During the presentation Ayla took extensive notes, handwritten with impeccable clarity in a newly acquired pastel pink notebook. She even tried to make her writing look cuter with handful of flourishes and curls on the letters, before abandoning it halfway through out of an inability to stomach much more of that forced quirkiness. After the speech she looked around for someone to talk to, judging everyone around her. When she saw Taihou struggling to grip his keycard she found it comical, almost laughing to mock him, but then she remembered one of her Mother’s pieces of advice for life on earth. Humans respect the weak and the vulnerable, and even more than that they respect those who help the weak, it’s good if they see you doing that.
After getting her keycard she walked over to Taihou with a smile on her face, and gripped the card with one of her hands so that he could get a more solid grasp on it. She said
“Hi, my name’s Ayla. It’s so overwhelming to be here, it’s waaay different from my home dimension, but it’s so amazing to get to meet new people here!” Her tone was peppy and high-pitched, an excellent job at feigning positivity. She got a look at the room keycard and saw that it had the same number as hers.
“Ohmygosh! We’re going to be roommates! How totally awesome!” is what she said, which was far, far different from her actual opinion on the matter.
Taihou looked up at Ayla and graciously took the keycard.
"Th-thanks!" he said, sliding the card into a slot in his rubber claw sleeve meant for holding such articles.
"I'm Ebisugawa Taihou," he replied, introducing himself formally, the way his parents had taught him. Growing up in the much more casual America, he knew such propriety stood out, but he had the conviction to honor his parent's traditions. Besides, at Mobius, you really didn't know if you were going to run into royalty or not, so it was better to be safe than sorry. But after his introduction, he dropped the formality,
"...but you can call me Tai." He looked at his card, just to confirm that they were roommates.
"Awesome!" he replied. Fortunately, Taihou was rather gender-blind and rooming with a girl wasn't something to get him all flustered. What did interest him, though, was something Ayla had mentioned earlier.
"Did you say you were from another dimension? That's amazing! Where are you from? What are your powers? As you can see, I'm just an Inhuman, with shrimp traits," he said, adding some humbling, self-deprecation to get that out of the way, clicking his pincers in a rudimentary demonstration.
Ayla was happy to see how enthusiastic Taihou was. She thought about giving him a high-five, but stopped as she puzzled over how exactly that would work. She said
"Wow, what a cool name you have. So, I came from a dimension full of magic and wonder, my mother is one of the rulers over there. I can manipulate magic just like her, and there's almost no limit to what you can do with a little magic." She snapped her fingers and conjured forth a shower of pinkish sparks, and a few rose petals out of thin air. Some of the sparks started catching the petals on fire, and then she looked flustered and waved her hand to quickly dismiss it and ignore it.
"Anyway, although I was born there, my father is from Earth. I've never met him, but my mom says he's a big hero over here, so I came here to be just like him, I really want to see him someday!" She peered down the hallway and started walking, but still looking back at Taihou.
"Let's go check out our room! Also, I heard you say you were an Inhuman, what's that? I'm afraid I'm still learning about what things are like in this dimension.""A ruler?! Y-your highness," Taihou bowed stiffly, taken by surprise at having met a royal already. He straightened back up quickly though, his mind full of questions.
"A magical dimension? So you must know Dr. Strange." Tai looked on in awe at Ayla's display. Nothing he could do could come close to manipulating reality like that, though he wasn't particularly envious, just amazed.
"And your father is an Earth hero? Do you know which one? I'm a bit of a hero nerd so I can probably tell you whatever you want to know."He followed along after her, eager to see their room. Her question brought a slight grimace to his youthful face.
"Uhh, Inhumans. Yeah, I think we're like, a separate evolution of humans...? Some aliens were fighting a war and wanted to use our ancestors as soldiers and accelerated our evolution or something. We got powers and developed a prehistoric advanced civilization. But a bunch of Inhumans also crossbred with the later developed humans, so a bunch of humans have Inhuman genes or something. I was born and raised thinking I was a normal human, but there's this mist thing that causes changes to Inhumans exposed to it. It happened to me, and I became like this." He waved his claws, wiggled his antennae and flapped his tail in demonstration.
"I guess I'm not like, sad about it or anything, and I'm more or less used to it, but some people used to make fun of me, so I want to be a hero to show that despite my appearance, I can be a hero too." Tai suddenly caught himself,
"S-sorry, I get carried away easily and talk a lot...umm, what do you think of the fact that the frickin' Wolverine is our teacher? He's so awesome!" Not only did Tai find Wolverine awesome, he knew the ancient mutant had a lot of wisdom from his long life of suffering and hardship, and was an incredible role model when it came to dealing with stigma and unresolved pain.
Ayla chuckled a little when he bowed, though she did appreciate the gesture. She frowned a little when he mentioned Doctor Strange, and made a hasty explanation
"Oh, Strange, yes, um I've never met him but I know he's been to my home dimension. I don't know much about him, I hear he travels a lot. Probably been to a lot of places. As for my father, my mother hasn't told any details other than what I've shared, but I think if I become a hero here, maybe he'll hear about me and I can meet him for real. It might be silly, but I came here to make my father proud." Now she had gotten to the door of their dorm room, and opened it. She held it open for Taihou, and gestured for him to come in.
"I can't say much about Wolverine, because I never heard about him back home. Is he nice? Anyway, let's check out our room and you can tell me all about him."Tai noticed that Ayla seemed more perturbed by his mentioning Dr. Strange than she was when she mentioned that she didn't know who her father was. Normally not knowing one's parents was a source of angst, but maybe things were different in magical dimensions. He followed her into the room and noticed how nice it was.
"Wow! I can't believe we get to stay somewhere so amazing! Though to be fair, we are on a giant floating city. I hope you don't mind the top bunk, if possible, I'd prefer not to have to climb into bed every night." He demonstrated by grasping the rungs of the bunk bed ladder with his claws and making quite the cacophony as the notches and lumps in his claws rubbed against the metal frame. He noticed that his luggage had already arrived so he began to unpack.
"Well, I don't know that Wolverine is nice. I hear he's kind of gruff and grizzled, but what's amazing about him is his power prevents him from dying, so he's been around for over a century. He lived in a time before mutants were widely accepted and was supposedly used in experiments against his will. Despite all this, he chooses to push past the pain and help others. He has more of something than the other teachers, and that's experience. But I guess coming from a magical dimension, people living for centuries maybe isn't such a big deal, is it?" Taihou wondered aloud, though he wasn't about to attempt to guess Ayla's age or anything rude like that, besides, who knew if time even mattered in other dimensions. Imagine using the very concept of time to piss off an otherworldly entity.
Ayla noticed her luggage had also arrived, including the massive lump of rocks in the corner. She nodded along politely while Taihou talked, making a note that she'd have to get more info about that whole mutant acceptance thing at a later time. She slowly closed the door while he was talking. When he finished, she started talking.
"Oh, I don't mind taking the top bunk, it doesn't really matter that much, it's all a dump compared to home. Speaking of that, I hope you don't mind me having Grgggg around, he's not fully sentient but has plenty of brute strength, works pretty well as an assistant when I don't want to get my hands dirty." The big pile of rocks started to move, and one glowing eye lit up at the center of it, it struck quite an imposing figure. Ayla spoke again, but with the door closed her tone had changed, no longer high pitched, now bitter and tinged with venom.
"Now I get that you're some kind of hero nerd. I usually have better things to do with my time, but I think you can be useful to me. Don't worry, I'll help you too, find something worthwhile for your alien science experiment genes and toxic waste exposure, and I promise it won't be TV commercials for some restaurant. Really, I'm glad you're my roommate." She went to one of her bags and fished around for a moment before pulling out a binder full of disks. She laid it out open on the ground and said.
"My mother got these blu-ray things when someone offered her his soul and all he had to her. Collection date came earlier than expected thanks to a truck accident. Anyway, she wants me to study them, to act like the heroines in them, she says that's the way I need to act when I'm here. She also said to start with this one." She pointed to a disk that said Sailor Moon on it, and all of the rest were of similar magical girl anime.
"I think this is a task you can help me with, and it is something I would like to start immediately."Taihou watched with amazement as the magical pile of rocks named 'Greg' took form, but Ayla's personality suddenly transitioning into a more threatening presence put Taihou on edge in a slightly confused way. He wanted to tell her that he didn't actually need or want help with who he was and how he appeared, but his voice stuck in his throat for the moment. Yet all that fear washed away when he realized what she was asking for help with; hyper-focusing on the DVDs and Blu-rays distracted him from the sense of dread he had felt. Any suspicions that might have formed in his mind as to Ayla's origin were replaced with the idea that she was just someone from a magical dimension who wanted to be a magical girl.
"Oh my God!" Tai exclaimed as he rifled through the plastic cases.
"Sailor Moon's a classic, and great if your focus is on elemental or celestial magic. Oh! Cardcaptor Sakura is also good for elemental magic, or if you use cards, and it's great inspiration if you don't have a costume idea in mind yet. Precure's good if you want to incorporate martial arts. In Madoka Magica, they use melee weapons and it's also a bit eldritch if that's your thing." Tai had wanted to go out into the common room and meet the other students, but the fact that an extra-dimensional girl was consulting him on how to be a magical girl was much more than his otaku heart could resist. Sure, he mainly consumed shounen media, but he had eclectic tastes. Holding out a claw, he tried his best to make a sinister, hare-lipped smile while speaking in a high-pitched voice,
"Make a contract with me and become a magical girl!"
