The doctors talk to the lawyers. The lawyers talk to the staff, who talk to her.

She’s going to boarding school. If she cares to look up the boarding school in question online, it looks unobjectionable; lots of diverse students in fancy black-and-white uniforms on the front page (surprisingly diverse, actually, given it’s a New England boarding school), lots of cruft about giving a quality education to the leaders of the future. The tuition is exorbitant, though not a problem for Teddy.

There’s no page for famous alumni, which is a little weird for a site like this.

Teddy's been using the internet almost exclusively to look at websites for prestigious institutions for half a decade, and this one is definitely very weird. Neat, though. She's been worried, dimly, about her powers meaning she'd either have to quit sports or do weird ones, neither of which is an appealing concept, but the vibe she's getting from looking around is that they'd account for that somehow at this school. Teddy's willing to take handicap pills or whatever if it means keeping extracurriculars. She's willing to  do anything, really, if it means getting her life back on track.

When the head of staff, a kind Belgian man name Gerard, sits Teddy down and explains things, he seems kind of strained. She guesses that he's not used to his employers dying and vanishing (she sympathizes), but one way or another he's lost a bit of his consumate professionaliism. He's acting a bit like he won't see Teddy again, like she's going to a foreign country instead of a few hours away, and so Teddy engages her Assuring Adults She Can Handle Things subroutine and applies herself towards making this thing go smoothly for everyone else. Lourdes, the cook, sees through it immediately and tells her to watch her mouth and to make sure she eats enough, and they both depart from each other grinning and close to tears. Jean-Paul, who is on paper the gardener and in practice Teddy's martial arts intructor, tells her gruffly to take her sword with her and to not take anyone else's shit. Teddy flushes slightly but makes the promises.

Now she's staring at the application, online if at all possible, and mentally pacing. She can definitely bring her sword, apparently? Otherwise she a little stymied. This application is less personal essay than she was expecting, and more 'detailed medical chart'. She's able to fill in her name (Dorothy Ntkima Terentin) and so on, and her 'date of manifestation' comes easy enough (it's been aa few weeks), but this form seems kind of obsessed with a lot of things Teddy has never even thought about. There's an outside chance she'll need to weigh herself? But then, there's also a button she's afraid to click that appears to auto-populate info from Teddy's general practicioner? What is with this school?

It doesn't help that the application deadline is, from some conservative angles, already past. And the lawyers are being very vaguely intimidating to everyone about Teddy's 'educational needs'. She needs to get cracking on this.

She can definitely bring her sword. The auto-populate button, while convenient, is not mandatory. The form would also like to know a tentative list of powers, any changes her mutation has made to her body, and her sexuality and gender identity (with a disclaimer about their tolerance policy, which states, somewhat unusually, that no person will be permitted to use this information against her).

Uhhh. It is at this point that Teddy would choose a different school, if she had any control over that. Your gym looks fantastic, Whateley, but this girl's gonna go to high school with her friends and sleep under the bleachers, thanks, really. Please expunge all medical records and never ask me about sex again!

But lawyers. And responsibility.

She clicks the incredibly creepy autopopulate button, because why not. Disappointingly, this does not give her plausible deniability by filling in the sex and gender questions. For sexuality, she very quickly indicates heterosexuality (which could even be true for all she knows) and that she's a girl. There, simple enough. The auto-populate did manage to fill in a little bit about her superpowers, but not much, so she fleshes it out.

Teddy is strong, and tough, and fast. The powers made her significantly more of all of those, and she heals faster now, besides. This was tested for at the doctors' but became practically apparent later, when she kept nicking herself with her newfound, sharp fingernails. They'd begun to grow in slightly jagged, or faceted, at their bases, and they were constantly snagging on fabric or scratching Teddy's face. Attempts to file them had ruined emery boards and several metal rasps. Altogether, her doctors had seemed poorly equipped to explicate exactly what was happening to her, and they were somewhat confused about where Teddy's baseline abilities had been, thinking that she was either exaggerating them or that she had gotten some of her powers earlier than she was admitting. Mostly they were only successful in confirming something about her chromosomes being active and her being an exemplar. What that meant was unclear and difficult to research. Was this place some kind of... mutant school, like how there were historical women's colleges? Weird to think about.

Teddy writes all of this down, and formats it as nicely and neatly as the text editor allows. First impressions. When she's done, she submits the whole thing and goes to lie down.

The next day, a letter arrives. The letter states that Dorothy Ntkima Terentin has been accepted as a student at Whateley Academy, and will start in fall of 2012, the semester beginning in one week. She is encouraged to arrange transportation to the Dunwich, New Hampshire campus at any point before then; if she does not, transportation will be arranged for her. The letter encourages her to pack whatever she may need: they include a suggested checklist, including personal weaponry, any tools required by a Gadgeteer or Devisor student (“as school-supplied equipment may not be removed from the Workshop”), and toiletries rated for whatever combination of skin, hair, scales, or dermolith a student may happen to have. All of these are also available at the campus store, however. 

Okay, acting shocked is going to get old fast. Get used to the new normal, Teddy, and then go past it. Should be easy enough.

Packing. Packing, packing, packing. There's an immediate problem to tackle; Teddy has never actually has cause to transport The Sword (that's how it sounds in her head) out of the house before. She's been to fencing meets, but The Sword isn't precisely standard-issue. Jean-Paul gave it to her a couple of years ago, after Teddy had been kicked out of her third or fourth fencing class. He called it an estoc, and called the art of modern fencing several rude and disparaging things while he was at it. That guy had a lot of opinions for a drunk gardener. Essentially, The Sword was a three-foot-long pyramidal steel spike mounted on a sword hilt, weighing nearly five pounds despite its slender profile. The blade itself is unsharp, but leaving the point naked would be asking for punctured luggage or worse, and Teddy doesn't really have a scabbard for it. She wraps it in an old blanket she was going to pack anyway, and binds it up with twine from the kitchen. The whole thing goes in a very practical-looking leather Sunday bag that her dad used to golf with, along with a more standard (and sharp!) rapier in-scabbard. Is this what they meant by personal weaponry? Was she supposed to have a handgun?

She'll be bringing her tiny laptop and her phone, as well as a stylish little fitness watch. And her sewing kit? A thimble was a tool, she guessed. This really was nothing like summer camp. In a fit of pique she threw in all of her professional climbing equipment, as well.

She contemplates the word 'dermolith' throughout. It would be nice, she thinks after Googling, to stop accidentally leaving scrapes on every surface she puts hands to. She gingerly handles an old, golden medal she had borrowed from her dad's office, months ago, before he died. Somehow, she had never found the time to put it back. It goes between a pillowcase in her luggage for safekeeping. The gold is soft and delicate, and she feels protective of her dad's things.

Goodbyes, variously tearful or back-pounding as appropriate, are made to the house staff. Teddy tends to a flock of conciliatory emails to send to friends that she is now, she guesses, abandoning. It should be harder to do this, but it isn't. The same proves true of carrying her gigantic sports bag of luggage one-armed to the front step. She really has gotten stronger.

There's a taxi, then a bus, then a train. Then, eventually, creepy New Hampshire countryside. Yay! She'll be arriving a few days early, all told. Nervousness is a black dog chasing Teddy, and she is outrunning it.

When she arrives, she's greeted by a sharply dressed woman with a white streak in her black hair. "Hello, Dorothy. You are Dorothy, right?"

"Yeah, Teddy, short-for, y'know," Teddy stumbles.  She's wearing athletic wear, and no makeup. Was she supposed to dress up? This woman's pretty. Nothing for it, smile engaged.

"Yes! I'm assuming you're from Whateley Academy? What with the clipboard and everything?" She grins and holds a hand out to shake.

The woman smiles, amused, and shakes her hand. "Yes, you're in the right place. I'm Professor Gertrud Wolfgang, the housemother of Whitman Cottage. Now, you've arrived a bit early, before the crush of inrushing students, so you've got a few days before the official tour and welcoming assembly. That's good, it means you'll have a bit of time to settle in, and you can visit the campus store if you're missing anything without having to brave the crowds. If you have questions, though, they may have to wait a while, because I'm a very patient woman but I'm not patient enough to explain the intricacies of Whateley to every freshman individually." She lowers her voice conspiratorially. "I'm not patient at all, actually, I just say that so I can then say this conspiratorially.”

Oh, Teddy would immediately die for this woman. Nice.

"Yeah, I didn't have much holding me back, as it turns out! You can only pack so much," she says, indicating the behemoth bag under her arm. "I'll leave you alone, Houseprofessor Wolfgang."

Dorm time.

"As you arrived early, you can pick any unoccupied room on the second floor," Professor Wolfgang tells her as she leaves.

There’s a bust of someone, presumably Walt Whitman, to the side of the entrance hall. There's a large common room, past it, and a stairway leading both up and down. The common room contains a basket full of campus maps, plus sofas, chairs, a large TV, and several enclosed desks.

Ah, empty public spaces. This reminds Teddy of unsanctioned freeweight training in middle school. Good times. She snags a campus map and tucks it into her headband. Disarming people is the order of the day, and her actual clothing doesn't supply many pockets.

If nothing is too weird about New Hampshire then the second floor is presumably the second floor. She picks the farthest room from the stairwell she can find, as long as it isn't clearly worse than the others.

It's not! It's not the size of her room at home, of course, but it's a perfectly respectable dorm room.

Get some rugs in here, some paintings, it'll be great. As-is it's a place where she can sleep where she's never been tucked in by anyone, which in Teddy's current frame of mind is a big plus!

She feels confident enough to take the bed she prefers, which is closer to any windows. Her bag goes under it, the bed gets dressed, and then Teddy steps back out, leaving the door ajar and reaching for her map to find where to get some food around here. The number of granola bar wrappers in her bag right now can't be credited.

As she reads her map, she may notice a girl looking at her appraisingly. The girl is dark-skinned, agonizingly thin, about eight feet tall but hunched slightly, with long arms tipped with savage claws extending from her shoulders and a secondary set of more normal arms extending from her chest. Her legs are digitigrade, and she has a long barbed tail. She has spikes running down her spine, and coming out of the backs of her knees, and on both sets of elbows. Her eyes are solid red.

She grins, revealing a mouth filled chaotically with needle-sharp teeth, and says in a pleasant Midwestern accent "Hey! Incoming freshman, right? Need any help finding your way around?"

Oh! Oh, okay! It's like this!

Teddy schools her expression while also reangling her entire concept of what being a student at this school might imply. These things are going take a lot of her available brainspace for the next several moments. Luckily, the philosophical underpinning of being othered her entire life rears up and grabs the reins.

"Hi! I'm Teddy, it's nice to meet you." She puts out her hand (angled somewhat upwards, after a quick correction) to shake, not quite beaming but returning the smile.

"I am new here, yeah. Watch my nails, they're sharp and I haven't figured out how to fix 'em yet." They glint like rock candy under the flourescent lights.

The girl shakes her hand, using the more human of her right arms. "Maybe you could get a Workshop kid to make you some nail covers? It'd be a shame to grind them down, they're really pretty, but if they're that sharp- you know what, you should talk to Alice Carver, I'm sure she can machine you something, she's great with small parts."

She slightly belatedly lets go of Teddy's hand. "Sorry, I'm kind of doing the Fixer thing on autopilot. I'm Zafira - I'm the Fixer for Whitman Cottage, it's a semi-unofficial position that basically means, if you're having a problem, especially with a dormmate, come to me first and I'll try to solve it! And it's nice to meet you. I got that interaction totally backwards, sorry." She laughs.

"Oh, like an RA? That's so cool. I'll do my best to keep things from getting that far, anyway."

Beat.Teddy's missing something.

Oh, wait.

"So like. Yeesh. Sorry to dump this on you but  I actually have just no idea what's going on around here. I barely know what being a mutant means? I mean..." She does a sort of broad gesture encompassing the two of them. "Obviously, but other than that I'm lost."

It's so nice when authority figures want to help.

"Oh! Yeah, that totally makes sense - so, basically, Whateley is a school for mutants. It's not a superhero school - you can learn to be a superhero here, but you can also learn to be a supervillain, or a scientist, or whatever you want, really. But because the world at large is pretty hostile towards mutants, there's a certain amount of emphasis on self-defense; everybody has to take at least Basic Martial Arts, and most people do more than that. My boyfriend and I have a team in the Combat Sims, which is the sport du jour for most Whateleyites. Oh, and Whateley is also kind of - a weird fusion of high school and college? You can get out of here with a standard diploma, but you can also take a lot of courses for college credits, especially if you're an Exemplar, which I'm guessing you are, stop me if I'm wrong."

Normally Teddy would immediately latch onto the concept of intramural sports but there's new bait on the line. She could be a superhero. Up until now she's been thinking of her powers as a condition, or as some weird consequence of her dad's death. She never thought that she could... go out and punch bad guys really hard? Or something? This would bear further thinking-about. Perhaps there would be a guidance counselor,if they hade those at weird mixed-use futuristic mutant school.

"I've been told that, yeah. The doctors didn't really seem to know what was up, though. I think they were confused by, well, I do a lot of sports and I got the feeling they thought I shot up a lot more than I actually did."

...

"That explanation was incredibly helpful, actually. You're good at this. I think I sort of got pushed out of the nest and you're..."

"...okay, I am not going to call you the wind beneath my wings. Because we literally just met. But thanks."

Zafira grins again. "I'll take it as a compliment! I try to help people when I can. And yeah, baseline doctors kinda suck at diagnosing mutations. Oh, and, word to the wise, you should come up with a codename. Even if you're not planning to do the super thing, they get used for a lot of stuff around here. Mine's Urchin."

This is all being noted. Teddy has never once come up with a cool codename. Yet.

Teddy wonders if Zafira is named after the sea urchin and, if so, if Zafira can breathe underwater. Teddy wonders if it's rude to ask that kind of thing.

"Are you hungry?" Teddy is hungry, and feels like she could find the dining hall either way.

"I could eat, sure! Want me to show you to the Crystal Hall?" 

"If... that's..." She consults her map. "Yes, please."

Zafira starts loping down the hall. "Yeah, the Crystal Hall is the cafeteria. A place of many wonders, by all accounts. I only eat every week or so, which means I'm not as into it as, say, an Energizer would be, but they get good quality meat in for me, and that's really all a girl can ask for."

"Isn't it!"

Teddy is usually the one loping. She could get used to this.

"I'm catching myself wondering why the cafeteria is called the Crystal Hall."

"You'll see when we get there - it's a giant geodesic dome, it's really cool."

They exit the building and head toward the center of campus, where there is indeed a giant geodesic dome. It was not featured on the school's website, which is weird considering it's a giant geodesic dome in the center of campus.

"Well that wasn't on the school website. Maybe it doesn't show up in photos!" She's pretty much joking. She's heard weirder things in the past five minutes.

Teddy isn't quite taking the lead, because she isn't actually sure where she's going, but she has a task to focus on. She beelines for the nearest entrance, walkng backwards.

"I can't wait to run circles around this thing."

"Oh, yeah, the website on the normal human internet is a decoy so baselines don't think it's a good school and try to send their kids. If you access it from the school intranet you'll get the real site, which you'll need to register for classes and stuff. And running around the Crystal Hall is a time-honored tradition! I run a parkour club, we do it all the time."

!!!

"You do parkour?" Teddy has stopped, gripping the doorframe, door propped against her back. Multiple people on this campus do parkour regularly. And this was still New England?

But then Teddy smells food, and so she is forced to waft inwards on the fumes like a cartoon character. But she's not dropping this whole jock vibing moment, mark her words.

Zafira follows her into the cafeteria sedately. "I do! It's a lot of fun, especially when everybody has different powers they can use to cheat. F'rinstance, I run at about 60 miles per hour on all fours, and Sylvia's a Paragon so she gets intuitions of the best thing to do at a given moment, and Jesse's an energizer so she's really fast even without being a quadruped."

The cafeteria is grand and lovely and absolutely fucking ridiculous. It has a bunch of different buffet lines. "Have fun figuring out the categorization system," Zafira says cheerfully. "It's supposed to be pretty straightforward, but I never bothered, because the obligate carnivore lane is where I can acquire most of a cow, and that's all I really need. Speaking of which, off I go to acquire most of a cow."

     This is a good world that Teddy's stumbled into. Superpower sports! Competition, for once! There are a few outstanding thorns that have stuck in her side (there's supervillains here? and a secret intranet? and tons of white guy statues?), but taken all together, Whateley seems like it's the new horizon she desperately been wanting. She thought she needed something to get her back on track after Dad, but there's a sneaking suspicion unfurling somewhere low in Teddy's chest that she's been stuck for a lot longer than that. She feels like one of those captive killer whales would, if it somehow made it into the ocean.

     ....

     Teddy has, as it turns out, wandered over to some seafood. She's thoroughly ignoring any posted signage, since she has at least five senses that are gonna give her better feedback on how to find what she wants. She's got a grilled whitefish fillet with some kind of lemon situation involved, two considerable salads that are sort of blurring together at their edges, some golden, peppery rice, and a bucketful of ice water before she stops to think about what she's doing. She agrees with her choices, in retrospect. It takes her about twice that long to decide on a dessert, partially out of choice fatigue and partially because Teddy only rarely goes for sugar-bombs in her diet. But ooh, her heart says, they have parfait.

     With the help of a tray that seems ingeniously designed for this exact purpose, Teddy maneuvers her quite-large lunch selection to wherever it seems like Zafira will be able to find her. Teddy's a little unsure if this means that Zafira will be, say, showering her with gore, or if there's a separate area where she eats cows, or what, but you don't get anywhere in school by opting out of hanging out with cool upperclassmen. Teddy will sustain some bloodstains if it's necessary to maintain a friendship. In the meantime, she begins zesting some tiny limes with her (admittedly very useful) fingernails, dropping the fragments in her tureen of ice water and occasionally eating some fish. Are there, like, other students around? She realizes she wasn't paying attention to that until just now. She must have been hungry.

There aren’t a ton of other people in the cafeteria; there’s still a few days before school starts, and most people haven’t yet arrived. But there’s an old lady with ram’s horns picking at a plate of fried rice, and a middle-school-aged boy eating a very rare steak, and a girl who appears to also be a dragon tearing into a very well-done steak.

Zafira appears to have beaten her to sitting down. She waves at Teddy with one of her claw-arms, as the lesser arms rapidly feed meat and bone into her mouth. It’s a surprisingly neat process, really; there’s hardly any blood dripping down her chin, and there’s no indication that Teddy will be spattered with gore if she sits opposite. 

Everybody in this cafeteria is going to get heart disease except Teddy and maybe Zafira. She feels that this is true even though she knows nothing about most of their digestive systems. Old habits!

Teddy sufficiently limes her water and then tucks in, eating slowly enough for a standard person and glacially next to the industrial pace that Zafira is setting. The fish vanishes square-by-square. Her war-of-salads is slowly drained of troops. The parfait never even stood a chance. Teddy, who is used to great food, is impressed. She chomps an AWOL radish thoughtfully when she's done, and contemplates Zafira's teeth. Pointy. She wonders how they stay so sharp.

Once Zafira's done, Teddy wants to get cracking. She'll go back to her dorm hopefully supplied with knowledge of what school tasks (registration, signups, textbooks, uniforms, the usual) she can currently knock out, and which she might have to wait a few days for. And, if Zafira seems down, also supplied with an email or phone number so that they can stay in contact. No pressure.

Zafira’s happy to answer any questions Teddy chooses to pose, once she’s done with her meal, which doesn’t take long. Registration can be done via the school intranet; the system will suggest classes for her to take, and she should probably pay attention to it, because it’s very smart. Textbooks will be listed in the course descriptions when she signs up; she can buy them from the campus store, or the teachers will have used copies to hand out on the first day. The uniform is not strictly mandatory except on special occasions, but can be purchased off-the-rack at the campus store or tailored by Cecilia Rogers in Dunwich. She’s also happy to provide her email address and cell number, along with the email for Alice Carver, a senior and Devisor, “for those nail covers we talked about, she usually does power armor but she could get you fitted for some metal covers and machine them like that, and then you don’t have to worry about scratching stuff up unless you’re trying to.”

Yay! Friend achieved. Objective completed. School intranet made just a hair creepier.

Teddy texts Zafira so she'll have her number ("Hey! It's teddy"). Then she sends an exploratory email to Carver; typing on the glass screen these days means acting like she's just had a manicure, but it's managable. Still, she's heading back to her dorm for her laptop. Trying to do a whole class schedule on her phone would be hazardous and tedious, which is a bad combination.

Zafira texts back a smiley face. Alice emails her back within a couple of minutes, expressing slightly awkwardly that she would be delighted to work with Teddy to find a solution to her issue as soon as she gets back to campus the day after tomorrow.

When she gets back to her dorm, her bed has on it 1) a copy of the student handbook, which is not quite novel-sized but comes close, and 2) another laptop, this one larger and boxier than her own.

"As soon as", huh! People around here were really helpful. As evidenced by all the loot that's been deposited on her bed. She tucks the book into bed, so she'll remember to read it later, and then checks out the new laptop. What are its strategic advantages? Is it rigged to explode? Can it play solitaire. Regardless, Teddy's sticking with her little notebook comp for now.

Teddy theatrically pops her knuckles in the empty room, and gets to registering. She is going to take all of the most wonderful classes.

The new computer's main advantage is that it is proof against a frankly absurd amount of physical and electromagnetic punishment, according to the system spec document on the desktop. One such laptop is distributed to all incoming freshmen, but if she has her own computer she can feel free to return this one to Schuster Hall.

There are many wonderful classes available to her! Required classes are Intro to Superpowers (Powers Lab and Powers Theory) and either Basic Martial Arts or Survival. (The description of Basic Martial arts specifies, in bold: Yes, you have to take this before other martial arts classes, no matter your level of martial arts experience.) Recommended classes include a college-level lit class offered Saturday mornings, AP Calculus, AP Physics, Mutants and World History, Costume Shop 1, Intro to Mystic Arts, Intro to Psychic Disciplines, and a wide variety of physical activities including but not limited to gymnastics, mountain climbing, and ballet. Somewhat concerningly, the system seems to know which physical activities she's already taken classes in, offering more advanced versions of these classes.

She has eight available class periods in a day, plus the Saturday morning slot. She is not required to fill all of these class periods, but she is encouraged to fill at least five.

     It's nice to have some proof that Whateley is, like, a real school, like for classes. Teddy takes Powers, Martial Arts (if they insist), AP Calculus, AP Physics, Mutants and World History, Costume Shop, and... hm. Psychic Disciplines. Teddy doesn't want to wear a pointy hat, and if psychics are going to be in her life she'd like to know more about them. She tacks the literature class onto her Saturday slot.

     For her last little treat-yourself slot she goes with Gymnastics. She's happy to just climb stuff on her own time, and she's got a few bad memories associated with ballet. Gymnastics will probably the most social option, too, and she'd love to get back into it where she won't be gently encouraged to leave for being too big.

(It probably wouldn't be wise to just take as many phys-ed classes as she can cram in. Even if she's supernaturally fast at recovering from physical strain now. Maybe next semester.)

     Teddy confirms all of this, and then take out twenty minutes or so to put it in a little planner she brought with her. It's a pleasantly full schedule, although there's a little voice in the back of her head going Wow that's a lot of math huh. She shushes it and closes the journal.

     Armed with the knowledge she needs to get some textbooks*, Teddy gets up and heads out to the campus store. She makes sure her planner is tucked in, next to the student handbook.

*She is also armed with The Sword now, wrapped up in its blanket. She's pretty sure she saw a kid with some kind of cannon, earlier, so that's a thing, and she never really gets to show this thing to people anyway.

The first thing she may notice is that the campus store has a prominent display of scabbards, one of which - a belt scabbard made of lightly embroidered brown leather, angled so that it won't drag on the ground despite its length - is sized perfectly for The Sword.

The second thing she may notice is that the Campus Store is enormous, and contains far more varieties of thing than seems in any way reasonable. The textbook section is clearly marked, and she can find her assigned readings there. It's just that if she wants anything else - and it seems like she could get anything else - she may have to go exploring.

Was every student life building on this campus retrofitted from being a wacky derigible hangar? Signs point to yes.

Teddy puts The Sword in the scabbard. She takes it back out. Back in. What. This sword is from some obscure metal refinery in France, she thinks, made to a style that's so irrelevant that it mostly shows up in video games and at Renaissance fairs. But here, in a secret mutant school in New Hampshire, there's a sheath for it. A nice sheath, too, with bronzey thread whipping its way up the length in curlicues.

She'll be wearing that out. The blanket goes in her bag.

Teddy dutifully selects the appropriate books, also snagging a trail map for the area. She manages to find a truly mythical clothing section, and plumbs its depths for a while. She emerges with a powder-blue WHATELEY ACADEMY baseball cap, some gymnastics-and-martial-arts-specific clothing items, and a red hooded sweatshirt with a shockingly yellow banana emblazoned on the chest. She pointedly ignores the uniforms; they'll have to lead her to that particular water before she drinks it.

Teddy pauses. She could honestly peer through this place for hours (and she has the time), but where to go next? She's gonna get some snacks, probably, so she doesn't have to leg it to the cafeteria every time she wants a bite to eat, but those seem mostly closer to the entrance, so she'll do that last.

Where seems the most edifying?

There's sections for cookware, art supplies, various toiletries, knives, dorm furniture, posters, semi-precious stones, and pet supplies (though they're labeled "familiar supplies" for some reason).

     Teddy has literally always wanted a pet, but she doubts she'll have the time to learn how. Especially with how complicated the familiar supplies seem to get, the longer she examines them. May she never be asked to feed an aardvark, apparently.

     Wandering, Teddy manages to find a rather sizable, sturdy picnic basket (it's over in the biology section, for some reason, and it has a little sheath for a knife?) and begins placing her stuff into it as she goes. She dawdles in the knife section. They have daggers here, actual full-sized ones, many of them creepy and ceremonial-looking to Teddy's more practical eye. She selects one that looks A) useful, B) similar-ish to her estoc, and C) less arcane than the median. She also snags a multitool and a little hunting knife that fits in the basket-sheath. She caresses a few Chinese combat knives but ultimately stops herself. Let's be practical.

     Teddy would love to add additional surfaces and seats and decorations to her dorm room but decides to wait for her roommate to actually exist first. She does end up picking up a few good-quality markers and things; she knows from experience that she needs fun colors and various tactile experiences to stay engaged with math for very long, and she's gonna give herself the best chance. On top of that, some towels, a box of tissues, and a personal-size whiteboard are crammed into the slightly-protesting wicker basket.

     Then: snacks. a bushel of granola, in both loose and bar-form, spicy chips of variously Korean or Guatemalan origin, and a wholesale-sized package of dried orange segments. Teddy parks everything at the checkout, pays, and shall head dormwards to read her student manual attentively and do some calisthenics. Then: sleep.

The student manual explains many things, such Whateley's hero-villain neutrality policy, the reasons for said policy (villains would destroy the place if it was just a superhero school, and it was deemed better to have a school for mutants that maintains a neutrality policy than to have a pile of rubble), the fact that threatening other students' families is expressly forbidden even beyond the degree to which threatening other students is forbidden, and the fact that while uniforms are not required on a day-to-day basis, they will be required at certain formal events.

Books can't tell Teddy what to do!*

Teddy completes a vigorous series of exercises and then, downing water and supplements and a handful of kiwi rice crackers, hits the hay. As she's drifting off, she considers that having completed all of her important tasks today might leave things a bit boring until people start actually arriving on campus. She plans to spend tomorrow exploring the grounds (and getting some proper running done) unless anyone demands anything of her.

*She probably won't threaten anyone's families.

Tomorrow goes approximately as she plans; nobody demands anything of her yet.

The day after, there's a little shuttlebusload of freshmen shuttled in from Dunwich. They're all in Poe Cottage, for some reason. A couple of other folks trickle in too, but not many.

The day after that, it's a fucking three-ring circus. Kids! Parents! Luggage! Professor Wolfgang is outside with her clipboard, greeting cheerfully until her smile looks like more of a rictus. The cottage is loud; the campus is louder. The Crystal Hall is packed all day.

A girl opens Teddy's door toward lunchtime, dragging a rolling suitcase behind her. She's got a jeweled bindi on her forehead and luxurious-looking black wings folded across her back. "Hi! You must be Teddy, right?"

She's caught Teddy in the middle of an unlikely-looking stretch (her legs really can go so much farther up than they could before the whole Mutant Thing). A mix of exercise and camping equipment litters the floor, stopping self-conciously at the dorm room's midline. A picnic basket (with a knife!) overflows with multiplicitous snack foods.

Teddy shakes one earbud out of her ears, leaving it to dangle with the other.

"Ye-e-es?" she replies, ratcheting her raised leg downwards with each syllable. "Are you–?" Part bird? Capable of powered flight? Going to yell at me for hoarding food in here?

(Teddy contemplates the new horizons of fitness that come with additional limbs.)

"Your new roommate!" the girl chirps. (Not like that. She's just cheerful.) "Parvati Deval. Maan, Paapa, andar aao-"

Her parents enter the room, looking around. "Bigger than my old dorm," her father rumbles.

"Mine too," her mother murmurs. "Talk about accommodations, they gave you a room you can fly in!"

"I couldn't fly in here," Parvati laughs. "Um, I'm just going to - okay, your stuff is all on your side, cool - I'm gonna leave my stuff here and we'll get lunch. Do you want to come, Teddy?"

"Oh absolutely. You're gonna need as many elbows to throw as possible, that place is swamped." Teddy uses the cover of a closet door to demurely de-sweat herself with a towel. "I appreciate the reinforcements."

Teddy slides her sword on (she's learning the value of having a thing for people to talk about on this campus) and grabs a tactical-looking purse from the floor.

"Anyways, it's so nice to meet you guys! Did they show you where the gigantic diamond dome was already?"

"It's hard to miss!" Parvati laughs.

"Do you fence?" her father asks, his eyes tracking the Sword. "That blade looks pretty serious."

"Oh, yeah, are you familiar?" Teddy exclaims, popping about six inches of the Sword out of its scabbard. "It's an estoc, so it's all unsharpened except at the tip." Teddy runs her finger along one of its three dull edges. "It's a little more than they let you use in modern fencing, so I've only ever practiced with it at home. Apparently they have, like, combat sports here, though, so that's exciting." The Sword goes shunk as she lets it slide back into its sheath. She busies herself with the little button-strap that goes over the hilt to hold it in place. "But then I go kind of wild for extracurriculars."

Teddy navigates herself into the hallway so that the conversation is pointing away from her side of the room. She has some embedded instincts when it comes to parents, bedrooms, and the former's attitudes toward stashes of weapons and junk food in the latter. The Devals haven't said anything (and also aren't the boss of Teddy anyway, she reminds herself), but old habits die hard.

"They really weren't kidding when they said you could bring personal weaponry!" he says with an only slightly awkward laugh.

Mrs. Deval looks worried. "Maybe we should've bought you some pepper spray, like we talked about. What if everybody else is... what do they say? Packing heat?"

Parvati rolls her eyes. "If somebody comes at me with a knife I'll use my scream on them, and they'll be too busy bleeding from every hole in their face to care. Or I'll break their arms with my wings. I'm not defenseless."

"Oh, I know, but I worry. This nice young lady has such a large sword, I don't know if that's the standard."

"If I need a sword I'll get a sword," Parvati promises, to her mother's significant mollification.

"I'm not the only kid with a sword, but it's just a diverse campus like that!" Teddy is letting her mouth run while repressing a scream over the phrase 'packing heat' and an oh gosh over the concept of wing combat. "I just carry it around because leaving it under my bed collecting dust is a little sad." Plus it sort of dresses up all the spandex and lycra Teddy wears.

"I'd say most of the student body goes around unarmed." Teddy is pointedly avoiding the topics of magic, psionic attack, small personal knives, small personal firearms, and all of the other various and sundry things that she can't realistically have been accounting for, Which, conveniently, isn't lying! Lying to her roommate's parent would be kinda rude. "And we're super not supposed to get into unsanctioned fights, the student handbook is pretty clear."

Teddy uses all of her body language to get this group moving towards food.

Mr. and Mrs. Deval look relieved. "That's what I'd hoped," Mr. Deval says.

"And I'll still keep up with my capoeira," Parvati says. "Unless there's some style that works a lot better with wings, or something, in which case I might learn that instead."

The Devals are very willing to be shepherded towards food; they drove up from Trenton, apparently, and haven't eaten since breakfast. "We could've gotten KFC or something, but we wanted to see how the food was at this big fancy school my daughter's going to," Mr. Deval confides.

"And cafeteria food is free," Parvati teases.

"Yes, that too!"

Wing martial arts. Double jock roommates! Everythings coming up Terentin. Teddy falls into step with Parvati, smiles at her.

"Oh, the food here is great, sir. It was even great three days ago when nobody was really here yet to eat it, even, so I'm guessing it can only have gotten better," Teddy explains, striding forward to hold open the Whitman doors for the Devals. She's gently menacing the people, common to any school setting, who don't appear to understand how foot traffic is supposed to work. They shall taste steel, if they try to step on anyone's shoes.

Then, on the group's way past the Walt statue, something occurs to Teddy.

"Just, you know, don't accidentally get in the obligate carnivore line. Unless you, ha ha, want an entire horse torso for lunch. Heh. Diverse campus!" This is fine. "There are signs, shouldn't be a problem." Shut up, Teddy.

Parvati smiles back at Teddy.

"I'll stay away from any signs with horses on them, yes," Mr. Deval says. "I'm glad the food's so good, though! And if someone wants horse they should get horse!"

"But we won't," Mrs. Deval says firmly.

"So, Teddy, what kind of powers do you have?" Parvati asks.

"I'm an Exemplar, apparently. Nobody will quote me a number, but I can do the whole bending-steel-bars, sprinting-for-hours, math-in-my-head thing." Teddy holds her hands out in front of her like she's pushing something. "Plus my fingernails are made of diamonds now? Kind of? I'm just taking things as they come, honestly."

Teddy contemplates her human condition for a moment. Navel, meet gaze. Oh, but, right, conversation!

"How long have you been winged up?" she asks Parvati. Teddy is just beginning to contemplate that those beautiful wings might have had to grow in. Eeuch.

"A few months," Parvati says. "First my eyes turned." (Her irises are as black as her pupils, and so wide they consume almost all the visible real estate of her eyes - there's a peek of white at the corners, nothing else.) "The wings started out as just these weird growths on my back, then they kept getting bigger, and started growing feathers - it happened way quicker than it sounds like, they came in over the course of a couple days. Then..." She extends and flaps her wings a couple of times. "Wings! It took me a while to actually try flying, even though the doctors said they'd be able to support my weight, but ever since it's been my favorite kind of exercise. And that's some pretty stiff competition."

"And that's not all!" her mother continues. "Do the Autotune!"

Parvati rolls her eyes a little, but she inhales and then starts singing. Not just singing - she's got backing instrumentals, and her voice is clearer and prettier than anyone's voice can really sound. She cuts herself off after a few bars. "That's got combat applications too - I can scream at a hundred and fifty decibels and focus all that sound in a little area, so it echoes in somebody's head. I only had to do it once, but it was effective."

That seems like a lot of decibels! Between that and flight, Teddy suddenly feels unequipped for fighting at range.

"The 'Autotune', that's cute," she says, grinning at Mrs. Deval over her shoulder. "And impressive!" This is to Parvati. "I'm mostly jealous of the flight, though, I can't imagine having a whole other, like, muscle group to work with." Although growing new limbs might have been a bridge too far with everything else going on at the time. Careful what you wish for, Ted.

"Your wings might also be good for crowd control," Teddy finds herself half-joking, as the student body presses ever closer as they approach the Nutrition Hemisphere. There really weren't too many people with swords, which was both good for Teddy's ego and for the continued good grace of the Deval parents.

There's at least one, though! An Indian girl, shorter than Teddy but not by much, with a fucking claymore strapped to her back. "Hey!" she says, in a charming English accent, when she notices Teddy. "Sword bros! Is that an epee?"

Big Swords Anonymous! But, hmm. Hmmmm.

Teddy, inspired by Parvati's recent wings-unfurled Super Bowl performance moment, decides to lean into being a sword geek. With significant care but significantly more flair, Teddy frees the Sword from its confines, letting the midday sun play over its carbon-black length. She presents it sideways to the girl, holding it across both hands. The Sword's three sides narrow over the course of three feet to a single point, and the direct light reveals a triplet of subtle hooks worked into the blade, not far from the cross of the hilt. She gives it just a moment.

Then, she says, "I mean, you're not that far off."

"Oh, that is barbaric," the girl says admiringly. "It's like what a roofing nail wants to be when it grows up. Mine's more with the hack-and-slash bit."

Oh we are getting some mixed signals. Teddy is thankful that her mutation didn't giver her literal hackles to literally raise. As it is, her eyebrows are approaching escape velocity as she sheathes the Sword and attempts to disengage.

"Gee, thanks. I'm Dorothy. This is my roommate, Parvati. She and I are getting lunch with her parents."

Teddy can't actually help examining the girl's huge monster claymore, though. It doesn't do to ignore swords, in life or in high school.

The claymore is not only big but clearly old. This is not a sword that was made in a foundry; it was made by a blacksmith, possibly out of metal from a fallen star. It's well-maintained despite its age; it looks like it could cut through whatever flesh and bone are put before it.

"I'm Riya." Riya is clearly not unaware of Teddy's sudden discomfort; she shrugs, raises her own eyebrows in a sort of "what can you do" expression, and turns to go back into the Crystal Hall. "I'll see you around, I suppose."

Oh damn is that a magic sword. Are there magic swords. Did I just get microaggressed by and then insult a girl with a cursed magic sword.

"Yeah," says Teddy, suddenly of two minds. Maybe Riya hadn't meant it like that, maybe years of New England prep-school bullshit had made Teddy oversensitive. "See you around. I can't imagine the two sword girls won't have similar schedules."

Smile. Ceasefire?

She smiles back, looking somewhat relieved, but does not cancel her retreat. She does, however, wave slightly awkwardly.

Mr. Deval clears his throat and says "Let's get some food, huh?"

Oops! Apologies, Mr. Deval. "Oh, yeah, sorry about that. You know how it is with... swords? It's like that, with swords."

Teddy makes haste, once again gently threatening a pathway through the doors, and leads the Devals into the jam-packed Crystal Hall. She considers the signs for the different food lines, which she doesn't actually look at when she comes here by herself.

"The Carrot sign is for vegan food, Cheese is for non-vegan vegetarian, Steak is non-vegan non-vegetarian, Cow is meat-only, the Banana sign is fruit and stuff, Cake is sugary stuff..." Teddy cranes her neck. "I don't actually know what the no-bread sign is for, because they do usually have some bread over there... and the sign with a rock on it just has rocks, which makes sense, on some level, I guess."

Teddy sticks with the Devals, specifically Parvati, as they split into their chosen food lines. Teddy has been starting to notice that her diet is having less of an effect on her body; years of carefully-tuned meal planning for various sports purposes has suddenly stopped availing her. She's been advised that this has to do with how her body doesn't quite care about physics anymore, but it still feels pretty weird to be able to eat absolutely anything before a two-hour run and have it have no impact on her performance. No wonder Whateley serves cake 24/7, she thinks.

Mrs. Deval is apparently vegetarian, but her husband and daughter are not. They all avoid dishes with beef, which as always are marked.

Parvati scares up a large bowl of pasta primavera, a tuna and avocado poke bowl, a fried Cornish game hen, and a blackberry tartlet. “It’s a good thing my appetite increased when I manifested,” she marvels. “I saw like six things I wanted but couldn’t justify.”

“My daughter who used to eat naan with mayonnaise!” her father says merrily. “Such a selection!”

She huffs. “I was three years old! Three-year-olds are allowed to have bad food opinions!”

Teddy whistles, mentally. Was the appetite increase a thing? Shes pretty sure she's always been this hungry, she can just live up to it now.

She goes vegetarian herself, today, sticking to the vegan line for salads to avoid the twin scourges of buttermilk ranch dressing and cheddar croutons. Blech. Blueberry yogurt muffin, check, yogurt smoothie, check, parfait for dessert, check.

"When I was like, four, my mom would get me McDonalds and I would only eat the buns," Teddy says, angling for a table. "I couldn't ever tell which one of us my dad was more annoyed by."

If Teddy knew a little more Powers Theory, she'd know that most exemplars do not in fact get a massive appetite boost, but it seems like maybe having two extra limbs and using them to fly on a daily basis might cause some increased calorie requirements.

Food is eaten. The Devals return to the dorm, where they part from their daughter somewhat reluctantly and get in their car for the trip home.

Parvati sits on the floor (on her side of the room) and looks up at the ceiling. "Wow. I've never even been to summer camp, now I'm parentless until winter break. Is this your first time somewhere like this too?"

Parvati's new roommate has busied herself stacking her exercise accoutrement in slightly neater piles.

"Nah, not really! I did a lot of school activities and stuff, so I ended up staying at colleges a lot. The dorms here really are nicer, though!" Why did we have to use the word parentless, Parvati. So specific. "Having a roommate helps, I think. We can make sure neither of us starts binge drinking and setting stuff on fire, that sort of thing."

What's this can opener doing in the firestarter kit? What a mess.

Teddy purses her lips, sighs through her nose. This sucks this sucks this sucks–

"And, uh, just cause I assume it'll come up at some point, my dad died kind of recently and my mom fled the country." She says this all in one breath, facing away from Parvati. Teddy wasn't technically supposed to tell people that last part, according to her dad's pushy lawyers, but what the hell. Sort sort, stack stack.

"Shit!" Parvati's hands fly over her mouth. "Oh, shit, I'm sorry, that sucks. That must suck. I'm sorry. Do you want me to not mention it again, I would probably want people not to mention it."

"No, it's fine!" Teddy insists, her voice maybe half an otave higher than usual. "Like, obviously it's not fine. It does actually suck. But I just thought I'd bring it up before it turned into this whole secret. Parents isn't off-limits, and now we're over the hump."

Sort, sort.

When everything's been stacked correctly, which is mere seconds later, Teddy sits down on her bed. "Not to completely change the topic, but you do fight dancing?" Teddy did some googling over lunch.

"Yeah!" Parvati seems not to mind the subject change, to say the least. "Capoeira and ballet. Plus vocal training, which I guess I don't really need to keep up with anymore, and I had to spearhead a lot of political activism at my old school, we'll see how this campus is about that. You've got fencing, what else?"

"Oh, I did ballet too! Not recently, but back in sixth and seventh grade. I fence, I freeclimb, I did some competitive sprinting last summer, some gymnastics when I was a lot smaller, some private boxing classes, debate club... I'm what my trainer calls a dilettante." Jean-Paul had generally been joking, of course. He was aware that every afternoon Teddy could spend climbing cliff-faces with graduate students was one that got her away from her glaring mother, and was also one that he could spend stealing very nice cooking wine from the kitchen. It had been an understanding between them.

"I actually have no idea what the political fabric of Whateley Academy is," Teddy says after thinking for a moment. She's hoping Parvati's 'activism' is sit-ins and stuff, and not 'my uncle is a congressman and I want everyone to know it'. Which was how it had been at Teddy's old school. The flag pins, a terror. "But the school is supposedly neutral on the concept of super-villainy, which might have some implications."

wait hold on

'Political activism' doesn't mean 'I want to take over the world', does it? That could be awkward. Parvati doesn't seem like a super-villain, but Teddy's never actually met one, and they can't all act like the ones on TV.

"Neutral on - wow." Parvati shakes her head. “Well, I'll have to look into that. There’s got to be something propping it up, and I’ll just look like an idiot if I start pushing without knowing the background of the issue. Thanks for letting me know. Any other big surprises? Is Deathlist teaching chem?”

okay good

Teddy tries to think of things that surprised her about campus. The Crystal Hall, but they covered that, and Parvati had obviously started off better-informed about this being a Mutant School... but, hmm.

"Well, our RA– I mean, our "fixer"– is named Zafira. She's very large, and pointy, and nice, and if you need her email I can give it to you." Teddy has no idea whether being winged prepares one to meet Zafira.

Thinking about her reminds Teddy about Alice Carver, the devisor who offered to make Teddy some nail-sheaths. She drafts a quick email to her about scheduling that, now that she's presumably on-campus.

"Oh! And you're supposed to be thinking about a codename. I'm thinking of 'Glissade' but I really don't know."

There's a near-immediate response email from Alice saying that she's already in the Workshop and if Teddy wants to come now she can. If she doesn't, Alice will be in the Workshop pretty much every day for the foreseeable future.

"Oh, I'll probably meet Zafira at some point. 'Glissade' is a cool codename - I should check if 'Nightingale' is taken, since I'm a Siren with wings? Hmm, maybe I should do that now."

She opens up her suitcase and removes her laptop, then taps away. "Hmm... minor Marvel character, minor DC character, but it looks like nobody's got copyright on the name. And no actual supers. Nice!"

Is it normal for the engineering students to spend every day in the Workshop? Teddy finds the idea positively relatable, but she's learned over the years that that's usually a bad sign. Maybe she should bring snacks?

"Well that's good. Glad you knew what you wanted going in." Teddy sighs. "I don't really see why they can't just call me 'Teddy'. I was never a huge fan of professional wrestling-style nicknames, and I don't have, like, kids to protect." Masks aren't Teddy's thing either– too easy to be blinded by them, plus anonymity feels boring– part of committing to something is staking yourself on it. It's important to have skin in the game, and fun besides.

(Plus, Halloween masks always either cut into her mouth with the plastic, or the latex dust would get up her nose... blech. Bad sense memories.)

"If I head down to the Workshop to get my nails done, did you want to come?"

"I dunno, codenames are kinda part of the whole deal, aren't they? At least if you want to be a superhero, it's - part of what makes people take you seriously, I think. It's a little counterintuitive, because objectively the whole thing is kinda silly. But everybody's gotten used to it."

She glances at Teddy's nails and looks slightly confused. "I would love to come with, but I should really get unpacked sooner than later, right? You should totally show me when you're done, though!"

Bonkers. Teddy has never once taken a superhero seriously. They're cool, but it's like how a greyhound is cool. They're still ridiculous!

And you want to be one.

Touché.

Teddy says goodbye to Parvati, scoops up her picnic knife! basket of snacks, and heads back out, campus map in hand. Getting lost is for suckers. She orients towards the Workshop and starts herself walking, considering her nails. Supposedly, being an Exemplar should make her nails stop growing, or always stay a specific length, or something like that. Teddy is unclear on the specifics. The gemstones seem to be a separate issue from that entirely. The diamond coat has grown in pretty even now; Teddy's trimmed as much of the original nail off as possible, but there's still about a quarter-inch measure of overhang. It seems to consist of a sort of nail-rock matrix, with nail protein and diamond crystal weaving together into a composite. She thinks there's an occasional sapphire or ruby flecked throughout, but she's not a geologist. The effect overall looks like Teddy put superglue on her nails and then dunked her fingertips in a barrel full of tiny crystal shards. Pretty, reflective, even a little glamorous, but ultimately clumsy-looking, and prone to tearing bedsheets and toilet paper. Not ideal.

Ideal would either be normal nails that she could go back to trimming as short as possible (unlikely), or else some kind of jeweler's manicure from hell, to take the sharp edges off from the top of her nails. Still, for now, Teddy's more than happy to take some free metal nailsheaths. She's always liked schmoozing with upperclassmen anyway, and it's nice when people are nice.

The Workshop is in the labyrinthine Whateley tunnel system, in fact at the very center of the rat's nest of tunnels. Alice's email included directions to her section, and how to differentiate it from the others; apparently she's in Workshop section 105-∆.

Alice is a girl with a blacksmith's build, her hair cropped barely an inch from her scalp. She wears a partial suit of power armor and, at the moment, a welding mask and apron, because she is welding. As Teddy enters, she finishes up a join and puts down the welding torch, then flips up the mask. "Are you Teddy? If so, hi. If not, hi and what can I do for you."

Teddy was right, upperclassmen are cool. The arms on this girl, Christ. There were Exemplar biceps and then there were biceps. And she was doing unsupervised welding!

"Yeah! That's me!" Teddy chirrups, taking it all in. She juggles her basket of provisions for a moment, unsure where to set it down. She really cam down here expecting more of a shop-class vibe. This place seems more illicit and also much more professional, at the same time.

Either as some sort of proof of identity, or because she's picking up on Alice's no-nonsense vibe more than ever, Teddy shifts her stuff to one arm and extends her other hand, palm down and nails aglitter.

"The culprits."

Alice points her to where she can put down her basket; there's a lot of surfaces in the lab, and only some of them are completely covered with tools and materials. She then takes a look at Teddy's nails.

"Huh. If not for the big crystals at the base I would say you could just use a couple coats of Brick Polish. A chem gadgeteer developed it a couple of years ago. It is almost indestructible without the proper solvent. It would coat those little jagged bits. But the base crystals look pretty sharp too. Hmm."

She rummages around in a scrap pile until she finds a sheet of metal, then runs what may or may not be a sonic screwdriver over it. She reaches for Teddy's hand, then pauses. "May I touch your hand in order to help you."

Yes absolutely. Bestow your coolness unto me.

"Yeah, go ahead!" Teddy insists. "Why's it called Brick Polish? I might look into it anyway, my only plan besides this was finding someone with an indestructible angle grinder, and it's always good to have a backup." Avoiding touching things with her cuticles by themselves would be much easier than doing it with her entire nails. There's still the jaggedness to consider, aesthetically, but that might just be something Teddy gets used to slash hides under scrap metal.

She molds the sheet metal to Teddy's fingernails, where it sticks like wet clay despite not feeling warm in the slightest. "Bricks are what we call really tough mutants around here. Brick Polish makes your fingernails brick-tough. You can pick it up at the store. I would advise against plan angle grinder; for one thing you would probably get hurt, for another it probably would not work anyway if the nails are part of your mutation, they would just grow back that way."

She allows the metal to set for about ten seconds, then pulls it off and starts cutting out the nail covers. Within a minute or so they've all clattered to the table, and she hands them to Teddy. "Here you go. Unless you would like them anodized?"

Teddy would be fine because she's careful, but the advice is noted. It seems well-informed.

"What does anodizing do, it sounds very cool."

~Oh, dulce est~

...huh? What? Why did Teddy just. Think something in Latin. Which she doesn't understand. Zuh.

Alice doesn’t seem to notice. “Anodizing changes the color of metal. I could make it blue, pink, gold, any number of colors.”

Okay, Latin slogans bouncing around her head. Must be because this is such an educational environment. Whatever.

"Oh, wild!" Teddy exclaims. She examines her Sword's hilt, its belt, and so on for a second. "This sort of bronzy color would be nice, if you could pull that off. Gold would work too. This is great."

"I can do bronze."

She fiddles with chemicals and wires for a little while, then dunks the covers in a bucket of acid with wires and a chunk of scrap metal in it. When she pulls them out and rinses them off, the covers are a lovely warm bronze color. She puts them in a little bag, along with a small bottle, and hands it over. "There you go. Just apply a small dot of the glue to the underside and apply them like you would any other false nails. If you need to remove them for any reason, just immerse your hands in white vinegar for fifteen seconds and the glue will dissolve. Do not use the vinegar afterwards, in case I had to specify that."

Teddy's grasp of where magic starts and chemistry ends is fraying as she watches.

"Noted! Do you... want... a snack?" Teddy asks, tripping on the topic change. She gestures helpfully at her basket, which overfloweth with bags, tins, and boxes of food. "Or, like, snacks?"

“No, thank you. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

"No, I'm all done. Thanks! This was incredibly professional." Teddy places the bag of nails in the basket, and leaves the workshop in the least Goldilocks way possible.

She is heartbroken that her snack gambit didn't work. Even shy people liked snacks, right? Right? Maybe cool seniors with buzzcuts and metal-scultping powers didn't. Tragic!

Now that she's objectiveless, Teddy finds herself curious about this giant underground tunnel system. Are there rodents of unusual girth? Illicit drug abuse? Monkey bars?

No rodents, drug abuse, or monkey bars make themselves apparent. It’s mostly just long stretches of featureless hallway, studded with doors at irregular intervals. It seems very easy to get lost in. 

Yawn. This place really isn't anything like her old school.

Teddy's flawless navigational skills (and official campus map!) avail her in this situation. At least back at Whitman there will be more people, whom enjoy snacks.

There certainly are. In the common room sit Zafira, an old woman with horns, an adorable little girl, and a six-foot-tall humanoid cockroach, all laughing about something.

"Hi, Teddy!" Zafira says when she enters. "Ooh, what's in your basket?"

"Goodies. And a knife!"

She puts the basket on the common room's common table, palming the inedible bag of nail-sheaths out of it. Teddy's not too sure why there's a grandma here, but the more the merrier.

She perches herself in a convenient chair and begins exactingly applying the sheaths to her fingers. Gotta make sure she doesn't mix up the left and right fingers. Probably.

Zafira laughs. "I only eat once a week, but nice thought. Any of you gals interested?"

The cockroach shakes her head. "Strictly insectivorous," she buzzes regretfully.

The old woman looks through the goodies. "Hmm... okay, this is kosher," she says, taking a bag of hot chips.

The little girl takes a bag of cookies. "Ooh, strawberry! Standard new-girl warning, me and Reba" - she hooks a thumb at the old woman - "are both 18, we've just got GSD."

Teddy is baby!

"Oh, wild." It is not actually that wild; Teddy has quickly gotten used to, say, the age-confusion-factor given off by many of her fellow Exemplar students. That does mean she was expecting, like, Teen Wolf casting choices rather than... hmm. Wolf. Old woman. Little girl. Basket of goodies. Hmm.

To distract herself from that absolutely fruitless line of inquiry, Teddy turns to cockroach girl. "I'm pretty sure there are some mealworms in there somewhere, but I don't think cheddar powder is an insect, strictly. Sorry."

Teddy's nails are about a third bronze, now. The nail covers leave her hands feeling weirdly heavy.

"Can I get some more introductions? I'm Teddy, as stated, and I'm an embarrassingly-fresh freshman."

"Eleanor Trauger," says the arthropod. "Codename Samsa."

"Reba Litkofsky," says the old woman. "Codename Wicked."

"Isabel Chan-Schmidt," says the little girl. "Codename Alchemical."

"Zafira Serra," says Zafira. "We've already met but everybody else was giving you surnames and I never did."

"Oh, oh wow, you guys had that like rehearsed." Teddy looks both stunned and impressed, bottle of glue coming to a standstill above her hand. "I'm, well. I'm 'Dorothy Ntkima Terentin, codename TBA', but I go by Teddy." Her mom always yelled at her if she didn't give use her middle name. Not that it mattered now.

Teddy finishes applying the nail sheaths, and gives them an experimental drumming on a nearby surface. Ting ting ting ting.

"I mean, it wasn't that impressive, we know our own names," Reba says, her brow furrowing slightly. "Ntkima... I've never heard that name before. Is it Igbo? I know a Nkechi, and she's Igbo."

Well Teddy thought it was impressive. But onwards, to etymology. Teddy girds herself by grabbing a baggie of cacao nibs.

"My mom is, I'm pretty sure, from Senegal. She was never big on discussing it." Or anything. Discussions were reserved for other adults, with lectures for sweaty, loud children. "I'm kind of named after her, her name's Ntsiki. I don't really know what I'm talking about, here, I don't know much about her side of the family." If there even was one. Teddy had grown up with one grandparent, on her dad's side, who she had last seen five years ago at his funeral.

Reba looks entirely satisfied with this answer. "Senegal, okay."

Isabel snaps her fingers. "That's right, I just remembered I want you to teach me French."

"Sure," Reba says. "$200 or a skill or language I don't already have, not that you have any at this point."

Isabel groans. "Aren't we friends?"

"Yes, which is why I am accepting payment at 50% of my professional rate. You will not find a better deal from anyone competent enough to make the language stick."

Muttering darkly, Isabel pulls out her wallet and starts flipping through her bills.

Teddy could stand to learn more French. Currently, she knows a bunch of martial arts phrases, how to curse vividly, and not much else. (This was all from Jean-Paul, drunken sword-gardener, since Teddy's mother never spoke it at home.) Spanish is more Teddy's forte. She still doesn't speak Latin, regardless of any stray thoughts drifting through her mind.

"Is this a powers thing?" Teddy asks between nibs. She's not sure how she feels about instantaneous skill-gain, if that's what this is. It sounds dangerous, or at the very least boring. "Or do you just do language tutoring."

"I'm a psychic," Reba says. "And a very good one. I can take knowledge and intellectual skills from one mind and copy them to another; it is in fact my specialty. It takes me about an hour to really make it stick."

"That sounds convenient." That sounds like the kind of thing that would sap all meaning from Teddy's life, actually. One gained more from the process of learning something than just the knowledge by itself. But still, convenient. "Really popular around exams, I bet. When I signed up for Intro to Psych I was picturing more of a bending-spoons thing,"

"Telekinesis can't be taught," Reba says. "Telepathy barely can, either, but you can at least pick up how to read and transmit surface thoughts. And some level of protection from hostile psi."

"Well I definitely won't be able to do it with that mindset. The power of positive thinking, or something."

Arbitrary boundaries are for mortals for people who aren't Teddy. She will bend the most spoons and master the most techniques beginning with a silent p, mark her words.

"Thanks for hooking me up with Alice, Zafira. Maybe now I'll be able to stop ripping up my pillowcases in my sleep." Teddy tests the set of the glue, and then begins splitting cacao nibs in half between her new cyborg nails.

"I'm not being paid to crush your positive mindset," Reba shrugs, accepting her payment from Isabel. "Back to our room, Isabel?"

Isabel nods. They get up and go upstairs, presumably for the knowledge transfer about to take place.

"Bye guys," Zafira calls. "And it's no problem, I like putting people in touch with people who can help them out."

"Oh my gosh, they were roommates. The more you know." For no particular reason, Teddy directs this stream of babble at Eleanor. It's best not to leave new pals out. "My roommate, Parvati, we seem less contentious then that. We're both ballerinas? Sort of? It's a weird coincidence, but it's nice to have the common ground."

Eleanor smiles. "That's good! My roomie and I don't really like each other, but we don't bother each other either, so it works out."

"Katerina does ballet too," Zafira comments. "-my roommate. I don't know if you'd get along, though, she's, uh, intense."

"Oh, I'm easy to get along with," Teddy replies, intensely.

Teddy chats for a little while longer but eventually decides to go back to her room. She's got some reading to do for class.*

*nobody has assigned Teddy any reading for class. she's gonna make educated guesses based on her syllabi. this is normal.

Her syllabi give her a decent amount of information about what she'll be learning this semester, but only one (Lit) gives her an itemized list of what they'll be doing each week. Read a book, write an essay, defend that essay. First week, the Tale of Genji. The rest of the weeks contain similarly hefty tomes, so she might actually be well advised to start early.

The rest of the classes, as mentioned, don't give her an exact roadmap, but she could always take a look through her textbooks anyway.

Teddy will defend the hell out of an essay. But first, she must write one. It's exciting that this literature class is, as far as she can tell, adjusted for her new and improved reading speed; six months ago, reading a 1000-page novel, that had been translated from a language Teddy didn't speak, and originally written 1000 years ago, and then writing an essay about it, all in less than a week, would have been a task even Teddy would have found daunting. With her Exemplar brain boost, she's considering it merely 'challenging'.

Of course, two hours in she's spent more time researching the book online than actually reading it. Not a waste of time, if she's supposed to speak competently about it, but still not an ideal workflow. She moves on to reading chunks from the beginning of her other textbooks instead, switching at the same time from soy-glaze goldfish crackers to cayenne-honey almonds. Studying means snacking in earnest.

(Teddy finds time to flash her new nail-sheaths at Parvati at some point.)

Parvati admires the nail-sheaths! Then she puts away the last of her backless peasant blouses in her side of the room's closet space, flips open her laptop, and checks her email, her own relatively unadorned (but blue) nails tapping away.

She stretches a wing in front of herself to straighten out a couple of feathers. "So, should we work out roommate rules? I'm fine with you eating in the room as long as you keep everything sealed so we don't get ants or anything, I sleep from about ten to six and I prefer if everything's quiet around bedtime, um, what else... Do you have anything you'd like to hammer out?"

Teddy diplomatically places her small plastic jar of animal crackers to one side, lide screwed tight.

"Nah, I should be okay," she says with the blithe assurance of someone who's always had her own private bedroom. "I'll probably be knocking out a bit earlier than that anyway, and the snacks will attract no vermin. In fact–"

Teddy slides bonelessly from her lofted bed and pulls a plastic tub from under it, from which she pulls successively smaller, nested tubs. Snacks go in basket, which goes in slightly-larger tub, which is left excised from its kin as they're all re-nested and slid back under the bed. "Ta-dah, total snack lockdown. The Fort Knox of snacks. Impregnable by antkind."

Unless there are hyper-intelligent mutant ants, but presumably Parvati wouldn't ask Teddy to deny snacks in that scenario. She seems nice.

Teddy begins to get ready for bed, which mostly looks like her swapping one sleeveless shirt for a slightly roomier sleeveless shirt. Where did she put her toothbrush? She might have to get a sheath for it at this rate.

Parvati giggles. "Alright, Snack Fort Knox! Man, I feel like there's gotta be some kind of common-sense roomie rule I'm forgetting to ask about here, but I guess there's no law saying we have to work everything out our first day."

Aww yes, peer approval.

"Yeah, I guess 'you can just grit your teeth and tell me if I'm doing anything heinous' is the best policy."

Teddy does an incredibly quiet series of calisthenics and then, having located her toothbrush in her raincoat pocket(???), proceeds to make her rounds at the bathroom.

The bathroom is, as ever, large and equipped with really nice showers. It is also - and this part is new - full of girls, some of whom have much more significant bodily alterations than Teddy's fingernails, going about their toilette in various novel ways. There's a girl whose skin appears to be made of glazed ceramic buffing herself, a mermaid floating in a personal bubble of water and going over her tail with polish and a cloth, and a girl with swanlike wings combing out her feathers.

God, Teddy would be so annoyed if she were Parvati and she found out there was another girl with wings in the dorm. Get your own thing, swan girl.

After that brief look around as she enters, Teddy ignores everyone else in the bathroom. For reasons obscure, Teddy is unwilling to start conversations in locker room environments. Usually, the thing she tells herself is that nobody really wants to talk while they shave their legs or struggle into a sports bra. Today, she is telling herself it's prudent to not give unasked-for once-overs to GSD students while they're in various states of undress. Nobody else here wants to be stared at, especially, she assumes, if they're part-fish.

Teddy prepares for bed like a general girding herself for war. She showers in the morning as a rule, so tonight she gives herself an efficient wipe-down at a sink, in the interest of not sleeping in sweat. Wash face, brush teeth, moisturize, tick-tick-tick. Teddy's heard various opinions about whether or not Exemplars even need to floss, but it's not like it'll hurt. Gingivitis is for suckers. It's nice to see that the thread doesn't get snagged on her fingernails anymore, and the nail glue holds up as promised, even to her firmest handwashing efforts.

Onlookers would be forgiven for assuming Teddy thinks she'll die if she breaks eye contact with her own reflection during this whole process.

Perhaps because everybody else agrees that nobody really wants to talk in a communal bathroom, or perhaps due to her thousand-yard stare, no one bothers her while she does so.

Good!

Teddy carefully checks her gumline for diamonds (hasn't happened yet, but she has stress dreams about it!) before heading out. Do her teeth look pearlescent? Hmm. No, just Exemplar white. Perks of being a mutant. She used to have fillings, too, but the doctors took those out when all of this stuff started. Wouldn't need them anymore.

Teddy stares just a little bit more intensely at herself in the mirror.

Her fillings were supposed to be gone. She remembers the dental visit, dimly, from after her dad died and everything. She remembers looking at the enamel that grew back where it was supposed to. So why were all three fillings back in her jaw, now? And why were they gold?

Teddy wanders out of the bathroom, back towards her room. This cannot be happening again.

Parvati looks up when she gets back to the room. "Hey Teddy - is everything okay?"

Teddy chuckles. "Yeah! Yeah. It's kind of nothing?" Her tone is wry.

Because it would be weird to complain about her teeth turning gold to someone who had to grow in wings, right?

"I just noticed in the bathroom that, uh, some dental work they got rid of for me when I Exemplared seems to have... come back..."

Teddy sits on her bed, in what she hopes is a casual-looking way. "Did not know that fillings could do that." She's cracking her knuckles.

"That's freaky," Parvati says, her brow furrowing. "I'm new to this whole thing too, but I really didn't think that was part of being an Exemplar. I never had fillings..."

She Googles something. "Fillings coming out, fillings coming out, fillings coming out... I'm not seeing anything about fillings coming back in. Do you want to go to the medical center?"

Parvati's support is hugely calming. Teddy's actually sitting casually now, instead of just making a devoted show of it.

"Yeesh," she replies, one hand rubbing the back of her head. "Thank you. It's a little late, though. I'll go first thing in the morning? I don't actually have any reason to believe this just happened, I haven't checking for this specifically."

Teddy wonders if this is a body image template thing. "I wonder if this is a Body Image Template thing?"

"It... could be... did you feel particularly strongly about your fillings?"

"I should make it clear that I'm basically just repeating phrases I read in a pamphlet." Teddy didn't feel all that strongly about her armpit hair, either, but that certainly stopped growing in. Which is convenient, but doesn't help her working definition.

"Yeah, same here. Oof. Well, we can get you to the nurse's office in the morning and they'll... presumably not give you a band-aid and tell you to take a nap, but I don't know what hypercompetent mutant nurses do. Right now, I think I'm gonna take my inaugural shower."

Teddy weighs the options as far as warning her about the other bird girl. Eh. Parvati almost definitely doesn't have the same hangups Teddy would have in her shoes. "Just think really hard about not drowning and you'll do fine." She watches like a haw... like a. Hmm. She watches closely to see if Parvati has shower sandals. If she doesn't, she will be getting some in a gift basket. Teddy is going to win at being a good roommate.

Teddy has really gotten back in the saddle by now. What's one more weird bodily quirk? Ha. She's basically been doing this since puberty dropped. Bring it on, hypercompetent mutant nurses.

She takes off her blue silk headband and puts it right back on, this time covering her hair. There. Ready for bed. Hopefully when she wakes up in the morning her hair won't be, God, made out of silver or something. That's all Teddy needs.

Sleep will commence when Parvati is no longer bathing.

Parvati returns about fifteen minutes later, hair towel-turbaned, with the slightly dazed look of someone who has just taken a shower at Whateley Academy for the first time, and starts getting ready for bed.

Ah, memories. Teddy recalls when she took her first shower here. Less than a week ago. Good times.

Sleep happens. Teddy has the recurring dream about diamonds in her teeth. Unsurprising. A man is yelling at her, one of her innumerable old coaches. He's muffled, like his voice can't get past his mouth, or Teddy's mouth, or something. Her subconcious mind shoulders all of this imagery so that she barely remembers it in the morning, the dregs of anxiety easily explained by what's actually happening.

Teddy rises at around 5:30 and scrupulously cleans her teeth, since she's expecting an audience. She dons dressier-than-center gym clothes and waits for Parvati so that they can adjourn to the hypercompetent mutant nurse.

Parvati wakes up later - not that much later, but later - but gets ready quickly. Then she cheerfully follows Teddy to the Doyle Medical Complex, checking out the campus along the way. It's not a particularly long walk, and when they get there there's a bored-looking receptionist who's clearly been on the night shift. "There a problem?" she asks, looking up from her desk computer.

"I've got low-level GSD and some fillings I had removed a while back seem to be. Well, growing back." Teddy does not follow her brain-prompt that's telling her to go 'Ah' at the receptionist. That would be silly. "This is my roommate, who's here supporting me morally." She gestures to encompass Parvati. "I'm worried my teeth are going to turn gold or something and we thought I should ask someone."

Teddy rests her hand on her Sword, which is also here to support her morally.

The receptionist's eyes flick to the sword, but she's clearly seen weirder stress responses. "That's the right choice pretty much every time. I'll tell Doctor Tenent that you're here, just have a seat, okay?"

She taps away at her keyboard.

Teddy takes a seat. She was hoping to be given some paperwork to do, but Whateley's weirdly invasive records system probably made that a dim chance. Oh well.

"Thanks for coming with, Parvati. You can be like my lawyer or something."

Now that's a fantasy. Every lawyer Teddy's met recently, and there were a lot of them these past few months, was very particular in describing who they worked for. It basically worked out to 'we can't tell you, but we're obliged to say that it's not you.' She had had an advocate, but he was drunker and Frencher than, say, Parvati is. Which is a comfort right now.

"Hey, I've got cell service, it's no great sacrifice," Parvati says airily.

In a minute or so a woman in a doctor's coat with lightly greying blonde hair down to her waist comes out of her office and says "Ms. Terentin? I'm Dr. Tenent. Do you want to step into my office? Your roommate can come in with you if you want."

ooooh hippy hair

"The more the merrier." Teddy pushes herself to her feet. "If she didn't just come here to use your very nice chairs."

Teddy engages in the weird process that is navigating through the back rooms of a doctor's office, and does it flawlessly, heading straight for the office in question. One could surmise that she studied a map of this place before she got here. Or just spotted the name on the door, somehow.

Dr. Tenent follows her in, followed by Parvati. "So, Emily tells me your fillings are growing back? Can I take a look?"

"Absolutely." Teddy yawns her mouth open as appropriate. Exactingly cleaned teeth lie in wait, and the ridges of three of her molars gleam gold. They're very shiny, but otherwise normal-looking for fillings.

Teddy closes her mouth for a second. "Also, and I can't be definite about this, but I'm pretty sure these were silver-colored before I had them taken out." Mouth open again. She could do this all day.

Dr. Tenent nods. "Yeah, gold fillings aren't super common anymore, I bet you're right. Hmm. I... this doesn't seem like a BIT issue, because those are usually pretty naturalistic. I'd call it MATD, but you're not a Manifestor. It's possible that you've got an undiagnosed power, I guess... does it hurt at all?"

Teddy has enough powers, she thinks.

"No, it doesn't hurt." Teddy seems surprised by the question. "It's more like..." Teddy holds up her hands. "I've got diamonds growing under these very nice nail sheaths, which are a very stylish and recent solution to a problem that's been bugging me for months. I'm just assuming this is more of that. Like, maybe my teeth turn all-gold, or I start Midas Touching everything I eat until I starve to death or something." She hopes that's a joke that she just made. Being housed in Whitman makes her doubt it.

"It just all seems kind of arbitrary. More than the mutant thing was arbitrary, anyway. Argh." Ah, the fake-comedy-groan-covering-up-a-real-one. Classic.

"Oh, dear. Well, I doubt you're going to get the Midas Touch, but if your teeth turn to gold... it'd be unpleasant, I think is the way I'd describe it. Do you mind if I cast a detection spell on you, to see if you're, say, cursed, rather than going through a normal mutation?"

Magic magic magic magic. I knew I should have picked magic class over psychic class stupid robot registrar–

"Yeah, that's fine. Sounds useful."

Dr. Tenent's hair starts moving, and separates into individual locks with glowing ends. They weave through the air as the doctor incants something in Latin.

She blinks. "There's... something in your bag... and... I think you're, um, possessed. -Benignly. -I think."

Oh, well that's good.

"Possessed by whom? Like a ghost?" Teddy picks up her messenger bag from its place in the corner and puts it on a convenient medical exam table, keeping one eye on Dr. Tenant's hair.

There are a lot of somethings in Teddy's bag, as it turns out. A flashlight, a swiss army knife, a mini-sized blue sports drink, a bag of almonds, hand chalk, a whetstone, some sanitary pads, a length of thin rope, notebooks, her copy of Genji, and a little package of bubble wrap. That last one thunks when Teddy puts it down on the exam table, gingerly though she does it.

(Also present: receipts, stale gum, several garden-variety painkillers sans packaging, and a dead spider. Teddy ultimately decides to present the spider like she meant for it to be there.)

"The bubble wrap, or, well, whatever's inside it. I think it was a spirit's Hallow, which would make sense if you're currently possessed by that spirit. I don't think it's a ghost, it feels more... elemental? Can you hear me, spirit?"

Well damn.  Teddy hopes the doctor's wrong.

She shakes the bubblewrap package out into her hand. Now she holds a weighty gold disc, bigger than her palm and as thick as a pancake.

Okay, now she's starting to see how this must look.

Okay, to a bystander (hello, Parvati!) it might seem obvious. Your teeth magically grew gold, you have a big mysterious gold medallion in your purse, put it together. But to Teddy, the disc, or coin, or whatever it is, is old news, part of her life. For a long time, it had just sat in a display case in her dad's office, but eventually, when Teddy was about six, it became the thing her dad distracted her with while he was busy. Even now, holding it here, Teddy is recalling long summer afternoons spent rolling the disc across the carpet, knees buzzing pleasantly from the rugburn of it all, as her dad did unknowable, financial things on his sleek black computer.

It looks exactly how she remembers. Its surface is worn down smooth, with the barest hints of vanished engraving here and there. Teddy used to cross her eyes and see faces in it, or animals, or flowers, like looking at shapes in the clouds. Now she's having to look at it a little differently. It's like if someone told you the cookies you made with your grandma were haunted. That your baby blanket was cursed.

The spirit, such as it is, does not appear to hear Dr. Tenent. It doesn't appear at all.

Parvati does look pretty concerned about the medallion.

Dr. Tenent is also concerned, and makes a few more mystic passes over the coin with her hair. "I'm getting... satisfaction... luxury... competition - no, victory. A spirit of victory. Teddy, where did you get this?"

"It was– My dad kept it in his office. I took it with me when I left." It's hers. Some things you can just feel yourself inheriting, mothers abroad be damned. "He'd had it since before I was born, with a lot of other expensive junk." Teddy is now wondering if her home is full of cursed swords, goblets, and belt buckles. Wild.

Teddy's not really looking, but when Tenant says victory the light starts hitting the medallion just a little differently. Vague shapes on the surface look slightly less vague, and slightly more like leaves. Are Teddy's eyes glimmering, or is she just a little weepy? There's likely to be a corresponding magical shift, to anyone with magical hair sensors.

Dr. Tenent looks increasingly concerned. "It's having some kind of effect on you when I say the word 'victory'. Have you been - hearing voices? Having unusual impulses? Do you find yourself absentmindedly doing things that don't make sense until later?"

Teddy's irises are solid rings of gold. They're the same color as before, but it doesn't look like flesh anymore. In Teddy's hand, the medallion shines like it's just been polished.

"Victory," echoes through astral wavelengths only Dr. Tenent can hear, reflections of her own voice, garbled and accented. The world feels like it has raised an eyebrow at her.

The girl in front of her with the golden eyes is oblivious.

"I don't– oh! I might have heard a voice? Once? I thought it was just, like, glossolalia," Teddy says. It was when she was talking about what-was-it-called-anodization with Alice Carver. "It was Latin, I don't remember the syllables or anything."

Teddy is concerned that she's concerning Dr. Tenent, who didn't ask for any of this, but she's also feeling a little wary. Her grip tightens slightly on her father's medallion. She's avoiding looking at Parvati.

Teddy doesn't know how to explain, to a relative stranger anyway, that she does most things absentmindedly. Things usually just work out, if she's trying. You have a plan, you do it, and then you check back in on yourself when it's done. It;s like when you're running, you don't focus on your feet, you focus on where you're going. It's called being goal-oriented.

"Sapientia vivit corpus tuam," says a voice in Teddy's head, and in the magic.

"That's what makes you such a good home," Teddy finishes, voice ringing and accented, and then blinks. "What the fuck! What?"

Parvati startles. Dr. Tenent's hair assumes a defensive posture. "Spiritus! Revelare te ipsum!" she barks, her hair shining with purple light.

Gold glitters from Tenent's hair, to the medallion, to Teddy, and so on. For a brief moment, there is a short, golden silhouette visible inside of Teddy. It vanishes. Gold sparks dance around Teddy's mouth.

"I am having a magnificent tribulation with following which language we are using,"  Teddy continues, the cadence of her words Romantic. "And if you insist on mangling the name of me, I will do as– no– as– no. No. I'm me. This is my voice. I– Shut up."

The sheen vanishes from the air, from Teddy's eyes, from the medallion. The magic goes silent.

Teddy is panting, and a small bead of sweat peeks out from her headwrap. The silence continues.

...Hello?

Impressive! Well, impressive and rude. Not even gotten a chance to apologize you.

Oh.

I, Victoriatus, apologize you for me illicit usage of the language centers of you. Wait. How do I indicate gender. I am male.And I apologize you.

"He... says his name is Victoriatus?" Teddy manages. It's hard to talk and talk at the same time.

Accept you my eloquent apology!

Quiet.

––––

After a moment, Teddy heaves an explosive sigh. "Doc, I bet you've done this before, but I'd really prefer if you'd talk to me instead of the gold-plated ghost in my head. He's excitable, apparently." Teddy sits, somewhere. The medallion sits, dully, in her lap.

Dr. Tenent calms her hair and smooths her skirt. "Of course. I'm sorry, I thought- it doesn't matter. You've contacted the spirit?"

"Well, yeah, that was him doing the stentorian voice, and the grammar. I think he got tired of switching between English and Latin? He kind of grabbed my brain for a second before I made him stop."

Teddy starts putting her non-Hallow things away. The spider corpse goes in a wastebasket.

"I can kind of just talk to him in my head, now? I think he just learned English. I made him stop talking because it was, well, incredibly distracting. He talks in gold." Speaking of. Teddy starts checking herself over for diamond incisors, platinum leg hair, etc. She's thorough, and she finds nothing. Phew. "I'm not turning into sapphire or something, nice. I'd have to have a chat about that and I just got him to pipe down."

Teddy looks to Parvati. "So this was a fun way to see magic for the first time. How was it for you?"

Parvati gives her a slightly shaky thumbs-up. "Seriously considering changing my class schedule so I have any idea what's going on."

Dr. Tenent nods slowly. "Please do talk to the spirit, and see why he's doing what he's doing. It's possible that he's making uncontrolled changes to your body, which could be very dangerous, because you're not an Avatar. In that case we'd want to provide you with some magical protection from transformative magic. If he's making these changes on purpose, then presumably he has a reason for them, and you can talk to him about that and possibly get an idea of what other changes he might make, and maybe argue him into something more useful - maybe coherently diamondlike nails rather than crystals growing out of your nails? I'm just spitballing, though."

But Teddy doesn't want to talk to him. She wants to ignore him. If she ignores him then it's like he's not there, like he hasn't been living in her brain or whatever for, what, months? Years? See this is why she doesn't want to think about it!

And she could! Teddy is very good at doing what she wants and not doing what she doesn't want. She could just proceed like this didn't happen, ignore some admittedly weird looks from hypothetical-Parvati, and pretend that the heavy weight in her lap was still just a keepsake from her dead dad. But... she did come here today for a reason. Is she just going to give up because things got a little complicated? Teddy's life got a little complicated. She needs to own it.

"Alright," Teddy sighs. "I'll try to keep the ambient glitter to a minimum." She puts her fingertips to her temples in a way that she assumes is important.

Listen.

...

Are you listening?

I'm listening.

It’s like a dream, in that Teddy doesn’t know what’s happening, but she isn’t questioning it.

The… space she’s in is more like several spaces all at once. It’s like her dorm room, but Parvati’s stuff isn’t there; it’s like her bedroom back home, but the door isn’t where it’s supposed to be; it’s like the gym, which is what she calls the refurbished greenhouse where she does sword training with Jean-Paul. It’s a lot like the gym, actually, between the dappled sunlight and feeling of being outdoors, indoors, but the gym isn’t gilt like this. Gold highlights every surface, like twines of metal ivy growing on a fence.

In the middle of the room(s?) sits a little round figure. He looks like pictures of Teddy’s dad, from his childhood, or maybe more like a younger brother Teddy never knew about. He has the chubby look of someone about to have a lot of growth spurts, and a little wreath of green leaves half-circling his head, pressing into a short afro.

He looks up at Teddy, and his eyes are caught somewhere between gold dust and the milky way. He blinks, and his hair wraps itself into cornrows. He blinks again, and his eyes are human. Teddy realizes he had no clothes until this moment, where now he wears an odd wrapped-cloth skirt, and a t-shirt.

“Teddy,” he says, and she recognizes Victoriatus’s voice.

Awareness trickles in like rain getting into a coat.

"Am I having a dream right now?” Teddy asks. She’s waiting for the weightless feeling that comes when you have that kind of realization, the impending wake-up, but it doesn’t come. She considers pinching herself, but decides not to. “When did I even go to sleep? You better not be doing more bull–“

“Peace! Peace!” Victoriatus interjects, holding up two peace-signs. Confused, he folds his fingers back down before continuing. “You wanted to talk. This is what that looks like. I imagine it’s what you wanted, if you were to stop and think about it.”

He’s right. She wishes he wasn’t reading her mind, or whatever, but he’s right. This is, so far, so much easier than sitting there and thinking a conversation while the doctor and poor Parvati watch.

“So. You’re an ancient Roman ghost made of gold and you lived in Dad’s private museum until, what, you couldn’t resist switching from a giant gold Oreo to a teenager?”

“Well. How to explain. The medallion is comfortable, but comfort is only part of what life requires. Ooh. My English is coming along well. But I, ooh, I digress. I digress. You are, essentially, the perfect vessel for me. The Highball glass to my Harvey Wallbanger, as it were.”

“What.”

“Oh, you understand, I know you do. You’re just. Well, look at you!” Victoriatus sounds like he’s watching his only child graduate college. “You’re so driven, you crave after heights most mortals never consider! And your propensity for intuitive action is so luxurious!” He reclines on a bean-bag chair of uncertain origin. “I simply will not apologize for moving in, you might as well shame a goat for climbing a mountain.” Now he’s eating grapes?

“So you just own me now? I’m your new house? Do you have any idea how dehumanizing that is? I’m not a coin. I’m not yours.”

“Oh, Teddy, no. No! Look around.”

Against one wall, her Sword. Against another, her bed from home, with the bedding she brought to Whateley piled on it like it’s been slept in. Snack food, hidden but hidden where Teddy would hide it. The floor under her feet feels just like it does when she spars, rough and easy to grip and fling her body under Jean-Paul’s guard.

“Look at me.” Victoriatus stands up, all five feet of him. Teddy looks down. She’s briefly distracted, again, by his strange sort of half-toga skirt, but then she focuses on the shirt. It’s a baby-blue tee, with white lettering. It says:

IT’S TEDDY’S HEAD

What?

Victoriatus turns around, both thumbs pointing at the text across his back:

YOU JUST LIVE IN IT

Teddy bursts into laughter. What? “Did you… make that? It’s cute!” she manages through gasps.

“No, I didn’t. This is your head, Teddy,” Victoriatus says as he underlines the text on his torso with one hand. “And I have no idea what a t-shirt even is.” He smirks, and then a more complicated emotion plays across his childish features. “...if you really tried, I’m sure you could push me right back into the medallion. But I hope you won’t.”

Teddy sighs. Then she sits. She is in the outfit she wore to the reading of her father’s will. “I have terms. And a magic doctor backing me up.”

“Naturally. This was bound to happen.” Victoriatus sits cross-legged on the floor. Sunlight plays in the leaves of the laurel branches he wears. “I am glad it has.”

They negotiate. Teddy wins.

Teddy wakes up from what, to Dr. Tenent and Parvati, must have seemed like a very ill-timed five-minute nap. She’s smiling.

The developments, in short:

Victoriatus is an ancient spirit ‘best known as a Roman genius ideae but of course much, much older’ that lived in the medallion for lack of more lively options. He claims Teddy’s dad knew he existed, although Teddy’s not sure about this.

>Teddy’s nails, hair, etc. will be growing in at a regular rate now, in defiance of her Exemplar powers. She will no longer need to think too hard about why her self-image cares so much about the hair between her eyebrows. It’s a weight off her mind, which apparently is enough motivation to convince Victoriatus to change something.

>Relatedly, Teddy’s nails will be solid diamond, over a layer of keratin, going forward. Victoriatus is delighted, actually, since the boulders-in-the-nail style he had been doing up to this point was his attempt at a compromise. He might be kind of a dumbass, Teddy tells anyone who will listen.

>If Vic has any additional ideas for ‘sprucing up the place’ he will be relating them to Teddy in her dreams, and, she insists, waiting for permission ‘even if it’s a genius idea, ha ha’. He has a lot of plans, and is very excited. (He has already begun dissolving the gold fillings, which he bashfully admits was an embarrassing fit of pique on his part.)

>Victoriatus clarifies, at swordpoint, that he cannot actually listen to Teddy’s thoughts, anymore than Teddy could read the intentions of her dorm room by standing around in it. It’s difficult to get him to explain any of this clearly, since it appear to be the only way he knows life can be.

>Victoriatus is apparently very excited that Teddy is going to school and doing difficult classes. He’s honestly probably too invested. Teddy thinks he need hobbies.

Teddy explains all of this (or at least what’s relevant) to Dr. Tenent. She politely, attentively, but very firmly acknowledges-but-leaves-to-one-side any advice the doctor has to offer qua handling Victoriatus: Teddy has this under control, now, and can take care of it by herself. But she appreciates the support, if she might ever end up needing it. Don't call us, etc. etc.

And then, stunningly, after all of this, it's time for Teddy to attend her first class at Whateley Academy.

Her first class is Powers Theory!

They're talking about the Exemplar trait today. Blah blah blah personal ideal, blah blah physical strength, blah blah blah usually regenerates at a power level one or two below their Exemplar rating.

Teddy sits towards but not at the front of the class. She's mildly surprised by how regular (well, Exemplar regular) everyone looks. It's possible that living in Whitman for several days has given her a skewed perspective on how many cockroach students there are per capita.

Exemplar lecture is interesting! Well, the information is interesting, at the very least. Teddy takes detailed, copperplate notes on what kind of mutant she is, her Sword sticking out of her bag at her feet. She's a little rueful about how she's getting this information right after she convinced an ancient gold casper to start messing around with her Exemplar power's expression, but hey, such are the risks of leading an interesting life.

And she would never admit to it, but Teddy is semi-automatically sizing up the competition. Between sentences inked in her notebook she is casting assessing glances at her fellow students, at least those of them who are in her field of view. And if she's using any of the various glass surfaces around the room to look behind herself, well, it really is just to fill time between notes.

Most of her fellow students are no threat to her bored. You can get a lot of this information on Wikipedia, and many of them obviously already have - certainly most of the Exemplars. There's a low susurrus of chatter that the teacher doesn't care enough to deal with until it gets too loud, at which point he turns around and glares at the chatterboxes until they shut up temporarily.

Her next class is Basic Martial Arts. The dojo floor is one big padded mat; there's an area to the right of the door where students have left their shoes, and a handful of students are sitting seiza. The rest are mostly cross-legged. The instructor isn't here yet.

Well, the lecture is still news to her. Teddy does not really use the internet much, especially when she's acclimating to a parkour mutant college campus for teens. Which has terrible secret sewers. The information she'd getting here is at least better than whatever this-isn't-my-area, here's-a-pamphlet nonsense her doctors shoved at her when it all went down. And her notes can't look nice if they're short.

The dojo might offer an opportunity to correctly apply some of this enthusiasm with which Teddy currently overflows. Nice. She sits, diamond toes aglitter, criss-cross: her martial arts training has been distinctly Renaissance European, and she's not seeing an advantage in pretending to know things she doesn't know. Teddy looks about. Again with the sizing-up of her peers.

Internally, Teddy wonders if she'll get to use the Sword, which is still bagged. She wonders when this gi starts being optional, and if this is Whateley's way of convincing students that wearing costumes isn't goofy. Not that this is any worse than a fencing uniform. Hm, hm, wonder, wonder.

A few minutes after she sits down, an extremely tall woman wearing a black bodysuit with her hair in pompoms strides into the room, followed by a younger man in a karate gi.

She looks over the class. "I am Sensei Amanda Tolman. Everyone who wishes to remain in this class will purchase a gi for practice. Unless otherwise notified, you will change into your gi before class. When the bell rings, you will begin in seiza position, lined up, as you see the more experienced students here. We will practice in a variety of situations, including street clothes, costumes, and real-life situations. However, most classes will be taught here, and you will be wearing gis. Any questions so far?” She does not pause for questions. "The students in this class have a variety of skill levels, and an even wider variety of powers. This will require the use of some unique training tools. In the dojo here, we will use a variety of tools and weapons. Everything from a simple bo staff to the bokken to simulate a sword. There will be similar substitutes for knives, guns, or even gas and explosives."

“The single greatest benefit of this training is that it will teach you to think. You will be constantly planning ahead, assessing danger, planning escape routes or attacks. You will study tactics, learn to sense weakness and danger, and change your view of the world. This training is actually more important than the hand-to-hand skills. You will also learn that any power and any technique has holes."

“This is a good time to mention waivers. By virtue of the fact that you are here at Whateley, I know that your parents or guardians or, in some cases, you yourselves, have signed damage, injury, and liability waivers. That means that I am not responsible if you get hurt in this class! And you will get hurt, every last one of you. This is a rough class. But it is also worth it."

"There are many more advanced martial arts classes, taught by a wide variety of instructors, in a wide variety of disciplines. You may ‘graduate’ to those classes, once you have mastered the basic concepts of this beginner’s class. You should also know that Survival, with its own forms of 'combat training', is still open. You may transfer out of this class and into Survival anytime through next Wednesday. After that, you will simply receive an F in this class."

Teddy was pointedly ignoring the fact that some of her fellow students weren't dressed out. She could change for a sporting event in her sleep at this point, and the gi's been in her bag since she bought it.

By this point in Sensei Tolman's speech, the fact that Teddy's eyebrows are only raised instead of actually physically bursting through the dojo's roof is down to a triumph of will on her part. This might be good! This might be Sword! It's been a while since Teddy's had instruction from someone who wasn't a drunk, incompetent, lazy, or some combo thereof (Bless Jean-Paul for sticking to one at a time.) That several of Teddy's fellow students look close to fainting is a secondary concern.

Teddy does keep most of her wonder and excitement off of her face, but she's kind of jittering otherwise. One foot taps until she stops it, then her fingers drum the mat, and so on.

Sensei Tolman continues as she picks up a bo staff. "My predecessor, Tatsuo Ito, felt it important to demonstrate during the first lesson that a well-trained baseline can take down a powerful mutant. I have no powers enhancing my body, no TK shell or Exemplar strength. Terrence Washington!" she calls abruptly.

The boy in question jumps when she calls his name. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Come onto the mat. And my title is not ma'am, it is sensei."

Terrence comes onto the mat. He's an inch taller than the already very tall Sensei Tolman, and he looks like a bodybuilder. "Sorry, sensei."

"Do not apologize. Just improve. Mr. Washington, you are an Exemplar-4 and a TK-3b: you can lift up to three tons, fly, and resist low-caliber bullets. As an Exemplar, you are also much faster than the average human, and your mind works at superhuman speeds. However, you are untrained. I want you to fight me."

Terrence blinks. "Sensei, I'm really strong. I don't want to hurt you."

"Then fight to subdue," she suggests. She snaps her fingers, and a large cage descends from the ceiling. "This is the 'capture cage'. If you maneuver me into it, I will consider myself neutralized. Conversely, if I do so to you, you will be neutralized. Do you understand the rules?"

He nods.

Sensei Tolman nods as well. "Good. We will bow to each other - but do not take your eyes off of me. Then, my assistant Michael-" (the younger man nods) "-will shout 'Hajime,' and the fight will begin."

The instructor and student bow to each other. Michael shouts 'Hajime!'

Terrence comes at Tolman with a bear hug. She ducks under his arms fluidly and hits him in the shins with the staff. He yelps and goes down. "Do better than that," she snaps as he rises.

He tries to kick her, but she flows past him and sweeps his feet out from under him. He falls again. "I believe I mentioned you can fly," she says. "That attack should not have worked on you."

He rises into the air, then swoops down towards her. Having prompted this attack, Tolman dodges him easily and allows him to plow into the mat. She allows him to rise again, only to grab him by the arm and swing him bodily into the capture cage. It sways gently with the force of her throw.

"Do you yield?" she asks.

"Yes, sensei," Terrence says sullenly. He climbs out of the cage and returns to his spot.

She turns to the class. "Mr. Washington is, by my estimation, among the most powerful students in this class, but it took me less than a minute to defeat him. No matter what your natural abilities, you can learn to fight."

Teddy is giddy about this. She does think that the difference between her super-strength and this Terrence guy's is basically irrelevant in this context, but, yeah, okay, point made. Good thesis. And poor Terrence. And, well, the cage is a little WWE for her tastes, But still, fighting, giddy, yay.

She hopes that the more tremulous kids are getting the vibe. Cause she wants to fight all of them and if they drop out she will glare at them in the crystal cafeteria.

After that, Sensei Tolman divides the class into two groups, "has done martial arts of some kind in the past three years" and "has not". The latter group is given over to Michael and starts learning how to fall properly. The former is encouraged to show Sensei Tolman their moves.

Teddy can go first. She puts herself through the kind of exhibition she'd do in front of a mirror at home. She's not primarily a bare-handed fighter, but she has her bases covered.

Her head is down, like a boxer's, and her punches are close-range and not very showy. Her kicks either scrape along the ground or go way, way up in the air, and her legs stay in the air, sometimes, to deliver several blows. Her movements are lunging, advancing, almost geometric. Her body never rotates or spins, just turns ninety degrees or flips one-eighty or bends. She uses whichever leg is in the air like it's a pike, like her foot is its heavy blade. Her torso stays upright the whole time, Everything lends itself to a swift, aggressive advance from far range to close, as if she'll need to go from six feet to six inches from her target as quickly as possible. Some truly heinous things are happening to imaginary knees, and it looks sometimes like Teddy is holding an invisible knife in her left hand. Old habits!

Teddy basically fights exactly like she did unpowered. It's violent French boxing, done quite competently. She's seen no reason to adapt, and any advantage her Exemplar reflexes might lend her is nil against an imaginary opponent during an exhibition.

When she finishes, Teddy's clearly expecting to be debriefed by her Sensei, but it's also exciting that now she gets to see other people do martial arts. It's been a lonely road so far, and this feels great already.

Sensei Tolman is squinting when Teddy is done.

"Your movements are incredibly tight, but you clearly work from a plan, and a sufficiently adaptable foe could take advantage. A duel may be like a chessboard, but a fight is not. Your style... French kickboxing. A particularly brutal subschool. It almost reminds me-"

She stops squinting and raises one eyebrow. "You're the one with the sword in her bag, aren't you."

Well. Teddy will keep all of these criticisms in mind, and incorporate them into her plan going forward! She's midway through that mental contortion when Sensei stops talking about how brutally effective Teddy is and gets to the part about her Sword.

Is this the Psychic Disciplines lecture? Or is Teddy's aesthetic just that finely honed?

Or wait. "Uh. And forgive me if this is a completely oblique statement. But, Jean-Paul sends his regards?" Teddy has always, always wanted to send someone else's regards.

"I'm sure he does," Sensei Tolman says, amused. "If he told you to say that, please let him know that he's not subtle and the answer is still no. If you made that up and he actually said nothing of the sort, just tell him I know what he's up to, that should get his goat."

Once the thrill of the regards-giving wears off, Teddy is faintly horrified that someone else on the planet apparently knows Jean-Paul the Awful, Cantankerous Old Frenchman other than her. But hey, she made a teacher happy, which is always a good thing.

"That was all me, I don't usually do what he tells me outside of a swordfighting context." If she did, she would have done a lot more anatomically-improbable things than she already has. One shudders at the thought. "I definitely don't give women messages for him, yuck. Sorry you're aware of whatever, I can't imagine the kind of stuff he hides." Jean-Paul has a whole rant about American puritanism. Relatedly, Teddy can curse like a sailor in French.

Sensei Tolman nods ruefully. "Anyway, I'll want to see your technique with the blade too, at some point, but that doesn't have to be this class - we might duel next class so I can get a handle on you, I'm more practiced with a jian but I can use a rapier if I have to. For now, you can either go back to your dorm or you can stay and get a preview of who you'll be facing for the rest of the semester."

Teddy's eyes flash. "Estoc's kind of weird anyway, so don't feel like you have to stick to fencing swords." She certainly didn't! She leaves Sensei Tolman's side as she feels herself blushing.

This is because of the exercise, and how warm it is in here. Teddy looks at Michael the teaching assistant for an appropriate amount of time. Anyway.

But like!!! A duel with a teacher. A really really big teacher! Whateley is such a good place!

Teddy sticks around and leers at the competition.

Another girl steps up next. She looks kind of familiar: dark skin, black hair pulled back in a tight sporting bun, perky smile.

"Since you mention it, I'm better with my own blade. D'you mind if I summon it?" she asks, in an increasingly familiar British accent.

"Not at all," Sensei Tolman says. "If you can summon your weapon to your side, you're likely to have it in a combat situation, so I'd rather see how you fight with it than without it."

There's a crackle of electricity as a fuckoff giant claymore appears in the girl's hand. It suddenly becomes obvious that this is Riya, from yesterday in the Crystal Hall.

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Riya

Teddy sighs quietly. Of course.

Okay, let's see what the claymore girl can do. Grumble grumble, crossed arms.

She starts swinging.

That sword is not one you want anywhere near you. This is made abundantly clear. Riya makes use of broad, aggressive slashes, the claymore moving through the air faster than it has any right to. The sound is like a helicopter blade and a Jacob's Ladder had a very loud baby - because, of course, the blade is covered with crackling lightning. There's a feeling in the air, static mixed with an almost palpable sense of awe. (Though Teddy might find it oddly muted.)

As a finale, the blade describes a savage curve up through the air and comes down in an imaginary-foe-cleaving finale, stopping an inch from the mat.

"Your technique has some serious stopping power," Sensei Tolman says immediately. "That's good. I don't like how vulnerable you leave yourself, though, and that last move was showy. If you're not willing to bisect your opponent, don't act like you're going to."

"I can summon full plate and a shield as well as the blade itself - I didn't, because it would involve footwear on the mat, but usually I'm much better protected than that."

Sensei Tolman shakes her head. "If you're not wearing armor, don't act like you are! Besides which, even full plate can be penetrated. Do you see Ms. Terentin's sword sticking out of her bag? That is an estoc, a blade made specifically for fighting armored knights on the battlefield. I have no doubt whatsoever that she could skewer you through whatever plating you care to put up against her. You must not rely on one technique to protect you!"

"Yes, Sensei."

Victoriatus is eager to please. Teddy. Hey, Teddy? Teddy. That girl's general area is making fake emotions for you. Hey. Hey, Teddy. I'm gonna get rid of these. Convenient! Teddy can still feel weird pangs of damn girl leeching into her head, but it is muted, and some of it, Teddy is loathe to admit, is probably real. Even if the lightning is kinda tacky.

"One more thing. I noticed that 'aura of glory' trick. Was that intentional?"

Riya shakes her head rapidly. "It doesn't come off. Any time I'm fighting, Hrothgar projects awe. He says it's utterly non-negotiable."

Sensei Tolman purses her lips. "A technique you can't control is a liability. Negotiate it."

"I'll try, Sensei."

"That is, technically, all I can ask. You may go or stay, as you choose."

Riya dismisses her blade and sits back down, near enough to Teddy to be mildly irritating but not so near that it's reasonable.

Hey, Teddy, don't mention me to that woman. I don't need to get stress wrinkles.

God, Teddy hadn't really thought about it, but Other Sword Girl is also Other Magical Spirit Girl. This revelation would be more grating if Hrothgar didn't sound like a real jerk (and if Riya hadn't clearly staked out this territory first). Maybe having a mean ghost in your sword made people act like Riya acts. That could be it.

"You know, I could puncture any given piece of plate armor, but I'd have more trouble puncturing the sword that weighs as much as a car and is coming at me at the same speed as one. That's good armor in my book."

Teddy is looking maybe a degree or two in Riya's direction. I could dodge it, but that's not what we're talking about. "Plus a shield's a little more problematic anyway. Piercing someone's shield is a good way to nick them and then lose your sword. Not that that's a problem for you, I'm guessing." Should I get a shield? Noting that for later. "Either way you wouldn't have to change your routine there too much to keep me at bay." For a couple moments.

Teddy whumphs her back against the wall and sliiiiiiides down. Sure is some karate happening, over there.

(Actually it's not karate, it's Hung Gar style kung fu, courtesy of a girl wearing weirdly shimmery chainmail and a weirdly shimmery hijab. She's not as good as Teddy or Riya, but she's got some chops, and she's making the floor shake with every blow.)

Riya grins cheekily. "You don't have to talk me up - I'm here to learn, I know I'm not perfect. I'm really looking forward to seeing you use that railroad spike, though. That kickboxing demonstration was a strong opening."

Let me compliment you, you complete–

That's not gonna work! And she actually got kind of nice at the end, there, anyway. Teddy massages her irritation down by grinding her thumb-pad against the Sword's pommel. "I didn't say 'perfect'. I just prefer showing people that I can win over having it explained to them. And anyway I'm assuming you fight differently against a real target versus your own shadow." Teddy certainly will be. There's a whole layer of this stuff that only comes out when you have someone to put hands on. Ahem.

"I assume you've had training since you're not doing fall practice, but I'm not fluent in Busted Huge Sword arts. How'd you learn?" Teddy had a hard enough time getting trained in mortal-sized big sword arts.

"Well, the Sword leapt into my hands while I was touring the British Museum with my class, and they had me sign some papers, and those papers said that I'd use my abilities in a manner salutary to the Crown or some bollocks like that. But one of the side effects of signing was that the Crown, in expectation of those salutary services, paid for my tuition at Whateley and got a tutor to get me up to speed before I arrived - didn't want me embarrassing the Queen with shoddy swordswomanship, or whatever. Really absurd, if you ask me, but I don't turn down an edge."

Wild!

"Wild. I get so surprised whenever I remember there's, like, a real Queen with a crown and everything." And a strategic reserve of magic swords? Some of Jean-Paul's more outlandish insults towards the British Crown suddenly gain a terrifying credibility. If there was one country he had more dirt on than the US, it was England.

Teddy regards her own Sword. She wonders idly if it's possibly also cursed or possessed or whatever, since apparently that's going around like head lice. But there's something so solid about it, so unRomantic, about the Sword that the idea doesn't really take flight. It's just a very sharp length of metal.

"Well, remember to take notes tomorrow. Part of fighting people with this thing is that they have no clue what I'm gonna do with it." Teddy is clearly standing up to leave.

Riya waves, staying seated to check out the remaining competition, apparently less satisfied than Teddy that all the real contenders have already shown themselves.

Teddy can't lurk and be social at the same time. She'll leave it to Riya, begrudgingly. Riya receives a single peace sign.

Teddy repairs to a nearby locker room to change, deodorize, and so on. This class would be better at the end of the day, but that's not how you put students through a required course, Teddy understands.

Nextclassward.

AP Calculus! For the first day, the teacher has a precalc skill evaluation for them to complete; "I don't do catch-up in this class," she says severely, "so if you get below a C I encourage you to either seek tutoring or find a class better suited to your level of experience."

Teddy makes a wonderful grade, but she isn't all that fast about it. And there's a lot of erasing. And Vic keeps making curious noises in her head until she puts him on silent. Dude's got a thing going for angles.

The teacher accepts her paper without comment on her speed or erasing.

"I'll give these back tomorrow," she says once everyone's done (Teddy's is far from the last, and one boy makes a quiet whining sound as his paper is taken from him). "Now, a few words about my homework policy: Do your homework. If you do not do your homework you will fail this class. If you do your homework, and you study rigorously, and you seek help when you are having trouble, I will make it my personal mission to make sure you do not fail this class."

Then she starts explaining what the fuck a "discontinuity" is. She's very sharp, and very precise, and her chalk does not dare to squeak or scratch.

Victoriatus shuffles duly aside as Teddy shoves math knowledge into her brain.

Teddy will do her homework, and rigorously study, and will avoid having trouble with the material. Got it. Perhaps she will aid the poor whining boy if he doesn't change classes. Teaching people is a good way of studying. Teddy is aware of how many time commitments she already has, but you wouldn't know it from how she acts.

Next up is AP Physics, which is taught by a bizarrely modelesque man in his apparent thirties. Maybe he's an Exemplar. He's got that intolerable "I'm not just any teacher, I'm a cool teacher" vibe to him, and he starts the class with an examination of Galileo's Leaning Tower drop experiment and what it actually meant, while half-sitting on his desk.

Wow, that man sure is modelesque. And intolerable. Just let Teddy read the textbook, at this rate. Drop him off a tower, fix his posture. Et cetera.

Teddy regrets sitting at the front, and also regrets only bringing loud snacks.

Fortunately, a class period is only so long. She's got a lunch block next.

Teddy can snack as loud as she wants! Which is regular loud.

Salad with a yogurt drink chaser. A tureen of sufficiently plant-based sugar water. One improbably large cube of pineapple with glittering salt crystals. A cookie.

These she brings to wherever feels most appropriate seatingwise. Is the Zafira cohort here? Has Parvati decided that Teddy is still cool? Are there any dweebs to take under her wing and forge into musclebound gods?

Hey.

Oops. Sorry. 

Parvati's sitting at a table near the edge of the cafeteria, chatting and laughing with another person with wings! This one looks like an onyx statue, their wings shot through with veins of gold.

Zafira's not in the cafeteria, and she can tell this pretty much immediately because Zafira's an eight-foot-tall monster woman.

There is this dweeb over here, eating by himself, if she wants to trust in her weird baseless instinct that he'd be fun to talk to.

Teddy will let wing bonding happen over there. It's not like Parvati won't get enough Teddy Time just living with her. There are dweebs to bring out of their shells.

"I can sit here, right?" Teddy asks, pointing one knee at the bench opposite the guy. It's a good idea to determine if he's alone for a good reason before she actually sits down, and the best approach is the direct one. Present target with talking girl, engage.

"-huh? Yeah, sure. Here?" He shifts his tray slightly to give her some more room.

The room is useful! And he checks out so far. They have some large salads available in this ridiculous crystal hall.

"I'm Teddy," she says, wielding a fork. "Thanks. I wanted to actually eat instead of playing musical chairs for five minutes, so I appreciate it."

She munches a radish.

"Yeah, the Crystal Hall is kind of a zoo around lunchtime. I usually get some space to myself because everybody's afraid I'm gonna repeat the origami duck incident, though, score one for Diedrick's."

Okay, so Teddy knows what the Crystal Hall is, but that's it.

"Well, hey, if it helped me find a seat then more power to the foldy duck, whatever that might mean." Maybe it was an origami duck that had swears on it. How does one distinguish a duck from a crane, anyway. "How do you tell an origami duck from a crane, anyway?" Loud sipping of passionfruit mango juice through straw.

"Uh, in this case it was designed so if you pulled on the tail it would quack. But I messed up... somehow... and it, uh, exploded, instead."

"Wild." Explosions are cool. Teddy is keeping an eye out for signs of oncoming ones, though. "Was that magic or what?"

Hmm, Victoriatus says faintly, with an accompanying beard-stroking vibe.

What?

Well, Vic says in the bullet-time thought-conversational space. I can't actually tell. There's something interesting going on with this wastrel. Touch him for me.

What?

Just brush against him. Or ask him his name.

Gonna go with Plan B on that one, Vic.

"What's your name, anyway? Diedricks?" she asks aloud, stepping abruptly on her last question. Her eyes are glittering, just a bit.

The boy chokes a little on his pasta salad, then collapses into giggles. "Uh, I can't fully explain how funny what you just said was - I guess I can, imagine if you met somebody and he forgot something and said something about Alzheimers and you asked if his name was Alzheimer? My name's Morty. I have Diedrick's."

Oh gosh he can giggle. Teddy is gonna adopt him.

"Ah. That's actually–"

Morty what? Victoriatus insists. Or ask for his societal security number.

"–That's actually. Hilarious. Uh, Morty what?"

"Halliwell. Do you also have a surname?"

"Terentin! I would explain why I ask but I don't. Hold on."

TEDDY THIS FELLOW IS INCREDIBLY CURSED. I'M HAVING A FREAKOUT ABOUT IT

Teddy's eyes dart around as Vic dumps spectral sensory data into her human brainpan. It takes about two seconds.

(What exactly does Victoriatus see with his special eyes?)

Morty is so fucking cursed! He will never, ever succeed. At anything. If he succeeds at something he might actually die, that's on the table. He's been bubbling up around the edges of this thing for some time, trying new things and being exquisitely careful (when he can, Diedrick's is inconvenient like that), but the curse has a million tentacles to squash him down with. This curse is... perhaps the best way to describe it would be "the anti-Victoriatus".

If she had touched Morty like Vic suggested, her eyes might have turned brown again. That's how fucking cursed this boy is.

"You okay?" Morty asks. "You seem to be having, like, mini-seizures. I don't know if that's impolite to say."

"No, that's useful feedback," Teddy replies, her eyes slowly focusing back in on the real world. Gonna have to have another Victoriatus chat to make sure he knows not to just drop alien perceptions on her like that in the future. But it's cool.

"Yeah. So. I found out today that I have a really old sports announcer from Rome living in my head. Anything you just saw was him. He's still learning the rules." Teddy navigates her pineapple sculpture. "But I'd rather know about the weird magic tangling itself in my life than, like, not know about that." She is inviting Morty's thoughts on this topic, for reasons.

Because if Teddy was in this Morty guy's corner before because of giggles, she's even moreso now. He's trying so hard! He's a champ! She has to help him! But also, it's lunch and she has class after this and her new spiritual insight into Diedrick's makes her think she shouldn't just dump all of this on him right this second. So we're gonna poke at the corners of the topic for right now.

"Oh, you're an Avatar? That makes sense. I've heard spirits can be kind of inconsiderate about that kind of thing. I don't know what I'd do if there was a spirit in my head. Sometimes it feels like there's barely room in there for me."

oh my gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood

"Yeah, he's pretty nice compared to how Dr. Tenent was acting when she found out he was in there," she says, pointing at her own head. "He just bores easily."

Teddy finishes lunch while chatting amicably about things that aren't how cursed Morty's whole life is. When she leaves she tries to get Morty's email address while also avoiding being within his reach. She's good at that, but it probably does seem a little weird. Victoriatus is nervous, she can't help it.

Morty is totally willing to give this pretty girl his email address! Then he descends into the tunnel system, because he has a Workshop class right after lunch which he is very excited for.

Speaking of which, Teddy has Mutants in World History now. She should probably get going.

Nyoom. Quickest possible path.

(That doesn't involve acrobatics. Which would be fun)

Mutants in World History begins with a boilerplate lecture about how mutants have shaped the previous century et cetera, then moves straight into a discussion of the "Theme Heroes" of WWII.

Teddy is uncomfortable with how thoroughly modern history has been influenced by people in seemingly purposeless spandex. She doesn't drift off or anything, but she does devote a lot of her attention to drafting possible Morty messages:

Hey, so, you're cursed.

Have you spoken to your doctor about...

Hey, don't panic. You have a curse.

I like to be able to blame my problems on actual sources. Do you agree?

This is gonna suuuuuuck.

Blah blah blah Champion, blah blah the Mystic Six, blah the Necromancer, blah blah please list five superheroes or supervillains you would like to learn about in class and email them to the professor by tomorrow class dismissed. Time for Costume Shop!

Oh boy, more purposeless spandex!

Hey Morty, do you know anyone who knows about curses, bloodlines, etc. etc.? I have some questions coming up from my spiritual roommate and you seem in-the-know. If so, would you be willing to meet up with me and bring along whoever that is? I'm a big believer in peer networking. Thanks, and sorry for the weird request! Yours truly, Teddy.  😅

Email sendy-noise, navigation to Costume Shop noise.

(Teddy probably can't name five supers off the top of her head. She will make that email sendy-noise later.)

Morty doesn't get back to her immediately, probably absorbed in whatever he's doing in his Workshop class.

Costume Shop is with Mrs. Ryan, a woman who wears multiple shades of beige in the same outfit.

"Who can give me a reason to wear a costume?" she asks.

The beiges are infuriating. Teddy distracts herself by answering.

"They don't make clothes rated for the kind of stuff mutants do." Teddy doesn't actually understand the advantages of a "costume" over, say, high-quality unbranded sports gear, but she's willing to play along. If only because there are few things worse than a dead-silent classroom after the teacher has asked a question.

"Excellent answer." Mrs. Ryan puts DURABILITY on the board. "What else?"

“To protect your secret identity!”

"Certainly." SECRECY.

“A uniform, so the police and public can recognize you.”

"Absolutely." RECOGNITION.

"For armor, or protection. Maybe your costume is your power."

"Excellent." PROTECTION.

“To show off a killer bod!”

"Why not?" KILLER BOD.

A papery-skinned girl wearing a surgical mask raises her hand. "To hide a deformity, and blend in."

“Very good," Mrs. Ryan says, putting up BLENDING IN. "All the costumes we’ve spoken about until now are meant to stand out. They deliberately attract attention. But there is a completely different kind of costume. As you can see from your fellow classmates, many of them have slight differences. Something that noticeably sets them apart from the common press of humanity. In some of these cases, a cleverly designed costume can conceal the difference, allowing the person to walk unnoticed among ordinary people. I have a particular fondness for these costumes, since they pose a greater challenge to the seamstress."

Now that Teddy considers it there are GSD cases that fall between her 'gold contacts and sparkly nails' and Zafira's unhideable end of the spectrum, who might benefit from this kind of thing. Not actually sure that's a costume, per se. But maybe POWER ARMOR, SPORTS BRAS, ASSISTIVE DEVICES, ETC. SHOP doesn't fit as well on the syllabus.

Wait, do I even technically have GSD anymore? Teddy's medical chart must be mostly crossed-out text at this point.

Mrs. Ryan continues talking about the purpose and benefits of a good costume.

"A costume doesn't have to be brightly-colored spandex," she says. "Champion did many great things, but his aesthetics should not have influenced following generations as heavily as they did. Some students have powers that can make their costume a foregone conclusion; most of you do not. Perhaps you want to model your aesthetic after a Roman centurion, or an avenging angel, or a Xenomorph. The sky is the limit. By the end of the semester, you will have either a physical mock-up or illustration of a costume that could serve you throughout your career. Please have concepts for me by tomorrow; a concept can be as specific as 'I want to have a Mister Mystic look, but with more elaborate shoulderpads' or as vague as 'something in a nice red'."

The bell rings. A few seconds later, Teddy's phone buzzes.

She checks her phone as Victoriatus gibbers fruitlessly into her headspace about 'chiffon'.

I've got a couple of Mystic Arts friends, yeah. Where would you want to meet? And it's not a weird request at all, we're at Whateley, this stuff comes up!

Teddy's plan is to break the Curse News gently to Morty with an expert that he likes nearby. Involving teachers and/or medical professionals is not something that occurs to her.

I know like three locations on this campus that aren't hiking trails. Dealer's choice. I get out at 4:30. 🤪

Email sending noise. Teddy grabs her bag and goes to leave class.

~Teddy, what if it's a gold satin half-skirt!~

Vic.

Sorry. What if it's a gold satin half-skirt?

No. How do you not know how I dress?

How do you not know how you could dress?

Teddy argues silently as she proceeds to her next class.

We can meet up at Twain at 5:00, then! Unless you'd rather meet at your own dorm instead of at mine. Or you'd rather meet at the Crystal Hall, but it gets pretty crowded when everybody gets out from classes. So, one of those places, but preferably not the Crystal Hall. Unless you prefer it.

Her next class is Intro to Psychic Disciplines. She gets there early.

Twain works, one dead poet statue is as good as another. 🙄

is there a weird psychic test on entry or is this more of a survey course.

There is not a weird psychic test! Their instructor comes in, wearing a crisp black pantsuit, and introduces herself as Dr. Vesmarran. "That's D.PSI, or doctor of psionics. My thesis was in knowledge sharing. Not teaching, per se, but the art of taking knowledge from one person's mind and copying it over to another's. I don't use the technique in class, you'll be sorry to hear; it's effective, but it requires a much more in-depth knowledge of the recipient's mind than I intend to gain for any of yours. I've occasionally been known to imprint a language or a minor psychic technique on a student who really impresses me. Other than that, the only person who gets the benefit of my powers without paying my fees is my wife. Now, does anyone want to hazard a guess what we'll be learning in this class?"

It is so cool that her psychic teacher is a woman with a wife. And! A doctorate! Whateley is great.

Less great is this knowledge-sharing stuff, again. The entire philosophy of it is still incoherent to Teddy, and the practice apparently extends past Reba the Whitman Grifter and into the upper echelons of Whateley's psychic department. Bah humbug. If you want to learn Latin instantly then you should absorb an ancient gold ghost into your brain like the rest of America. Teddy's here to bend spoons.

Teddy hates to leave professorial questions unanswered, but she knows a trap when she sees one. 'Teacher asks new students what the class is about' is a trap.

A boy raises his hand shortly.

"Mister Mallory," Dr. Vesmarran calls.

"I don't know what you're going to be teaching, but I'm here to learn psionics."

She nods. "Good answer - or, well, fun answer, which is similar. You don't know what's in my head! If you did, you'd be set. But you're not going to find out what's in my head for a while. Now, does anyone in here have a PSI rating of any level, or any experience with psionics?"

Two boys raise their hands, identical twins who look like they should be in a resort ad of some kind.

"Mister Manos," Dr. Vesmarran says, "...and mister Manos. I see my surnames-only stratagem isn't going to work here. Konstantin and Gavriil, wasn't it?"

"Kostas," says one of them.

"And Gav," says the other.

"Gav has some training..." the first starts.

"...but Kostas is the one with the PSI rating."

"Alright. Gav," Dr. Vesmarran says, looking a bit like she's licked a lemon as she utters the nickname, "what's the first thing we teach?"

"Theory and consent."

"Bingo. You're not putting your greasy little fingers in anybody's heads just yet, kids: first, you learn to keep your hands to yourselves. Don't worry, we will learn some basic techniques before the end of the semester, but before then you will know exactly what the rules are."

If Teddy wants to do telepathy before then then she can just talk to Vic. And she plans to keep everyone out of her head if she can, at least unless the knock first. And wipe their feet.

I do think we'd be better at receiving company if it wasn't all one room in here. Most minds have more partitions than this, Teddy. And I at least deserve a sitting room.

Don't you have a costume to design?

I can do two things!

"Now, before we get into theory and consent, does anyone have any questions?"

A girl with a nervous mien raises her hand. "How can we defend against psychic intrusion? That's the main reason I'm taking this class."

"My first tip is not to mention that you have secrets," Dr. Vesmarran says. "Psychics are, as a rule, incredibly nosy. More to the point, however: do you ever get songs stuck in your head? Suddenly remember that you have to breathe, or feel like your tongue doesn't feel right in your mouth?"

"Yes..."

"The best exercise to strengthen your mind against intrusion is to invite such disturbances, and extirpate them."

"Extirpate?"

"Destroy them. Completely. Get a song stuck in your head, and through sheer force of will, rip it out. Start breathing manually, and then go back to breathing automatically. If you do that about three times per day, first of all, you'll no longer be annoyed by petty bullshit like having songs stuck in your head, and second of all, your mind will be much more resilient against intrusion. We'll discuss other techniques, but for ambient resistance, there's nothing better."

The girl considers this. "That sounds... really weird. I thought you were going to tell me to imagine a brick wall around my brain, or put my private thoughts inside a basket, or something."

"Have you ever tried that? It takes up an enormous amount of mental bandwidth, and it's not even particularly effective. Get songs stuck in your head and ruthlessly murder them. Works every time."

Teddy is, god bless her, actually taking notes. They aren't color-coded yet– but give it time.

Meanwhile, Victoriatus rifles through Teddy's mental dressing room. Spandex he casts aside, as well as anything day-glo, but there's something about all these leather scabbards and steel climbing equipment... perhaps bronze would be a happy medium there... pants, of course, are an enduring fashion this millennium, although they seems so restricting to him... as the spirit mulls, he runs the blue silk of the headband Teddy wears, out there in Psychic Disciplines, through his hands, and in his grip it becomes cloth-of-gold.

Well, the headband doesn't become cloth-of-gold. Not physically. But if Teddy thought about it, she might find herself wondering what color it really was.

Dr. Vesmarran starts talking about psychic consent. Basically, you do not do anything to anyone's brain without them explicitly asking you to, including looking at it, and until you have a certification you don't do anything without supervision either. If you have psychic abilities such that you can't help reading surface thoughts, you'd better be damn sure you don't look any deeper. If someone attacks you and your only means of self-defense is a psychic technique, it's permissible to use that technique - usually. If it is found that you have broken these rules, the consequences will be severe: anything from work detention to expulsion or even arrest, depending on severity and whether or not it's a repeat offense.

"We take telepathic ethics very seriously here," Dr. Vesmarran says. "We'll talk about some edge cases tomorrow." And the bell rings.

Teddy tucks away her notebook, whose first page now reads TELEPATHIC ETHICS (TELEPETHICS) across the top. She's got some thoughts about the idea that some students' only means of self-defense is psychic techniques. Sensei Tolman would probably agree with them.

She double-takes at a reflection she sees on her way out of the class. Why is her blue silk headband blue silk? Shouldn't it. Hm. No... This all makes complete sense, but it doesn't. Argh.

Vic. What are you doing.

Victoriatus hides something guiltily behind his back in her mind's eye. I'll fix it.

Try to stop breaking things in the first place. Use your own damned thoughts.

But yours are so pretty!

She's got gymnastics next, her last class for the day. The class is small and largely female (there's one boy, who introduces himself as Callum Donnelly and who looks like a Disney prince who got really fucking buff), and the teacher, Mrs. Suleiman, is a woman of advancing years who professes to have worked with Cirque du Soleil. Teddy is the only freshman in the class and accordingly the only one Mrs. Suleiman doesn't already know, so she sets her to showing off much as Sensei Tolman did earlier in the day.

Teddy could get used to this. She's dressed out in basic black tights.

It has been more than a little while since she's done scored-and-graded gymnastics, but it's like riding a bike. She's a bit light on formalism, heavy on improvisation, and there are obvious points where one technique and another have started to sort of slouch together, but she's really very good at this besides that. Her movements are rugged and strong and explosive, except at very specific points where they verge on ballet. There's less room than you might expect between this routine and her kickboxing one earlier in the day. Teddy seems a bit uncertain about how much she's supposed to incorporate her super-strength, though; she's clearly using it, but it's more like she's juicing up baseline moves rather than doing anything novel.

Afterwards she makes enough eye contact with everyone that they know A) she's open to review and B) she's not scared of upperclasswomen.

Callum applauds when she's done, as do a few of the girls. One of the girls, icy blonde and disturbingly pale, sniffs. The teacher nods thoughtfully.

"You're very good - which I suspected, because the algorithm placed you in the top-tier class, but it's good to have confirmed. If you don't mind, I'm going to take a moment to go over a few techniques you seem a bit rusty on?"

Teddy indicates that she would love that. She didn't just take this class because the all-knowing algorithm said so. Or for the praise. Or the compellingly unflappable competition.

(Applause, it would seem, causes a mild particle effect of gold in Teddy's immediate vicinity. It's subtle enough that she misses it, although she'll probably notice the fine golden dust on her arms later on.)

Mrs. Suleiman goes over the relevant techniques, telling the other students to stretch while she demonstrates.

After several minutes of demonstration (she's shockingly flexible, especially for a woman of her apparent age), she gathers everyone together. "Alright," she says, "this isn't going to be quite like previous classes. Those were teaching core skills; this class is going to be more of an independent study. That does not mean it's going to be easy; I'm going to make sure you all work as hard if not harder than you did in my previous classes. I want you practicing something at all times. Don't be afraid to ask for my help if you think you might be doing something wrong, or if you just want to show off. If you can't think of something to do, I'll give you something to do based on what you've been doing. Any questions?"

Callum raises his hand. "Can we work in pairs? Some of what - Teddy, right? - what Teddy was doing looked really interesting, and I'd like to see if I can integrate it into my style. And, Teddy, it looks like you're not really working with your Exemplar bit, and I can help with that."

Mrs. Suleiman nods. "That's fine with me if it's okay with Teddy."

Teddy is blazingly happy that she's lucked into an upperclassperson's independent study course. Thank you, creepy algorithm.

"That's very nice of you. I think partnering up would be a great idea." Because honestly, it is. Besides the obvious benefits of sourcing advice from as many people as possible, Teddy just does better when she has someone to work against. She loves jogging alone but there's nothing quite like racing, you know? And it's like that for everything. Interdependent study! "I've been an Exemplar for a month now? So the onboarding would be nice."

Callum, true to his word, asks her about a couple of the moves she showed off, then explains some ways she could make her increased strength and speed work for her.

"You've got to adjust your expectations," he says. "You did a really impressive set, but - when you jump, you're not jumping like you know how high you could go, you're jumping like you know how high you used to go. The part of being a mutant that they don't show on TV is just a lot of obsessively measuring how high you can jump, how much you can lift, how fast you can run - and then doing that again every couple of weeks until it starts to level off. It's pretty grueling, but it's worth it, because when you know exactly what you can do, you can work until you do that every time."

Teddy infodumps about obscure Renaissance-era swordplay techniques. It's not not high-level geometry.

She's surprised that there's more mutation. She's been thinking about her exemplar stuff as a blob of unchanging physical might sitting on top of how strong, fast, etc. she used to be, not... a new realm of exercisable selfhood? Something that responds to effort, or at least takes effort to reveal fully? Exciting stuff. She pumps Cal for his gain-tracking methods: Does he make charts? If so, what headers does he use? Does he focus on muscle groups by day or approach things more holistically? What time does the gym fill up on weekdays during the semester? Does he want some cacao nibs. And on and on.

Callum does make charts! She'll get a lot of this stuff in Powers Lab. He does in fact do muscle groups by day, it just seems right that way. There's enough gyms scattered across the campus and enough kids who are willing to coast on their mutation that none of them fill up that much. He would love some cacao nibs.

"You're pretty passionate, huh," he chuckles. "I like that. You're probably Alphas material, you know."

"What is that?" And why does it sound like you're offering me steroids or something.

And why do people even in this millennium throw around Greek letters to sound cool?

Aren't you Roman?

Arguably I am American.

"It's one of the clubs on campus. The Alphas are sort of just - cool folks who hang out? But not 'cool' like 'I just like them', 'cool' like objectively cool. I think Zafira mentioned she'd met you? She's an Alpha, so's her boyfriend. I think you'd fit in pretty well."

Hm. Zafira is objectively cool. "My schedule is filled to bursting but I'll give it a shot."

Email is proffered.

Callum accepts her email and gives her his own. "No pressure at all, just let me know and I'll let Vera know and we'll invite you to a function or something."

Then, because Mrs. Suleiman is looking pointedly at them, Callum asks about another of her cool moves.

You see, it's all about breaking down the body with a series of lines that...

Soon enough, the bell rings and the school day is over. Everyone is free! Except Teddy, who has a discussion to have with Morty over in Twain.

Teddy is free at all times. But it's never fun giving somebody bad news, even if it is a thing you chose to saddle yourself with.

I should make you tell him.

Oh, capital idea, Teddy. I am a bit more well-read on this topic. And my perception of the universe has a certain... completeness that you do not possess. Does this mean I get to use the tongue again?

Just for that phrase? No. I can handle it.

Twain is undifficult to find. Morty is easy to find?

Morty is easy to find, as he is sitting on a bench outside Twain! His hair is wet from a recent shower, and he's sitting with a gangly blonde boy who looks like a second-rate Youtuber.

"Teddy! Hi!" he says. "This is Isaac, he's in Mystic Arts."

"Charmed," the blonde drawls. He's English, and he clearly knows it. "I'm told you need to know about curses, and bloodlines, and possibly the combination thereof."

"Yeees," Teddy ekes out. There are a lot of smarmy English people per capita around here, and it's throwing her. "I am also charmed. Hey, Mort."

Teddy leans against something handy, possibly old Sam Clemens himself.

"So, yeah. I'm going to get right into it. I have a Roman victory spirit living in my head. Which is posing very few problems so far, considering."

That's very kind of you.

"I mean, he doesn't understand how people use their fingernails, but I let it slide. He's named Victoriatus. Anyway, this afternoon at lunch, I was talking to Morty, and Victoriatus kept interrupting me, more than usual. Which made it hard to actually talk."

It was important.

"So I asked him what was going on, and then he made me ask Morty's full name, sorry for how abrupt that was, Morty. And then I had some visions, with senses that were inhuman. But the thesis here is that my old magic spirit showed me some kind of old magic curse on Morty's bloodline."

That is fundamentally opposed to my nature.

"That's keeping him from winning at stuff, maybe. Again, sorry, Morty."

"...huh? I... really?"

Isaac squints at her, then at Morty.

Then he squints a little bit closer at Morty.

Then he leans in and sniffs him.

"Quit it!" Morty says. "Don't embarrass me in front of Teddy!"

"How the fuck did I not notice this?" Isaac asks, ignoring him completely. "I thought you just wore really shitty cologne!"

This is a cuter situation than Teddy had prepared for, if she's being honest. Not that she entirely appreciates being squinted at.

Nor I. Mortals should shield their eyes, certainly, but in a respectful manner.

"I mean, if he needs to sniff you I'd let him sniff you, Mort. Pretend he's a cat or something."

"I am not a cat," Isaac says haughtily. "Cats are terrible." He sniffs Morty again. "That is definitely a curse, yeah - a really nasty one, too."

"Okay, can you remove it, then?"

"Nope!" Isaac says brightly. "I am not rated for this shit. I'm getting Arjun. Teddy, don't let him hide."

"Oh, for fuck's- don't get Arjun," Morty says as Isaac walks briskly into Twain. "Come on!"

"Morty the flight risk," Teddy smirks.

Do you think they're treating this a little flippantly?

Well, yes, but you are teenagers.

Teddy would sit next to Morty, but then she remembers that he's the salt to Vic's snail. So she continues to lean on Mr. Twain. "You know, it's weird. I found out I was possessed this morning, and here I am paying it forward."

"Well, thanks, I guess. Even if it does mean Isaac's siccing Arjun on me."

"I don't exactly know what that means! If it's bad, I'll let you blame Vic."

Teddy's face quirks.

"Oh, before I forget, uh. I'm going to be avoiding incidental contact with you because your magic thing is unhealthy for my magic guy. So if I duck a high-five or sit at the far end of a table or whatever it's no offense." Teddy would rather not discuss how much a boy can touch her with that selfsame boy, this is an unacceptable exposure of her flank, but there's nothing for it and the best way out is through and also it's Whateley. That last one is an excuse she expects to return to a lot.

"Oh, that makes sense. Uh, Arjun is a friend of Isaac's, he's a Paladin of Ganesha, he's a really powerful chaos wizard, but he doesn't like me. He thinks I'm dangerous and shouldn't be allowed to invent things."

"Is he afraid of swords? I can help if he is. If this incoming spiritual once-over doesn't fix everything and make you less dangerous, I mean." Teddy doesn't wanna stab a Paladin but maybe Paladins should be less mean to tiny adorable waifs, then. Pretty basic stuff, she thinks.

"Please don't stab Arjun. I don't think it's mostly about the fact that everything I make blows up... it might be partly that, but it's mostly my Diedrick's. Which, honestly, isn't unreasonable. You haven't seen me when I'm having an episode."

"You haven't seen the massive concept-squid riding around on your...

Ontology!

"...on your ontology. But I did just meet you today, so I give. I'm not a Morty Expert, I'm a stabbing expert." And she reserves the right to threaten Paladins.

"If I need anything stabbed, I'll be sure to go to you first."

Isaac exits the cottage, leading a boy with very large ears, pale blue skin, and four arms. The boy extends his upper right hand to Teddy. "Arjun Patel, nice to meet you - Teddy, right?"

Oh. Hmm. He seems nice, actually.

Hey, I can touch this one, right?

Go for it. If it turns out that every child attending this school can destroy me with one hand, then I'm not long for this plane, regardless.

Handshake achieved. Teddy is good at handshakes. "Yup. I met Morty today and he's got a curse I'm hypothetically allergic to." Teddy is finding it hard to switch her mind off of the stabbing digression. Fighting someone with six limbs would be so cool.

Arjun peers at her. "Huh. Your - cohabitant - does look a bit, mm, conceptually fragile. He'd be better protected if you were an Avatar, but he'll probably settle in a bit more over time, form a new Hallow in your soul. Nothing to worry about."

Morty clears his throat. "Do I have anything to worry about?"

Arjun turns to squint at him, folding his lower arms across his chest and waving his upper hands around mystically. "...fucking hell. Yes, apparently you do- how did nobody notice this?"

"I don't know, Arjun, how did nobody notice this?" Morty snipes. "We were in Tolman's basic martial arts class together, how come you never flapped your hands at me and diagnosed me with bad karma?"

"If I checked for curses on every maniac who tried to blow me up, I wouldn't have time to sleep," Arjun says haughtily.

Teddy was not worried. Good handshake, though.

It's called conceptual purity, you wrongfully-glorified teenaged mouthpiece. Honestly, excuse me if I'm not lording over the domains of mice and travelers and luck and one million other things besides–

Teddy is visibly unimpressed with the spat spinning up in front of her. "Are we kicking the guy with a murderous failure curse while he's down, now. Is this our bedside manner."

–could argue that I'm overspecialized, certainly, and it does lead to certain inopportune–

Would you like me to say something to him, Vic?

–elephant! What? No. No, thank you, Teddy. I am simply shocked that this upstart so-called Paladin could fathom looking upon me of all spirits and pronouncing judgement. You make a keen point, Teddy, he really ought to–

Teddy does not sigh.

"Yeah, can you just get this thing off me?"

Arjun makes a balancing gesture with two of his hands. "Maybe. I'm taking you to see Circe, though."

"Circe? I'm not even allowed in the Mystic Arts building! Why are you taking me to a building I'm not allowed in?"

"Because if I try to take this curse off you and I fail, it'll probably kill you, and Circe can stop that from happening."

Morty pauses. "...that's a pretty good reason."

"I did think so."

Oh, so this is just going to be a series of escalating magicians.

Does insisting on going with them feel like a good idea?

( But I suppose if it will make the all-seeing Paladin happy I could become Victoriatus, incarnate genius of competition and, oh, perhaps prime numbers, why not. Wouldn't that just be grand. )

It doesn't feel like a bad idea, certainly.

"Do they let random freshmen in?" And if not, how do they intend to stop her?

"I can let you in," Isaac says breezily. "Unless you're spying for the Psychic Arts department."

"Ah, but would I even know I'm spying for the Psychic Arts department?" She would. This is a joke.

"Fair point. I'll let you in anyway," Isaac says.

They set off towards Kirby Hall.

That's probably easiest. Teddy leads the way.

"Which Kirby is Kirby Hall? I'm trying to keep a tally of how boring Whateley building name origins are."

"Nobody cares enough to find out," Isaac says cheerfully.

"That's gonna skew my data." Teddy dreams of the day they let her take Statistics.

Ah, yes, let's reduce the world to pure math. Clearly, everything in Creation makes that much sense.

Oh, are you done having your tantrum now?

No. And it was an invective oratory, not a tantrum.

They reach Kirby Hall, which, just like when she stopped by earlier, has one door.

Arjun waves a hand absently as they approach, and a second door appears.

Could you have found that for us?

I have better things to be doing. Like, say, your Costume homework. Do you think we could replace the Sword with a nice gladius?

Nope!

Javelins?

Teddy mulls on throwable polearms rather than acting surprised at magic doors.

Morty rolls his eyes at the magic door, then passes through. "That's tacky."

"You're not wrong," Isaac says. "But it's traditional."

Arjun leads them through some slightly labyrinthine hallways and knocks on a door which reads CIRCE: DEPARTMENT HEAD, BETTER THAN YOU.

Not in the lead, Teddy notes, for once, how labyrinthine a layout is. How very notable. She should really do this more often.

Teddy reads the sign. "Oh, I love her."

The door swings open, revealing a Greek woman of indeterminate age sitting in an armchair. The walls are lined with various tomes.

She looks at Arjun. "Arjun? What brings you to my office, trailing-" She notices Morty. "My goodness."

"I'm starting to feel like we're in an equilibrium," Morty comments.

Teddy is ready to be impressed. Noticing Morty's issue without prompting is a good step one, since people are impressive when they match Teddy's successes.

Well, it was mostly your success, Vic, but still.

...

Vic?

Teddy can feel Victoriatus looking at Circe, and he sees...

Teddy may have heard the name Circe before.

This is that Circe.

Her magical aura is like a million strands of light, reaching out to examine everything in her range. She's in absolute control of this room; it might as well be an extension of her body. You could say she's forgotten more about magic than most people will ever know, but you'd be wrong, because she's never forgotten anything about magic. She made sure of that very early in her career.

She raises one eyebrow at Teddy. "Victoriatus has found himself a new Scorpus, I see. May I ask your name? And yours, cursebearer."

"Uh, Morty," Morty says. "I'm Morty Halliwell. Mortimer. Hopefully not a cursebearer much longer."

Teddy raises one eyebrow at Circe. She's glad she was ready to be impressed. "I'm Teddy."

Is she doing the name thing you had me do to Morty?

I have not the faintest clue. By Jove, I haven't thought of Scorpus in decades...

We're sticking with just Teddy, for now. Even though faculty probably has access to her birth chart and deepest fantasies, given her experiences so far.

Circe doesn't press. "Alright. Arjun, why have you brought these two to me?"

"I'm going to try to remove Morty's curse, but I need backup in case I drop a thread and the curse decides to kill him."

"Good instincts," Circe says. "And why is... Teddy... here?"

"She wanted to come along and I didn't feel like telling her no."

Circe rolls her eyes. "I thought you were being creative for once. Silly me. Look at Teddy and tell me what you see."

Arjun, looking embarrassed, squints at Teddy once more. Then the dawn breaks. "...counterweight."

"A mystically perfect counterweight. You could use Morty's curse and Teddy's spirit in a Circle of Lachesis. Do you see what I'm driving at?"

Arjun nods rapidly. "Should I start, then?"

Circe turns to Teddy. "Do you consent to Arjun using you as a counterweight while he disentangles Morty from his curse? It'll have no consequences other than you being stuck in this room for the next half an hour."

To Arjun:

:3c

Hey, Vic, is that all cool? This seems like a you thing.

Hm? Oh, yes, the boy. Yes, I rather thought that's why you wanted us to come along, actually. I have no objections as long as... Actually, do you mind if I speak aloud to Circe?

...Yeah, fine. Try not to let me feel you moving my tongue around, though.

To Circe:

"Hello, sorceress. I'm surprised to see you teaching. I award you congratulations. On Teddy's and my own behalf I cede permission to this child mage to act under your purview and instruction to end the blight on Mortimer's genius. Do not allow us to be transformed into some kind of golden antelope. Thank you." This is all delivered breathlessly, almost telegramatically, in Teddy's voice, while her eyes shimmer and she experiences the pleasant sensation of singing to oneself without realizing it.

Circe's eyes narrow. "I suppose you wouldn't have expected-"

She inhales, then exhales, then claps her hands together. "Never mind. Arjun, proceed."

Arjun gives her a look, but starts moving his hands through the air slowly and muttering under his breath in Hindi.

This goes on for some time.

Teddy, entirely recovered from her Victory Fugue, is fine with this. She flashes Morty the occasional peace sign for his morale, and works on homework. She assumed being ritualed would have more sensations than this, but maybe Vic's special effects budget has spoiled her. At some point, she texts Parvati:

My day stayed as weird as it started, and I'll talk sooo much about it later, but for now: I'm pretty sure my brain ghost is frenemies with a character from The Odyssey? Who also is a teacher here. Whateley is wild. 🤪

Parvati texts her back:

omg
that is crazy XD
i'm like trying to figure out if i should start a petition to change the dorm name from whitman to angelou because like
dude statue, girl dorm
is that not a little :/
also he had some pretty uncool things to say abt black people apparently so double :/
lol sorry i'm totally rambling we'll talk when you get back

These messages are sent within about five seconds of each other.

Let me know if you need me to disappear a statue. P:

Teddy adjusts her notification settings for Parvati is but is otherwise charmed. She thinks idly about whether all of the different triangles and formulas she's writing for her Physics homework are going to interfere with the magic ritual she's supposedly participating in.

Physics homework which she has had to assign herself, because the teacher is a dork who wears tight pants and doesn't assign homework on the first day. She's only doing the fun problems, though.

They do not appear to interfere, or at least Arjun doesn't ask her to stop drawing them. Eventually, with the air of a man removing a block from a Jenga tower, he speaks the words "Yah to ho jaane do!"

There's a flash of blue light, and... nothing happens. Arjun breathes a sigh of relief. Circe reaches out with one of the strands of her aura and examines Morty.

"Clean," she pronounces. "Excellent work, Arjun. Morty, Teddy, you may go."

Teddy goes to high-five Morty once she's stood up. Victoriatus cringes.

"Not cursed!"

"Not cursed! Apparently. Kinda thought that would be... a bigger deal?"

Vic busies himself with pretending he was never worried.

"Yeah. I mean, I guess it's like surgery in that you want it to be boring? But it was, like, very very boring." Teddy's eyes dart from Circe to Arjun to Circe. "Uh, no offense. I imagine that was really hard work." She also imagines, like, glowing runes and some pointy hats. Like, honestly, at least Psychic Arts are supposed to be invisible. Come on, people.

She goes to leave! Come on, Morty! I guess you're staying, Isaac! Let me know if you ever want to fight me with four swords at once, Arjun!

Isaac goes with them. "So, Halliwell, feel any different?"

Morty rolls his eyes. "Just said I didn't, Isaac."

"Ah! I was reading, sorry. Circe has some fascinating tomes and I don't get a lot of opportunities to visit her office."

"You're such a weird nerd."

"I was a little surprised when she didn't turn you into, like, a toad or something for touching her stuff."

She would, too.

"Oh, if you have a legitimate reason to be there she doesn't mind if you take a look," Isaac says. "And apparently providing moral support during the uncursing of a friend counts. I was vital moral support."

"Sure, Isaac," Morty says, rolling his eyes. "Uh, so, Teddy, did you want to hang out some more - or, no, I guess you'll probably want to get back to your dorm, huh."

"I do, actually, just 'cause I need to update my planner." Teddy has a planner with her, of course, but it's her school planner and she needs to transfer some things from it to her much more broadly-focused daily planner. "But I figure me and probably my roommate were gonna get dinner after not too long, so if you wanted to just swing by Whitman."

"I can do that! Uh, I'll see you then?"

Teddy will let Morty know when she's ready! Good job getting uncursed, buddy!

How's Parvati doing back at the patriarchal dormitory?

She's doing some capoeira shadowboxing in the middle of the room. When Teddy enters, she comes to a stop and waves. "Hey! How'd your Odyssey adventure go?"

Teddy grins at Parvati. Coolest roommate ever.

"It was weirdly underwhelming! Magic is kind of boring when professionals are involved, as it turns out."

Teddy dumps her bag under her bad and grabs a different and smaller bag. The Sword goes from the abandoned bag to Teddy's hip, which necessitates a change from workout-casual shorts to something that can handle a belt. Teddy's wardrobe is gonna have to shift if she's gonna be armed at all times, and since they're letting her be armed all the time then it will, in fact, be shifting.

She fills Parvati further in as she changes. Highlight reel: Morty is a little blond guy who had a curse, which was funny because Teddy just found out she has the opposite of that curse, and so she and Morty and a couple of snide boys went and talked to Literally Circe and they used Vic to fix Morty, which is good because Teddy looked at the curse and it was bad. So she's keeping the ball rolling by meeting up with Morty and his friend for dinner, if Parvati hasn't eaten yet.

Oh, and you won't believe who Teddy has martial arts class with! This is related as Teddy transfers data from one planner to another. And she got invited to some kind of creepy upperclassman society with a creepy name! How was Parvati's day!

Morty sounds fun, and Parvati hasn't had dinner yet and she's totally willing to meet him! Lifting curses sounds cool even if it was kind of boring! Parvati covers her mouth and giggles with shock when Teddy relates who she had martial arts with, and when she mentions the Alphas she says the name does sound weird and kind of creepy but maybe cool too!

"I had a way less interesting day than you did," Parvati confesses. "Like, BMA was cool, Sensei Tolman had me try to do some midair capoeira and I fell on my ass but I think I made a pretty good showing of the regular capoeira. And I had ballet with this really cute boy, Callum? He's like, blonde, and Irish, and I do not usually go for white boys but he's a definite maybe, mostly because he's in ballet and that's like, a good sign in general. Oh, and Mrs. Ryan, what is up with her, when I saw her I was like 'why is this woman allowed within twenty yards of a sewing machine' but she brought me up in front of the class and said some super cool stuff about color theory and how I could accentuate the iridescent highlights on my feathers, but like, if she knows so much about color theory why does she dress like that."

Teddy explains that Callum was the very polite and very buff and quite intense young man that tried to get her in on Zafira Is Cool But Does This Seem Weird Club. Teddy will extend significant credit to anyone who's a combination ballet-gymnast, though, so she's a bit mollified as well, but let's make sure Parv knows that referring to yourself as an Alpha is suspect as heck.

(Midair copoeira will come to Parvati, she has Teddy's total confidence. And adoration. Coolest roommate.)

Soon it is time to hang out slash eat slash hang out while eating. Teddy has asked The Boy Squad to meet at the Whitman Statue.

...Am I the only one who rather liked the Ryan woman's outfit? I think English does a disservice by calling that shade beige, Victoriatus insists.

The Boy Squad is present, minus Arjun. So, just Morty and Isaac.

"Hi again, Teddy!" Morty says, waving. "And you must be Parvati, nice wings - or, sorry, that's probably not, um, appropriate-"

"It's fine, they really are nice," Parvati laughs. She shakes his hand. "I'm guessing you're Morty, and you're Isaac?"

Isaac taps two fingers to his temple. "Right in one."

Arjun is only a provisional Boy Squad member anyway.

"The safer bet would be to call you both Morty, so that you'd definitely be at least half right," Teddy says, executing an perfect walking-backwards-through-campus maneuver despite not being a tour guide. "But Parvati is bold like that." Finger guns.

Parvati snaps her fingers. "Damn, yeah, I should've thought of that."

Morty giggles. "But you're also guaranteeing you're half wrong. It's a good tack if you've got no information, but I've been reliably informed that I look like a Morty, which means guessing gives you maybe a sixty-forty chance, which is a ten percent increase in average rightness."

"Some people are inappropriately named, though," Isaac argues.

"It's less common than you'd think!" Morty says. "Even controlling for factors like ethnicity, I think you could give people a lineup and a set of names and they'd be able to assign them with better than random chance."

"I want to be very clear that I'm in favor of the bold approach. Hedging bets is safe, but I don't think it's, like, smart." And if anyone says Teddy looks like a Dorothy then they're gonna get stabbed.

I'm a big fan of nominative determinism, but then, I would be, wouldn't I? says Victoriatus with a rye chuckle. He's currently weaving silk. Or having statuesque men who look like Callum weave silk for him, the imagery is unclear.

"The victory spirit in my head whose name is Victoriatus says he agrees with Morty. Shockingly." Teddy steps backwards over a tree root without looking.

"Hey, Victoriatus agrees with me! That means I win, right? Isn't that his whole thing?"

"You're opening a very dangerous can of worms there," Isaac points out. "He's usually going to agree with Teddy, and I don't think she needs any help winning."

Parvati hmms. "I doubt Teddy wants to win by fiat, though. I think it's safe."

"Then I win?" Morty asks.

"Yes, Morty, you win," Parvati says.

"Huzzah!"

"Gross misunderstanding alert. We're like a bad sitcom in here," Teddy insists, tapping her temple. "Constant comedy of opposites. Morty does win, though. By fiat. Which I would hate!"

Teddy props open the doors to the cafeteria with dramatic straining noises.

By mutual agreement, they select a table, deposit bags to mark it as theirs, and scatter to forage. After a few minutes, everyone returns to the selected table. Morty has some pasta salad; Isaac has spare ribs and an artichoke; Parvati has a tray with a pecan hand pie, lo mein, battered shrimp, and a salad of what looks like mixed flowers with a red vinaigrette.

"You're eating flowers?" Morty asks.

"They looked nice and I'm an adventurous eater," Parvati says. "Wanna try?"

"Pass," he says, forking a tortellini. "I'm pastivorous today."

Charred squid paprikash, charred wedge salad, and a cereal bowl filled with very, very dark roasted cashews. Either someone working the dinner line has fire powers, or they just have a very simple idea of what 'cooking' entails.

Teddy looks balefully at Morty's tray as she claims a single, beautifully unburned flower from Parvati. Pasta is a force for good in the world, but at least get some hot sauce or something.

"Anything particularly uncursed happen the past couple hours?" Teddy asks him as she untangles some gory-red tentacles with a fork. The flower waits expectantly for an answer atop its iceberg lettuce throne.

"I dunno. I haven't tripped once since I got uncursed, that's kind of notable? I trip a lot. But in general, no, I haven't, like, tried to invent anything and had it miraculously not explode. Mostly I just showered and did some English homework."

"Well, you can't let the little things slide just because something big and weird happened," Parvati says philosophically.

"Especially at Whateley," Isaac comments. "You'd never get anything done. Speaking of which, what kind of weird shit happened on your first days? Besides Morty's thing."

Parvati laughs. "Oh my god, where do I start? Um, Teddy's apparently got some kind of sports anime rival, and we both got very mildly hit on by this Irish guy in two distinct gym classes, and I'm thinking of campaigning for Whitman Cottage to be renamed Angelou Cottage? Are those weird enough?"

Anime is like, cartoons, right. Sailor Moon? Sailor Moon. Right.

"Callum did not even mildly hit on me, Parv. We just shared workout scheduling techniques." Teddy's childhood inoculated her against European accents, anyway. "And then he asked me to join his, like, church group frat or something. I dunno."

"I think Vic's doing my costume homework for me? Is that allowed? Getting to know him and helping Morty were my two big weird things, and they sort of merged into one weird, at the end there. My Physics teacher sucks?" Honestly, most things were weird today. "Vic knows Circe from way back?"

"Callum invited you to join the Alphas?" Isaac is suddenly very interested. "-unless you literally mean his church group, he does have a church group."

"No, the church thing turns out to be me being intuitive and amazing. I have been given a standing invite to an 'Alpha function', apparently. Whole conversation made me feel like I was a kid in the first act of a don't-do-drugs PSA. Or, like, a pyramid scheme, or a murder fraternity."

It's still gauche to use Greek letters like that. How generic. Victoriatus remains equally dubious. Nothing wrong with drugs, though, Teddy.

Isaac whistles. "Teddy, you should definitely take that invitation. I'll leave it to you whether you want to actually join the club, it is kind of a lot of work to be one of the official cool kids at a school as ambiently cool as Whateley, but their parties are great. No drugs necessary. Only group on campus with better parties than the Alphas is the Golden Kids, and that's just because they're all rich as shit and can fly in French people to make hors d'oeuvres."

"Have you actually been to an Alpha party?" Morty wonders.

"Once. It fucking ruled. No inexplicable purple mixed drink, but that's why I've got a hip flask."

"I thought your hip flask was full of cream soda."

"Not when I'm in Party Mode."