"

“Alright.”

Snug nice cozy bed.

Eventually he actually falls asleep.

Bed loves him too.

Isaac gets up three hours later, heralded by an alarm consisting of very loud and annoying birdsong. He grabs a towel and heads over towards the bathrooms. Jonathan is free to wake up or not.

As teenagers go, Jonathan is usually an early riser. This will be fine. Really.

He follows Isaac's example. Regarding the bathroom, not regarding turning into a wolf.

The bathroom is full of naked monsters.

That's not entirely fair. There are several perfectly normal-looking teenage boys, along with a few boys who look less like normal teenage boys and more like Hollywood's idea of what a normal teenage boy looks like. However, there's also one boy with the lower body of a massive snake brushing his teeth, another who's all fine blue tentacles from the chest down who seems to be simultaneously shaving and brushing his hair, and one with expansive wings instead of arms who has a small implike creature grooming the feathers covering the nape of his neck.

There's a shower free, if he'd like to brave the gauntlet.

Yes okay this is what we signed up for fine go ahead.

He unfreezes and heads for the toilet, then the shower if it's still free. Having been tortured yesterday does not make for a fresh feeling. Tries not to stare at anything. Anyone. Again. He'll have to practice that skill apparently.

He receives some curious looks, as the New Kid, but nobody ventures as far as to interact.

The shower is: a shower. Larger than one might expect from a dorm shower, but that would seem to make sense given the size of some of the GSD cases.

Once he emerges, most of the crowd is gone, but the naga is still present, shining his scales with a washcloth and a bottle of some purple liquid that kind of looks like dish soap. He looks up as Jonathan leaves the shower. "Hello. I don't believe we've met; I'm Serpentmind. Dorjee Tseng." He unbends and extends a hand.

Ahhh since when do you combine social with bathroom.

"Uh. Hi. Jonathan. No uh codename yet."

He busies himself with drying his hair.

Dorjee returns his hand to scale-shining. "My apologies. Regrettably, this is just about the only time that the population of Twain is all predictably together, so much of my bridge-building is conducted under otherwise inappropriate circumstances. I simply wished to inform you that I am Twain Cottage's fixer, so if you have any trouble with another student, or indeed with any other aspect of your experience at Whateley, please come to me and we'll see if we can sort it out."

“Fixer”. What has he gotten himself into.

“Uh. I see. Thank you.”

He flees with his mostly dry hair.

When he gets back to his room, Isaac is leaving, backpack slung over one shoulder. He nods to Jonathan.

There's a note on Jonathan's desk reading POWERS TESTING AT 10AM IN LAB A. ALSO REPORT TO DOYLE MEDICAL COMPLEX FOR SCREENING ASAP. How the note got there is unclear.

Well, someone could have walked in, nodded to Isaac, and left it there.

Seeing as he has over an hour he figures the “screening” probably won't take that long, consults the map in the student handbook (when he has money to spare he should get a locally-usable phone), and heads over to DOYLE MEDICAL COMPLEX.

Doyle Medical Complex is: a hospital!

The man at the front desk smiles politely. "What are you here for?"

"'Screening'. I'm a new student."

He presents the note in case it contains additional clues.

He glances at it and nods. "You want Ophelia Tenent. Room 114." He points to the appropriate hallway.

He will traverse the appropriate hallway.

Doctor Tenent's door is open. She's aging well, despite the grey streaks through her foor-foot-long prehensile blonde hair. She turns to him as he enters. "Jonathan, right? I'm Dr. Ophelia Tenent. This shouldn't take long, have a seat."

After THE BATHROOM he is not going to be particularly perturbed by some hair. Polite smile and sitting where directed.

"So what's a screening?"

"Well, we have to make sure all of our students are healthy, and that means finding out any diseases or medical conditions you might have and handling them appropriately. Also, since you're from another universe, you're probably going to be missing several very important vaccinations. You'll need to read and sign this."

A lock of hair picks up a clipboard and pen and hands them to him. The form on the clipboard asks some fairly exacting questions about his medical history (has he ever had chicken pox? suffered from depression? visited the island nation of Karedonia?), requests his consent to either a simple magical scan or extensive bloodwork, and asks him to check off any of the following vaccinations he has not received (tetanus, polio, airborne Ebola, Hyperplague, et c).

He will check off the things he recognizes and mention there's a lot he doesn't. He is a healthy outdoorsy teenager who has not had any serious medical issues and in fact has not seen a doctor very often.

"I don't know, what's the differences?" he says of the scan.

"The bloodwork takes a few days and requires that I draw five vials of your blood. The scan takes fifteen seconds during which I look at you with my eyes all glowy. But some students have religious objections to magic, so we include the blood draw option out of... inclusivity, or respect, or whatever."

"I have no objections."

"Excellent." Her hair plucks the clipboard from his hands and deposits it on a nearby table, then several tendrils of it separate and begin glowing. Doctor Tenent's eyes do indeed glow as she peers at Jonathan. "Hmmm... mm... no, no lurking horrors." The glow flickers away as she stands and begins filling several syringes. "Now for the fun part. Do you have any objections to me assisting the process with magic by temporarily numbing your arm and magically causing the fluid to disperse through your body?"

"Fun, she says. Yes. Er, no. Objections."

"Good," she says. "You might want to close your eyes if you're squeamish."

There follows a great deal of vaccination. True to her word, Ophelia's hair does another glowy thing and there's an odd sensation like liquid flowing through him, and the nascent swelling goes down immediately.

"There you go," she says, unnecessarily dusting her hands off. (Two strands of her hair duplicate the motion as well.) "All is well; you may go if you're not dying for more of my stellar company."

"I believe not dying is preferable. Thanks!"

He walks out of the medical center and looks for a long and possibly woodsy route to kill time until the powers testing lab.

There are routes through the woods! Some are forbidden by the RULES AND REGULATIONS, but they're clearly demarcated if so.

Then he will have a nice relaxing unweird walk. Right?

Well, maybe. Halfway through he runs into a girl irritably attempting to uproot a large rock, or possibly a small boulder. She's having more luck than one might expect from a girl her size and a rock that size, but some luck is not necessarily enough in this circumstance.

...he'll see if she looks like she Would Like Help With That before interacting.

She notices him and pauses for a moment. She wipes a hand across her forehead, leaving a smear of dirt. "You wouldn't happen to have some kind of helpful power, would you? This stupid rock is blocking the ley line."

"Uh —"

Pause to consider that yes he does have a power and yes it is relevant and does this request sound reasonable eh close enough.

"— yeah. Does the rock need to be left alone other than being moved? I am literally on my way to powers testing and don't know if there might be, like, side effects."

The girl stands up gratefully, trying to brush off her skirt and only managing to make it worse. "Nah, you can break it if you want. It just needs to not be where it is."

He looks for the currently bottom-most part of the rock that isn't covered in fresh dirt and rests his hands on them for a few seconds, then steps back.

The girl looks at him sideways, but doesn't comment, probably assuming he's going to do something that takes some leadup.

What he is going to do is walk around to the other side of the rock and then cause it to roll out of its current pit with no spectacle whatsoever other than some leaning back like he was pulling on a nonexistent rope.

He pulls the rock over to a place that is definitely not on or near the path.

The girl exhales. "Thank you. I'm Jesse, by the way - Compass. I'd offer to shake hands, but." She claps her hands together, causing a little of the dirt to fall off.

"Jonathan, no code name yet, I just got here."

Clearly he needs one to introduce himself less awkwardly.

She nods. "Took me a while to figure one out for myself, too. I don't love 'Compass', but it's better than 'Ley', which, you know, kind of handing myself over to the smartasses on a silver platter."

He takes a moment to get it, then winces.

"Right. I need to actually figure out the rest of what I do before I know what to call myself. And check the taken names list, which I'm sure will be horribly disappointing."

She nods. "TK's pretty common. Everybody finds something, though. Well- I'm gonna go take a shower, I think. Have fun with powers testing!"

"That's the plan!"

Speaking of plans, time to hurry up a little bit.

There are no more random encounters along the way. He'll make it to the underground labs in time.

When he gets to the labs, he's greeted by a gentleman in a labcoat whose nametag says he's Doctor Duncan. "Hello! Are you Jonathan Strand?"

"Unless my life is even weirder than I currently think it is, yes!"

Dr. Duncan laughs. "Well, it probably is, based on experience, but maybe not in that particular way. Come on in."

The lab has various features, notably a desktop computer, a treadmill, and an expansive set of weights. "Now, as far as you know now, what are your powers?"

"I'm tougher and stronger than I was — someone said I'm probably an Exemplar — and I have weirdly complicated telekinesis."

"How's your telekinesis weirdly complicated?"

"I have to get to know stuff before I can move it, and I can feel it inside, and I can reshape some materials or just mangle others. And I can't make stuff float, it's always like it's attached to me, but maybe that's how it usually works."

"No, that's abnormal. Typically there's only a token sensory component. Fascinating. Can you demonstrate on..." He casts around for an object, then picks up one of the lower weights. "This. Just 'get to know it' and move it around some."

"Oh and it's faster or slower depending on the material. Metal and glass are easy, plastic is a little slower, wood is really slow and I have to, like, pay attention to the wood grain on the inside to get through it."

He holds the weight, waits a few seconds, and then lifts it up — with his right hand fisted above it like there's an invisible rope.

"And you say you can reshape the material? Can you do that with this one?"

"Sure, but I won't be able to get it back to this shape, okay?"

The researcher waves a hand. "That's fine. We've got dozens of the lower weights."

He turns it into a blob and then a lumpy crooked bar.

"Hmm. Alright. I'd like you to go down the row and see how high a weight you can lift with your power."

The weights range from 1-10lb, then by tens until 100, then by hundreds until 1000, then one ton, then by tons until 20. The ton weights are inscribed with strange runes.

"Well, I still need to lift it not with my power..."

He gives it a try. He is surprised by his own strength, because he can manage to get the 500 pound weight off the ground, though he's not in any sense picking it up with his hands, just touching it then straddling it and straightening his legs.

He lets the weight down gently, and then looks thoughtful.

"500 pounds, then... TK-4A, unless you can form a telekinetic shell... is something wrong?"

"It's not a limit on my power that I can feel, I just can't lift that much. But I noticed something putting it down."

He steps over to the thousand-pound weight that he didn't budge, straddles it, and — lifts it without moving a muscle, by only an inch off the ground. Then puts it down again.

"I noticed when I first got my power that moving stuff without moving myself only sort of worked sometimes and not for anything heavier than a bit of paper. But it seems like I took some energy out of putting the other one down gently that I could use to pick this one up."

"Fascinating," Dr. Duncan says. "Some sort of- internal reservoir? Can you try doing that repeatedly, to build up a charge, and see how far you can take it?"

He tries. It seems to keep working, allowing him to lift the big one further. On the other hand, lifting weights is tiring and also boring.

Dr. Duncan notices this. "Hmm- stop for a moment. Can you actually feel energy being added to your reservoir?"

"I think so, but the feeling is mixed up with everything else."

"Alright. Don't go anywhere."

He goes into his office for a minute and fiddles with a control panel. A robotic arm descends from the ceiling and picks up the 500-pound weight. "Try to take the weight from the arm using your ability," he says over a speaker. "Sort of a tug-of-war thing."

Ooookay.

He stands facing the weight side-on and spreads his feet out and pulls.

The robot arm pulls as well. It also pulls away, moving backwards slowly but surely.

"That's adding energy. I could do more of this if I had something to brace on."

A chest-high wall rises seamlessly from the floor.

He stands with his back flat against the wall and pulls harder.

The robot arm gets about a thousand pounds of opposing force.

"I feel like I could pull harder but I think if I slip it'd hurt me!"

"Well, don't do that. It looks like we're at about a thousand pounds, that's enough for anyone to be getting on with. How long do you think you can maintain this level of pull?"

"It's not tiring at all. I'm not doing anything other than paying attention to it. It's just that if I try to change it while it was stronger it might crush me on the inside, or that's what it feels like. I have to distribute the pull evenly over my body."

"Alright. I'd like you to keep it up for a minute and then see how much you can lift."

He can do that.

When they return to the line of weights he can now lift the thousand-pound weight up as far as he likes, limited by the geometric constraint of heeding to be standing above it. The smaller ones that he's confident in handling, he can raise up to the ceiling with a bit of care.

"And the one-ton?" Dr. Duncan prompts.

Identically awkward.

"Hmm. Alright, so we're still at TK-4A exertion of force no matter how much energy you have available. I'd like to conduct a few tests on what kinds of energy you can draw from." He pulls out a lighter and flicks it on. "I don't particularly expect this to work, but try to claim this."

He tries.

He can get the frame of the lighter, and the fuel, and the wick, but the flame slips out of his mental grasp.

"Alright."

Next he ducks into his office and emerges carrying a sculpture consisting of a waterwheel turned by a sourceless waterfall, which spills into a base-bowl the water level of which doesn't change. "It runs on a tiny portal," he explains. "Try drawing from the motion of the wheel."

He sits down at a table and tries to accomplish this task and eventually manages to spill all the water out by having the base spin around the wheel instead of vice versa.

"...can I get a refill?"

"Yes," Dr. Duncan says with a slight smile. He fills up a cup at the water fountain and pours it on the waterwheel, where it begins cycling through the portal again.

Fiddle fiddle fiddle.

"...oh."

The waterwheel is now slowed down but he is getting up and going over to the weights.

Dr. Duncan perks up. "Epiphany?"

"I don't have to attach things to me!"

He grabs three of the weights he lifted before and arranges them in a triangle around the one-ton weight. And up it goes with no strain and no fuss.

Dr. Duncan claps excitedly. "Fantastic! Based on how simple that seemed I'll put you down as a tentative TK-5A - unless you want to try the 5-ton or 20-ton with that trick?"

"Got something better suited for, uh, foot plates? Don't want to crack your floor. Or I could mangle some more of the weights, whichever."

"I will be extraordinarily surprised if you manage to crack this floor. You may note that it is currently supporting 210 tons' worth of dumbbells with no strain."

He will rearrange larger objects using smaller ones as — bases? anchors? feet? — until he has another triangle setup around the 20-ton, well, can you really call it a dumbbell properly.

Up it goes — and stops eight inches above the ground.

"Out of energy."

"Alright! That's TK-7A. This is probably the last test we'll run on your telekinesis, but I'd like to see if there's a cap on your energy reserves."

"Okay."

Dr. Duncan ducks into his office again and emerges with an electric motor, which he turns on. "You should be able to use this like the waterwheel," he suggests. "It seems more efficient than setting up a game of tug-of-war whenever you need to recharge."

“Oh! That should work.”

He pokes the electric motor on the case and the end of the shaft. Then it slows down.

“That works really well.”

It slows down a bit more. Then stops abruptly.

"Oops?"

"Oh, of course - acting against resistance - uh, it overheated and tripped the thermal overload cutout. We can get it back in a minute when it cools down, just... don't take quite that much from it that fast."

"I have the feeling I'm going to be taking an engineering course or two."

He tries again. The motor doesn't stop this time.

After a few minutes he lifts the 20-ton weight further, to a couple feet from the floor. Puts it back down.

“I have more but it doesn't feel any different.”

"Hm. You can take the motor and do some science on your own, if you like; I'll just pick up another at the Workshops. For reasons of time, though, I'm going to want to move on to the Exemplar testing soon."

"Okay."

He directs Jonathan to the desktop computer, where a test is administered. There are sections on memorization (increasing strings of numbers, skimming and immediately reciting paragraphs or pages of text), spatial reasoning in up to eight dimensions, and an absolutely brutal strategy game like a cross between Go, 3D chess, and the Game of Mao. There are also straight math and English and science sections, the last of which shades into the bizarre towards the end. (There are entirely too many quantities approaching infinity.)

Jonathan takes these tests like a high school student who has recently had weird things done to him.

Then comes the physical! There are tests of speed, deadlift capability, endurance, et cetera. Breaks are at regular intervals, including protein bars and water as necessary.

One of the later tests appears to be another test of speed. He is placed on a treadmill and set to go at a certain rate.

Abruptly, out of the console pops a boxing glove on a spring, moving much faster than aerodynamics should allow it to.

He just barely knocks it out of the way with a flailing arm, trips, and falls.

He falls over stiffly and thumps into the padded floor like an unusually non-brittle statue.

"…ow."

Dr. Duncan helps him up. "Sorry about that. Test of reflexes and automatic defense mechanisms, standard procedure. Speaking of which, did you do something with your power there? You fell oddly."

“Uh, yeah, I. Made myself stiff instead of squishy. Ow. I think I bruised some things.”

"That seems the opposite of helpful," Dr. Duncan notes. "Fortunately, that was the last of the physical tests. I'd place you at Ex-3, which means you're above human limits both physically and mentally. You're not bulletproof, but you're pretty well enhanced. Also, due to your natural regeneration as an Exemplar, those bruises will go away within a couple of hours."

"No, I mean like I hurt my muscles and everything doing that. Saved my outside at the expense of my inside. Ow."

"Oh dear. Do you need help getting to Dr. Tenent's office?"

He sits up, wincing.

“I have no idea how bad this is or isn't. Feels like I could walk.”

"I'll get you somebody in case you collapse on the way there."

He exits the room and comes back with a six-foot-tall girl wearing a partial suit of power armor. She extends a hand to help Jonathan up.

He accepts the help up and out, wincing all the way.

The girl starts off towards the medical center.

She's pretty laconic, for a value of "laconic" that includes "completely silent."

His part of the conversation is muttered “ow”s.

After the third or so, she looks quite concerned.

"Would you like me to carry you? I'm very strong."

His mind weighs embarrassment and pain and good judgement.

“yes please i think i'm probably fine but I don't really know”

She picks him up with no visible effort and holds him in a bridal carry. She continues at a jog, keeping her arms steady so Jonathan isn't jostled.

"There's no shame in knowing your own limits!" she proclaims. "Even a minor injury can grow in severity if ignored."

Mmph.

She's a fast jogger. They make it to the medical center pretty quickly; she brings him to Dr. Tenent's room immediately.

Dr. Tenent clicks her tongue in concern as her hair starts glowing. "Oh, dear. I wasn't expecting to see you again so soon. What happened?"

"Uh, I fell down in power testing and I tried to use my power and I hurt myself worse than not doing anything would have."

Her now-glowing eyes narrow. "Was it that fucking boxing glove thing?"

"—yes."

"I hate that thing," she groans. "I keep telling them one of these days that routine is going to get someone seriously hurt. If not a kid, then a tester. You seem to have just... strained pretty much every muscle in your body simultaneously. You'll be alright within a couple of days, or a couple of hours if you're an Exemplar. When you start Martial Arts they'll teach you how to take a fall properly and you shouldn't have that problem again."

"Yeah. Exemplar. Thanks."

"...Alice?" Dr. Tenent prompts.

"Yes?" the girl in power armor responds.

"You can put him down now."

Alice puts him down.

"If it's just muscles and they'll be OK shortly I'll just walk carefully to my room and rest?"

"Exactly what I would recommend," Dr. Tenent says.

Alice waves goodbye and starts jogging back towards the lab/workshop area.

Then he will do that.

It being the middle of the school day, Twain is pretty empty. The only person in the front hall is a balding centaur wearing a tweed jacket. He looks up. "Can I- oh! You must be our new resident. I'm Amos Edgely, housefather of Twain. Glad to finally meet you." He extends a hand. "I hope you're settling in well?"

"Sorry, I need to lie down," he says as he limps towards his room.

"Oh? I have healing, if that'd help."

He has read barely enough of the student handbook to know that "housefather" is in fact some kind of official position. He does not actually want to be in pain for another hour or so or to put off everyone who bothers him much as he is in the mood for that right now. He stops.

"Uh, okay. It is just — muscles."

"Well, it does seem to be troubling you." Amos closes his eyes and a white light coalesces in his palm, then extends to Jonathan.

He's not in pain anymore! Hooray.

"Thank you."

Amos beams. "You're welcome! I like to think I have these gifts for a reason. Now you can go on up, I won't keep you."

Technically his reason for doing that is now gone. In fact his to-do list is empty, other than possibly finishing powers testing? But he can inquire via e-mail what to do about that and Dr. Duncan did not tell him to make sure to come back soon.

He not-limps up to his room.

There's an electric motor on his desk, along with two notes.

Jonathan,

Sorry again about that last test. Your final rating is TK-7a, Ex-3. Which is very good. You didn't say one way or the other about the motor, so I decided to just send it to you; you can drop it off at the Devisor labs if you don't want it. Have fun at Whateley!

-Dr. Duncan

The other just says CHECK YOUR EMAIL.

He will refamiliarize himself with the motor, plug it in, and park it in a corner. Because he might as well practice, and more energy is good, right?

Then check his email.

His email contains one message about how to set up and use his email account and another telling him to how to register for classes online.

Does this come with any information on required and recommended classes?

It doesn't, but the registration site does!

Recommended classes include English Lit 2, Costume Shop 1, Mutants and World History, and any of several art classes.

Required classes are Powers Theory, Powers Lab, and either Basic Martial Arts or Survival.

If he does not have to take English Lit 2 then he is not going to.

He thinks he should probably get some, like, physics and engineering or something, given the nature of his power. What sort of prerequisites does that imply adding?

The site reminds him that he'll have to take some English classes at some point, but if he does not want that point to be right now it doesn't have to be.

He can take Intro Physics right off the bat, actually. There's more advanced physics on tap, but it requires Calculus 1, and Calculus 1 requires either Algebra, Geometry, and Trig, or just Pre-Calculus. (He's marked as having already taken Algebra and Geometry. Probably that's from the Exemplar mental test.) Most of the engineering classes require Calculus Physics. Some of the really advanced ones have minimum recommended Exemplar/Devisor/Gadgeteer ratings, too.

Okay, so to get those things going, Intro Physics and Pre-Calculus. And the required classes and definitely Mutants and World History, and ... how many is he supposed to be picking?

Six to eight. Powers Theory and Lab count as one class.

Physics, Pre-Calculus, Powers, Basic Martial Arts, Mutants and World History, Costume Shop 1, and for that art class, Intro to Sculpture and Mixed Media because that sounds like something he can 'cheat' at. That's seven.

Can he get some advice somewhere on whether this is a reasonable plan?

Well, Amos is still probably downstairs.

...okay, this is plausibly the kind of thing Amos is for.

He will go down and inquire.

Amos is ready and willing to check Jonathan's schedule!

"Seems perfectly reasonable to me. You like science, huh? It's nice to see someone who isn't a Devisor taking an interest."

“Weeeeeelllllll, my power kind of is about moving and building things so I figured I need to know more about what I'm doing. Especially considering the accident. It's not exactly my what-I-want-to-grow-up-to-be but I think it'll be worth it.”

"Ah, that makes sense. Still, a lot of kids in your position would just coast on the power they have. It's good to think about how to improve yourself."

...okay he'll go full cheese.

"I'm not gonna coast, I'm gonna fly. Even if I have to figure out how first."

Amos grins at him. "That's the spirit."

Annnnd now he will go upstairs and complete his registrations.

This happens!

It turns out the Exemplar tests took a while, because it's 3:00. It's not long before boys start returning to Twain. This includes Isaac, who tosses his bag onto his bed and slouches into his rolly chair.

"What a day, what a day. Jonathan, my roommate and bosom friend, how are you."

He opens his mouth to reply immediately, pauses, then starts listing things and counting them on his fingers.

"Apparently ley lines are a thing, powers testing is dangerous, and you have entirely too many people with weird titles."

Isaac counts on his fingers in turn. "Ley lines are indeed a thing, yes. I don't remember powers testing being that dangerous, but perhaps we have different reactions to boxing gloves. As to weird titles, I haven't got a clue what you're talking about and you'll have to cite your sources."

"'Housefather', 'fixer', and yes the boxing glove which can technically be said to have sent me to the hospital."

"Good lord, really? Remind me not to roughhouse with you anytime soon. Anyway, yes, I suppose those are a bit weird. Fixers aren't quite official but they aren't quite not, it's just a formalization of what already happens when you get enough people together in one place. Namely, one of them will try to meddle in everyone else's business. Dorjee's good people, though, we let him meddle because he's good at it. He keeps the petty little bullshit that teens naturally generate from building up into blood feud as it ordinarily will."

"Okay, I will try to take him less dubiously. And I just need to practice with my power more so as not to do that particular thing again, or do it right. It's been less than two days."

Isaac abruptly shakes his head. "What is that noise? Is there a-" He notices the motor. "What on God's green fuck is that?"

"It is a" — he makes a show of reading the nameplate — "one-horsepower electric motor. Which gives me the strength of a horse, because apparently I absorb energy from moving objects."

Isaac blinks. "Cool. Very cool. I'll try and get used to that noise, then. A roommate does not complain about his roommate's special powerup item, that's definitely somewhere in the Bro Code."

"Seriously, if it does bother you I can find other things to do. This is just what we found worked in testing. And I don't need it all the time and it could live in some closet somewhere. I'm still figuring things out."

"Okay, maybe turn it off at night. But I am actually able to ignore things."

"And yet it is better not to have to!"

“So I registered for classes and I got my power tested and now what should I definitely be doing besides scrambling to catch up? With the note that I am only sometimes a people person.”

Isaac considers this. "You won't have to scramble too badly, classes have only been running for a couple of days. Stuff to do... I dunno, I mostly just play GEO and smoke when there's not some kind of event happening. Despite my charming accent, I'm secretly kind of boring."

"We'll probably get along fine then. GEO?"

Isaac raises an eyebrow. "You are from a parallel universe. Good and Evil Online - GEO - is the single best video game ever invented. The sheer depth of the system... It's what you get when Devisors make video games instead of death rays. It's like every overblown teaser trailer for a fantasy action-RPG, except it's real, and it's exactly as good if not better than what they say. Plus, despite being an MMO, you don't need friends to play. Which is nice."

“What's a video game?”

He does not manage to keep a straight face while saying this.

Isaac smirks. "Very funny."

He pulls his bag down from the bed and takes out his laptop. "Think I'd better get started on homework. This lit class I'm taking has us reading Brave New World, and I find this Huxley fellow's ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to his newsletter."

“And I need to find out what homework even looks like for me, namely by — uh, you do have textbooks here, right, it isn't all computerized or magically injected into your brain?”

"There are textbooks, yes. Not for every class, some of them are all computerized, but there are textbooks. Typically they're handed out in class, though."

"Oh. D'you think that they'll have them for late registrations?"

"Yeah, there's always extras."

“Well, that's just great! I have nothing to do! Again!"

He punctuates this with much arm-waving.

Isaac shrugs. "There's always running naked through the woods. Invigorates the spirit."

"…you're serious."

He grins toothily. "Admittedly, it helps to be able to turn into a wolf. And you're either unusually perceptive or unusually literal-minded; that usually hits people as a joke."

“Most of those people aren't your roommates, I imagine?”

He grabs his copy of the STUDENT HANDBOOK.

"Ah. Fair enough, I am a bit... casual."

“Don't, uh, feel like you need to change your habits on my behalf.”

He attempts to hide in reading the handbook.

Isaac raises one eyebrow with glacial slowness.

Doesn't comment, though. He's letting that one sit right where it fell.

Jonathan is definitely reading this book!

Isaac drops the eyebrow and grins. "I think I'm going to be changing some of my habits anyway. Just as a matter of neighborliness." He considers. "At least while you're in the room."

Squawk!

Hee.

Isaac settles into Brave New World.

Jonathan is going to FINISH READING THIS BOOK and learn all about STUDENT LIFE and MISC.

STUDENT LIFE talks about the various student organizations: the Mystics (a club for wizards-in-training), Venus Inc. (a club for models-in-training), the Jewish Life Association (a club for Jews), et cetera. There's also a listing of student teams, with membership. Apparently Venus Inc. has a militant arm.

MISC. explains various elements of the rest of the guide. Apparently a Houseparent is responsible for, well, being the responsible grown-up in charge of a bunch of rowdy teenagers. They provide guidance, keep order, disperse announcements, et cetera. A student team is a group of students who fight together in the Combat Simulators; most take Team Tactics together, to learn how to work together better in combat situations. There's also a rundown of power terminology and a list of powers along with their approximate strength by rating.

Have they got any organizations that are about one or more kinds of going to outdoors places and doing athletic and/or adventurous things?

Well, there is a parkour group, which is in fact athletic and outdoors. Most seem not to appreciate the outdoors on its own merits, or if they do they don't do it in groups.

Parkour is totally one kind of going to outdoors places and doing athletic and occasionally adventurous things. He'll take it. Presumably he can go find their gathering on the weekend or something.

Hmm ... ... ... practice with his power that he now understands better, then go to dinner a bit early. Or maybe when Isaac does, that seems like an appropriate notion.

Isaac stands up about an hour later and stretches loudly. "Weird book," he declares. "Very weird. You up for food?"

"Nope! I run on electricity now! — not actually. That would be cool but also boring.”

He drops some of the stuff he was fiddling with in his pockets and stands up.

"It could be a lot weirder. At least you don't have to eat rocks."

As they enter, the Crystal Hall is starting to fill up, but there's still a good amount of seating. The lines are relatively short, too. Isaac makes a beeline for the assorted meats.

Jonathan goes for variety. Still no rocks.

Has Isaac saved a seat for him?

Well, there is an empty seat at his table. He's sitting with a blue-skinned boy with four arms and very large ears, and a seven-foot-tall concrete statue.

Plop.

Isaac raises a hand. "Hullo Jonathan. Boys, this is Jonathan, my new roommate. No codename as of yet."

"Arjun Patel," the blue-skinned boy says in a light Indian accent. "Gana. Nice to meet you."

"Josh Zabcik," the statue offers. "Manhattan. Same."

"Hi!"

He does not have any notions of how to positively interact with new people right now, so: food and listening.

"Arjun," Isaac asks, "remind me what you're taking this semester?"

"Why, so you feel better about your life?" Arjun gripes. "I'm TAing Magic for Non-Mages and taking Psychic Defense 2, Mystic Algebra, European History, Magical Theory 3, and Team Tactics 2. All that plus Cape Squad meetings and Security duty is probably going to eat my life completely, but what can you do."

"Does Justin know you call his club Cape Squad?" Isaac wonders.

Arjun rolls his eyes. "I'm not going to call it Future Superheroes of America. I'm Indian. It's bad enough wearing that stupid eagle pin to meetings."