Sadde nods vigorously. "But when people don't take me seriously I use that."

"Hmmm?"

"Well they don't pay attention to me so I just do whatever and then if they wanna scold me I play up the innocent kid thing. Or I pretend to be dumber than I am to get things I want. I didn't have to do that with mum—" her voice cracks a bit here "—but teachers yeah."

"I asked Legend if I can tutor you. Since school doesn't sound super helpful."

"You mentioned! Can you do it? You're such a better teacher!"

"I don't know but maybe. Legend seemed to think it'd be a good idea."

"Awesome!"

"Legend seems nice."

"Yeah. This is better than I thought it would be."

"What'd you think it'd be?"

"I don't know, more... controlling?"

"If it gets controlling we can just leave and they probably don't want us to do that and they're not like the Valar who can't respond to incentives."

"Valar?"

"These stupid gods from my home world."

"What did they do?"

"They sent Boots back to Materia where she could have died! Because she was inventing wizardry and making everything nice and they didn't like it because of some stupid prophecies that weren't going to come true anymore anyway."

"...I have like a million questions about everything you just said."

"Okay! I don't have to go back to Brazil for a couple hours."

So she starts asking him all sorts of questions about what Materia is and Boots and the prophecies and wizardry—

Boots is the person he lives with he left his parents because he didn't get along with them, and she landed in Arda in a dimensional transit accident from Materia. Materia is this terrible horrible world that hates science.

Hates science? What kinda world is that? How does a world hate science? And why would the Valar send anyone there?

Because they are terrible!!!!!!! If you try to do science in Materia the thing you are trying to study will stop working that way or you will get eaten.

That's terrible. That is incredibly terrible. That is so terrible.

There was a version of him in this world who died three times before he was 13 and after the third they couldn't even resurrect him! Still can't! He might exist in one of Materia's horrible afterlives, though.

A version of him?