A stranger falls into step with him as he gets off the bus at his destination. He's dressed like a businessman, if businessmen still wore hats.

Dylan shoots him a look of inquiry tinged with suspicion.

"I hear it's traditional, to make a fresh start when you go off to college," the stranger says. "A clean break. Isn't that right, Dylan?"

He takes a deep, measured breath, shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie hard enough to strain the fabric, and keeps walking. Whether or not he's going to wreck this guy, he's not going to wreck this guy in the middle of the crowd at the bus station.

The stranger laughs.

"Oh, don't worry. I'm not going to tell your parents where to find you. Quite the opposite! I wish you the best of luck, and, out of the goodness of my heart, and my support for your endeavours, I'd like to offer you a little... perk."

He can think of several things to say to that. Suck my dick features prominently in the list. He makes the effort to avoid going there—and it does take an effort—because the more steps you take down that road, the harder they are to retrace, and, again, it would be strategically inadvisable to smash this guy's face in while they're still in the middle of a stream of people getting on and off buses.

"The terms are this: I will grant you the power of complete control over anything—and anyone—you own, and temporary control of anything within your domain. Establishing a domain is up to you. In exchange, you owe me... a favour, to be collected at a time of my choosing. Maybe next year, maybe ten years from now, maybe never. Who knows? Anything is possible. Are you interested?"

...well, yes, of course he's interested, if he could believe for a second that this guy was in any way telling the truth, which he does not.

"I'm pretty sure it's illegal to own people," he points out mildly. It's not any of his top five objections to this conversation, but it's a start.

"In the eyes of the power, what matters is whether they consider themselves yours. Getting them into that state is, again, up to you."

"I'm also pretty sure magic doesn't exist." He rounds a corner and heads for an exit, slipping out of the bulk of the crowd.

The stranger follows, totally unconcerned.

"'Magic' is such a... reductive word. What's that quote, again? More things in hell and earth...?"

"Heaven," he corrects automatically.

"My mistake."

Smiling, the stranger takes a few steps ahead to open the door and hold it for him on his way out.

There are so many layers to this interaction and he's probably not seeing half of them and he wants to rip through them by force, and, also, having this guy acting like a—servant—is feeding the same part of him that wants to listen to that offer.

What's the worst that could happen? He says yes, and... nothing comes of it, because magic isn't real and this guy is just a really good cold-reader? A really good cold-reader who knows his name for some unexplained but presumably mundane reason?

"What good is 'temporary' control?" he asks guardedly.

"Well, as long as something never has to leave your domain, you can change it however you like. And if it does have to leave... you can edit out any inconvenient memories, for example, from someone you've been... hosting. Changes you make will persist if they're restoring the state something was in when it entered your domain."

He lets the door close behind them and falls into step again.

"Tell you what. I'll offer you a free trial. You can have this power for the next twenty-four hours, and tomorrow afternoon I'll come by to hear your final decision. Does that sound fair?"

There's something just a little off about his smile. Like it wasn't fully made to go on a human face.

"Twenty-four hours isn't a lot of time to 'establish a domain'. Doesn't sound that fair to me."

"Be creative. I'm sure a man of your talents can figure something out."

He claps Dylan on the shoulder in a companionable fashion.

Dylan shrugs him off violently and stops in his tracks, not trusting himself to move right now. This street isn't that busy but there are people here and he needs to not start a fistfight. Breathe. Just breathe.

The stranger laughs again, without a care in the world.

"Free trial, no strings attached. What do you say?" He spreads his hands.

The angrier he is, the more appealing it sounds, to have arbitrary control of anything he owns. To be able to own people, if he can convince them to accept his dominion.

"Fine," he grits out. "Whatever. Get lost."

The stranger tips his hat, and strolls past Dylan headed in the opposite direction they've been traveling, and after a few steps the sound of his footsteps just... stops.

He turns around, careful to move only in slow, controlled, deliberate ways.

Yep. The guy just vanished out of the middle of the sidewalk. There's no door there he could've walked through, and—Dylan looks up—no window he could've somehow silently climbed to.

Point in favour of magic existing, he supposes.

He resettles his heavy backpack on his shoulders and keeps walking. According to the map he looked up before he got here, his residence building should be just down the street from the bus station. (Is his dorm room going to count as his domain? Not likely, it's hardly his except in the most superficial and temporary sense...)

The building is right where the map said it would be, and once he gets there his room isn't hard to find. It's suite-style, with four single rooms off a central common room with a couch and a little table and a TV and a tiny kitchen, and his room is 201D which is the closest room to the common area in suite 201.

He dumps his backpack on his bed, oofs in relief at being finally free of the weight, and cautiously ventures down the hall to see if any of his suitemates are here. He's arriving just about as early as it is possible to arrive, so they might not be, and honestly he's kind of hoping they aren't because he's still fairly on edge from that conversation and when he meets his suitemates for the first time he'd like to not come off as a snappish asshole or, even worse, as a mess of barely restrained violence. Granted, he is a mess of barely restrained violence, but he'd rather most people he meets not find that out.

A few minutes later, a blonde girl wearing a backpack bulging at the seams walks in,