"What's with the disproportionate number of twins?" 

"Some classes happen to be statistically unusual in such a way," she says, amused, "and you haven't identified all the twins yet." 

"Why do you look just like my best friend from back home?" 

Mesmerra grins. "I look different to everyone," she says cheerfully. "Whatever a given person's ideal of a sexy dom looks like, from the depths of their subconscious...that is how I appear to them. If I look like someone you know..." she trails off archly. 

"Oh." 

"...what does it mean if I don't find you especially attractive?"

She looks at Kiri and clucks her tongue. "Obligate dom. No submissive tendencies in you at all. You're out on the end of the bell curve." 

"Is that useful or merely a demographic fact?"

"Demographic fact. You might be a little harder to mind-control into submission, but it's unlikely to make or break anything."

She nods. "Anyone else have any questions?"

"I assume you're not going to just answer questions about our classmates." 

"Indeed I am not." 

"Is my and Emily's neighborhood sampled from places being terrorized by Sentinels?" 

"Why are you assuming that you share a neighborhood?"

"...Because we come not only from the same universe but the same place within the universe? I guess I didn't specifically think about it too much."

"To more fully answer your question, one neighborhood contains civilians sampled from your former United States of America, and a few Sentinels guaranteed not to find them, and the other is sampled from Canada, relatively near your birthplace but unscathed by direct contact with the catastrophe." 

"Well. That is fifty percent worse than I'd hoped and fifty percent better than I'd feared."

"You're welcome, dear."

Edie resists the urge to flip Dean Mesmerra off. 

"...are the Sentinels also guaranteed not to escape the neighborhood and go wandering the others?"

"Yes. They're there to give, mm, perspective, and provide resources to those with the will to take them, not to be an inconvenience by messing up the town."

"Are you mind-controlling them? I was not under the impression they had minds." 

"Oh, they don't," Mesmerra says, not elaborating any further.

"Perhaps we can visit the neighborhood and... Kiri can melt them, perhaps."

"That seems like a relatively low priority if they aren't going to find anyone...on the other hand I don't want anyone else getting their hands on them, so yeah, good point."

Pause. 

"They won't be able to find the townies. Will they be able to find us?"

Mesmerra smiles mysteriously. 

"Well, we'll have an advantage in locating them, then, since those things home in on mutants like bees to honey and Edie and I are the only ones here." 

"I know it's me who's saying this, but your world is impressively fucked up." 

"Yeah, the difference is our fucked-up mostly stems from this one thing, not the...diverse fubar you've got going on." 

"Is there anything that is going to wander the several neighborhoods from any of them or are they quite quarantined?"

"Quarantined isn't the right word. In general, townies and other beings sourced from a given universe will stay put in their neighborhood, but students transporting people or goods across neighborhoods is permitted, and this can have knock-on effects down the line." 

"Ah, okay. Is there a better way to find specific neighborhoods than leaving campus and wandering around?"

"Well, depending on your idea of a good way, you could ask someone else who's already left campus and wandered around, or you could scry on the town, or you could enslave someone and send them to do reconnaissance."

"Is scrying learnable from books?"

"Yes, although if you're going to try picking up magic systems outside your own, I also recommend talking to the Magic teacher in advance of her class."