"Seventeen of my planet's years but is there a reason to expect they'd be the same—?"

"The spell should let you know how long seconds, minutes, and hours are; there are twenty-four hours in a day, and approximately 365 days in a year. Does that sound about right?"

"Oh, huh, yeah. ...that's extremely weird."

"Not significantly weirder than us both being recognizably human," Mrs. Carson comments. "Which is admittedly very weird."

She pulls a small packet and a clipboard out from her desk and scribbles a few things on the paper, then slides it over to Kaede. The form contains some relatively standard questions (home address [which has been crossed out], blood type, and gender [with a wide variety of options]), and less standard questions (tentative power ratings, GSD/BIT/MATD irregularities, age of manifestation, sexuality). It's not very long.

"...blood has types? What's a nonbinary? And why is—I think I need some more explanations."

Mrs. Carson looks slightly embarrassed. “Oh, of course, I’m sorry - blood type you can leave blank and we’ll find it out at your medical examination, it’d only really come up in an emergency. Nonbinary means someone who does not fully or consistently identify as male or female. Let’s see...” She takes out a copy of the form and looks it over. “GSD is another word for ‘visible mutations’, it’s any way your body has been altered by your powers to be different from a baseline human’s. Age of manifestation you can disregard, it sounds like your magic doesn’t crop up suddenly like ours does. Any further questions? I’m sorry, I was sort of on autopilot while filling this out and I didn’t consider your lack of context.”

"Oh, okay. I guess I'm nonbinary? Sometimes I'm a girl, sometimes I'm a boy, and—I do use magic to change my body, too, and also regardless of which gender I am the bodies I usually use don't look like the body I would've had if I hadn't ever used any magic, my skin was way darker and my hair was different, I changed for reasons," she explains, waving a hand vaguely. "Why is this part important, though? And—sexuality? That's, like, I guess mine is all of them?—bisexual, huh, what a neat word."

“It’s part of the process we use to determine where to house you,” Mrs. Carson explains. “We try to maintain a culture of zero tolerance when it comes to bullying, but even so, issues of sexuality and gender variance are somewhat touchy in our culture, and people don’t always realize what’s necessary to provide a safe space, so we have Poe Cottage, where students who don’t fit into society’s norms can maintain their own internal culture.”

"Bu...llying. Another interesting word. And you have that for people's genders? And sexualities? ...I guess it's better than having that for people's magic which they're born with and absolutely no way to control for."

“We have that too,” Mrs. Carson says unhappily. “Not here, obviously, because this is a school for mutants, but mutants are frequently persecuted in the larger world simply for being mutants. We are working on it, but due to factors like religious support of the practice and public fear of supervillains, it’s an uphill struggle.”

"Oh. Well. Delightful," she says, and sighs. "Uh, anyway—what are possible power ratings? And, our magic does have a manifestation actually, we're born with it but we only actually get access to it later. I was very early, I got it when I was four, most people who get it do it between their middle teens and early twenties, with some—outliers, I really like this language—in both directions."

"Power ratings! Avatars channel the power of a spirit, granting us other powers besides that, based on what spirit we access. Devisors, like Mortimer, make machines that don't function based 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 metallic armor or a geyser of human blood. 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 by teleporting. Mages have an easier time using some specific form of magic, and psychics have telepathic abilities, often along with telekinesis." She's clearly gone through this list many times. "Based on your unique magic - well, unique to us - I'd classify you as a mage. Probably a Wiz-3, on the seven-point scale. You can put that down for your tentative rating."

She does that, "Although I think the only things in that list my magic can't do one way or another is the instinctual understanding thing and the laws of reality thing."

“Yes, magic tends to be rather broad in scope. One of the reasons I practice it. But these categories are for innate powers. The fact that a sufficiently skilled devisor or gadgeteer or mage could imitate them is irrelevant to the rating system unless they make a permanent change to themselves that allows them to do it at will.”

She nods. "That makes sense. And it's lots of different kinds of magic, huh."

“We don’t typically refer to mutant powers as magic,” Mrs. Carson cautions. “The term is used more or less exclusively for the use of Essence to accomplish supernatural effects. But yes, powers are very diverse, and the list doesn’t even really cover all of them, just the most conventional ones.”

"Yeah, I guess that's fair. The translation doesn't seem to be exact but—supernatural effect that consumes a supernatural resource that some people have and can be trained and all that, it's similar to how it works back home and that's the only term we have for our powers and my magic detected Mortimer's whatever-it-is but I guess I have no idea what-all my magic can interact with and what it considers to be in its purview, yeah. Never had reason to wonder before."

Mrs. Carson nods. "There's not a rule against it or anything, it's just slightly confusing. Not all powers consume resources, though - devisors and gadgeteers, for instance, can easily invent all day. And often do, if no one stops them to make them eat and go to their classes."

"Yeah which just makes it weirder that I can see Mortimer's magic, but it was there."

Shrug. "Well, wish as we might, powers don't always have to make sense. Would you like a tour of the grounds now that you're officially a student? I can summon a student tour guide and get started on your paperwork."

"Sounds good to me!"

She picks up a phone off her desk and dials it. "Hello, can I get a student ambassador for a new student? -good lord, really? I- yes, alright, send him over." She puts down the phone, eyebrows raised. "Apparently your student ambassador will be Mr. Halliwell. Unless you object to that, in which case I'm sure I can find someone else?"

"I don't have any reason to object to that, no."

"Excellent," Mrs. Carson says. "In that case, you can wait for him in the waiting room and I can get started on the miracle of bureaucracy."

The waiting room is much more comfortable than most of its kind, with soft chairs and a magazine bin containing back issues of Highlights for Kids and National Geographic.

She doesn't have much time to appreciate it, because after a few minutes someone trips on the doorframe, almost falling onto his face but catching himself at the last moment. It's Morty! "Hi!" he says as he rights himself. "Morty Halliwell, here to show you around instead of accidentally kidnapping you this time. Sorry about that."

"I didn't have anywhere I was expected in the next, oh, ever, so really not that big a deal." She stands up. "Why don't you lead the way?"