"Earth to Peter, come on get up we're going."

"Yeah, yeah," he says, hopping to his feet.

I do want to talk about it! Maybe I can think about how to explain while you go somewhere.

okay! back in a bit then

He shuts the notebook, puts it in his backpack, and slings it over his shoulder.

"Still kind of want to look at the list of powers."

"Oh, right. Uh, maybe don't peek too much at the pages after the list of powers because I'm not sure she wants that bit to be read?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Do we have to, like, worry about getting caught or something...?"

Vivian pats Gabe gently on the head. "No. No, we do not."

She leads them to the auditorium's fire exit, which obligingly opens and lets them out into the back parking lot, from which they can make their merry way to the nearest park.

"I have no idea what you'd look like as 'an ideal of feminine beauty'," Marcus admits, looking over the powers.

"...oh, I think I know how I'd do that."

"What, how you'd change my face to be girly?"

"Give me two hours and my makeup kit."

"You know, that might be a good test run. Mom's gonna freak out, though."

"What she doesn't know can't hurt her."

"...you may actually want a low-stakes way to gauge your mom's reaction and introduce her to the concept that her son might not be a paragon of masculinity," Vivian mentions. "So, uh, maybe not full drag but some eyeliner and nail polish. Push the Overton window."

"Man I think I'm just... I mean, I have... no idea. How to deal. With. Her. She's, um." He glances at Felicia. "Really Catholic. 'A notebook gave my eldest child superpowers that turned him into a bishounen Mary Sue' is..."

"What does being Catholic have to do with it?"

"My mother would definitely think this was a demonic plot of some kind."

"...I was gonna go did I say to tell her you found a magic notebook and have superpowers, I did not but then I remembered you're gonna be very conspicuously not going to school. The gender thing is kind of negotiable but you're going to be really obviously not... normal... anymore."

"I mean I'm not even sure, like... I mean there's no guarantee that if I take the isekai roulette I'll even stay here at all, or, what I mean is, I might be isekai'd for a long time and then I'm a missing person?"

"Roulette?"

Marcus flips back a couple of pages and shows the description of the "destinations" to him and Felicia.

"Wait, so you'll just... be gone? Disappear? Wait that wasn't in the contract."

"You said you were planning to come back, to fix your apocalypse scenarios if nothing else. And maybe you can find an interdimensional communication method to go with your interdimensional transit, then it'd be no worse than going off to college really."