"Someone" is, in this case, a girl looking extremely confused.

Extremely confused girl says something in a language that, to an untrained ear, might sound some kind of Slavic, except it's not any of the existing earthly Slavic languages.

“Um,” Morty says astutely. “You don’t speak English, do you? ...parlez-vous Francais?”

...different language, this one some strange mix of Asian—and Latin-sounding?

Morty shakes his head, then pauses. “Is that a universal sign, shaking your head?” He tries a Gallic shrug instead.

Well, she seems to at least understand it well enough to mimic it and smile at him.

Oh no a cute girl smiled at him what do. He attempts to smile back, and mostly manages it.

”I... guess I’d better call Administration so a psychic can get your language and somebody can put you back where you came from? I don’t know why I’m talking out loud about this, I guess it just seems friendlier that way. Just, uh, sit tight.”

She did not understand a word of that so she'll just assume that since that didn't sound like a question he tried to say something reassuring. She makes a gesture with her hands that looks a bit like a very slow punch against her palm except with the little finger and thumb extended out, pauses to consider this, then stops and decides to just keep the smile going.

He goes over to a device on the wall and removes part of it and holds it to his ear, then presses some buttons on the wall part.

"Hi, this is Morty Halliwell - well, um, something exploded, obviously, and now there's a girl in my room who doesn't speak English and I think she might be from another universe. Yep. You're telling me, ma'am. I don't think she's dangerous, you don't have to- okay. Bye."

He hangs up the device gingerly and lolls his head back. "Great. Well, at least it'll be over quickly."

...ooh. He spoke into a thing on the wall and was probably talking to someone? That's interesting, what kind of magic is it?

None at all, apparently!

If she's looking for magic, there's actually surprisingly few magic objects here. Not the device on the wall, not the scraps of charred cardboard around Kaede's feet, not the flawless plate glass of the window. The only magic in the room besides her and her personal effects is Morty himself, and a general sort of haze of the stuff woven through the air.

There's also someone flying through the air in a corona of blue light, rapidly approaching the window. She's magical.

...wait, if it's not magical... then how...?

This is all so mysterious. She'll wait here and prepare an escape spell if she needs to.

The flying woman comes to the window and, in a flash of blue light, teleports into the room. She's holding a platinum rod topped with a star sapphire (both of which are extremely magical), and she squints at Kaede suspiciously. "This is the girl you summoned?"

"Yeah," Morty says.

The scepter glows, and a tendril of magic extends towards Kaede's mind.

No the fuck it doesn't.

The woman blinks and looks at the scepter. She shakes it a couple of times.

"Something wrong?" Morty asks hesitantly.

"She appears to have... nullified my translation spell. This could present a problem."

"Whoa. I didn't know she was magic."

"I did. Now shush."

Morty shushes. The woman floats gently to the floor and points at herself. "Elizabeth Carson."

Point at self. "Kaede," she says, using a name that sure sounds very normal for a locally Korean girl even though this girl is quite obviously not Korean. Then she pauses, clearly thinking about how to communicate something, then she decides to point at the rod, then tap her temple twice, then make a quizzical sound accompanied by a tilt of her head.

Mrs. Carson nods, then turns to Morty. "Elizabeth talk Mortimer," she says seriously.

"...what?"

"Go with it, Halliwell," she says. She turns back to Kaede and raises her scepter, which glows. "Elizabeth talk Kaede?" she asks.

Oooooooh. Okay, she starts doing the palm punch gesture again and stops herself again and goes back to the smile. Hopefully clear enough?

The tendril reaches out again, pokes her brain, and departs.

"Testing: can you understand me?" Mrs. Carson asks.

"Oh, yes. Neat spell, that's really cool, how does it work?"

"It essentially takes a pre-programmed understanding of the English language and implants it into your brain temporarily. The spell normally lasts only a day or so, but I can have a psychic associate of mine make it permanent if that turns out to be necessary. Where were you before Mortimer summoned you? Is anyone going to be urgently missing you, such that we should prioritize trying to send you back immediately?"

"No one's going to be missing me anytime soon," she says. "I was travelling between towns, not doing anything important. Implanting knowledge in one's brain, though, that sounds both useful and kind of terrifying."

"Yes, it can be very dangerous if misused. That's part of why I only use it for the translation spell, and only temporarily."

"What about other people though?"

"There aren't very many other people running around who are good enough at magic to manage this kind of spell. Most of them are either very careful with their powers, as a powerful wizard should be, or they are supervillains, who tend to show a notable lack of respect for the public good."

"Psychics can do it too, but they're even more heavily regulated," Morty says.

"What rate of... uh, people with terrifying powers to people who can't resist them do you have?"

Mrs. Carson sighs. "The meta-gene complex, which causes powers, crops up in about 0.002% of the population of the United States, the country we are currently in. There are not reliable worldwide statistics, because most of the world is less tolerant of mutants than we are. However, not everyone with the meta-gene complex will manifest so much as a low-level Exemplar trait; conversely, a baseline with sufficient dedication could train herself in magic until she was the next Circe. Ballpark, I would say that for every fifty thousand humans, there is someone with terrifying powers they cannot hope to resist."

"Well, that's I suppose better than the alternative. ...what's your total world population?"

"About seven point one billion."

"Holy shiz."

Mrs. Carson suppresses a smile. "Your world has fewer people, I'm guessing?"

"I mean, we don't have a—oh, census, that's an interesting word, I like it—but yeah, at a guess."

"We do have a census! It's very convenient for statistics. Does your world have a name?"

"The planet is called Galatea. The continent, too, for some reason."

"Huh. Is it the only continent with people on it?"

"Used to be people on the northernmost continent, there's some on the continent to the west, various scattered islands but no one can get to the northern hemisphere and the continent is the biggest livable landmass."

"I see. Well, our planet is called Earth - not very creative, but at the time it was being named people didn't think we would be making introductions. I apologize for the circumstances of your arrival; we usually try not to kidnap people from their worlds. Mr. Halliwell will be appropriately disciplined for doing so, and we will make every effort to return you as soon as possible."

"...but I'll be able to come back here if I want to? And you guys will be able to visit? Because, uh, interuniversal contact sounds like it would be pretty darn great for our planets. Well, mine, at least, for sure." She points at the telephone. "That thing isn't magic and he still managed to talk to—someone—you?—through it, we don't have anything like that, that'd be revolutionary."

"He was talking to my secretary, actually," Mrs. Carson says. "We can certainly send you back with some of our technology. Or if you wanted to stay in our world for a longer period of time so you could learn about it, that can be arranged. Reliable transit between worlds is actually very expensive to accomplish, Mr. Halliwell's experimental results notwithstanding, so we wouldn't be able to visit or summon casually."

"Expensive how?"

"It requires the time and energy of a highly experienced wizard and consumes a significant quantity of expensive resources, mostly mithril, which costs about ten thousand dollars per ounce. - a day laborer receives on average fifteen dollars per hour worked."

"Oh, huh, it's expensive in money, that's too bad."

"How so?"

"My schtick is metamagic so stuff that's expensive in magic can get less expensive if I help with it. I wouldn't have expected it to naively work with a different world's magic, if I'd ever given the question any thought, but I can see your magic and his magic," she says, hiking a thumb in Morty's direction, "clear as day. And I managed to stop your spell. So."

"I don't have magic," Morty objects, looking up from a device he's been tapping at idly.

"She might be referring to your Devisor trait," Mrs. Carson says thoughtfully. "That has... a lot of potential applications. If you turn out to be able to reduce the magical cost of spells then you could be extremely helpful to any number of large-scale projects; wizards are loath to part with significant amounts of Essence, even for a good cause. And if you can somehow alter mutant traits, you would be among the most powerful people in the world. Though I wouldn't recommend trying. Altering mutant traits has historically been hideously dangerous."

"So for what it's worth I don't make a habit of messing with magic without understanding it very thoroughly because even at home this can have some bad effects. Just stopping magical effects typically doesn't, except for the directly causal relationships—like, if I disrupt all the magic keeping a floating chair afloat it will... stop floating." She shrugs. "Obviously. I can also convert between the three different types of magical resources from back home but I can't generate any, the main way I get, or used to get, any, back home, was by draining batteries and some old artefacts before handing them over to the Explorers' Guild."

"Not messing with magic you don't understand is a good policy," Mrs. Carson says drily. "At any rate, it sounds like you want to stay here for a time and learn about our world's technology and magic, is that correct?"

"If it wouldn't be terribly inconvenient. I can make myself useful to pay for it, even not taking the magic into account."

"It wouldn't be inconvenient at all, no. This is actually a school of, among other things, magic and technology. And we don't need you to pay for it; we consider ourselves to be in your debt for having summoned you out of your world in the first place, and will happily provide for whatever you need while you're here. Would you like to relocate to my office for your intake interview?"

"Oh. Uh, sure, that sounds good to me."

"Mortimer, before I forget, you'll be having detention in Hawthorne for a month, and I want you back with your therapist until you can work out some way to stop yourself from doing ill-advised things when you're having an episode. If that means getting Mr. Conway to physically pin you to the ground every time you get near a sheet of cardboard unless you can explain what you're doing with it, then you do that. Are we clear?"

Morty grimaces. "Yes, ma'am."

"Excellent." There's a flash of blue light, and Kaede and Mrs. Carson are standing in a small but well-furnished office. She sits down behind a mahogany desk, and gestures toward a chair opposite for Kaede to do the same. "First of all, how old are you exactly?"

"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?"

"I'm glad I got you instead of someone who would have been more put out about it!"

Morty leads her to a small marble bust set into the wall, pulls on it, and runs a card on a keychain over the screen thus revealed. A bookshelf slides away, revealing a staircase leading downward, which Morty takes two steps at a time. They come out in a small vault, Morty once again almost falling on his face. He gestures grandly. "Welcome to the Homer Gallery! We're required to show this to all incoming students, because it contains gifts from culturally significant alumni you have no knowledge of whatsoever because you're from another universe."

"Should I ooh and aah at them?"

Also, are they magical?

"Noises of appreciation are strictly optional. There are only two I'm required to explain. The first is this." He gestures at a life-sized 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, behold."

"The other is this." He turns to gesture at a pile of gold. "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 obscenely rich she is."

This strange device, labeled "Professor Ripper's Quasar Gun", and this walnut-sized diamond, unlabeled, are both magical. The rest appears to be mostly dross.

"What charming people. What's this?" she asks of the diamond, walking over to it.

"That is... let's see... the Tear of Medea. Ancient artifact, fairly evil, grants fabulous magical powers to its wielder at the cost of their empathy. Generally bad news."

"At the cost of their empathy? Why?"

"I wouldn't know, I'm not a magic type. Medea apparently didn't have much empathy herself, based on the stories about her, so it might have been intentional, or it might have just been a side effect she didn't care to patch."

"Huh." Pause. "Betcha I could fix that."

"Ooh. That sounds like a very worthy project. Mrs. Carson will probably want to wait until you're confirmed to be able to do that kind of thing on a smaller scale, though, the Tear of Medea is pretty big and pretty bad in general."

"Yeah that makes sense. Do you get your empathy back if you stop using it?"

"That's how it works for most mind-affecting artifacts like that. If you use them too long they can have some lasting adverse effects, but they say that's because if parts of your brain are altered for long enough the rest of the brain starts adapting to it and it doesn't adjust well to those parts coming back online."

"Makes sense. So once I'm allowed to it shouldn't be hard to test it when I think I've got it—well, I guess someone without empathy could lie about it..."

"I think for something like that they'd get an empath in. Can't lie to ESP - not without practice, anyway."

"Oh that solves it neatly, then. What other things like this are there, at a smaller scale?"

"Oh, there's tons of cursed artifacts lying around museums and stuff. Probably most of them are less of a big deal than the Tear. We keep it here because it's safer here, right under Mrs. Carson's office, than in some museum behind regular bulletproof glass."

"'Bulletproof'?"

"-guns! A new concept. Guns are an invention that shoot little metal bullets at high speeds, usually to kill people and things. Bulletproof glass is strong enough that you can't use a gun to break it open and take whatever's inside. This glass is bulletproof, but as I said the main protection for this vault is being near Mrs. Carson."

"Ah. Huh. Sounds very specific."

"The word 'bulletproof' is used in a lot of contexts to just mean 'very strong', since humans have been using guns to kill each other for a very long time. I think one of the first superheroes called himself the Bulletproof Man."

"Was he? Bulletproof?"

"Yep! He was a TK superman with a strong enough telekinetic field to repel bullets. At least the bullets of his time. We have stronger guns now, he would no longer be comprehensively bulletproof."

"Huh. Cool. I could probably make myself bulletproof, if I knew more about bullets."

"Neat! There's also bulletproof fabrics you can use to make an armored costume, that's what most supers who don't have a TK field or high Exemplar rating do. Anyway, wanna get out of here and continue the tour?"

"Sure, lead the way."

Morty leads her up the stairs and replaces the marble bust in place, causing the vault door to vanish again. He then goes over to the receptionist's desk, tripping along the way. (There's a weird flicker of magic when he does, almost lost in the noise of his power and the ambient magic of the campus.)

"Hi Ms. Dawson! Kaede needs an ID, can you print her one?"

The receptionist nods and taps some buttons on her keyboard. "Here you go, hon," she says, taking a small laminated card from a whirring printer. The card has a picture of Kaede's face on it, with text reading KAEDE, FRESHMAN, NO TEAM AFFILIATION.

There's some further whirring, which sounds somehow confused, and the printer spits out another card. This one has a different picture on it, but the same text.

Kaede looks at the cards. And blinks at them. "Making a painting—picture, neat word, of my face, that's okay, but how does it know about my other usual face?"

The receptionist shrugs helplessly. "Wizards can do some very strange things."

Morty looks at the picture. "He looks nice!"

"Aww, thank you. You look nice, too."

Morty blushes. "Well, that's kind of you. Um, we can go a couple of places next - there's the classrooms if you want me to show you around the classrooms, or the dorms if you want to get a feel for the dorms, or if you're hungry we can go to the Crystal Hall, which is the cafeteria."

D'aww he's adorable. "Wherever you think would be most enriching to my tour experience, not being particularly hungry at the moment."

"Alright! If you're not hungry let's check out the classroom buildings."

They check out the classroom buildings! Morty gives her a general tour - "this is Dunn Hall, for science and programming classes that don't verge on Devisor or Gadgeteer territory," "Kirby Hall, magic and psi, I'm guessing you'll be spending some time here," "here's Laird, home of the martial arts classes, place where I have fallen on my ass more times than I can count."

"—oh right, I think I saw a magic flicker on you when I saw you trip one time."

"...huh?"

"I don't really know what it was, might've been an accident and it was tiny but I think it was there."

"Huh."

He considers.

"Nope, I have absolutely no idea what that might be about. Maybe it's a mutant thing."

She shrugs. "Yeah, no idea either."

Morty shrugs and shows her around a couple more class buildings.

"If you're hungry now I can show you the cafeteria, otherwise we can head to the campus store and get you all the stuff you might need for your dorm room and then stop by your dorm and drop it off?"

"Let's go to the store, why not. ...except I don't have any local currency, is that covered by the extradimensional kidnapping package I got?"

"It totally is! That's part of what the card's for - what the cards are for, actually, it tells the campus store that you have access to money from your extradimensional kidnapping package. If you didn't have one of those it'd just be to let you into the cafeteria."

"Alright, makes sense."

They go to the campus store!

It’s got a lot of stuff in it. There’s all the things a native of this world might expect from a campus store, but there’s also glassware, and bins of semiprecious stones, and throwing knives, and a small display of welding equipment, and there’s apparently a sale on liquid nitrogen.

Ooh. There is a bunch of stuff she has never seen and has no idea what it's for and she's enthralled.

Morty guides Kaede through the selection of various items, including bedding, toiletries, some local clothes, and a prepaid cell phone, explaining what some of these things are along the way. "If there's anything else you'd like, let me know. Or if you want anything else explained."

Okay wait cell phone what. No magic! And it's not even like attached to anything?????

“Oh! Yeah, I guess if you’re not used to technology cell phones would seem like, uh, total bullshit. They sort of - emit a signal that bounces off the atmosphere and gets received by other cell phones, is my understanding. They’re super handy? That’s maybe an understatement.”

"A signal. That isn't magic. What is it?"

"It's a special kind of light that we can't see. It turns out there's a bunch of different kinds of light, and we can only see this teeny little spectrum of it, but phones can make and receive a different kind that travels better, and we have a way of - like, you know how writing is a way of encoding speech in a way you can see? We can encode speech way better in that kind of light, and so we turn the sound into light and send it up to a satellite in the atmosphere, then the satellite bounces it down to the phone we're talking to, and light is super fast so it all happens just like talking to somebody who's right there. That was the worst explanation ever that I just did. It's complicated."

"It was actually really good! Though I'm not sure what you mean by light you can't see."

“So, you know how light can be different colors? We can only see, like, seven of them. Or four, depending on how you count it. But there’s a ton of different kinds of light, and some of them can kill you, and some of them can have messages encoded in them, and we can only actually see a teeny-tiny little fraction of them. Well, you and I can only see a teeny-tiny little fraction of them, there’s mutants who can see way more kinds of light.”

"So what's the difference between those kinds of lights and a colour?"

“There isn’t a principled difference, actually, just a difference of scale! Colors look different from each other based on how much energy is in the light, and that’s the difference between the different kinds of light we’re talking about, too.”

"Oh. Oooh. Wait, then, is it like, one energy two energy three energy, why do rainbows have specifically those six colours rather than a whole range? —you do have rainbows here?"

"We do have rainbows! But we're kind of running into the edge of my knowledge of how colors work here. I do like physics, but I'm not a physicist, I'm an engineer. To whatever extent I am in fact an engineer instead of, like, a cardboard wizard. Which is not much."

"Okay, fair. ...do colours have names when you can't see them? I kinda wanna make a spell to see some new colour."

"Yeah, the one right below our visual range is called infrared and the one right above it is called ultraviolet. You can tell we put a lot of effort into those names."

Kaede giggles. "Okay, let's see..." She closes her eyes, hums for a second, then says, "This is a spell I am now creating and binding to allow me to see ultraviolet, as defined by the people and peoples of this society. Ultraviolet, despite the very generic and broad name, refers to a narrow range of energy values that light can take, one that is right above typical human visual range." She opens her eyes and looks around for stuff that has colours. "No things within my field of view are strictly violet, so this implies that this colour range is above the energy levels of most if not all visible light around here. This spell will last exactly five minutes from the moment I have finished casting it, though with the requisite expenditure of mana and the repetition of these words I will if I so desire be able to cast it once more." She smiles, as if telling herself an oft-repeated private joke. "Should this experience begin to deteriorate my eyesight, my otherwise-physical health, or my mental health significantly more than what normal visible light does, I will instead return to being unable to see ultraviolet light and my vision will return to normal. The next time I say the word 'light', this spell will be in effect, for the time length determined before. Light."

And she gasps. "Whoa. That—it's—everything looks different, it's not just a new thing, it's—whoa—"

"Oh- yeah, sunlight has a lot of ultraviolet in it, it's kind of everywhere. You doing okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine, spell would cut it out if it were doing something I'd on reflection not want it to do, but it's just—man, do you want to see some ultraviolet light, it makes everything else look so different, I was kinda expecting a sorta-purple but it's something else altogether—gods, how do you describe a colour—it's kinda garish? Except it's not what the word 'garish' was invented to be used for..."

"I absolutely want to see some ultraviolet light. If it's not - too expensive, or anything - I remember your magic has a resource limit?"

"Oh it's not expensive at all, regular arcanists gotta limit their spells to short words or phrases and gestures but since I can just bind a one-time spell to a long descriptive thing and then unbind it once I'm done I can make it almost arbitrarily cheap. Not as cheap as if I were designing myself a blessing but I'd have to convert arcanist mana to elementalist mana and I couldn't be bothered." She grins. "Okay, lemme make up a spell for you..." She closes her eyes again, then starts another long paragraph describing what exactly the spell is meant to do. It's very similar but not identical to the one she cast on herself, and references Morty instead of her.

And after she's done, he can see ultraviolet.

"Wow. That's - really, really cool. It is kind of garish - wait, we have to look at some flowers. Flowers are designed for pollinators that can see ultraviolet light. I think I saw some over here-" He hurries over towards a section of the store that has a couple of bouquets on a stand.

He's right. They're extremely pretty.

"Oh wow I never knew—gods, I'll have to design a blessing for this—no, better, I should make ultraviolet vision goggles—"

"You absolutely should. Actually - depending on how your enchanting works you could enchant contact lenses, if you could reclaim the magic before replacing them? Even if you couldn't, hard lenses can last for years."

"I can reclaim the magic, yeah, but a regular enchanter wouldn't be able to. But these, er, contact lenses, if they don't last as long, could be enchanted with only as much magic as they last, so I don't think it'd be a problem anyway."

"Oh, cool, I thought it might be a permanent thing. I wonder what kind of things you can draw energy from in this world? You said my power is a kind of magic, maybe you could draw from one of my inventions?"

"Yeah, where I'm from I'm used to being able to just draw magic and convert it from anything but that's all within my system, right, I don't know what I'll be able to do here. The cardboard was definitely not magic after I'd arrived, though."

"Well, it wasn't exactly an invention at that point. Would you ordinarily expect to be able to draw from the broken pieces of an artifact?"

"If it weren't doing artefact-y things by then, no, should be spent. Active artefacts are really hard to break, though, even if you like physically fracture its structure the magic will hold it together, although it'll spend mana faster if it has to do that in addition to whatever it does originally."

"Huh! I don't think that's what magic stuff in this world is like but I don't know a lot about magic. It's certainly not how Devisor inventions work, those break like anything."

"Yeah, whole different system here, I shouldn't assume anything in particular works the same way." Shrug.

"So, yeah! Is there anything you think you're still missing?"

Well, if her budget covers one of those phones she wants it, but she also should get, like, clothes and stuff to drop off at her room? And maybe some pretty-but-useless things like pebbles or whatever that she can enchant with various functions later, it's always good to have some of those.

They pick out a phone, and some bedding and toiletries and clothes, and some shiny pebbles from the bin of shiny pebbles that is for some reason on prominent display. Then they check out, paying with Kaede’s card, and head towards her dorm to drop off the purchases.

”You’re in Poe,” Morty says. “It’s a coed dorm, which I guess is how they’re going to accommodate you, uh, sometimes being a boy? A lot of the Poe kids are kinda weird, but they’re nice folks, in general.”

"Weird how?"

“That came out wrong - everybody’s kinda weird, this is Whateley, but the Poe kids are a little more insular, they’ve got way more of a cottage culture than everybody else. It’s probably a really nice place if you’re part of it, it’s just a little weird from the outside.”

"Huh. And it's the only—coed—dorm?"

"No, there's Melville too. And Hawthorne, but they weren't gonna put you in Hawthorne, that's for kids who need really major accommodations. It was probably a coin toss between Melville and Poe."

"And the Melville folks aren't weird?"

“I really shouldn’t have said the Poe kids’re weird, it's unfair, they’re super nice. The Melville kids... the stereotype is that they’re kind of snobby and they think their cottage is better than everybody else’s? That’s where they put a lot of the rich alumni’s kids. People say they have a hot tub, but I feel like that can’t be right.”

"What's a hot tub?"

"It's like a heated bath sized for several people. They're kind of a weird concept and a little bit, uh, sexualized? Which is why I don't think they actually have one, I think it's just a weird rumor."

"...well now I want to find my way into it if it exists."

Morty blushes. "Well, I wish you luck on this daring quest."

They arrive at Poe. Morty knocks on the door.

It's opened by an unreasonably tall man apparently in his thirties, who beams at them. "Morty! And you must be Kaede. Great to meet you; are you here to get settled in?"

"I am, indeed! But I believe you have the advantage of me."

"I do, don't I. I'm Mr. Dresden, I teach Mystic Arts and I'm the Housefather of Poe. That means I'm in charge of roommate assignments, student discipline and morale, and fixing things when somebody inevitably breaks them. Speaking of which, Morty, I'll show Kaede around the cottage, you should go get dinner."

"Hey!" Morty laughs. "Okay, okay. Kaede, it was really nice to meet you - uh, maybe we can hang out again after you've settled in?"

"Yeah absolutely, I'll find you around."

He waves awkwardly and stumbles off.

"Alright. Now I'll show you around and explain the whole Poe Cottage, uh, situation." He starts walking. There's a plaster bust of Edgar Allan Poe in an alcove by the entrance, and a large common room, past it, and a stairway leading both up and down. The common room contains sofas, chairs, a large TV, and several enclosed desks. "Like Mrs. Carson said during your meeting, Poe is the dormitory for students who don't happen to be both straight and content with their assigned sex. The historical reasons for its existence are now almost obsolete - there's less danger now of bullying than there was when I went to school, much less, and most people you meet will accept anyone for who they are. But most people doesn't mean everyone. This is why Poe Cottage's status is, while not the best-kept secret in the world, still a secret. Officially, Poe is just another dormitory. You don't have to stay in the closet - in fact I encourage you to be open with whoever you like - but don't out everybody else. Make sense so far?"

"Sure. And is that why Morty said they're, ah, insular?"

"Yeah, we get kind of a reputation - it's hard to keep a secret without feeling a little closer to everybody else who's keeping it, plus there's a lot of solidarity when everybody's got something in common. Now, on to the tour proper!"

Mr. Dresden shows her the basement first; it contains a weight room, a laundry room, and a couple of utility closets. "The laundry machines are designed to be easy to use - you just put your clothes in the front and turn the dial, the machines have their own detergent and everything but if you have some objection to the default detergent you can buy your own at the store and put it in here. The machines in the weight room have instructions on them, but I'd still recommend you get a spotter who knows the equipment your first couple of times in there."

"I keep being surprised by how many—things—you guys have turned into, like... services? Here?"

"What do you mean?"

"Exercising! You know, you have machines that specifically help you with it and have instructions on how to use and I'm betting they're also more efficient at it than whatever equivalent we have at home. And, you know, there's lots of things here where clearly someone went 'hey the way we do this is boring, terrible, and inefficient, how about I make it extremely easy and efficient instead' and then did it."

"Oh! Yeah, absolutely, science is one long story of taking boring and inefficient things and making them quick and easy instead. It's not the only reason for human advancement, but it's a big one."

He then ushers her up to the second floor, showing her to a room by the stairs. "The bathroom on the left side of the hall is for girls, and the bathroom on the right side is for boys; you can use whichever feels most comfortable for you on a given day. And this is going to be your dorm room. You're going to be rooming with Alex Kimball, who is also genderfluid. They're a lot of fun, I'm sure you two will get along."

He knocks on the door. It's opened by a person of indeterminate gender with short black hair and black lipstick, who grins toothily when they see Kaede. "New roomie! Now, are we going to go for a hug, kiss on the cheek, firm handshake? I'm wide open."

Kaede blinks, then giggles. "Not sure what's culturally appropriate," she says, but moves in for a hug.

“Hugs are always culturally appropriate,” Alex says firmly, hugging Kaede back.

“No they’re not,” Mr. Dresden says.

“Okay, that is in fact untrue,” Alex admits. “You shouldn’t hug people who you don’t know particularly well, unless they’ve said it’s okay. But it’s always okay with me. Hugs are great.”

She giggles again. "Duly noted."

"You two seem like you'll get along fine," Dresden says. "I'll leave you to get situated, if you don't have any questions for me?"

"If that's the end of the tour I think I don't have any, thank you very much!"

"You're welcome! Yeah, it's not much of a tour. Feel free to come down to my office and talk anytime!"

Dresden makes his exit. Alex lets Kaede in to the room, sits down in a chair with wheeled feet, and spins around a couple of times. The room contains two lofted beds, under which are desks, and one sink with a mirror over it. There's also an ottoman under the window. "So, this is my dorm room, and now also your dorm room! As you can see the bed is lofted, you can have Harry unloft it if you want but that means your desk won't fit under it and you'll have less room on your side. I think I've reclaimed all the miscellaneous junk I was storing in your desk when it was my second desk, but if I missed anything just throw it at me. I'd rather you didn't eat in the room, ants are no one's friend and I have problems with chewing noises; if you have any requirements of me as your roomie, you can hit me with them now."

"I've never roomed with anyone else so no idea if I have any, but I'd guess not, I'm pretty chill," she says, looking around with interest. "Where do I put my stuff?"

"There's closets by the doorway, mine's the one on the left." Alex points them out. "Being chill is good! I try to also be chill, and mostly manage except when I'm having an episode. Uh, speaking of which: I'm bipolar, and a Class-3 Rager. That means I sometimes have periods of emotional instability where I'm really manic excited or really depressed and irritable, and when I get really mad, my powers get more, uh, powerful. Ordinarily I'm a low-level chaos mage with a little bit of precog and paragon ESP and probability-warping, but when I'm raging they all go into overdrive and I get very difficult to stop. I don't go rager often, otherwise I'd be in Hawthorne, but it's still my responsibility to warn you about it."

"Give me the three-sentence explanation of each of those things? I'm from another world, see."

"Oh, for sure. You'll get all this in Intro to Powers too, but I'll give you the basics. Chaos magic means that I can do magic purely instinctually, without preparation or theoretical knowledge of what I'm doing. Unfortunately, that also means I have less control over what happens when than other mages do." Their hand is abruptly surrounded by flames, and then, equally abruptly, it isn't. "Precog is short for precognition; I can look a few seconds into the future, and I sometimes get prophecies of things that will happen further than that. Paragon means I can focus on a task and just know the best way to do it. Probability warping is what it sounds like - I have supernaturally good luck sometimes, and supernaturally bad luck sometimes. I can mostly control which happens when, but if I stretch the good luck too much then it snaps and I have really awful luck for a while, with no control over it. It also connects with my bipolar, so when I'm up it's really easy for me to stretch my luck and when I'm down it's almost impossible."

She nods, looking enraptured. "So many forms of magic.—oh, my form of magic is metamagic, by the way, naively I'd think there's a chance I could help with any aspect of yours that's misbehaving."

"Ooh, metamagic. I don't know if I'd want to mess with my luck through magic, though, that seems like a good way to get backlash. And I'm usually fine with how the chaos magic behaves, it's in line with my subconscious - it's only really a problem when I'm trying to do something I don't actually want to do, or not do something I do want."

"That's fair, too. I don't want to rely on it with local magic too much, anyway, since it's very surprising to me that I can interact with it at all, what with how my magic system is completely separate. So, like, I can see your magic hanging around you and stuff but I'd want a lot more than just that to even begin thinking about messing with any of it in any way and definitely not if you don't want it."

"Oh, cool. How much can you see? Can you guess my big secret?"

Now that they mention it, Alex's magic is unusual for what Kaede's seen of other mutants. Their power is partly coming from them, but there's a trailing thread connected to something else, winding off and vanishing into a direction that doesn't track with the normal Euclidean dimensions.

"I'll say it has something to do with how there's a bit of your magic that's not coming from within you but I don't know enough local magic to know where it's coming from instead."

Alex nods. "It isn't actually a secret, it's more a fact that nobody believes. Me and some of my friends are reincarnated gods, and we've still got a connection to the old wells of power from when we were worshipped. There's not much power coming from them anymore, because nobody still worships us, but the connection is still there."

"Huh. How does that work, being a reincarnated god?"

"Well, there's a little bit of backstory there. We're not the first gods to try this gambit; we had a whole pantheon, and we weren't the big ones. The big gods did it first, the ones that everybody used to worship. But they were power-hungry, and they didn't work together, and they got themselves killed. So we got together, six of us who thought we could work together, and we fused ourselves to some humans who were about to be born in the same general area."

"And what... are gods. Like what do you all do, my world has stories about gods but I'm pretty sure they're all fake and if they're not I guess I'm meant to be evil."

"Oh, gods are- so, in our world, baseline humans have a certain amount of mystic Essence that they generally don't use unless they're trained in magic. When they worship a being, their spare Essence goes towards that being. If that being actually exists, then they get a little packet of Essence added to their supply. If they don't exist, Essence accumulates in the sort of general location where they would be until there's enough to gain consciousness, and a god begins to exist. Gods generally do more or less whatever they want. Some answer the prayers of their followers, if they're feeling nice or if they want to reinforce god-approved behavior. They're no more a moral authority than any other being is, they're just... bigger."

"And if people stop worshipping you, what happens, if you were originally made from that Essence? There's still some coming from there, right, will it run dry sometime, and is being reincarnated relevant in some way, do you have memories from before or powers, and what about the people you fused with—sorry, that's a lot of questions, it's just so exciting—"

"Essence is to some extent self-renewing; a god with no worshipers can continue to exist as long as they don't do much that requires Essence, but it's kind of depressing being a god and not being able to do any of the stuff you used to do. Being reincarnated is frankly a much better deal; mutants can do what they want with their powers, they just have to eat to recharge. We have all our memories from before, and while our godly powers influenced the mutant powers we got, we don't have access to the powers we had as gods anymore. Not yet, at least; if we can scrounge up some worshippers we'd be back in business. The people we fused with were newborns, so when our personalities merged, they - grew up around us, like a beanpole, if that makes sense? If the essence of Tyche was removed from me, Alex would still be there, but he'd be different from the Alex who you're talking to. That's what happened with Steven, at least." They wince. "Shit, I have to explain Steven now. Um, one of our number was Herakles, the God of Strength, and... we think he got a bad baby. Because when we all met back up at Whateley, he was... we were all different, that's how the fusion worked, but Herakles - Steven - was just awful. Then he picked up a boyfriend, Jack, who's an Avatar of a powerful spirit, and... stuff went down, it was complicated, Jack's spirit ended up sort of eating the Herakles out of Steven and leaving just the awful human bits. So we ditched him and took Jack into our team instead."

She blinks a few times. "And Steven is... still around?" is what she settles on in the end.

Alex makes a face. "Yes, unfortunately. No, I don't mean that, people dying is bad, but he really is awful."

"What's Steven like? I'd been thinking of it as you guys like replacing or mixing with the baby but if there's enough person there to be a person when half is gone..."

"He's like... he feels entitled to things, and he resents anybody who doesn't give them to him. He takes what he wants, if he thinks he can get away with it. And he thinks we betrayed him by dropping him when he lost Herakles. Herakles tempered him a little, he was kind of - protective, and brave, and ultimately well-meaning. If Isolate Steven has any positive qualities he hides them very well."

"Is Herakles around, in Jack, or all gone?"

"He's gone. Jack's spirit digested his essence. I don't mean to make him sound like he was perfect, he was a bit of an ass even before the fusion, but."

"I'm so sorry for your loss," she says, sounding very genuine.

Alex sighs. "Thanks. I've gotten used to it over the years, but it still stings."

They brighten. "Anyway, do you want to meet the rest of the team? It's getting about time for dinner, anyway."

"Yeah, sure, sounds good."

They twirl out of the room. "Alright, first things first." They knock on the door to the left of their own room's.

A black girl opens the door after a moment. "Hey Alex. Is it dinner already?"

"Yep! Also wanted to introduce you to my roomie. Kaede, this is Sheila Kamber-Green, bearer of Metis, goddess of wisdom. She's a Devisor and Energizer, so she can invent things that run on their own laws of physics and absorb energy for her own purposes."

Sheila waves. "Charmed."

"Pleasure," she replies. "I do metamagic. Also I don't think I ever caught what you were deity of," she adds, to Alex.

"Oh! Tyche, goddess of fortune."

Sheila exits the room, and an Asian girl follows after her, buttoning a dress shirt. "Hi," she says. "Sandy Cheung, bearer of Nike, goddess of victory. I'm a package-deal psychic, which means I can use one of a psychic power, an Esper power - in my case Paragon - or telekinesis at a time. We're also both Exemplars, which means our strength, speed, and brainpower are enhanced beyond human limits."

"I'm gonna have my plate full of these names for different kinds of magic, aren't I."

She does not sound altogether displeased by this.

"Oh, yeah, powers theory is a lot. Fortunately nobody really minds explaining their power."

They troop over to another room. Sheila knocks this time. "Kostas, get your ass out here."

A gangly young man steps out. "Why so cheerful, Sheila- ooh, a newbie!" He sketches a bow to Kaede. "Konstantin Manos. Pleased to meet you."

"We're doing the whole introductory spiel," Sandy says. "Including Powers Theory 101."

"Okay! Konstantin Manos, bearer of Thanatos, god of death. I'm a Siren and faux-mage Energizer, that means I can do cool shit with my voice and I can absorb light and turn it into magical shadowstuff called Erebum, with which I can do magic. They call me a faux-mage because I'm not technically a wiz-class mutant, but I still have an advantage at magic."

"Kaede, otherworldly visitor, metamagic. How did this world come to have so many different kinds of magic?"

He shrugs. "Search me. All the myriad varieties of mutant powers are technically one trait expressing itself in different ways, hard as that is to believe, but there's a lot of different kinds of magic-magic too - like, Erebeal magic, what I do, is totally different from chaos magic like Alex does, which is different from the hermetic magic that school teaches by default, which is different from theurgy and blood magic and necromancy."

"Are there more people from other worlds, that you know of? Could explain a bit if there was cross-contamination."

"Yeah, it's possible. People do come from other worlds sometimes, and I guess they could've developed different magical traditions in parallel. Actually that happened within our world too, back in Ancient Greece people mostly used proto-hermetic magic while in most of the rest of the world they were using various kinds of theurgy."

"I hope I can learn to use some of this magic the regular way, it'd be great to have any that's actually mine rather than borrowed."

"Usually anybody who's a person can learn magic. There's a couple of exceptions - some people don't have souls, and that'd prevent it, but Alex would know if you didn't have a soul."

"Definitely a soul in there," Alex nods.

"There you go." They reach the final room. Sandy knocks. "Jack, Gav, get out here, we're all going to dinner with Alex's new roommate."

Two boys come out. One of them is identical to Kostas except for the color of his tongue stud (his is silver, Kostas' is gold). The other is shorter and stockier than the twins, and wears a slight frown.

"-oh, okay," the twin says in response to no apparent stimulus. "Hi, I'm Gavriil Manos, bearer of Hypnos, god of dreams. I'm a psychic and I manifest ectoplasm, which I can shape into various objects and effects.

"Are we introducing ourselves? I'm Jack Schmidt. I'm a shifter and a power mimic, if I touch someone I can use their powers for a few minutes. Are they doing the 'we're secretly greek gods' thing at you? You're going to make us all look like weird nerds, guys."

"Like you're not a weird nerd," Kostas says, rolling his eyes.

"I can also see the thing where they all have a bit of magic pointing away from them and you don't, so if they're not secretly gods they're sure something you're not," she says, grinning. "But power mimic, that's cool, do me, do me," she continues, offering her hand.

He pokes her hand. Then he frowns. "No dice. What's up with that?"

"She's from another universe, she's not a mutant," Alex explains.

"Oh. That makes sense, then, when I mimic a power it's really relying on the fact that mutant powers are all basically the same thing."

"Shame. Anyway, I can totally see a magic thing they all have and you don't, there. I can't tell what it is, yet, I'd need to stare at them for a very long time and that'd be creepy, but there's definitely something there."

Jack looks troubled. “But... if you guys are gods... why do you hang out with me?”

Sandy sighs. “You’re not as annoying as you think you are, Jack. And you have the potential to become very powerful.”

“If we end up back in our rightful place on Olympus we’re taking you with us,” Gav nods, throwing an arm around Jack’s shoulders. “Hypnos, Thanatos, Metis, Nike, Tyche, and Jack.”

“Kinda fucks up the aesthetic, but we’ll deal,” Kostas agrees, throwing his arm around Jack’s other shoulder. With Jack thus secured, the twins begin down the stairs, dragging him along.

"Surely you'll find a new name for him. Ascension to godhood must involve some sort of naming ceremony, right?" she suggests, following along.

Jack pouts. "I like my name."

"He's also terrible at coming up with names," Alex sighs. "We play roleplaying games together and he has to use a random name generator every time or he just can't come up with anything. His codename is 'Man Jack'."

"It's a perfectly serviceable pun," Jack says defensively.

"I don't have the language, what's it a pun with—"

"'Every man jack' means 'everybody'," Jack explains. "And I can shapeshift, so I can be anybody."

"—ooooh. For free or does it cost, what are the limitations of the shapeshifting—"

"It takes up energy, so I eat more than a normal human would, but not as much as some powers do - Sheila has to eat a ridiculous amount of food, because she's an Energizer, I'm just in 3000-calories-a-day territory. And I'm a shifter-5, so I can turn into basically any humanoid form and I can make functional changes to my biology: armor plating, venom, wings, the works." Demonstratively, he grows five inches taller, turns into a redheaded woman, and gains goat legs. "Power rankings are on a seven-point scale, so I'm pretty close to the top."

"That is so cool, I'm extremely jealous, the shapeshifting blessing I need to use for my occasional sex changes is very expensive, relatively speaking."

"Maybe you could make it more efficient by watching Jack change shape," Sheila suggests. "Or is that not how it works?"

"Not really how it works," she says regretfully. "Blessings are the most mana-efficient form of magic in my system, can't really get better than that, but shapeshifting itself is very complicated so very expensive. What I might be able to do instead is copy whatever he's doing, though."

Jack shifts his form a few more times, in a rhythm with his steps. "Does it look like something you can copy?"

She watches, fascinated. "...maybe. It's not obvious that I can't, anyway. Would need to stare at you for way longer than that to say for sure, but I'm told it's impolite to do that without asking someone out first."

Jack coughs a couple of times with surprise. "Uh, I'm. Taken. By Alex. I'm willing to let you stare at me while I use my power, though, that sounds like not a problem."

"Hey, you're not allowed to use me as an excuse not to go out with pretty girls," Alex admonishes him.

"But you're the only pretty girl I want," Jack says.

"Dammit, stop being cute," Alex groans. "I'm trying to chip away at your monogamy, not reinforce it by acknowledging that it's adorable."

.....d'aaaaaaawwww.

"Does that mean I should ask both of you out, then?"

"I'd accept," Alex says cheerfully. "Only for a casual thing, I'm not looking for a new primary, you know? But casual can still be fun."

"And despite Alex's best efforts I'm still monogamous," Jack says.

"It's very inconvenient," Kostas stage-whispers.

"We're all entitled to our strange preferences, I suppose," she stage whispers back.

"Oh, it's more inconvenient than it sounds," Gav says. "He's a power mimic, but unlike most power mimics he's got an extra layer to his: to wit, if he sleeps with someone, he gets a copy of their power for good. It's got to do with the source of his power, the god Nem-Shar, who was once a trickster god and, like many trickster gods, had sex as part of his domain."

"But he doesn't want to sleep with anyone," Kostas says tragically. "Even though he's got a permissive SO, and a pretty face, and sex powers."

"...you're joking." She looks at him. "Why."

Jack's shoulders hunch a bit. "I don't want to have sex if it's not because I love someone. It'd be like... selling myself, or something."

She looks at Kostas again. "Is this some cultural thing? Do you guys buy slaves with sex or something?"

Gav's eyebrows rise. "What? No. It is a cultural thing, at least partly, prostitution is very frowned upon and that's what he's gesturing at. The Greeks had a much more sensible way of doing things, as usual."

"They also had slavery," Sheila points out. "So there's at least one point in the current zeitgeist's favor."

"What were the Greeks like? And why is that past tense?"

"There's still Greeks," Kostas clarifies. "But they don't have much continuity with the ancient ones, the ones who worshipped us. It's been three thousand years, cultures shift."

"How to summarize a civilization..." Sheila muses. "They were very invested in the pursuit of wisdom and beauty, or at least that's how they thought of themselves. They thought everyone who wasn't Greek was a barbarian, a word which they coined to describe the animalistic grunting they heard whenever these non-Greeks opened their mouths. They were eventually conquered by the Romans, who were stricter but who carried on the worship of the Greeks' gods, though with different names."

"And they didn't think prostitution was bad but also didn't think slavery was bad? That's a combo."

"Rather," Sheila says drily. "I believe the philosophers worked out that slavery was morally wrong at some point, but their leaders didn't care enough to do anything about it."

"And you guys don't have slavery anymore, right? I think someone said it earlier."

Sheila nods. "There was a war two and a half centuries ago and the slaves were set free - largely as punishment against their erstwhile owners, but slavery was outlawed as a consequence. The rest of the world had mostly already gotten around to it, and the ones who hadn't followed suit."

"That's a pretty cynical view of the Civil War," Jack comments.

"When you've seen three thousand years of history, it starts falling into patterns. Noble reasons are often given for effecting change, but are rarely responsible for it."

"Hear hear."